Central America Needs a Marshall Plan

Ed Corcoran

Central America has lately been prominent in the news, with controversy over how to respond to migrant caravans arriving through Mexico at the U.S. border — up to 10,000 refugees may seek asylum in the United States, much to the chagrin of President Trump.

Even U.S. border agents cruelly firing tear gas at women and children hasn’t deterred a newer caravan from forming in Honduras.

The president has used the situation to amplify his calls for a border wall, even though the number of unauthorized immigrants has been steadily falling and comes mainly from overstayed visas rather than illegal crossings.

More recently, an agreement that forces asylum seekers to wait in Mexico has created turmoil in Tijuana and other border cities. Mexico and the United States have also proposed a bilateral investment program to curb migration from Central America. Disagreement over the border wall led directly to a U.S. government shutdown and a threat to cancel U.S. support to the region.

Overall, the crisis in Central America is having a dramatic impact on U.S. politics.

All this follows an earlier determination by the Trump administration that removed temporary protected status granted to tens of thousands of Hondurans after a 1999 hurricane had ravaged their country. The administration claimed that conditions had improved sufficiently in Honduras to warrant suspension of protected status, despite the fact that Honduras has one of the highest homicide rates in the world. (In fact, its rampant corruption from the drug trade has been investigated in detail by the U.S. government’s own Drug Enforcement Administration.)

There’s a strong case for continued protection for Honduran refugees and the other thousands from Guatemala and El Salvador who have joined them, most of them desperate individuals frantically seeking a new life. Americans have always felt a strong obligation to help those less fortunate, hearkening back to a broad sanctuary movement that directly supported refugees during the Cold War conflicts of the 1980s.

Still, almost totally absent from this discussion is any awareness of U.S. responsibility for the repressive and corrupt governments that have been the driving force behind this flood of refugees.

A Shameful History

A hundred years ago, American businessmen basically took control of Central America.

With the mostly white, Spanish-speaking aristocracy in the region, they set up subservient governments that strongly supported U.S. commercial interests at the expense of the indigenous populations. The U.S. government turned a blind eye to, or abetted, this repressive commercial domination of “banana republics.”

The situation was exacerbated by the Cold War against Soviet communism. Unfortunately, that struggle was given such overwhelming priority in foreign policy that the United States often supported brutal autocrats so long as they were anti-communist. In Central America, this intensified existing U.S. support for its repressive governments.

In post-war Guatemala, popular uprisings had brought in reform governments that directly threatened U.S. business interests, leading to a CIA-led invasion that resulted in a bitter civil war. The United States a supported series of repressive governments responsible for widespread massacres in the country, for which President Clinton eventually apologized.

A U.N.-sponsored peace accord in 1996 ended the civil war and led to free elections, but resulted in deeply corrupt governments. The current government is in the process of trying to terminate a U.N. commission investigating corruption. The United States, initially a strong supporter of the commission, has fallen silent.

The situation is no better in El Salvador, which also had bitter civil conflicts in the 1980s. Pre-war political turmoil had the commercial elites strongly supporting the country’s military government’s brutal suppression of rural resistance. A post-war coup and reform governments supported economic development, but a brief war with Honduras and rising opposition led to another coup and then a civil war.

Opposition elements consolidated into a single Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), and the U.S. government began actively training military elements to suppress it. In many cases these military units committed grievous human rights abuses.

A U.N.-sponsored peace accord in 1992 saw the FMLN transition into a political party which went on to win national elections. But poor economic conditions and drug trafficking led to the rise of two violent street gangs that the government has been totally unable to suppress.

Honduras returned to civilian rule after the peace accord with El Salvador, and the United States established a continuing military presence. As the Honduran army became heavily involved with anti-guerilla activities, a CIA-backed campaign became entangled in a range of extra-judicial killings.

This involvement deepened in June 2009, when a coup d’etat ousted the elected President Manuel Zelaya. The United States declined to insist on Zelaya’s return, instead continuing cooperation with the new government. U.S.-trained forces continue to suppress popular demonstrations in the country, and the government continues to favor foreign corporations at the expense of the local population.

The situation is further complicated by the U.S. demand for illicit drugs — and its prohibition of them — which fuels much of the criminality in the region, as well as helping to destabilize Mexico.

Overall, the current dismal governance in much of Central America is a direct result of callous U.S. policies.

A Mini-Marshall Plan

With the refugees from these countries now arriving at the U.S. border, the situation is a stark reminder that the United States has a fundamental stake in global peace and prosperity.

In the case of Central America, the solution lies not in domestic U.S. adjustments alone, but actions in the countries of origin of the desperate refugees fleeing brutal conditions. President Trump’s threat to cut off U.S. aid to the countries refugees flee is exactly the opposite of what’s really needed — a comprehensive regional strategy for economic development in support of democracy and human rights.

The problems have been a century in the making and certainly won’t be resolved overnight. There needs to be an integrated network of actions to stabilize the region, stem the flood of refugees, and align the U.S. with global forces for democracy and development rather than repression.

A significant step could be some sort of mini-Marshall Plan with a Regional Development Council, a comprehensive collaboration to support modern economies.

Upgrading schools and infrastructure would be critical early steps, and returning refugees could contribute significantly to such activities. Agriculture remains the basic driver of local economies ever since banana production brought about an initial economic surge. The situation has been complicated by recent droughts which have added food distress as a major element motivating refugees to flee.

Thousands of current and recent refugees from Central America should be involved in such development programs, helping to make real change in their home countries.

There’s some infrastructure for this already. An “Alliance for Prosperity” launched under President Obama led to Conferences on Prosperity and Security in Central America, the latest held just last month. The National Democratic Institute has also sponsored a conference of Northern Triangle countries — El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras — to advance a regional legislative agenda on security and human rights. The recent announcement on an investment program could significantly expand these modest efforts.

Such coordination needs to be on a broader regional basis and at the governmental level, developing economies that reduce violence and work for everyone. It cannot be simply be a U.S. effort, so the inclusion of Mexico in the proposed investment program is very encouraging.

China has also pledged $150 million in support of development in El Salvador, and the World Bank has long been promoting jobs in the region. Former Secretary of State George Shultz has recommended working with the Inter-American Development Bank to redirect its finance focus to its poorest member countries.

The principal emphasis should be on infrastructure and public health plans that support economic expansion with immediate job opportunities, as well as a regional market to expand the Central American economies.

Improving Security

Economic development has to be tied to governance improvements, reducing violence with rule-of-law and anti-corruption measures. Former Assistant Secretary of State Rick Barton has made several concrete recommendations on these lines, starting with encouraging governments to broker peace deals between rival gangs while addressing underlying causes.

This requires an unremitting focus on corruption and support to prosecute high-level crimes, reinforcing such prior actions as the State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations supporting the prosecution of high-profile crimes in Honduras.

Any such efforts also have to be on an international level. The United Nations, for example, had an independent investigator in Guatemala whose efforts had led to meaningful criminal justice reforms, anti-corruption laws, and high security courts for the prosecution of powerful individuals. But he was banned by the current government without any major international objections.

The United States needs to strongly support such anti-corruption initiatives and work to expand them across the region. Civilian and military officials who fail to cooperate need to be publicly identified, with restrictions placed on their financial dealings as well as travel of their family members to the United States.

Alongside this top-down approach, the United States can help to mobilize citizens and local civil society to reestablish public safety. In Honduras, a U.S. partnership with the Alliance for Peace and Justice helped collect data on violence, vet and purge the police force of corrupt officials, and implement new laws for safer streets. Some 25 community centers now provide safe spaces and programming for young people. Throughout the region, the United States has backed land registration of the disempowered to counter the prevalence of violent, illegal seizures of private property.

All these initiatives are positive steps, but they need expansion and strong support to protect both indigenous populations and the free press essential to anti-corruption efforts.

Initial steps would have to be with those governments which proved to be most cooperative, demonstrating the potential for broad development, focusing on specific industries (such as agriculture and tourism) and working jointly to set up Enterprise Zones insulated from broad political dysfunction. These zones could employ local individuals fleeing violence in their home areas.

Winding Down the Drug War

Illicit drugs remain a fundamental cause for violence and a major challenge for the region, with the demand driven from within the United States. Secretary Shultz stresses the need to reduce this demand with improved economic conditions at home and expanded domestic drug reduction programs.

The failure of the supply-side approach can be seen in the fact that the United States has the highest drug use among major economies despite leading a global war on drugs for decades. Instead of prohibition, decriminalizing use and small-scale possession of drugs, legalizing responsible marijuana use, expanding well-vetted drug treatment centers, and improving economic prospects for people in the United States could gradually reduce both drug use and profits going south to drug lords, which would reduce incentives for violence while hopefully mitigating the worst impacts of the related U.S. opioid crisis.

Resources currently spent on disrupting supply and paying for the costly domestic incarceration of drug users could be used instead to support drug demand reduction and treatment efforts, as well as development efforts in trafficking regions. There are also broad opportunities to intensify international cooperation on obstructing drug traffic routes and their associated violence, minimizing the associated corruption, and complicating financial support for drug operations.

Giving Refuge

Parallel with this, there needs to be significant improvement in the capacity to fairly and swiftly assess the claims of asylum seekers in the United States. Those who meet the criteria should be admitted without delay.

That means more humane conditions for people awaiting a hearing, more interviewers who determine whether migrants meet the “credible fear” threshold, and more immigration judges. The inadequacy of current capacity has contributed to a backlog of some 1 million cases in the immigration courts. To address this aspect of the challenge, the Deputy Attorney General has recently recommended the establishment of a new appellate court for immigration appeals.

The United States needs to stop quibbling over short-term responses to the Central American crisis and focus on realistic positive programs to address it. Instead of spending an estimated $40 billion on an ineffectual border wall, the money would be much better spent promoting prosperity and improving local governance to minimize the number of refugees who are displaced in the first place.

There are many good options. Combining U.S. ingenuity with local initiatives and enforcing the rule of law could significantly reduce violence and improve economic prospects in the region — and, hopefully, give people a real choice to flourish in their home countries.

Complaint Lodged with European Ombudsman: Regulatory Authorities Colluding with Agrochemicals Industry

Colin Todhunter

Back in 2016, I posed the question in The Ecologist whether regulators in the EU were acting as product promoters when it came to the relicensing of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup. The renewal of the license for glyphosate in the EU was being debated at the time and much evidence pointed to collusion between regulators and corporate interests whose sales of the herbicide add up to many billions of dollars a year.

In that article, I referred to evidence presented in various documents written by environmentalist and campaigner Dr Rosemary Mason. Now, in the wake of a new, important paper by Charles Benbrook (14 January) in the journal ‘Environmental Sciences Europe’, Dr Mason has lodged a complaint with the European Ombudsman accusing European regulatory agencies of collusion with the agrochemicals industry.

Mason has been writing to the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the EU Commission over a period of 18 months, challenging them about ECHA’s classification of glyphosate. She notes that many people around the world have struggled to understand how and why the US Environmental Protection Agency and the EFSA concluded that glyphosate is not genotoxic (damaging to DNA) or carcinogenic, whereas the World Health Organisation’s cancer agency, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), came to the opposite conclusion.

The IARC stated that the evidence for glyphosate’s genotoxic potential is “strong” and that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen. While IARC referenced only peer-reviewed studies and reports available in the public literature, the EPA relied heavily on unpublished regulatory studies commissioned by pesticide manufacturers.

In fact, 95 of the 151 genotoxicity assays cited in the EPA’s evaluation were from industry studies (63%), while IARC cited 100% public literature sources. Another important difference is that the EPA focused its analysis on glyphosate in its pure chemical form, or ‘glyphosate technical’. The problem with that is that almost no one is exposed to glyphosate alone. Applicators and the public are exposed to complete herbicide formulations consisting of glyphosate plus added ingredients (adjuvants). The formulations have repeatedly been shown to be more toxic than glyphosate in isolation.

Mason notes that this reflects issues raised by the European Parliament’s PEST Committee, which was set up in response to the concerns raised by the European Citizens’ Initiative to ban glyphosate, and the Monsanto Papers (internal Monsanto documents disclosed in cancer litigation in the USA revealing how industry has subverted science).

In an unusual step, the editor-in-chief of Environmental Sciences Europe, Prof Henner Hollert, and his co-author, Prof Thomas Backhaus, weighed in with a strong statement in support of the acceptance of Dr Benbrook’s article for publication. In a commentary published in the same issue of the journal, they write:

“We are convinced that the article provides new insights on why different conclusions regarding the carcinogenicity of glyphosate and GBHs [glyphosate-based herbicides] were reached by the US EPA and IARC. It is an important contribution to the discussion on the genotoxicity of GBHs.”

The IARC’s evaluation relied heavily on studies capable of shedding light on the distribution of real-world exposures and genotoxicity risk in exposed human populations, while the EPA’s evaluation placed little or no weight on such evidence.

In the wake of the IARC’s evaluation, there has been an industry-orchestrated attempt to discredit or even destroy the agency.

You can read here – The European Regulatory Authorities are colluding with a corporation involved in the Holocaust – the document that Mason has submitted to the European Ombudsman. It includes all of her recent correspondence with various regulatory agencies (and their responses) that outline concerns about the toxicity of glyphosate and some of the methods that have been used to keep it on the market.

Mason has also written a scathing open letter to Bayer CEO Werner Baumann. You can read the open letter here (Monsanto was recently incorporated into Bayer).

The US War Against the Weak

Manuel E. Yepe

War Against the Weak is a well-documented book of more than half a thousand pages, written by Edwin Black. It describes a criminal operation planned by the United States from the beginning of the twentieth century and put into practice between the 1930’s and 1960s  with the purpose of creating a dominant superior race.

That U.S. campaign, virtually ignored in the world today because of the media cover up to which it has been subjected, served as a model for the Holocaust of the Jewish population carried out by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

Characters and institutions in politics and the economy that today are presented as respectable champions of democracy and respect for human rights, were involved in this genocide.

The book tells us that, in the first six decades of the 20th century, hundreds of thousands of Americans labeled as feeble minded –because they did not conform to Teutonic patterns– were deprived of their right to reproduce.

Selected in prisons, asylums and orphanages because of who their ancestors were, their national origin, ethnicity, race or religion, they were sterilized without their consent, and prevented from procreating and getting married. They were separated from their partners by governmental bureaucratic means.

This pernicious white collar war was conducted by philanthropic organizations, prestigious professors in elite universities, wealthy businessmen, and senior government officials who formed a pseudoscientific movement called Eugenics Its purpose, beyond racism, was to create a superior Nordic race that would impose itself at global level.

The eugenics movement gradually built up a national legal and bureaucratic infrastructure to cleanse the United States of the “unfit.” Intelligence tests colloquially known as “IQ measurements” were invented to justify the exclusion of the “weak-minded”, who were often nothing more than shy people or persons who spoke another language, or who had a different skin color.

Forced sterilization laws were enacted in some 27 US states to prevent the persons so detected from reproducing. Marriage bans proliferated to prevent race mixing. Numerous lawsuits, whose real purpose was to impose eugenics and its tactics in everyday life, reached the Supreme Court of the United States.

The plan was to immediately sterilize 14 million people in the United States and several million more in other parts of the world so that, at a later stage, they could continue eradicating the rest of the “weak” and leave only the purebred Nordics on the planet.

In the 1930’s, some 60,000 people were coercively sterilized. and an incalculable number of marriages were banned by state laws stemming from racism, ethnic hatred and academic elitism, covered with a mantle of respectable science.

Eugenics, whose objectives were global, was spread by U.S. evangelists to Europe, Asia and Latin America forming a well-woven network of movements with similar practices. By means of lectures, publications and other means, they kept its advocates on the lookout for opportunities for the expansion of their ideas and purposes.

Thus it arrived in Germany, where it fascinated Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement. German National Socialism transformed the U.S. search for a “superior Nordic race” into what was Hitler’s struggle for a “dominant Aryan race.”

Nazi eugenics quickly displaced American eugenics because of its fierceness and speed, as well as by the scientific rationality applied by the murderous doctors of Auschwitz. The process had been previously rehearsed at the Cold Spring Harbor Eugenic Labs on Long Island, New York, with the financial support of the Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Harriman foundations in whose laboratories the eugenics experiments, that culminated in Auschwitz, began.

When the extermination of Jews was described as genocide in the Nuremberg Trial, the U.S. institutions linked to the practice of eugenics, it was renamed “genetics” and continued its sinister projects for more than a decade.

Edwin Black’s book, a jewel of investigative journalism, provides the reader with the possibility of seeing the common kinship and features of this tragic history with the circumstances the U.S. population faces today.

For electoral purposes, from the beginning of his election campaign, Donald Trump raised the “America First” slogan, backed up with many of his own manifestations of xenophobia, rejection of immigrants and proven identification with white supremacists. He did this within the scenario of deep political fragmentation of a country whose ruling elite has been able to keep the population focused on the naïve alternative between Democrats or Republicans.

Any similarity is purely coincidental!

Maldives president launches “anti-corruption” campaign to undermine Chinese influence

Rohantha De Silva

Ibrahim Solih, the new Maldives president, is rapidly changing the previous government’s pro-China orientation and strengthening the Indian Ocean nation’s relations with India and the US.

On January 8, Solih initiated an “anti-corruption” investigation of multi-million dollar contracts awarded to Chinese companies by former President Abdulla Yameen. Solih’s office called for written complaints about “cases of corruption and abuse of power within state institutions” since January 1, 2012, which includes former President Mohammed Waheed’s final two years in office.

Waheed became president in February 2012, after the forced resignation of pro-US President Mohamed Nasheed. Under Waheed, the Maldives negotiated a $US500 million loan from China for infrastructure, including a bridge linking the capital Male to the main airport in another island, and various housing projects.

Anti-China critics claim that infrastructure projects were given to Chinese companies at inflated prices and corruption was “institutionalised” after Abdulla Yameen became president in 2013. Yameen has denied the accusations, insisting that the loans were in order to accelerate economic development in the Maldives.

The purpose of the government’s investigation is to witch hunt Yameen and other pro-Chinese factions of the Maldives ruling elite. The government has already begun investigations against Yameen. On December 16, a Maldives court ordered a freeze on Yameen’s bank accounts, which hold $6.5 million. He has also been accused of receiving close to $1.5 million in “illicit” payments during last September’s presidential elections.

Solih came to power last year as part of a regime-change operation against Yameen orchestrated by the US and India. Yameen’s orientation cut across US strategic interests in the region.

The new government has accused the former Yameen administration of creating a debt crisis for the Maldives and appealed to India for financial assistance. Beijing claims that the Maldives’ debt to China is only $1.5 billion but the Solih government insists that it is much larger.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended Solih’s swearing-in ceremony in November and the two leaders signed a joint statement which declared the “importance of maintaining peace and security in the Indian Ocean and being mindful of each other’s concerns and aspirations for the stability of the region.”

Solih’s first foreign visit was to India in December and was followed by an announcement that New Delhi would provide $1.4 billion in financial assistance to the Maldives.

India and the Maldives have agreed to deepen security and maritime cooperation between the two countries, which includes coordinated patrol and aerial surveillance of the Indian Ocean. The Indian External Affairs Ministry will also provide the Maldives with a Dornier aircraft. The Maldives has asked India to assist in housing construction, and establishment of water and sewerage systems in the outlying islands.

The US has accused China of engaging in “debt trap diplomacy” in the Maldives. The term was invented by Washington, which has for decades used direct and indirect financial assistance to further its interests around the world, to blacken Beijing and undermine its relations with other countries in the Indo-Pacific region.

The US has no concern about the debt problems confronting the Maldives or other countries in the region but is determined to prevent anything cutting across its efforts to encircle China and prepare for war.

The Maldives is strategically located off the southwest tip of India and just above the important sea lanes from Middle East and Africa to East Asia, South East Asia and Australia. These sea routes, which provide China, Japan, South Korea and India with access oil from the Middle East, are a focal point for rivalry between the US and India on one side and China on the other.

India and the US are concerned about China having deep-sea ports under its authority in the region, including at Gwadar in Pakistan and Hambantota in Sri Lanka. Beijing has signed an agreement to build a $1.3 billion port at Kyaukpyu in Burma on the Bay of Bengal and is also to develop the Chittagong port in Bangladesh.

These ports are part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which includes road, rail and pipelines to more closely link the Eurasian landmass with China.

Nervous about the new Maldives’ government reorientation towards Washington and New Delhi, China’s foreign ministry publicly stated that it hoped the government would continue backing Beijing’s BRI and the Free Trade Agreement signed by the previous administration.

The rapid reorientation of the new government in the Maldives away from China and towards the US and India can only heighten political conflict and crisis in the small Indian Ocean state.

Duterte allies dominate Philippine midterm election campaign

Joseph Santolan

The Philippines is in the thick of final preparations for the 2019 elections. At stake are 12 senate seats, out of 24, and all of the seats in the House of Representatives, as well as provincial, city and municipal offices. The election is scheduled for May 13, and campaigning will officially commence on February 12.

Politics in the Philippines is an exceedingly bloody affair, and each election is marked by scores of political murders. Already in the 2019 election, which is not yet officially opened, a congressman has been gunned down on the orders of his political rival. If local elections are included, where blood is shed with impunity, the death toll for the 2019 elections already exceeds 10.

This has long been the face of Philippine “democracy,” which was created from the ground up by direct American colonial rule and shaped by US imperialism. It is a scramble by rival oligarchic dynasties for the lucrative spoils and repressive apparatus of the state. Each election they form themselves into parties, most of which have no platform but are tied to the interests of a particular family or set of families. These parties gradually form themselves into two rival coalitions vying for office. The coalitions generally hold until the next election, when all bets are off and the realignments begin.

The 2019 elections will be dominated by the same names that have crowded every ballot sheet for the past half century: Marcos, Estrada, Aquino, Roxas, Osmena. Disgraced former President Joseph Estrada and two of his sons are running for office. The eldest daughter of dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Imee Marcos, is running for the Senate. The election campaign of 2019 will be dominated by the coterie of a former dictator, politicians facing long-standing corruption charges, movie stars, and military men who have attempted on multiple occasions to overthrow the government by coup.

Like its ruling class counterparts around the world, the Philippine bourgeoisie is in crisis. Massive social inequality and the growing waves of international class struggle have produced a crisis of class rule. The Philippine elite has gathered in its majority behind the fascistic populist, President Rodrigo Duterte, in mobilizing the violence of the state against the working class and poor of the country.

Survey results published by the Social Weather Station (SWS) in December revealed that of the 12 front-runners for the Senate, eleven of them are allies of the president. The sole opposition figure in the top 12 is Liberal Party politician and failed presidential candidate, Mar Roxas. Front runners, Grace Poe, who was the leading presidential rival to Duterte in 2016, and Cynthia Villar, Senator and wife of a former presidential candidate, have now both aligned themselves with the Duterte administration.

The size of the dominant coalition is striking; it has brought together dynasties which were formerly fierce rivals. This alignment expresses the unanimity of the ruling class in its endorsement of Duterte’s War on Drugs, which is in fact a campaign of state violence against the poor and the working class, which has over the past two years racked up a body count in the tens of thousands.

On January 11, the non-governmental organization Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) published a report entitled “ACLED 2018: The Year in Review.” It stated, “The Philippines is a war zone in disguise. More civilians were killed in the Philippines in 2018 than in Iraq, Somalia, or the Democratic Republic of Congo—highlighting the lethality of President Rodrigo Duterte’s ‘War on Drugs’-*cum*-state terror campaign. Throughout the year, the Philippines saw similar levels of fatalities from direct civilian targeting as Afghanistan.” The report added, “The Philippines ... while not facing a conventional war on the scale of Afghanistan or Syria, is one of the deadliest places in the world to be a civilian.”

The unanimity of Duterte’s coalition, which has brought together the combined force of former presidents Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, previous mortal political enemies, is based on its endorsement of this state violence. This orientation is clearly revealed in their combined efforts to lower the age of criminal accountability in the country from 15 to 9. A bill to this effect has already passed the House by an overwhelming majority and is poised to pass the Senate as well.

Scores of children have already been killed in Duterte’s war on drugs. The new legislation targets children as “drug couriers.” Children under the age of 9 accused by the police of crimes will face mandatory community service, while those nine and older will be sent to prison as adults. The Duterte coalition has given full-throated endorsement to this legislation.

Not content with his ruling class backing, Duterte is bringing his own coterie into the elections in an attempt to sharpen the fascistic character of elite politics in the country. His daughter, and mayor of the southern city of Davao, Sarah Duterte Carpio, is running for Senate. Presidential assistant Christopher ‘Bong’ Go, in many ways the brains behind the ‘war on drugs,’ and the head of police, Bato de la Rosa, the man directly responsible for its implementation, are likewise running for senate and are currently polling in 14th and 15th slots.

The bourgeois opposition to Duterte has gathered behind the platform of the Liberal Party of former President Benigno Aquino III. The Liberal Party, now largely led by Leni Robredo, the current vice president, has formed an “Opposition Coalition.” The only parties which have joined them are the pseudo-left group, Akbayan, and the right-wing military party, Magdalo, which under the leadership of Antonio Trillanes has been associated with several military coup attempts. Akbayan emerged out of a merger of a section of the Stalinist Communist Party of the Philippines and various Social Democratic organizations in the 1990s and eventually integrated itself into the Liberal Party apparatus.

The “Opposition Coalition” has focused its political ire not on the fascistic policies of the Duterte administration, but rather on his geopolitical realignment and his establishment of improved economic and diplomatic ties with China. Above all, they have denounced Duterte for not escalating Manila’s confrontation with Beijing in the South China Sea. In this matter, Akbayan has played the leading role, heading street protests against Xi Jinping and Duterte and decrying “Chinese imperialism.” Among the Senatorial candidates of the Opposition Coalition is former Solicitor General Florin Hilbay, who represented the Aquino administration in its legal case against Beijing’s South China Sea claim in The Hague in 2015–16.

The Liberal Party coalition represents sections of the Philippines bourgeoisie who are alarmed at Duterte’s departure from the established ties with their former colonial master and are looking to return the Philippines firmly to the camp of Washington. Their attacks on Duterte have been combined with unstinting praise for his Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, who they see as a balancing weight in favour of Washington within the Duterte administration. The fact that the man they are praising is directly overseeing the second year of martial law on the island of Mindanao indicates that they have no genuine concern for democracy or opposition to the dictatorship which is being prepared. They are merely looking to tie it to Washington.

Macron offers “great national debate” as trap for French yellow vest protesters

Anthony Torres 

Last week, on the eve of the 10th Saturday yellow vest protest, French President Emmanuel Macron launched his “great national debate” on the yellow vest movement. After initiating the so-called debate with an insulting letter to the French people insisting he would not modify his policies, Macron attended a discussion with 600 mayors in the town of Bourgtheroulde, which was transformed into a fortified camp by the security services. The event confirmed that masses of yellow vests and tens of millions of workers are right to dismiss Macron’s “debate” as a political fraud.

As the World Socialist Web Site and the Parti de l’égalité socialiste insisted since before the beginning of the yellow vest movement, there is nothing to negotiate with Macron. The question posed to the movement, and the broader class struggle across Europe, is the transfer of power to the working class. This requires the formation of workers’ organs of struggle independent of the unions and the mobilization of the working class internationally for the expropriation of the financial aristocracy.

As he launched the “great debate” at Bourgtheroulde, Macron turned the town of 3,700 people in Normandy into a fortress to protect him from the French population with which he claims he is debating. He mobilized 10 squadrons of the mobile gendarmerie, seven companies of CRS riot police and 300 gendarmes of the territorial force. While he spoke for seven hours to a hand-picked group of mayors, who loudly applauded him, he met neither the yellow vests nor the town’s inhabitants.

His intervention in Bourgtheroulde only confirmed that the “great debate” will take as a given the policies of austerity and militarism he laid out in his letter to the French people. He will give the protesters nothing and seek to crush all opposition with police repression.

In his letter, Macron rejected any modification of his tax cut for the rich. His supposed debate on budget policy and efficiency in the public services devolved into an initiative to protect the riches of the financial aristocracy by stepping up anti-worker austerity. “We will not go back on the measures we have taken to encourage investment and make work more rewarding,” he wrote. “They were just voted on and are only beginning to yield their effects. We cannot in any case continue tax cuts without reducing the overall level of our public spending.”

Macron then offered the population a choice of which essential services to slash to the bone: “Public services have a cost, but they are vital: schools, police, the army, hospitals, the courts are indispensable to our social cohesion. Are there too many administrative echelons or levels of local government? Should we reinforce decentralization and give more power of decision and action to those closer to the citizens, at what level and for what services?”

This parasitic ex-banker cannot help but display his contempt for workers, whom he dismisses as lazy. Shortly before the ninth Saturday protest, as he was receiving bakers’ apprentices at the Elysée presidential palace, he lectured the population for lacking a “sense of effort.” He added, “The disturbances our society is experiencing are sometimes also due or connected to the fact that far too many of our fellow citizens think you can get things without making that effort.”

Yellow vests who have a hard time making it to the end of the month—be they small businessmen, farmers or workers—are, in fact, making an enormous effort in the face of exploitation by the financial aristocracy represented by Macron.

Economist Thomas Piketty has calculated that French workers create three times as much wealth as they did in 1970 despite the fact that the official work week has been reduced, overcoming the advantage the United States had in productivity at that time due to large-scale investment during the post-World War II period. Over the first nine months of 2018, workers in firms with more than 15 employees worked an average 31.5 hours overtime. The average work week for full-time workers is 39.1 hours, and 23.7 hours for part-time workers, among the highest in Europe.

As Macron lectures the population, workers are worn down by the strain of their labor. According to Social Security statistics, 16 percent of work stoppages are due to muscular-skeletal disorders, and 10 percent are due to excess fatigue or psychological stress. The worst-hit industries are construction, manufacturing and health care.

The National Statistics Institute just published a report on work accidents. In 2013, 26 percent of those polled said they had suffered a workplace accident in their career. This rises to 40 percent for workers and 32 percent for farmers, young as well as old.

It is the financial aristocrats represented by Macron who lack “a sense of effort.” The Challenges paper sheds some light on the “French social model,” wrongly presented as egalitarian. The size of the 500 greatest fortunes as measured by Challenges has been multiplied by 7 and that of the top ten by 12 since 1996. Yet over the same period France’s GDP barely doubled and the real median salary did not increase for 20 years.

Since the 2008 crash, the 500 wealthiest Frenchmen have tripled the portion of the economy they personally hold. From 2009 to 2018, their collective wealth grew from 10 to 30 percent of the gross domestic product, reaching an unprecedented level of €650 billion. The pillaging of the working class by the financial aristocracy has only accelerated during the last two presidencies—those of Macron and his predecessor, the Socialist Party’s François Hollande.

The anger of the working class against social inequality is entirely legitimate. It is not the responsibility of the workers to finance tax cuts for the super-rich, who should be expropriated in France and around the world.

In his letter, Macron sought to divert social anger into the repugnant channel of anti-immigrant xenophobia, turning in a more neo-fascist direction. He wrote that in France, “tradition today is disturbed by tensions and doubts connected to immigration and failures of our system of integration.” Under cover of “secularism,” which he claimed was “the subject of important debates”—such as reactionary bans on certain types of clothing worn by some Muslim women—he demanded that “all respect the reciprocal comprehension and intangible values of the Republic.”

An essential precondition for the mobilization and unification of workers in struggle is the rejection of the xenophobic agitation of this representative of the banks.

Ford workers at Bridgend in Wales facing 1,000 job losses

Barry Mason

Ford has confirmed its plans to cut nearly 1,000 jobs at its plant in Bridgend in South Wales. It is threatening cuts at its other main UK plant in Dagenham, London, which produces diesel engines.

At Bridgend, some 370 jobs will be lost in the first phase, with a further 620 to go by 2021. This would reduce the current workforce of 1,700 by more than 50 percent. Bridgend currently produces engines for Ford Sigma for Jaguar, now owned by Tata-subsidiary Jaguar Land Rover (JLR).

Ford employs around 13,000 workers in the UK. The job losses are tied to the ending of production of the two petrol engines currently made at Bridgend. There are plans for Bridgend to produce Ford’s new three cylinder 1.5 litre Dragon engine. When initially announced in 2015 the proposal was for 250,000 Dragon engines a year to be produced, but this was reduced to 125,000 when the plans to cut jobs were announced in early 2017. A projected workforce of only 550 is considered large enough to produce the new engine.

Under the One Ford global approach the Dragon engine will be produced in Brazil, China, India, Mexico and Russia as well as Bridgend. The plant in India will play the lead role, with plants competing to produce the engine at the cheapest price at the expense of the workforce.

The reduced workforce and capacity at the extensive Bridgend plant could mean it becoming economically unsustainable and under threat. It opened in May 1980 creating 1,400 jobs, although Ford initially promised 2,500 jobs. Bridgend produced engines for Ford’s Fiesta and Escort models and at its height employed over 2,100 workers.

Ford is stepping up its plans to compete in the cut-throat global car industry. Ford’s European president Steven Armstrong told the Financial Times, “This is not about making the business today more efficient but completely redesigning it.”

The attacks on jobs, wages and conditions are set to be sharply escalated as a result of the Brexit crisis. The FT noted, “The company also warned that its two UK sites—at Bridgend and Dagenham—face ‘significantly more dramatic’ cuts than already planned if the country leaves the EU without a trading deal … If we get wrong result, then expect that results will be significantly more dramatic…”

Sky reported Armstrong saying, “If Brexit went in the wrong direction we would need to take another look to mitigate the impact of that—we will take whatever action is needed. Nothing is off the table.”

Under the 2008 “One Ford Plan,” rather than tailoring production to a country or continent, Ford now produces models to be sold across the world, with parts made in various countries. In 2012, Ford announced it would cease vehicle production in the UK. It closed its Transit Van factory in Southampton and part of its original car production site at Dagenham, with the loss of around 1,400 jobs. It had already ceased assembling cars at Dagenham in 2002. At its peak in the 1970s, the Swaythling plant in Southampton employed 4,500 workers, but this had been cut to just 500 prior to its announced closure. Only three years earlier, in 2009, the workforce had been halved when Ford offered voluntary redundancy.

Henceforth Ford would not assemble any vehicles in the UK and only produce engines in its UK plants in Bridgend, Dagenham and transmissions at its Merseyside Halewood plant.

Every single job loss imposed by Ford and other auto conglomerates has been with the connivance of the trade unions. Ford had originally put forward its plans to cut jobs at its Bridgend plant in early 2017. It proposed to work with the Unite and GMB unions to, “to identify future business opportunities.” The GMB reported that its meetings with the company had shown 1,100 jobs to be under threat over the next five years.

The unions allowed Ford to pit workers at Bridgend and Dagenham against one another to win orders. At the time, BBC Wales reported a leaked internal Ford document showing that Bridgend was “underperforming in comparison to similar sites, including at Dagenham in Essex. Overtime levels at Bridgend are more than double Dagenham’s rates, which adds 6% to the cost of the engines produced…” The document adds that finding future work for Bridgend would be subject to improvements in performance.

In May 2017, Ford announced a global $3 billion cost-cutting exercise to address a drop in its share price.

As the latest cuts were announced, Walesonline reported January 16 that unions would be party to a Ford presentation outlining how the company plans to cut the workforce over the next two years. Bridgend managers were waiting for approval from the US headquarters to be able to offer any “voluntary” redundancies. Walesonline had seen documents showing that “370 jobs will be cut this year through voluntary redundancy; 450 jobs will become surplus to requirements by the time the plant ceases to make engines for Jaguar Land Rover in September 2020; 170 jobs will no longer be needed during the same period due to the decline in demand for the Sigma engine.”

The article noted that the unions were prepared to accept the cuts, provided they were achieved through “voluntary redundancy.” It noted that some workers fear other attacks were planned, including a pay freeze or ending the final salary pension scheme.

A statement given to Walesonline by Ford referred to the role of the unions: “We are starting consultations with our union partners and other key stakeholders to implement a comprehensive transformation plan aimed at strengthening the Ford brand … The strategy will result in fewer jobs—both hourly and salaried—but it is premature to speculate on how many as we have just begun discussions with our Works Council and union partners … [W]e aim to achieve the reduction in labour costs through voluntary employee separations and will be working closely with social partners and other stakeholders.”

This statement demonstrates that the unions are nothing but management partners. Following Ford’s announcement, Unite issued a January 11 press statement by Des Quinn, its national officer for the automotive industry, that could have been written by Ford’s PR department. It stated, “Over the last two decades the UK car industry has experienced a renaissance of which we can all be proud of. [sic] The challenge for government, the carmakers and the unions in the near future is to fight very hard to maintain the environment that made that success possible.”

This is nothing more than a call for workers in the UK to accept lower wages and more exploitative conditions.

Workers at Ford must break free of the stranglehold of the unions and wage an independent, international struggle. New organisations—rank-and-file workplace committees, democratically controlled by the workers and independent of the unions—must be set up based on unifying and mobilising car workers in Britain and internationally in defence of the social right to a secure, well-paid job.

British PM May to reveal “Plan B” as Brexit infighting continues

Robert Stevens 

Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May has been unable to secure any substantial concessions from the European Union on the transition arrangement for Britain leaving the bloc.

May is to give a statement to MPs today on how she intends to proceed after Parliament rejected her proposed Brexit deal with the EU and she survived a vote of no confidence in her crisis-ridden government. May has held phone discussions with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, but the EU is still saying the existing deal is not up for renegotiation.

In recent days, May has met with senior figures from her cabinet and from opposition parties, as well as leaders of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). Since the 2017 general election, the DUP’s 10 MPs have kept the Tories in power via a confidence and supply arrangement.

Speculation has mounted that May will present only a “holding statement” to parliament, which could be amended by MPs.

There have been no discussions between May and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has insisted that May rule out a “no-deal Brexit” before any talks. The government has refused this condition, stating that it has no further plans to discuss with party leaders.

This did not stop Labour’s pro-EU Blairites from meeting cabinet office officials, despite Corbyn sending all MPs a letter calling for no talks with May. Yvette Cooper, who chairs the Home Affairs Select Committee, and Hilary Benn, who chairs the Brexit Select Committee, both defied Corbyn, as did John Mann and Stephen Kinnock, the son of former Labour leader Neil Kinnock.

Liberal Democrats leader Sir Vince Cable, whose party has just 11 MPs, is demanding a “People’s Vote,” i.e., a second referendum, hoping thereby to overturn the result of the 2016 referendum. Cable released a letter to the Observer that he had sent to Cabinet Minister David Lidington in which he estimated that “even without complete consensus across the house, legislation could be passed in six weeks and a referendum could be brought about within 16 weeks.”

May has consistently ruled out a second referendum and warned against efforts to overturn the Brexit vote.

With no breakthrough in the political stalemate, government officials are stepping up planning for a no-deal Brexit. On Sunday, Cabinet Minister Liam Fox warned in the Daily Telegraph that MPs seeking to rule out a no-deal Brexit—targeting former Tory minister Dominic Grieve—were in danger of unleashing a “political tsunami” from voters who support Leave.

With just over two months before the March 29 scheduled Brexit date, May is seeking to wind down the clock and force MPs to vote for her amended deal. In doing so, she is threatening both sides of the Brexit divide—Remain MPs, with a no-deal Brexit in which the UK would be forced to trade on World Trade Organization terms, and the Tories’ hard-Brexit wing, with the possibility of a second referendum and the failure of Brexit.

Although MPs voted for an amendment calling for May to come back to Parliament with a statement that could be voted on this week, the vote was not binding and May has moved the vote to January 29.

Today, Yvette Cooper is expected to move an amendment to the European Union Withdrawal Bill in an attempt to postpone Brexit.

John Rentoul wrote in the pro-Remain Independent, “The importance of Cooper’s bill is that it changes the default setting in law. At the moment, if Parliament fails to act, the UK will leave the EU on 29 March. Cooper’s bill says that, if a deal has not been approved by 7 March, the government would be required to seek an extension of the Article 50 deadline. That would mean asking the EU to postpone the UK’s departure until the end of this year—and EU leaders have said they would agree to an extension if it were to hold another referendum.”

This manoeuvre has the potential to backfire badly. Having taken what pro-Brexit MPs want “off the table,” Rentoul notes, “They would then have to choose between the prime minister’s deal and putting off Brexit for at least nine months.” This may have the effect of forcing Tory MPs who voted with the opposition last week to vote for May’s deal and give her the majority she needs.

The Blairites have stepped up pressure on Corbyn to commit Labour to support a second referendum on EU membership. Corbyn has maintained that he favours removing May through a general election. Only then, he says, would a second referendum be an option.

The pro-Remain Labour right and their cross-party allies have been warned, even in the pro-Remain press, that they may have substantially misread the national mood in believing that a “People’s Vote” is a magic bullet for overcoming the Brexit impasse.

On Saturday, the Guardian released the findings of an unpublished survey commissioned by the pro-EU Best for Britain group. It found that if Labour committed to stopping Brexit, almost a third of those likely to vote for the party would not do so. Just 25 percent of those likely to support Labour would do so if it committed to preventing Brexit. The poll, conducted by Populus, asked 2,000 people their views just before May’s deal was voted down last week.

Another poll by Survation found that if Labour backed a second referendum it was likely to lose votes at a general election.

A further poll published at the end of last week found that people in the UK oppose a new referendum by a margin of nearly two to one. In every region of the country with the exception of London, and there only by a few percentage points, the poll found more support for respecting the vote of the 2016 referendum. This was the case even in Scotland, which voted to remain in the EU in 2016.

Labour MP and Shadow Home Secretary Dianne Abbott warned again on BBC’s “Question Time” programme, “The thing about a second referendum is people should be careful what they wish for. My view, and I voted Remain, is that if we had a ‘People’s Vote’ tomorrow, Leave would win again. You’d just have a lot of angry Leave voters.”

The escalation of the crisis of class rule in Britain prompted fresh speculation regarding the possibility of a snap general election. However, for the Tories this carries the real risk of losing office and is therefore generally considered anathema. May suffered the collapse of her majority in the snap election she called in 2017.

The Blairites follow the Tories in their fear that an election could bring a Corbyn-led government to power that would be unable to control a resurgent movement of the working class, pressing the demand that Corbyn make good on his professed anti-austerity and anti-militarist polices.

The various options being debated—hard or soft Brexit, the Blairites’ “People’s Vote” or Corbyn’s call for a general election—are all concerned solely with securing the strategic interests of British imperialism as it enters a period of enormous political and social instability. The exclusive focus on Brexit conceals what is the central division in the UK as in every country—the yawning gulf between what Corbyn describes as “the many” and “the few”—or, more accurately, between the working class and the super-rich oligarchy.

Despite such rhetoric, Corbyn’s main role, in partnership with the unions, is to block an independent struggle by workers and young people against the class war being waged by the capitalists. This offensive continued last week even as MPs were preparing for the vote on May’s deal, with the government slipping through an announcement that starting on May 15, under a provision of the Universal Credit welfare system, thousands of the poorest pensioners will lose to up £7,000 annually.