Shining Light Into Darkness

Brita Rose

These are some dark times. A corner of our world is enduring unimaginable suffering due to a conflict that shows no sign of relenting. 300,000 Syrians have been killed and 600,000 remain under siege at the hands of a tyrannical government, or now ISIS. As a result, eleven million people have been displaced in what has become the worst human disaster of this century.

Of the displaced, four million Syrians have sought refuge in neighboring countries. These hospitable nations have reached full capacity and, as a result, this summer refugees began a more perilous journey into Europe via land or sea. Thousands have already perished making this journey.

As world leaders have scrambled to respond to this crisis, there is re-emerging a dark and ugly social response to the growing needs of the victims of this conflict. We have been there before: after 9/11; after a mosque/community center was built near the World Trade Center site; and after the tragic Paris and California attacks. Now more than half the nation's governors say they oppose letting Syrian refugees into their states, (even though the federal government has both the plenary power and the power of the '1980 Refugee Act' to place refugees anywhere in the country).

Islamophobia, minority discrimination and anti-Muslim hatred are not something new in the U.S., but they are a cancer to our culture -- an affront to the values of a pluralistic nation that stands--at least on paper--for justice, fairness and the common good of all. They are anathema to a nation built by immigrants and on the principle of offering refuge to the homeless, weary and oppressed, as we find inscribed inside the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty:

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

- Emma Lazarus' sonnet, New Colossus

There is another text in which alludes to the idea of providing refuge to the weary and oppressed.

"This is what the LORD says: Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of his oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the alien, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place." Jeremiah 22:3

"For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in." Matthew 25:35

In the spirit of shining light into the darkness surrounding these developments, several local interfaith leaders organized to speak of this light last Saturday, December 12th, outside Brooklyn Borough Hall. Coinciding with the seasons of Hanukkah and Christmas, through a 'Hanukkah candle lighting prayer vigil'--sponsored by Brooklyn Borough President, Eric Adams, Kolot Chayeinu and other local faith groups-- in unity we declared this light of love, hope and peace.

In a beautiful, quiet and attentive gathering of hundreds who spilled out onto the street on a cool December night under Christmas wreaths and the light of Menorah candles, we listened, we sang songs, and we prayed. Jewish, Christian and Muslim faith leaders and others united in their appeal to welcome the refugee and stand against hatred and injustice. Rev. David Rommereim, pastor of Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, invoked the name of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a saint of the last century, who also stood against oppression and spoke light into the darkness of his time during WWII.

In this spirit over 10,000 American Jews nationwide have signed a letter to stand against recent proposals from the 'airwaves', from calling for a registry to track Muslims to having an outright ban on Muslim immigrants. In solidarity with this Jewish community we say "Never again" to profiling and discriminating against any group. We call on our leaders to allow Syrians along with other refugees into America. If the total number of refugees set to be accepted from around the world in fiscal year 2016 is 85,000 (all under rigorous security), then there is room for the President's proposed 10,000 Syrians.

On Saturday there were a few hecklers on the fringes of our gathering waving American flags and shouting hateful and fearful slogans against immigrants. The silence of hundreds gathered in the name of love and peace seemed to somehow drown them out, and they eventually disappeared. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

We will continue to shine our light by promoting our hope of a culture of acceptance, equality, and of hospitality to strangers--particularly those suffering the perils of war, hunger or oppression. It is what the United States stands for as a country of immigrants. It is also what we do as a people of faith, and it is with this faith that we see the light prevail.

US Made ‘Cold War’ Plans To Wipe Out Much of Planet’s Population

Robert Barsocchini

Given the US’s long history of wiping out huge numbers of people in the service of physical and hegemonic expansion, it may be unsurprising that the nation planned ‘a wholesale slaughter of much of the planet’s population’ during the Cold War, as newly declassified documents reveal.

Jason Ditz summarizes that the US goal was to first ‘prevent Soviet retaliation as much as possible’ then ‘eliminate the ability of the Soviets to fight,’ and finally expand ‘to places whose lone value was that a lot of people lived there.

…all-told there were some 1,200 cities to be targeted with nuclear strikes specifically to try to kill as many people as possible. Cities like Moscow and Leningrad, which also had military or government targets, were to be hit dozens of times.’

Analysts at George Washington University write:

‘The SAC study does not include any explanation for population targeting, but it was likely a legacy of earlier Air Force and Army Air Force thinking about the impact of bombing raids on civilian morale. For example, in a 1940 Air Corps Tactical School lecture, Major Muir Fairchild argued that an attack on a country’s economic structure “must be to so reduce the morale of the enemy civilian population through fear—of death or injury for themselves or loved ones, [so] that they would prefer our terms of peace to continuing the struggle, and that they would force their government to capitulate.”’

One of the authors of the Cold War nuclear bombing plans was Curtis Lemay, the war criminal notorious for massive bombings of Japanese population centers.

The plans are also reminiscent of a recently declassified US instructional film from the same era, which states:

“Where can the navy attack? As long as the navy commands the seas, it can deliver a biological or chemical attack anywhere on that three quarters of the Earth’s surface that’s covered by water” as well as deliver bio/chem agents “hundreds of miles inland from any coastline” to “attack a large portion of an enemy’s population.” The film then shows a cartoon with US bio/chem weapons agents spreading over huge swathes of China and Russia.

Slavery “pervasive” in global seafood supply

Gabriel Black

Slaves are used to peel and process shrimp that finds its way in to many major supermarkets and shrimp companies around the world, according to an investigative report by the Associated Press (AP) published last week.

At Gig Peeling Factory in Samut Sakhon, Thailand, slaves work 16-hour days, waking up as early as 2 AM with the command, “Get up or get beaten.” Peeling shrimp in ice buckets, small children work alongside their parents, often crying, as their cold hands become numb in the troughs of shrimp.

The toilets overflow with feces. Workers work sick. According to the AP, “Some had been there for months, even years, getting little or no pay. Always, someone was watching.”

Tricked or forced into illegal migration, these workers, often from Myanmar, are slaves who are being worked quite literally to death to pay off impossible debts. Paid no more than a few dollars a day—at best—workers live locked-in in dormitories on-site and must pay bosses for their own gloves and equipment.

The following are a few anecdotes from AP’s investigation:

* “A woman eight months pregnant miscarried on the shed floor and was forced to keep peeling for four days while hemorrhaging.”

* “An unconscious toddler was refused medical care after falling about 12 feet onto a concrete floor.”

* “Another pregnant woman escaped only to be tracked down, yanked into a car by her hair and handcuffed to a fellow worker at the factory.”

Whole Foods, Dollar General, Wal-Mart, Kroger (Ralphs, Food 4 Less), Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Chicken of the Sea, Bumblebee, Petco and Fancy Feast, are just some of the companies whose supply-chain sources from slave-labor shrimp processing plants in Thailand that the AP was able to infiltrate.

The AP’s report is part of an ongoing investigation into slavery in Thailand’s seafood industry. According to the AP, “Pervasive human trafficking has helped turn Thailand into one of the world’s biggest shrimp providers.”

Earlier this year, in March, an AP reporting team infiltrated slave fish-trawlers off the coast of south-east Asia. Thousands of slaves, often smuggled in from Burma (Myanmar) or Thailand, were being forced to work against their will catching fish.

When not at sea enslaved workers are kept in cages at ports on small remote islands in Indonesia, including at the port of Benjina. They live on “a few bites of rice and curry a day in a space barely big enough to lie down.” Others were not so lucky and have been at sea for over a year, working non-stop, with cargo ships intercepting the trawlers to unload the catch.

According to a UN report, 60 percent of Burmese migrants in Thailand’s seafood processing industry “were victims of forced labor.”

AP’s investigation found that shrimp processed at Gig Peeling, the factory they infiltrated, ended up unloading at N&N Foods, Okeanos Food, Thai Union, Kongphop Frozen Foods and The Siam Union Frozen Foods—all of which are some of the world’s largest seafood suppliers. Thai Union, for instance, had net revenue of $3.4 billion in 2014. Chicken of the Sea, John West, King Oscar, Petit Navire, Parmentier, Mareblu and Century are some of its major international brands that it owns.

Before publishing the story AP reached out to the various companies that were implicated in the “slavery tainted” supply chain. Spokespeople for Whole Foods told AP that they were “confident” they were not implicated in the chain. However, AP spoke to their Thai supplier, who admitted they did not know where the shrimp came from.

The CEO of Aqua Star told AP that “it’s disgusting that it’s even remotely part of my business.” The CEO of Thai Union said that he was “deeply disappointed that despite our best efforts we have discovered this potential instance of illegal labor practice in our supply chain.”

However, according to “a half-dozen former workers” from another shrimp slavery shed, a Thai Union employee visited the shed every day.

Companies may choose to crack down on the slavery in their supply chain, no doubt with the public’s perception of them in mind. Earlier in the year AP’sstory about slavery in the fishing industry in Thailand led to the rescue of several thousand slaves.

However, undergirding the prevalence of slavery is not some collection of inhumane business owners that need to be shamed into line. At root are economic pressures to produce shrimp at the absolute cheapest price by brutally exploiting the workforce.

The global fish industry, similar to the global electronics industry, outsources production to intermediate suppliers, who themselves may sub-contract to hundreds of smaller companies.

Driving this competitive pyramid is cost; the sub-contracted sweat-shops are all competing against each other, and must out-do each other somehow. However, there is no technical advantage they can wield. At the end of the day the only way they can improve their bottom line is by keeping wages as low as possible. Especially in times of global economic stagnation, driving workers into conditions of slavery is the most competitive thing these sub-contractor companies can do.

It must also be asked, should these slaves be transferred to less slave-like conditions, what would that exactly mean? Workers making electronics at Foxconn routinely work 14 hour days making only $22 a day. What exactly distinguishes this life of ostensibly free labor from that of the shrimp-workers, who are beaten when they try to escape?

If Foxconn employees stop working, they too are forced to return to work, not by brute force, but because they need to eat and somehow find a way to live. Both the factory workers and the shrimp peelers are subjected to lives of virtual slavery, one enforced by violence, the other by their own needs.

In conditions of growing economic inequality and worsening global economic crisis, the pressure on companies to cut costs and find cheaper suppliers grows. Stories uncovered by AP will not go away with a dash of good will and public outcry. They are the logical result of an economic system, capitalism, whose source of profit comes from grinding workers down to the bone.

The US terror scare

Patrick Martin

In a commentary published December 17 in the Washington Post, columnist David Ignatius, who has close connections with the US military-intelligence apparatus, comments on the debate within US ruling circles about the scale and timing of an escalation of the US military intervention in Iraq and Syria.

After noting that President Obama has so far rejected calls to deploy substantial numbers of US ground troops against ISIS, Ignatius poses this revealing question:

“What would cause Obama to change his mind and treat the war against the Islamic State as an existential crisis requiring a major US military intervention? Probably the trigger would be a big, orchestrated terrorist incident that so frightened the public that it began to prevent the normal functioning of America. At that point, Obama might decide there was no alternative to taking ownership of the Middle East mess with tens of thousands of US troops.”

This observation explains far more about the political significance of the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris and the December 2 killings in San Bernardino than the feverish denunciations of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS) by American politicians and the corporate-controlled media.

The US ruling elite is mulling over its options in Iraq and Syria, well aware of the powerful domestic opposition to the expanding war in the Middle East. Wall Street, the Pentagon and the CIA know that to embark on a major escalation, including the use of large numbers of ground troops, they will need a suitable pretext to overcome popular antiwar sentiment. The media firestorm following San Bernardino has served as something of a dress rehearsal for how this would be done.

Terrible and tragic as it was, the killing of 14 people in San Bernardino was only one of dozens of such mass shootings in the United States over the past few years, and only the second—following the Ft. Hood, Texas killings by Major Nidal Hassan in 2009—in which the attackers were apparently motivated by Islamic extremism. In the period since the 9/11 attacks, white supremacist and Christian fundamentalist terrorists have killed more people in America than Islamists, yet there is no political or media firestorm demanding state repression of such right-wing fanatics.

San Bernardino has been seized upon to roll out a political agenda prepared well in advance, with demands for the elimination of encryption in Internet services, mass surveillance of all social media postings, a crackdown on visa waivers and a dramatic escalation of US military operations in the name of a war against ISIS. This despite the fact that the two killers, husband and wife, did not prepare their attack using encrypted communications, did not (contrary to press claims) announce their terrorist intentions on social media, did not make use of the visa waiver program, and had no direct connection to ISIS at all. Syed Farook was apparently radicalized before ISIS had even taken its present shape as an organization.

This is a recurring pattern over the past 15 years, going back to the murky origins of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which have never been the subject of a serious and independent investigation. Terrorist attacks take place that are attributed to shadowy Islamist organizations that have longstanding ties to the CIA and other imperialist intelligence agencies. (Al Qaeda, for example, arose out of the US-backed guerrilla war against the pro-Soviet regime in Afghanistan in the 1980s.)

These attacks become the pretext for the launching of predatory wars long planned by the imperialist powers and needing only a suitable pretext. Thus 9/11 became the launching pad for the US invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. The Paris attacks have brought a French aircraft carrier into the bombing campaign in Syria along with the participation of British bombers and a substantial troop deployment by Germany.

War abroad is inevitably accompanied by repression at home, with police-military mobilizations that are carried out in the name of fighting “terrorism,” but whose real purpose is to suppress domestic antiwar sentiment and working class opposition to the austerity measures required by the deepening crisis of world capitalism. Thus the Paris attacks were followed by a savage crackdown by the French government, whose first victims were environmental protesters outside the climate summit earlier this month.

According to Ignatius, who participated in a closed-door briefing at the White House with a group of editors and columnists on December 15, the Obama administration does not view San Bernardino as providing a sufficient casus belli for a full-scale US war in Syria. Something bigger would be required.

This should be taken as a warning. There are many in the vast US intelligence apparatus with the experience and ruthlessness required to manufacture such an incident, either by permitting an ongoing terrorist plan to go forward without disruption—as was apparently the case in the 9/11 attack—or by directly organizing such an operation under a false flag. At the very least, they consider events such as the Paris and San Bernardino attacks as a political godsend.

It is instructive to recall the words of former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who played a key role in the Carter administration’s anti-Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, in his book on US imperialist foreign policy, The Grand Chessboard, published just four years before 9/11:

It is also a fact that America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America’s power, especially its capacity for military intimidation. Never before has a populist democracy attained international supremacy. But the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense of domestic well-being[emphasis added]. The economic self-denial (that is, defense spending) and the human sacrifice (casualties, even among professional soldiers) required in the effort are uncongenial to democratic instincts. Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization.

When such an event occurs, the faster the media reaches unanimity on what organization was responsible and what country must be bombed or invaded to “defend” the American people, the more certain it is that a long-prepared contingency plan is coming to fruition.

This reality underscores the completely manipulated and stage-managed character of the 2016 presidential election. An event such as San Bernardino can be dropped on the US public like a bomb at any time for the purpose of provoking a war, tipping an election or even calling off voting altogether. It is worth remembering that in 2004 there was open discussion within the Bush administration of the possible postponement or cancellation of the presidential election, using a possible terrorist attack as the pretext.

Last week’s debates by the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates displayed bipartisan agreement on the essential political rationale for a new imperialist war in the Middle East. All the capitalist politicians, from the pseudo-socialist Bernie Sanders to the libertarian Rand Paul, adhered to the media narrative that the San Bernardino killings are the central issue in the election, that the American people are completely preoccupied with the danger of terrorism, and that every action of the US government, foreign and domestic, must be judged through this lens.

The Socialist Equality Party entirely rejects this political framework. We call on workers not to be deceived or swayed by the barrage of pro-war propaganda disguised as anti-terrorism. We fight for the independent political mobilization of the working class against imperialist war, against mounting state repression, and against austerity policies and the destruction of jobs and living standards and advance a socialist and internationalist program to guide this struggle.

Haiti’s political crisis deepens in wake of fraudulent elections

John Marion

As Haitian President Michel Martelly continues to rule by decree and make preparations for suppressing popular dissent, the crisis resulting from the country’s corruption-ridden elections is deepening.

Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council (Conseil Electorale Provisoire, CEP) named Jovenel Moïse, the candidate of Martelly’s PHTK political formation, the winner of the first round of presidential elections that were held on October 25. However, Moïse was given only enough votes to advance him to the second round of elections scheduled for December 27, with Jude Célestin as his opponent.

Célestin, the second-place finisher, so far has refused to campaign for the runoff, instead aligning himself with other opposition candidates who have been dubbed the Group of 8 or G8. The result of Célestin’s tactic is that Moïse is the only candidate campaigning in an election scheduled for next Sunday.

In the weeks following the announcement of the October 25 presidential results, Port-au-Prince was the center of street protests called by the opposition parties that had run candidates, including Fanmi Lavalas, Pitit Dessalines, and Célestin’s Alternative League for Haitian Progress and Emancipation (Ligue Alternative pour le Progrès et l’Emancipation Haïtienne, LAPEH). However, after the CEP’s December 18 announcement of legislative and local results— from the same October 25 balloting—violent protests spread across the country: in Jacmel, Les Cayes, Trou-du-Nord (Moïse’s hometown), and other locations.

The UN still has thousands of MINUSTAH troops in the country for use in suppressing the population. They are working alongside the Haitian National Police (Police Nationale d’Haiti, PNH). The Departmental Operations and Intervention Brigade (Brigade d’Opération et d’Intervention Départementale, BOID), a PNH unit created last June, arrested 27 members of opposition parties in the days following the elections—many just for wearing the t-shirts of their parties. Protests since then have called for the disbanding of the BOID along with the resignations of Martelly and the CEP.

Thousands protested in Port-au-Prince on December 10 to demand honest elections and the resignation of the CEP. December 16, the 25th anniversary of Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s first election to the presidency after the fall of the Duvalier regime, saw protests of a similar size. The G8 parties had called a general strike for Monday, December 7, but postponed it after protests on December 5 were suppressed with tear gas and water cannons.

This election is not the first in which Célestin’s actions have benefited Martelly or his lackeys. In 2010 Célestin finished second in the first round, qualifying him to run against Mirlande Manigat in a second round. However, the Organization of American States and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton challenged those results; Martelly, who had finished third, was given a spot in the runoff, while Célestin backed down without a fight.

In the current standoff, Célestin has been reluctant to meet with either the CEP or Prime Minister Evans Paul’s “independent” commission, but jumped at the chance to meet with Obama administration emissary Kenneth Merten during his week-long visit to Haiti at the beginning of December.

Merten is a former US Ambassador who has now been sent back to impose Washington’s will as a “Special Coordinator for Haiti.” Haitian Communication Minister Mario Dupuy told Le Nouvelliste that Merten wanted “‘simply to inform himself more precisely about the [Haitian] executive’s understanding of the electoral process. He was informed about it. There is nothing abnormal in that quest.’” Dupuy also tried to excuse the widespread voting fraud by complaining about “‘an amalgamation between frauds and irregularities.’”

A second article in Le Nouvelliste gives an idea of the machinations and contradictions underlying Célestin’s decision to call protests rather than campaign. By aligning himself now with Pitit Dessalines, Fanmi Lavalas, and other Group of 8 parties, he expects their support if and when he campaigns for the presidency. However, Moïse Jean-Charles, the candidate of Pitit Dessalines and third-place finisher on October 25, went on the radio to declare that “those who support Jude Célestin are part of the traditional economic elite which has kept the country hostage for two centuries.” Dr. Maryse Narcisse of Fanmi Lavalas has declared that she won’t support any other candidate.

A December 14 letter from Célestin to the CEP, released publicly, cravenly calls on that body to reform the process. After noting that Haiti has no sitting parliament, mayors, or local legislatures, he warns that a President not trusted by the people “will not have any legitimacy, nor moral authority, nor political authority for taking the difficult measures indispensable to the proper functioning of our country and to the sociopolitical stability that will permit it to proceed resolutely into development and democracy.” In other words, imperialism requires a stooge still capable of deceiving the public. Célestin concludes his letter to the CEP with a suggested reading list that includes editorials from the Miami Herald, Washington Post, and New York Times.

The 1987 Haitian Constitution calls for the establishment of a Permanent Electoral Council, but the use of “provisional” bodies has become routine. The CEP is supposedly representative of various sectors of society, but its president, Pierre-Louis Opont, is the choice of big business. Of its nine members, two—one Episcopalian and the other evangelical—are explicitly religious.

The current CEP is so distrusted that Prime Minister Evans Paul has attempted to appoint a separate commission to resolve the electoral crisis. Calling his commission “independent,” he nonetheless tried to appoint three members with ties to his administration to a five-member body. The electoral opposition and what remains of the Senate have objected, but on Thursday Martelly tried appointing the commission by decree with a mandate for it to complete its work in three days.

While Moïse benefited from ballot stuffing and other forms of fraud on October 25, he is hardly alone. Last week, the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights (Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains, RNDDH) released a detailed report on a case in which a candidate of the Vérité platform was forced to pay bribes of more than US $25,000 in a disputed parliamentary election. Despite that sum and the intervention of Reginald Boulos, the president of the National Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the seat was given to the Fanmi Lavalas candidate who finished second, but paid a higher bribe.

The RNDDH notes that the acronym of the National Electoral Litigation Office (Bureau de Contentieux Electoral National, BCEN)—which decided the dispute and received the bribes—is now sarcastically called the Banque Centrale Electorale Nationale (National Central Electoral Bank) by the population.

Radio Kiskeya reported that in a similar scheme in Mont-Organisé/Capotille, a parliamentary candidate was forced to pay $30,000.

The political crisis is unfolding as economic developments are further impoverishing one of the poorest countries in the world. The national currency, the gourde, has been weakening, and the resulting inflation was exacerbated by a spring drought that led to weak harvests. For October 2014 the annualized inflation rate was 5.8 percent, but it has now climbed to more than 11 percent. A weak gourde also makes imports from the United States more expensive.

Violence is being used to intimidate the press as well as voters. On the night of November 30, the offices of Radio Kiskeya were shot at by as yet unidentified gunmen. No one was hurt, but Senator Simon Dieuseul Desras had warned several days earlier that Martelly’s government would target media outlets.

Chinese industrial zone engulfed by waste landslide

Peter Symonds

A massive wall of mud, rock and construction waste engulfed an industrial area of the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen on Sunday, destroying at least 33 buildings and covering about 380,000 square metres under 10 metres of debris.

No deaths have been confirmed to date, but as of yesterday 85 people were missing. Despite the efforts of some 2,900 rescuers operating with heavy machinery and specialist rescue equipment, only seven survivors had been found. A rescue worker told the Xinhua news agency that the conditions were “extremely difficult” as mud kept pouring in to fill up excavation sites.

Local residents told the South China Morning Post that the number of missing was “definitely much higher” than the official count. A woman whose parents and brother were buried at home said that ten people, including seven children, lived next door and none had escaped. “Nobody reported these missing cases on their behalf,” she said.

Sixteen people, including a seven-year-old child, were hospitalised and in a stable condition. Around 900 people have been evacuated to temporary shelters. Survivors told the media that they had little warning or time to flee.

The area on the outskirts of Shenzhen known as Guangming New District is the site of many small and medium-sized businesses. Three industrial parks were affected by the landslide, which damaged, buried or toppled 14 factories, three workers’ dormitories, a canteen, 13 low-rise buildings and two office blocks.

The landslide also severed a major pipeline supplying natural gas from Central Asia to Hong Kong. The China National Petroleum Corporation, which has dispatched workers to construct a temporary pipeline link around the affected area, denied reports in the state-run media of an explosion.

This landslide was not a natural disaster, but resulted from the collapse of a mountain of industrial waste piled up just a few hundred metres from the boundaries of one of the industrial parks. According to the Ministry of Land and Natural Resources, the dump of earth and construction rubbish, as high as 20-storeys in parts, was too large and angled too steeply, making it unstable.

According to the South China Morning Post, documents show that the Hongao Construction Waste Dump, on the site of a former quarry, was operating illegally. Its initial 12 months approval in February 2014 had run out. Inspectors found the site still operating in July and not following agreed safety procedures. Rather than shut down the dump, the local authorities ordered the operator to make improvements and reapply for a licence in September, which it failed to do.

The newspaper reported that people living in the area had repeatedly complained to authorities about the dump as it looked increasingly unstable. The complaints were ignored and the number of trucks carrying waste to the site increased in recent months. Despite promises of a crackdown, the authorities took no action to shut the dump down in October.

A professor at Shanghai’s Tongji University specialising in waste management told the South Morning China Post: “The proper way of handling construction waste is to recycle or bury. Levelling or piling should only be used when there was no other option.” He said that there were no national standards for burying waste and that the highly-piled Shenzhen waste dump was not an isolated case.

The disaster epitomises the unbridled capitalist exploitation that underpins China’s rapid economic expansion over the past three decades. Shenzhen was just a fishing town close to Hong Kong in the 1970s before it was transformed into one of the country’s first Special Economic Zones for foreign investors. It was one of four cities visited by the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1992 as part of his “Southern Tour” designed to accelerate pro-market “reform” and transform China into a vast cheap labour platform.

Today Shenzhen is a wealthy city with a population of 10 million. Its frenzied expansion as a huge manufacturing hub has been built on the gross exploitation of the working class, generous tax breaks and other concessions for investors, and lax regulation and enforcement on everything from building codes to environmental and safety standards.

The Taiwanese-owned corporation, Foxconn, operates a vast industrial complex in Shenzhen employing some 400,000 workers making electronic goods for international brands such as Apple, Dell and Hewlett-Packard. Its regimented and oppressive work practices only came to light after a spate of suicide attempts by workers in 2010.

Shenzhen is not alone. In August, more than 140 people were killed and hundreds more injured in a series of massive explosions in the northern port of Tianjin. Tianjin Rui Hai International Logistics was illegally storing dangerous chemicals in a warehouse in close proximity to residential areas and public buildings. While the company initially received approval in 2012 as a result of ties between its owners and the city’s political establishment; it continued to operate after October 2014 without an official permit.

The Chinese authorities reacted to the explosion by making a series of arrests, including of company executives, and announcing investigations of officials in an effort to deflect widespread outrage over the wanton disregard for public health and safety. The head of the State Administration of Work Safety, Yang Dongliang, was sacked for “serious breaches of discipline and the law” and placed under investigation. He had been vice mayor of Tianjin until 2012.

The Chinese leadership has responded to the Shenzhen landslide in a cynical, pro-forma fashion. President Xi Jinjing and Premier Li Keqiang issued a statement exhorting rescuers to find survivors. As questions, concerns and criticisms mount, scapegoats will be found on whom to pin the blame and deflect attention from the underlying causes that lie in the unfettered operation of the capitalist market over which Xi and Li preside.

Ethiopian government kills students in protests over latest land grab

Joe Williams

Weeks of protests in Addis Ababa and surrounding towns have culminated in clashes that left 75 civilians dead and an as-yet-unknown number arrested. The protests are led by students belonging to the Oromo population, who are angry over the federal government’s most recent land grab. A similar move by the government in 2014 instigated protests in which dozens were killed and thousands arrested. Many of the students arrested then are languishing in jail to this day.

The land grab is part of the Addis Ababa and the Surrounding Oromia Special Zone Integrated Development Plan, known colloquially as “the Master Plan.” It involves seizing land from its historic Oromo owners for little or no compensation, and turning it over to foreign companies for infrastructure and agricultural development. The government plans to seize enough land to expand the area of the city about 20-fold, in violation of Ethiopia’s constitution, which grants the city’s government sole responsibility for economic planning.

After two weeks of protest, local residents responded to news that implementation of the master plan was set to resume by razing several farms owned by Dutch conglomerates Solagrow and Grazeland Farm Agro Industry on December 11.

The government seized on these actions to paint the protesters as violent. Abiy Berhane, a counselor in Ethiopia’s London embassy, told International Business Times, “The protesters are members and sympathizers of violent opposition groups who are determined to overthrow the constitutional order in Ethiopia by force.” Government spokesperson Getachew Reda joined in slandering the students, telling a press conference, “Elements trying to take advantage of the misunderstanding now have reached the point where they are organizing armed gangs and routinely burning down buildings belonging to private citizens, along with government installations.”

In reality, just as in 2014, the students and farmers have been met with violent resistance since their protests began in late November in the town of Ginci. As college, high school, and even elementary school students staged massive walkouts from classes, the protests soon spread to Haramaya, Jarso, Walliso, and Robe and eventually engulfed much of the country in a movement “far, far bigger” than any the government has had to deal with since coming to power in 1991, according to Merera Gudina, chairman of the Oromo Federalist Congress, an opposition party. He explained the ferocity of the protests, saying, “People are frustrated to live under this government, frustrated with the election, frustrated with their local governments, frustrated with their whole lives.”

Oromo expatriates held solidarity rallies in London, Washington, New York, Los Angeles, and several other cities around the world. In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, protesters marched to the office of Republican US senator Mike Rounds to deliver a letter demanding that the US government stop funding and arming the regime. His office hasn’t responded.

Milkessa Midega of Addis Ababa University concurred with Gudina’s assessment that the protests pose a serious challenge to the regime, telling Bloomberg News, “The party looks to have neither developed the society—we are begging food aid now—nor democratized the state-society relationships in Ethiopia…. The Oromo protest movement burns out of the general socio-economic and political marginalization and exclusionary features of the current regime.”

The government responded by ordering soldiers to fire on protesters, and insists that fewer than 10 civilians have been killed. A college in the capital was cordoned off, and soldiers removed dozens of students. Many have not been heard from since, and their fellow students have expressed fears that they are being tortured. All schools in Oromia have been shut down, the citizens are under curfew, and the military has set up command posts in Oromo towns.

In the midst of the protests, ethnic clashes between the Oromo and Amhara peoples added to the bloodshed in nearby Ameya Woreda. Estimated at 40 percent of the population, the Oromo are by far the largest ethnic group in the country, but have historically faced persecution under a series of governments drawn from non-Oromo groups. The Ethiopian Human Rights Council has accused the government, which is dominated by members of the Tigray ethnic group, of stoking tensions between the two groups to distract from the land grab. The Council’s director, Bestate Terefe, described a horrifying situation in which order has completely broken down and people are evacuating the town. “Everybody is full of fear, no one has security. Those who have armaments are protecting their house from any attack. Others are moving in the forest, others are taking their property to other places…. Things are not stable, we are totally in danger.”

The protests come as the government is facing international criticism for its mishandling of a drought plaguing the eastern part of the country. The number of people requiring food assistance has nearly doubled from 4.55 million to 8.2 million, and the UN expects it to double again to 15 million in the coming year. Despite this, Finance Minister Abdulaziz Mohammed said, “Regarding the impact on economic growth, the drought affected areas are peripheral and pastoral communities in the southern and eastern parts of the country…normally, those parts of the country contribute not more than 5 percent to our GDP. On the other hand, we expect harvest to be more this year.”

Instead of helping its citizens, the government has chosen to confront NGOs and journalists trying to cover the crisis. Cognizant that the last two Ethiopian regimes collapsed amid similar droughts, it has sought to intimidate those reporting on the current one. According to Allafrica.com, “NGOs are being warned not to use the words ‘famine, starvation or death’ in their food appeals. Neither are they to say that ‘children are dying on a daily basis,’ or refer to ‘widespread famine’ or say that ‘the policies of the government in Ethiopia are partially to blame.’ Neither are they allowed to ‘compare the current crisis to the famine of the eighties.’ Instead, the latest drought in Ethiopia is to be described as ‘food insecurity caused by a drought related to El Nino.’ ”

A drought in 2011 killed 200,000 people in neighboring Somalia and nearly brought down its government. Kenyan-led African Union troops were sent in to stabilize the US-backed regime, and today Ethiopian troops are primarily responsible for keeping it in power. The US has grown increasingly concerned that economic overtures from China, which include badly needed infrastructure investments, may undermine the Ethiopian regime’s willingness to do its part in Washington’s pivot to Asia.

One million people fled to Europe in 2015

Andre Damon

The wars stoked up by American and European imperialism in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq have contributed to what could possibly be the largest refugee crisis in human history, with the number of people forced to flee their homes “exceeding 60 million for the first time,” the United Nations said last week.

Over a million of those refugees sought asylum in Europe, the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported Monday.

“2015 will be remembered as a year of human suffering and migrant tragedies,” William Lacy Swing, the director general of the IOM, said in a statement.

Swing noted that more than 5,000 refugees had died while fleeing, including 3,692 who drowned in the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas, while “millions have been made into scapegoats and become the targets of xenophobic policies and alarmist rhetoric.”

Eleven more refugees, including three children, died Tuesday after their wooden boat capsized in the Aegean Sea. The route from Turkey to Greece across the Mediterranean Sea has become “the deadliest route for migrants on our planet,” according to the UN.

More than a third of refugees entering Europe are children. The Save the Children charity issued a sharply worded response to the latest figures, declaring that “Europe is doing too little to protect and help vulnerable refugee children and stop families drowning on our shores.” It declared, “When children are dying on our doorstep we need to take bolder action. There can be no bigger priority.”

Commenting on the figures, António Guterres, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said, “It’s clear humanitarian actors are no longer able to provide the minimum support both in relation to core protection and lifesaving activities.”

“If you become a refugee today your chances of going home are lower than at any time in more than 30 years,” declared Guterres. Only 124,000 international refugees returned in 2014, down from a million 10 years ago.

Having made “human rights” the watchword for bombing and plundering helpless countries, the Western powers stand exposed by the refugee crisis as completely indifferent to these same “human rights” when it comes to their own borders. Instead of providing aid and assistance to the thousands of people drowning on their shores, they are using the refugee crisis as a pretense to further escalate the drive to war and attack on democratic rights at home.

The German government, which has sought to posture as a supporter of refugees, has vastly expanded deportations while slashing social assistance to refugees. The country deported 18,363 people in 2015, nearly double the number deported in the previous year and up from 7,651 in 2012. A further 190,000 people currently reside in Germany whose applications for asylum have been denied, and live in constant fear of deportation. Behind the scenes, the German government is making plans to use the military to carry out mass deportations next year.

German authorities have spearheaded the drive by the EU to work out an agreement to pay Turkey some $3 billion to stop refugees from the Middle East from entering Europe via a land route. Some 2.2 million people have fled to Turkey, where they have been prevented from entering Europe and kept in abhorrent conditions in refugee camps.

With most land routes into Europe closed off, refugees seeking to flee to Europe have been forced to make the perilous journey by sea onto the Greek islands over the tempestuous Aegean. Some 816,752 people have arrived by this route, compared to only about 30,000 who traveled by land, a testament to the brutal effectiveness of the EU’s attempts to seal its external borders.

Greece’s Syriza-led government, which in its election campaign this year sought to pander to the altruistic pro-refugee sentiments of Greek workers, has, together with its total capitulation to the austerity demands of European officials, acquiesced to its role as a border guard for the larger European powers.

To this end, the Greek Island of Lesbos, the birthplace of the lyric poet Sappho, has been turned into a giant internment camp. Some 450,000 refugees arrived in Lesbos this year, more than five times the number of island’s permanent inhabitants. Over 4,000 arrived on Monday alone.

The island is the site of the EU’s first refugee “hot spot,” a sanitized term used to describe what is little more than a concentration camp. Under police guard and surrounded by barbed wire, refugees are kept in squalid conditions.

Reuters, which was allowed to visit the “hot spot” but denied permission to take photographs, described the deplorable conditions facing refugees. “As night falls and temperatures drop to about 6 degrees Celsius (43 Fahrenheit) or lower, groups of people huddle among piles of suitcases, burning pieces of cardboard to keep warm. The dusty plot of land turns to mud each time it rains.” Greece has promised the EU it would set up four more such miserable camps.

The one million refugees who have managed to enter Europe are among the five million people who have been newly displaced this year, according to figures released by the United Nations last week. This was on top of the 59.5 million who were displaced by the end of 2014.

But the UN figures cover only the first half of the year, before the enormous spike in people fleeing the Syrian Civil war as a result of intensified intervention by the Western powers. This means that the number of people displaced worldwide could hit over 70 million in 2015 once the figures are updated.

Fully half of those crossing the Mediterranean this year were refugees from Syria. Those fleeing the war in Afghanistan accounted for 20 percent, while those fleeing Iraq accounted for 7 percent. Thus, more than three quarters of those seeking refuge in Europe are seeking to escape wars directly stoked up by US and European imperialism in the Middle East.

The European powers have pledged to intensify their crackdown in the New Year. This month, The European Commission announced plans to double the funding and personnel of Frontex, the EU border patrol agency. It vowed to further militarize the organization, creating a force of “rapid intervention troops” provided with their own ships and helicopters to intercept and turn back refugees.

UK: Employment practises of Sports Direct retail giant exposed

Harvey Thompson & Robert Stevens

Two undercover reporters for the Guardian were recently hired at a distribution warehouse in Shirebrook, England run by Sports Direct. From their time employed there they produced several articles detailing the exploitative working conditions the retail giant imposes.

Sports Direct was founded in 1982 by Mike Ashley and is the UK’s largest sporting retailer. It operates over 500 stores worldwide, employing 24,000 people. In 2014, it recorded revenues of £2.7 billion and a profit of £180 million.

When Ashley floated Sports Direct on the Stock Exchange in 2007, selling 43 percent of the business, he raked in £929 million. His remaining 57 percent was valued at more than £1 billion. In the 2014 Sunday Times Rich List, Ashley’s wealth was estimated at £3.75 billion.

Ashley is also the owner of Premier League soccer team, Newcastle United Football Club, for which he paid £55 million.

The Shirebrook distribution warehouse measures 2,100 feet by 410 feet, equivalent to 13 Olympic swimming pools placed end-to-end. Up to 5,000 staff clock in each day, around 2,000 on the busiest shifts.

A second warehouse of a similar size is being constructed next door. Sports Direct operates its warehouses 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

New starters, reports the Guardian, are handed a letter by employment agency, The Best Connection, reading, “Your performance onsite will be monitored and if you do not meet the expectations of Sports Direct then your assignment will be terminated.”

The letter from a second agency, Transline, is blunter, stating, “Transline reserves the right to end an assignment at any time without reason, notice or liability.”

The undercover reporters said Sports Direct operates as “a retail machine whose cogs almost entirely consist of people: cheap people, typically from eastern Europe, who understand little, if any, English. To accommodate them, all signs and announcements inside the building are made in Polish as well as English.”

Staff are under constant camera surveillance, after entering the warehouse using a fingerprint scanner. Once on shift, they have to walk almost 20 miles a day picking orders from a maze of 50-feet-high shelves.

The firm operates a “six strikes” in six months and out policy. A “strike” is characterised as a “crime” against the company and includes “errors”, “excessive/long toilet breaks”, “time wasting”, “excessive chatting”, “horseplay”, “wearing branded goods” and “using a mobile phone in the warehouse.”

Workers are supposed to receive the minimum wage of £6.70 an hour, but a raft of disciplinary measures and deductions means they can earn less. “Workers are warned that if they clock in one minute late—or clock off one minute early—they will be docked 15 minutes’ pay.”

The Guardian reporters add, “In addition the body search at the end of each shift—which can take up to 15 minutes—is also not paid.”

Daily body searches are carried out in line with a “zero tolerance” of theft policy. Workers are lined up, “before being ordered to strip to the final layer above the waist and empty their pockets. They are then asked to roll up their trouser legs to reveal the brands of their socks and expose the band of their underwear. Occasionally workers are hauled into a side room for a more detailed search.”

Sports Direct has gained notoriety for its employment conditions, with the Shirebrook warehouse known locally as the “Gulag”.

The Guardian exposé follows a BBC documentary detailing similar practises, which aired in October. It revealed that staff, afraid they would be sacked for taking time off sick, phoned ambulances on more than 80 occasions from work over a two-year period.

Sports Direct issued a statement saying the Guardian report contained “unfounded criticisms” of its employment practices. It promised, “Mike Ashley shall personally oversee a review of all agency worker terms and conditions to ensure the company does not just meet its legal obligations, but also provides a good environment for the entire workforce.”

Figures in the political establishment and parts of the media have feigned shock at the exposure and rushed to present Sports Direct and Ashley as corporate bad apples.

The Guardian editorialised that Sports Direct was a “bad business”, with a “a pile-’em-high, pay-’em-low approach to the workforce” that “can never be a route to prosperity for the economy as a whole.”

It states further that this “conscious strategy would seem to be to rely on cheap labour rather than costly investment in robots or other technology.”

Is any of this a surprise?

Sports Direct is part of a globally integrated network of retail chains that sell products manufactured by cheap labour in China and Southeast Asia and use cheap labour warehouse and retail staff in countries like the UK. It is well known that this is standard practice.

Sports Direct employs the vast majority of its workforce on exploitative zero-hours contracts, but so do many other large firms, including McDonald’s, Britain’s biggest food chain with 83,000 workers, JD Wetherspoon, the UK’s largest pub chain, and the Boots chemist chain.

According to a report published this month by the StepChange charity, almost 750,000 people work zero-hours contracts. Some 1.26 million are in part-time jobs and 586,000 are in temporary roles. Of those on zero-hours contracts, 67 percent experienced a loss of income in the past year.

The encouragement of such practises is official government policy. Extolling the virtues of the British economy, Prime Minister David Cameron said in 2013 that Europe’s crisis stemmed from its lack of competitiveness and flexibility in the “new global race of nations” and the challenge posed by the “surging economies in the east and south.” He condemned “complex rules restricting our labour markets” and “excessive regulation” on business as “self-inflicted” wounds.

The government initially tried to block a debate on the Guardian ’s Sports Direct report by writing to the Speaker of the House to say the matter was “not urgent and should not be aired.”

Ian Lavery, the Labour Party’s shadow minister for trade unions and civil society, merely offered to meet Ashley and “help him tackle concerns” about the way staff are treated. “We can have a discussion about a way forward on this issue which would help both the employees, and indeed Sports Direct,” he said.

Lavery warned, “The last thing we want is more resentment on the workplace. We want the likes of Sports Direct to have decent relationships with the people who are making the profits for them.”

Labour’s solution, in Lavery’s words, is for “trade union recognition and a trade union deal at Sports Direct.”

Workers should treat the appeal by the former president of the National Union of Mineworkers to turn to the trade unions with contempt. The Shirebrook distribution warehouse stands on ground occupied by the former Shirebrook Colliery, which was closed in May 1993 after 96 years.

During the national miner’s strike of 1984-85, Shirebrook village, wedged between South Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, was the location of fierce battles as striking miners fought to defend their jobs and livelihoods. The miners were defeated due to the connivance of the trade union bureaucracy and the Labour Party. Since then the areas surrounding many former pits, mainly in regions of chronic unemployment such as Yorkshire, South Wales and the North East of England, have witnessed the growth of “industrial parks” and warehouses based on the super-exploitation of workers.

The trade unions have not lifted a finger to oppose any of this, and have collaborated to the hilt in allowing the practices at companies like Sports Direct to become the norm for millions of workers.

US-backed Nigerian military massacres hundreds in Shia minority

Thomas Gaist

Nigerian government forces massacred civilian members of the Shia religious community in Nigeria’s Kaduna State last week, killing more than 1,000 and injuring thousands more in a protracted slaughter that lasted from December 12 to December 14.

Soldiers systematically shot civilians at as many as three different sites, attacking the sect’s burial ground, the home of its leader in Gyellesu, and the sect’s Hussainniya Baqiyyatullah religious center, according to witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch

“The Nigerian military’s version of events does not stack up. It is almost impossible to see how a roadblock by angry young men could justify the killings of hundreds of people. At best it was a brutal overreaction and at worst it was a planned attack on the minority Shia group,” Human Rights Watch’s Africa chief Daniel Bekele said.

Dozens of the wounded continued to die in military detention centers without any medical care, Ibrahim Musa, a spokesperson for the Shia sect, said Monday. Nigerian forces buried hundreds of the bodies in mass graves, according to the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC).

The victims were members of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria, led by a prominent Nigerian cleric named Sheikh El-Zakzaky. Zakzaky was shot four times by Nigerian forces during the December 14 raid. At least one of Zakzaky’s sons was also killed during the raid, the fourth of his children to be killed by Nigerian state forces. Three of Zakzaky’s sons were killed during a previous raid in July 2014 by the Nigerian military, along with dozens of other members of the IMN.

The Nigerian troops bulldozed buildings used by the IMN, including at least one mosque, according to evidence cited by the Nigerian Human Rights Commission. During a previous crackdown on the IMN in 2007, state forces demolished a large compound run by the group, including a health facility and a school.

The government claims that the raid was carried out after members of the Shia sect blocked a convoy that included the head of the Nigerian army. Western media have promoted a pro-government account of the incident, focusing on the supposed threat that the IMN may emerge as a violent Islamist insurgency in response to the killings.

Analysts cited in African media have rejected these claims, noting that IMN is essentially a dissident faction of the Nigerian elite. “Nigeria’s small Shiite minority is generally well integrated within Nigerian society” and have “little affinity with Boko Haram’s ultraconservative Sunni fighters” strategy analyst Roddy Barclay told Africa Practice.

The raid comes just months after the election of Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, who has taken power with the backing of the Obama administration and the US military. Buhari had previously been head of state in Nigeria after leading one of the series of military takeovers of the Nigerian government that occurred during the 1980s and 1990s. Buhari has come to power promising aggressive measures to “stabilize the system” amid an intensifying social crisis, including growing mass unemployment and shortages of fuel and other basic commodities.

Buhari hailed “strong support from friends abroad” in his inaugural address, in a barely veiled reference to the support extended to his All Progressives Congress party by the consulting firm AKPD, a firm which is owned by President Obama’s close advisor David Axelrod. Buhari’s first act in office has been to establish a massive new military facility in the northern city of Maiduguri, as part of broader plans to militarize the northern region in the name of fighting Boko Haram.

The US-backed Buhari administration has thus far maintained virtual silence in relation to the military massacre, even as the body count has risen far beyond the government’s original claims that only dozens were killed during the raid.

Buhari’s return to power has taken place against the backdrop of a growing US military intervention throughout West Africa in particular. The past year has seen an increased buildup of US and NATO forces in the countries surrounding the Lake Chad basin, including the invasion of northern Nigeria earlier this year by a Western-backed multinational army led by Chadian and Cameroonian forces, all justified under the fraudulent banner of the “fight against Boko Haram.”

In July 2015, Obama and Buhari met personally to discuss “US-Nigeria cooperation to advance a holistic, regional approach to combating Boko Haram” during an official visit by Buhari to Washington, DC. At the time, Obama praised the ex-military dictator Buhari for his “reputation for integrity” and for his “very clear agenda to bring safety and security and peace to his country.”

Buhari subsequently met with Vice President Biden to discuss joint policies to “unlock the full potential of the Nigerian economy.”

US Ambassador Entwistle said on Monday that the US government would offer incentives for US firms to invest in Nigeria, according to the Vanguard. Entwistle made his remarks during a visit to Nigeria, where he met with GM executives who recently announced hundreds of millions in new investments in Africa’s largest economy.

The US presence in West Africa has increasingly focused on Nigeria, which is the continent’s most populous country, largest economy, and largest oil producer. The US military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) held naval drills off the coast of Nigeria’s largest city of Lagos in the spring of 2014, drills that were joined by naval units from some 20 NATO and West African governments, including a large contingent of German forces.

In May 2014, Obama administration sent teams of military advisors and covert operatives to Nigeria in the name of retrieving victims of a mass kidnapping by Boko Haram.

Senior Obama administration officials told the New York Times that the White House was preparing to launch new military interventions in Nigeria in May of this year. The plans were leaked by the White House staffers to coincide with the inauguration of Buhari as president.

Earlier this month, Pentagon officials told the Times that the US plans to build a new large military base designed to support operations throughout the West African region, which will function as a central hub for a web of smaller bases manned by US Special Forces and intelligence operatives. In October, a contingent of some 300 US troops began deploying to reinforce the US presence in Cameroon.

The European powers are piggybacking on the US military drive, seeking to reassert their interests in their former colonies.

The British government is moving forward with plans to double the number of UK military trainers in Nigeria, increasing the total number of British forces to 300, UK Defense Minister Michael Fallon said on Monday, after meeting Nigerian officials for discussions about the fight against Boko Haram and security policy, according to Nigeria’s Vanguard .

“Britain and Nigeria are both democracies; we are free peoples, free to choose our governments. These terrorists—ISIS, Boko Haram—they are opposed to us, our ways of life and they need to be defeated. So, we have been discussing today what more Britain can do,” Fallon said.

Over 130 British troops are already inside Nigeria providing training in “infantry skills, civil-military affairs, media operations, command and leadership, and support to Nigerian military training schools,” according to a statement by Nigeria’s Ministry of Defense. London will also deploy Royal Air Force units to train the Nigerian air force in counterinsurgency methods, Fallon said.

Before last week’s raid, Shia minorities in the north have themselves been subject to attacks by Boko Haram, even as the government has militarized large areas of the country in the name of protecting the population from the militants. These attacks have convinced many Shia that Boko Haram functions largely as a tool of the government.

The killings have already stirred up tensions across a much wider area stretching to the Middle East. An Iranian military blog post vowed revenge against Nigeria’s “puppet government” in response to the massacre, and mass demonstrations were held in Tehran this week protesting the raid.

The supposed struggle against extremism is being employed to legitimize a massive expansion of imperialist military operations throughout the continent. The Western powers are seeking to reimpose direct colonial rule across all of Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. These efforts are enabled by close the collaboration of the national bourgeois elites, their national militaries, and other local proxy forces such as the Islamist militias mobilized by Washington to spearhead the overthrow of the Libya government during the 2011 war.

The total number of operations by AFRICOM grew from 170 in 2008 to 550 by 2013, according to statistics presented by its commander, General David Rodriguez. By 2013, US forces were operating in 49 African countries.

In addition to the massive base at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, US forces operate out of a constantly growing web of bases in Gabon, Kenya, Mali, Morocco, Tunisia, Namibia, Senegal, Uganda and Ethiopia. The US opened new counterterror training program in Tunisia in early 2014. In support of French operations during the 2013 Mali war, US Special Forces were dispatched to Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Togo, and Senegal.