No Action On Ongoing Repression Of Myanmar’s Muslims

M. Adil Khan

In one of its recent reporting the Guardian reports that at the entrance to Thaungtan village in Myanmar’s Irrawaddy Delta a brand-new signasserts, “No Muslims allowed to stay overnight. No Muslims allowed rent houses. No marriage with Muslims.”

Al-Jajeera also reports of similar rise in systematic eviction, rape, loot and arson of Rohingyas (the Muslim ethnic minority of Myanmar’s Delta) by the military. Similarly Bangkok Post also reports how in a recent incident soldiers in Shey Kya village in Rakhine State “raided their (Rohingya) homes, looted property and raped them at gun point.” In the same Al-Jajeera report it quotes Yanghee Lee, the UN envoy on human rights in Myanmar, who said that she had received “repeated allegations of arbitrary arrests as well as extrajudicial killings occurring within the context of the security operations conducted by the authorities in search of the alleged attackers”.

Myanmar Government neither denies nor confirms these recent outbreaks of violence against Muslims in Myanmar. Instead it claims that some of the army actions are responses to ‘400 strong rebel actions’ of Rohingyas. But this claim of ‘armed resistance with foreign support’ is yet to be verified by any credible source.

This is an irony for Myanmar Muslims for they made important contributions in every aspect of Myanmar’s development – economic, political and social – including that Muslims in Myanmar played a key role in its independence movement first against the British then against the occupying Japan so much so that U Razzak, a Muslim from upper ‘Burma’ who believed in unity in diversity worked closely with Aung San, the Father of the Nation (Aung San Suu Kyi’s father ) and was Minister of Education and Planning in Aung San’s shadow cabinet who was assassinated along with Aung San on the fateful July 19, 1947.

Sadly, history does not seem to play any part in influencing Myanmar’s present day relations with Muslims – persecution of Muslims in Myanmar by now has become not only relentless but more brutal.

Saddest part is also that Nobel Laureate Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi once West’s voice of freedom and democracy who now heads the Myanmar government seems also to have a short memory of history that she herself once was a victim of state persecution. So far Aung San suu Kyi has chosen to remain either deafeningly silent or disturbingly evasive to the on-going horrific acts of violence against Muslims in her country. What is also quite tragic is that in recent times when a handful of conscientious Myanmar citizens condemned and protested in Yangoon against what seems like a well-organized plan of persecution,her police baton-charged the protesters for ‘disturbing public order’.

I, however, do not expect Aung San Suu Kyi or for that most institutions to come to much help in the cause of Myanmar’s Muslims and so far as Aung San Suu Kyi is concerned I expect the least for by now she has become a prisoner of her own ambition and thus is unlikely to do anything that would risk her own self-seeking agenda.

I also do not think the so-called free world would do anything differently either for they are a prisoner of geo-politics where self-interest has taken precedence over principles – they need a friendly Myanmar government in their China containment strategy and thus last thing they would do is annoy Myanmar’s government (more accurately, its army) and close its containment conduit that it believes it has opened by befriending an army that is known for its unenvious record in human rights abuses.

Nor do I expect Bangladesh, Myanmar’s oppressed Muslims’ closest Muslim neighbour to do much about the issue either for their government is but a prisoner of another government where the latter is nothing but a cahoot in the cabal of West’s imperialist geo-politics and also that its brand of politics resonates well with that of Myanmar’s sectarian political culture.

Bangladesh’s one and only Nobel Peace Laureate, Professor Muhammad Yunus is also not saying much for he is but a prisoner of fear.

The world body of Muslims, the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) simply has neither the gal nor the moral standing to do much about the issue either for its members are too busy killing and demonizing each other – their own Muslims.

UN, the only body that can and has been raising its concerns from time to time is also a prisoner, of its structural incongruities that enables it to report but not regulate.

Only the people that irrespective of religion, caste, colour or nation they belong to, that believe in human rights as the fundamental tenet – the right to live and co-exist with each other with equal rights and privileges – can make the difference and fortunately, they are not in millions but in billions. They must unite and raise their voices internationally and most importantly within their own countries.

They must petition their respective senators, congressmen, parliamentarians whoever and get their governments to raise their voices in the strongest of terms against these dastardly acts of persecution and repression of Muslims in Myanmar that are happening on a daily basis for as Desmond Tutu oncereminded, “remaining silent at the time of injustices is to be on the side of the tyrants”.

Cyber Warfare: A New Frontier In Foreign Policy

Dillon Aubin

Last week, millions of Americans spent hours without their favorite websites after a series of cyber attacks hit crucial internet infrastructure. Dyn, a prominent internet performance management company, was hit by a wave of distributed denial-of-service attacks that left Twitter, Netflix, Paypal, and other major websites inaccessible. Though a relatively unknown hacker group called The New World Hackers claimed responsibility (1), the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have not verified these claims in their subsequent investigations (2). Regardless of who’s responsible, the timing of this incident coincides with a global discussion on the dangers cyber warfare.

After the US formally accused the Kremlin of orchestrating the Democratic National Convention Leak from this past summer (3) , Russian relations became an increasingly critical issue in the current presidential race. Earlier this month, Vice President Joe Biden more or less declared cyber war against the Russian government. During an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd, Biden explained how the White House is working on a cyber retaliation against the Kremlin for its alleged meddling in electoral affairs (4). Though state enforced cyber warfare is not necessarily a new concept, the American people are not accustomed to their leaders openly speaking of it. We may have just experienced a digital Pearl Harbor, or worse, a digital Gulf of Tonkin Incident.

Much like the chlorine gas and machine guns of World War I, our governments have a new generation of weaponry at their disposal. The world has never seen a planet encompassing cyber war, nor could it imagine the consequences of digital attrition and its effects on the real world. Unlike conventional warfare, there was no Geneva Convention outlining the moral standards for cyber attacks on nation states. But most importantly, it is difficult to decipher the point in which a cyber attack warrants a direct military response.

While campaigning in August, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton promised that her administration would respond to a Russian cyber attack with all branches of power. She pledged:

“We will be ready with serious political, economic and military responses. And we’re going to invest in protecting our governmental networks and our national infrastructure. I want us to lead the world in setting the rules of cyberspace” (5).

Though her methods are questionable, she makes a point in acknowledging that the rules of cyberspace are insufficiently clear. In the information age, all aspects of civilization share a common link to the digital world. The vast number of targets make cyber attacks a vague concept, one that can take various forms depending on the objective. A notable example of this ambiguity is the infamous Stuxnet virus.

Allegedly a joint US-Israel operation, Stuxnet is a piece of malware designed to infiltrate computer systems that monitor industrial machinery. In short, the the malware exploits errors in the programming and aims to cause a mechanical malfunction. In an extensive operation, Stuxnet infiltrated a number of Iranian nuclear facilities for the purpose of disrupting Tehran’s nuclear program (6). Though the operation did not lead to a reactor meltdown, the concept of a computer virus manipulating fragile infrastructure in a nuclear facility is terrifying.

Though we sometimes forget, our daily lives are built around programming. The power grids that provide our electricity rely on programmed machinery. Our bank accounts are filled with digital representations of our wealth. Even sensitive information like credit card numbers and passport photos are often passed around on the internet. In an era of unrestricted cyber warfare, all of these elements could be fair game for manipulation.

So before our leaders start issuing nonchalant threats, we need to lay down some ground rules. A complicated and unexplored concept, cyber warfare leaves a wide spectrum of possibilities and severity. For an extensive period, there must be an international effort to identify these possibilities and design a protocol for acceptable responses. Because in the information age, there is a lot more at stake than a day without Netflix.

Notes

1. http://6abc.com/news/group-of-hackers-claims-responsibility-for-massive-cyber-attack/1568944/
2. https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/youre-not-ready-for-a-big-internet-outage-140652507.html
3. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/07/us-russia-dnc-hack-interfering-presidential-election
4. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/us/politics/biden-hints-at-us-response-to-cyberattacks-blamed-on-russia.html
5. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/sep/1/clinton-us-will-treat-cyberattacks-just-any-other-/
6. http://www.businessinsider.com/stuxnet-was-far-more-dangerous-than-previous-thought-2013-11

Domestic U.S. Politics Of War With Russia

Eric Zuesse

First, the context in which the issue of war against Russia is being raised:

Syria’s government is allied with Russia’s government, and ‘The West’ is trying to overthrow Syria’s government and is bringing into Syria, and arming, tens of thousands of jihadists there, as the footsoldiers to do it. Syria and Russia are bombing the people that we are bringing in.

The Presidential candidate of the U.S. Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton, is a longstanding and ardent proponent of the U.S. establishing a “no-fly zone” over at least the parts of Syria where non-ISIS jihadists — the jihadists that are financed and armed by the U.S. and its allies (mainly by the Sunni fundamentalist royal families who own Saudi Arabia and Qatar) — have conquered territory from Syria’s (legitimate and internationally recognized) government. It’s conquest of Syria, that the U.S. is backing. The U.S., in both law and fact, is already participating in an invasion of Syria.

Syria’s government is run by the ideologically committed anti-Sharia-law and non-sectarian Ba’ath Party, under President Bashar al-Assad, who happens to be nominally an Alawite Shiite (and fundamentalist Sunnis hate Shiites, and all of the jihadists are fundamentalist Sunnis, just as the royal Saudi and Qatari families are), and Assad has always crushed jihadists in Syria — until Barack Obama became the U.S. President. As soon as Obama came into power, he and Hillary Clinton were working behind the scenes for the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad.

Clinton has committed herself clearly to completing what President Obama has started. And she intends to do it by means of instituting in Syria a no-fly zone like she did in Libya (a big win for her). But there is a big difference: Russian planes weren’t defending Muammar Gaddafi’s Libyan government. Russian planes are defending Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian government.

For the U.S. government to institute a no-fly zone in Syria would mean that the U.S. would shoot down Syrian government planes that are bombing the U.S.-backed jihadists who are fighting to overthrow and replace Assad’s government. Of course many civilians are getting bombed by both the U.S. and Syrian sides, and some of the victims of the Syrian government’s side are publicized on U.S.-allied television in order to stir hatred against Assad and help (the non-ISIS, U.S.-backed) jihadists (such as Al Qaeda in Syria), but this is the way of war — and the propaganda for war — and no “no-fly zone” will improve that situation, but could possibly make it far worse.

Russia’s participation in the Syrian war is not an invasion, but America’s is. The Syrian government had requested assistance from the Russian government to help kill all of the jihadist groups (not only ISIS but Al Qaeda in Syria and all the others, all of which are backed by the U.S. and by the royals who own Saudi Arabia and Qatar). The jihadists are trying to overthrow and replace Syria’s secular government. On 30 September 2015, Russia started its bombing campaign there, which continues.

Consequently, the U.S.-established no-fly zone in Syria would also be shooting down Russian bombers.

At that point, where the U.S. and Russia are at war against each other in Syria due to America’s no-fly zone (in a country where we’re invaders, not invited in by the nation’s government, such as the Russian planes are), either one side or the other would surrender, or else nuclear war would result. How likely would Syria and Russia be to surrender Syria? How likely would the U.S. be to surrender to Russia and Syria? (After all: Hillary Clinton is passionately anti-Russian and anti-Syrian.)

In other words, and in short: nuclear war is the likely outcome if Hillary Clinton becomes elected President of the United States. It would be practically unavoidable, if she is elected.

The domestic U.S. politics that are associated with this shocking but clear fact are complex, but are likewise clear: The American public simply don’t know or understand these facts; and the reason they don’t is that these facts are hidden from them, as will be exemplified in the following ways:

On October 26th, the U.S.-allied propaganda-agency Reuters headlined “Britain, U.S. sending planes, troops to deter Russia in the east” and pretended (without even acknowledging the actual facts of the matter) that this NATO action is a response to ‘deter’ Russia because Russia had accepted in 2014 the overwhelming desire of the residents of Crimea to become Russian citizens after the coup that U.S. President Barack Obama’s Administration had perpetrated in Ukraine during February 2014, overthrowing the democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, for whom 75% of Crimeans had voted. Even Western-sponsored polls that were taken of Crimeans both before and after the resulting Crimean 16 March 2014 referendum on whether Crimea should be restored to being again a province of Russia (which Crimea was until the Soviet dictator Khrushchev had arbitrarily transferred Crimea to Ukraine in 1954) showed that over 90% of Crimeans wanted to do this and that even a higher percentage of them were mad as hell against what America was doing and extremely supportive of Russia’s position on this matter, but the U.S. government’s position is that it was instead ‘conquest of land’ by Russia, and the U.S. and its allies are pouring troops and weapons onto and near Russia’s borders in order to defend against ‘Russian aggression’. The power of sheer propaganda! It’s crucial in politics.

The way the Reuters ‘news’ report phrased this matter was “NATO’s aim is to make good on a July promise by NATO leaders to deter Russia in Europe’s ex-Soviet states, after Moscow orchestrated the annexation of the Crimea peninsula in 2014.” That’s not as much of a lie as the U.S. President’s use of the word ‘conquest’ to describe Russia’s role there is, but it’s close.

Reuters’s report opened with “Britain said on Wednesday it will send fighter jets to Romania next year and the United States promised troops, tanks and artillery to Poland in NATO’s biggest military build-up on Russia’s borders since the Cold War.” But in order to play down the danger here, they refused to headline their ‘news report’ with that, it’s real, actual, news, which was: “NATO’s biggest military build-up on Russia’s borders since the Cold War.” That headline would have attracted far more readers, but in the ‘news’ business in a dictatorship, that’s not the main objective when reporting news that the government wants to bury instead of to go viral. It’s part of ‘news’-management, which includes burying what is important.

Then, Reuters quoted the U.S. Secretary of ‘Defense’, who said: “It’s a major sign of the U.S. commitment to strengthening deterrence here.”

After the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, and in the same year terminated its Warsaw Pact military alliance that had been set up by the Soviet Union to mirror America’s NATO alliance, NATO expanded right up to Russia’s borders and is therefore highly aggressive and threatening toward the people of Russia, who don’t like missiles minutes away, any more than Americans would like if Russia took over Mexico and placed troops and missiles on our border. But, according to the U.S.-and-allied propaganda-line, this strangulation of Russia by NATO is ‘deterrence’ against Russia. Then, when Russia responds to such U.S.-aggression by positioning troops and weapons to their side of their border, that’s called ‘aggressive’. And NATO is ‘responding’ to ‘Russia’s aggressive moves’.

It’s like blaming a raped woman for trying to defend against her rapist. Hillary Clinton’s actions (never her rhetoric) show that she wants more of that type of thing, especially regarding the Russian people, whom the U.S. government wants to conquer by eliminating their international allies, one by one — and then by eliminating their own leader Vladimir Putin himself, after the original ‘regime change in Iraq’ (whose Saddam Hussein was the first Russia-friendly leader to be eliminated; then Muammar Gaddafi, then Bashar al-Assad, then Viktor Yanukovych). The pattern is clear. And now NATO is going in for the kill.

But this reality is not how America’s ‘impartial’ press reports what is actually a buildup toward a possible NATO invasion of Russia.

Of course, America’s Republican Party (or conservative) press have long been controlled by neoconservatives (they were all supportive of ‘regime-change in Iraq’, and the American public never punished them for that — mega-criminal deceit goes unpunished), and so they don’t even pretend to be anything more than nationalistic mouthpieces for the U.S. government’s conquests. However, the Democratic Party’s (or liberal) press do need to cater to some progressive anti-nationalistic audiences. Yet still neoconservatism dominates at such newspapers as The New York Times and the Washington Post, as well as in magazines such as The Atlantic, The New Republic, and Foreign Policy, all of which are, if anything, neoconservative Democratic Party organs. All of them endorse Hillary Clinton. But there is a small progressive wing to American ‘journalism’; and, so, here is how one of the progressive sites, Common Dreams, handles this crucial matter, which might soon end the world as we know it: they headlined on October 26th, “NATO Preps ‘Biggest Military Build-Up on Russia’s Borders Since Cold War’,” and opened (quoting from Reuters and other Western sources):

Playing “a dangerous game,” NATO pushes allies to send more troops and military equipment to Eastern Europe. NATO is pushing all allies to deploy more troops and military equipment to Russia’s borders, further ratcheting up tensions as the West prepares for “its biggest military build-up on Russia’s borders since the Cold War,” as Reuters observed.

“France, Denmark, Italy and other allies are expected to join the four battle groups led by the United States, Germany, Britain, and Canada to go to Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia, with forces ranging from armored infantry to drones,” Reuters reported.

“Yet with the U.S. openly talking [about] a war with Russia, the continued deployments seem far from a purely defensive measure,” argued Antiwar.com‘s Jason Ditz [who said]:

”Diplomats also suggested it was only partly about sending a message to Russia, and that the real point of the latest push is to get a bunch of nations involved as a ‘message’ to U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has complained the U.S. is spending too much defending Europe and that Europe isn’t doing enough on its own. That underscores the cynical nature of the deployments, and indeed the sort of thing adding to the sense of NATO being obsolete, that they feel they can afford to organize major deployments just for the sake of scoring political points in member nations’ elections.”

These moves are shortsighted, to say the least, wrote Gilbert Doctorow of the American Committee for East-West Accord [by saying]: “America’s steady campaign of expanding NATO, […] its vilification of Russia, and its information war based on lies” are part of “a dangerous game” that is pulling all sides inevitably closer to war, Doctorow argued.

Nothing was provided there that highlighted the stark contrast between the strongly anti-invasion Republican Presidential candidate Trump, versus the strongly pro-invasion Democratic candidate Clinton. In other words, no essential context was provided — no context of a policy-decision that America’s voters will have to make, choosing the one or the other to be the next President. Instead, ‘progressive’ news-sites treat their readers and audiences as mere fools who think that voting for a third-party candidate in a U.S. Presidential contest is not a wasted vote, like refusing to vote at all is.

The overwhelming majority of the 100+ reader-comments to that Common Dreams report, who expressed a Presidential choice said “Vote Green” or “Jill Stein,” referring to a third-party candidate who stands no chance of winning even one of the 50 U.S. states. In other words: the readers at this progressive site are so unconcerned about the future of the world, that they don’t even care whether the next U.S. President would be Hillary Clinton who would cause nuclear war, or Donald Tump who has consistently argued against her neoconservatism and emphasized the necessity of ending the U.S. government’s rabid hostility toward Russia and ending expansion of NATO up to Russia’s borders. In other words: despite progressive rhetoric, they’re actually oblivious to the world’s future — oblivious to the most important thing of all.

And, so, that is the domestic politics of the war that the U.S. elite are determined to wage against Russia. The fix is in for nuclear war.

To the owners of the media, the people who hire and fire — and promote and demote — the “news’ people, and thus who shape what the public know and understand and what the public don’t, it’s better that the outcome of the U.S. election be determined by whether or not Donald Trump is a rapist, than by whether or not Hillary Clinton will bring about nuclear war with Russia. So, it’s the way things are.

In the U.S.-allied nations such as Britain, the ‘news’ media are similar. For example, Britain’s liberal Guardian headlined on October 27th, “Nato and Russia playing dangerous game with military build-up: Russia wants to detract from problems at home and position itself as a superpower, and Nato troop movements can only help.” It said that, “amid western suspicions the Russian fleet will be used to flatten civilians in Aleppo, Nato’s apparent goal here is to deter future acts of aggression on European territory by Vladimir Putin’s revanchist Russia.” That might as well have been written by the Obama Administration, as by some ‘news’ person.

‘The West’ is clearly behind the plan. Of course, the American public haven’t yet spoken.

Samoan car component plant to shut, eliminating 740 jobs

John Braddock

Samoa’s biggest private sector employer, Yazaki Eds Samoa, announced on October 10 that it will close its local plant in 2017, after 25 years in operation. The Japanese-owned car component manufacturer, which produces electrical harnesses, employs 740 people in the capital, Apia.

The shutdown is a direct result of the destruction of the Australian car industry and underscores the assessment made by the Socialist Equality Party on October 6 which explained that the closure of Ford’s Australian plants demonstrated the need for a global auto workers’ strategy to defend jobs and living standards.

Yazaki is a supplier to General Motors (GM) and Toyota, both of which are in the process of shutting down. Ford Australia closed its two remaining auto plants this month, ending production in the country after 91 years. When GM and Toyota close next year, it will end the country’s auto assembly and related parts industry, resulting in an estimated loss of up to 150,000 jobs.

The ruthless restructuring of the auto industry is being enforced in one country after another by governments and unions, for the benefit of a tiny financial and corporate elite, with devastating consequences for workers internationally.

Yazaki Samoa Employees Association president Uelese Tupuola made it clear the unions would fully collaborate with the company to axe the plant. “We’ve always known at the back of our heads that this day will come but we tried to keep an open mind about the result,” Tupuola said.

Co-ordinator of the Samoa First Union, Jerome Mika, said it was “a good opportunity” for the government to look at legislating redundancy provisions, which do not exist in the Employment Relations Act. Mika praised Yazaki’s president Craig O’Donohue as “very genuine” and falsely claimed that the management-union talks would ensure workers are “looked after.”

The company is preparing a minimal severance package, but workers who resign to find other jobs before the shutdown will miss out on any payment. O’Donohue declared that although the closure may not be “favourable,” Samoan workers had to “remember how happy we should be for the experience that we have and we still have to go.”

This is staggering hypocrisy. Yazaki is yet another example of how transnational companies treat workers as disposable commodities. They shift production to exploit ever-cheaper labour, playing workers in one country off against their fellow workers in others, lowering wages and destroying the conditions of workers everywhere.

The plant was established in 1991 when Yazaki transferred its operations from Melbourne, taking advantage of Samoa’s labour market “flexibility” and poverty-level wages. The Samoan government beat off competition from Fiji and Indonesia, offering 15-year tax holidays and long-term property leases at low rents. Exports were conducted under a concessional arrangement that gave duty-free access to the Australian and New Zealand markets.

Yazaki, which became a major supplier of harnesses to the global auto industry, made millions from the exploitation of its workforce. In Samoa’s first industrial strike in 1993, Yazaki workers protesting sweatshop conditions and 1.24 tala [US 48 cents] an hour wages were defeated through government collusion and the use of scab labour. According to the Samoa Observer, today’s wages average just 130 tala [$US51] a week. The company’s profits have typically ranged up to $US3 million annually.

Like auto workers in Australia and elsewhere, Yazaki workers can expect to be pitilessly flung onto the scrapheap. The Samoan government declared that business closures are a “reality that governments around the world must face.” The government will continue to promote Samoa as “an attractive option for foreign investment” while proactively seeking more “seasonal work” for Samoans in New Zealand and Australia.

Over the past two decades Samoa has been opened up to foreign investment and trade through pro-market reforms with the ruling Human Rights Protection Party at the forefront of cutting business taxes, privatising public assets, removing trade barriers and slashing public services.

The Yazaki plant closure will have a devastating impact on the tiny Pacific island state, which has a population of just 190,000. At its height, the plant employed more than 2,000 workers and made up over 20 percent of the manufacturing sector’s total output. It produced around 70 percent of Samoa’s exports and 6 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

Thousands will be hit by the job losses and subsequent downturn. According to the Asia Development Bank (ADB), 27 percent of Samoans live below the national poverty line. Only 29.4 percent of those aged over 15 years is formally employed, with the majority are dependent on development aid, remittances from overseas, tourism, agriculture, subsistence farming and fishing. Samoa ranks among the worst in the world for diseases of poverty such as diabetes—the rate of adult obesity is 42 percent.

Responsibility for the dire social conditions that exist throughout the Pacific lies with the imperialist powers that have dominated the region for the past century—Samoa was a New Zealand colony for over 50 years after its seizure from Germany in World War I. The effects of colonial rule have left all the Pacific Islands acutely under-developed and dependent on imports. Trade and commerce statistics overwhelmingly favour Australian and New Zealand interests and those of transnational companies that control banking, mining, oil and fishing.

The axing of Samoa’s most important manufacturing plant comes alongside recent cuts in the New Caledonia nickel industry and a deepening economic crisis in Papua New Guinea. In its July 2016 Pacific Economic Monitor, the ADB forecast that due to the precipitous downturn in commodity prices, the South Pacific region will see economic growth sharply decline from 7.0 percent, recorded last year, to an average of 3.9 percent in 2016. Samoa’s growth is predicted to drop even further, from 3.5 percent this year to 2 percent in 2017.

Ruling Venezuelan party cuts off recall petition drive, provoking protests

Alexander Fangmann

Protests and rallies took place across Venezuela on Wednesday, organized by right-wing opposition parties in response to the National Electoral Council’s (CNE) halting of the signature drive for a recall referendum that would remove President Nicolás Maduro from power. In several areas of the country there were violent clashes between police and armed demonstrators mobilized by right-wing parties. A policeman in the state of Miranda was reportedly shot dead while trying to clear a roadblock on the Pan-American Highway.

A subsequent “civic strike” called by the right on Friday appeared to have little effect. Separately, however, hundreds of workers from the Hipódromo de La Rinconada, Caracas’s main racetrack, blocked a key highway to protest delays in the paying of food tickets, a government-mandated benefit that allows workers to buy food.

Since the crushing defeat suffered by the chavista United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) in legislative elections last December, the Maduro government has increasingly taken measures to sideline the National Assembly, raising the danger of dictatorship just as conditions for the Venezuelan working class are becoming increasingly dire in the face of the country’s economic collapse.

The CNE based its ruling last week on earlier decisions in four regional court cases, which upheld challenges to the validity of signatures collected during the first step of the recall process. The government is claiming that an enormous percentage of the signatures gathered by the opposition were fraudulent. This move in all likelihood means that the recall is effectively off the table because, according to the constitution, after January 10 a recall would only result in Maduro’s replacement by the vice-president, rather than in new elections as would occur if the recall took place before that date.

Underscoring the deep crisis and divisions between the main factions of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie, the opposition-controlled National Assembly voted to put Maduro on trial following the CNE decision, hoping to emulate the recent impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in Brazil. Meanwhile, Diosdado Cabello, the former speaker of the National Assembly and a leading figure in the PSUV, said in regard to the claims of electoral fraud, “We hope that those responsible will be found, will be detained and will go to prison for what they have done.”

Since the PSUV’s loss of control of the National Assembly, the Maduro government has become increasingly reliant on the courts and other institutions made up primarily of chavista appointees to allow it to circumvent the legislature. Aside from the decision on the recall referendum, the CNE also announced that elections for state governors, which had been scheduled for December, will instead be held in June of next year, likely to prevent further layers of government from being lost by the PSUV.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court ruled that the Maduro government could send its budget directly to the courts for approval, bypassing the normal legislative process. To provide a fig leaf of legality for its moves, the Maduro government has leaned heavily on a dispute that opened up last year just after the National Assembly voted to seat three deputies from the state of Amazonas, despite a ruling by the Supreme Court which barred those deputies from taking their seats after a challenge to their election results by the PSUV. Since that time, the chavistas have considered all acts of the National Assembly as null and void. As vice-president Aristobulo Isturiz put it, "Legally, the National Assembly does not exist."

The bypassing of the National Assembly on the part of the ruling PSUV poses a grave danger for the Venezuelan working class. The move toward extra-constitutional rule is unfolding as social conditions in the country are rapidly deteriorating due to an economic collapse following from a fall in the price of oil, itself ultimately conditioned by the continued downturn in the world economy. While the recent measures have been aimed in the first instance at the PSUV’s right-wing opposition, the concentration of power will be directed against the working class once it begins to organize itself independently to defend its living conditions.

Conditions in the country are dire. On Thursday, October 27, the government announced it would be raising the minimum wage, including food subsidies, by 40 percent. This does not begin to erase the erosion in purchasing power that has occurred due to the rampant inflation, which the IMF expects will exceed 1,600 percent next year.

There are widespread reports of hunger in the country, with many people skipping meals. It was widely reported earlier this month that workers from the state-run oil giant PDVSA, previously considered among the best-paid in the country, have been selling their uniforms to get money to buy food.

The health care system also appears to be in almost total collapse. Infant mortality has increased by 18.5 percent from the previous year, and is up 50 percent from 2012. Hospitals lack all kinds of basic supplies, which the country has not been able to import, due to the fall in export earnings.

The Venezuelan Health Observatory, part of the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas, says that fewer than 10 percent of operating rooms, emergency rooms, and intensive care units are operational. In addition, over 76 percent of hospitals have a scarcity of medicines, 81 have a scarcity of surgical materials, and 70 percent do not have reliable access to water. Diseases that had once been eradicated are returning to the country, such as diphtheria.

The oil industry is also suffering from a vicious cycle of neglect, as lack of imported parts, machinery, and funds to pay oil service companies have led to a decline in production. According to government figures, oil production fell 11 percent over the past year and the number of working rigs declined by 25 percent. In parts of the countries, wells are simply flaring off oil and gas due to a lack of processing equipment. Oil service companies such as Halliburton and Schlumberger are winding down their operations and exiting the country.

Despite this economic and social meltdown, Venezuelan bonds are providing excellent returns of 46 percent as the Maduro government continues to prioritize paying back its creditors over funding imports that would allow it to meet workers’ needs or even to continue producing the oil it needs to fund imports. In fact, banks and financial firms around the world have historically profited quite handsomely from the so-called “Bolivarian socialist” policies pursued by Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez.

Report documents Canadian government’s abuse of immigrant and refugee children

Janet Browning & Roger Jordan

An August 2016 report, “No Life For A Child: A Roadmap to End Immigration Detention of Children and Family Separation,” by human-rights researchers from the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law criticizes successive Canadian governments for their brutal and illegal practice of locking up immigrant and refugee children.

The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) routinely detains all undocumented migrants and refugees “who are considered a flight risk or a danger to the public and those whose identities cannot be confirmed,” including children and adolescents.

Infants, children and teenagers are generally kept in federal immigration holding centers in Toronto and Laval, Quebec. Designed for adults, these facilities resemble medium-security prisons, with little privacy or freedom of movement, and little to no access to education and exercise, says “Not Life for a Child.”

According to the report, between 2010 and 2014, an average of 242 children were cruelly and arbitrarily detained annually in immigration detention centers, often after rejected refugee claims, in violation of Canada’s international legal obligations.

However, the researchers caution the true number of detained children is actually much higher, since the Canadian government’s statistics exclude children who were being held because their parents were in custody and were not themselves subject to a detention order. The detained children came from all over the globe, including some from Syria and other war-ravaged regions.

Those in detention have not been convicted of any crimes, nor have they even been charged with a crime. They exist in legal limbo, but are treated like convicted criminals.

Significantly, the study confirms that the detention of child refugees has proceeded apace under Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government. Earlier this year, two 16-year-old boys were held in solitary confinement, in one case for three weeks, at the Toronto holding center.

The report’s findings explode the Trudeau government’s attempt to posture as a friend of refugees. When he assumed power last year, Trudeau made a calculated appeal to the widespread public sympathy for the plight of refugees by announcing the acceptance of 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of February. He posed for pictures at Toronto’s Pearson Airport when he greeted the first plane-load in December.

The Liberals’ election pledge amounted to a drop in the bucket given that millions have been displaced by the US-fomented war in Syria. Moreover, it was made up largely of refugees who were being privately sponsored by charities and other groups. In the months since, reports have emerged of many refugees struggling to get by and having to rely on food banks and donations to survive.

The Liberals’ hypocritical “refugee-friendly” pose was meant to form a demonstrable contrast with the previous Harper Conservative government, the better to press ahead with a reactionary agenda of expanding militarism abroad and implementing austerity at home.

Trudeau’s Liberals are no less responsible for creating the conditions for the refugee crisis than the Harper Conservatives. Under the previous Chretien-Martin Liberal governments, Canada joined the war in Afghanistan, which laid waste to the country and forced hundreds of thousands to flee, and whilst in opposition the Liberals enthusiastically supported Canada’s leading role in the NATO war on Libya, which left the country in ruins and largely under the control of Islamist militia.

In the year since Trudeau came to office, Canada has expanded its role in the US-led war in Iraq and Syria, where millions have been forced to flee their homes, and it is planning military interventions on the impoverished African continent to prop up authoritarian regimes in the name of the “war on terror.”

The Liberals have also sent warships to the eastern Mediterranean to assist NATO in enforcing the European Union’s brutal refugee “deterrence” program, which has claimed the lives of thousands who have drowned horrifically in the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas.

Children have been hit particularly hard by the refugee crisis. Estimates suggest they represent around a quarter of all migrants and refugees worldwide. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates there are now more than 60 million refugees worldwide.

The Global Detention Project has called Canada, with its mandatory detention laws, an “outlier” on detention for immigrants and refugees among industrialized democracies. The conditions in which adults and children are kept are miserable, as shown earlier this year when a group of refugees went on hunger strike at their detention facilities. Trudeau’s Public Safety Minister, Ralph Goodale, refused to meet with them.

Immigration detention in Canada is harsh and arbitrary for the explicit purpose of “deterrence”—i.e. discouraging migrants from coming to Canada by making it known they will be subjected to harsh treatment.

There are strict rules, regimented daily routines, and significant restrictions on privacy and liberty. Children in detention are under constant and invasive surveillance. They have inadequate access to education, insufficient opportunity for recreation and play, and receive poor nutrition and healthcare.

"They are the equivalent of medium-security prisons. There's barbed wire, there are routines that people have to follow in terms of mealtimes. They're not nurseries. They're not designed as daycare centers. These are, in effect, prisons," said Samer Muscati, director of the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto. "It's the worst sort of place you can put a child in." He described meeting parents who said that their children's first words were "search" or "shift change."

At the press conference held to release the report, Rachel Kronick, a child psychiatrist at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal and an assistant professor of psychiatry at McGill University, who contributed to the research, said, "Life in immigration detention is woefully unsuited for children." She said the report’s findings are clear and well documented. "Our research concluded that it is never in the best interests of children to be separated from their parents. Nor is it ever in the best interests of [a] child to be detained,…Migrant children's right to health must be protected. Children who are detained or separated from their families experience extreme psychological distress.”

The report was based on interviews with detained refugees and asylum seekers, as well as mental health experts, social workers, legal professionals and children's rights activists. Organizations and individuals endorsing the cessation of the barbaric practice of detaining children include the Canadian Pediatric Society, the Canadian Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatrists, the Office of the Ontario Child Advocate, and the president of the Canadian Bar Association.

The report notes that Canada’s current practices relating to the detention of children are in violation of its international legal obligations.

These terrible conditions have been created by the passage of ever more draconian refugee legislation by successive governments. Under the Chretien-Martin Liberal government, a law was passed that strips anyone who arrives in Canada via a “safe third country” of the right to even apply for refugee status.

In 2012, the former Harper government tabled the draconian Refugee Exclusion Act (Bill C-31), which legalized mandatory incarceration for refugees designated as “irregular arrivals.” Under this law, which was presented as a way to reduce the flow of “bogus refugees” and people-smuggling,” migrants, including children, can be detained for a year pending a governmental review of their case.

This legislation, now being implemented by the Trudeau Liberals, effectively strips refugees of basic democratic rights, including freedom from arbitrary detention, the right to freedom and security, and habeas corpus.

Also in 2012, the Conservatives enacted the Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act which further limits the rights of refugee claimants to appeal a rejected claim, including eliminating any right of appeal for those from so-called “safe countries.” It also mandated biometric identification procedures for those applying for a Canadian visa.

The gig economy: More than 160 million in US and EU rely on “independent work”

Genevieve Leigh

Up to 162 million individuals in the United States and the European Union, or 20 to 30 percent of the working-age population, engage in “independent work,” a phenomenon that makes up what is being called the “gig economy,” according to a McKinsey Global Institute report released this month.

The report defines this independent work as a position that meets three basic criteria: a high degree of autonomy; payment by task, assignment, or sales; and a short-term relationship between the worker and the customer. These jobs include things like freelance work, driving for Uber, sales on Etsy, renting out rooms on Airbnb, and various temp jobs.

The report divides those who take part in independent work into four categories under the headings: “free agents,” those who both actively choose independent work and collect their primary income from it; “casual earners,” defined as workers who supplement their main income with independent work and do so by choice; “reluctants,” who make their primary income from this work but would prefer traditional jobs: and “financially strapped,” workers who do independent work out of necessity.

The group referred to as the “reluctants” make up 14 percent of independent workers, which equates to 23 million people. The “financially strapped” comes in slightly ahead, at 16 percent, or 26 million people. This adds up to almost 50 million people who take second or third jobs in the independent sphere out of necessity.

The report does not include what are becoming known as “fissured workers,” those whose jobs are considered non-core functions such as technical support, janitorial services and security, and are therefore being turned over to vendors and subcontractors, often resulting in another form of casualized labor.

The report explains that independent work provides many “macro benefits” to the economy by increasing labor force participation and the number of hours worked in the economy. Also among the beneficiaries of this layer of workers are the owners of startups, who rely on such cheap labor to avoid the “burden” of full-time employees. In other words, those on the receiving end of the “benefits” of the casualization of the labor force are not the workers, but the capitalist class, the petty-bourgeois, and aspiring petty-bourgeois layers who are no longer forced to supply long-term fixed jobs to their employees.

As the study notes, independent workers have limited access to income security protections, such as unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, and disability insurance. Since pay is often awarded as a lump sum according to the type of project, rather than by hours worked, minimum wage laws may not apply and retirement security is virtually nonexistent. Most casualized laborers are not provided health insurance, forcing them to turn to the overpriced Obamacare exchanges, or individual insurance market, or pay tax penalties for not being insured.

In addition, workers are considered to be “independent contractors” by the IRS, which requires paying self-employment tax in addition to income tax. This type of work creates other obstacles as well, such as reduced access to credit, the risk of not being paid for work that is already performed, and complex tax filing, licensing and regulatory compliance requirements.

However, many of the obstacles cited above have come to apply not only to part-time work, but to full-time jobs as well. With workers’ pensions being liquidated in many major US cities going through economic crises, Obamacare health care plans on track to increase by 25 percent in 2017, and wages remaining stagnant across the board, the “benefits” of full-time employment are becoming more and more a thing of the past.

The reality of the situation is that casualizing the workforce means only that the working class may now “choose” how they wish to be exploited, be it a “traditional” 9 to 5 job, or under the more novel guise of “independent” work.

Often packaged as creating “options” for workers, as this study suggests, the reality is that these new forms of employment provide options and increased profits for the ruling class. The push for more part-time and independent work is an attempt to curb the declining rate of profit, inherent in the capitalist system, by finding new ways to squeeze labor at a lower cost. It stokes competition between workers who are now forced to enter a race to the bottom within the independent sphere, as well as between those in the independent sphere and in full-time employment.

Possibly most affected by this shift in the economy is the Millennial generation, those aged 18-30. The report notes that more than half of those under age 25 participate in independent work, not just in the United States but throughout the European Union as well.

US mergers set new record in October

Barry Grey

With Qualcomm’s announcement Thursday of a $39 billion deal to acquire NXP Semiconductors NV, October has set a new monthly record for US mergers and acquisitions.

Coming the same week as AT&T’s $85 billion merger agreement with Time Warner and the $47 billion deal for British American Tobacco to take full control of Reynolds American, the total volume of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) for the month has reached $248.9 billion, topping the previous record of $240 billion set in July of 2015.

The past week has also set a new weekly high of more than $177 billion.

While M&A activity this year still trails last year’s record pace by 20 percent, recent weeks have seen a sharp acceleration of deal making. Such a flurry of M&A announcements in the run-up to a presidential election is rare. It indicates that the US corporate-financial elite does not anticipate a major change in the business-friendly policies of the government, whichever party captures the White House.

The character and scale of the latest merger announcements underscore the relentless process of monopolization that is increasingly placing economic activity in the US and around the world in the hands of a relative handful of corporate behemoths, whose economic dominance only enhances their control of bourgeois parties, politicians and governments, whether nominally of the “left” or “right.”

The announced merger between Qualcomm and NXP, for example, “counts as the second largest pure technology deal of all time after Dell Inc.’s recent acquisition of EMC Corp. for about $60 billion,” according to the Wall Street Journal. The San Diego-based semiconductor giant Qualcomm is a leader in the field of mobile devices. In acquiring the Netherlands-based NXP, the world’s biggest developer of chips for automobiles, Qualcomm is seeking to expand its revenue base under conditions of a stagnating market for mobile phones.

A takeover of Reynolds American by British American Tobacco would create the world’s largest listed tobacco company by revenues and market value.

The AT&T-Time Warner merger, if approved by the next US administration, will represent what the Washington Post called a “seismic shift” in the “media and technology world,” one that “could turn [AT&T] into a media titan the likes of which the United States has never seen.”

In addition to controlling much of the traditional telephone market, AT&T is already the biggest pay-TV provider in the US and the second largest wireless provider, behind Verizon. The acquisition of Time Warner would give this tech colossus control over a large swath of news and entertainment in the US, including such Time Warner properties as CNN, HBO, Cinemax, other Turner System cable channels and the Warner Brothers film studio.

There is every indication that the wave of mergers will continue. On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that business telecommunications firms CenturyLink and Level 3 Communications are in advanced talks to merge in a deal likely to be valued at more than $20 billion.

The extraordinary level of mergers and acquisitions and the scale of the combinations are expressions of stagnation and crisis in the basic economy and the growth of financial parasitism. Mergers as a rule add nothing to the productive forces. On the contrary, they divert capital from productive investment and are generally used to slash costs and eliminate jobs. Stock prices are generally bid up, producing windfalls for big investors, and countless millions are pocketed by Wall Street investment bankers and lawyers.

Since the financial crash of 2008, M&A activity has soared while the real economy has settled into a malaise of slow growth, reduced productive investment, declining productivity and a fall in the growth rate of world trade. Along with the wave of mergers, banks and corporations have funneled billions of dollars into stock buybacks and dividend increases, entirely parasitic measures that enhance the wealth only of the rich and the super-rich.

Adding to the drive to consolidate is an environment of stagnant and declining corporate profits. Earnings for firms in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index are expected to rise a modest 1.1 percent in the third quarter, but that follows five consecutive quarters in which they fell.

Commenting on the record M&A activity in October, the Journal wrote on Friday: “With sales growth hard to come by in a slow economy, companies are casting about for ways to cut costs and keep profit growing. But after years of belt-tightening they need new sources of efficiency, such as a merger with a rival. Many are also looking to deploy their cash hoards in ways that will ensure future growth after spending years aggressively buying back stock.”

American corporations are hoarding an estimated $2 trillion in cash, much of it parked overseas to evade US taxes. Meanwhile, the focus on speculative and parasitical activities is producing an ever-larger overhang of debt. Tech companies in the S&P 500 today owe a combined $451.4 billion in long-term debt. This is an increase of 42 percent from just a year ago.

The speculative orgy and debt binge are encouraged by the super-stimulative monetary policies of the US Federal Reserve and the other major central banks. Years of near-zero interest rates and money printing in the form of “quantitative easing” have made corporate borrowing extraordinarily cheap. Companies are using borrowed funds to finance stock buybacks, dividend increases and mergers. Debt among all companies has risen every year since 2009, reaching $6.6 trillion in 2015, equal to more than a third of the country’s gross domestic product.

Italy: Another earthquake and an impending political crisis

Marianne Arens

Yet another earthquake shook central Italy on the evening of October 26. Two major tremors reading 5.4 and 6.1 on the Richter scale and over a hundred aftershocks affected the entire region of Marche and could also be felt in Rome. Because people were still awake and immediately ran outdoors, the only person who died as a consequence of the earthquake was an elderly man who had a heart attack.

Two months ago, several earthquakes struck the region of Gran Sasso and the villages of Amatrice, Accumoli, Pescara and Arquata. Almost 300 people were killed and over 400 injured. Numerous buildings collapsed and people spent the night in the cold and pouring rain. After Wednesday’s earthquake, thousands of people are in need of emergency accommodations, drinking water, toilets, warm clothing and a new home.

Minister President Matteo Renzi (Democratic Party) promised the earthquake victims two months ago that “rebuilding has priority.” However, even the damage of the earlier earthquakes had not been repaired. For example, seven years after L’Aquila was hit by an earthquake in 2009, the city centre is still one big construction site, and some of it has simply been left in ruins, empty and abandoned. Most people are still living in improvised housing that is now falling apart as well. Balconies have collapsed and the wind blows through walls and ceilings.

On account of the earthquake, Renzi interrupted his national referendum campaign tour and returned to Rome from Venice. The vote on December 4 could, however, bring about a shakeup of an entirely different kind: a political earthquake with far reaching consequences, not only for Italy, but also for the fate of the EU.

On December 4, Renzi’s most important reform, the constitutional referendum, will come to a vote. If passed, it would abolish the two-house system of parliament and simplify and accelerate the decision process. The Italian government wants to use the reform to prepare for war and impending class struggles.

The government is following the dictates of finance capital, which demands the introduction of authoritarian forms of rule in order to carry out supposedly necessary “reforms” against the opposition of the population. Renzi has, for a long time, connected the passing of this reactionary referendum with his personal fate. “If the referendum fails, my political career is at an end,” he has declared.

However, Renzi cannot be at all certain of the victory of the referendum. His policies in recent years and the attacks of his government on workers, pensioners and youth have enormously intensified social tensions. According to a report published by Caritas Italy on October 7, the number of people in absolute poverty has grown by 1.8 million to a total of 4.6 million in eight years. To an increasing extent, poverty affects not only southern Italy, but also the northern regions. As the report says, it affects “the entire society and not just isolated groups.”

With his pension reform, his “Buona Scuola” school reform, his “Jobs Act” labour reform, he has carried out a sustained attack on basic social rights. For weeks, there have been repeated strikes and protests against the government. In September, package deliverers, truck drivers, railway workers and flight personnel employed by the airline Alitalia went on strike. On September 15, an Egyptian worker was run over and killed by a strike-breaking truck, leading to days of protests by tens of thousands of people.

On Friday, October 21, over a million workers all over Italy took part in strikes organized by the so-called rank-and-file trade unions. This included strikes at Fiat factories, in particular the FCA factory in Pomigliano near Naples.

The “rank and file” trade unions (COBAS, CUB, USB and others) have taken up these struggles because the traditional trade unions support the labour and market reforms of the Renzi government. Union bureaucrats such as CGIL head Susanna Camusso are in fundamental agreement with Renzi that the Italian economy has to be saved at the expense of workers. The large metal working union FIOM, to which CGIL belongs, expelled all workers who took part in a boycott of the enforced Saturday shifts at Fiat.

It comes as no surprise that tens of thousands of workers are leaving the traditional unions and turning to “alternative” rank-and-file unions. However, these organizations are dominated by pseudo-left conceptions and their policies do not go beyond a nationalist and trade union perspective. The tense political situation demands an international and revolutionary program, but the “rank and file” unions close their eyes to this necessity, just like the traditional unions.

Instead, they allow right-wing forces to take the political initiative.

In effect, Lega Nord, the fascists and other right-wing radicals are responsible for a massive mobilization against the referendum. Lega Nord head Matteo Savini has called for a blockade of several Northern Italian cities, such as Milan and Bologna, supposedly in order “to free Italy” and “to stop immigration.” They have also called on the Five Star Movement of Beppe Grillo to take part in the blockade.

Beppe Grillo has called for a “no” vote in the referendum. Grillo and his Five Star Movement could be the victors if Renzi loses the referendum on December 4. This poses a threat to the very existence of the EU.

Beppe Grillo is the most important EU ally of Nigel Farage of the UK Independence Party (UKIP). Farage was the main proponent of the Brexit movement, which achieved a majority in favour of the United Kingdom’s exit from the EU on June 23. Grillo also calls for Italy to quit the EU and the euro.

The victory of the opponents of the referendum could further intensify the crisis of the EU, which is already threatened with a split and conflicts such as the disagreement over refugees and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between the EU and Canada. Following the austerity diktats in Greece, Spain and Italy, growing layers of the population see the EU as the main culprit in attacks on wages, jobs and social programs.

However, the Five Star Movement does not attack the EU from the left, from the standpoint of the European working class, but from a right-wing nationalist standpoint. A national solution would make the crisis in Italy even worse. This has already been demonstrated by the deep crisis of the Italian banks, which are on the verge of collapse. The Italian banks have bad loans on their books amounting to over €360 billion.

On October 27, the troubled bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena suspended trading for the third time in a week. Its share prices moved like an extreme temperature curve and the renovation plan, to which the union had agreed, now includes layoffs of 2,600 employees and the closing of 500 branches.

This is why, in order to win support for his referendum, Matteo Renzi is trying to portray himself as a representative of Italian interests in opposition to the EU. In the current struggle over the Italian budget, he has made an ultimatum to the EU commission, demanding that it approve Italy’s planned deficit. La Repubblica held a prominent interview with Economics Minister Pier Carlo Padoan, in which he warned the EU Commission: “If the EU rejects our budget, this would be the beginning of the end.”

The 2017 draft budget includes a planned deficit of over 2.3 percent of GDP in the coming year. However, for Italy and other highly indebted EU member states, the EU has only approved a maximum of 2.2 percent, instead of the usual debt ceiling of 3 percent.

However, Renzi insists on passing a more flexible budget, and justifies this with the growing number of refugees from Africa and the enormous expense of rebuilding after the earthquake. On the day of the earthquake, he said on television that, effective immediately, he would only take into account “the needs of Italian citizens, but not those of Brussels technocrats.”

Renzi’s promises are—as always—grandiose and not to be taken seriously. He has promised a significant increase in pension payments to retirees and wants to increase social welfare by €500 million. This would barely be a drop in the bucket, since even a meagre improvement of conditions for those living in poverty would, according to official numbers, require an immediate expenditure of €2 billion.

UN warns US-Saudi war threatens mass starvation in Yemen

Bill Van Auken

United Nations aid agencies warned Friday that Yemen, after 18 months of savage bombardment in a US-backed war waged by Saudi Arabia and its fellow oil monarchies, is facing a catastrophic crisis threatening mass starvation.

More than 10,000 people have been killed since the Saudi regime began its bombing campaign in March 2015. Millions more have been displaced, and urban areas and essential infrastructure have been reduced to rubble.

According to statements issued by UN agencies, over 14 million Yemenis, more than half the population, is now living in hunger, while 7 million are on the verge of starvation.

In a press briefing in Geneva Friday, the UN children’s agency UNICEF said that at least 370,000 children are at risk of severe malnutrition, and without urgent treatment will die. Fully 1.5 million children are malnourished.

Aya, 2 years old, in Hodeidah main hospital being checked against acute malnutrition [Photo: WFP/Abeer Etefa]

The World Food Program (WFP) reported that almost half the children of Yemen are already suffering irreversibly stunted growth due to malnutrition. “An entire generation could be crippled by hunger,” said the WFP’s Yemen director, Torben Due.

The UN agency found that at least 10 of the country’s 21 governorates are on the brink of famine.

“It is really a dire situation on the ground. When you see mothers who have little to eat themselves and they see their children slipping away, it just breaks your heart,” said WFP spokeswoman Bettina Luescher. “It really is shocking and horrible to see this in the 21st century.”

The threat of mass starvation is compounded by a rapidly spreading cholera epidemic, which has recorded 1,410 cases in just the three weeks since the outbreak was first detected.

This human tragedy is not merely the byproduct of a war waged by the wealthy and parasitical Gulf monarchies, backed by Washington, against the poorest nation in the Arab world. Rather, it is this war’s intended effect.

The supposed aim of this war is to reinstate what is routinely referred to as the “internationally recognized government” of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, a stooge of Saudi Arabia who was placed in power through a 2012 election in which he was the sole candidate. He was supposed to step down in two years, but unilaterally extended his term and then, amid charges of wholesale corruption, was forced to flee the country after the Houthi rebels, based in the north and supported by elements of the military, took over the capital of Sana’a.

The Saudi regime, fearing any opposition in the region, refused to accept the rise of the Houthis, a political movement based on the Zaidi Shia group, which has enjoyed limited support from Iran.

In addition to a murderous bombing campaign that has targeted schools, hospitals, residential neighborhoods and factories, the Saudi-led coalition of Gulf sheikdoms, backed by the US Navy, has also imposed a sea blockade that has choked off the impoverished country’s supplies of food and medicine. Before the war, Yemen imported 90 percent of its food. The blockade has sent the price of food and other basic necessities soaring out of reach of much of the population.

There is also mounting evidence that air strikes have been deliberately targeted at destroying the country’s ability to provide its own food. The British daily Independent cited a study by London School of Economics researchers who documented “357 bombing targets in the country’s 20 provinces, including farms, animals, water infrastructure, food stores, agricultural banks, markets and food trucks.” Their conclusion: “...the Saudis are deliberately striking at agricultural infrastructure in order to destroy the civil society.”

Agriculture is a major sector of the national economy of Yemen [Photo: WFP/Abeer Etefa]

In other words, with the aid of US imperialism, Saudi Arabia and its allies are attempting to starve an entire population into submission in what constitutes one of the great war crimes of the 21st century.

The UN reports came just days after Reuters photos from a Yemeni hospital of a starving 18-year-old girl, literally reduced to skin and bones, gained some international attention.

The photographs recall nothing so much as the horrific images that came out of Biafra in the late 1960s, when the Nigerian government waged a genocidal war to suppress the secessionist territory. That attempt to starve a people into submission is credited with spawning the modern-day “human rights” movement, with its plethora of NGOs and its overriding imperialist hypocrisy.

There is no such international reaction to the crimes carried out against the people of Yemen, however, which are largely ignored by the Western media and supported by the ruling parties not only in Washington but also the United Kingdom and all the other imperialist powers.

The media and the UN agencies have euphemistically referred to the slaughter being inflicted upon the Yemenis by the Saudi monarchy and the Pentagon as “the forgotten war.” In reality, the immense human suffering inflicted by this war of aggression has not been forgotten, it has been deliberately blacked out by those in Washington and Riyadh who are determined to deepen it to the point of mass murder in order to achieve their strategic objectives.

Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the United Nations, who made a lucrative career posturing as a human rights champion, was one of the leading proponents within the Obama administration for US support for the war against the people of Yemen. She has also been one of the principal defenders of the Saudi regime within the United Nations, which on Friday re-elected the blood-soaked monarchy to its human rights council.

Power, who has led the demonization of Russia over alleged war crimes in Aleppo, has, for obvious reason, shown no such sympathy for those dying from starvation and US bombs in Yemen.

Since the beginning of the war, the Pentagon has provided logistical and intelligence support, including the aerial refueling of warplanes, without which the Saudi bombing campaign would be impossible. Moreover, the US has poured a whopping $115 billion in arms into the kingdom since Obama took office, resupplying bombs and missiles dropped on Yemeni homes, schools and hospitals.

Following an October 8 Saudi bombing of a funeral, killing over 140 people, the Obama administration and the Pentagon issued hollow statements about US support to Riyadh not being a “blank check” and Washington’s military backing being reevaluated “so as to better align with US principles, values and interests.”

Within days, however, a spokesman for the US Central Command told reporters that nothing had changed, and that the US was continuing to provide aerial refueling of Saudi warplanes so that they could strike their targets in Yemen. Then on October 12, the US Navy fired Tomahawk cruise missiles at Yemeni installations in retaliation for what it claimed were failed missile attacks on a US warship.

Earlier this week, US Central Command Chief General Joseph Votel flew to Riyadh for talks with Saudi officials, including the regime’s defense minister, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Votel told reporters that he wanted to “hear Saudi concerns” and that it was “important to maintain confidence in the relationship.”

The threat of the war in Yemen not only continuing, but seeing a more direct US military escalation is likely to intensify in the aftermath of the US presidential election.

Michael Morell, the former acting director of the CIA and key adviser to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, spoke on Tuesday before the Center for American Progress, the think tank founded by the Clinton campaign chairman, John Podesta, calling for a more aggressive US policy to punish Iran for its “malign behavior in the region.”

Morell, who has previously advocated bombing Syrian government positions and carrying out military actions to “make Russia pay a price” for its presence in that country, claimed that Iran is shipping arms to the Houthis in Yemen. He said he would support “having the US Navy boarding their ships and if there are weapons on them to turn those ships around.”

In other words, the preparations are being made for a far wider US war in the region, with the threat that it will spill over into a global conflict.