Information Technology And The Media

John Scales Avery

Misuse of Information Technology

The role of the media

Throughout history, art was commissioned by rulers to communicate, and exaggerate, their power, glory, absolute rightness etc, to the populace. The pyramids gave visual support to the power of the Pharaoh; portraits of rulers are a traditional form of propaganda supporting monarchies; and palaces were built as symbols of power. Modern powerholders are also aware of the importance of propaganda. Thus the media are a battleground where reformers struggle for attention, but are defeated with great regularity by the wealth and power of the establishment. This is a tragedy because today there is an urgent need to make public opinion aware of the serious problems facing civilization, and the steps that are needed to solve these problems. The mass media could potentially be a great force for public education, but often their role is not only unhelpful – it is negative. It is certainly possible to find a few television programs and newspaper articles that present the facts about climate change in a realistic way. For example The Guardian gives outstanding climate change coverage. However, the mass media could do very much more. One has to conclude that the media are neglecting their great responsibilities at a time of acute crisis for human civilization and the biosphere. The same can be said of our educational systems at both both the primary and advanced levels. We urgently need much more public education about the severe dangers that we face today.

The mass media have failed us

The predicament of humanity today has been called “a race between education and catastrophe”: How do the media fulfil this life-or-death responsibility? Do they give us insight? No, they give us pop music. Do they give us an understanding of the sweep of evolution and history? No, they give us sport. Do they give us an understanding of the ecological catastrophes that threaten our planet because of unrestricted growth of population and industries? No, they give us sit-coms and soap operas. Do they give us unbiased news? No, they give us news that has been edited to conform with the interests of powerful lobbys. Do they present us with the urgent need to leave fossil fuels in the ground? No, they do not, because this would offend the powerholders. Do they tell of the danger of passing tipping points after which human efforts to prevent catastrophic climate change will be useless? No, they give us programs about gardening and making food. A consumer who subscribes to the “package” of broadcasts sold by a cable company can often search through all 95 channels without finding a single program that offers insight into the various problems that are facing the world today. What the viewer finds instead is a mixture of pro-establishment propaganda and entertainment. Meanwhile the neglected global problems are becoming progressively more severe. In general, the mass media behave as though their role is to prevent the peoples of the world from joining hands and working to change the world and to save it from thermonuclear war, environmental catastrophes and threatened global famine. The television viewer sits slumped in a chair, passive, isolated, disempowered and stupefied. The future of the world hangs in the balance, the fate of children and grandchildren hangs in the balance, but the television viewer feels no impulse to work actively to change the world or to save it. The Roman emperors gave their people bread and circuses to numb them into political inactivity. The modern mass media seem to be playing a similar role.

Alternative media

Luckily, the mass media do not have a complete monopoly on public information. With a little effort, citizens who are concerned about the future can find alternative media. These include a large number of independent on-line news services that are supported by subscriber donations rather than by corporate sponsors. YouTube videos also represent an extremely important source of public information. Countercurrents is an outstanding example of an independent Internet news service, and the vitally important work deserves our wholehearted support.

Perpetual war

The military-industrial complex needs enemies. Without them it would wither. Thus at the end of the Second World War, this vast power complex was faced with a crisis, but it was saved by the discovery of a new enemy: communism. However, at the end of the Cold War there was another terrible crisis for the military establishment, the arms manufacturers and their supporters in research, government and the mass media. People spoke of the “peace dividend”, i.e., constructive use of the trillion dollars that the world wastes each year on armaments. However, just in time, the militaryindustrial complex was saved from the nightmare of the “peace dividend” by the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. No matter that the attacks were crimes committed by individuals rather than acts of war, crimes against which police action rather than military action would have been appropriate. The Bush Administration (and CNN, Fox, etc.) quickly proclaimed that a state of war existed, and that the rules of war were in effect.

The Cold War was replaced with the “War on Terrorism”. To a large extent, this over-reaction to the events of 9/11/2001 can be interpreted in terms of the needs of the military-industrial complex against which Eisenhower had warned. Without a state of war and without enemies, this vast conglomerate of organizations and pressure groups would have languished. If the aim of the “War on Terror” had been to rid the world of the threat of terrorism, acts like illegal assassination using drones would have been counterproductive, since they create many more terrorists than they destroy. But since the real aim is to produce a state of perpetual war, thus increasing the profits of the military-industrial complex, such methods are the best imaginable. Urinating on Afghan corpses or burning the Koran or murderous night-time raids on civilian homes also help to promote the real goal: perpetual war.

Even the events that initiated the “War on Terror”, seem to have been made worse than they otherwise might have been, in order to give a better excuse for invading Iraq, attacking Afghanistan, and attacking civil liberties. There is evidence that a number of highly placed officials in the US government knew as early as April 2001 that the World Trade Center might soon be attacked. The testimony given by CIA insider Susan Lindauer is very explicit about this point. There is also evidence that charges of thermite were placed on the steel structures of several buildings, to melt the steel and thus ensure collapse. Molten steel and traces of thermite were found in the ruins before these were sealed off from public scrutiny by the FBI. The collapse of Building 7 (which was not hit by any aircraft) is particularly suspicious. Larry Silverstein, the leaseholder of the World Trade Center, said shortly afterwards in a PBS interview: “I remember getting a call from the fire department commander telling me that they were not sure that they would be able to contain the fire…” (and he said that) “I think that the smartest thing to do is to pull it.” The phrase “pull it” is one used to speak of controlled demolition, and the subsequent free-falling collapse of Building had all the earmarks of this process. Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, an organization of more than a thousand accredited architects and engineers, have produced a two hour documentary film pointing to evidence that the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings was due to explosive charges of thermite rather than to fire or the impact of airplanes 1 For those who belong to the military-industrial complex, perpetual war is a blessing, but for the majority of the people of the world it is a curse. Since we who oppose war are the vast majority, can we not make our wills felt?

The deep state

It is obvious, almost by definition, that governmental secrecy and democracy are incompatible. In a true democracy, the citizens need to know what is going on, and their well-informed votes must control the actions of their government. The revelations of Edward Snowden and others have shown that the number of people involved in secret operations of the United States government is now as large as the entire population of Norway: roughly 5 million. The influence of this dark side of government has become so great that no president is able to resist it. In a recent article, John Chuckman remarked that “The CIA is now so firmly entrenched and so immensely well financed (much of it off the books, including everything from secret budget items to the peddling of drugs and weapons) that it is all but impossible for a president to oppose it the way Kennedy did. Obama, who has proved himself to be a fairly weak character from the start, certainly has given the CIA anything it wants. The dirty business of ISIS in Syria and Iraq is one project. The coup in Ukraine is another. The pushing of NATO’s face right against Russia’s borders is another. Several attempted coups in Venezuela are still more. And the creation of a drone air force for extra-judicial killings in half a dozen countries is yet another. They don’t resemble projects we would expect from a smileyfaced intelligent man who sometimes wore sandals and refused to wear a flag pin on his lapel during his first election campaign.” 2 Of course the United States government is by no means alone in practicing excessive secrecy.

Figure 1: The data of major Internet corporations was stolen without their knowledge or consent.

Secret land purchases in Africa

According to a report released by the Oakland Institute, in 2009 alone, hedge funds bought or leased nearly 60 million hectares of land in Africa, an area the size of France. 3 As populations increase, and as water becomes scarce, China, and other countries, such as Saudi Arabia are also buying enormous tracts of agricultural land, not only in Africa, but also in other countries. 4 These land purchases are very often kept secret from the local populations by corrupt governments.

Secrecy, democracy and nuclear weapons

Nuclear weapons were developed in secret. The decision to use them on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in an already-defeated Japan was made in secret. Since 1945, secrecy has surrounded all aspects of nuclear weapons, and for this reason it is clear that they are essentially undemocratic. Nuclear disarmament has been one of the core aspirations of the international community since the first use of nuclear weapons in 1945. A nuclear war, even a limited one, would have global humanitarian and environmental consequences, and thus it is a responsibility of all governments, including those of non-nuclear countries, to protect their citizens and engage in processes leading to a world without nuclear weapons.

Figure 2: These huge buildings in Fort Meade, Maryland, are the main headquarters of NSA.

Figure 3: Angela Merkel’s telephone was bugged by NSA. In a cartoon depicting the incident, she says “Tell the Americans to stop listening to our telephone conversations”. Her aide replies, “You just did”.

Figure 4: The revelations of Edward Snowden and others have shown that the number of people involved in secret operations of the United States government is now as large as the entire population of Norway: roughly 5 million.

Figure 5: According to a report released by the Oakland Institute, in 2009 alone, hedge funds bought or leased nearly 60 million hectares of land in Africa, an area the size of France. These land purchases are very often kept secret from the local populations by corrupt governments.

Freedom from fear

In order to justify secrecy, enormous dark branches of government and mass illegal spying, governments say: “We are protecting you from terrorism”. But terrorism is not a real threat, since our chances of dying from a terrorist attack are vanishingly small compared to (for example) preventable disease or an automobile accident. If we are ever to reclaim our democracy, we must free ourselves from fear.

2 If properly used, information technology can unite the world

We stand on each other’s shoulders

Cultural evolution depends on the non-genetic storage, transmission, diffusion and utilization of information. The development of human speech, the invention of writing, the development of paper and printing, and finally, in modern times, mass media, computers and the Internet: all these have been crucial steps in society’s explosive accumulation of information and knowledge. Human cultural evolution proceeds at a constantly-accelerating speed, so great in fact that it threatens to shake society to pieces. In many respects, our cultural evolution can be regarded as an enormous success. However, at the start of the 21st century, most thoughtful observers agree that civilization is entering a period of crisis. As all curves move exponentially upward, population, production, consumption, rates of scientific discovery, and so on, one can observe signs of increasing environmental stress, while the continued existence and spread of nuclear weapons threaten civilization with destruction. Thus, while the explosive growth of knowledge has brought many benefits, the problem of achieving a stable, peaceful and sustainable world remains serious, challenging and unsolved. Our modern civilization has been built up by means of a worldwide exchange of ideas and inventions. It is built on the achievements of many ancient cultures. China, Japan, India, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, the Islamic world, Christian Europe, and the Jewish intellectual traditions, all have contributed. Potatoes, corn, squash, vanilla, chocolate, chili peppers, and quinine are gifts from the American Indians.

The sharing of scientific and technological knowledge is essential to modern civilization. The great power of science is derived from an enormous concentration of attention and resources on the understanding of a tiny fragment of nature. It would make no sense to proceed in this way if knowledge were not permanent, and if it were not shared by the entire world. Science is not competitive. It is cooperative. It is a great monument built by many thousands of hands, each adding a stone to the cairn. This is true not only of scientific knowledge but also of every aspect of our culture, history, art and literature, as well as the skills that produce everyday objects upon which our lives depend. Civilization is cooperative. It is not competitive. Our cultural heritage is not only immensely valuable; it is also so great that no individual comprehends all of it. We are all specialists, who understand only a tiny fragment of the enormous edifice. No scientist understands all of science. Perhaps Leonardo da Vinci could come close in his day, but today it is impossible. Nor do the vast majority people who use cell phones, personal computers and television sets every day understand in detail how they work. Our health is preserved by medicines, which are made by processes that most of us do not understand, and we travel to work in automobiles and buses that we would be completely unable to construct.

The fragility of modern society

As our civilization has become more and more complex, it has become increasingly vulnerable to disasters. We see this whenever there are power cuts or transportation failures due to severe storms. If electricity should fail for a very long period of time, our complex society would cease to function. The population of the world is now so large that it is completely dependent on the high efficiency of modern agriculture. We are also very dependent on the stability of our economic system.

The fragility of modern society is particularly worrying, because, with a little thought, we can predict several future threats which will stress our civilization very severely. We will need much wisdom and solidarity to get safely through the difficulties that now loom ahead of us. We can already see the the problem of famine in vulnerable parts of the world. Climate change will make this problem more severe by bringing aridity to parts of the world that are now large producers of grain, for example the Middle West of the United States. Climate change has caused the melting of glaciers in the Himalayas and the Andes. When these glaciers are completely melted, China, India and several countries in South America will be deprived of their summer water supply. Water for irrigation will also become increasingly problematic because of falling water tables. Rising sea levels will drown many rice-growing areas in South-East Asia. Finally, modern agriculture is very dependent on fossil fuels for the production of fertilizer and for driving farm machinery. In the future, high-yield agriculture will be dealt a severe blow by the rising price of fossil fuels. Economic collapse is another threat that we will have to face in the future. Our present fractional reserve banking system is dependent on economic growth. But perpetual growth of industry on a finite planet is a logical impossibility. Thus we are faced with a period of stress, where reform of our growth-based economic system and great changes of lifestyle will both become necessary. How will we get through the difficult period ahead?

I believe that solutions to the difficult problems of the future are possible, but only if we face the problems honestly and make the adjustments which they demand. Above all, we must maintain our human solidarity. The great and complex edifice of human civilization is far too precious to be risked in a thermonuclear war. It has been built by all humans, working together. And by working together, we must now ensure that it is handed on intact to our children and grandchildren.

The collective human consciousness

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main, John Donne (1572-1631)

If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants, Isaac Newton (1643-1727)

One needs an exceptional stupidity even to question the urgency we are under to establish some effective World Pax, before gathering disaster overwhelms us. The problem of reshaping human affairs on a world-scale, this World problem, is drawing together an ever-increasing multitude of minds. H.G. Wells (1866-1946)

The Open Access Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it., Aaron Schwartz (1986-2013)

Sharp qualitative discontinuities have occurred several times before during the earth’s 4-billion year evolutionary history: A dramatic change occurred when autocatalytic systems first became surrounded by a cell membrane. Another sharp transition occurred when photosynthesis evolved, and a third when the enormously more complex eukaryotic cells developed from the prokaryotes. The evolution of multicellular organisms also represents a sharp qualitative change. Undoubtedly the change from molecular information transfer to cultural information transfer is an even more dramatic shift to a higher mode of evolution than the four sudden evolutionary gear-shifts just mentioned. Human cultural evolution began only an instant ago on the time-scale of genetic evolution. Already it has completely changed the planet. We have no idea where it will lead. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Human society is a superorganism, far greater than any individual in history or in the present. The human superorganism has a supermind, a collective consciousness far greater than the consciousness of individuals. Each individual contributes a stone to the cairn of civilization, but our astonishing understanding of the universe is a collective achievement. Science derives its great power from the concentration of enormous resources on a tiny fragment of reality. It would make no sense to proceed in this way if knowledge were not permanent and if information were not shared globally. But scientists of all nations pool their knowledge at international conferences and through international publications. Scientists stand on each other’s shoulders. Their shared knowledge is far greater than the fragments that each contributes. Other aspects of culture are also cooperative and global. For example, Japanese woodblock printers influenced the French Impressionists. The nonviolent tradition of Shelly, Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela is international. Culture is cooperative. It is not competitive. Global cultural cooperation can lead us to a sustainable and peaceful society. Our almost miraculous modern communications media, if properly used, can give us a stable, prosperous and cooperative future society.

Fish kills highlight mismanagement of Australian waterways

Martin Scott

The recent discovery of hundreds of thousands of dead fish in far-western New South Wales (NSW) has prompted renewed questions about the management of Australia’s scarce water resources.

The fish were found at Menindee Lakes, which is part of the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia’s largest river system.

A map showing the Murray-Darling catchment

Spanning more than one million square kilometres in southeastern Australia, the Basin provides drinking water for over three million people, and supports more than 9,000 farms, which produce around 40 percent of Australia’s agricultural output. The Basin is also home to hundreds of species of native birds and fish.

The latest fish kill comes after about 10,000 fish died in a similar event a short distance upstream in late December.

Major fish kill events occur when large blooms of algae are killed by heavy rainfall, as happened in December, or a sudden cold snap, as was the case in January. The bacteria that decompose the dead algae use up what remains of the already depleted oxygen in the water, suffocating the fish.

Blooms of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) occur as a result of low water levels, high temperatures, and high nutrient content in the water due to fertiliser run-off.

While the current drought certainly contributed to the low water levels in Menindee Lakes, lack of rainfall cannot be solely blamed for the fish kills. Many of the fish that have washed up on the banks of the Darling River at Menindee are Murray Cod, some estimated to be at least 30 years old.

Fran Sheldon of the Australian Rivers Institute explained: “Ecological evidence shows the Barwon-Darling River is not meant to dry out to disconnected pools—even during drought conditions. The presence of certain iconic river animals [such as the Murray Cod] within its channels tell us that a dry river bed is not normal for this system.”

According to Sheldon, excessive diversion of water for irrigation means that the floodplains and wetlands that feed the lower sections of the river are only filled during times of high flow. Low and medium flows that would otherwise have filled these areas are instead captured upstream for irrigation.

As a result, the river system is no longer able to cope with extended drought.

The public outcry over the recent fish kills has prompted a wave of finger-pointing and grandstanding from the major political parties.

NSW opposition Labor Party leader Michael Daley called for an inquiry into the fish kills, saying that the state’s Liberal-National Coalition government “have been repeatedly warned by far-west residents, community groups, scientists and Labor that their water policies would cause devastation on the Darling River.”

NSW Regional Water Minister Niall Blair, a member of the rural-based National Party, hit back, claiming that Daley was “ignoring the fact that similar environmental catastrophes happened under their [Labor’s] watch when last in government.”

Federal Agriculture and Water Resources Minister David Littleproud, another National Party leader, called for Basin states to agree to spend a pitiful $5 million from the Murray-Darling Basin budget to fund a strategy to look after native fish. The Murray-Darling Basin Authority previously cut its native fish strategy after the NSW Coalition government withdrew 60 percent of its funding in 2012.

The poor condition of the Darling River has had wider impacts. The region’s fruit growing industry has been decimated, tourism has all but disappeared, and local residents have reported that the poor quality of tap water from the river has been making them sick.

The Darling River and some of the Menindee Lakes, photo courtesy Tim Keegan - Flickr

The common failing of decades of attempts to address water security in the Basin is that they are all based on a “market solution” to the complex problems posed by various environmental, commercial, social and cultural issues.

The management of the river system is linked to a market in tradeable water entitlements, limited only by the total allocation of water usage. The market in water rights has ensured that huge agribusinesses accumulate vast water entitlements that are used to maximise profits to the detriment of rural communities, small businesses and farms and the environment.

In wet years, these corporate giants grow lucrative and thirsty crops such as cotton, and pump water out of the river into massive on-site storage facilities.

During extended dry periods, it may be more profitable for them to simply sell the water at exorbitant “market-rates” to growers of slow-maturing grapevines and fruit trees, who are seeking to avoid the destruction of their businesses.

If they are unable to pay, small farmers are forced to sell out to the big companies, which either farm the land profitably, due to their massive water assets, or simply add any water entitlements to their portfolios.

Since 1994, when water rights were first separated from land ownership under the federal Keating Labor government, the number of farms in Australia has fallen by approximately 16 percent. This consolidation of farm ownership means the use of water, a precious natural resource in the dry continent, is in the hands of big business.

The Labor government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard introduced the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in 2013. Ostensibly, it was designed to address the over-allocation of water for irrigation and improve the conditions of the river system by reserving more water for environmental flows.

Environmental scientists, including the Wentworth Group, criticised the plan, arguing that the 2,750 gigalitre (gL) per year target for water recovered from irrigation for environmental flows was insufficient to restore the Basin to health.

The Wentworth Group pointed out: “This volume fell substantially short of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s best estimate that between 3,856gL and 6,983gL was required for a healthy river.” In other words, the substantial shortfall ensured that the plan was unlikely to ever overcome the river system’s environmental problems.

Moreover, the target has not been reached. To date only 2,117.5gL has been recovered, almost three quarters of which was achieved before the Basin Plan was enacted. Progress slowed even further in 2014 when a cap on water “buy-backs” was introduced.

The federal government also seems to have paid well over the market price for several large-scale purchases of water entitlements.

In 2017, after declaring an end to water buy-backs, the government paid $78 million for 22gL of water entitlements from a property at Tandou Station, southwest of Menindee. The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences valued the water rights at less than $25 million.

The deal was brokered by then Deputy Prime Minister, National Party leader and Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce. It resulted in a $36 million profit for Webster Ltd, the major water trader that owns the Tandou property.

Bill Johnson, a former director at the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, told the media: “It is highly questionable whether the Commonwealth got any water for this money.”

In reality the “buy-backs” of water entitlements do not necessarily mean more water in the river system. The purchase of a water right is meaningless if there is no water flowing in the relevant area.

The main beneficiary of the water entitlements market has been big business. The government has bought back entitlements, in some cases to water that does not exist, and has subsidised improvements to irrigation infrastructure.

The dead fish at Menindee are just one graphic symptom of the failure of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, like previous “market solutions,” to manage Australia’s largest river system to meet the needs of the majority of people, rather than the profits of the wealthy few.

Reports indicate Haitian government involvement in La Saline massacre

John Marion 

The La Saline massacre, which occurred in Haiti on November 13, rivals the crimes of the Duvalier dictatorship and of the military regimes that seized power after Duvalier fell. Fifty-nine people, including children as young as three years old, were murdered in La Saline in a premeditated slaughter. Only the Jean-Rabel massacre, perpetrated in 1987 by the regime of Henri Namphy with support from tontons macoutes, has involved more deaths.

La Saline is a poor neighborhood in Port-au-Prince, described by PBS as a place where people “cook over open fires in alleyways so narrow that two people can’t pass without touching shoulders.” The Saint Jean Bosco church of Jean-Bertrand Aristide was in La Saline, and recent protests against government corruption have found support there. It is located on the other side of a canal from the former Fort Dimanche prison, where the Duvaliers tortured and murdered thousands of people.

La Saline also houses a commercial port with three terminals, and the Croix-des-Bossales market that sells produce from the country to restaurants, wholesalers and supermarkets. Early press reports blamed the killings on gangs fighting over control of the market.

The National Network for the Defense of Human Rights (RNDDH) has conducted a thorough investigation of the massacre, including interviews with survivors, family members, hundreds of La Saline residents, judicial and police figures, and a parliamentary deputy. The resulting report describes how for years the government has made use of the armed gangs, about whose murders and extortion it is fully aware, to subdue the population. People interviewed accuse government figures of supplying arms and money to the gangs.

The report describes how, in October 2017, a commission including the minister of the interior, the minister of public health, and the wife of President Jovenel Moïse, visited La Saline to promise the rebuilding of one school, the creation of another, and the renovation of a public health facility. In return, they demanded that residents keep protesters from marching through the neighborhood. The residents refused.

One year later, the protests of October 2018 made use of the neighborhood as a meeting place.

The RNDDH names several government figures accused of direct involvement in the November 13 massacre. Fednel Monchery, director general of the Ministry of the Interior, is accused of having participated in the planning and of having furnished arms and vehicles.

Joseph Pierre Richard Duplan, former mayor of Port-au-Prince, is accused of having supplied arms and uniforms. Some perpetrators of the massacre were wearing Haitian National Police (PNH) uniforms. Separately, Duplan has been questioned in the disappearance of news photographer Vladjimir Legagneur 11 months ago.

Police agent Gregory Antoine is accused of having participated directly in the massacre, fighting alongside the Base Nan Chabon gang. Police agent Jimmy Cherizier is accused of having participated directly and of having hosted the meeting at which the massacre was planned.

A lawsuit filed by 13 residents of La Saline in December seeks to determine whether the president, the prime minister, the minister of justice, the minister of the interior, and the director general of the PNH were involved, according to Le Nouvelliste. The 13 people bringing the suit represent a group of more than 50, most of whom remained anonymous out of fear for their safety.

The 59 murders were gruesome: People were dragged out of homes and executed point blank; others were chopped to death with machetes; children were shot in their homes; bodies were burned, chopped into pieces, left in heaps of garbage, and fed to pigs. Women were raped.

The RNDDH was able to identify 45 of the 59 dead and includes details of their murders in its report. When it confronted the police and judiciary with its findings, they claimed ignorance. The police claimed not to know how many were killed, while the judicial authorities said they had “no precise information relating to the events.” The report also notes that, aside from the announcement by Prime Minister Jean Henry Ceant that he was opening an investigation, the government made no pronouncements in the first two weeks after the massacre.

The silence and evasion foreshadow future crimes. The government of Ceant and President Moïse is in deep crisis, and desperate. Moïse’s previous prime minister resigned after his attempts to cut fuel subsidies caused massive protests last July.

Haiti’s rate of inflation was more than 15 percent last year and its currency continues to drop against the dollar. A shortage of gasoline and diesel is developing because of the government’s inability to pay the company that has been importing them from the US since Haiti’s participation in the PetroCaribe program. More protests against austerity and corruption are planned in February.

The big bourgeoisie has come out publicly against Moïse, with Reginald Boulos criticizing him for having voted against Venezuela’s membership in the Organization of American States and Dimitri Vorbe of Sogener telling the TV program “Haïti, sa k ap kwit” that “the state needs to be organized to create all the conditions needed to promote the functioning of businesses in Haiti, which would allow them to make money, but also to give it to the state (in taxes).”

On January 14, protests occurred in the commune of Lascahobas after months of electricity rationing. After the protesters blocked traffic with barricades, police from the Departmental Unit for the Maintenance of Order (UDMO) fired live ammunition, killing at least two. One of the victims was shot in the heart.

In December the offices of Radio Kiskeya, known for its political reporting since 1994, burned to the ground after a fire spread from the building next door. Liliane Pierre-Paul, one of its founders, had survived torture and exile by the Duvalier regime in the 1980s. In 2015, at a time when the station was critical of then-president Michel Martelly, an unidentified person fired shots at the station.

In the weeks following the fire, which destroyed not just the station but its archives as well, criticism of the government’s response was limited to the underfunding of firefighters, who took more than an hour to respond. However, Le Nouvelliste reported this week that Pierre-Paul and Director General Jean Marvell Dandin filed a lawsuit on January 18 demanding that the court investigate whether the fire was set. The suit also asks the judge to determine whether the firefighters were delayed deliberately by the government.

Brazilian Workers Party uses crime wave to back fascistic Bolsonaro on repression and austerity

Miguel Andrade

A wave of attacks on public infrastructure in Ceará, one of the poorest states in Brazil’s Northeast, has provided an opportunity for the self-styled “anti-fascist” opposition in the Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores—PT)—which run’s Ceará’s state government—to collaborate with Brazil’s fascistic new president, Jair Bolsonaro.

The government has so far reported 235 attacks in 50 municipalities, mostly directed at police and mass transit, including the metro of the state capital, Fortaleza, but also extending to schools, garbage collection and energy transmission infrastructure.

The crime wave was reportedly initiated by a “tactical agreement” between the state’s largest drug trafficking gangs as a response to the nomination of a new head for the state’s prison system. Already entering its fourth week, it is only the latest episode in the protracted and tragic crisis of the country’s overcrowded and abusive prison system, true dungeons of a system of social apartheid in one of the world’s most unequal societies. Hundreds of inmates have been killed in numerous riots, many by the most horrific methods.

Brazilian prisons are filled to no less than 100 percent overcapacity. Forty percent of the 700,000 inmates—the world’s third largest prison population—have not even been sentenced, while fully 20 percent of those sentenced are in jail for simple theft and are eligible for alternative sentences judges never bother to apply.

The situation is even worse in Ceará, where overcrowding stands at 300 percent, and an even more staggering two-thirds of inmates have not been sentenced. Even so, the PT state governor announced at the end of 2018 he would nominate Luís Mauro Albuquerque Araújo, the former head of the prison system in neighboring Rio Grande do Norte state, for the same position in Ceará.

Araújo has been held responsible for institutionalizing state-sponsored torture in Rio Grande do Norte’s prisons in a 2018 report by the Justice Ministry’s Torture Prevention Committee. The panel compared his administration to that of the US-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq with regular humiliation of naked inmates, beatings, isolation and deprivation of family visits.

The dismal conditions of prisons is widely considered by experts as the single most influential factor in gang recruitment, since belonging to a gang is considered by inmates the best means of abuses ranging from theft of personal belongings to rape. “Christened” inmates are from then on required to obey the gangs after they are released, under the threat of torture and execution of family members by their own “chiefs.”

At the beginning of the crime wave, Governor Camilo Santana asked the Justice Ministry for the deployment of the National Guard, which was swiftly implemented amid reports of an increase in police abuse beginning to flood the state’s Human Rights Council. Reports vary from house-to-house searches and fabricated evidence to a doubling down of inmate abuse, with guards unleashing dogs on naked inmates. In perhaps the most serious abuse, security agents have been forcing suspects to declare belonging to gangs in widely shared whatsapp videos, a procedure considered by experts to be a death sentence, allowing for rival factions to come after the suspect on the streets or in prison.

The most lasting impact of the crime wave, however, is the Workers Party’s embrace of Bolsonaro’s proposal to extend the country’s anti-terrorism law to include “burning buses” and “damaging public buildings.” The move was formalized in a meeting between Santana and Bolsonaro’s right-wing justice minister, Sérgio Moro, on January 17 in which Santana asked for the federal government’s support. This followed an interview with Santana on CBN radio January 11, in which he suggested that “state autonomy” should be wider in defining terrorism—a matter currently in the hands of the federal government.

A longstanding demand of Brazil’s far-right, such an extension of the definition of terrorism is directed at the criminalization and repression of social opposition. It would vastly widen the reach of a draconian law approved under PT President Dilma Rousseff in 2016 using the pretext of the 2016 summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

The 2016 anti-terror law characterizes as terrorism “sabotage with the goal of provoking social or generalized terror.” Defended by the PT as a “democratic” law that drew a distinction between actions carried out for the purpose of pressing demands and those aimed at “provoking generalized terror.” However, it left it to the security forces to determine which was which.

The right-wing shift in Brazilian politics beginning under the PT, with the 2013 mass anti-austerity and anti-World Cup protests against Rousseff, has already seen 23 demonstrators sentenced to an average of seven years imprisonment for “qualified damage” and “resistance,” based on 2013 and 2014 laws that pre-date the anti-terror legislation.

Other PT governors have also since early 2018 aped Bolsonaro’s far-right, repressive agenda, making “security issues” a central tenet of their electoral campaigns. Some of them have even discussed issues of controlling protest and surveillance with the Israeli ambassador to Brazil. Repressive “partnerships” with Israeli law enforcement and security companies are one of the central issues in Bolsonaro’s far-right rants. The PT’s Piauí state governor, Wellington Dias, is currently in Israel to discuss such issues, after his counterpart in the state of Bahia, PT Governor Rui Costa, did his own right-wing “pilgrimage” to Israel after reelection, in November 2018.

Meanwhile, some 20 congressmen from Bolsonaro’s Social Liberal Party (PSL) returned from a recent trip to China, paid for by the Chinese government, in which they were presented with a system of facial recognition to be installed in Rio de Janeiro’s streets and mass transit system, allegedly to fight crime. The trip was offered by the Chinese government as a “goodwill” gesture to deflect the anti-Chinese demagogy that characterized Bolsonaro’s election campaign.

For its part, Justice Minister Sérgio Moro left Ceará to meet his Argentine counterpart in Brasília to sign a new treaty expediting extraditions between the two countries, in order to avoid “what happened to Cesare Battisti,” who was subjected to a rendition operation with which the Bolivian, Italian and Brazilian governments illegally cooperated. As Moro considers that existing rights to challenge extradition were an obstacle to Battisti’s rendition, the new treaty can only mean Brazil and Argentina will work to legalize such methods.

Most importantly, the collaboration on “security issues” has been a central argument for meetings between PT governors and Bolsonaro’s candidate for speaker of the House, Rodrigo Maia, of the Democrats party (DEM), who is seeking reelection. The support for Maia, who was first elected as speaker in 2016 with crucial PT votes, has been posed by the PT and its allies as a defense of Congress’s “independence.”

After Maia left a meeting with PT congressmen and the Piauí governor Dias, the PT-aligned Brasil247 celebrated with a headline: “Maia defends pact with the PT and displeases Bolsonaro clan.” The meeting happened after the PT’s president, congressional representative Gleisi Hoffmann, feigned indignation over Bolsonaro’s support for Maia, saying that the party would not support him if Bolsonaro’s PSL did.

Maia will nonetheless have the official support of the Democratic Labor Party (PDT), which came in third in the October presidential vote and was courted by the PT with the offer of the vice-presidential position on its slate, and of the Maoist Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), which actually accepted a similar PT offer, running Manuela D’Ávila for vice president. It is clear that if Maia is reelected, it will be due to PT “defections.” The same must be expected on the crucial votes on the “pensions reform,” which PT governors already have declared “must be discussed” in a November 14 letter to Bolsonaro.

Another PT ally, Renan Calheiros of the Brazilian Democratic Movement party (MDB), who twice presided over the Senate under PT’s rule, is also seeking favor with Bolsonaro in order to be elected for a third term. Calheiros’ son was elected with PT support as governor of Alagoas state, also in the northeastern region. During his campaign, the PT’s presidential candidate Fernando Haddad declared at a rally: “I come here to bring the acknowledgment of Lula for your defense of him and your dignity.” Calheiros, however, saw no obstacle to jumping from Lula’s defense to that of Bolsonaro’s son, senator Flávio Bolsonaro, under pressure to resign over accusations of graft and of collaboration with death squads in his home state of Rio de Janeiro. On January 18, he described the younger Bolsonaro as “a boy with strong opinion and who defends them, who wants to do good.”

Just three weeks into Bolsonaro’s administration, the PT’s claims to offer a “democratic resistance,” let alone an alternative, are being thoroughly exposed. The same is true for all the pseudo-left currents, many of which posture as socialist or even “Trotskyist,” which not only called for a vote for the PT, but which are now covering up the party’s collaboration with Bolsonaro.

These include first and foremost the myriad Pabloite and Morenoite currents operating within the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), the parliamentary split from the PT, but also the PT apologists within the Workers Cause Party (PCO), which claims that the collaboration with Bolsonaro is restricted to the “right wing” of the party, and that its “left” should be defended. Such a “left” includes jailed former president Lula—who hand-picked the right-wing, pro-austerity Fernando Haddad to substitute for him in the elections, Hoffmann, and the union bureaucrats who on December 18 recorded a video sent to Bolsonaro saying they were “sorry” for questioning his legitimacy and also offering to negotiate the “pension reform.”

Davos overshadowed by crisis and social upheaval

Nick Beams

This year’s gathering of the global elites at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, is perhaps best summed up in the phrase: The chickens are coming home to roost.

For almost five decades, the WEF has been at the centre of the promotion of the free market policies that have funnelled trillions of dollars into the hands of the world’s wealthiest individuals and led to the widening of social inequality to historically unprecedented levels—an institutionalised process that accelerated to new levels after the meltdown of 2008.

In January 2009, as the financial crisis was still unfolding, there was a widespread fear at the annual Davos meeting that the bonanza was about to end. But as concerns over an immediate social backlash receded somewhat and the vast accumulation of wealth on the heights of society continued, thanks to the massive injection of cheap money by the US Fed and other major central banks, it appeared that all was still for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

No longer. Social anger and the class struggle are intensifying around the world. As the Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortty commented, the Davos billionaire is now experiencing a new and unsettling emotion: fear. As they face a world order crumbling before them, the Davos plutocrats are “terrified” and “whatever dog-eared platitudes they may recycle for the TV cameras, what grips them is the havoc far below.”

Surrounding the Davos gathering, there were attempts to introduce a course correction. In a column produced for the meeting, Financial Times economics commentator Martin Wolf pointed to the responsibility of the global elites for the elevation of populist and authoritarian political leaderships and insisted that law-governed democracies had to be made to work better. “Davos people,” he concluded, “please note: this is your clear responsibility.”

The international charity Oxfam issued a report showing that 26 billionaires held as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent of the world’s population, some 3.8 billion, that wealth accumulation at the top was increasing at the rate of $2.5 billion per day and called or a new “human economy” to be financed through increased wealth taxes.

The “Davos people” gave their answer to this reform agenda when they handed the platform for the keynote address to the newly installed extreme right wing and fascistic president of Brazil, the former military commander, Jair Bolsonaro, after giving it to another right-wing authoritarian Donald Trump the previous year.

Bolsonaro’s remarks were music to their ears as he set out his agenda for a “new Brazil” by creating new market opportunities, lower taxes on business and a “much-needed overhaul” of the country’s pension system. And they would have been mindful that these measures come with a commitment for the suppression of the working class.

As the Davos summit opened, the WSWS noted that the present regime of the world capitalist order, dominated and controlled by the global billionaires and their financial markets, was as incapable of any reform as pre-1789 France or the pre-1917 czarist autocracy in Russia both of which responded to social opposition with increased repression. The red-carpet treatment for Bolsonaro sent a message to the working class the world over: this is how your demands will be met.

This year’s annual meeting was marked by the absence of a number of political leaders, itself an expression of the growing political disorder within bourgeois politics and the rising tide of class struggle. British Prime Minister Theresa May could not attend due to the turmoil over Brexit; US President Donald Trump withdrew himself and the rest of the planned American delegation because of the government shutdown; French President Emmanuel Macron stayed at home as he confronted continuing protests by the “yellow vest” movement.

The circumstances surrounding another absentee were also significant. On the eve of the meeting, Zimbabwe’s president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, decided he would skip Davos in order to direct the suppression of protests against his government’s doubling of fuel prices, which, according to reports, led to 12 deaths last weekend.

Hanging over the entire gathering was the worsening global economic outlook and the consequences of even a minor downturn under conditions of deepening trade conflicts, above all the US trade war against China, the palpable breakdown of long established political structures and the rising tide of social anger and class struggle.

In the lead up to the meeting, David Lipton, the deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund issued a warning that “history suggests” an economic downturn “somewhere over the horizon.” But under conditions of deepening distrust in government institutions there was no guarantee that the regulatory regimes put in place after the finance crisis “will be sufficient to keep a ‘garden variety’ recession from becoming another full-blown systemic crisis.”

Another warning came in the form of a letter written by billionaire investor Seth Klarman, which, the New York Times reported, was passed around amid the Davos attendees. Its central focus was on the impact of rising class struggles

“It can’t be business as usual amid constant protests, riots, shutdown and escalating social tensions,” he wrote. Citing the “yellow vest” movement in France, he continued on this theme: “Social cohesion is essential for those who have capital to invest.”

Klarman is among those who are aware that the measures taken by financial authorities over the past decade to combat the effects of the financial crisis are contributing to the creation of a new one as debt levels rise.

“The seeds of the next major financial crisis … may well be found in today’s sovereign debt levels,” he wrote. “There is no way to know how much debt is too much, but America will inevitably reach an inflection point whereupon a suddenly a more skeptical market will refuse to continue to lend to us at rates we can afford.”

And such a crisis will have immediate political effects, as Klarman and others recognise. “It’s not hard to imagine worsening social unrest among a generation,” he wrote,” that is falling behind economically and feels betrayed by a massive national debt without any obvious benefit to them.”

But a social order in which, as Oxfam reports, 82 percent of all the wealth created in 2017 went to the top global 1 percent is organically incapable of responding to deepening opposition other than with repression, underscoring the analysis of the International Committee of the Fourth International that present political situation is above all characterised by revolution versus counter-revolution.

Indian teachers, government workers launch indefinite strike in Tamil Nadu

Deepal Jayasekera

In another outbreak of massive working class struggles in India, about 700,000 teachers and state government employees in the southern state of Tamil Nadu have been on indefinite strike since Tuesday. They walked out over a list of demands that includes reversal of retirement pension cuts, pay increases and permanency for school teachers and anganwadi (day care centres) workers.

More than 20,000 strikers have been arrested for participating in street demonstrations throughout the state, defying threats of disciplinary action by the right-wing communalist All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK)-led state government. On Wednesday, the Madras High Court ordered them to return to work by today—a warning of further government retaliation.

Tamil Nadu teachers picketing

The strike is a part of a growing upsurge of the international working class after decades of worsening conditions and widening social inequality. The revolt includes the strike by tens of thousands of Matamoros maquiladora workers on the Mexico-US border, the teachers’ strikes in Los Angeles and across the US and the Yellow Vest protests across France.

Workers throughout South Asia have taken determined industrial action, as seen in last month’s nine-day strike by Sri Lankan plantation workers demanding a doubling of their wages, and this month’s eight-day strike by garment workers in Bangladesh for higher pay.

Just two weeks ago, workers across India joined a two-day strike on January 8 and 9 against the pro-investor “reform” and austerity measures of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP) government. Late last year, over 3,000 workers from three major auto factories in Oragadam, near the Tamil Nadu state capital Chennai—Yamaha, Royal Enfield and Myoung Shin India Automotive—participated in two-month-long strikes.

Teachers and other state government employees want to roll back the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) and reverse the imposition of the National Pension Scheme (NPS), which have cut salaries and placed their pension funds in the hands of the stock markets.

The NPS, introduced by the last BJP-led central government, was imposed in 2014. Since then, all new central and state government employees have been deprived of the previous pension rights and 10 percent of their salaries have been diverted into a pension fund that fattens the profits of share market investors.

The seven-point list of strike demands includes payment of 21-month pay arrears, regularisation of part-time employees and anganwadi teachers and increased pay for secondary school teachers. Non-permanent workers are increasingly exploited, under various categories like “contract,” “part time,” “trainee” and “apprentice,” in both the public and private sectors, to impose poverty-level wages and divide the working class.

The strike has shut down many schools throughout the state. Workers in other state government departments, such as Revenue, Health, Rural Development and Agriculture, have joined the strike.

Despite mass arrests, strikers participated in protests in the capital Chennai and other major cities like Mudurai, Coimbatore, Virudhungar, Ramanathapurum, Sivaganga, Theni, Vellore and Dindigul.

Strikers outside a District Collector office

However, the trade unions, which were forced to call the action due to the growing militancy among workers, are totally opposed to any mobilisation of the working class against the government’s attacks. The Joint Action Council of Tamil Nadu Teachers Organisations and Government Employees Organisations (JACTTO and GEO), an alliance of teachers and government unions, claims that the AIADMK government can be pressured to reverse its policies.

What workers have experienced is the opposite—a government crackdown. On Monday, the day before the indefinite strike began, state Chief Secretary Girija Vaidyanathan threatened to cut off strikers’ wages and cancelled all leave, except for medical reasons, during the strike. The state education department moved to hire strike breakers, offering temporary appointees a meagre 7,500 rupees ($US106) a month.

The last state AIADMK government unleashed brutal repression against striking government employees in 2003, sacking hundreds of thousands.

The striking workers also have had bitter experiences with the unions. Workers have repeatedly come forward to fight against the CPS. In February 2016, for example, they started an indefinite strike, but the Tamil Nadu Government Employees Association (TNGEA), an alliance of 68 unions, ended the strike after 10 days without meeting their demands.

The unions justified that betrayal by citing election and school examination duties that government employees needed to perform, and by supposedly giving the government time to think over workers’ demands. JACTTO refused to join the strike, claiming that the incoming state government’s 2016 budget would concede the demands.

Successive governments at both central and state levels have continued such socially-incendiary “economic reforms,” imposing on workers the burden of the deepening crisis of Indian and world capitalism since the 2008 global financial breakdown.

Major “reform” measures similar to the CPS have been introduced around the world at the dictates of the International Monetary Fund. They will not be reversed by replacing the BJP-led Modi government at the Indian general election due to be held in April-May. The opposition Congress—the traditional party of Indian ruling elite—and the regional capitalist parties like the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam [DMK], the AIADMK’s current Tamil Nadu rival, are equally committed to same pro-big business measures.

The only viable strategy to defeat these attacks, as in Mexico, the US, France and around the world, is one based on the international class struggle and the independent political mobilisation of the working class against the reactionary capitalist order.

India’s main Stalinist parliamentary parties—the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) and the Communist Party of India (CPI)—are trying to channel the rising movement of workers behind the return of yet another capitalist government, whether led by the Congress Party or a series of smaller, right-wing regional parties—after the April-May general election, on the pretext of defeating the Hindu communalist BJP.

The same Stalinist parties made an electoral alliance with the AIADMK in the 2011 Tamil Nadu state elections, even after its mass sackings of striking government employees in 2003.

As the World Socialist Web Site explained in its January 12 Perspective on the political significance of the two-day national general strike: “All these parties have played a pivotal role in implementing the Indian bourgeoisie’s drive to make India a cheap-labour haven for global capital. Between 1991 and 2008, the CPM and CPI sustained in power a succession of governments, most of them Congress Party-led, which spearheaded the neo-liberal agenda and pursued closer ties with Washington.”

Indian workers should follow the example of the Abbotsleigh tea plantation workers in Sri Lanka, who, under the guidance of the Socialist Equality Party, have established a rank-and-file action committee completely independent of the trade union apparatuses that have enforced their brutal exploitation for decades. Auto workers in the US, confronted by plant closures and thousands more job losses, have taken a similar course.

Such rank-and-file workplace committees must develop a working class counteroffensive by unifying the struggles of workers across India and by reaching out to workers around the world, with whom they are closely interlinked by global capitalist production.

Above all, Indian workers need a revolutionary party, based on an internationalist socialist program and strategy, embodying all the strategic lessons of the struggles of the world working class, to prosecute the struggle for workers’ power. That party is the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).

Canada’s diversity imperialism

Keith Jones

Canada’s trade union-backed, ostensibly “progressive” Liberal government is playing a key role in the regime-change coup that Washington has launched against Venezuela’s elected president, Nicolás Maduro.

Canada quickly seconded US President Donald Trump’s announcement Wednesday recognizing Juan Guaidó, Venezuela’s self-proclaimed “interim president,” as the country’s head of state.

The cabinet Trudeau named after winning office in October 2015 was hailed as an exemplar of diversity and inclusiveness. With an equal number of women and men, newspaper columnists lauded the “gender-balanced cabinet.” It boasted an indigenous Justice Minister, an Indian-born Sikh defence minister, a former Somali refugee as immigration minister, a gay Treasury Board president, and a quadriplegic Veteran Affairs Minister.

Particular acclimations were given for the selection of a female minister of foreign affairs, Christina Freeland. In an article in September on Canada’s “feminist foreign policy,” Foreign Policy magazine wrote that last year Canada hosted “the first-ever meeting of female foreign ministers, as part of a package of commitments it made to prioritize women’s issues under its G-7 presidency this year.”

The meeting, Foreign Policy wrote, was “unprecedented in its display of female power on the world stage.”

“It is important—and historic—that we have a prime minister and a government proud to proclaim themselves as feminists,” declared Freeland. “Women’s rights are human rights.”

In reality, as underscored by Canada’s role in aiding and abetting the US-orchestrated regime-change operation in Venezuela, the only “identity” that matters is that all the members of the Trudeau cabinet are defenders of imperialism.

Trudeau has been enthusiastically promoted by the New York Times and Guardian as a poster boy of contemporary liberalism. That is a liberalism that has renounced all social reform, is pro-austerity and pro-war, and which privileges issues of racial, ethnic and gender identity, as a means of rallying the support of sections of the affluent middle class.

Trudeau and Freeland are recycling and amplifying the foul propaganda emanating from the CIA and the likes of Brazil’s new ultra-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, that Guaidó—a representative of the country’s traditional US-aligned oligarchy—is the incarnation of the democratic aspirations of the Venezuelan people.

Ottawa’s role, however, goes far beyond trying to provide a smokescreen for yet another “made in USA” coup and obscuring the inexorable connection between Washington’s current intrigues in Venezuela and the succession of invasions, occupations and coups it has orchestrated in Latin America since 1898.

Ottawa, according to news reports, will soon host a meeting of the Lima Group, a coalition of US allies in the Americas, to plot the next steps in the “regime-change” operation against Maduro and the bourgeois nationalist regime he heads.

Since its establishment in August 2017, Canada has acted as Washington’s principal agent inside the Lima Group. Last September, Canada was conspicuous in leading opposition to a Lima Group “pledge” to oppose any foreign military intervention in Venezuela—i.e. a US invasion.

Wednesday’s US-fomented coup has pushed the impoverished South American country to the brink of civil war and, with Trump demonstratively declaring “all options on the table,” brought the US to the brink of a military assault on Venezuela.

There is every reason to believe that Canada will participate in any US military action against Venezuela, reprising, albeit almost certainly on a larger and bloodier scale, its 2004 role in assisting the US in overthrowing Haiti’s elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Washington has spearheaded the resurgence of imperialism, waging a never-ending series of wars since 1991 in an increasingly desperate attempt to offset the decline in its global economic position. But all the imperialist and aspiring great powers, big and small, are rearming and reviving war as a vital instrument of state policy.

A major belligerent and, from an economic and strategic vantage point, beneficiary of the two imperialist world wars of the last century, Canadian imperialism is no exception. Long gone are the days when Canada’s ruling elite, with a view to politically and ideologically harnessing the working class to its rule, promoted the myth that Canada and its military have a special “peacekeeping” vocation.

Since 1991, Canada, under Liberal and Conservative governments alike, has played a leading role in one US-led war after another, including the first Gulf War, the 1999 NATO war on Yugoslavia, the Afghan War, the 2011 regime-change war in Libya, and the ongoing US war in the Middle East.

As in Venezuela today, Canada’s government and military have, in the course of these wars and interventions, repeatedly aligned with extreme right-wing and outright fascist forces. Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) personnel involved in the bombing of Libya described themselves as “al Qaeda’s air force.” Similarly, in the Ukraine in 2014, Canada helped orchestrate, in concert with Washington, a fascist-spearheaded coup against the country’s elected president.

Canada’s longstanding and rapidly expanding military-security alliance with Washington and Wall Street enjoys all but unanimous support with the Canadian ruling class, as the best means to assert its own predatory imperialist interests and aims on the world stage.

Canada’s banks and resource companies are important players in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Canadian ruling elite shares Washington’s determination to roll back Chinese and Russian economic and geopolitical influence in the Americas.

Under Trudeau and his purported “feminist foreign policy,” Canada is playing an even more rapacious and reactionary role in world affairs than under the neoconservative and onetime Iraq war enthusiast, Stephen Harper.

Declaring that Canada must prepare for the wars of the 21st Century and play a larger role in sustaining a US-led world order, the Trudeau government announced in June 2016 plans to hike military spending by more than 70 percent to almost $33 billion by 2026.

Already Canada is playing a leading role in US imperialism’s three main military-strategic offensives, any one of which could rapidly spiral into a war between nuclear-armed powers: in the Middle East, against Russia and against China.

Canada is leading one of NATO’s four new “forward deployed” battalion-sized battlegroups on Russia’s borders; routinely deploys warplanes and battleships to patrol the Black Sea, Baltic States and Eastern Europe; and is training Ukrainian Army and National Guard personnel to, in Trudeau’s words, “liberate” Eastern Ukraine.

And long before Ottawa ordered, at Washington’s behest, the December 1 arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on trumped-up charges, Canada was closely aligned with Washington in its escalating confrontation with China. Building on a secret 2013 US-Canadian military agreement on coordinating operations in the Asia-Pacific, the CAF has greatly expanded deployments in Asia. CAF head Jonathan Vance now routinely describes the South China Sea and Malacca Straits, key chokepoints in US war planning against China, as of vital strategic importance to Canada.

There are vital lessons to be learned from Trudeau’s role in Trump’s coup attempt in Venezuela, applicable in every country all over the world. Replacing one set of representatives of the financial oligarchy with another, regardless of their race, gender, or sexual preference, will not lead to a more “humane” outcome. The struggle against imperialism and social inequality must base itself on the social force capable of opposing capitalism and imperialist war: the working class.