African protests met with savage repression

Kipchumba Ochieng

Protests called in Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and Tunisia against high costs of living, corruption, authoritarianism, fraudulent elections and unemployment have been met with savage repression.

The regimes in four geopolitical and economic nodal points of the continent, with a combined population of 343 million, have launched mass arrests, teargassed protestors, arrested major opposition leaders, and killed at least two protestors.

Members of the Economic Freedom Fighters protest in Cape Town, South Africa, Monday March 20, 2023. The party has called for a nation-wide shutdown and mass demonstrations to press President Cyril Ramaphosa to resign. [AP Photo/Nardus Engelbrecht]

The scale of the savage repression demonstrates that more is at stake than curbing the activities of capitalist opposition parties. The ruling elites are intent on suppressing massive opposition within the working class to deplorable living conditions across the continent, intensified by the ruling classes response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the soaring of prices due to the ongoing US-NATO war against Russia in the Ukraine.

Kenya

In Kenya, the government of President William Ruto turned his electoral “bottom-up” economic model supposedly geared towards bringing down the cost of living, eradicating hunger, creating jobs into a top-down savage police crackdown.

He outlawed the first mass protest under his rule called by billionaire opposition leader and former prime minister Raila Odinga of the Azimio la Umoja–One Kenya Coalition Party, ludicrously arguing that the demonstrations were filed too late for authorization. 5,000 heavily armed police offices and the notorious paramilitary, the General Service Unit (GSU) were deployed.

Nairobi was converted into a fortress. The city woke up to a mass police presence. Roads leading to key government buildings in the capital had been blocked and the president's official residence, State House, sealed off.

Police teargassed hundreds of protestors that had been able to bypass police cordons in Nairobi’s Central Business District, from where Odinga had called for a march towards the president’s residence. At least four members of parliament and dozens of protestors were arrested, including National Assembly Minority Leader Opiyo Wandayi, Senator Stewart Madzayo and MPs Amina Mnyazi and Richard Chonga. Other lawmakers were teargassed.

“We came here peacefully but they tear gassed us,” Nairobi protestor Charles Odour told French news agency AFP. “They lie to us every day. Where is the cheap maize flour they promised? Where are the jobs for the youth they promised? All they do is hire their friends.”

Some of the fiercest clashes took place in Kibera, the largest urban slum in Africa, and one of Odinga’s strongholds. Police officers in full-riot gear fired teargas and used water cannon against hundreds of protesters, as they set tyres ablaze, blocked roads and chanted “Ruto must go,” some of whom were throwing rocks. One protestor was seriously injured after being shot by police. Some reports state he has died.

The chants were reminiscent of the demands of working people and rural masses in Sri Lanka in July last year: “Gota [Prime Minister Rajapaksa] has got to go!”

When Odinga emerged in midday from a Nairobi hotel to lead the march and to hold a press conference, his motorcade was fired on with tear gas and water cannon. Azimio spokesperson Makau Mutua said Odinga’s vehicle had been hit by a bullet. In a tweet, Mutua shared a photo of a shattered windscreen online.

Demonstrators were dispersed in other parts of the country, including Kisumu in western Kenya, the third-largest city and an Odinga stronghold. A third-year university student was shot dead.

Kenyans are struggling as prices for basic necessities soar and the value of the shilling has dropped sharply over the past year against the US dollar—3.5 million face starvation due to a prolonged drought in the north. Latest data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics shows that households spent 13.3 percent more on food compared to a year earlier. Food accounts for nearly a third of the shopping basket for Kenyan families.

South Africa

In South Africa, the African National Congress government deployed 18,000 police and 3,500 soldiers to supress a threatened “national shutdown” by the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) against the electricity crisis, to call for President Cyril Ramaphosa to resign and for the high level of unemployment to be addressed.

“This is an attempt to overthrow the government. This is not a shutdown, but it’s anarchy,” KwaZulu-Natal Police Commissioner, Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, said on Friday.

The day before the protest, in a 12-hour period that stretched over Sunday night and Monday morning, police arrested 87 people across the country.

Protests broke out in Braamfontein on Sunday night. Police used stun grenades to disperse the demonstration. In Cape Town during early hours of Monday morning, a group of around 100 people were dispersed when police fired gas canisters.

During the day, EFF organised protests in Sandton, Cape Town, Pretoria and across provinces. Under a heavy escort and with a police helicopter overhead, 2,000 protesters marched in the capital Pretoria to Ramaphosa's official residence, passing the seat of government, the Union Buildings. In Sandton, over 30 protesters were arrested after they tried to block clothes retailer Woolworths. Groups varying in size from dozens to hundreds gathered in other parts of the country.

EEF leader Julius Malema recognised that the turnout was less than expected, blaming ANC Transport Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga for sabotaging the party's plans to ferry protesters by bus to Pretoria. He told protesters that over 1 million rand (55,000 dollars) had been spent to hire buses to ferry EFF supporters to Tshwane, but bus contractors had withdrawn their services at the last minute.

With an unemployment rate of 33 percent, many have lost their income. Youth (aged 15-34 years) have an unemployment rate of 45.3 percent. Adding to workers’ fury, the regulatory authorities have allowed Eskom, the state-owned electricity company that generates that 90 percent of South Africa’s power, to raise its prices by up to one third over the next two years as it faces insolvency. This comes as South Africa’s annual inflation rate is running at 6.9 percent in January, while food price inflation hit a 14-year high at 13.4 percent.

Nigeria

In Nigeria, protests are ongoing citing fraud during elections held in 28 states. Some states, like Anambra, Bayelsa, Edo, Ekiti, Imo, Kogi, Ondo, and Osun are conducting governorship elections off-cycle.

In Lafia, the Nasarawa State capital, protestors clashed with the police with one person allegedly killed while several others were injured. In Enugu State, protestors marched onto the streets of Independence Layout, Enugu, protesting the delayed announcement of the governorship election and stormed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The Kano State government has imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew. State Commissioner for Information and Internal Affairs Malam Muhammad Garba, threatened people to remain indoors as police “would not spare anyone or group bent on causing trouble”.

Tunisia

In Tunis, the capital, thousands of Tunisians rallied to protest President Kaïs Saïed’s rule, nearly a year after he dissolved parliament and assumed dictatorial rule last July. Over the past months, Saïed has arrested opposition politicians, trade union members, judges, a prominent businessman and the head of an independent radio station.

In a speech Saturday to commemorate the departure of French troops and Tunisia’s 1956 independence, he threatened to expel “all who want to undermine independence”.

Over the past weeks, the regime has instigated pogrom-like attacks against Black African migrants across Tunisia which started in early February and accelerated following Saïed’s racist speech February 21. The aim is to divert attention from the devastating effects of rising inflation and food shortages on living standards. In February, inflation reached 10.4 percent, up from 8.3 percent in 2022. Youth unemployment stands at 40 percent.

Saïed had said that “hordes of irregular migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa” had come to Tunisia, “with all the violence, crime, and unacceptable practices that entails”. This was part of a criminal plan designed to “change the demographic make-up” and turn Tunisia into “just another African country that doesn’t belong to the Arab and Islamic nations anymore”.

Police raid German real estate giant Vonovia

Markus Salzmann

Investigators searched the headquarters of Germany’s largest housing group Vonovia at the beginning of last week. The Bochum public prosecutor’s office and North Rhine-Westphalia State Criminal Office are investigating employees of the group and others on suspicion of bribery and corruption, breach of trust and fraud.

Berlin tenants demonstrate for the expropriation of housing corporations in September 2021 [Photo: WSWS]

More than 40 private and business premises were searched in North Rhine-Westphalia, Baden-Württemberg, Hamburg and Saxony. Four arrest warrants were executed against Vonovia employees, former employees and business partners of the company. Details were not disclosed by the public prosecutor’s office, which referred to the ongoing investigations.

One of the suspects is also alleged to have manipulated contract tenders at the Stuttgart-based GWG Group after leaving Vonovia. The housing company, which belongs to R+V Versicherungen, owns around 15,000 apartments and is significantly smaller than the listed industry giant Vonovia.

Vonovia owns 565,000 apartments in Germany, Austria and Sweden, but mostly in Germany. In Berlin and Brandenburg alone, the company has around 150,000 apartments after the takeover of Deutsche Wohnen in 2021. Its stock market value is currently almost €18 billion.

According to research by broadcaster Westdeutscher Rundfunk and Süddeutsche Zeitung, at least two Vonovia employees are alleged to have received bribes of around half a million euros over a 10-year period. In return, they are said to have awarded construction and trade companies contracts worth millions of euros, which in turn charged inflated prices or failed to provide services at all.

The investigation began in 2021, based on an anonymous letter. “The more the investigators found out, the more the picture of a suspected system of bribery emerged, which is said to have operated in the midst of the DAX-listed company for years,” news programme Tagesschau reported. Since then, at least 20 people have been under investigation, but according to investigating authorities that number could rise further as they pursue numerous leads.

Vonovia responded to the searches by portraying itself as a victim that was doing everything it could to clear up what had happened. CEO Rolf Buch stated, “We are shocked. It appears that individual employees at our subsidiaries have taken bribes to Vonovia’s detriment.” He added that this was “unacceptable.” The real estate group has since commissioned Deloitte to conduct an internal audit.

The claim that Vonovia was unaware of the incidents for over 10 years and was itself the victim is absurd. Like other large real estate companies, the Bochum-based group is notorious for its excessive greed for profit and its opaque methods of fleecing tenants.

Back in the 1990s, there were similar accusations against the Veba-Immobilien Group, which became Vonovia after several takeovers.

Last year, in an interview with finance daily Handelsblatt, Vonovia CEO Rolf Buch announced that rents would rise significantly due to inflation. Tenants’ associations indignantly pointed out that inflation was not a legal reason to raise rents.

Even when Berlin’s Social Democrat (SPD)-Left Party-Greens Senate (state executive) organized the “Round Table” with representatives of the real estate industry in Berlin during the last legislative period, Vonovia flatly rejected calls for rent increases to be stopped or even limited.

In Berlin and other major cities, housing is now in such short supply that astronomical rents are being demanded. In this situation, Vonovia declared this year that it would no longer begin new construction in Berlin, Potsdam and Dresden. In Berlin alone, the company stopped the construction of 1,500 planned apartments. A company spokesman justified this with the high level of inflation and increased interest rates. At the same time, the company increased its operating profit by 35 percent to just under €1.6 billion in 2022.

But Vonovia is not only cashing in simply on rental costs. For years, it has been using the ancillary costs it charges to rake in rich profits. A 2018 investigation by news magazine Der Spiegel found that the company had set up numerous subsidiaries for this purpose to operate services such as the cleaning of residential complexes and winter services at greatly inflated prices.

As an example, Der Spiegel cited a Hamburg residential complex where the costs for winter services (ice and snow clearance, etc.) increased by a whopping 1,900 percent. At the same time, tenants were no longer able to see exactly which services were being provided and which were not. The article reports “erroneous” and “dubious” service charge statements.

Even if Vonovia did not know about the openly criminal machinations of individual employees, it is par for the course in such a company.

The German Tenants’ Association has already warned that tenants are the ones who suffer because of the bribes. A large part of the damage would be paid directly or indirectly by tenants. It will be passed on to tenants via the service charges.

In addition, the company is apparently preparing massive cost-cutting measures. According to reports, the Executive Board is to be reduced in size. It can be assumed that further savings will also be made in personnel and services for tenants. After the raid became known last week, Vonovia’s share price fell by up to 5 percent, and has not recovered since.

The Vonovia case makes it clear once again that there is an urgent need to expropriate the rent sharks without compensation and to transfer their housing stock into public ownership. Housing must not remain a luxury commodity which profit-oriented corporations exploit to massively enrich themselves.

In a referendum in Berlin in 2021, a clear majority voted in favour of expropriating large real estate companies such as Vonovia. Despite this popular vote, the governing coalition of the SPD, Greens and Left Party refused to implement the albeit limited decision. Instead, they set up a “round table” with the real estate lobby to continue safeguarding its profits.

All three of Berlin’s governing parties, which recently suffered heavy losses in elections to the House of Representatives (state legislature), had explicitly supported the merger of Vonovia and Deutsche Wohnen. They were well aware that this would further aggravate the situation facing thousands of households.

To circumvent the outcome of the referendum, the SPD, Greens and Left Party had convened a commission of experts, which has been consulting for months about whether expropriation is legally and financially permissible or even violates the constitution. For their part, the Christian Democrats (CDU), who are expected to provide the next Berlin mayor, have announced they will take legal action against any laws introducing the state takeover of such companies.

Amazon announces 9,000 more job cuts as tech industry jobs massacre builds

Shannon Jones

Amazon announced Monday that it is laying off another 9,000 employees, bringing to 27,000 the number of staff the company has cut since the start of the year. The layoffs represent about 8 percent of the company’s global workforce. Amazon’s stock fell 1.25 percent Monday following the job cut announcement.

The latest round of cuts by Amazon signal that the jobs massacre in the tech industry is continuing unabated. On March 14, Meta said it was laying off another 10,000 workers. Four months ago Meta announced the layoff of 11,000 employees, 13 percent of its workforce.

Through March 20 more than 500 tech companies have laid off nearly 140,000 workers this year. This has been the largest contraction in the tech industry since the dot-com crash, with almost every major tech company announcing cuts. Significant job cuts so far this year have come at giants Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Twitter and IBM, who together account for nearly half of the layoffs in tech.

The Amazon Fulfillment Center (FC) in Shakopee, Minnesota (MSP1) in the Twin Cities region. [Photo by Tony Webster / CC BY 2.0]

In a memo to employees, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the latest cuts would impact workers mainly at Amazon Web Services, PXT, which handles human resources, advertising and the Twitch livestreaming division. He said the final decision on which jobs would be eliminated would be determined by mid-April. Citing the current economic “uncertainty,” Jassy said the company had “chosen to be more streamlined in our costs and headcount.”

In typical corporate speak the letter continued, “The overriding tenet of our annual planning this year was to be leaner while doing so in a way that enables us to still invest robustly in the key long-term customer experiences that we believe can meaningfully improve customers’ lives and Amazon as a whole.” Needless to say this offers little comfort to workers whose lives are being upended.

The recent round of cuts will impact 2,300 Amazon workers in the Seattle, Washington, area, the company’s base of operations. This month Amazon announced the closure of eight Amazon Go convenience stores. It has also suspended construction on its highly touted HQ2 project in the Washington D.C. area. Some 8,000 workers were supposed to have started work at the complex in Arlington, Virginia, this summer. Meanwhile, Amazon issued a directive last month requiring employees to be in the office at least three days a week.

Last year, layoffs impacted workers at Amazon’s Alexa voice recognition activation division and then spread to those working on automated stores, drones and the consumer retail division as well as job recruiters. Cuts have so far not hit the company’s warehouse division.

Jassy said the company had not announced all planned layoffs in January because management had not completed its cost assessment at that time. “Rather than rush through these assessments without the appropriate diligence,” he wrote, “we chose to share these decisions as we’ve made them so people had the information as soon as possible.”

Amazon enjoyed a boom in sales and profits during the pandemic as online shopping increased. However, last year the company saw a loss due to declining online sales revenue and because of its investment in electric startup Rivian Motors. Amazon suffered a $5.4 billion loss when the share price of the vehicle company collapsed. Amazon has contracted for 100,000 delivery vehicles from Rivian.

According to website layoffs.fyi, 67 tech companies have announced 26,910 layoffs so far in March. This follows 84,714 tech layoffs in January and 36,491 in February.

March layoffs include:

• Better.com—3,000 layoffs.
• Xerox—800 layoffs in production, marketing and talent teams.
• Go to Group—600 job cuts following 1,300 announced late last year.
• Atlassian—500 jobs slashed as the business software maker is cutting 5 percent of its workforce.
• Thoughtworks—500 layoffs, the software consulting firm is laying off 4 percent of its global workforce.
• Sirius XM—475; 8 percent of its workforce.
• Informatica—450; 7 percent of its workforce.
• Pico Interactive—400; 20 percent of its workforce.
• Alerzo—400 job cuts, impacting full-time and part-time staff.
• Docusign—680; 10 percent of its workforce.

The latest layoffs take place amid continuing crisis in the world financial system with the takeover of Credit Suisse this weekend. This followed the collapse and takeover of Silicon Valley Bank, which further destabilized the tech industry.

The banking crisis and tech layoffs are the product of the relentless increase in interest rates by the US Federal Reserve, which has resulted in the shutting off of the easy money that had fueled growth in the tech industry. The interest rate hikes are part of a deliberate effort by the ruling class to undermine the militancy of the working class by increasing unemployment.

The layoffs in the tech industry foreshadow broader problems in the US economy. The tech and information industry accounts for 10 percent of the US economy and 8 percent of jobs, and far more counting jobs that support tech. Writing on the tech layoffs and the aftermath of the collapse of SVB the Wall Street Journal wrote, “The same tech industry-based economic engine that fueled the global economy on the way up—turning every invested dollar into what seemed like a buck and a half—is doing the opposite on the way down.” It continued, “The unraveling of Silicon Valley Bank began when interest rates rose, the ‘free money’ spigot shut off, and investment in startups crashed. The result was investors and companies drawing down their accounts at the bank.”

The tech sector cuts at Amazon come as the company is attempting to squeeze ever more production and profit out of its workforce in its warehouses. According to a recent report in the Guardian, injuries at Amazon warehouses are twice as high as at its major competitors. The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued citations against Amazon at six warehouses in January and February of this year. The citations involved unsafe working conditions, ergonomics and failure to report injuries.

On February 1, OSHA issued a statement reporting that it found multiple risk factors for musculoskeletal injuries, including high frequency of lifting, heavy weight of items, “employees awkwardly twisting, bending and extending themselves to lift items” and long hours required to complete tasks. Examination of company log books revealed that Amazon employees experienced a high incidence of musculoskeletal disorders.

However, despite the numerous irregularities, OSHA has issued minimal fines. In the case of the most recent violations, just $46,875 in total was levied against three facilities, in Aurora, Illinois; Nampa, Idaho; and Castleton, New York.

Trade unions support Ford Valencia scheme to lay off 1,144 workers

Alejandro López

Ford Spain has announced a savage redundancy scheme to lay off 1,144 workers, or 20 percent of its workforce, at its plant in Almussafes, Valencia. Just hours after the announcement, the trade unions signaled their readiness to work with management to impose these attacks in the space of three months.

Ford plant in Valencia, Spain [Photo: Ford Motor Company]

The cut is a devastating exposure of the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government which has showered Ford with billions of euros in tax benefits and claimed that attacks against working conditions where necessary to attract supposed investments to preserve jobs.

Above all, it has exposed the German and Spanish trade unions which organised last year’s fratricidal competitive bidding contest between Almussafes plant against Ford’s Saarlouis plant in Germany. The one who imposed the most savage attacks on its workforce would secure the contract to produce electric vehicles, and supposedly, preserve the plant’s future and jobs. Almussafes “victory” has only meant a new round of attacks, as the WSWS had warned.

The savage cuts were expected for months. The Almussafes factory will stop producing the S-Max and Galaxy models in April because Ford is accelerating its strategy towards the total electrification of its passenger vehicles in 2030 and of its entire portfolio in 2035. Thus, the factory Almussafes will keep the production of only the Kuga, accounting for 62 percent of the more than 245,000 cars assembled in Valencia in 2022. The factory also assembles the Transit Connect but will stop making the version for the European market at the end of this year.

It is clear that this is just the start of the job onslaught. Last November, Martin Sander, director of Ford’s electric car division in Europe, said that electrification would mean a reduction in jobs compared to combustion vehicles. “The time it takes to produce an electric vehicle is significantly less than the time it takes to produce a combustion engine vehicle. Depending on who you ask, it’s somewhere between 30-50%, so we’ll need less capacity to build vehicles in the future. That is a reality.”

Thousands more jobs are under threat. According to the Valencian Association of the Automotive Industry (AVIA), Ford’s operations are responsible for nearly 25,000 direct jobs in the region of Valencia, many of these are linked to the combustion vehicles.

Already in February, Ford Europe announced 3,800 job cuts across Europe over the next three years. In Germany, 2,300 jobs are to go and 1,300 in Great Britain.

The trade unions are not only refusing to mobilise workers in defence of jobs. Instead, they have long agreed to the cuts behind the backs of the workforce and immediately announced their readiness to work with Ford management to impose them through so-called voluntary redundancies.

The UGT, which won a majority of the union election votes last month, with 2,713 votes (61.91 percent) translated into 22 delegates in the company committee, reacted by bemoaning that it will be hard for them to impose the job losses on workers. It stated: “This is a more than considerable volume of jobs [losses], which makes it difficult to reach an agreement that guarantees 100% voluntary leave through retirement support plans and incentivized leave. We can say that a more than complicated negotiation is starting today.”

It added, “What [the company] is not going to be able to claim is that, since the surplus is extensive, it will make the conditions of the previous [redundancy] plans cheaper. In any case, what would proceed is the opposite, in order to seek the greatest number of volunteers.”

UGT has now called management to lower the age for voluntary redundancies under the previous job cuts agreed at 55 years. This layer now represents only 600 workers in the plant, after the UGT signed off on mass redundancy schemes over the past years, the last one affecting 630 workers in April 2021.

Last week, UGT cynically stated that “far from what the company intends, and although it may seem crazy, what we will request from UGT at the negotiating table is that the exit age for a hypothetical plan be lowered below the 55 years agreed in the previous plan.”

The UGT recalled the clause in the Electrification Agreement they signed last year allowing management to “reach an agreement to undertake the voluntarily exits.” The whole deal has been exposed as fraud, sold as a way of preserving jobs at the expense of workers at the Saarlouis plant in Germany.

The Electrification Agreement represents the most savage attack on workers in the Valencia plant’s 46-year history designed to ensure it “won” a fratricidal bidding contest against Saarlouis. It imposes a four-year wage freeze, which under conditions of soaring prices due to NATO’s war against Russia in the Ukraine, represents thousands of euros less for each worker.

Aware of mounting anger, the UGT refused to submit the agreement to a referendum, even when it represented 97 percent of the unionised workers before February’s elections. Instead, they opted to submit the deal to a sham vote last February, while pre-empting opposition to it by posting a video on YouTube featuring an attack on the WSWS for opposing its reactionary collaboration with Ford management. Without the text available, workers were forced to vote via a union app. It was thus impossible to independently count the vote.

The UGT has once again been exposed as a tool of Ford to ram through attacks. Last August, the UGT downplayed Ford Spain’s refusal to accept millions of euros in corporate bailouts from the Spanish government and the EU which signaled its intention to increase attacks on workers, reneging on its earlier commitments. UGT cynically claimed that investments “are not in question” and will preserve “thousands of jobs in very good conditions.”

The STM-Intersindical Valenciana also stands exposed. The union claimed to oppose the UGT backroom deals with Ford management, the Electrification Agreement and its sham vote. On this basis, it received a substantial increase in its votes during last February’s elections, gaining 30 percent of the votes and increasing its union affiliation by 28 times, according to STM spokesperson in the plant, Daniel Portillo. Portillo also claimed that the UGT suffered a 40 percent disaffiliation.

It shows that workers are seeking an alternative to oppose wage cuts and job losses, but the STM is no alternative.

Celebrating the results, Portillo promised “we are going to do everything possible as a union to fight and prevent all those cuts that the company can achieve with its majority union (UGT).”

Weeks later, the same Portillo reacted to Ford’s jobs cuts announcement by stating “We hope that within 30 days an agreement can be reached that is so beneficial so that people can present themselves voluntarily [for the redundancy scheme].”

The union then posted a 114-word statement, stating that it “will work and fight to reduce the number of those affected, in order to improve the production lines’ work rhythms and speeds to avoid harm to our health. Of course, we will also fight to avoid traumatic dismissals.”

Protests sweep France as National Assembly accepts Macron’s pension cuts without a vote

Alex Lantier

Protests erupted across France yesterday evening, after the National Assembly failed to censure Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne’s government for imposing President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular pension cuts without a parliamentary vote. Violent clashes between heavily-armed police and thousands of protesting youth and workers continued into the night in cities throughout France.

Only 279 deputies voted a censure motion presented by right-wing deputy Charles de Courson and backed by the neo-fascist National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen and the Unsubmissive France (LFI) party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. This fell nine short of a majority in the 577-seat Assembly. Under the arcane and reactionary terms of Article 49, line 3 of France’s 1958 constitution, Macron’s cuts are thus formally adopted as law without a parliamentary vote.

These events constitute a historic exposure of the state as a class dictatorship of the capitalist oligarchy. Three-quarters of the French people oppose Macron’s cuts, and two-thirds want a general strike to block the economy and prevent their adoption. But the Assembly trampled the will of the people underfoot. There is no parliamentary road to stop the looting of the French people by an entrenched ruling class determined to slash pensions by hundreds of billions of euros in order to fund bank bailouts for the rich and war with Russia.

The vote was also a devastating exposure of the union bureaucracies and pseudo-left parties like LFI. For weeks, at protests of millions of workers and youth, they claimed that just attending protests in large numbers could convince the Assembly to oppose Macron’s cuts. The predictable outcome in the Assembly, which never had a majority to vote a censure motion against the Borne government or the cuts, exposes the political charlatans who peddled these illusions.

Instead, a direct confrontation is emerging between the working class and the capitalist police-state machine, as protests continue to escalate amid growing, palpable fear in ruling circles. Industrial action is continuing among airline, rail and refinery workers, whose strike is beginning to cause fuel shortages in southeastern France. There is also a growing movement among teachers to stop the holding of the baccalauréat end-of-high school exam in protest against Macron.

A nationwide protest strike is scheduled for March 23, and even in official media there is growing speculation that the trade unions may not be able to hold back an uncontrolled social explosion of strikes and protests after that date.

Last night, after the announcement of the failure of the censure vote in the Assembly, spontaneous protests erupted for a fifth night since Macron announced Thursday he would impose his cuts without a parliamentary vote. The Macron administration again launched a brutal police crackdown on the protests throughout the country. Riot police armed with plastic shields, pistols and assault rifles fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters and savagely beat protesters, including women, with batons.

There were clashes with police in Toulouse around the Jean-Jaurès station, in Strasbourg around Kléber square, in Lille on Republic Square, and in Lyon around Bellecour Square. In Strasbourg, police kettled and trapped protesters in narrow streets and shot multiple volleys of tear gas at them, leaving protesters to choke and pass out from the fumes.

In Paris, protesters gathered and were attacked by police in areas across the city including Vauban Square near the National Assembly, then at the St. Lazare train station and Châtelet and Bastille squares. Protesters marching from Bastille Square shouted chants on the 1789 French Revolution, saying: “Louis XVI we decapitated him, Macron fears we can start again.”

As large squads of heavily-armed police charged back and forth across central Paris, some cops also assaulted diners who happened to be eating at restaurants near where protests were taking place.

An objectively revolutionary situation is emerging, as the working class in France moves into a direct confrontation with the capitalist state machine. This takes place amid a wave of strikes against austerity and inflation by millions of workers across Europe, in Germany, Britain, Portugal, Greece, Belgium, the Netherlands and beyond. The critical question posed, as the class struggle continues to mount, is on what perspective the fight against Macron can be waged.

Twenty years since the US invasion of Iraq

Patrick Martin

Twenty years ago, on March 20, 2003, the government of the United States embarked on one of the greatest crimes of the 21st century, launching an unprovoked and illegal war against Iraq. It began with saturation bombing of the defenseless country (“shock and awe”), which annihilated the bulk of its armed forces and much of its social infrastructure, including electrical power and water supplies, food processing, and the production of medical supplies.

In this June 19, 2004, file photo, residents of a Fallujah, Iraq neighborhood walk through the wreckage of their homes which were destroyed in a U.S. airstrike. The U.S. launched its invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003, unleashing a war that led to over 1 million deaths. (AP Photo/Abdul-Kadr Saadi, File)

This was followed by the invasion of the devastated country by more than 130,000 American troops, armed with the most technologically sophisticated weapons, who cut through what little remained of organized Iraqi resistance and reached Baghdad in only two weeks. After another week of slaughter, US forces captured the capital, suffering only 34 casualties in this final one-sided battle, compared to countless thousands of Iraqi dead.

The methods employed by the Bush administration in Iraq were entirely criminal, in keeping with the nature of the whole enterprise. The war began with a sneak attack: cruise missile strikes against government buildings where Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein was believed to be, in an effort to assassinate him. It continued with the use of weapons banned by international law, like white phosphorus bombs, which set cities on fire and cause horrific burns to human flesh. In addition, US and British forces fired an estimated 440,000 depleted uranium shells, which cause long-term cancer rates to skyrocket and produce hideous birth defects.

In the course of the war, the most horrific forms of torture were employed by US forces, revealed in shocking images from the Abu Ghraib prison. The authorization of torture was drawn up by Bush administration lawyers, who asserted that the president had virtually unlimited powers as Commander-in-Chief.

The result of the invasion, followed by an eight-year occupation, was what the WSWS branded as “sociocide,” the deliberate destruction of an entire society. The imperialist conquest reduced one of the most advanced countries in the Middle East to conditions of medieval barbarism, not only economically, but also politically. The US rulers systematically promoted religious divisions and ignited sectarian warfare between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims and between Muslims and smaller religious minorities, in an effort to prevent any united resistance to the US occupation.

In deliberately embarking on an aggressive war, the US government and its leading officials—including George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and Colin Powell—were guilty of war crimes. Along with allies like UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, they violated the core principle laid down by the Nuremberg Tribunal after World War II, which found that the central crime of the Nazis, from which all their other crimes flowed, was the launching of unprovoked and aggressive wars. (See below, remarks delivered by David North in 2004 at a debate in Dublin, Ireland.)

David North speaks at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland on October 14, 2004

The American media paid only perfunctory attention to the Iraq War anniversary. What has been said is aimed at covering up for the colossal scale of the crime, and of the media’s own role in it.

The cynicism, as always, found its most perfidious expression in the pages of the New York Times. A news analysis by Max Fisher under the headline, “20 Years On, a Question Lingers About Iraq: Why Did the U.S. Invade?” treats the motives of the Bush administration in launching the war as uncertain and even “fundamentally unknowable,” in the words of one “scholar” interviewed by Fisher. 

The Times article flatly rejects the “once-prevalent theory: that Washington invaded to control Iraq’s vast oil resources,” without referring to the prominence of former oilmen like Vice President Cheney and Bush himself in driving the decisions for war. And it attributes the systematic lying about Saddam Hussein’s possession of “weapons of mass destruction” to a form of groupthink, in which “[a] critical mass of senior officials all came to the table wanting to topple Mr. Hussein for their own reasons, and then talked one another into believing the most readily available justification.”

The Times’ “analysis” carefully avoids any discussion of the role of the Times itself as one of the main promoters of the “weapons of mass destruction” campaign. Reports written by Judith Miller and Michael Gordon, most notoriously a September 2002 front-page exclusive under the headline, “U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts,” parroted the claims of top Bush administration officials, and were taken up by the corporate media as a whole. White House officials then cited these reports as “evidence” against Iraq, which they themselves had planted.

The motivations for the war are not “unknowable.” Indeed, they were known at the time, with tens of millions throughout the world participating in demonstrations in advance of the invasion, rejecting the lies of the administration and demanding “no blood for oil.” The size and breadth of the demonstrations were so large that it prompted the New York Times to comment that there were “two superpowers”: The United States and “world public opinion.”

On March 21, 2003, the day after the invasion began, World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board Chairman David North published a statement laying out the nature of the war:

The unprovoked and illegal invasion of Iraq by the United States is an event that will live in infamy. The political criminals in Washington who have launched this war, and the wretched scoundrels in the mass media who are reveling in the bloodbath, have covered this country in shame. Hundreds of millions of people in every part of the world are repulsed by the spectacle of a brutal and unrestrained military power pulverizing a small and defenseless country. The invasion of Iraq is an imperialist war in the classic sense of the term: a vile act of aggression that has been undertaken on behalf of the interests of the most reactionary and predatory sections of the financial and corporate oligarchy in the United States. Its overt and immediate purpose is the establishment of control over Iraq’s vast oil resources and reduction of that long-oppressed country to an American colonial protectorate.

The war was part of an unending series of invasions and occupations initiated by the United States in the midst of and following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, under both Democrats and Republicans. This includes the First Gulf War (1990-91); the bombing of Serbia (1999); the invasion of Afghanistan (2001); the bombing of Libya (2011) and the US-backed civil war in Syria (2011). Far from expressing the strength of American capitalism, the effort of the American ruling class to use military force to conquer the world arises out of extreme crisis. As the WSWS statement explained:

Whatever the outcome of the initial stages of the conflict that has begun, American imperialism has a rendezvous with disaster. It cannot conquer the world. It cannot reimpose colonial shackles upon the masses of the Middle East. It will not find through the medium of war a viable solution to its internal maladies. Rather, the unforeseen difficulties and mounting resistance engendered by war will intensify all of the internal contradictions of American society.

The 20th anniversary of the Iraq war is being marked now amidst an escalating US-NATO war against Russia, which threatens to become a much wider war, involving the whole of Europe and risking the potential use of nuclear weapons for the first time since the Truman administration carried out the nuclear incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

While the former middle class critics of the Bush administration’s war against Iraq have become the most fervent advocates of the war against Russia, the basic interests driving US policy remain the same. American imperialism, now led by the Biden administration, instigated the war and is determined to pursue it to the military defeat of Russia, whatever the consequences. Facing intersecting crises, enormously exacerbated by the pandemic, the ruling class toboggans toward catastrophe.

The media which yesterday promoted the lies of “weapons of mass destruction” peddles the “Wuhan lab leak” hoax to blame China for the coronavirus pandemic, and the claims of “unprovoked Russian aggression” and ludicrous allegations of Nazi-style atrocities in Ukraine.

The lies of 2023 are even greater and more brazen than the lies of 2003. Putin’s reactionary invasion is a desperate effort by the Russian oligarchy to defend its class interests against a real threat: the far more powerful forces of American and European imperialism.

Pressure grows on another US bank amid controversy over Credit Suisse takeover

Nick Beams

The desperate actions by governments, regulatory authorities, and banks in both the US and Europe have not only failed to stem the growing financial crisis but in some ways are making it worse.

In the US, following the failure of the Silvergate bank, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature over the past two weeks, the latter two recording the second- and third-largest banking failures in US history respectively, attention has turned to the travails of the First Republic Bank with growing concerns that it could be the next to go.

Last week, a consortium of 11 major banks, under the leadership of JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, with the collaboration of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, deposited $30 billion with the struggling bank. It was hoped this show of confidence would stop the outflow of depositors’ money, ease the pressure on its share price and stabilise it.

In just a few days, the operation has been revealed as a complete failure. While the outflows are reported to have slowed somewhat, First Republic has lost $70 billion out of the total of $176 billion it held at the start of the year.

And despite the injection of cash, the company’s shares have continued to plummet. Its share price has fallen by 90 percent since the beginning of the month, closing 47 percent down yesterday. Long-term bonds that mature in 2046 were trading at 55 cents on the dollar, down from 75 cents in early March.

First Republic took another hit before trading opened yesterday, when the ratings agency S&P Global downgraded its credit rating for the second time in a week. It said the $30 billion in deposits from the major banks “should ease near-term liquidity pressures, but it may not solve the substantial business, liquidity, funding and profitability challenges that we believe the bank is now likely facing.”

With the deposit operation having failed, a new plan is under discussion today in which the banks may convert a part or all their deposits into an infusion of capital.

The failure of SVB and the deepening problems of First Republic have focused attention on the role of small to middle-sized banks in the US financial system and their potential for setting off a systemic crisis.

The limited regulatory measures introduced after the crisis of 2008 focused on the large banks, characterised as “too big to fail.” In 2018, Congress removed many middle-sized banks from oversight with a decision that some regulations should only apply to banks with assets of $250 billion and above as opposed to the earlier stipulation of $50 billion.

This posed no great danger so long as the Fed was continuing its policy of ultra-cheap money. But the situation has shifted sharply with interest rate hikes initiated by the Fed over the past year, lifting its base rate from near zero to 4.5 percent.

This has meant that the assets held by these banks, which play a significant role in regional areas and in key sectors of the economy—there are some 4000 banks in the US—have suffered a decline in their market value, such that they are well below the book value as recorded in the banks’ balance sheets.

This applies not only to Treasury bonds and other financial assets, the value of which falls with interest rate rises, but also to other interest rate-sensitive assets such as commercial real estate.

A divergence between market value and book value does not present a problem so long as money continues to flow in. But if it starts going in the other direction, as it did for SVB, then those losses must be recognized when the assets are sold to cover the cash outflow.

The situation recalls that which developed with regard to subprime loans, the spark that set off the 2008 crisis. When problems first came to the surface in 2007, Fed chair Ben Bernanke said they would not spread because the subprime market was so small relative to the total financial system.

The circumstances of the present crisis are very different from those of subprime. But there are similarities in that a crisis that erupted in what might have been regarded as an inconsequential area of the system has been shown to have broad implications. And in some ways the present crisis is more serious than that which erupted with subprime.

Subprime mortgages, which were sliced and diced to form bond packages and then sold off to investors, were in essence speculative assets.

Today the crisis arises from the fact that many middle-sized banks have invested heavily in what are supposed to be the safest assets of all, Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities, which have fallen in value because of the Fed’s interest rate hikes.

This is what led financial regulators to invoke the danger of “systemic risk” as they moved in to guarantee the money of wealthy individuals at SVB whose holdings went well beyond the limit of $250,000 automatically covered by insurance.

The issue now is: How far will these measures be extended? Are all deposits throughout the banking system now guaranteed? And what is going to happen to the value of the holdings of Treasury bonds and other financial assets held on the books of so many small and middle-sized banks if the Fed continues its rate rises? And if there is a pause in the rate hike cycle what does this mean for the Fed’s so-called “fight” against inflation?

These are some of the issues which will confront the Fed’s policy-making body when it meets today and tomorrow.

It will also have to consider the implications of the takeover of Credit Suisse, a globally significant bank, for the stability of the US and international financial system.

One issue of immediate concern is the effect of the Credit Suisse takeover by UBS, organised at the insistence of the Swiss government and the country’s financial regulator FINMA, on the bond market.

In any liquidation or takeover, as financial interests salvage what they can from the carcass, bond holders are further up the line from shareholders.

But in the takeover of Credit Suisse, the Swiss National Bank declared that holders of $17 billion worth of so-called additional tier ones (AT1s) would get zero. The AT1s are a variant of contingent convertible bonds, known as cocos, which were introduced after the 2008 crisis in which debt could be converted into equity.

The pecking order in the event of liquidation was that shareholders would be wiped out first, followed by cocos and then senior creditors. In return for increased risks, the holders of the coco bonds were paid a higher rate of interest.

However, in the takeover of Credit Suisse these rules were overturned. While equity holders may get something, AT1 holders will get nothing.

Financial Times columnist Gillian Tett pointed to some of the motivations for the decision.

“It is hard to escape the suspicion,” she wrote, “that the Swiss authorities decided to make (modest) payments to equity holders – but not to bond investors – because the former included a powerful Saudi shareholder [the Saudi National Bank] (that Bern did not want to offend.)”

Protectionism, geopolitical self-interest and state intervention “seem to have over-ruled free-market principles.”

But she went on to note that there was “uncertainty about the legal structures surrounding US finance too.”

When SVB and Signature failed, protection was given to all depositors despite the mandate of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation that it only applied to the first $250,000 of deposits.

The net result, she concluded, is that investors are in limbo land, not knowing whether capital market laws apply as a “pillar of faith” for the future or whether governments in the US and Europe have the desire or the means to stand behind all banks. It was “no wonder fear abounds.”

The Bank of England (BoE) and the European Central Bank (ECB) both issued statements criticising the Swiss decision, with ECB president Christine Lagarde pointedly telling the European parliament, “Switzerland does not set standards in Europe.”

The ECB statement said, “Common equity instruments are the first ones to absorb losses, and only after their full use would Additional Tier 1 be required to be written down.”

The BoE set out its opposition, saying there was a “clear statutory order” in which shareholders and creditors should bear losses.

There are important political conclusions to be drawn from this incident. One of the central tenets of bourgeois ideology is that the capitalist system, and above all its financial mechanisms, are a rules-based order to which the working class must submit and obey as if it derives from Nature itself.

In fact, the financial system is not some natural and therefore eternal mechanism but a product of class society in which supposedly immutable rules are overturned overnight in a time of crisis as the conflicting interests of the ruling elites come to the surface.