Seven World-Historical Achievements of the Iraq Invasion of 2003

Gary Leupp

Here is a list of the noteworthy, ongoing results of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq beginning in March 2003. (Recall that that that invasion was denounced by the UN as illegal, based entirely on lies, and—given the U.S.’s hegemonic position in the world, allowing it to act with impunity—the crime’s architects have never punished.)

1/ The principal achievement of the war and occupation was the dramatic expansion of the al-Qaeda network that had attacked the U.S. on January 11, 2001. An al-Qaeda franchise was established in Iraq for the first time, playing a key role in the Sunni “insurrection” against the occupiers and their Shiite allies, then expanding across the border into Syria where it split into the al-Nusra affiliate and its even more savage rival, ISIL. Iraq also served and serves as a training ground for jihadis now operating from Iraq to Libya and beyond.

2/ The invasion and its consequences encouraged the cause of Kurdistan, an imagined state straddling Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. The Kurds are the largest stateless people in the world, victims of British and French colonialists who divided the region between them after World War I. After the Gulf War of 1991, the U.S. established a “no-fly” zone over northern Iraq to discourage Baghdad from deploying troops in the region. Iraqi Kurdistan had already obtained a degree of autonomy before the invasion but the status became official under the occupation and a referendum for independence is likely to pass soon. This would infuriate Iraq and perhaps provoke Turkey’s intervention. As it is, the autonomous region is locked in struggle with Baghdad over territorial claims and control over oil fields.

3/ The invasion destroyed the Iraqi state, causing it to fracture into three: Kurdistan, the Sunni zone in the west, and the Shiite-majority areas around Baghdad. The Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein had been extremely repressive and brutal. But it had maintained order; discouraged religion in politics; protected the Christian and other religious minorities; promoted women’s rights; imposed no dress code; enforced a criminal code modeled after the Napoleonic (not the Sharia); licensed rock n’ roll radio stations, allowed the brewing of beer and its sale etc. The Shiite-led regime boosted into power by the occupation has reversed much of this. (A bill to ban the production and sale of beer was just passed by Parliament last week.) But the regime’s power does not extend into much of Anbar Province, ISIL still governs Mosul, and again, Kurdistan has become autonomous.

4/ Because Shiites are the majority in Iraq (60%), and dominate Iran next door; and because the leaders of Shiite parties have studied in Iran or lived their in exile and are sympathetic to Iran’s mullah-led regime; and because the U.S. was forced by peaceful mass protests to allow elections and the emergence of Shiites as the leaders of the country, Iran’s power and influence in the region has expanded dramatically.  (Apparently no one in the State Department thought about that.) Since Iran has not attacked another country in centuries—but was savagely attacked by Saddam Hussein in 1981, sparking a long war killing over half a million people—and since Iran’s friendliness to its neighbor, one of the few Arab countries in which its co-coreligionists hold power, is entirely natural, one can ask why anyone might be alarmed by this. But it does alarm some, the leaders of Saudi Arabia, that crucial U.S. Arab ally governed by Wahhabi Sunnis, most of all.

5/ The invasion produced a regional power struggle between Sunni Islamists on the one hand, and their Shiite (and other) enemies on the other. This is often portrayed as a contest between Saudi Arabia (whose government-backed clerics condemn Shiites as heretics, and who fear the prospects for rebellion in Saudi Arabia’s own oppressed Shiite minority) and Iran, depicted as the protector of Shiites in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen etc. (The so-called “Shiite Crescent” extending from Iran to Hizbollah-controlled areas of Lebanon in fact embraces states and movements that have little in common with the Islamic Republic of Iran. But they are all targeted by the medieval regime in Riyadh which tars them all with the Iranian brush.) The Saudis were keen advocates for a U.S. strike on Iran (on the false pretext of a nuclear threat); are major supporters of al-Nusra in Syria and have funded ISIL as well, preferring such Islamist forces to the secular if Alawite-led Syrian regime; and are bombing the hell out of Yemen with active U.S. and British assistance under the false pretext that the Shiite Houthi “rebels” are agents for an expanding Iran. These things would not be happening, had the U.S. not ripped the lid off Pandora’s box in Iraq in March 2003.

6/ The invasion has produced friction between the U.S. and its important NATO ally Turkey (which has the second largest military in the alliance). Turkish war planes are bombing Kurdish YPG (People’s Protection Units) militia in Syria who constitute the U.S.’s most reliable allies, producing U.S. protests (which the Turks ignore, arguing straight-faced that the YPG are just as terrorist as ISIL). The Turks warned before the invasion of Iraq that it would likely produce regional instability. But Ankara would have allowed the U.S. to attack from Turkish soil if Turkish forces as part of the “coalition of the willing” could be stationed around Mosul, once part of Turkey—the idea being to contain Kurdish nationalism.

Fortunately the parliament rejected the deal. But the predicted instability has occurred. The Arab Spring of 2011 in Syria was not directly connected to the Iraq invasion, but gave the U.S. the opportunity to pontificate that “Assad has lost legitimacy,” demand his immediate resignation, and bankroll the armed opposition including the Kurds. The fact that U.S. efforts to find and recruit Syrian Arab forces as allies—who are not in bed with al-Nusra—to topple Assad have failed so dismally binds the Pentagon ever closer to forces that Turkey wants to wipe out. (The conflict and contradiction are embarrassing to Washington. Oh, by the way, did you notice that the Turkish foreign minister just announced that Turkey would invade Iraq if it “felt threatened”?)

Having declared in 2011 that Bashar al-Assad must go, the U.S. was faced in 2014 with the horrible embarrassment of ISIL (that toxic fruit of its Iraq invasion) winning lightening victories from Raqqa to Fallujah, obliterating the Sykes-Picot line dividing Syria and Iraq. The now-Syria based terrorists were approaching Baghdad. So now the U.S. having withdrawn all troops in Iraq was back in action, bombing to prevent such a disaster. And it started bombing ISIL positions in Syria (although with far less efficacy than the later Russian efforts) in league with a list of largely reluctant allies dragooned into formal membership in what Washington likes to call a “coalition” to make its unilateral program for the region sound like the will of what they like to call “the international community” regardless of how many key nations that imagined “community” includes.

The U.S. command that Assad step down was made in the summer of 2011. Turkey’s President Erdogan, hitherto a friend and even mentor of the Syrian leader, opportunistically took up the U.S. demand and demanded his resignation. And Ankara itself began to interfere big-time in the neighboring country it once dominated, targeting Kurds more than anyone else. Since the U.S. relies on these allies, how could there not be a sharp conflict here?

7/ The invasion of Iraq and aftermath resulted in four million Iraqi refugees fleeing the country as of 2007. Hundreds of thousands have poured into Europe, alongside people displaced by U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Libya, and by the turmoil in Syria exacerbated by U.S. actions, producing a massive continent-wide crisis. Many Europeans aptly blame the deluge on the U.S., pointing to the U.S.’s paltry record of admitting refugees from the Middle East and complaining of strained national resources to handle the humanitarian catastrophe. (Another embarrassment.)

***

This is all what Buddhists call “karmic retribution” for past acts. Or what the Hebrew prophet Hosea referred to when he said “Those who sow the wind reap the whirlwind.” Or what the CIA meant when it invented the term “blowback.” It’s all heading towards something, unless decent people stop it.

But when I watch people like Michael Moore line up behind the foremost advocate of war in U.S. politics, joining (consciously, philosophical) amoral thugs hell-bent on maintaining and expanding the empire when it’s in a stage of precipitous decline, I am not optimistic. Not only will she win, but she will rival Dick Cheney as a cold-blooded latter-day Cold Warrior, cynically exploiting fear and stupidity to try to bring Russia to its knees.

Hillary doesn’t recognize any of these seven points, which to recapitulate are:

+ US actions have greatly strengthened al-Qaeda

+ US actions have encouraged Kurdish nationalism (with unpredictable ramifications)

+ The US through its vicious illegal actions has destroyed the modern Iraqi state

+ US actions have solidified ties between Iran and Iraq’s majority Shiite community, strengthening a country still targeted for “regime change”

+ The invasion of Iraq and the regime change there exacerbated the historical Sunni-Shiite divide, and encouraged Saudi Arabia as the ultra-Islamist protector of the shrines to redouble its efforts to support extremist Sunnis everywhere in the region

+ The results of the invasion place Turkey and the U.S. at loggerheads over the question of Kurdish nationalist movements in both Iraq and Syria

+ US interventions in the Middle East and North Africa since 2001 have produced a massive refugee crisis, inflicted mainly on Europe

She does not acknowledge that George W. Bush’s invasion (that she so passionately endorsed, fully exposing her Valkyrie soul, was criminaland not somebody’s well-meaning “mistake”). She doesn’t have any analysis of the Kurdish question. (She is not—as sometimes alleged by supporters—a “policy wonk” but a lazy intellect who doesn’t know jack-shit about the real world.)

She has never expressed regret for the horrific destruction of Iraq, nor given any attention to the plight of its women, who were (as she surely knows) much better off under Saddam Hussein. (To acknowledge that would be to suggest that sometimes U.S. imperialism favors misogynist Islamists over relatively progressive secularists, for its own pragmatic empire-building purposes. She can’t mention that publicly.)

She deals with the rise of Iran—made inevitable by the U.S. invasion of Iraq—by doubling down on her crude clueless Iran rhetoric, which rests on the assumption—repeatedly debunked by U.S. intelligence agencies—that Iran might pose a nuclear weapons threat. She doesn’t understand the history of the Sunni-Shiite divide; I believe she rolls her eyes in irritation that these people have these differences so hard to understand, impeding the Exceptional Nation’s ability to straighten everything out by bombing, and conquering, and making people die. She doesn’t understand anything about the history of the Kurds and their fate in the region.

She feels no guilt at all about her orchestration of the ruin of Libya. She sees no reason to link her own actions to the flooding of Europe with refugees fleeing terror. But she will probably be the next president, with fellow shieldmaidens Michele Flournoy (as “secretary of defense”) and Victoria Nuland or Samantha Power (as secretary of state).

Never acknowledging what happened yesterday, never able to absorb historical lessons, determined to maintain and expend its global hegemony (just as that becomes absolutely impossible to do, because other nations rise too, and great nations like Spain and Britain actually get humbled over time), the U.S. under Clinton will likely head methodically towards  a showdown with Russia. She wants so badly, to show she can do it. She’ll do it for women, everywhere, to show how strong a woman can be.

And then there will be a sudden strange change in your environment. As you wonder what’s going on you’ll be painlessly vaporized, on account of Hillary’s passion to topple Assad, or forcibly reintegrate the Donbass into Ukraine.

The brilliance of the 2003 invasion will be clarified as never before in that bright blast, as Hillary—a very strong woman—cackles in the background from her bunker about how she came, saw, and a million died.

Who’s Racist?

Linh Dinh

Over three days last week, at least 150 blacks attacked whites at random around Temple University. Victims were surrounded, punched and kicked. Wallets and phones were stolen. Rocks were thrown at passing cars. When cops showed up, one was knocked from her bike and a police horse was even punched twice in the muzzle.

Most of the assaults took place on Friday. On Saturday, Joe Lauletta, a father of one victim, reported on FaceBook:

I spent last night in the ER at St. Mary’s HospitaI. I received a call from my daughter Christina after my sons football game. She was crying, I couldn’t understand her, my heart dropped, I became scared, I said what is the matter? Dad, I was jumped, I’m beat up pretty bad. Where r u? Temple, they stole my phone. We’re heading to the police station. I do not hear from her until she gets to her apartment. Rage is running through my mind the whole time. She said she is getting a ride home and wants to go to St. Mary’s. I find out that her and her 2 male friends where badly beaten by a group of 30-40 black teenagers on their way home from the Temple football game. This happened after they got off the subway at Broad and Cecil B Moore. These sick animals held her down and kicked and stomped on her repeatedly. Thank god, the people from the pizza place intervened. They arrested 2 people at the scene. I have not let Christina out of my sight, she is resting. Every part of her body is badly bruised, it makes me cry just thinking about it. No broken bones. If you have children at Temple, tell them to be careful. Please keep Christina Lauletta in your thoughts.

CBS Philadelphia describes another victim’s ordeal:

He says around 9:30 Friday night he was leaving work when he saw what looked to be at least 200 juveniles walking in large groups.

He said he overheard police saying the kids were playing the knockout game.

He says a juvenile around 10 years old started shouting obscenities at him and grabbed his phone out of his hand. The student says the juvenile then came back and threw the phone at him, striking him in the face.

Around 15 minutes later, the student says he was walking with his girlfriend when they were approached by at least seven juveniles. The student says he went to hit the Temple Police alert button when his girlfriend was struck by one of the juveniles.

As the student was chasing them away, he says he was struck in the face by a someone he estimates to be eight years old.

This is not new. In 2014, five black girls, aged 17, 15, 15, 15 and 14, committed three separate attacks on random white people at Temple University. Struck across the face with a brick, a 19-year-old white student suffered a fractured jaw and nearly had her teeth knocked out. Her 15-year-old assailant, Zaria Estes, was given a 2 ½-6 year sentence.

Across America, gangs of blacks have beaten random people for decades, just for the sport of it. This cathartic recreation has been dubbed wilding, catch and wreck, knock out game or flash mob, and it can happen at parks, shopping malls, state fairs or even your living room.

In 2012, a mentally-handicapped woman was relaxing on her stoop in Chester, just outside Philadelphia, when she was attacked by six black teenaged girls. When the terrified woman tried to flee inside, they rushed into her living room to continue the savage beating. Had these girls not posted their exhilarating workout on FaceBook, they might never have been caught.

A white bartender at my neighborhood dive was attacked, just outside her front door, by a group of black kids around 12 years old. After throwing a rock at her head and knocking her down, they kicked her a few times as she curled up on the ground, then they scattered. “Just like that, it was over. All I could do was go inside and cry.”

Not surprisingly, the latest incident at Temple University has received scant media attention. Though AP did cover it, it never pointed out that these were racial crimes. As usual, only “teens” are fingered, with their race not mentioned. Had mobs of whites attacked random blacks, the entire world would have known about it by now.

Locally, a black writer editorializes in the Philadelphia Inquirer that gentrification is ultimately responsible. In “Behind Temple attacks, rage often comes with exclusion,” Solomon Jones explains:

In a city where poverty is concentrated outside the universities, we can’t truly expect the poor to watch jobs and wealth and excess pass them by without any reaction at all.

To be sure, violence is the wrong response. And the kids who engaged in it will surely be prosecuted, as they should be.

But I believe those teens are expressing something that has long simmered beneath the surface. They are expressing the rage that comes with exclusion. They are expressing the hurt that comes with invisibility. They are engaged in the inevitable push and pull of change.

Temple University, my alma mater, has reached out to the community with scholarships for local youth, according to spokesman Ray Betzner. They’ve put reading programs in place, tutored high schoolers and even talked to their own students about respecting longtime community residents. But Temple would be wise to reach out into the community with an eye toward creating stronger relationships and greater opportunities for the young people who’ve been pushed aside by a generation of exclusionary development.

The community would be wise to reach back.

So these attackers are among “people who’ve been pushed aside by a generation of exclusionary development.” Like many urban universities, Temple is surrounded by black ghettos, but these are being gentrified thanks to a steady influx of white suburbanites and immigrants.

If you’re barely treading water, and your rent jacks up because of gentrification, you’ll be pissed too. Who wants to be evicted? Blacks, though, are always the victims, and never agents, of any neighborhood’s improvement. Why is that?

In Detroit, a post-apocalypse ghetto of burnt out houses, gutted factories and urban raccoons, Mexicans revived a section near downtown. Unlike the rest of Detroit, there are plenty of restaurants and shops in Mexicantown, and it’s perfectly safe to walk around.

If there were fewer Mexicans, blacks would have more jobs, obviously, so why are our borders wide open? In “Race and Crime in America,” Ron Unz suggests that Hispanics are being imported to replace blacks. They can do the same jobs, sans mayhem. In 1992, East Palto had the highest murder rate in all of America. Then a transformation happened as Hispanics flooded in. Ron Unz:

Over the last twenty years, the homicide rate in that small city dropped by 85%, with similar huge declines in other crime categories as well, thereby transforming a miserable ghetto into a pleasant working-class community, now featuring new office complexes, luxury hotels, and large regional shopping centers. Multi-billionaire Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife recently purchased a large $9 million home just a few hundred feet from the East Palo Alto border, a decision that would have been unthinkable during the early 1990s.

The more blacks there are in a neighborhood, the more crimes, the lower the housing values and the more dysfunctional the public schools, and everyone knows this, including, say, a fresh-off-the-boat immigrant from Mali and Bangladesh. Black maladaptation is only getting worse.

What you have, then, is a group that will largely be excluded from better jobs, universities and housing. As long as the United States shall last, blacks will be an underclass. Their symbolic successes, as in having a half-black president, can’t gloss over the fact that the majority of them are barely afloat.

The in-state tuition for Temple University is $15,688, and the school accepts 56% of its applicants. It’s reasonably priced and easy to get in. Only 13.1% of Temple students are black, however, in a city with 44.1% blacks. Before you charge racism, do consider what Walter Williams has to say:

Among high-school students who graduated in 2014 and took the ACT college readiness exam, here’s how various racial/ethnic groups fared when it came to meeting the ACT’s college readiness benchmarks in at least three of the four subjects: Asians, 57 percent; whites, 49 percent; Hispanics, 23 percent; and blacks, 11 percent. However, the college rates of enrollment of these groups were: Asians, 80 percent; whites, 69 percent; Hispanics, 60 percent; and blacks, 57 percent.

Though all races are being admitted to college too liberally, blacks benefit the most, for only 1/5th of blacks in universities should even be there. Feeling out of place, blacks across the country are demanding separate dormitories.

Blacks are also given preferred treatment when it comes to government jobs and contracts, so the academy, state and media are all in their favor, yet their failures have only increased.

In Ethnic America, Thomas Sowell observes, “The [black] race as a whole has moved from a position of utter destitution—in money, knowledge, and rights—to a place alongside other groups emerging in the great struggles of life. None have had to come from so far back to join their fellow Americans.”

Having achieved not just civic equality but, at times, even favored treatment, blacks still often find themselves on the losing end of life’s struggles. If you dare to suggest that individual blacks should bear at least some responsibilities for their failures, however, you will be branded a racist.

So I’m a racist for writing this, Walter Williams is a racist for pointing out that most blacks attending college shouldn’t be there, and Joe Lauletta is a racist for calling his daughter’s attackers “sick animals.” Everyone is a racist except those 150+ blacks who attacked whites unprovoked.

To many black apologists, blacks can’t be guilty of anything, be it murder, rape, a brick across your face or even racism, because everything they do is just a response to relentless white racism. I’ll insist, though, that these black apologists are the worst racists of all, because to deny someone of moral agency is to reduce him to an animal.

As for the media, their steady suppression or excuse of black misbehavior is an encouragement of even worse. This has to be intentional. They’re enabling more riots, more catch and wrecks, more knock out games.

Teaching in Germany, I showed my students the Philadelphia Police Department’s YouTube channel, without comments. One video after another had a black person assaulting or robbing somebody. When a Hispanic criminal suddenly appeared in the 9th video or so, some students couldn’t help but grin, for they were fleetingly spared of the monotony.

Since the students wanted to learn about the US, I gave them an authentic, unedited glimpse. At their local cinema, Straight Out of Compton was playing. It’s very cool to act black in Germany.

Of course, black apologists will claim that American blacks only rob because they’re oppressed and poor, though I don’t see how this explains the 22,000+ black-on-white rapes/sexual assaults reported yearly, as compared to zero white-on-black sexual attacks. (See table 42 of the Department of Justice’s Criminal Victimization in the United States reports for 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008, the last year available.) Oh yes, white women are so fetishized, blacks can’t help but rape them. None of them can help doing anything, I get it. What a gross insult this is to decent blacks.

Again, to deny someone of moral agency is to reduce him to an animal.

Because Of Hillary Clinton, Emergency, Contraception Is Banned In Honduras

Eric Zuesse

Of course, one of Hillary Clinton’s proudest claims is that as the U.S. Secretary of State she championed reproductive choice throughout the world. She championed it in words, but her actions were sometimes in the opposite direction, and there is perhaps no nation where her actions as the U.S. Secretary of State had a bigger impact than Honduras, which case will therefore be examined, and her impact on this documented, here:

The reason that the morning-after pill, which enables raped women to avoid becoming pregnant from a rape, was made illegal by the government that now exists in Honduras, is that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton persuaded President Barack Obama not to terminate U.S. financial aid to the coup-regime that came into power there on 28 June 2009. Without that aid, the democratically elected President would quickly have been restored. Though the U.S. Ambassador in Honduras told Secretary of State Clinton that there was no way in which that coup was legal and that consequently it undoubtedly was a “coup” and that existing U.S. law therefore required U.S. funding of the Honduran government to cease immediately, she ignored the law, and she ignored everything except her friend Lanny Davis the lobbyist whom the coup-plotters had hired to represent them to Democrats (a different lobbyist was hired to represent them to the congressional Republicans). President Obama took his Secretary of State’s advice and refused to enforce the law, and Hillary Clinton publicly praised what the regime was doing. The regime was condemned throughout Latin America, because the coup, which consisted of the local aristocracy or ‘oligarchs’, overthrew the democratically elected President of Honduras, who had wanted a land-reform law to be introduced. Immediately after the coup that overthrew him, the newly installed regime allowed the aristocrats’ paid thugs to murder anyone who tried to lead the opposition; and therefore the regime that had been imposed by Honduras’s aristocracy and kept in power by America’s aristocracy, has remained stable since. However, after the coup, Honduras has had the world’s highest murder-rate. Thus, it’s a stable but now extraordinarily violent country. (Detailed documentation of every allegation in this paragraph can be found in the “Honduras” section of this article I earlier wrote about “Hillary Clinton’s Six Foreign-Policy Catastrophes”; and that section on Honduras, in turn, links to 68 sources, which provide the sometimes gruesome details regarding Hillary Clinton’s impact upon the lives of the Honduran people since the coup. However, that article didn’t mention this matter concerning contraception, rape, and abortion; and, so, the present article will be an extension from that earlier one, dealing specifically with Hillary Clinton’s impact upon family-planning and reproductive choice in Honduras.)

One feature of the new, U.S.-backed, regime, was the imposition of draconian fundamentalist laws against contraception and intensifying the abortion-ban. On 13 February 2012, the Center for Reproductive Rights headlined “Honduras Supreme Court Upholds Absolute Ban on Emergency Contraception, Opens Door to Criminalize Women and Medical Professionals” and reported:

The Honduras Supreme Court has upheld the country’s absolute ban on emergency contraception, which would criminalize the sale, distribution, and use of  the “morning-after pill” — imposing punishment for offenders equal to that of obtaining or performing an abortion, which in Honduras is completely restricted.

“By banning and criminalizing emergency contraception, Honduras is telling the world it would rather imprison the women of its country than provide them with safe and effective birth control,” said Luisa Cabal, director of international legal programs at the Center for Reproductive Rights. “Today’s decision from the Honduras Supreme Court blatantly disregards women’s fundamental reproductive rights and completely ignores the respected medical opinion of experts around the globe. It will cause significant harm in the lives countless women and doctors across the country. …

Consequently, the hell in Honduras has been accentuated by punishment of women who have been raped, and punishment of doctors and pharmacists who try to help them.

The President whom Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the ten main aristocratic families of Honduras, overthrew and prohibited from running for President ever again, Manuel Zelaya, had, in April 2009, vetoed a law that the Honduran legislature (controlled by those ten families plus another 15 or so) had just passed to ban the morning-after pill. So, that law didn’t enter into force until the U.S.-imposed regime restored it. However, the restoration of the ban wasn’t final until this decision was handed down by the Honduran Supreme Court. As Amnesty International said at that time:

 On 1 February, the Supreme Court in Honduras upheld a decree imposing an absolute ban on emergency contraception. This decree was vetoed in May 2009 by the former President on grounds that it conflicted with the Constitution. The Supreme Court has now concluded that the decree is constitutional and that Congress can begin to develop laws enforcing a ban of the emergency contraceptive pill on the basis of its alleged “abortive” nature. The World Health Organization, Pan-American Health Organization, and several other expert bodies have clearly stated that the emergency contraceptive pill is not abortive; it is a form of contraception that works by ensuring the egg is inaccessible and impeding fertilization. The criminalization of the emergency contraceptive pill will have appalling consequences. For example, rape victims will be unable to prevent pregnancy …

And so it has been in Honduras.

During the period since the 28 June 2009 Honduran U.S.-backed coup, the hell in Honduras has been so bad that Honduras has become one of the top sources of illegal immigration into the United States. The world-record-high murder-rates and crushing poverty, with no opportunity for the public to ‘move up in the world’ other than through becoming one of the paid enforcers for the aristocrats, which often also entails leading the now-booming drug-gangs there, has essentially forced out of Honduras millions of residents, and many of them have escaped through Mexico into the United States, in order to be able to have a decent life, rather than murder and be murdered.

Hillary Clinton’s opponent in the U.S. Presidential campaign, Donald Trump, never talks about the hell that Clinton and Obama have been imposing around the world (except regarding non-Christian-majority countries such as Libya), and he seems to view illegal immigrants as if U.S. foreign policies have nothing to do with creating the problems that those people are facing, but there is no indication that he would continue those policies, which have been causing them to be illegal immigrants here. To the contrary, his anti-interventionist foreign-policy proposals would be inconsistent with coups and invasions regarding any foreign country whose government is not posing an imminent threat to U.S. national security. Trump’s foreign-policy proposals are not in any way favorable toward those of Hillary Clinton (who is simply an extreme version of Obama’s worst policy-orientations). (And America’s own Federation of American Scientists has stated that Obama is lying in order to ‘justify’ his policy now to ignore existing in-force nuclear treaties with Russia as being supposedly not violations of them. So, though he may not be as much of a neoconservative as she is, he basically is one, too. His aggression against Russia is subtle, but forceful.) Consequently, at least regarding foreign policy, a President Trump would be authentic change, irrespective of whether a particular voter would approve of that change as opposed to continuing America’s existing foreign policy but in a more extreme way. Among other things, a vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote to retain the status-quo in Honduras and around the world, but to go much farther in the same direction. A vote for Donald Trump is a vote to change that status-quo — to change (and in some important respects reverse) that direction.

The biggest impact of this election will be on foreign (including both economic and military) policy. Even domestically within the United States, the difference between the two candidates on foreign policies will have a much bigger impact, including possibly even nuclear war, than will the other policy-areas, which the general public erroneously think will have a bigger impact upon their lives and their future than will foreign policies. (And here are quoted recent reports in the Washington Post, Spiegel, Huffington Post, and other serious media, discussing her preparing her coming Administration’s plans and personnel for a war with Russia; and Obama is right now setting everything up for her to be able to start the war as soon as possible.)

Regardless of whether the American public know it, the main impact of this Presidential election will be on foreign policy, including on the immense impacts that foreign policy will have domestically.

So: this is not the time when the U.S. will be progressing but instead regressing, and intelligent voters will be aiming to minimize the harms, rather than to achieve progress. Progress, at this stage so late in the game, is still being hoped-for only by some fools who happen to be also progressives. Any intelligent progressive, at this late stage, is focused entirely upon minimizing the harm. And the maximum harm could happen with surprising rapidity. (Back in 1961, the estimation of experts was that — as one of the few who spoke publicly stated — “A nuclear war between the United States and Russia would be all over in 24 or 48 hours because both sides would let go with their full atomic arsenals.” The estimates today are far more precise but unpublished, and they’re all well under an hour — some as low as 20 minutes.) There wouldn’t be any surrender, nor any armistice. There would only be the end of civilization, and unspeakable misery (including details that are ignored by the major media, such as this) until practically everyone is dead (from starvation if nothing else). Those are the stakes in this election.

Queensland university case shows divisive agenda behind Australian “racial discrimination” law

Mike Head

A protracted legal case, in which the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), some staff members and three ex-students are being sued by a QUT indigenous employee, highlights the reactionary role of the “offensive behaviour” provisions of Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act.

In May 2013, several QUT students allegedly wrote Facebook posts objecting to three students being asked to leave an indigenous-only computer room on QUT’s main Brisbane campus by a staff member, Cindy Prior. She is now seeking about $250,000 in damages in the Federal Circuit Court from the university and three of the students who posted comments. A decision in the case is still pending.

In a formal complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission in May 2014, Prior accused QUT and the students of violating section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. This provision makes it an “unlawful act” to do anything “reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people” because of their “race, colour or national or ethnic origin.”

The students were not informed of the complaint until just before a compulsory conciliation conference in August last year. After the commission failed to resolve the dispute, Prior launched her law suit. She is suing Alex Wood, one of the students she asked to leave the computer lab, for posting: “Just got kicked out of the unsigned indigenous computer room. QUT stopping segregation with segregation?”

Jackson Powell is being sued for writing: “I wonder where the white supremacist lab is.” Another student, Calum Thwaites, has denied posting the words “ITT Niggers,” saying a prankster set up a false Facebook site in his name.

Upon becoming aware of Wood’s post, Prior asked that QUT take action against the students. A university equity officer contacted Wood and asked him to delete the post, to which he agreed. QUT later ruled that the students had committed no disciplinary offence under the university’s rules.

In court affidavits, the students have denied any intent to racially vilify Prior or indigenous students. According to the court documents, one of the students raised issues about the funding of separate facilities for indigenous students. His post reportedly stated: “My Student and Amenity fees are going to furbish rooms in the university where inequality reigns supreme? I believe if we have to pay to support these sorts of places, there should at least be more created for general purpose use, but again, how do these sorts of facilities support interaction and community within QUT? All this does is encourage separation and inequality.”

These comments point to the frustrations among students over the deteriorating conditions in universities after years of funding cuts by successive governments. They also show such legitimate grievances can be channelled against other students, on the basis of race or colour, because of the establishment, alongside the overall cuts, of special programs for indigenous or other groups, in the name of “positive discrimination.”

Over the past five years, as universities and their students have suffered punishing cuts, there has been a growth of facilities, like QUT’s Oodgeroo Unit, reserved for particular groups of students, defined in terms of race, religion, ethnicity, gender or sexual preference.

Between 2011 and 2013, the previous Labor governments of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, slashed a total of $6.6 billion from higher education and research. This intensified the fight between universities to attract more fee-paying students, while retrenching staff, driving up class sizes and increasingly relying on lower-wage casual teachers.

Both the Coalition and Labor opposition are committed to further cuts. The government is seeking to slash $3.2 billion from the sector, and Labor has helped the government impose an initial wave of attacks on universities and students, having pledged to support at least $320 million in funding cutbacks during the campaign for the July 2 election.

Under federal funding rules, introduced by Labor, universities are also required to implement strategies to improve the access, retention and success of indigenous students, or they can be financially penalised. These programs are generally presented as progressive initiatives to assist Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, who remain severely under-represented in tertiary education enrolments.

The truth is that these programs provide only pittances, compared to the needs of many indigenous students for personal and financial support. More fundamentally, all students should be entitled to decent facilities and services. This is particularly so for those from working class backgrounds, who suffer systemic disadvantages regardless of race or ethnicity, including in the funding of schools and other educational services.

First-class and free education is an essential social right that must be available to all young people, not rationed on the grounds of racial identity. Instead, students increasingly confront over-crowded facilities, massive class sizes, and the replacement of lectures and tutorials by on-line programs.

The elevation of supposed “positive” discrimination on campuses, based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexuality, is part of a broader promotion of identity politics. By provoking resentments against alleged special privileges, it serves to divide students and working people, and obscure the underlying class issues. This pits them against each other as public education and the basic rights and social conditions of the entire working class come under mounting attack.

The invocation of the Racial Discrimination Act against objections or criticism of these policies serves to reinforce this divisive agenda. It is a fundamental attack on freedom of political expression. In effect, any member of a racially or ethnically defined “group” can launch proceedings against anyone whose comments they claim have “offended” or “insulted” them, or any other member of that group.

For example, socialist commentary opposing “positive discrimination,” on the basis that everyone should have access to decent education, healthcare, housing and other social services, could become an “unlawful act” on the grounds that it offended a member of a certain group.

Already, section 18C has been used to threaten critics of Israel’s military aggression, such as former Fairfax Media columnist Mike Carlton, who have been falsely accused of anti-Semitism.

When the provision was invoked in 2011 against right-wing commentator Andrew Bolt, who had accused “fair-skinned” Aboriginal people of taking advantage of indigenous programs, Labor, the Greens and pseudo-left groups all proclaimed this as a “victory” against racial vilification.

In reality, reliance on the capitalist state’s laws and courts has always opened the way for such repressive measures to be wielded broadly against opponents of the ruling elite. The same state apparatus, which is thoroughly steeped in racism, is being continually bolstered. This includes the imposition of “anti-terrorism” laws that could see people jailed for life for “advocating” opposition to Australia’s predatory involvement in US-led militarism throughout the Middle East and globally.

At the same time, elements within the political and media establishment are agitating for the scrapping of section 18C. While hypocritically claiming to be defending free speech, they are among the most vicious advocates of such laws.

The QUT case has been exploited to restart a campaign by the Murdoch media and conservative elements within Turnbull’s government, led by Senator Cory Bernadi, for the repeal of 18C or the removal of the words “insult” and “offend.” Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott last week took up the issue, as a part of his efforts to topple Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who has so far failed to back the demand.

On the pretext of “free speech,” this agitation seeks to legitimise the demonising and scapegoating of indigenous people, while feeding off the resentment generated by identity politics and channelling it toward demands for the further slashing of social spending across the board, and not just for indigenous people. This is one of the ways in which the unstable Liberal-National government and the whole political establishment is trying to satisfy the intense pressure from the financial and corporate elite to impose deep austerity measures.

Report says New Zealand SAS is fighting in Iraq

Tom Peters

An article in the British Guardian newspaper on October 20 outlining the role of Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers in the US-led assault on Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, noted that British, Australian and New Zealand elite SAS commandos “are active in northern Iraq, along with US forces, where they have been calling in airstrikes to support both Kurdish and Iraqi advances. Their role at the frontline has not been well documented, however.”

The information, attributed to Peshmerga officers, is the first report that New Zealand troops are active in a combat role in Iraq. In early 2015 the National Party government sent around 140 army troops to Iraq as part of a joint Australia-New Zealand mission to train Iraqi soldiers. The government has repeatedly described this as a “non-combat” deployment, even though the vast majority of the 140 soldiers are not involved in training but in vaguely defined “force protection.”

The government and opposition Labour Party justify support for the war, like earlier deployments to Afghanistan, on the basis of combating terrorism. In reality, the Obama administration aims to cement its control over Iraq and Syria and to roll back Russian and Iranian influence in the Middle East. In Syria, the US and its allies, including Saudi Arabia, are supporting Al Qaeda-linked militias to carry out a proxy war against the Assad regime, which is backed by Russia. The brutal five-year-long conflict is threatening to escalate into a direct confrontation between nuclear-armed powers.

The Guardian’s statement that the New Zealand SAS is fighting in Iraq prompted denials from Prime Minister John Key and Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee.

Key’s statement was highly ambiguous, however. He told the media on October 22 that “from time to time, you will get very small numbers of SAS that may go [to Iraq] for a VIP visitor, for instance, or force protection or other particular things—they’re very small numbers … We can categorically point out that we haven’t deployed the SAS in a combat capability” (emphasis added). A spokesman for Brownlee was similarly quoted by Fairfax Media saying the SAS are sometimes sent “to provide advice on issues like force protection” but not for combat operations such as planning air strikes.

Washington has previously requested elite combat troops from its allies, including New Zealand, for the war in Iraq. The SAS consists of highly-trained killers who are greatly valued by the US. In 2004 a NZ unit was personally commended by then-President Bush for its role in the war in Afghanistan, where they have been repeatedly deployed by Labour and National Party governments.

The operations of the NZ SAS are shrouded in secrecy but well-informed commentators have questioned the government’s assertions about its role in Iraq. Paul Buchanan, a former US intelligence official and now a prominent media pundit in New Zealand, told Fairfax: “Notwithstanding the New Zealand Government’s semantic gymnastics, reports of NZSAS involvement in the fight to liberate Mosul are not surprising and to be expected…. A country does not maintain such a force without the intention to use them in conflict zones, and as a member of the anti-Daesh coalition New Zealand is no different in this regard.”

Fairfax noted that “in the past, Buchanan has said he had received ‘credible reports’ that New Zealand SAS was carrying out missions in Iraq.”

In February 2015, when Key announced the “non-combat” deployment, investigative journalist Jon Stephenson told RadioLIVE that according to “very reliable sources” SAS commandos were already secretly operating in Iraq.

Stephenson’s previous reporting has exposed the complicity of the SAS in war crimes in Afghanistan, where the government had similarly claimed the commandos were only operating in an “advisory” and “training” capacity. In 2010 the SAS participated in a US-led assault on a defenceless village, which resulted in six innocent civilians killed and 15 injured.

The Guardian’s report has been met with almost complete silence by the main opposition parties, including the Greens. According to Newstalk ZB, Labour’s associate defence spokesman David Shearer merely stated that the SAS directing air strikes in Iraq would go against previous commitments made by the government.

Labour Party leader Andrew Little has openly supported US bombing in Iraq, and previously said that Labour would endorse sending the SAS to join the war.

The attack on Mosul, which is likely to kill thousands of innocent people and turn tens of thousands into refugees, has been welcomed by the Labour Party. Speaking to Radio NZ on October 26, Little criticised the New Zealand’s military training deployment on the grounds that the Iraqi Army forces being trained were not disciplined enough.

He instead praised the Iraqi government’s Counter Terrorism Service (CTS), saying it had done “a very good job” and was doing the “heavy lifting” in the battle of Mosul. The CTS, led by officers who are often trained in the US, is known for its ruthlessness and brutality, including torture and execution of captured fighters.

Little also said he supports the government’s plan to extend the army’s mission in Iraq to train security and police forces in parts of the country taken back from ISIS. This underscores the utter fraud of Labour’s initial decision to vote against the deployment last year.

When Prime Minister Key announced the deployment following the September 2014 election, he repeatedly stated that it would be limited to a two-year mission. Speaking to Radio NZ recently, however, Defence Minister Brownlee declared that “the commitment we’ve got in Iraq is not going to stop simply because Mosul is taken.”

New Zealand has now been involved in 15 years of the so-called “war on terror,” which has served to justify US interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Syria, and shows no sign of ending.

Every party in parliament supports the alliance with the US, including the visit by a US navy vessel during the New Zealand navy’s 75th anniversary celebrations in Auckland in November. The Greens support the government’s recently-announced $20 billion in spending to upgrade navy ships, warplanes and other military hardware, in order to integrate New Zealand into US war preparations against Russia and China. Labour and NZ First have denounced the government from the right, for not spending enough.

German welfare recipients threatened with fines of up to €5,000

Anna Rombach

According to tightened state regulations regarding Germany’s Hartz IV welfare benefits, the unemployed now have to deal with drastic penalties of up to €5,000 if the information on their applications is incomplete.

This regulation supplements Amendment 9 to the Social Security Codes II, which went into effect at the beginning of August. It was submitted by Andrea Nahles, Social Democratic Party (SPD) minister of social affairs and employment. It contains a far-reaching tightening of regulations for Hartz IV recipients.

The formation and content of the law demonstrates that, should a red-red-green coalition of the SPD, the Left Party and the Greens form the next government, social attacks will proceed and become even worse.

Under the title “Tougher penalties for tricksters and dawdlers,” Spiegel Online reported October 25 on the new internal directives of the Federal Labour Office. These determine how the amended law will be enforced. Among other things, sanctions against Hartz IV recipients whose application forms contain errors can include fines of up to €5,000.

The Hartz IV provisions, which amount to a single payment of €404 per month plus rent and heating costs, is not sufficient for a humane existence. Recipients have already been humiliated by sanctions, harassed, and robbed of their social rights. They have been punished by benefit reductions of 30, 40 and—among young people—up to 100 percent. The new regulations represent a further escalation in the attacks against them.

Up to now, one would only be threatened with penalties if false information had been entered on applications. Now it is enough for information to be missing. Penalties can be imposed even when no damage has been done.

Imprisonment is also a possibility. The Bild newspaper quoted from the directives of the authorities, according to which Hartz IV recipients shall face prison time if they have “clearly expressed their unwillingness to pay,” a regulation which opens the door for arbitrary detentions and the deprivation of rights.

In addition to this, Job Centers must inform the relevant immigration authorities if a foreign Hartz IV recipient is penalized with fines of more than €1,000, a fact that could encourage their deportation. In the event of “petty offences,” the Job Centers will now impose fines of up to €55, instead of the previous €50 maximum.

The effect of these regulations will be devastating. No Hartz IV recipient can pay a fine of €5,000 and no bank will provide them with credit for such fines. The government is forcing complete subjugation to the Hartz IV regime, which will lead to deeper indebtedness, homelessness, illness, hunger, addiction and criminality.

Such laws are directed against the entire working class. They are meant to create an atmosphere of anxiety and fear among workers and youth. Any worker who is laid off must fear that they will wind up on the streets or in prison.

Around 4.3 million people of working age are Hartz IV recipients. The ongoing capitalist crisis is driving the numbers of the long-term unemployed especially high, with 1 in 3 (1.4 million) living on welfare for more than eight years.

When life at the minimum subsistence level becomes a permanent state, fear, worry and need become prevalent, which already makes it more difficult to fill out the complicated Hartz IV applications correctly.

According to information from the Federal Labour Office (BA), from April 2015 to March 2016, the Job Centers have imposed almost 1 million benefit reductions (950,000 against 414,000 beneficiaries). Nearly 7,000 people had their benefits cut completely in March 2016. Young people up to the age of 25, as well as minors, are especially affected by these brutal measures. In the last year, 1,800 persons sanctioned were only 15 years old and almost 15,000 between the ages of 16 and 17 years old. From 2007 to 2015, the Federal Labour Office saved €1.7 billion alone through sanctions.

The law, which was created under the auspices of Minister Nahles, exploits the desperate situation of those affected to place them under even greater financial and social pressure and finally to condemn them to misery.

Nahles’ actions are in keeping with the tradition of the red-green government of Gerhard Schröder und Joschka Fischer. During their period of rule (1998-2005), they used their Agenda 2010 reforms to begin a comprehensive assault on the social rights of the working class. The Hartz laws were a component of their sanctions regime.

For the federal elections in 2017, a new government of the SPD and the Greens is being prepared, but this time the Left Party will also be taken on board. In the state of Berlin and nationally, a red-red-green coalition government is currently being prepared.

Until now, the SPD and the Greens have repeatedly rejected a nationwide collaboration with the Left Party. Under conditions of deep economic and political crisis, however, sections of the ruling class see in an alliance between the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Left Party the only possibility for carrying out their program of social cuts and militarism domestically and abroad against the opposition of the working class.

Such an alliance would not be a left-wing alternative to a Christian Democratic Union/Social Democratic Party government. On the contrary, it would build on their right-wing policies and strengthen them further.

As far as the SPD is concerned, the initiative for tougher sanctions against Hartz IV beneficiaries comes directly from them. Gabriele Lösekrug-Möller (SPD), the state secretary in the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, justified the sanctions by saying that without them there would be no way to make sure that welfare recipients “were also committed to cooperation” and ready to supply “their own effort.” Obviously, the SPD representatives voted both in parliament and the federal council for stricter laws.

The Greens have surpassed the SPD in hypocrisy and cynicism. As the junior partner of the SPD, they passed the Hartz IV legislation together with the sanctions regime. However, since the party congress in 2012 in Hannover, they have called for a moratorium on sanctions. Party head Cem Özdemir warned at that time that the Greens should be identified with “participation and justice” on this issue, and denounced the “humiliation” of Hartz IV recipients.

Member of Parliament Brigette Pothmer (Green Party) conceded that “this Hartz IV system [is] perceived as a very repressive system by the entire society, but especially by the unemployed.”

In October 2015, the Greens in parliament requested the suspension of sanctions pending an expert evaluation of the sanctions process. This request was nothing but a publicity stunt to make it look like they opposed the awful situation in the Job Centres. In parliament, Nahles rejected the change in the law.

In the Federal Council vote, however, the Greens voted for a law that went far beyond the legislation Özdemir had called a “humiliation” for the sake of publicity back in 2012.

However, the Left Party is playing an even more despicable role. It openly advocates a red-red-green coalition and recommends itself as a coalition partner by throwing all its platitudes about discriminatory welfare practice overboard and supporting Hartz IV. Recently, the Left Party participated in a joint meeting with the SPD and the Greens in parliament. The philosopher Oskar Negt opened the meeting by saying that the “collapse of democratic institutions” could only be prevented by means of a “collaborative left working together.”

The Left Party representatives of two states that have coalition governments with the SPD abstained from the parliamentary vote over Nahles’ law “out of consideration for the coalition partners,” as Katja Kipping put it.

The new attacks on Hartz IV recipients prescribed by Amendment 9 to the Social Security Codes II provide a foretaste of the kind of measures that would be carried out by a red-red-green federal government.

Mexican and US autoworkers face Ford plant shutdowns

Marc Wells

After announcing in April a $2.5 billion investment to build a new small-vehicle plant in Mexico and confirming in September that it would relocate its small cars manufacturing there in the next two or three years, US auto giant Ford is now temporarily suspending production in both the US and Mexico due to an alarming decline in sales.

The decision follows a company statement last week that it would stop production of the Mustang for a week at a Detroit plant amid slumping sales. Third quarter revenues registered a 6 percent decline, while profit for the quarter was down a whopping 55 percent from a year ago. Total year-to-date US sales are down 8 percent from 2015. Retail sales declined 4 percent while fleet sales are down 21 percent.

Four plants are affected by the decision. In the US, these include the Kansas City assembly plant, where the bestseller F-150 is made, and the Louisville assembly plant, where production of the Escape and Lincoln MKC will also be suspended.

In Mexico, the Cuautitlán Stamping and Assembly Plant in the State of Mexico, which puts together the Fusion and MKZ sedans, and the Hermosillo Stamping and Assembly Plant in the State of Sonora, where Fiestas are assembled, were temporarily shut down for, respectively, one and two weeks. It was announced that last Monday operations would resume in both plants.

A total of 9,000 workers in the US and 4,000 workers in Mexico are affected by the suspensions. While it was announced that US workers with at least one year of experience would receive about 80 percent of their paycheck, it is unclear whether Mexican autoworkers received any compensation.

In the US, new hires with less than a year on the job are going to suffer more severely the immediate consequences of the United Auto Workers’ betrayals, as new contracts have created a multi-tier workforce and include substantial wage reductions and benefit losses. As for Mexican workers, they are told that they should be grateful for keeping their jobs after the shutdowns.

Mexico has undergone a sizable industrial expansion in recent years. Employment growth from 2010 to 2015 hit 186 percent for certain sectors. The auto industry increased employment 41 percent in that period.

International capital has targeted the Latin American country for its cheap labor and its desirable geographical position. It serves as an ideal base for shipping to the 45 countries that are parties to its 10 free trade agreements, the signatory countries of some 32 bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreements with Mexico and all the countries participating in the nine trade agreements (Economic Complementation and Partial Scope Agreements) within the framework of the Latin American Integration Association (ALADI). Mexico is also a member of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP).

Auto giants have taken full advantage of a vast low-paid labor force. According to some estimates, the average manufacturing wage is little more than US$2 an hour, not only a fraction of that paid to European and American workers, but 40 percent less than the prevailing wage in China.

Enormous profits are extracted in Mexico through the exploitation of its workers, often toiling in slave-like conditions. The unions are viewed as either impotent or complicit in the exploitation of workers by these large corporations, while local governments are famous for offering investors free land, tax breaks and infrastructure while workers are subject to police repression.

The temporary shutdowns highlight a critical economic slump and the interconnectedness of world economy. Mexico exports vehicles to the US, Canada, China, South Korea and most countries in Latin America. So far this year, Mexican auto industry output is down 5 percent compared to 2015.

The Ford F-150 is the best selling vehicle in the US and made up 90 percent of the automaker’s global profits during the second quarter. However, Ford registered a 3 percent decline in sales of that model in September from a year before, in addition to substantial consecutive contractions in the recent two quarters.

Such a decline is a clear sign of decreased consumer purchasing power, especially when one considers that more than half a billion dollars of pre-tax profit in the third quarter is derived not from manufacturing, but from Ford Credit, the company’s finance arm.

The contradictions of capitalism are bursting at the seams: on the one hand, the system seeks to transfer onto workers the brunt of the crisis; on the other hand, by diminishing workers’ ability to buy commodities, it further escalates the crisis by inhibiting demand and precluding a further development of the productive forces.

Moreover, as in the case of several expanding economies, growth in Mexico is dependent on the ability of the world market to absorb its industrial output. The US is a major market: a contraction in sales there snowballs to all countries which supply US demand. The result is a shrinking economy with a likelihood of further suspensions or closures.

The Mexican economy shrank 0.2 percent in the second quarter this year, following a timid 0.8 percent growth in the previous period, falling below the modest market expectations of 0.1 percent growth. It was the first contraction since the second quarter of 2013, due to a drop in industrial output.

Worse yet, Mexican workers are some of the most impoverished in the world. According to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the gap between wealth and poverty is larger in Mexico than in any other OECD country. Mexico’s richest 10 percent make more than 30 times what the poorest 10 percent earn. The country’s bottom 20 percent does not make enough to ensure three meals a day.

At the end of 2014, Mexico’s 16 billionaires were worth $9 billion on average, where the 25 million people who make up the bottom 20 percent were worth an average of $8. Moreover, in 2014, Mexican workers toiled an average of 2,327 hours, compared to US workers, who labored 1,796 hours, or German workers, with 1,302 hours.

Living conditions in 25 percent of Mexican towns are similar to sub-Saharan Africa in terms of healthcare, illiteracy, and homes without toilets or solid floors.

These figures elucidate why international capital seeks investments in countries like Mexico. It’s also clear that workers must draw conclusions from the world situation. In the US, they are being pitted against their Mexican brothers and sisters in a race to the bottom, as companies and trade unions collude in a relentless assault on workers’ living standards under the guise of global competitiveness.

Such is the bankruptcy of nationalism, which seeks to transfer profit losses derived from international competition onto workers. In the US this was the foundation of the Obama administration’s “insourcing,” a restructuring process that essentially brings labor costs in America in line with Third World levels.

US workers, like their Mexican brothers and sisters, are paying for a world crisis that’s not of their making with closures, job losses and a decline of living standards. In other words, they are all getting poorer.

The unions, and in particular the American United Auto Workers (UAW), saw to this bitter pill being force-fed to workers, blackmailing them with the prospect of losing jobs to non-American workers. Hence, the repeated betrayals: in 2009, Obama and the UAW ensured the halving of autoworkers’ wages and the dismantling of health and pensions benefits. Then, last year, the new contract created a sub-tier of unprotected workers who stand to lose wages, if not jobs.

Within the context of North America, Canada is no exception: Unifor, the Canadian autoworkers union, is defending the rotten contracts with General Motors and Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles and preparing for the imposition of a similar deal at Ford based on the two-tier model developed by the UAW.

The crisis requires an independent international mobilization of workers across North America, joining together US, Mexican and Canadian workers against their common enemy: world capitalism and its supporters, including the trade unions, facilitators of capitalist exploitation.