International Energy Agency report underscores inadequacy of US government response to climate change

Ronan Coddington

The International Energy Agency (IEA), a Paris-based affiliate of the Organisation for Economic Co-ordination and Development (OECD), has released a special report outlining various pathways to ensure a world with a net zero carbon emissions rate by 2050.

The report, which is titled Net Zero by 2050, states that in order to achieve a carbon neutral world by that year producers will need to immediately stop any new fossil fuel production. This is only one of 400 “milestones” along the road to 2050, and its implausibility only underscores the difficulties of combining a rational, science-based response to the danger of climate change with the maintenance of global capitalism, driven by private profits and the interests of rival nation-states.

The report, issued May 17, is billed as “the world’s first comprehensive study of how to transition to a net zero energy system by 2050.” It promises to do so “while ensuring stable and affordable energy supplies, providing universal energy access, and enabling robust economic growth,” according to its press release.

International Energy Agency building (iea.org)

Countries will need to increase solar and wind production by roughly 400 percent more than the current rate. This would occur with a phasing out of coal and gas plants, in favor of solar and nuclear plants, as well as the retrofitting of coal and gas plants with carbon capture devices, where the carbon will later be injected underground. According to the special report, this transition must finalize before 2040. As it stands, roughly 80 percent of the world’s energy grids are powered by fossil fuels.

By 2040, a significant amount of air travel would have to be done with renewable fuels like hydrogen. By 2030, the majority of cars sold would need to be electric. By 2035 most vehicles involved in the transportation of goods would also need to make this transition.

The pathways described by the IEA also include enabling access to clean electricity and cooking to everyone in the world and making the world’s electric grid completely carbon neutral by 2040. “The sheer magnitude of changes needed to get to net zero emissions by 2050 is still not fully understood by many governments and investors,” stated IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol.

The agency, which functions as an advisor for numerous national governments, stated: “[c]limate pledges by governments to date—even if fully achieved—would fall well short of what is required” to achieve these goals. The report calls for “a historic surge in clean energy investment that creates millions of new jobs and lifts global economic growth.” The agency’s underlying assumption is that this can be done under capitalism.

The pathways and benchmarks provided by the IEA are based upon goals set by the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, a nonbinding pact which most leading world governments have signed onto. In addition to being unenforceable, the Paris Accord presumes that rival capitalist nation-states will put aside their differences for the sake of the environment.

A number of alternative approaches suggested by the IEA are problematic in their own right. Vast quantities of lithium are needed for the manufacturing of electric vehicles and for nearly every form of renewable energy. Without investment in proper recycling infrastructure, lithium extraction is itself an extremely damaging process to the surrounding environment.

Additionally, the vaunted target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is also worthy of criticism. Keeping temperature rises within this limit fails to take into account various climate feedback loops that could push the global temperature to increase past that point even if net carbon emissions cease.

Typifying such inadequate responses was US President Joe Biden’s climate initiative announced on international Earth Day in April. The president unveiled his plan at a climate summit at the White House that was attended by numerous world leaders. A fact sheet presented by the White House declared that it has set “ambitious goals,” which put “the United States on an irreversible path to a net-zero economy by 2050.” Biden revealed that the United States would cut carbon emissions in half by 50 percent by 2030.

The emissions the Biden administration has pledged to cut in half are based on levels from 2005, a year with especially high pollution. Since 2005, the US has achieved a 14-15 percent decrease in overall emissions. This means that Biden, who will be long gone by 2050, can take credit for decreases that happened before he was even elected.

While the IEA’s report called for an immediate stop to any new fossil fuel production within the US, the Biden administration has, within its first few days of power, issued 31 drilling permits on federal land. The Biden administration has also approved 22 offshore drilling permits to companies, such as Shell and British Petroleum.

Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) recently contested a lawsuit brought forth by environmental groups to stop a Trump-approved oil extraction operation in northern Alaska. The project, dubbed “Willow,” is expected to extract roughly 100,000 barrels of oil a day for the next 30 years.

Leaving aside the political improbability of the US actually following the path outlined in Biden’s plan, there is a more fundamental issue: If the world as a whole is to reach net-zero emissions, this cannot be a matter of each of more than 200 countries separately reaching that goal. For many of the poorest countries, that would be a recipe for mass starvation. To overcome poverty and malnutrition, their energy consumption must grow.

A global solution to the climate change crisis thus necessarily requires global economic planning, which is incompatible with both the nation-state system and the profit interests of nationally based corporations and banks.

The New York Times, the mouthpiece of the American ruling class, has sought to provide apologetics for the Biden administration. An article last month, headlined “Biden’s Fossil Fuel Moves Clash With Pledges on Climate Change,” sought to explain away the administration’s hypocritical moves, saying: “Biden is trying to avoid alienating a handful of moderate Republicans and Democrats from oil, gas and coal states who will decide the fate of his legislative agenda in Congress.”

In fact, the paralysis of the entire capitalist class in the face of the climate crisis is rooted not in this or that pragmatic maneuver but in the profit system itself. And in addition to all rational and scientific responses being contingent upon the profitability of various energy conglomerates, the ruling class is also seeking to gain ground against its various geopolitical rivals.

This is demonstrated by the White House fact sheet’s declaration that the new climate initiative will “Center the Climate Crisis in U.S. Foreign Policy and National Security Considerations.”

Biden has named former Obama Secretary of State John Kerry as his climate envoy. As the World Socialist Web Site noted in January, this appointment, as with the rest of Biden’s agenda, is “driven, first and foremost, by the geopolitical needs of American imperialism.” This related particularly to Washington’s “predatory aims for the subjugation of China and Russia, which Washington regards as its two biggest military and security rivals,” the WSWS explained.

From the recent unveiling of Biden’s massive military budget proposal, which focuses on the US’s mounting confrontation with China, as well as the administration’s efforts to blame the latter for COVID-19, to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s abandonment of public health as the pandemic continues, the US capitalist class has made clear its intent to pursue profit at the cost of human life.

Election in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany reveals bankruptcy of Left Party and Social Democrats

Peter Schwarz

Sunday’s state election in Saxony-Anhalt exposed the bankruptcy of the parties calling themselves “left-wing.” The Left Party, Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Greens together received only a quarter of the votes. In a deindustrialised state characterized by high levels of emigration and unemployment and low living standards, these parties left the field open to the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Reiner Haseloff,right, Minister President of Saxony-Anhalt, receives flowers from Armin Laschet, CDU Federal Chairman and Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia, before the start of the CDU Federal Executive Committee meeting in Berlin, Germany, June 7,2021. The top bodies are discussing the results after the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt. (Michael Kappeler via AP, Pool)

The CDU emerged as the clear winner, with 37.1 percent of the party-list votes and 40 out of 41 direct parliamentary mandates. It gained 7.4 points and took back from the AfD all 15 direct mandates the latter had won in 2016. Voter turnout was almost the same as five years ago, just over 60 percent.

The AfD lost 3.5 points but remains the second strongest party, having won 20.8 percent of the vote. Although it is dominated by the völkisch-nationalist “Flügel” (“wing”) and repeatedly makes a name for itself with Nazi slogans, one in five voters cast their ballots for this extreme right-wing organization. Whereas five years ago, the AfD had mainly campaigned on the basis of anti-refugee propaganda, this time, it also took up issues such as pensions and health and propagated the slogans of the coronavirus deniers.

The media and pollsters tried to conjure up a better result for the AfD, predicting a neck-and-neck race between it and the CDU. On election day the Bild am Sonntag newspaper ran the headline “Germany faces an earthquake on Sunday,” claiming that the CDU was only one point ahead of the AfD.

The CDU’s clear election victory is being attributed above all to Minister-President Reiner Haseloff. He managed the feat of adopting the AfD’s policies to a large extent, and—as in the case of preventing higher broadcasting charges to be paid by most citizens—openly cooperating with them, while at the same time giving assurances that there would never be a government coalition with the AfD.

Many voters apparently voted for the CDU to prevent the AfD, which according to polls is rejected by an overwhelming majority, from joining the government. The Left Party lost 10 percent and the SPD lost 18 percent of its voters to the CDU.

These two parties bear primary responsibility for the rise of the far right. Through their decades-long support for social cuts and deindustrialisation at the federal and state levels, they have driven desperate elements into the arms of the far-right demagogues.

In the 1990s, the SPD was the strongest party in Saxony-Anhalt. In 1998 it achieved its best election result, winning 35.9 percent of the vote. From 1994 to 2002, Prime Minister Reinhard Höppner led an SPD minority government supported by the Left Party’s predecessor, the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). Under this so-called “Magdeburg Model,” the PDS participated in a state government for the first time.

The result was a social disaster. After eight years of the Magdeburg Model, the state had the highest unemployment rate in the country, 21.4 percent. Hardly anything remained of one of Germany’s largest industrial areas. Large chemical plants in Bitterfeld, Halle and Leuna, mechanical engineering facilities in Magdeburg and copper mines in Mansfelder Land were shuttered. Youth and leisure facilities, sports facilities and educational institutions were also closed down en masse and budgets for day cares, kindergartens and afterschool care were cut by a third. Several thousand educator positions were eliminated.

In 2002, the SPD was voted out of office. It lost almost two-thirds of its vote and, with a drastic decline in voter turnout, only got 20 percent of the ballots. Now, with just 8.4 percent of the vote, it has achieved the worst result in its history.

The PDS/Left Party managed to hold on for a few more years. In 2006, it even became the second strongest party in Saxony-Anhalt with 24.1 percent of the vote. But it has also been discredited by its anti-working class policies in numerous municipalities and state governments. Winning just 11 percent of the vote, it has now had its worst election result since the federal state was founded following German reunification in 1990.

The Greens were also unable to meet the expectations placed on them before the election. Although they increased their share of the vote by 0.8 percent, with just 5.9 percent of the total they remained far behind forecasts.

The Left Party, SPD and Greens did best in affluent urban areas where there was above average turnout, while they found little support in poorer and rural areas.

The result in Halle, next to Magdeburg, the largest city in the state with 240,000 inhabitants each, is typical. In constituency III, home to some of the most expensive residential areas, turnout was 72.6 percent. The Greens achieved 23.6, the Left Party 14.3, the SPD 9.3 and the AfD 9.1 percent of the vote. In constituency I, where conditions are poorer, only 52.4 percent went to the polls. The AfD won 22.3, the Left Party 12.7, the SPD 8.1 and the Greens 6.2 percent.

The high share of votes for “other” parties, which had no chance of clearing the 5 percent hurdle needed to enter the state legislature, demonstrates that people are searching for alternatives. Collectively these organizations scored a total of 10.4 percent of the vote, 3.7 percent more than five years ago. Among first-time voters aged 18 to 24, as many as 21 percent voted for them.

These parties reflect the general confusion. Among them there are three animal rights parties, which together won 2.5 percent, Free Voters (3.1), Pirate Party (0.4), the satirical group Die Partei (0.7) and right-wing extremists. While the German National Party (NPD) vote fell from 1.9 to 0.3 percent, the coronavirus denier party DieBasis (theBase) gained 1.5 percent.

The Saxony-Anhalt election is regarded as a dress rehearsal for the federal election on September 26 and the state elections in Berlin, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and Thuringia happening at the same time. It reveals how urgent it is to build a political alternative that unites the working class across all borders based on a socialist programme.

Austria’s Black-Green government agitates against Muslims

Markus Salzmann

At the end of last month the Austrian government headed by the right-wing Chancellor Sebastian Kurz launched a deliberate provocation against Muslims in Austria by introducing its so-called “Islam Map.” The Kurz government, a coalition of the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) and the Greens, are trying to distract attention from their disastrous policies and mobilise far-right forces.

For an entire week at the end of May, an overview of 623 Muslim institutions in Austria could be viewed on the internet. The presentation of the “map” had previously been announced at a government press conference. The website presentation contained addresses, personal data of leading figures as well as information about the activities of Muslim institutions and associations. The presentation also included an explicit request to report observations about the listed associations to the authorities.

Integration Minister Susanne Raab (Image: BKA / CC BY-SA 2.0)

All of the organisations were listed under the label “political Islam,” regardless of whether the organisation in question had political connections and objectives or not. The publication of details of hundreds of associations, mosques and their leaders was intended to mobilise the far-right dregs of society to hound and attack Muslims.

The intended reaction was not long in coming. Immediately after the publication, right-wing extremists in Vienna sprayed graffiti on several mosques and hung up posters with the inscription “Look out! Political Islam near you.” Similar signs were also put up in St. Pölten. While this represented a clear danger for Muslims, it was the intellectual architects of the attacks, namely the authors of the map and Austrian Integration Minister Susanne Raab (ÖVP), who immediately received police protection.

There was a huge wave of criticism of the government’s right-wing campaign, and even the Council of Europe demanded the withdrawal of the map. “The map overshoots the mark and is potentially counterproductive,” the Council declared in a statement by Daniel Höltgen, the special representative for anti-Muslim intolerance and hate crimes.

Many Muslims felt stigmatised and their security threatened by the publication of their addresses and other details and the Muslim Youth of Austria (MJÖ) announced it would file a complaint against the map. Due to the “massive security risk” now facing Muslims, the association demanded the deletion of the map and intends to file a complaint with the data protection authority.

Other Muslim associations, plus representatives of churches and other organisations, also spoke out strongly against the map. The Islamic Religious Community in Austria (IGGÖ) denounced the map as a risk to the security of Muslim institutions.

The University of Vienna has distanced itself from the provocation, although several academics from the university had helped to draw up the map. The strong reactions were certainly the reason why the map was taken off the internet at the end of a week. Officially, it was claimed that alleged threats against employees of the IT provider had made it necessary to take down most of the content, although the map itself, featuring a host of Muslim sites, is still available on the internet.

At the same time, both the map’s authors and the government are sticking to the campaign. “This is not discriminating in general against Muslims,” Raab told the German newspaper Die Welt. “It is about the common fight against political Islam as a breeding ground for extremism.” For her part, Green Party integration spokesperson Faika El-Nagashi announced a “lull” and a review before the site goes back online.

The comments by both politicians make clear that they continue to fully back the content of the campaign. On Thursday, Ednan Aslan, a religious scholar at the University of Vienna, who had drawn up the map on behalf of the government-affiliated Documentation Centre for Political Islam, declared that one would not allow “Islamist threats” to disrupt the “scientific work.”

The Documentation Centre for Political Islam was set up in 2020 by the ÖVP and the Greens. It was supposedly modelled on the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance—in what is in fact a brazen insult to the victims of the Nazis. In fact, the roots of the Documentation Centre can be traced to an initiative of the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) in 2016. After the collapse of the previous ÖVP/FPÖ government, the Greens took over the role of the FPÖ and, together with Kurz, continued the former coalition’s extreme right-wing policies.

Not surprisingly the anti-Islamic campaign has received glowing praise from far right-wing and openly fascist circles. Beatrix von Storch, deputy federal spokesperson for the Alternative for Germany (AfD), regarded the initiative of the ÖVP-Green government in Vienna as a role model for Germany.

“The German Interior Minister Seehofer should take action against Islamic extremism in our country with the same verve shown by the Kurz government in taking action against Islamism in Austria,” the far-right politician demanded. The CDU interior politician, Hans-Jürgen Irmer, who is known for his xenophobic utterances, also demanded such a map for Germany.

This latest provocation underlines the right-wing character of the government in Vienna. During the course of his coalition with the FPÖ, Kurz had already closed down several mosques and expelled dozens of imams. Lacking any legal basis, most of the mosques were reopened following court rulings. The headscarf ban in Austrian schools, introduced in 2019, was also overturned by the Constitutional Court one year later. Again, this fundamental attack on religious freedom and freedom of expression was aimed, like the publication of the map, at whipping up anti-Islamic and xenophobic sentiments.

From the start of its participation in the Austrian government, the Green Party, which likes to portray itself as a cosmopolitan and liberal party, agreed with these xenophobic policies and have gone even further.

One of the first announcements of the ÖVP-Green government was an action plan against religiously-motivated political extremism. Criminal law was to be adapted to “current challenges.” These “challenges” did not refer to the growing incidents of far-right terror, but rather the “specification and addition of criminal offences to effectively combat religiously motivated political extremism (political Islam).”

The Islam Act passed in 2015 was strengthened by the ÖVP and the Greens this year. The Act laid down regulations on the financing of Islamic organisations and institutions and associated penalties for non compliance. The aim is to facilitate the closure of mosques and the expulsion of imams. The Greens also agreed to include a ban on headscarves in the coalition agreement.

Last week, the Austrian parliament’s interior committee confirmed the first part of new anti-terror legislation adopted by the government. A broad majority from all parties represented in the ruling National Council voted for a tightening up of the country’s citizenship law. According to this law, persons convicted under one of the terror paragraphs of the penal code can in future have their citizenship revoked, provided they have another citizenship. The law is clearly directed against immigrants, mainly from Muslim countries.

With this right-wing course, the government in Vienna is also reacting to current scandals. The Public Prosecutor’s Office for Economic Affairs and Corruption in Vienna accuses Kurz of giving false testimony to the official committee investigating the Ibiza affair. According to a recent opinion poll published by the news magazine Profil, 47 percent are now in favour of Kurz’s resignation.

Above all, however, the undemocratic policies of Kurz and the Greens are directed against the entire population. The COVID-19 pandemic and the government’s unscrupulous policies have massively aggravated the social situation in the country. The government’s policy of opening up the economy despite the continued spread of the coronavirus has cost the lives of more than 10,600 people. Unemployment also rose to record levels in 2020.

At the same time, the government’s plans to slash benefits for the unemployed in order to force them back to work in a blatant attack on basic democratic rights. The ÖVP and the Chamber of Commerce are currently planning a legislative initiative that will require the long-term unemployed to take work anywhere in the country in future. In the process, unemployment benefits are to be reduced from 55 to 40 percent of former wage levels.

Mexico’s ruling Morena party suffers losses in midterm elections

Don Knowland

Mid-term elections held yesterday for the Chamber of Deputies of the Mexican Congress and 15 of 32 state governorships, along with the mayoral posts (alcaldías) of the 16 boroughs (delegaciones) of Mexico City, which holds a federal entity status akin to the states.

The preliminary results showed significant losses for the ruling party Morena (National Regeneration Movement) and its head, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (popularly known as AMLO), who was elected in a landslide in 2018.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (Source: Wikipedia Commons)

Three hundred of the 500 congressional seats were up for direct election of candidates, the remaining 200 being allocated proportionally based on those results. Morena is projected to win about 190 seats in the lower house, a loss of about 60 seats.

Morena maintains a majority of upwards of 280 seats, in combination with its “Together We Make History” allies, the pseudo-left Labor Party (PT, Partido de Trabajo), the increasingly right-wing Ecological Green Party (PVEM), which picked up around 30 seats and the socially conservative Solidarity Encounter Party (PES), which will at most win a handful of seats.

However, the ruling party has lost its two-thirds supermajority that would empower it to implement changes to the Mexican Constitution without the support of additional parties. AMLO has said he wants to change the constitutional reform opening up the energy sector to private and foreign companies that was adopted at the outset of the term of the prior corrupt president, Enrique Peña Nieto.

That energy program was pushed through by the three parties that now make up the “right-left” Va por Mexico (Go for Mexico) electoral coalition consisting of the right-wing National Action Party (PAN), the previously governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) of Peña Nieto, and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), the supposed “left” part of the coalition. They picked up the bulk of the seats that Morena lost.

Once the third-strongest party after the PRI and PAN, the PRD, “social democratic” in name only, will gain just over a dozen seats, having pursued a trajectory which in fact is ever more to the right.

Morena did considerably better in the state elections for governors. It won 10 or 11 of the 15 seats up for grabs, in addition to the one it previously held. That will extend its power over a number of states, several largely rural—Baja California, Baja California Sur, Colima, Guerrero, Michoacán, Nayarit, Sinaloa, Sonora, Tlaxcala, Zacatecas, and possibly oil-rich Campeche, while an allied PT/PVEM candidate will likely win in San Luis Potosí.

Morena’s biggest defeat was in Mexico City, a stronghold of parties aligned with AMLO since the late 1990s. AMLO was once mayor, and the current mayor is Claudia Sheinbaum, a leading contender to succeed him as Morena’s next presidential candidate in 2024. Morena had held 11 of the 16 alcaldías, but appeared likely to win only six or seven of them.

COVID-19 hit especially hard in the city, and discontent simmered over the collapse of an elevated metro line in May, killing 26 riders and injuring many more. AMLO’s current Foreign Minister Marcel Ebrard was mayor when this train was built. The criminal negligence and corruption involved was clear for all to see.

Monday morning, AMLO still claimed to be “happy, happy, happy” with the results of the lower house election, and he emphasized Morena’s gains in the governors’ races. He also claimed that the vote showed the Mexican people supported his call for a “fourth transformation” of Mexico, as epoch-making as independence from Spain, late 19th-century bourgeois liberal reforms and the Mexican Revolution a century ago.

AMLO continues to claim that he has used the first half of his six-year term to lay the foundations for his fourth transformation, and will get down to reforms “in earnest” in the next three years of his term in office. He has maintained a favorability rating of upwards of 60 percent, and Morena yesterday had more than double the votes in the lower house elections than the next closest party, the PAN.

But his alleged accomplishments have amounted to nothing and class tensions in Mexico are boiling over.

Over 56 percent of the working population continues to work in the informal sector and lacks social security. This is a proportion that has grown over time and will not disappear with AMLO’s promised “fourth transformation.” Rather, it is the product of a system unable to sustain Mexico’s population.

In the early 1990s, former PRI President Carlos Salinas de Gortari signed the Free Trade Agreement with the United States and Canada, privatized the economy, including the banks, and opened the country to market forces, that is to increased exploitation by US and European imperialism. His claim was that the economy would grow and ultimately bring prosperity to all.

That never happened. Mexico’s growth since has averaged a mere 2.2 percent annually. Poverty only grew. The 10 richest people in Mexico accumulated the same wealth as the poorest 50 percent of the country, according to a 2018 report by Oxfam, and that gap has only been exacerbated under AMLO.

Corruption became endemic, an issue that AMLO claimed he would take head on. The government’s “war” on the drug cartels, which ended up favoring certain cartels over others, led to many thousands killed or disappeared. Under AMLO murder rates remain at near record highs.

López Obrador has elevated the political influence and budget of the Mexican military, which has a long record of corruption, extrajudicial killings of workers and other abuses. This is part of a turn of the Mexican oligarchy toward authoritarian forms of rule anticipating the further discrediting of the entire political establishment. The Morena administration even created a new National Guard to perpetuate the military’s internal deployment and used it increasingly to harass striking workers.

The latest elections proved the bloodiest in modern Mexican history. Over 800 candidates were subjected to violence, and 36 were murdered.

While AMLO did increase the minimum wage slightly, and makes murky claims to have established billions of dollars of direct social transfers to underprivileged groups, there is very little to show for it. In truth his government’s financial policy has been along neoliberal lines: aversion to indebtedness, control of inflation, austerity and balance in public spending and rejection of any expropriation of the private sector.

The policies of AMLO and his government as to the COVID-19 pandemic have been nothing short of criminal. Factories were to remain open, and especially those of big US companies; profits could not be impaired. The Morena government refused to expand fiscal spending to counteract the impact of COVID-19 on employment, forcing many to work in dangerous conditions.

Health measures and spending were utterly inadequate. Vaccinations have proceeded at an appallingly slow pace.

The result has been at least a half million excess deaths. And by all estimates, an additional 10 million were pushed into poverty.

A guest column by a Mexican economist on the Spanish web page of the New York Times on Sunday recognized that Mexico had long since become two countries, one composed of a small sliver of the rich, and the other of masses of poor people.

Emphasizing that López Obrador “is a less radical politician than he is accused of being and more responsible for public affairs than he is given credit for,” the column went on to argue:

This disparity threatens the very social fabric of the nation. For ethical reasons but also for political prudence, it is urgent to avert the risks of social instability that derive from the difficult coexistence of these two Mexicos. And given that the opposition has so far been unable to offer an alternative to this problem, I am convinced that López Obrador is the only viable option to avoid the despair of the majorities and what it could entail.

In other words, this despair could easily lead to a popular rebellion. This expresses the true function of López Obrador and his political program: to promote the deception that it can meet the needs of the vast majority of the population.

AMLO is nothing more than a fake left representative of the class interests of a criminal Mexican bourgeoisie, and is fully complicit in its crimes.

German trade unions support destruction of jobs and worksite closures at Lufthansa Technik

Marianne Arens

Hundreds of Lufthansa workers protested on Wednesday, June 2, against planned worksite closures and partial shutdowns at the German airline’s line maintenance operations. Lufthansa Technik GmbH, a subsidiary controlled 100 percent by Lufthansa, plans to close its worksites in Bremen, Düsseldorf, Hannover, and Leipzig, while the closure of sites in Hamburg and Frankfurt is taking place in stages. Out of a total of 1,350 jobs, 780 are at immediate risk. Around 180 workers protested in Frankfurt and about 230 in Hamburg against the airline’s job-cutting plan.

Lufthansa airplane (Flickr)

The layoffs at the Lufthansa Technik sites are part of the massive restructuring plan being implemented by Lufthansa, using the coronavirus pandemic as a pretext. In reality, the planned job cuts had long been waiting in the desk drawer of airline chief executive Karsten Spohr. A Lufthansa spokesperson confirmed this with the remark, “The air travel crisis of course makes it necessary to undertake changes, the necessity for which were already apparent prior to the crisis.” Although Lufthansa received €9 billion last year from the German government’s emergency COVID-19 bailout, the company destroyed 60,000 jobs worldwide.

The World Socialist Web Site has been warning for many months that the pandemic is not merely the product of a natural disaster. The explosive spread of the virus is the direct result of the capitalist “profits before lives” policy, which is aimed at sending workers into dangerous workplaces and their children back into school. At the same time, hundreds of billions of euros were pumped into the major corporations and banks in the name of coronavirus emergency bailouts.

The bill is now being paid by the working class in the form of layoffs, plant shutdowns, and attacks on workers’ benefits secured over decades of struggle. Lufthansa provides a prime example of this. In May 2020, its business report noted a total of 138,000 employees, while today it is officially 110,000, or 28,000 fewer. Tens of thousands of additional jobs face destruction, entire business areas will be outsourced, and collectively bargained pay rates decimated. At the company’s annual shareholder meeting on May 4, the board confirmed its intention to axe a further 10,000 full-time jobs, including compulsory redundancies. The stock market backed the plan, driving up the price of Lufthansa shares.

While a job at Lufthansa guaranteed a secure, decent-paying job once upon a time, the airline now conducts blatant wage dumping. This was underscored in a recent Report Mainz segment on the closure of Lufthansa subsidiaries GermanWings and SunExpress Deutschland. Laid-off pilots and flight attendants are attempting to be rehired by the newly established company EuroWings Discover, but are either being turned away or rehired on the basis of sweeping wage cuts and part-time contracts. Almost all new hires are temporary.

Under these conditions, it is necessary for workers to take matters into their own hands. The WSWS and Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP) propose the building of rank-and-file action committees to cooperate across company and national divisions in order to lead a struggle against these attacks and for decent-paying, secure jobs for all. To this end, the International Committee of the Fourth International, to which the SGP belongs, has founded the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees. Its goal is to develop a conscious international movement of the working class.

This requires above all a break with the nationalist and essentially anti-worker orientation of the trade unions. All of the crisis contracts agreed at Lufthansa over the past year to impose layoffs, shutdowns, and wage cuts were signed by the trade unions active at the company. These include Verdi, VC (Cockpit Association), and UFO (Independent Organisation of Flight Attendants). They all agreed last year to income reductions totalling €1.3 billion, including the elimination of holiday pay and Christmas bonuses for ground crew and technical workers, and a wage freeze and cancellation of all benefits until the end of 2021.

These voluntary income reductions in the billions were described by the World Socialist Web Site as “a new dimension of trade union sellouts.” The trade union leaders are not workers’ representatives, but co-managers for the company. Verdi’s Christine Behele is also deputy chair of Lufthansa’s supervisory board. The trade unions have fully embraced the capitalist business model, placing the competitiveness of Lufthansa on the world market ahead of the interests of workers and their families.

Already on April 6, 2020, the trade unions published a declaration of loyalty to the “Dear Herr Executives” of German Lufthansa, in which they explicitly declared their “support for all necessary measures to stabilise our company in these difficult times.” The IGL (Industrial Air Traffic Union) and TGL (Technical Air Travel Union) also signed this document of utter capitulation.

The rallies held last week in Frankfurt and Hamburg are part of the trade unions’ strategy of stabilising the company. On the one hand, they are aimed at concealing the fact that the union leaders have long ago accepted and signed off on the job cuts and worksite shutdowns. On the other, they serve to control the mounting anger in the workforce.

Verdi, which called for the protests, claimed to be surprised by the prospect of compulsory redundancies and accused Spohr of making “wrong business decisions.” Verdi trade union secretary Uwe Schramm made this point in a press release from Verdi in the state of Hesse. At the same time, he stoked illusions in the German federal government, claiming that it is working “at all levels during the current coronavirus crisis for the retention of Lufthansa and its jobs.”

Workers must interpret this as a declaration of hostility to their interests. The reality is that the federal Grand Coalition government has nothing but contempt for the interests of workers. Its ruthless “profits before lives” policy has produced close to 90,000 coronavirus deaths in Germany alone. The attacks at Lufthansa are also being encouraged by the government. The government even previously urged that job cuts be imposed at an even faster pace.

The unions support this course and do everything in their power to pit workers at different plants, companies, and subcontractors against each other, and divide them. At one of the airports, Verdi is bitterly complaining about the fact that Lufthansa has outsourced the Line Maintenance division for EuroWings at its main site in Düsseldorf to an external competitor of Lufthansa Technik.

The fate of WISAG service workers at the Frankfurt airport demonstrates the consequences this will have for workers at the suppliers, service providers, and subcontractors. The service company WISAG, controlled by the Frankfurt oligarch Claus Wisser, is an expert in exploiting the pandemic for ruthless and illegitimate layoffs planned long before the crisis. At the end of last year, WISAG laid off 230 experienced workers, who had worked at the airport for 20, 30, and even 40 years, throwing them on the streets with ridiculous compensation packages of €3,000 or €4,000.

Under the slogan “Today us, tomorrow you,” a group of these workers took up the struggle against their layoff and organised a series of rallies and an eight-day hunger strike at Frankfurt airport’s Terminal 1. The WISAG workers laid a black funeral wreath in front of the Verdi headquarters because the union did nothing to protect their jobs.

Since then, it has been revealed that a second company under the WISAG Group is carrying out layoffs. At Aviation Services GmbH (ASG), 87 workers have been laid off. Those targeted are precisely the workers who have decades of experience at the airport, and they have been offered ridiculous “social plans” like the WISAG workers.

At ASG, the unions affiliated with the German Union Confederation (DGB) have shown that they serve the interests of the corporations and the capitalist profit system, not those of the workers. At ASG, which is responsible for cleaning the interior of aircraft, workers are part of the IG Bau union. The union authored an online letter in which it stated that it had been aware of the impending layoffs since July 2020.

Exaggerated claims for G7 tax deal

Nick Beams

The announcement by G7 finance ministers over the weekend that they had agreed to push for a minimum 15 percent corporate tax rate as part of a bid to eliminate tax havens for major global corporations has been presented as the beginning of a new era of multilateralism and even a significant step towards social justice.

Closer examination of what was actually agreed to, and whether it can even be implemented in further negotiations going beyond the G7 group of the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Canada, reveals the empty character of these assertions.

Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, back centre, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, centre right, at a meeting of finance ministers from across the G7 nations at Lancaster House in London, Friday June 4, 2021. (Stefan Rousseau/Pool via AP)

The main promoter of the exaggerations was US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, anxious to advance the claims of the Biden administration that it is taking a lead role in managing the affairs of global capitalism in contrast to the “America First” doctrine of the Trump administration.

Yellen said the G7 finance ministers had made a “significant, unprecedented commitment… that provides tremendous momentum towards achieving a robust minimum global tax rate of at least 15 percent.

“That global minimum tax would end the race to the bottom in corporate taxation, and ensure fairness for the middle class and working people in the US and around the world.”

It would also help the global economy thrive, she added, encourage countries to educate and train their workforces and invest in research and development as well as infrastructure.

Others also waxed lyrical about the impact of a new tax regime. France’s finance minister Bruno Le Maire said the G7 countries had “risen to the challenge of this historical moment.” Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi called the deal a “historic step towards a fairer and more equitable society for our citizens.”

But the figures do not support these statements. According to estimates by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which has been involved in negotiations for a uniform tax regime over the past eight years, the proposals, if implemented, could generate an additional $50-$80 billion a year in revenue, but the actual sum raised would vary significantly depending on the final agreement. And spread over a large number of countries any tax boost will not meet the claims being made for it.

Moreover, the G7 deal is only the first step in implementation. Much has still to be determined in the wider negotiations, involving 139 countries, being conducted by the OECD. The next stage will be to win the backing of the G20 group of countries, which are to meet in Venice next month.

Critics of the proposal have said the 15 percent rate is too low. The UK IPPR social justice research group told the Financial Times (FT) it “would not be enough to end the race to the bottom” in which countries cut their tax rates to attract global corporations.

Pointing to the wider geo-political concerns of Washington, an FT report on Monday said the tax deal was the “first substantive proof of revived international co-operation since President Joe Biden brought the US back to the negotiating table.”

It stated that “privately” some ministers had indicated the urgency for a G7 deal in order to “demonstrate that rich countries still mattered, in a bid to show the world that the 21st century was not going to be dominated by rules set by China.”

Notwithstanding the mutual backslapping, significant differences remain. They centre on the moves by countries to impose taxes on global corporations, in particular hi-tech firms such as Google, Facebook and Apple, on the revenues they raise in their markets.

These had been the subject of a major conflict with the US as the UK, France and Italy sought to force these companies to pay more tax on the revenue they raised even if they did not have a physical presence there.

In response to the moves for a digital tax, the Trump administration had announced a series of retaliatory tariffs against what it claimed was discrimination targeting American companies. These were suspended until the end of this year while negotiations took place.

Yellen then brought forward the proposal for the 15 percent minimum global tax and agreed that the largest global corporations with profit margins of at least 10 percent would have to allocate 20 percent of their profits to countries where they make their sales. This would overturn the previous regulation that companies were only taxed in countries where they had a physical presence.

Yellen pushed for European countries to immediately drop their new digital taxes in return for gaining tax rights under the new deal. But they have said they will abolish the taxes only when a global agreement is reached. Canadian finance minister Chrystia Freeland said after the G7 deal was announced that her government intended to go ahead with the digital tax as well.

The G7 communiqué did not provide a clear determination. It said: “We will provide for appropriate co-ordination between the application of the international tax rules and the removal of all Digital Services Taxes, and other relevant measures, on all companies.”

There are a number of barriers to cross before any final international deal is reached. Apart from securing agreement at the G20 and the international adoption of the new rules under the OECD negotiations, the definition of what constitutes the “largest and most profitable” global companies is still to be worked out.

There is also the question of whether countries which have tax rates below 15 percent will sign off. One of the most significant is Ireland, which has a 12.5 percent corporate tax rate and has become the headquarters for tax purposes of a number of major technology and pharmaceutical companies. The Irish government has said it wants to keep its low tax rate regime in place.

“Any agreement will have to meet the needs of small and large countries, developed and developing,” the Irish finance minister tweeted after the G7 deal was announced.

The biggest barrier could prove to be the US Congress. The Wall Street Journal noted that the new approach advanced by the Biden administration may run into Congressional opposition “where some lawmakers are wary of moving before other countries.” Some proposals “could require the US Senate to ratify changes to tax treaties, which would take a two-thirds vote and at least some Republican support.”

And it is not even certain that the deal will result in higher levels of taxation on the most profitable companies because the proposed global tax regime of 15 percent may bring pressure for lower corporate taxes in some countries.

This was evidenced in the business reaction in Australia where the present corporate tax rate is 30 percent.

According to Business Council of Australia chief executive Jennifer Westacott, with a tax rate double the proposed 15 percent global minimum, Australia was “severely exposed in its ability to attract global capital.”

Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Wilcox said the G7 agreement was the opportunity to have “a long-delayed discussion in Australia about business taxes.” He claimed that a tax rate of 30 percent and other regulatory measures meant Australia had “one of the very highest ratios of business income tax to GDP in the OECD.”

This reaction indicates that rather than halting the race to the bottom, the deal could give it a new twist.

Nukes, Lies and Invisible Murder

Robert Koehler

Let’s listen in for a moment to the gentle, awkward language of mass killing:

The employment or threat of employment of nuclear weapons could have a significant influence on ground operations. . . . Integration of nuclear weapons into a theater of operations requires the consideration of multiple variables. Using nuclear weapons could create conditions for decisive results and the restoration of strategic stability. Specifically, the use of a nuclear weapon will fundamentally change the scope of a battle and create conditions that affect how commanders will prevail in conflict.

This is a sneak peek into a 2019 report by the Joint Chiefs of Staff called “Nuclear Operations,” which Brian Terrell quoted recently. The document was, for some reason, publicly posted in the waning days of the Trump administration, then — oops — quickly removed, but not before it was downloaded by the Federation of American Scientists.

As The Guardian noted, the document, the first of its kind in 14 years, seemed to indicate a creepy shift in Pentagon thinking: from nuclear deterrence to actually fighting (and of course winning) a nuclear war.

The report even included a quote from Dr. Strangelove, by which I mean Herman Kahn, the high-profile strategist of the Cold War era who was one of several inspirations for Stanley Kubrick’s iconic character. “My guess,” says Kahn, “is that nuclear weapons will be used sometime in the next hundred years, but that their use is much more likely to be small and limited than widespread and unconstrained.”

OK, shrug and move on, right? We survived the Cold War, so any remaining “duck and cover” fear can be stored in the attic of our collective consciousness. Except for the occasional lone nut with a gun — showing up at a school, shopping mall, church, synagogue, massage parlor — violence serves the cause of human safety; it’s the core of our self-defense. And therefore, as the above quotes demonstrate, good violence, even though it may occasionally kill or dismember children, shatter lives, spread toxicity, must be discussed abstractly and strategically. We aim moral rancor only at our enemies, who have been previously dehumanized.

And thus global — and especially American — militarism continues uninterrupted and fully funded. Joe Biden’s 2022 defense budget proposal, for instance, is $754 billion, up $14 billion from Trump’s last defense budget. This includes $715 for the Pentagon and nearly $16 billion for nuclear weapons development and modernization, because . . . this is just the way things are.

As Slate reports, the Biden budget “calls for full speed ahead on new weapons for all three legs of the nuclear triad” — land-based ICBMs, the B-21 bomber and a new nuclear-armed submarine.

“. . . hawks of both parties,” Slate notes, “are likely to breathe a sigh of relief that Biden has ignored the pleas of some Democrats to whack the defense budget in order to pay for more social programs. Biden is upping everything, including taxes and deficits, to pay for everything.”

And the budget also includes something called the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, which focuses on China, establishing it as our current primary adversary and perhaps launching a new cold war with it — as though, what else is new? There’s nothing harder than trying to govern a country without a clear enemy. Not simply a “threat,” mind you — which could include current and future pandemics, not to mention climate change and ecological devastation — but an enemy. When you have an enemy, you can focus the entirety of your thinking on strategy and tactics. No need for complexity. No need to listen, to grope for understanding. No need to acknowledge your own vulnerability and face the unknown. Just modernize your nukes.

But without such courageous vulnerability, peace is impossible. Militarism creates the illusion of safety, though of course its endless presence creates just the opposite. Peace work is not a tool for a leader to summon. It’s deeply complex, requiring an attitude of “power with” rather than “power over” one’s potential enemy.

Joseph Gerson, president of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security, puts it with clarity. Instead of shaking our weapons at China, we should pursue “mutually beneficial diplomacy” with it.

“Instead of increasing military spending to reinforce U.S. dominance,” he writes, . . . that money should be spent to export billions of vaccine shots to countries in need before new variants renew the pandemic here in the United States. With our housing shortage, real security lies in funding massive home construction. And, with the seas rising and a new fire season upon us, cooperation — not war — with China is essential if the climate emergency is to be contained.

He adds: “Yes, challenge China on its human rights violations, but do so in tandem with opposing police violence and the prison-industrial complex in the U.S.”

Such a world — such leadership — is within our reach, but first we must free ourselves from the mindset of militarism, which is perpetuated not merely by politicians and generals but, inexcusably, by much of the media, which compliantly speaks their language. In militaryspeak, civilians may be bombed but they’re never murdered, at least not by us. If we can’t avoid acknowledging their deaths, then they become collateral damage, necessary for “the restoration of strategic stability.”

UK universities and colleges continue attacks on staff jobs and conditions

Ioan Petrescu

Nearly 1,300 staff at the University of Liverpool are striking in protest against planned job cuts in the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences. The three-week strike began on May 24, coinciding with the end of year examination period, and is set to have a considerable impact.

The university originally intended to cut up to 47 staff, but this was revised down to 32 after the University and College Union (UCU) threatened industrial action.

Announcing the reorganisation in February, Louise Kenny, Executive Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the university, said, “Project SHAPE, which will bring about a major realignment of the University’s Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, was implemented in order to help tackle the extreme health inequalities and unmet health needs in the Liverpool City Region, both of which have been brought to the fore throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Staff protesting at Liverpool University at a rally during the strike (WSWS media)

The Vice-Chancellor claimed the university needs the “headroom” provided by cutting jobs to have enough money to build a new research centre. But Liverpool University had a turnover of £584.7 million in 2020, as well as an operating surplus of £54.7 million. It has the seventh largest endowment of any university in England, at £168.3 million. Kenny herself receives an estimated £410,000 per year from the university and recently boasted of selling a mansion in Ireland for €3.25 million.

The reality is that the job cuts are central to the marketisation and privatisation of the sector that has proceeded apace under the framework of the 2017 Higher Education and Research Act.

The UCU was reluctant to call the strike, waiting more than a month and a half between the results of the ballot, backed by 84 percent of members, and the start of the action. It was forced to take action under immense pressure from the rank-and-file who want to defend their jobs and conditions.

In the last few weeks, the union has made clear that it is not opposed to redundancies in principle, only with the way the university goes about them. According to a union spokesman, its main objections are that the employer “relied on the use of flawed data to assess performance and was widely criticised by experts” and that “the criteria remain opaque, lack transparency and the university has refused to tell staff what data it is using to choose who to sack”. The UCU is a specialist in assisting universities to reduce staff numbers, provided this is done on a “voluntary” basis.

World Socialist Web Site reporters spoke to a young staff member in the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at a rally of striking staff. He explained how the cuts and restructuring at the university would have a detrimental impact, particularly on vital coronavirus research. “Some of the staff [who are being made redundant] have been doing research on COVID. We were known as the Institute of Integrative Biology. Part of the mission statement was a recognition that a lot of biology is increasingly an interdisciplinary subject. There is a lot of room for interdisciplinary research on coronavirus, and so one of the sad things about this whole restructure was the breakdown of that Institute, of that kind of idea that we all work on different things, but they have relationships to each other.

“One of the first things that struck me and struck a lot of people is the fact that they were doing this during a pandemic when people are so vulnerable.”

Asked about the government’s response to the pandemic, he said, “It seems wild what's happened with the herd immunity. It is all coming out in the [Dominic] Cummings hearing. It is just baffling, this kind of acceptance that people are going to die, and you know the various comments that we have heard about something like ‘bodies piling up’, seems completely inhuman to me. I suppose it is what can happen when you have a concentration of power among a few people.”

The faculty member expressed his concerns about the privatisation of higher education. “There's an infiltration of private capital into public education,” he said. “There's a building, just down the road, there's an entire floor that’s owned by Unilever. It's this sort of stuff that people have warned about for ages; that we spend all this public money on research, and then the profit is reaped by shareholders and people who are already very wealthy.” Asked about his opinion of the UCU, he explained, “I haven’t much historical knowledge, but they are not by the workers or for the workers.”

Attacks on jobs and conditions are happening at other universities around the UK. University College Birmingham is planning to axe 73 senior lecturer jobs and replace them with 42 new staff hired on cheaper contracts and increased workloads. The cuts would threaten teaching in the schools of business, tourism and creative industries, and health, sport and food. Many of the 73 staff threatened with the sack have been at the university for over 20 years.

The UCU has not called for any kind of industrial action against these attacks, instead complaining that the union has not been consulted and given the opportunity to sell the cuts to its membership before they were announced. UCU regional official Anne O’Sullivan said, “Proposals to cut 73 senior staff and create 42 new roles with non-negotiated changes to the pay and grading structure are a clear breach of the university’s legal obligations… We are calling on the university to meet with us to find a solution that protects jobs and student learning before it is forced to defend itself in court.'

Luminate Education (previously Leeds City College Group) has announced a restructuring plan that will see 39 jobs cut across multiple sites, including Leeds and Harrogate colleges. The proposals would affect adult and community learning and hair and beauty staff across Leeds, as well as business and learning support staff at Harrogate College. Jobs in adult education will be cut at several sites in Leeds including at Mabgate, Beeston and Rothwell. Any new alternative posts created in the restructure will have reduced pay and changes to terms and conditions. The UCU is using identity politics to divide Luminate Education staff, with its main objection not being the cuts themselves, but rather that 90 percent of the positions affected are filled by women.

The role of the UCU in facilitating job losses is seen clearly at the University of Chester. The union posted a news piece on its website boasting that, “The university originally announced 86 redundancies, but negotiations with trade unions have led to a number of posts being saved.”

Emboldened, the university plans to cut 27 jobs in the English, humanities, history, archaeology, engineering, geography and media departments by July. There is strong opposition among staff and student, who have carried out joint protests. Over 150 staff attended the “biggest ever” UCU Chester branch meeting and voted by 96 percent “to pursue all means necessary to oppose all compulsory redundancies.” The union was sure to leave the door open to “voluntary” redundancies.