UK intelligence agencies exonerated of responsibility in London Bridge terror attack

Simon Whelan & Robert Stevens

An inquest jury found this week that the three men who killed eight people in the June 2017 London Bridge terrorist attacks were lawfully shot dead by armed police officers.

On June 3, 2017, the three Islamists—Khuram Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba—drove a van into pedestrians on London Bridge before exiting the vehicle and stabbing numerous people in a 10-minute rampage through the Borough Market area.

Given that evidence was presented showing that police gave them warnings before shooting, it was fairly clear that a “lawful killing” verdict would be the outcome of the inquest into the deaths of the three—who were confronting the police with 12-inch knives when they were killed.

The inquest into the deaths of the terrorists followed the inquest into the eight victims last month, which failed to answer many unexplained questions as to how and why the perpetrators were able to commit such atrocities unhindered.

What soon emerged after the London Bridge attacks is that the ringleader, Butt, was well known in advance to the intelligence agencies.

Once again, the main question posed by these legal processes is how close are Britain’s security services to Islamist terrorists, who have now carried out multiple attacks on innocent civilians in the UK?

Throughout the inquest, the bereaved families heard a litany of evidence of what is routinely termed by a compliant media only as “a string of errors” and “missed opportunities” by police and intelligence agencies—leaving Butt to plot the attack free from any interference by the state.

In the face of this damning evidence, the chief coroner of England and Wales, Mark Lucraft QC, said, “My finding is that the pre-attack investigations of MI5 and SO15 [the Metropolitan police’s Counter-Terrorism Command] were generally thorough and rigorous. On all the evidence … I am not persuaded that investigative opportunities were lost which could realistically have saved the lives of those who died.”

The families presented evidence before the inquest showing that the attacks could and should have been prevented. A barrister for six of the eight bereaved families accused both MI5 and the police of missing “opportunities galore” to identify the perpetrators and prevent the attack.

Butt had been investigated by MI5 since 2015 over concerns he wished to stage an attack. The inquest heard that investigators inexplicably “failed” to spot Butt’s association with his fellow attackers, nor the fact that Butt was working at a gym and an Islamic school that were both owned by another alleged Islamist extremist.

As Gareth Patterson QC told the Old Bailey court on behalf of the victims’ families, “Straightforward investigative work would have revealed these things.” He said there was a “fairly damning list” of failings, noting, “The attack planning was going on for some time and was there to be detected, it was eminently detectable and these eight tragic deaths did not need to happen.”

Patterson explained that preparations for the London plot over several months were missed repeatedly. In particular, “Evidence of attack planning can probably be dated to the meetings of 7 March 2017 and the purchase of the operational telephone on around 15–17 March 2017.”

“This means,” said Patterson, “that there was a period of months during which an attack could have been detected. It is submitted that there is a ‘substantial chance’ that a higher level of monitoring would have detected such planning. It is important that the paucity of actual evidence of attack planning, in the context of a failure to investigate, is not used to suggest that there was no evidence that might have been uncovered through proportionate investigative steps.

“The truth is that the eight people who died relied, as we all do, on the police and Security Service to keep them safe,” the barrister said. “Regrettably,” he continued, “they did not discharge their duty when dealing with this dangerous man, Khuram Butt. Insufficient steps were taken to prevent the attack.”

Refusing to accept that the authorities were in any way responsible for the attackers being able to fulfil their plans, the coroner sought to deflect culpability from them and criticised Butt’s family for supposedly failing to inform the authorities. But it is a matter of record, with the inquest hearing the evidence, that Butt’s brother-in-law did in fact call police to warn them of Butt’s intentions. But according to the official narrative, this information was supposedly “mishandled” and failed to reach the teams in the counterterrorism command and at MI5 investigating Butt.

Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu disputed claims that opportunities were missed. Citing the coroner’s findings, Basu told the press, “Even those closest to the attackers, and we have heard from them during the inquest, knew nothing of their murderous plans.” This is exactly the state defence Patterson argued was untenable. The state say they could not be expected to locate a plot because there was no evidence, while failing to explain why they refused to look in the first place!

After hearing the coroner’s conclusions, family members took to the steps of the court to insist that they believed the police and MI5 had failed in their collective duties.

Philippe Pigeard, father of victim Alexandre Pigeard, said “Many of Butt’s actions are unknown by the investigators, even though they were supposed to have him under investigation. The question is: could this attack have been prevented? The answer is really difficult—but yes, probably. I think they could have done a better job.”

Christine Delcros, the girlfriend of victim Xavier Thomas, said, “I believe this attack was preventable. I find it staggering that Butt, a well-known extremist, was allowed to work within the London transport network, to have access to and teach young children, and to rent and use a vehicle in a manner now too often encountered. I am dismayed SO15 did not pass this critical information to any of his employers.”

Just months after the London Bridge attacks, an investigation into that and three other terrorist attacks by the UK’s former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, David Anderson QC, concluded that three of the six attackers were well-known to MI5.

One named by Anderson was Salman Abedi, who committed the Manchester Arena bombing, in which 22 people were killed just days before the London Bridge attacks. A mass of classified information was withheld from Anderson’s report, but it is widely known that not only Salman Abidi, but his entire family were implicated in the atrocity, including his parents and brother, Hashem Abedi.

Hashem Abedi was in Libya at the time of the Arena bombing but was detained shortly afterwards and this week was finally extradited to the UK to face charges in relation to the attack. He appeared in court Thursday after being charged with the murder of the 22 and denied any involvement.

Unlike many other perpetrators of terrorist attacks, Hashem Abedi—someone with intimate knowledge of the Manchester Arena bombing— is not dead as a result of it. Any ensuing trial has the potential to reveal the intimate relationship between the British state and those it has enlisted for years in Islamist circles to take part in proxy wars on its behalf.

Last year the Daily Mail published further damning information about these connections, revealing that Salman Abedi was a protected British intelligence asset before committing his heinous act. The newspaper reported that Abedi and his brother received British government assistance and fled Libya—in the midst of the Libyan civil war—on board a Royal Navy vessel, HMS Enterprise, in August 2014. This was less than three years before Salman Abedi bombed the Arena. The Mail reported that the Abedis’ presence aboard the ship was known to the highest levels of the British state, including in Downing Street.

All these events are a devastating condemnation of imperialism. The major imperialist powers created the conditions for the radicalisation of Islamist elements, on a right-wing basis, who were then used as foot soldiers in proxy-war operations. They have systematically worked with such forces, not as enemies but allies—in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. In turn, these Frankenstein monsters invariably respond by launching savage attacks, with working people being the main victims.

Gulf between wealthy and poor widening in Australia

Mike Head 

Misleading headlines, such as “Australia a nation of millionaires for the first time in history,” last week greeted the latest official report on household wealth and income. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Household Income and Wealth Australia 2017–18 report actually shows that most households own substantially less than $1 million, and that social inequality has intensified since the 2008–09 global financial crisis.

“Average” wealth—a figure inflated by those at the very top—rose above $1 million, primarily because of soaring house prices. The median or middle figure, however, was $558,900. In other words, half the households had a net worth of less than half of $1 million. In fact, just as many households had less than $223,500 as had over $1 million.

The most revealing indicator of the social gulf is that the richest 20 percent of households increased their wealth by 67 percent in the 15 years between 2003–04 and 2017–18, to an average of $3.237 million, while the assets of the poorest 20 percent rose less than 3 percent to $35,200.

While those in the wealthiest quintile gained an average of $1.3 million, the average worth of the poorest quintile rose only $1,000 (after inflation). As a result, the top 20 percent now own 93 times more than the lowest.

Moreover, according to an analysis by the Guardian’s Greg Jericho, this wealth gap accelerated during the two years to 2017–18. During that most recent period, the top 25 percent saw their wealth increase by 17.7 percent, while the bottom 20 percent went backward.

Successive governments, both Liberal-National and Labor, have enriched the corporate elite via tax handouts and pro-business policies, at the expense of the working class, whose real wages, job security and basic public services have been cut.

The ABS’s data indicates that wealth inequality is at its highest level since these surveys began in 1993–94. By 2017–18, the wealthiest 20 percent of households held over 60 percent of all household wealth, while the lowest quintile had less than 1 percent.

Even these figures grossly underestimate the social divide. Statistical averages are distorted by the wealth of the super-rich. This masks the financial stress and social misery confronting millions of working-class people, due to stagnant wages, under-employment, poverty-line pension and welfare payments, and rising debt levels.

A recent “Cold and Lonely” report, for example, found that elderly poor people are suffering hypothermia inside their homes because they cannot afford to turn heating appliances on.

By presenting a breakdown only into quintiles, the ABS surveys also camouflage the vast gap between the top 1 percent and 10 percent, and the rest of society. According to the latest Australian Financial Review Rich List, the country’s 200 wealthiest individuals or families control wealth totaling $341.8 billion—up by 21 percent from last year. Some members of the “top 10” virtually doubled their fortunes in 12 months.

A significant report published in 2017 provided, for the first time, a breakdown of the wealth proportions held by the richest 1 percent, 5 percent and 10 percent of the population. The top 1 percent alone owned up to 20 percent of household wealth, accounting for the lion’s share of the 55 percent held by the richest 10 percent.

That report showed that Australia is one of the most unequal industrialised countries, while mirroring processes underway globally. While the richest 1 percent live in extreme luxury, and the remainder of the top 10 percent enjoyed lifestyles far out of reach of the everyone else, the bottom 40 percent are barely surviving.

According to last week’s ABS report, one factor in the widening gulf is the value of property, both owner-occupied and investment properties. For high-wealth households, average property values rose from $1.14 million to $1.85 million between 2003–04 and 2017–18. Households in the poorest 20 percent that owned property had much lower average growth of $10,100, to $18,100, over the 14 years. But only 5.5 percent of low-wealth households actually held property.

Home ownership is at a record low. In the 1995–96 survey, almost 43 percent of respondents owned their home outright and another 28.3 percent were paying off a mortgage. By 2017–18, outright home ownership had fallen below 30 percent for the first time since the surveys began, while 36.7 percent had mortgage debt. The other 32 percent were renting—a record high.

Because of decades of government cuts to public housing, renters were increasingly subjected to the private market. In 1994–95, 5.5 percent of people rented through a government agency, while 18.4 percent had a private landlord. By 2017–18, the state agencies rented to 3.1 percent, leaving a record 27.1 percent paying rent to private landlords.

On average, household debt burdens exceed what they earn in annual income for the first time, mainly due to huge mortgages. The ABS found that in 2017–18, the median debt-to-annual income ratio hit 110 percent.

This burden is born disproportionately by the most vulnerable households. More than 30 percent of the poorest households are carrying debts three times their income. A decade ago, that proportion was less than 23 percent.

Education is another source of inequality. Those in poorest quintile of households are carrying the highest levels of debt for university or vocational education. Between 2003–04 and 2017–18, their average study loan debts increased in real terms from $2,800 to $7,200. Those for high wealth households rose only from $1,300 to $4,800.

Income inequality is widening too. The sharpest indicator is in New South Wales, the most populous state. There, those in the lowest 20 percent of income earners actually suffered an average income fall in real terms after 2015–16, from $412 a week to just $397 a week. That is not enough to live on.

Another factor is that welfare cuts have stripped even sub-poverty entitlements from growing numbers of people, deliberately pushing more workers into low-paid and insecure jobs. By 2017–18, only 44 percent of households received more than 1 percent of their income from welfare payments, well below the 55 percent in 2000.

This redistribution of income and wealth from the poorest to the richest layers will accelerate as the Liberal-National government’s income tax package, passed by parliament this month with Labor’s backing, takes effect.

Over the next five years, billions of dollars will be handed to the top 5 percent of the population—those taxpayers receiving more than $200,000 a year—while the millions of low-paid workers, students and welfare recipients trying to live on less than $41,000 a year will get nothing in tax cuts.

Thousands protest in central China against proposed waste incinerator

Robert Campion

Thousands demonstrated in the central Chinese city of Wuhan recently in a week-long protest to denounce a planned garbage incinerator. The Chinese government mobilised police to quash the protests while, at the same time, mass demonstrations were continuing in Hong Kong.

The Wuhan protests began on June 28, triggered by local government plans to establish the waste incinerator in densely-populated Yangluo in the Xinzhou district. While authorities claimed that a location for the incinerator had not yet been approved, this did little to assuage the fears of residents. As many as 10,000 people marched that weekend to voice their opposition.

The suspected site is close to housing, surrounded by 300,000 residents and two universities within a three-kilometre radius. According to reports, the protest was violently broken up by over 1,000 police, who beat and arrested demonstrators, including the elderly. According to protesters, those detained were released a few days later.

Assurances from the local government that the incinerator would not be installed without further environmental studies and community approval were met with deep distrust. Smaller protests continued on July 1 and 2, then 10,000 demonstrators defiantly marched back onto the streets on July 3 for two days. Protesters chanted “give us back the green mountains and clear waters” and “garbage burning plant get lost from Yangluo.”

The local government forced businesses to close at 6 p.m. on July 4 in an effort to remove protesters from the streets. The mobile phone network was also disabled. According to reports, around 1,000 riot police returned, armed with helmets, shields and batons, as well as an armoured car, to disperse the demonstrations that night. Video footage posted onto Twitter and YouTube shows police riot squads violently suppressing residents in an effort to intimidate and disperse the movement.

On July 9, the state-owned Global Times reported that authorities “vowed the project would not begin without residents’ approval.” Protests seem to have stopped, but according to locals, a heavy police presence remains in the city.

Wuhan is a city of ten million people. The proposed plant stands to become the 6th such incinerator in the city. The Xinzhou district is also the site of a large landfill. Local residents complained that in summer months the air is so foul that they close their windows to get away from the smell, which still prevents them from getting sleep.

One 24-year-old protester in Yangluo told the South China Morning Post: “For years we had to put up with the disgusting smell of the garbage burial site, and we were all glad when we heard it would end next year.” He was referring to government announcements that the landfill would be replaced with a public park. “All of a sudden, the park is gone and a garbage burning site will be put there. Nobody can bear it.”

In addition, previous plants have produced toxic emissions that lead to lung disease, leukaemia and cancer. In 2013, China’s state broadcaster CCTV reported that the five existing incinerators in Wuhan were substandard and emitted dangerous pollutants.

A study in 2015 by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that none of the incinerator plants operating in Wuhan passed an environmental impact assessment. This made it clear that the government had done nothing in the two years since the CCTV report in 2013. In similar fashion, incinerators have been placed near residential areas without public consultation, and routinely flout waste disposal standards.

Since the restoration of capitalism, beginning in the 1970s, China’s economic growth has come at the direct expense of safety and the environment, producing deep grievances in the working class. One waste management disaster in Shenzhen in 2015 led to the deaths of at least 73 people. A mountain of construction waste and debris collapsed near workers’ living quarters. In 2017, residents of Qingyuan, Guangdong province, protested against a proposed waste incinerator, forcing the government to halt its construction plans.

Caixin, a Chinese business journal, commented in January that “glaring falsifications and outright corruption persist in some of China’s fundamental environmental monitoring data.” It explained that the situation had been further compounded since 2015 by the privatisation of environmental testing operations, which “has since become an enormous and lucrative industry.” Testing is either not carried out, or poorly conducted, or companies simply offer bribes in order to pass safety checks they would otherwise fail.

Beijing is deeply fearful that social unrest will explode across China, much as it already has in Hong Kong. Throughout China, workers, peasants, and youth are facing similar attacks on social and working conditions. Hundreds of thousands in Hong Kong lack access to safe, affordable, and clean housing, much like in Wuhan. This is just one underlying factor in driving the intensity of the Hong Kong demonstrations.

The protests in Wuhan—and those of working people throughout China—pose the question of united working class opposition to the Stalinist Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Beijing.

Posts related to the Wuhan protests became a “hot topic” viewed by 231 million users on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform equivalent to Twitter, in the space of three days, despite government censorship. Yet, Beijing is objectively incapable of addressing the social crisis in China, and discontent will only continue to grow.

The fight for democratic rights, including the right to live in a clean and safe environment, can be fought only through the unity of the entire Chinese working class to overturn the regime as part of the international struggle against capitalism.

United Nations report finds global hunger on the rise for third year in row

E.P. Milligan 

A report published this week by the United Nations (UN) shows that over 820 million people across the world suffered from hunger in 2018. The annual report cast doubt on the UN’s purported goal of ending world hunger by 2030, describing it as “an immense challenge.” Last year marked the third year in a row that hunger levels have risen with roughly one in every nine people globally going hungry.

The rise in hunger and food insecurity is inextricably linked to the rise of social inequality, the outbreak of new wars and conflicts and the disastrous effects of climate change. Contrary to the neo-Malthusian arguments that hunger, like environmental degradation, stems from “overpopulation,” any serious analysis of the report’s findings ultimately points to the crisis of capitalism and the irrational distribution of the world’s resources.

The authors themselves note dangerous economic trends, such as nationalist trade policies, which have contributed to world hunger and continue to threaten any ability to reverse such processes. “This dark outlook,” the report states, “reflects increasing risks related to rising trade tensions, weakening investments, increasing government and corporate debt, and rising borrowing costs.”

Such tragic figures point to a society and global economic system in retrograde. The growth of world hunger over the past three years, itself a departure from roughly a decade of so-called “progress” involving a pitifully marginal increase in world living standards, has arisen out of concrete historical conditions.

Such a phenomenon is only possible in a world where 26 billionaires control as much wealth as the poorest half of humanity. Increasingly bloody neocolonial proxy wars—such as the war in Yemen, named one of the greatest humanitarian disasters in human history—deprive millions of basic needs such as food, water and medical supplies. Climate change, a product of the capitalist mismanagement of the world’s resources, has led to increasingly extreme weather conditions such as droughts, floods and storms, all of which have produced famine conditions for millions more.

The report, titled “The State of Food Insecurity and Nutrition in the World: Safeguarding Against Economic Slowdowns and Downturns,” was organized by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. UN researchers produced the paper in tandem with the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme and the World Health Organization.

A breakdown of statistics by region shows that hunger has risen almost 20 percent in Africa’s subregions. In Eastern Africa, close to one-third of the population (30.8 per cent) is undernourished. Although hunger levels in Latin America and the Caribbean still remain below seven percent, they are slowly increasing. In Asia, 11 percent of the population is undernourished.

The UN found that hunger is increasing primarily in countries where economic growth is lagging, particularly countries that rely heavily on the international trade of primary commodities—i.e., food, raw materials, fuels and base metals. It also found that income inequality is on the rise in many of these countries, a process which will serve to exacerbate the problem. “Income inequality increases the likelihood of severe food insecurity,” the report states.

In other words, the problem of hunger is most severe in countries most vulnerable to the predations of world imperialism. The report identifies “middle earning” countries as among the most affected by increases in hunger. These are nations with vast amounts of natural resources and platforms of cheap labor that are routinely exploited by the banks and major corporations of the centers of world imperialism—above all, of the United States and European powers.

For the first time since the creation of the yearly report, researchers chose to take a broader look at food insecurity. The report introduced a second indicator, distinct from hunger, which found that 17.2 percent of the world’s population—1.3 billion people—lack regular access to “nutritious and sufficient food.”

“Even if they were not necessarily suffering from hunger,” the report states, “they are at greater risk of various forms of malnutrition and poor health.” When these figures are combined with those suffering from hunger, the report estimates that 2 billion people are affected by moderate to severe food insecurity.

The report places special attention on the conditions of children, a measuring stick of the relative health of society as a whole. It found that since 2012, no progress has been made in reducing low birthweight. It also found that while the number of children under the age of five affected by stunted growth has decreased over the past six years, the pace of progress is far too slow to meet 2030 targets. In southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, one in three children are stunted. Finally, overweight and obesity—themselves indicators of malnutrition—continue to increase globally, particularly among school-age children and adults. It points out that these problems will inevitably disrupt other developmental patterns across a wide array of indices.

Unsurprisingly, the report does not provide any realistic solutions to the crisis. Despite the far-reaching implications of the report’s findings, its authors remain at an impasse. “Our actions to tackle these troubling trends will have to be bolder,” the report declares. “We must foster pro-poor and inclusive structural transformation focusing on people and placing communities at the centre to reduce economic vulnerabilities and set ourselves on track to ending hunger, food insecurity and all forms of malnutrition.”

Unable to draw deeper conclusions about the failure of world capitalism, the report at best can only offer unrealistic proposals for reform. Above all, the authors of the report advise against any further cuts to social programs or trade policies that would threaten economic downturn. As the ruling classes of the world shift further and further to the right, however, they increasingly will base themselves upon these very policies in an attempt to offset the growing internal economic contradictions of their various nation-states.

French intelligence strategy document warns of “insurrectional violence”

Will Morrow

The French national intelligence and counterterrorism organization quietly released the first update to its five-year public strategy document on Monday. The report—which was uploaded to a ministerial website and not accompanied by any presidential press release—states that the role of France’s counterterrorism agencies is to fight “subversive movements” and the threat of “insurrectional violence” in the population.

The “National Intelligence Strategy” was published by the National Intelligence Coordination for the Fight Against Terrorism (CNRLT), an arm of the Élysée presidential palace. It advises the president and reports directly to the prime minister. The report was written in direct collaboration with the prime minister and personally approved by President Emmanuel Macron.

The strategy document “constitutes the road map for the intelligence agencies,” it states in the preface. A comparison with the first five-year “road map” makes clear the purposes of the update. The 2014 version identifies its five areas of operations as terrorism, espionage and economic interference, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, cyberattacks and organized crime.

This month’s report establishes a new category: “Anticipation of crises and the risk of major ruptures.” Under the headline “Violent subversion,” it states: “The growing strength of movements and networks of a subversive character constitutes a factor of crisis that is all the more preoccupying because they are aimed at weakening, and even destroying, the foundations of our democracy and the republican institutions through insurrectional violence.”

The document explains that by “subversive” movements, it means not only “violent actions against people or goods,” but “also the collection of traditional demands that these movements employ in order to infiltrate and radicalize them.”

This is a formula for the criminalization and violent suppression of any expression of social opposition in the population. Within this framework, so-called “traditional demands”—i.e., against layoffs, for higher wages, improved living standards, against war and for social equality—do not represent the legitimate demands of the population. They are merely “employed” by “subversive” forces whose aim is the destruction of democracy. This is the argument of a fascist police state.

“The radicalization of these modes of action calls for a heightened vigilance by the intelligence services in their function of anticipation and the defence of the state to prevent violence of all kinds and the destabilization of our institutions,” the report continues.

Under the headline “Crises of public order,” the report outlines the response of the intelligence agencies to the growth of social opposition in the working class. “The anticipation, analysis and monitoring of social movements and crises in society by the intelligence agencies constitute a double priority,” it states. “A knowledge of local life and the connection with its actors (elected officials, associations, media…) are important challenges for the different intelligence services.”

These policies, outlined by a leading “counterterrorism” agency in France, underscore the fact that the vast expansion of the police powers and the evisceration of democratic rights under the banner of the so-called “war on terror” over the past decade and a half has always been directed against social and political opposition in the working class, while promoting the neo-colonial operations of French imperialism in the Middle East and Africa.

In France, the build-up of a police state has been carried out under both The Republicans and the Socialist Party—from which Macron’s ruling Republic on the Move party emerged—with the support of the entire political establishment. Socialist Party President Francois Hollande utilized the November 2015 terror attacks as a pretext to declare—with the support of Jean-Luc Melenchon’s Left Front—a state of emergency that lasted almost two years.

The report constitutes a warning of the far advanced preparations for authoritarian rule in France and across Europe. The objective source of this universal process is the staggering growth in social inequality in every country, and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny corporate and financial elite, which is determined to enrich itself by wiping away whatever gains remain of those won by the working class in bitter struggles throughout the 20th century.

The ruling class is turning toward police-state measures and the promotion of fascistic and far-right forces to suppress growing opposition in the working class to capitalist and rising support for socialism.

In Germany, the Verfassungschutz intelligence agency has placed the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei, the German section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, on a list of “left-wing extremist” organizations requiring surveillance—citing its opposition to militarism and capitalism, and its call for the building of a mass revolutionary socialist movement in the working class. At the same time, the political establishment promotes the neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany and covers for far-right terrorist networks inside the state apparatus.

In the United States, President Donald Trump, with his almost daily statements that “America will never be a socialist country,” speaks and acts ever more openly as a fascist seeking to build an extra-parliamentary movement based on anticommunism and violent anti-immigrant attacks.

Within France itself, the Macron administration has responded to mass “yellow vest” protests against social inequality over the past six months, not with concessions but escalating police violence, including mass arrests, rubber bullets, tear gas and the deployment of the military.

The advanced preparations for authoritarian rule in France were underscored by the government’s actions on Bastille Day on July 14.

Terrified that protests could erupt as thousands of soldiers marched through Paris for the Bastille Day parade in a humiliating setback to Macron, the security forces placed a blanket ban on anyone in political sympathy with the “yellow vests” from entering large areas of Paris around the parade area on the Champs-Elysées avenue.

Before the parade, the police rounded up hundreds of individuals identified as potential protest leaders. Leading “yellow vest” protesters including Eric Drouet, Maxime Nicolle and Jérôme Rodrigues were rounded up and detained until the end of the ceremony. Police then transported the detainees to a camp in Paris’ 18th Arondissement, near a police station surrounded by barbed wire fences in an area of abandoned warehouses.

Nonetheless, masses of people booed and jeered Macron as his motorcade passed down the Champs-Élysées during the Bastille Day parade.

The French government is now giving a green light for a further escalation of police violence. This week, the news web site Médiapart revealed that the Macron government had bestowed a “yellow vest” award to more than 9,000 police officers last month as recognition for their role in violently repressing the protests.

Those who received medals included Grégoire Chassaing, the police commissioner in charge of the police raid on a music festival in Nantes on June 22 that caused the disappearance and presumed drowning of 24-year-old Steve Caniço; Rabah Souchi, who led the police charge that nearly killed the peaceful, 73-year-old “yellow vest” protester Geneviève Legay in Nice; and Bruno Félix, the leader of the riot police unit implicated in the death of Zinab Redouane in Marseille.

Drug companies poured 76 billion opioid pills into US neighborhoods in just six years

Genevieve Leigh

Previously undisclosed drug company data released by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has provided the most comprehensive look to date at the nation’s opioid crisis. The database, which traces the path of every single narcotic sold in America—from manufacturer to distributor to pharmacy from 2006 to 2012—has been analyzed in a report by the Washington Post.

The data, along with the history of its delayed release, is remarkable in many ways. First, it confirms in the most concrete terms the criminal role played by drug companies in creating the deadly opioid epidemic that now kills 70,000 people a year in the US. The prescription opioid epidemic alone resulted in nearly 100,000 deaths from 2006 through 2012.

According to the database, throughout the documented six-year period in which the drug epidemic was beginning to spin out of control, drug companies poured 76 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone pain pills into US neighborhoods.

This almost incomprehensible number meant that during these years, the companies distributed enough pills to supply every adult and child in the country with 36 pills each per year.

However, the distribution of the pills was not uniform from state to state or from city to city. The state of Kentucky, for example, was flooded with enough pills to give every person 63.3 pills each per year; South Carolina, 58; and Tennessee, 57.7.

West Virginia, the state with the highest opioid death rate during this period, received enough pills to give every person 66.5 pills each year.

Rural areas hard hit

Rural areas were among the hardest hit. In Norton, Virginia, there were enough pills to provide 306 pills per person a year; Martinsville, Virginia, 242; Mingo County, West Virginia, 203.

During the years covered by the database, 2006 to 2012, annual opioid deaths rose from under 18,000 a year to more than 23,000, with prescription drugs cited as factors in almost half the deaths. The volume of the pills handled by the companies also skyrocketed as the epidemic surged, increasing about 51 percent from 8.4 billion in 2006 to 12.6 billion in 2012.

Since then, overall opioid deaths in the US have skyrocketed. The flooding of markets with prescription drugs, especially in economically depressed areas, spawned increased heroin use and ultimately, along with a number of other factors, led to the current fentanyl crisis that added more than 67,000 to the death toll from 2013 to 2017.

There is no doubt that the top drug manufacturers and distributors are guilty a thousand times over for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people; for the incalculable pain and suffering on the part of those addicted, their children, and their families; for the economic and social devastation the crisis has brought to large swaths of rural America. It has placed an immense strain on healthcare systems, social services, and the foster care system. These companies made billions of dollars off of human suffering.

Complicity of the political establishment

However, the insidious character of this massive operation extends well beyond the drug manufacturers and drug distributors. The drug manufacturers and distributors were able to carry out this operation only because of critical structural support they received from the highest level of the political establishment.

The data revealed Monday comes from an exclusive database controlled and viewable only by the DEA, a government-controlled body supposedly meant to oversee and police these companies. The information to which this body had access is highly detailed, including the name, DEA registration number, address and business activity of every seller and buyer of a controlled substance in the United States. The database also includes drug codes, transaction dates, and total dosage units and grams of narcotics sold.

It is not only the drug companies who have been fighting to keep this database secret, but the DEA along with the US Department of Justice. The database was only unveiled after a yearlong battle for access to the documents waged by the Washington Post and HD Media. What accounts for this secrecy?

The truth is, as with every major industry, the drug corporations routinely buy off politicians to secure ideal business conditions. The DEA exemplifies the fact that the federal agencies supposedly tasked with policing big business—the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration—are under the thumb of the corporations and run political interference for them.

Innumerable facts support this claim. First, despite access to this overwhelming data, over the course of this entire crisis the DEA has taken only the most limited action against these companies, which has resulted in many of them paying a pittance in fees for their crimes.

The Obama administration’s role

However, even this minimal oversight was too much for the companies and their counterparts in Washington. As the opioid crisis was erupting, the US Congress was working to eviscerate the oversight powers of the DEA, starting in 2014 and culminating in the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act of 2016, which passed by overwhelming votes in Congress and was signed into law by then-President Barack Obama.

The main purpose of the legislation was to stop the DEA’s Office of Diversion Control from halting drug shipments for unusually large and unexplained sales. For example, when several Walgreens pharmacies in Florida sold more than 1 million opioid pills in a year, compared to a nationwide average of 74,000, the Office of Diversion Control could impose fines and suspend distribution, preventing the drugs from reaching the streets pending the results of an investigation.

The 2016 law effectively ended the ability of the DEA to suspend such orders. Political action committees representing the pharmaceutical industry contributed at least $1.5 million to the 23 lawmakers who sponsored or co-sponsored four versions of the bill. Overall, the drug industry spent $102 million lobbying Congress on the bill and related legislation between 2014 and 2016.

At least 46 investigators and attorneys from the DEA, including 32 directly from the Office of Diversion Control, were hired by the pharmaceutical companies after scrutiny of the drug distributors began in 2014.

The intimate connection between these gigantic corporate monopolies and the institutions of state power revealed in the case of opioid drug distributors is the relationship that prevails across-the-board throughout the capitalist system internationally.

Over the course of the last three years, various lawsuits have been brought against different drug companies. Some have been successful in bringing attention to the issues involved and in securing some monetary retribution from the companies. There are currently dozens of drug companies being sued in federal court in Cleveland by nearly 2,000 cities, towns and counties alleging that they conspired to flood the nation with opioids.

While these efforts rightfully target many of the guilty parties involved in the creation of this crisis, the results of the lawsuits, however “successful,” will ultimately do little to repair the damage done by the drug epidemic over the course of the last decade, let alone make whole the families who have suffered the trauma of losing loved ones.

More fundamental than the individuals involved in these crimes is the social system that produces them. The subordination of the political establishment to the private interests of corporations is not a feature of life that will be changed through lawsuits. Rather, the solution to the opioid crisis lies in the mobilization of the working class to take ownership of the for-profit pharmaceutical companies, drug distributors and the entire healthcare industry in order to provide medical care in the interest of human need, not private profit.

UK: Bed shortages cause increasing reliance on emergency beds in NHS hospitals

Ben Trent

Due to the rising demand for hospital beds in the UK, the National Health Service (NHS) has become more reliant on the use of temporary or emergency beds for patients.

“Escalation beds,” which are supposed to alleviate peaks in demand during the winter months, are being routinely deployed due to the lack of beds across all hospitals.

A study for the British Medical Association (BMA), based on Freedom of Information requests, discovered that on March 3, a total of 3,428 escalation beds were in use despite the easing of the winter spike. By May 1, at least 1,637 escalation beds were still being used—according to results provided by only 80 (a third) of the 240 NHS trusts in England.

The Independent article reporting the study noted that “Four out of five NHS hospitals are relying on emergency surgical beds to provide enough space for routine patients as they try to keep up with soaring demand. …”

It added, “If a surgical bed is unavailable operations may have to be cancelled, this adds to already significant waiting lists which have seen waits for cancer treatment and routine operations grow ‘unacceptably.’”

NHS England chief Simon Stevens warned a few days previously that “We are now at a point where our hospital bed stock is overly pressurised, and in many parts of the country we are going to need—backed up by extra nurses—increased capacity, not decreased.” Stevens warned that this was “quite a significant gear shift” for the NHS.

Stevens put the year-round use of emergency beds in the context of the loss of almost 15,000 beds since 2010. But his figures are an underestimation.

In England, total bed capacity has been slashed from 160,254 in 2009 to 129,992 in 2019, according to official NHS England figures. Over the same period, available beds for mental illness and learning disability have been cut by a third, from 29,330 to 19,368.

Over the past 30 years, NHS bed capacity has been halved by Labour and Conservative governments. Bed occupancy rates have reached dangerous levels, jeopardising patient safety and efficiency as a result.

The average occupancy rate for general and acute beds (open overnight) runs above 90 percent, according to the latest figures. However, the “safe” and most efficient level is considered to be 85 percent.

Last month, Dr. Nick Scriven, the president of the Society for Acute Medicine, warned that “[t]he system is now so reliant on this ‘extra capacity’ that most hospitals cannot survive even minor changes in pressure that occur. Even just a weekend can throw some into chaos, with beds opening on a Sunday and taking until the Thursday to close on a never-ending cycle.”

This month Scriven stepped up his warnings to declare that a significant health disaster could rapidly overwhelm the NHS. He declared: “This is meant to be the time when services are least stretched and staff have an opportunity to draw breath but the numbers are staggering—more than 17,500 people needing emergency admission every day in June with a 5 percent increase in 12 months and the number of patients ‘stuck’ in acute beds is identical to this time last year (4,500).

“These two mean the pressure remains relentless and people are suffering delays in getting care, notably the 12-hour breach number was 375 percent more this June compared to 2018.

“As we lurch from one period of pressure to another without any noticeable respite there is now an incredibly serious worry on the horizon in Australian flu which could cause chaos in the UK.

“If the experience in Australia—75,000 cases up on the same period in 2018—is replicated then we would see a similar situation to the ‘bad’ winter of 2017 well before we move into winter proper.

“It would be unknown how the NHS would cope given that even in the middle of summer many of our hospitals still have a large proportion of so-called extra capacity in use.”

One example, reported in the local BirminghamLive website, was the Accident and Emergency department in Walsall’s Manor Hospital receiving 311 admissions on June 24, breaking the previous record within a 24-hour period by 18 patients. This is part of a trend of year-on-year increases, typically in April and May.

Manor Hospital Chief Executive Richard Beeken said there was a “greater number of referrals for admission than we have been able to cope with within our core bed base,” adding, “During April, May and June we have seen huge strain placed upon our urgent care services.”

The BMA is campaigning for a further 10,000 patient beds for the NHS.

This comes amid the release of results of the annual inpatient survey conducted by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). The results from 76,000 hospital patients surveyed in July 2018 are the worst in 10 years.

One in 10 said that they should have been admitted to hospital “a lot” sooner. Almost one in six “definitely” felt they had waited too long to get a bed on a ward after admission. Less than 60 percent of respondents said that they could get help from a member of staff in reasonable time, whilst only 37 percent of respondents answered affirmatively that they could find a member of staff to discuss their fears and worries.

Of the findings Dr. Scriven stated, “They show that despite the often heroic efforts of staff on the ground, the relentless pressures building in the system for years on end are starting to take a toll.”

Professor Ted Baker, the chief inspector of hospitals at the CQC, declared, “The mounting pressure on the system is having a direct impact on how people are experiencing inpatient care.”

The NHS is in the grip of a complete collapse, where all the resources are under incalculable levels of strain, after the deliberate assaults by successive governments over the last decade. The 71-year-old public institution is being dismantled and sold off to private bidders, piece by piece.

The terrible impact of relentless attacks on the NHS is underscored in a recent report, “Ending the Blame Game,” by the Institute for Public Policy Research think tank. It found that reversals in public health initiatives led to fully 131,000 preventable deaths since 2012.

The reason the cuts have been able to proceed is due to the lack of any opposition from the Labour Party and its partners in the trade union bureaucracy.

Dame Donna Kinnair, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), praised the conniving RCN leadership after they rammed through a rotten sell-out pay deal in 2018 as “a credit to nursing and our organisation.”

Labour’s shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, offered token criticism, declaring, “The Tories and, in coalition, the Lib Dems, have run down the NHS and imposed the biggest funding squeeze in its history.” Yet, when the Tories unveiled their Long Term Plan, which sanctions further attacks on the NHS, he did not object to the principles that underlay it—that of further opening up the NHS to private investment through Integrated Provider Contracts (ICPs).

Canada’s Liberal government steps up internet censorship with creation of new media fund

Penny Smith & Roger Jordan

In a further step aimed at strengthening state control over the internet and digital content, Canada’s Liberal government has announced a multi-million dollar media fund to be distributed to outlets deemed to be producing “authoritative content.” The $600 million fund, to be launched this fall, will be dispensed by an eight-member government-appointed committee.

The fund, made up of tax credits and incentives to be handed out over the next five years, was first announced last November, under the guise of protecting “the vital role that independent news media play in our democracy and in our communities.”

Behind all of the bogus talk about defending “independent media” outlets and “Canadian journalism,” the new funding structures are explicitly aimed at censoring the internet in the lead up to and following this fall’s federal election. They are part of a global assault on democratic rights and freedom of speech by ruling elites in every country, which has found its most graphic illustration in the persecution of publisher and journalist Julian Assange and courageous whistleblower Chelsea Manning.

Underlining the international character of the censorship efforts, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland co-hosted the Global Media Freedom Conference earlier this month with British Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt, who has repeatedly vowed to hand Assange over to the Trump administration.

Promoting a meeting that took place just seven miles from Assange’s prison cell, where he is being held alongside terrorists and convicted criminals for the “crime” of exposing the global conspiracies of US imperialism and its allies, Freeland’s foreign ministry sought to strike a pose of concern for journalistic integrity. “Canada and the UK are working together to defend media freedom and improve the safety of journalists who report across the world,” declares Global Affairs Canada on its website in a passage that would not be out of place in Orwell’s 1984 .

The very language used by the Trudeau government to justify the creation of the media fund, replete with references to “authoritative content” and “independent news outlets,” recalls nothing so much as Google’s wide-ranging internet censorship program. Launched in April 2017, the global push to demote news sites deemed undesirable to the powers that be led to a sharp drop in traffic for left-wing, anti-war and socialist publications, the World Socialist Web Site chief among them.

The government’s hand-picked committee will include representatives from News Media Canada, the Association de la presse francophone, the Quebec Community Newspaper Association, the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada, the Canadian Association of Journalists, the Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec, Unifor, and the Fédération nationale des communications.

This advisory panel is anything but independent. The fact that the Liberals have included Unifor, Canada’s largest trade union that represents 12,000 journalists, underscores that Trudeau views the unions as a key pillar of support for the capitalist state and its policies of austerity and war. Over the past three decades, Unifor and the union bureaucracy as a whole have sabotaged and suppressed working class struggles. The Liberals therefore have full confidence that the Unifor bureaucrats will prove invaluable in supporting the state-led offensive against voices of opposition and dissent.

Unifor backed the Liberals in the 2015 election campaign, while Unifor president Jerry Dias acted as a trusted advisor to the Liberal government during the renegotiation of NAFTA. This fact has prompted the only criticism of the fund within ruling circles, with the official opposition Conservative Party declaring that the Trudeau government is stuffing the panel with pro-Liberal representatives.

Predictably, the Tories have expressed no concern with the initiative’s fundamentally anti-democratic and authoritarian premises. This is because all of the major parties, including the Liberals, Tories, and NDP, have been complicit in the erection of the scaffolding of a police state over the past 15 years in the name of fighting “terrorism.”

The media fund is the latest step Ottawa is taking towards expanding the power of the state to control and censor digital content. It follows a series of international meetings and coordinated measures that Prime Minister Trudeau claims are aimed at keeping Canadians safe from “foreign interference,” principally from Russia and China.

The threat of “foreign interference” in the coming federal election was laid out by the Communications Security Establishment, which is part of the US National Security Agency-led “Five Eyes” global spying network, in its update to a report titled “Cyber Threats to Canada’s Democratic Process” released in April. The report assessed that it is very likely Canadian voters will encounter foreign cyber interference ahead of, and during, the 2019 general election.

Shortly after, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland announced during a G7 foreign ministers meeting in France that “Our judgment is that interference [in the federal election] is very likely and we think there have probably already been efforts by malign foreign actors to disrupt our democracy.”

In mid May, at the “Christchurch call” summit in Paris where heads of state and big tech officials discussed a closer working relationship, Trudeau announced plans for a Digital Charter to increase the regulation of the tech sector. The Canada Declaration on Electoral Integrity, released later the same month and signed by the government and social media companies, commits social media platforms to “intensify efforts” to combat “disinformation” and “promote safeguards that effectively help address cybersecurity incidents.”

Regarding social media regulation, Trudeau announced at a meeting before the International Grand Committee on Big Data, Privacy and Democracy, “I’d much rather do it in partnership with platforms but, if it comes down to it, we will take measures that we will regret having to take because our imperative is to keep citizens safe.”

After details on the Digital Charter were published in late May, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains warned in vague terms that “violations of the laws and regulations that support these principles” will result in “clear, meaningful penalties.”

It is unclear whether “meaningful penalties” mean millions of dollars in fines for press outlets and tech firms, or worse, the persecution, imprisonment, and torture of individual journalists and political dissidents like Assange, who faces extradition to the United States on espionage charges for revealing the global war crimes and conspiracies of US imperialism.

Ottawa’s turn to digital censorship is further reflected in federal budget 2019. Measures to “safeguard Canadian democracy” include $19.4 million in funding over four years for the Department of Canadian Heritage to launch the Digital Democracy Project, an international initiative led by Canada aimed at creating “guiding principles” for combating online “disinformation”, and the Digital Citizen Initiative aimed at educating the public on “deceptive practices” used online.

Confronted with growing worker militancy and mass opposition to government policy, the Canadian ruling class in collaboration with its imperialist allies is setting out to establish and formalize mechanisms for state censorship.

The turn towards internet censorship and other authoritarian practices must be seen in the context of rising working class militancy against right-wing provincial regimes in Ontario and Quebec.

As the right-wing populist premiers Doug Ford and Francois Legault gut public services and workers’ rights, the ruling elite as a whole fears that the mounting protests could erupt into an all-out challenge to the agenda of capitalist austerity and war supported by all of the established parties. This includes the Trudeau government, which has hiked military spending by over 70 percent and collaborated with the Trump administration’s far-right crackdown on refugees and immigrants.

Riot police attack Athens protest against Airbnb as housing costs soar

John Vassilopoulos

Riot police armed with clubs and tear gas attacked protesters in Athens last Thursday night. The demonstration was called to oppose Airbnb and other short-letting platforms that have hiked up house prices in the Greek capital.

The attack by riot police came one day after Draconian law-and-order plans were unveiled after the first cabinet meeting of the newly elected conservative New Democracy (ND) government. These include the re-establishment of the notorious DELTA rapid response police unit, with the hiring of 1,500 officers both for DELTA and the motorcycle DIAS.

All security-related departments, including those covering migration policy, are to be placed under a single “super-ministry,” which will come under the jurisdiction of newly appointed Citizen Protection Minister Michalis Chryssochoidis.

Around 80 mostly young people marched through the Athens district of Koukaki. The proliferation of short-term lets in the area around the Acropolis and other tourist attractions has resulted in a lack of affordable housing for locals.

Police and mainstream media outlets claimed riot police acted in response to protesters attacking them with sticks and stones, resulting in two policemen sustaining light injuries.

However, this was contradicted by several eyewitnesses who described the police attack as unprovoked.

Riot police assault demonstrators in Athens

A video posted on Facebook shows four riot policemen attacking a protester while two others try to protect him. In the background, passers-by scream at the police to stop, including an older tourist who approaches the police, shouting in English, “Stop doing this! Stop, please!”

A separate video shows a man with head injuries sitting on the pavement being tended to by members of the public while a group of riot police look on. The man was later reportedly arrested.

Man with head injuries after assault by riot police

Commenting on the attack, the video’s poster wrote, “If this happens on a march of hardly 100 people…on Koukaki’s central-most pedestrian area and blatantly in front of passers-by…you can imagine how far [this government’s] violence and repression can go.”

Speaking to lifo.gr, a local resident who witnessed the attacks from her balcony also said the protest had been entirely peaceful: “Young people were shouting slogans against Airbnb and giving out flyers. I did not see any of the kids holding wooden sticks. … I don’t know if there was a verbal altercation between protesters and police. Even if there was, this does not justify tear gas and violence. … We’re not even talking about anti-establishment activists or veteran anarchists from the Exarchia district. Just young people who are protesting because they can’t live in their own neighbourhood.”

The same resident described police actions towards one of the protesters: “They beat the living daylights out of that kid. We were shouting from our balconies, but they did not stop.”

According to a survey published by Airbnb in 2016, Koukaki came fifth out of 16 “top trending neighbourhoods.” It had experienced a massive 800 percent growth in short-term guests the previous year. A quick search on Greek lettings site xe.gr brings up just over 100 properties currently available for rent in the area. This compares to more than 800 properties in Koukaki that are listed on short-term platforms like Airbnb and HomeAway. The same explosion in short-term letting is reportedly taking place in neighbourhoods across the Athens metropolitan area.

The bulk of these properties, in many cases entire blocks of flats, form part of property portfolios of mostly foreign investors taking advantage of Athens’ relatively low property values compared with the rest of Europe. A Golden Visa programme launched in July 2013 offers five years’ residency to real estate investors who spend at least €250,000 on property. According to data compiled by Inside Airbnb, nearly half of Airbnb hosts in Athens have multiple properties listed under their account.

A report published by Kathimerini noted: “According to data analytics company AirDNA, the commercial triangle surrounding Plaka and Monastiraki has 1,181 properties, mostly high-quality, generating an average monthly income for their owners (based on 80 percent occupancy) of around 1,625 euros. The second most lucrative Airbnb neighborhood is Acropolis, with an average monthly income of 1,430 euros and 321 listings, followed by Thiseio (1,300 euros and 268 listings), Koukaki-Makriyianni (1,275 euros and 684 listings) and Kerameikos (1,264 euros and 213 listings).”

Just hours after the incident in Koukaki, outgoing Syriza Deputy Citizen Protection Minister Katerina Papakosta could not even bring herself to raise a serious protest, stating on her Facebook page that “the current prime minister has said that there will be no acts of lawlessness under his government…let every logical and intelligent citizen be the judge of that.”

Having lost the election, the pseudo-left Syriza has no intention of abandoning its march to the right. Having junked its mandate to end austerity only months after being elected at the start of 2015, the outgoing Syriza government routinely deployed riot police units to attack demonstrations against its austerity policies. Syriza also deployed riot police against desperate migrants and refugees interned in squalid camps such as Moria on the island of Lesbos as part of the European Union’s reactionary immigration agenda. The ND government will continue these policies.

It was under Syriza’s watch that Airbnb became prevalent in Athens. According to statistics from Inside Airbnb, since 2015 listings have increased exponentially. Meanwhile, rents in Athens as a whole grew by an average of 50 percent—but more than doubling in Koukaki.

Meanwhile, wages have continued to fall. The median income in the private sector is not even €900 a month. Based on current prices for a 70-square-metre apartment in Athens, more than half this median income would go towards rent.