Dozens Of Refugees Drown Near Greek Island Of Farmakonisi

Thomas Gaist

Some 45 refugees, including 17 children, drowned in boat sinkings in the Aegean Sea Friday, after capsizing near the Greek island of Farmakonisi, according to Greece’s coast guard.

The dead were among the growing toll of victims to die while fleeing from the fallout of a decade of relentless imperialist war in the Middle East and North Africa. The deaths come just days after 15 refugees died in another sinking near Farmakonisi. More than 110 refugees have died in the Mediterranean in January, surpassing the total for January 2015, according to statistics compiled by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

During the past year, the IOM has documented at least 2,910 refugee deaths and disappearances occurring during transit of the “Central Route,” an area roughly between Libya and the Italian coast. Some 900 more refugee deaths have been confirmed in the Eastern Mediterranean from January 2015 to January 2016, according to IOM. At least 7,000 have drowned in the Mediterranean since late 2013, according to the IOM.

Despite the immense perils of the journey, more and more are attempting to cross into Europe. Nearly 40,000 refugees have landed in Greece and Italy this month, a figure more than 10 times higher than that of January 2015.

Every day sees the arrival on Mediterranean shores of rickety boats packed with refugees desperately fleeing the fallout of wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen. Millions have abandoned their homes in response to the constant threat of death at the hands of US military forces and proxy armies, and the absence of employment and reliable food and water created by the widespread destruction of infrastructure.

The death toll will only continue to grow as European governments increasingly target the growing displaced masses with air and naval military operations. As part of the European Union Naval Force operation launched last year, an armada of EU warships, aircraft and drones has been deployed under orders to target suspected smuggling boats.

Refugees who survive the crossing to European shores are being welcomed by a growing refugee management system of concentration camps, militarized police and ever more authoritarian refugee laws. The Danish parliament is preparing policy changes that will empower the state to seize personal property of refugees. Any assets over $10,000 are subject to confiscation under the proposed law, with an exception for wedding rings being inserted only after the deliberations produced unexpectedly high levels of public outrage.

The murderous crackdown on refugees is closely linked with the preparations for dictatorship being pursued by the entire European ruling class. On January 13, German police carried out mass raids against hundreds of Berlin residents in an area associated with left-wing anarchist and anti-fascist groups.

Hundreds of heavily armed officers swarmed into an entire neighborhood, occupying it for days. Sweden’s top diplomat called for a military draft to reinforce Stockholm’s anti-migrant operations on January 10, and Stockholm passed anti-refugee legislation last October banning refugees from acquiring permanent residency status in Sweden.

Massive methane gas leak imperils Los Angeles neighborhood

Evan Blake

Earlier this month, California governor Jerry Brown belatedly declared a state of emergency in the Porter Ranch neighborhood of Los Angeles, in response to the ongoing natural gas leak from a well at the nearby Aliso Canyon underground storage facility, which is owned and operated by Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas). At present, more than 4,500 Porter Ranch families in the relatively affluent suburban enclave, roughly a third of the local population, have fled.

An average of 1.6 million pounds of methane have been released by the well daily, according to recent estimates. This rate has begun to slow slightly as pressure in the well decreases. Since methane is roughly 84 times more potent at trapping energy than carbon dioxide, this amount is equivalent to the daily emissions of 4.5 million cars or six coal-fired power plants.

The leak, likely the largest methane gas leak in US history, is attributable to the dilapidated character of infrastructure in America and the subservience of social needs to private profit. A substantial cause of the leak was the absence of a subsurface safety valve, which was removed by SoCalGas in 1979 and never replaced. At that time, the existing safety valve was old and leaking, and because the company was not legally obligated to replace it, the company apparently chose to save money instead.

The well was drilled in 1953, before wells were designed to have two cement casings line the entire length of the well to prevent leakage. On October 23, a breach occurred in the single casing of the well at 470 feet deep, causing natural gas to seep through the surrounding environment to the surface. The absence of a safety valve at the base of the well, which would have cut off access to the underground aquifer, the largest west of the Mississippi, has led to the continual outpouring of natural gas.

After first reporting the leak to state authorities, but concealing its existence from the public, SoCalGas made seven “kill attempts” in which they injected slurry into the well to try to stop the flow of gas. It is believed that one of the initial slurry injections, performed on November 13, substantially widened the area through which gas is leaking.

Each “kill attempt failed” to stop the flow of gas, and the attempts have cumulatively created a gaping hole 25 feet deep, 80 feet long and 30 feet wide, upon which the well head is now dangerously suspended by wires, according to California Department of Conservation officials who spoke with the Los Angeles Times .

The state regulators told the Times that a well-head blowout is now a “significant concern.” In the event of a blowout, “highly flammable gas would vent directly up through the well…rather than dissipating as it does now via the subsurface leak and underground channels,” according to the Times .

Gene Nelson, a physical sciences professor at Cuesta College, told theTimes, “If the wellhead fails, the thing is just going to be full blast. It will be a horrible, horrible problem. The leak rates would go way up.”

SoCalGas has declined to speak with media about the current state of the well, and has not made available any pictures of the well site.

The company did not begin drilling a relief well until December 4, six weeks after the leak began. Greg McCormack, an expert in petroleum engineering, told LA Weekly, “They really should have started drilling that well as soon as they found out it was leaking. They would be well on their way to being able to control the well.”

Barring the event of a blowout, the relief well is expected to halt the methane leakage by late February or early March. Speedup of the drilling process for the relief well, which also poses the risk of explosion, is likely as the company seeks to mitigate public outrage. Since news coverage of the leak first began, stock for Sempra Energy—the holding company responsible for SoCalGas—has fallen by nearly 15 percent.

Beginning in October, nearby residents immediately reported smelling a foul odor, stemming from methyl mercaptan, a chemical added to odorless gas to make it detectable. By December, hundreds of residents were reporting headaches, nosebleeds, nausea and other symptoms, attributable to the methane, methyl mercaptan and other volatile organic compounds, including the carcinogen benzene.

Last week, the Associated Press revealed that SoCalGas has been misrepresenting the levels of benzene observed since monitoring began in November. While SoCalGas had been claiming that only two air samples over the past three months showed elevated concentrations of the compound, AP discovered 14 such instances in the company’s data, which SoCalGas spokeswoman Kristine Lloyd attributed to “an oversight.” Benzene has long been known to cause leukemia and other cancers, with the World Health Organization cautioning, “No safe level of exposure can be recommended.”

Children, the elderly and those with preexisting conditions are most vulnerable to these pollutants, whose long-term consequences remain unknown. For a time, an average of roughly 50 children per day saw Porter Ranch school nurses for severe nose-bleeding, while some babies have been rushed to the emergency room with shortness of breath. Two schools in the city are scheduled for relocation this month.

Nearby residents have borne the immediate brunt of the disaster. Brandon Ly told LA Weekly, “I feel like I’m trapped. I’m stuck in a poisonous house.”

Neighbor Arlene Stein said, “You can smell it really bad on our cul de sac. When it’s bad, it’s nauseating. I’ve had headaches almost continuously for the last couple of months.”

The full scale of the crisis was not made public until an aerial survey was conducted by the state Air Resources Board. The survey found that over the first three weeks of November, when SoCalGas conducted its slurry injections, the amount of methane released increased from 44,000 kilograms per hour to 58,000.

In late December, the Environmental Defense Fund released aerial footage showing a bird’s-eye, infrared view of the gas leak. Others have uploaded similar infrared videos from the ground, demonstrating the pervasive flooding of methane into Porter Ranch.

Nearly three months after the leak began, Brown finally declared a state of emergency on January 6. Brown’s reputation as a supposed “progressive” on environmental issues, dating back to his first term as governor in the 1970s, is increasingly recognized as fraudulent by many Californians.

Brown’s sister and fellow Democrat, Kathleen Brown, is a paid board member of Sempra Energy. Since 2010, Brown himself has received over $100,000 in campaign contributions from Sempra Energy.

Brown’s emergency measures are cosmetic only, designed for the newspapers and not to address the problem. The emergency regulations only apply to a dozen natural gas storage fields located in nine counties, and commit no public funds to address the leak or recompense local residents suffering health problems. They also do nothing to address the root cause of the crisis—the continued reliance upon dilapidated infrastructure across the oil and gas industry, which would rather pocket profits in the short term.

The absence of a safety valve is not at all uncommon for natural gas wells, many of which are as old or older than the Aliso Canyon well. SoCalGas itself reported to the Public Utilities Commission in 2014 that 229 of its wells were at least 57 years old, while 52 of them were at least 70 years old. They have admitted that many of their wells are similarly ill-prepared for a breach, posing the risk that the ongoing environmental disaster could become a commonplace event in the near future.

The Aliso Canyon gas leak recalls the 2010 BP oil spill, with many labeling it the worst environmental catastrophe since that event. A more recent environmental crisis involving a comparable amount of corporate criminality and government collusion is the ongoing water crisis in Flint, Michigan. Each of these environmental and social catastrophes lays bare the essential relations of capitalism, in which the needs of society are trampled to serve the interests of the financial aristocracy.

Job cuts mount as global economy falters

Gabriel Black

Major corporations around the world announced sharp cuts in their labor forces this past week. The job reductions come amidst growing signs of a general economic crisis, as commodity prices and share values plummet.

Leading the way in job cuts are energy companies, particularly in the oil and gas industries, which have been hit hard by the collapse in oil prices.

Schlumberger, the largest oil technology and drilling company, announced Thursday that it would eliminate 10,000 positions, roughly ten percent of the firm’s workforce. The company’s stock has been trading at near four-year lows this past week. In order to please investors, the company announced the mass layoffs alongside a $10 billion stock buyback program to boost its stock price.

Royal Dutch Shell reported that it would increase its planned 7,500 job cuts this year to 10,300. The downsizing is bound up with Shell’s acquisition of the BG group, a smaller British oil company. The cut totals ten percent of the workforce of the merged companies. Other energy company cuts include Southwestern Energy Corporation (1,100), Noble Corporation (100), and Potash (430).

While job cuts have been sharpest in the oil and gas sectors, the general downturn in primary resources has soured profit forecasts and spurred layoffs throughout the economy.

The German Manager Magazin reports that Volkswagen is considering slashing up to 10,000 jobs as part of a new cost-cutting drive. In addition to the impact of the general tumult in the world economy, Volkswagen is reeling from the exposure of its rigging of car emissions. Volkswagen intends to place the burden of the scandal squarely on the backs of the workers, in part by increasing productivity by ten percent this year.

On Tuesday, health industry giant Johnson & Johnson announced 3,000 job cuts at its medical device division. That is about five percent of the firm’s global workforce. The company hopes to save $1 billion annually from the cut, which will be imposed over the next two years.

Pearson, the world’s largest education publisher, announced Thursday that it would shed 4,000 jobs, roughly 10 percent of its workforce. Many of these job cuts will fall in the company’s operations in the United States. The firm’s shares declined substantially after it announced three months ago that it would not make a profit in 2015. The firm is the co-owner of Penguin Random House.

Barclays, the British investment bank, announced that it would cut 1,200 jobs and close offices around the world, particularly in Asia. Virgin Media, another British company, will cut 900 jobs, primarily in London and Birmingham.

These job cuts follow other mass job reductions in Europe, including 6,500 at General Electric’s European operations, 6,000 by the French nuclear group Areva, 5,800 at British Airways, and 1,000 at Tata Steel in Britain.

Job losses are mounting as well in China. While growth continues in some sectors, unemployment is increasing amongst workers in the steel industry and other sectors that have been sharply hit by the collapse of commodity prices. China International Capital Corporation estimated that 3 million workers would be laid off in the next few years in the coal, steel, electrolytic aluminum, cement and glass industries due to overcapacity. Professor Liu Erduo, a labor economist at Renmin University, predicts that the unemployment rate in China will rise from 5.1 to at least 6.1 percent this year.

The cascade of job cuts comes as prominent figures attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland predict a grim future for the world economy. William White, chairman of the review committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and former chief economist at the Bank for International Settlements, stated, “The situation is worse than it was in 2007.” White warned that this time around, the world’s central banks will not be in a position to bail out the financial markets. “Our macroeconomic ammunition to fight downturns is essentially all used up,” he said.

Misery compounds as mass layoffs continue in West Virginia

Naomi Spencer

“We heard on Facebook that it was a total shutdown. Not one phone call from anyone,” a West Virginia coal miner’s wife told the State Journal newspaper after Seneca Coal Resources closed its Wyoming County Pinnacle Mine. The 200 miners employed at the pit showed up for work on December 31 to find it had been abruptly idled.

Tom Clarke, the CEO of Seneca Coal Resources-affiliate Virginia Conservation Legacy Fund, which acquired Pinnacle from Cliffs Natural Resources just one week before the closure of the mine, stated that the operation was simply too productive for the market. Coal was “getting backed up into the hollers,” he said. “[B]ecause the operation had been mining coal more quickly than the company could sell it … Seneca’s first priority was to close down the mine,” the State Journal reported.

The Pinnacle Mine closure is typical of the crisis battering the coalfields over the past few years, exacerbated by plummeting global commodities markets and the downturn in industrial production worldwide. The coal industry in Appalachia—where seams have been extensively mined and production costs are higher than in the western US—has been decimated.

Companies including Patriot, Arch and others have fled into bankruptcy courts to offload pension and health care obligations for workers and retirees, and mine operations have been snatched up in a wave of mergers and acquisitions.

Pinnacle Mine employees confront a double burden of unemployment and the imposition of an insurance policy under the mine’s new owners that includes copays of 50 percent. The United Mine Workers of America (UMW) has stated merely that it had “objected to the health care changes” and that the company said it was due to “a mix up of health care providers.”

Across the state, communities are reeling from similar layoffs.

While the statewide jobless rate fell to 6.5 percent in November, West Virginia remains the worst in the country for unemployment and labor force participation rates. Moreover, despite the seasonal uptick related to holiday retail jobs, unemployment rates increased in 30 of West Virginia’s 55 counties in November and the situation has worsened steadily after the Christmas season.

On January 11, some 200 Blackhawk Mining employees received notices that they would lose their jobs in March. Most of the miners work at the Winchester Underground Mine or the Toms Fork Prep Plant and Loadout in the Elksdale area.

Both operations were recent acquisitions from an auction of Patriot Coal assets. In its layoff announcement, Blackhawk stated: “All of the terminations are expected to be permanent, and there are no bumping rights.”

“It’s like a ghost town,” an older resident told local television station WSAZ. The local Workforce West Virginia unemployment office reported serving at least 800 displaced workers in the past couple of weeks.

CONSOL Energy announced plans January 13 to idle the Twin Branch surface mine in Mingo County, impacting 88 workers. The company cited unseasonably warm weather in December that it said “impacted our customers’ ability to accept previously contracted shipments of coal.”

Workforce West Virginia lists other job cuts, including the termination of 115 manganese workers at Felman Production in Letart, effective December 21, and the impending February 18 layoff of 120 Walter Energy miners at the company’s Maple and Gauley Eagle Mines.

On December 31, Murray Energy announced nearly 600 layoffs in northern West Virginia:

• 125 miners received pink slips at the Marshall County McElroy Mine, a move that follows the layoff of 260 others earlier in 2015.

• 112 workers have been laid off at the Shoemaker Mine in Ohio County, following the layoff of 170 others in 2015.

• 107 miners are out of work at the Harrison County Mine (formerly Robinson Run).

• 106 have been laid off at the Monongalia County Blacksville Mine, where some 130 others lost their jobs in 2015.

• 82 workers have been laid off at the Marion County Loveridge Mine.

These figures do not include layoffs of nonunion workers. Mike Caputo, the vice president of UMW District 31 and a Democratic state legislator, expressed the complacency and complicity of the union in a December 31 interview with the MetroNews “Talkline” program. “It’s just a bad day,” he said of the Murray Energy layoffs. “It’s a bad day for the industry and it’s bad for all of us who work in this industry. … It’s sad that on the final days of 2015, we get one last, cruel blow to coal mining families.”

The crisis in the coal industry is precipitating layoffs in rail transport and other industries in the region.

Rail giant CSX announced January 18 that it was closing its administrative offices in the hub of Huntington and reassigning the management of its traffic to adjoining divisions in Atlanta, Baltimore and elsewhere. The closure will eliminate 121 positions, though CSX said those Huntington management and union employees would remain employed “supporting the transition” over the next several months.

The Huntington Division services the coalfields of Central Appalachia. CSX reported coal revenue has declined by $1.4 billion over the past four years,.

Until a few years ago the Huntington area was the center of coal shipments on the Ohio River. According to the US Army Corps of Engineers, barge traffic has collapsed on the Ohio, Kanawha and Big Sandy Rivers.

The Robert C. Byrd Locks and Dam, located between Huntington and Point Pleasant, handled more coal than any other facility on the river but is now one of the “least busy,” with coal movements falling from 42 million tons in 2005 to 15.8 million in 2015. On the Big Sandy River between Kentucky and West Virginia, coal shipments have dropped by nearly three-fourths in the past decade, from 25 million tons to 6.4 million tons in 2014.

McDowell County, one of the poorest counties in the United States, has seen the number of underground mines shrink from 34 to 13 in the last year. Last week, the county’s Wal-Mart announced it was closing and laying off 140 employees.

The closure not only eliminates the only major grocery store for 20 miles, it also removes $65,000 in taxes to McDowell County, and some 90,000 pounds of fresh food donations from the busy Five Loaves & Two Fish food pantry in Kimball. Wal-Mart donated between 1,500 and 3,300 pounds of meat and produce each week to the pantry. “You’re just afraid to get up every morning,” pantry director Linda McKinney told the Charleston Gazette-Mail. “When you get up you think, ‘OK, today what’s going to close? Who’s going to lay off? You would pray, but our tax base is basically zeroed out.”

Fifty-six-year-old Hazel Cooper arrived at the food pantry at 11 p.m. to be first in line when it opened the next morning. She was chased off by police, but came back, sleeping in her car under layers of clothing. Cooper told the Gazette-Mail she only started her car to warm her feet in the middle of the night. “Most people don’t have the gas to let their car run all night,” she explained. “People will do that to put food on the table.”

The collapse in coal production has compounded already severe budget shortfalls at the state, local and departmental levels. Counties have cut jobs and benefits and eliminated programs as the amount of so-called coal “severance” tax revenue has fallen.

In 2016, the state Treasurer’s Office anticipates an ongoing decline of coal severance. In a January 6 news release, the Treasurer’s Office offered a best-case projection of a stable collection of $5.5 million in the first two quarters of the fiscal year, resulting in a 23 percent downturn in county and city collections.

Governor Earl Ray Tomblin enacted a 4 percent across-the-board budget cut last fall in the face of a $150 million shortfall. In spite of the deep cuts, the shortfall has widened to more than $350 million. Tomblin has proposed regressive measures such as a cigarette sales tax hike to raise revenue, placing the burden of the budget crisis on the shoulders of the poorest citizens.

For its part, the coal industry has lobbied for further cuts in coal severance tax rates, from the current meager 5 percent rate on all coal mined to a mere 2 percent. “It’s designed to help mitigate further losses and decline within the coal industry,” West Virginia Coal Association Vice President Chris Hamilton insisted. “There are a lot of uncertainties out there today, a lot of cost factors that cause our coal industry to be at a disadvantage.”

The industry is also lobbying to remove a 56-cents-per-ton tax on coal that goes toward the Workers’ Compensation Debt Reduction Fund, a system that pays into the underfunded state workers’ compensation program.

Mass protests against pension cuts in Greece

Christoph Dreier

In Greece, an increasing number of professional groups are protesting against the planned pension cuts of the Syriza government. Sailors are striking the ferry service, doctors and lawyers have demonstrated on Syntagma Square and angry farmers have repeatedly paralyzed major public transport hubs for days.

The protests by farmers have expanded considerably. Up to 6,000 tractors have been parked on the fringes of major roads. Last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday farmers drove their vehicles for a few hours onto main roads, thus blocking traffic. Some 1,300 tractors have been parked, ready for action, in Promachone on the border with Bulgaria.

On Wednesday about 2,000 farmers demonstrated in front of the regional administration in Komotini, during a visit by Agriculture Minister Vangelis Apostolou. They demanded a meeting with the minister, but he declined. Instead, police attacked the protesters with tear gas.

The protests of farmers are marked by anger and despair. The Guardianspoke with one of the protesting farmers, who had tried in November to storm the Greek parliament, as Syriza announced their plans for pension cuts. He already has problems providing for his three children, he said. In September he had voted for Syriza because he thought the party was a new hope for the country. “Now I don’t want to hear anymore from them”, he said.

Another farmer denounced all the parties, saying, “If the politicians continue to drive us in the corner and humiliate us, we go to Athens and burn them down.” Talks between trade unionists and Labour Minister Giorgos Katroungalos remained inconclusive on Friday and the farmers have announced they will continue their protests.

On Wednesday and Thursday sailors took strike action and virtually paralyzed the entire ferry service. On Thursday, the sailors marched to the Ministry of Shipping, where employees also are on strike. The sailors’ trade union PNO announced the next 48-hour strike for January 27-28.

Last weekend, public sector unions and private sector workers held a demonstration in front of the Greek parliament, which was attended by about 5,000 people.

In addition to the farmers, workers and sailors, doctors, lawyers, pharmacists and other self-employed persons took to the streets to demonstrate against the pension reform. About 4,000, mostly well-dressed persons gathered in the Syntagma Square.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has made clear he is determined to enforce the brutal pension reform irrespective of public protest. At the economic forum in Davos he assured his backers that he would carry out his planned reforms to the letter.

The plans involve future cuts in pensions of up to 30 percent. The only protection afforded is to a minimum pension of €384. In addition, contributions to the pension fund are to be raised significantly. In future, farmers will have to pay 20 percent instead of 7 percent of their income. Social Security payments are expected to increase for both employers and employees. Some self-employed workers must reckon with contribution increases of more than 100 percent.

The massive cuts in pensions are a fundamental attack on the living conditions of millions of Greeks. Many families, plagued by unemployment, already depend on the already meagre pensions. The official unemployment rate continues to be extremely high, at 24 percent.

The latest reform is the 12th cut to pensions in Greece since 2010. Average pensions have declined during this period from €1,355 to €833 per month today.

In return for new cuts Greece is to receive a small tranche of loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union (EU) of €5.7 billion. However, it is not yet certain whether the banks consider the planned measures as adequate or if they will demand even deeper cuts.

At the meeting in Davos investor representatives made clear that the cuts to pensions were insufficient and that further attacks should be made on current retirees.

At the fringes of the meeting Tsipras met on Thursday with IMF chief Christine Lagarde. The meeting was “cordial”, according to the Greek side. Lagarde had stressed that Greece still had to make additional cuts before there could be any talk of debt reduction.

There is no doubt that the Syriza government will implement any and all the demands of the representatives of the EU and IMF. It has made that abundantly clear in the past. Since its re-election in September it has implemented fresh cuts and privatisation in cycles of one to two weeks, which have been met with strong resistance in the population.

In September the new government increased VAT on many basic goods and thus hit the poorest of the poor. In October, parliament decided to increase the retirement age to 67 years, and carried out its own first pension cuts.

On November 6, more taxes were increased. Farmers now have to pay €200 instead of €66 per ton for diesel taxes. On November 19, the Syriza government allowed the seizure of indebted residential buildings in order to improve the finances of the banks.

On December 6, the government majority finally decided the 2016 budget in parliament, involving cuts of €5.7 billion. In the middle of the same month it gave a green light for the privatisation of regional airports to be carried out by the German company Fraport.

This balance sheet speaks for itself and now Syriza is preparing to implement its pension cuts despite widespread opposition. In so doing it is supported by the major trade union federations, the ADEDY and GSEE, which are doing everything in their power to render the massive protests harmless for the government.

For February 4, the federations have announced a “general strike”. Such actions are a weapon in the arsenal of the unions to allow workers to let off steam while effectively demobilising them. They are the permanent accompaniment to the cuts orgies.

The ADEDY and GSEE functionaries were recruited from the ruling parties New Democracy (ND) and PASOK, and supported their policies. Today, they maintain close links with Syriza and play the same supporting role.

The only way to dismiss the EU diktat is an unsparing struggle against the programme and practice of Syriza, the unions and their pseudo-left appendages.

Mass protests against unemployment erupt across Tunisia

Alex Lantier

Five years after the self-immolation of graduate and vegetable seller Mohamed Bouazizi triggered mass protests against unemployment that escalated into revolutionary struggles that brought down Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, mass protests against unemployment by workers and students have again erupted across Tunisia.

After the death at a protest last Saturday of Ridha Yahyaoui, a young man seeking a teaching job in the city of Kasserine in southern Tunisia, protests spread across southern and western Tunisia, to the capital, Tunis, and, by Thursday, across the entire country. A policeman died when his vehicle overturned, and unspecified numbers of protesters were hurt Thursday during clashes in Kasserine, where Tunisian security forces killed dozens of protesters during the 2011 uprising.

“I have been out of work for 13 years, and I am a qualified technician. We are not looking for handouts, just our right to work,” electrician Mohamed Mdini told Reuters at a protest in Kasserine.

After a rally by unemployed university graduates on Thursday in Tunis, calling for jobs and the fall of the Tunisian regime, the state declared an 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew yesterday across all of Tunisia. The Tunisian interior ministry warned that protests were causing “damage to public and private property.” It threatened to prosecute anyone who defied the curfew, though protesters in Kasserine have already defied a local curfew declared in their region earlier in the week.

The eruption of mass protests in Tunisia shows that none of the grievances that drove the working class into revolutionary struggle five years ago against first the Ben Ali dictatorship in Tunisia, then the Mubarak dictatorship in Egypt, have been resolved. The United States and the major European powers spent billions of dollars on wars that devastated the region, from Libya to Mali. At the same time, the NATO powers and the Tunisian capitalist class have failed to meet fundamental social needs of working people or to respect basic democratic rights.

After an interlude where the Islamist Ennahda party held power, Ben Ali’s party, the Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD), freshly renamed Nidaa Tounes, returned to power in 2014, with support from Tunisia’s corrupt union bureaucracy and middle class “left” groups.

Protests began a week ago, when Ridha Yahyaoui died, electrocuted after climbing on a pole to address a rally of unemployed workers whom the Education Ministry had turned away for jobs. Yahyaoui was one of seven unemployed graduates who were denied employment after organising a sit-in last year and meeting with local authorities to present demands at the beginning of this year.

Salem Ayari, the secretary-general of the Union of Unemployed Graduates, told the Huffington Post-Maghreb that Yahyaoui “had recently discovered that his name had been pulled from the list of files to be handed to the prime minister to regularise their situation. … The list was modified and manipulated without consultation with the mayor or the deputy who were taking care of the matter.”

Yahyaoui’s tragic death, like that of Bouazizi, triggered protests across the depressed industrial and mining heartlands of southern Tunisia where Kasserine and Sidi Bouzid are located.

Construction workers and day laborers in Béja joined the protests, demanding papers and regular working conditions, and protesters marched, blocked roads and tried to occupy municipal buildings in cities across southern and central Tunisia, including Meknassi and Sousse. When the government tried to end the movement on Wednesday by offering concessions to Kasserine and promising to create a few thousand jobs, workers in other cities across Tunisia joined the movement. Sidi Bouzid, Béja, Kébili, Meknassi, Mazouna, Gabès, Sfax, and Sousse were all hit by protests.

Several government buildings, including in Jendouba and Tozeur, were occupied by students and unemployed workers demanding jobs. Protests also hit working class districts of Tunis, where protesters reportedly blocked roads and set a police station aflame.

President Béji Caïd Essebsi, a former Ben Ali regime official, spoke to the Tunisian people in a televised address last night, as the government became alarmed over the spread of protests at the end of the week. Briefly posturing as sympathetic to the masses, admitting that “the unemployed cannot wait forever,” Essebsi attacked unidentified people active in the protests for “having helped fan the flames and ordered acts of sabotage and pillage.”

Essebsi cynically said he would create jobs without spending any extra money, saying he felt sure the state “can find the necessary funds, at need by taking them away from other projects.” He pledged, however, that whatever his government did, it would respect “all its engagements, financial and otherwise, to its foreign partners,” that is, the major banks and governments in the imperialist countries in Europe and America.

Essebsi’s rhetorical promises notwithstanding, the last five years have shown conclusively that the working masses’ demands for basic social and democratic rights are incompatible with capitalist rule in North Africa, and in particular the escalating military interventions of the imperialist powers. Tunisia has been starved of investment and jobs, and hit by bloodshed spreading from neighboring Libya after NATO and its Islamist allies toppled Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in a bloody war.

In Tunisia, unemployment is over 15 percent (including over a third of the youth), the informal economy is equivalent to 54 percent of gross domestic product, and purchasing power has fallen 40 percent since the beginning of the revolution, Tuniscope reported.

Above all, the five years since Ben Ali’s collapse have illustrated that no social protest, however powerful, can produce a victory for the working class without having at its head a revolutionary party. The uprisings of 2011 in Tunisia and Egypt were powerful revolutionary struggles mobilising masses of workers that rapidly smashed the resistance of security forces of feared dictatorships that had previously seemed invincible.

In the absence of a revolutionary party fighting to lead the working class in Tunisia, Egypt, and beyond to seize state power and create a socialist society, however, both regimes ultimately were able to stabilise themselves. After power briefly shifted into the hands of the Islamists, figures in the entourage of the former autocrats—Essebsi in Tunisia, and General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Egypt—ultimately succeeded in returning to power with the backing of various petty-bourgeois “left” organisations.

The bourgeoisie internationally is quite conscious of the role played by these forces and has rewarded them handsomely. The Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) and the Tunisian Human Rights League (LTDH) shared the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize with various business and professional groups. The Nobel committee hailed their “decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia.”

As the Tunisian protests are now showing, the UGTT and LTDH did not build a democracy, but a new façade for the return of the old dictatorship, built on intense economic oppression and the suppression of mass opposition in the working class. Their democratic pretensions notwithstanding, they are now trying to strangle the protests and help justify police repression by spreading lurid tales that the protests are infiltrated by terrorists from Libya.

The UGTT, a pillar of the Ben Ali regime, issued a statement that briefly called demonstrators’ demands “legitimate,” then proposed deploying UGTT members around state buildings to protect them from protesters. In a statement, it said it “denounces the looting and theft committed by criminal gangs that try to manipulate social protest … and appeals for a general mobilisation of its members to protect the facilities of public and private institutions.”

Hamma Hammami, the leader of the Workers party that is a key element of the Popular Front, a middle class “left” grouping that allied with Nidaa Tounes before the 2014 elections, is also making clear that his party again wants to block a revolution in Tunisia. Speaking to Mosaïque FM, he said that while Popular Front members “admittedly join the protests,” this is “with the objective of giving structure to them, so that they preserve a pacific character and are nothing else.”

The end of liberal Europe

Peter Schwarz

The historian Heinrich August Winkler has described the history of Germany as a “long road to the West.” By “West,” the Social Democrat means parliamentary democracy, human and civil rights—as they were defined by the American and French revolutions— class compromise and social balance.

After a long Sonderweg (special path), according to Winkler’s interpretation, Germany had finally arrived in the “West” through the Constitution of 1949, the nonviolent reunification of 1991 and the integration into the European Union, which finally led the European continent to peace.

Winkler’s conception of the “West” was always ideologically driven and involved a significant glossing over of reality. However, if recent events are assessed on the basis of his criterion, then Germany and Europe have rapidly travelled the “road to the West” in reverse over recent months. Almost overnight, the political culture has been violently transformed. The social democratic and liberal Europe has collapsed.

Everywhere, the ruling elites are moving sharply to the right. Chauvinism, xenophobia, militarism and the call for a strong state are on the rise. This applies not only to the emerging ultra-right-wing parties such as the French National Front, the Alternative for Germany, the Austrian Freedom Party, the Hungarian Fidesz and the Polish PiS, but also for every establishment party, including those supposedly on the left.

Pseudo-left publications such as the Pabloite United Secretariat’sInternational Viewpoint are among the leading voices in the chorus calling for state intervention and imperialist war in the name of allegedly defending women’s rights.

In Germany, political parties and the media have sparked a campaign of racist incitement against refugees following the wildly hyped events in Cologne on New Year’s Eve, reminiscent of the anti-Semitic campaigns of the Nazis. Government and opposition parties try to outdo each other in the call for more police and tougher laws, with the Left Party excelling in this regard.

In France, the Socialist Party government has imposed a permanent state of emergency and threatened to deprive convicted criminals of foreign origin of their citizenship, in the tradition of the Vichy regime.

Everywhere in Europe the borders are being imposed, and the Schengen system is as good as dead. Conflicts between EU members are escalating. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned at the World Economic Forum in Davos that the EU “could very well break up in a very short time.” His Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte spoke of “six to eight weeks” remaining for the EU to resolve the refugee crisis. The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitungwrote, “Never before was the end of the EU as realistic as it is today.”

Europe’s ruling elites are agreed when it comes to increasing military capacity, waging war in the Middle East and Africa and deploying the military at home. But even here, the unity of Europe should not be taken for granted. With the growth of national antagonisms, it is only a matter of time before tanks are deployed to the borders between EU member states. Seventy years after the end of World War II, the threat of war in the heart of Europe has reemerged.

The approximately 1 million refugees who have entered Europe in the past year, about 0.2 percent of the total EU population of 508 million, are the pretext and not the cause of the political shift to the right. This shift is not the result of widespread sentiments in the general population, as the media seeks to present it, but the expression of a rebellion of the ruling elites. They are systematically fanning reactionary moods, using the media and the official parties.

The real reason for this rebellion from above is the explosive social, economic and political contradictions that have been building up since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the wider Soviet bloc 25 years ago, and especially since the international financial crisis of 2008. German imperialism has played a crucial role in these developments.

Germany has ruthlessly exploited its economic predominance to force its rivals to the wall and to gain hegemony over Europe. It has used the euro in order to impose merciless austerity measures on weaker southern and eastern European countries--measures that have ruined their economies, plunged millions into misery and robbed the youth of any future.

A cursory glance at European economic statistics is sufficient to show the illusory character of the idea that Europe could be united harmoniously and peacefully on a capitalist basis.

For example, Germany’s gross domestic product, just short of €3 trillion in 2014, was more than seven times as high as that of neighboring Poland, which has nearly half as many inhabitants. Germany’s exports were seven times larger than those of Poland; the German export surplus of €220 billion alone was higher than total Polish exports of €163 billion.

Even France, which exported less than half as much as Germany in 2014 and had a trade deficit of €71 billion, and the United Kingdom, with a trade deficit of €134 billion, were cast in the shadow of Germany.

The contrast in the social statistics is even more blatant. The average monthly gross earnings of full-time workers within the EU varies between €306 in Bulgaria, €902 in Poland, €3,106 in Germany and €4,217 in Denmark.

These averages mask the huge social gulf that has opened up within the individual countries. For example, Germany owes its economic supremacy not least to its extensive low-wage sector, which resulted from the Agenda 2010 “reforms” introduced by the Social Democratic Party-Green Party government of Gerhard Schröder. Millions of workers are living on the edge of subsistence and often need two or three jobs to make ends meet.

These sharp social contradictions are the real reason for the shift to the right by the European elites. They know that below the surface, a massive social explosion is brewing and that they have little time to prepare for it. As in the 1930s, they are stirring up chauvinism and xenophobia to divert social tensions into right-wing channels, build up the police apparatus, and establish a right-wing movement to use against social protests in the same manner as they did in the 1930s with the Nazi stormtroopers (SA).

The growth of militarism serves the same purpose. There has hardly been a war in recent history that has not in part served to direct internal tensions outwards. At the same time, the conflicts between the great powers are very real. In Germany’s ruling class, the belief has long prevailed that its global economic interests can be secured only by military means. For two years, it has agitated intensively for an aggressive foreign policy under the slogan, “New power, new responsibilities.”

Currently, these missions take place in the framework of international alliances, primarily NATO. But this will not last. The conflicts of interest between the great powers are so deep that due to the crisis of the world capitalist economy they are being driven inevitably toward a Third World War.

Only the political intervention of the working class can prevent such a catastrophe. In contrast to the ruling elites, the mood among the masses is predominantly left-wing. But this sentiment finds no expression in official politics. The experiences of the past year–from Syriza’s betrayal in Greece to Germany’s Left Party supporting the call for increased state powers—have powerfully demonstrated that no opposition can be expected from the ranks of the official parties.

The fight against war, racism and social cuts, as well as the defense of refugees and democratic rights, is inseparable from the struggle against capitalism and the building of an international socialist workers’ party. This requires the building of sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International throughout Europe.

The Fourth International is the only political tendency that has warned that Europe cannot be unified on a capitalist basis, and that new wars are inevitable if capitalism is not overthrown.

Leon Trotsky, the founder of the Fourth International, explained at the end of the First World War, “a halfway complete and consistent economic union of Europe coming from the top by means of an agreement of the capitalist governments is sheer utopia.” That analysis is being confirmed today. The only possibility of uniting Europe in the interests of its peoples is in the United Socialist States of Europe.

Twenty-five years ago, David North, now the chairman of the WSWS International Editorial Board, warned in a speech on the eve of the launching of the first Gulf War by the US against Iraq, “just as World War I and World War II were preceded by bitter inter-imperialist rivalries, the ground is being prepared for World War III. The weapons which are now being used against the Iraqi people will in the future be used in even more bloody and horrific conflicts.” (1)

Since then, US imperialism and its European allies have destroyed a great part of the Middle East, which now threatens to become the source of a new world conflagration.

1) “One of the great crimes of the twentieth century,” speech by David North, January 20, 1991 in New York City, in: “Desert Slaughter. The Imperialist War Against Iraq,” Detroit 1991, p. 246

Forecast 2016: East Asia on the Cusp

Sandip Kumar Mishra

In his new year's speech in 2016, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un expressed willingness to have talks with South Korea but just a few days later, conducted North Korea's fourth round of nuclear tests. The inconsistency in North Korea’s policy and actions is not easy to decipher. North Korea seems to seek proposals for peace while escalating tensions. In the past one year, the dynamics of East Asia has also been quite similar.

There have been a few bilateral and multilateral proposals intended to bring peace but there have been simultaneous counter actions by countries of the region, which have further heightened regional insecurity. There are indications of change in regional political and economic exchanges but there are equally strong trends underlining continuity. It seems that the region is passing through a cusp in which any clear trend is difficult to decipher, with a lot of activity, both positive and negative.

For the past few years, bilateral relations in East Asia have been characterised by mistrust, provocations and counter-actions on the surface and continued economic and other exchanges beneath, among the countries of the region. Shinzo Abe in Japan, Xi Jinping in China, Park Geun-hye in South Korea, and Kim Jong-un in North Korea have all been less compromising on their respective positions and this has led to the emergence of many security hotspots in the region. The only exception has been continuous improvement in China-South Korea relations.

Looking BackIn 2015, China became more overtly assertive in the region with the establishment of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), activities to establish One-Belt, One-Road, constructing artificial islands in the South China Sea and its behaviour in the East China Sea. In the process, China had serious contentions with the US and Japan. Unlike previous few years, it tried to reach out to North Korea in 2015 while maintaining good relations with South Korea. Chinese representative Liu Yunshan, who is ranked number five in the hierarchy of the Chinese Communist Party, participated in a celebration to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the Workers' Party of Korea in Pyongyang. It has been the highest exchange between the two countries after the death of Kim Jong-il in late 2011.

Meanwhile, China was able to make South Korea join the AIIB as one of the founding members, keep Seoul away from the US proposed Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and also welcome the South Korean President Park Geun-hye to participate in the Victory Parade organised in Beijing to commemorate the 70th year of the victory over Japan in World War II.

The Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe continued his hard-line policies vis-à-vis history and territorial issues by evoking nationalist sentiments. However, on 1 November, Abe visited Seoul to participate in the three-nation summit meet, which happened after a gap of three years. On 28 December, Abe also conveyed his apology to South Korea on the comfort women issue and promised a contribution of US$8.3 million to create a fund for the victims. Japan wants to mend its relationship with South Korea but without softening its nationalist fervour and hard-line stand. The change in the Japanese approach is not a change of heart but just an attempt to neutralise its isolation in regional politics.

South Korea in the past few years has been trying to walk a tight rope. It has been consistently cooperating with China in the economic sphere and also on the issue of the North Korean nuclear programme, and at the same time,ha been  trying to maintain its close relations with the US. China’s strategy to reach out to Seoul has not been able to create any substantial gap in South Korea-US relations. However, Beijing has been successful in creating a gap between South Korea and Japan, though the gap may be attributed to Japan's aggressive behaviour more than Chinese efforts. The improvement in China-South Korea relations looks quite consistent. However, after North Korea’s self-proclaimed thermonuclear test and China’s reluctance to put forth tougher sanctions on North Korea via the United Nations Security Council, it would be difficult for South Korea to continue its tightrope walking strategy.

North Korea appears to be making all effort to reach out to other countries across the globe in the context of its relatively strained relations with China. In the past year and a half, the North Korean Foreign Minister and Prime Minister have visited more than fifteen countries with the intention to diversify economic exchanges, including India. North Korea’s uncompromising stance vis-à-vis China appears to be paying off, with China trying toto placate North Korea again through high level visits and Xi Jinping’s message to North Korea. However, China and North Korea relations have had to face a few unpleasant developments: for example, when North Korean music band Moranbang returned to Pyongyang without performing in China because of a reported misunderstanding about the level of Chinese leadership participation. The so-called North Korean thermonuclear test is also going to be an issue between the two countries.

Looking AheadOn the basis of these trends in the East Asia, the following projections could be made about the region for 2016.

First, even though China's economic attractiveness in the region has been acceptable, Beijing’s political assertiveness is going to be a cause for discomfort. Either China will have to change its course or the regional players will be compelled to more overtly create a network of resistance. The US, Japan, Australia, India and even South Korea along with some Southeast Asian countries are going to cooperate more closely to counter Chinese political and military assertiveness.

With the recent North Korean nuclear test, even South Korea has indicated that it might join THAAD, and this would definitely be a setback for China. China appears to be adamant in its demand to have ‘great power relations’ with the US and Xi Jinping seems to want to continue his two-pronged policy of ‘economic allurement’ and ‘political assertiveness’ for some time.

Second, Japan will try to mend its relations with South Korea. Recently, both countries have had an agreement on the issue of comfort women. If Japan and South Korea area able to improve their relations, it would be a positive for the US which has security alliances with both. After the North Korean test, it is obvious that the US, Japan and South Korea are in favour of tougher sanctions , but China seems to be returning to its old policy of protecting North Korea by asking for dilution of sanctions.

Third, the current year would be critical for South Korea, as it may have to choose between economic opportunities in China and the security imperative emanating from China’s assertiveness and North Korean nuclear and other brinkmanship. If China is unable to contain the North Korean nuclear and missile programmes and its provocative behaviour, South Korea would certainly have to rethink its policy of cooperating with China, even at the expense of the US' displeasure.

Fourth, North Korea’s uncompromising stance on its nuclear programme makes it almost certain that there is only a thin possibility of denuclearising North Korea and regional players have to make peace with a nuclear North Korea. However, continuous purges of political and military elites in North Korea along with its economic miseries make it difficult to predict its future. A more provocative North Korea does not mean a strong North Korea but rather a weak and unstable state, and any implosion would have serious repercussions for the region.

Finally, it is going to be a critical year for US foreign policy in the region. With the growing positive and negative vibes created by China, the US also needs to come out with its responses in a more planned and coordinated way. It seems that the US has been reluctantly reacting to China - it needs to have a pro-active policy for the region. However, it is not sure whether the US has  the willingness or the capacity to do so as a relatively weaker Washington is entangled in several other issues and regions.

Thus, in brief, it is going to be a critical year for East Asia, where the future course of the regional architecture will become clearer. All the countries of the region have to make critical decisions with regard to their foreign policies. There are enough political contests, which indicate an unstable time ahead. However, going by the economic interdependence and exchanges among these countries, there is a possibility that some modus vivendi might be evolved to not only co-exist but also co-prosper. Rapprochement between Japan and South Korea and a trilateral summit meet among China, Japan and South Korea are basically driven by these possibilities. The future of East Asia would depend on the choices made in this by the leaders of the region.

German Model: Unsuitable for Korean Unification

Rahul Raj


In September 2015, in her speech at the 70th UN General Assembly, South Korean President Park Guen-hye cited the 25th anniversary of the Germany reunification and again made a strong pitch for the unification of the Korean peninsula. Previously in 2014, in her speech in Dresden, Germany, she had spoken about unification, and had cited the German model as a possible path for Korean unification.

The German experience has often been looked at as a model for any unification of North and South Koreas. Many believe that the Korean unification is not a question of whether or not it will happen, but of how and when it will happen.

However, the fact is that while there certainly are similarities that can be made between the divisions of Germany and Korea, these countries represent very different cases, and what worked in Germany is not likely to work for the Koreas. The primary difference is that Korea’s division was the result of a civil war along ideological lines - a war that is technically still ongoing given how the 1953 armistice that stopped the shooting did not declare peace. East and West Germany, though also divided on ideological lines, were never involved in a war as enemies. 

In the early years after the establishment of its first government in 1948, South Korea launched an aggressive 'pukch’in t’ongil' (march north for unification) policy of unification under the leadership of the then President, Rhee Syngman, who supported the use of force and was vehemently against the existence of North Korea as a state. However, after the 1953 armistice, Seoul changed trajectories and pursued the principle of unification via peaceful reconciliation. In 1972, when West Germany launched its Ostopolitik policy of engagement with East Germany, abandoning its previous Hallstein policy, a similar process was observed in South Korea that saw it begin to engage North Korea via the Red Cross. 

However, unlike West Germany, South Korea’s change of heart was less than sincere, and more likely a knee-jerk reaction to the then US President Richard Nixon’s overtures to China. Nonetheless, because of deep mistrust between the two countries - in addition to provocative actions by Pyongyang such as the 1974 attempted assassination of President Park Chung-hee that killed his wife - nothing really came of this engagement.

Furthermore, the then West German President Willy Brandt's Ostopolitik policy led the reconciliation process that led West Germany to recognise East Germany as a state. Additionally, the 1971 agreement between the Allied powers led to the reestablishment of diplomatic ties between both German states. 

Conversely, Seoul did not make any direct contact with Pyongyang's major allies, Moscow and Beijing, until near the end of the Cold War. North Korea and South Korea still do not have official diplomatic relations. Seoul, in fact, does not recognise North Korea as a sovereign state despite Pyongyang's membership at the UN and its recognition by over 150 countries.

Although South Korean President Roh Tae-woo finally launched his Nordpolitik, constructed along the lines of West Germany's Ostopolitik policy, in the 1980s, Seoul’s warming relationship with Beijing and Moscow in the 1990s left Pyongyang feeling isolated. Additionally, a number of major calamities,  including floods and famine, as well as fear of its own collapse, created a sense of fear in the North Korean regime. In order to assuage Pyongyang's growing discomfort, Roh signed several agreements with Pyongyang, but the growing insecurity felt by North Korea dampened all progress on that front and the process essentially remains a stalemate. Moreover, vulnerability and shifting geopolitical realities pushed North Korea to develop nuclear weapons, which it perceived as a tool for protection as well as a bargaining chip.

Pyongyang's recent testing of a hydrogen bomb suggests that it has become more dangerous and reckless in its nuclear ambitions, making reconciliation talks all the more urgent.

Till date, the 1997 Sunshine policy has been the most remarkable engagement process. Launched under the leadership of former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, it emphasised the unification of the Korean peninsula through engagement, including providing economic aid to bolster the North Korean economy. However, the Sunshine policy subsequently collapsed due to the lack of reciprocity on North Korea's part, as well as due to former US President George W Bush's hard-line policy towards Pyongyang in the 2000s. Although President Park has emphasised the need for unification several times, there has hardly been any real movement towards that end for years.

South Korea has not taken steps West Germany had done in order to establish a conducive environment for the rapprochement that finally led to the reunification of Germany in 1990. Furthermore, Moscow played an important role in moving the two Germanys towards reunification. Beijing, on the other hand, is barely able to control North Korea, which has often been an unpredictable ally.

Seoul has to formulate its own policy for reunification. It has to go outside conventional norms of diplomacy and agree to negotiate without any preconditions. Vexing matters such as de-nuclearisation and human rights issues should be set aside for the sake of creating a conducive atmosphere for talks. 

These are issues that can and should be addressed at the appropriate time; but for the moment, they represent huge stumbling blocks to negotiation. Unification will happen only if reconciliation takes place, and in an environment of mutual respect.