Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi face a humanitarian catastrophe in the wake of Cyclone Idai

Meenakshi Jagadeesan

Large swathes of Southeast Africa face a humanitarian crisis in the wake of Cyclone Idai which swept through Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi this past week. The storm, categorized by the United Nations as the “worst ever disaster to hit the southern hemisphere,” has already destroyed crops, caused massive flooding, rendered hundreds of thousands homeless.

While the official death toll as of this writing stands at 552, Mozambique’s president, Filipe Nyusi, reported that more than 1,000 people had been killed by high winds and widespread flooding. The storm is believed to have affected over 2.6 million people.

Mozambique, the country where the storm first made landfall, is perhaps the worst hit, with vast swathes of land completely submerged. The port city of Beira, home to 500,000 people, was hit on Friday. Media reports indicate that the city appears to be an “island in the ocean” and was initially completely cut off from the rest of the world.

Jill Lovell, an Australian running a missionary school in Beira, was able to send out an email message, cited by the Guardian, describing the situation: “It is a total mess here ... People are in trees and on rooftops. Emergency relief crews are slowly coming in. Rains continue to make it all even harder. So many lives lost and homes destroyed.”

Reports from pilots attempting rescue missions describe chaotic and heart-wrenching scenes of completely submerged homes, with people clinging on to what remains of roofs, tree trunks and small islands that have appeared overnight without any possibility of accessing food or clean water. The situation is so grim that pilots have been forced to make the difficult call of having to decide whom to save.

In its report on the catastrophe, the Guardian quotes Ian Scher of Rescue SA, highlighting the awful reality: “Sometimes we can only save two out of five, sometimes we rather drop food and go to someone else who’s in bigger danger ... We just save what we can save and the others will perish.”

The Guardian also provided a graphic description of the situation in Beira’s central hospital when the storm hit.

Mark Ellul, a British doctor in Beira, described the hospital as already being in a bad situation prior to the storm, and operating at full capacity. When the storm hit, ripping apart the roof and tearing out windows, patients who could walk tried to get out, while those who couldn’t remained clinging to their beds. Ellul barricaded himself under the sink in his hotel room to ride out the storm, coming out only to see “debris thrown everywhere, trees ripped up and roofs thrown off, [and] electricity poles pushed over the roads.” Many of the people he met told him that “they had seen bodies in the street or had had neighbours killed.”

There have been reports of dams close to Beira bursting, though it is not yet confirmed. Dams across the region are thought to be full to the brim, and will have to open their floodgates soon. The bigger threat would be if the massive Kariba and Cahora Bassa dams on the Zambezi river were to be affected. As of now, that does not seem to be the case, but both dams were built about 50 years ago and the Kariba needs urgent maintenance.

In Zimbabwe, residents in the Southeastern town of Chimanimani told of losing relatives and neighbors to the storm and watching houses and even bodies being swept away to neighboring Mozambique. In the nearby town of Chipinge, over 20,000 homes have been described as “partially damaged” and over 600 completely destroyed.

According to UN reports, the storm has directly affected over 920,000 people in Malawi. The worst hit were the lower Shire river districts of Chikwawa and Nsanje in the far south of the country. Half of the districts in Nsanje have been flooded with over 11,000 households being displaced.

Rick Emenaker, a pilot for a humanitarian aviation organization that was carrying out a survey of the damage, told the South African news site Lowvelder: “It was a heartbreaking flight today as we flew over many miles of flooded land in the Buzi River basin ... a number of villages were completely buried in the flood waters. The magnitude of this disaster is hard to comprehend.”

Even as the storm subsides, the disappearance of bridges and impassable roads have made the rescue operations as well as the delivery of vitally needed food, clean water and medicines an extremely risky proposition. Medicins Sans Frontiers, in reporting its response to the disaster, has highlighted the fact that the worst affected areas remain inaccessible, or only accessible through helicopter, or in some cases, boats. At this point, UN and Red Cross officials have already warned of the high risk of outbreaks of cholera and typhoid in the affected areas.

May asks Brussels for Brexit extension amid worsening political crisis

Chris Marsden

Prime Minister Theresa May will ask for an extension before Britain’s exit from the European Union (EU) comes into effect. If this is rejected by Brussels at a summit on Thursday, Brexit is set for March 29, in just nine days.

No one knows exactly what May will ask for—a short extension (June 30 has been raised) or one extending beyond the summer that would require UK participation in the European elections. May has not ruled out asking for a combined short extension, with the back-up of a two-year delay if no parliamentary agreement on her EU deal is possible. It is far from certain that the EU will agree an extension. Its leaders have made clear they want May to provide sufficient reason for doing so, insisting it will come with a political and financial cost to the UK.

May met with her cabinet yesterday, after her plan to bring her Brexit deal back to parliament for a third “meaningful vote” was scuppered by the intervention of Parliamentary Speaker John Bercow. The pro-Remain Conservative ruled Tuesday that a parliamentary convention dating back to 1604 meant it was unacceptable for another vote on a deal rejected twice already—the second time by a majority of 149. MPs decided that May had not secured the necessary concessions on the UK’s right to unilaterally leave the Northern Irish backstop customs arrangement already agreed with the EU.

Bercow ruled that any additional vote would demand “a new proposition that is neither the same nor substantially the same as that disposed of by the House on March 12…” He added that this ruling “should not be regarded as my last word on the subject,” suggesting a possible compromise. But Solicitor General Robert Buckland described his intervention as a “constitutional crisis” and May readily agreed.

The 90-minute Tory cabinet meeting was bitter and angry. One insider compared it to the “last days of Rome.”

May has the support of those of her MPs who fear a “hard Brexit” and loss of tariff-free access to the Single European Market. Her aim now is to force hard-Brexit Tory MPs and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP)—whose votes May relies on to rule as a minority government—to accept that the likely alternative to her “soft-Brexit” option is not a “no-deal Brexit”, but an extended period of continued EU membership. She also counts on their fear of a delay that might create the conditions for a second referendum to overturn the 2016 result or possibly even a general election.

May’s closest allies gave out conflicting signals, with Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay suggesting that a third vote on her deal could still take place next week if enough Tory rebels and the 10 DUP MPs change their minds. Barclay warned, “Parliament is leaving no other option, other than to revoke [Article 50], if you take the deal off the table and no-deal off the table.”

An official party spokesperson reiterated May’s earlier warning that rejecting her deal would provoke a national crisis, while other sources speculated that the queen might prorogue parliament—ending this session and then reopening parliament—so that Bercow’s “no second vote” ruling was no longer valid.

Any extension before invoking Article 50 of the EU constitution would have to be agreed by all 27 member states. German Chancellor Angela Merkel pledged to “fight to the last hour of the deadline on 29 March for an orderly exit," but her Europe minister, Michael Roth, spoke of the EU’s patience “really being put to the test at the moment” and insisting on a “concrete proposal” about why the UK is “seeking an extension.”

Numbers are being frantically crunched to determine whether there is a parliamentary majority for a second referendum, given that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has accepted that one should be held if May’s renegotiated deal is still unacceptable and threatens a no-deal Brexit. Divisions in the Labour Party over Brexit are part of a toxic mix of factional conflicts in the Tory Party. There is a swathe of Labourites in pro-Leave constituencies whom May is trying to persuade to back her deal.

Meanwhile Corbyn has still not said he will support a Remain vote if a second referendum is held. He is meeting with the leaders of the Scottish National Party, the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party—who are collectively urging him to back a Remain vote. But he is also discussing with MPs calling for a “Norway Plus” non-membership free trade arrangement with the EU. The group spans Nick Boles and Oliver Letwin of the Tory Party and Stephen Kinnock and Lucy Powell of Labour.

Corbyn is still suggesting that he wants to fight for his own Brexit strategy—including tariff-free EU access. On Sunday he suggested he might table another no-confidence motion in the government if May’s proposals fail. “At that point we should say there has to be a general election so the people of this country can decide 'do they want a Labour government investing in people's communities, dealing with inequality, injustice and having a relationship with Europe that protects jobs and guarantees our trade for the future’,” he said.

This only confirms that Corbyn is anathema to his Blairite opponents, who want an end to Brexit and are just as vehement in their opposition to a Labour government under his leadership. There is no real political division between the phalanx of Labour MPs who split to form the (pro-EU) The Independent Group (TIG) and the larger numbers who have set up an internal opposition, the Future Group, led by Deputy Labour Leader Tom Watson.

Even as May was fighting for her political future, “senior members” of Labour’s shadow cabinet were briefing the Evening Standard that Corbyn was “tired and fed-up” and ready to quit as party leader. That same day the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), a Zionist organisation that has played a central role in the Blairite campaign to remove Corbyn and drive out his supporters, announced that it would debate a no-confidence motion in Corbyn at its congress next month.

The motion continues efforts to slander Corbyn as an anti-Semite. If passed, it would register the JLM’s intention to end all campaigning for Labour candidates who are not “allies” in the fight against anti-Semitism, i.e. those backing Corbyn. The resolution states that “The blame for this crisis of anti-Semitism and the party’s failure to deal with it lies with Jeremy Corbyn. He is therefore unfit to be Prime Minister and a Labour government led by him would not be in the interests of British Jews.”

Corbyn’s refusal to fight the Blairite fifth column, even as they collude openly with the Tories and the media and carry out the expulsion of some of his key supporters, epitomises his political role in demobilising the working class.

The Tory government is in a state of meltdown. Britain is in the grip of a major constitutional crisis. Yet Corbyn and his pro-capitalist clique are preventing workers and youth from shifting political life decisively away from the faction fight ripping through the ruling elite onto an axis of the class struggle.

Brexit has provoked an internecine struggle between arch reactionaries whose differences over EU membership are entirely subordinate to their collective aim of imposing further savage attacks on working people and pursuing an aggressive militarist agenda in the domestic and global interests of the financial oligarchy. The fight for a progressive alternative depends upon the most far-sighted workers and young people drawing the necessary conclusions, breaking from Labour to the left and waging a genuine struggle for socialism in Britain and throughout Europe.

Trump, Bolsonaro and the danger of fascism

Patrick Martin

The three-day visit to Washington by the president of Brazil brought together two of the most right-wing figures in the world: Jair Bolsonaro, a former military officer and fervent admirer of the blood-soaked military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985, and Donald Trump, who has become the pole of attraction for authoritarians and fascists the world over, including the gunman who slaughtered 50 Muslims at two New Zealand mosques last week.

During their joint press conference at the White House Tuesday afternoon, Trump repeated his declaration, delivered to an audience of right-wing Cuban and Venezuelan exiles in Florida, that “The twilight hour of socialism has arrived in our hemisphere.” He emphasized, as he did in his State of the Union speech, that this also involved putting an end to the threat of socialism within the United States itself.

Both Trump and Bolsonaro have made the extirpation of socialism—the political core of fascist movements—the central goal of their governments. At their joint press conference, they railed against socialism only days after the massacre in New Zealand, carried out by Brenton Tarrant. Tarrant posted a manifesto hailing Trump as a “symbol of renewed white identity” and declaring his desire to put his boot on the neck of every “Marxist.”

The mutual embrace of Trump and Bolsonaro at the White House is symbolic of the elevation of far-right parties and cultivation of fascistic forces by capitalist governments and established bourgeois parties all over the world. It underscores the fact that the growth of fascism in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the US is the result not of a groundswell of mass support from below, but rather the sponsorship and encouragement of so-called “democratic” governments that are, in fact, controlled top to bottom by corporate oligarchs.

The global promotion of extreme right politics was embodied by the presence of right-wing ideologue Steve Bannon, a former Goldman Sachs vice president and Navy officer, as a guest of honor at a dinner with Jair Bolsonaro Monday night. Bannon has close ties with Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo, who is a member of the Brazilian Parliament and a Latin American representative of the political consortium set up by Bannon, known as the Movement, whose aim is to promote extreme right-wing political parties throughout the world. “Some of the Bolsonaro team on the right see themselves as disciples of the Bannon movement and representatives of Bannon for Brazil and Latin America,” one former Trump administration official told McClatchy.

At the press conference, both Jair Bolsonaro and Trump pledged their support to a fascistic litany of “god, family and nation,” as Trump put it. Bolsonaro declared, “Brazil and the United States stand side-by-side in their efforts to share liberties and respect to traditional and family lifestyles, respect to God, our creator, against the gender ideology of the politically correct attitudes, and fake news.”

Both presidents threatened the use of military force against Venezuela, demonizing President Nicolas Maduro as a socialist dictator. (He heads a capitalist regime, but one whose foreign policy tilts toward China and Russia rather than US imperialism).

Trump reiterated the mantra that “all options are on the table” against Venezuela. Bolsonaro was asked if he would permit US soldiers to use Brazilian soil as a base for military operations against Venezuela. Rather than dismissing that prospect as a violation of both Brazilian and Venezuelan sovereignty, he declined to answer, citing the need for maintaining operational secrecy and the element of surprise.

One of the bilateral agreements that Trump and Bolsonaro signed would allow the United States to use Brazil’s Alcantara Aerospace Launch Base for its satellites. Brazil also announced an end to visa requirements for US visitors. Both actions provide avenues for the integration of Brazil into Pentagon operations, particularly drone-missile warfare and the deployment of special operations forces.

Before visiting the White House, Bolsonaro made an unannounced visit to the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia, an extraordinary move for the president of a country that was subjected to 21 years of unrestrained torture and murder by a military dictatorship installed in a CIA-backed coup.

The dire implications for the working class of the global rise of the far right are indicated by Bolsonaro’s glorification of the Brazilian military dictatorship. Trump hailed the “shared values” between his government and that of a former military officer who praises a regime that jailed, tortured and murdered tens of thousands of workers and students. Twenty years ago, Bolsonaro told an interviewer that the Brazilian Congress should be shut down and that the country could be changed only by a civil war that completed “the job that the military regime didn’t do, killing 30,000 people.”

The capitalist ruling classes are turning once again to dictatorship and fascism in response to the intensification of the world economic crisis, the disintegration of the postwar international order and growth of trade war and geostrategic conflicts, and, above all, the resurgence of the class struggle on a world scale. Petrified by the prospect of mass working-class opposition and the growth of anti-capitalist and socialist sentiment, they are reviving all of the ideological and political filth of the 20th century, including racism, anti-Semitism and the politics of “blood and soil.” They are actively recruiting fascists and racists and integrating them into the military/police agencies of the state, to be unleashed against an insurgent working class.

These developments show that the alternatives are not socialism or reformism, but socialism or barbarism—that is, the descent into fascism and world war.

It would be politically criminal to underestimate the danger to the working class represented by the growth of far-right and fascist movements and the elevation of far-right parties and politicians into government—as is already the case in Germany, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Austria, Brazil and other countries. To defeat this danger, it is above all necessary to learn the lessons of history.

The entire history of the 20th century demonstrates that fascism and war cannot by prevented by appeals to the ruling class or “popular front”-style politics, which subordinates the working class to supposed “progressive” sections of the bourgeoisie. The only way to stop fascism and prevent imperialist war is to mobilize the working class on an international scale for the overthrow of capitalism.

Germany: 3,000 Bosch workers protest in Stuttgart against job cuts

K. Nesan 

On March 13, approximately 3,000 Bosch workers marched through the neighbourhood of Feuerbach in the city of Stuttgart to protest against impending job cuts. The Bosch company is using the introduction of electric-powered cars to press ahead with the biggest job cuts in its history.

The Bosch plant in Feuerbach-Stuttgart has been in operation since 1910 and is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of diesel components. Eight thousand workers build diesel motor products, including injection technology, ignition and exhaust gas filters. In total, more than 13,000 employees are employed at Bosch-Feuerbach.

After the criminal manipulation of Volkswagen diesel emissions tests was made public in September 2015, Bosch experienced a rapid decline in demand for its products. The Bosch plants in Feuerbach, Homburg (Saar) and Bamberg employ around 15,000 workers, while the company has a total workforce of 50,000 worldwide.

So far, the company has refused to provide information on how many workers will lose their jobs in the process of the transition to electric mobility. After the demonstration, the manager of Bosch, Uwe Gackstatter, spoke vaguely of a “structural break” and said: “We will not be able to keep the current level of employment,” due to “the slump in orders for diesel engine components.”

In January, 600 jobs were cut in Homburg and Bamberg, and it is feared all 15,000 workers could lose their jobs should all three plants close down. In Feuerbach, one worker told the WSWS that management was systematically preparing to cease production and shut down the entire Feuerbach plant, eliminating all 8,000 diesel component jobs.

In Homburg, a plant closure would affect 4,100 workers. Bosch produces solely diesel injection pumps at this site and refuses to invest in alternative products. Four hundred jobs have already been slashed.

In the tone of a company manager, Oliver Simon, the head of factory works council in Homburg, declared: “So far, we have been able to compensate for the declining demand for passenger cars with a boom for commercial vehicles, but here, too, we are experiencing a massive slump.”

The works council has already agreed that contractual holidays be used this year to extend weekends and that the Christmas holidays be extended. Shift workers can also choose additional holidays instead of a wage increase, in accordance to the last contract agreed by the IG Metall trade union. In both Homburg and Bamberg, workers are being told that using this alternative could prevent further job losses.

The chairman of IG Metall, Jörg Hofmann, has conducted secret talks behind closed doors with Bosch management for many years. Following a conversation with the Homburg management in September 2018, Hofmann told Deutschlandfunk that the company was evidently planning to “phase out the plant in line with declining demand.” Hofmann continued: “In the long term such a closure is unacceptable. The issue is not making the closure socially acceptable, but rather providing perspectives for the plant.”

In fact, the IG Metall-controlled works councils act as Bosch’s closest accomplices when it comes to enforcing the “re-modelling” of plants at the expense of the workforce. IG Metall works councils have been negotiating with management since October 2018 on “restructuring.” For its part, management has responded with job cuts and a proposal for a 30-hour week without compensation of wages.

On February 14, the works councils at all the Bosch plants issued their “Bamberg Declaration” in which they complain of management’s attempt to “play off plants against one another.” Bosch, the declaration continues, had no perspective for the plants, nor are any investments in “future products” planned.

IG Metall is mainly concerned with ensuring that Bosch continues to make profits. The union has already accepted in principle that job cuts, plant closures and wage cuts are inevitable.

The Bamberg Declaration states, “The challenges are huge, and the issues are very complex. There are no easy answers. But we are firmly convinced that there are possible solutions. Our goal is to secure industrial manufacturing and development in Germany.”

No worker knows what concessions the IG Metall works councils have already made in the course of negotiations. When asked at a special works meeting that preceded the demonstration, several workers confirmed that no details had been reported about the negotiations. Instead, the works councils have only repeatedly appealed to management to put forward constructive solutions.

IG Metall organises protests such as the March 13 demo to allow workers to let off steam, while carrying out talks with management behind the backs of the workforce. Increasingly however, workers realise that the union does not represent their interests, and that, on the contrary, IG Metall constitutes a mechanism to control workers in the interests of the profit system and suppress any independent resistance.

Fewer and fewer workers are prepared to follow the calls for protest made by the union. It came as no surprise that IG Metall announced in a press release prior to the demonstration that it anticipated 5,000 participants but only around 3,000 workers showed up.

Nevertheless, the demonstration expressed the anger growing among thousands of workers in the auto supply industry. Last week, the Schaeffler auto parts company also announced a further 900 job cuts.

The billion-dollar investments of corporations in the development of electric vehicles will completely transform the auto industry. The future of many thousands of jobs is in danger. To defend their jobs, workers must organise independently of IG Metall and the trade unions and conduct their struggle on the basis of a socialist and international perspective.

Hungary hit by strikes in public sector and auto industry

Markus Salzmann

Hungary is currently being hit by a wave of strikes. On Thursday, nearly 10,000 public sector employees went on strike. Following January’s strike at the Audi plant in Györ, which ended with workers achieving an 18 percent wage increase, thousands of workers in the supply industry have now gone on strike as well.

Workers are responding to their poverty wages and the right-wing policies of the Orban government. The main demand in the public sector is for an increase in basic salaries, which have stagnated for 11 years. Lower income workers sometimes receive less than €800 per month for working full-time.

The public sector unions are known for their close collaboration with governments of all stripes. Now they see themselves forced to demand a minimum wage for public sector employees. However, union representatives have yet to announce what this minimum wage demand will be.

Added to this is workers’ anger over the so-called “slave law.” Above all, the Orban government has used this law to respond to the needs of the auto industry. The law raises the number of possible overtime hours from 250 to 400 a year. For public sector employees, it means an increase in daily working hours from 8 to 9 hours and a reduction of five days leave per year.

The strikers held a rally in front of the parliament in Budapest and called for a demonstration on May 1. They were supported by numerous workers and young people. According to media reports, the strike met with great popular sympathy.

Audi workers in Györ in western Hungary have partially achieved their demand for an increase in wages. When production in several European locations was threatened, the carmaker agreed to an 18 percent increase in wages and the Audi internal union AHFSZ broke off the strike. Previously, workers at the Daimler plant in Kecskemét had won an increase in wages of over 20 percent. The stoppages by Hungarian workers are part of a growing strike movement throughout Eastern Europe. In recent years, auto workers in Romania, Serbia and Slovakia have also been on strike.

On Tuesday, workers at Korean tire manufacturer Hankook in Dunaújváros, where 3,400 workers are employed, went on strike. In the face of extremely low wages and onerous working conditions, they are demanding an 18 percent salary increase, an extra month’s salary and additional bonuses. Last week they held a two-hour protest strike. As a result, management offered a low wage increase, which was rejected. Hankook has been producing tyres in Hungary since 2007.

Other automotive suppliers are also affected by strikes. At Westcast in Oroszlány, 1,500 workers held a two-hour protest strike calling for a wage increase of 18 percent. They threatened to shut down operations if management failed to meet their demands.

Workers at German auto parts supplier Conti in Veszprém also supported their demand for more wages by holding a protest strike. At a Bosch Group plant in Miskolc, the ETMOSz union organized a protest strike with more than 500 participants. They are demanding a 12 percent salary increase and other salary components that are usual for workers at the company in other countries.

Other plants are also threatened with strikes. As a result, carmaker Suzuki has already announced that it will not apply the government’s new labour code, to avoid protests. Previously, the Esztergommassiv factory came under criticism after a worker who tried to build a union in the factory was fired.

The strikes must be seen in the context of the increasing social crisis in Hungary. Despite official claims of full employment, the country is one of the poorest in the EU. The differences between the city and the countryside are enormous. In villages, 40 percent of people live below the subsistence level, and the average net wage is just under €700.

The health and education systems face collapse. Well-educated young people are moving abroad in search of a future, for example to Austria or Germany. In the meantime, there are huge campaigns in industry to recruit workers from the Balkans or Ukraine.

At the same time, the government promises to further improve business conditions by keeping wages and taxes low. According to statistics agency Eurostat, in 2017 an average working hour in Hungary cost around €9; by comparison, the rate in Germany was €34.

For example, automotive supplier Bosch recently announced plans to massively expand its plant in the northeastern city of Hatvan. According to Die Zeit, electronic components will be produced there from 2020. With a total investment of around €30 million, the government in Budapest is investing just under €4 million. Hungary offers the “lowest corporate taxes EU-wide,” said Foreign and Foreign Trade Minister Péter Szijjártó at a press conference with Bosch management.

The Munich-based carmaker BMW also announced last year it planned to open a new plant in the eastern part of Debrecen. The total investment there is around €1 billion. This project, too, is being supported by the Hungarian state and local authorities, which want to spend more than €500 million on the necessary expansion of road infrastructure and similar projects. As the napi.hu web site reports, the government plans to invest more than €400 million over the next few years to this end.

As workers become more and more involved in struggles, the unions are trying to stop a broad movement at all costs. Especially the MKKSZ, which has called for the strikes in the public sector, is known for its subservience to the government. Union representatives had earlier stated that a general strike in Hungary was not possible. After tens of thousands took to the streets at the end of last year against the government and the labour code, the unions are now not calling for further protests.

Instead, they are openly revealing how far to the right they really stand. On the Hungarian national holiday, opposition parties and unions jointly demonstrated against the Orban government on Friday in central Budapest. Significantly, the campaign commemorating the 1848-49 revolution was organised under the motto, “National Unity.” Representatives of the ultra-right Jobbik party, the Social Democrats and the unions sang the national anthem together.

Australian government targets China in new “foreign influence” register

Mike Head

Knowing it has the bipartisan backing of the Labor Party, Australia’s Liberal-National Coalition government last week launched the full force of a new “foreign agent” registration scheme by leveling unsubstantiated accusations against China-linked institutes and political figures.

Entities and individuals with alleged connections to Beijing are the initial, and most vulnerable targets, of the Foreign­ Influence Transparency Scheme (FITS), because of the deepening US-China conflict. But the registration regime is a direct, and far wider, threat to basic democratic rights, including free speech.

Attorney-General Christian Porter told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that more than 700 political parties, universities, lobbying firms, media companies and politicians had been warned they could face serious legal consequences if they failed to register.

Porter said officials were ready to chase down people who chose to “run the gauntlet.” He declared: “They would be very, very unwise indeed if they engaged in lobbying or influencing activity with government and determined not to register themselves.”

Porter singled out the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and the institute’s director, former Foreign Minister Bob Carr.

Nine Network outlets, such as the Sydney Morning Herald, reported that 13 university-based Confucius Institute cultural and language education centres had received warning letters from the Attorney-General’s Department.

“A government source” said Confucius Institutes were among the logical first targets. The department would request further information from them, and they could face severe penalties for failing to comply with the legislation.

As of Monday, a three-month “grace” period expired for registration under the “foreign interference” laws that were pushed through parliament last year with the Labor Party’s support.

The FITS Act requires registration by anyone deemed to have an “arrangement” with overseas entities in a political activity. There is up to five years’ jail for those who fail to register or comply with complex and ongoing reporting requirements.

Anyone who fails to register can be compelled to do so by a “transparency notice” issued by the Attorney-General’s Department. The register’s secretary can require “any information or documents.” It is a criminal offence not to comply, or to provide “false or misleading” information.

This affects the essential political, legal and democratic rights of millions of Australians, especially members or supporters of political parties, lobby groups or other organisations opposing official policies, including the US-led drive to war against China and other designated threats to US global hegemony.

The FITS Act and its companion, the Espionage and Foreign Interference (EFI) Act, constitute the most extensive, anti-democratic legislation in Australia since World War II, when governments ruled by wartime regulations.

For failing to register under the FITS Act, organisations and individuals also could be prosecuted under the EFI Act, which contains unprecedented “foreign interference” offences. One offence, punishable by up to 20 years’ jail, is “covertly” collaborating with an overseas group or individual to seek political change.

The EFI Act contains a further array of criminal offences, with penalties up to life imprisonment, ranging from “treason” to “advocating mutiny,” “sabotage” and “dealing” with leaked information that “harms” Australian “national security.”

Porter boasted that the register was already “changing behaviour and contractual arrangements between individuals in the Australian political system.” As an example, he accused Carr of resigning from the Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI) to avoid registration, a claim that Carr vehemently denied.

A spokesman for UTS also refuted Porter’s charge, saying the university “does not consider any of its activities, including those of ACRI, to be registrable under the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme, but will continue to monitor this over time.”

As of last Friday, the FITS registration list contained only 23 names, but its breadth gave a glimpse of the far-reaching and reactionary implications. The Australian Academy of Science, a non-profit organisation whose purpose is to “facilitate access to global science and technology,” felt obliged to register for “general political lobbying” because it has agreements with 10 fellow bodies in other countries, including China, to “promote bilateral, regional and global research collaborations.”

Prominent on the FITS list, alongside some oil companies and corporate lobbyists, are two interconnected entities funded by the US State Department—the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and the Perth USAsia Centre at the University of Western Australia—to conduct activities to support the military alliance with the US.

According to the register, the US Studies Centre’s contract requires it to host a conference this year on “Indo-Pacific Strategic Futures.” Its aims include to promote “support for the rules-based order” and “a commitment to countering malign influence.” These are code words for supporting the US economic and military offensive against China.

The conference is meant to “create a small but well-informed cohort of ‘next generation leaders’ who will amplify the lessons learned from the conference and become leading voices within the [US military] alliance and partner network.”

The US State Department is acutely aware of the mounting discontent globally over social inequality and the drive to war. In Australia, as elsewhere, this disaffection has been compounded by the barbaric US-led wars in the Middle East and the exposures provided by Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden of US and allied war atrocities, political plots and mass surveillance.

By supposedly laying out some of the most overt US political interference in Australia, these registrations are evidently intended to clear the way for ramping up the witch hunt against alleged Chinese “meddling.”

In reality, the passage of the foreign interference” legislation itself was demanded by Washington, and that marks an escalation of decades of US intervention to ensure there is not the lightest deviation from the Australian political establishment’s commitment to the US alliance.

To reinforce that message, on his first day in the job, the newly-arrived US ambassador to Australia, Arthur B. Culvahouse Jnr, launched an extraordinary public broadside against China, accusing Beijing of conducting “payday-loan diplomacy” to trap South Pacific countries in debt­.

Addressing the media after presenting his credentials to Australia’s governor-general, Culvahouse was asked about US Vice President Mike Pence’s denunciation of China’s loans to Pacific nations as “debt trap diplomacy.” Fresh from White House briefings, Culvahouse went further, saying: “I would use stronger language.”

The US ambassador conveyed an implied threat that Australian capitalism’s lucrative export markets in China could be sacrificed in the intensifying US economic war against China unless Washington was satisfied. He said he had his “fingers crossed” that the White House considered the interests of its allies when finalising a trade deal with China.

Culvahouse is a highly-connected member of the US political-intelligence establishment, with a long record of involvement in the secretive machinations of governments, from Richard Nixon’s Watergate crisis to the Iran-Contra affair under Ronald Reagan and the upgrading of nuclear weaponry under Vice President Dick Cheney.

Culvahouse noted that he had arrived just in time for a federal election, due by May. The election is being engulfed by political turmoil, rooted in the deep-going popular discontent.

Previous US ambassadors have played a central role in Australian political crises, including the 1975 “Canberra Coup,” in which the Whitlam Labor government was dismissed after it began to lose control over the industrial and social movement in the working class.

In mid-2010, Labor and trade union powerbrokers who were “protected sources” of the US embassy ousted Kevin Rudd as prime minister in favour of Julia Gillard. Rudd had suggested that the Obama administration should make some accommodation to China’s rise. Gillard and her backers, including the current Labor leader Bill Shorten, quickly committed to the US “pivot” to the Indo-Pacific to combat China, including the stationing of US marines in Darwin.

Three killed, five injured in Netherlands shooting

Will Morrow 

Dutch officials announced at 6:30 p.m. last night that police had arrested 37-year-old Gökmen Tanis, the principal suspect in a shooting yesterday morning in the city of Utrecht that left three people dead and another five injured.

At the time of writing, little is known about either the event itself or the motivations of the shooter. The shooting occurred on a tram in Utrecht at approximately 10:45 a.m. Witness statements indicate that a single male shooter was targeting a specific woman, rather than firing indiscriminately at all nearby passengers.

A 21-year-old witness, Niels, who was on the tram at the time, told De Gelderlader that the perpetrator “focused on a particular person,” and then “aimed at the people who tried to help that woman.” He said that he saw a woman crawl out of the tram, and as people tried to help her, a gunman “went round behind her and began firing at them.”

Another witness told Dutch public broadcaster NOS that he helped an injured woman after the tram had stopped. “I looked behind me and saw someone lying there behind the tram. People got out of their cars … and they started to lift her up. I helped to pull her out and then I saw a gunman run towards us, with his gun raised,” he said. “I heard people yell: Shooter! Shooter! And I started to run.” Of the five people injured, three are reported to be in critical condition.

The Turkish state-owned news agency Anadolu reported that the shooter was targeting “a relative in a tram due to a family dispute,” citing unnamed relatives. Tanis is reportedly of Turkish origin.

NOS reported that acquaintances told the media that there was a “family issue,” and that Tanis had serious psychological problems. The French-language Internaute website reported that “multiple witnesses described Tanis as an unstable individual, in particular since a separation one or two years ago.”

Police have also confirmed that Tanis was known to them and had a criminal record. He reportedly attended pre-trial hearings two weeks ago on rape charges dating from July 2017, and faced trial in 2013 on attempted homicide charges relating to a shooting in a flat in Kanaleneiland, near where yesterday’s shooting took place. NOS reported that he had also faced court action for a number of petty offences, including burglary in 2012, shoplifting and driving under the influence of alcohol in 2014, and damage to property in 2015.

A local businessman told BBC Turkish that Tanis had fought in the Russian republic of Chechnya. “He was arrested because of his connections with [IS] but released later,” the businessman claimed.

More substantive information making clear the character of the shooting will doubtless come to light as the investigation proceeds. Well before it was clear what had occurred, however, the Dutch and other European governments yesterday were already whipping up an atmosphere of national emergency and issuing thinly-veiled references to terrorism and religious extremism.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte, the head of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, spoke at a press conference in the afternoon. Rutte declared that “a terrorist motive has not been ruled out,” adding, “An act of terror is an attack on our civilization, on our open and tolerant society.”

If it was confirmed as a terrorist act, he said, the only answer was that “our society, our democracy, is stronger than fanaticism and violence. We will not yield to intolerance.” The references to “our civilization” and an “open and tolerant society” are typical dog-whistle references used for xenophobic attacks on immigrants and Muslims.

Rutte was joined by French President Emmanuel Macron, who tweeted, “We are at your side in grief and determination to fight against those who wish to impose terror.”

These statements were made as police announced that the gunman had fled the scene of the shooting and that a manhunt was underway. The government raised the national threat rating to the highest level for Utrecht, advising all residents in the city to remain indoors. Videos on social media show heavily-armed police conducting building-by-building searches for Tanis.

In recent years, the entire political establishment in the Netherlands has shifted ever further to the right and more and more openly adopted anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric and policies. Both the People’s Party and the Socialist Party have increasingly adopted the policies of Geert Wilders’s neo-fascistic Party for Freedom (PVV).

In the run-up to the last elections in March 2017, Rutte’s government blocked two Turkish ministers from speaking at events in the Netherlands to campaign for a “yes” vote among Turks on Erdogan’s constitutional referendum to transfer far-reaching powers to the presidency. Rutte’s decision was praised by Wilders as a victory for the PVV, declaring: “We do not want more but less Islam. So Turkey, stay away from us. You are not welcome here.”

The Socialist Party supported Rutte’s ban. The lead candidate Emile Roemer declared that there was “no place in the Netherlands for the propaganda circus of sultan Erdogan.” Yesterday’s shooting took place in the lead-up to nationwide provincial elections scheduled for March 20.

The promotion of anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim chauvinism by the Dutch political establishment is part of an international shift to the right within the ruling class and the deliberate promotion of extreme-right forces by the state and their elevation into positions of power, in response to growing struggles of the working class against inequality and growing interest in socialism.

German government wants its own aircraft carrier

Johannes Stern

The German ruling class dreams of building its own aircraft carrier. This was made clear by statements from leading government and opposition politicians last week.

At a press conference with the Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins in Berlin last Monday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) was asked what she thought of the “interesting proposal for a European aircraft carrier made by the leader of the Christian Democratic Union.” Merkel replied, “I think aircraft carriers are good ... It is only right and proper that Europe has such equipment. I am quite willing to cooperate.”

One day earlier the head of the CDU, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, responded to the European manifesto of French President Emmanuel Macron by raising the prospect of a joint Franco-German aircraft carrier. In a guest commentary for the Welt am Sonntag, she wrote: “Germany and France are already working together on the project of a future European fighter, other nations are invited to participate. As a next step, we could begin the symbolic project of building a joint European aircraft carrier to express the global role of the European Union as a force for security and peace.”

Workers and young people in Germany and throughout Europe must take this announcement as a serious warning. It is obvious that the construction of a German-European aircraft carrier is planned for war, not peace. Germany’s only aircraft carrier, the Graf Zeppelin, was launched on December 8, 1938. It was a project with great symbolic importance for Adolf Hitler during the process of rearming the German army (Wehrmacht) to fight World War II.

The current German grand coalition’s military and rearmament plans leave no doubt that the ruling class is preparing once again for large-scale warfare. The construction of a powerful navy plays a central role in the plans of German imperialism to assert its predatory interests worldwide—as was the case preceding the First and Second World Wars.

According to the new policy doctrine of the German army presented last July by Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen (CDU), Germany “As a foreign trade and commodity-dependent nation is particularly reliant on unrestricted use of the sea.” Due to “Germany’s maritime dependence,” “the Bundeswehr has a special responsibility for the protection of its own coastal waters, the adjacent sea areas such as the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, the waters of NATO’s northern flank area and international maritime lines.”

The doctrine then goes on to explain what this entails. Among other things, German naval forces would have to be able to “prove effective in three-dimensional naval warfare over the entire spectrum of intensive operations,” “plan and lead multinational operations at an upper tactical level and participate in naval warfare” “via their own A2/AD [Anti-Access Area-Denial] skills and ability to conduct operations against A2/AD-enabled agents” and “maintain tactical-offensive naval warfare and deny the enemy the ability to engage in offensive naval warfare.”

In other words, the call for an aircraft carrier is not simply the brainchild of Merkel, but rather the implementation of war plans which have been worked out behind the backs of the population. According to the current “ capability profile of the Bundeswehr ”—an internal planning document for the comprehensive modernisation of the Bundeswehr up to 2031—the navy, in the next few years, is to receive all necessary “capabilities” to conduct comprehensive naval warfare. According to media reports, the central issue is “recovery of the ability to conduct naval warfare from the air.”

The cost of these insane plans is to be carried by workers and youth in two ways: as cannon fodder on fresh battlefields and in the form of massive social cuts to free up the billions necessary for military rearmament. In their founding government pact the coalition of the conservative Union parties (CDU/CSU, Christian Social Union) and the Social Democratic Party pledged to increase defence spending by 2024 to 2 percent of gross domestic product, i.e., more than €75 billion annually.

The purchase of an aircraft carrier would far exceed all previous rearmament plans. To give just one example, the construction costs of the USS Gerald Ford, which was commissioned by US President Donald Trump in July 2017, amount to $13 billion. The total price of the ship and its F-35c fighter aircraft squadron then soars to about $30 billion. Additional costs include operating expenses of around €13 million per month—during “peacetime.” These figures do not even include the costs for the crew of several thousand men.

Despite the monstrous nature of such a project, there has not been a word of opposition from the entire political and media establishment. On the contrary, five years after then president Joachim Gauck and the German government announced at the Munich Security Conference in 2014 that Germany must take on “more responsibility” in the world, the ruling class is increasingly making clear what this means.

According to a recent article on the pro-government think tank, the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), it is time to junk the “wishy washy term ‘responsibility,’” which “spreads a diffuse sense of comfort in the midst of global political turmoil.” In reality, it is all about “conflicting interests and the means of enforcing them.”

The SPD, which has long since played a leading role in Germany’s new aggressive foreign policy, is now attacking US imperialism from the right. During his brief visit to Afghanistan last week, German foreign minister Heiko Maas (SPD) attacked Trump’s announcement to withdraw US troops. One should not leave Afghanistan “too early,” Maas warned.

According to media reports, the German government is preparing to increase its own troop levels in this resource-rich and geo-strategically important country. The aim was to replace “capabilities provided by multinational partners which are critical for the mission,” according to a document cited in the German daily Tagesspiegel. To this end, “forces will be held ready in Germany” and an “increase in the mandate’s time limit will be examined on an individual case basis.”

Germany’s so-called leftist opposition parties also agree in principle with the grand coalition’s war and rearmament plans. According to the security spokesman for the Green Party, Tobias Lindner, the government should “finally ensure that the Bundeswehr is once again operational.” His criticism of the planned aircraft carrier is limited to the fact that this project has not been preceded by “any serious debate on German defence policy or the capacity profile of the Bundeswehr.” A project “that would be far more realistic and not to be underestimated for the integration of European armed forces” is, in his opinion, “a joint training sailing ship”!

As for the Left Party, it has failed to make any comment on the government’s plans, and that comes as no surprise. A congress of the Left Party in Bonn at the end of February agreed a European election program with a large majority. The program is basically in alignment with German-European armament policy. In the run-up to the conference, the party executive had rejected any criticism of the European Union and a passage describing the EU as “militaristic, undemocratic and neoliberal” was deleted from the draft program. Since then, the leadership of the Left Party has even abandoned any verbal criticism of militarism.

The Socialist Equality Party (SGP) is the only party that has placed the return of German and European militarism at the heart of its European election campaign to arm the widespread opposition among workers and young people with a socialist program.

Its election statement declares: “In May 2019, the Socialist Equality Party (SGP) will run in the European elections with a nationwide electoral list to oppose the rise of the far right, growing militarism, the building of a police state and increasing social inequality. Together with the other sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), we are fighting for a socialist program to unify the European working class in struggle against capitalism. This is the only way to prevent the continent from relapsing into fascist barbarism and war.”

Macron denounces growing wave of protests in France

Alex Lantier

Hundreds of thousands of people took part in protests in France this weekend. The 18th successive yellow vest protest against social inequality took place alongside protests directed against the Algerian regime of Abdelaziz Bouteflika, and a demonstration against climate change.

Multiple police prefectures refused to provide the number of demonstrators in their regions, and the interior ministry claims only 32,300 people joined yellow vest protests across the country. This figure, far below the figures reported in previous demonstrations, was accompanied by claims in the press that the protests are decreasing in size.

In fact, what is shown by the protests is the continuing growth of opposition among workers and youth. The Facebook page “The Yellow Number” reported 230,766 protesters on Saturday, as the yellow vests marked the end of Macron’s fraudulent “grand national debate.” More than 350,000 people protested at the “March of the century” to oppose climate change, according to organizers. Thousands joined protests in solidarity with the Algerian workers and youth demanding the fall of Bouteflika’s National Liberation Front (FLN) regime.

“March of the century”

Fearing, above all, that the mobilization of millions in Algeria may inspire a revolutionary struggle by large sections of workers in Europe—already shaken by yellow vest protests—the government and media have stepped up their denunciations of the protests. Citing acts of public vandalism in which the police have played a murky role, the Elysée and media called for suppression and end to the protests.

In Lyon, 30,000 people protested on Saturday in three demonstrations. The protests against Bouteflika in Algeria were livestreamed on the internet. Thousands demonstrated in Toulouse, a hotspot of yellow vest protests. A group of protesters separate from the group insulated the right-wing mayor, Jean-Luc Moudenc, who denounced the “climate of terror” imposed by the yellow vests. Large protests were reported in Montpellier, Caen and Dijon.

In Bordeaux, where, like in Toulouse, the prefecture refused to provide the number of protesters, thousands demonstrated. Skirmishes broke out with police forces. A retiree at the yellow vest protests told France-Television, “I saw a protester injured by a grenade. He was against a wall and was doing nothing. Many people are sickened by the police’s actions. This will not calm people down. On the contrary. It’s always the same people rioting, and if they [the police] had really wanted to arrest them, they could.”

In Paris, 10,000 yellow vests were on the Champs-Elysées, and some joined the “March of the century,” which involved 100,000 people (only 36,000 according to police) at Republic Square.

Yellow vests at the “March of the century” expressed demands both on climate change and also broader social issues. “The yellow vests are not only fighting for higher purchasing power, but also against social injustice and the predatory actions of multinational companies that plunder the planet’s resources,” one participant told Le Monde. A care worker added: “We’re told to buy electric cars, but when you live in an apartment complex, where would you park it, and how can you pay for it?”

On the Champs-Elysées, the police deployed a large force to block off sections of the road, and began firing tear gas from the morning onwards. WSWS reporters noted the presence of a large number of police officers in civilian clothing standing side-by-side with their colleagues on the barricades supposedly established to fend off rioters.

After the arrival of a group of a few hundred people dressed in black and wearing masks, who passed through all the police barricades, clashes broke out between protesters and police. Around 80 well-known store brands on the street suffered damage, including the Fouquet’s brewery, the Gaumont cinema, the Swarovski jewellery store, and the Tarneaud bank.

As masked protesters arrived at the Champs-Elysées, yellow vests who spoke to the WSWS expressed their hostility toward the rioters and their suspicions that they were collaborating with police. One protester from Lyon said: “You come once to protest, and you get hit and tear-gassed. At a certain point there is no longer any respect for the people. In Lyon the fascists come, and they are protected by the police. It’s not normal. We went to find the riot police to get them to protect the yellow vest protesters. They ran away in the other direction.”

He added, “In the protests, half the time they are there infiltrating. We all know them. The cops don’t change. The BAC police insulted my wife. We don’t speak to people like that.”

Riot policeman caught on video filling his bag

It remains to be established exactly what took place on the Champs-Elysées and above all the responsibility of the police for the events. Police officers were filmed by a reporter, Remi Buisine, as they were stealing merchandise from the store of the Paris Saint-Germain football club. In the video, which has been widely viewed on social media, police strike Buisine to try to take his phone and prevent him from filming. A police source told Liberation that the images of the incident were “embarrassing.” The Paris police prefecture has announced that the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) would conduct an internal investigation.

The emergence of a mass movement demanding the fall of the Algerian regime since February 22 objectively raises the problem of the international unification of working-class struggles. While strikes are taking place against European austerity measures from Portugal to Berlin, a new revolutionary wave is developing in northern Africa, targeting a regime directly supported by Paris. Terrified by this development, the Macron government is responding with repression and provocations.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe denounced the yellow vests as responsible for the violence on the Champs-Elysées, because “all those who excuse or encourage the acts that I denounced, in excusing, in encouraging them, become complicit in them.”

While the most serious questions are raised about the role of the police, Macron, rushing back from his ski weekend in La Mongie, also targeted protesters. In an emergency meeting of the interior ministry, he declared that “all those who were there were complicit.”

The government propaganda against the protesters has been taken up by a large section of the media close to the government. On Twitter, Bernard Henri-Levy vituperated: “Let’s stop with the myth of ‘certain’ Yellow Vests, ‘infiltrated’ by the bad ‘rioters.’ This movement of [yellow vests], from day one, has been a factional, hateful and anti-republican movement.”

These are shameless lies and provocations. The vast majority of the yellow vests, and the other protesters from Saturday, were not rioting. The official torrent of denunciations against the protesters is a defence of the tiny capitalist elite in Europe, completely corrupted and no less terrified of the working class than the bloody regime around Bouteflika that they support.

The question posed by the protests is the necessity for a perspective and revolutionary leadership capable of uniting the struggles of workers and youth on an international scale, in a struggle for political power and the overthrow of the capitalist system.

Obesity-related cancers rise among US millennials

Alex Johnson

Obesity-related cancers among millennials have climbed to rates higher than what was generally witnessed during the baby boomer generation, according to a recent scientific study. Astonishingly, the publication found that these cancers, which are typically present in elderly adults, have become increasingly common at younger ages over the past 20 years.

The study, published in The Lancet last month, found that between 1995 and 2014, out of the over 14 million incident cases for 30 types of cancer, incident occurrences increased significantly for six of 12 obesity-related cancers in young adults aged 25-49.

Funded by the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute, the study examined data over a 20-year period, covering 67 percent of the US population.

It found that the risk of pancreatic, colorectal, endometrial and gallbladder cancers in millennials is far higher than baby boomers when they were the same age. This increase is steeper in progressively younger generations (individuals aged under 50) and successively younger generations (individuals born after 1950).

Senior author Ahmedin Jemal, vice president of Surveillance and Health Services Research for the American Cancer Society, told CNN that “the risk of cancer is increasing in young adults for half of the obesity-related cancers, with the increase steeper in progressively younger ages.”

Excessive body weight is a known carcinogen that is associated with over a dozen cancers, and the report provides further evidence that obesity is a significant risk factor for cancer. Besides cancer, obesity and being overweight are also major risk factors for other serious diet-related diseases and illnesses, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and strokes.

Nearly 40 percent of adults are currently obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), while at least two-thirds are classified as either obese or overweight. The CDC found that 18.5 percent of children aged 2- to 19-years-old were obese.

Although cancer rates have fallen steadily over the past 25 years, due primarily to the reduction of lung cancer caused by smoking, the gradual increase in obesity-related cancers is beginning to roll back this progress.

The researchers stated that young adults still have an overall lower risk of developing these cancers compared to older adults. However, Jemal notes that the implications of the study for future trends in cancer diagnosis are harrowing.

“Cancer trends in young adults often serve as a sentinel for future disease burden in older adults, among whom most cancer occurs,” Jemal said.

One of the principal factors contributing to the rise in obesity rates among American adults is the lack of access to healthy foods among low-income and rural populations. Healthy foods like fruits, vegetables and high-quality proteins are often unaffordable for poor and working-class Americans.

A study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association in 2007 found that low-income Americans would have to spend up to 70 percent of their food budget on fruits and vegetables to meet new national dietary guidelines for health eating.

Moreover, even if they could afford it, low-income residents in rural areas and inner-cities often cannot even access healthy foods. According to a 2010 report by the US Department of Agriculture, 23.5 million people live in “food deserts,” locations without a nearby supermarket where healthier options are available and residents are instead forced to rely on convenience stores and fast-food restaurants.

Burdened by the rising cost of living, stagnant wages, and skyrocketing student debt, millennials have less time and fewer resources to address important health needs. As a result, they have increasingly turned toward unhealthy food options.

A survey conducted by the CDC this past October found that 45 percent of Americans aged 20 to 39 ate fast food on a given day. A study conducted by Bankrate.com discovered that 54 percent of millennials eat out at least three times a week or more.

Widening social inequality in the US is reflected in dietary differences between the rich and the poor. According to a 2016 article published by STAT, only 38 percent of low-income people (a family of four making around $30,000) eat an intermediate diet (a diet quality better than poor, but not ideal), versus 62 percent of higher-income people (a family of four making around $69,000).

The rise in obesity is not unique to the American population, but an expression of a wider and global public health crisis. The World Health Organization has called obesity a “rising epidemic,” with over 1 billion adults considered obese worldwide.