Bangladesh government continues repression of apparel workers

Sarath Kumara

Bangladesh’s Awami League government and employers have intensified their crackdown on apparel workers following mass walkouts over wages in December involving tens of thousands of workers.

In recent weeks, the international media, including the New York Times, and giant international retailers have voiced concerns about the situation in Bangladesh. Their disquiet is not out of sympathy for garment workers who labour in harsh conditions for poverty wages. They fear the eruption of industrial and political struggles that will impact on investor profits.

In 1983–84, the Bangladesh’s garment industry earned $US31.6 million or 3.9 percent of the country’s total exports. Last year it earned $28.1 billion or 82 percent of exports. Around 4.5 million workers, 80 percent of them women, are employed in over 4,500 sweatshops throughout the country. The industry is not only lucrative for Bangladesh big business. It is a major source of profit for giant retail corporations in the US and Europe, such as Wal-Mart and Marks & Spencer.

Commenting on the garment industry at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina cynically declared: “We are highly committed to ensuring compliance with regard to labour rights, workplace safety and environmental standards in the industry.” As Hasina made these remarks, her government was stepping up its repression against garment workers.

On December 11, a group of workers at Windy Apparels factory in Ashulia walked out on strike and were quickly joined by about 150,000 workers from more than two dozen factories. The strike continued for 10 days over 16 demands, including a wage increase to 16,000 taka ($US200) a month, up from the current below poverty-level 5,300 taka.

The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) responded by locking out workers at 55 factories. An estimated 1,600 workers were sacked, although some reports claimed the number was much higher, at over 3,500.

Around 249 workers, including 14 local union leaders, were arrested. Many workers and union officials went into hiding to escape from house raids by security forces. Union offices have been vandalised and forcibly shut down, with membership documents burned and furniture removed.

Many of those arrested were charged under the Special Powers Act, a repressive law introduced by the Awami League in 1974 to quash so-called threats to state security.

One of those arrested, brutally beaten and threatened with death by the police was Nazmul Huda, a well-known television and print journalist. Huda has been charged with violating section 57 of the Information and Communications Technology Act, which carries a minimum sentence of seven years’ jail.

On January 22, the New York Times published an article entitled, “Protests in Bangladesh Shake a Global Workshop for Apparel,” voicing concerns now being raised in US and European capitals. The newspaper interviewed Jhorna Begum, the wife of Jahangir Alam, a local trade union president in Ashulia, one of those still imprisoned by Bangladesh authorities.

Begum told the Times that police raided their home looking for her husband. After he failed to return home, she hired a lawyer to track him down and discovered that he was being detained in a dark and crowded cell where he could not even see his own hands. Begum was only able to speak to him briefly. “We live hand to mouth, waiting for the pay cheque at the end of the month,” she told the Times .

Following the death of garment union leader Aminul Islam, who was found tortured and murdered in April 2012, many garment workers are cautious about speaking to the media. Islam went missing near the Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity office in Ashulia, where he worked as a senior organiser. His body was later dumped near the Ghatail police station, some 100 kilometres to the north.

Last Thursday, the New York Times published an editorial feigning concern about the ongoing repression in Bangladesh. “The brutal recent crackdown on protesting garment workers,” it declared, “is proof that clothing manufactured in Bangladesh is still exacting a terrible price from the people who make it … The truth is that the 2013 labour-law reforms did little to improve workers’ rights.”

The editorial concluded by nervously warning that the “failure by the garment industry and Ms. Hasina’s government to adhere to its principles stains an industry and threatens the economy and stability of Bangladesh.”

The Times article acknowledged that the main reason for the “shockingly low wages” in Bangladesh’s garment industry was global retail corporations “exerting pressure on suppliers to drive costs even lower.”

Forbes recently reported that a Bangladeshi garment worker earns $0.13 an hour, compared to $7,283 an hour (pre-tax) compensation for one of the 350 top chief executive officers (CEOs) in the United States. “This would roughly equate to the hourly rates of 16,000 employees from Bangladesh combined,” the US-based magazine said.

Pennsylvania State University associate professor Mark Anner told the Financial Times last month that production costs and the real value of Bangladesh workers’ wages have been declining in recent years. Since 2013, he said, the dollar price for a pair of cotton trousers has dropped 9.3 percent in real terms. The ongoing expansion of the Bangladesh garment industry was “based largely on its cost competitiveness.”

BGMEA vice president Mohammed Nasir told the Financial Times: “The buyers go to each factory and get a detailed quote for the work … then they take the cheapest deal offered for each part of the work and demand that factories meet that overall price … Factories are desperate, so they agree. It means retailers pay around $5 for a piece of denim clothing that would sell in the west for $60.”

Twenty major international apparel retailers, including H&M, C&A, Esprit, GAP, Li & Fung and others, have issued a statement warning Prime Minister Hasina that industrial unrest in Bangladesh may damage the country’s reputation as a reliable sourcing market. They called on the government to form a new wage board for the garment workers. At the same time, the giant retailers said they “do not condone illegal activities by workers, labour groups.”

The call for a new garment industry wage board is thoroughly bogus. The existing wage board failed to review workers’ pay last year, in contravention of existing labour laws, and some factories still refuse to grant a pay rise recommended by the wage board in 2013.

Concerned to defuse further unrest, the Swiss-based UNI Global Union (UNIGU) and IndustriALL Global Union (IAGU) have launched an online campaign demanding the Bangladesh government release garment union leaders detained in recent weeks. These organisations want the government to establish a corporatist partnership with the unions and non-government organisations to control and discipline workers.

Australian prime minister’s speech points to growing political crisis

Mike Head

Both Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Labor Party opposition leader Bill Shorten delivered what were billed as heartland addresses to the National Press Club in Canberra this week, laying out their visions for 2017. Each speech, in its own way, underscored a profound crisis engulfing Australia’s political establishment.

Donald Trump’s election as US president has sent shockwaves through the parliamentary elite. Not only has Trump’s campaign underlined the deep popular hostility to the major capitalist parties internationally. It has accelerated the global turn to trade war and war, with catastrophic implications for Australian capitalism, which is already reeling from the collapse of the mining boom.

The US president’s naked “America First” program is intensifying the dilemma facing the Australian ruling elite as Washington ramps up its confrontation with China, Australia’s biggest export market. Trump’s brutal anti-immigrant measures and aggressive pursuit of the profit interests of American big business are also fuelling popular opposition to the social offensive being waged by the capitalist class worldwide.

There is already widespread working class disaffection after decades of attacks on jobs and social services by successive Liberal-National Coalition and Labor governments. According to a world “2017 Trust Barometer” published last month by PR company Edelman, the “implosion of trust” in government, business and the media in Australia is among the greatest of the 28 countries surveyed.

The “trust index” in Australia is 40, below that of the US, on 47. Last year, when Turnbull’s Coalition government narrowly survived the July federal election, the proportion of Australians trusting government plunged from 45 percent to 37 percent, one of the sharpest falls recorded, comparable only to Mexico, Russia and China.

Neither Turnbull nor Shorten has any answer to the deepening crisis of Australian capitalism or the mounting geo-political tensions and drive to war, other than a deepening assault on the social position of the working class to provide tax cuts for the wealthy and boost military spending. Like Trump, both are whipping up anti-refugee xenophobia to divide workers and divert attention from their own regressive policies and records.

Turnbull’s speech gave an indication of political paralysis. It was devoid of anything new, except for a call for new coal-fired power stations. The financial media outlets immediately denounced Turnbull for not laying out any agenda to meet their demands for sweeping company tax cuts, the dismantling of welfare entitlements and a full-scale assault on workers’ wages and conditions.

Writing in Murdoch’s Australian, contributing economics editor Judith Sloan condemned the speech as “predictable, unenlightening guff” that was also “gutless.” The Australian Financial Review said Turnbull’s agenda “continues to fall short of the bold economic program needed to deal with the emerging global order.”

These comments reflect the mounting handwringing by big business over Turnbull’s failure to deliver on his promise, when he ousted Tony Abbott as prime minister in September 2015, to supply an “economic narrative” to overcome the public backlash that erupted against the government’s austerity measures in 2014–15.

Remarkably, Turnbull virtually said not a word about Trump’s victory or the world situation. There was no mention of Trump’s program of protectionism and militarism, which has already provoked tensions with China and the European powers. The only hint of the consequences came when Turnbull said his government was “disappointed by America’s withdrawal from the TPP”—the proposed US-led Pacific trade bloc now dumped by Trump in favour of threats of more open trade war measures against China.

Later, without referring explicitly to Trump’s plan to slash US corporate tax rates from 35 to 15 percent to boost profits and attract investment, Turnbull tried to use the global cutting of business taxes to demand support for his own scheme to cut the company tax rate from 30 to 25 percent over the next decade.

Acutely aware of the rising public animosity toward his government, Turnbull tried to present his tax plan—which would hand companies an estimated $50 billion over 10 years—as a boon for ordinary workers. Without offering any explanation, he claimed that “full-time workers on average weekly earnings would have an extra $750 in their pockets each and every year.” In reality, the spiralling global race to reduce corporate taxation will only benefit the super-wealthy, while further stripping billions of dollars from basic social spending.

Likewise, Turnbull cynically tried to dress up his pledge to promote supposed “clean coal” technology—in the interests of the coal mining giants—as a means to protect households from soaring electricity prices.

While avoiding any reference to the growing threat of war following Trump’s victory, Turnbull reiterated his government’s intentions to massively expand military spending. “No peacetime government has committed more resources to national security than mine,” he declared.

Claiming it would “create thousands of new jobs,” he described the “Defence Industry investment program”—$195 billion for warships, plans and other weapons systems over 10 years—as a “truly a historic national enterprise.”

Turnbull also echoed Trump in demonising refugees, vowing to ensure that asylum seekers would never reach Australia. “Since 2013, Operation Sovereign Borders—an initiative that began under Mr Abbott and that I reinforced—has stopped the boats and restored integrity to our borders.”

During his National Press Club address, Labor leader Shorten also emulated Trump’s drive to divert the rising social and class tensions in reactionary nationalist, protectionist and militarist directions. Shorten claimed to have heard the message of what was a “global phenomenon”: “Too many Australians think the political system is broken—and more than a few don’t trust us to fix it.”

Scapegoating overseas workers, Shorten demanded a drastic cut in work visas for them, to protect the “jobs of Australians.” Feigning concern for soaring levels of youth unemployment, he said a Labor government would ensure that one in every ten jobs on defence projects went to an Australian apprentice.

These policies, like Trump’s, will only divide workers and youth in Australia from their fellow workers around the world, and whip up xenophobic sentiments—a prelude to inciting workers to fight each other on battlefields in the interests of “their” national capitalist class.

Toward the end of his speech, Shorten, a former trade union chief, underlined the crucial role of the unions in peddling this divisive agenda. He declared: “We need to revive the co-operative spirit of the Hawke-Kelty consensus between businesses, unions, the Commonwealth and all sectors of our community.”

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, under the banner of “making Australia globally competitive,” the Labor governments of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating worked hand-in-glove with Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Bill Kelty and the entire union leadership to smash up workers’ conditions, eliminate tens of thousands of jobs and privatise major enterprises.

That offensive launched an endless process, intensified by every government since, of shifting wealth more and more into the hands of the privileged few. The speeches by Turnbull and Shorten point to the turmoil now wracking the political system as a result of the enormous discontent produced by this assault, and the escalating global geo-strategic tensions.

Corruption allegations undermine French presidential candidate François Fillon

Alice Laurençon

Just over a week after allegations of corruption were first published, French presidential candidate François Fillon has come under increasing pressure as more information emerges.

Last Wednesday, the satirical newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné published allegations that Fillon, the candidate for the conservative The Republicans (LR) party, had paid his wife Penelope €600,000 over eight years for a fictitious job as his parliamentary assistant. This allegedly also included €500,000 as a “parliamentary attaché” for Marc Joulard, a deputy who replaced Fillon in the Assembly during the time that Fillon was a minister in government.

The newspaper cited statements from another attaché, Jeanne Robinson-Behre, who had worked for Joulard during the same period, in which she claimed not to recall any occasion when Penelope Fillon ever did any work for Joulard. Fillon has not denied that his wife received this sum of money, but has repeatedly declared that she had done work to justify her salary, such as meeting guests in his absence and proof-reading drafts of his speeches.

The allegations against Fillon were fuelled by a video aired on television channel France2 on Thursday. The video showed an extract from an interview with UK newspaper the Sunday Telegraph in 2007, in which Penelope Fillon stated, “I have never been actually his assistant or anything like that.”

“I don’t deal with his public relations”, she added.

In its most recent edition, Le Canard Enchaîné has stated that the amount paid to Fillon’s wife was higher than initially thought, at approximately €831,000.

It also alleged that Fillon paid €84,000 of public funds to two of his children, who he supposedly hired as legal advisers while he was senator, in 2005 and 2007. This is despite the fact that neither of his children had finished their legal studies and were therefore not qualified as lawyers, leading to further speculation over what work they supposedly did.

Although it is still unclear whether the payouts to Penelope Fillon and to Fillon’s two children were technically illegal, due to the flexibility of French laws on hiring family members and parliamentary assistants, the allegations are discrediting not only Fillon, but the entire political establishment. While demanding that the working class endure draconian austerity measures, the ruling elite is able to procure hundreds of thousands of euros of public funds for their own benefit.

Media and political circles are increasingly wary of the consequences of scandals like these in further distancing the working class from the established parties.

An editorial published yesterday in Le Monde stated: “By taking the French people as fools, by allowing them to see and hear such levels of indifference towards them, by getting rid of even the slightest show of integrity, we will end up, one way or another, by deepening their disgust with government business and by provoking their revolt—and legitimately.” With their sense of impunity and blind egotism, it continued, “the candidates responsible for this state of affairs will only have themselves to reproach. But it’ll be too late.”

The publication of this new information has provoked intense divisions within LR, whose candidate has gone from being the favourite for the presidency, to facing an electoral debacle. According to a recent survey, 76 percent of the French population said they were not convinced by Fillon’s statements about the allegations. Polls now predict that Fillon would only gain 19 to 20 percent of the vote in the first round of the presidential elections, coming in behind PS-linked banker Emmanuel Macron and National Front (FN) candidate Marine Le Pen. This would eliminate him from the second round.

As the European powers scramble to respond to Donald Trump—whose administration is backing Le Pen, who has taken Trump’s election as a sign that she can win the French presidency—LR are debating how to salvage their candidacy and assert French capitalism’s interests on the world stage.

On Thursday, 17 prominent LR officials, including LR General Secretary Bernard Accoyer, and former candidates for the LR primary Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet and Bruno Le Maire, penned an editorial in the French newspaper Le Figaro, in which they declared their “total support” for Fillon, and denounced the allegations as “rumours, approximations and slander”.

However, other officials have called for Fillon to step down, and cede his nomination to another LR candidate. Calling the results of the November primary contest, which nominated Fillon as LR candidate, “null and void when confronted with these unpredictable developments”, the deputy for the Rhone region, George Fenech, called for the LR to organise a national council meeting in order to “find a solution.”

Sections of the LR are manoeuvring to install as presidential nominee Alain Juppé, who came in second after Fillon in the primaries. LR deputy Philippe Gosselin confirmed on Thursday that an open letter calling for the nomination of Juppé was being prepared, and was “ready to be signed by several dozens of deputies.”

With the Socialist Party (PS) also deeply divided over last Sunday’s nomination of Benoît Hamon as presidential candidate, the French ruling elite is faced with the possibility of the collapse of the two major parties of bourgeois rule for the last half century.

Broad sections of the French and European ruling elite are concerned that Le Pen could benefit from the breakdown of these two parties, and widespread popular disgust with the entire political establishment in France. Le Pen is resolutely hostile to the European Union (EU), and in the wake of the Brexit vote in the UK and Donald Trump’s hostile stance towards the EU, an FN presidency would profoundly change the EU, threatening its very survival.

London’s Haringey Labour council launches £2 billion privatisation

Thomas Scripps

Labour councillors in the impoverished London borough of Haringey are pushing forward with plans to place £2 billion of public property into private hands.

To be finalised in April, the scheme will place the whole of Haringey’s public finances at risk, see thousands of council tenants thrown out of their homes and increase already unaffordable house prices in the borough. These events are a reflection of London’s ongoing process of social cleansing, in connection with the wholesale destruction of social and genuinely affordable housing to make way for high-value developments.

Haringey’s privatisation marks a new stage, whereby UK local authorities themselves—and all of the services they provide—are placed under private direction. Above all, the situation in Haringey is a vital political lesson in the pro-capitalist character of the Labour Party.

The driving force behind the privatisation programme is the leader of Haringey Council, Labour councillor Claire Kober. She intends to establish a “Haringey Development Vehicle” (HDV), a private company half owned by the Council and half by a private developer. The Council will put up land to secure its share, which the developer will match with equity. The Council’s assets will be transferred to the HDV on long leases for a 20-year period.

To decide which developer Haringey Council would partner with, Kober was flown to a high-flying property fair at Cannes in France to discuss with various bidders. A shortlist was drawn up which includes Lendlease; Morgan Sindall with Affinity Sutton and Circle; Pinnacle with Starwood Capital and Catalyst.

Two of these corporations—Lendlease and Starwood—are represented by a lobbying group that has wined and dined Kober and her heads of housing no less than 13 times. A spokesman for the Council, when asked if the HDV had been discussed at these lunches, responded: “It is impossible to account for all of the conversations that took place at these events which involved a large number of people who are not from Haringey including London borough leaders and GLA representatives.”

The immensely rich surroundings in which Kober and her administration made their decisions could not be further divorced from the life experience of Haringey’s working class residents. The borough has the fourth-highest landlord eviction and overcrowding rates in London, the second-highest rate of families housed in temporary accommodation, above average homelessness rates for the capital and one of the highest rates of out-of-work benefits recipients—according to the London Poverty Profile of 2015.

There has not been the slightest democratic pretense at giving voice to the interests of working class people. In fact, most residents of Haringey’s Council housing estates slated for destruction under the HDV are entirely unaware of what is being planned. This is something Haringey Council’s own consultants admit, but intend to do nothing about.

What information has been gained from the Council regarding the HDV has provoked an overwhelmingly hostile response. A number of demonstrations have been held protesting the plans. The Haringey Defend Council Housing organisation has described it as an “absolutely terrible policy”, continuing, “The whole plan is about increasing house prices. It’s morally wrong. They [the Labour Council] should stop doing the Tories’ dirty work.”

In response, Kober falsely claimed in the Guardian, “Whatever you want to call what we’re doing, it’s not privatisation.” According to Kober, HDV is a route to 5,000 new homes and thousands of new jobs in the next 20 years. She said in the same article, “A council like Haringey could never borrow the money or recruit the talent to build on this land at the scale and pace that’s needed. So, rather than sell it to private developers and hope for the best, we’re bringing in the investment and skills from a private partner while retaining a 50% control...”

This is a miserable cover-up. There are no plans to build social housing under the HDV, only so-called “affordable” housing. As is well known, “affordable” prices are defined as up to 80 percent of the market rate. This is already unaffordably high for many Haringey residents and will be driven yet higher by the new HDV builds which—if previously approved redevelopments are an indication—will be tailored to the very rich. These previous projects include the sale of Hornsey Town Hall to Far East Consortium International Ltd (FEC), despite the opposition of over 99 percent of locals consulted. The building was renovated into a luxury hotel with just four affordable units.

As for Kober’s suggestion that the involvement of private interests is harmless—and even beneficial—this is indicative of the programme of the Labour Party, which supports big business.

The door has been opened to private, for-profit involvement in local authority affairs on an unprecedented scale. Haringey Council, under the HDV, will be as responsible for providing a profitable return to the private developer as it is for providing for its residents. Given that the leaders of Haringey Council are closely intertwined with big business, it is clear which of these commitments will be given priority. This is a process taking place throughout the public sector in Britain and internationally. 

The motivations of big business in this area are made clear by recent analysis from Bilfinger GVA, which showed that the fastest rate of economic growth is happening outside of central London. According to their research, the combination of major regeneration projects and access to affordable office space is driving up demand in boroughs like Haringey. In other words, London’s outer boroughs are considered the capital’s next big investment bubble. Private developers are rushing to bulldoze obstacles like social housing in order to secure themselves a slice of the profits.

As the example of Haringey shows, among their most valued accomplices in this effort is the Labour Party. Clearly aware of the serious popular fallout they can expect from their actions, lower-tier Haringey Labour councillors have criticised the course of action taken by Kober and the Council’s leadership.

Whatever their arguments or the course of the debate, these councillors offer only token opposition to Kober’s plan. An examination of their record since 2010 reveals they have voted again and again for massive spending cuts in the borough. Since 2010 to the beginning of 2014, Labour cut £117 million from Haringey’s budget, with many vital services reduced or terminated. A further £70 million reduction is to be imposed by 2018. More than 600 council workers’ jobs are slated to be lost by 2018

What has been imposed by the Labour council in Haringey has been enforced by Labour everywhere, with the party in control of councils in virtually every major urbanised area in London and nationally.

“Left” Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his close political ally, shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, have ordered all Labour councils to impose increasingly savage cuts to local authority budgets. Labour-run authorities across the country are enacting cuts with as much callousness and ferocity as Conservative.

Corbyn’s own Islington constituency Labour council has slashed £220 million over the past decade, with plans for a further £70 million in cuts, and has set up a council-run private company, called iCo, to charge for services.

Theresa May’s White Paper offers no plan for post-Brexit Britain

Robert Stevens

On Thursday, the Conservative government released its White Paper, supposedly setting out its plans for Britain’s exit from the European Union (EU).

The 77-page document was made public one day after parliament—by a large majority—passed a one-line Conservative government bill authorising the triggering of Article 50, the Lisbon Treaty legislation that begins the formal exit process.

The document, “United Kingdom’s exit from and new partnership with the European Union White Paper”, is not so much a plan as an empty wish list. It outlines 12 “principles” that read like chapters from a marketing manual, including “Providing certainty and clarity”, “Ensuring free trade with European markets”, “Controlling immigration” and “Delivering a smooth, orderly exit from the EU”.

The Guardian criticises the government and its document from the standpoint of that section of the ruling elite favouring EU membership and continued access to the Single Market and Customs Union. That said, the newspaper’s cynical conclusion that the White Paper “tells the country nothing and everything about the most important foreign policy decision to face Britain for decades” is certainly to the point.

As is now the established pattern, the government promises the best of all possible futures for British imperialism. After affirming, “We will not be seeking membership of the Single Market” with all that this entails, the paper states that the government “will pursue instead a new strategic partnership with the EU, including an ambitious and comprehensive Free Trade Agreement and a new customs agreement.”

A final agreement, it claims, “may take in elements of current Single Market arrangements in certain areas as it makes no sense to start again from scratch when the UK and the remaining Member States have adhered to the same rules for so many years.”

In other words, the UK will leave the Single Market while seeking to maintain access to the Single Market!

Nothing concrete is outlined in regard to the position of the City of London. The paper boasts, “The UK’s financial services sector is a hub for money, trading and investment from all over the world and is one of only two global, full service financial centres—and the only one in Europe”, before observing that what is being sought is “the freest possible trade in financial services”. But it again offers no explanation as to why the EU states should or would adopt a magnanimous attitude toward their major competitor.

The White Paper goes on to state, “To provide legal certainty over our exit from the EU, we will introduce the Great Repeal Bill to remove the European Communities Act 1972 from the statute book and convert the ‘acquis’—the body of existing EU law—into domestic law”—after previously complaining that EU law was un unwarranted intrusion into British sovereignty.

The bill avoids any concreteness as well on the issue of immigration controls, the central concern of the Tory xenophobes in Westminster and the wider party base. It states only that it is undecided how the UK will “gain control of the numbers of people coming to the UK from the EU”. Instead, in a move designed to make it easier for the Tories Article 50 bill to complete its passage through committee stage hearings in parliament next week, the document indicates, “We expect to bring forward separate bills on immigration and customs.”

The paper declares in addition that “implementing any new immigration arrangements for EU nationals and the support they receive will be complex and Parliament will have an important role in considering these matters further”. The sole purpose of this vague pledge is to draw the teeth of the opposition parties should they offer a pro forma defence of the rights of EU citizens post-Brexit.

It blames the EU for the question mark placed by Brexit regarding the fate of an estimated 2.8 million EU nationals who currently reside in the UK, asserting, “The government would have liked to resolve this issue ahead of the formal negotiations. And although many EU member states favour such an agreement, this has not proven possible.”

As things stand, the government has little reason to fear amendments being made to its plans for Brexit. Despite more than 150 pages of amendments from Labour, the Scottish National Party and Greens, not a single Tory MP—barring the soon-to-retire pro-EU Kenneth Clarke—is prepared to rebel. In short, the Tories look set to keep to a timetable of triggering Article 50 by the end of March.

The May government is triggering Brexit while boasting, backed by the Bank of England, that the economy is performing well and even headed for a boom. However, what has fuelled the growth spurt of the past few months is consumer spending. This week the Economist predicted this was set to end, noting, “There are signs that Britons’ freewheeling ways may not last much longer ...

“People now appear to have decided that with Brexit negotiations about to get under way and the attendant economic uncertainty, they should focus less on borrowing and more on repaying. On January 31st the Bank of England revealed that consumer-credit growth in December fell to £1bn from £1.9bn the month before.”

The absence of any strategic plan in the White Paper is further proof of a growing crisis of rule in Britain. Powerful sections of the ruling elite never considered they might lose the referendum, underestimating the extent of opposition in the population to the EU and the general discontent with the entire political set-up after nearly a decade of savage austerity. No contingency planning was therefore ever considered by then Prime Minister David Cameron in the event of a Brexit vote.

His successor and fellow advocate of remaining in the EU, May, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Brexit Secretary David Davis have no plan either. The Brexit wing of the Tories claimed that leaving the EU would allow the UK to go “out of Europe and into the world”—by signing new trade deals with the US, China and other major markets—while, conversely, maintaining access to the UK’s most important existing market, the EU.

This was and remains a fantasy.

As for the prospect of a “buccaneering Britain” rampaging merrily across the planet, May’s obsequious performance during her meeting with Donald Trump underscored the reality that the UK, in fact, overwhelmingly relies on securing increased US trade, along with Washington’s backing, so as to pressure the EU into making concessions.

In reality, there is no indication from Trump’s “America First” administration that the UK will get such a favourable deal, which can, in any event, only be negotiated and signed after leaving the EU. Equally, there is no reason to believe that any European leader will be prepared to treat Britain leniently.

Prior to this week’s vote on Article 50, Sir Ivan Rogers, the UK’s former EU ambassador, tellingly noted the negotiations would be held in an “extremely feisty atmosphere” and that EU Commissioners were “openly” insisting that Britain would have to pay up to €60 billion as part of the exit process in a “predictably hard line”.

Moreover, Rogers’ scenario does not factor in the hostile response of Germany and France to being threatened by May’s relationship with Trump. The major European powers, rather than preparing to back down, have concluded from the new US president’s declared intention to seek the breakup of the EU that any concession to May would only allow the UK to function as the Trojan horse for this project.

Protests continue against corruption in Romania

Peter Schwarz

Tens of thousands have been taking to the streets each day in Romania to protest against a relaxation of anti-corruption laws.

On Tuesday evening, the government used an emergency decree to implement legal changes protecting corrupt politicians from prosecution. It also submitted a law to parliament that would grant amnesty to criminals who have been sentenced to less than five years in prison. As a result, several politicians sitting in prison for corruption will benefit.

There were fierce protests on Wednesday in the capital Bucharest and 55 other cities. According to the police, some 250,000 people participated in the demonstrations, while others put the figure at 300,000. The protests continued on Thursday and Friday. According to participants, the protests will continue for 10 days. The new regulations will then come into force, if the government does not retreat.

Corruption is endemic in Romanian politics. Many leading politicians are under investigation, have criminal records or are in custody. According to the National Anti-Corruption Directorate (DNA), there are currently 2,150 facing charges of misconduct in office. Those affected include not only the ruling Social Democratic Party (PSD), but also all the other bourgeois parties.

The protests are only superficially about corruption, which is seen especially by younger representatives of the middle class as an obstacle to their own social advancement. Behind this is a power struggle within the ruling elite that has been raging for years over foreign policy orientation and the allocation of sinecures.

NATO member Romania, with its proximity to Russia and border with Ukraine and the Black Sea, plays a key role in the efforts of the United States to encircle Russia militarily. It is the location of the US missile defence shield and is striving—together with Bulgaria and Turkey—to establish a permanent NATO fleet in the Black Sea, the most important base of the Russian Navy.

Tensions between the US and Europe always find a direct echo in Romanian domestic politics. With the intensification of tensions as a result of the new administration of Donald Trump, the trench warfare in Romania is taking on more aggressive forms. This is the main reason for the flare-up of the protests.

It is significant that the European Union is openly standing behind the demonstrations. In a joint statement, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and his deputy Frans Timmermans expressed their “deep concern about the recent developments in Romania.” They demanded: “The fight against corruption must be taken forward, not be undone.”

The spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry, Martin Schaefer, also explained that the Romanian government’s decree was “not a good and proper sign.”

Romanian President Klaus Johannis has openly sided against the government’s plans. On the very night the government agreed the legislative change, he wrote on his Facebook page that it was a “day of mourning for the rule of law,” which had received a “powerful blow by the opponents of justice, equity and the fight against corruption.” Johannis described it as his mission to restore the rule of law.

On January 22, when the first plans about the law change were leaked, the president had participated in street protests against them. As a result, the PSD chairman, Liviu Dragnea, accused him of wanting to take part in a coup.

Johannis, regarded as a follower of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, was elected as president of Romania at the end of 2014. The most important opposition candidate was the then Prime Minister Victor Ponta of the PSD. A year later, Ponta resigned following a wave of protests, which bear a great similarity with the current ones.

At the time, the WSWS characterized the protests as follows: “The demonstrations, styled in the media as a ‘popular revolution,’ represent the efforts of the imperialist powers and local elites to cultivate a layer of the upper middle class as a constituency for their policies of war and austerity.”

Johannis utilised Ponta’s resignation to install a technocrat government under the non-party former european commissioner Dacian Ciolos, who was responsible for ruthlessly implementing Brussels’ austerity diktats.

The consequences for the working class were devastating. More than 25 years after the fall of the Stalinist Ceausescu regime and 10 years after Romania’s accession to the EU, it remains the poorhouse of Europe. According to the EU Social Justice Report by the Bertelsmann Foundation, it stands in 27th place. Only Greece is worse. The average wage is €400 (US$430) a month; 40 percent of the population and 48 percent of young people under 18 are at risk of poverty; 28 percent of the population suffer from severe material deprivation.

In the end, the policies of the Ciolos government were so hated that the PSD won over 45 percent of the vote in early elections last December. However, turnout was below 40 percent. At the beginning of this year, the PSD formed a new government under Sorin Grindeanu, which is now the focus of the protests.

Since the fall of Ceausescu, the PSD and its predecessor organization have been reliable pillars of capitalist rule in Romania. Closely associated with the trade unions, it supported ferocious attacks on the working class, the privatization of state enterprises and accession to NATO and the European Union. The successor organization of the former Stalinist state party, it always encountered a certain mistrust from Washington, Brussels and Berlin. The accusation of corruption has always been a synonym for the suspicion it was being influenced by Moscow.

Now that the conflicts between Brussels and Washington are escalating, the PSD is trying to curry favour with the Trump administration. Party chairman Liviu Dragnea and premier Grindeanu have publicly boasted that they participated in a private dinner during Donald Trump’s inauguration, at which the new president was present.

Dragnea published photos on Facebook, claiming he told Trump he wanted to take the strategic partnership between Romania and the US to a new level. Trump replied, “We will make it happen! Romania is important for us!”

They also met with Michael Flynn, national security adviser, and discussed “the excellent perspectives of the strategic partnership between Romania and the United States.” He had assured Flynn that the new government would respect Romania’s commitment to allocate 2 percent of GDP to defence.

President Johannis responded immediately. His office issued a statement saying that the Romanian ambassador to the US was the country’s only official representative at the inauguration ceremony. “Delegations made of representatives of some institutions or political parties, who take part in events organized in the margins of the official inauguration ceremonies, do not represent the Romanian state.”

FBI secret manuals allow for warrantless stalking of journalists

Zaida Green

More than 1,000 pages of FBI policy manuals recently leaked by The Intercept detail the agency’s secret powers, which were massively expanded under the Obama administration. These include the power to send armed surveillance teams to stalk journalists without a warrant, to coerce potential informants (including minors) with deportation, and to extensively infiltrate campus, ethnic and political organizations. The leaked manuals are the subject of an 11-part report by the online journal.

The biggest document obtained by The Intercept is the 2011 edition of the agency’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (DIOG), a 656-page policy manual, in unredacted form for the first time. The rulebook governs all of the agency’s activities, including infiltration, surveillance, and electronic information collection.

Infiltration and surveillance

One category of investigation outlined by the DIOG is the “Assessment,” created in December 2008, which codifies warrantless stalking. Assessments do not need the authorization of a court, nor do they need to be based on any evidence—“particular factual predication” in the manual’s bureaucratic jargon—let alone the suspicion of any wrongdoing. Certain types of assessments may be “proactively” initiated by individual agents on their own. Most other assessments need only the rubber stamp of a supervisor, the Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the field office, in order to proceed.

An FBI agent may request from an Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC) the deployment of a mobile surveillance team—including armed teams—to physically stalk the subject of an assessment, including (but not limited to) journalists, religious figures, elected officials, potential informants, and individuals who are not the subject of any investigation. The manual’s 2011 revision removed the restriction of only one surveillance team per assessment.

Agents may also request authorization to aerially surveil the land around a target’s home, including with thermal imaging cameras. The manual asserts that people’s yards “do not enjoy Fourth Amendment protection from aircraft-mounted surveillance” and thus do not require search warrants authorized by a judge. In assessments related to counterterrorism, the “best practices” outlined in the FBI’s Counterterrorism Policy Guide directs agents to cross-reference the agency’s databases and other systems with information such as the subject’s phone numbers.

Assessments can be used to map and collect information on populations with potential informants and on other communities of interest, including demographic data, religious affiliations, community dynamics, and businesses. FBI memoranda obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) revealed that the FBI mapped Chinese neighborhoods in San Francisco because “[w]ithin this community there has been organized crime for generations.”

Data collected by an assessment can be retained for decades and queried by various law enforcement agencies for years, even when the assessment never leads to an investigation.

FBI infiltration of any group, both “sensitive” (e.g., religious, political, ethnic) and “non-sensitive” (e.g., business, recreational) also does not need the approval of a court. The unredacted form of the DIOG reveals loopholes exploited by the agency to jump over the already threadbare safeguards against infiltration. By labeling groups with majority non-citizen memberships as acting on the behalf of a foreign power, and labeling any group “illegitimate,” agents can avoid the apparently onerous burdens of fetching the rubber-stamp of an SAC, and the go-ahead from their division’s head legal adviser if the group is sensitive.

If a group is not related to “sensitive investigative matters,” then, with the approval of the division’s head legal adviser, FBI infiltrators may “substantially affect” the group’s agenda on social, religious, or political issues.

A report issued by the Department of Justice (DOJ) in 2010 revealed that the FBI had illegally infiltrated left-wing groups, spying on an antiwar rally for the concocted purpose of investigating “international terrorism subjects” (and lying about it at a congressional hearing), and labeling nonviolent acts of civil disobedience as “acts of terrorism” so as to place activists on federal watch lists.

FBI use of informants

The 2015 edition of the FBI’s Confidential Human Source Policy Guide expands the powers afforded by the manual’s 2007 edition on how the FBI handles informants. The new policies, with an entire chapter devoted to “Immigration Matters,” allow the agency to threaten potential informants—including minors—with deportation if they don’t cooperate with the agency.

The FBI works closely with the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency to identify potential informants whose immigration status they can use as leverage, then petitions Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to allow the informants and/or their dependents temporary relief from deportation—but only as long as they remain useful to the FBI. As soon as an informant loses value, the FBI is obligated to report them to ICE and to have their relief terminated. A presentation obtained by The Intercept and drawn up by the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force refers to these coercive methods as “immigration relief dangle.”

In the case of Moroccan citizen Yassine Ouassif, border agents seized his permanent residency card as he was crossing from New York to Canada, forced him onto a bus back to San Francisco, and instructed him to contact an FBI agent. The agent offered him a choice: become an informant so that he and his wife can stay in the United States, or be deported to Morocco.

With permission from an SAC, FBI agents may recruit minors, emancipated or not, as informants, with or without their caretakers’ consent. With the permission of the DOJ, the FBI may also recruit clergy, lawyers and journalists. Informants can operate in other countries and the FBI is not required to notify the host countries.

One of the FBI documents obtained by The Intercept is an educational pamphlet on cultivating informants and how to build effective dossiers. These “source identification packages” identify, among other things, informants’ motivations, vulnerabilities, family relations, financial goals and psychological characteristics. Today, the FBI has more than 15,000 informants—over ten times the number the agency had in the 1970s—and has built software dedicated to tracking and managing said informants.

The FBI’s online activities are now coordinated under the Net Talon National Initiative, first established in 2008. The agency’s online operations are so ubiquitous that internal documents complain of resources accidentally wasted on investigations of personas created by its own agents.

FBI agents may converse with someone who has nothing to do with any investigation, and then decide that person should be the subject of an investigation. Agents can target any web site, forum or online network that the FBI believes terrorists are using “to encourage and recruit members” or to spread propaganda.

The FBI has a long and sordid history of entrapping socially isolated, often mentally ill individuals in terror plots that they would otherwise have no capacity to enact. In the case of 29-year-old Basit Javid Sheikh, the FBI created a fake Facebook profile of a female Syrian nurse whom Sheikh became infatuated with. After Sheikh confessed to the “nurse” that he wanted to travel to join an Islamist militia, the nurse suggested he join the US-backed al-Nusra Front and another undercover FBI agent promised Sheikh a way in. Sheikh agreed, purchased a plane ticket to Beirut, and was arrested at Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina. A federal judge later ruled that Sheikh was mentally ill and not competent to participate in his hearing.

Phone surveillance and warrantless search requests

The DIOG also details the use of “pen register” and “trap and trace” devices, which disrupt a phone line’s service as it tracks the numbers dialed into it. Judges can grant the FBI and other law enforcement agencies pen register orders without the need for officers to establish probable cause. These orders not only authorize the use of these recording devices, but also can be used to demand that the subjects’ telecom provider immediately hand over any and all telephone numbers, email addresses, and other dialing, routing, addressing or signaling information that the agent deems “relevant” to the investigation.

National Security Letters (NSLs) function as another type of warrantless search request that may be issued to telecom providers and other financial institutions. NSLs can be issued by a variety of FBI leadership personnel. Over 300,000 NSLs have been issued in the past 10 years, with an average of over 35 a day in 2015.

The scope of NSLs issued to Internet companies is limited to basic subscriber information: name, address, length of service. But FBI internal guidelines reveal that the agency has standard templates for requesting email transaction information, such as email headers and activity logs, which are beyond the scope of what an NSL can be used to obtain. The DIOG also reveals that the agency uses NSLs to obtain “second generation” call records of multiple individuals en masse. The FBI may label journalists as foreign spies to sidestep the required DOJ approval of NSLs targeting journalists.

The ACLU chief technologist Chris Soghoian, speaking to The Intercept, explained that the FBI routinely asks for information it is not legally entitled to “because it is banking that some companies won’t know the law and will disclose more than they have to … The FBI is preying on small companies who don’t have the resources to hire national security law experts.”

With the monstrous expansion of the FBI’s spying powers under Obama, the Trump administration, the most right-wing government in American history, now holds the reins of a domestic intelligence agency with the freedom to spy on masses of people without so much as a rubber stamp.

Trump threatens to send US troops to Mexico in conversation with Peña Nieto

Clodomiro Puentes 

According to a short excerpt of a telephone conversation between US President Donald Trump and his Mexican counterpart Enrique Peña Nieto, leaked by an anonymous White House official, the US head of state threatened to send US troops south of the border because of the Mexican military’s supposed reluctance in prosecuting a bloody “war on drugs.”

“You have a bunch of bad hombres down there,” Trump told Peña Nieto, according to the excerpt given to AP. “You aren’t doing enough to stop them. I think your military is scared. Our military isn’t, so I just might send them down to take care of it.”

The Associated Press claims the leaker provided only that snippet of the conversation to the news agency on condition of anonymity because the administration did not make the details of the call public. Mexico’s Secretariat of Foreign Affairs denies the veracity of what was leaked of Trump’s bellicose and inflammatory remarks.

Eduardo Sánchez, spokesman for the Mexican president, asserted that Trump’s threat, “did not happen during the call.” According to this account, Peña Nieto had first posed the matter of cross-border arms trafficking. Sánchez claimed he was not in a position to confirm the content of Trump’s response.

However, a White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, subsequently told the media that Trump had made the remark, but claimed that it was “lighthearted.”

News of the exchange last Friday comes alongside a similarly tense conversation between Trump and Australian Prime Minister John Turnbull over a refugee-swap deal brokered during the Obama administration.

Given both the Australian and Mexican governments’ efforts to downplay the tenor of the discussions, there is the likelihood that the leaks were calculated to send a message to ruling classes around the world as to the “new political order,” to use Stephen Bannon’s ominous phrase, represented by the “America First” orientation of the Trump administration.

The exchange between Trump and Peña exposed the historical character of the relationship between the two countries—that is, one of imperialist exploitation of Mexico by Washington. Trump’s crude bullying, his addressing of a head of state as though a colonial administrator to a coolie, would simply be the slipping away of the mask of diplomatic civility hitherto concealing the ugly face of US imperialism.

In looking at the social devastation wrought by Mexico’s War on Drugs, including over 166,000 dead and some 28,000 disappeared in the past decade alone, and from there to draw the conclusion that the Mexican military is operating with an excess of timidity, only points to the barbarous and fascistic outlook prevalent at the summits of power.

Of course, this outlook is not unique to the Trump administration. The Democrats have no serious differences with the Trump administration’s current approach to the long and predatory relationship of the American ruling class towards Mexico. After all, Vermont senator and “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders voted to confirm former Marine General and commander of US Southern Command John F. Kelly as secretary of Homeland Security.

That Kelly, who has voiced his opposition to sanctuary cities and his support of the recent immigration ban, is held by Democrats and their coterie of pundits to be a “moderating influence,” exposes as a fraud their feigned commitment to immigrants and refugees currently facing the threat of deportation.

Far from an isolationist strategy, Trump’s “America First” policy would mean further stacking the terms of US-Mexico trade in Washington’s favor. Taken to its most extreme conclusion, it also signals to the Mexican ruling elite the willingness of the present administration to employ military force in pursuit of US profit interests.

In response to the growing economic and political threats from the north, the Mexican bourgeoisie is attempting to lessen its dependence on US-Mexico trade, whose balance is decidedly in US imperialism’s favor, contrary to Trump’s bald-faced lie that the US is “being taken advantage of.” While 80 percent of Mexican exports head to the US, by comparison, only 15 percent of US exports go to Mexico.

Mexico has recently moved to fast-track a “modernized” trade agreements with the EU, with the next rounds of negotiations scheduled for April and June in Brussels and Mexico, respectively.

The Peña Nieto government has also sought to strengthen economic ties along the Pacific and in the Americas. Secretary of Foreign Affairs Luis Videgaray has highlighted in particular the revisiting of trade relations with the countries of the Northern Triangle (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador) and South America, alongside China, South Korea and Japan.

In particular, Mexico and China have announced a $212 million deal, brokered by multibillionaire Carlos Slim, to begin assembling cars for the Chinese state-owned automaker JAC Motors in the state of Hidalgo, with hopes of catering to domestic and Latin American markets.

Despite the open threats, Peña Nieto and the Mexican ruling establishment will undoubtedly continue efforts to curry favor with the Trump administration.

From the role of the CIA in assisting previous PRI governments in carrying out a “dirty war” against leftists and guerrillas, to the current funding of the Mexican repressive apparatus through agreements such as the Merida Initiative in order to brutalize and deport Central American immigrants, the Mexican ruling elite has a long and bloody history of close collaboration with Washington.

EU summit marks escalation of conflict between Europe and US

Johannes Stern 

The European Union summit in Malta on Friday was held in the context of growing tensions between Europe and the United States. Although the official topics of discussion were the exclusion of refugees from the EU, the future of the EU after Brexit, and preparations for the 60th anniversary in March of the Treaty of Rome, many European leaders used the occasion to sharply criticize the policies of the new US government.

“It is unacceptable that the president of the United States should make a series of statements pressuring Europe on what it should or should not be,” said French President François Hollande upon his arrival in Valletta, the capital of Malta.

German Chancellor Angel Merkel called for a strengthening of Europe’s international role in response to Donald Trump’s policies. She said that in view of the new US president, the more clearly Europe defines its role in the world, “the better we can maintain our transatlantic relationships.” She repeated her statement from the middle of January that Europe has “its fate in its own hands.”

This did not go far enough for Martin Schulz of the Social Democratic Party, who is a candidate for German chancellor and the former president of the European Parliament. In an interview with Der Spiegel, he demanded that Merkel adopt a tougher attitude toward Washington.

The chancellor must not “keep quiet about behaviour we cannot accept,” he said. “If Trump sends his wrecking ball through our set of values, one must say clearly: that is not our policy.” Schulz declared the new US president to be “extremely dangerous to democracy.” He accused Trump of playing with “the security of the Western world” and beginning “a culture war.”

Even before the summit, EU Council President Donald Tusk of Poland spoke of “worrisome declarations by the new American administration,” and characterized the US as an external “threat” along with “Russia’s aggressive policy,” an “increasingly, let us call it, assertive China” and the “wars, terror and anarchy in the Middle East and in Africa.” He said that “particularly the change in Washington” is placing the EU “in a difficult situation,” since the “new administration [is] seeming to put into question the last 70 years of American foreign policy.”

Tusk called on the 27 leaders of the countries that will remain in the EU after Brexit to implement a new common European foreign and defence policy to secure their global geo-strategic and economic interests, if necessary in opposition to Washington.

To master the “most dangerous challenges since the signing of the Rome Treaty,” he said, it is necessary “to take decisive, spectacular measures.” The aim must be “to use the changes in the trade strategy of the US to the advantage of the EU by intensifying our discussions with interested partners.”

This requires “a definitive strengthening of the external borders of the EU, improved collaboration between agencies that are responsible for combating terrorism and protecting peace and order within the border-free zone, an increase in defence spending, and a strengthening of the foreign policy of the EU as a whole.”

After the initial shock, the EU is reacting with aggressive countermeasures to what Tusk called the “new geopolitical situation” brought on by Trump’s nationalistic and militaristic foreign policy, which has in its crosshairs Germany and the EU as well as Iran, Russia, China and Mexico.

The Handelsblatt responded enthusiastically on Wednesday in an article entitled “The EU fights back.” It wrote, “After initial speechlessness, the EU has reacted fiercely to Trump’s attacks and decisions.”

In addition to Tusk’s declaration, the German business newspaper hailed the decision of the EU “to put the US on the planned tax haven black list.” Green Party member of the European Parliament and cofounder of Attac-Deutschland, Sven Giegold, said it is “right that the EU Commission is targeting the US tax system.”

On Thursday, other leading members of the European Parliament opposed the expected appointment of Ted Malloch as the new American ambassador to the EU. Malloch openly questions the existence of the EU and has indicated that his aim is its destruction. In an interview conducted in January, he told the BBC why he wanted to become the US ambassador in Brussels. “I took a diplomatic post that helped to destroy the Soviet Union,” he said. “Perhaps there is another union that needs taming.”

In an open letter to Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, the factional heads of the Liberals (ALDE) and the conservatives (EVP) in the European Parliament, Guy Verhofstadt and Manfred Weber, said, “These statements demonstrate outrageous malice toward the values that constitute the EU. If an official representative of the US were to say something like this, it could seriously damage the transatlantic relationship that has been an essential contribution to peace, stability and prosperity on our continent.”

The deeper cause of the worsening of the transatlantic relationship as well as growing tensions within the EU itself is, however, not Malloch’s statements, or Trump’s actions, but the fundamental contradictions of the world capitalist system: the contradiction between the global integration and interconnection of the economy and its division into national states with opposed interests, and the contradiction between the social character of global production and its subordination to private ownership of the means of production and the accumulation of private profit by the ruling class.

Twenty-five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, these contradictions, which in the last century led to two world wars but also the October Revolution in Russia, are emerging once again and driving the ruling class on both sides of the Atlantic to ever more aggressive measures. While Trump’s “America First” policy is aimed at offsetting the economic decline of US imperialism by military means, the EU is reacting to the deep political, economic and social divisions in Europe with the militarization of the continent in both domestic and foreign policy.

Like few EU summits before it, the meeting in Malta contributed to the exposure of the rhetoric of democracy and human rights that is being used to mobilize the widespread outrage over Trump behind the realization of European great power fantasies.

The so-called “Declaration of Malta” prescribes the brutal sealing off of the central Mediterranean route against refugees from Africa. This involves the arming and training of the Libyan coast guard, which is infamous for its brutality, to capture refugees when they are still in Libyan territorial waters and bring them back to the African coast.

During her visit to Ankara on Thursday, Merkel supported the dirty refugee deal between the EU and Turkey, which aims to keep out refugees from the war-torn regions of the Middle East.

US defence secretary threatens North Korea with “overwhelming” force

Peter Symonds

US Defence Secretary James Mattis, who is currently touring North East Asia, warned North Korea yesterday that any attack on the United States and its allies would be defeated. And any use of nuclear weapons would be met with an “effective and overwhelming” response.

This bellicose threat only has one meaning: the obliteration of the North Korea’s regime, as well as its military, industry and infrastructure, with the loss of countless lives. It is a message that is aimed not only at North Korea, but also China, Pyongyang’s only ally and economic lifeline.

In the first instance, Mattis’s comments were aimed at reassuring South Korea and Japan. During last year’s presidential election campaign, President Trump threatened to walk away from the US alliances with Japan and South Korea if they did not pay a far greater share of the costs of the extensive American military bases in their countries.

On his flight to South Korea, Mattis declared that the alliance between the two countries as “enduring.” He met with South Korea’s acting President Hwang Kyo-ahn on Thursday and pledged that the US intended to stand “shoulder to shoulder” against any North Korean threat. After meeting with the US defence secretary on Friday, South Korean Defence Minister Han Mikoo welcomed Mattis’s threat to North Korea as evidence of the allies’ close military cooperation.

For all the public reassurances, Mattis is likely to have discussed South Korea paying a greater share of the ongoing costs and restructuring of US military bases. The Pentagon has been engaged in a major reorganisation of its presence in South Korea as part of the Obama administration’s military build-up throughout the region in preparation for war with China. The US has some 28,500 military personnel in the country.

Mattis’s immediate priority was to secure the deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) battery to South Korea. The South Korean government, under pressure from the Obama administration, agreed last year to install the sophisticated anti-ballistic missile system despite widespread local opposition.

Mattis repeated the claim that the THAAD battery in South Korea, part of an extensive and growing anti-missile system in Asia, is aimed against North Korea. “If it were not for the provocative behaviour of North Korea, we would have no need for THAAD out here,” he said.

The prime target of the US anti-missile network is not North Korea, but China, which has protested against the planned THAAD installation in South Korea. The THAAD system, which is capable of shooting down nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, is not primarily for defence, but to neutralise China’s ability to retaliate in the event of a US first nuclear strike.

Mattis and his South Korean counterpart announced that the THAAD system would be deployed by the end of 2017. The South Korean government, however, is mired in political crisis after the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye. Her future is now in the hands of the Constitutional Court. If she is removed from office, a fresh presidential election will be held.

South Korean opposition parties have no opposition in principle to the THAAD deployment but are seeking to capitalise on mounting public opposition. The Los Angeles Times reported: “A large group gathered in a central square [in Seoul] Thursday to protest Mattis’ arrival. One held a sign that read, ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis—Not Welcome in Korea. More protesters were expected Friday.”

“Mad Dog” Mattis is a former Marine general and head of US Central Command notorious for his murderous language and methods in the Middle East. The fact that he chose to make his first overseas trip as defence secretary to North East Asia is another sign that the Trump administration has put a confrontation with China at the top of its agenda.

Trump’s threats of trade war measures against have gone hand-in-hand with bellicose statements on China’s activities in the South China Sea and North Korea. Trump has repeatedly accused Beijing of failing to use its economic muscle to force Pyongyang to dismantle its nuclear weapons and programs.

Trump responded last month to North Korea's claims that it was preparing to test an intercontinental ballistic missile by flatly declaring that it “won’t happen.” While he gave no indication how the US would prevent such a test, the implication was that the North Korean missile would either be destroyed on the ground or shot out of the sky by an anti-missile system.

Trump’s belligerent comments toward North Korea coincide with a debate in US foreign policy and military circles over the danger that Pyongyang will soon have nuclear-armed missiles. Patrick Cronin, from the Centre for a New American Security, for instance told the Washington Post that North Korea was “on the cusp of being able to demonstrate and deploy all the sinews of a nuclear-weapon state.”

Prior to Mattis’s trip, Joint Chiefs Chairman General Joseph Dunford spoke by phone with his South Korean counterpart to discuss the “acute security situation” posed by North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. The two reaffirmed the strong commitment of the two countries to building up a joint defence posture.

Under the Obama administration, the US and South Korean militaries agreed to new joint operational plans—OPLAN 5015—that shifted from a defensive posture in the event of a war with North Korea to an offensive one, including pre-emptive strikes on North Korean missiles and nuclear weapons, and “decapitation” raids on the Pyongyang regime.

In an article this week in the Joint Forces Quarterly, Dunford indicated that any war with North Korea would not be limited to the Korean Peninsula. “Today, North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile, cyber, and space capabilities could quickly threaten the homeland and our allies in the Asia-Pacific region,” he wrote.

“Deterring and, if necessary, defeating a threat from North Korea requires the Joint Force to be capable of nearly instant integration across regions, domains and functions,” Dunford stated.

These comments make clear that the Pentagon is preparing for a conflict that would rapidly draw other powers, including China—a new world war that would range across the world and into outer space.

Mattis left South Korea last night for further talks in Japan over the weekend.