Going Soft on Corporate Crime a Bipartisan Affair

Russell Mokhiber

Donald Trump is not a fan of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), the law that says it’s illegal for any person — corporate or human — to bribe overseas.

Trump has called the FCPA “a horrible law” and has said that the law “puts us at a huge disadvantage.”

And you could argue that the Trump Justice Department’s first two FCPA enforcement cases reflect Trump’s point of view.

Both were declinations — despite the fact that the companies disclosed illegal overseas payments and agreed to disgorge illegally gained proceeds.

Some are using the cases to ask the question — is Trump soft on corporate crime?

As the lawyers say, let’s stipulate for the record that he is.

But let’s also remember that going soft on corporate crime was perfected by the Democrats.

The Obama Justice Department, for example, regularly used declinations — five in Obama’s last year in office — and non prosecution agreements — 22 over the eight years of his administration — to settle corporate FCPA matters.

And since September 2015, when the Obama administration put out the Yates memo calling for more prosecutions of individual executives, there have been 20 FCPA corporate prosecution agreements — yet not one individual has been charged in connection with those cases.

There are those in the get tough on corporate crime camp — like David Uhlmann, former head of the Environmental Crimes Section at the Justice Department and now a University of Michigan Law professor — who argue that if a corporation commits a serious crime, then a corporation should be convicted.

We’re talking guilt — as in guilty pleas.

For environmental crimes, that has been the practice.

Over the past fifteen years, 93 percent of major corporate criminal environmental cases ended with public companies pleading guilty to their crimes.

Same for antitrust corporate crimes.

Over the past fifteen years, 74 percent of major corporate criminal antitrust cases ended with public companies pleading guilty to their crimes.

But only 29 percent of corporate criminal FCPA cases were settled with guilty pleas.

And only 8 percent of securities fraud cases have been settled with guilty pleas.

Why?

You might ask — maybe these corporations weren’t guilty?

Not likely, because in almost every one of these cases — no matter the type of soft settlement — deferred prosecution, non prosecution, declination — the company admits to illegal wrongdoing.

The companies admit to their criminal wrongdoing in documents that are now publically available on a new web site — the Corporate Prosecution Registry — created by University of Virginia Law School Professor Brandon Garrett.

And what do we learn from this comprehensive corporate crime database?

That there is a two tier system of corporate criminal justice — one for the smaller, politically less well connected companies — which generally are forced to plead guilty to their crimes — and one for large, politically well connected public companies — which generally enter into softer alternative resolutions — declinations, non prosecution agreements and deferred prosecution agreements.

Or if they are forced to plead guilty, it’s not the parent forced to plead guilty but some unit that won’t be adversely affected by any debarment or other collateral sanction that might follow.

The dominant corporate narrative —  driven by the corporate crime defense law firms — is that big public companies — especially banks and financial institutions — even if they commit the crimes, can’t withstand the brunt force trauma of a guilty plea.

They say — the company will be driven out of business. Innocent shareholders will lose money and innocent workers lose their jobs. A corporate guilty plea is the equivalent of the corporate death penalty.

Not true.

Top corporate crime prosecutors and defense attorneys — they’re interchangeable and regularly swap places via the revolving door — are expert at crafting guilty pleas that avoid these consequences.

That’s why when prosecutors want to, they can get guilty pleas — even for big banks — who for years dodged any personal or corporate criminal liability for causing the 2008 financial collapse.

Burned by that public criticism, the Obama Justice Department in May 2015, thought it was necessary to throw the public a bone.

And they did just that by forcing Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, The Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS and Barclays to plead guilty to felonies in connection with a conspiracy to fix foreign exchange markets.

Why doesn’t the Justice Department demand felony guilty pleas from parents in more big corporate crime cases?

Power and money. The big companies don’t want to plead guilty even when they are guilty. They have corporate reputations to protect. And they have the power and money to hire the best corporate criminal defense law firms to get the job done.

The lawyers’ marching orders?

For the corporate parent, anything but a guilty plea.

Move down the corporate crime ladder from guilty plea to deferred prosecution to non prosecution to declination.

In the parallel Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) case, move down the ladder from admission to no admission with a neither admit nor deny consent decree.

In a World Bank proceeding, move down the ladder from a debarment to a reprimand or a conditional non-debarment agreement.

Some say that it was Obama’s slippery slide down the corporate crime ladder — he hit bottom with not one executive or bank criminally charged for the 2008 financial meltdown — that fueled the populist revolt that helped Trump take the White House.

We don’t want to become Brazil, a country battered by wave after wave of corporate crime and corruption.

It’s time to restore a modicum of corporate criminal justice that will deliver tangible deterrence.

Let’s start by moving back up the ladder of corporate justice.

If a company commits a felony, it should plead guilty to a felony.

No more deferrals, non prosecutions and declinations in major corporate crime cases.

Brutality of Israeli Regime on Full Display in Video

Richard Hardigan 

The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) published a shocking new video (see longer version here) on Sunday, July 30. ISM is an organization of activists, both international and Palestinian, devoted to standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people against the Israeli occupation. The video, filmed in Hebron in the West Bank, was taken on Saturday during a demonstration of solidarity with the protestors at Al-Aqsa mosque.

In the video, there are scenes of soldiers kicking a prone teenager, appearing to shoot the driver of a passing car, and slamming a small child onto the ground before attempting to arrest him.

“There is more than is shown in the video,” a British ISMer told me. “The army seemed out of control at times, vandalizing shops, beating children and assaulting journalists.”

“The soldiers broke into and trashed a small shop, left a note in Hebrew saying ‘Israel lives,’ followed by an expletive,” said a Danish activist.

“The scary thing is that the presence of internationals usually has a moderating effect on the army. The IDF is very conscious about its image. What would they have done had we not been there?” the British activist wondered. “I don’t even want to think about it.”

Venezuela on the Cuban Road

Manuel E. Yepe

“Venezuela may be marching along the Cuban road, according to congressmen” is the title given by NBC-News to Suzanne Gamboa’s article dated Washington D.C. On July 19, 2017, citing words from New Jersey Democratic senator Bob Menendez, a vehement promoter of the genocidal blockade imposed by the United States against Cuba for more than half a century.

“Castro has condemned his own people to poverty, hunger and immense suffering, while accumulating wealth and power,” this corrupt politician declared, without blushing. He’s had a criminal trial for corruption pending since 2015 that has seriously disturbed his political career in U.S. The trial against Menéndez is scheduled for the period in which the election process will take place that will elect his replacement in a Senate seat the Democratic party does not want to lose. This has led Menéndez to conceal, as far as possible, his legal situation.

Many of the members of the US Congress who are now focusing their attention on the situation in Venezuela are of Cuban descent. It is not that they were born on the island but that they were formed in the heat of hatred for the island’s national independence and socialism. The extreme right of the United States and the oligarchies across the continent have played a key role in this struggle. Many are from Florida, Texas and New York, where the largest population of Venezuelan immigrants can be found.

Another American politician who has a leading role in the development of the current US right-wing campaign against Venezuela because of it’s winning back positions won in recent decades by the continent’s anti-imperialist left. That is Marco Rubio, a Republican senator from Florida.

Rubio played a significant role in the maneuver of the Venezuelan pro-imperialist opposition –which ended in failure two weeks ago– to call on Venezuelans to participate in an illegal “plebiscite”, which –except in the extremely pro-imperialist milieus– was totally obscured by the effort by the Venezuelan government which confirmed broad popular support for the process of choosing the Constituent Assembly on July 30.

Marco Rubio gained notoriety for his participation in the show recently starring President Trump in Miami to announce the implementation of new US government provisions against Cuba.

He gave those of Cuban for several years to take financially approve the U.S. establishment’s multi-million dollar campaign of hatred against Cuba. With this, he moved up in the ranks of his party and gained strong economic support until arriving at the first ranks of national policy like the “Cuban-American of extreme right”. He was among the possible Republican candidates for the presidency and lost in a hard race against the current president, Donald Trump.

Rubio had a serious setback when, at a certain moment in the representation of a false native identity, it was discovered that not only had he not been born in Cuba, but that he had not even been in his alleged country of origin.

Marco Rubio was born in Miami, Florida, in May 1971, when the Cuban revolution had been in power for more than a decade. His parents were Cuban immigrants who left Cuba in 1956, under the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, and were naturalized as US citizens in 1975.

From a Catholic family, Rubio made an abrupt switch of faith. After his first Catholic communion in 1984, and his marriage, also Catholic, he became a Mormon, soon afterwards became a Catholic again and later he went to the Baptist church until he returned to Catholicism.

Rubio is in the conservative wing of the Republican Party. In 2010, he won a position in the United States Senate as a favorite candidate of the Tea Party movement, a political formation that is located to the right of the political spectrum, but is not formally linked to the Republican party.

His candidacy for the Senate has been tarnished by unfinished investigations into embezzlement of Republican party funds.

He competed for the Republican presidential nomination during the 2016 primaries, until he finally decided to withdraw from the race because of his defeat by politician and tycoon Donald Trump in Florida, the state from which he is a senator.

It is quite logical that in the struggles for its definitive independence there are many similarities between the current political processes of Venezuela and Cuba, as well as between the independence aspirations of all the Latin American countries that have in common the objective of liberating themselves from the condition of semicolonies of the United States.

Al-Qaeda, A CIA by-product, Is Antithetical to Kashmiri Struggle

BASHARAT SHAMEEM

Regarding the newly found Al-Qaeda and Daesh fantasy of some “charged up” Kashmiris, it is important for Kashmiris to know that aligning with groups like these is to essentially do what their oppressors have been wanting them to do rather failingly–to deny and malign the primacy of their historical struggle and sacrifices which date back to several centuries. These groups are the illegal products and binaries of the dirty world of US imperialism whose aim is to maintain its hegemony and to crush all its opponents. It is for those misled youth to think that the authenticity of Kashmir’s political struggle needs to be maintained. For all those stirred up youth who fantasize Al-Qaeda and Daesh, this article is a small intro on the genesis of Al-Qaeda which must lay bare certain delusions that the extremist propaganda proliferates in the young minds.

In 1979, when USSR had done the mistake of invading Afghanistan, a person named Zbigniew Brzezinski, the then US National Security Advisor and a very astute political scientist, is said to have conceived the plan of American proxies going to hit USSR and defeat the Communist bloc by turning Afghanistan into USSR’s “Vietnam”. Brezinzski is sometimes regarded as the Godfather of Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. He is reported to have told the US establishment then, “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War.” Zbigniew Brzezinski visited Afganistan in the same year and met with Osama Bin Laden, the pictures of which are still preserved. Brzezinski is reported to have conveyed to the mujahideen: “We know of your deep belief in God, and we are confident your struggle will succeed. That land over there is yours, you’ll go back to it one day because your fight will prevail, and you’ll have your homes and your mosques back again. Because your cause is right and God is on your side.” Imagine the ludicrousness of American imperial interests coinciding with sacred Jihadi goals; it is nothing but pure rubbish.

To hurt USSR, the CIA along with help from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, funded, organized, armed and trained radical recruits to fight the Soviet Army in a manufactured holy war in Afghanistan. In this way, the foundation of Al-Qaeda, was laid by CIA and its head was none else but one of the more trusted CIA operatives, Osama Bin Laden. Al-Qaeda was created to serve as a CIA proxy in Afghanistan and as such, it had got nothing to do with Islam as such. A former British Foreign secretary, Robin Cook has said: “Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.”

Many informed analysts, authors, journalists, secret agents, intelligence chiefs, and leaders have substantiated the claim that Al-Qaeda was funded, armed and trained by the CIA to fulfill the US imperialist objectives–the first of which was to destroy the Communist bloc and later on, when this goal was achieved, to create a binary enemy among Muslims which will allow the US to perpetuate and justify wars in the Muslim countries.It was the CIA which trained Al Qaeda in special terrorist operations for which it is now known. These include car bombs, assassinations, hijackings, kidnappings which are now dubbed as terrorist acts. Eminent US journalists and authors like Alex Jones and Webster Tarpley have expressed serious doubts over the official US narrative on 9/11 attacks. In his book, “9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA”, Tarpley alludes to it as another dirty operation done by rogue CIA elements in collusion with their manufactured proxies like Al-Qaeda so as to achieve the long term strategic goals in the world. Further, in an interview with Press TV, Tarpley, quoting various US defense sources, refers to Ayman Zawahiri, the so-called current Al-Qaeda chief, as a double agent of CIA and MI 6. In 2010, Washington Post carried a report in which it was revealed that it was CIA which had created several fake Osama videos in order to perpetuate its enterprise of lies and deception regarding Al-Qaeda.
It is no surprise that as the 1997 official US government security document titled “Project for the New American Century” revealed, the US will strike and invade any country at will at any time because the US has a God given right of destroying any power that challenges its hegemony in any way. Since much of US attention is focused on the oil resources of Middle East, it thinks that where it can, it will invade directly and where it cannot, it will use its satellite state Israel and also other well nurtured proxies like Al-Qaeda and ISIS. As Tariq Ali says, the role of such groups is also to create widespread destabilisation and destruction of progressive people and governments within the Islamic world. A case in study is Syria and much of the Middle East. What is intriguing is that despite being only some distance away from Israel, the ISIS hasn’t carried one attack against it and that too when it believes in the complete annihilation of the so-called “infidels”. But still, the ISIS goes and strikes deep into the heart of Europe.

There has indeed been a whole lot of analysis about the dirty linkages between CIA and the international terrorist organizations, but perhaps, the most startling revelation about Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda in the recent times has come from the former CIA/NSA officer Edward Snowden. In an interview with the Moscow Tribune in May 2016, Snowden reveals rather astonishingly:

“The so-called leader of Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, who was supposedly killed in Pakistan in 2011 by U.S. special forces, is still alive and well, living in the Bahamas, on the payroll of the CIA…I have documents showing that Bin Laden is still on the CIA’s payroll. He is still receiving more than $100,000 a month, which is being transferred through some front businesses and organizations, directly to his Nassau bank account. I am not certain where he is now, but in 2013, he was living quietly in his villa with five of his wives and many children… The CIA orchestrated the fake death of the former leader of Al-Qaeda who was one of the CIA’s most efficient operatives for a long time. What kind of message would it send their other operatives if they were to let the SEALs kill him? They organized his fake death with the collaboration of the Pakistani Secret Services, and he simply abandoned his cover. Since everyone believes he is dead, nobody’s looking for him, so it was pretty easy to disappear. Without the beard and the military jacket, nobody recognizes him.”

Edward Snowden further states that he will talk about the documents which prove Bin Laden is alive in his soon-to-be-released book. Even though Snowden’s claims have not been substantiated and confirmed by other sources, there are enough reasons to believe the dirty fiddlings of CIA in creating imaginary binaries in terrorist groups and individuals from time to time. The sad part is that disaffected and disenchanted youth (like Zakir Moosa, for instance)in the Muslim societies do fall prey to this dirty trap which is meant only to bring ruin to their own cultures and societies. The need is to delink the social and political struggles from these terrible imperialist traps from Morocco to Indonesia and Kashmir is no exception.

There is no need to get trapped into radicalism or the so called Caliphate glory even if a right wing frenzy is fast overtaking Indian polity and society alike. In these circumstances, maintaining political authenticity will make the Kashmir struggle morally more credible. On the contrary, efforts should be made to broaden its scope by making it more plural and comprehensive. That can be done by forming solidarity consensus with other struggling people in India and elsewhere. There is also a need to recalibrate the different social movements of different sections like peasants, workers and students within the broader political movement. While all the focus has been on politics, it is imperative to note that the effect of the Land Reforms of 1950s is now waning to a significant level and consequently, new challenges have erupted for the Kashmiri peasantry. The floods of 2014 have also ravaged them; they are now under a heavy burden of bank loans. The turmoil of the last two and a half decades has also given rise to a kleptocracy of its own in Kashmir, primarily because of a blind patronage to the loyalist elites by the Indian state. This has resulted in a large scale corruption and plunder of the state’s resources with simply no accountability at all. All this has come at the cost of the exploitation of the working class masses. The Daily Wage system/ Casual Labour system in vogue in the state is one of the most repressive. The plight of these labourers is terribly bad; they face severe circumstances while undertaking difficult jobs for a very meagre biological minimum. For instance, every week, a story comes about the death or serious injury to a PDD Daily wager. These labourers are exploited by almost every government department. Till this day, nobody has shown any serious concern towards their plight. Another serious issue is the gradual privatisation of the state’s education sector and a complete lack of attention towards the government sponsored education due to the paucity of funds. This is proving highly detrimental as the children of the disaffected populations are being deprived of the quality education. There is a total alienation among these social classes. Instead of falling into the trap of an illusionary enterprise of global fundamentalism, there is ample scope to calibrate and the energize the political struggle by incorporating these class based struggles to make it a truly mass movement aimed to deliver political and social emancipation in real and concrete terms.

Australia: Official figures continue to cloak jobs crisis

Terry Cook

Figures released last month by the Australia Bureau of Statistics (ABS) show that unemployment in June stood at 5.6 percent, up 0.1 percent on the previous month. While 62,000 full-time jobs were added over the month, this was largely offset by the loss of 48,000 part-time positions.

Even so, the outcome was immediately heralded by Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull as proof that his promise of “jobs and growth” made repeatedly during last year’s federal election campaign was “not just a slogan” but “an outcome.” Federal Employment Minister Michaelia Cash also seized on the result to claim the economy was creating about 27,000 full-time jobs a month. “That is a fantastic thing for Australian people,” she asserted.

However, a closer examination of the report shows there is little to celebrate for the hundreds of thousands of people engaged in the daily search to find a job, or those who are still forced to accept part-time or casual employment. Even on ABS official figures—which always cloak the real level of joblessness by counting anyone who worked as little as one hour a week as employed—there are currently some 730,000 people without work.

A more realistic assessment of the job situation is provided by the Roy Morgan Research Institute survey, which shows real unemployment in June was 8.9 percent (1.2 million people) while underemployment—people employed but looking for more hours—stood at 10.7 percent. That is, it showed that over 2.6 million people, or 19.6 percent of the country’s workforce, were either without a job or looking for more work.

For young people, the official (ABS) unemployment rate is far above the national level, standing at 13.1 percent in June, up from 12.7 percent the month before. In some regional areas, the rate is as high as 41 percent. Official youth underemployment stands at 18 percent, the highest level in 40 years.

While Cash waxed lyrically over the ABS’s estimation of full-time job creation over the last five months, this result in no way reverses the long-term trend to ever greater levels of casualisation. Full-time employment currently accounts for just 68 percent of the workforce, down from around 72 percent just 10 years ago. Moreover, Australia has the third highest proportion of part-time workers in the industrialised world.

At the same time, major employers across major sectors are continuing to push for greater casualisation of their workforces. Company demands for the lifting or weakening of restrictions on casual and contract hire now feature centrally in negotiations for a plethora of new enterprise work agreements.

Coal miners employed by mining company Glencore in the Hunter Valley in New South Wales are currently taking industrial action against the company’s refusal to accept restrictions on casualisation. Workers at Glencore’s Oaky North underground coal mine in Queensland have been locked out since June 9 over the same issue.

While the official unemployment rate has edged down slightly over the last few months, there are indices pointing to a worsening of the jobs situation across a number of key sectors over the next period.

The just released mining sector’s national job index by recruitment firm DFP Recruitment Services shows that the number of vacancies across the sector has started to stall, amidst weakening commodity prices.

The DFP report states that while the number of job vacancies in the industry during June was up almost 38 percent from a year ago, the rate was actually down 0.1 percent from May and was up just 0.2 percent for the entire June quarter. Moreover, the job vacancies were mainly for temporary and contract roles, which increased 3.5 percent during the June quarter while permanent vacancies fell 2.1 percent.

Aggregate bulk commodity prices fell by almost 30 percent over the first six months of this year. The benchmark price of iron ore fell from $US94.86 a tonne in February to as low as $US53.36 a tonne last month and now stands at just $US65.74.

In three of the past four months, retail spending has slumped, recording month-on-month declines for the first time in almost six years.

According to a National Australia Bank (NBA) report last month based on about 4 million daily customer transactions, growth in spending on consumption-based goods and services by bank customers slowed to 2 percent over the year to the first quarter of 2017, down sharply from 3.1 percent over the year to the fourth quarter of 2016.

Speaking to the results NAB chief economist Alan Oster declared: “I think retail itself is in a recession. It is basically deteriorating and not contributing much to growth at all and we don’t see it improving in the short term.”

At the end of May, the Australian arm of British fashion chain Topshop went into administration, joining a string of recent retail failures, including Herringbone, Rhodes & Beckett, David Lawrence, Pumpkin Patch and Payless shoes.

Large-scale job cuts have been announced over the last three months. In early June, Australia’s largest communications carrier Telstra announced it will shed 1,400 jobs nationally while giant transport company Toll Holdings revealed plans to slash 1,700 jobs over the next 12 months. Rail haulage company Aurizon announced it will cut 300 jobs and the Commonwealth Bank will axe 150 jobs over the next months.

The federal budget brought down in May includes the shedding of another 4,500 jobs public service positions, including 244 from the Health Department and 245 from the Immigration Department. The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies will lose 20 percent of its 150 staff. A major restructure of the Western Australia’s state public service was announced in May, which will reduce 41 existing departments to just 25 and could result in the shedding of around 3,000 jobs.

At the same time, hanging over the jobs situation is the looming closure of the Australia’s car manufacturing sector. Toyota will close its Altona plant in Victoria in October this year, completing the destruction of 2,600 jobs. GM Holden will also end all production in Australia in October, destroying 2,300 remaining jobs.

Australian Automotive After­market Association released a report at the beginning of February this year estimating that 25,000 jobs would be lost in the automotive supply chain businesses in the next 18 months as a consequence of the car plant closures. More than half of the 117 remaining tier-one component suppliers are expected to close.

Indonesian government bans Hizbut Tahrir

John Roberts

Indonesian President Joko Widodo has banned the Islamist organisation Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI), using his presidential power to issue a regulation in lieu of law, known as Perppu.

The presidential edict issue on July 19 allows the arbitrary side-stepping of the 2013 law on associations, which provides for the banning of organisations but sets out procedures and leaves the final decision to a court. The change gives state officials the power to summarily remove the legal status of organisations. The regulation will be presented to the national parliament in six months but takes immediate effect.

The coordinating minister for political, legal and security affairs, Wiranto, a former Suharto-era army general and close political ally of Widodo, announced the regulation on July 12. He said it allowed the government to remove the permit of any organisation allegedly opposed to state ideology of Pancasila and the country’s 1945 constitution.

Foreshadowing a wide crackdown on political dissent, Wiranto said there were numbers of organisations existing that were a threat to Indonesia. The Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) is one immediately in the government’s crosshairs. Wiranto added disingenuously that the new procedure “is merely aimed at maintaining national unity and safeguarding the nation’s existence. It is not an arbitrary act of government.”

Hizbut Tahrir is an Islamist movement founded in 1953 in Jerusalem. It has operated in Indonesia since at least the 1980s.

It played a role in the Islamist campaign directed against the Widodo government during the recent Jakarta gubernatorial election. Widodo’s supporter and protégé Basuki Tjahaja Purnama was ousted from his post as governor and jailed in May on frame-up “blasphemy” charges concocted originally by a number of right-wing Islamist groups.

HTI is based on a reactionary Pan-Islamist ideology that advocates a universal Muslim caliphate, an Islamic government and the imposition of Sharia law.

The organisation has not, however, been formally accused of or prosecuted for any criminal act. HTI is an easy target as it is banned in a number of European countries and by most Middle Eastern regimes. It is also opposed by Indonesia’s established Muslim parties and its banning has been endorsed by the country’s largest, Nahdlatul Ulama.

Any organisation deemed to be based on “Marxist-Leninism” is already prohibited, reflecting the fears of the entire ruling class of the emergence of a movement of the working class and rural poor. Working people were the real targets of the 1965 US-backed coup that toppled President Sukarno, installed the Suharto dictatorship regime and left at least 500,000 dead.

Last month Widodo ordered his ministers to pressure the parliament’s lower house, the DPR, to restore a role for the country’s armed forces (TNI) in internal security and counter-terrorist measures. The DPR is revising the Eradication of Terrorism law.

Following the fall of the Suharto dictatorship, the National Police were removed from army control and given exclusive responsibility for domestic security. The TNI, notorious for murderous repression throughout the Suharto regime, were forced to step back, at least formally, from internal security operations.

The anti-democratic measures now being implemented by the Widodo administration reflect deep rifts and infighting in the country’s ruling elite in the lead up to the presidential and parliamentary elections due in 2019.

These divisions were exposed during the bitter conflict involved in the Jakarta election. Government opponents were able to mobilise hundreds of thousands to two anti-Basuki rallies in Jakarta in November and December. Arrests followed and twice this year Widodo has told the media he would “clobber” those who threatened national political stability, a term used by Suharto.

The Islamist groups allied with Widodo’s political enemies cynically exploited resentment over glaring social inequality and the association of both Basuki and Widodo with economic development that for decades has only benefited the rich.

The latest World Bank figures updated in April show 40 percent of the population is vulnerable to falling into poverty, while over 10 percent live below the Indonesian government’s official poverty line of $US27 per month or 82 cents per day. One percent of the 250 million Indonesians own half of all national financial assets.

Widodo’s opponents include sections of the country’s political and financial elite, particularly associated with the Suharto regime and its corrupt system of patronage and economic protectionism. These layers deeply resent Widodo’s pro-market “reforms” that threaten their interests.

Widodo’s coalition represents sections of the ruling class, which were also spawned in the Suharto period, but are more oriented to foreign investors, seek to further open up the Indonesian economy and are critical of protectionist measures.

Suharto-era general Prabowo Subianto, Widodo’s opponent at the 2014 presidential election, has positioned himself as the leader of the government’s opponents. His candidate, Anies Baswedan, won the Jakarta governorship.

Prabowo and Anies embraced the reactionary chauvinist campaign of the Islamic groups which included the FPI and the GNPF-MUI along with the HTI. They attacked Basuki, who is a Christian with a Chinese heritage, as unfit to rule over Muslims in a majority Muslim country.

The motives of the Islamist groups in exploiting the religious sentiments of the most oppressed layers have a class content. GNPF-MUI leader Bachtiar Nasir gave Reuters an interview in May in which he made clear the next target of his organisation would be ethnic Chinese and stopping the inflow of Chinese capital to Indonesia. He called for an affirmative action program for non-Chinese Indonesians.

The Islamist groups represent a layer of the ruling elite that was excluded from the largesse of the Suharto regime and now want to enhance their position at the expense of Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese minority. This meets up with the interests of those supporting Prabowo who resent ethnic Chinese, who while making up only five percent of the population, are strongly represented among business and financial interests.

The fear in ruling circles is that this infighting will open the way for a broader movement of workers and the rural poor that will threaten the interest of the capitalist class as a whole. That is what is driving the shedding of the democratic veneer of the post-Suharto period and the adoption of anti-democratic measures.

Britain’s National Health Service being gutted through privatisation

Jean Shaoul 

The Health and Social Care Act 2012 gave free rein for the hiving off of National Health Service (NHS) assets to the big corporations and the construction of a health care “market” paid for with taxpayers’ money.

The impact of the 2012 Act on the creeping, piecemeal privatisation of the NHS is vast. The Act removed the Secretary of State for Health’s core duty to provide or secure comprehensive and universal healthcare, making it unclear who is ultimately responsible for health care. Instead, it set up some 200 new clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) to make contracts for service provision in their area under a newly established NHS Commissioning Board (NHS England), at a cost of at least £1.5 billion.

The Health and Social Care Act compelled the CCGs to put their contracts, whose value would be based upon what they could afford from their shrinking budgets, out to competitive bids from “Any Qualified Provider.” These bidders include private-sector independent sector treatment centres, Circle, Serco and Virgin Care as well as the NHS. This opened up the NHS’ £110 billion annual budget to the corporations. In addition, the cost of commissioning adds an extra £4.5 billion each year in legal, financial and administrative costs, pushing up the cost of administering the “internal market” to a staggering 14 percent of the NHS’ budget.

According to David Lock QC, the effect of the regulations has been to close down the option of in-house provision and create a health care market, bringing health care under the remit of European Union (EU) competition law. This gives private providers legal rights that make it almost impossible to stop their penetration of the NHS. Any trade deal with the United States following Britain’s exit from the EU would also encompass health care.

Hospitals, incorporated as Foundation Trusts—i.e., de facto commercial enterprises—are allowed to enter into joint ventures with and distribute surpluses to for-profit companies, raise commercial loans without restriction and raise up to 49 percent of their revenue from commercial sources—up from just two percent previously.

The Act shifted the responsibility and budget for some services to local authorities and created new powers for charging—signalling a move from a largely tax-based service to one in which patients may have to pay for services.

It has transferred all NHS land and property to NHS Property Services, a government-owned company that is empowered to sell off NHS buildings and land. Last year, the company, some of whose board members have declared interests in real estate, property management and facilities management companies, raised its rental charges, adding another £60 million to the NHS’ annual costs. It can be expected that the government will soon transfer the ownership and control of the NHS’ assets to private owners.

The government has already confirmed that it will sell off £2 billion of NHS land—equivalent to 5 million square metres—out of the estimated £9-11 billion land and property controlled by NHS Trusts. Property identified for sale includes ambulance stations, clinics, staff accommodation and trust headquarters.

Privatisation takes the form of the internal cannibalisation of NHS hospitals.

A number of NHS Foundation Trusts are now raising a small but significant percentage of their income from private sources, including private UK and overseas patients, car parking, rentals, accommodation and other services. This is increasing year-on-year, with some London hospitals reporting 30 percent increases. About one quarter of the Foundation Trusts are planning to open private patient units.

This process is particularly evident in the specialist hospitals such as the Royal Marsden Hospital (specialising in cancer), which derived 20 percent of its income from non-NHS sources in 2015, and the Great Ormond Street Hospital (specialising in paediatrics), which derived 12 percent of its income from non-NHS sources in 2015. Other hospitals exemplifying this process include Moorfields Eye Hospital (13 percent), the Liverpool Heart and Chest NHS Trust (18 percent) and the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital (31 percent). Much of this revenue is from overseas patients.

Top-class NHS facilities are being used to treat private patients while waiting lists grow, and surgeons and consultants earn fat fees on the back of NHS training and experience. Whistle-blowers have revealed that some doctors are even carrying out private work while being paid to work for the NHS.

According to the NHS Support Federation, more than one third (£5.5 billion) of £16 billion in contracts awarded by the CCGs have gone to the private sector. The largest contract is believed to be worth more than £1 billion for community services in Cambridgeshire. The Financial Times reported that private-sector companies were engaged in an “arms race” to win NHS contracts.

These companies choose the less complex treatments such as hip replacements and cataracts, which are more lucrative, leaving the more complex, chronic and costly treatments to the NHS. Since they have few resources to put things right when treatments go wrong, NHS hospitals have to admit some 6,000 patients treated by private companies every year.

In addition, the exorbitant cost of new hospitals procured under the Private Finance Initiative, the three percent population increase since 2010, the 20 percent cut in social care and the four percent annual rise in NHS costs despite a pay freeze for medical staff have had a devastating impact on the financial resources available for front-line services.

The government has demanded that the NHS deliver a further £22 billion in “efficiency savings” between 2016 and 2020, leading to a lower level of health care spending per capita in England than in similar advanced countries.

To achieve this gutting of health care expenditure, NHS England announced yet another reorganisation, superseding the CCGs, which divides the country into 44 areas in which NHS bodies and local authorities together provide all NHS and social care services.

Each area had to provide a plan by July 2016 for implementing the cuts and restructuring its NHS services, “advised” by expensive financial consultants such as McKinsey, Deloitte or PwC, who also advise the insurance and health care industry. Key elements in these plans include the disposal of “surplus” property and assets and the involvement of the private sector with its “new models of care.”

The area plans lay the basis for moving towards a “mixed-funding insurance model,” with the budgets passed to insurers. A new system of personal health care budgets is being piloted and is to be rolled out to 5 million patients by next year. It paves the way for an insurance-based system, with additional charges for anything not covered under the personal health care budget—much to the delight of the insurance and health care industry.

At the same time, NHS staff will be transferred to private-sector companies, breaking up nationally negotiated wages and conditions, dividing NHS staff and pitting them against one another in a race to the bottom in terms of jobs, wages and conditions.

The authors of two articles in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine said that “2015 saw the greatest rise in mortality for almost 50 years in England and Wales” and accused the government’s “relentless cuts” to the health service of being behind 30,000 excess deaths in 2015. They concluded that “the evidence points to a major failure of the health system, possibly exacerbated by failings in social care” and warned that without “urgent intervention” from the government, mortality rates could continue to increase.

The scale of the cuts already imposed is vast:

* 66 Accident and Emergency/Maternity wards have already closed

* 19 more hospitals are to close

* 14,966 NHS beds have been closed

* 51 more NHS walk-in centres are set to close

The deliberate dismantling and running down of the NHS has already caused untold suffering, lengthening waiting lists, early deaths and a fall in life expectancy in Britain.

No prison in England and Wales safe for young people

Peter Reydt 

“By February 2017, we concluded that there was not a single establishment that we inspected in England and Wales in which it was safe to hold children and young people.”

This is the shocking conclusion made by Peter Clarke, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales in his Annual Report 2016–17.

The report shows a drastic decline in conditions within the prison system. Describing conditions comparable to those in the United States, it details how working class criminals are incarcerated in “filthy and dilapidated”, vermin infested, overcrowded and violent “facilities” for sometimes the most minimal offences.

Decades of law and order policies by Labour and Conservative governments have made prisons a breeding ground for substance abuse, violence, illness, suicide and squalor.

More young people in England and Wales are imprisoned than in any other country in Western Europe. The age of criminal responsibility in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is just 10 years old, and in Scotland it is 8 years old.

The state of prisons for children and young inmates is especially bad. Vulnerable working class children endure conditions that cannot but traumatise them further. Any pretense of rehabilitation has long been discarded. The guiding principle is to control and punish young offenders, who are already victims of a society based on savage inequality.

Clarke’s report paints a harrowing picture of the state of prisons in England and Wales, showing what life is like for prisoners on a day-to-day basis.

“There have been startling increases in all types of violence” the report finds. In the 12 months to December 2016, there were 26,000 assaults, up by 27 percent in just one year. Assaults on staff were up by a staggering 38 percent, to 6,844 in the same period.

?“Self-inflicted deaths” have more than doubled since 2013—and in the 12 months to March 2017, 113 prisoners took their own lives.

“Debt, bullying, and self-segregation by prisoners looking to escape the violence generated by the drugs trade are commonplace. This has all been compounded by staffing levels in many jails that are simply too low to keep order and at the same time run a decent regime that allows prisoners to be let out of their cells to get to training and education, and have access to basic facilities.”

“Shockingly, 30% of young adults (aged 18 to 21) being held in adult establishments told us that they spent less than two hours a day out of their cells,” the Chief Inspector writes.

“During the course of the year, I have often been appalled by the conditions in which we hold many prisoners. Far too often I have seen men sharing a cell in which they are locked up for as much as 23 hours a day, in which they are required to eat all their meals, and in which there is an unscreened lavatory. On several occasions prisoners have pointed out insect and vermin infestations to me. In many prisons, I have seen shower and lavatory facilities that are filthy and dilapidated, but with no credible or affordable plans for refurbishment. I have seen many prisoners who are obviously under the influence of drugs. I am frequently shown evidence of repeated self-harm, and in every prison I find far too many prisoners suffering from varying degrees of learning disability or mental impairment. I have personally witnessed violence between prisoners, and seen both the physical and psychologically traumatic impact.”

These findings are borne out by the report’s figures showing a dramatic rise in violence, self-harm and drug use over the past year, while education and employment classes in youth prisons declined to a seven-year low.

Mental illness among prisoners is widespread, with growing numbers driven to self-harm and suicide due to the degrading and hellish conditions.

Last month’s National Audit Office report, titled “Mental Health in Prison” found, “Rates of self-inflicted deaths and self-harm have risen significantly in the last five years, suggesting that mental health and well-being in prison have declined.”

The number of self-harm incidents rose by 73 percent between 2012 and 2016, the report found. Last year there were 40,161 incidents of self-harm in prisons and 120 “self-inflicted deaths.”

“This was almost twice the number in 2012, and higher than any previous year on record. In 2016, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman found that 70% of prisoners who had taken their own life between 2012 and 2014 had been identified as having mental health needs.”

According to the authors, some health workers believe up to 90 percent of the prison population suffers from mental illness.

Health workers and reform advocates have long warned about the negative impact of Britain’s prison system on inmates. But the situation has only worsened.

The chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, Frances Crook, explained “Prisons are out of control. A prisoner dies by suicide every three days. Children are locked up with nothing to do for 23 hours a day.

“Record levels of violence mean that men are too scared to leave their cells. Women are injuring themselves more and more. Staff fear for their lives. Conditions are filthy. Enough is enough.”

She added, “Prisons for children should be closed forthwith. For decades, children have been subjected to abuse and neglect by the state. Now the official watchdog has confirmed what the Howard League has been saying for years—there is not a single prison in the country where a child is safe.”

Last night, initial reports were emerging of riot-trained prison staff being sent to Mount Prison, in Bovingdon village near Hemel Hempstead.

Last October, inmates at Her Majesty’s Prison (HMP) Lewes rioted for six hours against conditions that one refugee inmate described as “worse than Syria.”

In November, 200 inmates rioted at HMP Bedford, criticised for its “abject failure” to address overcrowding, rampant drug addiction and self-harm. The worst riot took place on December 19, when 600 inmates took over four wings at HMP Birmingham. This was the biggest prison riot since HMP Manchester in 1990 (known then as Strangeways).

G4S, the private firm which runs HMP Birmingham, sent in two initial Tornado riot control squads to quell the disturbance, with the prison service’s “gold command” sending in 11 more Tornado units. It took riot squads comprising 160 officers over 12 hours to bring the prison back under control, with one inmate hospitalised with a fractured jaw and broken eye socket.

The crisis in the prison system is a ticking time bomb that can only worsen given the current political climate. While funding for prisons is being gutted, the government is seizing on the current crisis to privatise more jails, selling them off to the highest bidders.

The UK already has the most privatised criminal justice system in Europe. As of 2015, 14 prisons (holding 17 percent of the prison population in England and Wales) were run by the private sector. This is an even higher proportion of private prisons than in the United States.

German economy minister threatens counter-measures in response to US sanctions on Russia

Peter Schwarz

Following the adoption of new sanctions against Russia by both chambers of the US congress, Germany’s economy minister has threatened that Europe could adopt counter-measures.

“We consider this to be patently in violation of international law,” said Brigitte Zypries (Social Democrats, SPD). She accused the Americans of penalising German companies “because they are economically active in another country.” The US law, according to Zypries, also proposed sanctions against German and European companies.

“We certainly don’t want a trade war,” the minister sought to proclaim. But the Americans had abandoned the course of joint sanctions, she added. “Therefore, it is right for the EU Commission to consider counter-measures.” Europe is ready to adopt such measures swiftly, she went on, “including in other areas.”

Representatives of German business associations also warned of the consequences of the new sanctions. They anticipate severe obstacles to cooperation with Russia in the energy sector.

“The law is hanging like a sword of Damocles over the companies,” said the chairman of the German Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations, Michael Harms. “It would be a blatant interference into our energy provision in Europe, and would result in rising energy prices and a decline in the competitiveness of European business.”

Prior to the adoption of the sanctions, leading German and European politicians threatened counter-measures. They were not fundamentally opposed to additional sanctions against Russia, but accused the United States, in contrast to past practice, of not consulting other countries on the sanctions and thereby pursuing their own economic advantage.

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel (SPD) expressed himself in especially stark terms. He accused the US of exploiting the sanctions “to promote national export interests and the domestic energy sector.” EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who on foreign and economic policy matters usually consults closely with Berlin, warned that the sanctions would “impact the EU’s energy security interests.” The EU Commission was therefore ready to respond with counter-measures within days “if our fears are not sufficiently taken into account.”

EU diplomats in Washington have managed thus far to bring about some changes in the law’s text. The upper limit for participation in Russian pipeline projects allowed under the law was increased from 10 to 33 percent. In addition, an amendment was introduced so that Trump would adopt sanctions “in consultation with allies,” whatever that may mean.

While Juncker declared that the diplomatic efforts had borne fruit, and suggested that the EU would wait and see, but remain ready to respond at any moment, the concessions apparently do not go far enough for Berlin. The German government fears that the sanctions will hinder the construction of the Nord Stream II pipeline, which would ensure Germany, notwithstanding its limited energy resources, a leading role in the provision of gas to Europe.

Scheduled for completion at the end of 2019, Nord Stream II, like the Nord Stream pipeline which began operating in 2011, connects Russia directly with Germany across the Baltic Sea, bypassing transit states like Poland and Ukraine. With an annual capacity of 110 billion cubic metres of gas, both pipelines will supply two-and-a-half times more than Germany’s gas requirements and around one fifth of Europe’s.

According to EurActiv, “Germany, the main backer of Nord Stream II, [is] the driving force behind the hardline stance towards the US.”

The energy issue, however, is only one reason for the growing tensions between Berlin and Washington. The bitter struggle for markets, raw materials and strategic influence is bringing the two opponents in two world wars ever more frequently into conflict. There is an aggressive tone in the German media and among politicians towards Berlin’s closest ally in the post-war period that has not been heard for a long time.

One example of this is the latest edition of Der Spiegel, which appeared with a drawing of Chancellor Angela Merkel on the front page kicking a football with an outstretched leg at Donald Trump’s face. In the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Stefan Kornelius described the US as a country whose president produces a lot of filth and destroys “all standards of morals, ethics, decency and honesty.” The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung even called for Germany to develop its own nuclear weapons.

In the federal election campaign, the parties are competing to see which can most aggressively uphold “the independent interests of Germany and Europe” against the “corrupt goals of US policy,” to use of the words of the Left Party’s Oscar Lafontaine.

Yet Trump only appears on the surface to be the cause for the deepening of transatlantic tensions. This is shown by the latest sanctions against Russia, which were passed virtually unanimously by the Democrats and Republicans in the face of initial opposition from Trump. The real cause is the irresolvable contradiction between private property relations and the nation state, on which capitalism rests, and the world economy and the globalised character of production. As in the last century, the tensions among the major imperialist powers arising from this threaten once again to provoke a world war.

In this, German imperialism is no less aggressive than its American counterpart. Zypries argument that the US sanctions are “patently in violation of international law” and penalising German companies is pure hypocrisy. In reality, Germany and the EU use the same methods against non-EU companies which fall foul of sanctions imposed by them. For example, firms involved in Iran’s nuclear programme are excluded from the European market.

Germany is seeking to dominate Europe so as to strengthen its position vis-à-vis the United States. On the issue of US sanctions against Russia, Berlin calculates that it has a good chance of winning many European countries to its side, because almost all major European energy firms are involved in joint projects with Russia worth billions in investments and profits.

Along with Russia’s Gazprom, participants in Nord Stream II include Germany’s Wintershall and Uniper, Austria’s OMV, France’s Engie, and British-Dutch Shell. Italy’s ENI operates the blue Stream pipeline with Gazprom and Turkey’s BOTAŞ, which runs from Russia through the Black Sea to Turkey. Britain’s BP has also agreed a joint project with Gazprom to supply 20 billion cubic metres of gas annually.

But several European countries are strongly opposed to the Nord Stream pipeline project. This is particularly the case in the Baltic states, Poland and Ukraine, which fear that a German-Russian alliance would be at their expense. This poses a dilemma for Berlin, since Eastern Europe is significant to Germany both as a source of low-wage labor and for geostrategic reasons.

The US sanctions drive and the danger of war

Alex Lantier

Moscow’s expulsion of 750 American diplomats and contractors after the US Congress passed a bill imposing economic sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea marks a historical watershed. The neo-colonial wars launched by the United States and its imperialist allies in the last quarter century are producing a generalized breakdown of international trade and diplomatic relations, posing the danger of war between the major nuclear-armed powers.

The overwhelming passage of the Russian sanctions bill, with which the US Congress committed Trump to blocking Russian trade with Europe, staggered the Kremlin. Hoping for improved relations under Trump, Russia did not retaliate for Obama’s expulsion of Russian diplomats last year, after Washington issued unfounded declarations that Russia “hacked” the US elections. In the half year since Trump's inauguration, however, the faction of the US ruling class demanding a confrontation with Russia has emerged as dominant in the media and state apparatus.

The bill, passed over protests from Germany and France, will also escalate tensions between Washington and its supposed NATO allies in Europe. Yesterday, US officials confirmed that the Pentagon is reviving plans, abandoned in 2015, to arm the far-right Ukrainian regime that emerged from the fascist-led coup in 2014. The aid would include anti-tank missiles and other lethal weaponry.

As a result, Moscow is planning for an extended armed stand-off with Washington, placing the military situation in Europe on a hair trigger. “We waited quite a long time for something to maybe change,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a televised address this weekend. “But all things considered, if it changes, it won’t be anytime soon.”

As it threatens Russia, Washington is simultaneously escalating its campaign against China. After Friday’s missile test by North Korea, which potentially put US cities including Los Angeles, Denver and Chicago in range of North Korean nuclear weapons, US officials confirmed that they are considering economic sanctions on China. “I am very disappointed in China. Our foolish past leaders have allowed them to make hundreds of billions of dollars a year in trade, yet they do NOTHING for us with North Korea,” Trump wrote in two Twitter posts. “We will no longer allow this to continue.”

After last week’s statement in Australia by US Admiral Scott Swift that he would follow orders from Trump to launch nuclear strikes on China, the Wall Street Journal posted a comment titled “The Regime Change Solution in North Korea,” advocating a pro-US military coup in Pyongyang.

There is a political logic to this relentless intensification of commercial, diplomatic and military tensions between the major powers. It cannot continue very long without exploding into war.

The media is attempting to downplay the danger in the face of growing popular concern. “Sanctions are often controversial,” the New York Times wrote of the Russia sanctions on July 27. “But they are a nonviolent tool—and in this case a timely and appropriate one—for making clear when another country’s behavior has crossed a line and for applying pressure that could make its leaders reconsider course.”

Who does the Times think it is kidding? In the last quarter century since the Stalinist bureaucracy dissolved the Soviet Union, sanctions were directed at countries—often allied to Russia or China—like Iraq, Yugoslavia, Iran and North Korea, each of which Washington or the entire NATO alliance targeted for war or regime-change. Today, however, sanctions are being directly aimed at major, nuclear-armed powers central to the world capitalist economy.

The last time Washington sought to arm the far-right Kiev regime, in 2015, Berlin and Paris cut across the US initiative and negotiated a peace deal between Moscow and Kiev. Before the talks, then-French President François Hollande warned of the danger of “total war,” that is, of nuclear war, between NATO and Russia. As Washington prepares a new escalation, all-out war is doubtless again being actively discussed in chancelleries, foreign offices and military headquarters worldwide, behind the backs of the world’s people.

The election of Trump was not the cause, but a symptom of a broad collapse of the imperialist system that threatens the world with catastrophe. The US sanctions bill against Russia has overwhelming bipartisan support, led by the Democratic Party. Great-power rivalries, including between the United States and its European imperialist allies, are rooted in objective conflicts lodged in the structure of world capitalism that twice in the previous century erupted into world war.

As the major powers fight over strategic positions and trillions of dollars in trade, it is ever clearer that the contradictions of capitalism identified by the great Marxists of the 20th century as the causes of war and social revolution—the contradiction between global economy and the nation-state system, and between socialized production and private appropriation of profit—are still operative today.

The key political question is the formation of a mass, anti-war and socialist movement of the international working class. A situation in which workers allow themselves to be swept behind the contending capitalist factions can lead only to disaster. While US imperialism’s attempts to assert its rapidly-collapsing global hegemony most immediately raise the threat of war, its European imperialist rivals and the reactionary post-Soviet capitalist oligarchies in Russia and China are no less bankrupt.

Washington’s policy against Russia and China will doubtless accelerate ongoing moves by the European powers, led by Germany, to pour tens of billions of euros into their military forces and set up military machines “independent from,” that is, potentially hostile to, Washington. This imperialist policy, carried out in the profit interests of the European banks and corporations and financed by attacks on European workers, goes hand-in-hand with the rise of nationalistic and far-right political forces across the continent.

As for the Russian and Chinese oligarchies, they oscillate between attempts to work out a deal with the imperialist powers and to confront them militarily. This was graphically revealed by Chinese President Xi Jinping’s appearance on Sunday at a massive military parade at Zhurihe. “The world is not all at peace, and peace must be safeguarded,” Xi said, telling Chinese troops: “Always obey and follow the party. Go and fight wherever the party points.”

Should the Chinese Stalinist regime, or the Kremlin, opt for a military confrontation with Washington, this could very rapidly lead the world to a nuclear conflagration.

The most urgent task is to mobilize the sentiment against war and social inequality that is growing among the working class all over the world. As the International Committee of the Fourth International explained in its statement, “Socialism and the Fight Against War:”

* The struggle against war must be based on the working class, the great revolutionary force in society, uniting behind it all progressive elements in the population.

* The new anti-war movement must be anti-capitalist and socialist, since there can be no serious struggle against war except in the fight to end the dictatorship of finance capital and put an end to the economic system that is the fundamental cause of militarism and war.

* The new anti-war movement must therefore, of necessity, be completely and unequivocally independent of, and hostile to, all political parties and organizations of the capitalist class.

* The new anti-war movement must, above all, be international, mobilizing the vast power of the working class in a unified global struggle against imperialism.