Report From Iran: The Country Moves Onward

Ugo Bardi

Iran is a country that maintains something of the fascination it had in ancient times, when it was both fabulous and remote. In our times, it remained somewhat remote, but also something that couldn’t be ignored as it went through a series of dramatic events, from the revolution of 1979, the hostage crisis, the Iraq-Iran war from 1980 to 1988, and much more. The latest political convulsion was the “Green Revolution” in 2009 that quickly abated, but the country clearly keeps evolving, especially in its relations with the West. It is impossible for anyone, including perhaps the Iranian themselves, to evaluate everything that’s going on in their country. For sure, Iran is complex, changing, varied, and fascinating, perhaps as much as it was at the time of Marco Polo when it was the hub of the merchants carrying silk and spice from China. These are some notes from a trip to Tehran where I stayed for a week in October 2019.

The first impression you have when you arrive in Tehran is of chaos: heavy traffic, throngs of people, movement and noise everywhere. But it takes little time to understand that this is friendly chaos. Especially if you happen to be Italian, you find yourself rapidly at ease in the confusion. Tehran is appropriately exotic in the bazaars, but also quiet in the suburbs, and very modern in places such as the shopping center near the Azadi lake, where you could think you are in Paris.

One thing about Iran is that it is a remarkably friendly place. That’s not unexpected: in most places in the world, the local people will normally be able to separate real foreign visitors from the image their TV presents to them. Most people everywhere are naturally friendly if they don’t feel threatened, or feel that they are being swindled or chided. If, as a visitor, you approach them in a friendly manner, they will almost always reciprocate in the same way. In Iran, Western governments are often perceived (and for good reasons) as evil entities, but that doesn’t apply to individual foreign visitors.

Just to give you some idea of the Iranian attitude, let me tell you of when I was sitting with my wife at a local restaurant (by the way, if you happen to be in Teheran, try the Baba Mirza on the Mirza Kurchak Khan street: Iranian fast food, absolutely great!). There, we entered in a conversation with another customer who turned out to be a civil engineer. When he learned that we were heading to see the Abgineh (glassware) Museum of Tehran (again, a highly recommended visit), he accompanied us there and then he insisted to pay our tickets in order, he said, “to show us the traditional Iranian hospitality.” That surely takes Iran several notches upward in the classification of friendly countries but it was not the only example in our experience in Teheran. That friendliness may also extend to American visitors even at the times when the US was referred to as the “Great Satan,” as Terence Ward reports in his book “Searching for Hussein” (2003).

This said, Iran doesn’t seem to be just friendly to foreigners, it seems to be friendly also to Iranians — at least these days. Of course, for a foreigner it may be difficult to detect social tensions brewing below the surface but what I can tell you is that in Tehran there is no heavy security apparatus detectable, unlike what you can see in many Western cities. We were taken to see from outside the residence of president Hassan Rouhani in a building in the Northern Area of Tehran: the security of the President seemed to require only a few policemen standing around the building. Of course, there may have been other, invisible, security measures. But it is impressive how they don’t seem to expect serious troubles.

In terms of social tensions, the obvious thing that comes to the mind of a Westerner about Iran, just as for all Islamic countries, is the status of women. Iran and Saudi Arabia are probably the only states in the world enforcing by law the Islamic tradition for women to cover their heads. Yet, the time when women were harassed by the police if they didn’t cover their heads well enough seems to be a thing of the past. In Iran, if a woman likes to wear a black chador that makes her look like a European nun, she is free to do so and many do. But most Iranian women, at least in Tehran, tend to interpret the rules creatively. The headscarf, the hijab, is worn halfway over the head and it is often light and brightly colored. The dress is also colored and decorated, women also wear jewelry and makeup. The result is often very elegant and lively. My wife reports that after a few days in Tehran she felt completely at ease wearing the hijab and that she even felt a little strange when she had to abandon it, coming back to Europe.

Then, of course, the impressions of a week may be badly misleading, but what I noted in terms of the social structure of the country seems to be consistent with the data. In Iran, women are still a minority in terms of being part of the workforce, but their role is important and larger than in other Middle-Eastern countries. Also, the gap seems to be rapidly closing. Of course, Iran remains a relatively poor country: in terms of GDP per person (PPP), it ranks at about half that of Italy and one third the value of the US. Nevertheless, in terms of social equality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, Iran does better than the United States, although not as well as Italy. Iranians also have a good public health service. 

A country’s educational system is a good indicator of social cohesion: dictatorial governments have no interest in an educated citizenship — they rather tend to exterminate their citizens or use them as cannon fodder. Iran, instead, shines in this area with the state providing free of charge education for all citizens with impressive results. Some 4.5 million students enrolled in university courses, which is only slightly less than in the US in relative terms and much larger than in Italy. Iran has one of the largest ratios of students to the workforce anywhere in the world.

Of course, an evaluation of the Iranian education system would have to consider the scientific level of the universities and it is true that, right now, they don’t score as high as Western ones. But the universities I visited seemed to be staffed by competent people and the research level was good. Here, one has to take into account the language barrier that often puts non-native English speakers at a disadvantage in the competition for space in the best scientific journals. I noted also that the research institutes I visited were massively staffed with women although, as it happens in Europe, the top-level positions are still mostly in the hands of men. That may rapidly change, though.

Islam is also part of the national Iranian culture: visiting Iran at the time of the Arba’een celebration gives you some idea of the importance of some religious traditions: you need not be a Shi’a Muslim to understand how deep the feelings for these traditions run and how fascinating they can be. Nevertheless, I would say that the current Iranian society is remarkably secularized. I can’t quantify that, just take it as a personal impression.

And now something about the current situation and perspectives. The first question is population: The number of Iranian citizens reached 80 million and it continues to grow, although at a progressively slower pace: Iran is moving toward its demographic transition, but it is not there, yet. It is also a population that’s becoming more and more urbanized, a typical characteristic of many non-Western countries. That may be a serious problem in the future: Iran is a large country but mostly dry and only a fraction of its land is arable. The result is that food must be imported from abroad. So far, this has not been a problem: globalization has made it possible to buy food anywhere and the result has been the near disappearing of hunger and famines worldwide. But things keep changing: globalization is on its way out and we may see a return of the old maxim that says “thou shalt starve thy neighbor into submission.” The food supply problem seems to be recognized by the Iranian government, hence the emphasis on research on desalination and water management (incidentally, the reason why I was in Tehran). But desalinated water, so far, has been way too expensive to be used in agriculture. In any case, water management is a vital element in the future of Iran.

Then, there is the question of oil production. Here are the latest available data for Iran. (From “peakoilbarrel.com” — the Y scale is in thousands of barrels per day)

At its peak, around 1978, the Iranian oil production had reached about 6 million barrels per day making Iran one of the main oil producers in the world. After the revolution and the war, it reached a certain stability near 4 Mb/day. But you see the effect of the economic sanctions: Iran’s production was nearly halved and exports nearly zeroed. At the current prices of oil, it is a loss of revenue of tens of billions of dollars, not at all negligible for a GDP of less than 500 billion dollars.

The Iranian economy can survive the loss of revenues from oil: it is surviving it right now, although with difficulties. But, in a certain sense, the sanctions are not completely bad: they can be seen as a stimulus to move in a direction in which Iran has to move anyway. The national oil resources are not infinite and the gradual loss of demand worldwide is going to bring Iran to a point where it will have to cease to be an oil-based economy. These are the same challenges faced by all countries in the world: abandon oil and move to an economy based on renewable energy. It is a difficult challenge that won’t probably be met without trauma and suffering, but it is not a choice. Willing or not, we all have to go in that direction.

One problem, here, is the evident lack, in Iran, of what we call “environmental awareness.” Of course, university researchers and teachers are aware of climate change, but most people in Iran seem to think that it is just one more Western hoax concocted to force them into submission. Seeing the world from the Iranian side, I can’t fault them for being oversuspicious. In recent times, Western governments have been doing their best to lose even the last shreds of credibility they had managed to maintain. And the results are easily detectable: I asked a group of about 30 students of the faculty of engineering of Tehran University what they thought of Greta Thunberg. It turned out that none of them had any idea of who she was.

Overall, though, I am not pessimistic about the future of Iran. Facing a difficult challenge, Iran has some advantages. One is that of being at the hub of the nascent Eurasian exchange zone. Another is to be a well-insulated country that makes it especially suitable for solar energy. In the end, I would agree with the idea proposed by Hamid Dabashi in “Iran, the Birth of a Nation” (2016) where he notes that Iran was a nation before it was a state. The Iranian nation is kept together by strong cultural traditions and linguistic ties. It has survived tremendous challenges in the recent past, it has a chance to survive the new ones that will come.

Popular Protest: How effective is it?

James M. Dorsey 

If there is one theme, beyond corruption and a host of economic and social grievances, that have driven protests — large and small, local, sectoral and national – across the globe, it has been a call for dignity.

Reflecting a global breakdown in confidence in political systems and leadership, the quest for dignity and social justice links protests in Middle Eastern and North African countries like Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Algeria and Sudan to demonstrations in nations on multiple continents ranging from Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Haiti to France, Zimbabwe, Indonesia, Pakistan and Hong Kong.

The global protests amount to the latest phase of an era of defiance and dissent that erupted in 201l and unfolded most dramatically in the Middle East and North Africa with the toppling of the autocratic leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.

Of the four Arab nations, only Tunisia has produced a relatively successful transition from autocracy to a more democratic form of government.

Regional and domestic counterrevolutionary forces staged a military coup in 2013 to remove Egypt’s first and only democratically elected president from office, installing one of the country’s most brutal and repressive regime in its post-independence history.

Libya and Yemen are wracked by civil wars, fueled by foreign intervention. Syria has been devastated by an almost nine-year long civil war between forces supported by outside forces that were determined at whatever cost to decide the fate of the country’s own popular revolt.

Like elsewhere in the region, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan used the 2013 Gezi Park protests, the largest anti-government demonstrations in the decade of his party’s rule, as well as a failed military coup in 2016, to reverse Turkish strides towards democracy and political pluralism.

The Middle East and North Africa’s retreat into more repressive authoritarianism and autocracy coupled with crackdowns of various sorts in Russia, China, Hong Kong, and Kazakhstan, to name just a few examples, has prompted analysts to wonder whether mass protest remains an effective way of achieving political change.

“Only 20 years ago, 70 percent of protests demanding systemic political change got it — a figure that had been growing steadily since the 1950s. In the mid-2000s, that trend suddenly reversed. Worldwide, protesters’ success rate has since plummeted to only 30 percent,” concluded New York Times journalists Max Fisher and Amanda Taub in a column exploring the roots of the current wave of discontent.

Mr. Fisher and Ms. Taub base their conclusion on a study by political scientist Erica Chenoweth that suggests that illiberals, authoritarians and autocrats have become more adept at thwarting protest using what she terms “smart repression.”

Yet, “smart repression” that involves in Ms. Chenoweth’s definitions efforts to ensure the loyalty of elites; greater brutality and violence by security and paramilitary proxies; enhanced censorship and criminalization of dissent; and depicting revolts as foreign-inspired conspiracies and forms of terrorism is at best an upgraded version of standard authoritarian and autocratic responses.

It’s hard to describe what is smart or more sophisticated about the repression involved in the military coup in Egypt and its immediate aftermath in which more than 1,000 people were killed; the arbitrary detentions of prominent businessmen, members of the ruling in family, religious figures and activists in what amounted to a power grab by Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman; the mass detention of an estimated one million Turkic Muslims in re-education camps in China’s troubled, north-western province of Xinjiang; or the arrests of tens of thousands in countries like Turkey and Egypt.

What may provide a better explanation of the reduced effectiveness of protest may be the fact that for the first time since World War Two, the number of countries moving toward authoritarianism exceeds the number moving toward democracy as a result of what political scientists Anna Luehrmann and Staffan Lindberg have dubbed “a third wave of autocratization.”

Underlying that wave is the rise of a critical mass of world leaders that share a belief in illiberal, authoritarian and autocratic principles of governance and disregard human and minority rights in favour of a supremacist endorsement of the rights of an ethnic or religious group.

The rise of those leaders is in many ways the flip side of the protests. They often are political outsiders, men who may or may not be part of the elite like Donald J, Trump in the United States, Victor Orban in Hungary, Narendra Modi in India, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines but project themselves as forces of change that will tackle the elites’ grip on power.

Aspects of their civilisationalism and reactionary nationalism has empowered and is supported to varying degrees by often opposed political forces that include far-right, anti-migrant and supremacist ethnic and religious groups as well as popular leftists, including some of the Democratic Party presidential candidates in the United States.

The result is a potential vicious circle in which civilizational attitudes, increasingly restricted democratic rights and greater repression marginalize ever more societal groups including significant segments of the middle class as well as minorities, who like in the case of Hong Kong, Iraq, Sudan or the Rohingya, see their resilience hardened by perceptions of having northing more to lose. Violence on all sides of the divide increases with the risk of militants having a greater appeal.

The conclusions of Ms. Chenoweth, Ms. Luehrmann and Mr. Lindberg would bear that out. If protest is people’s only peaceful alternative in response to unresponsive governments and political forces, undermining the protests’ effectiveness narrows the choices to affect change.

From that perspective, the scholars conclusions would amount to a contemporary adaptation of writer George Orwell’s 1944 assertion that “all revolutions are failures, but they are not all the same failure.”

However, that may be prematurely jumping to conclusions despite what the scholars project trends.

To be sure, the jury is still out on whether the revolts in Tunisia and Sudan will produce enduring political change.

But eight years on from the Arab revolts in 2011, protesters. determined to secure recognition and their place in society, underline lessons learnt by no longer declaring victory once a leader is forced to make concessions or resign as in Algeria and Sudan and by transcending easily exploitable sectarian ethnic and religious divides like in Iraq and Lebanon, a mosaic of 18 carefully balanced sectarian groups.

Said Middle East scholar Hanin Ghaddar: “For the first time in a long time, Lebanese have realized that the enemy is within—it is their own government and political leaders—not an outside occupier or regional influencer… Political leaders have been unable to control the course of the protests, which are taking place across all sects and across all regions… What brought them together is an ongoing economic crisis that has hurt people from all sects and regions.”

The realization that street power needs to be sustained until the modalities of transition are in place is key to enhancing the chances of protest retaining its effectiveness.

The future of protest as an effective tool depends similarly on perceptions of a common interest that transcends sect, ethnicity and class becoming part of the fabric of society.

Al-Baghdadi’s Successors and Islamic State’s Affiliates

Nauman Sadiq

In the event of the death of the Islamic State’s self-styled caliph, Amaq, a news agency affiliated with the Islamic State, reported on 7 August 2019 that the terrorist organization’s chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had appointed Abdullah Qardash as his successor.

Abdullah Qardash is from Tal Afar, a predominantly Sunni Muslim city in northwestern Iraq, and has served as an army officer during Saddam Hussein’s regime. Besides Qardash, two other close aides who have emerged as al-Baghdadi’s likely successors over the years are Iyad al-Obaidi, his defense minister, and Ayad al-Jumaili, the in charge of security.

Al-Jumaili has already reportedly been killed in an airstrike in April 2017 in al-Qaim region on Iraq’s border with Syria, while the whereabouts of al-Obaidi are unknown. Both al-Jumaili and al-Obaidi have also previously served as security officers in Iraq’s Baathist army under Saddam Hussein.

Regarding the creation and composition of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, apart from training and arms which were provided to Syrian militants in the training camps located in the Turkish and Jordanian border regions adjacent to Syria by the CIA in collaboration with Turkish, Jordanian and Saudi intelligence agencies, another factor that contributed to the success of the Islamic State in early 2014 when it overran Raqqa in Syria and Mosul and Anbar in Iraq was that its top cadres were comprised of former Baathist military and intelligence officers from the Saddam era.

Reportedly, hundreds of ex-Baathists constituted the top and mid-tier command structure of the Islamic State who planned all the operations and directed its military strategy. The only feature that differentiated the Islamic State from all other insurgent groups was its command structure which was comprised of professional ex-Baathists and its state-of-the-art weaponry that was provided to all militant outfits fighting in Syria by the intelligence agencies of the Western powers, Turkey, Jordan and the Gulf states.

Recently, the Islamic State’s purported “terror franchises” in Afghanistan and Pakistan have claimed a spate of bombings against the Shi’a and Barelvi Muslims who are regarded as heretics by Takfiri jihadists. But to contend that the Islamic State is responsible for suicide blasts in Pakistan and Afghanistan is to declare that the Taliban are responsible for the sectarian war in Syria and Iraq.

Both are localized militant outfits and the Islamic State without its Baathist command structure and superior weaponry is just another ragtag, regional militant outfit. The distinction between the Taliban and the Islamic State lies in the fact that the Taliban follow Deobandi sect of Sunni Islam which is a sect native to South Asia, whereas the jihadists of the Islamic State mostly belong to Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi-Salafi denomination.

Secondly, and more importantly, the insurgency in Afghanistan and the border regions of Pakistan is an indigenous Pashtun uprising which is an ethnic group native to Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan, whereas the bulk of the Islamic State’s jihadists in Syria and Iraq was comprised of Arab militants and included foreign fighters from the neighboring Middle Eastern countries, North Africa, the Central Asian states, Russia, China and even radicalized Muslims from as far away as Europe and the United States.

The so-called “Khorasan Province” of the Islamic State in the Af-Pak region is nothing more than a coalition of several breakaway factions of the Taliban and a few other inconsequential local militant outfits that have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State’s late chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in order to enhance their prestige, and draw funds and followers, but which doesn’t have any organizational and operational association with the Islamic State proper in Syria and Iraq.

The total strength of the Islamic State-Khorasan is estimated to be between 3,000 to 5,000 fighters. By comparison, the strength of the Taliban is estimated to be between 60,000 to 80,000 militants. The Islamic State-Khorasan was formed as a merger between several breakaway factions of the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban in early 2015. Later, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a Pakistani terrorist group Jundullah and Chinese Uyghur militants pledged allegiance to it.

In 2017, the Islamic State-Khorasan split into two factions. One faction, based in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province, is led by a Pakistani militant commander Aslam Farooqi, and the other faction, based in the northern provinces of Afghanistan, is led by a former Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) commander Moawiya. The latter faction also includes Uzbek, Tajik, Uyghur and Baloch militants.

In Pakistan, there are three distinct categories of militants: the Afghanistan-focused Pashtun militants; the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants; and foreign transnational terrorists, including the Arab militants of al-Qaeda, the Uzbek insurgents of Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the Chinese Uyghur jihadists of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM). Compared to tens of thousands of native Pashtun and Punjabi militants, the foreign transnational terrorists number only in a few hundred and are hence inconsequential.

Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is mainly comprised of Pashtun militants, carries out bombings against Pakistan’s state apparatus. The ethnic factor is critical here. Although the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) like to couch their rhetoric in religious terms, it is the difference of ethnicity and language that enables them to recruit Pashtun tribesmen who are willing to carry out subversive activities against the Punjabi-dominated state apparatus, while the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants have by and large remained loyal to their patrons in the security agencies of Pakistan.

Although Pakistan’s security establishment has been willing to conduct military operations against the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), which are regarded as a security threat to Pakistan’s state apparatus, as far as the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants, including the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, and the Afghanistan-focused Quetta Shura Taliban, including the Haqqani network, are concerned, they are still enjoying impunity because such militant groups are regarded as “strategic assets” by Pakistan’s security agencies.

Therefore, recent allegations by regional power-brokers that Washington has provided material support to the Islamic State-affiliate in Afghanistan and the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) as a tit-for-tat response to Pakistan’s security agencies double game of providing support to the Afghan Taliban to mount attacks against the Afghan security forces and their American backers cannot be ruled out.

In November last year, for instance, infighting between the main faction of the Afghan Taliban led by Mullah Haibatullah Akhunzada and a breakaway faction led by Mullah Mohammad Rasul left scores of fighters dead in Afghanistan’s western Herat province.

Mullah Rasul was close to Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar, and served as the governor of southwestern Nimroz province during the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. After the news of the death of Mullah Omar was made public in 2015, Mullah Rasul broke ranks with the Taliban and formed his own faction.

Mullah Rasul’s group is active in the provinces of Herat, Farah, Nimroz and Helmand, and is known to have received arms and support from the Afghan intelligence, as he has expressed willingness to recognize the Washington-backed Kabul government.

Regarding Washington’s motives for providing covert support to breakaway factions of the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban and the Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan, the US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attack, and toppled the Taliban regime with the help of the Northern Alliance comprised of ethnic Tajik and Uzbek warlords.

The leadership and fighters of the Pashtun-majority Taliban resistance movement found sanctuary in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, and mounted an insurgency against the Washington-backed Kabul government. Throughout the occupation years, Washington kept pressuring Islamabad to mount military operations in the tribal areas in order to deny safe havens to the Taliban.

However, Islamabad was reluctant to conduct military operations, which is a euphemism for all-out war, for the fear of alienating the Pashtun population of the tribal areas. After Pakistan’s military’s raid in July 2007 on a mosque (Laal Masjid) in the heart of Islamabad, which also contained a religious seminary, scores of civilians, including students of the seminary, died.

The Pakistani Taliban made the incident a rallying call for waging a jihad against Pakistan’s military. Thereafter, terror attacks and suicide bombings against Pakistan’s state apparatus peaked after the July 2007 Laal Masjid incident. Eventually, under pressure from the Obama administration, Pakistan’s military decided in 2009 to conduct military operations against militants based in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

The first military operation was mounted in the Swat valley in April 2009, the second in South Waziristan tribal agency in October the same year, and the third military operation was launched in North Waziristan and Khyber tribal agencies in June 2014. In the ensuing violence, tens of thousands of civilians, security personnel and militants lost their lives.

Although Pakistani political commentators often point fingers at the Washington-backed Kabul government in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s arch-foe India for providing money and arms to the Pakistani Taliban for waging a guerrilla war against Pakistan’s state establishment, reportedly Washington has provided covert support to the Pakistani Taliban in order to force Pakistan’s military to conduct military operations against militants based in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Keeping this background of Washington’s covert support to breakaway factions of the Afghan Taliban that have waged an insurgency against the US-backed Kabul government and to the Pakistani Taliban that has mounted a guerrilla war against Pakistan’s state establishment in mind, the allegations that Washington has provided material support to the Islamic State’s affiliate in the Af-Pak region in order to divide and weaken the Taliban resistance against American occupation of Afghanistan are not unfounded.

Evo Morales wins in Bolivia, the OAS and U.S. lose

Elson Concepcion

The irreversible victory of Evo Morales in Bolivia’s recent elections, (with 46.64% of the vote vs. 36.83% for Carlos Mesa), has shed light on several aspects of the role of the Organization of American States (OAS) and Washington throughout their campaign to destabilize popular or left-wing governments, and return control to those who raise the banners of neoliberalism and submission to the United States.

The OAS, as expected, was aligned with the losers and opted to question the voting system, and the electoral law, which states: “The candidate who surpasses the closest opponent by ten percentage points is declared the winner.”

President Evo Morales has described OAS action as an attempted coup against the Bolivian people, while the U.S. government, in addition to guiding the OAS, took direct action from its embassy in La Paz.

The OAS insisted that “there is sufficient reason to suggest a second round” and called a meeting of its Permanent Council in Washington, where the Bolivian electoral process was questioned, the possibility of fraud raised, and a call made for a second round vote, among other issues, with the sole purpose of denying Evo’s victory.

U.S. ambassador Carlos Trujillo dared to say that the delay in the vote count was due to the fact that Morales’ party was not winning.

While Nicaragua’s representative, Ruth Tapia, warned, “The OAS has no authority to intervene in the internal affairs of sovereign countries.” Similarly, Mexican ambassador Luz Elena Baños stated, “The report presented by the OAS must await the full count of electoral records.”

For its part, the Jubileo Sur Américas network has published several articles on its website recently, exposing crude U.S. interference in Bolivia’s electoral process.

Reports indicate that ships loaded with weapons have been traveling from the United States, specifically Miami, to the Chilean port of Iquique. This cargo was then shipped in containers declared as miscellanea.

Bolivian citizen Juan Carlos Rivero has also been denounced as responsible for purchasing weapons in the United States and sending those to the National Military Coordinator in Bolivia. This person has direct ties with Manfred Reyes, an opposition politician based in Miami, who is also linked to the U.S. Embassy in La Paz.

Other articles published on the Jubileo Sur Américas website indicate that U.S. diplomatic headquarters have been continuously monitoring the delivery of weapons and ammunition through secret collaborators. They have met with central leaders of the Bolivian opposition to address financing and offer advice on planned violence.

With this backing in their favor, losing opposition candidate Carlos Mesa and his closest collaborators have called for destabilizing actions, while seeking to declare themselves winners and create a kind of parallel power in the department of Santa Cruz.

Beirut Is Burning: Rebellion Against The Elites Has Commenced

Andre Vltchek

Tires are burning, smoke is rising towards the sky. It is October, the 18th day of the month, the capital city of Lebanon, in the past known as the “Paris of the East”, is covered in smoke.

For years I was warning that the country governed by corrupt, indifferent elites, could not hold together, indefinitely.

For all those five years when I was calling Beirut home, things were going down the drain. Nothing was improving: almost no public transportation, electricity shortages, contaminated and erratic water supply. Periodically, garbage has been piling up along the streets and suburban roads. Once an airplane lands and the doors open, the terrible stench of garbage welcomes us, residents of Beirut, back home.

Almost everyone knew that all this could not continue like this, forever.

The city was suffering from 4th World diseases, while simultaneously being flooded with Land Rover SUVs, Maserati and Porsche sports cars, and Armani suits.

Beiruthas almost collapsed to Jakarta levels, although, one has to admit,with extremely smart, highly educated and sophisticated elites, capable of conversing simultaneously in three world languages: French, Arabic and English. Also, with first rate art galleries, art cinemas, posh bars and nightclubs. With lavish marinas and the best bookstores in the entire Middle East.

Some say that Beirut has always been in possession of brain and guts, but something happened to its heart.

Now nothing really works here. But if you have millions of dollars, it does not really matter; you can buy anything here. If you are poor, destitute – abandon all hope. And the majority of the people here are now miserably poor. And no one even knows precisely how many are destitute, as a census is forbidden, in order ‘not to disturb religious balance’ (it was, for years, somehow agreed on, that it is better not to know how many Christians or Muslims are residing in the country).

It is certain that most of people are not rich. And now, outraged by their rulers, corrupt politicians and so-called elites, they are shouting, loudly and clearly: “Enough!”, Halas, down with the regime!”

*

The government decided to impose a tax on WhatsApp calls. Not a big deal, some would say. But it was; it is, it suddenly became a big deal. “The last drop”, perhaps.

The city exploded. Barricades were erected. Tires were set on fire. Everywhere: in the poorest as well as in the richest neighborhoods.

“Revolution!” people began shouting.

Lebanon has a history of left-wing, even Communist insurgencies. It also has its fair share of religious, right-wing fanaticism. Which one will win? Which one will be decisive, during this national rebellion?

The Communist Party is now behind several marches. But Hezbollah, until now the most solid social force in the country, is not yet convinced that the government of Saad al Hariri, should simply resign.

According to Reuters:

“Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said… that the group was not demanding the government’s resignation amid widespread national protests.

Nasrallah said in a televised speech that he supported the government, but called for a new agenda and “new spirit,” adding that ongoing protests showed the way forward was not new taxes.”

Any tax imposed on the poor would push him to call supporters to go take to the streets, Nasrallah added.”

So far, the rebellion has left countless people injured, while two Syrian immigrants lost their lives. Some local analysts say that this is the most serious uprising since the one in 2015 (which included the “You Stink!” campaign, reacting to the appalling garbage crises in Beirut and to the worsening social disaster), but others, including this author, are convinced that this is actually the most serious political catastrophe Lebanon has been facing since the 1980’s.

One hears anger, on every corner of the capital, in cafes and local stores:

“Trust is broken!”

Even those who used to be far from any political activities, are now supporting protesters.

Ms. Jehan, a local staff member at a UN office in Beirut, is one of those who found herself on the side of the rebellion:

“What is happening to Beirut and all over in Lebanon is good. It is about time we stood up. I will go too. This has nothing to do with religions. It is about our shattered lives.”

*

Reading Western mainstream media, one could begin to believe that Lebanon’s main problems are issues like foreign debt (Lebanon is, on a per capita basis, the third most indebted country on earth. The debt stands at 150% of its GDP), miniscule real reserves (US$ 10 billion), and the way the country interacts with the donors and lenders. IMF and its “advice” are constantly mentioned.

But even news agencies like Reuters have to admit that the entire mess is far from just about structural problems:

“As dollars have dried up, banks have effectively stopped lending and can no longer make basic foreign-exchange transactions for clients, one banker said.”

““The whole role of banks is to pour money into the central bank to finance the government and protect the currency,” he said. “Nothing is being done on the fiscal deficit because doing something will disrupt the systems of corruption.””

And here is the key word: “Corruption!”

Lebanon’s elites are shamelessly corrupt. Only such countries like Indonesia are able to compete with the Lebanese troglodyte clans, when it comes to stripping the entire nation of its riches.

Almost nothing is clean, or pure in Lebanon, and that is also why there aren’t any statistics available.

Money comes from the monstrous and ruthless exploitation of natural resources in West Africa. Everybody knows it, but it is never addressed, publicly. I worked in West Africa, and I know what the racist Lebanese ‘business people’ are doing there. But money stolen from the Africans does not enrich Lebanon and its people. It ends up in the Lebanese banks, and spent on lavish yachts, tacky and overpriced European sports cars, and inside bizarre private clubs in and around the capital. While many Lebanese people are near starvation, airplanes flying to Nice, Venice or Greek Islands are constantly packed with la dolce vita seekers.

Lebanon makes billions of dollars from narcotics, particularly those cultivated and refined in the Beqaa Valley. They get exported mainly to Saudi Arabia, for the consumption of the rich, or injected into the battlefields in Yemen and Syria, so-called combat drugs. Again, everyone knows it, but nothing is done to stop it. Hundreds of families, from farmers to politicians, got filthy rich on that trade. This adds a few more super-yachts at the proverbial Beirut marinas.

Then, there is ‘foreign aid’, ‘European investment into infrastructure’, Saudi and Qatari money. Most of it goes, directly, into the pockets of corrupt officials, to the so-called ‘government’, and to its buddies, contractors. Almost nothing is built, but the money is gone.Lebanon has railroad employees who are getting their monthly paychecks, but no railways, anymore. Train station had been converted into vodka bar. Lebanon begs for money so it can host refugees from all over the region, but much of the money ends up in a few deep pockets. Very little goes to the refugees themselves, or to the poor Lebanese people who have to compete for low-paying jobs with the desperate Syrians or Palestinians.

The poor are getting poorer. Yet, Ethiopian, Philippine and Kenyan maids are dragging the groceries of the rich, wiping spit off the faces of babies born into elite families, and cleaning toilets. Some get tortured by their masters, many commit suicide. Lebanon is a tough place, for those who do not look Phoenician or European.

And the slums in the south of Beirut are growing. And some Lebanese cities, like Tripoli in the north, look like tremendous slums, altogether.

Ali, a receptionist at a hotel in downtown Beirut laments:

“I work here as a receptionist for 14 hours and earn only 540 USD every month. I need a minimum of 700 USD to survive. I have a sister in US and want to visit her only for a week, but there is no way I can get visa. I am only 24 years old. I see no future in this country, like so many thousand others protesting in the streets of Beirut.”

According to various estimates, Lebanon may collapse as early as in February 2020. No more money can be looted. The end game is approaching.

If it does collapse, the rich will have their golden parachutes. They have their families abroad: in Australia, Brazil, France. Some have two passports, others have houses in the most desirable parts of the world.

The poor will be left with absolutely nothing: with a carcass of a country, previously looted by its own elites. There will be rotting, ageing Ferraris, all over, but one cannot eat carcasses of cars. There will be lavish but abandoned swimming pools, right next to polluted and destroyed beaches.

People know it, and they have had enough.

Mohamed, a worker at a Starbucks cafe in Beirut is determined:

“This is terrible but it is about time. We can take no more. We need to change the country, drastically. This time things are different. Not about who we worship but about our daily lives.”

Lebanon, in comparison to other shamelessly-capitalist countries, is well-educated. People here cannot be fooled.

The rebellion against the elites has just begun. People want to take back their country.

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinian Christians that nobody is talking about

Ramzy Baroud

Palestine’s Christian population is dwindling at an alarming rate. The world’s most ancient Christian community is moving elsewhere. And the reason for this is Israel.

Christian leaders from Palestine and South Africa sounded the alarm at a conference in Johannesburg on October 15. Their gathering was titled: “The Holy Land: A Palestinian Christian Perspective”.

One major issue that highlighted itself at the meetings is the rapidly declining number of Palestinian Christians in Palestine.

There are varied estimates on how many Palestinian Christians are still living in Palestine today, compared with the period before 1948 when the state of Israel was established atop Palestinian towns and villages. Regardless of the source of the various studies, there is near consensus that the number of Christian inhabitants of Palestine has dropped by nearly ten-fold in the last 70 years.

A population census carried out by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in 2017 concluded that there are 47,000 Palestinian Christians living in Palestine – with reference to the Occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. 98 percent of Palestine’s Christians live in the West Bank – concentrated mostly in the cities of Ramallah, Bethlehem and Jerusalem – while the remainder, a tiny Christian community of merely 1,100 people, lives in the besieged Gaza Strip.

The demographic crisis that had afflicted the Christian community decades ago is now brewing.

For example, 70 years ago, Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, was 86 percent Christian. The demographics of the city, however, have fundamentally shifted, especially after the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in June 1967, and the construction of the illegal Israeli apartheid wall, starting in 2002. Parts of the wall were meant to cut off Bethlehem from Jerusalem and to isolate the former from the rest of the West Bank.

“The Wall encircles Bethlehem by continuing south of East Jerusalem in both the east and west,” the ‘Open Bethlehem’ organization said, describing the devastating impact of the wall on the Palestinian city. “With the land isolated by the Wall, annexed for settlements, and closed under various pretexts, only 13% of the Bethlehem district is available for Palestinian use.”

Increasingly beleaguered, Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem have been driven out from their historic city in large numbers. According to the city’s mayor, Vera Baboun, as of 2016, the Christian population of Bethlehem has dropped to 12 percent, merely 11,000 people.

The most optimistic estimates place the overall number of Palestinian Christians in the whole of Occupied Palestine at less than two percent.

The correlation between the shrinking Christian population in Palestine, and the Israeli occupation and apartheid should be unmistakable, as it is obvious to Palestine’s Christian and Muslim population alike.

A study conducted by Dar al-Kalima University in the West Bank town of Beit Jala and published in December 2017, interviewed nearly 1,000 Palestinians, half of them Christian and the other half Muslim. One of the main goals of the research was to understand the reason behind the depleting Christian population in Palestine.

The study concluded that “the pressure of Israeli occupation, ongoing constraints, discriminatory policies, arbitrary arrests, confiscation of lands added to the general sense of hopelessness among Palestinian Christians,” who are finding themselves in “a despairing situation where they can no longer perceive a future for their offspring or for themselves”.

Unfounded claims that Palestinian Christians are leaving because of religious tensions between them and their Muslim brethren are, therefore, irrelevant.

Gaza is another case in point. Only 2 percent of Palestine’s Christians live in the impoverished and besieged Gaza Strip. When Israel occupied Gaza along with the rest of historic Palestine in 1967, an estimated 2,300 Christians lived in the Strip. However, merely 1,100 Christians still live in Gaza today. Years of occupation, horrific wars and an unforgiving siege can do that to a community, whose historic roots date back to two millennia.

Like Gaza’s Muslims, these Christians are cut off from the rest of the world, including the holy sites in the West Bank. Every year, Gaza’s Christians apply for permits from the Israeli military to join Easter services in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Last April, only 200 Christians were granted permits, but on the condition that they must be 55 years of age or older and that they are not allowed to visit Jerusalem.

The Israeli rights group, Gisha, described the Israeli army decision as “a further violation of Palestinians’ fundamental rights to freedom of movement, religious freedom and family life”, and, rightly, accused Israel of attempting to “deepen the separation” between Gaza and the West Bank.

In fact, Israel aims at doing more than that. Separating Palestinian Christians from one another, and from their holy sites (as is the case for Muslims, as well), the Israeli government hopes to weaken the socio-cultural and spiritual connections that give Palestinians their collective identity.

Israel’s strategy is predicated on the idea that a combination of factors – immense economic hardships, permanent siege and apartheid, the severing of communal and spiritual bonds – will eventually drive all Christians out of their Palestinian homeland.

Israel is keen to present the ‘conflict’ in Palestine as a religious one so that it could, in turn, brand itself as a beleaguered Jewish state in the midst of a massive Muslim population in the Middle East. The continued existence of Palestinian Christians does not factor nicely into this Israeli agenda.

Sadly, however, Israel has succeeded in misrepresenting the struggle in Palestine – from that of political and human rights struggle against settler colonialism – into a religious one. Equally disturbing, Israel’s most ardent supporters in the United States and elsewhere are religious Christians.

It must be understood that Palestinian Christians are neither aliens nor bystanders in Palestine. They have been victimized equally as their Muslim brethren, and have also played a major role in defining the modern Palestinian identity, through their resistance, spirituality, deep connection to the land, artistic contributions and burgeoning scholarship.

Israel must not be allowed to ostracize the world’s most ancient Christian community from their ancestral land so that it may score a few points in its deeply disturbing drive for racial supremacy.

Equally important, our understanding of the legendary Palestinian ‘soumoud’ – steadfastness – and of solidarity cannot be complete without fully appreciating the centrality of Palestinian Christians to the modern Palestinian narrative and identity.

Iraqi regime responds to mass protests with brutal crackdown

Jean Shaoul

The Iraqi police and security services have killed at least 250 people and injured thousands more in a brutal crackdown against the mass protests that first erupted earlier this month. In Karbala, 18 people were killed and 122 injured on Monday night. Three people died in Nasiriya as a result of injuries sustained earlier in the month.

The strikes and protests against Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi’s government, which are uniting workers across religious affiliation despite the confusion deliberately stoked by Iraq’s divisive political system, are the largest in decades. Centered in the country’s majority Shia population, the ostensible base of the ruling parties that make up his fragile coalition, the protests have shaken the regime to its core.

They reflect the enormous anger over endemic poverty, rampant unemployment, the lack of the most basic services and the systemic corruption that has pervaded Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion and occupation and the bitter sectarian conflicts instigated by Washington as part of its divide-and-rule strategy that have devastated the country.

Anti-government protesters control the barriers while Iraqi security forces fire tear gas and close the bridge leading to the Green Zone, during a demonstration in Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2019. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

The Demonstrations in Iraq are part of a global upsurge of social struggles that have seen mass demonstrations in Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Lebanon, and other countries.

Abdul Mahdi made no attempt to meet their demand for jobs, better living conditions and an end to corruption. He dismissed their grievances with contempt, saying there was no “magic solution.”

Yet Iraq is OPEC’s second biggest oil producer. It has the fifth largest crude oil reserves in the world and, as everyone knows, last year took in more than $100 billion in oil revenues. But far from benefiting the Iraqi people, the cash went straight into the hands of international oil companies and their bought-and-paid-for hirelings in Iraq’s political and business circles. According to Transparency International, Iraq is the world’s 12th most corrupt state.

Instead, Abdul Mahdi imposed a dusk to dawn curfew and closed down the internet and social media in a bid to stop the protests from spreading. In addition, he ordered the deployment of heavily armed soldiers, members of Iraq’s elite counterterrorism squads and riot police to stop demonstrators from marching on Tahrir Square in downtown Baghdad and on the Green Zone, the heavily fortified center of the Iraqi government, the US and other Western embassies and the numerous military contractors that prop up the regime.

Snipers were positioned on rooftops to pick off protesters and masked death squads were deployed to go to the homes of known activists and assassinate them. Thousands are believed to have been injured as a result of the security forces’ use of live ammunition, rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannon.

Indeed, according to an Iraqi government committee that investigated the crackdown that took place during the first week of October, 149 civilians were killed as a result of the security forces’ use of excessive force and live fire, with more than 100 deaths caused by shots to the head or chest. While it held senior commanders responsible, it stopped short of blaming the prime minister and other top officials, claiming there had been no order to shoot.

But the government’s brutality only served to fuel the popular anger against the government. In the impoverished Shia neighborhoods of Sadr City, part of the Baghdad conurbation where more than a decade ago militias confronted American troops, crowds set fire to both government buildings and the offices of the Shia-based parties that support the government.

The initial wave of protests stopped for two weeks for the Shia religious festival of Arbaeen before resuming last Friday, when demonstrators in various parts of the country demanded the government’s resignation. “We’re here to bring down the whole government, to weed them all out,” and “We don’t want a single one of them. Not [parliamentary speaker Mohammed] Halbousi, not [Prime Minister Adel] Abdul Mahdi. We want to bring down the regime.”

The protests spread to the southern, Shia-populated southern provinces, with some of the young people voicing their opposition to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s leading Shia cleric, who urged protesters and security forces to show “restraint” and warned that there would be “chaos” if violence resumed.

As well as marching on Baghdad’s Green Zone, demonstrators targeted the headquarters of various militias across southern Iraq, including those of the Badr in ‘Amarra and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq in Diwaniyah and the Sayyidd al-Shuhada’ in Nasiriya was also set on fire—a significant development given how strong the group is in that area. They also attacked the political parties and the government buildings they control, burning the Dawa Party headquarters in Diwaniya and the al-Hikma Party headquarters in Samawa, and provincial governorate buildings in the southern provinces of Dhi Qar, Qadisiya, and Wasit.

Once again, the government imposed a curfew, closed the internet, turned off the electricity in Tahrir Square, warned school and university students not to join the protests and gave the green light to the security forces to attack the demonstrators. According to Iraq’s High Commission for Human Rights, 63 demonstrators were killed on Friday and Saturday, and more than 2,500 demonstrators and security forces injured, largely by parastatal forces. The photos and videos of some of those killed and injured are absolutely horrific.

But the protests have continued this week. Students—some 40 percent of Iraqis were born after the 2003 US-led invasion of the country—defied the government and joined the thousands demonstrating against the government and calling for its resignation, despite the security forces’ use of tear gas against them. Elsewhere in Baghdad, soldiers were seen beating up high school students.

Activists in Baghdad occupied Tahrir Square throughout Monday night in defiance of the curfew. Reuters news agency reported one protester as saying, “No, we will stay. They have now declared a curfew and severe punishments for anyone not going to work, this is how they fight us. We will stay here until the last day, even if there are a thousand martyrs.”

On Monday, the first cracks in Mahdi’s fragile coalition appeared with Muqtada al-Sadr, the cleric who backs parliament’s largest bloc and was instrumental in bringing Mahdi’s coalition to power, called for early elections.

These protests reflect Iraqis’ anger over the truly terrible conditions they have been forced to endure. Despite the $1 trillion in oil revenue generated since 2005, the level of poverty is appalling. According to World Bank figures, around seven million of Iraq’s 38 million people live below the poverty line, and youth unemployment is 25 percent, undoubtedly a huge underestimate.

According to the World Food Program, 53 percent of Iraqis are vulnerable to food insecurity, while a massive 66 percent of the two million internally displaced as a result of the civil war against ISIS are susceptible to food insecurity. Malnutrition is rife.

Life expectancy has fallen to 58.7 years for men and 62.9 years for women as a result of the destruction of Iraq’s healthcare system following years of economic sanctions in the 1990s and the occupation and civil war that followed the US-led invasion.

Most households no longer have access to a regular water supply but face constant interruptions and have to resort to tanker trucks or open wells.

Housing conditions are truly shocking. The US war and its aftermath destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes and displaced millions of people. Many are living in breeze block shacks with corrugated iron rooves. Fifty one percent of Iraqi households are crowded, some with as many as 10 people living in one home.

The protests are part of a broader upsurge in the class struggle that is taking place all over the world and testifies to the primacy of class over ethnicity, nationality and religion. The Middle East and North Africa has witnessed strikes and demonstrations in Algeria, Sudan, Jordan and Egypt and most recently, Lebanon.

Thirteen days of mass protests against the government’s corruption and economic measures that have impoverished the working class have brought Lebanon to a standstill. Many roads are blocked, and businesses, schools and universities are closed. The banks have remained shut throughout, fearing a currency devaluation and mass withdrawals. Riad Salameh, the Director of the Central Bank of Lebanon, speaking on CNN television, said that without a political solution, the Lebanese economy was just days away from collapsing. Hours later, Prime Minister Saad Hariri handed in his resignation to President Michel Aoun.

These struggles expose once again the political bankruptcy of the national bourgeoisie, not only in Iraq, but throughout the Arab world, that have proved organically incapable of resolving any of the democratic and social demands of the Arab masses or establishing any genuine independence from imperialism.

These demands can only be won by unleashing the enormous power of the independent international working class. It can be developed through the establishment of popular assemblies and workers’ committees in all the oil installations and workplaces throughout the country, aimed at mobilizing the independent strength of the working class in a struggle against the world capitalist system and for socialism.

As protests continue, Hong Kong’s economy lurches into recession

Peter Symonds

Hong Kong’s Financial Secretary Paul Chan signaled on a blog post on Sunday that figures to be released this Thursday would show negative growth for the third quarter GDP and that the territory’s economy was in recession—defined as two successive quarters of contraction.

“The blow to our economy is comprehensive,” Chan wrote, adding that it would be extremely difficult for it to reach the government’s forecast of 0.1 percent annual growth—made before mass protests erupted in June.

Chan identified tourism as one of the sectors that has been hardest hit. He described the fall in tourist numbers as “an emergency” with the number of visitors in the first half of October down by nearly 50 percent year-on-year. On average, hotels are only two-thirds full, compared to the same period last year.

Chan and the Hong Kong administration headed by Chief Secretary Carrie Lam blame the economic decline on protests demanding basic democratic rights. Five months of protests have certainly had an economic impact, particularly on tourism, which employs several hundred thousand workers in Hong Kong.

The whipping up of chauvinist sentiment directed against Chinese “mainlanders” by right-wing elements of the protest movement has contributed to a precipitous fall in tourists from throughout China, who last year made up three quarters of the 65 million people arriving in Hong Kong last year.

The protests, however, are only one factor in the deterioration of Hong Kong’s economy, which is also being hit by the slowdown in the global economy and the impact of the US trade war measures directed against China. As a major conduit for goods and investment between China and the world, Hong Kong’s economy is particularly sensitive to downturns in the mainland.

Hong Kong’s exports for the September quarter plunged by more than 7 percent year-on-year—the largest fall in nearly a decade, that is since the 2008-09 global financial crisis.

Last week, Chan announced economic measures to support businesses affected by the ongoing protests. These included halving rents on properties leased by the Hong Kong government and providing fuel subsidies for taxi drivers and fee subsidies for local ferries. Earlier relief measures included $HK2 billion ($US255 million) in aid to small companies and a $HK19 billion stimulus package to boost economic growth.

However, as the financial secretary admitted, these steps would only “slightly reduce the pressure” on small and medium businesses. “Let citizens return to normal life, let industry and commerce to operate normally, and create more space for rational dialogue,” he wrote.

The protest movement, which was triggered by the administration’s plans for legislation to allow extradition to the Chinese mainland, is being driven by widespread concerns for both democratic and social rights. Chief Secretary Carrie Lam has formally abandoned the extradition law. However, protesters are continuing to demand an inquiry into police violence, the dropping of charges against hundreds of people arrested, and for free elections based on universal suffrage for the legislative council and chief executive.

The deteriorating economy is not only being compounded by the protests but is itself one of the driving forces behind the mass demonstrations. Hong Kong is one of the most socially unequal cities in the world and also one of the most expensive in which to live. The free market policies of low taxes and limited spending on social services designed to boost the profits of big business impact most heavily on the poor.

Writing in the South China Morning Post yesterday, prominent economic commentator Andy Xie urged the Hong Kong administration to reform its economic policy to restore calm. “The essence of Hong Kong’s current economic policy, which is billed as a laissez-faire nirvana, is a regressive tax in the form of high land prices. It strangles the middle class. When economic growth is fast, it obscures the negative impact of the policy. But prolonged slow growth exposes the corrosive effect the policy has on wealth equality and labour income.”

It is not just the middle classes that are being hit, but the working class and the poor.

A recent Oxfam report on Hong Kong noted that its Gini index—a measure of social inequality on a scale from zero to one, with zero indicating complete equality—was 0.539 in June last year. This was the highest in 45 years. By comparison, the US was at 0.411 and Singapore 0.4579.

In 2016 the median monthly household income of the top 10 percent of Hong Kong’s population was 43.9 times the bottom 10 percent. The poorest would have to work three years and eight months on average to earn what the richest make in a month. The city’s top 21 business tycoons had assets collectively equalling Hong Kong’s $HK1.83 trillion ($US230 billion) fiscal reserves as of April, according to data published by Forbes. The wealthiest five earned $HK23.6 billion just in dividends in 2016 and 2017 but none of that was taxed.

Meanwhile the poorest sections of the population struggle to survive. Astronomical housing costs force some 21,000 people to live in cramped conditions in subdivided flats. Real wages have increased just 12.3 percent over the last decade and the minimum wage is just $HK34.50 ($US4.40) an hour. One in four children and one in three elderly live below the austere official poverty line. The slowing economy has led to rising unemployment and a decline in job opportunities particularly for young people.

While various media commentators recognise that the worsening social crisis is fueling the anger and frustration behind the protests, the various protest leaders and opposition parties, the so-called pan-democrats, raise no social demands. The official opposition is part of the Hong Kong political establishment and reflects the interests of a layer of the business elite that are constricted by China. At the same time, they are deeply hostile to any movement of the working class.

The silence of the pan-democrats and associated groups has left the door open for right-wing organisations such as Civic Passion and Hong Kong Indigenous that seek to exploit the social discontent by blaming “mainlanders” for the lack of jobs and inflation, especially high housing rents and prices. Their chauvinist demagogy only divides workers in Hong Kong with the working class throughout China, which faces similar social problems and the lack of basic democratic rights.

The protests, which have now continued for five months, have reached a political impasse. No one can doubt the courage and determination shown by the protesters. However, the only way to break out of the dead-end is a turn to the only social force capable of overturning the oppressive, police-state regime in Hong Kong—the working class in China and internationally—on the basis of a socialist perspective.