Volkswagen works council agrees to destruction of 20,000 jobs in Germany

Dietmar Gaisenkersting

Only one week after the chairman of the board of the Volkswagen Group (VW), Herbert Diess, announced a “radical restructuring” and the “slaughter of scared cows,” in an incendiary speech before company managers, the chairman of the VW general works council, Bernd Osterloh, jumped to his side.

At a press conference last week in Wolfsburg, Osterloh declared that he saw no alternative to the corporate strategy adopted, declaring, “This is the right way forward.” The company and the works council have already agreed to destroy one in five of approximately 100,000 jobs.

Volkswagen Wolfsburg industrial plant [Source: Wikimedia Commons]

Starting this year, according to EU regulations, VW, like all manufacturers, must achieve an average emission value of 95 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre driven. So far, the world’s largest car manufacturer, which includes brands such as Audi, Skoda, Seat, Porsche, VW, Lamborghini and Scania, is far above this. Given the current average value for carbon dioxide emissions, VW would theoretically have to pay fines of more than €4 billion.

In order to avoid this, the works council, run by the IG-Metall union, is supporting the company’s top management in its announced “radical restructuring.” Many more electric cars must be built and sold. This in turn will lead to massive job cuts, as the production of electric vehicles is significantly less labour-intensive.

Works council leader Osterloh expressly supports this. He therefore avoided commenting at all in detail on Diess’ incendiary speech, although it was an open declaration of war on the company’s 660,000 employees worldwide, but above all on the 100,000 VW workers in Germany.

Osterloh claimed he did not know what Diess might have meant by the “sacred cows.” Finance daily Handelsblatt reported, “In corporate circles, this was seen as a conscious decision by Osterloh not to start a new conflict within the group.” The business challenges posed by electrification and digitization were so great that no additional internal conflicts need be stirred up, the paper said.

Osterloh, Diess and the entire workforce know what is meant by “scared cows.” It is not profits, whose defence and increase Diess constantly reminded us of in his speech. In this way, the company’s stock market value is to rise to €200 billion, more than doubling.

What is meant by “sacred cows” are the jobs, wages and working conditions that will be sacrificed on the altar of profit.

When the head of the works council agrees with the company boss at his annual press conference, after the latter had announced massive attacks a week earlier, this shows how closely the works council, the union and the company’s top management collaborate. Both sides had already agreed on everything before Diess’ inflammatory speech.

Traditionally at VW, the union representatives play a major role in directing the company. The 20-member Supervisory Board consists of 10 representatives of IG Metall and the company works council members, including Osterloh himself, along with the chairmen of the works councils at the subsidiaries Audi and Porsche, and the national chair of IG Metall, Jörg Hofmann, who is also the deputy chairman of the Supervisory Board. Because the state of Lower Saxony is a major shareholder in Volkswagen, the state premier Stephan Weil (Social Democratic Party, SPD) and his Economics Minister Bernd Althusmann (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) also sit on the Supervisory Board.

The union and SPD have therefore always held a key position at VW when sharp changes are being implemented. Five years ago, IG Metall chairman Berthold Huber had even taken over as head of the supervisory board pro tem, shortly after he celebrated his 60th birthday in the Chancellor’s Office at the invitation of Angela Merkel, together with top politicians and business leaders. Osterloh presented the company’s Executive Board with a 400-page cuts program running to €5 billion in 2014.

Since then, the works council, headed by Osterloh, has pushed through the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs, most recently 30,000 as part of the so-called Future Pact in 2016. When Diess was brought to VW from BMW in 2015, Osterloh boasted that the restructurer was “his man.” When Diess became head of the entire group in 2018, business weekly Wirtschaftswoche ran the headline, “A CEO by the grace of Osterloh.”

Osterloh, the VW works council and IG Metall continue to be the driving force in bleeding the workforce dry in order to maximise profits. Last week, Osterloh announced almost casually that up to 20,000 jobs would probably be cut in the course of electrification at German locations, one in five jobs.

Osterloh wants to make these job cuts “socially acceptable.” The works council had already agreed with the company to cut jobs by expanding part-time working arrangements for older employees. So far, only those born up to 1962 can take advantage of these regulations, but now they are to be extended to employees born up to 1967.

Once again, it is clear that VW workers are not only confronted with a globally operating car company and its shareholders, worth billions, but also with the trade unions and the works council representatives, who are elaborating and enforcing the attacks together with the company management.

As well as VW, other car manufacturers have announced massive job cuts, including Daimler, Opel, Ford and General Motors. Autoworkers worldwide have a common interest in the use of modern technologies to improve their working conditions and, beyond that, the standard of living and cultural level of all humanity. But the opposite is the case. Workers are losing their jobs and livelihoods, and the wealth of society is flowing into the pockets of a tiny minority.

This wealthy layer also includes the leaders of the trade unions and works councils. They receive incomes that workers can only dream about. The form of this corrupt collaboration may differ from country to country. In essence, it is always the same. In the US multiple United Auto Workers union (UAW) officials have been accused or have pleaded guilty to stealing millions of dollars in union funds and accepting bribes from the companies. In Germany, corruption is regulated by law within the framework of the system of “co-determination” that gives the unions a seat at the board table. Volkswagen pays its works council representatives sums running into the millions. Osterloh alone received over €3 million in the five years from 2011 to 2016.

Trade union officials therefore have a common interest in suppressing the class struggle and any effort to defend wages, working conditions and jobs. True to their nationalist perspective, they see their task in ensuring the competitiveness of “their” company in the global battle for sales. To do this, they are prepared to do anything—agree to wage cuts, layoffs and even the closure of entire plants, such as the Opel factory in Bochum.

In order to free themselves from the stranglehold of the trade unions, the World Socialist Web Site and the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party) call for the establishment of independent committees of action organized and led by rank-and-file workers. Full-time union functionaries and works council leaders must be excluded from them.

Without breaking with this bought-and-paid-for bureaucracy and setting up independent rank-and-file committees and networking with other workers internationally, not a single job can be defended in Germany.

As we wrote in November, “In contrast to the unions’ pro-capitalist and nationalist policies, these action committees will base their strategy on the rights and requirements of the workers, which are irreconcilable with those of the capitalists. They are based on the principle of internationalism and the unity of the working class, which faces the same corporations and financial interests all over the world. They have the task of organising the resistance against the attacks of the companies and to establish contacts with other action committees around the world.”

Johnson’s real Brexit agenda is trade war, militarism and class war

Robert Stevens

The UK left the European Union (EU) Friday night, amid small celebrations, of which the largest in the capital’s Parliament Square was addressed by Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage.

Epitomising the extreme right-wing forces being galvanised around Brexit, the “Great British Brexit Celebration Meet-up” in Glasgow’s George Square was hosted by Alistair McConnachie--a former member of Farage’s previous vehicle, the UK Independence Party. McConnachie is a Holocaust denier who was previously funded by the Protestant Orange Order.

An hour before the official 11pm exit, Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson issued a three and a half minute video declaring the dawn of a “new era” and “potentially a moment of real national renewal and change.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed the Withdrawal Agreement for the UK to leave the EU on January 31st. [Credit: U.K. Prime Minister]

Leaving the UK meant “We have taken back the tools of self-government. Now is the time to use those tools to unleash the full potential of this brilliant country and to make better the lives of everyone in every corner of our United Kingdom.”

The reality could not be more different. Johnson is on a collision course with Europe that threatens to end in outright trade war and economic dislocation. He has aligned his government with the US and its heightening militarist agenda. And far from an era of prosperity, his government is committed to an assault on the living standards of the working class that will lead to an eruption in the class struggle.

A measure of the reactionary character of his government’s political agenda is that the first example Johnson gave of “taking back control” and “getting Brexit done” he mentioned was “controlling immigration”. He later listed “our armed forces” as among “this country’s incredible assets…”

Johnson has set a deadline of December 31 to reach a trade agreement between the UK and EU. Within hours of a video declaring a future of “friendly cooperation, between the EU and an energetic Britain,” the media reported that London would insist in negotiations beginning in March that there be “no more concessions” in a “new offensive” against Brussels.

There would be no “high alignment” with the EU on labour legislation and trade rules. Speaking to Sky News, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said, “the issue of alignment” is “not even in the negotiating room.” Such an arrangement would “defeat the point of Brexit,” he added.

Farage welcomed Johnson’s approach as it was in Britain’s “national interest” to be “a competitor on their [the EU’s] doorstep.”

Johnson will make a speech today in London to business leaders and diplomats outlining the UK’s position, with the Financial Times reporting that he “is expected to say… that the UK will not align with any EU rules or allow the [European Court of Justice] to oversee trade relations with the UK.”

The EU is also in no mood for compromise, with European commission President Ursula von der Leyen declaring they hoped to reach a deal based on the “best possible relationship with the United Kingdom,” before warning, “but it will never be as good as membership. Our experience has taught us that strength does not lie in splendid isolation, but in our unique union. It is clear Europe will defend its interests in a determined manner.”

The UK would not be able to cherry-pick in the upcoming negotiations because, “Only those who acknowledge rules of the internal market can benefit from the common market.”

In a further retaliatory move, former European Council President Donald Tusk said the EU would show “empathy” if Scotland became independent from the UK and applied to join.

This would mean the break-up of the UK and constitutional crisis on a massive scale. As Britain left the EU, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said that were Scotland to be independent, it would seek full EU membership. Last week, for the first time since the 2014 referendum on independence (which had a 55-45 percentage in favour of remaining), a poll found a slim majority in favour of leaving. This was largely thanks to the ruling Scottish National Party securing a majority for support, in Scotland, for remaining in the EU in the 2016 Brexit referendum.

Johnson’s preparations for trade war with the EU are accompanied by his government’s commitment to stepped up militarism. In the weeks leading to Brexit he pledged unswerving support for Trump in his war threats against Iran. UK Royal Navy warships were sent to the Straits of Hormuz to escort and protect oil tankers and plans were enacted by Downing Street to ready the deployment of fighter jets, drones and other military assets.

The trade war and military offensive will be paid for by the working class.

Significantly, a section of Johnson’s Brexit night video referenced “creating freeports” as critical to the UK’s “recaptured sovereignty.” Free ports, better known as Free Trade Zones or Special Economic Zones, allow corporations to benefit from zero taxation levels and the super-exploitation of the working class.

Johnson plans the creation of around 10 free ports initially. Their necessity was debated on in parliament as recently as October 2018, with Tory MP Simon Clarke declaring they “must be able to offer lower levels of taxation and less burdensome regulations than exist outside, cut down on customs documentation, offer secure perimeter areas and therefore lower insurance costs and avoid Value Added Tax (VAT).”

A previous attempt to establish freeports in the UK by the Thatcher government in the 1980s had failed “mostly due to the regulatory constraints placed on them by the EU.”

In a revealing statement as to how the Tories envisage the UK acting as an attractive location for global investment—at the expense of the EU—Clarke declared of existing free ports in the EU itself, “In summary, we should not aim to establish the type of insipid freeport that one finds across the European continent. Instead, we should aspire to construct supercharged freeports like those found in China, the US and the Middle East.”

The Tories under Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, in a desperate attempt to placate growing anger, industrial action and strike votes in various important sectors, claimed that they would end austerity after workers had made “sacrifices” for a decade. Johnson repeated this pledge throughout the general election campaign.

This rhetoric and all such nonsense about the Tories becoming the “party of the working class” didn’t even last until Brexit day.

Last week, all cabinet ministers were instructed to identify cuts of at least 5 percent to their Whitehall department budgets. The Financial Times reported that “A letter jointly signed by the prime minister and chancellor Sajid Javid tells ministers that budgets remain extremely tight, even after a decade of austerity in public services.”

Departments were instructed “to name 10 projects that could be scrapped in this autumn’s comprehensive spending review led by the Treasury.”

Ministers would be required “to go through every line of departmental budgets assessing value for money…” and present “radical options” to cut spending.

The savings would “free up money to invest in our priorities.”

The central priorities of the Johnson government are more handouts for the super-rich and increasing military spending. Last September, Johnson announced an initial above-inflation defence spending increase of £2.2 billion.

The European powers, led by Germany and France, will respond to the challenge from Britain, and above all from the United States, by stepping up their own militarist rearmament programme and austerity measures against the working class.

Brexit Day

Binoy Kampmark

London: Parliament Square is the site, muddied by rain, trodden by hundreds who have made it their celebratory space.  The Leave Means Leave official website had been busy for weeks, thrilled about January 31 and the fact that that Britain would finally be leaving that beastly collective they know as the European Union.  Those who promised to be in attendance were the usual suspects of the Little England brigade who had been so successful in convincing citizens that leaving the European Union was tantamount to gaining one’s freedom from a stifling oppressor.  Over time, the EU had become a figure no less savoury and vicious than Hitler, an achievement of branding if ever there was one.

London is ground zero for the anti-Brexit sentiment that clings to this city with depressing dedication.  It is the Leavers’ primary target, and affirmation they have won.  Vae victis – woe to the vanquished – is a sentiment they seem to relish, though few would know the provenance of the term.  There are parties taking place celebrating the event across this wounded city, daggers into the heart of the metropolitan centre.  During the day, London talkback radio was bubbling and humming with an upbeat note in the morning, occasionally moving into a state of delirium.  Some, it seemed, had already been on the sauce.  Bikers for Brexit, for instance, were happy to share their views about the “revelation” that their freedom was being returned; that the “tyranny” of the European Union was finally being overthrown.

A good number of callers could not see what the fuss was all about.  “We can trade with Europe; we can still trade with Europe,” suggested a sozzled David, who promised to be nursing a brandy as the celebrations commenced.  But beyond trade, David’s true colours showed.  The EU had been responsible for the sort of immigration that that had produced “beggars” and the “homeless” problem in Britain.  No mention was made of the industrious contributions of those millions, spearheaded by the Poles.

Robert was particularly irate at the divisions.  As an arch Leaver living in a Remain borough, he faced the cancellations of play dates for his children, a feeling of having contracted leprosy.  His account was marked by breezy uses of “apparently” (“Old people voted for Brexit, apparently”.)  But the caller was clear: he was definitely not racist, because “I’m black.”

Anecdotes seemed to be the order of the day, an easy if questionable form of data sampling.  Craig from Shoreditch spoke of “the Pole, the Israeli, and the Czech” who told him what a good thing Britain was doing against a seventy-year old effort to initiate a “global takeover”.  One had to “fight the system”.  This, it seemed, entailed voting for the very same man with system etched on his forehead.

By the afternoon, the mood had moderated, though still dominated by the theme of hope that Prime Minister Boris Johnson had reiterated for months.  On radio, Vincenzo from Sheffield felt he had little to celebrate.  He had been in Britain for four decades as had others of his generation. “They forgot us,” he lamented.  Another spoke of moving to Ireland and chasing up his business contacts there, abandoning this sceptred Isle of Idiots.

By 5 in the evening, the dissenters had vanished from Parliament Square with their mild, even defeated voices, with placards such as “We’ll be back” and “You have destroyed my future career and dreams.”  Predictably, the statue of Winston Churchill found itself the subject of much attention.  There were posters such as the “Restoration Bill 2020” appended at the base, a document scatterbrained and meandering in its clauses.  The authors wished for all EU flags to be removed from buildings, fishing rights restored exclusively to Britain, a re-instatement of the Magna Carta and the abolition of hate-speech laws.  Evidently unaware that British law and EU law have nourished and influenced each other over almost a half century, such documents become parochial venom to direct at those in disagreement.  Just to keep with that theme, a rotund gentleman, cheeks red and defiantly moving his placard around before Churchill’s indifferent gaze, was giving tips on how to tell a “Remoaner from a Remainer.”  The former, spat his message, are offered money to betray their country.

There are pockets on the square gradually growing in number, but at this time, they resemble devotees of a cult.  Like Sadhus in a trance, several men dance before drum beats, their eyes shut, limbs a jumble of ecstatic movements and gyration.  Donald Trump inspired imitation Stetsons are handed out, albeit sporting the Union Jack on flimsy material.  Others in attendance seem to resemble an animal species preserved in a sanctuary, making Parliament Square something of a historical zoo.  A man decked in full Union Jack regalia from head to toe, his dark skin and flashing grin a striking contrast to his outfit, terrifies some of those who have decided to see spectacle.

As the Brexiters had failed in getting their Big Ben to bong for 11 in the evening, a makeshift miniature was assembled on the square, with the more modest title of “Little Ben”.  Makeshift Little Ben was plastered with “Democracy”, “Sovereignty”, boasting a small bell to sound by anybody wishing to partake.  The drum attached below the small makeshift tower, which resembled a haphazard paper construction, was belted with manic delight.

Covering the show was an entire regiment of press officials and support staff from any number of countries.  They seemed as bemused as anybody else, adjusting their cameras and mikes between the statues of Churchill and Jan Smuts, with an illuminated Westminster as the backdrop.  A few interviewees were already being drawn in, their eyes sparklingly enthusiastic about what is to come.

The hour duly arrived and, impressive as ever on timing, comes Nigel Farage, a man who has been paid from EU funds as a member of the European Parliament for years, yet has never won a seat in Britain’s parliament.  To be paid by the enemy, it seems, is not a form of betrayal, except when others do it.  “The war is over,” he declares emphatically.  “The vast majority of people who voted Remain now say we’re a democratic country and its right we accept Brexit.”

The sense that this is done and dusted for those who wished to exit the EU is unshakeable.  It ignores the obvious point that the machinery that will extricate Britain is still to be hammered out, sorted and implemented between British negotiators and their counterparts in Brussels.  The EU strategy on this is to bring in the squeeze after those months are out, imposing what will be a form of moderated misery.  January 31 is but a symbolic day; the practical cruelties and nastiness will only be felt once the transition period expires, when the bureaucrats so loathed by the populists will have their say.  For now, Britain continues to pay EU dues without any representation. Not exactly independence, by any stretch of the imagination.

Latest UN plan to address catastrophic decline in biodiversity—more empty platitudes

Philip Guelpa

The planet is now faced with the sixth mass extinction of life on Earth, which will, if not averted, make the world unlivable for humanity. However, unlike the previous five, which were caused by various natural processes, the impending catastrophe is being triggered by human-induced climate change and other forms of environmental degradation caused by the irrationality of the capitalist system, and it is within our ability to stop it.

Last year, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) estimated that approximately one million plant and animal species face extinction over the next several decades. The global rate of species extinction is already at least thousands of times higher than the average over the past 10 million years.

As recent extreme weather events, including the devastating, climate-induced bushfires in Australia, but also Indonesia, Portugal, California, and the Arctic demonstrate, entire communities of plants and animals, not to mention humans, are at grave risk. Estimates suggest that more than a billion animals have been killed, with many more injured and/or short of food and water in Australia so far during this fire season alone.

Already during the industrial period, 75 percent of Earth’s land and 66 percent of marine ecosystems have been altered by human activity. It is estimated that nearly 600 plant species have been driven to extinction over the past 250 years.

Now, a draft plan by the Working Group of the Convention on Biological Diversity, prepared for the upcoming five-day summit in Kunming, China, scheduled to start February 24, titled Zero Draft of The Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, presents an initial version of a proposed plan to address this impending crisis. It warns that unless nearly a third of the planet is protected to provide livable habitats for endangered plant and animal species, and pollution cut by half, this mass extinction is inevitable.

The proposed plan asserts that to avert this crisis, “transformative changes across economic, social, political and technological factors” are needed. It goes on to state, “Biodiversity, and the benefits it provides, is fundamental to human well-being and a healthy planet.” However, “Despite ongoing efforts, biodiversity is deteriorating worldwide and this decline is projected to continue or worsen under business-as-usual scenarios.” The plan aims to develop necessary “goals and targets” to combat this crisis, with the aim of stabilizing biodiversity over the next decade and permit ecosystems to recover by mid-century.

The plan identifies 20 targets. Among them are:

• Cutting pollution from biocides, plastic wastes, and excess nutrients by at least 50 percent.

• Providing protected status to sites important for biodiversity—covering at least 30 percent of these land and sea areas by 2030, with at least 10 percent under “strict protection.”

• Promoting sustainable agriculture.

Over the past several decades, as the effects of climate change and other human-induced environmental degradation on the world’s ecosystems have become increasingly apparent and are an established fact in the scientific community, the capitalist system has demonstrated its utter incapacity to undertake anything approaching the “transformative changes” necessary to avoid a global ecological catastrophe. A plan similar to the one now being proposed—the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020—had been formulated at a summit in Japan in 2010. Grand promises were made. However, predictably, the goals were not met, and conditions continue to deteriorate at an ever-increasing rate.

The situation is dire. Every year that passes without substantial, world-wide, coordinated action brings Earth closer to irreversible devastation. Scientists have warned that at a certain point the process of global warming would reach a “tipping point” beyond which a positive feedback loop would be initiated whereby environmental degradation would re-enforce itself, making any future efforts to stabilize the environment difficult or impossible. This tipping point may be reached sooner rather than later.

A study by an international group of scientists published last year in the journal Nature (23 January 2019) projects that by 2060 the planet’s ability to absorb anthropogenic (human produced) carbon dioxide will begin to decline. That would greatly accelerate the pace of global warming, substantially compounding the environmental effects already underway.

As Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, acting executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, put it, 2020 must not be another “year of conferences.” It is likely to be just that, however. She has criticized the Zero Draft of The Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework as inadequate. Its “vision” is that “By 2050, biodiversity is valued, conserved, restored and wisely used, maintaining ecosystem services, sustaining a healthy planet and delivering benefits essential for all people.” It is, in fact, simply another set of vacuous language with no mechanism for implementation or enforcement.

At the just concluded Davos World Economic Forum, biodiversity loss was listed as the third greatest risk to the world. Again, predictably, it was nothing but talk. The drive to “maximize shareholder value” supersedes all other concerns.

Human existence depends on what are termed “ecosystem services”—such as breathable air, drinkable water, and an adequate food supply—which are the product of a complex, dynamic interaction between living and non-living components. These cannot be replaced, certainly not within the foreseeable future. As just one example, a substantial number of agricultural crops on which humans rely are pollinated by animals, primarily insects and birds.

Of the 115 leading global crops consumed by humans, 87 rely on animal pollination, to some degree. These pollinators include 2,000 bird species and 20,000 species of wild bees that are key to crop propagation. Often, the relationships between plant and pollinator are exclusive. This delicate system is in grave danger.

A recent study by Cornell University found that the US and Canada lost one in four birds—or 3 billion total—since 1970. The Audubon Society reported that North America could lose 389 of the 604 types of birds it studied due to climate change. According to Audubon, limiting the temperature rise to 1.5C could protect 148 bird species. A UN report published in 2016 estimated that at least 9 percent of bee and butterfly species are at risk.

The negative impacts on complex ecosystems by drought, wildfires, flooding and other climate-driven catastrophes now being experienced at the unprecedented scale and frequency, which will only worsen in coming years if drastic action is not taken, make it increasingly difficult for plant and animal communities to bounce back once the immediate episode has passed. The loss of individual species to extinction goes far beyond the simple reduction in the diversity of a biological community. The intricate and dynamic web of interactions between species in any given ecosystem have evolved over millennia. As growing numbers of species are lost, the fragility of the overall system increases, ultimately reaching the point of an irreversible collapse. Put simply: remove one leg from a chair and it may yet stand, remove two and it falls.

The problem is not that humanity does not have the means to avert this crisis. Or that the world’s population is unaware of the situation. The current bushfires in Australia have generated mass anger against the political establishment’s dismissal of climate change in favor of big business, especially the fossil fuel industry. In the US, recent research by Yale University found that a majority of those polled responded that they are “concerned” or “alarmed” about climate change. The numbers reporting alarm tripled over the last five years.

The causes of climate change and environmental pollution have been known for decades. Just 100 companies have produced more than 70 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988. A mere 20 corporations are responsible for the majority of plastic pollution in the oceans.

Disaster is not inevitable. The necessary technological, economic, and social mechanisms to rectify them exist. And new tools are constantly being developed. The vast resources now being wasted on the military and obscene enrichment of the capitalist elite could be redirected to such urgent tasks as the replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energy and the replacement of plastics with truly recyclable packaging materials, etc., etc. However, as long as the world’s economy is divided into competing corporations and nation-states, and controlled by a tiny minority of the population, who operate solely for their own, immediate personal interest, there will be no meaningful change in the current catastrophic trajectory toward environmental disaster.

Firms responsible for covering Grenfell in flammable cladding demand immunity from prosecution

Charles Hixson & Robert Stevens

Within 48 hours of the second phase of the Grenfell fire inquiry opening this week, the entire rotten process was exposed.

Lawyers for the main corporations involved in covering the high rise building in dangerous flammable cladding effectively demanded immunity from future prosecution.

On Tuesday evening, an application was made to Inquiry chair Sir Martin Moore-Bick by lawyers for the Grenfell tower refurbishments main contractor, Rydon, architects Studio E, external wall subcontractor Harley Facades, and the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO). The association managed the tower on behalf of the Conservative-run Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC).

The lawyers requested that Moore-Bick ask Attorney General Geoffrey Cox QC for an undertaking that “nothing said by a witness in answers to questions in the inquiry will be used in furtherance of a prosecution against them.”

Gasps broke out from long-suffering bereaved and survivors attending the inquiry as Moore-Bick explained, “Very recently I’ve been advised that, when they are called to give evidence, which of course will start next week, many of the witnesses who were involved in the decision and choice of materials are likely to claim privilege against self-incrimination as a reason for not answering questions.”

Moore-Bick expressed his concern that the fraudulent nature of the inquiry was being exposed before all: “[T]his application has come very late in the day and at a most inconvenient time. It’s very disappointing, I might even use a stronger word,” he declared. He would decide on whether to notify the Attorney General next Monday, after hearing representatives from residents, bereaved, and survivors.

Lawyers for the families are to consider their position on the application over the weekend. On their behalf, Michael Mansfield QC said, “The timing of this application... is highly reprehensible and highly questionable coming on the eve of evidence… It has caused immense anxiety, distress and anger.” The Grenfell community had been wanting to “get to the point of accountability,” and now they felt “almost thwarted at the doors of the court.”

In making their demand for immunity from prosecution, the entities responsible for turning the tower block into a death trap—that allowed a small kitchen fire to destroy a 24-story block within hours—are relying on the stipulations of the 2005 Inquires Act.

Under the Act, those giving evidence in an Inquiry have the right to withhold information which might incriminate them. This is not enough for those making the application, who want the Attorney General to use his power to rule that no evidence given by witnesses will be used against them in criminal proceedings. This would make them immune, except if they are subsequently charged with conspiring to or giving false evidence to the Inquiry.

Attempting to justify their request, the corporations stated that their employees could face life sentences as it was likely, based on the experience of some of those already interviewed by the police, that further investigation “will include gross negligence manslaughter where applicable.”

Harley Facades lawyer Jonathan Laidlaw QC said a number of the firm’s employees had been interrogated. “Right through the course of phase two [of the inquiry] these individuals will remain suspects in respect of whom there is a real and appreciable danger of self-incrimination.”

He threatened that if they did not receive legal assurances that any statements they made during the inquiry would not be used subsequently to prosecute them, then their employees would simply refuse to answer any questions.

Laidlaw said it was “impossible to get to the answers the bereaved, survivors and residents are plainly entitled to” unless they received such protection.

This is a cynical ruse by corporations whose main concern is not about the fate of their employees. The fire and deaths were not merely the responsibility of individuals immediately involved with the refurbishment. The demand for immunity from future prosecution is about ensuring that those in senior positions and therefore the corporations themselves avoid prosecution for terrible crimes.

They know they are assured of the kid gloves treatment by the tried and trusted inquiry set up. The Guardian noted, “Similar undertakings had been made in the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, the Bloody Sunday inquiry, the Ladbroke Grove inquiry, the Baha Mousa inquiry, the al-Sweady inquiry, the Azelle Rodney inquiry and the undercover policing inquiry, lawyers for the corporates said.”

Families responded with dismay and outrage at the move, with their counsel scathing about the applications for immunity. Samuel Stein QC said his clients were furious and, “outraged by an application which has all the appearance of looking like an attempt to pull a fast one…”

Stephanie Barwise, representing 280 members of the Grenfell community said, “The behaviors of arrogance and complacency which caused the disastrous fire at Grenfell still rage unchecked in many of the core participants.”

Exactly why the Grenfell refurbishment firms and KCTMO felt it necessary to make their move was evident in the first two days of the second phase, during which emails and other damning evidence were revealed, as they indulged in mutual finger pointing and recriminations. They showed that the firms knew the cladding put on Grenfell would simply burn off in the event of a fire.

Barwise introduced emails from an executive of Celotex, maker of the combustible synthetic insulation, admitting to a distributor that it was “clearly wrong” to think it proper to use flammable insulation on any building, regardless of height. Adrian Williamson QC, speaking for the families, said: “From the start (the project) was bedevilled by a culture which was cost cutting which put cost over every other consideration.”

Sessions from Monday to Wednesday featured counsels for the corporate participants. Rydon Maintenance claimed cladding maker Arconic knew their polyethylene panels fell below the minimum required for facades under European legislation. They noted that internal emails from Arconic in 2011 revealed that although their panel fire ratings had dropped from Class B to Class E, an Arconic official insisted, “we can still work with regulators who are not as restrictive.” In 2018, the BBC spoke to a source in the building industry who had worked on major cladding projects and said of Class E cladding, “To be blunt… you wouldn’t put E on a dog kennel.”

As part of attempts by companies to pass the buck, Rydon’s counsel released a 2013 email from Celotex citing a concern that their material could be dangerous when used with aluminium composite cladding. “We cannot seem to find or design a suitable barrier in which we have confidence that it can be used behind a standard ACM [Aluminium Composite Material] panel which we know will melt and allow fire into the cavity.” The company decided to enter into the “lucrative” high-rise business later that year.

In 2015, Neil Crawford, from architects Studio E emailed a fire engineer writing that “metal cladding always burns and falls off.” The idea of using cheaper cladding first emerged in March 2013 when the council began worrying that the cost of the refurbishment was too high. When Harley Facades said it could save £454,000 by switching from fire resistant zinc to ACM, the KCTMO approved the new cladding in October 2014.

Counsel for Celotex provided evidence from an engineer at Harley writing about the possible building of a fire-stopping into the facade: “There is no point. As we all know, the ACM will be gone rather quickly in a fire.”

Another email exchange between Celotex and one of its distributors, Celotex firm’s head of technical, Rob Warren, wrote it was “clearly wrong” when an inspector “said it was OK to use any insulation up to 18 metres (59ft), and only above 18 metres did it have to be non-combustible.” He added: “The fire hasn’t got a tape measure and if it starts at the ground floor it will love to race up the first 18 metres. Just shows the smoke of confusion out there.”

On Thursday, a representative for the families, Balvinder Gill, made the accurate statement that “We and our clients have been genuinely shocked at hearing the corporate core participants seeking to defend the indefensible and trying to justify the unjustifiable.” Gill added, “Each of these corporate core participants had blood on its hands and it cannot be washed off by the blood of others.”

Stein observed that those responsible for the refurbishment at Grenfell had killed residents “as sure as if they had taken careful aim with a gun and pulled the trigger.” He added, “Those companies involved killed when they criminally failed to consider the safety of others. They killed when they presented their unsuitable dangerous products in the pursuit of money and they killed when they entirely ignored their ultimate clients, the people of Grenfell Tower. They knew they were all literally playing with fire.”

What is being said is that the 72 who were killed in the Grenfell fire inferno were victims of the heinous crime of social murder.

This term was coined by Frederick Engels in his seminal work, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1845. He wrote, “When society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live—forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence—knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual.” [emphasis added]

The Socialist Equality Party and the Grenfell Fire Forum insisted from the outset that the inquiry, a creature of the Conservative government, would not bring justice and was aimed at protecting the guilty. The request for immunity must serve as a reality check for all those who retain illusions that the inquiry can bring justice.

We repeat our call to families and the Grenfell community to withdraw all co-operation from the inquiry and to instruct their legal team to do likewise. The demand must be taken up for criminal proceedings, with arrests and charges brought immediately, in order to bring those responsible for the deaths of 72 men, women and children to justice.

Peronism votes unanimously to invite US troops into Argentina

Andrea Lobo

On Wednesday, the Argentine Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Congress, voted 214–2 to allow the “entry of foreign troops” and the participation of Argentine troops in exercises abroad.

Several of the military exercises listed in the bill are being organized and financed by the Pentagon. Most prominently, it includes three “Unitas” exercises organized by the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) and the Brazilian regime of the fascistic former captain President Jair Bolsonaro, and the “Gringo Gaucho” exercise, which involves receiving a US aircraft carrier with thousands of troops and sailors.

The bill was introduced by the previous right-wing government of Mauricio Macri, which left office last December. However, the unanimous support by the Peronist ruling coalition Frente de Todos of President Alberto Fernández and vice-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner provides undeniable evidence of the subordination by all factions of the Argentinian ruling class to US imperialism.

Serving as a “left” front for the ruling coalition, all of the Peronist trade union leaders voted in favor, including Hugo Yasky, Facundo Moyano, Vanesa Siley and Walter Correa. The affirmative list also includes the Frente Patria Grande, a party created by Juan Grabois, a “popular economy” leader. Also serving this role within the ruling coalition, Juan Carlos Alderete and Verónica Caliva of the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party (PCR) voted “yes” to welcoming US troops.

The vote is far from an “isolated” case. While Alderete and Caliva were “absent,” these supposedly left figures that frequently denounced the Macri administration for “selling out the Fatherland” voted in favor the same day for a bill declaring the “sustainability” of the foreign debt of the government a “priority” and allowing for unrestricted debt emissions. This constitutes a transparent backing to continuing the enrichment of Wall Street vultures through ruthless social austerity.

Moreover, these forces have remained silent in the face of other alignments of Fernández’s foreign policy with US imperialism. Last week, the president’s first official trip was to Israel during the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, an obvious gesture to the Trump administration. Buenos Aires also extended the designation and financial sanctions against “the terrorist organization Hezbollah,” a ruling party in Lebanon and close ally of the Iranian government.

Foreign Minister Felipe Solá also threatened the Nicolás Maduro government in Venezuela with “international isolation” after the blocking of Juan Guaidó, a US-sponsored puppet openly seeking a military coup against Maduro, from entering the National Assembly.

Some commentators have pointed to Argentina’s granting asylum to Evo Morales, who was overthrown in a US-backed military coup last November, as an “exception” to the pro-US line. However, Morales and his Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) have played an essential role in suppressing opposition to and legitimizing the coup and the elections being organized by the far-right regime installed by Washington and its Bolivian military allies. Morales himself acknowledged that Washington offered to airlift him out of Bolivia after the coup.

The only two legislators who voted against the two bills on Wednesday belong to the Left Workers Front-Unity (FIT-U). However, this posturing is as hypocritical and frail as that of the “left” Peronists. Their front includes forces, like Izquierda Socialista, which backed the US imperialist interventions in Syria and Libya, while the FIT-U’s international partners in the New Anti-Capitalist Party have expressed support for a US war against Iran. Similarly to its role in chaining workers to the Peronist trade unions, the FIT-U’s “anti-imperialism” is aimed at keeping workers from making the necessary political break from all nationalist and pro-capitalist forces.

Recent Peronist governments were able to posture as independent of US imperialism thanks to the boom in commodities prices fueled by greater Chinese investment and trade. The Argentine ruling class used this leverage against US and European capital to achieve greater participation in the profits reaped from the exploitation of Argentine workers, while affording limited increases in social spending. This was reflected politically in the so-called “pink-tide” governments across Latin America.

The fall of oil, mineral and other commodity prices in 2014, however, ended these special circumstances, leading the Argentine bourgeoisie and the upper middle class, which became very wealthy during this period, to shift to the right and increasingly orient back to US imperialism.

Trade with China quintupled between 2000 and 2007. Fueled by the sale of soybeans and copper exports, China replaced the United States as Argentina’s main trade partner, after Brazil. Since 2016, however, the United States again became the second main buyer of Argentine exports.

In terms of credit, Argentina received 10 major loans from China amounting to $19 billion between 2005 and 2015, according to the Inter-American Dialogue, at below market interest rates and mainly for infrastructure projects. Macri sought to cut back the scale of these projects seeking to reassure US investors, but, amid a deepening economic crisis, his administration’s credit line with China grew to $18.7 billion, even as it received the largest IMF loan in history of $57 billion. Last year, China approved another $7.9 billion to the Macri government for building a nuclear plant.

The US Southern Command built a military base in Neuquén, a project approved since 2012 and temporarily halted in 2018 due to local protests. The southern province of Neuquén has the vast Vaca Muerta oil and gas deposits being exploited in a partnership between the Argentine state and major US corporations like ExxonMobil, Chevron and other firms.

The 1976–1983 military dictatorship backed by the United States—until Washington aided the UK in its imperialist takeover of the Malvinas Islands in 1983—resulted in mass popular opposition to the military, forcing the successor governments to implement defense, national security and intelligence acts limiting military involvement in internal affairs. Ever since, and especially after the social upheavals during the 2001–2002 economic crisis in Argentina, the United States has sought to gradually erode these changes.

Under the administrations of the late Néstor Kirchner (2003–2007) and his wife Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007–2015), Gringo-Gaucho military exercises with US aircraft carriers took place in 2004, 2008 and 2010. Preserving this route around Argentina is crucial for US carriers since they are too large to cross the Panama Canal.

In February 2011, a US military cargo plane was retained temporarily by Argentina presumably for “administrative” reasons; however, it was exploited by the Kirchnerists to varnish the government’s “anti-imperialist” image. The plane and materiel were soon returned, and Kirchner expressed her approval for future Gringo-Gaucho operations, but no other joint exercises were carried out during her term.

Nonetheless, Fernández de Kirchner continued to increase military collaboration, agreeing to a new US-built military base in the Chaco region, signing into law “anti-terrorist” legislation demanded by Washington and hosting a special US military training program for Ministry of Defense officials. A scathing report by investigative journalist Horacio Verbitsky found that the E-IMET program employed in the training aimed at “bringing down the barriers that often exist between the Armed Forces, civil officials and legislators.” Recognizing that military operations “could be seen as a return to the ‘bad old times,’” the official document cynically claims to oppose the military “usurping power.”

During Macri’s term, Argentina vowed to carry out more “anti-drug” and “anti-terrorist” operations with US agencies and allowed the Pentagon to build another base near the country’s strategic northern border with Paraguay and Brazil and another at the southernmost city of Ushuaia.

When US forces arrived in May 2018 for a military exercise, Peronist legislators protested that Congress had not been consulted—a fraudulent ploy exposed by the recent vote.

At the same time, a space station built by China in Neuquén and used in the lunar landing in January 2019 has been denounced by the US Southern Command head, Maj. Gen. Craig S. Faller, who told the US Congress last year that it could be used to monitor and aim at “US, allied or partner targets in space activities.”

Preceding this increased collaboration, the Obama administration agreed to declassify tens of thousands of documents revealing US training at its School of the Americas and the arming of death squads under the Argentine military dictatorship that kidnapped, tortured and murdered tens of thousands of radicalized workers and youth. The Argentine officials then became key advisers in setting up death squads that served the US-backed regimes in Central America until the 1990s.

BJP to table Indian budget amid mounting economic crisis, popular anger

Kranti Kumara

India’s Hindu-supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government will unveil the state budget for the 2020–21 fiscal year today, Feb. 1, amidst a deep economic crisis that has seen the growth rate fall sharply, private investment collapse, and unemployment reach a 45-year high.

Compounding the government’s predicament are contradictory demands from domestic and global capital and mounting social opposition.

Since mid-December, India has been convulsed by mass protests against the BJP’s newly-adopted anti-Muslim Citizenship Amendment Act or CAA. On Jan. 8, tens of millions of workers joined a one-day general strike to protest the government’s pro-investor, pro-market policies—social spending cuts, privatization, deregulation, massive tax cuts for big business, and the promotion of “flexible” contract-labour jobs.

The Narendra Modi-led BJP government has responded to the unraveling of the economy by stoking Hindu communalism, with the double aim of mobilizing the BJP’s Hindu chauvinist cadre as shock troops against the mounting social opposition, and splitting the working class.

However, growing working class anger over mass joblessness and stagnant and declining real wages is intersecting with mass opposition to the BJP’s Hindu supremacist agenda and flagrant attacks on democratic rights.

“The biggest fear is if growth doesn’t pick up, it will spill onto the streets,” an unnamed “senior government functionary” told the Indian Express this week. “What looks as disaffection in some [university] campuses may spread further.”

For its part, Indian big business is awaiting the budget with bated breath. The hope, to use the words of the Indian financial press, is that it will revive the “animal spirits” of private investors.

With the growth rate now standing at less than 5 percent, its lowest level since the 2000–9 global crisis, and investment growth at its lowest level in 17 years, domestic capital is looking to the Modi government for “fiscal stimulus.” That is, they want the government to boost spending on transport, energy and other infrastructure projects so as to “kick-start” the economy. Indian and foreign businesses are also seeking tax breaks and other “incentives” to boost their declining revenues and profits.

However, the government’s fiscal resources—negligible when compared with those of the world’s other major world economies—have been further eroded by the economic crisis.

While Modi and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman insist the downturn is merely conjectural and will soon pass, economic experts are increasingly taking exception to these claims and pointing to the all-sided, interconnected character of the economic crisis.

Domestic consumer and business demand for goods and services have essentially collapsed. There are multiple reasons for this. Rural India is mired in poverty and a two-decade long agrarian crisis, bound up with the withdrawal of state support and investment. Workers’ incomes have been ravaged by unemployment, wage cuts and the proliferation of low-paid precarious jobs.

Corporations and real estate companies are weighed down by the massive debts they incurred to finance growth in the past decade, with many struggling to make even interest payments on their loans. This in turn has crippled the financial sector. The “Non-Performing Assets” of banks, i.e., loan installments remaining unpaid for 90 days, have ballooned.

Consequently, commercial credit—which acts as the main source of new capital for Indian businesses, especially real estate and medium to small industries—has all but dried up.

In 2019, India’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), slashed base interest rates by 1.35 percentage points to encourage commercial lending. But the banks, themselves mired in debts, have refused to pass on the interest rate cuts, starving the economy of funds. As a result, thousands of small and medium-sized industries and businesses have shut down.

The rapid unraveling of India’s economy has come as a shock to such representatives of global capital as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. They have long promoted India as a “bright-spot” in the crisis-ridden global economy, despite the fact that more than 800 million Indians subsist on less than $2 per day.

In contrast to domestic economists and big business, and despite conceding—to use the words of the IMF’s chief economist, Gita Gopinath—that the “most recent” adverse Indian economic figures “have surprised everyone,” the IMF has sternly warned the Indian government against increasing deficit spending to stimulate growth.

This is because India’s budget projections for the 2019–20 fiscal year, which ends March 31, are in a shambles.

The projected revenues from income taxes and the sell-off of government assets are in steep decline. According to an analysis by The Mint business-news website, the total revenue of the government for the first 8 months of fiscal 2019–20 amounted to Rs. 9.83 trillion (US $138 billion), just 50.1 percent of the government-projected Rs. 19.6 trillion ($276 billion) for the full year.

The Mint estimates that the revenue shortfall for the full year will amount to Rs. 1.2 trillion ($17 billion) and that the real fiscal deficit will reach 5.5 percent of India’s GDP, against an originally projected 3.3 percent.

Whilst the representatives of world finance and domestic business disagree over whether the BJP government should resort to fiscal stimulus, they are in complete agreement that the crisis must be offloaded onto the working class.

Capital is determined to put this crisis to “good use” and impose “structural reforms” aimed at increasing workers’ exploitation and corporate profitability. They are pressing the Modi government, a most pliant and willing agency of big businesses, to implement a further raft of pro-investor “big bang” reforms.

What they are demanding is that the government gut all restrictions on layoffs and plant closures, so as to create a more “flexible” workforce, and make it easier for people to be displaced so that businesses can acquire land for industrial purposes. They are also pressing for a fire-sale of Public Sector Units (state-owned businesses) and various other sops to industries and financial speculators.

Just a couple of years ago, Modi was proclaiming India’s growth rate “world-beating.” Now many economists are warning the country may be in the grips of “stagflation,” that is, the combination of anemic economic growth or worse, with steep inflation. The growth rate has fallen for the past three years, while the inflation rate is now the highest it has been in six years.

The Indian economy is being battered by slow world economic growth and by the Trump administration’s “America First” protectionist policies and trade war with China. Between April and December, total exports fell 2 percent to $239 billion.

Even more significantly, while a central aim of Indian state policy for the past three decades has been to transform India into a cheap-labour producer, and, more recently a production-chain hub for global capital, India’s exports as a share of GDP have slumped sharply. Whereas in 2013, non-refined oil exports surpassed 14 percent of GDP, they are now less than 10 percent.

These figures speak to the failure of the Modi government’s “Make in India” campaign, which aims to entice transnationals to invest and transform the country into a global manufacturing hub. Towards this end, the government has created several “Special Economic Zones” (SEZ), where normal labour and environmental regulations don’t apply and businesses are accorded tax exemptions.

Despite the Modi government “rolling out the red carpet” to foreign businesses and its concerted efforts to exploit mounting US-China tensions to entice companies to shift production from China to India, the “Make in India” campaign has found few takers. A major reason for this is the poor public and social infrastructure, including high levels of functional illiteracy.

Primary goods such as gems and precious metals still account for a large share of India’s exports. In 2018–19, India’s exports of high value goods such as machinery and automobiles totaled just $66 billion, and accounted for only 1.73 percent of the world total of $3.8 trillion in high value goods exports. India’s share of overall world merchandise exports amounted to a mere 1.67 percent ($323 billion) out of $19 trillion.

Many economists in India and internationally argue that India’s economic situation is even graver than the government’s figures suggest, because the Modi regime has played fast and loose with the numbers. According to Arvind Subramanian, the former chief economic advisor to the Modi government, India’s growth rate has been at least 2 percent lower per year than claimed by the Modi government since it first came to power in 2014. Subramanian has also observed that commercial lending, the source of almost all new capital, has all but dried up, and in the first 6 months of the current fiscal year amounted to a mere Rs. 1 trillion ($14 billion).

President Trump expands anti-Muslim travel ban to thirteen countries

Kevin Reed

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday that imposes travel restrictions on six more countries with large Muslim populations bringing the total number of nations under the US travel ban to thirteen.

Immigrant visas are being suspended for Nigeria, Myanmar, Eritrea and Kyrgyzstan and people from Sudan and Tanzania will be prevented from entering the US diversity visa program that provides green cards to immigrants. According to the Department of Homeland Security, the ban will not apply to non-immigrant travelers such as students, tourists or people visiting the US on business.

Trump signed the new order almost exactly three years to the day after he enacted the original Muslim travel ban one week after he took office. The new rule will go into effect on February 22 and adds the six countries to the current list of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Venezuela and North Korea. The initial Muslim travel ban executive order went into effect on February 1, 2017.

The current decision could not be more transparently motivated by domestic political considerations as President Trump seeks to whip up extreme right-wing nationalism as part his 2020 reelection strategy. Taking the step in the final days of the impeachment trial in the Senate and the lead up to his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Trump is openly encouraging anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim hatred from within his fascistic political base.

In response to the proclamation, Omar Jadwat, the director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union said, “Trump is doubling down on his signature anti-Muslim policy and using the ban as a way to put even more of his prejudices into practice by excluding more communities of color.”

The addition of Nigeria, Eritrea, Sudan and Tanzania—all countries with large Muslim populations—brings the number of African countries on the travel ban to seven, the most of any continent. The expansion of African countries on the list is of a piece with Trump’s previous vulgar references to “sh*thole countries” on the continent and Nigerian immigrants coming to the US who will never “go back to their huts.”

In an effort to deflect attention from the obvious, White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grishan said, “President Trump’s security and travel proclamations have immeasurably improved our national security, substantially raised the global standard for information-sharing, and dramatically strengthened the integrity of the United States’ immigration system,” adding, “The orders have been a tremendous and vital success.”

According to the New York Times, the expanded restrictions are likely to block 12,300 immigrants over the next year, “from resettling, finding work or reuniting with their families in the United States.” Nigeria, the largest economy and largest population—200 million people—in the African continent, will be the most severely impacted with nearly 8,000 immigrant visas issued last year.

The White House claimed Nigeria had an “elevated risk and threat environment in the country.” The country’s Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, told the Times that no one in his country had been notified that they were being placed on the new list. Although Nigeria has partnered with the US military as part of the coalition fighting Islamist militias, Mohammed said, “It would be a double jeopardy: The country has committed a lot of resources to fight terrorism.”

In an expression of imperialist bullying against the other five countries, the White House said each country had not complied with the administration’s requirement for information-sharing related to terrorism data, they had not updated their passport systems or had issues with international criminal reporting methods.

In the case of Myanmar, also known as Burma, where sectarian violence has forced Rohingya Muslim refugees to seek asylum abroad, the travel ban shuts down a possible road to safety or family reunification. Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, a refugee resettlement agency, said, “Nearly 5,000 Burmese refugees started to rebuild their lives in America last year, many of whom seek to reunite with family still in harm’s way.”

Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh fleeing violence in Myanmar [Credit: K.M. AsadLightRocket, via Getty Images]

News of expanding the list of banned countries began to leak on January 11 when the Associated Press reported that the White House was considering “dramatically expanding its much-litigated travel ban to additional countries amid a renewed election-year focus on immigration by President Donald Trump, according to six people familiar with the deliberations.”

During his trip to Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum last week, Trump said he planned to add “a couple of countries” to the ban when everyone already knew that six or seven countries were being added.

Early reports about the impact of the travel ban show once again that Trump and his advisors are hell-bent on pursuing their xenophobic political agenda no matter the fallout. A report on Vox notes, for example, “Although it doesn’t affect student visas, it could also discourage students from coming to the US for their studies, since they might not have the option to remain in the country permanently. Almost 13,000 Nigerian students came to the US last year.”

Meanwhile, in an interview with National Public Radio, David Wilson, President of Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland said, “at Morgan, we have roughly 10 percent of our nearly 8,000 students or so at Morgan who are international, representing 60 countries. And of that 10 percent, about 20 percent of those students are from Nigeria.”

Nearly 80,000 visa applications have been subject to the travel ban since December 17, according to data from the State Department. Exceptions have been granted to just 6,333 immigrants and another 17,798 were granted waivers.