UK by-election deepens divisions in ruling class over Brexit

Robert Stevens

The British Liberal Democrats won Thursday’s Richmond Park by-election, overcoming a 23,000 Conservative majority in one of their safest seats.

The election in the Greater London constituency was prompted by the resignation of Tory MP Zac Goldsmith over government plans to build a third runway at Heathrow. However, it was fought out, following June’s Brexit referendum vote, over whether the UK will, in fact, leave or remain in the European Union.

The Lib Dems, who now have nine MPs, won the seat by campaigning in opposition to Brexit. They have pledged to vote against any move by Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May to trigger Article 50, beginning the process of leaving the EU, if parliament is eventually able to vote on the issue.

Lib Dem candidate Sarah Olney won just under 50 percent of the total vote. Labour Party candidate, Christian Wolmar, trailed in third place, winning just 1,515 (3.67 percent) and losing his deposit. Large numbers of both Tory and Labour voters decided to vote for Olney.

Goldsmith is an outspoken supporter of Britain leaving the EU. The Conservatives did not stand a candidate, instead calling for a vote for Goldsmith. The far-right UK Independence Party also backed Goldsmith.

The loss of the seat reduces the Tory governments’ parliamentary majority to just 13.

The vote was seized on by the Liberals and other pro-EU forces as proof of the necessity to build a “progressive alliance” in support of EU membership, or at least continued membership of the Single Market. In her acceptance speech, Olney stated, “[O]ur message is clear: we do not want a hard Brexit. We do not want to pull out of the single market.”

Party leader Tim Farrow declared, “Nearly a third of Tory voters from the last election who voted to leave in June voted Liberal Democrat yesterday,” adding that “this was about people trying to say to Theresa May we do not like the extreme version of Brexit—outside the single market—that you’re taking us down.”

The Green Party stood aside in the election in order to back Olney. Caroline Lucas, the Green’s sole MP, stated Friday, “The regressive alliance has been defeated and the government has suffered a hammer blow to its hard Brexit plans.”

The vote has heightened significance given the four-day Supreme Court hearing starting next Monday, at which the government is challenging last month’s decision by the High Court that the prime minister cannot bypass parliament and use Royal Prerogative powers to trigger Article 50.

However, Richmond Park was hardly a bellwether constituency regarding the national mood over Brexit. The June referendum recorded a narrow Leave victory nationally, with 52 percent voting to leave and 48 percent to remain. But London boroughs voted 59 percent in favour of remain. Richmond Park, an affluent constituency with the second highest concentration of older, wealthy professionals in the UK, voted heavily in favour of remain by a majority of 72 percent.

Pro-Brexit forces responded to the pro-EU assertions of the Liberal Democrats that they had won the seat on a turnout of only 53 percent, a 23 percent drop on the general election in a constituency that would naturally favour their line. The next by-election—-to be held on December 8 in the seat of Sleaford and North Hykeham in, Lincolnshire, northern England, would show a pro-Brexit result, they insisted.

The Sleaford and North Hykeham election was prompted by the resignation of Tory MP Stephen Phillips, with a majority of more than 24,000, who opposed May’s decision to bypass parliament in triggering Article 50.

How the numbers are crunched is less important politically than the fact that British politics is being recast on the basis of support for a pro- or anti-EU programme. The deepening economic crisis post-Brexit, fuelled by the heightened political uncertainty resulting from Donald Trump’s disputed victory in the US presidential election, is reshaping political loyalties in ways that cross party lines. Every event is being seized on to justify the agendas of the two bitterly opposed camps within ruling circles.

A Tory spokesman responded with the aggressive assertion, “This [Richmond Park] result doesn’t change anything. The government remains committed to leaving the European Union and triggering article 50 by the end of March next year.”

While this will endear May to the party’s substantial pro-Brexit hard core block of 80 MPs and the wider party base, it will further alienate its pro-EU wing. Conservative MP Anna Soubry, a vocal remain supporter, tweeted that the Richmond result was “sensational” adding, “[P]oliticians ignore Remainers at their peril & u [you] can forget hardbrexit.”

The fissures over Europe tearing the Tories apart are also impacting on Labour, with the staunchly pro-EU Blairite wing stepping up their efforts to remove Jeremy Corbyn as leader and recast the party as the main political vehicle to prevent Brexit. Prior to the Richmond campaign, three senior Labour MPs—Lisa Nandy, Jonathan Reynolds and Clive Lewis—wrote an article calling on Labour not to stand in order to “put the national interest first.” The article denounced Goldsmith as a “hard Brexiteer,” adding, “the vote against him must not be split.” With a nod to the formation of a cross party pro-EU movement, it added, “In this coming Parliament progressives will need every vote they can get.”

The Richmond result will be used to put additional pressure on Corbyn.

The immediate aftermath of June’s referendum was used by the Blairites to launch an attempted coup against Corbyn by forcing a leadership election on the basis that he was only “lukewarm” on the UK’s EU membership.

Even after defeating these efforts, thanks to broad popular support, Corbyn has continued with his capitulations to the right—most recently in his decision not to back a parliamentary motion calling for an investigation into former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s lies justifying the illegal war against Iraq.

Within hours of the defeat of the Scottish National Party motion, thanks to Corbyn’s cowardice, Blair announced the formation of a new political lobby group on a “platform designed to build a new policy agenda for the centre ground.” He added that “Part of its focus will plainly be around the European debate.”

In calling for an active boycott, the Socialist Equality Party insisted during the referendum campaign that the pro and anti-EU factions of the ruling elite are both reactionary.

The advocates of Brexit base their strategy on calculations that the EU is in its death throes and that British imperialism must be freed from all constraints on its ability to exploit global markets. On this basis, the May government is cravenly seeking the endorsement of Trump, a Brexit supporter, while at the same time making concerted efforts to develop closer economic ties with China and India.

The Socialist Equality Party has insisted the Remain camp, representing the interests of the financial swindlers in the city of London, is solely concerned with access to the Single Market and is happily adopting wholesale the anti-immigration rhetoric of the Brexiteers, demanding restrictions on, or an end to, free movement of EU citizens to the UK. In their endorsement of the EU, they glorify the institution hated by millions of workers across the continent due to its continued imposition of austerity.

Millions of Australians living in recession

Mike Head

Economic growth has slowed sharply across Australia since the mining boom began to implode in 2011, in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis. However, the overall statistics hide the fact that growing numbers of people are living in areas of outright economic decline.

National gross domestic product (GDP) growth has averaged around 2.8 percent since 2011. Yet data released last week by SGS Economics and Planning, a consulting firm, show that in 2014-15, an estimated 6.6 million people—28 percent of the population—lived in a region where economic activity contracted. This figure had risen from 21 percent, or about 4.8 million people, in 2012.

People living in rural and regional areas hit hard by the mining collapse were most affected, but major urban working class populations were also living in recession, including in Sydney, the country’s biggest financial centre. This represents a devastating economic and social reversal.

Two thirds of the 6.6 million people were in the states of Queensland (3 million people) or Western Australia (1.1 million people) “where the mining bust hit the economy hard,” SGS’s Terry Rawnsley told a Sydney conference. But “of most surprise” was the 2 million people living in a recession-hit areas in New South Wales (NSW), whose capital is Sydney.

Rawnsley reported that between 2012 and 2015, the number of people in NSW who experienced at least one year in recession ranged between 1.6 million and 2.7 million people. He noted that record low interest rates had failed to halt the reversals.

These disparities underscore the ever-widening social inequality that is fuelling mounting discontent and political disaffection. Beneath the picture of economic growth painted by the media and political establishment, the conditions of life are worsening in working class suburbs and entire regions of the country.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull last month called for deep corporate tax cuts and other “hard” decisions that would “create winners and losers.” The SGS analysis points to the reality that the only “winners” are the financial and corporate elites. The “losers” are workers and young people, who already confront recession, accompanied by the ongoing destruction of jobs, the driving down of wages and conditions, and the devastation of essential social services.

Parts of Sydney are booming. The Ryde-Macquarie Park area, a corporate technology hub, grew by 5.8 percent in 2014-15. Four other relatively affluent Sydney regions—Northern Sydney, the inner city, the northern beaches and Baulkham Hills—each had growth rates of 4 percent or more.

By contrast, Sydney’s working class suburbs went backward or stagnated. Parramatta declined by 0.2 percent and Sydney South West by 0.1 percent, while Blacktown recorded 0 percent. These are areas where, despite fast growing populations, thousands of jobs have been wiped out in the manufacturing and retail sectors, including in auto and steel.

People in the industrial and mining-dependent cities to the north and south of Sydney also fared badly. Newcastle and Lake Macquarie contracted by 0.1 percent, the nearby Hunter Valley recorded 0 percent, and the Illawarra region, centred on Wollongong, grew by 0.1 percent after declining by 2.1 percent two years earlier. Thousands of steel and coal mining jobs have been eliminated in these areas.

In other parts of the country, some of the biggest reversals occurred in Geelong (-0.5 percent), an industrial city near Melbourne hit by auto and refinery closures, Brisbane South (-1.3 percent), where long-term high levels of unemployment have been compounded by mining-related losses, and Perth South East (-1.4 percent), where mining-related jobs have also been decimated.

Regional South Australia (-3.6 percent), where mining and steel jobs have been slashed, suffered the worst decline, followed by areas of Queensland. These included Ipswich (-1.6 percent), an outer Brisbane working class suburb, Townsville (-1.9 percent), where this year’s closure of the city’s nickel refinery has since added to the slump, and Toowoomba (-2 percent), a regional city affected by the mining crash.

In his presentation to a population conference, Rawnsley warned: “When we publish the 2016 economic growth data in early 2017, I expect an even worse result for regional areas across the country.”

Rawnsley also issued a political warning. “Beyond the economic and social issues that these long periods of stagnation can generate, there is increasingly a political dimension,” he said. “The Brexit result and election of President Trump was on the back on voters in communities who have not experienced the benefits of globalisation. We have seen the same process in Australia with strong support for One Nation in recession-hit parts of Queensland and Western Australia.”

In Australia, as in the US, Britain and continental Europe, the main beneficiaries of the seething hostility toward the traditional ruling parties that have imposed this social crisis, so far have been right-wing populists. Most prominent are the anti-immigrant One Nation party led by Pauline Hanson and the protectionist Nick Xenophon Team, headed by the senator of the same name.

During the campaign for the July 2 double dissolution election called by Turnbull, these formations targeted the areas mired in recession. By posing as anti-elite candidates, they cynically exploited the social misery and sought to divert the widespread anger in nationalist and xenophobic directions, blaming foreign workers, especially from China and the Middle East, for the mass unemployment and poverty created by the capitalist profit system itself.

Since the election, in which these demagogic parties and “independents” picked up 11 out of the 76 Senate seats, reducing Turnbull’s Liberal-National Coalition to 30 seats, they have been heavily promoted throughout the corporate media as major political figures, as if they genuinely represent impoverished working class and rural people. None of them has any solution to the mounting social problems facing working people.

As the parliamentary year ended last week, however, these parties propped up the crisis-wracked government, providing the votes it desperately needed to push through legislation that will only intensify the hardship being experienced by millions of people. This included about $20 billion in social spending cuts, more income tax cuts for the wealthy and the re-establishment of a policing agency with draconian powers [link to ABCC article] to suppress resistance by workers throughout the construction and related industries.

In the final parliamentary session for the year, both Turnbull and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, who heads the rural-based Nationals, were effusive in their praise for Hanson and Xenophon. Far from having any answer to the social crisis, these right-wing outfits fully support the underlying corporate profit system.

A new round of UN and US sanctions on North Korea

Peter Symonds

Under pressure from Washington and its allies, the UN Security Council imposed a new round of punitive sanctions on North Korea on Wednesday over its fifth nuclear test in September and a series of missile launches. Yesterday, the US, Japan and South Korea announced a further tightening of their own unilateral penalties on Pyongyang.

The new round of sanctions will not only raise tensions with North Korea, but also with China, which is its strategic ally and largest trading partner. The US administration is already threatening to take action against Chinese companies that fail to fully implement the UN sanctions.

North Korea is already one of the most diplomatically and economically isolated countries in the world. No formal peace treaty was signed to end the Korean War more than 60 years ago, and so the US never established diplomatic relations with North Korea and has maintained an economic embargo.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Washington’s unstated aim has been to engineer the economic and political collapse of the Stalinist regime in Pyongyang. Incapable of making any appeal to the international working class, the North Korean regime has responded with bellicose threats and a nuclear program that have only heightened the danger of a new war.

The latest UN sanctions are aimed at further crippling the North Korean economy by cutting its exports of minerals. The most significant measure is to limit the country’s annual export of coal—its largest export item—to 7.5 million tonnes or $400 million in sales. The resolution also blocks the export of North Korean zinc, nickel, silver and copper and places restrictions on the number of staff at North Korean foreign missions and their bank accounts.

Altogether, it is estimated that the new economic penalties will further reduce North Korea’s foreign exchange earnings by $800 million. If fully implemented, that figure represents a large inroad into the country’s export income. In 2015, North Korean exports brought in about $3 billion in total.

Lacking any significant trade with North Korea, the additional sanctions imposed by the United States, Japan and South Korea are targeted at individuals and corporations.

Washington added seven people and 16 entities to its blacklist, including Air Koryo, North Korea’s national airline. Tokyo banned Japanese ships that have stopped in North Korean ports from entering Japan and expanded its list to 58 of people who are blocked from reentering Japan after visiting North Korea. Seoul has expanded its blacklist by 36 individuals and 34 North Korean companies.

More significantly, the Obama administration is threatening to take action against China if it breaches the sanctions imposed on North Korea. In comments to Reuters, Danny Russel, US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said that the US would inform Beijing of any Chinese companies violating the UN resolution and expect it to act.

“If the Chinese decline or fail to act, then we’ve made absolutely clear, not only that we reserve the right to take action on a national basis under our authorities but that we will have no choice but to do so,” Russel said. Reuters reported that measures under consideration including sanctions against Chinese steel companies allegedly using North Korean coal or penalties against Chinese banks being used by North Koreans.

Russel’s remarks follow a series of warnings to China by US officials to strictly implement sanctions. US National Security Adviser Susan Rice and Secretary of State John Kerry stressed the need to choke off financial flows to Pyongyang during a meeting with Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi in New York on November 1.

An unnamed American official bluntly told Reuters: “If we are serious about leaning on the North, we have to go after the economy generally. As it turns out, the Chinese tolerance for North Korea misbehavior is higher than ours and that gap is not sustainable.”

The comment underscores that fact that Washington has exploited the “North Korean threat” to put Beijing under pressure and to justify its military build-up in North East Asia. As part of its “pivot to Asia” against Beijing over past five years, the Obama administration has greatly expanded its anti-ballistic missile systems that are primarily directed toward fighting a nuclear war with China.

The Chinese government has been engaged in a balancing act—attempting to force North Korea to end its nuclear programs that threaten to trigger a nuclear arms race in East Asia, while trying to ensure the Pyongyang regime does not collapse. A political implosion could allow the US and South Korea to exploit the crisis to install a pro-US regime in North Korea, on China’s northern border.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said this week China has always enforced UN resolutions and would do so with the new one on North Korea. He noted that the resolution referred to the need to “avoid creating adverse consequences for North Korean civilian and humanitarian needs,” adding that the new measures were “not intended to create negative effects on normal trade.”

Geng reiterated China’s call for a return to talks on North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. He also repeated Beijing’s opposition to US plans to place a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) installation in South Korea—a sophisticated anti-ballistic missile system.

The Obama administration has reportedly advised President-elect Donald Trump to make dealing with North Korea the number one foreign policy for his administration. Trump has yet to elaborate a coherent stance towards Pyongyang, but his erratic comments, right-wing militarist orientation and threats of trade war measures against China will almost certainly further inflame a highly volatile situation.

Another indication of Trump’s determination to take a belligerent attitude to China emerged yesterday when the Financial Times reported that the president-elect had spoken by phone with Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen. The call was the first by an American president to his Taiwanese counterpart since formal diplomatic relations were severed in 1979.

The conversation calls into question Washington’s adherence to the “One China” policy adopted in 1972 which acknowledges the government in Beijing as the sole legitimate ruler of all China, including Taiwan. Trump’s action will provoke an angry reaction and possibly retaliation by Beijing.

Vote no on the Italian constitutional referendum!

The International Committee of the Fourth International calls for a “no” vote in tomorrow's referendum in Italy on the constitutional amendments proposed by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. The referendum would give the prime minister virtually unchecked powers to impose his party's agenda on the legislature, in a step towards authoritarian rule.

The referendum is unequivocally reactionary. The Senate would be transformed into an unelected body selected by regional officials and deprived of its vote on many government affairs—in particular, of its ability to bring down a prime minister with a no-confidence vote. The referendum's “Italicum” measure would give a bonus to whatever party wins the most seats in the Chamber of Deputies, automatically handing it a 54 percent majority. It could then name a prime minister who would rule without any effective opposition from the legislature.

The referendum is supported by the European Union (EU), the banks, and Renzi's Democratic Party (PD). Last week, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told La Stampa, “I would like to see 'Yes' win,” because Renzi was carrying out the “right reforms.”

Their calculations were laid out, three years before Renzi proposed the referendum, in a JPMorgan Chase briefing lamenting the “deep-seated political problems” of southern European regimes, like that set up in Italy after World War II and the fall of the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini.

It stated, “The political systems in the periphery were established in the aftermath of dictatorship, and were defined by that experience... Political systems around the periphery typically display several of the following features: weak executives; weak central states relative to regions; constitutional protection of labour rights; consensus-building systems which foster political clientelism; and the right to protest if unwelcome changes are made to the political status quo. The shortcomings of this political legacy have been revealed by the crisis.”

It is not difficult to see why Renzi has now proposed this referendum with the full support of Europe's ruling elite.

Europe is mired in economic slump, and Italian banks face hundreds of billions of bad debts, after nearly a decade of deep austerity measures have discredited its political system. A wave of corporate bankruptcies and social cuts is being prepared that will provoke explosive social anger among the workers. Renzi's referendum is intended to allow the PD to act ruthlessly against working class opposition to the demands of the banks and major corporations.

The ICFI's opposition to Renzi's referendum does not lessen our irreconcilable opposition to the groups across the political spectrum in Italy issuing nationalist calls for a “no” vote. These include the Italian right, such as the remnants of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, the far-right Northern League, and the fascistic Fratelli d'Italia organization. They have long demanded authoritarian measures like Renzi's amendments, but see a PD defeat tomorrow as a chance to regain power.

The Five-Star Movement (M5S) of Beppe Grillo has issued increasingly xenophobic and populist attacks against the EU, denouncing Renzi as a “wounded sow.” However, the M5S itself proposes to negotiate a settlement with the EU, based on a renegotiation of EU treaties and a referendum on Italy's exit from the euro currency.

Much of the PD's periphery is calling for a “no” vote. This includes the CGIL (General Confederation of Italian Labor) and FIOM (Italian Metalworkers Union) unions, the Italian Left composed of PD breakaways, and groups like Rifondazione Comunista—the main other tendency that emerged, besides the PD, from the break-up of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) after the Soviet bureaucracy restored capitalism in the USSR in 1991.

These groups have worked closely with the PD for decades and in Rifondazione's case, entered into government with the PD in 2006-2007 to vote pension cuts and credits for the Afghan war. They support the EU and offer no way forward for workers and youth seeking to oppose the policies of Renzi and of international finance capital.

They accommodated themselves to the capitalist state system created after World War II, based on the PCI's support for the Italian bourgeoisie and the Allied imperialist powers after the fall of Mussolini. The Stalinist PCI blocked a social revolution after World War II, betraying struggles of the working class in the Resistance. Now, a party descended from the PCI, that supported capitalist restoration in the USSR and is staffed with right-wing functionaries like Renzi, a former Christian democrat, aims to tear up what remains of the concessions granted in that period.

The critical task is to define a politically independent perspective for the working class on the issues raised by Renzi's referendum.

Whatever the outcome of the vote, the referendum will intensify the convulsive crisis engulfing the ruling classes internationally, which has been accelerated by the election of Donald Trump as US president. A “yes” vote would pave the way for intensified attacks on the social rights of the working class. Renzi has indicated that he may resign if the “no” vote carries, possibly bringing to power an anti-EU government including Grillo's M5S.

What is emerging everywhere is the conflict between the nation-state system and world economy, amid the escalating break-down of the institutions of the post-World War II order—and in Europe, the EU. After Britain voted in June to leave the EU, there is a strong possibility that an anti-EU regime could emerge in Italy, directly threatening the break-up of the EU and the euro.

Tomorrow, Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) presidential candidate Norbert Hofer could also become Western Europe's first far-right head of state, laying the groundwork for a possible chancellorship of FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache.

The ICFI opposes the referendum from the standpoint of an independent political mobilization of the working class on a European and international scale. Workers and youth in Italy opposed to Renzi's referendum face a common enemy with workers in every country across Europe: a capitalist class whose agenda of deep austerity, militarism and war drives it ever more rapidly to dictatorship.

There is deep and explosive opposition among workers and youth in Italy and across Europe. This opposition, however, must be unified and mobilized in struggle based on a clear political and historical perspective. Rifondazione and its allies have proved to be bourgeois parties and a dead end for workers.

The ICFI advances itself as the new political leadership that must be built, fighting to win workers to the perspective that, as the ruling elites turn to dictatorial forms of rule, the only viable response for the working class is international revolutionary struggle. Faced with the discrediting of European capitalism and the breakdown of its political institutions, the ICFI advances the perspective of the overthrow of the EU and its replacement by the United Socialist States of Europe.

Joint statement of the Socialist Equality Party (Britain), Parti de l'égalité Socialiste (France) and Partei für Soziale Gleichheit (Germany)

Poverty is Not Only an Ignored Word

Cesar Chelala

If we have learned anything from this last presidential election is that poverty continues to be an ignored word in the United States political landscape. Although politicians avoid using the word like an unarmed man avoids a poisonous snake, poverty is an integral part of the U.S. social and political landscape, and will not go away just by ignoring it.

Poverty is a multifaceted concept that includes social, economic, health and political elements. Poverty is generally classified into two types: 1) Absolute, which is synonymous with destitution and includes people who cannot obtain adequate resources to support a minimum level of physical health, and 2) Relative, which occurs when people do not enjoy the minimum standard of living as determined by the government. Relative poverty varies from country to country, and in some cases within the same country.

A more practical definition is that poverty is a state of deprivation in which people lack the usual or acceptable amount of money or material possessions to live with dignity. In 2015, using this concept, 43.1 million Americans (13.5% of the population) lived in poverty. Although children are 23.1 percent of the total population, they constitute 33.3 percent of the poor population. A 2013 UNICEF report stated that the U.S. had the second highest relative child poverty rate in the developed world.

A concept related to poverty is food security, since the former influences the latter. In a food secure household its members have access at all times to enough food for an active and healthy life. In 2013, when child poverty levels were record high, 16.7 million children were living in food insecure households, unable to access the nutritious necessary for a healthy life.

A 2016 study by the Urban Institute, a Washington D.C. research organization that analyzes how people and communities will be affected by policy reforms, states that teenagers in low income communities are frequently forced to join gangs, sell drugs or exchange sexual favors because they cannot afford to buy food.

Homelessness aggravates the problems associated with lack of food. According to a 2014 report by the National Center on Family Homelessness, the number of homeless children in the U.S. has reached record levels, with 2.5 million children -one child in every 30- experiencing homelessness in 2013. Lack of affordable housing and domestic violence are among its main causes.

According to recent census estimates, half of the U.S. population qualifies as poor or low income, while one in five Millennials are living in poverty. According to The Routledge Handbook of Poverty in the United States, new and extreme forms of poverty have appeared in the U.S. as a result of neoliberal structural adjustment and globalization policies.

In June 2016, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned the U.S. that it needs to address its high poverty rates by raising the minimum wage and offering paid maternity leave to women to encourage them to enter the labor force.

Poverty hinders children’s access to quality education. Because the U.S. education system is funded by local communities, the quality of education is frequently a reflection of the affluence of the community. A poorer education thus tends to perpetuate inequality. In addition, females in poverty are likely to become pregnant at younger ages and with fewer resources to care for a child, they frequently drop out of school.

Poverty is not only an ignored word by U.S. politicians but a widespread and nefarious phenomenon in the country. Unless it is solved we cannot speak of a just society, equal in possibilities to all. Now is the time to remember Franklin D. Roosevelt’s words: “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

Suu Kyi defends military crackdown on Burma's Rohingya Muslims

John Roberts

Aung San Suu Kyi, the head of government in Burma, has dismissed mounting allegations of killings by the country’s military of Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state, bordering Bangladesh.

State Counsellor Suu Kyi’s office issued a statement on November 19 declaring: “Regarding those incidents, after asking the Tatmadaw [the military] and border guard troops in those regions, it is known the information is absolutely not true.”

At every point, Suu Kyi and her government, in which the military hold the key ministries of defence, home affairs and border affairs, have attempted to downplay the size of the military’s current operation and its impact on the local population.

The military initiated a crackdown in northern Rakhine state after attacks on three border posts killed nine police and soldiers on October 9. The army command blamed Rohingya militants connected to the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation, a loose grouping widely thought to have been defunct since at least 2001.

Aid groups and the media have been largely excluded from the “operational area” declared by the military around the town of Maungdaw, where it says “clearance operations” are being conducted. A brief tour of Maungdaw on November 2 by foreign diplomats and a UN official was described by Time as “highly chaperoned.”

The editor of the English-language Myanmar Times, Fiona MacGregor, was sacked after she wrote an October 27 article on allegations of widespread rape of Rohingya women. She said the management claimed her article breached company policy by damaging “national reconciliation.”

An article “A Genocide in the Making” published yesterday by the Foreign Policy web site stated: “A recent escalation in the latest violence has raised the official death toll since the October crackdown to 134, although Rohingya advocacy groups put it at more than 420. Despite Bangladesh’s refusal to take refugees, several hundred are believed to have fled to camps there. A number who crossed the Naf River separating the two countries in the middle of November were gunned down mid-river. While a number of security personnel have been killed in skirmishes, the overwhelming majority of deaths have been Rohingya.”

The UN has reported that some 30,000 people have been displaced in Rakhine state since October, adding to the more than 100,000 already living in squalid, heavily-guarded internment camps for those displaced in the anti-Rohingya pogroms that began in 2012.

For decades, the military and Buddhist nationalist groups have terrorised and denied the Rohingya the most basic democratic rights—many are deemed second-class citizens or denied citizenship altogether. All are officially regarded as “illegal immigrants” from Bangladesh despite many having lived in Burma for generations.

Like the rest of the political establishment, Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) is mired in anti-Rohingya chauvinism and opposed to the granting of citizenship and other basic democratic rights. In May 2016, Suu Kyi asked the US ambassador to Burma to refrain from using the word “Rohingya” as it implied recognition of an ethnic and religious group.

Despite media restrictions, there is growing evidence of military atrocities in the north of Rakhine state. The US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has issued two reports based on satellite surveillance images that indicate the extent of the army’s “clearance” operations. On November 21, its second report found that a total of 1,250 buildings had been destroyed in five villages by arson.

The HRW evidence has been reinforced by other reports.

Time on November 14 said the army had responded with helicopter gunships when it claimed it was confronted by 500 Rohingya in the village of Gwason armed with “small guns, knives and spears.” The BBC reported at least 25 suspects were killed there on November 13.

A Rohingya man named Salaman told Agence France Presse that he helped bury the bodies of a man and a woman who were shot by soldiers in the village of Doetan. “Soldiers came in to Doetan village in the evening of [November 19] about 5pm. Most of the men from the village ran away because they are afraid of being arrested and tortured. Then they [the soldiers] started shooting and two were killed.”

Presidential spokesman Zaw Htay downplayed the satellite imagery and flatly rejected reports of the two deaths in Doetan. He provided no evidence, insisting only that the government and military have “strongly prohibited any human rights violations, especially against women and children.”

Chris Lewa, an activist with the Arakan Project, told the Voice of America the military operation was creating great hardships. “It’s very brutal and the issue [in] that area is access to displaced people and even non-displaced. And it’s not only the poor, it’s everyone because they can’t access markets and they cannot harvest—this is going to lead to a humanitarian disaster.”

The brutal treatment of the Rohingya has provoked protests in neighbouring countries. The Nikkei Asian Review reported that 400 people gathered last Friday outside the Burmese Embassy in Jakarta, and on Saturday several thousand marched through the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka demanding an end to the killing of Rohingya.

Suu Kyi was denounced as a “butcher” according to the report. There were also demonstrations in Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. The Malaysian government called in the Burmese ambassador to issue a warning and express its “concern” over the situation in Rakhine.

At a closed meeting of the UN Security Council on November 17, US Ambassador Samantha Power expressed concern over the situation in the Rakhine and called for international observers to be allowed into the area. No credibility should be given to such statements as Washington routinely uses “human rights” as a means for pursuing its interests around the world through diplomatic and military interventions.

For decades, the US and its allies have promoted the pro-Western Suu Kyi as Burma’s “democracy icon” and backed her installation in power in April in a de facto coalition with the military. In reality, the military still controls the reins of power, with Suu Kyi acting as its promoter as the regime seeks investment and aid internationally.

By keeping the spotlight on the atrocities in Rakhine, Washington no doubt is seeking to marginalise the Burmese military, consolidate the position of Suu Kyu and the NLD, and further draw Burma into its network of alliances and strategic partnerships in Asia aimed against China.

The fate of the Rohingya people, and the fact that Suu Kyi backs the military’s repression, is of no concern to Washington.

Australia’s ABCC Bill: A far-reaching assault on workers’ rights

Mike Head

After trying for three years, the Liberal-National Coalition government this week finally secured the passage of the draconian Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) Bill, following a complex series of last-minute deals with various Senate “crossbenchers.”

The ABCC legislation is the second of the two industrial relations bills that the government used as a trigger for the July 2 double dissolution election of all members of both houses of parliament.

The central purpose of the ABCC bill is to outlaw and suppress all strikes, stoppages and work bans by workers throughout the construction, transport and offshore oil and gas industries, as well as solidarity action via picket lines involving other workers and supporters.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull declared the bill “a vital element in our national economic plan.” The peak employer body, the Master Builders Association, claimed its passage was a victory against “bullying” on construction sites. Media commentators spoke of ending “union thuggery” in the building industry.

In reality, the target is not the trade unions, which have secured mutually-beneficial enterprise bargaining agreements (EBAs) with many major companies to enforce their requirements for ever-higher rates of productivity and profit, but workers in a wide range of construction-related industries.

Formally titled the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013, the ABCC Bill was first introduced by Turnbull’s ousted predecessor Tony Abbott after the 2013 federal election. As far as the corporate elite was concerned, it was supposed to be the first instalment of a stepped-up offensive against workers’ jobs, wages and conditions, starting with building workers.

The bill reinstates and expands the coverage and powers of the ABCC, which was first established by the previous Howard Coalition in 2005, with extraordinary coercive powers and punitive measures, including heavy fines on construction workers for taking “unlawful” industrial action.

The Rudd and Gillard Labor governments, which took office in 2007, retained the ABCC until 2012, and used it to attack workers taking industrial action on major construction projects, including Woodside Petroleum’s liquefied natural gas plants in Western Australia and the West Gate Bridge upgrade in Melbourne. In each case, the trade unions isolated the disputes and sought to prevent any political and industrial movement against the Labor government.

Labor then replaced the ABCC with a Fair Work Building Industry Inspectorate, with similar but slightly modified powers. It was intended to work more closely with the unions, particularly the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), which covers most construction-related workers, to curtail resistance by workers.

For the past three years, the Coalition government has employed Labor’s inspectorate to harass, intimidate and prosecute building workers. The agency’s 2015–16 annual report boasts of a 30 percent increase to $1.8 million in penalties imposed on unions and workers, 34 legal proceedings and 17 compulsory interrogations—a 21 percent rise.

With the passage of the ABCC Bill, this punitive assault on construction workers will be ramped up. First, penalties for unlawful industrial action or supposed coercion have tripled to $36,000 for individual workers and $180,000 for trade unions.

What is “unlawful” will remain determined by the Fair Work Act, first introduced by the previous Labor government with the support of the unions. It prohibits all industrial action outside narrow “enterprise bargaining periods”—usually only once in three or four years—policed by the unions.

Second, these penalties have been extended to any other workers, or family members or supporters, who join pickets or blockades seeking to support any struggle to defend construction workers’ conditions.

Third, the agency’s powers have been expanded beyond building sites to also cover workers involved in off-site prefabrication of building parts, the transporting or supplying of goods for building work, and offshore oil and gas platforms. This scope also can be extended by ministerial regulations.

Fourth, the ABCC has a range of new powers, including to prosecute workers and unions even after they have settled or abandoned a dispute with an employer, and to pursue legal costs and uncapped compensation—potentially millions of dollars—for damage allegedly suffered by a company. Employers can also now apply for court injunctions to stop industrial action or picketing.

These provisions all provide greater scope for the use of the ABCC’s police state-style coercive powers. It can compel workers or other witnesses to answer questions, hand over documents, provide information or testify in secret hearings. Anyone who refuses to comply can be jailed for up to six months. These powers overturn fundamental rights, such as to remain silent and not to self-incriminate.

To gain the vote of one “crossbench” senator, the government agreed to retain the current fig leaf of scrutiny, introduced by Labor, of requiring an Administrative Appeals Tribunal member to approve the use of these powers. This deal also reversed the bill’s onus of proof on workers to prove that any industrial action was taken lawfully. However, workers still bear an “evidential burden”—they must produce evidence of their “justification” for taking action.

Finally, the industry code issued by the government under the bill will ban a host of clauses in enterprise agreements, including any that limit casualisation, excessive overtime or retrenchments, thus opening the way for unfettered sackings and replacement of workers by casual or body-hire labour. Companies that agree to such clauses also will be barred from tendering for federal government-funded infrastructure projects

As a result of a split among the employers, this code will not commence for two years. Two major companies, Lendlease and ProBuild, joined the CFMEU in a lobbying push for this delay. Together with an estimated 1,500 other companies, they have signed agreements with the CFMEU since 2014 that contain such clauses, in return for the union suppressing workers’ discontent. Some agreements provide for employer-paid union delegates, whose essential function is to police the deals.

The final horse-trading on the ABCC Bill this week highlighted the promotion of reactionary nationalism and protectionism, under the guise of defending jobs and conditions.

In return for voting for the bill, Senator Nick Xenophon secured an agreement from the government on new procurement rules to require suppliers bidding for government projects worth more than $4 million to use Australian-produced materials and hire local workers.

Above all, these measures are directed against imports of Chinese-made steel, in line with campaigns by the trade unions and the Labor Party to blame Chinese workers—tens of thousands of whom are also losing their jobs—for the corporate destruction of steelworkers’ jobs in Australia. The Labor Party immediately congratulated Xenophon and the government for striking the deal.

Likewise, Labor Senator Doug Cameron, an ex-union leader, successfully moved an amendment to the bill’s industry code, requiring employers to employ Australian residents wherever possible, not overseas workers. This is part of a reactionary campaign by Labor and the unions to bar or expel foreign workers who entered the country on temporary work visas.

UK Independence Party selects new leader as post-Brexit crisis deepens

Julie Hyland 

The UK Independence Party (UKIP) finally elected a new leader this week, after two ballots in as many months.

Paul Nuttall, a former history lecturer and Member of the European Parliament, won 62.6 percent of the vote. Despite having been deputy party leader for six years, he is a virtual unknown as the UKIP brand has been synonymous with former City trader, Nigel Farage.

Parodying US President-elect Donald Trump, Nuttall pledged to “put the great back into Britain” and to turn UKIP into an “electoral force”—largely at the expense of the Labour Party.

In reality, Farage’s departure as party leader after the successful campaign for Britain’s exit from the European Union (EU) in the June referendum has left UKIP rudderless. Nuttall’s own victory was largely due to his being the last one standing.

Diane James, MEP for South East England, had been elected as UKIP leader on September 19. Her landslide victory came after she won the backing of Farage and Arron Banks, UKIP’s multimillionaire donor. They backed James as a safe pair of hands after their preferred candidate, Steven Woolfe, was barred from standing in the contest on a technicality.

Woolfe’s barring was indicative of deep tensions and factional rivalry within the organisation. James stood down after just 18 days in the job, on October 5, saying that she could not exert her authority over the party. The following day, Woolfe was hospitalised after a reported altercation with a fellow UKIP MEP, after a party meeting in the European parliament in Strasbourg.

Woolfe collapsed during a vote in the meeting, hours after he had allegedly been involved in a confrontation with Mike Hookem. The altercation came after Woolfe reportedly said he had considered defecting to the Conservative Party, before deciding to run in the UKIP leadership contest. Woolfe subsequently resigned from UKIP, as did James. Both now sit as Independents in the European Parliament.

James’ resignation meant that Farage had to act as interim leader while the second leadership race that ended with Nuttall’s victory took place.

Like many of UKIP’s leading spokesperson, Nuttall hails originally from the Conservative Party. His opposition to Brussels is combined with eulogies to unrestrained capitalism, and calls for a war against “cultural Marxists.” A staunch Catholic, he is anti-abortion and supports a referendum on the return of the death penalty. Nuttall has praised moves to privatise the National Health Service, telling Sky News that it “is a monolithic hangover from days gone by and unfortunately or fortunately shall I say, we are becoming an older population and quite frankly I would like to see more free market introduced into the health service.”

Nuttall, who is from Liverpool, claims that UKIP will champion “working class people.” Douglas Carswell, another Tory defector and UKIP’s only Westminster MP, claimed UKIP would lead an “anti-oligarch insurgency” as “heirs to the Levellers” in the English civil war.

But neither Nuttall nor his party offer any social policies that will alleviate the massive decline in living standards among working people after eight years of austerity, and nothing whatsoever for the youth. Nuttall’s promotion of anti-immigrant and law and order rhetoric is a right-wing populist veneer for the defence of the interests of British capital against the working class.

Carswell claims that the key feature of the 21st century is the degree to which technology has fundamentally transformed “the relationship between the governed and the governing.”

The “coming of broadband and digital communication” has led to the “emergence of a new class of citizen-consumer,” he claims. Just as Netflix and Amazon have made “self-selection a cultural norm,” so public services must be re-ordered accordingly.

Such a policy translates into the final dismantling of universal social provision and handover to the private sector and cannot mobilise significant support. That is why Nuttall made clear that the central plank of UKIP’s campaign over the immediate period would be the demand for Britain’s immediate exit from the EU, combined with anti-Muslim propaganda and the whipping up of “English patriotism.”

Gerard Batten MEP has been appointed UKIP spokesman on Brexit (British Exit from the EU). He attacked Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May as someone who had supported a Remain vote in the referendum and who “cannot be trusted to deliver our withdrawal from the EU.” UKIP was opposed to triggering Article 50, which begins the two-year process of negotiations with the EU over Britain’s terms of exit, he said. Instead, Parliament should repeal the European Communities Act (1972) in order to “restore law-making supremacy to the UK Parliament and put the British Government in the driving seat of negotiations not the EU.”

Behind the demagogy, UKIP is in deep crisis. In addition to divisions within the organisation, party donations have crashed. Between July and September, UKIP raised just £43,000, less than the extreme-right British National Party, which has no parliamentary representation. UKIP claims that this is because many donors concentrated on funding the Leave campaign in the EU referendum. But the party has reportedly lost 14,000 members in the past year and a half, as the Tories have adopted its political agenda wholesale.

In addition, the UKIP-controlled Alliance for Direct Democracy in Europe—a group in the European Parliament—has been accused of misspending more than half a million euros (£427,000) of taxpayers’ money by financing Farage’s attempt to win a Westminster seat in the 2015 General Election and the anti-EU referendum campaign. The Alliance has been asked to return €172,655, and will miss out on €248,345 in grants as a result, deepening UKIP’s financial crisis.

Most importantly, Arron Banks has threatened to walk away from UKIP. He was part of the welcoming party, led by Farage, which travelled to New York to congratulate Trump immediately on his becoming president-elect. The insurance tycoon subsequently said he was planning to fund 200 candidates to “drain the swamp” of careerists and corruption in Parliament. He told the Times that the plan was to draw up an “undesirability” rating to target sitting MPs. “It would be highly amusing to tease career politicians with a hot poker,” he said.

UKIP’s crisis is in sharp contrast to Farage’s personal fortunes. Trump’s suggestion that he would make the “ideal” UK ambassador to Washington drew outrage from the government. It was regarded as an unprecedented intrusion into British political life and a barely disguised demand for the sacking of the current ambassador, Sir Kim Darroch.

Farage continues to insist that he would be able to negotiate a better UK-US trade deal under a Trump presidency, with his backers accusing the May government of “arrogance” and mendacity in blocking him for the job.

Last week, Farage was afforded a champagne-fuelled party in his honour at the luxurious Ritz hotel in London. Those attending included Banks and the billionaire Barclay brothers, Sir David and Sir Fredrick, owners of the Ritz and the Telegraph newspaper. Lord Ashcroft—former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party and billionaire tax exile—helped bankroll the event, along with property entrepreneur and co-founder of Leave EU, Richard Tice, and Lord Pearson, former Tory turned one-time UKIP leader.

Farage told the gathering that he suspected “the Conservative party is not fit for the legacy of Brexit. I suspect there is going to be a genuine realignment of British politics over the course of the next three or four years. ... There are great battles to be fought and I’m going to go on fighting those battles.”

The former UKIP leader is planning another visit to Washington next month to meet with the “transition team” who are preparing for Trump’s move to the White House in January. The Express reported that he has also lined up 20 speaking events in the US for the next year, “which could see him rake in a fortune.” A friend of Farage was cited by the newspaper, stating, “It is churlish to say he isn’t rich because compared to other people he would consider himself well off, but this is his new life, this is what he is going to do going forward.”

US Navy punishes family that revealed Flint water poisoning

Zac Corrigan

Since the time her four children started losing their hair and breaking out in rashes in late 2014, LeeAnne Walters has played a central role in exposing the systematic poisoning of the water supply in Flint, Michigan. This week, Walters has publicly revealed for the first time that her husband, a 17-year veteran in the US Navy, has endured months of daily humiliation, threats, and punishment at work in an effort to silence her.

“It has been heart wrenching to watch them try to destroy my husband on a daily basis,” LeeAnne told the WSWS. “Never in a million years did I think we’d be fighting the Navy for our livelihoods after fighting for our lives in Flint.”

Citing the Whistleblower Protection Act, Dennis Walters requested permission, on November 22, to apply for a transfer from his workplace at Naval Base Norfolk, in Virginia, where the continuous mistreatment has been meted out.

In April 2014, as part of a complex and far-reaching plan to monetize the assets of both Detroit and Flint, Democratic and Republican party officials and regulatory bodies—at the city, and state and federal levels—conspired to switch Flint’s water source from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to the notoriously polluted Flint River.

After decades of flaunting regulations by General Motors (GM) and other corporations, the river water is so corrosive that after the switch, it damaged parts produced in GM’s Flint Engine Plant. The untreated corrosive water piped through the entire city’s water infrastructure for another year after GM returned to the Detroit-supplied source of treated water caused toxic amounts of lead to be leeched into the homes of 100,000 Flint residents, resulting in a massive public health crisis that continues to this day.

LeeAnne and Dennis Walters played a pivotal role in revealing to the world the scale and scope of the poisoning by initiating independent testing of the city’s water. Even though the Walters family had to move from Flint to Virginia after Dennis was stationed there in late 2015, LeeAnne continued to travel to her home in Flint each month. She often drives with a team of volunteers to oversee the testing of hundreds of homes in Flint for lead and chlorine levels in residents’ tap water.

She also monitors the efforts of both state and federal officials to bring the water supply into legal compliance. Close to three years after the switch to the Flint River, and 14 months after the order to return to Flint’s original source, the water is still too toxic for drinking, cooking, brushing one’s teeth, and many residents still complain of hair, skin and lung ailments when bathing in it.

LeeAnne testified, with Dennis at her side, at a hearing before Michigan state legislators in March, 2016, presenting a detailed chronology of events in Flint leading to the uncovering of the toxic nature of the water. “That’s when things took a turn for the worse,” LeeAnne recalls. The Navy, she said, “basically put a gag order on Dennis. The Master Chief told him he couldn’t be involved in Flint or talk to the media, because it was ‘too political.’ We have it in writing—they said it had the potential to demean and discredit the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency], even though the EPA was funding our testing!”

“Dennis adhered to this,” says LeeAnne, but the Navy wanted to silence her, as well. “They told him that he needed to ‘get me under control,’” she said, explaining that Dennis’ superiors began to demean and humiliate him on a daily basis. “Because I live in Flint for two weeks out of each month, to do the testing, they were saying to him, ‘What kind of mother would leave her family like that? Her role as a military wife is to support you, not to be a crusader.’ They even told him that it wouldn’t be long before I left him for some celebrity or millionaire,” that she would supposedly meet through her work in Flint.

LeeAnne said Dennis endured this while being made to work 12 hours a day, six days a week, in unusual shifts which required him to sleep on his office floor. “They told him that [my own work in] Flint seemed to be a problem, that it was keeping him from focusing on work. They even ordered my husband to do ‘voluntary’ therapy for seven sessions, otherwise they would involuntarily lock him up in a psych ward at a mental hospital for eight days. That would ruin his career,” she said. “They told him they would force him into a ‘hardship discharge,’ which would make him lose his retirement benefits.”

She added, “Eventually, I called the ombudsman, but that only made things worse.” Dennis was repeatedly denied leave, denied opportunities to receive training which could advance his career, and stripped of qualifications that allowed him to perform job duties like teaching classes or being a line coach on the gun range, she said.

In May, Dr. Marc Edwards, the scientist from Virginia Tech who tested the Walters water in Flint, tested the water in the family’s military housing in Virginia. The results showed that its lead level was at 16.6 parts per billion. Like the water in Flint, this was above “action level” set by the EPA. LeeAnne says that when she reported the results to the Navy, instead of addressing the problem, the punitive conditions against Dennis were once again escalated. He was charged with “failure to report” for duty, a serious offense that can result in jail time. “But when he asked for time off to find a lawyer in July, the charge was magically dropped,” LeeAnne said.

These revelations underscore the conspiratorial nature of the Flint water poisoning and its coverup. Involved are not only private financial interests, but the City of Flint, the State of Michigan, the Federal government, and, as has now been revealed, even the US military, which has a long history of using such intimidation—and much worse—against whistleblowers.

There are of course the contemporary cases of Manning, Assange, and Snowden.

It isn’t just military and intelligence whistleblowers that are attacked by government bodies. The 2001–2005 lead-in-water crisis in Washington DC was prolonged for years because high-placed health officials fired several whistleblowers in the department who tried to make the danger public. It was the independent intervention of Edwards that eventually revealed the source of the lead contamination and forced local and federal agencies to finally address the problem.

Regarding the campaign against her family, LeeAnne said: “I want to help people in Flint. That’s my passion. It’s my community. But there’s only so much of me, and in a way [the Navy] has diverted some of my attention from what I’m trying to accomplish in Flint. But as far as getting me to stop, I’m not going to bow down to bullies.

“This is why people don’t whistleblow, because this is what happens. My biggest fear is that others will have to go through what we’ve gone through.”

Moscow in secret talks with Syrian “rebels”

Bill Van Auken

Syrian “rebel” groups backed by the US, Turkey and other Western powers have entered into talks with Russia on brokering an end to the fighting in Aleppo, which was Syria’s largest city and commercial capital before being devastated in the US-orchestrated war for regime change against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The talks in Ankara, first reported by the Financial Times of London, were reportedly brokered by the Turkish government and convened in the context of the increasingly decisive rout of the Islamist militias that have controlled parts of eastern Aleppo for the past four years and threatened to overrun the entire city as recently as last year.

Since last weekend, Syrian government troops, backed by Lebanese Hezbollah fighters and Shia militias from Iraq, have retaken some 40 percent of the territory previously occupied by the Islamists, whose strongest contingent is the group known as the Al Nusra Front, which served as Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate.

Tens of thousands of civilians have poured out of the eastern section of the city, seeking refuge from both intense bombardment by Syrian government warplanes and the terror exercised by Al Nusra and similar jihadist groups. While the Western powers claimed that there were 250,000 civilians trapped in the “rebel”-held area, based on the inflated claims made in relation to other areas retaken from the Islamists, many believe that only a fraction of this number had resided in the eastern zone.

According to the Financial Times, “While the secret talks are not the first time a rebel representative has met with the Russians, those familiar with the talks said it was the first time such a large number of opposition groups were involved.”

The FT article highlighted the implications of the talks in terms of the sidelining of Washington and the increasingly evident debacle confronting the more than five-year-old US operation directed at arming, training and paying militias for the purpose of overthrowing Assad.

“The Russians and Turks are talking without the US now. It [Washington] is completely shut out of these talks, and doesn’t even know what’s going on in Ankara,” one unnamed opposition figure told the British daily.

Another opposition representative, asked why Moscow was attempting to reach a deal with the so-called rebels at this juncture, said that the Russian government was “essentially saying: ‘Screw you Americans.’”

The more likely motivation is the desire of the government of President Vladimir Putin to use ties with the armed opposition as a bargaining chip in its dealings with both Washington and the Assad government itself under conditions in which Russia’s intervention on the side of Damascus, which began 14 months ago, has apparently produced a decisive turning of the tide in the Syrian war.

The talks are indicative of closer relations between Ankara and Moscow, even as conflicting agendas in Syria and the wider region have led to intermittent frictions. Turkey sought a rapprochement with Russia earlier this year to break the tension caused by a November 2015 Turkish ambush and shooting down of a Russian warplane operating against Islamist militias in Syria near the Turkish border. Relations grew closer in the aftermath of the abortive July 15 military coup, which was widely blamed on the US.

Turkey’s own intervention into Syria, Operation Euphrates Shield, has been carried out with the tacit complicity of Russia, which controls much of Syrian airspace, even as the Assad government has denounced the Turkish incursion.

Tensions boiled to the surface after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made a statement Tuesday declaring that Turkey had sent its military into Syria “to bring justice.” It added, “We are there to end the rule of the cruel Assad, who has been spreading state terror.”

The statement prompted demands from Moscow for an “explanation.”

“The announcement really came as news to us,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “It is a very serious statement and one which differs from previous ones and with our understanding of the situation. We hope that our Turkish partners will provide us with some kind of explanation about this.”

This was followed by a phone conversation Wednesday between Erdogan and Putin. On Thursday, Erdogan offered the “clarification” demanded by Moscow. “The aim of the Euphrates Shield Operation is no country or person but only terror organizations. No one should doubt this issue that we have uttered over and over, and no one should comment on it in another fashion or try to [misrepresent its meaning],” the Turkish president told a meeting of village chiefs assembled at the presidential palace in Ankara.

By “terror organizations,” Erdogan and his government have consistently made clear they mean not only the Islamic State (ISIS), but also the Syrian Kurdish militia, the YPG, which the US has funded, trained and armed, utilizing it as its principal proxy force against ISIS. The Pentagon has declined to provide Turkish troops with air cover because of Ankara’s determination to attack Washington’s Kurdish proxies.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu, meanwhile, met in Turkey’s Mediterranean resort city of Alanya Thursday, announcing that both countries are seeking to broker a truce in Aleppo and assure the provision of humanitarian assistance to its battered population.

Russia has proposed opening up four “humanitarian corridors” into eastern Aleppo to permit civilians to escape the besieged zone and allow food and medical aid in. Previous attempts to open up such corridors have broken down, however, as a result of the US-backed Islamist militias shelling them and firing upon civilians attempting to escape.

The US and its allies have denounced the Russian-backed offensive by the Syrian government, highlighting the humanitarian crisis in order to demand an end to the attack on the Al Qaeda-linked militias that form the backbone of the Syrian “rebels.” The increasing hysteria of these denunciations reflects the fact that the fall of eastern Aleppo will deprive these militias of their last urban stronghold and consolidate Syrian government control over all of the country’s major population centers.