Mass protests in Bangladesh against brutal cost of living increases

Wimal Perera

Tens of thousands of people protested in Dhaka on December 10 to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League-led government and to call for new elections over rising inflation, fuel increases and violent police attacks. The next general election is not officially due until the end of 2023. The demonstrations—part of a national series of “restore democracy” protests—were organised by the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

Thousands of Bangladesh Nationalist Party supporters rally in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Dec. 10, 2022, to demand the Hasina government resign and hold early elections. [AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu]

The BNP’s campaign has nothing to do with restoring democracy, nor is it driven by concerns about the deepening social crisis facing the Bangladeshi masses. The right-wing BNP is attempting to take advantage of the mass discontent against the Hasina administration, which has been in power for three consecutive terms since 2009.

But the BNP is determined to keep popular anger within the country’s parliamentary framework. When it was in power the BNP brutally repressed the opposition parties and the struggles of workers and the poor.

The BNP-led 20-party alliance, which includes the Islamic fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami and several other Islamist groups, has held 10 rallies, starting on October 12 in Chittagong, over the past two months.

Along with calls for the resignation of the Hasina government and for early elections, last Saturday’s rally in Dhaka issued eight other demands. These included the release of BNP chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia who was jailed in 2018 for 17 years on corruption charges. The BNP alliance also announced that it would hold nationwide protests on December 24.

According to media reports, some 32,000 police mobilised in Dhaka to crack down on last weekend’s rally. The Awami League had previously warned the BNP not to hold mass protests in Dhaka on December 24 because it was holding its national council in the city on the same day.

Earlier BNP-led protests were violently attacked by police, aided by ruling party thugs. Seven BNP protesters have been killed by police and thousands injured so far.

Thousands more have been detained, including BNP secretary Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, who has been charged with “provoking party members to launch an attack on police” during a December 7 protest in Nayapaltan, Dhaka. Police raided the BNP’s central office on the same day.

The Hasina regime, which faces an escalating economic crisis, is acutely nervous about the rising mass opposition. Reflecting these concerns, a December 8 editorial in the Daily Star warned, “What could it [the ruling establishment] possibly gain from a heavy-handed confrontation and raid on the central office of the BNP?”

Running parallel with the BNP’s campaign, various Stalinist and “left” organisations have staged anti-government protests. The Left Democratic Alliance—which includes six pro-capitalist parties, including the Stalinist Bangladesh Communist Party (CPB), Socialist Party and Revolutionary Communist League—held a national protest on December 13 over government repression.

Echoing the BNP’s demands, CPB general secretary Ruhin Hossain Prince has declared that the only alternative to the current political crisis is to hold the next general elections under a neutral interim government.

The CPB and its allied trade unions, such as the Garment Workers’ Trade Union Centre, have repeatedly betrayed workers struggles. In 2020, when Bangladeshi apparel factories’ shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Chowdhury agreed with employer demands that workers’ wages be cut by 35 percent.

In late November, Workers Party president Rashed Khan Menon appealed to various political parties to take joint action against the government. The Workers Party, which is another Stalinist formation and a member of Hasina’s ruling alliance, is desperately attempting to hoodwink its supporters by distancing itself from the government’s repressive actions.

All these Stalinist parties have a long record of aligning themselves with both of the country’s main bourgeois parties. In 1983, the CPB joined the Awami League-led 15-party alliance against the military rule of Hussain Muhammad Ershad. In 2006 it supported the BNP and since 2008 it has been part of Hasina’s grand electoral alliance.

The sordid political manoeuvres of the BNP, the Stalinists and other bourgeois parties, reflect their concerns about the deep-seated mass anger of working people over rising inflation, job cuts and government moves to privatise state-owned enterprises.

In the last six months, the prices of more than 50 essential medicines have increased. In early August, the government announced a more than 40 percent increase in fuel prices—the highest rises in Bangladeshi history—which immediately triggered nationwide protests of workers and the poor.

In November, the price of loose flour increased by 4 percent to 60–63 taka per kilogram. This month the average bulk electricity price will be increased by 20 percent, even as consumers suffer from daily power cuts. Bangladesh imports almost 77 percent of its total oil and refined fuels.

Anger is brewing, particularly among the country’s four million Bangladesh garment workers, who have suffered hundreds of thousands job losses, wage cuts and unpaid salary arrears during the pandemic.

On October 10, Janoron Sweater workers in Ashulia demonstrated to demand outstanding wages. On November 2, Olio Apparels workers protested due to four-month’s unpaid wages. On December 13, workers at the New Line Clothing Company in Gazipur took action for between three and five months of unpaid wages.

Farmers have also held demonstrations in Jamalpur, Rangpur and several other districts, to demand an uninterrupted supply of fertilisers.

Since coming to power in 2009, Hasina’s Awami League-led regime has ruthlessly mobilised the police and the notorious Rapid Action Battalion to repress all opposition from workers and the poor.

In January 2019, police shot dead a garment employee and injured scores when thousands of garment workers struck to demand a wage rise. Under bogus claims of fighting drugs in 2018, Bangladeshi police have conducted a systemic campaign against the population killing over 100 people and arresting about 12,000.

Like every other country, the deepening economic crisis in Bangladesh is a direct result of the US-NATO proxy war in Ukraine and the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

After having recorded several years of increased foreign currency reserves, Bangladesh’s current reserves have dropped to $US34.47 billion. At the end of June this year its foreign debt soared to $94.5 billion. In August, inflation surged to a 10-year high of 9.52 percent and continues to rise.

According to the International Monetary Fund’s October global outlook report, Bangladesh’s GDP growth forecast for fiscal year 2022–23 will decline to 6 percent, down from the government’s target of 7.5 percent. The Hasina government is currently attempting to secure a $4.5 billion IMF bailout package, the third country in South Asia behind Pakistan and Sri Lanka to seek help this year.

The World Bank reported in October that “revenues from self-employment [in Bangladesh], as well as median earnings for salaried and wage workers, still have not bounced back to levels commonly reported before the pandemic.”

Even though the BNP is attempting to seize upon the growing mass discontent, this right-wing bourgeois party, which has deep connections to the military, was deeply hated for its repressive rule. In the December 2008 general elections, it was routed with its number of parliamentary seats reduced from 300 to 29.

The BNP and the Awami League are pro-imperialist big business parties. They depend on the political support of the Bangladesh Stalinists, pseudo-left organisations and unions to maintain capitalist rule and impose the burden of the capitalist crisis on the working class and the poor.

Elon Musk’s Twitter mass bans tech and left-wing reporters

Kevin Reed

In an act of blatant retaliation Thursday evening, Twitter suspended the accounts of leading tech journalists who have been reporting on the social media company and its billionaire owner Elon Musk.

Among the purged accounts are those of Ryan Mac of the New York Times, Donie O'Sullivan of CNN, Drew Harwell of the Washington Post, Matt Binder of Mashable, Micah Lee of The Intercept and independent journalists Aaron Rupar, Keith Olbermann and Tony Webster. The account of the open source social media platform Mastodon was also suspended.

No explanation was given by Twitter for the suspensions. NBC News reported that a spokesperson for the New York Times said the suspensions were “questionable and unfortunate” and that neither the journalist nor the Times organization had received any information about the banning of Mac’s account.

“We hope that all of the journalists’ accounts are reinstated, and that Twitter provides a satisfying explanation for this action,” said Charlie Stadtlander, communications director for the Times.

Some tech news sources reported that the shutdowns were connected to the Twitter decision on Wednesday to suspend @ElonJet, the account of 20-year-old Florida college student Jack Sweeney which tracked the whereabouts of Elon Musk’s private jet, based on publicly available flight information.

Explaining the decision to terminate Sweeney’s account, Musk tweeted on Wednesday, “Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info.” Twitter then suspended more than 25 accounts that tracked planes of government agencies, billionaires and others. 

However, after his jet tracking account was closed, Sweeney moved it to Mastodon, a social media competitor of Twitter, and continued to post the jet location information. The journalists who were suspended had shared the Mastodon account information as part of their reporting on Twitter.

In the case of The Intercept’s Lee, for example, the journalist said in a text message that before the suspension of his account he had attempted to tweet out a link to the Mastodon account that tracked Musk’s jet but was unable to and instead tweeted a screenshot.

Washington Post reporter Harwell described a similar experience when he tweeted about Mastodon being kicked off Twitter. His account was terminated immediately after he posted information about how Twitter had shut down the account of its competitor and was violating free speech rights.

As of this writing, Musk had not responded to requests for comment and Twitter did not respond to email inquiries by news media.

The measures taken by Twitter expose as a fraud Musk’s claims that he is a “free speech absolutist” and that his $44 billion private acquisition of the social media company would result in an increase in the free exchange of ideas on the platform. On April 25, for example, Musk tweeted that he hoped “even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means.”

Meanwhile, in October, Musk said any decision to reinstate the account of Donald Trump—or others permanently banned from the platform since the January 6, 2021, assault on the US Capitol—would be made by a content moderation council. Instead, Musk moved to restore Trump’s account several days after the fascistic former president announced his intention to run for the White House in 2024. No content council has ever been convened.

Brazil’s Lula endorses Castillo’s impeachment in Peru on behalf of imperialism

Tomas Castanheira

The fall of Peru’s pseudo-left-backed President Pedro Castillo, impeached and arrested a week ago, is a political event with profound implications for Latin America.

In the one and a half year he has remained in office, the former Peruvian teacher and trade unionist has faced a sustained effort by the far-right opposition to illegally remove him from power.

Brazil’s president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, participates in the closing event of the work of the Transition Cabinet, on December 13. (Photo: Valter Campanato/Agência Brasil) [Photo: Valter Campanato/Agência Brasil]

Castillo quickly lost any popular support by implementing the same pro-capitalist policies he had promised to fight and unleashing brutal repression against the growing struggles of the working class.

Like all the reactionary measures Castillo took to win the support of the Peruvian ruling class, the military and the imperialist powers, his final act of despair—to call for the dissolution of Congress and the establishment of a state of exception—played into the hands of the extreme right conspiring against his government.

The impeachment and arrest of Castillo, along with the appointment of his vice president, Dina Boluarte, as president of Peru, were enacted at lightning speed by a Congress that has an even lower popular approval rating than the deposed president. However, its decisions were promptly endorsed by the European Union and Washington.

The eagerness of the imperialist powers to back Boluarte is primarily motivated by the fear that the process of transferring power entirely behind the backs of the Peruvian population will spark a social explosion in the country with the potential of spreading throughout the region.

These counterrevolutionary efforts of imperialism had the immediate backing of the newly elected president of Brazil, Luís Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers Party (PT).

On Wednesday evening, December 7, Lula published a letter supporting Castillo’s removal from office and assuring that “everything was carried out within the constitutional framework.” Presenting the episode as a lesson for South America, the Brazilian leader greeted Boluarte and wished her “success in her task of reconciling the country and leading it along the path of development and social peace.”

The position taken by Lula, who is desperate for the support of the imperialist powers and the reactionary ruling class of his own country, differed from those of other Latin American leaders, who either remained silent or openly defended Castillo.

Lula’s attitude towards the Peruvian crisis signals an ostensible break with the diplomatic policies pursued in his previous terms as president of Brazil, between 2003 and 2010. Then, the Brazilian former trade unionist belonged to a group of bourgeois national governments in Latin America, the so-called “Pink Tide,” that sought to present themselves as a viable alternative to the capitalist misery and imperialist oppression that historically dominated the region.

In 2008, alongside figures such as Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Nestor Kirchner of Argentina, and Evo Morales of Bolivia, Lula founded the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). The purported goal of this initiative was to forge an economic, political, and military bloc that would allow for unprecedented development of the oppressed continent.

In a supposed show of independence from US imperialism, the South American countries jointly responded to the police insurrection against Rafael Correa in Ecuador in 2010. In an emergency meeting convened on the same day of the events, UNASUR condemned the coup attempt in Ecuador and approved a resolution to prevent future coup attempts in the continent.

Within a decade, the UNASUR project completely foundered, alongside the crisis of the Pink Tide governments and their pretensions of an alternative Latin American path to socialism.

Although Lula promises in his new government program that he will resume efforts for “South American, Latin American and Caribbean integration” and to strengthen initiatives like UNASUR, his response to the crisis in Peru shows a determination to achieve a unilateral accommodation with the imperialist powers.

Lula’s verdict on the undemocratic process of Castillo’s ouster—“everything was carried out within the constitutional framework”—is even more hypocritical if one considers his response to the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff of the PT in 2016. The toppling of Rousseff and the elevation of her right-wing vice president Michel Temer to the presidency, executed on the basis of trumped-up charges by a Congress determined to undemocratically remove her from power, was characterized by the PT as an unequivocal “coup d’état.”

Castillo faced an even more unscrupulous and blatant conspiracy by the far-right. Determined first to subvert the popular vote, it then worked feverishly in the Congress to sabotage the basic functioning of the government and to remove the president based upon absolutely reactionary charges such as “betrayal of the fatherland.” In this case, however, Lula claims that’s what a constitutional process looks like. The success he wished Boluarte “in reconciling the country” might as well have been directed to Michel Temer!

Lula’s readiness to throw Castillo to the lions is an expression of his own tremendous political weakness in the face of conditions analogous to those that undermined Peru’s pseudo-left government.

The new PT government struggles to assume office as it is confronted by an authoritarian conspiracy by Brazil’s current President Jair Bolsonaro, supported by sections of the military. Like Keiko Fujimori, defeated by Castillo in Peru, the fascistic Bolsonaro and his Liberal Party refuse to acknowledge the election’s results and demand that political power be kept in their hands.

Last Friday, Bolsonaro spoke out for only the third time in public since his defeat was confirmed 40 days ago. He urged his supporters to remain mobilized, stressing that he remains “the supreme chief of the Armed Forces,” which he defined as “the last obstacle to socialism.” His speech was followed, three days later, by violent protests in Brasilia by his fascist supporters against the official certification of Lula’s victory.

German military’s special forces unit has ties to far-right Reichsbürger terrorist network

Peter Schwarz

On December 7, in one of the largest police raids in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, some 3,000 officers stormed about 150 locations in 11 federal states and arrested 25 people, who continue to be held in pretrial detention. Another 29 people are under investigation. The state prosecutor has accused them of being members or supporters of a terrorist organisation, and the searches are ongoing.

On the day of the raid, the federal prosecutor released a statement saying those arrested belonged to an organisation “that aimed to overturn the existing state order in Germany and replace it with its own form of government.”

Prince Reuss Heinrich XIII was charged by the federal prosecutor as the ringleader. Prince Reuss is a Frankfurt real estate agent and descendant of a Thuringian noble family who ruled the Vogtland region for 700 years, while another leading suspect is the former paratrooper commander Rüdiger von Pescatore, who led the terrorist organisation’s “military arm.”

Among the detainees are also the Berlin judge and former member of parliament of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, as well as former elite soldiers, including the former special forces (KSK) Colonel Maximilian E. The locations searched included the barracks of the KSK in Calw, Baden-Württemberg, which was previously identified as a centre of the right-wing terrorist Hannibal network.

The network, which draws on the milieu of Reichsbürger, QAnon supporters, so-called “lateral thinkers” (Querdenken) and coronavirus deniers, is estimated to number in the tens of thousands. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution (as Germany’s domestic secret service is called) numbers the supporters of the monarchist and anti-democratic Reichsbürger at 23,000 alone, 2,000 more than a year ago. It considers 10 percent to be prepared to use violence.

KSK soldiers at the Bundeswehr Day 2017 at the army airfield Faßberg [Photo by Tim Rademacher / wikimedia / CC BY-SA 4.0]

Last week’s raid was apparently carried out because the Interior Ministry and the chief federal prosecutor’s office feared imminent attacks against state institutions, which would have endangered the lives of high-ranking government officials and politicians.

The investigation thus far into the terrorist network within the Reichsbürger milieu has uncovered a strikingly large number of members of the KSK.

In addition to the above-mentioned Rüdiger von Pescatore, those figures already known by name include Maximilian Eder, who led an armored grenadier battalion in Kosovo in 1999 and later served in the KSK; Peter Wörner, a trained KSK elite soldier who now works as a survival coach; and Andreas Meyer, who is still active in the KSK as a staff sergeant.

Not all of the 54 people under investigation by the public prosecutor’s office are known, so there could well be further KSK members among them.

The strong presence of elite soldiers among the terror suspects makes clear that the plans for a putsch were not simply the fantasies of a few crazy individuals, as is often claimed. It is now also known that during the first raids, the police secured some 90 weapons and a six-figure sum of cash, and discovered a reference to gold bars worth €6 million allegedly stored in a Swiss safe.

In addition, the investigators found lists of possible enemy targets. According to the news magazine Der Spiegel, they discovered at the arrested Marco v. H.’s residence a handwritten list of 10 politicians from Baden-Württemberg, several doctors and a judicial official. In addition to the names, the addresses of the politicians’ electoral district offices and the doctors’ practices were noted.

The high number of suspected military personnel is significant for another reason. It shows how closely the growth of fascist terrorist networks and the right-wing extremist milieu on which they are based is connected with the revival of German militarism and the associated rehabilitation of Nazi ideology and the crimes of the Wehrmacht.

The emergence of the KSK was directly associated with the transformation of the German army (Bundeswehr) from a territorial defence army into an international intervention force. It was founded in the mid-1990s, after the Federal Constitutional Court gave the green light for out-of-area military operations beyond NATO’s borders. It also followed the declaration by Federal President Roman Herzog that the “end of free-riding” had been reached, and Germany had to assume political and military responsibility in the world in correspondence with its increased weight due to reunification.

The KSK is trained for special operations behind enemy lines, including targeted killing. It operates in the strictest secrecy. No data on casualties and losses suffered by the unit is published, even after operations have been completed. It was used during the Yugoslav war in Bosnia and Kosovo, in commando operations in several African countries and especially in the war in Afghanistan.

There, the KSK worked with US Special Forces in the hunt for Taliban members. It is said to have killed more people than the rest of the Bundeswehr combined. The Bundeswehr only responded to inquiries by stating that as a matter of principle it does not count dead enemies. When Colonel Georg Klein ordered an air raid in Kunduz that claimed 142 predominantly civilian lives, the KSK was involved. Klein was later promoted and the role of the KSK was concealed.

The elite unit, which comprises only a little more than 1,000 men, is surrounded by the stench of fascism. Its almost 30-year history is accompanied by right-wing extremist incidents, which have repeatedly been covered up and trivialised.

In 2005, Reinhard Günzel, who had commanded the KSK until 2003, together with Ulrich Wegener, the founder of the federal police special operations unit GSG 9, published a book at a far-right publishing house placing the KSK in the tradition of the Wehrmachtsdivision Brandenburg. The Brandenburg Division operated behind enemy lines in the war of extermination against the Soviet Union.

Günzel was dismissed in 2003 because he expressed his solidarity with anti-Semitic statements by former Christian Democratic Union member of the federal parliament Martin Hohmann. Today, Hohmann is a member of the far-right Alternative for Germany.

In 2008, Daniel K., a KSK captain, threatened Lieutenant Colonel Jürgen Rose, a member of the critical soldiers’ association Darmstädter Signal. He described Rose as an “enemy within” whom one must “smash.”

K. received a referral and was promoted. Rose had to retire prematurely and pay €3,000 in penance because he had warned of right-wing tendencies in the KSK. K. was only removed from service in 2019 after he outed himself on Facebook as a Reichsbürger (citizen of the Reich).

In 2017, KSK soldiers celebrated the retirement of KSK Lieutenant Colonel Pascal D. with far-right rock music and Nazi salutes. They competed in long throws with pig heads, and the winner’s prize was a prostitute.

In 2020, the 45-year-old KSK instructor Philipp Sch. was arrested after the police found explosives, an arsenal of weapons and ammunition and Nazi literature in a raid on his private property.

The Hannibal network shows most clearly the extent of the far-right threat posed by the KSK. After the arrest in April 2017 of the military officer Franco A., who had posed as a refugee, it gradually became known that a non-commissioned officer of the elite unit named André S. had built up an extensive right-wing extremist network under the pseudonym Hannibal, with groups throughout Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

The Hannibal network included commando soldiers, elite police officers, agents for the intelligence agencies, judges and other state officials. They made extremely violent plans. They had access to military and security resources and planned to use them to eliminate political opponents.

Members of the Hannibal group “Nordkreuz” stole tens of thousands of ammunition rounds from authorities and planned to kidnap political opponents with Bundeswehr transporters and murder them at specified locations. They kept enemy lists, and order lists for caustic lime and hundreds of body bags.

Although journalistic investigations revealed numerous details about the far-right conspiracy and the Federal Prosecutor’s Office conducted investigations, André S. was never prosecuted. After eight years of service in the KSK, most recently as an instructor and security officer in the Calw barracks, he was transferred but not released from the Bundeswehr. There has not even been a disciplinary case mounted against him. The Frankfurt Higher Regional Court rejected putting him on trial due to a lack of “sufficient suspicion of terrorism.”

One reason is that André S. worked as an informant for the military intelligence service MAD. This reveals the same pattern as in the National Socialist Underground (NSU) case. Numerous informants and employees of the secret services who promoted far-right forces with state funds were active in the immediate proximity of the far-right NSU trio that murdered 10 people. The files in the case are still under lock and key. Parliamentary committees of inquiry were denied access to them.

The obvious conclusion is that there is a connection between the Hannibal group and the Reichsbürger Network, which the Federal Public Prosecutor is now investigating. However, the investigation will either be stonewalled or limited to alleged “individual perpetrators” as in previous cases—the NSU trial, the attack on Cologne’s Mayor Henriette Reker, the murder of Kassel’s regional President Walter Lübcke and the terrorist attacks in Halle and Hanau.

The far-right structures extend deep into the state apparatus and are closely linked to the return of militarism. In the Baltic States and Ukraine, the Bundeswehr cooperates with armies that worship Nazi collaborators during the Second World War as heroes. Historians such as Jörg Baberowski and Timothy Snyder, who trivialize the crimes of the Nazis, are promoted.

The ruling elite needs the far right to suppress the growing opposition to militarism and its devastating social consequences. Having been forced to move against the Reichsbürger Network, the ruling class will use the exposure of the fascist coup plot as justification to strengthen the state and take action against left-wing opponents.

Only one week after the raid against the Reichsbürger, the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Neuruppin ordered nationwide house searches of “last generation” activists. The Prosecutor’s Office is investigating the environmental group for “the initial suspicion of formation or support of a criminal association, disruption of public enterprises, trespassing and coercion.” The pretext for the legal attack is a protest against the refinery PCK Schwedt, in which members of the group are said to have turned off the emergency valves of the pipeline that carries oil from Rostock to Schwedt.

US to send Patriot missiles to Ukraine: The “most escalatory action to date”

Andre Damon

This week, nearly all of the major newspapers and cable news networks in the United States reported that the Biden administration is preparing to imminently send Ukraine at least one battery of Patriot surface-to-air missiles.

The Patriot missile system, CNN reported, is “expected to ship quickly in the coming days.”

With each battery costing over $1 billion and requiring a crew of 90 people to operate, the Patriot would be the most expensive and complex weapons system transferred to Ukraine.

US army soldiers stand next to a Patriot missile launcher in Lithuania in 2017. (AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis)

 “This is a major step up in US commitment,” Sean McFate, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council told Syracuse University News. He added, “The Patriots will provoke a Russian reaction,” calling it, “the US’s most escalatory action to date.”

Commenting on the significance of the announcement, Keir Giles, of the pro-war think-tank Chatham House, told NBC, “We’ve seen an incremental process of the US supplying more essential capabilities to Ukraine as it becomes clear that Russia’s ‘red lines’ are no more than bluff and bluster.”

True to US President Joe Biden’s declaration in December 2021 that “I don’t accept anybody’s red lines,” the US has systematically identified and carried out actions that the Kremlin previously implied would provoke military retaliation against NATO.

In April, the US assisted Ukraine in sinking the Moskva, the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet. This was followed shortly by the announcement that the American military was actively assisting Ukraine in targeting Russian generals for assassination and the admission that the Pentagon has deployed military personnel to Ukraine.

The United States has in just a matter of months provided Ukraine with many of its most advanced weapons systems, including the M777 towed Howitzer, the HIMARS long-range missile system, the M109 Paladin self-propelled armored gun, the HARM anti-radar missile, and the NASAMS air defense system.

The expected announcement that the US will now deploy the Patriot missile system to Ukraine would continue this pattern of escalation, playing a deadly game of chicken with nuclear-armed Russia.

In November, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned that if “NATO supplies Kyiv fanatics with Patriot complexes along with NATO personnel, they will immediately become a legitimate target for our armed forces.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reiterated Medvedev’s remarks on Wednesday, saying the missile system would “definitely” be a target for Russia.

Vladimir Dzhabarov, first deputy chairman of the International Affairs Committee of the Russian Federation Council, said Wednesday, “The US is provoking us into direct conflict with NATO. Especially if they supply the Patriot air defense system.”

He added that the US is “really putting the world on the brink of a third world war.”

The justification for the decision to send Patriot missiles to Ukraine is Russia’s ongoing missile strikes against Ukrainian power infrastructure, which is having devastating consequences for broad sections of the Ukrainian population.

But in reporting the expected decision, Voice of America quoted Retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, who questioned why the US was seeking to shoot down Russian drones, each costing $5,000-$20,000, with missiles costing millions of dollars each.

“Patriot is an extremely complex and expensive system to operate. Each round of Patriot is between $3 [million] and $4 million apiece. That is a very expensive system. It would use up a lot of the money being set aside for them, I think, with a very limited return on investment.” He concluded, 'For me, Patriot is not a great answer” to defending Ukrainian cities from drone attacks.

Of course, the Patriot system is not a “great answer” for the problem American imperialism claims to be interested in.

The real aim, however, is not to defend Ukraine’s population centers but to allow Ukraine to obtain air superiority in support of offensive operations. The Patriot, the American military’s most advanced and long-range surface-to-air missile, is capable of shooting down aircraft up to 100 miles away, including those potentially operating over Crimea or the Russian mainland.

The Washington Post commented that the move represented a major shift from Biden’s earlier position that the US would not send “advanced” weapons to Ukraine. It wrote that the administration “has steadfastly resisted sending certain advanced weaponry—including long-range missiles, fighter jets and battle tanks—on the grounds that, in Russia’s eyes, doing so would draw the United States even deeper into the war, and the maintenance and operation of such systems is complex.”

 “The White House National Security Council,” NBC reported, citing an unnamed official, has “recommended reversing course.”

US pundits, meanwhile, are braying for more escalation. In an op-ed in the Washington Post, Max Boot demanded that the US “give Ukraine the ability to strike every inch of Russian occupied territory” – which according to Boot includes Crimea.

Boot wrote, “Last week, Ukraine took the war to Russia in a small but symbolic way. Ukraine reportedly used jet drones to strike two air bases deep in Russia—one of them only 100 miles from Moscow—that are used to operate the long-range bombers that launch missiles against Ukrainian cities.”

Boot noted that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken “did not condemn the attacks.” From this he concluded, “The US position seems to be that if US weapons systems aren’t employed, and the attacks are focused strictly on military targets, it doesn’t object to the attacks.”

He concluded, “Gaining access to longer-range ‘fires’ will enable the Ukrainians to more effectively strike such military targets across the width and breadth of Russian-occupied territory. That includes Crimea.”

Commenting in Foreign Affairs, retired Australian Army major general Mick Ryan noted, “If Ukraine can continue to win on the battlefield, Kyiv might try to isolate and possibly even seize all of the Donbas and Crimea. Retaking both areas is a stated goal of the Ukrainian government. But there is a long way to go before Ukraine reaches the point where it can invade Crimea.”

The US is massively escalating its involvement in a war that has produced a disaster for the people of Ukraine. The country’s economy has been shattered, and the Russian military’s new strategy of degrading power and water infrastructure is having a devastating impact during the cold Ukrainian winter.

The White House is calculating that putting ever greater military and economic pressure on Russia will intensify divisions within the Russian oligarchy, with the hopes that this will create the possibility of regime change through a palace coup against the Putin government.

However, there are significant forces within the Russian political establishment that are demanding a more aggressive response to the US provocative actions.

Violence against refugees at EU external borders increases dramatically

Martin Kreickenbaum

Serious human rights violations continue at the EU’s external borders. Illegal pushbacks, deprivation of liberty, beatings and sexual assaults are now part of the standard repertoire used by the European Union to repel refugees.

On October 3, this year, 19-year-old Abdullah El Rustum Mohammed almost paid with his life for this criminal policy. On that day, the refugee from the civil war in Syria tried to cross the Bulgarian border from Turkey in a larger group of refugees to seek protection in the EU.

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However, the group was intercepted by Bulgarian police and taken back to the border fence. A riot then ensued there; some refugees swore at the police officers, and some stones were thrown. Then a Bulgarian military truck appeared with more border police, who first fired warning shots and then shot directly at the refugees. Abdullah was hit in the chest and collapsed.

Other refugees provided first aid and managed to get Abdullah to a Turkish hospital, where he was immediately operated on. The projectile missed his heart by a hair’s breadth. “If the bullet had destroyed the vein, I wouldn’t be alive now. It is a miracle. I never thought I would be shot at. In a country that calls itself European,” Abdullah told broadcaster ARD a few weeks later.

A refugee had filmed the incident with his mobile phone. The video has been forensically analysed by the Netherlands-based research platform Lighthouse Reports and presented to an audio expert, who confirmed Abdullah’s statements. According to these, the shot must have come from the direction the camera was pointing—from the Bulgarian side of the border.

The Bulgarian Interior Ministry has confirmed an incident at the border but denied border police had fired at refugees. Speaking to journalists, Interior Minister Ivan Demerdzhiev claimed, “There are no incidents of violence against refugees. There is no evidence that a Bulgarian border police officer fired a shot, and there have been no acts that violate human rights.”

However, in early November, Demerdzhiev had indirectly ordered border police to shoot at refugees after a Bulgarian border police officer was shot dead by two suspected drug smugglers. When asked by journalists whether the border police would dare to shoot, Demerdzhiev replied, according to the Euractiv website, “I will personally take responsibility, and they will dare.”

He reiterated this stance to ARD: “Migrants who try to enter our territory illegally are becoming more and more aggressive. In some cases, they use stones, knives and other weapons. A Bulgarian police officer was killed. Those who expect our police not to react to these acts and not to protect the lives and health of Bulgarian border police officers are mistaken.”

Indeed, Bulgaria’s border police are known for their brutality against refugees. In May this year, Human Rights Watch documented the illegal ejection of refugees through violence and the use of police dogs at the Bulgarian-Turkish border.

Last week, WDR television magazine Monitor showed footage of crates in which asylum seekers are locked up by the Bulgarian border police. Together with European media partners and the research platform Lighthouse Reports, the journalists investigated witness statements and found a barracks where refugees were locked up in rooms with bars. They were led there by refugees from Afghanistan and Syria, who told of their horrific experiences with the European border guards.

“The Bulgarian police set dogs on us, which bite us. And they beat us, they are very brutal. They beat us with wooden sticks before sending us back to Turkey.” They were also imprisoned, he said. “We were kept in a terrible barred shed. It stinks there like a dirty toilet. It’s like a cage, everything there is dirty.”

This cage is located off the beaten track at a Bulgarian border police station. The refugees are sometimes locked up here for days, without a toilet, without food and with only a little water to drink. Then they are dragged back to Turkey without a chance to apply for asylum.

Legal scholar Constantin Hruschka of the Max Planck Institute in Munich told Monitor, “One thing is the inhuman and degrading treatment. And the second is the unlawful deprivation of liberty. Because people simply cannot be detained without trial and deprived of their liberty. Especially if the deprivation of liberty is then used to return them unlawfully across the border.”

Common practice on the Balkan route

Setting up lawless spaces to illegally imprison refugees, humiliate and abuse them is not solely a specialty of the Bulgarian border police, but a widespread practice across the Balkan route, which is covered up and encouraged by the European Union. Bulgarian border police are massively supported by Frontex, the European border management agency, whose officers are also on duty at the police station where Monitor discovered the cage with refugees.

In Hungary, border police maintain containers in which they cram refugees and squirt them with pepper spray before driving them back across the border to Serbia in illegal pushback operations.

In Croatia, minibuses without windows serve as cells for refugees. One woman refugee told Monitor how she was held in such a minibus for hours in the intense heat: “The bus has room for eight people, but they put in 20, with children, 25 people in it. They just kept us in it for four hours. We were getting worse and worse. Then you start throwing up in the bus. And then they start driving, very fast. When they brake, you fall over each other, you vomit on each other.”

Such a procedure is torture and a blatant violation of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Croatian border police were supported by Frontex from 2016 to 2021 and equipped and trained by German officials. Research by the Border Violence Monitoring Network, a coalition of refugee aid organisations, together with ProAsyl, found that 129 German federal police officers with a Frontex mandate and 24 German liaison officers were stationed in Croatia over five years. The German police officers trained Croatian border police in 87 seminars, and Germany also supplied vehicles, thermal imaging cameras and surveillance technology worth almost €3 million to the Croatian border guards.

In particular, support was provided to Croatian intervention police, who are tasked with picking up refugees behind the border and driving them illegally back across the border. These units can be seen on video footage systematically beating refugees with a special multifunctional baton, the tonfa.

The massive expansion of violence against refugees at the EU’s external borders is also shown in the Black Book of Pushbacks, published by the Border Violence Monitoring Network. An update contains 733 new interviews with refugees who refer to pushback operations that deprived more than 16,000 refugees of their right to seek protection in Europe this year and last year.

One example is the experience of a 36-year-old Syrian who, together with his eight-year-old son, was picked up by the Greek border police from a small group of refugees near the border river Evros.

All of them had to hand over their mobile phones and were forced to strip down to their underwear. Those who refused were beaten. Together with refugees from Morocco, Afghanistan and Somalia, they were held for hours in a dark room with a filthy toilet.

The refugees were then beaten up, loaded into a minibus, and taken back to Turkey in the dark across the Evros River. During the whole time they received neither food nor water, there was no medical care or interpreters. And at no time did the refugees have the chance to present their right to asylum under due process.

Hope Barker, co-editor of the Black Book, says of the massive expansion of violence and human rights abuses at the EU’s external borders, “In the beginning, it was just isolated, sporadic events, but now it’s a widespread, systematic crackdown on refugees.”

EU continues pushbacks

Despite the abundance of evidence of scandalous crimes at the EU’s external borders, the EU Commission and EU member state governments persistently deny any human rights abuses. For example, in July of this year, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis declared that it was “the right of every EU member state to protect its borders while respecting fundamental rights.”

Even when OLAF, the EU’s anti-corruption agency, proved in a report that the Frontex EU border agency had systematically supported and covered up illegal pushback operations in the Greek Aegean and the central Mediterranean, Frontex interim director Aija Kalnaja claimed her agency had complied with all applicable rules: “We would like to reiterate that Frontex operations in the Aegean were carried out in accordance with the applicable legal framework.”

When the brutal pushback operations by Croatian police in 2021 could no longer be denied, EU Domestic Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson declared that “violence at our borders” was “unacceptable, especially when it is structural and organised.” In fact, illegal practices at the EU’s external borders continue to be tolerated and encouraged.

Human rights organisation Bulgarian Helsinki Committee counted at least 2,513 pushback operations at the country’s border with Turkey in 2021. Greek human rights organisation Aegean Boat Report has recorded a total of 1,860 pushbacks of refugee boats in the Aegean alone since March 2020. As a result, 49,237 men, women and children have been denied the right to seek protection in Europe.

More than 2,100 refugees have already lost their lives at the borders of the European Union this year. At least 1,982 people have drowned in the Mediterranean, 367 of them in the eastern Mediterranean between Turkey and Greece. One hundred thirty-six refugees died at European land borders, most of them at the Turkish-Greek and Turkish-Bulgarian land borders and in the Western Balkans.

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser nevertheless called on the EU Commission in October this year to “stem the rising illegal migration via the Balkan route.”

In doing so, Faeser tries to play off refugees from Ukraine against other refugees, whom she defames as “illegal migrants,” even though they have fled wars instigated by the imperialist powers in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and other countries. Faeser said, “We have a joint responsibility to stop illegal entries so that we can continue to help people who urgently need our support.”

The Conference of EU and Western Balkan states, which met in Albania on December 6, decided to tighten border security with massive support from Frontex. For refugees, this can only result in more violence, internment, humiliation and illegal returns.

Thousands of garment workers laid off in the Philippines

Isagani Sakay

In the largest retrenchment this year in the Philippines, 4,485 workers at the Mactan Export Processing Zone and the Cebu Light Industrial Park, both located in the central Philippine city of Lapu-Lapu, were laid off in October.

Five companies, Mactan Apparels Inc, Metro Wear Inc., Globalwear Manufacturing Inc., Feeder Apparel Corporation, and Vertex One Apparel Phils, all owned by the Taiwan-based Sports Center International, issued joint notices of retrenchment on September 26, 2022.

Aerial view of Mactan Island and Lapu-Lapu City, with Cebu in the background, 22 November 2008 [Photo by Lsj / CC BY-SA 3.0]

The companies, which employed a total of 18,000 workers before the mass firing, blamed the terminations on a world now “on the brink of global recession, with higher-than-expected inflation and the global financial conditions are becoming tighter…”

The announcement continued: “Likewise, the unprecedented situations that our company has been dealing with, the COVID-19 pandemic, Typhoon Odette (International name: Typhoon Rai), supply chain issues, increasing gas prices and the conflict war [sic] between Russia and Ukraine have shaken not only our financial health but as well as having unstable operations.”

The retrenchment was closely coordinated with the Philippine government. On September 4 2022, a labour department team at the work sites facilitated the doling out of separation pay and the issuance of termination notices, waivers, and quit claims to head off any legal challenges to the termination. On October 4, the social welfare department handed out meagre food packs and cash assistance, which ranged from PHP 2,000 to PHP 5,000 ($US34 to $US85), depending on the length of the laid-off worker’s employment.

In a Business World report, the garment industry’s Confederation of Wearable Exporters of the Philippines (CONWEP) warned of further layoffs as global demand continued to decline. Executive director Maritess Jocson-Agoncillo stated, “This will be a trend for some factories whose customers are starting to cut their projections, so we expect temporary closures or partial retrenchment of workforce in the next few months.”

More than 9,400 workers have already been laid off or placed on forced leave, Jocson-Agoncillo revealed, a figure that represents 3.5 percent of the 270,000 workers in the apparel, shoes, bags, and textile sections of the garment industry. She warned that layoffs could reach 8-10 percent if global demand worsens. She also complained that high costs, including labour costs, were forcing companies to consider moving to lower cost countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, and Indonesia.

Workers in the international garment industry are paid poorly, and work long hours, often without overtime to meet orders and quotas. According to the latest available data from the International Labor Organization, in 2019, workers in Myanmar were paid $US139 a month, barely twice the 2019 international poverty line of $1.90 a day for a single person.

Workers in Sri Lanka were paid $161 a month, and in the Philippines garment workers were paid, on average, $218 dollars. The figure in the Philippines is barely above the official poverty threshold for a family of five. Despite the repeated complaints by garment corporations of burdensome mandated wages, only 53 percent of the total workforce were actually paid the legal minimum wage.

The International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers Federation (ITGLWF) conducted a study in 2013 into four of the five corporations involved in the recent retrenchments—Mactan Apparels Inc, Metro Wear, Inc., Globalwear Manufacturing Inc., and Feeder Apparel Corporation. It found they adhered only to the bare minimum of labor regulations in pay and benefits and required workers to work 12 hours overtime each week to meet production quotas. The companies also openly threatened workers against taking action to fight for better pay and conditions. An estimated 20 to 30 percent of the workers were employed on a contract or casual basis.

In an interview for the research study, a production worker, employed for nearly a decade at Mactan Apparel Inc. who nevertheless earned only the minimum wage, stated, “There is no seniority status in our factory, even if you stay in the company for many years, you will only receive minimum wage. That is why we are forced to take overtime work so at least it supplements our take home pay. Otherwise, how can I survive with such meagre income, how can I pay rent for the small room where I stay, cope with my daily necessities, and send some money for my family in the province? At the end of the day, it is zero balance; there are no savings left for whatever uncertain things that may happen to me and my family.”

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, garment corporations globally conducted a massive assault on jobs and conditions. In 2020, over 1 million garment workers lost their jobs in Bangladesh and, in Vietnam, a million were laid off. In Myanmar, 20 percent of the apparel and garment factories closed and over 10,000 workers lost their jobs.

In the Philippines, a total of 40,000 garment workers were laid off by the end of 2021. In the Mactan Economic Zone alone, over 4,420 garment workers at Sports City International factories, 2,000 at the Yuenthai factory, 100 at the FCO international and 67 at Kor Landa were sacked by September 2020. In November 2020, another 300 workers at the First Glory Apparel factory, many PM/Sentro union members, lost their jobs. 

Like their class brothers and sisters internationally, the remaining garment workers were quickly herded back to the factories even as the pandemic continued to rage. Revenues in the garment industry, after dropping from $US3.99 billion to $US3.46 billion in 2020, began to increase again to $US3.66 billion in 2021 and are projected to reach $US4.58 billion this year and $US5.66 billion in 2026.

As the 2020 mass firing swept through the Mactan Economic Zone, workers at the Yuenthai factory refused to accept their termination notices. Retrenched workers at the First Glory Apparel factory voted to strike. However, instead of uniting and mobilizing workers in the zone with workers, nationally and internationally, to defend their jobs and safeguard their lives, the Stalinist-aligned labor organizations Partido Manggagawa (PM), Sentro ng mga Nagkakaisa at Progresibong Manggagawa (Sentro), and the MEPZ Workers Alliance helped corral workers back to the factories. They promised to provide “legal assistance,” calling on the sacked workers to seek redress from a labor legal system that explicitly recognizes “retrenchment as a right of the management to meet clear and continuing economic threats or during periods of economic downturn to prevent losses.”

In January 2021, a PM/Sentro union called off a planned strike at First Glory Apparel by the remaining 76 union workers in the factory who had voted to take action to fight for the jobs of the 300 sacked workers. The union accepted the mediation of the local city government without winning a single concession.

The mass sackings in the Mactan Economic Zone are being replicated around the world as corporations seek to impose the burdens of the worsening global crisis of capitalism onto the backs of workers. The basic social and democratic rights of the working class cannot be defended through pro-capitalist unions and political parties, nor within the framework of the nation state.