La Rinconada – The Devil’s Paradise

Peter Koenig

La Rinconada, 5,000 to 5,400m above sea level, corrugated iron shacks, glued to the hills of the surrounding mountains, home to some 50,000 to 70,000 mining inhabitants and competing mafia mobs that control them. La Rinconada, in the Peruvian Andes, the world’s highest, chaotic, poisonous and illegal goldmines, some 210 km northeast of Puno, a 4-hour drive by car over partially paved, albeit potholed roads. La Rinconada, near the just barely more civilized mining town of Ananea (about 4,700 m above sea level), is also considered one of the most horrific places on earth: a crime gang-run city, spreading through a valley and up the surrounding hills, no running water, no sewerage, no electricity grid. La Rinconada looks and smells like a wide-open garbage dump, infested by a slowly meandering yellowish-brownish mercury-contaminated brew – tailings from illegal goldmining – what used to be a pristine mountain lake.

The thin, oxygen-poor air is loaded with mercury vapor that slowly penetrates people’s lungs, affecting over time the nervous system, memory, body motor, leading often to paralysis and early death. Average life expectancy of a mine worker is 30-35years, about half of Peruvian’s average life expectancy.

Life has no value. People are killed for carrying a rock that may contain some tiny veins of gold. Bodies are often just thrown on to garbage heaps to rot. Occasionally a body is found and then buried right on the garbage dump. It’s not unusual to find a grave right in the midst of a field of trash.

Human rights do not exist in Rinconada. Child work is common place. And so is child prostitution, women and drug trafficking. Time off is a life of drunkenness and drug deliria. Life is worthless. See also Andre Vltchek’s essay – Welcome to Hell: The Peruvian Mining City of La Rinconada https://www.rt.com/op-ed/454486-la-rinconada-hell-mining-peru/

Small boys are used to work in underground mining galleries, where adults hardly fit. When the galleries collapse and a child – or several – dies – nobody cares. Many are not even identified. Most likely they are not missed. They are children of non-parents, like in non-humans, those that run this hellish mining industry, and those who send their children there to help them make a living. No love, no ethics, no respect for nothing but the legendary gold nugget, for greed and necessity. No mercy.That’s La Rinconada.

Miners come “voluntarily”. Nobody forces them.Most are poor and jobless. They come for necessity. Some are just greedy – the never-dying ‘Gold Rausch’ attracts them. The dream of getting rich in the goldmine makes them accept the most horrendous working and living conditions: surviving in an open dump-ground of everything, garbage, toxic heavy metals, wading in mercury-polluted tailings, thin air, contaminated by poisonous vapors, no heating, most of the year sub-freezing temperatures –trash and debris everywhere. But the miners don’t complain. Some bring their wives, few bring also their kids – it’s their choice. Some stay ‘temporarily’ only, 6 months, 12 months, 2 years? – For some the dream of hitting the riches never dies; they stay until they die. – They know they will be abused, enslaved. They know, they can take it or leave it.

Miners work for usually long hours and are working during 29 days for free. On the 30th day they may keep whatever they take out of the ground, amounting on average to about 800 to 1,000 Soles per month (US$250 – $320). Sometimes day 30 brings nothing.Sometimes some rocks with traces of gold. All are hoping for a gold nugget. This type of mining wage is not unique to Peru. Bolivia and other Andean countries that are open to the most environmentally and socially destructive industry – mining – apply similar systems. The illusion to hit it BIG by finding the legendary ‘gold rock’ is a passion; it is obsessive. And if and when a miner does find a treasure to keep, he is vulnerable of being robbed, even killed, body discarded – another miner gone missing. Or not. Just disappeared. Maybe in a garbage dump. They are endless in Rinconada. They reflect the character of Rinconada. Refuse, waste, stench and death.

Nobody cares – or not enough to investigate the death, the missing. It’s the name of the game. Miners come by their free will. They are not coerced. They enslave themselves, in the vane hope to get rich. Instead, they intoxicate themselves from mercury fumes, from a totally poisonous environment, daily exposure to heavy metals. Their nervous system slowly but surely fails them. Memory loss; brain damage, muscular dystrophy, collapsing lungs, paralysis, early death. For many, it’s a dream gone dead. That’s what poverty does; it kills while dreaming of a better world.

Rinconada – mafia rules. Police work in connivance. Murders and assassinations are of the order. Prostitution, alcohol and drug abuse is rampant. Nobody cares. It’s survival of the fittest – and often survival succumbs to hardship, misery and yet hope for a better life.

These criminal organizations are all local, meaning from the vicinity, Puno, Juliaca and thereabouts. No foreign mining companies are allowed. They, huge world (in)famous gold and precious metals corporations, are waiting ‘downstream’ to buy the blood-ware, without identity, without origins. So that nobody can trace them to the crime.

Women generally do not work in the mines. Superstition. They bring bad luck. They make the gold veins disappear. They distract the men. The mines are masculine. Only men are allowed to work them. The mountains may get jealous, and who knows what jealousy is capable of doing. Women have other chores: collecting loose rocks that may contain some remnants of gold; they clean, prepare food, mind the household, children, if a family is unwise enough to bring their offspring to this hellhole – and, they are “taking care of the men”, in more ways than one.

La Rinconada – one of the most horrible places on earth. Hardly known to the rest of the world. Most people in Lima, the capital of Peru, have no idea that Rinconada exists, and if they have heard the name, they associate it with a lush country club in the elite district of “La Molina” of Lima. – They don’t know what it also stands for – The Devil’s Paradise.

What Rinconada produces is “blood gold”, akin to blood diamonds, blood emeralds in other parts of the world.

Who buys this gold?

Large corporations. One of them is the Swiss registered Metalor, one of the world’s largest gold foundries. Annually, about 3,000 to 3,500 tons of gold are mined across the globe. Switzerland refines about 70% to 80% of all the gold in the world. An estimated 20% to 30% of it is considered ‘blood gold’ – gold that stems from illicit mining practices, child labor, environmental and social destructions, land theft, corruption – like from Rinconada.

As of now, Switzerland, the host of the globe’s largest mining corporations and gold foundries does not want to know the origin of the gold – possibly the environmentally and socially most destructive precious metal. Switzerland does not impose a code of ethics on the corporations that enjoy the Swiss tax-haven. The Swiss Government pretends that these mining corporations have their own codes of conduct, and the Swiss authorities trust that they adhere to their own standards of ethics. What an easy way out!

When challenged with evidence to the contrary, i.e. Rinconada, or Espinar (also Peru), where Glencore beats up defenseless indigenous women, because they attempt to protect their properties and water from Glencore’s illegal confiscation – with the corrupt help of the local Peruvian authorities – the Swiss authorities close their eyes to open crimes of their corporations and if pressed, they simply say, “if we are too harsh with them, they will leave Switzerland” – and – “if they are doing something illegal, they are responsible to their host country”, apparently ignoring that corruption buys everything in most of these “host countries”.

That’s the level of ethics one of the richest and reputedly most noble countries of the universe applies to keep her corporations happy. Naturally, Switzerland is also the only OECD member that allows her parliamentarians to sit in as many corporate Boards of Directors as they wish. Imagine! – A totally legalized conflict of interest. And nobody says ‘beep’. The Swiss populace just accepts this blunt aberration – most of them don’t even know it exists. They live comfortably and well, and don’t care much about Human Rights abusing corporations, and less so that their Parliament is a humongous built-in corporate and banking lobby. In this environment of white-collar illicit behavior, corporations like Metalor and Glencore flourish. A recently launched people’s referendum propagating ‘Responsible Mining’, was undermined in the Swiss Parliament by the ‘built-in’ mining lobby. It is common practice that Parliament, as well as the Swiss Executive give their votum before the public vote on a referendum, another unfair practice, as it influences the voters’ final decision.

In the meantime, the Government of Peru accuses the Swiss foundry Metalor of financing and buying tons of gold from suspicious sources in Peru, meaning illicit gold – or ‘blood gold’. Metalor is also investigated for participating in organized crime and money laundering from illicit gold deals (OjoPúblico, Peru, 14 March 2019):

“The Metalor Group was the exclusive importer of gold from illegal mining, sold or shipped by Minerales del Sur SRL (Minersur) in the period from 2001 to 2018 in the amount of more than US$ 3.5 billion. Metalor is headquartered in the Canton of Neuchatel, Switzerland.”

Metalor is also being investigated for financing Minersur’s purchasing and sales transactions of gold from illegal sources. One of these illegal sources is La Rinconada. Other illegal sources stem from gold-digging in Peru’s Madre de Dios Amazon Region, where thousands of hectares of rainforest are being raided and devastated by mafia-type organizations, similar to the ones in Rinconada. Metalor denies the accusation, saying they only deal with reputable mining corporations. The case is wide open and the stench of illegality that has been permeating Metalor for many years is as sickening as Rinconada itself.

What is it about gold that makes it destroy the environment, precious fresh water resources, the human spirit, sowing conflict among entire societies, abolishing their social fabric and bringing death to countless millions for centuries in exploited and abused regions of the globe? – The real industrial value of gold is only about 15% to 20% of its speculative market value. But the gold fever is such that banks invented ‘paper gold’, meaning that Mr. and Mrs. Anybody can buy gold without ever seeing the gold bar. The bank simply issues a certificate, an IOU for a certain amount of gold which, in theory, could be exchanged for the real thing at any time Madame Anybody would like to keep her gold bar in her personal household vault. Not so easy. There is more than 100 times more paper gold floating around than real gold is available on the market. If everybody would like to exchange their paper gold into real gold, the banking system would collapse, or would just simply fail to deliver.

Case in point was Germany. By tradition Germany had about 1,200 tons of gold, worth about US$ 50 billion, deposited in the FED in New York. In 2013, when the Germans awareness that their gold is being stored outside of German borders resulted in a public outcry, the Bundesbank wanted to withdraw and repatriate all of their foreign stored gold by 2020, but the FED said no, they could not deliver. The gold was simply not available. Was the FED using the German gold and the gold of so many other countries deposited in the FED’s treasuries for speculation – rent seeking with somebody else’s assets? Blood and crime are intimately linked to gold, it seems. Our western monetary system was for a long time backed by gold. Today, western moneys are fiat money, not even backed by gold, just hot air. But the Russian ruble and the Chinese yuan are backed by gold, as well as by their respective economies. – Who knows – as a last-ditch effort to save the US-dollar and the western fiat money pyramid from collapsing, the west may again revert to some kind of gold standard, a man-made folly, when in fact, the only real value reflected in a county’s monetary system, is its economy.

Back to La Rinconada, Metalor and Switzerland, home of more than two thirds of the world’s gold refining – how much of the reserve gold in the coffers of countries around the world is “blood gold”? – How many people, children and eventually entire generations have to live in misery, their health degenerating from exposure to heavy metals and eventually leading to early and painful death, until human consciousness is able to stop the gold craze? – Closing down hellholes like Rinconada and Madre de Dios mafia-run, all-destructive gold mines? – And hundreds more of similarlydevastatingtype mines around the world. Perhaps when the value of gold becomes what it ought to be – its industrial value, and nothing more and nothing less, humanity becomes richer by the values of human decency and respect for each other.

Ukraine’s Autocephaly: First Results and Possible Influence on Orthodox World

Jelena Rakcevic

Nearly three months ago, on January 6, Patriarch Bartholomew signed the Tomos of Autoceplahy for the Ukrainian Orthodoxy. Though the whole process of granting autocephaly took less than a year – Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko appealed to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in April 2018 – the “healing of the schism” seems to be requiring much more time as the reconciliation between former schismatics and the Orthodox Church, which used to be the only canonical one in Ukraine, can’t happen in one moment.

The Phanar is said to have implemented everything Kyiv had asked it to: the leaders of the two previously schismatic churches – the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate (UOC-KP) and Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) were suddenly reinstated. The two organizations merged in the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which was designed to unite the Ukrainian faithful and attract the followers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP). After the Tomos of autocephaly was granted to the OCU in early January, its hierarchs and the state urged the followers of other denominations (primarily of the UOC-MP) to join the newly established church.

To date, more than 500 UOC-MP parishes have transferred to the OCU. Ukrainian media claim that the majority of them were voluntary but according to the recent report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), in some cases they were initiated by state or local authorities or even representatives of extreme right-wing groups, who were not members of those religious communities. If the Orthodox Church of Ukraine wants the UOC-MP followers actively join it, its hierarchs must intervene and show that violence is not a solution.

Autocephaly was to become one of Poroshenko’s main advantages during the elections. He finally brought to the Ukrainians an independent church separate from Moscow and recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate. However, recent polls show that he is lagging behind. The newly elected OCU Primate Epiphanius often highlights the role of Petro Poroshenko in the process of gaining autocephaly but it hardly yields any results as it makes the OCU look like a political project.

So far, the Tomos so hastily granted by Constantinople hasn’t brought the long-expected peace to the Ukrainian Orthodoxy. Believers are still divided, violence has grown and the authority of the new church leaders in Ukraine is weak.

Autocephaly affected not only Ukraine but also the Orthodox world. The Tomos, which was fiercely opposed by the Moscow Patriarchate for obvious reasons, led to an increased level of misunderstanding between the Orthodox Local Churches. Some Churches (of Antioch, Serbia and Poland) joined Moscow in criticizing Constantinople while the others still haven’t recognized the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. There have been calls to convene a Pan-Orthodox Synaxis on the Ukrainian issue (for example by John X of Antioch) but Patriarch Bartholomew refused to hold such a council.

The Ukrainian autocephaly did influence the relations between the Local Churches, and this influence wasn’t positive.

Really disturbing is that the Ecumenical Patriarchate can no longer unite or reconcile the other Local Churches. One can remember the conflict between the Churches of Jerusalem and Antioch in 2013 when the first established an archdiocese in Qatar, the land which canonically belongs to the Patriarchate of Antioch. The Phanar that claims to bear the title ‘first among equals’ did nothing to resolve the issue, and that was one of the reasons why the most ancient Orthodox Church was absent at the Pan-Orthodox Council convened by Patriarch Bartholomew on Crete in 2016.

However, Constantinople willingly interferes in the affairs of the Local Churches if it’s beneficial for it. Along with the Ukrainian issue, the Ecumenical Patriarchate is focused on France, in particular on the Archdiocese of Russian Orthodox Churches in Eastern Europe (AROCWE). On November 27, 2018, the Holy Synod of the EP suddenly and unilaterally dissolved the Archdiocese declaring that all its parishes and properties must be transferred to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The Extraordinary General Assembly held on February 23, 2019, refused to dissolve the Archdiocese. Later, it will be decided whether to come under the jurisdiction of another Church – the Moscow Patriarchate, Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia or Romanian Orthodox Church.

It is still unclear why all of a sudden Constantinople decided to revoke the Tomos of 1999 granted to the AROCWE. It is rumored that this was masterminded by Metropolitan Emmanuel (Adamakis) of France who decided to acquire the Archdiocese’s parishes. Of course, such an act doesn’t boost Constantinople’s popularity among the AROCWE parishioners.

Another act unilaterally revoked by the Phanar was the 1686 ruling that placed Ukraine under the Patriarchate of Moscow. This was a decision that led to the escalation of the conflict between Moscow and Constantinople. These two incidents are serious reasons for concern. What if it decides to declare the ‘New Lands’ in Greece its own territory, for example? An Orthodox war between the Church of Greece and the Phanar?

The Ecumenical Patriarchate has shown how easily it can influence the fates of Orthodox Churches by revoking or interpreting documents it had once issued. On the other hand, it’s not that capable of resolving conflicts even in its own dioceses (see the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America whose Primate Archbishop Demetrios faces strong criticism amid numerous calls of Bartholomew to leave). The gap between Local Churches is widening. And today the Ecumenical Patriarchate is not seen as the leader, the ‘first among equals’ at least, that can unite the Orthodoxy and deal with the threat of another great schism.

Indian elite nervously prepares for national elections

Wasantha Rupasinghe & Keith Jones 

The campaign for India’s national elections is unfolding in a highly-charged political environment.

Among India’s workers and toilers there is deep-rooted anger against not just the Hindu supremacist Bahartiya Janata Party (BJP), which swept to power five years ago on the basis of phony promises of jobs and development, but against the ruinous outcome of three decades of neo-liberal “reform.”

This anger, however, can find no genuine or positive expression in the politics of the Indian establishment. All of the parties, from the BJP and the Congress Party to the Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM, have connived in the implementation of “pro-investor” policies aimed at making India a cheap-labour hub for global capital. All support the great-power ambitions of the Indian bourgeoisie, even as they draw South Asia ever more deeply into the maelstrom of imperialist intrigue and conflict, and threaten to ignite, as was highlighted again last month, a catastrophic war with Pakistan.

The elections will be held in seven regional phases, starting just two weeks from now on Thursday, April 11 and concluding Sunday, May 19. The votes are to be tabulated May 23. State elections will be held alongside the national vote in four states—Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Odisha, and Sikkim—but not in Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim majority state and the focal point of the India-Pakistan strategic rivalry. Citing “security” concerns, the BJP government has extended indefinitely the central government rule it established over Jammu and Kashmir last June, after the state government, in which the BJP served as the junior party, collapsed due to differences over how to contend with mounting popular opposition.

Opinion polls, which in India have often proved wrong, indicate Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP will cling to power. But unlike the past five years, they will be dependent on the votes of their National Democratic Alliance allies for their parliamentary majority.

The BJP’s record of austerity and reaction

The BJP re-election campaign revolves to a large degree around the promotion of Modi as a self-made Hindu “strongman,” who incarnates an assertive “rising” India. The other key theme of the BJP campaign is the claim that the Modi government has delivered “world-beating” economic growth.

In 2014, India’s corporate elite propelled the BJP to power, so as to accelerate neo-liberal reform and more aggressively assert its interests and ambitions on the world stage.

Five years on, the BJP continues to vastly out distance all its rivals, even when combined, in corporate donations.

However, some sections of the ruling elite are fearful that the BJP is sowing a whirlwind: that its noxious communal politics are rending the social fabric and undermining the popular legitimacy of state institutions; and that its relentless hype about India’s growth and suppression, and fiddling with economic statistics can’t cover over the grim reality that confronts the vast majority.

The fruits of India’s growth have been monopolized by a tiny capitalist elite. Between 2015 and 2017, the portion of India’s wealth owned by the top 1 percent surged from 53 to 73 percent, leaving the remaining 99 percent with a 27-percent share.

India, as even much of the corporate media now concedes, is beset by both an agrarian and jobs crisis. According to a suppressed government report, the labour force participation rate plunged from 63.7 percent in 2003 to 49.8 percent in 2017-18, because tens of millions have given up looking for non-existent work.

The BJP was clearly rattled by its defeat in state elections in December in three states—Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgargh, and Rajasthan—which are part of the “Hindi belt” that has historically constituted its principal base of support, and by the palpable growth of social opposition in recent months. This includes farmer protests and the participation of tens of millions in a two-day general strike in January against the Modi government’s pro-big business economic policies.

In an attempt to divert the mounting social anger and mobilize its Hindu right base, the BJP seized on the February 14 Pulwama terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir to foment a war crisis with Pakistan. Making good on Modi’s pledge to punish Pakistan for the attack, Indian warplanes struck inside Pakistan on the night of February 25 for the first time since the 1971 Indo-Pakistani war.

Even though this resulted in a Pakistani counter-strike that brought South Asia’s rival nuclear powers to the brink of all-out war, the BJP and much of the corporate media continue to promote India’s airstrike as a masterstroke. Modi, they claim, has shattered the shackles of Indian “strategic restraint” vis a vis Pakistan, winning international recognition for an Indian “right” to punish Pakistan for major terrorist attacks in Indian-held Kashmir.

The Congress Party and their Stalinist enablers

The Congress Party’s response to last month’s war crisis was akin to that of the other opposition parties. That is to say, it hailed the Indian airstrikes, but quibbled when the BJP relentlessly milked them for electoral gain, countering that all the credit should go to the “heroes” who comprise India’s military.

The historic ruling party of the Indian bourgeoisie, the Congress appeared to be on its death-bed, after suffering a long string of electoral debacles, until receiving a shot of adrenalin from last December’s state elections.

A dynastic party, now led by Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia Gandhi, the Congress has no substantive differences with the BJP over economic or foreign policy. Indeed, Congress spearheaded the abandonment of the bourgeoisie’s post-independence state-led development program, its pursuit of an India-US “global strategic partnership,” and its drive to make India a major military power.

But Congress is hoping nonetheless to exploit the widespread anger over the lack of jobs and government support for agriculture and the savage austerity measures the BJP has imposed in the name of reducing the debt-to-GNP ratio. Congress is trumpeting a “guaranteed annual income” scheme which it claims would ultimately provide the poorest 20 percent of Indian families with up to 72,000 rupees (or roughly US $1,000) per year, with the aim of raising their incomes to 12,000 rupees ($172) per month.

Much of this is smoke and mirrors, and not only because the Congress Party has failed to flesh out the details of the program, which would be rolled out over many years. Much of it is to be paid for through “rationalizing,” i.e., cutting existing social spending programs.

In a reference to Modi’s trumpeting of his “surgical strikes” on Pakistan, Rahul Gandhi is boasting that the Congress’ phony guaranteed income scheme constitutes a “surgical strike on poverty.” But as even some of Gandhi’s political rivals have noted, the Congress has been claiming that it will lift Indians out of poverty for generations. In 1971, Rahul Gandhi’s grandmother, Indira Gandhi, won a sweeping election victory on a pledge to “banish poverty” (Garibi Hatao).

The Congress is also denouncing the “divisive” communal politics of the BJP. But it itself has shamelessly connived with the Hindu right, including by lending full-throated support to an RSS-led agitation against a Supreme Court order opening a Kerala shrine to women, and by placing “cow-protection” at the center of its government agenda in Madhya Pradesh.

The Congress toyed with the idea of forming a “grand coalition” with a host of regional and caste-ist parties. But ultimately it has formed electoral alliances only in a handful of states. There are two reasons for this. The Congress leadership feared a “grand coalition” would cut across its attempts to re-establish itself as a truly national party. Recognizing the Congress’ weakness, many of its potential allies—such as the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in north India, and the Telugu Desam Party(TDP) in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana—drove a hard bargain. They are calculating they will have greater leverage if they keep their hands free to haggle over cabinet seats with both the Congress and BJP—many of them are erstwhile BJP allies—once the votes are counted.

The CPM, its sister Stalinist party, the Communist Party of India (CPI), and their Left Front have played the principal role over the past three decades in politically suppressing the working class. From 1991 to 2008, the Stalinists propped up a succession of right-wing Indian governments, most of them Congress-led. Moreover, in the states where they have held office, West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, they have implemented what they themselves concede are “pro investor policies.”

The Stalinists’ response to the bourgeoisie’s embrace of communal reaction and authoritarianism in the form of Modi and his BJP has been to turn still further to the right. They have redoubled their efforts to chain the working class to the parties of the bourgeoisie and its state, claiming that to counter the BJP and “save democracy” and “the Republic,” the working class and oppressed must work for the election of an “alternate secular” government—that is, help bring to power another right-wing capitalist government, likely Congress-led, committed to the ruling class’ agenda of intensifying the exploitation of the working class and maintaining and expanding India’s role as a satrap of Washington in its military-strategic offensive against China.

If the Hindu right has been able to grow into such a menace, it is precisely because the Stalinists have politically paralyzed the working class, preventing it from advancing its own socialist solution to the social crisis, and subordinating it to right-wing capitalist parties and governments.

India’s workers must blaze a new political path based on the Trotskyist program of permanent revolution: the mobilization of their independent class strength and the rallying of the toilers and poor behind them in the fight for a workers’ government, as part of a global working-class offensive against capitalism.

Goodyear-Dunlop plans 1,100 job cuts in Germany

Marianne Arens 

The jobs massacre in Goodyear-Dunlop’s tire factories is continuing, with 1,100 job cuts planned at its facilities in Hanau and Fulda in the German state of Hesse. Goodyear-Dunlop shut two plants down over recent years, in Amiens, France, in 2014, and Philippsburg, Germany, in 2017.

As Goodyear-Dunlop Tires Germany Ltd. announced on March 19, 490 job cuts will take place at its Fulda tire factory and 610 at its headquarters in Hanau by 2022. Both factories currently employ around 2,900 workers, meaning the latest measure will cut more than a third of the workforce. The one-time largest producer of tires in the world currently employs 60,000 workers in 22 countries.

Company management, the works council, and local politicians are now engaged in damage control to prevent a rebellion among the workers. Business manager Jürgen Titz has insisted that the job cuts will be carried out in a socially responsible manner. This simply means that restructuring, including the job cuts, will take place in consultation with the works councils.

For their part, the works council and Industrial, Mining, Chemical, and Energy Union (IG BCE) support the plans, and want to “try and find the best possible solutions for the workers,” said Ines Sauer, chair of the works council at the Fulda factory. In Hanau, works council chair Herbert Sandner claimed he was “shocked,” and called for a social plan for those impacted.

According to the Goodyear-Dunlop board, the company will invest €106 million in the two plants in parallel with the job cuts. Management also announced that in order to improve competitiveness, production in future will focus on larger tires no less than 17 inches in size.

The IG BCE welcomed this move in particular. Osman Olusoy, deputy leader of the union in Hesse, merely complained that the restructuring had come too late and that the job cuts were the result of a “chain of errors” by management in tire production.

In order to quell opposition among the workers, Hanau mayor Claus Kaminsky (SPD) sought to pose as their ally, stating that he “trusts that Goodyear will remain an important actor in our local economy over the long-term.” After a meeting with the board, which was also attended by Sandner, Kaminsky said that the positive thing is “that management and the works council are working hand-in-hand.”

Kaminsky’s claim that management and the works council are working hand-in-hand is correct, but their goal is to strangle any opposition among the workers. Their claim that the job cuts will secure the factories for the long-term is a flat-out lie.

The entire global auto industry is being restructured. A jobs massacre is under way at Ford, VW, Opel, Audi, and at practically all supplier plants. Under conditions of global trade war, General Motors and Ford are in the process of winding down their European operations. In addition, there is the impact of Brexit and the transition to electric cars. The companies are exploiting this to boost their profits at the expense of the workers, and slash hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The layoffs at Goodyear began five years ago, when in January 2014 the company’s plant in Amiens was closed with the loss of 1,200 jobs. The workers, who responded by spontaneously occupying the plant, were isolated by the trade unions, especially by the IG BCE. Two workers were subsequently hauled before the courts for allegedly kidnapping the factory manager and were handed prison sentences.

Then in 2017, the Philippsburg factory in Baden-Württemberg, once the largest Goodyear factory outside of the United States, was shut down. Since then, some 2,000 jobs have been cut at German Goodyear plants.

The experience of the workers at Philippsburg is worth reviewing. It showed once again how bankrupt the union’s policy of isolating each plant actually is. The argument “We will accept job cuts to save the plant” served to divide the workforce and pave the way for the shuttering of the entire factory.

Even as the closure of Philippsburg was in progress, Goodyear outsourced the jobs of around 900 workers in Wittlich to a subsidiary, Goodyear-Dunlop Tires manufacturing. Their collective bargaining rights and wages are guaranteed only until 2022. In Hanau and Fulda, production plans also only run for the coming two and a half years, and much of the work is already done by contract workers who have virtually no rights.

If they are to defend their jobs, Goodyear workers must reject the lies and intimidation of Goodyear management, the bourgeois politicians, works councils, and IG BCE. They must organise themselves independently in rank-and-file action committees to make contact with workers at other Goodyear plants and throughout the entire global auto industry in order to take the defence of jobs into their own hands on the basis of a socialist programme.

Australian government exploits fascist atrocity in New Zealand to push online censorship

Oscar Grenfell 

The Liberal-National Coalition government, along with Labor, the Greens and the entire Australian political establishment, is cynically using the March 15 fascist massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand, to escalate long-standing moves to censor social media and suppress political discussion.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison summoned the Australian representatives of major social media companies, including Facebook, Google and Twitter, to a meeting in Brisbane, where he outlined a series of draconian measures aimed at forcing them to rapidly remove content.

Morrison flagged legislation that would compel the platforms to delete whatever the government deems to be “abhorrent violent material.” It would be a criminal offence for the companies to fail to comply with a government directive, punishable by massive fines. Financial penalties would increase, based on the length of time that the material was publicly viewable.

In an unprecedented move, the government has also stated that the legislation, which is still being drafted, will contain provisions for the criminal prosecution and potential jailing of social media executives and office-holders who do not obey its dictates.

Following the meeting, Attorney-General Christian Porter declared that the response of the social media representatives had been “thoroughly underwhelming.” “There was unfortunately nothing in that room that would discourage the government from looking at a legislative solution to try to ensure that much, much quicker action is taken,” Porter stated.

Labor leader Bill Shorten has declared his support for the proposed legislation. The Greens have hysterically denounced “fake news,” and called for an inquiry into social media.

Labor and the Greens, no less than the Coalition, have overseen the build-up of police-state measures over the past two decades. They are making clear that if a Greens-backed Labor government is installed in this year’s federal election, it will deepen the assault on democratic rights.

All of the official parties and the corporate press have presented the proposed measures as an attempt to stop “hate speech” and prevent the public being exposed to “offensive” and “violent” material. They have cited the dissemination of the Livestream video of the shooting, produced by the fascist terrorist Brenton Tarrant, on social media platforms and websites.

These claims are a lie. They are aimed at covering up the responsibility of the political establishment, and all of the major parties, for the Christchurch attack, and utilising the massacre to crackdown on the democratic rights of ordinary people.

Tarrant’s attack was not the product of free speech or the Internet. The Australian-born fascist was a highly conscious political operative with links to extreme right-wing networks in Australia and across Europe. His political outlook, based on murderous hostility to immigrants and an intense hatred of socialism, mirrors the nationalism and jingoism that has been promoted by Australian governments, and all of the official parties, for decades.

For the past 30 years, Labor and Coalition governments have transformed Australia into a world model for the persecution of refugees fleeing imperialist war and oppression. They have vilified asylum-seekers, while detaining them indefinitely in concentration camps in the Pacific.

The major parties and the press have demonised Muslims since 2001, as part of the bogus “war on terror,” aimed at legitimising predatory US-led military interventions and erecting the foundations of a police state. They have stoked nationalism and anti-Chinese xenophobia to divide and disorient the working class amid a deepening social crisis produced by their pro-business policies, and to legitimise Australia’s integration into US preparations for war with China.

Morrison himself was installed as prime minister in a political coup within the Liberal Party last August, spearheaded by far-right forces. He and his colleagues have sought to transform the Liberal Party into an alt-right style movement, modeled on Trump and based on extreme nationalism, xenophobia and populism.

In reality, the calls for a crackdown on social media are directed against the mass opposition of workers, students and young people to the ruling elite’s agenda of war, austerity and authoritarianism.

Since 2017, the major social media companies, working in collaboration with the US intelligence agencies, have introduced a series of algorithms to dramatically reduce traffic to socialist, progressive and anti-war websites. Facebook and Twitter have deleted hundreds of pages and accounts exposing US wars and military intrigues, and the domination of official politics by the banks and corporations.

Morrison has made clear that his government’s measures are of a piece with these international efforts to suppress freedom of speech online. In the immediate wake of the Christchurch attack, he floated the possibility of a ban on all social media livestreaming.

This would prevent ordinary people from broadcasting significant social and political events, and airing their views, to a live audience online. Livestreaming has been used in the US, Australia and internationally to document police violence, state attacks on protests and to broadcast political demonstrations to a global audience.

Even if the government legislation does not ban live-streaming, statements by senior Coalition ministers have signalled that it will be used to crackdown on political opposition. It is entirely possible, for instance, that footage of police attacking ordinary people or prison guards brutalising detainees could be deemed “abhorrent violent material” and proscribed.

Moreover, the threat of financial and legal penalties is clearly intended to pressure the social media companies, which are already implementing online censorship, to carry out the broadest removal of content, including to protect their own lucrative operations.

Already, in the immediate aftermath of the Christchurch attack, major Australian internet service providers blocked access to websites which had hosted Tarrant’s video, even if they had subsequently removed it. Facebook has begun a purge of pages associated with the Australian far-right.

These measures will inevitably be followed by attempts to suppress left-wing and progressive pages and opposition from the working class. Morrison, and Peter Dutton, the minister for home affairs, set the stage for this, by declaring last week that it was necessary to oppose “extremism” of the “left” and the “right.”

A federal Senate hearing on social media in November last year underscored the real target of online censorship.

Journalists from corporate media outlets, including Chris Zappone, the online foreign editor for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, warned that social media threatened “social cohesion” and was fuelling “growing distrust between the population—the citizens—and the leaders of that country.”

Dr Michael Jensen, of the Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, a government-funded think tank, said that online discussion would likely be used to weaken “the Five Eyes alliance”—the international surveillance network led by the United States, which monitors the communications of millions of ordinary people and is integral to the preparations for war. He warned of online support for Julian Assange, who is being persecuted for his role in WikiLeaks’ exposure of US war crimes, mass spying and illegal diplomatic intrigues.

At the hearing, representatives of the Coalition, Labor and the Greens all expressed support for measures aimed at suppressing anti-war and progressive sentiment online.

The drive by the entire political establishment, in Australia and internationally, to social media censorship and other authoritarian measures, underscores the importance of the International Coalition of Socialist, Antiwar and Progressive Websites, initiated by the World Socialist Web Site in 2017 to fight back against these attacks on freedom of speech and democratic rights.

European Union intensifies internet censorship

Justus Leicht & Johannes Stern

Two months before the European elections, the European Parliament has voted to massively escalate internet censorship. Yesterday, the majority of MEPs voted in favour of a directive which, under the guise of copyright reforms, would enforce the use of so-called upload filters in social media, thus further restricting the internet.

According to Article 17 (formerly Article 13) of the Directive, internet platforms must now ensure that works protected by copyright are not uploaded without permission. This could only be enforced through upload filters, which automatically filter and censor content. The consequences are clear: internet giants such as YouTube or Facebook, which cooperate closely with the secret services and governments and already censor left-wing and progressive content on a massive scale, are being urged to delete articles, videos or other postings even before they are uploaded.

So far, platforms such as YouTube and Facebook have had to delete copyrighted works from their sites as soon as they receive a complaint. According to Article 17 of the new directive, operators must ensure that copyrighted works are not uploaded without permission. Alternatively, they must also seek licences for the material uploaded by third parties and, in principle, develop mechanisms to prevent works from being made available in the first place where the rights holders have proven their claims.

In practice, given the amount, variety and speed with which new content is uploaded, this could only be achieved by automatically scanning and filtering all content in advance. Anyone who inserts images, excerpts from texts, videos or music to their own content, or modifies such content to create new content from it, can fall victim to the upload filters just as much as someone actually violating copyright law. In addition, upload filters can be politically manipulated so that, for example, texts or videos that are directed against austerity, militarism and war, report on labor disputes and strikes or contain terms such as socialism or “Marxism” are censored.

None of this is the result of an oversight, but is the real purpose of the “reform.”

The European governments and giant tech companies fear growing social opposition and are already censoring left-wing and progressive content on a massive scale. Facebook regularly deletes accounts that oppose war and police violence. In Germany, tens of thousands of posts have been deleted since the so-called Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) came into force. Google, in consultation with German government circles, has modified its search algorithms in order to suppress left-wing and progressive websites—including, above all, the World Socialist Web Site.

Faced with the “Yellow Vest” protests in France, the mass protests in Algeria and the growth of class struggle internationally, the ruling class is feverishly seeking ways to suppress all independent opposition. Last autumn, the EU already agreed to intensify internet censorship and threatened opposition parties with sanctions and punishments. The most recent authoritarian measure has been pushed through in direct opposition to the expressed will of the population.

On the weekend before the vote, more than 100,000 across Europe took to the streets against the new directive and the infamous upload filters. More than 40,000 people demonstrated in Munich alone on Saturday and more than 10,000 in Berlin. Further protests took place in Malmö, Helsinki, Amsterdam, Bucharest, Krakow, Lisbon and Thessaloniki. An online petition on change.org, “Stop the censorship machine—Save the internet,” was signed by more than 5.1 million people. Last Thursday, the German Wikipedia site went offline for a day in protest.

Immediately after the vote on Tuesday evening, spontaneous demonstrations with several hundred participants each took place in Cologne, Karlsruhe, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Dresden and Leipzig. Further protests are planned for the next few days. The directive must be approved by the European Council before it can officially enter into force. According to media reports, this will take place in a vote on 9 April.

The MEPs who voted against the reform—including the majority of SPD, Linkspartei and Green MEPs from Germany—fear above all the growing radicalisation among students and young workers. Julia Reda, a member of the Green/European Free Alliance (EFA) parliamentary group, warned that the directive would “rob an entire generation of confidence that politics will represent the interests of the population.”

In fact, the vote showed that all the establishment parties support censorship and the construction of a European police state. Representatives of all factions—from the European Left (GUE/NGL), the Greens, Liberals (ALDE), Social Democrats (S&D) and Conservatives (EPP and ECR) to the extreme right (ENF and EFDD)—voted in favour of the new censorship law.

In implementing their reactionary plans, EU politicians are resorting to bald-faced lies. A few days before the vote, conservative European politician Daniel Caspary (CDU) denounced the anti-censorship protests in the Bild newspaper as “bought demonstrators” who would “endanger democracy.” The EU Justice Commissioner Věra Jourová told Netzpolitik that upload filters and short deletion periods for online platforms could have prevented the right-wing terrorist attack in Christchurch/New Zealand and the radicalisation of the perpetrator. She wanted “100 percent certainty” that “terrorist content... would not remain on the net.”

Such statements turn reality upside down. It is not the internet and demonstrators who are responsible for attacks on democratic rights or the radicalisation of right-wing terrorists like Brenton Tarrant, but EU politicians like Jourová herself. She is a member of the Czech governing party ANO 2011, which advocates a restrictive immigration policy and denounces Muslim refugees as potential terrorists. How openly and shamelessly leading European politicians are tying in with Nazi traditions was demonstrated by a statement made by the head of the conservative EPP parliamentary group, Manfred Weber (CSU), at the beginning of 2018. “The central European issue” was “the final solution to the refugee question,” he declared.

One year later, European governments openly consider fascistic methods to implement their reactionary policies. Ahead of protests by the “Yellow Vests” last weekend, the Paris military governor announced that the soldiers of an elite unit were ready to open fire on demonstrators with live ammunition if necessary.

Workers and youth must draw the necessary conclusions. The struggle against internet censorship—as well as the struggle against social inequality, fascism and war—requires a political struggle: that is the mobilization of the international working class on the basis of a socialist program.

As strikes and protests escalate, Algeria’s army chief demands Bouteflika’s ouster

Bill Van Auken

In a desperate bid to defend Algeria’s military-backed National Liberation Front (FLN) regime, the chief of staff of the armed forces, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Gaid Salah, demanded on Tuesday that the country’s figurehead president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, be declared “unfit to rule.”

In a televised address delivered against the backdrop of a continuing escalation of the more than month-long wave of popular protests and strikes, General Salah declared: “In this context, it becomes necessary, even imperative, to adopt a solution to get out of the crisis, which responds to the legitimate demands of the Algerian people, and which guarantees the respect of the provisions of the Constitution and the maintenance of the sovereignty of the State.”

Salah called for the invocation of Article 102 of the Algerian Constitution, which empowers the Constitutional Council, the upper chamber of the country’s legislature, to declare Bouteflika “unfit to rule,” which would set the stage for his removal from office by a two-thirds vote of the parliament.

Bouteflika, a veteran of the war for liberation from French colonialism, has been in power since 1999. The 82-year-old president suffered a stroke in 2013 and has been confined to a wheelchair and not spoken publicly since then.

The mass demonstrations, which have brought millions of workers and youth into the streets across Algeria, erupted after it was announced that Bouteflika intended to seek a fifth term. In the face of the mass protests, the government shifted its tactics, declaring on March 11 that the president would not seek a fifth term, but that elections would be postponed until a new constitution was drafted, extending his rule indefinitely. His current term is set to expire on April 29.

The move was answered by demonstrators who chanted the slogan, “We wanted elections without Bouteflika, now we have Bouteflika without elections.”

The speech by the 79-year-old General Salah marks a humiliating climbdown by the regime and was greeted with cheers and the honking of horns in Algiers on Tuesday. At the beginning of the mass protests, the military’s chief of staff had denounced demonstrators as “adventurers.” Subsequently he, like much of the country’s corrupt ruling elite, changed his tune, feigning sympathy for the protesters, while continuing to back Bouteflika remaining in power.

Salah’s action is entirely unconstitutional. It is up to the Constitutional Council to invoke Article 102, not the head of the military. His intervention, however, expresses the reality of the bourgeois state structure in Algeria, in which the military serves as the backbone of the regime, repeatedly intervening in and mediating conflicts within the state.

The Constitutional Council obediently responded to the general’s demand, announcing that it would convene an extraordinary session to consider ousting Bouteflika on the grounds of his unfitness to rule.

The general’s televised speech came as the mass protests continued in the center of Algiers, and as workers’ strikes swept the country.

On Tuesday in Arzew, a major Algerian port and industrial area that includes a refinery exporting LNG (liquified natural gas), workers walked out Tuesday morning in response to a call made on social media, independent and opposed to the country’s trade unions, for a three-day strike. In addition to demanding the end of the regime and profound changes in the country’s social system, strikers carried a banner that read, “The union of shame,” and demanding the ouster of Abdelmadjid Sidi-Saïd, the secretary-general of the General Union of Algerian Workers (UGTA) for the past 20 years, who has backed Bouteflika against the mass protests.

Post offices and public services were also shut down in many parts of the country.

On Monday, thousands of workers, joined by family members and retirees, marched in Tizi Ouzou, one of Algeria’s largest cities in the north central part of the country. The march was called to protest both the regime and the support given to it by UGTA chief Sidi-Saïd. Banners read, “For the immediate departure of the system and Sidi-Saïd.” Others denounced the union leader as Bouteflika’s “court jester.”

While sections of the UGTA bureaucracy have aped the regime, attempting to present the ouster of Sidi-Saïd—like that of Bouteflika—as the solution to the grievances of the workers, the hostility of the working class is directed against an entire system of official unions that function as corporatist partners of the government and the employers, serving to suppress the class struggle.

In Algiers, meanwhile, Tuesday saw what has become a weekly demonstration by thousands of students, as well as protests by architects, court magistrates and other public sector workers.

And in the Mediterranean port city of Béjaïa, several hundred students demonstrated, joined by farmers who drove their tractors into the center of town and employees of the state-run forestry department.

While the sudden about-face on the status of Bouteflika has been forced upon the regime by the rising tide of working class opposition, General Salah’s pseudo-constitutional solution will answer none of the political, much less social, demands that have brought millions of Algerians into the streets.

If the Constitutional Council follows the military commander’s orders, as it likely will, Bouteflika will be replaced by the legislative body’s chairman Abdelkader Bensalah, who would serve as caretaker president for at least 45 and up to 90 days. Bensalah, 76, is one of the founders of the Democratic National Rally (DNR), a coalition partner of Bouteflika’s National Liberation Front (FLN) and a close ally of the ailing president.

Under the terms of the constitution, elections would be held under the supervision of Bensalah’s caretaker government within 90 days, ensuring continued control and domination by the ruling parties and the ruling class of wealthy businessmen, corrupt officials and military commanders that they represent.

Sections of the opposition have denounced Salah’s maneuver. Mustapha Bouchachi, a lawyer and leading figure in the Front of Socialist Forces (FFS), stated on Tuesday that “The Algerian people don’t accept that the government, or a symbol of power of this system, manages the transition period.”

These elements, which include all of the bourgeois opposition parties as well as pseudo-left groups like the Workers Party and the Pabloite Socialist Workers Party, allied with the French New Anti-Capitalist Party, are demanding only that they be included in this “transition” and are offering themselves to give the military-dominated regime a political facelift.

What has brought masses of workers and youth into the streets, however, is not the desire for such a political reshuffling at the top, but rather the demand for a fundamental transformation of a social order in which 80 percent of the wealth is controlled by the top 10 percent, while the official youth unemployment rate stands at 30 percent and some 14 million people are condemned to live in abject poverty on less than $1.50 a day.

As significant as the apparent abandonment of Bouteflika by the regime is in terms of the impact of the mass struggles that have shaken Algeria, it marks only the beginning of the struggle of the Algerian working class to transform these conditions. Whatever the fate of the aging president, power will remain in the hands of the military brass that has served as the linchpin of the capitalist setup in Algeria for decades.

Until now, the security forces have been overwhelmed by the massive character of the demonstrations demanding Bouteflika’s ouster, responding for the most part with tear gas and the arrest of protesters who are released the next day. The military command’s commitment to a shift within the state apparatus may be accompanied by a turn to far more repressive measures that emulate the methods employed by its counterparts in Egypt.

While Bouteflika’s ouster will no doubt be met with jubilation across Algeria, the critical question is the development of an independent political strategy and the formation of a new revolutionary leadership in the working class.

The central task facing Algerian workers is the formation of popular organs of power, based on the working class, to fight to overthrow and replace the remnants of Bouteflika’s regime with a workers’ government. The victory of this revolution depends on its extension beyond Algeria, uniting Algerian workers with their class brothers and sisters throughout the Middle East and in the advanced capitalist countries.

Sri Lankan think tank warns about growing levels of social inequality

Dilruwan Vithanage 

Sri Lanka: State of the Economy 2018, the latest annual report from the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), reveals that income inequality has been an ongoing and rising problem across the country over the past quarter century.

The government and international NGO-funded think tank nervously notes that “persistent income inequality in Sri Lanka is major issue which needs urgent attention of the policy makers.”

The report, which is based on figures from Sri Lanka’s department of statistics and census, compares household income and expenditure (HIES) data in 1990–91 with a 2016 survey. While official surveys in Sri Lanka are notoriously limited and do not give a real picture of the depth of poverty, the report does provide some glimpses.

The survey claims that the number of people suffering income poverty has reduced from 26.1 percent of the population in 1990–91 to 4.1 percent in 2016, which it claims is a “notable achievement.”

The poverty line, however, is just $US1.90 or 290 rupees per day per person, an extremely low amount. The World Bank’s 2016 global poverty line is $3.20 income per day, almost double, the Sri Lankan figure.

The geographical spread of poverty is revealing: 1.9 percent of those living in urban areas are poor compared to 4.3 and 8.8 percent in the rural and estate sectors, respectively. In other words, the most poverty-stricken sectors of the population are located in the tea and other estates where plantation workers walked out on strike late last year to demand a 100 percent increase in their 500-rupee basic daily wage. Rural farmers have been constantly agitating against the government over cuts to agricultural subsidies and for reasonable prices for their produce and debt relief.

The report indicates that the richest sections of society dramatically boosted their wealth compared to the poor during the past 25 years.

The average household monthly income of the bottom 10 percent increased from 1,661 rupees or $40 in 1990–91 (the exchange rate then was $1=41 rupees) to 10,419 rupees in 2016 or $71 (exchange rate was $1=146 rupees), less than double compared to the US dollar.

By contrast, the average monthly income of the richest 10 percent climbed from 12,963 rupees or $316 in 1990–91 to 162,460 rupees or $1,144 in 2016, more than trebling compared to the US dollar. For the top 1 percent and 0.1 percent, the growth was undoubtedly far greater.

In 2016, the richest 10 percent, or the top decile, earned the equivalent of the total amount earned by 70 percent of all households in 2016. The share of the bottom decile stood at just 1.6 percent of total household income.

Sri Lanka: State of the Economy 2018 indicates how poverty drastically impacts on the education of Sri Lankan children. According to HIES data for 2012–13 (no data was given for 2016), 23.8 percent of the poor children aged 15–16 years and 64.7 percent of poor children aged 17–18 are unable to complete their formal education due to lack of finance.

The report notes that these figures point to the failure of the Samurdhi (Prosperity) program and other limited social welfare measures, which consecutive Sri Lankan governments have claimed will reduce poverty and improve the living conditions of the poor.

In the face of widespread discontent, the United National Party-led government’s recent budget, as a cosmetic measure, increased the number of people receiving Samurdhi by 600,000. Currently, there are 3.5 million people in Sri Lanka receiving Samurdhi payments of between 1,500 and 3,500 rupees per month.

The IPS report provides some sense of the devastating impact of the bloody 30-year war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in the north and east of the country. The highest percentage of Sri Lankan households falling into the “poorest group”—i.e., with a monthly income of less than 30,000 rupees—are in the northern districts of Mullaithivu (71 percent of the population) and Kilinochchi (66 percent) and in Batticalao (65.2 percent) in the east.

In 2016, 50 percent of Sri Lankan households earned less than 39,855 rupees per month. With the average household consisting 3.8 people, this is not enough to sustain this size family. The average price of goods and services measured by the Colombo Consumer Price Index have increased by nearly six times over the same 1990–91 to 2016 period.

Social inequality in Sri Lanka is an expression of the growth of inequality globally. In 2018, the UK-based charity Oxfam revealed that the wealth of the world’s billionaires increased by $900 billion, or 12 percent, while 3.8 billion people, half the world’s population, saw their wealth decline by 11 percent.

The World Socialist Web Site commented on January 22 this year: “In the decade since the global financial crisis erupted in 2008, governments and financial authorities have imposed its full impact on the backs of the world working class, in the form of stagnant and lower wages and austerity programs that have gutted health and other social services, to name just some of its effects.”

In line with this agenda, consecutive Sri Lankan governments have imposed the austerity demands of the International Monetary Fund by increasing taxes on essentials, privatising state-owned enterprises, freezing wages and gutting social services.

As the same time large corporations and investors have been given tax cuts and various incentive packages to boost their profits. In 2012, Colombo reduced company tax rates from 35 percent to 28 percent. The maximum personal income rate, which was 35 percent before 2010, was reduced to 24 percent in 2011 and further cut last year to 16 percent.

Sri Lanka: State of the Economy 2018 laments that “in-depth analysis is needed to understand the root causes of persistent income inequity.” The root cause of “persistent income inequity” is no secret: it is the inevitable product of capitalism and the drive for profit, the system that the government and think tanks such as the IPS defend.

UK school funding crisis threatens children’s basic education

Tom Pearce

The funding crisis wracking UK schools is wreaking havoc across the country. Schools are being forced to manage their budgets in ways that did not seem imaginable a decade ago and taking desperate measures to balance their budgets.

At the annual conference of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), heads warned that there is a “£5.7 billion funding shortfall” that could leave many schools bankrupt.

Many schools have already cut administration staff and reduced extra-curricular activities on offer. There have been staff redundancies and pay cuts for many.

Exacerbating the problem of funding, the government put in place statutory pay rises at the start of the 2018-2019 academic year without providing additional cash to cover the cost of the paltry pay rise. Instead, schools have had to make choices about the standard of children’s schooling, inevitably leading to a detrimental effect on pupils and staff.

The education-funding crisis is moving into a new stage, where initial cuts to schools are now moving towards the destruction of basic educational provision.

A school in Stockport, in northern England, Vale View Primary, has taken the measure of closing early on Fridays due to a desperate situation created by the lack of funding. Even more shocking is the fact that parents who cannot pick up their children at lunchtime early are going to be charged.

The school is one of 25 that have taken the drastic measure of shortening the school week due to funding constraints.

When announcing the changes to School Week, Vale View Primary’s chair of governors attempted to mask the situation in a letter to parents by selling shutting early as a way of allowing them to “spend more time with your children.” The head teacher, Helen Hannah, cited the statutory pay rises as a reason that she was making the changes due to a £100,000 deficit in her school. The head has also made double figure redundancies and justified the changes to ensure that class sizes would not rise to 40 pupils per class. Such are the choices that head teachers have being forced to make across the country.

A huge £400,000 worth of cuts have already been made to the Vale View Primary’s budget. The school is due to cut nearly £10,000 in art therapy and has reduced the amount of money spent on speech and language therapy by £16,000. School trip subsidies have been cut by £50,000 and resources have been cut by £100,000. Additionally, £136,000 has been saved from not replacing teaching assistants.

An indication of the indifference of the government to the crisis was the reported refusal, three times since last September, of Education Secretary Damian Hinds to meet head teachers to discuss the damage caused by cuts with those on the front line.

Vale View Primary’s fate is one now common in English schools. The scale of the impact of the cuts to education is mirrored across the country.

In the north of England, some schools are holding extra non-uniform days in order to raise cash from the donations that come from not wearing the usual school uniform. In Essex and inner London, lunchtime supervisors have been cut and replaced with the class teachers, who must give up their lunchtime to look after children. Teachers are also cleaning their own classrooms and areas after cleaning staff have been cut.

How are teachers able to plan and provide a decent education under these conditions? Teachers are already under extreme pressure to deliver high quality lessons and in some cases to mark to ridiculous standards. They are burning out and the funding crisis is exacerbating the situation.

In other schools, wish lists and crowd funding have been established for parents and carers to buy “luxury items” such as pencils, glue sticks and rulers. Some schools already have cut hours to save money, with many pupils in Birmingham’s primary schools being sent home at lunchtime on Fridays.

This month, the Guardian reported on the comments of teachers it surveyed about the crisis. It noted, “A chemistry teacher from Cheshire described four years of redundancies, school buildings no longer fit for purpose and diminishing resources: ‘No current GCSE textbooks, limited photocopying, sharing exercise books between classes, broken equipment not replaced.’”

A Gloucestershire science teacher said his annual budget had been cut by 45 percent since 2010. “We are actually unable to provide students with the GCSE ‘required practicals’ as the chemicals and enzymes are too expensive. Our buildings are cold. No heating until November is the rule even though teachers and students are wearing their coats indoors.”

The WSWS spoke to a teacher from a Cambridgeshire school, who said, “Sixth form hours have been cut from timetables in order to make the post-16 area financially viable. Teachers are worried that they will not be able to teach the course and students are worried that they will lose teachers input into their A Levels.”

In the face of unprecedented funding cuts, the education unions have done nothing to oppose the government.

Paul Whiteman, the National Secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), in a TES article earlier this month, presented the problem as one in which “cross-party” MPs had not been aware of the devastation caused by funding cuts. However, “MPs are waking up, fortunately. According to our research, more than half are now prepared to say that the school funding crisis is real.” All that was required was a little more “honesty” from the same Tory ministers who have slashed billions from education over the last decade. “The Department for Education has listened somewhat to us and other unions and has found a little extra money, but now we need real movement from the Treasury. The trouble is, the chancellor doesn’t appear to be listening,” said Whiteman.

Kevin Courtney of the National Education Union (NEU), who is hailed by Britain’s pseudo-left groups as a militant fighter, has done nothing more than set up a website documenting funding cuts to school.

As with the NAHT, the NEU proposes nothing beyond an appeal for teachers to write to their Members of Parliament. This tactic so far has only enabled the situation to be debated in parliament for three hours.

The only other action undertaken by the main teachers’ unions was an ineffective march in London last year and a protest rally called on a week-day evening. A protest by NAHT members in London, culminating in a parliamentary lobby, took place at the end of February. On March 4, there was a three-hour debate on school funding in Parliament, with the Conservatives promising only to stick to their policies.

Internationally, education workers are taking action into their own hands. In every country, there is mass support among broad sections of workers for a fight to defend public education. This is shown in the international wave of strikes and protests against education cuts in the US, Colombia, Algeria, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Portugal, France, Netherlands, Morocco, Zimbabwe and Tamil Nadu, in southern India.

In all of these struggles workers are coming into conflict with the union bureaucracies who, when they cannot prevent strikes from breaking out, seek to do everything to isolate and sabotage them.

In the UK, Courtney et al are calling on teachers to wait for a Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn and are sitting on demands by workers for action to be taken now.

At the end of last year, the NEU sent out an “indicative” survey to 257,849 members, to which 82,487 teachers responded. The survey found that 100 percent supported a campaign to expose funding cuts, with 99 percent of responses saying that funding cuts had had a severe impact on their schools.

However, the most significant statistic was the appetite for a fight against the cuts, with four-fifths of members prepared to strike. 82 percent of teachers at state schools and 84 percent at colleges were prepared to take strike action to “secure better funding for schools and the full implementation of the teachers’ pay award.” Only 31 percent of teachers participated in the vote, significantly lower than the required 50 percent level required to strike under anti-strike laws, expressing teacher’s lack of confidence in the NEU.

Despite the demand for a fight, Courtney made another bland statement committing the union to nothing: “The NEU Executive will be meeting to discuss these findings and will be considering the next steps in the campaign.”

UK teachers should look to the struggle of teachers internationally and draw the necessary lessons in order to fight against the destruction of free, public education. Only a complete break with the trade union bureaucracy will enable them to fight the education cuts. Teachers must form rank-and-file committees, controlled by workers themselves and independent of the unions. These must turn to education workers internationally and base themselves on what teachers and students need, not what the ruling elite say is affordable.