50 years of failure of the Organization of Islamic Conference

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

The 14th Islamic Summit Conference ended Friday Night (May 31) in Mecca. A final statement accused Iran of supporting Yemen’s Houthi rebel group; illegally occupying three islands in the Persian Gulf; and “interfering” in the domestic affairs of both Syria and Bahrain.

Not surprisingly, the Mecca summit reiterated support for Saudi/western-backed Yemeni government of President Abdu Rabuh Mansour Hadi which is fighting the Houthi rebels.

The OIC summit condemned a “terrorist attack” on Saudi Arabia’s oil pumping stations which targeted global oil supplies. The summit statement also condemned “sabotage operations” against four vessels near the territorial waters of the United Arab Emirates, which it said threatened international maritime traffic safety.

Tehran rejects OIC statement

Iran on Friday rejected a final communique issued following a Mecca-hosted summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), saying it did not reflect the views of all OIC member-states, according to Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi accused summit host Saudi Arabia of “exploiting the holy month of Ramadan, and the holy city of Mecca, to level allegations against Iran.”

Mousavi also reportedly accused Riyadh of “missing the opportunity provided by International Quds Day and the OIC summit to press for the rights of the Palestinian people… and choosing instead to sow discord among Muslim and regional countries”.

Saudi Arabia’s behavior at Thursday’s summit, he added, “are in line with the futile efforts of the U.S. and the Zionist regime against… Iran”.

Mousavi went on to voice hope that leaders of OIC member-states “will not allow the Palestinian issue to be overshadowed by divisive policies”.

Syria also rejects OIC statement

Syria is rejecting the final statement of the Arab emergency summit held in Saudi Arabia, which criticizes what it calls Iranian intervention into Syrian affairs.

Syria says the statement is an unacceptable interference in the internal affairs of Syria.

A Syrian Foreign Ministry statement said the Iranian presence is “legitimate because it came at the request of the Syrian government and contributed to support Syria’s efforts in combating terrorism supported by some of the participants in this summit.”

The Syrian statement said the summit should instead condemn the involvement of other countries in Syrian affairs, “which lacked legitimacy and legality” and provided “unlimited support in various forms  to terrorist groups and prolonging the crisis in Syria.”

The leader of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group told supporters in Lebanon on Friday the Mecca summits are a Saudi call for help from Arab countries after Saudi Arabia failed to win in Yemen, where the kingdom and its allies have been at war since 2015 against Iranian-allied Yemeni rebels.

“It is a sign of failure,” Hassan Nasrallah said. “These summits are calls for help …that express the failure and the inabilities in confronting the Yemeni army, popular resistance and people.”

OIC summit condemns any decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital

The OIC summit condemned any position adopted by an international body that supports prolonging occupation, including a U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, it said on Saturday.

The Mecca summit also refused all illegal Israeli measures aimed at changing facts in occupied Palestinian territories including Jerusalem, and undermining the two-state solution, it said in a statement.

The summit urged member countries to take “appropriate measures” against countries that move their embassies to Jerusalem, it added.

The summit refused any proposal for peaceful settlement that did not accord with Palestinians’ legitimate inalienable rights, the statement said.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani had his own message for OIC leaders ahead of the summit, urging them to stay focused on the rights of Palestinians.

In a letter published online Friday, Rouhani said Muslim leaders should not let the importance of Palestinian statehood be “marginalized” in the face of the Trump administration’s forthcoming Israeli-Palestinian plan.

Rouhani also noted in the letter he was not invited to the Islamic summit, but expressed Iran’s readiness to work with all Muslim leaders to confront the White House’s so-called “Deal of the Century.”

Syrian Golan Heights

The Islamic summit condemned President Trump’s decision to annex the occupied Syrian Golan Heights into Israeli territory. Paragraph 17 of the joint communiqué said:

“The conference called for Israel’s full withdrawal from the Occupied Syrian Golan to the borders of 4 June 1967, in accordance with Security Council Resolutions Nos. 242 (1967)  and  338 (1973), the  principle of ‘land for peace, the terms of reference of  the Madrid Peace Conference and the Arab Peace Initiative adopted by the Arab Summit in Beirut in 2002. It also affirmed non-recognition of any decision or action aiming to change the legal and demographic status of the Golan. The Conference specifically rejected and condemned the American President’s decision to annex the Golan into Israeli territory, dismissing it as null and void and of no legal effect.”

Tellingly, the US State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus confirmed Thursday that the State Department has changed its maps to show the disputed Golan Heights as Israeli territory. Ortugas statement came after Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had received one of the updated versions.

“I know we have for sure we updated the maps,” Ortagus said when asked whether the State Department had taken such steps after President Donald Trump in March officially recognised the Golan Heights as part of Israel.

Fifty years on

The Islamic summit convenes every three years to make decisions about how to confront and contain conflicts and crises in Muslim-majority countries. This year it coincides with two emergency summits – The Arab League and Gulf Cooperation Council summits- called for by Saudi King Salman Ben Abdulaziz amid heightened tensions with Iran.

On September 25, 1969, representatives from 24 Muslim-majority countries held a summit in Rabat, Morocco, in response to the burning of al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Fifty years later, the summit still regularly convenes, with the latest set to take place in Mecca on May 31, 2019.

The historic Rabat meeting resulted in a decision to establish the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which was designated to handle the Islamic Summit, turning it into a permanent and fundamental executive body.

At the 13th Summit, held in Istanbul in 2016, a statement was issued stressing the need for “cooperative relations” between Iran and Islamic countries, including “abstaining from the use or threat of force.”

The OIC is the second largest intergovernmental institution, just after the UN, with 57 member states from four continents. It is the voice of 1.5 billion Muslims around the world.

OIC members represent 22 per cent of the world population, have 2 per cent of the world’s GDP, 1.3 per cent of the world trade and only 1.5 per cent of the investments. Twenty five per cent of OIC population does not have access to medical facilities or safe drinking water.

Half of the population lives below the poverty line classified as the most poor. No Muslim country is in the top list of the Human Development Index or in any other global economic indicators.

This depressing picture of the Islamic countries is not limited to the economic and social spheres, in the realm of education and technology the facts are equally disappointing.

The OIC member countries possess 70 per cent of the world’s energy resources and 40 per cent of available raw material but their GDP is only 5 per cent of the world GDP. Muslim countries miserably lag behind in education and technology.

They produce only 500 PhDs each year as compared to 3,000 in India and 5,000 in the United Kingdom. None of their educational or research institutions or centres of excellence find place in the top 100 in the world.

The OIC today has 57 Muslim member-states and has held 14 summits in response to the challenges confronting the Muslim world. Since its establishment, the Islamic world has suffered several major catastrophes which have reduced it to almost a non-factor in international politics.

The breakup of Pakistan through armed intervention by India in 1971, the invasion of Lebanon by Israel in 1982, the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), the US invasion of Iraq 2003, recent US attempts for regimes change in Iran and Syria have dealt a mortal blow to the unity, dignity and sovereignty of the Muslim world.

The OIC has failed to respond meaningfully to any of these crises or demonstrate any unity of thought and action apart from issuing high-sounding declarations at the end of each summit. Nothing was done to contain the crises or avert the tragedies. The OIC remained merely a silent spectator.

Limited influence

While the OIC has been known for its cultural and social projects, its political influence has been relatively limited.

“Typically, in the past, the OIC has been effective in promoting cultural and educational projects across the Muslim world,” Sami Hamdi, a Middle East expert, told Al Jazeera. “However, its political capabilities remain severely limited.”

According to Mamoon Alabbasi, a political analyst focusing on the Middle East and North Africa region, while the OIC has relative political weight, its rhetoric does not always translate into action on the ground.

“With 57 member states… the OIC carries a [relatively] heavy political weight… [and] impact. But how much change that makes on the ground is not always clear,” said Alabbasi.

Adding to its political limitations is its inability to unify its stance on issues, say experts.

“Like other international organizations, such as the UN General Assembly, the OIC is supposed to have a unified voice but it does not because policies of the individual countries greatly differ,” said Alabbasi.

“Most importantly, the OIC doesn’t have a unified voice because most of its member countries are not democracies. So, while their populations may be in agreement [over an issue] they do not always represent the views of their populations.”

Hamdi agrees: “The OIC has a broad spectrum of different cultures. This means that on the political front, even if there is a united stance, it means very little, practically.” 

Final Analysis

The Palestinian cause and support for Somalia, Djibouti, poor Islamic countries, and oppressed minorities have been permanent points in the Islamic Summit’s resolutions during its 50 years history. The 14th Islamic summit issued three documents: A joint communiqué of 18 pages with 102 paragraph, a special resolution on the Cause of Palestine and Al-Quds and a three page Mecca Declaration.

Among other issues, the Mecca Declaration stressed “the importance of standing by those Muslims in non-Islamic countries who suffer persecution, injustice, coercion and aggression; extending full support to them and adopting their causes in international forums to ensure the realization of their political and social rights in their countries and develop programs and mechanisms that would guarantee their integration in their societies without any discrimination.”

Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar

The Conference condemned the inhumane situation in which the Rohingya Muslim community lives and called for urgent action to end acts of violence and all brutal practices targeting this minority and give it all its rights without any discrimination or racial profiling. It emphasized that the Government of Myanmar is fully responsible for the protection of its citizens and underscored the need to stop the use of military power in Rakhine State immediately.

The Conference urged the Government of Myanmar to take practical, time bound and concrete steps to restore the citizenship of Rohingya IDPs and forcibly displaced Rohingya Muslim Minority Community who were deprived of their nationality, with all associated rights, especially the right to full citizenship, and to allow and facilitate the return in safely, security and dignity of all Rohingyas internally and externally displaced, including those forced into taking shelter in Bangladesh.

The Conference condemned the inhumane situation in which the Rohingya Muslim community lives and called for urgent action to end acts of violence and all brutal practices targeting this minority and give it all its rights without any discrimination or racial profiling. It emphasized that the Government of Myanmar is fully responsible for the protection of its citizens and underscored the need to stop the use of military power in Rakhine State immediately.

The Conference urged the Government of Myanmar to take practical, time bound and concrete steps to restore the citizenship of Rohingya IDPs and forcibly displaced Rohingya Muslim Minority Community who were deprived of their nationality, with all associated rights, especially the right to full citizenship, and to allow and facilitate the return in safely, security and dignity of all Rohingyas internally and externally displaced, including those forced into taking shelter in Bangladesh.

The Conference insisted on the importance of conducting international, independent and transparent investigations into the human rights violations in Myanmar, including sexual violence and aggression against children, and to hold accountable all those responsible for these brutal acts in order to make justice to the victims. The Conference affirmed its support for the ad hoc ministerial committee on human rights violations against the Rohingyas in Myanmar, using all international legal instruments to hold accountable the perpetrators of crimes against the Rohingya. In this connection, the Conference urged upon the ad hoc Ministerial Committee led by the Gambia to take immediate measures to launch the case at the International Court of Justice on behalf of the OIC. It further called for ensuring free and unrestricted access to humanitarian assistance by affected persons and communities.

Sri Lanka

The Conference expressed deep concern and strong condemnation of the recent acts of violence against Muslims in Sri Lanka and urged the Government of this country to hold accountable to perpetrators of these acts, bring them to justice and counter firmly the spread of rhetoric of hatred and intolerance, while ensuring the security and safety of the Muslim community in Sri Lanka.

Jammu and Kashmir

The Conference reaffirmed its principled support for the people of Jammu and Kashmir for the realization of their legitimate right to self-determination, in accordance with relevant UN resolutions. It condemned the recent outbreaks of violence in the region and invited India to implement the relevant Security Council resolutions to settle its protracted conflict with its neighbor. It further welcomed the recommendations included in the UN report on Kashmir issued in June 2018; called for the expedited establishment of a UN commission of inquiry to investigate into the grave human rights violations in Kashmir, and called on India to allow this proposed commission and international human rights organizations to access Indian-administered Kashmir.

Islamophobia is a form of racism

The Conference noted with concern that Islamophobia, as a form of racism and religious discrimination today, has spread across the world, as evidenced by the increase in religious intolerance, negative stereotyping, hatred and violence against Muslims. In this connection, the Conference encouraged the United Nations and other regional and international organizations to declare 15 March an international day to combat Islamophobia.

It condemned roundly the horribly appalling terrorist attack, perpetrated out of hatred for Islam, against innocent worshipers at Al-Noor and Linwood mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch on 15 March 2019. In the meantime, it expressed appreciation to the Government of New Zealand for its unequivocal condemnation of the terrorist attacks, hailing the firm and clear position of the Prime Minister of New Zealand, who displayed compassion toward and sympathy with the Muslim community in their bereavement. The Conference equally paid tribute to the wider New Zealand society for showing such a deep empathy with the families of the victims and the Muslim community.

The Conference urged all countries with Muslim minorities, communities and migrants to refrain from all policies, statements and practices associating Islam with terrorism, extremism or dangers posing a threat to society.

The Conference called upon all Member States, in coordination with the General Secretariat, to adopt a comprehensive OIC Strategy on Combating Islamophobia, in order to establish a legally binding international instrument to prevent the growing trend of intolerance, discrimination and hatred on the grounds of religion and faith.

The Conference welcomed the establishment of the OIC Contact Group on Peace and Dialogue and called on the Contact Group to develop a Plan of Action on Combating Islamophobia in preparation to the Contact Group meeting at the ministerial level at the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September 2019.

From Glyphosate to Front Groups: Fraud, Deception and Toxic Tactics

Colin Todhunter

Environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason has just written to the Editor-in-Chief of the British Medical Journal and the British Medical Association Council Chairman, Chaand Nagpaul.

Her purpose is to not only draw attention to the impact of biocides, not least that of glyphosate, on health and the environment but also to bring attention to the corruption that allows this to continue.

Along with her letter, she enclosed a 13-page document. Readers can access the fully referenced document here: European Chemicals Agency classifies glyphosate as a substance that causes serious eye damage. It is worth reading in full to appreciate the conflicts of interest and the corruption that has led to the rise in certain illnesses and the destruction of the natural environment.

By way of a brief summary, the key points raised by Dr Mason and her claims include the following.

• The European Chemicals Agency classifies glyphosate as a substance that causes serious eye damage. There has been a massive increase in the use of glyphosate in recent years. An increase in cataracts has been verified by epidemiological studies in England and by a 2016 WHO report.
• There are shockingly high levels of weed killer in UK breakfast cereals. After testing these cereals at the Health Research Institute in Iowa, Dr Fagan, director of the centre, said: “These results are consistently concerning. The levels consumed in a single daily helping of any one of these cereals, even the one with the lowest level of contamination, is sufficient to put the person’s glyphosate levels above the levels that cause fatty liver disease in rats (and likely in people).”
• The amount of glyphosate in tap water in South Wales has increased tenfold in a very short period.
• Glyphosate is largely responsible for the destruction of biodiversity and an increase in the prevalence of many serious health conditions.
• There are massive conflicts of interest throughout various agencies in the EU that ensure harmful agrochemicals like glyphosate come to market and remain there.
• In fact, a global industry has emerged to give ‘advice’ on biocides regulation. This results in regulatory bodies effectively working to further the commercial interests of the pesticide industry.
• The European Food Safety Authority sanctioned increased maximum pesticide residue levels (MRL) at the request of industry (Monsanto in this case, to 100 times the previously authorised MRL).
• The Washington-based International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) is used by corporate backers to counter public health policies. Its members have occupied key positions on EU and UN regulatory panels. It is, however, an industry lobby group that masquerades as a scientific health charity. The ILSI describes its mission as “pursuing objectivity, clarity and reproducibility” to “benefit the public good”. But researchers from the University of Cambridge, Bocconi University in Milan, and the US Right to Know campaign assessed over 17,000 pages of documents under US freedom of information laws to present evidence of influence peddling.
• ILSI Vice-President, Prof Alan Boobis, is currently the Chairman of the UK Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment (CoT) (2015-2021). He was directly responsible for authorising chemicals such as glyphosate, chlorothalonil, clothianidin and chlorpyrifos that are destroying human health and creating a crisis in biodiversity. His group and others have authorised glyphosate repeatedly. He and David Coggon, the previous Chairman of CoT (2008-2015), were appointed as experts on Science Advice for Policy by European Academies (SAPEA), a group allied with the agrochemical industry and is fighting for higher pesticide exposure.
• Jean-Claude Juncker the President of the European Commission who, against a petition from more than 1.5 million European citizens, re-authorised glyphosate in December 2017 for a further five years. He set up the Science Advisory Mechanism, aiming to put industry-friendly personnel on various committees.

There are many more claims presented by Rosemary Mason in her report. But the take-home point is that the reality of the agrochemical industry is masked by well-funded public relations machinery (which includes bodies like the UK’s Science Media Centre). The industry also subverts official agencies and regulatory bodies and supports prolific lobby organisations and (‘public scientists’) which masquerade as objective institutions.

When such organisations or figures are exposed, they frequently cry foul and attempt to portray any exposure of their lack of integrity as constituting an attack on science itself; no doubt many readers will be familiar with the ‘anti-science’ epithet.

The industry resorts to such measures as it knows its products are harmful and cannot stand up to proper public scrutiny. And under a system of sustainable agroecology that can produce plentiful, nutritious food, it also knows its markets would disappear.

Motivated by fraud and fear of the truth emerging, it therefore tries to persuade politicians and the public that the world would starve without it and its products. It co-opts agencies and officials by various means and embeds itself within the policy agenda, both nationally and internationally.

And now, with increasingly saturated markets in the West, from Africa to India the industry seeks to colonise new regions and countries where it attempts to roll out its business model. Whether, say, through trade agreements, the WTO or strings-attached loans, this again involves capturing the policy ground and then trapping farmers on a financially lucrative chemical(-GMO)-treadmill, regardless of the consequences for farmers’ livelihoods, food, public health and the environment.

Australian government forces refugees back to face repression in Sri Lanka

Max Newman

Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton landed in Colombo on Monday for a two-day visit to reinforce the collaboration between the two countries’ governments to stop refugees fleeing Sri Lanka’s latest violent outbreak of communal violence and the government’s military crackdown.

His trip came just after the Australian navy seized a vessel carrying 20 asylum seekers, including at least one baby, from Sri Lanka. Under tight military secrecy, they were reportedly transferred to Christmas Island, an Indian Ocean outpost, and quickly removed to Sri Lanka, where they could face imprisonment and torture.

This was the latest illegal boat “turnback” conducted under “Operation Sovereign Borders,” which utilises the armed forces to intercept and block all refugee boats attempting to reach Australia. The entire operation is a direct violation of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which prohibits the removal of asylum seekers to face a risk of death, harm or persecution.

Dutton was due to meet Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on Tuesday. Dutton would “prosecute Operation Sovereign Borders’ interests,” Dutton’s spokeswoman told News Corp Australia. “We greatly value the ongoing cooperation on regional maritime security.”

Operation Sovereign Borders’ aircraft this week began three days of patrols over the waters near Christmas Island. Dutton’s office would not confirm reports that up to six boats might have set out from Sri Lanka for Australia, with a spokeswoman again refusing to comment on “operational matters.”

These desperate voyages follow the bombings of three churches and three hotels on April 21 by Islamist extremists, leaving more than 250 people dead. Due to the operation’s police-state secrecy, little is known about the latest asylum seekers, including their background and ethnicity. However, the Sri Lankan media and political establishment are whipping up communal tensions and violence, blaming the country’s Muslims for the terrorist attacks.

Dutton seized upon the boat’s interception to reiterate Australia’s brutal anti-refugee policy. “The prime minister and I are absolutely resolute in making sure that we can never allow people to come here by boat,” he told 2GB radio.

Dutton blamed the May 18 Australian election, which the Labor Party expected to win, for the arrival of the boat, claiming that asylum seekers had anticipated a softening of the anti-refugee policy.

In reality, with more than 60 million asylum seekers now fleeing wars and oppression around the world, refugee boats have not stopped trying to reach Australia. As of mid-January, Operation Sovereign Borders officially had “disrupted” 80 refugee ventures since its inception in September 2013, including 17 last year.

Because of the government’s secrecy, however, there is no way of knowing how many more boats have been intercepted, or sank at sea trying to escape detection. There is also clear evidence that both Labor and Liberal-National Coalition governments have bribed so-called “people smugglers” to take the asylum seekers back to the country they fled.

The return of a Labor government would not have changed the policy. Since the election, Labor has reiterated its support for “Operation Sovereign Borders” and for the detention of refugees in “offshore” Pacific island camps.

In fact, Labor’s new shadow home affairs minister Kristina Keneally, who previously feigned sympathy for refugees, has accused Dutton of letting too many into Australia. She demanded to know why Dutton had earlier “stopped these crucial border patrols” by the air force before resuming them in February.

Keneally further condemned Dutton for allegedly permitting about 80,000 asylum seekers to arrive by plane over the past four years. “Peter Dutton has in fact allowed people smugglers to evolve their business model from using boats to using planes,” she told the Sydney Morning Herald.

It was the Greens-backed Labor Government of Julia Gillard that instigated the illegal deportation of Sri Lankan refugees without allowing them to apply for asylum. In 2012, in a bid to strengthen geo-political ties with Sri Lanka, it struck a deal with then President Mahinda Rajapakse, which led to the mass deportation of nearly 700 asylum seekers.

In September 2017, the Australian High Court sanctioned this criminal practice, despite evidence that those deported were arrested by Sri Lanka’s police Criminal Investigation Department (CID). Returned refugees were kept in inhumane and cramped conditions, subject to violence, maltreatment and torture.

While falsely depicted in the media as less draconian than Rajapakse’s, the current Sri Lankan government has continued these arrangements. It has also exploited the April 21 bombings to impose a state of emergency and sweeping repressive measures, which include military house-to-house searches.

Within Australia, a number of Sri Lankan families languish in “community detention,” constantly monitored by Border Force, a para-military organisation, with the threat of deportation hanging over their heads.

Some families have been seized by Border Force, under the cover of darkness or in the early hours of the morning, and swiftly deported to Sri Lanka. In March 2017, the residents of Biloela, a rural town in the state of Queensland, launched a powerful and ongoing campaign to prevent a local family from being deported.

This response reflects widespread public outrage over the treatment of refugees despite the bipartisan line-up. Working-class people in Australia and internationally are appalled at the violence and cruelty inflicted on asylum seekers and immigrants. Australia’s persecution of refugees has set a global precedent. To evade detection, asylum seekers are drowning in the Mediterranean, they face police attacks and barbed wire across Europe, and thousands, including children, are being imprisoned in the United States.

US requiring visa applicants to reveal social media information

Meenakshi Jagadeesan

The US State Department has begun asking most US visa applicants to provide information about their social media accounts. The policy that went into effect last Friday will give the government access to the personal data that is usually shared on social media, including photographs, locations and dates of various milestones.

In a statement reported in the New York Times, an official spokesperson downplayed the effects of the new regulations, claiming that they were merely an extension of existing rules: “We already request certain contact information, travel history, family member information, and previous addresses from all visa applicants.”

As of now, the State Department is only asking applicants to reveal their account handles. However, as acknowledged by then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly in 2017, the administration has been seriously considering proposals that would require applicants to reveal all their passwords, giving the government full access to their accounts.

The implementation of the new policy, a manifestation of the long-proposed “extreme vetting,” is another step in the Trump administration’s war against immigrants.

Following up on his March 2017 executive order imposing a 90-day ban on the immigration of citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries (Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen), Trump issued a memorandum claiming that the “executive branch [needed to] enhance the screening and vetting protocols and procedures for granting visas” in order to “avert the entry into the United States of foreign nationals who may aid, support, or commit violent, criminal, or terrorist acts.”

In March 2018, the State Department filed two notices announcing its intent to implement changes to the existing rules that would focus on the social media profiles of applicants. The plan outlined by the State Department at that time made it clear that the US government would “require nearly all visa applicants...to submit five years of social media handles for specific platforms...and with an option to list handles for other platforms not explicitly required.” In addition, applicants would be required to list “previous telephone numbers, email addresses, prior immigration violations and any family history of involvement in terrorist activities.”

While claiming that the new policy does not reflect any dramatic change in the existing framework of rules, administration officials have presented it as a much-needed and essential tool to deal with national security concerns. Framing it as a delayed response to the 2015 San Bernardino shootings (where one of the perpetrators had apparently posted various incendiary statements online that had remained undetected), the State Department has doubled down on the claim that the new measures will help protect the American people from possible “terrorist activities.”

But, as critics have pointed out, this is an extremely dubious claim, particularly given that there is no way to prevent those plotting attacks from using false names, creating fake identities or even framing others on social media. Beyond that, the idea that applicants would be expected to report on unspecified “terrorist activities” of family members, who might in fact be US citizens, constitutes an egregious attack on the freedom of speech and the freedom of association guaranteed under the US Constitution.

As the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) pointed out in its response to the State Department’s earlier notice, the threat to collect information on family members was bound to have a chilling effect not just on the applicants, but also citizens who would not be informed about how the collected data might be shared between various government agencies.

Hina Shamsi, the director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, explained at the time: “There is a real risk that social media vetting will unfairly target immigrants and travelers from Muslim-majority countries for discriminatory visa denials, without doing anything to protect national security.”

Reacting to the formalization of the proposal this past week, Shamsi told the New York Times, “This is a dangerous and problematic proposal,” pointing out that there’s been no evidence provided by the State Department that such kinds of vetting could actually help protect national security.

The new immigration policy will affect nearly 15 million visa applicants in 2020 alone. Given the sheer numbers, it must be noted that in addition to constituting an attack on privacy and democratic rights, these measures will increase processing times, leading to a further bottleneck in the processing of visa applications. The new requirement will result in a higher threshold, more complicated paperwork and longer wait times aimed at discouraging legal immigrants.

Over the past two years, the Trump administration has floated a series of measures to limit legal immigration including the denial of automatic birthright citizenship, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, the introduction of a so-called merit-based system that would drastically reduce family-based visa applications and replace them with requirements based on education and skill, and the elimination of the diversity visa lottery system that grants 50,000 people the right to migrate to the US every year.

The global assault on jobs

Jerry White

The Australian telecom giant Telstra announced Tuesday that it would eliminate the jobs of 10,000 contract workers over the next two years, after having laid off 5,000 contractors last year.

The layoffs come as Telstra moves up its “T22” restructuring plan to slash the jobs of 8,000 direct employees—a quarter of its workforce—by the end of 2022. It is now cutting 6,000 direct jobs over the next several months in order to include the US$1.75 billion in savings in its 2019 financial reports.

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald titled “Investors cheer as Telstra wields the axe on costs” summed up the attitude of the corporate-financial oligarchy to the destruction of workers’ livelihoods and families.

The cuts are part of a wave of mass layoffs being carried out internationally, as corporations respond to mounting signs of a global recession, exacerbated by Trump’s trade war policies against China and other countries. Finance capital is demanding brutal job cuts and reductions in labor costs so that the corporations can boost their profit margins despite shrinking markets and falling sales.

Other companies that have recently announced mass layoffs include:

General Motors

The biggest US car maker is cutting 14,000 salaried and production jobs and closing seven plants, five in the US and Canada. Two of the seven targeted facilities, located in other countries, have yet to be identified. In comments to a shareholders meeting Tuesday, CEO Mary Barra said the cuts would save $6 billion and “drive profitable growth.”

Ford

Last month, Ford announced that it was in the final phase of its “Smart Redesign” program and would cut 7,000 jobs, or 10 percent of its global salaried workforce, by the end of August. The automaker is slashing salaried positions in Germany, the UK and the US, and laying off thousands of production workers in Brazil, Russia, China and the US. But Wall Street considers this to be a mere down payment. A Morgan Stanley analyst recently said that Ford needs to slash another 23,000 jobs to meet its cost-cutting targets.

Fiat-Chrysler

On Tuesday, the corporate board of French carmaker Renault said that it would need more time to decide on a proposed merger with Fiat Chrysler, which would create the third largest automaker in the world. Like other mega-mergers, the tie-up would “lead to job cuts in Europe—where both automakers employ too many people making vehicles delivering too little profit,” the Detroit News reported Monday.

Volkswagen

The largest car maker in the world has established a “strategic alliance” with Ford and is slashing 7,000 jobs.

General Electric

The US-based transnational announced last week that it was cutting more than 1,000 jobs at its Belfort plant in eastern France and reneging on its pledge to create 1,000 new jobs due to a fall in demand for power plant equipment.

AT&T

The world’s third largest telecom cut more than 11,780 jobs last year even as it reported $19.4 billion in profits. The company received more than $20 billion in relief due to Trump’s corporate tax cuts.

Retail

British international retail giant Marks and Spencer is threatening to close 100 stores as part of a jobs massacre in the retail sector that saw the elimination of 70,000 jobs in the UK at the end of 2018 and 41,000 US jobs in the first two months of 2019 alone. German-based MediaMarktSaturn, Europe’s biggest consumer electronics retailer, has announced 700 layoffs.

Even as the job cuts escalate, the corporate-controlled politicians and media talking heads prattle on about the booming economy and record low levels of unemployment in the US. By this they mean record corporate profits, the quadrupling of the stock market and the unprecedented transfer of wealth to the ultra-rich since the 2008 financial crash.

America’s low official unemployment rate does not account for the fact that record numbers of workers have dropped out of the workforce—the labor participation rate is lower today than in 2007—and the jobs most workers have pay less, lack pensions and are devoid of any semblance of security. Real wages in the US fell by 1.3 percent last year, following a more than four-decade decline. A recent study in the UK showed that wages are worth a third less today than they were in 2008.

“You might have 25 jobs throughout your life and they’re often contract,” Wall Street analyst Maryann Keller told the Detroit Free Press for an article on the temporary and part-time jobs that have proliferated in the auto industry since President Obama’s restructuring of GM and Chrysler 10 years ago. “Prior to 2009, the old union contracts ensured you a job for life. It was preposterous and not affordable,” said Keller.

At the other pole of society, the corporate and financial oligarchy is spending more than ever on yachts, private jets and mansions. The Wall Street Journal just reported that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, has plopped down $80 million to buy a penthouse and two adjacent units on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. Meanwhile, Amazon workers are sleeping in their cars and collecting food stamps.

After the 2008 crash, the International Committee of the Fourth International and the World Socialist Web Site warned that there would be no peaceful or “socially neutral” resolution to the global financial breakdown. In May 2009, David North, chairman of the International Editorial Board of the WSWS and national chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (US), wrote:

This crisis is the form in which a fundamental restructuring of the American and global economy, and the social and class relations upon which it is based, is taking place. It can be resolved only in one of two ways: Either on a capitalist or on a socialist basis. The first, the capitalist solution, will mean a drastic lowering of the living standards of the working class in the United States, Europe and throughout the world. This solution will require massive internal repression, the destruction of the democratic rights of the working class, and the unleashing of military violence on a scale not seen since World War II.

The only alternative to this catastrophic scenario is the socialist solution, which requires the taking of political power by the American and international working class, the establishment of popular democratic control of industrial, financial and natural resources, and the development of a scientifically-planned global economy that is dedicated to the satisfaction of the needs of society as a whole, rather than the destructive pursuit of profit and personal wealth.

As with the 2008 financial crash, the ruling elite intends to make the working class bear the full weight of a looming downturn in the global economy, even as the state intervenes to protect and expand the wealth of the financial oligarchy. This was made abundantly clear Tuesday, when Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said that the US central bank is prepared to cut interest rates again, triggering a stock market surge.

But the striving of the working class to assert its own solution has been suppressed by the unions in the US and around the world. In the years following the crash, they reduced strike activity to the lowest level since the early twentieth century. The last 18 months, however, have seen a resurgence of the class struggle, including the rebellion of US teachers; the wildcat strikes by maquiladora workers in Matamoros, Mexico; the Yellow Vest protests in France; and the upheavals in Algeria, Sudan and other African countries.

In Matamoros, workers revolted against the nationalist and pro-capitalist unions, marched to the US border to appeal to their American brothers and sisters to join the fight, and sent messages of solidarity to GM workers in the US and Canada fighting plant closings.

Around the world, millions of workers and young people are being radicalized. They are coming to realize that it is capitalism that is stealing their jobs and impoverishing their families, not immigrants and refugees as Trump and the far-right parties in Europe claim, echoed by the so-called “mainstream” parties and the trade unions.

This crisis poses fundamental political questions. The global assault on the social and democratic rights of the working class requires a globally coordinated response. This means rejecting the nationalist poison peddled by unions like the United Auto Workers, which promotes anti-Mexican and anti-Chinese chauvinism and pits workers against each other in a fratricidal struggle over who will work for the lowest wages and in the worst conditions. It also means rejecting the corporate-controlled Democrats, including Bernie Sanders, who occasionally refers to himself as a socialist while lining up with Trump’s trade war policies.

Instead, workers need to build rank-and-file committees, democratically controlled by the workers themselves, to develop an industrial and political counteroffensive against the global capitalist system and coordinate their struggles on an international scale. Above all, it means the building the International Committee of the Fourth International to provide this resurgent class struggle with the revolutionary perspective and leadership it requires to enable workers to take political power in their own hands and build a socialist society.

Three reports expose extreme inequalities in Britain

Steve James

The United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, visited the UK and Northern Ireland last year and received over 300 written submissions. His report’s summary, in unusually frank language, stated:

“Although the United Kingdom is the world’s fifth largest economy, one fifth of its population (14 million people) live in poverty, and 1.5 million of them experienced destitution in 2017. Policies of austerity introduced in 2010 continue largely unabated, despite the tragic social consequences. Close to 40 percent of children are predicted to be living in poverty by 2021. Food banks have proliferated; homelessness and rough sleeping have increased greatly; tens of thousands of poor families must live in accommodation far from their schools, jobs and community networks; life expectancy is falling for certain groups; and the legal aid system has been decimated.”

Alston noted a “growing number of homeless families—24,000 between April and June of 2018.”

He observed that “it might seem to some observers that the Department of Work and Pensions has been tasked with designing a digital and sanitized version of the nineteenth century workhouse, made infamous by Charles Dickens ...”

One of the most striking developments highlighted is the growth of the “working poor.”

“Four million workers live in poverty, an increase of more than half a million in the last five years.” One in six of those referred to food banks are working, while 60 percent of those in poverty are families in which at least one person works. Even more striking, “a shocking 2.8 million people are in families where all adults work full-time” yet are still in poverty.

Alston confirms the extent to which the “social safety net” which once provided a guarantee against the most extreme levels of poverty and deprivation has been “systematically and starkly eroded.” He heard “time and again about important public programmes being pared down, the loss of institutions that previously protected vulnerable people, social care services at breaking point, and local government and devolved institutions stretched far too thin.”

The 49 percent cut in funding to local government between 2010/11 and 2017/18 resulted in 500 children’s centres and 340 libraries closing to 2016, while 8,000 librarians lost their jobs.

Large numbers of vulnerable children were at “greater risk of harm due to rapidly deteriorating front-line child protection services.”

The UN rapporteur devoted a large section of this report to the government’s Universal Credit (UC) scheme, which rolled six welfare benefits into one. He described local authorities and voluntary organisations preparing for UC to be introduced into their area “as if they were preparing for an impending natural disaster or health epidemic.”

UC impacted welfare claimants’ finances, mental health and work prospects. Its “perverse and catastrophic” five-week waiting period pushes “many who may already be in crisis into debt, rent arrears and serious hardship.” Deductions for advances, rent and utility arrears can consume as much as 60 percent of the already meagre payments.

Working UC claimants can experience huge monthly fluctuations in the amounts they receive, while the punitive regime of benefit sanctions for claimants falling foul of the government’s arbitrary and pointless job search requirements had succeeded in “instilling a fear and loathing of the system.”

Because UC is claimed online, the new scheme effectively excludes large numbers of the most vulnerable who have no smart phone or internet access. One third of new claims for UC are never completed, a UC telephone helpline is overloaded and operated by poorly trained staff, while many of the public libraries offering internet access have been closed. Many UC claims are automatically processed, giving rise to “errors of scale” with “millions of monthly transactions” found to be incorrect. Claimants are waiting months to be paid the right amount even when written evidence of a mistake is available.

Among Alston’s other findings were:

* More than 40 percent of children live in poverty.

* Half of all those in poverty are from families with a disability.

* Pensioner poverty is rising.

* Black and Asian families in the lowest fifth of income levels were “the most likely to live in poverty and deprivation.”

* Destitution is a “design characteristic of the asylum system.”

* People in poverty in rural areas were at particular risk of “loneliness and isolation” due to cuts in transport services, and lack of broadband or library access.

Despite bitter complaints from the British government, Alston’s report is be formally presented to the UN Human Rights Council in June.

By grotesque contrast, this year’s Sunday Times Rich List, the annual roll call of Britain’s 1,000 wealthiest individuals, revealed that the super-rich had, over the last 12 months of general social immiseration, increased their personal worth by nearly £50 billion.

Collectively this infinitesimally small social layer account for £771 billion, although this figure is assumed to be considerably underestimated. Entry level for the rich list is now £120 million, an increase of £5 million from last year. Of the wealthiest 1,000, 151 are billionaires, six more than last year.

Britain’s entire annual social security budget last year was £222 billion.

A more detailed and comprehensive report into inequality was recently initiated by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS), to be led by academic Sir Angus Deaton over the next five years.

An introduction to the Deaton Review, “Inequalities in the twenty-first century” by Robert Joyce and Xiaowei Xu, reports that Britain is one of the most unequal societies in the world, although weaknesses in both the Gini coefficient and the 90:10 ratio meant that both measures have failed entirely to capture the “runaway rise in top incomes.” For example, CEO pay to the FTSE 100 companies in the UK was, by 2017, 145 times higher than the average worker’s salary, up from 47 times higher in 1998.

Deaton and his partner, Anne Case, coined the term “deaths of despair,” referring to “deaths from suicide, drug and alcohol overdose and alcohol-related liver disease” while “deteriorating job prospects, social isolation and relationship breakdown may slowly be taking their toll on people’s physical and mental health.”

Introducing his report, in a speech titled “Inequality and the future of capitalism,” Deaton gave voice to the concerns of more astute advisers of the ruling elite. He warned, “Britain is divided as never before and, once again, many believe that their voice doesn’t count either in Brussels or in Westminster.”

“[T]oday’s inequalities are signs that democratic capitalism is under threat, not only in the US, where the storm clouds are darkest, but in much of the rich world ...” He recommended “repairs for democratic capitalism, either by fixing what is broken, or by making changes to head off the threats.”

Deaton harkened back with undisguised nostalgia to “the construction of the modern welfare state by Attlee’s government after the Second World War,” which he says had “tamed the beast” of capitalism. This is a forlorn wish indeed. His review is being prepared amid the shipwreck of Jeremy Corbyn’s declared project of pushing Labour to the left.

Instead Labour’s right wing, speaking for the super-rich, have declared even his meagre reform proposals beyond the pale. Corbyn has made endless retreats while his Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell woos the City of London with pledges of loyalty to big business and the “national interest.” This guarantees that the storm clouds will continue to gather over capitalism and that the threat to its survival from the working class will grow.

Boeing rejects pilot simulator training for 737 Max 8

Bryan Dyne

Aerospace giant Boeing is proposing to proceed with new pilot training for its 737 Max 8 aircraft without the use of hands-on flight simulators. This cost-cutting measure continues the policy that led to the crashes of Lion Air Flight 610 last October and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in March, which killed a combined total of 346 passengers and crew.

According to CNN, part of Boeing’s plan to bring the grounded 737 Max 8 back into service is a computer-based training program which, like the company’s recommended pilot training on the aircraft before the two crashes, does not involve any time in an actual flight simulator. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which must ultimately approve any retraining regimen for the jet, has not yet announced its official training requirements.

Boeing’s proposal comes amidst mounting evidence of shoddy construction of its commercial jets, including its 737 Max line, which was brought into service in 2017 and quickly became the company’s biggest-selling aircraft and pushed Boeing’s stock price and profits to record highs. The FAA said Sunday that more than 300 Boeing 737 jets, including the Max, may have faulty wing parts that do not meet strength and durability standards. The FAA said it plans to order airlines to remove and replace the parts on impacted aircraft. It added that as many as 148 parts made by a Boeing supplier could be “susceptible to premature failure or cracks.”

The affected parts are slat tracks, which sit on the front of the wing and move along a track to create lift. They play an important role during take-off and landing.

Boeing’s proposal to skip flight simulator training for pilots when its grounded fleet of 737 Maxes is cleared to resume service is not an innocent one. Much of the criticism the company has faced is that the original training for the Max 8 for pilots who had flown previous versions of the 737 aircraft was an hour-long course on a tablet. This was part of a scheme by the company to reduce the cost of the new plane for airlines and minimize the time needed to get it into the air. Corners were cut in order to beat back a challenge from Boeing’s European-based rival Airbus, whose new short- and mid-range commercial jet was threatening to capture lucrative markets long dominated by the US giant as well as the rapidly growing Asian market.

At the time, the company, the FAA and the pilots unions all agreed that the minimal training was adequate.

The airplane manufacturer is proposing more of the same in order to hold onto market share for its most profitable aircraft. Flight simulators cost upwards of $15 million each and pilots typically train for hundreds of hours before they even get inside a real cockpit.

The CNN report came only one day after Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg gave an interview to CBS News in which he admitted that the company did not correctly implement the installation of its new Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), an automated anti-stall system that is believed to have been responsible for both crashes. Muilenburg also acknowledged that “our engineers discovered” the problem, but the company kept it hidden from the airlines, pilots and regulatory agencies until it was exposed by the crashes, both of which occurred within minutes of takeoff when MCAS was triggered by a faulty sensor and repeatedly forced the nose of the plane sharply downward.

In the same interview, Muilenburg attempted to shift scrutiny from Boeing’s leadership onto the workers, claiming that “there appears to have been a maintenance issue with” the angle-of-attack sensor, which fed data to MCAS that made the software force the two planes into a lethal nosedive. In previous comments, Boeing spokespeople have attempted to blame the pilots.

Muilenburg’s comments are further undercut by new reports revealing that Boeing changed how the MCAS software worked without informing those who knew about the system. The program was originally installed on the 737 Max 8 to compensate for the plane’s tendency to stall, a consequence of mounting a larger engine on the same body design as earlier 737s—another decision driven by Boeing’s desire to produce its answer to Airbus as quickly and cheaply as possible.

Originally, MCAS was capable of changing the pitch of a plane by only 0.6 degrees and it relied on input from two different sensors. However, Boeing changed the software to make it more aggressive, giving it the ability to automatically pitch the plane upward by 2.5 degrees, and allowing it to be triggered by input from a single sensor—one of the plane’s two angle-of-attack sensors.

FAA officials were not even directly aware of the existence of MCAS. An internal FAA review of its jetliner certification process found that no senior agency official participated in crucial assessments of the MCAS system, instead relying on Boeing employees to perform safety tests and analyses of potential hazards, under the terms of the 2005 Organization Designation Authorization program—a measure designed to further weaken federal oversight of the company.

Those that did sign off on MCAS were not made aware of the changes in the system because of FAA rules declaring that since the system had been certified, the changes did not warrant additional safety tests. This meant that the officials in charge of pilot training were not alerted to the change.

Mike Sinnett, a Boeing vice president, defending these decisions last November in response to the outcry over the Lion Air crash, said, “It’s been reported that it’s a single point failure, but it is not considered by design or certification a single point.” He added that this was so “because the function and the trained pilot work side by side and are part of the system,” ignoring the fact that many if not most of the pilots flying the 737 Max 8 did not know of the existence of MCAS.

What is absent from the press reports, however, is any suggestion that Muilenburg, Sinnett or any of Boeing’s leadership should be prosecuted in connection with the deaths of 346 people. Muilenburg was paid $23 million last year in compensation for Boeing’s accelerating rise on the stock market, achieved by a brutal cost-cutting drive, including the elimination of thousands of jobs. He was also rewarded for enriching big investors and speculators by overseeing billions in stock buybacks and dividend increases.

At least 116 injured in Russia factory explosions

Clara Weiss 

On Saturday, June 1, three blasts at the Kristall factory in the Russian city of Dzerzhinsk injured 116 people. As of this writing, 17 are still hospitalized. The factory produces explosives for the Russian military, including the FAB-500, the most powerful air bomb in the Russian defense industry.

Dzerzhinsk is a city of about 260,000 people, located in the Nizhny Gorodski oblast in central Russia. A former center of the Soviet chemical industry, more than 40 percent of the population are still employed in manufacturing. The Kristall factory, built in the Soviet period, now belongs to the major state-owned defense cooperation Rostech, which employs over 400,000 people. Its head, Sergei Chemezov, is a leading member of the ruling United Russia party and was put on the US sanctions list in 2016 as a close ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

The blasts reportedly occurred at a unit in the factory that produces the highly explosive chemical trinitrotoluole (TNT), a standard component of dynamite. They were so powerful that windows in more than 300 apartment buildings, 70 kindergartens and 31 schools as well as several cultural buildings and gyms were shattered or torn out of the walls, spanning a radius of at least 3 kilometers. Footage of the blasts shows a major mushroom cloud rising over the city. Many buildings were also left without electricity.

An ensuing fire destroyed three storage units at the factory and two plants, and damaged the building of the factory management. The fire spread over 1,200 square meters, including 800 on the factory site as well as 400 cubic meters of the nearby forest. Some 400 firefighters were needed to extinguish the fire.

Among those injured were 44 workers at the factory. One of them is still in the hospital in critical condition. Many of the injured were local residents, including at least one child. Most residents had wounds inflicted by flying glass from shattered windows. It is generally believed that the number of injured was reduced because the blasts took place on a Saturday, when schools and kindergartens were closed.

Nikita Tumakov, who witnessed the blasts from his apartment, told a Russian newspaper: “At 11:50 a.m. the first explosion occurred. I was sitting at home in my room on a chair, and I was thrown off [the chair]. Everything in the apartment was turned upside down. Then I went out on the balcony, began to take a video, and the second explosion came with a major wave. My balcony was shaking.” Other residents confirmed that the effects of the blast could be felt in neighboring districts of the city. The blasts triggered a panic in the city, with many residents fleeing to the homes of friends or relatives in the region.

A state of emergency was declared in Dzerzhinsk as well as in the nearby villages of Pyra, Zhelnino, and Kordon Lesnoi. Workers in neighboring factories were evacuated.

On Sunday, workers of the city administration, nearby factories, volunteers, and other local residents spent hours trying to remove the rubble and broken windows. The damage caused is estimated to be in the millions of rubles (hundreds of thousands of US dollars).

The city’s mayor has assured the population that no toxic chemicals were released by the blasts and that radioactivity in the city was not increased above the allowed maximum. However, on social media, residents have expressed suspicions about these official assurances. The Russian state and its local agencies are notorious for downplaying, if not outright lying about, the scope of such disasters.

While no official explanation has been given for the blasts, everything indicates that gross violations of basic safety procedures at the factory were the cause. The general director of the Kristall factory had been removed from his position just before the latest blasts because of “problems with factory safety” after another explosion at the Kristall factory on April 4 had destroyed an entire shop. After all of these explosions, almost nothing remains of the original factory buildings (click here for footage).

The Kristall factory is only a particularly stark example of the dangerous workplace conditions facing millions of workers in Russia on a daily basis. On August 31, 2018, another blast at the Sverdlov factory in Dzerzhinsk, which also produces explosives for the military and is directly adjacent to the Kristall factory, killed six people.

According to a report by the Russian Ministry of Labor, 2,600 people died in 2017 because of accidents in production. This was an increase of 5 percent from 2016. The by-far deadliest occupations are in mining and construction. In stark contrast to the numbers provided by the Russian government, the International Labor Organization has estimated that some 15,000 workers in Russia die at their workplace every year, and that some 190,000 workers die annually as a result of exposure to dangerous conditions at work.

Responsibility for these deaths lies with the Russian oligarchy, which has emerged out of the destruction of the USSR by the Stalinist bureaucracy. Making close to no investments in new technologies and equipment, this oligarchy’s criminal neglect of basic infrastructure has resulted in countless fires and explosions at both factories and public buildings. Most recently, this included a horrific fire at a shopping mall in the mining city of Kemerovo a year ago, which took the lives of at least 64 people, many of them children, and a fire at a shoe factory in early 2018, which killed 10 migrant workers from China.

Warnings mount that trade war could bring recession

Nick Beams

An investigation by Chinese state authorities into why FedEx misdirected two packages sent to the technology company Huawei is likely to assume greater importance in the ongoing conflict with the US following a report that the misdirection was the result of “internal protocols” set up to comply with measures directed against the company by the Trump administration.

The misdirection took place when the packages shipped from Japan were sent to the FedEx global hub in Memphis instead of the intended recipient in China. When the news broke, FedEx apologized for the misdirection and said that “no external party required FedEx to make these shipments.”

But according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, citing a person familiar with the matter, changes in the company’s “internal protocols” to comply with the US crackdown on Huawei caused the company to misdirect the packages. “New restrictions on doing business with Huawei affected how FedEx handles Huawei’s packages,” the report said.

Beijing has launched an investigation into FedEx for “undermining the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese clients” and the commerce ministry has said it will compile a list of “unreliable” foreign companies following the US measures directed against Huawei that block it from US supplies of components.

The deepening economic confrontation between the US and China has been joined by the Trump administration’s decision to impose tariffs on Mexican goods, rising from 5 percent this month to 25 percent by October, on the demand that it take action to cut the flow of immigrants and refugees into the US. This has brought a series of warnings from Wall Street analysts of the consequences for financial markets and the economy more broadly.

Morgan Stanley recently warned that a global recession could start within nine months if the Trump administration goes ahead with its threat to impose a 25 percent tariff on an additional $300 billion worth of Chinese goods and Beijing launches retaliatory action. In a separate analysis, JPMorgan Chase said the probability of a US recession in the second half of this year had risen to 40 percent from 25 percent a month ago.

In a report to investors, Chetan Ahya, Morgan Stanley’s chief economist, wrote that markets were underestimating the impact of the trade conflict. “Investors are generally of the view that the trade dispute could drag on for longer, but they appear to be overlooking its potential impact on the global macro outlook.”

These views were echoed by John Normand of JPMorgan Chase in London. He wrote: “The move down in markets over the past month is all about trade war, but I don’t think this is fully in the price. The economic data were weakening before tariffs went up so we’ve yet to see the economic consequences of trade.”

Manufacturing figures from May showed weakness across Asia and Europe, which underscored the global ramifications of the conflict between the US and China, he noted.

Manufacturing in the US is slowing markedly. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that US factories “are on track for their weakest showing this year since 2016.” It continued: “Manufacturing job growth has stalled since late last year and output has fallen in three of the past four months as demand for business equipment and commodities weakens in the US and abroad.”

In addition, orders for durable goods were down 0.1 percent in April from a year earlier, the first year-to-year decline since 2017.

Bank of America (BofA) has lowered its forecast for profit growth and drawn attention to the risk of recession arising from the trade conflicts. Savita Subramanian, the head of US equity strategy at BofA, has cut her estimate for profit growth in S&P 500 companies as rising tariffs impact costs. “Globalisation has benefited S&P 500 margins for decades, and protectionism coupled with rising wages/input costs poses risks to peak margins,” she wrote in a note to clients.

The indirect impacts from trade tensions, including falls in consumption spending, falling confidence and the ban on Huawei, among other issues, “are likely more extreme than direct impacts,” she added. “Worst case—an economic recession.”

A former governor of the People’s Bank of China, Dai Xianglong, has warned that if the economic conflict between the US and China continues to escalate it will have a major impact on the global economy.

“The consequences of the US-China trade war not only will be reflected in both countries, but will also extend to relevant regions, extend to the whole world,” he told a press event in Beijing last week. “If the China-US trade war continues to grow larger,” he added, “it may cause the global economy to decline and may cause a global financial crisis.”

The prospect of recession is reflected in the continuing fall in yield on long-term bonds, as investors seek safety, pushing up bond prices and bringing down yields.

The gap between the yield on three-month and 10-year Treasury bonds is growing—a movement regarded as heralding a recession. And the yield on the 10-year bond could go even lower, according to JPMorgan analysts. They expect the yield on 10-year bonds to be 1.75 percent at the end of the year, compared with a previous forecast of 2.45 percent.

The downward revision was made following Trump’s move to impose tariffs on Mexico. The tariff hikes against China had already brought considerable uncertainty, but the action against Mexico has added another dimension. Some companies, seeking to dodge the effect of the China tariffs, had been looking to shift some of their operations to Mexico, but those plans have now been thrown awry.

There is now general uncertainty over where the Trump administration could next strike. Will it be the threatened imposition of a 25 percent tariff on auto imports, hitting Japan, Germany and South Korea, or something completely unexpected like the tariffs against Mexico?

A graphic example of the turmoil was provided yesterday when the New York Times reported that, under pressure from US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and the director of trade and manufacturing policy, Peter Navarro, the administration was considering imposing tariffs on aluminium imports from Australia.

Australia was exempted from the 10 percent tariff imposed on aluminium in May last year on “national security” grounds and since then its exports to the US have sharply increased.

In the event, Trump rejected the push from within his administration. But the reasons for his decision, at least for now, only served to reveal the underlying content of the accelerating economic warfare. The cancellation of the Australian exemption was rejected on advice from senior officials at the Defense and State Departments, who argued that it would undermine the US-Australia alliance.

Australia is regarded as a frontline state in the military preparations against China, with its vital communications facilities and basing of US forces. As Trump put it when questioned on the report, “We’re doing a very special relationship with Australia.”

Algerian army suspends July 4 presidential elections

Will Morrow

On Sunday, the Algerian Constitutional Council cancelled presidential elections scheduled for July 4. Interim President Abdelkader Bensalah had called the elections in April, only a week after the resignation of long-time President Abdelaziz Bouteflika amid mass protests demanding his ouster and the fall of Algeria’s military regime.

The decision came amid continuing mass weekly protests of workers and youth in cities across Algeria, opposing the elections, Bensalah and the military dictatorship. In recent weeks, protesters repeatedly chanted slogans denouncing the elections and the military brass, such as “No elections with the gang,” “No dialog with symbols of the old regime.”

So overwhelming was the popular opposition to these elections, correctly identified as a fig leaf to maintain a corrupt regime, that no parties dared to stand candidates in them. Judges refused to participate in the preparation of election lists, with the Judges’ Club association issuing a statement noting that the election was “rejected by the people.” In the end, the Constitutional Council called off an election that was proving to be an embarrassment for the regime and only threatened to trigger a broader eruption of mass opposition.

The Constitutional Council’s suspension of the elections is not, however, an attempt to bow to the will of workers and youth and build a democratic regime. Power remains in the hands of military strongman General Ahmed Gaïd Salah. And by postponing the presidential election without setting a future election date, the Constitutional Council has effectively left Bensalah and Prime Minister Noureddine Bedoui, who are widely despised, in power indefinitely.

In its communiqué announcing its ruling, the Constitutional Council stressed that its purpose in postponing the election was to preserve the existing regime. It wrote, “it is essential to create adequate conditions to organize this election transparently and without bias, in order to preserve constitutional institutions that help realize the aspirations of the sovereign people. It is the duty of the head of state to summon the electorate and complete the electoral process through the election of the President of the Republic and the swearing of the constitutional oath.”

While the Constitutional Council issued its statement claiming to defend the aspirations of the Algerian people, the military regime is locking up and killing politicians and public figures in an effort to terrorize the population.

Reports and videos posted on social media show that demonstrations over the past month have more and more taken up slogans directed against the military, including “No to the Egyptian solution,” a reference to the 2013 coup of dictator Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. While the regime is seeking to find some means of ending the protests, it is preparing a no less brutal crackdown than its counterparts in Egypt and Sudan, where the military government yesterday launched an assault on civilian protest encampments in Khartoum, using live ammunition to kill at least 35 people.

Last Friday’s demonstration in Algeria included widespread protests against the state-overseen killing in prison of Kamel Eddine Fekhar, a Kabyle separatist and former leader of the Front des forces socialistes (FFS), which is affiliated with France’s big-business Socialist Party. Arrested without a warrant on March 31, immediately after giving an interview published on Facebook, he was charged with “threatening state security” and “inciting racial hatred.” Fekhar allegedly died as a result of a 50-day hunger strike on May 28.

Fekhar’s death attracted international condemnation, with Amnesty International calling it “a result of nothing more than having expressed his opinions.”

Fekhar’s lawyer, Salah Debouz, pointed to the chilling effect the military regime intends for his death to have. “Now, anyone publishing his views or expressing an opinion on social media can be arrested for having criticized one or another official,” he told Le Point on June 3. “I think there are many more people in this situation than is known, because they do not have the means to pay for a lawyer and no one hears anything about them. It is easier to repress them.”

Louisa Hanoune, the general secretary of Algeria’s Workers Party (PT) and a close ally of the Bouteflika family, remains in prison after having been arrested on May 10 while appearing as a witness at a military trial of Bouteflika’s brother Saïd. Her arrest followed statements attempting to present herself as a critic of the military and was aimed at sending a message that any criticism of the army will be met with violent repression.

Hanoune had compared the Algerian army to the bloodstained Egyptian military dictatorship of General al-Sisi, effectively warning against support for Gaïd Salah. “Once in power, al-Sisi ordered the imprisonment of even the naive people among the activists and political parties who supported him, believing that the army would open a true democracy,” she said. The army has viciously retaliated, imprisoning Hanoune and preventing her doctors from visiting her.

The different bourgeois opposition parties are seeking to find a means of channeling workers and youth behind a fraudulent transition that, while utilizing more democratic phraseology, will leave the country in the hands of the corporate elite and be no less impervious to the social demands of the Algerian workers and rural oppressed for an end to crushing poverty and unemployment, particularly among the youth. Between a quarter and a third of youth are unemployed in a country where 70 percent of the population is aged under 30.

On June 3, El Watan reported that a collection of autonomous trade unions, which receive funding from the CIA front National Endowment for Democracy, and the self-proclaimed “Civil Forum for Change,” had launched a call for a new “responsible, serious and rational dialogue, as a means of resolving the present crisis” without Bensalah and Bedoui. The pseudo-left Workers Party and Socialist Workers Party, which is allied to the New Anti-Capitalist Party in France, are seeking to channel opposition behind a no less fraudulent demand for a “Constituent Assembly.”

Such demands are aimed at channeling the working class behind factions of the bourgeoisie, and preventing the working class from waging a struggle to take political power into its own hands, establish a workers government on the basis of socialist policies, and seek to extend its revolutionary struggles across the African continent and internationally. The fight for socialism is the only basis upon which the democratic and social demands of the working class can be fulfilled.