After a year, Indian court grants bail to three student activists arrested on bogus “terrorism” charges

Deepal Jayasekera

The Delhi High Court has granted bail to three student activists arrested by the Delhi police one year ago on bogus “terrorism” charges under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). They have been victimized as part of the vicious legal vendetta India’s Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has mounted against opponents of its class war and communalist policies, including the anti-Muslim Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

Burnt shops at Shiv Vihar after the Delhi riots [Wikimedia Commons]

Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita and Asif Iqbal Tanha were arrested by the Delhi police, which is under the direct control of Modi’s Home Minister and chief henchman, Amit Shah, in May 2020. They were detained on the basis of frame-up charges in relation to the so-called “Delhi riot conspiracy case” and later booked under the UAPA. Narwal and Kalita are students at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), and Tanha is from Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) University.

The real reason for their arrests and detention was their involvement in the anti-CAA protests, which swept across India in late 2019 and early 2020. These three students and many other anti-CAA protesters arrested by the Delhi police have been falsely blamed by the authorities for the communal riots that convulsed parts of northeast Delhi for four days, beginning February 23, 2020. The riots—whose victims were overwhelmingly poor Muslims—were incited by BJP officials and facilitated and, in some cases, joined by police.

The CAA, pushed through the national parliament by Modi and his supremacist BJP in December 2019, discriminates against Muslims by defining Indian citizenship on an explicitly religious basis for the first time in the country’s history. The CAA provides an automatic path to citizenship for non-Muslim immigrants from the main Muslim countries in South Asia—Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan—who arrived in India before the end of December 2014. However, Muslim immigrants from these same countries and all others from the region are excluded from its provisions and liable to expulsion.

The CAA is part of a vicious communal campaign mounted by the BJP against India’s Muslim minority. During the campaign for the April-May 2019 parliamentary elections, in which the BJP won re-election, Amit Shah, then the BJP’s president, repeatedly denounced Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh as “termites” and vowed that if the BJP was reelected, they would be thrown into the Bay of Bengal.

On August 5, 2019, the Modi government moved to scrap the limited semi-autonomous constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state. It placed the whole state under a brutal military lockdown. One year later to the day, Modi laid the foundation stone for a temple devoted to the mythical Hindu god, Ram, on the site of the Babri Masjid, which was razed to the ground by a mob of Hindu fanatics incited and directed by BJP leaders and associated Hindu supremacist organizations in December 1992. This major escalation of the BJP’s Hindu communal campaign was approved in advance by the Indian Supreme Court in a verdict issued in November 2019.

Rammed through parliament in a matter of days in December 2019, the Modi government’s anti-Muslim CAA was met with widespread opposition throughout the country, but especially in the national capital Delhi. Workers, youth and intellectuals joined the protests, which cut across religious, ethnic and caste-communal lines.

Fearing that the anti-CAA movement would intersect with growing working-class opposition to its austerity measures and other pro-investor policies, the Modi government doubled down on its effort to whip up Hindu communalism, with the aim of dividing the working class and mobilizing its far-right supporters as shock troops against it.

Pushed onto the back foot, the BJP-led central and state governments unleashed lethal police violence against the anti-CAA protesters, while fomenting communalist reaction with crude denunciations of their opponents as anti-Indian and pro-Pakistani. This culminated in the Delhi riots. Directly instigated by local BJP leaders, they resulted in the deaths of at least 53 people, the injuring of hundreds and the destruction of scores of homes and businesses.

Seeking to turn reality on its head, the Modi government subsequently directed the police to frame up anti-CAA protest leaders, Muslim and Hindu alike, for the Delhi riots. Dozens of government opponents have been arrested on bogus charges of being involved in a broader “conspiracy” to foment the Delhi riots, while the true culprits in and around the BJP go free. Underscoring the vindictiveness of the authorities, a pregnant JMI student, Zafoora Zargar, was jailed from April through June 2020 in the midst of the surging COVID-19 pandemic.

Narwal, Kalita and Tanha are just three of scores of people facing what are widely conceded, even by much of the corporate media, to be utterly bogus charges under a draconian “anti-terrorism” law. In its June 15 ruling granting them bail, the Delhi High Court said: “[I]t seems, that in its anxiety to suppress dissent, in the mind of the State, the line between the constitutionally guaranteed right to protest and terrorist activity seems to be getting somewhat blurred. If this mindset gains traction, it would be a sad day for democracy.”

The High Court ruling reflects concerns within sections of the ruling class and its political establishment that the BJP government has gone too far in its legal vendetta against its political opponents. It fears that such a transparently bogus use of the UAPA’s draconian provisions to victimize government opponents will dangerously erode the credibility of the bourgeois “democratic” state, its courts and police in the eyes of working people.

The High Court verdict is also driven by concerns that if the Modi government is not chastened, it could use the UAPA or other authoritarian measures against its opponents within the political establishment, further destabilizing bourgeois rule. The BJP has repeatedly accused the leaders of the parliamentary opposition of being “anti-national,” suggesting that their criticisms of the government are akin to “treason,” and as part of its 2019 coup against Kashmir it arbitrarily detained the principal leaders of the pro-Indian Kashmiri regionalist parties for months without charge.

Expressing concern about “foisting (the) extremely grave and serious penal provisions” of the UAPA “frivolously upon people,” the Delhi High Court justices warned that “wanton use of serious penal provisions would only trivialise them.”

Further elaborating on its advice to the Modi government that it should use the UAPA more sparingly, the court said: “Notwithstanding the fact that the definition of ‘terrorist act’ in section 15 UAPA is wide and even somewhat vague, the phrase must partake of the essential character of terrorism and the phrase ‘terrorist act’ cannot be permitted to be casually applied to criminal acts or omissions that fall squarely within the definition of conventional offences as defined inter alia under the IPC [Indian Penal Code].”

The UAPA was introduced by a Congress Party government in December 1967 amid concerns that mounting political opposition could not be contained and suppressed through existing legislation. It contains deliberately vague definitions of “terrorism,” so as to facilitate mass repression of political opponents, and successive governments, led by both the Congress and BJP, have used its draconian provisions to suppress popular opposition.

One of the most prominent recent examples is the case of five left-wing intellectuals—Varavara Rao, Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves, Sudha Bharadwaj and Gautam Navlakha—whom the BJP placed under house arrest in August 2018 and have since undergone lengthy incarceration. Without presenting a shred of credible evidence, the police and BJP leaders have accused the five of being “urban Naxals,” suggesting they are in cahoots with the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), which has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Indian state.

The Indian government and Delhi police are not about to accept the High Court’s decision to bail out the student activists. Immediately after the High Court decision, a Delhi police spokesperson said: “We are not satisfied with the interpretation of the provisions of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act by the Hon’ble High Court in a matter concerned with grant of Bail. We are proceeding with filing a Special Leave Petition before the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India.”

The Supreme Court, which has a long record of conniving with the Modi government in its authoritarian and communalist actions, has indicated its dissatisfaction with the High Court ruling, but pending a full hearing of the matter rejected the BJP government’s plea for the bail order to be stayed.

On June 18, the Supreme Court termed the High Court’s criticisms of the UAPA’s definition of “terrorism” and the use to which the government has put it “surprising,” adding that the ruling “can have pan-India ramification(s).” Further elaborating on its concerns, the Supreme Court stated: “The manner in which the High Court had interpreted the Act (UAPA) will probably require examination by the Supreme Court. … [I]n the meantime, the impugned judgment shall not be treated as a precedent and may not be relied upon by any of the parties in any of the proceedings.”

Chinese government imposes a “three-child” policy

Lily Zhao

On May 31, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) politburo announced that birth restrictions would be further increased and each couple allowed to have three children.

This most recent modification of the decades-old population control policy still maintains a limit on childbirth. It is another bureaucratic and anti-democratic attempt to respond to declines in birth rates and the slowing growth of the Chinese capitalist economy.

An elderly man with children near a commercial office building in Beijing on May 10, 2021 [Credit: AP Photo/Andy Wong]

The “three-child” announcement was not warmly welcomed, however, and it was especially unpopular among young people.

One of the most prevalent responses on social media was that the financial burden of having one child is heavy enough, let alone three. As is the case internationally, workers and young people in China are confronted with worsening living and working conditions, an ever-bleaker job market amid the pandemic, and limited access to social services, including public schools for those families migrating to large cities.

In cities where job opportunities are centered, rent itself could easily eat up half of the monthly salary of a young college graduate or more, while housing prices have been skyrocketing. For instance, the median second-hand housing price in Shenzhen, one of the major centers for foreign trade, manufacture and IT in southeast China, reached 54,110 renminbi (RMB) per square meter ($US718 per square feet) last year, while the median monthly income there is just 5,199 RMB ($US742).

That is, a small two-bedroom apartment could easily cost more than 3 million RMB, a figure greater than 40 years’ salary for someone on the median income.

Another prevalent concern, particularly among young women, is that the three-child policy will further suppress their employment opportunities. Even before the hated one-child policy was dropped in 2011, it was not uncommon for women of child-bearing age to be asked during job interviews if they have children or plan to bear a child. Many companies consider paid maternity leave as an impediment to their accumulation of profits.

Now, if a woman can potentially have three children, which could amount to at least six or seven years on and off maternity leave during her late twenties and early thirties, she will be placed in an extremely disadvantaged position in an increasingly competitive job market.

The CCP regime’s birth regulation policies are not simply an attack on women, but on the democratic rights of all workers to decide how many children they want to have. The previous one-child policy was widely resented. Workers who broke the rule were forced to pay financially crippling fines (which amounted to nothing for many party bureaucrats, wealthy elites and urban upper middle-class households), went through sterilizations and abortions against their will, and lost their jobs.

The CCP has turned towards encouraging couples to have more children, not to right the wrongs of the past or to uphold the interests of workers. On the contrary, the government’s latest stance is motivated solely by the financial and political interests of the Chinese capitalist class.

The one-child policy was implemented in 1979 as China faced a rapidly expanding population. The specifics of this policy varied by province, but in general, each urban family was restricted to one child, while rural families were allowed two. Most ethnic minorities were exempted from the restrictions.

In 2011, if both parents were only children, they were allowed to have a second child. In 2013, this “two-child” policy was expanded so that only one parent needed to be a single child. Two years later, all couples were allowed a second child.

These shifts have been an attempt to address low birth rates, population aging and the fading away of the “demographic dividend” produced by a large segment of the population having been of working-age.

China’s rapid economic growth in the decades after capitalist restoration in 1978 partly relied on the fact that working-age people were a high proportion of the population, ensuring a ready supply for the labor market and less requirements for health care and pensions.

The two-child policy failed. According to a demographic study conducted last year by the Evergrande Research Institute, China will soon approach its population peak. During 2018, the number of births fell by 2 million, followed by a further decline of 580,000 in 2019. By 2030, the annual number of births is forecast to drop by another 3.65 million.

At the same time, the population is aging disproportionately. In 2019, 12.6 percent of people were 65 years old and above. This figure will reach 14 percent in 2022, 20 percent in 2033, and an extraordinary 35 percent in 2060.

The official Xinhua news agency said the new three-child policy could “maximize the role of population in stimulating economic and social growth.” The politburo itself declared that the change was essential in “realizing a rapid and high-quality economic growth, defending national security, and maintaining social stability.”

Low birth rates and an aging population, as recognized by the CCP bureaucrats, have serious economic and social implications. The same demographic study reported that the proportion of the population that is working-age had been in decline since 2010. It was estimated that by 2050, the relative size of this cohort would decrease by another 23 percent compared to 2019. The study warned that an aging population would increase consumption and reduce savings and investment, potentially impeding economic growth.

Economic growth had been slowing years before the COVID-19 pandemic. In the June quarter of 2019, under the impact of the trade war measures implemented by the US, China’s growth rate hit its lowest point since 1992. This year, even though China recorded a sharp rebound from 2020’s pandemic impact, many concerns persist from the coronavirus crisis: unemployment, the bankruptcy of smaller enterprises, declines in the numbers of migrant workers in the cities, just to name a few.

The Beijing regime has long considered rapid economic growth as a central factor in maintaining social and political stability. Class tensions have sharpened intensified ever more in recent years, however, by staggering levels of inequality and increasingly oppressive forms of rule. Stimulating the birth rate is critical for the ruling elite to have a steady supply of cheap labor to boost output.

Underlying the low birth rate and young people’s unwillingness to have more children is a deep chasm between the tiny super-rich elite and masses of workers and young people struggling to get by. Opposition to this bureaucratic population policy cannot be separated from the fight against inequality, for decent employment and living conditions, and for democratic rights, that is, for genuine socialism.

Derek Chauvin sentenced to 22.5 years for the murder of George Floyd

Kevin Reed

Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who killed George Floyd on May 25, 2020, was sentenced on Friday to 22-and-a-half years in prison.

Former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin listens as Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill sentences him to 22 1/2 years in prison, Friday, June 25, 2021 at the Hennepin County Courthouse in Minneapolis [Credit: Court TV via AP, Pool]

Chauvin—who was captured on smartphone video kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than 9 minutes until he was asphyxiated—wore a medical facemask in court and looked to his left as Hennepin County Court Judge Peter A. Cahill read out the sentence. Chauvin was immediately led out of the courtroom and back to jail after the conclusion of the procedure.

The sentence was greater than the minimum 12 and-a-half years required by the state’s guidelines for the crimes Chauvin had been convicted of on April 20. In his 22-page “Sentencing Order and Memorandum Opinion,” Judge Cahill wrote, “270 months, which amounts to an additional ten years over the presumptive 150-month sentence, is appropriate.”

The judge also wrote that Chauvin “must be held accountable for the death of Mr. Floyd and for doing so in a manner that was particularly cruel and an abuse of his authority.” While the sentence was less than the thirty years requested by the prosecution, it is the longest sentence ever handed down in a Minnesota case involving murder by a police officer.

According to legal experts, Chauvin could get out of prison on parole after serving two-thirds of his sentence or approximately 15 years. Ben Crump, attorney for the Floyd family, said the family had gotten “some measure of accountability” from the verdict but is hoping Chauvin gets the maximum sentence at his upcoming federal civil rights trial.

Ahead of the sentencing announcement, Chauvin spoke briefly saying he could not give a full formal statement due to “additional legal matters at hand” and then, turning to the Floyd family, said, “There’s going to be some other information in the future that would be of interest, and I hope things will give you some peace of mind,” although he did not explain what he meant by this comment.

Speaking outside the courtroom, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, whose office prosecuted the case against Chauvin said, “Today’s sentencing is not justice, but it is another moment of real accountability on the road to justice.” However, the number of police murders in the US so far—431 deaths through June 21 as reported by the Washington Post—is on track to reach 1,000 people this year, the same number killed every year since 2015.

Family members of George Floyd had asked Judge Cahill prior to his announcement to impose the maximum possible sentence of 40 years for the public murder of their loved one. Floyd’s brother Rodney said the sentence was a slap on the wrist and that the family “suffered a life sentence for not having him in our life, and that hurts me to death.” Floyd’s nephew Brandon Williams, said the punishment was insufficient, “when you think about George being murdered, in cold blood with a knee on his neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds execution-style in broad daylight.”

The day began with Chauvin’s defense attorney Eric Nelson requesting a new trial on the grounds of jury misconduct and judicial errors. Nelson argued that public statements after the trial by juror Brandon Mitchell—who explained why the video of Floyd’s killing made the Chauvin’s conviction a clear choice—were grounds for at least a special hearing and that the judge should have granted a change of venue, among other issues. However, Cahill denied the motions and moved to the sentencing announcement in the afternoon.

The horrific video of the murder of George Floyd by Chauvin—captured and uploaded to social media on Memorial Day 2020 by 17-year-old Darnella Frazier—has been viewed online 1.4 billion times. The video of Floyd—a 46-year-old black man—pleading for his life and calling out for this mother while white police officer Chauvin remained on his neck in cold-blooded indifference, sparked a multiethnic mass movement across the US and internationally against racial discrimination and police violence involving tens of millions of people.

Since his conviction, Chauvin has been held at the maximum security prison in Oak Park Heights, Minnesota, in a cell by himself for his own protection and with his meals brought to him.

In mid-March, weeks before the jury trial of Chauvin, the city of Minneapolis agreed to compensate Floyd’s family with $27 million for the wrongful death, the largest such settlement in the city’s history.

The three other officers involved in Floyd’s murder—J. Alexander Kueng, 27, Thomas Lane, 38, and Tou Thao, 35—are scheduled for trial in March on state charges of aiding and abetting both murder and manslaughter. All four officers have been charged by the US Justice Department with federal offenses, Chauvin for excessive force and violating Floyd’s civil rights, Kueng and Thao, for failing to intervene to stop Chauvin and Kueng, Lane and Thao for deliberate indifference for failing to provide medical care to Floyd.

Chauvin has also been charged in a separate federal indictment for an incident of police brutality in 2017 where he used a choke hold on a 14-year-old and beat the teenager in the head with a policemen’s flashlight.

All of these charges—along with the prosecution, conviction and now sentencing of Chauvin—are a measure of the concern within the US ruling establishment about the explosive social and political implications of the ongoing police violence against the working class and poor of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. The source of the disproportionate rate of police brutality and violence facing minority populations is to be found in the conditions of poverty and socio-economic inequality that dominate American capitalist society.

Trudeau appoints Canadian Labour Congress President Yussuff to Senate sinecure upon his retirement

Roger Jordan

Four days after Hassan Yussuff ended a seven-year stint as president of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), the country’s largest trade union federation, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his appointment to the Senate. Canada’s unelected upper house of parliament is notorious as a reward and political rest home for has-beens, cronies and bagmen of Canada’s two traditional parties of government, the Liberals and the Conservatives.

Newly retired CLC President Hassan Yussuff

Yussuff’s new sinecure will provide him an annual salary of $150,000-plus till he is 75 and a lavish expense account. His appointment epitomizes the ease with which top trade union bureaucrats find their home in the right-wing political establishment and corporate boardrooms.

In the most immediate sense, Trudeau is rewarding Yussuff for his services in suppressing the class struggle and supporting the multi-billion dollar bailout of the banks and big business during the coronavirus pandemic. In March 2020, as the pandemic erupted and financial markets quaked, Yussuff declared that Canada required a “collaborative front” between the trade unions and employers. This front would soon be giving its blessing to a $650 billion state bailout of the markets and big business, so as to prop up the rich and super-rich. It then transitioned to forcing millions of people back into unsafe workplaces as the virus ran rampant.

In May 2020, Yussuff co-authored an article with Chamber of Commerce head Perrin Beatty in which the pair called for the aforementioned “collaborative front” to be made permanent in the form of a “national economic task force.” This was necessary, they argued, to ensure Canada could compete with its rivals on the world stage, and to “stop stakeholders going off in different directions,” i.e. to prevent the working class from asserting its independent interests, including prioritizing workers’ health and lives over capitalist profit. Whilst Yussuff articulated this corporatist policy most openly, it has been pursued by every trade union, from Unifor and the teachers’ unions to the Quebec Federation of Labour and Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CNTU).

Yussuff’s nearly two-decade career in the CLC leadership—prior to being elected president he served as its secretary-treasurer—embodies what the anti-worker syndicates that go by the name “unions” have become, over the past four decades: nationalist and pro-corporate entities, dedicated to upholding the interests of Canadian big business.

Pseudo-left defenders of the unions, like Fightback and the International Socialists, now try to depict Yussuff as a “bad apple.” They conveniently forget that it was the decision of the ex-Stalinist Hassan Husseini—the candidate for CLC president that they backed— to withdraw and throw his support behind Yussuff, that ensured his narrow election as CLC president in 2014. Last year, they went into a fit of apoplexy when Yussuff and the CLC released a statement supporting Bill Morneau, Trudeau’s former finance minister and corporate pension CEO, in his bid to head the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. However, Fightback and the other pseudo-left groups remained conspicuously silent, as they do to this day, on the unions’ role in supporting, indeed lobbying for, the bail out of corporate Canada, and their enforcing of the ruling class’ homicidal back-to-work/back-to-school policy.

The truth of the matter is that Yussuff is a typical representative of the upper echelons of the union bureaucracy. Elected as secretary treasurer of the CLC in 2002, he served for 12 years as the right-hand man to CLC President Ken Georgetti, who came to be so hated that he is the only incumbent CLC president to ever lose a bid for re-election. Yussuff defeated his former boss and close ally, amid mounting worker anger over the unions’ refusal to wage any serious opposition to the hard-right policies of the federal Harper Conservative government.

Georgetti’s period in office was characterized by the trade unions’ acquiescence to the decimation of industrial and manufacturing jobs; the New Democratic Party’s propping up of the big business and scandal-ridden Paul Martin Liberal government; and the failed CLC-backed attempt to forge a Liberal-led Liberal-NDP coalition government, during the 2008 economic crisis. The coalition agreement, which was torpedoed when the ruling elite swung behind Harper’s proroguing of parliament, to cling to power in a constitutional coup, included commitments to enforce $50 billion in corporate tax cuts and wage war in Afghanistan through 2011. When the New Democrats emerged as the official opposition in 2011, Georgetti and the CLC backed the ascension of former Quebec Liberal minister and avowed Margaret Thatcher admirer, Thomas Mulcair, to the leadership of Canada’s social democrats. The union body also backed the Ontario NDP’s support for the austerity Liberal governments of Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne, which gutted spending on health care, education, and social services. Throughout this entire period, Yussuff was re-elected to his well-paid position at one CLC congress after another, on the same slate as Georgetti.

In spite of his fraudulent attempt to posture in 2014 as the candidate of “change,” with his slogan “More democracy, grassroots renewal,” Yussuff, during his tenure as CLC president, oversaw a further turn to the right on the part of the union bureaucracy. With the election of the big business Liberals under Trudeau in 2015, the unions further expanded their corporatist relations with government and big business.

The CLC and all its affiliates, including the purportedly “left”-led Canadian Union of Postal Workers, played a key role in Trudeau’s 2015 election, by spearheading an “Anybody but Conservative” campaign, that portrayed the Liberals as a “progressive” alternative to the Tories. Just a week after being elected prime minister, Trudeau held an unprecedented closed-door meeting with more than one hundred top leaders of the CLC and its affiliates, in which they all pledged to work closely and loyally with the incoming government. After the election of US President Donald Trump, the unions joined in the fascist-minded president’s promotion of economic protectionism and nationalism, with the only difference that their slogan was “North America First” instead of “America First.”

To put this slogan into practice, Yussuff and Unifor President Jerry Dias effectively served as Trudeau government advisers, during the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. They and the CLC subsequently hailed its outcome: a protectionist trade pact aimed at laying the basis for North America’s twin imperialist powers to wage trade war and prepare for potential military conflict with global rivals like China, the European Union, and Russia.

Yussuff termed the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which includes a clause barring free trade agreements with “non-market economies, a euphemism for China, as “historic.” The CLC has also continued to describe Trudeau as “worker-friendly,” even as the Liberal government has embarked on a vast rearmament program that will see military spending rise by over 70 percent by 2026, compared to 2017 levels, and has repeatedly adopted or threatened to adopt laws criminalizing workers struggles, including the 2018 postal workers’ and 2021 Port of Montreal strikes.

The cooperation between the CLC, government and big business was taken to the next level with the outbreak of the pandemic. Yussuff’s “collaborative front” took the form of a series of backroom meetings with government ministers and business lobby groups aimed, first, at designing various emergency programs—massive bailouts for big business and makeshift relief for working people—and then at “reopening” the economy, that is forcing workers back-on-the-job amid the pandemic. One of the key slush funds for the corporate elite was the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy, which is set to cost the government well over $100 billion. Sold by Yussuff and his fellow union bureaucrats as a “job saving” measure, it has been used by some of Canada’s largest corporations to boost shareholder payouts, executive salaries, and share buybacks.

To enforce the back-to-work campaign, the unions deliberately demobilized all worker opposition and refused to fight for any pandemic-related demands in contract disputes. As soon as the pandemic erupted, the teacher unions in Ontario wound up the fight against Ford’s cuts to education, which had precipitated a one-day province-wide strike in February 2020. Harvey Bischof, the head of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, responded to the suggestion that teachers might strike, to oppose what the union itself described as potentially life-threatening working conditions, by declaring the OSSTF would not sanction “illegal job action.” At the Cargill meat packing plant in High River, Alberta the United Food and Commercial Workers sent 2,000 workers back to the unsafe factory after almost 1,000 COVID-19 infections and three deaths, insisting that any job action by workers to protect their health and lives would be “illegal,” and contravene the collective bargaining system the union is duty-bound to uphold. Meanwhile, Unifor, the union where Yussuff embarked on his career as a trade union bureaucrat, helped the Detroit Three, in the fall of 2020, to impose another round of concessions on autoworkers, including the entrenchment of the multi-tier low-wage system, while failing to negotiate a single pandemic-related safety measure.

In light of this record, Yussuff’s ability to exchange the CLC president’s suite for a plush leather-upholstered chair as a Liberal government-appointee in the “Red Chamber” should come as no surprise. That being said, it does point to the extraordinary extent to which the union bureaucracy has been integrated into the structures of the capitalist state and major corporations. This is a process driven by powerful objective forces: on the one hand a growing working-class rebellion, driven by mounting social inequality and the endless assault on workers’ rights; and, on the other, the turn of the ruling elite to right-wing, anti-democratic forms of rule, as it prepares for economic and military conflicts with its rivals on the world stage, under conditions of an unprecedented global capitalist crisis. Given the nationalist and pro-capitalist outlook that is the very essence of the unions, they must inevitably respond to the growth of the class struggle and the deepening crisis of the social order upon which their privileges depend, by moving ever further to the right, becoming ever more hostile to the working class, and embracing ever more forthrightly the institutions of the capitalist state.

The integration of the union bureaucracy with the capitalist state is an international process. In the United States, President Biden is supporting union organization drives with the so-called Pro Act, which will simplify the process for union certification in economic sectors with a low or no unionized workforce. The aim of this unprecedented support from a US President for the union bureaucracy is to establish a “national labour front,” led by the secretaries of Defence, Homeland Security, and Finance, that will use the trade unions to dragoon workers behind American imperialism’s economic, diplomatic, and military offensive against China.

Germany’s largest union, IG Metall, is overseeing the destruction of hundreds of thousands of jobs in the auto and related industries, blackmailing and bullying workers to accept early retirement and other compensation programs, and drafting restructuring programs on behalf of corporate management. Underscoring that this process has been long in the making, Berthold Huber, the former head of IG Metall, celebrated his 60th birthday in 2010, in the office of Germany’s right-wing Christian Democrat Chancellor, Angela Merkel. The Merkel government has imposed rigorous austerity throughout Europe and in Germany itself, and led a revival of German militarism that has been accompanied by the trivialization of Nazi war crimes by state-backed far-right academics.

Divisions over Russia policy erupt inside EU at Brussels summit

Johannes Stern & Alex Lantier

On Thursday, European Union (EU) heads of state met for a two-day summit in Brussels that endorsed EU policy on the pandemic, while clashing bitterly on foreign policy, especially Russian.

On Thursday evening, the EU issued an initial summit communiqué whitewashing its pandemic policies in Orwellian terms. It hailed “good progress on vaccination and the overall improvement in the epidemiological situation” and stressed “the EU’s commitment to international solidarity in response to the pandemic.”

Angela Merkel [Wikipedia Commons]

In reality, over 1.1 million people have died in Europe due to EU opposition to scientific social-distancing policies. It kept hundreds of millions of workers and youth on the job and at school, even in many of the deadliest weeks of the pandemic. Now, EU states are pressing to end all social distancing, even as the Delta variant spreads, threatening a new contagion. Moreover, EU countries are starving the Covax global vaccination program of doses, pledging to deliver only 100 million by the end of 2021 though they have already administered 325.1 million doses in Europe.

The heart of the summit, however, was planning an aggressive imperialist foreign policy, targeting refugees and Russia. Even before the summit opened, conflicts were mounting over EU relations with Moscow, after the bilateral summit between US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this month.

It came after a dangerous incident on Wednesday between Russia and Britain in the Black Sea, in which Russian aircraft dropped a bomb in the path of a British destroyer allegedly violating Russian territorial waters in the Black Sea. In response, Berlin and Paris proposed to renew EU-Russia talks, which have been suspended since the 2014 NATO-backed regime change operation in Ukraine.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel floated the proposal before the German parliament on Thursday morning. “It is not enough for the US president to speak to the Russian president. I am very happy about that, but the European Union must also create different formats for discussion,” she said. Citing wars in Libya and Syria, Merkel added: “We must define an agenda of common strategic interests, for instance on climate protection, but also in the areas of peace and security.”

French President Emmanuel Macron supported her remarks as he arrived in Brussels on Thursday. “Dialog is necessary to stabilize the European continent but it must be firm, as we will not give up any of our values or of our interests,” Macron said. He added, “We cannot remain on a purely defensive attitude to Russia, on a case-by-case basis, while, very legitimately, we saw a structured discussion unfold between President Biden and President Putin.”

The proposal went too far for most EU states and was rejected out of hand, especially by Eastern European governments. The Polish government demanded that Putin first meet EU demands, first and foremost the implementation of the Minsk agreement on Ukraine. Approaching Russia before that would be “a bad signal,” said Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, right at the start of the EU meeting. “It would be like trying to talk to the bear to save some of the honey.”

Instead, the EU called for a tougher course against Russia. Its communiqué “stresses the need for a firm and coordinated response by the EU and its Member States to any further malign, illegal and disruptive activity by Russia, making full use of all instruments at the EU’s disposal, and ensuring coordination with partners.” To this end, the EU Commission and the High Representative are tasked to “present options for additional restrictive measures, including economic sanctions.”

In reality, the proposal of Merkel and Macron had nothing to do with a more peaceful policy. It aimed to develop a foreign and military policy towards Russia more independent from Washington, in order to strengthen the EU’s hand against its foreign rivals and to impose its policies of austerity and “herd immunity” on the coronavirus at home.

From their point of view, however, it was not enough to “let ourselves be debriefed about talks with the president of the United States,” Merkel explained. She said the EU must be “man enough and woman enough to put forward its point of view in direct talks.”

Berlin and Paris are stepping up military pressure on Russia. France will participate in the massive Sea Breeze naval maneuver, scheduled for June 28–July 10 in the Black Sea. Hosted by US and Ukrainian forces, it includes 5,000 troops, 32 ships and 40 aircraft from dozens of countries.

This week, the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) is participating for the first time in a NATO airspace surveillance mission over the Black Sea. Two Eurofighters from Tactical Air Wing 71 “Richthofen” landed at Romania’s Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base in Constanta on Thursday. Until July 9, they will patrol Black Sea airspace together with British forces.

As the EU escalates its military threats, divisions between the member states are growing. Writing on Paris’ and Berlin’s failure to secure support for their proposal, the German weekly Der Spiegel warned: “Merkel’s and Macron’s defeat extends beyond the day. … The Union is also divided over its dealings with Hungary: the rift between East and West threatens to become an abyss.”

A the summit, besides Hungary and Portugal—which holds the rotating EU Council presidency—eight Eastern European states (Bulgaria, Croatia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic) refused to sign a joint letter attacking Hungary’s new anti-LGBT law, banning schools from using material seen as promoting homosexuality. A Reuters report called it “the most intense personal clash among the bloc’s leaders in years.”

The EU is responding to its explosive internal divisions and to growing social and political opposition among workers and youth with a constant police state and military build-up.

In the Mediterranean and Africa, the EU called for closer cooperation with regional allies to halt migrants, deny their right to asylum and imprison them in camps. It stated that “mutually beneficial partnerships and cooperation with countries of origin and transit will be intensified.” This has led to the construction of detention camps including in Turkey, Libya, Bosnia, Greece and Spain where hundreds of thousands of refugees are kept in appalling conditions.

The EU identified Turkey as a key partner against refugees. It hailed “preparatory work for high level dialogues with Turkey on issues of mutual interest, such as migration, public health, climate, counter-terrorism and regional issues.”

“The European Council calls on the Commission to put forward without delay formal proposals for the continuation of financing for Syrian refugees and host communities in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and other parts of the region,” it added. It also hailed “de-escalation in the Eastern Mediterranean,” where Turkey has clashed with Greece and France, and new customs deals with Turkey.

The EU communiqué also endorsed France’s war in Mali and its collaboration with the military junta installed in an August 2020 coup in Bamako. It reaffirmed its “call on the Malian transition authorities to fully implement the Transition Charter” and return to nominally civilian rule.

This came as a car bomb attack wounded 12 German troops supporting French forces in Mali, near Ichagara in the northern Gao region, as well as a soldier from another unidentified country, four days after a car bomb injured six French soldiers near Kaigourou. German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said three German soldiers were seriously wounded.

Nonetheless, the EU hailed its missions in Africa in support of France, including “the continuation of EU CSDP missions and engagement in the Takuba Task Force,” which involves troops from 12 European countries beyond France.

The summit concluded with a closed-door discussion of the Next Generation EU bailout, one of the multiple bailouts that collectively will funnel over €2 trillion to the banks and corporations during the pandemic. Such bailouts are to be paid for with austerity attacks targeting the working class, such as renewed labor reforms in Spain and pension cuts in France that are already being prepared.

Civil War in Afghanistan Will Threaten Afghanistan, China and Pakistan

Vijay Prashad

The United States, which has prosecuted a war against Afghanistan since October 2001, has promised to withdraw its combat troops by September 11, 2021. This war has failed to attain any of the gains that were promised after 20 years of fighting: neither has it resulted in the actual fragmentation of terrorist groups nor has it led to the destruction of the Taliban. The great suffering and great waste of social wealth caused due to the war will finally end with the Taliban’s return to power, and with terrorist groups, which are entrenched in parts of Central Asia, seizing this prospect to make a full return to Afghanistan.

Civil War

There are two forms of war that exist in Afghanistan.

First, there is the war prosecuted by the United States—and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—against their adversaries in Afghanistan. The U.S. and NATO have allied with a range of political projects, which certainly includes the government of the President of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani. This is the war that the U.S. and NATO have indicated will now be ending.

Second, there is the ongoing civil war between the Ashraf Ghani government, backed by the West, and the forces around the Taliban. This is a war among Afghans, which has roots that go back several decades. As the first form of the war ends, the civil war will continue. The two principal forces in Afghanistan—the government of Ashraf Ghani and the Taliban—are unwilling to form a government of national unity or to create a mechanism to end the civil war.

Failure of peace talks between the various stakeholders in Afghanistan—including the United States—in Doha, Qatar, suggests the continuation of the civil war. The United States, since 2001, has not drawn up any serious political road map for a withdrawal. The U.S. will leave as it came, with the U.S. troops taking off as abruptly as they arrived.

Already, the Afghan National Army is weakened, much of the Afghan territory outside its full control. In recent months, the Taliban has been keeping its powder dry, waiting for the U.S. to withdraw before it steps up its attack against the government in Kabul. A report by the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team, which was submitted to the United Nations Security Council on June 1, suggests that Al Qaeda and the Haqqani network prepare to strike as soon as the opportunity arises. Al Qaeda is “such an ‘organic’ or essential part of the insurgency that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to separate it from its Taliban allies,” the report noted.

A Pakistani intelligence official, who is well-informed about the situation in Afghanistan, told me that the countryside will gradually slip further out of Kabul’s control, with the Taliban and its allies—including Al Qaeda and other regional terrorist groups—confident of victory by the end of the summer in 2022.

There is no appetite either in the United States or in Central Asia for the continuation of the U.S. military presence. Nothing good has come of it, and it does not promise any advantage in the future.

Regional Possibility

On June 3, 2021, Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Haneef Atmar, China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi, and Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi held their fourth trilateral dialogue. This was the first high-level meeting held since September 2019. There was no direct reference to the withdrawal of the U.S. forces, but it set the context for the two most important outcomes of the meeting.

First, China pledged to play a “constructive role” to improve the long-fraught relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which have become more heated up because of the regional conflict between India and Pakistan. China has close ties with the governments in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) requiring peace in Central Asia for the success of the massive infrastructure and trade project, which runs from China’s Pacific coast to the Indian Ocean and to the Mediterranean Sea. China’s leverage over these countries is considerable. Even if China can create a modus vivendi between President Ghani and Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan, it does not settle the deeper problems, such as the military weakness of Ghani’s government.

Second, based on these governments’ cooperation in the counterterrorism process, the foreign ministers agreed to jointly tackle terrorist outfits that operate in Afghanistan and in its neighboring countries: such as the Turkistan Islamic Party or East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), ISIS, and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Pakistan’s government is troubled by the operations of the TTP, which operates along the borderlines of the two countries but is based in Afghanistan’s Paktika province. China, meanwhile, is very concerned about the ETIM, which operates in Afghanistan and Tajikistan and has been trying to destabilize the Chinese province of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The ETIM has close ties with the Taliban, which—while it has held discussions with the Chinese—understands that its use of the ETIM gives it leverage against China. Whether or not these three governments will actually be able to weaken these terrorist groups, incubated by the Taliban, is unclear.

Tangled Web

It now seems impossible for the United States to formally remain in Afghanistan. There is simply no political will for the troops to remain in the country, even as the U.S. will keep paramilitary and mercenary forces in Afghanistan.

Given the heightened U.S. pressure on China, however, there is plenty of evidence that the U.S. is not unhappy with the possibility of instability that will come to the heart of Asia after the summer of 2021. In 2003, the U.S. designated the ETIM as a terrorist group, but it removed it from that list in 2020. This is clear evidence of the U.S. motives to destabilize China’s Xinjiang province.

The Pakistani intelligence official suggests that if the Taliban takes Kabul, groups such as the TTP and the ETIM will be emboldened to conduct attacks in Pakistan and China respectively. These groups, he tells me, will fight alongside the Taliban to weaken Kabul’s hold and to use the countryside to launch these attacks; there is no necessity for the Taliban to actually take control of Kabul.

The question that remains is whether or not the Taliban can be divided. The Taliban is a tangle of Afghan nationalism and patriotism as well as various forms of political Islam. There are elements in the Taliban that are far more nationalistic and patriotic than they are committed to the Islamist currents. Attempts to peel the “moderates” away from the more hardcore sections have largely failed, which has been evident since at least former U.S. President Barack Obama’s failed plea to the “moderate Taliban” in 2009.

There is simply not sufficient strength in Afghanistan’s society to resist the spread of the Taliban. Nor is there an organized capacity of Afghan citizens present yet to build a new bloc against both the failed U.S.-backed governments (from Hamid Karzai to Ghani) and the Taliban. But if Afghanistan’s neighbors cut off their support to the Taliban, and if they are able to deepen an economic project (such as the BRI), then there is the possibility for this new bloc to eventually emerge. That is why the dialogue between Afghanistan, China, and Pakistan is central. It might, in fact, be more important in the long run than the conversations with the Taliban.

Industrial waste, unplanned urbanization blight Turkey’s Sea of Marmara

Ozan Özgür

The marine mucilage, or sea snot, that first started to appear in the Sea of Marmara in January, mostly on Istanbul’s shores, has continued to spread over the past months. It recently covered the coasts of almost all the provinces that have a coast to the Sea of Marmara and brought a major environmental disaster to the surface.

When marine mucilage was first seen on the beaches, it was thought to be just a layer over the sea. However, scientists have explained that its greatest impact takes place underwater.

An aerial photo of Pendik port in Asian side of Istanbul, Friday, June 4, 2021, with a huge mass of marine mucilage, a thick, slimy substance made up of compounds released by marine organisms, in Turkey’s Marmara Sea.

The mucilage layer on the bottom particularly affects sea creatures. The layers seen on the surface prevent sea creatures from getting the necessary oxygen, causing them to die. Thus, the entire marine ecosystem is rapidly disappearing.

Alice Alldredge, an expert on marine mucilage and a professor emeritus at University of California, Santa Barbara, told The Scientist: “Sea snot is a colloquial term for the mucus that is exuded by a lot of different phytoplankton species.” She added: “[t]he main problem is that the material eventually sinks and completely smothers the organisms that are on the bottom. It kills corals, it kills fish, it kills all the crustaceans down there, the bivalves—it kills pretty much everything because there’s not enough oxygen.”

Studies have shown that the pollution is not limited to the Marmara Sea, which is an inland sea. The pollution has been seen both in the neighboring Aegean and Black Seas. Like all environmental problems, it ignores artificial national boundaries and has an international character.

Alldredge said: “There have been scum events like this in the Adriatic [Sea] going back to the 1800s. … It seems these events are increasing in the Mediterranean. It used to be just the Adriatic, in the area around Sicily. Now, there’s been some events up around Corsica and the Italian-French border. So, it’s not just Turkey that’s suffering from this.”

Scientists agree that this mucilage originates from industrial and urban wastes that have been dumped into the Marmara Sea for decades, as well as from climate change. If comprehensive measures are not taken soon, Marmara will turn into a completely dead sea.

M. Levent Artüz, a hydrobiology expert from the Marmara Environmental Monitoring Project, claims that the Sea of Marmara already died in 1989. Speaking to the 1+1 Forum website, he said: “This is not an isolated event; it is a chain, a result. Marmara died in 1989. What we see is the decay of a corpse. The diversity of species in the sea was dealt a grave blow, it was hollowed out, competition between species disappeared.”

The Marmara Region links Europe and Asia and consists of cities clustered around the Sea of Marmara. While it makes up 8.5 percent (approximately 67,000 square kilometers) of Turkey’s surface area, over 25 percent of country’s population—over 20 million people—live there. Its largest cities, including Istanbul, Kocaeli, Bursa and Tekirdağ, host many of the country’ largest industrial facilities. Waste from industrial plants and these major cities is dumped on the bottom of the sea without passing through modern wastewater treatment facilities.

Professor Barış Salihoğlu, head of Turkey’s Middle East Technical University (METU) Institute of Maritime Sciences, stated: “Indeed, mucilage is very common. We have seen a gel-like structure spreading across the sea and never encountered such a large mass before.” He also warned: “Oxygen levels have dropped drastically, so we need to take action quickly. It is not the first time mucilage has been seen, but it is the first time it has been so widely spread.”

Pointing to deoxygenation caused by the waste from provinces surrounding the Marmara Sea, Mustafa Yücel, deputy director of the METU Institute of Marine Sciences, said: “There is also an excess of nitrogen and phosphorus that creates other ecosystem problems, such as deoxygenation, which is the main cause of mucilage. … The problem is big.”

He also stated: “The main cause of this deoxygenation is essentially the same thing that causes sea snot: nitrogen and phosphorus loads. According to our models and calculations, this deoxygenation only comes from Turkish territories. These loads have entered the sea for the last 20-30 years.”

Capitalist politicians have reacted by covering up the roots of the problem, which is in the capitalist system’s failure to build the proper waste management infrastucture. They either blame each other or make empty promises to solve the problem quickly. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) government has blamed the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, controlled by the bourgeois opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which was elected two years ago, for this issue.

Erdoğan himself was silent on the issue for months and then cited untreated wastewater discharged into the sea as the cause of the problem. He blamed municipalities that passed from the AKP to the bourgeois opposition parties in local elections held in 2019. However, most of the municipalities, especially Istanbul, have been ruled by AKP mayors since 1994.

Nurettin Sözen (CHP), a former mayor of the Istanbul metropolitan area, claimed that three full biological treatment projects planned to be built in Istanbul were shelved after Erdoğan was elected mayor of Istanbul in 1994. Sözen said that under Erdoğan, a low-cost method of discharging the wastewater, which pollutes the Sea of Marmara to the bottom of the sea was implemented.

The CHP’s criticisms are utterly hypocritical, however, as smaller cities on the Sea of Marmara that have been governed by CHP mayors for years have not pursued a waste treatment policy fundamentally different from AKP municipalities.

On June 8, Environment and Urbanization Minister Murat Kurum announced that Turkey is launching its “largest and most comprehensive sea cleaning mobilization” ever to save the Sea of Marmara. The only action proposed by Kurum, who met the mayors and governors of the Marmara Region’s seven provinces fully six months after the mucilage emerged, was to begin collecting mucilage by boat. However, the source of these problems is the control of industry and urban planning by capitalist interests and bourgeois governments who serve them.

While industrial enterprises do not implement necessary purification and filtration measures, the national and local governments who serve them transfer public resources to the wealthy instead of acting to protect the environment.

The Turkish state refuses to make long-term, comprehensive infrastructure investments needed to save the Marmara Sea from turning into a dead sea or to ensure the safety of millions in an expected Istanbul earthquake. Instead, it is preparing to build an Istanbul Canal in line with the NATO military alliance’s geopolitical calculations and plans for massive profiteering by Turkish and international investors.

However, scientists warn such a canal would damage the ecosystem of the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea, destroy Istanbul’s wetlands, increase traffic and even damage inflicted by a possible earthquake. Valuable resources and time are thus wasted., 

Spain’s PSOE-Podemos government pardons Catalan-nationalist political prisoners

Alejandro López

The Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government has pardoned nine Catalan nationalists serving decade-long jail sentences over their role in the October 1, 2017, Catalan independence referendum. The decrees eliminate the remainder of the prison sentences, which were based on fraudulent convictions on charges of sedition and misuse of public funds. They maintain the prisoners’ disqualification from holding public office for a decade, however.

Podemos party leader Pablo Iglesias speaks as Spain's caretaker Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez looks on after signing an agreement at the parliament in Madrid, Spain, Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019. (AP Photo/Paul White)

Yesterday, they were released from jail.

The PSOE-Podemos pardons are not a recognition that the Catalan nationalists were jailed due to a far-right campaign using trumped-up charges and a show trial. In fact, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez made clear that he defends the Supreme Court’s reactionary sentences and refuses to halt the prosecution of 3,000 Catalan-nationalist activists. Rather, it is a pragmatic decision dictated by the need to rapidly shower Spanish corporations and banks with billions of European Union (EU) bailout funds, while trying to defuse mounting working class anger over the pandemic and EU austerity measures.

The pardons have received the full blessings of powerful sections of the Spanish and European bourgeoisie. They come after Sánchez’s speech last Friday titled “Re-encounter: A project for the future, for all of Spain” at the Gran Teatre del Liceu. Speaking in front of Catalan businessmen, Sánchez announced the pardons, calling them “a resounding message of the desire to live together in coexistence.”

Antonio Garamendi, president of the Spanish Confederation of Employers’ Organizations (CEOE), which represents Spanish big business, told RTVE that “if this ends in things normalizing, it is welcome.” Two days later, he said in another interview, “I would like companies to return to Catalonia, and normality is needed.” An estimated 7,500 companies have left Catalonia since the 2017 independence referendum.

Javier Faus, president of the Cercle d’Economy, Catalonia’s big-business association, founded during the 1950s by pro-Francoite Catalan businessmen, said: “We consider that political stability has an economic value in itself. Politics and economics are not unrelated. ... We need tranquility, calm and get to work on things.”

Even the Catholic Church, a bastion of the 1936-1978 fascist Francoite regime and still one of Spain’s largest landowners, posted a statement defending the pardons. It said, “dialogue must always be proposed as an effective way that responds to the hope of resolving divisions.”

Spain’s largest trade unions, the Stalinist Workers Commissions (CCOO) and the social-democratic General Union of Labor (UGT), which are negotiating wage cuts and sackings, and advising the government on austerity, posted a joint statement hailing the pardons as “a necessary—although certainly not a sufficient—condition to overcome past episodes.”

Outside of Spain, major factions of the European bourgeoisie supported the pardons. The Council of Europe, a human rights body headquartered in Strasbourg, the seat of the EU parliament, passed a resolution defending the pardons. It also demanded the withdrawal of Spanish extradition requests for exiled Catalan nationalists facing charges in Spain.

London’s Financial Times posted an editorial, “Catalan pardons offer a chance of reconciliation,” calling the pardons a “commendable attempt to try to open a route to reconciliation and coexistence within Catalonia.”

Workers and youth must be warned. The WSWS has always opposed the incarceration of the Catalan nationalists and called for their release, but Spanish big business, the Catholic Church and the European bourgeoisie are not trying to defend democracy. Indeed, barely three months ago, the PSOE was busily seeking extraditions of Catalan nationalist lawmakers charged with sedition sitting in the European parliament. The question raised by the pardons is: what has changed?

The pardons are part of back-door negotiations between factions of the ruling class in Madrid, spearheaded by the PSOE-Podemos government, and in Barcelona, led by the Catalan nationalists, over the disbursement of billions of euros in EU bailout funds.

In coming years, Spain is set to take in €140 billion from the EU’s €750-billion recovery fund. The bailout mechanisms were approved by all 27 EU countries last month. In Spain, they were approved earlier this year, in January, thanks to parliamentary support from the fascistic Vox party. Sánchez has hailed the EU bailouts as the “most ambitious and transcendental of Spain’s recent history.”

Leading sections of the European and Spanish bourgeoisie aim to scale back the nationalist, anti-Catalan campaign that Madrid launched after the 2017 independence referendum, in order to secure agreement on the disbursement and spending of these funds. Spain’s regions will play a prominent role. They are to manage around 54 percent of Madrid’s allocated bailout for 2021, around €18.7 billion. Catalonia is to receive the second-highest payoff on the list.

The bailouts were a major part of the phone call between Sánchez and Catalan regional premier Pere Aragonès earlier this month. They are set to meet next Tuesday; the bailout will again be on the agenda.

The Catalan bourgeoisie expects to be one of the main beneficiaries. The Catalan government has already selected 27 projects for the fund valued at €41 billion. Major transnationals, such as ICL, Celsa, Aigües de Barcelona, Telefónica or Cellnez are set to benefit. The largest budget is allocated for a “carbon recovery” project, involving large companies such as Suez, La Farga, Nedgia Naturgy, Holaluz, Factor Energia and Serradora Boix.

The bailout is sealed in blood, however, amid the catastrophic loss of life to the pandemic. Claiming there was no money to implement a scientific policy to combat the virus, including to end non-essential work and subsidize small businesses, the EU instead funneled €750 billion to the super-rich. There was also a €1.25 trillion European Central Bank “quantitative easing” plan and a seven-year €1 trillion EU budget.

So far, it has cost the lives of over 1.1 million people across Europe. Now, as mass COVID-19 deaths are expected from the Delta variant’s spread, the ruling classes demand that nothing impede their orgy of self-enrichment.

The agreement also involves the Catalan nationalists supporting the PSOE-Podemos minority government to implement draconian social cuts dictated by the EU. These include a new labor reform and measures to “flexibilise” the workforce, raise the retirement age, cut pensions and increase taxes.

Pledges of unity, concord and coexistence made by Spanish and Catalan politicians and businessmen, will prove utterly empty, and sooner rather than later. The coming together of Spain’s ruling factions will not produce the economic stability they predict. Instead, it will be accompanied by mounting attacks on the working class amid an international upsurge of the class struggle.

Recent months have seen a series of significant strikes by workers across the United States, including the Volvo strike. Major struggles have also been waged by educators, health care workers and Amazon workers across the US and Europe. In Spain, not a week has passed by without one major strike since the beginning of 2021. This includes bus, metro and tram workers; health workers opposed to redundancies and cuts; Airbus workers struggling against plant closures; bank workers opposed to 18,000 redundancies in the banking sector.

The pardons agreement vindicates the analysis made by the WSWS of the reactionary character of both Catalan nationalism, which promoted itself as an alternative to the “authoritarian, anti-democratic Madrid,” and the pseudo-left forces like Podemos. While the Catalan nationalists are endorsed by the CEOE and the Catholic Church, Podemos oversees reactionary policies in government.