Australian state Labor government threatens violence against detained youth

Eric Ludlow & Patrick Kelly 

The Labor Party government in the state of Victoria announced Friday that 40 adult prison guards will be deployed to two youth detention centres as part of a crackdown on alleged child rioters.

The guards will be armed with batons and capsicum spray. They will also be authorised to use tear gas against targeted youth detained in the justice system. Premier Daniel Andrews described the move as a “profound change” and “big step” to security arrangements at the Parkville and Malmsbury youth centres. In a menacing press conference, he declared the guards had the training and equipment “to return order” and they would “be charged with doing just that.”

The premier also announced the construction of a new high security youth detention centre, supposedly to isolate serious and violent offenders. Describing what will effectively serve as an adult-style prison for children, Andrews declared it “a significant investment … it will be many hundreds of millions of dollars, but it is absolutely necessary.”

This follows the government’s announcement in December that $2 billion will be allocated to expanding the police force by an unprecedented 20 percent.

The state Labor government’s measures are part of the Australian ruling elite’s wider assault on basic legal and democratic rights. Repressive measures are being especially directed against working class youth, as the political establishment anticipates stepped up social and political unrest.

Last year, the brutal treatment of youth detainees, many of Aboriginal descent, in the Northern Territory was exposed. Boys were assaulted and tear-gassed by detention guards, and hooded and shackled in methods recalling the infamous Abu Ghraib US military prison in Iraq. Now the conditions are being created for the same treatment to be meted out to detained young people in Victoria.

The pretext for the government’s moves was provided by renewed clashes between young inmates and detention security guards. A so-called riot reportedly involved around 30 youth at the Malmsbury centre, 80 kilometres northwest of Melbourne, last Wednesday. Fifteen of the teenagers escaped after allegedly assaulting a staff member. They were all arrested within 24 hours, after allegedly stealing several cars, invading homes and committing four armed robberies.

At the same centre on January 12, six teenagers were accused of criminal damage after a clash with detention guards. Dozens of armed riot police and dogs were sent in at around 2pm in response to reports that inmates were “causing trouble.”

The “riot” was allegedly sparked when the six detainees refused to be moved to another area of the facility. They then tore out fence posts and locked themselves in the volleyball court, shouting at gathered journalists. The Human Services Department’s secure services director, Ian Lanyon, later reported that four of the teenagers (three aged 18 and one 19-year-old) were being sent to an adult jail.

The government effectively subverted an earlier state Supreme Court ruling that it was illegal to lock up children in adult prisons. After the ruling, the government simply rebranded the Grevillia Unit of the maximum security Barwon Prison, west of Melbourne, as a “youth justice facility and remand centre.”

Legal representatives for one of the teenagers sent to the Barwon prison after the January 12 clashes, 18-year-old Grayson Toilolo, said Toilolo was feeling “very anxious” about the transfer.

The Age reported the comments of an unnamed grandfather of one of the boys who escaped from the Malmsbury centre last week. He said his 17-year-old grandson was a “good kid” who got in trouble with police after being deeply traumatised by the death of his mother. He urged the government to provide the boy with the help he required. “The government is now trying to convince everyone that the only way to fix this mess is to build more jails and lock everyone up,” he said. “But it’s not working and we’re in a terrible mess.”

Several reports detailing oppressive conditions within the juvenile detention system have been buried. In 2010, a state Ombudsman’s report noted numerous problems and risks facing inmates and staff at the facility, including overcrowding, hygiene issues, unsafe grounds and electrical hazards. A WorkSafe review completed last September identified mounting and unaddressed mental health and drug addiction and withdrawal issues among the young inmates.

The media is attempting to manufacture a climate of “law and order” hysteria over the crisis within the juvenile justice system. Its aim is to overturn any notion of rehabilitation or that crime is the product of a diseased society and prepare the justifications for violence against young people targeted by the police and courts.

The Murdoch tabloid, the Herald Sun, is leading the campaign. A comment published on Sunday by journalist Katie Bice, “Take off kid gloves, rule with iron fist,” was typical of the filthy and provocative material being published every day. Bice demanded that the government “be strong” and “rule with an iron fist.” She denounced “pen-pushing advocates [of youth detainees] who believe a diamond lies in the rough—sometimes it’s just a dirty old piece of coal.”

The same edition of the newspaper carried an editorial, “Less Carrot, More Stick.” It denounced “soft policies, soft sentencing” and declared the root cause of the problem to be “a scary lack of respect for authority.” It effectively proposed to torture detained youth, demanding that they be given “a reality check in the form of tough measures to punish all those who cause trouble, including solitary confinement, as well as the withdrawal of visiting rights and all other privileges.”

The working class needs to take the campaign against detained children as a warning. The state repression now being directed against layers of some of the most oppressed young people will be used far more broadly, as the ultra-wealthy and their political representatives seek to suppress any challenge to their rule.

US deaths from cervical cancer higher than previously thought

Gary Joad 

A new report shows that the incidence of cervical cancer of the female genital tract in the United States is higher than previously thought. A press release published January 23 in Cancer, from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, reports that initial estimates of cervical cancer failed to discount the women who had undergone hysterectomies, which virtually always includes removal of the cervix, the lower most segment of the uterus.

The estimated occurrence of cervical cancer and resulting deaths were thereby falsely lowered, by including persons in the former studies who had no cervix. About one fifth of US women have had a hysterectomy.

In the United States last year, there were 12,990 newly diagnosed cases of cervical cancer and 4,120 women died of the disease. This represents a 77 percent higher incidence in black women than previously estimated, and 47 percent higher in white women. The corrected US mortality rate of cervical cancer in black women is 10.1 per 100,000 each year, and 4.7 per 100,000 for white women.

Also, more women are dying of cervical cancer over the age of 65 than previously stated, the traditional life point at which health authorities have recommended stopping screening for the disease.

Anne F. Rositch, PhD, MSPH, an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Bloomberg School, said in the press release, “This is a preventable disease and women should not be getting it, let alone dying from it.” She added, “These data tell us that as long as a woman retains her cervix, it is important that she continue to obtain recommended screening for cervical cancer since the risk of death from the disease remains significant well into older age.”

In an editorial in Cancer on the Bloomberg study, Dr. John Farley, gynecologic oncologist and professor at Creighton University School of Medicine at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Arizona, wrote, “We have a vaccine which can eliminate cervical cancer, like polio, that is currently available and only 40 percent of girls age 13 to 17 have been vaccinated. This is an epic failure of our health care system in taking care of women in general, and minorities specifically.”

Human papilloma virus (HPV) was confirmed in the 1980s to be the cause of cervical cancer, as well as cancers on the vulva, penis, and in the vagina, throat and tonsils. HPV is the most common sexually transmissible disease (STD) in the US. The lifetime risk of encountering HPV for sexually active persons has been estimated at 80 percent. Of the 150-200 HPV viral strains, some 15 are high risk for causing disease, and three or more are probable high risk. HPV strains 16 and 18 are responsible for 75 percent of cervical cancers worldwide. The health care consensus generally remains that HPV infection is a prerequisite for cervical cancer occurrence.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there are about 30,700 new cases of HPV cancers of the varied types annually in the US. The HPV vaccine is considered highly effective, had it been comprehensively administered as recommended. It is estimated that the HPV-caused cancers would have been reduced by some 28,000, or over 91 percent. Some health authorities have insisted the vaccine is over 99 percent effective.

The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Oncology reported last week that in a group of 1,868 men with penile cancer, 45 percent had HPV infection. Ten percent of these men had received the HPV vaccine.

At any one time worldwide, there exist about 500,000 cases of cervical cancer and there are about 275,000 women’s deaths annually. Approximately 50,000 new cases of cervical cancer occur globally each year. India leads the world at about 73,000 deaths per year, or some 26.4 percent of global annual mortality for cervical cancer.

The CDC recommends all boys and girls ages 11 or 12 receive the vaccine, which is given in two shots, 6-12 months apart. Teens 14 and older require three injections. Women can receive the vaccine through the age of 26, and men through age 21.

Current cervical cancer preventative recommendations in the US include beginning pap smears (scraping or swabbing a sample of cervical cells for pathologic study) together with HPV testing in sexually active women at age 21, repeating every three years. Cervical Cancer News reported January 20 that most of the cervical cancers discovered in the US occur in women who have never had screening tests.

On January 17, Self magazine reported the testimonial of an unmarried young Ohio woman who moved to Boulder, Colorado in 2008 with $200 in her pocket. Because of painful menstrual cycles, she sought care at a Planned Parenthood Clinic for birth control pills to relieve her cramps. In the course of her health evaluation, she was diagnosed with a cervical pre-cancer and received treatment in return for a small donation that she struggled to afford. Without that treatment, she told the magazine, she might well have progressed to a life threatening status.

So-called low-grade pre-cancers can resolve on their own. Higher grade pre-cancers have a 30 to 40 percent incidence of progressing to outright malignancy, which has been estimated can occur within a year. The magazine also noted that most cervical cancers occur before age 50. Once the cancer occurs, potentially more uncomfortable and extensive treatment is required for a cure, unless the disease is too advanced, when it becomes life threatening.

But according to Self, the CDC has characterized cervical cancer as among the malignancies “easiest to prevent,” given the screening, diagnostic and treatment technologies now available. In the last 50 years, cervical cancer rates in the US fell 50 percent, due to the availability for many women of screening and treatment of early disease.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) operates out of 650 centers in the US. Fifty-four percent of these are in so-called shortage service areas, providing preventive exams for women, birth control education and counseling, contraception, early genital and cervical cancer treatments, and abortions.

In 2014, PPFA health professionals provided care for 2.5 million patients while performing 271,539 exams and pap smear screenings, providing 24,063 HPV vaccines, and administering over 2000 pre-cancer treatments. In 2013, PPFA reported that it provided some 320,000 clinically safe abortions for women with limited financial resources.

PPFA obtains fully a third of its revenue, about $450 million, from the federal government by way of Medicaid dispensed to and through the states, and from Title X family planning grants. PPFA, however, is barred by reactionary federal laws from using these fund to provide abortions.

Far-right religious groups and individuals, who have given significant political support to Donald Trump, have long worked to defund PPFA. This includes his current nominee for secretary of Human Health and Services (HHS), Republican Georgia congressman and orthopedic surgeon Tom Price. Price is on record favoring draconian cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, which some 130 million people depend upon for life-saving health care.

If Price receives Senate confirmation he will be positioned to advocate and push through Congress the drastic cutting of health care funds for the elderly, the poor, as well as Planned Parenthood, the object of religious-right hatred. He would also oversee the 11 divisions comprising the HHS Department, which includes the CDC, the Federal Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health.

According to Cosmopolitan magazine, a reporter from ThinkProgress at the Conservative Political Action Conference asked Price about the loss of contraception coverage for women in his health care proposals. He reportedly replied, “Bring me one woman who has been left behind. Bring me one. There’s not one. The fact of the matter is this is a trampling on religious freedom and religious liberty in this country.”

The chairwomen of PPFA, Cecile Richards, said, “Tom Price poses a grave threat to women’s health in this country.” Sasha Bruce, senior vice president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, told Cosmopolitan that with Price’s nomination Trump is sending “a clear signal that he intends to punish women who seek abortion care.”

First US coal mine fatality of 2017

Naomi Spencer

A Kentucky coal miner was killed Thursday, January 26 in a Pike County mine.

Ray Hatfield Jr., 42, of Hi Hat, was working in the R&C Coal LLC Mine No. 2, a small underground mine near Pikeville when he was killed in an accident involving a conveyer belt. Hatfield was a beltman with 23 years’ experience in the industry. He leaves behind a wife, two daughters, and a son.

Few details have been released about the accident, but a preliminary report from the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) stated that he “received fatal injuries when he became entangled in a moving belt drive roller. The victim was attempting to shovel near the belt drive when he came in contact with a tandem roller.”

At the time of the accident, Hatfield was working alone; he was not discovered for several hours.

Pike County Coroner Russell Roberts said he went into the mine and pronounced Hatfield dead at 5:15 p.m. The mine has been idled while state inspectors investigate the accident.

The R&C Coal No. 2 mine employs only nine nonunion miners, according to MSHA records, and produced a mere 14,636 tons of coal in 2016. The mine is typical of the hundreds of small pits in the central Appalachian coalfields: it has been through periods of idling over the past few years as coal prices have collapsed, and it has changed hands multiple times. MSHA lists six changes of ownership since 2006, all limited liability companies. Some are affiliated with larger coal mining entities, while other operators are individuals or real estate firms.

The production level at the mine is a fraction of its activity a decade ago. In 2008, workers produced 110,276 tons of coal at the No. 2 mine and put in over 55,000 man-hours. Last year, that had dwindled to a tenth the man-hours. Nevertheless, the number of citations on the books suggests brutal working conditions. MSHA lists 109 violations, for which 33 citations are unpaid and listed in delinquency.

Pike County was once the largest coal producer in the state, and the county seat of Pikeville was proclaimed the “energy capital of America.” It has long been one of the largest banking centers in the US mid-South, with most of the holdings in local financial institutions bound up with the energy industry.

The decimation of the coal industry has intensified the long-standing economic distress of the region. Tens of thousands of coal miners and their families have been thrown into financial ruin, and many have had to leave their hometowns in search of work.

Per capita income in Pike County stands at just over $20,000, according to the latest available data from the Census Bureau. That amounts to less than half the national median per capita income. One in four Pike County residents officially live in poverty.

Ray Hatfield’s death came just one day after a truck driver at an Iowa limestone mine was killed in an apparent roof collapse.

As the World Socialist Web Site noted, both accidents occur in the context of the pledges by newly inaugurated President Donald Trump to “cut regulations by 75 percent. Maybe more, but by 75 percent.” One of his first acts in office was to order a freeze on new and pending regulations.

Trump campaigned in central Appalachia on the promise to “make coal great again” and re-open shuttered mines. His appointments and cabinet picks—a collection of billionaires and corporate executives hostile to safety and environmental regulation—expose the reality of his economic plans for the coal mining sector.

In the final days of the Obama administration, outgoing MSHA head Joe Main touted the record low nine coal mining deaths in 2016. “We know consistently things are getting better,” Main said, noting that for the first time, fatal accidents had dropped to the single digits. West Virginia saw four miners killed, Kentucky had two deaths, and Alabama, Illinois and Pennsylvania all recorded one death each.

“There’s a lot of ingredients that went into the recipe to make the cake that we now have in terms of having the outcomes of the safest years in mining history,” Main said. “If you start taking ingredients out of that, the cake’s not going to be as good, I can tell you that.”

In reality, the active ingredient in this death rate “recipe” is the collapse in coal mining activity, not improved safety enforcement. According to an Associate Press analysis of Energy Information Administration data, the number of employed miners in the US fell from 91,000 in 2011 to 66,000 in 2015. MSHA also recorded 16 fatalities last year in “metal/non-metal mines” like limestone and gravel pits.

At the same time that mine employment has dropped, the coal mining workforce has been diagnosed with the severest form of black lung at rates 10 times higher than what federal regulators had previously reported. The disease is caused by breathing in dust in the mines, and has been exacerbated by long shifts, increased mechanization and frenzied production rates. Thin seams like those in Appalachia where coal is harder to dig out of the hard surrounding rock produce more silica rock dust. The Obama administration introduced dust standards on these long-known problems that were far weaker than those recommended by health and safety experts.

The industry has labeled the most tepid regulations a “war on coal” and fought to roll back safety requirements introduced after disasters like the 2010 Upper Big Branch mine explosion, which claimed the lives of 29 miners in West Virginia.

Last year, the Kentucky legislature unsuccessfully considered bills to totally eliminate state inspections of coal mines, leaving the inspection rounds to a handful of MSHA employees who visit individual mines four times a year. Another bill sought to end mandatory state safety training for mine foremen, leaving the safety preparations entirely in the hands of coal companies.

As Main issued his self-congratulatory statement on record low death rates, MSHA investigators completed a review of one of 2016’s fatal coal mining accidents in Kentucky. On January 19, 36-year-old Nathan Phillips was crushed between a continuous mining machine and the wall where he was working in Webster County, Kentucky’s massive Dotiki Mine.

Investigators found that Phillips was not wearing an emergency shutoff device called a proximity detector that was mandated by federal law, and that managers at the mine were aware of this fact. If Phillips had been wearing the proximity detector, it would have shut off the continuous miner when it drew too close to him.

SPD leader Gabriel succeeds Steinmeier as German foreign minister

Johannes Stern

Last Friday, President Joachim Gauck officially dismissed the Social Democrat Frank-Walter Steinmeier from the post of foreign minister. His successor is the former economics minister and Social Democratic Party (SPD) chairman, Sigmar Gabriel. The new economics minister is Gabriel’s former state secretary, Brigitte Zypries, who was federal justice minister from 2002 to 2009. On February 12, Steinmeier will be elected to succeed Gauck as president by the Federal Assembly.

As the WSWS wrote in a previous article, the changes, including the chancellor candidacy of former president of the European Parliament Martin Schulz (SPD), are directly linked to the coming to power of Donald Trump. German imperialism is responding by aggressively pursuing its own economic and geopolitical claims, if necessary against its main post-war ally, the United States.

Immediately after Trump’s inaugural speech on January 20, Gabriel had already argued that Germany now had to define and pursue its own interests “rigorously.” Earlier last week, in an interview with business daily Handelsblatt, he stressed it was now a matter of asserting German leadership in Europe and the world.

“Germany should act confidently and not be anxious, let alone submissive,” he said. “We are a technologically highly successful exporting nation, with many industrious workers and shrewd entrepreneurs.” Germany was “not only stable itself, but an anchor of stability for many other countries in Europe.” Trump’s first speech as US president showed “He is bitterly serious in what he means. We will have to dress warmly. But there is no reason for timidity.”

Gabriel’s answer echoes Germany’s former great power pretensions that had already found a place in the foreign ministry under Steinmeier. At the 2014 Munich Security Conference, Steinmeier, together with German President Gauck and Foreign Minister Ursula von der Leyen (Christian Democratic Union, CDU), announced that Germany must be “ready to engage in foreign and security policy issues earlier, more decisively, and more substantially.” Ever since, the SPD-led foreign ministry has published numerous policy papers, directed at the militarization of Europe under German hegemony. In several articles, Steinmeier himself has spoken of “Germany’s new global role.”

With Trump’s election and Britain’s impending exit from the European Union, the German ruling class feels the time is ripe to turn this ambition into action. “Now is the time to strengthen Europe,” Gabriel declared in Handelsblatt. “Strengthen Europe, develop a common foreign and security policy. ... We do not need ‘more Europe,’ but a different Europe. One which positions itself collectively in the world. If Trump starts a trade war with Asia and South America, this will open up opportunities for us.” Europe must “now quickly work on a new Asia strategy” and “use the space that America frees up.”

In this context, Brexit was “being discussed far too defensively,” Gabriel blustered. It could “provide a decisive impulse” and “tremendously strengthen a core Europe” led by Germany. The Europe of 28 member states, in “which the European Commission micromanages things and leaves unanswered the major issues of a common foreign and security policy or a common economic and fiscal policy” has “no future.”

To put Gabriel’s perspective in a nutshell: Germany must now finally rise to become Europe’s “disciplinarian” and enforce its geopolitical and economic interests internationally. This is precisely what Humboldt Professor Herfried Münkler, who maintains close links with the foreign ministry, called for as early as 2015 in his book Power in the Middle. Ever since the inauguration of Trump, this is the stated aim of the ruling class.

In the article “German officials demand aggressive response to Trump ’s inaugural address”, we reported on the ferocious reactions to Trump’s inauguration. Since then, numerous other newspapers, foreign policy think tanks, business leaders and politicians have joined in the call for German “leadership” in Europe and the world.

“Berlin confronts the difficult task vis-à-vis the USA and within the EU of showing leadership,” warned the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP). And Manfred Weber (Christian Social Union, CSU), head of the conservative EPP Group in the European Parliament, threatened in the Rheinische Post that if Trump’s message was “America first,” then our answer must be “Europe first.”

The Left Party, which from the beginning has been part of the return of German militarism, is sounding similarly aggressive tones. On the day Gabriel took office, Gregor Gysi, leader of the European Left, said on Deutschlandfunk, “We must find our own role and act sovereignly and, incidentally, boldly against Trump. Otherwise we have no chance. ... If you want Trump to have respect for you, you have act downright impudently and confidently. He likes that. Then he will also learn to deal with you. But if you act obsequiously and then say nothing ... you’re finished with him. He likes tough guys, so you have to act correspondingly tough.”

In 2014, the Partei für Soziale Gleichheit (PSG, Socialist Equality Party) published a resolution analysing the historical and political reasons for the return of an aggressive German imperialism. The reason for this was “the deep crisis of global capitalism and the nation-state system on which it is based. When Trotsky analysed the objective driving forces in 1932 that led to the rise of Hitler, he wrote: ‘As the productive forces of Germany become more and more highly geared, the more dynamic power they gather, the more they are strangled within the state system of Europe—a system that is akin to the “system” of cages within an impoverished provincial zoo.’”

The resolution continues: “Hitler’s attempt to break out of this system of cages by violently conquering Europe left the continent in ruins, costing the lives of 70 million and ending in total military defeat. But the post-war order resolved none of the problems that had led to war. The economic power of the US made possible a temporary stabilisation and the post-war boom. The Cold War not only kept the Soviet Union at bay, but also kept Germany under control. But with the reunification of Germany and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the period in which German business could conduct its affairs in the wake of the US and the German army could restrict itself to national defence was irrevocably over.”

At the end of the resolution, the Partei für Soziale Gleichheit outlines the only viable perspective in the struggle against war, which is now of crucial significance: “The PSG links the struggle against militarism and war with the mobilization of the working class to defend their social and political rights. The fight against imperialism is a struggle against capitalism. All demands arising from opposition to war—the abolition of the Bundeswehr (German military), the immediate withdrawal of German troops abroad, the dissolution of the secret services—require the independent political and revolutionary mobilization of the working class, with the goal of assuming political power and transforming the world economy on a socialist basis.”

UK Labour Party split threatened over Brexit

Paul Mitchell 

The second reading today of the government’s Article 50 bill, which will trigger the two-year process of Britain leaving the European Union (EU), has raised again the prospect of a split in the Labour Party.

Even if this does not happen, it confirms that Labour remains mired in a bitter civil war despite party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s constant efforts to placate his Blairite opponents.

Last Thursday, Corbyn declared that there would be a three-line whip to ensure Labour MPs voted in support of triggering Article 50. This was the signal for a resumption of operations by the coup plotters, who made the Brexit vote in favour of the UK quitting the European Union last June the centrepiece of their efforts to remove Corbyn as party leader. They blamed his late and unconvincing conversion to the Remain campaign in the referendum on Brexit and staged a wave of resignations from the shadow cabinet and a no-confidence motion signed by 172 members of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP).

The coup attempt failed. However, the Blairite’s hopes have been resuscitated by last week’s ruling by the Supreme Court that the Brexit process could not begin without parliamentary approval. Its judgement allows pro-Remain MPs to make amendments to any legislation proposed by the Conservative government and to change or block any agreement it reaches with the EU.

On one level, there is a unity of concerns between Corbyn and his opponents as both have made clear that the UK must maintain access to European markets. But Corbyn has effectively endorsed the position of Theresa May’s Conservative government that this can be secured through effective negotiations with the EU. Urging party unity, he said, “we will frame that relationship with Europe in the future, outside Europe but in concert with friends, whether those countries are in the EU or outside the EU.”

The Blairites insist that no such deal is possible, warning that the government’s pledge to end free movement of EU labour and its antagonising of the major European powers will end in the UK’s economic exclusion.

These divisions have been brought to the peak of intensity by May’s efforts to cultivate relations with the US administration of Donald Trump as a means of strengthening the UK’s hand against Germany and France. A leading political ally of Tony Blair, Guardian columnist Martin Kettle, warned, “A trade deal with the US is top of the leavers’ wish list, but this too is a potentially treacherous prospect. It owes more to the wishful thinking of UK Atlanticists than to hard economic reason, which still points firmly to Europe.”

His colleague, Jonathan Freedland, added, “One study, released on Friday, estimated that leaving the single market would bring a loss in UK trade of up to 30 percent—while a new deal with the US might boost it by a meagre 2 percent. It was a reminder that while the US might be a bigger market for British exports than any other single country, it is dwarfed by the European continent on our doorstep.”

The Independent’s deputy business editor James Moore outlined the underlying considerations as, “[T]he Conservative Party is morphing into the hard Brexit party, Jeremy ‘not wedded to freedom of movement’ Corbyn is following it down that road ... Labour needs to split ... The two party system is collapsing anyway, and the fundamental schism in Britain is not so much about right and left as it is about in or out.”

There is no chance of blocking the Article 50 bill, but the Blairites are using the opportunity to stake out their leading role in a strategic realignment of bourgeois politics that will only gather pace in the coming months. Whether this takes the form of another extended period of trench warfare or a possible split to form a new political alliance or party is yet to be decided.

Following Corbyn’s announcement of the three-line whip, Tulip Siddiq resigned as a shadow education minister, citing the fact that her London constituency voted to remain. On Friday, the shadow secretary for Wales, Jo Stevens, quit. Stevens was followed by Labour MP Owen Smith, Corbyn’s leadership challenger last year, who said he would vote against Article 50 and that up to 50 Labour MPs could also defy the whip. “For my money, I think we should be seeking to get another referendum, a confirmatory referendum at the end of the process,” he added, lining himself up with the Liberal Democrats who also advocate a second referendum.

Shadow business secretary Clive Lewis, mooted by Guardian columnist Owen Jones as a possible replacement for Corbyn, said he would vote for the bill at the second reading but not for the third and final reading if Labour’s amendments were not accepted. These would ensure the UK commits to having “the closest relationship to Europe and the single market as is possible,” he declared.

Two whips, Bristol MP Thangam Debbonaire and Manchester MP Jeff Smith, who are supposed to ensure voting discipline, announced they too would defy the whip.

A Commons motion, or “reasoned amendment”, to throw out the government’s bill entirely has been tabled by the former shadow health secretary, Heidi Alexander, supported by 18 fellow backbenchers. The amendment says the government has failed to “safeguard British interests in the single market” or given guarantees on whether parliament or voters should decide on any deal.

Deputy Leader Tom Watson, a key opponent of Corbyn, insisted that Labour had to take a “sensible” approach to the Blairite rebellion. “I understand this is very unique circumstances and we are going to deal with this issue very sensitively,” he said—declaring that Labour frontbenchers who had quit should be back in their jobs within months.

Divisions are also emerging, and being encouraged, within Corbyn’s own constituency. The Observer, Sunday sister paper of the Guardian, published an open letter signed by Labour “activists” critical of Corbyn’s position on the Article 50 bill. It claimed, “the intervention appears to indicate a significant disillusionment among part of Mr Corbyn’s core support, with around half of the signatories understood to have previously backed him for leader.”

The Guardian has also hyped a march being organised for March 25 through the Unite for Europe Facebook page, which declares, “Brexit can be stopped.”

The declared aim of the march is to “embolden our elected representatives.” The hitherto unknown movement, fronted by “professional singer” and former male model Peter French, complains, “The vast majority of our MPs support our membership of the European Union, but are being railroaded into a catastrophe by reckless and incompetent leadership. With our vocal support, they can stop Brexit.”

The Guardian is set on fishing in troubled waters regarding the Labour Party, but they are playing to a real constituency. The Canary, the pro-Corbyn news site, published an editorial Friday complaining, “Corbyn has chosen to back the government without guaranteeing that the most vulnerable people, and the most valued principles of our participation in the EU project, will be protected post-Brexit. ... It is a decision that could sink his leadership of the party, and kill off any chance of a bona fide left-wing alternative among the national Westminster parties. This is a colossal mistake.”

A substantial section of the pro-Corbyn left is in favour of an alternative “progressive alliance” with the SNP, the Welsh nationalist Plaid Cymru, the Greens and possibly the Liberal Democrats—oriented to the same pro-Remain sentiment as the Blairites, but also making a pitch to the social disaffection that animated the working class Brexit vote.

Israel’s Netanyahu steps up settlement construction

Jean Shaoul 

Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has launched a series of provocative moves against the Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and inside Israel itself.

His aim is to distract public attention from the corruption probe that could force his resignation and bring down his government. In doing so, he has been emboldened by strong support from the incoming Trump administration.

Netanyahu has given the go-ahead for building 2,500 new homes in settlements in the West Bank, the largest construction scheme of its kind since 2013-14, saying, “We are building, and will continue to build.”

This follows the announcement that 566 new homes—previously on hold because of US opposition—are to be built in East Jerusalem. Jerusalem’s deputy mayor, Meir Turjeman, who also heads the planning committee, said plans for 11,000 other homes in East Jerusalem were also under consideration, although he did not say when they would be approved.

These moves come just days after Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president. Trump, who has vowed to be “the most pro-Israel president in history,” has indicated his support for the Greater Israel project and backs moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He has appointed David Friedman, his personal bankruptcy lawyer, who is pro-settler and a fervent opponent of the two-state solution, as his ambassador to Israel. Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, is charged with imposing a deal with the Palestinians on Israeli terms.

Netanyahu has welcomed this shift in US policy. He had clashed repeatedly with former US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry over settlement expansion—among other issues—because it cut across the charade of the two-state solution, seen as vital to suppressing social and political opposition to the imperialist powers’ reactionary and authoritarian allies in the region.

His extreme right-wing coalition partners hope that Trump will allow them to move forward with their goal of annexing so-called Area C, the 60 percent of the West Bank under Israeli military control; passing the law to legalise illegal settler outposts, including Amona, retroactively; and approving the Jerusalem Law proposal which would apply sovereignty to “greater Jerusalem”—the Eztion Bloc, Ma’aleh Adumim, Betar Ilit and Givat Ze’ev, all of which are across the 1967 borders.

Netanyahu has cautioned against taking unilateral action before he has met the new administration. He is set to meet Trump in Washington in February.

Not only is construction on land seized during the June 1967 war illegal under international law, but the Palestinians view the settlements, now home to more than 600,000 Israelis, as a major obstacle to any peace deal and the creation of a future Palestinian mini-state.

In another inflammatory move, the authorities have demolished dozens of homes belonging to Israel’s Palestinian citizens, in part to appease the right-wing settler movement, which opposes the evacuation of illegal outposts in the West Bank. The authorities claim the Palestinian homes are illegal as they were built without a warrant, which is in fact impossible to obtain. Last year, the government approved the demolition of tens of thousands of Palestinian homes on this basis.

A new law, now going through the Knesset, will establish a national enforcement unit to wage an offensive against unauthorised construction in Palestinian towns and villages in Israel, giving it the power to demand information from the local authorities and restricting the right of judicial appeal.

On January 10, 11 homes were demolished in the city of Qalansawe. A week later, a further 15 were demolished in Umm al-Hiran, in the Negev, whose Bedouin community, along with dozens of other Bedouin communities, face expulsion.

While many of Palestine’s original inhabitants fled or were driven out by the Israeli army in 1948, one-quarter of those who remained were subsequently driven from their homes by the Israeli army, including the Bedouin families who relocated to Umm al-Hiran. Since then, the exclusion of the Palestinians from the national master plans has led to the Palestinian local authorities holding just 2.5 percent of the land and a severe housing shortage for Palestinians who constitute 20 percent of Israel’s population.

Successive governments refused to recognise Umm al-Hiran and similar villages now been classified as illegal. Under government proposals, drawn up to replace the Prawer Plan that was abandoned in 2013 following mass demonstrations, the villagers are to be relocated to overcrowded slum “townships” that are the most deprived in Israel. Their land is slated for the development of a new Jewish town.

At a mass rally to prevent the demolition of Bedouin homes in Umm al-Hiran, violent clashes broke out, ending in the death of two people. One of them was a local teacher, Yacoub Abu al-Qian, who had been shot by the police. Ayman Oydeh, head of the Palestinian Joint List, the third largest party in the Knesset, suffered a head injury from a rubber bullet.

Numerous witnesses insisted that al-Qian posed no threat to anyone when the police opened fire on his vehicle, causing him to swerve out of control and drive into the police officers. The police claimed that they had shot him because he had deliberately rammed into the police in a terrorist attack. Afterwards, they sought to justify their actions alleging he was active in the Israeli Islamic Movement, which his family denied. Later still, the police said he was struck not by police fire but by demonstrators’ rocks, which conflicted with the medical reports.

Since then, there have been protests all over Israel by Palestinian citizens, who fear that the demolitions and forced evacuations in Umm al-Harin are a taste of what is to come as the government opens up a new front against its own citizens and brings the war against the Palestinians to Israel itself. The police used tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannon to break up the demonstrations.

A mass rally from all over the country descended on the Knesset in Jerusalem, demanding that the police release al-Qian’s body without preconditions on his funeral, which the Supreme Court has now supported, and an end to the house demolitions. His family are demanding an investigation into the circumstances of his death.

Netanyahu and his ministers have repeated the unsubstantiated claim that the killing of al-Qian was a justified response to a terrorist attack by an ISIS supporter. The lies and cover-up of his murder are of a piece with claims a few months ago of a vehicle-ramming terror attack in East Jerusalem, which turned out to be a misunderstanding in which the driver was shot and killed by police. Similarly, when a wave of fires broke out at the end of last year, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, senior police officers and fire fighters claimed that many of the blazes were deliberate arson attacks by Palestinians. Despite numerous arrests for arson, all of the supposed suspects have been released without charge.

These provocations against Israeli Palestinians follow a particularly deadly and violent period for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Since the start of a wave of violence in October 2015, in the wake of increasing restrictions on the right of access to and prayer in the al-Aqsa compound in East Jerusalem over the preceding summer, 247 Palestinians have been killed by Israelis, with 135 Palestinians killed between the months of October and December 2015 alone. Of the 130 killed in 2016, 112 were Palestinians, 15 were Israelis, and three were foreign nationals.

Netanyahu has already ordered his security chiefs to prepare plans to counter mass opposition expected in the West Bank if Trump does move the US embassy to Jerusalem.

Senior Chinese military official warns of rising danger of war

Peter Symonds

The official web site of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) published a commentary on the day of US President Donald Trump’s inauguration warning that the danger of war between the two nuclear-armed powers was escalating. The article reflects the growing concerns in the Chinese regime over the bellicose remarks of Trump and his advisers toward Beijing over trade and a range of other issues.

Liu Guoshun, an official with the national defence mobilisation unit of the Central Military Commission, warned that “the possibility of war increases” as tensions around North Korea and the South China Sea heat up. “‘A war within the president’s term,’ ‘war breaking out tonight’ are not just slogans, but the reality,” he wrote.

The Central Military Commission, which is chaired by President Xi Jinjing, is at the top of China’s military command structure.

Trump has repeatedly condemned China for failing to take strong action to rein in North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. After Pyongyang at the beginning of the year declared it was preparing to test an intercontinental ballistic missile, Trump bluntly tweeted: “It won’t happen.” The obvious implication was that the US would resort to any means—including a military intervention—to prevent such a launch.

The statements of incoming US secretary of state Rex Tillerson on the South China Sea were even more inflammatory. Speaking at his confirmation hearing in mid-January, Tillerson berated China for its construction activities in the South China Sea and threatened to block Chinese access to islets under its control. Any US attempt to impose a military blockade against Chinese ships and aircraft would constitute an act of war.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer last week reaffirmed Tillerson’s threat, provoking a reaction from the Chinese foreign ministry that reiterated Chinese claims in the South China Sea and urged caution on the part of the US. The PLA commentary suggests that sections of the Chinese military are pressing for a more aggressive response and military preparations to counter US provocations in the South China Sea or elsewhere.

Jin Canrong, an academic at the Renmin University of China, condemned Tillerson’s remarks. He told the state-owned Global Times: “If the new US administration follows this route and adopts this attitude, it will lead to a war between China and the US, and that would mean the end of US history or even of all humanity.”

Jin bragged that if the US navy sent aircraft carriers into the South China Sea, the Chinese military had “the ability to destroy them all, even if they send 10.” The Global Times and its contributors highlight the reactionary character of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) response to the threat of US aggression.

The CCP regime, which represents the interests of an ultra-rich oligarchy, seeks to manoeuvre for a deal with US imperialism, on the one hand, while engaging in an arms race and preparing for war, on the other. Under President Xi, China reacted to the Obama administration’s massive military build-up as part of Washington’s “pivot to Asia” by revamping the PLA to fight a war with the US.

Last year the PLA scrapped its seven military regions in favour of five theatre commands to enable the closer integration of naval, air and missile forces and greater control by the Central Military Command and the CCP.

Despite Beijing’s denials, its land reclamation and construction in the South China Sea from 2015 clearly has a military component aimed at countering the US build-up in the region. Major General Luo Yuan told the Global Times: “The islands with airports that we have built in the area are unsinkable aircraft carriers … and we have DF-21D and DF-26 missiles capable of destroying large surface ships.”

Trump has called for a huge increase in the US military, including an expansion of its military arsenal. In response, the Global Times last week seized on unconfirmed reports that the Chinese military had moved its most advanced inter-continental ballistic missile, the Dongfeng-41, to the northeastern province of Heilongjiang to demand a boosting of the Chinese nuclear arsenal.

Advocating what would in effect be a nuclear arms race, the Global Times declared: “China’s nuclear capacity should be so strong that no country would dare launch a military showdown with China under any circumstance, and such that China can strike back against those militarily provoking it.”

Trump, who has turned unpredictability into a principle of foreign policy, has already inflamed tensions with China by threatening to impose trade war measures and to tear up the “One China” policy if Beijing refuses to accept his demands. The One China policy, under which the US recognises Beijing as the sole legitimate government of all China, has been the foundation of US-China relations for nearly 40 years.

Pang Zhongying, a professor at Renmin University, told the South China Morning Post that the danger of conflict was rising. “There is little doubt that a major storm is gathering. Both sides appear to have made few discernible efforts to hide the fact that they expect a rough ride for bilateral ties.”

Commentators in other countries are also ringing alarm bells.

Speaking to the Association of European Journalists in London last Friday, former British military chief, General Richard Barrons, warned that Trump’s confrontational approach to negotiation could provoke a war. He said Trump’s “win-lose” philosophy might be normal for a head of a major corporation, but could be “deeply dangerous” on the international stage.

Barrons outlined a scenario involving Chinese and American ships in the South China Sea that could rapidly escalate into a war between the two countries. “Wars generally start for really bad reasons and the red mist descends and you lose control,” he said. “I think the risk of that is evident.”

Protests in Mexico continue against gas price hike, water privatization

Clodomiro Puentes

The gasolinazo protests, which erupted in Mexico early this month over the slashing of gasoline subsidies, continue throughout the country. In Baja California, these protests have coincided with enormous social anger over PAN (National Action Party) state Governor Francisco Vega’s attempt to ram through legislation that would privatize water services and implement severe rate increases, a measure backed by the ostensibly “center-left” PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution) and Movimiento Ciudadano (Citizens’ Movement).

Protesters marching in Tijuana

On January 22, protests were coordinated across the country. In Tijuana, some 18,000 protesters gathered at the city’s Monumento a Cuauhtémoc roundabout in one of the main arteries of the downtown district and marched to the town hall. In Mexicali’s town hall, over 20,000 protesters convened. At these protests, the calls for the resignation of Governor Vega were added to the national calls for the resignation of President Enrique Peña Nieto.

The immense anger set off by the efforts to subordinate to private profit such a basic social right as access to water, forced Vega to repeal the measure earlier this month. The most extreme proposed rate hikes were in Tijuana, where the minimum rate of 59.1 pesos per cubic meter would have been raised to 99.5 pesos, and in Playas de Rosarito, from 81.2 to 99 pesos. In addition, the bill would have allowed private water concerns to cut off service for non-payment after 90 days, a measure which is deemed unconstitutional. Even at present prices, urban residential rates in Tijuana currently exceed those for similar services across the border in San Diego.

In spite of the repeal, the protests against the state government continue, alongside the ongoing protests throughout a country beset by inflation and a chronically underperforming economy, whose future looks increasingly uncertain with the election of Donald Trump.

Since coming to power, Trump has demanded that Mexico pay $12 to $15 billion for a border wall and has threatened trade war through the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The Mexican peso has lost approximately 13 percent of its value in relation to the dollar, while the cost of gasoline is expected to rise by 14 to 20 percent in the next year, driving up prices of all commodities and further straining the ability of working families to pay for basic necessities. Mexican President Peña Nieto’s politically-calculated cancellation of a planned meeting with Trump will do nothing to resolve the Mexican government’s state of crisis, with the president’s approval rating hanging precariously just above the single digits.

Members of the Socialist Equality Party and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality intervened at continuing protests this past Sunday to speak with those attending about social and political conditions in Mexico, the significance of a Trump presidency and the need for a socialist program which insists on the international unity of the working class.

Protesters chanted “Fuera Peña, fuera Kiko!” (“Out with Peña, out with Kiko!”—the latter referring to the Baja California state governor) and carried signs expressing their outrage over not only the gasolinazo and the attempt at water privatization, but a range of long-standing grievances, including the counter-reforms aimed at the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), the disappearances of many individuals in the state and of the 43 students who were kidnapped by the government in Iguala in 2014.

A placard held by a protester which reads: “Let all with a rightful grievance have a court that will hear, protect and defend them against the strong and the arbitrary. The juridical foundation of laws is to protect and preserve the rights of all of society.”

About 400 people attended the protest. A truck equipped with speakers and a microphone led the march through the city as angry citizens denounced the government. Professor Juan Ramirez, a member of the “non-party” political organization Ciudadanos Unidos de Tijuana, which has played a role in organizing the demonstrations over the past month, was the main speaker during the march. His remarks consisted mostly of the narrowest of demands to the municipal government.

That the protest’s final destination was an empty city hall seemed to symbolize the ruling elite’s indifference to the needs and aspirations of the masses of working people, and the dead-end protest perspective of the Ciudadanos Unidos de Tijuana leadership. Among those who joined in the demonstration, however, many were looking for a way to fight the government and the deteriorating social conditions in Mexico.

“I’m very pleased that people are protesting, it’s good to see Mexicans waking up,” said Lorena. “This protest shows that we won’t stand for privatizing water or paying 18 pesos more for a liter of gasoline.

Lorena

“I don’t feel that working people are represented. They’re all equally dishonest—neither PRI, nor PAN, nor PRD; they’re all the same, corrupt, enriching themselves off of the people, and never following through with what they promise. I’ve voted for the PRI for 25 years, but with everything that’s going on, I’ve had it.”

While expressing hopes that a party like Morena (the National Regeneration Party headed by Andrés Manuel López Obrador-AMLO) might offer some sort of alternative, she noted that figures such as AMLO were cut from the same cloth as the rest of the political establishment. “It’s true, even the ones claiming to be outsiders are all from the same group as the rest. They haven’t been in power yet, so we’ll have to see how it plays out.”

Miguel

“It’s important that we’re here to defend the Constitution, which the water law would’ve gone against. We need a solution to the political parties that we have now, which only exist to benefit wealthy classes,” said Miguel, one of the protesters. “I wish that the media would cover these protests more extensively, and tell the truth about them. Too often, they attempt to portray us as just rabble rousers with nothing to do. That’s obviously not true, we’re here peacefully.”

Alicia, a domestic worker, said, “There could be a danger that this gets derailed. What we have now is a government that only represents the wealthy, the millionaires. It makes no sense that we have one of the richest people in the world, Carlos Slim, and yet we have a minimum wage of 80 pesos a day. That doesn’t cover anything, and the price of just about everything keeps increasing.”

Members of the Socialist Equality Party were able to address the assembled crowd, emphasizing the international dimension of the struggle facing workers, and the consequent need to unite Mexican and US workers across the border that divides them.

“We have to unite [internationally], and we have to be very conscious of which Mexico we’re talking about—the Mexico of workers. Long live the international working class!” said one SEP speaker. These remarks were met with shouts of “Viva!” and applause, with many in the crowd asking for leaflets and information.

The protests express a growing popular awareness that the whole of the Mexican political establishment is fundamentally hostile to the needs of the masses of working people. What is lacking, however, is a conscious revolutionary leadership in the working class, raising the danger that the protests will dissipate mounting anger behind one or another wing of the bourgeois political establishment. What is urgently required is the building of a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International in Mexico to link the struggles of working people across North America on the basis of a program of international socialism.

Six killed in terror attack on Quebec City mosque

Keith Jones

Six Muslim Canadians, all of North or West African origin, were killed and another 19 persons wounded, five of them gravely, by a masked gunman who assaulted a Quebec City mosque during evening prayers Sunday.

Yesterday afternoon, Alexandre Bissonnette, a 27-year-old Laval University student, was charged with six counts of first-degree murder and five of attempted murder during a brief court appearance.

Shortly after the mosque slaughter, Bissonnette contacted police and subsequently surrendered to them on a Quebec City bridge. An AK-47 and two handguns were found in his car.

Initially, police took a second person into custody in the vicinity of the Islamic Cultural Center of Quebec, the scene of the shooting. But later they conceded this was a case of mistaken identity and said they now believe Bissonnette acted alone.

Sunday’s attack was a heinous crime. The target of the attack and the profile of the presumed killer leave little doubt it was a political attack, motivated by Islamophobia and other extreme right-wing views.

Shortly after media began posting a photo of Bissonnette, a leader of a Quebec City group dedicated to helping Syrian refugees told reporters he was known to them for spouting anti-immigrant views. François Deschamps of “Bienvenue aux réfugiés” (Welcome to Refugees) said Bissonnette also routinely railed again feminists in his online posts.

According to the Montreal daily La Presse, Bissonnette’s Facebook page, which has now been taken off line, had hyperlinks to the National Front, the French neo-fascist party led by Marine Le Pen.

Global News said Bissonnette’s Facebook “likes” also included US President Donald Trump, the Israeli Defense Forces, and Christopher Hitchens, the British writer who became a propagandist for the illegal 2003 US invasion of Iraq and Washington’s phony “war on terror.”

Witnesses say that when Bissonnette opened fire on them, he screamed “Allahu Akbar!” in a thick French- Québécois accent.

Soon after the media reported the attack, Canadian authorities, beginning with Prime Minster Justin Trudeau and Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard, denounced it as an act of terrorism.

Quebec City media reports suggest Bissonnette is a psychologically troubled individual. Even if, as is likely, this is true, Sunday’s mass killing cannot be separated from the noxious political and social environment that has been created by North America’s governments and capitalist elite through their wars of aggression, gutting of democratic rights, and promotion of reaction, including anti-Muslim bigotry.

Since Friday, news reports around the world have been dominated by the fallout from and reaction to US President Donald Trump’s antidemocratic and patently discriminatory executive order barring refugees, visitors, and US permanent residents from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the US. All these countries—Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen—have been the target of US aggression, either in the form of “regime change” wars, drone strikes or punishing economic sanctions.

Trump has systematically stoked anti-Muslim prejudice since he launched his bid for the Republican Party presidential nomination. This is exemplified by his naming of Stephen Bannon, the former Goldman-Sachs executive who made Breitbart News into a sounding board for the fascistic alt-right, as his “chief strategist.”

On Monday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer made a show of condemning the Quebec City attack “in the strongest possible terms.” But he did not mention that its target was a mosque or that its victims were Muslims. Without losing a beat, Spicer then brazenly sought to invoke the murders perpetrated by a sympathizer of the ultra-right as an argument for the Trump administration’s persecution of Muslims and immigrants. “It’s a terrible reminder,” said Spicer, “of why we must remain vigilant and why the president is taking steps to be proactive and not reactive on issues of national security.”

Like the Democratic Party in the US, Canada’s elite claims to be appalled by Trump’s anti-Muslim bigotry. But since 2001 it has promoted the false “war on terror” narrative, joining both parties of US big business in exploiting the atrocities committed by Islamist terrorists—often thanks to unexplained intelligence lapses—to legitimize militarism and war and sweeping attacks on democratic rights, while feeding anti-Muslim prejudice.

Stephen Harper and his Conservatives sought re-election as Canada’s government in the fall of 2015 with crude Islamophobic appeals, claiming Canada was at war with “Islamist terror” and promising to set up a snitch line so Canadians could denounce the “barbaric cultural practices” of their immigrant neighbours.

This was the culmination of a year-long campaign in which Canada’s ruling elite had rallied round the Harper Conservative government in using the deaths of two military personnel at the hands of psychologically troubled, recent Canadian-born converts to Islam to promote reaction at home and abroad. This included expanding Canada’s participation in the US war in Iraq and Syria—a war that arises directly from Washington’s previous ruinous Mideast wars, and like them is aimed at strengthening US hegemony over the world’s most important oil-exporting region. It also involved the ramming through, with the support of the opposition Liberals, legislation giving the national-security apparatus police-state powers (Bill C-51).

As for Trudeau—the politician who is being touted by the New York Times and the British Guardian as the new poster boy for international liberalism—he has been assiduously courting Trump ever since his election last November.

Trudeau’s Liberal government is in talks with top Trump officials to expand Canada’s already extensive participation in America’s military-strategic offenses in the Mideast and against Russia and China. It has also signalled that it is ready to throw Mexico to the wolves and support Trump in scuttling NAFTA, so long as Canadian big business keeps it privileged access to US markets.

Apart from one tweet Saturday declaring “Canadians will welcome” refugees, Trudeau has refrained from criticizing Trump’s trampling on democratic rights and steps to militarize the Mexican border, let alone his aggressive America First protectionist policies and plans to massively hike US military spending.

This is because Canada’s ruling elite views it as essential to asserting its own predatory imperialist interests that Canada be, as the Globe and Mail put it recently, behind Trump’s “walls”—that is, a partner in a “Fortress North America.”

Canada’s liberal media, like that in the US, systematically lies about the extreme right-wing forces, including Islamist terrorists, that Washington and its Canadian allies use on the world stage.

How many Canadians, for example, know that Canadian Armed Forces personnel who participated in NATO’s regime war in Libya referred to themselves as “Al Qaeda’s air force”?

While the entire Canadian ruling elite is complicit in the promotion of anti-Muslim bigotry and reaction, it is not mere chance that Quebec was the site of Canada’s first lethal attack on a mosque.

All sections of Quebec’s political establishment, including the pseudo-left Québec Solidaire, have legitimized a reactionary campaign gotten up by the right-wing tabloid press that claims immigrants and religious minorities are threatening Quebec’s values.

Muslims have been the principal target of this campaign.

Currently, the Quebec Liberal government has legislation before the provincial legislature that would ban Muslim women wearing religious face coverings from receiving public services, including education and health care, except in emergencies.

When it held office for 18 months in 2012-14, the trade union-supported, pro-Quebec independence Parti Quebecois sought to enact a Charter of Quebec Values under which public sector workers would have been threatened with the loss of their jobs if their wore a Muslim hijab, Sikh turban, Jewish kipah, or other “ostentatious” religious symbols. Underscoring the chauvinist character of this legislation, an exception was provided for “discreet” crucifixes.

The PQ’s new leader, Jean-François Lisée, has suggested it should be illegal for Muslim women to wear the niqab or burqa in public in Quebec because an AK-47 could be hidden under it.

As for the right-wing mayor of Quebec City, Régis Labeaume, he has at most issued pro forma condemnations, despite repeated acts of vandalisms at the city’s four mosques, while repeatedly suggesting refugees could constitute a terrorist threat.

In Quebec and Canada, as around the world, the ruling class is promoting anti-immigrant and anti-minority chauvinism so as to split the working class.

There is mass revulsion in Quebec and across Canada at Sunday’s horrific events. Trudeau, Couillard and the entire establishment are trying to manipulate these sentiments through hypocritical calls for unity and solidarity. These are aimed at suppressing any discussion of the real causes of the tragedy at the Islamic Cultural Center of Quebec.

A crisis-ridden, ever-more socially polarized and militarized capitalist society is dredging up all manner of reaction.

The defence of democratic rights requires the development of an independent movement of the working class against war and social inequality based on an unequivocally anti-capitalist and internationalist program.