More than 300 asylum seekers in Glasgow, Scotland to be evicted

Steve James

Transnational services provider Serco has announced it intends to restart the eviction of around 300 asylum seekers from their accommodation in Glasgow, Scotland. The company intends to move against 30 households per week.

Those targeted, including many fleeing war and poverty in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, are legally barred from working or seeking public funds and face being pitched onto Glasgow’s streets without any income. Many are in poor health.

Last August, Serco’s attempts to change locks on flats used by asylum seekers whose cases were no longer eligible for accommodation support from the Home Office provoked protests in Glasgow city centre, and outside Home Office buildings. Two asylum seekers started a hunger strike and tenants’ groups pledged to oppose evictions.

Under this public pressure, Serco agreed to “pause all further lock-change notices … whilst the law is being tested and clarified.”

Serco has since lost its Scottish contract with the Home Office, under the COMPASS asylum seeker dispersal programme, but has nevertheless been awarded a £1.9 billion contract to provide accommodation for 20,000 asylum seekers in the North West of England, the Midlands and East of England regions.

Concerned about the bad publicity from Glasgow, the Home Office contracts for Scotland, Yorkshire, Northern Ireland, the North East of England and the Humber regions were awarded instead to Mears Group, another giant services provider. Now Serco is using a Court of Session ruling, Scotland’s leading civil court, to gain “vacant possession” of all the contested properties before it hands over the Scottish contract to its rival.

In April the Court of Session rejected a case brought against the Home Office and Serco by two of those threatened with eviction. The 29-page ruling by Lord Tyre identified the central issue as “whether it is unlawful for Serco to evict an asylum seeker, whose claim for asylum has been refused, from his or her accommodation without first obtaining a court order authorising it to do so.”

Tyre ruled that it was not unlawful, since the asylum seekers accommodation was provided by the Home Office, Serco merely being the contractor. Serco staff can now turn up at any time to change the locks on asylum seekers’ flats. Unlike a normal dispute between a tenant and landlord, Serco face no requirement to obtain a court order before effectively evicting the occupants.

By early May, Glasgow-based campaigning group Positive Action in Housing (PAIH) reported that Serco had already commenced sending out letters to asylum seekers. The letters stated that “the Occupancy Agreement regarding the above property was terminated as a result of your support being terminated by the Home Office … The date by which you were required to leave your accommodation ... is in the past. You should now leave the property.”

On the PAIH blog, chief executive Robina Qureshi noted that the threatening letters from Serco made no mention of the rights the asylum seekers still have.

Although those facing eviction have had their asylum applications rejected by the Home Office, most people (95 percent) seen by PAIH have not exhausted the appeals process. They are not subject to deportation orders.

Qureshi noted, “Without an eviction procedure defined by law, frightened individuals are being placed in a state of fear and alarm by unannounced visits to their accommodation from Serco staff, using spare sets of keys.”

She continued, “You have people terrified of leaving their only homes in case Serco changes their locks while they are out. You have a woman pleading for someone to donate her a locked wardrobe so Serco staff can’t rifle through her personal belongings looking for Home Office letters or asking personal questions that are nothing to do with them. This is the depths we have reached.”

Qureshi explained that despite people retaining a right of legal recourse to the immigration authorities via the First Tier Tribunal, for example, doing this in practice was a difficult and protracted process taking months. By evicting people and making them destitute, Serco and the Home Office were effectively barring any further legal moves to defend their asylum application.

Serco is also proceeding despite an appeal against Lord Tyre’s Court of Session ruling, lodged by Govan Law Centre (GLC) on May 2. GLC’s Mike Dailly said at the time that Serco’s move was “extraordinarily unjust.” He explained that GLC’s client had obtained an opinion from a Queen’s Counsel, a senior law officer, which identified “different and substantial grounds of appeal with ‘good prospects’ and ‘a strong probability of success’ in line with Scots, UK and European legal jurisprudence.”

Dailly added, “we do not believe Serco and the Home Office should proceed with hundreds of lock-change evictions in Glasgow until the appeal is dealt with. Serco act on behalf of the UK government and ultimately this is the UK Home Secretary’s responsibility.”

Serco, it seems, is not even restricting its efforts to people whose asylum cases have been initially rejected. According to PAIH June 25, Serco has sent eviction letters to people whose applications are still proceeding. Serco has also sent inaccurate letters to people, misreporting the progress of their asylum application.

PAIH highlighted the case of Kidiste, a 34-year-old woman from Eritrea, who was sent an eviction letter June 12 demanding she leave her flat by June 25. The letter said her asylum application had been successful. Kidiste thought she had now been accepted as a refugee. One week later, Serco wrote to her again, this time stating that her application had been refused and she should leave her flat. Fearing persecution in Eritrea for her religious views, Kidiste still has an ongoing claim.

Serco also wrote to a Gambian woman telling her on June 21 that her entitlement to support would end in two days. She too has an ongoing legal case.

Others in receipt of Serco eviction letters include a 72-year-old Iraqi man who lived in Syria and lost contact with his wife and children after they fled the civil war. He has a heart condition, spine and breathing problems, is mostly confined to bed and has been traumatised by his experiences. Serco told him to leave his flat by July 2.

Serco’s actions have attracted widespread criticism from refugee organisations. A spokesman for the Scottish Refugee Council warned, “For hundreds of men and women in Glasgow this will mean forced eviction from their only source of accommodation and safety in Scotland.”

For its part, Glasgow City Council has threatened to pull out of the Home Office dispersal programme. In the absence of any agreement between the Home Office, Serco and the Scottish National Party-controlled city council, the impact of the evictions is going to fall on voluntary and tenants’ organisations.

Glasgow Night Shelter for Destitute Asylum Seekers, which provides bunk beds for 22 destitute men, warned earlier this month that it had only two spare beds and it would be “months away” before having any accommodation for women.

Ford announces 12,000 layoffs, five plant closures across Europe

Will Morrow 

In a statement and conference call with investors yesterday, Ford Motor Company announced that it will lay off 12,000 workers and shutter five plants across Europe by 2020, a 20 percent reduction in its workforce on the continent.

The announcement is part of a global restructuring that the company announced last October. In January, it reported that it would slash a “significant number” of its European workforce of 51,000. In the ensuing months, it has worked with what it calls its “trade union partners” and governments across Europe to suppress the growing anger and resistance of workers.

The company’s statement yesterday confirmed that it will close its plant in Blanquefort, France, near Bordeaux, destroying approximately 800 jobs and ending its production in the country, the Bridgend Assembly plant in Wales, with 1,700 jobs, and three plants located in Russia: the Naberezhnye Chelny Assembly, St. Petersburg Assembly (which closed June 20) and Elabuga Engine Plant, destroying 2,000 jobs together.

Warning strike by Ford workers in Saarlouis in January

It is also ending production of its C-Max passenger vehicles at its Saarlouis assembly plant in Germany, laying off more than 5,000 workers combined at Saarlouis and Cologne. The statement referred to an unknown number of layoffs at its plant in Valencia, Spain. In addition, it is selling the Kechnec Transmission Plant in Slovakia.

These actions, which would have devastating consequences for tens of thousands of workers if implemented, immediately triggered an almost three percent rise in Ford’s share price yesterday. The Wall Street Journal, the voice of American finance, noted that “shares have rallied 33 percent this year amid an emerging view among some investors that Chief Executive Jim Hackett’s turnaround plan is beginning to gain traction.”

They anticipate billions more dollars handed directly to the corporate and financial elite in the form of dividend payouts to hedge funds and the billionaire parasites that control them. Ford’s total dividend payouts over the last five years have averaged $2.79 billion per year—equivalent to approximately $14,000 for each one of Ford’s 200,000 workers globally. The top five institutional shareholders alone, all of them hedge funds, will receive approximately $600 million this year, which could provide an immediate $3,000 raise to every worker.

But the financial markets are demanding far more. The Journal noted that CEO Hackett has been “under pressure from analysts who have questioned whether he is moving quickly enough to boost profitability,” and added, “Mr. Hackett still has a long way to go.”

Mass meeting at Brigend plant votes for strike action [Credit: Unite Facebook page]

In May, Ford announced the elimination of 7,000 white collar job cuts in North America, or 10 percent of its global salaried workforce. Even as engineers, technicians, managers and other white-collar workers being escorted out of their office buildings, Wall Street analysts said Ford would have to slash another 23,000 salaried jobs to meet its cost-cutting target. The company has also cut hourly workers in the US, including eliminating a shift at the Flat Rock Assembly plant in suburban Detroit.

Ford’s restructuring is part of a new offensive by all the automakers internationally spurred by a global downturn in sales, particularly in China, and the implications of the turn toward new research- and capital-intensive technologies in electrical vehicle production. All the automakers are conducting similar job-cutting campaigns: GM announced 14,000 layoffs in North America last December, and this year has seen announcements of 7,000 layoffs by Volkswagen, 4,500 by Jaguar, and 3,000 by Tesla.

Ford’s statement notes that it will expand its electrical vehicle production, while shifting passenger vehicle production primarily to Turkey. It ended all heavy-vehicle production in South America last year, as part of its global “transformation” plan aimed at slashing $14 billion in costs.

Ford world headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan

This offensive, however, is taking place amidst a resurgence of working-class struggle, strikes and protests internationally and growing resistance and opposition among autoworkers. On June 14, Ford Bridgend workers in Wales voted by 80 percent to reject the closure of the plant, with 83 percent of those who voted backing a strike.

In Detroit, Michigan, 1,900 workers at the French-owned Faurecia parts manufacturer struck last week to oppose years of givebacks enforced by the United Auto Workers union, before the union shut down the strike without any vote Friday, and then rammed through another concessions contract Thursday. . The last thing the UAW wanted was a successful strike as 155,000 Ford, GM and Fiat Chrysler workers seek to overturn decades of concessions when labor agreements expire in mid-September.

If Ford has so far been able to proceed with its attacks without organized resistance, it is thanks only to the sabotage by the trade unions. The role of these pro-corporate apparatuses was acknowledged yesterday by Ford Europe President Stuart Rowley who said he was “grateful for the ongoing consultations with our works councils, trade union partners and elected representatives,” and that “together” they were focused on “building a long-term sustainable future for our business.”

Indeed, Ford’s trade union partners have responded to the restructuring announcement by promoting nationalism to cut across any unified struggle by workers in Europe, and insisting that nothing can be done to fight, while enforcing cuts to workers’ conditions.

In Germany, the IG Metall union defends the layoffs in the same language as the company. Martin Hennig, the head of the Ford Works Council, was asked by the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger on January 22 if he thought the job cuts were appropriate, and replied that it was “correct in principle to subject everything to review and deal with the issues that are affecting the entire auto sector.”

In March, he told Handelsblatt, in language indistinguishable from Ford management, that “either we make the turnaround and become profitable, or we gradually shut down.” IG Metall repeatedly promotes nationalism and insists that it will defend “German jobs.”

At Ford’s Valencia, Spain plant that employs 8,000 workers, the UGT union federation has signed a series of contract suspension agreements, including one this month, cutting workers’ wages by 20 percent below the contract level, in the name of “saving jobs” at the plant.

In the UK, Walesonline revealed that the Unite union has been party to closed-door presentations with Ford management detailing the implementation of planned cuts at the plant since at least January. They have promoted British nationalism to drive a wedge between workers internationally, with General Secretary Len McCluskey declaring that “the company has deliberately run its UK operations so that not a single Ford vehicle … is made in the UK,” and complaining that it is “easier and quicker to sack our [i.e., British] workers than those in our competitor countries.”

And in France, the main union federations, with the Stalinist CGT represented by Philippe Poutou, a leading member of the pseudo-left New Anti-Capitalist Party, are promoting the illusion that Macron, known as “the president of the rich,” will defend workers’ jobs. The Objectif Aquitaine noted on June 25 that “disappointed by the attitude of Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire,” Poutou and his counterparts in the other unions “sent a courier on June 13 to Bercy [the finance ministry] to relaunch a dialogue with the minister.” The unions have called a protest action for September 20, a month after the scheduled closure of the plant.

Workers must reject the nationalist perspective promoted by all of the unions. The reality is that Ford and all of the other auto giants are operating with a global strategy, pitting workers against one another in different countries. The only response to this offensive is for workers to develop their own internationally-coordinated campaign to defend all jobs, stop all closures, and raise living standards for all workers.

Such a struggle requires a break from the trade unions, which function as labor-management arms of the companies. They are working to ensure that Ford succeeds in closing plants and decimating entire communities.

Autoworkers in Europe must take the fight into their own hands and assert their own class interests, through the formation of independent rank-and-file committees, which must be forged across national borders.

The global assault underway by the automotive giants and their determination to funnel ever greater sums of wealth into the bank accounts of the financial elite underscore the impossibility, under capitalism, of guaranteeing the most basic social rights of the working class, which produces all of society’s wealth. The answer is socialism: the establishment of workers’ governments, and the transformation of the gigantic productive forces of society, including the automotive giants, into public utilities, run under the democratic control of the working class, on the basis of a scientifically planned world socialist economy to meet the social needs of the population.

Sharp downturn in Sri Lankan economic growth

Dilruwan Vithanage

The Sri Lankan capitalist class and the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government confront twin economic predicaments—rapidly dropping economic growth and multi-billion dollar foreign debts that must be repaid in the next five years.

Prior to the April 21 suicide attacks carried out by Islamic fundamentalists, international rating agencies predicted that Sri Lanka’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate this year would be 3.4 percent.

The terrorist bombings targeted three prominent Christian churches and three luxury tourist hotels, killing over 250 innocent people and injuring 500. The atrocities hit the tourism industry and triggered a withdrawal of foreign investment in government securities.

Tourism contributes 5 percent of the country’s GDP. Before the attacks, tourism earnings were expected to rise from $US4 billion last year to $5 billion in 2019. This has been revised down to $3.5 billion.

On June 11, Central Bank Governor Indrajit Coomaraswamy declared it was “too early to fully understand the impact” of the terrorist attacks, but the country’s growth rate could fall to 2.9 percent.

Nine days later, however, international credit rating agency Moody’s reduced its prediction for this year to 2.6 percent.

The economic problems are not just a consequence of the terrorist bombings. The growth rate has been falling for the past two years. In 2017, it was 3.4 percent, the lowest in 16 years, and in 2018 dropped to 3.2 percent.

This is a product of the global downturn and cuts in government expenditure and austerity measures demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF has ordered Sri Lanka to reduce its fiscal deficit to 3.5 percent of GDP, or half the rate it was in 2015.

Colombo is desperately seeking to boost the economy by expanding private bank lending. The Daily ft reported in late April that the Central Bank had called on “banks and finance companies to reduce interest rates on deposits… enabling lower rates on lending products in general, and to SMEs [Small Medium Enterprises] in particular, thereby enhancing credit flow to the real economy.” This would reduce lending rates to SMEs by about 2 percent, the Central Bank declared.

However, the private banks and finance companies failed to cut their lending rates. Central Bank Governor Coomaraswamy said he expected their cooperation and added: “Clearly there is a national problem now and everybody has to play their part.”

Moody’s analyst Matthew Circosta told the media that the “primary challenge facing Sri Lanka” is its large external debt refinancing needs over the next five years. The government, he said, faced repayments of more than $3 billion annually and totaling $15.4 billion during 2020–2024.

Circosta warned that although funds could be raised from international markets, “the government is highly vulnerable to sudden shifts in investor sentiment that could affect the availability and cost of these funding sources.” Apart from these debt repayments, Colombo has to find external sources to finance part of its budget deficit.

An IMF review of the country on May 17 said it faced “a tightening in global financial conditions and capital flow pressures [that] could raise refinancing risks.” Growing trade tensions in key economies, “coupled with weaker global growth, could reduce export growth, FDI [Foreign Direct Investment], and remittances.”

The review noted that “political uncertainty in the run up to the elections poses risks to program implementation.” That is a clear warning to the government and the parliamentary opposition that whoever wins the elections must implement the IMF’s dictates.

Two weeks ago, the finance ministry directed all government ministries to reduce their capital expenditure by 15 percent to help reduce the deficit.

In line with the IMF demands, the finance ministry is moving to commercialise or privatise all “loss-making institutions.” The number of loss-making state-owned enterprises (SOEs) doubled last year.

Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera recently told a meeting of eight state-owned corporations that the government should “rethink” its continued support for loss-making entities.

The SOEs at the meeting included the Sri Lanka State Plantation Corporation, Co-operative Wholesale Establishment, Central Engineering Consultancy Bureau, State Timber Corporation, State Pharmaceuticals Corporation, Milco Ltd, National Livestock Development Board and Geological Survey, and the Mines Bureau.

Samaraweera said changes were necessary “to make these institutions profitable by increasing their productivity and financial position.” This inevitably means brutal attacks on jobs and working conditions.

A Sunday Times commentator nervously observed on June 23: “Those likely to be affected most by the economic downturn are the poor, whose employment, incomes, livelihoods and future are bleak in a stagnant economy. Government leaders talk about poverty alleviation, but their actions and words do not match.”

The economic downturn and massive debt burden mean that the government and the ruling elite must inflict even greater attacks on the social rights of workers and the poor, and turn to autocratic forms of rule to implement them. The real fear of the ruling elite is eruption of mass working-class resistance.

Last week, 3,000 railway engine drivers and various technical employees walked out to demand higher pay. Though union leaders limited the industrial action to two days, it was the first strike since the terrorist attacks. The stoppage, which is to be followed by a 24-hour walkout starting tonight, is another indication of the mounting working-class anger toward the government.

Five government officials killed in alleged coup attempt as Ethiopia’s “democratic” facade cracks

Joe Williams

Gunmen killed five high ranking government officials, including Army Chief of Staff General Seare Mekonnen, in two separate attacks in Ethiopia’s Amhara region on Saturday.

Very few details about Saturday’s attack have been released, but Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed appeared on state television that evening, dressed in military fatigues, to condemn what he called an attempted coup against the Amhara regional government.

His office released a statement the next day, self-contradictorily declaring that “the situation in Amhara region is currently under full control by the Federal Government in collaboration with the Regional Government,” while maintaining that operations to secure the region would continue and for “citizens to also be guardians of peace and support all efforts to hold suspected individuals accountable.”

According to spokesmen for Ahmed, the assault began when Brig. Gen. Asamnew Tsige and soldiers loyal to him stormed a meeting of the Amhara government, wounding a number of individuals and killing Ambachew Mekonnen, the president of the Amhara region, his adviser, Ezez Wassie, and Migbaru Kebede, Amhara’s attorney general. Later that day, Seare Mekonnen and retired Major-General Gezae Abera were killed in Seare Mekonnen’s home by one of his bodyguards.

The federal government responded by initiating a nationwide manhunt for people it says are suspected of taking part in the coup attempt, during which much of Amhara was on lockdown. The operation has so far resulted in 180 people being rounded up, including four high ranking Amhara regional officials.

Tsige, who was pardoned by Ahmed last year after having been imprisoned by the previous government for allegedly orchestrating a similar coup attempt in 2009, was killed in a gunfight in Bahir Dar, in northern Amhara, on Monday. Nevertheless, the military is continuing its crackdown.

Ahmed’s claims that the attack was aimed at the Amhara regional government have been viewed with much skepticism, and for good reason. Ahmed’s tenure as Prime Minister, which began in April 2018, has been dominated by tension between his government and the military. He came to power promising to bring an end to the despotism that has historically characterized Ethiopian governments.

Among Ahmed’s promised reforms were expanded freedom of speech and expression, opening up the internet, and limiting the military’s role in the government. As a gesture of goodwill upon taking office, he released tens of thousands of political prisoners, ended the internet blackout imposed by the previous government of Hailemariam Desalegn, and sacked over 100 generals and other high officers, mostly from the Tigray ethnic group that had dominated the previous regime.

This created a large constituency for his removal within the military, both from officers who resent the military’s loss of political power, and from those who see the sackings as a racist attack on the Tigray people. The Tigray are often seen to be collectively responsible for the crimes of the previous regime, and hundreds of thousands of Tigray have been driven from their homes due to racist violence since Ahmed’s rise to power.

However, Ahmed has also endeared himself to Western politicians and business interests by opening up the Ethiopian economy to foreign exploitation, namely through the liberalization of labor laws and the privatization of state assets. Ahmed plans to sell the government’s shares in Ethiopian Airlines, Africa’s largest and most profitable airline, and open up numerous sectors currently monopolized by the state, including telecommunications, aviation, electricity, and transportation. Manufacturing, hotels, and certain agricultural sectors are expected to be fully privatized.

Thus, it is no surprise that world leaders and the international press have hailed his rise to power, declaring his political reforms to be the dawn of a new era of freedom and prosperity for Ethiopia, while ignoring the fact that ethnic violence has actually increased since his inauguration. In addition to the attacks on the Tigray, nearly 1 million ethnic Gedeos have been forced to flee their homes in West Guji. In both cases, the attackers belong to militias affiliated with the Oromo ethnic group, of which Ahmed is also a member.

Nevertheless, only two months after assuming office, in an editorial titled “Abiy Ahmed pulls off an astonishing turnaround for Ethiopia,” the Washington Post declared that he had ended the country’s “cycle of unrest, repression, and more unrest.”

At the same time, the paper acknowledged that the real interest of the American bourgeoisie for whom it speaks is ensuring the undisrupted flow of capital from Ethiopia to American investors: “It remains to be seen whether Mr. Abiy can sustain his reform drive, which is sure to draw opposition from regime hard-liners. A key question will be whether economic reforms, including the sale of shares to foreign investors in large state companies and the privatization of others, will bring in enough hard currency to allow payments on foreign debts and ease import bottlenecks.”

His imperialist backers are surely also aware that the limited reforms they have tried to pass off as a democratic revolution are not sustainable. Ethiopia is a highly unequal society in which over half of the population lives on less than $2 per day, while the ten richest individuals possess $25 billion.

Furthermore, Ethiopia’s economic strategy is based on seizing land from poor farmers for little or no compensation, and then selling that land to investors, largely in China and the Arabian peninsula. In this way, millions of acres of land that once produced food in a country notorious for its vulnerability to famine have been converted into condominiums and cash crop farms for producing coffee, flowers, and palm oil.

This policy has come to be symbolized in popular consciousness by an operation known as “The Master Plan.” Initiated in 2014, it involved seizing farmland from Oromo farmers and conveying it to the city of Addis Ababa for its own expansion, usually to build condos for wealthy investors. The Master Plan met with immediate and fierce resistance from the Oromo population, which organized massive demonstrations that were brutally repressed by the government. Over a three-year period, hundreds of Oromo were killed in protests, and 5,000 were put in prison.

Although the government officially terminated the Master Plan in late 2016, the policy of seizing land for sale to investors has continued under other names. Ahmed exploited popular revulsion at this policy and rose to prominence as a leader of the Oromo resistance movement. However, he has largely turned his back on the farmers who propelled him to power. Land seizures have continued, and in March, the Oromo resumed their protests.

Then, in early June, Ethiopia’s internet was shut down for reasons that have still not been explained. Neither the Ethiopian telecom company nor the Prime Minister’s office have responded to media requests for comment, except to say that customers will receive credits on their accounts for the time they were denied access. The internet had been restored for merely four days when Saturday’s attack occurred, at which point the government shut down the internet once again.

Regardless of Ahmed’s specific motivation for these shutdowns, one cannot ignore their significance given the degree to which his international backers, and Ahmed himself, touted his initial restoration of the internet as proof of his commitment to democratic rights when he assumed office.

The situation in Ethiopia is extremely unstable. This is the second violent attack against the Ahmed regime by disgruntled elements in the armed forces, and Ahmed is finding his limited democratic reforms to be wholly incompatible with an economy that relies on stealing land and cannibalizing state resources.

Given the historically tight relationship between the Ethiopian and US militaries, and the US’s dependence on the Ethiopian military for subduing the Horn of Africa, it cannot be ruled out that elements in the Ethiopian Army believed they would have American support for an operation to restore their power.

The illusion of solving the problems which confront the working class and poor farmers in Ethiopia through idealistic appeals to concepts like freedom and democracy is being rapidly exposed. Instead, the problems confronting Ethiopian society can only be resolved through the rational and planned use of resources to meet human needs instead of profit, and this can only be achieved by the revolutionary restructuring of society on a socialist basis led by the working class.

Facial recognition technology and the US military-intelligence apparatus

Kevin Reed 

On Tuesday, the Oakland City Council Public Safety Committee unanimously approved a resolution banning the use of facial recognition (FR) technology by the city, including by the police department. A full vote of the city council on the resolution is planned for July 16.

If the entire city council adopts the ban, Oakland could become the second city in the US to do so, the first being San Francisco which passed a resolution banning FR on May 14. The Oakland resolution would amend the city’s surveillance ordinance, stopping any planned use of FR technology by city departments as well as blocking the use of any information gathered by others using it. The Berkeley City Council is also planning a vote on a facial recognition ban on July 9.

In moving the public safety resolution, Oakland City Council President Rebecca Kaplan, a Democrat, presented the issue as primarily one of racial discrimination. “It has become clearer and clearer that there is a serious and ongoing problem of racial inequity with the implementation of facial recognition technology,” Kaplan said.

Although the San Francisco resolution—which was passed by a vote of 8-1—raised the threat that FR poses constitutional rights protected by the First, Fourth and 14th Amendments as well as key sections of the California Constitution, it too contained a nod to identity politics stating, “While surveillance technology may threaten the privacy of all of us, surveillance efforts have historically been used to intimidate and oppress certain communities and groups more than others, including those that are defined by a common race, ethnicity, religion, national origin, income level, sexual orientation, or political perspective.”

US government image promoting the advances in facial recognition technology

That American city governments are banning FR technologies—while simultaneously attempting to bury the explosive class implications of its use beneath the rubbish of racial, ethnic and gender identity politics—indicates that the level of state surveillance already underway with these tools is vast, and an enormous threat to the democratic rights of all those living in the United States.

Facial recognition is most commonly identified with personal computer and smartphone technologies, such as Apple’s Face ID, and for automatically identifying family members and friends in personal photo libraries. However, these consumer-level implementations of FR employ only the most rudimentary capabilities of this ever-present technology.

Facial recognition technology is a form of biometrics, the measurement of the distinctive characteristics used to label and describe individuals such as fingerprints and DNA. These systems integrate the basic principles of facial recognition—the measurement of the relative position, size and shape of the eyes, nose, cheekbones and jaw, for example—with more sophisticated three-dimensional skin texture characterizations, motion video and human behavioral analytics.

The advanced development and implementation of FR is, above all, being driven by the requirements of the military-intelligence apparatus and is connected with the Pentagon war machine and massive domestic surveillance operations of the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Now, for example, the US State Department manages a facial recognition database of 117 million American adults, mostly drawn from driver’s license photos. The FBI has also implemented Next Generation Identification—developed by the defense contractor Lockheed Martin—to include facial recognition alongside of fingerprints in its criminal and civil databases.

According to media reports, DHS began in 2017 photographing every passenger at the gate before boarding an airplane and has rolled out the process to 15 US airports since 2018. This program, called “Biometric Exit” is run by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and is used to cross-reference the images of departing passengers with photos from visa and passport applications.

In March 2017, President Trump issued an executive order to speed up the use of facial recognition identification for “100 percent of all international passengers” in the top US airports by 2021. Since then DHS has been rushing to get the systems up and running to scan the faces of travelers on 16,300 flights per week, or approximately 100 million travelers leaving the US every year—of course, many of them US citizens.

As the report published by the ACLU on June 17 called “The Dawn of Robot Intelligence” explains, the surveillance camera infrastructure constructed over many decades and capturing video images of the public 24/7 is now being married with powerful artificial intelligence systems. The video content being captured by tens of millions of cameras is being put through “video analytics” software that is increasingly capable of sophisticated learning and connected to other forms of electronic surveillance.

According to the ACLU report, the analytics software now in place claims “the ability to detect things such as loiterers, people moving the wrong direction or intruding into forbidden areas, and the abandonment or removal of objects. They claim the ability to note demographic information about people, such as gender, race, and age, and to collect information such as what clothes they are wearing.”

These so-called “deep learning” and “neural network” systems of artificial intelligence (AI) are being trained—with the assistance of the tech monopolies like Google and Amazon—to process and recognize human action and activity, body language, emotion, eye movements in real-time. The ACLU says, “The result is rapid progress in automated video analysis—progress that has brought computers to a point where they are on the cusp of becoming virtual security guards across the world.”

While the ACLU report focused primarily on the use of FR and AI for domestic police operations, the US military is developing similar systems for the purposes of warfare. The US Department of Defense’s DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has been developing facial recognition technologies for unmanned air and battlefield purposes with a $2 billion budget to do so.

Although the military is careful to claim that the AI technologies being used “do not capture any personally identifiable information”—especially in the aftermath of Google employees’ protest against Project Maven—the use of video analytics for drone-based surveillance is well-developed. The purpose of Project Maven is to automate the analysis of drone video footage to find ostensible threats and objects without human analysts.

For the Pentagon, facial recognition is a “non-contact” method of identifying individuals, search and verification. With the assistance of super high resolution and thermal imaging camera techniques, especially in low light situations, the military can detect the presence of people and also recognize faces from long distances. The combination of AI and FR is also a central aspect of security systems on military bases around the world.

Much of the criticisms of the use of facial recognition systems is based on the argument that they are inaccurate and make too many mistakes. Such objections are often combined with an uncritical acceptance of the justifications made by the surveillance state for using FR while ignoring, or making them primary to, the buildup of a facial recognition database of the entire population that is a direct attack on basic democratic rights.

These arguments are similar to those advanced against CIA rendition, indefinite detention and torture programs on the grounds that these are “ineffective” methods of interrogation. On the one hand, they accept the lies of the military-intelligence establishment about what they are doing and, on the other, the criminal methods continue to be utilized anyway.

Much of the criticisms of facial recognition technologies as enabling racial profiling by the police and other law enforcement agencies are based on research by scientists at the MIT Media Lab published in 2018. Based on a dataset of 1,270 faces, the study showed that the FR software from Microsoft, IBM and Megvii from China was accurate 99 percent of the time when identifying the gender of white men and inaccurate 35 percent of the time when identifying the gender of “darker skinned women.”

The essential argument of the study is that FR technologies reinforce the biases that exist within society at large. The problem with this approach—which is a divisive and diversionary argument from the essential questions—is that the software companies simply responded by immediately advancing their technology to improve the accuracy of their systems by 10-fold when it comes to identifying “darker-skinned women.”

The build-up of enormous databases of facial and other biometric data of the entire population of the US and other countries is part of the preparations for even greater crimes against humanity abroad than have already been committed over the last quarter century of war in the Middle East and North Africa and the suppression of growing opposition to war and social inequality at home.

These threats cannot be fought on the basis of appeals for the shelving of inaccurate methods or identity politics, which serves to split the working class along racial, ethnic and linguistic lines. The working class can only prepare for the huge battles to come in defense of the most basic democratic rights by organizing its enormous revolutionary strength under the banner of socialist internationalism.

Striking Coca-Cola workers rebel against union in Mexico City

Andrea Lobo

Hundreds of Coca-Cola workers in Mexico City and the neighboring State of Mexico have launched a wildcat strike against the transnational corporation and the pro-company union. The strike, which takes place in the heart of Mexico and the largest city in the western hemisphere, is yet another sign that the working class is moving into struggle against the world’s most powerful companies around the world.

About 200 workers at the distribution center in Tlalpan, Mexico City, decided during a mass assembly outside of the plant on Friday to strike. On Saturday, Coca-Cola plants of similar size in the Mexico City suburbs of La Viga and Zaragoza joined the strike and supported the demands advanced by their coworkers in Tlalplan.

Coca-Cola workers walk out in Toluca [credit Angel Gonzalo Zamorano]

On Monday, workers at two more distribution centers in Iztacalco and Mixcoac stopped work, halting the distribution of Coca-Cola from the centers in the impoverished industrial belt on the southern periphery of the megacity. Though four of the plants were coerced back to work, there is no contract and the situation remains volatile. Another plant that walked out Wednesday remains on strike.

In recent weeks, Coca-Cola workers in Mexico have been compelled by management to sign an agreement that cuts their food vouchers and paid vacations, and eliminates sales commissions that can comprise from a third to a half of workers’ incomes.

“Sign your resignation or sign this piece of paper,” management told the workers.

As anger grew at plants, workers began talking to one another on social media.

Workers’ demands were democratically discussed and evolved quickly from getting their commissions back to deciding that “the solution is signing a new contract” with major improvements, particularly the 8-hour day.

The strike was carried out in opposition to the company and the pro-company union, which is affiliated with the Revolutionary Confederation of Workers and Peasants (CROC). “Our trade union simply didn’t do anything to support us on the question that we have really heavy workdays for unjust salaries,” one Tlalpan worker told reporters.

Management moved to threaten workers that they would not only lose the commissions but also all their seniority. Executives speaking to workers at the mass assembly sought to divide them, asking, “does at least one of you, because someone might, want to have a dialogue inside, to come in and talk?” All workers angrily responded “no!”

One worker yelled at a union leader: “Slaves used to work from daylight to daylight: they would enter at 7 and leave at 7. We don’t even have that. I leave at four from my house and come back after 10.” Workers receive 294 pesos or $15 per day and work six days each week.

Matamoros Coca-Cola workers strike in January

La Izquierda Diario interviewed striking workers who said: “One day, my son asked if I didn’t live at the house anymore because he never sees me.”

On Tuesday night, the company forced workers to sign that they agreed to the elimination of their commissions in exchange for no reprisals, with the CROC union and the company executives both continuing threats against workers. However, on social media workers warned Wednesday that “a strike already occurred in 2012, but union leaders sold out and nothing happened, and many got fired.”

The relief for the corporation was brief. At daybreak Wednesday, dozens of workers at a Coca-Cola distribution center in Coecillo, Toluca—35 miles west of Mexico City—walked out against the elimination of the commissions, with workers reporting that it signifies losing a third of their income, along with demands of a shorter workday.

Demonstrating the simmering opposition across the country, strikers in Toluca told reporters of La Izquierda Diario they had not heard about the strikes in Mexico City. “Our interests are the same as theirs,” one worker said.

The super-exploitation faced by Coca-Cola workers led them to carry out strikes even before the recent cuts. Some 400 Coca-Cola bottling workers in the northern border city of Matamoros struck this spring. The strike lasted more than two months, beginning as far back as January 31 as a wildcat strike demanding a 20 percent raise and US$1,600 bonus and lasting until April 5. Matamoros Coca-Cola workers walked out amid wildcat strikes by more than 70,000 manufacturing workers in maquiladora sweatshops in the city, which ended in a sellout agreement involving 140 firings.

On June 5, about 30 Coca-Cola drivers in Santa Rita, Durango, struck for a day to protest the 14-hour days and the elimination of paid vacations, with Milenio noting that workers simply dismissed any interaction with the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) union.

Strikers march in Tlalpan on Saturday [Credit: Winnyto Gutierrez]

Beyond a short piece by Forbes on Friday, focusing on the statements by the corporation, the corporate media in Mexico and internationally has been completely silent, fearful that Coca-Cola workers will decide to join their resistance against the cuts and even join the struggles of workers in other sectors amid the ongoing resurgence of working-class militancy in Mexico and internationally. These fears by the ruling class were reflected by a sharp fall of 1.44 percent in the stock prices of Coca-Cola Femsa, the branch in Mexico, as news of the strike in Toluca broke.

The approval by the Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) administration of a labor reform demanding that “independent” unions be allowed to compete for representation through a majority vote has produced a wave of activity among opportunistic trade union careerists backed by pseudo-left organizations—including the Socialist Workers Movement (MTS), which publishes La Izquierda Diario, the Stalinist Mexican Communist Party (PCM), the Political Organization of the People and Workers (OPT), and numerous others—hoping to replace the established and hated company unions of the CROC and the CTM.

This happens amid growing opposition to the administration of López Obrador and his bourgeois party Movement for National Regeneration (Morena) as it subserviently obeys the dictates of the fascistic Trump administration by sending 21,000 troops to the borders to crackdown on Central American immigrants. AMLO is also obeying the dictates of Wall Street through aggressive corporate tax cuts along the industrialized northern border and an open “austerity” program involving mass layoffs in the public sector.

The main objective of the labor reform and the reason why both big business parties of US imperialism and sections of the Mexican ruling class are promoting this legislation was explained by the Secretary of Labor, Luisa María Alcalde, to El Financiero: “With the reform, we reduce the chances of strikes like those in Matamoros because more authentic union representations, guarantee talks and no strikes… attracting dialogue and productivity.”

Mexican workers must expand their fight for the social right to a decent salary and the eight-hour day. Combating one of the largest and most powerful transnational corporations like Coca-Cola requires an international struggle in alliance with their class brothers and sisters across Latin American and in the US and Canada. Workers must build rank-and-file committees independent of the nationalist and pro-capitalist trade unions to expand their struggle.

China's Engagement with Africa: Where Does it Stand?

Anand Benegal


China’s engagement with the Africa continent has been analysed to examine a variety of aspects and a substantial portion of those analyses focus on the dept trap and resource curse concerns. However, an analysis of Beijing’s multidimensional relational policy comprising economics and culture and a comparison of China's presence in Africa with those of the US and the EU shows that China is the continent’s most favoured partner.

China's Multidimensional Partnership with AfricaFor some time now, China has consistently been Africa’s largest single trading partner, having surpassed the US in 2009. In terms of trade volume, only the EU-Africa partnership is far greater, at US$ 314 billion compared to China's US$ 170 billion in 2017. Similarly, Chinese FDI has shown dramatic growth, from US$ 74.8 million in 2003 to US$ 4.1 billion in 2017. According to McKinsey, thousands of Chinese firms employ and train millions of African workers, across diverse sectors including energy, infrastructure and manufacturing. Chinese commerce holds a diversified portfolio and is in Africa for the long-term, suggesting that profits from demographic dividend-driven growth is Beijing’s primary goal.

More controversially, the speed and secrecy in Chinese One Belt One Road project related investments have escalated China into becoming Africa’s largest creditor. These investments are typically long-term commitments in sectors such as transport, energy, mining, and communications. However, in Africa, China is viewed as a benevolent trustee. This is largely due to how Beijing has forged a thriving cultural partnership. Sino-African cultural relations range from research and education to language and culture. The Communist Party of China also provides diplomatic training to African politicians and entrepreneurs, which contribute to this favourable image among emerging African leaders. Sino-African research partnerships have garnered positive media reception for increasing employment and knowledge opportunities. Local telecommunications and agri-technology are among the most notable successes. A recent article in Nature goes so far as to state that “on the technological front, China is unmatched in Africa.”

Meanwhile, 59 Confucius Institutes (CIs) are involved in teaching Mandarin Chinese along with Chinese culture in over 30 African countries, second only to France's 115 Alliance Françaises in 35 African countries. CIs supplement diplomacy and promote cultural and educational outreach programmes. The stringency of China’s visa policy also means African countries do not fear brain drain. Despite some harboring fears over the one-sidedness of this cultural relationship, the wider African populace has welcomed these educational opportunities.

China, US and EU in AfricaThe conspicuous contrast is in military presence: the US has thousands of troops stationed across Africa, conducting counterterrorism and training operations. Precise force estimates are unclear, but the footprint is substantial—34 military outposts were observed in 2018. Likewise, the EU too holds military programmes. EU countries with sizeable military presence include Germany (in Mali, Somalia and Niger) and France (in Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Djibouti, and Gabon). These external forces are often resented by the locals as the former tend to entangle themselves in regional conflicts. For instance, France launched airstrikes against political rebels in Chad in February 2019, and their siding with President Idriss Deby’s regime was heavily criticised.

China has only recently shifted from its non-intervention policy. Aside from establishing a military base in Djibouti, China has increased contributions to UN peacekeeping missions, offering to contribute 8000 troops and to train regional peacekeeping forces in 2015. While Western countries have a long history of continental military intervention, China has hitherto benefited from a lack of equivalent history. Beijing is trying to smoothen its growing military ambitions in Africa through diplomacy: the first China-Africa Defense and Security Forum took place in Beijing in June 2018. However, the nature of China’s response if/when embroiled in local/regional conflicts will be a factor that sculpts the trajectory of this relationship. Insofar, not having faced this issue has helped Beijing's popularity with African leaders, whereas poor handling of a regional conflict could affect Beijing’s popularity.

Popularity surveys by Afrobarometer (2014) and Pew Research Center (2016) show that regional African populations view China warmly. 51 African leaders were present at the Forum on Africa-China Cooperation in Beijing compared to 27 at the UN General Assembly held in October 2018. Although historically, the US has been Africa’s preferred ally, a 2017 Pew survey shows China overtaking the US in terms of popular favourability, in at least three out of six African countries surveyed, with a tie in one (Kenya). Consolidating the decline of the US’ popularity is the ongoing US-China trade war which adversely impacts African economies, bringing the continent closer to China.

China's multidimensional African policy has been a diplomatic victory compared to the US’s and the EU’s policies, which are heavily focused on regional security. Reacting to China, the EU unveiled a set of economic proposals towards Africa in September 2018, and the US’ National Security Advisor John Bolton announced a US-Africa strategy that December. These new proposals are similar to the multidimensional partnerships which currently underpin Sino-African relations.

Looking AheadThe quick and emphatic marriage of economic and cultural diplomacy has been central to China’s rise in Africa. However, efforts to expand its military presence in conflict-ridden regions in the continent could affect this popularity among people and elites alike. How China navigates its security interests whilst evading the fallouts of regional conflicts could determine how its standing—as Africa’s most valued partner—progresses.

Understanding Climate Change as a National Security Concern

Avino Niphi


The scientific community has unequivocally confirmed the alarming severity of climate change impacts arising from excessive anthropogenic influence. Over the years, the frequency of extreme weather conditions has been observed to have a direct bearing on the availability of water in India and consequent effects on agricultural productivity, economic growth and social stability. In addition, the relationship between climate change, peace, security and development is also becoming more apparent.

Human security lies at the core of climate change impacts. However, the impact on human security is not accorded high priority status in national and/or regional policy-making agendas in most contexts. As the central security provider for the people it governs, the state would benefit from expanding the discourse on climate change to view it also as a national security concern. Doing so could facilitate overcoming the prevailing sluggishness in policymaking aimed at tackling climate issues while also keeping the focus on human security. Given how effects of climate change overlap with traditional security concerns within the policy domain, such an approach could provide an entry-point to formulating timely mitigation-based state responses.

On a transnational level, the impact that climate change could have on a country is much greater and could unfold as matters of national security. In this regard, the vulnerability of the Indo-Bangladesh region to climate change is a helpful case study to understand the inter-linkages in the long term national security concerns and priorities of both countries. Alongside India’s proneness to climate related risks, Bangladesh has been ranked the 7th worst weather affected country since 1998. Today, two-thirds of Bangladesh’s territory is situated less than five meters above sea level, significantly affecting the country’s agricultural productivity.

Climate Change and the India-Bangladesh ContextWhile both India and Bangladesh have managed to create a space for themselves in the international community through impressive economic growth rates and have stabilised their bilateral relations since the formation of Bangladesh in 1971, the dual consequences of climate change, i.e. environmental degradation and the perceived threat to national security due to the cross-border influx of migrants, have often manifested in bilateral relations. Intensification of these concerns could potentially roll back years of socio-economic progress in both countries as well as bilateral rapport-building.

An estimated 13.3 million people in Bangladesh are expected to be displaced by 2050 due to climate-change induced effects. In such a scenario, migratory responses among those affected seem inevitable. For a country that is locked by Indian territory on three sides, and by the Bay of Bengal on the fourth, the optimal recourse for climate displaced people in Bangladesh would be to relocate and seek refuge either in other parts of Bangladesh or into the other proximate regions, i.e. north-east Indian states and West Bengal. However, from the Indian perspective, the north-eastern states are not economically equipped to handle any major migrant influx; and West Bengal, the fourth most populous state, is likely to face demographic unrest as a side effect of mass influx of people. The resultant competition over opportunities and resources would pose a challenge to economic capacity and social stability in these areas while also creating a simultaneous decline in Bangladesh’s labour force and productivity. While frictions arising from cross-border migration from Bangladesh have already manifested in a variety of Indian states bordering Bangladesh, India’s Assam state emerges as a prime example where the issue has been identified as an act of “external aggression” by the former governor of Assam and the Indian Supreme Court.

It would thus be worthwhile for New Delhi and Dhaka to coordinate with each other to address the issue sustainably. Such coordination might, in fact, also help prepare both countries for a potential future scenario when large scale climate-induced migration from Bangladesh into India occurs.

Another issue that could possibly get aggravated due to climate change effects is the disputes over trans-boundary rivers. Tensions over trans-boundary river waters have been known to trigger a variety of conflicts in different parts of the world. Despite India and Bangladesh sharing 54 trans-boundary rivers, there exists only one water sharing treaty between the two, i.e. the Ganga waters sharing treaty, which was signed in 1996 for a period of 30 years (renewable by mutual consent). As a lower riparian, Bangladesh’s water security is directly vulnerable to the effects of upper riparian India’s activities on these rivers. Damming and other activities on these rivers in India have an impact on availability of water for irrigation, industry, energy demands, and public consumption in Bangladesh.

Equally, India’s national security and stability is connected to those of Bangladesh’s. The effects of climate change on Bangladesh are likely to be projected onto India, over and above the latter’s own vulnerability to climate change impacts. In order to safeguard its national interests, India, therefore, needs to coordinate with Bangladesh to begin managing these issues well in advance.

Given the circumstances, viewing climate change as a national security related concern could open conversations among governments regarding potential future scenarios. This provides an avenue for both countries to build capacities and introduce anticipatory measures in a timely manner. Mutuality of interests on these issues could also be amplified in policy discourses to speed up identification of remedial measures. Discussing climate change from a national security perspective with the same degree of attention and urgency as any other strategic concern is imperative also because it can provide a potent segue for prioritising climate change not only in the national and bilateral policymaking domain but also on the regional level.

Looking AheadIn January 2019, the UN Security Council demonstrated renewed interest in discussing the risks posed by climate change to peace, security and development. A similar debate in India on national security concerns linked to climate change would be extremely useful for related policymaking and public consciousness. This, in turn, will be contributory to fostering conditions necessary for ensuring human security since ensuring national security is not merely about protecting territory but also about providing protection for the peoples in that territory.

At present, India’s climate policy is fragmented and does not address the wider and impeding national security related concerns. While this study looked at the India-Bangladesh context, India also directly neighbours six other countries. Given that the cumulative impact of climate change also has the potential to catalyse conflict by aggravating unresolved domestic and transnational security issues, examining climate change as a national and regional security concern could help spark more comprehensive and coordinated domestic policy action as well as facilitate regional cooperation.