Volvo to lay off 500 workers at Virginia truck plant

Ed Hightower

On Tuesday, Volvo Trucks announced its intention to lay off 500 workers, comprising the entire second shift, at its Dublin, Virginia plant. The layoffs will take place in early February. The announcement comes on top of 300 layoffs in September and another 500 in February.

Volvo cites decreased demand for its trucks as the reason for the latest round of layoffs at the plant, a claim that is belied by the fact that they are requiring the very workers they will terminate in February to come in to work overtime shifts this Saturday.

One Volvo worker, a member of United Autoworkers Union (UAW) Local 2069, told the World Socialist Web Site that workers might call in sick for the Saturday shift, a tactic called a “sick out.”

Asked what the UAW was doing to prevent the job losses, the worker became angry and said quickly, “It sets up perfectly for the union. They are holding their local elections in March, right after the layoffs take effect. If you are laid off the union doesn’t tell you when you can vote. So they exclude the workers who are most affected by their sellouts policies from being able to vote them out.”

The worker had been on the second shift at Volvo for several years, and had witnessed the results of previous UAW-brokered contracts. He added, “The union said the [March 2016] contract had 80 percent approval or something like that, but nobody voted for it. It was ratified in April 2016, but we didn’t even get the full contract in September, as people were being laid off.

“The union was so unserious about the contract that, back in March right before the old contract expired, they told me to watch the news to see if we would be on strike or not! I was at work the day it was set to expire and only heard a half hour beforehand that there was an agreement and we were to keep working when the shift ended.”

He added, “The UAW trailer sits on site, with 5-15 people sitting in there smoking cigarettes, doing nothing, but getting full pay. It is locked with a punch code. When I went in there to ask about a contract, they all jumped out of their seats and pulled out their printed contracts, pretending to do something.”

The worker described a recent exchange with a UAW shop steward about the pending layoffs:

“I asked him, ‘Can you name one person who got money from the union after the [September 2016] layoffs?’ He replied, ‘How would we do that? We give to organizations that do good things in the community.’

“I said, ‘Why not have a soup kitchen for laid off workers? Have you helped anyone? How much of my dues went to Hillary? None of my dues goes to my fellow workers who are laid off. Will any come to me?’”

At that point the shop steward walked away.

UAW Local 2069 has nothing on its Facebook page about either the upcoming layoffs or those in September. The most recent post promotes the thinly coded antidemocratic nostrum of “fake news” impacting the 2016 US presidential election.

Asked what exactly Local 2069 does, the worker replied, “They do something about veterans riding motorcycles to Washington and they have a fish fry at the Veterans Affairs hospital. They supported Clinton. The reps went to Florida after the [March 2016] contract was signed for a rally for Clinton.”

Finally, the worker described the pool of unemployed workers that Volvo maintains:

“All of the local ‘get a job’ programs are bogus. They don’t want you to get another job. They move paper around. In the New River Valley, it is hard to get another job because employers think you may be hired back at Volvo. You get put in a Volvo stack because you are addicted to this place and you will go back. They know you don’t want to lose your hire date and status. This place is a noose around everybody’s neck to keep them in there building trucks.”

Volvo workers should immediately take steps to defend their jobs by building rank-and-file factory committees tasked with unifying workers of all tiers within the plant against job cuts. Ties to auto and other workers across the continent and internationally must be built to coordinate action against giant transnational corporations like Volvo, Freightliner and their parent companies.

Most importantly, such a struggle to unite the working class must be set on socialist and internationalist foundations in opposition to the pro-corporate, nationalist orientation of the UAW.

Report documents widespread failure of US communities to test water for lead

Shannon Jones

A new study by USA Today shows that millions of people in the United States are living in smaller communities that do not regularly test for lead contamination in their water supplies. About 100,000 people are served by water systems that were found to have unsafe levels of lead, but where authorities failed to treat the water in order to remove it.

Journalists reviewed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) records and visited communities across the United States.

The report further underscores pervasive and widespread lead contamination of water supplies across the United States, despite formal EPA rules mandating testing and lead abatement measures.

These latest revelations come in the wake of the lead-in-water crisis in Flint, Michigan where more than 100,000 residents were exposed to lead-tainted water after city officials switched the city’s water supply from the Detroit water system to the Flint River in order to cuts costs.

According to USA Today, some four million US residents live in communities where authorities failed to conduct mandated lead testing or did the testing improperly. In 2,000 communities lead testing was skipped more than once. Several hundred did not conduct lead tests for five or more years.

The report noted that small water systems were likely to escape close monitoring by the EPA. US regulations exempt small, poorly-funded water systems from stringent water testing requirements. Instead of providing federal resources to help these struggling communities, often in rural areas such as Appalachia, residents are left to fend for themselves.

The results are many times tragic, with residents, including particularly susceptible children, exposed to dangerous levels of lead that can stunt growth, cause permanent mental impairment and lead to other health issues.

There are about 850 local water systems with a documented history of lead contamination where there has been no proper lead testing since 2010.

The USA Today report cited the example of the community of Coal Mountain, West Virginia where the water treatment process consists of occasionally pouring bleach into the old wellhead that serves as a water supply for residents.

State officials labeled 12 water systems in West Virginia “orphans,” because it was not clear who was in charge, and warning letters were ignored year after year.

In Ranger, Texas the family of a two-year-old boy found that their son had elevated lead levels in his blood. They learned later from USA Today that their tap water had lead levels 28 times the federal limit. This all happened while city officials were aware of the lead-in-water problem in their community, but took no corrective action nor alerted residents.

The requirements to run a small water system are often extremely low. For example, the state of Texas requires only a high school diploma or GED and a training course in basic water operation. “You might have to get more training to run a hot dog stand than a small water system,” Paul Schwarz with the Campaign for Lead Free Water told USA Today.

About 350 of the water systems cited by the USA Today report serve schools or day care centers. At an elementary school in Ithaca, New York one sample tested was 5,000 parts per billion (ppb), the EPA threshold for hazardous waste. Investigators found 600 water systems where tests showed tap water continuing at more than 40 ppb, more than double the EPA’s limit, which itself is unrealistically high.

At the Orange Center School near Fresno, California local officials let children keep drinking the water for years despite tests that showed excessive levels of lead. The school skipped testing for nine years after a finding of high lead levels in 2003. In 2012 tests showed elevated lead levels, but school officials let children continue drinking the water. Two years later the state ordered the school to stop using the water and began shipping bottled water to students until the district connected to the Fresno water system.

The problem is not limited to small cities or rural areas. In April, water testing in the city of Detroit revealed that 19 public schools had elevated levels of lead or copper. One water sample at Brown Academy showed lead levels of 1,500 ppb, 100 times the EPA limit of 15 ppb.

Despite the pressing urgency, the amount of money available for water system upgrades is tiny compared to the need. The EPA estimated in 2013 that some $64.5 billion is needed over the next 20 years to maintain small water systems. In 2016 the revolving fund allocation for water systems of all sizes was less than $1 billion.

In the wake of the USA Today report federal, state and local officials went into damage control mode, feigning shock and outrage at the disastrous state of US water infrastructure. While calling for tightening lead testing standards and notification, none of the proposed legislation actually provides additional funding for water infrastructure, particularly for small, cash-strapped communities in impoverished areas.

In relation to the Flint water crisis, the US Senate approved legislation this week appropriating a token $170 million to address needed infrastructure upgrades in the city. The money is a relative drop in the bucket compared to the estimated cost of replacing lead pipes in the city, which by some calculations will reach up to $1.5 billion.

Meanwhile, a federal appeals court on Friday ruled that the State of Michigan must make regular water deliveries to homes in Flint that do not have a working lead filter. The administration of Republican Governor Rick Snyder has ignored two previous court rulings mandating the delivery of bottled water, claiming the cost would be prohibitive and that it is unnecessary since the city’s tap water now meets federal standards.

Activist Melissa Mays of the group Water You Fighting For? told a press conference Tuesday that she questions the methods state officials are using to determine if Flint water is safe to drink. She said that many residents had results coming in above the federal action level of 15 ppb—in at least one case, as high as 1,700 ppb. She wanted every home in Flint tested.

“We have too many vulnerable people slipping through the cracks right now and there are too many high numbers … I don’t care if it seems unrealistic because it’s unrealistic to us to think that everything’s OK when there’s not the data to back it up,” Mays remarked.

US companies win greater access to lucrative Pacific fisheries

John Braddock

Pacific island fisheries officials and the United States government have signed a six-year extension to a 27-year-old fisheries treaty confirming American-flagged fishing vessels have continuing access to lucrative Pacific fishing grounds. The signing took place at a meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fishery Commission (WCPFC) in Fiji on December 4.

The South Pacific Tuna Treaty is the US’s most important commercial, aid and trade pact within the region. The treaty governs access to the world’s biggest fishing grounds, within the 200-mile exclusive economic zones of 17 mostly small Pacific Island states dispersed over vast areas of ocean. The US State Department negotiates access on behalf of American fishing companies, which operate the biggest purse seine (large netting) fleets in the Pacific.

The agreement was hammered out after 18 negotiation rounds over seven years. It almost broke down early this year when Washington notified Pacific island governments of its intention to withdraw from the treaty unless agreement could be reached on new financial terms and increased access.

Washington had agreed to pay $US89 million for its 2016 fishing rights, but reneged on the deal. Unless it was renegotiated, the treaty stood to expire next month, with devastating consequences for jobs and livelihoods, as well as government revenues, in Pacific states. For small countries like Tuvalu, fishing rights generate as much as 50 percent of total revenue.

Last month, in the lead-up to the WCPFC meeting, the US fishing companies ramped up their pressure. The San Diego-based American Tunaboat Association (ATA) cynically demanded, among other things, a “level playing field” for US companies and the “protection of US fishing rights on the high seas.”

ATA executive director Brian Hallman, accompanied by a group of ATA members, attended the WCPFC meeting to push the industry’s demands. Tri Marine International, which has a fishing fleet based in the American Samoa capital Pago Pago, supported by the territory’s government officials, called for more fishing days for the US fleet, claiming previous restrictions affected fish delivery to the canneries in American Samoa.

Under the new six-year Multilateral Treaty on Fisheries, the amounts to be paid to the Pacific states are a pittance compared with the enormous profits due to be reaped by the fishing companies. The western and central Pacific tuna fishery is valued at over $5 billion annually.

The deal allows US vessels to choose the number of fishing days to purchase, at a rate of $12,500 per fishing day. Hallman said the ATA was particularly pleased with a guaranteed four-year term for fishing days and their cost.

In addition, an industry payment of $45 million per year and US government fisheries aid of $21 million annually will go to members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency that signed the agreement. The “aid” is the total extent of the US government’s financial assistance to the poverty-stricken region, which it regards as its own backyard. Washington is meanwhile spending billions of dollars to extensively militarise the Pacific in order to confront China.

In a statement, the US State Department claimed the revised treaty would generate higher economic returns for Pacific countries, “while supporting the continued viable operation of the US fishing fleet in the region.” However, American Samoa’s Commerce Department Director Keniseli Lafaele told the Samoa News that while the treaty secures “continued access to the fishing grounds” by the US-flagged purse seine vessels, it gives “no special recognition or benefit to the American Samoa tuna industry.”

According to Lafaele, the deal “will not make much difference” in saving the local industry. Tri Marine International’s Samoa Tuna Processors closed its canning operation on December 11, eliminating 800 jobs. StarKist Samoa is also considering more intermittent closures of the country’s only other major cannery, blaming poor fish supplies. The international fishing companies, chasing higher profits and lower costs, are increasingly transferring their processing operations to Asian-based plants.

American Samoa, a designated “unincorporated” US territory with a population of just 55,000, is deeply impoverished. A 2009 study found its poverty rate running at 57.8 percent. A US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released on December 2 identified $5.67 as the minimum wage needed for a local family of six to afford to live. This exceeds the hourly minimum wage for cannery workers by $0.51, according to the GAO.

Under duress from the companies, local authorities have opposed moves to tie the minimum wage to the US federal rate of $7.25 per hour. Though they make millions on their operations, the canneries have previously threatened to relocate if the minimum wage is raised. They pay no tax and Asian fishing companies avoid US import tariffs on processed fish. In 2014, the territory governor’s office urged against minimum wage rises, calling a scheduled 2015 increase a “prescription for total economic ruin.”

Throughout the Pacific, there is opposition to the rapacious activities of the fishing companies. The environment advocacy group, the Pew Charitable Trusts, called for a two-year ban on fishing for bluefin tuna before the WCPFC meeting. The Pew organisation said independent surveys showed stocks had been critically depleted to just 2.7 percent of the levels that existed before the advent of commercial fishing in the Pacific.

The director of Pew’s tuna conservation campaign, Amanda Nickson, said there had been four years of “delays and lack of adequate action” by key agencies such as the WCPFC and governments, and a moratorium on commercial fishing was urgently needed to allow stocks to regenerate.

In the Cook Islands last month many people turned up at a presentation by the European Union and Spanish fishing industry to oppose a controversial purse seining agreement the government entered into with the EU. Under the agreement the Cook Islands will receive $7 million for allowing four European purse seiners to fish for skipjack tuna. Traditional leaders organised the opposition, declaring they did not want “mega-rich Spanish fishing companies” plundering the Cook Islands’ “most important resource.”

Conservation measures for depleted tuna stocks have polarised the WCPFC. According to Radio NZ, WCPFC executive director Feleti Teo said it was proving “extremely difficult” to reach a consensus on protecting depleted tuna stocks.

Management of bluefin tuna is controlled by a sub-group within the WCPFC called the Northern Committee. It is made up of countries located above 20 degrees north latitude, essentially Asian member countries, which have been accused of a complete failure to manage the stock. The WCPFC itself has been accused of not reining in the distant water fishing nations.

Australia: Testimony details abuse in youth detention centres

Oscar Grenfell 

Testimony last week at royal commission hearings in Darwin has shed further light on the systemic abuse of vulnerable children in Australian youth detention centres.

Under successive Labor and Country Liberal Party governments in the Northern Territory (NT), children in detention, many of Aboriginal descent, have been subjected to treatment branded as “cruel,” “inhuman” and “degrading” by the United Nations.

The royal commission was called as part of a damage control response by the federal Liberal-National government of Malcolm Turnbull to widespread outrage over footage broadcast by an ABC “Four Corners” program in July of boys being assaulted and tear-gassed by detention guards.

The program documented the illegally prolonged detention of children in isolation, repeated instances of guards assaulting inmates, including stripping them naked and pinning them to the ground, and footage of Dylan Voller, then 17, strapped in a “mechanical restraint chair” with his head covered by a “spit hood,” reminiscent of images from the US military prison at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.

On Monday, Voller, now 19, testified at the commission. The week before his testimony, Voller’s mother said he feared retribution from guards at the Darwin adult prison, where he is currently incarcerated.

On December 8, the NT’s Labor government sought to prevent Voller and 13 other witnesses from giving evidence, warning that the testimony could “have potentially damaging consequences for the reputations of individuals or for the NT government.” The unsuccessful move underscored the nervousness of the entire political establishment over the revelations of abuse.

In his testimony, Voller detailed years of abuse suffered since he was first incarcerated at the age of 11 in the regional centre of Alice Springs. Among the punishments meted out to Voller and other child detainees were deprivation of food and water, the removal of bedding and clothes and prolonged isolation as forms of punishment. Voller’s testimony included the following allegations:

* From the age of 11 or 12, he was routinely strip-searched by guards at the Alice Springs youth detention centre. Voller was not told why he was being searched, and said he did not understand what was taking place. In later years, at the Don Dale detention centre, south of Darwin, he was strip-searched whenever he went to the toilet or left his cell.

* Cells at the Alice Springs facility did not have toilets or water. Voller and other inmates would have to press a button to ask for water, and would sometimes be left waiting for hours.

* Children at the Alice Springs facility were sometimes denied access to toilets as punishment. On one occasion, Voller said: “I had been asking for at least four or five hours and they just been saying no. And I ended up having to defecate into a pillow case, because they wouldn’t let me out to go to the toilet.”

* Don Dale centre guards charged inmates daily rent, deducting payments from their small allowances. Voller and other inmates were also denied meals and water as punishment for swearing and other minor misbehaviour.

* At Don Dale, Voller and other inmates were repeatedly held in isolation, had their mattresses and all their clothes taken, and were left naked in bare concrete cells, sometimes for an entire night.

* Voller was subjected to sensory abuse. In one instance, he was left in a cell without any clothes with cold air conditions. On other occasions, guards switched on a bright light and left it on for the entire night, preventing any sleep.

Voller also commented on an incident in August 2014, when officers from a nearby adult prison stormed the “Behaviour Modification Unit” of the Don Dale facility, armed with shields, gas masks, tear gas and batons after a minor disturbance. The officers indiscriminately released capsicum-spray in the small and enclosed area. Voller said: “I thought I was going to die. My heart was racing because of the tear gas. My eyes were burning.”

Voller spoke of being tied up in the “mechanical restraint chair” on three occasions. The chair had arm and leg straps, completely immobilising him. He also had a “spit hood”—a cloth bag—placed over his head. Voller was left in the chair for hours on end. He commented: “I was defenceless at that time. Felt like there was nothing I could do, and I was telling them the whole time that it was hurting. I even ended up getting sick and vomiting in my mouth a couple of times. They didn’t care.”

On Tuesday, Antoinette Carroll, a Central Australian Legal Aid Service youth justice advocacy project coordinator who has worked with Voller since he was 11, gave evidence. She noted that as a young child, he had first been sentenced to 18 months in detention for minor offences.

Carroll said Voller had been “set up to fail” by the “youth justice system,” noting that his formal education ended at the age of 10. She stated: “It just became very evident from the get-go that there would be a punitive approach taken to Dylan as he travelled through the system.”

Russell Goldflam, a NT Legal Aid Commission lawyer, pointed to the culpability of the political establishment in his testimony on Wednesday. He quoted former NT Attorney-General John Elferink who denounced Don Dale inmates as “the worst of the worst” and declared that the government would “crack down on them.” Goldflam said the law and order rhetoric of the government “created a political space that made it more likely that children could be assaulted in detention.”

The Northern Territory has been a testing ground for punitive measures, including mandatory sentencing for minor offences, for the past 30 years. Aboriginal people, who comprise the most oppressed section of the working class, have been severely affected. In the NT, close to 90 percent of adult inmates are indigenous, up from 69 percent in 1991. The rate of imprisonment of Aboriginal women rose by 72 percent from 2002 to 2012.

The conditions confronting Aboriginal communities in the NT have been likened to third-world countries by Amnesty International and other charity organisations. Basic necessities such as running water and medical care are often lacking. Unemployment and poverty are endemic.

However, the practices revealed in the NT are not isolated, nor are they confined to indigenous prisoners. For years, reports have documented bashings, isolations, “lockdowns” and deaths in jails and juvenile prisons across the country. The abuses in the NT reveal the increasingly brutal methods being used more broadly against working-class youth, who confront high levels of unemployment and under-employment, insecure work, prohibitive housing costs and crippling tuition fees and debts.

Labor Party politicians have adopted a false posture of moral outrage in response to the abuses revealed in the NT. In reality, Labor was in office from 2001 to 2012 when many of the abuses occurred.

Labor governments in other states are no less culpable. In Victoria, the Labor government recently moved 40 children accused of “rioting” in a youth detention facility to an adult jail. In Queensland, media reports have exposed efforts by the Labor government to cover up abuses of boys in both juvenile and adult prisons, including assaults, solitary confinement and use of “spit hoods.”

Huge increase in hospital admissions for malnutrition in Britain

Jean Gibney

A recent Department of Health (DoH) report found a 44 percent rise in UK hospital admissions related to malnutrition over the past five years.

The DoH revealed the number of bed days accounted for by someone with a primary or secondary diagnosis of malnutrition rose from 128,361 in 2010/11—the year the Conservative-Liberal Democrats coalition came to power—to 184,528 last year.

Malnutrition as the main cause of hospital admissions has more than doubled over the past decade. From 65,048 bed days in 2006-2007, the total surged to 184,528 hospital bed days last year.

Each bed costs the National Health Service (NHS) on average £400 a day to staff and a spell in hospital because of malnutrition averages between 22 and 23 days. Information supplied by the House of Commons library shows that 57 percent of the patients involved were women and 42 percent were aged over 65.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) classes someone as malnourished if they have a body mass index of less than 18.5, or have suffered the unintentional loss of more than 10 percent of their weight over the last three to six months, or have both a body mass index under 20 and have unintentionally seen their weight drop by more than 5 percent over the previous three to six months.

According to NHS statistics, 3 million people are at risk of malnutrition, with 7,366 of these admitted to hospital with the condition between August 2014 and July 2015, a 51 percent increase since the corresponding period from 2010 to 2011.

Speaking about the increasing numbers of elderly people being admitted to hospital with malnutrition, Simon Bottery, director of policy at the Independent Age charity, said, “These new figures on malnutrition are genuinely shocking. As a society there is no excuse for us failing to ensure that older people are able to eat enough food, of the right quality, to stay healthy.”

He continued, “Yet we have been cutting back the meals on wheels services and lunch clubs on which so many vulnerable elderly people relied and reducing the numbers who receive home care visits.”

Research by the National Association of Care Catering found that only 48 percent of local councils still provided meals on wheels, compared to 66 percent in 2014. Freedom of information requests submitted to local councils in England found that 220,000 fewer people were receiving meals on wheels in late 2014 than in 2010, a fall of 63 percent. Only 17 percent of councils in the northwest of England still do so, and 91 percent of providers expect the provision to fall further in the next year.

The response of the Department of Health to the findings was not to address the causes of malnutrition, but to glibly suggest that better data collection, more training and a paltry £500,000 to Age UK would assist in the spotting and reduction of malnutrition in the elderly.

Malnutrition is not only confined to the elderly. The figures for the rise in cases of malnutrition and other health issues show the impact of increasing poverty is widespread among all age groups. It is linked to cuts and sanctions to welfare benefits, cuts to and privatisation of health and social care services, unemployment and low pay. This is seen in the massive rise in people who now regularly depend on charities for basic food supplies.

Recent figures by the Trussell Trust, an anti-poverty charity, report a huge uptake in emergency food supplies between April 2016 and September 2016. Across the UK, they distributed 519,342 three-day emergency food supplies to people in crisis, compared to 506,369 during the same period last year. Of these, 188,584 went to children. The staggering number means that the food bank network is on course to distribute the highest number of food parcels in its 12-year history during 2016-17.

The Trust cited changes to the benefits system and low pay and unemployment as the main causes of the rising use of food banks. It said, “Benefit delays and changes have been the biggest reasons for food bank use, accounting for 44 percent of referrals to Trussell Trust food banks (27.4 percent benefit delay; 16.6 percent benefit changes). Low income was the second largest cause of a crisis, accounting for nearly one in four of all referrals to Trussell Trust food banks, driven by problems such as low pay, insecure work or rising costs.”

A long-term study into increasing levels of deprivation and social and economic inequality since 1983, “Breadline Britain: The Rise of Mass Poverty,” by Joanna Mack and Stewart Lansley, revealed poverty levels have soared, with the current figure standing at 20 million people (around a third of the population). Lansley, the co-author of the 2015 report, stated, “This study paints the most appalling picture of levels of deprivation across the country and of how generations are being denied opportunities.” He added, “It is horrifying and appalling to me that we have a society that has built into its DNA growing levels of poverty. It is completely unjust and completely unnecessary.”

Lansley warned, “You have a situation where levels of poverty will already be rising significantly and the picture can only get bleaker as people become more desperate. On current trends, the next five years will see more people in the UK in poverty, more often and for longer. Despite falling unemployment, the combination of an increasingly polarised labour market, rising housing costs and a continuing squeeze on benefits will put further pressure on low incomes.”

Linking increasing levels of poverty with economic and social inequality, the Oxfam charity revealed that in Britain millions of workers are struggling to cope to put food on the table, let alone maintain a healthy nutritious diet: “The UK is one of the richest countries in the world, but it’s a nation divided into the ‘haves’ and have-nots.’ While executive pay soars, one in five people live below the poverty line and struggle to pay their bills and put food on the table.”

Jonathon Ashworth, Labour shadow health secretary, expressed dismay at the DoH malnutrition figures, stating, “Real poverty is causing vulnerable people, particularly the elderly, to go hungry and undernourished so much so that they end up in hospital.” The research, he said, “reveals a shocking picture of levels of malnutrition in 21st century England and the impact it has on our NHS. This is unacceptable in modern Britain.”

Ashworth did not address the previous Labour government’s systematic assault on the living standards of the working class in the wake of the 2008 economic crash. He also omitted to mention that while in opposition Labour has supported every cut to welfare benefits and public services. Nor did Ashworth mention the role of Labour councils that have carried out every single cut to services and, along with the trade unions, have supported the assault on the living standards of millions of workers and the decimation of the welfare state.

European Union and IMF demand new austerity measures in Greece

Christoph Vandreier

At a joint press conference in Berlin on Friday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras made a show of unity. Greece no longer wanted to be seen as “part of the crisis but part of the solution,” said Tsipras. There were large budget surpluses and the targets set had been surpassed, he added, in summarising his government’s austerity policies.

In the lead-up to the conference, conflicts erupted between Greece on one side and the European Union (EU) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the other. Both institutions imposed a brutal programme of austerity on Greece over recent years and supplied it with bailout loans. They are now demanding an intensification of attacks on the working class.

A dispute emerged last week after Tsipras announced a plan, during a live speech on television, to pay 1.6 million especially needy retirees Christmas benefits totalling €617 million, equivalent to €380 per person. The measure was passed by parliament on Thursday. In addition, sales tax increases for the islands in the eastern Aegean were suspended. The islands have spent additional funds over recent years for the confinement of refugees.

Part of the primary surplus achieved in the Greek budget this year will be used to finance the measures. Due to the Greek government’s enforcement of brutal austerity and privatisation measures, a budget surplus of €1.9 billion was reached, rather than the €500 million agreed with Greece’s creditors in the memorandum of understanding.

These figures make clear that no retreat from the austerity measures is involved, but merely a symbolic gesture. Tsipras hopes to be able to stabilise his deeply despised government and hold onto power. In the course of its first year in government, Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left) has seen its support collapse due to its austerity policies from 35.5 percent in the September 2015 election to 14.1 percent in the latest polls.

The government has already imposed pension cuts of €230 million this year. Further cuts of €439 million in top-up pensions are planned for next year. This is in spite of the fact that 45 percent of pensioners currently receive monthly payments placing them below the poverty level of €665, according to government figures. The real number of impoverished pensioners is much higher, because in Greece, where there is virtually no social welfare system, the unemployment rate of 22.6 percent means that entire families are dependent upon the pensions of the grandparents.

Prior to Syriza assuming power, pensions dropped by 50 percent due to cuts. Syriza actually promised an end to pension cuts during the election campaign and to oppose the EU’s austerity demands. But once elected, they bowed to the EU’s dictates, emerging as the government most capable of enforcing the austerity drive. Only two months ago, the Syriza government attacked pensioners with tear gas.

In the face of these austerity measures, the millions for pensioners amount to a drop in the bucket. It will include one-off payments that will do nothing to change the character of the cuts implemented and those to come. In comparison with the more than €40 billion in austerity measures since 2009, the hand-out to pensioners does not even amount to 1.6 percent of the total.

But even these cosmetic measures were too much for the EU and IMF. “The institutions have decided that the actions of the Greek government do not correspond to the terms of the loan agreement,” stated euro group head Jeroen Dijsselbloem. The European Stability Mechanism (ESM), through which the previous loans were organised, reacted to Tsipras’ Christmas policy by freezing previously approved debt relief measures, including interest rate cuts and debt moratoriums. These measures will now be discussed further at the euro group meeting on 26 January.

According to news portal Spiegel Online, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble encouraged the ESM to take this step. The German government has responded to the Brexit victory in Britain and Donald Trump’s election in the United States by stating its intention to consolidate its domination in Europe and impose austerity with even more ruthlessness. At the beginning of the month, Schäuble stated to the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that Greece had to impose all reforms if it “wants to stay in the euro—regardless of its debt position.”

The background to the latest dispute is the ongoing negotiations over the budgetary goals that should be imposed on Athens for new loans. The majority of the euro group members demanded a budget surplus of 3.5 percent in the year 2019-20 so that Greece can begin paying off its massive debt burden.

IMF Europe chief Poul Thomsen and chief economist Maurice Obstfeld proposed in a submission on Monday that the target be reduced to 1.5 percent. This would, however, mean that the debt would have to be restructured and partially written off so as to avert state bankruptcy. French President François Hollande also spoke out in favour of treating Greece more moderately.

But neither Hollande nor the IMF representatives are concerned about halting austerity measures in Greece. The authors of the submission explicitly call for further “structural reforms,” including making it easier to impose mass layoffs. They state that Greek pensions remain too high and mass taxes are too low. The conflict is merely over the best methods to squeeze the billions of bailout loans from the Greek working class and who should profit from this the most.

The Syriza government has more than made clear over the past year that it is also committed to this goal. For the first time since the outbreak of the debt crisis, a government has surpassed the terms of the creditors and saved more than had been dictated. That it is paying out a fraction of the additional savings, and in a one-off measure to boot, is a hollow gesture.

Shortly before Tsipras’ joint press conference with Merkel, Finance Minister Euklides Tsakalotos had spoken of errors in communication with regard to the Christmas measures in a meeting with German parliamentarians. One ought to have informed the creditors in advance, the Finance Minister stated, according to Spiegel Online.

EU summit lines up against Russia

Peter Schwarz

On Thursday, the 28 leaders of the European Union gathered in Brussels at their final summit of the year. The EU is in deep crisis. Following the British decision to leave the EU, the election of Donald Trump as US president, and the rise of right-wing nationalist forces in many European countries, it is paralyzed and divided.

The member states are hopelessly divided over many issues--the distribution of refugee quotas, the attitude towards Turkey, the austerity policy dictated by Berlin and Brussels, the creation of a European army, the response to incoming President Trump, and, above all, the stance towards Russia.

In addition, the leaders of the larger member states, who have thus far set the course in the EU, have been weakened by internal political crises.

Britain is on its way out of the EU and its government is arguing over what Brexit means. French President Francois Hollande leaves office in May. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi resigned last week and his successor, Paolo Gentiloni, is at best a transitional figure. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy rests on an uncertain majority. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is seeking her fourth term in office next year, confronts growing resistance both within her own Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and within its coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party (SPD).

Shortly before the summit, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker described the situation in the EU with the words: “This time we are dealing with a multiple crisis. It is burning all over, not just in Europe. But wherever there is fire outside Europe, the conflagration moves toward Europe.”

For these reasons, the summit was to be limited to a few hours on Thursday. To avoid intensifying the crisis, the discussion was supposed to avoid controversial issues. Over dinner, the participants planned to discuss preparations for the Brexit negotiations in the absence of British Prime Minister Theresa May.

But things turned out differently. Council President Donald Tusk decided “spontaneously” to invite a Syrian anti-Assad activist--something unprecedented in the history of the EU--and the summit was extended by hours. Brita Hagi Hasan, introduced as the “mayor of Aleppo,” described the situation in the east of the city in dramatic terms. Speaking to the assembled heads of government, he claimed 50,000 civilians were “soon to be massacred.”

Hasan is one of those Syrian “oppositionists” who travel round the world promoting imperialist military intervention and are dragged into the limelight for that purpose. He has met several times with the French foreign minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, most recently at the end of November.

During the summer, he attended a meeting in Paris together with Maryam Rajavi of the Iranian People’s Mujahedin and Michel Kilo, another Syrian regime opponent, who three years ago called for an American military strike against Syria. The People’s Mujahedin are fighting the regime in Tehran from abroad and have been listed by the EU up to 2009 as a terrorist organization.

Tusk, Hollande and Merkel used Hasan’s appearance to call for the fractious EU members to unite on an anti-Russian line. While in US ruling circles there is fierce struggle over relations with Russia, the EU is siding with that wing which is pushing for a confrontation with Russia. Merkel and Hollande fear that the new president, Donald Trump, is moving closer to Moscow at the expense of the Europe, and that the EU, and possibly NATO as well, could break apart as a result.

In an editorial just before the summit, the Financial Times wrote: “Europe’s diplomats are at a loss over how to prepare for his [Trump’s] incoming administration.... With any US pivot on Russia policy, the bloc’s hard-won consensus on how to respond to Moscow could change, tipping the balance between the EU’s hawks and doves.”

The European leaders did not waste any words talking about Mosul or Yemen, where they, the US and Washington’s regional allies are bombing civilians as ruthlessly as the Russians and the Syrian army in Aleppo. But they shed buckets of crocodile tears over the fate of the civilian population of Aleppo--and this on the day when the fighting there had stopped.

Chancellor Merkel said the report delivered by Hasan was “very depressing.” She accused Russia and Iran of responsibility for crimes against the civilian population in Aleppo and demanded that they be punished. She accused the United Nations Security Council of “failure.”

British Prime Minister Theresa May spoke in identical terms. “We must ensure that those who are responsible for these atrocities will be held accountable,” she said.

President Hollande said the EU’s raison d'être was in question if it could “not even unite on something as basic” as “condemning the massacres that are being initiated by the Syrian regime and its supporters.”

The cynicism of this feigned indignation was underscored by the fact that just hours before, Merkel’s government had begun the first mass deportations to Afghanistan. This initiates a process that will result in forcibly ejecting up to 12,500 refugees from Germany and sending them back to a country reduced to rubble by war and civil war.

Based on the surge of emotions that was staged with Hasan’s appearance, the summit agreed a number of controversial decisions either directed against Russia, providing for an accelerated military buildup, or serving to repel refugees.

The summit decided that despite billions in losses for various European countries, the sanctions against Russia for the Ukraine conflict should be extended until at least July 31 of next year. The day before the summit, the Slovak prime minister and current EU council president, Robert Fico, had described the sanctions as nonsense.

At the same time, the summit paved the way for the ratification of the partnership agreement with Ukraine, whose rejection by then-Ukrainian President Yanukovych had led to the 2014 putsch. This past spring, the agreement was blocked by Dutch voters, who rejected it in a referendum. The summit adopted a legally binding supplementary declaration allowing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte to submit it again to parliament. All other EU countries have already ratified it.

The summit also agreed on closer military cooperation. It ratified the construction of a centre for the planning of civil and military missions. The British government, which previously blocked all moves toward a European army, dropped its resistance.

The summit also welcomed the Commission’s plans for a multi-billion-euro fund to finance military research. Decisions about it are to be made in the first half of next year.

While the summit huffed and puffed about the misery in Aleppo, Merkel, Hollande, Gentiloni and Rajoy met with the president of Niger, Mahamadou Issoufou, and other African leaders to persuade them to halt the flow of refugees and keep them in camps, in return for large sums of money.

Officially, this project is called “Migration Partnership.” For the sum of 100 million euros, half of which will come from Germany, camps are to be built along the escape routes where up to 60,000 people can be detained.

Berlin also prevailed at the summit when it came to dealing with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The German government refuses to cool relations with Ankara as a result of Erdogan’s authoritarian methods of rule because it fears a failure of the refugee deal the EU struck with Ankara to prevent refugees travelling on to Europe.

Now the EU has taken a step toward Erdogan by holding out the prospect of a refugee summit in the spring of 2017, with the participation of Commission President Juncker and EU President Tusk.

Facebook’s “fake news” measures: A move toward censorship

George Gallanis

On Thursday, the global social media giant Facebook announced new measures it said were designed to limit the spread of “fake news” from hoax web sites. The measures, however, are part of a broader corporate media campaign to clamp down on independent and alternative news organizations.

Facebook’s announcement is in response to criticism it received from major corporate news outlets such as the New York Times alleging that fake news articles shared on the social media platform played a major role in altering the outcome of the 2016 elections. Facebook’s CEO and founder, Mark Zuckerberg, first called such allegations “crazy” but has shifted to accommodate the demands.

In a news post on Facebook titled “News Feed FYI: Addressing Hoaxes and Fake News” by Adam Mosseri, vice president of product management, Facebook laid out the four components of its new policy.

Under the headline “Easier Reporting,” Facebook will streamline the way people can report an alleged fake news site by implementing new features. Under “Disrupting Financial Incentives for Spammers,” Facebook plans to financially hurt “fake news” sites by limiting their ability to purchase ads by making it more difficult to use fake domain sites when posting ads.

This is followed by the measure called “Informed Sharing.” If an article is read multiple times and it is not shared afterwards, according to Facebook this may be a sign that the article is “misleading.” If Facebook deems this to be the case, then the article will receive a lower ranking on Facebook’s newsfeed, making it less visible and available for reading.

In practice, this means that if an article, whether it is telling the truth or not, is not shared, then it may be demoted and become less likely to be read. An analysis by BuzzFeed News found that during the 2016 presidential election campaign, news posts considered fake were in fact more widely shared than those considered real.

Most significant, however, is a policy under the headline “Flagging Stories as Disputed.” Facebook will catalog reports of alleged fake news from users, along with other vague data it only describes as “signals,” and will send them to a third-party fact checker for arbitration. If a story is deemed fake, then Facebook will mark it as such with an attached explanation as to why. Such stories will then appear lower in Facebook’s newsfeed.

Facebook’s “third party” reportedly consists of five news organizations acting as fact-checkers. These are: ABC News, Politifact, FactCheck, Snopes and the Associated Press. According to Facebook, these organizations are also signatories of The Poynter Institute’s International Fact Checking Code of Principles, which are: 1) “a commitment to nonpartisanship and fairness”; 2) “a commitment to transparency of sources”; 3) “a commitment to transparency of funding and organization”; 4) “a commitment to transparency of methodology”; and 5) “a commitment to open and honest corrections”.

Poynter, a self described “global leader in journalism,” receives funding from, amongst others, Google, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and most notably the National Endowment for Democracy, a front for the US Department of State that has intervened in elections all over the world in the interest of US imperialism.

The implications of Facebook’s moves to limit “fake news” are ominous. It takes place in the context of an effort by the corporate media to create an amalgam between clearly manufactured content and articles and analysis that it brands “Russian propaganda” because they are critical of US foreign policy.

Last month, the Washington Post published an article, “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say,” which referred to an organization, PropOrNot, that had compiled a list of web sites that are declared to be “peddlers of Russian propaganda.” The site includes WikiLeaks, Truthout, Naked Capitalism and similar publications.

Amnesty International reports Fiji’s police and military using torture

John Braddock

Fiji’s police, corrections and military officers are committing torture against people accused of crimes or in custody, according to an Amnesty International report released on December 4. The report, Beating Justice: How Fiji’s Security Forces Get Away with Torture, details repeated violations of international law by the security forces, including beatings, rape, sexual violence, attacks by police dogs and murder.

Amnesty charges the Fijian authorities with acting with impunity, their brutal activities condoned at the highest levels. Security forces personnel who commit abuses rarely face sanction and even when officials are convicted of crimes, they are usually quickly pardoned and released from prison.

Fiji’s 2013 constitution entrenches “absolute and unconditional immunity” for any government actions between the 2006 military coup and 2014, when a so-called democratic election installed Frank Bainimarama, the coup leader and military head, as prime minister. The election was held under conditions of press censorship, military provocations and severe restrictions on opposition political parties. The authoritarian, anti-working class regime continues to rule through fear and intimidation, using draconian anti-democratic laws and restrictions on the right of assembly and the media.

In a state visit to New Zealand in October, Bainimarama insisted that the institutions of the Fijian state are “functioning properly” and are “truly independent and free from personal and political influence.” New Zealand’s then prime minister, John Key, downplayed any criticisms. He told the media that “human rights” were an area where “discussion and engagement” was needed. “I have always said the restoration of democracy in Fiji was a good and important step, but it does evolve over time,” Key declared.

The Amnesty report observes that the military continues to play a direct role in all levels of government, as well as in civilian policing. Military officers are routinely appointed to senior government roles, including head of corrections and head of police, effectively militarising the posts and making it impossible to hold officers accountable for their violations of international law.

According to the report, police “are effectively left to police themselves,” while the military brass has frequently interfered in investigations involving military officers. In a few cases where perpetrators have been successfully prosecuted, custodial sentences were reduced under “Community Supervision Orders,” allowing them to be released within weeks of being convicted and return to their previous posts. Bainimarama and Police Commissioner Brigadier-General Qiliho have both expressed support for military and police officers when allegations of torture have come to light.

The brutality routinely handed out by the security forces, dating back at least to the 2006 coup, is ongoing. In a video clip circulated online from October, three police officers are shown beating suspects on the side of the road. In September, Isaac James was taken in for questioning at Nakasi police station, where he was allegedly denied food and water for two days, beaten by police using sticks, a belt and a screwdriver. He escaped custody, fearing for his life, and remained in hiding for most of October.

On November 29, Ricardo Fisher was beaten unconscious by five police officers while in custody. Fisher, who was hospitalised with fractured ribs, claimed that police have not followed up his official complaint. The secretary of the Coalition for Human Rights, Monica Waqanisau, told Radio New Zealand that Fisher’s case showed “little is changing.”

Fijian human rights lawyer Aman Ravindra-Singh told Radio NZ that state-sponsored torture is still happening despite Fiji signing a UN anti-torture treaty earlier this year. He said there had been no progress on prominent cases, including the alleged 2011 torture by a military officer of trade unionist Felix Anthony and the alleged police beating of businessman Rajneel Singh a year ago. Ravindra-Singh said the police stonewall by claiming investigations are “continuing” when there is ample evidence to prosecute.

The Amnesty report cites other videos of police assaults on civilians circulated on social media, including footage shot in November 2012 that shows a half-naked man being beaten and sexually assaulted by police and military officers, while another man has a police dog set upon him.

Police regularly torture suspects in order to obtain confessions. In August 2014, robbery suspect Vilikesa Soko died, four days after being arrested, from a blood clot on his lungs after a sustained physical and sexual assault. His autopsy showed multiple traumatic injuries. The report cites another case of a person having a leg amputated. Witnesses and lawyers also raised concerns about threats and intimidation against them.

At least five people have been beaten to death in police or military custody since 2006, including 19-year-old Sakiusa Rabaka who in 2007 was beaten, sexually assaulted and forced to perform military exercises. He died from his injuries on a military base in Nadi. Eight police officers and one military officer were ultimately convicted over his death and sentenced to prison terms. All were released within a month.

Kate Schuetze, Amnesty International’s Pacific researcher, said that in Fiji “accountability for torture is the exception rather than the rule,” “This amounts to a climate of near impunity. It is the result of the fact that torture is poorly defined in law, immunity is granted, there are few legal safeguards and there is no independent oversight.”

Amnesty has called on Bainimarama’s regime to make limited changes, such as to withdraw the armed forces from policing tasks. But Fiji Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum rejected the Amnesty report out of hand, branding it “biased and selective.”

Moreover, the local imperialist powers, Australia and New Zealand, have never been concerned about democratic rights in Fiji. After the 2006 coup, fearing that political instability in the region would open the door to China and other countries, wide-ranging international sanctions were imposed. This backfired, with Bainimarama gaining aid and investment from Beijing under his “look north” policy.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with representatives of the regime in 2010, signalling an end to Australian-led efforts to force it into submission. In 2014, Washington, Canberra and Wellington all rushed to endorse the bogus election and re-forge ties with Fiji.

Bainimarama has bluntly called any criticism of Fiji hypocritical. In a speech in October, Bainimarama admitted torture remained an “issue” in Fiji, but claimed there were only “isolated incidents.” He pointed to the US, which uses torture under the guise of combating terrorism, and to Australia’s detention of asylum seekers in “cruel, inhumane or degrading circumstances” as examples of state-sanctioned policies that, he claimed, were “vastly different” from the situation in Fiji.

Corporate tax-dodging in Australia costs billions

Mike Head

Two reports on company taxation show that more than a third of the largest companies operating in Australia paid no tax in 2014–15 and that multinational tax evasion cost an estimated $4.8 billion that year. These reports show the fraud of the claims being made by the Australian government and corporate media that Donald Trump-style tax cuts will boost plummeting investment and benefit the country’s population.

Addressing a business dinner last month, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull renewed his call for the company tax rate to be reduced from 30 to 25 percent in an attempt to meet the demands of the financial elite for his government to match the unprecedented cut from 35 to 15 percent promised to the US ruling class by President-elect Trump.

Turnbull insisted that investment would flood out of the country and into the US and other lower-taxing countries, unless the population accepted tax cuts for the corporate giants and other pro-business “reforms” to boost profits. “Hard decisions” required “winners and losers,” he declared.

Yet billions of dollars in corporate tax concessions—all permitted by the law—have failed to halt the slump overtaking Australian capitalism. Far from using tax windfalls for investment, major corporations have continued to boost their profits and reward their wealthy shareholders while restructuring their operations at the cost of workers’ jobs and conditions.

In the most recent result, the Australian economy contracted by 0.5 percent in the September quarter, driven by an ongoing collapse in business investment—down 9.7 percent over the past year.

Almost 700 of Australia’s largest 1,904 companies paid nil tax in the 2015 fiscal year, according to an annual corporate tax transparency report issued by the Australian Tax Office (ATO) this week. It showed that 36 percent of the companies—whether locally-listed, private or foreign-owned—paid no tax. But the ATO insisted that this was perfectly legitimate and not a sign of tax evasion or avoidance.

Of the companies that paid no tax, 291 reported an accounting loss. Another 125 reported an accounting profit but reconciliation items (for example, tax deductions allowed at higher rates than accounting permits) resulted in a tax loss. A further 128 reported a taxable income but prior-year losses were available to deduct against that profit so no tax was payable. Lastly, 135 reported a taxable income but were entitled to offsets (such as research and development incentives) at least equal to the tax otherwise payable.

One reason that the ATO cited for the outcome was the collapse in commodity prices, which continued into the 2016 fiscal year. In all, energy and resources corporations paid $3.2 billion less tax to the government during fiscal 2015, with almost 60 percent of the companies in this sector paying no tax at all.

The world’s biggest mining company, BHP Billiton, more than halved its tax bill from $3.95 billion in 2014 fiscal year to $1.7 billion after its taxable income fell from $40.4 billion to $33 billion. Its effective tax rate fell from less than 10 percent to about 5 percent.

Mining giants were not the only tax-dodgers, however. Among the big names that paid nil tax, IBM paid nothing despite recording $3.6 billion in total income and $49.3 million in taxable income. Amazon Corporate Services paid just $4.3 million on $148.3 million in revenues and $14.2 million in taxable income.

Apple and Google increased their tax payments a little in 2014-15, after coming under public fire for global tax evasion. Apple’s tax bill almost doubled to $146.3 million, on the basis of local income of $8.4 billion. That is an effective tax rate of less than 2 percent. Google’s tax bill lifted $3 million to $12.2 million, on reported income of $438.7 million—a rate of under 3 percent.

The Business Council of Australia, representing the largest firms operating in Australia, backed the ATO’s declaration that nil tax returns were not a sign of tax evasion or avoidance. “This includes 109 companies that paid no tax, despite reporting more than $1 billion in total income,” BCA chief executive chief executive Jennifer Westacott said.

Westacott claimed the discrepancies could be explained by the fact that companies only pay tax on their profits, “after paying all expenses including wages, capital replacement, supplier costs, fleet costs and other operating expenses.” Such items, however, often allow companies to reshuffle their results to minimise tax liabilities.

An Oxfam report on global tax evasion, due out next Monday, estimates that Australia loses more than $4 billion a year due to the use of 15 of the worst global tax havens by multinationals.

The top three offshore financial centres used by those multinationals operating in Australia were Switzerland, Singapore and the Netherlands. On a global basis, Bermuda topped the list as the most serious tax haven, with 0 percent corporate income tax, 0 percent withholding taxes, evidence of large-scale profit shifting and a lack of transparency.

The charity’s report implores the government not to join the “race to the bottom” on corporate tax rates. Oxfam notes the average corporate tax rate across G20 countries was 40 percent 25 years ago. Today it is less than 30 percent.

Despite net profits by the world’s largest companies tripling in real terms over the past 30 years, from $US2 trillion in 1980 to $7.2 trillion by 2013, tax contributions of large corporations were diminishing, the report says. On top of that, Oxfam says 90 percent of the world’s biggest companies had a presence in at least one tax haven.

Oxfam’s report appeals to the Australian government to ensure that companies pay their “fair share” of taxes, so that money is available for schools, hospitals and other social services. In reality, as the record of the past 30 years demonstrates, what the financial elites regard as “fair” is determined purely by their capacity to keep ramping up profits and dividends via a combination of tax-dodging, cheap labour exploitation and free-market deregulation.

In this process they constantly play one country, and one section of the working class, off against the others, shifting production and financial operations to wherever they can extract the lowest costs and biggest margins. As a result, social inequality has widened immensely, and even more so since the 2008 global financial breakdown.

Trump’s tax cuts and “America first” economic program will only heighten this endless international “race to the bottom” at the expense of workers and young people, who face further job destruction, the driving down of wages and conditions and the devastation of essential social services.

While Turnbull’s Liberal-National government is under immense corporate pressure to accelerate this offensive, it has long had bipartisan support in the political establishment. During the 1980s and 1990s, the Labor governments of Hawke and Keating began the assault, lowering the corporate tax rate from 49 to 30 percent, and the top marginal personal tax rate from 60 to 49 percent. Even so, as the latest reports confirm, major corporations and the wealthy often pay little or no tax.

Social Democratic Party wins Romanian elections

Andrei Tudora & Tina Zamfir

Romanian elections held December 11 were won by the Social Democratic Party (PSD), which gained 45.5 percent and will be able to form a government alone or with its neo-liberal ally Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (ALDE), which won 5 percent. Voter turnout, at 39.49 percent, was one of the lowest in the country’s history.

The vote represented broad rejection of the technocratic government headed by former EU Commissioner Dacian Ciolos. The government was imposed last November by conservative President Klaus Iohannis, a close ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, after the ouster of the Social Democratic government headed by Victor Ponta.

The vote for the conservative National Liberal Party, which supported a second Ciolos government, collapsed, standing at little over 20 percent, with the party facing a protracted internal crisis including the risk of breaking up. Another party that supported Ciolos was the Save Romania Union (USR), formed in February this year on an anti-corruption platform by various civil society organizations, ranging from free-market NGOs to pseudo-left “activists.” The party expected to play a major role in a new governing coalition, but only managed to pick up 8.83 percent of the vote.

The Social Democrats, running in the election as an opposition party, had in fact supported the formation of the technocratic government and backed it in parliament for the past year. The PSD is preparing to take power at a time when the European Union (EU) is in rapid disintegration and the country finds itself at the forefront of the war drive led by Washington against Russia.

The Social Democratic Party, formed from the remnants of the former ruling Stalinist Communist Party, has acted as the main pillar of capitalist rule in Romania. Backed to the hilt by the trade unions, it has presided over the privatization of state-owned enterprises in the early 1990s and the implementation of the savage attacks on workers’ rights demanded for entry into the EU. Its ruthless bureaucrats have admitted to complicity in crimes against humanity perpetrated by the CIA, and justified them with the “success” of accession to NATO.

The right-wing, anti-working class character of the new administration is evident in its election program. While attempting to cultivate a basis among sections of the middle classes with nationalist rhetoric and measures to prop up small entrepreneurs, the Social Democrats aim to prop up big business by drastically slashing taxes and contributions to social funds.

The Social Democrats were supported in the campaign by the trade unions, who tried to sell for good coin their election promises to increase pensions and salaries for state employees and increase the minimum wage from €277 to €321. The union bosses showed signs of nervousness when, after the elections, it became obvious the promises were not destined for the 2017 fiscal year. Dumitru Costin, leader of the National Union Bloc for the past 25 years, said, “We are not talking here about questioning in the first day after the election a promise of President [Liviu] Dragnea [PSD leader], we’re becoming slightly ridiculous. Mr. Dragnea was more than exact in his words; we have the documents.”

After the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis, the PSD was also the main political driving force of the militarization of the country. In January 2015, then prime minister Victor Ponta met President Iohannis and the leaders of the other parliamentary parties to sign a political agreement that whoever came to power would uphold an increase in military spending of at least 2 percent of GDP beginning next year.

On December 1, RomanianNews.ro cited a report delivered by the British trust Jane’s Information Group, that showed that Romania’s military spending has surpassed for the first time the sum of US$3 billion. This is, the report shows, the second highest spending in Eastern Europe, surpassed only by Poland.

PSD leader Dragnea, likely to become the new prime minister, reiterated his unwavering commitment to the EU and NATO immediately after the first exit polls came out.

Although the European press largely focussed on the corruption allegations associated with the PSD, more astute bourgeois commentators recognize in the Romanian PSD a valuable ally of the imperialists’ interests. Writing for the Euractiv web site, Nicolas Tenzer complained: “Russia now encircles Romania with new puppet presidents and Russian troops stationed in Crimea are just 250 kilometres from Romania’s Black Sea coast.” Tenzer notes that “Due to his former position, Ciolos is very popular among his fellow European leaders. The rest of the Union, however, should not overlook the strong pro-European stances of the rest of Romania’s political sphere as well.”