Anti-Semitic propaganda distributed at Polish parliament as government witch-hunts Holocaust historians

Clara Weiss

On Wednesday, an edition of the right-wing newspaper Tylko Polska with a front page article on “How to spot a Jew” was distributed at the Polish Sejm (parliament). In the manner of Nazi-style anti-Semitic propaganda, the article listed “names, anthropological features, expressions, appearances, character traits, methods of operation” and “disinformation activities” which allegedly allowed for identification of Jewish people.

A parliamentary deputy from the center-right Poland Comes First party denounced the distribution of the newspaper as an “absolute scandal” and described it as “filthy texts, as if taken from Nazi newspapers.” Following a public outcry internationally, the Sejm Chancellery, which had initially refused to take action, declared that the newspaper would be removed from kiosks at the Polish parliament.

There was nothing accidental about the distribution of this far-right newspaper at the Sejm. Its very publication was part of what can only be described as a state-sponsored witch-hunt of Holocaust historians.

Next to the article “How to spot a Jew,” the Tylko Polska newspaper ran the headline, “Attack on Poland at a conference in Paris,” and a picture of the historian and sociologist Jan Gross, who has written extensively on pogroms against Jews by Poles.

What the newspaper described as an “attack on Poland” was, in fact, a far-right assault on a Holocaust studies conference in Paris on February 21–22. Hosted by the prestigious Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), the conference was entitled “The new Polish school of Holocaust history.” It was disrupted by a group of some 30 Polish anti-Semites and nationalists, affiliated with the far-right newspaper Gazeta Polska, who shouted anti-Semitic slurs at the conference presenters (among them Jan Gross) and denounced them for spreading “anti-Polish” sentiments. In the weeks leading up the conference, its organizers in Paris had received threatening phone calls and mail. To ensure security, the conference started behind closed doors on its first day.

According to French media reports, the Polish government-controlled Institute of National Memory (IPN) was “effectively present and expressed itself without condemning what was going on.” The Polish ambassador in Paris also retweeted criticism of the conference by the IPN along nationalist lines on his Twitter account.

While the EHESS later published a statement denouncing the assault by Polish nationalists as an “attack on freedom of speech and academic freedom,” Poland’s vice-prime minister Jarosław Gowin tried to downplay the incident in an official letter. He denied that the slurs had an openly anti-Semitic character and denounced the criticism of the Law and Justice (PiS) government by conference participants who described it as a “regime” as “not being protected by the freedom of academic expression.”

Apart from Tylko Polska, numerous right-wing and pro-PiS publications have denounced the conference. The Wiadomości, for instance, called it a “festival of anti-Polish slander.”

The essentially state-backed, far-right attack on the Paris conference—an unprecedented event in academic life in recent European history—was the product of a massive campaign in Poland against all those working on the history of the Holocaust and Polish anti-Semitism. It is aimed at ensuring that the ongoing state-sponsored, systematic rewriting and falsification of the history of Polish nationalism and the crimes of Nazism goes unopposed.

The “legal” framework for this campaign was created with the “Holocaust bill,” passed by the Polish parliament and president in early 2018, which criminalizes speech and writings addressing crimes by Poles against the Jews.

In the past few years, an unknown number of lesser-known historians and students have been victimized by this campaign. Now, it is openly targeting the best-known figures in Polish-Jewish historiography: Dariusz Stola, the head of the POLIN museum of Polish-Jewish history, and Barbara Engelking, the co-founder and head of the Center for Research on the Annihilation of the Jews (Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów ). Both are scholars of world renown and are heading institutions that are among the most significant internationally in the research into and public education about the Holocaust.

In February, the Polish government announced it would not support the extension of Dariusz Stola’s contract, which is running out at the end of this year, and opened a competition for the post of director of the museum. A petition denouncing the government’s attempt to remove Stola from his position was signed by over 4,500 people. Stola announced that he would reapply for the position.

The moves against Stola came after official criticism of a special exhibition at the POLIN museum, held last year, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the anti-Semitic campaign waged by the Polish Stalinist government in 1968–69.

In response to student protests in March 1968 in Poland, and amid a mass general strike in France, the Polish Stalinist government, fearing that the working class struggles in Western Europe would spread to Poland and undermine its rule, unleashed a vicious anti-Semitic campaign against the student leaders. The Stalinist press depicted the protests as an intervention of Jewish “outside” forces. Within the following two years, at least some 13,000 people, among them numerous survivors of the Holocaust and some of the country’s leading academics and scientists, were forced to leave the country and give up Polish citizenship. The exhibition, which openly raised parallels to the current promotion of anti-Semitism by the PiS government, was viewed by some 116,000 people. The POLIN museum itself has been attended by well over a million people since it opened its doors in 2014.

The Polish ministry of culture, which is among the main sponsors of the POLIN museum, refused to support the exhibition financially. Poland’s vice-minister of culture attacked the exhibit at the POLIN, falsely claiming that “no Poles” had been involved in this campaign. Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who marched alongside far-right forces last November, said that Poland had nothing to apologize for with regard to 1968 and that the events were entirely the responsibility of an “outside great power,” that is, the Soviet Union, which had “occupied” the country.

Parallel to the campaign against Stola and with perhaps even greater ferocity, the government and right-wing media have attacked Barbara Engelking and her Center for Research on the Annihilation of the Jews. The attacks started after the publication of an extensive, two-volume book on the “Fates of Jews in select districts of occupied Poland,” edited by Engelking and Jan Grabowski and published under the aegis of the Center. The book, based on years of research, details the fate that Jews suffered including those hiding in Nazi-occupied Poland. It addresses the role of the Polish “Blue police” in hunting down Jews and handing them over to the Nazis or murdering them on their own, as well as anti-Semitic pogroms perpetrated by Polish nationalists. The study found that most of the 200,000 Polish Jews who were murdered outside the Nazi concentration camps were killed directly by or with the help of Poles.

The book and its editors were subject to an intense attack, spearheaded by the IPN and the Polish Anti-Defamation League, an extremist nationalist outfit for academics closely affiliated with PiS. Historian Jan Grabowski has pointed out that many of the “criticisms” by members of the IPN were based on notorious anti-Semitic pamphlets.

Engelking has since been removed by the government from her position as the head of the International Council for the State museum of the former concentration and death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.

To their credit, none of the historians are prepared to give in to the massive pressure by the state and affiliated far-right forces. Stola has denounced the attacks on himself and published a statement, on behalf of POLIN, to defend Engelking and her research Center. Grabowski has sued the Polish Anti-Defamation League before a Warsaw court for “defamation.” He stated: “The line of action taken against Engelking and myself is designed to set an example. Polish teachers of history have told me that they are now under pressure to only teach according to the ideology of the government. Students of history and doctoral students openly say that they do not want to tackle burning topics because they fear for their careers.”

The PiS government is spearheading what is an international campaign to systematically bolster fascist forces through state support and through targeted historical falsifications. These policies have created a right-wing and dangerous political climate which increasingly resembles that of the 1930s.

At the beginning of this year, the mayor of Gdansk, Paweł Adamowicz, who had been an outspoken critic of the promotion of anti-Semitism and xenophobia by the PiS government, was assassinated. Later that month, some 100 fascists were allowed to march at the site of the Auschwitz death camp, where over 1 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust. In February, the offices of the Polish political and human rights activist Paweł Kasprczak were targeted with Nazi graffiti, including the words “Red Swine,” and “Jude raus.”

Fascist terrorists murder 49 in Christchurch, New Zealand

Tom Peters & John Braddock

Forty-nine people were killed and another 48 injured in a horrifying terrorist attack yesterday afternoon on two mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch. The attack is by far the largest mass shooting and the most severe act of terrorism in New Zealand’s history, and one of the world’s worst in the recent period.

Seven people died at Linwood Masjid Mosque and 41 at Masjid Al Noor Mosque next to Hagley Park, near the city centre. Another person died in hospital. It is possible the death toll will rise.

Ordinary people internationally have expressed shock over the attack and sympathy with the victims. Vigils are planned in New Zealand towns and cities on Saturday night and in coming days.

Mourners outside Wellington mosque

Three people have been arrested in connection with the massacre. Weapons were found near each of the mosques. Police also disarmed two explosive devices found in one vehicle—an indication that further attacks might have been planned. So far, only one man has been named, 28-year-old Australian citizen Brenton Tarrant, who appeared in court today charged with murder.

The attack is a horrific crime, an act of barbarism motivated by racism and extreme right-wing ideology. It is not just a New Zealand event, but is the outcome of the rise of far-right, fascistic networks that have developed around the world, promoted and protected from the highest levels of the state apparatus. Their activities have expanded alongside the rapid escalation of the international class struggle and desperate moves by the ruling elites to suppress opposition by eviscerating basic democratic rights.

Tarrant drew his inspiration from, and had a definite audience among, far-right, anti-immigrant groups internationally. Video footage of the Al Noor Mosque attack was broadcast live on Facebook and YouTube, apparently from a camera mounted on Tarrant’s head. The footage, since taken down, shows the gunman driving to the mosque, entering the building and carrying out his cold-blooded and systematic massacre. Defenceless victims, including small children, had little chance of escaping the hail of bullets from the assault rifle.

Although many details are not yet known, it is clear that this was not a random or “senseless” action. According to a 73-page “manifesto” published by Tarrant online, he spent two years planning the attack after spending some time living in Europe.

Entitled “The Great Replacement,” the manifesto makes clear that Tarrant was a white supremacist and considered himself a “fascist.” The document praised mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who killed dozens of young people and children at a Norwegian Labour Party camp in 2011, motivated by anti-Islamist prejudice. Tarrant claimed to have had “brief contact” with Breivik and to have received his “blessing” for the New Zealand attack.

Just last month, US authorities arrested a Coast Guard Lieutenant, Christopher Paul Hasson, who was plotting to carry out terrorist attacks against socialist groups, Democratic Party politicians and media personalities. Hasson is a neo-Nazi who also proclaims Breivik as his idol.

Tarrant hailed US President Donald Trump as “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.” Like Trump, Tarrant described immigrants as “invaders,” stating: “We must crush immigration and deport those invaders already living on our soil.”

The shooter also threatened leftists. A passage headlined “to Antifa/Marxists/Communists” stated: “I want you in my sights. I want your neck under my boot.” On March 12, Tarrant posted numerous photos on Twitter of his assault rifle, covered in written messages, including references to Josué Estébanez, a neo-Nazi who murdered a teenage anarchist in Spain in 2007. Another slogan is “Vienna 1683,” which references the armed repulsion of Ottoman invaders by Austrian militias.

Astonishingly, NZ Police Commissioner Mike Bush claimed that neither New Zealand nor Australian police, or any other agencies, had any prior knowledge of Tarrant or the other people arrested. They were not, apparently, on any extremist “watch lists.” If this is true, it underscores the fact that the state authorities have turned a blind eye to, and are complicit in, the activities of the far-right networks.

No explanation has been given as to how such an attack could be planned for years without coming to the attention of police. Questions are also being raised about how the attackers acquired their weapons. New Zealand has no gun register and there are 1.3 million legally-owned weapons, in a country of just under 5 million people.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern stated in a press conference on Friday evening that New Zealand was “not chosen for this act of violence because we condone racism, because we are an enclave for extremism. We were chosen for the very fact that we are none of those things. Because we represent diversity, kindness, compassion.”

In fact, the attack took place in a definite domestic and international political context characterised by imperialist violence and increasing nationalism, xenophobia and racism. It follows almost two decades of New Zealand and Australian participation in US-led wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, which have killed more than a million people. Troops from New Zealand and Australia have been implicated in multiple massacres and atrocities against civilians in Afghanistan.

Under deteriorating social conditions, growing inequality and poverty, there has been a definite move to foster the creation of an “alt-right” movement in NZ. It is designed to confront the growing radicalisation of the working class and youth.

The atrocity in New Zealand follows not only the mass murder committed by Breivik in Norway, but the 2012 murders carried out by fascists at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin in 2012 and at a Jewish care home in Overland Park, Kansas in 2014; the 2015 massacre of African-American worshippers in Charleston, South Carolina; the 2016 murder of British Labour politician Jo Cox; the 2017 killing of nine people at a mosque in Quebec City, Canada; and the murder in 2018 of 11 Jewish worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania—to name only some of the right-wing acts of terrorism.

Echoing the recent assault on British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, NZ Green Party leader James Shaw was attacked in a Wellington street last Thursday, by an individual shouting slogans against the United Nations. The assailant may well have been motivated by recent protests by far-right groups against New Zealand signing the UN Migration Compact.

Anti-Islamic sentiment has been deliberately stoked by politicians in Australia and New Zealand. Australia’s extreme right-wing Independent Senator Fraser Anning issued a fascistic press release blaming the Christchurch massacre on the victims themselves. He described Muslim immigration as the “real cause” of the attack. Anning recently attended a rally at St Kilda Beach organised by prominent Australian neo-Nazis.

At her first press conference on Friday evening, Ardern declared that “there is no place in New Zealand” for purveyors of “hate.” However, Ardern has embraced, and brought into the very centre of her government, the racist and populist NZ First Party, which was founded in the early 1990s on an explicit anti-Asian, anti-immigrant platform.

NZ First, which is a partner in the Labour-led coalition government, is a notorious spreader of anti-Muslim xenophobia. Despite receiving just 7.2 percent of the votes in 2017, NZ First was given the roles of foreign minister, defence minister and deputy prime minister.

Following the June 2017 London terror attacks, NZ First leader Winston Peters demanded in parliament that New Zealand’s “Islamic community” “clean house” by naming potential terrorists in “their own families.” Without producing any evidence of such extremism, Peters denounced the “twisted spirit of inclusiveness” that accommodated “the culture of Damascus” and “Tripoli” in New Zealand. He declared: “We must avoid the same politically correct trap that has allowed such communities apart to form… We must stop the slide as a people, as a culture in the West.”

Last year, NZ First called for a “New Zealand values test” to be administered to new immigrants, clearly a dog-whistle aimed against Muslims and Asian migrants. Peters said it would stop migrants who believe “women are cattle and second-class citizens.” Another NZ First member, Roger Melville, declared that people from “Pakistan, Indians and some Asian-type nations” were “forcing their ways on others.”

The Christchurch attack provides a deadly warning about the dangers ahead. An atmosphere of toxic nationalism, militarism and anti-immigrant xenophobia is being whipped up internationally, providing the basis for the re-emergence of fascism as capitalism lurches into its greatest crisis since the 1930s. It must be answered by the building of an international, socialist movement, unifying the working class of all countries in the struggle to end capitalism and the fascist reaction it has spawned.

The US reinforces political and military relations with the Maldives

Rohantha De Silva 

Maldives Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid’s recent US trip underscores the strategic importance of this small Indian Ocean archipelago to Washington’s foreign policy. Shahid, accompanied by senior government officials, was invited by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Last month’s trip came after Shahid’s earlier visit to India—Washington’s strategic partner in the region—to boost relations with that country. The new Maldivian government is distancing itself from China and strengthening its political and military connections with Washington.

As well as Pompeo, Shahid met with Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asia Alice Wells and Under Secretary for Political Affairs David Hale, as well as officials from the US National Security Council, USAID and the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. He also held talks with the State Department’s Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Nathan Alexander Sales, about involvement in future programs.

Shahid declared that Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy was good for his country and stability in the Indian Ocean. Contrary to this assertion, however, the US is the principal destabilising factor in the region.

President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih’s government came to power in November 2018, following a Washington-orchestrated operation to remove President Abdulla Yameen’s administration, and to politically realign the island country away from China and toward the US.

Washington’s geo-political manoeuvres in the Indo-Pacific region are aimed at establishing a tight network of alliances to militarily encircle China.

Shahid endorsed Washington’s claims of commitment to a “free and open” Indo-Pacific region. In fact, under the guise of “freedom of navigation” in the South China Sea, Washington is provocatively violating the 12-nautical-mile territorial limits around islets claimed by China, including Mischief Reef in the Spratly islands group.

On February 21, Shahid signed a Memorandum of Agreement on Aviation Cooperation with Alina Romanowski at the US State Department. Romanowski is the State Department’s principal deputy coordinator on counter-terrorism. Washington’s counter-terrorism posturing is a cynical lie. The US is responsible for the rise of Islamic fundamentalist forces, such as Al Qaeda and ISIS, and the death of millions of civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq and across the Middle East and North Africa.

Maldivian security forces are being integrated into Washington’s military plans. The US will provide training to local law enforcement bodies and a new aviation security advisor at Male International Airport.

Shahid’s meeting with Pompeo also involved discussions on “judicial sector reforms, efficient governance and rule of law, transparent public financial management and anti-corruption.” No details were made available about these talks.

Washington reportedly agreed to assist in “civil society development,” including improvements in infrastructure and education. China remains the largest infrastructure investor in the Maldives but India is moving to displace Beijing.

The Solih government has accused the former Yameen administration of creating a debt crisis by borrowing heavily from China and has appealed for financial assistance. Beijing claims that the Maldives’ debt to China is only $1.5 billion, but Solih insists it is much larger.

While Washington wants to fully integrate the Maldives into its geo-strategic operations, it has offered only a financial pittance—approximately $US9.5 million—in assistance. Shahid, however, responded enthusiastically, tweeting: “Had productive meetings with senior officials @State Dept. Both sides agree that we are living through some of the best times in the relationship between the Maldives and USA...”

Running parallel with the reorientation of Maldivian foreign policy, President Solih has launched an “anti-corruption” campaign against the pro-Chinese faction of the country’s ruling elite. Anti-China critics claim that previous government infrastructure projects were awarded to Chinese investors at inflated prices and that corruption was institutionalised.

Several leaders of the pro-Chinese opposition, including former President Yameen, have been arrested on corruption allegations. Yameen has been accused of receiving $US1 million in government money.

According to the reports, a private company operated by Yameen’s supporters deposited government money into the former president’s personal account at the Maldives Islamic Bank. The alleged money-laundering operation involved more than $79 million in tourism revenue.

Yameen has denied the allegations, telling reporters in January that the money was given to him by “various parties as campaign funds.” His lawyers have declared that the Anti-Corruption Commission has not proven that the money was “state funds obtained through corruption.”

Yameen’s five-year-administration was marked by escalating attacks on the media and democratic rights, with nearly all opposition leaders arrested or forced into exile. The current administration’s so-called fight against corruption and “for good governance,” however, is a cover for its pro-US foreign policy.

Pompeo enlists US energy conglomerates for global oil war

Bill Van Auken

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered an extraordinary speech this week to a conference attended by representatives of the major US energy conglomerates in which he appealed to “Big Oil” to play an increasingly direct role in the drive by US imperialism for global dominance and the preparation for war on every continent.

Speaking Tuesday at the annual CERAWeek conference in Houston, Texas which brings together US oil and gas company executives, representatives of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and US government officials, Pompeo stressed that the steep growth in US energy production, driven by what industry insiders describe as the “shale revolution,” has provided Washington with a potent weapon to use against its global rivals.

The growth in energy production, with the US surpassing both Russia and Saudi Arabia as the largest crude oil producer late last year, and estimates that US exports will exceed those of Russia in the next three years and those of Saudi Arabia in the next five, is seen by the US ruling elite as a means of exerting its hegemony on a worldwide scale.

Pompeo’s speech provided a blunt description of US predatory aims across the planet that involve the interests of the American-based energy conglomerates.

His attempts to present this as some kind of moral crusade were laughable. Countries targeted by US imperialism, he claimed, were “using their energy for malign ends, and not to promote prosperity in the way we do here in the West. They don’t have the values of freedom and liberty, or the rule of law that we do, and they’re using their energy to destroy ours.”

The “prosperity” promoted by Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and other US-based energy conglomerates is that of their CEOs and major capitalist investors. Their values of “freedom and liberty” and “rule of law” extend just as far as their freedom to exploit the planet’s energy reserves at will and to impose the rules dictated by the US government to protect their interests.

Pompeo went on to link the interests of “Big Oil” to the multiple geostrategic conflicts between US imperialism and its global and regional rivals.

He stressed that US energy production and export was crucial to countering a series of “bad actors.”

“We don’t want our European allies hooked on Russian gas through the NordStream II project, any more than we ourselves want to be dependent on Venezuelan oil supplies,” Pompeo said, referring to the expansion of a natural gas pipeline linking Russia to Central Europe. He stressed that US liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports could “make Europe free from that Russian intervention.”

This pitch for promoting US energy dominance in Europe came as the Pentagon announced that it is preparing to develop and test new low-flying intermediate-range nuclear missiles beginning in August, after the formal expiration of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) between the US and Russia, torn up by the Trump administration last month. The Pentagon has also sent officials to Warsaw to discuss the establishment of a permanent US base in Poland, dubbed “Fort Trump” by Polish officials.

Pompeo also denounced China, claiming: “China’s illegal island-building in international waterways isn’t simply a security matter. By blocking development in the South China Sea through coercive means, China prevents ASEAN members from accessing more than $2.5 trillion in recoverable energy reserves.” Clearly, the main concern is that these reserves could be exploited by US-based conglomerates.

Beijing issued an angry rebuke to Pompeo’s charge, denouncing his remarks as “irresponsible” and insisting that “Nations in the region are capable of resolving and managing the disputes in their own way.” It added, “Nations outside the region should refrain from stirring up trouble and disrupting the harmonious situation.”

The day after Pompeo’s speech, two B-52H Stratofortress bombers flew from Guam over the disputed areas of the South China Sea, the second flight carried out in 10 days in the face of Chinese objections. The warplanes are capable of carrying nuclear payloads.

The US secretary of state also signaled the importance of US energy production in underpinning the economic blockades imposed by US imperialism on both Iran and Venezuela, measures that are tantamount to acts of war.

Pompeo vowed to tighten the stranglehold on Iran in the coming period. “We’re committed to bringing Iranian crude oil exports to zero as quickly as market conditions will permit,” he said. He declined to answer a question as to whether Washington is preparing to revoke waivers granted to a number of countries dependent upon Iranian oil.

Pompeo told the energy executives that Washington is “using all of the economic tools at our disposal” to effect regime change in Venezuela, including the embargo on Venezuelan oil exports imposed in January. He denounced the Venezuelan government for shipping oil to Cuba at a “subsidized price,” contrasting this practice to the “superior business model” of the United States.

After delivering the speech, Pompeo, asked by CNBC whether Washington is considering military action in Venezuela, thuggishly repeated the mantra that “every option is on the table.”

Appearing together with Pompeo, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry was asked if the overthrow of Maduro would lead to the reassertion of control over Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest on the planet, by US-based energy giants. “Absolutely, I think that is the real message, that the national companies want to see this regime outside so that we can return,” he replied.

Pompeo’s pep talk to US “Big Oil” about supporting the predatory aims of US imperialism was hardly necessary. The two have been intertwined for well over a century. Pompeo’s predecessor as secretary of state, it should be recalled, was Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of Exxon, whose predecessor, Standard Oil, monopolized control of Venezuela’s oil industry until its nationalization in 1976.

The oil corporations have been intimately involved in the US wars of the 21st century. The invasion of Afghanistan, directed at furthering US influence over the vast energy reserves of Central Asia, resulted in the installation of Hamid Karzai, a former consultant of Unocal, as president. The US ambassador to the country, Zalmay Khalilzad, who served as Karzai’s handler, also worked for the oil company in plotting the construction of strategic pipelines across its territory.

In advance of the Iraq war, Vice President Dick Cheney, the former CEO of the oil service giant Halliburton, organized a “task force” on Iraqi oil comprised of major US oil executives. Detailed maps were drawn up for the parceling out of the spoils of the US war of aggression launched in 2003.

If the secretary of state is compelled to make a fresh appeal to the “patriotic” profit interests of the energy conglomerates it is because US imperialism is now preparing for a far greater conflict, a world war with catastrophic implications for humanity.

Auto workers in China face job losses and closures

Gary Alvernia 

A growing number of car manufacturers have announced job cuts and factory closures in China, amid figures indicating that 2018 saw the country’s first decline in car sales in nearly 28 years.

Ford and Korean auto-giant Hyundai have recently announced that they aim to reduce factory production and make workers redundant, due to increased competition from local Chinese companies. In the case of Ford, it has also been hit by US trade war tariffs imposed on China.

Hyundai stated its intent in January this year to cut 1,500 jobs at its Beijing manufacturing plant, citing a decline of 23 percent in sales for 2018. Ford, which is among the worst performing foreign car producers in China, has released figures indicating a 37 percent decline in annual sales for 2018. Its factories in Chongqing are operating at just 20 percent of total capacity and the company has reportedly been “quietly laying off thousands” of its 20,000-strong workforce, according to the New York Times.

The cuts and closures are not confined to two companies. Japanese car-makers have also experienced declining sales, with Suzuki announcing total pull out of China in August last year, selling its facilities to its partners in China. Nissan is reducing domestic production by 30,000 vehicles in the first three months of 2019, roughly a 30 percent cut in order to bolster weakening car prices.

European companies have also reported declining sales in China. British carmaker Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has been hit particularly hard, with a staggering 46 percent decline in sales last year that led to the shuttering of a factory in Changshu. Other companies, such as Volkswagen (VW) and especially luxury brands like Mercedes and BMW have been less affected. However, according to remarks made by analysts at Japanese financial firm Nomura to the Financial Times, they are now concerned that China will become a “profit drag rather than profit driver.”

While domestic Chinese manufacturers have not engaged as yet in large scale sackings, they have also been impacted by failing sales. Geely, the largest domestic Chinese car producer, reported just a 0.7 percent increase in sales last year, while state-owned companies BAIC Motor and Dongfeng Motor Group suffering 11 and 17 percent declines respectively, according to the Nikkei Asian Review.

Job cuts have so far centered on those workers on part-time or casual contracts, with full-time workers shielded for the present by existing labour protections. This reflects fears in the Chinese regime that mass retrenchments in the auto industry, at a time of cuts in the steel and coal industry, could provoke an increasingly restive working class.

The Communist Party of China (CPC) apparatus views low unemployment as key to preventing worker opposition to exploitative conditions. Auto manufacturing employs nearly five million people in China, not counting those working in various support services and related businesses.

Currently, at least an estimated 2 million cars on stock are unsold, with that number likely to increase. Local and foreign manufacturers have massively expanded productive capacity in recent years, to take advantage of the previously buoyant market and corporate tax breaks only recently terminated by the Chinese government. With the high level of inventory surpluses, further factory closures, increased idle production, and job losses are virtually inevitable. Nomura analysts told the Financial Times that production would have to fall another five percent to match expected sales declines this year.

The result of declining sales and increased inventories has been a price cutting war between the different car companies both domestic and international. Some manufacturers such as Hyundai have slashed prices by 15 percent, with the resulting financial losses likely to cause further attacks on jobs and conditions of workers.

The job losses are not likely to be confined to China. As American and European car makers now derive on average up to one-third of their profits from the Chinese automobile market, the risk of a large worldwide wave of layoffs has increased substantially. Citing losses in China as a partial cause, JLR shuttered its plant in Solihull, England for two weeks, while Fiat Chrysler announced late last month that it would lay off 1,400 workers at its Jeep Cherokee plant in Belvedere, Illinois.

The crisis confronting automakers is being compounded by the US tariffs imposed on Chinese goods as a part of the Trump administration’s trade war. This is particularly damaging for American manufacturers who had intended to use China as a low-wage labour base to cheaply produce vehicles for US and European consumption.

Additionally, while Chinese officials are concerned about large-scale job losses provoking social unrest, there is some indication that the regime might use the opportunity to allow poorly performing companies, especially so-called “zombie companies,” to fail. These companies are largely propped up by government support and contributed to China’s massive debt-to-GDP ratio.

Another factor leading to job losses has been the push towards electric vehicles whose sales are increasing. This has meant more car models are obsolete and being discontinued as car companies re-direct their resources.

However, in the final analysis, lower car sales are largely a reflection of the broader and ongoing economic downturn confronting China. The largest declines in car ownership appear to be among young workers and students, with a rise in car-sharing schemes and hikes in petrol prices impacting car affordability. Significantly, those car brands experiencing the greatest losses are those in the budget and small car ranges, most likely to be purchased by workers and youth, while sales for many luxury brands remain high.

The global character of the auto industry underscores the necessity of an international struggle by auto workers against the drive by the major corporations to impose the brunt of the downturn through closures and job losses. Auto workers in China need to reach out to their counterparts in North America, including the US, Mexico and Canada, and Europe to build a unified movement based on a genuinely socialist program.

Jobs bloodbath in the global auto industry

Jerry White

Volkswagen Group, the world’s second largest automaker, is eliminating up to 7,000 jobs as part of a brutal cost-cutting drive to boost profit margins and appease investors who have driven down the German automaker’s stock price 54 percent over the last half-year.

Nearly three years ago, VW set out to slash 30,000 jobs around the world, including 23,000 in Germany, under Future Pact 2016, a plan drawn up by the IG Metall union officials who sit on its corporate board under the country’s “co-determination” scheme.

The VW cuts are part of an ongoing jobs bloodbath in the global auto industry. With trade war tensions growing, signs of a new economic recession and falling sales, the global auto giants are engaged in a brutal competition to slash labor costs and beat out their rivals in the costly but still tenuous market for electric and self-driving cars.

On Wednesday, US-based Ford Motor Co. confirmed that it is continuing its worldwide restructuring to save $25.5 billion over the next few years and, according to Ford CEO Jim Hackett, double its profit margin from 2018. Analysts say the number of job cuts could be as high as 25,000, mostly in Europe.

The carmaker is closing its plant in São Paulo, Brazil, ending South American truck production, shutting a transmission factory in Bordeaux, France, cutting output in Saarlouis, Germany, consolidating its UK operations, preparing to exit Russia and slashing jobs in China.

Korean automakers Hyundai and Kia are downsizing in China, along with other foreign-based transnationals who flooded into the country to exploit cheap labor and the world’s largest car market. Kia is considering closing a plant in Yancheng, following the ending of production at Hyundai’s oldest plant in Beijing.

Last week, production ended at the General Motors Lordstown, Ohio, assembly plant, which once employed 13,000 workers and was the site of militant autoworker struggles in the early 1970s. Last November, GM announced plans to close five plants in the US and Canada and slash more than 14,000 jobs. The company, which made $11.8 billion in 2018 profits, intends to save $4.5 billion through the job cuts, less than half the $10 billion it has squandered on stock buybacks for its richest investors over the last four years.

On Wednesday, Schaeffler Group, a German producer of engine and transmission components, announced it will slash 900 jobs, after missing profit targets and seeing investors drive down its stock value by 44 percent. Mass layoffs have also occurred in Matamoros, Mexico, largely in retribution for the courageous strikes by maquiladora workers, which led to a shortage of parts for US and Canadian auto plants. At least 4,000 workers have been fired and another 50,000 layoffs have been threatened by Mexico’s main business organization.

The principal mechanism for carrying out this coordinated global assault on autoworkers has been the financial markets. By driving down share prices, powerful hedge funds and wealthy shareholders give their marching orders to corporations to escalate the attack on workers’ jobs, wages and conditions. This increases the returns on their investments, thereby funneling even more money to the financial oligarchy.

“Low industry [share] valuations show investors want more changes with spending at a record, profits falling and new competitors vying to jump onto the autos bandwagon,” Bloomberg News wrote in a March 6 article. “The great auto-industry shakeout has started to arrive in force,” the article continued, noting that “Consolidation, while no silver bullet, would help eliminate the duplicate outlays on everything from expensive software ventures to battery technology.”

Several major automakers are considering potential tie-ups, including VW and Ford, Daimler and BMW, and French automaker PSA with Fiat Chrysler or GM. Such a consolidation would be carried out at the expense of the jobs of hundreds of thousands of white-collar and production workers.

In his mid-19th century work, Wage Labor and Capital, Karl Marx identified the consequences of the “industrial war of capitalists among themselves” over markets and profits. “This war has the peculiarity that the battles in it are won less by recruiting than by discharging the army of workers. The generals (the capitalists) vie with one another as to who can discharge the greatest number of industrial soldiers.”

Workers are beginning to fight back. After decades in which the class struggle was suppressed by the unions, there has been a resurgence of strike activity among workers around the world. In the first ten weeks of 2019, strikes by auto and auto parts workers have taken place in Hungary, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, China and other countries. The growth of resistance poses fundamental questions of perspective and strategy.

First, the global assault on jobs must be met with a global response by autoworkers. It is impossible for workers to fight transnational corporations on a nationalist basis. The answer to the fratricidal race to the bottom between workers is forging the closest links between workers in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa in a common fight to defend the jobs and living standards of all workers.

Second, the unions long ago abandoned any defense of workers and have been transformed into direct tools of corporate management and the state. This was the result not simply of the cowardice and corruption of the union bureaucrats, but the inability of these nationalist and pro-capitalist organizations to respond in any progressive way to the globalization of production.

The United Auto Workers and the Unifor union in Canada have responded to GM’s plant closings by launching an anti-Mexican campaign, even as Mexican workers revolt against slave labor wages and sweatshop conditions. At its just concluded bargaining convention, the UAW made clear that it plans to impose even deeper concessions on 150,000 GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler workers, whose contracts expire this summer, by using the same lie it has for four decades: that concessions “save jobs.”

The same is true everywhere. The long-time IG Metall leader and chairman of the joint works council of the Volkswagen Group, Bernd Osterloh, who makes $848,000 (€750,000) a year, has already signaled his support for VW’s new cost-cutting plan.

In order to fight, autoworkers need new organizations: rank-and-file factory and workplace committees that are independent of the unions. These committees must oppose the corporate dictatorship in the factories and mobilize the broadest sections of the working class in mass protests, plant occupations and national and cross-border strikes to defend jobs and living standards.

Finally, the growing industrial movement of the working class must be developed into a powerful political movement against capitalism and the economic and political domination of the corporate and financial elite. The new wave of layoffs demonstrates that under capitalism, revolutionary advances in technology such as artificial intelligence, 3-D printing, machine-to-machine communication and self-driving cars are used not to improve life for the broad masses of the population, but to drive more workers into destitution.

The only answer to this is the fight for socialism. The vast fortunes of the super-rich must be expropriated and the giant banks and corporations converted into public enterprises democratically controlled by the working class, as part of the scientifically planned reorganization of the world economy.

This requires that the working class take political power on a world scale, reorganizing society to meet social needs. Only in this way can the immense potential of globally integrated production and labor-saving technologies be used for the common good of all of mankind.

IMF endorses Sri Lankan government budget

Saman Gunadasa

The second reading of the 2019 government budget presented by Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera was passed by the Sri Lankan parliament on Tuesday. The final vote on the United National Party (UNP)-led government’s measures, which are in line with International Monetary Fund (IMF) demands, will be taken on April 5, after further debate.

The IMF mission chief for Sri Lanka, Manuela Goretti, told the Dailyft on Tuesday that “a prudent policy mix is necessary” because the government faced a “public debt at over 90 percent of GDP, large refinancing needs, and low reserve buffers.” Samaraweera’s budget, she declared, “strikes an adequate balance by advancing fiscal consolidation.”

In 2016, the IMF approved a $US1.5 billion bailout loan to Sri Lanka. The final two instalments, amounting to $500 million, however, were suspended last October. This was in response to President Maithripala Sirisena’s sacking of the pro-US Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister and the eruption of bitter faction fighting inside Colombo’s ruling elite.

Sirisena appointed former President Mahinda Rajapakse as prime minister and then, after Rajapakse failed to win a parliamentary majority, dissolved the parliament.

The US, which regards Rajapakse as pro-Chinese, opposed his appointment. In December, the Sri Lankan Supreme Court overturned Sirisena’s dissolution of parliament, compelling him to reappoint Wickremesinghe as prime minister.

While the IMF, following requests from Colombo, agreed to recommence its loan program in February, Goretti reminded the Dailyft that the resumption of IMF funding required “the government to return to the basics.” She called for more state-owned enterprises (SOE) to be brought under its scrutiny through “Statements of Corporate Intent”—i.e., making them commercially viable through downsizing and by increasing prices or charges. She also warned the government that the budget deficit target of 3.5 percent of gross domestic product had to be observed.

With provincial council and presidential elections due at the end of this year, it was expected that the UNP-led government would attempt to make some concessions in its 2019 budget. But facing a massive debt crisis and the IMF dictates, the government announced a few cosmetic measures while moving to boost tax revenue.

The token concessions include a 2,500-rupee ($US14) rise in the monthly salaries of state sector employees and a 600,000 increase in the number of people receiving Samurdhi (limited living allowance) welfare payments. Currently about 1.3 million Samurdhi recipients are only paid between 1,500 and 3,500 rupees per month. Other proposals include concessionary loans for small businesses, self-employed persons and students for private education fees.

Prior to the release of Samaraweera’s proposals, the government’s plantation minister claimed that the budget would include a 50-rupee increase in the daily allowance paid to estate workers. While this did not occur, the government, in an attempt to deflect the anger of estate workers, has made an arrangement for a 50-rupee monthly allowance to be paid through Tea Board earnings. These payments, however, will only last for a year.

Plantation workers held a nine-day national strike in December to demand a 100 percent pay increase and lift their poverty-level basic daily wage to 1,000 rupees. The plantation companies rejected this and, with the connivance of the unions and blessing of the government, only increased the daily wage by 40 percent while slashing previous hard-won allowances.

The UNP-led government faces mounting opposition from workers over its attack on social rights. Together with working-class struggles around the world, protests have erupted among farmers and fishermen over subsidy cuts and from students opposing the privatisation of education.

In line with the IMF austerity demands, the budget contains new taxes and rate increases. These include:

* A 12 percent increase in excise duty on cigarettes

* Higher excise duties on local hard liquor and malt liquor, up by 8 percent and 12 percent respectively

* A 3.5 percent tax on all foreign payments by credit cards

* An increase in the embarkation fee to $US10.

Finance Minister Samaraweera also announced new steps towards the privatisation of the Sri Lankan railways. The rail service, he declared, would be improved “in conjunction with the private sector” and “allow the private sector to lease/rent Sri Lanka railway carriages.”

According to the Institute of Policy Studies, a government think tank, indirect taxes, which are mainly paid by working people, constituted 84 percent of all tax revenue last year.

Samaraweera said that the government would move to increase taxes paid by small businesses, self-employed people and other sectors of the working population, including by the establishment of a Revenue Intelligence Unit. At the same time, he announced enhanced tax concessions for wealthy investors where investments are over $100 million and $1 billion.

The government’s estimated total revenue and grants for 2019 is 2.4 trillion rupees and total expenditure of 4.6 trillion rupees, with the deficit expected to be around 2.2 trillion. Almost all the deficit will be financed by borrowings.

On March 7, the Central Bank floated an international sovereign bond auction to borrow $2.4 billion for $5.9 billion debt repayments due this year. The government paid $1 billion towards the debt in January and is required to pay $2.4 billion in April. These figures point to the depth of the economic crisis facing the Sri Lankan capitalist class.

The 2019 budget allocated 393 billion rupees for the armed forces and police but only 187 and 105 billion rupees for education and health respectively.

Health and education spending is almost the same as the allocation last year and the combined amount is 100 billion rupees less than that provided to defence and police. The security forces and the police are routinely deployed by the government to suppress demonstrations and protests by workers, the poor and students.

Big business responded to the budget by demanding more concessions. The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce said the budget was “realistic” but voiced its displeasure at the government’s failure to address the privatisation of the state-owned enterprises. It also raised concerns about last year’s 3 percent growth rate and said the growth estimate for 2019, “is not a positive signal for business climate.”

President Sirisena, who collaborated with the UNP government for four years to impose wide-ranging attacks on workers’ social and democratic rights, made clear the austerity had to continue.

“It was not possible to address all the demands, because the country is facing severe economic crisis,” he said, referring to the proposed budget. “All of us have to understand [that] carrying out demonstrations, strikes, protests, marches, demanding allowances and facilities, will only further weaken the economy.”

Sirisena, who cynically calls for “stable government,” hopes to win reelection as president with the support of Rajapakse’s faction. Rajapakse and his Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (Sri Lanka People’s Front), however, are appealing to the military and organising with various extreme-right Sinhala chauvinist formations. Their declared agenda is for the establishment of a “strong government" of their own party.

Confronting massive debts and the growing mass opposition, all factions of Sri Lanka’s ruling elite are preparing for police-state forms of rule to impose the full burden of the mounting economic crisis on the working class and the poor.

Rise in UK opioid prescriptions contributes to surge in overdose fatalities

Margot Miller

A study by the British Journal of General Practice reveals an alarming rise in the number of National Health Service (NHS) prescriptions for opioids issued by General Practitioners (GPs). This is greatest in the more deprived areas of the country.

“Patterns of regional variation of opioid prescribing in primary care in England: a retrospective observational study” provides further proof that life expectancy, health, and access to health care is very much a function of the most fundamental division of society under capitalism—class. Poverty and the stresses that it brings is a major killer.

Opioids are prescribed for pain relief, especially acute pain in cancer and end of life care, or for short-term use after an injury or surgery. The most commonly known are morphine, fentanyl, oxycodone, tramadol and codeine. Fentanyl is so powerful it is used to knock out elephants and is also used in executions. Six or seven grains of the substance can prove lethal.

The consequences of long-term use of opioids can be devastating, often leading to death.

The British Journal of General Practice records that “[m]ore opioids were prescribed in the north than in the south of England, and more opioids were prescribed in areas of greater social deprivation.”

The 10 highest areas for GP opioid prescribing are NHS Blackpool Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), and CCGs in St Helens, Lincolnshire East, Knowsley, Barnsley, Corby, Halton, Great Yarmouth and Waveney, Doncaster and South Tees—all areas with the highest concentrations of deprivation. Nine out of 10 of these areas are in the largely de-industrialised north of England, which are blighted by poverty.

Dr Roger Knaggs, associate professor in clinical pharmacy practice at the University of Nottingham, noted that these drugs are not suitable for relieving long-term chronic pain, such as back pain, arthritis and nerve pain. Their efficacy decreases with use over time, they come with side effects and are highly addictive.

One of the authors of the opioid study, Luke Mordecai, a pain research fellow at University College London Hospital, has called for a national register to monitor patients on the equivalent of more than 120mg of morphine a day. “There should be a national database to keep track of these people,” he said. “There is very high morbidity and mortality [among them], a lot of it avoidable.”

International attention has turned to the dangerous consequences of the increasing use or misuse of these powerful drugs, most catastrophically in the United States. In 2017, US deaths from drug overdoses reached 72,000—6,000 more than the previous year-on increase of 9.5 percent. Of these deaths 30,000 were associated with opioids, up more than 9,000 from 2016. Pharmaceutical companies have made bonanza profits by selling medications whose addictive properties they have previously denied.

A study by the Sunday Times found a correlation between areas with higher prescribing of opioids and higher death rates. Mortality in the northeast at 6 per 100,000 is double the national average of 3 per 100,000. Wales comes next (5 per 100,000), followed by the northwest (5 per 100,000) and Yorkshire and Humber (4 per 100,000). London has the lowest mortality figures, with 2 per 100,000.

Figures for 2017, the latest available, show there were three times more opioid related deaths in the North East and North West (512) in comparison to London (159), with the equivalent population size. Swansea in Wales has the highest death rate from opioids in England and Wales. According to the Office for National Statistics, 16 people per 100,000 died from opioids in Swansea in 2017.

Opioid addiction is becoming a problem among those over 60. The number in this age group undergoing treatment for opioid addiction has risen a staggering 300 percent in the last decade. The Sunday Times revealed that in 2017-18, 2,520 needed treatment for addiction.

While not as acute as in the US, the increased prescribing of opioids points to a mounting social crisis, marked by a woefully inadequate health service starved of funds by years of austerity since the global financial crash of 2008.

NHS Improvement, the regulator of the country’s NHS trusts, calculated that the combined NHS trusts are carrying a total deficit of £4.3 billion. Research and development into new treatments is abysmally low, both comparatively and in real terms. The UK Public Spending website projects a measly £1.9 billion will be spent on research and development in 2019, compared to £48.3 billion on defence.

Eytan Alexander, chief executive of UK Addiction Treatment, told the BBC, “GPs must accept responsibility for consistently overprescribing … A rate of 79 packs [prescriptions] per minute is just not acceptable. It is vital that alternatives are provided.”

The problem is that GPs treating patients in distress have little alternative than to prescribe something that is potentially harmful if used long-term. Research into providing effective pain relief solutions with minimal side effects is very low on the priority list of any government, Conservative or Labour.

Alternative holistic treatments to long-term pain management, while available privately, are not widely on offer in the cash-starved NHS. Only 40 percent of NHS pain consultants can adopt a multi-disciplinary approach to pain management, including a psychologist and physiotherapist.

That the working class is bearing the brunt of this crisis is no surprise. Manual workers are more likely to suffer muscular-skeletal injuries due to the nature of the work they do. The rate for men and women reporting chronic pain is much higher in the lowest rather than in the upper income quartile.

Another indication of the deepening social crisis in the UK is the increasing uptake of antidepressants. Rates of antidepressant use across all ages increased by 5 percent between 2015-16 and 2017-18, according to figures released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The British Journal of General Practice concludes from its findings that “Questions of equality of care arise from higher prescription rates in the north of England and in areas of greater social deprivation.”

The increase in opioid use corresponds to the changing nature of the work environment. Speed-up is the order of the day. In companies like Amazon, workers are encouraged to compete to achieve backbreaking targets, on pain of dismissal, expedited by temporary contracts. A higher likelihood of work-related injury follows.

The culture of work has been transformed. Wages have been driven down, and the right to sickness benefits eroded, expressed by the fact that sickness is routinely treated as a disciplinary matter.

Many workers are now referred to Human Resources after a period of sickness and must attend a back-to-work review when they return to the job. Disciplinary proceedings kick in after a certain number of absences, regardless of a doctor’s sick note. The pressure is on to work through injuries that need time and rest to heal. Workers resort to aggressive pain killers to enable them to continue working out of fear of the economic consequences of missed work.

Responsibility for this assault on wages and conditions must be laid at the door of the trade unions. They actively collaborate with employers, pitting workers in the UK against those in other countries, to make UK industry more competitive on the world market and an attractive cheap labour proposition for foreign investment.

The struggle for equality in health and all areas of social life is bound up with the fight for socialism, which means the working class taking hold of society’s wealth and resources—at present being squandered by a tiny, parasitic minority—to use for the benefit of all.

Canada ever more deeply implicated in US-engineered coup attempt in Venezuela

Laurent Lafrance

If we look independent enough, we can do things for you that even the CIA cannot do.—former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.

As the political crisis in Venezuela deepens, the leading role that Canada and the Trudeau government are playing in the ongoing US-orchestrated coup becomes ever more evident. Like its US counterpart, Canadian imperialism covets Venezuela’s vast oil resources and is determined to prevent Russia, China, and other “strategic rivals” from expanding their influence in the Americas, even if this naked pursuit of predatory interests threatens to unleash a bloody conflagration.

On February 25, US Vice President Mike Pence was invited to address a meeting in Bogotá of the Lima Group, a coalition of US allies in the region co-founded and led by Canada. In a bellicose speech, Pence vowed “there is no turning back” in Venezuela and reiterated US President Donald Trump’s threat that “all options are on the table”—a code name for military action—in forcing Nicolás Maduro and his bourgeois nationalist regime from power.

Following Pence’s speech, the Lima Group, which consists of Canada and thirteen Latin American countries, issued a statement reiterating its support for the self-declared interim president Juan Guaidó and supporting Pence’s demand that the Venezuelan military complete the US-led coup by switching its allegiance from Maduro, the country’s elected president, to the would-be US puppet ruler.

Only two group members, Mexico and Uruguay, refused to support the statement. But Canada is working behind the scenes, apparently with some success, to prevail on Mexico to abandon its current stance of urging a mediated settlement between Maduro and Venezuela’s right-wing, pro-US opposition.

Speaking on behalf of the Lima Group, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said, “We reiterated our conviction that the transition to democracy must be conducted by the Venezuelans themselves, peacefully, within the framework of the constitution, in accordance with international law and supported by political and diplomatic means, without the use of force.”

This is a subterfuge. By ruling out military intervention, at this point, Canada only seeks to distance itself from the Trump administration’s bellicose threats, the better to support the US-led regime-change operation; and all the while laying the political groundwork for a naval blockade or outright invasion should the escalating economic sanctions—themselves an act of aggression tantamount to war—prove insufficient.

Established in 2017 with the ostensible purpose of brokering a “peaceful” resolution to the growing social-political crisis in Venezuela, the Lima Group’s real objective—and this is epitomized by Canada’s role within it—is to provide the US imperialist intrigues in the country with a “humanitarian” and “democratic” façade.

As the radical journalist Yves Engler noted in a recent comment on Canada’s role in the US-orchestrated coup in Venezuela, former Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien once made a revealing comment that points to how Canadian imperialism aids and abets its US allies. Chrétien told US President Bill Clinton, “Keeping some distance will be good for both of us. If we look as though we’re the fifty-first state of the United States, there’s nothing we can do for you internationally, just as the governor of a state can’t do anything for you internationally. But if we look independent enough, we can do things for you that even the CIA cannot do.”

Pence’s intervention at the Bogotá meeting underscored that while the US is not formally a member of the Lima Group, Canada and its Latin American allies are working in tandem with it. In fact, the Lima Group is directly involved in the US war plans, as shown by last week’s meeting in Florida between the head of the Colombian armed forces, Maj. Gen. Luis Navarro Jiménez, and leaders of the Pentagon’s Southern Command.

Like the US, Canada blamed the Maduro regime for the violence that took place during last month’s US-staged provocation at the Venezuelan-Colombian border over the purported “humanitarian aid” convoy. Freeland and Minister of International Development Marie-Claude Bibeau immediately issued a statement demanding that “the perpetrators” of this “unacceptable violation of basic humanitarian principles and human decency … be brought to justice.” With the aim of legitimizing the overthrow of Venezuela’s elected president and justifying future military action, Canada has already petitioned the International Criminal Court to investigate the Maduro regime.

However, the attempt of the US, Canada and the Venezuelan opposition to whip up a propaganda furore over the “aid” convoy quickly unraveled. Last weekend even the New York Times had to concede that it was forces loyal to the Venezuelan opposition who set the “aid” truck fire in a calculated provocation.

Like the Trump administration, Canada is using the Venezuelan government’s blocking of the Trojan Horse “aid convoy” to justify imposing harsher sanctions against officials in the Venezuelan government. Freeland said that Canada has “put many of the senior leaders in the Maduro regime on our sanctions list” and is now “discussing with our partners ways that that sanctions list can be expanded in order to have even more bite.”

Since 2018, several Venezuelan officials have been targeted by US and Canadian sanctions. Needless to say, such actions are not taken against regimes aligned with Ottawa and Washington that have far worse records of human rights abuses, such as the al-Sisi dictatorship in Egypt or the Saudi absolutist monarchy.

Pence’s demand that the member states of the Lima Group transfer ownership of any Venezuelan assets within their borders, including those of the state-owned oil company PDVSA, to the Guaidó-led “interim government” is an idea jointly developed by the Washington Inter-American Dialogue think-tank and the Canadian Centre for International Governance Innovation, based in Waterloo, Ontario.

The current attempt to oust the Maduro regime is the culmination of a longstanding US imperialist destabilization campaign, including a failed US-orchestrated coup against Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, in 2002.

A Canadian Press report published at the end of January revealed that Canadian diplomats worked systematically over several months with their Latin American counterparts in Caracas to prepare the current regime-change operation, pressing Maduro’s right-wing opponents to set aside their differences and mount a joint challenge to the government. “The turning point,” said the Canadian Press, “came Jan. 4, when the Lima Group … rejected the legitimacy of Maduro’s May 2018 election victory and his looming January 10 inauguration, while recognizing the ‘legitimately elected’ National Assembly.” The report cited an unnamed Canadian official as saying the opposition “were really looking for international support of some kind, to be able to hold onto a reason as to why they should unite, and push somebody like Juan Guaidó.”

One day prior to Maduro’s inauguration, Freeland spoke to Guaidó, the newly-elected National Assembly speaker, by telephone to urge him to challenge the elected Venezuelan president.

Like Washington, Canadian imperialism is determined to install a client regime in Venezuela so as to advance its predatory ambitions in Latin America and counter the growing presence of Russia and China in the region.

Canadian financial and mining companies are very active in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), a region that possesses some 25 percent of the world’s forests and an estimated 35 percent of the globe’s potential hydroelectricity, as well as 85 percent of all known reserves of lithium and a third of copper, bauxite and silver. The region is also rich in coal, oil, gas and uranium, and underwater oil reserves are regularly being discovered along its coast lines.

In their 2016 book Blood of extraction: Canadian imperialism in Latin America, Todd Gordon and Jeffrey Webber detail the expansion of Canadian capital in the LAC and the outright criminal actions of Canadian companies to secure access to the region’s resources and vast pool of cheap labour.

In 1990, Canadian capital in Latin America, in the form of cumulative Foreign Direct Investment or FDI, stood at C$2.58 billion. By 2000 it had risen to C$25.3 billion, an increase of 800 percent, and by 2013 to C$59.4 billion, an increase of 134 percent from 2000, and 2,198 percent from 1990. From 2007 to 2012, Canada was the second largest external source of FDI in the LAC region, trailing only the US.

LAC countries account for over half of Canadian mining assets held abroad, some C$72.4 billion. There were only two Canadian mines in operation in the region in 1990. By 2012, that number had jumped to eighty, with another 48 in the development or feasibility stage. The operating mines generated combined revenues of C$19.3 billion in 2012 for Canadian companies. In 2014, 62 percent of all producing mines in the region were owned by companies headquartered in Canada.

Behind a smokescreen of bogus “humanitarian” rhetoric, it is these multi-billion dollar investments and the hopes of still greater loot and plunder that are driving Canada’s government to play a leading role in the US-led regime change operation in Venezuela, the country that is home to the world’s largest proven oil reserves. The Trudeau government and Canadian big business are determined to grab the biggest slice of the pie possible in Latin America, even if it means subjecting the region’s long-suffering workers and toilers to dictatorship and war.