Private equity firm to purchase the assets of the .ORG domain registry for $1 billion

Kevin Reed

A public demonstration took place on Friday morning in front of the offices of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in Los Angeles to demand a halt to the sale of the .ORG domain registry to the private equity firm Ethos Capital for $1.135 billion.

The “SaveDotOrg” protest was organized by a coalition of technology industry organizations and nonprofits that oppose the sale of the .ORG domain because it “could impact millions of individuals and organizations who have a .ORG website, opening the door to potential censorship and price increases on domain registration and renewals.”

Protesters outside of the office of ICANN in Los Angeles on Friday (Photo credit-thepublicsradio.com)

The conversion of .ORG into a for-profit enterprise is by definition an attack on public access to news, information and digital media. Among the threats it poses to the nonprofits and other organizations using the .ORG domain are higher domain registration fees, censorship-for-hire schemes, selling browsing data and diminished technical maintenance and support.

As of this writing, 660 organizations, 21,000 people and six members of Congress have endorsed a letter from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) that ICANN—the nonprofit umbrella organization responsible for the internet’s domain name system—stop the planned sale of the .ORG domain by the Public Interest Registry (PIR).

The letter is addressed to Andrew Sullivan, President and CEO of the Internet Society and says, “Non-governmental organizations all over the world rely on the .ORG top-level domain. Decisions affecting .ORG must be made with the consultation of the NGO community, overseen by a trusted community leader. If the Internet Society (ISOC) can no longer be that leader, it should work with the NGO community and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to find an appropriate replacement.”

PIR, also a non-profit organization, was created by the Internet Society in 2002 to manage the .ORG registry. As of 2015, there were 10.5 million domains registered with the .ORG designation. According to surveys of consumers, the public perceives .ORG websites to be more trustworthy and “Respondents were more likely to turn to .ORG websites in a crisis, more likely to post content on .ORG sites and to trust information on a .ORG domain.”

In response to the growing opposition, PIR announced on January 17 that the 30-day review period had been extended to February 17 to allow for “additional information” to be provided “so that ICANN has a full understanding of the Transaction.” However, the PIR statement says that “ICANN is not providing or withholding its consent at this time.”

The .ORG registry is what is known as a top-level internet domain. It is one of seven such domains—the others being .com, .gov, .edu, .mil, .arpa, and .net—that were established in 1985. The domain name system (DNS) was created by internet pioneers to make it easier for users to remember the location of computers on the network. Instead of memorizing their all-numeric IP addresses, users were able to type the second-level domain (WSWS) followed by its top level (.ORG) domain to find the desired resource on the internet.

The sale of the top-level domain was originally announced on November 13. In a press release, the ISOC and PIR said the terms of the deal involve the acquisition of “PIR and all of its assets from the Internet Society” by Ethos Capital. Andrew Sullivan is quoted in the statement saying, “This transaction will provide the Internet Society with an endowment of sustainable funding and the resources to advance our mission on a broader scale as we continue our work to make the Internet more open, accessible and secure—for everyone.”

It is significant that the Internet Society, a nonprofit organization and user of the .ORG domain itself, which was founded in 1992 to provide leadership and establish standards for the functioning of the world’s critical information infrastructure, is now compelled to sell off a significant asset in order to “sustain funding” and “make the Internet more open, accessible and secure.”

A group of 11 executives of major international NGOs—including Greenpeace, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)—issued an open letter to ISOC and ICANN from the World Economic Forum in Davos last Wednesday opposing the sale.

Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU said, “Free expression around the world is increasingly endangered by government and corporate players, which is why we are joining other civil society organizations in making public our concerns over the .org sale. The internet is crucial to the integrity of civil liberties and human rights work, and also the safety of those doing it. The security of civil society should not be entrusted to private equity.”

Ethos Capital was founded in 2019 and appears to have been created for the purpose of purchasing the .ORG registry. The firm’s CEO Erik Brooks, a well-connected Harvard MBA, specializes in “companies in which technology can be used to automate, optimize and transform traditional business models into faster growing, more efficient organizations.”

The purpose of selling to private equity is obviously to transform the previously non-profit PIR into a for-profit organization with investors of the $1 billion expecting a return on their money. When asked who the investors are, Ethos Capital said, “this is a US-based private transaction in which investors and corporate directors have a right to privacy.”

The justifications provided by Sullivan, the Internet Society and his investors for selling are based largely on the fait accompli of the internet’s transformation from an open public resource into a structure dominated by the Silicon Valley tech monopolies.

In response to the mounting criticisms, Nora Abusitta-Ouri, Chief Purpose Officer of Ethos Capital wrote on Wednesday, “nonprofits rely on for-profit businesses every day to achieve their online goals—from registrars to web designers, to Internet providers, to hosting services, and beyond. The Internet was built by for-profit companies with the resources and capabilities to innovate, and we want to make sure that the registrants of .ORG, like every other domain in the world, have the benefit of being served by a company with the ability, desire and resources to innovate and compete on a global scale.”

The concerns of the opponents of the hiving off of .ORG to private equity investment vultures are legitimate. Promises by Ethos Capital that it will keep increases in domain registration fees to 10 percent cannot be trusted. Additionally, there will be pressure to monetize the .ORG assets by collecting browsing activity and tracking visitor demographics, and offering this data up to marketers for lucrative fees. There is nothing to stop the firm from turning this data over to the surveillance state.

It should be expected that the private owners—beholden to powerful financial and political interests—will use their control of the top-level domain for online censorship of websites that are considered objectionable by their stakeholders on Wall Street and in Washington DC.

The backdrop to the .ORG transaction is the ongoing vendetta against WikiLeaks.org and its founder and editor Julian Assange. Assange is currently being held illegally in a London prison, facing proceedings for his extradition to the US on charges of violating the Espionage Act of 1917, for publishing the truth about the crimes of imperialist states and corporations against the public.

Meanwhile, many political parties and organizations—including the World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Parties throughout the world—use the .ORG domain for their online presence. It can be expected that private control will lead to arbitrary suspensions of domain registration and targeting left-wing and socialist political opponents and critics of corporate and state policy.

As was the case when net neutrality was officially abolished by the FCC in June 2018, the growing public opposition to the privatization of yet another resource of the internet will be run roughshod over. Appeals to the executives of the organizations making the decision to sell the .ORG asset will not stop the process from moving forward and being completed.

The defense of an open internet and its maintenance as a public utility that is available to all requires a mass political struggle against the capitalist system. Only the independent mobilization of the working class—including workers in the internet and tech industries—on the basis of a socialist and internationalist program, can prevent the further conversion of the information infrastructure into private property that is integrated with the police and military-intelligence apparatus.

Death toll rises to 38 after earthquake in Elazığ in eastern Turkey

Ulas Atesci

The death tall has risen to 38 after a 6.8-magnitude earthquake shook Turkey’s eastern province of Elazığ on Friday evening. With search and rescue operations continuing, the Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) is reporting more than 1,600 injured.

Since Friday, over 700 aftershocks have shaken the region. In a statement on Sunday, the AFAD stated that an initial analysis of 1,521 buildings found that only 347 were not damaged. Seventy-six buildings were destroyed and 645 were heavily damaged.

Rescue workers continue to look for people trapped under debris following a strong earthquake that destroyed several buildings on Friday, in Elazig, eastern Turkey. (Photo Credit: AP)

The closest residential area to the earthquake’s epicenter is the Sivrice district of Elazığ. A magnitude 4.3 earthquake also hit neighboring Malatya province on Sunday morning.

More than 420,000 people live in Elazığ, but analysts said that if the earthquake had occurred closer to residential areas there would have been an even greater disaster due to the lack of secure buildings.

Turkey is an earthquake-prone country, sitting atop two major fault lines, and scientists have repeatedly called on the government and local administrations to take due precautions, especially after a horrific earthquake in 1999 killed more than 17,000, according to an official count.

However, there are no serious preparations, either for İstanbul or cities in the rest of the country. The government has no plan outside of calling on people to keep calm. Inevitably, the working class pays the heaviest toll in lives as cheap, vulnerable houses and buildings collapse.

Last Friday’s disaster had long been predicted. Among others, Naci Görür, a well known professor of geology, told CNN Turk last October that an earthquake was likely to hit the Sivrice district of Elazığ.

After the earthquake in Elazığ, he explained on his Twitter account that he had prepared a project with other scientists against the coming disaster, but it was rejected by official institutions. He asked, “In fact, it is well known that earthquakes will happen sooner or later on every fault line. Why are those places not taken care of when there is no earthquake?”

An earthquake victim who spoke to the daily Cumhuriyet after the disaster, Hakan Tahşi, said he has been living in a building named Dilek Sitesi, built in 1987 and consisting of 28 apartments. It was destroyed and at least eight residents were killed.

Tahşi said, “Our building was already rotten… The municipality knew it was vulnerable to earthquakes.” However, those living in the building, as with most working people, could not afford to change their residence or find a secure building.

The chairman of the Chamber of Geology Engineers, Hüseyin Alan, also blamed officials for the deaths in Elazığ and Malatya, saying the damage was a result of “unhealthy and illegal construction, rapid and low quality urbanization based on rent, and lack of legal arrangements to eliminate problems.”

Many residential areas in Turkey are built on active fault lines, disregarding scientific standards in urban planning. According to Alan, besides İstanbul, 18 city centers, including Aksaray, Bolu, Sakarya, Yalova, Bursa, Balıkesir, Manisa, İzmir, Aydın, Denizli, Erzurum, Kahramanmaraş, Hatay, Hakkâri, Muğla, Eskişehir, Kütahya and Bingöl, along with more than 80 town centers and 502 villages, are “on the lines where active faults with high potential to produce earthquakes pass.” In a major earthquake, buildings there would be “destroyed,” he said.

Though this reality threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people across Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his ministers responded only by cracking down on criticisms, especially those raised on social media. On Saturday, Erdoğan visited the disaster zone and condemned what he called a “smear campaign” on social media by those questioning the Turkish government’s preparations for earthquakes.

“Do not listen to rumors, do not listen to anyone’s negative, contrary propaganda, and know that we are your servants,” Erdoğan said. A prosecutor in Ankara subsequently opened an investigation into social media posts about Friday’s quake.

As always when social inequality and the government’s class character are raised, the opposition parties joined the government to suppress opposition to obvious official negligence. The Kemalist Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu said, “In an environment where we have such a painful day, we have to stay away from such strict political polemics,” while the far-right Good Party leader Meral Akşener called for “unity and solidarity.”

Outrage erupted on social media after the head of the Turkish Red Crescent, Kerem Kınık, called on people to make ten-lira donations for people impacted in the region. Thousands of people responded to a hashtag asking, “Where did the earthquake tax go?” Since 1999 there has been a national tax, widely known as the “earthquake tax,” supposedly to protect the population from earthquakes. But after every quake, it emerges that no serious measures have been taken.

As a result, an earthquake in the eastern province of Van in 2011 left more than 600 dead and nearly 4,200 injured. After this disaster, then-Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek was asked to account for the 46-48 billion Turkish liras (US$8.1 billion) in earthquake taxes collected since 1999. He said the government spent it on double highways, health care and education instead of preparing for earthquakes.

The pro-government daily Sabah rushed to help the government. Columnist Dilek Güngör claimed that the state housing authority (TOKİ) built 80,000 housing units for earthquake victims for 110 billion Turkish lira, and that 35 billion Turkish lira were spent on “urban transformation.”

The Elazığ disaster has again exposed government spending as utterly inadequate. In reality, the government does not grant TOKİ housing units to earthquake victims as a gift, but sells them for a profit. Similarly, “urban transformation” has long been a mechanism, especially in İstanbul, to drive working class residents from the city center and build luxury residences for the affluent. Its purpose is not to protect residents from earthquakes, but to boost profits for construction firms and enrich the top layers of society.

Since the 1999 quake, which according to some unofficial estimates killed over 50,000 people and left more than 250,000 people homeless, there has been no real “urban transformation.” Instead of rebuilding insecure buildings, especially in densely populated poor districts, the Turkish government and municipalities have abandoned the workers to their fate.

Figures on an anticipated earthquake in İstanbul underscore the scope of the danger. According to Boğaziçi University’s Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute, a 7 magnitude earthquake in the city of more than 15 million people would “heavily damage” between 6,000 and 40,000 buildings, while about 150,000 would become “unserviceable.” More than 500,000 residences are in danger and at least 1.5 million people would have problems finding shelter.

The Elazığ earthquake has again exposed the contempt of the ruling elites for safety precautions essential to the survival of working people. In Turkey as around the world, the losses caused by earthquakes and other natural disasters are compounded by the bankruptcy of the capitalist profit system.

Rising concerns over spread of the Wuhan coronavirus

Benjamin Mateus

There are now 2,744 confirmed cases and at least 80 reported deaths from the Wuhan coronavirus, including one physician treating patients—61-year-old Dr. Lian Wudong. To date, all but some 44 of the confirmed cases and all the deaths have occurred in mainland China, predominately at the center of the epidemic, Wuhan. Other cases of the infection, formally known as 2019-nCoV, or novel coronavirus, have been found in Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Australia, Thailand, Nepal, France and the United States.

Residents in Fanling district of Hong Kong took the streets on Sunday night to oppose the plan to house quarantined patients or medical workers in their neighborhood, that is far from Hong Kong's business center. (Photo Credit: Vincent Yu/AP)

The virus so far remains uncontained, fueling confusion, panic and rising social tensions across China, where the government has partially or fully locked down 13 major population centers, encompassing nearly 60 million people. In Wuhan, citizens are calling for their local leaders to be held accountable. Doctors on the front line of treating victims of the coronavirus infection are leading this call by bluntly declaring, “The city’s leaders should be removed immediately.”

These tensions have begun to spread to Shanghai, one of China’s major commercial centers and one of its most populous cities, where an 88-year-old man died as a result of the virus, sparking concerns about the complex spread of the disease and its ramifications on an international scale. In response, Chinese President Xi Jinping was forced to state, “Confronted with the grave situation of this accelerating spread of pneumonia from infections with the novel coronavirus, we must step up the centralized and united leadership under the party central.”

Initial efforts to combat the epidemic include a promised 1,230 medical experts from China’s National Health Commission to assist with efforts on the ground in Wuhan. The military is also sending additional medical personnel, while the city has promised to build two new hospitals in 15 days to treat patients with coronavirus infections.

The United States, French, Japanese and Russian consulates have ordered the removal of their people and are coordinating with Chinese authorities for their safe and efficient transfer out of the city. US private citizens are being offered seats on planes departing Wuhan.

There are also six confirmed and 100 suspected cases in Hong Kong. The city has taken emergency measures by restricting celebration of the Lunar New Year, limiting the gathering of groups, requiring the use of face masks and shutting schools until at least mid-February. These measures have been met with resistance by demonstrators, who set fire in the lobbies of two buildings designated as quarantine sites for the developing epidemic.

The head of China’s National Health Commission, Ma Xiaowei, told the media, “The epidemic has entered a more serious and complex period.” The local Chinese medical authorities stated that there are at least an additional 3,000 suspected coronavirus cases, of which at least half are expected to be confirmed. Because the incubation period can last up to two weeks, those without symptoms can be contagious without knowing it, suggesting that the infection will become far more widespread than anticipated earlier.

This is highlighted by the international nature of the crisis: there are three confirmed cases in France, five in the United States, four in Australia and 32 in the rest of Asia. Canadian health officials are observing a man who returned from Wuhan to Toronto on January 22 and is now admitted with a respiratory illness.

In China itself, the emergency is being exacerbated by the lack of supplies. According to local medical personnel and staff, masks are running short and sanitary equipment is being quickly exhausted. Physicians, nurses and aides are on 24-hour standby, even as the travel ban within the affected cities makes commuting to hospitals difficult. This has created the added problem of making routine tasks, such as other forms of medical care and even getting groceries, much more difficult in population centers as large or larger than New York City and Los Angeles. Local hospitals have been forced to appeal on social media for donations of supplies and funds to stock and run their services.

Dr. Xu Wenbo, the director of the Chinese National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention under the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Beijing, announced to reporters on Sunday that researchers had isolated viruses and were selecting strains to use in developing a vaccine against the coronavirus. The US National Institutes of Health has also stated that it can potentially develop a vaccine for human trials in a few months. It remains unclear if these efforts are being jointly coordinated.

Meanwhile, three Beijing hospitals—Beijing Ditan Hospital, Beijing Youan Hospital and No. 5 Medical Center of PLA General Hospital—have turned to administering the anti-HIV retroviral drugs Lopinavir and Ritonavir to treat patients. This ad-hoc treatment is being used with limited data to support or refute its efficacy. The medical journal Lancet has announced that it has commenced a clinical trial using these agents to treat new cases of coronavirus.

The Lancet also published two small studies on the novel coronavirus last Friday confirming many of the suspicions medical authorities were claiming, including that the virus can transfer from person to person in hospitals, homes and cities, and that people can infect others during the incubation period of the virus—in other words, people can spread the contagion before they become symptomatic themselves. The studies also found symptoms including fever, coughing, shortness of breath, fatigue, pain, headaches, coughing up blood and diarrhea. Of 41 patients reviewed, six died.

The largely scattered efforts to contain and treat 2019-nCoV reflect the scarcity of resources devoted to medicine. According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2020, “Health systems around the world are at risk of becoming unfit for purpose. New vulnerabilities resulting from changing societal, environmental, demographic and technological patterns threaten to undo the dramatic gains in wellness and prosperity that health systems have supported over the last century.”

This state of affairs is not the result of new viruses evolving more quickly or a lack of advances in medical technology, but of the subordination of modern medicine to private profit. In one revealing episode, China’s vice minister of industry and information technology, Wang Jiangping, told news outlets that Hubei Province is going through more than 100,000 protective suits each day, while their manufacture lags by 30,000 per day. The sheer material needs are overwhelming the capacity to address these demands. Yet Chinese companies manufacture more than 50,000 such suits per day for export.

A New Phase in US-North Korean Denuclearisation Talks?

Sandip Kumar Mishra

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, by recently replacing his foreign and defence ministers, has indicated his intent to take a tough stand on the issue of denuclearisation. On 18 and 22 January 2020, Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho was replaced by Ri Son Gwon, and Defence Minister No Kwang Chol was replaced by Kim Jong Gwan. Ri Son Gwon is former chairman of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, and Kim Jong Gwan was Vice Defence Minister.

These, and a few other reshuffles were reportedly charted out in the fifth plenary session of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea held on 28-31 December 2019. In the meeting, Kim Jong-un said that North Korea’s self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and long-range ballistic missile tests was over, and in that in the "near future," North Korea might introduce new "strategic" weapons into its arsenal. He went on to say that North Korea would resort to "shocking actual action" and the US would have to "pay for the pains sustained by our people." He threatened that if US' hostile policy towards North Korea did not change, "there will never be denuclearisation on the Korean Peninsula." What could have contributed to these recent provocations?

The February 2019 Hanoi summit ended abruptly reportedly because North Korea was asking for 'substantial' concessions with regard to economic sanctions but was not ready to give 'enough' in return. Even though there was another, albeit brief, meeting between Kim Jong-un and President Donald Trump at the DMZ in June, and a meeting between US and North Korean officials in Stockholm in October, no real progress was made on denuclearisation. After the Hanoi debacle, North Korea repeatedly asserted that it would wait only till the end of 2019 for results. In fact, it threatened the US that it would resume nuclear and missile testing, which had been on standstill for nearly two years. It is thus no secret that North Korea was disappointed with the lack of an outcome, and around 27 short-range missile and rocket tests since May 2019 have been undertaken as a demonstration of this displeasure.

On the other hand, the US on several occasions has indicted that the  deadline for denuclearisation talks identified by North Korea – 31 December 2019 – is "artificial." The US remains unwilling to show any flexibility, and it has in fact been reported that it has been simultaneously preparing to deal with an alternate scenario. Trump and senior officials of his administration have otherwise maintained their publicly expressed hope of North Korea choosing peace over war.

Some have argued that the talks are a gambit by the Trump administration to distract from the gravity of the situation and buy time until the US presidential election in November 2020. This ties in with Trump celebrating diplomatic overtures towards North Korea as a huge milestone of his foreign policy, even though there is no discernible progress in denuclearisation.

North Korea, of course, would be aware of this election-focused strategy, and thus considers now an opportune time to put pressure on the US. Kim Jong-un is likely working on the assumption that the Trump administration will not opt for military action in an election year. For this same reason, North Korea is ready to escalate and sharpen its strategic offence capabilities, and Jong-un's recent statements as well the choice of foreign minister reflect this plan. Ri Son Gwon, unlike his predecessors, comes from a military background and is a known hardliner, which would also send the appropriate message to the US.

It appears that the US-North Korea denuclearisation tango has moved to a new phase – one that would involve aggressive posturing and threatening statements and activities from both countries. On the other hand, should better sense prevail, and North Korea refrains from further testing, that it is election season might signal better prospects for movement towards a deal. Whatever the outcome, these developments foretell significant activity on the Korean denuclearisation front in 2020.

Johnson&Johnson THET Africa Grants Programme 2020/2021

Application Deadline: 23rd February 2020

Eligible Countries: THET welcomes grant applications to strengthen the healthcare workforce in delivering essential surgical and anaesthetic care to mothers and children in the following 8 countries:

• Ethiopia
• Ghana
• Kenya
• Malawi
• Nigeria
• Tanzania
• Uganda
• Zambia

About the Award: The AGP supports the training of health workers in low- and middle-income countries, through engaging partnerships between health organisations in the UK and Ireland and their counterparts in Sub-Saharan Africa
The fourth round of the Africa Grants Programme will take a different approach from previous years, moving away from community healthcare to focus on essential surgery and anaesthesia for mothers and children.
The focus of this round will be on reducing morbidity and mortality from conditions requiring essential surgical intervention and/or enhancing patient safety as a result of improved anaesthetic care through the training of relevant health workers. The aim of this stream is to improve the access to, and availability of, quality surgery and/or anaesthetic care for maternal, neonatal or paediatric surgical conditions.

Type: Grants

Eligibility: All those considering applying should carefully read the eligibility and funding criteria contained in the Call for Applications and Q&A document as these may differ from previous THET grant streams. This grants round will only accept applications from established health partnerships – partnerships which have worked together on projects, including scoping studies, for 6 months or more.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value and Duration of Award: Grants are available from £30,000 up to a maximum of £75,000. All funded projects are expected to last between 12 and 15 months. Project activities can be implemented from May 2020 until July 2021.

How to Apply: The Grant Application Form and Budget Template should be completed and submitted, along with letters of support from each of the lead partner institutions and any managing partners, in one email to AGP@thet.org by midnight 23^rd February 2020.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

Globalizing the War on Indigenous People: Bolsonaro and Modi

Jess Franklin

A man who has repeatedly romanticized dictatorship and advocated the use of torture seems like an odd choice for guest of honor at the annual celebration of the constitution in the biggest democracy in the world. However, it makes perfect sense that Brazil’s notorious President, Jair Bolsonaro, has been invited to India’s Republic Day parade by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Authoritarian nationalism is on the rise across the globe and anti-democratic leaders are now at the helm of the world’s biggest democracies, including India and Brazil, as well, of course, as the USA. This is bad news for everyone, but minorities are particularly at risk as these demagogues claim that “their” rights must be sacrificed for the national good. Bolsonaro and Modi have already taken several significant strides down this dangerous path.

While Bolsonaro’s war against Brazil’s indigenous peoples has been covered extensively by the international press and received a great deal of attention on social media, far less noise has been made about what’s happening to the forest-dwelling people of India. India is home to more tribal people than any other country on Earth: Out of the estimated 370 million indigenous and tribal people worldwide, over 100 million live there.

There is growing national and international concern about the impact on Muslims of India’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC), but this legislation is catastrophic for tribal communities too.  According to tribal activist and writer Gladson Dungdung:

“Adivasis [tribal people] will be denied their citizenship, detained in the detention camps and intruders will be rehabilitated in their land and territories. This is unacceptable. Adivasis are first settlers of the country, they must be kept out of the CAA/NRC and their land, territories and resources must be protected.”

Land theft is a core element of the existential threat facing indigenous and tribal people at the mercy of dominant societies worldwide. In recent years, this threat has accelerated in both India and Brazil as Modi and Bolsonaro’s administrations pursue populist, majoritarian agendas that entail commandeering indigenous land and resources “for the good of the nation.”

Last week, Kayapo chief and activist Raoni Metuktire convened a meeting of Brazilian indigenous peoples “with the goal of coming together and denouncing that a political project by the Brazilian government of genocide, ethnocide and ecocide is underway.” This meeting was partly in response to Bolsonaro’s latest attack: proposed new legislation to open up indigenous reserves for resource extraction, such as mining for gold and oil, and economic activities like agriculture and tourism. If the bill passes, indigenous communities will have no power to veto such projects.

State-sanctioned land theft is occurring in India on an almost unfathomable scale. There are up to 8 million forest-dwelling people currently facing eviction from their land; a number roughly equivalent to the population of New York. This is the result of the government’s gross mishandling of a court case that challenged the Forest Rights Act (FRA), legislation which guarantees the rights of people living in India’s forests. Demonstrating its contempt for the people concerned, the Indian government’s Ministry of Tribal Affairs didn’t even turn up at court hearings to defend its own law.

The outcry against this exceptionally flawed decision has led to the eviction order being suspended – for now. The next Supreme Court hearing on the case will take place imminently. V.S. Roy David of the National Adivasi Alliance (NAA), a group representing tribal peoples in India, has said: “We unequivocally appeal to the Supreme Court to re-evaluate this retrograde anti-people order which will throw millions of Adivasis and other traditional Forest Dwellers into the streets.”

Survival International has campaigned for decades for the rights of forest-dwelling tribes in India. It highlights the catastrophic outcomes of previous evictions, such as that of the Chenchu people from Pecheru village, evicted in the 1980s in the name of conservation. Chenchu survivors report that of the 750 families that used to live in the village, just 160 families survived after the eviction took place. Many starved to death.

Resistance, from people like Chief Raoni, V.S. Roy David, Gladson Dungdung and their domestic and international allies, has already proved powerful and effective. The Bolsonaro and Modi regimes have both proposed laws to erode protections and provisions for indigenous and tribal peoples, but the protests that followed forced the administrations to abandon these proposals, at least for now:

In 2019, a secret draft amendment to India’s colonial forest law was leaked to the press. It allowed forest guards to shoot tribal people, to issue communal punishments, to seize property and arrest citizens with impunity. It also allowed authorities to extinguish rights provided under the FRA and hand over forest land to private companies. Eight months after it was leaked, following national and international protests, the Indian government withdrew the proposed changes to the law although many fear it will be brought back in another guise.

The Bolsonaro regime proposed to end the indigenous healthcare system, SESAI, a decentralized care model with 34 Special Indigenous Health Districts, run in collaboration with local communities and tailored to their needs. Indigenous people saw the dissolution of SESAI as a direct threat to their lives, and especially the lives of their children and elderly. The proposal sparked outrage and protest among indigenous peoples all over the country. From Paraná to Rondônia, from Pernambuco to Mato Grosso do Sul, indigenous groups occupied public buildings and highways in support of SESAI. The Minister backed down and made assurances that the programme would not be abolished, only a week or so after the proposition was first floated.

Brazil and India are states founded on and distinguished by diversity. Both have provisions to protect the rights of their indigenous and tribal citizens enshrined in their constitutions. Anyone who believes in constitutional democracy must stand in alliance with the indigenous and tribal people of India and Brazil: for tribes, for nature, for all humanity.

Australians suffer violent hailstorms, flash floods and ongoing fires

Martin Scott

Tragedy struck again this week, with three volunteer American firefighters losing their lives when the Lockheed C-130 Hercules waterbomber they crewed crashed on Thursday in southern New South Wales (NSW). The cause is still under investigation. The body of a 59-year-old man was found in his burnt-out home on Friday in the south coast town of Bodalla, while six volunteer NSW firefighters were injured when their vehicle overturned.

The confirmed national death toll from the fire crisis now stands at 33. Over 2,500 homes have been destroyed and an estimated 12 million hectares of land has been affected.

Even as 100 fires continue to burn, severe thunderstorms wreaked havoc across eastern Australia this week, with heavy rain, gale-force winds and hailstorms causing damage to thousands of homes, businesses, and vehicles in Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), NSW and Queensland. Although the heavy rainfall was welcomed by farmers and firefighters, it was not nearly enough to end the protracted drought afflicting much of the country.

As with the bushfires, this week’s storms have exposed the inadequacies of Australia’s largely volunteer-dependent emergency services. In many cases personnel and equipment had to be withdrawn from fighting fires to respond.

A violent storm hit the national capital Canberra on Monday, battering the city with golf ball-sized hail. The windscreens of thousands of cars were smashed and hundreds of homes suffered damage. At the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), 65 glasshouses where experimental crops were being grown were shattered, ruining years of research. Hail damage and flash flooding caused the closure of major institutions, including the National Archives, National Museum of Australia, Old Parliament House, and the Australian National University.

The ACT Emergency Services Agency (ESA) fielded more than 1,900 calls for assistance, more than double the previous record for a single event, and more than three times the annual average.

Victoria had its wettest two-day period in many months on Sunday and Monday, with some areas receiving more than 100 millimetres. More than 55 millimetres fell in parts of the fire-ravaged East Gippsland region, providing some amount of relief for firefighters.

In Melbourne, the state capital, parts of the Monash freeway and the Princes highway—major thoroughfares connecting the south-eastern suburbs with the central business district—were brought to a standstill by hail and flash flooding.

In Pakenham, floodwaters as high as one metre caused chaos on suburban streets and forced the evacuation of around 100 children from a childcare centre. The south-eastern satellite suburb of Melbourne has undergone massive expansion in recent years, as workers and their families have been forced further out by stagnant wages, underemployment, and rising housing costs. Much of the new housing development has been on floodplains previously used only for agriculture.

In central NSW, the thunderstorms and strong winds moving across the drought-ravaged landscape whipped up a 300 kilometre-wide dust storm that plunged Dubbo, Broken Hill, Nyngan, and Parkes into total darkness.

In Sydney, rain, wind and hailstones caused chaos, particularly in the south-eastern suburbs. Three drivers were trapped in their cars by fallen trees, and trains were cancelled for hours after part of a railway station roof fell on the track. Around 14,000 homes and businesses across the city were left without power on Monday night.

In all, an estimated 30,000 insurance claims relating to the storms have been filed in NSW, Victoria, and the ACT. The total value of the damage is estimated at more than $320 million.

More than 300 millimetres of rain fell on south-east Queensland last Friday night, leading to flash floods which cut major highways and disrupted train services. Power outages left 20,000 homes and businesses without electricity.

Despite the massive downpours, the combined water storage capacity across south-east Queensland has increased by less than one percent, or about two weeks’ supply. Because catchment areas are extremely dry, much of the rain was absorbed into the ground, reducing the run-off into creeks, rivers, dams and reservoirs.

The impact of the “supercell” storms was particularly violent as result of the years of drought. Trees that have been weakened by years of hot, dry weather are more prone to collapse in strong wind than healthy specimens. Severe flash flooding and landslides are also more likely when the vegetation that would otherwise absorb rainfall and hold soil together has been destroyed by extreme heat and fire.

While torrential rain and violent hailstorms may seem to be the opposite of drought, record-high temperatures, and unprecedented bushfires, they result from the same climate processes. Although the abnormally strong positive phase of the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD)—responsible for last year being Australia’s driest on record—has now ended, ocean and soil temperatures remain unusually warm, creating ideal conditions for storms to develop.

The wild storms of last weekend were immediately followed by another heatwave, meaning any relief the rain brought to the firefighting effort was only temporary. Nearly 80 bushfires in NSW, and 20 in Victoria, continue to burn. With several more months of hot, dry weather likely, Australia’s catastrophic summer is far from over.

Moreover, it was this time last year that entire regions of tropical north Queensland were inundated by some of the worst recorded floods. The February 2019 floods damaged over 3,300 homes, of which at least 1,500 have had to be demolished or effectively rebuilt. An estimated 500,000 cattle drowned. Just the losses covered by insurance totaled over $1.2 billion, but, as is the case of the fire crisis, many of the worst affected people had no insurance or inadequate coverage.

Other countries in the region have also been hard-hit this monsoon season. Flooding and landslides in Indonesia in the first week of the year forced hundreds of thousands of people to seek refuge in temporary shelters. Late last year, at least 75 people were killed in the Philippines as a result of severe floods.

The increased frequency and intensity of all types of extreme weather events is precisely what climate scientists predicted would be the impact of the 1.1 degree Celsius increase in average surface temperature since the industrial revolution. Unless global carbon emissions are drastically reduced, that figure is expected to climb to between 3 and 5 degrees Celsius.

Volkswagen boss Diess commits management to mass layoffs

Dietmar Gaisenkersting

2019 ended with the announcement of the loss of tens of thousands of jobs in the German auto industry. The year 2020 began with a fiery speech by the CEO of the world’s largest auto company, Volkswagen, in which he announced a “radical restructuring of the group” and the “slaughter of sacred cows.”

Herbert Diess in 2019 [Credit: Alexander Migl]

CEO Herbert Diess opened VW’s so-called “Global Board Meeting,” a gathering of 120 managers and executives, last Thursday with the words: “A turning point is ahead—equivalent to the industrial revolution.”

Electro-mobility, he said, aimed at reducing vehicle emissions to the legal limit, has increased the pressure to innovate, while digitalisation had fundamentally changed the auto as a product. The company could not rest on past achievements, according to Diess. Even if sales, turnover and profit were acceptable last year—and he could quote the positive comments of financial analysts—he wanted to be honest. This also meant saying clearly: “The storm has just begun.”

Diess offered his vision of transforming the auto concern into a technology company within a few years. He repeatedly drew comparisons between VW and California-based Tesla, the specialist in electric car manufacturing, whose share price had risen far more dynamically than VW’s. Both companies were now almost equal in terms of market value. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are valued like an auto company, Tesla like a tech company.” He wanted to change that.

According to Diess: “In future, the auto will be the most complex, valuable, mass-produced Internet device.” And the car would become the most important “mobile device,” thereby outstripping the smartphone.

This was the only way to understand “why Tesla is so valuable from an analyst’s perspective.” “This is precisely where we want to be with VW,” Diess said. When asked “the big question” as to whether VW had moved fast enough to do this, he replied: “Maybe, but it is becoming increasingly critical.” The current pace was too slow.

He went on to recall the example of mobile phone manufacturer Nokia, the Finnish multinational, which “went under in the fight against Apple.” This is “exactly the situation that is being repeated in the auto industry.” The age of classic car manufacturers is over, the future of Volkswagen lay in the sphere of digital technology—“and only there.”

The boss of more than 660,000 employees worldwide said the company lacked the “courage to do something forceful, when it came to radical change.” The conversion into a technology company would go hand in hand with an increase, or at least the maintenance of current profits. “The profit margins in 2020 must at least be maintained.” The goal was to increase the market value of the company to 200 billion euros [$US 220.5 billion], i.e., to more than double the company’s current value of 92 billion euros.

Such obscene levels of enrichment of shareholders are not possible without a frontal attack on the workforce of the entire group. Diess threatened: “We have the potential, if we grasp the seriousness of the situation as an opportunity to fully exploit the potential of this company and, where necessary, also slaughter sacred cows.”

To be blunt, “sacred cows” mean auto workers’ jobs, wages and working conditions. Diess preferred to use the terms “synergies” and increased “productivity.” “We have to progress further in terms of productivity. Cost reduction programs are in operation for all our brands,” he asserted. There was particular potential in German plants, “and they also have the greatest leverage.”

The company’s activities had to be checked regularly, VW had to ask itself: “What can be eliminated, what needs to be renewed?” The VW boss announced the slogan: “In order to achieve and permanently increase our target margins, we also need a fundamental rethink. Away from volume orientation and towards quality of results.”

The luxury brand Bentley delivered 10,000 vehicles, but made no profit. “If I’m completely honest: I would prefer 5,000 deliveries and a return of over 20 percent. […] In future, we will focus even more on sales, profits and cash than what appears biggest on the company’s reports.”

Diess was not concerned about the consequences for jobs if vehicle production were halved, as long as profit levels were right: “To this end, we need a radical restructuring of the company.” Without providing any specific figures, Diess clearly has in mind slashing the company’s workforce, with a concentration on the approximately 230,000 jobs in Germany.

Diess’ plans far exceed the job cuts previously announced. In 2016, VW management already agreed with the IG Metall union and the works councils to cut 30,000 jobs. Its top end, Audi, announced the loss of almost 10,000 jobs at the end of last year.

Diess intends to use the latest technological developments to wipe out workers’ past gains in the auto industry. Diess switched from BMW to VW in 2015, tasked with revamping the company and he can fully rely on the IG Metall (IGM) union and the company works council to back his plans to further enrich shareholders at the expense of the workforce.

When Diess moved to VW, the chairman of the company’s joint works council, Bernd Osterloh, told the Handelsblatt business newspaper that the new CEO was “his man.” Osterloh had been instrumental in his appointment. When Diess took over as head of the entire company in 2018, a second German business newspaper, Wirtschaftswoche, carried this headline: “A CEO reliant on Osterloh’s mercy.”

In collaboration with Osterloh, Diess plans to reorganise the company’s procedure for eliminating jobs. At the present moment, IG Metall is working with the German government and auto company representatives on plans for social measures to facilitate redundancies. To this end, both parties set up the “National Platform Future of Mobility” (NPM) two years ago. Under the aegis of the German Transport and Economics Ministries, representatives of the Merkel government, company associations and the unions are working together in six working groups.

Working Group 4, misleadingly named “Securing mobility and production sites,” is headed by none other than Jörg Hofmann, the national chairman of IG Metall. When union officials and works councils talk about “securing production sites,” this invariably involves job cuts, supposedly to keep facilities open. In the past few years, every job wiped out in the auto industry has been justified on the basis of “securing the site.”

The IGM and its works councils develop all the plans, the arguments (“securing competitiveness and competitiveness,” “increased productivity,” “securing the site”) and the mechanisms (social plans, severance, part-time retirement, early retirement) for job reduction.

In its January report published last week, IGM boss Hofmann’s working group drew up various scenarios for the upcoming workplace massacre and its consequences. One scenario, the “worst case,” predicted that 410,000 jobs would be lost in the auto industry over the next ten years—that is, one half of the current 820,000 in Germany.

The union suggests “cushioning structural change” involving retraining those auto workers due to be fired. Last year it presented its concept of a “transformation short-time allowance.” Corporations and the Federal Employment Agency would pay unemployed auto workers a greatly reduced salary, while they were “trained” for up to 24 months for work in other professions or industries.

Now the NPM writes that a central training concept is needed for the entire mobility sector. Just one day later, on Wednesday last week, the NPM report provided the basis for the meeting of government, company and trade union representatives held in the German chancellery. Heads of staff and works councils from the auto-industry met with chancellery head Helge Braun (Christian Democratic Union) and several ministers.

In reality, the hectic round of activity all boils down to finding ways to cut and maximise profits without triggering mass protests. Alongside VW, every other major car company has announced major job cuts, including Daimler, Opel and Ford.

The “transformation short-time allowance” proposed by IG Metall and the associated training concept are aimed at making this possible. The training centres, where companies linked to the unions can make a fortune providing training, would only have one function for auto workers: as a way station en route to the unemployment line. This was already the case with the “transfer companies” set up at Opel Bochum.

While modern technologies create previously unimagined opportunities to raise the standard of living and the cultural level of all humanity, the opposite is taking place under capitalism. Workers are losing their jobs and livelihoods, while social wealth flows into the pockets of a small minority.

Auto workers must prepare for major conflicts that will pit them against the big corporations, the federal government, trade unions and affiliated works councils. The WSWS and the Socialist Equality Party (SGP) support all workers who decide to organise independently, set up action committees and take up the struggle against the corrupt union and works council bureaucrats. Get in touch with us.

Second case of coronavirus confirmed in the US

Benjamin Mateus

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a second confirmed case of the Coronavirus has been diagnosed in a 60-year-old Chicago woman who traveled to Wuhan in December and returned on January 13. The patient reported she had no symptoms during her flight and sought medical attention when she developed symptoms.

Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told news media that an additional 63 cases are presently being monitored in the US across 22 states. Authorities have also reported on three new cases that have been identified in France.

Since it was first identified on December 31, 2019, more than 1,000 people have now been infected worldwide, and in the latest report the death toll has climbed to 41, all having died in mainland China. However, the World Health Organization (WHO) has continued to decline to formally designate this new epidemic “a global health emergency,” stating they require additional information before reaching their decision. The incubation period for the new newly designated virus, 2019-nCoV, can take up to 14 days before symptoms appear.

A comparison with recent epidemics is useful. In 2003, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) virus, also known as the Asian Avian Flu, spread across 32 countries, with over 8,000 cases and 800 deaths reported. SARS was the first occurrence of a Coronavirus where human-to-human transmission was documented. The SARS fatality rate was 10 percent.

In September 2012, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) epidemic germinated in Saudi Arabia and spread to 27 countries. Human-to-human transmission of MERS was first reported in May 2013 in France. However, researchers noted that the virus spread slowly among humans, suggesting a regression in its virulence. The MERS fatality index was 35 percent.

By comparison, the Spanish flu of 1918 had a death rate of 2 percent. The present Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic has a case fatality approaching 4 percent. Authorities are grappling with determining if the virus could become more virulent and infective. Presently there are no antiviral drugs or vaccines ready to prevent the disease. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has said that such a vaccine could be manufactured with human trials underway in three months.

Yesterday, the Chinese authorities made an extraordinary decision to extend the lockdown in central China to 12 cities around the epicenter of the outbreak, affecting over 36 million people. The Chinese government has come under significant criticism for attempting to sweep the issue under the carpet. As the infection rates began to escalate rapidly, fears of a pandemic on the heels of a major holiday event, the Lunar New Year, sent the financial markets into a frenzy. Only after health officials in Hong Kong reported on a mysterious respiratory illness that can be transmitted by humans did the magnitude of the problem come out in the open.

According to National Public Radio, hospitals in Wuhan are struggling to find enough doctors and nurses to treat and care for the rising number of patients seeking medical attention. Patients are being turned away from overcrowded hospitals and clinics after standing for hours in line waiting to be seen. There is insufficient protective gear, and health workers are at risk of acquiring the infection. Hospitals are sending out pleas for online donations and supplies. The city is rushing to build a new hospital within six days, and to staff it appropriately to treat patients.

Panic and frustration are seizing the Chinese people as they turn to social media to seek answers. Frustrated by the lackluster response, their posts express their anguish and ire as they feel helpless watching their families fall ill with the infection.

The local health response has been overwhelmed and that insufficient resources have been dedicated to the potential magnitude of such a crisis. It would be, to say nothing else, prudent to offer the Chinese government all the possible resources to aid them in addressing this burgeoning epidemic.

Ultimately, the Wuhan-coronavirus epidemic, possibly pandemic, is a byproduct of growing populations with ever-increasing social inequality. Poverty and social dislocation are creating unprecedented environmental disasters that capitalism, under the outmoded nation-state system, is woefully incapable of addressing.

The SAR and MERS epidemics are only the most recent development of human-to-human transmission of a virus that had been confined to animals. The viruses are adapting to the miserable conditions that capitalism has created. Just last year, the Democratic Republic of the Congo was grappling with the world’s second-largest Ebola epidemic on record, with more than 3,300 cases confirmed and 2,200 dead.

The Australian fires that have claimed at least 31 lives, destroyed thousands of homes and burned over 27 million acres of land are directly attributable to the intensification of climate change. Yet, no substantive actions or programs have been proposed to address this catastrophe or prepare for a future crisis that is surely on the near horizon.

One must ask, how prepared would the United States be should an epidemic similar to that presently developing in China affect it? When Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, leaving more than 5,000 people dead, countless households were left without running water or electricity for months, and many still remain so.

Nurses and doctors in the US are unable to keep up with the burdens of daily patient care. Hospitals are being forced to close due to a lack of funding. The uninsured and underinsured face the prospects of lower life expectancy. Could the United States muster the necessary response to address such an epidemic?

The Coronavirus emergency places in focus a health crisis which is an expression of the failure of the capitalist system to provide solutions to the most basic needs of the population. Inevitably, the inability of authorities to confront such health emergencies are intrinsically linked to social inequality and the subordination of science to profit.

Exposed is the fact that there are no coordinated global mechanisms in place to cope with a health crisis that could easily spiral out of the control of authorities, placing the lives of countless people in danger.

Mass protests continue as Macron moves to impose French pension cuts

Alex Lantier

Hundreds of thousands of strikers, “yellow vest” protesters and youth marched Friday in protests across France against President Emmanuel Macron’s pension cuts, after Macron presented the pension bill to his council of ministers to prepare its passage at the National Assembly next month. It came after rail and transport workers ended a six-week strike against the bill, which would allow the French state to slash pensions over the coming years and decades.

A segment of the Paris march

An overwhelming majority of workers opposes the cuts and opposes Macron, a former investment banker nicknamed the “president of the rich.” An Elabe poll this week found 61 percent opposition to the pension cuts, and that 82 percent of French people believe they are personally worse off since Macron took office in 2017. Nonetheless, Macron intends to submit the cuts to the National Assembly, where his party has a majority, on February 17.

All accounts agreed that the number of protesters had risen since the last national protest on January 16. Nevertheless, police and the Stalinist General Confederation of Labor (CGT) union gave wildly different figures for the number of protesters nationwide, ranging from 239,000 to 1.3 million. With the largest march in Paris, tens of thousands marched in Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Le Havre, and Lyon, and large protests took place in Nice, Rouen, Nantes, Clermont-Ferrand as marches were held in over 200 French cities in total.

There is nothing to negotiate with enemies of the people

In Lyon, hundreds of members of the National Barristers Council (CNB) striking against cuts to their pensions occupied the Lyon Judicial Tribunal. Several waste treatment facilities in the Paris area also took strike action, as did the staff of the Eiffel Tower.

Political tensions are still mounting, as the government moves to ram its cuts through by force despite mounting popular anger and opposition. There is nothing to negotiate with Macron, who worked out his cuts with financial firms including multi-trillion-dollar global asset management firm BlackRock and is determined to funnel hundreds of billions of euros away from pensions to the super-rich and the military-police forces. The only way forward for the working class is a fight to bring down the Macron government.

Oh King Macron, tool of the bosses, Macronism and neoliberalism are over, you must know we are taking you to the scaffold. Revolution

The French union bureaucracy is blocking a serious struggle to bring down Macron, however. They have negotiated the cuts ever since Macron’s election in 2017, and called rail strikes against it only last autumn to try to keep control as wildcat strikes erupted at the French National Railways. They then isolated the rail strikers—blocking an indefinite walkout in French ports, refineries and auto, while advancing a bankrupt strategy of asking Macron to renegotiate his cuts.

While the strikers already insisted that the rank and file and not the unions had launched the strike, there is growing disquiet and concern among strikers at the treachery of the unions.

Cédric, a Paris transit worker, told the WSWS: “When we listen to the media, we see they feel there is a moment of weakness among us strikers, and we are here today to show them that is not true. Unfortunately, if we have gone back to work, it is not of our own free will; it is more that, at the end of the month, one has to eat. It is more the financial side that forced us to go back to work. But now we are trying to come together on more spontaneous actions to show our discontent.”

Frédéric, another transit worker, criticized the unions for isolating the rail workers: “If we had all gone out together on an indefinite strike, after a week or so Macron would have been defeated. But non-striking workers would have had to follow us. And, as you say, one does not know what exactly was happening in all the trade unions’ talks. That is why personally, I myself am not in a union or a union member.”

Several strikers told the WSWS that, if Macron rams the cuts through the National Assembly, they would continue to strike and protest. “It is not just because today Macron decides to impose his so-called law with the minority that supports him that we will stop the struggle. But we’ve been on strike 50, 51 days, we are exhausted financially. That is what they wanted, clearly. But if we need to keep fighting until the end of the year, we will, maybe two days a week.”

Comédie Française theater—On Strike

Conditions are rapidly emerging for an explosive clash between the working class and the Macron government, backed by the banks and global investors and financial markets. In such a struggle, the decisive allies of workers in France are workers around the world, mobilized against the banks. Yet this support among workers internationally and among broader layers of workers in France cannot be mobilized as long as the struggle is subordinated to the organizational straitjacket of the unions and their plans for cutting deals with Macron.

The decisive question is forming workers’ committees of action, consciously independent of the trade unions, in order to mobilize broader layers of workers in a struggle to bring down Macron and to overthrow the diktat of the capitalist financial aristocracy internationally. It is ever clearer that the banks’ determination to impose draconian cuts despite overwhelming popular opposition has placed Macron and the entire ruling class on a course to dictatorship.

National Statistics Institute—It’s possible to fund pensions

Yesterday morning, Macron launched a hysterical diatribe against those who are correctly accusing him of trampling democratic principles, by imposing a cut that will impoverish the population with blatant contempt for mass popular opposition.

“Today our society is sick with the idea, installed through sedition by political arguments that are extraordinarily guilty, that we are no longer live in a democracy, and that some type of dictatorship has been installed,” Macron said. However, he then warned that French bourgeois democracy has been badly weakened, and that dictatorship is being considered in France.

“So install a dictatorship,” he said, adding: “Dictatorships justify hatred. Dictatorships justify violence to get out of problems. But in democracies there is a fundamental principle which is respecting others, outlawing violence and fighting hatred.” He accused “all those who today in our democracy are silent on this of complicity, today and in future, of the undermining of our democracy and our Republic.”

BNP bank, AXA and Swiss Life corporations as vultures

Macron’s arguments are, in fact, those of a dictator seeking to justify his reign. For all his hypocritical invocations of respect and nonviolence, he has devised his cuts not with respect but with contempt for the opinions and economic interests of the overwhelming majority of the working population. He is now trying to impoverish workers by ramming these cuts through a rubberstamp parliament and cracking down on working class opposition.

Macron has not only had police arrest over 10,000 people in “yellow vest” protests, but decorated police units involved in the killings of Zineb Redouane and Steve Caniço, and the beating of elderly protester Geneviève Legay. He aimed to show police that deadly violence is not only tolerated, but rewarded. He underscored this in 2018 with a politically guilty call to remember France’s fascist dictator during World War II, the genocidal anti-Semite Philippe Pétain, as a “great soldier.”

The defense of fundamental social and democratic rights against Macron and the international banks requires the building of independent action committees in the working class in France and internationally, and a struggle to transfer state power to these bodies of the working class.