Big Tech and the Rise of Surveillance Capitalism

Mark Kernan

A few years ago after the 2008 financial crash Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone described Goldman Sachs, that great titan of financial capitalism, as a “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” Fast forward almost ten years and you could say the same, and much worse, about surveillance capitalism, according to Shoshana Zuboff author of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.

This time though the squid is even bigger and it is jamming its blood funnel, via smart phones, smart TVs, tablets & soon even smart homes, into every last nook and cranny of our individual & collective privacy. The very thing that was suppose to set us free and serve us, as internet creator Tim Berners Lee had hoped, has now evolved as Lee said “into an engine of inequity and division; swayed by powerful forces who use it for their own agendas.” The capture & commodification of our data, the predatory construction of user profiles and surveillance is in the DNA of surveillance capitalism. Cambridge Analytica is only the tip of the iceberg.

Zuboff points out in her brilliant book that all pervasive, stealthy and omnipresent surveillance capitalism has exploited human experience to collect free raw material for translation into behavorial data. The behavorial surplus-our emotions, fears, our voices and our personalities-is then fed into thinking ‘machine intelligence’, and then reconfigured into predictive products. Products specifically designed to anticipate what you will do today, tomorrow, and next week by means of behavorial modification. But not only does surveillance capitalism predict it also nudges us, influencing our behaviour through personalised and intrusive targeted advertising.

As she memorably puts it: once we searched Google, now Google (and the rest) searches us. We have been digitally dispossessed by the remorseless logic of big tech’s profit imperative. Whereas before it was the social and natural world that was subordinated to the market dynamic now, as she puts it, it is our very human experience that is ripe for extractive profit.

Our data, remorsely collected in recent years, without our true consent, has been weaponised against us with military efficiency, as stated by Tim Cook that is, of Apple, no less-creating a digital profile that lets companies know us better than we know ourselves.

Far-fetched or implausible? Ponder this.

Wearable emotion trackers have integrated sensors which measure & track the wearer’s biometric signals (skin temperature, heart rate & blood volume pulse). The data is then sent via wireless technologies such as Bluetooth to a connected appliance. A huge data-set set is then compiled, no doubt, which can bealgorithmically analysed so as to spot patterns and correlations from which future behaviour can be predicted. Perhaps every time we are feeling a bit down we’ll get a zap of Oxytocin or Serotonin from our watches.

This is all marketed as consumer wellness, but it is really an assault on our unconscious selves that helps businesses sell dodgy products and increase revenue. Our most intimate micro feelings & sensations mined in real time just for profit.

Think that outlandish? Ponder further. Amazon recently patented a “labour saving” design for wristbands that can track warehouse workers’ hands which uses ultrasonic vibrations to nudge them quicker into more efficient working practices. Not long ago this was the stuff of dystopian sci-fi, now electronic supervision from a distance so as workers can’tdeviate from narrowly assigned roles is considered a possibility.

Twenty or thirty years ago people would have been indignant at such proposals & personal violations. In the late 1980s German greens fought with the state over a national census: only sheep are counted, was the slogan. In 1983 the German constitutional court ruled that proposed census questions were gratuitously intrusive and that the information could possibly be abused. Times have changed.

Recently two of the elite digital priesthood, Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg, called for more privacy and regulation of the internet. Zuckerberg also promised that Facebook “will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure.”

Both calls are brazen, self serving & cynical, and exercises in misdirection. The principles of trust, privacy & ethical behaviour were never high on their agenda as they grew their digital, social & cultural hegemonies. They’ve done little to protect our data-actually, legally speaking it’s their data-and that was the way it was always meant to be. Laws protecting our data have long since been undermined by a labyrinth of online contracts & terms and conditions that nobody reads, and what could be euphemistically called a light-touch regulatory framework.

As most of the US big tech European headquarters are based in Ireland this means the Irish data protection commission is the de facto European regulator since the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into being.Yet the Irish data commissioner last year said it would not investigate Google’s secret tracking of the location of Android users. Best not to upset the empire too much with notions about privacy and freedom rights of individuals, I suppose. A few years ago former TaoiseachEnda Kenny said Ireland was the “best little country” in the world to do business in. Maybe that’s what he meant.

Silicon Valley, which has always been a kind of digital scientology populated by people with mid Atlantic upspeak as their lingua franca, have knowingly broken the social contract, now they’ve been caught and as their profits might suffer they are clamouring for regulation.

Zuckerberg came to Dublin recently and in a report by the Irish Times-which read like a facebook press release-he said of privacy rules in Europe via GDPR, “I think it’s a good foundation that encodes a lot of important values around people being able to choose how their data is used…” Facebook grew relentlessly on a quasi-religious drive of hovering up data almost at any cost. Drunk on behavorial metrics & tracking our interactions it behaved like that blood sucking giant squid, smelling money wherever it latches onto human curiosity & weakness.

Our data being ‘used’ (mercilessly mined, exploited & sold off to the highest bidder he meant) is just mere PR deflection, risible if it wasn’t so obvious. We should choose, and no one else, how our data is used, if it is to be used at all.

This is self-serving propaganda by Zuckerberg. Silicon Valley PR bullshit trying to boost its tarnished “brand reputation”. After all, even when you turn off tracking, Facebook still tracks you. Likewise, it follows you across the internet via code implanted in your browser. So much for Zuckerberg’s much lauded promise to rebuild Facebook as a “privacy-focused” platform.

More risible still, Facebook is actually paying the Daily Telegraph as part of a marketing campaign to run positive stories about it titled: “Being human in the information age”. As Orwell might have said about these propaganda pieces: you couldn’t make this shit up.

Shoshanna Zuboff accurately points out that the digital oligarchs are the robber barons of the 21^stcentury. Their business model has been premised on deliberate “psychic numbing” & our unconscious awareness of what they have been doing.

Big tech calling for regulation now is a cynical public relations strategy, for years they resisted regulation as it hindered ‘innovation’ & privacy was, according to Zuckerberg no longer a social norm anyway. Yet the technologies they make billions off were only made possible by massive state subsidies and public research contracts. Without the US defence budget, American tax dollars in other words, generations of computers would not have been built. State capitalism in other words recast as free-market entrepreneurialism.

Noam Chomsky writing in the 2009 explains it well:

“[T]he core of the economy relies very heavily on the state sector, and transparently so. So for example to take the last economic boom which was based on information technology — where did that come from? Computers and the Internet. Computers and the Internet were almost entirely within the state system for about 30 years — research, development, procurement, other devices — before they were finally handed over to private enterprise for profit-making.”

The silicon valley/state relationship is ongoing, and still reciprocal. Eric Schmidt-ex Google CEO- is now chairman of the Defense Innovation Board set up by the Pentagon which is made up of Silicon Valley experts, academics, and the US defence industry to ‘innovate’ (there’s that word again) & discuss the deployment of artificial intelligence in war, amongst other things. Innovation at this point is really a rhetorical device and a proxy for intrusion into our privacy, and worse.

Intriguingly, another board member Harvard law Professor Cass Sunstein a few years ago proposed the novel and somewhat Huxleyian idea of ‘cognitive infiltration’ where, “Government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action.” The road to hell is paved with good intentions & unintended outcomes- perhaps, perhaps not. Then again, maybe it’s time has finally come.

Privacy for the rich you could say, and the social media panopticon for the rest of us. This is no less than the incremental crippling of human freedom, just like the frog in slowly boiling water, it’s happened before we even notice what has been going on.

Why is all of this important? Constant surveillance creates a prison of the mind. The surveillance innovations of big tech strike straight at what makes us human-our privacy, our agency, our autonomy, and our need for solitude.

Without solitude how can we ever figure out who and what we are? Without it, we can’t be fully human and we certainly can never be fully free.

We were told by Reagan, Thatcher, & Blair & others that neoliberal capitalism was about freedom & liberating the individual from economic & economic slavery. The Internet promised similar emancipation, and yet we’ve ended up with surveillance capitalism.

Published over twenty years ago Richard Barbrook & Andy Cameron’s article The Californian Ideology now looks extraordinarily prescient. In it they warned that “The technologies of freedom are turning into the machines of dominance.” Tim Berners Lee would agree. Bizarrely, for all of us, the Californian ideology of counter-cultural libertarian individualism & free market capitalism has converged & morphed into rapacious surveillance capitalism.

Tech utopianism is the new digital orthodoxy of the day and ‘innovation’ has become a proxy for deep intrusion into our privacy, and even, as Ruboff warns, our sense of self. Silicon Valley’s doctrine of technological inevitability she adds “carries a weaponised virus of moral nihilism programmed to target human agency and delete resistance and creativity from the text of human possibility.”

As has been said elsewhere, Big Tech’s business model isn’t compatible with our rights, human values and even our democracies. More importantly, it isn’t compatible with our very idea of being human. Zuboff finishes her timely book with a warning we should heed:

“It’s not ok for [our] every move, emotion, utterance, and desire to be catalogued, manipulated, and then used to surreptitiously herd us through the future tense for someone else’s profit.”

Billionaires like Eric Schmidt & Zuckerberg now have unprecedented asymmetries of knowledge-they know huge amounts about us, yet we know little about them. As Zuboff points out: “They aim to be unchallenged in their power to know, to decide who knows, and to decide who decides.”

But what if a state-corporate-bureaucratic monster emerges from all of this? Which, as David Samuels of Wired magazine warned, has the potential for “tracking, sorting, gas-lighting, manipulating, and censoring citizens” similar to China’s big brother state.What if the digital freedom we thought we had is not freedom at all; in reality it is a type of unfreedom masquerading as freedom? What if, during our induced digital somnolence, the monster squid has already arrived?

Is 5G Worth the Risks?

Iishana Artra

In recent months there’s been a lot of talk about 5G – the next generation of wireless technology. 5G is being touted as a necessary step to the ‘internet of things’ – a world in which our refrigerators alert us when we’re low on milk, our baby’s diapers tell us when they need to be changed, and Netflix is available everywhere, all the time. But what we’re not hearing is that evidence-based studies worldwide have clearly established the harmful effects of human exposure to pulsed radiofrequency radiation from cell towers, cell phones and other devices – and that 5G will make the problem exponentially worse.

Most people believe that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) carefully assesses the health risks of these technologies before approving them. But in testimony taken by Senator Blumenthal of Connecticut, the FCC admitted it has not conducted any safety studies on 5G.

Telecom lobbyists assure us that guidelines already in place are adequate to protect the public. Those safety guidelines, however, are based on a 1996 study of how much a cell phone heated the head of an adult-sized plastic mannequin. This is problematic, for at least three reasons:

• living organisms consist of highly complex and interdependent cells and tissue, not plastic.
• those being exposed to radiofrequency radiation include fetuses, children, plants, and wildlife – not just adult male humans.
• the frequencies used in the mannequin study were far lower than the exposures associated with 5G.

5G radiofrequency (RF) radiation uses a ‘cocktail’ of three types of radiation, ranging from relatively low-energy radio waves, microwave radiation with far more energy, and millimeter waves with vastly more energy (see below). The extremely high frequencies in 5G are where the biggest danger lies. While 4G frequencies go as high as 6 GHz, 5G exposes biological life to pulsed signals in the 30 GHz to 100 GHz range. The general public has never before been exposed to such high frequencies for long periods of time.

This is a big deal. It turns out that our eyes and our sweat ducts act as antennas for absorption of the higher-frequency 5G waves. And because the distances these high-energy waves can travel is relatively short, transmitters will be required closer to homes and schools than earlier wireless technologies: the build-out will add the equivalent of a cell tower every 2-10 houses.

But former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has made it clear the Telecom-dominated FCC does not put health first: “Stay out of the way of technological development,” he said. “Unlike some countries, we do not believe we should spend the next couple of years studying… Turning innovators loose is far preferable to letting committees and regulators define the future. We won’t wait for the standards.” In response to questions about health concerns, Mr. Wheeler said: “Talk to the medical people”.

Good idea.

The “medical people” have conducted over 2,000 international evidence-based studies that link health impacts with pulsed radiowave radiation from cell towers, routers, cell phones, tablets, and other wireless devices. These studies tell us that RF radiation is harmful at even low and short exposures, and that it impacts children and fetuses more rapidly than adults. Among the findings are that RF radiation is carcinogenic, causes DNA damage, affects fertility and the endocrine system, and has neurological impacts. Pulsed electromagnetic frequencies have also been shown to cause neurological symptoms: depression, anxiety, headaches, muscle pain, attention deficits, insomnia, dizziness, tinnitus, skin tingling, loss of appetite, and nausea.

The U.S. Government has known of these risks since at least 1971, when the Naval Medical Research and Development Command published a bibliography containing 3,700 references reporting 100 biological and clinical effects attributed to microwave and radio-frequency radiation.

Recent findings, such as the $30 million 2018 U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) Study, have corroborated the findings of all well-designed heart and brain cancer studies of people with 10 or more years’ exposure to cellular radiation from cell towers and cell phones. They all agree: RF radiation causes cancer.

What has been the response to these findings?

Scientists are urging the World Health Organization (WHO) to update its classification of RF from a Group 2B Carcinogen to a Class 1 carcinogen – making RF and 5G comparable to arsenic and asbestos. Annie Sasco, former Chief of WHO’s Research Unit of Epidemiology for Cancer Prevention, says, “Enough is enough, how many more deaths would be needed before serious action is taken? Evidence just continues to accumulate.”

Ronald Melnick, the designer of the NTP study, says that the study “shows clear evidence of a causal link between cancer and exposure to wireless cell phone signals.” He adds that “An important lesson that should be learned from the NTP studies is that we can no longer assume that any current or future wireless technology, including 5G, is safe without adequate testing.” Meanwhile, 231 scientists from 42 nations have signed the 5G Appeal, which urgently calls for a moratorium on the technology. Steps are being taken to slow the deployment of 5G in Italy, Belgium, Israel, Switzerland, and The Netherlands, and in the states of California, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Oregon.

But so far, not enough political leaders have been willing to heed the warnings. Or perhaps they are deferring to President Trump, who said that 5G antennas “must cover every community and they must be deployed as soon as possible…. No matter where you are you will have 5G and it is going to be a different life. I don’t know that it will be better… but I can say that technologically it won’t even be close.”

Wireless technology has become so ubiquitous that most of us have been lulled into believing it is safe. Now, the hazards are about to be ratcheted up dramatically. More citizens and legislators need to join those who are actively resisting the reckless push for 5G.

Meeting the challenges of Global Polio eradication

Zeeshan Rasool Khan

Polio or poliomyelitis is a viral infectious disease caused by polio virus, which mainly affects young children. The disease culminates in rendering the infected person paralyzed. It has no cure and can be prevented by immunization only. Due to efforts of major health organizations, the disease has almost been wiped out from the face of the planet – Earth. However, when the rest of the world is celebrating triumph over polio, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria continue to make news for not accomplishing this goal.In these three countries,polio is still endemic.The reason for failure in the eradication of Polio is mainly poor health infrastructure, malnutrition,etc, but the three countries have many other unfortunate reasons – which for a nuclear country like Pakistan are quite embarrassing. These countries face hurdles in various forms pertaining to the suppression of this disease.However, the main obstructions that have made the big chunk of the population to suffer are misinformation, misconceptions, credulousness,and petty-mindedness of some people.

The misinformation stymies the progress in prevention and cure of this disease. A myriad of myths exists that has clogged activities in this direction. Relating a thing to the religion multiplies the influence of that thing because the religion is attached to the sentiments of a person. Obviously, when some activity would be declared religiously impermissible, it will surely create an impact. Moreover, when people would have become dependent on ‘Mullahs’ who according to Allama Iqbal have only one objective to spread anarchy in the name of God, the problem becomes worse. And it is happening in above-mentioned countries. In these countries,people are being intercepted from receiving immunization for polio by promulgating myths that polio vaccine contains pig fat,alcohol (things forbidden in Islam),etc. Another misconception, which has been created, is that the polio vaccine causes sterility. Some clerics have issued fatwas denouncing vaccination as a western gambit to sterilize Muslim population, thus jeopardizing the children. The rumor about vaccine and infertility actually ran in Nigeria, where political and religious leaders brought immunization campaign to a halt on the suspicion that polio vaccine could be contaminated with sterilizing agents. Although the committee of doctors later proved it wrong, yet this rumor became so powerful that people started believing it, not only in Nigeria but also in other countries. Some so-called religious leaders have even issued decrees saying that any person who will become paralyzed or die from polio would be given the status of a ‘martyr’ for denying to be duped by ‘western conspiracy’. Notwithstanding, this misconception has many buyers, which has made the treatment next to impossible.Besides, extremists have spread superstition that vaccination is an attempt to upset the divine apple cart; in other words,it is an attempt to preclude will of God – An instance of thoughts of sorts. Unfortunately, this superstition, too, has gained support from different quarters.

One more barrier is political instability. In many areas of all the three countries, polio workers are considered as intelligence agents aimed at carrying forward foreign sponsored un-Islamic agenda and so on. They are threatened, targeted,attacked and killed for carrying vaccination campaigns. Hence, many vaccinators lost their lives during their services and fell victim to barbarity.Recent killings in Pakistan once again forced the government to suspend the anti-polio campaign and this presents the worst scenario.

Creating scare, promoting myths, misconceptions and accepting them as facts, without thinking about repercussions is not sanity. Similarly, seeing everyone through the prism of espionage is not maturity. One of the Pakistani officials rightly said; these conspiracies of thwarting the plan of curbing polio may serve vested interests, but it is dealing a major blow to the country. And a million dollar question that has emerged is how long people would suffer because of ignorance-cum-dogmatism of others?

All and sundry has the role to play. The need of the hour is to create awareness, stop spreading myths and clear the misconceptions. Religious scholars, Preachers, and intellectuals need to come forward to spread truism with regard to polio vaccination. Media has a very crucial role to play to motivate people to receive the vaccination. Physicians and medical experts have a great responsibility to remove confusions among masses. Together with other NGOs, doctors need to organize awareness programs, workshop at schools, colleges, and universities to inform youngsters about the importance of polio vaccines. Concerned people also need to make efforts to reach out to rural areas to educate the public about poliomyelitis, its causes,and necessity of polio vaccine.The government needs to take initiative to fix the trust-deficit. It needs to take community leaders into confidence, familiarise them about the composition, effect,and requirement of the vaccine. The government should employ trustworthy people from refusing – communities for polioimmunization campaigns. Also, the government must step up security for polio workers and utilize every possible medium to ensure vaccination safely and successfully.Additionally, those who cast doubt upon polio workers and target them should reconsider their strategy, as it is the matter of the nation’s future.These problem-solving steps are relevant to all the three countries as the reasons for failure in controlling the polio are nearly the same. All the institutions and common masses need to join hands to work in coordination to get the dream of the polio-freeworld realized.

Panama election a distorted expression of growing opposition to austerity

Andrea Lobo

Panama’s electoral tribunal declared Laurentino Cortizo Cohen of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) winner of Sunday’s presidential election in Panama, with 33 percent of the votes, two points ahead of the openly right-wing Democratic Change candidate, Rómulo Roux, who acknowledged his defeat Monday afternoon.

The election was another sign of growing opposition to inequality, albeit in a distorted way. It came after a year dominated by a series of strikes, including teachers demanding greater funding for public education, a one-month strike by thousands of construction workers demanding a 60 percent raise, and a general strike last July against an electricity rate hike.

Cortizo, however, demonstrated his intention of escalating the policies of austerity and financialization driving inequality. His campaign, and this was true for all candidates, centered on “fixing” Panama’s image after the emergence of the Panama Papers and a bribery scandal regarding the Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht.

Significantly, José Blandón, the candidate of the Panameñista Party of incumbent president Juan Carlos Varela, who is constitutionally unable to run for re-election, received only 10.7 percent of the votes, compared to 19 percent for the previously little-known independent candidate, Ricardo Lombana. The only contender claiming to be “left,” the Broad Front for Democracy (FAD), founded and led by the construction-sector union responsible for selling out the strike last year, received only 0.68 percent, virtually the same as in 2014.

Amid official boasts about the fastest economic growth in the region and a growing number of millionaires and their extravagant lifestyles, more than half of the working population is either unemployed or works in the highly precarious informal sector. Half of those in the formal sector make the minimum salary, and buying power has fallen during the last decade.

Alfredo Ábrego, a young father of three at Paso Blanco, told El País last week “There are no jobs in this area and, when there are, they are sporadic, nothing stable… They say the economy is growing, yes, but we only survive here with less than $200 for a fortnight. We are close to Panama [City] but transportation is difficult.”

Alma Moreno, a worker who makes $300 each fortnight sweeping streets in Panama City, told the Spanish daily, “A few years ago, we could do our shopping for the whole family with $200 or $250 per fortnight. Now, it’s almost double: the pound of rice, the liter of oil… Everything is expensive.”

A multibillion-dollar expansion of the Panama Canal initiated under the PRD government of Martín Torrijos, who promised to “lift all boats” with good-paying jobs, was inaugurated in 2016, but most Panamanians have seen none of the benefits. The same promise was made when his government signed a bilateral free trade agreement with the US.

His father, Omar Torrijos, a populist dictator who took power in a military coup in 1968 and founded the PRD, made similar promises when signing a deal for the gradual transfer of the Panama Canal from US to Panamanian control in 1977. The threadbare political capital from the limited social reforms he implemented is largely behind any remaining support for the PRD. In 1981, he was killed in an explosion believed to have been staged by the CIA.

Social austerity, privatizations and tax incentives have been intensified by governments of all stripes ever since, at the behest of the local and international financial aristocracy. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Panama’s financial system hosts 1105 firms that administer $129 billion in assets, or 238 percent of GDP.

After decades dictating these right-wing policies, the IMF focused its 2018 report on improving Panama’s image for investors, suggesting greater supervision by the agency’s own departments and “measures to remove any appearance of secrecy in the law.” The aim, however, has nothing to do with fighting tax evasion and corruption, but to “secure Panama’s competitive position as international financial and business services center,” which is based on its offer of tax benefits and other obscure financial services.

While the deepening crisis of global capitalism has fueled financial parasitism, endless austerity and staggering inequality, it is also intensifying the economic and military conflicts between rival capitalist nation-states, chiefly between a US imperialism in decline and a still-rising China, the world’s two largest economies. As a reflection of its position as a logistical, geographic, and financial node in the global economy, these processes find a particularly sharp expression in Panama, a country of four million people.

Panamanian politics are thus a sensitive barometer of the falling power of US imperialism and its growing dependence on reckless military operations in seeking to reaffirm its domination over the hemisphere.

As the Cold War drew to a close in the 1980s and 1990s, Washington fulfilled the 1977 accords by handing over the Canal, closing down the School of the Americas, moving its Southern Command headquarters to Miami and shutting down its military bases in Panama.

The weakening of the so-called “special relationship” with Panama as a firm neocolonial bastion of US imperialism was most clearly demonstrated by the 1989 invasion of 26,000 US troops to capture the former CIA asset and dictator Manuel Noriega, leaving thousands of civilians killed or maimed.

The Pentagon, however, has shown its readiness to intervene in Panama and the vicinity, including Venezuela, since 2003 by staging the largest annual military exercise led by its Southern Command, under the name Panamax, based on the scenario of “ensuring the defense of the Panama Canal,” whose control is crucial for isolating China from the eastern coasts of the Americas.

Since the Martín Torrijos administration, the Panamanian ruling class has increasingly sought to maneuver between Washington’s domination and the forging of closer economic ties with Beijing. As early as 2005, a cable from the US embassy published by WikiLeaks warned, “the GOP [Government of Panama] fears that an ill-considered move toward China could compromise its relations with the United States, its most important bilateral partner.”

In June 2017, Panama broke ties with Taiwan and recognized Beijing as the sole government of China. Last November, president Varela went as far as to declare to Washington that Panama “is a sovereign, dignified and independent country that decides its own policies… How can you tell countries in Latin America and Central America not to strengthen commercial ties with China?”

In recent years, Chinese companies have invested several billion dollars in infrastructure projects and gained control of ports on both ends of the canal. The telecommunications giant Huawei has set up a distribution center along the canal as well.

President-elect Cortizo has deep personal and political ties with the US ruling class and, on election day, announced he had a “frank” discussion with the Chinese ambassador, in which he stressed that “we have a strategic relationship with the US, our main partner.”

Nonetheless, with the Panamanian economy slowing down from its 11.3 percent growth in 2011 to 3.7 percent currently, ongoing negotiations on a free trade agreement with China, and remarks by Chinese president Xi Jinping about turning Panama into a “logistical center” for Chinese companies in the Americas, economic ties between the two countries are expected to continue growing.

At the same time, Varela has led regional support for the US regime-change operation in Venezuela, which is aimed in large measure at reversing growing political and economic Chinese and Russian influence in the region. Last Thursday, Varela echoed Trump’s threats of an invasion. “I hope the Maduro ex-president looks himself in the mirror of the former general [Manuel] Noriega,” he said.

Noriega, however, finds a political reflection in his successors, including Cortizo, who also backs Washington’s reckless operation in Venezuela. Noriega played a leading role as a channel of intelligence, money, guns and drugs used to back the US counterinsurgency and regime-change operations during the 1970s and 1980s in Central America, which not only killed hundreds of thousands, but set the stage for the ensuing social crisis, involving cartels, gangs and police-state repression in the region, and the deaths of many thousands more over the last two decades.

A US-instigated civil war or a direct military intervention in Venezuela would not only bring about an even worse disaster for the entire hemisphere, but could also trigger a war with nuclear-armed Russia and China.

The only alternative to imperialist war and oppression—and Panama’s current position as a flashpoint—lies in the growing struggles of the working class in Latin America, the United States, Europe, Africa and Asia against social inequality.

The extreme right in the European elections

Peter Schwarz 

Forecasts predict that far-right parties will make considerable gains in this month’s European elections.

According to opinion polls, the right-wing extremist group in the European parliament, Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF), could increase its seats from 37 to 63. The Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) group could win around 40 seats, and the European Conservatives and Reformers (ECR), which has shrunk from 70 to 54 during the current legislative period, could win 58 seats. The Hungarian Fidesz of Viktor Orbán, which was recently suspended by the Conservative European People’s Party (EPP), is expected to win 14 seats.

In total, openly right-wing extremist parties can expect to win up to 175 seats in the European Parliament, whose size shrinks from 751 to 705 in the case that Britain leaves the European Union (EU) before the election.

The ENF includes the French Rassemblement National (National Rally) of Marine Le Pen, the Italian Lega of Matteo Salvini, the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) of Heinz-Christian Strache, the Dutch Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV) of Geert Wilders and several minor far-right parties. The EFDD, which initially also included the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), previously led by Nigel Farage, and the Italian Five-star Movement of Beppe Grillo, is now dominated by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). In addition to the Polish governing party PiS of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the ECR also includes the Danish People’s Party, the Sweden Democrats, the neo-fascist Fratelli d’Italia and, to date, the British Tories.

The growth of right-wing extremist parties does not reflect a move to the right in broader sections of working people and youth. The mood among these layers tends more to the left, and is manifesting itself in a growing number of protests and strikes.

For the first time in a long while, strikes for better wages and working conditions have hit not only western European countries but also large parts of eastern Europe. In Hungary, for example, there were mass protests against the “slave law” of the Orbán government, and in Poland, 300,000 teachers went on strike for weeks against starvation wages and the PiS government. In Germany, the number of days lost due to strikes increased fourfold to around 1 million last year and the number of those participating in strikes rose tenfold to 1.2 million. In addition, there were mass protests against high rents, Internet censorship and xenophobia.

The growth of the extreme right is the response of the ruling classes to this increasing militancy. It is the result of the systematic political, ideological and organisational support provided to right-wing extremists by the media, the establishment parties and the state. This is particularly evident in the European election campaign.

The core demands of the right-wing extremists—the hermetic sealing off of Europe’s external borders against refugees, their detention in camps, the establishment of an all-embracing surveillance and security apparatus, the censorship of the press and the Internet, the massive increase in armaments for the military—have become the official policies of the EU.

In the book, “ Why are they back? ,” the vice-chairman of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP), Christoph Vandreier, demonstrates in detail how in Germany, the rise of the AfD was systematically prepared and promoted at the universities, in the editorial offices and in the state apparatus. Today, this far-right party sets the tone in German politics, despite receiving only 13.6 percent of the vote. It heads the official opposition in the Bundestag (parliament), where it chairs important committees and is omnipresent in the media. The secret service has labelled the critics of the right-wing extremist party as “left-wing extremists,” placing them under surveillance, while giving the AfD and its neo-Nazi periphery a clean bill of health.

Similar books could be written about every other European country. Everywhere, the right-wing extremists owe their entry into parliament and their rise to leading state and government offices to the support they receive from the ruling class. They now sit in government in 10 out of 28 EU member states. Not only conservative, but supposedly left-wing parties have allied themselves with them. For example, in Greece, after their election victory in January 2015, Syriza immediately formed an alliance with the far-right Independent Greeks, in order to push through the EU’s austerity diktats against the working class.

Right-wing extremists now systematically use their access to the state apparatus to push forward their agenda.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (Fidesz) and Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini (Lega) met in Hungary last Thursday to forge a pact for a “new Europe.” Orbán celebrated Salvini as a “hero who has stopped immigration across the sea.” Salvini called Orbán “a point of focus for Europe.” Both vowed to work closely together to stop immigration, described by Orbán as “the greatest challenge history presents us.”.

On Monday, the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) leader and vice-chancellor, Heinz-Christian Strache, is expected in Budapest for the same purpose, and on May 13, Orbán will be received in Washington by President Donald Trump.

Orbán and Fidesz are the product of capitalist restoration in Hungary and the decades-long efforts of the Western powers to suppress any opposition to its devastating consequences.

Fidesz was founded in 1988 as a liberal student organisation with massive help from the West. At that time, Orbán’s patrons also included the American-Hungarian billionaire George Soros, whom Orbán has since declared to be the main enemy of the state in an anti-Semitic campaign. Fidesz played an important role in the fall of the Stalinist regime in the fall of 1989.

After a first period in office from 1998 to 2002, Orbán only succeeded in coming to power again in 2010. He owed this primarily to the right-wing policies of the post-Stalinist Socialist Party, which had been completely discredited by a corruption scandal. Since then, he has been trying to establish a dictatorial regime by suppressing any social opposition through ultranationalist policies and closing down any independent press and judiciary.

Orbán received support from the European People’s Party (EPP), of which Fidesz remains a member till today. Especially the German Christian Democrats (CSU/CDU) and the Austrian People’s Party have regarded Orbán as a welcome guest, even when his dictatorial inclinations were obvious. For years, Chancellor Angela Merkel resisted demands to exclude Fidesz from the EPP. It was only when Orbán organised a poster campaign against EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, himself a member of the EPP, that relations cooled and Fidesz was suspended by the EPP.

But Orbán insists on staying in the EPP. He responded to Salvini’s calls to join the far-right ENF by proposing to include the Lega in the EPP, to which Salvini said he was not averse. If the EPP embraced Orbán’s views, it would be a pleasure to work with it, Salvini responded.

The proposal is not outlandish. After some initial hesitation, the EPP included Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia in its ranks. The media czar, with his close ties to the underworld, ruled together with neo-fascists and the then regional party Lega Nord, which he helped gain national influence by including them in his government.

In Austria, which borders Hungary, the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) has been governing for one and a half years together with the right-wing extremist FPÖ, which heads the Interior, European, Defence and Labour ministries.

Here, too, the FPÖ uses its power systematically to bring the media and justice system into line and propagate right-wing extremist views. This is underscored by the outrage on the right surrounding Austria’s most famous television presenter, Armin Wolf, which has dominated the headlines for days.

FPÖ Youth Organisation poster compared to an anti-Semitic cartoon from the Nazi Stürmer newspaper, shown in the ZIB2 newscast

In news programme ZIB2 on the public broadcaster ORF, Wolf had confronted the FPÖ’s lead candidate for the European elections, Harald Vilimsky, with neo-Nazi statements from his party—a poem by the mayor of Braunau (Hitler’s birthplace), equating immigrants with rats, and a xenophobic poster of the FPÖ youth organisation, which Wolf compared with an anti-Semitic caricature from the Nazi rag Der Stürmer. Vilimsky subsequently demanded Wolf be fired and taken off the air.

FPÖ leader Strache, the chairman of ORF’s Foundation Council Norbert Steger, and other high-ranking FPÖ politicians called the interview “disgusting,” “perverted” or compared it with the infamous People’s Court of the Nazis. Steger advised Wolf to “take a break.”. Strache had previously published a picture of Wolf on Facebook with the headline, “There is a place where lies become news. That’s ORF.”

As usual in such cases, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz practiced the wisdom of Solomon. “Such a dispute serves Armin Wolf, perhaps also the Freedom Party.” However, it was “not good for the country,” he said, and continued his alliance with the FPÖ regardless.

The promotion of the extreme right by the state and the establishment parties shows that only an independent movement of the working class can halt the real danger. The fight against right-wing extremism and fascism is inextricably linked to the struggle for a socialist programme against its cause, capitalism.

This is what the Socialist Equality Party is fighting for in the European elections. In our election manifesto, we say that the SGP is “participating in the European elections to counter the rise of the extreme right, growing militarism and glaring social inequality. Together with our sister parties in the Fourth International, we are fighting across Europe against the EU and to unite the continent on a socialist basis. Only in this way, can the relapse into fascist barbarism and war be prevented.”

Uber drivers to participate in global strike

Leslie Murtagh & Jessie Thomas

Thousands of drivers for Uber, Lyft and other ride-sharing companies are expected to join in a strike today, logging off their apps at peak hours to press demands for livable wages and job security.

Strikes are being planned in major cities throughout the US, as well as in the UK, France, Australia, Nigeria, Kenya, Chile, Brazil, Panama, Costa Rica and Uruguay. The strike action comes the day before Uber stock goes public, with estimates that the sale could increase the company’s value by $10–20 billion beyond its current appraisal of $80 billion.

The action by Uber and Lyft drivers takes place amidst a growing upsurge in the class struggle, from the recent walkout by hundreds of thousands of teachers in Poland to the strike by 70,000 maquiladora workers in Matamoros, Mexico. It coincides with a statewide walkout by teachers in the US state of Oregon, city college and charter school employees in Chicago, and nurses and hospital support staff in Toledo, Ohio.

In New York City, the Uber and Lyft strike was voted on last week by drivers in the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA). Some 10,000 drivers in the city will not work the busy 7:00 a.m.–9:00 a.m. period on Wednesday and will rally outside Uber and Lyft headquarters in Long Island City at 1:00 p.m.

In San Francisco, drivers are organizing a protest at Uber’s headquarters followed by a twelve-hour app shutoff. In London, drivers will be protesting at Uber headquarters during a nine-hour app shutoff. Graphics circulating for the international strike are using the slogan, “Uber IPO: Billions to Bosses, Poverty Pay for Drivers.”

In New York City, the taxi industry was transformed when a huge influx of app-based cars hit the streets in 2011, causing heated competition. This competition, cost cutting and arbitrary dismissal policies from ride-sharing companies, and the quickly depreciating value of taxi medallions, have driven down working conditions for all drivers. This has led to a tragic string of eight NYC taxi and app-based driver suicides last year.

In the wake of these suicides, the city implemented a minimum wage of $17.22/hour—after driver expenses—for app drivers at the beginning of this year. However, according to a 2018 Economic Policy Institute report, the average Uber driver in the US makes only $9.21/hour.

These poverty-level wages, which starkly contrast with the millions of dollars that executives and shareholders make, have led to actions by drivers demanding a living wage. In March, hundreds of Uber and Lyft drivers in Los Angeles went on strike in opposition to planned pay cuts and to demand the implementation of a minimum hourly rate matching New York City.

Last week, the US Department of Labor issued a ruling defining gig economy workers, such as Uber and Lyft drivers, as independent contractors. This move allows employers to avoid paying workers the federal minimum wage, overtime or providing benefits or workers’ compensation.

In a statement widely circulated on social media, Sonam Lama, a New York City Uber driver since 2015, was quoted in a NYTWA press release as saying, “The gig economy is all about exploiting workers by taking away our rights. It must stop. Uber is the worst actor in the gig economy. Uber claims that we are independent contractors even though they set our rates and control our workday.”

An Uber driver in New York, who wished to remain anonymous, told the World Socialist Web Site, “Uber is going pubic tomorrow, and part of their recently released financial plan is to continually lower driver wages to feed the bottom line for shareholders. They have promised ‘other benefits and opportunities’ to make up for this, which drivers know from experience is bull.

“Uber drivers are demanding $1 per mile and $0.20 per minute in fares, as well as overtime and benefits and for the company to restructure their independent contractor employment system.”

The WSWS pointed out that the walkout by app-based drivers was part of a global upsurge in working class struggle. “I’m happy to see this quick response from drivers in the wake of all of that. Our wages have been steadily declining in 2019, and once that report was released drivers were rightfully pissed. I used to make between $80–$100 in a morning shift, and now I’m lucky to see $60.

“They have also reduced surge payouts by flooding the market with new drivers. They have a bunch of upfront bonuses when you first begin employment, and then they start reducing your pay and taking those away once you’ve been driving for a while. So they incentivize new drivers and push out old ones.”

The international character of the Uber and Lyft strike demonstrates the essential unity of the global working class and points to the way forward as increasing numbers of workers move into struggle. Whatever their nationality, workers face exploitation at the hands of the same transnational corporations.

The fact that workers at Uber and Lyft are organizing their struggle largely independent of the nationalist trade unions is also of enormous significance. In struggle after struggle, the unions have demonstrated that their role is not to unite, but to divide, workers. The unions are organically tied to the nation-state and to the defense of the capitalist profit system. Workers need new organizations, rank-and-file committees, to coordinate and unify their struggles.

The exploitation of Uber, Lyft and other drivers is part of the intensified exploitation of the entire working class. The so-called gig economy now accounts for 34 percent of the US workforce, and this is expected to grow to 43 percent by 2020. Part-time, low-wage and casualized labor has proliferated through the world. Moreover, traditional sections of the working class are confronting “Amazonization”—that is, the employment of every means possible to increase exploitation.

All the parties of the political establishment are responsible for growing social inequality. In the US, this includes both the Democrats and Republicans. The Trump administration is waging a war on the working class—ever more directly connected to hostility to socialism. The Democrats have centered their opposition to the Trump administration not on its pro-corporate policies or its fascistic attack on immigrants, but on demands for greater aggression against Russia.

There is growing interest in socialism among millions of workers and young people throughout the world. Conditions like those facing ride-sharing drivers are the reason why.

Genuine socialism means a radical redistribution of wealth and the transformation of the giant banks and corporations into democratically-controlled utilities. It means the reorganization of economic life on a world scale to meet social need, not private profit. Technological advances—including the development of mobile communications and apps—must be used to dramatically improve the conditions of the vast majority of the population, not increase their exploitation.

The realization of socialism requires the building of a mass political movement of the working class, independent of all the capitalist parties. The Socialist Equality Party is spearheading this fight.

South African elections held amid rising social discontent and alienation from ANC

Eddie Haywood

South African voters go to the polls today, a quarter century after the end of apartheid in 1994. They do so amid chronically high unemployment and vast social inequality worse even than under white minority rule.

If the African National Congress (ANC) secures a majority, as expected, this is more a testament to the political rottenness of the main opposition parties than to its continued political authority among broad layers of the working class, the younger generation above all.

The sixth election held since the end of apartheid will determine the composition of the National Assembly that forms the basis for the national government. Provincial and local elections are also contested across the country.

While nearly 50 parties are fielding candidates, the main challengers to the ruling ANC of President Cyril Ramaphosa, which currently holds the majority with 249 seats in the National Assembly, are the Democratic Alliance (DA) of Mmusi Maimane with 89 seats, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) of former ANC youth leader Julius Malema with 25 seats, and the Zulu-nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) of Mangosuthu Buthelezi with 10 seats. The DA, EFF, and IFP are all anticipated to increase their share of the vote. But this will be a share of a declining vote, with large numbers expected to abstain.

While the government stresses that 75 percent of the country registered to vote ahead of the poll, the Electoral Commission of South Africa has expressed concern that this leaves around 10 million who have not—of which the majority, 6 million, are under the age of 30. The electoral commission predicts that voting by those under 20 will be at its lowest level since 1999.

This political alienation from and growing hostility towards the ANC is rooted in the party’s sacrificing of the jobs, wages and essential social services on which millions rely in the interest of preserving capitalist rule.

The ANC articulates the concerns of the South African bourgeoisie, including rich white farmers, as well as global mining corporations exploiting vital resources such as platinum and gold. It is staffed by numerous black millionaires who have enriched themselves through the policies of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) as junior and not-so-junior partners of the major corporations.

Ramaphosa is the archetype—becoming one of the country’s richest individuals in the country by trading on his former leadership of the National Union of Mineworkers during the struggle against apartheid. He is now worth an estimated $550 million.

His path to the presidency was paved with the blood of the 34 miners massacred in 2012 at Lonmin’s Marikana operation, while he was the company’s BEE partner. While Ramaphosa owned a 9 percent share in the Lonmin, he excoriated the striking mineworkers as criminals, and pressured the authorities to “take action.”

In contrast to this parasitic layer, most black South Africans live in appalling poverty.

South Africa remains the most economically unequal country in the world, according to the World Bank, with black workers systematically disadvantaged regarding wages and assets, and in levels of unemployment.

With a population of 60 million, South Africa is home to 10 billionaires who collectively control more than US$30 billion. The top 1 percent own 70 percent of the country’s wealth, while the bottom 60 percent own a mere 7 percent.

The unemployment rate in South Africa stands at 27.5 percent, with the jobless rate for young people ages 18 to 35 standing at nearly 50 percent. With more than half of the population living below the poverty line, another survey found that this meant half of South Africans are in households with per capita income of US$90 or less a month. Only 13 percent of all South Africans earn more than US$6,000 a year.

Basic services such as electricity and running water are non-existent in many townships, leading to frequent protests, while the education system is such that nearly 80 percent of nine- and ten-year-olds are only semi-literate.

Speaking to Reuters regarding her reason for not voting , 20-year-old Petronela Mukhine, an unemployed resident of Alexandra, an impoverished section of Johannesburg, spoke of the ANC government’s lack of concern for regular people. “They’re all doing the bare minimum. We need change. A lot of people are unemployed, most of them don’t have houses. They stay in shacks and it’s not safe.”

The ruling ANC, relying cynically on its credentials as leading the fight against apartheid, therefore no longer resonates with broad layers of South African youth.

Financial markets have indicated why they are lining up behind the ANC and see a strong win as a boost to their fortunes. Colin Coleman, chief of sub-Saharan Africa at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., told Bloomberg, “We need to get out of this election a strong mandate for structural reforms.” He went on to underline Ramaphosa’s non-negotiable aim to privatise state-owned assets, a move international banks and corporations are directing the ruling government to accomplish.

The ANC is also reported to be losing influence in black middle-class areas that were formerly strongholds, with many citing the endemic corruption within ruling circles and rejecting Ramaphosa’s pledges of change from the era of former leader Jacob Zuma.

Ramaphosa’s closest challenger, Mmusi Maimane of the DA, is a Christian pastor and former business consultant and a current member of the National Assembly. Maimane has campaigned using empty rhetoric and condemnation of the ANC, pointing out the ruling party’s lack of delivering on its promises to improve the economy.

Malema’s EFF claims to be a “radical, left, and anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movement,” centering its propaganda on demands for the seizure of white-owned estates and, less forthrightly, demands for nationalisation of key industries.

This is pure demagogy, designed to secure a place at the table for the corrupt layers at the head of the EFF. Malema himself has an estimated personal wealth of $2 million. Despite officially earning $2,800 a month he owns several luxury villas, drives a Mercedes and wears a $17,000 Breitling watch. He is, in short, a lower-ranking “tenderpreneur”—still living off the business contracts secured during his time with the ANC.

The ANC has also recognised the benefit of making empty promises on the land issue. It has pledged to implement a programme of land seizure from white farmers, without compensation. But it stresses that implementation would require a 67 percent electoral majority to change the constitution.

The ANC has long relied on the backing of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), part of the Triple Alliance along with the ANC and the South African Communist Party. But this collusion with the ANC and the bourgeoisie has severely undermined the standing of the unions.

In a rear-guard action seeking to rescue some measure of popular support, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), the largest with 350,000 members, formed a federation with some smaller unions and a political vehicle, the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party. Its prospects in the election are slight, but its existence is proof that the union bureaucracy fears a genuine political realignment of the working class to the left.

In the absence of such a development, the election is a contest between rival groups of bourgeois politicians, vying over how best to carve up South Africa’s economic resources and exploit its vast working class for the profits of international banks and corporations.

Thousands of jobs threatened at Bombardier plants in Belfast and Casablanca

Steve James

Thousands of aerospace workers’ jobs are threatened following Canadian aerospace and transportation transnational Bombardier’s decision to sell off its wing-making operation in Belfast.

Four sites—Belfast, Newtownabbey, Dunmurry and Newtownards—currently employ around 3,600 workers.

Bombardier has owned facilities in Northern Ireland since 1989, when the company took over the historic Belfast-based Shorts Brothers.

The company’s Moroccan plant, employing around 400 workers at the Midparc free economic zone in Casablanca, is also for sale.

Bombardier’s move is the next phase of a global restructuring, necessitated by ferocious competition in the world airline industry. The company is attempting to defend its profit margins and shareholder dividends at the expense of its 70,000-strong international workforce.

The announcement was made by Bombardier President and CEO Alain Bellemare, whose annual salary and other compensations amounted to over $12.5 million in 2018.

Late last year, the company announced 5,000 jobs were imperilled included 2,500 in Canada and 490 in Northern Ireland. The redundancies followed Bombardier’s decision to sell its narrow-body commercial 150-seater “C” Series aircraft to Airbus, with the aircraft re-designated the Airbus 220. The aircraft’s wings are currently made in Belfast.

The “C” Series was the last technically competitive airliner to challenge US-based Boeing and European conglomerate Airbus. But even with a US$16 billion turnover, Bombardier was in no position to fund the huge development costs required. Bombardier also sold its Q400 turboprop aircraft programme, and its de Havilland trademark, to Longview Aviation Capital.

Over the same period, rival regional jet producer Brazilian-based Embraer sold 80 percent of its commercial jet business to Boeing.

Airbus and Boeing now between them control most of the world market for advanced commercial airliners. Bombardier intends to limit its aircraft production to private business jets and aims to integrate operations in Montreal, Mexico and Texas into a single unit.

The Belfast and Casablanca plants are not certain to close. Aerospace component manufacturers are said to be eyeing both. These include Airbus, GKN Aerospace, US Spirit AeroSystems and Triumph Group Inc. According to JPMorgan, the Belfast wing-making plant site is viewed as a “prize asset” while the Casablanca location is already a concentration of primarily European aerospace component production. No further redundancies have been announced.

Bids from Chinese companies are possible. According to Stephen Kelly, chairman of Manufacturing Northern Ireland, the Aviation Industry Corporation of China and the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China are believed to be exploring options regarding taking over.

Bombardier states that the British government’s paralysis over Brexit—with Parliament yet to pass Prime Minister Theresa May’s European Union (EU) withdrawal deal—was not a factor in its decision. However, the impasse and the UK’s post-Brexit future must impact any decision of future buyers. Bombardier management pressured the pro-Brexit Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to support May’s proposed deal to avoid a “no-deal” EU exit and disruption of Airbus’s supply chains, without success.

The threat to thousands of jobs is a searing indictment of the Unite and GMB trades unions and their pseudo-left apologists.

Union officials have, since the first announcement of redundancies last year, and in line with their long-standing close integration into corporate management, done everything possible to prevent any mobilisation in defence of jobs and living standards.

Speaking in November, Susan Fitzgerald, Unite regional coordinating officer and member of the Committee for a Workers International-affiliated Socialist Party (Northern Ireland), sowed illusions that the unions would organise a fightback. She told Belfast Live , “Unite is already engaging with trade unions representing workers across the Bombardier sites in Europe and North America to bring forward a global workers’ response to this race-to-the-bottom agenda.”

As with any such promises of cross-border action by the nationalist trade unions, this amounted to nothing. Instead, the unions merely sought to limit job losses to “voluntary redundancies.” This is a tried and tested method used by the trade union bureaucracy everywhere to collaborate with companies to impose job losses. The result is always the same: The company gets the job losses it wants, with the unions cementing their position as reliable corporate partners in policing the workforce.

In early April, under pressure from Bombardier workers who held factory gate protests, union officials reluctantly acceded to a ballot on industrial action against 30-35 compulsory redundancies. By April 29, Bombardier withdrew the compulsory layoffs. The unions claimed a great victory. Unite Assistant General Secretary Steve Turner hailed the “great news for the workers affected and a tremendous win for the entire workforce; this success demonstrates the power of our unions when we stand together for jobs and skills.”

This was just three days before the sell-off announcement. Union officials immediately pledged to work with whatever buyer emerged. “It doesn’t matter whose name is above the gate—what matters is that we safeguard jobs and skills in this critical industry,” said Jackie Pollock, Unite regional secretary.

Steve Turner admitted Unite was already “in close contact with other global aerospace companies which could come forward as a potential buyer for Bombardier’s aero structures.”

Turner and Pollok reach out directly to aerospace industry management teams to offer their skills in ensuring industrial peace during any selloff. The role of the pseudo-lefts, such as Fitzgerald and the Socialist Party, is to prepare the way for this, and blind workers as to the transformed character of the unions.

Over the last four decades, the unions have ceased to be the limited defensive organisations they once were, when workers were able to extract improved terms and conditions from the employers in this or that country. This has been utterly undermined by objective developments in the world economy that have globalised every single area of economic life.

The aerospace industry and the fate of Bombardier is a pivotal example. Faced with giant corporations, organised across continents and employing tens and hundreds of thousands of workers in many regions and countries, the trade unions are not able to extract concessions based on pressure on companies within the nation state. Today, the role of the unions is transformed, with their function to assist firms and attract investment through offering better rates of exploitation of the workforce and industrial peace to the companies.

While workers have seen their jobs, conditions and security evaporate, the union apparatus has become a loyal partner and adviser to corporate management. The unions are populated at the top by a layer of well-paid officials, and as in Unite, many of whom are members of pseudo-left outfits.

Bombardier workers are posed urgently with bringing their struggle into line with objective international developments.

New organisations of rank-and-file workers—independent of the unions, seeking to unify struggles nationally and across borders and continents—are needed to take up the struggle in defence of jobs and living standards. In response to the global race to the bottom in living standards organised by the companies, and facilitated by the unions, workers must act as an international force and unify their fight with that of other aerospace employees fighting the same battles.