Australian university trade union concedes up to 90,000 job losses

Mike Head

By its own admission, the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) is presiding over a disaster—the greatest ever destruction of jobs in the Australian university sector.

The October edition of the union’s aptly-titled Sentry online magazine states: “The NTEU can confirm that there have been at least 12,185 positions lost in Australian universities since March. This comprises at least 5,300 continuing positions, 6,486 casual positions and 399 fixed term positions that we are aware of. Sadly, the full figure is likely much higher.”

Based on the NTEU’s estimate that about 100,000 people are engaged on casual contracts in the sector, the magazine concludes: “[I]t is not out of the question to assume that up to 50,000 of our casual colleagues have lost work since the COVID-19 disaster began.”

An NTEU rally at Macquarie University late last year (Credit: WSWS)

That loss would take the total to around 90,000 permanent, fixed-term and casualised jobs destroyed in just over six months.

This is a staggering indictment of the NTEU and all those trying to keep university workers tied to the union. It has—like a sentry—stood guard over its members, policing the cuts by opposing any industrial action or unified political mobilisation to answer the onslaught.

The Sentry report asks the obvious question: “So what have we been doing?”

The NTEU’s only answer is to list a series of “Fund Unis Fairly” petitions and emails sent to Education Minister Dan Tehan and members of parliament, urging them to block the Liberal-National Coalition government’s “Jobs-ready Graduates” Bill.

“Whew indeed! It’s been a busy few weeks,” wrote NTEU national organiser Michael Evans. “Watch out for more lobbying efforts over the next few days in the lead-up to the Senate vote next week.”

In other words, the union has devoted all its activities toward stifling the anger of university workers and diverting them into the dead end of appealing to the same political establishment and parties that have stripped billions of dollars from public universities over the past decade.

The government’s bill is deeply reactionary. It ties funding to universities further transforming themselves into vocational training colleges to meet the needs of big business. But even if the bill were blocked, the assault on jobs, course offerings, research and conditions for staff and students would continue.

And virtually all the vice-chancellors, with whom the NTEU publicly pleaded for months for a united front against the government’s measures, have backed the bill, each hoping to gain a little extra funding by implementing the government’s agenda.

The Sentry report covers up the NTEU’s record this year, as if university workers have forgotten!

As soon as the COVID-19 pandemic emerged in March, the union scrambled into weeks of backroom talks with the vice-chancellors, volunteering wage cuts of up to 15 percent, in return for meaningless promises not to eliminate as many jobs as initially announced.

That deal ultimately collapsed. Widespread opposition among university workers led the employers to conclude that the NTEU could not win enough support to enforce the supposed “job protection framework.” Then the union proceeded to bulldoze similar agreements through at individual universities, acting in close partnership with each management.

A recent report on the Conversation provides an outline of the results. “Firstly, ten universities have gained staff support to vary their enterprise agreements. These universities have individually adopted an approach similar to an earlier national Job Protection Framework proposal…

“Enterprise agreement variations enable these universities to reduce or delay job losses by freezing salary increases and purchasing leave entitlements. While saving some jobs, some of these universities have continued with agreed voluntary redundancy programs this year and are reserving options for next year.”

Thus, either with the support of the NTEU or benefiting from university workers’ loss of confidence in the union, the managements have secured amendments to their NTEU-negotiated enterprise agreements, enabling cuts to wages and conditions, as well as jobs.

At other universities, the union’s previous agreements have given management ample room to achieve similar outcomes. The Conversation report continued: “Secondly, 17 universities have taken a management-led approach. These universities have implemented voluntary and involuntary redundancy programs within the framework of existing enterprise agreements.”

The impact of this assault is becoming increasingly clear, with managements unveiling plans to abolish entire courses. Sydney’s Macquarie University last week foreshadowed the scrapping of a number of programs, including the Bachelor of Mathematical Sciences, Bachelor of Advanced Science and Master of Biostatistics.

Universities are also stepping up their efforts, in line with the government’s demands, to return to face-to-face teaching, exposing staff and students to the ongoing danger of the resurging global pandemic.

All the while, the NTEU has kept staff separated, university-by-university, and repeatedly warned its members they would face heavy fines if they took any industrial action. In doing so, the union has relied on the anti-strike laws that the union movement itself helped draft, first under the Hawke and Keating Labor governments of 1983 to 1996 and then under the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments of 2007 to 2013.

The purpose of these laws is to reinforce the function of the trade unions as the officially-recognised industrial police force on which governments and the corporate elite rely to suppress working-class struggles.

Politically, the NTEU’s lobbying campaign seeks, above all, to promote illusions in the Labor Party. The Sentry emphasises that Labor’s education spokespeople Tanya Plibersek and Senator Louise Pratt, along with right-wing “independent” Senator Jacquie Lambie, have said they will not support the bill.

Yet the last Greens-backed Labor government, in which Plibersek was a key minister, set the framework for the increasing corporatisation, casualisation and de-funding of the public universities. First, with the support of the NTEU, it imposed a capitalist market-driven “education revolution” that forced universities to compete with each other for enrolments, setting in motion a dog-eat-dog struggle for survival. Then, in 2011–13, it slashed $2.7 billion from funding, compelling universities to turn to full fee-paying international students as cash cows.

In perpetrating its historic betrayal, the NTEU has been assisted by the various pseudo-left groups that satellite around the unions, hoping to become part of their well-paid leaderships. Socialist Alternative’s “NTEU Fightback” has time and again urged disgusted university workers to join and try to rebuild the NTEU.

Socialist Alternative and other pseudo-left organisations also have promoted the National Higher Education Action Network, which takes an even more explicit pro-NTEU position. It is proposing to ask university workers to sign a token “strike pledge” to take industrial action, sometime in the indefinite future—provided that enough other workers take the pledge. Its demand is for a vague “substantial increase in government support of universities.”

At the same time, the network is cooperating with the NTEU, calling for its supporters to “save the date for an NTEU backed rally” on October 13. The network whitewashes the pro-management role of the NTEU and other unions, saying they have been “largely powerless to defend staff, students, and universities” because of their “low membership levels” and the punitive anti-strike laws.

This is a lie. The NTEU’s record of collaborating with the employers is part of a wider decades-long union partnership with the government and big business. This has been taken to a new level by this year’s “confidential” talks involving five tripartite “working parties” on “industrial relations reform.”

The working-class disillusionment and bitterness produced by years of the unions enforcing the agenda of big business with the assistance of the anti-strike laws they helped draft have reduced the unions’ membership to about 10 percent of the country’s workforce.

Against this line-up of the government, the parliamentary elite, the NTEU and the union’s accomplices, the Socialist Equality Party and the Committee for Public Education (CFPE) are continuing their fight for the formation of genuine rank-and-file committees of educators and students, completely independent of the trade union apparatuses.

These committees are essential to organise a unified struggle to defend all jobs and basic rights, protect university staff and students from unsafe COVID-19 conditions and link up with workers and students internationally who are facing similar critical struggles.

This means challenging the capitalist profit system and turning to a socialist perspective, based on the total reorganisation of society in the interests of all, instead of the financial oligarchy. We urge all university workers and students who want to take forward this fight to contact the CFPE.

IMF issues debt warning

Nick Beams

The International Monetary Fund has warned that the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed international debt levels, already at record highs in 2019, to heights that could trigger a crisis.

The warning is contained in a blog post last week co-authored, among others, by IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva. It noted that, compared to the end of 2019, average debt ratios “are projected to rise by about 20 percent of GDP in advanced economies, 10 percent of GDP in emerging economies, and about 7 percent in low-income countries.”

These increases are on top of debt levels that were already historically high. While “many advanced economies still have the capacity to borrow, emerging markets and low-income countries face much tighter limits on their ability to carry additional debt,” it stated.

Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, in Munich, Germany, February 14, 2020. (AP Photo/Jens Meyer, File)

It warned that before the pandemic struck about half of low-income countries and “several emerging market economies were already in or at high risk of a debt crisis, and the further rise in debt is alarming.” It said that just as these countries were starting to recover from the pandemic many of them “could suffer a second wave of economic distress triggered by defaults, capital flight, and fiscal austerity.”

The IMF said that while no debt crisis had so far emerged because of the action taken by central banks—the pumping of trillions of dollars into the financial system—these actions were “fast becoming insufficient.” The suspension of debt service initiated by the G20 expires at the end of the year and developing countries would need additional low-cost financing in 2021 and beyond.

Most of the measures so far had focused on liquidity to maintain countries’ access to finance both from official and market sources. “But as the crisis continues, solvency problems—the inability to repay debts—will increasingly come to the fore.”

The IMF said it was “working hard to prevent a debt crisis” and that the world was at a “critical juncture and should not sit idle waiting for a crisis.” It needed to “review its arsenal of weapons” and “do the utmost to prevent, and if necessary, pre-empt, another sovereign debt quagmire.” The alternative was “large-scale debt defaults” that would “severely damage economies and set back their recoveries for years” with low-income countries especially at risk.

Very little action, however, was proposed that in any way matches the seriousness of the crisis to which the IMF is pointing. The only concrete measures were calls to extend the present debt service suspension initiative, the building of a more “more robust debt architecture” and for “all stakeholders to do their part to reduce the risk of a catastrophe and pave the way for a safer financial system.”

An IMF analysis published last month on the “international architecture” of sovereign debt noted that while measures on debt restructuring since 2014 had largely been successful there were gaps in the system that “could pose challenges in future restructurings.”

These arise from the development of new methods in the way debt is funded and this diversity in the credit base meant it had become more “diverse and fragmented” that had already “raised challenges.”

It said that “should a COVID-related systemic sovereign debt crisis requiring multiple deep restructurings materialize, the current resolution toolkit may not be adequate to address the crisis effectively and additional instruments may need to be activated at short notice.”

While the IMF always tries to present an image of being in control, the actual picture it presents is one of a deepening crisis that could rapidly escalate.

The issue of debt is by no means confined to the sovereign debt of emerging market economies and low-income countries. It lies at the heart of all the major economies, above all the US.

A report published in the Wall Street Journal last week noted that the US has been plunged into the deepest slump since the Great Depression with the highest levels of debt in its history.

All told US consumer, government and business debt, fueled by years of ultra-low interest rates now totals $64 trillion, more than triple the American GDP.

It noted that even before the pandemic the percentage of delinquent auto-loan debts had almost reached levels seen in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008.

Low interest rates have also led to a record level of corporate debt triggering concerns that “high levels of corporate debt during a recession could force companies to slow spending and hiring to repay what they owe—or get simply overwhelmed by their repayments.”

The debt problem has been exacerbated by the use of borrowed funds to finance share buybacks that reached a record high of $806 billion in 2018. This is a mechanism by which companies are loaded up with debt not for financial investment but to boost the incomes of executives, rewarded for lifting share prices, and hedge funds.

The quality of debt has declined significantly with the amount of triple-B rated corporate bonds—the lowest quality investment-grade debt—doubling over the past decade. So far the corporate bond market has been propped by government bailouts, the reduction of the Fed’s interest rate to near-zero and the intervention of the central bank to buy up corporate bonds.

The Wall Street Journal report also noted that state and local governments had not been setting aside money to cover the cost of pensions and their problems were now compounding because of reduced revenues from income and sales taxes, with the result that they were cutting services and laying off workers.

Armenia, Azerbaijan bomb each other’s cities

Alex Lantier

A week after fighting erupted between Armenia and Azerbaijan, bloodshed escalated this weekend as both sides bombarded each other’s cities. A new eruption of the 1988-1994 war between the two former Soviet republics over control of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, which initially broke out in the run-up to the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, threatens to escalate into an all-out regional war.

The war threatens to drag in not only the two countries’ main regional backers—Russia, which supports Armenia, and Turkey, which backs Azerbaijan—but also to intensify divisions within NATO. Calls are growing in France, which is already fighting a proxy war against Turkish-backed forces in Libya and backing Greek maritime claims in the Mediterranean against Turkey, to intervene more aggressively in support of Armenia.

Azeri barrages targeted several towns in Nagorno-Karabakh, which Armenian forces have held since 1994 and Azeri forces are trying to retake. Azeri forces also reported that they captured several villages there.

In this image taken from footage released by Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry on Sunday, Sept. 27, 2020, Azerbaijan's soldiers fire from a mortar at the contact line of the self-proclaimed Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan. (Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry via AP)

Azeri President Ilham Aliyev tweeted: “Today the Azeri army liberated the village of Talish in the Terter region; the villages of Mehdili, Chakhyrly, Ashagi Maralyan, Shaibey and Guidzhag in the Jebrail region; and the village of Ashagi Abdurrahmanli in the Fizuli region. Karabakh is Azerbaijan.”

On October 2, Armenian authorities reported that Azeri forces hit the road linking Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh with an Israeli-made LORA missile.

Yesterday, Armenian forces bombed Ganja, Azerbaijan’s second-largest city after Baku, saying the risk of civilian casualties would not deter them. The Azeri Defense Ministry reported that in Ganja, “As a result of enemy fire, civilians, civilian infrastructure, and ancient historical buildings were harmed.”

Arayik Harutyunyan, the leader of Artsakh, the Armenian name for Nagorno-Karabakh, said he would respond to strikes on his capital, Stepanakert, by bombing Azeri cities. He declared: “The Azeri terrorist army is targeting civilians in Stepanakert, using Polonez and Smerch weapons systems. From now on, military targets in large Azeri cities are the target of the Defense Army of Artsakh. We are calling on the Azeri population to leave these cities to avoid inevitable losses.”

The toll in civilian and military losses is rising rapidly. Officials reported 21 civilian deaths in Azerbaijan and 13 in Armenia this weekend, with the military situation on the ground remaining unclear. Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh reported that 51 servicemen were killed on Saturday, while Azeri forces have declined to state their military losses.

In a TV address Saturday, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said: “As of now, we already have significant human losses, both military and civilian, large quantities of military equipment are no longer usable, but the adversary still has not been able to solve any of its strategic issues.”

Mortar fire from the Armenian-Azeri fighting also landed in neighboring Iran’s East Azerbaijan province, causing damage, including a blackout in Khodafarin. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh warned against all violations of Iranian territory and called for a negotiated settlement.

In this war, the reactionary implications of the ethnic nationalism promoted by the Soviet bureaucracy in the run-up to capitalist restoration in 1991 are coming together with the explosive geopolitical tensions caused by the three subsequent decades of US-led wars in the region. The United States, France and Russia had brokered earlier talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the post-Soviet period, as well as discussions with Turkey. However, relations between these powers have collapsed amid bloody proxy wars across the region, from Libya to Syria and Iraq.

The European powers and Russia have repeatedly but ineffectually called for de-escalation. On Friday night, after Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio expressed “concern over the clashes [and] the risk of military escalation,” the Elysée palace in Paris reported that President Emmanuel Macron telephoned both Aliyev and Pashinyan to call for talks. “He reiterated calls for a cease-fire and called to begin a process and a method that would lead to a return to negotiations,” the Elysée said, adding, “Work is beginning this evening.”

Whatever “work” on negotiations Paris believed was occurring promptly ended, however, with the dramatic escalation of the fighting this weekend.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Pashinyan yesterday to stress that “all parties must immediately stop clashes and start negotiations,” spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer said.

The Turkish government has ruled out any ceasefire, pledging to continue backing Azeri claims on the Nagorno-Karabakh region. After Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared that Turkish support for Baku was part of its broader defense of the “oppressed” in the Caucasus, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu told the Italian daily La Stampa, “Superficial demands for an immediate end to hostilities and a permanent ceasefire will not be useful this time.”

Global geopolitical tensions are exploding, particularly amid growing US war threats against Iran. Multiple reports have emerged of CIA-backed Syrian Islamist militias sending troops from Syria via Turkey to Azerbaijan, on the border of both Iran and Russia, marking a major new escalation of regional tensions. Washington is also angry at China’s growing commercial ties in the region and recently bombed Iranian-linked forces in Iraq.

Significantly, Washington has made few public efforts to halt the Armenian-Azeri war. While it gives millions of dollars in military aid to both countries, it boosted aid to Azerbaijan last year amid its war planning against Iran. It gave $100 million to Azerbaijan to heighten maritime security against Iran, while leaving military aid to Armenia at $4.2 million. Azerbaijan purchased large numbers of Israeli SkyStriker drones used in the recent fighting, according to the Jerusalem Post.

There has been speculation in diplomatic circles internationally that some US officials see Armenia as too close to Iran and Russia. Last year, discussing US military aid to Azerbaijan, Russian analyst Pavel Felgenhauer told Eurasianet.org: “American-Iranian relations have worsened quite quickly, so Azerbaijan finds itself in Washington’s focus and Armenia, not. Armenia is seen, probably, as an Iranian ally.”

Under these conditions, the Turkish government has apparently felt free to reject calls for Armenian-Azeri talks, bucking warnings from Russia and the European Union.

In France, already on the verge of an open clash with Turkey in Libya and the Mediterranean, calls are growing for a more aggressive policy. Yesterday, 173 French lawmakers, mostly from areas of southern France with large Armenian communities, called on Paris to “abandon this absolutely untenable position of neutrality.” They asserted that the Azeri offensive’s goal is “the disappearance of Armenian populations from this region.”

This followed publication by the French right-wing daily Le Figaro of a long interview with Pashinyan. The Armenian premier said Azerbaijan “is using drones and Turkish F-16s to bomb civilian areas in Nagorno-Karabakh,” and that “Turkish military commanders are directly involved in the conflict.”

Pashinyan explosively charged Azeri and Turkish forces with planning genocide, declaring: “The situation is much more serious [than earlier border clashes]. It is more appropriate to compare it with what happened in 1915, when more than 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered in the first genocide of the 20th century.” Pashinyan was referring to the mass murder of Armenians in Turkey during World War I. “The Turkish state, which continues to deny the past, is once again venturing down a genocidal path,” he added.

One cannot oppose war and ethnic cleansing, however, by supporting either of the contending bourgeois camps, both of which have vast amounts of blood on their hands. The 1988-1994 war led to over 20,000 deaths and the displacement of over a million people, a large majority of them Azeris fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh amid the Armenian victory. What these conflicts show is the reactionary nature of the nation-state system.

Averting further wars and massacres, which could escalate into a devastating conflict between the major powers, requires uniting workers—in Armenia, Azerbaijan and around the world—in a socialist and anti-imperialist movement against war and the capitalist system.

Leaked FBI report warns of far-right “Boogaloo” violence in advance of election

Jacob Crosse

A leaked September 29 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) intelligence report prepared by the Dallas, Texas, field office warns that leading up to the November election, “boogaloo adherents” and “militia violent extremists” are increasing “violent and criminal activity” in the Dallas area.

The assessment was made the same day President Donald Trump, in the first presidential debate with his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, refused to condemn white supremacists and militia groups, instead instructing the fascistic street gang the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”

“Somebody’s got to do something about Antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem... this is a leftwing problem,” Trump added.

Virginia 2nd Amendment Rally (2020 Jan)

The intelligence document, leaked to the Nation ’s national security reporter Ken Klippenstein, confirms that the federal government continues to downplay the threat violent far-right groups pose to the general population. It also demonstrates that homicidal terrorist violence overwhelmingly emanates not from amorphous “Antifa” or “insurrectionary anarchist” groups, as the New York Times recently argued, but from far-right anti-communist and racist groups. These include the Proud Boys, “Boogaloo” and “back the blue” militia groups such as the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters (III).

A database published in July of this year by researchers at the Washington, DC think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) found that in the last 25 years there have been zero people killed in anti-fascist attacks. Conversely, the researchers linked 329 victims to right-wing violence since 1994.

Sourcing for the FBI report was based on social media activity, news reports, government surveillance of text communications and information provided by two well-placed “FBI human sources.” One of these, it appears, has been working with the agency for three years.

The unclassified report states: “Two human sources were critical to the key analytical judgments in the product. One of the sources has reported various threats since 2017, and some of the information reported has been corroborated.”

It continues: “Another human source with direct access provided context on the anti-government or anti-authority threat due to historically providing corroborated anti-government or anti-authority extremists reporting in the FBI Dallas AOR [Area of Responsibility].”

The report noted that in June 2020, one of the FBI sources had “direct access” to “self-identified boogaloo adherents” who had been seen in downtown Dallas at multiple protests. One of these adherents told the source they would “hunt anti-fascist anarchists and kill any Dallas looters.”

Approximately four months later, days before he was assassinated by US Marshals and local police, Michael Reinoehl expressed his fear that right-wing groups and the police were “hunting me.”

“There’s nightly posts of the hunt and where they’re going to be hunting,” he told an interviewer. “They made a post saying the deer are going to feel lucky this year because it’s open season on Michael right now.”

The level of police infiltration of far-right militia groups must not be underestimated or dismissed. Just over a month ago, two Boogaloo bois, Michael Solomon, 30, of New Brighton, Minnesota, and Benjamin Teeter, 22, of Hampstead, North Carolina, were indicted on federal charges of attempting to provide weapons to Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist fundamentalist group, in exchange for funding for their local “boojahideen.”

The “Hamas” contact was, in fact, a confidential informant, who arranged a hotel meeting on June 28 with Teeter, Solomon and an undercover FBI agent posing as a more senior member of Hamas. At the meeting, the pair agreed to supply silencers as well as unregistered gun parts to the informant/agent in exchange for money. In an affidavit, the US government alleges the four shared their “anti-US views” and Teeter and Solomon expressed their desire to become “mercenaries” for Hamas.

In subsequent meetings over the summer, Teeter and Solomon are alleged to have discussed targeting a county courthouse for destruction, as it was “a symbol of the unjust laws that America upholds.” On July 30, the pair allegedly delivered five suppressors to the undercover agent for $1,800. Both are facing federal charges for conspiring and attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization. They face 12-14 years in prison.

Fellow Boogaloo boi Air Force Staff Sergeant Steven Carrillo, 32, remains in custody awaiting to see if he will face the death penalty for his alleged role in the killing of Federal Protective Security Officer David Patrick Underwood, 53, on May 29, as well as Santa Cruz County Sheriff Sergeant Damon Gutzwiller on June 6. The day after Underwood was killed, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Acting Secretary Chad Wolf called the shooting “an outright assault on our law-enforcement community,” while his deputy secretary, Ken Cuccinelli, called it an “act of domestic terrorism.”

At the press conference, Wolf did not name any groups potentially responsible, except one. “The investigation is very early on,” he said. “We have seen reports out there that a number of different groups are involved in these, whether it’s Antifa or it’s others.”

The Boogaloo movement, whose followers refer to themselves as “Boogaloo bois,” “boojahideen” or simply “boog,” began as a meme that was shared across internet forums, including 4chan and the largest Nazi board in the world, Iron March, in 2013. Members are overwhelmingly ex-military, racist and share an apocalyptic worldview that understands their antisocial actions as the catalyst to a “second American revolution” that will culminate in a race war ending in the establishment of an anarcho-capitalist fascist state.

In a New York Times interview from mid-August, 39-year-old Kris Hunter of Waco, Texas, a self-proclaimed Boogaloo boi and member of the “United States Boogalier Corps,” estimates that “80 percent” of the members of his group are military veterans. Unlike other right-wing militias in the US, such as the Oath Keepers, Boogaloo ideology is virulently anti-police, leading to more ex-military followers as opposed to former cops.

Despite the Boogaloo movement possessing a clear anti-government, violent ideology that calls on adherents to use the cover of anti-police protests to carry out terrorist attacks against property and state agents, and its decentralized cell-based organizational structure, the report warns only of the increased threat of “violent lone actors.”

While a relatively new formation, the Boogaloo movement shares many characteristics of previous right-wing anti-government militias, drawing inspiration from the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and Anders Breivik, the Norwegian fascist who carried out the mass murder of Labor Party youth in July 2011.

The proliferation of flowery pastel Hawaiian shirts among members, generally worn under body armor, first began to appear at far-right anti-lockdown rallies this past spring in Lansing, Michigan; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Denver, Colorado and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The intelligence report notes that on April 30, “two armed individuals who both identified themselves as Duncan Lemp... patrolled a Dallas parking lot near [a business] to protest the business being cited for reopening in violation of local and state stay-at-home orders.”

Duncan Lemp, 21, was fatally shot by members of the Montgomery County Police Department’s SWAT team on March 12, 2020 during a no-knock 4:30 a.m. raid on his apartment. Lemp, a software developer, lent his expertise to far-right groups, including the Three Percenters, helping to design and maintain websites. He has become a symbol for the group and a way for members to feign solidarity with anti-police protesters. Boogaloo bois have been spotted at demonstrations carrying signs with the names of Duncan Lemp as well as Breonna Taylor and Eric Gardner.

US FBI officials trained Australian Federal Police “foreign interference” squad

Oscar Grenfell

In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald last week, Australian Federal Police (AFP) commissioner Reece Kershaw revealed for the first time that a specialist AFP unit established last December to counter “foreign interference” and “espionage” has been trained by officials from the American Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI).

The admission is the latest, and most direct confirmation, that the US government and its intelligence agencies have been centrally involved in a McCarthyite witch hunt targeting supposed “Chinese interference” in Australian politics and virtually every area of society.

This campaign included the passage, by the Liberal-National Coalition and Labor Party opposition, of draconian “foreign interference” laws in 2018 that potentially criminalise any individual or organisation in contact with a “foreign principal.” The legislation, while directed in the first instance against Chinese nationals, creates the conditions for criminal action against anti-war organisations and the illegalisation of internationally-coordinated political activity.

AFP officers at an airport last year (Credit: afp.gov.au)

Kershaw’s interview made clear that the AFP squad is actively seeking to manufacture prosecutions under the laws, which have been held up by the US government and media as a model to be emulated internationally. This is in line with the intensification of the Trump administration’s campaign against China, involving trade war measures, diplomatic aggression, attacks on democratic rights and military provocations that threaten war.

The collaboration between the AFP and the FBI has been at the highest levels. Kershaw stated that he had “reached out” to FBI director Chris Wray and “asked him for assistance... around training our people and looking at how we could deliver our own package perhaps modelled on the US...He was great, sent his people out, we did that early on in the piece.”

While his comments were vague on details, the unmistakable conclusion from Kershaw’s statement is that the FBI, one of the main domestic spy and federal policing agencies of the United States, played a central role in the very establishment of the AFP “foreign interference and espionage” unit.

The Herald article was a fawning and uncritical piece, commissioned to celebrate Kershaw’s first 12 months as AFP chief. Predictably none of the questions raised by Kershaw’s statements were even asked, let alone answered.

Chief among them is the obvious irony of a domestic agency of the American government overseeing a supposed struggle against “foreign interference” in Australia. Nor was there any probing of the extent of the ongoing involvement of the FBI and the American state in the activities of the AFP unit.

Very little was written about Chris Wray. He is an anti-China “hawk,” who was handpicked to head the FBI by President Trump, and has played a central role in ratcheting up the anti-China campaign within the US. In July, he declared that China posed the “greatest threat” to US interests in the world.

“We’ve now reached a point where the FBI is now opening a new China-related case every 10 hours,” Mr Wray said. “Of the nearly 5,000 active counterintelligence cases currently under way across the country, almost half are related to China.”

Despite the uncritical character of the Sydney Morning Herald interview , Kershaw did point to the scope and resources of the specialist team, revealing that it is currently composed of 65 full-time AFP officers, with a “significant scope to expand” based on the large sums allocated to police and military funding by the Liberal-National Coalition government and the Labor opposition.

Reference was made in the article to the first public operation of the AFP unit, a raid on the home and parliamentary office of New South Wales state Labor parliamentarian Shaoquett Moselmane last June. The unprecedented action, carried out in collaboration with the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the domestic spy agency, was greeted by lurid media headlines accusing Moselmane of being an agent of the Chinese Communist Party.

The attack was immediately supported by the state and federal Labor leadership, and Moselmane was forced to take indefinite leave from parliament. The only publicly-released evidence against him, however, was that he had visited China on several occasions, and had made statements praising the Chinese response to the coronavirus and warning against the implications of the US provocations targeting Beijing.

It has since emerged that the “target” of the AFP investigation is John Zhang, who worked as a part-time staffer in Moselmane’s office.

Media reports, based on information provided by AFP and ASIO, point to the threadbare character of the allegations against Zhang. He has been associated with Chinese community organisations, participated in a private WeChat group of which Moselmane was also a member and has had contacts with the Chinese consulate. Zhang has launched a Supreme Court challenge, maintaining that the accusations against him are an attack on the implied right to freedom of political communication in the Australian Constitution.

The subject was not broached in the interview with Kershaw, but it is hard to believe that the FBI was not at least apprised of the first major operation being conducted by the AFP team that it had trained. The likelihood that the FBI was involved in planning a raid on an Australian parliamentarian has major implications for democratic rights. It would be a clear case of “foreign interference,” but one that the Australian political and media establishment has no interest in probing.

The raid against Moselmane was accompanied by wartime measures targeting Chinese nationals. Last month, it was revealed that on the same day that the parliamentarian was raided, so were four journalists employed by Chinese state-media in Australia. Their laptops and devices were taken and ASIO invoked draconian powers to prevent them from reporting the operation. Like Zhang, at least some of the journalists were apparently members of the WeChat grouping.

In addition, court filings by Zhang have claimed that AFP and ASIO officers took correspondence between himself and Chinese consular officials. This would be a violation of protocols under international law which protect the rights of diplomats.

The picture that emerges, from Kershaw’s statement and what has been revealed of the actions against Zhang and Moselmane, is of the FBI’s involvement in targeting political figures, journalists and diplomats who are suspected of not being fully on board with Australia’s central role in the US preparations for war with China.

Kershaw signaled that this will be escalated. He declared that the AFP unit was focusing on “convert[ing] intelligence into evidence. We have a fantastic relationship with ASIO and the intelligence community about how we wash that into a brief of evidence.” This is a warning the further frame-ups and prosecutions are in the offing.

In comments featured in the Australian, Kershaw revealed that the AFP is carrying out a “recruitment drive” targeting Mandarin speakers. Attempts are undoubtedly underway to cultivate informants and to pressure Chinese nationals to cooperate, similar to the targeting of the Muslim and Middle Eastern communities as part of the “war on terror.”

Kershaw also made some weasel words about “public concern” over the AFP raids targeting the Sydney headquarters of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the home of Newscorp political editor Annika Smethurst in June, 2019. The operations were over separate stories exposing Australian involvement in alleged war crimes in Afghanistan and plans for expanded domestic spying.

Kershaw promoted a “notice to produce” scheme, which would allow media organisations to hand over information to the AFP, before having police officers barge through their front door, as the best alternative to further state raids on journalists.

The AFP raids on the journalists were conducted before the establishment of the foreign interference taskforce, and made use of existing legislation criminalising the possession of “classified national security” material. But the revelation of the FBI’s involvement in the foreign interference squad inevitably raises questions about a greater US hand in those raids than has previously been acknowledged.

In the aftermath of the raids, then acting AFP commissioner Neil Gaughan declared their purpose was to protect the information that the Australian police and intelligence agencies receive from their counterparts in the US-led “Five Eyes” spying network.

The obvious question, given the role of the FBI since the ABC and Smethurst raids in the AFP’s “foreign interference” task force is whether the bureau was as heavily involved in planning those actions against Australian journalists.

This would be in line with the US attempts to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, for his exposure of American war crimes, human rights abuses and global diplomatic intrigues. The raids against the ABC and Smethurst occurred a month after the Trump administration issued a superseding indictment against Assange, including 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act, punishable by 175 years imprisonment. The indictment was based on the work of an FBI “counter-espionage squad.”

In any event, Kershaw’s statements demonstrate that the drive to war is inevitably accompanied by an onslaught against democratic rights. Like their counterparts in the US, the Australian ruling elite is seeking to divert social tensions outwards, with increasing aggression against Beijing, and a witch hunt against “foreign interference” that is creating the conditions for a far broader assault on social and political opposition from the working class.

Politics with the pandemic and a vaccine

Farooque Chowdhury

Toll the current coronavirus pandemic has already claimed hasn’t desisted imperialism and its media to indulge with politics of pandemic and a vaccine – the Sputnik V. The vaccine is “criminal” as it’s Moscow-made.

The global toll, according to the Johns Hopkins University, has crossed a grim line a few days ago: More than a million – a 10-months toll in at least 188 countries. The infection-figure is more than 33 million.

“So many people have lost so many people and haven’t had the chance to say goodbye. Many people who died, died alone. It’s a terribly difficult and lonely death,” said Margaret Harris, the World Health Organization (WHO) spokesperson. She described the death toll as “a very sad milestone.”

A WHO official has recently warned: The death toll may cross two million by the time vaccines are widely available.

An International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) statement from Geneva identified the situation as “one of the largest humanitarian catastrophes in recent times.” Jagan Chapagain, secretary general of the IFRC said: “A million deaths represent 1 million individual tragedies and countless heartbreaks. They represent many, many thousands of orphans, of widows, of holes in families and community fabrics that will never be filled. They also represent countless health care workers and frontline responders, including many Red Cross and Red Crescent volunteers and staff, who have lost their lives.”

In this death-march, who are the front-runners? The capitalist countries, it is. And, among these brethren, the Capitan – the Empire – is at the extreme front.

With near to 7.1 million infections and more than 200,000 deaths, the US is home to the world’s highest case and fatality numbers. India with over six million cases follows the world leader of mishandling the pandemic, and, then, goes down the rightist Bolsonaro-led Brazil with more than 142,000 deaths. France and the UK, two major capitalist economies, aren’t backbenchers. Rather, the two sit at the front with their highest-ever daily total cases.

The actual figure of the global death toll is much higher. The arguments for a higher figure are: (1) all information is not reaching the authorities; and (2) methodologies used for counting the toll. Methodologies as well as benchmarks vary from country to country. Moreover, there’s the story of hide-facts-and-have-a-happy-face.

Still, what about the toll? What about the main responsibility of the toll?

There’re ethical, moral, and above all, political responsibilities. The political leadership at global level has to take the responsibility of whatever has happened in facing the pandemic.

The question of responsibility rests more on the system than on individuals. Political leadership in countries acted in most irresponsible possible way. In countries, it acted in most indifferent possible way. It immersed in sectarian pit in countries. Political leadership in countries began politics of election with the pandemic. Political leadership in countries began mobilizing their rightist adherents, many were armed and with violent mood, to strengthen rightist politics. And, in countries, political leadership acted promptly, acted in a responsible manner, acted effectively.

These are two stories of two political approaches. One, with business interests that trades the pandemic for profit; and, the other, with people’s interests – a fight for life.

The first one committed mass murder, murder at mass level, while the other, successfully strove to save souls.

Thus, the pandemic-crisis is a political story of the 21st Century – political facts of irresponsibility and responsibility to respective electorates, respective taxpayers.

It’s story of political system. It’s a story of non-accountability and accountability to peoples in countries. The pandemic, thus, has appeared as the biggest political story in present time.

Almost immediately after the outbreak of the pandemic, the mainstream media (MSM) blamed Wuhan, a city in China, the city’s wet market. Then, the MSM-priests began blaming the political leadership in China.

The “truth”-preachers – the MSM – claimed, after their first barrage of “discoveries” regarding Wuhan and the Chinese political leadership was proved baseless, the Russian and Chinese scientists “stole” formula of a vaccine the imperialist masters were progressing with.

The “theft-story” was concocted as reports began emerging: The Russian and the Chinese scientists were making significant advances in their research for an effective vaccine to fight the virus novel in nature.

Then, the MSM marketed another story: From Moscow, with the Vaccine Untouchable. Their claim: The Moscow-made vaccine – Sputnik V – has not gone through required trials. So, according to the MSM-standard, it’s “untouchable”.

But, is the claim logical, based on facts? That’s to be seen.

A study report prepared by the developers of the Sputnik V has been published in The Lancet, a respected British journal (“Safety and immunogenicity of an rAd26 and rAd5 vector-based heterologous prime-boost COVID-19 vaccine in two formulations: two open, non-randomised phase 1/2 studies from Russia”, vol. 396, issue 10255, September 26, 2020). The study states that the Sputnik V is “is safe, well tolerated, and induces strong humoral and cellular immune responses in 100% of healthy participants. All reported adverse events were mostly mild. The most common systemic and local reactions were pain at the injection site, hyperthermia (body temperature 37–38°C), headache, asthenia, and muscle and joint pain, which are typical for vaccines based on recombinant viral vectors. No serious adverse events were reported during the study.”

Then, 5,000 Russian volunteers were administered with the vaccine, and they showed no serious side effects. The volunteers included high-risk groups including the elderly.

Now, 40,000 Moscow-citizens will be administered with the vaccine. There’s no doubt that all the volunteers will be closely monitored.

The question: How the MSM begins a propaganda blitz against a vaccine before getting final trial results? Have it started similar propaganda war against other vaccines being developed and at different trial stages in the countries it considers friendly? Now-a-days, the MSM’s credibility is always questioned by citizens aware of its past “great” work including the Iraq War and North Korean leader Kim’s “death” news.

Actually, the Covid-19 vaccine is a market of billions of dollar. Shares of a few companies investing in Covid-19 vaccine surged for some time. A few companies experienced mergers. Moves are afoot keeping in the future market. The MSM propaganda-blitz against the Sputnik V is not isolated from that market venture.

How many reports the MSM carried about Putin’s proposal related to the coronavirus pandemic? The Russian leader proposed at the UN General Assembly’s 75th session: In this Covid-period, global trade needs to be freed from illegitimate sanctions.

The story of sanction, virtually a monopoly mechanism of the Empire, is long. Cuba is the economic and financial war’s longest-ever victim. It’s followed by Venezuela. There’re other victims also. The war hurts all the victim-countries’ pandemic-fighting capability.

How many times do the MSM report this aspect? So, the proposal by Putin mostly went unreported.

The Russian leader proposed Green Corridor – areas free from sanctions and trade wars for supply of essentials including food, medicines, personal protective equipment, the items immediately required to fight the pandemic.

The pandemic is taking its toll not only in terms of deaths. There’s contraction in economies. Business closures, hunger, unemployment, lost of shelter are now regular news. Now, incidents of increasing food lines, decreasing number of food donors, and the world’s biggest-ever renters’ strike in the Empire are well known to media audience. Reports from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Asian Development Bank, International Labor Organization, among many others, voice the related facts. It’s millions and billions, human beings and money. Yet, a full account of the toll isn’t possible. Putin said the same: Experts are yet to assess fully the scale of the socio-economic shock associated with the pandemic.

But, the world-people find, as Putin mentioned in his speech, “lack of humanity”, “deficit of humanity” in this pandemic period.

On the other hand, there’s the Cuba-medical-solidarity-story: Hundreds of Cuban medical professionals reached countries to fight the pandemic. Russia sent its medical professionals and medical aid to countries including Italy, one of the worst hit countries. Putin, in his speech, mentioned this fact: Solidarity of doctors and volunteers across borders, disinterestedly helped each other.

But, these stories of solidarity in fighting the pandemic are least reported by the MSM. It’s part of the politics with the pandemic at the global level.

The pandemic demands meaningful and effective actions from the humanity. It’s, as the IFRC leader said, not a quick-fix job. Do the MSM and its masters pay heed to this fact?

Therefore, the Putin-proposal goes unheard, the media-blitz against the Sputnik V, the Cuba-Venezuela-sanctions’ cruel character goes unreported, the political responsibility of the mass murder in countries goes unidentified; and these actions are taken as part of the mainstream politics at global level.

Conversions and Anti Christian Violence in India

Ram Puniyani

Mr. Satyapal Singh, the BJP MP, while speaking in Lok Sabha on amendments to FCRA went on to support the forthcoming restrictions to the foreign contributions. While making his arguments, to buttress his point, he put forward the case of Pastor Graham Stewart Stains. In the process he poured venom on the late Pastor by saying that the Pastor had raped 30 Tribal women and was involved in the work of conversion to Christianity with the help of funds from abroad!

This blatant lie should have been countered in the Parliament. The brutal murder of Pastor Stains was described by the then President of India, Dr. K.R. Narayanan by saying “it belonged to the world’s inventory of black deeds”. The pastor, who came from Australia to work among the Leprosy patients in Orissa, was sleeping in an open jeep in the village on the night of 22-23 January 1999. He was working in Keonjhar, Manoharpur, in Orissa. On that fateful night he was burnt alive with his two minor sons, Timothy and Philip. The Whole Country was aghast with the brutal nature of the crime. The brutality was committed by Rajendra Singh Pal aka Dara Singh, a worker of Bajrang Dal.

Mr. Advani was the home minister that time. He stated that Bajrang Dal has nothing to do with this act; he knows this organization too well. As the immediate measure he sent three member ministerial team, Murli Manohar Joshi, Navin Patnayak and George Fernandez to Orissa. In a single day the team concluded that this grave crime is an international conspiracy to destabilize the ruling NDA government. Then Wadhava Commission was appointed. The commission concluded that Dara Singh, who was working with Bajrang Dal with the help of organizations like Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, VHP etc. propagated that Pastor is doing the work of conversion and is a threat to Hinduism. He did mobilize people, poured Kerosene on the vehicle and put fire.

The Commission in its report further stated that Pastor had not been doing the work of conversion; he was involved in serving the leprosy patients. Dara Singh was awarded death penalty by Courts, which was later reduced to life imprisonment; currently he is undergoing the jail sentence. What is remarkable is that as per the report there was no substantial increase in the percentage of Christians in the area. The report states, “Keonjar district had a total population of 15.30 lakh. Out of them, 14.93 lakh were Hindus. Christians, mostly tribal’s, were 4,707. According to the 1991 census, there were already 4,112 Christians in the district. Thus, there was an increase of only 595 in the Christian population.” One can say that this is not due to conversion but is due to the natural biological process. Propaganda of Dara Singh and the organizations was purely guided by their political agenda.

The propaganda that Christian missionaries have been converting is the dominant social perception all around, and it is the ground for ‘Hatred against the Christians’, who have been facing the violence from last over two decades. We witnessed violence against Christians, mainly in Adivasi areas, Dangs, Jhabua, and large parts of Orissa. After this gruesome murder, there was regular violence against Christian community, the peak of which was seen in the Kandhamal violence (August 2008) in which nearly hundred Christians were killed, close to four hundred women raped and many Churches attacked and destroyed.

That has not been the end. The violence against this community is going on in a regular manner. It is mostly in remote areas, in a scattered manner and many a times below radar. The prayer meetings are attacked and missionaries distributing religious literature are apprehended. The organization ‘Persecution Relief’, in its recent report points out, “Hate crimes against Christians in India have risen by an alarming 40.87 percent…,That increase came despite a complete nationwide lockdown that lasted three months to stem the spread of Covid-19 infections.”

While the attacks on Muslim minority has been glaring, those against Christians though are scattered and low intensity, the murder of Pastor Stains and Kandhamal violence stand out. The core ideology behind this violence which has been spread is that Islam and Christianity are ‘foreign religions’ and are a threat to Hinduism. This is so much in contrast to what Indian Nationalists like Gandhi and Nehru who regarded that religion is no basis of Nationality; Christianity is as much a religion of this land as any other.

As a matter of fact as per one version Christianity entered this land in AD 52, With St Thomas setting up Church in Malabar area. Since close to last over 19 Centuries many missionaries have been coming and working in the remote areas, setting up health and education facilities in particular. They have also set up the schools and colleges, and hospitals in urban areas, which are known for their good standards, and people in these areas do vie to avail of these facilities with gay abandon.

Today the percentage of Christians, as per census figures is 2.30 (2011 census), this is again a climb down from 1971 when it was 2.60 %. Last six decades it has shown a constant decline, 2.60 (1971), 2.44 (1981) 2.34 (1991), 2.30 (2001) and 2.30 again in 2011. The organizations like Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, VHP and Bajrang dal are active more in remote places to spread the misconception of the conversion. This is an assault on ‘Freedom of Religion’ and the repressive laws against freedom of religion have been coming up in state after state. While Indian Constitution stands for individual’s right to practice and preach one’s religion, the anti Christian violence on the pretext of religion is becoming endemic as sectarianism is growing in a frightening manner.

Recently 25th August, it was 12 years since kandhamal Violence had shaken the country. The need is to restore peace, amity and harmony. By speaking unsubstantiated charges Mr. Satyapal Singh has just gone on to add to the anti Christian propaganda, which dents our values of Fraternity.

Can India sustain a safe sanitary culture?

K. Rajasekharan Nayar

People wear masks and use handwash to keep the virus away as a result of  fear of infection. One may also find this new behaviour as a formality among many persons and as a result of legalities.  And this is happening in a society which is least concerned about sanitary practices. In this new sanitary culture, the prominent internalised attitude could be about the other but about oneself.  This is compatible with the pre-existing health culture which makes people spit wherever possible and that also least concerned about the other. This is also happening in a culture in which open defecation and open urination are rampant. Plastics and other wastes are carelessly thrown into roadsides.  But these behavioural indiscretions occur largely as a result of lack of resources and unaffordability of sanitary facilities at home.

At the international level, in many low income and middle income countries, improved access to the safest drinking water or sanitation facilities since 2000 was observed between 2000 and 2017. However, many people  continued to not have access to such facilities especially in sub-Sharan African countries (Local Burden of Disease WaSH Collaborators, 2020). The last round of Demographic and Health Survey in India (National Family Health Survey, 2015-16), gives some indication as to which groups have at least the means to practice hand washing which is one of the most recognized, and irrefutable preventive measures to avoid the infection. NFHS data show that the upper castes have the luxury of soap and water in close to three-fourth of their households, while more than 60% of the scheduled tribes and half of the scheduled castes do not have soap and water facilities. Every one-in-five households of schedules tribes did not even have water, soap, or other cleansing agents. This is almost four times more than the proportion among higher castes. One in every five households in the lowest wealth quintile lacked water, soap, and other cleansing agents. The upper castes are predominantly rich (57% of the upper castes are in the richest two quintiles) while 70% scheduled tribes and 50% of scheduled castes belong to the lowest two quintiles. The socio-economic underpinnings of sanitary facilities is evident and it is therefore not always possible to highlight behavioural factors especially for sanitary practices as availability of facilities and their sustainability also determine such practices.

The recent initiatives at the national level in India known as clean India campaign or Swatch Bharat Mission (SBM) could have possibly made some changes. According to a recent study covering key stockholders in the mission, it is found that there are some changes in the administrative culture of slowness and creating bottlenecks which is characteristic of India’s bureaucracy (Curtis, 2019).  Open defecation is a serious problem in India and the focus of SBM is to eradicate this behaviour. The Swatch Bharat website shows that open defecation has been eradicated and household toilet coverage has increased from 38.7% in 2014 to about 100% in 2019. The success is attributed to use of modern technology, effective leadership and employee rewards.

The coverage of sanitary latrines has been made universal and all villages in India have been declared Open Defecation Free (ODF) on 2 October, 2019. However, this needs further empirical support as informal observations in many North Indian states present a contrary view. The perennial problems in many villages in India are non-availability of water and other ecological constraints which make the use of sanitary latrines an unpleasant experience. Evidently, infrastructural provision is not the only solution but sustainability is equally important.

One illustration of this experience despite the availability of water and personnel assistance is with respect to public toilets. For instance, Kerala which has better water availability, visiting a public toilet located in a number of public institutions such as Bus Stations, Railway Stations, Hotels and Offices apart from specific public comfort stations available in cities and towns is indeed an unpleasant experience.

Preliminary exploratory investigations as part of a research project show that the quality of such facilities is extremely poor and the maintenance is shoddy although some of these facilities are inaugurated with much fanfare. There may be number of factors responsible for the poor state of such facilities; some of them being the behavioural patterns of the people who use them and also lack of maintenance by the persons who manage such facilities.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call for universal sanitation access and ending open defecation by 2030. Shared toilet models are not currently an acceptable form of safely managed sanitation and an alternative approach was tried in the country. However, given the complexity of sanitary behaviour of the population, it is extremely important to understand the multi-disciplinary dimensions of toilets as well as general sanitation in India. Constant monitoring and support to the population is essential than just provision to sustain the ‘claims of coverage’.