Unleashing My Inner Jihadi

Geoff Dutton

For a big, strapping nation like the United States of America to be obsessively fixated on foreign-born evildoers is really quite strange, especially given that it has so many of its own. Other than 9/11, all terror attacks in the US since 2000 that weren’t thwarted or aborted involved firearms. Even if you include mass shootings that didn’t receive the Government’s Terrorism imprimatur, how many mass killings can you cite that were committed by undocumented aliens or foreign infiltrators?

Not that there aren’t foreigners who have bones to pick with America. According to Statista, nearly 200,000 Iraqi civilians lost their lives due to the US invasion, the ensuing resistance, and subsequent conflicts with ISIS invaders. From the start of the Iraq War in 2003 under GW Bush to his exit from office in 2009, 105,000 Iraqi civilians were killed, peaking at nearly 30,000 in 2006. During Obama’s first term, civilian deaths totaled 93,300, hovering at less than 5000 per year.

When ISIS stormed into Iraq in 2012, deaths escalated; 20,000 in 2014, remaining above 13,000 until steeply declining to 2500 in 2017. US Military deaths for those 15 years totaled 4541, peaking at 904 in 2007. Overall, 44 Iraqi noncombatants fell for every American soldier who died there. This is the so-called Price of Liberty, paid by innocent Iraqis, traumatized veterans, bereaved military families, and American taxpayers, at the further cost of eternal vigilance over everyone by our intelligence agencies.

Due to foreign forces and internal conflicts, by 2016 5.5 million Syrians had fled their homes, as did 2.5M Afghani citizens. As of 2017, Turkey had admitted 3.4M Syrians. By 2016 Germany had received 100,500 Syrian asylum seekers, while only 1540 were admitted into the US. Within Syria, by 2017, 23% of the housing stock had been damaged and more than half of working age adults were unemployed (source: Statista). Although the US did not cause this situation, it certainly intensified it, having motivated assorted foreign jihadis to coalesce there in expectation of creating a caliphate.

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It’s hard to deny that America is a violent nation. Glossing over that inconvenient truth are official and self-appointed apologists, eager to point fingers at criminal elements and foreign evildoers. But the sad fact they belie is that the perps of the vast majority of shootings are homegrown resentful gun-happy white men, most without criminal records.

Know that the United States enjoys a near-monopoly in gun violence. Constituting 4.4% of the world’s population, its residents own 42% of all civilian-owned guns (of 644 M worldwide). In 2012, the US enjoyed 29.6 homicides from firearms per million people. The closest runner-up, Switzerland, had 7.7 per M, while our Canadian cousins had a rate of 5.1.

Also know that since 9/11, there has been only one case of mass murder in the US that officially bears the label of terrorism—the 2016 massacre at a Christmas party at a social service agency in San Bernardino, CA that left 14 dead and 22 injured. Both suspects, one of whom was a native US citizen and the other a legal alien, died in a shootout with police the same day. (source: Vox)

That this couple, along with Nidal Hasan and Omar Mateen, the 2009 Fort Hood Texas shooter and the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooter, respectively, were Muslims with Middle Eastern roots only served to fan the flames of Islamophobia, even though the US Government declined to designate either Hasan or Mateen as terrorists. (Hasan couldn’t be tried by a military tribunal for terrorism, while Mateen’s actions were attributed to homophobia.)

They were all loonies, right? Yet, a study in the American Journal of Public Health found that databases that track gun homicides show that people with a diagnosed mental illness committed less than 5 percent of 120,000 gun-related killings in America from 2001 to 2010. In any event, that mass shootings are rare events makes coming up with effective mental health regulations challenging. Gun violence research shows that the strongest predictors of violence in general include alcohol and drug abuse and a history of domestic violence. Many such incidents may involve undiagnosed mental disturbances that regulators would be unable to screen for.

After a spate of other tragic shootings, especially in public schools, politicians appeared to lean toward denying gun permits to psychologically impaired individuals, not that such regulations are likely. The National Rifle Association has spent $203.2 million on political activities since 1998. Close to 90% of that was direct spending, while the remainder went to campaign committees, all of it aimed at forestalling any and all gun regulation and weeding out legislators and candidates whom the NRA believes lack sufficient Second Amendment fervor.

Take assault rifles. American civilians collectively own and actively trade between 6 to 10 million AR-15-type semi-automatic rifles. The NRA routinely refers to this style of weapon as “modern sporting rifles” and resists all efforts to rein them in (Politifact). Besides the gun lobby’s resistance, any regulations aimed at suppressing ownership of these weapons would be doomed by the black market—smuggling, Dark Web trading, and 3D printing of increasingly sophisticated firearms, abetted by a lack of enthusiasm on the part of gun-loving law enforcement officers to enforce them.

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So here we have a superpower with its military and its citizenry armed to the teeth, a nation that commits and abets more violent acts than any since WWII (or during it, if we count the firebombing of German and Japanese cities), fearful of terrorism. A nation that defends freedom by arming unsavory autocrats. A nation that has created more terrorists than have ever beset its citizens, with an “intelligence community” that routinely and in some ways unconstitutionally spies on them, all in the name of combatting an exaggerated menace that US military adventures and foreign policies have conjured up.

They all are drunk with power and continue to cow Congress to give them greater resource to expand their capabilities. And now they want to take hegemony into orbit with a Space Force, for crying out loud. What for? To defend our spy Satellites? To block Iran or ISIS from landing on the Moon or Russia from colonizing Mars? And nothing that the American people can say in protest will stop them.

After a decade or more of witnessing gratuitous carnage perpetrated in my name at home and abroad, unchecked lust for military and economic supremacy around the globe, and collateral damages at a scale hard to comprehend, I lost it. I considered most terrorist acts—especially those committed by Islamic jihadists—as blowback, pure and simple, events that wouldn’t have taken place but for cruel and unusual punishments visited on Muslim-majority nations with the temerity to reject the decadent imperialism of America and its western allies.

Now, I’m sure there are jihadis who consider all infidels to be fair game, no matter whose flag they live under. Even so, I’m equally sure that America’s actions must have strengthened their resolve. Realizing that made me feel both contrite and complicit, and I vowed to take action to purify my soul.

What I did not do was to contact ISIS on Facebook, buy a gun, or round up bomb-making supplies. What I did do was to invent a fictional God-fearing Islamic jihadi, a young Iraqi man cast straight out of Blowback Central. Between what the US-led coalition and then ISIS did to him in Iraq, he has a lot of anger to blow back. To be clear, I wasn’t calling for America’s destruction; I just wanted my compatriots to get comfortable with the idea that decimating civilians and their infrastructure might just breed a bit of resentment that certain people might act out.

Mahmoud (that’s the protagonist’s name) understands he can’t directly retaliate against the US, but is enticed to join a terrorist conspiracy in Piraeus led by a mysterious Turk. And so, he projects himself across Anatolia to the Aegean coast to float to Greece to partake in a plot that he learns upon arrival will send him back to Turkey. He comes mentally unprepared for such a mission or for the steaming cauldron of chaos that was greater Athens in 2015, where a bitching brew of leftists and ultranationalists pit themselves against the callow Greek government and each other. The more extreme among them plot institutional destruction. The extremist Mahmoud hooks up with has no small plan; he’s targeting the upcoming G-20 meeting in Turkey.

So, let’s talk Turkey, which features prominently in the plot. Despite their recent bickering, there’s a weird parallel between our current president and theirs, involving power-lust, side deals with cronies, and advancing radically conservative and anti-secularist agendas. Both are happy to help industrialists, moneymen, and the religious right to do what they will; in both lands we see foxes guarding henhouses and dominant religions enforcing their articles of faith. Too, both leaders are truculent, bombastic, and thin-skinned; one takes refuge in his luxurious palace, the other behind a symbolic wall. But, while the US is folding itself into fetal position with regard to alliances, treaties, and trade, Turkey is building bridges to nations the US condemns, like Russia, Iran, and now even Syria. Is Venezuela its next best friend?

Although the novel doesn’t dwell on these similarities, many readers will pick up that subtext as Mahmoud and his comrades reshape their mission to Turkey. They pick a new target to dispatch. They eschew firearms and explosives, having decided that the way to his heart is intravenous.

After all is said and done and destinies revealed, the reader may still not be sure whom to root for, the state or the terrorists. It’s a tougher choice than one might think, and causes one to ponder what it might take to wrest remnants of democracy from the clenched jaws of tyranny. How, for instance, would you feel about a foreign power that turned its firepower on your community and you had to flee, perhaps never to return, and what might you do about it?

What is the United States of America?

Sameer Dossani

Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court despite being creditably accused of multiple sexual assaults and appearing to commit perjury. He will almost definitely make a number of decisions that serve to erode the accountability of big business in general and our Molester-In-Chief in particular.

All of this is deeply troubling and it’s been reassuring to see the level of outrage across the country. But there’s a deeper conflict going on here, one over a simple question: What is the United States of America?

Is the USA the home of the free? A settler colonial state? A country of equality? Or a place where Latina women earn only 54% of what white men do, where the state smiles on police killings of black people, and where a handful of billionaires control the majority of resources and poor people scrounge to survive?

Socialist organizers like myself have a set of answers to these questions. The USA is a patriarchal, colonial, oligarchic state built on dispossession of native peoples, on slavery, continuing exclusion of people of color, and on undervaluing, objectifying and profiting from women’s bodies. Gender privilege, race privilege and class privilege are the remnants of systems that were designed to enrich the very few. In meaningful ways, those systems have not ended.

Up until now, those answers were in opposition to the answers of the people in charge. Those people (almost all of them rich white men of both major political parties) looked at the same set of data and came to different conclusions.

“Colonialism committed many crimes, but that’s all in the past,” they might say. “And besides, Native people and the descendants of slaves have access to modern comforts now, that they wouldn’t have had otherwise. Capitalist economics may not be great, but it’s doing much better than the Soviet Union did. Yes there are problems, but things are in general trending up. We have equality of opportunity if not outcome. Yes there are centuries of discrimination to overcome but we’re moving towards a more just and multicultural future. Maybe not as fast as you socialists would like.” (At this point in the discussion I’d usually feel a little condescending pat on the head.) “Women are already in the boardroom and other places of power. Free trade and globalization will make these divisions meaningless in the log run.”

My debates with neoliberal elites are not about values. We all agree (or pretend to agree) that liberty, equality and justice are worthy ideals. We also agree on the data – they are intent on spinning the facts, not denying them. But where I see a need for radical social transformation, they at most see a need for minor adjustments to a status quo that works pretty well. (For them at least.)

The Trump era – and this Kavanaugh moment – is in some ways similar. We don’t disagree on the facts. No one who saw Kavanaugh’s performance on October 4 should doubt that this person is capable of belligerence and using violence to get what he wants. In addition to the allegations of sexual assault, his own friends and colleagues say that this guy should not be anywhere near the Supreme Court. And Trump himself has bragged about sexual assault. Lindsey Graham,  Susan Collins and others are simply lying when they say that there’s no credible evidence against Kavanaugh. And they know it.

And therein lies the difference between Trumpist leaders and those of an earlier era. We don’t disagree on the facts and we don’t even disagree on the spin. Kavanaugh got away with it; they believe he has the right to. As does Trump. The USA means rich white men in charge – they should be; it’s their birthright. History has winners and losers. They are the winners. Trump avoided or evaded taxes? Of course he did, taxes are for chumps. What are you gonna do about it?

The arrogance and bravado is the same whether they are talking about sexual assault, tax avoidance or global warming.

When faced with this attitude, it is tempting to join the chorus from the centre decrying the evil men who don’t even aspire to democracy and equality. But did we really have more democracy and equality when those in the political center paid lip service to it?

Instead of joining the mainstream, the socialist left should be following grassroots movements who have long been calling for transformational change. That means challenging the system where it matters – minimum wages, maximum wages, worker-owned businesses, universal good quality free healthcare and education, cracking down on the tax avoiders who should be paying for these policies, and ending mass incarceration, the military-industrial complex, and corporate welfare. There’s no shortage of transformative policy proposals; there is a shortage of political will on all sides to take these projects forward.

Politics in the age of Trump means supporting movements that are building a new set of institutions within which transparency, accountability, democracy and justice are more important than the “rights” of the few to rule over the many. Those institutions need to be asshole-proof. Over-privileged men should not be able to co-opt and control those new institutions. Those working within and outside of the left of the Democratic party – like the Democratic Socialists of America – have their work cut out for them. Transformation needs to go mainstream and fast. As does accountability for the rich and powerful.

If other Democrats – those who occupy the current mainstream and see themselves as guardians of the status quo – are willing to be allies in that process they are more than welcome to pick up a picket sign, send emails to their lists and make phone calls like the rest of us.

India alarmed at Saudi oil refinery project in strategic Gawadar port

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Pakistan’s latest announcement about Saudi Arabia’s investment in an oil refinery at the strategic port of  Gwadar has set alarm bells ringing in India.

James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, says that Saudi’ oil refinery in Gwadar Port could threaten Iran’s India-backed Chabahar Port.

The deal could additionally involve deferred payments on Saudi oil supplies which will firstly, create a strategic oil reserve close to Iran, and secondly, help cash-strapped Pakistan in payments, Dorsey said.

Gwadar Port was built mainly by Chinese assistance. It is now operated by the Chinese.

A refinery and strategic oil reserve in Gwadar would serve Saudi Arabia’s goal of preventing Chabahar, the Indian-backed Iranian port, from emerging as a powerful Arabian Sea hub at a time that the United States is imposing sanctions designed to choke off Iranian oil exports, Dorsey said adding:

A Saudi think tank, the International Institute for Iranian Studies, previously known as the Arabian Gulf Centre for Iranian Studies (AGCIS) that is believed to be backed by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, argued last year in a study that Chabahar posed “a direct threat to the Arab Gulf states” that called for “immediate counter measures.”

Written by Mohammed Hassan Husseinbor, an Iranian political researcher of Baloch origin, the study warned that Chabahar would enable Iran to increase its oil market share in India at the expense of Saudi Arabia, raise foreign investment in the Islamic republic, increase government revenues, and allow Iran to project power in the Gulf and the Indian Ocean.

Husseinbor suggested that Saudi support for a low-level Baloch insurgency in Iran could serve as a countermeasure. “Saudis could persuade Pakistan to soften its opposition to any potential Saudi support for the Iranian Baluch… The Arab-Baluch alliance is deeply rooted in the history of the Gulf region and their opposition to Persian domination,” Husseinbor said.

Noting the vast expanses of Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan Province, Husseinbor went on to say that “it would be a formidable challenge, if not impossible, for the Iranian government to protect such long distances and secure Chabahar in the face of widespread Baluch opposition, particularly if this opposition is supported by Iran’s regional adversaries and world powers.”

Saudi militants reported at the time the study was published that funds from the kingdom were flowing into anti-Shiite, anti-Iranian Sunni Muslim ultra-conservative madrassas or religious seminaries in Balochistan.

Dorsey recalled that President Donald J. Trump’s national security advisor, John Bolton, last year before assuming office, drafted at the request of Trump’s then strategic advisor, Steve Bannon, a plan that envisioned US support “for the democratic Iranian opposition,” including in Balochistan and Iran’s Sistan and Balochistan province.

China building military base in Pakistan

In another development, China is reportedly constructing a military base in Pakistan’s port of Jiwani, close to the Iranian border on the Gulf of Oman.

The Jiwani base, a joint naval and air facility for Chinese forces, is located a short distance up the coast from the Chinese-built commercial port facility at Gwadar, Pakistan.

The Chinese have asked the Pakistanis to undertake a major upgrade of Jiwani airport so the facility will be able to handle large Chinese military aircraft.

Jiwani will be China’s second major overseas military base. In August, the PLA opened its first foreign base in Djibouti, a small African nation on the Horn of Africa.

Not surprisingly, India has secured access to the key Port of Duqm in Oman for military use and logistical support to counter Chinese influence and activities in the region.

In February last, a Memorandum of Understanding on Military Cooperation was signed by the two countries during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Oman. 

According to Indian Express, following this pact, the services of Duqm port and dry dock will be available for maintenance of Indian military vessels.

The Port of Duqm is situated on the southeastern seaboard of Oman, overlooking the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. It is strategically located, in close proximity to the Chabahar port in Iran.

New Zealand government bans “foreigners” from buying houses

Sam Price

On August 15, the New Zealand parliament passed the Labour Party-led government’s Overseas Investment Amendment Bill, banning purchases of houses by non-citizens and non-residents. To buy an existing house, individuals must have New Zealand citizenship or residency and have lived in the country for at least a year.

The government of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern falsely claims the ban will address the housing market bubble that has driven up prices and rents. In fact, it is aimed at scapegoating so-called foreigners, especially Chinese people, for the increasingly severe housing crisis.

An Oxford Economics report recently identified New Zealand as having the second-most overvalued housing in the world, behind only Hong Kong. As a result, around 40,000 people, or nearly 1 percent of the population, live without adequate housing. Last year, a Yale University study found that this is the highest level of homelessness in the OECD.

Like governments in the US, Europe, Australia and throughout the world, the Labour-New Zealand First-Greens coalition is seeking to divert working class anger over social inequality, including the lack of affordable housing, into the most reactionary channels. The aim is to whip up nationalism and xenophobia to divert attention away from the government’s own responsibility for the worsening social crisis.

At the same time, the promotion of anti-Chinese chauvinism in particular is aimed at aligning New Zealand with the growing US-led military build-up and threats of war against China.

In a speech to parliament last December, Finance Minister David Parker declared that New Zealanders “should not be tenants in our own land.” House prices should be “set by local buyers, not by the wealthy 1 percent from international markets.” Greens MP Eugenie Sage supported the ban, accusing “offshore property speculators” of “pushing Kiwi [New Zealand] homebuyers out of the market.” The right-wing nationalist NZ First Party strongly endorsed the bill.

In fact, it is primarily local investors who have driven housing costs to grotesquely unaffordable levels for the vast majority of workers. Writing on the Radio NZ website, economist Shamubeel Eaqub said the new law would have an “imperceptible” impact on housing costs, as foreign buyers “accounted for 4 percent of house sales.”

The ban is part of a broader campaign to scapegoat foreigners and immigrants, especially those from Asia, for the social crisis. This includes changes designed to cut thousands of places for international students and restrict their right to work. During last year’s election, Labour promised to cut overall immigration by almost half.

The new law further underscores the nationalist character of the government’s supporters, including the liberal “left” media and the trade union bureaucracy. On June 26, the day the foreign buyer ban law received its second reading in parliament, the trade union-funded Daily Blog posted an emphatic demand from its editor Martyn Bradbury to “PASS THE BLOODY LAW NOW!”

The unions are similarly seeking to scapegoat migrant workers for low wages. The Unite union, which is among the Daily Blog’s backers, recently celebrated the government’s decision to ban the Burger King chain from hiring migrant workers for 12 months, which could result in dozens of workers being unable to stay in the country.

The government has done nothing to address the housing shortage or reduce the cost of housing. Labour’s Kiwibuild scheme, which aims to build 100,000 new homes over 10 years is woefully inadequate and does not take into account a rapidly growing population. The houses will be sold mostly for more than half-a-million dollars.

There is an urgent need to spend billions of dollars to create genuinely affordable housing. The Ministry of Building, Innovation and Employment reported last November that the country has a shortage of over 71,000 homes. The crisis is particularly sharp in Auckland, the country’s most populous city, which was short of 44,000 homes.

Since the formation of the current government last September, median house prices nationally have increased 3.6 percent to $549,000. In Auckland, the largest city, the median has increased 75 percent over four years. Although this has slowed down in the past year, the median is now $852,000, and modest homes frequently sell for over $1 million. This property bubble, created by intense speculation by property investors, will likely trigger a major financial crisis if it bursts.

Rents have also soared. According to a nationwide housing stocktake commissioned by the government early this year, between 2012 and 2017 rents for a three-bedroom house rose 25 percent, while wages rose just 14 percent.

The same report, published in February, revealed that emergency housing is under immense strain, with 80 to 90 percent of homeless people turned away by emergency housing providers last year.

In August, Auckland City Mission reported than in the last year it had distributed 15,879 food parcels, up 22 percent from the previous year, and the highest amount since it was founded 98 years ago.

A New Zealand Herald investigation into conditions facing homeless people found they “are dying about 36 years earlier than the general population.” Out of 45 who died in the past seven years, the average age was 45.6.

The lack of affordable housing, stagnant wages and degrading working and living conditions, has triggered an international resurgence of working class strike activity. This year has seen more strikes in New Zealand than in the past 30 years. In July and August, nurses and teachers held nationwide strikes. The cost of housing relative to income was a major factor in the disputes.

Workers must reject the efforts of the ruling elite to derail their struggles by deflecting anger onto immigrants and foreigners, who make up 20 percent of New Zealand’s population. This requires a decisive break from all the established political organisations, including the trade unions, which are seeking to divide workers along nationalist lines.

There is an urgent need for workers, facing the same attacks in every part of the world, to coordinate internationally in a conscious fight to abolish the capitalist system. The demand must be raised for high-quality housing for all, as a fundamental social right. This requires the reorganisation of society along socialist lines, including the nationalisation of the banks and investment giants that have profited from the housing boom.

British royals spend millions on palace improvements

Laura Tiernan

The World Socialist Web Site has drawn attention to the recent publication of a cookbook framed around Meghan Markle’s charitable efforts with local residents impacted by the Grenfell fire and Prince William’s guest appearance on BBC One’s DIY SOS: Grenfell. We described these initiatives as part of a broader charm offensive aimed at suppressing the social anger generated by the June 14, 2017, inferno that claimed 72 lives and occurred less than four miles from Kensington Palace.

On October 5 the Daily Mirror published a report that sheds additional light on the cynical calculations involved in these efforts. “Meghan Markle and [Prince] Harry can finally move into Kensington Palace apartment next door to Kate and William,” the Mirror states, thanks to renovations at Kensington Palace underway since last year, with more than £1.4 million spent on repairs to the roof and new windows.

A major refurb of the palace was announced on June 27, 2017—just two weeks after the Grenfell fire, accompanying remodelling of Buckingham Palace—initially costed at £396 million. The Kensington Palace renovation started amid revelations that the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) authorised the use of flammable external cladding on Grenfell Tower to save £293,000—a decision that amounted to a death sentence for residents.

William’s two visits to the DIY SOS site along with Meghan’s “secret” visits to the Community Hubb Kitchen, will have been carefully managed by the royal family’s PR team as part of efforts to ensure a smooth transition into apartment 1, and prevent public anger from spilling over.

For 12 months the royal family refused to confirm that Harry would be moving into the palace. The couple would, it was reported, remain in Nottingham Lodge—described by the media as a “cosy” two-bedroom cottage on the grounds of the palace. This was all part of cringeworthy media efforts to present the royal couple as everyday people. The story of their engagement over a home-cooked roast chicken was endlessly recycled.

Five months later, and in the aftermath of Markle’s cookbook and William’s DIY:SOS appearance, the press has announced that Harry and Meghan will in fact be moving next door to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. The £1.4 million renovations for Harry and Meghan follow a £4.5 million renovation for William and Kate’s apartment in 2014. It has 22 rooms, including two nurseries, three kitchens and three bathrooms.

Alongside this, the £2 million spent on the Grenfell DIY:SOS community centre and boxing gym is chicken feed. But there is more to come. Friday will see Princess Eugenie, ninth in line to the throne and who carries out no official functions, marry (baronet) Jack Brooksbank at St George’s Chapel, Windsor. A modest affair compared with the £38 million squandered on Harry and Meghan’s nuptials at the same venue in May, it will nevertheless cost the taxpayer over £2 million for security (in part because the couple insisted on a carriage ride through the streets) and £250,000 to clean up afterwards. The proud parents will spend an additional £2.8 million for the ceremony’s two days of celebrations.

Homeless people have told the Daily Mirror that Windsor’s Conservative council have told them to clear their belongings from the streets on the wedding day, just as it did for Harry and Meghan’s.

At Buckingham Palace, the ten-year renovation project is now costed at £500 million and rising. According to a report in the Daily Mail, “The Buckingham Palace revamp will see 3,000 metres of dangerous vulcanised rubber cabling ripped up.”

While a half a billion pounds are spent to ensure the safety of the monarchy, for Grenfell residents it was a very different story. They were subjected to a regime of “managed decline” and neglect that saw the RBKC council and its Tenant Management Organisation create a death trap. Cheap flammable material, faulty electrical wiring, no sprinklers or central fire alarm—a program of social cleansing and “regeneration” in the interests of the rich.

Calls grow in Madrid to ban Catalan nationalist parties

Alejandro López

Demands are growing inside the Spanish political establishment to ban the main Catalan nationalist parties—the Catalan European Democratic Party (PDeCAT), the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and the pseudo-left Candidatures of Popular Unity (CUP). These calls to attack or outlaw parties that collectively receive millions of votes mark a major escalation in the drive of the Spanish and European bourgeoisie toward a police state.

A year has passed since the Catalan independence referendum last October and its violent repression by police, which left over 1,000 peaceful voters injured. Yet the underlying conflicts are as bitter as ever. The right-wing Popular Party (PP) and Citizens are demanding the outlawing of the CUP; a new electoral law making it harder for Catalan, Basque and Galician nationalist forces to get seats in parliament; and that Madrid impose an unelected regional government in Catalonia by again invoking Article 155 of Spain’s 1978 constitution.

The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) opposed the Catalan referendum, a vote called by pro-austerity, pro-European Union (EU) parties aiming to split the working class along national lines. But its principled opposition to Catalan bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalism does not lessen its opposition to the moves by the Spanish bourgeoisie, backed by the EU, to build a police-state regime whose central target would be rising militancy and strikes in the working class.

The PP and Citizens are seizing upon various events as pretexts for a crackdown and relying on the reactionary policies of the minority Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) government of Pedro Sánchez, backed by the pseudo-left Podemos party.

The first were clashes between Catalan police and CUP-aligned forces protesting a provocative pro-Spanish police rally held by the right-wing Jusapol Foundation. The pro-police rally hailed the violent police crackdown on the Catalan referendum or, in Jusapol President Natan Espinosa’s words, it was to “honour those who worked to preserve the unity of Spain.”

The other pretext is Catalan regional premier Quim Torra’s threat to withdraw his support for the minority PSOE government and push for unilateral independence if Sánchez does not recognise Catalan self-determination. Torra called for pro-CUP protesters to keep marching—saying, “Press hard, you do well in pressing”—again exposing the CUP’s close ties to Torra’s austerity regime.

The day after the clashes, PP leader Pablo Casado said all Catalan nationalist parties should be outlawed. He pledged to “request the modification of the Law of Parties so that we can already act against those parties and organisations in Catalonia that are encouraging violence and inciting civil confrontation. … After the altercations yesterday, we cannot tolerate that there are political parties like the CUP, ERC or PDeCat that do not condemn these intolerable aggressions.”

Casado proposed achieving this end by invoking the law used in 2003 to ban Batasuna, the political wing of the Basque nationalist group ETA. He also called for financially strangling parties that he said “encourage or justify violence” by eliminating all public subsidies to them.

Casado then attacked Sánchez, saying there is “no longer an excuse” not to implement Article 155 and impose a new unelected regional government in Catalonia. On Twitter, he compared Torra’s comments to “support for Kale borroka,” the Basque word for street fighting—like burning cars, attacking houses or banking facilities, and attacking public transport as carried out by pro-ETA Basque nationalist youth in the 1980s and 1990s.

All but calling for the permanent suspension of the Catalan regional government, he demanded that Article 155 be implemented “with the necessary duration, the necessary extensions, and sufficient state involvement.”

Citizens leader Albert Rivera said he would discuss outlawing the CUP, which gives a pro-independence majority in the Catalan parliament for Torra’s secessionist, pro-austerity government. He also called for reforming Spain’s electoral law to set a 3 percent threshold for parties to enter Spain’s parliament. Since the Catalan nationalists have virtually no support outside Catalonia, this would de facto eliminate the ERC, PDeCAT and the Basque Nationalist Party from the national parliament.

As the PP and Citizens fall short of the parliamentary majority to reform the electoral law, Rivera called on Sánchez to support such a move. The PSOE is currently rejecting this, with the secretary of the party calling it “throwing petrol” over the political fire in Catalonia.

There is broad opposition to the PP in Spain, as well as to the secessionist programme of the Catalan nationalists in Catalonia, and a growing wave of strikes in Spain as well as across Europe. If the PP and Citizens can proceed with attacks on democratic rights and moves to build a police state, this is above all due to the reactionary role of Podemos in supporting the PSOE government and suppressing left-wing opposition to the PSOE and the PP. The absence of any opposition from these two parties emboldens the right wing to step up its attacks on democratic rights.

Sánchez has continued the previous PP government’s crackdown on the Catalan nationalists, while making a few symbolic concessions to try to smooth over relations. While Sánchez declared his sympathy for Catalan autonomy, he kept Catalan political prisoners in jail and retained “rebellion” charges against nine incarcerated Catalan officials and politicians. The charges carry sentences of up to 25 years in jail.

The PSOE, which like the PP before it runs a minority government, can hold power only through the support in parliament from Podemos, together with the various regional-nationalist parties. Podemos General Secretary Pablos Iglesias has visited Catalan political prisoners in jail to give them messages from Sánchez, and has called upon Sánchez to design a “concrete state policy” on Catalonia. Iglesias makes no secret of the close political collaboration between Podemos and the government.

Iglesias said that “never has Podemos had as much influence as now,” adding that the party is “proud of our push” as Sánchez’s main supporters. These boasts are a devastating exposure of the reactionary role of Podemos.

The Podemos leadership is declaring its unstinting support to all the anti-worker policies the PSOE has implemented since taking power last June. The PSOE has not only continued jailing Catalan nationalists on fraudulent charges, but threatened to re-impose Article 155 on the region and passed the previous PP government’s austerity budget, including billions of euros in defence spending increases. It also sold precision bombs to Saudi Arabia in its bloody war in Yemen, carried out mass expulsions of migrants and sent police to break up strikes.

This again confirms the ICFI’s assessment of the role of Podemos as an anti-working class and anti-Marxist party, and its insistence that the key question in Spain and across Europe is building sections of the ICFI to give political leadership to the emerging struggles of the working class.

As the ICFI warned in its statement, “Oppose the state crackdown on the Catalan independence referendum!” on the eve of the vote, “The Catalan crisis has yet again exposed the Podemos party’s reactionary role. … Podemos is still calling for an alliance with the PSOE, even as the PSOE supports the PP’s onslaught in Catalonia.” The ICFI warned that Podemos was “signaling the ruling class that it is also available to form an alternate government. … Such a government were it to be formed, would offer no alternative to the drive to dictatorship and austerity currently being prosecuted by the PP.”

This assessment of the role a Podemos-backed government would play in Spain has been thoroughly vindicated.

Tamil Nadu police arrest hundreds of striking Indian autoworkers

Arun Kumar & Moses Rajkumar

In recent weeks, thousands of autoworkers from Yamaha Motor India, Royal Enfield and Myoung Shin Automotive (MSA) plants in the Oragadam-Chengalpattu industrial zone have been involved in strikes, occupations and protests to demand union rights, better working conditions and wage rises.

Located southwest of Chennai, the Tamil Nadu state capital, the zone employs hundreds of thousands of workers. Colloquially known as the “Detroit of Asia,” the area has the majority of India’s 7.6 million autoworkers. Companies located there include Ford, Daimler AG, Renault–Nissan, Komatsu, Mitsubishi and Toyota.

Last Sunday, hundreds of Yamaha and MSA workers held a “human chain” demonstration to support their respective demands and protest against company and police repression. The Yamaha and Enfield plants produce motorcycles while MSA makes auto parts. The demonstration followed a series of struggles.

Yamaha workers assembling for a human chain protest

* On September 21, over 750 Yamaha permanent workers had walked out on strike indefinitely and established an occupation to demand the reinstatement of two workers. The workers were sacked because of their involvement in organising a new union—the Yamaha Motor Thozhilalar Sangham (Yamaha Motor Workers Association)—at the facility. The union is affiliated to the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), which is controlled by the Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM.

Of the nearly 2,500 employed at Yamaha India, 750 are permanent, 1,500 are on contract and around 250 are apprentices. Permanent workers’ monthly salaries range from 13,000 rupees ($US180) to 18,000 rupees. Contract workers wanted to join the strike, but the union instructed them not to become involved, declaring that their jobs were at risk.

Yamaha India immediately declared the strike “illegal” and took the dispute to the Madras High Court. After the court ruled that any protest by the workers must be 200 metres from the factory premises, Tamil Nadu police entered the facility on September 26, attacked the striking workers and ejected them from the plant.

On October 3, police conducted early morning raids on the homes of four Yamaha workers, arresting them for allegedly climbing onto mobile towers a week earlier to highlight their demands.

* On September 24, about 1,300 Royal Enfield workers walked out to demand a wage rise and other claims. The company responded by threatening trainees with the sack if they did not return to work. Armed with a court order, the police, on the same day as they attacked the Yamaha strikers, raided the Enfield factory and forcibly removed strikers.

In line with the demands of union officials, Royal Enfield workers ended their strike on September 30. The union claimed to have reached an agreement with the company that there would be no reprisals against the strikers. A new CITU-linked union—the Royal Enfield Employees Union (REEU)—was recently established in the plant, but is not recognised by the company.

Despite the supposed agreement, management cut workers’ salaries for the days they were on strike, disciplined eight employees, and sacked another, over alleged involvement in union activities. The company also refused to allow workers to take their mobile phones into the plant. Nearly 700 permanent workers immediately walked out in protest.

Following union talks with the company, the Enfield strikers returned to work again on October 5, only to face another management provocation. They were told to “apologise” for striking and agree to a “good conduct” undertaking.

Angered by these demands, the workers occupied the plant, only to be attacked by police who arrested about 600 protestors, holding them in a nearby hall until that evening.

While management and the police were launching their attacks on the Yamaha and Enfield workers, the CITU, acting as an industrial police force, “advised” the workers to “honour” the court orders.

* On September 5, over 500 workers, including 150 permanent employees from MSA, a supplier to Hyundai in Tamil Nadu, began a strike and occupation to demand payment of a long-outstanding wage rise.

On September 27, a number of striking MSA workers were arrested by the police when they planned to picket the South Korean embassy in Chennai. Police detained them in a nearby hall before releasing them in the evening.

Striking Yamaha workers

Tamil Nadu business chiefs have denounced the wave of industrial action and demanded that the state government crush strikes.

Ar Rm Arun, chairman of the Tamil Nadu branch of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, India’s peak business body, told the Hindu newspaper: “MNCs [multinational corporations] are not mandated to be bogged down in any way by such issues. If the environment is not conducive to their business, there are so many choices for them.”

Arun called on the state government to “follow the example of the Singapore prime minister in how he firmly dealt with the striking Singapore Airlines pilots.” This was a reference to former Singapore dictator Lee Kwan Yew’s threats to crush the pilots’ strike in 1980.

Indian big business, global investors, the federal and state governments and the judiciary, working closely with the unions, are determined to suppress any independent eruption of class struggles. The repression of the Maruti Suzuki workers is a case in point.

In 2012, after Maruti Suzuki workers rejected a management-controlled union and formed an independent union, the company worked with police and Indian government authorities to launch a series of provocations. This resulted in the arrest and frame-up of Maruti Suzuki workers and the sentencing of 13 to life imprisonment on bogus murder charges. The CPM and CITU rejected demands for unified national action and then isolated the jailed Maruti Suzuki workers.

While Yamaha, Enfield and MSA workers have demonstrated their determination to fight, the CPM and CITU have repeatedly intervened to prevent unified industrial action.

CITU officials used last Sunday’s protest as another occasion to promote illusions in the Tamil Nadu state government. CITU district leader Muthu Kumar called on the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), a right-wing communalist party, to “find an amicable solution.”

Yamaha workers speak to WSWS reporters

WSWS reporters recently distributed leaflets among the striking workers explaining the necessity for unified national industrial action to take forward their struggle and exposing the CITU’s role.

Numerous Yamaha workers voiced their discontent and blamed the unions for not mobilising contract workers, apprentices and other workers in support of these struggles. Several union bureaucrats intervened and repeatedly demanded that the WSWS reporters leave the area.

Last week, union officials banned workers from speaking to WSWS reporters and, on Sunday, CITU leaders Muthu Kumar and S. Kannan threatened physical violence. Kannan claimed that WSWS reporters were working for the auto companies. Next time, he declared: “CPM comrades will kill you.”

These threats are another indication that the CPM and CITU are acutely nervous about the rising militancy of autoworkers and fear any exposure of their political record and pro-big business line. Notwithstanding their occasional “left” demagogy, the Indian Stalinists, as demonstrated in the states where they have held power, such as West Bengal, Tripura and Kerala, will do whatever is demanded of them by international investors and the Indian capitalist elites.

IMF revises down global growth projection

Nick Beams

Ten years after the global financial crisis, the World Economic Outlook (WEO) report issued by the International Monetary Fund this week makes clear the global economy is far removed from the growth path that existed in the years leading up to 2008.

In its two previous semi-annual reports, the IMF had pointed to synchronised global growth in 2017. While overall growth projections for 2018–19 remain above the levels for 2012–2016, synchronisation has largely petered out, with the outlook for the future on a downward trend.

Global growth is projected at 3.7 percent for 2018–19, some 0.2 percentage points lower than the forecast last April.

“The downward revision reflects surprises,” the WEO stated. It referred to “suppressed activity in early 2018 in some major advanced economies, the negative effects of the trade measures implemented or approved between April and mid-September, as well as a weaker outlook for some key emerging markets and developing economies arising from country-specific factors, tightening financial conditions, geopolitical tensions and higher oil import bills.”

The overall situation, the IMF assessed, was not going to improve as “growth in most advanced economies is expected to decline to potential rates well below the averages reached before the global financial crisis of a decade ago.”

While the WEO predicted that global expansion would continue over the next two years, it would be much less synchronised than in 2017, which saw the biggest increase in growth since the rebound of 2010.

“A smaller share of countries, particularly among advanced economies” was expected to experience an acceleration of economic activity in 2018. The report noted that among the advanced economies, growth “disappointed” in the euro area and in the UK, with the latter experiencing lower growth than had been anticipated.

The only exception to this overall trend was the United States where growth was expected to remain elevated until 2020 as a result of what the IMF called a “sizable fiscal stimulus”—the massive corporate and personal income tax cuts enacted by the Trump administration, which have increased the US budget deficit.

But like a shot of adrenalin, the effects would not last. The pace of economic expansion was expected to slow “as the stimulus reverses and reinforces the effect of ongoing monetary tightening” flowing from the US Federal Reserve’s moves to increase interest rates. Growth in the US was expected to fall to the somewhat anaemic level of 1.8 percent in 2020, with growth expected to further drop to 1.4 percent in later years.

The WEO noted that a “core element” in the upsurge in global growth and trade in 2017 was the pickup of investment in the advanced economies and an “end to investment contractions in some large, stressed commodity exporters.” But this pace of expansion was expected to decline in 2018–19 compared to last year, “with a more notable decline in trade growth.”

The report pointed to “rising trade tensions and policy uncertainty” which could lead firms to postpone or forgo capital spending and “hence slow down growth in investment and demand.” High frequency data, such as the purchasing managers’ indices, pointed to a “slowdown in international trade and industrial production.” The IMF revised down its forecast for fixed investment growth in advanced economies by around 0.4 percentage points from its prediction of six months ago.

According to the WEO, the “balance of risks” to the global forecast has shifted to the downside in the context of “elevated policy uncertainty.” Risks the IMF identified earlier, including rising trade barriers and a reversal of capital flows due to a tightening of monetary settings, “have become more pronounced or have partially materialized.”

The report warned that “escalating trade tensions and the potential shift away from a multilateral rules-based trading system are key threats to the global outlook.” In rather understated language, it said “a cooperative approach to reduce trade costs and resolve disagreements has so far proved elusive,” with the US imposing tariffs on a variety of imports and its trading partners undertaking retaliatory action.

Having marked down its predictions for growth in emerging markets and developing economics by 0.2 and 0.4 percentage points respectively, the WEO said the main source for the revision was the “negative expected impact of the trade measures” on activity in China and other economies in emerging Asia.

With the protectionist rhetoric in the US now having turned to action, the report stressed that the escalation of trade tensions could reach a point where “systemic risk” to the global economy was a “distinct possibility without policy cooperation.”

But there is no prospect for such cooperation because the eruption of trade conflicts is itself an expression of sharpening economic and geo-strategic rivalries.

The WEO instead concluded that tightening monetary conditions in the US, a stronger US dollar and a larger US current account deficit risk “aggravating trade tensions.” This could lead to a faster tightening of global financing, with “negative implications for emerging market economies, especially those with weak external positions.”

Financial risks had increased because an “extremely supportive financial environment” in the years since the financial crisis had rendered the global economy vulnerable to “sudden tightening of financial conditions.” This was a reference to the ultra-low interest rate regime and the pumping of trillions of dollars into the financial system by the world’s major central banks.

The report noted that measures of “equity valuations,” such as the US stock market, appeared “stretched,” leading investors to move into riskier assets in search of yield. “Across many economies, government and corporate debt is substantially higher than before the global financial crisis” and in “some emerging markets, there are concerns about rising contingent liabilities.”

Under conditions of tightening interest rates and rising uncertainty, the IMF said the risk of contagion had increased and not only in emerging markets. The report cited the rise in yields (increased interest rates and lower bond prices) on Italian sovereign debt as “a case in point.”

“A significant further decline in sovereign bond prices, with possible contagion effects, would impose valuation losses on investors, worsen public debt dynamics, and weaken bank balance sheets, reigniting concerns about sovereign-debt feed-back loops in the euro area,” the WEO stated.

A chapter in the report outlined the economic impact of the global financial crisis. It drew out that the effects have been long lasting and extend well beyond the countries that experienced a banking crisis.

Some 91 countries, representing two-thirds of global economic output, experienced a contraction in 2009, making the crisis the biggest economic shock in the post-war period.

Comparing the fall in output with the pre-2008 trend, the IMF said 24 countries that experienced a banking crisis, 18 of which were high-income countries, were still showing a shortfall relative to the preceding trend. Relative to the pre-crisis trend, the average shortfall was around 10 percent, but in some cases it was between 20 and 40 percent.

The main reason for the fall in production was the collapse in investment, which was down by an average of 25 percent compared to the pre-crisis trend. And the fall in output would have been greater if not for the massive economic stimulus provided by China, equivalent to around 10 percent of its gross domestic product.

Writing on this aspect of the IMF report, Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf concluded: “‘Never again’ must be the watchword.”

As the IMF survey makes clear, however, this remains nothing more than a pious hope. That is due to the increase in global indebtedness, the continued vulnerability of the world economy to financial shocks, and the ongoing breakdown of the international trading system, to name just some of the major trends.

The disease that struck the world capitalist economy a decade ago has not been cured, it has simply assumed more malignant forms.