Big Pharma’s Pushers: the Corporate Roots of the Opioid Crisis

Vijay Prashad

Sitting in a small cafe in a small town in western Massachusetts, Jordan talks about his problems with opioids. He was a construction worker, but an accident at his work site sent him to a hospital and into the arms of prescription painkillers. Jordan’s doctor did not properly instruct him about the dangers of these pills, which he used to kill the pain that ran down his leg. When the prescription ran out, Jordan found he craved the pills. “I used up my savings buying them on the black market,” he told me. When his own money ran out, Jordan got involved in petty theft. He went to prison for a short stint. The lack of proper care for his addiction in the prison allowed him to spiral into more dangerous drugs, which led to his near-death. Now released, Jordan struggles to make his way in the world.

With us is Mary, another recovering addict who entered the world of prescription drugs after she had a car accident a few years ago. Her shoulders and neck hurt badly and so Mary’s doctor gave her a prescription for fentanyl, which is 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine. Mary used a fentanyl patch, which allowed the drug to slowly seep into her body through her skin. It was inevitable, Mary told me, that she became addicted to the drug. The pain went away, but the longing for the opioid continued. Mary, like Jordan, is in a de-addiction programme. It is an uphill climb, but Mary is confident. She is a bright person, whose eyes tell a story of great hope behind the fog of her addiction.

In late October, in Easthampton, Massachusetts, a small crowd gathered in public to talk about the scourge of the opioid epidemic in the area. Kaisa Clark talked about her sister Kristina, who died last year at the age of 32 from endocarditis. Kristina (Tina) was addicted, but was not given much support from the medical community. “Time and again my sister was made to feel like her life didn’t matter,” Kaisa said, her voice cracking. In her obituary, Tina’s family wrote movingly about her fight with addiction. “It was an uphill battle to acquire the necessary physical and mental health services that she required, as the stigma of substance abuse continues to plague all areas of our community.”

These are some of the two million Americans who suffer from substance abuse disorders related to prescription opioid pain relievers. The numbers are staggering. In 2016, as many as 64,000 people died in the U.S. as a result of drug overdose. In 2015, the number was 52,404 dead, which means that the number increased by 22 per cent over the year. But more staggering is that over the past three years, deaths by synthetic opioids (fentanyls) increased by 540 per cent from 3,000 to 20,000. Illegal drugs—such as cocaine and heroin—continue to pose a challenge, but the real threat is from prescription opioids such as fentanyls of one kind or another. Each day, 175 Americans die from opioid overdose.

National emergency 

In early November, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency against opioid abuse. “The opioid is a tremendous emergency,” he said in his characteristic style. The declaration of an emergency means that state funds should go post-haste to help stem the crisis. It is not clear, however, if this will be enough. There are indeed severe problems of inadequate funding for the treatment of addiction, and funds will be welcome. But the problem also exists at the other end—the production of the addicts. This would require a full-scale assault on the pharmaceutical industry.

Whether Trump will have the stomach to take on this powerful industry is to be seen.

In July, Dan Picard, a City Council member in the town of Middletown (Ohio), reported that the opioid epidemic had put immense pressure on the financial resources of the town. He suggested that the town adopt a “three strikes” approach to the crisis. If a person called for an ambulance because of an opioid overdose, the city would send medical care twice, administer the antidote (Narcan) and allow the person to survive. The third time, the person having an overdose would be left to die. “We need to put a fear about overdosing in Middletown,” said Picard. He was chastised for his callousness.

But Picard is not alone. Across the “rust belt”, where de-industrialisation has slowly eviscerated community after community, the opioid epidemic makes its way. Matters are so grave that in West Virginia, by early March, the state ran out of money to help bury the poor. West Virginia’s Funeral Directors Association president Frederick Kitchen said that this was largely the result of drug overdose deaths. Robert Kimes of the same association said that many funeral home directors had said that the majority of those who required the indigent burial programme were young and “not financially in a great position”.

Princeton University economists Anne Case and Sir Angus Deaton looked carefully at the mortality rates for the U.S. working class and found them prone to “diseases of despair”—including drug overdose. In 2015, the Case-Deaton study found that there was a “sea of despair” that was drowning a generation of working-class Americans, with diseases such as drug addiction and alcoholism as evidence for the despair. In an updated version of the study that came out this year, Case and Deaton find that the collapse of the job market and the lack of hope amongst the working class have turned the poor towards various forms of addiction, including that of prescription drugs. Half the men who are out of the labour force, they suggest, are taking a prescription painkiller (such as an opioid).

“Although we do not see the supply of opioids as the fundamental factor,” Case and Deaton argue, “the prescription of opioids for chronic pain added fuel to the flames, making the epidemic much worse than it otherwise would have been.” Importantly, Case and Deaton point at the money. “We should note,” they suggest, “that a central beneficiary of opioids are the pharmaceutical companies that have promoted their sales.”

Social reasons for drug overdose

Case and Deaton are right to point to the social reasons for the drug overdose epidemic—the despair in society as it suffers from unemployment and social collapse—but also correct to point a finger at the pharmaceutical industry. Purdue Pharma, which makes the popular drug OxyContin, made $35 billion on this drug. The family that owns Purdue Pharma, the Sacklers, has made upwards of $13 billion. They donate vast amounts of money to charity, particularly in the arts. But they have also lobbied Congress with laser-sharp intensity. Between 2006 and 2015, Purdue Pharma and others who produce opioids spent $900 million on their lobbying efforts. That is eight times the amount spent by the gun lobby. They have purchased immunity from the elite, who are loath to stand up to stem the epidemic that is haemorrhaging poor communities across the U.S.

Matters get more horrid when one looks at the entire pharmaceutical industry. It is true that the drug industry has made a fortune selling painkillers—especially opioids—to the general public. But they also make a killing from selling the antidotes for an overdose. And they have shown their colours by raising prices as the epidemic spirals out of control. The drug that Picard wanted to deny the overdose victim on their third call to the hospital is Narcan. One version of Narcan is called Evzio and is made by the pharmaceutical company Kaleo. In 2014, Kaleo sold two Evzio doses for $690, but increased the price earlier this year to $4,500. Kaleo controls about 20 per cent of the antidote market. This means that it has been able to set the price for this drug across the market, including for generic naloxone, which doubled over the past year.

Neither Jordan nor Mary is able to easily face a world that seems to have turned its back on them. There are millions of others like them who live in “factory deserts”, in towns that have been utterly hollowed out by the new order of things. They have no faith in Trump’s emergency order. Some money will go towards opioid addiction, which they welcome. But that is not the crux of the matter. They point their fingers at the pharmaceutical industry and the billionaires in their society. There is money in their society, they tell me at different times, but it does not seem to be coming to them. “The rich would like us all to die or go to prison,” says Mary.

‘Dawn Leaks’ And The Ouster Of Nawaz Sharif

Nauman Sadiq

In a momentous decision on 28 July, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was disqualified from holding public office by the country’s Supreme Court on the flimsy pretext of holding an ‘Iqama’ (a work permit) for a Dubai-based company. Although it is generally assumed the revelations in the Panama Papers, that Nawaz Sharif and his family members own offshore companies, led to the ignominious downfall of the prime minister, but another important factor that contributed to the dismissal is often overlooked.

In October last year, Pakistan’s leading English newspaper, Dawn News, published an exclusive report dubbed as the ‘Dawn Leaks’ in Pakistan’s press. In the report titled ‘Act against militants or face international isolation,’ citing an advisor to the Prime Minister, Tariq Fatemi, who has since been fired from his job for disclosing the internal deliberations of a high-level meeting to the media, the author of the report Cyril Almeida contended that in a huddle of Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership, the civilians had told the military’s top brass to withdraw its support from the militant outfits operating in Pakistan, specifically from the Haqqani Network, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba.

After losing tens of thousands of lives to terror attacks during the last decade, an across the board consensus has developed among Pakistan’s mainstream political parties that the policy of nurturing militants against regional adversaries has backfired on Pakistan and it risks facing international isolation due to the belligerent policies of Pakistan’s security establishment. Not only Washington but Pakistan’s ‘all-weather ally’ China, which plans to invest $62 billion in Pakistan via its China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects, has also made its reservations public regarding Pakistan’s continued support to the aforementioned jihadist groups.

Thus, excluding a handful of far-right Islamist political parties that are funded by the Gulf’s petro-dollars and historically garner less than 10% votes of Pakistan’s electorate, all the civilian political forces are in favor of turning a new leaf in Pakistan’s checkered political history by endorsing the decision of an indiscriminate crackdown on militant outfits operating in Pakistan. But Pakistan’s military establishment jealously guards its traditional domain, the security and foreign policy of Pakistan, and still maintains a distinction between so-called ‘good and bad Taliban.’

It’s worth noting that there are three distinct categories of militants operating in Pakistan: the Afghanistan-focused Pashtun militants; the Kashmir-centered Punjabi militants; and the transnational terrorists, like al-Qaeda, which number only in a few hundreds and are hence insignificant. Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is mainly comprised of Pashtun militants, carries out bombings against Pakistan’s state apparatus. The ethnic factor is critical here.

Although TTP likes to couch its rhetoric in religious terms, but it is the difference of ethnicity that enables it to recruit Pashtun tribesmen who are willing to carry out subversive activities against the Punjabi-dominated state apparatus, while the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants have by and large remained loyal to their patrons in the security establishment of Pakistan.

Although Pakistan’s security establishment has been willing to conduct military operations against the TTP militants which are deemed as security threat to Pakistan’s state apparatus, but as far as the Kashmir-centered Punjabi militants, including Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, and the Afghanistan-focused Quetta Shura Taliban, including the Haqqani Network, are concerned, they are still enjoying impunity because such militant groups are regarded as ‘strategic assets’ by the security establishment.

Therefore, the Sharif administration’s decision that Pakistan must act against the jihadist proxies of the security establishment or risk facing international isolation ruffled the feathers of the military’s top brass, and consequently, the country’s judiciary was used to disqualify an elected prime minister in order to browbeat the civilian leadership of Pakistan.

Historically, from the massacres in Bangladesh in 1971 to the training and arming of jihadists during the Soviet-Afghan war throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and then launching ill-conceived military operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas under Washington’s pressure, which led to the displacement of millions of Pashtun tribesmen, the single biggest issue in Pakistan has been the interference of army in politics. Unless Pakistanis are able to establish civilian supremacy in Pakistan, it would become a rogue state which will pose a threat to the regional peace as well as its own citizenry.

For 33 years of its 70-year-long history, Pakistan was directly ruled by the army, and for the remaining half, the security establishment has kept dictating Pakistan’s foreign and security policy from behind the scenes. The outcome of Ayub Khan’s first decade-long martial law from 1958 to 1969 was that Bengalis were marginalized and alienated to an extent that it led to the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971; during General Zia’s second decade-long martial law from 1977 to 1988, Pakistan’s military trained and armed its own worst nemesis, the Afghan and Kashmiri jihadists; and during General Musharraf’s third martial law from 1999 to 2008, Pakistan’s security establishment made a volte-face under Washington’s pressure and declared a war against the Pashtun militants that ignited the fires of insurgency in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

Although most political commentators in Pakistan nowadays hold an Islamist general, Zia-ul-Haq, responsible for the jihadist militancy in tribal areas; however, it would be erroneous to assume that nurturing militancy in Pakistan was the doing of an individual scapegoat named Zia; all the army chiefs after Zia’s assassination in 1988, including Aslam Beg, Asif Nawaz, Waheed Kakar, Jahangir Karamat and right up to General Musharraf, upheld the same military doctrine of using jihadist proxies to destabilize the hostile neighboring countries, Afghanistan, India and Iran, throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

A strategic rethink in Pakistan army’s top brass took place only after 9/11, when Richard Armitage threatened General Musharraf in so many words: “We will send you back to the Stone Age unless you stop supporting the Taliban.” Thus, deliberate promotion of Islamic radicalism and militancy in the region was not the doing of an individual general; rather, it has been a well-thought-out military doctrine of a rogue institution. The military mindset, training and institutional logic dictates a militarist and aggressive approach to foreign affairs and security-related matters. Therefore, as a matter of principle, military must be kept miles away from the top decision-making organs of the state.

Finally, the rule of law, more than anything, implies the supremacy of the law: that all institutions must work within the ambit of the constitution. The first casualty of the martial law, however, is the constitution itself, because it abrogates the supreme law of the land. All other laws derive their authority from the constitution, and when the constitution itself has been abrogated, then the only law that prevails is the law of the jungle.

If the armed forces of a country are entitled to abrogate “a piece of paper,” known as the constitution under the barrel of a gun, then by the same logic, thieves and robbers are also entitled to question the legitimacy of civil and criminal codes, which derive their authority from the constitution.

Migration: The Whole World Is Changing For Good

Prithiraj Dullay

Waves of anger, fear and open hostility have greeted the influx of refugees and migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Some have reached levels of paranoia and xenophobic violence that have resulted in death. Across Europe politicians hurry to build “Fortress Europe” but the flood of humanity threatens to bring down the walls.

Predictions of the change in the composition of ‘nations’ the world over have come to fruition, whether as a result of climate change and environmental migration, refugee displacements as a consequence of wars or migrations for economic reasons. The world of the 20th Century is history. The reality that faces enclaves of mono-culture of whatever kind is that political borders, or those of colour, religion or even ideology are crumbling quickly as the world begins to change as never before.

Perhaps the change will be as extreme as that which was inherited after the barbaric hordes smashed through the frontiers of the Roman Empire, or those which were forced by Atilla The Hun or Ghengis Khan? It is prudent to remember that those ‘barbaric hordes’ who brought the downfall of Rome were none other than the ancestors of present day Europeans and that this happed just under 2000 years ago!

Yet, the world did not ‘roll over and die’. What it did was adapt, change and gradually accept, however grudgingly, the new order. The result was that populations changed as new genes were added to old and dying genetic pools. The outcome was more robust, adaptable and cleverer offspring.

Danish biologist, DNA researcher at the University of Copenhagen’s Center for Geogenetics, Eske Willerslev underscores the point when he says that Danes will die out if the borders are sealed off to new comers. He explains that Scandinavian geneology can be traced back to 10 000 years ago with the receding of the last Ice Age, when  rather small and dark skinned stone age hunters  moved into the area. They were followed some 6 000 years ago by a tool using population from the Middle East. Although the initial encounters between the groups was hostile, integration and mixing followed. Consequently,  the simpler Stone Age  population ‘disappeared’. The next wave of migration took place about 1 000 years later by stock farmers of the bronze age from East Europe. They were a taller people and had lighter skin. Willerslev is at pains to point out that Danish culture is not static; that it is constantly evolving; that the whole range of genetic variations found across Europe today is to a great degree the result of migrations of people from the Middle East and Eastern Europe. He makes it clear that the waves of migrations have given Danes everything from light skin, their language and even their physical height. He believes that we have a pressing need for migrations because any society without new genes and cultural input will die out. (See Politiken 29 October 2016)

The world is witnessing just such mass migrations as it gathers momentum across the globe. No country is immune. The old order of homogeneous populations is fast dissolving. New blood is sweeping across the USA, Canada, South Africa, Australia and now Europe, not withstanding the bluster of Donald Trump or the Le Pens or the Danish Folkeparti!

In many of the ‘new’ homes they have settled in, the immigrants have added not just new blood, but ‘new’ brain power. Microsoft alone will testify that Indians form the largest component of its workforce, making up over 40%. The flood of Chinese, Syrians, Somalians and others are changing our perceptions and limitations on intelligence.

As we have reacted to migrations of the past with distrust, resistance and even hate, so history will teach us that in the final analysis broader society will benefit with a new resilience, new genetics and a few shades of healthier skin colour! The Danes of the future, will still be Danish with all the additions of the newcomers absorbed and be richer and healthier for it.

Welcome the change, embrace it by a willingness to open your old world to the new. It is inevitable!

India strengthens its relations with Bangladesh

Rohantha De Silva

The Indian government is anxious to strengthen relations with Bangladesh to counter Chinese influence in that country. Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj visited Bangladesh on October 22 and 23 as part of this rivalry. Earlier in the month, Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley toured Bangladesh.

India’s moves to undercut Beijing’s influence is motivated by its geo-political interests. New Delhi’s main concern is Dhaka’s close relations with China. The Bangladesh paper the New Age noted in its opinion page on October 29: “New Delhi was concerned that China was getting involved in building economic infrastructure projects in Bangladesh, many of which were also strategic in nature.”

At the same time, New Delhi is acting on behalf of Washington, which has been aggressively working to integrate countries in the Asia-Pacific region into its military-strategic offensive against China.

Both New Delhi and Washington are particularly unhappy about Bangladesh joining China’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative, which now involves 60 countries, covering 70 percent of the world’s population. The US considers China’s OBOR as a serious challenge to its drive to assert world dominance.

On October 5, Bangladesh Foreign Secretary Shahidul Haque announced his country’s backing for the OBOR plan. Addressing a World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in New Delhi itself, he said Bangladesh needed “quick upgrading of our infrastructure, and our generation wants much more interaction and connectivity.”

During her visit, Swaraj met with Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Foreign Minister A.H. Mahmood Ali and former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, the leader of opposition Bangladesh National Party (BNP).

Spelling out Bangladesh’s importance to India, Swaraj said: “India is following a policy of neighbours first, and among the neighbours Bangladesh is foremost.” She said the relations between the two countries had gone beyond a strategic partnership.

Swaraj attended the annual India-Bangladesh joint consultative commission. After meeting with the Bangladesh foreign minister, Swaraj claimed that the two countries stood together in “fighting violent extremism and terrorism at all levels.”

She said: “We are both determined to protect our societies from the threat of ideologies of hate, violence and terror by adopting a zero tolerance policy.”

Swaraj inaugurated 15 development projects funded by India, worth about $US8.7 million. They cover education, health care, information technology, water supply and social welfare, and include 11 water treatment plants and 36 community clinics. She also gave books, computers and multimedia equipment to the Hindi and Sanskrit departments of several universities.

During the early October visit of Indian Finance Minister Jaitley, the two countries signed a $4.5 billion line of credit (LoC) agreement between the Export-Import Bank of India and the Economic Relations Division of the Bangladesh finance ministry. It will be used to fund 17 major projects in Bangladesh, including electricity, railroads, roads, shipping and ports.

The LoC was agreed during Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s visit to India in April. As with two previous similar agreements, Bangladesh will pay 1 percent annual interest over a 20-year payback period, with a 5-year grace period. Bangladesh must also purchase 65 to 75 percent of the services, goods or works from India.

India is trying to compete with China in offering investment, although unsuccessfully. In October last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping stopped over in Bangladesh on his way to a BRICS summit in Goa, India. He pledged $21 billion in aid and loans for various infrastructure and development projects and secured a promise from Hasina to make Bangladesh a strategic partner of China.

While in Bangladesh, Indian External Affairs Minister Swaraj also declared that both countries would “solve all irritants with sincerity,” but did not specify the “irritants.” Sharing the waters of the two countries’ common rivers is a long-standing problem.

The Teesta River, which flows through the north of India’s West Bengal state before entering Bangladesh, was not even mentioned during the visit. Opposition by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has prevented the signing of an agreement so far.

The 1948 communal-based partition of India arbitrarily divided rivers between countries. Promises by various Indian leaders, including present Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to solve this issue have failed to materialise.

Despite the unresolved Teesta issue, Bangladesh is willing to develop closer relations with New Delhi. The Bangladesh government has set an annual growth target of 8 percent by 2020, from the current 6 percent. To achieve that, the government would have to diversify the country’s trade into other sectors, from its present reliance on the garment industry, which accounts for 80 percent of exports. Hence the quest for Indian investment, and also the fees Dhaka could obtain as a trading hub between East Asia and South Asia.

New Delhi is becoming more aggressive toward its regional rival China. India is integrating into Washington’s economic and military build-up against China and forging closer military-security ties with key US allies, Japan and Australia.

This year’s standoff between Chinese and Indian military forces in the Doklam area, at the tri-junction of the India-China-Bhutan border, has underscored Bangladesh’s importance to India. China is planning to build a link road to access the Chumbi valley, which is subject of a dispute between China and the small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan.

From the Chumbi valley, India’s Siliguri Corridor—the only land connection between India’s northeastern states and the rest of India—would be within the range of Chinese artillery. If China occupied the Doklam plateau in any future conflict, India would be forced to use Bangladesh as a transit for military purposes.

House to vote on giving Amazon $53 billion deal to become main Pentagon supplier

Evan Blake

Members of the US House of Representatives and Senate Armed Services committees announced Wednesday that they have reached agreement on the proposed $700 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the annual defense spending bill. This astronomical figure—an $80 billion increase over spending in 2016 and roughly $26 billion more than was requested by President Donald Trump—is a clear signal that the US will expand its ongoing wars around the world and is preparing to engage in far broader conflicts potentially involving North Korea, Iran, Russia, and China.

The NDAA will now be voted on by the House of Representatives, where it has been rubber-stamped every year since 1961, before being signed into law by Trump. While reporting by the bourgeois press on the NDAA has been limited overall, a key section of the bill, titled “Procurement Through Commercial E-Commerce Portals,” has been almost entirely overlooked. This section establishes the framework whereby Amazon will be able to corner the market for Defense Department procurements worth roughly $53 billion, and its inclusion in the NDAA is a product of the direct links connecting Amazon with the state and military-intelligence apparatus.

Already marked as a semi-official wing of the US military-intelligence apparatus by their back-room deal with the CIA, Amazon will likely soon become the primary supplier for numerous items demanded by the Defense Department.

The Pentagon will now purchase office equipment, internet service, and all other equipment needed to direct its out war crimes directly from Amazon, both in the US and at its military bases internationally. In other words, if the bill becomes law, Amazon will be providing hundreds of thousands of CIA agents, military personnel, prosecutors, and immigration agents with their pencils, desks, and chairs.

Section 846 of the NDAA requires the Defense Department to purchase commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products on “e-commerce portals.” While congressmen claim that there will be healthy “competition” between a variety of such “e-commerce portals,” in reality Amazon possesses immense advantages that leave it poised to quickly monopolize the market.

By claiming that the online marketplaces are inherently competitive, Section 846 also enables the federal government to secure no-bid contracts, eliminating the requirement that procurement officers seek competitive bids.

The experience of numerous third-party vendors on Amazon, however, testifies that their online marketplace is the antithesis of a “free market.” Rather, the company is notorious for using the most sophisticated technology to drive out their competition and take over markets for themselves. By using algorithms to track sales data on Amazon, the company determines which products are most profitable, diverts traffic to their own marked-down version of the same product to drive out their competition, and then gouges the price to reap super-profits once they’ve established monopoly control.

Amazon is able to do this in part because they charge third-party companies 15-20 percent of their sales revenue for the ability to sell on Amazon, which impinges on profits and sets a higher price threshold at which companies can sell while still being profitable, thus enabling Amazon to perpetually undercut their competition.

With the establishment of an online marketplace catering to the federal government, Amazon will be able to track the Pentagon’s spending data on everything, and repeat the above process until they control every major market. Very shortly, Amazon could be the sole source of chairs, paper, desks, water bottles, etc. for the entire Defense Department, netting annual revenue of almost the entire apportionment of $53 billion, equal to 38 percent of the company’s overall $136 billion revenue in 2016.

Similar to the 2013 deal between Amazon and the CIA, the current deal gives the company a foot in the door for securing even more lucrative military contracts in the future. If this foray proves successful, the broader intelligence community and other federal agencies could themselves formulate “online marketplace” policies designed to benefit Amazon.

The proposed NDAA budget explicitly states that it will promote “the objective of enabling Government-wide use of such portals,” while making the entire process as seamless as possible for Amazon and the other e-commerce portals. The document states, “The conferees encourage the Administrator, General Services, to resist the urge to make changes to the existing features, terms and conditions, and business models of available e-commerce portals, but rather demonstrate the government's willingness to adapt the way it does business.”

In 2016, Amazon accounted for 38.1 percent of all online retail sales, followed distantly by eBay at 7.8 percent, Apple at 3.2 percent and Walmart at 2.8 percent. Amazon’s e-commerce sales are projected to grow by 32 percent this year, with their market share ballooning to 43.5 percent. If their growth continues at the same rate, Amazon will control 100 percent of online retail sales in roughly 10 years. With the help of the Pentagon, Amazon could reach this level of monopolization far sooner.

The connections between Amazon and the state find open expression in the implementation of Section 846 of the NDAA, which the company sculpted with House Armed Services Committee chair Mac Thornberry, a Texas Republican who has been lobbied by Amazon over the past year. Thornberry first introduced the concept of establishing online marketplaces via a standalone bill last May, which he then wrapped into the NDAA budget proposal in the following months. Announcing the initial bill proposal, Thornberry declared, “if you’re buying office supplies, you ought to be able to go on Amazon and do it.”

So far this year, Amazon has spent $9,660,000 lobbying the federal government, the 15th largest amount of any company or entity. They are on track to spend $12 million this year, more than Dow Chemical and Exxon Mobile. In the second and third quarters of 2017, Amazon explicitly lobbied on the “modernization of the procurement process,” according to filings by lobbying firm TwinLogic Strategies.

Amazon Business, the company’s commercial sales platform launched in 2015, will likely be the platform by which they sell merchandise to the Defense Department. The current head of Amazon Business’ public sector division, Anne Rung, was the head of the US government’s Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Federal Procurement Policy until fall 2016. In that capacity, Rung effectively oversaw the program that will now be making purchases directly from Amazon.

As the International Amazon Workers Voice (IAWV) has repeatedly exposed, Amazon is deeply implicated in the war crimes of American imperialism. Behind the backs of Amazon workers and the American population, the company has facilitated the machinations of the military and formed connections at the highest levels of the state. Their latest efforts to create a private marketplace to secure immense profits from the Pentagon marks a significant deepening of this corrupt relationship.

The only way to break the domination of the corporations and the military-intelligence apparatus is for workers to expropriate corporations like Amazon, redistribute the company’s wealth and the $90 billion belonging to CEO Jeff Bezos according to human need, and reorganize the corporation as a public service. Under socialism, Amazon’s distribution networks could be directed by the workers to deliver food, medicine, and rebuilding supplies to disaster zones like Puerto Rico, to help deliver clean water to impoverished regions of the world, and to establish a level of social planning to the distribution of the world’s resources.

French president travels to Saudi Arabia amid danger of war with Iran

Francis Dubois

Amid the eruption of an open confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran, French President Emmanuel Macron suddenly decided on November 9, amid an official visit to Abu Dhabi, to visit Saudi Arabia for talks. In Abu Dhabi, Macron had, among other official activities, visited a military base from which French warplanes bomb targets in Iraq and Syria, in order to announce further military operations.

The reason for Macron’s trip to Riyadh was the danger of a sudden outbreak of open military conflict between Saudi Arabia, backed by the United States, and Iran, allied to Russia and Syria. The two regional rivals are already fighting each other in proxy wars in Syria and Yemen. The Saudi regime has blamed Iran for alleged missile launches targeting Riyadh by Houthi rebels in Yemen and declared itself “in a state of war” with Lebanon, pressing Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to step down and violently criticize Iran.

Speaking on these topics as well as Trump’s opposition to the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, Macron declared: “I want to make the Saudi neighbor more sensitive to all these questions.” He added, “The very hardline positions expressed by Saudi Arabia on Iran … are not in conformity with my thinking.”

Paris clearly fears a breakup of Lebanon, a former French colony, which it hoped to stabilize based on a new constitution. “We really want unity and the territorial integrity of Lebanon to be preserved,” declared French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian. Macron and the Saudi leadership discussed the Lebanon crisis, and Macron reiterated the importance that France places on “the stability, security, sovereignty and integrity of Lebanon.”

In Riyadh, Macron specifically raised the issue of the danger of US cancellation of the Iranian nuclear deal, which he instead proposed to complete with an accord to oversee Iranian ballistic missiles. He warned against decisions that could even further destabilize the region, trip it into war or trigger a crisis like the current nuclear-armed standoff in North Korea.

The actions of both Riyadh and Washington threaten to trigger an all-out general war in the Middle East that could rapidly turn into a confrontation between Washington and Moscow. Le Monde cited Nahla Chahal, the chief editor of Safir Al-Arabi, an online magazine covering the Arab world, as saying: “We are on the edge of the precipice. The slightest thing could suddenly plunge the entire region into flames.”

This war danger flows from the humiliating defeat that the NATO imperialist powers and their Gulf state allies are currently suffering in their bloody proxy war in Syria. Saudi Arabia’s plans for the overthrow of Saudi President Bashar al-Assad are now in ruins, faced with the intervention of Russia and of Iran via the Hezbollah militia and the Saudi regime is now trying to take its revenge in Lebanon. Its leaders have made multiple belligerent statements about these countries in recent days and called its citizens to leave these countries.

A few days before Macron’s surprise visit, Saudi Arabia had apparently forcibly kept Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri in Riyadh. In a speech given on Saudi radio on November 4 to announce his resignation, Hariri attacked Iran for its alleged “interference” in the affairs of Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. Hariri accused Hezbollah—a Lebanese Shiite militia with close ties to Iran that supports Hariri’s own government and is fighting in Syria alongside Assad’s forces—of forming a “state within the state.”

Most Lebanese politicians are demanding Hariri be returned to Beirut. Lebanese President Michel Aoun said he was awaiting Hariri’s return to “discuss with him the circumstances of his resignation to try to draw the lessons of it.” Walid Jumblatt, the head of the Progressive Socialist Party, declared: “Now is not the time for Saad Hariri to resign; that would have serious repercussions on Lebanon’s economy and on Lebanon.”

A source close to Hariri’s March 8 Coalition, which also includes Hezbollah, told the media: “It is shameful that [Hariri] tendered his resignation in Riyadh, not Beirut. We are patient and reasonable, but there are limits. They accuse us of being linked to Iran, but Iran has never tried to dictate to Lebanon how it should behave.”

A chief of the Lebanese Forces, an ex-Christian militia that fought in the Lebanese Civil War, said: “Coexistence with Hezbollah is now impossible.” For former minister and influential Maronite deputy Boutros Harb, Hariri’s resignation “will create political tensions due to the breaking of the accord that allowed for the formation of the government at the end of 2016.” He added, “Now we can only work together to minimize the dangerous impact [the resignation] will have on Lebanon.”

“This situation is completely surrealist; it’s as if one were living in a political thriller,” said a Lebanese businessman linked to the Hariri family.

The Saudi monarchy is doubtless encouraged by the continual support of Washington, particularly since Donald Trump’s trip to visit the Middle East in May of this year and the formation of a new alliance with the United States and Israel—set up to counterbalance the axis between Russia, Iran and Turkey, backed by China, which took shape during the Syrian war.

Paris, like Berlin, is hostile to the Trump administration’s preparations for nuclear war against North Korea and its threats against Iran, which Trump has labeled a terrorist state. The European bourgeoisie is strongly opposed to repudiating the 2015 Iranian nuclear accord, which would signify reimposing harsh economic sanctions that would directly affect their investment, production sites, exports and profits in the country.

The intervention of Paris in the Saudi-Iranian conflict underscores the rising tensions between US and European imperialism. By traveling to Riyadh, Macron is trying not only to prevent Trump from carrying out a policy Berlin and Paris consider to be disastrous for their interests, but to prevent a situation in which Paris would be reduced to the role of a spectator in a major regional war that could spread across the entire world.

The ever more dangerous conflicts that Macron is trying to control are themselves the disastrous outcome of the policy of aggressive neocolonial war carried out by previous French governments in alliance with Washington, and in which Macron participated. Former French President François Hollande armed anti-Assad Islamist forces in Syria and, based on lying claims about chemical weapons attacks, led the charge for a direct war against Syria in 2013. However, that war was called off at the last minute by Washington and London, after war was voted down in the House of Commons.

The impact of the Syrian intervention was not only the destruction of Syria, the decimation of its population and the transformation of tens of millions of Syrians into impoverished refugees (to whom France refuses asylum), but to sow the seeds of a war that could destroy the entire region.

May’s Conservative government faces possible collapse over Brexit

Chris Marsden

The European Union’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier gave Britain a two-week deadline yesterday to provide “vital” clarification on the financial commitments it is willing to honour as part of its Brexit divorce settlement.

During a press conference following discussions with UK Brexit Secretary David Davis, Barnier took a hard line, stressing that there would be no talks on post-EU trade before agreement on the final settlement—expected to be over £50 billion.

With further substantive talks not scheduled until December, the European powers clearly smell blood in the water. They calculate that the Conservative government of Prime Minister Theresa May is too weak to make good on its threats to walk away from the EU with “no deal rather than a bad deal.”

EU officials let it be known to the Times of London that they are making contingency plans based on May or even her entire government not surviving beyond the end of this year.

May’s premiership has become a living nightmare for her. She heads a minority government after a narrow general election victory in June—a snap poll that she called in the aim of providing a larger majority to push Brexit through. Instead, not only did popular anti-austerity sentiment contribute to a large vote for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, but the fissures within ruling circles over Brexit were widened.

Now, May is at the epicentre of a political storm. Within days, she has lost two of her cabinet to scandals. Sir Michael Fallon fell as Defence Secretary after being accused of sexually inappropriate behaviour. Of a far more serious character is the resignation of Priti Patel as International Development Secretary after it was revealed that she held 14 meetings with top Israeli officials—including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—while supposedly on a “family holiday.” During the trip she also visited the Golan Heights and, on her return, lobbied to divert part of the UK’s international aid budget to the Israel Defense Forces.

The position of the fallen ministers on Brexit soon played a part in the unfolding crisis. May was subject to angry broadsides when she replaced Fallon with her chief whip, Gavin Williamson. To placate her critics, May replaced Patel with the prominent Eurosceptic Penny Mordaunt—even as Patel herself told the media, via “friends” and “colleagues,” that she now felt liberated to campaign hard for Brexit from the backbenches.

May then announced her intention to put an amendment enshrining in law the date Britain leaves the EU—at 11pm, March 29, 2019. She wrote in the pro-Brexit Telegraph warning, “We will not tolerate attempts from any quarter to use the process of amendments to this Bill as a mechanism to try to block the democratic wishes of the British people by attempting to slow down or stop our departure from the European Union.”

Her threat is directed not only at the opposition, but at sections of her own party who are calling for a legally-binding vote on Brexit when the final settlement is agreed. But this only confirms the impotence of a government that is hostage to a hard-line anti-EU faction which is otherwise a distinct minority within ruling circles in Britain.

The majority position in business circles and the City of London prior to the shock result of the June 23, 2016 Brexit referendum was to support EU membership. In its aftermath, the central concern became preserving access to the Single European Market on which the UK economy relies. That May cannot even defend this goal is a source of anger and despair for the Remain camp.

For their part, the party’s pro-Brexit faction push May around remorselessly while contemplating her eventual removal. Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and others calculate that Britain can force the EU to accept a favourable trade deal because to do otherwise would be mutually damaging. But above all they rely on securing a close economic relationship with the Trump administration in the US as their main bargaining chip.

However, as trade and political tensions deepen between the US and Europe, Britain could find itself wholly excluded from key markets with nothing other than a promissory note from an administration whose watchword is “America First!”

On Thursday, Barnier directly challenged May over the recent visit to Britain by US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross for talks with UK Trade Secretary Liam Fox. Ross has denounced the EU as protectionist, as has President Donald Trump.

In Rome, Barnier said, “When I hear the US secretary of commerce, Wilbur Ross, call in London for the British to diverge with Europe to better converge towards others—towards less regulation, environmental, sanitary, food, probably also financial, fiscal and social—I’m wondering … The United Kingdom has chosen to leave the European Union. Will it also want to move away from the European model?”

Making clear that the EU’s concern is Britain’s dropping of what little financial regulations remain, intensifying competition for markets and investments, he warned, “There will be no close commercial relationship without a level playing field.”

Commentators queued up to make their response to May’s crisis. The consensus is that her days are numbered, because the longer she stays in office, the more damaging it is for the strategic interests of British imperialism.

“Brexit has broken British politics,” writes Philip Stephens in the Financial Times. The Brexit “project is being steered, if that is the right word, by an administration drained of political authority by a misjudged election and by a Conservative party at war with itself.”

Conservative Remain supporter Simon Jenkins wrote in the Guardian that May “says she will not ‘tolerate’ Brexit backsliding from rebel remainer MPs. What we actually want to know she’s not tolerating is a much smaller group of flat-Earth rebels backsliding from a sensible Brexit.”

In the Daily Mail , Piers Morgan declared, “ Yes, if [May] resigns it will force another Conservative leadership contest, with the added risk of triggering another general election, but this current debacle cannot continue … The Prime Minister has to go, and she has to go now.”

Morgan identifies a key area of dispute among anti-Brexit forces in the ruling class—whether or not Corbyn and Labour offer an alternative through which Brexit can be overturned.

Corbyn and Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell have made great efforts to reassure the City of London that Labour’s proposed minimal reforms do not threaten big business but rather could be its political salvation.

This has not allayed fears among some that a government coming to power even formally committed to opposing austerity is too dangerous to contemplate. However, others are shifting.

On the BBC’s Newsnight, Lord Michael Heseltine said he and other Tories might even consider voting for Corbyn in a general election to stop Brexit.

“I have friends who are certainly Conservative voters who are agonising over exactly that dilemma,” he said. “If, as I think, the public opinion will move and the Labour Party moves there could be a situation where the only people left in favour of Brexit are the right-wing of the Conservative Party.”

For his part, Gordon Brown, the co-architect of New Labour alongside Tony Blair, used the launch of his memoirs to urge Corbyn to support a second referendum on EU membership.

This could be a “game changing moment” when “Brexit reaches crisis point” next year, he said. All that was required for victory is for the EU to agree limitations on free movement to appease anti-immigrant sentiment, as it has already done for Switzerland where jobs registered at job centres are mainly reserved for local people.

Trump sets out economic war in address to Asia-Pacific summit

Nick Beams

In what can only be described as nationalist “America first” rant, US President Donald Trump yesterday issued a virtual declaration of economic warfare to the heads of government and trade ministers at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference in Da Nang, Vietnam.

Abandoning the relatively subdued tone he adopted in China over the previous two days, Trump unleashed a tirade against what he called “violations, cheating or economic aggression” in the region—remarks clearly directed against Beijing.

The speech was billed as a major elaboration of US policy toward what Washington calls the Indo-Pacific. Raising his voice so loud that the speakers in the hall began to crackle, Trump blamed China and other countries for pursuing policies that stripped jobs from the United States.

“We can no longer tolerate these chronic trade abuses and we will not tolerate them,” he said.

“Despite years of broken promises, we were told that someday soon everyone would behave fairly and responsibly. People in America and throughout the Indo-Pacific region have waited for that day to come. But it never has, and that is why I am here today—to speak frankly about our challenges … From this day forward we will compete on a fair and equal basis. We are not going to let the United States be taken advantage of anymore. I am always going to put America first.”

There were two essential components to Trump’s diatribe: an attack on the multilateral trading system operating under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and an implicit call for a regional group, centred on the United States, directed against China.

Without specifically naming China, Trump said countries had been “embraced by the World Trade Organisation, even if they did not abide by its stated principles. Simply put, we have not been treated fairly by the World Trade Organisation.”

The United States, Trump said, had adhered to WTO principles, promoting private enterprise, innovation and industry. But “other countries used government-run industrial planning and state-owned enterprises” to engage in “product dumping subsidised goods, currency manipulation and predatory industrial practices.”

These countries had ignored the rules to gain advantage over those who followed them, causing “enormous distortions” in commerce and threatening the foundations of international trade itself.

“Jobs, factories and industries were stripped out of the United States and out of many countries in addition,” Trump said.

The call for a new bloc, centred on the US and aimed at China, is contained in the use of the term Indo-Pacific by the White House to describe what was previously termed the Asia-Pacific region.

As the Financial Times noted, some in the audience listening to Trump’s Da Nang speech were inclined to dismiss his use of the phrase as a slip of the tongue. But it was a “calculated effort to unveil his nascent strategy for Asia, which entails increased cooperation between the US, Japan, Australia and India aimed at countering the ever-expanding clout that China is wielding in Asia.”

The US president cast aside the multilateral framework put in place by the United States itself in the aftermath of World War II, and which has governed international trade for the past seven decades. He said the US would make bilateral agreements with “any Indo-Pacific nation that wants to be our partner and will abide by the principles of fair and reciprocal trade.”

Trump declared: “What we will no longer do, is enter into large agreements that tie our hands, surrender our sovereignty, and make meaningful enforcement practically impossible.”

Setting out what he called “the Indo-Pacific dream,” Trump said those who abided by the rules would be “our closest economic partners.” Those who did not, he blustered, “can be certain that the United States will no longer turn a blind eye to violations, cheating, or economic aggression. Those days are over.”

Trump left no doubt about where the new strategy was directed by listing a series of practices the US accuses Beijing of engaging in.

“We will no longer tolerate the audacious theft of intellectual property. We will confront the destructive practices of forcing businesses to surrender their technology to the state, and forcing then into joint ventures in exchange for market access.

“We will address the massive subsidising of industries through colossal state-owned enterprises that put private competitors out of business.”

Trump spelled out an agenda of attempting to cut across the prospect of Chinese investment in countries throughout the region through Beijing’s One Belt, One Road project. He declared that the US would refocus its development efforts by calling on the World Bank and the Asia Development bank to direct their operations “toward high-quality infrastructure investment that promotes economic growth.”

The US would reform “our development finance institutions so that they better incentivise private sector investment in your economies, and provide strong alternatives to state-directed enterprises that come with many strings attached.”

This vague commitment to “do more” only highlights the reality that the US has little to offer in the way of concrete economic initiatives in the face of major Chinese investment projects.

Trump’s speech was followed minutes later by an address by Chinese President Xi Jinping. While not mentioning Trump’s remarks, Xi emphasised international cooperation, economic openness and the need to uphold multilateralism.

Xi stated that over recent decades, economic globalisation had contributed significantly to global growth and had become “an irreversible historical trend.” He said: “We should continue to foster an open economy that benefits all. Openness brings progress, while self-seclusion leaves one behind.”

Xi’s speech contained phrases and themes that would have at one point formed the centre of an address by a US president. This underscores the enormous transformation in the structure of the world economy.

China, no less than the United States, is operating on the basis of its national economic interests. The difference is that whereas the US sees the present global order as leading to its further economic decline, the Chinese leadership, representing the interests of the oligarchs and multi-billionaires that constitute the country’s ruling class, sees only opportunities.

Beijing is seeking to use its growing economic strength within this framework to advance the strategic goal of becoming a “great power” and moving “closer to centre stage,” in Xi’s words at last month’s Chinese Communist Party congress.

There is no peaceful resolution to this conflict. Its objective logic is moving in only one direction: toward war between the United States and China, as the American capitalist class seeks to counter its palpable economic decline through military force.

Over 100 killed after typhoon batters Vietnam

Kayla Costa

At least 106 people have died over the past days, after Vietnam’s south-central coast was battered by Typhoon Damrey on Saturday. The typhoon was the second major storm to hit Vietnam in the past month, and the twelfth since January.

Typhoon Damrey landed on Saturday with 125 mile per hour winds. It completely destroyed weak residential infrastructure around the tourist hub, Hoi An.

Over the weekend, gale-force winds, floods and landslides damaged at least 116,000 homes, destroying 40,000 of them. Electricity poles were felled in many areas, and trees flung atop buildings and on roads. Six cargo ships capsized along with hundreds of smaller fishing boats.

Although the storm passed within 24 hours, heavy rainfall lingered for several days. The flooding has yet to cease, destroying farmlands and crucial infrastructure. Dozens of reservoirs are reportedly on the verge of overflowing, threatening impoverished villagers and farmers with further catastrophe.

At least 25 people remain missing and 197 have been reported injured. The death toll has risen sharply over recent days and is expected to continue growing. At least 30,000 people have been displaced, and four million people affected.

The death and destruction has led some to brand the typhoon the worst that has hit Vietnam in at least 18 years.

The latest storm follows Typhoon Doksuri, which struck central Vietnam in September. Despite its quick sweep through the region, at least eleven people were killed and more than 190,000 homes damaged. In August, heavy flooding and landslides in the northwestern provinces resulted in 27 deaths and over $45 million in damages.

The Vietnam Disaster Management Authority has boasted its response to Typhoon Damrey as a success, citing the 35,000 villagers that were evacuated safely before the typhoon and the 16,000 soldiers who are engaged in recovery efforts.

However, reports from the ground indicated that the victims of the storm were given virtually no warning, and were abandoned by the authorities for days.

In most areas, residents and tourists were given minutes to evacuate. “At first we were given 30 minutes to get out. Later it got more serious and they said we had 15 minutes,” a British tourist in Hoi An told the Sun.

Aid has been slow to reach the most damaged areas, due to blocked roads and ineffective bureaucracy. Nguyen Thi Dung, a local vendor in Hoi An cited by Agence France-Presse said, “Our family spent some days on the second storey of the house, eating only raw instant noodles as the power was cut off.” Other survivors also reported being stranded with nothing to eat, and limited supplies of fresh water.

Hoi An is a popular tourist destination and a UNESCO World Heritage site, just 30 kilometres from Danang, where the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit begins today.

Minimal structural damage was reported within central business districts of Hoi An and Danang. Both have increasingly been developed into wealthier hubs for travel and business. The surrounding rural provinces, on the other hand, have been decimated.

Residents of a number of the southern and central provinces rely on subsistence farming, low-paid rural work and fishing. Poverty rates are as high as 50 percent in some areas.

At least 250,000 hectares of farmland were destroyed by the storm, jeopardising the livelihoods of tens of thousands.

Tuoi Tre News reported on Tuesday that in the Van Ninh District of Khanh Hoa province, up to 85 percent of fishing boats had been destroyed. “Villages in Van Ninh District now resemble a giant landfill as they are filled with debris from damaged homes and the wreckage of local fishing boats,” the article stated.

One fisherman, Huynh Tai, commented: “We rely on nature to earn our living. Now nature has taken everything from us. My house has been knocked down, my ship is broken.” Tai said he would have to leave the village to find work elsewhere.

Those affected by the latest storm face a similar crisis to the victims of Typhoon Doksuri, who were given meagre state aid, and in many cases, were reportedly forced to rely on charity.

An article in the Conversation in September by Chinh Luu and Jason von Meding, who have researched flood disasters in Vietnam, noted: “Rapid population growth, industrial development and agricultural expansion have all increased flood risk, especially in Vietnam’s riverine and coastal areas.”

Luu and Meding stated that, “Socially marginalised people often have to live in the most flood-prone places, sometimes as a result of forced displacement.” A number of those hit by flooding disasters this year in northwestern Vietnam have previously been forced to leave their homes to make way for vast hydropower projects.

The plight of ordinary people is a product of the rapid growth of social inequality over the past three decades, as the Vietnamese Stalinist regime has pursued a program of capitalist restoration, and has sought to transform the country into a hub of foreign investment.

According to an Oxfam report on inequality released in February, there are now 210 “super-rich” individuals in Vietnam, with a combined wealth of $20 billion. This cohort, which accounts for around one in a million Vietnamese, controls 12 percent of national gross domestic product.

At the other end of the spectrum, millions eke out an existence below, or near the official poverty line. The Oxfam report noted that between 1992 and 2002, the income share of the poorest 40 percent of the population fell by over two percentage points, to just 17.28 of the national total.

The social divide is on display this week. While millions hit by the latest typhoon are facing destitution, the government is laying out the red carpet for dignitaries and heads of state, including billionaire US President Donald Trump, at this weeks’ APEC summit.

The government allocated at least $US17 million of last year’s budget to refurbishing central Danang for the event, which will doubtless feature discussions on how to maximize global corporate profits through the stepped-up exploitation of the south-east Asian working class.

New Zealand Labour-led government prepares attacks on working class

John Braddock

New Zealand’s Labour-NZ First-Green Party government has taken office this month amid heightening anxiety within the ruling elite over growing anti-capitalist sentiment and sympathy for socialist ideas among sections of the population.

Labour Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and NZ First leader Winston Peters, an anti-immigrant populist, both declared after the election that capitalism had “failed” and new measures were needed to revive its “human face.” In fact, the Labour-led coalition is a capitalist government that will accelerate the assault on living standards at home, and prepare for imperialist wars abroad.

Moves are already under way to strengthen the powers of the state and role of the unions to police the working class and suppress emerging resistance by the working class to the deepening social austerity measures.

In her first major appearance as prime minister-designate, Ardern told a NZ Council of Trade Unions (CTU) conference on October 25 that while she would introduce a series of “union friendly” policies, such as restoration of tea breaks and raising the minimum wage, “working together with business” would be “key” to her government’s operations.

Ardern praised Air NZ, declaring that “when business and workers join together, we can achieve great things.” When the company was losing money and looking to cut jobs, she said, the “high engagement cooperation between workers and employers,” saved the company and “the future of the business was transformed.”

Ardern failed to mention the destruction of 180 jobs in 2013 when Air NZ’s Auckland engineering base was moth-balled, and the closure of seven regional flight networks from 2014–16 saving $1 million a month. The cuts followed job losses at the Christchurch Engine Centre, Safe Air and in technical operations. Another 60 staff were axed in 2015 when the airline moved its heavy maintenance operations to Singapore. The sackings and closures were imposed with the collaboration of the then Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU), now part of E Tu.

As a result of decades of collaboration between the unions, the state and corporations to slash jobs and conditions, workers have largely abandoned these discredited organisations. Less than one in five workers is a union member, mainly concentrated in the state sector.

This historic collapse raises the prospect that class struggles will erupt outside the control of the unions. For this reason, Labour is promising measures to bolster their position. This includes restoration of the right of union access to workplaces, removing the ability of employers to deduct pay for work-to-rule and “low-level” protest actions and restoring the right of workers to initiate collective bargaining under the wing of the unions.

Labour will introduce industry-wide Fair Pay Agreements (FPAs), agreed by businesses within an entire industry and the unions. FPAs will set basic standards for pay and employment conditions, according to job type and experience, including for non-union members. Ardern claimed this would be done “by government, businesses, and unions, sitting around the table together.”

In other words, the unions through the FPAs will act as an arm of corporate management to tie the working class even more closely to the state.

Extensive anti-working class prohibitions on strikes within the Employment Relations Act, introduced by Labour in 2000 and maintained by the subsequent National government, will remain in force. This repressive legislation bans almost all strikes except during contract bargaining and over health and safety, while outlawing “political” or secondary strikes.

These proscriptions will now be expanded. Asked during the first election leaders’ debate whether the FPAs would see the return of “1970s-style” national strikes, Ardern emphatically declared: “No, we will not.”

Ardern later told Newstalk ZB: “Strikes will not be on the table when negotiating fair pay agreements. I am absolutely happy to rule that out.” Asked by Radio NZ’s Kathryn Ryan on September 21 how she would prevent industrial action around the FPAs, Ardern replied, “Easy, you legislate.”

Labour’s threat to almost completely outlaw strikes is supported by the union bureaucracy. CTU leader Richard Wagstaff told Fairfax Media on August 26 there was “zero prospect of industrial action” during the FPA negotiations.

To give this agenda a “progressive” veneer, Labour is promising certain measures that will be enacted through parliament. Paid Parental Leave is to be extended from 18 to 26 weeks, by 2020. Greens Minister for Women Julie Anne Genter has promised to close the gender pay gap in the public sector over four years by writing equal pay for women into the performance requirements of chief executives of government agencies.

Labour has promised to lift the minimum wage to $20 an hour, from the current poverty level of $15.75, but only by 2021. This miserly increase was hailed by leader of the Unite union Mike Treen, as a “big win for workers.” In April, Unite lodged a pay claim for Restaurant Brands fast food workers for a paltry 10 cents an hour increase, intended to eventually rise to 30 cents above the legal minimum.

Oppressive measures enacted by the former National Party government remain, with minor modifications. The widely-hated 90-day “trial period” for new employees, which discriminates particularly against young workers, will be kept. The law’s ‘fire at will’ provision, under which an employer can sack a new worker without reason, will be replaced with a new referee service which can hear claims of unjustified dismissal. Labour’s policy emphasises that it has “always supported trial periods for new employees.”

Labour has also promised to remove legislation that prevents film and television workers bargaining collectively. Known as the “Hobbit law,” it was enacted by National in 2010, under pressure from Warner Brothers and producer Peter Jackson, to force workers employed on his Hobbit films to be employed as individual contractors.

Workplace relations minister, Iain Lees-Galloway said last week Labour wanted “to sit down with industry players.” The government is likely to accommodate demands by Jackson’s company Weta Digital working on four upcoming Avatarsequels. “A lot of people have said they are really happy with the contracting arrangements. We are fine with that,” Lees-Galloway declared.

Further, Andrew Little, a former head of the EPMU, is now the minister responsible for overseeing the re-entry of the Pike River mine, which is currently sealed. The re-entry has been forced by a long-running campaign by family members of some of the 29 men who died in the mine’s 2010 explosion.

No-one has been held accountable for the disaster despite a 2012 Royal Commission finding that it was entirely preventable and that Pike River Coal had prioritised production over safety. The EPMU knew about safety breaches at the mine, which had prompted one walkout by workers, but failed to organise any action to ensure the mine was safe.

After the explosion, Little defended the company, telling the media there was “nothing unusual” about the mine and nothing that the union had been concerned about.

Meanwhile, the government is moving to strengthen the police in preparation to suppress working-class opposition to its big business agenda. Labour campaigned for 1,000 extra police but Ardern and Peters have since announced that police numbers will be boosted to 1,800 as part of the coalition deal. This is a 20 percent increase on the current level of 9,000 sworn officers, in a country with just 4.7 million people.