Kenyan elections take place under threat of crackdown

Eddie Haywood

Results of polls for thousands of elective offices across Kenya are being announced this week amid threats of social unrest. Nearly every elected office in Kenya has been contested, with candidates for president, governors, the national assembly, women’s representatives, and senate and county assemblies.

The hotly contested election for president between incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta and challenger Raila Odinga has been marked by allegations of election fraud and an intensified police state atmosphere.

The Kenyatta government, citing the potential for violence, deployed 180,000 police around the country for the duration of the poll. Protests by Odinga supporters have erupted in many cities, most notably in Nairobi and Kisumu, home to significant layers of opposition to the ruling Kenyatta government.

Preliminary results released Wednesday by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), the official body responsible for counting the vote, project Kenyatta the winner, with 54.3 percent of the vote, and Odinga receiving 44.7 percent, a margin of some 1.4 million votes, with 94 percent of the total vote counted. The final results are expected to be announced Friday.

Odinga has accused the Kenyatta government of election fraud, alleging that the election commission’s computer servers holding the vote tally have been hacked. In fact, the IEBC admits an attempted hack took place, but claims that it was unsuccessful and not a threat to the integrity of the election.

Former US Secretary of State John Kerry, heading the Carter Center’s observer team overseeing Kenya’s election, described the poll as credible, telling the media that while observers noted “minor variances”, there was nothing that would cause doubt over the poll’s integrity.

Overshadowing the election is last month’s murder of Chris Musando, a senior election official with the IEBC, the election body charged with counting the vote. The circumstance and those responsible for his death are as yet unknown, fueling a wave of suspicion in the population that the government was behind the killing. It has been reported that Musando’s body bore evidence he was beaten and tortured before killed.

A few days later, an unknown man attacked the home of Vice President William Ruto, in which a guard was wounded.

In the midst of these suspicious circumstances social anger has exploded, and protests have erupted across the country resulting in mass arrests and five killings by security forces. A real fear of a social explosion permeates the Kenyan ruling elite as evidenced in the deployment of the 180,000-strong security force at polling stations nationwide. The deployment of these repressive forces is widely perceived by the Kenyan population as blatant voter intimidation.

With a palpable sense of fear gripping the population over a possible government crackdown, many people stayed home the day of the poll. In many areas, streets were empty and shops closed. In the days preceding the poll, large numbers of Nairobi’s residents fled the city by bus to escape a possible crackdown.

The presidential contest was between two multi-millionaire candidates jockeying for power under conditions of entrenched official corruption and deteriorating living standards for the Kenyan masses.

Also hanging over the election is the widespread social anger gripping Kenya. The numerous strikes and protests rocking the country in the weeks and months leading up to the poll figure into the state of mind of the ruling class and their fear that Kenyan society is about to come apart at the seams.

While the Kenyan economy has boasted growth of roughly 5 percent annually over several recent years, the benefits have largely gone to the wealthiest layers of Kenyan society, leaving the majority of the Kenyan masses struggling to survive.

The mass of Kenyans live under conditions of social misery, confronting chronic unemployment, hunger and a lack of access to adequate health care and decent housing. Many Kenyans subsist in the informal economy, toiling as maids and scavengers, and other such enterprises for which the remuneration for many is only one dollar a day.

According to a poll released in July by Ipsos, 61 percent of Kenyans said they feel the country is heading in the wrong direction, and unemployment and inflation are their biggest concerns. Kenya’s workforce is growing by 2.5 percent every year, and it is expected that by 2025, vast numbers entering the workforce will not find employment.

In Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi, small shop owner Nancy Obongo summed up the disaffection towards the political class felt by broad layers of the Kenyan population when she told the media, “I hope this ends quickly because we need to go back to work and feed our families. Elections are always bad news for us poor people. I have to pay bills and feed my children. I don’t care who wins.”

The poll also takes place in the context of Washington’s intensification of military operations in Kenya and the African continent as a whole. Kenya is carrying out a bloody war on behalf of Washington against the population of Somalia, with the official claim that it is fighting the Islamist militant group Al-Shabbab. In reality, the Kenyan army functions as a proxy for Washington’s imperialist aims for the Horn of Africa in securing the region, which is strategically vital in terms of the oil traffic flowing through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

AFRICOM, the US military command for the African continent, has sharply increased its role and presence in Africa and Kenya in particular. The chief aim underlying this military intervention is to counter Beijing’s economic influence on the continent, which has grown rapidly over the last decade. Beijing’s One Belt, One Road economic initiative undertaken this year, in which Africa is to play a significant role, represents a threat to Washington’s economic and political dominance over the continent. Imperial strategists seek to neutralize this threat by the increased deployment of military might.

In the background of the elections are the forces pursuing a new “scramble for Africa” consisting of Western diplomats, banks, and corporations which have the aim of carving up the economic resources of Kenya for profit. In the final analysis, both the presidential candidates are vying to serve as the agent of this layer of parasites.

Emergency evacuation of four south London tower blocks

Paul Mitchell 

Hundreds of families in four 13-storey blocks in Ledbury estate in Peckham, south London, have been told by the local Labour-controlled Southwark Council to leave their homes.

Residents of the 242 flats have been sent letters saying they will have to “temporarily decant the blocks over the coming weeks and months” for emergency works. Council officials do not know when they will be able to return.

Ledbury estate towers blocks

The council said safety checks carried out following the Grenfell Tower fire indicate the blocks are at risk of collapse in the event of a gas explosion. Workman are now disconnecting the gas supply and residents are being given electric hotplates.

The council announced the evacuation following an investigation by engineering consultancy company Arup, which revealed that strengthening of the buildings “may not” have been carried out after the collapse as a result of a gas explosion at Ronan Point, a similarly constructed high-rise in east London, in 1968. Four people died and 17 were injured. The reinforcement of vulnerable buildings and the replacement of gas supplies by electricity were fundamental recommendations of the Griffiths Inquiry set up by Harold Wilson’s Labour Party government following the disaster.

The fact that 50 years after the disaster, Griffiths’ recommendations have been ignored at the Ledbury estate, and probably many more blocks around the country according to safety experts, is yet a further warning to those who put their faith in the Conservative government’s announced Grenfell Fire inquiry.

The May 6 1968 Ronan Point collapse

Southwark’s deputy leader and cabinet member for housing, Stephanie Cryan, blamed the failure to carry out Griffiths’ recommendations on the former Greater London Council, declaring, “We didn’t own the blocks when they were constructed at the end of the 1960s, but all the reports we found suggested the blocks were strengthened following the Ronan Point incident in 1968 to make them safe to include a gas supply.

“Arup’s structural investigations suggest this strengthening may not have occurred, and we have therefore turned off the gas until further investigations can be done.”

Southwark council’s Strategic Director for Housing & Modernisation, Gerri Scott, added, “Earlier today I heard from Arup, who regrettably informed us, based on their structural investigations, that the information we have regarding the history of the blocks may not be correct, and we have therefore taken the decision to turn off the gas supply to all Ledbury tower blocks immediately, and have asked Southern Gas Network to do so.”

Scott assured reporters that the council would offer residents £5,800 to help with moving costs, should they wish to find new accommodation. Some would be able to move into a new block of 80 flats “in the vicinity” of the Ledbury Estate, with others placed at the top of the housing waiting list. Those who don’t want to move will be offered the right to return to the refurbished Ledbury blocks, Scott added.

Workers disconnecting the gas supply on the Ledbury estate

The latest announcement is a volte face that demonstrates Labour is as guilty as the Tories of contempt for council residents.

Back in July, Ledbury residents, concerned by the tragedy at Grenfell Tower, were told at a council meeting that there were “no structural safety issues” relating to the cracks in their flats. However, at the meeting, building surveyor and fire safety expert Arnold Tarling revealed that flammable polystyrene inserted between concrete slabs and flues meant “a fire could travel up the building.”

There were gaps around cabling and gas pipes, Tarling explained, that were wide enough to fit his hand through, which “no amount of fire-stopping would be able to fill.”

Deputy leader Cryan criticised Tarling for springing the issues on the audience, saying that Southwark’s fire safety teams “are already carrying out” safety checks, although residents had not yet been told about them.

Cryan declared, “I have to be very clear that there are no surprises in any of the points made by Arnold Tarling, these are all matters we have been dealing with for some time, with advice from the best and most up-to-date sources of information. We will continue to investigate and carry out works if and when they are required. …We will keep our residents informed at every step.”

Following the announcement of the evacuation of residents from the towers, Tarling repeated to reporters, “As soon as I walked in and saw the gas supply, I knew it was all wrong … Southwark council did not listen to me, and you really have to question their competence.”

The sudden evacuation from the Ledbury estate after so many years raises questions over whether this has any connection with Southwark council’s social cleansing policies.

The estate is slap bang in the middle of the council’s “Old Kent Road Action Plan and Opportunity Area”—opportunity being the appropriate word for developers who have made millions from the council’s regeneration schemes.

Old Kent Road 'opportunity area' with Ledbury estate marked in yellow

Published in May 2016, the report points out that a whole swathe of Southwark, including the Ledbury estate, is the latest to be earmarked for “regeneration” by the Labour council. The plan, in explaining that the Old Kent Road is the last remaining undeveloped district in central London, just one mile from Tower Bridge, declares, “Over the next 20 years the opportunity area will be transformed, becoming increasingly part of central London… Located so close to central London, the area’s housing stock has become very popular and house prices have risen accordingly.”

Real estate company Savills has highlighted the problem of “high investment need estates” and “a legacy of poorly designed and built housing.” It has recommended “alternative options for poorly performing stock” and “the need to make difficult choices,” accompanied by “the prospect of leveraging in private sector investment.”

The council insists the Old Kent Road regeneration will provide 35 percent social housing. But its record shows that this is never achieved.

The notorious public-private partnership (PPP) redevelopment of the Heygate estate at Elephant and Castle, in cahoots with developers Lendlease, led to the replacement of 1,200 social homes with expensive private apartments. Only 82 social homes were replaced and just three of the original households have returned. Landlease made a profit of £113 million from the venture, while council leader Peter John’s claim the council would get “north of £100m” from it to build new housing, never materialised. It ended up with just £12 million.

Local campaign group “35percent.org” has campaigned to expose the council’s social cleansing policies. It has pointed out that the first major development along the Old Kent Road at the Bermondsey Works has used a “subject to viability” clause in a 19-storey, 158-unit scheme to provide just 10 affordable homes, none of which is social-rented. It has submitted 46 developments in a complaint to the Local Government Ombudsman in which affordable housing from private developments was not being delivered.

France boosts trade ties with Iran despite US sanction threats

Kumaran Ira

Despite ‎recently-imposed US sanctions on Iran, France is boosting trade ties with Tehran after Iran’s 2015 nuclear agreement to curb its uranium enrichment program. Since the nuclear deal, the French press has begun to call Iran an “El Dorado” for French auto, energy, and high-tech firms.

These deals point to sharp objective economic conflicts between the European Union (EU) and the United States, which underlie the growing strategic and military tensions between the two blocs. Washington has threatened to abandon the Iranian nuclear deal, undertaking a 90-day review of its policies toward Tehran. Two weeks ago, the US Congress overwhelmingly passed a bill targeting Russia, North Korea, and Iran, accusing Iran of terrorism and involvement in regional wars.

US sanctions are aimed not only at Iran but at other powers, including China and the EU, who are developing trade ties with Tehran. US sanctions on Moscow, Pyongyang and Tehran have been sharply criticised by European powers, and Germany and France have threatened to take retaliatory sanctions against the United States.

As Iran concludes multi-billion-dollar deals with European firms, including Germany’s Volkswagen and Italy’s Ferrovie dello Stato, French capital is moving aggressively into Iran. This includes France’s auto companies, which are desperate to boost sales amid the economic crisis in Europe.

On Monday, Iran and French car manufacturer Renault signed a €660 million deal to produce 150,000 cars a year. Renault aims to double its market share to 20 percent of the Iranian auto market by 2020. Iran produces about 1,350,000 vehicles a year and hopes to produce 3 million a year by 2025. With the new deal, Renault expects to add 150,000 vehicles a year to the Iranian market above its current capacity of 200,000 vehicles a year in Iran.

The Renault deals comes after another French carmaker, PSA Peugeot Citroën, which has 35 percent of the Iranian market, signed a deal last year to open a plant producing 200,000 vehicles annually. Peugeot was a major producer in Iran before sanctions were imposed. PSA only avoided a fall in overall global sales last year due to increased sales in Iran.

Last month, France’s Total and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) signed a 20-year, $4.9 billion contract with Iran’s Petropars to invest in the South Pars offshore gas field, which is split between Iranian and Qatari waters. With an initial $1 billion investment, Total will have a 50.1 percent stake; CNPC and Petropars will own 30 and 19.9 percent, respectively.

Total CEO Patrick Pouyanné called the occasion “historic” and encouraged other companies to invest in Iran. “We aren’t a political organisation, but I hope this agreement will encourage other companies to come to Iran because economic development is also a way of building peace,” he told AFP. “We are here to build bridges, not walls.”

Total is working to circumvent US sanctions, appointing a compliance officer to ensure that it is not targeted by Washington—as in 2014, when the US imposed a $9 billion fine on France’s largest bank, BNP-Paribas, for violating the embargo. Iran’s oil minister Bijan Namadar Zanganeh said Iran’s oil industry needs some $200 billion in investment over the next five years.

The calculations of Total, the oil company through which French imperialism has long transacted its neo-colonial policies in Africa, speak for those of European capital as a whole. They are not seeking to build peace, but to seize control of profits and markets which Iran’s theocratic regime prefers to offer to European firms rather than to a hostile American government. In particular, they are anticipating enormous profits to be made from the policies of economic liberalisation, austerity, and job cuts that President Hassan Rouhani is preparing against workers in Iran.

The European powers long enjoyed special access to Iranian markets, as Washington cut ties to the regime that emerged from the 1979 revolution against the CIA-backed Shah of Iran. Particularly after the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, US-EU rivalries surged in the Persian Gulf. France’s companies grabbed Iranian market share in the 1990s, while its diplomats argued that European influence in the Persian Gulf was necessary to build a “multi-polar” world. These tensions culminated in the illegal and unilateral US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In 2006, however, Washington and the European powers jointly voted to impose sanctions against Iran over its uranium enrichment program, which Iran insisted was for peaceful purposes. Over the last decade, China has increasingly developed its trade with Iran, which joined the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and became a focus of China’s plans for a web of transport, energy and trade routes across Eurasia.

The US-backed UN sanctions slashed Franco-Iranian economic ties. Trade in 2014 amounted to only €514 million, compared with €4 billion in 2004. France’s market share in Iran fell from 7 percent to 1 percent.

Since the 2015 nuclear deal, European ruling circles are desperate to re-establish their presence in Iran, which has the world’s second-largest gas reserves and fourth-largest oil reserves, and an internal market of nearly 80 million people. The EU is likely to clash with Washington, should it seek to reimpose sanctions on Iran in the near future. After the nuclear deal was initially ratified, the European Council on Foreign Relations issued an analysis on August 26, 2015, headlined “Europe won’t bow to an anti-Iran-deal US Congress.”

It said, “Europeans are now looking beyond a nuclear-centric vision of Iran to focus on how they can use the opening up to engage Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s administration. Both Iran and Europe are eager to reignite their once-prosperous trade relations, and Europeans would also like to work with Iran to more constructively de-escalate conflicts in the Middle East. This kind of progress can’t be easily undone, and if it is, European policy makers may blame Washington rather than Tehran for prematurely derailing an agreement that was given virtually global acceptance.”

Now, European businesses hope that the re-election of the pro-business Hassan Rouhani as Iran’s president will help their business interests. Tehran signed multiple contracts, worth up to €30 billion, just during Rouhani’s visit to France last year.

As Washington now threatens or actually imposes sanctions against Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea—which the Pentagon is preparing to target for military action—European corporations are coming into strategic conflict with their “allies” and rivals in the United States.

The danger of nuclear war in North Korea and the return of German militarism

Peter Schwarz

President Donald Trump’s threats to destroy North Korea have brought the world closer to an atomic war than the Cuban missile crisis 55 years ago. But unlike then, the president sitting in the White House is not seeking to rein in the hotheads among his generals, but is continuing to inflame the conflict daily.

European politicians and media, especially in Germany and France, have responded to the escalating conflict mainly with calls for restraint, distancing themselves equally from their nominal ally in Washington and the regime in Pyongyang.

For example, the German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel accused the American president of using the same slogans and responding to North Korean threats with the same aggressive rhetoric as the North Korean leader. That “worried him and made him fearful,” Gabriel said, “as in the First World War, we are sleepwalking into a war, but in this case, a war that will be conducted with nuclear weapons.”

The official statements from Berlin hardly differ from those from Beijing, which likewise calls for both sides to exercise moderation and restraint. It would be naive to see this merely as an expression of concern over the devastating consequences of a nuclear war. For example, NATO also expressed its concern at the “incendiary and threatening rhetoric,” then it urged North Korea alone to “refrain from further provocations and give up its nuclear and ballistic missile programs in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner”, as a spokesman for the military alliance said.

The German media presentation of the conflict as being fuelled only by Trump, while “sensible” and “adult” US politicians like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urge moderation, does not hold up under closer scrutiny. For example, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who is usually counted among the “adults”, has threatened North Korea with the “destruction of its people”. Even newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post, which are close to the Democrats, regard a preemptive strike against North Korea as a legitimate option.

The distancing of the German government from Washington is to be explained by the fact that it increasingly regards the US as its most important imperialist rival and considers an open conflict with its previous ally inevitable in the long term. This applies not only to Europe and the surrounding regions, but also—and above all—to East Asia, whose importance for the global economy and thus also for Germany has increased massively over the last 25 years.

The US war threats against North Korea and the associated pressure on China are understood in Berlin as an attack on German economic and geopolitical interests. This becomes very clear when one studies the major publications of the relevant foreign policy think tanks.

Even before the last Bundestag (federal) election four years ago, the German Science and Policy Foundation (SWP) published the paper “New Power. New Responsibility.” More than 50 representatives from government, the media, universities, think tanks and all the parties represented in the Bundestag participated in preparing a change in course for Germany’s foreign policy. After the election, the new government then put into practice the proposed return to German militarism and a German great-power policy.

Now, the German Foreign Policy Society (DGAP) has presented a 40-page dossier entitled “Foreign policy challenges for the next federal government”, which will expand this course in entirely new dimensions. Twelve contributions deal with all important world regions, analyse the “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and risks” of German foreign policy and develop strategies for action.

The introduction, drafted by Daniela Schwarzer, the director, and Christian Mölling, the DGAP’s research director, begins with the words: “The new federal government will have to make important decisions about the national and European framework by the autumn of 2017.”

In what follows, the two authors leave no doubt that they regard the US as the most important “challenge” for German foreign policy. They refer to the previous international partner as a “political and economic risk factor”, which jeopardizes the “rule-based regulatory structures” upon which Germany is dependent “in terms of security policy as well as well as financial and economic issues”.

“Probably the most important change in the overall strategic position of Germany in 2017 is the policy of the United States under President Donald Trump,” they write. Since Trump took office, “the US has become a decisive factor of uncertainty”. The US president undoubtedly undermined the “consensus of Western-liberal values”. Under Trump, the US “no longer stands for a state that wants to further develop and defend the liberal world order”.

Around the world, US policy is viewed as a threat to German interests. “There is the danger that the US will leave the [world] order based on institutions and international law, and use its power for short-term advantages,” write Schwarzer and Mölling. “The undermining of the internal unity of the EU, such as Trump’s closing ranks with countries like Poland, Hungary or the United Kingdom against the broad European consensus, has also become a real risk.”

The DGAP also warns against the “strengthening of protectionism”, the “destabilization of the world trade system”, the “danger of an escalation in the relationship between China and the USA” and “further destabilization in the Gulf region” because of US policy.

The DGAP dossier depicts China as the main arena of German-American antagonisms. Under the heading, “Security and Economic Interdependence: Germany Between the USA and China”, Josef Braml and Henning Riecke argue that in the conflict between the USA and China, Germany is taking the side of America’s traditional allies. For Germany, “as a trading nation with extensive economic ties to both states and other actors in the Asia-Pacific area”, to defend its interests, it should function as an “honest broker” rather than “de-escalating tensions”.

Braml and Riecke show how German and American business interests collide in the region in several areas. They warn, for example, that Trump might be able to make capital out of America’s role as a protective power in relation to Japan, South Korea and other allies by forcing them to make concessions on trade and monetary policy to the detriment of Germany. In monetary policy too, where the dollar will have to share its lead role with the euro and the Chinese Yuan for the foreseeable future, they see a smouldering conflict.

Of China’s most important international economic project, the “One Belt, One Road” silk road initiative, they write that “it is perceived in Washington as an economic and political counterweight to the economic and political order dominated by the US”, while international, i.e. German and European, companies are interested in China’s global infrastructure plans. For example, “Deutsche Bank and the China Development Bank plan to jointly fund Silk Road Initiative projects to the tune of three-billion-euro over the next five years.”

Similar assessments can be found in SWP publications. For example, a contribution that appeared in the latest issue of the SWP journal International Politics, under the title, “Plea for a new German foreign policy in uncertain times”, warns against any “misjudgement that the transatlantic crisis had begun with Trump and would end with his departure”. In fact, the problem had already begun under President Obama.

Also, “the supposed moderates” in Trump’s team had made “the radical break with 70 years of American post-war policy their own,” writes the author of the article, Time journalist Jörg Lau. In a contribution for the Wall Street Journal, Trump’s national security adviser, General H.R. McMaster, and business consultant Gary Cohn, had praised the president’s “clarity”, that the world “is not a global community, but an arena where nations, non-governmental organizations and businesses struggle for advantage... Instead of denying this elementary nature of international relations, we welcome it.”

According to Lau, this text is “a shocking document” for the German government. It was a question of a “conflict of principles” rather than “the usual differences between Willy Brandt and Richard Nixon, Helmut Schmidt and Jimmy Carter, Gerhard Schröder and George W. Bush”. This was “something else”. It concerned the “fundamental questions of the world order”.

The response of the SWP and the DGAP to this “fundamental conflict” is unambiguous: they advocate a return to the great power and militaristic traditions of Germany, which twice inflicted disaster upon the world. Under the pretence of defending “Western values” and “rule-based structures of order” against Trump, they are advocating German dominance over Europe, the formation of new international power blocks, and a massive military rearmament.

The headlines alone of the DGAP dossier are symptomatic: “Germany’s leadership tasks in Europe”; “Use the scope for action in the Western Balkans now”; “A permanent commitment: Ukraine” and “Burden-sharing in NATO: German leadership remains in demand”. Other contributions deal with German interests in the Middle East and North Africa, Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Lau advocates that the Bundestag election should become a massive campaign for military rearmament. He warns against a “reflexive counter-course to the US president” for disarmament and writes, “Instead of making the Bundestag election a referendum on a supposedly dangerous rearmament, the population should be enlightened about the new logic of German security: not because of, but in spite of Trump, not because he commands it, but because we want to oppose his irrational policy, we must spend much more on defence.” According to Lau, it is a matter of “Germany’s assertiveness in a crumbling West”.

These statements make clear that the danger of war in North Korea, even if it were temporarily defused, is only a prelude to further conflicts, which would inevitably result in a Third World War if they are not stopped by a mass movement of the working class. As at the beginning of the last century, conflicts of interest between the imperialist powers have become so acute that they can no longer be resolved by peaceful means.

The return to militarism is supported in Germany by all the parties represented in the Bundestag. In particular, the Left Party is accusing the government of not opposing Washington aggressively enough.

The Socialist Equality Party (SGP) is the only party fighting in the election campaign to unite the international working class based on a socialist programme directed against war and capitalism.

Sales declines at US department stores belie claims of economic recovery

Barry Grey

Major US retail chains this week reported continuing declines in same-store sales in the second quarter of 2017, sending their stock prices plummeting. On Thursday, Macy’s, Kohl’s and Dillard’s all reported negative sales results.

Same-store sales declined 2.8 percent at Macy’s and 0.4 percent at Kohl’s. Since 2015, Macy’s has experienced year-over-year sales declines in every quarter.

Macy’s shares fell 10 percent Thursday and Kohl’s dropped 5.8 percent. Macy’s stock price is now down over 40 percent this year. Kohl’s has fallen nearly 25 percent. On Thursday, Dillard’s stock plunged 15 percent, wiping out all of its gains for the year.

The declines continued Friday, with Macy’s losing another 0.24 percent, Kohl’s dropping 2.18 percent and Dillard’s closing with a loss of nearly 6 percent for the day.

On Friday, JC Penney, already teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, revealed a bigger quarterly loss than it had anticipated, sending its stock plunging more than 15 percent to close below $4 a share for the first time ever. The department store chain said it lost $62 million in the second quarter, a greater loss than in the same period of 2016. It also revealed that its same-store sales had fallen by more than 1 percent.

JC Penney stock has fallen by more than 50 percent so far in 2017 and plunged 85 percent over the past five years. At its peak in 1998, the firm’s market capitalization was $30 billion. Today, its market value is just over $1 billion.

Major retail chains that cater to moderate- and low-income consumers such as Macy’s, Kohl’s, JC Penney, Sears, Target and Kmart have all announced large-scale store closures in recent months, eliminating tens of thousands of jobs and placing in jeopardy many thousands more as the survival of the commercial malls they anchor grows increasingly precarious.

Macy’s is in the process of closing an additional 100 stores. Last month, Sears announced it was closing 43 more stores in the US on top of the 265 closings it announced earlier in the year. Its sales are down nearly 37 percent since early 2013.

In February, JC Penney announced plans to close between 130 and 140 stores as well as two distribution centers.

The wave of department store closings is part of a broader flood of retail closures and bankruptcies, on pace to surpass the numbers recorded at the height of the financial crisis and recession in 2008. As of July, US retailers had announced more than 3,200 store closures this year, with analysts expecting the figure to rise to more than 8,600.

Since October of 2016, retailers have eliminated more than 90,000 jobs. Since 2001, some 500,000 retail jobs have been slashed in the US.

Retail chains that filed for bankruptcy or liquidated so far this year include:

* Dollar Express, which closed all 323 locations, eliminating 3,000 jobs

* Payless Shoes, which filed for bankruptcy and announced plans to close 400 stores

* Clothing retailer Rue 21, HHGregg, Gordmans and Gander Mountain, which have either filed or are planning to file for bankruptcy

* American Apparel, which is liquidating its remaining stores and a factory in Los Angeles

* RadioShack, which filed for bankruptcy for the second time in two years and announced the closure of 552 stores

For the most part, those employed in retail are paid poverty-level wages. Currently there are over 32 million such workers, paid an average of $10.87 an hour, with cashiers receiving even less.

Two major factors are driving what CNN Money refers to as the “retail apocalypse.” One is the rise of online retailers, particularly Amazon, which are gaining increasing market share at the expense of so-called “brick and mortar” companies. Amazon, which accounted for 53 percent of all online sales growth in 2016, is expected to overtake Macy’s this year as the country’s largest apparel retailer.

More pervasive, however, is the impact of the devastating social crisis affecting broad layers of the working class. While President Donald Trump boasts of a booming economy, citing record high stock prices, and Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen talks of “full employment” and a full recovery from the post-2008 “Great Recession,” tens of millions are struggling to survive on the basis of poverty-level wages that have either stagnated or declined and part-time or temporary employment in place of full-time jobs that have been permanently eliminated.

Even as the stock market is driven upwards by unlimited subsidies from the Federal Reserve and unchecked financial speculation, real economic growth continues to stagnate. The US gross domestic product is rising at an anemic annual rate of 2 percent, far below the rates of previous post-World War II economic recoveries. And despite a nominal unemployment rate of just 4.3 percent, wages continue to rise a mere 2 percent on an annual basis, far more slowly than in previous post-recession periods and below the rate of prices increases for basic necessities.

Large sections of the working population lack the wherewithal to buy more than the bare necessities, which is why the retail slump is primarily hitting stores that cater to the working class.

That the destruction of decent-paying and stable employment is driving the retail crisis is confirmed by the announcement Thursday of plans to close up to 135 Applebee’s and up to 60 IHOP restaurants—two chains owned by parent company DineEquity. Both restaurant chains feature relatively low prices and appeal primarily to a working class clientele. Both recorded lower same-restaurant sales in the second quarter of 2017.

Australian government orders sham postal “survey” on same-sex marriage

Mike Head

As part of an escalating political crisis, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s government has ordered an unprecedented, anti-democratic and probably illegal postal ballot on same-sex marriage. The measure has been taken in a desperate bid to stave off splits in the Liberal-National Coalition on the issue.

Turnbull and his ministers announced the ballot on Wednesday, immediately after the Senate rejected, for the second time, the government’s bill for a national plebiscite on same-sex marriage. Unable to command a parliamentary majority for its plebiscite bill, the Liberal-National Coalition government is trying to achieve the same ends by under-handed means.

Growing calls are being made to boycott the ballot, while yesterday two High Court challenges were launched to halt it, via urgent interlocutory injunctions, potentially for months, until its legality can be tested.

The non-binding postal vote, now officially being called a “survey,” is a fraud on every level—politically, legally and organisationally. Like the abandoned plebiscite, it has nothing to do with the long-overdue recognition of the basic legal and democratic right of all couples to marry, regardless of gender. On the contrary, it amounts to another blatant effort to stymie the accelerating popular demand for marriage equality.

Even if a majority votes "yes" for the designated question—“Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?”—the government has refused to be bound by the result. If, however, a majority votes  “no,” the government has already ruled out permitting any marriage equality bill to be put before the parliament for a vote.

Not only is the postal ballot being launched to delay a parliamentary vote on the issue; it is designed to pander to the most right-wing, socially conservative elements in the Coalition and let loose the homophobic and religious fundamentalist social base on which they rest.

Already, the airwaves are being polluted by bigoted taunts against same-sex couples, accusing them of “abuse and neglect” of their children. One pamphlet asserts that their children are more likely to use drugs, be unemployed and suffer depression.

Turnbull has given the green light for this campaign, declaring: “We’re not going to shut down democracy and debate because people here or there say outrageous things or defamatory things.”

The prime minister is insisting, for the sake of his “progressive” electoral pitch to mainly upper-middle class layers, that he will vote “yes.” But he says he will not actively campaign for a "yes" vote. By contrast, Tony Abbott, the man Turnbull ousted as prime minister in 2015, has thrown himself into the fray, absurdly alleging that marriage equality is a threat to religious freedom and free speech.

Turnbull and key ministers from the socially conservative camp that devised the postal plan, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, are anxious to conduct the ballot within weeks, in order to avert divisions that could bring down Turnbull's increasingly fragile government. It holds just a one-seat majority in the House of Representatives and only 29 of the 76 Senate seats.

Their proposed “survey,” to be conducted between September 12 and November 15, would be unreliable, unrepresentative and open to manipulation and abuse. It would be far less accurate than the numerous surveys, some government-funded, conducted in recent times, all showing 60–70 percent support for marriage equality.

The ballot would particularly disenfranchise young people—many of whom are unfamiliar with the postal system, or are not on the electoral rolls—as well as indigenous and other people living in remote locations, or those living or travelling overseas, or who have moved house since the last election.

Supposedly, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), acting on the government’s instructions, would post voting papers to all citizens on the electoral roll, requiring them to mail them back. Not only would ballots inevitably go astray; there would be no means to guarantee that the votes were cast by those to whom the letters were sent.

If ballots included personal identifiers, in order to prevent manipulation, the ABS would then be able to match respondents' opinions on same-sex marriage with other personal information, violating the concept of a secret vote.

There is no precedent for such an operation. The government claims that it has validity because in 1974, the Whitlam government instructed the ABS to conduct a phone survey of 60,000 randomly selected people about a new national anthem. But Turnbull's postal ballot bears no relation to that phone survey, politically or logistically.

Moreover, the bill proposed this week by five Liberal Party backbenchers, in the event that the process produces a "yes" vote, would allow ministers of religion, military chaplains and “independent religious celebrants” to refuse to marry couples on grounds of sex, sexuality and family status. Other entities could legally refuse to provide facilities, goods or services.

Labor and the Greens, despite criticising the flaws in the postal vote, are imploring voters not to boycott it, thus giving it political legitimacy. They are pleading for young people to put themselves on the electoral rolls to participate, ostensibly as a means of ensuring a “yes” majority, in order to channel popular outrage over the ballot back into the parliamentary framework.

Speaking with feigned passion in parliament yesterday, Labor leader Bill Shorten said he would hold Turnbull responsible for “every hurtful bit of filth this debate will unleash.” Yet, he urged people: “Get your name on the electoral roll today, make your voice heard.”

Likewise, Greens leader Senator Richard Di Natale declared: “We are hoping that the shonky postal plebiscite is knocked off by the upcoming court challenges, but you’ll want to be on the roll in case it isn’t.”

This is sheer hypocrisy. The last Labor government—in which Shorten was a senior minister and with which the Greens formed a de facto coalition—effectively blocked same-sex marriage bills from 2007 to 2013. Like Turnbull, Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard appeased the religious right wing in Labor’s own parliamentary ranks, in order to cling to office as her government imposed its rightwing agenda of austerity and war.

Legal experts have indicated that the High Court challenges could well succeed. One application lists seven grounds of objection. They include the lack of any legislation to authorise the $122 million ballot, violation of the legislation covering the ABS, which confines it to collecting “statistics,” not opinions, and the use of ministerial directions and regulations to by-pass parliament.

Regardless of the law suits, working people and youth should take no part in this sham. Its primary political purpose is to hold together a government and an entire parliamentary set-up that is preparing to join a US-led war against North Korea and China, and deepen the assault on the working class. Millions of people are already experiencing the destruction of full-time jobs, falling real wages, soaring prices for housing, utilities and other essentials, and deteriorating schools, healthcare and other social services.

The fight for basic democratic rights, such as marriage equality, can only be taken forward through the independent political mobilisation of the working class on the basis of a socialist perspective, against the ruling elite and its political servants, who are increasingly tearing up basic legal and democratic rights across the board in preparation for suppressing widespread social unrest.

Opioid-related deaths soaring in Australia

Margaret Rees

New research points to a rising number of accidental opioid overdose deaths in Australia, echoing the opioid epidemic ravaging the United States, particularly among low-income and unemployed people.

The study, “Accidental drug-induced deaths due to opioids in Australia, 2013,” published by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC), is based on Australian Bureau of Statistics data.

A key finding was that accidental opioid deaths are trending upward. There were 398 deaths in 2007, soaring to 639 deaths in 2012—a terrible 60 percent increase that points to a deepening social crisis.

Prescription painkillers (pharmaceutical opioids) are now primarily responsible for more overdose deaths than heroin. Prescription painkillers caused 70 percent of the 668 opioid overdose deaths in 2013, more than double the other 30 percent due to heroin overdoses.

The largest proportion of deaths—40 percent—occurred in the 35–44 year age group, followed by the 25–34 age group and the 45–54 group, both with 27 percent. These are adults in their prime years, not adolescents.

During 2013, there were 432 male victims aged 15 to 54, about two-and-a-half times the 165 females in the same age group, suggesting that male workers are particularly being affected.

The trends are thought to have worsened since 2013. “We expect further increases once the deaths data for 2014 and 2015 are finalised,” report co-author Amanda Roxburgh told the Sydney Morning Herald.

“We’re seeing a real shift from illicit to pharmaceutical opioids implicated in these deaths, affecting a broader range of people who want to manage their pain. There’s good research showing there’s been a four-fold increase in the prescribing of these drugs between 1990 and 2014, particularly for Oxycontin, Tramadol and Fentanyl.”

Roxburgh suggested changes to medical prescription practices. She commented: “I think doctors need to prescribe for a shorter time and have the patient come in again for a review before they prescribe more.”

Once prescribed mainly for cancer patients, such opioids are now prescribed for acute pain after an operation and even chronic pain (lasting more than three months), such as lower back pain and osteoarthritis.

It is estimated that at least 20 percent of the population suffers chronic pain. This rising occurrence of pain, often work-related, has been the subject of aggressive marketing by pharmaceutical giants to persuade time-poor general practitioners to prescribe the powerful drugs.

Another paper: “Is there a pill for that? The increasing harms from opioid and benzodiazepine medication,” published last November by the Alcohol and Drug Foundation. It showed that between 1992 and 2012, the number of opioids dispensed through the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) actually increased 15-fold to 7.5 million.

The paper said the drugs were “over-promoted and highly prescribed” and “an increasing public health risk.” It noted that nearly half of Australia’s general practitioner prescriptions for opioids are to treat chronic pain.

A PBS Opioids Roundtable Report stated that 3 million people were prescribed at least one opioid under the PBS in 2014. The most common prescriptions were for paracetamol, combined with codeine, dispensed to 1.7 million patients, followed by Oxycodone, dispensed to one million patients. The use was highest in older age groups.

The PBS reported a high variation in prescribing among medical practitioners, with a small number of prescribers making a large number of authority requests. This highlights the fact that prescriptions for drugs like Oxycontin (Oxycodone) can be abused, by being diverted to non-prescribed users. The Australian Needle and Syringe Program found that the number of people injecting (misusing) these drugs has nearly doubled since 2001.

Around 50,000 people are undergoing treatment for opioid addiction, the majority of whom started using the drugs for a pain condition. There are higher rates of treatment for dependence on pharmaceutical opioids in rural and regional areas, where jobs and treatment services are scarcer.

Unfortunately, these studies do not examine the socio-economic causes of the developing epidemic. Research from the United States, however, points to the rise in opioid addictions and deaths being related to the deepening social crisis produced by the destruction of full-time jobs, mounting under-employment, poverty, social inequality and decimation of public health services.

A recent US study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse noted that reported abuse of opioids rose significantly among people with lower family incomes and those who were unemployed.

Uninsured people also were twice as likely as those with health insurance to report prescription opioid misuse and had higher rates of use disorders. There also was a link between mental health and opioid use. Respondents with a major depressive disorder and those with suicidal thoughts had higher rates of prescription opioid misuse and use disorders.

No such data has yet been produced in Australia, but indications exist of similar patterns. One badly de-industrialised region, in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley, reportedly has one of the highest opioid dispensing rates in Australia. One unnamed Latrobe Valley doctor told Fairfax Media that half his practice caseload related to chronic pain.

Former workers suffering from job injuries such as back injuries, aggravated by poor living conditions, can become addicted to prescription drugs and face extremely limited treatment options.

In the Latrobe Valley, for example, there are outreach day rehabilitation services, but no residential and withdrawal centres. People with substance addiction must travel several hours to the state capital Melbourne, about 150 kilometres away, for such treatment, an expensive option.

People who rely on prescription opioids often have no access to alternative measures, such as physiotherapy, nutrition advice or counselling. “They don’t have the money and they don’t live in a central location that has these services,” Briony Larance, senior researcher at NDARC, told the Monthlyearlier this year.

As a result of all these social, economic and health service factors, the most devastating consequences of drug addiction are felt by the poor in economically-depressed areas. The impact is magnified by the profit-driven pharmaceutical companies adopting predatory practices in order to exploit a growing demand for pain relief from an increasingly pain-ridden population.

This human catastrophe is not accidental. It is part of the immense social crisis created by the ruling capitalist class and its political servants over the past four decades through job destruction, the gutting of social services and a huge transfer of wealth from the working class and poor to the rich.

Canadian military to construct refugee camp as hundreds of Haitians flee US

Roger Jordan

Canada’s armed forces announced Wednesday that soldiers are constructing a camp near the Canada-US border in Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Quebec to house asylum seekers.

Tents to house up to 500 people are being erected in Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, close to a border crossing where up to 300 refugee claimants—most of them Haitians—are arriving daily. Although the majority of troops engaged in putting up the shelters will return to their barracks afterward, a CBC report has suggested that an unknown number will remain on-site to help with security.

The influx has been triggered by US President Donald Trump’s vicious clampdown on immigrants. In May, he vowed not to renew beyond January 2018 the Temporary Protection Status (TPS) accorded to Haitians following the devastating 2010 earthquake.

Despite the desperate plight faced by the approximately 60,000 Haitians staying in the US on TPS, including the imminent threat of being rounded up in Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and unceremoniously deported to conditions of poverty and misery in Haiti, Canada’s government has responded with callous indifference. Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen blandly declared August 4, “We discourage people from conducting irregular crossings of our borders. It’s not safe, it’s not something that we want people to do. We want people to claim asylum in the first country that they’re in, which in this case is the US.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau struck a similar tone, stating that the refugees should apply for asylum in the proper way and that Canada has to defend the “integrity” of its immigration system.

Such statements are deeply cynical. The hundreds of Haitians and other refugees crossing the border daily are being forced to cross “irregularly” because the Trudeau government continues to enforce the Canada-US Safe Third Country agreement, according to which refugees who make an asylum application at a regular border crossing are automatically turned back to the United States. They can only make a claim in Canada if they cross the land border independently, often at considerable risk. The refusal to abandon the agreement is bound up with the Trudeau government’s determination to deepen Ottawa’s strategic partnership with the Trump administration on the basis of stepped up military collaboration and enhanced North American economic protectionism, via a “modernized” North America Free Trade Agreement.

For Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard, the main concern is getting the asylum applications processed as fast as possible so as to limit the provincial government’s financial liability. “We give them social assistance, help to find housing. We give them healthcare, even education for the children,” he complained. “All that is expensive, and we don’t want the delay to be unduly prolonged. We’re talking about many millions of dollars.”

The right-wing Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ—Coalition for Quebec’s Future), meanwhile, is agitating for the refugee claimants to be summarily expelled. “The Liberals,” said CAQ leader François Legault, “are sending a very bad signal to illegal migrants by opening arms to them, as if Quebec can welcome all the misery of the world.”

Although Canada’s government was made aware in briefings as early as March of a potential influx of refugees, it has failed to provide adequate resources, forcing many of those crossing the border having to wait days in makeshift, ramshackle facilities to be processed.

Evidence suggests that the Trudeau Liberal government is already moving towards reaching some kind of an agreement with Haiti’s right-wing government to deport the asylum seekers after their applications have been summarily rejected. Two Haitian government ministers visited Montreal Wednesday and met with the city’s mayor, Denis Coderre.

A former federal Liberal Immigration minister, Coderre played a major role in the negotiations that led to the reactionary Safe Third Country agreement. Moreover, as Canada’s Representative to La Francophonie and “special adviser” to Prime Minster Paul Martin on Haiti in 2003-4, Coderre played a major role in fronting and organizing Canada’s participation in the US-led 2004 “regime-change” invasion and occupation of Haiti.

Jean Sebastien Boudreault, head of the Quebec Association of Immigration Lawyers, warned against the Haitian ministers having any contact with the asylum seekers. “We need to make sure, first and foremost, that we are protecting the people we are supposed to be protecting,” he told CBC, “which are the people who are seeking a refugee status.”

In contrast to the indifference and outright hostility from the authorities, the Haitian refugees have been met with an overwhelmingly positive welcome by residents of Montreal. On Sunday, hundreds of people gathered at the Olympic Stadium, where many of the refugees are being housed, to welcome the new arrivals, carrying signs that read “Refugees welcome” and “Haitians welcome.”

Many of the Haitians now fleeing Trump’s reactionary anti-immigrant policies were forced out of the impoverished Caribbean nation following the 2010 earthquake, which killed over 200,000 people and displaced half a million more. But Haiti’s endemic poverty and related social problems go back much further than that and are bound up with the ruthless exploitation of the country by American and Canadian imperialism.

American Marines first occupied Haiti in 1915, remaining for 20 years and leaving behind a trained Haitian army that for decades formed the backbone of pro-US dictatorial regimes.

In 2004, 500 Canadian troops intervened alongside US military forces to oust the elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, working in tandem with a bloody uprising based on elements drawn from the disbanded Haitian army and death squads active under the Duvalier military dictatorship and successor military regimes.

Canada’s determination to support the coup was bound up with its imperialist interests in the Caribbean, which has long been a major destination of Canadian foreign investment. Canada’s major banks have been active in the region since the early 20th century.

Following the 2010 earthquake, Canada deployed 2,000 troops and two battleships to the impoverished country in what was one of the largest overseas deployments by the Canadian Armed Forces since World War II. The Conservative government of Stephen Harper ensured that Canada obtained a leading role in the so-called rebuilding of Haiti, which amounted to developing plans to establish the country as a cheap-labour haven and a source of super-profits for big business.

The lack of concern within Canadian ruling circles for the fate of ordinary Haitians is further illustrated by the callous treatment of Haitians who found refuge in Canada following the 2010 earthquake. Little more than four years after the disaster and under conditions where the country remains an effective ruin, Ottawa canceled its own temporary residency program, forcing Haitians to leave “voluntarily” or be expelled.

The Trudeau government’s treatment of those fleeing the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant witch hunt underscores the bogus character of its much-publicized “refugee-friendly” stance. In 2015, shortly after coming to power, Trudeau made a great show of welcoming the first group of Syrian refugees flown into Canada as part of a resettlement program. In reality, Canada was extremely restrictive in the number of Syrians it accepted as refugees, allowing just 40,000 to enter the country. Many were only allowed in thanks to private sponsorships by churches, mosques and community groups.

Conditions for refugees in Canada are abysmal. Many are forced to rely on food banks and other charities to make ends meet. In addition, successive Canadian governments, including the Trudeau Liberals, have illegally locked up immigrants and refugees indefinitely if they are deemed to be a flight risk, a danger to the public, or if their identities cannot be confirmed. Reports have denounced the practice, which has led to children being confined to conditions comparable to medium-security prisons.

Trudeau has used his pose as a pro-refugee leader concerned about “humanitarian” problems as political cover for vastly expanding Canada’s military deployments around the world, from the sending of additional Special Forces to the Mideast war in Iraq, to leading one of NATO’s battalions on Russia’s borders in Eastern Europe, and bolstering Canada’s naval presence in the Asia-Pacific to help the US threaten China. In June, the Liberals unveiled a 70 percent hike in military spending and declared that “hard power,” i.e. war, must be a central part of Canada’s foreign policy.

Catalan independence referendum sparks growing concerns in Europe

Alejandro López

The Catalan independence referendum, planned for October 1 is setting the stage for a bitter clash between Madrid and Barcelona.

The Catalan secessionists—the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), Catalan European Democratic Party (PDeCAT) and the pseudo-left Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP)—are continuing to push forward with the referendum. The Popular Party government, Socialist Party (PSOE) and Citizens party are vehemently opposed, with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy swearing that “all means” will be used to prevent it taking place.

A confrontation is likely to take place later this month as the Catalan parliament starts the formal drafting of the referendum law and the law of disconnection—the legal foundation for the transition from the Spanish legal system to a new Catalan republic should the “Yes” vote win. This would come into effect, regardless of the level of participation, and ignoring the fact that most of those opposed to independence will not vote because as they regard the referendum as illegitimate.

The PP government, which has appealed to the Constitutional Court and been supported by its rulings, has already put in place a repressive framework targeting the secessionists. It has pursued prosecutions, disqualifications from public office, threats to civil servants who facilitate the referendum (such as setting up voting booths in public schools), encouraged interrogations by the Guardia Civil without judicial authorization and spied both “legally” and illegally on secessionist figures. The PP has also threatened to withhold central government funding if the regional government uses it to prepare for the referendum.

These measures are backed by most of the Madrid-based media, with scant regard to their anti-democratic, repressive nature. Official chauvinism has reached levels not seen since the Franco dictatorship.

For their part, the Catalan secessionists have passed an anti-democratic reform to the regional parliament’s statutes that will allow laws to be approved after a single reading, allowing the independence legislation to be fast-tracked with little or no debate.

The Catalan government has also replaced the chief of the 17,000-strong regional Mossos d’Esquadra police force, Albert Batlle. He had been under increasing pressure from the CUP to resign after he had said that he would obey Spanish law and courts. His replacement, Pere Soler, a staunch nationalist, has a track record of derogatory remarks about Spain, declaring last year, “I hope we secede now, because I feel sorry for all you Spaniards.”

The Madrid-based media has reacted by defining the whole process as a “coup” against the government and called for article 155 of the constitution to be invoked. El País declared it would be “the only ordinary way—short of declaring a state of exception—that the central government could legally take over the Mossos d’Esquadra law enforcement agency if the latter decides to cooperate with the Catalan executive’s secessionist plans.”

Batlle’s downfall came days after three members of Catalonia’s regional government stepped down and a few weeks after regional Premier Carles Puigdemont dismissed a senior member of his government for expressing doubts about the referendum.

It is in this context that the major European dailies are raising the alarm.

David Gardner for the Financial Times, in his article, “Rajoy is cutting it fine with his Catalonian intervention,” describes the prime minister’s last-minute offer of greater fiscal autonomy for Catalonia of merely sounding “statesmanlike, waiting almost until the eve of a constitutional train-crash that could wreck Spain.”

He accuses Rajoy and the PP of bearing a “heavy responsibility” for the crisis, which they are then irresponsibly exploiting because they find “it electorally rewarding in the rest of Spain to incite antagonism against the Basque Country and Catalonia, where its centralising instincts severely limit its support.”

The FT concludes with a warning against the Constitutional Court sitting next month and “honing its legal weapons against the Catalan plebiscite.” Instead, “The test […] will be if Madrid drops the alibi that Spain is trapped in a legal labyrinth, in which the constitution is a tablet of stone, and judges are shielded against a political problem elected politicians have a duty to resolve.”

The German Suddeutsche Zeitung in “Spain is threatening the Catalans, instead of transforming them” goes further, openly sympathising with the secessionists. It describes them as “a very pro-European coalition of Liberals, Conservatives and Social Democrats” working in “the tradition of the Spanish Republic, which was smashed by General Franco, who had the support of the Nazi regime in the Civil War.” The PP is described as “having emerged from the Francoites.”

The paper states that European Union (EU) diplomats “are surprised that the central government makes no attempt at all to woo the Catalans,” especially under conditions where most Catalans agree with holding a referendum but do not support secession. It concludes by warning that “the problem is not to be solved with prohibitions. The more Rajoy and his fellow campaigners attack Barcelona... the louder the demands for a referendum.”

An editorial in the French Le Figaro , “Spanish Divorce,” follows suit, criticizing Madrid for rolling out the “heavy weapons” and a whole range of other measures in a “legal arsenal” to prevent the referendum. It blames the government for its “hard” attitude and its failure to generate any initiative “to calm the fever.”

In their criticism of the Spanish government, the editors of the FT, Suddeutsche Zeitung and Le Figaro are following in the footsteps of The New York Times, which last month criticised the PP’s “intransigence” and the way it had “galvanised” Catalan separatists.

The concerns on both sides of the Atlantic express the fears of sections of the ruling elite that a confrontation between Barcelona and Madrid, with its threats of suspending Catalan autonomy and military figures talking of sending in the army, might spark a crisis that will engulf Spain.

Such a scenario could rapidly spiral out of control, dragging down the fourth largest economy of the Eurozone and a key EU and NATO member. All this would occur post-Brexit, dragging the EU into a yet deeper quagmire.

It would risk inflaming already rising tensions between the major European powers, the US and Russia against a background of growing social tensions in Spain and across the continent provoked by one wave of austerity after another.

In Barcelona, July has seen a record number of strikes affecting transport. Industrial action has been taken by taxi drivers and workers in the metro, Bicing (the city’s bicycle sharing system), Renfe (the state-owned company which operates freight and passenger trains), Barcelona Airport security and Deliveroo (the British online food delivery company).

These struggles have been spurred by wage cuts, growing job insecurity—class issues recognised by workers throughout Spain, Europe and the world. It a reminder that the growth of separatism is a retrograde development that cuts across the critical struggle to unite the working class in opposition to the social counterrevolution being carried out by both Spain and Catalonia under the auspices of the EU.