Violent Voyeurism: Surveillance, Spyware and Human Rights

Binoy Kampmark

Surveillance is merely a variant of violent voyeurism, the human behind the camera or visual apparatus observing behaviour in a setting, often private.  Its premise is privacy’s violation; its working assumption is privacy’s irrelevance; officially tolerated such a concept is unofficially repudiated.  Studies on surveillance do as much to reveal its problems as accommodate them: the great, all seeing commissar of email, letters and conversations remains persuasive.

Those who have put pen to paper on this have not always been very sympathetic.  Judith Jarvis Thomson tended to see matters of privacy as a secondary interest: privacy rights are bundled up, as it were, with others, a second order of concern.  The violation of privacy comes after more salient breaches. But mass market surveillance, much of it manufactured in the private sector, the ubiquity of spyware, and the ease with which such material can be acquired, has eclipsed such quibbles.

The innovations on the market have proven to be devastatingly effective.  Canadian privacy research group Citizen Lab’s work in this field has shed light on a range of manufacturers pushing such products as FinFisher, the Remote Control System (RCS) of Hacking Team, and Israel’s own NSO Group’s Pegasus.  As Sarah McKune and Ron Deibert observed in 2017, “business is booming for a specialized market to facilitate the digital attacks, monitoring, and intelligence-cum-evidence-gathered conducted by government entities and their proxies.”

Pegasus spyware remains one of the NSO Group’s most damnably and dangerously effective products, used to target individuals in 45 countries with impunity.  Human rights activists such as Ahmed Mansoor can testify to its spear-phishing qualities, having been a target of various SMS messages with links intended to infect his iPhone.  Had he actually clicked on those links instead of passing them on to experts at Citizen Lab and the cybersecurity firm Lookout for examination, surveillance software would have been installed.

An even more high profile instance where Pegasus is alleged to have been deployed is the case of slain journalist and occasional Riyadh critic Jamal Khashoggi, who was brutally dismembered in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018.  A suit against NSO was subsequently filed in Tel Aviv by fellow dissident critic Omar Abdulaziz, claiming that communications between him and Khashoggi had been monitored by Saudi authorities deploying NSO software.

Much of this is shrugged off as exceptional: the NSO Group, for instance, argues that such technology has been used to legitimately target terrorist groups and criminals; besides, their sale is premised on ethical restrictions.  “It is not a tool to be weaponized against human rights activists or political dissidents,” explains the NSO Group in an email.  Such ethical considerations were little bar in the cases of Khashoggi, at least initially.  But the concern, and publicity, was sufficient to prompt some mild action on the part of NSO Group.  While the firm concluded that its technology did not “directly contribute” to tracking Khashoggi prior to his killing, new requests from Saudi Arabia were frozen over concerns of misuse.

David Kaye, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, has made the latest effort to remind citizens that spyware, commercially and readily available, can be a very dangerous thing.  A good deal of matters in life take place behind the screen of safe privacy.  Dissidents and contrarians need their space to survive; journalists need their room to document abuses and make the powerful account.  In the face of modern surveillance, expansive, beefed up, and developed by global corporations, the task had gotten that much more challenging.

Kaye’s gloomy report, published to the UN Human Rights Council, supplies the disturbing stuffing the world of surveillance provides.  It leaves little room for the fence sitters: surveillance harms and impairs.  It is axiomatic that trust is denuded in that pursuit, and its very nature and intrusive activity eliminates the consensual bridge between citizen and state, and, as by-product, citizen and citizen.

It is, furthermore, generally unsupervised.  “Digital surveillance is no longer the preserve of countries that enjoy the resources to conduct mass and targeted surveillance based on in-house tools.  Private industry has stepped in, unsupervised and with something close to impunity.”  The market itself was “shrouded in secrecy; indeed, our knowledge of the problem exists mainly because of the digital-forensic framework of non-governmental researchers and tenacious reporting by civil society organizations and the media”.

As a function, such spyware is directed against specific individuals, “often journalists, activists, opposition figures, critics”.  This has led to unmistakable consequences: arbitrary detention, torture and extrajudicial killings.  This suggests two parts of the equation: to see, at one end; to then order, at the other, the suppression if not elimination of the individual.

Kaye suggests a reasoned brake on the industry.  “States should impose an immediate moratorium on the export, sale, transfer, use or servicing of privately developed surveillance tools until a human rights-compliant safeguards regime is in place.”

This may be sadly ambitious, given the security establishment’s various addictions to technology in this field.  Such suggestions are the equivalent of banning space technology that might be deployed in weaponry. Spyware is as much a product as a vision, the equivalent of arms manufacturing and efforts to produce the most lethal and insidious creation.  To mention human rights in the same breath is the equivalent of seeking a more honed form of killing, a decent form of surveillance.  Seen in its amoral context, such products are neither wicked nor good, a mere mechanism to monitor and police.  But behind the eye of spyware are its unscrupulous users. Behind the gazing software is a state or corporate employee, the voyeur of the national security state ever keen to peer into the lives of citizenry.

China: From Ethnic Diversity to Ethnic Mingling

Gautam Navlakha

On June 16 China announced that it had reached a “broad consensus” about counter-terror work with United Nations, after UN’s chief for Counter-terrorism, Russian diplomat Vladimir Voronkov made a visit to Xinjiang from June 13-15. China’s handling of so called terror threat posed by Uighur extremists has been much talked about by western media and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres raised the issue about the plight of Muslims in Xinjiang in April when he visited Beijing and met State Councillor Wang Yi. UN Human Rights chief Michelle Bachelet has been pushing China to allow UN access to investigate reports of disappearances and arbitrary detention of Uighur Muslims. Whether China encouraged the UN counter-terror chief to visit to circumvent the pressure it was coming under for its counter-terror measures is difficult to say but the visit certainly helped to ward off, for the time being, investigation by UNHRC team. Except it does not mean that China’s use of counter-terror approach towards Uighur Muslims and measures it has adopted for tackling it are above board.

Infact for years China denied existence of arbitrary detentions and enforced political re-eductaion bases. Then they claimed that these re-education camps were meant only against “minor criminals” and the idea was to “asist and educate” them. Its only since last year that China has begun to accept that “transformation through education” camps do exist in order to eliminate “religious extremism”. Indeed new rules enacted by the ruling Party allows “Governments at county level and above can set up education and trasnformation organisation and supervising departments” such as vocational training centres “to educate and transform people who have been infleunced by extremism” says a new clause in the Xinjiang Uigur Autonomous Region Regulation on Anti-Extremism.

These centres apart from teaching vocational skills are required to provide education on spoken and written Chinese (Mandarin), aspects of law and organise “ideological education to eliminate extremism”. They are also expected to carry out psychological treatment and behaviour correction to “help trainees to transform their thoughts and return to society and their families.”

In March 2017 a law was passed to ban acts deemed manifestation of extremism, including wearing veils, having “abnormal” beard, refusing to watch TV, listen to Radio and preventing children from national education.

Xinjiang situated on ancient silk route is a major logistical hub for China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Xinjiang is also rich in oil and other natural deposits. Starting around turn of the century investments in oil, gas and other mineral extraction industry have resulted in influx of Han Chinese settlers to Xinjiang. In 2009 riots had broken out in capital Urumqi since then repression increased. But it took a new turn in 2014 when in the name of combating terrorism and extremism Chinese authorities cracked down on Uighurs. Observers claim that the new Communist Party leader of Xinjiang Chen Quanguo, who was previously posted in restive Tibet and also a key player in the suppression of Falun Gong sect/religion across China, brought in a new grid system under which authorities divided city into squares of about 500 people with a police outpost to keep tab on people. In rural areas every village got a police outpost. The other change he brought in was banning certain names (such as Imam or Mohammed) and long beards and began targetting certain practices and beliefs of Muslims.

It is worth noting that in China there has been, what the Chinese describe, as two-line struggle within the Party on its stance on ethnic and religious minorities. The two lines, were “themes”, “ethnic mingling” versus “ethnic diversity”. Under cultural revolution, ethnic groups had suffered at the hands of Red Guards zealots, thereafter Party had moderated its stance towards minorities. Indeed as late as in 1999 Chinese Government adopted a policy “to preserve the traditional cultures of the ethnic minorities, the state formulated plans or organised specialists for work invloving the collecting, editing, translating and publishing of their cultural heritage and protecting their famous historical monuments, scenic spots, rare cultural relics and other important items of historical and cultural heritage”. However, this policy did not survive for long. This was the period when many Uigurs chose to migrate to Turkey and Pakistan as well as to Central Asian Republics. In particular, some Uighurs joined Al Qaida in Afghanistan or later joined Al Nusrat front in Syria.

While China’s fear of radicalised Uighurs posing a threat to its security and BRI which passes through Xinjiang can not be dismissed. It is equally, if not more true that the way China has gone about handling this challenge is deplorable. Although at Central Ethnic Workshop in September 2014 President Xi Jinping sought to bring the debate between those espousing end to ethnic autonomy and those espousing its expansion, in reality he lay emphasis on promoting collective belonging through Mandarin language instruction, patriotic education in Frontier region, stressed “equality before law of everyone” rather than group differentiated rights under China’s Constitution. Party began to stress residential integration, joint schooling, inter-ethnic mobility and migration as ways of getting around extremism.In the process there is demographic transformation taking place which, given Xinjiang’s strategic location, is a counter-productive move.

It is significant that ‘transformation through education” was first tried out against Falun Gong members, who were Han Chinese and millions of them spread all across China. The same leadership team which undertook this task is also reportedly engaged in the “transformation through education” project today in Xinjiang. Although westerm media and human rights group cite figures of a million, the exact number of people is difficult to verify. While numbers may be exaggerated the coercive nature of this re-education is not. What is disturbing about them is the fact that unlike draconian laws which target ethnic extremists/militants, or ruthless approach towards those using violence, the “transformation through education” targets ordinary Uighurs, or civilians. Even discounting for western media’s biasesd reportage of China and China related news, one cannot ignore the fact that there is mass detention of Uighurs who spend from several months to years in such camps. And these camps, it appears from reports, are not benign since the very idea of transforming people’s attitude is inherently coercive.

What is unfortunate is not just the fact that Chinese ruling Party has not been able to evolve a approach towards ethnic minorities which is accomodative and allows them elbow room to protect their cultural specifity. Instead the Party perceives cultural and political diversity as being a threat, rather than a source of strength. And as a result shows no scruple in practising suppression of ethnic diversity, unmindful of what damage it causes to the people. What is worse is that they are oblivious of enlightened self-interest because had they been alert to it the Party would realise that they are actually sowing seeds of a long drawn out conflict. Because, just as they are unable to stamp out Falun Gong, despite ban and its criminalisation. Uighurs with their ethnic kin in CAR and Afghanistan and Turkey, can nurture their rage and resentment.

Since Xinjiang shares border with India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kirghistan, Turkmenistan, trouble in Xinjiang is bound to spill over. Just as trouble in Afghanistan and Pakistan can spillover into Xinjiang. In other words, a wiser course would be for the Chinese Party to return to the Constitutional guarantees offered to minorities, and to policy of respect for “ethnic diversity” lest Xinjiang, strategic logistical hub remain turbulent putting a spoke in China’s BRI project, because ideas do not disappear.

2019 ITUC Global Rights Index: Bourgeois democracy exposed again

Farooque Chowdhury

The facts that the recently released 2019 ITUC Global Rights Index by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)  again exposes the bourgeois democracy.

Advanced/matured bourgeois democracies are denying bourgeois democratic rights. Labor is the main victim of this denial.

The 2019 ITUC Global Rights Index (Brussels, Belgium; henceforth Index) presents much significant information on workers’ rights in countries from both the global South and North. Among these countries are Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the US. These are the advanced bourgeois democracies. In the global south, to cite a few, there are Algeria, Bangladesh, Brazil, Cambodia, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Eritrea, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Iran, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkey, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. The Index has covered all the continents and most of the countries.

All the countries are within the world capitalist system. Global production/extraction and supply/distribution chains connect all the countries with global markets of raw materials, finished products and labor.

The Index ranks 145 countries against 97 internationally recognized indicators to assess where law and practice protects workers’ rights best. The Index rates countries according to the indicators, with an overall score placing countries in rankings of one to five plus.

These include: (1) sporadic violations of rights, (2) repeated violations of rights, (3) regular violations of rights, (4) systematic violations of rights, (5) no guarantee of rights, and (5+) No guarantee of rights due to breakdown of the rule of law.

The Index found 12 countries including Iceland and Sweden violating rights sporadically while 24 countries including Belgium and Republic of Congo violating rights repeatedly and 26 countries including Canada and Rwanda violating rights regularly. It also found 39 countries including Chile and Nigeria violating rights systematically while 35 countries including Brazil and Eritrea not guaranteeing rights, and nine countries including Palestine, Sudan, Syria and Yemen having no guarantee of rights due to breakdown of law.

Other key findings of the report include:

• Right to strike violated in 85% of countries.
• Deny some or all workers collective bargaining in 80% of countries.
• The number of countries excluding workers from the right to establish or join a trade union increased from 92 in 2018 to 107 in 2019.
• Workers had no or restricted access to justice in 72% of countries.
• The number of countries workers arrested and detained increased from 59 in 2018 to 64 in 2019.
• Out of 145 countries surveyed, 54 deny or constrain free speech and freedom of assembly.
• Authorities impeded the registration of unions in 59% of countries.
• Workers experienced violence in 52 countries.

On percentage of countries, which have restricted free speech and assembly, the Index informs: It’s 30% of countries in Europe, which is almost one-third of the bourgeois democratic Europe. And, this happens after dismantling of post-revolutionary societies and unfurling of capital’s democracy-flag.

On percentage of countries where workers have experienced arrests and detentions”, the Indexfinds: It’s 25% of countries in Europe. On strikes, the Index reports: “In 2019, strikes have been severely restricted or banned in 123 out of 145 countries. In a significant number of these countries, industrial actions were brutally repressed by the authorities and workers exercising their right to strike often faced criminal prosecution and summary dismissals.” On percentage of countries, which violated the right to strike, according to the Index, it’s 68% of countries in Europe. “In Belgium, 18 FGTB members were charged for blocking the road during a protest. The FGTB president of the Anvers branch was sentenced, but no penalty was imposed. Similarly, in France, 5 CGT and FO members were summoned by the police for distributing flyers at a tollgate. The general secretary of CGT Lot was charged with “illegal occupation of public roads” […]” In 2019, serious restrictions to collective bargaining were recorded in 116 countries. Countries that violated the right to collective bargaining in Europe was 50%. In the Netherlands, Norway and Spain, companies often bypassed collective bargaining with unions and pushed for individual agreements directly with workers.

The Index said: “Under international labor standards, all workers without distinction have the right to freedom of association. In 2019, 107 out of 145 countries surveyed excluded certain categories of workers from this right, often on the basis of their employment status from informal workers to non-standard forms of employment.” On worldwide basis, the percentage is 74, and 50% of countries in Europe exclude workers from the right to establish or join a trade union.

Capital has increased its old tact: “There is a worldwide trend, which is particularly evident in Europe but spreading globally, to seek to exclude workers from employment rights through ‘non-standard’ forms of employment, which reduces the organizational capacity of unions, as many workers are physically or psychologically isolated from permanent workers. Non-standard forms of work include temporary work; part-time, on-call, and contracts with zero- or variable working hours; temporary agency work; and disguised and dependent self-employment, in which many of the workers are found in platform, gig or digital work.” In 104 countries out of 145, the Index said, “workers had no or reduced access to justice, and the due process of law and justice was denied.”

This story is throughout the 62-page report. Facts from the global South have not been mentioned here, as those are not different, rather worse than the advanced bourgeois democracies. All of the ten worst countries for workers’ rights in 2019 are in the global South.  

Hence, the Index said: “The systematic dismantling of the building blocks of freedom and democracy […]”

The reality that stands stark is:

• The labor is not only as usually under assault by capital, but the assault has also widened and intensified. This means: (a) exploitation has increased; (b) capital has turned desperate as it feels resistance by labor is absent; and (c) workers need spreading of their understanding of the reality and building up of their organization.
• The advanced bourgeois democracies are shredding off mask that it used to put to hide its brutal face. This unmasking will take away words of optimism regarding the system that the so-called liberals market; but this depends mainly on the words the labor forcefully spreads.
• The bourgeois democracies themselves are in crisis. That’s one of the reasons behind inability/incapacity of the system – the bourgeois democracy – to give concession to the labor. And, that inability leads the system to denying of minimum rights, executing murder, etc. as the Index The more the inability increases the more capital will brutalize its assault on labor.

The Index tells almost the same. Two of the three global trends for workers’ rights identified by the Index show that

• democracy is in crisis,
• governments are attempting to silence the age of anger through brutal repression.

The situation is so desperate – “age of anger” – that the mainstream is failing to deny the dominating system’s crisis and muzzling down – “silence the age of anger through brutal repression” – of the labor.

This practice of capital – silence, repress, etc. – has been told in the Index:

“There was also a growing number of countries where the authorities or employers resorted to court orders to ban strike actions on the dubious pretext that such actions disrupted economic activities.”

Court of law, the seat of justice as the capital propagates, is colluding with capital, is colluding to snatch away the workers’ rights. This is an old fact showed by proletarian theoreticians, but denied by the mainstream scholars. Bourgeois court is not blind; it knows where capital’s interest lies. Therefore, as the Index tells, holy courts don’t discard “dubious pretexts”.

However, the third global trend, as the Index identifies, is “legislative successes for workers’ rights are still being won.”

This means: Workers can challenge the system, can win over space from the system; and that’s possible whenever workers have appropriate organization and leadership – not sold out to capital.

One point needs a brief clarification: The Index by the mainstream labor organization tells: “democracy is in crisis”. The democracy it tells about is bourgeois democracy, which a section in the rank of the people very often fails to differentiate.

One faction of capital, extreme right wing, will try to capitalize this situation by forwarding popular slogan that sounds “sympathetic” to the labor. Even, this extreme right wing, often with fascist characteristics, will raise/is raising slogan that feeds divisive politics in the rank of the people, especially within the labor. Divisive politics is a trap capital sets up for the working class.

However, one part of capital is aware that this situation is a threat to the democracy and stability of capital. But, there’s no urgency from capital to enter into any compromise with the labor as labor is being allured by popular slogan, and labor’s organization and politics are not that strong that can compel capital to give space to the labor.

The figures cited here are not from a radical labor literature. Based on the figures from the mainstream labor literature cited above it can be claimed that no other class faced/faces such denial of rights, justice and democracy in today’s world. It’s worldwide persecution of labor. It’s an old story known to many, but discussed least.

The grave situation appears graver if incidents of the last few years, since the Great Financial Crisis, are taken into account. There’s unemployment, homelessness. There’s the mighty austerity program. There are wars, civil wars initiated by imperialism, imperialist interventions. In addition, there are outsourcing and special economic/export processing zones. In the global South, the reality is much worse. It’s a reality of violence and murder perpetrated by capital against the labor.

No other class but the working class has to tell these facts, find out facts more burning from life of the working class, and interpret these facts in relation to capital, and capital’s politics and democracy. It has to be said that the working class is the most oppressed class today when capital’s profit and politics moves forward without facing much hindrance.

Multiple studies demonstrate global warming is melting glaciers faster

Philip Guelpa

Several recently published scientific studies clearly demonstrate that the melting of glaciers across the globe is accelerating due to human-induced climate change. A world-wide survey by a team based at the University of Zurich, published in the journal Nature (18 April 2019), reports that on average glacial melting is occurring at a rate 18 percent faster than was estimated only six years ago, and five times faster than in the 1960s. Collectively, this currently represents a loss of 369 billion tons of snow and ice per year.

The study was far more comprehensive than any previously conducted, examining ground and satellite data from 19,000 glaciers. It does not include the massive Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

The rate of loss varies by region, with the fastest melting taking place in central Europe, the Caucasus region, western Canada, the lower 48 states of the United States, New Zealand and near the tropics, where the rate is more than 1 percent per year. Of the 19 regions studied, only one—southwestern Asia—showed no significant glacial shrinkage.

Despite this variation, the near planet-wide distribution of this process demonstrates that a global phenomenon, climate change, is to blame, rather than localized factors.

The massive quantities of resulting meltwater from glaciers are a significant contributor to global sea level rise, representing approximately 25 to 30 percent of the annual total. Combined with the increase in volume of the oceans due to higher temperatures (water expands as it warms) and the concurrent melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the substantial input of water from melting glaciers pose a severe threat to billions of people living in coastal areas due to inundation and storm surge.

In addition, as glaciers retreat, the many regions of the world where large populations rely on water from glacially-fed rivers (e.g., the Ganges), the quantities are likely to become less reliable. In the Himalayan region alone, 1.6 million people depend on glacial meltwater.

Corroborating the global review, a specific regional study led by Columbia University graduate student Joshua Maurer, used declassified spy-satellite images to examine the melting of Himalayan glaciers. It found that the rate of melting of the 650 largest glaciers across India, China, Nepal, and Bhutan, representing 55 percent of the region’s ice volume, has doubled over the last two decades compared to that during the last quarter of the 20th century. Using temperature data from ground stations, he found melting to be greatest at the warmest locations, and less correlated with other factors. The study concluded that global warming was the main driver of accelerating melting of glaciers in the Himalayas.

Another recently published study predicted that even if global temperature rise was kept to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the Himalayas would lose one third of their glacial ice, but if current trends continue the loss could double. In either case, there will be dire consequences for downstream populations regarding agriculture, ecology, and hydropower.

The growing effects of global warming are also being seen in the Arctic. The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University reports that the spring thaw on Greenland’s ice sheet as well as sea ice loss are occurring several weeks earlier than normal. The melting is the most extensive that has been observed since satellite measurements began in 1979. Air temperatures as much as 40 degrees Fahrenheit (4.4 Celsius) above normal have been recorded.

In mid-May, the atmospheric temperature in northwest Russia, near the entrance to the Arctic Ocean, rose to 84 degrees Fahrenheit (29 Celsius). The average high temperature in that area at this time of year is 54 F. Similarly unusual high temperatures were recorded at other northern locations in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Finland. Several Alaskan rivers experienced the earliest ice breakup on record.

The effects of climate change in Alaska (credit: NASA)

Overall, the warming of the atmosphere in the Arctic is occurring twice as fast as the global average. Recent studies demonstrate that the Greenland ice sheet is melting at a rate much greater than previously thought. Were it to melt entirely, the resulting water release from Greenland alone would raise sea levels by about 20 feet, inundating extensive coastal areas, including many large cities, around the world.

Arctic sea ice is also melting at a faster rate. The average sea ice extent in May is nearly half a million square miles below the average for 1981-2010. Open ocean is darker than ice and therefore absorbs more sunlight. This creates a positive-feedback loop: the warmer the water, the more rapidly the remaining ice melts, opening more ocean surface, increasing the rate of melting even further, and so on. A warmer ocean also results in a warmer atmosphere, promoting the melting of terrestrial ice. If current trends continue, there will eventually be no more summer sea ice in the Arctic, significantly affecting climate in the northern hemisphere.

One consequence of a warming atmosphere in the Arctic is rapid thawing of permafrost. Field research by a team from the University of Alaska Fairbanks has revealed that permafrost at observed locations in the Canadian Arctic is thawing 70 years earlier than previously predicted.

Permafrost contains huge quantities of organic matter which sequesters carbon, frozen in place for thousands of years. Rapid thawing and consequent decomposition of this organic matter would release vast amounts of methane, contributing significantly to the greenhouse effect warming the atmosphere already resulting from the burning of fossil fuels. This sets up another positive-feedback loop: increasing the greenhouse effect leads to more rapid and extensive permafrost melting, releasing more methane, in turn intensifying the greenhouse effect, thus further accelerating permafrost melting, and so on.

The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, a significant greenhouse gas, recently exceeded 415 parts per million, the highest in human history. CO2 levels have risen nearly 50 percent since the Industrial Revolution, and the rate of increase is accelerating, with consequent atmospheric temperature rise. According to the Japan Meteorological Agency, this April was the second warmest on record globally. Even more significantly, 18 of the 19 warmest years on record for the planet have occurred since 2000.

The accelerating rate of ice melting occurring around the world, whether from glaciers, ice sheets, sea ice, or permafrost, is a grave warning that climate change is rapidly reaching the point at which its catastrophic consequences will be felt by billions of people, threatening the very existence of civilization.

A massive, worldwide effort is needed in order to halt this dire outcome. Capitalism, divided into rival nation-states, each dominated by a tiny ruling class driven by its own immediate financial self-interest, and hurtling toward world war, is incapable of marshaling the necessary resources to effectively address the problem. The efforts so far, such as the 2015 Paris Agreement, are pathetically inadequate to the task.

In the United States, the Trump administration is actively reversing even the modest measures to address climate change previously enacted and taking steps to cripple and muzzle agencies such as NASA and the EPA from conducting research and conveying that information to the public. Many Democrats, seeking to exploit genuine concern among the population regarding climate change, have made proposals, such as the Green New Deal, which are totally inadequate even in the highly unlikely event they would be implemented.

Only the socialist reorganization of society, in which the vast scientific, technological, and social resources of humanity are mobilized on a coordinated, global scale to confront this challenge, can avert this pending catastrophe.

Siemens cuts another 2,700 jobs in the energy sector

Elisabeth Zimmermann 

Just a few weeks after the Siemens Supervisory Board unanimously decided to spin off the company’s entire energy and power plant business and launch it on the stock market as an independent company at the beginning of May, management announced further attacks on jobs and working conditions in order to make the IPO more attractive.

On June 18, the Siemens board announced that its energy sector, now called Gas & Power (GP), would cut another 2,700 jobs worldwide, 1,400 in Germany. This should save an additional €500 million.

The job cuts are focused on the project business and energy transfer division, where high-voltage networks and transformers are manufactured. A cuts programme that will claim 6,000 jobs is already running in the power plant construction division.

Lisa Davis, board member for GP, justified the recent cuts on the grounds that they would “create more growth opportunities” that will “increase competitiveness in the energy market” and “better secure our business.” In future, large-scale projects should pay more attention to the yields to be achieved and orders rejected if they are too low, she said

Those affected by the measures already announced are mainly in GP in Erlangen (600 jobs), and almost 500 jobs in the Schaltwerk Berlin, as well as locations in Nuremberg and Dresden. The impact on jobs in the supply industry in the affected regions is also significant.

The 2,700 new job cuts come in addition to the 10,400 announced in connection with the Siemens reorganisation in early May. This involves 4,900 people worldwide at Digital Industries, 3,000 at Smart Infrastructures and another 2,500 at Central Functions.

The Siemens group is gradually being transformed into a pure holding company by spinning off the individual areas and listing them on the stock market. These areas then have to survive as independent companies in the market. Correspondingly, the pressure from shareholders to increase the rate of profit and to quickly spin off and close less-profitable parts being is stepped up. Other large corporations like ThyssenKrupp are experiencing similar developments.

In attacking workers’ jobs and social rights, the Siemens management has the full support of the IG Metall trade union and its works council representatives. They work hand in hand with the management members on the Supervisory Board and in the Economic Committee on the plans for job cuts.

When they become known, as at GP, the well-paid union and works council officials sometimes feign indignation. For example, Birgit Steinborn, chair of the Siemens general works council, described the job losses as “unimaginative” and instead demanded a requalification scheme for the employees concerned.

The numerous previous cuts and downsizing programmes always ended with the board implementing its plans against the workforce with the active support of IG Metall and the works council. At the beginning of May, the latter had already unanimously supported the spin-off of the Siemens group energy and power plant division.

Birgit Steinborn, who according to Spiegel Online pocketed almost half a million euros in 2017 for her work on the supervisory board, justified this by stating that the spin-off gave employees in the energy sector a better future. In view of the announcement of another 2,700 redundancies, the workers affected will regard this as pure mockery.

Those who want to fight against corporate attacks must organise independently of the unions. This requires the establishment of independent action committees, which will make contact with their fellow workers at other locations and countries and conduct a struggle to defend all jobs on the basis of an international socialist perspective.

France: What should be done with Arnault’s $100 billion?

Will Morrow 

Last week, French billionaire Bernard Arnault, the CEO and leading shareholder of luxury fashion retail group LVMH, became the third person in history to surpass the US$100 billion mark in personal wealth. Only Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos (worth $157 billion) and Microsoft head Bill Gates ($102.9 billion) are richer.

Arnault’s wealth has risen by $32 billion since the start of 2019, more than any other billionaire, placing him ahead of Warren Buffett as the world’s third-richest man, with $100.4 billion. The increase was due to a 40 percent rise in LVMH’s share price, following on record sales and profit figures for 2018 and the first quarter of 2019. The retail giant controls 4,650 retail stores and 70 brands globally, including the luxury clothing label Luis Vuitton and perfume brand Dior.

Arnault’s fortune is a direct outcome of the exploitation of thousands of garment and textile workers around the world, who labour in a chain of sweatshops to produce designer items sold for hundreds or thousands of euros for the pleasures of the rich and super-rich.

For example, a 2017 report by the Guardian newspaper into two of the Romanian factories that produce shoes and components for handbags and suitcases for Luis Vuitton estimated that their 800 workers make around 100,000 pairs of shoes each year. They received the local minimum wage of around €232 per month after taxes. This also means it would take them a little over three months to earn enough to buy just one medium-priced pair of the shoes they make. It would take them each 11,494 years to make what Arnault took in so far in 2019.

The continuing sales bonanza of luxury clothes, cars, jewellery, yachts and mansions shows how the corporate elite is spending more and more on its own selfish whims, even as the broad mass of the population in France and internationally faces growing poverty, unemployment and homelessness.

Arnault’s income this year alone is so large that it is virtually incomprehensible. On average, his wealth grew by $1.23 billion each week. Assuming he slept an average of eight hours, he went to bed every night and woke up $58 million richer. His wealth grew by $2,000 a second.

Arnault personifies the domination over economic and political life in France by a corporate oligarchy. He owns the Parisian daily newspaper Le Parisien as well as the financial daily Les Echos. He enjoys close personal ties with politicians from all the major parties. In 1995, he was reportedly one of the two witnesses in the marriage of Nicolas Sarkozy, the lawyer and future right-wing president of France.

The 2005 wedding ceremony of Arnault’s daughter, Delphine, held at the 400-year-old château d’Yquem in Bordeaux, was attended by Sarkozy, Bernadette Chirac (wife of former president Jacques Chirac) and leading Socialist Party official Hubert Védrine.

Védrine was foreign minister in Lionel Jospin’s PS-led “Plural Left” government from 1997 to 2002. Before that, he was a close adviser to President François Mitterrand (Socialist Party, PS), serving as his secretary of state at the start of the 1990s. In 2009, Védrine joined the board of LVMH, where he has remained since, personifying the corrupt revolving door connecting politicians in all the major parties to the boardrooms of the corporations that they served faithfully while in office. 

Bernard Arnault

Arnault made his fortune beginning in the 1980s. The son of a construction mogul, he moved to the United States at the start of the decade and attempted unsuccessfully to create his own business empire in American real estate.

While he is often cited as an example of the flight of the super-rich away from France in fear at the election of Mitterrand in 1981, it was in fact the Mitterrand government that played a key role in helping create his fortune.

In 1984, with French state support, Arnault purchased the near-bankrupt French textile company Boussac, which included the Christian Dior perfume label, for the symbolic sum of 1 franc. Having publicly pledged to protect all the jobs at the textile manufacturer, within five years he had sold off most of the company’s assets, firing around 8,000 workers. His fortune is directly associated with deindustrialization and the savage assault on the French working class in the 1980s and 1990s under the PS, enforced by Stalinist-led union bureaucracies.

Arnault is a public supporter of French President Emmanuel Macron, telling the Financial Times this month that Macron correctly understands that “the wealth of a country is made by the success of its companies.”

What would be done with $100 billion in a rational society?

Placing Arnault’s income in relative terms, the $32 billion that he has received since the start of the year is slightly more than what the United Nations claimed would be necessary to provide food for every person going hungry in the world for one year and prevent all starvation.

Equivalently, it could be used to double the number of nurses in France, and additionally increase all nurses’ annual salary by €9,000. This would go some way to addressing the permanent crisis in the French healthcare system that has triggered a growing wave of wildcat protests across the country against emergency wards stretched to breaking point.

Assuming that both these measures were enacted, Arnault’s remaining fortune would be enough to spend the $11 billion that the World Health Organization estimates is needed to halve the number of people in the world without access to clean water—many of them in African countries that suffered historic oppression by French and European imperialism—and $26 billion to provide an education to every child in the world who does not currently receive one.

These figures constitute a powerful case for expropriation and the necessity of the socialist reorganization of society. The capitalist elite’s death grip over social life is incompatible with the most elementary needs of the working class, which produces all of society’s wealth.

This is why the Macron government has reacted to “yellow vest” protests against social inequality not with concessions—but with tear gas, rubber bullets, water cannon, stun grenades and attack dogs. In France as in every country, the ruling class responds to the growth of working-class opposition with a turn to dictatorship to defend the wealth of the super-rich.

The only rational policy is to expropriate the ill-gotten wealth of the corporate and financial elite in France and internationally, to put it to use to meet pressing social needs of the world’s population. This means taking the major corporations and banks out of private hands and transforming them into public utilities, run under the democratic control of the working class, and organized according to scientific planning in order to guarantee every person in the world a high standard of living.

Trump plan will slash Medicaid and food stamps

Norisa Diaz

The Trump administration is working to escalate the transfer of wealth from the working class to the financial aristocracy by changing the way the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) calculates inflation, and therefore the way it measures poverty. The result—entirely intentional—will be to reduce social benefits for low-income people and over time exclude hundreds of thousands of them from programs such as Medicaid, food stamps and home heating assistance.

The OMB has requested public comment on a proposal to recalculate inflation based on the so-called “chained” Consumer Price Index (CPI) to calculate the Census Bureau’s Official Poverty Measure (OPM). The change from the CPI used up to now—a shift that has been pushed since the George W. Bush administration--will reduce the government’s annual measure of inflation by 0.2 to 0.3 percentage points.

As a result, the government’s federal poverty level will fall, making hundreds of thousands of poor people no longer eligible for benefits.

The OMB currently calculates inflation based on the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U). Every month, the prices of 211 items in 38 locales are evaluated to see how prices are changing. Trump and his OMB chief Rick Mulvaney, a right-wing Republican who is also serving as acting White House chief of staff, argue that the CPI-U overestimates inflation because it does not account for changes in what people buy to compensate for rising prices. The “chained” CPI supposedly takes such shifts into account, pushing down the official inflation rate.

Organizations that monitor public health and access to social services have carried out studies showing that that if chained CPI is implemented, more than a half-million individuals, including tens of thousands of children, will be cut off from assistance within the next decade.

Aviva Aron-Dine, the vice president for health policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), said earlier this week, “The notice describes and asks for comment on a long list of different inflation measures, but really it’s a proposal to lower the federal poverty line and thereby lower eligibility for many federal programs.”

Over the next decade CBPP estimates that 300,000 adults and children will become ineligible for Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and 250,000 adults will lose coverage under Medicaid expansion.

Researchers Gregory Acs and Laura Wheaton at the Urban Institute have calculated what the cuts would have amounted to if the chained CPI model had been used for the 15 years prior to 2016. Acs told the World Socialist Web Site, “We looked at the people who are on SNAP (food stamps) in a typical month in 2016, the last year we had full data in our model. If we used the chained CPI starting in 2001, for the last 15 years, how many people who were on SNAP in 2016 would not be eligible because their incomes were too high?

“We found that if that model had been used 15 years prior to 2016, 579,000 recipients would have been ineligible for SNAP benefits.” He added that “242,000—or about 42 percent—would have been children.”

He continued: “If you were to change from CPI to chained, the poverty line would grow 0.2 or 0.3 percentage points slower. This might at first appear limited, but in a single generation that can mean a five percent difference.”

Acs told the WSWS that the way poverty is currently calculated “misses fundamental changes in society, as it set a poverty line based on what the world was like 50 or 60 years ago, based entirely on nutrition.” He added, “This needs to be reset every decade or two.” Acs argued that the supplemental poverty measure is a preferred measure of poverty, as it considers the cost of food, clothing, shelter and utilities.

The administration points as a precedent for applying chained CPI to the poverty threshold the fact that it was incorporated into the 2017 tax overhaul bill, which provided a massive handout to the financial elite and increased the federal deficit over ten years by $1.4 trillion due to lost federal tax revenues.

In November 2017, the WSWS warned, “It is already becoming clear that the tax overhaul is a prelude to a frontal attack on Medicare and Social Security. On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office warned that the tax bill could trigger a budget rule that would require up to half a trillion dollars in Medicare cuts over the next decade.”

The plan to change the inflation measure is part of a deepening assault on the working class, requiring the most vulnerable social layers to pay for the transfer of trillions to the financial aristocracy with a loss of access to health care and groceries.

The Democratic Party, which is openly capitulating to Trump’s savage war on immigrants and seeking to escalate its war-mongering anti-Russia campaign, is saying little about the escalating assault on social programs for the working class and poor.

US House votes down amendment to block NSA collection of the personal communications of American citizens

Kevin Reed

On June 18, the US House of Representatives voted 283-175 against an amendment that would have limited the government’s ability to collect the personal communications of US citizens without a warrant. The amendment was introduced by Reps. Justin Amash, a Republican from Michigan, and Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, as part of a federal spending bill that includes funding for the Labor Department, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense.

NSA headquarters sign

The proposal was specifically written to block provisions of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978 that allows the US government—in the name of collecting intelligence on non-Americans located outside the US—to inherently and intentionally collect and store the communications of American citizens.

The motion by Amash and Lofgren had attracted the support of 42 civil rights groups including the ACLU, Arab American Institute, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Fight for the Future. In a letter to the House, the coalition of organizations wrote that adoption of the amendment would “significantly advance the privacy rights of people within the United States.”

The one-page amendment stated in part, “This certification does not authorize any acquisition that intentionally targets a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States if a significant purpose of such targeting is to acquire the communications of a particular, known person reasonably believed to be in the United States. …”

In explaining the motion, Representative Amash said, “The government can search and sweep in billions of communications, including communications of Americans, and then query that data. … The Amash-Lofgren amendment puts in basic safeguards to allow the government to continue using Section 702 for its stated purpose of gathering foreign intelligence, while limiting the government’s warrantless collection of Americans’ communications under FISA.”

The FISA Act has been revised and updated multiple times since its adoption. The initial passage was in response to the illegal use of federal resources by the Nixon administration in the late 1960s and early 1970s to spy on political and civil rights organizations within the US.

The law created special mechanisms for judicial and congressional oversight of the federal government’s surveillance of foreign entities and individuals within the US. Among these structures was the creation of the FISA court (also known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or FISC) to which the FBI and NSA must submit requests for warrantless searches for approval. The three-judge FISC panel operates in complete secrecy, and there is no requirement for its decisions to be released to the public.

Over the years, and especially since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent US military occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, the law has been used to cover up the expansion of warrantless domestic wiretapping and eavesdropping by the intelligence state.

Six years to the month after the revelations by former intelligence officer Edward Snowden that the NSA was systematically collecting the private e-mail messages and phone calls of everyone all over the world, the vote in the House of Representatives demonstrates that such activities are ongoing.

NSA Headquarters at night

This is no surprise, as the provisions of Section 702 have remained following post-Snowden revisions to the FISA law. The so-called USA Freedom Act of 2015—explicitly sold to the American people as the end of government spying on the public—and the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017 both preserved Section 702 in its original formulation.

Though the Amash and Lofgren amendment was offered on a spending bill and not on government surveillance policy specifically, its defeat still stands as a measure of the willingness of the US political establishment to openly flout Fourth Amendment protections against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” Significantly, among those voting against the amendment were many Democrats including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff.

In response to the vote, Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future, said in a statement, “It’s good to know that House Democrats like Adam Schiff are ’resisting’ Trump by voting to ensure that he has limitless authority to conduct mass warrantless surveillance,” adding, “The Democrats who voted against this common sense amendment just threw immigrants, LGBTQ folks, activists, journalists, and political dissidents under the bus by voting to rubberstamp the Trump administration’s Orwellian domestic spying capabilities.”

Although there have been press reports that the Trump Administration was not planning to renew legal authorization for the NSA data harvesting program, the persistent congressional support for Section 702 of FISA shows that such practices are critical to the state security apparatus. The New York Times, for example, reported in March that, according to Luke Murray, the national security advisor to Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the NSA was quietly shutting down the program due to “technical irregularities,” not concerns about the violation of constitutional rights.

On the contrary, police and state intelligence information gathering is on the increase against US citizens, especially those who have taken a stand against the Trump administration’s immigration policy. As reported by the World Socialist Web Site, this now includes the use of sophisticated methods of social media content collection for the purpose of profiling and targeting individuals and organizations within the US for harassment, intimidation, deportation and arrest by the Department of Homeland Security.

Honduran military invades university and shoots down students

Andrea Lobo

About 40 soldiers invaded the campus of the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH) firing live ammunition and tear gas into a crowd of hundreds of student protesters, leaving 20 injured. The five wounded by bullets are in “stable” condition, according to hospital authorities.

The operation follows the killing of four demonstrators and maiming of dozens with gunfire last week. Videos have shown armed squads snatching protesters, and the body of a young doctor was found after he participated in protests earlier this month.

Dozens more, including university students, have been killed by the Honduran police and military during recurring mass demonstrations since the US-backed military coup on June 28, 2009, that overthrew elected president Manuel Zelaya. UNAH, whose students have continuously been at the forefront of these demonstrations, had previously been invaded by riot police in 2009 and last year.

The most recent military repression, however, is unprecedented in the last decades and recalls nothing so much as the methods used against radicalized students and workers during the 1980s. While it did not experience the kind of full-fledged civil war seen in neighboring Central American countries, Honduras saw during this period the “disappearance” of 184 activists and the killing of dozens by US-trained death squads.

On Monday afternoon, students in UNAH’s University City in the capital of Tegucigalpa reported on social media that more than 300 armed officials of the National Police and the Military Police for Public Order (PMOP) had besieged the campus, firing tear gas and not allowing them to leave.

“Students reacted by throwing stones at the agents and, in response, the PMOP officials entered through the pedestrian walkway into the campus, pursuing students and firing with their rifles,” reported the AFP.

A chaotic scene followed, with videos showing the trapped students, who numbered more than 2,000, seeking to escape, carrying the injured with them.

The statement released by the armed forces, while making sweeping and unfounded claims of Molotov cocktails thrown and a hostage held by students, recognizes that their gunshots hit students’ legs as they sought to run away.

Students have been carrying out intermittent occupations of campuses across the country as part of the protests led by striking teachers and doctors that began nationally on April 26. While calling for the downfall of the regime headed by President Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), the most recent demonstrations were triggered by two bills that would further facilitate defunding, mass layoffs and privatizations in the public health and education sectors.

These and other austerity measures were dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as part of credit talks in April aimed at meeting billions of dollars in interest payments to the local and international financial oligarchies and tax exemptions for the 24 Export Processing Zones in the country, as well as multinational exporters like Dole.

One IMF “structural” program after another, on top of the open sacking of millions of dollars from Social Security Institute (IHSS) by the PNH leadership, have resulted in thousands of unnecessary deaths and a massive fall in living standards. Moreover, unemployment and subemployment have together increased from 35.6 percent in 2008 to 63 percent today.

Despite the policies implemented by both the US and Mexican governments of militarized border policing, mass deportations and concentration camps deliberately aimed at making migrants suffer, the first eight months of this fiscal year saw about 210,000 Honduran migrants apprehended by US and Mexican authorities. This represents about 2.3 percent of the population seeking to escape rampant poverty, murderous state repression and the world’s highest homicide rates, which surpass 300 per 100,000 people in the northern departments (compared to 5 for the United States).

Meanwhile, the local ruling elite, composed of a handful of millionaire and even billionaire financiers and landowners who have partnered chiefly with US and European capital, sit in gated mansions in Honduras with their joint investments and property protected by the state forces trained and armed by their US patrons.

The rapid escalation of privatizations, social austerity, concessions of land and natural resources and attacks on jobs and wages that followed the 2009 coup was paired with the intensification of capitalist state repression. Decrees signed in November 2011 and March 2012 allowed the military’s deployment in the country. In August 2012, the military special force “Tigres” was approved, followed one year later by the creation of the PMOP, both trained by the US military.

These forces have gradually grown to about 15,000 soldiers and serve as a reliable repressive force. It was the PMOP that was deployed across the country when riot police struck last week.

The US ruling class and its client elite in the region see the demonstrations in Honduras, along with the mass protests last year in Nicaragua against IMF pension cuts and this year’s strike waves across Mexico, as harbingers of a mass social explosion that not only threatens the present regimes in Central America, but capitalist rule and imperialism itself with the triggering and confluence of revolutionary struggles across the entire hemisphere.

The private intelligence firm Stratfor wrote earlier this month: “The protests could continue to June 28, the 10th anniversary of the 2009 Honduran coup. They could even gain momentum and turn into a lengthy insurrection against the president. The security situation in Honduras will rapidly deteriorate if the protest wave continues to gain momentum, and could send more migrants north within months.”

On Saturday, the US Southern Command chief, Adm. Craig S. Fuller, arrived at the US Soto Cano base in Honduras to inaugurate a US Marine “rapid intervention” deployment in the country. The following day, he released a statement virtually calling on the Venezuelan military to topple the Maduro government to “welcome you back into our hemisphere’s professional brotherhood-of-arms…[and] to the family of democracies in this hemisphere.”

The increasingly brutal response to the eruption of struggles against austerity and dictatorship in Honduras, as well as the abuses against migrants, are a warning to workers in Honduras itself, the Americas and beyond. US imperialism is prepared to employ the most ruthless militarist methods in defense of its economic and geopolitical interests, especially as it moves to counter the decline of its economic weight globally by relying on its “brotherhood-of-arms” to underpin its political hegemony.

The shelving of the bills in Honduras and the escalating repression—not to speak of the upper-middle-class march organized last weekend by the ruling National Party calling for “social peace”—have not deterred protesters.

However, the current leadership of the protests, including the University Student Movement (MEU) and the trade union organizations that formed the Platform for the Defense of Health Care and Education, are guiding workers and youth into the same dead end seen historically in all petty-bourgeois and bourgeois “left” nationalist movements: a rotten compromise with imperialism and its stooges.

A worker rightly commented on an announcement on social media of the “conditions for negotiations” outlined by the leader of the Medical Association, who has been promoted as the spokeswoman of the protests: “YOU, Mrs. Suyapa Figueroa and the others in the PLATFORM have been in charge of demobilizing the Honduran people when it was at a key moment to take down the dictatorship…we can’t have a truce like you did wanting to go into a dialogue that was only meant to demobilize the people and legitimize [the regime].”

There is nothing to negotiate with the JOH regime or any of the bourgeois governments in Latin America dependent on foreign finance capital and committed to the continued impoverishment of the working class. The only feasible alternative for workers is to organize independently of the nationalist and pro-capitalist unions and any organization seeking to subordinate them to one or another sector of the bourgeoisie, as part of an internationalist political movement with workers across the Americas against imperialism and for socialism.

300,000 demonstrate in Prague against right-wing Czech government

Markus Salzmann 

An estimated 300,000 people protested in the Czech capital of Prague last Sunday against the right-wing government of Prime Minister Andrei Babiš. At what was the biggest demonstration in the Czech Republic since the so-called Velvet Revolution of 1989, protesters demanded the resignation of the billionaire founder of the right-wing neo-liberal party ANO.

After the approximately 750-meter-long Wenceslas Square was determined to be too small to hold the protest, the demonstration was moved to the Letná Plateau on the banks of the Vltava, the site of the mass protests against the Stalinist regime 30 years ago. Three decades later it has become clear that the restoration of capitalism in Eastern Europe has not brought the promised prosperity and freedom. Instead, unprecedented levels of social inequality are being overseen by a thoroughly corrupt, authoritarian elite.

For seven weeks, thousands of Czechs have protested against Babiš, who is accused of corruption and of using his political power for private, business purposes. The protests are also directed against Czech Justice Minister Marie Benešova, who is accused of obstructing investigations against Babiš. According to Forbes magazine, the assets of the Czech Prime Minister are estimated at around 3.3 billion euros, making him the second richest man in the country.

The participants in Sunday’s demonstration were overwhelmingly workers, youth and pensioners, the majority of whom have suffered from the incessant attacks on social rights and benefits carried out by successive Czech governments. Posters at the demo read “Disappear” and “Babiš resign.” Further protests have been announced for August, and could continue up to the date planned to celebrate the toppling of the former Stalinist regime in 1989.

The mass protests in the Czech Republic are yet another indication of the international resurgence of the class struggle. Particularly in Eastern Europe, more and more people have taken to the streets or gone on strike in recent months to protest against catastrophic living conditions, poor wages and corrupt governments. The recent strike by Polish teachers was the largest in Poland in 30 years, and a strike by Hungarian auto workers nearly paralysed European production at Volkswagen. In Serbia and Albania thousands have taken to the streets to vent their opposition to their corrupt right-wing governments.

While the Czech and European press crows about continuing economic growth and low unemployment, the reality for ordinary people is very different. Rapidly rising rents in the cities and price increases for food, electricity and gasoline are driving many families to desperation. Prague is already one of the most expensive cities in Europe. In 2018, around 17 percent of Czechs lived in poverty.

The precarious economic reality becomes clear once one examines the increase in private indebtedness. As Radio Praha reported, around ten percent of the population can no longer pay their debts and must forfeit their property and possessions. This total includes around 10,000 persons aged between 18 and 29, and around 400 debtors under 18. Against such a background of social misery the Babiš government has pledged to implement further social cuts.

A number of right-wing, pro-European Union forces are seeking to exploit the legitimate protests against the hated billionaire for their own purposes. These forces are opposed to toppling the government and any expansion of the protests. Several representatives of these organisations have openly declared they do not seek to reverse the outcome of the 2017 election, which resulted in Babiš's party as frontrunner. Instead they would be satisfied instead with his removal as head of government.

In particular, the organizers of “One Million Moments for Democracy,” who are close to social-democratic and conservative pro-EU forces, want to force the government to adopt a stronger pro-European policy. “We are not making a revolution, but rather returning to the legacy and values of 1989,” said one of the initiators, Benjamin Roll.

These forces base themselves entirely on the criticism of Babiš made by Brussels. A recent European Commission audit report concluded that Babiš exerted huge influence over his holding, Agrofert, which he officially outsourced to two trust funds. On the basis of numerous examples, the 71-page report explained how EU subsidies finished up in the coffers of Babis’ company. A demand has been raised for the return of over 17 million euros.

Babiš responded by calling the Brussels report an “attack on the Czech Republic,” raising the prospect that the Czech Republic may prove to be as difficult for the EU as Hungary under its right-wing Prime Minister Victor Orban.

The Babiš government typifies all those forces that committed themselves to capitalism thirty years ago and shamelessly plundered the economy at the expense of the people. The son of a functionary of the Communist Party, Babiš studied in Paris and Geneva. From 1985 to 1991 he was head of the Czechoslovak commercial agency in Morocco.

During this time, he is said to have worked under the code name “Bures” for the Stalinist secret service, a claim Babiš denies. The files kept in the Slovakian capital Bratislava have been falsified, he argues. What is clear is that he had close contacts to the former state leadership and in the early 1990s used his links to consolidate Agrofert into a billion-dollar company.

Babiš entered politics in 2011 with the ANO party, which is completely geared to his person and interests. Babiš founded the party after both the social-democratic and conservative parties had become increasingly discredited. He won the 2017 general election with a clear majority but less than two years later he faces the protest of hundreds of thousands.

It is no coincidence that Babiš rules in a coalition with the Social Democratic CSSD. Thirty years ago, this successor to the Stalinist state party played the key role in selling off public owned property, plunging thousands of workers into unemployment and poverty. Following extensive losses in the last election, the CSSD is threatened with collapse.

The government is supported by the Communist Party (KSCM). The KSCM still adheres to the tradition of the former Stalinist state party, which proceeded ruthlessly against the population when it thought its rule was endangered. The party refuses to support a vote of no confidence in Babiš and has stated it will continue to support the billionaire's government.