UK police colluded in blacklisting of workers

Trevor Johnson

The release of a previously secret report exposes how the police collaborated with big companies to blacklist workers.

The report was marked on its front cover “[Police] Commissioner only.” While the released version is heavily redacted, it shows that police agencies including the Special Branch secret service and its infiltration unit, the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), colluded with blacklisting agencies such as the Consulting Association (CA), a secretive body funded by employers, and its predecessor the Economic League (EL).

Blacklisting was only made illegal at the end of the Labour government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2009, and even then only as a civil offence, not a criminal offence.

Big businesses used the CA and the secret police to spy on workers and hired and fired them based on the information collected—often lies and distortions. The blacklisted workers and their families were condemned to a life of poverty and hardship.

One worker was falsely described by the police as having a link to terrorism, ensuring he was refused employment. Showing how the EL worked in 1978, the case was uncovered as a result of a senior police officer who was related to the blacklisted worker and intervened on his behalf.

An active trade unionist, the worker had applied for a job making training videos for a company with links to the construction firms. The company asked the EL for information on him, causing the EL to go to the police “due to the perceived risk of involvement in education.”

“The receiving officer’s initial inquiries revealed a potential link to [redacted] which in his opinion had not been resolved satisfactorily... he returned to EL asking for any further information, stressing the matter’s importance due to the possible link to terrorism. This was recorded as fact by the EL representative.”

The EL reported back to the employer and the worker was turned down.

The Economic League was wound up in 1993, before blacklisting was made illegal. It had accumulated files on around 22,000 people. The CA was founded in the same year by Ian Kerr, described as a “key” figure in the EL by its director.

The CA was raided by the Office of the Information Commissioner in February 2009. Although only 15 percent of CA’s material was confiscated by the IC, it was enough to prove that it was illegally keeping a blacklist on more than 3,000 workers based on their trade union membership, political views and any raising of health and safety concerns.

It got information from the police agencies, including the Special Branch and the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS).

Building workers were the most frequently targeted, but the blacklist also included teachers, dockworkers, firefighters, students and many others.

The CA got its funding from companies, which paid fees of several thousand pounds per year, as well as paying for each file they accessed. The list of more than 40 companies includes all the major construction firms.

The report states, “Police, including Special Branches and the Security Services supplied information to the blacklist funded by the country’s major construction firms...”

The Metropolitan Police Special Branch Industrial Unit spied on trade unionists “from teaching to the docks, attending conferences, and protests personally, and also developing well placed confidential contacts.”

The report makes clear that police are still sharing information about workers with big businesses and other bodies by means of the Industrial Liaison Section of the National Domestic Extremism Unit.

Mark Jenner was an undercover police spy from 1995 to 2000, who entered a five-year relationship with an innocent, law-abiding woman as part of his cover story. He posed as a construction worker and joined UCATT. He also infiltrated the Colin Roach Centre, which was involved in numerous industrial and union disputes, particularly in the construction industry.

The centre was associated with the Building Workers Group (BWG) and hosted some of its meetings. Jenner was also a member of the BWG.

His activities in UCATT, the BWG and the Colin Roach Centre gave Jenner “ample opportunity” to spy on workers involved in disputes. He provided information on more than 300 people, at least 16 of whom appeared in the illegal blacklist.

On March 12, 2015, former SDS police spy-turned-whistleblower Peter Francis made a statement on his own and Jenner’s activities targeting trade unions, saying, “[H]ere in this supposed home of UK democracy, please let me state very clearly that Mark Jenner was 100 percent one of my fellow undercover SDS Police Officers deployed alongside me in the 1990s.

“Jenner, who has now been very publicly exposed, should be forced to appear in person at the public inquiry to account for his spying on, amongst numerous other political protesters, the totally law-abiding construction union UCATT members whose only ‘crimes’ were being union members.

“I would also like take this opportunity to unreservedly apologise to all the union members I personally spied upon and reported back on whilst deployed undercover in the SDS.”

The targets of his spying included “not only [those] engaged in working in the construction industry but also those in the National Union of Students (NUS), National Union of Teachers (NUT), Communication Workers Union (CWU), UNISON and the Fire Brigades Union (FBU).”

After becoming a whistleblower, Francis was threatened with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act.

The EL also worked with trade union officials to supply detailed files on workers—an aspect of its blacklisting work studiously avoided by the capitalist media and the Stalinist Morning Star.

Trade unionist Michael Anderson “discovered that on his file there was a note saying that the union Amicus had recommended he not be employed. Several of those who have received their files have raised concerns that information appears to have come from union officials. Anderson said: ‘I have written and asked Unite the union to conduct an independent inquiry into who “of Amicus” was responsible for supplying information that I was “not recommended” by my own trade union. I have received no reply. I have also asked how other privileged detailed information about which members attended union branch meetings and discussions held at branch fell into the hands of The Consulting Association. I have received no plausible reply.’”

The fact that the employers relied on the tip-offs given to them by trade union officials alongside the reports of police spies confirms the role of the union bureaucracy as an industrial police force on behalf of big business and the capitalist state.

The building industry has the worst record of all for fatalities at work, with 38 deaths in 2017-18. The report on blacklisting sheds some light on the methods by which such dangerous conditions were imposed, but a lot more is yet to come.

The official papers on the prosecution of the Shrewsbury building worker pickets in 1972 and how they were railroaded into prison have yet to be released. One of the pickets, Des Warren, who became a member of the Workers Revolutionary Party, then the British section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, was kept drugged while in prison and suffered permanent damage to his health and an early death.

His son Andy Warren has stated, “My dad argued that he was not a criminal, he was a political prisoner. He spent eight and a half months in solitary confinement. Both him and Ricky Tomlinson went on hunger strikes in protest at the way that the prison authorities treated them. My dad endured three hunger strikes, the longest lasting 22 days…

“When my dad was finally released and came home he was never the same… My dad never worked again. Every employer in the country blacklisted him. After a time his health began to fail due to the treatment that he had endured in prison, particularly the drugs.” 

Des Warren died in 2004 aged just 66.

Fiction and reality: The Italian Five-Star Movement’s citizen income scheme

Marianne Arens

On March 6, the application process for the so-called “reddito di cittadinanza” (citizen income) opened to Italian citizens. This scheme is a vanity project of the co-governing Five-Star Movement as they seek favour ahead of the European elections. It will not, however, change the stark social inequality in the country.

According to the statistical institute Istat, more than five million people are considered to be living in “absolute poverty” in Italy. This means they are unable to meet their basic daily needs for food, housing, clothing, medical care and social inclusion. The number has almost tripled from 1.8 million in 2007 to over five million today. The younger generations and southern Italians are worst affected—one in ten among them in absolute poverty.

This rampant impoverishment is the result of systematic wealth redistribution in recent decades. This fact is reflected in Italy’s changing tax rates. In 1974, there were 32 tax brackets in which inhabitants had to pay a rate, depending on their income, between 10 and 72 percent. Today there are only six brackets. The lowest income earners pay no less than 23 percent, while the highest tax rate does not exceed 43 percent. This tax rate also applies to billionaires like Berlusconi, Ferrero or Giorgio Armani.

Workers’ households are particularly affected by the economic decline. According to the Istat report, absolute poverty in households “where the caregiver is a worker” has risen to a dramatic 11.8 percent.

So it is not surprising that in the first week following March 6, more than 350,000 Italians sent in online or postal applications for the citizen income scheme. In theory, the scheme entitles citizens to 780 euros per month, with a 1,300 euro limit for families. In practice, however, the assistance is subject to numerous terms and conditions.

Originally, Beppe Grillo had promised every Italian an “unconditional basic income” as a fixed monthly sum. Yet now, the Italian government has reduced the “reddito di cittadinanza” to a weak imitation of Germany’s Hartz IV labour reforms, with additional high hurdles.

In order to be eligible, citizens must prove that they have less than 9,360 euros available and no more than 6,000 euros in a savings account (the numbers are slightly higher for families). The number of recipients may be reduced after March 28, as only then will the final wording of the law be decided. By the end of March, Parliament has to pass the previous decree into law, and until then new restrictions are always possible.

It was recently revealed that recipients of the citizen’s money scheme must be prepared to commute up to 100 kilometers for the first available job. For the second, they have to travel up to 250 kilometers, and, if after two rejections, they get a third offer, they must accept it, no matter where in Italy it is.

The right to the citizen income scheme expires after 18 months. Recipients will be given a yellow plastic card, with which they can only buy from grocery stores, supermarkets or pharmacies. This is officially justified as an insurance measure to prevent gambling and squandering. There is a cap of 100 euros on every transaction.

Punishment for violations range to up to several years in prison. The new citizens’ income thus equals a hastily introduced state employment scheme. Lately, public debate has raged around how applications are scrutinized and the ways in which recipients are tightly controlled to prevent misuse.

To this end, the government wants to recruit 3,000 students and unemployed academics to become so-called “navigators” for the state’s employment offices. These “navigators” are themselves precarious auxiliaries. As one state secretary described the positions: “You gain work experience and then you are available for the competition.” This temporary workforce is supposed to check applications as quickly as possible so that the first payouts can be made by the end of April.

The Five-Star Movement is desperately hoping to counter its rapidly declining poll numbers with this citizen income scheme. Yet, as the realities of its implementation materialise, the artificial euphoria is turning into disappointment and anger. Workers’ voices against the project are becoming ever clearer.

The online journal francetvinfo quotes unemployed Marco (34) from Rome saying: “The state gives us a bare minimum, but we had hoped to find work.”

On the internet, one M5S member disappointedly wrote: “The citizen income scheme is a flop (...) Thanks to the selection criteria, those in need of help will not only be humiliated by poverty, they will now be treated as potential fraudsters as well. You are told how, where and for what you can spend the money on (...) This income scheme treats you like a criminal.”

”Last year, I chose the five stars because I wanted something to change,” said a disappointed worker from the former Sardinian mining area of Sulcis to the daily La Stampa .

On the issue of the citizen income scheme, all of the opposition parties are against the Five-Star Movement. Yet, all these parties are arguing from the right, from the point of view of the Italian economy. From the PD (Democratic Party) and the trade unions to Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, they criticize the “reddito di cittadinanza” because it is harmful and impossible given empty state coffers and high public debt.

An example of this is the trade union representative Alfred Ebner (CGIL South Tyrol), who sees a “limit” in the scheme, since “only limited financial resources are available. When such resources have been exhausted, the scheme is either over or it will be scaled back.”

Even the Lega, the Five-Star Movement’s coalition partner, refuses to back it on the citizen income scheme. A few days ago, Interior Minister Matteo Salvini (Lega) asserted that the richer regions in the north—South Tyrol and the two Lega strongholds of Veneto and Lombardy—would have a substantial say in the implementation of the scheme.

As the European elections near, the rifts in the coalition government widen. There are now new conflicts between the Lega and the M5S every other day. Yet this gives the Lega an advantage, as it continues to attract Berlusconi and neo-fascist voters with its right-wing and xenophobic program.

According to polls, the Lega may almost double its 2018 parliamentary election results, from 17.4 percent to 33.2 percent. The party is contemplating a swap of coalition partners after the European elections to bring an even more right-wing government into office.

The Five-Star Movement, which reached 32.7 percent in parliamentary elections a year ago, has now fallen to 22 percent in polls. Beppe Grillo’s party, with its shrill protest and promise of a citizen income scheme, was able to venture into the vacuum left by the Democrats and Rifondazione. They became the strongest single party by using anger and frustration against the existing political parties and the EU for their own purposes. But once in government, Five-Star turned out to be just a placeholder for the ultra-right Lega.

Putin signs Russian internet censorship bills into law

Clara Weiss

On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law two bills that dramatically escalate the government’s censorship of the internet and crackdown on free speech. The first bill provides for the removal of and ban on sites and blogs that allegedly spread “fake news”, and the fining of their authors. The second outlaws the alleged disparaging of state symbols and the government, and the inciting of society to “hooliganism”.

Individuals accused of spreading “unreliable information” on “socially significant” issues that could cause harm to individuals or social disorder, can be fined 30,000-100,000 rubles (US$ 466-1,553) for their first violation of the law – an amount that surpasses what a sizable portion of the population make in a month – and up to 400,000 rubles (US$ 6,211) for repeated offenses. Legal entities can be charged up to 1,5 million rubles (US$ 23,292).

What constitutes “unreliable information” is nowhere defined and will be decided by the General Prosecutor’s office, which will be overseeing the implementation of the law, as well as the state agency Roskomnadzor (Russian Communication Oversight), the main agency responsible for the surveillance and censorship of the internet in Russia.

The two laws are part of an international campaign by the ruling class to crack down on the internet, which has become the main platform for the dissemination and discussion of news and opinions that run counter to the official bourgeois mainstream media, as well as for the organization of demonstrations and strikes.

The bill had been approved in a first and second reading by the Russian parliament earlier this year, amid a strike of some 12,000 truckers in southern Russia. The signing of the bills by Putin occurred on the same day as medical personnel at several hospitals in Novosibirsk launched a work-to-rule action to protest against their miserable salaries (about 20,000 rubles monthly or US$ 314 with overtime) and the ongoing cuts in the health care sector.

If the US political establishment and corporate media have based their campaign of internet censorship ideologically on the fight against alleged “fake news” with reference to the “Russian meddling” in the election, the Russian government and state media have justified Moscow’s own clamping down on free speech on the internet by citing the international campaign against “fake news” as well as the Ukraine conflict and the overt propaganda by the Western bourgeois media.

Amid escalating tensions with the US and European imperialist powers, and rising levels of social inequality, the Russian government in recent years has worked to set up what is now a comprehensive framework for the surveillance of the internet and individual users. It has banned the use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) that hide users’ actual internet IP, allowing them to surf on the internet without being automatically identifiable; public WiFis require personal identification for usage and the government has also obliged corporations running social media platforms to store their information about users on Russian servers and make them available upon request to the secret service. Meanwhile, a 2018 attempt to ban the popular messaging app Telegram, which enables encrypted communication, has largely failed.

In addition to these two new censorship laws, the Russian government is also actively preparing to create a Russian internet that would be separate from the World Wide Web. In February, the Russian parliament approved the first reading of a such a bill. The Kremlin has presented the law as a response to the US national cybersecurity strategy that was passed in 2018, and Putin has defended the law as necessary to guarantee the “security” of Russian citizens.

While there is no question that the open war preparations by the United States and NATO against Russia are a major motivation for the efforts to create a separate Russian internet, at least as important a factor is the fear of the Russian oligarchy that the internet can be used by Russian workers and youth to access information about and link up their struggles with the growing struggles of the working class all over the world. Russia is the most unequal large economy in the world, with the top 1 percent owning as much as one-third of the country’s net wealth and the bottom 50 percent of the population owning less than 5 percent.

The yellow vest protests in France, as well as the strikes by Iranian workers and, most recently, the mass protests and strikes in Algeria have been closely followed in Russia, where over 90 percent of the population has expressed opposition to the raising of the retirement age by five years, which was rammed through in the summer and fall of last year.

The US media coverage of the new censorship laws in Russia, feigning outrage over the Kremlin’s crackdown, has been entirely hypocritical. Thus, the editorial board of the Washington Post denounced as an “authoritarian assault” on the “potential value of the Internet, and its very freedom”.

The same Washington Post has been fully complicit in the internet censorship campaign in the US. It has been one of most vociferous proponents of a campaign against “fake news”, and, in November 2016, it published a “black list” of anti-war and left-wing web sites, many of which, including the World Socialist Web Site, were subsequently demoted by Google in search results, and purged by Facebook.

Unsealed documents shed light on state conspiracy against Chelsea Manning

Kevin Reed

On Wednesday, the U.S. Eastern District Court of Virginia unsealed several filings concerning Chelsea Manning’s legal challenge to the subpoena attempting to force her to testify before a grand jury involved in fabricating charges against WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.

Among the unsealed documents is Manning’s legal motion of March 1 to have the subpoena thrown out on the grounds that it violates her First and Fifth Amendment rights, that it is an abuse of the grand jury process and that it is the product of illegal electronic surveillance by the government.

The documents include the government’s response to Manning’s motion and other filings related to unsealing the documents as well as a transcript of a March 5 hearing before US District Judge Claude Hilton on these matters.

Chelsea Manning

Chelsea Manning—who has taken a brave and principled stand against the attempt to frame up Assange—was jailed on March 8 on civil contempt charges for refusing to testify before the secret grand jury. Judge Hilton cruelly sentenced her to jail indefinitely knowing full-well that she had already served seven years in prison—including long stretches in solitary confinement—even though she is recognized throughout the world as a courageous whistleblower and defender of the truth.

The unsealed documents shine a light on the desperate measures to which the US government has resorted in pursuing a legal pretext to prosecute Julian Assange. It also exposes the fact that Chelsea Manning has been the target of an endless campaign of intimidation and conspiracy in violation of her democratic rights.

In Manning’s legal filing of March 1, “Omnibus Motion to Quash Grand Jury Subpoena,” it is explained, for example, that a primary objective of the grand jury questioning is to prove that she made “false or mistaken” statements during her 2013 court-martial trial.

The document states, “Given the prosecutor’s unwillingness to disclose information to Ms. Manning that would help her evaluate the risks of testifying, she must assume that the grand jury is a ‘perjury trap’ or even worse, a subterfuge for another military prosecution.” Such an entrapment, the motion argues, would violate her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

The document also elaborates further on the First Amendment basis for Manning’s refusal to answer questions before the grand jury. Manning’s lawyers write, “First, there is a likelihood that this grand jury to be used expressly to disrupt the integrity of the journalistic process by exposing journalists to a kind of accessorial liability for leaks attributable to independently-acting journalistic sources. This administration has been quite publicly hostile to the press, and there is reason to believe that this grand jury may function to interfere profoundly with the operation of a free press.”

In other words, the Trump administration intends to make examples of both Manning and Assange and threaten any future journalists who report the truth about the crimes of American imperialism and its criminal military and intelligence operations around the world.

Manning’s motion also exposes the fact that federal prosecutors are using the grand jury mechanism in a wholly unconstitutional manner. They write, “Furthermore, it is possible that this subpoena represents an effort on the part of the FBI or another investigative agency in collaboration with government prosecutors to compel by grand jury process testimony that would otherwise be inaccessible.”

In violation of her legal rights, the FBI attempted unsuccessfully to question Chelsea Manning in 2010 while she was at the Quantico military brig in Virginia. Federal authorities are now attempting to use their power to compel testimony that was otherwise off limits to them.

Finally, and most significantly, Manning’s motion to quash the grand jury subpoena exposes the fact that she has been subjected to massive unlawful electronic surveillance in violation of her First Amendment rights.

The legal team writes, “There can be little doubt that local police, federal agencies, and possibly the military have been involved in surveilling and communicating about Ms. Manning, people with whom she is lawfully associated, and the entirely lawful activities in which they engage. Likewise, there is reason to believe that non-state actors may have enabled the state to circumvent legal constraints on electronic surveillance, by surveilling Ms. Manning, and then conveying their intelligence to state actors.”

Furthermore, the document explains, “… Ms. Manning has encountered at least one individual who appeared to tape her while attempting to goad her into conversations about unlawful uses of technology, she reasonably fears that this or something similar is happening to her.”

Considerable public criticism emerged after Manning was sent to jail, which no doubt contributed to the decision of the US government attorneys to also support Manning’s motion to unseal the documents. The World Socialist Web Site and International Youth and Students for Social Equality have called a series of rallies and meetings to demand Manning’s immediate release from jail.

Media reports on the unsealed documents have focused exclusively on the federal prosecutor’s assertion that Manning gave “false or mistaken” statements in her 2010 court martial trial. That this fact was exposed by Manning’s legal team as the means through which the prosecutors wish to entrap her is buried in coverage.

Given the well-documented record of US government spying and surveillance of political opponents over many decades, combined with Manning’s own declarations, the record of harassment and intimidation and attacks on her democratic rights must be understood as a threat to the entire working class.

The information contained in these unsealed documents confirms that the imprisonment of Chelsea Manning is part and parcel of a US government conspiracy to punish her, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks for telling the world the truth about the crimes of US imperialism.

European Union leaders grant May extra time to pass Brexit deal in UK parliament

Robert Stevens

The European Union’s (EU) 27 member states have agreed a plan allowing a delay of Brexit to May 22. But this is only on condition that UK MPs approve the deal the EU agreed with Prime Minister Theresa May by the previous official exit date of March 29.

May and the EU leaders hope that the threat of a “hard-Brexit” as the only alternative will swing enough MPs behind the proposed “Strasbourg Agreement” between May and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. If not, the UK will have only until April 12.

Any further extension would involve UK participation in elections to the European parliament—a further incentive to the Conservative Party’s hard-Brexit faction and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to come on board.

This only gives two additional weeks towards a new “cliff edge.” After that the EU has made clear that essentially only an abandonment of Brexit will prevent the UK crashing out without a deal. There will be no further renegotiation.

May came to the two-day summit just eight days before Britain was due to exit the European trade block under the terms of Article 50—following the June 2016 referendum vote to leave the EU. She arrived after making a televised statement to the nation the previous evening in which she posed as the people’s champion against a recalcitrant Parliament.

“You want this stage of the Brexit process to be over and done with. I agree. I am on your side. It is now time for MPs to decide,” May said.

May’s request was for an extension to June 30. The proposal agreed fixes May 22 as the new Brexit date because that is when EU elections begin. May has so far ruled out any scenario which would mean UK participation in the elections.

All reports and public statements portrayed French President Emmanuel Macron as taking the hardest line—most notably against Germany. But this was likely a prearranged case of good cop/bad cop. Macron in fact spoke for the entire EU when he warned, “In the case of a negative vote [in the UK parliament], we will go towards no deal—we all know it.”

He stressed that the stability and homogeneity of the EU was at stake. “We must respect the will of the British people, but also the European project. European leaders understand and respect the will of the British people, but we defend the interests of our own people… We are ready for Brexit. France didn’t choose this, the British people did… The European project must continue and must be stronger.”

Europe’s ruling circles must do whatever they can to limit the massive social, political and economic damage threatened by Brexit. François Heisbourg, special adviser of the French Fondation de la Recherche Stratégique think tank, said that in France and within the EU it was viewed that “Britain, having dragged itself deep into the cesspool, will now drag us into the cesspool as well.”

Tensions over Brexit in UK ruling circles have resulted in a full-blown constitutional crisis.

Last week, Parliament’s Speaker, John Bercow, a supporter of remaining in the EU, dredged up an archaic clause dating back to 1604 to prevent May putting her deal to a third vote if it was “substantially the same” as those previously rejected.

It has been suggested that May’s deal will now be put to Parliament again on Tuesday, March 26, in a “meaningful vote”—with the government arguing that Bercow’s ruling is invalidated by the change of date agreed. But given the continued difficulties May has in getting the DUP and her hard-Brexiteers on board, this is by no means certain—especially as there are reports of MPs wanting her to step down. May can now hold a vote in Parliament any time before April 12.

As the summit began, MPs on both sides of the house denounced May’s national address. In language evoking an impending civil war, Remain supporting Labour MP Wes Streeting described May’s Downing Street address as “incendiary and irresponsible. If any harm comes to any of us [MPs], she will have to accept her share of responsibility.”

Labourite Lisa Nandy stated, “Pitting Parliament against the people in the current environment is dangerous and reckless.” With MPs speaking of death threats being made against them, Bercow felt obliged to intervene again, saying to MPs, “None of you is a traitor.”

A pro-Remain online petition calling on the government to revoke Article 50 reached over two million signatures last night, at one point crashing the government’s petition website. This is aimed at galvanising support for Saturday’s “People Vote” march in London for a second EU referendum that is expected to be attended by hundreds of thousands of people. But in Parliament at this point there doesn’t appear to be a possible majority for a second referendum.

With no solution to the deadlock over Brexit in place, the government announced that extraordinary powers are to be enacted next Monday through its “Operation Yellowhammer” “command and control” contingency plans for a no-deal outcome. The government’s Cobra committee, which is only convened under conditions of national emergency, is now empowered to deal with all no-deal preparations, including having 3,500 troops on standby.

With dire implications for the working class and democratic rights, the operation allows sweeping powers embodied in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, introduced by the Labour government of Tony Blair, to be rolled out. In January, the Times revealed that scenarios for martial law were being considered and that “curfews, bans on travel, confiscation of property [and] deployment of the armed forces to quell rioting are among the measures available to ministers”.

On Thursday evening, Sky journalist Deborah Haynes, tweeted, “UK military has activated team in a nuclear bunker under the @DefenceHQ [Ministry of Defence] main building to step up preparations for a no-deal Brexit… The crisis management operation—dubbed Operation #REDFOLD… will direct 3,500 personnel who have been put on standby to help government if required if UK leaves EU next Friday without a withdrawal agreement. The REDFOLD mission is military dimension of cross-Whitehall no-deal contingency preparations, called Operation Yellowhammer.”

Under conditions of the greatest crisis of rule in Britain in peacetime, the working class has been reduced to the role of spectator. That a hated government still remains in place despite being in political meltdown is entirely the responsibility of Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Nothing he says or does is aimed at alerting workers to the gravity of the political threat they face, under conditions in which senior military figures have warned that central to the armed forces’ remit under Operation Yellowhammer is breaking strikes, particularly in the transport sector.

Corbyn has made no appeal to the working class to intervene independently in this mounting crisis. That would involve rejecting support for any faction of Britain’s ruling elite, whose conflict is over how best to pursue trade war policies—inside or out of the EU—at the expense of the working class. It would mean making an appeal for a unified offensive of the European working class against all of Europe’s capitalist governments and for socialism.

Instead his sole aim is to convince the ruling class that he is a safe pair of hands in defending the “national interest.”

Corbyn walked out of cross-party talks with May on Wednesday evening—due to the presence of Chuka Umunna, the leader of the Blairite breakaway Independent Group. But he then took a private phone call with the prime minister!

His next stop was Brussels, for what he described as “very constructive discussions” with EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier and European Commission secretary general Martin Selmayr. These focused on “Our determination… to prevent a no-deal exit from the European Union next Friday… and looking for alternatives and building a majority in Parliament that can agree on a future constructive economic relationship with the European Union.”

Historic humanitarian disaster unfolds in southeast Africa in the wake of Cyclone Idai

Niles Niemuth 

The dire social and economic conditions which prevail for millions of workers and toilers in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Madagascar have been tragically exposed by Cyclone Idai, which has left a historic humanitarian crisis in its wake across the southeast African nations.

Some 1.7 million people were in the direct path of what a spokesperson for the World Meterological Organization described as “one of the worst weather-related disasters in the Southern Hemisphere.” The United Nations has made an initial appeal for more than $40 million to provide emergency aid to more than 400,000 in Mozambique, the country hardest hit by the storm. The sum is tiny compared to the immense social needs.

As of this writing the official death toll stands at 504, with 308 recorded in Mozambique, 139 in Zimbabwe, 56 in Malawi and one in Madagascar. This figure is expected to rise substantially as contact is reestablished with more remote or totally devastated areas. Mozambique’s President Filipe Nyusi remarked after surveying damage this week that he estimated more than a thousand people had been killed in the country.

People displaced by flooding are seen at Bangula evacuation camp, in Nsanje, Malawi, March 12, 2019 [ Credit: L. Masina/VOA]

The storm made landfall in Beira, Mozambique last Friday, destroying much of the country’s fourth largest city with winds in excess of 175 kilometers per hour, knocking down homes and inundating it with rain and ocean storm surge. “Not a building was untouched. The power lines are down, pulled down by toppled trees.” The World Food Program’s Gerald Bourk told NPR about conditions in the city of more than 500,000, whose people are crowded into neighborhoods where homes are cheaply constructed. “It will take months for the people of the city and the city itself to recover.”

Chimanimani, a mountain town of a few thousand people, was among the hardest hit in Zimbabwe. There have been at least 40 burials in the small town since the beginning of the week, after a rock slide crushed a dormitory full of sleeping students and raging waters swept residents away.

The effects of the storm were also felt in South Africa where an ongoing wave of rolling blackouts was exacerbated after transmission lines were cut from the hydroelectric dam at Cahora Bassa in western Mozambique.

One week after landfall, as flood waters are now beginning to recede, it is still unclear how many hundreds of thousands across the affected region have been stranded by the storm’s impact and are in need of rescue or emergency aid. Major roads have been washed out, making many villages and cities accessible only by boat or airplane.

An inland lake of flood waters up to six meters deep has covered an estimated 3,000 square kilometers, an area larger than the US state of Rhode Island. Bodies have been spotted floating in the flood waters in Beira and across the region. Thousands have been stranded on rooftops and islands in the waters.

Residents of Nhamatanda, an area 60 kilometers northwest of Beira, told the AFP that water came rushing in and swept away their neighbors. “Water came like a tsunami and destroyed most things. We were prisoners on the roof,” Jose Batio told the news agency after being rescued along with his wife.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned that those who survived the flood waters now face the danger of water-borne diseases including cholera, in addition to other difficulties resulting from the damage of multiple health care facilities. “I am able to say that all health centers and hospitals have been affected,” Caroline Rose, MSF’s head of mission in Mozambique, told The New Humanitarian. “Several health centers have lost their roofs and are in very, very bad condition.”

The death toll and damage from Cyclone Idai is expected to surpass the Mozambique floods in February 2000 when sustained heavy rains were compounded by Cyclone Eline, which made landfall south of Beira. At the time it was considered the worst natural disaster to hit the country in a century, killing more than 700 people and leaving 463,000 homeless.

The 2018-2019 Southwest Indian Ocean cyclone season has been above average, with 12 storm systems forming since November. Eight of these storms, including Idai, have been classified as intense tropic cyclones, the most recorded since consistent satellite tracking began in 1967. As the global temperature continues to rise due to human-made climate change, scientists project that the number of tropical cyclones that form in the southern Indian Ocean will decrease, however, rising sea levels will put increasing numbers of people at risk of being inundated by storm surge and rain from those that do make landfall over Africa.

Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi are among the poorest countries in the world, an outcome of their colonial past, the bankruptcy of the petty-bourgeois nationalist movements and current economic exploitation by the imperialist powers, facilitated by each country’s ruling elite. These regions are seen by the Western imperialists as critical for the extraction of raw resources and little else.

Mozambique was held under Portuguese colonial rule for more than 470 years and shortly after independence was granted in 1975 a 15-year civil war erupted, fueled by an apartheid South Africa backed by Great Britain and the US, which resulted in more than a million deaths. According to the International Monetary Fund, Mozambique ranks 180th out of 186 countries for gross domestic product per capita when accounting for purchasing power. As of 2016 the country’s government owed more than $9.8 billion to foreign lenders, foremost the IMF and World Bank.

Zimbabwe, established as the British colony of Rhodesia in 1880, did not attain independence until 1980. The country has been under the control of the ZANU-PF regime ever since, first under Robert Mugabe and now Emerson Mnangagwa, with disastrous results for the majority of the population. More than 70 percent of Zimbabweans live in poverty, and skyrocketing inflation has put access to decent housing and other basic resources out of the reach of millions.

Malawi, a British colony from the 1880s until independence in 1964, remains one of the least developed countries in the world. Life expectancy for a child born in Malawi is only 50 years and HIV/AIDS rates remain high among the adult population. An estimated 27,000 people die every year from HIV/AIDS and more than 500,000 children have been orphaned as a result.

The criminal exploitation and underdevelopment of these countries makes inevitable widespread destruction even from weather events, which can be predicted many days in advance. With endemic poverty and infrastructure already criminally insufficient, workers and farmers in these countries have no emergency options when storms hit.

Australian state election dominated by alienation and discontent

Mike Head 

Such is the level of disgust and disaffection with the Australian political establishment, that this Saturday’s election in New South Wales (NSW), the country’s most populous state, could produce a “hung” parliament, with no party able to form a majority government.

Years of widening social inequality and worsening living conditions under successive Liberal-National and Labor governments have created deep discontent within broad layers of the working class, which finds no voice within the official political setup. Real wages are in serious decline and youth unemployment is at endemic levels, including in Sydney, the state capital and the country’s financial industry hub. Rural poverty is widespread.

The state’s official unemployment rate is 3.7 percent, largely as a result of a six-year property boom, which is now crashing. But the rate is more than three times higher in working-class suburbs, such as Liverpool, Fairfield, South Granville and Mount Druitt, and in regional centres like Albury, Tamworth and Nowra.

These statistics are just one indicator of the yawning gulf between the corporate elite, whose wealth has soared since the 2008 global financial meltdown, and the workers and youth who have paid the price via casualised employment, record levels of household debt and deteriorating social services and infrastructure.

Billions of dollars have been poured into corporate pockets for long-delayed and mostly privatised road and rail projects, while the state has more than 1,000 dysfunctional demountable school classrooms and the median waiting time for “elective surgery” in public hospitals has risen to 234 days. More than 37,700 people experience homelessness on any night—up by 40 percent in eight years—and falling house prices mean that many households now owe more on their mortgages than the market value of their homes.

Another indication of mass discontent was expressed last Friday, when tens of thousands of school students, in towns and cities throughout the country, joined their international counterparts by walking out of their classrooms to take a political stand against the escalating threat of climate change and the governments and corporations responsible for it. Notably, they did so in defiance of disciplinary threats from the state government and school principals.

State Labor Party leader, Michael Daley, used the strike to criticise the current Liberal-National Coalition government for denouncing the students, but both major parties have failed to come anywhere near a commitment to the students’ demand for 100 percent renewables by 2030—let alone any broad, scientifically-worked out plan to halt climate change and prevent the planet’s destruction.

The lack of any fundamental differences between the major establishment parties has seen the state’s voters deluged by negative attack ads and mud-slinging, accompanied by phony promises to suddenly make available billions of dollars to tackle the longstanding decline in public health and education, enforced by both Labor and Coalition-led governments for decades.

The agenda of whichever party leads the next government has been determined in advance: to impose the burden of the intensifying capitalist breakdown onto the backs of the working class.

Buried by the corporate media, an official pre-election budget update warned that global factors, including “rising political tensions, policy uncertainty, financial market volatility and hikes in trade tariffs” were clouding the state’s economic outlook. In particular, “deteriorating conditions in the housing market are having a stronger than expected negative impact on consumer spending and dwelling approvals.”

According to market analysts, Sydney’s median house price has fallen more than 10 percent from its peak in mid-2017 and worse is yet to come. As well as throwing over-stretched working-class families deeper into financial stress, this is stripping billions of dollars from state government revenues.

The election is also being held amid a deepening political crisis.

After 16 years in office, the last pro-business and notoriously corrupt Labor government was thrown out in 2011, reducing Labor’s vote to an historic low of 25.5 percent. At the last state election in 2015, Labor’s vote rose to just 34.4 percent, despite its hypocritical efforts to exploit the hostility to the federal Coalition government.

Opinion polls indicate little pickup in Labor’s support since then, leaving it short of winning the 13 seats in the 93-seat lower house needed to form a majority government. But the Coalition is also languishing at less than 40 percent.

A defeat for the eight-year-old Coalition state government is likely to intensify the factional war inside the unstable federal Coalition government, which must go to an election by the end of May.

Last year, NSW Liberal MPs urged Prime Minister Scott Morrison to call an early federal poll, in order to get “smashed” and improve the chances of the Coalition clinging onto office in NSW. Instead, Morrison has delayed the federal election for as long as possible, and certainly until after the NSW vote.

State Premier Gladys Berejikilian is a member of the Liberal Party’s “moderate” wing, as was Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, whom the party’s “hard right” faction removed last year. There is nothing remotely progressive, however, about either faction, with both supporting deeper attacks on living conditions and democratic rights, and stirring up nationalism and anti-immigrant xenophobia.

Berejikilian’s defeat, however, would intensify the federal inner-party crisis. The “hard right,” led by Morrison and Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, would exploit the loss to intensify its push to transform the Coalition into an anti-immigrant, populist and fascistic movement, along the lines of Trump in the US and far-right parties in Europe.

Both Berejikilian and Labor’s Daley have contributed to the demonisation of immigrants, blaming them for the lack of infrastructure, loss of full-time jobs and other social problems. Berejikilian has agitated for months for the halving of immigration into NSW. Following last Friday’s fascist attack on Muslims in New Zealand, a speech by Daley surfaced on social media showing him accusing Asian immigrants and other “foreigners” of “moving in and taking” the jobs of “our kids.”

“White Australia” nationalism and racism, upon which the trade unions established the Labor Party in the 1890s, remains at the core of their political DNA. This has been underscored by the fact that Mark Latham, who led the Labor Party nationally less than 15 years ago, is standing in the NSW election as the lead candidate for the virulent anti-immigrant Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, one of a plethora of far-right parties seeking to divert growing working class unrest into reactionary racist and nationalist directions.

Daley, who was installed as Labor leader last November, is being presented in the corporate media as new and relatively unknown. Given the level of popular hostility, this is regarded as an electoral advantage. In reality, he was a roads, police and finance minister in the last Labor government, which boosted the police force to deal with social unrest, sold off the state’s electricity retail assets, axed jobs and sent household power prices soaring, in order to accelerate the privatisation of public services and utilities.

The union bureaucrats, who policed the last Labor government’s policies, in tandem with the pseudo-left groups, such as Socialist Alliance and Socialist Alternative, are campaigning, yet again, for the return of another big business Labor government, perhaps in alliance with the Greens, as a supposed “lesser evil.”

This claim has been peddled at virtually every Australian state and federal election for decades, and millions of ordinary people now know it to be a lie. Both major parties unashamedly represent the financial and corporate interests of the country’s “power elites,” and both are utterly impervious to the crisis facing the vast bulk of the population. Moreover, Labor and the Liberal-National coalition, along with the Greens, fully support the country’s military alliance with the US, and are deeply implicated in Washington’s drive to war against China, in order to reinforce its global hegemony.

Workers and youth need to take firm stand against the new round of lies being promoted in the 2019 NSW state election, and turn to the socialist and internationalist perspective that alone represents the interests of the working class. That is the perspective advanced by the Socialist Equality Party, for social equality, for democratic rights, including freedom for Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, and for the international unity of the working class in the struggle against austerity and war.

Officials, media call for school militarization, censorship after mass shooting in Brazilian school

Miguel Andrade

Brazil, one of the most unequal and violent countries in the world, was left stunned a week ago on Wednesday by the brutality of a school shooting in the city of Suzano, in the industrial belt surrounding São Paulo. Two former students of the Raul Brasil State School, one aged 17 and the other 25, opened fire during a class break, killing five students and two school officials and wounding 17 others, before the 17-year-old shot his older accomplice and killed himself as the police arrived.

It soon emerged that another murder in the city minutes earlier, of the 17-year-old’s uncle, was the beginning of the rampage. This week, police announced the provisional detention of another 17-year-old youth, charged with helping to organize the massacre.

As the police and media investigation into the reasons for the massacre and the profiles of the shooters began, it immediately became clear that deep social alienation had been a major factor in their lives for a long time. Despite the age difference, the two had been friends from an early age and shared a considerable portion of their lives together playing video games at a local LAN gaming center, where workers told investigators they mostly played so-called shooting games, as do most of those who go there.

While the older shooter, Luiz Henrique de Castro, had graduated from the school, the younger one, Guilherme Taucci de Monteiro, had dropped out a year ago, telling his parents and grandparents, with whom he lived, that he couldn’t bear the feeling of social awkwardness and exclusion. His family, itself in considerable social distress as a result of the mother being unemployed for two years and also suffering from severe drug addiction, was unable to help. The conditions affecting his family are widespread in the city, at the center of a growing “rust belt” in São Paulo’s far east, in which no less than 25 percent of families are recipients of poverty relief benefits, and industry and trade are facing a slow recovery from a 43 percent collapse.

According to family members, despite the long build-up of Monteiro’s distress, the death of his grandmother three months ago plunged him into what appeared to be severe depression.

Much evidence, including social media posts, has also shown that the shooters had grown increasingly close to the far-right milieu, including to the online defenders of unabashed police violence in Brazil and promoters of violent threats against public figures associated with the left, and, not least, those targeted by Brazil’s fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro himself.

At some point, Monteiro started adopting American neo-Nazi symbols, including the skull balaclava that he wore when he invaded the Raul Brasil school, and which is worn by members of the neo-Nazi “Atomwaffen Division” in the US. An active line of investigation is being pursued into what extent the shooters had been involved with dark web “chans”—like those used by the fascist terrorist of Christchurch, where, in the wake of the massacre, monitors have detected not only messages of celebration, but also the emergence of messages being attributed to the shooters in Brazil.

In the official reactions from authorities and media, broader social issues remained the great unmentionable. For the know-nothings in the government and media, no word was warranted about the Brazilian social apartheid that is fueling civil-war levels of youth deaths in “drug wars,” countless state-sponsored police murders and the locking-up of 700,000 people, who live in constant terror of being decapitated in another riot in the veritable dungeons that constitute the country’s prison system.

While city and state authorities immediately issued perfunctory condolence statements. The fascistic president Jair Bolsonaro took six hours to post a statement on social media, predictably calling the massacre an act of “incomparable monstrosity and cowardice.” The Supreme Court president issued a dismissive statement in which he absurdly claimed that “this kind of violence is not part of our culture.”

Meanwhile, in Congress, politicians reduced the massacre to the questions of either gun control or the arming of teachers. Leaders and members of Congress from the Workers Party (PT) and Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), acting with the minds of petty state bureaucrats, issued mealy-mouthed statements, peppered with cheap psychoanalysis, about it being “necessary to end the culture of violence, which presents guns as a ‘purveyor of power.’”

Much more significant, however, was the bankrupt and reactionary response of what passes for the “progressive” press, as expressed in Folha de S. Paulo’sopinion pages, where the consensus was that reporting on the issue only encouraged future tragedies, and that attempting to reflect on wider underlying issues such as inequality, unemployment and the generally violent relations under capitalism was a distraction from the problems of “patriarchy” and “entitlement,” as well as the “suffering of the victims.”

Such opinions were expressed against the ominous backdrop of a statement by São Paulo’s Public Attorney’s office announcing that it is seeking to bring terrorism charges against anyone involved in the attack, unleashing the draconian 2016 anti-terror law approved by the PT. The measure would set a precedent for the witch-hunt of hundreds of thousands of people sharing, in one way or another, gun-related material the Attorney General’s office considers akin to that shared by the assailants.

Expressing the lurch to the right by the upper middle class, cultural critic Nelson de Sá quickly reacted to the tragedy with unmistakable “#MeToo” language, writing: “contrary to American journalism, we in Brazil still haven’t learned that the protagonists in this kind of story are the victims, not the assassins.” In other words, any attempt to understand what motivated two youth to kill others and then take their own lives is forbidden, and the public must accept that such tragedies just happen.

Another reactionary piece was written by the paper’s Ombundsman, who gained notoriety during the election for criticizing Folha’s editorial board for not classifying Bolsonaro as a far-right politician. Defending Sá’s line of reasoning, she related the Suzano tragedy with the Christchurch attack, asking rhetorically about the Australian fascist’s manifesto: “what is the point of reporting someone’s amateurish evaluation of the effect of race mixing on a nation’s development?” In other words, the Brazilian public must not be warned of the international fascist danger.

Another high-profile piece posted by Folha was a 2018 New York Times article by Frank Bruni that blames all such tragedies—as well as Bolsonaro’s election—on the internet, and concludes with a call for censorship: “I don’t know exactly how we square free speech and free expression—which are paramount—with a better policing of the internet, but I’m certain that we need to approach that challenge with more urgency than we have mustered so far. Democracy is at stake. So are lives.”

Such privileged layers, with nothing by contempt for the public in general and the working class in particular, are shifting ever further rightward. They are terrified that such supposedly incomprehensible tragedies are pushing broad layers of the population to see and react against the whole of capitalist irrationality, as shown by the outpouring of solidarity for the slain children.

Fifteen thousand people attended their collective funeral. As for the reaction of the parents, one of them told the press: “It never crossed my mind not to forgive the assailants. They are kids. They too are victims.” He added: “Dealing with them was first their family’s responsibility. But if the family can’t help, what is to be done?”

The army of petty-bourgeois identity politics pseudo-leftists are determined to suppress such questions. Their thoroughly reactionary response includes the assertion by Vice News that the attack was typical of someone “feeling wronged for not having what was promised to him [as a “man”]: a fancy job, high salary and sex with beautiful women.” Similarly, Marcelo Hailer in Revista Fórum stated that “toxic masculinity killed the Suzano students,” adding that “this masculinity promises a world of conquest for heterosexual men.”

It never occurs to these misanthropes that far more than “a world of conquests” is missing for millions of youth—particularly in deindustrialized towns like Suzano. More and more, the logical conclusion of this pseudo-left interpretation of the tragedy coincides with that of the far right—the youth who carried out the shootings were “monsters.”

A break with such reactionary views and the pseudo-left organizations which promote them is ever more urgent, as the far-right is openly targeting youth in Brazil and internationally in anticipation of major class struggles, and the Bolsonaro government is seeking to rally a far-right base by constantly appealing for parents, and even students, to denounce “Marxist indoctrination” by teachers and professors.

This campaign is being closely coordinated with the international far right. This was shown in Bolsonaro’s US visit, which included meetings with both Steve Bannon and the Virginia-based fascistic charlatan Olavo de Carvalho.

Supported by powerful corporate backers, right-wingers supporting the campaign have already pushed the PT and the pseudo-left out of two major student unions, in Rio Grande do Sul in the far south and in the capital Brasília, while Bolsonaro supporters have just finished their first “Conservative Students Congress,” hailing Brazil’s military dictatorship’s murderers and promising to escalate the witch hunt against socialism.

There is no doubt that such a fascistic campaign had its role in the channeling of the two shooters’ social alienation into such extreme anti-social behavior.

The Suzano tragedy has exposed the dismissive attitude of the PT and its satellites towards broader issues, which has in itself facilitated the official red-baiting. Despite their claims to be an “anti-fascist” opposition to Bolsonaro, these organizations have never missed an opportunity to answer far-right rants and threats by Bolsonaro and his supporters by completely dissociating themselves from socialism.

Historic flooding across US Midwest leaves thousands homeless, four dead

Jacob Crosse 

Thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes as communities throughout the US Midwest experience historic flooding events. States of emergency have been declared in four states, Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin and South Dakota. As of this writing, four people have died, while thousands remain in emergency shelters or trapped in their homes, surrounded by water.

Seventy out of 99 counties in Nebraska are under state-issued emergency declarations, as are 41 of Iowa’s 99 counties. In both states, melting snow, ice jams, and falling rain have engorged river systems with rushing water that has overwhelmed insufficient levee systems and destroyed outdated dams.

The flooding, which began last week, but was predicted weeks in advance, will continue throughout the week and into spring, as snow and ice melts while rain continues to fall. According to the National Weather Service, flooding has impacted approximately 9 million people in 14 states.

A record-setting winter snowfall season followed by last week's “bomb cyclone,” which brought high winds and heavy snow across the Midwest, in conjunction with warming temperatures, proved to be a deadly combination that has overwhelmed neglected infrastructure and transportation systems.

The latest environmental and social crisis, exacerbated by climate change, will have devastating effects on local farming economies. Meteorologists have documented  a 15 and 20 percent increase in rainfall  in the Upper Midwest in recent decades. The frequency of high impact rainfall has nearly doubled in the same timeframe. The message is clear: just as hurricanes and tropical storms have increased in intensity, flooding events in the Midwest are expected to increase as well.

Flooding events in the United States will increase food prices on a global scale. The Midwest and Great Plains states, including Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, North and South Dakota and Minnesota, contain some of the most productive and valuable agricultural land in the country. In Nebraska early estimates place the economic losses to farmers from the current flooding, primarily centered on corn and livestock, at over $1 billion, with that number expected to rise.

The flooding along the Missouri and Mississippi flood plains has compromised approximately 210 miles of the federal levee system in four states, making travel arduous or impossible for residents seeking to find shelter or return home and assess damages. In addition to overflowing levees, at least two dams have been compromised. The Spencer Dam, located on the Niobrara River in Nebraska, was destroyed last week, leading to at least one fatality.

Vice President Mike Pence conducted a flyby of the submerged Nebraska plains and briefly stopped in Omaha for photo opportunities with local government officials on Tuesday. Pence assured those in attendance that once he returned to Washington, D.C. federal disaster declarations would be “expedited.”

Despite Pence’s rehearsed remarks workers can be assured that whatever funds are made available after the fact will be severely lacking and difficult to access, while lucrative rebuilding contracts will be made available to campaign contributors and connected business interests.

The flooding has been particularly devastating to rural farmers in the affected area, many of whom were already teetering on financial ruin. Bankruptcy among farmers rose by 19 percent across the region in 2018, including in Nebraska, Iowa and Wisconsin. Dairy farmers, already in a precarious financial situation as milk prices continue drop due to escalating trade war tariffs between the United States and China, have been forced to dump thousands of gallons of milk, with some farmers forced to quit the industry all together.

Farms that haven’t been inundated with floods aren’t safe from the effects of the deluge. Vital rail and road infrastructure used to transport feed, grain and livestock has been washed away, isolating the farmers from local and global markets. In Nebraska, over 40 state and federal highways remain closed due to flooding. In some cases National Guard troops have been airlifting in hay and feed to prevent a mass culling of livestock. Even so, farmers are reporting massive losses as thousands of animals have either been trapped in overflowing barns or swept away by rushing water.

The Army of Corps of Engineers has warned that flooding will continue and that a “majority of the federal levee systems” are “compromised ... along the Missouri River from the confluence of the Platte River to Rulo, Nebraska.”

In 2011, following a major flood that breached a two-mile-long levee in Hamburg, Iowa, residents took matters into their own hands and raised the height of the levee to prevent future flooding. Federal officials however, intervened against this act of self-preservation and ordered the locals to reduce the size of the levee to pre-flood levels unless they were willing to make an additional $5.5 million in improvements. This proved to be too costly for the small town so the levee was lowered.

Hamburg residents such as Lana Brandt, 70, are flummoxed as to the government's intentions, now that Hamburg, eight years later, is once again under water.

“The government made us tear the top off of the levee and bring it down to stump size...and so the water’s rushing over the levee now,” Brandt told The Daily Nonpareil. “Whereas, if we had been able to keep that levee, we might have been able to keep our community dry, and we wouldn’t lose businesses and property and crops. This is huge.”

While workers and farmers are forced to pack sandbags and erect dirt berms in order to protect their lives and homes, the federal government is flying in hundreds of feet of retaining walls to protect military assets located at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. A 740 foot-long, four-foot-tall system of barriers was flown in from Louisiana to the base overnight on Sunday to protect flight simulators from being flooded.

The long-term effects of the massive cleanup that will be required will include innumerable environmental impacts on farmers and communities. Waterlogged fields will need to be dried before spring planting can begin, lest fields rot, mold over or fail entirely. The flooding has produced a dangerous concoction of industrial chemicals and pesticides that has covered hundreds of miles of farmland and seeped into the walls of homes, schools and businesses.

“The water is chock-full of stuff. This is a toxic brew that is going down the river—the water took out gas stations and farm shops and fuel barrels,” John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union, told the Washington Post.

Once the waters begin to recede, workers and farmers will be left to pick up the pieces on their own. Thousands of people who couldn’t afford flood insurance will continue the American tradition of appealing to their fellow workers on websites such as GoFundMe.com for the funds and supplies necessary to survive once Red Cross shelters close and token government assistance shrivels up.

With each successive natural disaster American capitalism reveals itself incapable of and unwilling to mitigate the impact on the working class. The systematic negligence of vital infrastructure is another expression of class exploitation in the United States. Only through the reorganization of society on a scientific socialist perspective, organized for human need rather than private profit, will future climate disasters be mitigated and unnecessary loss of life be stopped.

Click here for graphs detailing increase in water precipitation in Midwest.