Russia Was Never the Real Scandal

Peter Certo

Robert Mueller won’t be filing any more indictments related to the “Russiagate” investigation.

Though the search unearthed ample evidence that Russia wanted Trump to become president — and hints that some members of Trump World were perhaps aware of this — the recent summary declared no concrete findings that the two camps knowingly “colluded.”

The president, naturally, is declaring victory. And his anti-Mueller attorney general is preemptively clearing the president of related obstruction charges, it seems.

Of course, this won’t end the president’s legal troubles. Lawsuits have piled up related to emoluments and sexual harassment. And legal and congressional inquiries into his taxes, business dealings, and possible campaign finance violations are, in various stages, underway.

What it should end, however, is the incredibly naive belief that someone was going to wave a magic wand and make all this “Trump stuff” go away.

This was a hope that “the system” itself was fundamentally sound and would correct itself, expelling all this unpleasantness like a bad burrito. Trump himself cast the investigation as an effort to de-legitimize his electoral college victory, and this wasn’t entirely incorrect.

The thing is, evidence of much more serious “collusion” — with corporations and the wealthy — has always been hiding in plain sight. Though these unique excesses of the Trump era have gotten some coverage, they were never treated as the threat to his legitimacy that Russia was.

I mean, consider the facts.

Backed by health insurance corporations, Trump and the GOP have spent years trying to repeal, negate, or undermine the law that’s provided health care to between 20 and 30 million Americans. (They failed in Congress, but they’re still trying in court.)

Backed by billionaires, they passed an almost incomprehensibly large tax cut for the rich that’s sent the deficit soaring to record heights — and immediately proposed huge cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security to cover the difference.

Egged on by military contractors, they’ve put forth military budgets that award more money to a single corporation — Lockheed Martin — than the federal government spends on K-12 education. (And much of it is for a single plane that doesn’t work.)

In lockstep with fossil fuel companies, they’ve put coal lobbyists in charge of the EPA, oil men in charge of the State Department, and at every juncture tried to hound climate science out of government.

Finally, arm in arm with the private prison industry, they’ve loosened federal restraints on private detention facilities and packed them with record numbers of immigrants with no criminal records — even children and babies. (Indeed, this abuse of immigrants is the lone promise Trump’s kept to his working white voters.)

I’m hardly alone in thinking all these crimes far more atrocious than any exchange of nods with shadowy Russians or their online troll farms. But while some leading Democrats and media stories centered Mueller as a central figure of the “the resistance,” real people were organizing to fight the administration on all these fronts.

Groups like the Poor People’s Campaign are organizing to repeal the entire billionaire tax cut package. Democratic socialists have made universal health care a mainstream expectation. The Sunrise Movement and others have turned the Green New Deal into an almost household name.

Meanwhile, immigrant rights movements have even gotten elected officials to tweet #AbolishICE, and made congressional Democrats hold the line on the wall. And more bold ideas are coming around cutting the enormous Pentagon budget to fund social priorities.

The necessity of these movements suggests that “the system” is, in fact, not so sound. But thanks to these efforts, the body politic may soon be.

I’ll be fine if I never see another headline about Robert Mueller again. Let’s see more about the folks doing the real work of “resistance.”

Bone marrow transplant removes HIV from a second patient

Benjamin Mateus

A second individual, known as the “London patient,” has been recently confirmed to be free of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection after receiving a bone marrow transplant for Hodgkin’s lymphoma from a donor with a genetic resistance to the virus. Thirty months after the transplant, multiple tests indicate there is “no return of the virus.”

At this stage, the virus is considered to be in remission. Specialists in the field suggest a three- to four-year period to confidently confirm the cure.

A possible third case was recently announced on March 6 at a conference on retroviruses and opportunistic infections held in Seattle. The “Dusseldorf patient” has shown no signs of infectious HIV more than three months after discontinuing antiviral medications. There are six other HIV-infected patients who have received bone marrow transplants from donors resistant to the virus and might in the future be deemed cured.

Diagram of the bone marrow transplant process. Credit: BONEMARROWmx

HIV is a sexually transmitted virus and the precursor to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), one of the most widespread and deadly diseases on the planet. The World Health Organization estimates that at least 36.9 million people worldwide are infected with HIV/AIDS and that an additional 1.8 million individuals become newly infected each year, approximately 5,000 new cases per day.

Timothy Ray Brown, initially known as the “Berlin patient,” was considered the first HIV-infected patient to be cured. Brown had acquired HIV in 1995 while attending university in Berlin. For 10 years he remained well on antiviral medications that kept the infection in check. In 2005 he developed acute myeloid leukemia, a cancer of the blood cells that develops in the marrow of the bones. This leads to symptoms such as shortness of breath and fatigue and can be rapidly fatal without treatment.

Timothy Ray Brown, the “Berlin Patient.” Credit: Manuel Valdes, AP

Initially, he underwent chemotherapy, which put the cancer into remission. As a precaution, Brown’s oncologist obtained a blood sample to test for a possible stem cell transplant as a next option in case the remission was of short duration. Most patients won’t find a donor match, but fortuitously for Brown, he had 267 matches, which led his doctors to consider finding a donor with recently identified mutations in their white blood cells that make them resistant to HIV infection. (This inherited mutation is called CCR5 delta 32 and is discussed below.)

When the leukemia rebounded in late 2006, Brown decided to go ahead with the transplant. Such medical procedures are, however, complex and carry significant and potentially lethal complications. They are generally only used after more conventional treatments for cancer have already failed. He stopped his antiviral medications, and within three months the HIV was no longer found in his bloodstream.

In Brown’s case, his leukemia recurred a year later, and he underwent a second transfer with the same donor. Complications with the second procedure included severe brain injury that left him nearly blind and paralyzed with a prolonged but eventually full recovery.

As a result of the two bone marrow transplants, however, Brown has since remained free of HIV.

The white blood cells searched for by Brown’s doctors are those with a mutation to their CCR5 receptor on CD4+ T-cells. These cells, helper T-cells that express the CD4 protein on their surface, assist other white blood cells by regulating immune responses to an assortment of infections or pathogens. Helper T-cells are infected by HIV when the virus uses a combination of the CCR5 protein and the CD4 receptor to infiltrate the cell, in turn disrupting the coordinated functioning of the immune system.

When the number of infected CD4+ T-cells are sufficiently suppressed, this leads to the symptomatic stage of the infection, making the patient susceptible to a host of opportunistic infections popularly known as AIDS. An untreated person with AIDS can die from a common cold in a matter of days, much less from more virulent infections.

Schematic of how HIV infiltrates a helper T cell using the CCR5 protein and CD4 receptor. Credit: Medscape

Proof of individuals resistant to HIV emerged in 1994 when Stephen Crohn was found to be free of the virus after multiple sexual encounters with partners infected with HIV. He was found after several years of research seeking to understand the molecular mechanisms that lead to viral entry into white blood cells. When investigators analyzed Crohn’s blood, they found a mutation that makes a malfunctioning CCR5 receptor, preventing the HIV virus from entering helper T cells.

Since the identification of this mechanism, considerable research has gone into developing therapeutic interventions to block the function of CCR5. Though several drugs called CCR5 receptor antagonists have been studied, Maraviroc, developed by Pfizer and approved by the FDA in August of 2007, remains the first and only CCR5 inhibitor on the market. The drug was found to achieve complete suppression of the virus in 60 percent of people who have had significant resistance to other HIV drugs, though potential serious liver toxicity requires close monitoring.

Advances in HIV treatments, however, have not made access to the drugs for those infected universal. Only 59 percent of people living with HIV are receiving antiviral treatment, leaving 15.2 million human beings constantly in fear of dying from a minor infection.

Moreover, stem cell transplants from CCR5 mutation donors are unlikely to be realistic treatment options for millions affected by the virus. Combination treatment regimens are available, and the transplants carry significant harsh side effects, including the risk of death.

However, having elucidated the molecular pathways and applying the proof of concepts in the treatment of these individuals provides a tremendous impetus towards designing new cures and targeting the treatment for eradicating HIV and possibly future diseases. This will require a global collaborative effort, unfettered by the capitalist market and profit considerations, to coordinate and translate these findings into measurable outcomes.

Kazakhstan President Nazarbayev resigns amid mounting political crisis

David Levine & Clara Weiss

In a sign of growing social and political turmoil in Central Asia, Kazakhstan’s 78-year-old president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has been head of state of the country since its formation out of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, announced his immediate resignation on Tuesday, March 19. Kazakhstan is of enormous geostrategic and economic significance. It is the largest country in Central Asia and generates well over half of the region’s GDP.

Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who had been chairman of the Kazakhstan Senate, the upper house of parliament, was sworn in as president of Kazakhstan on March 20. He is to remain in office until new elections are held next year.

Nazarbayev was for decades a high-ranking functionary of the Stalinist bureaucracy and played a central role in the restoration of capitalism in Kazakhstan, which threw millions into poverty and impelled millions more to emigrate. Among the positions he held were president of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic (1990–1991), secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan (1979–1984), deputy of the Soviet of the Union of the USSR (1979–1989) and first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan (1989–1991).

Nazarbayev’s authoritarian regime has been characterized by extreme social inequality, nepotism, corruption and the violent suppression of political and social opposition, involving a rigorous regime of political censorship, as well as a language policy discriminating against non-Kazakh people who previously comprised the majority of the country's population. The Kazakh economy has grown significantly, especially since 2000, largely based on the extraction of the country’s vast precious mineral and oil resources. When oil workers in Zhanaozen went on a militant strike in late 2011, Nazarbayev oversaw a police massacre of the striking workers, with 11 killed and many more wounded.

In his March 19 announcement, Nazarbayev made clear that he plans to remain a key player in Kazakhstan’s politics. Nazarbayev will remain the most powerful person in the country for the rest of his life and oversee the process of a reshuffling of power relationships among Kazakhstan’s elites.

A 2010 law established Nazarbayev’s special status as Yelbasy, “Leader of the Nation” and bestowed upon him the title Halyq Qaharmany, “Hero of the People.” Nazarbayev enjoys lifetime immunity from criminal prosecution. The secrecy and inviolability of his own assets and wealth, as well as those of the family members living with him, are guaranteed.

Nazarbayev retains his special status as Yelbasy, and will remain chairman of the Security Council, chairman of the Nur-Otan Party, and a member of the Constitutional Council. He will also remain chairman of the Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan and chairman of the Managing Council of the Samruk Kazyna sovereign wealth fund. The latter company, owned by the state, is the sole or majority shareholder of the national railroad company, the KazMunayGas oil company, the airline Air Astana, and a long list of other key industrial enterprises.

Nazarbayev will thus have veto power over any and all decisions of government, including the power unilaterally to issue decrees with the effect of law, and has special powers that will effectively allow him to make key national economic policy decisions directly, without approval from the government.

In his inaugural address on March 20, Tokayev, the new president, proposed that the Kazakhstan capital city of Astana be renamed as Nur-Sultan in honor of Nazarbayev. The proposal was quickly adopted by the parliament as well as the city council. The central street in Almaty (Alma-Ata), Kazakhstan’s largest city, had already been renamed in Nazarbayev’s honor in 2017. When protests against the decision occurred several days later, the police arrested numerous demonstrators.

Also on March 20, the Senate elected Nazarbayev’s eldest daughter, Dariga Nazarbayeva, to take over Tokayev’s position as chairperson. Nazarbayeva, born in 1963, has had parallel careers in both politics and business and had an estimated wealth of $595 million as of 2013. Political commentators have suggested her as the most likely successor to take the presidency after the 2020 election.

Nazarbayev did not name a specific reason for his sudden and somewhat unexpected resignation. His health condition is mostly a matter of secrecy, but it is known that he underwent prostate surgery in Germany in 2011. His government has been rocked by crisis recently, with Nazarbayev dismissing all members of his administration on February 21.

Definite political and social conditions point to the broader concerns that underlie the political crisis in Astana and the decision of Nazarbayev to initiate the process of “transitioning” to another president.

First, the country’s ruling class, recruited to a high degree from the former Stalinist bureaucracy, is highly sensitive to the international resurgence of working-class struggles throughout the globe, including in Central Asia and the former Soviet Union. Kazakhstan, in particular, has seen a series of strikes and protests over the past few years and in recent months.

Social anger also recently erupted after a fire in Astana (now Nur-Sultan) on February 4 killed five children while their parents were at work. The family had been living in a temporary building heated by an electric heater and a stove. While official public mourning events were held in multiple cities, protests occurred in Astana involving public statements by women with multiple children.

Urzada Uaisova, an Astana resident and mother of six children, was quoted by news agency Interfax.by as saying, “I have been standing in line [for housing] since 2007. Twelve years have passed, and they haven’t given us anything yet. They have made some promises, but we just keep getting fooled. Each month, I pay 50,000 tenge (about US$130) for my housing, and there are costs for coal to heat the home. Why doesn’t the state give subsidies for the mothers of multiple children? If they would just let us rent an apartment for 50,000 tenge, we would be happy to pay that if we could later take ownership of the apartment.”

Videos of the statements of Uaisova and other women have been viewed on YouTube hundreds of thousands of times—very significant numbers for a country of just 18 million people and far exceeding the number of views of all the videos containing Nazarbayev’s own statement on the event. Later in February, protests took place in several cities demanding the creation of jobs, support for mothers with multiple children, and the resignation of Nazarbayev.

Second, Kazakhstan is engulfed in the crisis generated by the escalating war preparations of US imperialism against Russia and China. The country maintains significant and growing economic ties with China and has long-standing relations with Moscow. China buys about 25 percent of Kazakhstan’s oil output and Kazakhstan is the important country for the land route of China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI), which is seen by US imperialism as a major geostrategic challenge.

The Carnegie Endowment for Peace and Democracy, an important think tank of US imperialism, noted with concern in May 2018 that “[a]s part of its Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing is rapidly investing in east-west infrastructure projects across the Central Asian republic that have overshadowed previously launched programs backed by the US and Russia. ... From Beijing's point of view, Kazakhstan, where the BRI was first announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, is a critical element of its fast-growing drive for international influence. It sits in a strategic spot between China and Russia and is far away from potential competing powers including the US and the EU.” The article noted that the only way for Astana to counteract Chinese influence was to seek closer cooperation with Russia, but above all the EU.

Extreme social crisis ravages Mozambique in wake of Cyclone Idai

Eddie Haywood

Cyclone Idai, which slammed into Mozambique on March 14, has left Mozambicans in a state of catastrophe. The devastation left in the tropical storm’s wake has produced a full-blown humanitarian crisis, exposing the impoverished conditions already present before Cyclone Idai hit.

According to UNICEF, more than 3 million people across the region affected by Idai urgently need humanitarian assistance, including 1.5 million children. The disaster is the worse natural catastrophe to hit southern Africa in decades.

In Mozambique, the country most affected by the storm, more than 2 million are in need of emergency aid, including 1 million children. UNICEF warned of the severe threat of the spread of diseases after Idai’s destruction of vital infrastructure, such as sanitary water sources and more than 50 clinics and hospitals in the country. Massive flooding has led to a high volume of stagnant water, which threatens to unleash an epidemic of waterborne illnesses, such as cholera.

UNICEF launched an appeal for $122 million to support its response to the disaster. In Beira, a coastal city of 500,000 and the hardest hit by Cyclone Idai, UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore told the media, “The lives of millions of children and families are on the line, and we urgently need to mount a rapid and effective humanitarian response across all three countries [Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe].”

Scores of Mozambicans have been made homeless with the destruction of homes by massive flood waters brought on by the storm which washed away entire neighborhoods. Many people across the country have taken up temporary residence atop buildings and other elevated structures to avoid the high water. Exacerbating the catastrophe, a food crisis has emerged, with thousands of acres of farmland flooded by the storm, which wiped out most crops.

On Friday, the Portuguese news agency Lusa reported that a vicious outbreak of cholera has began to sweep through the country, with 139 victims so far, and the epidemic far from contained. Many of the afflicted originated from the squalid homeless camps set up for victims. Nearly 1 million vaccines were rushed to the region as a small number of health workers strove to cope the with the outbreak by setting up improvised treatment centers.

The situation for millions of Mozambicans is likely to worsen over the next days and weeks, as many areas devastated remain inaccessible. The storm has left nearly 1,000 dead. With daily reports of bodies discovered scattered in fields and floating in rivers, the death toll is certain to climb.

On Wednesday, Stephen Fonseca, a chief forensic analyst in Africa for the International Committee of the Red Cross, told the Washington Post of the massive flooding caused by the cyclone ripping through Magaro, a farming village, where rescue workers are finding corpses of victims on a daily basis since Idai hit. So far, 156 bodies have been found. These victims likely died during the surge of water that washed over the region. Fonseca stated that the dead he had found were not included in the official toll.

Out of fear for his safety, Fonseca told the Post of regrettably having to leave an unidentified body 30 feet up a tree and snagged on a branch in an area infested with crocodiles.

“Eventually it is going to separate and fall once the ligaments loosen up,” he said. “But there’s no way to get it without someone getting hurt, or falling to the crocs.” Fonseca said.

The magnitude of the disaster is exacerbated by the lack of social spending for emergency services and vital infrastructure to cope with such natural disasters. Nowhere is this illustrated more clearly than in Sofala province, the region hit hardest by Cyclone Idai, an area especially prone to flooding, which occurs two to three times a year.

According to Foreign Policy, the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery states that Mozambique ranks third in Africa among nations most exposed to weather-related disasters. Foreign Policy created a map of the disaster’s reach for its website, reporting that some 836 square miles were under flood waters in Mozambique, creating what the publication terms “inland oceans.”

The lack of vital infrastructure and services to provide assistance to the Mozambican masses in the wake of the country’s worst disaster is nothing short of criminal.

Mozambique is a nation of acute social contrast. With a population of nearly 29 million, it is the 16th richest country in Africa, and among the most socially unequal in the world. According to a 2017 report by New World Wealth, a market research firm based in Johannesburg, South Africa, there are 1,100 millionaires residing in the country. Of this group, 50 individuals hold wealth totaling over $10 million.

Contrasted to the obscene accumulation of wealth by a small layer of elites, according to 2016 figures published by the World Bank, 60 percent of the population lives in extreme poverty, with 80 percent left unable to afford enough food daily to maintain proper health. The majority also subsist on less than $2 a day.

Underlying this lopsided social construct is the fact that Mozambique holds vast economic resources in oil and gas reserves and mineral deposits of marble, bentonite, coal, gold, bauxite, granite, titanium and gemstones. The World Bank estimates that Mozambique holds untapped oil and gas reserves totaling over $100 trillion, and the country has the fourth largest reserves of natural gas in the world.

Key to understanding the lack of funding made available for the population to deal with Idai’s crisis are the American and European banks and corporations that have lined up to exploit Mozambique’s natural resources and its working masses.

In recent years, Exxon-Mobil, British Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell have secured billions of dollars in large contracts to extract Mozambique’s massive offshore gas reserves.

Far-right party wins most votes in Dutch provincial elections

Harm Zonderland

On March 20, provincial councils were elected in all of the 12 provinces of the Netherlands. The most significant outcome of the election was the entrance into the Senate of the Forum for Democracy (FvD), led by Thierry Baudet. The far-right, near-fascist party won 12 out of 75 seats.

The FvD was elected into the House of Representatives for the first time in 2017, when it won two out of 150 seats. In a statement made after the provincial elections Baudet issued a message to prime minister Mark Rutte: “You can no longer ignore the FvD.”

It was the first time that the FvD was running in the provincial elections, and it was among the top three parties in all the provinces. It is the strongest party in Noord-Holland and Zuid-Holland, where the capital Amsterdam, the Harbor of Rotterdam and the political center in The Hague are situated.

The FvD’s political agenda includes a call for closing the borders. It has been able to capitalize on the xenophobia stoked up by the rightwing-liberal VVD of prime minister Rutte and the far-right Freedom Party (PVV) of Geert Wilders.

On the same nationalistic grounds, the FvD proposes to leave the European Union. Furthermore, FvD’s leader Thierry Baudet is a so-called “climate change denier.” He was able to gain some working-class support by criticizing government spending on renewable energy rather than on healthcare.

Voter turnout was higher, at 56 percent, than in the previous provincial elections in 2015 when 48 percent of those eligible voted.

The media concentrated their attention on a major consequence of the provincial elections: the composition of the Senate, the First Chamber of Parliament, that is elected by the provincial councils.

While the Senate is to be elected in the coming three weeks, it is already clear the government coalition has lost its small majority. The coalition parties, the right-liberal VVD, the liberal D66 and the Christian democratic CDA, with the exception of the latter, have lost seats. The far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) and the Socialist Party (SP) have lost half of their senators, the social-democratic labour party PvdA has lost one seat.

The pseudo-left greens of GroenLinks have doubled their seats in the Senate. They profited from their standpoints on climate issues, such as compensation for increased household energy costs and higher “climate-taxes” for corporations. The ruling VVD has adapted its program to some of the positions of GroenLinks, minimizing its losses to just one seat.

But this is not, as the media claim, a “turn to the left.” While the transition from a fossil-fueled energy supply to renewable forms is popular, a lot of money can be made by some of the VVD’s closest allies, like the large energy and technology corporations.

To get legislation passed through the Senate, the government coalition now has to seek support from opposition parties. Mark Rutte commented: “We will make sure we get majorities. It means a lot of coffee and even more phone calls.”

GroenLinks has eagerly expressed its willingness to co-operate. Its nine senators would be enough for a majority. GroenLinks leader Jesse Klaver said: “Last week the government made promises on climate-policy. We will hold them to those promises.” Other parties, like the social-democrats of the PvdA and the right-wing PVV, have made certain demands that are to be met if the government coalition seeks their support.

The main winner of the election is the FvD. Like all fascist parties, both historically and at present, FvD puts forward an extreme right-wing agenda, serving the interests of their capitalist allies and benefactors. They combine nationalism and xenophobia with demagogic promises on issues such as healthcare and education.

Baudet appeals to nationalist sentiments and proposes xenophobic, anti-immigrant policies, using the same methods as Donald Trump with his “America First” rallies and his rants about “immigrant invasions.” While the entire political establishment is planning to place the financial burden of the energy transition on the backs of workers, FvD calls for ending investment in renewable energy resources, claiming that they are “too expensive.”

In addition, Baudet profits from popular discontent with the national government. After decades of austerity and “crisis management,” originally initiated by the social democrats of the PvdA, people have had enough of cuts to social programs, pensions and wages. Baudet publicly denounces the political elite and the “jobs carousel” or “old boys’ network,” appealing to the anger about the political establishment.

However, the political establishment has nothing to fear from Baudet’s denunciations, as those are just for the public. He has gathered a base of supporters in the capitalist class and affluent middle class—by portraying himself as well off and culturally literate, and by referring to art, culture and history in his speeches. In his victory speech, referring to climate policy, Baudet proclaimed: “The Owl of Minerva has come down, to dispel the idol called Transition.”

The rise of fascist tendencies within the ruling circles can be seen in several European countries, from Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD), to Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party and the Dutch Forum for Democracy , but also in the Americas. In Brazil, the recently elected president Jair Bolsonaro is known for his anti-immigrant views, his open admiration of the Brazilian military dictatorship, and his pledges to transnational corporations and the “free market.”

In the US, President Trump openly declared class war by claiming that the “twilight hour of socialism” has arrived, and vowing, “America will never be a socialist country.”

When social-democratic parties, Greens, so-called “socialist” and other pseudo-left parties disappoint and betray the working class time and time again, people look for an alternative. And since there is no visible left-wing alternative, some voters stumble into the trap of voting for right-wing parties.

Ogossagou massacre exposes rising bloodshed in European-occupied Mali

Stéphane Hugues & Alex Lantier 

The horrific massacre in the central Malian village of Ogossagou is exposing the brutal realities of the war in Mali launched by Paris in 2013. Under French and German military occupation, this country—one of the poorest in the world—is being torn apart by a rising wave of ethnic bloodshed.

Just before dawn on March 23, a band of approximately 100 fighters dressed in ethnic Dogon garb and bearing firearms arrived in Ogossagou, a Peul (or Fulani) village in the region of Bankass, near the border with Burkina Faso. They proceeded to shoot or kill everyone they could find, from the elderly down to the smallest infants. Approximately 160 people were killed and 55 wounded.

Eighteen people sought refuge in the house of the village marabout (healer), Bara Sékou Issa, who is known across West Africa, hoping the gunmen would not attack a marabout’s house. Sékou Issa had already welcomed a number of refugees from nearby villages into his home, offering them room and board. However, the attackers set Sékou Issa’s house on fire and gunned down anyone fleeing the house to escape the flames. All of Sékou Issa’s religious students reportedly perished in the flames inside his house.

The attackers slit the throat of the village chief, Amadou Barry, in front of his mother, aged 90, and then executed her, as well.

The village was left devastated, with houses and buildings burnt down and even livestock and domestic animals killed. Ismaïla Cissé, one of the Malian army’s few Peul officers, told the press: “They want to wipe us off the surface of the earth. Otherwise, how can one explain that they killed children, the elderly, and even livestock?”

As reports of this horrific massacre spread, Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta traveled to Ogossagou on March 25. “Justice will be done,” Keïta pledged. He also fired the chief of staff of the armed services, General M’Bemba Moussa Keïta, as well as the chiefs of staff of the army, air force, and military intelligence.

Keïta’s sacking of the top military leadership was effectively an admission that the Malian army, which is being trained by French and German soldiers, bore significant responsibility for the massacre. Soldiers at a nearby military base, only 13 kilometers away, reportedly were notified that the killings were ongoing around 6 a.m. However, they only arrived on the scene at 9 a.m., by which time the attackers had left.

Serious suspicions of official complicity with the forces that perpetrated the massacre—on the part of the Malian government and therefore its neo-colonial imperialist overlords—remain. Among the wounded in Ogossagou, the authorities apprehended several individuals they accused of being among the attackers. Nonetheless, they are refusing to divulge their identities.

Mopti prosecutor Maouloud Ag Najim told Jeune Afrique: “We interviewed most of the 45 wounded and their relatives, who are currently being treated at hospitals in Sévaré and Bankass. The military police team deployed in Ogossagou also interviewed some of the survivors. … Among the wounded, five people were identified by the survivors as being suspected attackers. We suspect they were members of the group who attacked the village of Ogossagou on March 23.”

After the massacre, Prime Minister Soumeylou Boubèye Maïga announced the dissolution of the Dan na Amassagou militia. This is an ethnic Dogon militia set up in 2016, after the French-backed government began encouraging the formation of local self-defense militias amid fighting between French troops, Malian government troops and various Islamist militias in northern and central Mali.

The Malian government is refusing to confirm or deny, however, whether the five suspected attackers they have taken into custody belong to Dan na Amassagou, a militia loyal to the central government in Bamako and that flies the Malian flag.

A November 2018 report by the International Human Rights Federation and the Malian Association for Human Rights alleged that donzo hunters making up the militia had tacit state backing: “Many witness statements and well-placed individuals testify to at least logistical and financial support for the donzos from the Malian government, or at least from some of its members. … Many witnesses say they have seen the donzos carry out military operations alongside the Malian Armed Forces.”

Youssouf Toloba, the head of Dan na Amassagou, for his part issued a statement denying that his militia had participated in the massacre and pledging to defy the state dissolution order. He said, “I am informing national and international public opinion: if those who are in the forests [terrorist groups] lay down their weapons, Dan na Amassagou will also. As long as that does not happen, we will not lay down our weapons.”

Over the course of the week, six Dogons were killed in two attacks on the villages of Ouadou and Kere Kere. UN sources wrote that in the night of Monday to Tuesday in Ouadou, “Several houses were burnt and livestock was stolen. An initial death toll lists four dead, including a young woman. The inhabitants took refuge in nearby villages.” On Tuesday, they added, “in the Dogon village of Kere Kere in the Bankass region, at least two women were killed and another wounded.”

In Mali, long-standing ethnic divisions are being inflamed and erupting into horrific violence under the impact of years of imperialist war and military occupation. The French-led war in Mali began in 2013, after mercenary militias fled the NATO war that devastated Libya, attempting to return home to Mali. As one of the world’s poorest countries funneled resources into a French-led war targeting ethnic Tuareg and Islamist militias, social conditions in Mali disintegrated.

Railway workers, teachers and public service workers have repeatedly struck to demand unpaid wages and better working conditions.

France has posted 2,700 troops in Mali and Germany 1,100, making it the German army’s largest overseas deployment, to support the Malian regime in Bamako. Presented as part of a “war on terror,” the occupation has fanned the flames of ethnic conflict, with Peul Islamist preacher Amadou Koufa’s celebrity leading to bitter accusations attacking the entire Peul ethnicity as terrorist. Ethnic violence between ethnic Peul, Dogon, and Bambara forces led to the deaths of 500 people in 2018, according to the UN.

Protests against Sudan’s al-Bashir regime enter fourth month

Jean Shaoul

On Monday, Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, saw journalists protesting to demand press freedom.

Since a wave of opposition demonstrations began on December 19, the government has routinely blocked Internet access and social media networks and censored the media. It has demanded that the newspapers submit their articles for review before printing, seized rolls of newspaper and banned foreign journalists from reporting on the protests.

Some newspapers, including Al-Maidan, Akhbar al-Watan and Al-Baath have been off the streets for more than 70 days since January. According to the Sudanese Journalists’ Network, which organised the protest, some 90 journalists critical of the government have been arrested. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says the number of arrests is unprecedented.

On February 22, the authorities arrested Othman Mirghani, editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper al-Tayar, shortly after he gave a televised interview criticising President Omar al-Bashir’s declaration of a state of emergency. He remains in custody without being charged.

The protests take place amidst the most sustained challenge to al-Bashir’s rule since he seized power in a 1989 coup. Triggered by a government decision that tripled the price of bread, the protests quickly developed into anti-government demonstrations across the country calling for al-Bashir to step down. They have drawn in ever-broader sections of the population, with nationwide strikes of workers on March 5 and 13.

Sit-ins have taken place at universities and schools, and there have been strikes by public and private sector workers, including those at Port Sudan on the Red Sea, the main gateway for Sudan’s imports and exports, who are demanding its sale to a Philippine company based in Dubai be halted. There have also been work stoppages and protests at major telecom providers and other corporations.

Al-Bashir has responded with brutal measures aimed at crushing all resistance, including the use of live ammunition by snipers, tear gas and baton charges. Officials say 31 people have died in protest-related violence since December, but Human Rights Watch has put the death toll at 57, including children and medics, some of whom have died in prison as a result of torture.

There have been numerous arrests including that of Mariam Sadiq al-Mahdi, deputy leader of the main opposition Umma Party (and daughter of the prime minister whom al-Bashir ousted in 1989) and 15 others while demonstrating in front of Umma’s headquarters in Omdurman, Sudan’s second largest city.

On February 22, al-Bashir announced a year-long state of emergency—the first in 20 years—and dismissed his cabinet and all 18 provincial governments, replacing the governors with military and security officers. The newly reshuffled government under Mohamed Tahir Eila is the third to be formed in less than two years.

The state of emergency grants the authorities unprecedented powers to ban protests, public meetings and political activities, and gives the police and security forces more power to arbitrarily detain people indefinitely, search buildings and seize property. While Sudan’s parliament has approved the decree for six months, not a year, it can be extended at any time.

Special emergency courts, set up to prosecute people for taking part in demonstrations, imposed harsh sentences against more than 800 protesters—some given jail terms of up to five years as well as fines—in the space of a week. Three weeks ago, the courts sentenced nine women protesters to 20 lashes each—since overturned—one day after al-Bashir issued a presidential decree ordering the release of 150 women protesters from prison to mark International Women’s Day.

On March 27, an emergency court in Omdurman sentenced three protesters, including two female university students, to six months in prison for taking part in an anti-government rally in the city.

None of this repression has deterred the demonstrations and strikes. Rallies have taken place over unemployment, soaring inflation, and controls on accessing foreign currency and cash that are making living conditions intolerable. Above all, they are aimed at al-Bashir’s regime.

The government insists that the problems are economic and stem from 20 years of US sanctions and the secession in 2011 of oil-rich South Sudan. It is desperately seeking loans from Abu Dhabi, other international investment, an end to black-market foreign exchange transactions and a deal with South Sudan that will restart the latter’s oil production and its transit to overseas markets through Sudan.

To dampen down opposition, al-Bashir has resigned as head of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP), appointing his close associate Ahmad Harun as its deputy head. Harun has announced a national dialogue in a bid to win over some elements of the opposition and maintain NCP rule via stage-managed elections in which Harun or Bashir would run and thereby forestall any attempt by sections of the armed forces, in the name of “the people,” to oust them.

The powerful movement of the Sudanese working class is part of a growing wave of strikes and demonstrations by workers across North Africa, including in Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, as well as around the world.

Sudan’s opposition rallies have been led by an umbrella group, the Alliance for Freedom and Change, that includes the Sudanese Professional Association (SPA), the National Consensus Forces (NCF), Sudan Call, the Unionist Gathering and the Umma Party, with the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) playing a crucial role.

According to the secretary of the SCP’s information bureau, Dr Fathi Elfad, who is one of at least 40 senior party leaders who have been arrested, the SCP has sought to “build the broadest possible alliance of political parties, armed groups, mass democratic organisations, professional unions, workers’ and peasants’ movements, as well as students’ and women’s unions.”

They are all demanding constitutional change and for al-Bashir to go. But this would serve to give the regime, which has suppressed all opposition to its policies over the last 30 years and waged war against its own people in Darfur and South Sudan, what amounts to a political facelift.

Masses of workers and youth have come out onto the streets, not for this political reshuffle, but to fundamentally transform an intolerable social order.

At least 80 percent of the Sudanese population live on less than US$1 per day. Some 5.5 million of the country’s 40 million population needed humanitarian assistance in 2018, an increase of 700,000 on 2017. Around 2.47 million children suffer from acute malnutrition.

In 2018, there were an estimated 1.2 million refugees and asylum seekers living in Sudan, including nearly 500,000 South Sudanese refugees who fled the civil war that erupted in 2013, as well as nearly 2 million internally displaced persons following Sudan’s decades of internal conflicts and droughts.

The critical question is the development of an independent political strategy and the formation of a new revolutionary leadership. It means forming popular organs of power, based on the working class, to fight to overthrow and replace the al-Bashir regime with a workers’ government. Above all, this depends upon extending the struggle beyond Sudan, uniting Sudanese workers with their class brothers and sisters throughout the Middle East and in the advanced capitalist countries under the leadership of the International Committee of the Fourth International.

As Washington hails victory over ISIS, media ignores massive human toll

Bill Van Auken

For the last several days, US President Donald Trump and his administration have been staging multiple victory laps over what it describes as the final defeat of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

In his right-wing rant before supporters in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Thursday night, Trump bragged that “the ISIS caliphate is defeated, one hundred percent.”

Last week he showed reporters before-and-after maps of Iraq and Syria—which he held upside down—the first showing areas previously occupied by ISIS in red and a current map that was spotless. The stunt apparently upended a promise made to the Pentagon’s proxy forces, comprised largely of the Kurdish Syrian YPG militia, that they would be allowed to be first in announcing the supposed victory.

The US media has followed suit, sending its embedded reporters striding into the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz, the last reported stronghold, alongside their handlers from the Pentagon’s proxy militia. One NBC reporter acknowledged that bodies had been cleared from the area before he arrived.

This sanitization of the bloodshed in Iraq and Syria has been a constant feature of the news coverage of the over four-year-long US war against ISIS. Few within the corporate media have even bothered to question the Pentagon’s official story that only a handful of the tens of thousands killed in relentless US bombing campaigns have been civilians.

This same hypocritical media provided non-stop coverage denouncing the Russian-backed campaign to re-take the Syrian city of Aleppo from Islamist forces as a war crime.

The Pentagon issued a report on Thursday claiming that the total number of civilians killed in both Iraq and Syria in the course of 34,038 airstrikes by the US and its allies between August 2014 and February of this year amounted to just 1,250.

The figure is a vast, deliberate and grotesque underestimate of the real carnage unleashed against the Iraqi and Syrian people by US imperialism.

Airwars, the organization that has provided the most comprehensive recording of civilian casualties, has cited as many as 30,000 civilian deaths reported in the course of the war.

The Associated Press issued a report on the siege of the Iraqi city of Mosul nearly two years ago that confirmed the deaths of 3,200 civilians as a result of US airstrikes and artillery and mortar bombardments by the Pentagon and its allies. Other credible reports have put the toll in Mosul at over 10,000, while an official of the Iraqi Kurdish intelligence agency, considered one of the more reliable sources in the Middle East, said that as many as 40,000 had been slaughtered.

Meanwhile, Airwars has estimated that 1,500 civilians were killed by coalition air and artillery attacks between June and October 2017 in the Syrian city of Raqqa—more than the total figure given by the Pentagon for four years of bombardment of both Iraq and Syria. Last October, mass graves were uncovered in the Syrian city holding the bodies of 2,500 people, most of them believed to be victims of the US siege. Thousands more remain buried.

Both of these cities, along with large swathes of north and western Iraq and north and eastern Syria, remain devastated by the US bombing campaign. While the siege of Mosul ended in July 2017, nearly two years ago, and that of Raqqa three months later, much of the first city and virtually all of the second remain in ruins.

Once Iraq’s second city with a population of nearly two million, nearly two-thirds of Mosul’s inhabitants remain displaced. An estimated 130,000 Iraqi homes were destroyed by the US bombardment, along with 90 percent of the city’s hospitals, dozens of schools and much of its basic infrastructure. The UN has estimated that there are some 8 million tons of rubble and debris that must be removed to begin restoring the city. With the resources and equipment now allotted, this task could take up 10 years.

“It is impossible not to be overwhelmed by what you see standing on the roof … in Mosul. Half of this sprawling city is literally leveled to the ground and it is practically impossible to move through due to the large number of explosives hidden in the rubble,” said Lene Rasmussen of the Danish Demining Group, the only international NGO operating in the city.

The anger of the remaining population in Mosul boiled over last week after a crowded ferry capsized in the Tigris River leading to the deaths of over 100 people. When the Iraqi president and the provincial governor attempted to join mourners, they were set upon by the crowd chanting, “No to corruption … all of you are thieves.”

Nearly two million people in Iraq remain internally displaced from Mosul and other cities like Tikrit, Fallujah and Ramadi that were also largely demolished by the anti-ISIS campaign. Many of them are in camps and subject to brutality at the hands of Iraqi security forces and sectarian militias, with men taken away to be tortured and executed and women subject to rape and sexual abuse.

Conditions in Raqqa are no better. It is estimated that 30,000 homes were completely destroyed and another 25,000 partially demolished. Following a visit to the Syrian city in October, Amnesty International’s Secretary General Kumi Naidoo described the “horrific destruction and utter human devastation” that he witnessed, stating, “What I saw in Raqqa shocked me to the core.”

He added: “The city is a shell—bombed-out buildings, very little running water or electricity, the stench of death hanging in the air. That anyone is still able to live there defies logic and stands as testimony to the remarkable resilience of the city’s civilians.”

Residents in both Mosul and Raqqa have told the media that, as bad as conditions were under the brutal and reactionary Islamist rule of ISIS, today they are considerably worse.

While Washington boasts of its final defeat of ISIS, the reality is that the Islamist militia was US imperialism’s own Frankenstein’s Monster. It arose as an offshoot of Al Qaeda, itself nurtured by the CIA during the US-orchestrated war to topple the Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan. It was forged in the US war of aggression against Iraq that killed close to a million Iraqis, and then utilized in the 2011 war to topple Libya’s leader Muammar Gaddafi. Fighters and arms were then funneled with the aid of the CIA into the war for regime change in Syria.

ISIS was able to seize control of territories comprising a population of eight million and consisting of nearly half of Iraq and large swathes of Syria only because of the abysmal conditions created by US military interventions and the massive supply of arms and money by the CIA and Washington’s principal regional allies, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar.

In Iraq, its advance was furthered by the anger of the Sunni population over the discrimination and repression carried out by the Baghdad government. These sentiments are only being deepened by the present conditions confronting the people of Mosul and the cities of Anbar Province.

While Trump initially proclaimed the defeat of ISIS at the end of last year, stating that as a result he would “bring the troops home,” triggering a political fire storm in Washington, the Pentagon has since made clear that the illegal US military presence in Syria will continue indefinitely.

While earlier this month Pentagon officials denied a report that the plan was to leave at least 1,000 US troops in the war-ravaged country, they have provided no alternative number for what is being described as a “residual force.”

The Pentagon’s proposed 2020 budget includes $300 million for arming and supporting “vetted Syrian opposition” partners, as well as $250 million to support “border security requirements” in Syria.

Washington’s aim is to carve out its own sphere of influence in Syria’s northeast, seizing control over the country’s main oil and gas-producing region and using Syria as a base for preparing military aggression against Iran.

Meanwhile, the US has encouraged Israel to play a major role in military operations against Syria. Trump’s decree recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the illegally occupied territory of the Golan Heights is bound up with Washington’s cementing of a regional alliance based on Israel, Saudi Arabia and the other monarchical dictatorships of the Persian Gulf against Iran.

Israel carried out airstrikes Wednesday against the Syrian city of Aleppo, reportedly striking warehouses, setting off major explosions that cut off power to the city and killing at least four people.

The so-called victory over ISIS has turned much of the region into a wasteland, creating the conditions for social explosions, even as US imperialism prepares to launch a wider and bloodier war in the Middle East.

Sixth Friday mass protest in Algeria demands fall of the regime

Alex Lantier 

Millions poured into the streets of Algeria’s major cities yesterday, for a sixth Friday protest demanding the fall of the military-backed National Liberation Front (FLN) regime.

It came after General Ahmed Gaïd Salah, the head of the Algerian armed forces, called on March 26 to apply Article 102 of Algeria’s constitution to remove the regime’s hated figurehead, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, on health grounds. Protesters rejected Salah’s sudden intervention to remove Bouteflika, who has been incapacitated since suffering a stroke in 2013. Instead, they demanded the bringing down of both the FLN and the army.

Banners carried at the protests read “Rest in Peace Gaïd Salah, leave power for the love of God,” “Gaïd Salah the people want democracy not a military regime,” and “Shame on you Gaïd Salah.” Another popular slogan was to demand the application of Article 7 of the constitution, which stipulates that power should come from the people.

Over a million people marched in Algiers, according to police reports, and thousands or tens of thousands marched in other major Algerian cities including Oran, Constantine, Annaba, Béjaïa, Tizi Ouzou, Sétif, Tlemcen and Sidi Bel Abbès. In Oran, protesters chanted “The transition must be led by the sovereign people and not the regime.” In Tlemcen, protesters chanted “Out, Out Saïd,” referring to Abdelmajid Sidi Saïd, the leader of the corrupt, FLN-linked General Union of Algerian Labor (UGTA) union.

In Algiers, huge throngs of people marched through the city’s major centers including Maurice Audin Square and outside the Main Post Office. Protesters also clashed during the afternoon with riot police, who fired tear gas and water cannon to block off major avenues and keep marchers from reaching the presidential palace. Protesters chanted slogans including “You are the past we are the future” and “The people orders the army to arrest the gang.”

Algeria’s public oil and gas companies have earned over $1 trillion in revenue, and broad layers of Algerian workers and youth despise the FLN leadership and their cronies as little more than a criminal gang that has plundered the country’s energy wealth.

The way forward for the movement against the FLN is the building of independent organizations of the working class, against the UGTA and its allies, and a fight to unify the movement with growing political opposition internationally among workers in Africa as well as in Europe and France.

Significant strike movements and protests at key industrial facilities have already taken place in Algeria. Port workers are on strike at Oran and Béjaïa, there have been strikes and sit-ins in protest by workers at subsidiaries of the Sonatrach natural gas monopoly, as well as by teachers and public sector workers. Many small businessmen and shopkeepers in Algerian cities have closed their businesses as a sign of support.

This comes amid an upsurge of protests by workers and youth internationally. Nearby Algeria in Africa, bread riots are demanding the ouster of the Sudanese government, while neighboring Morocco is threatening to dismiss striking teachers, who have organized a four-week strike that is exposing the unpopularity of the Moroccan monarchy. And across Europe, there is a rising wave of strikes against European Union (EU) austerity and growing political opposition, like the “yellow vest” movement against French President Emmanuel Macron.

As a revolutionary movement against the FLN and the Algerian army develops, it is critical to draw the political lessons of the revolutionary struggles of 2011 against Egypt’s military dictatorship.

The key role in ensuring the victory of the counterrevolution and the coming to power of General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi’s bloody junta was played by petty-bourgeois, pseudo-left parties. At each step in the struggle, they promoted illusions that the army, the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, or Sisi’s supporters themselves would carry out a democratic revolution. They thus blocked a struggle of the working class to take state power, and handed over the initiative to the ruling class.

The way forward is to link up the struggles of the Algerian working class with growing workers’ struggles internationally, and to build a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) in Algeria to fight for a revolutionary and socialist perspective against the forces trying to tie the workers to the old regime and its imperialist backers.

From the foreign ministry in Paris to the UGTA bureaucracy and the headquarters of various “opposition” parties with decades-long records of working with the FLN, a common line is emerging. Whether by Salah’s initiative or by the convening of constituent assemblies representing the entire political establishment, Algerian capitalism is to undergo a nationally-based democratic reform. This is a political mirage, designed to block a struggle of the working class for power.

Yesterday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian hailed the “remarkable civic spirit” of the Algerian protesters, effectively endorsing Salah’s initiative: “Now it is critical for the process that will now get underway, the transition that is now necessary, be able to unfold in the best possible conditions.”

Earlier this week, the UGTA issued a similar statement endorsing Salah and Algeria’s army brass: “The UGTA salutes and takes note of the call made by Mr Ahmed Gaïd Salah … Change has become necessary, it must manifestly be constructed through dialog that is marked by wisdom that allows the edification of a new Republic to emerge, alongside the aspirations of our people and youth, and to firmly ground the future and preserve our country, Algeria.”

There were no fundamental differences with this line in the statements made by the Front of Socialist Forces (FFS) and the Workers Party (PT). Both of them are terrified by the rebellion of the working class against the FLN regime and so abstained from calling for participation in yesterday’s protest.

The FFS, affiliated to France’s discredited, big-business Socialist Party (PS), issued a statement critizing Salah’s initiative and warning of the danger of revolutionary upheavals in Algeria. “To frustrate the people means provoking very serious uncertainty, inevitable chaos,” it said, adding: “Change must be an emanation of the popular will via the election of a sovereign constituent assembly and the building of a Second Republic, that is the consecration of a democratic and social alternative.”

As for Louisa Hanoune’s Workers Party (PT), it echoed the FFS’s position, calling for a “sovereign constituent assembly” while criticizing Salah’s maneuver as a “forcible coup.”

At the same time, terrified by growing popular opposition to the FLN, the PT withdrew its legislators from the national parliament, issuing a statement calling for “the departure of the parliamentary majority because they do not enjoy any popular legitimacy.” In fact, the PT itself, with its longstanding ties to the FLN and the UGTA, has no more legitimacy than they do.

None of these forces have either the ability or the intention of building a democratic regime that satisfies the mounting social demands of Algerian workers and youth.

Even in the countries where it was long ago established, capitalist democracy is rotting on its feet. Across the Mediterranean, the Macron government—terrified that the revolutionary movement against Bouteflika could spark a broader movement of the working class than the “yellow vest” protest—has issued an authorization to the army to gun down the “yellow vests.”

The problems facing workers in Algeria, France and beyond are rooted in the capitalist system. These can only be solved through the construction of sections of the ICFI to provide revolutionary leadership to the working class now in struggle against the profit system.