Fukushima Cover Up

Robert Hunziker

It is literally impossible for the world community to get a clear understanding of, and truth about, the Fukushima nuclear disaster. This statement is based upon The Feature article in Columbia Journalism Review (“CJR”) d/d October 25, 2016 entitled: “Sinking a Bold Foray Into Watchdog Journalism in Japan” by Martin Fackler.

The scandalous subject matter of the article is frightening to its core. Essentially, it paints a picture of upending and abolishing a 3-year attempt by one of Japan’s oldest and most liberal/intellectual newspapers, The Asahi Shimbun (circ. 6.6 mln) in its effort of “watchdog journalism” of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. In the end, the newspaper’s special watchdog division suffered un-preannounced abrupt closure.

The CJR article, whether intentionally or not, is an indictment of right wing political control of media throughout the world. The story is, moreover, extraordinarily scary and of deepest concern because no sources can be counted on for accurate, truthful reporting of an incident as powerful and deadly dangerous as the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima. Lest anybody in class forgets, three nuclear reactors at Fukushima Diiachi Nuclear Power Plant experienced 100% meltdown, aka The China Syndrome over five years ago.

The molten cores of those reactors melted down to a stage called corium, which is a lumpy hunk of irradiating radionuclides so deadly that robotic cameras are zapped! The radioactivity is powerful, deadly and possessed of frightening longevity, 100s of years. Again for those who missed class, TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) has no idea where those masses of sizzling hot radioactive goo are today. Did they burrow into the ground? Nobody knows, but it is known that those blobs of radioactivity are extraordinarily dangerous, as in deathly, erratically spewing radioactivity “who knows where”?

Fukushima is a national/worldwide emergency that is the worst kept secret ever because everybody knows it is happening; it is current; it is alive; it is deadly; it has killed (as explained in several prior articles) and will kill many more as well as maim countless people over many decades (a description of radiation’s gruesomeness follows later on in this article).

Yet, the Abe administration is talking to Olympic officials about conducting Olympic events, like baseball, in Fukushima for Tokyo 2020. Are they nuts, going off the deep end, gone mad, out of control? After all, TEPCO readily admits (1) the Fukushima cleanup will take decades to complete, if ever completed, and (2) nobody knows the whereabouts of the worlds most deadly radioactive blobs of sizzling hot masses of death and destruction, begging the question: Why is there a Chernobyl Exclusion Zone of 1,000 square miles after one nuclear meltdown 30 years ago, but yet Fukushima, with three meltdowns, each more severe than Chernobyl, is already being repopulated? It doesn’t compute!

The short answer is the Abe administration claims the radioactivity is being cleaned up. A much longer answer eschews the Abe administration by explaining the near impossibility of cleaning up radioactivity throughout the countryside. There are, after all, independent organizations with boots on the ground in Fukushima (documented in prior articles) that tell the truth, having measured dangerous levels of radiation throughout the region where clean up crews supposedly cleaned up.

The Columbia Journalism Review article, intentionally or not, paints a picture of “journalism by government decree” in Japan, which gainsays any kind of real journalism. It’s faux journalism, kinda like reading The Daily Disneyworld Journal & Times.

Based upon the CJR article: “The hastiness of the Asahi’s retreat raised fresh doubts about whether such watchdog journalism— an inherently risky enterprise that seeks to expose and debunk, and challenge the powerful—is even possible in Japan’s big national media, which are deeply tied to the nation’s political establishment.”

Japan’s journalists belong to “press clubs,” which are exclusively restricted to the big boys (and girls) from major media outlets, where stories are hand-fed according to government officialdom, period. It is the news, period! No questions asked, and this is how Asahi got into trouble. They set up a unit of 30-journalists to tell the truth about Fukushima and along the way won awards for journalism, until it suddenly, abruptly stopped. A big mystery ensues….

According to the CJR article, “The Investigative Reporting Section [Asahi] proved an instant success, winning Japan’s top journalism award two years in a row for its exposure of official cover-ups and shoddy decontamination work around the nuclear plant.”

Furthermore, according to the CJR article: “The abrupt about-face by the Asahi, a 137-year-old newspaper with 2,400 journalists that has been postwar Japan’s liberal media flagship, was an early victory for the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which had sought to silence critical voices as it moved to roll back Japan’s postwar pacifism, and restart its nuclear industry.”

And, furthermore, the truth be told: “In Japanese journalism, scoops usually just mean learning from the ministry officials today what they intend to do tomorrow,’ says Makoto Watanabe, a former reporter in the section who quit the Asahi in March because he felt blocked from doing investigative reporting. ‘We came up with different scoops that were unwelcome in the Prime Minister’s Office.”

It comes as no surprise that Reporters Without Borders lowered Japan’s rating from 11th in 2010 (but one has to wonder how they ever got that high) to 72nd in this years annual ranking of global press freedoms, released on April 20, 2016.

Koichi Nakano, a professor of politics at Sophia University in Tokyo, says: “Emasculating the Asahi allowed Abe to impose a grim new conformity on the media world.”

When considering the awards Asahi won during its short foray into investigative journalism, like Japan’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for reporting about a gag-order on scientists after the Fukushima disaster and the government’s failure to release information about radiation to evacuating residents, now that Asahi has been forced to put a lid on “investigative journalism” and it must toe the line in “press clubs,” any and all information about the dangers or status of Fukushima are ipso facto suspect!

The world is dead silent on credible information about the world’s biggest disaster! (Which causes one to stop and think… really a lot.)

The evidence is abundantly clear that there is no trustworthy source of information about the world’s biggest nuclear disaster, and likely one of the biggest dangers to the planet in human history. However, time will tell as radiation exposure takes years to show up in the human body. It’s a silent killer but cumulates over time. Fukushima radiation goes on and on, but nobody knows what to do. To say the situation is scandalous is such a gross understatement that it is difficult to take it as seriously as it really should be taken. But, it is scandalous, not just in Japan but for the entire planet.

After all, consider this, 30 years after the fact, horribly deformed Chernobyl Children are found in over 300 asylums in the Belarus backwoods deep in the countryside. Equally as bad but maybe more odious, as of today, Chernobyl radiation (since 1986) is already affecting 2nd generation kids.

According to USA Today, Chernobyl’s Legacy: Kids With Bodies Ravaged by Disaster, April 17, 2016: “There are 2,397,863 people registered with Ukraine’s health ministry to receive ongoing Chernobyl-related health care. Of these, 453,391 are children — none born at the time of the accident. Their parents were children in 1986. These children have a range of illnesses: respiratory, digestive, musculoskeletal, eye diseases, blood diseases, cancer, congenital malformations, genetic abnormalities, trauma.”

It’s taken 30 years for the world, via an article in USA Today, to begin to understand how devastating, over decades, not over a few years, radiation exposure is to people. It is a silent killer that cumulates in the body over time and passes from generation to generation to generation, endless destruction that cannot be stopped!

Is Gandhi Still Relevant?

Colin Todhunter

Mention Gandhi in certain circles and the response might be one of cynicism: his ideas are outdated and irrelevant in today’s world. Such a response could not be further from the truth. Gandhi could see the future impact of large-scale industrialization in terms of the devastation of the environment, the destruction of ecology and the unsustainable plunder of natural resources.

Ideas pertaining to environmentalism, agroecology, sustainable living, fair trade, local self-sufficiency, food sovereignty and so on were all present in Gandhi’s writings. He was committed to inflicting minimal damage on the environment and was concerned that humans should use only those resources they require and not amass wealth beyond their requirements.

People had the right to attain certain comforts but a perceived right to unbridled luxuries would result in damaging the environment and impinge on the species that we share the planet with.

For Gandhi, indigenous capability and local self-reliance (swadeshi) were key to producing a model of sustainable development. This is in stark contrast to what is currently taking place. For example, in agriculture the “Green Revolution” brushed aside indigenous agriculture and replaced it with water- and chemical-intensive farming that relies on external inputs from corporations and results in massive external costs. Moreover, it is unsustainable over the long term.

It has also exposed farmers to the vagaries of rigged global trade and markets,commodity speculation and the geopolitics of food. The result for many of them has been debt, suicide and financial crisis. Farmer and campaigner Bhaskar Save outlines how Green Revolution technology and ideology destroyed what was an ecologically sound approach to productive farming here.

Gandhi felt that the village economy should be central to development and India should not follow the West by aping an urban-industrial system. He noted that it took Britain half the resources of the planet to achieve its prosperity and asked how many planets would a country like India require? Gandhi added that the economic imperialism of a tiny island kingdom was keeping the world in chains, and if an entire nation of 300 million (India’s population at the time) took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts.

India is now 1.2 billion plus. U.S. citizens constitute five per cent of the world’s population but consume 24 per cent of the world’s energy. On average, one American consumes as much energy as two Japanese, six Mexicans, 13 Chinese, 31 Indians, 128 Bangladeshis, 307 Tanzanians and 370 Ethiopians.

Gandhi argued that the type of industrialized development adopted by Britain was based on a mind-set that encourages humans to regard man as conqueror and owner of the Earth. And it encourages ordinary people to engage in an endless consumerism again underpinned by arrogance: if one has sufficient cash, there is a sense of entitlement to possess anything that can be bought, regardless of the impact on the environment or on people in far-off places.

Oil comes from some place, minerals are mined from somewhere and the corporations that profit from extracting such resources impose a massive cost on people and the environment, not least by fuelling resource-driven conflicts — think Libya, Congo, Iraq, Syria (all underpinned by resource grabs, despite the “humanitarian” or “war on terror” narrative).

Although there was a role for industrialization that was not resource- or energy-intensive and which involved for example shipbuilding, iron works and machine making, for Gandhi this would exist alongside village handicrafts. This type of industrialization would not make villages and village crafts subservient to it: nothing would be produced by the cities that could be equally well produced by the villages and the function of cities would be to serve as clearing houses for village products. He argued that with new technology even energy could be produced in villages by using sunlight and local materials. And, of course, people would live within the limits imposed by the environment and work in harmony with the natural ecology rather than by forcing it to bend to the will of profiteering industries.

Consider that prior to the British, India was among the richest countries in the world and had controlled a third of global wealth until the 17th century. It was an exporter of spices, food grains, handicrafts, handloom products, wootz steel, musk, camphor, sandalwood and ivory items, among other things. The village was the centre of a rural economy, which was the centre of entrepreneurship. The British dismantled much of this system by introducing mono crop activities and mill-made products, and post-independence India failed to repair the economic fabric.

Officials now seem to be preoccupied with a fetish for GDP growth and an unsustainable model of ‘development’. Part of this process involves destroying the environment and moving hundreds of millions from the land and into what are already overburdened mega-cities. Depriving people of their livelihoods in rural India (and deliberately running down agriculture) means mass migration to cities that are failing to produce anywhere near the volume of jobs required to soak up new arrivals.

If a forest can be chopped down and the land and timber sold, this increases GDP and thus constitutes “growth.” The wildlife has gone and the forest which had been managed for centuries by local people who had used its resources sustainably for their needs has disappeared.

How much damage is being done by a system that thrives on turning people into slaves to their desires and allowing (U.S.) imperialism to reign free?

Gandhi offered a vision for a world without meaningless consumption which depleted its finite resources and destroyed habitats and the environment. Given the problems facing humanity, his ideas should serve as an inspiration to us all, whether we live in India or elsewhere.

Unfortunately, his message seems to have been lost on many of today’s leaders who have capitulated to an out-of-control “capitalism” that is driving the world towards resource-driven conflicts with the ultimate spectre of nuclear war hanging over humanity’s head.

What Does Kerala’s 60th Birthday Mean To Women?

Kandathil Sebastian

Kerala becomes 60 years old on 1st November. Over the past 60 years, this Indian state has witnessed phenomenal changes in politics, economy and ecology. Such changes may be true for other Indian states too. Individuals, groups, and communities everywhere in India are indeed changing. But the trajectory of change for the women in Keralais different – both as ‘change makers’ as well as ‘change inheritors’.

Women in Kerala inherited a socio-political system in which they have enjoyed many privileges compared to the women elsewhere in India. The well documented social interventions by progressive Maharajas and Missionaries, socio-political movements led by Marxists and other formations, and reform movements of both backward and upper castes led to the creation of a more progressive state in which ordinary women were comparatively free and were also looked up with dignity.

In many parts of India, girls are still being considered as burdens and are often not allowed to be even born into this world. Chances of a girl child to be born in Kerala are higher compared to the rest of the country where sex selective abortions are rampant. Women in Kerala are more literate and educated than the rest of India. The state has the country’s highest female literacy rate of 92% compared to Rajasthan’s 53%.

Women in Kerala marry late, indicating their better scope of ‘agency’ and ‘choice’. Their chances of survival as girls, mothers and elderly women are brighter compared to the rest of India. They report crimes against women to the police much more than those who do so in otherstates (leading to the state’s dubious distinction of having India’s third-highest ‘official rate’ of crimes against women in 2011).More women are employed in the organized sector within Kerala and their ‘earned income’ is higher compared to the rest of India.

Women has been significantly contributing to Kerala’s economy, ever since German missionaries and British planters deployed women labourers in the state. In early 20th century out of 81,000 coir making laborers of Alleppey, 61,000 were women. Women were also the backbone of agricultural and construction sectors too, though they are underpaid and work inderisory conditions.  Kerala women also independently migrate to foreign countries and earn higher salaries. There are many families in Kerala where women work abroad while their husbands stay back in the state by taking care of their children.

This does not mean that women in Kerala are ‘empowered’andthey actively contribute to the social change in the state as ‘decision makers’. The numbers of women politicians and elected representatives in the stateare very insignificant. In the special context of Kerala where politics is driven by religious, caste, and family factors, the state has not seen many women coming up as independent politicians. Though there are exceptions, women mostly come to politics thanks to their being associated with some powerful male politicians as their family members or as their community/caste peers. Political parties are generally unwilling to offer tickets to women in elections for seats other than that of the mandatory reserved ones.

Freedom of social and spatial mobility is very difficult in the state. Women are not allowed to go alone out of their homes after 6/7 pm. In case any urban women dared to go out at night like their peers in bigger cities of India, they are considered as women of loose moral character. Interactions with boys/men are not permitted beyond a point. In case anyone dared to challenge such norms of mobility and interaction, they are strictly controlled through family and neighbours.

Marriage, family etc. are considered as the raison d’etre and defining aspects of a woman’s existence. The values, norms and myths around these two institutions enforced through religion and tradition are strong enough for the patriarchy to ensure absolute control over Kerala women.  All dominant religions in the state are undivided on matters of controlling their women and are enforcing conformity through their shared value systems.

Women are always expected to be obedient. Suffering, caring etc. are attributes exclusively set aside for women. Women’s roles as‘dutiful and chaste wives’and‘loving and sacrificing mothers’are more appreciated in the state than their roles as ‘change makers in politics and public life’.The main onus of maintaining families is on women and this prevent them from meaningfully participating in any political activity.

Women saints projected in the state as role models are those who were obedient and unquestionably and silently suffered all their pains. Attempts of questioning and challenging are generally discouraged.There were of course great women in Kerala who challenged patriarchy and fought for equality in property rights and actively participated in trade union movements, social reform movements and in various agitations for political change. But at many critical junctures of Kerala’s modern history, patriarchy could rally a section of ‘conservative women’ behind them to sabotage change process. This was possible because the politics in Kerala is mostly scripted by patriarchal caste and religious leaders who always played a significant role in forming and articulating public opinion in the state.

However, with the arrival of social media, modern Kerala is changing very fast. Opinions beyond conservative groups are being articulated and debated widely and frequently. Kerala’s ‘restrictive emphasis on dignified conduct of women’ and over emphasis on certain values which limit women’s social and spatial mobility are being challenged. Innovative forms of agitations against freedom and moral policing are being conducted in the streets too.

For the women of Kerala, the 60th birthday of the state opens more avenues for change, growth and freedom. They will show the way for independence and change to ordinary women from other Indian states andfor women from other developing countries too.

Poor Women Furrowing Male Bastions

Moin Qazi

Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million. —Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The 21st century poses many challenges that require new ways of thinking, none more important than the economic role of women in a rapidly changing world. Over the last several decades, it has become accepted wisdom that improving the status of women is one of the most critical levers for addressing poverty. A series of studies has found that when women hold assets or gain incomes, family money is more likely to be spent on nutrition, medicine and housing, and consequently children are healthier. In 2015, world leaders put gender equality and the empowerment of girls and women squarely at the top of international and development agendas. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed upon by world leaders raised global ambition levels and added fuel to the momentum that has been building over the last decade to achieve major improvements for people and planet, and not least the world’s women. This is seen not only as important in its own right, but also as an essential ingredient for eradicating poverty

Over the years several strategies have been used to empower women .One of them relies on community groups whose members   can be trained and equipped to use their collective strength and wisdom to tackle their problems. 

In India, community groups have been set up in villages and slums to tackle specific problems. They are known as self-help groups. It needs great emotional intensity to break through age old barriers .This can possible only through groups who share the same emotional values and are driven by   strong impulses of mutual goals. One of the primary objectives is of course to avail loans which the women access by cross guaranteeing each other’s liability. These loans are part of a financial philosophy called microfinance. Members take loans for a variety of reasons: to buy medicine, start a business, purchase animals, pay school fees, buy clothing, buy food during the lean season, invest in agriculture .When we place capital in the hands of women, especially low-income women, who don’t have access to loans through traditional means it works wonders – unlocking her entrepreneurial impulses. When women are reached, they gain the courage and skills to break the cycle of inter-generational poverty.   We create the most powerful catalyst for lasting social change

None had made better use of the cash than Renuka Mahalle, a shrewd, flinty young mother who put her profits from four loans into cows, goats, land, a sturdy house and private tutors for her daughter. “I can make money out of anything,” she boasted, a flower-shaped gold stud glinting in her nose. Her house was made of mud, dirt, and cow dung with a thatched roof. In the yard, bricks were stacked up and small fire pits held twigs for cooking sorghum flatbread. A brown cow lay contentedly in the shade. When the dynamic Renuka got her first loan, for Rs. 5000, she already had Rs.2000 saved from working as a cook and raising chickens, the family trade. She invested her savings in a cow she later sold for Rs. 10,000. Her next Rs. 10,000 she invested in a thresher machine. It takes care of her own farming requirements, and when it is not in use at her farm, she rents it out. The villagers are also happy that they don’t have to hire one from an outsider.  .

In my microfinance journey of almost two decades, I was part of an oganisation which has served thousands of women   giving them access to financial services and women proved to be responsible and dynamic in their approach. They began earning, planning and investing back into their families. I remember there was a woman who started out with a mud hut. When I came back after three years on a personal holiday, she had a three-room house with a cement floor, and the goats were stabled in the hut in which she had stayed before. When her group of women first came for loans, they sat hunched, looking down into their laps. They would take the small pile of pastel and white notes they got as part of a loan and fold it into a hairpin behind their ears. They were looking so frightened because, they said, they were afraid they couldn’t pay it back.  Some of them   suggested taking only a part of the loan. For the remaining they said they would consult their husbands and then come back. Now, these same women were running businesses, and were often involved in politics in their village.

One must however understand how lenders operate and what are implications of debt for a woman who is borrowing that money Lenders may extend loans without understanding whether the economy of a particular area can sustain the businesses. Micro-entrepreneurs may be undone by an unexpected illness, a poor investment decision or a theft. A defaulting woman therefore faces the ire of other borrowers who see her as breaking faith with them, and, instead of developing social solidarity, the loans heighten social tension.

Several development successes have occurred in less than optimal settings, often under appalling conditions: weak governance, widespread corruption, minimal infrastructure, deep-rooted social divisions and a calcified bureaucracy. In each case, creative individuals saw possibilities where others saw only hopelessness, and imagined a way forward that took into account local realities and built on local strengths.

For decades, policy makers have treated poverty as a sign of helplessness and ineptitude. To improve poor villages or slums, the people who live there must have a hand in deciding their own fate.

We need to bring in the poor to the conversation. Interventions that take the end user into account almost always have better success rates than top-down decision-making. But many social programmes are still not talking enough to their poor customers to find out what they really want, and too often policy makers have no idea what their end beneficiaries really need.  Community development isn’t a quick fix. It’s hard work and it takes time. But what’s happening in villages I worked and elsewhere shows that it’s worth doing.

Australia: Widespread exploitation of backpackers and overseas labourers

John Harris

The Fair Work Ombudsman released a damning report earlier this month exposing the super-exploitation of backpackers, young overseas workers and students staying in Australia on the 417 working holiday visa.

The inquiry showed that young workers employed in the agricultural and farming sector under the visa often received half the legally-mandated rate of pay, while some were forced into slave-like conditions with no compensation. Workers were routinely denied penalty rates and other basic rights, and were threatened by employers with the revocation of their visa.

The report noted that some businesses also forced employees to pay in advance for the “opportunity” of securing regional work. Others were blackmailed into paying their employers for an extension of their visa.

The 417 visa is available for people aged 18 to 31 years from 19 countries. In 2005, the Liberal-National government of John Howard introduced an option that allowed 417 visa holders to extend their stay in Australia for a second year, on the proviso that they undertook 88 days of “specified work” in the first year of their holiday in regional Australia. They are required to provide evidence of their work to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP), including an Employment Verification Form (EVF) signed by an employer.

The scheme, which was continued by the Labor governments of Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd, was aimed at providing a source of ultra-cheap labour for major agribusinesses and farming concerns. The exploitative character of the scheme was exemplified by the fact that it was not until December, 2015, after mounting public anger, that legislation was passed requiring that 417 visa holders be “paid” for the performance of the specified work.

The report commented that the DIBP does not monitor the activities of employers of 417 visa holders, “nor are there any legislative consequences under the migration laws for any contraventions of workplace laws. All obligations and any resulting penalties/punishments fall to the 417 visa holder.”

It also noted that “there is no legal or statutory requirement for an employer to sign the EVF and there are no penalties for employers who refuse to sign this form in a situation where a visa holder has in fact completed these work requirements.”

Based on a survey of 4,000 417 visa holders, the report gave a sense of the scale of the exploitation. Some 66 percent said that underpayment was common, while 28 percent did not receive any payment for some, or all, of the work that they performed. The majority stated that they would not make a complaint for fear of victimisation.

The report featured a number of case studies. In one instance, four mango orchards near Darwin in the Northern Territory underpaid 12 workers, 11 of them on 417 visas, a total of $35,630. Most were paid $2.74-$4.79 per hour. Some received nothing.

Another study examined the operations of subcontractors. In one case, 417 visa holders hired by a subcontractor for Thomas Foods, Big Mars Pty Ltd (Big Mars) did not receive overtime or penalty rates for working up to 50 hours per week. They were not paid superannuation, and were required to establish an Australian Business Number (ABN)—effectively changing their legal status from employees to independent contractors with few rights.

Backpackers often live in overcrowded accommodation provided by employers. In one case, workers at a meat-processing plant in the Upper Hunter Valley in New South Wales (NSW) were forced to live in garages. The report noted a series of house-fires in similar accommodation for 417 visa holders in the nearby town of Scone last year.

The report also documented cases where employers would promote jobs on advertising web sites such as Gumtree, offering work for a second-year visa. The employer would then request money for the job or accommodation on the pretext that the work was considered to be “voluntary,” in order to avoid paying wages.

One company in Northern Queensland that supplies herbs, lettuce and vegetables to supermarkets has actively hired backpackers for unpaid work since 2009. Over 600 417 visa workers have passed through the farm. They were provided with an induction package which stated:

“This is NOT a holiday farm—this is a business and you are here to work for your second year visa. If you are not prepared to work to the best of your ability then we will replace you with someone who will respect us and fulfil the requirements set by the Australian government.”

A supermarket supplier of cucumbers in northern NSW was identified as one of the top five businesses sourcing labour from the 417 visa program in NSW. The inquiry found that in April last year its workforce was comprised solely of 417 visa holders, all on unpaid arrangements. They were provided with minimal food, accommodation in caravans and limited transport in exchange for an EVF form.

Earlier this year, Fair Work found that the same business was giving workers payslips indicating they were paid $17.29 per hour. However, all their wages were withheld, supposedly to cover food and accommodation. According to the report, the director of the company asserted “without the benefit of unpaid labour, the business would not be able to grow and sell cucumbers profitably.”

The report touts a handful of cosmetic regulatory changes introduced by the government since late last year. The facts and figures in the document, however, make clear that wholesale exploitation of cheap labour was always the purpose of the 417 visa arrangement. After a series of reports, lawsuits and media exposures over the past two years, thousands of backpackers and overseas workers still confront dire conditions.

Their plight is a particularly sharp expression of the consequences of the wholesale destruction of full-time jobs, and the erosion of wages and working conditions, overseen by successive governments, Labor and Liberal-alike, and enforced by the corporatised trade unions. According to most estimates, between 40 and 50 percent of all workers are employed in casual, part-time or contract positions.

The National Union of Workers (NUW), in league with the Labor Party, has cynically postured as an opponent of the exploitation of backpackers and others.

Like its counterparts, however, the NUW has worked hand-in-hand with the major supermarket and farming concerns, suppressing any industrial and political action by the workers they falsely claim to represent.

Most recently, the NUW has signalled that it will work with the chicken supplier, Baiada, to ensure an orderly closure of its Laverton plant in Victoria, which has historically employed a number of heavily-exploited foreign labourers. To the extent that the union has concerns over the 417 visa arrangements, it is from the standpoint that the super-exploited backpackers are not dues-paying members, depriving it of a cash source, and locking it out of the bargaining table.

At the same time, the current debate around a proposed “backpacker tax” underscores the complicity of the entire political establishment in the atrocious conditions documented in the report. The Liberal-National government of Malcolm Turnbull has proposed a 19 percent tax rate on the already meagre pay of backpackers. The Labor opposition has called for a review of the measure, warning that it could stem the flow of ultra-cheap labour to farming businesses.

Push for harsher anti-immigrant measures in New Zealand

John Braddock 

Earlier this month, Michael Woodhouse, the immigration minister in New Zealand’s conservative National Party-led government, announced curbs to the country’s immigration levels. Prime Minister John Key said the changes followed a regular biennial review and were an adjustment “at the margins” of the intake.

In fact, the decision was in response to a rising clamour in the media and wider political establishment, including the trade unions, for a crackdown on immigration. A reactionary campaign has been whipped up, blaming immigrants and foreigners for sharply rising house prices, youth unemployment and deteriorating social conditions.

No sooner had the government announced the new rules than all the opposition political parties, various trade union spokesmen and the Salvation Army weighed in to condemn the government from the right, declaring that the restrictions were totally inadequate.

Fewer residence approvals will be granted for the next two years, with levels down to 85,000–95,000 from 90,000–100,000. For skilled migrants, the number of points required to qualify will be raised from 140 to 160 points. The number of places available in the capped Family Categories will be slashed from 5,500 to 2,000 per year. Other changes include temporarily closing the Parent Category, thus removing the right for migrants to bring their parents to New Zealand.

Last year, 52,052 people were granted residency, up from 43,085 in 2014. Around half of those came through the Skilled Migrant category. Many of the more popular jobs, such as chefs and retail workers, will no longer qualify for inclusion in the category. David Cooper of Malcolm Pacific Immigration said those without any university qualification would struggle to reach the required 160 points “no matter what experience” they had.

The measures represent a tightening of an already highly regulated immigration system. New Zealand’s immigration policy has always been exclusivist. Until the 1970s, an unofficial “White New Zealand” policy operated, initiated and promoted by the unions and the Labour Party, aimed at Chinese workers in particular.

Thousands of so-called “overstayers”—Pacific Island workers and their families—have been subjected to forced evictions. Currently 150 international students from India are fighting summary deportation because the agencies that placed them included false financial information on their study visa applications.

The hostile response by the Green Party to the government’s measures was particularly notable. In June, co-leader James Shaw had distanced the Greens from the Labour Party’s strident campaign for a cap on numbers, saying that blaming immigrants for the Auckland housing crisis “tears the fabric of New Zealand society.”

Last week, however, Shaw said that with rising concerns about “the impact on house prices, and infrastructure” the Greens now proposed to cap overall net migration at 1 percent of the population, including returning New Zealanders. Under this policy, immigration numbers would have been halved this year. Seizing on the Greens’ U-turn, Winston Peters, leader of the right-wing anti-immigrant NZ First Party, pointedly asked: “Who will call who racist and xenophobic now?”

The most significant voices in the foul anti-immigrant agitation, however, are the unions, in particular the Unite union, and the trade union-funded Daily Blog. The latter denounced the government’s immigration cuts as “window dressing” to “our overheated and deeply corrupt immigration system.” This position dovetails with Daily Blog’s regular anti-Chinese rants, accusing Beijing of starting a “trade war” and trying to colonise New Zealand.

Unite union director Mike Treen wrote on the blog that the 5 percent reduction in immigrant numbers was of “no consequence.” Whatever the government did, Treen said, “you can be sure they will keep on bringing in students and workers on temporary visas for their big business mates to use and abuse.”

The Daily Blog and Treen, a former leader of the Pabloite Socialist Action League, have been campaigning intensively against immigration for months. They attempt to clothe reactionary nationalism in “progressive” garb by feigning concern over the increasing pool of “vulnerable and easily exploitable labour” being used by employers to drive down wages.

Treen made an apparent call for “open borders” in a Daily Blog post on September 22, saying: “The bosses want us to see the migrant as the enemy undermining our wages and conditions. But there is nothing to gain by excluding them from New Zealand. We need to give the ones here more rights to stand up for themselves. It would then be much harder for the bosses to use migrant labour to undermine wages.”

This is totally hypocritical. All the trade unions, including Unite, have been instrumental in assisting “the bosses” to depress the wages and living standards of the working class—immigrant and non-immigrant alike. Unite has established itself as the main mechanism for disciplining oppressed youth in the fast food, retail, hotel and entertainment sectors. It works closely with some of the most rapacious employers, including Restaurant Brands and Sky City Casino, to enforce their conditions.

To cover its tracks, Unite has conducted high-profile campaigns to pressure the government over youth pay rates and “zero hours” contracts, but the fundamental position of young workers in poorly paid, insecure and highly-exploited work remains unchanged. Unite collaborates with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment to vet applications by employers seeking to bring in overseas labour, while lobbying the government to crack down on the purported “hundreds of thousands” of temporary work visas, “low-skilled migrants” and foreign students “transitioning” into paid employment.

The pseudo-left groups are intimately tied up with this unprincipled political fraud. Both Socialist Aotearoa and Fightback have members employed by Unite. In order to distract attention from his union’s anti-immigrant agenda and support for highly restricted migration, Socialist Aotearoa leader and Unite senior organiser Joe Carolan recently organised protests against the impending deportation of the Indian students.

The perspective advanced “personally” by Treen is that workers should be able to live wherever they want with good wages and full rights—but for the time being NZ should end the “inhumane” policy of bringing in temporary migrants who are underpaid and have few rights.

This is completely bankrupt. The demands for more restrictions have nothing to do with defending jobs and basic rights but seek to shift the blame for the social crisis onto the most vulnerable sections of the working class, undermining a united struggle for decent jobs and conditions. Throughout their history the trade unions have consciously sought to redirect workers’ anger into divisive nationalist calls for “jobs for New Zealanders first.”

The only principled position is to fight as a practical matter right now—not at some indeterminate time in the future—for the right of all working people to live and work wherever they want, and with full social rights. This requires an international struggle, uniting workers in New Zealand with those in the Asia-Pacific and throughout the world, in defence of their common interests, on the basis of an anti-capitalist, socialist program.

Sri Lanka: New anti-terror measures lay foundations for police state

Nanda Wickremasinghe 

In mid-October the Sri Lankan cabinet approved the “policy and legal framework” for a new Counter Terrorism Act.

The planned legislation, which has been submitted to an all-party parliamentary national security committee to finalise, constitutes a far-reaching attack on fundamental democratic rights by widening the definition of terrorism to include practices generally regarded as normal political activity.

During his 2015 presidential election Maithripala Sirisena postured as a champion of democratic rights and promised, among many things, to repeal repressive laws such as the hated Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA).

However, the new Counter Terrorism Act, which will replace the PTA, confers even wider powers on the government and consolidates the foundations for a police state. The real target of the new law is the working class—socialists in particular.

The act defines the following as terrorist offences:

* Threatening, attacking, changing or adversely affecting the unity, territorial integrity, security or sovereignty of Sri Lanka, or that of any other sovereign nation.

* Illegally or unlawfully compelling the Government of Sri Lanka or the government of any other sovereign nation, to reverse, vary or change a policy decision or to do or abstain from doing any act relating to the defence, national security, territorial integrity, sovereignty of Sri Lanka or any other sovereign nation.

* Illegally causing a change of the Government of Sri Lanka or of any other sovereign nation.

* Committing any act of violent extremism towards achieving ideological domination.

Under these sweeping definitions virtually any political activity can be legally suppressed.

To declare that “compelling a change of policies of the government of Sri Lanka or of any other sovereign state” is illegal means that the government can block all political or industrial action, protests and demonstrations against the government by the working class, the poor, students or any other section of the population.

Other definitions of terrorism include, “committing or threatening to commit or instigating acts of violence of any manner on any person, attempted murder, grievous hurt, wrongful confinement extortion; complete or partial destruction the state or private property; serious damage to the environment of Sri Lanka or that of any other sovereign nation, as the case may be, causing obstruction or damage to essential services or supplies.”

Recruiting members for organisations proscribed by the government, being leaders or members of such organisations and withholding information on terrorism are now offences, as is “knowing” or “having reason to believe” a person is conspiring to commit an offence of terrorism but not informing the police.

Significantly, “espionage” has been broadened to cover “any person who voluntarily engages in any illegal, unlawful or unauthorised act for the purpose of gathering any ‘confidential information,’ for the purpose of supplying such information to a person who is conspiring, preparing, abetting, or attempting to commit terrorism.” This means those involved in political exposures or investigative journalism can be targeted.

The new measures also propose the death penalty upon conviction by a High Court, if a death has occurred as a “reasonably foreseeable consequence” of oppositional activity. This is an extension of death penalty beyond the offence of murder, which involves conscious intent. Other punishments for “terrorism” include imprisonment for up to 20 years, heavy fines and confiscation of property.

The new Act also says that suspects have no right to seek legal advice following arrest for 48 hours or until the individual is brought before a magistrate. This changes current rights and creates the conditions for the use of torture to obtain confessions, for which the Sri Lankan police are already notorious. Hundreds of people arrested during the war against separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were convicted using the confessions obtained under police torture.

Under the proposed legislation, “a statement made by any person to a police officer holding a rank not below a Superintendent of Police either by himself or in response to questions” will be “admissible” against those arrested.

The police and the armed forces will be given wide powers of arrest, detention and investigation. To legitimise this, the act states that when members of the armed forces arrest a “suspect” he or she should be handed over to the police. Cordon and search operations can be carried out by both the police and armed forces.

Suspects taken into custody under the terrorism laws can be detained for up to six months through an order from a deputy inspector general of police and without being brought before a magistrate. The “counter-terrorism” package also covers offences committed by Sri Lankan citizens both at home and abroad, against the Sri Lankan government or a foreign regime.

The Sri Lankan Inspector General of Police is to establish a Specialised Counter Terrorism Division, tasked with the responsibility of preventing and investigating terrorism.

Sri Lanka’s planned new anti-terrorism laws are in response to growing popular opposition to the government’s austerity attacks on the living conditions of the working class and the poor and in line with its support for the US preparations for war against China.

After nearly 30 years of communal war against the separatist LTTE and the associated battery of measures to divide and suppress the working class, the Sri Lankan ruling class and its government are legislating new anti-democratic laws to establish the basis for dictatorial forms of rule. It is part of the escalating assault on the basic rights of the working class internationally.

Mexican defense secretary calls for more troops, greater powers in waging “war on drugs”

Kevin Martinez

Mexico’ Secretary of Defense, General Salvador Cienfuegos, has called for the country’s military to intervene even more directly into the 10-year-old “war on drugs.” Speaking at a seminar entitled “National defense and international humanitarian law,” Cienfuegos asked the government to recruit more troops and create a legal framework to allow the military to operate with impunity.

“There is a drain [on the army], and it’s obvious why: we are working all over the country, at all times, in the mountains and in the cities,” Cienfuegos declared. He warned that if the government wanted the army to do more, it would have to supply “more people.”

While the ostensible target of the Mexican police and military has been the drug cartels, in reality this conflict has served as a pretext to clamp down on social opposition. Large sections of the Mexican government of President Enrique Peña Nieto and the Mexican ruling class as a whole are among the beneficiaries of the drug trade and are intimately tied to both the drug cartels and US imperialism.

Given that the Mexican military has until now operated with carte blanche in the towns and countryside, Cienfuegos’ “legal framework” can only mean blanket immunity for soldiers who commit abuses. The general’s demand that the military have a more direct say in shaping government policy can only be taken as a grave warning to the Mexican working class.

In his comments General Cienfuegos remarked that the army had suffered from “fatigue” in its 10-year war against various drug gangs. When reporters asked about the lack of a legal body to monitor the army he contemptuously declared, “Ask the legislators, not me; I do not make the laws.”

The Mexican newspaper La Jornada noted that the three main political parties were taken aback by the general’s blunt comments, calling them “unusual.” Patricio Martinez, senator of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), was quoted as saying, “We need to correct, amend the Constitution so that the army can assist with civil authority.”

In comments last March, Cienfuegos called the deployment of the military in the drug war a “mistake” and said that corruption in the police force had to be stopped, adding ominously, “If we don’t do it, there is no one else who will.”

The army is responsible for much of the violence wracking Mexico today. It has now been revealed that an army unit was on the scene the night that 43 Ayotzinapa teaching students were kidnapped by police and presumably murdered in 2014. The 17th Army battalion protected the police and refused to help the survivors.

Cienfuegos also absolved the army of any responsibility for the Ayotzinapa massacre, as well as the army operation in Tlataya in which 22 civilians were massacred. In the Ayotzinapa case, Cienfuegos declared that the army had “absolutely no responsibility.” In the Tlataya massacre, Cienfuegos noted that four soldiers had been released without charges, while another three had yet to be tried.

Since the beginning of the drug war under President Felipe Calderon (2006-2012), 80,000 have died and 30,000 have disappeared. The Obama Administration has been instrumental in making sure the Mexican military is armed with the latest weaponry and logistics, providing more than $1.5 billion in US arms, equipment and training between 2008 and 2015.

The militarization of Mexican society is being presented as a crusade against not only drugs, but corruption and human rights abuses as well. In Veracruz, Governor Javier Duarte of the PRI was issued an arrest warrant on suspicion of ties to organized crime and money laundering. Guillermo Padres, a member of the PAN who was governor of Sonora, was also accused of corruption and has been pursued by authorities. President Peña Nieto is trying desperately to refurbish his image as an enemy of political corruption, especially after his own complicity in the Ayotzinapa massacre and other state attacks against teachers and workers becomes public knowledge.

In a related development, a federal judge based in Mexico City, Vicente Antonio Bermudez Zacarias, was shot dead in broad daylight while jogging. Zacarias was involved in legal rulings in the case of the 43 missing students. The media has accused gangs of being behind the killing; however, given the political sensitivity of Zacarias’ rulings, a government assassination cannot be ruled out.

The former police chief of Iguala, Felipe Flores, was also detained by the government after more than two years on the run. Flores had disappeared after the events of September 26, 2014, when the students were last seen in the custody of police. In the official story, the students were handed over to a local gang who murdered them, incinerated their bodies and dumped the ashes in a nearby river. Numerous forensics experts have since concluded this story to be impossible. Flores’ arrest may shed new light as to the true fate of the 43 missing students.

While the army and Cienfuegos have sought to project an apolitical public image in relation to the country’s worsening violence, the military has always sought to maintain the status quo in Mexico. The intervention of the army in political life, if history is any guide, has never been in the interest of the working class. The history of Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, and its CIA-backed military-police dictatorships, is a bloody reminder of this basic fact.

Mexico is not the only country to militarize it police force in the face of worsening violence. El Salvador and Honduras, two of the most violent countries in the world, have deployed the military to ostensibly fight gangs. In Argentina, President Mauricio Macri declared a public national emergency to pave the way for the militarization of the country’s anti-drug war.

In the face of worsening social inequality and rising social opposition, the Latin American bourgeoisie has sought to arm and strengthen its state apparatus to prepare for a bloody crackdown against workers, students, and peasants.

UK: Man who appeared on reality TV show “Benefits Street” dies in poverty

Alice Summers

A 43-year-old man, Lee Nutley, who was a resident on the street where the reality TV show “Benefits Street” was filmed , was found dead at his home in Stockton-on-Tees in North East England at the beginning of October. Hundreds of people attended his funeral, which took place October 20, to pay their last respects.

The exact cause of his death is unclear, although police reported they did not believe there were any suspicious circumstances. Nutley, who took part in the filming of Channel 4’s “Benefits Street” from 2014 to 2015, suffered from substance abuse problems, epilepsy and had been on and off anti-depressants for eight years. After being laid off by a construction company, he relied on paltry Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) payments while seeking medical help for his epilepsy, depression and anxiety.

Nutley’s already wholly inadequate income of £45 a week from his JSA was also repeatedly cut off due to Job Centre sanctions for allegedly missing scheduled meetings. Nutley denied missing them. On one occasion, filmed in the show, Nutley’s welfare benefits were sanctioned for a four-week period. This meant his JSA was not transferred into his account for another two weeks after that, effectively depriving him of any income for six weeks and forcing him to rely on food banks and the support of his neighbours to feed himself. Nutley was just one of countless people who have been driven to food banks, substance abuse and, in the worst cases, ultimately to their deaths after sanctions to their benefit claims.

There is clear evidence that benefits sanctions may be linked to increasing numbers of deaths. In 2015, a Freedom of Information Request by the Disability News Service revealed that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) had investigated, via peer reviews, the welfare payments of 60 people after their deaths. This is a procedure that must be undertaken when suicide is associated with DWP activity.

John Pring of the Disability News Service said that although the admission that the DWP had investigated 60 cases was highly significant, he suspected that the true extent of the problem could be far larger, with the number of deaths possibly ranging anywhere from 60 to several thousand.

In November 2011, the bodies of Mark and Helen Mullins were discovered in their home in the small market town of Bedworth, Warwickshire. The married couple had made a suicide pact. When the couple died, they had been living on just £57.50 a week for the last 18 months. This tiny sum, just £4.10 each per day, was the unemployment benefit that was claimed by Mark.

In another tragic case, David Wood starved to death in 2014 after his benefits were reduced to £40 a week when a mandatory DWP medical visit mistakenly found him fit for work.

Indeed, malnutrition and food bank usage are increasingly found to be linked to benefit sanctions. According to a report by one of the UK’s main food bank providers, the Trussell Trust, over 40 percent of people referred to food banks in the 2015/2016 period had experienced some form of problem with their benefits, whether through changes, delays or sanctions. Other reasons cited included low income and debt.

In October 2012, new rules were introduced that further strengthened the potential for sanctioning JSA or Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) claimants. This allowed for the sanctioning of benefits for a minimum period of four weeks, and for up to three years, if a claimant is deemed to not have taken sufficient steps to search for work, leaves a job voluntarily, or if they turn down an offer of employment.

Under the new rules, the DWP has sanctioned an estimated 1.97 million JSA claimants, as well as approximately 79,000 Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) claimants, between October 2012 and August 2016.

These attacks on welfare benefits are part of a wider assault on the working class by the ruling elite, which seeks to destroy the hard-won post-war social benefits system, which they deem to be an unbearable constraint on profit accumulation. The welfare system has suffered relentless cuts under both Labour and Conservative governments, under conditions in which real term wages are stagnating and employers demand increasing levels of productivity from their workers.

“Benefits Street” was filmed on James Turner Street in the Winson Green area of Birmingham. It was reported that 90 percent of the residents on the street claimed welfare benefits. TV programmes such as “Benefits Street” play an essential role in the propaganda offensive of the ruling class to demonise the poor and the unemployed, and are deliberately aimed at manipulating public opinion for further assaults on living standards and the creation of a more competitive, “flexible” and exploitative labour market.

Such reality TV shows aim to construct a distinction, based on the Victorian premise, between the “deserving” and the “undeserving” poor—that is, those who are deemed to be poor and reliant on state aid through no fault of their own and those who are as a result of their own “personal failings,” such as a lack of effort in finding employment, alcoholism or criminal leanings. No attempt is ever made to critically examine and present to the viewer the real causes of unemployment, substance abuse or crime, which are social ills rooted in the crisis-ridden capitalist system. However, the end result of such propaganda is to castigate all welfare recipients as “scroungers.”

These attempts to portray those on benefits as scroungers, drug addicts or criminals go hand in hand with efforts to accustom workers to ever more exploitative working conditions. In line with these aims, other television programmes such as the BBC’s “Britain’s Hardest Workers: Inside the Low Wage Economy” do their part to drive home to the working class the inescapable nature of the super-exploitive job market.

In this five-part documentary shown in August, 20 volunteers took part in real-life work situations, experiencing the same gruelling conditions faced every day by the UK’s 5 million minimum wage workers. The volunteers were pitted against each other, with the “least productive” leaving the show at the end of the episode, in order to demonstrate the cutthroat nature of the jobs market. The prize for the eventual “winner” was a minimum wage job for a year.

The high-pressure and exhausting nature of these low-paid jobs is evidenced by the stress and demoralisation of the volunteers, who regularly broke down in tears. The program invites viewers to draw the conclusion that in an increasingly competitive job market, workers should be grateful for their job, no matter how terribly paid or degrading.

The message of this foul propaganda is that workers must submit to their super-exploitation, because with the global economy in crisis, and governments around the world increasingly employing protectionist measures, Britons must now work harder to compete with other workers internationally. In this way, these documentaries do the government of the day an immeasurable service in providing the ideological justification for slashing wages and welfare, and driving up productivity.

Last October, Jeremy Hunt, Tory health minister, stated that proposed cuts to workers’ tax credits were essential as “[W]e want [Britain] to be one of the most successful countries in the world in 20, 30, 40 years’ time.” He added, “Essentially, are we going to be a country which is prepared to work hard in the way that Asian economies are prepared to work hard, in the way that Americans are prepared to work hard.” Following June’s Brexit vote to leave the European Union, the Conservative government is stepping up its demands that British workers compete with workers internationally.

Lee Nutley was one more tragic casualty in a class war waged against the working class by the ruling elite. His death, and the deaths of countless others forced into similarly terrible poverty, is an indictment of the capitalist system as a whole, where the living and working conditions of the working class are sacrificed in the name of increased productivity and profit.

Polish government prepares legal action against EU council president Donald Tusk

Clara Weiss

The Polish government, headed by the Law and Justice (PiS) party, is preparing to mount a legal action against the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk. Tusk is a member of the opposition Civic Platform (PO), and was Polish prime minister from 2007 to 2014. With its campaign against Tusk, the PiS is trying to eliminate an important ally of the German government in the EU, weaken the opposition in Poland and foment anti-Russian sentiment.

The head of the PiS, Jaroslaw Kaczyński, has repeatedly declared that the government will not support a second Tusk presidency of the Council. He also threatened to prosecute Tusk. According to the Polish media Tusk is threatened with being charged with “diplomatic treason”, i.e. activities against the interests of Poland in cooperation with a foreign state. The charge involves a possible sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment. The Polish newspaper wSieci wrote that it is “very likely” that such a prosecution will go ahead.

The allegations concern Tusk’s relations with the Kremlin and, in particular, his political reaction to the aircraft crash in Smolensk in 2010, which resulted in the death of a large part of the Polish government, as well as representatives of the military and the Sejm (Polish parliament). Among the victims of the Smolensk crash was the Polish president at that time, Lech Kaczyński, the twin brother of the current PiS head.

The PiS maintains that the crash was not an accident, but rather an attack by Russia on the Polish government. It accuses the government under Tusk of concealing the “real” causes of the crash in conspiracy with the Kremlin.

Since taking power last autumn, the PiS government has stepped up its propaganda campaign significantly. In September, a government commission began to investigate the disaster. The chairman of the commission is Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz, one of the most right-wing members of the Polish cabinet and a vehement supporter of the massive NATO military offensive against Russia.

In recent years, Macierewicz has repeatedly put forward various conspiracy theories to explain the incident in Smolensk. A movie showing widely in Poland at the moment supports the version of the crash propagated by the PiS. The film has been enthusiastically promoted by leading PiS politicians.

In fact, Tusk is no friend of the Kremlin. He and his party, PO, are among the fiercest warmongers in the EU. Following an EU summit on relations with Russia in October, Tusk said: “It is clear that Russia’s strategy is to weaken the EU.” He described the economic sanctions levied against Russia due to the Ukraine crisis as a “defensive” measure.

The Tusk government helped organize the coup in Ukraine in 2014, trained right-wing, paramilitary Ukrainian militias and launched the massive military campaign against Russia, which the PiS government has continued.

When the PiS describes this attitude as too soft, it makes clear the extent to which the current government is pressing for war with Russia. The threats against Tusk are aimed not least at intimidating genuine opponents of such a war.

The PiS is also attacking Tusk because he represents a wing of the Polish bourgeoisie that advocates close cooperation between Poland and Germany, within the framework of the EU. According to media reports, Tusk is in daily telephone contact with his successor as head of the PO, Ewa Kopacz. Despite his function in the EU, he remains the de facto leader of the party.

As president of the European Council, which consists of the heads of state and government of all member countries and is the real power center of the EU, Tusk works closely with Berlin. He has played an important role in keeping growing opposition on the part of the so-called Visegrad group (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia) under the control of Germany. Apart from the PiS government, the governments of the Visegrad countries largely support Tusk’s political course.

The American web site Politico quoted an adviser to the German Social Democratic Party who said: “You can trust him, he is reliable, he can keep secrets to himself. Everyone knows that [German chancellor Angela] Merkel desperately needs Tusk to keep the Eastern European countries quiet and under control. She will never let him fall. She would rather sacrifice the presidency of the EU parliament, currently held by the German Martin Schulz, (SPD), in order to keep Tusk.”

Tusk works closely with Merkel and her government on many issues and advocates, along with Berlin and Paris, a “hard Brexit” for Britain.

Representatives of PiS had attacked Tusk after the Brexit referendum, which came as a major shock for the Polish bourgeoisie. Kaczyński accused Tusk of being “directly responsible” for the “no” vote because he had imposed harsh conditions on Great Britain in negotiations. Kaczyński said Tusk should “disappear” from the political stage.

The PiS government is also opposed to the plans for a European military union, an initiative mainly driven by Berlin and Paris, and is trying to establish close ties with the British government led by Theresa May. She hopes to use the Brexit to transform the EU from a political into a purely economic alliance. So far, however, negotiations between Poland and the UK have proceeded slowly.

The attacks on Tusk are not least of all aimed at eliminating an important ally of Berlin in the EU, thereby weakening the position of Germany, and hindering Berlin’s plans for a military union.