Cornucopian Renewable-Energy Claims Leave Poor Nations in the Dark

Stan Cox

The Stanford professor Mark Jacobson and his colleagues have written another paper purporting to show that 100 percent of energy demand can be fulfilled by wind, solar, and hydroelectric generation. This latest study, which comes in the form of a manuscript accepted but not yet published by the journal Renewable Energy, seeks to show how that goal can be met in 139 nations.

Jacobson’s previous “100 percent renewable” papers have prompted other researchers to publish their own studies pointing out faulty technical assumptions and analyses that cast a shadow over his claims. I expect that we will see technical critiques of Jacobson’s latest study as well published in coming weeks or months (if, that is, there are experts out there who are willing to risk being sued by Jacobson for questioning his results. He’s got one such sketchy lawsuit in the courts already.)

But even if we disregard the technical weaknesses of claims that all future demand can be satisfied with renewable energy sources—even if we assume for the sake of argument that such rosy scenarios really are achievable—there will remain the problem of energy poverty. As I have noted,

Billions of people around the world need more energy than they can afford, while billions of others can buy far more energy than is required to meet their needs. Global 100-percent renewable scenarios are based on these distortions; as a result, they typically aim to satisfy a worldwide per capita energy consumption that’s about one-eighth of what Americans consume. . . the 100-percent scenarios would leave in place huge gaps in consumption between affluent and poor communities, both among and within countries.

To quantify those distortions: Jan Christof Steckel and coworkers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research have shown that for societies to achieve satisfactory levels of human development, they must have energy capacity large enough to satisfy annual consumption of at least 40 gigajoules (GJ/yr) per capita, which translates as an average per capita flux of about 1300 Watts. (That fluctuates hour to hour, day to day, and place to place, and, according to Steckel and coauthors, it is a minimum for healthy development of a society.) But in their new manuscript, Jacobson and coauthors set their goals much lower than 1300 W for large parts of the world’s population. Here are the targets for per-capita consumption that they would try to meet with renewable energy in some of the continents, regions, and nations they examined:

South America:   1413 W
Southeast Asia:   1007 W
Africa:   625 W
India:    755 W
Haiti:    760 W
Cuba:    705 W

(For comparison, the current U.S. average is 9500 W.)

In the context of Jacobson’s studies, these are presented as reasonable targets because he, like many other energy-scenario researchers, is forecasting that extremely rapid improvements in energy efficiency will reduce worldwide demand to a level that can be satisfied by renewable sources. These sunny forecasts assume that progress in information and communications technology (ICT), along with good old industrial technologies, will accelerate and spin off greater and greater efficiencies.

But there is plenty of doubt about whether such historically unprecedented efficiency improvements can be achieved even in wealthy nations. And an analysis by the ecological economist Mauro Bonaiuti shows that rather than accelerating, the marginal benefits of innovation in traditional industries are in long-term decline, while even those of the still-young ICT revolution are already fizzling.

Steckel and colleagues conclude that poor nations striving to achieve high levels of human development cannot at the same time achieve rapid improvements in energy efficiency. Even if consumer goods like stoves and refrigerators are made to run on less energy, they argue, the society-wide infrastructure improvements necessary for development (which involve a lot of inputs like cement and steel) are and will remain highly energy intensive. Low-income nations, even ones with a large economy and an affluent minority, cannot adequately raise their overall Human Development Index if they are operating at only half of the 1300 W threshold, as Jacobson is asking India, Haiti, Cuba, and the whole continent of Africa to do.

(Beware of some Jacobson critics who, determined to save capitalism but cynically adopting the language of social justice, look at the inadequacy of the high-energy 100-percent renewable strategy and draw a suicidal conclusion: that the only acceptable alternative is a big rollout of nuclear power, carbon capture, and geoengineering.)

All nations, rich and poor, need to undergo a renewable energy conversion. But for the world’s poor majority to achieve good quality of life, energy supplies in poor nations must be not only converted but also increased. This will require massive assistance from the rich nations; perhaps those funds and resources can be regarded as partial payback of what Pope Francis has called the “ecological debt … between the global north and south.”

Another complication: The wholesale conversion to wind and solar energy infrastructure, wherever it’s happening, will itself consume a lot of energy. Until the conversion is complete, the energy driving the transition will have to come largely from fossil fuels. So supporting the energy-expansion-and-conversion effort in poor nations will put even heavier pressure on rich nations, which will already be struggling to build up their own renewable infrastructure on a crash schedule while simultaneously trying to shrink their overall energy footprint (if they are really serious about reducing emissions). The rich nations will need to offset those emissions created in the process of converting the worldwide energy supply by cutting their own energy use even more deeply.

For more than a decade, my colleagues and I writing for Green Social Thought have argued that the United States will need to reduce total energy generation by 80 percent if we are to run on wholly renewable energy, avoid runaway greenhouse warming, and help achieve adequate emissions reductions worldwide.

An 80-percent U.S. reduction would take us down into the neighborhood of 2000 W per capita, a quantity that according to the Steckel analysis, could support good quality of life (if, that is, it goes to meeting human needs and not toward capital accumulation). That level of demand could be met with 100-percent renewable energy. It also happens to be right around Mexico’s current per-capita consumption and close to the consumption that Jacobson and company are projecting for a future China. We could live with that.

Extra-Judicial Killings Mount In BJP-Ruled India

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

The Uttar Pradesh (UP) state government of Yogi Adityanath continued allowing police encounters since BJP came to power in the state in March 2017, Caravan News of India reported Monday (Feb. 26, 2018).

In 10 months of its regime, the state police conducted 1038 encounters killing 32 alleged criminals, and the Yogi government has officially boasted of these killings. But families of many of the victims have come out alleging that their dear ones were killed in staged shootouts.

Investigative journalist Neha Dixit visited families of 14 of the people killed in the alleged encounters. Furquan was one of them. In her long piece published in The Wire, she wrote chilling graphic details about how Furquan and 13 others were separately gunned down, according to Caravan.

The case of Furqan

Furquan, 40, showed up unexpectedly at his home in Shamli on October 8, 2017, full seven years after he was arrested and put in the Muzaffarnagar jail for his involvement in a village brawl. His sons, aged 12 and 10, could not recognize him because they were just 5 and 3 respectively when he was sent to jail.
“We did not have the money or a guarantor to get him released so we were surprised that he was out,” says Nasreen, his wife. The villagers informed her that a week back, the police came to the village to negotiate a settlement with the complainants in Furquan’s case. That is how he was released. Two weeks later, on October 23, 2017, he was shot dead by the police in an ‘encounter’.

The police claimed he was involved in a large number of dacoities in Saharanpur, Shamli and Muzaffarnagar. “I want to ask two things”, says Nasreen. “One, when he was in jail for seven years, how come he was also part of these dacoities? And two, why did the cops negotiate his release on their own, when they only wanted to kill him? Were they looking for an scapegoat?”

Nasreen says that most of his bones were broken. “Which means he was beaten up before being shot dead,” she says.

All five of Furquan’s brothers are currently in jail on different charges of theft and dacoity. The youngest, Farmeen, has alleged torture – he has fallen ill after electrocution of his genitals in Muzaffarnagar jail. The only earning member now is Meer Hasan, the father, who works as a rickshaw puller. “If we are a family full of such dreaded criminals, why don’t we have any money to feed ourselves even twice a day? Why do we still live in a kaccha house?” asks Nasreen.

With most family members in jail, she is unable to insist on an independent investigation into her husband’s killing. She says the family fears the other brothers will meet the same fate as Furquan if they complain against the police. “More importantly, with my father-in-law’s Rs 3,000 monthly income and six mouths to feed, we cannot afford to do that,” she says.

National Human Rights Commission

In the last 10 months, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has issued three notices to the Yogi government over allegations of fake encounters but encounters have continued unabated. NHRC had issued first notice in October 2017, then in November 2017 and the latest one in the first week of this February.

Through its November 22 notice, the NHRC had strongly condemned the state government of Yogi Adityanath for endorsing killings in encounters. The NHRD had issued notice following the government officially admitted that 433 encounters had taken place in the state in the previous six months (March – Sept 2017) killing 19 alleged criminals.

The state government had described the encounters as an achievement and a proof of improvement in the law and order situation. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath was quoted, in a newspaper on the 19th November, 2017, saying that “Criminals will be jailed or killed in encounters”.

The NHRC observed “that even if the law and order situation is grave, the State cannot resort to such mechanism, which may result in the extra judicial killings of the alleged criminals. The reported statement of the Chief Minister tantamount to giving police and other State governed forces, a free hand to deal with the criminals at their will and, possibly, it may result into abuse of power by the public servants. It is not good for a civilized society to develop an atmosphere of fear, emerging out of certain policies adopted by the State, which may result into violation of their right to life and equality before law.”

Security forces abuses and lack of accountability

According to Human Rights Watch report of 2017, Indian law makes it difficult, if not impossible, to prosecute public officials. Section 197 of the Criminal Procedure Code bars courts from recognizing any offenses (except sexual offenses) alleged to have been committed by public servants in the discharge of their official duties unless the central or a state government permits prosecution. In August, a special court discharged Gujarat police officer Rajkumar Pandian from a 2005 extrajudicial killing case under this provision. Pandian was the 12th defendant to be discharged in the case.

In rare cases in 2016, police were held accountable for abuses. In January, four policemen in Mumbai were sentenced to seven years in prison for their role in the death of a 20-year-old man in police custody. In April, 47 policemen were sentenced to life in prison for involvement in the killing of 11 Sikhs in 1991 in the Pilibhit district of Uttar Pradesh state.

Despite calls for repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, soldiers continue to have immunity from prosecution when deployed in areas of internal conflict. In July 2016, however, the Supreme Court of India, in a decision ordering an investigation into 1,528 cases of alleged extrajudicial killings in Manipur state, ruled that the AFSPA does not provide immunity to security force personnel who use excessive or retaliatory force, and that every alleged extrajudicial killing should be investigated. The confession of a Manipuri policeman in January that he had acted on orders to kill more than 100 suspected militants between 2002 and 2009 exposed how police had adopted illegal practices long associated with the army and paramilitary forces.

Treatment of Dalits, Tribal Groups, and Religious Minorities

Hindu vigilante groups attacked Muslims and Dalits over suspicions that they had killed, stolen, or sold cows for beef. The violence took place amid an aggressive push by several BJP leaders and militant Hindu groups to protect cows and ban beef consumption, the HRW report said adding:

“In March 2016, a Muslim cattle trader, Mohammed Mazlum Ansari, 35, and a 12-year-old boy, Mohammed Imteyaz Khan, were found hanging from a tree in Jharkhand state, their hands tied behind their backs and their bodies bruised. In August, a man was killed in Karnataka state by members of a nationalist Hindu group while transporting cows.

“In July, four men in Gujarat were stripped, tied to a car, and publicly beaten with sticks and belts over suspicions of cow slaughter. The government’s continuing failure to rein in militant groups, combined with inflammatory remarks made by some BJP leaders, has contributed to the impression that leaders are indifferent to growing intolerance.”

US Congressional hearing

A US Congressional Commission held a hearing in June 2016 on the human rights situation in India, coinciding with Modi’s visit to Washington. The hearing spotlighted issues of violence against marginalized communities and religious minorities such as Muslims and Christians.

A 2016 report by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom said religious tolerance had “deteriorated” and “religious freedom violations” had increased in India. During his visit to India in June, US Senator Ben Cardin, a ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, expressed concerns over religious intolerance, anti-conversion laws, and extrajudicial killings in the country. In August, during his India visit, US Secretary of State John Kerry emphasized the need to protect the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful protest.

US Congressman Trent Franks, a Republican who has visited India, flagged the riots in Uttar Pradesh, violence in Odisha and the 2002 Gujarat riots and said that because of the “current climate of impunity in India, many victims may never get justice”.

Congressman Joseph R Pitts, who is co-chairman of the commission, also said the economic growth in India “overlooks an array of troubling human rights concerns”. Talking about the plight of religious minorities, he said there is an “alarming trend” of instances of violence against religious minorities and the numbers have gone up.

Unchecked Attacks on Religious Minorities

The Indian government failed to stop or credibly investigate vigilante attacks against minority religious communities during 2017, Human Rights Watch said on January 18, releasing its World Report 2018. Many senior leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) publicly promoted Hindu supremacy and ultra-nationalism at the expense of fundamental rights for all Indians.

Extremist Hindu groups, many claiming to be affiliated with the ruling BJP, committed numerous assaults against Muslims and other minority communities in response to rumors that minority group members sold, bought, or killed cows for beef. Instead of taking prompt legal action against the attackers, police frequently filed complaints against the victims under laws banning cow slaughter. There were at least 38 such attacks in 2017, and 10 people were killed.

Amnesty International Report 2018

Official statistics released in November stated that more than 40,000 crimes against Scheduled Castes were reported in 2016, the Amnesty International said adding: Several incidents were reported of members of dominant castes attacking Dalits for accessing public and social spaces or for perceived caste transgressions.

Dozens of hate crimes against Muslims took place across the country. At least 10 Muslim men were lynched and many injured by vigilante cow protection groups, many of which seemed to operate with the support of members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Some arrests were made, but no convictions were reported. In September, Rajasthan police cleared six men suspected of killing Pehlu Khan, a dairy farmer who had named the suspects before he died. Some BJP officials made statements which appeared to justify the attacks. In September, the Supreme Court said that state governments were obligated to compensate victims of cow vigilante violence.

Freedom of expression

Journalists and press freedom came under increasing attack. In September, journalist Gauri Lankesh, an outspoken critic of Hindu nationalism and the caste system, was shot dead outside her home in Bengaluru by unidentified gunmen. The same month, journalist Shantanu Bhowmick was beaten to death near Agartala while covering violent political clashes. In September, photojournalist Kamran Yousuf was arrested in J&K for allegedly instigating people to throw stones at security forces, under a law which does not meet international human rights standards. In November, journalist Sudip Datta Bhowmik was shot dead, allegedly by a paramilitary force member, at a paramilitary camp near Agartala. In December, a French film-maker conducting research for a documentary on the Kashmir conflict was detained for three days in J&K, allegedly for violating visa regulations.

Journalists continued to face criminal defamation cases filed by politicians and companies. In June, the Karnataka legislature sentenced two journalists to one year’s imprisonment each for allegedly writing defamatory articles about members of the state assembly.

Not surpringly, in January, the Home Ministry said that it had refused to renew the foreign funding license of the NGO known as People’s Watch because it had allegedly portrayed India’s human rights record in a “negative light” internationally.

Karnataka Chief Minister accuses BJP of terror links

Tellingly, on Jan 10, 2018, Chief Minister of the Indian State of Karnatka, Siddaramaiah, said the BJP, RSS and Bajrang Dal have extremists within their organizations.

Addressing the media in Chamarajnagar, the chief minister said: “They are also extremists of one kind. BJP, RSS, and Bajrang Dal have extremists. Anybody who spoils communal harmony will not be tolerated,” Siddaramaiah said.

He went on to say, that his government would not differentiate between extremists. “We will not spare anybody, be it [Popular Front of India], [Social Democratic Party of India], Bajrang Dal or [Vishwa Hindu Parishad],” he said.

Meanwhile, state Congress working president Dinesh Gundu Rao said the BJP was becoming a terrorist organization. “[BJP leaders] are refusing to speak on the murders of Basheer [Ahmed], Dhanyashree. They say they will change Constitution. It is becoming a terrorist organization,” he said while addressing the media after holding a protest to condemn the suicide of 20-year-old Dhanyashree, who was allegedly harassed by Hindutva workers.

China: It’s Official – Xi Jinping Aims To Be “Dictator For Life”

 China Worker

Lifting of presidential term limits plunges China and its autocratic regime into unchartered territory

The news from Beijing is historic – nothing less than a political earthquake with repercussions around the world. At its upcoming “parliamentary session” (the National People’s Congress, NPC, which starts next week), China will remove the two-term limit for the presidency and vice presidency. This confirms what was widely expected; that Xi Jinping plans to extend his rule after his current second term finishes in 2023.

Xi has cemented his grip over the Chinese regime through a ruthless power struggle and anti-corruption purge, forcing factional opponents and recalcitrant regions to “bend the knee”. This was further confirmed by his “coronation” at the so-called Communist Party’s (CCP) 19th Congress in October, at which Xi imposed his own choice of leaders, eliminating or demoting possible challengers, and inserted his “thought” into the constitution.

Despite being widely expected, the latest move to allow Xi to indefinitely extend his reign as president (there is no limit on Xi’s other and actually more powerful position as CCP general secretary), has elicited shock and alarm from international commentators and Chinese dissidents alike.

The news came on Sunday 25 February in a brief statement from Xinhua news agency. China’s social media, the only public arena for limited and often coded political debate, went into overdrive with posts likening Xi’s move to North Korea’s dynastic dictatorship and China’s old imperial order, which were quickly erased by state censors.

In overseas media, the Guardian newspaper quoted China watcher Bill Bishop saying Xi has mutated into a species of “Putin-plus” – only Xi is “much more effective, much more powerful and, frankly, much more ambitious” than the Russian leader. And he’s running a much more powerful state and economy, we might add (China’s GDP is more than eight times larger than Russia’s).

Repression and censorship

Many commentators have – correctly – expressed fears that state repression in China and the shift to greater authoritarian control, already a clear trend under Xi’s first five-year term of office, will worsen.

The list of topics banned by China’s internet censors since Sunday’s announcement gives a picture of the political mood at least among significant numbers who oppose Xi’s establishment of one-man dictatorship. These topics include not only “two-term limit” and “constitutional amendment”, but also “I disagree”, “North Korea”, “Winnie the Pooh”, and “Yuan Shikai”. The cartoon bear Winnie the Pooh, who some say bears a resemblance, is used to poke fun at Xi Jinping, while Yuan Shikai was a general involved in the 1912 Chinese Revolution who staged a coup and tried to declare himself emperor. Even George Orwell’s book “Animal Farm” became a banned topic in the latest online clamp down.

State media have run articles to drown out any criticism. The Global Times said abolishing the two-term limit would “improve government” and said criticism of the move was due to “misinformation and external forces”.

“Checks and balances”

During his first term, starting in 2012, Xi downgraded most of his peers in the top CCP hierarchy, breaking up and bypassing the ‘collective leadership’ model developed in the Deng Xiaoping era of the 1980s and 90s. Ultimately, it is a dictatorship as before. But under Xi it is a regime with an unprecedented centralisation of power, at least since the shift to capitalism began 40 years ago.

Many capitalist commentators fear this will make the regime more unpredictable and prone to miscalculations. They especially fear the ramifications of this on the global stage – with Xi’s  stridently nationalist agenda and his monster “Belt and Road” plan to extend China’s global economic reach.

“Xi Jinping is susceptible to making big mistakes because there are now almost no checks or balances,” said Willy Lam, a Hong Kong-based author and biographer of China’s leaders including Xi. “Essentially, he has become emperor for life,” Lam told the New York Times.

Xi used the CCP’s anti-corruption arm, the CCDI, as a ruthless and widely feared tool to consolidate his power in the intra-regime struggle. Over one million CCP officials have been punished during the past five years. The CCDI will now be merged into a new and more formal state body, the National Supervision Commission, with greater powers. This is another decision that will be rubber stamped at the NPC’s meeting in Beijing opening on 5 March.

Xi has also spearheaded the most intense crackdown on political opposition, human rights lawyers, NGOs, bloggers and labour activists. This is the generally regarded as the darkest period of repression since the immediate aftermath of the Tiananmen Square democracy protests in 1989.

State repression under Xi has been especially severe in minority regions like Tibet and Xinjiang, and has also spread to Hong Kong, and increasingly even overseas with illegal abductions and financial pressure exerted on foreign governments and businesses not to “offend China”.

“It will get worse, for sure … the consequences will be very severe,” warned Wu’er Kaixi, a former Tiananmen Square protest leader.

Wu’er also criticised western leaders who he said had ignored dissidents’ warnings and instead “nurtured” Xi’s ambitions to become “a new 21st century dictator”. Not least among them is Donald Trump, who has praised Xi and is known for his own authoritarian tendencies.

There is massive frustration among Chinese dissidents like Wu’er Kaixi over the silence of the “international community” in the face of Xi Jinping’s authoritarianism. The reason is that Xi’s policies have largely saved global capitalism during the past few years of global crisis, by seeming to steer China through severe economic tests and sustain its role as the main engine of global trade and GDP growth. Increasingly, however, China’s rise is challenging and undermining its major rivals, especially US imperialism.

Today’s harsher international climate is also undoubtedly a factor behind the timing of Xi’s power grab. Xi’s leading coterie have moved now rather than waiting – perhaps anticipating that economic and geopolitical shocks are not far away.

Turning point

Socialists and chinaworker.info have explained that the rise of Xi as China’s new strongman is a deeply contradictory process. Xi and his allies, like the retired former anti-corruption czar Wang Qishan (who may yet be destined for a top role as the dictatorship’s old rules are being scrapped) have triumphed within the CCP’s factional struggle. But they have also been driven to do this by desperate pressures.

China faces explosive social and economic problems which the current authoritarian state has been completely incapable of solving. This is despite its apparent economic successes (also hugely contradictory and uneven).

China’s shift to a “lifetime dictator” system marks a turning point in world events and shows that China’s established political system has reached an impasse. It is a development as significant as the rise of Trump and Trumpism as a symbol of the political dysfunction of US capitalism.

The break-up of the Dengist ‘collective leadership’ model, which was an attempt to use power sharing, consensus and structured leadership succession to safeguard ‘stability’ and preclude against upheavals or radical change, shows the regime under Xi has entered unchartered territory.

As we commented at the time of the 19th Congress:

“Rather than overcoming the tensions within the Chinese state and elite, which in the final analysis reflect powerful contradictions at society’s base, Xi’s elevation opens a new phase, a high stakes gamble, that is full of risks for Chinese capitalism and the authoritarian state. The foundations of his rule – historically unprecedented levels of debt and financial speculation, intensified police terror, and ramped up nationalism – constitute a succession of crises waiting to happen.” [Xi Jinping: How strong is China’s strongman?]

The Madness Of Unchecked Growth: A Conspiratorial World View

Irwin Jerome

The White European conspiratorial model of constant, unbridled growth and expansion, vigorously exported and aggressively promoted throughout the New World, is a form of sheer madness: mentally, culturally and spiritually. It knows no allegiance to any one country, people or way of life other than to growth and expansion for their own sake and the aggrandizement of but a few. It’s conspiratorial world view refuses to debate how much human societies are hopelessly growing out-of-control, and instead prefers to focus everyone’s attention on how to perpetually cope with the out-of-control growth; which, of course, no one ever can because it’s essentially a hopeless endeavour. It refuses to debate the inherent fatal flaw that exists within the ever-growing density of all its major urban centre, and instead only asks the question, “How dense should the world’s urban early explorers, the untold crises those discoveries have led to between every invading Western colonial power and their occupying settler hordes who were at once pitted against the opposing world views of whatever aboriginal culture and peoples with which they made contact. The many divisive clashes that ensued between their opposing word views continues to this day to fuel the debate over whether or not there is any possible way to ever reconcile their vast differences.

However, underlying the basic concept of finding some Reconciliation isn’t just a matter of how to ensure that the original aboriginal, indigenous, First Nation native peoples finally receive: the same healthy benefits; the same educational services, or; the same equal employment opportunities as other non-indigenous peoples in the general society. What seldom is ever discussed with the context of Reconciliation is how to also close the gap between their world views means really something much more sweeping and imperative that represents what actually is the next huge, critical stage in human development upon which will be determined whether human societies, non-human societies and the earth itself can survive in harmony together.

Yet, in places in the New World like Sydney, Australia, where much attention and thought is currently being given to the question of Reconciliation, a just-released landmark report by Infrastructure Australia has outlined its own world view vision for the future and how the growth and expansion of its major cities should proceed forward. The three scenarios that its master plan proposed for the growth of Sydney and New South Wales don’t even begin to remotely take into account how to reconcile its world vision for the future of Australian society with that of its aboriginal peoples and all those who adhere to the same values and principles. It’s just more and more of the White European’s model and world view of exponential growth.

Embodied within its master plan’s chief question, “Hoe Dense Should Sydney Get?” is the kiss of death to any notion of real Reconciliation ever happening. Over the next twenty-five years, Infrastructure Australia intends to balloon Sydney and its surrounding population of seven and a half million, creating, in the process, three massively-dense cities comprised of: Sydney’s Central Business District (CBD); a greater outlying city of Parramatta, and; a brand new city formed around a forthcoming second major international ‘Badgerys Creek’ airport for Western Sydney (“Urban density set to soar as 2.4 m Sydneysiders arrive”, SMH, 28th Feb, 2018, Lisa Visentin)

The chief executive of Infrastructure Australia, Phillip Davies, has publically declared, “There is no doubt Sydney is experiencing growing pains, but this is not a reason to reject growth”. But by Davies own admission, “There goes the neighbourhood”, as the old saying goes, with the added comment “Yet Again!”; Sydney, as all those who now know her and love her, is toast. Those who knew her as she still is will soon become as faint and distant a memory as once were the aboriginal people who lived for millennia all along her shores. Davies and Infrastructure Australia are simply the embodiment of the same insane, invading White Europeans and their philosophy that came with the First Fleet who first sailed into Sydney’s inner harbour.

The madness seemingly has no end. In the nearby historically-famous Darlinghurst Road area of Sydney’s legendary ‘Kings Cross’, a development proposal seeks to demolish the site of the famous Kings Cross Bourbon and Beer Bar and, in the process, destroy the fine-grained retail pattern and architecturally-significant Darlinghurst Road area in spite of the City of Sydney itself and 12,000 residents already signed onto a change-org petition to try to stop it.

In still other inner and outer Western Sydney suburbs, a massive West Connex development project to open up a major corridor, linking Sydney’s inner-west communities with its outer-west areas, is the scene of phalanxes of bulldozers and wrecking cranes ruthlessly ploughing through Sydney’s many historic communities; destroying untold architectural and human heritage all along the way in preparation for the creation, many kilometres away, of a major new city and second international airport to handle the hordes for which Phillip Davies and Infrastructure Australia are eagerly planning. This massive development in New South Wales could be likened to the actions of the American Civil War’s General Sherman and his “March to the Sea” when he was directed by President Abraham Lincoln to destroy everything of the Confederacy – homes, crops, livestock, whole town and cities – in a 60 mile-wide ‘scorched earth’ swatch from Atlanta, Georgia to the Atlantic Ocean. Lincoln’s intent to break the will of the people to keep resisting just as West Connex is intent upon breaking the will of the Australian to resist the massive changes planned for them whether they like it or not.

What Sydney and its surrounds are undergoing could rightly be described as berserk. Local aboriginal and non-aboriginal people alike simply say, “White Fella’s madness now is going through the bloody roof! But what can you do?” As traditional Aussie values and traditions become further dissipated and displaced by the hard-edged corporate values of the ‘White Fella’, an exodus has begun as true-blue Aussie’s flee from Sydney and its surrounds to the hinterlands, in search of what all is being lost’ so much for the kind of Reconciliation that the earth and humanity so desperately needs now.

In the end, the result is the same everywhere in the New World, whether it’s Australia, Canada, the United States or wherever. No matter how much the people may protest whatever the crazed development scheme – be it West Connex or the equally-massive Kinder Morgan Pipeline in Canada or Dakota Access Pipeline in the U.S. – the white European’s conspiratorial world view of things continues, unabated, to mine, gouge or strip to the hilt the earth and its traditional peoples of their legacy. So, for the aggrandizement of but a select few and their ever-voracious, insatiable hunger, each transplanted European government in the New World remains hell-bent on the same suicidal course that knows no limits or boundaries, bound for the same nihilistic, catastrophic planetary future while taking all of us with it.

Greek rent subsidy scandal forces resignation of two Syriza ministers

Alex Lantier

In a scandal underscoring the social gulf separating workers from reactionary pseudo-left parties of the affluent middle class like Syriza (the “Coalition of the Radical Left”), two Greek ministers were forced to resign this week in a rent subsidy scandal.

Thanks to a 2015 law passed by Syriza, Deputy Minister for Labor Rania Antonopoulou and her husband, Economy Minister Dimitri Papadimitriou, obtained €23,000 over two years in state rent subsidies for their apartment in the upscale Kolonaki neighborhood of Athens. This is nearly 50 percent more than the gross salary of a Greek minimum wage worker, of €683.76 per month, over that period. They obtained these rent subsidies even though they in fact owned the apartment and declared an annual household income of over $500,000.

At the same time, the Syriza government of which they were a part continued to impose billions of euros in devastating European Union (EU) austerity measures on the Greek people.

Antonopoulou initially tried to ride out the scandal after it broke in Eleftheros Typos on Friday. However, she resigned after it was announced on Monday that Syriza Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had met her to express his “disappointment.” Papadimitriou resigned yesterday.

Both husband and wife are high-ranking economics professors on leave from Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. As a professor and senior scholar at the Bard College’s Levy Economics Institute, Antonopoulou specialized in feminist economics and globalization and did consulting work for the UN and the International Labor Organization. She became a minister immediately after Syriza won the January 2015 Greek election.

Papadimitriou has been president of the Levy Economics Institute since 1986. He served in top finance and government posts and in various associations including—fittingly enough—the Hellenic-American Bankers Association. He became economy minister in November 2016.

Such cynical profiteering by wealthy individuals falsely purporting to be “left” vindicates the World Socialist Web Site’s (WSWS) critique of the privileged class basis and reactionary outlook of the Stalinist and anti-Marxist middle-class tendencies that make up Syriza. They took power pledging to end six years of EU austerity that had slashed wage levels by 30 to 40 percent, hiked taxes, and devastated Greece. After only a few weeks in power, Syriza betrayed its pledge to end the EU austerity Memorandum; it then went on to impose billions in new EU cuts.

The WSWS alone warned about Syriza before January 2015—while pseudo-left groups like the International Socialist Organization in the United States, Podemos in Spain, Die Linke in Germany and the New Anti-capitalist Party in France all hailed Syriza as a great step forward for the left.

Shortly before Syriza’s election, the WSWS warned: “For working people, a Syriza government would not represent a way out of the crisis; on the contrary, it would represent an enormous danger. Despite its left-wing façade, Syriza is a bourgeois party that rests on affluent layers of the middle class. Its policies are determined by union bureaucrats, academics, professionals and parliamentary functionaries, who seek to defend their privileges by preserving the social order.”

Politically-connected Greek academic economists at US universities were a key constituency in Syriza. As Tsipras repeatedly crossed the Atlantic to visit the United States starting in 2013, they played a key role in helping win Washington’s support for the prospect of a Syriza government.

The most prominent was University of Texas at Austin professor and then briefly Syriza Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis. In a 2013 New York Timescolumn titled “Only Syriza Can Save Greece,” Varoufakis and fellow UT Austin economist James Galbraith tried to reassure Washington that Syriza would do the bidding of Wall Street and the Pentagon. “Syriza doesn’t intend to leave NATO or close US military bases” in Greece, they wrote, adding that the banks could safely buy Greek debt under a Syriza government, “because they know it will be paid.”

Antonopoulou’s pet project for a “Greek New Deal,” which she played around with for a while at Greek taxpayers’ expense, reflected this social layer’s anti-worker outlook. Speaking to German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle in February 2015, she explained that her plan was meant to give the unemployed “a publicly funded job at minimum wage,” which the EU had just cut 20 percent to its current abysmal level. However, she said, financing her plan was “difficult.”

Syriza refused to tax the rich or defy the EU, and Antonopoulou predictably found no money for her project. Nothing came of her “Greek New Deal” except her own handsome salary.

In July 2015, under the predictable threat of a cut-off of credit from the European Central Bank (ECB), Syriza capitulated to the EU. Even after Greek workers delivered a landslide “no” vote in Syriza’s own referendum on austerity, they stampeded to impose more EU austerity packages in order to keep the ECB from expelling Greece from the euro currency. Throughout, they refused to make any appeal to the European working class to defend Greece against the EU.

Their pro-imperialist outlook, their cowardice and their treachery were, as the WSWS noted at the time, rooted in definite material class interests, which Antonopoulou and Papadimitriou personify.

The WSWS wrote, “Syriza legislator Dimitris Tsoukalas (with declared personal savings in 2013 of over €1 million), Finance Minister Tsakalotos (whose stock portfolio is worth over €500,000), Economy Minister Giorgios Stathakis (€426,000 invested with JP Morgan), former Syriza leader Alekos Alavanos (€350,000 in savings, a stock portfolio and 11 real estate properties), and former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis (whose wife Danae Stratou is a millionaire) cannot imagine or tolerate a break with the EU because—like the rest of the Greek ruling elite—they would lose a great deal of wealth if Greece exited the euro and their assets were re-denominated in a heavily devalued national currency.”

And that summer, as Syriza plundered billions from the Greek people with more cuts to schools, pensions, and other basic services, it also passed the rent subsidy law that Antonopoulou and Papadimitriou used to siphon of tens of thousands of euros into their pockets.

The basis of socialist and left-wing politics, as the great Marxists have always insisted, is the working class. While the International Committee of the Fourth International seeks to build itself as the leadership of a revolutionary movement in the international working class, its petty-bourgeois pseudo-left opponents are going down in history as a collection of militarists, swindlers, and parasites.

Johns Hopkins researchers find toxic levels of heavy metals in e-cigarette vapors

Benjamin Mateus

A recently published study in the Journal of Environmental Health Perspective studying the impact of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) on daily users reported that the heating coils in these devices cause the release of toxic heavy metals in the vapors being inhaled.

E-cigarettes have been growing in popularity as a substitute for tobacco and method for smoking cessation despite uncertainties regarding their impact on the health of users. The device generates nicotine and non-nicotine containing vapors through a process where the e-liquid solution (these contain propylene glycol, glycerin, water, nicotine, and flavorings) is heated by metallic coils.

Two commonly used alloys in manufacturing these coils include Kanthal—made of iron, chromium, and aluminum which have a wide range of resistance and high-temperature application—and Nichrome, made of nickel and chromium.

Exposure to these toxic metals including the lead in the e-liquid solution has the potential for considerable health consequences. Lead has been known to cause neurotoxicity and cardiovascular disease while nickel and chromium have been implicated in respiratory ailments.

The reusable e-cigarettes come with a cylindrical-shaped battery and a mouthpiece that has a tank to refill with the e-liquid. These devices have diverse voltages and coil composition as they can be assembled and manipulated by the user.

Fifty-six participants were recruited into the study. The information recorded included the type of device used, the voltage of their device, type of coil, and frequency of coil changes. They collected three types of samples: the e-solution before contact with the coils, the aerosol generated by the e-cigarette, and the e-solution remaining in the tank after vaping.

The increase in metal concentrations in the aerosol/vapor and residual in the dispenser when compared to the e-liquid were all statistically significant for aluminum, cadmium, chromium, copper, iron, manganese, nickel, lead, antimony, tin and zinc. The ratio-increase for zinc was 29.5 in the aerosol and 36.7 in the tank; lead 25.4 and 116; nickel 8.43 and 64.6; chromium 6.78 and 70.7. The authors also pointed to concerns about arsenic in 10.7 percent of the e-liquid dispensers as those appear to get transferred to the aerosol and the tank as well. They attribute the source of most of these toxic metals to the heating coils in the e-cigarettes while the lead and arsenic appear to come from the dispensers of the e-solution.

According to standards established by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), 57 percent of e-cigarettes exceed the daily chronic Minimum Risk Level (MRL) for nickel, 68 percent exceed the daily MRL for chromium hexavalent, while for lead 48 percent exceed the EPA National Ambient Air Quality Standards. The authors also note that their data on the aerosol concentrations may be an underestimation as they assumed daily exposures as equivalent to 50 puffs, whereas recent investigation indicates that the average is closer to 200 puffs per day.

Interestingly, a study from 2017 found that e-cigarettes contained 35 of 36 elements and metals they screened for while only 15 of these were detected in conventional tobacco smoke. Some of these elements were present in much higher concentrations in e-cigarettes than in tobacco. They attributed these elements and particles to the filaments, thick wire, brass clamp, solder joints and wick and sheath of the e-cigarette devices.

The findings of the present study suggest that using e-cigarettes instead of tobacco results in less cadmium exposure but not to other hazardous material found in tobacco. They noted that emission rates were higher for cadmium, chromium, and nickel in e-cigarettes while lead and zinc seemed to be in similar concentration ranges with tobacco cigarettes.

The exposure to lead is of significant concern as decades of data suggest no observable lower threshold that can be considered safe and therefore all lead exposure should be avoided. Also, chromium and nickel are considered to have high carcinogenic potential (cause cancers). Iron can cause respiratory irritation and lead to lung fibrosis. Manganese can cause chronic bronchitis and reduced lung function as well as neurological dysfunctions. Copper may lead to coughing, chest pain and chronic nasal drip. Zinc can lead to shortness of breath, coughing and chest pain from reduced lung functions. Arsenic has the potential to cause cancer and cardiovascular diseases.

In a recent 2017 survey conducted on “vaping” by the NIH, they noted that one in three students in the 12th grade said they had used some vaping device in the last year. In December 2017, almost 7 percent of eighth graders, 13 percent of 10th graders and 17 percent of high school seniors reported having vaped in the past month.

More than 2 million middle and high school students were current users of e-cigarettes in 2016. This translates to 11 percent of high school and 4.3 percent of middle school students in the United States considered current users. From 2011 to 2015 e-cigarette use rose from 1.5 percent to 16 percent among high school students. Despite the recent studies that have exposed the potential health hazards of e-cigarettes the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) remains on the fence as to how to regulate e-cigarettes. Currently, they are treated under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act as equivalent to tobacco products, which means they regulate the marketing, labeling, and manufacturing of devices and e-liquids. Even according to the FDA review published in 2014, they admitted that e-cigarettes not only contain varying levels of nicotine, but also of potentially harmful nitrosamines, aldehydes, metals, volatile organic compounds, phenolic compounds and other substances.

The e-cigarette was invented in 2003 by a Chinese pharmacist and was first sold in 2004. The e-cigarette market, which includes more than 250 brands, saw exponential growth in 2006 with several million users worldwide and every major tobacco company engaged in the manufacturing and selling of these devices. Industry experts believe the consumption of e-cigarettes will surpass conventional tobacco cigarettes in the next decade.

As of 2018, operating profit pools for e-cigarettes was over $4 billion. It is estimated that by 2022 that figure will exceed $12 billion and surpass those of tobacco cigarettes. An April 2015 analysis published in the American Journal of Public Health found that smokers who used e-cigarettes were 59 percent less likely to quit smoking than those who never smoked e-cigarettes. The authors concluded that there was no compelling scientific evidence that e-cigarettes were better than nicotine patches, prescription drugs or behavioral techniques in helping smokers quit.

What is alarming is the number of youth who have turned to vaping without understanding the consequences of this activity to their long-term health. The more important but seemingly rhetorical question is to ask why these corporations do not test the safety of their products before bringing them to market. The profit motive is the most plausible explanation.

India’s highest court upholds life sentences for framed-up Pricol workers

Kranti Kumara

India’s Supreme Court has again demonstrated its inherent, implacable hostility to the working class and its struggles, upholding the life sentences imposed on two Pricol workers—the union militants Manivannan and Ramamurthy—on frame-up murder charges.

Based in Coimbatore in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Pricol is a multinational auto parts manufacturer.

India’s highest court announced late last year that it would not even hear an appeal of the convictions of Manivannan and Ramamurthy, although the case against them has all the hallmarks of a crude frame-up. These include gaping holes and inconsistencies in the police/prosecution narrative and the lack of any incriminating forensic evidence.

At the same time, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the company’s appeal of the acquittals of seven other Pricol workers on charges of murder and criminal trespass with intention to kill.

Six of these workers were exonerated by the High Court in Dec. 2016 after a lower court had sentenced them, along with Manivannan and Ramamurthy, to double life sentences for the unexplained September 21, 2009 killing of Pricol Human Resources Vice President Roy George.

The seventh was among 19 others whom the first court to hear the case had conceded were innocent of any and all involvement in George’s death.

All but one of the 19, including four women workers, were fellow militants at Pricol’s Coimbatore operations. The lone non-Pricol worker was S. Kumarasamy, the General-Secretary of the AICCTU, the national union federation to which the two unions formed by the Pricol workers in Coimbatore belong.

There are striking parallels between the struggle and the company-state frame-up of the Pricol workers and the travails of the victimized workers at Maruti Suzuki’s car assembly plant in Manesar, Haryana.

In both cases the workers encountered ferocious resistance from their employer—a globally-connected auto company—when they sought to challenge poverty wages and brutal working conditions. And in both cases the state has worked hand-in-glove with management to frame up and exact savage legal punishment on those in the leadership of the workers’ resistance.

The World Socialist Web Site has provided a detailed exposure of the frame-up of the Maruti Suzuki workers and is mounting a campaign to mobilize workers around the world to fight for the immediate release of the 13 workers—including all 12 executive members of the Maruti Suzuki Workers Union—who have been unjustly condemned to life imprisonment for the death, by asphyxiation, of Human Resources Manager Avineesh Dev.

As in the case of Dev’s death, George’s murder was used by the company and police to launch a vendetta against workers who had been leading the fight to build new unions. And as with the Maruti Suzuki workers, Indian authorities, including the country’s highest court, have connived in the frame-up of the workers, with the aim of intimidating the entire working class and enforcing the sweatshop conditions demanded by Indian and international capital.

Pricol, which began as a family-owned concern in the 1970s, now has six plants in India, including in Manesar, where the victimized Maruti Suzuki workers were employed, producing a wide range of components for cars, trucks, and motorcycles. It also has plants in Brazil and Indonesia, and business offices in the US, Germany, Japan and elsewhere, with a total global workforce of 5,500.

Pricol has justifiably earned a reputation for imposing a backbreaking work regime for minimum pay. In 2007, when the Coimbatore workers began to organize to challenge management, a worker with 25 years’ experience was earning around Rs. 8,600, or just $215 US per month. Today a worker with a quarter-century of service at Pricol reportedly receives a monthly wage of Rs. 25,000, or $390, which due to inflation represents only a modest improvement.

Many workers are employed as apprentices or as contract workers, meaning they earn only a fraction of the wages of full-time employees.

Such conditions are the norm across India. Moreover, companies enforce production quotas, attendance and other work rules with heavy fines, suspensions and dismissals. Pricol management is notorious for such practices.

To push back, the Coimbatore workers staged a sustained campaign of militant actions in open revolt against existing unions allied with management, and turned to the AICCTU, a small trade union federation affiliated to the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation. The latter is a Maoist organization that increasingly works in alliance with the main Stalinist parliamentary parties, the CPM and CPI, which were integrated into the bourgeois political establishment decades ago.

In the two years prior to George’s murder, Pricol management sought to break the workers’ resistance through a campaign of intimidation. Hundreds of workers were terminated and more than 150 fired. The company refused to negotiate with the workers unless they repudiated their new AICCTU-aligned unions, and it transferred top union office-holders to its plant in Uttarakhand, well over a thousand miles away. Management also threatened to close down the plants and worked with police to file criminal charges against workers on more than 40 separate occasions.

The workers responded by intensifying their struggle. This included large rallies, petitions to the government, and “stay-in” strikes where they would occupy the plants for hours at a time. On one occasion when the police tried to enter to violently eject workers on a “stay-in” strike, women workers doused themselves with petrol (gasoline) and kerosene and threatened to set fire to themselves.

The legal case against the Pricol workers cannot withstand serious scrutiny. As it is, convictions have been upheld against just 2 of the 27 persons the police and prosecution argued had entered into a criminal conspiracy to murder George.

The police and prosecution claimed there was CCTV footage showing some of the accused carrying out a murderous assault on George with metal rods. But when they couldn’t produce such footage in court, they claimed the CCTV had in fact malfunctioned.

Eight rods that were supposedly used in the attack were entered as evidence. But none had George’s blood on them, nor could they be linked via fingerprints to any of the accused.

The state argued that because George’s body had eight wounds, eight rods must have been used and eight persons must have been involved in the attack. Not only is there no basis for such inferences, the post-mortem showed George had suffered just three wounds.

Prosecution witnesses who supposedly witnessed the attack repeatedly failed to identify or correctly identify workers they had implicated in the attack on George.

The police First Information report was tampered with to add the names of additional workers.

The courts dismissed much of the testimony of the one eyewitness, a Pricol official who implicated Manivannan and Ramamurthy, as not credible.

Among the most curious aspects of the case is that an investigating officer was outside the company Human Resources office at the very time in the late morning of September 21, 2009 that the attack is said to have taken place, yet he heard and saw nothing.

Moreover, company officials did not inform him, anyone among the detachment of Armed Reserve Police that had been deployed at the plant for over a year, or the local police office that George and four other company officials had been attacked until the late afternoon—hours after they had been transported to hospital.

The Pricol workers falsely implicated in George’s death have suffered greatly, including long terms in jail awaiting the outcome of the legal proceedings against them. The verdict in the first trial was only rendered in 2015, more than six years after they were arrested. During this ordeal one of the framed-up workers committed suicide, as did the wife of another.

French President Macron turns his labor decrees against rail workers

Alex Lantier

On Monday, French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced plans to end the French rail workers’ statute and privatize the French National Railways (SNCF). Aware of deep anger among workers at his agenda, amid rising class struggles across Europe and internationally, he declared he would unilaterally impose the reform using President Emmanuel Macron’s labor decrees. This aims to give him time to drum up support from legislators and pro-corporate trade unions.

Philippe confirmed that he intends to eliminate the social rights granted to French rail workers in recognition of their participation in the defeat of Nazi Germany, led above all by the Soviet Union, in World War II. He said, “To new generations, apprentices, all those looking to join the SNCF, we say that they will enjoy the guarantees on working conditions enjoyed by all Frenchmen, those of the Labor Code. … In the future, at a date that will be worked out, there will be no further recruitment based on the rail workers’ statute.”

Claiming the SNCF’s situation is “alarming,” Philippe called on parliament to pass an enabling act to allow the government to impose its reform using Macron’s labor decrees. He said, “Faced with urgency, the government is determined to get key principles passed before the summer. … In mid-May we will submit a draft Enabling Act to the parliament. Using the decrees will allow for broad negotiations” with SNCF management and the unions. He also called for privatizing the SNCF, which would be transformed into a corporation whose shares are partially owned by the state.

The policy of Philippe and Macron is illegitimate and anti-democratic, both in its form and content, and deserves to be rejected with contempt.

The claim that there is not enough money to maintain the French rail workers’ statute and, more broadly, workers’ living standards across Europe, is a political lie. While attacking SNCF workers, Macron is handing over billions of euros in tax cuts for the rich (ISF). The French state gave the banks €360 billion in loan guarantees overnight during the 2008 Wall Street crash, and supported the European Central Bank’s lending of trillions of euros to the banks since then.

What is driving this reactionary policy is the war drive of the major imperialist powers: Macron is intending to finance a surge of French militarism at the workers’ expense.

On February 17, at the Munich Security Conference, French Defense Minister Florence Parly announced a 35 percent surge to a €300 billion military budget for 2018-2024. To join in the ongoing militarization of the European Union (EU), carried out together with Berlin, Macron intends to throw the workers back decades in order to finance wars in Mali, Syria and beyond, including wars directly between the major nuclear powers.

The government’s vision of the future, as shown by its plans to impose its labor decrees on PSA autoworkers and the SNCF rail workers, is to reduce all workers to temps without any social rights. Philippe’s promise to offer rail workers the protections of the Labor Code is a cynical fraud. The labor law passed with Macron’s participation in the 2012-2017 Socialist Party (PS) government of President François Hollande allows the bosses and union to agree to violate the Labor Code. Even the protections Philippe claims to offer are, in fact, being repudiated.

That is what was shown when the unions and the French chemical industry agreed last year on a contract in which workers are paid under the minimum wage, which is defined in the Labor Code.

No real struggle can be mounted against Macron’s regressive policies without carrying out a struggle against war and social inequality in the working class across Europe.

As Macron presents his plan to liquidate the SNCF, there is rising opposition and militancy in the working class internationally after a decade of accelerating social attacks since the 2008 crash. Since the beginning of 2018, there have been mass workers protests in Iran and Tunisia, strikes by German and Turkish metalworkers, British rail workers, and by Greek workers against the Syriza (“Coalition of the Radical Left”) government’s austerity policies.

In the United States, the powerful American proletariat is entering into struggle. Amid rising anger among autoworkers over the corporate bribing of United Auto Workers (UAW) union officials to impose a reactionary contract, teachers across the entire state of West Virginia are defying a right-wing governor and mobilizing to demand better wages and working conditions.

And in France, the rail workers face the necessity of organizing a struggle amid growing strikes by Air France and health care workers.

To oppose Macron’s attacks, workers cannot accept the straitjacket of a few symbolic trade union protests organized at the national level. The key question is to take the struggle out of the hands of the union bureaucracy and its political allies, who are leading the “negotiations” with Macron, and organize independently to wage a political struggle against the anti-democratic and militarist policies of Macron and the EU.

The government is counting on a purely national mobilization of rail workers in France, isolated from other layers of workers already targeted by Macron—auto, chemical workers, and retirees. He aims to divide and rule, exhausting or breaking up protests in various industries, isolated from their class brothers and sisters internationally. The French trade unions are adamant that the struggles now taking place inside France should not be unified, and sections of the press are gloating that it will be possible to inflict a humiliating and demoralizing defeat on the rail workers.

Speaking to Le Monde, pollster Jérôme Sainte-Marie advised Macron as follows: “For him it would be best for the reform of the SNCF to take on the appearance of a battle. If victory were too easy, he would get less out of it politically. It would be better if it were like the miners strike for Thatcher, a heroic struggle against the dreaded fantasy of the trade union monster that he ultimately wins.”

The reference to the 1985 miners strike in Great Britain, in which the trade unions isolated a strike controlled by the National Union of Mineworkers, and allowed British Prime Minster Margaret Thatcher to wage a broad assault on workers’ living standards, is a warning as to Macron’s plans.

The bourgeoisie’s strategy depends critically on the treachery of trade unions who fundamentally share the nationalist and militarist perspective of Macron. The call by leading members of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Unsubmissive France (LFI) to spend billions more on the army is a clear reflection of the reactionary outlook of these layers, which include the so-called “class struggle unions” linked to LFI, like the Stalinist General Confederation of Labor (CGT).

Willing to “modernize” the country and promote its “competitiveness” and its power on the world stage, they are willing to accept any of the social attacks they are negotiating with Macron.

The unions are desperately seeking to posture as forces for opposition, while avoiding organizing any opposition. The CGT initially called for a symbolic one-day strike on March 22, and even the French Democratic Labor Confederation (CFDT), which hailed Macron’s labor decrees and voted the sub-minimum wage contracts in the chemical industry, briefly declared it wanted to launch an “extendable strike starting on March 14.”

Yesterday, however, it was announced that the unions would postpone all decisions on strike action over the SNCF reform until March 15.