EU-Turkey Rift Widens

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

The rift between the European Union and Turkey is escalating as President Erdogan has accused the EU countries of persecuting Muslims like Jews were during World War II while the spirit of fascism was running wild on the streets of Europe.

The EU-Turkey rift was sparked on March 11when Turkish foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, was barred from landing in the Netherlands to attend a rally of Turkish immigrants. About 400,000 people with ties to Turkey live in the Netherlands.

Not surprisingly, Dutch far-right anti-Muslim leader Geert Wilders waded into the debate. “We are in Holland here, not in Turkey, and a Turkish minister has no room here to lobby for somebody like Erdogan, who is a mere dictator,” Wilders said.

Addressing a political rally in Istanbul on March 18, President Erdogan launched a scathing attack on European leaders. He was quoted by media as saying: “If they weren’t ashamed, they would revive the gas chambers.”

About Germany, Erdogan said: “When we call them Nazis they [European politicians] get uncomfortable. They rally together in solidarity. Especially Merkel.” “Merkel. She backs [the Netherlands] too. You too are practicing Nazi practices. To whom? To my Turkish brothers and sisters in Germany,” the Turkish leader said.

He has also quoted as saying: “They [European states] do not have the urge to hide their intentions and cannot hide the discomfort they feel from Turkey, which is growing stronger.”

Earlier President Erdogan has hit out at the Netherlands, by holding them responsible for Europe’s worst mass killing since World War II.

Referring to a Dutch battalion of United Nations peacekeepers who failed to halt the slaughter by Bosnian Serb forces of thousands of Muslim men and boys in eastern Bosnia in 1995, Erdogan said: “We know the Netherlands and the Dutch from the Srebrenica massacre. We know how rotten their character is from their massacre of 8,000 Bosnians there.”

Turkey orders sanctions against Netherlands

On March 13, Turkey announced a series of political sanctions against the Netherlands over its refusal to allow two Turkish ministers to campaign there. The sanctions include halting high-level political discussions between the two countries and closing Turkish air space to Dutch diplomats.

Deputy prime minister Numan Kurtulmus said the sanctions would apply until the Netherlands takes steps “to redress” the actions Ankara sees as a grave insult. “There is a crisis and a very deep one. We didn’t create this crisis or bring it to this stage,” he said.

Other sanctions bar the Dutch ambassador entry back into Turkey and advise parliament to withdraw from a Dutch-Turkish friendship group. The announcement came hours after Turkey’s foreign ministry formally protested over the treatment of the minister who was not allowed to land in the Netherland.

France and Germany have supported the Netherlands in its dispute with Turkey. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault called Erdogan’s statements about Nazism and fascism “unacceptable” and called on Turkey to abide to the European Conventions on Human Rights.

German Chanc Merkel pledged her “full support and solidarity” to the Dutch, saying the Nazi gibes were “completely unacceptable”.

President Erdogan responded angrily. “Shame on you!” he exclaimed during an interview with A Haber television. He renewed accusations that Germany supported “terrorists” battling Turkey and that it backed the “no” campaign in the Turkish referendum, arguing that Berlin did not want to see a strong Turkey.

“Some of the European Union countries – let’s not put all of them in the same sack – unfortunately cannot stomach Turkey’s rise,” he said. “Sadly, Germany tops the list. Germany supports terror in a cruel way.”He advised Turks living in Europe not to vote for parties that he described as “enemies of Turkey”.

Germany not ‘convinced’ Gulen behind failed Turkey coup

Tellingly, a German intelligence report has added fuel to the fire. On March 18, Germany’s intelligence chief said that US-based Fethullah Gulen was not the mastermind behind a failed July 15 coup aimed at ousting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkish authorities have blamed the attempted putsch that left 248 people dead on a rogue military group led by Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999.

Turkish authorities have arrested more than 41,000 pro-Gulen people, and fired or suspended 100,000, since the attempted coup.

Last month, authorities ordered the dismissal of nearly 4,500 civil servants, including 2,585 employees of the education ministry, 893 members of the gendarmerie and 88 workers at the public television channel TRT.

Turkish Referendum

The EU –Turkey feud stems from efforts by Erdoğan’s government to build support among Turks living abroad for the package of constitutional changes through referendum scheduled for April 16. In Germany alone, there are 1.5 million people with Turkish citizenship.

In early March, Turkey’s Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag pulled out of a scheduled visit to Germany, after a small town in German south-western region of Baden-Wurttemberg denied him the chance to address his countrymen. The city of Cologne canceled a similar event, where Turkish economy minister Nihat Zeybekci was due to speak.

Pro-referendum rallies were also canceled in Austria and Switzerland.

Refugee deal at risk

Turkey has threatened to cancel the refugee deal struck between Turkey and the European Union one year ago, which has helped in keeping the number of migrants arriving in Germany and elsewhere in Europe at bay.

Erdogan warned on March 16, that a key refugee deal with Europe could be at risk. Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said 15,000 refugees a month should be sent to Europe as a shock therapy.

Analyst Kamran Matin of the University of Sussex was quoted by the Voice of America as saying:

“The refugee deal they have with the EU, and especially with respect to Germany, is crucial leverage they have over Germany,” he said. “And the flow of refugees would have immediate impact in German domestic politics. Turkey is such a geopolitically important state and actor for not only European countries, but the entire Western bloc, especially facing the resurgence of Russia.”

Australia’s energy crisis exposes market failure

Mike Head

Both Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill made desperate announcements last week, claiming to resolve the worsening electricity crisis that has caused serious blackouts in recent months and sent household prices soaring over the past decade.

The failure of the national energy market was highlighted last September, when the entire state of South Australia lost power, plunging homes, hospitals and industrial plants into darkness for many hours. After storms knocked down transmission towers, supplies were shut off, supposedly to protect the national grid from instability. In February, under life-threatening heatwave conditions, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) cut off supplies to various areas.

Vague promises were made were made last week. Turnbull said his federal Liberal-National Coalition government would initiate a feasibility study into expanding the Snowy Mountains hydro-electricity system. He claimed that a $2 billion project to supply emergency back-up supplies could be completed in five years.

According to the prime minister, this would increase the scheme’s generation capacity by 50 percent to 2,000 megawatts, reputedly enough to power 500,000 homes. This “electricity game-changer” would also “ultimately mean cheaper power prices.”

After meeting gas company chiefs, Turnbull further insisted he had “guarantees” from them to divert supplies from lucrative liquefied natural gas (LNG) export markets to the domestic electricity grid during peak demand periods, even though they would receive far lower prices by doing so. But he gave no details of how much gas would be supplied or when it would be available. Two LNG companies had agreed to increase their domestic supplies, he claimed, while a third would “take it on notice.”

Weatherill said his state Labor government would commission a new $360 million 250 megawatt gas-fired power plant and call tenders for the installation of a 100 megawatt battery storage plant, to provide his state with its own back-up power. It was a “dramatic intervention” to address the “failure” of the national market, he said, but could not say where or when the plants would be built.

Several industry experts pointed out that these plans, even taken together, were insufficient to ensure adequate supplies and would come too late to solve the immediate problems of power outages. Moreover, the Snowy plan, which involves pumping diverted river water back up into dams, would have reduced capacity during periods of drought.

More fundamentally, however, all the announcements were based on the proposition that the privatised electricity market—dominated by profiteering power generation, distribution and retailing companies—can rectify the economic and social disaster it has itself produced.

During the September and February breakdowns, spare generating capacity was actually available but the owners of key plants kept their facilities offline as part of a systemic practice of driving up “spot” prices during peak demand periods.

Several studies in recent years have documented this practice, which has generated huge spikes in short-term wholesale electricity prices, sometimes rising to $14,000 per megawatt hour from the usual figure below $100.

A Melbourne Energy Institute study found 41 occasions in 2015 when the Snowy Hydro’s Angaston diesel generator in South Australia withdrew supply, pushing up spot prices. Combined, those 41 occasions delivered an additional $30.3 million in profit.

This price manipulation is perfectly legal because the electricity market is designed to allow power-generating companies to decide whether or not to sell their electricity, depending on price. As a result, the adequacy of the electricity supply—an essential ingredient of modern life, especially during extreme weather—is determined by corporate profit, not social need.

Last week, a report by the Grattan Institute, a business-funded think tank, provided further insight into the operations of the profit-driven system. It showed that retail electricity prices in four major cities—Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide—have almost doubled since 2005, when the deregulated “retail contestable” pricing system began to take effect.

Over that decade, distribution costs have increased by only about 10 percent, and wholesale electricity costs have fallen by about one-third, allowing the retail suppliers to make what the Grattan report described as “excessive” profits.

In other words, while working class households have been suffering ever-greater difficulties in paying electricity bills, on top of other sky-rocketing utility and housing costs, the three companies dominating the retail market—AGL, Energy Australia and Origin—have reaped a windfall.

Rampant profiteering has taken hold since the 1990s, when the Keating Labor government initiated the process of privatising the government-owned businesses that were responsible for the generation, transmission, distribution and retailing of electricity in each state and territory. Labor said a “national competition policy” would deliver significant benefits to consumers by providing incentives to producers to be efficient, innovate and lower their prices.

Implemented from 1995 onward, the resulting selloff of electricity corporations led directly to the opposite—inflated prices, inadequate investment in generating and transmission facilities, and unreliable services. The only consumers to benefit were businesses. Between 1990-91 and 2003-04, according to the Grattan report, their bills fell on average by 27 percent in real terms, while residential bills began to rise.

In addition, thousands of electricity industry and other public sector jobs were destroyed. Between the mid-1990s and 2003, employment in the sector fell from 83,000 to 33,000.

This drive deepened under the Labor government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Its 2012 Energy White Paper demanded that state governments privatise the remaining electricity assets, then estimated to be worth more than $100 billion, delivering bonanzas to the financial markets and associated business interests.

Both Turnbull and Weatherill declared their readiness to use all the powers available to their governments to fix the energy crisis. Turnbull said he could revoke gas export licences and Weatherill threatened to instruct power-generating companies to supply electricity during critical periods. In reality, their proposals leave intact the corporate stranglehold over the electricity grid.

As result, the energy crisis will only worsen. At the end of this month, French energy giant ENGIE is due to close a 1,600 megawatt coal-fired power station at Hazelwood, axing more than 750 jobs and taking out about 25 percent of the base load electricity capacity in the state of Victoria. Already, energy traders are cashing in on the expected shortages. On the futures market last Wednesday, the June contract for electricity in Victoria hit $147.50 per megawatt hour, compared to a price for the March contract of $80.

The debacle produced by Australia’s corporate electricity market is reminiscent of the Enron crisis in the US. The energy conglomerate created artificial power shortages to allow traders to sell power at much higher prices, but ultimately imploded in 2001 in what was then the largest corporate bankruptcy in American history.

Similar practices led this month to more than a million homes, schools and businesses in Detroit and across Michigan enduring disastrous power outages. Rather than investing in serious infrastructure upgrades, the electricity companies responsible are involved in speculative Enron-style energy trading, as well as far more profitable natural gas projects.

These are not aberrations. They epitomise the increasingly decayed and parasitic character of the capitalist profit system. Essential utilities, such as electricity, gas, phone and Internet connections, which should be available to everyone as a basic social right, are being subordinated to the relentless demands of the financial elite for ever-higher investor returns.

Union sells out striking Kenyan doctors

Eddie Haywood 

On March 14, the Kenyan Medical Professionals, Pharmacists, and Dentists Union (KMPDU) representing government-employed doctors and other health care professionals reached an agreement with the government to end a strike that began in December 2016 and lasted 100 days. The strike was the most protracted such dispute for doctors and medical workers in Kenya’s history.

Very little information has been released about what the new agreement, which is only a draft proposal, actually stipulates. The KMPDU and the Ministry of Health have signed a “Return To Work Formula” (RTWF) with only a promise to continue negotiations within 60 days. The new settlement appears to have fallen far short of the original 2013 collective bargaining agreement, which the government had refused to implement, leading the doctors to strike. The union and the government agreed to sign a formal contract within 60 days.

The general secretary of the KMPDU, Ouma Oluga, said the agreement was a “win-win for everybody” and told the media, “We wish that this country shall never experience this again.”

Minister of Health Cleopa Mailu cynically told reporters, “Kenyans have suffered, and I am quite sure we cannot in any way begin to fathom the extent of the pain which the ordinary Kenyans felt during those 100 days.”

The strike coincided with mounting popular outrage with President Uhuru Kenyatta, who is seeking reelection in August. His government is widely perceived as corrupt.

While the government claims it does not have the funds to implement the demands of the doctors, the Ministry of Health is currently embroiled in an investigation that alleges that ministry officials looted $20 million from its coffers, representing 21 percent of its 2016 budget.

The leading officials of the KMPDU, which represents about 5,000 government-employed doctors and medical workers across Kenya, were arrested and detained briefly in February for refusing to end the strike. Originally sentenced to 30 days in jail, this anti-democratic attempt by the government to intimidate striking doctors provoked such popular outrage that the sentence was reversed a week later, with the union officials’ release.

Underscoring the tenuousness of the RTWF agreement, KMPDU General Secretary Oluga told reporters, “We are happy that the doctors union have finally put an end to the strike. ... While the strike is over, the dispute may not be, because we need to restore industrial harmony between ourselves and our employers. ... We know that the return-to-work agreement is simply an agreement and there is a lot of follow-up that will be done.”

There is nothing in the RTWF agreement that is binding, and the KMPDU’s promises to medical workers for the pay increases are most likely to prove a mere “castle in the sand.”

Illustrating the government’s contempt for the doctors and medical workers and its lack of sincerity to follow through with any agreement is the government’s hiring of 500 doctors from Tanzania only days after signing the RTWF. The Tanzanian doctors will be paid at rates far below their Kenyan counterparts, a clear indication of how the government views the RTWF agreement and the plight of medical workers.

In addition to being underpaid, the Tanzanian doctors will be restricted in terms of where they can work (only the public sector), for how long, and under what conditions (restricted from buying a home or owning property) and essentially stripped of their democratic rights. Further, management plans on implementing a two-tiered workforce that can be used to undercut any future disputes or strikes.

Additionally, state hospitals are carrying out retaliatory firings of doctors and medical workers who participated in the strike. Just the week before the RTWF was signed, President Uhuru Kenyatta threatened to fire the striking doctors and medical workers if they did not return to work.

The real fear of the KMPDU—that the union would be “killed” by the government, thus eliminating their source of dues income—was the true catalyst for the KMPDU calling the strike in December. This fact was expressed by KMPDU’s negotiating committee chairman Dr. Alex Muturi to the Kenyan Star last January: “Any union stands on two things: the membership and the CBA [Collective Bargaining Agreement]. The CBA is the only reference any union has with the employer.” The same week he stated before a crowd of striking doctors that “the government’s unwillingness to implement the agreement is a plan to kill their union.”

The KMPDU only agreed to end the strike after the government agreed to officially recognize the union. Like their counterparts worldwide, the KMPDU leadership is looking out for its own interests: that is, collecting union dues paid by thousands of public health care workers.

Before the ink had dried on the RTWF agreement, a segment of the striking doctors and medical workers refused to accept it and continued to strike. As an expression of the KMPDU’s contempt for these recalcitrant workers, the union has accepted the contingent of lower-paid doctors from Tanzania, saying they wish to “incorporate them into the union.”

Notably during the strike, there was no attempt by the KMPDU to connect the issues plaguing medical workers with similar issues afflicting the broader working masses in Kenya, who in many cases subsist on less than $2 a day. Instead, the union has limited its demands and subordinated medical workers in appeals to the state.

The Kenyan doctors strike again demonstrates that the unions are hostile to the interests of workers and incapable of defending, let alone improving, their conditions. The betrayal of the medical workers by the KMPDU makes clear the necessity for the political mobilization of the entire working class against the international banks and their domestic servants in defiance of the trade unions and the big business political parties.

UK budget steps up attacks on education

Tom Pearce 

New research by the Education Policy Institute (EPI) think tank finds that every school in England faces budget cuts by 2020. The EPI estimates that every primary school faces an average real terms loss of £74,000, with secondary schools facing a deficit of £291,000 in the next three years.

This is the reality of the Conservative government’s £3 billion a year real terms cut in funding for school age education, to be imposed by 2020.

These statistics come as no surprise to head teachers who are dealing with the impact of relentless cuts. A primary school in Cambridgeshire wrote to parents last week explaining the impact of funding changes and the “apprenticeship levy” of 1 percent on school budgets.

From May, all employers with wage bills over £3 million a year must pay 0.5 percent of that towards apprenticeship funding. This will hit council schools as they come under the overall local authority wage bill—with small academy schools exempt as they are not under direct authority control.

The primary school letter explained that funding cuts are having a “negative impact of £70,000 on the school budget for 2016/2017.” The head teacher said, “This just doesn’t just affect us” and indicated how “serious the funding crisis has become.”

In the government’s March 8 budget, the worst fears of head teachers were realised as Chancellor Phillip Hammond announced continued austerity, ignoring the concerns of the teaching profession.

For education, the budget found £320 million for the creation of more state funded “free schools.” Free schools, set up by parents, charities and other groups, are state-funded, but privately run and have been criticized for creating a two-tier education system, weakening current schools.

The government’s aim is to create grammar schools—based on selective education—out of these new essentially private schools, overturning a 1998 ban on new grammars. In addition, just £216 million will be added to funding to refurbish existing schools. The budget fell massively short of what schools require just to get by and is an insult in response to calls of school leaders to save jobs, courses and reduce class sizes.

On budget day, Education Secretary Justine Greening was heckled by head teachers as she spoke at the Association of School and College Leaders meeting about the new plans. In response to the policy of creating new grammar schools, under conditions whereby existing schools are struggling to survive, she received cries of “rubbish” from attending members.

The GMB union has many school support staff among its members. Analysing official figures, it found that a total of nearly £1 billion is to be spent on new free schools. In the first full year of the next Parliament, £655 million of capital funding is set aside for free schools, with the just announced £320 million in addition to this. The aim is the continued privatisation of education by moving schools from local authority control to the private sector, with new schools being controlled from the beginning by trusts and companies.

As budgets are slashed, the crisis schools face exacerbates, with head teachers warning that schools are being forced to axe courses, increase class sizes and cut back on trips and after-school clubs.

Not a week passes without a story about schools struggling to cope with budget restraints. With schools forced to make decisions about cutting funding to key resources and school trips, the educational and cultural opportunities being offered to schoolchildren are dwindling every week. The latest round of articles reported that a three- to four-day week is being considered by schools in a number of regions. A shortened school day is being looked at to cut costs. In addition, class sizes are soaring, with 35 pupils in a class becoming the norm and rising in some schools.

Another result of the budget squeeze is the narrowing of subjects that are being offered, with some schools not employing teachers and cutting the choices for students at GCSE and A Level.

The situation is getting so desperate that two schools have already written to parents to set up direct debits to pay for basic resources. The schools in Wokingham, Berkshire, which historically is one of the most poorly funded local authorities (LA) in the country, have been forced to take donations from parents just to offer pupils a basic education.

St. Crispin’s, a state secondary, has asked parents to set up a monthly direct debit to help it cover its everyday costs. On its web site, it states: “During recent years, schools have faced an increasing challenge with regards to reducing budgets.

“We would like to request that parents and carers consider offering a voluntary financial contribution to the school. This might be in the form of a one-off contribution or more helpfully a monthly direct debit of between £1-£5 (or more!). Just £1 a month from every family could make an immediate and actual difference of an additional income in excess of £10K per annum.”

Another school, The Hawthorns School, a primary in Wokingham, asked parents to set up monthly contributions.

This signals the demise of free education for children, when even the state sector are forced to charge for basic educational rights.

In the face of these attacks, what is the response of the main teaching unions? National Union of Teachers (NUT) General Secretary Kevin Courtney described the budget as “a complete dereliction of duty to our children and young people.” He added, “The chancellor knows full well that schools and sixth-form colleges up and down the country are on their knees struggling to make ends meet.”

Courtney, was part of the Socialist Teachers Alliance (STA), and is backed by pseudo-left groups, including the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). He is also a founding member of the People’s Assembly—a Trades Union Congress backed coalition which includes various other union bureaucrats, a few Labour Party “lefts,” the Green Party and pseudo-left groups, including the SWP.

Courtney has established a school funding campaign, in alliance with the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), several of the largest trade unions and the People’s Assembly. Their “schoolcuts” web site found that 98 percent of schools would see cuts under the new “fair funding” formula between now and 2020.

However, the sum of their action is for those concerned to contact their local Member of Parliament. The same Tory government that is hell bent on destroying the social right to education and privatizing is called on by the NUT and ATL to “take immediate action to inject much needed money into an already beleaguered system and protect our children’s education.”

ATL leader Mary Bousted said in response to the budget only that, “Parents and children will be deeply disappointed that the chancellor has not taken this opportunity to put more money into the national funding formula, which would be the best way to improve social mobility and ensure all children get a good education.”

No protests, let alone strikes, in response to this unprecedented crisis are planned by any teaching unions. Instead, it has been left to some school governors, who are volunteers, to threaten industrial action over funding cuts.

Presidential front-runner Macron pledges to bring back the draft in France

Alex Lantier 

In a public meeting Saturday in Paris, Emmanuel Macron, the preferred presidential candidate of President François Hollande and of the majority of the ruling Socialist Party (PS), pledged to bring back the draft and accelerate the rearming of the French armed forces. Macron indicated his goal was to prepare the army not only to carry out large-scale foreign wars, but also massive interventions inside France itself.

This statement by the candidate whom polls currently favor to win the presidential election is a warning to workers and youth in France and across the world. It comes barely two weeks after Sweden re-established the draft, openly declaring it was needed to obtain enough troops to combat Russia. After two devastating world wars in the 20th century, the European ruling classes are preparing for a new war between the major powers and a frontal assault on living standards and democratic rights of workers at home.

Macron said, “We have entered an epoch in international relations where war is again a possible outcome of politics.” He demanded that France maintain independent capacities “to conceive, decide upon, and execute” military action.

To prepare for the wars planned by Macron and his supporters in the state machine, the army would mobilize entire age brackets. “Universal national service, in the army and the national gendarmerie [paramilitary police] will [include] all young men and women born in the same year, that is, about 600,000 youth per year,” Macron declared. “The period of universal military service will take place in the three years following each person's 18th birthday.”

The fact that Macron justified bringing back the draft by claiming that humanity is entering an epoch of major wars exposes his cynical attempts to provide a “democratic” and “progressive” veneer for his proposal to force people into the army. He stated this would only be for one month: “Each French youth will meet his or her fellow citizens, mix with different social layers and experience the cohesion of the Republic for a month.” However, preparing for major wars would require far more than a month of military service.

Press reports suggested that setting up the draft would require an initial expenditure of €15 billion, and then a regular yearly expenditure of €3 billion, roughly the budget of France's nuclear arsenal. Macron already plans to impose tens of billions in austerity measures. Financing the military rearmament he is planning would entail vicious social attacks against the working class.

As Washington spends $1 trillion on upgrading its nuclear arsenal, and German media discuss how Berlin could get its own nuclear bomb, Macron also insisted on reinforcing French nuclear weapons. “Our strategic deterrent is a critical element of our independence and our strategic autonomy for decision and action,” he said. “We cannot allow it to be weakened.”

Macron indicated a large number of potential targets of military action, both in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. “We cannot stay out of the game,” he said about Syria, where he called for the destruction of the Islamic State (IS) militia. He also raised Russia, declaring that “only firmness and unity among European countries will allow us to maintain the open dialog with Russia that is necessary.”

One of the most important targets of Macron's military build-up would be the French population itself, and above all the working class. He proposed to create “a center of planning and operations dedicated to internal operations,” connecting different ministries (including defense, the interior, and foreign affairs) involved in military operations inside France, and a pooling of data of France's different intelligence services.

This would supplement the existing state of emergency imposed by the PS, which it has already seized upon as a pretext to justify brutal repression of mass protests of youth and workers last year, against the PS' socially regressive labor law. European Union (EU) strategists do not hesitate to cite the repression of the class struggle as the central goal of their interior military planning.

In 2014, reviewing a book published by the EU Institute for Security Studies titled “Perspectives for European Defense 2020,” German radio Deutschlandfunk wrote that, “Within the framework of the joint foreign and security policy, the responsibilities of the police and armed forces are increasingly being merged, and the capacities to tackle social protest built up. … [U]nder article 222 of the Lisbon Treaty, a legal basis has been created for the deployment of military and paramilitary units within EU states in crisis.”

One of the authors of the book, Professor Tomas Ries, wrote that the main menace to European security was the “conflict of unequal socio-economic classes in world society.”

Macron's proposals testify to the bankruptcy of capitalism on a global scale. In one country after another, the financial aristocracy is concluding that it needs more cannon fodder to profit from the massive plundering that it foresees would emerge from wars that would involve millions or tens of millions of soldiers at the European level. After the announcement of the massive re-militarization of Germany in 2014, Washington also announced a 10 percent increase of its gargantuan military budget after the election of Donald Trump.

By carrying out the military escalation proposed by Macron, Paris would itself become a driving force in the downward spiral leading, as in 1914 or 1939, towards world war. If France begins to prepare a major military mobilization of its population, this will only step up pressure on other countries in Europe and beyond to do the same.

The draft and the arms race Macron is calling for are not simply the product of NATO's massive troop deployments along Russia's western borders under Obama and Hollande, who admitted in 2015 that there was a danger of “total war” between NATO and Russia.

Relations between the major powers are the most unstable than they have been since World War II. Germany, which Macron wants to make France's major ally, is being threatened with trade war by Trump, who is also threatening North Korea and so implicitly its neighbor, China, with war.

No one asked Macron how many millions or billions of people would die in the wars between the world's major nuclear powers into which Paris is preparing to send France's youth. How would the death rates suffered by these youth compare with those suffered by the European generations that fought and died at Verdun during World War I, or Stalingrad during World War II?

Macron's statement also underscores the dead end of the French presidential election, in which the population is faced with the choice between neo-fascist candidate Marine Le Pen and a series of reactionary Gaullist or PS-linked candidates like Macron. This choice is no choice at all. France under Macron—constantly ready for war, and monitored by a dense network of cops, special forces, spies, and stool pigeons—would be all but indistinguishable from the standpoint of broad masses of workers from a neo-fascist state run by Le Pen.

Afghanistan and the Attempted Exhumation of the QCG

Rajeshwari Krishnamurthy

On 17 February 2017, the office of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, citing mechanisms devised during the meetings of the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG), demanded that Pakistan take "practical measures and initiate effective counter-terrorism efforts against all those terrorist groups which operate in Pakistan and pose a threat to security and stability of Afghanistan."

Pakistan – which had witnessed a terror attack by the Islamic State (IS) earlier that week – responded positively, at least in rhetoric. Whether the response is followed up with sustained concrete action remains to be seen. Nonetheless, the timing of Afghanistan's invocation of the QCG narrative is important. Could it possibly provide a hint about the new US administration's potential Afghanistan strategy? Perhaps.

Significance and Timing

The QCG – comprising the US, Afghanistan, Pakistan and China – had been instituted to bring the Afghan Taliban to the negotiation table with an objective of achieving reconciliation between Kabul and the Taliban. However, the Group – which did not find much success – was considered a failure and a lost cause by many, especially after President Ghani, following a massive attack in Kabul, stated in April 2016 that Afghanistan no longer expected Pakistan to bring the Afghan Taliban to the negotiating table.

Meanwhile, Russia began undertaking consultations regarding the Afghan issue with China and Pakistan in a trilateral meeting format. The February 2017 six-party talks in Moscow - where representatives from Afghanistan, Russia, India, Iran, China and Pakistan were in attendance - was the subsequent phase of these consultations. The US was excluded from this Russia-led meeting, much like Moscow was from the Washington-led QCG. It is conceivable that the US viewed this development as unfavourable, particularly as it came at a time when the new administration in Washington was still in the process of formulating its Afghanistan strategy.

In November 2016, Kabul signed a peace deal with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the chief of the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (HIG). In February 2017, his name was removed from the UN sanctions list. While many have voiced concerns regarding the terms of the deal, Russia supported this development, as did several other countries including China and the US, viewing the deal as the first step towards a peace deal between Kabul and other terrorist groups, such as the Afghan Taliban.

China too has sought to bring relevance back to the QCG (for similar but not the same reasons). On 5 February, days after China had hosted a meeting with the Qatar-based Taliban leaders, China's Special Envoy on Afghan Affairs, Deng Xijun, met Ghani in Kabul and said Beijing had "coaxed Taliban into negotiations, urging Pakistan to revive quadrilateral dialogues." China seems to prefer a platform in which it can play a greater role – something the six-party talks does not offer – and therefore seeks to work with the US via the QCG. However, that does not automatically mean that Beijing – which has had contacts with the Taliban for years – would want to substantially expand its role or presence inside Afghanistan in the process, at least in the immediate future. Beijing would likely want to avoid getting involved in Afghanistan militarily. It might therefore be useful to also assess whether the China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) will or are able to align their actions based on common objectives.

Timing

Kabul's invocation of the "mechanisms devised during" the QCG meetings came two days after Moscow hosted the first six-party talks on security in Afghanistan and its neighbourhood. When the office of the president issued the 17 February statement, President Ghani was away attending the Munich Security Conference. His 18 February speech at the conference did not contain any reference to the QCG, but he said that "...this is not a civil war, it is a drug war, it is a terrorist war, and it is also a state-to-state undeclared war." The timing of invoking the QCG thus seems to indicate that it was perhaps not an action that had been in the works; and even if it was, it was probably done with short notice, possibly on the US' 'encouragement'.

It seems that the US now seeks to revive the relevance of the QCG to counter-balance Russia's regional initiatives with an objective to remain in the 'lead' on the Afghan issue – and thereby, in South Asia. The attempted exhumation of the QCG could be viewed in connection to this. Nonetheless, the US appears to be keeping its options for the time being (at least till the White House and the Pentagon come to a consensus on Washington’s Afghanistan policy).

Looking Ahead

However, for now, the QCG cannot be considered entirely exhumed. While the fates and efficacies of these multiple regional multi-lateral initiatives remain to be seen, it appears that at present the US might want to remain in Afghanistan for some time to come. Overall, reconciliation might become a recurring theme throughout 2017, at least in rhetoric. Whether the objectives are achieved and in that manner, is another matter entirely. Meanwhile, one could expect restlessness in Islamabad at every instance Kabul interacts with Moscow, because Pakistan too seems to prefer the US and not Russia to 'take the lead'.

Re-building Sri Lanka: An Island at a Crossroads

Asanga Abeyagoonasekera

In 1908, MK Gandhi said, the “English have not taken India, we have given it to them.” This expression is applicable to Sri Lanka as well when one observes how some elites handed the island nation over to Britain in the optimism of a better rule. Before the Indian subcontinent won back its independence, Britain ruled the region with the support of fewer than 100,000 troops and managed to control 400 million people via draconian policies and supporting local allies who worked to secure the British interests. Irrespective of the upper hand they enjoyed due to advanced military technology, this was possible largely due to their capacity to divide the targeted populations and co-opt locals into becoming British allies. This “divide and rule strategy” was employed in Sri Lanka too; and the communal discrimination and differences between different ethnic groups fuelled by the colonial British rulers at that time continues to overshadow the Sri Lankan nation even today. 

Sri Lankan President Mathripala Sirisena's dissolution of the gazette notification issued by the British rulers - that had declared 82 rebels as traitors during the 1818 rebellion - is remarkable. Sri Lankans who had fought in the rebellion had been assassinated in cruel ways and some were exiled and imprisoned outside the country. Several decades on, a Sri Lankan president was bold enough to remember the country's national heroes who had sacrificed their lives for an independent Sri Lanka. Many countries still remember the gross human rights violations and plunder of national wealth during the British colonial period, and till date, resultant scars run deep in the post-colonial societies.

In another positive development, President Sirisena’s Asia-centric balanced foreign policy has delivered results, such as winning support and trust from several world leaders. The levels of external pressure witnessed during the past are not visible and have drastically reduced owing to issues of concern being addressed with commitments to rectify the situation. At the UNHRC, the Sri Lankan foreign minister assured that “the Constitution drafting process is for us both central and essential not only for democratisation, but also for ensuring non-recurrence of conflict...The Parliamentary process and referendum are for us, imperative.” The UN had criticised the Sri Lankan mechanism as “worryingly slow,” accusing the latter's leadership of neglecting the widespread torture and abuse that are still a reality in the country.

In Sri Lanka, different members of the government have voiced different opinions on the constitutional process. Sending mixed signals has been a practice that has not helped much. Therefore, a consensus has to be reached on the constitutional process and if the government proposes to go for a referendum. 

Neville Ladduwahetty, in his recent article, 'The referendum trap', clearly explains that it is also vital to consider how "unintended consequences would be exploited by the Tamil leadership both nationally and internationally to make claims for the right of self-determination followed by other claims that go far beyond what was intended through Constitutional Reforms," and argues that this "is the end game the Tamil leadership is striving for by pushing for a referendum.” What if the referendum has dual outcomes such as a huge loss in the South and a victory in the North? It will clearly send a message of further division in the polity. Who would take the advantage of this situation?

President Sirisena's stance regarding the fresh UNHRC appeal for a hybrid court has been clear in that he will not allow foreign judges into the process and has explained that the local judicial process is dependable and capable. At a recent event, President Sirisena reiterated his position and said “I am not going to allow non-governmental organizations to dictate how to run my government. I will not listen to their calls to prosecute my troops.” Having foreign judges in Sri Lanka will definitely aggravate political tensions.

There are three essential elements that can be easily introduced to bring credibility and results to the local reconciliation process. First, the government could consider international engagement such as of Interpeace, a reputed body that could be used to provide technical assistance for the reconciliation process with terms of reference from the government. In January 2016, the Director General of Sri Lanka's Reconciliation taskforce met the Director General of Interpeace. However, unfortunately, there has been no forward movement since then. Second, certain recommendations of the eight national reconciliation conferences conducted during 2011-2015 could be implemented. Civil society leaders had contributed significant recommendations vis-a-vis these reports. Third, top priority must be given to Tamil Nadu-Sri Lanka relations and Sri Lankan diaspora re-engagement strategies. 

There is much to be done to heal the hearts and minds in the deeply divided Sri Lankan community. It is hoped that one of the options succeeds in becoming a lasting policy. As a wise Wazir (minister) in 9th century Baghdad had said, “The basis of government is jugglery. If it works, and lasts, it becomes policy.”

Brexit, Nationalism and the Damage Done

Patrick Cockburn

Brexit is English nationalism made flesh, but the English underrate its destructive potential as a form of communal identity. Concepts like “nationalism” and “self-determination” have traditionally been seen as something that happens to foreigners. An English failing today is an inability to recognise the egocentricity implicit in such nationalism and the extent to which it alienates and invites confrontation with other nations in the British Isles and beyond.

A classic example of this blindness to the consequences of this new type of nationalism came this week when Theresa May denounced Nicola Sturgeon for “playing politics with the future of our country” in demanding a second referendum on Scottish independence. This immediately begs the question about the nature and location of this “country” to which such uncritical loyalty is due. If the state in question is the UK, then why do the advocates of Brexit ignore the opposition – and take for granted the compliance – of Scotland and Northern Ireland in leaving the EU?

It is worth recalling the degree to which British politics was divided and poisoned by fierce disputes over Irish independence for the whole of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, right up to the moment that Ireland achieved self-determination in 1921. What used to be called “the Irish Question” has now been reborn as an all-consuming issue by “the Scottish Question” and, whatever the timing and outcome of a second Scottish referendum, it is not going to go away. Supposing that Theresa May really believes, as her patronising rejection of another poll in Scotland might suggest, that “the Scottish Question” can be indefinitely delayed, then she will be joining a long dismal list of British leaders down the centuries who made the same mistake about Ireland.

English politicians have frequently had a tin ear when it comes to other people’s nationalism, imagining that it can be satisfied by material concessions or rebutted by arguments about independence inflicting unacceptable economic damage. English people often have an equally muddled or myopic vision of their own nationalism, using the terms “English” and “British” as if they were synonymous or marked a distinction of no great account. They therefore do not see how their nationalism has changed significantly in the last few years and is making the continuation of the UK less and less likely. The transformation is also obscured because the ingredients of nationalist identity are in any case hazy since a successful nationalist movement becomes the vehicle for all sorts of grievances and protests.

British nationalism was in the past more fluid than Irish or continental nationalism because it did not face such intense pressures. It needed to be adaptable and inclusive enough to meet the needs of empire and a post-imperial world. It was primarily territorial within the island of Britain, rather than ethnic, religious or linguistic, and was so successful and self-confident that it did not closely define exactly what made somebody British. Strident assertions by Ulster Protestants about their “Britishness” sounded foreign and rather embarrassing to people in the rest of the UK.

The new English nationalism that surfaced so strongly during the Brexit campaign is, ironically, much closer to continental traditions of nationalism. It is much more ethnically and culturally exclusive than the English/British tradition, which developed when British politics stabilised after prolonged turmoil and civil war at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

What makes the new English nationalism so dangerous post-Brexit is that it is deeply felt but incoherent and comes with little self-knowledge. It is more dangerous than the elephant in the room, whose presence nobody will acknowledge, because in this case the elephant is scarcely aware of its own bulk and impact upon others. As a system of beliefs the new nationalism is much more appropriate to an English nation state than to a more diverse United Kingdom. Yet there is genuine bafflement among English people when the Scots apply the same arguments as Brexiters used to justify leaving the EU to justify Scottish independence. It takes a good deal of cheek for Theresa May, as she initiates Britain’s withdrawal from the EU – the consequences of which even its protagonists admit nobody knows – to accuse Nicola Sturgeon of setting “Scotland on a course for more uncertainty and division, creating huge uncertainty.”

It should be quickly said that there is nothing wrong with there being an English nation state. The left tends to denigrate or suspect nationalism as a mask for racism or, at best, a diversion from more important social and political issues. It can be both, but nationalism has also been the essential glue for progressive and liberal movements since the American War of Independence. If it has fallen into the hands of the xenophobic right in England and the US in recent years, that is the fault of those who saw it as illegitimate, obsolete and irrelevant in a globalising world.

Because the new nationalism sees itself in a vague way as seeking to return to a mythical England, which seems to have had its terminal date in about 1960, it is not good at seeing that its project is new and different from what went before. The old British state, as it developed from the end of the seventeenth century, was known – and often detested by other states – for its acute sense of its own interests. The new English nation state stretching from the Channel to the Tweed seems to have little idea of its own strengths and weaknesses and will be much less capable of charting an independent course in the world, whatever its pretensions “to be taking back control”.

One of the curiosities of the Brexit referendum was that, while the Leaves frequently beat the patriotic drum and spoke of the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 and the Battle of Britain in 1940, they showed little interest in or knowledge of history. Before the eighteenth century, English governments spent much of their energies and resources fighting the Scots, Irish and Welsh. In the years before Agincourt, Henry V learned to be a soldier suppressing Welsh uprisings. Scottish and Irish rebellions played a central role in precipitating and determining the outcome of the English Civil War. An end to this disunity through repression or conciliation launched Britain as a great power. A return to instability in relations between the nations living in the British Isles will have the opposite effect.

Britain is already weaker as a state than it was two years ago because its government is wholly preoccupied with Brexit and the prospect of Scottish secession from the UK. All other pressing problems facing the country must wait, possibly for decades, until these issues are dealt with. The break-up of Britain is not something that may or may not happen as the result of a second referendum, but is already upon us. The confrontation between English and Scottish nationalism is not going to moderate or evaporate. The one certainty is that “The Scottish Question” and Brexit have come together to destabilise Britain for years to come.

Death toll rises from Peru’s El Niño flooding

Cesar Uco 

The official death toll from the intense rain and flooding that has hit the Pacific coastal zone of Peru rose to 72 Sunday, with an estimated 115,000 homes destroyed and over 100 bridges washed out.

The natural disaster, caused by the “El Niño” phenomenon caused by a sudden rise in ocean temperatures, has exposed the inability of the Peruvian government to either prepare for or properly respond to increasingly frequent climatic catastrophes, leaving the poorer and rural Peruvians to their fate.

From Tumbes on the border with Ecuador to Arequipa, the largest city in southern Peru, incessant heavy, tropical rain returned this week to flood cities and destroy tens of thousands of arable hectares.

According to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, in addition to the death toll, at least 72 people were injured, with 11 missing and police searching for survivors in many areas, including villages that had been cut off by rising waters. The Civil Defense Institute (Indeci) stated that more than half a million people have been affected by the flooding, while Peru’s roads have been cut off by avalanches resulting from the excessive accumulation of water in the Andes.

Due to the rapidly rising water, beginning on Wednesday March 15, the Rímac and Huaycoloro rivers flooded as they passed through the capital city of Peru, Lima. Luis Castañeda, mayor of Lima Metropolitana, ordered the closure of all schools and cut off the drinking water supply in 27 districts of the city beginning on Thursday. Tens of thousands of Limeños joined long lines at the markets to stock up on food, especially bottled water, anticipating further flooding and avalanches that could leave them isolated for several days.

Due to the pandemonium created by the threat of floods and avalanches, public transportation was extended in Lima until the early hours of the morning. However, there were places in the city that buses could not access.

Castañeda asked the President of Peru, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (PPK), to declare a state of emergency and allow “a strong recovery of infrastructure because that means sources of work,” according to El Comercio. He added: “I hope the government gives us an emergency law so that all provinces and districts can respond quickly to this aggression of nature.”

According to Castañeda, the president declined his request, and instead answered by asking him to close the portion of the Pan-American Highway that goes around the city of Lima, connecting the north with the south of the country, but the mayor refused to do.

PPK asked the public to have faith in facing what he called an unexpected “Biblical Flood” that occurs every “50 years.” The rains, added the head of state, “are causing flooding, roadblocks, bridge collapses and many bad things.” He said the problem was not a shortage of money, but a mismanagement of resources.

Prime Minister Fernando Zavala told La República that 800 million nuevos soles (US$ 245 million) had been allocated to deal with the damage in the north, the country’s most affected area.

Peru’s north coast, especially the department of Piura, has been the hardest hit. The sewers of the city of the same name were not good enough to filter the waters. The population defended itself by piling up sacks of sand. Gorges turned into deadly avalanches of mud, logs and stones.

During the week, the flood reached the Plaza de Armas in the center of the city of Piura. According to El Comercio, the water “leaked through several floodgates” until reaching the Plaza de Armas, flooding streets, homes and commercial premises.

According to COER (Regional Emergency Operations Center) in Piura, the rains and overflows of the Piura and Chira rivers left 191,930 affected. Education will be disrupted for a long time as the floods have left 177 schools unusable.

The rivers Tumbes and Zarumilla overflowed into the city of Tumbes. So far 1,500 hectares of rice and 1,650 of organic bananas, plus 120 of fruit trees have been inundated by the rains.

COER Tumbes reports that 400 meters of irrigation canals have disappeared. The total number of affected in the city is reported at 13,000. Two people have died: one child drowned in the river Tumbes and one adult in Papayal. Access routes have been interrupted.

In Cajamarca, the main access route to the coast was under the water of the Jequetepeque river.

In the department of La Libertad, the historic center of the city of Trujillo was flooded, destroying some of the most beautiful cultural heritage of Peru, including three mansions, jewels of the 19th Century architecture.

In the surroundings of Lima, avalanches in Chosica, Punta Negra and the Chilca river have left buildings destroyed and people homeless. Three gorges were flooded, and the waters destroyed a children’s shelter, damaged crops and blockaded the South Pan-American Highway.

The emergency situation caused by the El Niño phenomenon has led politicians to make hollow speeches on the need to invest in infrastructure.

The reality is that much of the death and destruction could have been mitigated if the governments that have ruled Peru over the past decades had placed any priority on investments in material and social infrastructure. Instead, the entire concentration has been on attracting billions of dollars in foreign capital dedicated to mining for export dollars, which go into the pockets of a tiny layer of Peruvian millionaires and their foreign counterparts.

According to data from the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM), Peru has a portfolio of 47 mining projects worth approximately US$47 billion. Compared to this figure, the amount that Prime Minister Zavala released to rebuild the northern region—US $246 million—amounts to 0.52 percent or 2.25 percent of the approved mining projects.

Poverty in Germany reaches new record high

Elisabeth Zimmermann 

The welfare organisation Paritätische Wohlfahrtsverband presented its latest report on poverty in Germany at the beginning of March. According to this study, poverty in Germany reached a new record high in 2015, at 15.7 percent, with 12.9 million people live in poverty.

The figures, presented by Paritätische Wohlfahrtsverband and nine other organisations, show a sharp rise in poverty rates in several regions. At the same time, the report makes clear that the rate at which poverty is rising is accelerating.

Poverty rose most of all in Berlin, from 20 to 22.4 percent compared to the previous year. The highest rate, 24.8 percent, is in Bremen, where almost one in four people is poor. Overall, the percentage of the population living in poverty has increased in 11 of the 16 states compared to the previous year. In all of the states of eastern Germany, poverty rates are either slightly under or over 20 percent.

For the first time, the association presented comparisons over a 10-year period for poverty rates in the states, certain regions and cities, according to figures from the Federal Agency for Statistics. Poverty rose most rapidly in North Rhine-Westphalia, from 14.4 percent in 2005 to 17.5 percent in 2015.

In the Ruhr region, poverty rose during this period by 24.7 percent, from 16.2 percent in 2005 to 20.2 percent in 2015. The cities with the highest percentage increase in poverty are also in the Ruhr region. In Dortmund, poverty rose from 18.6 percent in 2005 to 25.7 percent in 2015; in Duisburg from 17 to 26.6 percent; and even in the state’s capital Düsseldorf, where substantial wealth and riches are concentrated, it rose from 13.8 to 18.3 percent.

The authors labelled Berlin and the Ruhr region as “poverty problem areas for policy in Germany.”

Those most affected by poverty are the unemployed with 59 percent, single parents and their children at a rate of 43.8 percent, foreigners at a rate of 33.7 percent and people who have an immigration background at 27.7 percent. These high rates are followed by families with three or more children, who have a poverty rate of 25.2 percent.

Old-age poverty also rose drastically. Poverty among retirees rose by 49 percent, from 10.7 percent in 2005 to 15.9 percent in 2015. These numbers will further increase due to the creation of a massive low-wage sector and the spread of insecure jobs. The impact of the rise in the retirement age to 67 and the cutting of pensions can also be seen here.

The report also describes the impact of poverty on the life expectancy of people. Among men with an income of less than 60 percent of the median income, life expectancy is 70.1 years. This is more than 10 years less than among men with an income of more than 150 percent of the median, whose life expectancy is 80.9 years. Among women, the corresponding difference is 76.9 to 85.3 years.

After the report was presented, the usual cynical debate about the definition of poverty was initiated. Andrea Nahles (Social Democratic Party, SPD), who as federal labour minister bears considerable responsibility for the rise in poverty, spoke out immediately, stating that the focus on the at-risk poverty rate was “reductionist.” Poverty could not be summarised by a number, she said.

Representatives of the German Association of Cities and Municipalities were concerned that students, who would later be among the elite in terms of achievement, were also included in the study. Georg Kremer, general secretary of the Caritas charity, criticised the unclear division between relative and absolute poverty in the report.

According to his opinion, someone forced to live on less than 60 percent of the median income was not automatically poor.

The Paritätische Wohlfahrtsverband based its calculation on a European Union provision. According to this, researchers count all people in a household whose income is less than 60 percent of the median income of all households. The household’s entire net income is used. This calculation puts the poverty limit for single people at €942 (US$1,012), while for a family with two small children it is €1,978 (US$2,125) per month.

The author of the report dealt with the criticism when it was presented. Poverty could not be reduced to impoverishment and commenced “when people can no longer participate” in a sports club or cultural event, or afford a trip to the cinema.

He referred to the fact that economic development and growth had not brought about a reduction of poverty for a long time. Too many people worked part-time or had mini-jobs and could barely make ends meet.

The inclusion of hundreds of thousands of students in the poverty report is hardly surprising. In the first place, a large section of students, if they receive no support from their parents, are in fact poor. Secondly, many students do not obtain a good-paying job after graduation appropriate to their level of qualification. Many have to put up with short-term contracts and low-paid jobs for years.

Hundreds of thousands of students, refugees, people with care needs and people with disabilities do not appear in the statistics because they do not have their own household. Also not included are 335,000 homeless people.

The poverty report was therefore “not an artificial dramatization, it underestimates rather than overestimates the risk of poverty,” noted Schneider. He supplied substantial material confirming the extent of social inequality in Germany and giving an idea of the social tensions that are developing.

Political responsibility for the dramatic rise of poverty in Germany is born by the SPD-Green government led by Gerhard Schröder and Joschka Fischer (1998-2005). The Agenda 2010 and Hartz IV welfare reforms it implemented resulted in the formation of a huge low-wage sector and the creation of insecure jobs. This policy was part of a major redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top, which took place internationally and continues to take place.

A comment by the Süddeutsche Zeitung from March 10 states: “Income from capital and pay for managers have increased by 30 percent since the turn of the millennium, four times faster than wages.” The official unemployment figures could be explained as a result of “stagnating incomes, part-time jobs and short-term contracts.”

The official unemployment figures cover up the true extent of unemployment. If the unemployed currently in work programmes are included, those incapable of work due to illness and people who work part-time but are looking for a full-time job, the number of unemployed amounts to 3.7 million, a million more than the official number.

Increasing prices for rent, energy and basic foodstuffs affect poor people particularly harshly. There are repeated reports of children going to school without breakfast, of parents who skip meals at the end of the month so as to be able to feed their children and of elderly people who must choose between a warm apartment and a sufficient quantity of food.

That 1.5 million people regularly obtain food from around 2,000 food banks provides a clear indicator of how widespread poverty is in Germany.

At the same time as the latest poverty report was presented, it was announced that 330,000 households had their electricity cut off last year. This was frequently the case for Hartz IV claimants. Their electricity was cut off because they could no longer pay their bills.

The billions currently being spent by the government to rearm and strengthen the military to play a leading role around the globe can only be secured through more cuts to social spending.

The harshness with which the government is determined to take on the working class, including its poorest and most vulnerable sections, is shown by its ruthless treatment of refugees, where the main goals are defence, deportation and deterrence, and the growing number of sanctions against Hartz IV claimants imposed by job centres last year. According to a report by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, in 2016 there was “an average of 134,390 people were affected by benefit cuts.” That is 3,000 more than in the previous year.

The responsibility for such bullying and arbitrary measures lies with Labour and Social Affairs Minister Andrea Nahles (SPD). It is utterly worthless, as the Paritätische Wohlfahrtsverband does, to appeal to her and the federal government for a fairer distribution of wealth in Germany and the elimination of poverty in the country. The current and future governments, regardless of their composition, will do the exact opposite.