Eurasia’s Great Game: India, Japan and Europe play to Putin’s needs

James M. Dorsey

Eurasia’s Great Game is anything but simple and straightforward.

A burgeoning alliance between China and Russia that at least for now is relegating potential differences between the two powers to the sidelines has sparked a complex geopolitical dance of its own.

With India, Japan and Europe seeking to drive a wedge between the two Asian powers, Central Asian states, where anti-Chinese sentiment is rising, are quietly rooting that Asian rivalries will grant them greater manoeuvrability.

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi on a visit to Russia this month during which he attended the annual Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, established to attract Asian investment in the country’s Far East, announced a US$1 billion credit line to fund development of the region.

Mr. Modi and Russian president Vladimir Putin also agreed to establish a maritime link between the Far East’s capital, Vladivostok, and Chennai that would reduce transport time from 40 to 24 days.

The connection potentially could serve as an extension of the Indian Ocean Corridor that links India to Japan and the Pacific and competes with China’s pearl of strings, a series of ports across Asia in which China has invested heavily.

In contrast to Mr. Modi, Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, who has attended the forum since its inception in 2015, did not announce any major deals in response to Mr. Putin’s insistence that “the development of the Russian Far East, strengthening its economic and innovation potential, and raising the living standards of its residents among others, is our key priority and fundamental national goal.”

With the trans-Atlantic alliance fraying at the edges, Markus Ederer, the European Union’s ambassador to Russia and one of the EU’s top diplomats, appeared to recognize Mr. Putin’s priorities when he urged the bloc, to engage on a massive scale with Russia on some of the most tricky political and security aspects in their relationship despite differences over Russian aggression in Ukraine and Georgia, human rights and alleged Russian interference in various European elections.

In a memorandum to senior bureaucrats, Mr. Ederer suggested that 5G mobile communications, personal data protection, the Artic, regional infrastructure and the development of joint policies on matters such as customs and standards by the EU, Russia, Norway and Iceland, should be topics on the EU-Russian agenda.

Mr. Ederer said that these were areas “where leaving a clear field to our competitors by not engaging would be most detrimental to EU interests.”

He argued that a “pragmatic” move towards “enhanced co-ordination” with Russia was needed to combat “Eurasian competition” as China’s influence grows.

The EU “would have everything to lose by ignoring the tectonic strategic shifts in Eurasia. Engaging not only with China but (also) with Russia…is a necessary condition to be part of the game and play our cards where we have comparative advantage,” Mr. Ederer asserted.

Messrs. Modi, Abe and Ederer see opportunity in what Thomas Graham, a former U.S. diplomat and managing director of Kissinger Associates, describes as Russia’s need for “diversity of strategic partners in the (Far East) to maintain its strategic autonomy (from China) going forward.”

The EU, India and Japan hope to capitalize not only on Russia’s requirement for diversified investment but also Mr. Putin’s need to counter widespread anti-Chinese sentiment in the Far East that has turned against his government at a time that protest in Russia is accelerating and after Mr. Putin’s party this month lost a third of its seats in the Moscow district council.

Public sentiment east of the Urals is critical of perceived Chinese encroachment on the region’s natural resources including water, particularly in the Trans-Baikal region.

A petition initiated earlier this year by prominent Russian show business personalities opposing Chinese plans to build a water bottling plant on the shores of Lake Baikal attracted more than 800,000 signatures, signalling the depth of popular resentment and pitfalls of the Russian alliance with China.

Protests further erupted earlier this year in multiple Russian cities against Chinese logging in the Far East that residents and environmentalists charge has spoilt Russian watersheds and is destroying the habitats of the endangered Siberian tiger and Amur leopard.

The protesters, who also denounced construction of housing for Chinese workers, are demanding a ban on Russian timber exports to China.

Underlying the anti-Chinese protests is the lopsided nature of economic relations that Russia scholar Leo Aaron says fits Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin’s definition of colonial trade, in which one country becomes a raw material appendage of another.

“China is Russia’s second-largest trading partner (after the EU) and Russia’s largest individual partner in both exports and imports. For China, the Russian market is at best second-rate. Russia ranks tenth in Chinese exports and does not make it into the top ten in either imports or total trade,” Mr. Aaron said.

He noted that three-quarters of Russia’s exports to China were raw materials and resources as opposed to consumer goods, electronics and machinery that account for the bulk of Chinese sales to Russia.

European, Indian and Japanese efforts to capitalize on anti-Chinese sentiment taps into a deeply embedded vein.

Writing under the pen name P. Ukhtubuzhsky, Russian author Nikolai Dmitrievich Obleukhov warned already in 1911 that “Russians are being displaced by the yellow races who seize commerce, industry, wages, and so on… God guides people. Those nations who protect Good and Truth will be victorious. If Russia, carrying the light of Orthodoxy, faces in Asia the yellow races wallowing in the darkness of paganism, there cannot be any doubt as to the outcome of this struggle.”

Mr. Putin, presiding over a country in economic trouble, can’t create the margins of manoeuvrability that he needs on his own. He hopes that India, Japan and Europe will come to his aid.

Accidental drug overdose deaths continue to rise in Australia

Clare Bruderlin

An annual report by the Pennington Institute, released in August, revealed that the number of drug overdose deaths in Australia has increased by 28 percent in a decade, while the number of accidental drug overdose deaths rose by nearly 40 percent.

The report compiles statistics of drug-induced deaths from 2001 to 2017, examining trends in age-groups, socioeconomic areas and the types and number of drugs used. The report notes that the statistics from 2016 and 2017 are only preliminary and likely to rise, because some coronial inquests from these years have not been finalised.

So far, 2,162 drug-induced deaths are recorded for 2017. Despite the statistics being preliminary, a record 2,177 deaths are currently reported for 2016. The report estimates that both drug-induced deaths and unintentional drug-induced deaths have increased on average by 3.4 percent each year since 2001.

The report focuses primarily on unintentional deaths, which make up the majority (approximately three-quarters) of all drug-induced deaths.

The largest number of deaths occurred in the 40–49 year age-group, followed by the 30–39 age-group and the 50–59 age-group. These are people in the prime of their life. Collectively, accidental drug-induced deaths in these aged groups rose from 540 deaths in 2001, to 1,157 in 2017—a 113.7 percent increase.

The highest growth rate of unintended drug-induced deaths occurred in regional areas where, as the report explains, there is less access to drug treatment and support services, and generally longer delays in emergency services, than in capital cities. From 2011 to 2017, the rate of accidental drug-induced deaths in rural and regional areas increased by 24 percent, compared to 5 percent in capital cities.

The rate of unintentional drug-induced deaths is higher also among indigenous people. Aboriginal Australians were three times as likely to die from unintended drug-induced deaths in 2017, with 19.2 deaths per 100,000 population, compared with 6.2 for non-Aboriginal people.

One of the report’s limitations is that it uses a “Socio-Economic Index for Areas” to gauge the average income of the residential area where a person lived, not their individual income. While drug overdose, addiction and misuse affects both “poor and wealthy neighbourhoods,” the report nonetheless shows that 69 percent of unintentional drug-induced deaths occur in low socioeconomic areas.

The highest rates of accidental drug-induced deaths per 100,000 people were found in Western New South Wales, with a rate of 11.4; Perth South at 9.2, and Nepean-Blue Mountains at 9.1. These are areas of high unemployment, including among former mine workers.

Opioids remain the most commonly identified drug group in unintentional drug-induced deaths. The number of accidental deaths involving opioids increased by 144 percent over 15 years, and more than trebled from 2006 to 2017. The majority of these deaths involve pharmaceutical opioids, which are prescribed to manage pain.

The rise in prescription-opioid deaths may be bound up, in part, with high numbers of work-related injuries. Some 563,600 people experienced a work-related injury or illness in 2017–18, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data. Chronic joint or muscle conditions accounted for 18 percent (101,340). The occupations most affected were technicians and trade workers. More than half the people who experienced a work-related injury were male.

Males accounted for approximately two-thirds of unintentional drug-induced deaths. During the study period the rate of these deaths increased an alarming 41.7 percent for males, versus 8.5 percent for females.

As Indian economy sinks, Modi government scrambles to respond

Kranti Kumara

After coming under severe criticism from Indian big business and foreign capital for not recognizing the depth of the crisis facing the country’s economy, India’s Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has announced a slew of new economic measures, just weeks after tabling its budget for the 2019-20 fiscal year.

The new measures are principally aimed at shoring up the country’s beleaguered financial system, which is weighed down by tens of billions of dollars in bad loans, and at placating capitalist investors.

In the hopes of inducing banks to be less reticent in extending credit to businesses and consumers, the government has sought to “clean up” their balance sheets by injecting capital and forcing bank mergers.

To boost “investor sentiment,” Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has rescinded a tax surcharge on the very rich in her July 5 budget that provoked howls of opposition from the Indian elite and foreign investors. The government has also raised foreign investor limits in several industries, including allowing 100 percent FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) in coal mining, and vowed to accelerate the sell-off of public assets.

Boosting India’s auto manufacturers, who are shutting down production lines for weeks as unsold new cars pile up in their inventory, is also a government priority.

Indian and domestic capital have welcomed the measures taken by the Narendra Modi-led government. But many Indian business leaders and the financial press are pressing for more radical steps, arguing that the crisis is “structural,” and not simply the product of a temporary, cyclical fall in demand. The Times of India, the flagship publication of India’s largest media group, has published editorial after editorial urging Prime Minister Modi to act with “Kashmir type” urgency to push through further neo-liberal reforms, referencing the government’s illegal power-play stripping Jammu and Kashmir of its special, semi-autonomous constitutional status.

Falling investment and consumer demand, rising joblessness

India’s growth rate has been declining for more than a year and a half, but the decline has accelerated in recent months. In the April-June quarter, GDP growth plunged to a six-year low of 5 percent. Economists and Indian government officials have long held that India needs at least 8 percent growth to create enough jobs for new entrants.

Consumer demand has fallen steeply as workers’ real incomes, in an already low-wage economy, have fallen due to rising unemployment—the jobless rate is currently at a 45-year high—and the proliferation of low-paid, precarious contract work, even in the so-called “formal” sector comprised of large firms.

New investment by Indian companies has declined sharply, falling from 22 trillion rupees (Rs.) ($350 billion) in 2014-15 to Rs. 11.3 trillion ($160 billion) in 2018-19.

Although India’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India, has, under government pressure, repeatedly slashed interest rates, banks have been unable to increase lending since they are weighed down by about Rs. 10 trillion ($140 billion) in NPAs (Non Performing Assets), and have to provision reserves against losses.

Manufacturing activity has plunged with the auto sector experiencing an up to 50 percent sales decline.

When the BJP came to power in 2014, Modi coined the slogan “Make in India” to exhort transnational corporations to manufacture their goods in India for the world market. He grandiosely promised to create 100 million jobs and enhance manufacturing’s share of India’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product) from 16 percent to 25 percent by 2025.

Neither of these goals are being fulfilled. Despite some new investments, manufacturing still makes up less than 17 percent of nominal GDP and, instead of job creation, more and more job seekers confront long-term unemployment or have to settle for low-wage jobs in sales or marketing. India’s exports are still predominantly comprised of commodities such as gems, rice and mineral oil, rather than manufactured goods.

Anemic economic growth in the advanced capitalist countries and the Trump administration’s trade war policies have undercut Modi’s push for India to become a production-chain hub rivaling China; although sections of the Indian elite cling to the hope that Washington’s drive against China will cause US and other western-based transnationals to relocate production facilities to India.

In recent years exports as a percentage of GDP have fallen sharply. In 2017-18 exports represented just 11.65 percent of India’s total GDP, its lowest level since the 2003-04 fiscal year.

Increasing unemployment is now a chronic feature of the economy, with 34 percent of youth between 20 and 24 years old and about 38 percent of young urban workers unemployed. In other words, Indian economic growth, such as it is, has occurred at the expense of jobs and incomes. Household consumption from automobiles to Rs. 5 packets of biscuits (cookies), a common snack for impoverished workers, have declined sharply.

Corporate incomes have also fallen, with demand contracting even as corporations’ debt load has ballooned. Corporate debt now amounts to 56 percent of India’s GDP.

Auto and auto parts companies have slashed hundreds of thousands of jobs, while idling plants for weeks. The auto companies are pressing the government to cut the national sales tax, the GST, on cars from 28 to 18 percent. This appears to be not forthcoming, at least for the moment, since the government cannot afford the Rs. 300 billion revenue loss.

Purdue Pharma, accused of deliberately fueling deadly US opioid crisis, files for bankruptcy

Kate Randall

Purdue Pharma, the producer of OxyContin, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Sunday. The move is part of an effort to settle litigation with dozens of states and other plaintiffs who charge the company deliberately fueled the opioid crisis while pocketing tens of billions of dollars.

The filing is a contemptuous slap in the face to the thousands who have suffered addiction, overdose and death from opioids along with the communities they live in. The opioid epidemic now kills 70,000 people a year in the US. Under terms of the settlement, Purdue Pharma would admit to no guilt for the epidemic and its owners would take away billions in personal wealth.

Purdue Pharma is principally owned by the descendants of Mortimer and Raymond Sackler, both physicians. The Sackler family issued a statement feigning sympathy for the victims of the opioid crisis. “Like families across America, we have deep compassion for the victims of the opioid crisis,” it said, calling the settlement a “historic step toward providing critical resources that address a tragic public health situation.”

The bankruptcy filing in New York came just days after the Stamford, Connecticut-based pharmaceutical struck a deal with more than 2,000 local governments across the US over its alleged role in creating and fueling the deadly epidemic. Purdue’s board of directors approved the settlement Sunday, in which the Sackler family agrees to relinquish ownership of the privately held and immensely lucrative company. The company would be restructured as a public beneficiary trust.

The Sacklers also agreed to provide $3 billion in cash over several years and pledged future revenue from the sales by Purdue, for an estimated total of $12 billion, to go to the communities most sharply affected by the opioid crisis. Twenty-six states opposing the deal contest this estimate, saying they will take the Sackler family to state courts in an attempt to seize some portion of the Sackler family’s fortune.

Purdue Chairman Steve Miller said in a statement: “The resumption of litigation would rapidly diminish all the resources of the company and would be lose-lose-lose all the way around. Whatever people might wish for is not on the table now.”

The Sackler family still completely owns Purdue Pharma and an estimated $13 billion net worth is shared among some 20 family members. The settlement and bankruptcy filing would allow the family to pay what amounts to a pittance for them, $3 billion, and exit the company with no guarantee that the rest of the funds will ever reach its victims.

From 1995—when Oxycontin was introduced—to 2011, the drug brought in $2.8 billion in revenue for Purdue Pharma. By 2017, cumulative revenue from the drug had skyrocketed to an obscene $35 billion. These billions were the result of a deliberately false advertising campaign, which claimed that the 12-hour extended-release opioid was not addictive. The company aggressively pressured doctors to prescribe the drug, offering them paid speaking engagements, free trips to pain-management seminars and other perks.

According to data released by the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and analyzed in a July report by the Washington Post, between 2006 to 2012, drug companies—with Purdue in the lead—poured 76 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone pills into US neighborhoods, enough to provide every adult and child in the country with 36 pills each per year. The ensuing epidemic has placed an immense strain on healthcare systems, social services, and the foster care system. Big Pharma made countless billions as a direct result of this human suffering.

Hundreds of thousands of Indian auto workers face sackings and wage cuts

Saman Gunadasa

More than 365,000 auto industry workers’ jobs—350,000 at auto-parts manufacturers and dealers and 15,000 in vehicle assembly—have been destroyed in India since April in response to falling sales. In August, the industry slumped for the 10th straight month with sales of passenger vehicles dropping by 30 percent and car sales by 41 percent, the steepest fall in two decades.

Some commentators are predicting that about half a million jobs will be slashed in the coming months. This attack is part of an escalating global assault on the jobs, wages and conditions of auto workers in the US, Canada, Mexico, Europe and Asia.

The auto industry in India employs about 37 million workers directly and indirectly. Manufacturers include Japanese and Korean companies (Maruti Suzuki, Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, Nissan and others), US and European automakers (GM, Ford and Fiat), and Indian manufacturers, such as Tata Motors, M&M, Bajaj and Hero Motor Corporation.

The downturn has engulfed India’s main auto manufacturing areas—the Gurugram-Manesar-Bawal automotive belt in northern Haryana state, Sriperumbudur, Oragadam and Maraimalai Nagar near Chennai in southern Tamil Nadu, and Pune in western Maharashtra—and auto parts manufacturers scattered across India. Hundreds of laid off internal migrant workers from impoverished Indian states, such as Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh, who were previously employed in the Indian auto industry, are returning to their home villages and cities.

* Maruti Suzuki, the Japanese joint venture, has cut 6 percent of its temporary workforce in Manesar and Gurgaon and declared two days in September as “no production days.” In July, production was reduced by 30 to 35 percent. In August the company’s total sales (domestic and exports) fell to about 106,000 units, a drop of more than 32 percent from the 158,000 units it sold in the same month last year.

Over the past 12 months an estimated 50,000 workers have lost their jobs in the Gurugram-Manesar-Bawal industrial belt. The 3,000 automotive parts plants that supply to large auto companies in the region have reduced production by about 30 percent.

* Tamil Nadu accounted for 45 percent of India’s motor vehicle exports and 33 percent of auto parts production in 2017–18. The state’s capital Chennai, which is known as the “Detroit of Asia,” is said to have the capacity to manufacture a car every 20 seconds and a commercial vehicle in 90 seconds.

While reliable statistics are not available on the auto industry layoffs and job cuts in Tamil Nadu, the Hindu newspaper reports that over 10,000 workers have lost their jobs in recent months. Ashok Leyland, India’s second largest producer of commercial vehicles, is suspending production for five to eighteen days at its five plants, two of which are in Tamil Nadu.

In terms of sales, India’s automotive sector is the fourth largest in the world and the most affected by the slowdown in the Indian economy. The industry has an approximate 50 percent share of India’s manufacturing sector gross domestic product and 7 percent of the country’s total gross domestic product.

A recent statement from the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) blamed India’s slowing economy and high ownership costs, including increased road taxes and safety regulations and high interest rates, for the falling vehicle sales and demanded concessions from the government.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is desperately attempting to arrest falls in India’s gross domestic product growth rates by lowering interest rates. The Reserve Bank of India has cut the official interest rate four times this year, reducing it to 5.4 percent. The government has also indicated that it will attempt to boost demand by lifting a ban on government departments buying new cars.

There is no redress, however, for the tens of thousands of sacked auto workers. Contract auto workers, who only earn between 6,000 to 8,000 rupees ($US86 –$US115) per month, face a dire situation, as will permanent workers as the auto industry crisis deepens.

Widodo plans to move Indonesian capital to Borneo

Owen Howell

Indonesian President Joko Widodo announced last month that the national capital will move from Jakarta to a newly-built capital city in the East Kalimantan province on the island of Borneo. If the plan is approved by parliament, construction of the new city will commence by the end of 2020. The full relocation is due to take place in phases from 2024 onwards.

The proposed site in Borneo is a forested area of around 180,000 hectares of government-owned land, in the North Penajam Paser and Kutai Kartanegara regencies. Once the infrastructure is developed, an estimated 800,000 civil servants will be forced to move there.

The decision was prompted by the rapid expansion of Jakarta which has become a huge, overcrowded city beset by congestion, pollution, and flooding. Jakarta’s traffic jams cost an estimated 100 trillion rupiah ($US7 billion) a year in lost productivity, while tens of thousands of cars are added to the roads every year, accounting for 75 percent of the city’s air pollution.

Jakarta, which is effectively built on mudflats, is also one of the fastest-sinking cities in the world. Two-fifths of the city currently lie below sea level and parts are dropping at a rate of 20 centimetres a year. Depletion of the city’s underground water wells has led to land subsidence. Coupled with rising sea levels caused by climate change, this could mean that by 2050 large areas of Jakarta will be completely submerged.

Above all, the fast urbanization and growing population are generating fears in ruling circles over the potential for social upheaval. Greater Jakarta, home to more than 30 million people, is set to soon overtake Tokyo as the world’s most populous city. As the city has grown, social tensions have intensified.

The government claims the relocation is to ease pressure on Jakarta and spread economic activity outside Java, which accounts for 54 percent of Indonesia’s 270 million people and contributes about 58 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP). On the other hand, Kalimantan—the Indonesian part of Borneo—accounts for just 5.8 percent of the population and contributes 8.2 percent of the GDP.

President Widodo has declared that the move will help address income disparity, justifying it as a “realisation of economic equality and justice.” In reality, the plan will do nothing to address the class divide in Indonesia, which has only deepened since the collapse of the Suharto dictatorship in 1998. Today, an estimated 1 percent of the Indonesian population owns 50 percent of national wealth, and the richest 10 percent possesses 77 percent.

The choice of East Kalimantan, Widodo claimed, was “very strategic,” placing the new capital at the country’s geographical centre and supposedly protected from natural disasters. The capital will be located between two cities, Balikpapan and Samarinda, both of which have international airports, toll roads, and operating seaports.

The real “strategic” reason behind the relocation is to place the capital away from one of the largest working classes in the world amid rising social tensions and a resurgence of the class struggle internationally. As well as Jakarta, most of the nation’s major cities are located on Java.

Australian government pushes drug testing for welfare recipients

Oscar Grenfell

The Liberal-National Coalition government is pressing ahead with a plan to introduce mandatory drug-testing for around 5,000 recipients of the Newstart and Youth Allowance welfare payments in working class areas of Sydney, Queensland and Western Australia.

The measure, contained in legislation the government has reintroduced to parliament, is aimed at expanding “welfare quarantining” and further punishing the unemployed and the poor.

In a clear indication that the government’s laws are only the first step in a broader onslaught, a meeting of the Nationals’ Federal Council on the weekend passed a motion calling for all recipients of parenting and unemployment welfare under the age of 35 to be paid through cashless debit cards that can only be used in certain stores.

Under the government laws, two year drug-testing trials would begin in the Queensland regional city of Logan, along with Bankstown, a suburb in Sydney’s south-west and Mandurah, a coastal city in Western Australia.

The targeted areas have all been hit by the decades-long assault on manufacturing and industry, spearheaded by Labor and the unions, which has resulted in rising poverty, unemployment and complex social problems. In Bankstown, unemployment rates for 18–24 year-olds have been estimated at up to 30 percent.

Under the scheme, welfare recipients in the trial areas would be subjected to “random” drug testing.

Anyone who tests positive for an illicit substance would have 80 percent of their welfare payment quarantined for the next two years. Those who test positive twice within a 25 day period will be “referred to a medical professional” and could be forced into rehabilitation programs. Refusal to take a test would result in the immediate cancellation of all payments.

The government has sought to justify the policy by claiming that it is responding to “community expectations.” It has also stated that a testing regime will reduce rates of drug use.

These assertions have been rejected by welfare groups, which have noted that the government claims are not based on any evidence. In reality, the measure is aimed at stigmatising welfare recipients, scapegoating them for social issues caused by job destruction and government funding cuts, and forcing the unemployed off any government benefits.

This is of a piece with the government’s broader pro-business agenda, including the introduction of sweeping tax cuts and legislation aimed at creating the conditions for workers who organise industrially and politically.

The drug-testing legislation has previously been blocked twice in the parliament, as a result of widespread public opposition.

Right-wing populist MPs, however, including representatives of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and the Centre Alliance, have signaled that they will back the measure this time around. The position of these right-wing MPs underscores the fraudulent character of their occasional populist rhetoric.

For their part, Labor MPs have made tepid criticisms of the welfare measures. Labor leader Anthony Albanese has, since the party’s federal election debacle in May, spearheaded a shift even further to the right, including by backing the government’s tax cuts.

The Murdoch-owned Australian newspaper has labelled the welfare legislation the latest “test” for Albanese to demonstrate his pro-business credentials.

Even before the latest measures, Australia has one of the most punitive welfare regimes in the developed world.

New EU Commission to intensify militarism and attacks on refugees

Will Morrow

Ursula von der Leyen, the former German defense minister and incoming head of the European Commission (EC), unveiled her proposed team of commissioners in a press conference last Tuesday. The nominations and titles of the new posts are another marker of the extraordinary pace with which the European ruling class is moving to the right. The incoming EC will oversee an escalation of militarism, vicious attacks on refugees and the elevation of fascist and far-right forces against the working class across the European Union.

The most widely commented upon change is to the portfolio covering immigration and refugees. It was previously titled “Migration, interior affairs and citizenship.” Henceforth it will be named “Vice-president for protecting the European way of life.” It covers not only migration, but responsibility for policing Europe’s external borders and internal security, as well as education and employment policies.

The new title, which associates restricting migrations with protecting a so-called European “way of life,” is a direct reprise of the tropes of the modern-day fascist right and would have pleased Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels himself.

For example, a major theme advanced by French fascist ideologue Renaud Camus, in his The Great Replacement, is that migration to Europe threatens to replace—i.e., extinguish—European “identity” and culture. Camus’s “theory” was cited by Brenton Tarrant, the fascist terrorist who gunned down 50 Muslim worshipers at two churches in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15, in the manifesto he published shortly before the attack. Tarrant’s manifesto opposed what he called an immigrant “invasion” to the west.

The introductory letter from von der Leyen to Margaritis Schinas, a former European Parliament member for the Greek conservative party New Democracy who will fill the role, includes passages that could have been culled directly from the publications of the extreme right. Protecting the “European way of life,” von der Leyen states, “highlights the need for well-managed legal migration, a strong focus on integration and ensuring our communities are cohesive and close-knit.”

“We must address and allay legitimate fears and concerns about the impact of irregular migration on economy and society,” she states. Those whose “legitimate fears” von der Leyen has in mind are evidently the far right, with whom she makes clear the EC will collaborate: “Building a consensus for a fresh start on migration will require outreach, consultation and close cooperation.” Schinas should “lead this work by focusing on building bridges between those most entrenched,” she writes.

Von der Leyen’s overtures are entirely in line with the current policies of the European Union, which has promoted far-right forces across the continent, and the German Grand Coalition of which she has been a part. The Grand Coalition has elevated the fascist Alternative for Germany (AfD) to the official opposition in Parliament, and defended the right-wing extremist Humboldt University professor Jorg Baberowski—who infamously remarked that “Hitler was not vicious”—from criticisms by students who have opposed his efforts to justify the revival of German militarism by relativizing the crimes of the Nazis. The German intelligence agency, the Verfassungsschutz, has placed the German Socialist Equality Party on a list of left-wing extremists because it opposes capitalism, militarism, fascism and seeks to build a socialist movement of the working class.

The European bourgeoisie is shifting so far to the right that it is increasingly dispensing even with the hypocritical humanitarian titles that it previously bestowed to its right-wing policies. This has provoked consternation even among bourgeois figures in the media and political establishment.

Even outgoing European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker has expressed his concern at the renaming of the immigration post. There have been statements of opposition from individual members of European Parliament, and on Wednesday, the European Parliament voted for a motion by the French MEP for the Greens Karima Delli, protesting the announcement.

These protests are completely cynical and fraudulent. The European Union has overseen a policy of mass murder toward refugees for years, including deliberately canceling rescue ships in the Mediterranean to drown thousands of refugees in the continent’s southern sea as a deterrent to other asylum seekers. All the parties protesting the latest name change support the attack on migrants but want to give their own variant a less accurate title. They know their policies are unpopular in the population and fear an eruption of opposition from below.

Von der Leyen also announced that the foreign relations portfolio will be renamed as the commission for “A Stronger Europe in the World.” It will be headed by the current foreign minister in Spain’s Socialist Workers Party government, Josep Borrell.

He will be responsible for overseeing a more aggressive military policy by the European Union against its major geopolitical rivals, including Russia, China and the United State, and escalating predatory operations to secure access to markets and resources for European imperialism.

It’s Still a Stalemate in the LWE Hotbed

Bibhu Prasad Routray


Weakened insurgencies tend to negotiate. Such decision may be a tactic to buy time, defer defeat, protect their leaders and cadres, or simply to salvage whatever little is possible in a war that these armed movements have no hope of winning. Being ‘rational’ actors, insurgencies do not wish to be vanquished completely by a militarily superior adversary. If one is to apply this truism to India’s left-wing extremism (LWE), the persistent obduracy of the extremists to reject negotiation offers point to two possibilities. The extremists either do not see themselves as losing the war with the state, or distrust the process of negotiation as a viable conflict resolution mechanism. How will such an outlook shape their approach in the months to come?

Media reports seem agog with the prospect of a ‘surgical strike’ on LWE. India’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) is reportedly implementing a strategy to root out the remnants of LWE which is now confined to few pockets of select states. Although similar measures involving deployment of additional security forces on focused counter-extremism operations have been implemented by earlier administrations, this time around the Ministry is taking steps to improve the morale of the security forces; augment coordination between the central as well as state security force establishments; and target the financial lifeline of the extremists and the urban supporters of LWE, labelled as ‘Urban Naxals’. Tweets by the Minister of Home Affairs and journalists who claim to have knowledge of the decision-making processes within the MHA indicate that the government is determined to put an end to the activities of the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist), which is in its 15th year of operation.

Notwithstanding the fact that the problem of boosting the security forces’ morale and improving coordination are, at best, medium to long-term projects and cannot be achieved quickly, the present strategy appears to be focused on neutralising LWE leaders and cadres. It remains a fact that the numerical strength of the outfit has significantly declined. According to an assessment of the Chhattisgarh Police, in 2016, there were 10,000 Maoists and their supporters in Chhattisgarh. The number has decreased to 6000 in 2019.Over the past months, several encounters in which Naxal cadres have been killed, have been reported from almost all the major LWE-affected states. And yet, one does not witness a sense of panic in the outfit.

In 2019 (till the end August alone), the outfit has issued at least 22 media statements or releases compared to 21 in 2018 and 30 in 2019. Barring a bunch of appeals issued to the police informers in January 2019, none of its statements carries any element of perturbation. The last two statements issued in August 2019 are about supporting the Kashmiri people against the Indian government’s decision to nullify Article 370 and against fake encounters in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Although there is no doubt that the outfit is a pale shadow of its former self, it appears to be not only confident of surviving the counter-Naxal operations, but also is in search of opportunities to re-organise and bounce back. Opting for negotiations with the government, therefore, is certainly not on its cards.

If true, what strategy is the CPI-Maoist most likely to adopt and how will it pan out in the coming months?

The violence profile of the CPI-Maoist in the past years provides an indication to this effect. Conventional wisdom tells us that a weakened outfit, in order to survive, halts its area expansion plan and engages in activities that are geared towards preserving its cadres. It also attempts to increase its publicity campaign in order to fill up the vacuum in the operational front. However, halting expansion projects for too long can severely affect its ‘credibility’. Preserving cadres and leaders may not be possible when the security forces are implementing a plan to target its core areas. The killing of many of the Naxal cadres in recent months has taken place during proactive operations by the security forces in the extremist stronghold areas.

At present, two things still favour the outfit operationally. Firstly, in spite of the hurry in which the MHA seems to be to—in the words of Home Minister, Amit Shah—“to uproot” the LWE problem, the CPI-Maoist can continue to exploit the safety of its core areas as well as the persisting loopholes in the security forces’ operations. A recent operation in Chhattisgarh revealed a near-impregnable four-tier security around a CPI-Maoist camp in Abujhmaad. The fact that the outfit’s leadership is dispersed across many states, and not concentrated only in one place, will continue to add longevity to its operations. Secondly, the outfit can focus its energy to carry out bigger strikes on advancing security forces. Past incidents of this nature, resulting in the killing of a large number of security forces, have affected their morale and have, on odd occasions, halted the operations. In those cases, negative media publicity forced the government to take a fresh look at its strategy. Advancing security force operations do create such opportunities for the extremists, especially in their stronghold areas, and the outfit is mostly likely to exploit this.

The official strategy must, therefore, factor in the advantages that the CPI-Maoist continues to enjoy. Augmentation in the capacities of the forces, improving inter-state and inter-force coordination, and preventing loss of lives of security forces must be a part of a gradual, yet decisive affront on the military prowess of the Naxalites.

International Labour Organization (ILO) Global Competition on Labour Migration 2019

Application Deadline: 31st October 2019

Eligible Countries: International Labour Organization (ILO) member countries.

About the Award: The International Labour Organization (ILO) is launching its fifth annual Global Media Competition to recognize exemplary media coverage of labour migration. This year’s themes are ‘fair recruitment’ and ‘the future of labour migration’.
The Global Media Competition aims to recognize and promote quality reporting on labour migration issues.The 2019 competition themes are ‘fair recruitment’and ‘the future of labour migration’, in two categories:professional and student journalism.
For the first time, the competition has a student prize category and the option for a fellowship prize.
The competition aims to promote quality reporting on labour migration issues. Across the world, migrants face prejudice, intolerance and stigmatization in their workplaces and communities. Negative public narratives can lead to abuse and exploitation, and challenge social cohesion.
Balanced and ethical reporting can play an important role in addressing stereotypes and misconceptions, and in highlighting the positive contribution migrant workers make in their origin and destination countries.

Type: Contest

Eligibility: Professional journalists are invited to submit a maximum of two entries, one per each of the two following categories:

• Written articles (online or print articles)
• Media Production (photo journalism, audio, video)

Articles should not exceed 8000 words and videos/multimedia should not be longer than 10 minutes.
To qualify, entries must have been published between 1 November 2018 and 31 October 2019 (see Terms and Conditions for details). A submission in any language is welcome, however an English, French or Spanish translation must be included if the submitted material, or parts of it are in another language.
Refugees and displaced persons, where they are employed as workers outside their own countries, are considered migrant workers. As such, submissions covering international migrant workers and refugees (participating in labour markets outside their own countries) will be accepted.

Selection Criteria:  A panel of 5 distinguished judges will evaluate the top ten entries from each of the above-mentioned two categories. The decision of the ILO and judges on all matters relating to the contest is final, and no correspondence will be entered into at any stage. The ILO encourages entries that cover different aspects of labour migration and, as much as possible, reflect views of various concerned parties: government, employers, and trade unions’ organisations, migrant workers.
In addition to ensuring that competition submissions are aligned with the basic ethics of journalism, all submissions will be judged on the following criteria:

• Creativity
• Accuracy
• Protection

Value and Number of Awards: Each of the four winners will be able to choose between two prize options:
-Paid fellowship (course fees, Daily Subsistence Allowance (DSA) and travel) to participate in a one-week ITC-Turin course on a fair recruitment or labour migration related topic in 2020; or
-A cash prize of $1,000 USD.
Student Award
•Award categories: one prize will be awarded for one of the two categories: -Exemplary reporting on fair recruitment of migrant workers, or -Exemplary reporting on the future of labour migration. For details on the categories see the section above for professionals.
•Prize:
The winner will be able to choose between two prize options:
-Paid fellowship (course fees, DSA and travel) to participate in a one-week ITC-Turin course on a fair recruitment or labour migration related topic; or -A cash prize of $300 USD


How to Apply: Complete the online entry form  in the category of either ‘professional’ or ‘student’ category. You can submit your piece in the following categories: written press, photo essay, multimedia, video and/or radio. See the full Terms and Conditions  for details.

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Yemen Continues Its Descent into Hell

Charles Pierson

There are really only two sides to the war in Yemen. There are the unarmed civilians. And there’s everyone else. The civilians are losing. Badly.

The 2011 democratic uprising in Yemen, part of the Arab Spring, succeeded in forcing out Yemen’s longtime dictator President Ali Abdullah Saleh. In a deal brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council, Saleh was succeeded by his vice president, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi. In 2014, a civil war broke out which pitted Yemen’s Houthi rebels against President Hadi’s government. Between 2014 and 2015, the Houthis gradually took control of Sana’a, Yemen’s capital. Hadi fled the country in 2015 and is in exile in Saudi Arabia. In response, a military coalition led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates began bombing the country in March 2015 with the declared aim of restoring Hadi. The Saudi-led coalition receives assistance from the US, UK, and France while the Houthis are backed by Iran. (The Houthis appointed an ambassador to Tehran last month.) ISIS and Al-Qaeda are also active in Yemen.

The UN has called Yemen the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis.” Yemen relies on imports for 75% of its food. A coalition land, sea, and air blockade on Yemen has cut off desperately needed food and medicines. An outbreak of cholera affects half a million people. International aid group Save the Children has determined that as many as 85,000 children may have died from starvation and disease.

All of the belligerents, both domestic and foreign, have committed rapes, torture, extrajudicial executions and detentions, and have conducted indiscriminate attacks on civilians. These findings appear in a report to be presented this week to the UN Human Rights Council, but they will not be news to anyone who has followed the conflict. The UN panel which produced the report—the Group of International and Regional Eminent Experts on Yemen—has given Human Rights Council chief Michelle Bachelet a list of 160 undisclosed persons which the panel recommends be prosecuted for war crimes.

US Role

Since 2015, the US has been assisting the Saudi-led coalition with target spotting, intelligence sharing, and (until November 2018) in-flight refueling of coalition aircraft. Many of the bombs dropped on innocent Yemenis are supplied by the US, such as the bomb which killed 40 Yemeni schoolchildren in a Saudi airstrike on a school bus on August 9, 2018. Examination of bomb fragments found at the scene disclosed that the bomb was manufactured by US defense contractor Lockheed Martin. One of the justifications President Trump gives for US involvement in the Yemen war is the need to maintain US arms sales to the Saudis.

President Barack Obama took the US into Yemen’s civil war in order to throw a bone to the Gulf States which had opposed his nuclear deal with Iran. Trump, who has done his best to reverse all of Obama’s other policies, has perversely continued US involvement in Yemen. In doing so, Trump has been opposed even by prominent members of his own party, such as Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul.

On April 16, 2019, President Trump vetoed a Congressional resolution which invoked the 1973 War Powers Resolution and would have forced the US to terminate assistance to the Saudi-led coalition. The 53 to 45 vote in the Senate which followed on May 2 fell short of the two-thirds supermajority needed to override a presidential veto.

Undeterred, Congress is making another attempt to end the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen, this time using Congress’ power of the purse. In July, the House passed amendment 26 to the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. The Khanna-Smith-Schiff-Jayapal amendment blocks intelligence sharing, logistical assistance, and the transfer of spare parts used in coalition warplanes.

Will the Khanna-Smith-Schiff-Jayapal amendment survive in the Republican-controlled Senate? Probably not. Not a single Republican had the guts to vote in favor of the House version of the NDAA. Nevertheless, a bipartisan group of more than 40 legislators from both chambers has written the leaders of the House and Senate armed services committees urging that the Khanna-Smith amendment be retained in the final form of the NDAA.

The Trump Administration maintains that a negotiated settlement, not unilateral US withdrawal, is the way to end the war in Yemen. The Wall Street Journal reported on August 27 that the Trump Administration is seeking the first ever direct talks between the US and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

The problem with talks, as Bonnie Kristian writes in The American Conservative, is that “Talks are good, but their outcome and timeline are uncertain. It could be months or even years before a deal is reached * * * .” (She might have added: “or never.”) She’s right. Several rounds of talks between the Houthis and the Yemeni government have already been held, but the war goes on. US withdrawal could end the war tomorrow.

The South Will Rise Again

A fissure has opened in the Saudi-UAE coalition. In a surprise to the Saudis, the UAE announced in July that it was pulling most of its forces from Yemen. In addition, the Saudis and Emiratis back opposing forces in Yemen. While the Saudis back the officially-recognized government of President Hadi, the UAE backs a revived separatist movement in Yemen’s south. Before unification in 1990, north and south were two countries: the northern Yemen Arab Republic and the southern People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen. The marriage of the two countries has not been a happy one, with the south rankling under the domination of the north. The southern separatist movement constitutes a second civil war within the larger civil war centered in the north between the Hadi government and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

After the Houthis took Sana’a in 2015, the Yemeni government moved its capital to the southern port city of Aden. In August, Southern separatists wrested control of Aden from the Hadi government. The Hadi government blamed connivance by the UAE, which the UAE denies. Fighting outside Aden continues between Saudi- and UAE-backed militias. On August 29, Emirati warplanes attacked government-backed forces trying to retake Aden.

That’s about as obvious as a rift can get. Nevertheless, the Saudis and the UAE are publicly trying to keep up the appearance of a unified coalition as Yemen totters on the brink of fracturing permanently. Whatever happens, unless the war ends, the people of Yemen will be the losers.

How China Sees the World

Tom Clifford

Question: What leader saw his country’s military dropping 26,171 bombs in one year? That works out at every day of that year, the country’s military dropped 72 bombs, or 3 bombs every hour, 24 hours a day, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. He was a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Answer Barack Obama. That same year, 2016, special operators from the United States could be found in 70 percent of the world’s nations.

One last question. What UN security council member has not fired a shot in anger outside its borders for 30 years but is nonetheless being accused of military expansionism?

Answer: China.

They see things differently in China. What we in the West refer to as the Middle East, they call the Middle West.

There are many in the West who view China as a military threat, a clear and present danger. China, needless to say, see things from a different perspective.

The United States occupies prime global real estate. It has two friendly neighbors in Canada and Mexico. China has strained relations stretching back centuries with many of its neighbors. These include India, Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam. Of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (China, France, Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom), China is the only one that has not fired a single military shot outside its border in thirty years. A naval clash with Vietnam in 1988 was the last time a shot was fired in anger.

The collapse of the Soviet Union was, in the West, viewed as a victory for human rights. In China it was viewed as a damming indictment of poor economic planning. China learned its lesson. Economic growth must come before military expenditure. The Chinese economy may not be as strong as official figures suggest. No one here really believes that the economy is growing at 6.5 per cent annually.

But there can be no doubting the economic growth over the last four decades or so.

By comparison after adjusting for inflation, workers’ wages in the US are only 10 percent higher in 2017 than they were in 1973 when Nixon was in the White House. Annual real wage growth is just below 0.2 percent. The US economy has experienced long-term wage stagnation.

Trade between the US and China grew from $5 billion in 1980 to $660 billion in 2018. A communist run country is the largest foreign holder of US Treasury securities. This funds the federal debt and keeps US interest rates low.

China is also the largest US merchandise trading partner, biggest source of imports, and third-largest US export market.

Have the Chinese played fast and loose with global trade rules? Probably. Do they try to use their money to buy political influence overseas? Probably. Does China use unfair trade practices (such as an undervalued currency and subsidies given to domestic producers) to flood US markets with low-cost goods? Yes. But China is not to blame for the stagnation in US wages. That was apparent long before China was a factor.

Since 1978 China has lifted 800 million people out of poverty and created the largest middle class in the world.

The Chinese people are not blind to the inequalities, injustices and brutality in their own society. The Chinese people admire much about the US. Many send their children to be educated there. The Chinese people would relish the opportunity to have a greater say in the running of their affairs. But history and its lessons are important in China. They have learned from bitter experience over several thousand years of history that they suffer most when the central government is weak and divided. After the Opium War of 1842 the country was torn asunder by invasions, civil wars and famines. Since 1949 its borders have been secure and after the disaster of the Mao years, its people have a standard of living unimaginable when Nixon was in the White House in 1973 reflecting on meeting Mao the previous year and wondering how best to deal with a word that was entering the political lexicon: Watergate.