EU Court of Justice strips Catalan separatist leader Puigdemont of parliamentary immunity

Alejandro López

The European Union’s General Court of Justice (EGC) has stripped parliamentary immunity from three Catalan Members of the European Parliament (MEP), including former Catalan regional premier Charles Puigdemont.

Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont, leaves the jail of Sassari, in Sardinia, Italy, Friday, Sept. 24, 2021. (AP Photo/Gloria Calvi)

The Spanish Supreme Court is set to issue a new European Arrest Warrant for Puigdemont. He faces possible arrest as he travels to attend the next plenary session of the European Parliament at the French city of Strasbourg Monday July 10, as the Macron government stokes mass repression against anti-police protests following the police murder of 17-year-old Nahel. Macron is deliberately strengthening far-right and fascistic forces within the state and in French politics.

Puigdemont will be travelling from Belgium, where he has been living since 2017, when he fled Spain after Madrid’s brutal police crackdown against the Catalan independence referendum he organised. The crackdown left over 1,000 peaceful voters injured. This was followed by threats to impose a military-led state of emergency on Catalonia, the detention of top officials of Puigdemont’s regional government, and a show trial condemning nine of them to a decade in jail for sedition.

In 2019, Puigdemont, still in exile, was elected as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP).

In its ruling passed Wednesday, the Luxembourg-based court rejected the appeal filed by Puigdemont against the European Parliament’s decision to waive his immunity. It claimed that the EU parliament’s resolution in March 2021 sponsored by neo-fascist Vox, and supported by 404 European Members of Parliament of the liberal, conservative and social-democratic blocs, was not initiated with the intention of damaging the activity of the Catalan MEPs.

The EU resolution lifted the immunity of Puigdemont and former MEPs Antoni Comín (former Catalan regional health minister) and Clara Ponsatí (former regional education minister), paving the way for their extradition back to Spain where they face over a decade in jail. It was backed by the ruling Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) and the right-wing Popular Party (PP).

The EGC’s ruling claims that that the events prompting the request to lift immunity took place in 2017, when the three were not yet MEPs. It added that it is not up to the European Parliament to analyse the legality of Madrid’s anti-Catalan judicial acts, which it considers “the exclusive competence of the national authorities”.

Puigdemont has announced he will submit an appeal to the European Court of Justice. If extradited, he faces fraudulent charges of embezzlement and disobedience, which carry a prison sentence of up to four years.

The “rebellion” offense he was previously charged with was abolished by the PSOE-Podemos government earlier this year. This was negotiated with the Catalan nationalists in back-door talks in exchange for the reform of the penal code that included criminalization of strikes and protests.

Spain’s previous attempts to have Puigdemont extradited during his stays in Germany, Belgium and Italy have failed. In March 2018, Puigdemont was arrested in Germany and then freed after the court decided they could only approve his handover over misuse of public funds. The Spanish judiciary then rejected the extradition, wanting to pursue Puigdemont for the crimes of rebellion and sedition, carrying a maximum of 30 years in prison.

Puigdemont was arrested in Italy in September 2021 and then released due to the European Court ruling stating that the Catalan MEPs had interim immunity. That interim measure was to await the clarification of the appeals which have now been resolved.

Without immunity, Puigdemont has lost the legal shield he had in Europe.

After the EU parliament passed the neo-fascist sponsored resolution, the World Socialist Web Site wrote, “This unprecedented decision is a warning to the European working class. Europe’s principal parties of rule have joined forces to pass a resolution originating from Spain’s leading fascist party to persecute Catalan lawmakers, lobbied for by the PSOE, with the active complicity of the pseudo-left Podemos party. The EU thus gave its political seal of approval to Madrid’s fascistic anti-Catalan campaign, the main means through which the Spanish ruling class has intervened to shift politics far to the right.”

As the European powers plunge into an intensifying NATO war on Russia in Ukraine, a deepening economic crisis with a vast surge in inflation and soaring food prices, and face a rapid growth of the class struggle, the European ruling class is consciously fanning the flames of the anti-Catalan campaign.

Underlying this is an agreement with Madrid on the need to build a police-state regime across Europe in order to wage imperialist war abroad and class war at home. The attack on the Catalan nationalists takes place following an accelerated political offensive of the European working class. There have been mass strikes in France, Belgium, Italy, Portugal and Spain, anti-war protests in Denmark, and a massive mobilization of millions of workers across Britain.

The ruling takes place in the run-up to a snap election scheduled for July 23 called by the PSOE-Podemos government, following their electoral debacle in the local and regional elections in May. Terrified of the emergence of mass opposition to war, austerity and police-state repression, it has called these elections to hand over power to the right-wing Popular Party (PP) and the neo-fascist Vox party.

The latest ruling will provide fuel to the right-wing electoral campaign in Spain. The anti-Catalan campaign, simmering in the background over the past year, is set to re-erupt to shift politics further to the right.

PP leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo welcomed the ruling and demanded acting PSOE Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez respond to the ruling “in the next few hours and promise that he will not pardon Puigdemont”. The acting PSOE-Podemos government duly responded, with its spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez from the PSOE, expressing “satisfaction” at the court ruling and demanding that Puigdemont “answer for the events” of 2017.

Proving that workers cannot vote for Podemos’ new outfit, Sumar, in the hope of obtaining a less callous and repressive policy, the party’s spokesperson Ernest Urtasun cynically called for “dialogue and de-judicialisation” of the Catalan issue, even as Sumar campaigns to renew a coalition government with the PSOE.

Sumar, composed of the same pro-NATO, pro-capitalist politicians of Podemos and led by acting Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz, is deeply implicated in the Spanish bourgeoisie’s drive toward police-state forms of rule. Over the years, Podemos has supported the crushing of protests calling for the release of Catalan prisoners and was part of the government that oversaw the sham trial against Catalan political leaders. In the EU parliament, while they tried to cover themselves by voting against the resolution upheld last Wednesday by the ECG, they are partners with the PSOE which backed it.

The various Catalan nationalist parties’ perspective of securing greater control of the region’s economic wealth for the Catalan bourgeoisie also stands exposed.

In 2021, the nine Catalan political leaders jailed for nine to 13 years were released after back-door negotiations with the PSOE-Podemos government over the disbursement of billions of euros in European Union bailout funds. In exchange, the Catalan nationalists have backed the minority PSOE-Podemos government as it intensified war against Russia in Ukraine, drew up the largest military spending increase in Spanish history, to over €27 billion per year, cut pensions, imposed below-inflation wage increases and passed a labour law reform slashing workers’ legal protections.

Ministry of Defence confirms war crimes inquiry into UK Special Forces deployed to Afghanistan

Harvey Thompson

Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) confirmed last week that UK special forces (UKSF) members are at the centre of a war crimes inquiry pertaining to their deployment in Afghanistan.

A challenge had been made by bereaved family members and by media outlets into the conduct of the Special Air Service (SAS) between 2010 and 2013. The inquiry follows years of reporting of alleged unlawful killings in Afghanistan by the SAS.

British soldiers storm a building in Afghanistan, 2007 [Photo by Defence Imagery / Flickr / CC BY-NC 4.0]

The probe will also look at allegations that a previous investigation by the Royal Military Police (RMP) of unlawful killings by special forces was inadequate. In 2014, the RMP launched Operation Northmoor, an investigation into allegations of over 600 offences by British forces in Afghanistan, including the alleged killing of children by the SAS. It began winding down in 2017 and was terminated in 2019. The MoD said it had not found sufficient evidence for any prosecutions.

In a statement ahead of the latest hearing of the Independent Inquiry, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said, “The inquiry is now reaching the stage of substantive hearings, and I can confirm that the allegations relate to the conduct of UK Special Forces.”

Wallace was careful to make clear that the military and government view the proceedings as extremely restricted and unique in character.

Stressing that a confirmation of Special Forces involvement was made only “in the exceptional circumstances of this inquiry,” Wallace continued, “Outside of this very specific context, such confirmation should not be seen to alter the long-standing position of this government, and previous governments, to not comment on the deployment or activities of the UK Special Forces.”

Prior to its July 3 announcement, the MoD held that the inquiry should restrict from the public “any evidence or documents or words or passages of documents, that tend to confirm or deny the alleged involvement of United Kingdom Special Forces in the operations that are to be investigated”. However, before they were due to argue their case in front of the chair of the inquiry, Lord Justice Haddon-Cave, MoD lawyers wrote to the inquiry informing it that the ministry “proposed to abandon that part of their application.”

This reversal, confirmed at a hearing Wednesday, means that evidence of involvement of UK Special Forces in the alleged unlawful killings in Afghanistan can be discussed openly in the inquiry proceedings and reported.

The government has already made clear that any official inquiry will aim to protect the guilty. In January, Wallace said, “While there have been several comprehensive investigations into the events in question, if there are further lessons to learn it is right that we consider those fully, to ensure all allegations are handled appropriately and in equal measure, to ensure our personnel are adequately protected from unnecessary re-investigations.”

The MoD is currently pursuing automatic anonymity for all UKSF personnel involved in operations in Afghanistan to be automatically granted anonymity. It was also pushing for all witness evidence about the operations themselves to be held in closed hearings, away from both the bereaved families and the public.

MoD lawyer, Brian Altman KC, said that the ministry intended to keep in place its “neither confirm nor deny” policy in relation to naming specific UK Special Forces units or sub-units. Altman argued that the identification of “particular force elements” would pose a risk to future capabilities and operations.

Lawyers for the families of Afghans killed in seven separate SAS operations have argued that restrictions sought by the MoD are “unjustifiable and seriously damaging to the credibility of the inquiry.”

Tessa Gregory, a partner at Leigh Day, representing the families, said that the relatives had suffered “years of cover up and obfuscation”. The relatives remained concerned even as the inquiry began that the MoD was “seeking to shut the door on them and prevent evidence being heard in public.”

Lord Justice Haddon Cave, speaking at the opening of the hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, said the case “as much as possible should be heard in public to allay public concerns about the subject matter of the inquiry,” while declaring that some evidence would need to be heard in closed hearings, because of “national security” concerns.

Last July, the BBC screened an episode of its Panorama documentary series, “SAS Death Squads Exposed: A British War Crime?” The programme aired interviews and evidence based on official files from police investigations and a four-year probe showing that one SAS unit in Helmand province had killed 54 people in suspicious circumstances between 2010 and 2011.

The unit’s tour of duty resulted in an Afghan death toll more than double that number. None of the unit’s members sustained any injuries in the raids, indicating they had not faced threats to their safety. Also revealed was evidence that senior officers were aware of concerns within the SAS but failed to pass on evidence to the military police.

The government denounced Panorama for “irresponsible, incorrect” journalism. But within 24 hours the government was forced to initiate a formal fresh investigation into the allegations, in which the BBC and other organisations were asked to share information, and which led to the recent announcement of a statutory inquiry. The inquiry was announced by the government a day after the BBC released a follow-up investigation into a night raid on the south western Nimruz province in 2012 in which the SAS killed two young parents and severely injured their infant sons.

US-led invasion and occupation of Afghanistan

In October 2001, under the manufactured pretext of retaliation for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the United States carried out an invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Cloaked in a spurious mission to destroy Al Qaeda, a creation of the CIA-orchestrated war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1970s and 1980s, the real objective of the US military was to seize control of a country bordering the oil-rich former Soviet republics of the Caspian basin, as well as China and Iran.

Britain’s military played the leading supporting role. The invasion inaugurated the “war on terror” under which Washington claimed the right to pre-emptively invade any country it perceived as a threat to its global interests, establishing “black sites” used for rendition, torture and interrogation. In March 2003, the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq commenced based on lies relating to “weapons of mass destruction.”

The British government and military signed off on all of this in defiance of mass protests by millions in the UK and around the world.

Subsequent regime-change wars were launched under the hypocritical banner of “human rights,” including in Libya, the country with the largest oil reserves in Africa, and Syria. These wars killed and injured millions of civilians, turned tens of millions more into refugees and destroyed entire societies.

In Afghanistan, the longest official war involving the US military before its ignominious departure in August 2021, conservative estimates are that at least 175,000 civilians were killed since the 2001 invasion. The true death toll including deaths caused indirectly by the war, such as disease and cold, are believed to be closer to a million.

This dirty colonial war, with mass murder through air strikes and night raids and the killing and torturing of detainees, was intended to terrorise the population into submission. Instead, it swelled a growing anti-occupation insurgency until Taliban militias were able to overrun six provincial capitals within the space of barely one week, ousting the hated and isolated US-backed Kabul regime in August 2021.

UK forces stationed in Afghanistan reached a peak of 10,000 a decade into the occupation and were deployed to the southern Helmand province, between 2006 and 2014, where many of the 457 British fatalities took place. These were predominantly soldiers in their 20s or younger fighting a futile but bloody battle to stop the insurgency spreading to the nearby capital. It was during this period that British special forces were operating.

The persistence of the bereaved families for justice for their murdered loved ones is a thorn in the side on London, as it pursues its geopolitical interests. A major propaganda trope of the US/NATO war against Russia in Ukraine has been demands to arraign Russian president Vladimir Putin before the Hague on charges of war crimes.

No-one can believe that any inquiry overseen by Britain’s ruling elite can bring justice. Those in charge of this and previous inquiries are motivated solely by protecting the “integrity” of the armed forces and the state they defend. They will not condemn as “war criminals” the political and military elite that has inflicted a 30-year cycle of imperialist military violence across the globe and left countless millions destitute in its wake.

Erdoğan backs Ukraine’s NATO membership, releases Azov commanders in Turkey

Ulaş Ateşçi

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Istanbul on Saturday and declared that Ukraine “deserves” NATO membership. The meeting and statement came just ahead of NATO’s war summit in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, on July 11-12.

Speaking at a joint press conference with Zelensky, Erdoğan said, “Undoubtedly, Ukraine deserves the NATO membership.” Before that, he made clear his government’s support for Ukraine in the war against Russia, stating: “The Ukrainian people are defending their territorial integrity and independence in the war. … We have since 2014, when Crimea was annexed in a way against international law, expressed on all the platforms our support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence.”

A member of NATO, Turkey seeks to pursue a policy of maneuvering between NATO and Russia due to the Turkish bourgeoisie’s strong economic and military ties with both sides. Following the Russian invasion in February 2022, Ankara closed the straits to both NATO and Russian warships on the basis of the Montreux Convention, and called for a negotiated settlement.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, center, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, left, and United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres shake hands after their meeting in Lviv, Ukraine, Thursday, Aug. 18, 2022. [AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka]

Ankara’s support for Ukraine’s NATO membership shows that this policy has become increasingly untenable in the context of a sharp escalation of the US-led NATO war against Russia. Erdoğan had already paved the way for a major escalation against Russia in March, when he became the last leader to endorse Finland’s NATO membership. The vote in the Turkish parliament was unanimous, confirming once again that the Turkish bourgeoisie is in the service of imperialism.

Erdoğan declared his support for a criminal move that would bring NATO into a direct war with Russia, while in the same speech he called for an “end to the war.” He said, “There is no loser in a just peace. It is our sincere wish that the parties, despite their differences of opinion, return to the quest for peace as soon as possible.”

Welcoming Erdoğan’s support for Ukraine’s NATO membership, Zelensky said, “I am grateful for Turkey’s support for our peace plan. We are working on the implementation of this peace plan.”

Zelensky’s so-called “peace plan” is an unfettered escalation of NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine. The Biden administration’s announcement on Friday of its decision to send cluster bombs to Ukraine indicates that even more reckless moves are being prepared, from direct NATO involvement in the war to the deployment and use of nuclear weapons.

Erdoğan’s open support for Ukraine’s NATO membership came shortly before the Vilnius summit, where a more formal alliance with Kiev will be discussed. Ukrainian accession to the military alliance, which would drag NATO powers into a full-scale war with Russia due to the alliance’s Article 5, has been openly discussed in the recent period.

In April, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg declared, “Ukraine’s rightful place is in NATO,” adding, “All NATO allies have agreed that Ukraine will become a member.” In May, French President Emmanuel Macron said he supports a “path” for Ukraine into NATO.

After Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited Kiev in June and announced his support for Ukraine’s NATO membership, Ihor Zhovkva, the deputy head of the Office of the Ukrainian President, claimed that Canada was one of 20 NATO member states to agree in writing that they support Ukraine becoming a member of NATO.

Erdoğan also announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin would visit Turkey in August. He said the two countries were seeking to extend the grain corridor agreement in the Black Sea, which expires on July17, and that prisoner exchange talks between Ukraine and Russia were continuing.

Later on Saturday, however, Zelensky unexpectedly announced that the commanders of the fascist Azov Brigade held in Turkey had returned to Ukraine with him.

In a tweet ending with the fascistic slogan “Slava Ukraini,” he wrote, “We are returning home from Turkey and bringing our heroes home: Ukrainian soldiers Denys Prokopenko, Svyatoslav Palamar, Serhiy Volynsky, Oleh Khomenko and Denys Shleha. They will finally be with their relatives.”

The far-right commanders captured by Russian forces during the battle of Mariupol last year were slated to remain in Turkey until the end of the war, according to an agreement reached in September between Kiev, Moscow and Ankara.

The Kremlin, which closely followed the Erdoğan-Zelensky summit, reacted with sharp condemnation. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “The conditions of return were violated by both the Turkish and Kyiv sides,” adding, “Nobody informed us about this. According to the terms of the agreement, these persons were supposed to stay on the territory of Turkey until the end of the conflict.”

He said Turkey was under pressure to show solidarity with NATO ahead of the Vilnius summit, implying that Erdoğan had bowed to that pressure.

The Azov commanders, whom Zelensky and the Western media often call “heroes,” openly stand in the tradition of the Ukrainian fascists led by Stepan Bandera. This sordid tradition includes collaboration with the Nazis during the Second World War against the Soviet Union and complicity in the Holocaust as well as other massacres.

Prokopenko, one of the released Azov commanders, had previously referred to his grandfather, who fought against the Soviet Union on the Finnish side during the “Winter War,” saying, “It feels like I continued the same war, only on another section of the front, a war against the Kremlin’s occupation regime. My grandfather had such a terrible hatred of communism, of Bolshevism, of the Sovok.”

Zelensky’s visit to Istanbul and Erdogan’s declaration of support for Ukraine’s entry into NATO followed the latest round of talks between Ankara and Stockholm on Sweden’s NATO membership.

In the days leading up to the meeting, Washington stepped up pressure on Ankara to lift its veto and endorse Sweden becoming a NATO member at the Vilnius summit. After a meeting with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson at the White House on Wednesday, President Joseph Biden said he “fully supports” Sweden’s NATO membership bid.

However, Thursday’s meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels did not produce this outcome. Ankara argues that Sweden supports the Kurdish nationalist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its Syrian affiliate, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which Turkey considers terrorist organizations, as well as individuals linked to Fethullah Gülen. Gülen is a long-time CIA asset and US-based preacher whom Ankara blames for the NATO-backed 2016 coup attempt against the Erdoğan government.

Referring to Sweden, Erdoğan said on Friday: “How can Turkey trust a country where terrorists run wild on the streets? How can a state that does not distance itself from terrorist organizations contribute to NATO?”

After the meeting in Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg said, “What we are working to achieve is a positive decision at the summit where Turkey makes clear it is ready to ratify.” Then he announced that Erdoğan and Kristersson would meet again in Vilnius.

Fluorinated carbons, PFAS, found in nearly half of US tap water

Benjamin Mateus

The results of a new study released last week by the US Geological Survey (USGS), a bureau of the US Department of the Interior, found that nearly half of all US tap water contain industry-made perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), referred to as “forever chemicals” due to their stable molecular structures that make them highly persistent in the environment. Some PFAS may take over 1,000 years to degrade, if at all. 

Fire Brigade in the Netherlands putting out a car fire with chemical foam thought to release PFAS [Photo: Fire Brigade Neder-Betuwe, base Ochten, the Netherlands]

These synthetic substances, first developed during the Manhattan Project (the US government research project that produced the first atomic bomb) in 1945, are known for their heat-resistant and stain-resistant properties, and have become ubiquitous in the commercial fabric of society that include a wide range of consumer products, food packaging, nonstick cookware, waterproof clothing and firefighting foams. Because of their unique carbon-fluorine bond—one of the strongest chemical bonds in nature—they persist in the environment after seeping into the groundwater from landfills, wastewater treatment plants, waste incineration facilities and contaminated rain. 

Research has documented the health effects of these substances for more than five decades. It includes potential for causing cancers, behavioral disturbances, metabolic derangements, and impact on pregnancy and childhood development. 

As the 2015 Madrid Statement on PFAS made clear, “[They] are found in the indoor and outdoor environments, wildlife, and human tissue and bodily fluids all over the globe. They are emitted via industrial processes and military and firefighting operations, and they migrate out of consumer products into the air, household dust, food, soil, ground, and surface water, and make their way into drinking water.”

Diagram shows the pathways for PFAS through the environment. [Photo: US Government Accountability Office (GAO)]

The statement added that in addition to the toxicity seen in animal studies that led to liver toxicity (PFAS is known to accumulate in this organ), deleterious impact on lipid and endocrine metabolism, immune dysregulation, formation of tumors in multiple organs, “the growing body of epidemiological evidence … include[s] association with testicular and kidney cancers, liver malfunction, hypothyroidism, high cholesterol, lower birth weights and size, obesity, decreased immune response to vaccines, and reduced hormone levels and delayed puberty.”

Extrapolating from samples collected from 716 tap water locations—residences, businesses and drinking water treatment plants, including 155 unregulated private-well water—throughout the country over a five-year period (2016-2021), the USGS study estimated that about 45 percent of US drinking waters contained anywhere from one to nine different PFAS with corresponding cumulative concentrations ranging from 0.348 to 346 parts per trillion (PPT), with a median figure of seven PPT. 

These substances appeared to predominate in urban areas clustering in the Great Plains, Great Lakes, Eastern Seaboard, and Central and Southern California regions with high population densities. However, as the authors note, only a few dozen PFAS were targeted in the study despite, according to industry experts, the existence of 14,000 such compounds used in every conceivable facet of production.

The authors of the USGS report wrote, “Targeted PFAS analytes are only a fractional indicator of the 8000+ potential PFAS and the fraction of total organic fluorine captured by these targeted analyses is typically low in surface water and drinking water. Potential detection of one or more PFAS in US drinking-water combined with the paucity of information available on current use of ultra-short chain compounds supports the continued need for point-of-use tap water monitoring, with an emphasis on small community water supplies.”

They conclude by warning, “To fully understand exposure and adequately determine risk to human health, continued emphasis should be placed on 1) integrating geospatial datasets with PFAS data broadly to identify vulnerable regions/subpopulations, 2) expanding monitoring to include rural small-system and private-well dependent communities, and 3) expanding target and non-target analysis methods particularly in drinking-water monitoring programs in the US and globally.”

Although the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sets the standards for drinking water quality, each state can interpret these standards, including “nature of the regulation and the state’s view on which level may result in health effects,” should they choose to, with the caveat that there is a wide range of PFAS concentrations. 

For example, while California has the strictest limit, PFAS concentrations of 5.1 PPT, in Nevada the allowed concentration is the highest in the country at 667,000 PPT. Recent estimates have placed the number of Americans drinking PFAS-contaminated water of at least 1 PPT at 200 million people. When researchers adjusted their exposure limit to 10 PPT, they still found that 20 to 80 million Americans were exposed to such levels. Blood tests indicate that upwards of 98 percent of the US population has been exposed to PFAS.

Although most states had adopted the EPA’s previous level of 70 PPT, in March 2023, under mounting pressure from public health scientists and various interest groups, the EPA revised the legal limits on two compounds commonly produced and in use for several decades, per-fluoro-octane-sulfonic acid (PFOS) and per-fluoro-octanoic-acid (PFOA) to 4 PPT which is understood by experts on the topic as an arbitrary compromise. 

Scientists have emphatically stated that there are no safe limits for exposure to these compounds and recommended “advisory health limits” that are 50 to 1,000 times lower than even this threshold. Additionally, they further criticized the EPA and Biden administration because these new limits only apply to six out of about 14,000 compounds and called for the entire class of chemicals to be regulated.

This didn’t stop the chemical industry and military from taking the EPA to task on this shift stating that the enforcement of such measures is liable to set off a wave of lawsuits. Chemical manufacturer 3M, which recently reached a $10.3 billion settlement for PFAS contamination of US public drinking water systems, a drop in the bucket to be paid out over 13 years, said after the EPA’s announcement of the new limits, “We believe that the standards proposed by the EPA lack a sound scientific basis and that the EPA has not shown that they are necessary to protect public health or the environment.” 

The statement is technically correct insofar as it references the lack of any effort by the EPA, the White House, and the entire governmental apparatus to address these issues up to the present moment. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy wrote in March 2023, “An inherent complexity to PFAS is the limited understanding of where PFAS is present in products, including where PFAS is intentionally added and where it is present as a byproduct of other processes.”

They admitted, “Understanding the sources and pathways of exposure is critical to mitigation of PFAS … Mitigation efforts and health-protective measures cannot be implemented without the ability to detect PFAS at levels of concern. Addressing the challenge of developing additional analytical methods with higher sensitivity to detect both single and mixtures of PFAS is a critical opportunity to accelerate advancement across all other areas.”

Considering these comments indicate little has been done so far to address the concerns first raised about the environmental costs and public health dangers more than two decades ago, the Biden administration’s recent proposal to protect communities from PFAS pollution are just hollow promises functioning as reelection campaign talking points rather than giving serious consideration to the health of the population. 

Indeed, the Obama-Biden administration back in 2011, through the EPA, allowed extraction industries to employ highly toxic chemicals in the fracking process that break down into fluorocarbons, PFAS. The New York Times wrote then, “The records, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by a nonprofit group, Physicians for Social Responsibility, are among the first public indications that PFAS, long-lasting compounds also known as ‘forever chemicals,’ may be present in the fluids used during drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.”

The EPA scientists had themselves indicated the potential toxicity of these chemicals, but the Obama administration allowed these same companies to invoke trade-secret claims that meant information on these chemicals could be withheld from the public. This policy further raise critical issues over the role of the EPA as a supposed public health defender while acting as an agent of Wall Street. With thousands of chemicals constantly being introduced into commercial use, there is very little testing to comprehend the long-term consequences they pose to environmental and population health.

Notably, 3M, a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate operating in numerous industrial fields, which began production of PFOA in 1947, had noted signs of trouble in their workers exposed to high levels of these chemicals back in the 1980s and 1990s. Specifically at their Teflon factory in Parkersburg, West Virginia, a cluster of birth defects was possibly linked to PFOA. Their own internal documents had found these chemicals in fish and recognized their toxic potential. In 1990, they examined blood levels in their workers and how exposure was altering their cholesterol levels.

Much of this information was suppressed or minimized until recently. And, in response to two decades of lawsuits, 3M has curtailed production of PFAS beginning in 2020 and will halt all PFAS production by the end of 2025. However, the long-term clean-up and health issues that are expected to emerge in the future decades will be at the expense of the working-class population.

Regarding healthcare alone and the enormous costs to remove these pollutants, a 2019 study conducted by the Nordic Council of Ministers on health impacts linked to exposure to PFAS, estimated the costs to the European Union at 52 to 84 billion euros annually. Extrapolating this data for the US, this would translate to $37 to $59 billion each year. These costs would be deflected by the polluters and ultimately borne by “ordinary people, health care providers, and taxpayers.”

The issue of PFAS and its regulations is but the tip of the iceberg that is bringing the issues of pollution, climate change and global sustainability of this planet to the fore. The very conditions that have allowed pandemics to emerge as a real existential threat to humanity are a byproduct of the anachronism of capitalist production that places profits over the safety of human life and environment. However, given the experiences with the failed and criminal response to the COVID pandemic, there is a viable solution under the aegis of capitalist production.

A fraudulent presentation of Australia’s Indigenous Voice

Nick Beams

Minister for Indigenous Affairs Linda Burney addresses National Press Club in Canberra, Australia, July 5, 2023. [Photo: ABC iview]

The address by Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney to the National Press Club last Wednesday was part of the attempt by the Labor government to turn around flagging support for a Yes vote on its proposed referendum to be conducted later this year to change the Constitution and establish an indigenous advisory body, or Voice, to the government and the executive.

Her speech signified a shift in the government campaign away from an emphasis on the support of big business for the Voice—virtually universal among the corporate and financial elites—and from promotion by celebrities. Instead, she emphasised the supposed “practical” outcomes the Voice will have in addressing the appalling social and economic conditions confronting large sections of the Indigenous population.

Burney was attempting to appeal to the widespread sentiment, going back many decades, that the dire and, in numerous cases, worsening conditions for Indigenous people must be addressed.

However, this is where the Yes campaign is coming adrift because the more is known about the Voice, the more there is growing, well-founded scepticism in wider sections of the population, not least among Aborigines, that it will do anything to alleviate these conditions. It will be simply a mechanism through which the social and political status of a layer of well-connected, and invariably well-heeled Indigenous individuals, is further elevated.

Towards the beginning of her address, Burney advanced a historical falsification which is at the centre of the Yes campaign. “The idea of constitutional recognition through a Voice is what Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people themselves have asked for, not the government,” she said.

As the WSWS has documented, using material provided in the book Everything You Need to Know About the Uluru Statement from the Heart, written by Voice supporters Megan Davis and George Williams, the origins of the Voice lie in the efforts of the Abbott Liberal government in 2015 to deflect anger over the major cuts to Indigenous services in the 2014 budget and the deepening disillusionment with decades old pledges of some form of “recognition.”

A meeting involving Abbott, the then Labor leader Bill Shorten, as well as prominent Indigenous figures such as Marcia Langton and Noel Pearson, was convened at the prime minister’s Sydney residence, Kirribilli House. It issued a statement which included the establishment of a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous council to advise governments on legislation.

This initiative is the foundation of the Voice referendum now being advanced by the Albanese Labor government, which is one of its cornerstone policies.

The fact that it has been, from the outset and throughout the entire course of its development, a top-down and not a bottom-up movement is one of the reasons for its faltering support, including within the Indigenous population.

Burney gave a list of the appalling conditions for many sections of the Indigenous population including health, suicide rates, higher incarceration rates, especially of youth, life expectancy, education and housing among others. She noted that a report last month showed that just 4 out of the 19 targets for “closing the gap” were on track—over a decade after the program was put in place.

According to Burney, the reason is that there has not been a body such as the Voice which would work in a “practical way” to overcome them.

But over the past decades, there has been no lack of “voices,” including Indigenous ones, pointing to the failure of government policies to bring any real advance. There has been no lack of reports on conditions—including housing, health, education, incarceration rates and deaths in custody, to name just some—after which the terrible situations they document very often worsen.

In seeking to present the Voice as the path forward, Burney gave a very revealing example of where it would make “an important practical difference,” citing the Community Development Program, more commonly known as work for the dole, or unemployment benefits. The CDP scheme involves around 40,000 people, the vast majority Indigenous, across 1000 communities.

Burney said that the CDP program had been a “failure.” In fact, based on a government report issued in 2019, a more accurate description would be a disaster. The report found that since its introduction the scheme had led to an increase in social problems, including stealing of food by children, increased family violence, growing financial problems, and an increase in mental health problems.

According to Burney, however, “the Voice can play a key role in helping to fix CDP.” In other words, it would assist in giving this cheap labour scheme a much-needed facelift. That would be its “practical” value.

The Voice will likely consist of 24 unelected members chosen by existing bodies such as Aboriginal land councils and government-funded service providers, that is, the very organisations that have been integral to the imposition of social misery inflicted on the Indigenous population, together with representatives of the growing number of Aboriginal businesses.

There was one grain of truth in Burney’s press conference remarks. She said the social crimes committed against the Aboriginal population have causes that are “systemic” and “structural.”

The roots of the oppression of the Indigenous population do not lie in the establishment of “white” society, as the issue is so often portrayed, but in the formation of capitalist society based on private ownership of the means of production and the land requiring the “clearing” of its inhabitants through shooting, poisoning and the spread of disease, in some cases deliberately.

Today, the ever-worsening conditions of large sections of the Indigenous population are part of a capitalist offensive against the working class as a whole, particularly its most impoverished sections. This is exemplified by the Robodebt crime, which illegally claimed nearly $2 billion from at least 433,000 welfare recipients.

In her Press Club remarks, Burney presented the Voice as a continuation of the 1967 referendum in which the Aboriginal population was counted in the census and which gave the Federal government the power to make laws regarding them over and above state legislation.

The overwhelming Yes vote in that referendum was an expression of a growing upsurge of the working class, a component of which was the developing sentiment that action had to be taken to support the advancement of the Indigenous population.

However, over the more than half century since, there has been a concerted campaign to separate the struggle against the oppression of the Indigenous population from the broader struggles of the working class, diverting it into the fight for land rights and property titles within the framework of identity politics.

Burney played to this agenda in her speech. Departing from her prepared remarks, she lashed out at Trump-style politics in the opposition to the Voice. Undoubtedly there are racist elements in the No campaign, but to brand the growing opposition to the Voice in this way, including from within the Indigenous community itself, is a crude attempt to tarnish genuine opposition as racialist.

The Voice does not represent a way forward for Indigenous people. It is yet another trap as all the nostrums advanced in the past are more clearly exposed.

It is part of an agenda of “reconciliation” and constitutional “recognition.” That is, reconciliation with the capitalist system responsible for the crimes against the Aboriginal population from 1788 to the present day and the integration, via constitutional recognition, of a privileged layer of academics, business executives and bureaucrats into the political establishment.

With unerring class instinct major corporations, finance houses and multi-million-dollar sporting enterprises have taken the measure of the Voice and are backing it to the hilt as their demands for deepening attacks on the working class became ever more strident.

Key sections of the military establishment support it on the basis that it will assist in the development of national unity and patriotism as the drums of war beat ever louder.

The Voice is part of this agenda. Burney concluded her speech by declaring that a Yes vote would “unify and strengthen Australia” and would be “an act of patriotism.”

Brazil's Electoral Court bars fascistic former president Bolsonaro from running for office

Miguel Andrade

On June 30, Brazil’s Electoral Court (TSE) concluded its vote on the first of 16 indictments of fascistic former president Jair Bolsonaro, declaring him ineligible to run for office for eight years.

Jair Bolsonaro [Photo: Tânia Rêgo/Agência Brasil]

The trial focused on a meeting called by Bolsonaro on July 18, 2022, with foreign ambassadors in Brasilia, in which he attacked Brazil’s electronic ballot boxes and promoted the army as guarantor of the integrity of the electoral process through a “parallel” vote count, independent of the TSE. Bolsonaro categorically stated that it would be impossible to audit the Brazilian electronic ballot boxes, which would disqualify the TSE as an arbiter of the legitimacy of the elections, demanding the intervention of the armed forces.

Bolsonaro was convicted of abuse of political and economic power for electoral purposes, with the TSE finding that the meeting was aimed at using the office of the presidency to mobilize the president’s electoral base. 

Such a conviction aims to solve, in the most opportunistic, pragmatic and anti-democratic way possible, the intractable crisis of capitalism and bourgeois democracy in Brazil, inextricably linked to the worldwide march of capitalism towards a third nuclear world war. It is as ineffective as it is dangerous.

First, to say that Bolsonaro used the meeting with ambassadors for “electoral purposes” is a gross understatement of what happened. The meeting was part of a long preparation for a coup d’état that culminated in the fascist violence of January 8, 2023, in which his supporters attempted to force, by means of an attack on the headquarters of the three constitutional powers, the intervention of the armed forces.

Moreover, as already shown by the intense political discussions between representatives of Lula’s own PT and foreign ambassadors, and stressed again by recent Financial Times reports of frantic diplomatic discussions with the US, the diplomatic arena was crucial for the Brazilian electoral dispute. This dispute took place behind the backs of the population, as the main candidates, Bolsonaro and Lula, presented themselves to international capital as the most capable of imposing the austerity required by global war preparations.

Having won, at least temporarily, the trust of its imperialist masters, the PT is now dedicated to rehabilitating the Brazilian political system. It is trying to convince the population that the period of fascist threats vocalized by Bolsonaro was nothing but a flash of lightning in a blue sky, and that everything can return to normalcy if the former president is removed from what the PT calls the “electoral game.” The goal of this political maneuver is to prevent workers from understanding the extent of the fascist threat and its causes in the crisis of Brazilian and world capitalism.

Bolsonaro’s electoral ban plays a key role in this process, since it alleges, as the rapporteur of the case at the TSE, minister Benedito Gonçalves, emphasized, that the coup plot was of a merely electoral nature and, most importantly, of a “very personal” character. It thus absolves Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party and other key figures, especially within the military, of any role in the conspiracy.

It is significant that the Court unanimously acquitted Gen. Walter Braga Netto, Bolsonaro’s running mate and former minister of Defense and chief of staff, based on the allegation that Bolsonaro acted alone in organizing the meeting. In the same fashion, Gonçalves cited the testimony of former chief of staff Ciro Nogueira and witnesses from the Foreign Ministry to emphasize that Bolsonaro acted alone. All claimed opposition to the meeting, which for the TSE reinforces its illegal character while placing the blame exclusively on Bolsonaro.

With the attempt to minimize the seriousness of the coup plot by reducing it to a campaign trail event, the sentence against Bolsonaro sets extremely anti-democratic precedents. Refusing to explain how the meeting secured any specifically electoral advantage for Bolsonaro, rapporteur minister Gonçalves claimed that the electoral impact was irrelevant, so long as Bolsonaro had sought it. This reasoning was endorsed by the majority. A crucial document, the so-called “coup draft” found with Bolsonaro’s former Justice Minister Anderson Torres, which envisaged emergency measures to overrule the power of the TSE and establish a provisional military government, was attached to the case and cited without connection to the “electoral impact,” since it was clearly part of a much broader conspiracy that the court ignored.

Thus, the political balance sheet of the trial is that a handful of unelected judges revoked the political rights of a presidential candidate based on acts whose impact allegedly cannot be assessed—a precedent that can and will be used even more arbitrarily against the political rights of those who challenge the political system from the left.

Meanwhile, the PT and the bourgeois press celebrated the ruling as the “rebirth” of a post-Bolsonaro right-wing in the country, offering political legitimacy to all of Bolsonaro’s co-conspirators. In a manner which is as utopian as it is politically criminal, the PT’s president, Deputy Gleisi Hoffmann, celebrated the sentence as “pedagogical and educational,” adding that “the extreme right has to know that in order to participate in politics, it has to be in the democratic process.”

The press echoed the triumphant tone of the ruling party, with Globo editorializing that the “TSE decision opens the way to the civilized right-wing” and Estado de S. Paulo similarly predicting in an editorial “the reinvention of the Brazilian right-wing.”

It is undeniable that Bolsonaro’s conviction by the TSE judges carries a component of self-defense, given the former president’s incitement to attacks on the courts. These were frequently made side-by-side with fascist elements who promised to kidnap and execute the judges, among other opponents of the former president. This is also how one may understand the reaction of the bourgeois fractions represented by the newspapers that celebrate the “reinvention of the Brazilian right-wing” and by the PT itself.

However, all these factions, without exception, fear the Brazilian working class infinitely more than the fascist threat. The Brazilian bourgeoisie is aware that it presides over a social powder keg and one of the most unequal countries on the planet, and that it no longer has any path of development, even if temporary, like the “commodities boom” that momentarily allowed for relief from social tensions during the first PT governments. 

Since the economic crisis that propelled the bourgeoisie to oust the last PT president, Dilma Rousseff, from power in the fraudulent impeachment of 2016, the country’s ruling class has engaged in a brutal downward spiral of austerity that cannot be imposed by democratic means. The emergence of fascist forces under Bolsonaro’s leadership responds to the objective need to prepare for an inevitable and decisive confrontation with the working class.

Far from offering any alternative to this situation, the new Lula government has as its only program the imposition of austerity under the “new fiscal framework.” It meanwhile is pursuing a foreign policy aimed at balancing itself between attempts to extract short-term concessions from the European imperialist countries and the United States and maintaining a close relationship with China and Russia.

In this context, the bourgeoisie fears that a full exposure of Bolsonaro’s crimes will precipitate a working class confrontation with the entire Brazilian political establishment, including the PT, for which it is not yet prepared. In addition to the election indictments, Bolsonaro is facing investigations for numerous other crimes, particularly those committed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prosecuting them and eventually convicting Bolsonaro could pave the way for the same to happen to all those who carried out the “herd immunity” policy of putting profits above human lives during the pandemic.

The attempt to resolve the political crisis through the electoral court may further strengthen Bolsonaro himself and the fascist movement he is developing, since the anti-democratic and fragile nature of his conviction will be exploited both to portray him as the victim of a judicial persecution and for him to challenge it.

This attempt also embodies the PT’s inability and fear of making any appeal to the working class for support. Instead, it, along with the ruling class as a whole, seeks to strengthen the bourgeois state, and especially those institutions most shielded from the precarious popular control offered by elections, such as the TSE and the Supreme Court (STF).

Nothing could be more representative of this hostility to the population than the deification of the president of the STF and TSE, Minister Alexandre de Moraes. Appointed to the STF by the successor to the PT’s Rousseff in the presidency, Michel Temer, he has been allowed to preside over a “secret” inquiry with no oversight focused on the dissemination of “fake news” by Bolsonaro’s supporters.

It was based on these powers, and without any public discussion in Congress, that Moraes ordered the arrest of close aides of Bolsonaro, such as former minister Anderson Torres, with whom police found the plan to nullify the powers of the TSE cited by the rapporteur of Bolsonaro’s ineligibility.

Recently, Lula’s Justice Minister, the former member of the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), Flávio Dino, declared in a completely demoralized fashion and ignoring the workers on behalf of whom his government pretends to speak, that “if it were not for the Supreme Court, we would be in exile.” He added dismissively about Moraes and his “superpowers” that “his decisions have been backed by the full court.”

The fascists are fully aware that the measures of Moraes and the courts will not stop their march. It is Brazil’s worst-kept secret that Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party considers his conviction a political asset, one that can bolster the party’s populist appeal by portraying the president as a “victim of the elites.”