French President Macron's China trip exacerbates conflicts between imperialist powers

Peter Schwarz

The sharp tensions over French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent trip to China shed light on the real goals of the US and its allies’ offensive against China and Russia. Driven by economic crises, tumultuous financial markets and the growth of the class struggle, the imperialist powers are struggling to forcibly re-divide the world, risking a nuclear third world war that would call into question the survival of mankind.

French President Emmanuel Macron, left, shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping after meeting the press at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, on April 6, 2023. [AP Photo/Ng Han Guan]

Their immediate objectives are the subjugation of Russia and the plundering of its vast natural resources, as well as the containment of China, whose economic rise is to be stopped. But the intensification of the confrontation is inevitably leading to fierce clashes between the imperialist powers themselves – especially between the US and Europe, but also between rival European powers.

The US has been launching new provocations against China on almost a daily basis over recent months. The one-China policy, which governed relations with China for 50 years, has now been abandoned. The US military conducts one aggressive military exercise after another off the Chinese coast. Last week, the biggest joint maneuver with the Philippines in history began.

In this tense situation, Macron traveled to China accompanied by a large economic delegation, had President Xi Jinping roll out the red carpet, agreed on a number of lucrative economic deals and praised Chinese President Xi’s peace initiative for Ukraine.

On the return flight, the French President then openly expressed what many other European politicians think, but for political reasons do not want to state openly. In an interview with journalists from Les Échos and Politico, he distanced himself sharply from the US’ China policy.

“Europe is in the process of creating elements of genuine strategic autonomy and should not fall into a kind of panic reflex and follow American policy,” he said. It should not enter into a block logic and allow itself to be drawn into crises “that are not ours.” If it is only a “follower” on the subject of Taiwan and “adapts to the American pace and a Chinese overreaction,” Europe will become a “vassal,” although it could be a “third pole.”

The “battles” that need to be fought are the “acceleration of our strategic autonomy” and the “securing of the financing of our economies,” Macron stressed. The key to reducing dependence on the Americans is to expand the European defence industry. What is needed is a “European war economy.”

In a clause that was likely noted with particular care in Washington, Macron also explicitly spoke out against the role of the US dollar as the leading global currency. “I would like to take this opportunity to emphasize one point: we must not be dependent on the extra-territoriality of the dollar,” he said.

Representatives of French Imperialism

Macron spoke as a representative of French imperialism and not as a peace advocate. For a long time, he was one of the hardliners on Chinese policy. Considering France an Indo-Pacific power, due to its overseas territories with 1.6 million inhabitants, he sought an anti-Chinese alliance with Japan, India and other countries.

But the United States sidelined him. When they signed the AUKUS tripartite alliance with Britain and Australia in September 2021 and Australia cancelled the purchase of $56 billion worth of French submarines, the conflict escalated. Macron recalled the French ambassadors from Washington and Canberra in protest and stepped up his campaign for “European sovereignty” or “strategic autonomy,” which he had already promoted in a 2017 programmatic speech at Sorbonne University in Paris.

This push for “strategic autonomy” in the economic, political and military fields is accompanied by a massive military build-up. The latest French military budget envisages an increase in defense spending of €3-4 billion per year. By 2030, the military budget will rise to €69 billion – from €32 billion in 2017. More than half of the funds are earmarked for the modernization of France’s nuclear arsenal: the renewal of warheads and missiles, as well as of Rafale jets and submarines that can fire them.

This is to be financed, among other things, by reducing pensions, against which millions have been taking to the streets for weeks. Macron meets them with dictatorial measures – with brutal police operations and by defying the will of the population and parliamentary majorities.

Macron’s remarks on America’s China policy were met with angry protests in the US and among its closest allies, as expected. The New York Times accused the French president of undermining US efforts to contain China. A Wall Street Journal editorial threatened to leave Europe to its own devices in the war against Russia, which the US is significantly pushing and funding: “Macron wants the US to rush to Europe's aid against Russian aggression, but apparently takes a vow of neutrality against Chinese aggression in the Pacific. Thank you, my friend.”

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said the alliance with the United States was “an absolute basis” for European security. Without mentioning Macron’s name, he accused him of dreaming of “working with everyone, with Russia and with powers in the Far East.”

Criticism from Germany

There was also strong protest from the European Union and Germany. The European Commission said that Macron had done the opposite of what he had agreed with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who travelled with him to Beijing and sharply criticised China’s Taiwan policy.

French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von de Leyen, center left, arrive for a working session with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, on April 6, 2023. [AP Photo/Ludovic Marin]

The German news magazine Der Spiegel carried the headline: “Is Macron now completely out of his mind?” The Süddeutsche Zeitung accused the French president of “driving a wedge in Europe's relationship with the US and at the same time opening a trench across Europe.” The Christian Democratic Union politician Johann Wadephul criticized: “Macron’s appeal for more European sovereignty is just as true: We are not pursuing this goal against the USA, but with them.”

The German Foreign Ministry said that while it was opposed to fierce competition with China, the belief that Europe could stand aside in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan was absurd. In addition, the close connection to the US was not seen as a threat, but as a prerequisite for European security, especially in Central and Eastern Europe.

Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock traveled to China on Thursday to restore the impression of European and transatlantic unity damaged by Macron, according to official accounts. At a meeting with her Chinese counterpart Qin Gang, she stressed that a forcible reunification of China with Taiwan was unacceptable for Europe. At the same time, she downplayed Macron’s remarks, claiming that French China policy “reflects” European China policy exactly.

The fact is that Berlin, too, has long pursued a policy of “strategic autonomy,” even if it uses other terms for it. Leading politicians and media outlets assume that NATO is a temporary alliance, that the global economic interests of the US and Europe are not compatible in the long run and that Germany must pursue its imperialist interests on its own military strength.

In a commentary on Macron’s remarks, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung explained that Europeans have known since Donald Trump's presidency that “Washington can no longer be trusted in every situation of life.” A similar constellation could already exist again in 2024, it continued. Macron’s analysis that Europe must strive for something like strategic autonomy is therefore not wrong from the outset.

Already in 2003, the Iraq war led to sharp conflicts between the governments in Germany under Gerhard Schröder and in the US under George W. Bush. Since 2014 at the latest, Germany has been officially pursuing the goal of once again playing a major role as a global military power. And in 2017, after a confrontation with US President Donald Trump, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that the times in which Germany could completely rely on others were over. “We Europeans really have to take our destiny into our own hands,” she said.

The rivalry between Germany and France

But the pursuit of a European great power policy inevitably brings back the old rivalries between Germany and France, which fought fiercely between 1871 and 1945 in three major wars. The much-vaunted Franco-German partnership and post-war European unity flourished under US sponsorship, which for geopolitical and economic reasons had an interest in pacifying Western Europe.

Even if Paris and Berlin could agree on the goal of developing Europe into an independent world power – a “third pole” as Macron put it, the question of who is in charge and who dominates Europe would lead to irreconcilable conflicts. Especially since the beginning of the Ukrainian war, German and French interests have clearly diverged.

Germany, which was initially reluctant to cut off its economic relations with its main energy supplier, Russia, joined the US at the start of the Ukrainian war and is now using the war for the most comprehensive rearmament programme since Hitler.

Its stated goal is to become Europe’s “military leader.” “Germany’s size, its geographical location, its economic strength, in short: its weight, make us a leading power, whether we like it or not. Also militarily,” said former Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht six months ago.

Germany has tripled its arms budget and has become the main warmonger after the US. According to calculations by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the US spent €71.3 billion in the first year of the war, while Germany spent €7.4 billion and France only €1.8 billion.

According to a commentary by the F.A.Z., Macron’s interview was therefore aimed not least at “the Federal Government, which has demonstrated its proximity to the United States since February 2022 and shows little commitment to a Franco-German axis.”

With the Ukraine war, Germany pursues its own geostrategic interests, which exclude French interests. In addition to the subjugation of Russia, German imperialism is concerned with the domination of Eastern Europe – or “Central Europe,” as it was formerly called – which was already one of its most important war aims during the First and Second World Wars. After the defeat in the Second World War, it had to give up large, formerly German territories in the region.

Today, Poland, the Baltic States and other Eastern European countries form an important reservoir of cheap labour for the German economy. If there were a conflict with the US, these countries would inevitably orient themselves towards Washington.

In order not to jeopardize the alliance with the US in the Ukrainian war, the German government is moving further away from China, with which it has had the closest relations of all European states so far. Economically, China is still Germany’s most important trading partner. In 2022, German companies invested €11.5 billion more than ever before in China. 

The German government is now pushing further afield and is seeking new alliances with Japan, India, Brazil and other countries. While in Beijing, Baerbock described China as a “partner, competitor and systemic rival” and objected to “unhealthy dependencies,” but also stressed that this means “not decoupling.”

The steady escalation of the war in Ukraine by NATO, the systematic US war preparations against China, and the rival great power aspirations of Germany and France show that there is no way out of the danger of war on a capitalist basis. What is driving the imperialist great powers into the madness of a nuclear Third World War is – as in 1914 and 1939 – the irresolvable crisis of the capitalist system, which can only bring about social inequality, societal decline and environmental destruction.

American Library Association registers a near doubling of efforts to censor, ban books in 2022

David Walsh

The right-wing rampage to censor and ban library books and materials in the US continues. The desperate aim is to suppress independent and critical thought among young people, in particular, who are instinctively at odds with the status quo. The developing political and social crisis makes it all the more imperative for these social forces to block access to anything that does not uphold the official lies and mystifications.

The Associated Press reported April 10 that a graphic novel based on the diary of Holocaust victim Anne Frank was removed from the library at Vero Beach High School in Florida after a complaint from one parent. The latter individual, the head of the ultra-right Moms for Liberty in Indian River County, an organization spearheading book banning nationwide, raised an objection. The school’s principal abjectly submitted, and the book was removed last month.

Anne Frank's Diary-The Graphic Adaptation

The work, Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation, is a 2018 reworking or editing of the original diary by Israeli filmmaker and writer Ari Folman (Waltz with Bashir, 2008), with illustrations by David Polonsky. Folman also directed Where Is Anne Frank, an animated film and a freer adaptation of the diary in 2021.

The book has been praised widely for its psychological sensitivity and artistry. The New York Times Book Review described it as a “stunning, haunting work of art.” The reviewer for the Christian Science Monitor asserted that in “the handling that Folman and Polonsky give” the diary, “what happens is nothing short of a revelation . . . nothing has ever quite captured the strange, stubborn delicacy, the forlorn wistfulness, of the diary like this before . . . a genuine work of art.” Nonetheless, one phone call from a right-wing Vandal, and the book disappears.

What are the objections? Moms for Liberty leader Jennifer Pippin, reports the Associated Press, claimed that “the Anne Frank graphic novel violated state standards to teach the Holocaust accurately.” What was inaccurate? Pippin didn’t explain directly, but we can deduce something about the objections from her comments: “Even her version featured the editing out of the entries about sex,” Pippin said, referring to the original diary. “Even the publisher of the book calls it a ‘biography,’ meaning, it writes its own interpretive spin. It’s not the actual work. It quotes the work, but it’s not the diary in full. It chooses to offer a different view on the subject.”

Apparently to indicate the character of the objection, the AP comments that the book “at one point shows the protagonist walking in a park, enchanted by female nude statues, and later proposing to a friend that they show each other their breasts.”

Ignorance goes hand in hand with social reaction. Moms for Liberty, as noted, is a far-right organization, with ties to fascist elements in and around the Republican Party. Considering those political surroundings, its claim to be concerned with an accurate depiction of the Holocaust needs to be taken with a very large grain of salt. The outfit has particularly close ties to the administration of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Media Matters for America has correctly pointed out that Moms for Liberty uses “parental rights” as a cover for harassing public schools and libraries. They are opposed to “indoctrinating” children—except with chauvinism, militarism, anti-communism and religious bigotry.

The right-wing commissioners in Llano County, Texas, northwest of Austin, are so determined to censor books they disapprove of that they are willing to shut down the public libraries in the county on that account.

According to CNN, the county commissioners “kicked out the members of the library board in 2021 and replaced them with a new board that demanded review of the content of all its books. That led to several books being removed from its catalog [and] access being cut off to an e-book service that included some of the disputed titles.”

In April 2022, seven residents of the county sued officials claiming that the action violated their First and 14th Amendment rights. The lawsuit alleged that county officials removed books from the shelves of the public library system “because they disagree with the ideas within them” and terminated access to thousands of digital books because they could not ban two specific titles.

Remarkably, the suit charged that the county suspended access to e-books because officials were unable to remove two books on a list circulated by a far-right Texas state politician, dissolved the existing library board and replaced them with individuals who promoted book removals and closed the advisory board meetings to the public.

On March 30, 2023, a federal judge ordered the Llano County library system to return 12 children’s books “to its shelves that had been removed, many because of their LGBTQ and racial content.” (CNN)

US District Judge Robert Pitman commented in his order that although “libraries are afforded great discretion for their selection and acquisition decisions, the First Amendment prohibits the removal of books from libraries based on either viewpoint or content discrimination.”

These are simply two examples of the censorship campaign, organized by a network of well-financed, extreme right organizations. The proliferation of such cases could provide the basis for a daily column.

The American Library Association (ALA) released data in late March revealing that there were 1,269 demands to censor library books and resources in 2022, the highest number of such efforts since the ALA began keeping records more than two decades ago. The book challenges last year nearly doubled the 729 registered in 2021.

A record 2,571 unique titles were “targeted for censorship” in 2022, writes the ALA, a 38 percent increase from the 1,858 unique titles subjected to attack the previous year. The vast majority of the controversial books “were written by or about members of the LGBTQIA+ community and people of color.”

The systematic character of the campaign, with local groups making use of lists compiled by right-wing groups, “contributed significantly to the skyrocketing number of challenges and the frequency with which each title was challenged.” Of the overall number of books challenged, reports the library association, “90 percent were part of attempts to censor multiple titles. Of the books challenged, 40 percent were in cases involving 100 or more books. Prior to 2021, the vast majority of challenges to library resources only sought to remove or restrict access to a single book.”

According to Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, “Overwhelmingly, we’re seeing these challenges come from organized censorship groups that target local library board meetings to demand removal of a long list of books they share on social media.” 

Judy Blume 2009 [Photo by Carl Lender / CC BY 2.0]

In remarks delivered in New York April 4, renowned author of children’s, young adult and adult fiction, Judy Blume (Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret; Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Deenie and Blubber) denounced the DeSantis administration in Florida for its vicious censorship efforts.

Blume, reports Variety, described DeSantis as a “governor who wants to control everything, starting with what kids can think, what they can know, what they can question, what they can learn, and now even what they can talk about. We have a legislator who’s trying to put through a bill preventing girls in elementary school from talking about periods. … Good luck there.”

She referred to the censorship campaigns of the 1980s and the attacks on her work because of its treatment of sexuality, “and, specifically, puberty—which to some people was a very dirty word. It wasn’t something the censors wanted to talk about with their kids. You know—if they don’t read about it, they won’t know about it, and if they don’t know about it, it will never happen to them … guess what.”

Blume remarked that the present situation was like “the ‘80s, except it’s the ‘80s on steroids. … This time it’s not the Moral Majority or only the Religious Right. This time it is coming from our government.” She went on, “Lawmakers, drunk with power, with a need to control everything. Sure it’s still sexuality, but it’s gender, it’s LGBTQ+, it’s racism, it’s history itself that’s under fire.

“Teachers are under fire, librarians are threatened,” Blume added. “They are criminalizing teachers and librarians. It’s not just that they’re threatening their jobs, they’re threatening them. They could go to jail, all because they stand up for the rights of the students they teach. All because they refuse to give in to fear. I’ve known librarians who have saved lives by handing the right book to the right child at the right time. And for that one kid, finding themselves in a book can be a lifesaver.”

Bangladesh government tables new “essential services” anti-strike laws

Wimal Perera

On April 6, the Bangladeshi government tabled a modified Essential Services Bill, allowing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s regime to declare any sector an essential service and outlaw all industrial action. The repressive measure was introduced amid rising anger among workers and the poor over soaring inflation and worsening living conditions.

Supporters of Bangladesh Nationalist Party, headed by former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, rally in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Dec. 10, 2022, to demand Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resign and hold new elections. [AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu]

The bill was submitted to a parliamentary standing committee which will report back with suggested changes within 30 days. If passed, the new law will allow the government to declare any service “essential” that it deems necessary, banning strikes and imposing punishments of up six months jail and 50,000 takas ($US470) fines on anyone involved in “illegal strikes.”

The bill is an extension of the already existing Essential Services Act and yet another move to widen the government’s autocratic powers. In 2018, the Hasina government passed the Digital Security Act, which curbs freedom of expression and has been used to suppress protests over the jailing of leaders of Bangladeshi opposition parties.

The current Essential Services Act already bans strikes by workers in power generation and distribution-related activities, post and telecommunications, e-commerce, internet and digital services, as well as in the railways and all transportation of goods and passengers by water, road and air.

According to media reports, the new bill covers information and communication technology; port or port-related services; and any armed forces-related services and businesses. Other sectors include government-owned or controlled conservation systems, water supply or sewage systems and related health services, such as hospitals, clinics, health centres and dispensaries.

Extension of the Essential Services Act is driven by concerns in the Bangladeshi ruling class about an explosion of working-class struggles against deteriorating social conditions that have been worsened by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the US-NATO war against Russia.

Last August, nationwide protests by workers, students and the poor erupted against the government in response to unprecedented fuel price increases—the highest in Bangladeshi history.

In January, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) granted a $4.7 billion loan to the Hasina government, conditional on it implementing a series of harsh austerity measures. According to the Business Standard, this included “dynamic adjustment of fuel prices—which means increase of oil prices, bringing down the domestic default loan of state-owned banks to 10 percent, setting up asset management companies to recover defaulted loans, and leaving the exchange rate to the market—that is subjecting the exchange rate to market forces.”

Even before the IMF loan was approved, the government hiked gas and electricity tariffs to comply with the bank’s demands for reductions in government subsidies.

On December 10, tens of thousands of people attended protests called by the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) to demand resignation of the government and for new elections over inflation, fuel increases and violent police attacks.

On February 5, garment workers in Dhaka demonstrated demanding an increase in the minimum monthly wage from 8,000 taka ($US75) to 23,000 takas ($215) to compensate for increased house rents and drastic cuts in living standards.

While Bangladeshi trade union leaders have criticised the government’s new essential services bill, they oppose any independent mobilisation of workers against the government’s increasingly repressive measures.

The Bangladesh Noujan Sramik Federation, a water transport workers union, issued a statement criticising the government for not holding any discussion with “stakeholders before placing the bill in the parliament”—i.e., the union bureaucracy—and made a vague threat of future protests.

Physicians and nurses had held protests over “very valid” demands. “Banning the basic right to protest in the name of maintaining essential services should not be allowed,” the union stated. It threatened legal action against the legislation, which violated the constitutional right to protest.

Similar statements and harmless protests called by the unions against previous iterations of the government’s draconian measures have proved futile.

In October 2022, the Hasina government passed its previous version of the Essential Services Act, ignoring protests by the Sramik Karmachari Oikya Parishad (United Front of Workers and Employees), the country’s largest union federation. Rather than mobilise workers to bring down the government, the federation appealed for cancellation of the Bill, advising the government that there was “a scope to regulate strikes in the existing law.”

Bangladesh now faces mounting financial problems with its much praised “economic progress” on the wane. The World Bank has lowered the country’s growth rate from 6.7 percent to 5.2 percent for the 2022–23 fiscal year, while in March inflation hit 9.33 percent and foreign exchange reserves dropped to $31.14 billion, a six-year low.

Voicing concerns about growing social inequality in Bangladesh, an April 10 editorial of the New Age wrote: “In the past, the ultra-rich population grew faster in Bangladesh than any other countries” but warning that 35 million Bangladeshis or around 20 percent of the population currently live below the poverty line.

The escalating impact of the global economic crisis on Bangladesh, now facing falling foreign reserves and rising social tensions, has parallels with Sri Lanka where financial collapse and the eruption of a mass anti-government protests and strikes last year forced the resignation of President Rajapakse and his regime.

The Hasina government is replicating the same sort of repressive essential service anti-strikes bans and other anti-democratic attacks being implemented by the Wickremesinghe regime as it imposes the “brutal experiment” dictated by the IMF. It is no doubt nervously watching the explosive situation in France, where millions of workers and youth are continuing their three-month struggle against President Macron’s attacks on old-age pensions.

Riots erupt across France as Constitutional Council validates Macron’s pension cuts

Alex Lantier

At 6 p.m. yesterday, France’s Constitutional Council ruled that President Emmanuel Macron’s pension cuts are constitutional, removing the last legal obstacle to their adoption as law. The Elysée presidential palace announced 15 minutes later that Macron will promulgate the pension cuts as law within 48 hours.

The Council’s predictable approval of a law opposed by 80 percent of the French people, and which Macron rammed through without even a vote in parliament, again tears the “democratic” mask off the capitalist state. It imposes the diktat of the banks, who plan amid the NATO-Russia war in Ukraine to massively divert social spending into strengthening the military-police machine. The struggle against the pension cuts can only be waged as a political struggle directed against the entire capitalist state machine.

The Council’s decision also exposes the forces in the union bureaucracy and the pseudo-left parties who, warning of “violence” by protesters, told workers to place their hopes in trade union “mediation” with Macron. Everyone involved, including masses of workers and youth, knew very well that Macron would ignore the “mediation.” On the other hand, two-thirds of the French people supported a general strike to block the economy and bring down Macron.

The bureaucrats simply worked to wear down and demobilize mass anger with reactionary and pointless promises to resume talks with Macron.

Protests and riots erupted in over 100 cities across France yesterday evening after the announcement of the ruling. Rennes saw heavy clashes with police as protesters stormed and burned down a police station and set the door of the Jacobins Convent church on fire. There were also clashes in Grenoble and Lyon, where heavily-armed riot police put the Croix-Rousse neighborhood on lock-down.

In Paris, where a massive police deployment and a police ban on demonstrations protected the offices of the Constitutional Council, several thousand protesters gathered on the Place de Grève in front of City Hall. They marched initially west towards the Elysée palace but were turned back by a series of police charges, finally marching towards Republic Square. Clashes between police and youth protesters who set garbage bins on fire continued throughout the night.

The Constitutional Council is a body of unelected reactionaries hand-picked by successive French presidents to nine-year terms. One of its top members is Alain Juppé, the convicted embezzler and former French prime minister who in 1995 provoked mass rail strikes with the first plan for pension cuts in France, four years after the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union. Its president is the social-democrat Laurent Fabius, for whom laws were changed to avoid his conviction after his government let all France’s hemophiliacs be infected with AIDS-tainted blood in the 1980s.

Unsurprisingly, the Council issued an illegitimate, anti-democratic ruling that discredits the capitalist state as a whole. It made only minor changes to the cuts, stripping out certain “social” measures—like a requirement to report corporations who fire older workers to hire younger, cheaper workers—that Macron added in as a meaningless sop to the union bureaucrats.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose Unsubmissive France (LFI) party leads the New Popular Union (NUPES) with the rumps of the French social-democratic and Stalinist parties, reacted immediately after the verdict. He tweeted, “The decision of the Constitutional Council shows it is more attentive to the needs of the presidential monarchy than to those of the sovereign people. The struggle continues and must gather its strength.”

Later on in the evening, Mélenchon again tweeted to emphasize that he and his allies intend to work closely with the union bureaucracies to keep political control of workers struggles. He wrote, “The exceptional violence of the decisions of the Constitutional Council require intense coordination between the NUPES and the trade unions to continue the struggle and to control the fightback. We are alerting about anger and despair.”

Mélenchon’s call to “control the fightback” aims not to mobilize and give a perspective for social anger, but to divert it into the dead end of union “mediation” with Macron. Indeed, Mélenchon had nearly 8 million votes in last year’s presidential election, largely in working class neighborhoods of France’s major cities. An appeal to his voters to take mass strike action to bring down Macron could rapidly block France’s economy, as a large majority of the French people support doing.

Mélenchon has abstained from any such call, however, instead issuing an absurd proposal for a general strike addressed to the trade union leaders, who had no intention of acting on it. Still fearing that they cannot call off the movement without provoking a wave of strikes outside their control, the union bosses are continuing to call strikes while trying to wear down the movement.

Stéphanie Binet, the financial journalist and managers’ union head newly chosen to run the General Confederation of Labor’s (CGT) Stalinist bureaucracy, issued an impotent appeal from the all-trade union alliance to Macron to show “wisdom” and abandon the pension cuts he just imposed.

She turned down Macron’s invitation to the all-trade union alliance for talks Tuesday and called for a “historic, popular tsunami” of participation in May Day protests. Binet said, “We will not go see the president if he promulgates the cuts as law. But if he withdraws them, it will be with great pleasure that we will go have discussions with him.”

Given mass anger in the working class, certain political allies of the union bureaucracies tried to restrain expressions of “great pleasure” at the idea of meeting France’s president of the rich and present a more “militant” face. Thus Olivier Besancenot, the former presidential candidate of the Pabloite New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), tweeted: “Here lies the tomb of the Fifth Republic, 1958-2023 RIP. The struggle continues!”

Proclamations that the Fifth Republic is dead by middle class allies of the union bureaucracies working to demobilize opposition to Macron and the Fifth Republic’s police-state regime are politically worthless. The class struggle has confirmed that these pseudo-left groups work to tie workers to a bankrupt perspective of bureaucratic “social dialog” with a capitalist state that now unabashedly rules against the people.

As social anger continues to mount, the decisive task remains to prepare a general strike to bring down Macron, the investment banker, architect of the pension cuts, and center of the police state conspiracies against workers. But the ruling of the Constitutional Council brings to an end one period of the struggle against Macron. It has confirmed that there is no “democratic” path, within the existing state structure and its official channels for “social dialogue,” to oppose the diktat of the banks.

UK: Criminalisation of homelessness escalates under Conservative and Labour law-and-order agenda

Dennis Moore

Freedom of Information responses from 29 police forces in England and Wales reveal that 1,173 people sleeping out or begging on the streets have been arrested under the 200-year-old Vagrancy Act since 2021.

Nearly 4,000 have been arrested over the last five years, according to data collected by local government expert Jack Shaw. These include 1,666 arrests made by London’s Metropolitan Police, more than any other force.

A homeless man sleeping in a shop doorway in Romford, London, December 2022 [Photo: WSWS]

Punishments can include a £1,000 fine and the possibility of a criminal record.

The Vagrancy Act of 1824 was used against the ever-growing numbers of ex-servicemen who ended up living on the streets, amid searing poverty, following the Napoleonic Wars. Many had been permanently injured or disabled, left unable to earn a living, with no access to any other source of income or assistance.

Hounding the thousands who had fought and who had ended up penniless and destitute, the Act criminalised those who were “Endeavouring by the exposure of wounds or deformities to obtain or gather alms… or procure charitable contributions of any nature or kind, under any false or fraudulent pretence.”

People moving from Ireland and Scotland in search of better conditions were also targeted. The legislation included “every person wandering abroad and lodging in any barn or outhouse, or in any deserted or unoccupied building, or in the open air, or under a tent, or in any cart or wagon.”

The Vagrancy Act built on a lineage of “bloody legislation against vagabondage” stretching back into the 16th century, in the words of Karl Marx. “The fathers of the present working class,” he wrote of these earlier laws in the first volume of Capital, were “chastised for their enforced transformation into vagabonds and paupers. Legislation treated them as ‘voluntary’ criminals, and assumed that it depended on their own good will to go on working”.

The same brutal logic penalizes poverty, especially extreme poverty and homelessness, today.

There have been numerous calls by homeless charities to abolish the Vagrancy Act and remove it from the statute books. The government put an amendment into the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act formally repealing it, but has delayed putting it into effect. There is no official date set for doing so and the government has made clear that those found begging will still be treated as criminals.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recently announced plans in the name of tackling anti-social behaviour that include proposals to essentially reintroduce the Vagrancy Act by the back door. According to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, local authorities will receive new powers to target those deemed to be causing public distress, including those who block shop doorways or beg next to cash machines.

These measures would be imposed mainly by the Labour Party which runs the vast majority of councils in England’s largest urban areas. Not to be outdone by Sunak, Labour launched its campaign for the May local government elections by marketing itself as the party of law and order. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer lent his voice to the debate on criminalising the homeless, pledging to crack down on anti-social behaviour by handing the police new powers to impose “respect orders”.

Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said, “Labour is the party of law and order and the next Labour government will give new powers to police through respect orders to crack down on repeat offenders causing misery in town across the country”.

Many of those on the streets have multiple and complex health and psychological problems. Further repressive legislation will likely lead to them disengaging from whatever limited services are available.

Research from Sheffield Hallam University concluded the use of Public Space Protection Orders (PSPOs) by local councils in England and Wales, in an attempt to disperse homeless people from town centres, were ineffective. The orders authorise local councils to levy £100 fines in an attempt to ban or control behaviours such as drinking, sleeping in public places or pitching tents.

PSPOs have been repeatedly abused to target behaviour that is in no way “anti-social”, including being in a position to beg and sleeping out at night. Homeless people have described physical and verbal abuse from officers enforcing these orders.

Co-author of the Hallam report, Dr. Vicky Heap, said, “The misuse of PSPOs and other anti-social behaviour powers are disproportionately criminalising people experiencing street-sleeping homelessness.”

In response to comments made by Labour’s Cooper, Dr. Heap said, “It seems Labour and the Conservatives are trying to out-punitive each other… But it’s underlying social causes that need to be tackled. They’re long-term projects and these are short term measures”.

Since 2014, the use of PSPOs against rough sleepers has increased as a consequence of increasing homelessness, produced by private landlords securing evictions via Section 21 of the Housing Act 1988—known as “no fault” eviction notices. Ministry of Justice figures for England and Wales show that between October 1-December 31, 2022, there were 5,409 evictions, double the figure for the same period in 2021.

Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities figures released earlier this year found that almost 100,000 (99,270) households were staying in temporary accommodation at the end of September 2022.

Across every council in England, homelessness services provide about 32,000 beds, including drug alcohol services, refuge provision and mental health help.

Rates of homelessness are rising as homeless charities struggle under the pressure of increased energy costs, council underfunding and the need to help their staff through the cost-of-living crisis. One charity told the Guardian that it had received estimates for its annual gas and electricity bill suggesting a £500,000 a year increase.

CEO of Homeless Link Rick Henderson said, “Due to local funding pressures, the vast majority of homelessness services are having to scrape by on budgets set when inflation was a fraction of what it is now”.

Already, the last decade of austerity has seen rough sleeping increase by 141 percent in England since 2010, while the number of available beds has fallen 26 percent, with reductions also in the number of day centres providing food, support and warmth.

Now, a survey carried out by Homelessness Link, a charity representing homelessness providers, estimates that cost of-living pressures have led to a fifth of charities having to further reduce services, while nearly half have said that their frontline services will be at risk in the coming months.

Charities working with the homeless are concerned that the Vagrancy Act will be replaced in all but name and that the growing numbers found asking for money, food or shelter will still be subject to action by the police or local authorities.

Matt Downie, CEO of Crisis, said that life on the streets is a “traumatic dangerous and dehumanising” struggle to survive, adding, “its incredibly disappointing to see the government resorting to this rhetoric at a time when rough sleeping numbers are once again surging as the cost of living pushes more people into poverty.”

Poland receives Zelensky and prepares direct intervention in Ukraine war

Martin Nowak & Johannes Stern

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Warsaw last week made one thing clear above all else: NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine continues to escalate—both in terms of geographic scope and intensity. Poland is playing a key role in this and, in close coordination with the leading NATO powers, is preparing to intervene directly in the conflict.

Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, 2nd right, walks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as they meet in Warsaw, Poland, Wednesday, April 5, 2023. [AP Photo/Michal Dyjuk]

In a joint appearance with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in the courtyard of Warsaw’s Royal Castle, Zelensky praised Poland’s role as one of the biggest supporters of the war and called for further arms deliveries.

“Is it still far to victory? No!” he declared. He added that one should “just not stop at solidarity. If the fight requires artillery, it must be granted. If victory requires tanks, their thunder must be heard on the front line, and if independence requires an air force, one must not brood over how Russia will react to planes.”

Poland is among the first countries to supply fighter jets to Ukraine and now plans to hand over its entire stock of MiG-29 fighter jets to Kiev. Polish President Andrzej Duda announced this after a meeting with Zelensky. He said his country had already delivered eight fighter jets to Ukraine and was currently preparing six more MiG-29s for handover. He said Warsaw will be “in a position in the future to hand over its entire MiG fleet” of about 30 aircraft to the Ukrainian Air Force, “provided the NATO allies agree.”

On Thursday, Berlin approved the Polish government’s request to export MiG-29 fighter jets to Kiev from stocks in the former East Germany. In 2002, the then Social Democratic-Green government had sold 23 fighter jets to Poland, which the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) had taken over from the former East Germany’s National People’s Army. According to Warsaw, the Polish Air Force still has about a dozen of them today, which are now going to the Ukrainian army.

The planned Polish arms deliveries are not limited to fighter jets. In Warsaw, the Ukrainian delegation signed further contracts for Polish howitzers, anti-aircraft missiles, troop carriers and wheeled tanks. The arms purchases are to be financed by support funds from the EU and the USA. It was also agreed to set up joint production lines to manufacture 125-mm tank ammunition for the Ukrainian army.

The entire visit was designed to celebrate the close alliance between Warsaw and Kiev. After Duda received him with Poland’s highest military decoration, Zelensky spoke of a “friendship for centuries” between Ukraine and Poland. But historical conflicts still simmer beneath the surface.

This summer marks the 80th anniversary of the massacres by Ukrainian nationalists and fascists of an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 Poles in Volhynia and eastern Galicia. The leaders and instigators of the mass murder are glorified by today’s leadership in Kiev. On January 1, 2023, the Ukrainian parliament and military leadership celebrated the 114th birthday of notorious fascist, anti-Semite, and Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, whose Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) and its paramilitary wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), played a central role in the Holocaust and war of extermination against the Soviet Union.

The current Ukrainian government sees itself as part of this tradition. Among other things, the Ukrainian parliament published a tweet showing a picture of Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, in front of Bandera’s likeness, quoting him as saying, “The complete and final victory of Ukrainian nationalism will be won only when the Russian empire no longer exists.”

After a public outcry in Poland, the Ukrainian Rada (parliament) was forced to delete the post. But this does not diminish the glorification of Bandera and other fascists in Ukraine. The Zelensky regime spends millions on monuments and renaming streets in honour of Nazi collaborators and neo-fascists.

Poland’s far-right ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party also pursues an extreme anti-Russian course, openly making pacts with fascist and anti-Semitic forces. Its protest against the tweet was mainly because the Ukrainian government’s glorification of Bandera reveals the real nature of the war.

Ukraine is not conducting a “fight for freedom,” as Zelensky claimed in Warsaw. The reactionary Russian invasion does not change the fact that NATO is waging an imperialist proxy war in Ukraine against the nuclear power Russia. By systematically encircling Russia militarily and arming Ukraine, it finally provoked the Putin regime’s military response. Now, NATO is systematically escalating the conflict in order to subjugate the resource-rich country. In the process, the leading NATO powers are also concerned with control over Ukraine itself.

The Polish leadership made no secret to Zelensky that it expected its share of the division of the spoils of war. In the reconstruction process, Warsaw would probably continue to be Ukraine’s most important trading partner, Duda urged. The day before, German Economics Minister Robert Habeck had already visited Ukraine with a business delegation to assert Germany’s claim to a leading role in Ukraine.

But the NATO powers are not only pursuing economic interests. Behind the scenes, knives have long been sharpened for the revanchist repartition of Ukraine and all Eastern Europe.

“Among the little-discussed consequences of the war is the resurgence of the territorial disputes that resulted from the post-World War II settlement,” reads a recent statement from the World Socialist Web Site.

The ruling class in Germany has “not forgotten that the Polish city of Wroclaw was once called Breslau and was the sixth largest city in the German Empire at the beginning of the twentieth century.” Nor has the Polish government “forgotten that the city of Lviv in western Ukraine was known as Lwów, Poland’s third largest city, before the outbreak of World War II.”

Such far-reaching goals are at stake as the imperialist powers rearm and prepare for direct intervention in the war. Here, too, the Polish government is rushing ahead.

In late March, Polish Ambassador to Paris Jan Emeryk Rościszewski openly threatened military intervention in an interview with French television station LCI. “If Ukraine does not defend its independence, we will have no other choice, we will be forced to enter the conflict,” he said.

Rościszewski’s threat was in response to the worsening crisis in Ukraine. Militarily, politically, but also economically, the Zelensky regime is under enormous pressure one year after the war began. NATO is pursuing the declared goal of defeating Russia militarily in Ukraine. And it is clear that the latest arms deliveries are not enough to achieve this.

The open announcement of direct military intervention is alarming, but not new. In late March, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán warned that European powers were about to begin talks on the deployment of “peacekeepers.”

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of the ruling PiS party, had already called for a NATO “peacekeeping mission” to assist Ukraine a year ago. Last May, retired US General Jack Keane raised the issue of an “international coalition” to secure control of the Black Sea against Russia.

Since then, NATO powers have been increasingly aggressive in advancing their war preparations. Last June, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced that the military alliance’s Rapid Reaction Force on NATO’s eastern flank would be increased from 40,000 to 300,000. In recent months, NATO has deployed tens of thousands of troops in Eastern Europe and is working to build a veritable invasion force. Poland is playing a central role in this effort.

On March 22, the first permanent garrison of the US Army was officially opened in Poznan, which the White House had already decided on last summer. This is an open breach of the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, which prohibits the “permanent stationing of substantial combat forces” in former Warsaw Pact member states.

“We have been struggling for years with this word ‘permanent,’ and now it has become a reality,” Defence Minister Mariusz Błaszczak exulted at the opening ceremony. He also referred to the nearby “Abrams Academy” in Biedrusko. There, the US Army trains Polish soldiers on Abrams M1A2 main battle tanks. Poland bought 250 of these last year for the equivalent of $4.75 billion.

The far-right PiS government has set itself the goal of building Europe’s strongest land army, and to that end has increased its defence budget to 4 percent of GDP this year. Recently, Defence Minister Błaszczak announced the arrival of the first newly purchased American K2 and Abrams main battle tanks. In total, Poland has ordered over 1,000 tanks. The Polish army’s troop strength is also to be massively increased—from the current 164,000 soldiers to 300,000. In addition, there will be tens of thousands more for the National Guard.

In February, it was also announced that a Polish Volunteer Legion (Polski Korpus Ochotniczy, PDK) would be formed. According to reports, the formation took place in Kiev on February 15—with a representative of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, several Polish volunteers, the Polish organizer of the Legion, and the commander of the Russian Volunteer Corps in attendance.

The latter is a unit of Russian-born volunteers formed in August 2022 and fighting for Ukraine since 2014. The leader of the unit is notorious neo-Nazi Denis Nikitin. Most recently, he had bragged about attacking Russian villages with his unit behind the front lines, near the Russian city of Bryansk.

The deployment of commando units like the PDK, recruited from NATO countries, can only be seen as a precursor to the deployment of NATO ground forces. Already, more than 150 special forces from Britain, the United States, France, and other NATO countries are operating inside Ukraine.

The massive NATO manoeuvres taking place in the coming weeks and months—including Defender Europe 23, Baltops 23, Sea Breaze 23 and Air Defender 23—involve tens of thousands of NATO troops and are increasingly taking the form of a springboard for direct military intervention.

In Poland, preparations for the large-scale NATO manoeuvre Anakonda 23 are currently in full swing. From April 17 to May 16, about 10,000 Polish soldiers and nearly 3,000 soldiers from allied NATO countries will be mobilized. The exercises will take place at the main training area in Poland and at training grounds in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Sweden.

New York Times helps arrest source of documents showing US lies

Andre Damon

On Thursday, the New York Times publicly exposed the identity of the individual who allegedly shared classified documents that exposed lies by the Biden administration and media about US involvement in Ukraine.

The New York Times building is shown in New York. [AP Photo/Mark Lennihan]

Mere hours after the Times identified the alleged leaker as Jack Teixeira and visited his parents’ house, the 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard had been arrested in connection with the “transmission of classified national defense information,” the Justice Department said.

In identifying the alleged source, the Times worked closely with Bellingcat, a US state-funded organization with close ties to the US intelligence agencies. The lead author of the Times report was Aric Toler, a staff writer at Bellingcat.

The action by the New York Times exposes it, yet again, as a branch of both the intelligence agencies and the police: Its reporters are agents and informers.

The Times is particularly bitter because the revelations expose that it has been promoting a false pro-war narrative.

The leaked documents showed that US President Joe Biden lied when he said, “I will not send American servicemen to fight in Ukraine.” In fact, over 70 US soldiers are deployed in Ukraine, alongside over 100 NATO special forces, according to the document.

They also showed that the White House lied when it said, “NATO is not involved” in the conflict, as the documents do not make a distinction between efforts to train and lead Ukrainian forces and the other operations of NATO.

Rather than exposing, or even questioning, Biden’s lies, the New York Times served to promote the Biden administration’s propaganda narrative. And the leaks are as damaging to the Times as they are to the US government.

On Tuesday, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby called on the US media to exercise self-censorship, declaring, “This is information that has no business in the public domain. It has no business, if you don’t mind me saying, on the front pages of newspapers, or on television. It is not intended for public consumption, and it should not be out there.”

The US media has granted this request. In a Pentagon press briefing Thursday, there was not a single question directed to Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder about the contents of the leaked documents. The vast majority of questions had to do with the identity of the leaker and what the Pentagon was doing to stop further leaks.

The first five questions addressed to Ryder included the following:

• “Can you confirm that Airman First Class Jack Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, is a person of interest in this leaked document’s case?”
• “In the days after the leaks came to light, what steps has DOD taken to reduce the number of people who have access to not only these classified briefings but classified material in general?”
• “In the DOD’s efforts to change the way you do business in terms of protecting classified information, apart from the stuff that you do already, is that DOD-led, or is that Joint Staff-led? Who’s kind of directing what on that?”
• “General Ryder, you say that there are strict protocols in place, and yet, a 21-year-old airman was able to access some of the nation’s top secrets. How did this happen? And isn’t this a massive security breach?”

When a reporter asked about China’s reaction to the trip by Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen to the United States, Ryder responded, “Wait? What?... Read the room… Come on.”

The Times claimed that Teixeira, a 21-year-old member of the intelligence wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, shared the documents in a private chat group with 20 or 30 people.

The newspaper reported that it “has established, through social media posts and military records, that Airman Teixeira is enlisted in the 102nd Intelligence Wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard. Posts on the unit’s official Facebook page congratulated Airman Teixeira and colleagues for being promoted to Airman First Class in July 2022.”

Times reporters traveled to Teixeira’s house and spoke to his mother immediately prior to the arrest: “Airman Teixeira’s mother, Dawn, speaking outside her home in Massachusetts on Thursday, confirmed that her son was a member of the Air National Guard and said he had recently been working overnight shifts at a base on Cape Cod. In the last few days, he had changed his phone number, she said.”

While about 60 or so documents have been made public so far, US media outlets indicate they have access to far more.  The Washington Post reported Thursday, “The Post also reviewed approximately 300 photos of classified documents, most of which have not been made public.”

And the Post and the other media outlets are responsible for maintaining this secrecy. They are not reporting information that undermines and contradicts the official line from the Pentagon, State Department and White House.

Rather, the Post is selectively releasing sections of the documents with an aim to facilitate US war propaganda. An article published Thursday by anti-China war propagandist Josh Rogin declared, “The most shocking intel leak reveals new Chinese military advances.” He wrote, “China has tested and deployed a new longer-range hypersonic missile that is probably able to evade U.S. defenses, according to an overlooked top-secret document among those recently leaked.”

The rush by the US media to the defense of the White House and the Pentagon is motivated by hostility to any genuine exposure of the crimes of US imperialism. The New York Times, Washington Post and US broadcast media see their job not as exposing the crimes of the US government but as covering them up and keeping the US government’s secrets.

The Times’ role in facilitating the arrest of a leaker has revealed, in vivid detail, that the American corporate press is as tightly controlled as in any dictatorship.