Attack in Iran raises spectre of a potentially far larger conflagration

James M. Dorsey

An attack on a military parade in the southern Iranian city of Ahwaz is likely to prompt Iranian retaliation against opposition groups at home and abroad. It also deepens Iranian fears that the United States. Saudi Arabia and others may seek to destabilize the country by instigating unrest among its ethnic minorities.

With competing claims of responsibility by the Islamic State and the Ahvaz National Resistance for the attack that killed 29 people and wounded 70 others in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan, which borders on Iraq and is home to Iran’s ethnic Arab community, it is hard to determine with certainty the affiliation of the four perpetrators, all of whom were killed in the incident.

Statements by Iranian officials, however, accusing the United States and its allies, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Israel, suggest that they see the Ahvaz group rather than the Islamic State as responsible for the incident, the worst since the Islamic State attacked the Iranian parliament and the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Tehran in 2017.

Iran’s summoning, in the wake of the attack, of the ambassadors of Britain, the Netherlands and Denmark, countries from which Iranian opposition groups operate, comes at an awkward moment for Tehran.

It complicates Iranian efforts to ensure that European measures effectively neutralize potentially crippling US sanctions that are being imposed as a result of the US withdrawal in May from the 2015 international agreement that curbed the Islamic republic’s nuclear program.

Ahvaz-related violence last year spilled on to the street of The Hague when unidentified gunmen killed Ahwazi activist Ahmad Mola Nissi. Mr. Nissi was shot dead days before he was scheduled to launch a Saudi-funded television station staffed with Saudi-trained personnel that would target Khuzestan, according to Ahvazi activists.

This week, a group of exile Iranian academics and political activists, led by The Hague-based social scientist Damon Golriz, announced the creation of a group that intends to campaign for a liberal democracy in Iran under the auspices of Reza Pahlavi, the son of the ousted Shah of Iran who lives in the United States.

While Iran appears to be targeting exile groups in the wake of the Ahvaz attack, Iran itself has witnessed in recent years stepped up activity by various insurgent groups amid indications of Saudi support, leading to repeated clashes and interception of Kurdish, Baloch and other ethnic insurgents.

Last month, Azeri and Iranian Arab protests erupted in soccer stadiums while the country’s Revolutionary Guards Corps reported clashes with Iraq-based Iranian Kurdish insurgents.

State-run television warned at the time in a primetime broadcast that foreign agents could turn legitimate protests stemming from domestic anger at the government’s mismanagement of the economy and corruption into “incendiary calls for regime change” by inciting violence that would provoke a crackdown by security forces and give the United States fodder to tackle Iran.

The People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran or Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MeK), a controversial exiled opposition group that enjoys the support of serving and former Western officials, including some in the Trump administration, as well as prominent Saudis such as Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi intelligence chief, who is believed to be close to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has taken credit for a number of the protests in Khuzestan.

The incidents fit an emerging pattern, prompting suggestions that if a Gulf-backed group was responsible for this weekend’s attack, it may have been designed to provoke a more direct confrontation between Iran and the United States.

“If the terrorist attack in Ahvaz was part of a larger Saudi and UAE escalation in Iran, their goal is likely to goad Iran to retaliate and then use Tehran’s reaction to spark a larger war and force the US to enter since Riyadh and Abu Dhabi likely cannot take on Iran militarily alone… If so, the terrorist attack is as much about trapping Iran into war as it is to trap the US into a war of choice,” said Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council.

Iran appears with its response to the Ahvaz attack to be saying that its fears of US and Saudi destabilization efforts are becoming reality. The Iranian view is not wholly unfounded.

Speaking in a private capacity on the same day as the attack in Ahvaz, US President Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, declared that US. sanctions were causing economic pain that could lead to a “successful revolution” in Iran.

“I don’t know when we’re going to overthrow them. It could be in a few days, months, a couple of years. But it’s going to happen,” Mr. Giuliani told an audience gathered in New York for an Iran Uprising Summit organized by the Organization of Iranian-American Communities, a Washington-based group associated with the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq.

Mr. Giuliani is together with John Bolton, Mr. Trump’s national security advisor, a long-standing supporter of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq that calls for the violent overthrow of the Iranian regime.

Mr. Bolton, last year before assuming office, drafted at the request of Mr. Trump’s then strategic advisor, Steve Bannon, a plan that envisioned US support “for the democratic Iranian opposition,” “Kurdish national aspirations in Iran, Iraq and Syria,” and assistance for Iranian Arabs in Khuzestan and Baloch in the Pakistani province of Balochistan and Iran’s neighbouring Sistan and Balochistan province.

The Trump administration has officially shied away from formally endorsing the goal of toppling the regime in Tehran. Mr. Bolton, since becoming national security advisor, has insisted that US policy was to put “unprecedented pressure” on Iran to change its behaviour”, not its regime.

Messrs. Bolton and Giuliani’s inclination towards regime change is, however, shared by several US allies in the Middle East, and circumstantial evidence suggests that their views may be seeping into US policy moves without it being officially acknowledged.

Moreover, Saudi support for confrontation with Iran precedes Mr. Trump’s coming to office but has intensified since, in part as a result of King Salman’s ascendance to the Saudi throne in 2015 and the rise of his son, Prince Mohammed.

Already a decade ago, Saudi Arabia’s then King Abdullah urged the United States to “cut off the head of the snake” by launching military strikes to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.

Writing in 2012 in Asharq Al Awsat, a Saudi newspaper, Amal Al-Hazzani, an academic, asserted in an op-ed entitled “The oppressed Arab district of al-Ahwaz“ that Khuzestan “is an Arab territory… Its Arab residents have been facing continual repression ever since the Persian state assumed control of the region in 1925… It is imperative that the Arabs take up the al-Ahwaz cause, at least from the humanitarian perspective.”

More recently, Prince Mohammed vowed that “we won’t wait for the battle to be in Saudi Arabia. Instead, we will work so that the battle is for them in Iran.”

Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a prominent UAE scholar, who is believed to be close to Emirati Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, played into Iranian assertions of Gulf involvement in this weekend’s attack by tweeting that it wasn’t a terrorist incident.

Mr. Abdulla suggested that “moving the battle to the Iranian side is a declared option” and that the number of such attacks “will increase during the next phase”.

A Saudi think tank, believed to be backed by Prince Mohammed last year called in a study for Saudi support for a low-level Baloch insurgency in Iran. Prince Mohammed vowed around the same time that “we will work so that the battle is for them in Iran, not in Saudi Arabia.”

Pakistani militants have claimed that Saudi Arabia has stepped up funding of militant madrassas or religious seminaries in Balochistan that allegedly serve as havens for anti-Iranian fighters.

The head of the US State Department’s Office of Iranian Affairs, Steven Fagin, met in Washington in June with Mustafa Hijri, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), before assuming his new post as counsel general in Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The KDPI has recently stepped up its attacks in Iranian Kurdistan, killing nine people weeks before Mr. Hijri’s meeting with Mr. Fagin. Other Kurdish groups have reported similar attacks. Several Iranian Kurdish groups are discussing ways to coordinate efforts to confront the Iranian regime.

Similarly, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) last year appointed a seasoned covert operations officer as head of its Iran operations.

Said Saudi Ambassador to the United States Prince Khalid bin Salman, Prince Mohammed’s brother: President “Trump makes clear that we will not approach Iran with the sort of appeasement policies that failed so miserably to halt Nazi Germany’s rise to power, or avert the costliest war ever waged.”

Australian university students face unprecedented financial pressures

Martin Scott

The 2017 Student Finances Survey, released last month by Universities Australia, revealed that 15 percent of Australian students regularly go without food or other basic necessities.

The report, based on data from 18,584 students enrolled at 38 universities, paints a picture of the unprecedented financial hardship faced by students in higher education resulting from decades of cutbacks by successive governments, Labor and Liberal-National alike.

More than half of the students surveyed said that their financial situation was often a source of worry. A quarter of undergraduates had been forced to reduce their course load or defer their studies because they could not afford to continue.

The situation is most dire for indigenous students and working class students classified as being from low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds.

Some 71 percent of indigenous, and 63 percent of low SES, students were concerned about their finances. Around 27 percent of indigenous students regularly go without food or other basic necessities because they cannot afford them. Indigenous and low SES students are also less likely to have savings or financial support from family.

The report found that four in five domestic students are engaged in paid employment. Approximately 30 percent of full-time domestic undergraduates reported working more than 20 hours a week in addition to their studies, up from just 16 percent in 2006.

The pressure to work increased hours has a detrimental effect on studies, with 27 percent of full-time domestic students regularly missing class to attend work, and 40 percent stating that their work commitments adversely affect their performance at university. About 36 percent of part-time students are regularly forced to skip classes for work, and more than half report that employment has a negative impact on their studies.

The median annual income from paid employment in 2017 was $15,600 for full-time domestic undergraduates, and $33,900 for part-time domestic undergraduates. Taking into account other sources, including poverty-level government allowances, the median total income for full-time domestic undergraduates was $18,300, and for part-time domestic undergraduates, $33,900.

More than half of full-time domestic undergraduates, and at least 20 percent of part-time domestic undergraduates reported total annual income below the poverty line of $26,494, defined as 50 percent of median income.

In fact, the present situation is likely worse than the survey suggests, as the data, collected in 2017, does not reflect the full impact of federal cuts to Sunday and late-night penalty rates introduced in July last year, and extended in July 2018.

The second most common source of student income after paid employment was government support. One third of domestic undergraduates, and 18 percent of domestic postgraduate students received Youth Allowance, AUSTUDY, or ABSTUDY payments averaging about $10,000 annually.

Legislation proposed as part of the 2017 Federal Budget would increase the maximum liquid assets test waiting period for these payments from 13 to 26 weeks. The waiting period before receiving these payments would be increased for anyone with more than $11,500 in savings, and the maximum 26-week wait would apply to the estimated 25 percent of students with liquid assets of $18,000 or more.

Domestic undergraduates estimated they would complete their studies having incurred an average HELP student loan debt to the government of $32,000. Average estimated HELP debt for domestic postgraduate students was $40,000, and for higher-degree research students, $30,000. New legislation passed in August lowers the minimum repayment threshold for these loans from an annual income of $55,874 to $45,000.

For many domestic students earning $40,000 and over, this will mean beginning to pay back student loans while still at university.

Median annual expenditure for domestic students was $16,300 for undergraduates, $32,500 for postgraduate coursework students, and $31,500 for higher degree research students. The primary expense reported by students was housing.

Economic modelling in a recent Urbis report found that a student earning average income could afford to pay $114 per week for accommodation. The average weekly cost of one bedroom in a shared three bedroom house was $112. For the more than half of full-time students who earn less than the average income, the cost of housing is prohibitive.

The majority of students at Australian universities live in private rental housing rather than purpose-built student accommodation, and are therefore subject to the same housing crisis facing workers across the country. Most Australian universities are located in the major cities, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide, which were all considered “severely unaffordable” housing markets by a 2017 Demographia survey. Sydney was the second least affordable city in the world, and Melbourne the fifth least affordable.

In recent years there has been a significant increase in the amount of purpose-built student accommodation, primarily to cater to full-fee-paying international students, who are a crucial source of revenue for universities looking to compensate for cuts in government funding.

Most of these new developments are commercially owned and managed, and according to real-estate analyst Savills, “record numbers of investors are looking to access the Australian student accommodation market.” This growth can hardly be seen as a move to provide affordable housing for all students. According to Urbis, the average weekly cost of such accommodation was $222, or 24 percent more than a student earning average income could afford to pay.

The effect of rising tuition and housing costs, reduced access to government support, and growing inability to earn sufficient income while studying will be to exclude from higher education all but the wealthiest of students.

This is the outcome of decades of funding cuts to higher education, imposed by successive Labor and Liberal-National governments. Recent funding reductions imposed by Liberal-National governments are a continuation of sweeping cuts imposed by the Greens-backed Labor government of Julia Gillard, which in 2013 introduced a $2.3 billion cut to university funding, the largest in history.

The increasingly dire plight of students makes clear that the fundamental social right to education is incompatible with a society subordinated to the profit dictates of a tiny corporate and financial elite.

Financial Times expresses concerns over Sri Lanka taking Chinese loans

Naveen Dewage

The London-based Financial Times (FT) recently published an article entitled “Sri Lanka sinks deeper into China’s grasp as debt woes spiral.” It is yet another expression of the concerns of US, European and major Asian powers about cash-strapped Sri Lanka relying more on China for economic support.

The US, with the backing of India and Japan, is increasingly putting pressure on Sri Lanka not to deviate from its efforts to undermine and encircle China.

The FT article is directed against Sri Lanka’s plan to issue $US250 million worth of renminbi-denominated Panda bonds. Country has already agreed to a $1 billion syndicated loan from China Development Bank in August. Its first instalment of $500 million was to be released in the first week of this month.

The article also noted that Sri Lanka had accumulated foreign debt of $55 billion of which Chinese lenders hold 10 percent, while Japan, the Asian Development Bank and World Bank have 13, 14 and 11 percent respectively.

However, the article claimed: “Sri Lanka’s mounting burden has earned some notoriety, with some observers saying the country is falling into a debt trap of Chinese design.” It added: “This view gained currency last year, after $1.1bn in debt was written off in exchange for the deep water port of Hambantota, near the southern tip of Sri Lanka.”

The major powers and the international media are increasingly using the catch phrase “China’s debt trap.” They claim that Beijing provides “unsustainable loans” and investments to bring countries under its fold to achieve China’s strategic ambitions for global domination.

This claim has nothing to do with their concerns for the plight of Sri Lanka or, for that matter, any of the backward countries facing mounting debts for which most of the major powers are directly responsible.

For decades, US imperialism has sought to undermine Beijing’s influence in Asia and Africa. Sri Lanka is among Washington’s major concerns because it is strategically located in the Indian Ocean astride important sea-lanes between North East Asia and Africa, the Middle East and Europe.

Washington was hostile to the close economic relations of the former President Mahinda Rajapakse government with Beijing, including the procuring of arms from China for the communal war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which ended in mid-2009. Washington exploited human rights abuses by the Sri Lankan military to pressurise Rajapakse to distance himself from Beijing. Washington hypocritically used these war crimes though it fully backed Colombo’s war.

In the end, the Obama administration orchestrated a regime change operation in Colombo in the January 2015 presidential election to bring Maithripala Sirisena to power. To this end, Washington secured the help of right-wing United National Party (UNP) leader Ranil Wickremasinghe and former President Chandrika Kumaratunga.

After coming to power, Sirisena and Wickremesinghe immediately changed the foreign policy in favour of the US and India and even held up China-funded projects.

However, facing a financial crisis, the government has turned to China for funding. Colombo obtained a bailout loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in June 2016 which was attached to far-reaching austerity measures for restructuring the economy and slashing government expenditure on basic services. This was the second IMF bailout loan in seven years—the first being obtained in 2009 under the Rajapakse regime.

As well as allowing Chinese companies to resume work on stalled projects, the government ceded a majority share of the Chinese-funded Hambantota Port to China Merchant Port Holdings in December 2017 in an attempt to offset the debt incurred for the port project.

Eyeing more financial assistance, Wickremesinghe declared at the handing-over ceremony that Hambantota was “part of the modern silk route,” a reference to Beijing’s ambitious “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) project.

The US, India and Japan immediately expressed concerns over the handing of the Hambantota port to China, claiming that it would be used as a military base by China to control the Indian Ocean.

With its own regional ambitions, India considers Sri Lanka as part of its sphere of influence in South Asia. To counter China’s rise, New Delhi has developed a close strategic partnership with Washington, and lined up with Japan which is also hostile to China.

Last month Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera visited Sri Lanka to boost military ties after having discussions with his Indian counterpart, Nirmala Sitharaman. Onodera visited Hambantota and told Japan’s NHK that the “port should not be used for military purposes,” indirectly referring to China.

Begun under the Obama administration, Washington’s aggressive economic and military moves against Beijing have intensified under Trump. Trade war measures are being ramped up by the US against China while military alliances with India, Japan and Australia are being strengthened. The US is insisting that countries in the region line up with its actions against China.

An FT editorial on September 10 declared that “China’s reputation as development financier [was] on the line.” It added: “US officials now see a disturbing pattern in which Beijing has encouraged indebtedness in order to gain control of strategic assets when debtors default on repayments.” Declaring that eight out of 68 countries “already have unsustainable levels of sovereign debts,” the editorial called for the US to “raise its own game plan” to counter China.

Defending his government, Sri Lankan Prime Minister Wickremesinghe declared at ASEAN’s World Economic Forum in Hanoi on September 10: “We are dealing with China. There is a fair amount of Chinese investments. There are China loans… I can’t see it as a threat.” He denied ceding the Hambantota port to China’s control.

There is no doubt that Sri Lanka will come under increasing pressure from the US and its allies to distance itself from China. The Sri Lankan military already has close relations with the US military and its warships frequently visit the island’s ports. Last week Colombo announced it will fully support US sanctions against Iran and halt oil imports from that country.

India cancels talks with Pakistan, threatens military action

Keith Jones

Indian Army Chief Bipin Rawat threatened military action against Pakistan Saturday, while applauding the Indian government’s sudden about-face on accepting a Pakistani offer for their respective foreign ministers to meet on the sidelines of this week’s UN General Assembly.

“I think our government’s policy has been quite clear and concise,” General Rawat told reporters. “We’ve made no bones about the fact that talks and terrorism can’t go hand in hand. Pakistan needs to curb (the) menace of terrorism.”

On Thursday, India’s government, which is led by Narendra Modi and his Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had accepted an offer of talks from Pakistan’s newly-minted prime minister, Imran Khan. But less than 24 hours later, New Delhi scuttled the planned meeting between India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and her Pakistani counterpart, Shah Mahmood Qureshi.

As justification, India cited the killing of three policemen, who had been abducted by anti-Indian Kashmiri insurgents from their homes in Jammu and Kashmir Thursday evening, and the alleged mutilation of the corpse of an Indian soldier killed earlier in the week in firing across the Line of Control (Loc) that separates Indian- and Pakistani-held Kashmir. A third reason cited by India was the Pakistani post office’s publication of a series of stamps commemorating Burhan Wani, the 21-year-old commander of an Islamist Kashmiri insurgent group whose July 2016 killing sparked mass protests in Indian-held Kashmir.

In his remarks Saturday, General Rawat, who was reportedly promoted over more senior officers because of his readiness to pursue an aggressive policy against India’s nuclear-armed rival, went beyond supporting the government’s hardline and declared India should inflict “pain” on Pakistan. “We need to take stern action to avenge the barbarism that terrorists and the Pakistan Army have been carrying out. Yes, it’s time to give it back to them in the same coin, not resorting to [a] similar kind of barbarism. But I think the other side must also feel the same pain.”

Peace talks between India and Pakistan, the arch-rivals born from the 1947 communal partition of South Asia, have been in limbo for more than a decade.

Beginning in late September 2016, India and Pakistan exchanged bloodcurdling threats of all-out war and heavy artillery and gun fire across the (LoC) on virtually a daily basis, causing scores of military and civilian casualties on both sides.

Nevertheless, both New Delhi and Islamabad claimed the coming to power of a new government in Pakistan last month provided an opportunity to ratchet down tensions.

Pakistan has responded to Friday’s announcement from New Delhi and Rawat’s threats by both repeating its offer of talks and declaring its readiness for war. Warning that India should not misconstrue Pakistan’s offer of “friendship” as “weakness,” Prime Minster Imran Khan said, “Our people are ready, our tanks are also ready.”

Islamabad has charged that India’s about-face was a sham, that it never wanted the foreign ministers’ meeting to go ahead. It chose to make a show of accepting the offer only to pull-out a day later, so as to highlight its hardline stance against Pakistan in the run-up to the flurry of diplomatic activity that will surround this week’s UN General Assembly.

What is clear is that India’s ruling elite, emboldened by its emergence as Washington’s principal ally in South Asia, is determined to bully Pakistan into demonstratively accepting New Delhi’s preeminence. Specifically, it is demanding that Islamabad ensure no logistical support is provided to the anti-Indian insurgency in Kashmir. This goes hand in hand with a narrative that reduces the alienation of the population of India’s lone Muslim-majority province to Pakistan’s machinations.

In reality, the Indian government has repeatedly and systematically violated Jammu and Kashmir’s constitutionally guaranteed autonomy and rigged its elections. For the past three decades, Indian security forces have waged a “dirty” counter-insurgency war in Jammu and Kashmir, subjecting the state’s population to armed-occupation, torture, disappearances and summary executions.

The Pakistan bourgeoisie is no less hostile to the democratic and social aspirations of Kashmir’s workers and toilers. It has manipulated the insurgency, promoting reactionary Islamist forces, so as to use them to pursue its own reactionary geo-strategic interests.

The cancellation of the foreign ministers’ talks fits well with the political calculations of the BJP government in the run-up next year’s general election. It has proclaimed September 29 “Surgical Strikes” day to mark the second anniversary of the provocative raid that Indian forces carried out inside Pakistan on September 28–29, 2016. It has also “suggested” the country’s universities organize parades to be addressed by Indian military personnel and cajoled students to write letters and emails pledging support to the armed forces.

But there is strong support across the Indian political establishment for a belligerent stance against Pakistan. The country’s main opposition party, the Congress Party, denounced the BJP government for its short-lived acceptance of the Pakistani offer of talks, and when it cancelled them complained that the BJP should never have agreed to talks.

In the brief interim between New Delhi’s acceptance and cancellation of the foreign ministers’ meeting, the US State Department declared the planned talks to be “terrific news.”

For the past decade, Washington has showered India with strategic favours, with the aim of transforming it into a frontline state in its military-strategic offensive against China, while dramatically downgrading ties with Pakistan. This has included explicit threats from Trump and his top aides that the US could repudiate Islamabad’s designation as a major non-NATO ally, and block an IMF emergency loan to Islamabad. However, the US still hopes to bully Pakistan, which has turned much of the country into a killing zone in support of the Afghan war, to eliminate all Taliban “safe-havens” in Pakistan, and calculates a lessening of tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad would help.

Under the four-year-old BJP government, India has dramatically increased its integration into the US drive against China, including throwing open its airbases and ports to routine use by Pentagon warplanes and warships and developing trilateral and quadrilateral ties with Washington’s closest allies in the Asia-Pacific, Japan and Australia.

New Delhi is also preparing, albeit reluctantly, to abide by the US sanctions against Iran, although India is heavily dependent on imported oil and Iran is one of its largest suppliers.

However, when it comes to Pakistan, India is ready to ignore Washington, as it seeks the greatest room and leverage to ruthlessly pursue what it deems its core strategic interests.

India’s corporate media has responded to the scuttling of the Indo-Pakistani foreign ministers’ meeting by saying that it indicates there will be no meaningful steps to revive the so-called “comprehensive peace progress” until after India’s general elections next May.

Such statements are based on an enormous underestimation of the combustibility of the Indo-Pakistani conflict and the extent to which it has become intertwined with the maelstrom of world geo-politics, above all the US-China divide. Pakistan has repeatedly warned that Washington’s drive to harness India to its predatory strategic ambitions has overturned the balance of power in the region. It is forcing Islamabad to both deepen its longtime strategic alliance with Beijing, leading to the crystallization of South Asia into rival blocs—the US and India versus China and Pakistan—and to deploy tactical, i.e., battlefield, nuclear weapons.

Brazil election campaign preparing rise of right-wing government

Miguel Andrade

With Brazil’s national elections just two weeks away, it is becoming increasingly clear that, whatever the results at the polls, the next government will be the country’s most right-wing since the fall of the 1964–1985 US-backed military dictatorship.

Currently, first-round polls give the the fascistic army reserve captain and seven-term Rio de Janeiro federal representative Jair Bolsonaro the lead with 28 percent, followed by Workers Party (PT) candidate Fernando Haddad with 16 percent and Ciro Gomes of the Democratic Labor Party (PDT) with 13 percent. The candidate for Brazil’s former leading right-wing party, the Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB), has been unable to break out of single digits, despite his electoral alliance holding a third of the seats Congress.

Polls for the second round of the election show Bolsonaro being narrowly defeated by every other candidate.

Whatever the results, however, two trends, vastly accelerated in the recent weeks, must be taken by the working class as a sharp warning of the violent swing by the Brazilian ruling class that lies ahead.

The first is the increasing frequency of comments on the part of military and far-right figures implying that the legitimacy of the next administration may be in question, either because of claims of election fraud or “foreign meddling.” The latter is a reference to the strategy of the Workers Party to take the case of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has been jailed on corruption charges and denied the right to run as the PT’s candidate, to the UN.

The second trend is the rush to the right by the so-called “anti-fascist” opposition to Bolsonaro, which is doubling down on its claims, in the fashion of the bankrupt Democratic Party opposition to Trump, that Bolsonaro is a threat to Brazilian capitalist interests.

The far-right campaign to justify a military coup in Brazil, casting the military as the only “legitimate” power, was already evidenced by the April 3 threats made by Brazilian Army commander, Gen. Eduardo Villas Bôas in relation to a Supreme Court ruling on a habeas corpus motion filed on behalf of Lula, which was ultimately struck down. At the time, Villas Bôas declared that “the army shares the feelings of well-meaning citizens’ against impunity [for Lula].”

On September 8, Bolsonaro’s vice-presidential running mate, Gen. Hamilton Mourão, escalated the campaign, declaring to Globonews that the military’s “mission” was to “guarantee the proper functioning of the institutions” of the state. He added that, “according to the Army’s manuals” it was up to the “interpretation of the commander” whether or not a military intervention was necessary. Making clear the deeply unstable conditions anticipated within military circles, even in the event of a Bolsonaro electoral victory, Mourão said that the president, as commander-in-chief, could “legitimately” mobilize the military for a “self-coup” if he felt “institutions were not working,” that is, if the president didn’t get his way in the face of political opposition, adding, “as we’ve seen many times in other countries.”

A day later, Gen. Villas Bôas declared to Brazil’s right-wing daily O Estado de S. Paulo that, in face of both the attempt on Bolsonaro’s life by a deeply disturbed individual during a campaign rally, and the brief divisions within ruling circles regarding the blocking of Lula’s candidacy after the UN Human Rights Committee’s recommendation that he be allowed to run, the legitimacy of the elections could be questioned.

Villas Bôas declared the UN recommendation a “violation of Brazilian sovereignty” after several pundits and an O Estado de S. Paulo editorial had already adopted this line, and that on these grounds a ruling in Lula’s favor could delegitimize the elections. Likewise, the attack on Bolsonaro could be grounds for Bolsonaro to claim that he was unable to campaign, and also delegitimize the elections. After the knife attack on September 6, Bolsonaro remained in semi-intensive care for two weeks and is still a patient in one of the favorite private hospitals of Brazil’s wealthy elite.

Such declarations emboldened Bolsonaro himself to declare, in a video from his hospital room, that the Brazilian electronic ballots were going to be manipulated for a Workers Party victory that would free Lula through a presidential pardon. In the video, he asks his supporters, “think of what you would do in prison; would you accept it? Lula has not attempted to run because he has a plan.”

Under the weight of the international economic crisis and the collapse of the commodity boom that allowed the so-called Pink Tide of IMF-friendly “nationalist” regimes to sweep to power in Latin America, the Brazilian ruling class is demanding not only the destruction of workers’ living standards, but an unhindered alignment with US imperialism and an abandonment of whatever negotiating strategies were employed by the Workers Party to extract benefits from imperialism through ties with China and other “south-south” strategies.

Conscious of the growing restiveness in the working class and the inevitable resistance these policies will produce, ruling circles are increasingly turning to the military. After decades of exclusion from political life due to demoralization after being forced from power and held responsible for the crimes of the murderous 1964–1985 dictatorship, high-ranking generals are taking over civilian posts, including the Defense Ministry, and, most importantly, Rio de Janeiro’s law enforcement. Military officers are also running for office in record numbers.

Most recently, on September 13, for the first time in Brazilian history, a military officer was nominated to serve as counsel to the incoming Supreme Court’s president, José Antônio Dias Toffoli, who claims that four-star Gen. Fernando de Azevedo e Silva is qualified to advise him “with his knowledge of our county.”

Against this backdrop, the “anti-fascist” opposition to Bolsonaro is pitching its appeal to the Brazilian ruling class and “democratic” imperialist governments and officials, allowing the country’s far right to posture as nationalist and an opponent of the establishment.

Leading pundits, both right-wing and ostensibly “left”, including those tied to the Workers Party, have for almost a year attempted to discredit Bolsonaro, not by exposing his lies about being able to create jobs by slashing wages, but by criticizing the “half-heartedness” of his support for neoliberal “reforms,” citing his record of voting against privatizations and the slashing of pensions.

In the last two weeks, however, they have almost unanimously shifted their critique further to the right. They have seized upon several recent reports in the imperialist press, including the Financial Times, Bloomberg and, most prominently, the Economist’s September 20 editorial, claiming Bolsonaro would be a “disastrous president” to try to dissuade Brazil’s ruling class from supporting him.

Celebratory comments from PT-supporting pundits came in the form of an article titled “‘Bye, bye, darling’, says ‘The Economist’ to Bolsonaro” by Flávio Ribeiro on the GGN news website on September 21. Similarly, the sycophantic Paulo Moreira Leite posted a column on the PT-aligned website Brasil247 on September 20, titled “Markets are already starting to distrust Bolsonaro’s unbelievable proposals,” referring to a plan to cut taxes for the rich. In other words, the wisdom of the financial markets’ support for IMF-approved PT policies, and not the votes—much less the mobilization—of the working class, will propel the Workers Party back to power.

The most recent “warnings” against Bolsonaro from the leading imperialist circles have coincided with the rise of the Workers Party’s substitute for Lula, Fernando Haddad, in the latest polls. The only São Paulo mayor to ever lose a re-election bid in the first round with 16 percent of the votes—less than the share of spoiled ballots—Haddad was able to earn São Paulo a Fitch investment grade rating amid the worst economic crisis in a century, an “accomplishment” achieved at the expense of the city’s working class and through a virtual zero investment policy.

Contrary to the “Free Lula” campaign’s lies about the ex-president’s “defiant” policies in favor of the poor, the party has continued a sharp turn to the right to compete with Bolsonaro for the support of the ruling elite. Lula’s nomination of the right-wing Haddad to head his economic team in January was already an indication of this trajectory.

GGN’s editor Luís Nassif celebrated on September 14 an FGV think-tank report explaining that market fluctuations in Brazil were more connected to international factors than any concern by finance capital about a PT victory—also in contradiction to the claims of the “Free Lula” campaign about his “defiant” defense of the oppressed.

This was followed by pundit Patrícia Campos Mello in her September 21 Folha de S. Paulo column citing favorable commentary about Haddad, repeatedly pointing out that it came, not from “progressive” and “anti-Trump” newspapers like the New York Times or the Guardian, but from Bloomberg and the Financial Times (“Financial markets Bibles are abandoning Bolsonaro”). It is symptomatic of the rightward turn by Bolsonaro’s “anti-fascist” critics that they shy away even from the positive references to the PT in CIA mouthpieces such as the New York Times .

One of the reports quoted by these columnists is Bloomberg’s Matthew Winkler’s analysis of the Brazilian situation from September 20, which ends by saying that investors believe that the winner of the election “doesn’t matter.”

As the Brazilian military increasingly indicate that it is preparing to guarantee that the election “doesn’t matter,” and the PT makes clear it has no intention of standing in their way, the responsibility for the dangers facing the Brazilian working class lie squarely with those pseudo-left forces promoting the PT as a political alternative.

Twenty-nine killed in attack on military parade in southwestern Iran

Keith Jones

At least 29 people were killed and 70 wounded Saturday when gunmen attacked a military parade in Ahvaz, the capital of Iran’s southwestern Khuzestan province. The dead included roughly equal numbers of Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) soldiers and civilian spectators, among them a four-year-old girl and a young boy.

According to Iranian authorities, Saturday’s terrorist attack was carried out by four people, two of whom were subsequently killed and two captured.

The Ahvaz National Resistance, a little-known ethno-nationalist group fighting for the secession of Iran’s largely Arab-speaking oil-rich Khuzestan province, claimed responsibility.

Tehran has accused Washington, which has re-imposed devastating economic sanctions against Iran, and its client states in the Gulf of facilitating the attack.

A “foreign regime recruited, trained,” and “armed” the perpetrators of the Ahvaz assault, declared Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif on social media Saturday. “Iran,” he continued, “holds regional terror sponsors and their US masters accountable for such attacks. Iran will respond swiftly and decisively in defence of Iranian lives.”

Yesterday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said that an unnamed Gulf country had provided for the “financial, weaponry and political needs” of the assailants, who targeted a parade marking the beginning of the eight-year (1980-88), US-fanned Iran-Iraq War. “It is America who supports these little mercenary countries in the region,” continued the Iranian president. “It is Americans who are provoking them … who provide them with their required necessities to perpetrate such crimes.”

Referencing Washington’s sponsorship of the Shah’s brutal dictatorial regime, Rouhani said the US wants “to create chaos and turmoil … so that they can return to the country one day and take charge as they did in the old days. But none of these is possible.”

Egged on by the Trump administration, the Saudi regime and its Gulf allies have repeatedly threatened Iran, including by creating a Sunni “anti-terrorist” military alliance, and laid waste, with US logistical support, to Yemen in a war that Riyadh claims is necessary to defeat “Iranian-backed” Houthi rebels.

In May 2017, the Saudi Crown Prince and kingdom’s effective ruler, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, threatened to do battle “inside Iran.” “We won’t wait for the battle to be in Saudi Arabia,” declared the Crown Prince in a Saudi television interview. “Instead, we will work so that the battle is for them in Iran.”

On Sunday, Tehran summoned the resident charge d’affaires for the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia’s closest regional ally, to protest remarks by Abdulkhaleq Abdulla—an adviser to the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and deputy supreme commander of the UAE’s armed force, Mohammed bin Zayed—in which he had openly applauded the Ahvaz attack.

Writing on his Twitter account, Abdulla said, “attacking a military target is not a terrorist act;” then added, “Moving the battle deeper inside Iran is a declared option and will increase during the next phase.”

Iranian President Rouhani’s remarks holding Washington responsible for Saturday’s attack were made shortly before he left for New York, where he will attend this week’s opening of the annual UN General Assembly.

US President Donald Trump and his top aides have been signaling for weeks that they intend to use the UN deliberations to escalate Washington’s campaign of diplomatic, economic, and military pressure against Iran. The spearhead of this campaign is the US drive to crash the Iranian economy by strong-arming states around the world to abide by unilateral US sanctions, including as of November 4 a complete embargo on Iranian oil exports. But it has also seen US forces in Syria, and their Israeli allies, repeatedly target IRGC forces fighting in Syria against ISIS and against Islamist forces backed by Washington and their Gulf allies.

The US sanctions are patently illegal. They violate the UN-backed, US co-authored, 2015 Iran nuclear accord, which Tehran—as all the other signatories to the agreement and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have repeatedly attested—has fulfilled to the letter. The US sanctions are also, under international law, tantamount to an act of war.

Yet Trump intends to use appearances at the UN on Tuesday and Wednesday and various meetings on the sidelines of the General Assembly to fulminate against Iran for being a “rogue state” and to bully and threaten other countries to fall into line with Washington’s drive for regime change in Tehran or themselves face US reprisals.

Underscoring that the US is preparing for military action against Iran across the Middle East, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last Friday that Washington will strike against Iran if “US interests” are attacked by Iranian-backed “proxy” forces. Recently the US blamed Iran, without providing any evidence, for an attack on its consulate in Basra, which occurred in the midst of widespread political violence. Speaking on CNN, Pompeo said, “We have told the Islamic Republic of Iran that using a proxy force to attack an American interest will not prevent us from responding against the prime actor. … Iran will be held accountable for those incidents.”

On Saturday, Trump’s personal lawyer, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, vowed that US imperialism will soon bring about regime change in Tehran in an address to an “Iran Uprising Summit.” The summit was sponsored by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a group that enjoys next-to-no support within Iran and that prior to becoming a darling of America’s neo-conservative right was for decades on Washington’s list of “terrorist organizations.”

“I don’t know when we’re going to overthrow them,” said Giuliani. “It could be in a few days, months, a couple of years. But it’s going to happen.”

Speaking at a similar gathering in Paris in July 2017, John Bolton, the former George W. Bush administration official who in April became Trump’s National Security Advisor, was equally forthright. “The declared policy of the United States should be the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime in Tehran,” he proclaimed.

In a transparent lie, the US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Hayley, while making the tour of US Sunday morning talk shows, claimed: “The United States is not looking to do regime change in Iran. We’re not looking to do regime change anywhere.”

Rising homelessness among older people in Australia

Margaret Rees

A recent report found that 18,600 people aged 55 and over were homeless around Australia on the night of the 2016 census—a 49 percent increase over the past decade.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) report said people over 55 made up one in six of the homeless on that night. Of this group, 63 percent were male and about 8 percent identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.

“Homelessness is a growing problem for older Australians and will likely continue to increase over time due to an ageing population and declining rates of home ownership among older people,” the report warned.

Over the past decade the largest increases in homelessness occurred among people aged 55 to 64 and 65 to 74. Although not the majority, the number of homeless older women increased by 31 percent from the previous census in 2011.

Factors that put older women at risk of homelessness include domestic violence, relationship breakdown, financial difficulty and limited superannuation.

Often the plight of the homeless is hidden from public view. The crisis extends far beyond those living rough on the streets. Most commonly, the older people were living in boarding houses (27 percent) or staying temporarily in other households (24 percent).

The Australian Bureau of Statistics defines homelessness as living in a dwelling that is unfit for human habitation and lacks basic facilities such as kitchen and bathroom facilities, with no tenure, or short and not extendable tenure, or that does not allow a person access to space for social relations, including personal or household living space, ability to maintain privacy and exclusive access to kitchen and bathroom facilities.

The number of older people seeking assistance from specialist homelessness services grew at an average of 8 percent a year from 2012–13 to 2016–17, to just over 23,600 people. The most common reasons older people sought assistance were housing crisis (22 percent), domestic and family violence (19 percent) and financial difficulties (17 percent).

Periods of homelessness also lengthened. The median number of days older people were supported increased from 18 days in 2012–13 to 27 days in 2016–17.

Loretta, a case manager in community aged care who works in a homelessness agency for the aged in Melbourne, told the WSWS: “We work with people with complex homelessness. We have an outreach worker. It is quite horrendous. Fairly elderly people are finding themselves homeless, even 80-year-olds.

“They might find that they can’t afford to pay the rent. Or they may let their family live with them, and then their family kicks them out. Or they may have been widowed. It is amazing how it unravels for them pretty quickly.

“They have paid rent all their lives, they might be in private rental, and suddenly they find they can’t afford it any more. These are people who have worked all their lives.

“A lot are in crisis accommodation. There are not so many directly on the streets… Although there are some who are wandering the streets. They may have chronic diseases, or a number of issues.

“The biggest significant change is that our outreach worker’s caseload has increased fourfold. She can’t manage it, but they won’t increase the hours. She needs another person. She is drowning in work.

“The number of elderly women is certainly growing, and they are extremely vulnerable. Previously there were women, perhaps with mental health issues, but now there are all walks of life. It is extraordinary. They can be people who have been quite middle class, and then it happens so quickly.

“Private rental people are the most vulnerable. Either the money runs out or their partner leaves them. Changed circumstances make it extremely hard to find rental accommodation.

“Older people can struggle with mobility or have health-related issues. Our outreach worker has to put a package in place. If you are over 65 there may be homecare assistance from the federal government. If you are younger, there are only temporary services for the duration of an illness.

“For all these things you need an advocate who knows how to navigate the system, such as priority housing. Without a worker, you can’t get it by yourself.”

These conditions reflect the increasingly precarious situation facing broader sections of the population. OECD figures reveal that the poverty rate for older people in Australia is 25.7 percent, one of the highest in the world.

The increase in the aged pension entitlement age from 65 to 67 compels older workers to continue in the workforce, even if they are physically or mentally incapable of doing so, or unable to secure work.

The proportion of the pension-age population receiving the aged pension has reduced almost 10 percentage points to 66 percent since 1997.

In January 2018, the participation rate of people aged above 65 in the workforce was 13 percent (17 percent for men, 10 percent for women). This is nearly double the levels of 2006, when 8 percent of older people were working (12 percent for men, 4 percent for women).

Because of soaring house prices and falling wages, another factor is declining home ownership. In 2003–04, 79 percent of older people owned their own homes. By 2015–16 that had reduced to 76 percent, paralleling a broader fall in the entire population.

Older workers are increasingly forced to rent or continue to pay mortgages after retirement, placing them in greater danger of mortgage default, rent stress and homelessness.

Late in 2017, unpublished data from the Australian Department of Social Services revealed 32,000 households of people aged 65 and above, and receiving government rent assistance, were paying unaffordable rents in the state of New South Wales.

That was a 50 percent rise over the previous five years, and included 9,000 people, 65 and over, who were outlaying more than half their income on rent.

According to the AIHW report, many older people are also delaying medical treatment or foregoing it altogether due to cost. Almost 30 percent of people 65 and over, whose annual income was below $30,000, reported delaying or avoiding dental visits for financial reasons.

Older people are seen and treated by governments, Labor and Liberal-National alike, as a burden unless they are able to pay for all aspects of their care and wellbeing. The fact that after working their entire lives, older workers are not guaranteed even a roof over their head is an indictment of the capitalist profit system.

Another tragic family killing in Western Australia

Cheryl Crisp

The discovery of the bodies of five members of the one family, comprising three generations, in the Western Australian state capital of Perth, has raised further serious questions about the social crisis engulfing the once booming mining state.

It is alleged that on September 3, the day after Fathers’ Day, Anthony Robert Harvey, 24 years old, murdered his wife, Mara Lee Harvey, 41 and their three children—Alice and Beatrix, two-year-old twins, and Charlotte, aged three and a half. The next day, Beverley Ann Quinn, Mara’s mother, was allegedly killed when she arrived, as she often did, to assist her daughter with the children and the household chores.

Police accuse Harvey of staying in the house for some days with his dead family before travelling 1,500 kilometres north to his father’s home in Pannawonica where he turned himself in.

The bodies were discovered by police on September 9, based on the information provided by Harvey. However, police did not inform Mara’s only sister, Taryn Tottman, of her mother’s, sister’s and nieces’ deaths. She and her family found out on the news.

The children’s mother, Mara, who with Harvey had previously worked for Sino Steel Pilbara mines in the state’s north as fly-in-fly-out (FIFO) workers, had finished a shift stocking shelves at a Coles supermarket at 11 p.m. prior to her death. She and Harvey, her husband of almost three years, owned a Jim’s Mowing franchise. The couple reportedly bought into the franchise by selling some properties owned by Mara.

Mara’s family said there were no indications of problems in the household and that the tragedy was “unfathomable.” Most neighbours in the Bedford suburb, where the Harvey family lived, reported there were never conflicts or arguments and the children were happy and healthy.

Friends told Daily Mail Australia the only problem appeared to be that their Jim’s Mowing franchise was “slow” and not making enough money. Mara had been forced to get a night-fill job at Coles and try to sell an investment unit she bought while working in the mine, but it had been on the market since January without success.

One next-door neighbour told the Australian that Harvey had recently talked to him about the stress of running his own business and the money worries it had created. “There were a couple of times he had been quite ill with the flu and he was having to get up and go to work anyway,” the neighbour recalled. “He said there was no money coming in unless he was out there.”

Harvey’s boss, Jim Penman, heads the Jim Group, Australia’s largest franchise operation, with 3,800 franchisees in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United Kingdom. He described Harvey as a “respected and well-liked franchisee.” Penman reported that Harvey emailed quotes for two gardening jobs just hours before the alleged murders and completed two mowing assignments on the day after the killings. It appeared “as if everything was normal.”

If the Harveys were under financial and personal pressure from the purchase of the franchise, they would not have been alone. The current royal commission into the predatory practices of the banking and financial system has heard evidence from franchisees who bought their businesses only to find the advertised “business model” impossible to meet, in part because the information they were given on purchase was wrong. Many had declared bankruptcy, losing their homes, life savings and health in the process.

A current federal parliamentary inquiry has heard of similar experiences by franchisees, including laid-off or retired workers, but has yet to produce a report, with its deadline extended from September 30 to December 6.

The shocking deaths are the third domestic violence-related mass killing in Western Australia (WA) in four months. It follows May’s murder-suicide of a family of seven, including four children, in Osmington near Margaret River in the state’s southeast, and the death of a mother and two children in July in Perth, allegedly at the hands of her son and the girls’ brother.

According to police records, 23 people have been killed in domestic violence-related incidents, during the less than nine months of 2018, more than double the number for the whole of 2017. The victims have been nine children, ten women and four men. It is alleged that two of the four men were killed by their own sons.

Politicians, state and federal, Liberal-National and Labor, have responded with typical empty platitudes, declaring the tragedy “incomprehensible,” “horrible” and “senseless.” The state’s Labor Party Deputy Premier Roger Cook advised “everyone” to “go home and hug their kids.”

Premier Mark McGowan immediately sought to divorce the tragedy from social spending cuts announced last year by his newly-elected government. “It isn’t always about funding,” he insisted. In other words, the cuts will go ahead irrespective of the consequences.

While there is little information known of the motives behind the alleged murders, the context in which they have occurred is one of growing social crisis.

In WA, a long mining boom, which relied almost entirely on exports to China and other Asian markets, has collapsed, leaving in its wake growing poverty and despair. House and unit prices that skyrocketed in line with the price of iron ore and increased demand have plummeted by almost 73 percent. CoreLogic Property Data states that Perth’s property market has performed worse than any other capital city in the country. Of the 20 worst performing markets throughout the country, half were in WA and they covered the entire state.

In April 2018, WA recorded a 6.9 percent official unemployment rate, its highest in 16 years, with youth unemployment rising to a staggering 17.1 percent, the highest in the country. The unemployment figure has since dropped to 6 percent, but mainly due to increases in part-time and casual jobs. According to Deloitte Access Economics 11,800 jobs were created in the state in the year to July 2018, with only 1,800 being full-time.

The WA Labor government, elected in March 2017, has embarked on a program of job cuts and a public sector wage freeze. Its first budget slated 3,000 jobs for elimination in the public service. The May 2018 budget then hit low and medium-income households with water price rises, following electricity and transport price hikes last year.

Personal insolvency cases in WA jumped by 26 percent at the beginning of 2017, as compared to a 1 percent increase nationally. At the same time, the wealthiest 20 percent of WA households held almost two-thirds of the state’s wealth, while the poorest 20 percent held less than 1 percent.

What actually provoked Anthony Harvey on the evening of September 3 to allegedly kill his entire family is, as yet, unclear. But the growing economic crisis, insecurity surrounding work and income can have had only a destabilising impact on the young man.

Macron impeachment mooted as wave of French ministers resign

Francis Dubois

Two months after the Stalinist General Confederation of Labor (CGT) called an end to strikes against French President Emmanuel Macron’s rail privatization plan, ministers are deserting the government. The cabinet and Macron’s party, The Republic on the March (LRM), are disintegrating and powerful sections of the bourgeoisie are openly debating mechanisms to remove Macron and build an alternative government.

After the departure of the third highest ranking minister, Ecology Minister Nicolas Hulot, and then of Sports Minister Laurence Flessel, the number two, Interior Minister Gérard Collomb, announced his departure on September 18. He said he would stay on until after the May 2019 European elections.

The press, which also reported the departure of two of Collomb’s associates at the Interior Ministry, Jonathan Guémas and Jean-Marie Girier, described Collomb as a minister on life support. Le Monde said this strategic ministry is “derelict” and described shocked reactions from high-ranking police officials. “Such self-destructive action is rarely seen. The PR of Gérard Collomb as future candidate for the mayor’s office in Lyon has undermined the PR of Gérard Collomb as interior minister.”

Several other ministers have announced that they will not stay in the government. Heritage Minister Stéphane Berne only wants to stay on until the end of the year, so as not to be a “marionnette” or a “fig leaf” for the government. He criticised a planned law that provides for “destroying entire neighbourhoods, which are protected, based on the claim they are dilapidated and in poor repair.”

Other top-ranking ministers gave the same reasons as Collomb for announcing their departure. Budget Minister Gérald Darmanin plans to run in Turcoing, Man-Woman Equality Minister Marlène Schiappa in Le Mans, junior minister for Ecology Sébastien Lecornu in Vernon, and both junior minister for digital affairs Mounir Mahjoubi and government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux in Paris. LRM party chief Christophe Castaner plans to run in Marseille. If they intend to be mayors, they will all need to leave within the year.

L’Obs euphemistically noted that “the municipal elections seem to provide certain ministers with a means to justify their departure.”

Frédérique Dumas, one of LRM’s senior deputies in the National Assembly, slammed the door shut as she left LRM on September 16, saying she has “the feeling of being on the Titanic.”

Two months after the unions signed the privatisation of the National Railways (SNCF), it is ever clearer that what Macron won against the rail workers was a Pyrrhic victory. It in fact exposed his government as lacking any social base or democratic legitimacy. According to an Elabe poll last month, only 6 percent of Frenchmen think that Macron’s policies improve their lives. This lack of any popular support is intensifying the Macron regime’s crisis.

“Macron might as well take out a personal ad saying, ‘President looking for a party to defend him,’” Le Monde wrote, adding: “Macron’s forces, which are supposed to protect the executive, are typically inaudible or even invisible.” It cited an LRM official who wrote that “of the 403,000 members the party has on paper, only 70,000 are ‘active members’ today.”

The media are openly concerned about whether Macron can implement his agenda of social cuts, even as the financial aristocracy works to plunder hundreds of billions of euros to finance tax cuts for the rich and a major military build-up. Indeed, the ministers who have resigned are those tasked with critical sectors like the budget, social security and interior security.

In the context of the Benalla affair, a coalition of parties running from Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Unsubmissive France (LFI) to the neo-fascists and including the right-wing The Republicans (LR) had already effectively destabilised the government.

The Benalla affair underscored that inside the political establishment there is no faction that is more left-wing or less hostile to democratic rights. LFI, LR and the neo-fascists all reacted to the issuing of a video where Macron aide Alexandre Benalla illegally beat peaceful demonstrators in Paris on May Day, not by opposing police brutality against protesters but posing as advocates of police grievances against Macron. Everything points to moves by powerful factions of the bourgeoisie to prepare a palace coup against Macron.

These efforts have redoubled in recent weeks as the Senate compelled Macron aides implicated in the Benalla affair to testify. Benalla, fired by the presidency in the meantime, had denounced the inquiry as “illegitimate” and called Senate Speaker Philippe Bas a “petty tyrant.” A week later, he presented extensive apologies to the Senate, stressing his “profound regret” for what he had said and insisting that he wanted to “present an apology.”

The Elysée presidential palace responded aggressively to the hearings around its ex-employees, accusing the Senate of trying to usurp powers and politically attack the president. The 22 LRM senators boycotted the hearings, claiming that they were “a PR stunt more than an effective attempt to reach the truth.”

Similarly, junior minister for relations with the parliament and LRM chief Christophe Castaner accused the members of the Senate inquiry into the Benalla affair of trying to undermine the head of state.

Nevertheless, he also raised an issue that high circles in the state and the ruling establishment are doubtless considering as well, saying: “If some think they can take upon themselves the power to impeach the president of the Republic, they are themselves a menace to the Republic.”

Castaner raised a situation that would be without precedent in the Fifth Republic and that no one had raised until then, that is, the impeachment of Macron: “A commission of inquiry with political ambitions and that thought it could exploit its oversight functions to bring down the president of the Republic would be committing a constitutional error.”

Le Monde took Castaner’s remarks seriously, however. It also advanced for a time a proposed solution: “There is only one method for impeachment. According to Article 68 of the constitution, ‘the president of the Republic can be impeached only in case of having failed his duties in a way that is manifestly incompatible with his continuation in office.” Impeachment is then ‘pronounced by both houses of parliament assembled as the High Court of Justice.’”