Is Washington on the brink of a major attack on Syria?

Bill Van Auken 

The US and its allies are systematically putting into place all the elements needed to justify and carry out a major new act of aggression against Syria, according to reports from Moscow and the Middle East.

The charges that Washington is preparing an unprovoked attack followed warnings made by US National Security Adviser John Bolton, as well as by British and French officials, that their governments would retaliate sharply against any use of chemical weapons by the government of President Bashar Assad in the northern Syrian province of Idlib.

Recent bombing and shelling by the Syrian military, as well as the reported transfer of the Syrian army regiment based in the city of Homs to the southern border of Idlib, have raised speculation that Damascus is on the verge of launching an offensive to retake one of the last territories still under the control of Al Qaeda-linked Islamist militias. These forces were armed and funded by Washington, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to wage a seven-year-long proxy war for regime change aimed at installing a more pliant pro-imperialist regime in Damascus.

The Assad government has denied employing chemical weapons in its campaign to reassert control over areas of the country seized by the Western-backed “rebels.” It has accused the Al Qaeda-linked forces of staging chemical weapons incidents with the aim of provoking US military attacks on the regime, like the ones carried out last April and in 2017.

Speaking at a press conference in Jerusalem last Wednesday, Bolton declared: “We are obviously concerned about the possibility that Assad may use chemical weapons again. Just so there’s no confusion here, if the Syrian regime uses chemical weapons we will respond very strongly and they really ought to think about this a long time.”

The US national security adviser also made the case for the more aggressive US assault on Iran, which has included the abrogation of the 2015 nuclear agreement reached between Tehran and the major powers, along with the re-imposition of punishing economic sanctions.

Bolton claimed that Washington’s aim was not regime change in Tehran, but rather a “massive change in the regime’s behavior.” At the same time, he made it clear that the purpose of the economic sanctions was to create intolerable conditions for the masses of the Iranian people, leading to social upheavals.

He also spelled out areas where the Pentagon is preparing for confrontation with Iran. “Iranian activity in the region has continued to be belligerent: what they are doing in Iraq, what they are doing in Syria, what they are doing with Hezbollah in Lebanon, what they are doing in Yemen, what they have threatened to do in the Strait of Hormuz,” he said.

Bolton followed up his trip to Israel with a meeting in Geneva with his Russian counterpart, Nicolai Patrushev, apparently in an attempt to enlist Russian assistance in Washington’s campaign against Iran. Publicly, at least, Moscow appeared to rebuff the approach. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov demanded that all military forces not invited into Syria by the government leave the country, a clear attempt to distinguish between Tehran and Washington.

US officials have made clear that while Washington’s objective in Syria remains the toppling of the Assad regime, it is also focused on the driving out of Iranian forces from the country as part of its strategy of rolling back Iranian influence throughout the Middle East and clearing the path for the assertion of US hegemony in the oil-rich region.

Iran has rejected US and Israeli demands that it abandon Syria, insisting its forces have been invited into the country by the government in Damascus, unlike the 2,200 US troops there, which have been deployed in direct violation of international law.

Iran’s Defense Minister Amir Hatami and his Syrian counterpart announced on Monday the signing of a “defense and technical agreement” that provides for the continued “presence and participation” of Iran in Syria.

“We hope to have a productive role in the reconstruction of Syria,” Hatami said during his visit. Tehran had previously committed to building 20,000 housing units for returning refugees. The Trump administration, meanwhile, has canceled $230 million that had been earmarked for Syrian “stabilization” and has made it clear that it will provide nothing for reconstruction of the vast majority of the country that is now under government control.

To achieve its strategic aims in Syria and the broader Middle East, Washington is driven to intensify its military intervention.

The Russian government has claimed that it has intelligence establishing that British trained “specialists” have been sent into Idlib for the purpose of staging a “chemical attack” designed to provide the pretext for US, British and French strikes on the Syrian government.

“The execution of this provocation with active participation of British security services is supposed to serve as yet another pretext for delivering a missile and aviation strike by the US, the United Kingdom and France on Syria’s government and economic facilities,” Maj. Gen. Igor Konsashenkov, the spokesman of the Russian Defense Ministry said on Monday.

Konsashenkov pointed to the deployment of the US guided missile destroyer USS The Sullivans, armed with 56 cruise missiles, to the Persian Gulf, as well as the transfer of a B-1B bomber carrying 24 cruise missiles to the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar as indications that Washington is preparing for a major strike on Syria.

He cited reports from the Middle East that the Islamist militia Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (previously known as the Al Nusra Front, the Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda) had “brought eight containers with chlorine to the city of Jisr ash-Shugur in the Idlib governate...” in preparation for a staged chemical weapons incident.

The timing of a US assault on Syria may be influenced by the announced plan for a September 7–8 summit in the northern Iranian city of Tabriz, bringing together Iranian President Hassan Rouhani with his Russian and Turkish counterparts, Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for talks aimed at achieving a negotiated settlement of the Syrian conflict.

Turkey is opposed to a Russian-backed offensive against Idlib, where it has provided support to some of the “rebel” groups. At the same time, however, it has come into increasing conflict with the US, intensified by recent trade sanctions, and has drawn closer to Moscow and Tehran.

Washington is vehemently opposed to any resolution of the seven-year-old war in which it does not dictate the terms.

A further incentive for launching a major escalation of the US war in Syria is the domestic political crisis of the Trump administration, which has confronted a tightening legal noose with last week’s plea agreement with Michael Cohen, his former lawyer, and the conviction the same day of Paul Manafort, his former campaign manager, as well as the announcement of immunity deals with two of the US president’s closest associates, Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg and National Enquirer publisher David Pecker.

The Democratic Party and decisive layers within the ruling establishment have centered their opposition to Trump on the question of confronting Russia, the sharp edge of which centers on US policy in Syria.

In an editorial published Saturday titled “Trump is getting in his team’s way on Syria,” the Washington Post sharply criticized the US president for failing to pursue a more aggressive military policy in the ravaged Middle Eastern country, while praising various officials within his administration for affirming that US troops will remain in the country and asserting a policy of confrontation with both Iran and Russia.

“Any US strategy in Syria would face steep obstacles, including the machinations of Russia, which claims to want to restrain the regime and remove the Iranians, but, in practice, abets both,” the editorial stated. “Yet the unique problem with this US policy is that it is at odds with the stated positions of President Trump. Mr. Trump has repeatedly and bluntly declared that he wishes to withdraw US forces from Syria as soon as possible...

“What all sides in Syria perceive is not only a lack of US resolve. They also see an administration that hasn’t been able to formulate a clear strategy to defend American interests—thanks to the poor judgment of the president.”

The launching of a major US military escalation in Syria would provide Trump with the means of blunting the attacks on his presidency. At the same time, it would raise the risk of a military confrontation that could quickly escalate into a region-wide and global war.

Normalised Instability in Australia

Binoy Kampmark

You can sense Australian politicians – or at least a good number of them – fuming at being cobbled together with the counterparts of other states deemed less worthy of the tag of “stable”.  Take, for instance, entertaining Italy, tenaciously temporary about its leaders.  “We said,” reflected a rueful Senator Derryn Hinch of the Justice Party, “‘how often they change their governments, how often they changed their leaders, what a stupid country and how irresponsible.”

The Italy of the antipodes (without the colour); a state so obsessed with leadership change that it requires a session of bloodletting every two years or less.  This is a country incapable of keeping stable governments, a state where the party system holds true over democratic instincts.  The pack mentality of committing parricide has come to the fore again, with Malcolm Turnbull facing the last hours of his prime ministership.

Turnbull has fought, setting his own expectations before the coup plotters: show that there is enough support for a new leader. Forty-three signatures were required, thereby outing the plotters.  (At this writing, the forty-third signature has been obtained.)  For such anti-Turnbull figures as Senator Eric Abetz, this was simply poor form: how dare the Australian prime minister ask who was being disloyal?

The other demand from Turnbull was getting advice from the Solicitor General on the eligibility of his executioner-in-chief Peter Dutton to continue to sit in parliament. The issue there is whether Dutton has benefitted from the commonwealth in a way that is in conflict with his duties as a parliamentarian.  That advice, needless to say, has been unequivocal. Only the High Court could rule on that with any certainty.

For these political creatures, the party ballot comes before the electoral vote, a situation that has an odd echo of the Holy Roman Empire rather than a modern democracy.  This, in the absence of wars (at least internal ones), disruptions to the local currency, and a collapse of the financial system, suggests a certain suicidal eccentricity on the part of Australian politicians.

It has been a disastrous sequence of events for that unfortunate system known as Australian democracy.  As it lurches to the next faction (the Founding Fathers in the United States had much to say about those, establishing a Republican system that would prevent this nonsense), we face the prospect of the executive being decapitated yet again.  The genius of the US example, at least, was to keep the executive out of Congress’s way, an effort to make sure that checks and balances prevailed in the unruly viper’s nest of politics.

The rhetorical sequences are always the same when it comes to slaughtering an elected leader in the party room, strummed out to the same tedious instrumental fashion.  The person who wins praises the predecessor having even as the wounds are fresh; the defeated party promises no vengeance, and bears no ill-feeling. Labor’s Kevin Rudd, on failing to beat Julia Gillard, the same individual who lay in the party knives into him: “I bear no malice; I bear no grudges” or words to that effect.  From the ousted Liberal leader Tony Abbott to Malcolm Turnbull: “There will be no sniping, no wrecking, no undermining.”

Now, the round robin word cycle replays itself before the heralded execution of yet another Australian prime minister.  We are told that it has been a good government with sound policy (no mention of defeats in the Senate of key policy positions are mentioned).  There have been good achievements, evidently so profoundly effective as to warrant an assault on the leader.

In the distance are the drum banging shock jocks, populist town criers in the employ of the Murdoch press and associated lobbies ever keen to jockey for positions.  Sky News has become a fox hole of determination against Turnbull.  The Australian has become a front line position of assault.  Peta Credlin, Abbott’s long time iron maiden advisor and bull ram, has been lobbing grenades into the Turnbull camp with a satanic fury.

The party of contenders, bickerers and potential stealers is getting crowded.  Turnbull might take some heart from this: a larger field limits the options and minimise Dutton’s chances.  Treasurer Scott Morrison has nominated; foreign minister Julie Bishop is also considering.  The former Nationals leader and permanent media surfer Barnaby Joyce is giving Turnbull advice to stand in the second ballot as a matter of moral duty. Turnbull, however, does not intend to contest the ballot, thereby leaving the way open to any of the three.

Outside the Liberal Party, the Labor Party is breathing heavily, aroused by the prospects of snatching power.  “It is now clear that the Liberals cannot provide the leadership that the Australian people deserve,” chortled Senator Penny Wong.  “The only party capable of delivering that government and governing for all Australians is the Australian Labor Party.”  The Greens leader, Senator Richard Di Natale felt sour. “It’s a disgrace. It’s utterly shameful.  We haven’t had a stable government in this country for a decade now. I’ve got a 10-year-old boy, he’s seen a half a dozen different prime ministers.”

It is such faffing indulgence that costs democracies dearly, lending a helping hand to authoritarian tendencies while unmasking the true power dynamic at play in the Westminster system.  It has also crowned the populist barkers and howlers, letting Murdoch know how close he is to the centre of that bubble known as Canberra. Turnbull would have been best served to take the matter to the Governor-General, declared the situation untenable and called for fresh elections.

Instead, we bear witness to a puerile, party game, short-termed, governed by the crudest of self-interest and a desperate desire to preserve seats.  It has let the desire for vengeance and the streak of cowardice prevail over the functions of presentation. (Exeunt the Australian voter!)  Turnbull has delayed and aggravated his would-be executioners, but the time has arrived.

With each orchestrated fall comes the reckoning about possible change.  Should there be fixed four-year terms of parliament?  One way of saving the system might be to save the executive, and the only way to save the executive from the trivial, poll-driven mutilations of party hacks will be for Australia to become a republic of some sort – or at least one where the executive has a separate political line free from severance.  But that would minimise the all-powerful position political parties have in Australia.

Mortgaging the Public Interest: Gross Maladministration and the Illegal Entry of GMOs into India

Colin Todhunter

Despite five high-level reports in India advising against the adoption of genetically modified (GM) crops, the drive to get GM mustard commercialised (which would be India’s first officially-approved GM food crop) has been relentless. Although the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) has given it the nod, GM mustard remains held up in the Supreme Court mainly due to a public interest litigation by environmentalist Aruna Rodrigues.

Rodrigues argues that GM mustard is being undemocratically forced through with flawed tests (or no testing) and a lack of public scrutiny and that unremitting scientific fraud and outright regulatory delinquency has taken place. She is seeking a moratorium on the environmental releasee of any genetically modified organism (GMO) in the absence of: comprehensive, transparent and rigorous biosafety protocols; biosafety studies conducted by independent expert bodies; and access to biosafety protocols and data in the public domain.

On Friday 24 August 2018 and in relation to the ongoing court proceedings surrounding GM mustard, Rodrigues filed an additional court application concerning the ongoing illegal imports of GM seed, GM soy cultivation in Gujarat and the presence of GMO imports in processed foods and oils. All of this represents a back-door entry of GMOs into India.

The application is scathing about what it calls proof of ultimate ‘regulatory delinquency’ and of the regulators and attendant government ministries mortgaging the public interest.

This new 78-page submission to court asserts that the GEAC has provided cover for the illegal trade in imports of GM processed foods, including huge quantities of GM seeds as well as processed and crude soy oil. The GEAC is also accused of deliberately allowing the contamination of India’s food chain with untested GMOs, thereby potentially endangering the health of Indians.

In addition to the illegal cultivation of herbicide-tolerant (HT) soybean in Gujarat, there have also been reports of HT cotton illegally growing in India (insecticide-containing Bt cotton is the only legally sanctioned GM crop in India).

Interestingly, this 2017 paper discusses how cotton farmers have been encouraged to change their crop planting practices, leading to more weeds appearing in their fields. The outcome of this change in terms of yields or farmer profit is no better than before. These changes, however, coincide with illegal HT cotton seeds appearing on the market: farmers are being pushed towards a treadmill reliance on illegal cotton seeds genetically engineered designed to withstand chemical herbicides.

The authors, Glenn Stone and Andrew Flachs, say that traditional planting practices and ox-plough weeding are:

“… being actively undermined by parties intent on expanding herbicide markets and opening a niche for next-generation genetically modified cotton.”

They observe:

“The challenge for agrocapital is how to break the dependence on double-lining and ox-weeding to open the door to herbicide-based management…. how could farmers be pushed onto an herbicide-intensive path?”

In 2018, the Centre for Science and Environment tested 65 imported and domestically produced processed food samples in India. Some 32 per cent of the samples tested were GM positive: 46 per cent of those imported and 17 per cent of those samples manufactured in India. Out of the 20 GM-positive packaged samples, 13 did not mention use of GM ingredients on their labels. Some brands had claims on their labels suggesting that they had no GM ingredients but were found to be GM positive.

The situation has prompted calls for probes into the workings of the GEAC and other official bodies who seem to be asleep at the wheel or deliberately looking the other way.

But this wouldn’t be the first time: India’s only (now legal) GM crop cultivation – Bt cotton – was discovered in 2001 growing on thousands of hectares in Gujarat. The GEAC was caught off-guard when news about large scale illegal cultivation of Bt cotton emerged, even as field trials that were to decide whether India would opt for this GM crop were still underway.

In March 2002, the GEAC ended up approving Bt cotton for commercial cultivation in India. To this day, no liability has been fixed for the illegal spread.

The tactic of contaminate first then legalise has benefited industry players elsewhere too. In 2006, for instance, the US Department of Agriculture granted marketing approval of GM Liberty Link 601 (Bayer CropScience) rice variety following its illegal contamination of the food supply and rice exports. The USDA effectively sanctioned an ‘approval-by-contamination’ policy.

In her evidence submitted to court, Aruna Rodrgues argues that what is happening must invite the gravest charges. At least four institutions stand accused of unconscionable gross maladministration: The GEAC, Ministry of Commerce, the Food Safety Standards Authority, the Directorate General of Foreign Trade the Directorate of Plant Protection and Quarantine & Storage.

Corruption at the core of the global GM project

Corruption and illegality go hand in hand with the global GM project. For instance, a jury in San Francisco recently found that Monsanto had failed to warn former groundsman Dewayne Johnson and other consumers of the cancer risks posed by its weed killers. It awarded him $39 million in compensatory and $250 million in punitive damages.

The jury’s verdict found not only that Monsanto’s Roundup and related glyphosate-based brands presented a substantial danger to people using them but that there was “clear and convincing evidence” that Monsanto’s officials acted with “malice or oppression” in failing to adequately warn of the risks.

The warning signs seen in scientific research about the dangers of glyphosate dated back to the early 1980s and have only increased over the decades. However, Monsanto worked not to warn users or redesign its products but to create its own science, designed to appear independent and thus more credible, to show they were safe.

To have Roundup removed from the market or its use heavily restricted would pull the rug from under much of Monsanto’s GM endeavour to date, which has relied on the roll-out of two crop traits: herbicide tolerance and bt insecticide. Monsanto genetically engineered crops to withstand direct spraying of Roundup (HT trait): these seeds and the herbicide are huge money spinners for the company. It comes as little surprise to many therefore that the company would use all means necessary to protect its product and its bottom line.

Glyphosate-based herbicides are widely used around the globe. Residues are commonly found in food and water supplies, and in soil, air samples and rainfall. Regulators, however, have failed to heed the warnings of independent scientists, even brushing aside the findings of the World Health Organization’s top cancer scientists who classified glyphosate as a “probable human carcinogen”.

Another trial will take place in October in St Louis involving roughly 4,000 plaintiffs whose claims are pending with the potential outcomes resulting in many more hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in damage awards. They all allege that their cancers were caused by exposure to Monsanto’s herbicides and that Monsanto has long known about, and covered up, the dangers (it is no coincidence that in Argentina, where glyphosate is liberally sprayed on GM HT crops, there has been dramatic increases in birth defects and cancers).

Unsurprisingly, many in India have called for a ban on HT tolerant crops. The Supreme Court appointed TEC Committee recommended a ban on HT crops (2013) and the Swaminathan Task Force Report (2004) recommendation was that HT crops are completely unsuited to Indian agriculture. Health dangers aside, in a country of small farms where multi-cropping is common, sanctioning the liberal spraying of herbicides on GM HT crops would be grossly negligent. Even in the US, with its huge farms and mono crop expanses, the spraying of the herbicide dicamba is causing big problems for farmers, many of whom claim the chemical has drifted onto their fields, damaging crops that are not genetically modified to withstand it.

But India’s regulators and attendant ministries have tried to introduce GM mustard which is tolerant to another herbicide, glufosinate (contained in Bayer’s brand ‘Basta’), a neurotoxin even more toxic than glyphosate.

Prof. Dave Schubert (Salk Institute for Biological Studies) in his document ‘A Hidden Epidemic’, says that we have reached the point where the evidence against probable carcinogen, glyphosate (active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup), is “directly analogous with DDT, asbestos, lead and tobacco, where industries were able to block regulatory actions for many years by perpetually muddying the waters about their safety with false or misleading data.”

Where GM is concerned, we are witnessing an unnecessary gamble with the genetic core of food, the environment and human health. Unnecessary because the US authorities themselves have conceded that GM crops have failed to achieve desired benefits. For example, regarding drought tolerance, the USDA has admitted that Monsanto’s drought-tolerant corn performs no better than existing drought-tolerant varieties of non-GM corn.

Regarding yields, in 2016 the US National Academies of Sciences concluded, “The nation-wide data on maize, cotton, or soybean in the United States do not show a significant signature of genetic engineering technology on the rate of yield increase.”

In India and Burkina Faso, Bt cotton has not been a success. Moreover, a largely non-GMO Europe tends to outperform the US, which largely relies on GM crops. In general, “GM crops have not consistently increased yields or farmer incomes, or reduced pesticide use in North America or in the Global South (Benbrook, 2012; Gurian-Sherman, 2009)” (from the report ‘Persistent narratives, persistent failure’).

“Currently available GM crops would not lead to major yield gains in Europe,” says Matin Qaim, a researcher at Georg-August-University of Göttingen, Germany.

Consider too that once the genetic genie is out of the bottle, there may be no way of going back. For instance, Roger Levett, specialist in sustainable development, argues (‘Choice: Less can be more, in Food Ethics, Vol. 3, No. 3, Autumn 2008):

“If some people are allowed to choose to grow, sell and consume GMO foods, soon nobody will be able to choose food, or a biosphere, free of GMOs. It’s a one-way choice… once it’s made, it can’t be reversed.”

HT crops have also led to serious problems (as set out here) in countries where they are used.

Moreover, non-GM alternatives can outperform GM, yet officialdom in India seems to be facilitating the contamination of agriculture with illegal GMOs.

And what of India’s only legally permitted GM crop to date? The peer reviewed study “Deconstructing Indian cotton: weather, yields and suicides” concludes that “annual farmers’ suicide rates in rainfed areas are inversely related to farm size and yield and directly related to increases in Bt-cotton adoption (i.e. costs)”.

Despite evidence of the failure of Bt cotton, Aruna Rodrigues notes that for the regulators it nevertheless strangely remains the official template of ‘success’ for other GM crops.

GMO based on a fraud

GM has not delivered as promised, is not ‘substantially equivalent’ to non-GM counterparts and poses unique risks (previously discussed here).

And the corporations behind the roll-out of GM have done little to inspire confidence. According to Steven Druker, we can see that GMOs were approved fraudulently in the face of scientific warnings: clear, early warnings right from the start of possible harm. As the latest application to India’s Supreme Court states:

“These early warnings have been confirmed and reinforced up to the present time, through independent studies; this despite great difficulties faced by scientists, which include ‘persecution’, and sackings, nothing short.”

There are major uncertainties concerning the technology (not least regarding its precision and health safety aspects), which are brushed aside by industry lobbyists with claims of ‘the science’ is decided and the ‘facts’ about GM are indisputable. Such claims are merely political posturing and part of the plan to tip the policy agenda in favour of GM. Tipping that agenda also involves corruption and the subversion of democratic institutions.

Following the court decision to award in favour of Dewayne Johnson, attorney Bobby Kennedy Jr said the following at the post-trial press conference:

“… you not only see many people injured, but you also see a subversion of democracy. You see the corruption of public officials, the capture of agencies that are supposed to protect us all from pollution. The agencies become captured by the industries they are supposed to regulate. The corruption of science, the falsification of science, and we saw all those things happen here. This is a company (Monsanto) that used all of the plays in the playbook developed over 60 years by the tobacco industry to escape the consequences of killing one of every five of its customers… Monsanto… has used those strategies…”

He then went on to say glyphosate is ubiquitous in the food supply and is related to so many terrible life-threatening conditions, which he listed.

Given the failure or lukewarm performance of GM technology, the risks to health and the environment and the devastation caused by India’s only legal GM crop to date, many might be wondering why Indian authorities are facilitating the entry of (chemical-dependent) GMOs into the food system.

Why is there so much support for a technology mired in fraud that has to date created more problems and risks than benefits?

Why – despite increasing support for highly productive, sustainable zero-budget farming in places like Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka – is a bogus technology being pushed?

Why, based on India’s unnecessary and rising import bill, is unadulterated (non-GM) food, self-reliance and food security an anathema to policy makers?

In other words, whose interests are ultimately being served: the public, the farmers or those of transnational agrocapital?

India: Kerala floods death toll climbs to 445

Sathish Simon & Deepal Jayasekera

The official number of those killed in the worst floods that the southern Indian state of Kerala has faced in nearly a century now stands at 445. Of the two million flood victims, almost one million people remain in more than 2,780 relief camps, with little prospect of returning to their homes in the near future.

Millions of Kerala residents now face the danger of water-borne diseases, such as cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, typhoid and leptospirosis, along with bites from poisonous snakes and other reptiles, which are expected to push up the current death toll.

Those able to return to their homes face immense difficulties due to the lack of electricity and drinking water. About 50 electricity sub-stations and over 16,158 transformers have been seriously damaged, cutting power to more than a quarter million properties.

While water levels are receding, more than 100,000 houses need to be fully rebuilt, a task that will have to be undertaken by flood victims, as government authorities have virtually abandoned the survivors. Last Wednesday a 68-year-old man committed suicide after he was taken to the remains of his home at Kothad in Ernakulam district. Earlier in the week, a 19-year-old boy took his own life because his school certificates were destroyed by the floods.

Tamil Nadu’s transport system has been seriously impacted with about 11,000 kilometres of roads and 237 bridges damaged. A final estimate of the toll on the state’s agricultural sector cannot be made yet because state officials have not been able to reach many of the flooded areas. Over 10,000 hectares are flood damaged at a cost of 5.728 billion rupees ($82 million) in the hardest-hit Idukki district, which produces cardamom, pepper, tea, fruit and vegetables.

Initial estimates of the cost of the Kerala disaster currently stand at 200 billion rupees ($3 billion), but officials have warned that the final amount will be more than twice that figure. United Nations Development Programme senior advisor G. Pramod Kumar told the media: “The total loss will probably run into billions of dollars. Think about Mississippi, Katrina and the Thailand floods—they all ran into tens of billions of dollars. Finding money to recover from this level of damage is difficult.”

The massive social destruction in Kerala, however, is a direct result of political decisions made by India’s ruling elite. Successive Indian governments, at central and state levels, all share the blame, having refused to provide badly needed flood-control infrastructure. Instead they have diverted government resources to providing facilities and tax breaks for foreign and local big business investors.

India’s central and Kerala state governments, whether led by the Hindu-supremacist Bharatiya Janatha Party, the Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist) or the Congress Party, have promoted highly profitable construction, mining and deforestation industries without any consideration of their dangerous environmental impact.

In the aftermath of the disaster, all factions of the ruling elite are attempting to divert popular anger by shifting responsibility onto their political rivals.

The CPM-led Kerala state government, for example, is blaming neighbouring Tamil Nadu for the flood. In an affidavit submitted to the Indian Supreme Court on August 23, Kerala Chief Secretary Tom Jose said: “The sudden releases from the Mullaperiyar Dam, the third largest reservoir in the Periyar Basin, forced us (Kerala) to release more water from the Idukki reservoir, downstream of Mullaperiyar, which is one of the causes of this deluge.”

The Tamil Nadu state government rejected the Kerala government’s allegations. Mullaperiyar Dam is located in Kerala but its operations are controlled by Tamil Nadu. This has been the source of regional chauvinist conflict between the two states for decades.

Congress Party state opposition leader Oommen Chandy blamed the current CPM-led state government for the floods, accusing it of not releasing water from Idukki dam “until the last minute” and causing “huge damage to life and properties.”

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan rejected these accusations, claiming they were “misleading,” “baseless” and that emergency warnings were issued “before the dams were opened.”

Irrespective of Chandy’s claims, the previous Congress Tamil Nadu state government, which he led, is equally responsible for the disaster. Both state governments refused to act on recommendations by the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) in 2011. The Indian government-appointed agency identified future flood dangers and called for tight restrictions to be placed on quarrying, mining, illegal repurposing of forests and high-rise building constructions.

The Kerala government has called on the BJP-led central government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to provide 20 billion rupees ($287 million) in emergency assistance. Modi, however, has provided just 6 billion rupees ($86 million). He also rejected $100 million of aid offered by the United Arab Emirates, stating that India would not accept any assistance from a foreign government and had enough resources to deal with the disaster.

Last Wednesday, Raveesh Kumar, a spokesman for India’s ministry of external affairs, told the media: “In line with the existing policy, the government is committed to meeting the requirements for relief and rehabilitation through domestic efforts.”

The CPM-led Kerala state government has denounced the BJP government’s response. Kerala’s finance minister Thomas Isaac told the media the central government’s reaction was “political discrimination” against “a leftist government.”

Appearing on Manorama News channel’s “Liveathon” programme, Kerala CPM Chief Minister Vijayan called on Kerala residents to donate a month’s salary to help rebuild the flood damaged state. “All those who have lost their houses should be provided new ones,” he said. “Damaged houses should be repaired. The government, however, cannot carry out these tasks on its own.”

In other words, the economic burden of repairing the homes and basic facilities of millions of flood survivors in Kerala is to be placed on the backs of the working class.

NSA leaker Reality Winner sentenced to more than five years in prison

Kevin Martinez

National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Reality Winner, 26, was sentenced last Thursday to five years and three months in federal prison for leaking classified documents to the press which contained allegations of Russian manipulation of the 2016 presidential election.

Winner is the first person to be tried by the Trump Administration under the Espionage Act and according to her attorneys her punishment will be the longest sentence ever imposed for leaking classified information.

She pleaded guilty in June at a federal courthouse in Georgia as part of a plea deal to reduce her sentence. Prosecutors from the Justice Department did not seek the maximum sentence of 10 years imprisonment and instead recommended a 63-month penalty.

Winner was employed by defense contractor Pluribus International Corporation in May 2017 when she printed a classified document from the NSA office in Augusta, Georgia and mailed it to an “online news outlet.”

The news organization was never named by prosecutors, but the Justice Department announced Winner’s June 2017 arrest the same day that the online news source The Intercept published an article on a secret NSA document.

The document alleged that Russian military intelligence launched a “cyber attack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last November’s presidential election”. Upon closer examination, however, the document fails to provide any real evidence to back up these claims as it merely rests on summary statements that are to be taken at face value.

For example, it reads “Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate actors … executed cyber espionage operations against a named U.S. company in August 2016, evidently to obtain information on elections-related software and hardware solutions. … The actors likely used data obtained from that operation to … launch a voter registration-themed spear-phishing campaign targeting U.S. local government organizations” (emphasis added).

Short on any specifics, the document fails to note if the operation had any discernible impact on the outcome of the 2016 election. Furthermore, the NSA documents contain hypothetical charts which show how Russian intelligence agents, or anyone else, might infiltrate US election systems. Winner may have thought the documents were proof of Russian hacking and leaked them to the media.

The ruling class has been involved in a ferocious conflict since Trump’s victory in November 2016 over allegations of Russian hacking of the election for which no real proof has been offered. Behind these conflicts lie questions over foreign policy and democratic rights, with President Trump being criticized by Democrats and Republicans for his lack of bellicosity toward Russia and with Congressional Democrats leading the charge for the censorship of the Internet to combat “foreign meddling.”

The sentencing of Winner for leaking documents to the press and the Trump administration’s war on journalists and whistleblowers is entirely consistent with the Obama Administration’s persecution of Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange.

Winner grew up in Kingsville, Texas, a small city 44 miles southwest of Corpus Christi. She joined the Air Force upon finishing high school and became a linguist, fluent in Arabic and Farsi. She was employed as a translator by the NSA at Fort Meade, Maryland. After leaving the military she again worked for the NSA, this time as a civilian contractor.

In court, Winner apologized for her actions calling them “an undeniable mistake that I made,” adding “My actions were a cruel betrayal of my nation’s trust in me.” For their part, prosecutors made the claim that “the defendant’s unauthorized disclosure caused exceptionally grave harm to our national security.”

US Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia, Bobby Christine, appointed by Trump last year, told reporters outside the federal courthouse in Augusta, Georgia, “Winner will serve a term of incarceration that will give pause to others who are entrusted with our country’s sensitive national security information and would consider compromising it,” and “Anyone else who may think of committing such an egregious and damaging wrong should take note of the prison sentence imposed today and the very real damage done.”

Needless to say, the government’s attorneys did not explain or make an effort to prove how exactly Winner compromised “national security” or put anyone’s lives at risk.

President Trump responded to the sentencing by publicly criticizing his own Attorney General Jeff Sessions for not prosecuting his rival Hilary Clinton in a similar fashion, tweeting, “Ex-NSA contractor to spend 63 months in jail over ‘classified’ information. Gee, this is ‘small potatoes’ compared to what Hillary Clinton did! So unfair Jeff, Double Standard.”

Amazon unleashes army of Twitter trolls to improve its image

Erik Schreiber 

Amazon has unveiled a new program to burnish its worsening image through social media. In the middle of August, the company began introducing a corps of “Fulfillment Center Ambassadors” on Twitter. The group’s primary responsibility is to mitigate the damage from increasingly common exposures of the punishing conditions at Amazon’s warehouses.

This diplomatic corps includes at least 12 accounts so far, and the users’ profiles follow the same pattern. Their usernames all end with the title “Amazon FC Ambassador,” they all include the Amazon smile logo, and they all show a photograph of an employee in a warehouse, although his or her face often is outside the frame. In addition, the ambassadors’ profiles include a link that allows users to schedule a tour of an Amazon fulfillment center.

When Twitter users criticize Amazon for its low pay, dangerous working conditions or inhuman workloads, these ambassadors spring into action. They insert themselves into the conversation and cheerfully defend the company. Their favorite topics are wages, bathroom breaks, and the temperature of the warehouses where they work. The following comment from Phil is representative: “Working conditions are very good- clean/well lit- Safety is a top priority at my facility!”

The ambassadors affect a uniformly chipper tone and often cite the same talking points. For example, several ambassadors have posted variations on the following remark, again from Phil: “We make ~30 percent more than traditional retail stores. We also have great medical benefits from day one.”

Some comments express a nauseating affection for the company. In one post, Carol remarked, “I can safely say that none of MY ideas have panned out anywhere near what Jeff Bezos has accomplished. I am more than happy, though, to continue working here, at BFI4, in WA. I receive a (more than fair) wage and work with some really good people. Making history, every day.”

Such cloying paeans to the mammoth retailer and its obscenely wealthy CEO might make Twitter users think that they have stumbled into Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In fact, skeptics have challenged the ambassadors to prove that they’re real people, rather than bots. Ambassadors have obliged them by posting photos of themselves holding sheets of paper bearing the names of their interlocutors.

Real Amazon workers are, in fact, maintaining these accounts. These employees are stockers, stowers and managers at warehouses in places like Jacksonville, Florida; San Marcos, Texas; and Kent, Washington. Most of the ambassadors have worked at Amazon for a year or longer. They openly tell other Twitter users that the public relations campaign is part of their job responsibilities. It would be easy, though, to mistake the ambassadors for workers who are spontaneously defending Amazon without prompting.

“FC ambassadors are employees who understand what it’s actually like to work in our FCs,” said Ty Rogers, an Amazon spokesperson, in an interview with the Guardian. “The most important thing is that they’ve been here long enough to honestly share the facts based on personal experience. It’s important that we do a good job of educating people about the actual environment inside our fulfillment centers, and the FC ambassador program is a big part of that, along with the FC tours we provide.”

The truth of the matter was revealed to Yahoo Finance by a former Amazon employee who described his ambassadorship. “Ambassador isn’t a job you do every day, it’s just something you are trained to do,” said Chris Grantham, who worked at a warehouse in Florida for three years. “Becoming an ambassador was a way to get out of loading trucks or packing boxes for 10 to 12 hours. You may ‘ambassador’ one day, then unload trucks for the next three.”

Ambassadors receive an additional paid day off, which they must use within three weeks, and a $50 Amazon gift card. “Plus, they gave us lunch: cold cuts and sandwich bread,” said Grantham. Managers pick workers for this job. “Generally speaking, ambassadors are the kiss-asses of the department,” said Grantham. “I stopped doing it after the first year I was there because it didn’t pay more. It’s voluntary.”

Naturally, the ambassadors do not describe the actual working conditions at Amazon warehouses. These details can be found in the book Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain by journalist James Bloodworth, who worked at Amazon as part of his research. He describes an atmosphere of stress, high pressure and abusive managers. After workers enter the facility, they undergo screening reminiscent of that at a major airport. Hoodies, sunglasses and phones are forbidden, and workers are patted down upon leaving to discourage theft.

Other appalling details are presented in a survey that the workers’ rights group Organise conducted. Between December 2017 and March 2018, the group gathered information from workers at Amazon warehouses in the United Kingdom. Employees described being forced to stand for 10-hour shifts. A pregnant woman was reprimanded for being sick. About 73 percent of workers had had their targets (i.e., the number of items that they must pack or sort) increased from already unreasonable levels. An incredible 74 percent of workers avoided using the bathroom so that they would not miss their targets. Approximately 55 percent of workers reported having developed depression since they started their jobs at Amazon. About 42 percent of workers reported having witnessed bullying or harassment. Not surprisingly, 82 percent of workers said that they would not apply for a job at Amazon again.

A legion of Amazon workers has expressed its anger at their low pay and abominable working conditions. In the US, Amazon worker Shannon Allen, for example, has produced a series of videos that detail the mistreatment to which she was subjected.

Above all, the billion-dollar corporation is threatened with the possibility that its workers may take matters into their own hands. The World Socialist Web Site’s International Amazon Workers Voice (IAWV) has undertaken a campaign to expose conditions at Amazon facilities around the world. This campaign has unquestionably caused deep disquiet among Amazon executives, particularly since the IAWV proposes a program of political and industrial action with which Amazon workers can fight back. The IAWV’s calls for rank-and-file committees at fulfillment centers and for Amazon workers to link their struggles to those of millions of other logistics workers globally—especially with those of UPS workers—is a direct threat the superprofits of Jeff Bezos and his lackeys.

Because information about Amazon’s exploitation of its workforce is emerging steadily as workers gain the confidence to speak out, the company’s charm offensive is falling flat. Twitter users have taken to arguing with the ambassadors and even insulting them.

Pranksters have created Twitter accounts to satirize the ambassadors, posting expressions of loyalty to “father Bezos” and hymns of gratitude for “three-minute regulated breaks between shifts.” But as part of the ongoing campaign to censor left-wing and oppositional viewpoints on the Internet, including, apparently, of criticism of corporations, Twitter has suspended some of these parody accounts. Nevertheless, the truth about Amazon’s slave driving is out, and workers coming into struggle will not be satisfied with the company’s transparently false happy talk.

Macron’s education cuts deny admission to thousands of French university students

Kumaran Ira

Less than two weeks before classes resume on September 3, tens of thousands of French students are still being denied admission to university by the Parcoursup algorithm set up by the Orientation and Success for Students (ORE) law imposed in the face of mass student protests this spring. According to figures released on August 9, of the 812,050 university-age students who are enrolled in Parcoursup, 66,400 still had not been admitted anywhere.

The fact that tens of thousands of students may be denied higher education underscores the reactionary character of President Emmanuel Macron’s education cuts. The measure aims to make universities more competitive and to prepare their privatization. It gives France’s public universities the power to select, and to reject, their own students.

Previously, virtually every student wanting to attend university, who had passed the baccalauréat exam at the end of high school, would be assigned to a public university in his or her chosen field. The new law, however, requires university admissions to take into account the baccalauréat score, the quality of the student’s high school, and the student’s academic record and internships. This favors more affluent layers of the population who can access better-ranked schools, travel, obtain internships and cultural experiences—opportunities denied to working-class families.

In the last three years, the number of incoming university students has grown by 30,000 to 40,000 each year, a tendency expected to continue until 2020. Public universities would therefore need substantial state investment to deal with the increased number of students. Instead, Macron’s education cuts are substantially lowering the number of enrolments, forcing students to either attend private universities or abandon their studies outright.

After the ORE reform was announced, students protested across France in the spring, blockading dozens of universities to oppose the law and demand its withdrawal. Macron reacted with brute repression, sending the police to break up the blockades.

The trade unions and pseudo-left parties like the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) and Unsubmissive France (LFI) played a key role in isolating the students. They kept students from waging a joint struggle together with the workers against Macron, by limiting the movement in the railways, airlines and other industries to symbolic actions subordinated to the trade unions’ negotiations with Macron. The unions then approved Macron’s policy of privatizing the railways and preparing more social attacks, isolating the student blockades and letting police crush them.

Faced with growing anger and concern among students, the government has tried to deny the figures about students being denied admission that are reported in the press. Higher Education Minister Frédérique Vidal told RTL radio: “There are 16,000 youth who are actively looking for admission, and 50,000 we are trying to contact and who currently are not answering our calls.”

These 50,000 other candidates are “inactive,” according to the jargon of the government, who claims that they therefore do not need to be counted as seeking admission. “We consider them inactive because one knows that youth can have other plans, be enrolled in the university system but not actively be seeking admission,” Vidal tried to tell RTL.

The government’s explanation flagrantly contradicts the experiences of thousands of students. L’Express contacted Guillaume Ouattara, an engineering student at Compiègne, “who has analyzed the Parcoursup platform’s algorithm, and concluded that the division between students who are or are not actively seeking admission is fraudulent.”

Ouattara told L’Express, “To be considered as actively seeking admission, one must have recently formulated a request for internships or have contacted the rectorate (to discuss admissions plans). However, many students do not even know that they can contact their rectorate or have not found internships that suited them. However, they are still logging on to the system to check if their situation has changed.”

Though these students are still waiting to be admitted, the education ministry blamed them for supposedly not trying to gain admission: “Every year, we have this problem. We ask the students to make themselves known to us if they are really looking for a place in higher education. We have sent them various messages on the platform.”

Ouattara told L’Express he had his doubts: “Students I’m talking to have not all received either a phone call or a message. … There are indeed 66,000 students who are waiting, not 16,000 as the ministry claims.”

The government has assigned only €7 million in aid for unassigned high school graduates’ moving expenses, assuming they will eventually be assigned a university. According to financial daily Les Echos, “Aid packages of €200-1,000 for moving expenses are being granted as lump sums at the beginning of the university term for graduates who are forced to move far from their home after receiving an offer of admissions.”

This derisory sum of €200-1,000, which does not compensate the cost of moving and starting university studies, is more of an insult than an offer of aid.

If thousands of students risk not being able to attend or finance their studies, it is because of social austerity that allows the super-rich to accumulate exorbitant fortunes at the expense of the masses.

The €7 million aid package proposed to as yet non-admitted students is less than what some French billionaires make in a day. Thanks to Macron’s anti-social reforms, the 13 richest people in France have increased their wealth by €23.67 billion since the beginning of 2018.

Bernard Arnault, the richest person in Europe and the fourth-richest person on the planet due to his ownership of luxury conglomerate LVMH, was able to increase his fortune from €18 billion to €73.2 billion between 2008 and 2018—a decade of deep economic crisis and social hardship for masses of working people. It would take a minimum wage worker 4 million years to earn Arnault’s net worth.

Arnault’s fortune increased by €19.1 billion over the course of the last year— that is more than €52 million per day. Arnault “earns” in less than four hours the equivalent of the total funding proposed by the Macron administration to aid students who still have not received an admissions assignment from Parcoursup.

New Australian prime minister forms cabinet after endorsement from Washington

James Cogan

Scott Morrison, Australia’s new prime minister—the country’s seventh in just 11 years—spent the weekend receiving the congratulations of the Trump administration and other US allies and selecting his cabinet.

Morrison won a leadership ballot of the governing Liberal Party on Friday afternoon, after former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was ousted in a political coup organised by the party’s most right-wing faction. Turnbull’s so-called “moderate” supporters within the party threw their support behind Morrison to prevent the victory of Peter Dutton, the candidate of the right. Morrison, an extreme right-wing figure himself, was elected as the “compromise” leader by just 45 votes to Dutton’s 40.

Turnbull is the fourth elected prime minister since 2010 who has been torn down by their own party before finishing a single term in office. Even before Turnbull’s demise, the regularity with which political leaders are axed had led the British Broadcasting Corporation to label Australia as the “coup capital of the world.”

Turnbull himself gained the leadership of the Liberal Party in September 2015 by organising the removal of Tony Abbott, who had led the party to victory in the September 2013 election against the Labor Party. Labor had its own coups in June 2010, when Kevin Rudd was ousted by Julia Gillard, and again in June 2013, when Gillard was removed and Rudd reinstalled.

The constant factors in the intractable political turmoil in Australia have been the mounting geostrategic tensions between the US and China, and the immense disaffection with the whole parliamentary establishment due to falling living standards and ever-widening social inequality.

In 2010, Rudd’s removal was in large part due to his hesitation to fully align Australia with an openly confrontational policy by the United States, Australia’s strategic ally and largest source of investment, against China, the country’s largest export market and trading partner. The Labor powerbrokers who ousted him were in close contact with the US embassy, which termed them as its “protected sources” in its diplomatic cables.

Under the Gillard, Abbott and Turnbull governments, Australia has served as a crucial partner in the US military build-up in Asia and one of Washington’s closest allies on the world arena. Canberra has backed all US-led wars and intrigues—from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Ukraine, to the persecution of WikiLeaks’ editor Julian Assange, to the denunciations of China over its territorial claims in the South China Sea and other issues.

Since late 2016, Turnbull, fully supported by Labor and the media, waged a xenophobic campaign against purported Chinese “influence” in Australian business, politics and society, culminating in the ramming through in June of anti-democratic “foreign interference” laws that could be used to criminalise opposition to US and Australian militarism.

Throughout this time, however, class tensions have been building to the point of a social explosion. Sections of big business have continued to raise that support for Washington’s confrontation with Beijing was threatening their markets in China.

Fear of an eruption of the working class led Turnbull to retreat from some of the most severe austerity policies that Abbott had attempted to implement. It also left him incapable of getting support from various right-wing populist parties that control the balance of power in the upper house of parliament for his key policies: a pro-business restructuring of the energy industry and massive corporate tax cuts.

This year, amid recriminations internationally that Trump’s policies are threatening to trigger a second global financial crisis, Turnbull’s foreign minister Julie Bishop publicly rejected US calls for direct military participation in so-called “freedom of navigation” provocations in the South China Sea. Just two weeks ago, Turnbull gave a speech in which he sought to distance Australia from Trump’s trade war measures against China.

In the final analysis, the move against Turnbull is part of a conscious and ongoing campaign to refashion the Liberal Party into a movement that is prepared to confront and ride rough-shod over both the working class and the sections of the ruling class that oppose confrontation with China.

The aim of the Dutton faction, which includes Tony Abbott and enjoys the full backing of the Rupert Murdoch-owned media, is to try and consolidate a right-wing base of support by blaming the social crisis facing millions of people on too much immigration and social welfare spending. Key figures in the faction, such as former military officers Andrew Hastie and General Jim Molan, are determined to use the foreign interference laws to prosecute alleged “agents of Chinese influence” and stoke virulent xenophobia against China.

The policies and demagogy of the Dutton-Abbott wing broadly parallel those of the pro-Trump “alt-right” in the US and the range of extreme-right and neo-fascist movements that have emerged to prominence across Europe. As international relations and parliamentary democratic forms of rule break down, preparations are being made to use authoritarian, police-state measures to defend the financial and corporate oligarchy against mass opposition from the working class to social inequality and war.

While Dutton did not win the leadership, the right faction will put its mark on all the policies of the Morrison government. In the name of “uniting” the party, Morrison’s “compromise” was to reinstate Dutton and some of his main backers, along with the three crucial figures in the challenge to Turnbull, Mathias Cormann, Michaelia Cash and Mitch Fifield, back into some of the most senior cabinet jobs.

Turnbull and Julie Bishop, reflecting the marginalisation of their “moderate” positions, have announced they are resigning from parliament.

Regardless of whether the US had a direct hand in the move against Turnbull, the fact that his ouster was welcomed in Washington is obvious. Trump took time out on the weekend to have a “very warm” phone call with Morrison, in which the two pledged to uphold the US-Australia alliance. Morrison invited the US president—who is deeply unpopular in Australia—to visit the country as soon as possible.

Morrison’s apparent intention, reflected in his cabinet selections, is to attempt to hold together both the Liberal Party and its coalition with the rural-based National Party until he is forced to call the next election—which must be held by mid-May 2019.

Most of the policies his government will take to an election are already being implemented. These include ongoing cost-cutting to public health, public education and social welfare, and massive increases to military spending to finance the war preparations against China.

There is little question that Morrison, new treasurer and former investment banker Josh Frydenberg, and finance minister Mathias Cormann remain determined to secure major cuts to the corporate tax rate and personal income taxes on the wealthy, though that will be hidden from the population.

The reactionary economic agenda will be combined with attempts to divert social discontent and divide the working class with anti-immigrant xenophobia. Morrison declared earlier this year his support for a “cap” on annual migration and he is a ruthless advocate of the bipartisan Liberal and Labor policy of preventing any refugee reaching Australia by boat and claiming asylum.

The key objective of the Liberal and National parties is to win back a large section of their voter base that has switched to supporting various right-wing populist formations, such as Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, which blame the social crisis in working class and rural areas on immigration and welfare spending.

The Labor Party, headed by former union leader and Rudd-Gillard minister Bill Shorten, is desperately seeking to win government by rhetorically posturing as concerned over social inequality and offering a “progressive” alternative to the Coalition.

The reality is that for four decades, Labor and the trade unions have been committed to doing what is necessary to maintain the “international competitiveness” of Australian capitalism. This has translated, under Labor governments from 1983 to 1996 and from 2007 to 2013, into attacks on workers’ wages and conditions, austerity cuts to social spending and tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. Labor has more than matched the most right-wing faction of the Liberal Party in demonising refugees and blaming immigration for over-stretched infrastructure and unemployment.

Labor is not a “lesser evil” to the Coalition. If it is returned to government it will continue and deepen the militarist alignment with the US against China and impose the burden of economic crisis on the working class through the most ruthless means.

The working class faces the urgent task of asserting its own independent interests through the development of a mass, socialist and internationalist movement against all the establishment parties and the capitalist profit system they defend.