US House rejects Trump’s national emergency

Barry Grey 

In a largely party-line vote, the US House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a “resolution of disapproval” rejecting President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration. Trump signed the declaration on February 15, circumventing Congress and shifting $8 billion previously allocated for other purposes to mobilize the military to build his wall along the US-Mexican border. Some $3.6 billion is to come from the diversion of military construction funds.

The declaration is an unprecedented assertion of unilateral, quasi-dictatorial executive powers in violation of the US Constitution, which reserves to Congress the authority to allocate public funds.

Never before has a president declared a national emergency to implement a policy that had been explicitly rejected by Congress—in this case, its refusal to grant Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion to extend existing barriers along the country’s southern border. The declaration, based on the false and fascistic claim of an emergency along the border due to an “invasion” of criminal aliens, also violates the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars the US military from engaging in law enforcement operations within the borders of the US.

It provides a sweeping grant of authority to the Pentagon for the complete militarization of the US-Mexican border.

The one paragraph disapproval resolution was sponsored by Democratic Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas. It passed by a vote of 245 to 182, with 13 Republicans joining all of the voting Democrats. (The Democratic Party won control of the House in last November’s midterm election and holds a 235 to 197 majority).

Under the terms of the 1976 National Emergencies Act, the Senate must vote on the measure within 18 days and cannot block a floor vote with a filibuster. This means that the Democrats, all of whose 47 senators are expected to vote in favor of the disapproval resolution, have to secure the votes of only four Republicans to pass the measure. Three Republicans—Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina—have already said they will support the resolution.

However, Trump has declared that he will veto the resolution, and it is all but certain that an attempt to override the veto, requiring a two-thirds vote in each chamber, will fail. In the House, for example, it would require at least 55 Republican defections and a total vote to override of 290 to overturn Trump’s veto.

There is thus an enormous element of political theater—and cynicism—in the Democrats’ congressional action against Trump’s declaration. On Monday, Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said, “This isn’t about the border. This is about the Constitution of the United States.”

Yet neither Pelosi nor any other leading Democrat has suggested that Trump’s subversion of the Constitution and move toward presidential dictatorship constitutes an impeachable offense. And the last thing they want to do is mobilize popular opposition to Trump’s authoritarian measures and attacks on immigrants.

In January, when Trump first declared his intention to invoke emergency powers to build the wall, in the midst of the 35-day partial government shutdown precipitated by his ultimatum on funding for the reactionary project, the Democrats and newspapers aligned with the Democratic Party such as the New York Times and the Washington Post indicated either acquiescence or outright support.

Now they are basing their opposition largely on the argument that there is no border emergency and the diversion of funds for the wall will weaken the military and jeopardize national security as well as US imperialist foreign policy interests. They are, for example, circulating a list to wavering Republicans of all the possible military construction projects in each district that could lose funding because of money being shifted to construction of the wall.

Three days after Trump signed his emergency declaration, a coalition of 16 Democratic Party-controlled states, led by California, filed a lawsuit opposing the measure. The legal complaint centered on the lack of a “factual basis” for this particular declaration, while avoiding any challenge to the president’s ability to declare a national emergency or allocate money without congressional authorization in general.

With this and other suits filed by advocacy groups certain to wind their way through the federal appellate courts and end up in the US Supreme Court, the Democrats are encouraging the courts to issue the narrowest possible rulings, so as not to curtail the emergency powers relied on by the military-intelligence agencies, which the Democratic Party has been relentlessly promoting in its factional warfare with the Trump administration.

This unprincipled, cowardly and essentially right-wing approach is also evident in a statement released Monday opposing Trump’s declaration and signed by 58 former national security officials, mainly Democrats. The signatories include former secretaries of state Madeleine Albright, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel; Obama-era CIA directors John Brennan and Leon Panetta; former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper; former national security adviser Susan Rice, former UN ambassador Samantha Power and former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Their statement explicitly affirms support for presidential emergency powers in general, but argues against this particular declaration on grounds of US national security and foreign policy aims.

It states, for example: “Redirecting funds for the claimed ‘national emergency’will undermine US national security and foreign policy interests. In the face of a nonexistent threat, redirecting funds for the construction of a wall along the southern border will undermine national security by needlessly pulling resources from Department of Defense programs that are responsible for keeping our troops and our country safe and running effectively.” [Emphasis in the original]

It goes on to complain that the administration’s actions are heightening tensions with Mexico when that country’s support is needed for “cooperative efforts to address the growing tensions with Venezuela,” i.e., to carry out Washington’s coup to overthrow the elected government of Nicolás Maduro and install the US puppet Juan Guaidó.

New Cuban constitution recognizes private property

Alexander Fangmann

Approved by a referendum on Sunday whose overall outcome was not in doubt, the Cuban government has adopted a new constitution explicitly allowing private property and enshrining earlier initiatives to more deeply integrate the country into the global economy and dismantle what remains of the radical economic measures taken in an earlier period.

Above all, the new constitution signals the preparation for an all-out assault on the Cuban working class and the social welfare measures that distinguish its standard of living from that of other Latin American and Caribbean nations.

According to the National Electoral Commission, the constitutional referendum passed with 86.9 percent of voters approving the document. According to official news agencies, turnout for the referendum was at least 7.8 million, or 84.4 percent of eligible voters, following an aggressive campaign by the government to get out the vote and encourage approval. This is less than the 97.8 percent who voted for the previous constitution of 1976. The lower turnout is an expression, though distorted, of dissatisfaction with the Cuban government.

The most significant of the changes to the constitution is the explicit recognition of private property in “certain” means of production by “natural or juridical Cubans or foreigners.” In other words, the provision goes beyond the sanctification of the small-time operations of most cuentapropistas, or “self-employed” people. This measure is preparing the ground for the future privatization of state companies and property and the expansion of the activity of foreign corporations on the island.

The constitution includes language asserting that socialism is “irrevocable,” that the “socialist economy” will “regulate and control the market” and that private property will play a “complementary role in the economy.” Aside from the fact that while the Cuban Revolution was not a socialist revolution and it never established socialism, similar claims were made by the Stalinist bureaucracies just as they prepared to reintroduce capitalist property and market relations into the Eastern European economies some thirty years ago.

Vadim Medvedev, one of the chief ideologists of perestroika in the former Soviet Union, argued that “socialist property has many different forms” which “makes it flexible and capable of responding to different economic conditions in different sectors and regions.” Even today, the Chinese Stalinists insist on referring to Chinese capitalism as “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The impact of the dissolution of the Soviet Union on the working class was devastating, with life expectancy falling and indices of social misery skyrocketing in the years following 1989–91.

Many of the new provisions in the constitution are aimed at winning the support of Cuba’s burgeoning middle class, which has seen its wealth grow in recent years from connections abroad that can supply hard currency or goods for business ventures, and which increasingly sees its interests coinciding with those of foreign capital.

Though the constitution is clear that the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) will remain the “fundamental pillar” and “leading political force” in the country, the government clearly hopes that a mild democratic gloss and legalization of business activities and investment sources will appeal to these layers.

Among these new provisions are the introduction of the post of prime minister and the imposition of term limits on the Cuban president who is now allowed two 5-year terms, a far cry from Fidel Castro’s 49 years as head of government. Additionally, provincial assemblies are to be dismantled and replaced by a system of presidentially appointed governors and deputy governors, along with a devolution of responsibilities to municipalities.

Several reforms have also been made to the legal system which now, on paper, recognizes the presumption of innocence and habeas corpus in criminal cases, and which now allows lawsuits against the state for damages and negligence.

In deference to considerations of the growth of identity politics among the petty-bourgeoisie, the new constitution prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Earlier plans to explicitly allow same sex marriage were removed from the final draft after pushback from the Catholic church and a number of evangelical churches.

After having been removed in the draft constitution, the phrase “advancing toward a communist society” was put back in the final version, apparently due to overwhelming popular feedback, no doubt a reflection of the opposition of Cuban workers to several decades of immense growth in inequality.

The government has been sensitive to criticism of the new constitution and has campaigned aggressively for a yes vote, even making support for it tantamount to a blow against Yankee imperialism in Latin America, which is at this moment staging a provocation aimed at regime change against Cuba’s principal ally, Venezuela.

Indeed, the Cuban government’s new constitution and drive to de-nationalize industry and expand market relations throughout the country is driven by the recognition that it can no longer rely on deep subsidies from Venezuela or survive another “Special Period” without a social upheaval. Basing itself not on the international working class, it seeks support from international capital in the hopes of preserving the privileges of the bureaucracy.

The developments in Cuba have entirely vindicated the perspective of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), which rejected the claims that the Castro regime had implemented socialism in Cuba, above all by the Pabloite revisionists, who hailed Castro as a “natural Marxist,” and abandoned the fight for the building of the Fourth International throughout Latin America and the colonial world.

The fight against the destruction of what remains of Cuba’s social welfare system and the growth of social inequality can only be carried out under the leadership of a revolutionary socialist party basing itself on Leon Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. For that reason, the fight to establish socialism in Cuba requires the building of a section of the ICFI.

India bombs Pakistan, Islamabad vows military retaliation

Wasantha Rupasinghe

India carried out an air strike deep inside Pakistan early Tuesday morning, its first since the 1971 Indo-Pakistani war, raising tensions between South Asia’s rival nuclear-armed states to a boil.

With Islamabad asserting it has a right to retaliate and the spokesman for Pakistan’s army vowing it will “surprise” India, there is a grave danger that escalating tit-for-tat retaliatory actions will spiral out of control into a catastrophic war.

Reports of heavy shelling across the Line of Control (LoC) that divides Indian- and Pakistan-administered Kashmir were appearing as this article was filed for publication.

The Indian government is claiming that 12 Indian Air Force Mirage fighter jets destroyed the main base of Jaish-e Mohammed (JeM), an Islamist group active in the insurgency against Indian rule in Kashmir, by striking it with 1,000 kilogram (2,000 pound) “precision” bombs. The reputed base was located in Balakot in Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, some 60 kilometres from the LoC.

“In this operation,” Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale told a celebratory press conference Tuesday, “a very large number of JeM terrorists, trainers, senior commanders and groups of jihadis who were being trained for fidayeen action were eliminated.”

The Indian government has officially refused to be more precise in its death count. But Indian media, based on sources inside the Hindu supremacist BJP government, are speaking of between 200 and 300 dead.

While the precise form of India’s attack on Pakistan was not known in advance, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other senior government and military officials had repeatedly vowed Pakistan would be punished militarily for a suicide bombing that killed 40 soldiers in the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) near Pulwama, in Indian-held Kashmir, on February 14.

No sooner had the JeM claimed responsibility for the bombing than Modi declared Pakistan responsible and said India’s military had a “free hand” in exacting retribution.

Mirage 2000 jets operated by the Indian Air Force

As preparations for yesterday’s strike proceeded, the BJP government announced a slew of retaliatory measures. These include cancelling Pakistan’s Most Favoured Nation trade status and vowing to maximize India’s “rights” under the Indus Valley Water Treaty, effectively threatening to roil Pakistan’s economy by denying it the water it needs for irrigation and electricity generation.

Nevertheless, in an implicit admission that its planned retaliatory attack on Pakistan was a wanton violation of international law, New Delhi did not seek to justify yesterday’s strike by referring to the Pulwama attack. Rather, Gokhale claimed that it was a “non-military pre-emptive action,” exclusively targeting the JeM, because “credible intelligence” showed the Islamist group was on the verge of launching another terrorist attack.

Islamabad has disputed India’s account of the raid it mounted inside Pakistan under cover of darkness early Tuesday. A statement issued from a meeting of Pakistan’s National Security Committee, chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan, accused India of making “self-serving, reckless and fictitious” claims. According to Islamabad, the Indian fighter jets were chased off by Pakistani warplanes and their precision bombs fell in forested areas, with one injured civilian the lone casualty.

The wild divergence in the claims emanating from New Delhi and Islamabad underscores the explosiveness of the situation. The reactionary ruling elites of both countries have for decades used their strategic rivalry as a mechanism for diverting social tensions and stoking reaction, and made central to their rule the notion that any compromise with, slight from, or reversal at the hands of the arch-enemy is impermissible.

Even as they dismissed the impact of Tuesday’s attack, Pakistan’s military and government gave every indication they intend to respond in kind.

“Pakistan,” declared army spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor, “will retaliate on diplomatic, political and military fronts to India’s action.”

He then added ominously, “Prime Minister Imran Khan told the army and people [to] get ready for any eventuality. Now it is time for India to wait for our response. We have decided. Wait for It.”

In ordering yesterday’s strike, Modi and his BJP government had a double objective.

First, to intensify India’s escalating campaign of diplomatic, economic and military pressure on Pakistan, and “normalize” India’s resort to illegal military action inside Pakistan in response to insurgent attacks in Indian-held Kashmir.

Shortly after it was propelled to power in 2014 by the Ambanis and India’s other newly-minted billionaires, the Modi-led BJP government signaled that it was determined to change the “rules of the game” with Pakistan, so as to force it to submit to India’s regional dominance and demonstratively cease all logistical support for the Kashmir insurgency.

The new wave of popular opposition to Indian rule that, since 2016, has convulsed Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, has only made Modi, the BJP and the RSS-led Hindu right more determined to lash out against Pakistan.

The second, and no less important aim of yesterday’s air strikes, is to incite a bellicose and communalist political atmosphere in the run-up to India’s April-May, multi-stage general election.

With its promises of jobs and development having proven to be a cruel hoax for India’s workers and toilers, the Modi government is facing mounting social opposition. Tens of millions of workers joined a two-day, nationwide general strike last month to oppose the BJP government’s austerity measures and “pro-investor reforms.” There have also been widespread farmer protests.

The BJP is seeking to use the war crisis with Pakistan to mobilize its Hindu right political base, project Modi as a strongman uniquely able to tame India’s enemies, and paint any criticism of him and his government as disloyal, if not treasonous.

Because of the foul atmosphere whipped up by the Hindu right in the wake of the Pulwama attack, thousands of Kashmiri students who were attending colleges in other states have already had to flee for home in fear for their lives.

The ability of the BJP to seize on the Pulwama attack to mount this vile and transparent political ruse is entirely bound up with the reactionary politics of the opposition parties.

Whilst they may voice the occasional criticism of the BJP government’s brutal repression in Kashmir, they all stand four-square behind the Indian bourgeoisie’s drive to bring Pakistan to heel and realize its great-power ambitions.

In 2016 the entire opposition—and this includes the Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist, or CPM)—hailed the “surgical strike” or commando raid that the BJP ordered on Pakistan—an action Modi boasted had thrown off the shackles of “strategic restraint” on India’s Pakistan policy.

Yesterday, Congress Party President Rahul Gandhi kicked off the parade of opposition leaders hailing the Indian air strikes, by tweeting, “I salute the pilots of the IAF (Indian Air Force).”

CPM General Secretary Sitaram Yechury praised the military for “an effective strike” and rushed to attend a government-convened all-party meeting. At the meeting’s conclusion, Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj boasted that “all parties in one voice praised the security forces and supported the government’s anti-terror operations.”

The Pakistani government and elite are seeking to cast themselves as victims of Indian aggression. But they are no less responsible than New Delhi for the reactionary strategic conflict that has riven South Asia since the 1947 communal partition of the subcontinent into an expressly Muslim Pakistan and a predominantly Hindu India, and which today threatens to culminate in a nuclear holocaust. Especially cynical is Islamabad’s attempt to portray itself as the protector of the Kashmiri people. Pakistan has run roughshod over the rights of the Kahsmiris in Azad, or Pakistan-held Kashmir, and it has manipulated the popular opposition in Jammu and Kashmir, using its political influence and logistical muscle to promote anti-working class Islamist militia groups.

The Indo-Pakistan conflict is rooted in Partition, but it has been enormously exacerbated by the predatory actions of Washington. Determined to use India as a frontline state in its military-strategic offensive with China, successive administrations, Democrat and Republican alike, have showered strategic favours on India, while blithely ignoring Islamabad’s warnings that its actions have overturned the regional balance of power.

So as to further cement the Indo-US “global strategic partnership,” US National Security Adviser John Bolton gave the Modi government a green light to strike Pakistan. Less than 24 hours after the Pulwama attack and after hurried consultations with his Indian counterpart, Ajit Doyal, Bolton declared that Washington supports “India’s right to self-defense against cross-border terrorism.” Except for the name of the country, Bolton’s words were exactly those that US governments have for decades used to bless Israeli attacks on the Palestinians.

Fear of the burgeoning Indo-US alliance—which now includes a US right to use Indian military bases for refueling and resupply—has led China and Pakistan to forge ever-closer strategic ties. Consequently the Indo-Pakistani and US-China conflicts have become enmeshed. A war between India and Pakistan would from the get-go risk drawing in the world’s great powers and igniting a global conflagration.

The latest Indo-Pakistani war crisis underscores the urgency of developing a working-class led movement against war and imperialism in South Asia and around the world. In opposition to Modi and Imran Khan, who pursue like policies of austerity and capitalist restructuring even as they toss bloodcurdling threats at one another, Indian and Pakistani workers must unite their struggles and rally the oppressed toilers behind them in the fight to overthrow capitalist rule, tear down the subcontinent’s reactionary communally-infused state system, and establish the United Socialist States of South Asia.

Dozens killed in Nigeria amid election chaos

Eddie Haywood

Amid Saturday’s hotly contested presidential poll, for whom a victor has yet to be determined, and in its immediate aftermath, 39 people have been reported killed during a rash of election-related violence. Results of the tally, expected to have been released on Monday, have now been delayed, with vote counting continuing today.

Preliminary results suggest incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari is leading his main rival, businessman Atiku Abubakar, who cried foul, stating there were widespread irregularities in the tally particularly in Nasarawa province and the capital Abuja.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) the official body overseeing elections in Nigeria, stated that Buhari has won a total of six states so far, with Abubakar winning the Federal Capital Territory, the area comprising Abuja.

Denouncing Buhari’s lead at a press conference on Monday, Abubakar’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) accused the Buhari government of colluding with election officials to sway the vote to the president.

Saturday’s poll took place after the INEC postponed the polling, originally scheduled one week before, citing a lack of preparedness and election materials in several areas of the country. The delay was denounced by voters across the nation.

On Saturday, INEC abruptly canceled voting in the Bonny and Akuku Toro areas of Rivers State, citing the outbreak of violence by militants, and widespread allegations of irregularities and fraud at polling locations.

Before the election, in the town of Ubima, several gunmen raided an INEC office and stole boxes of ballots and robbed several poll workers.

INEC National Commissioner Festus Okoye told reporters in the capital city Abuja, “We have received reports related to incidents in Akuku Toru and Bonny local government areas of Rivers State. The position of the commission is that elections will be conducted separately for that registration area later.”

Out of a field of 70 candidates, only incumbent Buhari and Abubakar were considered front-runners. In the weeks before the poll, the contest was a virtual dead heat, with both candidates garnering a near even amount of support. After the poll’s closing on Saturday, INEC reported that the tally for president was “too close to call,” and vote counting would continue on Sunday.

The election occurred amid massive irregularities and allegations of fraud, with the poll carried out under a virtual police state. Hundreds of armed security forces were deployed to polling locations throughout the country, engaging in several acts of intimidation, beatings, and mass arrests, with an estimated 130 people arrested on Saturday.

Buhari deliver a televised address on Monday in which he declared that he had ordered the military and police to be “ruthless” with anyone allegedly engaged in voter fraud. “I warn anybody who thinks he has enough influence in his locality to lead a body of thugs to snatch [ballot] boxes or to disturb the voting system, he would do it at the expense of his own life,” Buhari cautioned.

PDP spokesperson Kola Ologbondiyan denounced the president’s remarks as “direct call for jungle justice” and a “license to kill.”

The election’s deadliest incident took place in Abonnema town in Rivers State, around 14 kilometers (nine miles) from Nigeria’s main oil industry city of Port Harcourt, when seven were killed during a shootout between the Nigerian army and a group of militants. The incident occurred after the militants blockaded a highway and subsequently carried out an ambush of an army outpost.

In the southern Osun province, a regional office of INEC in the town of Ijebu-Ijesha Oriade was set aflame by unknown saboteurs, destroying part of the building.

Several abductions of INEC staff occurred around the country, and one INEC official, Ibisika Amachree, was shot dead in Port Harcourt after the poll’s closing.

In the hours preceding the opening of Saturday’s poll, several bombs exploded at a refugee camp in the northern city of Maiduguri, a region particularly wracked by years of paramilitary conflict between the Nigerian army and the Islamist militia Boko Haram.

Speaking to CNN, Nigerian army spokesman Onyeama Nwachukwu said that the bombing attack occurred around 5 a.m. “There was an attack this morning at the camp by the militants, but the military has suppressed it at the moment.” Nwachukwu told reporters that no deaths or injuries resulted from the bombings, and that the army would conduct an assessment of the incident.

It is clear that Washington is closely observing the outcome of the election, as evidenced by the presence of American troops in the region, including special forces personnel. For several years, the US has maintained a significant operational presence in West Africa, with the operation of several military outposts and bases in the neighboring countries of Cameroon, Niger, and Mali.

Fearing the potential of a wider outbreak of violence arising from the chaotic election, US Ambassador Stuart Symington issued a statement on Monday calling on Nigerians “to remain patient and to refrain from violence while the INEC compiles the final result of the tally.”

Symington admonished, “No one should break the law by announcing results before INEC does, or break the peace by claiming victory before the results are final.”

Washington is primarily concerned with China’s significant economic expansion across West Africa, which it regards as a threat to American economic and geopolitical dominance on the continent.

Recently, Beijing and Abuja have cemented several proposals for a wide array of investment projects in the country, including this month’s $2.3 billion investment deal by China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), China’s state-owned oil company, for a stake in Nigeria’s vast Akpo field, which has been estimated to hold significant oil deposits. The deal comes on top of previous investment stakes, secured by CNOOC over several years, totaling $19 billion.

Additionally, America’s substantial economic interests in West Africa underscore Washington’s considerable military presence in the region. Operating in direct competition with Beijing and CNOOC, American oil giants Exxon-Mobil and Chevron have secured the rights to significant stakes in Nigeria’s oil reserves.

The UK Guardian reported in 2016 that an investigation of Exxon-Mobil’s potential corruption of oil extraction deals was initiated by Nigerian authorities, arising from Exxon Mobil’s 2009 contract with the Nigeria Ministry of Petroleum Resources for stakes in the “Crown Jewels” of oil fields, which possess the most significant oil deposits in Nigeria.

Allegations of corruption were brought to authorities’ attention when it became known that Exxon-Mobil beat out CNOOC for the contract, even though the American oil giant underbid CNOOC by $2.25 billion.

No doubt rankling Washington’s ire, Reuters reported on Monday that Exxon-Mobil, along with Chevron and British Royal Dutch Shell, have been ordered by the Buhari government to pay $2.5 billion in back taxes it says are owed to local governments in the oil-producing regions of the south.

Poverty in the UK: 100 “baby banks” spring up to assist parents with basic supplies

Margot Miller

The growing poverty and inequality blighting the lives of millions in the UK is predicted to worsen, according to latest reports.

By 2023-24, according to forecasts by the Resolution Foundation think tank, 37 percent of children in the UK could be living in relative poverty—in excess of the previous high of 34 percent at the beginning of the 1990s. This would mean 1 million more children living below the poverty line in the next five years.

Research published this month by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), commissioned by the BBC, revealed that over a third of babies in the UK are living below the poverty line.

Many Britons thrust into poverty are familiar with and are regular users of food banks. Such is the growing impoverishment that a new phenomenon has sprung up—“baby banks.” These are funded by charitable donations and provide struggling families with such necessities as cots, baby food and nappies. There are now over 100 baby banks throughout the country, with volunteers reporting that their take-up is on the increase.

The JRF, a social policy research and development charity, analyzed the government’s own data for the BBC.

It extrapolated from the government’s latest figures that, in 2016-17, 302,838 children aged under one year old were living in families whose household income was below the poverty line. That translates to 35 percent of children in that age group living, for example, with a single parent earning less than £198 a week (after deducting housing), or £360 a week for a couple and two children.

The JRF latest state of the nation report, “UK Poverty 2018,” reported that poverty is increasing, with 4.1 million children living in poverty now, a 500,000 increase over the last five years. Not only has child poverty been increasing since 2011-12, but so has in-work poverty as the UK has been transformed into a low-wage economy.

The study identified in-work poverty as an increasing causative factor in the rise in child poverty. Between 2010-11 and 2016-17, the number of children living below the poverty line in working families, as well as the child poverty rate, rose sharply—more so than at any other time over the last 20 years.

In response to these reports, and of a piece with Prime Minister’s Theresa May’s fraudulent announcement at the Conservative Party conference that the era of austerity was at an end, the government denied that poverty and inequality saw an increase and is on the rise.

Another study by the Resolution Foundation, “The Living Standards Outlook 2019,” predicts a substantial rise in UK child poverty over the next five years.

The Resolution Foundation was founded in 2005, with the stated purpose of seeking to improve living standards of low- to middle-income families. Its income forecasts for those at the lower percentile of the population in the next period make grim reading.

Senior economic analyst at the Resolution Foundation (RF), Adam Corlett, said, “UK households have already taken a £1,500-a-year hit to their incomes. There’s now a huge risk that their incomes stagnate over the next few years as the economy’s pay performance struggles to get out of first gear …”

“The outlook for low- and middle-income families is particularly tough,” said Corlett, pointing a finger at government slashing of welfare spending as a factor.

Average earnings have still not recovered from the global financial crash of 2008 and are more than £500 a year less than their pre-crisis level after inflation is factored in, the RF says. The future holds no respite, as “non-pensioner median income growth is not set to return for several years.” Even without the negative economic impact of a no-deal Brexit—in which the UK withdraws from the European Union and is forced to trade on World Trade Organisation terms—“the outlook for household incomes is weak.”

Projected income growth is lowest for parents, the unemployed, low- to middle-income working households, social renters, those with mortgages, and single adults. The RF reports that child poverty is predicted to “rise to record levels within the next five years, and will be six percentage points higher in 2023-24 than in 2016-17.”

By 2023-24, “[T]he majority of children who either have a single parent; are in larger families; are in a household where no-one is in work; or live in private or social rented housing, will be in poverty.”

Income for all families that have children is predicted to decrease by 1 percent between 2016-17 and 2023-24, compared to a rise of 4 percent for non-children households. And income growth will be disproportionately lower for the poorest 40 percent of the population.

The RF found that average real household income at the end of 2018 was “£1,500 lower than had been projected in pre-referendum forecasts.” The Bank of England’s average earnings projection, though stronger than the OBR’s, was revised downwards and forecasts a real pay drop in 2019. While the poor are predicted to get poorer, “the richest 4 percent of the population are projected to continue to have a greater share of income than the entire bottom 40 percent.”

The Brexit vote and ensuing economic uncertainties are cited by the RF as a contributory factor in growing poverty. Immediately after the referendum vote the pound fell, affecting the poorest families most of all because the bulk of their income covers necessities.

The report singles out the government’s moves to decimate what remains of the post-war welfare system as a major factor in reducing poorer households and families with children to penury.

The freeze in benefit payments is into its fourth year, leaving households with £4.4 billion a year less in total. Families with more than two children will be up to £2,800 a year worse off, as they can only claim for up to two children now. Families on tax credits or those claiming Universal Credit (UC) will lose the “family element” of their benefit, amounting to an annual deduction of £545.

Government tax breaks have benefited only high earners, while council tax rises and pension cuts—including auto-enrolment into pension scheme with contributions rising from 2 to 5 percent in April—have massively eroded the disposable income of the worse off.

Support for the unemployed in 2019-20 will be at its lowest point since 1990-91, meaning there has been no improvement in the living standards of those who are the poorest in 30 years. And in the poorest percentile of the population, it is parents with children who are hardest hit.

The Resolution Foundation report ends on a sanguine but unrealistic note. Their gloomy predictions may be challenged, “either as a result of economic trends diverging from today’s forecasts or as a result of deliberate policy change.”

As the UK enterers unnavigated waters, with EU withdrawal set to take place in just over a month, the Tory government is committed to increasing the exploitation of the working class and completely dismantling previous welfare reforms. This onslaught is in order to allow British corporations to increase their profitability and remain competitive in the world market as trade war begins to intensify. This onslaught against the working class will be imposed whatever the outcome of the Brexit negotiations and under any future government, no matter what its political colouration.

In 2015, the vast majority of Labour MPs allowed the passage of the Tories Welfare Reform Bill by abstaining on it. The 48 MPs who did vote against, including Jeremy Corbyn—who was elected party leader just weeks later—have refused to drive out the Blairites right wing. Instead, they have repeatedly capitulated to their every right-wing demand.

A critical factor in the growth of poverty in recent years was the instruction by Corbyn and his Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell to Labour councils that they continue to set legal budgets, i.e., impose cuts, in the face of cuts to their funding by central government. McDonnell has committed a future Labour government to a “Fiscal Credibility Rule,” rendering bankrupt any rhetoric he occasionally makes about fighting austerity. This week, Labour-run Birmingham City Council, that has already laid off 12,000 workers over the last decade, announced another nearly 1,100 job losses.

French-Italian proxy war in Libya

Marianne Arens

There are concrete material interests behind the sharp tensions between France and Italy, which in February led to France recalling its ambassador in Rome. In Libya, where dozens of rival militias have been fighting for supremacy since the 2011 NATO war, the two EU members are conducting a proxy war over control of Africa’s largest oil and gas resources.

While Italy backs the Government of National Accord (GNA) of Fayez al-Sarraj in Tripoli, which is also supported by Germany and the UN, France has sided with the National Army of Libya (LNA) of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, who presides over its counterpart in Tobruk. Egypt and Russia also back Haftar.

That this war is about oil interests and strategic influence in Africa is an open secret.

The “national accord government” of Fayez al-Sarraj, which has little influence outside the capital, controls the National Oil Company of Libya (NOC), in which the Italian energy group ENI has been involved for half a century. Italy has reopened its embassy in Tripoli and, together with the EU, is financing the GNA Libyan Coast Guard as Europe’s proxy border force to keep migrants away from Europe.

Haftar’s LNA had already brought the so-called oil crescent around Benghazi in the east of the country under its control last summer. In early February, it also took control of the oil fields in the southwest of the country, including the El Sharara oil field, considered the largest in the country.

The El Sharara field was occupied late last year by security personnel and local people protesting against the unity government in Tripoli and demanding higher wages and an adequate regional share of the oil revenues. It has been operated since 1994 by a joint venture of several international oil companies, in which, in addition to the Austrian OMV, France’s Total also participates.

Haftar is supported militarily by France. A paper by the government-related German Foundation for Science and Politics (SWP) states that France has “lent political—and most likely other forms—of support to Haftar’s operation in the south, and prevented its Western partners from issuing joint statements on the issue.”

Officially, Paris justifies its support for Haftar with the fight against Islamist militias in the Sahel zone. As part of Opération Barkhane, the former colonial power France has been involved for several years, with more than 4,000 troops, in the five Sahel countries of Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad. The operation is also supported by Britain and Estonia, and works together with the German Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) in Mali.

A French government advisor had previously complained about the high cost of the operation and said that the only way to bring it to an end was to stabilize Libya. That is why the French government has opted for Haftar.

According to the Swiss daily Tribune de Genève, an army spokesman for Field Marshall Haftar also said, “We had a common interest, which is combating terrorism. France wanted to pursue terrorist groups in our neighbouring countries from the south, such as Chad, Mali and Niger, where these groups are heavily spread.”

However, many observers are convinced that France is primarily concerned with oil interests, and that the competition between Italy and France on this issue is the main reason for the ongoing civil war in Libya.

As Mohammed al-Diari, foreign minister in the Tobruk parliament from 2014 to 2018, explains in an interview with the Tribune de Genève, informed circles in Libya attributed the armed conflict to “the rivalries between the Italian group ENI and Total.” In general, “the question of oil resources is very sensitive.” Abdul Hafiz Ghoga, a former member of the Transitional Council in 2011, told the newspaper, “There will be no peace and stability in Libya unless the international community reaches consensus.”

The NATO bombing campaign of 2011, which was mainly based on the initiative of France, was not about human rights, but about oil and gas, access to Africa and control of the Maghreb. The bloody price for this is still being paid today by the people of Libya, who, eight years on, are still suffering from the civil war between rival criminal militias armed and financed by their imperialist backers.

In the last bloody conflict over Tripoli at the end of August 2018, 115 people lost their lives and 25,000 people became homeless due to the destruction of entire neighbourhoods, according to official sources.

France and Italy are not the only neo-colonial actors in the region. Germany, the US and Britain are also trying to defend their respective interests and expand their influence.

The US has repeatedly tried to relocate its AFRICOM centre, previously based in Stuttgart, to Libya. Washington is primarily seeking to stop China’s economic advance in Africa. The United States also wants to consolidate its alliance with friendly Arab states in order to curb Iran’s growing influence. Flying from Sicily, US forces repeatedly carry out bombing attacks against Libyan cities, allegedly to destroy positions of ISIS or al-Qaeda.

The German government is determined to make up for the “mistakes” of its 2011 foreign policy, when it did not participate in the Libyan war, and wants to exert influence in Africa itself. The Bundeswehr is already involved in operations around Libya—in Mali, Morocco, Tunisia, Sudan, South Sudan and the Mediterranean.

In the hypocritical language of diplomacy, the already-cited study by the German Foundation for Politics and Science (SWP) recommends that Berlin cautiously distance itself from al-Sarraj, because Haftar is increasingly gaining influence. “Western states would also have to revisit their support to the GNA if the latter becomes engaged in an escalating struggle with Haftar.”

A central challenge in negotiating such a turnaround was the disunity of Western governments in Libya, in light of “the diplomatic spats between Italy and France, for which Libya is one arena; and the unilateral French support for Haftar’s southern operation.”

Reports disclose super-exploitation of Chinese technology workers

Pradeep Ramanayake

A report released last month by the London-based Financial Times (FT) shed light on the conditions faced by workers in China’s service sector due to long and stressful working hours. According to the report, technology companies are the worst exploiters.

Entitled “Overdoing it: the cost of China’s long-hours culture,” the report combined labour statistics with interviews gathered from workers employed in telecommunications, internet and IT companies.

Some 85 percent of white-collar employees in China have to work overtime, with more than 45 percent reporting overtime of more than 10 hours a week, according to a survey last year by job recruitment website Zhaopin.

Gina Wang, brand manager at Chinese internet company Tencent, told the FT “she starts work most days at 10am and generally finishes at 10pm, but sometimes is still working at midnight.”

Another worker, Jing Li, an accountant at China’s largest telecoms equipment maker, Huawei, earned $US40,000 last year, equivalent to four times the average annual urban wage in China. But she said “you have to work as if you are four people [to get that wage].”

Both the workers complained of the mental and physical toll of their jobs. Wang said the burden of her work might be contributing to her stomach problems and periods of depression while Li said she too has suffered from depression.

The FT report cited some significant studies by medical journals. According to a study based on data from more than 600,000 individuals, published in 2015, the Lancet, a leading British-based journal found that people who work for more than 55 hours a week face an increased risk of stroke and coronary heart disease compared with those who work between 35 and 40 hours a week.

A survey in Shanghai last year of patients with cardiovascular disease found a significant incidence of arrhythmia—an irregular heartbeat that can be a prelude to more serious disease—in patients aged 21 to 30. Sun Baogui, executive vice-chairman of the Chinese Heart Failure Society, said this finding was consistent with their reported lifestyle of long working hours and getting little sleep.

China’s labour laws state that workers should not work more than eight hours a day, or 44 hours a week, and that anything more than this should be categorised as overtime, which should not exceed three hours per day. Nevertheless, Chinese technology companies follow an “unspoken rule,” called the “996 work schedule” or “work from 9 am to 9 pm every day for 6 days a week.”

A BBC report last year, titled “Young Chinese are sick of working long hours,” quoted a report by Zhang Xiaolin, a senior legal counsel at a Beijing-based law consulting company that further explained the illegal nature of this high level of exploitation on workers.

Xiaolin stated: “Theoretically, a 996 work schedule is against the law. Companies may apply for special permission to adopt a 996 schedule if their business warrants it. Pilots or train conductors, for example, can work longer shifts than the eight hours stipulated under Chinese law. But e-commerce businesses do not qualify.”

It was not just the long hours that were illegal, Xiaolin said, “but also the pay—more than 40 percent of new companies we interviewed did not have a clear compensation scheme for overtime.”

The workers who spoke to the FT said they expected a long-hours culture when they entered the industry. Although Chinese law requires overtime work to be compensated at 1.5 times ordinary pay, they did not generally receive such payment because the work was classified as “voluntary,” meaning it fell outside the official definition of overtime.

The salaries paid to the workers do not match with their cost of living. For an example, Li Zhepeng, 25, who worked for an e-commerce site, told the BBC he received a salary of 3,500 yuan ($560) a month for posting descriptions of toys and backpacks. That salary was less than half the monthly rental cost of a one-bedroom apartment outside the city centre, so he was sharing a small apartment with three flatmates.

It is not only in the technology sector that millions of Chinese workers face intensive exploitation. The ruthless environment of unpaid overtime is spreading to other fields as companies make their staff work longer hours in a bid to match this “success.”

The fact that this illegal regime has continued for years without being hindered by the authorities makes it clear that these inhumane levels of exploitation are backed by the Chinese government. It has long turned the country into a sweatshop in the interests of corporate profit.

Increasingly, struggles of the workers from different industries are erupting against the unbearable working and living conditions, and confronting massive repression by the Chinese ruling elite. Together with their fellow workers internationally, Chinese workers face the task of building an independent movement to fight against the severe exploitation and state repression on the basis of socialism.

The global struggle of teachers

Jerry White

On almost every continent, teachers have come to the forefront of the struggle against government austerity and levels of social inequality not seen since the 1920s. Teachers have played a key role in the resurgence of the class struggle that broke out across the world in 2018 and has accelerated in the opening months of this year.

Three thousand teachers are currently on strike in Oakland, California in the latest in a series of teacher walkouts in the United States, involving 71,000 educators during the first eight weeks of 2019. The strike follows last month’s walkout in Los Angeles, the nation’s second largest school district, a strike in Denver, Colorado, and a two-day statewide walkout in West Virginia, where the strike a year ago sparked the largest rebellion of teachers across the US in decades.

Teachers and school workers accounted for 380,000 of the nearly half-million workers involved in work stoppages in the US last year, the largest number since 1986. There have been increasing calls for strikes in many states, including Oklahoma and Arizona, where statewide strikes took place last year.

In São Paulo, Brazil, the largest city in the Americas, teachers have gone on strike for the second time this year against pension cuts. In Mexico, teachers in Michoacán and Oaxaca struck and set up blockades earlier this month to fight layoffs and government-backed “school reform.”

Earlier this month, teachers and child care workers struck in Berlin, Germany; educators in Portugal joined a general strike; teachers in France joined the Yellow Vest protests against the “President of the rich,” Emanuel Macron; and more than 100,000 teachers from primary school to higher education are set to carry out the first national strike on March 15 in the Netherlands.

Teachers have also struck in Morocco and Zimbabwe amid growing opposition against the reduced education budgets and school privatization throughout Africa, and tens of thousands of teachers in Tamil Nadu, in southern India, struck last month for improved pay and conditions.

This movement is being driven by record levels of social inequality throughout the world. The social counterrevolution, which was initiated by UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and US President Ronald Reagan four decades ago, was accelerated after the global financial crash of 2008. Capitalist governments, led by the Obama administration in the US, spent trillions to buy up the toxic assets of the banks and provide unlimited credit to re-inflate the stock markets and the private fortunes of the financial criminals. To pay for this, political parties of every stripe made “austerity” the watchword.

Two recent reports highlight the historic transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top in the US since 2008.

A new research paper by Gabriel Zucman, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, found that the share of total household wealth controlled by the top 0.1 percent richest adults was at the highest level since 1929, when this tiny elite hoarded 25 percent of the wealth. “US wealth concentration seems to have returned to levels last seen during the Roaring Twenties,” wrote Zucman, who noted that it could be even higher because of the ability of the super-rich to hide their wealth in off-shore accounts.

A report by the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis found that employee pay and benefits as a percentage of gross domestic income fell to 52.7 percent in last year’s third quarter, the fourth straight quarterly decline. Labor’s share of domestic income has steadily declined since 1970, when it was 59 percent. It continues to be the lowest since the end of World War II. At the same time, the share of domestic income going to corporate profits has climbed from less than 12 percent in the 1980s to more than 20 percent today.

The global economic crisis was also used by the financial elite to loot public assets and get its hands on the world “education market,” which will be worth an estimated $10 trillion by 2030. A recent book pointed to the role of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, USAID, and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) in funding school privatization schemes around the world.

In the US, the Obama administration, which found endless resources to bail out Wall Street, starved the public schools of resources and used the manufactured crisis to expand for-profit charter schools. By 2016, the latest date available, 25 of the 50 US states were still spending less per pupil than they did before the Great Recession, leaving a $19 billion shortfall. The number of public-school employees today is 170,000 below pre-2008 levels, even though student enrollment has risen 1.5 million, and in 38 states, the average annual salary of teachers is lower than it was in 2009.

The universal character of the attack on teachers and public education and what underlies it raises a number of fundamental issues. First is the role of the unions throughout the world, which are opposed to any struggle because they are aligned with the capitalist parties and accept the entire framework of austerity and social inequality.

In Oakland, the union rejected demands by rank-and-file teachers to include opposition to budget cuts in the strike demands, even though the district plans to pay for any pay increases by slashing millions of dollars from educational services and closing schools. The Oakland Education Association is colluding with the state Democratic Party to reach a rotten deal that is entirely acceptable to the corporate and financial elite, and like previous strikes across the country, betrays the fight to defend the right to public education.

This is true of the unions throughout the world. In the face of the global attack on public education, jobs and living standards, the nationalist and pro-capitalist unions have collaborated with their respective governments and capitalist owners to lower labor costs and corporate taxes in order to make their “own” countries more competitive.

That is why the building of new organizations of struggle, controlled by workers themselves and independent of the unions, is a burning question. Teachers must form rank-and-file committees, which base themselves on what teachers and students need, not what the powers-that-be say is affordable.

Teachers have won popular support because they are fighting for fundamental rights and because all workers are facing the same conditions—declining incomes and skyrocketing living costs, precarious employment and endless attacks on social rights, including health care and pensions—which were won over generations of struggle.

The developing movement among teachers is an initial expression of a rebellion that will inevitably extend into broader layers of the working class, particularly industrial workers in key sectors such as auto, steel and other areas of manufacturing. It is a movement that will be compelled to address not only the immediate questions of wages and working conditions, but the great issues that face workers in every country—social inequality, the shredding of democratic rights, the growth of authoritarian forms of rule and the mounting danger of catastrophic war.

Strikes alone cannot resolve what workers confront. The logic of the international resurgence of the class struggle is the necessity for the working class to fight to take political power in its own hands and reorganize the world economy on the basis of social need, not private profit.

Only by expropriating the financial aristocracy and carrying out the socialist reorganization of economic life can the vast wealth produced by the working class be used to raise the material and cultural level of the masses, guarantee a free and quality public education to all, and rid mankind of poverty, exploitation and war.

The premium is therefore on the building of a new, socialist and internationalist leadership that can make the working class conscious of this necessity. That is the fight being undertaken by the ICFI and its sections.

Trump-Kim Summit in Hanoi: Optimism Despite Impediments

Sandip Kumar Mishra

The second US-North Korea summit meet, eight months after the Singapore Summit, is scheduled to take place in Hanoi on 27-28 February 2019. There is skepticism regarding the potential outcomes of this meeting, based on three important factors.

First, the US and North Korea have not changed their fundamental positions in the past eight months. Both of them are primarily concerned with their own foreign policy goals and remain unwilling to concede much ground. In fact, US President Donald Trump, while making conciliatory statements about Kim Jong-un, has also given more space to ‘hawks’ such as Vice President Mike Pence, National Security Advisor John Bolton, and US Special Representative for North Korean Policy Mark Lambert. Kim, too, has been driving a hard bargain. At one point he disputed North Korea’s denuclearisation as the sole goal and put forth preconditions in a North Korean official daily. The US would like to address denuclearisation followed by easing of sanctions, whereas North Korea prefers it the other way round. In this atmosphere of a clear divergence in fundamental goals, to expect anything substantial from the Hanoi summit would be naive.  

Second, for the success of any summit meet, it is important to lay the ground work in advance. The more public meeting between top leaders is generally symbolic and its contents based on the process, roadmaps and timelines agreed on at earlier discussions. North Korea avoided pre-summit meetings after Singapore, and did not allow US special envoy for North Korea Stephen Biegun to visit North Korea until this month. North Korean representative Kim Yong Chol's November 2018 meeting with Mike Pompeo was also cancelled, and Kim did not meet with Pompeo when he visited Pyongyang. With pre-summit exchanges at various levels of government clearly absent, a detailed and comprehensive plan for North Korean denuclearisation and concomitant US security guarantee during the Hanoi summit seems improbable.

Third, North Korea and the US came to negotiating table following reports of a breakdown in communications between China and North Korea, and more stringent imposition of Chinese sanctions on the latter. In less than a year since, Chinese and North Korean leaders had three summit meetings with better communications in place and a closer alignment of positions. China has openly demanded a proportionate easing of sanctions on the basis of "some positive developments" regarding North Korean denuclearisation. North Korea has augmented its strategic depth, and in this changed scenario, it will not be easy to extract unilateral benefits from North Korea in the Hanoi Summit.

Having laid the foundations of the prevailing environment of skepticism, it is important to also acknowledge a few important changes to arrive at a more holistic overview of the summit.  

First, there has been some change in position. Even though the broad approach has not undergone any significant change, Trump and Kim have shown some flexibility. They are aware the lack of any movement whatsoever in Hanoi would spell the end of the US-North Korea engagement process, which, in the long-run, will have negative implications for their eventual goals as well as the domestic environment. It is for this reason that Trump has been indicating that he is in no 'hurry'. He has also said that the US will continue with the rapprochement if there is clear evidence of progress. In addition, they have the hindsight of knowing what went wrong during the Singapore Summit, and neither will want to commit the same mistakes again.

Two, South Korea, which has been pivotal to the current phase of US-North Korea engagement, is equally concerned about the Hanoi Summit. It has been in touch with both North Korea and the US and is attempting to bridge the gap between their strategic goals. In fact, South Korean President Moon Jae-in has long displayed an interest in good bilateral relations with North Korea, and inter-Korea dynamics can suffer if there is no parallel progress between the US and North Korea. There is speculation that if Hanoi hits a dead-end, it could also lead to a rift in South Korea-US ties.

Third, if we assume that there has been an important tactical shift even if the larger US and North Korean strategic goals remain unchanged, it means that there is still a possibility of charting a forward course, if not a final and comprehensive agreement on denuclearisation. The most important reason for the deadlock so far has been the US insistence on complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearisation in a limited time span. If the US agrees to an incremental process, progress would be perhaps easier to achieve. Further, if the US also corrects its misperception that North Korea came to the negotiating table because of ‘maximum pressure’, it may be possible to arrive at a quid pro quo deal.

Overall, it is indeed difficult to predict the outcomes of the Hanoi Summit, and there are obvious reasons to not be optimistic. However, there are also elements that suggest that important progress can be made.