11 May 2019

Needs finally explained

Aleksandar Šarović

We need food, clothing, and shelter to secure our existence. It gives us the basic pleasure of living. People are also social beings. Joined in society, they improve their lives significantly and get more pleasure. The most substantial progress comes from the cooperation between free people which may bring the greatest power to satisfy their needs. It may also bring the highest level of personal satisfaction, harmony and love among the people. Cooperation among free people brings a bright future of humankind.
The problem begins when individuals start comparing themselves with other individuals.  Subjective opinion of individuals may increase self-importance and diminish the importance of other human beings. Such thinking alienates people from reality and nature. Alienated individuals often want to reach a better life on the expenses of other people. They invest an effort in building their power which enables them to oppress and control people. The success in it brings pleasure but also it brings an illusion of power which hurts back. In such a society weaker people always suffer. Such life is the origin of social problems which have been damaging society through the whole history of humankind.
When people achieve power over others, they expect a significant improvement in their lives, but it cannot happen. For example, Egyptian pharaohs created absolute power over people and wanted to stay in control forever. They built pyramids to ensure their status. However, what exactly did they get by building pyramids? They enjoyed the power over people, but I think watching their tombs grow every day reminded them of leaving this world. They could not possibly feel well no matter what they believed in about the afterlife. I think pharaohs were much more afraid of leaving this world than their slaves who did not build an illusion of power.
Privileged people are very afraid of losing power. For example, I recently saw on TV Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg so concerned about the future of his company that I believe he has lost the pleasure of living. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, literary cried when his Internet Explorer lost the user demand battle with Google Chrome. What fools they are! The illusion of power has damaged their lives. Such a power indulges people so that everyone tries to build privileges which give them power in society. If people succeed in it, they enjoy it, but then they fear losing power much more than they can enjoy having it.
Besides, one day everyone has to lose to stronger people, and this always brings pain. Wise people think fighting for power and privileges is not worth it. However, people who live in alienated society cannot abandon privileges because they enjoy them very much. As a result, the effort to win and stay the winner create enormous stress which prevents people from sensing their real needs and then of course from satisfying them. Such people cannot feel well. Then their misery oppresses other people more, and then everything goes wrong. Privileges are evil, and the illusion of power harms society.
Those who search for power over others cannot achieve a good life no matter what they do. They can hardly love. They may look like they are capable of loving and caring for people, but this is just narcissism. They love their power and success in society. If something hurts them, they would furiously attack the origin of their trouble. Hurting someone’s narcissism means initiating hatred which does not forgive. That is how we can recognize a narcissistic person. Dissatisfaction makes narcissistic people cruel which brings a lot of suffering to the community. It builds sadomasochism among the people where no good future can be expected for anyone.
When society gets alienated from its nature neither successful nor unsuccessful people have good lives. The attempt to raise power over others is a historically proven mistake. The control over people should not be needed at all. The pyramids and all other significant achievements of dictators do not deserve to be appreciated. If this energy were used productively, we would have lived much better today.

People need freedom. Freedom from authorities relieves us from oppression in society. Free people may get to know and develop themselves, their ideas and feelings. They may learn the objective values of life. It would tell them that all values they can reach lie within them. They are the most important creation of themselves. The more they get to know themselves, the more capable they are of build harmony with the environment, the closer they can come to another individual, the more easiness of living they can find. Then they do not need to compare themselves with other people. Then they do not produce problems in society.
Those who live freely following their nature are much more capable of feeling their needs and satisfying them. Freedom is necessary for the development of a productive way of living. Only free people may do great deeds and improve themselves and society. The less people feel powerlessness in society the less they need power over others. That is how a productive orientation of society is built. Productive people are capable of loving. Love is the most significant achievement people can make in their lives. Love itself brings the most stable satisfaction to people. Contrary to narcissists, people who love are never destructive.
Everything good people do stays in memory and hearts of people who are affected by them. People who left good influences initiate good actions of other people. It is as a kind of reincarnation. Good people live positively in the minds of other people while bad ones do not, no matter how significant the monuments they left are. However, the prime benefit from a productive way of living comes from the fact that good people may have good lives while bad people cannot.
Free people who chose to live naturally, responsible for their lives and for the nature that surrounds them, live good lives. They are satisfied, relaxed, and full of understandings for others. Such people can accept the limitations of their nature. When they recognize that their way of living meets the life expectations they do not need anything anymore. They are not afraid of death. Death brings them freedom in the broadest sense. Wise people declare such a way of living as the best possible.

The policy of society based on the cooperation of free people is the only one that may create a good society. But when we try to implement it, we run into the same problem since the beginning of time. The more alienated society is, the more alienated values are accepted by people, the less satisfied people are, and then the greedier they are. People alienated from their nature require a greater share in the division of power and in the distribution of wealth than society can deliver. Then people cannot agree about anything. We have tried to call upon a human conscious to accept a good policy, but human conscience was never able to change society. We have also tried to make rules which will enforce creating good policy, but we were never successful in it. The fact is we do not know how to create a good society.
I have decided to define a policy which will create a good society. After an extensive study, a conclusion comes to me that the democratic acceptance and implementation of equal human rights will do it. Through the history of humankind, the development of equal human rights policy has improved society greatly. Its further development will improve society much more. The problem is the further development of equal human rights requires the implementation of completely new ideas which cannot be easily accepted by society. However, it should be well understood once people accept these ideas they would create a good society unconditionally. Now I will present the essence of equal human rights.
Free individuals may choose to improve and damage society. States have a strong power to restrict people from damaging society and have some power to encourage people of producing benefits. However, the authorities of states were never efficient enough in creating a productive orientation of society as people might be by the implementation of equal human rights. People may radically improve society by getting equal legislative, judgmental, and executive powers. Each person should get an equal right to punish and award other people. Then everyone will try to produce maximal benefits to people and avoid hurting them. This is an essential step in building a good society.
In essence, every person will get an equal right to evaluate a few people of their choice monthly. A positive assessment will bring a small award to the assessed person, and a negative evaluation will carry a small punishment. Such assessments will encourage every person to do everything they can to enrich the lives of other people and avoid producing evil in society. Such a right will make a radical transformation of powers in the society which will completely change the world and make it a beautiful place to live. I’ve called such evaluation democratic anarchy.
Equal human rights will give each person the right to work. As long as unemployment exists, such a right does not exist. Unemployment will be eliminated by shortening working hours proportionally to the unemployment rate. Elimination of unemployment would increase the demand for workers on the free market so that employers would have to pay them more. Better paid workers will be able to purchase more which will grow the economy. Such a simple measure will remove the problems of capitalism. It will also release people from the fear of insecurity of living in a capitalist society and give them more choices to find a pleasant job. These two simple measures will make capitalism a decent social system.
The ultimate stage of equal human rights will affect the public economy. It will be necessary to develop the market of work in public companies. Everyone will get equal rights to work at every public work post at any time. The best productivity offer of workers would get the right to work. It sounds impossible to achieve because such a division of labour never existed. However, the realization of it is just a technical problem.

The new economy will bring more market than capitalism may afford. To implement the competition of workers for every work post, we will need to develop a system that will effectively evaluate the productivity of work offers, harmonize rewards for work, and define the job responsibilities of workers. In short, the workers who offer the highest productivity and responsibility, and demand the lowest salary will get the job. This is a complex task which is explained in my book Humanism. No economy can be better than the one where each job gets the best available worker. Publicly owned companies will send capitalism down to history.
Better workers will always win. They will constantly bring the most efficient progress to society. But nobody will be privileged anymore, and the losers will not suffer because the whole system will be based on the harmony of the market. The market allocates every good to the most capable purchaser who needs and loves it the most. The producers profit from it the most as well. The market of work will eliminate work privileges which will make each job equally demanded. Such a market will allocate every job to the most productive worker who needs and loves it the most. Shorter work hours will eliminate unemployment while less desirable jobs will be compensated with higher incomes. The market will help society to reach the best life possible.
Equal human rights will bring much more benefits to people. These three measures will dis-alienate society. People will find objective values of life. People will respect each other which is the first step in the productive orientation of society. People will be able to follow a natural way of living and to satisfy their needs. People who permanently satisfy their need are never destructive. They enjoy life.
The lack of equal human rights has always made problems in society. It was the only reason society was never good. Full acceptance of equal human rights will prevent all social evil and build permanent harmony among people. Such a policy will build freedompeacejoylovewisdom, and a good-quality life to everyone unconditionally. Equal human rights are our real need which we do not recognize enough. Only equal human rights may build a bright future of humankind.

An Education that kills

Ramanujam Meganathan

It is not that education is in crisis. Education is a crisis now. When people involved in education face problems in practicing it, it is an educational problem or educational crisis. Education as a crisis is it has become an instrument of crisis in society. How? Everyone, be it a politician, administrator, educationist, teacher, parent, student and thinker wants education to become an instrument of change and transformation, but in their own perspective and perception. Education needs to fulfill the basic material needs of an individual  is one thing, a major thing, but it needs also serve the greater purpose of societal and human needs of transforming the society to another level of human development. Does it serve the purpose? It is time for all stake holders of education to reflect and introspect on it. ‘Current tragedy’ of suicides by children soon after the board examination in the state of Telangana and the places where the coaching factories operates stands a testimony of how education is posing a crisis  in today’s children, parents, teachers and the society as a whole. An education which is mandated to nurture children with values and qualities to face the world with courage and determination is killing them. The recently reported number of suicides reported in the above mentioned state is about 20. This is only reported and there may be many more. Why do children commit suicide? This is an open open known fact. They expected above ninety, but failed or secured less than the expected number. Who expected – the child, parent, school, everyone in the neighbourhood and whole country?  Yes, the whole country expects only above 90 and cracking the high stake examination like the NEET, IITJEE and to realise the great ‘Indian American Dream’. No one asks for how the child with her familial and school circumstances has been able to put up a brave face and cleared the examination. Everyone wants to be the first class first ranker so that they can get into the premier institutions and move to any other lucrative job giving country. Aspirations are not a crime; everyone should aspire to achieve something in life. Do we need to put our children’s life at stake and push them to end their life?  The most worrying thing is nobody seems to bother about these suicides, loss of young lives. It is news, as usual, part of 24X7 breaking news.  They are repeated once or twice and forgotten. Release of the highest money invested movie, slapping of a politician or an official or by someone who matters, who has twin electoral voting cards, drunken driving accidents are reported a hundred times and discussed in the ‘yelling intellectual talk shows.’ Death of 20 children after a board examination is only passing news. It appears this country has come into terms with educational suicides as normal or ‘new normal’. Even educationist and educational administrators seem to be accepting it as normal.
It is high time that the country woke to the bitter truth that our educational system has become a crisis. Children are burdened for unfounded reasons. Education has been commodified to the extent that rich get rich education and poor get poorer education. Privatization of education is the order of the day. The state where the suicides has  happened has a series of residential schools where children are stressed to the extent that they have no time except studying, coaching, drilling and learning the techniques of cracking the board examination and high stake entrance examinations like NEET and IITJEE.  Quarter of a century ago (in 1992-1993) as a follow up to eminent writer R.K. Narayan’s maiden speech in the Rajya Sabha the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi appointed a committee to study the burden on children under the chairpersonship of noted scientist and educationist Professor Yashpal. The report of the committee, rightly titled as, Learning Without Burden, brought out appalling condition of teaching-learning in school which burden children. There were efforts to reduce burden- no or less homework for early learning stages in primary school, reduction in the number of tests, abolition of corporal punishment, reduction of curriculum load were some of the initiatives. National Curriculum Framework – 2005 (available at www.ncert.nic.in) which is under implementation across the country has also recommended reduction of curriculum load as one of its five guiding principle. Right to Education Act 2009 (which is now diluted) also set some non-negotiable norms to make learning less burdensome for children in school. But the real stress and trauma begins in high school where learners think of or are made to think of their higher education and making a career. This is being influenced by many factors. Who decides this matter more than what the children wants to become in life.  Majority of the cases it is not the child who decides what she will do in her higher education. It is the over ambitious parents, skewed society which runs after one kind of professional courses or looking forward to job outside the country. This shows that school education has failed to instill confidence in our children. The gap between board examination and the high stake entrance examinations is another major reason for this tragedy. Has education failed? No. Even it has, we ought to believe that education cannot fail.  The way it is practiced has become a threat to children and society as a whole. It is high time that the governments, particularly state governments and institutions working in and for education of children in school gave a renewed thinking on the crisis. Any concerned citizen would not hesitate to suggest that there needs to be high level committee of educationist, administrators, politicians, people from judiciary, writers, thinker, artistes, students and teachers to delve deep into the problem and check the educational menace which affects the society as a whole before it (education) becomes a catastrophe.

French public sector workers strike against Macron government attacks

Anthony Torres

Hundreds of thousands of French workers demonstrated on Thursday as part of a nationwide public sector strike to oppose the Emmanuel Macron government’s draft law on the “modernization” of the public sector.
After six months of “yellow vest” protests, all of the unions felt obliged to call for participation in the day of action, fearing they would otherwise lose control of the anti-government protest movement.
Macron has pledged to eliminate 120,000 out of 5.5 million civil service jobs by 2022. The positions eliminated will be replaced by lower-paying contract jobs from the private sector for one-off assignments. Workers will be forced to move between jobs and locations, and work longer hours. Once the reform has been approved by the National Assembly, it will take effect on January 1, 2020.
Over 150 protest demonstrations took place on Thursday. Teachers, customs officers, orderlies, nurses and air traffic controllers were mobilized. Some 110,000 people demonstrated, according to the French government, while the CGT union federation claimed 250,000 participants. There were 3,000 protesters in Marseille (a union source reported), and between 3,300 to 5,300 in Lyon, 3,000 to 4,000 in Lyon, and thousands in Rennes, Montpellier, Bordeaux, Angers, Lille, Strasbourg and Perpignan. In Paris, 30,000 people demonstrated, according to the unions.
The workers who turned out did so despite their strong mistrust of the trade union apparatus, which limited the size of the turnout. Secretary of State Olivier Dussopt estimated the number of strikers in the civil service at 3.3 per cent, in the hospitals at 4 per cent and in the state civil service at 11.4 per cent, with a strong participation by teachers, who are also mobilized against the education “reform.” The education ministry reported 17.6 percent and 11.7 percent striking in primary and secondary schools, respectively.
In Paris, the WSWS spoke with Anita, a retired civil servant who came “to defend the public service, to preserve all the gains that have been won through hard work and for the right to stand together to express our disapproval of the policies that are currently being pursued. There is money, so we have to share it. If there is globalization, we must share globally on a human level, for the happiness of the people in general.”
Anita explained that the fight against social inequality must go through to the ending of capitalist exploitation: “We should all be equal, we are all human beings, women, men, whatever the color, whatever the country. However, decision-makers still want more money, more capital. If they can’t exploit the Western working class, they will look for children in India, everywhere to produce at low cost and fill their pockets.”
The WSWS also interviewed George, who works at the Bobigny Regional Court. “We have tools that work poorly,” he said, “that are not adapted and that make our work more difficult when we are already overloaded.”
He pointed out that “the index point [that determines civil service wages] has been frozen for nine years ... Everything increases except our pay.”
George had no illusions about Macron’s attacks: “He doesn’t care anyway. Macron is financed by the rich, so he doesn’t care about the ‘yellow vests’. He makes and carries out a policy for the rich, for those who financed his campaign. He owes them.”
George indicated he didn’t believe in the current initiative of the unions: “It’s a real problem. I think that ‘social dialogue’ is bullshit. Workers’ unions are being caught up in it and some will go so far as to accept money. They are caught in a trap where social dialogue leads us to believe that we might have common interests with employers, when we see the decline in the rights of employees and the poorest. We must stop pulling the wool over our eyes and return to shorter, more ferocious forms of struggle. The ‘yellow vests’ may be a solution.”
The WSWS spoke to Lucile, a high school teacher, who said that “it is a demonstration that concerns all civil servants, not only teachers, and it is against the breakdown of public service that has been organized since the election of our very dear president. Now it is really becoming something that is really serious. At school there is an ongoing reform that is very serious, especially for high school students. Also in the hospital and in all public services, so they will be aligned with conditions in the private sector.”
Asked about teachers’ strikes in the US in 2018 and 2019, Lucile replied that she “followed the strikes” and saluted their struggle: “Teachers in the United States do not have the same protection as we who are well-protected. I have not followed the teachers’ strikes in Europe, but it is important to make our voice heard now for the European elections.”
“We have the same needs whether in Europe or throughout the world,” she concluded. “That’s it, we can’t give up because that’s what they expect us to do.”
The French government’s attacks on the public service, as well as on pensions, confirm that Macron has no intention of listening to workers’ demands. After six months of “yellow vest” protests, Macron intends to force through and intensify the policies in favor of the rich that have made him the most unpopular president of the Fifth Republic. His attitude to the workers has been demonstrated in his deployment of soldiers in Operation Sentinel, with permission to fire on “yellow vest” protesters.
It is essential that workers take their struggles out of the hands of the trade union apparatuses, which negotiate and accept the government’s austerity policies and which have been hostile to the “yellow vests” struggles. The latter have shown in many ways the way forward, by organizing themselves independently of the trade unions. They have faced brutal repression and denunciations in the media.
The unions, which isolated and strangled the railway workers’ strike last year, have no intention of organizing a struggle. Financed to the tune of billions of euros by corporations and the state as part of the “social dialogue,” they are hostile to opposition to Macron’s policy, which threatens their material interests. They announced that the objective of Thursday’s rally was merely “to inform, raise awareness and increase the opposition to this bill.”
Faced with Macron’s obvious intransigence, Jean-Marc Canon of the CGT claimed that “the possibilities of social dialogue with the government have been exhausted.”
In fact, the union apparatuses organized this week’s strike only out of fear of being overwhelmed by the workers. Union officials are nervously watching the rise of workers’ struggles in France and across Europe.
Nurses and nurses’ aides at the Chalon sur Saône hospital have been on strike since Wednesday. The Info.Chalon website explained that the strike was launched independently of the unions. An emergency room doctor described the conditions: “In one year, we have only five days without any patients in the emergency corridors, with sometimes up to 18 patients sleeping in the corridors.”
The unification of the ongoing struggles requires a conscious break with the trade unions and the creation of action committees to coordinate a political struggle against Macron, the European Union and the international financial aristocracy.
Twenty-eight years after the Stalinist dissolution of the USSR, falsely described as the “End of History” and the class struggle by the ideologists of the ruling class, the struggle of the “yellow vests” as well as the public sector workers is part of a resurgence of the class struggle around the world.
Teachers have been mobilized in the US, the UK, Kenya and Poland. Movements of “yellow vests” have also emerged in Portugal, Germany and beyond. Mass movements of workers and youth are aimed at overthrowing military dictatorships in Algeria and Sudan. Faced with the intransigence of the financial aristocracy and the politicians it places in power, only the revolutionary path is open to workers.

Iran conflict intensifies transatlantic tensions

Peter Schwarz

The intensification of sanctions against Iran by the United States has produced sharp transatlantic tensions. In a joint statement, the European Union's foreign policy representative, and the foreign ministers of Germany, France, and Britain condemned the expansion of the sanctions.
“We take note with regret and concern of the decision by the United States not to extend waivers with regards to trade in oil with Iran,” it states. The signatories noted their determination “to enable the continuation of legitimate trade with Iran,” and explicitly appealed to Russia and China “to make their best efforts to pursue the legitimate trade that the agreement allows for, through concrete steps.”
But unlike in 2003, when representatives of the German and French governments publicly declared their opposition to the war in Iraq, and millions of people took to the streets on both sides of the Atlantic to oppose it, the European governments are today doing all in their power to avoid a broader mobilisation against the war danger.
Instead, they are demanding even louder than before more European military rearmament. In the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Stefan Kornelius demanded a “European muscle-building programme” to defend Europe against the arbitrariness of the two actors, the US and Iran. “What is thus far lacking is a credible strategy for deterrence or even for a counter-strike, in the finance sector, with the help of trade sanctions, but ultimately also militarily.”
“Deterrence” and a military counter-strike: this is the undisguised language of militarism. Comments like these underscore that the only difference between the Trump administration and the European governments is that the latter are lagging behind in the rearmament race.
Last year, Germany, France, and Britain opposed the US when it unilaterally cancelled the nuclear accord with Iran. They agreed with Iran to continue respecting the accord, and to develop financial and trading mechanisms to circumvent the sanctions imposed by the US.
Above all, they were motivated by their own economic interests in a country with large oil and gas reserves, and a population of around 80 million well-educated people. They view Trump's threats of war against Iran as an attack on their imperialist interests in the region.
However, the attempt to circumvent the US sanctions came to nothing. Faced with the ultimatum of losing access to the US market if they continued to do business with Iran, almost all major European corporations and banks withdrew from Iran.
Washington's latest decision to withdraw the exemptions for China, South Korea, Japan, India, and Turkey, who had been permitted to continue purchasing oil from Iran, only accelerated this trend. The European press commentaries are dominated by anger towards Trump and Europe's lack of power, combined with pledges to rearm and establish Europe as a world power.
Britain's Financial Times complained that the European governments “have few options: however much they are urged by officials, banks and companies cannot operate outside of Washington’s robust sanctions regime. They will not choose Iran over the US. … Mr Trump never gave the accord a chance, even as he has enthusiastically sought a similar deal with North Korea.”
Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger sighed in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, “It's painful to acknowledge one's own impotence. ... The road to world power is still a long one.”
Daniel Brössler remarked in the Süddeutsche Zeitung that the German-American friendship has been “shattered.” “In many cases, the US is no longer an ally, but an opponent against whom alliances must be plotted,” he continued. There remain “many common interests, in Ukraine, for example, in Venezuela and Syria.” But even after Trump, the US will never “return to being the protective power that Germany relied on for so long.” Brössler concluded with the call for Germany to increase its military spending.
Former Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel (Social Democrats, SPD) spoke along similar lines in an interview with Deutschlandfunk. He described it as a problem that the “European Union, ever since it was founded, was never meant to be a world power. Instead we were always supposed to keep out. And we made ourselves comfortable and thought that was good.” Gabriel concluded, “We have to learn to play a role in the world.”
The European opposition to American sanctions and threats of war against Iran is not motivated by any concern over defending Iran against unfair treatment or blackmail, or to prevent a war. This was made clear after Tehran responded to Trump's threats by announcing it would leave the nuclear deal unless the remaining parties to the accord, Germany, France, Britain, Russia, and China, implement the nuclear accord within 60 days by lifting sanctions on oil and the banking sector.
The foreign ministers of Germany, France, Britain, and the European Union responded by issuing a statement in which they denounced Iran. “We urgently call upon Iran to comply fully with its obligations under the JCPoA as it has done to date, and refrain from any escalatory steps,” the statement read. It also noted that Iran's compliance with its obligations would be reviewed.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) stated that Germany wants to prevent Iran from gaining possession of a nuclear weapon. “We therefore expect Iran to fully implement the accord, without any deviations.” French Defence Minister Florence Parly announced new sanctions against Iran to be implemented if Tehran violates the accord's provisions. British Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt warned of “consequences” if Iran stopped fulfilling its obligations.
Mounting tensions between the major powers, threats and blackmail in foreign policy, and an escalating arms race: all of this recalls the conditions prior to the two world wars of the last century. As was the case then, the threat of war does not arise from the characteristics of one or another political leader, but the irreconcilable contradictions of capitalist society. The struggle for hegemony in the global economy and the attempt to turn mounting social tensions outwards is driving the capitalist states unavoidably towards war.
The danger of a third, nuclear world war can be stopped only by an independent international movement of the working class fighting to overthrow capitalism and for the building of a socialist society.

Fiji authorities suppress May Day protests, arrest locked-out workers

John Braddock

The authoritarian regime of Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama last week banned two May Day protests and arrested over 30 workers and trade union officials, accusing them of breaches of “public order.”
The majority of those arrested were protesting workers who had earlier been locked out by the Fiji Water Authority (FWA). More than 2,000 FWA workers, most of whom were deemed to be “temporary,” had their contracts suddenly terminated and were told to reapply for their jobs. Some 800 workers filed grievance claims against the company for unlawful termination and for their collective agreement to be enforced.
Police quickly moved to arrest locked-out FWA workers who gathered outside the utility’s depots on April 30 and May 1. The Fiji Trades Union Congress (FTUC) said the police removed people from land owned by the National Union of Workers (NUW) and also stopped workers from congregating, even on their own land. Fiji Village reported the authority was working with police to “deal with” the workers.
Organised by the FTUC, the May Day events included a planned nationwide protest on May 3, followed by a march through Nadi on May 4. The FTUC had applied for permits to hold the protests over the national minimum wage, labour law reforms and the right to strike, but cancelled them after permits were denied.
The protests were also timed to coincide with the 52nd annual conference of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), which was being hosted by a Pacific island country for the first time. Nearly 3,000 international delegates, including finance ministers, central bank governors and business representatives, met in Nadi over five days, supposedly to discuss issues such as poverty, inequality and climate change.
The government deployed more than 400 police for the duration of the conference. A police spokesman declared they would ensure the meetings would be held without “any major incidents.” Fijian Economy Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum warned people not to use the ADB meeting to “undermine Fiji’s reputation.”
The Fijian Teachers Association (FTA) had earlier received a letter from the secretary of education instructing teachers not to join the protests. FTA president Netani Druavesi said teachers’ rights were protected under the constitution and the letter was “illegal and a threat to the country’s educators.” Eight FTA executive members were questioned by police about the proposed protests.
Police then conducted a number of arrests on May 1. Those detained included FTUC general secretary Felix Anthony, the secretaries of the FTA and nurses’ union and an officer of the NUW. Acting police chief Bitukula Waqanui told the Fiji Times the union officials were detained for “alleged breaches of the law.” The following day, police raided the FTUC headquarters.
After being jailed overnight, the union officials were released without charge. However, 28 FWA workers were detained and appeared in the Lautoka Magistrates Court on May 3, charged with unlawful assembly. A police spokesman told media “the group unlawfully gathered on a piece of land in Lautoka … and refused to disperse when directed to by police.”
The workers were granted bail under tight restrictions, including a 6pm to 6am curfew, and are required to report to the police station every day. They were ordered to surrender their passports, and provide a cash bail bond of $100 each. The workers are due to reappear in court on 24 May for a plea hearing.
The NUW has taken the FWA employment dispute to a tribunal hearing. While the FTUC said it would “not rule out further protests,” the unions are not organizing any industrial action to defend the arrested workers or oppose the layoffs at the authority.
Immediately before the arrests, the FTUC had been in tripartite discussions with the government and business representatives to implement “labour reforms” to meet the requirements of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The government claims it has met all but one of the ILO’s rules, underlining that such measures have nothing to do with defending the rights of the working class.
An ILO spokesman told Radio NZ on May 8 that his organisation was instrumental in negotiating with the Fiji government, “in coordination with the rest of the UN system,” to have Anthony and other union officials released from gaol. The ILO has not however intervened on behalf of the FWA workers.
The sacking and persecution of the FWA workers and ban on the protests again underlines the dictatorial nature of the regime, which rests directly on the military.
The Fiji First Party (FFP) of former coup leader Bainimarama has been in power since 2014, following eight years of military rule. In the 2018 elections, the FFP retained office in a sham contest between two parties run by former military strongmen. The main opposition SODELPA party is led by Sitiveni Rabuka, the instigator of two military coups in 1987.
Worsening social inequality and misery—28 percent of the population lives below the poverty line—as a result of the austerity policies of successive regimes has been accompanied by intimidation of opposition parties, repressive laws and rampant violence by the police and military.
Last month, three New Zealand journalists were arrested as they investigated environmental degradation by a Chinese property developer building a new resort on Malolo Island. The journalists were later released, with the police commissioner claiming that they had been arrested by “a small group of rogue officers.”
The day before the arrests, however, the Fiji Parliamentary Reporters’ Handbook was published, affirming constitutional impediments to a free press, in “the interests of national security, public safety, public order, public morality, public health or the orderly conduct of elections.”
The regional imperialist powers, Australia and New Zealand, are supporting the anti-democratic actions of the Bainimarama government as they seek to counter the rise of China in the Pacific, which they regard as their own “backyard.”
In a visit to Suva in March, New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters announced that NZ will provide Fiji’s military with an upgraded “package of support,” including training with the NZ military, and an “enhanced partnership” between the NZ Police and the Fiji Police Force. These measures will inevitably be used against the working class.

Turkish election authorities order re-vote in Istanbul

Ulas Atesci & Keith Jones

After weeks of disputation, Turkey’s Supreme Election Council (YSK) has bowed to the demands of the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the AKP (Justice and Development Party)-led government and ordered Istanbul’s March 31 mayoral election be re-run on June 23.
Earlier, election authorities had dismissed the AKP’s complaints about election irregularities in Turkey’s largest city and allowed the candidate of the opposition Nation Alliance, the CHP’s Ekrem İmamoğlu, to be sworn in as Istanbul’s mayor. The Nation Alliance is a coalition between the far-right Good Party and the CHP or Republican People’s Party, the party of the traditional Kemalist capitalist elite that dominated the politics of the Turkish Republic till the turn of the 21st Century.
During the five weeks culminating in Monday’s 7 to 4 YSK ruling annulling the results of the March 31 election, Erdoğan and his AKP advanced a long series of dubious and outright anti-democratic arguments to press for the March 31 Istanbul mayoral election to be set aside. Erdoğan proclaimed, for example, that İmamoğlu’s 14,000 vote margin of victory was immaterial given the number of votes cast.
Ultimately, the YSK justified its decision to cancel the mayoral election on the grounds that some of those who supervised the vote were not, as required by law, civil servants. However, it did not annul the other elections held simultaneously with the vote for mayor, including for the city’s various districts, a majority of which were by won by the AKP-led People’s Alliance.
Only the latest in a long series of authoritarian actions by Erdoğan and his right-wing Islamist populist regime, Monday’s canceling of the March 31 Istanbul election sparked an immediate popular outcry, including large angry spontaneous protests in the streets of Istanbul.
It comes as the 17-year-old AKP national government and the Turkish bourgeoisie and its republic face a confluence of political, economic and geopolitical crises. Turkey’s economy fell into recession in the fall of last year, driving the official unemployment rate to 14.7 percent in the December–February quarter, even as inflation hovered around 20 percent and the lira continued to depreciate significantly.
The economic crisis has been exacerbated by the unraveling of relations between Ankara and Washington, for seven decades the Turkish bourgeoisie’s principal military-security partner. The US and Turkey are at loggerheads on multiple fronts. These include: Turkey’s purchase of the Russian-made S-400 air defence system; Washington’s partnering with the YPG, the Syrian offshoot of the PKK, the Kurdish nationalist movement against which the Turkish state has waged a bloody counter-insurgency war in the country’s southeast for the past 35 years; the US sanctions and war preparations against Iran; Washington’s promotion of Israel and Saudi Arabia as its principal Mideast allies; and Washington’s push to exclude Turkey from a significant role in the development of offshore Eastern Mediterranean energy resources.
If Erdoğan and his AKP went to such lengths to overturn their defeat in the Istanbul mayoral election, it is because they calculate they cannot accept divisions within the state apparatus as they seek to negotiate the geopolitical and economic headwinds—a threatened breakdown of the US-Turkish alliance and an eruption of class struggle.
Home to one-fifth of Turkey’s population and responsible for almost a third of the country’s total economic output, Istanbul plays an outsized role in Turkish politics. Erdoğan’s own rise to power began with his election as the city’s mayor in 1994 and he and his supporters have controlled the city’s administration ever since.
The principal target of Erdoğan’s authoritarian measures, including what no doubt were extreme behind the scenes pressures to bully the YSK into ordering the re-vote in Istanbul, is not his capitalist political rivals, but the working class.
Erdoğan and his top ministers have repeatedly pledged to Turkish big business and foreign investors that in the coming months the AKP led government will carry through sweeping economic “reforms”—i.e., social spending cuts and other “pro-market” measures aimed at bolstering the competitive position of Turkish capitalism. In so doing, Erdoğan has frequently drawn attention to the four-year period before Turks next go to the polls, suggesting that this places the government in a strong position to ram through unpopular measures.
As around the world, the past period has seen a growth in working class militancy in Turkey. The March 31 nationwide local elections gave distorted expression to the growing anger against the AKP government. Although the combined vote for the AKP and its electoral ally, the ultra-chauvinist MHP (Nationalist Movement Party), narrowly surpassed 50 percent, there was a sharp turn against the ruling bloc in Ankara and the major cities of western Turkey. This was rooted in anger over the increasingly dire economic situation and indicates a major erosion of support for the AKP among the urban poor, whose support it had cultivated through limited social-welfare programs provided by the state and AKP-aligned Islamist charitable foundations.
Significantly, much of the criticism emanating from Turkish big business circles and foreign investors of Erdoğan’s successful push to overturn the outcome of the Istanbul election is that it will delay the government’s promised austerity drive as the AKP will be loath to alienate voters prior to the June 23 re-vote.
The CHP responded to the YSK’s decision to force a re-vote by accusing the government of a “civil coup.” It also called into question the legitimacy of the results of both the April 16, 2017, referendum, which approved constitutional changes vastly increasing the powers of the president, and the June 2018 parliamentary and presidential elections. There were widespread allegations of electoral improprieties in both 2017 and 2018. Notably the Supreme Election Council played a significant role in determining the referendum outcome, which Erdoğan won only narrowly despite severe limits being placed on the opposition campaign due to a state of emergency, when it ruled that it would count ballots that “had not been stamped” by its officials “as valid unless they could be proved fraudulent.”
However, the CHP quickly made clear it would contest the June 23 elections and is determined to channel the opposition to Erdoğan’s anti-democratic actions into establishment channels. Reprising the role it had played in April 2017 when there were widespread protests against the referendum result, the CHP appealed for calm and an end to street demonstrations. Eager to demonstrate to both big business and Erdoğan that the CHP shares their apprehension that anti-government protests could quickly spin out of the establishment’s control, Istanbul’s defrocked mayor Imamoğlu sought to becalm the protests by declaring “everything is going to be all right,” and this soon became the opposition’s mantra.
Much of Turkey’s pseudo-left openly supported the CHP, a right-wing pro-imperialist party, in the March 31 election. Now they are using the canceling of the March 31 Istanbul election to redouble their efforts to subordinate the working class, in the name of the “defence of democracy,” to the Turkish bourgeoisie and in particular that faction most orientated to Washington, NATO and the European Union.
Several pseudo-left groups that stood their own candidates, including the Stalinist Turkish Communist Party (TKP), have already announced they will withdraw in favour of the candidate of the CHP and Good Party’s Nation Alliance, Imamoğlu.
The Kurdish nationalist People’s Democratic Party (HDP), which is closely aligned with the illegal PKK, backed the Nation Alliance mayoral candidates in the major cities of western Turkey, although the CHP and Good Party leadership have, if anything, been even more hostile to the recognition of the democratic rights of the Kurds than the AKP.
Sharing the CHP’s more pronounced orientation to Washington and the EU, the HDP will likely endorse Imamoğlu in the re-vote. But an HDP member of Parliament signaled that if Erdoğan was ready to make concessions to the Kurdish bourgeoisie, the AKP could yet garner the HDP’s support. “If you want to win the elections in İstanbul,” HDP MP İmam Tascier told Rudaw, “you have to gain Kurds’ votes... Whoever takes a step to solve the Kurdish question, Kurds [will] vote for it. If AKP do this, they might vote for AKP. If it does not and CHP does, they might for it.”
This horse-trading underscores the right-wing, anti-working class character of all the parties of the Turkish and Kurdish bourgeoisie.
The European imperialist powers, which are adamantly opposed to Erdoğan’s attempts to fashion a more independent role for the Turkish bourgeoisie in the Middle East, the Balkans and elsewhere, were quick to condemn the election commission’s canceling of Imamoğlu’s election win.
The EU demanded the YSK justify its “far-reaching” decision “without delay” and Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Mass called the canceling of the election “incomprehensible.”
It is very possible Washington and the EU will join forces to cynically invoke Erdoğan’s authoritarian actions to increase pressure on Ankara to fall more in line with their respective predatory policies.
However to date, the reaction of the Trump administration has been low-key. The State Department did not oppose the call for a rev-ote. It merely noted it was “extraordinary” and urged the re-vote be “free, fair and transparent.”
Behind the scenes high-stakes negotiations between Ankara and Washington are ongoing, with Turkey pressing its claim for the establishment of a buffer zone in north-eastern Syria at the expense of American imperialism’s YPG proxies, and the US threatening Turkey with a massive downgrade in military-security ties, even possible expulsion from NATO, if it doesn’t abandon the S-400 purchase.
The democratic rights of working people can’t be defended by aligning with any faction of the Turkish or Kurdish bourgeoisie. Rather the deepening crisis and fissures within the Turkish bourgeoisie and its state, rooted as they are in the breakdown of world capitalism, must be answered by the development of an independent political movement of the working class, fighting for workers’ power and the perspective of international socialism.

“Unequal Germany”—new study examines regional differences

Elisabeth Zimmermann

In recent years, the poverty report of the Joint Welfare Association and other studies have revealed the extent of the gulf between rich and poor in Germany. A new study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES), which is close to the Social Democratic Party (SPD), shows another aspect of this: grave regional differences.
On behalf of the FES, experts from the Institute for Regional and Urban Development Research (ILS) in Dortmund investigated the extent of the unequal living conditions in Germany’s 402 districts and district-free cities. The study, presented at the end of April, bears the title: “Unequal Germany—Socio-Economic Disparities Report 2019.”
In contrast to other studies, which mostly examine only one or two criteria, numerous indicators have been used as a basis: How high are the municipalities in debt? What are the incomes and rents? How many old people and children live on social assistance? What are the conditions of the infrastructure, medical care and other services?
On this basis, Germany was divided into five regions:
* Dynamic large and medium-sized cities with a risk of exclusion (22.7 million inhabitants), in which particular groups are prevented from participating fully and equally in economic life. The study cites cities such as Munich and Hamburg, as well as Gera and Frankfurt on the Oder.
* Strong surrounding region (13.7 million inhabitants), which includes the surrounding areas of Munich, Hamburg, Frankfurt am Main and Stuttgart.
* Solid middle (32.8 million inhabitants). The study includes a large part of West Germany outside the big cities. Typical examples listed are the Odenwald, the Sauerland and Göttingen.
* Rural areas in permanent structural crisis (8.1 million inhabitants). The rural areas in eastern Germany are particularly affected.
* Cities in permanent structural change (5.4 million inhabitants). These include many cities in the Ruhr area such as Duisburg, Dortmund, Gelsenkirchen, the Saarland and cities in Rhineland-Palatinate.
A key finding of the comprehensive study is that social and economic inequality has consolidated despite economic growth and employment growth in recent years.
And this economic growth is just about to dry up, with forecasts being revised downwards several times in recent months. The intensification of the capitalist economic crisis, the uncertainties associated with Brexit, worsening trade war and technological upheaval are threatening tens of thousands of jobs. The announcement of massive job cuts at Ford, VW, Bayer, Siemens and other corporations are just the beginning.
The FES study notes that more than 13.5 million people in Germany live in regions with severe structural problems. But even in the “dynamic boom regions” the gulf between poor and rich is growing. Here, middle-income people, families with children and pensioners are threatened with poverty. Many are driven out because they can no longer afford the rising rents and cost of living in the growing cities.
The situation has been further aggravated in that since 2017, almost one in five households in receipt of Hartz IV welfare payments do not have their full housing costs recognised and so are virtually pushed below the actual subsistence level.
Furthermore, the study states: “The causes of the structural problems are different. While urbanised regions in the west of the country have to deal with the loss of important old industrial sectors (e.g., mining and heavy industry), the aftermath of German reunification and the subsequent collapse of entire economic sectors and labour markets in the GDR [former East Germany] are felt in the predominantly rural regions of eastern Germany.”
This is a sugar-coated description of the wiping out of the formerly nationalised industry in the GDR by Western capitalist corporations with the help of the Treuhand privatisation agency and the former Stalinist bureaucracy. They destroyed millions of jobs, while enriching themselves obscenely.
The study notes that child poverty is a problem in almost all major cities and their surrounding areas. “Very high values of 25 to nearly 40 percent in the Ruhr area, Bremen, Berlin and in some East German cities indicate that here large parts of the population experience poverty and also encounter further social disadvantages during their lives,” the report states.
Elsewhere, the report notes: “For example, the risk of poverty for children and older citizens is a general problem in large cities. The extreme values between the dynamic large and medium cities with risk of exclusion and the urban regions in the ongoing structural change are not far apart (child poverty: Halle on the Saale with 31.9 percent; and Gelsenkirchen with 39.5 percent; poverty in old age: Frankfurt am Main with 8.8 percent; and Offenbach am Main with 8.9 percent).”
The FES study also provides empirical data on life expectancy, health, education and other areas. But it says nothing about the causes of this development and the intensification of social inequality: the capitalist profit system.
As with a similar study from 2015, this study’s authors want to submit policy suggestions for “equal living conditions in Germany,” an objective that is also in the federal government coalition agreement, concluded by the Christian Democrats and SPD.
One of their proposals is that federal and state governments finance highly indebted municipalities with debt cuts, subject to strict conditions. Yet, it is precisely this policy that has led to the catastrophic financial situation in many over-indebted communities.
It recalls the EU’s austerity policy in Greece, where billions in credits were used to rescue the banks, with German banks benefiting in particular. Millions of workers paid for it with the loss of their jobs, massive cuts in wages and pensions, and the destruction of the health system. A social catastrophe was unleashed that had never been seen outside wartime, and this catastrophe continues.
The extent of the concentration of wealth and poverty in Germany is clear from a study by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW). According to this, the 45 richest households in Germany possess as much wealth as some 20 million households of the poorer half of the population. The figures on which this study is based date from 2014. Social polarisation has continued to increase since that time.
This development is the result of a dramatic redistribution of social wealth from the bottom upwards—itself an international phenomenon. This did not simply fall from the sky, but is the result of the policies pursued by all governments over the last decades.
In Germany, with the introduction of Hartz IV, the SPD-Green Party government created a huge low-wage sector with insecure jobs, which has contributed significantly to the widening social polarisation. The subsequent governments under Angela Merkel have followed suit, and now the grand coalition is preparing further sharp attacks on the working class to finance the rapid rearmament of the German military.

Netanyahu agrees a ceasefire with Hamas—for now

Jean Shaoul

Israel ended its weekend bombardment of Gaza, the most ferocious flareup since the 2014 war, after agreeing to yet another Egyptian-brokered ceasefire reached on Monday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to facilitate Qatar’s transfer of funds to Gaza and to ease Israel’s blockade in return for a distancing of Gaza’s protests from the border and an end to nightly riots and the launching of incendiary balloons into southern Israel. This was essentially the same terms it had agreed just six weeks ago. It was Israel’s failure to deliver that had led to this latest clash. But three days after the ceasefire, Ha  aretz was warning that Gaza was still waiting for Israel to implement measures to ease the blockade.
Netanyahu authorised the massive assault on Gaza in response to rockets launched from Gaza that killed two Israelis, following Israel’s tightening of restrictions on Gaza’s fishing limits. His decision came just days after being sworn into Israel’s new parliament following the victory of his far-right bloc in last month’s elections. It was the necessary down-payment to ensure that his about-to-be formed ultra-nationalist coalition will protect him from corruption charges and a hefty prison sentence. 
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the most powerful military in the region, launched more than 150 aerial strikes and shelled at least 200 sites in the tiny Palestinian enclave, targeting multi-storey residential buildings, mosques, shops and media institutions. Turkey’s Anadolu news agency was in one of the buildings destroyed.
Israel sealed off access to Gaza’s territorial waters and closed all its land entrances to prevent anyone from leaving or entering Gaza, only allowing in fuel for the territory’s sole power plant.
According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, the 27 Palestinians killed in the shortest and most violent attack in recent years included at least 14 civilians, with the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirming that two pregnant women and three infants were killed by Israeli strikes. Another 154 Palestinians were wounded.
Israel, for its part, suffered the loss of four civilians, the first casualties since 2014, as more than 700 rockets were launched from Gaza. While some of the rockets were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome system, most landed without causing damage or injury.
Netanyahu boasted, “In the past two days, we’ve renewed the policy of assassinating senior terrorists,” referring to the targeted assassination of Hamed Ahmad Abed al-Khoudari on Sunday, the first such killing in four years. “We’ve killed dozens of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists and we toppled terror towers,” he added, referring to the IDF’s destruction of entire apartment buildings that destroyed or damaged more than 830 homes and left more than 350 Palestinians homeless.
“The campaign is not over and requires patience and judgment. We are preparing to continue,” he threatened, indicating that a resumption of aerial bombing, if not an outright invasion, might resume at any time.
Netanyahu came under ferocious attack from his right-wing coalition partners who were virulently opposed to the ceasefire. Bezalel Smotrich, a member of the Union of Right-Wing Parties who is angling to become Israel’s next minister of justice, said, “We should have killed 700 terrorists”—one for every rocket fired from Gaza.
This was from a man whose party agreed to an electoral alliance, brokered by Netanyahu, with the fascist and anti-Arab terrorist Jewish Power, comprised of followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, who advocated the “transfer” of Palestinians to neighbouring Arab countries and a ban on intermarriage between Jews and Arabs. The precursor to Jewish Power, Kahane’s Kach Party, was banned as a terrorist organization.
Benny Gantz, the former chief of staff and head of the Blue and White coalition that sought to unseat Netanyahu as prime minister, excoriated the ceasefire as “another surrender to the blackmail of Hamas and terrorist organizations.”
Gantz had launched his campaign with a video boasting about how many Palestinians had been killed under his command during the 2012 and 2014 wars against Gaza. This merchant of death faces a civil lawsuit for killing six Gazan residents on July 20, 2014.
Netanyahu also came under fire from a rival within his own Likud Party, Gideon Saar, who said, “Timed intervals between rounds of violence directed at Israel and its citizens are getting shorter, while Gaza’s terror organizations are getting stronger. The round of fighting has been delayed rather than prevented.”
Netanyahu, for his part, was determined to bring the hostilities to an end before the events held May 8 and 9 to mark Israel’s Memorial Day, “Independence Day,” which Palestinians mark as the Nakba (Catastrophe), and the Eurovision Song Contest, which Tel Aviv is hosting May 14-18. The latter is already proving to be a commercial disaster, with tickets sales and hotel bookings down on forecasts, despite heavy promotion and subsidies.
According to the daily Ha  aretz, Israeli military officials had warned politicians “that if significant steps are not taken to implement understandings with Hamas [to ease the blockade], the group controlling the Gaza Strip will struggle to prevent other organizations in the coastal enclave from acting against Israel,” a reference to Islamic Jihad. Yet despite the warnings, “there has not been an increase in aid or goods going into the Strip.”
The IDF has been discussing a broader military campaign in Gaza in the coming months that would have devastating consequences.
A 2017 document, published by Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, also warned that without a significant change to the humanitarian situation in Gaza, Hamas, the bourgeois clerical group that emerged out of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and controls Gaza after winning the 2006 elections, was in danger of being outmaneuvered by more extreme forces. Last March, Hamas faced down protesters angry over new taxes and their abysmal living conditions in the Strip, which will soon become uninhabitable.
Israel confronts, not only the consequences of Gaza’s economic and social collapse, but also the crisis engulfing President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA). This stems in large part from Netanyahu’s decision to stop the transfer of Palestinian tax revenues because of its stipends to the families of those accused of terrorist activities against Israel, a cut of some $138 million. Abbas is responding by refusing all tax monies owed to the PA, $100 million a month, in order to precipitate a crisis and secure international aid. As a result, he has been unable to pay PA workers their full salaries.
A further factor in Abbas's calculations is the expected launching of US President Donald Trump’s “deal of the century,” to be announced in June, that will provoke a furious backlash from Palestinian workers. Extensive leaks make clear that what the US envisages is not a Palestinian state alongside Israel but some sort of “autonomous” rule in disconnected bits of PA territory to be funded by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf petro-monarchs.
Without substantial economic aid, the PA is staring into the abyss. Unable to fund its institutions, Abbas faces the prospect of mass protests by workers whose livelihoods depend upon the PA and who reject the US plan. While Qatar has agreed to send $300 million to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and $150 million to the besieged Gaza Strip, after the ceasefire was announced on Monday, this is a drop in the ocean.
Two weeks ago, Nikolay Mladenov, the UN’s envoy to the Middle East, stated that without measures to resolve the PA’s economic crisis, the situation could escalate into major violence threatening the existence of the PA and the stability of the entire Middle East.

Venezuela tensions mount after arrest of coup leader

Bill Van Auken

Washington has stepped up threats of military intervention in Venezuela following moves by the Maduro government to arrest a group of right-wing politicians in the National Assembly who participated actively in the abortive April 30 coup called by the US puppet and self-proclaimed “interim president” Juan Guaidó.
On Wednesday night, agents of Venezuela’s SEBIN internal security agency arrested the vice president of the National Assembly, Edgar Zambrano. Zambrano is the leader of the right-wing Democratic Action (AD) party, whose last elected president, Carlos Andrés Pérez, directed the repression that led to as many as 3,000 deaths during the 1989 popular uprising known as the caracazo and was subsequently impeached for corruption. Zambrano was leaving a meeting at the AD headquarters when he was surrounded by security agents.
After he refused orders to get out of his car, the police brought in a tow truck which towed him and his car to jail. He reportedly had US $9,000 on his person at the time of his arrest.
He and several other National Assembly deputies have been charged by the country’s Supreme Court with treason, conspiracy, civil rebellion and other crimes in connection with the April 30 events, which were initiated by Guaidó, who posted a video of himself and the leader of his far-right, US-funded Voluntad Popular party, Leopoldo Lopez, who had escaped house arrest, and a few dozen armed men in uniform.
On April 30, Guaidó and Lopez appealed to the Venezuelan military to rise up and overthrow the government of President Nicolas Maduro. In the course of the day, it became clear that the coup had no significant support either within the military or the civilian population. Soldiers who had been brought to the event under false pretenses turned themselves in, and an appeal by Guaidó to the population to storm the La Carlota air base in eastern Caracas failed miserably, while provoking violent clashes in which five people lost their lives.
Zambrano and others were photographed and filmed at the site where the coup leaders sought to gather support, a highway overpass in the Altamira section of the capital. They are seen trying to persuade soldiers to join in an attack on the base and standing with civilians who mounted heavy machine guns on the overpass, apparently preparing for a massacre.
Others named by the court have sought to flee. Richard Blanco of the Alianza Bravo Pueblo, a minor right-wing party that split from the AD, sought refuge in the residency of the Argentine ambassador in Caracas. Two other deputies charged in relation to the coup, Mariela Magallanes and Americo De Grazia, entered the Italian embassy seeking protection from arrest.
Meanwhile, Maduro has announced the dismissal of dozens of Venezuelan military personnel who had been involved in the coup attempt. The most senior among them was the chief of the SEBIN internal security force, Gen. Manuel Figuera. Five lieutenant colonels, four majors, four captains, six lieutenants and 35 sergeants were also arrested.
Some 25 of these military personnel sought refuge in the embassy of Brazil, whose fascistic president, former army captain Jair Bolsonaro, has provided enthusiastic support for Washington’s regime-change operation.
Leopoldo Lopez, who was convicted for inciting violence in the so-called La Salida (Exit) demonstrations which were launched in 2014 in an attempt to force out the government after the right-wing opposition had lost both presidential and municipal elections, has been granted protection by the Spanish embassy, which has allowed him to continue issuing calls for Maduro’s overthrow.
The initial attempts by the Maduro government and its judicial system to hold accountable those responsible for the attempted coup of April 30 have evoked howls of protest from Washington, the European Union and the United Nations.
Washington issued a statement in the name of its “virtual embassy” in Venezuela, denouncing the detention of Zambrano as “illegal and inexcusable” and warning that there would be “consequences,” without specifying what form they would take.
The European Union called the arrest “another flagrant violation” of Venezuela’s constitution and a “politically motivated action aimed at silencing the National Assembly.”
And the United Nations human rights office demanded the “immediate release” of Zambrano and demanded that the Maduro government “cease the attacks” on the National Assembly and its members.
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza called attention to the grotesque hypocrisy of these denunciations, declaring that those who were leaping to the defense of the coup organizers were complicit in the coup. He pointed out that in the countries whose governments were condemning Caracas, “sedition and military rebellion also constitute grave crimes.”
Arreaza in particular blasted the UN human rights office for failing to condemn the attempted coup of April 30 and defending the impunity of its organizers. “Is it the case that military coups are organized in defense of human rights?” he asked.
What would be the reaction of the US government if a group of politicians and a handful of soldiers called for an assault on Andrews Air Base outside of Washington and set up machinegun positions on a Highway 495 overpass? One can safely assume that such an incident would produce far more bloodshed than the clashes in Caracas, and that the perpetrators would have been prosecuted on treason, sedition and terrorism charges.
Meanwhile both Washington and Guaidó—whom the Maduro government has yet to charge, no doubt fearing his arrest could provoke a US attack—are continuing to encourage a revolt by the military to topple the Venezuelan president.
US Vice President Mike Pence, in a speech delivered on Tuesday to the annual Conference of the Americas held by the US State Department made a point of announcing that sanctions imposed just three months earlier on the now renegade commander of SEBIN, General Figuera, had been lifted “in recognition of his recent actions in support of democracy and the rule of law” and urged others “follow the example” set by Figuera.
Figuera, a veteran commander of Venezuela’s National Guard, a unit used in the repression of struggles of the working class in Venezuela, is an unlikely champion of “democracy.”
Pence’s speech included preposterous claims that the Maduro government had entered a pact with Iran to bring Hezbollah “terrorists” into Venezuela and from there dispatch them throughout the hemisphere. The claim seemed aimed at joining the two major arenas of US threats of war into one, justifying attacks on both Iran and Venezuela. The vice president likewise denounced Russia for using its trade and political ties with Venezuela to gain “a foothold in this hemisphere.”
Pence summed up by declaring: “The United States of America will continue to exert all diplomatic and economic pressure to bring about a peaceful transition of democracy in Venezuela. But to those who continue to oppress the good people of Venezuela, know this: All options are on the table.”
The only “military option” that he announced in the speech was the US Navy’s deployment next month of the USNS Comfort, a hospital ship, to countries bordering Venezuela next month, ostensibly to provide aid to Venezuelan migrants.
Discussions are underway within the Trump administration on far more aggressive forms of US military intervention. These reportedly include dispatching US military units, including special forces troops, to neighboring countries, first and foremost Colombia, and the deployment of a naval armada off the Venezuelan coast in a show of force.
US Senator Rick Scott, a Florida Republican, issued a call on Wednesday for the US to mount a naval blockade of Cuba to enforce the sanctions against the export of Venezuelan oil decreed by the Trump administration. Scott called last week for the US to send troops to Colombia to break through barriers on the Venezuelan border to force through “humanitarian aid.”
All of these proposals, which pose the threat of a bloodbath and a potential confrontation between the US and nuclear-armed Russia, express the mounting frustration in Washington over the failure of the regime-change operation centered upon Guaidó to produce the desired results. The Venezuelan military has thus far failed to turn against Maduro, and the broader masses of Venezuelans, however much they are hostile to the Maduro government, see in the right-wing CIA-trained opposition an enemy in service of US imperialism and the country’s traditional ruling oligarchy.
Under these conditions, the threat of a direct US military intervention to assert Washington’s control over Venezuela and its oil reserves, the largest on the planet, only continues to grow.