Mali government falls amid protests against Franco-German occupation

Stéphane Hugues & Alex Lantier

On April 18, the Malian government collapsed as Prime Minister Soumeylou Boubèye Maïga submitted the resignation of his government to President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta (IBK). This followed weeks of protests against the Franco-German occupation of Mali in the aftermath of the horrific ethnic massacre of 170 Peuls on March 23 in the village of Ogossagou.

The French puppet regime in Mali, one of the world’s poorest countries, also faces growing strikes by workers. Anger is mounting among workers against the plunder of state finances organized under the auspices of Paris and Berlin. Strikes have been ongoing for months among public school teachers, who are demanding payment of housing bonuses and back wages, and by rail workers mounting strikes and hunger strikes to demand back wages.

On April 5, 50,000 people (30,000 according to Malian police) marched on Independence Avenue in the capital, Bamako, to denounce the Franco-German occupation of the country, launched in 2013, and the corruption of the French puppet regime led by Keïta, known as IBK. The protest was called by representatives of the Peul ethnicity targeted by the Ogossagou massacre, civil society organizations and Islamic preachers, including the former president of the Islamic High Commission of Mali (HCIM), Imam Mahmoud Dicko.

In Bamako, protesters held aloft handmade signs proclaiming, “France is a terrorist state with mercenaries and drones,” “No to France’s genocide in Mali” and “Go home, don’t plunder our natural resources.” They chanted, “Down with IBK.” There were calls for the implementation of Muslim sharia law and also for Russian assistance against the French and German troops occupying Mali.

“We are sick and tired of this regime. Our children, husbands, and our parents are dying due to the misgovernment of the country by IBK and his clan,” Mariam Fomba told AFP. Fomba, whose husband was killed in the war in Mali, said she wanted to “throw out IBK.”

Before that, on March 30, hundreds of people had attended a protest outside Montparnasse train station in Paris, marching to the Malian embassy to denounce the massacre. Mimo Dia, the organizer of the Paris protest, criticized the complicity of the French puppet regime with the ethnic-Dogon Dan Nan Ambassagou militia that is widely suspected to have carried out the Ogossagou massacre.

Dia said, “Dogons and Peuls have always existed. Even today, amid the massacre, Peul and Dogon villages coexist and don’t care about the conflict. So, it’s not a problem with the Dogons. It’s a political problem. The Malian army has outsourced Malian security to the Dogons. That has to stop. It’s why we want one very simple thing: to disband all the militias in Mali … including Dan Nan Ambassagou, and the Malian authorities complicit with them. They should all be caught and tried decently, so that justice can be done.”

These protests fuelled growing discussion of a possible vote of a motion of censure targeting the Maïga government by the Malian National Assembly, which was ultimately submitted on April 17 by parliamentarians of opposition parties and of IBK’s Rally for Mali (RPM).

On the morning of April 18, Maïga was engaged in desperate, back-channel talks with the RPM and opposition parties in an attempt to assemble a majority to oppose the censure motion. A few hours before debate on the motion of censure was about to begin, however, Maïga threw in the towel and handed in his letter of resignation to the Malian president’s office.

Maïga’s resignation offers nothing to workers and oppressed toilers in Mali, however, and will only intensify the class struggle in Mali and across the region. President Keïta’s choice of Boubou Cissé to replace Maïga on April 22 points to his role as a lackey of imperialism and finance capital. Cissé, an unelected economist and political independent, had just been overseeing as finance minister the non-payment of wages to public sector workers. Trained in Germany, the Persian Gulf and France, Cissé worked at the World Bank before returning to Mali amid the French invasion to take ministerial portfolios in mining and then in finance.

Growing anti-war protests and class struggles in Mali are part of a broad upsurge of mass political opposition and class struggles around the world. From militant strikes among American teachers and Mexican maquiladora workers, to the “yellow vest” protests in France and civil servants and plantation workers strikes in the Indian subcontinent, a mood of intransigent opposition to the ruling elites is growing. In Africa, mass protests demanding the fall of dictatorships in Algeria and Sudan are unfolding among waves of teachers strikes across the continent.

In France’s former colonial empire, including Mali, this brings workers into confrontation with the eruption of European militarism since the last great class struggles in the region: the revolutionary uprisings that toppled imperialist-backed dictators in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011.

After the uprising in Egypt began, the NATO powers went to war in Libya and destroyed Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, which Paris saw as a longstanding obstacle. Gaddafi’s overthrow and murder plunged not only Libya but the entire Sahel into civil war. Militias fleeing Libya arrived in Mali and chased the Malian army out of the north of the country—the pretext Paris seized upon to invade the country in January 2013. With the complicity of regimes in the region, including Algiers, which opened its airspace to French bombers, a war began that has now lasted six years.

In addition to France, the United States, Canada and—since 2015—Germany have sent troops to Mali. With over 1,000 troops, the Mali war is Berlin’s largest overseas deployment since it ended the demilitarization of its foreign policy that followed the fall of the Nazi regime. Events have put paid to imperialist claims that these deployments aim to protect the Malian population from Islamist militias.

The war has displaced hundreds of thousands of people and cost thousands of lives. Bamako receives $1 billion per year in aid funds but—concentrated on helping NATO troops fight its own population—has overseen a collapse in living standards and public services, to the point that now teachers’ and rail workers’ salaries are not even paid.

Despite this expenditure on war, French-led occupation forces have not succeeded in crushing military opposition to their presence and the puppet regime in Bamako. Eleven Malian soldiers were killed in an attack at 5 a.m. April 21 at a military station in Guiré, near Mali’s border with Mauritania. The attacking militia left behind 15 dead, according to the Malian government.

One French military doctor died in Mali in a bomb attack on his vehicle, AFP reported.

Severe police-state measures come into force in Sri Lanka

Pani Wijesiriwardena & K. Ratnayake

Following Sunday’s terrorist bombings in Sri Lanka, a nationwide state of emergency was imposed yesterday, giving the military, as well as the police, sweeping, anti-democratic powers.

Under the pretext of fighting terrorism, the Colombo government, like its counterparts around the world, is strengthening its police-state apparatus, which will be used to suppress a resurgence of working-class struggles.

The emergency regulations allow the security forces to take measures for the “suppression of mutiny, riot or civil commotion, or for the maintenance of supplies and services essential to the life of the community.” The essential services clause has in the past been used to ban strikes and other industrial action.

Under the state of emergency, the military is granted police powers, including the “detention of persons; the taking of possession or control of any property or undertaking without warrant.” The regulations allow for the lengthy detention of so-called terrorist suspects without charge or trial.

The state of emergency reactivates sections of the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) that was extensively used by the security forces during the island’s three-decade communal war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to suppress Tamils and working people as a whole.

The PTA was used to arbitrarily detain thousands of men and women, extract confessions by torture and use those confessions to secure convictions. Using the cloak of a state of emergency, the security forces went far further—carrying out hundreds of abductions and extra-judicial killings, not only of “LTTE suspects” but government opponents and critics.

The government is now extending these measures. An unprecedented nationwide ban has been imposed on social media, including Facebook and YouTube, censoring what is a widely-used and popular form of communication. As of last October, Sri Lanka had 23 million mobile phone users, 6.4 million internet users and five million on Facebook.

The across-the-board crackdown reflects deep fears in ruling circles in Sri Lanka and internationally that social media is a powerful tool not only for disseminating ideas but for organising collective action. In the context of a rising tide of strikes and protests, the government is imposing blanket censorship on the pretext of blocking “false news.”

Speaking yesterday in parliament, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe noted that world leaders had expressed their support for Sri Lanka. “We should seize this opportunity to use their assistance to eradicate terrorism,” he said, adding, without elaborating, that structural changes needed “to face this terror situation.” Inevitably this will mean a further bolstering of the police-state apparatus.

The death toll in Sunday’s barbaric attack has risen to 321 men, women and children, with more than 500 injured, many seriously. Among the dead are 45 children and 48 foreigners, including some Indian workers, as well as American, European, Chinese and Japanese tourists.

Few details of the bombings have been released. According to the government, seven suicide bombers were involved in the attacks on churches and expensive hotels. The police have said 40 people have been arrested, including suspected members of the Islamist group—National Thowheeth Jamma’ath (NJT).

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) yesterday claimed responsibility for the bombings, saying they were carried out by “Islamic State fighters.” Many commentators have cast doubt on the statement, noting that ISIS has previously claimed responsibility for attacks it did not carry out, in order to boost its reputation.

Whether or not ISIS was in some way connected to the attack, serious questions remain. The government is yet to offer a credible explanation as to why no action was taken following a specific warning—10 days before the attack—that NJT was planning to bomb Christian churches.

Defence Secretary Hemasiri Fernando attempted to justify the inaction by declaring that the government did not expect an attack of “such magnitude” and “so soon,” adding: “It was quite impossible to protect a large number of churches last Sunday.”

These remarks are at the same time cynical and absurd. The Sri Lankan security forces are among the largest per capita in the world and have waged a brutal war to suppress so-called LTTE terrorists. Yet it appears that no action was taken to investigate NJT nor protect any, let alone all, churches. If the government was not expecting an attack of “such magnitude,” what did it expect? And again, why was no action taken?

The entire political establishment and the security forces are mired in Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism and have connections to Buddhist extremist groups that have attacked Christians and Muslims in the past—with the police turning a blind eye.

Did the Sri Lankan government and state also turn a blind eye to the impending bombings on Sunday, calculating that a tragedy could be exploited for political ends and to justify a security crackdown?

In the wake of the bombings, all the rival political factions, as well as the military, are seeking to exploit the tragedy to advance their own interests.

Tuesday, Army Commander Mahesh Senanayake declared: “An emergency should be declared at least for a short period so that the army is given these powers to enable us to bring this situation under control.” What exactly the military is seeking to bring under control is not clear.

Colombo has been embroiled in bitter political infighting since Maithripala Sirisena ousted Mahinda Rajapakse as president in the 2015 election via a US-backed regime change operation. Now, amid a worsening economic crisis and growing class struggles, Sirisena has come to blows with Wickremesinghe, the man he installed as prime minister.

Wickremesinghe has all but blamed Sirisena, who has control of the police and defence ministries, for not taking action to prevent the bombings. At the same time, the government is clearly intending to whip up anti-Muslim chauvinism, with ministers openly discussing a ban on Muslim women wearing the burqa.

Speaking in parliament, opposition leader Rajapakse accused the government of being responsible for the terrorist attacks, saying it had harassed military officers and his brother, former Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, over their role in the war. In reality, the government has taken virtually no action over the war crimes, for which the entire Colombo establishment is responsible.

The US is also seeking to use the bombings to enhance its position in Colombo and undermine China’s influence. Washington’s hostility to Mahinda Rajapakse stemmed from his close ties to Beijing. Under Wickremesinghe, Sri Lanka has strengthened its diplomatic and military ties with the US, at China’s expense.

Both US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have phoned Wickremesinghe and offered assistance. FBI officials are already on the ground in Colombo and involved in the investigations.

Workers should oppose the state of emergency and reject the reactionary intrigues and manipulations of all factions of the ruling class. All of them are moving to establish dictatorial forms of rule and to whip up anti-Muslim chauvinism to divide the working class. The fight for democratic rights can go forward only through a unified struggle of the working class across ethnic and religious lines on the basis of a socialist and internationalist perspective.

Major Indian airline grounded, threatening 23,000 jobs

Deepal Jayasekera

Jet Airways, until recently India’s largest private airline, has been forced to ground all its aircraft since last Wednesday, threatening the jobs of its more than 23,000 employees. The airline announced the grounding of all flights with immediate effect after it failed to secure funding from investors to pay for fuel and other bills.

With around $1.2 billion in bank debt, the country’s oldest private airline was desperate to secure a stopgap loan of about $217 million from its lenders as part of a rescue deal that had been agreed to in late March. But the lenders balked at advancing the funding. As the airline said in an April 17 statement, “Since no emergency funding from the lenders or any other sources is forthcoming, the airline will not be able to pay for fuel or other critical services to keep the operations going.”

The grounding of Jet Airways poses the immediate danger of massive job losses and demonstrates how the company, its shareholders, and lenders are determined to place the burden of the airline’s crisis on its workforce. All Jet Airways employees have yet to receive their March salary, and its pilots, engineers and senior staff have not been paid since January.

Desperate Jet Airways employees demonstrated in New Delhi and Mumbai last Thursday, calling for government intervention to bail out the airline. They displayed placards saying, “Save Jet Airways, Save our family”.

The collapse of Jet Airways has taken place in the midst of campaigning for India’s general election and presents the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with yet another crisis. Modi and his Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have boasted about India’s “world-beating” economic growth. But numerous reports, including from government agencies, have pointed to a sharp rise in unemployment among all sections of the population, from rural women to university graduates.

In a desperate attempt to derail mounting popular opposition from working people and rural toilers over mass unemployment and under-employment, social inequality and poverty, Modi and his BJP have been whipping up communal animosity against Muslims and tensions with Pakistan.

Jet Airways officials and lenders are searching for an investor willing to acquire a majority stake in the airline. Naresh Goyal, the founder of Jet Airways, is reportedly working with Future Trend Capital, headquartered in Delaware, and London-based Adi Partners to put together such a deal. Jet Airways’s lenders, for their part, are endeavouring to secure bids from US private equity firm TPG Capital and Indigo Partners, which owns a controlling interest in the ultra-low cost US carrier American Frontier Airlines.

India’s government-backed wealth fund, the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund or NIIF, and Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways, which already owns a 24 percent share in the grounded airline, are also being tapped as potential takeover candidates.

The airline’s lenders, including the State Bank of India (SBI) and other Indian government-owned banks, have issued a May 10 deadline for potential buyers to submit their binding bids. According to Ashish Nainan, aviation analyst at Care Ratings, “Even if a deal is reached it will take considerable time to get Jet back in the air.” This means that Jet employees, who have not received salaries for one or two months, will be left waiting weeks and months more without pay.

Any “rescue” plan for Jet Airways will be implemented at the expense of the jobs, wages and working conditions of the airline’s 23,000 strong workforce, who will bear the brunt of the “restructuring” measures needed to boost the company’s profitability. Jet Airways Chief Executive Vinay Dube admitted in a communication to employees: “We don’t have an answer today to the very important question of what happens to employees during the sale.”

Jet Airways, which was India’s second-biggest airline by market share until last November, operated more than 120 planes and well over 600 flights daily at its peak. In recent weeks, being unable to pay its staff and for fuel and other critical services, the airline was forced to cancel hundreds of flights and halt all international flights.

The grounding of Jet Airways is part of a global aviation industry crisis. Confronting rising fuel prices, airlines are engaged in cut-throat competition with each other for market share. Airline workers’ wages, jobs and working conditions and passenger safety have all become casualties of their desperate attempts to cut costs so as to keep their companies operating, and ensure the continued flow of dividends to their shareholders.

Last September, Ryanair workers across Europe took strike action to demand higher wages and better conditions. Ryanair became Europe’s largest budget airline through poor pay and working conditions, high levels of exploitation, and the widespread use of contract labour.

The airline crisis has severely affected most Indian airlines. Kingfisher, a major private carrier founded by beer tycoon Vijay Mallya, was grounded in 2012 at the cost of thousands of jobs after failing to make payments to bank lenders, staff, and airports. Spicejet, another low-budget private airline, was saved from collapsing at the last minute in 2014.

Air India, the country’s state-owned carrier, is heavily indebted, with its short and long-term debt totaling $10.3 billion as of March 31, 2017. It is surviving thanks to bailouts totalling billions of dollars. Modi’s BJP government sought to privatise the airline last year, but had to abandon the attempt after failing to secure a single bid by its May 31 deadline. The airline’s crisis continues to be borne by its workforce, which routinely waits weeks and even months for their pay, and by the working class more broadly, which is funding the bailouts through increased taxation and austerity.

The Jet Airways’ crisis has been exacerbated by the growth of low-cost competition in India’s domestic market since the mid-2000s, rising fuel prices, and the depreciation of the Indian rupee. As a result, the airline owes large sums to its suppliers, pilots and other staff, and oil companies. The airline has made a loss in all but two of the past 11 years, and defaulted on loans due to be paid by December 31, 2018.

Last year, the Modi government approached Tata Group to ask for its assistance in rescuing Jet Airways. The crisis deepened still further when companies that were leasing planes to Jet Airways refused to continue doing so as the airline’s imminent collapse became increasingly apparent.

Following its grounding, Jet Airways’ share price plummeted 34 percent Thursday, reaching its lowest level since April 2009. This underscores investors’ scepticism over prospects for the airline’s revival. Moreover, it confirms that in exchange for any “rescue,” investors will demand a savage cost-cutting programme at the expense of workers’ jobs, wages and workplace conditions.

The grounded airline’s rivals have rushed to take advantage of Jet Airways’ withdrawal from operations. Spice Jet said it would add 27 planes over the next two weeks, and saw its shares surge by 15 percent on Thursday. IndiGo, now the country’s biggest private carrier, is also adding new planes.

OECD report: Growth of social inequality fuels global political and economic crisis

Jessica Goldstein

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released an annual report, Under Pressure: The Squeezed Middle Class on April 10. The 178-page report paints a glaring picture of the social polarization that has occurred over the past three decades among all OECD countries.

The OECD defines the “middle class” as households earning between 75 percent and 200 percent of the national median income in each country. In the United States, the middle-income threshold for a single person household ranges from $23,416 to $62,442 per year; in contrast, the poverty threshold for a single person in the US is $12,490.

In reality, the vast majority of those households in the middle-income strata would be defined as working class, not middle class—those working for a wage or salary and whose labor is exploited for profit. The findings of the report further underscore this point.

The report shows that among OECD countries, a growing number of middle-income earners perceive “that the current socioeconomic system is unfair.” This is attributed to the fact that in many OECD countries, working households have faced “dismal income growth or stagnation” and in some cases, decline. Middle incomes increased at a rate of one-third less than the top 10 percent over the past 30 years. Broken down by decade, income growth for middle-income households was 1.0 percent from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s; 1.6 percent from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s; and 0.3 percent from 2007 to 2016.

The alarming rate of social polarization and growth of income inequality is a main feature of the report. It found that the top 10 percent of households, across all OECD countries, own nearly half of all wealth, while the bottom forty percent own only three percent. In the US, the wealth held by the top one percent of households surged from 11 percent to 20 percent, nearly doubling over the past three decades.

At the same time, the share of middle-income earners in the total population fell from 64 percent to 61 percent, and the proportion of low-income households in OECD has expanded.

The OECD refers to this decline in the middle-income category and expansion of high-income and low-income categories as a “shift in center of gravity of economy.” In the US, earnings have increased faster at the top than in the middle since the 1980s. Among all OECD countries, while the high-income population increased from 11 percent to 14 percent, its share of wealth increased disproportionately from 26 percent to 35 percent.

No longer does a two-income household guarantee middle-income status, the report found. Also, the number of families with children in the middle-income category has fallen over the past three decades, which it attributes to the exorbitant costs of education, healthcare and housing needed to raise a family in most OECD countries.

For middle-income households, the report found that the slide into lower-income status is a real threat, and especially pronounced in the US, Latvia, Estonia, Portugal, Spain and Greece, where middle-income households are at the greatest risk of falling into the lower income category over a four-year period. The immediate reasons for this are varied.

For middle-income earners, one in six jobs are at risk for automation. This number is one in five for low-income earners and one in ten for high-income earners. Housing prices have grown three times faster than the median income over the past two decades, and the cost of education and healthcare have also increased well above the rate of inflation in OECD countries.

This has caused over-indebtedness to be a major problem for middle-income households, with one in five finding that they have to spend more than they earn to make ends meet. In European countries, half of middle-income households say they have difficulty making ends meet.

The report also found that 60 percent of OECD parents surveyed believe that future generations will not reach the same income level as their parents and grandparents. Younger generations of workers have less stable jobs than baby boomers, or those born from 1943–1964. The sharpest decline in the middle-income population was among 18–44-year-olds, with the greatest decline over 30 years being those aged 30–44.

In the US, the share of adults in the middle-income range either fell or remained the same over 30 years. In all OECD countries, an increasing number of elderly people fall into the middle-income elderly, in large part due to the growth in those working past retirement age in order to afford necessities.

Middle-income households do not receive as much in social benefits as they pay in taxes. Meanwhile, since 1981, corporate and personal income tax for top earners has been cut, with corporate taxes down from 47 percent to 25 percent and personal income tax on the wealthy down from 66 percent to 43 percent. The supposed lack of money for social benefits is exacerbated by the fact the wealthy are more likely to hoard income in offshore accounts.

Jobs requiring a high skill level make up one fifth of high-income earners today, as opposed to one-fourth in the mid-1990s. Jobs requiring a medium skill level are mostly found in the middle-income households, but the likelihood that they are now lower income has increased in 14 countries. Medium skilled occupations, according to the OECD, are those in such positions as clerks, craft workers, plant and machine operators and assemblers.

An increasing number of higher skilled and professional occupations are now found in middle-income households as opposed to high-income households. These positions include managerial, professional, and technical occupations, such as teachers, lawyers, health professionals, engineers and social workers. This points to the proletarianization of large sections of the labor force.

More workers than ever in the middle-income bracket are engaged in non-standard work, increasing the perception of instability, insecurity and anxiety. Non-standard work is defined as temporary, part-time and self-employed work arrangements. These jobs have fewer job protections, social rights and job training opportunities.

The OECD report expresses the nervousness within the ruling class over the consequences of these transformations. It states that “a rising sense of vulnerability, uncertainty and anxiety has translated into increasing distrust towards global integration and public institutions” and attributes social inequality to the rise of politicians who promote nationalism, isolationism, populism and protectionism.

Such political tendencies, however, do not actually express the genuine sentiments of the working class, whose strivings are toward social equality and international cooperation. They represent sections of the ruling class that aim to suppress any movement of the working class towards socialism and internationalism through the use of national chauvinism and demagogy.

The report offers desperate proposals for limited reforms to address the crisis. Among these reforms are relaxation on regulations on construction and introduction of rent controls, publicly subsidized childcare or cash reimbursement for parents, universal healthcare coverage or “means-tested” assistance, vocational training programs and adult education, and tuition fee loans and school-to-work programs.

But why have these limited reforms not been enacted already as the world economic system faces its next great financial crisis? The OECD report fails to address the fundamental cause of the crisis: the capitalist system itself.

Money abounds in the banks and stock markets, as the report itself details. The massive transfer of wealth from the working class to the ruling class over the past three decades has created the conditions of social crisis, and yet this same ruling class offers no answers.

Bayer cuts 4,500 jobs in Germany

Dietmar Gaisenkersting

In a deep cost-cutting move, chemical giant Bayer AG is eliminating 4,500 jobs in Germany or almost one in seven of its 32,000 positions in the country. According to the Bayer works council, most of the jobs will be cut at its corporate headquarters in Leverkusen, just north of Cologne in west central Germany.

Last November, Bayer announced 12,000 job cuts in its worldwide workforce, or one in ten jobs. This includes 5,500 administrative positions, 4,100 jobs at Bayer’s agricultural chemicals subsidiary Crop Science as a result of its merger with US-based Monsanto, and 2,350 in the company’s pharmaceutical and consumer health divisions.

These job cuts do not include another 10,000 being eliminated through spinoffs of brands and divisions. The company is selling off its veterinary medicine division, the health product brands Coppertone (sunscreen) and Dr. Scholl’s (foot care), and its 60 percent share of a joint venture called Currenta Solutions. The latter is a business service provider that employs 5,000 workers in Germany who provide waste management, infrastructure, utilities and other services.

A deal reached by the works council will delay the winding down of Currenta until three years after its sale, meaning, at best, that workers will keep their jobs for a maximum of three years.

On Tuesday, all Bayer employees received a “Dear Employees” letter from Bayer CEO Werner Baumann, which said, “We will reduce the annual costs of our platform functions (corporate functions, business services and regional platforms) by 1.4 billion euros.” These moves, the millionaire Bauman wrote, were necessary “to ensure our competitiveness.”

Last year, it was announced that 750 out of 3,400 jobs would be cut at the Wuppertal plant, just east of Düsseldorf, due to the closure of the brand-new factory for blood clotting medicine, costing 350 jobs and another 400 in pharmaceutical research. In Berlin, 650 of the 5,000 jobs in research are being wiped out by 2022, and several hundred jobs will be cut in the agricultural chemicals division in Monheim.

Under Germany’s “co-determination” scheme, half of the seats on Bayer’s supervisory board are filled with members of the works council and the trade union IGBCE (Mining, Chemicals, Energy). While management and the works council are still negotiating the details of the job losses, the works council is already preparing the workforce for deep cuts. The Rheinische Post quoted from an internal letter from the Central Works Council to the workforce, which states, “The company’s plans go to the foundations. The concern is great everywhere in the company with the headquarters in Leverkusen expected to be hit hardest.”

Far from opposing this attack, Heinz Georg Webers of the IGBCE and Deputy Chairman of the Central Works Council announced that the bodies he oversees would help the company shape the reductions. “We insist on keeping the promises in the ‘Joint Statement’ for all colleagues affected by the drastic cuts project,” Webers said.

In November 2018, in the “Joint Declaration” of the Works Council and the Executive Board, titled “Securing Bayer’s Future 2025,” the works councils had unanimously approved the company’s job-cutting plan. As usual, the jobs are to be destroyed in a “socially acceptable way”—i.e., without compulsory redundancies. Instead, with the blessing of the unions, management will get rid of workers by the end of 2025 through offering severance pay and early retirement packages.

The conditions under which workers can leave the company have been fixed since January. Older workers may receive so-called flexi-termination contracts that run for six years and allow them to retire early at age 57, with a maximum 7.2 percent reduction of their statutory pension. For younger Bayer workers, the company will provide severance payments.

As a result of the restructuring, Bayer aims to save €2.6 billion per year from 2022 onwards. The one-time costs—for example, for severance payments—amount to €4.4 billion. Bayer CEO Baumann had already announced to stockholders last year that all of Bayer’s businesses should contribute to “improving the company’s performance” by 2022 and beyond. The profit margin, the corporate executive said, should rise from approximately 26 percent last year to about 27 percent this year and to more than 30 percent in 2022.

Many workers will accept the offer to “voluntarily” give up their jobs because they know the union will do nothing and fear that the Monsanto takeover can only make things worse.

The shareholder’s constant demands for higher yields prompted Bayer to acquire Monsanto in June last year for US$63 billion (€56 billion). While Baumann denies that the Monsanto acquisition has anything to do with the current cuts, in reality the financial markets are demanding the jobs massacre to cover the huge legal costs, stemming from Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer.

There are now at least 11,200 US plaintiffs who blame the glyphosate-based weed killer for their cancer. In two judgements, the courts awarded plaintiffs damages running into millions. Bayer has appealed against the lower court’s judgements.

A US judge, who has already tried Bayer once before, and has brought together hundreds of complaints from farmers, gardeners and consumers, has called on Bayer to engage a mediator and negotiate with the plaintiffs on a settlement.

Business daily Handelsblatt quoted the analyst Richard Vosser of the US bank JPMorgan, who assumes that the number of plaintiffs will rise to at least 15,000. “He expects Bayer to face costs of 5 billion euros.”

These billions, too, will be squeezed out of the workforce through a rigorous austerity programme.

Jobs and working conditions can only be defended by waging a fight in opposition to the works councils and the IGBCE. This means organising rank-and-file factory and workplace committees independent of the union and its local representatives.

In a statement on the redundancies at Bayer last year, the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) explained that these committees would be “responsible for bringing together all Bayer employees who reject job losses at all locations and planning and preparing joint resistance.” This applied to all Bayer employees worldwide and to all workers—far beyond Bayer.

“This is necessarily a political struggle that is not only directed against individual employers, but against the entire capitalist system and the grand coalition government in Germany,” the SGP writes. “The Socialist Equality Party and the World Socialist Web Site are fighting to develop the growing opposition to redundancies and welfare cuts into a powerful counter-offensive by workers. This requires an international socialist strategy aimed at breaking the stranglehold of the banks and large corporations and transforming the world economy to meet the needs of the population, not private profit. Multinational corporations such as Bayer must be expropriated and transformed into public enterprises under the democratic control of workers.”

Privatisation of UK’s National Health Service escalates

Ben Trent

Starting this month, general practitioners in the National Health Service (NHS) have been banned from advertising private services. The ban is being implemented through a new contract agreed by NHS England, the umbrella organisation for NHS trusts.

The contract stipulates that “from 2019 it will no longer be possible for any GP provider either directly or via proxy to advertise or host private, paid-for GP services that fall within the scope of NHS-funded primary medical services.”

NHS England ratified the contract with the British Medical Association (BMA), one of the biggest associations for healthcare workers, which hailed it as the “biggest overhaul of services for 15 years” and one that would stop the “increasing blurring in recent years between NHS and private GP services offered to patients.”

The reality is the contract doesn’t offer anything to bridge the increasing gulf between the resources allocated to services and the resources required to provide adequate care. GPOnline points out that the deal “could strip hundreds of thousands of pounds in funding from some GP practices that operate private patient lists alongside their standard NHS list.”

The paltry £20 million set aside for three years to offset this income loss is hardly sufficient.

The ban does nothing to stem the growth of private healthcare providers in direct competition with the NHS. An internet search for private GP services finds that Spire Healthcare advertises GP appointments for 30 minutes at £90, with 39 hospitals providing appointments nationwide. If a patient wishes to book an appointment in Oxford, he or she can easily spend £70 for 15 minutes at a BUPA hospital.

In a telling article entitled “Should I go private, doctor?” which was published last month in the medical journal The BMJ, GP Helen Salisbury relates discussions with patients who are interested in “going private.” Patients are compelled to seek private treatment because the NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) “no longer funds—surgical treatment of troublesome varicose veins, removal of unsightly but non-malignant skin lesions, or other ‘low priority’ complaints.”

Another factor pushing patients to private treatment, Salisbury reports, is that the “NHS—which is meant to provide timely investigation, treatment, and relief of suffering—is failing patients as waiting times increase.” She explains that most of her patients support the NHS and don’t want to be “queue jumpers,” but that the conundrum faced by such patients is, “How bad will these symptoms get if I hang on for NHS treatment?” She makes clear, however, that this quandary is faced by only a handful of patients. As for the general populace, there is no spare money for private healthcare.

There remain an increasing number of avenues that can lead to GP privatisations. GPOnline reported the intended move of “at least five” practices in the borough of Tower Hamlets looking to leave their GMS (General Medical Services) contracts to ICP (Integrated Care Providers) contracts.

ICPs, still in a consultative stage, were developed by NHS England to allow NHS trusts a chance to better integrate with private care providers, offering “greater flexibility to achieve full integration of care.”

Dr. Richard Vautrey, General Practitioners Committee chair, described moves by GPs to enter ICPs as a “one-way street to loss of independence, direct management control and potential wholesale privatisation.”

NHS FightBack warned in our February article, “NHS 10-year plan: Recipe for further attacks on services and privatisation in UK”:

“[N]othing is more destructive in the LTP [Long Term Plan] than its commitment to continue privatization with vigour. The current network of 44 Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships (STPs) are to be turned into more centralized “Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) by April 2019. Every ICS will work towards an “Integrated Provider Contract” and these contracts will no doubt be awarded to or sub-contracted to the private sector.”

We noted that NHS England head “Simon Stevens has already written to the government suggesting legislative repeal of significant key sections of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 that he deems as barriers to wholesale privatization and NHS provider mergers.” The LTP wants to “remove the counterproductive effect that general competition rules and powers can have on the integration of NHS care” and “cut delays and costs of the NHS automatically having to go through procurement processes” and to give powers for the ICS commissioners to decide what is “best value” and to award contracts.”

The Long Term Plan is the latest cornerstone in the systematic assault on nationally provided healthcare services.

An investigation last year by the Pulse website found that over a million patients were forced to move surgeries in the preceding five years, due to the closure of nearly 450 GP surgeries. Of these, 134 closed in 2017, displacing 450,000 patients. This was in contrast to the closure of 18 surgeries in 2013, impacting 37,000 patients.

In 2016, NHS FightBack noted the contents of a leaked letter in which a senior official in NHS England official stated that “vulnerable [general] practices must either transform and deliver a quality service or be allowed to fail and wither by the system.” In conclusion, we warned, “The central aim of the policy that GP practices “be allowed to fail and wither” is nothing but creating the most favourable conditions for … private companies to profit from patient care services.” This is the situation three years hence.

The fact that overall NHS privatisation continues unabated puts paid that the shift to for-profit healthcare is being curtailed. Vast portions of the NHS are already in the hands of private sector profiteers. In 2017–18, £8.8 billion of the health service budget went to “independent sector” providers—a 50 percent increase compared with 2009-10.

According to a House of Commons Library analysis undertaken for the Labour Party, 21 NHS contracts worth £127 million are currently out to tender. One of these contracts is worth £91 million and will result in a private firm running an NHS 111/Clinical Assessment Service in the south east of England. Some £36 million worth of NHS contracts were put out to tender in just the last six weeks.

The ban on mixing of paid for and free services at GP surgeries is a calculated manoeuvre. Cognisant of the anger among broad sections of the population at the unabated attacks on the NHS—coupled with the increasing militancy of health workers in Britain and internationally—the government is seeking to find ways of rebranding their attacks and heading off opposition.

In this they are relying on the BMA and other unions to sell the new GP contract as a great barrier in stopping the privatisation of the NHS, whilst using the new lever—the LTP—to integrate private and public healthcare providers.

It was only three years ago that the BMA, via its Junior Doctors Committee, carried out a despicable sellout of the national strike by 40,000 junior doctors. This led to the imposition of a contract that was even inferior to one previously overwhelmingly rejected by its membership.

The only way to prevent the complete breakup of the NHS into private healthcare units is by the building of rank-and-file committees, independent of the trade union bureaucracy, in unity with all public and private sector workers to defend jobs, wages and essential services.

Police arrest over 1,000 climate change protesters in London

Robert Stevens

More than 1,000 people have been arrested in London over the last seven days of climate change protests organised by the Extinction Rebellion (XR) group.

Protesters continued to peacefully occupy public spaces in the capital, including Parliament Square, Piccadilly Circus, Waterloo Bridge, Oxford Circus and Marble Arch, despite mounting and provocative police arrests. On Saturday, 200 extra police from neighbouring forces were demanded by the Metropolitan Police to deal with the protesters. Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick declared, “Every day we have had over 1,000 officers—and now over 1,500 officers.”

The right-wing media and politicians have applauded the manhandling of protestors by the police, demanding the full force of the law to be used against them.

Video footage shot Saturday afternoon showed police dragging protesters down the road near Regent Street adjacent to the Oxford Circus area. By Saturday evening police heavily outnumbered protesters. Forcing protesters to leave Waterloo Bridge on Saturday, police issued a warning that remaining there would be an arrestable offence.

By Sunday evening, 963 people had been arrested, and a further 100-plus were arrested by Monday afternoon—for a total at 1,065 people. Those arrested range in age from 19 to 77. Of these, 53 have been charged for various offences including breach of Section 14 Notice of the Public Order Act 1986, for obstructing a highway and obstructing police.

A Met spokesman said that, contrary to reports, its cells were not yet full in London and that they had contingency plans to handle even larger-scale arrests.

On Sunday, police moved in to clear protesters from Oxford Street and Parliament Square during the day, and the remaining activists from Waterloo Bridge in the evening. Those demonstrators not arrested were being allowed to go to a small designated “legal” protest area at nearby Marble Arch.A fter evicting them, police remained at all three sites in force.

There was no let-up in calls by the right-wing media that the police step in and clear the streets. The Sun, owned by billionaire oligarch Rupert Murdoch, editorialised Monday, “The Mayor and the Met have huffed and puffed in the press—but the green tents are still standing [in Marble Arch].” It warned of the danger that “Their pathetic efforts have emboldened protesters,” adding, “Tomorrow, Britain goes back to work. The Home Secretary must ensure police have cleared the streets.”

On Monday, around 100 Extinction Rebellion activists protested in London’s Natural History Museum, lying down for around 30 minutes in a “die-in”.

The arrests were stepped up following a tweet issued Thursday morning by Home Secretary Sajid Javid. He wrote, “No one should be allowed to break the law without consequence” and called on police to “take a firm stance” against “any protesters who are stepping outside the boundaries of the law” and “significantly disrupting the lives of others.”

After a meeting between Javid and Cressida Dick, the Met described the protests at Waterloo Bridge, Oxford Circus and Parliament Square as “illegal.”

The Conservative government’s response was backed up by Labour Party Mayor of London Sadiq Khan. On Saturday, Khan declared, “I remain in close contact with the Met Commissioner and agree that Londoners have suffered too much disruption.” The protesters had to “let London return to business as usual,” as they were “now taking a real toll on our city—our communities, businesses and police. This is counter-productive to the cause and our city.”

Describing the massive state operation he was authorising, Khan said more than 9,000 police officers had been deployed, which had proved “extremely challenging for our over-stretched and under-resourced police.” He slandered those demonstrating, saying, “It simply isn’t right to put Londoners’ safety at risk like this.”

This followed comments from former Labour home secretary under Tony Blair, David Blunkett, who said, “The full force of the law needs to be used against those who have been warned and yet who persist with their anti-social protests.”

On Sunday, those gathered at Marble Arch were addressed by 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg, whose protests outside Sweden’s parliament last year sparked the current wave of global strikes and demonstrations by school youth and students.

Thunberg, who will meet politicians, including Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn over the next week, said to a standing ovation, “Despite all the beautiful words and promises. … For way too long the politicians and people in power have got away with not doing anything at all to fight the climate crisis and ecological crisis …”

She added, “We are now facing an existential crisis, the climate crisis and ecological crisis which have never been treated as crises before, they have been ignored for decades.”

The nominally “left” Corbyn has not issued a single statement condemning the scale of arrests that even Met chief Dick said was the largest number she had ever seen in a single policing operation in her 36 years on the force.

In spite of the sincere intentions of many joining its protests, the Extinction Rebellion offers nothing more than a version of “green” capitalism. It makes no appeal to the working class in Britain and internationally—the only social force that can prevent the planet’s ecological destruction—but to the capitalists and their politicians, whose relentless profit drive has created the crisis. On Sunday, as these same politicians and their police units were ramping up their mass arrests, XR’s leaders declared it was time to stand down their protests and made calls for direct negotiations with the government.

Farhana Yamin, XR’s political circle coordinator, said Sunday represented “a transition from week one, which focused on actions that were vision-holding but also caused mass disruption across many dimensions. … Week two marks a new phase of rebellion focused on negotiations where the focus will shift to our actual political demands.”

She added, “We can do that by showing we are disciplined and cannot only start disruptive actions but also end these when needed. … Being able to ‘pause’ a rebellion shows that we are organised and a long-term political force to be reckoned with.

“This will give XR leverage as we enter into negotiations with those in power to make headway on our three demands.”

XR organiser Sam Knights, stated, “We are now calling on the government and political class to come to us.”

Their demands are for the government to “tell the truth about climate change”; to reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2025; and to create a citizens’ assembly to oversee progress on its agenda.

This bankrupt perspective only provides political cover to the very Conservative government and Labour “opposition” which have jointly orchestrated the mass arrests of those demanding change. The Tories and Labour have imposed decades of austerity in which millions of people have been pauperised. They will do nothing to imperil the accumulation of wealth by the super-rich, whatever the cost to the environment.

More fundamentally, it is impossible to resolve the environmental crisis based on forlorn hopes of one or even several governments tinkering their policies, within the confines of the existing economic system. What is needed to resolve the climate crisis is a global effort, mobilizing the scientific, technological and productive resources of the entire human race.

Overcoming the challenges of rapidly rising sea levels, accelerating CO2 emissions, loss of biodiversity, collapse of food chains and desertification is bound up with the task of overthrowing the failed capitalist system and its replacement with a socialist society based on rational planning, democratically undertaken on a global scale.

New police crackdown in France as Macron to announce further austerity cuts

Will Morrow

As French President Emmanuel Macron is set to announce new social attacks on the working class in a speech on Thursday, the government is stepping up its police crackdown against social opposition and “yellow vest” protesters opposing social inequality.

At last Saturday’s “yellow vest” protest, police were once again given free rein to violently assault and arrest protesters. A video from Paris posted on Twitter and shared more than 2,500 times showed one such incident: As a swarm of riot police charge at a group of demonstrators, an officer runs up behind a lone woman walking away with her back turned, and beats her in the back of the head with his baton. The officer keeps running as the woman falls unconscious to the ground. Other police run past, stepping over her motionless body.

More than 60,000 police were mobilised across the country, using water cannon, tear gas and rubber bullets. The Interior Ministry reported that it had detained more than 200 people and that 17,000 people were stopped and searched as they tried to enter the capital.

A number of incidents indicate that the police are increasingly targeting journalists reporting on police repression. Gaspard Glanz, a freelance reporter and founder of Taranis News, was arrested and, as of this writing, remains in detention. Glanz was clearly identifiable as a journalist on Saturday. He approached a group of riot police and demanded to speak to the captain, after he said the police had shot at him with a stun grenade and was physically pushed away by police.

When Glanz allegedly gestured at them with his middle finger while walking away, police threw him to the ground and arrested him.

Glanz has been detained for more than 48 hours and is reportedly being charged for “participation in a group aiming to commit violence or damages” and “offence against officials representing the public authority.”

Hundreds of people protested outside the Paris police offices yesterday evening, and a petition launched by Glanz’s father demanding his release has been signed by more than 18,000 people. The petition states that “the free and independent press is prevented from operating in our country. Gaspard Glanz fights for freedom of information, a fundamental condition for the preservation of our liberty.”

Another journalist, Clement Lanot, published a video on Twitter showing police taking aim and firing at him with a rubber bullet gun. A third female journalist was also reportedly badly injured when a stun grenade exploded on her hand. A video on social media shows her being carried away by other protesters.

Last Saturday was the first weekly “yellow vest” protest since the fire on Monday night at the Notre Dame cathedral. The Macron government immediately sought to exploit this event, which was the outcome of the socially destructive policies of the French ruling class, its reckless gutting of social expenditure and funnelling of wealth to the corporate elite, to demand national “unity” and call for an end to protests against the government.

On Friday evening, Interior Minister Christopher Castaner used this argument to declare at a press conference that “the rioters” had “not been touched by what happened at Notre Dame,” and so would “be out once again.” “The threat is serious and calls for an enhanced response,” he said.

Signs at the protests opposed the fact that while nothing is being made available for the working class, large corporations and their billionaire owners are being subsidised to posture as generous benefactors to society by donating a tiny fraction of the billions they have taken from the labour of the working class to the Notre Dame repairs. Most of these “donations” will be borne by the working class in the form of a 60 percent tax rebate.

A number of banners in several cities opposed the arrest and planned extradition to the United States of WikiLeaks journalist and whistleblower Julian Assange. In Paris, a banner stated “Vive Assange,” and in Toulouse, a mask of Assange was placed over the statue of Joan of Arc. These actions express the widespread support for Assange in the French and international working class.

The government’s violent crackdown takes place as Macron is due to give a speech Thursday that will include further social cuts. He had been due to give the speech last Monday to summarise the results of the so-called Grand Debate, a fraudulent spectacle of town hall-style meetings and online surveys aimed solely at promoting the illusion that the government, a representative of the corporate and financial elite, will respond to the demands of the population.

The speech was called off during the Notre Dame fire, but a leaked version published by Lundi Matin revealed the measures that were to be announced. While the speech is couched as a response to the demands of the mass protests, all the measures it contains will either do nothing to improve or will significantly reduce workers’ living standards.

It rejects any overturning of Macron’s slashing of the fortune tax on the super-rich. Instead, “taxes will be lowered for those who work by significantly reducing income tax.” These measures invariably combine negligible tax cuts for workers with large tax cuts for the rich. Moreover, they are to be funded by “cuts to our public expenditure” and “the necessity to work more.”

The last measure was detailed this weekend by government deputy and spokeswoman Aurore Bergé, in an interview with Le Journal de Dimanche. She said the government is planning to create a new “day of solidarity”—i.e., the abolition of a public holiday—to force workers to work an extra day every year for free. She cited May 8, which marks the victory of the allied powers over Nazi Germany in World War II.

“I am persuaded that the French are willing to work more if we explain to them 100 percent that the income of the day of solidarity will be devoted to the reduction of taxes or financing pensions,” she said.

The only measure nominally aimed at addressing the crisis of public services is a pledge not to close any more schools and hospitals until the end of Macron’s current term. This comes amid a massive wave of school and hospital closures that have devastated entire regions of the country.

A study conducted by Le Monde in March revealed that in the 22 years from 1997 to 2019, more than 338 maternity hospitals out of 885 were closed. As a result, the number of adult women living more than 45 minutes from a maternity hospital almost tripled, from 290,000 to 716,000. The percentage living more than 30 minutes away more than doubled from 12.6 percent to 26 percent.

Many surgery departments have also been closed, under conditions where heavy snow in some regions of France can make it impossible to travel long distances for treatment.

Washington tightens sanctions to cut Iran oil exports to “zero”

Bill Van Auken

With the lifting of waivers that allowed five major countries to continue purchasing Iranian oil, Washington has launched another and far more dangerous phase of its illegal and unilateral economic sanctions against Iran.

The waivers were granted last November, when the Trump administration imposed a second round of punishing sanctions designed to choke off all Iranian energy exports and freeze Iran out of the world banking system, so as to crash its economy. They covered the countries of China, India, Turkey, Japan, South Korea, Greece and Italy, as well as the island of Taiwan. The waivers for the last three lapsed as they ended imports of Iranian oil. Now, the exceptions for the other five are to end on May 2, exposing them to penalties including fines and being frozen out of US markets.

Announcing the US action on Monday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo used the language of a gangster threatening retaliation against anyone daring to defy Washington’s dictates.

“We will no longer grant exemptions,” he said. “We’re going to zero. We’re going to zero across the board. We will continue to enforce sanctions and monitor compliance. Any nation or entity interacting with Iran should do its diligence and err on the side of caution. The risks are simply not going to be worth the benefits.”

The waivers were originally granted with a demand from Washington that the respective countries reduce their oil imports from Iran and find substitutes for Iranian crude. They were also aimed at preventing a sudden cutoff of all Iranian oil leading to a spike in global petroleum prices and possible political repercussions over a rise in the price paid at gasoline pumps in the US itself.

News of the US decision to yank the waivers sent global crude oil prices up 3 percent in trading early Monday, with futures climbing to more than $74 a barrel, the steepest increase in six months.

In the case of China, the amount of Iranian oil being imported has only risen over the past six months.

Even before Pompeo’s formal announcement, news of the impending US action led to a sharp rebuke from Beijing.

“China opposes the unilateral sanctions and so-called ‘long-arm jurisdictions’ imposed by the US,” the country’s foreign ministry spokesman said Monday. “Our cooperation with Iran is open, transparent, lawful and legitimate, thus it should be respected. Our government is committed to upholding the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies and will play a positive and constructive role in upholding the stability of the global energy market.”

The withdrawal of the waiver for Chinese importation of Iranian oil sets the stage for another confrontation between Washington and Beijing as the two powers are in the midst of negotiations supposedly aimed at heading off a full-blown trade war provoked by the Trump administration.

While government officials and energy industry sources have indicated that India, which is dependent upon imports for some 80 percent of its energy needs, has succeeded in finding alternatives to Iranian oil, the sudden lifting of the waivers poses problems for the ostensible US allies, Turkey, Japan and South Korea.

Turkey is the most heavily dependent upon oil imports with Iran, with which it shares a roughly 300-mile border. Ibrahim Kalin, a senior adviser to the president of Turkey, was in Washington last week pressing US officials to extend the waiver on Iranian oil imports to the country.

“In terms of oil, Iran is one of our main oil suppliers, and we made it clear that not only would we like to continue to buy oil from Iran, but also Iran is a neighboring country,” Mr. Kalin told the media after the talks. “We have a long border with Iran, we have cultural ties.”

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu posted a message on Twitter saying that “Turkey rejects unilateral sanctions and impositions on how to conduct relations with neighbors.”

Both Japan and South Korea rely on particular types of Iranian oil for their petrochemical industries and have not found ready substitutes.

Before the Trump administration unilaterally abrogated the 2015 Iran nuclear accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in May of last year and began the imposition of ever-tightening US sanctions, Iran exported some 2.5 million barrels per day (bpd). That amount, which has fallen to less than 1 million bpd, still accounts for 40 percent of the government’s revenues.

All the other signatories of the JCPOA accord—Russia, China, Britain, France, Germany and the European Union—insist that Iran has fulfilled all of its obligations to limit its nuclear program. This assessment has been verified by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN body charged with ensuring Iranian compliance.

The Trump administration’s actions have met with hostility from the major European powers, all of which saw the signing of the JCPOA as opening up Iran for investments by major European energy conglomerates and for increased trade.

The White House issued a statement saying that the decision on the waivers was aimed at “denying the [Iranian] regime its principal source of revenue.”

“The Trump administration and our allies are determined to sustain and expand the maximum economic pressure campaign against Iran to end the regime’s destabilizing activity threatening the United States, our partners and allies and security in the Middle East,” it said.

This policy, which the US administration has dubbed “maximum pressure” against Iran, also saw the Trump administration earlier this month take the unprecedented action of designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), an integral part of Iran’s military, as a foreign terrorist organization. The action was taken over objections from both the Pentagon and the CIA, which fear that it will provoke reciprocal treatment toward US military and intelligence personnel operating in the region.

The US attempt to cast Iran as the principal “destabilizing” force in the Middle East has been continuous under Democratic and Republican administrations alike ever since the 1979 Iranian Revolution that overthrew the US-backed monarchical dictatorship of the Shah, a pillar of imperialist domination in the Middle East.

This US narrative has only intensified as Washington has invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which border Iran, and unleashed wars for regime change in Libya and Syria. The victims of these wars number in the millions.

Under the Trump administration, the axis of US Middle East policy has been the forging of an anti-Iranian alliance comprised of Israel, Saudi Arabia and the other reactionary Sunni Gulf Oil sheikdoms, with Washington supplying massive amounts of arms to Iran’s regional enemies.

The Trump administration is counting on its regional allies among the monarchical dictatorships, particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to increase oil production to offset any impact from the decrease in energy supplies created not only by the sanctions against Iran, but also by those imposed against Venezuela. Even further tightening of the market stems from the escalating civil war in Libya.

Such action, by the Sunni oil sheikdoms, however, is far from assured. The Saudi monarchy, which is on the verge of filing an initial public offering (IPO) for its giant state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco on the stock market, has ample reason to welcome a spike in oil prices.

Tehran issued a defiant response to the US announcement on the end of the waivers. “Given the illegal nature of these sanctions, the Islamic Republic of Iran has not considered and will not consider any value or credit for waivers granted [to customers of the Iranian oil] on [US] sanctions,” Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Abbas Moussavi said on Monday.

Meanwhile, the commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Navy warned that Iran could close down the Strait of Hormuz, a key passageway for Middle East oil bound for Asia, if the US blockade prevented its own oil from passing through it.

“In case of any threat, we will not hesitate to support and defend Iran’s waters. We will defend our honor and will take reciprocal measures when it comes to protecting Iran’s rights,” IRGC Navy Commander Rear Admiral Alireza Tangsiri said.

The US drive to effect regime change in Iran by crashing its economy has exacerbated the country’s social and economic crisis, with the government of President Hassan Rouhani, representing the interests of the Iranian bourgeoisie, compelled to maneuver between the threats from an increasingly rapacious US imperialism and the movement from below by the working class in opposition to conditions of unemployment and austerity and the rolling back of the limited social concessions the mullahs made as they consolidated their power in the early 1980s.

The Trump administration’s criminal Iran agenda—its repudiation of the JCPOA and unleashing of economic war on Iran—has placed Washington and Tehran on a collision course, threatening to ignite a Mideast-wide war that could draw in all of the major nuclear-armed powers.