Newfoundland pushes ahead with Muskrat Falls project amid mass protests

Janet Browning

Despite longstanding and increasingly vocal opposition to the environmentally destructive and highly speculative Muskrat Falls hydro-electric dam project, the Newfoundland and Labrador government-owned Nalcor began flooding the reservoir for the dam last weekend.

Dwight Ball, the province’s Liberal Premier, announced last Saturday that the government had given Nalco the go-ahead to begin flooding what will ultimately be a 41 square kilometer (16 square mile) reservoir. Nalcor engineers have argued they need to raise the water level in the reservoir to 25 meters now so as to prevent winter candle-ice from damaging dam infrastructure.

The Muskrat Fall project has been controversial since it was announced in 2012 by Danny Williams’ provincial Progressive Conservative government and Stephen Harper’s federal Conservative administration.

The focus of the most recent protests are well-founded concerns about the impact of mercury contamination on the local population, which is largely Inuit and Innu.

Studies have shown that flooding Muskrat Falls to create a dam reservoir without first clearing away all, or at least much, of the vegetation and top-soil will dramatically increase methylmercury levels in the water and food chain. This risks poisoning residents downstream in Mud Lake, Rigolet and Happy Valley-Goose Bay (HVGB) who live off fish and other wildlife, like seals, that feed on fish.

Methylmercury, explains a recent Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) article, “forms in nature when bacteria reacts with mercury in water, soil or plants” and becomes increasingly concentrated and toxic as it moves up the food chain. At the top of the food chain, in fish and seals, the concentrations of methylmercury will be “10 million times the concentration” found in the local water, explains Trevor Bell, a Memorial University professor who has studied the danger that methylmercury poses to the people leaving south of Muskrat Falls.

Nalcor and the government have long known that the flooding will raise methylmercury levels. But they have claimed the toxin will be rapidly washed into, and dissipated, in Lake Melville, the estuary below Muskrat Fall that is the Inuits’ traditional hunting and fishing grounds.

However, scientific studies have shown the increased levels will persist for decades, putting the local population at severe risk of poisoning and/or the loss of their food supply.

A study by a team of Harvard researchers found that if, as the government and Nalcor propose, only some of the vegetation is cleared from the reservoir, methylmercury levels could rise by as much as 380 percent.

Despite the scientific studies and growing popular anger, Nalcor and the Liberal government continue to downplay the risk of contamination, or blithely declare, as did federal Liberal MP Nick Whalen, that it can be easily mitigated by providing “compensation” to the Inuit for the loss of their food source. Removing all the organic material, as the Harvard researchers recommended, was, they insisted, prohibitively expensive.

There are also concerns that the dam is being built on unstable ground. “It is a very uneasy feeling to be living near the Churchill River below Muskrat, let me tell you that much, HVGB resident Edward Mesher told the World Socialist Web Site. “I’m convinced this whole thing is about certain people profiting greatly from the construction contracts who really don’t understand the likely outcome or care about the people around here at all.”

As Nalcor moved to initiate flooding last month, a wave of protests erupted and continued for the better part of two weeks. Protesters, including native elders, occupied part of the Muskrat Falls worksite and picketed the main gate, succeeding in shutting the project down for several days, as workers expressed their solidarity. In a livestreamed appeal, the protesters said they didn’t want to put anyone out of a job, just protect their food and water.

In a further expression of the depth of the anger with the government and Nalcor, local mayors in Labrador said they would not allow Nalcor to transport equipment through their towns. There were also protests on the island of Newfoundland, including in Corner Brook and at the provincial legislature in Saint John’s.

Scores were arrested on contempt of court and trespass charges. The government has refused to drop these charges despite reaching a settlement on October 26 with the official native leadership—the Innu Nation, the Nunatsiavut Government and the NunatuKavut Community Council.

These government-backed organizations are dominated by the tiny, indigenous petty bourgeois elite, which has close ties to the political establishment in St. John’s. This elite is profiting from various business ventures associated with the Muskrat Fall development, including through the Nunatsiavut Group of Companies.

Under the October 26 agreement, the government claims that Nalcor will closely monitor methylmercury levels and will henceforth make all its decisions “using scientific-based research. This claim has already been belied by its insistence that it is too costly to remove all vegetation and top-soil from the reservoir.

At its unveiling, the Muskrat Falls development was trumpeted by the Williams Conservative government as a “green, clean and renewable” project that would provide a boost to Newfoundland’s economy, generating larger revenues through electricity exports to Nova Scotia and the northeastern US. However, the price of electricity has fallen, while project costs have soared. Initially budgeted at $6.2 billion, the Muskrat Falls hydro-electric project is now expected to cost nearly double that, $11.6 billion.

It is now widely conceded that Muskrat Falls is a boondoggle. But with so much money invested in the project and so much of the business elite having banked on profiting from it, there is no question of it being abandoned.

Instead the Newfoundland and Canadian ruling elite as a whole are preparing to place the burden for the cost overruns and profit shortfalls on the province’s population through electricity rate increases and further austerity.

Last month, as the protests erupted against the Muskrat Falls project, several provincial Liberal ministers joined Barry Perry, the CEO of Fortis, the St. John’s-based international power utility, in New York to celebrate Fortis’ launch on the New York Stock Exchange.

Newfoundland Premier Ball had himself been scheduled to join Perry in ringing the bell at the opening of NYSE trading on October 17, but according to press reports had to cancel.

While the people of Newfoundland and Labrador will bear the environmental and financial burdens of the Muskrat Falls project, Fortis, which owns the transmission lines by which the electricity the project generates is to be transported to markets in Newfoundland and beyond, expects to cash in, literally all the way to Wall Street.

Beijing bars two Hong Kong legislators from taking their seats

Peter Symonds

In a heavy-handed move yesterday, the top Chinese legislative body effectively banned two elected Hong Kong legislators from taking their seats in the territory’s Legislative Council for advocating independence from China.

Sixtus Leung and Yau Wai-ching were among six young political activists who won seats in the council elections in September on the basis of calling for independence or greater autonomy from China. All were prominent in the 2014 protests that erupted against Beijing’s decision to restrict the nomination of candidates in the 2017 election, the first by universal suffrage, for Hong Kong’s powerful post of chief executive.

A protracted dispute emerged in the council after Leung and Yau refused to take the standard oath of office last month, which includes swearing allegiance to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region as part of China. Instead, displaying a banner that read “Hong Kong is not China,” the two pledged allegiance to the “Hong Kong nation.” Their modified oath provocatively included a derogatory Japanese term for China.

The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) in Beijing yesterday issued an official interpretation of Hong Kong’s Basic Law that “those who support Hong Kong independence do not qualify to run for and serve as members of the legislature” and should face legal consequences. In addition, it ruled that those who failed to take the oath of office solemnly should not be permitted to take it again.

In comments to the media, Standing Committee Deputy Secretary-General Li Fei branded Leung and Yau as “traitors.” Advocating separatism, he declared, was not a matter of legal opinion but a legal issue and those doing so should be punished by law. In a particularly menacing threat, he added: “Traitors of the country will not have good endings.”

The NPC ruling pre-empts the outcome of a case before the Hong Kong courts to determine whether Leung and Yau should be permitted to retake their oath of office. It also calls into question the status of the other four legislators, some of whom stop short of calling for full independence but advocate some form of “self-determination.”

Britain returned Hong Kong to China in 1997 on the basis of “one country, two systems,” not to promote democracy in its former colony, but rather to ensure that it remained a major Asian financial centre. Underpinning its legal system is the Basic Law, which stipulated that Hong Kong was part of China and that the Legislative Council and chief executive—relics of British colonial rule—would eventually be elected by universal suffrage.

Beijing has rarely used the right of the NPC to interpret the Basic Law. It has done so in this case out of growing fears that the advocacy of Hong Kong independence will encourage separatist movements in other parts of China including Tibet and Xinjiang. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is also fearful that calls for democratic rights in Hong Kong will spill across the border and trigger similar demands, including by the working class, for greater democratic and social rights in China.

However, the leaders of the 2014 protest movement base themselves on backward appeals to Hong Kong parochialism and, in the case of Leung and Yau, are explicitly hostile to immigrants and tourists from mainland China. The two stood as candidates for Youngspiration, which in July last year organised a protest to demand that Hong Kong authorities deport a 12-year-old boy who had overstayed a visa and lived with his grandparents for nine years.

None of the organisations that dominated the 2014 protests—the Hong Kong Federation of Students, Scholarism and Occupy Central—had any orientation to the working class or appealed more broadly to workers and youth over unemployment, social inequality and the lack of public services in Hong Kong.

These groups had no basic disagreements with the so-called pan-democrats—more longstanding parties and organisations representing layers of the Hong Kong elite who want greater autonomy for the territory from China. Their overriding concern is that Beijing’s intrusion into Hong Kong’s political and economic life will harm its status as a leading financial centre.

The Financial Times commented yesterday: “Many legal experts and opposition politicians argue that by unseating elected politicians through a decree, Beijing has dealt another serious blow to autonomy and the rule of law in Hong Kong. Hong Kong’s independent legal system is one of the territory’s main attractions for foreign investors.”

For corporations doing business in China, including private Chinese companies, Hong Kong’s legal protection of private property, solid commercial law and well-established court system offer a security for investors that is not available in China. While capitalist property relations have flourished under the CCP regime for more than four decades, the legal framework that guarantees private property and profits is still relatively rudimentary.

Both the pan-democrats and the newer separatist organisations such as Youngspiration represent layers of the corporate elite and upper middle classes in Hong Kong who are determined to maintain their territory’s competitive advantage and the associated profits, business opportunities and careers that go with it.

The NPC ruling sets the stage for an escalating political confrontation. Opposition legislator Claudia Mo told the Financial Times that the decision was the “beginning of the end” for Hong Kong. “From now on, Beijing can do what it wants, telling Hong Kong courts and judges how to rule on anything that’s politically sensitive. It’s a sad situation but we have to fight on because if we don’t, we won’t get anything,” she said.

Last week, the Hong Kong Bar Association declared that an intervention by Beijing would “deal a severe blow to [Hong Kong’s] judiciary.” Lawyers and barristers were planning to hold a “silent march” in protest today.

On Sunday thousands of protesters marched through Hong Kong holding signs saying “Defend the rule of law” and demanding the resignation of Hong Kong chief executive Leung Chun-ying. Police estimated the number at 8,000 while organisers put it at 13,000. Later in the evening, a group of hundreds of demonstrators clashed with police outside the Chinese government’s liaison office in Hong Kong.

Indo-Pakistan tensions escalate

Wasantha Rupasinghe

Geo-political tensions between India and Pakistan surged over the weekend as cross-border firing continued in both directions along the Line of Control (LoC), the de-facto border between the Indian- and Pakistani-held portions of disputed Kashmir. More than two dozen people, mostly civilians, have been killed in military exchanges over the past two weeks.

According to an Indian defence spokesperson, in the latest incident on Sunday, two Indian soldiers were killed and two more soldiers and three civilians were injured in the Krishna Ghati sector of Poonch district by Pakistani fire. Lt. Col. Manish Mehta boasted: “Indian troops [are] responding befittingly and have caused heavy damage to Pakistani army posts.”

An Indian intelligence sources cited by the media declared, “While Pakistan targeted Victor post of the Indian Army, their Copra post caught fire in retaliatory fire by the Indian troops. Pakistan has also suffered some casualties in retaliatory fire. However, their exact number could not be known.”

The artillery exchange on Sunday took place after a lull of four days. On the previous Sunday, the Indian military said it inflicted “heavy casualties,” destroying four Pakistani army posts in the “Keran sector” of Pakistani-held Kashmir. The “massive fire assault” was supposedly in retaliation for the beheading of an Indian soldier by “terrorist” infiltrators on October 28.

The ongoing clashes along the LoC highlight the dangerous standoff that has brought the nuclear-armed rivals to the brink of war. The Indian government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is waging an aggressive military campaign against Pakistan, blaming it for Islamic separatist attacks on an Indian army base in Uri in Jammu and Kashmir on September 18.

The governments of both India and Pakistan are whipping up reactionary chauvinism and militarism, creating explosive tensions on the subcontinent. Accusations of spying have led to diplomatic expulsions and withdrawals from each other’s capital. The Pakistan Express Tribune reported on November 4 that both countries “may temporarily recall high commissioners.”

Last Thursday, in an unprecedented move, the Pakistani Foreign Office named eight Indian diplomats in Islamabad as agents of India’s intelligence agencies—the notorious Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Indian Intelligence Bureau (IB). Spokesperson Nafees Zakaria told the media: “As you are aware, a number of Indian diplomats and staff belonging to the Indian intelligence agencies RAW and IB have been found involved in coordinating terrorist and subversive activities in Pakistan under the garb of diplomatic assignments.”

Pakistani authorities outlined a long list of charges: “espionage, subversion and supporting of terrorist activities in Balochistan and Sindh,” “sabotaging the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC),” “creating unrest in Gilgit-Balistan,” “damaging Pakistan-Afghanistan relations,” “fabricating evidence to portray Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism,” “fueling sectarianism and maligning Pakistan with propaganda on human rights issues,” “carrying out activities in AJK [Pakistani-held Kashmir] detrimental to the Kashmir cause and misleading the international community about indigenous movement for self-determination in IOK [Indian-held Kashmir].”

Indian Prime Minister Modi has made no secret of his government’s backing for separatist movements in the Balochistan province of Pakistan. He has cited Islamabad’s alleged atrocities in that province to counter Pakistan’s accusations of human rights abuses by the Indian military in Indian-held Kashmir. Modi has exploited the Balochistan issue in international forums like the UN as part of a diplomatic campaign to isolate Pakistan.

India is opposed to the CPEC, a network of rail links, highways and pipelines connecting western China with the Pakistani port city of Gwadar. New Delhi cites the fact that the CPEC runs through Gilgit-Balistan and Pakistani-held Kashmir—areas claimed by India—but its real concern is that the corridor could give a boost to both Pakistan and its other regional rival, China.

Under Modi, India has forged even closer ties with the US as it seeks to encircle China with allies and strategic partners. The CPEC offers China an alternate means of importing energy and raw materials from Africa and the Middle East. The Pentagon’s war planners have foreshadowed the imposition of a naval blockade of China using key “choke points” such as the Malacca Strait in the event of conflict with China.

The diplomatic feud was triggered on October 27 when India declared Pakistani High Commission staffer Mehmood Akhtar as persona non-gratia for alleged espionage activities. Akhtar was arrested by Delhi police allegedly with “sensitive defence documents” for the Pakistani military spy agency, the Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI). He was expelled from India.

The Indian government has been backed by the US in its bellicose campaign against Pakistan following the Uri attack. Washington regards New Delhi as an important partner in its “pivot to Asia”—a comprehensive strategy aimed at undermining the influence of, and preparing for war with China. The US has showered India with important concessions, including a civilian nuclear deal that gives India access to global nuclear market, an offer of advanced defence technology and support for New Delhi’s strategic outreach into South East Asia and Africa.

Despite its formal calls for “restraint” on both sides and appeals for a “negotiated settlement,” the US has supported India’s moves to isolate Pakistan internationally by branding it a “terrorism sponsoring” state. It has blamed Islamabad for the terrorist activities of separatist groups in Indian-held Kashmir and backed the Modi government’s military aggression, including its so-called “surgical strikes” inside Pakistan’s territory on September 28-29.

The escalating geo-political tensions between India and Pakistan underscore the utterly reactionary nature of nation-state structure in South Asia, created through communal partition of British India into a Muslim Pakistan and a Hindu-dominated India in 1947. The decades-long geo-political rivalry in South Asia has already led to three declared wars and countless war crises between India and Pakistan. Now an all-out war between India and Pakistan could become the trigger for a catastrophic global conflict that would draw in the US, China and all the nuclear-armed powers.

After state crackdown, Turkey’s HDP halts its parliamentary activities

Halil Celik 

On Sunday, Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) declared that it would halt all its parliamentary activities. In a press conference on Monday, HDP spokesperson Ayhan Bilgen said that they would not attend to the general assembly or commissions of the Turkish parliament, saying, “We have decided to halt our work in the legislature.”

The decision came as a response to the arrest of nine HDP lawmakers on November 4, including its co-chairs Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdag, who were imprisoned for alleged links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Kurdish nationalist organisation waging guerrilla war against the Turkish state.

The legal grounds of the detentions were prepared last May, when the immunity of more than 130 representatives, largely from opposition parties, was lifted by a parliamentary vote with the support of the social-democratic Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).

The political beheading of the HDP came days after the arrest of Gültan Kışanak and Fırat Anlı, the co-mayors of the Kurdish-populated southeastern province of Diyarbakir for alleged links with the PKK, on October 30. Since the last general elections of November 2015, thousands of Kurdish politicians and activists, from both the HDP and its sister party, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), have been arrested on similar charges.

Also, on November 5, an Istanbul court arrested nine journalists and executives of Cumhuriyet, one of Turkey’s oldest and best-known newspapers. This stunning operation, following the last wave of bans on some 20 television and radio stations a week ago, was based on accusations that the suspects were “committing crimes on behalf of the ‘Fethullahist Terror Organisation’ (FETO) and the PKK.”

This all takes place as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) move towards an authoritarian presidential system by drafting a new constitution. Erdogan and his government have already gained the full support of the fascistic MHP, which incessantly calls for the arrest of HDP deputies as “legal extensions of the PKK”, the reintroduction of capital punishment, and the invasion of northern Syria and Iraq.

The latest state of emergency decree on October 29—which dismissed an additional 10,000 civil servants and banned 15 media outlets—has also given Erdogan the power of appointing rectors to universities directly without considering the preferences of academics. Authority to directly appoint rectors was part of an omnibus bill that the AKP sought to pass in recent months, but that was ultimately retracted.

Having largely acquiesced to the government’s authoritarian measures, especially since the failed coup attempt of July 15, the opposition CHP was finally alarmed by the last wave of detentions of Cumhuriyet journalists and HDP lawmakers.

Covering up his support to the parliamentary vote to lift the HDP’s legislative immunity, Kilicdaroglu condemned the detention of the HDP deputies, saying: “We are against the jailing of politicians, scientists and journalists over their views. If you defend democracy, then you should recognise that those who come to power with elections should go with elections. If not, you will slaughter democracy.”

Speaking to supporters in Izmir, on November 4, Kilicdaroglu also criticised the AKP government for its cross-border operations in Syria and Iraq. In fact, Kilicdaroglu has declared his party’s support to the Turkish army’s cross-border operations, so long as they target the PKK in northern Iraq.

Meanwhile, the Turkish military continues to deploy tanks, armoured vehicles, and thousands of troops to Silopi, a Kurdish-populated town near the Iraqi border, challenging the Iraqi government’s decision opposing Turkish participation in the offensive on Mosul. Ankara has insistently demanded that Turkish troops be allowed to actively participate in the attack against the Islamic State in Mosul.

On Saturday, Erdogan threateningly said that his government would have a “different response” for Shi’ite militias if they “cause terror” in Tal Afar, a city west of Mosul largely populated by Iraqi Turkmen.

The state terror launched by the government at home is tightly coupled with Ankara’s escalating warmongering moves in the Middle East, which would easily spark a conflagration—a regional war in the Middle East, and a broader war between NATO and Russia.

All events of the last decade have proven that CHP or HDP and their satellite trade unions cannot and do not want to oppose the authoritarian and militarist agenda of the imperialist powers and the Turkish ruling class, carried out by the AKP government. For years, these two bourgeois “left” parties sought a reconciliation with the AKP, under cover of a impotent calls for “peace and democracy.”

Just a few months ago, the CHP, in the name of fighting the July 15 coup attempt, obeyed the so-called Yenikapı spirit—i.e., national unity behind the AKP government. The HDP complained for its part of its exclusion from the “national consensus” reached by the AKP, CHP and MHP after the attempted coup.

Now, even as they are targeted by the government, these two bourgeois opposition parties and their allied trade union bureaucrats and pseudo-left followers are swearing allegiance to the “rule of law,” calling on workers to respect the rule and order, and relying upon the support of US and European imperialism.

This docility is not accidental; the difference between the AKP government and these opposition parties is not of principle but on tactical differences over how best to serve the vital interests of the imperialist system. Thus, both the CHP and HDP support the predatory, US-led war in the Middle East in the name of “human rights and democracy” and “national interests”, as does the AKP. Their conceptions of what these “national interests” are differ from each other, however.

The CHP—together with the AKP and MHP—supports the Turkish invasion in Syria, while the HDP aims to exclude Ankara from the ongoing imperialist re-division of Iraq and Syria, so long as Ankara does not accept the Kurdish nationalists as its main partner.

The role of the Kurdish nationalist movement, constitutionally represented by the HDP, is no less reactionary. A movement serving as US imperialism’s main proxy force in Syria and Iraq—whose leader, PKK head Abdullah Ocalan, has for years called for a Turkish-Kurdish axis based on the “National Oath” of the Ottoman Parliament in 1920 (a declaration recognising parts of Greece, Bulgaria, Georgia and Iraq as Turkish territory)—cannot seriously oppose the dictatorial and militarist drive of the Turkish government.

Whatever decision the HDP may take, it will not be in the interests of either the working class and the youth or of Kurdish suffering masses in their struggle for social and political liberation. On the contrary, seeking a greater share of profits from the exploitation of Kurdish working class and poor peasants by global conglomerates, the HDP’s actions, based on the perspective of identity politics, inevitably escalates the social counterrevolution and the danger of war.

Deporter-in-Chief: The legacy of Obama

Genevieve Leigh and Toby Reese 

Over the past six years the United States and Mexican governments have collectively apprehended nearly 1 million refugees fleeing to the United States from the Northern Triangle countries—El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras—deporting more than 800,000, including more than 40,000 children. Nearly 10 percent of the Northern Triangle countries’ total population have reportedly left the region.

The unceasing flow of refugees has compelled the political establishment to take a series of measures in an attempt to contain the crisis. More recently, the strategy of the Obama administration has been to shift the dirty work of apprehensions and deportations to its southern neighbor, Mexico.

Under heavy pressure from Washington, Mexico implemented Programa Frontera Sur in July 2014. The plan, likely crafted by officials within the Obama administration itself, means that those refugees who previously would have reached the US border are now being intercepted by Mexican authorities.

Under the Programa Frontera Sur, Mexico has relocated over 300 immigration agents to its southern border with Guatemala to carry out the ruthless dictates of Washington. The program has included setting up mobile checkpoints and conducting regular raids on trains and migrant hostels. The Obama administration has directly supported this campaign with training, technology and intelligence. For migrants, the consequences have been devastating.

A year after its implementation in July 2014, apprehensions by the Mexican government increased by 71 percent over the same period the previous year. Likewise, apprehensions of Central Americans by the US border patrol decreased. This shift created the illusion of some measure of effective immigration reform in the US. In reality, even more migrants are being deported than previously; the only change has been in the location of apprehension. Furthermore, due to the absence or deliberate disregard of laws of due process and humanitarian norms, the migrants are often no longer even considered for temporary visas. Instead, they are forced to return, in massive numbers, to some of the most violent and desperate social conditions on the planet.

The program has taken a particularly aggressive approach to operations aimed at preventing migrants from riding north on cargo trains, known collectively as La Bestia. Migration authorities have blocked migrants from boarding trains, forcibly removed migrants from trains mid-ride, and raided establishments that migrants are known to frequent, detaining thousands in the process. There have been many reports of excessive use of force and other abuses by the authorities, including a recent shooting of a 15-year-old boy traveling from Guatemala. The government has denied all of the charges.

No longer able to board the train in Chiapas, migrants, because of the disruption of the usual route, are forced to rely on different and dangerous modes of transportation, often traveling incredible distances by foot. Without access to the networks of resources and shelters long established on the previous train route, migrants suffer immensely from vulnerabilities on their new path.

The Mexican government has turned these methods of repression, forged initially to be used against migrants, towards its own population. Earlier this year the Guardian found that an increasing number of indigenous Mexicans had been detained for possible deportation in Chiapas for not having a valid identification—despite the Mexican Constitution stating that individuals are able to move freely throughout the country “without necessity of a letter of security, passport, safe-conduct or any other similar requirement.” It is quite common for babies who are born in indigenous communities in Chiapas, Guerrero, and Oaxaca to be born without a record of birth. Some reports estimate that as many as 7 million Mexicans do not have a registered name, identity, or nationality. Earlier this year, the WSWS learned of a woman who gave birth to a child in Chiapas and then, en route to the US, became entangled in an immigration web in which the baby became stranded without citizenship in either country.

As the tenure of the 44th United States president comes to a close, a balance sheet of the administration’s “accomplishments” regarding immigration should be drawn. Despite grand promises of immigration reform in his first 100 days of office, the Obama administration proceeded to enact draconian immigration legislation and speed up deportations. Obama’s actions become all the more significant when one considers that these policies were carried out while the Democratic Party, which continues to posture as a defender of working people and the poor, gained a majority in both houses of Congress after the 2008 elections.

In immigrant communities, Obama has become infamously known as “deporter-in-chief.” Since 2008 there have been over 2.5 million deportations, an average of more than 1,000 per day. This is roughly double the rate that occurred under Republican president George Bush, and totals more than under any other president in US history. In 2013, there were 435,498 removals, an all-time high for a single year. In addition, the administration has prioritized using a more formal removal process, which carries greater consequences if re-entry is attempted by the immigrant. Considering that the most recent statistics only include deportations that have taken place through October 2014, it is quite possible that over 3 million immigrants have been deported to date.

After coming to office, Obama vastly expanded a program begun under Bush called Secure Communities. The program united federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in an effort to deport immigrants who were already living in communities, as opposed to those attempting to cross the border. A political scientist at the University of Iowa, Rene Rocha, recently told the Christian Science Monitor that, “Prior to the Obama administration, there was very little interior enforcement, it was almost all near the border. By the end of 2011, arrests near the border and interior were equal.”

The program faced extensive criticism for ripping up communities and the lack of regulation of the program’s implementation. A study by UC Berkeley found that only 52 percent of individuals arrested through the program were slated to have a hearing before an immigration judge and that 39 percent of individuals arrested had a spouse or children who were US citizens, causing an impact on 88,000 families that included US citizens.

In many cases, immigrants who have temporary legal status through programs such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) are held in poorly regulated detention centers throughout the country with few rights. Although these individuals have received temporary legal immunity from deportation, in many states they are not eligible for Medicaid programs, nor are they eligible for the tax subsidies of the Affordable Care Act. In select states that have provided a state-funded waiver to assist the poorest sections of immigrants, such as California with Medicaid, this vulnerable section of the population is often scapegoated by the right wing for their “abuse of social programs,” in a further effort to divide the working class.

The administration’s “reform” measures did not only focus on immigrants already residing in the country but have also focused on strengthening Fortress America at the border. In 2010, Obama signed into legislation a bill that granted $600 million to further militarize the US-Mexico border through the buildup of thousands of border agents and the use of Predator drones to patrol from the sky.

The most recent manifestation of Obama “reform” came in September when his administration announced that it would begin the forced removal of Haitian refugees, an act only briefly postponed in the wake of Hurricane Matthew and the massing of thousands of Haitian immigrants at the US border in cities such as Tijuana, Mexico. Many of these immigrants, who fled Haiti to Brazil following the 2010 earthquake, are now being forced out of economic necessity to make the dangerous journey north from Brazil to the United States. Much like the migrants fleeing the war-torn Northern Triangle region, the Haitian migrants have now become double victims of US imperialism: first, from the devastating situation they faced in their home countries brought on by US imperialism, and later during their perilous journey in search of livable conditions.

The criminal immigration policies of the Obama administration carried out over the last eight years are yet another indictment of the increasingly Orwellian nature of the US political establishment. The great “anti-war” candidate became the first president in history to keep the US at war throughout two full terms in office. Universal health care has turned out to be nothing short of a restructuring of the system to benefit big business. The alleged candidate of working people has overseen the largest transfer of wealth to the top 1 percent in history. As his presidency comes to a close, we should add to the balance sheet immigration “reform” that has turned out to mean the ruthless deportation of more immigrants than any other administration in US history.

For all intents and purposes, Hillary Clinton can be expected to continue the same harsh policies as the Obama administration if she is voted into the White House on November 8. While Clinton demagogically harangues Donald Trump for his plans to build more walls, she has been a firm supporter of deportations, and voted for the increased securing of the border through building a 700-mile barrier between the US and Mexico in the Secure Fence Act of 2006 (a bill also approved by Obama as a senator). Clinton is on record in January of this year trying to distance herself from Trump by dishonestly quibbling over semantics and stating that she supported the building of a “fence” and not a “wall.” Based on the Obama experience, it should be clear that whatever rhetoric is decided upon, the reality will be increased attacks on defenseless migrants.

Divisions mount in UK military over US presidential race

Robert Stevens

Sir Richard Shirreff, a recently-retired British general, has publicly declared his opposition to Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Speaking to the Conservative Daily Telegraph, Shirreff, NATO’s deputy supreme allied commander in Europe between 2011 and 2014, said, “Here we are days from the election and that’s a real, real threat—Trump saying he might not commit to article 5.”

Article 5 of the US-led NATO constitution commits each of its members to come to the aid militarily of any member facing attack.

Shirreff added, “The defence of Europe during the Cold War depended on total certainty that whichever president was in the Oval Office, of whatever party, [the US] would come to Europe’s defence.”

Shirreff is a vocal advocate of Britain gearing up for war with Russia, as part of NATO. Earlier this year he published a book entitled 2017: War with Russia: An Urgent Warning from Senior Military Command.

Among Britain’s ruling elite there is grave concern for the future of Europe over the outcome of an election being contested by the two most unpopular candidates in US history. Following the June referendum vote to leave the European Union (EU), Britain is in the midst of a constitutional and political crisis without precedent in the post-war period. Such is the febrile atmosphere that the discussion in ruling circles on the US elections is focused on its implications for the NATO alliance, for the security of the European powers and on the issue of war preparations against Russia, in which Britain is playing a major role.

Sherriff’s intervention was in opposition to that of General Lord Richards, Chief of the Defence Staff from 2010 to 2013. Last week, Richards argued that a devastating war between the US and its allies against Russia was less likely if Trump is elected to the White House. Speaking to Parliament’s the House magazine, Richards said, “It’s non-state actors like Isis that are the biggest threat to our security. If countries and states could coalesce better to deal with these people—and I think Trump’s instinct is to go down that route—then I think there’s the case for saying that the world certainly won’t be any less safe. It’s that lack of understanding and empathy with each other as big power players that is a risk to us all at the moment.”

Richards warned of the imminent danger of a war with Russia, which would immediately embroil the UK as America’s main ally, if Hillary Clinton came to power. He said of the war in Syria, in which the Russian government is backing the regime of Bashar al-Assad, while opposition militias backed by US and Britain are fighting to remove him: “Unless she’s [Clinton] prepared to do this properly and go to war with Russia, she shouldn’t talk about no-fly zones and nor should we. We would have to shoot down Russian aircraft in order to impose it. Do we really want to go to a shooting war over Aleppo?”

He warned, “The alternative is for the West to declare a no-fly zone and that means you’ve got to be prepared to go to war with Russia ultimately. I see no appetite for that and nor, frankly, do I see much sense in it.”

Accompanying Shirreff’s comments, Lord West of Spithead, a former First Sea Lord and Labour government security minister, commented on a new Russian battle tank. He told the Daily Telegraph he was “very concerned” about a Russian military build-up. West described Russia’s economy as “a war economy. They have got the GDP of Italy and they are trying to spend the same on defence as America. What they are doing is unsupportable and when something is unsupportable, then anything could happen.”

One would not know from West’s comments that the main NATO powers are squandering vast amounts of their own GDPs on preparing for war with Russia and China.

In August, West told the Daily Star, “If the EU starts to break up and things go badly wrong in Europe, which I think they might well do, we have historically twice in the last century had to go and sort it out at immense cost of blood and treasure to our nation.”

On China, West said, “I do not believe we can let the Americans handle that on their own, we have to stand by them.”

Britain’s ruling Conservatives, backed by the opposition Labour Party, recently signed off on the renewal of the Trident nuclear missile system at an estimated cost of over £200 billion (almost twice the annual cost of the UK’s National Health Service.)

The intervention of top military figures in political affairs is now a regular occurrence and is indicative of the disintegration of British democracy. In September 2015, in the immediate aftermath of the landslide victory of Labour “left” Jeremy Corbyn in the party’s leadership contest, the Sunday Times carried comments from a “senior serving general” that in the event of Corbyn becoming prime minister, there would be “the very real prospect” of “a mutiny.” Elements within the military would be prepared to use “whatever means possible, fair or foul,” the officer declared.

Just weeks later Britain’s highest ranking military officer—Chief of the Defence Staff Sir Nicholas Houghton—was asked by the BBC’s Andrew Marr about Corbyn’s statement that he would never authorise the use of nuclear weapons. He replied, “Well, it would worry me if that thought was translated into power.”

The constitutional crisis opened by the Brexit referendum and the attempt by the defeated pro-EU camp to overturn the vote has prompted a further extraordinary intervention by senior military figures. Lord West and Lord Dannatt, the former head of the army, vented their opposition to last week’s High Court’s judgement that Prime Minister Theresa May cannot trigger Article 50—beginning the process of leaving the EU—via Royal Prerogative powers bypassing parliament. One of the powers it covers is the “control, organisation and disposition of the Armed Forces.”

Lord Dannatt told the Sunday Telegraph, “This judgement should not be allowed to impact on the future use of the Royal Prerogative as far as authorising military action is concerned. I fear it might, but it is up to the Government now to make it quite clear that that linkage is not legitimate and should not be made.”

He added, “That is kind of consensus government, whereas actually the Prime Minister has to be a leader, to take decisions and live with the consequences.”

Lord West said, “There are people who don’t like the ability to use the Royal Prerogative to react and go to war rapidly if you need to as a nation and I’m afraid they are wrong. We elect a government and the whole duty of a government is to govern. There may be an occasion where you have to take action because the time to act is so little. You can’t go and have a debate in Parliament about it.”

The mounting anxiety over the US elections in Britain is expressed throughout Europe.

Most European leaders want a victory for Hilary Clinton, who they believe will safeguard, at least for the time being, transatlantic economic, political and military relations. But there are opposed positions in every country. In France, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the neo-fascist National Front is a serious contender in the presidential elections in April/May next year. As someone who has argued for more friendly relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Le Pen has endorsed Trump, stating that he “is a less harmful candidate than Hillary Clinton.” “Clinton is war,” she added.

NATO announces largest troop deployments against Russia since Cold War

Alex Lantier

NATO will place hundreds of thousands of troops on alert for military action against Russia in the coming months, top NATO officials told the Times of London on Monday.

The US-led military alliance is planning to speed up the mobilization of forces numbering in the tens of thousands and, ultimately, hundreds of thousands and millions that are to be mobilized against Russia. Beyond its existing 5,000-strong emergency response force, NATO is tripling its “incumbent response force” to 40,000 and putting hundreds of thousands of troops on higher alert levels.

The Times wrote, “Sir Adam West, Britain’s outgoing permanent representative to NATO, said he thought that the goal was to speed up the response time of up to 300,000 military personnel to about two months. At present a force of this size could take up to 180 days to deploy.”

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said, “We are… addressing what we call the follow-on forces. There are a large number of people in the armed forces of NATO allies. We are looking into how more of them can be ready on a shorter notice.” According to the Times, Stoltenberg explained that NATO is looking broadly at methods for “improving the readiness of many of the alliance's three million soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines.”

The target of these deployments, the largest since the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy and the end of the Cold War a quarter century ago, is Russia.

“We have seen a more assertive Russia implementing a substantial military build-up of many years, tripling defence spending since 2000 in real terms; developing new military capabilities; exercising their forces and using military force against neighbours,” Stoltenberg said. “We have also seen Russia using propaganda in Europe among NATO allies and that is exactly the reason why NATO is responding. We are responding with the biggest reinforcement of our collective defence since the end of the Cold War.”

These statements show how NATO planning for a horrific war against Russia has continued behind the backs of the people throughout the US presidential election campaign. Military deployments and war preparations by the Pentagon and the general staffs of the various European countries are set to go ahead, moreover, whatever the outcome of the election in the United States and those slated for 2017 in the European NATO countries.

Stoltenberg's vague attack on Russian “propaganda” in Europe is an allusion to the instinctive opposition to war that exists in the European and international working class and popular distrust of the anti-Russian propaganda promoted by NATO officials like Stoltenberg and West.

Last year, a Pew poll found broad international opposition to NATO participation in a conventional war against Russia in Eastern Europe, even in a scenario that assumes Russia started the conflict. Under these hypothetical conditions, 58 percent of Germans, 53 percent of French people, and 51 percent of Italians opposed any military action against Russia. Opposition to war in the poll would doubtless have been higher had pollsters mentioned that NATO's decision to attack Russian forces in Eastern Europe could lead to nuclear war.

This opposition is rooted in deep disaffection with the imperialist Middle East wars of the post-Soviet period and the memory of two world wars in Europe in the 20th century. The arguments Stoltenberg presented against it are politically fraudulent.

The primary threat of military aggression and war in Europe comes not from Russia, but from the NATO countries. Over the past 25 years, the imperialist powers of NATO have bombed and invaded countries in Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Within Europe, they bombed Serbia and Kosovo in the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, pushed NATO’s borders hundreds of miles to the East, and backed a violent, fascist-led putsch to topple a pro-Russian government in Ukraine in 2014.

The aggressive character of NATO policy emerged once again last Friday, when NBC News reported that US cyber warfare units had hacked key Russian electricity, Internet and military networks. These are now “vulnerable to attack by secret American cyber weapons should the US deem it necessary,” NBC stated.

Russian officials denounced the activities highlighted in the report and the Obama White House's silence on the matter. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, “If no official reaction from the American administration follows, it would mean state cyber terrorism exists in the US. If the threats of the attack, which were published by the US media, are carried out, Moscow would be justified in charging Washington.”

The geo-strategically disastrous consequences of the Stalinist bureaucracy's dissolution of the Soviet Union and restoration of capitalism in Eastern Europe are ever more apparent. With NATO troops or proxy forces stationed in a geographic belt extending from the Baltic republics to Poland, Ukraine and Romania—either a short distance from or on Russia's borders—NATO is now poised for a major war against Russia that could escalate into a nuclear conflagration.

An examination of Stoltenberg’s remarks shows that NATO’s plans are not defensive preparations to counter a sudden conventional invasion of Europe by the Russian army. In such a scenario, Russian tank columns would overrun the few thousand or tens of thousands of troops in NATO’s various emergency response forces, depriving the broader ranks of NATO “follow-up” forces the 60 to 180 days they need to mobilize.

Rather, the plan for mobilizing successive layers of “follow-on forces” is intended to allow NATO to threaten Russia in a crisis situation by gradually bringing to bear more and more of its collective military strength, which, although split between 28 member states, outweighs that of Russia. Russia's population of 145 million is far smaller than that of the NATO countries, at 906 million.

The aggressive character of NATO’s agenda is illustrated by a report issued last month by the CIA-linked Rand Corporation think tank on the military situation in the Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The small military forces NATO has posted in the Baltic republics, Rand wrote, are “inviting a devastating war, rather than deterring it.” They calculated that Russian forces, if they actually invaded, could overrun these countries in approximately 60 hours.

On this basis, the think tank called for launching a vast NATO military build-up in the Baltic republics, virtually at the gates of St. Petersburg. It wrote that it would take “a force of about seven brigades, including three heavy armored brigades—adequately supported by air power, land-based fires, and other enablers on the ground and ready to fight at the onset of hostilities… to prevent the rapid overrun of the Baltic states.” This would cost the NATO countries $2.7 billion each year.

As the NATO countries intensify their threats against Russia, there are increasingly bitter conflicts among the NATO imperialist powers themselves. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi bluntly opposed new sanctions on Russia as called for by Washington at last month's European Union summit in Brussels, and there are deepening tensions between Germany and the United States as officials in Berlin and Paris call for an independent EU military.

Prospects of increased US-led military provocations against Russia are sharpening tensions within Europe. In an article titled “Whether Clinton or Trump wins, for Germany things will get uncomfortable,” German news magazine Der Spiegel warned of the long-term implications of an aggressive US-led policy against Russia, which it assumed would continue regardless which of the two candidates secured the White House.

The magazine wrote, “The motto will be: If you want (nuclear) US protection from Putin, you must either pay us more money or re-arm yourself.”

Mass protests call on Korean president to resign

Ben McGrath

Up to 200,000 people demonstrated in the South Korean capital on Saturday to demand President Park Geun-hye resign, according to protest organisers. Park is accused of allowing her personal confidante Choi Soon-sil to be involved in deciding policy matters despite holding no formal government position. Park’s approval rating has fallen to a mere 5 percent, the lowest of any South Korean president.

Like last week’s demonstration which involved 20,000 people, the protestors included a wide range of workers, both Korean and foreign, as well as middle, high school and university students and other youth. The participation of young people is significant in South Korea where they are often prevented from having any voice in politics. More protests are planned for next week.

“I am mad that an unelected individual ruled the country behind the scenes. It is a regression of the democracy that we have learned about,” Cho Ji-hun, an 18-year-old student told the Korea Herald. “I thought I would regret it if I did nothing in this seriously sad situation.” Others denounced the president’s recent apologies over the matter as meaningless.

Park has maintained her innocence whilst apologizing for the scandal. In a speech Friday she said: “I feel sorry and miserable that a specific individual derived benefits in the process of key state projects, the purpose of which was to improve the nation’s economy and the people’s lives.” It was her second apology in 10 days.

Park also stated that both she and her secretariat would cooperate in an investigation now underway. However, an official involved with the probe told the media, “Nothing is decided yet on [when to start] questioning the president, as our priority is currently on fact-finding.” Justice Minister Kim Hyun-woong (Kim Hyeon-ung) previously said that the president was legally protected from being questioned.

Two recently-sacked presidential secretaries—An Jong-beom and Jeong Ho-seong—were questioned on Sunday, following their formal arrests. An has been accused of working with Choi, to pressure companies to donate nearly 80 billion won ($US72 million) to Mir and K-Sports, two non-profit organizations established under suspicious circumstances. The money was allegedly used as a slush fund, with some of it going towards Park’s retirement and for real estate speculation. Jeong has been accused of providing government documents to Choi.

Choi was also formally arrested on Thursday and has been questioned for several days. She has been charged with abuse of authority, raising suspicions that the accusation is designed to protect the president. Unlike bribery, abuse of authority does not require third party involvement. It also comes with a lighter sentence should she be found guilty. Her lawyer has also maintained her innocence.

South Korea’s political elite are attempting to restrict the widespread public anger to Park alone and away from the broader crisis now engulfing the national economy in line with other countries around the world. Corruption goes beyond Park in a country where scandals are regularly used to force political changes and settle scores.

The opposition parties, led by the Minjoo Park of Korea (MPK), have all focused on demanding Park resign. On Thursday, MPK lawmakers made their first call for the president to quit. “Park’s prolonged rule will bring extreme confusion, leaving the country in a deadlock. The people will become victims,” a statement from six MPK representatives declared. “There will be disaster if Park does not step down and continues to cling to her remaining term in office.”

These comments echoed those of the minor Justice Party, which postures as a left-wing alternative to the MPK. Ahn Cheol-soo of the People’s Party and a potential presidential candidate in next year’s election has also called for Park’s resignation. The South Korean president is constitutionally limited to one, five-year term with Park’s term ending in February 2018.

While the anti-Park faction in her own Saenuri Party continues to call for the party leadership to step down, those close to Park have resisted, stating that the scandal should be resolved before any changes occur.

Park’s longtime involvement with Choi and her father Choi Tae-min, a cult leader who befriended Park following her mother’s assassination in 1974, is well known in Seoul and Washington.

Park was criticized for her involvement with the elder Choi, who died in 1994, during a bitter factional fight with Lee Myung-bak in the 2007 presidential primary. A 2007 document released by WikiLeaks in 2011 from then-US ambassador to South Korea Alexander Vershbow, stated: “Rumors are rife that the late pastor [Choi Tae-min] had complete control over Park’s body and soul during her formative years and that his children accumulated enormous wealth as a result.”

While the political establishment and media have focused on the religious nature of the case, it was already known that the younger Choi had been profiting from her relationship with Park.

The political calculations run far deeper than a simple corruption scandal. Park has lost the confidence of the ruling elites in Seoul as well as Washington. She has been unable to force through so-called labor reform measures demanded by the conglomerates that control the economy amid declining growth.

When questioned on Friday about US President Obama’s position on Park, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest pointedly declined to support Park, saying “that the alliance between the United States and South Korea is a close alliance, it’s a strong alliance, and it’s one that is strong today as it’s been. And one of the hallmarks of a strong alliance is that it remains durable, even when different people and different personalities are leading the countries.”

During her presidency Park has tried to draw closer to China, joining the Beijing-led Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) against US wishes and appearing at a military parade in China’s capital alongside Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin in September 2015. The image of a US ally alongside the two biggest targets of American imperialism will have raised concerns in Washington.

The lack of any US support for the embattled Park is a clear warning to any future South Korean administration to line up unequivocally behind Washington’s “pivot to Asia” against China.

Growing tensions in Chinese-German relations

Ulrich Rippert 

This week Germany’s Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy Sigmar Gabriel (SPD–Social Democratic Party) is spending several days in China, where he is holding talks with senior government officials. He is accompanied by a high-profile business delegation from 60 large- and medium-sized enterprises. Unlike many previous trips to China by Gabriel and Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU–Christian Democratic Union), the current visit is overshadowed by fierce tensions. The almost obligatory signing of major economic projects is not on the agenda.

The immediate cause of the tension is Berlin’s intervention against the acquisition of several German companies by Chinese businesses.

This past summer, Gabriel and European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society Günther Oettinger, a German politician from the CDU, attempted to prevent the purchase of industrial robot manufacturer KUKA by the Chinese Midea Group by encouraging German and European companies to take over KUKA. This effort failed because Midea, which had originally offered €4.5 billion [US$5.01 billion], had bought up 95 percent of KUKA shares.

Last week Gabriel rescinded approval for the already agreed sale of German semiconductor equipment maker Aixtron, valued at €670 million, to China’s Fujian Grand Chip Investment Fund (FGC). According to press reports, he was responding to an intervention by the US ambassador to Germany, John B. Emerson, who presented a confidential paper to German government officials, according to which Aixtron products could be used in the Chinese nuclear programme.

The announced takeover of the Munich-based manufacturer of lighting products and semiconductors, Osram Licht, worth €6 billion, by San’an Optoelectronics, another Chinese company, also met resistance from the German economic affairs ministry. The former light bulb manufacturer Osram is now considered a high-tech corporation, which possesses numerous international patents.

The Chinese government responded to Berlin’s intervention by summoning the German ambassador immediately before Gabriel’s visit, and handing him an official protest note. In it, Beijing complained of the non-approval of Chinese investments due to American pressure.

Gabriel dismissed the protest, saying key German technologies must be better protected in future. It had to be clear “that Germany and Europe will create instruments for the future, in order to protect security-related technologies, where this is necessary”, the minister wrote in a commentary for the daily Die Welt. Foreign investors remain welcome, he said, but the government would not allow “a state-controlled business to undertake technology acquisitions combined with expanding geopolitical power”, Gabriel blustered.

Chancellor Merkel agreed with her economics minister. Via government spokesman Steffen Seibert, she let it be known that German interests would prevail in matters of security. In addition, German investors were being disadvantaged in China, she claimed, which was unacceptable. Equality of opportunities must exist in Chinese-German economic relations.

This sharp tone toward the Chinese government is part of an increasingly aggressive German foreign policy. At every opportunity, representatives of the government emphasize that Germany, now more than ever, is involved in all regions of the world and must defend its own economic and geo-strategic interests more confidently.

At the heart of this is growing alienation from its traditional ally, the US. The political crisis in Washington, which has taken on unprecedented form during the presidential campaign, has led ruling circles in Germany to develop new foreign policy strategies. An electoral victory for Donald Trump with his “America-first” policy is seen by most German observers as the worst possible scenario. But they also expect more aggressive war policies against Russia and China, which take no account of German interests, in the event of a Hillary Clinton victory.

Therefore, they are increasingly turning to Russia and China. For this reason, economic affairs minister Gabriel travelled to Moscow in late September, before his visit to China, and agreed closer cooperation with Russian President Vladimir Putin to reduce economic sanctions gradually. At the start of October, Gabriel was then a guest in Tehran and opened a German-Iranian business forum. On this occasion, he specifically praised the Iranian government for offering dialogue with Germany on the rule of law. He stressed that cooperation between Berlin and Tehran had improved, despite known differences.

But in its cooperation with Russia and China, Berlin insists it set the tone. The recent statements by Oettinger, who in a speech to business leaders called the Chinese "slit-eyes” and “sly dogs”, are expressions of this imperialist arrogance.

Germany has cultivated close and good relations with China for years. Berlin has distanced itself from President Barack Obama’s “pivot to Asia”—the military encirclement of China using a ring of allied states. Instead, Germany has been the only European country to hold regular joint meetings with the Chinese government.

Economic relations have developed rapidly. Germany has traditionally exported machinery, cars and other high-tech products to China and imported electronics, textiles and other mass products. In 2015, China, with a trade volume of €163 billion, was Germany’s largest trading partner outside the European Union. Not only for Volkswagen, but for many of the 5,000 German companies operating in China, the market there is of vital importance. The “rise of the People’s Republic to the economic powerhouse of the world was a major cause of stability and growth of the German economy in recent years”, observes the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

But the growth of economic relations has not improved political relationships between Berlin and Beijing. Under conditions of global economic stagnation, China is increasingly perceived in Germany as an economic rival. The Chinese economy has evolved in recent years from an extended workbench of German and international corporations and a huge market, into a business competitor that makes billion-euro investments in technological development.

Chinese investments in foreign technology companies, promoted by the government in Beijing, have triggered panic in German business and government circles. Although they have not yet reached the level of European and American investment in China, they are growing rapidly.

According to recent figures from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, China’s foreign investment in the past year reached more than $140 billion, around a quarter more than the previous year. It involved a “new era of Chinese capital”, researchers at the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin assert. Each week, new investment projects were being announced.

“Even today, the People’s Republic is one of the three largest foreign investors worldwide. Nevertheless, that was just the beginning”, writes Die Zeit in a background article. China’s President Xi Jinping has announced foreign investments amounting to $1.3 trillion over the next 10 years.

According to the German government, Chinese companies bought into 37 German firms in the first six months of this year alone. Chinese companies have invested more in Germany in this period, €9.7 billion, than in the past 15 years combined. German-Chinese economic relations are changing at a rapid pace. Both countries act less and less as partners and increasingly as competitors.

The double standard displayed by the German government was shown by Gabriel’s protest against the plans of the Chinese government to introduce an 8 percent electric car quota by 2018 to mitigate the terrible smog in major Chinese cities. German auto companies, which lag far behind in the development of electric cars, saw this as a disadvantage. Industry Minister Miao Wei finally calmed his German colleagues, but nothing was decided.

The impact of this growing economic rivalry between the two countries is now evident in the steel industry.

A few decades ago, China produced a fraction of the world’s steel. In 2015, this reached 50 percent. Given the slowdown in economic growth in China, demand has decreased. According to European Union estimates, China now has an overcapacity of 350 million tonnes, which is more than twice as many as the entire EU produces in a year.

China’s attempt to export some of its surplus has led to a slump in steel prices by up to 40 percent. This spring, China announced the elimination of 500,000 jobs in the steel industry and a drastic reduction in capacity.

Nevertheless, the European steel corporations, with the support of the trade unions, demanded high punitive tariffs be imposed against China, as are already applied in the US. But even then, the chairman of the World Steel Association, Wolfgang Eder, assumes that the European steel industry must be reduced by half in the next 15 years. With 330,000 employees working in more than 500 steel plants, this would amount to a massive cut in jobs.

The German government is responding to growing competition with China as it has to all the problems in recent years: With sharp attacks on the wages and living conditions of the working class at home, with the establishment of authoritarian forms of rule and with the revival of German militarism. Under capitalist conditions—i.e., the dominance of private ownership and the nation-state—it is impossible to bring the enormous potential of global productive forces and the social interests of humanity into harmony.