Independent journalist Richard Medhurst was arrested by British police under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act (2000) Thursday August 15. He was seized at London’s Heathrow Airport. Medhurst is known for his journalism opposing US, British and Israeli war crimes in Gaza and across the Middle East, and has more than one million followers on social media.
In a video posted Monday night to X (since viewed 2.6 million times) Medhurst revealed that six police officers were waiting for him at the entrance to the aircraft when it landed at Heathrow. He was held for nearly 24 hours, including in solitary confinement, was questioned by police, and had his electronic equipment seized.
Medhurst’s video describes police state methods against anti-war journalists in Britain. He was prevented from calling family or friends to inform them of his whereabouts, and police declared that any discussion with his lawyers would be subject to audio surveillance—a clear breach of lawyer-client privilege.
He explained: “They arrested me—not detained, they arrested me—under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act of 2000 and accused me of allegedly, ‘expressing an opinion or belief that is supportive of a prescribed organization’, but wouldn’t explain what this meant.”
Medhurst is the first journalist to be arrested under Section 12. Its draconian provisions, amended in 2019, mean a person can be jailed for up to 14 years for merely “express[ing] an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation” and in doing so “is reckless as to whether a person to whom the expression is directed will be encouraged to support a proscribed organisation.”
Introduced by Tony Blair’s Labour government, the Act is a legal dragnet. In Medhurst’s case, it appears that commentary defending the right of Palestinians under international law to resist foreign military occupation and genocide is being defined as support for terrorism.
Hamas is among the organisations proscribed as terrorist by the UK government. While its military wing was proscribed in 2001, Hamas was banned in its entirety in 2021, aimed at criminalising support for the Palestinian people. The political wing of Hamas won elections held in Gaza in 2006 and the organisation also oversees charitable work.
Medhurst has denounced the accusations against him: “I categorically and utterly reject all the accusations by the police. I am not a terrorist. I have no criminal record. Prior to this incident, I’d never been detained in my entire life. I’m a product of the diplomatic community, and I’m raised to be anti-war. Both of my parents won Nobel Peace Prizes for their work as United Nations peacekeepers. They had a tremendous effect on my worldview and outlook and instilled in me the importance of diplomacy, international law and peace.”
Medhurst’s mother is Syrian and his father British. He was born in Syria and his parents were assigned to diplomatic postings in Lebanon, Syria, India and Pakistan. He speaks four languages fluently: English, Arabic, French, and German.
In 2019, Medhurst began hosting regular broadcasts discussing history, US politics, international relations and the Middle East, which he has described as being “rooted in an anti-imperialist viewpoint”. He told an interviewer the following year, “I think one of the reasons people gravitate towards my channel is due to its explicit nature. I don’t have time to sugarcoat war crimes, murder and corruption.”
Medhurst campaigned for the release of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, reporting on his extradition case in London. Now he has been targeted by the same forces seeking to outlaw anti-war journalism and the truth. His YouTube channel was demonetised last year, with video content exposing Israel’s attacks on the Palestinians deleted.
The persecution of Medhurst under the Terrorism Act is grotesque. Just four days ago, he posted a video on X showing the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike in Gaza that killed newborn twins and their mother. Their father had left the apartment to collect the twins’ birth certificates, and returned to find them dead. As Medhurst explained, 115 babies born in Gaza since last October have been murdered by Israel, and 2,100 children under the age of two. This is state-sponsored terrorism, armed and financed by the US and Britain.
As NATO escalates its proxy war in Ukraine, and seizes on the Gaza genocide to pursue a regional war targeting Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iran, domestic state repression is being intensified.
On August 9, the FBI raided the upstate New York home of Scott Ritter, the former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and United Nations weapons inspector. He told reporters: “I’m being targeted because I have made an effort to try and improve relations between the United States and Russia, try to bring about arms control, try to bring about peace.” A vocal critic of NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine, his passport was revoked by the State Department at John F. Kennedy airport in June as he was about to leave to attend a conference in Russia.
In Britain, several independent journalists and anti-war activists have been detained in the past 18 months under counter-terrorism laws. They include Craig Murray, Grayzone’s Kit Klarenberg, and French publisher Ernest Moret. Dozens more pro-Palestinian activists have faced pre-dawn raids, detention, and interrogation under anti-terror laws.
Medhurst explained in his video statement, “despite having been released unconditionally, I do not feel that my bail is truly unconditional. I’m effectively in limbo, not knowing if I will be charged in three months or if I will go to prison.”
He concluded, “We cannot call ourselves a democracy as long as reporters are dragged off of planes and detained and treated like murderers. I am disgusted that I am being politically persecuted in my own country.”
Labour is presiding over this ramped-up state repression. Over the weekend, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper briefed the media on plans to crack down on “extremist ideologies”. She told the Guardian, “I have directed the Home Office to conduct a rapid analytical sprint on extremism, to map and monitor extremist trends, to understand the evidence about what works to disrupt and divert people away from extremist views, and to identify any gaps in existing policy which need to be addressed to crack down on those pushing harmful and hateful beliefs and violence.”
Two bills drafted by the Interior Ministry (BMI) will provide the Federal Criminal Investigation Authority (BKA) and the Federal Police with new powers. They represent a milestone in the establishment of a totalitarian police state.
Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser [Photo by Raimond Spekking / Wikimedia / CC BY-SA 4.0]
The BMI cites the “implementation of the EU directive on data exchange between police authorities” of the various EU countries as the official reason for the new BKA law. However, the 80-page draft law, which www.netzpolitik.org has published in full, provides for far more measures than “just” this gigantic exchange of data within the EU.
The three most important innovations are, first, the BKA’s authorisation to break into private homes and plant state-operated Trojan software in computer equipment; second, permission to compare biometric photos of persons available to the police authority with photos or video snippets from the internet and social media such as Facebook, X, Instagram, Tik-Tok; third, the power to analyse the data collected in this way or already available in the authorities’ huge databases using AI-based tools.
As a detailed examination will show, this law provides the BKA with extremely wide-ranging powers and continues the large complex of police and secret service laws that the grand coalition of Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD) passed in the summer of 2021, shortly before being voted out of office.
1. Secret break-ins to plant state-operated Trojan software
In future, BKA officers will be allowed to break into the homes of German and foreign citizens, to search them “covertly” and to implement state-operated Trojan software on computers and smartphones, without the owner having committed a criminal offence or having an investigation pending against him or her.
The mere suspicion that the owner of the property or a co-tenant has an “anti-constitutional attitude” or could be considering a terrorist or other serious offence such as “extremism” is enough to legitimise the break-in.
In the view of the BMI, this has become necessary because the extraction of private data through online searches, in which state Trojans are infiltrated into smartphones and computer devices via the internet, has proven to be “impractical.” The powerful antivirus programmes available on the market today and the anonymisation of movements on the internet using special browsers such as TOR are too great an obstacle for police access via the internet. Hence the “more practical” resort to the traditional lock pick and crowbar.
Until now, a citizen’s home has been considered a particularly protected space and worthy of legal protections, because it also contains the intimate sphere, the person’s innermost thoughts, and the personality of the person concerned. In the age of computer technology, this “core area of private life” also includes private smartphones and computer devices with their data, as the Supreme Court formulated in its judgement of May 2020.
If the police plan to search a house today, they must apply to a public prosecutor for authorisation and must specifically name the accused and the offence with which they are charged, as well as the findings they hope to make during the search.
The public prosecutor must then submit this application to the investigating judge for approval. The person concerned must be informed in advance so that he has the opportunity to be present during the search or to be represented by a person of his choice. Exceptions to these regulations are formally only possible in the event of imminent danger, which in real life can always be declared by the police without difficulty.
In future, however, the adoption of the Faeser Act in the Bundestag (parliament) will sweep aside all these restrictions on the protection of a citizen’s privacy.
Even if there is only a vague suspicion of someone holding an unpopular opinion, the police authorities will be able to break into people’s homes secretly. Such criminal activities by the justice system have so far been reserved for the secret services.
For example, the Interior Ministry and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Verfassungsschutz), as Germany’s domestic secret service is called, under its then right-wing extremist president Hans-Georg Maassen, declared the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) to be “left-wing extremist.” The BMI rejected a legal complaint by the SGP on the grounds that “the struggle for a democratic, egalitarian, socialist society” stood in contradiction “to the central values of the constitution.” The Verfassungsschutz is authorised to carry out any kind of secret service surveillance, including covert surveillance, such as home invasions and cyberattacks, against the SGP and any other organisation classified as “left-wing extremist.”
But this “privilege” of the Verfassungsschutz and the other secret services is now to be abolished.
The strict separation of the police and the secret services, introduced after the collapse of Hitler’s Third Reich as a “lesson learned from this totalitarian dictatorship,” has thus been finally eliminated after decades of systematic erosion. The Federal Criminal Police and the other police authorities of the federal states will in future act as a “secret state police,” even if they will not bear this name, which is burdened by the monstrous crimes of the Gestapo.
To conceal this fact, the interior minister and the defenders of her bill insist that the planned police searches would be carried out “only within the framework and in compliance with the constitutional order.”
What is hidden behind these empty words is the fact that the Supreme Court has already overturned several previously planned police laws, for example with its ruling of May 2020 on a police law by Horst Seehofer (CSU, Christian Social Union), then interior minister in the grand coalition of CDU/CSU and Social Democratic Party (SPD) led by Angela Merkel.
This law already provided for the mass storage of telecommunications data through online searches, in which state Trojans were to be deployed on the victims’ computer systems via the internet with the support of telecommunications companies such as Telekom, O2, etc.
The Supreme Court expressly did not object to this mass surveillance. However, it did demand that the “core area of private life” should not be violated, or only under certain circumstances.
In reality, however, the mere installation of state Trojans constitutes a violation of this core area.
Furthermore, according to the court, online searches must be authorised by a judge (except in cases of “danger in delay”) and, in addition, “carefully recorded and documented.” The latter “hurdle” is easily overcome by the police clerks, and the so-called “judicial reservation” is also no obstacle.
The observance of these formalities, which involve little effort, is what lies behind the significant legal formula “within the framework and in compliance with the constitutional rules.” In other words: a sham.
2. Matching biometric police data with data from the internet
The second significant and far-reaching extension of the BKA’s powers is that in future, the police authorities will be able to compare the biometric photos of ID cards, passports, driver’s licences and police-wanted photos stored by them, with photos and video clips that have been downloaded from the internet and stored in huge databases, which are also biometrically categorised for this purpose. This will enable the BKA to deduce the whereabouts, movements and behaviour of individuals.
This procedure has not been permitted under data protection laws to date because those affected have not given their consent for their photos to be used, not to say misused, from the internet. This obstacle is now to be removed.
The draft law explicitly does not provide for authorisation for real-time biometric searches. This means that there will be no real-time comparison of passers-by in railway stations or large public places with search databases. The focus is rather on the retrospective analysis of image material, not on real-time surveillance. At least this is what the interior minister repeatedly asserts.
But this definitional distinction is intended to deceive and reassure. Above all, it is intended to take the wind out of the sails of the protests and constitutional concerns against ubiquitous real-time surveillance.
The trick is that even a processing delay of just a few seconds after real-time data has been captured by surveillance cameras at airports and railway stations constitutes “retrospective data processing.” In reality, however, it is equivalent to real-time data utilisation.
3. AI-supported analysis of biometric data
The full impact of the biometric comparison of photos held by the authorities with data from the internet will only be realised through the use of instruments that are defined as “permitted” in the third core area of the planned BKA law:
Tools based on artificial intelligence can and may enable BKA officers to recognise the whereabouts and movements of individuals, even complex patterns and connections between the movements of several people that are not obvious to humans.
Mental states and characteristic behaviour, such as the way people walk, can also be recognised with such AI tools and used to filter out these people from a sea of data.
The insights gained from AI analyses of connections can also enable predictions of actions, encounters with other people or public protest demonstrations.
According to the draft law, these capabilities are to be used in the fight against terrorism and, above all, extremism.
In its ruling of February 16, 2023 on the unconstitutional Hesse Police Act and the “HessenData” analysis software, the Supreme Court declared the automated, AI-based analysis of large amounts of data extracted from the internet and/or already available in the databases of the police authorities to be fundamentally constitutional, but made a number of constitutional requirements for this:
Intensity of the intervention: The court classifies automated data analysis as particularly intrusive. The broader and deeper the insights into individuals, the higher the intensity of the intervention.
Proportionality: The lower the requirements for the reason for the analysis, the higher the legal requirements for the method of data analysis must be, as it is easy to carry out mass data analyses. Minor offences such as parking violations or theft of low-value items should not lead to false accusations too often.
Purpose limitation: The purposes of data analysis must be clearly and precisely defined in law.
Protection of the core area of private life: It must be ensured that no data from the core area of private life is included in the analysis.
Transparency and control: The methods of data analysis must be comprehensible and controllable. The court sees particular challenges in terms of comprehensibility and susceptibility to error in AI-based systems.
Threshold values: Specific threshold values must be defined for the use of the analysis software, for example with regard to the severity of the crimes to be prevented.
Procedural safeguards: Sufficient procedural safeguards such as documentation and deletion obligations must be provided for.
These are all good sounding provisions. The only snag is that the Supreme Court has not prescribed a neutral and competent authority to monitor compliance with these provisions, as is the case, for example, with the data protection officer in relation to compliance with data protection regulations.
And where there is no control, there are no restrictions on the police in the “conscientious exercise of their duties.”
It should be emphasised that some of the above-mentioned constitutional requirements do not apply to the biometric recording and AI-based analysis of personal data of refugees from the outset, and this is for “security reasons,” as stated in the draft law.
Refugees are fair game for the Interior Ministry and are defenceless against the activities of the police. There are no laws in Germany that regulate the protection of the fundamental rights and freedoms of refugees when their biometric data is processed.
Lawyers critical of such breaches of basic democratic rights regard the general authorisation to use refugee data for security purposes as a violation of the principle of purpose limitation and the prohibition of discrimination on the basis of nationality.
So much for the BKA authorisation law of Interior Minister Nancy Faeser.
“Restructuring of the Federal Police Act”
The imagination of the bureaucrats in the Interior Ministry when it comes to inventing euphemistic names for legal amendments of serious substantive importance is boundless. This law has little to do with “restructuring the Federal Police Act”; rather, it is a law that grants the Federal Police extensive powers to restrict the fundamental rights of a citizen they have in their sights.
Nancy Faeser had this law passed by the federal cabinet in November 2023 and then introduced it in the Bundestag.
It provides for the following extended powers for telecommunications surveillance by the Federal Police:
The federal police will in future be able to access telecommunications connection data even if there is only a suspicion of “smuggling” and “extremism.” This includes information about who has phoned or exchanged text messages with whom.
Under certain circumstances, especially “in cases of imminent danger,” it should also be possible to monitor ongoing telecommunications.
The federal police will also be authorised to identify and locate SIM cards and mobile devices.
These measures should only be permitted in the event of “danger to life and limb.” In addition, they require the approval of a judge, which, as is usually the case, is only a formality and is only a nuisance for the police because of the associated paperwork.
The federal police are not authorised to carry out source telecommunications surveillance, i.e., to infiltrate devices with state Trojans, as this is the responsibility of the Federal Criminal Investigation Authority (BKA).
The federal police have also been given the new power to impose reporting requirements, bans on entering and residence bans for entire municipalities or municipal districts. This is intended to prevent people from travelling to large events or demonstrations where, in the police’s estimation, they could “commit crimes of considerable significance.”
In Bavaria, which is always miles ahead of the federal government when it comes to police state measures and has armed the state police with these powers since August 1, new offences have even been introduced for violations of reporting requirements.
Green politicians as a “democratic fig leaf”
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is determined to have both laws, the BKA and the Federal Police Act, passed in the Bundestag, and can rely not only on the support of the parties in the coalition government (SPD, Greens and Liberal Democrats, FDP), but also on that of the opposition CDU/CSU, as well as the Left Party and its BSW offshoot and the fascist Alternative for Germany (AfD), who all support the stepping up of the powers of the state apparatus.
The deputy parliamentary party leader of the Greens in the Bundestag, Konstantin von Notz, has already justified the new laws, including the abolition of the separation between the police and the secret services, to the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND).
For many years, von Notz has acted as a democratic fig leaf for the stepping up of state powers and the surveillance carried out by the secret services in Germany, posing “critical” questions as a member, and since 2021 as chairman, of the Parliamentary Control Committee (PKGr) supposed to “monitor” the intelligence and secret services, asking “critical” questions about the activities of the Verfassungsschutz, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND, responsible for foreign intelligence operations) and the Military Counter-Intelligence Service (MAD).
All of this, of course, is done in the strictest of secrecy, because this committee, the PKGr, only meets behind closed doors. Even after each meeting, its members are obliged to maintain the strictest secrecy about what was discussed. Naturally, this means no one can control the controllers, which is extremely convenient for everyone involved.
Von Notz justified the police breaking into private homes without any criminal offence or investigation having been committed with the argument: “We are living in serious times. The police need effective and modern investigative powers and means.”
The Green politician did not specify what exactly he meant by “serious times.” In view of the plummeting poll ratings for the parties in the coalition government—without the CDU/CSU being in a significantly better position—it is reasonable to assume that he means the enormous popular opposition to all Bundestag parties, against their pro-war policies and their policy of social cuts.
And the “investigation methods” that Faeser wants to legalise with her laws cannot exactly be called “modern.” These were the methods of Hitler’s Gestapo and have always been the methods of all secret services, all police and military dictatorships.
Establishing police state powers—an international phenomenon
In this context, it is important to understand that establishing police state powers is not a specifically German phenomenon. It is taking place in all capitalist countries around the world. To name just two examples:
In the UK, the recruitment of former members of the military into the police force has been intensified for years. Above all, however, the police have been massively equipped with military weapons throughout the country, and their deployment against protest demonstrations or during raids is organised using military tactics.
The 2012 Olympic Games in London were the largest police and military security operation in peacetime in the history of the United Kingdom: 13,500 soldiers were deployed, 5,000 of whom were deployed to support the police in searches of homes and buildings. The Royal Navy operated on the Thames and at the venues for the sailing competitions, the Royal Air Force was on standby and surface-to-air missiles were stationed at six locations throughout London, including on residential buildings.
The French president followed this example at the Olympic Games in Paris a few weeks ago, and even exceeded it. As the WSWS reported, more than 80,000 riot police and military police and soldiers were deployed on the ground, in the water and in the air, supported by helicopters, drones and snipers. The whole of Paris was divided into different security zones, the borders of which could only be crossed after strict controls by police or soldiers. These measures put Paris under a state of siege.
In both cases, it is clear that these were large-scale manoeuvres to train the police and military apparatus for use against large crowds of people protesting against the massive social cuts and the pro-war policies of their governments and taking class-struggle measures.
As in these two large neighbouring countries of Germany, the two planned laws on massively stepping up police state powers are also justified here by Faeser with the “fight against international terrorism.” But like all laws that are passed and have been passed under the pretext of the “fight against right-wing extremism” or the “fight against terrorism,” these laws are ultimately also directed against the working class, which will unite internationally in its struggle against mass redundancies, factory closures, social cuts and war.
The governments of all the countries concerned, inside and outside the EU, will have no difficulty in declaring this international unity and the joint struggle of the workers as “international terrorism.”
United Nations Special Rapporteur Tomoya Obokata has restated and amplified his condemnation of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TWFP) as a “breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery.” His finding is a devastating exposure of the claims Canada is a staunch defender of “human rights” and a “progressive” society, which are so assiduously promoted by the Justin Trudeau-led Liberal government, the New Democrats, and their trade-union and pseudo-left backers.
When Obokata first denounced the TWFP, following a research visit to Canada last year, his conclusions were largely met with indifference. His final report has been far more widely discussed in the media. Far from expressing any concern for the plight of the impoverished migrant workers, the coverage has been a cynical and opportunistic attempt to use their plight as ammunition in the ongoing, far-right-instigated campaign against immigrants and immigration.
Forced to live in barrack-like conditions, migrant farm workers were badly hit by multiple waves of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. [Photo: Migrant Workers Alliance for Change ]
Obokata’s final report found that Canada’s temporary foreign worker program, which is a means to secure cheap labor from impoverished countries, is spawning contemporary forms of slavery and exploitation.
Obokata’s comments followed a two-week tour of Canada to assess the government’s preparedness to address modern slavery, including forced labor and other forms of abuse. The report, based on meetings with officials, academics, and migrant workers, highlighted the exploitation of migrant labor under the TFWP, particularly in agriculture. It noted that employer-specific work permits make migrant workers vulnerable to abuse, as they have few legal rights and fear deportation if they speak out or try to report abuses to the authorities.
The World Socialist Web Site’s initial article on the UN special rapporteur’s visit outlined some of the inhumane conditions he documented in his initial report:
*Closed work permits bind migrant workers to their employers and make them subject to immediate deportation if they are fired;
*Appalling and overcrowded living conditions;
*Low wages, no overtime pay, and long hours (12-hour shifts are common);
*The burdening of workers with extra-contractual tasks not stipulated in their agreements;
*Sexual harassment, intimidation and violence from employers;
*Denial of access to health care and/or transport to medical facilities;
*Lack of access to social services, including language courses and other supports for newcomers;
*Frequent debt bondage to recruiters in their country of origin.
While the exploitation of migrant labor has a long history in North America, its contemporary Canadian form dated from the end of the post-war period. The TFWP, formalized in 1973 under the Liberal government of Pierre-Elliott Trudeau, was an extension of earlier programs designed to address so-called “labor shortages” by importing migrant workers, particularly from the Caribbean and Latin America.
Over the last fifty years, the TFWP has served as a means for employers to reap large profits from brutally exploiting migrant workers desperate for a means to support themselves and their families and to find a route to gain permanent residency status in Canada.
Under the Harper Conservative government, the number of temporary foreign workers was expanded from 30,000 in 2008-9 to more than 110,000. By 2023 this number had than doubled to 240,000, according to Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) data, as the Liberals responded to calls from employers to address “labor shortages,” while continuing to prohibit most immigration by non-professional and/or unskilled workers under Canada’s discriminatory “points-based” immigration system.
The increase in demand for the cheapest labor possible must itself be seen as a symptom of the rapidly deepening crisis of world capitalism, which has impacted Canada especially in the aftermath of the eruption of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The exploitation of temporary workers is accompanied by constant pressure and attacks on the working conditions and social standards of all workers.
The TFWP is not just a way for employers to bypass the legal protections and living standards reserved to citizens of Canada. It also serves as a mechanism for the systematic undermining of these standards, since the methods used against the most vulnerable sections of the working class are invariably expanded throughout the economy. This is one of the reasons why all workers, regardless of their immigration status or national background, have a direct interest in defending the rights of all migrant workers.
Obokata’s report has been seized upon by sections of the media and political establishment to condemn the Liberal government’s immigration policy from the right.
While much of big business supported increased numbers of temporary foreign workers as a means to supply Canadian capital with cheap labor, corporate Canada, or at least large sections of it, frightened by the growth of social opposition, has joined in the attack on the Liberals’ supposed “open door” immigration policy and is encouraging the far right and outright fascist forces that are spearheading the anti-immigrant agitation.
In November 2023, Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced that the target for permanent resident arrivals in Canada would be limited to 500,000 for two consecutive years. This was followed in January 2024 by the imposition of a cap of 360,000 on student visa admissions permits. In March, Miller announced restrictions on temporary immigration. For the first time, Non-Permanent Resident (NPR) arrivals will be limited similarly to permanent resident numbers.
Obokata’s report has criticized the latest shift in government policy, noting that the reduction of NPR arrivals will not address the abusive nature of the TFWP program itself.
Rather the government’s response is in line with the demands of the far right, which is cynically attempting to use the plight of migrant workers as an argument against immigration.
This was made clear in a press conference held earlier this month in Hamilton, Ontario by Poilievre. The Conservative leader, who routinely denounces the corporate media for “liberal bias” and generally shuns press conferences, called on a reporter from the far-right outlet Rebel News, which championed the fascist-instigated “Freedom Convoy” while it menacingly occupied downtown Ottawa in 2022, and promotes the British fascist Tommy Robinson.
In what was clearly a pre-planned exchange, the Rebel News reporter asked Poilievre what a Conservative government would do to “prevent temporary foreign workers taking the jobs of unemployed young Canadians.” In response, Poilievre denounced Trudeau for “destroy(ing) our entire immigration system … he has expanded the temporary foreign worker program by well over 200% at a time when we’re losing jobs.” He went on to decry the program for bringing in migrant workers who supposedly “take jobs away from or suppress the wages of Canadian workers.” “I challenge Canadian business to hire Canadian workers first,” continued Poilievre, “and I challenge the government to end the chaos in the temporary foreign worker program.”
In Britain, similar far-right agitation by the political establishment, including the Labour government, has emboldened fascists like Tommy Robinson to lead riots of far-right thugs in cities with high immigrant populations.
Contrary to the claims of the far right, the pressure on workers’ wages does not arise from the importation of cheap labor. Both processes are symptoms of the deepening world capitalist crisis, which the ruling class in every country seeks to overcome with intensified exploitation of the working class.
In a ruling that has sparked outrage within the Peruvian working class, 11 peasant leaders were sentenced to nine years in prison on July 25 for participating in marches against the Chinese-owned Las Bambas mega-mine in 2015.
In a parallel development, four young individuals from Cusco have been sentenced to six and seven years in prison for participating in protests against President Dina Boluarte in January 2023.
Indigenous demonstrators in Juliaca on the first anniversary of the January 9, 2023 massacre that claimed at least 20 lives in the Andean city [Photo by QM Keen / CC BY-SA 4.0]
According to the website Servindi, which advocates for Peru’s Indigenous peoples, the Cotabambas’ Single Criminal Court in ApurÃmac sentenced the peasant leaders for
... crimes of aggravated damage, disturbances, and obstruction of the operation of public services. The sentence, … [includes] civil reparation of 50,000 soles in favor of the State and US$88,000 in favor of the mining company [Las Bambas].
In a previous statement, the MUQUI network, which covers communities affected by mining, wrote:
Following the protests carried out by the communities of Cotabambas due to the passage of hundreds of trucks with minerals from the mining company MMG Las Bambas in their territories … in September 2015, three people died as a result of police repression, and more than 20 people were injured; the Prosecutor’s Office accused 19 community members … of illegal possession of weapons, causing common danger with catastrophic means, disturbances and damages.
When the sentence was issued, David Velasco, the defense attorney for the accused from the Ecumenical Foundation for Development and Peace (Pedepaz), told the newspaper La República:
In essence, it is the criminalization of social protest and the use of criminal law to prevent people from defending their rights.
… They will use criminal law against those who publicly demonstrate against arbitrary decisions of the central or local government or against companies that violate rights to land, the environment, and others.
La Republica coverage of the verdict revealed that “the defense deemed it contradictory and arbitrary as the fundamental requirements, including the proof of an organized power apparatus, were not established in the judicial process.”
According to defense attorney David Velasco, “None of that has been proven in the trial,” emphasizing “the lack of clarification regarding the responsibility as media authors of the crimes charged rather than indirect arguments supporting participation.”
The guilty verdict against the 11 peasant leaders is an assault on the right to protest the abuses of mining and capitalist companies. It is another step toward dictatorial measures by Boluarte to control a restive population.
Boluarte’s presidency began with a brutal crackdown on those who opposed the removal of then-President Pedro Castillo due to the failed self-coup of December 7, 2022. Boluarte is facing allegations before the International Criminal Court in The Hague for ordering the police and the armed forces to use firearms and shoot to kill. These actions resulted in 49 deaths, 155 attempted murders and 937 injuries during the protests from December 2022 to February 2023.
The president’s administration has an approval rating of only 6 percent, reflecting the growing public dissatisfaction with her, which has led to numerous protests and marches by workers and young people during the national holidays on July 27, 28 and 29 in Lima and other parts of the country.
In the context of increased class struggles in Peru and elsewhere and the escalating competition between the United States and China for South American markets, the peasants’ resistance against the Las Bambas mine is of great significance. The mine, owned by the Chinese company MMG, represents an investment of US$10 billion, accounting for 11.1 percent of copper exports and 1 percent of the national GDP.
The mine’s history is marked by conflicts between the mining company and the surrounding peasant communities, who own the land crossed by the road used for transporting copper to the port of Matarani for export.
Since its planning in 2004, there have been protests to prevent its opening due to interference with local communities. Las Bambas began operations in 2015, which led to an increase in clashes with miners and indigenous peoples in the region.
In February 2015, the Challhuahuacho community members went on strike, demanding the hiring of local workers.
On September 25, 2015, the area’s residents began a second strike demanding the demolition of the treatment plant because they considered it polluting. The magnitude of the clashes between the community members and the mine led the government to declare a state of emergency in the provinces of Cotabambas, Grau, Andahuaylas, and Chincheros. The protests left four dead and 23 injured.
In October 2016, the residents began a blockade due to the mining company’s road use. The clashes left one community member dead, and 15 people and 20 police officers injured.
On February 4, 2019, residents of the Nueva Fuerabamba community began a blockade of the road corridor.
In December 2021, confrontations were reported at the security gate and its facilities. A new blockade of the southern corridor resulted in losses of US$9.5 million a day in income.
In January 2022, operations restarted. Other negotiations were also held with then-Prime Minister Mirtha Vásquez.
In November 2023, residents of Challhuahuacho carried out a strike against the mining company by blockading roads at several strategic points, preventing the passage of vehicles and workers trying to enter the mining camp.
Las Bambas is only one of the most prominent among many conflicts between mining companies and Peruvian peasants. In its February report, the Ombudsman’s Office reported that “socio-environmental conflicts linked to mining activity rose from 84 to 78 cases this month, representing 37.9 percent of all social conflicts.”
A new mega seaport located in Chancay, 80 kilometers north of Lima, is set to be inaugurated in November of this year. This development signifies the increasing rise of Chinese capital in terms of economic and political influence that had been held traditionally by the US in Latin America. Currently, 29.7 percent of Peruvian exports are destined for China, while the United States drastically dropped to second place, with just over half of that value, at 16.6 percent.
Peru is seen as an attractive market for foreign investors, with 51 projects in the mining, petroleum and energy sectors attracting an investment of US$54.556 billion, as reported by the National Society of Mining, Petroleum, and Energy. The sentencing of 11 peasant leaders by the Boluarte government is a signal to transnational corporations, demonstrating a determination to repress the labor movement opposing the super-exploitation of raw materials by international capital.
The judge handed down the sentences in the context of a growing movement of workers, peasant organizations, youth and indigenous people in the Amazon against the corrupt bourgeois state, President Dina Boluarte, and the widely despised Fujimorista-Cerronista alliance, which comprises the far-right Fuerza Popular and the pseudo-leftist Peru Libre party, which exercise de facto rule over Peru from the Congress of the Republic.
This political alliance in Congress—which has an approval rating even lower than that of Boluarte at 4 percent—has exposed Peru Libre as a trap, an ultra-nationalist bourgeois party designed to keep the working class and peasant movements under control within the bourgeois state framework.
This alliance has successfully paralyzed the executive branch, while enacting a series of counter-reforms, including a proposed amnesty for the massive war crimes committed under the dictatorial regime of former President Alberto Fujimori in the 1980s and 1990s. Stripped of many of her powers as president, Boluarte has been left to implement dictatorial measures to quell the growing resistance from the people, relying on the Peruvian security forces for support.
The official subject for discussion at the conclave of central bankers, academics and financial journalists which starts on Friday at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is “Reassessing the Effectiveness and Transmission of Monetary Policy.”
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome during the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium near Moran in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming Friday, August 25, 2023. [AP Photo/Amber Baesler]
The central attention, at least as far as Wall Street is concerned, will be directed to what Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell says about interest rates in his keynote address on Friday morning.
Parasitic deals made by the financial oligarchs when money was virtually free are now coming under increasing pressure because of the elevated interest rates of the past two years.
They want more than an indication that a 25-basis point cut (0.25 percentage points) is on the table for September, which Powell looks set to give. They want a clear sign this will be just a start and that rates will come down 75 or even 100 basis points by the end of the year.
Echoing widely held sentiments, Eric Beiley, in charge of wealth management at Steward Partners, told Bloomberg: “If traders hear cuts are coming, stocks will react favourably. If we don’t hear what we want, that would trigger a big selloff.”
The most recent round of turbulence was at the beginning of the month when Wall Street took a dive following the lifting of interest rates by the Bank of Japan. It undermined the so-called carry trade in which investors made big bets using billions of borrowed yen. It was compounded by data showing a lower-than-expected increase in new jobs created in the US in July.
The market has risen since then with the S&P 500 only 2 percent shy of its all-time high, but the markets and the underlying financial system are so dependent on debt that it only takes a small, unexpected movement to set off turbulence.
One of the areas most affected by the increase in interest rates is high-tech start-ups using venture capital (VC) in the hope of becoming the next “big thing” or selling their firm to one of the major existing tech giants.
As the Financial Times reported this week: “Start-up failures in the US have jumped 60 percent over the past years, as founders run out of cash raised during the technology boom of 2021-22, threatening millions of jobs in venture-backed companies and risking a spillover to the wider economy.”
The article reported that Carta, which provides information to private companies, found that some 254 of its venture-backed clients had gone broke in the first quarter of this year. The rate of bankruptcies was seven times higher than when it began reporting in 2019.
Some of the numbers are not small. Earlier this month, a financial technology company, Tally, which was valued at $855 million in 2022 and had raised more than $170 million from VC firms, announced that it was “unable to secure the necessary funding to continue our operations.”
In a recent note, reported by the FT, Morgan Stanley analysts said the jump in bankruptcies was because “an abnormally high number of companies raised an abnormally large amount of money during 2021-22.”
It said VC-backed companies employed 4 million people and should the rise in bankruptcies fail to slow this would impact on the rest of the economy.
Another area of concern is the so-called non-banking financial institutions which have undergone an explosive growth since the financial crisis of 2008 and the establishment of an ultra-low-interest rate regime. They hold nearly half of all global financial assets.
While these institutions claim to be separate from the traditional banking system, they actually have intimate ties with it because the banks, searching for profits, provide them with money.
A case in point is that of the First and People’s Bank in Kentucky. According to a report in the FT it is on the edge of bankruptcy because of its partnership with a financial technology company, part of the shadow banking system, has resulted in soured loans running into the tens of millions of dollars.
The failure of First & People’s would be significant because, as FT noted, “it would be the first community bank collapse in the US to stem from an ill-fated excursion into the world of shadow lending, putting some $200 million of customers’ deposits at risk.”
What has happened in Kentucky has been replicated in other parts of the country. Businesses and households put their money into what they regard as conservative and sound community banks without knowing they are engaged in potentially risky operations in the largely opaque shadow banking system.
A report prepared by economists from New York University and the Fed earlier this year found that some shadow lenders received a significant amount of money from traditional banks.
“Traditional approaches to financial sector regulation view banks and non-bank financial institutions as substitutes. We argue instead that banks and [shadow banks] are intimately interconnected,” it said.
The lending of banks to non-banks has been rising rapidly and is now over $1 trillion. In the case of First and People’s the proportion of its loans to shadow banks went from nothing two and a half years ago to 53 percent.
While the official mantra is that with inflation starting to come down, preparing the way for interest rate cuts, and with the unemployment rate not showing a major leap, the US is headed for a “soft landing.”
This scenario, however, ignores developments in the real economy. There is a jobs bloodbath underway in the auto industry as companies gear up for an intensified global war for markets. High-tech companies are also engaged in layoffs.
The global steel industry, the backbone of the industrial economy, is at the start of a major downturn. It is centred in China, which produces half the world’s output, and is sending out shock waves to the rest of the world, threatening to set off a price-cutting war leading to closures and job cuts.
At the end of July, the Wall Street Journal published a report in which it noted the factory boom, which developed after the lifting of anti-COVID measures, was “running out of steam.”
“Higher interest rates, rising operating costs, a strengthening US dollar and lower selling prices for commodities are dampening activity at factories across the country,” it said.
“Executives for makers of long-lasting items such as cars, crop-harvesting combines and washing machines are projecting challenging business conditions for the remainder of the year.”
It gave as an example the situation at John Deer, the world’s largest manufacturer of farm equipment. It has laid off 2,100 production workers, or 15 percent of the hourly workforce, since last November.
The downturn in the industrial economy is reflected in the spot price for steel. It has fallen 22 percent from a year ago and is off by 40 percent since the start of the year, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights.
On Thursday evening Kamala Harris will deliver her acceptance speech as presidential nominee to the Democratic party’s national convention. It will be no doubt full of Hollywood-scripted blather about how well the economy has done under the Biden administration and how it will do even better under one she leads.
A more significant address will be given by Powell the next morning with Wall Street threatening turmoil if it does not meet its demands for more money, but whatever Powell says, one thing is certain. He will provide no solution, any more than Harris, to the growing financial and economic problems besetting the US that are driving it to world war and social counter-revolution.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced on August 14 that he would not run in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leadership contest slated for September 27. Whoever is selected as the president of the ruling party will replace Kishida as prime minister, with the next general election not scheduled until October 2025. Kishida’s three-year tenure in office has been marked, in particular, by the buildup of the military in preparation for war in league with the US against China.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announces Aug. 14, 2024 that he will not run in the upcoming party leadership vote in September, Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2024 [AP Photo/Philip Fong]
Kishida has been under pressure to resign for months stemming from different party scandals. This includes revelations last November that different LDP factions had established slush funds by under-reporting hundreds of millions of yen (millions of dollars) in political donations. There also continues to be ongoing fallout from the exposure, following the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in July 2022, of the party’s longstanding ties to the Unification Church, a rightwing cult also known as the Moonies.
Kishida tied his resignation to the slush fund scandal, stating, “It is necessary to firmly present a newly born LDP to the people.” He added, “What is left for me to do is to take responsibility as the head of the LDP (for the scandal).” Kishida claimed he would not back a candidate to replace him, although he will almost certainly exert his influence behind the scenes.
Kishida has become widely unpopular. An Asahi Shimbun poll conducted in July, for example, found 74 percent of people were opposed to Kishida remaining prime minister in contrast to an 18 percent support rating. However, there was no clear support for any of Kishida’s potential replacements.
The ruling class is not concerned with corruption or Kishida’s personal responsibility for it. It is worried that Kishida will not be able to assert Japan’s imperialist interests internationally and suppress the growing opposition of the working class at home to attacks on their living conditions and to the danger of war.
There are no doubt concerns in ruling circles that the protests against the government’s support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, ongoing since last October, will grow as the danger of war in the Indo-Pacific looms greater.
The pressure on Kishida to resign intensified following Joe Biden’s announcement in July that he would not run for reelection this November. With an eye towards a Trump victory, a former cabinet member told the Asahi Shimbun, “The job of prime minister can only be filled by someone who can deal with a heavyweight (US) president.”
The comment reflects concern that that carefully laid plans for war with China could be upended and Tokyo sidelined in the region should Trump return to the White House. During his first term, Trump eschewed traditional alliances while placing economic pressure on Japan. A Trump presidency would not lessen the danger of war, but could undermine the US-Japan alliance and further destabilize the Indo-Pacific.
Whoever replaces Kishida will continue and intensify Japan’s remilitarization. This includes the de facto doubling of military spending to two percent of GDP by 2027, the acquisition of offensive weaponry, and the solidification of de facto alliances with countries like South Korea and the Philippines under the direction of Washington. Tokyo has also played a leading role in antagonizing Beijing over Taiwan by increasingly questioning the One China policy.
Potential replacements for Kishida include Shigeru Ishiba, who has previously held high-ranking positions including defense minister; Sanae Takaichi, the current Minister of State for Economic Security in Kishida’s cabinet; and Toshimitsu Motegi, the LDP’s secretary-general and a former foreign minister.
Ishiba stands out for his pro-war positions among a party of far-right warmongers. He espouses tearing up Article 9 of the Constitution, known as the pacifist clause, which bars Japan from fielding a military. Eliminating the clause would represent a new stage in Tokyo’s remilitarization, allowing Japanese imperialism to assert its interests overseas militarily without any restraints whatsoever.
In an interview with the Diplomat in December, Ishiba stated that Kishida’s goal of raising military spending to two percent of GDP was “misguided” and called for more spending. “Some say that NATO countries spend two percent of GDP on defense, so Japan must follow suit. But Japan’s security environment is worse than NATO countries’, so two percent of GDP may not be enough,” he said. Ishiba also hinted at the idea of Japan acquiring its own nuclear weapons, something he has called for in the past.
Sanae Takaichi ran in the 2021 party leadership election with the backing of Shinzo Abe. She is a pro-war, anti-China hawk. Shortly before the 2021 contest, she directly appealed to the most hawkish elements of the party by holding talks with then-President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan, and calling for increased military ties between the two countries. She has on numerous occasions visited the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, a symbol of Japanese militarism, which enshrines class-A war criminals from World War II. Her most recent visit came on August 15, the anniversary of Japan’s defeat in the war.
Toshimitsu Motegi has also exacerbated tensions with Beijing. He declared in May that Tokyo “intends to deepen ties further,” following the inauguration of pro-independence Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te. “Taiwan is an important partner and irreplaceable friend with which we share the basic values of freedom, democracy and the rule of law,” Motegi declared after a 30-lawmaker delegation travelled to Taiwan for Lai’s inauguration. As foreign minister at the beginning of Kishida’s government in October 2021, Motegi raised publicly and explicitly for the first time the possibility of Japan’s involvement in a conflict between Beijing and Taipei.
None of these candidates represent Japanese working people who will have no say in who becomes prime minister. In the first round of voting, all LDP lawmakers from both houses of parliament are given a vote. This represents 50 percent of the total while the other half is determined by a vote of the LDP’s approximately 1.1 million dues-paying members, meaning each LDP member’s vote has only a tiny fraction of weight of that of a member of parliament.
Should one candidate receive a majority, they will be elected party president. If not, the top two candidates will compete in a run-off in which the lawmakers will again have one vote while the LDP chapter from each of Japan’s 47 prefectures will also have one vote based on which candidate won the prefecture.
For all the talk of standing up for democracy in the Indo-Pacific and around the globe, these are the anti-democratic measures by which the Japanese ruling class ensures its grip on power while running roughshod over the will of the population.
