Cheap Drivers

Seth Sandronsky

Ride-hailing firms Uber and Lyft contract with drivers, who after paying their expenses, get a median hourly pay of $3.37 an hour (half above and below), according to a draft paper by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research. That sum is less than half of the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour

The MIT paper by Stephen M. Zoepf, Stella Chen, Paa Adu and Gonzalo Pozo surveyed 1,100 drivers for the two firms. “Results show that per hour worked, median profit from driving is $3.37/hour before taxes, and 74 percent of drivers earn less than the minimum wage in their state. 30 percent of drivers are actually losing money once vehicle expenses are included.”

Riders use mobile phone apps to hail Uber or Lyft drivers, whose work expenses include insurance, maintenance, repairs, fuel, and depreciation. Such drivers are self-employed independent contractors, responsible for these expenses. They are not company employees.

Drivers have their own formula, as some own vehicles while and others lease them, according to Ari, of Los Angeles, a former Uber driver who asked to use his first name only.

Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi took to Twitter to knock the MIT research on ride-hailing drivers’ pay. “MIT = Mathematically Incompetent Theories (at least as it pertains to ride-sharing).” The MIT lead author, Stephen Zoepf, executive director of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford University, concurred with certain criticisms of the paper about drivers for ride-hailing firms.

Recalculating the MIT methodology that Uber’s top economist differed with, delivered different results. On one hand, income of median drivers was $8.55 an hour, while 8 percent lost money and 54 percent earned under the state minimum wage. On the other hand, $10 an hour was median driver pay, and 41 percent earned under their state’s minimum wage, while 4 percent lost money.

Let us be clear. An hourly wage rate of $15.00 per hour nets one an annual income of $30,000. This is not living large.

Turning from economics, we look at the politics of ride-hailing firms. “Over the past four years, transportation network companies (TNCs), primarily Uber and Lyft, have convinced legislators in the vast majority of states to overrule and preempt local regulations and strip drivers of rights,” according to a recent report from the National Employment Law Project and Partnership for Working Families. The American Legislative Exchange Council, with funding from the billionaire Kochs, is involved.

“TNCs have successfully adopted state interference, an antidemocratic legislative practice favored by the gun and tobacco industries and popularized by the ultraconservative ALEC, in order to rewrite the law,” according to the NELP and PWF report. This “political strategy pioneered by the tobacco industry and the National Rifle Association” is also a favorite of the National Restaurant Association and, more recently, TNCs Uber and Lyft.”

Deregulation of airlines and trucking grew during the late 1970s on the watch of Democratic President Jimmy Carter. In part, unionized truck drivers became independent contractors who unlike them did not collectively bargain for pay and benefits with employers. This group of non-company workers resemble the union-free Uber and Lyft drivers, the independent contractors of 2018. The present is history.

Gun Industry Killing More People Overseas

Tamara Pearson

I live next door to the world’s biggest gun manufacturer. Here in Mexico, the murder rates are close to civil war levels. They broke records last year, for a total  of 41,217 homicides, with 25,339 first degree murders over the course of the year. And those are the official figures – which if anything, tend to under report reality.

President Trump has labeled Mexican migrants heading to the US as “criminals” but has ironically overlooked the fact 70% the guns coming into Mexico originate in the US. With the recent  shooting in the YouTube headquarters, the inspiring movements of young people demanding gun control, and Black Lives Matter protesting police impunity – the issue of systemic, deathly violence in the US is receiving important attention. But the impact of of that violence outside US borders is largely going under the radar.

In every measurable way, the U.S is head honcho of the global violence industry: it is the biggest arms exporter, it dominates global military spending, it sold a majority of guns, globally, in 2016, with the UK in second place at just under 10%, and it has been the leading arms dealer in the world for 25 of the past 26 years.

It’s hard to estimate how many deaths the US is responsible for overseas, especially indirect ones and those that have resulted from illegal gun trading (which is how most guns arrive in Mexico). But analyst Nicolas J.S. Davies estimated that “about 2.4 million Iraqis have been killed as a result of the illegal invasion of their country by the United States and the United Kingdom” and “about 1.2 million Afghans and Pakistanis have been killed as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001” and more in Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

It’s important to consider how the U.S’s violence overseas could be contributing to a culture of violence and a glorification of murder within it’s borders. It’s also important to remember how profitable the guns and ammunition industry is, and that like the drug trade, US companies have every interest in a strong demand for guns in and outside US borders.

An IBIS report on the guns and ammunition manufacturing industry noted that “In response to a weakening domestic military market, industry players have increasingly sought growth in exports.” That growth in exports has been a key factor in the percentage of murders here committed with guns increasing from 15% in 1997 to 66% in 2017. Now, there are around 300 million guns in Mexico – despite the fact that the country has just one shop (hidden discretely down a small lane in the capital) where they can be bought.

The figures are almost bad in nearby Central American countries El Salvador and Honduras – both with some of the highest murder rates in the world. In El Salvador, between 2014 and 2016, 49% of recovered guns had been originally bought in the US, and for the same period in Honduras, 45% were originally bought in the US. Indeed, while the mainstream, Western media focuses on the drug trade across the Americas, it is gun traffickers coming from the US who are exploiting US gun laws to sell guns over the border.

It’s Time to Radically Redistribute Social Wealth

David Rosen

The U.S. is a very rich country.  The Federal Reserve estimates household net worth at $94.8 trillion at the end of the Q1 2017, with the nation’s overall total assets at about $225 trillion.

In the World Inequality Report 2018, a study by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman, “Distributional National Accounts: Methods and Estimates for the United States,” makes a sobering point: “Income inequality in the United States is among the highest of all rich countries. The share of national income earned by the top 1% of adults in 2014 (20.2%) is much larger than the share earned by the bottom 50% of the adult population (12.5%).”  The authors note that while there is a 1-to-19 ratio between the income of the “lower class” (bottom 50%) and the “upper class (top 10 percent) in the U.S., the divide between the bottom and top classes in China is – at least for now – a 1-to-8 ratio.

In the face of the “recovery” from the Great Recession of 2007-08, Naomi Klein’s notion of “disaster capitalism” was implemented.  The Federal Reserve reports that in 2016, the richest 1 percent of families controlled a record-high 38.6 percent of the nation’s wealth.  The recently Congressionally-approved Republican bait-and-switch tax scam will only further increase inequality.

The truth of America’s deepening socio-economic inequality is obvious to all who choose to see, to know, what’s going on.  This condition exacerbates such ongoing conditions as deepening poverty, increased crime, growing drug addiction, failing health and overall social malaise.  The super-rich — whether defined as 0.1 percent, the 1 percent or the 10 percent — rule.  The government serves their needs.

Not since the rule of the Robber Barron’s during the fin de siècle era a century ago has the nation witness such tyranny of the 1 percent.  Today, they are back, but packaged as hip sophisticates and tasteful plunderers.  However hyped by the media, they truly rule.

In the face of such tyranny, the only way of preventing the nation becoming a 21^st century feudal state, with robber barons become lords of the manor, is to radically redistribute America’s social wealth.

***

In a very revealing study, “Top Incomes and the Great Recession: Recent Evolutions and Policy Implications” (2012), Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez layout a very clear trajectory of wealth aggregation during the 20^th century.  They note that “the share of total market income going to the top decile was as large as 50% at the eve of the 1929 Great Depression ….”  In the face of recovery and WW-II, it “stabilized below 35% between the 1940s and the 1970s.”  This was the era of the American Dream – the era that Trump seeks to invoke in his campaign slogan, “make American great again.”

They point out, “the top decile income share has risen from less than 35% during the 1970s to about 50% in recent years. This comes mostly from the very top. The top percentile income share itself has more than doubled, from less than 10% in the 1970s to over 20% in recent years.”  They conclude in no uncertain terms: “Again the key point that needs to be stressed from our viewpoint is the magnitude of the aggregate income shift that has occurred in the US since the early 1980s. The bottom 90% has become poorer, the top 10% has become richer, with an income transfer over 15% of US national income.”

The economist Stanley Stasch provides additional insight into how this economic coup de grâce was pulled off.  “From 1980 to 2005 the policies of President Reagan, the first President Bush, House Speaker Gingrich, and the second President Bush essentially destroyed the purchasing power of the bottom 60% of U.S. households (the bottom three quintiles),” he argues, “their share of national income declining from about 32% down to about 27% (a 15-16% reduction).”

Stasch notes that Reagan implemented three key developments that shifted national wealth: (i) secured the tax cuts the benefited the wealthy combined with tax increases for the non-wealthy, (ii) successfully attacked and, ultimately, severely weakened labor unions and (iii) federal spending adopted a new, more punitive approach dubbed “starving the beast” that shifted monies away from the middle and lower classes to the upper classes.

These policies had long term consequences.  “From 1980 to 2007, the top 0.01% of earners enjoyed a 408% growth in their income, the top 0.1% of earners enjoyed a 308% increase in their income, the top 0.5% enjoyed a 214% growth in their income, and the top 1.0% of earners enjoyed a 177% increase in their income,” Stasch points out.  He reminds readers, “During this same time period, the bottom 99% had to struggle with only a meager 8% increase.”

***

In 1873, Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner published, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, a satirical mockery of the greed and political corruption of late-19^th century American life.  This critical period of U.S. development lasted from around 1870 to 1900 and saw the nation transformed.  Every aspect of American life was being remade – it was shifting from an agricultural to manufacturing nation, from east-coast enclaves to a true nation state, and from a relatively homogeneous Anglo population to one with increasingly diverse shades of white (e.g., Germans, Irish).  However, what most captured Twain and Warner’s mockery was the glutton and self-adoration of the super-rich, those they dubbed “the robber barons.”

A century later, the only thing that’s missing from the portrait of 21^st century robber barons – symbolized by Donald Trump — is a Twain and Warner to mock them mercilessly.  A similar cabal of the superrich and their water-carriers control the Congress and succeeded, in late December 2017, with Pres. Trump signing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act into law.

The cabal that pushed for the Congressional passage of the bill consisted of three very powerful forces, intimately tied to one another.  First and foremost were the superrich, often referred as political donors.  Most well-known among them are the Koch brothers and the Mercers, but there are hundreds of others throughout the country who use their wealth to lubricate Congressional – let alone local and state — office holders.  In the run-up to passage of the tax act, two Congressmen revealing the underlying truth driving the bill’s passage.  Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY) declared, “My donors are basically saying, ‘Get it done or don’t ever call me again.’”  And Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was even more honest, reportedly saying that if the GOP didn’t pass the bill, “contributions will stop.”

The second force is the army of lobbyists that “assist” Congressional staff personnel drafting the legislation that became the law.  In 2017, there were 10,963 registered lobbyists in Washington, DC, and, according to Public Citizen, 6,243 registered lobbyists were worked on the tax bill.  It finds that there were more than 11 lobbyists per member of Congress working on tax reform.

Finally, many Fortune 500 companies aggressively backed passage of the tax bill through lobbying and other practices.  According the Vox, four conglomerates played an oversized role in pushing the bill’s passage — Comcast, Microsoft, Altria Group (formerly Philip Morris) and NextEra Energy. (Vox notes that Comcast, through its NBCUniversal subsidiary, is one of several major investors in Vox Media.)

The Republican-controlled Congress is not yet satisfied with its efforts to further expropriate the income and wealth of the middle class, working class and poor. This year, they are seeking to reduce spending on Medicare, Medicaid and anti-poverty programs.  For example, some Congressmen (as well as Republican-controlled state legislatures) are seeking to force welfare recipients to take jobs as a condition to receive benefits.

The sad truth of the decade-and-a-half marked by the Great Depression and WW-II was that it temporary uncut the ceaseless effort by the “ruling class” – capitalism — toward ever-greater expropriation of social wealth.  During the grand-days of fin de siècle, the robber-barons controlled 50 percent of social wealth; during the mid-20^th century era of social crisis, its control dropped to 35 percent; in the era of Trump, their share is back to 50 percent.  One can only wonder if a series of catastrophes similar to those that took place in the 1930s-1940s is the only social force that redress the tendencies to ever-greater inequality?

The great challenge facing “progressives” in the upcoming elections of 2018 and 2020 is to acknowledge economic inequality and the need for a radical redistribution of social wealth.  Every political issue is real and important, however without anchoring it within the context of growing inequality it will lose its specificity, of the real lives of ordinary Americans.  Making matters worse, the ruling class controls not only the Congress, but the apparatus of state power, the federal bureaucracy, as well.  In particular, they write the laws and they enforce them, through the judiciary and the law-enforcement apparatus.

An ever-growing number of ordinary Americans are coming to realize that they are being had by one of the greatest con-man of the last century, Trump.  A host ofnot directly related social issues launched social movements.  Police shootings of black males, male sexual abuse, a school shooting and teacher strikes turned into Black Lives Matter, #MeToo!, Never Again and a growing number of state-based teacher strikes.  One can well image a deeply disturbing event taking place that galvanizes popular resentment against the superrich.  Americans are realizing that their pockets are being picked, their social wealth (however little it is) is being expropriated to make the new robber barons ever richer.

Unfortunately, it might take too long for the electoral process of change the deeply in-grained, half-century long tyranny of ruling-class wealth expropriation.  The condition of sustained legal theft is lived by many as the American way of life.  It’s time for a new, 21^st century version of The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, one in which sharp critics heartedly mock today’s robber barons, but also offer meaningful examples of alternatives to a different American in which wealth is radically redistributed.

Neutralizing The Messengers In India

Nava Thakuria

India continues to be a dangerous place for working journalists as the largest democracy in the globe has lost three journalists in mysterious accidents within the first three months of the year. Even the UN secretary general Antonio Guterres came out with a strong condemnation against the journo-killings and let the world know about India’s degraded index on safety & security of professional scribes. In fact, within few hours the central Indian provinces of Madhya Pradesh and Bihar had lost three scribes on 25-26 March 2018. Sandeep Sharma (35), a dedicated reporter of Bhind locality of MP, was deliberately mowed down by a truck in the morning hours, following which the television reporter (of News World) died in the hospital. Sandeep, who had reported against the local sand mafia, even received threats and informed the police but it did not help him to survive. On the previous night, two scribes namely Navin Nischal and Vijay Singh were hit by a luxury vehicle in Bhojpur locality of Bihar and died on their way to the hospital. Navin, who used to work for Dainik Bhaskar and Vijay, who was associated with a Hindi magazine, were riding on a two-wheeler when the accident took place.

The bygone year witnessed the killing of 12 journalists, where tiny northeastern State of Tripura contributed two casualties. The populous country thus emerged as one of the hazardous places for media persons after Mexico, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia etc.

India’s troubled neighbor Pakistan lost seven professional journalists and a media student to assailants in the year. On the other hand, its other neighbours namely Bangladesh, Myanmar and Maldives witnessed the murder of one scribe each in the last year. However Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet (now under Chinese occupation) evaded journo-killing incident during 2017.

Last year, India witnessed the killings of Hari Prakash (January 2), Brajesh Kumar Singh (January 3), Shyam Sharma (May 15), Kamlesh Jain (May 31), Surender Singh Rana (July 29), Gauri Lankesh (September 5), Shantanu Bhowmik (September 20), KJ Singh (September 23), Rajesh Mishra (October 21), Sudip Datta Bhaumik (November 21), Naveen Gupta (November 30) and Rajesh Sheoran (December 21).

On an average India loses five to six journalists annually to assailants, where the perpetrators normally enjoy impunity as the public outbursts against those murders remain lukewarm. However the horrific murder of Kannada editor-journalist Ms Gauri at her Bangaluru (earlier known as Bangalore) residence sparked massive protests across the country.

As the news of Gauri’s murder by unidentified gunmen spread, it immediately caught the attention of various national and international media rights organizations. Everyone out rightly condemned the incident and demanded actions against the culprits. Even the Communist leader and Tripura’s immediate past chief minister Manik Sarkar was influenced by the protest-demonstrations.

He personally joined in a rally in Agartala demanding justice over Gauri’s brutal killing, but when he young television reporter (Shantanu) from his State fall prey to the mob violence, he preferred to remain silent. The Tripura based journalists, while strongly condemning the murder of Shantanu, had to demand a response from Sarkar.

Later one more journalist (Sudip Datta) was murdered by a trooper belonged to the State police forces, which put Sarkar, who was also in charge of State home portfolio, in an embarrassing position. Otherwise popular for his simplicity, Sarkar also received brickbats for the murder of three media employees (Sujit Bhattacharya, Ranjit Chowdhury and Balaram Ghosh) together in 2013. Amazingly, within this period, no other northeastern States reported about journo-killing.
As usual, central States like Jharkhand, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana etc remained the killing field of journalists for many years and most of the journo- casualties in the country were reported from the zone. Shockingly most of the cases were not resolved legally and the victim families continue crying for justice against their irreparable losses.

India was ranked 136th among 180 countries in World Press Freedom Index (2017) of Reporters Sans Frontiers and the country was just ahead of its neighbours Pakistan (139), Sri Lanka (141) and Bangladesh (146). Norway topped the list of media freedom index, where as one party-ruled North Korea (180) was placed at its bottom. India’s other neighbours namely Bhutan (84), Nepal (100), Maldives (117), Afghanistan (120) and Myanmar (131) ensured better press freedom. Pakistan lost seven journalists namely Muhammad Jan, Taimoor Khan, Abdul Razzaque, Bakshish Ellahi, Haroon Khan, Samar Abbas & Utpal Das along with a novice scribe (Mashal Khan) to assailants last year.

Bangladesh witnessed the murder of rural reporter Abdul Hakim Shimul and Maldives drew the attention of international media with the sensational killing of Yameen Rasheed, a journalist & human rights defender. Relatively peaceful Myanmar reported one journo-murder (Wai Yan Heinn) in 2017.

According various international agencies over 95 media persons spread in 28 countries were killed in connection with their professional works last year. This year it has reached to 10 casualties till the end of March. The statistics were dangerous in previous years (120 fatalities in 2016, 125 killed in 2015, 135 in 2014, 129 in 2013, 141 in 2012, 107 in 2011, 110 in 2010, 122 in 2009, 91 in 2008 etc). The situation got deteriorated in Mexico (14 incidents of journo-killings), Syria (12), Iraq (9), Afghanistan (8), Yemen (8), the Philippines (6), Somalia (5), Honduras (4), Honduras (4), Nigeria (3), Russia (3), Turkey (3), Yemen (3), Guatemala (2), Peru (2), Dominican Republic (2), Colombia (2) etc.

The year also witnessed 262 journalists sent to the jails in different countries with slight improvement than in 2016 when 259 media persons got imprisoned worldwide. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Turkey still tops the list of detainees in 2017 with 73 scribes behind bars followed by China (41), Egypt (20), Eritrea (15), Vietnam (10), Azerbaijan (10), Uganda (8), Saudi Arabia (7), Bangladesh (4), Myanmar (3), Cambodia (2), Pakistan (2), India (2) etc.

In 2016, India witnessed the targeted killings of six working journalists, which was preceded by five cases in 2015. It improved its statistics in 2014 with the murders of only two scribes, but the year 2013 reported the killings of 11 journalists including three media workers in northeast India.

The vulnerable media community of the one-billion nation continues pursuing for a national action plan to safeguard the media persons in the line of military, police and doctors on duty. Their arguments are loud & clear, if the nation wants the journalists to do the risky jobs for the greater interest always, their security along with justice must also be ensured.

Egyptian Kangaroo Court Sentences 35 Morsi Supporters To Life Imprisonment

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

An Egyptian Kangaroo Court Wednesday (April 4) sentenced 35 alleged Muslim Brotherhood members to life in prison for allegedly forming “terrorist cells” to attack security forces and state institutions.

The Sohag Criminal Court sentenced another 155 defendants to three to 15 years on similar charges, including plotting to kill public figures and security officials, and joining an outlawed group, a reference to the Brotherhood which has been declared a terrorist group by the government of Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Tellingly, the new harsh sentences against the Muslim Brotherhood members came a day after the Egyptian government announced that Field Marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has won re-election as Egypt’s president with 97 percent votes.

According to CNN, observers have widely called the vote a farce, seeing it more as a referendum on el-Sisi than a free and fair election.

US-client General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who later assumed the title of Field Marshall, toppled Mohammad Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in July 2013. Mursi was the first democratically elected President of Egypt.

An Egyptian Kangaroo court last month sentenced 10 people to death and five others to life in prison for allegedly forming a “terrorist group” to plot attacks on security forces and other institutions.

The state-run MENA news agency said the defendants are affiliated with the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. MENA said three of the 15 defendants were sentenced in absentia.

Egypt has cracked down on anti-government elements since the overthrow in July 2013 of Mohammad Mursi.

Hundreds of anti-government people, including Muslim Brotherhood supporters and members, have received death sentences since 2013, and Egypt has carried out dozens of executions, according to security sources and rights groups.

According to Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide database, in recent years there has been a sharp increase in Egyptian courts’ use of capital punishment, with the number of death sentences jumping from 109 in 2013 to at least 509. Since the beginning of 2015, there have been reports of at least 354 death sentences.

The Cornell Center believes there are at least 1,700 people under sentence of death, but no official figures are available due to intense state secrecy surrounding capital punishment. Amnesty International indicates that at least 1,413 death sentences were issued between 2007 and 2014.

Interestingly, in January this year, an Egyptian kangaroo court handed 268 supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi up to 25-year jail terms over a violent pro-Morsi sit-in following his removal in July 2013.

Giza Criminal Court sentenced 23 defendants to 25 years in prison, 223 to 15 years and 22 to three years, ordering them to pay altogether a fine of more than $2.1 million for the damages they reportedly caused to the surrounding zoo, public park and college building during their 45-day sit-in.

Egyptian judicial system has become a joke

In January this year CNN quoted an Egyptian attorney as saying that Egypt is using death sentences to settle scores.

Human rights advocates say the alarming numbers recorded by the Egyptian Coordination for Rights & Freedoms and the Initiative for Personal Rights are shocking — but the stories behind them are even more harrowing, the CNN said adding:

What happened to four families from the northern city of Kafr el-Sheikh is a case in point. After more than a year of campaigning to have their loved ones’ death sentences commuted in a case clouded by allegations of flaws in Egypt’s judicial system, they received phone calls directing them to collect their relatives’ bodies early on January 2.

Tellingly, an Egyptian Kangaroo Court in February 2016 sentenced a four-year-old child to life imprisonment. The child, Ahmed Mansour Qurani Ali, was convicted on four counts of murder and eight counts of attempted murder. The Egyptian military admitted the mistake only after the story had already circled the globe.

European Parliament condemns

In February last, the European Parliament condemned Egypt for its use of the death penalty and called for all planned executions to be halted pending a review of the cases.

Egypt is restricting “fundamental democratic rights”, members of the European Parliament (MEPs) said in a statement on February 7, adding Cairo should abolish capital punishment.

“The European Parliament ” calls for the end to all acts of violence, incitement and hate speech, reminding the Egyptian government that the universal protection of human rights and long-term prosperity go hand in hand,” it said.

UN human rights experts have also expressed concern that Egyptian officials are using evidence obtained through torture or ill treatment, often during periods of enforced disappearance, to sentence prisoners to death in military courts.

Maldives president ends state of emergency

Rohantha De Silva

Maldives President Abdul Yameen ended the country’s state of emergency on March 22, after it was in force for 45 days, but is continuing his repression of political rivals. He withdrew the draconian emergency law a day after the police filed trumped-up terrorism charges against his chief opponents.

Those charged include former leader Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, jailed Chief Justice Abdulla Saeed and Justice Ali Hameed, four opposition lawmakers and an ex-police commissioner. Another opposition lawmaker, Abdulla Sinan, who had been arrested earlier, was detained on April 1, also on terrorism charges.

If convicted, the nine people charged with terrorism could be jailed for 10 to 15 years. In addition, two judges and a judicial officer were charged with receiving bribes to help overthrow the government.

A statement issued by Yameen’s office noted that “though there still exists a diminished threat to national security,” the president has decided to lift the state of emergency “in an effort to promote normalcy.” In reality, Yameen lifted the emergency not to “promote normalcy” but because, having cracked down on his opponents, he is seeking to deflect international criticism.

The US, EU and India demanded the lifting of the emergency, not out of any concern for democratic rights. Rather they are hostile to Yameen’s close ties with China, which cut across efforts to undermine Chinese influence in the Indian Ocean.

The present crisis erupted when the Maldives Supreme Court quashed the conviction of opposition leader and former President Mohamed Nasheed and ordered the immediate release of the eight other political figures on February 1. The court’s decision threatened Yameen’s parliamentary majority and would have allowed his rival Nasheed, currently in exile, to contest presidential elections due later this year.

To counter the court order, Yameen declared a state of emergency, arrested two Supreme Court judges and opposition leaders, then cracked down on opposition protests. Under pressure, the remaining Supreme Court judges reversed the February 1 decision.

Despite opposition from India, the Yameen government is strengthening its relations with China, which include major Chinese projects. The Maldivian ambassador in Beijing, Mohamed Faisal, told the S outh China Morning Poston March 22 this is part of a “global trend.” He continued: “A lot of people are seeing what China is doing because in terms of both economically and global power, China is rising.”

Chinese investment includes an airport expansion, a bridge connecting the airport to the capital Male, social housing and island resorts. Up to 2011, China had no embassy in Maldives. Since Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit in 2014, however, ties have rapidly developed. Chinese lending now accounts for more than 70 percent of the country’s foreign debt. Yameen has signed up to China’s One Belt, One Road infrastructure plan to integrate Eurasia, to which India and US are hostile.

India “welcomed” Yameen’s decision to end the state of emergency. At the same time, India’s external affairs ministry statement called for the “credible restoration of the political process as well as rule of law before elections are announced this year.”

When the crisis erupted in Maldives, Nasheed called for Indian military intervention, claiming Yameen was transforming the island into a “Chinese colony.” The Indian media repeatedly called on New Delhi to decisively intervene, warning that China was taking control of India’s backyard. As well as demanding an end to emergency rule, New Delhi made known that its armed forces were ready for any eventuality.

Over the past two months, however, India has been cautious, due to threats elsewhere. Last year, India and China were locked in a dangerous stand-off in their border areas on the Doklam Plateau. Despite boasting that it had stared down Beijing, New Delhi was clearly rattled by how close it came to an armed clash with China.

The Indian Express last week quoted an unnamed “senior government official” as saying: “We can’t stop what the Chinese are doing, whether in the Maldives or in Nepal, but we can tell them about our sensitivities, our lines of legitimacy. If they cross it, the violation of this strategic trust will be upon Beijing.”

For its part, China has bluntly stated that the political crisis in Maldives is an “internal matter” and “outside powers,” mainly India, should not get involved. In February, the Chinese navy conducted a naval exercise in the East Indian Ocean, which the Indian media immediately declared was a warning to New Delhi.

The Hindu wrote in its editorial on March 26 that “military intervention by India [in Maldives] was never a possibility” and called for a more cautious effort to influence the Yameen government. It urged New Delhi “to demonstrate its relevance to the Maldives as the biggest power in the South Asian region, while helping steer Mr. Yameen to a more reasonable and inclusive democratic course ahead of the presidential election later this year.”

None of this means India is retreating from its anti-China partnership with Washington and key US allies, Japan and Australia. The PTI reported on March 17 that the so-called quadrilateral alliance of India, US, Japan and Australia is going to discuss the Maldives issue at their next meeting. It quoted a senior US official as saying that Washington was closely monitoring the Chinese actions in the Indo-Pacific region and Maldives.

Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont released from German prison

Ulrich Rippert 

Former Catalan regional president Carles Puigdemont was released from detention yesterday afternoon in Germany, where he faces extradition to Spain. However, Puigdemont is not completely free, he may not leave Germany until further notice, had to post bail of €75,000 and must report weekly to the police in Neumünster.

On Thursday evening, the Higher Regional Court (OLG) in Schleswig agreed not to extradite Puigdemont to Spain on the charge of rebellion. However, the OLG has upheld the second allegation of misappropriation of public funds and therefore the former Catalan regional president could still be extradited to Spain. The arrest warrant was only “suspended” under certain conditions, a spokeswoman for the court said.

In a press release, the court explained its decision as follows: “The victim’s alleged behaviour is not punishable in the Federal Republic of Germany under the applicable law.” The relevant criminal offence of treason had not been met because it could not be associated with violence.

Thus, the Higher Regional Court very directly contradicted the Attorney General of Schleswig-Holstein, who had declared earlier this week that an admissible extradition request existed, and the risk of Puigdemont fleeing was real. On Tuesday, the Schleswig-Holstein Attorney General announced that an “intensive examination” of the European arrest warrant issued by the Spanish judiciary had revealed that an admissible extradition request existed.

The state prosecutor argued that the charge of rebellion against Puigdemont raised by the Spanish judiciary “essentially involved the allegation of holding an unconstitutional referendum on Catalonia’s independence from Spain, despite the anticipated violent clashes.” This accusation of rebellion found a similar equivalent in German criminal law in paragraphs 81 and 82 of the Criminal Code (High Treason); a verbal likeness of the German and Spanish regulations was not required by law. It is exactly this assessment that the higher regional court has now rejected.

The decision of the OLG has far-reaching consequences.

Puigdemont can no longer be handed over to Spain for “rebellion.” The court decision is binding on the federal government. On the existing legal basis, Puigdemont cannot be prosecuted in Spain or any other country on this charge. Whether the allegation of breach of trust can be upheld is highly questionable because it is not a charge of personal corruption. The Spanish authorities accuse Puigdemont, as regional president of Catalonia, of having financed the banned independence referendum using €1.6 million of public funds. However, if the referendum was not a call for rebellion, it is highly questionable whether the financing of it actually meets the charge of the misappropriation of public funds.

The first reactions to the verdict in Germany were divided. In a furious editorial, the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung stated, despite the verdict, Puigdemont remains “a criminal” who “cannot escape justice.” If he succeeded in escaping extradition, “he will have little choice but to hide from the Spanish courts in Belgium or elsewhere. If he is deported, he will go to jail in Spain.”

Media outlets and politicians who fear that an extradition of Puigdemont could cause violent protests in Catalonia and also in Germany, welcomed the verdict. “If things go well, if things go really well, then the verdict of the German judges is the beginning of a political solution, the beginning of negotiations,” commented the Süddeutsche Zeitung .

Gregor Gysi of the Left Party called on the German government to put pressure on Madrid and the judiciary. “Now, I expect that our foreign minister might go to Spain and try to talk them out of certain things, and not that our government sits there and says we must now execute their arrest warrants for things that are not punishable in Germany.”

In fact, the German government, which yesterday had refused to take a position on the verdict, then did exactly that.

Newsweekly Der Spiegel reports that the government had already agreed on its approach during a telephone conference on the day Puigdemont was arrested. According to information held by Der Spiegel, on the weekend before Easter, Justice Minister Katarina Barley (Social Democratic Party, SPD), Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (also SPD and former Minister of Justice), Chancellery Chief of Staff Helge Braun (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) and Hans-Georg Engelke, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of the Interior and former head of “Terrorism/Islamism” at the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (as the secret service is called) held a telephone conference to determine the attitude of the government. It was agreed that the government would not veto any possible extradition of Puigdemont.

A few days later, the Attorney General of Schleswig-Holstein “consulted” with the Ministry of Justice to discuss further action, writes Der Spiegel. In other words, when the Schleswig-Holstein Attorney General requested Carles Puigdemont be held in detention at the beginning of this week pending extradition, stating that the charge of rebellion was justified and found “a comparable analogy in German criminal law in paragraphs 81 and 82 of the Criminal Code (High Treason),” this approach and this argument had been agreed with the highest government circles.

Thus, it is clear that the German government not only supported the undemocratic approach of the Spanish government, but wanted to use the arrest of Puigdemont to set a precedent for the prosecution of any form of protest and resistance against the ruling powers.

In particular, the reference to the law relating to High Treason illustrates the tradition in which the German government stands and how consciously it is working to build a European police state. High Treason is aimed at a violent upheaval within society, according to Rechtslexikon. It is an offence in which the perpetrator “undertakes to use force or threats of violence to undermine the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany or to change the constitutional order based on the Basic Law [constitution], i.e., to practically bring about an overthrow (revolution).”

The law had already been introduced at the founding of the German Reich in 1871 and since then has been repeatedly employed to persecute and suppress opponents of the imperial authoritarian state and later the Nazi dictatorship. The SPD founder August Bebel was persecuted on this basis as well as the KPD (German Communist Party) leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. During the Nazi period, Hans and Sophie Scholl, along with other members of the White Rose resistance group were sentenced to death and executed on this basis.

Now, the German government is again resorting to these brutal forms of oppression to intimidate and nip in the bud any form of opposition, resistance and protest.

It is no coincidence that the criminalization of resistance and the introduction of police-state measures in Europe coincide with the largest strike movement in France against the labour market “reforms” of the Macron government and increased protest strikes in Germany. In Spain, the economic and social crisis is particularly acute. Not only have Amazon workers gone on strike, but pensioners have been organising mass demonstrations to fight for decent pensions and improved social benefits.

Even if the verdict of the Higher Regional Court in Schleswig-Holstein does not lead to Puigdemont being extradited and charged with “rebellion,” the German government is continuing its right-wing course.

Israel’s shoot-to-kill policy on Gaza border claims more lives

Jean Shaoul

Israel’s military forces killed seven Palestinian protestors along Gaza’s border and injured around 200 more, five of them seriously, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) used live rounds and tear gas against protestors throwing stones and burning car tyres to create smoke to screen themselves from sniper fire.

About 10,000 Palestinians took part in the second “March of Return” protest yesterday, which they called “Jumat al-Kawshook” or “Friday of tyres.”

Also, solidarity protests took place in several towns and cities in the West Bank, including Ramallah and Al-Bireh. According to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, 37 Palestinians were injured by live ammunition, rubber bullets and tear gas canisters.

Rallies in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza were called for Friday evening and Saturday in cities in the United States, Britain, France and elsewhere in Europe.

Israel’s Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman had earlier warned that “open-fire rules for the Gaza border will remain unchanged” and that anyone approaching the border was endangering their life. He promised a “reaction of the harshest kind like last week.”

Without providing a shred of evidence, Israel has accused Hamas, which governs Gaza, of using the protests as a cover for carrying out attacks on the border.

Friday’s demonstration was called as the culmination of the second of six weeks of peaceful protests, demanding the right to return of Palestinian exiles to their ancestors’ villages and towns in what is now Israel—a demand that Israeli officials reject because it would reduce Jewish citizens to a minority.

The Palestinians are also calling for the full implementation of the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 of December 1948 stipulating that “the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.”

Of the 1.9 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, 1.3 million are refugees, according to Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics report in February 2018.

The March of Return will conclude on May 15, the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the state of Israel, which the Palestinians commemorate as Nakba (Catastrophe Day). The US is set to open its embassy in Jerusalem on that day, as announced last year by President Donald Trump. The Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.

Last Friday, Israeli troops and sharpshooters killed at least 16 people—a total that has now risen to 20 as others have succumbed to their injuries. At least 23 have been killed in the last week, including a Palestinian killed by an Israeli drone late Wednesday in the Gaza Strip, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

Evidence of the IDF killing spree is provided by video footage showing that at least two of those murdered were unarmed as they walked slowly towards the border with Israel, while another man was shot in the back as he ran away from the border holding a car tyre.

Not a single Israeli was killed or even injured, and no Israeli property was damaged or at risk.

A further 1,400 Palestinians were injured, more than half by live ammunition and steel-tipped rubber bullets. It was the deadliest day of violence since Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza, which killed 2,250 Palestinians, the majority of whom were civilians.

Ahmad Abu Artema, who conceived the idea of the March of Return, is not affiliated to Hamas, and rejects armed resistance, partly because it has failed. Instead, he puts forward a plan for mass civil disobedience as promoted by Mahatma Gandhi against British rule in India. His plan won the backing of several Gaza-based Palestinian groups. He said, “It’s not necessary to resist the occupation with bullets. You can resist the occupation with dabke[traditional Palestinian music and dancing], or by just sitting there.”

Irrespective of the value of such a strategy, it confirms that Israel used live fire on a peaceful, unarmed protest.

Israel’s chief military spokesman, Brigadier General Ronen Manelis, warned on Monday that the IDF would step up its violence on the Gaza border. He added that the IDF had restricted its actions thus far to the border fence, but it was prepared to “act against these terror organizations in other places too,” that is, within Gaza.

B’Tselem, the human rights organization, condemned Israel’s use of live fire on the civilian protesters, calling it criminal and illegal. It said that live fire should only be used when troops face “tangible and immediate mortal danger, and only in the absence of any other alternative.” It has launched a “Sorry Commander, I cannot shoot,” campaign, urging Israeli soldiers to disobey orders to shoot unarmed protesters in Gaza, which it argues are “manifestly illegal.”

The group criticized the Israeli military for announcing, even before the March began, that soldiers would use live fire against protesters, even if they were hundreds of meters away from the border fence.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch stated that last week’s killings were unlawful and “calculated,” and noted that the border protests posed no immediate threat to Israeli soldiers.

Within Israel, there have been small demonstrations in Tel Aviv, Jaffa and near the border with Gaza protesting at Israel’s unprovoked murders.

The US, Israel’s chief benefactor, unable to stop the holding of an emergency session of the UN Security Council, blocked a draft statement condemning Israel’s use of force against protesters at the Gaza border. Not one of the major powers spoke out against this filthy manoeuvre.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, then called for an “independent and transparent investigation” and reaffirmed “the readiness” of the world body to revitalise peace efforts.

This is a fraud and a diversion. Previous UN inquiries, including the report into the 2014 Israeli war on Gaza, provide detailed evidence of Israeli war crimes, but use irrelevant legal arguments to draw conclusions entirely at odds with their own evidence and absolve Israel of criminal responsibility for its actions. Last year, Guterres succumbed to US pressure, suppressing a UN report that found Israel practices apartheid against Palestinians.

Speaking for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, Lieberman flatly refused the UN’s pathetic entreaties, saying that the government would not carry out any inquiry into the casualties. “From the standpoint of the [IDF] soldiers, they did what had to be done,” he said. “All of our troops deserve a commendation.”

While the UN issued a warning to Israel to use “extreme caution” in facing the second round of mass protests, it toed the Israeli line and called on organizers of the March not to put women and children in danger.

Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas and other militant groups of using women and children as human shields to excuse its own murder of innocent civilians.

Trump’s Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt went further in giving Israel a green light to do whatever it liked. He told the Palestinians to engage solely in peaceful protests and demanded that the protesters “should remain outside the 500-meter buffer zone; and should not approach the border fence in any way or any location.”

Turning reality on its head, he refused to condemn Israel’s murder spree, condemning instead “leaders and protestors who call for violence or who send protestors—including children—to the fence, knowing that they may be injured or killed.”

Greenblatt demanded the Security Council “send a clear message to the Palestinian leadership insisting that it put an end to these riots that only serve to sow violence and instability.”

JPMorgan CEO threatens rate hikes to break wages movement by US workers

Barry Grey 

In the midst of an expanding wave of teachers’ strikes in the US and mounting class battles in Europe, intensive discussions are underway within the American ruling class on measures to prevent the growth of a militant nationwide movement for higher wages and benefits. The corporate-financial elite is preparing the most ruthless measures—economic and political—to counter the emerging rebellion of US workers against the government, the corporations and the corporatist trade unions that do their bidding.

On Thursday, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who heads the largest US bank and is often called “the most powerful banker in the world,” warned of rising wages and raised the possibility of a sharp rise in interest rates to put a brake on economic growth and drive up unemployment. The aim of such a policy would be to weaken the working class and break its resistance to austerity and wage cutting.

In his annual letter to shareholders, Dimon wrote: “I believe that many people underestimate the possibility of higher inflation and wages, which means they might be underestimating the chance that the Federal Reserve may have to raise rates faster than we think…

“If growth in America is accelerating, which it seems to be, and any remaining slack in the labor markets is disappearing—and wages start going up, as do commodity prices—then it is not an unreasonable possibility that inflation could go higher than people might expect.

“As a result, the Federal Reserve will also need to raise rates faster and higher than people might expect.”

Significantly, Dimon cited the precedent of then-Fed Chairman Paul Volcker’s shock increase in interest rates in August of 1979, which precipitated the deep recession of 1980-82. The Reagan administration exploited the wave of plant closures and layoffs that followed the near doubling of interest rates to launch an anti-working class offensive and social counterrevolution that has continued to this day, under Democratic no less than Republican presidents.

The appointment of Volcker by Democratic President Jimmy Carter followed the 111-day national coal miners’ strike of 1977-78, in which the miners defied Carter’s back-to-work Taft-Hartley injunction, shaking the authority of the entire state. Volcker’s recessionary measures were followed by Reagan’s firing and blacklisting of the PATCO air traffic controllers in 1981, which was the signal for a decade of union-busting, wage cutting and strikebreaking, made possible by the treachery of the union leadership.

Dimon wrote: “Remember that former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker increased the discount rate by 100 basis points on a Saturday night back in 1979 in response to a serious double-digit inflation problem. And when markets opened the next business day, the Fed funds rate went up by over 200 basis points.”

In his letter, Dimon acknowledged that the course he was suggesting could lead to an implosion of stock prices, noting, “In this case, markets will get more volatile as all asset prices adjust to a new and maybe not-so-positive environment.”

“There is a risk that volatile and declining markets can lead to market panic,” he added.

He alluded to the ultra-low interest rate regime that has been maintained for more than three decades by the Fed, with near-zero rates put in place following the 2008 market crash, which has fueled the staggering rise in stock prices and accompanying enrichment of the corporate-financial elite. “While in the past,” he said, “interest rates have been lower and for longer than people expected, they may go higher and faster than people expect.”

The social basis for the stock market boom has been the suppression of the class struggle. This has been accomplished above all by the transformation of the trade unions into corporatist adjuncts of the government and big business. The central preoccupation of these anti-working class organizations has been to prevent strikes and isolate and betray them when they broke out, resulting in record low levels of strike activity, especially since the 2008 financial crisis.

What particularly alarms the ruling class in the current wave of strikes and protests by teachers in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arizona and other states is the fact that they have been organized by rank-and-file teachers independently of and increasingly in defiance of the unions.

The New York Times recently quoted a teacher in the leadership of a rank-and-file group in Arizona as saying, “Our unions have been weakened so much that a lot of teachers don’t have faith in them.” The newspaper noted that the walkouts to date have occurred in states where the teachers unions are weak, the majority of teachers are not union members, and state laws bar unions from compelling workers to pay union dues. It has written worriedly of teachers using social media “to organize and act outside the usual parameters of traditional unionism.”

It and other capitalist media are commenting on the “tight” labor market and danger of the economy “overheating.” This week alone, the Wall Street Journal published two front-page articles on this theme, one with the headline “Iowa’s Labor Plight: Too Many Jobs,” and the other with a headline noting that “jobs outnumber workers” in Elkhart, Indiana, the center of recreational vehicle manufacturing in the US.

In essence, Dimon is telling the ruling class that regardless the consequences for stock prices and the fortunes and profits of significant sections of the corporate elite itself, the stability and continued rule of the capitalist class as a whole may require drastic measures to undermine workers’ militancy and step up the war on the working class.

Fear within the ruling elite of a wages movement was underscored Friday when US stock prices plunged following the release by the Labor Department of the March employment report. Alarm over the outbreak of a trade war between the US and China was compounded by the news that US wages had risen 2.7 percent year-over-year.

Two months ago, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 665 points when the January jobs report showed a wage increase of 2.9 percent. But that was before the outbreak of the teachers’ strikes. This time, the very modest wage increase for March contributed to a drop in the Dow of 572 points.

As Dimon’s letter indicated, a rise in interest rates is only one component of an intensification of the offensive against the working class. The weakening of the working class by means of mass unemployment is to be accompanied by a frontal attack on what remains of basic social programs.

“The real problem with our deficit,” Dimon wrote, “is the uncontrolled growth of our entitlement programs… The extraordinary growth of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security is jeopardizing our fiscal situation.”

Social Security could be “fixed,” the multimillionaire banker said, “by changing the qualification age and means testing, among other things.” He pointed out that when the program was initiated in 1935, the average life span after retirement was 13 years, while today it is 25. In other words, the destruction of health care for workers must be carried through to dramatically lower their life expectancy.

In his letter, Dimon did not spell out the political corollaries of his economic and social policies. However, in May of 2013, his bank issued a report on the euro area calling for the overturning of the bourgeois democratic constitutions established in Europe after World War II. The document, “The Euro Area Adjustment—About Half-Way There,” called for measures to protect the major international banks and stressed the need for “political reforms” of a dictatorial character to impose the necessary attacks on the working class.

The American financial oligarchy and the state are already beginning to implement similar measures to crack down on working-class opposition in the US, including the drive to censor the Internet and criminalize political dissent in the name of combating “fake news” and “Russian meddling.”