Russian Iranian strains raise spectre of US-Israeli-Russian deal on Syria

James M. Dorsey

With Israel set to host an unprecedented meeting of the national security advisors of the United States, Russia and Israel, this week’s efforts by German foreign minister Heiko Maas and Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe to mediate between the US and Iran could prove to be a sideshow.

The meeting of the national security advisors, against the backdrop of Syrian and Russian forces pummelling the northern region of Idlib, the last major stronghold of Syrian rebels, takes on added significance with strains emerging in relations between Moscow and Tehran.

Hundreds have been killed and thousands displaced in the latest attacks that have not shied away from targeting hospitals and residential areas.

In what may be marching orders for his national security advisor, John Bolton, US President Donald J. Trump tweeted last week: “Hearing word that Russia, Syria and, to a lesser extent, Iran, are bombing the hell out of Idlib Province in Syria, and indiscriminately killing many innocent civilians. The World is watching this butchery. What is the purpose, what will it get you? STOP!”

While few expect the advisors’ meeting this month in Jerusalem to produce immediate results, US and Israeli officials hope that it could prepare the ground for a deal that would further weaken Russian ties to Iran and reduce, if not terminate Iran’s presence in Syria.

Among multiple scenarios being bounced around, some analysts believe that a possible deal could involve Russia pushing Iran out of Syria, a key US and Israeli demand, in exchange for the lifting of at least some American and European sanctions against Russia and US acceptance of the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu rejected a similar Russian proposal last November.

“The fact that the Russians see value in these conversations, that they’re willing to do it publicly, I think is in and of itself quite significant. And so we are hopeful that they’re coming to the meeting with some fresh proposals that will allow us to make progress,” said a senior Trump administration official.

The officials suggest that a recent Russian refusal to sell Iran its most advanced S-400 missile defense system because that could fuel regional tensions and tacit Russian acquiescence to Israeli military strikes against Iranian and Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah targets in Syria opens the door to a potential deal.

Iran has denied wanting to acquire the Russian system while Russia has officially demanded that Israel halt its attacks and respect Syrian sovereignty.

Mr. Bolton’s discussions with Israeli national security advisor Meir Ben-Shabbat and Nikolay Patrushev, head of Russia’s security council, could not come at worse moment for Iran as it struggles to dampen the effect of harsh US sanctions following the Trump administration’s withdrawal last year from the 2015 international agreement that curbed the Islamic republic’s nuclear program.

Analysts Udi Dekel and Carmit Valensi argued in a report published last month by the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) that despite public statements to the contrary, Russia like Israel, rejects a withdrawal of US forces from Syria.

After initially announcing in February a complete pullback, Mr. Trump agreed to keep several hundred US troops in the country.

Mr. Dekel and Ms. Valensi said that a US withdrawal would strengthen Iran and force Russia to allow Iran to take control of oil fields in the east of the country.

Writing in Haaretz, columnist Zvi Bar’el suggested that Russia and Iran differ over the endgame in Syria. “Russia has no intention of simply returning Syria to Assad’s control,” Mr. Bar’el said. He added that Russia sees Syria as a base to forge closer ties to the Gulf and Egypt.

Iran, by contrast, hopes to capitalize on its massive investment in Syria to maintain its influence in Lebanon, counter Saudi regional ambitions and grant it access to the Mediterranean.

Scores were killed in clashes between pro-Iranian militias and Russian forces in Aleppo and Deir az-Zor in April. Russian forces last month reportedly removed Shiite militias from areas close to the international airports of Aleppo and Damascus.

Ibrahim Al-Badawi, a Syrian columnist identified with Mr. Al-Assad’s regime, reported that Russian and Syrian security forces had arrested pro-Iranian Syrian activists.

Mr. Al-Badawi said further that a recent reshuffle of the upper echelons of the Syrian state security apparatus had been designed to weaken the position of Maher al-Assad, the president’s brother and commander of his Republican Guard as well as the army’s elite Fourth Armoured Division. Maher al-Assad is believed to be close to Iran.

Russia and Iran are “each…striving to strengthen its influence in the Syrian security apparatuses and in the militias fighting on the ground, while weakening the other side’s influence and presence… The [once-]concealed disagreements among Syria’s allies are now out in the open. It is no longer a secret that Russia, in response to a clear demand from the Gulf, aspires to weaken Iran’s influence,” Mr. Al-Badawi wrote.

A possible litmus test of the potential of the talks between the national security advisors may be whether Russia accedes to an Israeli request not to give Syria full control of the S-300 anti-missile system, the equivalent of the US Patriot batteries, that Moscow has already sold and delivered.

Israeli officials have warned their Russian counterparts that once fully controlled by Syrian forces, the S-300 would be a legitimate target.

Israel and Russia agreed four years ago to coordinate military actions over Syria in order to avoid accidentally trading fire.

Israel, however, last year rejected a Russian offer to ensure that Iranian forces would not move within 100 kilometres of the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel during the 1967 Middle East war and recently recognized as Israeli territory by the United States. Accepting the Russian offer would have amounted to tacit acceptance of an Iranian presence in Syria.

Mr. Dekel and Ms. Valensi noted in their report that Israeli forces had reduced the number of attacks on Iranian targets in Syria in a bid to improve chances of exploiting Russian-Iranian strains.

“There is a window of opportunity that allows Israel to try…with Russia and the United States…to formulate and achieve shared interests that it has with the two superpowers, most importantly increasing stability in Syria and instituting governmental reforms in Syria, along with reducing Iranian influence there,” Mr. Dekel and Ms. Valensi said.

Heat Wave – Impact on the Poor and the Marginalised

Sheshu Babu

While summer is uncomfortable to most of middle class people, it takes heavy toll of the daily laborers, marginalised casual workers and industrial manual employees. The rich and most government employees take some shelter under air conditioners or coolers but large number of ‘fourth -class’ employees, the street hawkers, peddlers, beggars and daily wagers are forced to work in scorching heat conditions. Deaths due to heat wave are reported usually without classifying their state of ‘class’ or ‘caste’ . If carefully analyzed most of those who die are from dalit and marginalised sections who work ceaselessly throughout summer for their daily bread and face risk of sun- strokes.

Consequences

The amount of overall heat energy trapped by greenhouse gasses is jaw- dropping. Between 1971 and 2010, the IPCC’s Assessment Report tells us that earth gained 274 million million billion Joules ( The Social Consequences of India’s Heat Waves Spell Doom for the Working Poor, by Nagraj Adve, originally published on June 24, 2016, thewire.in). As James Hansen said, this is ‘ equivalent to exploding 400,000 Hiroshima Atomic bombs per day 365 days per year. Since 1970, the energy trapped is equivalent to four Hiroshima bombs per second. Thus, the consequences of global warming are very grave and need to be addressed quickly and serious measures should be taken to reduce loss of life.

Estimates

The number of people dying due to heatwaves has been on the increase.in the last decade,with over 2,000 people being reported dead during 2015 heatwave in India. A paper published in ‘Science Advances’ establishes a mammoth 146 per cent increase in the probability of heat – related mortality in India due to the increase summer mean temperatures (Heatwave: Passing phase or a Natural calamity?, By Vidya Soundarajan, 10 June 2019, downtoearth.org.in). Rising global tempera- tures are leading to extreme weather climate conditions like droughts, floods heatwaves, etc. The rise of temperature has been 0.5 degree Celsius over last 50 years.

In 2010, Russia had 55,736 deaths due to heat wave in June.(www.statista.com). The costliest heat wave occurred in China in 2008 with estimated damage of 21.2 billion US$. In Italy, heat wave (2003) caused over20,000 deaths.

No assistance

During summer, the vulnerable sections face lot of suffering and diseases due to heat and humidity. They do not have proper health- care mechanism nor do they have provision of food and clean water. The slum dwellers , mostly SCs and STs or OBCs, have no proper shelters during day time. The women and their babies have insufficient protection from heat and are often exposed to hot air in the day. Governments have done little to assist these sections. They have no income to take precautionary measures. Even the supply of ORS packets is inadequate.

The laborers , specially women, lead pathetic lives. They have little time to protect their bodies from heat because of the nature of work. There is no policy for these people to protect themselves from such manual work that demands hours of exposure to the sun. Their labor goes unnoticed.

Social activists should take up their travails and tribulations in a pro-active way and put pressure on rulers to frame policies which give them help in summer and restrain them in working in sweltering heat without any minimum protection. Some sort of economic social and medical benefits programs should be formulated to tackle intense heat by the marginalised sections.

Tory cuts result in 131,000 preventable deaths in the UK

Barry Mason

A reversal of public health initiatives has led to 130,000 preventable deaths since 2012. The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) think tank lays the blame on austerity measures pursued by the 2010 Conservative/ Liberal Democrat government and continued by the Tory government of Theresa May.

The report’s title, “Ending the Blame Game,” is a critical reference to right-wing nostrums asserting that individual bad behaviour is responsible for health problems without any consideration of deteriorating social conditions.

The report notes that more than “half of the disease burden in England is deemed preventable, with one in five deaths attributed to causes that could have been avoided.”

The “disease burden has shifted away from infectious diseases to long-term chronic conditions… An estimated 15 million people in England live with a long-term condition for which there is no cure and the number of people living with multiple conditions is expected to rise significantly… [I]n many cases they are entirely preventable.”

The report noted the improvement in the UK’s ranking among 35 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries had slowed markedly since 2010. In fact, it had “hit a wall.” Between 1990 and 2010 the UK ranking for the number of disability-adjusted life years [the number of years lost due to ill-health, disability or early death] resulting from preventable illnesses rose from 26th to 17th position, but between 2010 and 2017 it rose by only one percent to 16th position. In terms of preventable deaths, the ranking improved from 29th in 1990 to 21st by 2010, but by 2017 this had slowed, with the ranking in 2017 at 20th.

The IPPR concluded that had the rate of improvement in cutting preventable deaths continued beyond 2012, 131,000 deaths from preventable causes would have been avoided.

The report highlights the role of austerity measures in this development, explaining that a “decade of austerity has resulted in cuts to public health, prevention and mental health budgets in the NHS [National Health Service], and wider national and local government services which help drive better health.”

Noting the importance of spending on preventative measures, the study adds “for every £1 [$US1.27] spent on prevention the median return is £14 [$US17.81].”

Highlighting the role of deteriorating social conditions, the IPPR argues, “Often the most vulnerable in society are at the greatest risk of developing preventable conditions through personal behaviour which is influenced by social pressures such as poverty or job insecurity… [M]any prevention policies continue to rely on the agency of the individual to make changes. This approach fails to recognise the vast range of social, environmental and commercial determinants of poor health.”

Dean Hochlaf, lead researcher and one of the authors of the report, told the Guardian, “We have seen progress in reducing preventable disease flatline since 2012. At the same time, local authorities have seen significant cuts to their public health budgets, which have severely impacted the capacity of preventative services. Social conditions for many have failed to improve since the economic crisis, creating a perfect storm that encourages harmful health behaviours. This health challenge will only continue to worsen.”

Cuts in funding for physical education in schools are impacting on children’s health outcomes. “Funding for physical education—supposedly coming from the sugar tax revenues—was reduced in 2017 from £415m to £100m.”

The workload of health visitors who give preschool children advice and monitor their health is too large for them to be able to deliver effective outcomes. Fully 40 percent of health visitors have caseloads above 400, when the recommended level is 250.

Responding to the IPPR report, Shirley Cramer, chief executive of the Royal Society for Public Health, said, “At the heart of this report’s worrying findings are the years of chronic underfunding experienced by public health teams … who provide vital services and support … [I]t undermines the future sustainability of our NHS.”

Ian Hudspeth, chairman of the Local Government Association Community Wellbeing Board, said that “prevention is the bedrock to a healthier, more equal and prosperous society. Focusing on early intervention and prevention… is the most effective use of local government and NHS resources to help people live longer… and reduce health inequalities.” He called on the government to reverse the £700 million reduction in public health grants to local councils.

In November last year, Professor Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights investigated social conditions in the UK. In his final report issued in May this year, he concluded, “The bottom line is that much of the glue that has held British society together since the Second World War has been deliberately removed and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos.”

The IPPR findings follow a report published in November 2017 by a team of researchers at University College London (UCL). Details were published on the online medical journal BMJ Open. It noted, “The squeeze on public finances since 2010 is linked to nearly 120,000 excess deaths in England with the over 60s and care home residents bearing the brunt … The critical factor in these figures may be changes in nurse numbers (that could lead) to an additional 100 deaths every day from now on in.”

Between 2010 and 2014, real term spending on social care “has fallen by 1.19 percent every year… despite a significant projected increase in the numbers of over 85s—those most likely to need social care—from 1.6 million in 2015 to 1.8 million in 2020,” the researchers found.

Using data on death rates between 2011 and 2014, they compared them with projected trends in such rates that could have been expected had it not been for government spending cuts. They projected that by the year 2020 there would be around 200,000 excess deaths resulting from the spending cuts since 2010.

Figures released earlier this year by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries showed a six-month cut in life expectancy for UK adults. This is the largest fall since evidence emerged in 2010-11 of a slow-down in increased life-expectancy. Actuaries have concluded that the ongoing slowing of life expectancy represents “a trend as opposed to a blip.”

Sir Michael Marmot, Professor of Epidemiology at UCL, has been a leading authority on health inequalities for over four decades. Last month he addressed a packed meeting at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts on health inequalities.

The institution’s website reported, “Something is very wrong in the United States and the United Kingdom… While the rich continue to enjoy good health and longer lives… the poor are getting sicker and dying younger.”

It continued, “Marmot said that it is social conditions surrounding poverty that cause health inequalities… [S]tressful experiences in childhood (can lead to) a lifetime of poor health outcomes … [O]ne of the ways that the root causes of health inequalities could be addressed would be to reduce childhood poverty. The US and UK have the financial capability to do so… [and] not doing it is a political decision.”

Commenting on declining life expectancy for the poor in both the UK and the US, Marmot told the meeting, “Social injustice is killing people on a grand scale.”

The above reports show how the financial crisis of 2008 has been used by the ruling elites in the UK, US and other leading capitalist economies to accelerate the destruction of social welfare and to greatly increase the wealth of the super-rich.

German parliament passes draconian deportation law

Peter Schwarz

On June 7, Germany’s grand coalition government (a coalition of the Christian Democratic Union/CDU, Christian Social Union/CSU and Social Democratic Party/SPD) passed a so-called “Orderly Return Law,” which had been introduced to parliament by Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU). The Greens and Left Party voted against the law, arguing there had been insufficient time for a proper parliamentary debate. The majority of deputies in the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and neo-liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) abstained.

The law overrides basic democratic rights, as the WSWS pointed out in its analysis of the original draft. Immigrants can be deported for trivial offences and can be punished if they do not voluntarily assist in clarifying their identity—a measure required to enforce their own deportation. Asylum seekers required to leave the country can more easily be sent to “security confinement” centres and put into regular prisons, although they have committed no offence.

In the course of the discussions on the draft, a further restriction was added: In future, police officers can search the home of a refugee whose request for asylum has been denied “for the purpose of seizing the foreigner for deportation.”

The new law directed against refugees and immigrants is an integral part of a systematic attack on the democratic rights of the entire working class. Hardly a day goes by without new plans and proposals aimed at increasing the powers of the police and intelligence services.

The ruling class is responding to growing disaffection and opposition by building a police state. The incessant propaganda directed against refugees and attacks on immigrants are being used to move official politics further to the right. This is an international phenomenon. The same methods are being employed by Donald Trump in the US, Matteo Salvini in Italy and Sebastian Kurz in Austria.

It is no accident that the “Orderly Return Law” was adopted shortly after the European elections, in which all the parties of the grand coalition were severely punished. With just under 45 percent of the vote, the parties forming the government lost their majority. The SPD registered its worst ever national result with 15.8 percent and is in deep crisis.

The SPD has responded with yet another lurch to the right. On the same day the Bundestag passed its new deportation law, former SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel recommended his party embrace in full the refugee policy of the far-right AfD.

In an article written for the Handelsblatt business newspaper, Gabriel praised the Danish Social Democrats as a role model. The Danish Social Democrats had shown “that socialists can win elections if they stand for a clear policy,” he wrote. “Leading candidate Mette Frederiksen was not afraid to get close to the Danish right-wing populists in her drastic shift in migrant and immigration policies.” In so doing, Gabriel continued, she had won back those people who felt overwhelmed by the country’s immigration policies.

Gabriel accused the SPD of protesting “at the relatively harmless initiatives of the German government for faster deportation,” while “the Danish Social Democrats had agreed on a—to put it mildly—‘robust’ immigration and asylum policy.”

It was a matter of “recovering control: control of one’s own territory as well as control of a deranged financial capitalism,” Gabriel concluded. “Taming the social situation, the creation of rules and the enforcement of statehood is the real theme behind the election victory of the Danish Social Democrats.”

The vice president of the Bundestag, Thomas Oppermann (also SPD), argued in a similar manner. In Der Tagesspiegel, Oppermann demanded a refugee and immigration policy “linked to tough rules which are then enforced.” “We set clear rules and insist they are enforced. With great severity, when necessary,” he said.

That the Danish Social Democrats adopted the xenophobic program of the far-right People’s Party in the parliamentary election held on June 5 is true. That it gained votes is false. At just under 26 percent, its tally was about the same as in the previous four elections.

Beneficiaries of the collapse of the People’s Party, which plummeted from 21 to 8.7 percent, were, aside from a number of smaller far-right parties, the Greens and left Liberals, who criticised the right-wing immigration policy of the right-wing government. Now both parties are likely candidates for a new coalition headed by the Social Democrats.

Gabriel, however, is quite prepared to lie through his teeth when it comes to justifying a policy directed against refugees, immigrants and the working class as a whole. The strong state and the tough rules that he, Oppermann and other social democrats are demanding are directed primarily against those workers and young people who are no longer prepared to accept social cuts, layoffs, militarism, the reinforcement of state forces and environmental destruction. Under conditions where the SPD is no longer able to win majorities in elections, it is increasingly relying on an authoritarian state.

In this respect it has the support of sections of the media, which in the past were prepared to offer up some defence of democratic rights. A commentary in the Süddeutsche Zeitung following the adoption of the new asylum law is typical.

Stefan Braun praises the law as an “historic event” with the “potential to permanently pacify dangerous conflicts.” The SZ journalist, based in Berlin, notes with satisfaction that in addition to “tightening up deportations” the Bundestag agreed another law “to facilitate immigration.” While refugees and asylum seekers are rejected, entry regulations for skilled workers urgently needed by German industry are to be simplified.

Of course, there are “critics who warn against a sell-out of asylum law when dealing with refugees,” Braun admits. However, sanctions against refugees who conceal their identity were “not only problematic, but unfortunately also the product of the experiences of many policemen and interior authorities.” The possibility of raiding an apartment in extreme cases, while representing “a major extension of powers” was “also a reaction to the fact that there are cases in Berlin and elsewhere where the authorities have been led by the nose.” Those who “do not want faith in state authority to be undermined” face a dilemma that can be resolved by the new laws, Braun claims.

This is the typical German social democrat and petty bourgeois. Dismantling fundamental democratic rights and strengthening the police are “problematic,” but when the police and state authorities say so, then “state authority” has priority. This is nothing more than the justification for a police state.

At least 95 killed in massacre at Sobane Kou village in Mali

Will Morrow 

A horrific massacre took place overnight Sunday and early Monday morning in the central Malian town of Sobane Kou. At least 95 of the town’s inhabitants were slaughtered, including women and children, but many more remain unaccounted for. This is the latest in a series of mounting sectarian massacres produced by the predatory policies of imperialism throughout the region, above all France and Germany, and their neo-colonial occupation of Mali and the Sahel.

No one has claimed responsibility for the mass killing on Sunday night, which targeted a village inhabited by the ethnic Dogon community. There is suspicion, however, that it was a retaliatory action for an equally brutal massacre on March 23, when heavily-armed Dogon fighters with ties to government security forces attacked the predominantly Muslim Fulani village of Ogossagou, near the border with Burkina Faso. They killed approximately 160 people, including men, women and children, and injured more than 50.

The official death count of 95 civilians in Sobane Kou is based only on the bodies that have already been found, most of them badly burned. It will likely rise further. The official population of the village is 300, but an Al Jazeera reporter stated that when a roll call was conducted on Monday, “they had only a few dozen people coming forward.”

A survivor of the Sobane Kou attack, who gave his name as Armadou Togo, told AFP that “about 50 heavily-armed men arrived on motorbikes and pickups. They first surrounded the village and then attacked—anyone who tried to escape was killed. ... Some people had their throats cut or were disemboweled, grain stores and cattle were torched. No one was spared—women, children, elderly people.”

A spokesman for Dan Na Ambassagou, the Dogon militia suspected of having attacked Ogossagou, said: “We are in consternation. … After the authorities inspect the site, we will proceed with the burials.”

An escalating conflict between the Fulani and Dogon ethnic communities is underway. Six months ago, a massacre at the Fulani village of Koulongon killed 39 people.

The Malian government in Bamako, despised by the population as a corrupt puppet of the Western imperialist powers occupying the country, reacted to the Sobane Kou massacre by pledging to prevent further bloodshed. President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita cut short an official visit to Switzerland, telling the local public broadcaster that the “country cannot be led by a cycle of revenge and vendetta.”

But the reality is that the bloodshed is the catastrophic outcome of the aggressive, militarist policies of the imperialist powers, above all the United States, Germany and France, and their client government in Bamako.

The origins of the conflict must be sought most immediately in the 2011 NATO war in Libya, which, with the support of right-wing fundamentalist Islamist proxy forces, destroyed the government of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. The outcome of this war was the complete destruction of Libyan society. The country is now run by rival militia groups tied to the imperialist powers, who have kept the country in a state of civil war for nearly a decade since the NATO intervention.

Following the destruction of the Gaddafi regime, thousands of fighters poured out of Libya and across the Sahara, traveling to the Sahel region, including Mali. Various rival militias declared an independent or Islamic state in northern Mali.

Paris reacted in 2013 by launching a new war to occupy its former colony, one of the poorest countries in the world, to save the Bamako regime and destroy the northern Mali militias. For six years now, Paris has sunk deeper into a quagmire in Mali. President Emmanuel Macron has continued the war, codenamed Operation Barkhane, initiated by Socialist Party (PS) President François Hollande, involving an occupation force of 4,500 French troops and troops from five former French colonies in the Sahel: Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.

As it rapidly moves to re-militarize its foreign policy, Berlin also approved military operations in support of the French only two months after the initial French invasion. Last month, the German parliament voted overwhelmingly to extend the military occupation of the country with 1,100 soldiers until 2020, at a yearly cost of 400 million euros.

These operations have nothing to do with protecting the local population from Islamist militias, which were armed and funded by US and European intelligence agencies in Libya. They are aimed at propping up the puppet government in Bamako, suppressing the resistance of the impoverished rural population and workers to the government, and maintaining their control over the resource-rich region.

The imperialist intervention in Mali led directly to the growth of ethnic tensions between the predominantly Muslim Fulani community and the Dogons. There are widespread suspicions of state involvement in the ethnic conflicts that are now erupting. The Malian government has utilized the Dogon militia in the French-led war against Islamist militias, which have recruited disproportionately among the Fulani.

There were reports that a dozen uniformed security members were among those who carried out the March 23 massacre in Ogossagou. At the same time, while the government announced that it would dissolve the militia after that massacre, this was never carried out. Nor are there reports of criminal prosecutions related to those killings.

There is, however, deep and growing opposition in the Malian population to the imperialist powers and the Bamako regime. Following the massacre on March 23, protests and strikes of tens of thousands of workers and impoverished rural people broke out, directed against the central government and the occupying forces, which the population considered responsible for allowing the attacks to take place. After a protest of tens of thousands on April 5 in the capital, the government of Prime Minister Soumeylou Boubèye Maïga was forced to resign.

Radio France Internationale-Afrique reported an outpouring of opposition on social media to the Franco-German war and the related UN military mission in the country. “What shame for the UN mission in Mali,” wrote one user on Twitter, while another wrote: “The breakthrough in Mali will be the departure of the UN force and the Barkhane force.”

Russian journalist Ivan Golunov released after campaign against his arrest

Clara Weiss 

On Friday, June 6, the well-known investigative journalist Ivan Golunov was arrested in the center of Moscow and charged with the illegal consumption and distribution of drugs. After several days in confinement, during which he was physically abused, Golunov was released and put under house arrest on Monday. He was released from the house arrest and the charges against him were dropped on Tuesday.

The 36-year-old Golunov, who had earlier worked for the business newspapers Forbes, Vedomosti and Kommersant’, and now writes for the Latvia-based outlet Meduza—all of them close to the liberal opposition—was arrested in broad daylight in the center of Russia’s capital on Friday. Police claimed that they found five packages of the amphetamine mephedrone on him during the arrest, and they found more drugs at his home, including packages of cocaine.

Golunov insists that he is innocent and that the drugs were planted on him to persecute him for political reasons. In his work, Golunov has exposed corruption cases involving the mayor and the vice-mayor of Moscow, as well as numerous other figures close to Putin. His outlet Meduza reported that Golunov had been receiving threats in recent months.

According to Meduza, Golunov was deprived of sleep for two days, and severely beaten during interrogation. On Saturday, he had to be hospitalized with doctors noting, among other things, a concussion and a broken rib.

Despite Golunov’s demands, the police refused for several days to test him for drugs. A drug test on Monday for a court hearing found that Golunov had not consumed any illegal substances. A district court in Moscow released Golunov on Monday and put him under house arrest for two months. Pictures released by the Interior Ministry that allegedly showed drugs at Golunov’s home were later proven to have been taken in other houses during drug raids by the police. The frame-up character of Golunov’s arrest has been so obvious that even the state-sponsored media raised questions about it.

The Moscow ombudsman, the capital’s head of the Interior Ministry and the State Prosecutor General all became involved in the case, and an advisor of Russian President Vladimir Putin asked to receive reports on it.

Several hundred people reportedly protested on Saturday for Golunov’s release; further protests are planned for Wednesday, June 12, which is a national holiday in Russia. On Monday, Kommersant’, Vedomosti and RBC all carried the same front page, entitled “I/We are Ivan Golunov.” A joint editorial declared that Golunov might have been arrested because of his “professional activity” and demanded that the actions of the Interior Ministry be investigated. The issues of the three newspapers sold out within a few hours and are now being auctioned off online. Famous Russian artists, journalists, rappers and comedians joined a video denouncing Golunov’s arrest.

Hashtags like #IamIvanGolunov and #FreeGolunov found significant support on Twitter. According to social media statistics, the name Ivan Golunov was mentioned more often than any other name on social media on Tuesday, including that of President Putin.

[Picture: The front pages of Kommersant’, Vedomosti and RBC on Monday]

Apparently stunned by the blowback and fearing that the opposition to Golunov’s arrest could escalate and trigger a larger movement against the Putin regime, the Interior Ministry decided on Tuesday to have all the charges dropped and announced that Golunov would be released from house arrest. The policemen involved in his case were suspended.

There is little question that the arrest of Golunov was politically motivated and constitutes an assault on free speech and other basic democratic rights. It occurred under conditions of a global war on journalism, which has been spearheaded by the illegal persecution of WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange. It struck, not least of all, because of that context, a core in Russian society.

However, the political forces opposing Golunov’s arrest are thoroughly reactionary and do so not in the interest of “free speech,” but for the purposes of advancing the imperialist-led anti-Putin campaign. They include the right-wing, pro-US Russian oppositionist Alexei Navalny, who has participated in fascist-led “Russian Marches,” British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and various mouthpieces of US imperialism, including the New York Times.

In an exercise of shameless hypocrisy, the same politicians and media that have fully supported the persecution, torture and illegal detention of Julian Assange, and the censorship of the Internet, now decry the arrest of Golunov as an assault on free speech and media freedom.

In a particularly stark example, British Foreign Secretary Hunt, who had denounced a UN report exposing the systematic torture of Julian Assange as “wrong” and has publicly endorsed Assange’s extradition to the United States, tweeted: “Very concerned by arrest of Russian investigative journalist, Ivan Golunov of @meduzaproject. Journalists must be free to hold power to account without fear of retribution. We are following his case closely. #FreeGolunov #DefendMediaFreedom.”

On Tuesday, the New York Times, which has blacked out almost entirely the US-led persecution of Assange and Chelsea Manning and the protests internationally against their detention, reported extensively on the arrest of Golunov and protest actions against it under the headline “Reporter’s Arrest Sets Off Widespread Protests in Russia.” By Monday, the newspaper had already run another long article on “free speech” in Russia, quoting one figure associated with the liberal opposition after another, to decry the assault on free speech under Putin and praise the opposition’s activities on YouTube.

It is not difficult to understand the reasons for the New York Times’ concern with “free speech” in Russia: it directly coincides with the interests of US imperialism, which for years has been engaged in a massive campaign aimed at pressuring, undermining and ultimately toppling the Putin regime in Russia.

In the case of Golunov, the defense of “free speech” by the US media and Western politicians is facilitated by the fact that he, like many Russian journalists close to the liberal opposition, has focused his investigations on corruption cases involving figures that were close to or politically aligned with the Russian president, including former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych who was toppled in a US- and German-backed coup in Kiev in February 2014. His journalistic work thus could be easily exploited for the anti-Putin campaign in the Western media and by the pro-US liberal opposition in Russia.

Had Golunov dared expose war crimes of US imperialism or any other major imperialist power, these outlets would have no doubt maintained near-complete silence about his case, as they have done with regard to the persecution of Assange and Manning, and the charges brought against a French journalist who exposed French arms sales to Saudi Arabia for the criminal war in Yemen.

US flight attendants speak out over uniforms that cause illness

Brian Brown & Tom Hall

Body rashes. Burning throat and eyes. Coughing and headaches. These are just some of the medical symptoms American Airlines flight attendants have been dealing with since the rollout of new uniforms for more than 70,000 airline employees in September 2016.

Many Delta Air Lines workers are reporting similar health issues with their work uniforms, which were produced by a different manufacturer.

One of many flight attendants with irritated skin symptoms. Credit: AFA-CWA

“They rolled out three years ago, and when I opened the box, this awful fishy, chemical smell hit me,” one American Airlines flight attendant told the World Socialist Web Site.

“I washed everything several times. My house stunk. I tried to wear it, and it gave me rashes, headaches, chest tightening, dry cough,” she continued. “I figured out it was the uniform. I quit wearing it and was better, but if I was around others wearing the uniform, I got the symptoms. I would get rashes on my chest, neck and arms. I wore the skirt that was lined. My arms would get a rash because they would brush against the skirt. It’s been going on three years.”

After discussing her symptoms with co-workers, she realized that her physical ailments were widespread and that their uniforms were likely the cause. “We just sort of figured it out. That was the only common denominator, and you felt better when you took it off within an hour,” she said. Over 5,000 American Airlines employees have filed complaints that their uniforms have made them ill.

The company is preparing to replace the uniforms with those provided by a different supplier. However, this change will not be completed until 2022. In the meantime, American Airlines is allowing workers who experienced illness to choose alternative clothing until the new line of uniforms is completed sometime in 2022. However, uniforms from the new manufacturer, Lands’ End, have been the source of almost identical complaints from flight attendants at Delta.

American Airlines and the company that supplied the uniforms—Twin Hill, a subsidiary of the company Tailored Brands, which also owns clothing outlets Men’s Wearhouse and Jos. A. Bank—have stated, “The uniforms are safe and designed with the appropriate levels of chemicals used to sustain the quality of the work uniforms.” American Airlines insists that its uniforms are safe to wear and have spent millions on tests to prove that the uniforms are safe.

American Airlines

Twin Hill has been dealing with lawsuits from other airline industry workers making similar complaints about the safety of their uniforms. Around 10 percent of employees at Alaska Airlines reported adverse reactions when it rolled out Twin Hill uniforms in 2011. Alaska Airlines later dropped Twin Hill as its uniform vendor, but not before flight attendants filed a lawsuit against Twin Hill in 2013. A similar suit by American Airlines flight attendants filed last year is still pending.

Independent studies have found high levels of carcinogenic material in the uniforms’ fabric. However, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA) union conducted its own research on the uniforms and found that one piece of the uniform, a collar, was found to have levels of cadmium higher than the acceptable textile industry standard. The APFA’s test also determined the uniforms contain formaldehyde, nickel, and tetrachlorophenol, a corrosive chemical known to cause eye irritation.

A Harvard study from 2017 also found a high correlation between the introduction of Twin Hill uniforms at Alaska Airlines and self-reported symptoms such as rashes and irritated skin, shortness of breath and blurred vision.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), a unit of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, issued a health hazard evaluation of symptomatic reactions believed to be tied to uniforms supplied to the tens of thousands of American Airlines employees.

“We are the new Radium Girls,” Heather Poole, a flight attendant and published author who has detailed working conditions facing flight attendants, told the World Socialist Web Site.This refers to female factory workers in the early 20th century poisoned by the radioactive material in the self-luminous paint they used to paint watch dials. The companies lied to their workforce, claiming the paint was harmless, even as their employees suffered from anemia, necrosis of the jaw and other symptoms of radiation poisoning.

Heather Poole, American Airlines flight attendant. Credit: Heather Poole

“It took them years to get sick, so the company would deny responsibility. But they had tumors on their faces and other horrific injuries. Their bones would disintegrate from the inside out and their jaws would fall off. And the company was able to legally deny it when it was so obvious. It was mostly women workers, who considered it a highly desirable job. It’s the same with us.

“You have to understand that these uniforms are not resale clothing. At Lands’ End, the shirt you wear is not the same as my uniform. That’s part of our problem because the airline, in public statements, compares our uniforms to retail items by the same companies. But they put chemicals like formaldehyde in our uniforms, and a lot of other things we don’t know about, to make it durable.”

Heather took medical leave in August 2018 after she began experience symptoms such as shortness of breath, elevated heart rate and fatigue. “Then I started having anxiety. I almost dreaded going to the airport. Why was I having these feelings? And this young flight attendant said that the heart monitor on her watch saw heart-rate spikes.”

She says that, to her knowledge, not a single worker has successfully obtained workers’ compensation benefits due to adverse reactions to their uniforms. American Airlines uses the infamous claims administration company Sedgwick to handle its workers’ comp cases. The World Socialist Web Site has interviewed Delta flight attendants and Amazon workers who have suffered serious workplace injuries only to be systematically denied care by Sedgwick and even harassed by Sedgwick’s private detectives.

“Sedgwick spins it by claiming that it is just allergies, meaning they don’t have to cover it,” Heather said. “How do you find a doctor? When you do, how does he know what the chemicals are when the company keeps insisting it is safe?

“The union is doing nothing,” she added. “They are just counting numbers. Twin Hill got to them, I think, because they are not helpful at all anymore.”

The widespread health problems reported by airline workers come in the context of a regime of brutal cost-cutting and exploitation by management at major air carriers, the result of years of consolidation and layoffs in the industry. Delta Air Lines recently was exposed attempting to lock a flight crew into their aircraft as it sat at the gate. The crew was approaching the company’s maximum duty hours, the most they can be required to work without a break.

Fearing a delay or cancellation if the crew insisted on taking their break, and without a backup crew available, Delta management instructed the gate agent to keep the door to the jet bridge closed.

“A lot of flight attendants are afraid to speak,” Heather said. “They will just fire you. It’s like an abusive relationship. Because of seniority, you don’t just start over where you left off, you start off at the bottom at less than $20,000 per year. If you speak out, they’ll find a reason to fire you. There are so many loopholes that it’s easy to fire.

“At first, I felt so hopeless. I felt like, ‘they’re just going to get away with it.’ But I decided to publicize it. Every day I write about it and tweet about it. My co-workers hear me and are going to learn about it. Before social media, they could bury this kind of stuff. Now, they can’t make it disappear.

“It’s criminal what they’re doing and they think they can get away with it, and they have for so long. But then it gets to be too big. And then they get caught. They’ve gotten so cocky they can’t cover it up anymore.”

Australia: Worst economic slowdown since global financial crisis

Mike Head 

Among the many lies told throughout the recent Australian election campaign was that the economy was headed for a period of recovering, and then accelerating, growth. This fraud underpinned all the bogus spending promises, as limited as they were, of both the ruling Liberal-National Coalition and the opposition Labor Party.

As the Socialist Equality Party warned during the election, this charade has been quickly shattered. Mounting concerns about the fallout from the worsening trade and economic war launched by the US against China are compounding the impact of falling house prices, plunging construction work and declining real wages.

Gross domestic product (GDP) figures released last week showed that economic growth was just 0.4 percent in the three months ended March. The resulting 1.8 percent annual expansion was the weakest since the 2008-09 global financial crisis, and just half the post-World War II average of 3.5 percent.

For the first time since the 1982 recession, per capita GDP—economic output per person—fell for the third consecutive quarter, confirming that a per capita downturn has already begun.

Financial industry analysts are warning of the possibility of the first outright recession for nearly 30 years. AMP economist Shane Oliver revised up his probability of a recession in 2020 from 15 percent to 25 percent.

The GDP results were far lower than even the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) downgraded forecast of 1.7 percent for the 12 months to June 30, let alone the 2.75 percent growth forecast in the government’s recent budget and its pre-election economic and fiscal outlook.

Because of the slump, rising unemployment and near-zero inflation, the RBA cut official interest rates by 25 points to an all-time low of 1.25 percent last Tuesday. These are uncharted waters, well below the “emergency” 3 percent level set in 2009 amid the global meltdown.

Because of the speed of the slide toward recession, the finance markets are betting on further rate cuts. Trading on rates futures imply a 50-50 chance of another cut to 1 percent next month. A majority of 44 economists polled by Reuters predicted a second cut in August, with some also expecting a third move.

In a speech last Tuesday, RBA Governor Philip Lowe said it was “not unreasonable” to expect a cash rate of 1 percent by the end of the year, with “the main downside risk being the international trade disputes, which have intensified recently.”

Lowe also referred to the “main domestic uncertainty” in his statement the next day announcing the rate cut. He referred to “the outlook for household consumption” being “affected by a protracted period of low-income growth and declining housing prices.”

The GDP figures revealed that household spending climbed only 1.7 percent over the year, barely more than population growth. This reflects nine years of declining income, especially for working class people. Overall, average household disposable income remains lower in real terms than in 2010.

Consumption of “discretionary” items, such as restaurant meals and entertainment, fell in the March quarter, while consumption of essentials, like electricity, health services and rent, continued to climb.

Years of stagnating or falling real wages have sent the average household debt to income ratio to a record high of near 200 percent, creating financial stresses now intensified by falling home prices. Since a six-year property bubble began bursting in 2017, house prices have fallen 14.9 percent in Sydney and 11.1 percent in Melbourne, the two biggest cities.

The downturn in the housing market is also leading to falling construction. In the March quarter, it declined 2.5 percent, and was 3.1 percent lower over the year, a far cry from 10 percent plus annual growth rates achieved as recently as three years ago.

The residential construction slump is set to deepen, with dwelling approvals in April down 24 percent on a year ago.

Recession has been avoided, so far, by increased government infrastructure spending, primarily on business-related projects, and higher prices for iron ore exports, due to global supply disruptions, including a burst dam disaster in Brazil.

Government spending accounted for nearly 80 percent of GDP growth over the past 12 months.

The latest signs of recession followed a shock inflation result of zero during the March quarter. This indicated a rapidly stalling economy and pushed the annual rate down from 1.8 percent to 1.3 percent. Financial commentators expressed fears of a deflationary spiral, in which heavily-indebted consumers delay purchases in the hope of waiting for lower prices.

Adding to the slump are major job cuts, including an estimated 50,000 jobs lost so far in the construction industry.

The former government-owned telecom giant Telstra announced last week it would eliminate the jobs of 10,000 contract workers over the next two years, after having laid off 5,000 contractors last year. Telstra is also axing the jobs of 8,000 direct employees—a quarter of its workforce—by the end of 2022. It is currently cutting 6,000 direct jobs over the next several months.

The Roy Morgan survey company reported that unemployment in May was at 10.3 percent, 0.5 percent higher than the same period last year, with 166,000 fewer people employed than 12 months ago.

This estimate is much higher than the current official Australian Bureau of Statistics rate for April of 5.2 percent. In addition, according to Roy Morgan, 1,223,000 workers (9.2 percent of the workforce) are now under-employed, that is seeking more work.

That made a total of nearly 2.6 million workers either unemployed or underemployed, equal to 19.5 percent of the workforce.

There are indications of worse to come. Job advertisements plummeted in May, recording the largest monthly decline since just after the 2008-9 crisis. According to ANZ Bank’s job ads series, new postings fell by 8.4 percent in May after seasonal adjustments. That left total ads down 14.9 percent over 12 months, the sharpest annual decline since 2013.

The super-rich, however, have enjoyed spectacular increases in wealth during the same year, at the expense of the working class. The 200 individuals or families on the Australian Financial Review Rich List boosted their collective wealth by 21 percent to $341.8 billion, as real wages continued to stagnate.

German Interior Ministry attacks press freedom

Gregor Link 

At the beginning of April, the World Socialist Web Site described a bill federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer submitted to the cabinet for approval, an Intelligence Services “Enabling Act.” This assessment has now been fully confirmed. The harmlessly titled bill “For the Harmonization of the Secret Service Law” hides a comprehensive attack on fundamental democratic rights.

The law “removes the remaining restrictions on the activities of the secret services, which were anchored in the constitution and laws of the Federal Republic after the terror of the Third Reich,” we warned. It undermined basic rights, such as postal and telecommunications secrecy and the inviolability of the home.

Meanwhile, more details and plans have become known. For example, the current bill allows the intelligence agencies to secretly spy on journalists and their editors. The secret services would be permitted to hack the servers, computers and smartphones of publishers, broadcasters and freelance journalists.

This would remove editorial confidentiality, which enables journalists to protect their sources. Reporters Without Borders (ROG) warns that the prohibition on “seeking the identity of a journalistic source through searching editorial offices could be circumvented digitally via an online search.” This would mean “media workers and their sources lose the basis for a trusting cooperation,” said ROG CEO Christian Mihr.

In an online search, the authorities would use “Trojan” programs. These exploit security vulnerabilities, using programs the authorities usually purchase on the black market, which are infiltrated into the target system, and, unnoticed by the user, enable the remote viewing of files, programs and messages on a device. They can also manipulate the device.

According to the bill, this would be possible without those involved having committed a crime. It is enough if it involves a “political process” that is “of concern to the intelligence service.” Judicial approval is not necessary—the domestic intelligence service itself would weigh up whether its interests outweighed the right to editorial secrecy. Only the so-called G-10 parliamentary commission, which meets in secret, would control these decisions.

Reporters Without Borders points out that such online raids would be just the tip of the iceberg. Other measures included in the draft law that allow the secret services to spy on journalistic work include monitoring encrypted communications between media workers and sources, retrieving travel data for research trips and establishing international databases accessible to both intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies.

In a statement, the German Journalists Association (DJV) describes the “secret digital spying on editorial staff, journalists and their sources” as an attack on journalists’ right to refuse to testify and notes, “The secret service would become a further authority, after state attorneys and other authorities that can practically decide themselves on the proportionality of monitoring journalists.”

Press freedom is currently under attack worldwide. Its harshest expression is in the prosecution of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. As WSWS has long warned, his persecution and imprisonment have created a precedent for the criminalization of journalism.

Just last week, police raided the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) editorial offices, and the home of a News Corp Australia editor, and confiscated around 10,000 documents, including notes, drafts, minutes of meetings and e-mails. In both cases, the authorities were seeking the origin of information about war crimes committed by Australian military personnel in Afghanistan and the surveillance plans of the secret services.

Under the guise of the new secret service law, the uncovering of state crimes and preparations for dictatorship in Germany is now to be criminalized. Although the grand coalition—comprised of the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD)—lost its majority in the European elections, and is further weakened by the crisis of the SPD, it is pushing forward the rearmament of the state apparatus. This is directed against the entire population.

The federal and state interior ministers will discuss plans in Kiel from June 12 to 14, allowing the security authorities to have comprehensive access to all types of electronic devices. Home assistance systems such as Amazon’s “Alexa,” digital voice assistants such as Apple’s “Siri” and Google’s “Assistant,” as well as “smart” televisions, refrigerators, lawn mowers, alarm systems and cars, will be bugged to provide law enforcement with insight into every aspect of daily life. Even gaming platforms will in future be infiltrated by the secret service.

While the intelligence agencies have been able to read normal SMS messages and listen in to landline phones for many years, according to news weekly Der Spiegel, Interior Minister Seehofer (CSU) wants to ensure that even encrypted chats and phone calls can be read and intercepted in future. To this end, messenger services such as WhatsApp and Telegram would be obliged to record the communications of their customers and provide them in unencrypted form to the authorities. Providers who do not comply with this would be banned by the Federal Network Agency for Germany.

Increasingly, state circles are openly calling for the formal abolition of the separation of powers between the police and intelligence services, which has long been ignored in practice. The legal separation of these powers had been enshrined in Germany’s post-war constitution to prevent a resurgence of Hitler’s Secret State Police (Gestapo).

For example, on the 70th anniversary of the Basic Law, as the post-war constitution is called, Torsten Voß, head of the Hamburg state secret service, called for a weakened “modified separation law.” In Mecklenburg-Pomerania, Interior Minister Lorenz Caffier (CDU) demanded a rethinking of the separation rules at a meeting of the East German secret service authorities in Schwerin. These are regarded as “sometimes a huge obstacle” for the machinations of the authorities.

Hamburg state Interior Minister Andy Grote (SPD) was also open to the weakening of the separation rules, stating that it would enable the targeting of Muslim children more efficiently.

The moves to return to a police state and dictatorship in Germany do not spring solely from the brains of a few interior ministers. The unprecedented attacks on the basic democratic rights of the working class are a global phenomenon, in which the ruling classes everywhere are reacting to growing social and political resistance to social inequality and militarism.

Aerospace and defense giants United Technologies and Raytheon announce merger

Kevin Reed 

The aerospace and defense corporations United Technologies (UTC) and Raytheon announced a merger over the weekend that will create a single giant entity worth a reported $100 billion. Following rumors that a deal was in the making, the two companies published a website on Sunday that made the “all-stock merger of equals” plan official.

The new firm—to be called Raytheon Technologies Corporation (RTC) and finalized in the first half of 2020—will include all of Raytheon, a leading defense industry contractor, and the defense and aerospace divisions of UTC. The latter firm had already announced plans last November to divest its Otis elevator and escalator and Carrier heating and cooling divisions. In corporate-speak, UTC said at the time that the decision allowed for “strategic focus and financial flexibility to deliver innovative customer solutions and drive long-term value.”

On the website announcing the merger under the title “Defining the Future: Aerospace and Defense,” the combined annual sales of the two entities are calculated at $77 billion. This is for UTC Pratt & Whitney fighter jet engines ($21B), UTC Collins Aerospace commercial and military aviation systems ($22B), Raytheon intelligence, space and airborne systems ($18B) and Raytheon missile and integrated defense systems ($16B).

The merger press release explains that the combined corporation “will offer a complementary portfolio of platform-agnostic aerospace and defense technologies.” It then gets to the heart of the matter, saying the deal “will offer expanded technology and R&D capabilities to deliver innovative and cost-effective solutions aligned with customer priorities and the national defense strategies of the U.S. and its allies and friends.”

Raytheon Tomahawk crusie missile [Credit: US Navy]

Consolidation in the defense and aerospace industries has been intensifying in recent decades, leaving all but a handful of huge contractors to provide the US military with the weapons it uses to raise entire cities, destroy countries and kill millions of people. According to the New York Times, getting bigger gives these firms “more scale and cost savings that can be poured into research and development, as well as shareholder returns.”

Indeed, a bullet point in the UTC-Raytheon press release highlights the fact that the deal is expected to return $18 to $20 billion in capital to shareowners within the first 36 months of the combined company. An investor selling point for the merger—as well as a likely rationale for US government regulatory agency approval of the deal—is that there is little overlap in capabilities and products between the two firms.

Wall Street and the corporate media are giddy over the creation of a new American military colossus. For the financial elite, the prospect of a single entity that is second to Boeing in aerospace and Lockheed-Martin in defense is too good to be true.

Raytheon traces its history back to the electronics industry of the 1920s in Cambridge, Massachusetts. With connections to MIT, the company developed radar systems for the US military during WWII. In the post-war era, the company specialized in missile guidance technologies and consumer products such as refrigerators, air conditioners and microwave ovens.

Beginning in the 1980s, Raytheon made a series of acquisitions that included the Beech Aircraft Corporation, Chrysler and General Motors defense and electronics divisions, Hughes Aircraft Company and Magnavox Electronic Systems. By the year 2000, Raytheon had divested itself of most divisions not related to the defense industry.

Among Raytheon’s most important products is the Tomahawk subsonic cruise missile. Every US military operation and regime change campaign since the Gulf War of 1991—from Iraq and Afghanistan to Yugoslavia, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Syria—have included the launching of Raytheon-made Tomahawk cruise missiles, mostly from naval ships and submarines.

In April 2017, the US Navy launched 59 Tomahawk missiles against a Syrian airfield, claimed by the Trump administration without proof to be the launching site of a government chemical attack on civilians. One year later, another 66 cruise missiles were fired on a supposed “Syrian chemical weapons facility.” For each one of these missiles, the Pentagon paid Raytheon at least $1.4 million.

The Tomahawk missile can be launched from long distance (800–1500 miles), fly at extremely low altitudes (90 to 150 feet), at subsonic speeds (550 mph) and can follow moving targets. After launch, the missile is propelled by its own engine and is nearly undetectable. It contains a 1,000-pound fragmentary warhead that often includes bomblets designed to cause maximum destruction and human casualties upon impact.

Enormous sums are being poured into further development of the Raytheon Tomahawk cruise missile, including weaponizing any remaining fuel during short range attacks into a “fuel-air explosive” that creates a thermobaric explosion more powerful than the onboard warhead.

United Technologies was founded as United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) in the 1930s and specialized in commercial and military aircraft frames and engines. During WWII, it also entered into business dealings with the US military and signed lucrative wartime contracts.

After the war, its Pratt & Whitney and Sikorsky divisions provided jet engines and helicopters in both the military and commercial markets. UAC also made acquisitions in post-war passenger rail systems for Penn Central Railroad and Amtrak.

UTC’s Pratt & Whitney brand of military jet engines is among the most widely used in the world. With over 7,000 engines utilized by the militaries of 34 countries—including the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Norway and other allied nations—UTC is the world’s foremost provider of war-making jet propulsion technology.

Pratt & Whitney’s F135 engine is used in the US Air Force F-22 Raptor (made by Lockheed Martin), a stealth and super-maneuverable “single weapons platform.” The F-22, which costs $150 million apiece, has a glass cockpit and is armed with six missile launchers, four long range and two short range. The four launchers can be replaced with two bomb racks that can carry one 1,000-pound or two 250-pound bombs in each.

The Pratt & Whitney powered F-22 can also carry air-to-ground weapons with guidance systems and it has an internally mounted 20mm rotary cannon that is embedded on the right wing. The fighter jet can drop a guided bomb from 50,000 feet while cruising at Mach 1.5 and hit a moving target from 24 miles away. The F-22 was used in airstrikes against Libyan air defense in March 2011 and also in airstrikes against Syria in September 2014.

The combination of Raytheon and United Technologies demonstrates several features of capitalism in the twenty-first century. Firstly, that the parasitic financial elite is demanding ever-greater monopolistic enterprises to sustain their accumulation of untold billions and trillions of dollars regardless of the destructive purposes of their investments. Secondly, that the greatest accomplishments of science and technology are subordinated to the military-industrial complex required by American imperialism to further its ambition as the barbaric hegemon of world affairs.

When asked about the merger on Monday, President Donald Trump said he was “a little concerned” about the deal and the potential it has to eliminate competition in the defense sector.

During an interview on CNBC, Trump said, “It’s hard to negotiate when you have two companies and sometimes you get one bid. … The United States has to buy things; does that make it less competitive?” He should know, since exclusive bids were a cornerstone of his real estate hustling operations. In any case, it is likely that the Pentagon and Wall Street will have their way regardless of Trump’s phony objections.