Traitors In Britain’s Leadership

Eric Zuesse

When a UK Prime Minister, such as the Conservative David Cameron, does the work of a foreign power, working for that foreign power and against UK’s democratic ideals, and also against the interests and values (such as equal-rights, and UK’s sovereign independence) which are held by the UK public, then that UK Prime Minister is perpetrating treason, whatever else it might also be called. This has happened, and yet no one pays attention to it: no one is even pointing out that it is treason. (Whether it is, in every sense of the word, we’ll get to, after the story here has been told, but that story must come first; only afterward can it be discussed.)

Following are highlights from the shocking and uncontested (though confusingly written) original Al Jazeera investigative news report published on January 8th, which had mentioned this treachery only in passing (but without calling it that). These excerpts will make clear the severity of what has actually been happening here — and of what is continuing to happen.

I shall add [in brackets] clarificatory adjectives etc., so as to help make instantly clear who is who, in this confusingly written story, and thus speed and ease a reader’s comprehension of the stunning narrative that’s being told here:

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http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/01/israel-apology-plot-uk-politicians-170108040326289.html

8 January 2017, Al Jazeera Investigative Unit

Israel apology after plot against UK politicians

Al Jazeera reveals discussions of Israeli diplomat and UK civil servant to ‘take down’ anti-settlement politicians.

The Israeli embassy has apologised to UK deputy foreign secretary [Conservative] Sir Alan Duncan for comments made by one of its staff members [Mr. Shai Masot] on plans “to take [him [Duncan]] down” due to his [Duncan’s] criticism of Israel’s settlement activity in the occupied [Palestinian] West Bank.

The comments, made by a senior political officer at the Israeli embassy [Mr.] Shai Masot, were secretly captured on film during a six-month undercover operation by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit, which reveals plots by the Israeli diplomat [Masot] and a British civil servant [Duncan] to destroy the careers of senior politicians [whom Israel wanted to be downed].

In a conversation with Maria Strizzolo, who was then chief of staff to MP [Member of Parliament] Robert Halfon, the deputy chairman of the ruling Conservative Party, [Israel’s Mr.] Masot asked her [the Conservative Strizzolo] if he [Masot] could give her some names of MPs [whom] he [Masot] would suggest she “take down” [on behalf of Israel].

[See it at 2:14 in this video, where his actual phrase was “Can I give you some MPs that I would suggest you take down?”]

Masot named [recommended to Strizzolo] Duncan, who in 2014 said that while he fully supports Israel’s right to exist, he believes [Jewish] settlements on occupied Palestinian land represent an “ever-deepening stain on the face of the globe”. He [Duncan] also likened the situation in Hebron in the occupied West Bank to apartheid. …

Strizzolo … revealed that she had a strategy of manipulation to ensure Israel remains at the top of the UK’s foreign policy agenda.

“If at least you can get a small group of MPs that you know you can always rely on, when there is something coming to parliament and you know you brief them, you say: ‘You don’t have to do anything, we are going to give you the speech, we are going to give you all the information, we [the office of MP Robert Halfon] are going to do everything for you’,” she said.

She also advised trying to infiltrate Prime Minister’s Questions, a weekly session in which the leader of the country answers questions from MPs. The debate is televised live.

“If they already have the question to table for PMQs [Prime Minister’s Questions], it’s harder to say: ‘No, no, no, I won’t do it’,” she said.

Strizzolo then boasted how her own efforts once made an immediate effect on the national debate. …

In 2014, she [had] persuaded MP Halfon to question the prime minister in public over three missing teenagers believed to have been kidnapped and murdered “to get a response from the government”, Strizzolo said.

Halfon took the request and called on former prime minister David Cameron to support the Israeli government. …

In response, Cameron promised that Britain would “stand by Israel”.

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Cameron there was a pushover for Halfon, who clearly was an agent for Israel. But was this treason only by Halfon, and not also by his boss and fellow-Conservative, Cameron?

To say that Cameron, as the principal decision-maker, who was a pushover for a foreign power’s stooge — the traitor who was acting on behalf of a foreign power — wasn’t himself acting treasonously here, would be to say that, for example, there is no such thing as criminal negligence, which is a criminal liability for failure to have done due diligence in carrying out one’s duties to the public as the nation’s chief of state.

Cameron, not Halfon, was the actual decision-maker here, the responsible party in the matter: as Harry Truman had said of the U.S. Presidency, “The buck stops here.”

This is comparable to the Inspector General of the TARP bailout of the megabanks, Christy Goldsmith Romero, recommending (and the U.S. government ignoring):

A PROPOSAL TO BRING ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE “INSULATED CEO”

I propose that Congress remove the insulation around Wall Street CEOs and other high-level officials by requiring the CEO, CFO and certain other senior executives to sign an annual certification that they have conducted due diligence within their organization and can certify that that there is no criminal conduct or civil fraud in their organization.

But, in the case of a head-of-state — a nation’s CEO — the obligation to do due diligence and to take full responsibility, for everything that one does and says that actually affects the public, and responsibility for the nation’s relationships with other nations: this due-diligence obligation for a head-of-state, is even more severe than it is for a private CEO.

A country that tolerates such negligence or worse (evil intent) from its rulers, cannot be a democracy, because that country’s international relations are being manipulated by a foreign power — placing another nation’s leadership above one’s own. That’s subversion, of the given nation. It is treason, for any public official.

In the United States, the aristocracy are trying to fool the public into believing that the incoming President Donald Trump is such a traitor (‘Russian agent’) (and no evidence has been presented to the public for that, except ‘evidence’ concocted by a former British spy); but in this case involving Israel and the Prime Minister of UK, there is even video of the Israeli agent Masot communicating to Strizzolo, who then communicates to MP Halfon, and who brags that she had formerly communicated to Halfon who then communicated to the Prime Minister, who then acted in accord with the Israeli government’s back-channel instruction. Was it really an “instruction,” though — or was it instead some type of international deal, a trading-of-favors between allied countries? Precisely what favors are being performed by Israel, to UK? Really? And would that secret international agreement — without any democratic approval by the domestic public — be something that a democracy would allow?

In any case, even if there was some secret deal that induced Cameron to fulfill upon Israel’s instruction, that secret treaty (the deal) had not been entered into by the Constitutionally authorized process. This alone would be violation of oath-of-office — on behalf of a foreign power. It would be treason.

Secret deals, unauthorized treaties (in effect), ended up producing World War I. They are exceedingly dangerous. Doing international relations this way is inconsistent with democracy.

But that’s what happened here in UK’s Party on the ‘right’, the Conservatives. However, Israeli attempts at subversion of the UK government happen also in UK’s Party of the ‘left’, Labour; and, the video that was linked-to is devoted primarily to that — to the Labour Party.

Like happens in the United States, the main Party on the ‘left’ is being torn between viewing things mainly in terms of tribal conflicts (‘Palestinians’ versus ‘Jews’), or else viewing things mainly in terms of conflicts between the government and the public — the rulers versus the ruled (irrespective of their ‘tribe’). In Israel, the rulers are, essentially, only the Jews who hold power; and the ruled include many people (the “Palestinians”) who are excluded from many rights that all “Jews” in Israel enjoy. The current leader of Britain’s Labour Party, Jeremy Corben, rejects the Jewish state’s tribal values; and, consequently, he is being called ‘anti-Semitic’ by his opponents, both within and outside his Party. In today’s Israel, to oppose racism is to be ‘anti-Semitic’. A certain type of racism is policy in today’s Israel. Adolf Hitler, a supreme European tribalist, is thus now retrospectively a paragon of Israeli values: tribalism (racism). The current Israeli government is in Hitler’s image, only less consistently, and choosing a different tribe to reward, and a different tribe to punish (and, of course, far less certain than he was of the ultimate morality of their cause, and thus also far less intense about their application of the resulting punishment than he was, in his blinding hatred; but, after all, he was the paragon of bigotry) — differing with him, on those things. The current Israeli government equates nazism (the ideology, not Germany’s particular nazi party) with good, and equality with bad: they say that to be opposed to the current state of Israel is to be an ‘anti-Semite’. And this type of value-system is being worked secretly upon the UK’s government, in Britain’s back rooms, with alien (in particular, Israeli) lobbyists.

That video, which I linked to at its 2:14, continues on for a full 26 minutes, and mainly presents there the conflict within UK’s Labour Party, over these two mutually incompatible views of Israel and the Palestinians: one view, championed by the anti-Tony-Blair and anti-Iraq-War, progressive, new leader of the Labour Party, Corben, is a view which refuses to take sides with Israel against its Palestinians; and the other view, the one which is championed by Israel’s apartheid government, identifies that equalitarian position with “anti-Zionism,” and then promptly identifies ‘anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism’, meaning that every Jew (or at least ones who aren’t themselves ‘anti-Semitic’) endorses the current apartheid Israeli government. This ridiculous lie, equating equalitarianism with ‘anti-Semitism’, assumes that any Israeli who rejects Israel’s current, apartheid, government, hates Jews, instead of hates racists. It’s “Big Brother” thinking: a conviction that bad is good, white is black, up is down, peace is war, etc.

Israel works secretly in America’s back rooms, too. Some people worry that President Trump will be a Russian agent. Some people worry more realistically that he will be an Israeli agent. And some people worry that he will be a Saudi agent (because the royal Saud family hate Iran, and Trump seems to believe that the Saudi royal family, who are Saudi Arabia’s government, are allies not enemies of America, and that Iran is America’s eternal enemy). Others worry whether Trump will be intelligent enough, or even honorable enough, to avoid being any foreign agent at all. But whereas there is strong reason to consider Britain’s David Cameron to have been an Israeli agent, there is no reason, yet, to think that Trump is any foreign agent at all. Only time will tell.

In UK, time already has told the reality on this; and another and much briefer al-Jazeera video, which was posted on January 7th by UK’s Guardian, presents a conversation between Masot and Strizollo, in which Masot tells Strizollo that the Israeli government isn’t satisfied with the extent to which UK’s Conservative Party has silenced the Conservative Foreign Minister Boris Johnson’s insistence upon a “two-state solution”: his insistence upon a situation in which Palestinians will be freed from domination by Israel’s ‘Jews’ — freed from the aristocrats (many of whom live in America, actually) who, in reality, control and determine Israel’s apartheid government.

Yet another brief al-Jazeera video shows that Strizzolo’s immediate response when Masot asked her “Can I give you some MPs that I would suggest you take down?” might have been to think of that assertion — the question he posed — as being an attractive invitation by Israel to, perhaps, help her boss by blackmailing some of his opponents: she said, “Well, I know that if you look hard enough, I’m sure that there is something that they’re trying to hide.” But, whether she was thinking there, of that question as representing Israel’s Mossad, intelligence agency, and what help it might be able to offer to the Conservative cause, isn’t entirely clear. However, this video opened with Masot’s telling Strizzolo that his career-aspiration “is to be the head of the Foreign Affairs Department of the Intelligence Department in Israel — I’m not a career diplomat.” So, maybe it’s in the context of his being an aspiring spy, that she was considering the ways in which she might be able to be of help to both her boss, and also the young and rising Israeli agent who was, perhaps, propositioning her.

Such statecraft, in the seedy real world, was repeatedly condemned by the people who wrote America’s Constitution. They thought of it as being the type of international relations that the nation they were starting should avoid, at all costs. They could hardly imagine that “it comes with the territory” (as the vernacular might phrase the matter).

It’s dangerous to democracy in any country.

We Breathe Polluted Air Beyond Permissible Standards Across India

Marianne Furtado de Nazareth

Every single day, we in India who walk the streets of our country, India, breathe polluted air way beyond permissible standards for our health. Several reports had been published over the years about the abysmal state of air pollution in New Delhi, the capital. A few government interventions like taking vehicles of over 15 years off the streets and making it a punishable offence to drive them. Buses and autos were ‘greened’ with a change in fuels being made by them. And ofcourse a lot of new tree cover was planted across Delhi to get the free clean up act which trees can give us.

However now damning information obtained by Greenpeace India through online reports and Right to Information applications from State Pollution Control Boards across India, shows that none of the Indian cities comply with standards prescribed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and very few cities in southern India comply to Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) standards. The information was revealed in a report titled ‘Airpocalypse’ that assesses air quality in 168 cities across 24 states and union territories and pinpoints fossil fuels as one of the main culprits for the deteriorating air quality across the country. The report highlighted Karnataka like many other cities has not complied with the WHO and National Ambient Air Quality standards.

We who live in Karnataka and who have lived in Bangalore over the decades, can especially feel the deterioration of air quality, in the Central Business District (CBD) area. There are no rules with regard to pollution especially by government vehicles in the city which are the worst offenders. The BMTC buses, vehicles run by the Karnataka Police, BBMP vehicles which collect garbage everyday from different localities are the wors offenders, belching thick black smoke into the faces of pedestrians and passers-by.

According to Green Peace, the air pollution levels for cities in Karnataka highlighted that PM10 were higher than the annual average of 60 µg/m3 as prescribed under NAAQS. Levels of PM 10 in the atmosphere in Davanagere, Bengaluru, Tumkur, Riachur and Hubbali were respectively 109, 119, 118, 87 and 80 µg/m3 for year 2015-2016.

For those who do not understand the different levels of pollution: Visible smoke is comprised of particles of PM10 size or larger. The particles with the greatest health effects are those within
the “respirable range”, that is between PM10 and PM0.1. The respirable range contains particles that can penetrate deep into the lungs and deposit there; particles smaller than PM0.1 are usually exhaled. Fine and ultra fine particles (PM2.5 and PM 0.1) are not visible to the eye (2.5 microns is approximately 1/30th the size of a human hair). 1.6 Million more people die due to air pollution in India and China according to Greenpeace, India.

The top 20 most polluted cities have PM 10 levels between 268 µg/m3and 168 µg/m3 for the year 2015-2016. While, Delhi tops the list with 268 µg/m3, it is followed closely by Ghaziabad, Allahabad, and Bareli in Uttar Pradesh; Faridabad in Haryana; Jharia in Jharkhand, Alwar in Rajasthan; Ranchi, Kusunda and Bastacola in Jharkhand; Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh, and Patna In Bihar; with PM10 levels ranging from 258 µg/m3to 200 µg/m3.

The most polluted cities are spread across the North India, starting from Rajasthan and then moving along the Indo-Gangetic belt. A closer analysis of the data obtained through RTI and previous studies on air pollution pin-point to continued use of fossil fuels as the main culprit for the dangerous rise in the level of pollutants in the air.

A Greenpeace India previous report estimated that air pollution led to approximately 6 lakh more deaths than what was estimated in 2015 at the GDP level. Comparing to world’s leading economies-EU, China and the US, India’s air pollution policy scenario stands weak.

Sunil Dahiya a Green Peace campaigner says, “Air pollution is no more just the problem of Northern India and Delhi, Bengaluru and many other urban centers in southern India are breathing hazardous levels of pollutants in the air and its time the people in Southern India also rise up to demand and contribute towards their right to clean air and move away from polluting fossil fuel based society to clean and greener option of clean energy and transport system. An aggressive shift towards public transport from the government and public is the need of the hour along with tacking other relevant sectors to make the air breathable for us and generations to come.”

While Delhi underwent a severe air quality check, it’s time Bengaluru woke up on its air pollution snag. The main source of pollution in the city is the exponential growth in the number of vehicles. Vehicular pollution constitutes about 42 per cent of the air pollution in the city. Based on the report the pollutants shows significant contribution of anthropogenic sources i.e., fossil fuel burning, to the overall air quality in the city.

For Karnataka, a 2010,TERI report highlighted PM10, SOx and NOx

Sources	PM10	SOx	Nox
Transport	42 %	16%	68%
Road Dust Resuspension	20%	–	–
Construction	14%	–	–
Industry	14%	56%	8%
DG Set	7%	23%	23%
Domestic	3%	–	1%

Further explaining the report which was aimed at highlighting the fact that air pollution needs to be addressed as a national problem, Sunil Dahiya says: “India’s pollution trends have been steadily increasing, with India seeing more deaths than China in 2015. India’s deteriorating air quality demands an urgent robust monitoring system. This report clearly shows that air pollution is not restricted to Delhi alone. Thus, our pollution reduction strategies need to be much more ambitious, systematic and with focused targets with clear timelines. Accountability and a compliance mechanism should be in place, with no leniency towards the fossil fuel dependant sectors such as, power and transport.”

Millions face dire consequences of rundown of Britain’s National Health Service

Robert Stevens

Prime Minister Theresa May and Conservative ministers have spent the last week denying that the National Health Service (NHS) is in an enormous crisis.

Last weekend, two patients at Worcestershire Royal Hospital died after waiting hours for treatment in hospital corridors. At the same time, more than 20 hospitals raised alerts that they could no longer provide basic services to the public. In response, the British Red Cross said, accurately, that the NHS was facing a “humanitarian crisis.”

At Prime Minister’s Questions Wednesday, May said the depiction used by the Red Cross was “irresponsible and overblown” and claimed that the NHS was receiving £10 billion more funding from the government than it had requested.

May was flatly contradicted just two hours later by Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England. Stevens was giving evidence to parliaments’ public accounts committee on the “financial sustainability of the NHS,” and said funding was being substantially reduced. “Over the next three years, funding is going to be highly constrained. In 2018-2019, real-terms NHS spending per person in England is going to go down, 10 years after Lehman Brothers [collapsed] and austerity began.” He added, “We all understand why that is, but let’s not pretend that’s not placing huge pressure on the service.”

Stevens gave his evidence after Chris Hopson—chief executive of NHS Providers—said bluntly in his testimony that, “We have reached the point in the NHS where we can no longer deliver everything that has been asked of the NHS.”

The dire situation in the NHS, which is a life-and-death issue for millions, has been deliberately created by successive government policies.

Stevens, a former adviser to Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, is no friend of the working class. However, his reference to the austerity agenda enacted after the financial crash of 2008 is a significant admission. In order to enact a £1 trillion bailout of the banks and super-rich, the Labour government began a programme of mass austerity. Central to this was the acceleration of spending cuts to the NHS and the privatisation—to the tune of billions of pounds—of a huge portion of its services, resulting in the present crisis.

In 2009, Stevens’ predecessor, David Nicholson, in alliance with the Gordon Brown Labour government, demanded that already struggling NHS Trusts deliver up to £20 billion in “efficiency savings” over three years from 2011 to 2014. This was enforced under the Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition when they came to office in 2010. Following the re-election of the Tories in 2015, a further £22 billion in cuts is being imposed by 2020-2021, again under the euphemism of “efficiency savings.”

As a result of this systematic underfunding, the breakdown of the NHS worsens by the day. On Tuesday, figures leaked from NHS Improvement, an NHS regulator in England, to the BBC revealed that nearly a quarter of patients waited longer than four hours in Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments last week. In one hospital, Weston Area, 44 percent waited more than four hours. The document revealed dangerously high levels of bed occupancy. In England 94.7 percent of beds are full, a figure well above the “safe” threshold of 85 percent.

Those admitted to hospital as emergency cases face long, and as the Worcestershire deaths demonstrate, dangerous, waiting times for a bed—in some instances well over 48 hours. In the first week of January, more than 18,000 people had “trolley waits” in corridors of four hours or more and 485 people had to lie on trolleys for more than 12 hours—treble the number seen during the whole of January last year.

On Friday, the Daily Mirror ran a front-page picture of a 22-month-old boy—with suspected meningitis—who had to lie in a waiting room for five hours on two plastic chairs pulled together as a makeshift bed by his mother due to a lack of beds at a hospital.

The boy’s mother, Rose Newman, said, “Theresa May said she accepted there had been a few instances where things like this happen. That is laughable. In that waiting room, there was a woman sitting opposite me, head in hands, I don’t know what had happened to her but she had been there for eight hours. Another baby, younger than Jack [her son], had a big rash across her, had to be put on a drip, and they’d been waiting more than six hours.”

Members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) reported this week that the situation in the NHS is the worst they have known. One nurse in charge of a major treatment centre in A&E, told the RCN, “At one point our treatment area, meant for 20 patients, had 56 patients crowded in corridors and around the nursing station.” Janet Davies, the RCN’s chief executive said nurses were told to discharge people from hospital even though they were unfit to leave in order to free up beds.

Another professional body, the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), demand the government provide funding urgently to help “over-full hospitals with too few qualified staff.” RCP President Professor Jane Dacre said, “Our members fear that patients’ lives are at risk because they can’t get round to see patients who aren’t in the emergency and accident department or are waiting for results to come back.”

The Royal College of Radiologists also demanded more funding and “immediate and longer-term measures to address the issues.”

Central to the crisis is the mass culling of staff. According to a report issued last April by the NHS’s Health and Social Care Information Centre, the NHS had 69,317 fewer staff than was being reported by the government, including just over 15,000 fewer nurses, midwives and health visitors and 3,000 fewer doctors. According to recent figures, there are 6,000 fewer nurses and 400 fewer doctors working in mental health.

At Prime Minister’s Questions, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, focussed on the NHS crisis in his allotted questions. While Corbyn addressed the lengthy waiting times and other aspects of the crisis, he said nothing about its origins and proposed nothing beyond the government bringing forward £900 million of funding due to reach the NHS by 2019. This amount is a mere drop in the ocean compared to the vast resources being stripped from the NHS and the profits reaped by the privateers.

Moreover, Labour played a central role, as indicated by Stevens, in laying the basis for today’s crisis.

There have been repeated warnings about this state of affairs. Last year, 50,000 junior doctors mounted a wave of unprecedented strikes to protest the government plan to enforce an inferior contract on them. In the face of relentless and hostile propaganda from the government and right-wing media, the junior doctors warned that the contract was bound up with accelerating efforts to destroy the NHS. For that, they won widespread public support.

Corbyn, in alliance with the trade unions, played a major role in the isolation and eventual defeat of the junior doctors. After first studiously ignoring the strikes, Corbyn belatedly made a face-saving appearance at a picket line in April, while calling for the government to reach a negotiated settlement with the British Medical Association (BMA)

This allowed the government the time required to concoct a dirty deal with the BMA—on whose junior doctors committee Corbyn supporters have leading positions—out of which the inferior contract demanded by the Tories was enforced last December.

Public health care is a social right, not a privilege, and the working class must begin to organise a counteroffensive against the scorched earth programme of the ruling elite aimed at destroying the NHS. In 2012, the Socialist Equality Party launched the NHS FightBack campaign to lead this struggle, insisting that a fight back can be successful only if it is waged independently of Labour and the trade unions and on the basis of a socialist programme.

Italy’s Five Star Movement leader seeks to shift course on Europe

Marianne Arens

The leader of Italy’s Five Star Movement, Beppe Grillo, announced on his return from Christmas holidays that the party’s 17 deputies in the European Parliament would leave the euroskeptic group (anti-European Union) and join the pro-European Liberals.

The move, which was evidently agreed to with the leader of the Liberal parliamentary group, Guy Verhofstadt, surprised both allies and opponents of Grillo. The Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD)—to which Grillo’s Five Star Movement (M5S) has thus far belonged—is led by the former head of the UK Independence Party Nigel Farage, who played a leading role in the campaign for a British vote to leave the European Union (EU). By contrast, Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister, is an enthusiastic supporter of the EU and chief negotiator for the European Parliament in the Brexit talks.

Verhofstadt’s Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) is considered explicitly neo-liberal. It includes the German Free Democratic Party (FDP) and Free Voters, the Liberal Democrats in Britain, the MoDem and Parti Radical/UDI in France and the right-wing Ciudadanos in Spain. ALDE supports international trade agreements like the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which Grillo allegedly opposes. Former Italian Prime Ministers Romano Prodi and Mario Monti both belonged to ALDE; both have implemented drastic austerity measures in Italy on behalf of the EU.

On January 8, Grillo allowed party members to vote online on the surprising shift, which they approved by 78.5 percent without internal discussion.

In a letter to Farage, Grillo remarked on the change, “You have won the most important struggle for UKIP, Britain’s exit from the European Union. An epoch-making result which would not have been possible without your intervention. The Five Star Movement still has to win its struggle.” This would be more likely as part of a large parliamentary group rather than the EFDD, which had “lost its dynamic” and which UKIP will soon leave.

There was obviously some backroom horse-trading carried out with Verhofstadt: the “Grillini” were to have supported Verhofstadt’s election as European Parliament president on January 17 and could even have nominated a vice-presidential candidate. In exchange, the ALDE group would have ensured the Five Star Movement deputies continue to enjoy the financing, parliamentary positions and opportunities that are bound up with membership in a parliamentary group.

But the deal came to nothing: Verhofstadt slammed the door in Grillo’s face at the last moment. On January 9, the ALDE executive committee refused to give its backing to the agreement. The Grillo deputies reached out to Farage in a Skype discussion, who arranged their reentry into the euroskeptic group, without, however, their group leader David Borrelli. He was compelled to give up his European parliament seat.

On his blog, Grillo denounced the “narrow-minded” Verhofstadt, writing that he ought to be ashamed for bowing to pressure from the establishment. “The establishment decided to block the M5S from joining the third largest parliamentary group in the European Parliament,” he wrote demagogically. “All possible forces have united against us. We have shaken the system like never before.”

By contrast, the media interpreted Grillo’s failed about-face in the European Parliament as an attempt to draw closer to the establishment and portray the “Grillini” as a potential partner in government.

According to the Zürich-based Tages-Anzeiger, Grillo wanted “to show that the M5S is not the spectre it is believed to be in many European capitals… Obviously the M5S is no longer to be primarily viewed as a populist, anti-system movement, but as a political force that wishes to jointly influence reasonably and constructively.”

Die Presse from Austria wrote, “The Five Star Movement, chiefly characterised to date by its rowdiness, would have gladly adopted a more serious image through the alliance with ALDE. Because the Grillini want to enter government.”

Such hopes are based on opinion polls from December showing support for Grillo’s movement on the rise. When the December 4 constitutional referendum backed by the Renzi government failed badly, with close to 60 percent voting against it, observers generally saw the M5S as the main beneficiary. Grillo demanded a snap election and openly speculated about the possibility of defeating Matteo Renzi’s Democrats.

The ALDE rejection in Strasbourg is the second setback suffered recently by Grillo. In mid-December, a corruption scandal exploded involving the M5S mayor in Rome, Virginia Raggi.

In Rome, the M5S, which began as a diffuse, petty-bourgeois protest party, has proven itself to be an increasingly right-wing and anti-working class tool of bourgeois rule. The attempt to join a neoliberal parliamentary group in the European Parliament was obviously no accident.

The party has thoroughly exposed its rotten political character in the Italian capital: it has declared a readiness to impose a drastic austerity programme on city employees and residents. Prior to this, Italy’s financial controller rejected the city’s budgetary proposals. Raggi must now present a new budget by February 28. She must take steps to reduce debt levels, shed obligations, sell city property and save, save, save…

Grillo, commenting on the crisis in the capital, asserted that the Five Star Movement would “fight tooth and nail to change Rome.” In this context, this was a direct declaration of war against rubbish collectors, street cleaners, bus and tram drivers, social workers and on Rome’s residents, who rely on the infrastructure and social services.

When the Five Star Movement secured a quarter of the vote in the 2013 parliamentary election, the WSWS warned that Grillo’s movement stood in opposition to the interests of workers and other employees. “They will quickly recognise how right-wing his politics in fact are… Under the guise of a struggle against corruption, monopolies and bureaucracy, it [the M5S] advocates an historic assault on the working class and the entire framework of the welfare state established in the post-war period.”

Grillo already made such policies clear on his blog several years ago: in his offensive against “waste,” he demanded an attack on the social achievements of the Italian working class. He sought to pit the unemployed and precariously employed young people against better-paid and state workers. He created a division between two “blocks”: block A, made up of “millions of young people without a future, with precarious work or unemployed,” and block B, “chiefly dependent upon the state with monthly incomes of more than €5,000 [US$ 5,315].” Every month, the state had to “pay 19 million pensions and 4 million salaries to them. This burden is unbearable.”

Grillo advances a nationalist programme, agitates against immigrants and supports the repressive state apparatus. On his blog he recently effusively praised the policemen from Milan who shot the suspect in the Berlin Christmas market attack, Anis Amri. In the same blog, he proposed a renegotiation of the Schengen and Dublin agreements, and to establish a European database on immigrants. He compared Italy and Europe to a “sieve,” which can be penetrated by any immigrant, demanding, “Now we must act and protect ourselves.” He called for all illegal immigrants to be immediately deported.

The right-wing character of the Five Star Movement is becoming ever more apparent. Despite this, it continues to have a base of support in Italy. This is due in no small part to the rightward evolution of Italy’s pseudo-left organisations. Many former supporters of Rifondazione are enthused over Grillo’s rise. After supporting the bourgeois “left” camp for 25 years, they are now prepared to join Grillo’s openly right-wing movement.

Eleonora Forenza, the candidate for the European Left Group (GUE/NGL) for the European Parliament presidency, stated, “The Five Stars are a contradictory phenomenon. It would be wrong for the left not to turn to the people who vote for the Five Star Movement.” The left had to “develop political work in this contradiction.”

Historian Aldo Giannuli, who formerly commented in pieces for Il manifesto, Liberazione and L’Unità, enthused last September, “Thank heavens that it [the M5S] exists.” Although he acknowledged “a large number of errors, stupidity, backwardness and omissions,” he claimed that only with the M5S could one combat right-wing populism, meaning France’s National Front, the Alternative for Germany, the Finns Party, Donald Trump in the US and the Lega Nord in Italy.

“The M5S is the only party with such a high poll percentage over such a long period of time,” Giannuli wrote in September 2016. He noticed that many in M5S originally came from Rifondazione, the SEL (Left Ecology Freedom, led by Nichi Vendola) or the Democrats. Giannuli informed his blog readers that he had voted for M5S.

Financial parasites feast on Argentina’s economy

Andrea Lobo

On December 26, Argentine president, Mauricio Macri sacked his minister of the economy, Alfonso Prat-Gay, as part of his government’s policy of driving up interest rates and escalating its already severe austerity measures. These measures are aimed at facilitating the growth of parasitism by financial investors in Argentina, who are feasting on high interest rates, ranging this year between 25 and 38 percent.

At the same time, the country has entered an economic recession amid severe social cuts, rate hikes, hundreds of thousands of layoffs and collapsing real wages. Unions and the pseudo-left parties have responded with a demobilization campaign of empty protests and proposals for national reforms.

The argument being made by the ruling elite is that high interest rates will keep the Argentine peso strong and control inflation, which has climbed to over 40 percent—the highest rate since the end of the 1998-2002 economic crisis. The reality is that the tarifazos , or rate hikes, which benefit chiefly privatized or “public-private” partnerships in the transportation and utilities sectors, along with the depreciation of the peso to the dollar, yuan and other currencies, have been the main factors fueling inflation.

Jorge Brito, the CEO of Argentina’s second-largest financial firm, Banco Macro, declared recently that he supports the efforts to “keep inflation down because it is the most unjust tax for those that have the least.” He paired this populist rhetoric with a warning to the rest of the ruling class: “We have to be very sensitive to understand what is happening with the people, because we are living in that kind of complicated world.”

Macri’s dismissal of Prat-Gay as economy minister is the culmination of a political confrontation inside of his right-wing administration. The head of Argentina’s central bank, Federico Sturzenegger, has openly called for a further enrichment of the banks through high interest rates on debt bonds. Ultimately public debt, which according to third-trimester government figures has climbed to 53 percent of GDP, gets paid through taxes and social cuts.

While Prat-Gay also called for a growth of the financial sector, he argued for a reduction in interest rates, claiming that they were hurting the export sector and national production, reflected in a 3.4 percent drop in GDP since the third trimester of 2015 and a 7.3 percent fall in industrial activity.

The Spanish daily El País reports that, “it is precisely this accelerated growth [of the financial system] that is becoming a great business, while every other key sector around it is collapsing and Argentina, increasingly expensive, doesn’t stop losing competiveness.”

In a December 2016 report on Argentina, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean points out that the 2016 capital and finance balance more than doubled, while exports and imports fell. The UN-affiliated agency goes on to warn that the central bank “has to be cautious in its policy to normalize rates, which could affect the recovery of the real economy.” In other words, there are indications that, if interest rates are brought down, foreign and national capital will again leave the country since profitability in the real economy is too low or “uncompetitive.”

On the other hand, the IMF has praised Macri’s “ambitious reforms”. The US credit firm, Moody’s published a statement earlier this month declaring that Macri’s “pro-market policies will create new opportunities for loans and will allow creditors to assess the assumed risk…”

After putting an end to the country’s debt default, which began in 2001, and reopening the country to international lenders, Macri is replacing Prat-Gay with Nicolás Dujovne as treasury minister and Luis Caputo as finance minister. Both are directly aligned with defending the growth of financial parasitism and are personally close to Macri, which also signals that he is preparing for political and financial turbulence.

Dujovne, a “fiscal hardliner” according to the Financial Times, has asked for a new $25 billion loan from the IMF. He has also called for freezing public spending growth for 10 years. Caputo, for his part, is an ex-Wall Street multimillionaire who has been in charge of the sellout negotiations with the vulture funds.

Back in 1998, the country entered a recession, resulting mainly from an end of foreign investments into sectors privatized by then-president Carlos Menem, tougher credit conditions by international lenders and the global consequences of the Brazilian and Russian financial crises (two of Argentina’s top commercial partners).

In 1999, incoming president Fernando de la Rúa imposed severe austerity measures and kept the peso’s parity with the dollar, since devaluing it would set inflation higher and lead to even sharper social tensions. Ultimately, these measures led to an intensification of the recession and a bank run halted by the infamous corralito measures to prevent withdrawals.

Currently, Argentina’s economy has been hit by the severe economic crisis in Brazil and the slowdown in China (Argentina’s top trading partners). Exports to Brazil and China fell 20 percent and 35 percent respectively during 2015. This has been compounded by low commodity prices and historic public debt levels. Moreover, the Trump presidency in the United States will likely bring about more restrictions on credit and trade.

The deterioration of the real economy and financialization are an expression of the unresolved contradictions in the world economy, expressed more specifically in Argentina’s increasingly explosive periods of economic deceleration and the growth of foreign debt since the late 1980s.

Since Macri came into office in December 2015, more than 200,000 workers have been laid off, while his government has reduced subsidies for consumption and imposed several other social cuts. Last week, the government approved a renewed income tax law, which will weigh more heavily on working class families as salaries grow nominally, albeit not compensating for inflation.

These measures are intended to make workers pay for the government’s debt crisis, the stagnation in production and the windfall profits for the Argentine and foreign financial elites.

Meanwhile, unions have been working closely with Macri, who agreed to expand the funds for “social works” of the Solidarity Fund for Redistribution, used historically by the Peronist movement to tie the finances of unions to the central government. This is in spite of the promises of the new leadership of the largest union bloc, the CGT, to “go out to the streets” and support social movements.

The pseudo-left parties of the Worker’s Left Front (FIT) have made empty criticisms of Macri’s policies, insisting that “salaries are not taxable income” and that “capitalists should pay for the crisis.” However, they continue seeking to channel working class discontent behind the large union confederations that are collaborating with the government, urging these right-wing organizations to organize resistance and call a general strike. The chief declared goal of these parties is to “elect new legislators,” while it’s also clear that their members seek to climb the bureaucratic ladders in the unions.

The petty-bourgeois character of these nominally Trotskyist parties was reflected by the alternative bill they proposed in Congress for the income tax reform, which called for an elimination of income taxes to all salaries “ under collective agreements ” and for using the calculations made by the “statistics institutes of the union centrals.”

In the same way that the smaller CTA union confederation indicates that “without the CGT there will be no general strike,” the pseudo-left demobilizes workers by appealing to the union bureaucracies chiefly led by Peronists and other right-wing forces.

On December 16, the newspaper tied to the Socialist Workers Party (PTS) of the FIT posted a favorable interview with a journalist of the conservative newspaper, La Nación, Nicolás Balinotti, where they highlight his comment: “In 2017, I’m sure that the CGT will break the truce it sealed with the government.”

As his government prepares to escalate attacks against workers, Macri has been meeting with union leaders of the CGT, CTA, and smaller blocs, asking them to have a more central role in the government and “become an anchor of responsibility.”

Blocking the emergence of an independent working class movement, the unions and their pseudo-left apologists are attempting to channel social tensions back into bourgeois politics, where these middle class forces can seek some returns from Macri’s “liberalization” plans for the economy and growth of the financial sector.

US banks report massive fourth quarter profits

Gabriel Black

Profits for the two largest US banks by assets surged in the fourth quarter, reflecting a rise in trading activity following the election victory of Donald Trump.

JPMorgan Chase profits increased 24 percent to $6.7 billion, while the bank’s revenue rose two percent to $24.3 billion, according to the quarterly earnings report released by the bank on Friday. The bank reported its best-ever fourth quarter trading business. It net income jumped 96 percent from a year earlier.

Bank of America’s fourth quarter profit shot up by 42 percent to $4.7 billion. The second largest US bank’s revenue climbed 2.1 percent to $20 billion, the result of a gain in interest income and loan growth.

Earnings for the country’s fourth largest bank by assets, Wells Fargo, fell 5.4 percent to $5.3 billion and revenue remained flat in the wake of a scandal over the bank’s practice of opening unauthorized customer accounts in order to meet aggressive sales targets.

Combined 2016 profits for Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo totaled $64.6 billion, some two percent higher than in 2015.

Overall, share prices and profits of the big Wall Street banks are soaring, fueled by expectations of sharply higher profits under a new administration pledged to dismantle the 2010 Dodd-Frank bank regulatory overhaul and remove virtually all regulations restricting speculative activity and protecting investors and the general public from Wall Street fraud.

The incoming Trump administration is also promising to sharply cut corporate taxes and personal income taxes for the wealthy. Its key economic posts are filled with Wall Street insiders, including Goldman Sachs alums named to at least five top positions. These include Steven Mnuchin as treasury secretary, Gary Cohn as director of the National Economic Council, and longtime Goldman lawyer Jay Clayton to head the Securities and Exchange Commission.

US financial stocks have been on a tear since the November 8 election, with total gains for the 63 largest groups hitting $459 billion. The financial sector has headed up a general surge in stock prices, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average increasing 8.9 percent since Election Day and nearing the 20,000 mark. The US stock market is now valued at $26 trillion, the highest in history.

The Dodd-Frank law is a largely token measure that has done virtually nothing to rein in the type of speculative and fraudulent activity that led to the 2008 Wall Street crash. Nevertheless, the big US banks have denounced it and lobbied against provisions that require them to maintain a bigger capital reserve and others that minimally restrict their ability to gamble with depositors’ money.

And while the Obama administration worked systematically to bail out the banks and make the financial oligarchy richer than ever, shielding the architects of the Great Recession from criminal prosecution, it did impose fines for some of the banks’ grossest swindles, including the sale of worthless subprime mortgage-backed securities, the rigging of key global interest rates such as the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), drug money laundering, illegal home foreclosures and other illicit activities.

Now the banks are confident they will not even face such token reprimands for their reckless and often criminal pursuit of super-profits.

Trump is also expected to offer massive tax breaks to companies that invest in government-sponsored infrastructure projects. A spurt in growth and an anticipated rise in interest rates promise to increase the opportunities for the banks to realize higher returns.

This Trump boom will make the inevitable bursting of the stock bubble that much more violent. The fundamentals of the European, East Asian and American economies remain weak, with very low rates of reinvestment.

The massive profits reported by the American banks contrast sharply with the situation in Europe. The total profits of the three largest US banks for 2016, $65 billion, exceeds the combined market value of Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse, two of the largest European banks.

This reflects a sharp decline in the position of European banks relative to their US rivals in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. Share prices for major European banks such as the Royal Bank of Scotland, Deutsche Bank, Barclays and UniCredit are below their pre-2008 levels.

US Millennials face higher unemployment, lower income than parents’ generation

Shelley Connor 

A report released by Young Invincibles last week outlines key areas in which so-called Millennials—Americans between the ages of 18 and 34—face unprecedented financial difficulties.

The brief, which compares the financial health of Millennials to that of Baby Boomers in the 1980s, demonstrates that wages and home ownership have declined significantly within a generation. The authors measured five factors of Millennials’ financial health against that of young adults in the 1980s: income, assets, net wealth, home ownership and retirement planning.

The discrepancies in income alone are shocking; wages have declined by 20 percent from 1989 to the present, with Millennials earning about $10,000 less than Baby Boomers did as young adults. In 1989, a high school graduate earned about the same income as a college graduate with a degree today. The report also notes that an astounding 1 million young adults experienced long-term unemployment during the Great Recession of 2008-09.

The report’s authors maintain that, although income declined across all education levels for Millennials, a college degree remains a worthwhile investment. According to the Young Invincibles’ analysis, “intergenerational declines in income were steepest for those with no degree.” Nevertheless, years of deep cuts to state education budgets force today’s college students to contend with ever-rising tuition costs and increasing amounts of student loan debt.

The Young Invicibles’ report acknowledges that “student debt blunts some of education’s benefits,” which stands out as an impossibly sanguine understatement in light of the numbers they present. By their own analysis, median assets declined at a rate of 71 percent for college graduates with student debt, in contrast to a decline of 45 percent for college graduates without student loans.

Student debt is at an all-time high, with 42 percent of all 18-29 year olds reporting that they bear student loan debt. In addition, the average debt burden for students has nearly doubled within a single generation, with Millennials owing an average of $37,000 upon graduation.

In years past, a college degree was regarded as an important aspect of preparing for a career and gaining enough wealth to own a home and retire comfortably. The economic burdens of today’s college graduates, however, demonstrate that the economic downturn has cut deeply throughout all educational levels for working and lower-middle class youth.

When Baby Boomers graduated college, those with outstanding student loans earned an average of $68,000 annually. Student borrowers today, by contrast, can expect to earn an average of $51,000—a 25 percent decrease.

Another cornerstone of financial security for Americans, home ownership, has declined by about eight percent between the Baby Boom and the Millennial generations. When separating out those without college degrees, however, the decline is a much steeper 22 percent. College graduates with student loan debt are also less likely to own their homes.

Only half of today’s young adults own their own homes, according to Young Invincibles, and the authors point to studies that show an estimated 2.8 million 25- to 34-year-olds contend with severe rental burdens.

Housing accounts for over 60 percent of assets held by the middle class; it represents about 15 percent of gross domestic product. Given that fewer than half of today’s young adults can attain home ownership, while many others cannot afford to rent, the implications for the economy as a whole are sobering.

This is a particularly strong indicator of the depth of economic decline. Last year, a study by the Pew Research Center revealed that, for the first time since 1880, young adults between the ages of 18 and 34 were more likely to live with a parent than in any other living arrangement. Pew’s researchers pointed to an anemic job market, where 5.7 percent of men between ages 25 and 34 are unemployed. On top of this, rental costs have risen disproportionately to wages since 2008.

Housing is not the only area in which Millennials lag behind Baby Boomers. Young adults in the 1980s owned twice the amount of assets as young adults in 2013. Research highlights the impact of student debt on this decline; non-borrowers amongst this cohort own over three times the assets of borrowers. In 1989 college graduates with student debt enjoyed a median net wealth of $86,500; by 2014 the same cohort had a median net worth of only $6,600.

On its face, retirement seems to be the one area in which Millennials are on stronger footing than Baby Boomers; retirement plan ownership increased by 150 percent between 1989 and today. However, beneath the surface of this seemingly hopeful number lies the virtual disappearance of pension plans, which decreased from 27.1 million in 1989 to 15.2 million in 2013.

The Young Invincibles’ report was notably released amidst a storm of pageantry surrounding President Barack Obama’s exit from the White House. The New York Times, which pumps out wholesale lies and half-truths on a daily basis, published an editorial in its Sunday edition praising Obama’s “optimism.”

The Times heralded Obama’s ascension to the White House as a surprising victory over racism and greed and compares him to Abraham Lincoln, insinuating that he has made America a more equitable and prosperous country.

The Times also praised Obama’s stimulus plan, which they assert staved off another Great Depression, and hailed the federal investment in General Motors and Chrysler. This move, they claim, preserved more than a million jobs. They casually ignore the fact that the investment was predicated upon stripping autoworkers of their hard-earned pensions and dramatically cutting wages. Autoworkers today are forced to work grueling hours and face hazardous working conditions for poverty wages.

“Even now,” the Times’ chides, “...stubborn biases and beliefs… have blinded many Americans to their own good fortune, fortune that flowed from policies set in motion by this president.” The startling numbers quoted by the Young Invincibles—declining home ownership, disappearing pensions, rent that outstrips earning, and crippling student debt—give the lie to this offensive statement.

Racist anti-immigrant riots in Poland

Clara Weiss

Racist clashes broke out in the northeastern Polish town of Ełk at the New Year, following the murder of a 21-year-old Polish man. Several other cities in Poland have since also witnessed racist attacks. The riots are a result of the racist agitation fomented by the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS), and an expression of growing social and political tensions in the country.

The clashes in Ełk began on New Year’s Day, after 21-year-old Daniel R. was apparently stabbed on New Year’s Eve by a Tunisian cook from a kebab restaurant. According to media reports, Daniel R. and a friend took two bottles of coke from the restaurant and left without paying. The cook and the restaurant owner, who comes from Algeria, then followed the pair. In the ensuing scuffle, the cook reportedly stabbed Daniel with a kitchen knife, and the young man died at the scene. To what extent alcohol and racism were involved in the confrontation is unclear in light of conflicting media reports.

Later on, a mob of 100 to 200 people gathered in front of the restaurant. Both the kebab restaurant and another stall belonging to the same owner were demolished. The mob bawled anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant slogans. Bottles and stones were thrown at the police during the confrontation. For hours, there was not a single policeman in sight, according to a report by the liberal Polityka. When the police came, a violent clash with the rioters occurred and the police used pepper spray and arrested 28 people. Thirty-four people were injured in the clashes. The cook suspected of the killing was arrested by the police and charged with murder. The sister of the dead man spoke out against the riots.

According to a report by Gazeta Wyborcza, members of the fascist organization ONR (Obóz Narodowo-Radykalny, National-Radical Camp), wearing the Falanga on their sleeves, the symbol of Polish fascists, participated in the service for the dead and subsequent funeral. On Facebook, right-wing extremists called for lynch-mob justice. On Saturday, 7 January, the ONR and Młodzież Wszechpolska (All-Polish Youth) organized a march in Ełk under the banner of the fight against “Islamic aggression.” According to press reports, only a few dozen people took part in the march, several of whom are likely to have travelled from outside the region.

The far-right has turned Daniel R. into a “Polish martyr,” who, like the Polish driver of the truck in the Berlin terrorist attack of December 2015, was “murdered by an Islamist.”

Although there were no further riots in Ełk, media reports suggested that the mood remains tense. Increased police patrols was still operating for days on the town’s streets. A report in the liberal magazine Newsweek Polska said residents and witnesses to the confrontation in the kebab restaurant were afraid to talk openly to reporters about what they had seen. The sociologist Stefan Marcinkiewicz, from the University of Warmia-Masuria, told the magazine, “People are afraid. There is a pogrom atmosphere.”

Since the riots in Ełk, there have been a number of attacks on kebab stalls and immigrants in other cities. In the small town of Ozorków near the industrial city of Łódź in central Poland, a 44-year-old man from Pakistan was attacked by a group of right-wing extremists who severely beat him. In Wrocław on January 2, the window of a kebab restaurant was smashed. On January 3, a man from Bangladesh was attacked on the way to work by masked men and had to be hospitalized in Legnica. On January 5, a restaurant in Wrocław, which is run by an Egyptian women, was attacked. An unknown attacker threw a lighted bottle of gasoline into the restaurant. Fortunately, however, the fire was quickly extinguished.

All these incidents are fueled by the xenophobic and right-wing atmosphere systematically encouraged by the government of the Law and Justice Party (PiS) to channel social discontent in the working class and sections of the rural population in a right-wing direction.

Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Blaszak implicitly supported the racist riots by blaming “the many years of multicultural politics, political correctness and open borders” for the excesses. He also stated, “We do not have the social problems with which you have to contend in Western Europe, where we have sizable enclaves of Muslim immigrants, who are not integrated into the rest of society.” Blaszak reiterated that the PiS will not allow any Muslim refugees into the country.

A council member of PiS in Ełk, Michał Tyszkiewicz, had already whipped up the atmosphere before the riots with a post about the “murder” on Twitter, to which he added the hashtags “New Year’s Eve, shock, immigrants, scythe in the back.”

The PiS has been systematically stoking racist resentments for years to poison the political climate and to boost right-wing forces. In their one-year reign, the PiS has strengthened ultra-right forces and worked closely with the Catholic Church, a traditional bastion of the radical right and fascist tendencies. This went so far that Polish president Andrzej Duda, together with the Polish Bishops, officially declared Jesus Christ “King of Poland” in a church ceremony in November. The PiS government has also deliberately encouraged anti-Semitic historical falsifications and resentments.

It is no coincidence that this nationalist and racist propaganda led to riots in Ełk. The medium-sized town with its 60,000 inhabitants stands at the centre of the social and political crisis in Poland. Ełk is located in the northeastern region of Warmia-Masuria, by far the poorest region of the country, which is also most affected by the massive military build-up and war preparations against Russia.

According to official figures, far more people live in extreme and relative poverty in Warmia-Masuria than the national average. The National Statistics Office (GUS) reports that, nationwide, about 7.4 percent of the population live in extreme poverty, i.e. they have an income of less than 545 zlotys (approximately $132). By contrast, the percentage is 14.8 percent in Warmia-Masuria. A further 26 percent in the province live in relative poverty, having less than 2056 zlotys (around $500) a month, compared to a national average of 16.2 percent. Moreover, the poverty rate has risen significantly in previous years, although the national average was declining.

Ełk is one of the larger towns in the rural region. It lies near one of 14 special economic zones—the Suwalska Specjalna Strefa Ekonomiczna—established in Poland since the 1990s. About 10,000 workers are employed in the Special Economic Zone, most of them at starvation wages.

Social tensions are being exacerbated by the war preparations against Russia, causing much nervousness. The region borders on Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave in Eastern Europe, which is a focal point of confrontation between NATO and Russia due to its strategic location and the stationing of Russian troops there. Under the PiS government, Poland has become even more of an outpost of NATO re-armament against Russia than under the previous government of the liberal Civic Platform (PO).

Last summer, on the eve of the NATO summit in Warsaw in June, the Polish government ended visa-free travel between the Polish border regions and Kaliningrad, which had been introduced in 2012. Last autumn, the Polish interior minister rejected the repeal of the measure, although it was deeply unpopular among the population from the beginning. Many people living in the Polish border region have relatives and friends in Kaliningrad, and were able to travel repeatedly to the Russian enclave under the visa-free rules. The region also benefited economically from the visa-free border traffic, since many Russians came across the border to shop in Poland.

Moreover, the province of Warmia-Masuria, like the rest of northeastern Poland, is the main focus of paramilitary, right-wing units, whose build-up Polish Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz has systematically encouraged over the last year. In November, the Sejm (parliament) agreed the creation of a territorial defence unit (WOT), comprising 53,000 men and to be concentrated mostly in the northeast and southeast of the country. Paramilitary organizations belonging to the radical right were explicitly encouraged to join the WOT. Among the forces the PiS wants to integrate into the state apparatus as part of this is the fascist ONR, which has sought to exploit the violence in Ełk.