The Curious Story of Kim Jong Nam’s Death

Stansfield Smith

In the West, even among people who consider themselves not susceptible to government-corporate media propaganda, any wild story about North Korea can be taken as credible. We should ask ourselves why that is the case, given what we know about the history of government and media fabrications, often related to gaining our acquiescence to a new war.

The corporate media reports North Korean agents murdered Kim Jong Nam with a banned chemical weapon VX.   They fail to add that the US government is one of the few countries with a stockpile of this banned weapon. They rarely note the Malaysian police investigating the case have not actually said North Korea is connected to his death.

The story of his death or murder raises a number of serious questions. North Korea says Kim Jong Nam was not murdered, but suffered from heart problems, high blood pressure and diabetes, required constant medication, and this caused his death. The North Korean diplomat in Malaysia Ri Tong-il “cited the postmortem examination conducted by Malaysian health authorities, claiming that the postmortem showed Jong-nam died of a heart attack.”

Malaysian authorities conducted two autopsies, the second after the first said to be inconclusive in identifying a cause of death, before announcing well over a week later that VX was involved.

What was going on here? And why weren’t the autopsies made open to others besides Malaysian officials?

Why was the South Korean government the first country to come out quickly after Kim’s February 13 death to blame North Korea for murdering him with the VX nerve weapon – before Malaysia had determined anything? The Malaysian autopsy was not complete until February 23, ten days later.

Why did these two women charged with murder travel several times to South Korea before this attack occurred?

Why was the only North Korean arrested in the case released for lack of evidence?

The two women did not wear gloves, but had the liquid directly on their hands.  “The police said the four North Korean suspects who left the country the day of the killing put the VX liquid on the women’s hands.” They later washed it off.  Why did none of them die or even get sickened by it? No reports say they went to the hospital.

“Malaysian Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu  Khalid said the women knew they were handling poisonous materials during the attack…. leading forensic toxicologists who study murder by poison… question how the two women could walk away unscathed after deploying an agent potent enough to kill Kim Jong Nam before he could even make it to the hospital.”

“Tens of thousands of passengers have passed through the airport since the apparent assassination was carried out. No areas were cordoned off and protective measures were not taken.”

Why, if a highly deadly VX used to kill Kim, did the terminal remain open to thousands of travelers, and not shut down and checked for VX until February 26, 13 days later?

Health Minister Subramaniam Sathasivam said “VX only requires 10 milligrams to be absorbed into the system to be lethal,” yet he added that there have been no reports of anyone else being sickened by the toxin.

DPRK’s Ri Tong-il said in his statement, “How is it possible” the two ladies survived? “How is it possible” no single person in the airport got contaminated? “How is it possible” no nurse, no doctor, no police escorting Kim after the attack were affected?

Why does Malaysia, which acknowledges Kim Jong Nam is Kim Jong Un’s half-brother, make the outrageous demand that Kim’s body won’t be released to North Korea until a close family member provides a sample of their own DNA?

From what we are told, the story does not add up.

Ri Tong-il asked in his same statement “Why is South Korea trying so hard [to blame the DPRK] in this instance? They have a great political crisis inside South Korea [which is quite true] and they need to divert people’s attention,” noting also that the two women involved traveled to South Korea and that South Korea blamed the North for murder by VX the very day it happened.

Stephen Lendman also gives a plausible explanation:

“Here’s what we know. North Korean senior representatives were preparing to come to New York to meet with former US officials, a chance for both sides to discuss differences diplomatically, hopefully leading to direct talks with Trump officials.

The State Department hadn’t yet approved visas, a positive development if arranged.

Reports indicate North Korea very much wanted the meeting to take place. Makes sense. It would indicate a modest thaw in hostile relations, a good thing if anything came of it.

So why would Pyongyang want to kill Kim Jong-nam at this potentially sensitive time, knowing it would be blamed for the incident, talks likely cancelled?

Sure enough, they’re off, Pyongyang accused of killing Kim, even though it seems implausible they planned and carried out the incident, using agents in Malaysia to act as proxies.”

Is possible that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un decided to murder his apolitical brother, choosing to do so by using a banned highly toxic agent in public, under video cameras in a crowded airport of a friendly country? Instead of say, doing it by easier means in the North Korean Embassy’s guesthouse in Kuala Lumpur, where the New York Times said his brother sometimes stayed?

We are not supposed to doubt what we are spoon fed, that Kim Jong Un is some irrational war-mongering madman who has instituted a reign of terror. A safer bet is this is a new attempt to beat the drums of war against North Korea and its allies.

India’s Gender Reforms Need Greater Bite

Moin Qazi

Of all the world’s major ills – such as war, hunger, and natural disasters – none can quite compare to the millions of baby girls and female fetuses killed by parents  .The  National Family Health Survey 4 data for 2015-16  indicates that the practice of aborting female fetuses and murdering girls after birth is being contained  efforts

The   sex ratio at birth (number of females per 1,000 males) improved from 914 to 919 at the national level over the last decade with the highest in Kerala (1,047), followed by Meghalaya (1,009) and Chhattisgarh (977).Haryana also witnessed a significant increase from 762 to 836.while this has shown only marginal improvement   sates like Haryana which had bad records have shown very significant progress.

Life’s women with electricity, clean cooking fuel, toilets and improved drinking water reaching more homes than before, but improved infrastructure does not find a reflection in improved health.

Women’s health has improved, but only marginally. There was a slight fall in the number of women with anaemia — from 55.2% in 2005-06 to 53.1%. The number of underweight women fell by close to 13%, while those who are overweight and obese have risen sharply.

Violence against married women has come down. The percentage of women facing marital violence has dropped from 37.2% to 28.8%.over the decade. The number of women facing violence during pregnancy is now at a low of 3.3%. This indicator seems to reflect a better awareness of   rights and improved social standing among women.

Female literacy rate that has gone up to 68.4% as compared with 55.1% in the previous survey. The female literacy rate, however, continues to lag men who have a literacy rate of 85.6%. The number of females having attained more than 10 years of schooling also grew from 22.3% to 35.7% between NFHS3 and NFHS4.

India is home to 586 million women, just over 17% of the total number of women in the world. India is also home to 173 million women below the age of 15, which is about 20% of the world’s young women. So the developments and changes in the lives of these women socially and economically are of import, not only to India, but to the world at large.

Between 1981 and 2011, women’s literacy in India increased from 29.8% to 65.5%. In 1990, only 60% of 21-year-old women were literate and, in 2011, this figure had improved to 85%. The 2011 Census was a landmark because for the first time, out of the total number of literates added during the decade, females outnumbered males.

Between 1980-81 and 2000-01, the percentage of girls who were in school at the primary level (classes I to V) increased from 64.1% to 85.9%. In urban India, women’s literacy levels increased from 58.1% to 79.9% over the last three decades. In rural India, women’s literacy levels improved from 21.4% to 58.8%. Statistics for urban India are expectedly better than the all-India average. But rural India is not far behind in terms of decadal improvement although there is still a long way to go.

The NFHS shows that India has witnessed an impressive jump in financial inclusion of women+ , with 53% of the female population now having bank accounts as compared to a mere 15% a decade ago,

The 38% jump in women with bank accounts is complemented by the survey finding that 84% married women in the age of 15-49 years are increasingly participating in decision-making as compared to 76% in the third round of NFHS conducted in 2005-06. The data also show 38.4% of women own a house and or land — alone or jointly with others.

Not surprisingly, improvements in banking and an enhanced role in the household are accompanied by an increase in the female literacy rate that has gone up to 68.4% as compared with 55.1% in the previous survey. The female literacy rate, however, continues to lag men who have a literacy rate of 85.6%. Women with more than 10 years of schooling also grew from 22.3% to 35.7% between NFHS3 and NFHS4.

.The national trend of improving literacy is also reflected in rural areas among the 11–14 year old cohort. However, in the age group of 11–14 years in rural India, 6% of the girls were not in school while the comparable number for boys was lower at 4.8%. While on the face of it, these numbers may be discouraging, in 2006, 10.3% of the girls in the 11–14 years age group were out of school and the comparable number for boys was 7.5%. Clearly, even in a short period of five years, between 2006 and 2011, the enrolment of girls and boys is converging even in rural areas

According to a Harvard Business Review study, women in emerging markets reinvest 90% of every dollar earned into “human resources”— their families’ education, health and nutrition — compared to only 30 to 40% of every dollar earned by men.

India‘s achievements are heartening but a lot has to be done to undo decades of discrimination of women on account of entrenched patriarchal traditions.   When compared to other countries the picture of India’s gender domain is still grim .The status of women has long served as a civilization index. In our times, organizations like the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) measure it according to specific indices such as reproductive health (measured by maternal mortality ratio and adolescent birth rates), empowerment (measured by proportion of parliamentary seats occupied by females and proportion of adult females and males with at least some secondary education), and economic status (measured by the labour force participation rate of adult female and male populations). India ranks a dismal 130th (out of a total of 188 countries ranked) on the Gender Inequality Index devised by the UNDP, according to the latest report.

Thus  while India has substantially improved its rank in the Global Gender Gap index — moving from 108th to 87th position  according to   released by the World Economic Forum (WEF) it  ranks 142nd in terms of ‘health and survival’ of women’ according to its parameters.

Supported by government’s policies, women are using whatever their levers of agency provide to bring about change in their societies.    Ela   Bhatt, founder of SEWA (Self-Employed Women’s Association) whose  trade union movement  has helped realize the dreams of thousands of women at the grassroots level-vendors, agricultural labour, rag pickers, embroiderers, construction workers and countless other women toiling in rural and urban areas-has always believed in the enormous  potential of India’s  women.

“She has a name, an address, a bank account number. She has learned who the exploiting forces are. She is more aware that poverty is not destiny: that she does not have to accept that as her destiny. You see that transformation all the time. The macro forces change, but what the women have gained is self esteem, a sense of mutuality that is strength giving.

“But what makes me happiest is that they see that they are more self-reliant, and they are fiercely independent. This is very much the Gandhian approach.”

From a Free Society to a Surveillance Society

T. Navin

Gorge Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty Four depicts a situation of extreme state power in which the super state is controlled by a privileged few of the Inner Party. It is overseen by Big Brother who enjoys intense cult of personality. In this state there is omnipresent government surveillance. The government persecutes those with independent thinking which is considered as thought crime and enforced by the thought police. Those in outer party are expected to rewrite everything according to the party line.

The situation that is emerging in India seems to be taking us in that direction. We are moving from a free society to a Surveillance Society. The reason which guides the State to assume this supra power is to move in the direction of setting up Hindu Rashtra. The role of State is assumed to be to enable this process. The State assumes the need to have a fresh Social Contract between the State and the Citizens. In this new contract, the citizens need to give up their respective Social and Class identities and become what is considered as ‘Hindu’ identity which is again equated with ‘Nation’.

The State knows that there would be constant threat and opposition to the idea of Hindu Rashtra. There are inherent opponents to the same. There are opponents who come from various segments of Society and come with various ideological leanings. There are Minorities, Women, Dalits, Adivasi and Workers who are opposed to this idea of Hindu Rashtra. There are Marxists, Ambedkarites, Gandhians and Liberals who tooth and nail oppose the idea of Hindu Rashtra. Such segments and ideologies become a threat to the idea of setting such a State. In this situation, the State assumes the need to achieve the Social contract between the citizens and the state by hook or crook.

This desire of achieving the same makes them to open up avenues to those who are considered as part of ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ party. All the powers are concentrated in small elite consisting of the Prime Minister and close confidantes such as Amit Shah with ideological allegiance to Nagpur RSS headquarters. The small elite are overseen by a Big Brother (the Prime Minister). In the process of overseeing, all the thoughts considered contrary to the idea of ‘Hindu Rashtra’ are considered as ‘thought crimes’ and branded as anti-national or pro-terrorist. There is thought police who are constantly into identification of ‘thought crimes’ or ‘thought criminals’.   This is monitored by an inner party which consists of key figures of Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and other organizations affiliated to RSS. The outer party consists of Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), Bajrang Dal and other entities of RSS. The attempt is to identify those with ‘thought crimes’ which contradict with the idea of Hindu Rashtra and persecute them.

The acts committed by members of ‘inner’ or ‘outer party’ such as killing of the rationalists, incidents such as Dadri lynching and giving clean chit to the perpetrators, events related to the acts of violence by Gau Rakshaks (Cow Protectors), hate spreading against minorities, constant tracking on valentine’s day and enforcing forced marriages, targeting students of opposite ideological fronts and branding their resistance as anti-national, targeting ‘thought leaders’ of opposite camp as ‘thought  crimes’, trolling the ‘thought leaders’ of the opposite front and constantly abusing them, creating fake images stories around those resisting are part of the process of exercising ‘thought control’ against those involved in what it considers ‘thought crimes’.

The increasing spaces being provided to Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) in University and College campuses and its assuming responsibility as to what events should or should not be held in campuses, RSS deciding on what should or should not be written or spoken, Bajrang Dal taking up the role of deciding as to what is Indian culture and imposing it on people, saffron coterie deciding as to what is or is not an anti-national act, the ones with leanings to the saffron ideologies being provided spaces in top leadership of academic and non-academic bodies are part of an attempt at achieving ‘thought control’ and identifying ‘thought crimes’ by members of ‘inner’ and ‘outer party’.

This emerging scenario demands resistance to the idea of Surveillance Society. More than the opposition to the emerging surveillance society, exposing the hollowness of the concept of Hindu Rashtra may be the need. A society based on an idea of a religious identity and supposed religious supremacy is an artificial construct which work against the demands for equity and equality for all. It can never meet the material, human and spiritual aspirations of human beings. It is important to expose that those inflicting this surveillance are the ones who are involved in ‘thought crimes’.

Australia: Three homeless people killed in arson attack

Chris Sadlier 

Three homeless people were burnt to death last week in a disused factory where they were squatting in the inner-western Melbourne suburb of Footscray. The horrific deaths have again focused attention of the dangerous and nightmarish conditions facing thousands of people who are sleeping rough throughout Australia.

Emergency services were called to the rear of the old Kinnear’s rope factory at 11.30 p.m. last Wednesday after reports of a fire and explosion. After the fire was extinguished, about 45 minutes later, three bodies were found inside.

Five days later police revealed that two of the victims were a mother and daughter—Tanya and Zoe Elizabeth Burmeister—aged 32 and 15. A third person, a man, has yet to be formally identified but is reported to have been known as Bluey. He had been living in the empty factory for more than a year.

A 52-year-old man, Darren Patrick Clover, who is accused of starting the fire, has been charged with three counts of murder, arson causing death and arson. He allegedly set it alight after dousing the dwelling with petrol purchased from a nearby petrol station. The occupants, who often padlocked themselves into the building to protect themselves from intruders, were unable to escape.

Nothing is known about any relationship that Clover might have had with the three living in the factory and therefore the immediate reasons for the alleged arson. However, the roots of this tragedy lie in the growing poverty and unemployment, lack of affordable housing and inadequate social welfare and mental health care facilities. These circumstances are the outcome of policies imposed over the past three decades by successive Australian governments—state and federal, Liberal and Labor alike—on behalf of the corporate elite that has further enriched themselves during this period.

According to media reports, Tanya Burmeister had a long history of substance abuse and was still a teenager when she gave birth to her daughter. In 2012, after a series of partnerships with violent men, she lost custody of Zoe with the Department of Human Services (DHS) placing the child in a home with a carer.

Zoe had recently been reported as missing and had gone to the empty Footscray factory to be with her mother. She had just enrolled in a new high school a few weeks before she was killed.

Tania Burmeister’s sister, Shaylee Tennyson told the media, that Zoe’s death could have been prevented if the DHS had intervened and put the teenager into secure welfare. She pointed to the rundown of welfare services, telling the Herald Sun that she had raised concerns about Zoe’s welfare with child protection services on a number of occasions but nothing was done.

“How many families have to go through this before you change your system?” Tennyson said. “It’s broken, it’s fractured and it’s traumatised and it’s not working. The procedures need to be overhauled and more staff hired. If it was effective Zoe would still be here in secure welfare, not dead in a squat she was living in.”

A nearby milk-bar owner told the Fairfax Media that Tanya and Bluey regularly used the pay phone and ATM at her shop. “They were always nice, here every day. He used to sleep in his car but he had too many fines and the government took it so then he was sleeping in there [the factory],” she said.

It is not clear what motivated the arson attack but the legal aid lawyer for Darren Clover told the Melbourne court that her client needed an urgent mental-health assessment and was a “significant” risk of self-harm. Clover suffered from depression and was on medication, refused to appear at the initial filing hearing, remaining in his cell, and did not apply for bail. The committal hearing will commence on June 9.

A day before the fire, the Maribyrnong Council approved plans for a multi-million dollar redevelopment of the 3.3-hectare disused factory site. Kinnears, which was established in Footscray in 1903, became the state’s largest rope works, employing at its peak about 1,000 people in round-the-clock shifts. It closed in 2002.

The site was sold in 2002 to a property developer for $8 million and five years later the AXF Group purchased it for $16 million. In 2012 the Victorian government approved plans for over 1,000 apartments: but construction has never begun. Two years later AXF sold it to another property developer, R&F Estate for $60 million.

R&F Estate plans to build up to 1,400 apartments in several multi-storey blocks on the site; reportedly it will be one of the largest privately-owned apartment complexes in Melbourne. The state Labor government has mandated that only 5 percent of these properties are required to be what is officially defined as “affordable.”

According to the latest figures, Maribyrnong and neighbouring Braybrook are the fourth most disadvantaged municipality and suburb respectively in the Melbourne metropolitan area. The official unemployment rate in Maribyrnong is 7.9 percent and in Braybrook 13.3 percent, compared to a national average of 5.7 percent.

The corporate media in Melbourne responded to Wednesday’s attack with feigned concern over the horrific death of the homeless using photographs appropriated from Tanya and Zoe Burmeister’s Facebook accounts and testimony from relatives.

This reportage is thoroughly disingenuous and designed to cover up their own role—the demonisation of the homeless and cover-up of government cutbacks and other retrogressive decisions—in creating the conditions that led to the murders.

The Murdoch-owned Herald-Sun, for example, working in tandem with the police, Melbourne’s city council and the state Labor government, has been running a vicious year-long campaign aimed at driving the homeless out of Melbourne’s central business district.

Earlier this year the newspaper published a series of sensationalist front-page stories accusing homeless people of harassment, drug-taking, and of faking their poverty. Such has been the media and police harassment that last June homeless people staged a demonstration in the city centre.

In January, large contingents of police used “move on” powers to shift groups of homeless from busy areas within the city’s central business district. The operation was timed for the beginning of the Australian Open tennis tournament, a significant tourist draw card.

The growing homeless crisis is a sharp indication of mounting social distress in working-class areas. The number of people sleeping rough in Melbourne’s central business district has risen by 74 percent in two years, from 142 in 2014, to 247 in the middle of 2016. One welfare agency has reported that eight new people were arriving on Melbourne’s streets every week.

The lack of affordable private accommodation has been exacerbated by the closure of a number of caravan parks and inner-city boarding houses that were bought up by property developers.

State and federal governments have systematically slashed funding for public housing and opened up the market to private developers. As a consequence, there is now more than 32,000 people on the waiting list for public housing in Victoria. This figure, however, would be far higher if it were not for people choosing not to apply due to the lengthy wait involved.

Doctors strike highlights catastrophic health care crisis in Kenya

Eddie Haywood 

Since December of last year, 5,000 doctors employed in public hospitals across Kenya have been on strike, citing low pay and dreadful working conditions. The strike has highlighted the sharp crisis afflicting the health care system in the East African country.

The strike was called by the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU) to demand the implementation of an agreed-upon 2013 collective bargaining agreement with the Ministry of Health, which guarantees a 300 percent pay increase for doctors as well as funding for new medical equipment and new facilities. The Kenyan government claims there are no funds to implement the 2013 agreement.

Striking doctors have described via social media the horrid conditions afflicting public-run hospitals. These include power outages during surgeries with patients still on operating tables, not being able to run proper protocols in post-exposure prophylaxis, preventing the spread of HIV due to lack of equipment and being made to stand by helplessly while critically wounded patients die due to a lack of ambulances to take them to another hospital specializing in intensive care. Doctors also described being forced to work without drugs, gloves and other instruments critical in delivering care to patients.

For many years, Kenya’s public health care system has been starved of funding from the annual budget and beset by corruption in the Ministry of Health. The last several years have seen an exodus of medical personnel to the private sector due to the appallingly low pay in the public-run system. Many Kenyans must use the public-run medical system because they cannot afford the high cost of private care.

Also afflicting public hospitals is the lack of funding for new medical equipment essential for delivering adequate care. Shortages in funding for neglected facilities have left public hospitals in a dilapidated state, posing serious sanitation risks to patients and staff.

Dr. Judy Karagania, an ophthalmology resident at Kenyatta National hospital in Nairobi taking part in the strike, described the horrid conditions to the Guardian in an interview last month: “The machines break down frequently, the doctors are overwhelmed. The patients, they are so many that they are lying on the ground.”

Another participant in the strike, Dr. Cynthia Waliaula, told the Kenyan Daily Nation of the heart-wrenching experience of losing a newborn infant, due to the hospital at which she was employed in the town Isiolo having only two oxygen tanks. “I think every Kenyan doctor has had to decide who gets oxygen. You are forced to play god,” Waliaula lamented.

In February Dr. Davis Ombui, spokesperson for the KMPDU, expressed the health care catastrophe to Voice of America: “We know many Kenyans are losing their lives. Even us as doctors, we have relatives, we have friends, we have family and it has affected us all. But the narrative we are sticking to is that we cannot go back and supervise deaths as it were.”

In the more than three months since the strike began, public hospitals across the country have seen delivery of medical services come to a standstill, leaving millions without health care. The Kenyan media has resorted to a campaign of blackguarding the doctors, blaming them for the crisis sparked by criminal underfunding.

Despite the efforts of the media, there is broad favorable sentiment within the Kenyan masses for the doctors’ grievances. The government is widely perceived and despised by the masses as the guilty party for its refusal to adequately fund the health care system.

The government of President Uhuru Kenyatta is keen to put an end to the strike, fearing a wider explosion of social outrage by workers throughout the country. On February 13, the government jailed seven union officials for a month for refusing to end the strike. This provoked a 48-hour solidarity strike by medics in the private sector. A Kenyan appeals court ordered the release of the union officials to carry negotiations.

In a statement to the press in January, Kenyatta denounced the striking doctors: “I have noted, with deep concern, the suffering of Kenyans as a result of the ongoing strike by health workers in government facilities. This strike is totally unacceptable and goes against the Hippocratic Oath and basic principles of humane consideration for fellow Kenyans.”

This cynical appeal to principle is particularly offensive, given the record of the Kenyan government’s refusal to increase government spending for health care.

Overseen by the Ministry of Health, public hospitals accounted for around 4 percent of government spending. The Kenyan government budget for the 2016 fiscal year was nearly $20 billion, of this a mere $228 million was allocated to Kenya’s public health care system. This paltry amount allocated for the health care of a nation of 46 million underscores the depth of the current crisis.

In addition to the paltry amount of funding for the public health care system Kenya’s government is beset by nepotism and corruption. An internal audit of the Ministry of Health leaked last year revealed that nearly $50 million was looted by Ministry of Health officials, accounting for a whopping 21 percent of the entire funds earmarked for the 2016 fiscal year.

The auditors stressed that the amount may be just a fraction of the total stolen, as the audit had not yet been completed for the entire account of the Ministry’s transactions for 2016. According to Business Daily Africa, the audit report to Secretary of Health Cleopa Mailu explained, “The small sample covered is an indicator that there could be a wider scheme wherein the ministry incurred huge losses to the detriment of service delivery to the public.”

The current crisis underscores the fact that capitalism cannot provide decent and humane health care to the Kenyan masses.

Kenya is home to some of the wealthiest Africans, including current President Kenyatta, who is worth $500 million. While the total accumulation of wealth by the top 10 richest individuals in the country totals nearly $3 billion dollars, the majority of Kenyans survive on only $2 or less a day.

According to UNICEF, some 44 percent of the Kenyan population lives below the poverty line, and access to decent health care is a luxury that they cannot afford. Kenya has one of the African continent’s worst HIV rates at 7.8 percent. Infant mortality stands at an appalling 74 out of every 1,000 births.

The cutting of basic services for the Kenyan masses fits with the broader overall pattern of governments worldwide in the wake of the crisis of capitalism which manifested itself with the economic breakdown in 2008, which are busy rolling back hard-won social gains attained by the working class over decades of struggle. Their aim is to make the world’s working class pay for the crisis of the capitalist system.

By comparison with the budget for health care, Kenya gave far more of its annual budget to its military, some $2.6 billion; 12 times the annual budget amount allocated for the public health care system.

A strike by university lecturers has deepened the government’s political crisis ahead of parliamentary elections in August. While the KMPDU has limited its appeals to the government, the courts and oppositional parties, the strike, above all, poses the need for the political mobilization of the working class against the demands of the international banks and their domestic servants.

Kenya is carrying out a nearly five-year proxy war in Somalia on behalf of Washington, which has resulted in a catastrophic famine and refugee crisis. The aim of this brutal invasion is to subjugate Somalia under the control of US imperialism, as a significant portion of the world’s ship borne oil supply passes its eastern coast moving from the Middle East through the Red Sea and into the Gulf of Aden.

The Kenyan strike is part of the growing wave of class struggle in Africa. On February 20, at least five people were killed in Guinea’s capital of Conakry during protests sparked by a three-week teachers strike against the government’s decision to dismiss or cut the salaries of many junior teachers after the latest civil service exams. Many students in the West African country took to the streets to defend their teachers.

Unionism loses its grip on Northern Ireland in March 2 election

Steve James

The main beneficiary from the March 2 elections to the Northern Ireland assembly was the Irish bourgeois nationalist party, Sinn Fein. For the first time since Ireland was partitioned in 1921, in the aftermath of the Irish War of Independence, pro-British Ulster unionist parties have lost their combined absolute political majority in the regional government.

Although the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) led by Arlene Foster remains the largest party, with 28 seats, in the assembly based in Belfast’s Stormont House, the party now only has one more seat than Sinn Fein.

Sinn Fein’s total vote was only 1,186 short of the 225,413 won by the DUP out of a total number of votes cast of 812,783, on a relatively high turnout of nearly 65 percent—up by 10 percent on last year. The DUP’s first preference votes were down 1.11 percent on last year’s Assembly vote, with Sinn Fein’s up 3.89 percent.

This means that together with the 10 seats won by the Ulster Unionist Party, one Traditional Unionist Voice seat and one independent unionist, the combined forces of pro-British unionism can only muster 40 seats in a reduced 90-seat assembly.

At the last elections, held less than a year ago, the combined unionist seats amounted to 55 of 108 then available.

On the nationalist side, Sinn Fein’s 27 seats, added to the Social Democratic and Labour Party’s 12, gives the Irish nationalists 39 seats. But these, combined with 8 seats won by the “cross community” advocates of economic liberalism, the Alliance Party, 2 for the Greens and 1 for the pseudo-left People Before Profit Alliance, mean that non-unionist forces amount to 50 seats.

Negotiations for a new power-sharing government will therefore take place with Sinn Fein much strengthened. But the party has previously insisted that it would not re-enter government with the DUP led by First Minister Arlene Foster, pending the outcome of a public inquiry into the Renewable Heat Initiative (RHI) scandal, so-called cash for ash, and with outstanding Irish language and deeply contested “Troubles” legacy issues unresolved.

If a new arrangement between the two parties cannot be found, under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, another round of elections must be held or the Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire can re-impose direct rule from London.

Brokenshire’s predecessor, Theresa Villiers, has suggested that Westminster could legislate to give the Northern Ireland parties more time to come to terms. The Conservative government in London is seeking to avoid adding to its intractable problems in the aftermath of last year’s referendum vote to leave the European Union (EU), by including direct rule of Northern Ireland among them.

The March 2 poll was triggered by the resignation of the deputy first minister, Sinn Fein’s gravely ill Martin McGuinness. McGuinness’s resignation and Sinn Fein’s refusal to immediately nominate a successor meant that, under the complicated constitutional rules surrounding Northern Ireland’s administration, new elections were obligatory.

In response, Foster promised a “brutal” election. Throughout her campaign, she warned hysterically of the dangers of a victory for Sinn Fein and its longtime leader and unionist bogeyman, Gerry Adams. She repeatedly presented McGuinness’s eventual replacement, Michelle O’Neil, as “installed by Gerry Adams and...instructed by Gerry Adams.”

As a consequence, the outcome, although marking a shift towards Sinn Fein, is also deeply polarised. Despite being in government for 10 years, it is notable that the DUP vote did not collapse, but rather its rival (and self-proclaimed “moderate”), UUP, lost 5 of its 15 seats and will see a leadership contest next month after the resignation of Mike Nesbitt.

Foster’s aggressive rhetoric also tended to encourage nationalist voters to turn out for Sinn Fein; otherwise the party might have been expected to suffer from popular anger at the corruption and swindling that has characterised the assembly’s operations during Sinn Fein’s years in power with the DUP.

Overhanging the election was the steadily deepening crisis surrounding Britain’s departure from the EU. Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU by 55 to 45 percent, reflecting the fact that significant farming, infrastructural and cross-border subsidies have found their way from the EU’s coffers to Northern Ireland agricultural and business interests.

Brexit, besides disrupting the flow of subsidies, will transform the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic into an external boundary of the EU.

Imposed by the British Army and maintained by anti-Catholic pogroms in 1921, the border barricaded the wealthy Northern industrial heartlands of the Ulster Protestant capitalist class from the impoverished and turbulent Catholic south. During the twentieth century and particularly during the “Troubles”—the dirty war between the British Army and Irish republicans between 1969 and 1998—the border was heavily militarised.

The Good Friday Agreement mostly brought an end to armed conflict in the north by laying the basis for republicans to join the Stormont Assembly, under complex and sectarian power-sharing arrangements. These, reflecting the long-standing loss of influence by Ulster capitalists bound up with the destruction of heavy industry, amounted to a joint unionist and republican effort, overseen by the British and Irish governments, to attract global mobile investment—while relying on sectarian divisions to police the working class.

Today, the border is almost invisible, and is crossed daily by commuters, travelers and considerable amounts of commerce and trade. British, Irish and Northern Irish politicians of all stripes have insisted that border controls will be kept to a minimum under Brexit, but no one has yet explained what this means or how it can be achieved. Proposals from both the Irish government and Northern politicians, including Sinn Fein, that some form of special status could be created to allow Northern Ireland to retain EU membership or single-market access have been proposed, but have been rejected by both the DUP and London.

The issue is becoming one of a lengthening list of disputes between powerful rival pro- and anti-Brexit factions of the ruling class, and between the pro-Brexit British government and the EU over the terms of Brexit.

The hard-right DUP is firmly in the Brexit camp and functioned as a conduit for funding from dubious sources for the “Leave” campaign across the UK. According to the pro-EU OpenDemocracy web site, the DUP accepted cash from the hitherto unknown Constitutional Research Council, fronted by a Scottish-based former Conservative party candidate, Richard Cook. Cook reportedly has links to former Saudi intelligence figures and royals seeking to benefit from a Brexit-induced fall in the value of sterling.

Sinn Fein, by contrast, sees the threat of Brexit as an argument for a “border poll” referendum on Irish unification, a provision for which is in the Good Friday Agreement, and a position that is gaining a hearing from the Irish government and the EU. Commenting on the election outcome, Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny, fresh from talks with Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, and EU President Donald Tusk, stated, “If the people by consent were to form a united Ireland, that could be a seamless transfer as happened in the case of East Germany and West Germany when the Berlin Wall came down.”

Kenny’s remarks were endorsed by EU Parliament President Antonio Tajani, who said, “Ireland must ensure that its economic links to the UK are protected,” and secondly, “...it must ensure that the terms of the Good Friday Agreement which has given peace in Northern Ireland are included in any future agreement between the UK and the EU.”

Massive increase in attacks on refugees in Germany

Franci Vier

There were 3,533 attacks on refugee shelters and individual refugees in 2016 in Germany, indicating a massive increase in right-wing violence directed against a vulnerable group of people who have experienced war, persecution and poverty.

The growth of such deliberate violence can only be understood against the background of the refugee baiting conducted by the establishment parties, the media and sections of the academic milieu. In 2015, when many refugees from Syria and other war zones came to Germany, there was an outpouring of solidarity in the population. But since then, the most right-wing sections of society have been mobilized against them with various threatening scenarios.

Of the 3,533 registered attacks, those on refugee shelters (inhabited and uninhabited) account for 988. These included attacks (66 arson attacks and four involving explosives), propaganda offences (211 cases), property damage (371 cases) and other assaults. While compared to the previous year—the highpoint of the refugee influx, when 1,031 attacks on refugee homes took place—this number has decreased, violence in every other category is on a sharp rise.

There were 2,545 registered cases of violence involving direct attacks on refugees outside their accommodations (due to lack of data there are no comparative figures for 2015). In total, 560 people were injured, including 43 children. Added to this are 217 attacks on aid organizations and their volunteers.

The figures are derived from a response by the Interior Ministry to a parliamentary question quoted by the Funke Media Group at the beginning of the week. Since no official statistics have been released, the figures are only preliminary and may rise.

Violence against refugees had risen to around 200 offences from 2014 to 2015. In May 2016, the Federal Criminal Police then reported an increase of 44 percent over the same period the previous year. Thus it could already be foreseen that politically motivated crime and violence by right-wing groups and individual perpetrators against refugees would take on a massive scale. The number of attacks rose yet again, while the number of refugee shelters and refugees has decreased. The figures for 2016 mean that 10 attacks took place every day last year.

In autumn 2016, Der Tagesspiegel reported an increase in the brutality of the violence by far-right groups and neo-Nazis. The number of attempted homicides has risen from one (2014), to four (2015), and 11 in 2016.

Attacks occurred throughout the country, and the number of successful prosecutions is generally low. The media only report particularly brutal cases, such as those in Clausnitz and Bautzen.

In Bautzen at the end September 2016, after an aggressive provocation, around 80 right-wing extremists chased 20 young asylum seekers through the city because they had refused to leave a public square. One refugee was injured with a knife. The far-right hooligans threw stones at an ambulance, which could only continue to take the youth to hospital under police protection. In another incident in the same city, an asylum seeker’s residence was set on fire, while right-wing onlookers stood by and applauded.

In Clausnitz in the state of Saxony in February 2016, an angry group of right-wing demonstrators surrounded an incoming bus of refugees and abused the terrified occupants with xenophobic slogans. The police responded by violently forcing the refugees from the bus into their hostel.

Most assaults are only reported in the regional press or not at all. For example, the Berlin police only issued a press release about 15 of the 57 attacks on refugees in 2015. In 2016, there were just seven press releases on some 60 attacks on refugee homes. The situation is similar in Bavaria. Police issued press releases on just two of the 30 attacks on refugee accommodation or individual refugees in Munich.

Assaults by refugees, however, whether fictitious (as the recently alleged “sex mob” in Frankfurt) or grossly exaggerated (as in New Year's Eve 2015 in Cologne), are exploited politically and by the media to stamp refugees in general as being potential perpetrators of violence. There is a systematic effort to stigmatize refugees as sex offenders, social parasites or potential terrorists.

The statistical data of the Federal Police tells an entirely different story, however. As of June 2016, crimes “against sexual self-determination” as well as the general crime rate have not grown proportionately.

In November 2016, criminal psychologist Ulrich Wagner told broadcaster SWR, “The fact is that in 2015, more than a million people came to Germany, and this did not lead to a corresponding increase in crime.” He pointed out that the “sense of security” in the general population is influenced greatly by the detailed media coverage.

The massive violence against refugees takes place against a background of a political turn to the right internationally. In the US, Donald Trump and his fascistic adviser Stephen Bannon have made nationalist and racist action against migrants the official state doctrine.

In Europe as well, nationalist and xenophobic views have gained ground in the political establishment with the rise of the National Front in France, UKIP in Britain, and the far-right Alternative for Germany. Official social discourse has moved clearly to the right.

Germany’s Left Party also bangs the drum for a strong state and the arming of the police. Its parliamentary leader Sahra Wagenknecht, the supposedly “left” figurehead of the party, stirs up particularly offensive sentiments against refugees. At times, she calls for upper ceilings on the number of refugees; at others, she criticizes Merkel’s “chaotic policy” of “uncontrolled border openings” or demands that refugees who abuse German “hospitality” be deported.

Jörg Baberowski, professor of Eastern European history at Humboldt University in Berlin, has denounced refugees in numerous interviews and newspaper columns as a burden on the welfare state and as potential perpetrators of violence.

Against the backdrop of this intellectual incitement, right-wing forces feel encouraged to move from public expressions of anti-refugee hatred to carrying out actual deeds. While refugees are criticised for their supposed readiness to commit violence, in actual fact there is a massive rise in right-wing violence against the refugees themselves.

German authorities ban appearances by Turkish politicians

Justus Leicht & Peter Schwarz 

The authorities in several German cities have prevented appearances by Turkish government officials who wanted to advocate a yes vote in the constitutional referendum of April 16. About 1.4 million Turkish citizens live in Germany who are entitled to vote in the referendum.

The bans were justified on technical grounds. For example, the city of Gaggenau refused to allow an event with the Turkish justice minister, Bekir Bozdag, arguing that parking and access roads would not cope with the expected visitor numbers.

The city of Cologne refused to allow an appearance by the Turkish Economics Minister Nihat Zeybekci at the Porz town hall on the grounds that there was no hiring agreement for this event, because a publicised “theatre event” had been recast as an “information session.” And the city of Hamburg banned a planned appearance of the Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Tuesday on the pretext that fire protection measures were insufficient.

In reality, the bans are for political reasons. They are taking place against the backdrop of a hysterical campaign to ban all Turkish politicians who support the new constitution, sought by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to strengthen his rule.

Bavarian state premier and leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU), Horst Seehofer, told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that Turkish politicians were abusing their “right to hospitality” when they “promote anti-democratic measures in their country.” CSU domestic affairs expert Hans-Peter Uhl told the Bild newspaper such meetings should, if necessary, be disbanded by the security authorities.

In the newspapers of the Redaktionsnetzwerks Deutschland, Free Democratic Party (FDP), leader Christian Lindner railed against “systematic Turkish state propaganda on German soil.” He called on the federal government to call a halt to it.

Even federal Justice Minister Heiko Maas (Social Democratic Party, SPD) spoke out against Erdoğan himself being allowed to promote the constitutional amendment in Germany. With reference to the German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yücel currently sitting in Turkish custody, Maas told an SPD event in the Saarland, “I think with what is happening there, we are at a point when the time to keep quiet has to be over.”

The most aggressive calls for a general ban on appearances by politicians from the Turkish ruling AKP have come from representatives of the Left Party. In Berlin, Left Party leader Bernd Riexinger demanded, “that the next promotional show for Erdoğan not take place.”

“The Turkish despot is leading the government around by the nose,” he said, with barely concealed chauvinism.

In the Rheinische Post, Left Party parliamentary leader Sahra Wagenknecht accused the government of “cronyism with the Turkish autocrats.”

The demand for a ban on appearances by Turkish politicians is undemocratic and reactionary.

Proponents of such a ban say it is justified because Erdoğan is suppressing his political opponents and that the proposed constitutional amendment has authoritarian characteristics. Therefore, as Heribert Prantl wrote in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, “freedom of speech for Erdoğan (and his governmental campaigners) in Germany” means “aiding the elimination of fundamental rights and liberties ...”

This argument is essentially false. Such prohibitions do not defend democracy and freedom of expression in Turkey, but suppress it in Germany. Leading politicians and journalists presume to prescribe to Turkish citizens living in Germany what they may think about, whom they may listen to and who not. In place of political debate comes bans and censorship. In this way, a precedent is created for the suppression of all dissent. The state will determine what may and may not be said in public.

If the AKP (which after all, won 60 percent of the vote among Turkish citizens living in Germany in the last election) may not express its views in Germany, what about members of socialist parties, which the ruling elites accuse of being “anti-constitutional”? Or what about Muslims, whose faith some right-wing politicians claim is incompatible with the constitution?

That the discussion is going in such a direction is shown by another argument that the proponents of the ban cite against the appearance of Turkish politicians: fundamental rights only apply to Germans.

In its weekend edition, the Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote, citing the Freiburg law professor Ralf Poscher, arguments for a general ban on assembly were “legally feasible” because Article 8 of the constitution (“All Germans have the right to assemble peacefully and unarmed without prior notification or permission”) was a “German fundamental right.”

On Monday, Heribert Prantl repeated this shameful argument. Pointing to earlier appearances by Erdoğan in Germany, he warned that Turkish government politicians should not be “given the impression that their campaign speech rights in Germany are a kind of customary right.”

The government had permitted such appearances in the past, “even if the right of assembly is really only a German fundamental right.” This was “an act of diplomacy … because one and a half million Turkish voters live in Germany and because German-Turkish friendship should be strengthened in this way.” But now the question arises, whether the German state was “not only entitled, but even obliged” to “stand firm against this promotion?”

In this way, the basic democratic right to freedom of assembly for hundreds of thousands of Turks living in Germany is made dependant on arbitrary state decisions. No events with elected Turkish politicians—even completely peaceful ones—are to be permitted if their politics do not suit the German state. And this in a country that only 80 years ago denied millions of people all rights under the Nuremberg Race Laws because of their Jewish religion.

When it comes to their own interests, the German political elite use very different standards. Completely forgotten is the campaigning by Chancellor Helmut Kohl (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) in spring 1990 in East Germany, then still a sovereign state, where he promised “blossoming landscapes” if they supported reunification. And in 2014 on the Maidan, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle expressed his solidarity in person with the right-wing forces that organised the overthrow of the elected Ukrainian government. In both cases, representatives of the German government were not discussing domestic German politics among expatriate Germans but were directly intervening into the affairs of other countries.

If it serves their interests, the German government has no problem dealing with autocrats and despots. For example, just last week, Chancellor Merkel visited the Egyptian ruler al-Sisi, who acts far more harshly against his political opponents than Erdoğan, and assured him of Germany’s interest in the stability of Egypt.

Merkel has agreed a dirty refugee deal with Erdoğan himself, which prevents refugees from the war zones in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan from making the onward journey to Europe. Merkel wants to continue this deal, and for this reason, she, like foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel, has been cautious in speaking about the bans on Turkish politicians.

However, there are fierce conflicts among German politicians about how to deal with Turkey. From the start, Merkel’s refugee deal met with criticism in her own camp because a section believed German imperialism was binding its hands in the Middle East if it tied itself too tightly to Turkey. Above all, the CSU and the Left Party have for some time been demanding that Germany should act with more self-interest towards Turkey. And the defence ministry has invested much effort in the arming and training of the Kurdish peshmerga.

In the meantime, German-Turkish relations have reached a low point. Last week, the Turkish foreign ministry in Ankara summoned the German Ambassador Martin Erdmann and conveyed to him its “unease” about the actions of the German authorities. On Sunday, Erdoğan accused Germany of “Nazi practices,” which met with an indignant backlash in Berlin.

The defence of democratic rights and the struggle against Erdoğan’s authoritarian measures cannot be left to the German government and the bourgeois state. They require the mobilisation of the Turkish and international working class.

In northern France, Calais mayor bans distribution of meals to migrants

Antoine Lerougetel 

In an inhuman action, Calais mayor Natacha Bouchart of the right-wing Les Républicains (LR) signed an order on Thursday, March 2, prohibiting the distribution of meals to migrants.

After the brutal dismantling by police of the “La Jungle” camp, at the orders of President François Hollande’s Socialist Party (PS) government last October, and the dispersion across France of some 6,000 refugees wanting to go to Britain, at least 700 still live near Calais, in deplorable conditions. Several new migrants arrive daily in Calais, mostly from the Middle East, Africa and the Indian subcontinent.

85,000 people sought asylum in France in 2016, mostly from Sudan, Afghanistan, Haiti, and Albania. Almost two-thirds of their applications were rejected. The actual number of undocumented migrants is certainly higher.

During the visit to Calais by PS Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux on Wednesday, Bouchart said she wanted to prevent the formation of “magnets for migrants” and also to keep new “gathering points” from reappearing in Calais. Le Roux agreed, saying he also would “firmly oppose any gathering point”. Just for form, he added that “we will not prevent the distribution of meals”, which did not prevent Bouchart from signing her barbaric order the next day.

Bouchart said she was “personally opposed, even if it is humanly difficult to say,” to any humanitarian provision in Calais, whether it be meals or showers set up by Catholic Relief.

The legal argument of the municipal order is based on the prohibition of gatherings within a defined perimeter of the city. It “prohibits the abusive, prolonged and repeated occupation of the industrial zone of the Dunes” and asserts that the distribution of meals for migrants is “likely to disturb public order, safety and security.”

Sarah Arrom, who works for the charity Utopia56, reported that police used tear gas on Thursday to prevent volunteers from providing breakfast to 30 teenagers: “Tear gas has never been used before when we tried to distribute meals.”

Some leaders of the charities said they would not comply with Bouchart’s reactionary order. “We have been distributing food both day and night for two months, and we will continue to do so for a simple reason: people are hungry,” said Gaël Monzy of Utopia56.

Renke Meuwese of Refugee Community Kitchen and Help Refugees, told the media that kitchens were cooking about 400 meals a day, compared with about 50 during the previous month.

A Catholic Relief official, Vincent de Coninck, said he was “amazed that a politician could forbid children to wash and eat.”

However, aid volunteers in Calais are powerless to stop escalating attacks on the democratic rights and humanitarian conditions of the refugees. Closely connected to the petty-bourgeois social milieu of the parties and trade unions which operate on the periphery of the PS, they cannot and do not try to mobilise the working class to defend the rights of immigrants.

Faced with increasing attacks on immigrants by the PS and LR, the charities argue above all that their actions facilitate the police and health authorities’ defence of public order.

They stressed that food distributions make it possible to “avoid deaths on the streets,” to ensure “the safety of the people of Calais by avoiding theft and possible attacks” and to “identify medical problems, in particular the possible spread of infectious diseases.” They also point out that “the charities do this work because the state and public authorities do not carry out their own obligations, both legal and humanitarian.”

Only a broad and politically independent mobilisation of workers across Europe can stop the escalation of attacks on refugees and immigrants.

On November 23, Pierre-Alain Mannoni, a teacher-researcher at Nice Sophia Antipolis University, was tried for taking three wounded Eritrean girls to the doctor in his car. On January 4, at the Nice court the public prosecutor called for an eight months’ suspended prison sentence for the farmer Cédric Herrou, 37, for helping migrants near the Franco-Italian border.

These actions by the authorities are part of a wider strategy by all EU governments to discourage people in the Middle East and Africa from fleeing the imperialist wars that have devastated their countries for more than 15 years. Extreme right-wing attitudes, which would have been identified with the positions of the National Front, have become commonplace in mainstream French and European bourgeois politics.

Political parties and the media have long been campaigning against migrants in order to poison the political atmosphere and divide workers along ethnic and religious lines.

The Stalinist CGT (General Confederation of Labour) union confederation participated in the far-right demonstration on September 5 of last year calling for the dismantling of the “Jungle”. It thus contributed to the anti-immigrant hysteria whipped up by the candidates in the April-May 2017 French presidential elections.

Indeed, the CGT and its political allies, the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) and the Left Front alliance of the French Communist Party and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Left Party, defend the proxy wars in Syria and Libya with the help of Islamist forces as well as the anti-immigrant policies of the Socialist Party, which they supported during the 2012 presidential elections.

Warning of neo-fascist victory in France, Hollande promotes EU militarism

Alex Lantier

Before yesterday’s summit of German, Italian, Spanish, and French officials in Versailles, François Hollande gave an extensive interview to Le Monde and other papers of the Europa consortium—Süddeutsche Zeitung, La Stampa, the Guardian, La Vanguardia, and Gazeta Wyborcza. The French president outlined the deeply pessimistic perspectives predominating in the layers of the European bourgeoisie closest to Berlin and the European Union (EU).

Hollande unambiguously indicated that the EU is on the brink of collapse, in particular because a National Front (FN) victory in the April-May French presidential elections would install in Paris a neo-fascist government that could blow up the EU. However, having pointed to the bankruptcy of the French and European capitalist regimes, the only perspective he could offer was to develop the EU as a massive military and police-state machine.

Asked about an FN electoral victory, Hollande said: “The threat exists. The far right has never been as high in the polls for more than 30 years.” He added, “if somehow the National Front candidate were to win, she would immediately launch a process of exit from the eurozone, and even from the European Union. This is the objective of all the populists, wherever they are: to leave Europe, to close themselves to the world, and to imagine a world surrounded by barriers of all kinds and borders defended by watchtowers.”

Hollande posed as a defender of the EU and democracy against the danger of the far right. “My last duty is to do everything to keep France from being convinced by such arguments, or to take such drastic action,” Hollande declared, adding: “But France will not give way. First of all, because it is France and it is conscious of the fact that the votes on April 23 and on May 7 will determine not only the fate of our country, but the very future of European construction, as well.”

These democratic pretensions are rank hypocrisy. The possibility of an FN victory and the disintegration of the EU is now very real, and this is above all an indictment of the reactionary policies of austerity and war pursued by the EU across Europe and, in particular, by Hollande’s own Socialist Party (PS) government in France.

The EU’s relentless austerity offensive after the 2008 Wall Street crash bled the working class white, most obviously in Greece, and Hollande imposed over €100 billion in austerity measures against the working class in France. The European ruling elite’s response to growing social anger was to boost police powers and stimulate ever more anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment to divide the working class along racial lines.

The PS imposed and continuously extended a state of emergency in response to terror attacks carried out in France and Belgium. It initially concealed and then dismissed the significance of the fact that these attacks were carried out by Islamist terror networks that France and other NATO powers relied upon to wage their proxy war in Syria. Instead, it passed a reactionary mass electronic surveillance law and joined a media firestorm warning of religious war and demanding stepped up policing, aimed above all against Muslims.

This policy not only created the judicial and surveillance infrastructure of an authoritarian state in France, but paved a way for the neo-fascist FN to fully integrate itself into the bourgeois political mainstream and aspire to take over state power, exploiting anger with the PS on a populist basis.

The claim that the French people would reject an FN government due to its attachment to the EU is a political fraud. Not only is the EU broadly unpopular in France—in one poll last year, only 23 percent of the population thought EU membership helped France—but the EU’s own positions on war and the persecution of immigrants and refugees are increasingly indistinguishable from those of the FN.

Indeed, the political agenda Hollande then laid out for a post-Brexit EU to a large extent consisted of carrying out on a European scale the policies that the FN proposes for France: to build up the EU as a major military power and police-state apparatus, based on appeals to so-called European “community of spirit.”

“What Europeans demand, is that the EU be able to protect them more,” he declared, “that European sovereignty protect their borders, ward away the terrorist threat, and finally preserve a way of life, a culture, and a community of spirit. … Today, Europe can find a second wind by concentrating on defence. On the one hand this would ensure its own security, but on the other it allows it to act in the world, to seek solutions to conflicts that threaten it.”

The danger of the coming to power of the FN, like Brexit or the election of Trump, reflects a deep breakdown of the relations and structures of international capitalism as they developed after World War II and after the Stalinist bureaucracy dissolved the USSR in 1991. After the election of Trump, Hollande made clear, the purpose of the EU military machine would be to rival, and perhaps eventually threaten, the United States, as well as to pursue a harsh line against Britain after Brexit.

Hollande again stressed his wariness of Trump: “We now know the basic lines of his policy: isolationism, protectionism, anti-immigrant policies and budgetary irresponsibility. So one has to worry in the face of this uncertainty, and the euphoria of the financial markets strikes me as quite premature. As for his misunderstanding of what the EU is, it forces us to demonstrate to him its political cohesion, its economic weight, and its strategic autonomy.”

Asked what he would say if Britain wanted to keep the advantages of EU membership after Brexit, Hollande bluntly replied, “That it is impossible and that it will thus have to become an outsider to the EU. Here is the problem of the United Kingdom: it thought that by leaving Europe, it could develop a strategic partnership with the United States. But it turns out that America is closing itself to the world. The United Kingdom made the wrong choice at the wrong time. Sorry.”

The EU’s advocates are abandoning any idea—in line with claims at the EU’s founding in 1992 that it would prevent the re-emergence of a third world war between the European powers—that the EU would equally respect the rights of all its member states. As shown by the four-power format of the Versailles summit, which decided not to issue any formal statement to minimize opposition from other EU states, Berlin and Paris aim to deal with rising tensions in Europe by sidelining smaller countries and moving to a so-called “multi-speed” Europe.

“Let’s be frank: some member states will never join the euro zone. Face up to it. And let us not wait for them to deepen the economic and monetary union,” Hollande declared. “Because if you want to do everything with all 27 member states, the danger is that you will do nothing at all.”

Finally, on Russia, while he adopted a hostile line, Hollande indicated differences with sections of the US foreign policy establishment that pursued an aggressive line against Moscow under Obama, to the point of risking a military clash with Russia in Syria or Ukraine.

Russia, Hollande said, “is affirming itself as a power. It tests our resistance and measures power relations at every point. At the same time, Russia uses all possible means to influence public opinion … with strategies for influence, networks, and very conservative views on lifestyle issues. It also has pretensions that it will defend Christianity from Islam. Let us not exaggerate anything, but let us be vigilant.”

He added, “People often ask me, ‘Why don’t you speak more often with President Putin?’ But I never ceased speaking to him! Or with the [German] chancellor either, by the way. And that is good.”

Amid this escalating collapse and drive to war of the world capitalist system, both the defenders of the EU and the reactionary Trump administration and its allies within Europe, like the FN, face the international working class as enemies. The only way forward is to mobilise and unify workers around the world in struggle against austerity, war, and police-state measures.