Slumdog Republic

Satya Sagar 

It was always the worst kept secret in India, but has now finally become official – those who run the Republic of India do not need the Public of India at all. What is worse, they in fact see the latter as a grave threat to their very existence.

All this was amply evident on Republic Day this year, as the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister unfurled the Indian flag at Chennai’s Marina Beach. There was much pomp and showbut a minor detail was somehow missing from the scene– there was no audience.

While the tricolor did flutter prettily in the cool sea breeze to the melody of the national anthem, it did so ‘amidst tight security’and to empty stands.

The absence of people at the ceremony in Chennai had a background to itof course. In the run up to the Republic Day event, for nearly a week,over thirty thousand people had gathered at the same venue to demand the lifting of a ban on the traditional Tamil bull-taming sport of jallikattu.

For a very brief while, it seemed the keepers of the Indian Republic were operating in tune with the country’s enlightened Constitution – that guarantees freedom of assembly, speech and dissent to every citizen.The popular protest challenged the Indian Supreme Court’s verdict on the issue forcing politicians to scramble to bring in new laws to meet their demands.

Protestors expanded their demands beyond restoration of jallikattuto include issues such as the drought in the state, farmer’s suicides and the economic crisis sparked off by Narendra Modi’s foolish demonetization experiment. The Indian mediashowcased the campaign as an example of how mature Indian democracy had become – the crowdswere peaceful and the authorities patient.

In the end it turned out,all this show of democracy was possible only due to a massive ‘intelligence failure’ on part of those in power- they had never expected the Indian people to actually try to exercise their rights. Surprised by an uprising of this scale and intensity,they had no choice except to play along initially.

When the Indian state apparatusfinally woke up, it was perhaps shocked at its own civilized conductwhen faced by the people’s audacity. It did not take long forit to bare its fangs for all to see.

In the early morning hours of 23rd January, local police launched an unprovoked attack on the protestors aimed at dispersing them. Women, children, the elderly – everyone was severely thrashed, dozens of youth arrested and as some video grabs showed, the police even vandalized and set fire to homes of fisher folk who gave shelter to fleeing protestors.

Among the excuses given for all this brutality was that the Indian army needed the venue to prepare for the upcoming Republic Day show! What this confirmed was something many Indians have realized for a long time – the Republic has been hollowed out completely to a point, where the Parade had turned into a Parody and the Ceremony is indeed more important the Constitution itself.

Another excuse authorities trotted out was the crowds had been infiltrated by ‘anti-national’ elements and ‘miscreants’, possibly even by ‘religious extremists’. From the lofty, protected perch India’s political and social elite sit on, these are descriptions that would in fact fit 90% of the country’s population.

Nearly seven decades ago, when India declared itself a Republic and adopted one of the most progressive constitutions anywhere in the world, it was hailed asa huge leap forward for this vast, diverse and desperately poor country. Ruled by warlords, emperors and colonial dictatorships for most of its 5000-year history the granting of fundamental rights to life, liberty and justice was seen as a truly revolutionary concept.

Much of this was possible due to the long history of India’s fight for freedom and democracy against British imperialism as also the visionary leadership of those who discussed, debated and drafted the Indian Constitution. And yet, today it turns out that – for a vast majority of the Indian population – every progressive provision of this grand document remains as dead as the ink it is written with.

For all its claims to being a Republic, the truth is,India today is a land of many monarchs who take turns to come to power and protect each other’s interests at the cost of the Indian people. The villains of the past have morphed into a dozen modern avatars of the feudal lord – as politicians, businessmen, bureaucrats, police and even underworld dons – all suckling at the teats of the public exchequer.

These monarchs need the public as voters to legitimize their rule but the flesh and blood Indian citizen to them is just a rag of tissue paper to be used and thrown away. Once in a while the voter turns citizen and poses a grave danger to the Republic of Indiaby demanding his/her Constitutional rights. The only way to deal with such ‘scum’then is by using the lathi and the gun, while the keepers of the Republic wrap themselves with the national flag and shout ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’, under armed protection.

Given their deep fear of the ‘unruly masses’, it is not surprising at all that the country’s politicians, together witha bankrupt but ‘patriotic’ media, have foisted ‘national security’ over every other priority in the country. People who have nothing to eat, no roof over their heads and whose children die of treatable diseases are supposed to sacrifice everything for a piece of ice on some remote border.

The annual Republic Day parade in the national capital New Delhi has been dominated by an obscene display of expensive arms, bought with public money for quite some time now. While ostensibly meant to defend the nation- these weapons are in fact intended as a show of power to awe the Indian people themselves into submission. ‘Behave or the Brahmo missile will burn your ass!’

It is not a coincidence that today India– despite its great poverty and deprivation – has become the world’s 3rd largest military force and the 4th largest spender on defense, surpassing countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia. India now also has the world’s largest paramilitary force, which in size is almost the same as the entire Indian army. In 2016 the Indian defense budget, at US$51 billion formed over 17 per cent of the total central government expenditure for the yearin sharp contrast to just 1.62 percent allocated for health and 4 percent for education.

India is also, for many years, the world’s largest market for imported arms. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, India accounted for14% of the global imports of weapons in the 2011-2015 timeframe, three times greater than those of China and Pakistan in the same period. India has spent over $120 billion on arms acquisitions over the last 15 years.

What are the implications of this splurging of scarce national resources for the day-to-day security of ‘India’ – a euphemism for the country’s nationalelite?The answer is probably quite well known but worth reiterating – more hunger, death and misery for the masses.

India has over one-third of the poorest people in the world,who live with little access to basic infrastructure. Officially, 76 million people or roughly 6 percent of India’s population does not have access to safe drinking water but the numbers are likely to be several times more. And according to the 2011 Census of India over 49.8% or almost half the Indian population did not have access to toilets.

India also has the world’s largest number of children suffering from malnutrition.According to estimates made by the FAO there were over 194 million undernourished people in India in 2014-16, the world’s largest number and representing almost a quarter of the globe’s undernourished population.

All this translates into a horrendous burden of disease. In 2016, out of an estimated 10.4 million new TB cases worldwide in 2015, India accounted for 2.8 million.In 2010, it was estimated 350,000 pneumonia deaths occurred in children younger than 5 years in India, whilediarrhea kills an estimated 300,000 children each year. Just road accidents kill around 200,000 Indians annually but nobody really cares as protecting ‘India’ is far more important than saving Indians.

In the meanwhile a few Indian business families have amassed phenomenal wealth at the expense of the entire nation.A recent report by Oxfam International on global income inequality says 57 billionaires in the country have the same amount of wealth as the bottom 70%. The top 1 per cent of the Indian population owns 58.4 per cent of India’s total wealth. The only country with a worse record is Russia.

There is no doubt at all the Indian ruling elites are converting the country into a full-fledged police state precisely to maintain these inequalities and keep citizens in perpetual poverty. And as public opposition to government policies rises so does the money and powers allocated to the men in uniform. The Indian ruling class have become Slum Lords and India has become, what can only be called a Slumdog Republic.

So how would have Dr B.R.Ambedkar, the architect of the Indian Constitution orM.K.Gandhi, who led the Indian freedom movement, responded to the current situation?

Given the complete deviation from Constitutional values and objectives as well as the prevailing ethos of the elites brazenly looting the nation, both Ambedkar and Gandhi would have both, surelycalled for nothing short of a popular rebellion to reestablish democracy in its true sense.

While Ambedkar frowned upon both ‘bloody revolution’ as well as the ‘grammar of anarchy’ he found in even non-violent agitations, he also was a staunch proponent of using democratic rights to transform social realities. As he once said, ‘We are having this liberty (provided in the Constitution) in order to reform our social system, which is full of inequality, discrimination and other things, which conflict with our fundamental rights.”

Gandhi was skeptical about the idea of ‘rights’ and preferred to use the term ‘duties’, which he urged everyone to carry out irrespective of where they were placed in society. At the same time he also pointed out that if the rulers failed to carry out their responsibilities then it was the duty of the citizen to oppose them in a non-violent manner.

Gandhi,who was the original ‘grammarian of anarchy’ that Ambedkar referred to, would have perhaps enthusiastically supported a nation-wide movement of civil disobedience against those who run the Indian Republic today.

Despite their differences in approach, the ‘madness’ and ‘anarchy’ of public protests, to both Gandhi and Ambedkar, would have appeared preferable to the ‘grammar of unjust stability’ any day. What the country needs today is a combination of both perspectives to uphold the Indian Constitution while dismantling through mass action every barrier to its implementation.

It is only then that a beginning can be made towards liberation of a billion plus people of this country who are held hostage by India’s corporate and feudal monarchies, with the collusion of Indian military and police.

Beyond The Muslim Veil

Moin Qazi

 This woman, who is your beloved, is in fact a ray of His light,
She is not a mere creature. She is like a creator

-Rumi

In recent years, due to the global socio-political climate, the phrase “Muslim woman” might conjure an image of a demure un-empowered woman sheltered by her veil Yet this image is not what our history records or what our present reflects.

But the landscape for women in Islam is changing. Muslim women are challenging patriarchy that all women experience around unequal power hierarchies in society and the objectification of women’s bodies in some sections of the media. In this regard they stand with their sisters of all backgrounds. There are so many bright women graduating from   universities and joining the workforce.

In Islam, a woman is seen as an individual in her own right, an independent person, and not as a shadow or adjunct to her husband or any other man. Muslim women are fully entitled to education, work, business ownership, and inheritance.

Islamic feminists insist that Islam, at its core, is progressive for women and supports equal opportunities for men and women alike. They are arguing for women’s rights within an Islamic discourse. Some of the leading proponents are actually men—distinguished scholars who contend that Islam was radically egalitarian for its time and remains so in many of its texts. Islamic feminists claim that Islamic law evolved in ways inimical to women, not due to any inevitability, but because of selective interpretation by patriarchal leaders. Across the Muslim world, Islamic feminists are combing through centuries of Islamic jurisprudence to highlight the more progressive aspects of their religion. They are seeking accommodation between a modern role for women and the Islamic values that more than a billion people in the world follow

Muslim women’s traditional importance in Islamic society has always been and continues to be the foundation of the Islamic family. Social values strongly reinforce orientation towards marriage and children as the normative pattern based on Muhammad’s (peace be upon him) own example. Child rearing, early education, and socialization of children are among women’s most important tasks in Islamic societies worldwide. Although traditionally excluded from the public male domain, Muslim women have been privately involved in study and oral transmission of Islamic source texts (Qur’an and hadith). In modern times, they have entered into both secular and religious forms of education with enthusiasm supporting their long standing role as family educators and moral exemplars as well as   professionals   in the workplace outside the home.

it is worth noting one singular fact: from Muslim women’s pivotal roles in the Egyptian, Tunisian, Libyan, and other revolutions to leading American Muslim female voices in U.S. law, religion, medicine, academia and a myriad of professions, a number of contemporary Muslim women are the modern realization of the continuing legacy of strong Muslim female leadership. They may, in fact, include your colleague or neighbor. Indeed, it is past time for us to view Muslim women with new eyes – they are not necessarily the stereotyped victim, they can also be the heroic protagonist much like they were some 1500 years ago.

The Qur’an recognizes the childbearing and childrearing roles of women, but does not present women as inferior to or unequal to men. On the contrary, central to Islamic belief is the importance and high value placed on education. From the true Islamic point of view, education should be freely and equally available to women as much as men.

Islam anticipates the demands of Western feminists by more than a thousand years.  A stay-at-home wife can specify that she expects to receive a regular stipend, which is not that far from the goals of the Wages for Housework campaign of the nineteen-seventies. Elsewhere, the fully empowered Muslim woman sounds like a self-assured, post-feminist type—a woman who draws her inspiration from the example of Sukayna, the brilliant, beautiful great-granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad (SAW).  She was married several times, and, at least once, stipulated in writing that her husband was forbidden to disagree with her about anything. All these conditions are based on the canons of Islam and on early Muslim practice. A Muslim woman, cannot be forced to enter into marriage without her agreement; indeed she has the right to revoke a marriage to which she did not agree in the first place.

Few Muslim women outside the urban areas may want to behave like Western women. The sexually exploitative element remains high in the West, however strident the rhetoric of sexual equality. Perhaps this is best illustrated by the well-known cigarette ad depicting a woman smoking: ‘You’ve come a long way, baby’. The message is clear: you too may now die of cancer through smoking. The high rate of divorce and sexual disease are common consequences of the reckless drive to equate the sexes and ‘free’ sexual relationships.

Western thinkers and practitioners must reconsider their assumptions about the role of Islam in women’s rights, and approach this topic with a more nuanced lens. They must understand the necessity of recognizing and consciously accepting the broad cultural differences between Western and non-Western conceptions of autonomy, as well as respecting social standards that reflect non-Western values. They should pay heed to what First Lady Michelle Obama expressed to hijab wearing students:  “You wonder if anyone ever sees beyond your headscarf to see who you really are, instead of being blinded by the fears and misperceptions in their own minds. And I know how painful and how frustrating all of that can be.”

Many people have called for a reform of Islam, but the truth is that Islam needs to be rediscovered, not changed. The deeper one goes into Islamic scholarship, the more the harsh images of Islamic law as a vehicle for stonings and amputations fade away, and are replaced by a surprisingly sophisticated and progressive approach to faith that dates back to its earliest days. Muslims don’t need to throw out their religion and create something new, they need to re-examine the original scriptures and find the original meanings as the Prophet, a man of progressive vision, would have seen them, even if his earliest followers did not always see as far.

Women are now elbowing their way into political and civil society, and universities. The trajectory of Muslim women’s movement gives   hope that even in Muslim societies that present cultural and political obstacles, women are finding opportunities to rise up — and to bring their societies up with them. The key is to do so within Islamic paradigms.

We now have female politicians, journalists, entrepreneurs and educators, urban and rural, who are making impressive inroads. Societies that educate and invest in women become richer, more stable, better governed and less prone to fanaticism, while those that limit women’s opportunities are poorer, more fragile, have higher levels of corruption and are more prone to extremism.

While this is only just the beginning, it’s clear that feminism in Islam is finally having its moment.

Australian college closure highlights sham practices in private education sector

Robert Campion

A profit-making beauty college in Sydney went into administration late last year, jeopardising the studies of up to 800 students and leaving 80 teachers and administrative staff out of work.

The sudden closure drew further attention to the dubious practices of a host of operators in the private education sector, who have enjoyed a bonanza as a result of the gutting of public education by successive Labor and Liberal-National governments at the state and federal level.

The Australasian College Broadway (ACT) was owned and run since 1994 by Maureen Hussein-Mustafa, a “self-made” millionaire who was listed 29th on Australia’s BRW Rich List in 2014. In 2011, she received the Medal of the Order of Australia for education and training. She is a financial backer of the Liberal-National Coalition.

ACT collapsed just days before new vocational reforms were to come into effect, subjecting private colleges to more stringent funding laws. The college is still embroiled in a fraud investigation from 2014, facing allegations that it placed “phantom students” on its books in order to receive higher government funding.

According to media reports, the college may have been paid tens of thousands of dollars per “phantom student.” ACT received over $10.4 million in government funding in 2015. Between the beginning of 2009 and early 2015, the college took in more than $50 million in federal funds.

Under the VET [Vocational Education and Training] FEE-HELP scheme, introduced by the former federal Labor government of Julia Gillard, students undertaking tertiary studies at private institutions are eligible for loans from the federal government to pay their course fees. Many students accrue tens of thousands of dollars of debt. Private providers receive the fees up front from the government, creating opportunities for easy profits.

ACT, which offers courses in hairdressing, make-up and beauty therapy, “strongly denied” allegations that “phantom students” were enrolled in uncompleted courses. However, according to Federal Department of Education data cited by the Sydney Morning Herald, only 73 students graduated from the college last year, out of the reported student body of 800.

Speaking to the media anonymously, some staff members claimed they were coerced into registering questionable student applications, and that up to 60 percent of those processed in recent years may have been fake.

One former tutor told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) she assisted an illiterate student in writing a letter to withdraw from the college, only to see it later torn up and thrown in a bin. Other media reports indicated that college management stonewalled attempts by students to unenroll from courses by refusing to answer phone calls or waiting six months before taking any action.

Other students and industrial professionals spoke out about the low quality of the training provided by ACT. A young single mother told the ABC that her $33,000 Diploma of Salon Management and Certificate III in hairdressing left her without the skills required for the industry. When she went for a job, she was told to return to a publicly-funded Technical and Further Education (TAFE) college and start over again.

Gloria Lee-Cooke, a hairdresser who received students from ACT over the years, told the ABC in 2015 that she had regularly complained about the training being provided by ACT. “It’s frightening to think that these students have been misled, I believe, into thinking they can get years of experience…and it’s just not the case,” Lee-Cooke said.

Government authorities repeatedly ignored questions over the college’s practices. In 2012, ACT’s funding application was denied by the Australian Skills Quality Authority, but the Administrative Appeals Tribunal overturned the decision.

ACT’s collapse is one of a series, mostly stemming from moves by federal and state governments to belatedly tighten funding regulations because of a growing public outcry, including by students.

Last February, at least 5,200 students and 500 employees were left stranded due to the collapse of several colleges owned by Global Intellectual Holdings. The colleges closed after a supposed crackdown by the Victorian Labor government on “study now, pay later loans” that increasingly targeted the most vulnerable potential students.

Before those closures, millions of dollars in government-sponsored loans were reportedly siphoned away into shelf companies owned by two prominent shareholders, who tried unsuccessfully to sell the company.

Agents for colleges have reportedly been issued fines by police for their aggressive sales tactics. These include targeting people around federal government Centrelink offices, where the unemployed, indigenous and intellectually disabled, and other disadvantaged people, must go to apply for, or try to retain, welfare payments.

Jacob De Battista, a recruiter for Keystone College, which was owned by Global Intellectual Holdings, told the ABC last year: “I used to manipulate people from all walks of life… a lot of the time I knew they weren’t capable of completing a diploma.” De Battista said he had been desperate to keep his job.

A host of smaller colleges have been embroiled in similar scandals and a number have collapsed.

The rise and rise of profiteering colleges was facilitated by the Labor governments of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard as part of the decades-long offensive against public education. The Gillard government introduced a host of pro-business reforms aimed at subordinating universities ever-more directly to the demands of the corporate elite, while forcing them and the public TAFE colleges to compete with private firms that cherry-picked profitable courses.

Labor and Liberal-National governments alike, at the state and federal levels, intensified the assault on TAFE and technical colleges. In New South Wales alone, more than 2,000 TAFE teachers have been sacked since 2011, while the number of enrolled students declined by over 80,000 from 2012 to 2016.

At the same time, the federal government removed limited regulations on funding for private colleges. As a result, funding under the VET FEE-HELP Scheme soared from $325 million in 2012 to more than $3 billion in 2016, with much of the increase going to private operators.

The current federal Liberal-National government has seized upon the resulting crisis to justify introducing a replacement “VET Student Loans” program that slashes financial support for students.

The new program imposes a three-tiered cap on government student loans, with the maximum grant consisting of $15,000. Many courses cost considerably more than the caps. The result is students having to pay, up front, out of their own pockets, amid mounting financial insecurity and joblessness among young people.

CIA files expose New Zealand Labour Party’s anti-nuclear posture

John Braddock

The release early last week of thousands of files related to New Zealand by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) further demolishes the myth of the now-deceased Labour Party Prime Minister David Lange (in office from 1984 to 1989) as a crusader against nuclear weapons.

The database was put online after legal action by the US-based MuckRock group, set up to help people file Freedom of Information Act requests. Among 13 million pages of records are almost 4,000 CIA documents referencing New Zealand, dating from 1948.

Outgoing US Ambassador to New Zealand Mark Gilbert told the New Zealand Herald the documents came from “note-taking in diplomatic meetings” and that the US “does not spy on New Zealand.”

Such claims are manifestly false. There is material in the CIA documents, which are heavily redacted, that could only have been collected by clandestine means. This includes a 12-page report from 1949 on the Stalinist Communist Party of NZ, discussing the extent of its influence within the Labour Party and trade unions. The Herald noted that coding on some of the sensitive documents indicates that their circulation was limited to high levels of the US government.

Many documents deal with the Lange government, which barred US warships from entering New Zealand. Washington was concerned about widespread opposition to nuclear weapons testing and the potential for Moscow to take advantage to increase its influence in the Pacific, which the US has always regarded as its back yard.

Under the Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament and Arms Control Act, passed by the Labour government in 1987, the country’s territorial sea, land and airspace became nuclear-free zones. After the law was passed, Washington suspended the tripartite ANZUS defence treaty, which included Australia.

While NZ-US defence ties have been fully restored and strengthened, particularly since 2001, the anti-nuclear policy has remained in place and is frequently trumpeted as the basis of the country’s “independent foreign policy.” In a July 2016 speech, Labour leader Andrew Little praised it as a “core part of New Zealand’s international identity,” now supported by “all sides of the political divide.”

The CIA documents show that Labour’s pacifist posturing was always a cynical charade. The party represents the interests of the New Zealand ruling class that, since World War II, has maintained a close alliance with the US in order to advance its own neo-colonial interests in the South Pacific.

According to the Herald, Lange’s newly-elected government in 1984 immediately tried to find a loophole in the policy to allow continued visits by US warships and “save the NZ and US relationship.”

Lange told US officials he believed nuclear propulsion was safe, leading the CIA to conclude that Lange had backed himself into a corner by campaigning on the anti-nuclear issue. The proposed visit by the USS Buchanan in 1985 was eventually denied on the basis that Washington refused to “confirm or deny” if it was nuclear armed.

A CIA report from 1985 stated that Labour MP Mike Moore, briefly prime minister in 1990 and later New Zealand ambassador to Washington (2010–15), told US embassy officials in 1984 “the United States should ‘finesse’ the nuclear power issue by asking to send a conventionally powered ship.” Moore said it “should ‘tell David [Lange] privately’ that no nuclear weapons would be on board the ship requesting access.”

Gerald Hensley, then head of the prime minister’s department, told the Herald Lange had secretly worked on a similar plan with the US Embassy. Chief of Defence Ewan Jamieson was to be sent to Hawaii to choose a ship obviously unable to carry nuclear weapons or sail under nuclear propulsion. The USS Buchanan was the vessel NZ selected to break the deadlock.

News of the proposal leaked while Lange was overseas. Acting Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer refused the USS Buchanan entry after Labour MP Jim Anderton said he would publicly protest the visit. A CIA report suggested Anderton would have had majority support in Labour’s parliamentary caucus.

Another former cabinet minister, Richard Prebble, said shortly after this “came the invitation to debate the issue at the Oxford Union and Lange’s evolution into a nuclear-free warrior.” Lange went to Oxford and argued before an international television audience that “nuclear weapons are morally indefensible.” According to Prebble, “the public reaction to little New Zealand standing up to America was euphoric.”

Behind the scenes, however, Labour worked assiduously to maintain ties with Washington. This included granting certain exemptions to the anti-nuclear legislation for visiting US military aircraft. More significantly, Labour vastly expanded the spy agencies, and in 1987 sought to appease the US by constructing the Waihopai spy base and boosting New Zealand’s contribution to the US-led Five Eyes spy alliance.

The Labour governments of the 1970s and 1980s were not concerned about “peacemaking.” Their opposition to nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific was bound up with the determination of both Australia and New Zealand to continue to hold sway over the region, particularly in opposition to France, which was conducting nuclear tests in the South Pacific.

The anti-nuclear posturing served a fundamental purpose for the New Zealand ruling class. It provided a “left wing” veneer for Labour as it launched far-reaching pro-market “reforms,” imposing the same policies as Thatcher in Britain and Reagan in the US on behalf of big business and the financial elite, with devastating consequences for the working class.

Hensley told the Herald there was a “rumoured” trade-off between the different factions of the Labour caucus: there would be “no opposition” to the right-wing economic agenda so long as Lange made New Zealand nuclear-free.

Regardless of whether there was such a deal, as the anti-nuclear policy gained wider support, especially among the middle class, Labour proceeded to deregulate the financial sector, privatise government-owned corporations, slash taxes for the rich and introduce the regressive Goods and Services Tax. The result was soaring social inequality. Tens of thousands of workers abandoned the Labour Party in disgust.

In 1989 Anderton quit the Labour Party to set up NewLabour as a vehicle to contain the deepening hostility. NewLabour subsequently joined with three other capitalist parties to form the Alliance. In 2001 the Alliance, with Anderton as deputy prime minister in the Helen Clark-led Labour government, voted to send SAS troops to join the US invasion of Afghanistan. After its participation in this brutal and criminal war, the Alliance’s support collapsed and the party disintegrated.

Today, the anti-nuclear policy has effectively been brushed aside. Last November, for the first time in three decades, the National Party government, supported by the Labour and Green parties, welcomed the visit by a US naval destroyer to New Zealand. The protest group Greenpeace also cheered the visit, despite the continued refusal of the US to say whether its vessels are nuclear-armed. The entire political establishment wants a closer alliance with US militarism, precisely at the point where Washington’s encirclement and threats against China have raised the risk of war between nuclear-armed countries.

US growth rate lowest in five years

Nick Beams

The US economy expanded at its slowest rate for five years in 2016 according to preliminary data issued on Friday. Gross domestic product (GDP) rose by only 1.6 percent in 2016, down from 2.6 percent in 2015, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported.

The figures may be revised later this month, but they mark a significant decline from the annual rate of growth of 3.5 percent recorded in the third quarter. The economy expanded at an annual rate of only 1.9 percent in the last three months of the year, below economists’ forecasts of 2.2 percent.

The Wall Street Journal noted that the US economy ended the year “on a familiar trajectory of roughly 2 percent economic growth, the lacklustre trend that has prevailed through most of the current expansion.” Since the official end of the recession in mid-2009, the US economy has grown by an average of 2.1 percent per year, the lowest for any recovery in the post-war period.

The slowdown in the US rate of growth is part of an international trend. As Martin Wolf, the economics commentator for the Financial Times, has pointed out, if growth rates for the major economies had returned to the levels they reached before the financial crisis of 2008–2009, major economies would be one sixth larger than at present.

The slowdown in growth, both in the US and internationally is accompanied by another significant tendency. The growth in global trade, which was running as much as twice the rate of increase of global GDP before 2008, is expected to fall below the rate of GDP growth in 2016.

One of the immediate causes for the sharp turnaround in the US GDP in the fourth quarter was a steep decline in exports, which contributed to a fall of 1.7 percent in the GDP numbers. This was due mainly to a fall in the level of soybean exports, which had increased sharply in the third quarter because of a contraction in supplies from other regions.

The trade figures were eagerly seized on by President Donald Trump to push for his reactionary “America First” agenda. Tweeting on the $60 billion annual trade deficit with Mexico, he wrote: “Mexico has taken advantage of the US for long enough. Massive trade deficits & little help on the very weak border must change, NOW!”

Commenting on the impact of the trade deficit on the fourth quarter GDP figures, Dan DiMicco, the former head of Nucor Steel, who was in charge of Trump’s trade transition team, told the Financial Times: “It’s another example in a long line of 20 years of examples of where the trade deficit reduced growth. If you look at just what the deficit did this quarter, imagine what is has done all those years.”

The GDP figures would have been even lower had it not been for an upturn of 3.1 percent in business investment following four consecutive quarters of decline.

Various commentators have pointed to a possible rise in so-called “animal spirits” as a result of Trump’s advocacy of corporate and personal tax cuts, deregulation and major tax breaks for corporations that carry out infrastructure spending.

But as the Wall Street Journal commented, while businesses are hopeful about the possibility of stronger economic growth, they are not counting on a boom. One business chief it cited said it was no secret the overall mood was better, but whether “this translates into anything meaningful in terms of demand … remains to be seen.”

Representatives of the Trump administration have claimed its policies will lift the US growth rate from its present low levels to 4 percent. That rate of economic expansion would see growth at levels not experienced since the dotcom and tech boom at the turn of the century.

For 2016, however, the growth rate in the US economy, touted as bright spot in the world economy, is running below that of the UK, expected to be around 2 percent, and the German economy at 1.9 percent.

The slowdown in the growth of world trade is an underlying factor in Trump’s trade war agenda. As Marx pointed out, when there is general economic expansion, the capitalist class functions as a “practical freemasonry,” in which competition functions as a mechanism for sharing out the “common booty.”

But in a situation of contraction, where some sections of capital face the prospect of losses, “competition becomes a struggle of enemy brothers” and the opposition between the individual capitalist and that of the capital class as a whole comes to the fore. Marx was referring to individual capitalist firms, but under conditions of lower global growth—above all in the major economies—and a slowdown in the expansion of the world market, Marx’s observation goes to the driving forces of economic nationalism and trade war.

The other feature to emerge from the US GDP figures is the ever-widening disconnect between the underlying real economy and the financial system. It is striking that the Dow has reached a record high of 20,000, with other indexes at or near record highs, while the US economy has experienced its lowest growth rate in five years.

This disconnect has a significant impact on economic growth, as vast amounts of wealth are diverted from the real economy into various forms of financial speculation. This leads to a decline in investment and falling productivity, two central features of the US economy in the eight years since the eruption of the financial crisis.

Rolls-Royce board escape serious punishment for “truly vast” bribery and corruption

Simon Whelan 

British aircraft engineering and FTSE 100 company Rolls-Royce received a 50 percent reduction in the size of the fine they received for protracted and endemic corrupt corporate practices. Rolls-Royce was fined just £671 million (US$787 million) for what Sir Brian Leveson in his judgement described as “truly vast corrupt payments.”

The fine was levied after the largest-ever investigation by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) found Rolls-Royce guilty of conspiracy to corrupt, or failure to prevent bribery by the company in Brazil, United States, China, India, Indonesia, Thailand, India, Russia, Nigeria, China and Malaysia.

The SFO, with the assistance of a joint Guardian and BBC Panorama investigation, uncovered the scale of mass corruption by Rolls-Royce spanning continents and several decades. However because the company, once exposed, cooperated with the investigation and admitted guilt, they were let off with what in financial terms can only be described as a slap on the wrist.

The corruption directly involved Rolls-Royce agents or intermediaries who on behalf of the company handled the sales, maintenance and distribution of Rolls-Royce’s products in emerging capitalist markets. The catalogued cases of bribery and corruption involved, amongst other crimes, gifts of Rolls-Royce cars and large bribes to government officials in Indonesia—who facilitated Rolls-Royce winning a lucrative contract with a national airline.

In China, bribes worth $5 million were paid to a state-owned airline, whilst negotiations were being conducted into a contract to purchase Rolls-Royce engines.

In Thailand, Rolls-Royce paid almost $19 million to secure state contracts and, in India, bribes of undisclosed sums were paid in order to secure state contracts.

The investigation revealed how substantial sums of money were made available by the company to fund extensive bribes approved by senior Rolls-Royce board members. It is estimated that contracts won because of corrupt activities garnered £250 million (US$292 million) in gross profits for the company.

Rolls-Royce also falsified documents between the years 2005 and 2009 to conceal commissions paid to intermediaries in India in relation to a defence contract, where such activities were banned by the government. False accounting and conspiracy to bribe foreign officials in India were part of a series of admissions made by Rolls Royce.

According to the SFO, senior figures within Rolls-Royce were aware as far back as 2010 about allegations regarding corruption within the company but decided not to notify the authorities.

Such is the scale of the criminal activity involved that it took from 2012 for the SFO inquiry to arrive at an indictment of Rolls Royce. No explanation, however, has been offered by the SFO or the British government as to why leading Rolls-Royce board members do not face any criminal investigation and prosecution. This despite the fact that Judge Leveson believed the corruption involved, “on the face of it, very senior Rolls-Royce employees.”

The kid gloves treatment of Roll-Royce is bound up with the fact that company is crucial to the global armaments industry and Britain’s leading role within it. Regardless of the findings, Judge Leveson described Rolls-Royce as “a jewel in the UK’s industrial crown.” The engineering corporation manufactures engines for both military and civil aeroplanes and for locomotives, ships, nuclear submarines and power stations.

Rolls-Royce ultimately got the exceptionally lenient treatment from the British state that they themselves had lobbied long and hard to gain. In 2004, the company lobbied then-Labour government ministers to weaken curbs on corporate bribery. Protracted efforts to diminish and dilute anti-bribery regulations were conducted, while former chief executive Sir John Rose was the leader of the company.

Documents from a 2004 court case reveal how Rolls- Royce, in conjunction with other transnational corporations, influenced Labour government ministers to shred policy proposals ostensibly aimed at reducing corporate crime. Utilising arguments extolling commercial secrecy, the corporations argued against revealing the identities of their agents and intermediaries operating within foreign countries. The big business-supporting Labour government fell into line, granting them their every wish.

The £497 million fine imposed upon Rolls-Royce involves a very convenient interest-free five-year payment schedule, agreed between the SFO and the company. Rolls-Royce will pay back the fine in instalments to settle the corruption cases brought by both British and American authorities. This sum is comparable to the company’s expected profits for 2016.

The agreement between the parties, approved by the British courts, is known as a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA). The DPA allows organisations to pay huge penalties back over a protracted period, and also crucially escape prosecution, if they confess to corporate crimes like fraud or bribery. There is no onus upon corporations to report criminal behaviour to the SFO.

The Rolls-Royce DPA is the third such agreement struck by the SFO since they were introduced into UK law in 2014.

Speaking about the case, Sir Edward Garnier, lawyer for the SFO, was concerned mainly that the investigation had uncovered criminal offences discrediting the operation of the capitalist market—rather than planned and systematic unlawful acts conducted by the people who ran Rolls-Royce.

That corporations like Rolls-Royce do not face serious punishment regardless of the extent or nature of the crimes committed, or prosecution at a later date, was reflected in the price of Rolls-Royce shares. On news of the settlement, they rose by 4.5 percent. The company trumpeted that free from further investigation and prosecution, its 2016 profits would beat previous market expectations. This will come at the expense of the workforce. Even before the ruling, Rolls-Royce was continuing with its ongoing restructuring, announcing the loss of 800 more jobs from its marine division, after shedding 1,000 last year. Its marine sector business employs 4,800 workers in 34 countries, including about 400 in the UK.

Since privatisation in 1987, the company’s sales have risen from £2.8 billion to £76 billion last year, making it the world’s leading supplier of engines for wide-body passenger jets, and second overall to its much bigger rival General Electric of the US. It now appears that its stellar performance is not so much the result of its engineering excellence as its corrupt payments to local officials and airline executives around the world.

Robert Barrington, executive director at Transparency International UK—which describes itself as a “global civil society organization leading the fight against corruption,” said, “Individuals haven’t been held to account and the markets—when the share price has gone up today—are perhaps suggesting this isn’t really a punishment or deterrent.”

Rolls-Royce executive Warren East stated after the judgement, “The behaviour uncovered in the course of the investigations by the Serious Fraud Office and other authorities is completely unacceptable and we apologise unreservedly for it.”

The crimes of Rolls-Royce are similar to those of the Siemens corporation, who were found guilty of conducting business in a criminal manner, and come on top of more recent revelations concerning criminal behaviour by car manufacturers Volkswagen and Renault, who have admitted to falsifying vehicle emission figures.

These scandals, together with the revelations concerning the manipulation of the Libor inter-bank lending rates, confirm that the big banks and corporations are engaged in systematic criminal activity in order to steal a march on their competitors. The so-called capitalist “free market” is nothing of the sort.

Summing up the case, Judge Leveson sought to smooth things over by stating that he had since been “informed that no current member of the board was involved in any of the conduct described in the statement of facts” and that there had since been a “cultural change” at Rolls-Royce.

Yet again big business has committed “completely unacceptable” criminal behaviour and evaded justice.

Germany carries out second expulsion of Afghan refugees

Anna Rombach

In a joint operation carried out by federal and state authorities, 26 Afghan refugees were deported on 23 January with officials putting them on a plane in Rhein-Main airport in Frankfurt, Germany and flying them to Kabul. This was the second mass deportation of this kind, following the deportation of 34 Afghan refugees on 14 December.

The young men came from Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Hamburg and Rheinland-Palatinate, where they sought to find refuge from the war in their country. Eighteen of the 26 deported came from Bavaria.

Many of those affected were seized from their homes in the dead of night, detained like hardened criminals and flown against their will to Kabul, one of the most dangerous cities in the world. Many of them had been in Germany for several years, had friends and family, and a professional qualification or a job.

The daily TAZ reported on 24 January that “several of the young men came from Kabul or the western Afghan city of Herat, while others came from the unsafe provinces of Logar, Kunar, Kapisa or Wardak.” Among them were many “who spoke German and in some cases had worked for years.”

It further stated, “Badam Haidari (31) explained in easy-to-understand German that he had lived for seven years in Würzburg. For five years and eight months he worked at Burger King, ‘always full-time.’ He never caused any trouble. ‘No stealing, no war with anyone, no fights’ …Arash Alokosai (21) from Kabul said he lived in Nuremberg for six years. He had an apprenticeship contract to manufacture vehicle bodies, but then ‘the rejection’ (of his asylum application) occurred. His girlfriend was three months pregnant. Ramin Afshar (19), also from Kabul, said he had attended vocational college in Germany. They got him out of bed on Monday morning and deported him in handcuffs.”

To avoid protest and resistance, the interior ministries provided no details about the planned deportation and only announced the timetable at the last minute.

Nonetheless, 200 people still gathered at the airport to protest the deportations. A group of Afghan refugees from the Frankfurt area organized by the “Afghan Refugees Movement” and ProAsyl, a refugee support organisation, called the demonstration on short notice. Their banners read, “Right to remain for all,” “Stop deportations—now!” and “No deportations to Afghanistan.”

Roughly a quarter of a million Afghans currently reside in Germany. Of these, around 1,600 are facing potential deportation. More than 10,000 have obtained the status of “tolerated.” Although their asylum application was rejected, authorities have suspended the deportation for the meantime. They now live in constant fear that they will be thrown out of the country.

The mass deportations are based on the repatriation agreement reached by the German government with the regime in Kabul on 2 October, 2016. The dirty deal provides a payment to the Afghan government from Germany, plus additional EU funding for every refugee they take back.

Conditions in Afghanistan today are more insecure than ever. In the first half of 2016, there were more than 1,600 recorded deaths and 3,565 injuries to civilians, the worst figures since 2009. At the end of 2016, more than 1.7 million people were internally displaced. Half a million people were forced from their homes last year alone. During the first two weeks of January there have been attacks and kidnappings in Kabul, Kandahar, Helmand and Pamir leading to more than 100 deaths.

The latest report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Afghanistan makes it clear those being deported will face countless perils and possible death. All of Afghanistan was in the grip of a domestic armed conflict, the report stated, adding that it was impossible to distinguish between safe and unsafe regions “due to the constantly shifting security situation.”

In newspaper interviews, former Afghan minister Amin Farhang, as well as former Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta—who both lived in Germany for decades—verified the findings of the refugee agency’s report. Even Hans-Peter Bartels (SPD), the parliamentary ombudsman for the armed forces, told Tagespiegel on 27 December, “Afghanistan is not a safe country. That is why the international community has decided to make further efforts at stabilisation, both civilian and military, above all by training and advising the Afghan security forces.”

In fact, the disastrous situation in Afghanistan is due to the nearly 16-year US occupation of the country, which has been backed by Germany. After ruining the country, Germany and the US—now under Donald Trump—are scapegoating immigrants who escaped the war-torn region and suggesting they are somehow associated with “terrorism.”

To whip up public opinion in opposition to the refugees, the government is claiming that only dangerous criminals and “threats” are being deported. Federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière, in a letter to the state interior ministers, wrote that since the attack on a Berlin Christmas market on 19 December, “the entire practice of deportation in our country [has been] under review,” and repatriation measures had to be enforced “more decisively in the future.”

This is contradicted by information gathered by ProAsyl, which provides an entirely different picture. “Among those deported, there were people who had committed crimes,” the report acknowledged. “But as a whole it remains unclear how large the number is and how serious the offences they are being accused of actually were.”

ProAsyl obtained information on 23 immigrants, some of whom were deported in December while others had their deportation temporarily stopped. “The people are between 21 and 57 years old, had mostly been in Germany between two and five years, sometimes even longer. Some of them were on the way to completing training or already had a job. Many were receiving medical care—for example with psychiatric problems. For most of these 23 people, nothing is known about criminal acts.”

Although deportations fall under the responsibility of the states, decisions are being taken in the offices of the federal agency for migration and refugees, and implemented by the federal police. The federal government is collaborating closely with the states.

State governments currently have no uniform policy. Refugees have been deported from Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, North Rhein-Westphalia, Hesse, Hamburg and Saarland, while other states have yet to deport anyone to Afghanistan. A proposal was made by Schleswig-Holstein for a nationwide stop to deportations.

The mass deportations have been facilitated by this month’s decision by the Green Party in 10 states to support deportations to war zones like Afghanistan. This decision obliges state governments to complete forced repatriations, which are decided solely “by the federal government’s own assessment of the local security situation.” Significantly, the Greens urge the government to better conceal deportations from the public. The federal interior ministry ought to avoid “the undignified public presentation of mass deportations,” their statement declares.

The Greens are thus jointly responsible for the shameful deportations. In Hesse, this includes Green Transport Minister Tarek al Wazir who, together with Volker Bouffier (Christian Democratic Union), leads the CDU-Green state government. The state government could choose to reject the federal government’s deportation orders—but it has not. The state government also has partial ownership of the Rhein-Main airport and oversees everything, including deportations, which go on there.

In Thuringia, Brandenburg and Berlin, where it is in government, the Left Party also supports the deportations. In these state, the Left Party claims it is only carrying out case “voluntary repatriations.” This is a cynical sham. The “voluntary” nature of the repatriation consists in the fact that refugees “voluntarily” agree to leave so they will not be forcibly deported at their own expense. The Left Party does not oppose the federal government’s deportation laws.

In Thuringia, where Bodo Ramelow’s Left Party leads the state government, they are carrying out a refugee policy just as brutal as other parties. Last year, with 1,762 “voluntary” repatriations from January to November, Thuringia was second among all German states for deportations.

In contrast to this, solidarity in the population is growing. Demonstrations against deportations are increasing and becoming larger. Many workers and young people have displayed a great willingness to help the refugees, many of whom fled imperialist war in 2015 and fled by foot to Germany through a perilous path of persecution and state repression.

Benoît Hamon wins Socialist Party presidential primary in France

Alice Laurençon

In a landslide victory, Benoît Hamon won yesterday’s second round of the ruling Socialist Party’s (PS) primary contest and became the party’s presidential candidate. According to initial figures yesterday evening, Hamon, the former education minister under President François Hollande, received 59 percent of the vote, eliminating former Prime Minister Manuel Valls, who won only 41 percent.

Two million voters cast their ballots, as opposed to the 4 million voters who participated in the primary contest for the right-wing Republicans (LR) in November, in a campaign marked primarily by vast popular disaffection with the PS government.

Hamon hailed his victory as the day “the left lifted its head once again”, declaring the vote to be “a sign of a living and vibrant left”. He pledged “to start, tomorrow, by uniting the left”, and stated his intention to “propose to [the Green Party presidential candidate] Yannick Jadot and to [former Left Party leader] Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in particular, that we create a social, economic and democratic governmental majority”.

The vote represents nothing of the sort. The result of the primary is a rejection by the electorate of the hated policies of the Hollande administration, represented most clearly in Valls’ candidacy. His defeat is a further humiliation for the government, and the PS is widely anticipated to face a debacle in the presidential contest in April-May of this year. The party is profoundly discredited after years of austerity and war; President Hollande has approval ratings of around 4 percent.

Although posing as a critic of Hollande, Hamon does not in any way represent a shift in the PS’ right-wing programme, or a reorientation to the left, let alone the working class.

Hamon is a resolute advocate of war and a law-and-order policy oriented to the security forces, and has stated his approval for Hollande’s programme of extra-judicial killings. In response to the growing danger of a large-scale war between the major powers in the wake of Donald Trump’s inauguration in the USA, Hamon has called for an offensive of French imperialism and indicated his sharp hostility towards Russia.

Calling for the creation of a universal basic income, Hamon has made certain gestures towards the pseudo-left parties linked to the PS, including his calls for discussions with Mélenchon. His proposal for a universal basic income of €600-800 a month is reactionary, however. It would not lift the unemployed out of poverty, and is intended as a substitute for a secure and well-paying job under conditions of mass unemployment and deindustrialisation, which Hamon treats as inevitable.

His programme would, however, cost hundreds of billions of euros, an expenditure that Hamon’s backers inside the bourgeoisie would not tolerate. The reactionary character of his proposal is not lost on the French population, two-thirds of whom are hostile to his universal income scheme.

Recent polls show that with Hamon as candidate, the PS will still come in fifth place in the first round of the presidential elections, with 8 percent. This puts him behind the National Front’s (FN) Marine Le Pen, LR’s François Fillon, PS-linked banker Emmanuel Macron and the former leader of the Left Party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. He would be eliminated after the first round, in a humiliating defeat for the PS.

Hamon’s victory will only exacerbate the crisis of the PS, which has been the major pillar of bourgeois rule in France for half a century. The PS is deeply divided, and large sections of the party have already expressed their opposition to aligning with Hamon’s positions. Many PS officials have pledged their support for Emmanuel Macron, rather than backing the PS candidate.

Speaking to BFMTV two days before the second round, Valls also made clear that he would not back Hamon. While stating that he would remain “loyal” to the PS if Hamon won, he also declared that he “would not defend [Hamon’s] programme” but would “move aside” during Hamon’s campaign.

Other PS officials have also already stated that they would oppose Hamon’s campaign. Pro-Valls MPs, including Christophe Caresche, Gilles Savary and François Loncle, circulated a letter last week stating that if Hamon won, they would assert their “right to withdraw from Hamon’s campaign”, and call for a Macron vote.

The calls to oppose Hamon demonstrate the depth of crisis within the PS. With support for the party haemorrhaging towards Macron, its very survival is at stake; it is deeply divided and threatened with a split after the April-May elections, if not before.

The turn of large sections of the PS to Macron, whose programme is even more explicitly right-wing than Hamon, underscores the reactionary and pro-capitalist character of European social democracy. Such parties across Europe, including Pasok in Greece and the Socialist Party in Spain, have also seen their vote collapse after decades of supporting the European Union’s (EU) austerity diktat.

François Fillon, the right-wing The Republicans’ (LR) candidate, also appears increasingly fragile. Although initially expected to win in a second round of the presidential election against neo-fascist FN candidate Marine Le Pen, Fillon was seriously damaged last week by corruption allegations.

Last Wednesday, the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné published claims that Fillon paid his wife Penelope hundreds of thousands of euros in tax-payers’ money over eight years for a job as his “parliamentary assistant” in which she did no identifiable work. Fillon is now in serious legal jeopardy, with French financial authorities announcing an investigation into the issue.

Between November, when he became LR’s presidential candidate, and last week, his approval ratings have dropped by 16 points, from 54 to 38 percent. The French bourgeoisie now faces a severe crisis, with both its traditional parties of government, LR and the PS, threatened with electoral collapse.

The FN is attempting to emerge as the main beneficiary of this collapse. Le Pen is expected to easily make it through to the second round of the presidential contest, according to the polls.

The prospect of the collapse of the two major parties of bourgeois rule in France is causing increasing unease within the European ruling class. Already reeling from the Brexit vote and from Trump’s denunciations of the EU as a tool of Germany, the crises in the PS and LR are further undermining Europe’s political order.

In a statement to the German parliament last week, recently appointed German Deputy Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel expressed Berlin’s concern over the consequences of the FN’s rise for the EU’s future. “After Brexit, if enemies of Europe manage again in the Netherlands or in France to get results”, he warned, “then we face the threat that the largest civilisation project of the 20th century, namely the European Union, could fall apart”.

The Trump administration has made it clear that it intends to exploit Brexit to use Britain as a political weapon against the EU, and particularly Germany, which it regards as a major economic competitor. France is also emerging as a battleground as Berlin and the Trump administration vie for influence, with the Trump administration rapidly building ties with the FN and Berlin seeking to keep pro-EU forces such as the PS and LR in power.

The breakdown of PS is thus a symptom of the deep factional conflicts within the European ruling elite and the growing international tensions and threat of war.

Dozens killed in Yemen in first US special forces raid under Trump

Niles Niemuth

US Special Forces carried out a raid on a number of homes in Yemen’s central Al Baydah Province on Sunday, killing as many as 57 people, including 16 civilians. One American soldier was reported killed.

The raid marks President Donald Trump’s first authorized military operation and first military fatality. The last US Special Forces raid in Yemen was in 2014, when a botched hostage rescue attempt resulted in the deaths of American journalist Luke Somers and South African teacher Pierre Korkie.

A US Central Command spokesman claimed on Sunday that 14 militants were killed in the raid but did not report any civilian casualties. According to the Pentagon, one US soldier was killed and at least three others injured in combat.

Two additional US soldiers were injured when the helicopter they were riding in was forced to make a hard landing as they sought to evacuate the American casualties. The helicopter was so damaged in the course of the raid that it had to be abandoned and was “intentionally destroyed in place.”

The attack targeted the home of tribal leader and reputed member of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) Abdulrauf al Dhahab. In addition to the destruction of a number of homes, a school, a mosque and a medical facility were all damaged in the assault.

“The operation began at dawn when a drone bombed the home of Abdulrauf al-Dhahab and then helicopters flew up and unloaded paratroopers at his house and killed everyone inside,” a resident told Reuters and the Associated Press.

“Next, the gunmen opened fire at the US soldiers who left the area, and the helicopters bombed the gunmen and a number of homes and led to a large number of casualties.”

Among those killed in Sunday’s attack was the eight-year-old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American citizen and Muslim cleric who was assassinated by Obama with a drone missile strike in Yemen in 2011. Awlaki was related to Dhahab by marriage. Nasser al-Awlaki, the child’s grandfather, told Reuters that the young girl “was hit with a bullet in her neck and suffered for two hours. Why kill children? This is the new administration—it’s very sad, a big crime."

This is the second of Anwar al-Awlaki’s children to be killed by the US government. His 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, was killed in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011, a few weeks after his father.

Two other local tribal leaders, Abdulrauf’s brother Sultan and Saif Alawai al-Jawfi, were also killed in the attack. The Dhahab brothers were allegedly motivated to join AQAP in early 2012 after a third brother, Sheikh Tariq al Dhahab, was killed by the Yemeni intelligence service.

Abdulrauf had previously been targeted for death by the Obama administration in September 2012 when a drone missile was fired at his car. He survived that attack when the missile, instead of hitting his vehicle, hit a minibus, killing 12 civilians, including a 10-year-old girl and her mother.

The US has waged a covert war in Yemen since 2002 when President George W. Bush ordered the first drone missile strike on suspected Al Qaeda members. The use of drone assassinations was dramatically expanded by Obama, who also claimed the right to use drone strikes to kill American citizens without due process anywhere in the world.

According to a tally by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, US drone strikes and other covert military operations over the last 15 years in Yemen have killed as many as 1,461 people.

The Pentagon carried out the first drone strikes under the Trump administration in Yemen on January 20, 21 and 22, killing five alleged AQAP members in Baydah province.

In addition to the ongoing drone war, the US has been facilitating a devastating aerial onslaught in Yemen by Saudi Arabia and its allies against Houthi militants since March 2015. At least 7,469 Yemenis have been killed in the Saudi-led war and some 40,438 have been injured.

The Saudi coalition has deliberately bombed food markets, schools, hospitals, factories and residential neighborhoods in its efforts to break the Houthi insurgency and reinstate the government of President Adbrabbuh Mansur Hadi.

Supported by US intelligence, bombs, fighter jets and refueling flights, the Saudi-led coalition has pushed the poorest country in the Middle East to the brink of famine. A no-fly zone and naval blockade imposed by the Saudi coalition with the support of the US have blocked the delivery of desperately needed food and medicine. Prior to the war the country relied on imports for 90 percent of its food supply.

According to the latest figures published by the UN, some 14 million Yemenis, more than half of the country’s population, are suffering from food insecurity, including 2.2 million acutely malnourished children and 500,000 children who are suffering from severe acute malnourishment. Approximately 19.4 million Yemenis currently lack access to clean drinking water or proper sanitation. The UN estimates that a child dies every 10 minutes in Yemen from preventable causes.

“Everywhere you go, you see people begging in the streets in bigger numbers, you see people rummaging through rubbish to survive,” the UN humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, Jamie McGoldrick, told the BBC.

“You hear catastrophic stories of children dying because they can’t get to health centers. People dying of malnutrition, people dying of preventable diseases. It will get worse because the problem is that the economy is in really bad shape and banking sector doesn’t function.”

Indicating the ferocity of the conflict, more than 100 fighters were killed over the weekend in clashes between troops loyal to Hadi and Houthi rebel fighters in the western city of Mokha, a major port which overlooks the Bab al Mandeb Strait, a strategic oil shipping lane. Approximately 370 fighters have been killed on both sides in the offensive which was launched by the Saudi-backed forces on January 7 with the aim of retaking the Houthi-controlled port.

Human Rights Watch again condemns Australia’s inhuman treatment of refugees

Max Newman 

The US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has once more damned Australia’s barbaric treatment of refugees and its “failure to protect children in detention,” as well as the country’s repressive counter-terrorism laws. The indictment was published in HRW’s annual World Report 2017, which catalogues violations of human rights in around 90 countries.

The report states that throughout 2016 the Australian “government continued its draconian policy of offshore transfers of asylum seekers to Manus Island in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Nauru.” This was despite “growing calls” for the government to address the abuses and “resettle those found to be refugees in Australia.”

HRW outlines the ruling last year by the High Court, Australia’s supreme court, that upheld the government’s indefinite detention of refugees. The report notes that this decision amounted to “authorizing by law” Australia’s role in “securing, funding, and participating in the detention of asylum seekers and refugees.”

HRW points out that, by contrast, the PNG Supreme Court “ruled that the detention of asylum seekers on Manus Island was unconstitutional” under PNG law. The Australian government initially defied the PNG ruling, insisting that the detainees remain indefinitely incarcerated. As noted in the report, Australia’s government eventually agreed to close the Manus Island facility, but gave no timeframe and made clear that the refugees on the island would never come to Australia.

Instead, the government moved, in the subsequent months, to forbid any adult asylum seeker who arrived in Australia by boat after July 19, 2013 from ever receiving a visa, even to visit Australia. This legislation became an essential component in a US-Australia refugee-swapping deal, in which some asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru would be transferred to the US in exchange for some heavily-vetted refugees currently languishing in camps in Costa Rica, having been denied entry to the US.

The announcement of the US-Australia swap came after numerous failed attempts by successive Australian governments, both Liberal-National and Labor, to find a “third option” for the forcible dumping of refugees into poorer surrounding countries. The report highlights the $A55 million deal struck with Cambodia in 2015 to offload refugees there. It notes that, out of the six refugees from Nauru who were “settled” in Cambodia, only two remain there, with the others returning “to their country of origin,” due to the deplorable conditions they faced in Cambodia.

The report also highlights the horrendous conditions on Manus Island and Nauru, where refugee and asylum seekers “face unnecessary delays in, and at times denial of, medical care, even for life-threatening conditions.” This was highlighted during the recent coronial inquest into the death of Hamid Kehazaei, 24, a prisoner in Australia’s detention camp on Manus Island who died from septicaemia spreading from a cut on his foot in August 2014, after authorities delayed his evacuation for medical treatment.

“Many have dire mental health problems and suffer from depression” the report states, pointing to the two incidents of self-immolation on Nauru in May last year as indicators of the effects of prolonged and indefinite detention on the mental health of those imprisoned.

“The Australian government’s offshore operations are highly secretive,” the report further notes, and “service providers working for the Australian government face criminal charges and civil penalties if they disclose information about conditions for asylum seekers and refugees.”

Despite these laws, current and former staff members at the detention centres have revealed some of the abuses. Last year, a leaked cache of over 2,000 incident reports from Nauru “exposed endemic and systematic abuse, predominantly of children.”

The HRW report also highlights the disturbing footage of children being tortured in youth detention in the Northern Territory, involving “teargassing, hooding, shackling” and being stripped naked. Noted as well is the introduction of further counterterrorism laws, featuring provisions that authorise the indefinite detention of those convicted of terrorist offences, even after they have served their sentences.

The HRW report points to a rapid escalation of the erosion of basic legal and democratic rights in Australia over the past year, with the attacks on refugees only the sharpest expression. However, this is not the first HRW report to detail such abuses, nor is it the first to document the horrors of Australia’s refugee camps. Yet, none of these reports has stopped the draconian practices.

All the major political parties—the Liberal-National Coalition, the Labor Party and the Greens—are jointly responsible for these measures. While the current Turnbull Coalition government has ramped up the assault, it was the Keating Labor government that, in 1992, introduced mandatory detention for refugees arriving by boat, making Australia the first country to do so.

In 2012, the minority Gillard Labor government, crucially propped up by the Greens, reopened the detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru, and established the inhumane regime that continues today. To cover their tracks, the Greens have been instrumental in conducting two Senate inquiries into the abuses in the facilities. Both inquiries proposed only cosmetic changes, illustrating the support by the Greens, like the rest of the political establishment, for the underlying “border protection” framework.

As the social conditions of the working class are increasingly attacked around the world by the corporate elite, asylum seekers—tens of millions of whom are fleeing US-led wars—will more and more be scapegoated by governments as a means of diverting social and class tensions in xenophobic and nationalist directions.

To fight this divisive poison, workers must unify their struggles workers across national borders, break with the political parties responsible for this crisis, and turn to an international socialist perspective. Workers must have the right to live in any country of their choosing with full citizen rights, including to work, study and receive welfare entitlements.