Protests against new labour law in Hungary

Markus Salzmann 

Braving freezing temperatures, several thousand workers have taken to the streets of Budapest on a daily basis since last Wednesday to protest against the tightening up of labour law by the Hungarian government. One week ago, 10,000 people protested against the new “Slave Law.” Police used tear gas and water cannon to brutally repel the demonstrators.

On Wednesday, parliament passed the new bill proposed by the right-wing Fidesz party led by Prime Minister Victor Orbán. On Friday and Saturday, riots took place with more than 50 participants arrested and many wounded in clashes with police. According to media reports, 14 police officers were injured. The media described the protests as “the most violent protests in more than ten years.” The initial protests were limited to the capital city, but protests also took place on Friday in Pecs in southern Hungary.

The law reform is designed to increase the annual overtime employers are allowed to demand from their workers from 250 to 400 hours. At the same time, companies no longer have to compensate or pay overtime within one year, but only within three years.

The protests not only included calls for the repeal of the new labour code, but also for the resignation of Premier Orbán and for basic political changes. In the 10 years Orbán has been in power, he has led Hungary towards dictatorship and strengthened the most right-wing elements in the country.

The protests are also directed against another law passed Wednesday, which subordinates the judiciary to even more control by the government. The law places new administrative courts directly under the justice minister, Laszlo Trocsanyi, a close ally of Orbán.

The tightening of the Labour Code serves the interests of international corporations operating in the country, especially the auto industry, which accounts for about one third of all Hungarian exports. Nearly all international carmakers, such as Audi, BMW and Opel, produce in Hungary. They are attracted in particular by wages that are around one third of what the auto companies pay in countries like Germany. Hungary is considered a “location with low labour costs, well-trained workers and weak unions,” the Wiener Zeitung notes.

As in other eastern European countries, massive emigration and the decline of the education system is beginning to affect the labour market. That is why companies are having increasing difficulty finding skilled workers. Orbán’s law means that such skilled workers can in future be compelled to work much longer hours.

Union representatives rightly refer to the law as a backdoor to the introduction of a six-day working week. Foreign Trade Minister Péter Szijjártó recently stated that investors have welcomed the proposals of the Hungarian government, because they will increase competitiveness.

In all of the protests, many participants wore yellow vests. They were expressing their solidarity with the protests in France, where the opposition to President Emmanuel Macron has assumed the dimensions of a mass movement of the working class against the capitalist system. The latest protests in Hungary have been supported by students and school pupils, as is the case in France.

Although the unions have increasingly adapted to the government line in recent years, they felt obliged to respond to workers’ pressure for the protests. The MASZSZ trade union group even threatened a general strike if the government did not withdraw the law. Other unions, such as the teachers’ union, also joined the protests. The Internet portal nepszava.hu published a survey by the polling institute Pulzus according to which 81 percent of respondents agreed with the protests.

The majority of protesters are expressing genuine anger at the right-wing government, but far-right forces are trying to exploit the protests for their own ends. The neo-fascist Jobbik party has called for rejection of the new labour law, and far-right-wing forces are using social media to mobilise against it. The Jobbik leadership called upon its regional organisations to travel to Budapest on Friday to participate in the protests.

A particularly vile role is being played by the so-called “left-wing” opposition parties. They are using the current situation to ally themselves with the ultra-right. When in power, the Socialist Party (MSZP) had also implemented policies attacking the working class and its rights. Now it is calling for collaboration with Jobbik.

MSZP MP Agnes Kunhalmi said that this was necessary to fight the Orbán government. She raised the possibility of an alliance for the European elections in the coming year, arguing that otherwise Orbán would ban all opposition parties.

A similar position is held by the right-wing neo-liberal Momentum movement, which supports the European Union. Its deputy, Anna Donáth, called for “solidarity” with all parties and groups opposed to the new the law.

The Orbán government is responding to the protests with an extremely aggressive, right-wing campaign. As was the case when the government took a fierce stance against refugees, Orbán raises the cudgel of anti-Semitism. According to Balazs Hidveghi, the communications director of the governing party, the Jewish US billionaire George Soros “organised the violence in Budapest.” Soros and his network were only interested in riots, and provocation and protests had been deliberately planned, as was the violence against policemen, Hidveghi explained, according to the Hungarian news agency MTI.

Recently, Hungary’s head of government initiated the bundling of media outlets favourable to the government in a new consortium. In early December, he signed a decree stating that this measure was of “strategic importance” and in the public interest. The measure permits Orbán to increase his influence over the press in Hungary and neutralise any media opposition. This explains why many of the Hungarian media outlets refuse to report on the protest or do so only to portray the protesters as “rabble.”

Bombings kill 62 in Somalia amid escalating US scramble for Africa

Bill Van Auken

The US military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) claimed on Monday to have killed 62 members of the al-Shabab Islamist militia in a series of six airstrikes over the weekend in a coastal region south of Somalia’s capital of Mogadishu.

The bombings were only the latest in a steadily escalating US air war in Somalia. They follow a pair of air strikes last month that the Pentagon claimed killed 37 al-Shabab members, a strike in October that it said claimed the lives of 60 fighters and another in November of last year that supposedly killed around 100.

In the latest bombing, as in all those that have preceded it, the Pentagon insisted that there were no “collateral” civilian casualties, following a longstanding ground rule that anyone killed by American bombs and missiles is by definition a targeted militant.

Somalia is one of the shadow wars that Washington is waging in Africa, with little or no information provided to the public, much less even a shred of popular approval.

In the latest attacks, AFRICOM reported that US warplanes carried out four strikes on December 15, leaving 34 people dead, and another two strikes on December 16 that killed 28.

The latest strikes bring the total for this year to 46, a significant rise over the 31 carried out last year, which was itself double the number conducted in 2016.

The Trump administration introduced sweeping changes to the rules of engagement in Somalia, casting aside previous restraints on bombing and other operations.

In addition to the air war, AFRICOM maintains a force of 500 US special operations troops on the ground in Somalia, its largest combat deployment on the continent. These troops participate in search-and-kill operations together with Somali government forces.

In addition, some 20,000 troops from Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Burundi operate in Somalia under the auspices of the African Union and in conjunction with the US military operation.

Despite this array of military power, al-Shabab continues to hold sway over vast swathes of the country’s rural areas and is able to make frequent attacks throughout Somalia.

The government that the US is attempting to prop up in Mogadishu is riddled with corruption and crises, pretending to preside over a society that has been left shattered by a quarter of a century of US imperialist intervention.

In the week before the latest US airstrikes, the town of Baidoa, the capital of the southwestern Bay region of Somalia, was the scene of bloody clashes between protesters on the one side and Ethiopian troops and Somali security forces on the other that have left at least eight people dead, including one local legislator and a 10-year-old child.

The protests broke out after Ethiopian troops arrested Muhktar Robow, the former second-in-command of al-Shabab, who quit the group and became the leading candidate for the presidency of the southwestern state in what is the first of a series of regional elections. According to reports, he was tortured, flown to Mogadishu and imprisoned there.

Ethiopian troops are reported to have occupied Baidoa, driving tanks through residential neighborhoods.

The clashes are only the sharpest expression of the breakdown of relations between the central government in Mogadishu and the regional administrations, which have largely cut off cooperation with the capital as a result of multiple conflicts.

Meanwhile, in Mogadishu itself, legislators earlier this month initiated impeachment proceedings against President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed Farmajo charging him with signing “secret deals” with Ethiopia and Eritrea and acting unilaterally in the appointment of military commanders and judges. The lawmakers also accused the president of abusing his powers by authorizing the unlawful rendition of a leader of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), Muse Qalbi Dhagah, a Somali national, from Somalia to Ethiopia.

The intensive US air strikes in Somalia came on the heels of Washington’s unveiling of a new policy in which the operations of AFRICOM, whose ranks have swelled to 7,500—compared to about 6,000 in 2017—are being overtly developed from the standpoint of Africa as an arena of great power conflict.

Until now, AFRICOM’s operations, which involve deployments of US forces in virtually every country of the continent, have been cast as part of the “global war on terrorism.” The strategy outlined last Thursday by US National Security Adviser John Bolton, however, placed counter-terrorism as Washington’s “second priority,” eclipsed by the imperative of confronting “great power competitors, namely China and Russia.”

Bolton’s rabid address, delivered before the right-wing think tank, the Heritage Foundation, indicted both Beijing and Moscow for pursuing “predatory practices” that “threaten the financial independence of African nations; inhibit opportunities for US investment; interfere with US military operations; and pose a significant threat to US national security interests.”

The thrust of Bolton’s speech was that China and Russia have been poaching—with considerable success—on territory that Washington views as its own semi-colonial preserve.

In particular, the national security adviser laid stress on the Horn of Africa and its strategic location on the shores of the route for much of the world’s seaborne oil traffic from the Middle East to Asia. He called attention to the building of a Chinese military base in Djibouti, just miles from where AFRICOM has its own main base on the continent, and on a proposed deal that would place Djibouti’s main Red Sea port facility under the management of a Chinese company, saying that this would shift “the balance of power in the Horn of Africa” in China’s favor.

In what was undoubtedly the most laughable segment of Bolton’s speech, he vowed that Washington would carefully review and substantially reduce its aid programs to African countries, vowing that it would not “fund corrupt autocrats, who use the money to fill their coffers at the expense of their people or commit gross human rights violations.”

This from a government that has provided unconditional defense of the Saudi monarchy, supporting its genocidal war in Yemen and covering up for its brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside its Istanbul consulate. One would never guess from Bolton’s sanctimonious speech that Washington has been the principal prop for African dictatorships, from that of Mobutu Sese Seko in the Congo onward.

Bolton’s speech, and the savage intensification of the US assault on Somalia constitute a warning: US imperialism views Africa as a battlefield in its global bid to employ military aggression as a means of defending its hegemony over every region of the planet. To the extent it faces challenges in terms of trade and investment from Russia and China, it will respond with intensified militarism, with the peoples of Africa suffering the consequences.

Financial market fall accelerates on global growth fears

Nick Beams 

US stock markets fell sharply yesterday, with the Dow down by 500 points, bringing its combined losses for the last two trading days to more than 1,000 points. The broader-based S&P 500 index was down by more than 2 percent, with the sell-off taking place across all sectors.

With all indexes now in “correction” territory, having fallen more than 10 percent since their highs, Wall Street is on track for its biggest annual decline since 2008. The Dow and the S&P 500 are set to record their worst drop for December since 1931, at the height of the Great Depression, having lost 7 percent so far for the month.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq index dropped 2.3 percent, recording a loss of 2.2 percent for the year. Market analysts described the market as “treacherous,” saying the “buy the dip” tactic, which meant that previous downturns were relatively short-lived, was not in evidence this time.

There is a confluence of factors impacting the stock market, including: fears of a global slowdown and possible recession; the ongoing impact of the US trade war against China; concerns over the future course of interest rates and what the Federal Reserve will say following its meeting on Wednesday; the impact of political turmoil in the US; the fallout of the Brexit crisis in the UK; and the developing upsurge of the working class, as reflected in the “yellow vest” movement in France.

The signs of a slowdown in global growth are most clearly expressed in China and Europe. Last week, Chinese government data showed the biggest fall in the growth rate of retail sales for 15 years and a decline in the industrial production growth rate to the lowest point in three years. There are warnings that the overall Chinese growth rate, at its lowest point since 2008-2009, could decline further next year, as US trade war measures begin to take effect.

In comments to Reuters, Changyong Rhee, a senior International Monetary Fund official for the Asia Pacific region, said the trade conflict between the US and China was already affecting business confidence in Asia.

“Investment is much weaker than expected,” he said. “My interpretation is that the confidence channel is already affecting the global economy, particularly the Asian economies.” He warned that Japan and South Korea could be among the countries hardest hit because of their dependence on exports to China.

In Europe, major economic indicators are pointing to a significant slowdown, if not a recession. According to a report in the Financial Times on Friday: “Germany is ‘stuck in a low growth phase,’ France’s private sector has fallen into contraction for the first time since 2016, and euro zone business growth has closed out 2018 at its lowest level in four years.”

The report said the business information service IHS Markit had concluded the Germany was in a period of “tepid growth,” with the “exuberant boom of 2017 now a distant memory.”

Chris Williamson, the organisation’s chief business economist, said the contraction in France was not due entirely to the series of “yellow vests” protests. Some of the slowdown reflected disruption caused by the protests, but “the weaker picture also reflects growing evidence that the underlying rate of economic growth has slowed across the euro area as whole. Companies are worried about the global economic and political climate, with trade wars and Brexit adding to increased political tensions within the euro area.”

In the United States, there are concerns that the economy will enter a period of much slower growth and lower earnings in 2019 after the effects of the “sugar hit” of the Trump administration’s corporate tax cuts wear off.

This week, all eyes will be on the statement to emerge from the meeting of the Fed on Wednesday. While a further rise in the base rate of 0.25 percent is expected—some commentators suggesting that failure to go ahead could provoke increased turbulence because it would indicate the Fed expects a worsening outlook for the economy—the key issue will be what it plans to do next year.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell offered some reassurances to the markets in November when he said the central bank’s base rate was close to neutral, indicating that it might not go ahead with the series of rises previously indicated for 2019.

President Donald Trump has continued his campaign against Fed rate rises. In a tweet issued yesterday, underscoring the delusional character of his “America First” agenda, in which turmoil in the rest of the world supposedly benefits the US economy, he wrote: “It is incredible that with a very strong dollar and virtually no inflation, the outside world is blowing up around us, Paris is burning and China way down, the Fed is even considering yet another interest rate hike. Take the Victory!”

The Fed decision will be crucial for financial markets, where there are increasing signs of a tightening of credit and concerns over stability. US credit markets are reported to be “grinding to a halt,” according to a Financial Times report, with “fund managers refusing to bankroll buyouts and investors shunning high-yield bond sales, as rising interest rates and market volatility weigh on sentiment.”

Not a single company has borrowed money through the $1.2 trillion high-yield, or so-called “junk bond,” market so far this month, and if that trend continues it will be the first such occurrence since November 2008, in the midst of the financial crisis.

The former chair of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, issued a warning about the state of financial markets last October, saying there had been a “huge deterioration” in the standards of corporate lending.

That deterioration, however, is a direct product of the policies pursued by the Fed in the aftermath of the 2008 meltdown, as, together with other central banks, it pumped trillions of dollars into the financial system, enabling the speculation which produced the crash to continue and reach new heights.

In a comment published at the weekend, financial analyst Satyajit Das, named by Bloomberg in 2014 as one of the world’s 50 most influential financial figures, warned that what he called the “everything bubble” was deflating and a new crisis was in the making. He wrote that since 2008, governments and central banks had stabilised the situation, but the fundamental problems of high debt levels, weak banking systems and excessive financialization had not been addressed.

While not directly referring to the beginnings of an upsurge of the working class, calling it a “democracy deficit” in the advanced countries and “rising political tensions,” he pointed to the “loss of faith in supposed technocratic abilities of policymakers,” which would compound economic and financial problems.

“The political economy,” he wrote, “could then accelerate toward the critical point identified by John Maynard Keynes in 1933, where ‘we must expect the progressive breakdown of the existing structure of contract and instruments of indebtedness, accompanied by the utter discredit of orthodox leaders in finance and government, with what ultimate outcome we cannot predict.’”

Keynes did not make a prediction, but history recorded what the outcome was: worsening economic conditions, the rise of fascist and authoritarian forms of rule, trade war and economic nationalist conflicts, leading ultimately to world war. Those conditions are now rapidly returning.

Whatever the immediate outcome of the present gyrations on financial markets, they indubitably establish that none of the irresolvable contradictions of the global capitalist system has been resolved. Rather, they have intensified, and faced with an intractable economic and financial crisis, the ruling classes will lash out with even more vicious attacks on the working class, deepening the assaults of the past decade.

Eighty years ago, the international working class was unable to prevent the descent into barbarism because, while undertaking powerful struggles in the United States, Europe and Asia, it lacked a revolutionary leadership. As it once again begins to enter enormous battles against the ruling elites, it must draw the lessons of history and arm itself with a global socialist strategy to confront the great political tasks now posed by the deepening breakdown of the global capitalist order.

The World Google Controls and Surveillance Capitalism

Julian Vigo

I have been following the scandal of the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act(also known as the Snoopers’ Charter) and Holland’s Sleepwet and their relationship to the encroaching government powers over private data, privacy, data collection, surveillance, and free speech for several years now.  And very much related to these bills created ostensibly to protest us from “terrorism,” is Google’s encroaching powers over our lives, to include the freedom of expression protected by most national laws, not to mention EU and UN Charters, around the planet today.

When the Internet became a tool for communication and research in the late1980s (usually through universities and research institutes) and later rendered public through commercial Internet service providers (ISPs) in 1991, most people were slow to catch on. Initially, I was inculcated into Internet culture by virtue of being a graduate student at New York University where I came to depend on their computer labs to churn out papers when not using friends’ computers. I still remember Archie, Telnet, and line mode browsers before the release of ViolaWWW.  By the mid 1990s students were curious about hypertext through Memex and Xanada while many others made their personal webpage which they would write in html with the help of on- or off-line instructions.  The concept of a free website builder had not yet emerged and everything was very much ad hoc, individuals figuring out how to fiddle with html as if a late 20th century Mini Cooper under whose hood the user would play around.  And yes, the flashing bright lights that every webpage seemed to embrace as if a will to trigger everyone visiting their page an epileptic seizure.

These were the golden days of the Internet when anything was acceptable to include the aesthetically challenging, old school graphics, and the simple layout with repeating background images that defies any description. These were the days that websites were entirely about content such that if you want to read up on the Klingon Language Institute, presentation was tertiary, if even a concern at all. Even by the mid 1990s most businesses had not caught onto the potential of the Internet for marketing, public relations, and advertising.  The finances needed for publicity were still largely functioning through traditional modalities and when companies did not think that people would be using the Internet for commerce, much less research.

In 1995, when the NSF (National Science Foundation) began charging a fee for registering domain names there were only 120,000 registered domain names. By 1998, this number rose to over 3 million. And while Amazon started in 1994, the birth of eBay the year later kicked off e-commerce definitively.  Still most businesses did not actively incorporate the Internet into their structures and the cost of building a website was not even an afterthought for most given the Internet on a shoestring approach that many of us ran with. I was working on my PhD at this time and finding that my ability to learn languages was directly applicable to computer languages where I was able to volunteer for friends and even carve out a living writing web pages and making early e-commerce sites for friends.  Web designers in Manhattan were quickly becoming desirable and well paid as we rolled towards the new millennium with more and more businesses and individuals realizing the potential of the Internet.

The thing is until 2000, the Internet existed for most people as this virtual encyclopedia, news reference, information center to check out cinema times. There were even early prototypes of Skype and messenger like ICQ where peer-to-peer communications were viewed as a novelty. I had my first Internet conversation from my apartment in Park Slope to a man living at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro. The Internet was an information highway, unregulated, and quite flexible considering kinds of technology it was slowly replacing.  Privacyschmivacy, right?

However, since 9/11 specifically and more recently around a series of culture wars, we are seeing how governments around the planet from the beginning of the new millennium had locked up ship and set out various legal initiatives that make it possible for governments to spy on its citizens. The US can be credited with fomenting such legislation that claims to do one thing (secure the “homeland”) while in reality, doing something quite different. So 45 days after 9/11 the Patriot Act, a vile piece of legislation that resulted in the disappearance of over 14,000 Muslim men within the United States, was born.  The residual force of the Patriot Act lay in the fact that this law made it easier for the US government to spy on its citizens with the government issuing National Security Letters (NSLs) without the need for a judge to sign off. The Patriot Act gave a new twist to McCarthyism since it put the power of the law into the hands of 43,000 law enforcement agents who had access to phone records collected through the NSLs. While most people today are aware of the importance of Edward Snowden’s and Julian Assange’s efforts to challenge the US government’s illegal acts of espionage on its own citizenry and illegal acts of violence, what many do not remember is how the Global War on Terror (GWOT) instigated much of the laws which rolled out enormous powers to Homeland Security, which decimated in the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) and put immigration in the same bracket as terrorology.

From the US to the EU, one thing has become painfully clear to me in recent months: free speech, the freedom of conscience, and privacy are all under threat by big tech companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google. In fact, these companies are far more the enemy of the people than the NSA (National Security Agency) or GCHQ, the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters. And Snowden has said as much referring to how he and his colleagues in the NSA were at the very least subject to some degree of democratic oversight while companies like Google and Facebook, as we saw recently with Zuckerberg’s testimony to Congress this past Spring, maintain a business model which perfectly combines capitalism with surveillance and it is all perfectly unregulated.

In 2014, John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney introduced the term “surveillance capitalism” in Monthly Review, an independent socialist magazine where they explain its inception from the post-war architecture which combined the vehicle of sales framed within a Madison Avenue centralized corporate marketing revolution together with the creation of a permanent state of war headed by the Pentagon where the Cold War was buttressed by arms and fictional nuclear preparedness on the one hand, and the shop ‘til you drop on the other. The military-industrial complex and the marketing of society, according to Foster and McChesney, constituted the two principle surplus-absorption mechanisms until the financial crisis of the 1970s when a third vector of surplus-absorption was added: that of financialization which supplemented the system as the previous two mechanisms waned:

Each of these means of surplus absorption were to add impetus in different ways to the communications revolution, associated with the development of computers, digital technology, and the Internet. Each necessitated new forms of surveillance and control. The result was a universalization of surveillance, associated with all three areas of: (1) militarism/imperialism/security; (2) corporate-based marketing and the media system; and (3) the world of finance.

It is hard to do such a brilliant article justice, but suffice it to say that Foster and McChesney give an excellent history of how the hunt for Edward Snowden was not news. They chronicle a long history dating back to the “Army Files” (also known as CONUS) scandal where the Army had been spying on and keeping files on over seven million U.S. citizens through the use of over 1,500 plainclothes agents.  It was because of the CONUS scandal that Americans came to know of ARPANET, the precursor to today’s Internet where these secret files of Americans were kept and where the “limitless storage of data” proved a threat to healthy democracy.   

Surveillance capitalism is now part of our everyday where even the follow-up quality control questionnaires and all the privacy tick boxes we are asked to tick form part of a larger private sector databank of information. The problem is that most people think that such information is “harmless” and that it is of little consequence to their safety or privacy. But surveillance capitalism, as Foster and McChesney show us, surveillance capitalism could go much further than any government surveillance:

Like advertising and national security, it had an insatiable need for data. Its profitable expansion relied heavily on the securitization of household mortgages; a vast extension of credit-card usage; and the growth of health insurance and pension funds, student loans, and other elements of personal finance. Every aspect of household income, spending, and credit was incorporated into massive data banks and evaluated in terms of markets and risk. Between 1982 and 1990 the average debt load of individuals in the United States increased by 30 percent and with it the commercial penetration into personal lives.

So now with the government having the private sector doing its bidding in terms of farming information of its “client base,” business was not making a killing but private individuals were going further into debt while losing their freedom of privacy. Conterminous to individuals being stripped of their democratic freedom of privacy came the removal of the freedom of speech, recently cemented by the recent “redrafting” of NAFTA whereby major corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter were positioned to be the main benefactors of what is now called  United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA):

These big tech companies have been trying to reinvoke their immunity as previously held under Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act through NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) renegotiations. And last month they were successful as NAFTA’s substitute, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement(USMCA), will now extend the immunity Congress had earlier provided with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) into neighboring North American countries. Not only is this is a gift to the tech industry, but it is a complete paradox. The tech industry lobbied heavily to get back Section 230 immunity by invoking “free expression” for its users while conterminously taking on the policing free speech on its platforms. In short, big tech’s request for absolute immunity, in light of its use of Section 230 to justify political bias and censorship, reveals a troubling present for free speech on the net.

Over the past year there has been an unprecedented amount of thought policing on social media by Facebook and Twitter where now there are rules that penalize users for “fake news” and other thought crimes while Facebook and Twitter have closed down hundreds of political media pages just before November’s midterm elections.  Censorship is now commonplace on these platforms just as Google is once again facing a fresh wave of criticism from human rights groups over its plan to launch a censored search engine in China, a project called Dragonfly. In an eery twist to the democratization of Information that was once predicted in the early 1990s with the public launch of the Internet, we are now seeing how information, in the wrong hands, is not only not progressive, but is proving to be quite dangerous.

The masses of people playing Candy Crush and using Viber on their mobiles are overwhelmingly unaware of their participation in data mining how their participation poses a danger to a healthy democracy. We need to stay informed about the encroachment of big business and social media corporations in our private lives and the depths to which the private sector can farm information. In the end, who controls this information and how it is employed is another and far grimmer question that we must ask, even at the risk of uncovering terrifying and inexorable truths.

U.S. Demands Europe to Join Its War Against Russia

Eric Zuesse

On December 16th, the Russian Senator, Konstantin Kosachev, who heads that body’s foreign-affairs committee, went public accusing the U.S. Government of coercing German corporations to abandon their investments in the key Russia-EU gas-pipeline project, which is now nearing completion. It’s a joint project of Russia and of corporations in some EU countries. He called this U.S. pressure against European corporations an affront to the national sovereignty of both the German and the Russian Governments, and, more broadly, an affront against the sovereignty of the entire EU, which, he pointed out, is not like America’s NATO alliance with Europe is, an instrumentality of war, but is supposed to be, instead, an economic and political union — an instrumentality of peaceful international cooperation, not of any sort of international coercion.

Here is the historical context and background to this:

In recent decades, the U.S. Constitution’s clause that requires a congressional declaration of war before invading any country, has been ignored. Furthermore, ever since 2012 and the passage by Congress of the Magnitsky Act sanctions against Russia, economic sanctions by the U.S. Government have been imposed against any company that fails to comply with a U.S.-imposed economic sanction; a company can even be fined over a billion dollars for violating a U.S. economic sanction. And, so, sanctions are now the way that the U.S. Congress actually does authorize a war — the new way, no longer the way that’s described in the U.S. Constitution. However, in the economic-sanctions phase of a war — this initial phase — the war is being imposed directly against any company that violates a U.S.-ordered economic sanction, against Russia, Iran, or whatever target-country the U.S. Congress has, by means of such sanctions, actually authorized a war by the U.S. to exist — a ‘state of war’ to exist. For the U.S. Congress, the passage of economic sanctions against a country thus effectively serves now as an authorization for the U.S. President to order the U.S. military to invade that country, if and when the President decides to do so. No further congressional authorization is necessary (except under the U.S. Constitution). This initial phase of a war penalizes only those other nations’ violating companies directly — not the target-country. Though the U.S. Government punishes the violating corporation, the actual target is the targeted (sanctioned) country. Sanctions are being used to strangle that target. The fined companies are mere ‘collateral damage’, in this phase of America’s new warfare. In this phase, which is now the standard first phase of the U.S. Government’s going-to-war, the U.S. Government is coercing corporations to join America’s economic war, against the given targeted country — in this case, it’s a war against Russia; Russia is the country that the U.S. Government wants to strangle, in this particular instance.

On Tuesday, 11 December, the U.S. House of Representatives voted unanimously (no member objected), by voice vote — unrecorded so that nobody can subsequently be blamed for anything — that President Donald Trump should impose penalties, which could amount to billions of dollars, against any EU-based corporation that participates with Russia in Russia’s Nord Stream II Pipeline to supply gas to Europe. This “Resolution,” H.Res.1035, is titled “Expressing opposition to the completion of Nord Stream II, and for other purposes,” and it closes by asserting that the U.S. House of Representatives “supports the imposition of sanctions with respect to Nord Stream II under section 232 of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act.” With no member objecting, the U.S. House thereby warns corporations to cease doing business with Russia, because the U.S. Government is determined that any such business will be terminated and will maybe also be fined. The U.S. Government imposes its will as if it were the dictator to the entire world, and without even needing to use its military, but just economic coercion.

The U.S. Senate doesn’t yet have a similar bill, but the unanimous passage of this one in the House constitutes a strong warning to Europe’s corporations, that unless they obey the U.S. sanctions, huge financial penalties will be imposed upon them. There are not many issues on which the U.S. Congress is even nearly 100% united in agreement, but during this phase, the introductory phase, of America’s war against Russia, the war against Russia is certainly among those few instances — entirely bipartisan.

According to Russian Television, on December 12th, headlining “US lawmakers want to put a cork in Russia’s gas pipeline to Europe”: “On Monday, Austria’s OMV energy group CEO Rayner Zele stated that the company is set to continue financing the pipeline next year. OMV has already invested some 531 million euros ($607 million) into the project, Zele told Ria Novosti. In early December, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas also said that Berlin’s abandoning the project would not make sense as Russia will still go on with it. Germany earlier rebuked Trump’s criticism of the project after the US leader accused Berlin of being a ‘captive’ of Moscow citing Germany’s alleged dependency on natural gas from Russia.”

If the U.S. Government fails to strangulate the economies in the countries such as Russia and Iran against which it has imposed sanctions, then the next step, of course, would be some type of armed invasion of the given targeted country. Before the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, America’s economic sanctions killed from 100,000 to 500,000 Iraqi children, but then the U.S. invaded and destroyed the country vastly more than just that.

Economic sanctions are an attempt to coerce a targeted courntry’s — in effect — surrender, but without needing to use a military invasion as the coercive means. Any sanctioned country is therefore in America’s bomb-sights, and will be conquered in one way or another, unless the U.S. Government backs down, at some point.

According to the most extensive study that was ever done of U.S. military bases worldwide, there are over a thousand such bases, and this is a huge multiple of all non-U.S. military bases put together. That study was published in 1995. Many new U.S. military bases have been built and manned since 1995, such as several dozen in just one country, Syria, where the sovereign Government has never invited them in and many times has ordered them to leave, but they refuse to leave. Currently, the U.S. Government spends more than half of all monies that are being spent worldwide on the military.

Regarding the Nord Stream II Pipeline, the beneficiaries if that Pipeline is never completed and placed into service, will be American LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) producers, and also America’s allies such as Saudi Arabia and Israel. World War III could actually start as a result of the U.S. Government’s serving America’s (and its allies’) fossil-fuels producers above all other concerns regarding not only global warming, but even world peace itself. Those are the interests that are, in effect, at war against the entire world. This is not a statement of opinion: it is established and well-demonstrated fact. It is the overwhelmingly documented reality.

Here, translated by me and slightly abbreviated, is the December 16th statement that was made by Russia’s Senator Kosachev, the Chairman of the International Affairs Committee:

A categorical statement by the United States on Nord Stream 2, calling for Germany to abandon it, and for the European Union to rally the ranks “against Russian aggression” is a clear and unceremonious interference into the affairs of sovereign nations, to which the United States has no right to have any official opinion. …

Washington’s attempts to dominate and interfere in the affairs of other states are extremely dangerous for the whole world and destructive for international cooperation. This line directly contradicts the interests of any countries that are not US satellites. And it obviously contradicts the interests of Russia.

And if Russia followed solely its own egoistic interests, we should just as unceremoniously intervene in, say, the trade disputes of Washington and Beijing on the side of our Chinese ally, in the NAFTA crisis, in order to impose upon the US additional problems regarding its relations with both Canada and Mexico, or the fates of the Transatlantic and Trans-Pacific partnerships, where the United States is again working hard. To do that would be proceeding from the American principle, “the worse it is for our competitor, the better it is for us”.

We do not do that. Firstly, because Russia respects the sovereignty of other nations and never interferes in their internal affairs. Secondly, because, in principle, it is not proper for a world power to behave in such a way. …

What especially disappoints me in this situation [is] … Germany’s silence. The United Statyes is actually encroaching on Germany’s rights. That silence is disappointing, as is the EU’s passivity, which doesn’t respond to the intrusion of Americans into their sovereign affairs. The European Union is not NATO. …

Alternate energy sources in times of scarcity

Sheshu Babu

Recent ups and downs of petrol and diesel prices have made a large impact on people who depend upon them in their daily lives in most parts of the country and the world. The over- dependence on fossil fuels is not only depleting resources but also driving towards a major crisis, especially in transportation of both commodities and people. Hence, there is a need to think of other alternatives to avert possible crisis.

Alternative options

According to Larry West, interest in alternate fuels has been spurred by three important considerations:

Alternate fuels generally have lower vehicle emissions that contribute to smog, air pollution and global warming

Most alternate fuels don’t come from finite fossil -fuel resources and are sustainable.

Alternate fuels can help nations become more energy independent.

The U. S. Energy Policy Act of 1992, has identified eight alternate fuels of note to achieve these goals. (Top Eight Alternative Fuels, https://cleantechnica.com ) . They are: Ethanol, Natural Gas, Electricity, Hydrogen (which can be mixed with natural gas) , LPG- Liquefied Petroleum Gas or Propane, Biodiesel, Methanol and P- Series Fuels – a blend of Ethanol, Natural Gas liquids and methyltetrahydrofuran (MeTHF). These have positive as well as negative effects but can be substituted for Gasoline and diesel to reduce pollution.

With redesigning of engines and better network, diesel and petrol can be replaced by a compound called Dimethyl ether (DME) but it too has carbon. It can be blended with conventional fuel to improve its combustion properties. (A green alternative to petroleum -based fuel, by Ankur Bordolol, Srikant Nanoti and team – CSIR-Indian Institute of Petroleum, Dehradun, IIT, Roorkee and Bharat Petroleum, updated September 20, 2015, indianexpress.com ). DME is not naturally occurring but needs to be prepared from natural gas. It can be used as a partial substitute to conventional fuels in petrol and diesel engines. Along with superior combustion properties, it has advantages such as high cetane number and absence of carbon- carbon bond and potential to reduce pollutants.

Eco- friendly measures

Reducing use of fossil fuels, increasing use of public transport vehicles, restricting use of private vehicles, developing alternate energy using wind, tidal or solar power will enhance clean environment. Global carbon emissions are set to hit an all time high in 2018 – according to researchers at the University of East Anglia and the Global Carbon Project. A projected rise of 2 percent or more is driven by a solid growth in coal use for the second year in a row, and sustained growth in oil and gas use. (Global carbon dioxide emissions rise even as coal wanes and renewables boom, December 5, 2018, www.sciencedaily.com ). The research anticipate rise in emissions in 2019 unless steps are taken to prune consumption of energy from conventional fuels.

Even after two weeks of negotiations on climate change, countries could not agree fully for measures to curb global warming. (COP24 climate talks end in agreement – barely, December 16, 2018, www.cnn.com). Countries have to do far more to curb the use of fossil fuels and deforestation to avoid droughts, floods and storms associated with global warming.

Hence research and exploration of alternate energy sources is the need of the hour so that scarce natural resources are not depleted and exhausted.

MSF reveals “mental health suffering” in Australia’s Nauru refugee detention camp

Max Newman

A detailed report released by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) documents the severe levels of mental health degradation among refugees on the small island nation of Nauru, which hosts one of Australia’s offshore asylum-seeker prison camps.

MSF provided mental healthcare on Nauru for 11 months, from November 2017 to October 2018, before being given just 24 hours’ notice to pack up and leave, despite hundreds of patients requiring ongoing care.

The report stated that the data collected “shows that the mental health suffering on Nauru is among the worst MSF has ever seen, including in projects providing care for victims of torture.”

Throughout their 11 months on Nauru, MSF staff faced hostility and obstruction from Nauru government officials, despite a memorandum of understanding signed between MSF and the health minister.

MSF staff were forced to leave hospitals in the middle of treating patients, not always allowed into asylum-seekers’ accommodation, and banned from the prison facilities themselves. They also experienced long visa delays and other organisations were directed not to refer refugees to MSF for mental health services.

Despite these obstructions, the MSF report is a damning indictment of Australia’s bipartisan border protection regime, in which all asylum seekers who attempt to reach Australia by boat are either turned away by naval vessels or indefinitely detained.

MSF provided care for 285 patients, of which 73 percent were asylum seekers or refugees, and 22 percent were Nauruan nationals. The remaining 5 percent were foreign workers or had unknown status. The patients ranged from under 1 to 74 years of age, with 19 percent of patients under the age of 18.

The mental health conditions of the patients were assessed via the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) scale, which measures the impact the patient’s mental health has on their daily life. With 1 the most serious rating and 100 the best, scores below 70 are considered unhealthy.

For the Nauruan patients their GAF score was 35, reflecting high rates of untreated psychosis on the island, as Nauru has no acute mental health treatment services. For asylum seekers and refugees, their median score was 40.

Among the asylum seekers, 60 percent (124 patients) had suicidal thoughts, and 30 percent (63 patients) had attempted suicide. “Children as young as 9 were found to have suicidal thoughts, committed acts of self-harm or attempted suicide,” the report stated.

Nearly two-thirds, 62 percent, of the refugee and asylum seeker patients were diagnosed with moderate to severe depression. Among them, 25 percent had anxiety disorder, 18 percent suffered post-traumatic stress disorder and 6 percent, or 12 patients, were diagnosed with resignation syndrome. This is a rare condition, produced by forms of extreme depression, which can lead a victim into a catatonic state.

The report quoted psychiatrist Professor Louise Newman’s description of the condition: “This comatose state appears to be a state of ‘hibernation’ in response to an intolerable reality. They are unresponsive, even to pain. They appear floppy, without normal reflexes, and require total care, including feeding and intravenous fluids, as otherwise they risk kidney failure and death from complications caused by immobility, malnutrition and dehydration. This is a life-threatening condition needing high-level medical care.”

Australia’s anti-refugee “border protection” regime maintains a “deterrence” policy, which involves creating conditions so harsh that no asylum seekers will attempt to reach Australia. In practice, this means the psychological and physical torturing of families.

One cruel practice is the family separation policy, started in late 2016, in which detainees requiring urgent medical evacuation to Australia are transferred alone or with a single family member. MSF’s data shows that those subjected to this inhuman policy are 40 percent more likely to have suicidal thoughts and/or have attempted suicide.

“One of the most distressing outcomes of this policy of indefinite trapping of refugees on Nauru is that of family separation,” Dr Christine Rufener reported. “Our mental health team has worked with multiple fathers who have been separated from their wives and children for months or for years. Fathers told us: ‘I wasn’t there to support my wife during her pregnancy or childbirth; I wasn’t there when my baby took his first breath’.”

MSF concluded that the “alarming level of mental health distress is related to Australia’s offshore processing policy.” Indefinite detention itself was a major contributing factor—65 percent of asylum seeker patients told MSF they felt they had no control over the events in their lives. These patients had a significantly higher chance of being suicidal or being diagnosed with major psychiatric conditions.

Dr Beth O’Connor, an MSF psychiatrist, said: “Patients spoke about the injustice of their situation. Most people have been recognised as refugees, yet while they have been told there are processes to resettlement, the criteria are unclear. People try to learn the ‘rules’ of the system, but the rules keep changing. They realise it is impossible to help themselves.”

MSF reported that 55 percent of the Nauruan nationals it treated showed signs of recovery once their psychosis was addressed and they were placed on appropriate medication. By contrast, only 11 percent of asylum seeker and refugee patients improved, 69 percent deteriorated, and 20 percent remained stable.

The report stated: “This suggests that while MSF could stabilise some these patients, without a change to their living conditions and asylum situation, significant clinical progress was unlikely.”

Farhad, a man imprisoned on Nauru, told MSF: “If I was in my home country, the government wants to kill me straight away. I tried to come to Australia and the government kills me a little by little, step by step. They tormented me a lot over five years on Nauru because I have no future in my life.”

The criminal and inhumane treatment of refugees and asylum seekers is the direct responsibility of not just the current Liberal-National Coalition government. The previous Labor government, which was kept in office by the Greens, reopened the Nauru camp, and another on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island, in 2012.

Sri Lankan president reinstates sacked prime minister

K. Ratnayake 

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena swore in Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister yesterday, after having unconstitutionally sacked him seven weeks ago in what amounted to a political coup. The decision is a major setback for Sirisena who had repeatedly insisted that he could not work with Wickremesinghe and would never reappoint him.

Contrary to the claims of the Colombo media, the decision to reinstate Wickremesinghe will not end the political crisis but is just a temporary pause in the ongoing conflict within Sri Lanka’s ruling elite.

After removing Wickremesinghe on October 26, Sirisena appointed former president Mahinda Rajapakse as prime minister and then swore in a new cabinet, declaring it to be the government. The decision brought to the surface a bitter war between two factions of the ruling elite—one headed by Sirisena and Rajapakse, and the other by Wickremesinghe.

After sacking Wickremesinghe, Sirisena prorogued parliament until November 14 to enable Rajapakse to secure a parliamentary majority via bullying and bribery. When Rajapakse failed to get the numbers, Sirisena dissolved the parliament and called a new general election.

Sirisena’s anti-democratic manoeuvre was temporarily halted by the Supreme Court in response to petitions from Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP) and its allies, which included the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP).

Sirisena ignored two consecutive parliamentary no-confidence motions passed against Rajapakse. However, on December 3, a Colombo appeal court issued a temporary restraining order against Rajapakse and his cabinet from exercising ministerial powers, effectively leaving the country without a functioning government.

Yesterday’s swearing-in of Wickremesinghe followed a final ruling by the Supreme Court on December 13 that the president’s dissolution of parliament was unconstitutional. The next day, another Supreme Court bench refused to stay the appeal court restraining order against Rajapakse and his cabinet. It postponed a hearing of that case until mid-January.

Sirisena made various face-saving remarks about his reinstatement of Wickremesinghe, claiming that he had done so as a leader who “respects the parliamentary traditions and democracy.” All his actions, including the dissolution of the parliament, he continued, were in response to the advice of “law experts” and based on “good intentions.”

Responding to impeachment threats made by some UNP parliamentarians, Sirisena said that he was “not afraid to go to jail.” However, UNP deputy leader Sajith Premadasa has ruled out impeachment and said that the party would collectively work with him.

Cynically posturing as a saviour of democracy, Wickremesinghe yesterday thanked those “who stood firm in defending the constitution and ensuring the triumph of democracy.” The first objective, he added, was to return Sri Lanka “to normalcy” and “restart the developmental process.”

Wickremesinghe is expected to select a new cabinet today and present his list to the president. The UNP-led United National Front (UNF), however, has only 103 MPs, and requires another 10 MPs for a majority.

According to press reports, Wickremesinghe is manoeuvring behind the scenes to declare a ‘national government’ with the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) and to expand the cabinet. Constitutionally, a one-party government is entitled to appoint a 30-member cabinet. The UNP is also seeking support from members of Sirisena’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP).

Wickremesinghe’s democratic posturing is as bogus as Sirisena’s claims that his actions over the last two months were to “save” the country and democracy.

Sirisena’s about-face is in response to international pressure, particularly from the US and its European allies, and India, which have demanded the reinstatement of Wickremesinghe, and fears about the growing upsurge of strikes and protests.

Washington’s main concern was that the appointment of Rajapakse as prime minister would undermine the military and political relations built during the past three years under the so-called unity government of Sirisena and Wickremesinghe.

Sirisena came to power in 2015 as part of a regime-change operation orchestrated by Washington which opposed Rajapakse’s close relations with Beijing. Sirisena, assisted by Wickremesinghe, denounced Rajapakse as dictatorial and ousted him as president in the 2015 election. Wickremesinghe was installed as prime minister.

Sirisena and Wickremesinghe quickly brought Sri Lankan foreign policy into line with the intensifying US-led confrontation against China. The new Sri Lankan “unity” government also began imposing austerity measures, as dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in exchange for a bailout loan.

From the outset, Washington responded to the bitter factional war in Colombo by backing Wickremesinghe and declaring that it should be “resolved” through the parliamentary process. Rajapakse sent his party leaders to meet with Western diplomats in Colombo in a futile attempt to secure their support.

Sirisena also came under international economic pressure. The IMF withheld final instalments of its loan until the “political uncertainty” was resolved; the US postponed its Millennium aid program; and Japan announced that it was delaying its aid and investment projects.

Writing recently in the Colombo-based Daily Mirror, Robert Blake, the former US ambassador to Sri Lanka, made Washington’s hostility to Rajapakse explicit. He should step down as prime minister, Blake declared, in order to “resolve the current political impasse and position Sri Lanka to be a leader and winner as the new Indo-Pacific great game unfolds.”

Translated into plain English, the so-called “Indo-Pacific great game” is Washington’s efforts to subjugate China through all means including diplomatic, economic and military. The end result will be a catastrophic military confrontation between nuclear armed powers.

The Sri Lankan ruling class is also terrified that the continuing political standoff would paralyse government functions, including a new budget, and accelerate the upsurge of strikes and protests by the working class, rural poor and youth in recent months against the government’s attacks on social and democratic rights.

This hostility was also reflected in local elections in February in which Sirisena’s SLFP and Wickremesinghe’s UNP suffered humiliating defeats at the hands of Rajapakse’s Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP). Sirisena attempted to distance himself from Wickremesinghe, blaming him for the “unity” government’s attacks on social and democratic rights.

The demagogic posturing by Sirisena and Rajapakse, on one side, and Wickremesinghe, on the other, as defenders of democracy is completely bogus. Both factions have long histories of brutal autocratic rule. Their bitter clashes are over how best to prop up capitalist rule and suppress the emerging mass opposition in the working class.

Now reappointed as prime minister, Wickremesinghe will use the economic crisis created by the factional infighting to intensify the attacks on the social and democratic rights of the masses.

Nothing, however, has been resolved. On Saturday, Rajapakse officially announced his resignation as prime minister and attacked the Supreme Court rulings for failing to support a general election.

“We are now engaged in a direct confrontation with a group of political parties that have continuously engaged in various subterfuges to avoid facing elections. We will bring the forces opposed to the country down to their knees by engaging the people,” he warned.

Rajapakse also made clear that he would intensify his campaign of anti-Tamil communalism. He lashed out against the UNP, which, he declared “has been taken hostage by the TNA [Tamil National Alliance]” and had to “adhere to the diktat of the TNA.” The TNA had sided with Wickremesinghe against Sirisena’s unconstitutional moves.

The political crisis which erupted in October exposed the reactionary nature of every faction of the Sri Lankan bourgeoisie. Behind the empty rhetoric about “defending democracy” is the fear of the ruling elites of mass struggles by the working class.

The political dangers now facing workers and the poor have not decreased, but have intensified. The working class cannot stand on the sidelines and allow the ruling elite to resolve its economic and political problems. Workers must mobilise and intervene as an independent political force for its own class interests based on the perspective of socialist internationalism.

Workers in every estate, workplace and neighbourhood should follow the example set by Abbotsleigh plantation workers in establishing an action committee, independent of the trade unions, and turning to the Socialist Equality Party (SEP). What is necessary is a unified political struggle for a workers’ and peasants’ government to implement socialist politics. Above all, we urge workers and youth to join and build the SEP and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) as the revolutionary leadership needed to take forward this struggle.