Australian cancer victim sues Bayer-Monsanto

Frank Gaglioti 

On June 4, in the first such case in Australia, the Melbourne lawn mowing service operator Michael Ogalirolo launched legal action in the Supreme Court against the global chemical giant Bayer, the current owner of Monsanto, which manufactures the herbicide Roundup.

The case follows similar recent cases in the US that have heightened concerns internationally over the use of the herbicide. Bayer, the German pharmaceutical company, bought out Monsanto, the original producer of Roundup, in 2018. The US agrichemical company had been founded in 1901.

Ogalirolo has developed the potentially lethal cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), which he claims is due to 18 years of exposure to glyphosate, the active component of Roundup.

His writ declares: “The defendant [Bayer] knew or ought to have known that the use of Roundup products were dangerous for the plaintiff… in particular causing DNA and chromosomal damage in human cells, cancer, kidney disease, infertility and nerve damage among other devastating illnesses.

“As such, Roundup products are dangerous to human health and unfit to be marketed and sold in commerce, particularly without proper warnings and directions.”

Ogalirolo’s case follows three successful legal actions against Bayer in the US. School groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson sued Bayer after contracting an extremely aggressive and lethal form of NHL and was awarded $US289 million in August 2018.

In a statement to jurors, a lawyer for Johnson, Brent Wisner, condemned Monsanto for putting profits first. He said that he had seen internal Monsanto company documents “proving that Monsanto has known for decades that glyphosate and specifically Roundup could cause cancer.”

In a second case in March, the US District Court in California found that Roundup caused Edwin Hardeman to develop NHL after using Roundup for 30 years on his property. Farmers Alberta and Alva Pilliod were awarded $2 billion in May, the biggest settlement so far, after developing NHL.

Alva Pilliod told the media after her court hearing: “We wish that Monsanto had warned us ahead of time about the dangers of using Monsanto [weedkiller]… And that there was something on the front of their label that said ‘danger may cause cancer.’”

Currently, there are 13,400 claims pending in US courts and a number of other Australian cancer victims considering taking action against Bayer.

As a result of the law suits and significant scientific studies, action is being discussed in a number of countries. Vietnam and France banned glyphosate products in April and July respectively, and other European administrations are considering bans.

In Australia, municipal councils are reconsidering the use of Roundup.

On July 4, 500 outdoor workers from Blacktown council in suburban Sydney walked out over safety concerns over the use of Roundup. The strike took place after six workers were told that they would be placed on other duties if they refused to use the herbicide.

The workers returned to work after an Industrial Relations Commission hearing ruled that the council should trial an alternative weed control process. One crew would trial the alternative but the majority of workers would still have to use Roundup.

In June, residents reacted angrily to the Illawarra council’s annual aerial spraying of Roundup to control weeds on the local escarpment, south of Sydney. Petitions opposing the spraying were signed by thousands of residents.

One petition signed by 2,500 people stated: “Roundup is extremely dangerous as proven in court now multiple times… The health implications for residents, their pets, and small children is simply unacceptable.”

The Illawarra District Weeds Authority officer David Pomery rebuffed residents’ concerns, stating Roundup was the “only practical and feasible method to control.”

The chemical giant Monsanto introduced Roundup in 1974. According to figures published in 2016, Roundup is the most heavily applied weed killer in the history of chemical agriculture internationally. There are 500 glyphosate products available to farmers and gardeners in Australia.

The huge expansion in the use of glyphosate products occurred after 1996 when Monsanto developed genetically modified seeds, including corn, wheat, soy, canola and cotton that are immune to the effects of the herbicide. This enables farmers to spray plants throughout their lifecycle, suppressing weeds but leaving the crop unharmed. Roundup-resistant seeds are marketed as Roundup Ready. This effectively ties the farmer to the continued use of Monsanto products, including having to rebuy seed every year.

According to a scientific paper, Trends in glyphosate herbicide use in the United States and globally, published in 2016, the introduction of Roundup Ready seeds enabled a 15-fold increase in the agricultural use of Roundup and allowed Monsanto to dominate the world herbicide market.

Glyphosate is also used for pre-harvest crop desiccation: That is the application of a herbicide near the end of the growing season to cause crops to dry and die uniformly, making them easier to harvest, and increasing the risk of chemical contamination of food products.

Bayer and Monsanto have conducted relentless campaigns against critics of the herbicide and Bayer continues to aggressively promote Roundup as a safe product.

Bayer has not responded to the Australian writ, but in the US it has indicated it will challenge the court victories of the successful litigants.

“We continue to believe firmly that the science confirms that glyphosate-based herbicides do not cause cancer,” Bayer stated in March in response to the Hardeman case.

A number of scientific reports have questioned Roundup’s safety record. In 2015, the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified the herbicide as “probably carcinogenic to humans,” based on a review of existing research.

A study published in February concluded that exposure to Roundup increased the probability of developing NHL by 41 percent. One of the co-authors, Lianne Sheppard, professor in the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at the University of Washington, told the Guardian that “from a population health point of view there are some real concerns.”

An Australian Broadcasting Corporation program, “The Monsanto Papers,” broadcast in October 2018, published an internal email from Monsanto’s chief toxicologist that contradicted the company’s promotion of the herbicide’s safety record. “[Y]ou cannot say that Roundup is not a carcinogen… we have not done the necessary testing on the formulation to make that statement,” the scientist stated.

Thus, there is mounting evidence that the continued promotion and sale of Roundup is another glaring example of the pursuit of corporate profit with scant concern for the potential consequences for health and the environment.

Indonesian court backs Widodo’s election

John Roberts

Indonesia’s Constitutional Court upheld the re-election of President Joko Widodo for a second five-year term on June 27, rejecting a petition by his challenger, Subianto Prabowo, to have the April 17 election overturned on the basis of electoral fraud.

The unanimous decision confirmed that Widodo and his vice-presidential running mate, the conservative Muslim cleric Ma’ruf Amin, secured 85.6 million votes, outpolling Prabowo, and his running mate, Jakarta deputy governor Sandiaga Uno, at 68.7 million. The ruling also gave Widodo’s five-party coalition a majority of more than 100 over Prabowo’s four-party group in the 560-member lower house of the national parliament, the DPR.

Widodo’s second term administration will be installed in October. In the meantime, following the court’s ruling, Widodo and Prabowo, directly or through their representatives, have begun to work out what are essentially power-sharing arrangements.

The mass of the 263 million population, many of whom live in abject poverty, will not be involved, nor are their interests being discussed. The election itself was a thoroughly anti-democratic process, with many parties barred from participating.

Both men, and the political parties gathered around them, are based on different factions of the ruling elite. Widodo’s coalition, and the party that leads it, former President Megawati Sukarnoputri’s Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), represent sections eager to attract foreign investors to finance infrastructure projects. A key partner in this coalition is Golkar, the political instrument of the US-backed military dictatorship of General Suharto installed in the bloody coup of 1965–66.

Widodo said investment was necessary for job creation, but the main beneficiaries will be the wealthy. The richest 1 percent of the population owns 50 percent of national wealth; the richest 10 percent owns 77 percent. This wealth concentration has steadily increased since the collapse of the Suharto regime in 1998.

In his first policy speech since the election, on July 14, Widodo said he would invite “as much investment as possible” and that “anything that obstructs investment must be trimmed.”

The international financial press welcomed Widodo’s victory and listed the measures needed to remove these “obstructions.” These included removing regulatory burdens, offering labour laws attractive to foreign investors, and further cutting price subsidies on fuel and electricity, which will affect the living standards of millions of the poorest people. Widodo was also urged to reconsider local content requirements, reducing investment restrictions and limiting the role of state-owned enterprises.

Like leaders throughout the Asia-Pacific region, Widodo has tried to balance between the US and China, which is now a leading investor in Indonesia. Prabowo accused Widodo of being too soft on China and declared he would review all Chinese-funded projects if he won the presidency. While Prabowo attracted no support from Washington, his anti-China stance is in tune with the Trump administration’s aggressive policies.

Prabowo, a notorious Suharto-era general, and a former son-in-law of Suharto, also stood against Widodo in the 2014 presidential election and challenged that result as well. His faction represents less competitive layers of the ruling elite. It favours protectionist measures to ensure its economic interests are not side-lined in the dealings with foreign investors.

Prabowo and his Gerindra party attacked Widodo’s reliance on Chinese capital. He posed as the defender of workers and farmers by claiming Beijing was sending too many Chinese workers into the country to work on infrastructure projects, and that Chinese involvement was undermining Indonesia’s sovereignty over its energy and food sector.

The Prabowo faction relied on the same forces it used to remove Widodo’s protégé Basuki Tjahaja Purnama as governor of Jakarta in 2016–2017. They mobilised an anti-Chinese chauvinist campaign led by Islamist hard liners who painted Widodo as a Beijing stooge.

There were two days of protests and rioting by these Prabowo supporters in Jakarta on May 21–22, disputing the legitimacy of the election commission’s poll declaration. Clashes with police left at least eight dead, 600 injured and hundreds arrested.

Concerns on both sides that the unrest could trigger wider discontent over poverty and inequality led to sordid deal making behind the backs of the masses, including Prabowo’s protesting supporters. According to Asia Sentinel, with Widodo’s permission his current vice president Jusuf Kalla, a member of Golkar, met with Prabowo the day after the Jakarta riots.

Tempo magazine reported National Intelligence Agency (BIN) chief Budi Gunawan, a man close both to Widodo and Megawati, then met with Prabowo in Bali on June 24. The involvement of Budi and BIN is significant. It underscores the reality that the military-intelligence apparatus, the ruthless instrument of the Suharto dictatorship, is still politically powerful and will again be well represented in Widodo’s new cabinet.

On July 13, Prabowo and Widodo met in public, joined by Budi, Prabowo’s Gerindra party general secretary Ahmad Muzani and Widodo’s presidential campaign chief Erick Thohir. In his July 14 speech, Widodo hinted that a power-sharing deal could be worked even if Prabowo’s faction remained in “opposition,” saying “acting as opposition is also a very noble thing.”

On July 20, the Prabowo faction let it be known that its price for formally joining the Widodo government would be eight positions in the 35-member cabinet, including control of the energy and food portfolios. However, Prabowo and his allies have said they would not make a final decision until September. Entry into the government would mean they could no longer pose as an “opposition” to head off social and political disaffection.

Whatever the final outcome of the horse-trading, two factors are pushing both factions to reach an accommodation.

One is the growing economic malaise. The effects of the trade war between Indonesia’s two largest trading partners, China and the United States, are being felt throughout the region. Singapore, the largest source of investment in Indonesia, suffered an economic decline of 3.4 percent in the second quarter of 2019. Between January and June, Indonesia’s exports fell 8.75 percent year-on-year and imports were down 7.63 percent.

The second related factor is the explosive social situation. Official figures show 26 million Indonesians are living in poverty. But the poverty line, outside of Jakarta, is just 401,220 rupiah ($US27.76) per month. One study showed that the real cost of living, for one person in a single room and minimal electricity, food and transport, on the outskirts of Jakarta, would be 790,000 rupiah.

The fear in ruling circles is that infighting in the political establishment could open the door for a mass movement of working people that rapidly spirals out of control, threatening the country’s fragile bourgeois rule.

German automaker Opel to cut a further 1,100 jobs

Marianne Arens

According to the tactic of divide and conquer, German automaker Opel and the works council are imposing round after round of attacks on autoworkers. Shortly before the plants closed for the summer holiday, news emerged that 1,100 jobs will be cut in Rüsselsheim, Eisenach and Kaiserslautern.

Job cuts have already been underway at the company’s International Centre for Research and Development (ITEZ) for a year. Up to 700 engineers and technicians are to transfer to the French services company Segula, while a further 2,000 will lose their jobs. It remains entirely unclear what the approximately 6,000 workers will confront when they return from holiday in August.

Last year, Opel cut 3,700 jobs across its locations. An additional 600 jobs will now be added to this in Rüsselsheim, coinciding with the 120th anniversary of the Rüsselsheim plant. At the same time, 200 jobs will go at the Eisenach facility in the state of Thuringia, while up to 300 jobs could be lost in the parts plant in Kaiserslautern.

Overall, this means that since being taken over by PSA, one in three out of Opel’s 19,000 workforce has lost their job. Out of a total global workforce of 38,000, over 8,000 jobs had been cut by the end of last year.

The job cuts are part of the “Pace!” restructuring programme. Two years ago, the French automaker PSA (Peugeot, Citroen, DS) purchased Opel and Vauxhall from GM, and the works council and IG Metall trade union voted in favour of “Pace!” They also praised PSA head Tavarez to the skies.

The World Socialist Web Site warned at the time, “There is much to suggest that the sale will be the prelude to a comprehensive restructuring programme. Opel currently employs some 38,200 in Europe, more than half of whom work in Germany. The PSA takeover could result in more than 6,000 people losing their jobs.” This has been fully confirmed.

Although these plans were fully worked out from the beginning, they have only gradually come to light. This is exactly what auto industry expert Ferdinand Dudenhöffer said on ZDF in July 2018, when he noted that the board and the union “intentionally didn’t announce everything at once,” because otherwise “they feared triggering a revolution or strike.”

IG Metall and the works council have played a central role for years in imposing job cuts as seamlessly as possible. Immediately after the PSA takeover, IG Metall and works council officials travelled to Paris to offer PSA chief executive Carlos Tavarez their “loyal collaboration.”

On February 21, 2017, the IG Metall website published a “joint statement from the central works council, IG Metall, and the European Opel/Vauxhall Central Works Council” in which the union praised the “confidential and honest talks.” With “confidential” they meant to say—behind the backs of the workforce.

Since then, the works council and IG Metall have supported the elimination of thousands of jobs, the laying off of thousands of contract workers, and the imposition of work rules and wage concessions at every plant. Prior to that, they were jointly involved in imposing the closure of Opel plants in Antwerp and Bochum.

In January, there was a change in the position of human resources head at Opel, with Ralph Wangemann, who has worked in management for 20 years, becoming director of human resources and labour. He is tasked with leading the entire human resources department for Opel and Vauxhall. His job is to collaborate with the works council to accelerate the restructuring measures and job cuts.

Several weeks later, the central works council also announced a change in leadership. Wolfgang Schäfer-klug, who led the central works council for seven years, resigned and handed the post to his deputy, Uwe Baum. It remains unclear whether Schäfer-klug will be rewarded with a high paying management job, like many other union bureaucrats.

Schäfer-klug said he would focus on leading the works council in Rüsselsheim and the European works council. This can only be taken to mean that further deep cuts are planned at the company’s facilities. Baum, the new central works council leader, is known as a hard-liner who suppresses all critical opposition.

The IG Metall and works council’s ruthless manoeuvres have been known for a long time. As appendages of the company boards, they are chiefly concerned with increasing productivity and profits. They subordinate the interests of the workers and the entire workforce to the profit interests of the company. Their goal is to support company management and shareholders in their global struggle with competitors.

The entire auto industry is being restructured due to factors such as the trade war with the United States, Brexit, and the weak Turkish lira (pushing down profits from exports). In addition, there is the expensive transition to electric vehicles and digital technology. The company knows no other way to protect their profits apart from imposing concessions on the backs of workers.

Two years ago, PSA CEO Carlos Tavares declared, “The only thing that protects workers’ jobs is profit.” However, according to company finances from July 2019, PSA’s losses continue to mount. In the first six months of 2019, PSA’s four brands sold a combined 1.9 million vehicles, 12.8 percent less than the same period in 2018. The latest round of job cuts was announced at about the same time.

The media never tires of noting that the cuts will be implemented through “voluntary” measures. There will be no compulsory redundancies, so the story goes, only part-time work for elderly workers, early retirement programmes and buyouts. This is utter nonsense, since it does not apply to contract workers, who can be laid off overnight. Secondly, the jobs eliminated through “social contracts” are lost forever. This, above all, destroys the future prospects for the younger generation. Only a handful of trainees are hired permanently.

Thirdly, the early retirement measures merely mean that elderly, better paid workers are forced out of the plants, to be replaced by younger workers able to work harder for less. In Kaiserslautern, the early retirement programme is currently being expanded to workers aged 58.

Measures are also being enforced at the ITEZ research centre in Rüsselsheim. At least 1,340 workers have accepted their departure from the centre, either through buyouts, early retirement or part-time work. Only 140 have volunteered to be transferred to Segula. After the holiday, a further 500 workers are expected to be forced out. If they refuse to work for Segula, Opel management has threatened that their jobs will be lost for good and they will have no right to a buyout.

As the WSWS has been arguing for some time, jobs, wages and working conditions can only be defended if the workers break free from the control of the union bureaucracy. They must build action committees entirely independently of IG Metall and coordinate their struggle internationally.

The problems confronted by Opel workers are the same as those faced by workers at VW, Ford and the other automakers and parts suppliers. They can only be resolved if workers take up the struggle for socialism, i.e., for a rationally planned economy under workers’ control directed towards meeting the needs of the entire population—workers as well as car owners—not the profit demands of shareholders.

US coal giant Blackjewel, LLC and affiliates declare bankruptcy

Zachary Thorton

The recent bankruptcy declaration of coal giant Blackjewel, LLC and its affiliates, which has left some 1,800 workers unemployed and owed unpaid back wages, is a case study in gross incompetence and criminality.

The company made an emergency Chapter 11 filing in the Southern District of West Virginia on July 1. Included in the filing are Blackjewel’s offshoots, Blackjewel Holdings, LLC, Revelation Energy, LLC, Revelation Energy Holdings, LLC, and Revelation Management Corp. Workers were not aware of the move until they reported for their shifts, after which they were escorted off the premises and given no indication of when or if they would be allowed to return to work.

Blackjewel, which is headquartered in Milton, West Virginia, also operates mines in Virginia, Kentucky, and, as of 2017, Wyoming, when it took over two sizable mines in that state. The Wyoming mines are located in the largest coal-mining region in the country, the Powder River Basin (PRB). This makes Blackjewel the latest PRB operator to file for bankruptcy following Cloud Peak Energy in May of this year.

The declining demand for coal due, due to the slowdown of the world economy and escalating trade tensions, coupled with the unresolved effects of the 2008 financial crisis and the sharp decline in the price of natural gas, has driven numerous coal companies, such as Peabody Energy, Arch Coal and Alpha Resources, into insolvency. However, in virtually every instance these companies were prepared months in advance to file for Chapter 11, thus allowing them to continue their operations. Blackjewel represents an exceptional case, in which the company apparently disregarded numerous indicators that it was approaching ruin up until the very last minute, when it could no longer continue operations.

In a court hearing, Blackjewel’s counsel, Stephen Lerner of Squire Patton Boggs, suggested that all was well with the company until one creditor, Riverstone Credit Partners, withdrew its financing, telling a judge, “That happened Wednesday. Prior to Wednesday there was no issue. Zero issue.”

That assertion is directly contradicted by Blackjewel and Revelation founder and CEO Jeff Hoops, who stated in his testimony, “Myself and our CFO, Drew Kesler, we maintain a very detailed cash flow model of the company, week to week. And we review cash needs and cash requirements each week.” If such an accounting was indeed taking place, then there is little doubt that Blackjewel was well aware of what was on the horizon.

Upon examination, it is a wonder that Blackjewel was able to last as long as it did. Before Blackjewel was formed in 2017, its affiliate, Revelation Energy, was struggling with cash flow since at least 2013. Blackjewel inherited this problem as well. Meanwhile, the companies were accumulating vast sums of debt. Clark Williams-Derry, director of energy finance for the Sightline Institute, draws this conclusion:

“The fact that Hoops’s companies have been short on cash, even as they racked up hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid bills, leaves only two options: business failure or fraud. Either Hoops’s coal mining empire was spending more than it was taking in, or someone was siphoning money out of the company. Or perhaps both.”

A lawyer for one lender contended that Hoops had engaged in what is known as “check kiting,” a type of check fraud that Wikipedia defines as “intentionally writing a check for a value greater than the account balance from an account in one bank, then writing a check from another account in another bank, also with non-sufficient funds, with the second check serving to cover the non-existent funds from the first account.” Evidence before the court showed that Hoops would often transfer funds into and out of Blackjewel, with many of these transfers done on the same day.

In its petition for bankruptcy, Blackjewel lists 30 creditors to which it owes a combined total of approximately $288 million. Topping the list is the US Department of Interior, with a claim of over $60 million, followed by Wyoming’s Campbell County Treasurer, with over $37 million owed. In 2018, Revelation Energy was ordered to pay $7.3 million in damages to Fifth Third Bank for violating an agreement in which Revelation was not allowed to transfer assets—in this case, the transfer of the Wyoming mines to Blackjewel—while it was in default on loan obligations to Fifth Third.

In addition to racking up huge debts, the company piled up numerous environmental and safety violations. On January 16, Blackjewel’s acquisition of its Wyoming assets were temporarily halted due to Revelation Energy’s 42 outstanding violations, some of which were so severe that regulators threatened to shut down the offending mines.

Blackjewel was prepared to file for Chapter 7—that is, liquidation—if not for an emergency $5 million loan approved by the court on July 3. The loan agreement was contingent on the resignation of Hoops and all of his family members.

The bankruptcy has completely devastated Blackjewel’s 1,800 workers, their families, and their communities. Workers had already had their wages, benefits, and working conditions eroded by decades of forced concessions imposed by the trade unions and their corporate masters.

Blackjewel owes about $6 million in unpaid wages to its employees. Paychecks that workers received on June 28 were withdrawn from their accounts by banks on July 1, leaving many with debilitating overdraft fees. Some workers were issued cashier checks but were unable to access them due to bank holds. Meanwhile, despite driving his companies into the ground, now former-CEO Jeff Hoops will have no trouble putting food on his plate. Indeed, Hoops will continue to develop a $30 million resort in West Virginia called The Grand Patrician, complete with a 500-person convention center, a nine-hole golf course, and a 3,500-seat replica of the Roman Coliseum.

As of this writing, there has been no indication as to when workers may return to their jobs.

Iran accuses 17 of spying for CIA as tensions escalate

Steve James & Robert Stevens 

Amidst rapidly spiraling tensions, the Iranian government announced Monday that it had arrested 17 Iranian nationals working in military and nuclear installations whom it accused of being US intelligence agents.

According to the Iranian Students News Agency, the intelligence ministry’s counter-espionage department said some of the alleged agents had already been sentenced to death, while others were said to be assisting Iranian efforts to garner information on US activities. Iran says those alleged to have been CIA spies were employed in “sensitive centres” in military and nuclear facilities and arrested over a 12-month period up until March this year.

Tehran claimed the individuals had received “sophisticated training” and been promised US visas or jobs in the US.

US President Donald Trump rejected the Iranian claims as “totally false” while Secretary of State and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo said that “the Iranian regime has a long history of lying.” He admitted however that there was “a long list of Americans that we are working to get home from the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

The arrests come after weeks of escalating tensions. In late June, the Trump administration was 10 minutes away from a potentially catastrophic military attack on Iran that would trigger all-out regional conflict and threaten to draw in the world’s major powers on opposing sides.

In the intervening weeks, the US administration has worked to ramp up more sustained pressure on Iran. Over the weekend, Iran’s seizure of the British flagged oil tanker Stena Impero as it transited the Strait of Hormuz was made the pretext for new naval and air provocations.

The Stena Impero was seized in retaliation for the July 4 boarding of the Iranian flagged supertanker Grace 1 by British Royal Marines off Gibraltar in an unprovoked act of piracy.

Marking a new and dangerous phase in the US campaign of unrestrained gangsterism against Iran, bringing the region to the brink of war, the crisis over the Stena Impero is inflaming already deep divisions within British ruling circles.

The Conservative government upholds the 2015 Iran nuclear accord, which the US government has abrogated. Like the EU, British companies hold substantial interests in Iran. But British imperialism has for decades relied on US influence and military backing in order to punch above its weight.

Following a meeting yesterday morning of the government’s Cobra emergency committee chaired by outgoing prime minster Theresa May, Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt issued a statement in the House of Commons.

Hunt described Iran’s action as “an act of state piracy” and a “flagrant breech of the principle of free navigation on which the world economy depends.”

He said he had spoken to the foreign ministers of the US, Oman, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Finland and Denmark and would now “seek to put together a European led maritime protection mission to support safe passage of both crew and cargo in this vital region.”

Hunt described this EU dominated force as a complement to US proposals in the region, but made clear, “it will not be part of the US maximum pressure policy on Iran because we remain committed to preserving the Iran nuclear agreement.”

Hunt’s position was immediately endorsed by Labour’s shadow defence minister Fabian Hamilton who intoned, “Iran’s actions in recent weeks in the Strait of Hormuz have been utterly unacceptable and should be condemned from all sides.”

However, military conflict with Iran had to be avoided he said, voicing the concerns of substantial sections of the British state over the recklessness of US actions in the Gulf. “Escalation has been inevitable since the United States walked away from the Iran nuclear deal and re-imposed sanctions... on any country or company that continues to deal with Iran.”

Hamilton asked whether the UK’s seizure of the Iran tanker Grace 1 off Gibraltar on July 4 was carried out at the request of the United States. “We know from the Spanish newspaper El País that the US told the Madrid Government 48 hours in advance that Grace 1 was headed for the Iberian peninsula, which could also explain why, 36 hours in advance, the Gibraltar Government introduced new legislation to shore up the legal basis for the seizure taking place in their waters.”

Hunt refused to give a categorical answer to Hamilton’s question.

Hamilton asked Hunt how the government intended to “get the nuclear deal back on track” and “persuade the Trump administration to drop its sanctions against Iran” before “we reach the point of no return.”

Putting the issue more bluntly, Labour’s shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon tweeted over the weekend, "A war on Iran could be even more damaging and destabilising than the war on Iraq. We need to avoid being the sidekicks of Donald Trump and [US National Security Adviser and anti-Iranian hawk] John Bolton and instead pursue the path of diplomacy."

Former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, Hunt’s contender for the Tory leadership who is set to become party leader and prime minister, has cemented close ties with Trump since the 2016 referendum vote to leave the European Union.

While a section of Johnson’s supporters have demanded he takes a firmer stance against Iran than has been advocated by May, Johnson has so far ruled out backing any US military strikes against Tehran.

However, Johnson supporter, Brexiteer and former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith accused the May government over the weekend of being unprepared to follow through on the Grace 1 capture. “I understand... from reasonable sources that Washington had offered the UK Government—even in the event that they haven’t quite agreed an allied position to this—to use US assets to support British shipping and they were not taken up at the point.”

On Monday, Pompeo was asked about Iran’s capture of the Stena Impero and replied, “The responsibility in the first instance falls to the United Kingdom to take care of their ships.” He added, “The United States has a responsibility to do our part but the world’s got a big role in this too, to keep these sea lanes open.”

Pompeo didn’t miss an opportunity to continue threatening Iran, declaring it a “bad regime” which has “conducted what amounts to national piracy, a nation state taking over a ship that’s traveling in international waters… We don’t want war with Iran. We want them to behave like a normal nation. I think they understand that and I think the whole world is waking up to the fact that this threat is real.”

None of this rules out that events could escalate into warfare, with a number of influential political and military figures noting over the weekend—as did Britain’s Admiral Lord West—that “despite what some people think, should a war start there is no way the UK could avoid being fully involved on the US side.”

Mass protests shake Puerto Rican and US political establishment

Jerry White

In what has been described as the largest demonstration in the history of Puerto Rico, hundreds of thousands of people in the US island territory marched Monday to demand the resignation of Governor Ricardo Rosselló.

The daily newspaper El Nuevo Día estimated that a half-million demonstrators participated in the “March of the People,” which paralyzed the capital of San Juan, shutting businesses and halting traffic. The demonstration included a huge procession down the island’s busiest highway, the Expreso Las Américas.

Hundreds of thousands march to demand the resignation of Rosselló

The mass mobilization marked the twelfth consecutive day of demonstrations, which have included clashes with riot police dispatched by Rosselló. Calls are mounting for an island-wide general strike amid solidarity protests in several cities on the US mainland with large Puerto Rican populations. Marchers in San Juan and at mainland protests chanted, “Ricky, ¡renuncia, el pueblo te repudia!” (“Ricky, resign, the people reject you.”)

Truck drivers parked their vehicles to help protesters occupy the main highway. A group of medical students told local media they were protesting because people are unable to get basic medical services at hospitals because the “government is so corrupt” and the funds needed to meet the needs of the people “go straight into politicians’ pockets.”

The governor’s effort to diffuse opposition by announcing he would not seek reelection next year and was handing over leadership of his New Progressive Party (PNP) only fueled popular anger. In a Facebook live broadcast Sunday, Rosselló reiterated that he would not resign and was “looking forward to turning over power to the person elected democratically.”

Rosselló, however, is politically isolated. Major news outlets including El Nuevo Día, the youth movement of his own party and other political officials are calling for his resignation.

Protesters demand the resignation of Governor “Ricky” Rosselló

Pressed by a Fox News reporter Monday to point to one political figure who supported him, Rosselló cited Javier Jiménez, the mayor of San Sebastian. A few hours later, Jiménez said, “It’s not true that I support the governor.”

The protests have escalated since Puerto Rico’s Center for Investigation released nearly 900 pages of private chat messages between the governor and top officials in his administration. The chats exposed the political establishment’s contempt towards the island’s 3.2 million inhabitants.

In one exchange, the governor’s chief financial executive, Sobrino Vega, joked with Rosselló about the growing number of dead bodies piling up in the morgue after Hurricane Maria in 2017, with Vega quipping, “Don't we have some cadavers to feed our crows?”

The release of the messages was only the catalyst for the social explosion, which was fueled by decades of factory closures and layoffs, compounded by austerity measures imposed by the Financial Oversight Board set up by President Obama and the devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria. An estimated 5,000 people perished in the hurricane and flooding that followed, largely as a result of the criminally negligent response by the Trump administration and local officials.

A section of the San Juan protest

The messages were leaked the same week that the FBI arrested two former officials in the Rosselló administration—Education Secretary Julia Keleher and Angela Avila Marrero, the executive director of the health insurance administration. The two were indicted on federal corruption charges.

Keleher, a close political ally of Trump’s education secretary Betsy DeVos, sparked teacher strikes and mass protests after she seized on the hurricane to shut 283 public schools and lay off 5,000 educators.

Juan, a 58-year-old informal sector worker, told the WSWS: “This is a historic moment in Puerto Rican history that we have dreamed of for many years. This protest is not just about the chats in which the governor insulted the people of this country. These protests have been building up for the past 15 years.

“They are driven by the economic problems, job insecurity, attacks on labor rights, the high cost of living, and the imposition of Wall Street and the economic junta. This reminds me of the US invasion of Puerto Rico in 1898. All of these protests are due to the emotional exhaustion of the country.”

Juan continued, “It is significant that there are young people as well as elderly people in these protests to defend their pensions. The youth are fighting for public education, which is being dismantled for private companies. I do not want this to end just with the resignation of the governor, but with a whole restructuring of political life in this country.

“I think the same process is taking place throughout Latin America and in Europe. It is a struggle on the one hand of the international interests of workers, to protect public education and pensions, and on the other of private capital. This is not a national problem—it has international consequences.”

“The content of the governor’s chats was obviously horrible,” Mario, a student at the University of Puerto Rico in Piedras Negras, told the WSWS. “But the PNP has moved further to the right, not only in economic terms but also social. Social security, teachers’ pensions and the services that the government should provide have all been cut.

“These austerity measures have created a divided society, where the poor and the workers on one side and the most fortunate on the other live in two different worlds but coexist in the same geographic areas.

“The education system is segregated by class. Public schools are badly run with a tiny budget and people cannot pay for private schools. Keleher justified her cuts by saying there was no money, and now she’s been arrested for stealing $15 million. The ruling class and the fiscal junta are punishing the working class unjustly, and this act of terrorism is driving people into the streets.”

Protesters in San Juan occupy a highway overpass

The WSWS also spoke to Anthony, a student whose grandfather needlessly died after the hurricane because he could not get his regular dialysis treatment due to lack of electricity.

“This is yet another chapter in the story of the government looting public funds, but this time the people are not willing to take any more of this nonsense. Everybody is clear that the group chat is not the problem but was only the mechanism by which the problem got exposed.

“The protests are about corruption, the dismantling of public education, the millions of dollars in donations that were never provided for the victims of the hurricane. No one is satisfied by the governor’s decision not to run nor be the president of the party. Each and every person involved in the scheme must be brought to justice.”

Politicians on the island have tried to adapt to popular sentiment, with San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz of the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) calling for Rossello’s impeachment, but not his immediate resignation. President Trump has sought to distance himself from Rosselló, while several Democratic presidential candidates, including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Tulsi Gabbard, have issued empty statements about “standing with the people of Puerto Rico.”

The Democrats are just as responsible for the horrific conditions on the island as the Republicans. The Obama administration imposed a financial dictatorship on behalf of Wall Street and wealthy bondholders, using the same bankruptcy judges and asset strippers as were employed in the bankruptcy of Detroit. The financial restructuring of Puerto Rico is, in turn, the preparation for new attacks on the pensions of public sector workers on the mainland.

Protesters shut down a major highway

The outpouring of hundreds of thousands of people demanding the resignation of Rosselló is sending paroxysms of fear through the entire US political establishment. The Trump administration is also isolated. It is seeking to use fascistic attacks on socialism, along with xenophobia and racism, to counter the growing radicalization of workers and young people on the US.

On the Twitter account of Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, several people tweeted that the American people should launch similar mass struggles to demand the resignation of Trump.

“If Puerto Ricans can do this, why can't we? When is enough, enough?” one post said.

“Why can’t we do this here. Demand for removal of the current crap ass President. It clearly works. Majority wins. We need to walk the street demanding justice. This should be happening in every American city,” another said.

But this the last thing the Democratic Party wants. A mass movement by the working class demanding Trump’s removal could quickly evolve into a struggle against the dictatorship of the corporate and financial elite, whose interests the Democrats defend just as ruthlessly as the Republicans.

The protests in Puerto Rico are the latest example of the mounting worldwide movement against austerity and social inequality produced by the capitalist system. After more than a decade of government policies that have funneled unlimited cash to the financial elites who crashed the economy in 2008, strikes and protests have spread across the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia.

The struggle to end the bankers’ dictatorship in Puerto Rico and secure the social rights of workers on the island can be taken forward only by appealing to workers and youth on the mainland to join the fight as part of an internationally coordinated struggle by the working class against capitalism and for socialism.

How the pharmaceutical companies, Congress and the DEA made the opioid epidemic a billion-dollar industry

Genevieve Leigh

Previously undisclosed information from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), published last week, traces the path of every narcotic sold in America—from manufacturer to distributor—between 2006 and 2012. The information, analyzed in a comprehensive report by the Washington Post, casts additional light on the massive, profit-driven spread of opioids, abetted by the entire political establishment.

During the six-year period, drug manufacturers and distributors flooded the country with 76 billion prescription pain pills, fueling an opioid epidemic that now kills 50,000 people a year in the US.

Multibillion-dollar drug distributors such as McKesson Corp, Walgreens, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen targeted in particular one of the poorest regions in the country, Appalachia, saturating former coal mining centers in Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee.

Norton, a small town of less than 4,000 residents in the southwest corner of Virginia, received 8,263,510 prescription pain pills, enough for 305 pills per person per year. One Walmart in the city alone received more than 3.5 million of the opioid pills.

In Mingo County, West Virginia, an economically depressed former coal mining county with a 29 percent poverty rate, 29,548,720 pills were flooded into the city, enough to provide each person with 203.5 pills a year. A pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia, a town of just 392 people, ordered nine million hydrocodone pills in a two-year span.

The counties that had the most pills per person experienced more than three times the death rate from opioid overdose than the rest of the country. Thirteen of those counties had an opioid death rate more than eight times the national rate, and seven of them were in West Virginia alone.

In Norton, the per capita death rate from prescription opioid overdoses was 18 times the national average.

According to the analysis by the Post, the volume of pills distributed by the drug companies kept pace with the growing opioid epidemic, increasing 51 percent, from 8.4 billion in 2006 to 12.6 billion in 2012. The companies responded to the deadly opioid epidemic, fully aware that it was killing thousands of people a year, by pumping more pills into the hardest-hit regions, above all Appalachia.

During this period, opioid manufacturers spent $11,676 on marketing per every thousand residents living in the region.

The targeting of Appalachia has a particularly criminal character. The region was once the center of the coal industry, and its miners were among the most militant sections of the working class. In 1921, in what became known as the Battle of Blair Mountain, some 10,000 armed miners set out to free fellow miners who had been imprisoned in Mingo County under a martial law decree. The miners were eventually dispersed by means of an aerial bombardment by the US Air Force.

The militancy of miners continued into the 1960s and 1970s, including a mass strike in 1969 to force the passage of federal regulations recognizing black lung as an occupational illness and limiting exposure to coal dust, and a 111-day strike in 1977-1978 in defiance of United Mine Workers (UMW) President Arnold Miller and a Taft Hartley back-to-work order by President Jimmy Carter.

In the 1980s, the ruling class carried out a decade of union-busting and mass layoffs, abetted by the UMW under Richard Trumka, now president of the AFL-CIO, who isolated and betrayed a series of strikes and helped impose massive cuts in jobs, wages, benefits and safety conditions. This culminated in the betrayal and defeat of the 1989 Pittston strike in West Virginia, Virginia and Kentucky.

The unions and the Democratic Party oversaw the social devastation of the region. By the beginning of the current century, one-third of the 100 poorest counties in the United States were concentrated in the coalfields.

Capitalism, having profited from plunging the region into economic depression, found a way to profit once again by exploiting the social misery it had produced to addict the population on deadly drugs. Pharmaceutical corporations pumped towns full of opioids and took in billions of dollars.

Leaked email exchanges between drug manufacturers and distributors give a sense of the character of this operation and those who orchestrated it. In January 2009, Victor Borelli, a national account manager for drug maker Mallinckrodt, sent an email to Steve Cochrane, the vice president of sales for KeySource Medical, informing him that 1,200 bottles of oxycodone 30 mg tablets had been shipped.

“Keep ’em comin’!” Cochrane responded. “Flyin’ out of there. It’s like people are addicted to these things or something. Oh, wait, people are…”

Borelli replied: “Just like Doritos keep eating. We’ll make more.”

There is a sociopathic character to such comments, which express a horrific disregard for human life. However, it is a sociopathology rooted in a social system. The flooding of economically depressed areas with billions of opioids for years on end, amidst a national health crisis and despite multiple levels of government oversight, is not the product of “crony” capitalism or “corrupted” capitalism, as Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren like to proclaim. It is, rather, an expression of the brutally exploitative nature of the system itself.

As far back as 1916 Lenin identified the integration of gigantic corporations into the machinery of the state as “state-monopoly capitalism,” the characteristic form of capitalist rule in the epoch of imperialism. This process was still in its infancy when Lenin analyzed it. It has since metastasized many times over.

The Republicans and the Democrats are both culpable in a massive social crime against the population of the country. So incestuous are the relations between the corporations and the state that in 2016 a unanimous House of Representatives and a unanimous Senate, at the height of the Opioid epidemic, quietly passed a bill the main purpose of which was to stop the DEA’s Office of Diversion Control from halting drug shipments for unusually large and unexplained sales.

The bill, which was brought to the floor by Republican Tom Marino, was written by Linden Barber, a former DEA employee who left his job as associate chief counsel of the DEA and within a month joined a law firm that lobbies Congress on behalf of drug companies. He can be seen in TV advertisements touting his skills to potential drug distribution clients facing DEA scrutiny. During this period, the pharmaceutical industry and law firms that represent them hired at least 46 investigators, attorneys and supervisors directly out of the DEA.

Before passing the bill, Congress heard testimony from dozens of experts, including the then-head of the Office of Diversion Control for the Drug Enforcement Administration, who was subsequently pushed out of his position for his opposition to the rubber-stamping of the man-made epidemic.

The bill was signed into law by then-President Barack Obama, without the usual photo-op or press coverage.

The multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical companies will not be stopped by the bourgeois courts. Their owners must be expropriated, and the companies transformed into publicly owned utilities as part of a planned, internationally coordinated socialist medical system based on providing quality health care for all rather than generating profits for billionaire capitalists.

All of the social evils associated with addiction—unemployment, poverty, lack of education—can be eliminated only through a struggle to mobilize the working class against the entire political system, both parties of big business and all of their bribed politicians. To end drug addiction and stop the billionaire drug pushers, it is necessary to put an end to capitalism.

Fire at Japanese animation studio leaves nearly three dozen dead

Ben McGrath 

An arson attack at an animation studio in Kyoto, Japan last Thursday killed 34 people and injured 34 others. Many remained hospitalized, some in critical condition. Police issued an arrest warrant for the alleged attacker, Shinji Aoba, 41, who suffered burns during the attack and remains unconscious in hospital. It was the deadliest fire in Japan since a suspected arson attack in 2001 killed 44 people.

Kyoto Animation arson attack [credit: Wikipedia]

Aoba is alleged to have entered Kyoto Animation Thursday around 10:30 a.m. after purchasing two twenty-litre tanks filled with gasoline from a nearby gas station. He is then said to have dumped the gasoline on the ground and ignited it while shouting “Die!” There were 74 people in the studios at the time.

Kyoto Animation is known for manga and TV and movie anime, including The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Lucky Star and K-On!. Nobuyuki Tsugata, an animation historian in the Department of Cinema at Nihon University College of Art, called the studio “unique in the industry” for its use of colour.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe offered a perfunctory statement on Twitter, saying: “It’s so dreadful that I’m lost for words.” As is typical in responses from the ruling class in such cases, empty words of grief were offered, avoiding any connection between the tragedy and declining social and economic conditions.

The media described Aoba as a disturbed loner who got into confrontations with his neighbours, including an incident only days before the fire. He was convicted of robbing a convenience store in 2012 and sentenced to three and half years in jail. Aoba lived alone in Saitama city, near Tokyo and was receiving treatment for a mental illness.

Upon being detained by police, Aoba supposedly declared “I did it” and said the studio “ripped me off,” accusing it of stealing a novel he had written. A witness who saw him detained, stated: “He sounded like he had a grudge against society, and he was talking angrily to the policemen, too, though he was struggling with pain.”

Hideaki Hatta, the company president, said the studio had had no contact with Aoba before the attack, although the company had recently received anonymous death threats. “They were addressed to our office and sales department and told us to die,” Hatta stated.

Thursday’s fire spread rapidly through the relatively small, three-storey building located in Kyoto’s Fushimi Ward. Experts in architecture and fire safety pointed to the building’s structure as a contributing factor in the high death toll. According to authorities, only five people were killed by the flames themselves. Most died from carbon monoxide poisoning. Nineteen people were found in a stairwell leading from the third floor to the building’s roof.

“The structure of the building was that it had one spiral staircase penetrating through three floors acting as a chimney, the most effective way of starting a fire,” Momoko Higuchi, a Tokyo-based architect, said. “Because the fire was with petrol, the effect was like a bomb. Most died of smoke.”

One of those who escaped the blaze told Japan’s public broadcaster NHK: “A black mushroom cloud billowed up the stairs, perhaps within 15 seconds, then everything went black, like pouring black ink all over the place. I couldn’t see anything.”

Shinichi Sugawara, an expert in structural fire engineering and professor emeritus at Tokyo University, said a backdraft was possible—a situation in which heat from a blaze shatters windows, allowing outside air to rush into and fuel a fire, increasing its intensity.

Other factors pointed to a lack of fire safety. While the door to the roof was supposedly not locked, one employee said the door was “a rare type” with two metal levers that had to be moved at the same time. He said he was “not good at opening the door at first.” Given the high stress of the situation as well as the blinding conditions, it is probable that the door presented an unexpected barrier to the employees’ escape.

The building also lacked sprinklers and fire shutters in the stairwell. Due to the size of the building, it was apparently exempt from installing those safety measures. Professor Sugawara commented: “I personally think that all places like that should have shutters, and all buildings should have sprinklers, regardless of size.” Yet the Kyoto Animation studios passed a safety inspection last October.

As with similar tragedies, accidents happen, but their severity is too often the result of decaying capitalist society. Businesses are exempt from implementing life-saving measures in the name of cost savings, and individuals suffering mental ill-health under the highly exploitative corporate profit system have nowhere to turn for help.

Those suffering from mental health issues are at a particular disadvantage in Japan where stigma is still attached to those seeking help with a variety of conditions ranging from depression to dissociative identity disorder. Only about one in three people suffering from severe mental health issues receives treatment. While rates of suicide in Japan have fallen in recent years, it is still the leading cause of death for people between 10 and 39.

None of this absolves Aoba, but the standard response from the state to these types of tragedies is to vilify the accused, overlook or ignore safety violations or concerns, and use the attack as justification for building up the police force to be deployed against the working class and growing social discontent.

Russian Ford workers betrayed by union, left with meager compensation and without jobs

Clara Weiss

On June 20, the Ford factory in Vsevolozhsk, near the city of St. Petersburg, effectively shut down production. Of roughly 1,000 workers, only 50 are left to work there until December this year to complete the factory's closure. According to news reports, the other two factories that Ford announced would be closed in Russia—one in Naberezhnye Chelny, a city in the region of Tatarstan; and one in Yelaburg—were shut down in early June.

The closures are part of a major assault on autoworkers internationally which includes mass layoffs at Ford and GM in the Americas and Europe.

In the struggle against this assault, workers are confronted not only with the transnational companies, but also with the trade unions, which strangle the workers’ resistance. This was in stark display during the shutdown of the Russian factories.

The Russian auto union MPRA (Inter-Regional Trade Union Workers’ Alliance) played a central role in enabling Ford to close the plants without organized opposition by the workers. The almost 1,000 workers were effectively forced to sign agreements of “voluntary retirement” and given miserable severance packages. The workers are now facing the prospect of social destitution and long-term unemployment, amid conditions of growing poverty and economic crisis.

From the very beginning, the union did everything it could to keep workers in the dark about company plans. Its first statement did not appear until February 15, 2019, well over a month after news about the impending closure broke. The MPRA made it clear it would not do anything to defend workers‘ jobs. In mid-March, union officials suddenly announced they would fight for severance pay of 2 million rubles ($31,733) per worker, the equivalent of two years’ full wages, and would carry out “strikes and hunger strikes to win their demand.”

But this was nothing but a smokescreen for its collusion with Ford in the closure of the the factory. Beyond a small demonstration in April, which was mainly attended by pseudo-left and Stalinist groups, the union maintained a virtual wall of silence with the only information released coning from local news organizations. Behind the scenes, however, MPRA officials negotiated th the sellout of the workers and their layoffs based on terms dictated by Ford.

By May, Ford Sollers, the joint venture between Ford and Russian automaker Sollers, boasted that 97 percent of the workers had agreed to sign a “voluntary retirement” agreement. Instead of the 2 million rubles that the MPRA insisted it would fight for, workers received between 300,000 ($4,759) and 700,000 rubles ($11,106).

Workers, who reluctantly took the deal, said the union left them no choice. One worker who had been at the factory since 2001 said: “I agreed [to the conditions]. I have to live on something and it’s better to take what they give. Most of us are awaiting a dark future.” He warned that many laid off workers would be blacklisted because the Vsevolozhsk Ford workers were known for conducting some of the most militant strikes in Russia over the past two decades. “They will not want to hire you as soon as they will hear you are from Ford. They think that we are freedom-loving.”

Another worker pointed out that Ford workers had not received their full wages on a regular basis because the factory had been running below capacity for long time. They often received no more than 20 to 25,000 rubles ($317-396) a month, although the official wage at the factory averaged 55-58,000 rubles ($873-920). “People have forgotten what a full wage means. This played its role [in the workers agreeing to the conditions],” he said.

According to local news, 32 workers refused to sign the severance agreement. One newspaper reported that they were locked up in the factory’s cafeteria by management and only received two-thirds of their wages as punishment. The same report noted that these workers will continue to work until the end of August although most of the workforce (about 730 workers) would be laid off in June. Others took their packages and had already left in May.

The MPRA has published not a single statement on the closure of the plant. It has made it clear, however, that it hopes to get a “seat at the table” to negotiate a deal with a potentially new owner of the factory. The city government is reportedly already conducting negotations with car companies, with several indicating that Hyuandai might take over. The purpose of this demand is to guarantee that the same union officials who have served the interests of Ford will be able to retain their “piece of cake,” if a new car company takes over.

In carrying out this betrayal, the MPRA has been supported by the Stalinists and various middle class “left” organizations. The Russian Pabloite RSM, which has for years maintained close ties to the MPRA leader Alexei Etmanov, has not published a single piece on the layoffs.

The ROT-Front, a Stalinist outfit that maintains close ties to Darya Mitina's OKP and was co-founded by the MPRA Chairman Aleksei Etmanov, promoted the MPRA's line on the layoffs. After a nearly three-month long silence, in July the organization reprinted information acknowledged that Ford workers had suffered from a defeat and cynically added, “A negative experience is also an experience.”

The role of the MPRA in the liquidation of the Vsevolozhsk Ford factory contains important lessons for workers in Russia and internationally. The betrayal of the MPRA was not a matter simply of “bad leaders.” Under conditions of the globalization of production, the trade unions internationally have been transformed into organization that work on behalf of the companies and the state to suppress working class opposition and attract investment.

The MPRA was founded in 2006 in Vsevolozhsk and was presented as the model for a militant trade union. This was under conditions where workers deeply despised the official trade union FNPR (Federation of Independent Trade Union). The FNPR, which originated in the official Soviet trade unions, was hated because of its role in the restoration of capitalism and its work on behalf of the government and the companies.

However, contrary to what Pabloite organizations like the Russian Socialist Movement have claimed, the MPRA was not an organization representing the left-wing aspirations of workers. Rather, it was formed with the deliberate aim of preventing a serious challenge to the dominance of the FNPR and the development of a politically independent movement by the working class.

The MPRA represents the interests not of the workers, but of a thin layer of bureaucrats and middle class careerists, many of which are politically active in Stalinist, liberal and pseudo-left organizations. Upon is founding, it immediately affiliated with the Confederation of Labor of Russia (KTR), which has been competing since the 1990s with the FNPR for seats at negotation tables with the government and companies.

For workers, the way forward lies in a break from the pro-capitalist trade unions and the nationalist pseudo-left and Stalinist organizations that cover up for them. This break must be based on a political understanding of the necessity for a globally integrated strategy by the working class against transnational corporations like Ford and the fight for an international socialist program.