First imagery of black hole by the Event Horizon Telescope

Bryan Dyne 

Astronomers have published the first reconstructed image of a black hole, from the center of galaxy Messier 87. Radio emissions collected in April 2017 by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration reveal a bright ring of light bent by the gravitational field of a black hole 55 million light years away, 6.5 billion times more massive than the Sun and occupying a volume of space comparable to our entire Solar System.

The reconstructed image of the black hole observed by the Event Horizon Telescope at the center of galaxy Messier 87. The brightness of the ring of light appears asymmetric because the half of the black hole's accretion disk that is rotating toward Earth emits more light toward our planet than the half that isn't. Credit: Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration

The results from the planet-wide array of eight radio telescopes are the first direct measurements of the structure of a black hole and its surrounding environment. A new level of astronomical technique provides insight into the structure of the black hole itself and the nature of gravity under such extreme conditions. These measurements are the first step toward a deeper understanding of how spacetime warps in the presence of mass and energy, the basis of Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

Two hundred researchers in Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Europe, North and South America labored for two years to make this discovery, while hundreds more made the upgrades to each of the observatories necessary to achieve the required angular resolution (the precision necessary to detect an object so far away with the degree of accuracy required).

These observations also provide the first, if limited, data of the dynamics of an accretion disk, the bright material surrounding and spiraling towards the black hole. The observations necessary to pin down the size of the black hole were taken over the course of a week and as a result provide the first direct look at how the matter around a black hole changes in time.

To complement the EHT measurements, NASA’s Chandra, NuSTAR and Swift space telescopes participated in the observing campaign. While the current scientific results do not incorporate their data, future calculations will be released combining radio and x-ray studies to provide a more complete picture of the interior of the Virgo galactic cluster’s second brightest galaxy.

Chandra x-ray observation of Messier 87 to compliment the released Event Horizon Telescope data. Credit: NASA/CXC/Villanova University/J. Neilsen

Further black hole images will be released in the coming months as researchers finish processing more data, both of the supermassive black hole at the center of Messier 87 (dubbed M87), as well as of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy.

Strictly speaking, the graphic released is not a photograph of a black hole. A black hole is, by definition, not an object one can touch or see but rather a region of space with such intense gravity that no form of matter can escape, including light. Anything passing through this so-called event horizon forevermore becomes a part of the black hole itself.

One can, however, image the accretion disk. It is comprised of gas and dust—and planets and stars—that stray too close and are captured by a black hole’s immense gravitational pull. The closer the material is to the black hole, the faster it circles around and the hotter and brighter it becomes. Accretion disks emit every frequency of electromagnetic radiation—from radio to visible light to gamma—and their emissions are the most common way to infer the presence of a black hole.

The gravitational pull of a black hole, in addition to creating a region of no return, warps spacetime so massively that light of the accretion disk isn’t simply radiated directly away from the black hole. Some of it is instead curved back around the black hole, allowing one to see all sides of the accretion disk simultaneously. The same phenomenon occurs with the event horizon itself. General relativity lets us “see” both the front half and the back half of the event horizon simultaneously, producing a “shadow” of a black hole that is 2.6 times the radius of the black hole itself. This shadow is what the EHT image reveals.

The peculiarities of black holes also make them easier to observe. The volume of a sphere (assuming its density doesn’t change) is proportional to the cube root of its mass: double its mass and it only increases in size by 26 percent. But if you double the mass of a black hole, it doubles in size. M87 is 2100 times more distant than Sagittarius A*, but it was suspected to be about 1500 times its mass, meaning the factors roughly cancel. Data from EHT confirmed this hypothesis and thus another aspect of general relativity.

The locations of the telescopes of the Event Horizon Telescope (blue) and the Global mm-VLBI Array (yellow), two collaborations working to produce high resolution images of the matter surrounding black holes. Credit: ESO/O. Furtak

Black holes were first theorized by Karl Schwarzchild in late 1915, when he showed that the unified structure of space and time proposed by Einstein, spacetime, could be contracted to a single point. The idea has been debated, refined and expanded upon for more than a century. Indirect evidence of black holes has existed since objects emitting powerful x-rays in our galaxy were discovered in the 1960s. Direct evidence was not acquired until the 2015 detection of gravitational waves.

Small black holes, those approximately the mass of our Sun, are formed when a large dying star implodes on itself in an event that can be seen across the entire Universe, a supernova. Larger black holes, those about ten times the mass of the Sun, are formed when these smaller black holes merge.

Supermassive black holes, on the other hand, those that are at the center of essentially every galaxy and which are millions or billions of times the mass of the Sun, were probably not formed through this process. They are too large and, since they are thought to be the seeds around which galaxies formed, too old to be the result of many thousands of mergers. It is unclear what physical processes generated such massive objects so early in the evolution of the cosmos.

Radio telescopes like EHT have been used for decades to study black holes. They are particularly suited for interferometry, which uses two or more telescopes in conjunction to make the effective size of the combined system the distance between the individual elements. EHT takes advantage of this by using observatories placed on opposite sides of Earth, making a telescope with the effective diameter of the entire planet.

The drawback of this technique is that it requires advanced mathematics and enormous computing power to produce an image that makes sense to the human eye. Those must be built up by comparing the radio wave data to models of the target being observed. Researchers using EHT built four independent models of M87 using our current knowledge of general relativity, fluid mechanics and plasma physics.

These were then compared to the approximately 5,000 terabytes of data collected by the telescope array that were aggregated using high speed fiber optic cables and physically shipping hard drives (when there was too much data to send over the internet). The model that most closely approximated the empirical data was then used to generate the images released to the world, as well as to understand the characteristics of the black hole and its accretion disk.

There are only two black holes that can be resolved by the world’s current suite of radio telescopes: the two already mentioned, M87 and Sagittarius A*. The natural next step involves launching radio telescopes into space to enlarge the separation between them and telescopes on the ground, making the detection of finer details in objects possible: this was first done in 1997 by Japan with the HALCA satellite and in 2011 by Russia with the Spektr-R satellite.

One can also look at higher frequencies, closer towards visible light. This means the telescopes need to have more precise radio “optics” and that the radio receivers and instrumentation must operate much more rapidly and record against a much more stable time signal to allow the technique to work.

Either way, the findings of the Event Horizon Telescope represent the first step of a new level of coordination and sophistication enabled through a powerful development of technique and international coordination. Only the realities of science funding under capitalism place limits on what can be achieved.

German interior minister tables Intelligence Services “Enabling Act”

Wolfgang Weber

The “Ermächtigungsgesetz” (Enabling Act) introduced by the Nazis in March 1933 provided Hitler with dictatorial powers. Now, Germany’s Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (Christian Social Union, CSU) has introduced a draconian draft bill euphemistically titled, “For the Harmonization of the Secret Service Law”.

This provides the three intelligence agencies—the domestic secret service, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) responsible for foreign counter-intelligence, and the Military Counter-intelligence Service (MAD)—with almost unlimited powers to monitor and spy on domestic and foreign citizens. The draft was published by netzpolitik.org a few days ago.

The law planned by Seehofer also removes the remaining restrictions on the activities of the secret services, which were anchored in the constitution and laws of the Federal Republic after the terror of the Third Reich. Basic rights such as postal and telecommunications secrecy and the inviolability of the home are being undermined.

In future, the BND will not only spy on foreign companies, citizens and governments, but also monitor German and foreign citizens inside Germany. Although this was already common practice, especially against opposition party politicians and left-wing government opponents, now it would be legalized and declared a core task of the BND.

The Office for the Protection of the Constitution, as the domestic secret service is called, and the BND are to be given the power to use state-developed malicious software (“State Trojans”) against “German nationals”, “domestic legal persons” and “persons resident in the Federal Republic” in prosecuting crimes. Previously, this was reserved for the police. With this software, computers and mobile phones can be spied on unnoticed by the owner, the inputting of text recorded live and camera and microphone outputs intercepted.

Target objects are not only mobile phones, laptops and other IT systems, but also cars with Internet access, so-called connected cars. IT specialists have warned in vain that such hacker attacks on the electronic systems of a car could cause fatal accidents, something that has already occurred. Interventions affecting the vehicle’s driving behaviour to liquidate the driver or other occupants ostensibly though an accident are thus made possible.

In addition to online searches, the state trojans can also be used for so-called source telecommunications monitoring. In this case, encrypted communication is picked up before encryption or after decryption and transmitted to the secret service. In this way, social media like WhatsApp, Skype and secure messaging services like Signal or Telegram can be cracked.

The draft places the hitherto illegally practiced use of state trojans “or comparable technical means” from Germany against foreign citizens and institutions abroad on a legal footing through a “clarifying license”.

The bill gives the green light for such hacker attacks to the Chancellery and not, as previously when used by the police, to a judge. They are always to be permitted if “serious criminal offences” or “matters presenting special dangers for the Federal Republic or its population” exist. According to Seehofer’s plans, the BND does not even have to present a reasoned initial suspicion, so that in this respect, it is basically not subject to any restrictions.

In principle, the use of state trojans would be allowed if “a conceivably more remote possibility” exists that a cyber-attack originates from a foreign intelligence service.

Regular reports before the Parliamentary Control Committee would largely be dropped—presumably to save time and resources, because this Bundestag committee was always nothing more than a “democratic” fig leaf for the murky affairs of the secret services.

The age limit from which people may be spied upon is also being abolished. In 2016, the government had lowered this from 16 to 14 years. Now, this age limit is to disappear completely, so that young pupils with their mobile phones and even small children with electronic toys can become target objects of the BND and end up in the data storage system of the secret services. According to the Interior Ministry, this measure is to emphasize the “holistic approach of the secret services”.

What seems rather grotesque at first glance, is a recognition that participants in demonstrations are getting younger and younger. This was evident in the protests against the new police laws; the anti-climate demonstrations saw those as young as 12 and 13 participating.

The number of businesses that are obliged on request to transmit their customers’ communication and movement data to the BND or the secret service, is being extended. In future, this will include the providers of telecommunications services as well as rail, bus, taxi and car-sharing companies.

In order to prepare the deployment of a state trojan into private telecommunications or computer equipment, BND agents and secret service agents may secretly break into homes in the absence of the target person. The basic right of the inviolability of the home is thus abolished with a stroke of the pen.

The bill also eliminates hitherto existing restrictions on the recruitment and employment of Confidential Informants (CI). It starts with the money and ends with protecting criminals. In the past, the law prescribed that a CI should not be paid so much money that it provided the greatest part of their livelihood. This was to prevent CIs from inventing stories in order to secure their living. According to a report by the Süddeutsche Zeitung on 30 March, the BND should in future be “free to pay whatever it wants”.

Even more serious is that BND CIs who are criminals will enjoy official and “legal” protection against prosecution. If the BND receives information that a CI is committing crimes in Germany, they no longer have to report them. Instead, it is up to the “management” to decide what to do. If the CI still becomes involved with the police or prosecutors, the BND can intervene with the judiciary. The prosecutors “should” refrain from prosecution, it says in the draft law; so far, this was just an option for them.

In future, the BND is to be allowed to recruit already convicted criminals—unless the crimes are murder and manslaughter.

Since their formation in the 1940s and 1950s, the BND, secret service and MAD have repeatedly acted as a supralegal state-within-the-state. These agencies were founded and built by leading SS and Gestapo people, who also selected and trained the personnel according to old Nazi traditions. But despite all attempts at cover-ups, the activities of the secret services and their CIs continually come before the courts and are recorded in the files. Seehofer wants to put an end to this with the new law.

The strict separation of the intelligence agencies and police, introduced after 1945 due to the bad experiences with the Gestapo (Secret State Police), is to be lifted. In Seehofer-speak, cooperation between the secret service and police is called, “ongoing administrative assistance”. The BND would work as a “service provider” for the police, performing online hacker attacks for them, evaluating and making the results available to the police.

All data collected by the intelligence services would not only be evaluated by them, but also passed on to third parties, in particular to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and other police departments, to government agencies, but also to foreign secret services such as the American NSA.

The close cooperation between the BND, the secret service and the MAD is to be institutionalized and “perpetuated” by the establishment of a so-called “expanded intelligence information network”. The Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) would also be involved. Collaboration with foreign intelligence services, including the construction and evaluation of centralized data storage, which previously took place in a legal grey area, is to be made the task of the secret services.

This is just a partial list of the provisions of the bill. But it shows the five most important elements:

• Use of the BND within Germany against its own citizens.

• Protection of criminal activities of intelligence agents against criminal prosecution.

• Full use of State Trojans and other attack software to hack and tamper with private communications and data and to interfere with vehicles.

• Lifting the separation of the intelligence services and police.

• Consolidating all intelligence services into an “enhanced intelligence information network” that provides police and government agencies with a “technical service” for obtaining secret or private data from citizens and businesses.

Like all the laws to build a police state, these are justified in the name of the alleged “fight against terrorism”, against “drug crime” and against “cybercrime”. In reality, it is about monitoring and controlling the entire population.

In the face of growing social tensions, the ruling class fears a sharpening of the class struggle. The size of this concern is shown by the sheer dimensions of planned intelligence operations and surveillance facilities. The German government has already decided to spend billions on equipping the secret services with state-of-the-art information technology.

The floorspace of the recently opened 1.4 billion Euro BND headquarters in the centre of Berlin is as big as 36 football pitches, far larger than the parliamentary and government district in front of the Reichstag building. To monitor mobile phone calls and other communications, the BND operates a total of seven gigantic listening stations, each with several giant satellite dishes.

The structure and bureaucratic language of Seehofer’s bill seeks to make this incomprehensible to normal people. Its aim is to free the intelligence services from all legal and criminal shackles. It is an intelligence service enabling act, in the tradition of the Nazis.

Two giant German banks plan merger

Gustav Kemper & Peter Schwarz

On March 17, the CEOs of Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, Christian Sewing and Martin Zielke, announced the start of negotiations on a merger of the two banks.

Speculation about a possible merger have surfaced a number of times following the financial crisis of 2008, but the economic rationality of such a decision was repeatedly called into question. The vehemence with which the German government in particular is now pushing for the merger of the two banks can only be explained by political motives: it is part of the effort to establish Germany and Europe as world powers capable of competing with the US and China.

This is made clear by the “National Industrial Strategy 2030,” which the German Economics Minister Peter Altmaier presented to the press in February 2019. The strategy calls for the formation of “national champions,” “big and strong players on a level playing field with competitors from the US or China.”

As justification, the paper states: “The emergence of a comprehensive world market in more and more regions increasingly raises the question of the critical size required for an industrial player to compete successfully in international competition.” The examples given include various industries and spheres in finance and banking.

The driving force behind the merger plans of Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank is German finance minister Olaf Scholz (SPD), who has been holding talks at an international level for months with rival international banks to explore the opportunities for German institutions on the world market. One year ago, Scholz appointed a finance industry insider, Jörg Kukies, as secretary of state at the finance ministry. Kukies is the former head of the German branch of the US investment bank Goldman Sachs, which also acts as adviser for Commerzbank.

While Germany is a major industrial powerhouse and third in terms of exports worldwide, behind China and the US, it lacks a major bank to match those of its main rivals. In terms of total assets, Deutsche Bank ranks 15th in the world, behind four Chinese, four American, three Japanese, two French and one British bank. Ranking second among German banks is the DZ-Bank, which is placed 51st in world rankings. Commerzbank is Germany’s third-largest bank (54th place in world rankings).

After a merger, the “Deutsche Commerzbank,” with total assets of over 1,800 billion euros would rank ninth in the world and third in Europe, behind the British HSBC (2,350 billion euros) and the French BNP Paribas (2,000 billion euros).

As long as goods and capital circulated relatively freely internationally, the weakness of its banking sector was not a fundamental problem for the German bourgeoisie. The international financial crisis of 2008, however, ushered in merciless rivalry on the global financial markets. The conflicts between the imperialist powers are coming to a head. Free trade is being replaced by the trade war, championed by the US.

The efforts of the German government to create “national champions” are directly related to its striving to once again become a world power, which requires a corresponding build-up of the country’s military forces. The German army has undergone a process of permanent rearmament following the announcement by former foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in 2014 that Germany was “too big to comment on world politics only from the outside.”

In order to become a world power, however, German imperialism needs not only a powerful army, but also a globally active bank to finance trade, domestic and foreign investment and its defence industry. The Achilles heel of the German economy is its financial dependence on the US—most recently confirmed by the billions in fines lodged by the US against major German players such as Siemens, VW and Deutsche Bank. Other examples are the US sanctions against Iran and other countries. China's growing financial power is also being followed in Berlin with concern.

Deutsche Bank played a major role in the First and Second World Wars. Already at its founding in 1870, it set itself the goal of “finally conquering for Germany a place on the table of financial mediation...” This policy then laid the foundation for financing German imperialist expansion in Asia, Africa and South America.

Some economists and financial experts have questioned the viability of the merger project. They fear that the two troubled banks will pull each other into the abyss. “Two sick patients do not make a single healthy one,” some commented, with reference to the low profitability and the relatively high cost overheads of the two institutions.

Commerzbank's share price has fallen 42 percent and Deutsche Bank's 71 percent during the past five years. Between 2015 and 2017, Deutsche Bank reported billions in losses, largely resulting from criminal charges for speculation lodged in the US. In the last ten years alone, Deutsche Bank has had to pay up 17 billion euros in fines.

For the German government, however, the merger of the two banks is a political project not an economic one. It is to be financed by massive job losses and drastic cost reductions. The Verdi trade union anticipates that 60 percent of bank branches will close. At present, Deutsche Bank has 2,064 branches, (1,409 in Germany) and Commerzbank about 1,000. Together, the two banks employ 140,000 people. Estimates of expected job losses vary between 30,000 and 40,000 jobs.

The business magazine Capital speculates “whether the current management of Deutsche Bank really has the strength and ruthlessness necessary to dismantle tens of thousands of jobs.” In this respect the bank management can rely on the support of the SPD and Verdi, which are both determined to create a “national bank champion.”

Harald Christ, an executive member of the SPD’s economic forum and former holder of a leading position at Postbank and Deutsche Bank, told the broadcaster n-tv that Germany confronted a fatal dependency should it lack its own powerful major bank. For a merger, “of course, the focus is on lowering costs,” he explained, “which means costs of material and staff.”

The Verdi union, whose representatives sit on the boards of both banks, have announced temporary protest strikes against the feared job cuts to begin on March 28. These, however, serve merely to let off steam, while Verdi and its works council officials work behind the scenes to develop the plans for job cuts.

Defying US threats, Turkey vows to deploy Russian air-defence system

Keith Jones 

Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, vowed Wednesday that Washington’s ever-escalating threats will not deter Ankara from proceeding with the purchase and deployment of the Russian-made S-400 air defence system.

Speaking two days after a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow at which the S-400 purchase and the potential for expanding Russian-Turkish military-strategic ties were among the principal topics of discussion, Erdogan did not just reiterate that the S-400 purchase was “irreversible.” He said that due to “constant” “provocations from the US” the delivery of the S-400 could well be brought forward from July.

Earlier Wednesday, Erdogan’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, warned that if the US carries through on its threats to punish Turkey for exercising its sovereign right as a NATO state to choose its own weapons and weapon-systems, Ankara could buy a second S-400 air-defence system from Russia.

Referring to Washington’s offer to sell Turkey Patriot missiles, but only if it abandons the $2.5 billion S-400 deal, Cavusoglu told Turkey’s NTV, “If they don’t sell the Patriots, we could buy a second S-400 system or another one from someone else.” He added that Turkey could also purchase Russian fighter jets, if Washington cancels its order to buy the US-made F-35 stealth fighter.

Erdogan and Cavusoglu’s remarks came in response to a column entitled “Turkey Must Choose between the US and Russia” that the Republican and Democratic leaders of the US Senate Foreign Affairs and Armed Services Committees published in the New York Times Tuesday.

Republican Senators Jim Inhofe and Jim Risch and Democrats Jack Reed and Bob Menendez wrote that if Turkey proceeded with the S-400 purchase in defiance of Washington, it would “have profound consequences” for the “country’s place in the world, its relationship with the United States and its standing in NATO.”

They went on to list a long series of punitive actions that Washington could, and in most cases they said, would, take if Ankara did not bow to US demands that it abandon the S-400.

The list began with the cancellation of Turkey’s order to purchase more than 100 F-35s. This and the ouster of all Turkish companies from the jet-fighter’s production chain are guaranteed, they asserted, should Ankara deploy the S-400. “Turkey,” they continued, “will be sanctioned as required by US law,” under the anti-Russia Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA).

Adopted in 2017, CAATSA provides for sanctions of varying scope and severity. But the senators indicated Turkey would face the full brunt of possible punitive measures. Economic sanctions they vowed, would hit “Turkey’s economy hard—rattling international markets, scaring away foreign direct investment and crippling Turkey’s aerospace and defense industry.”

Tuesday’s column represented bipartisan Congressional support for the ultimatum US Vice President Mike Pence delivered at an event last week, attended by Foreign Minister Cavusoglu, to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of NATO.

Indeed, the headline the senators chose for their column was meant to echo Pence’s claim that “Turkey must choose,” between “remain(ing) a critical partner” in NATO and close US military-security partner or buying the Russian-made S-400. In the latter case, declared Pence, the US “will not stand idly by.”

The US claims Turkey’s deployment of the S-400 would undermine NATO and US-Turkish military interoperability and enable Russia to gain intelligence on the functioning of the F-35. Whilst there are no doubt military-technical, as well as financial reasons, behind Washington’s opposition to Ankara’s S-400 purchase, it is only a flashpoint for more significant and intractable geopolitical differences.

Washington is determined to break the shaky alliance Ankara has forged with Russia and Iran in recent years, and to reduce Turkey to its traditional role as a pliant US client state anchoring American imperialism’s military-strategic interests in the Middle East, southeastern Europe, and the Black Sea.

The Turkish bourgeoisie, including for most of the past 17 years that Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) have led Turkey’s government, has supported and sought to profit from the never-ending wars of aggression the US has mounted or fomented since 1991 in the Balkans, the Middle East, and North Africa.

But to its consternation, Washington has repeatedly ignored and thwarted the interests and ambitions of its supposed junior partner.

Matters came to a head during the Syria war. Erdogan eagerly supported the US drive to overthrow Bashar-al Assad’s Baathist regime and helped arm the Islamist militias Washington used as its shock troops in the first years of the war. But Ankara recoiled when the US, in response to the defeat and collapse of its Islamist allies, made the Kurdish YPG—an offshoot of the PKK against which Ankara has been fighting a bloody counter-insurgency war in south-east Turkey for the past 35 years—its main proxy army in its regime-change war in Syria.

While maintaining its support for Assad’s Sunni Arab opponents, Ankara struck a shaky alliance with Assad’s chief allies, Moscow and Tehran, on the basis of their common interest in limiting and rolling back US power in Syria.

As Turkey’s S-400 purchase attests, the subsequent attempts of the US to bully and coerce Turkey into pulling back from closer ties with Russia and Iran have only served to antagonize Ankara and strengthen its determination to lessen its dependence on Washington.

That said, Erdogan’s overriding objective is to establish a buffer zone in northern Syria, as a first step to smashing the YPG-led proto-Kurdish state in Syria (the Rojava Republic).

During his visit to Washington for last week’s NATO foreign ministers meeting, Cavusoglu insisted that Turkey remains committed to the US-led war alliance and voiced support for NATO’s plans to counter Russian “aggression,” including by mounting a provocative naval exercise in the Kerch Strait, the passageway between Crimea and the Russian mainland that separates the Black and Azov Seas.

However, Washington’s ever-escalating threats and provocative actions against Turkey—but also across the Middle East, including its encouragement of Israeli aggression and its illegal and incendiary drive to embargo and crash Iran’s economy—are giving Ankara pause.

Speaking at a Turkish Heritage Organization function in Washington earlier this week, Gulnur Aybet, one of Erdogan’s senior advisers, warned that the US was pushing Ankara into Russia’s strategic embrace. “If the United States continues to approach Turkey with a zero-sum game,” said Aybet, “then the doors which are currently open for the future of (US-Turkish) relations could turn toward another partner, and that is Russia.”

In its conflict with Turkey over the S-400, Washington claims to speak in the name of NATO as a whole. But NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg acknowledged last week that under NATO rules the decision to buy the S-400 is Turkey’s and Turkey’s alone to make. Moreover, although they have their own geopolitical differences with Turkey, the major European powers have conspicuously failed to second the US threats and bullying over the S-400 issue.

According to many analysts, Erdogan and the AKP regime are still hoping—despite US imperialism’s ever more aggressive and reckless actions in its attempt to staunch the erosion of its world power—that Washington will not follow through on the more severe of its threatened reprisals, for fear of precipitating a complete breakdown in the three-quarters of a century-old US-Turkish military-strategic partnership.

Washington, as the senators’ New York Times op-ed highlighted, is confident that it can seriously damage the Turkish economy. In August, Trump’s decision to double US tariffs on Turkish aluminum and steel imports precipitated a collapse in the value of the Turkish lira, and helped tip Turkey into its first recession since 2009.

Eight months later, with its economy being battered by both high-inflation and recession, Turkey is even more vulnerable.

Erdogan has promised Turkish big business that his government will implement “economic restructuring,” i.e. slash social spending, cut corporate taxes and otherwise boost investor returns. But Wednesday’s announcement by his finance minister of what was billed as first steps to tackle the economic crisis was panned by much of domestic and international business as inadequate and a retreat from taking “tough decisions.”

Meanwhile, Erdogan and his AKP, which suffered significant losses in Turkey’s major cities in the March 31 local elections, are pressing the national electoral commission to set aside the results of the election for mayor of Istanbul and order a revote. Erodgan has justified this demand with claims the elections were marred by “organized crime” and the patently anti-democratic claim that a 13,000-vote margin of victory given the size of Istanbul’s electorate is irrelevant.

The US has signaled that it might yet seek to leverage the election controversy to fan opposition to Erdogan and his government within Turkey and internationally.

The Western press, spearheaded by the New York Times, has been lionizing the AWP’s main electoral opponent, the CHP-led Nation Alliance, as a democratic antidote to the authoritarian, Islamist Erdogan.

That Erdogan is a vicious enemy of the working class, who has run roughshod over democratic rights is indisputable. But the CHP is a rightwing, ultra-nationalist party that supports the brutal oppression of the Kurds and is allied with the Good Party, a split-off from the fascist MHP. Like the Kurdish nationalist HDP, which backed its candidates in the March 31st elections in Istanbul, Ankara, and the other major cities of western Turkey, the CHP is distinguished from the AKP principally by its even more pronounced orientation to US imperialism, NATO, and the European Union.

The confluence of geostrategic, economic and political crisis rocking the bourgeois Turkish Republic underscores the urgency of the working class constituting itself as an independent political force in opposition to imperialism and all the rival parties of the bourgeoisie and fighting for a workers’ government and the Socialist United States of the Middle East as the only means of securing the social and democratic rights of the working people, including the democratic rights of the Kurds and other ethnic and religious minorities.

Pre-emptive military coup ousts Bashir to protect Sudan’s elite

Jean Shaoul

Sudan’s army has stepped in to oust President Omar al-Bashir, in an effort to put an end to the months of mass protests and strikes calling for the ouster of his regime.

Awad Ibn Auf, the minister of defence and deputy president, announced Thursday that the military had arrested al-Bashir, who seized power in a coup in 1989, suspended the constitution, shut border crossings and closed the country’s airspace for the next 24 hours.

He declared a three-month state of emergency, putting the country under military rule, and said that the army would oversee a two-year transitional period leading up to elections. Political prisoners would be released, he claimed.

The military coup follows four months of social unrest triggered by a government decision that tripled the price of bread. The spontaneous protests quickly developed into nationwide anti-government demonstrations calling for al-Bashir to step down. The movement drew in ever broader sections of the population with nationwide strikes of workers, including at Port Sudan on the Red Sea, and several work stoppages and protests at major telecom providers and other corporations.

Al-Bashir responded with brutal measures aimed at crushing resistance to the government, including the use of live ammunition by snipers, tear gas and baton charges. At least 60 people have been killed, including children and medics, some of whom died in prison as a result of torture.

Security forces arrested hundreds of demonstrators, with at least 800 sentenced to lengthy terms of imprisonment. Women were sentenced to floggings. There have been numerous arrests of oppositionists, including leaders of the main opposition Umma Party and the Sudan Communist Party (SCP).

In February, al-Bashir announced a year-long state of emergency, making mass demonstrations illegal, and dismissed his cabinet and all the 18 provincial governments, replacing the governors with military and security officers.

This did little to curb the widespread unrest over unemployment, soaring inflation and controls on accessing foreign currency and cash that have made living conditions intolerable. There is enormous popular hatred of al-Bashir’s regime for its never-ending wars in different parts of the country, brutal repression, corruption and indifference to endemic poverty.

The regime has suppressed all opposition to its policies over the last 30 years and waged war against its own people in South Sudan and Darfur, with armed conflicts still ongoing in South Kordofan and Blue Nile provinces, in what has become known as Sudan’s third civil war.

Al-Bashir announced his resignation from the ruling National Congress Party (NCP), appointing his close associate Ahmad Harun as deputy head of the NCP, who called for a “national dialogue.” But this was understood as a manoeuvre to win over some elements of the bourgeois opposition and maintain NCP rule via stage-managed elections in 2020—where Harun or Bashir would run.

The powerful movement of the Sudanese working class is part of a growing movement of strikes and demonstrations by workers across North Africa—in Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco—and around the world.

Sudan’s rallies have been led by a coalition that includes the Sudanese Professional Association (SPA) of doctors, lawyers and teachers, the National Consensus Forces (NCF), Sudan Call, the Unionist Gathering and the Umma Party.

The Stalinist SCP played the crucial role in subordinating the working class to the bourgeois opposition tendencies through its call for “the broadest possible alliance of political parties, armed groups, mass democratic organisations, professional unions, workers’ and peasants’ movements, as well as students’ and women’s unions.”

Limiting the movement to al-Bashir’s ouster would always serve to give the regime a facelift, as has now been proven. The SCP’s popular front with the Islamic opposition Umma party is treacherous. Sadiq al-Mahdi, a former premier (1985-89) and a leader of the Umma, led calls for “the handing of power to a select military command that is qualified to negotiate with representatives of the people to build a new system to achieve peace and democracy.”

Masses of workers and youth have come out onto the streets, not for a military coup or political reshuffle at the top, but rather a fundamental transformation of the entire social order. Since Saturday, the anniversary of the military coup ‎that forced Jaafar Nimeiri to step down in ‎1985 after 16 years in power following massive protests, there have been mass demonstrations outside the military’s headquarters in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum. At least 800,000 people took part Saturday, with the number swelling to 2 million the next day, the biggest protest against the government in Sudan’s tumultuous history.

There were reports of some soldiers intervening to protect demonstrators after ‎security forces tried to disperse a mass sit-in outside the defence ministry, with al-Bashir’s gunmen killing at least 20 people.

On Monday, A l-Ahram Online reported after Sunday’s meeting of the National Defence and Security Council, headed by al-Bashir, “It has become clear that the army has picked its side.” The council issued a statement published by the Sudanese official news agency that “the protesters ‎represent a segment of society that must be heard.” ‎It had cooked up a deal for al-Bashir to step aside, with the military intervening “on the side of the people.”

According to Al-Ahram , the army was split over al-Bashir’s replacement, with one faction opposed to Defence Minister Auf because, like al-Bashir, he is wanted by the International ‎Criminal Court for war crimes in Darfur when he was head of military intelligence. Al-Bashir’s forces are accused of killing up to 400,000 people. Other military figures tipped for the post are retired Armed Forces Chief of General Staff Lieutenant-General Emad Al-‎Din Mustafa Adawi and Lieutenant-General Kamal Abdul-Marouf, the military’s joint chief of staff. ‎

The coup was clearly green-lighted by the United States and the UK, the former colonial power in Sudan, along with Sudan’s neighbour, the Egyptian dictator General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who made his second visit to the White House earlier this week. El-Sisi’s discussions with President Donald Trump were held against the backdrop of a similar attempt to neuter anti-regime protests in Algeria—with the military announcing the resignation of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika—as well as the raging civil war in Libya.

Referring to Libya and Sudan, el-Sisi said, “We cannot afford a leadership emerging in Libya or Sudan that tolerates, or even worse condones, militant Islamic activity. This is why … we are keeping a close eye on any possible transition of power in Sudan.”

On Wednesday, the US, Britain and Norway, who played a key role in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended a 30-year civil war and paved the way for the secession of South Sudan, issued a statement backing a pre-emptive coup. The statement said, “The time has come for the Sudanese authorities to respond to these popular demands in a serious and credible way. The Sudanese people are demanding a transition to a political system that is inclusive and has greater legitimacy.”

While the fall of al-Bashir was greeted with euphoria, the demonstrations have continued. Some protesters mocked the announcement, with one tweeting, “LOL, Awad Ibn Auf probably walked out [after] that speech and went straight to Bashir at his house arrest.”

The Sudanese Professionals Association said, “It’s a coup and we’re not budging” and called for protests to continue until authority is passed on to “a civilian transitional government that represents the revolution’s forces.”

But attempts to present a civilian transitional government as capable of producing a flourishing democracy that would resolve the enormous social and economic problems confronting Sudanese workers are no less fraudulent than a military transitional council. Either way, the country remains dominated by a small, wealthy clique. The only way to establish a democratic regime in Sudan is through a struggle led by the working class to take power and expropriate the ill-gotten wealth of the entire ruling class, in the context of a broad international struggle of the working class against capitalism and for the building of socialism.

Amid corruption scandals and deals with IMF and Washington, Ecuador’s government betrays Assange

Bill Van Auken

The decision by the Ecuadorian government of President Lenín Moreno to invite the British police into its London embassy to drag out Julian Assange, opening the way to the extradition of the WikiLeaks founder to the US, is a flagrant violation of international law and a shameful new chapter in the cowardice and submission of Latin America’s national bourgeoisie to US imperialism.

Not only did the Ecuadorian government throw open the doors of its embassy to the British police snatch squad, it announced on Thursday that the day before, without any notification to Assange or his attorneys, the country’s foreign ministry had summarily stripped the journalist of his Ecuadorian citizenship, which he had been granted in 2017 as part of an attempt to secure his release from the embassy under diplomatic cover.

Government officials claimed that there had been unspecified “irregularities” in the decision to grant Assange citizenship. The motive for abrogating the decision was clear: the Ecuadorian constitution prohibits the extradition of the country’s citizens and requires that they be tried for any crime under the country’s laws.

President Lenín Moreno announced his filthy deal with US and British imperialism in a video posted on his Twitter account, in which he claimed that he had secured guarantees from London that Assange would not be extradited to “a country where he could face torture or the death penalty.” This lie was exposed immediately, as the US Justice Department released an indictment, and UK authorities made it clear they were awaiting proceedings for extradition to a country where the death penalty is in use and that has practiced torture on an international scale.

Assange’s Ecuadorian lawyer, Carlos Poveda, denounced the government’s arbitrary, antidemocratic and extralegal actions. “At the minimum, we should have been notified so that we could exercise the right of defense,” he said. He insisted that the law establishes that any termination of asylum must be first reviewed with the asylee, who has the right to argue his case.

Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Jose Valencia went before the country’s National Assembly on Thursday to justify the illegal act carried out by the government in summarily stripping Assange of his asylum.

Valencia’s presentation, which was interrupted by shouts of “traitor” and “ vendepatria ” from opposition legislators, consisted of nine points, comprised of lies and absurdities.

He claimed that Assange, who has been held under increasingly draconian conditions in the embassy, largely cut off from the outside world, had engaged in “countless acts of interference in the internal affairs of other states,” had behaved badly toward embassy officials, and had made “insulting threats” against the Ecuadorian government, including the “infamous and slanderous” charge that it was “acting under pressure from foreign countries.”

The same Valencia had last week denounced the “insulting” warning by WikiLeaks that his government had reached an agreement with UK authorities to turn Assange over to the British police.

Valencia went so far as to claim that the handing over of Assange was done in part out of concern for his health, and then went on to complain about how much the embassy had spent on his food, medical expenses and laundry.

The immediate context for the Ecuadorian government’s action is a raging corruption scandal implicating President Moreno and his family. The so-called INA Papers, an extensive set of documents, emails and other social media communications, have implicated Moreno in crimes ranging from official corruption to perjury and money laundering.

At the center of the scandal is a scheme in which the Chinese company Sinohydro, which built a hydroelectric dam in Ecuador, deposited $18 million in payoffs in an offshore company, which in turn transferred the money to a set of 10 shell companies that included INA Investments Corp, owned by Edwin Moreno, the president’s brother. The company’s name was taken from the common syllable in the names of the president’s three daughters, Irina, Cristina and Karina.

An opposition legislator, Ronny Aleaga, who said he received the dossier anonymously, has insisted that the documents establish that the company was placed under the directorship of figureheads to conceal the president’s connection to the scheme.

The documents were first published in February 2019, prompting a congressional investigation. On March 26, WikiLeaks’ Twitter account called attention to the investigation, while citing a New York Times report that Moreno had been in discussion with the Trump administration—via a May 2017 trip to Quito by Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort—on handing over Assange in return for debt relief.

Foreign Minister Valencia responded immediately to the tweet, calling it “an absurd lie to harm the dignity of our country” and vowed the Ecuadorian government would take action.

Subsequently, Moreno and his subordinates tried to twist the WikiLeaks tweet of news already reported and well known in Ecuador into proof that Assange, held virtually incommunicado in the London embassy, was personally responsible for hacking the president’s phone and emails.

Within two days of the WikiLeaks tweet, the Ecuadorian national assembly, in which Moreno’s party and other right-wing parties hold the majority, passed a resolution calling on the Foreign Ministry to retaliate against Assange over the leak of the INA Papers.

The Ecuadorian president mounted a cynical campaign, claiming that he was the victim of an invasion of privacy and that the INA Papers had included “private photos” of himself and his family, all for the purpose of distracting public attention from the extensive evidence of his wholesale corruption.

With the expulsion of Assange from the London embassy, Moreno’s government has escalated this campaign. Maria Paula Romo, Ecuador’s interior minister, stated that Assange and WikiLeaks were involved in a plot to “destabilize” the Moreno government, which allegedly involved two “Russian hackers” working inside Ecuador, Ricardo Patiño, a former Ecuadorian foreign minister, and, possibly, the Venezuelan government of President Nicolas Maduro. She claimed that evidence of this plot would be turned over to Ecuadorian prosecutors imminently.

All of this is a geyser of mud aimed at diverting attention from the corruption charges against Moreno and deflecting the growing popular anger against his right-wing government. Recent opinion polls have placed his favorable rating at barely 17 percent.

Moreno made clear his intention to betray Assange from the moment he took office in 2017. He referred to the Australian-born journalist as a “hacker,” an “inherited problem” and “a stone our shoe.”

The previous government of President Rafael Correa had granted asylum to Assange in 2012 because of the clear evidence that he faced political persecution for exposing imperialist war crimes of the US government, mass surveillance and antidemocratic conspiracies carried out by Washington, other governments and transnational corporations.

When the government in Quito decided to grant Assange asylum in its London embassy, its then-foreign affairs minister, Ricardo Patiño, declared that Washington’s vendetta against the journalist “could endanger his safety, integrity and even his life." He continued: "The evidence shows that if Mr. Assange is extradited to the United States, he wouldn’t have a fair trial. It is not at all impossible that he could be subjected to cruel and degrading treatment and sentenced to life imprisonment or even capital punishment.”

What has changed in the nearly seven years that Assange has spent trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy? The Trump administration has only made the threats against the journalist more explicit, with former CIA director and now Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declaring WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service,” whose activities are not protected by the First Amendment. Former attorney general Jeff Sessions insisted that bringing Assange back to the US in chains to face a rigged trial was a “priority” for the US Justice Department.

The change is not in the threat to Assange, but rather in the sharp turn to the right by the government of Lenín Moreno, part of a wave of reaction that has accompanied the ebbing of the so-called Pink Tide throughout Latin America.

Nowhere has this been more evident than in the policies pursued by Moreno, who was the handpicked successor of the former president, Correa, who had declared himself a supporter of “Bolivarian revolution” and “21st century socialism.”

Moreno has pursued a policy aimed at subordinating Ecuador to the international banks and financial institutions economically and to US imperialism politically. Earlier this year, he concluded deals with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other international financial institutions for $10 billion in credit in exchange for implementing draconian austerity measures that have seen the axing of over 10,000 public-sector jobs, along with half of the government’s ministries, as well as the slashing of taxes on the rich, the gutting of labor laws and the scrapping of subsidies for fuel prices.

These policies have provoked mass protests and a general strike against the Moreno government.

At the same time, Moreno has courted the approval of the State Department and the Pentagon, becoming one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the US-instigated coup in Venezuela and the so-called “interim president” Juan Guaidó.

Correa, Ecuador’s former president, condemned the action of the Moreno government. “The biggest traitor in Ecuadorian and Latin American history, Lenín Moreno, allowed the British police to enter our embassy in London to arrest Assange,” he said. Moreno, he added, “has demonstrated his lack of humanity to the world, turning in Julian Assange—not only an asylee, but also an Ecuadorian citizen—to the British police,” which both placed his life “at risk” and “humiliates Ecuador.”

Similarly, former Ecuadorian foreign minister Guillaume Long issued a statement Thursday denouncing the arrest. “The surrender of Julian Assange, dragged by the British police after entering our diplomatic mission to remove him, is a national shame and a historical error that will leave a deep mark on Ecuador for a long time,” he said.

Long added that the government’s decision violated rulings of the United Nation and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and “will be remembered by future generations of Ecuadorians as an act of servility, vileness and ethical degradation.”

The betrayal of Assange is part and parcel of the Moreno government’s turn to the right and accommodation to US imperialism, which have spelled a frontal attack on the Ecuadorian working class. The defense of Assange and of basic democratic rights depends upon the struggle to unite the working class in Ecuador, Britain, the US and internationally in struggle against the capitalist system.

Australian prime minister calls crisis election for May 18

Mike Head

With his faction-wracked government beset by deepening economic and political crises, Prime Minister Scott Morrison today set May 18 as the date for an Australian federal election.

Even the extraordinary timing of Morrison’s announcement was revealing. It is an anxious bid to shut down parliament immediately and go to the polls as quickly as possible before the economic situation worsens and further rifts erupt in the ruling Liberal-National Coalition.

Morrison went to government house at 7am to ask the governor-general to not just dissolve parliament, as usual for an election, but to prorogue it. Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove prorogued—that is, suspended—the Senate as of 8.29 am, exercising his power to do so under section 5 of the Constitution.

Senate estimates hearings scheduled for today and tomorrow were immediately cancelled. This ends any further, even limited, parliamentary scrutiny of last week’s budget and its fraudulent economic predictions, on which both the government and the opposition Labor Party have based all their election pledges.

At an 8am media conference, Morrison declared that the election was a “clear choice” between the Coalition and Labor as to whom voters should “trust” to build a “strong Australia.”

In reality, the established parliamentary parties offer the working class—the vast majority of the population—no choice. This includes the Greens and an array of right-wing populists and “independents.” All support the existing capitalist profit system and its agenda of austerity and militarism.

Far from “trust,” there is seething hostility toward the political establishment elite after decades in which successive Coalition and Labor-led governments have enforced ever-widening social inequality, falling wages and conditions, deteriorating public services, and participated in US-led wars.

The Socialist Equality Party will stand candidates in the election to oppose this entire agenda. The SEP will be the only party to expose the lies of the political establishment and the corporate media, and tell the truth: the only way forward for the working class lies in unifying its struggles globally to abolish the capitalist profit system and establish workers’ governments to carry out a socialist program.

Such is the fraud of the official election campaign that both the old ruling parties have adopted the phony catch cry of a “fair go” as their central theme. Morrison told the media conference he believed “in a fair go for those who have a go,” insisting that this could be achieved only through individual “hard work.”

Acutely aware of rising working-class unrest, Labor Party leader Bill Shorten issued a video in which he again declared that his party stood for “a fair go for Australia.” He repeated the bogus claims he made in last week’s budget reply speech that a Labor government would make Australia less unequal.

These unabashed lies by both parties were further exposed just before Morrison called the election. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) effectively demolished all the economic forecasts in last week’s budget. It issued a sharp downgrade for global growth predictions, and said Australia’s economy was slowing twice as fast as comparable countries.

On top of the international downturn and trade war tensions ignited by the US, the IMF said an “unexpectedly” rapid and large fall in house prices in Australia meant the country’s economy was in “a delicate situation.” The IMF’s representative Thomas Helbling told the Australian Financial Review: “That’s always a big concern in a budget.”

The IMF’s blunt assessment is another warning that whichever party forms the next government, it will rapidly abandon its election vows of “fairness” and deepen the brutal austerity drive.

The IMF slashed its 2019 growth estimate for Australia from 2.8 percent to 2.1 percent, far below the budget’s unreal forecasts of 2.75 percent in 2019‑ 20 and 2020‑ 21, and 3 percent in the following two years. That alone means cutting billions of dollars from social spending in order to meet the demands of the financial markets for a budget surplus.

As for “fairness,” the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) issued a report that exposed this fraud. It stated that Australia’s richest individuals are increasing their proportion of national income to some of the highest levels in the developed world, while “middle-class Australians” are being squeezed into lower incomes or absolute poverty at some of the fastest rates internationally.

By “middle class,” the OECD means most of the working class—those households earning between $US19,537 and $US52,097 a year in purchasing power parity dollars. While upper income Australians, as a proportion of the population, grew by 2 percentage points between the mid-1980s and the mid-2010s, their share of income grew by 7 percentage points.

Median incomes in Australia had doubled since the mid-1990s, but housing costs had lifted by 250 percent, education expenses had increased by 150 percent, and “over-indebtedness” had soared, placing households in what “looks increasingly like a boat in rocky waters.”

Between 2007 and 2015, the OECD found the share of “middle-income households” falling into poverty in a single year was 4 percent, double the rate of the developed world and the same rate as impoverished Greece.

These statistics provide only a pale picture of the inequality and falling living conditions imposed by the corporate ruling class and its political servants, both Coalition and Labor, over the past four decades. Since the global financial breakdown of 2008-09, this social assault has only intensified, with full-time jobs being casualised, young workers being pushed into low-paid and insecure work, and more than a million jobless and disabled workers forced to try to survive on sub-poverty welfare payments.

In office since the Labor Party suffered a landslide defeat in 2013, the Coalition between the Liberals and the rural-based Nationals is being torn apart. The most right-wing factions, around Morrison, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton and ex-Prime Minister Tony Abbott, are seeking to divert rising social discontent and political disaffection in xenophobic and nationalist directions.

Given the government’s instability, sections of big business are again looking to the Labor Party, backed by the trade unions, to take office to suppress the resistance of the working class, as the Hawke and Keating governments did from 1983 to 1996 and the Rudd and Gillard governments from 2007 to 2013.

Australia: Another toxic factory fire endangers working-class suburbs

Peter Byrne

Last Friday an enormous fire engulfed a factory used to store chemical waste in the northern Melbourne suburb of Campbellfield. A worker, Vignesh Varatharaja, a refugee originally from Sri Lanka, was badly burned and had to be hospitalised and placed in an induced coma. About 175 firefighters were needed to quench the blaze.

A massive toxic plume of black smoke, visible from central Melbourne 30 kilometres away, covered a large area in the city’s north and triggered emergency health alerts. Residents in the working-class suburbs of Campbellfield, Broadmeadows, Pascoe Vale and Coburg were advised to take shelter indoors immediately. Eleven local schools were closed for the day, while 12 more reportedly telephoned families asking them to collect their children.

As it is not known exactly what chemicals were being stored at the site, the health danger posed by the fire remains unknown.

Firefighters at the scene of the blaze

The fire is only the latest in a series of incidents in Melbourne involving toxic and other industrial waste storage. All have affected working-class areas and all were the product of the subordination of public health and safety to the corporate profit interests.

There have been eight factory fires in Melbourne since October. One of the schools affected by Friday’s fire, Broadmeadows Primary, has been forced to shut down multiple times in recent years due to dangerous fires, including at Coolooro’s SKM Recycling factory and at a nearby tyre dump. In the western suburbs, an enormous fire erupted in Tottenham last September in a factory used to store chemicals.

The Tottenham fire triggered ongoing investigations by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The Age reported that the EPA discovered a massive, illegal toxic dumping operation across Melbourne’s northern suburbs, with up to 19 million litres of waste stockpiled. This is ten times more than was previously estimated.

In recent months, investigators uncovered multiple warehouses in Epping and Campbellfield. “When discovered,” the Age wrote, “the warehouses were packed almost floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall with industrial-size plastic containers and drums.”

The newspaper also reported that government documents last December assessed the potential consequences of a fire or spill at these sites as “MAJOR” and representing a “danger to life.”

Despite this, the state Labor government in Victoria has done nothing to resolve the toxic waste storage crisis. Corporate operators continue to get away with blatantly unsafe practices, and the EPA remains an underfunded and largely toothless body.

The EPA inspected the Campbellfield factory that went up in flames last Friday as recently as March 13. According to the Age, inspectors found “leaking containers and spilled chemicals on the factory floor,” with safety breaches described as “extremely alarming.” The site had more than 400,000 litres of chemicals, three times the authorised amount.

The EPA suspended Bradbury Industrial Services’ licence to process toxic chemical waste. Yet apparently no other sanction was imposed, nor any steps taken to resolve the health and safety hazard. Another inspection was carried out last Thursday, the day before the fire, with EPA staff reportedly discovering that the site still had 300,000 litres of chemicals.

The Herald Sun reported: “The site has a chequered history. The first non-­ compliance notice issued to Bradbury Industrial Services was in 2012, when operating under a different name—Resolve Waste Management. The company was given an official warning for not complying with site requirements. It was also fined $15,000 in 2016, but not convicted, after a 2013 fire at another Campbellfield site in Merola Way.”

Despite these circumstances, Labor Premier Daniel Andrews issued an extraordinary statement on Friday—before any serious investigation had commenced into the cause of the fire—declaring that “this is not a suspicious fire.”

Toxic waste disposal is big business. Three major corporations dominate the market—SUEZ Recycling & Recovery, Veolia Environmental Services, and Cleanaway Waste Management. Cleanaway is listed as one of the top 100 companies on the ASX stock exchange, with annual revenues of $1.5 billion. A 2017 government report found that these corporations process about 80 percent of all hazardous waste, with the other 20 percent handled by smaller business operators.

As reported by the Age: “This new ‘business model’ sees cowboy operators—and organised crime gangs—offer to remove waste at below-market rates to businesses wanting to avoid paying expensive disposal fees to licensed operators. Many of the chemicals being found at illicit sites are used by heavy industry and are expensive to dispose of properly. In many cases, landlords or a local council are forced to pay to clean up the mess left behind by rogue operators.”

A firefighter who works in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, and who has responded to numerous factory and warehouse fires, told the World Socialist Web Site: “The reality is that we don’t know how many [chemical sites] there are out there. These are big businesses. What are they going to get from the government? What fine will they get? They’ll get f*** all. They’re willing to take the hit when they get caught because of the money they’re making. It’s huge.”

The ability of waste disposal operators to act with impunity is a consequence of the state Labor government’s promotion of deregulation and privatisation measures aimed at boosting corporate profit rates. Every sphere of social life is now subject to corporate profiteering, including the disposal of hazardous waste.

The needs and interests of working-class people count for nothing. Workers in Campbellfield and surrounding suburbs have been badly affected by the protracted de-industrialisation of the economy, which was worsened by the liquidation of the Australian car industry in 2013 that saw the shut-down of the Coolaroo Ford plant. Yet nothing has been done by governments—Labor or Liberal—to address the depression level joblessness in the area—23 percent in Coolaroo and 25 percent in Broadmeadows.

The trade unions have policed the many factory closures in the area and continue to enforce onerous and unsafe working conditions in remaining plants. Workers at the Campbellfield toxic waste factory were covered by the Australian Workers Union (AWU), which is yet to explain its failure to ensure the safety of workers in the factory and surrounding suburbs.

Twenty of the 50 workers at the plant reportedly migrated to Australia on refugee and bridging visas, which makes them ineligible for unemployment benefits. The AWU’s only response has been to set up an online fund appeal for the badly injured worker.