Students’ suicide – social problems

Sheshu Babu

Summer is not only ‘cruelest’ season with rising heat and water connected problems to people but also it is a ‘ testing’ time for many young students who dream of bright future and decent life. This is also a peak season for suicide- related incidents for secondary and higher secondary as well as competitive exam writing youth. Whenever results are declared, one may find failures or average performers committing suicides due to depression and inability to sustain reality of failure in the exams.

Rise in numbers

According to the American College Health Association (ACHA), the suicide rate among young adults ages 15 – 24 has tripled since 1950s and suicide is the second most common cause of death among college students.( College and Teen Suicide Statistics, by Jackie Burrell, updated November 03, 2018, verywellmind.com) . As stress is a major factor, many lack coping skills and find ways to come out of trauma. Warning signs include academic problems, depression, mood swings,withdrawal, feeling of hopelessness,disregard for personal appearance, increased substance use, increased risk-taking and/or an obsession with death.

India has one of the world’s highest suicide rates for youth aged 15 to 29 according to 2012 Lancet report. (Every Hour one student commits suicide in India, Devanik Saha, updated May 08, 2017, hindustantimes.com) According to data available from National Crimes Records Bureau(NCRB) ,2015, every hour, one student commits suicide.

Flaws in the system

Student life is one of the most vulnerable phase in the life of human being. Adolescent characteristics like personal relations, swings in moods, desires and fears of future and aspirations or goals make youth react quickly to incidents which they are not prepared to face. Failures in Board Exams, competitive entrance exams, job related exams adversely affect the mental health and drive many to attempt suicide.

One of the major cause is the system of present education which gives undue weight to marks, rankings, widening differences of good and bad schools and colleges and lack of quality education to all. The rich elite pay heavily for getting their children educated in reputed institutions while poor are forced to study in ‘ government’ institutions where the basic infrastructure is woefully lacking. The teachers in elite institutions are well- equipped with knowledge and are paid for their labor while ordinary school and college teachers are both underpaid and under – equipped in training students. Thus, when the students face competitive exams at the All India Level, elite and rich students fare better than poor rural students.

Capitalist education

Knowledge has become ‘capital’ and teachers with higher educational achievements are recruited by corporate institutes who pay them more than most government teachers. That is why, students from corporate college like Narayana, Sri Chaitanya in Andhra and Telengana, Academies at Kota, FIITJEE and others in west and north India have good chance of cracking JEE Mains and Advanced rather than those who study in ordinary rural schools and colleges. These rustic students are denied good quality education. Hence, their desperation is more and due to chances of failures, they are more prone towards committing suicides. Opportunity for education is more for the rich.

Inclusive education

As long as private educational institutions exist, only some students get chance of good learning skills and face competition with skill and tact. Those who cannot afford money to spend for education will have to struggle to compete. Government should take complete responsibility to educate every child till the completion of post- graduate studies. All the students must be given equal importance and trained well- learned teachers should be appointed in all levels of schools and college institutes. Inclusive education without any sort of discrimination must be implemented and vacancies should be filled. A student should be given the freedom to choose any career of his/ her . Evaluation must be made on the interest of student to learn and marks or ranks should not be the basis of entering an institution. Constant mental support by parents and teachers, instilling confidence, emphasizing the fact that there are number of alternatives to choose from and driving depression and hopelessness from the student will immense help to avoid the thought of committing suicide.

A healthy country thrives only when its young population is healthy and educated in every respect. Present commercialisation of education is dividing and destroying youth power. Urgent steps are needed to curb the growing instances of committing suicides in the event of failures.

Want to curb violent attacks? Curb civilisationalism

James M. Dorsey

Decades of Saudi global funding of Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism is perceived to have created breeding grounds for radicalism in Muslim communities even if it was largely not directly responsible for the rise of jihadism.

The same is true for civilisationalism of which jihadism is just one expression as are intolerant, supremacist expressions of Evangelism, Hinduism and Buddhism.

Civilisationalism, wittingly or unwittingly, plays with the fire of processes of radicalization that may or may not lead to political violence, a fixture of human history.

Given that societies’ moral and ethical backbone invariably is rooted in values promoted by religion, religion often provides a convenient civilizationalist framework for the justification of violence. Religion, however, is seldom, if ever, the driver.

Recent attacks on mosques in New Zealand, churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka, synagogues in the United States and numerous other incidents across the globe demonstrate that civilizationalist ideologies that promote supremacy and exclusivism and dehumanize the other resonate with the most vulnerable groups in society.

Perpetrators of violence, irrespective of social background or economic class, tend to be people who are on the lookout. More often than not they are susceptible to charismatic figures, struggle to deal with personal problems or seek to fill a void in their lives.

They can be loners or products of a group that increasingly isolates them from society and/or convinces them of an imaginary threat posed by one segment of society.

What acts of political violence, recent and longer ago, demonstrate is that the fire civilisationalists play with more often than not erupts at home rather than on the other side of the globe.

The fire fuels the politics of fear on which civilisationalists thrive, distorts inter-communal relations, hijacks public debate, and disrupts development of inclusive policies that would significantly reduce the risk of violence.

A recent study of Saudi foreign fighters, the second largest contingent to join the Islamic State in Syria, showed that civilisationalism was their main driver. Products of an education system that long promoted a Sunni Muslim ultra-conservative brand of Islam that was exclusivist and supremacist, particularly towards Shiites, many of them were driven by sectarian concerns.

Those concerns stemmed from the decision of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, a member of a sect deemed heretical by ultra-conservatives to project his brutal suppression of anti-government protests as a struggle against Sunni militants and the support he enjoyed from predominantly Shiite Iran and Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite militia.

Anthropologist Scott Atran and journalist Jason Burke note that the phenomenon of foreign fighters joining struggles far from home does not contradict the fact that most recent and less recent acts of political violence were carried out either by homegrown loners or militants.

Some were instigated by recruiters who were nonetheless dependent on locals susceptible to their civilizationalist ideology.

Civilisationalism’s witting or unwitting appeal to vulnerable individuals is mirrored in the perpetrators of non-political incidents such as mass shootings who often are troubled males groping with personal problems and/or demons.

The fact that civilizational and political violence draw from the same pool that produces troubled mass shooters calls into question efforts to prevent incidents that almost exclusively focus either on civilizationalist notions that marginalize groups through stereotyping and other techniques, or criminalization and security measures.

What the communality of the pool highlights is that violence, political or not, is as much a security and law enforcement issue as it is one of public health and social service. It calls for mechanisms that provide early warnings, stop individuals from going off the deep end, and offer them the assistance they need to deal with their personal problems, grievances and voids.

Two separate incidents in October 2014 prove the point.

On first glance, Jaylen Fryberg, a popular freshman, who opened fire on classmates during lunch at a high school near Seattle, appeared to be a happy student. He was a well-liked athlete who shortly before he went on his shooting spree had been named his school’s freshman homecoming prince.

Mr. Fryberg, who shot himself during the incident, no longer is able to explain what prompted him to shoot fellow students and put an end to his own life. But the subsequent police investigation suggested that he was angry at being rebuffed by a girl that chose his cousin rather than him.

By contrast, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a 32-year old convert to Islam, who killed a guard at Ottawa’s National Monument and then stormed the Canadian parliament, had all the trappings of a troubled down-and-out individual.

Canadian media reported that Mr. Zehaf-Bibeau had a history of mental illness and a criminal record that included drug possession, theft, and issuing threats. He was addicted to crack cocaine and spent the last weeks of his life in a homeless shelter.

The Globe and Mail quoted a friend of his, Dave Bathurst, as being told by Mr. Zehaf-Bibeau that the devil was after him. “I think he must have been mentally ill,” Mr. Bathurst said.

The cases of Messrs. Fryberg and Zehaf-Bibeau raise the question of what the difference is between a school shooting and a politically motivated terrorist attack in terms of how societies can pre-empt violence.

The cases suggest that community engagement as well as social psychological and psychiatric services may be as important as security and law enforcement. Both Mr. Fryberg and Mr. Zehaf-Bibeau had issued cries for help in their own ways.

Writing on Twitter, Mr. Fryberg warned the woman who had rejected him that “your gonna piss me off… And then some (expletive) gonna go down and I don’t think you’ll like it.” Several days later, he tweeted “It breaks me… It actually does… I know it seems like I’m sweating it off… But I’m not… And I never will be able to.”

Mr. Bathurst, like Mr. Zehaf-Bibeau, a convert to Islam, was perhaps the one person Mr. Zehaf-Bibeau appeared to confide in. He described how he felt being persecuted by the devil.

Mr. Zehaf-Bibeau’s sense of alienation was deepened when the mosque that he and Mr. Bathurst attended asked him to no longer come to prayer because of his erratic behaviour.

Messrs. Fryberg and Zehaf-Bibeau’s communalities point, on the one hand, to a need for policies and tools that allow society to step in before individuals like them resort to violence.

On the other hand, they highlight the threat posed by civilizationalist ideology, irrespective of its religious, national or civilizational packaging.

Both cases, together with the attacks in New Zealand, Sri Lanka and the United States suggest that the rise of civilisationalists, be it to the highest office in the land or as increasingly acceptable social and political groups, raise the spectre of a world in which violence becomes the new normal.

Sri Lanka – Candidate for a New NATO Base?

Peter Koenig

Sri Lanka, Easter Sunday, 21 April 2019: More than half a dozen bomb blasts shook the country killing from 250 to more than 350 people. Depending on who counts, the death toll varies. The devastation took place in in several catholic churches and luxury hotels. Other explosions, including from – what they say – are suicide bombers, have since killed another several dozens of people. Many are children, women – christen worshippers. Why the luxury hotels? Western (Christian) tourists?

Yesterday, another explosion ripped through a suspicious building, killing 18, including children and women. Again, they, the ‘authorities’, say suicide bombers, who didn’t want their ‘cache’ to be discovered. Conveniently they are all dead – the “suicide bombers”. Nobody can ask them any questions.

There was a lot of confusion, and still is, all through Sri Lanka. Nobody claimed credit for the massacres. There were rumors that Sri Lanka’s President received warnings ahead of the attacks from foreign intelligence, but ignored them. The President denies these allegations. And the explosions continue.

Finally, the verdict is in. The culprits are an Islamic terrorist group, associated with ISIS. What else is new.

Sri Lanka’s population is composed of about 70% Buddhists, 13% Hindus, almost 10% Muslims, mainly Sunni, the Salafi version, and about 7% Christians. The New York times reports that the accused mastermind of the terror attacks was strongly influenced by Wahhabism, the same extreme hardliners that control most of Saudi Arabia.

Hatred between religions seems on the rise. In New Zealand a few weeks ago a white supremacist assaulted a mosque, killing 50. This past weekend, a shooting in a Synagogue near San Diego, California, killed a woman. The murderer said he was inspired by the New Zealand massacre. Are these spontaneous, interreligious mini-wars part of a foreign directed ‘divide to conquer’ effort, a strategy that has been used by empires for centuries, but seems to be alive and well with the current Washington based empire?

MintPress News reports that “Sri Lanka Easter attacks are the handiwork of terrorists returning from fighting in Syria, practicing the Saudi-backed Wahhabi Salafist ideology,” adding, “though not confirmed yet, they, [the attacks], are in keeping with the modus operandi of Saudi-sponsored Wahhabi terrorism worldwide. [The] Saudi sponsorship of Salafi Wahhabi dogma [is found] across the globe. From Boko Haram to ISIS, and from the Taliban to Al Qaeda, a common ideological thread runs through these terror groups. This is the Saudi-sponsored Wahhabi Salafi ideology whose South Asian counterpart is Deobandi.  For abbreviation purposes, it is becoming increasingly common to term this interconnected ideology as WSD (Wahhabi Salafi Deobandi).”

May we expect a wave of Saudi-sponsored WSD terrorism in the east too? – Is the horror Saudi government protected by the US, because it does its bidding? And this bidding leads to making gradually Islam extremism the justification for NATO bases around the globe? – Perhaps in Sri Lanka, tomorrow? So far Sri Lanka is clean from NATO. Sri Lanka has not even an association agreement with NATO.

Just look at the world-geostrategic location of Sri Lanka, linking the Arabian Sea with the Indian Ocean. Sri Lanka may also have a direct, open-sea connection with the small British island of Diego Garcia, in the Chagos Archipelago, north-east of Madagascar. Diego Garcia hosts the US’s largest Navy base outside the American Continent. Many of the drone killings in Yemen, Syria and other places in the Middle East originate from Diego Garcia. The “civil war” in Syria was (and still is) largely directed from Diego Garcia, as well as from Djibouti.

Wouldn’t it be logical for NATO to set up base in Sri Lanka to control South East Asia? Saudi guided WSD attacks would create the necessary chaos justifying all the AngloZionist secret services – plus NATO – to descend on Colombo, to create further protests and anarchy – a never-ending internal strife, giving the war industry a new never-ending flow of profit, hence, further justifying the never-ending war on terror – and, thereby, moving yet an inch closer to Full Spectrum Dominance over Mother Earth and her hapless spectators, what western humanity has become – a bunch of complacent consumers, drenched in turbo-capitalist market ideology, too comfortable to go on the barricades.

The key and engine to all of this is NATO, whose modus operandi is killing for a living, for dominance and for profit. If there is ever to be Peace – and that’s what the vast majority of the inhabitants of this globe wants – I’m not exaggerating pretending that 99.99% of world population wants to live in peace – then NATO must go, NATO must be dismantled.

So, Europe which has the largest membership in NATO (27 out of 29 nations) has to put the money where her mouth is: Europe calls for Peace, Europe claims to be Peace-loving – really? Then put your money into creating Peace – pulling out of NATO, refusing at once to fund this killing machine under the pretext of “protecting Europe”. Protecting Europe from what? From whom? – Not from Russia – despite all the highly propagandized and highly corporate-funded Russiagate / Russia phobia, exacerbated by a new artificially implanted fear – China. These countries have no history of expansion, like the west.

They only seek friendly relations of trade, of transport, cultural and research interconnectivity within the supercontinent, Eurasia, and ultimately, they promote a multi-polar world. The best example is the Chinese President Xi’s ingenuity – the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that just finished its highly successful forum in Beijing – where more than 120 nations signed memoranda of understanding (MOU) and cooperation agreements with China for tens of billions of dollars equivalent. – What a way of cooperating, instead of sowing western-style belligerence.

Europe and the rest of the world is not in danger, except in danger of itself for being a vassal of the US and for hosting 30-plus NATO bases which would be first in the line of fire, if the east is forced to defend itself from that permanent Pentagon-NATO driven aggression.

Europe withhold your funding for NATO, get out of NATO, dismantle NATO, – NOW, before NATO sets up yet another base in Asia, before NATO spreads more death around the globe.

General Motors reports $2.1 billion first-quarter profits as job cuts take their toll

Shannon Jones

General Motors reported $2.1 billion in first-quarter 2019 net profits, higher than analysts’ expectations, amid continuing signs of a slowdown in auto sales. The first quarter results were about double the $1.1 billion reported for the same period one year ago.

The company says that it is on target to save between $2 billion to $2.5 billion in 2019 due to its cost-cutting measures, including the closure of five auto plants in North America and the elimination of some 14,000 salaried and production jobs. The cuts are taking a widening toll as yet another company dependent on GM business, Ohio-based Falcon Transport, closed its doors last weekend.

GM’s reported profits came despite a seven percent decline in new vehicle sales in the US in the first quarter and continued steep sales declines in the critical Chinese market, where GM sales fell 17 percent. The company overcame these setbacks with sales of its highly profitable light trucks and SUVs.

The company’s earnings also received a boost from the upward valuation of its holdings in ride hailing company Lyft and French automaker Peugeot. GM has invested heavily in the still speculative autonomous vehicle sector. Last year, its GM Cruise, a self-driving car unit, spent $728 million and expects to invest $1 billion in 2019.

Reflecting the relentless pressure of the financial markets for ever-greater rates of return, GM’s stock declined after its quarterly profit report.

Announcing the earnings report, GM CEO Mary Barra told investors that “Looking at ways to cut costs is a top priority. We have assigned vice presidents to do it. We are attacking it with quite a bit of energy.”

Last November, the company announced the closure of five plants including the Oshawa, Ontario assembly plant, assembly plants in Lordstown, Ohio and Detroit-Hamtramck, Michigan and two transmission plants, one outside Detroit and other near Baltimore, Maryland. Mass layoffs of salaried employees were carried out in February. Production ended in early March in Lordstown, when 1,600 workers were laid off, with only a skeleton maintenance staff remaining. The Detroit-Hamtramck plant is reduced to a crew of 700, with production slated to end there in January 2020, just after the 2019 national contract negotiations with the United Auto Workers union.

As part of its cost cutting, GM is also focusing on ways to squeeze suppliers, ensuring further attacks on auto parts workers, already one of the most exploited sectors of the US workforce.

Barra has been rewarded for her efforts; she is one of 20 highest paid US CEOs, raking in $21.87 million in 2018, about 281 times the pay of a typical GM worker.

The pressure of a continuing global sales slump and changing technologies ensures that GM and the other US automakers will insist on further concessions in the 2019 contract negotiations set to begin this summer with the UAW. Both Ford and Fiat Chrysler have carried out layoffs in recent months. GM has already made it clear that it will use the announced layoffs and plant closings as a weapon to intimidate workers and beat back demands for the restoration of past concessions, including ending the abuse of temporary part-time workers and the two-tier wage structure.

The UAW has done nothing to oppose the layoffs and plant closures and has indicated that it will use the threat to jobs as an argument for further concessions. The UAW and the Unifor union in Canada have instead sought to stoke up hatred against workers in Mexico and China to divert anger over job cuts and prevent any linkup between American workers and their brothers overseas.

The UAW is widely hated for its collaboration with management and its efforts to divide workers by pitting so-called legacy workers against temporary part-time workers and second-tier workers. This hatred has only deepened after the exposure that FCA executives paid UAW officials more than a million in bribes to sign pro-company contracts in 2015 and earlier.

GM’s bumper profits are further fueling this anger as it is more and more obvious that they come directly at the expense of workers, their families and communities that are being devastated by plant closings. To add insult to injury, GM paid $0 in corporate income tax last year on $4.3 billion in profits. Since 2009 the automaker has extorted over $1 billion in tax breaks from Michigan and Ohio in the name of supposedly preserving jobs.

Some 1,300 workers at GM plants targeted for closure have already accepted forced transfers to other facilities. In many cases this involves moving hundreds of miles, the uprooting of families and the disruption of lives. Those not able to transfer, including temporary and contract workers, face the prospect of permanent layoff.

The closure of the Lordstown plant, which up until a few years ago employed as many as 5,000 workers, is already having a much broader impact throughout the economy. One casualty has been Ohio-based Falcon Transport. The trucking company employing 550 workers abruptly announced its closure Saturday night, sending a text message to employees stating, “We regret to inform you that Falcon Transport is not able to continue operations and will be shutting down effective today. Please stop any work you are doing for the company effective immediately...”

Many drivers were left stranded in locations all across the United States.

Falcon Transport had GM as one of its biggest customers and is apparently out of business due to the closing of the Lordstown plant. The company had been operating since 1901 and as recently as 2017 had employed 800 people. It was subsequently acquired by private equity firm Counterpoint Capital Partners, which evidently decided to cut its losses at the expense of workers.

On Monday, former Falcon Transport workers filed a class action suit noting that owners violated the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act that requires companies with 100 or more employees to provide 60 days’ notice before closing. They are asking for payment of wages equal to the sixty-day notice. One former Falcon Transport worker told local news station WKBN, “It is the most terrifying, horrible situation you could possibly ever be in. I was there for almost eight years. I think I should have an explanation. I should have been, at least, told.”

Already a number of supplier plants in the Lordstown area have shut down, including Comprehensive Logistics, with 180 workers, Magna’s Lordstown Seating Systems, with 120 workers and Ledec, with 73 workers.

Even before the final closure of the Lordstown plant, the unemployment rate in the surrounding Mahoning Valley was 6.0 percent, far higher than the statewide average of 4.7 percent, which is the seventh worst in the US.

An April 26 report in online news journal Pacific Standard details some of the social impact of the closure of the Lordstown plant. It notes that for every job lost due to a plant closing there are typically up to 10 jobs lost in the broader economy.

Terry Armstrong, the superintendent of Lordstown schools, said he expected to lose 75 students and 21 staff and tutors due to families leaving the area. He said he had hired a therapist to counsel children whose parents had been laid off.

In Austintown, 20 miles south of Lordstown, the local school superintendent said that they are preparing to lay off 10 percent of their staff, 40 teachers.

The GM plant closures have become a battleground as the 2020 presidential election cycle begins. Both President Trump and various Democratic Party presidential hopefuls have launched barbs at GM while demagogically claiming sympathy with laid-off workers. Their solution is completely reactionary, lining American workers up behind trade war measures against the foreign rivals of US capitalism, a program whose logic leads to world war while imposing endless pay cuts on US workers.

US threatens UK over Huawei involvement in 5G network

Robert Stevens

The United States has threatened to end electronic surveillance coordination with Britain after the government gave approval, in principle, for Chinese telecom giant Huawei to assist in building the UK’s next generation 5G data network.

Last week, Theresa May’s Conservative government agreed to allow Huawei to supply “noncore” infrastructure, in the face of US calls for a boycott of Huawei’s products. The US is hostile to any of its allies using products from Huawei, warning that this threatens NATO security and allows China critical economic dominance.

The decision was immediately condemned by Rob Joyce, a senior cyber security adviser to the US National Security Agency and a former adviser to US President Donald Trump, who said, “We are not going to give them [China] the loaded gun.”

He added of the UK’s decision, “We have got to understand all the details of that and decide what that means,” warning, “What we will be insistent on is UK decisions can’t put our information at risk, but the good news is that the UK already understands that.”

The political tension between the US and China meant that the Huawei issue had to be discussed and agreed at the UK National Security Council (NSC) last week. So secret are the NSC’s deliberations that the exact make up of its personnel is not known. It does include the prime minister and brings together cabinet ministers and senior officials involved in foreign and defence policy, as well as representatives from the intelligence agencies and the armed forces.

According to sources, the NSC was spilt down the middle over the decision to allow Huawei access, with the Guardian reporting that the “decision at Tuesday’s NSC meeting was forced through, according to one source, on the casting vote of the prime minister with a formal announcement expected later in the spring once further technical safeguards had been prepared.”

The decision was expected to remain a secret until then. But political tensions in Britain, centred on exiting the European Union (EU) and post-Brexit trade strategies amid developing trade war and mounting political instability globally, meant details of the meeting were leaked within hours to the pro-Brexit Daily Telegraph .

This was the first time that deliberations from the NSC had ever been leaked, prompting an escalation of the crisis of the already dysfunctional Tory government. The leak forced senior cabinet ministers known to be opposed to developing ties to China to issue denials that they leaked the decision. These were Home Secretary Sajid Javid, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt and Trade Secretary Liam Fox. Some are considered possible candidates to replace May in the event of a leadership contest.

Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill immediately announced an inquiry to uncover the source of the leak. It was reported that this might involve cabinet members who were present at the NSC meeting being asked to hand over their phones for examination and allowing access to their email records.

On Monday, the US stepped up its condemnation of the UK with Robert Strayer, a deputy assistant secretary at the State Department, stating that Huawei “was not a trusted vendor” and any use of its technology in 5G networks was a risk. He warned that if an ally cooperated with Huawei, the US would “have to reassess the ability for us to share information and be interconnected.”

With this, the Trump administration was making a direct threat to shut Britain out of the “Five Eyes” electronic surveillance system it leads. As well as the UK, the US is demanding that the other members, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, also exclude Huawei.

After Washington’s arm twisting, Australia and New Zealand have already blocked telecoms companies from using Huawei equipment in its 5G networks, and Canada is reviewing its relationship with the company.

These are issues of vital importance for British imperialism, following the 2016 referendum decision to leave the EU.

Writing in the Financial Times, Charles Parton, an associate fellow of the Royal United Services Institute think-tank and an adviser to Parliament’s select committee on foreign affairs, declared, “We might sleep more soundly at the decision over Huawei if we thought that our ‘Five Eyes’ allies would not cut co-operation, as the US has threatened. This alliance underpins the UK’s claims to be a global power. It is immensely important, not just for the intelligence exchanged, but for co-operation over developing methods of collecting future intelligence. The opposition of the three ministers most closely connected to the intelligence world suggests unease at the reaction of Five Eyes allies. Again, is this a risk worth taking for a Huawei system of dubious quality?”

Backing up Strayer was pro-US Tory MP Bob Seely, also a vociferous opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government in Moscow, who stated, “Robert Strayer’s remarks are common sense. Huawei cannot, by definition, be a trusted vendor. It is required by law to cooperate with Chinese secret services. It is close to, if not part of, the Chinese state.”

The Guardian noted that “sources close to Boris Johnson,” a leader of the Tories hard Brexit faction who is a favourite to succeed May, were “indicating the former foreign secretary could be willing to ‘look again’ at the Huawei approval if he were to become prime minister.”

Johnson is an outspoken supporter of the Trump administration and is demanding that the UK departs the EU in order to be free to sign free trade deals with the US and other powers globally.

However, for all the invocations of Britain stepping “out of Europe and into the world,” the Huawei fiasco makes clear that the US calls the shots. It will not countenance Britain taking actions seen as contrary to America’s geostrategic interests.

This is a major threat to the UK, which has sought deepening cooperation with China since it became a founder member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in 2015. That decision angered Washington, which saw the bank as a rival to the US-controlled World Bank in the Asia Pacific, but the Obama administration stopped short of threatening a break with the UK. No longer.

The NSC decision was followed a few days later by Chancellor Philip Hammond arriving in Beijing as an enthusiastic participant at the second Belt and Road Initiative forum hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Hammond was among 5,000 foreign delegates from more than 150 countries, including 37 heads of government or heads of state.

Hammond declared his support for a deepening of economic ties and hailed the “truly epic ambition” of the Belt and Road Initiative—a massive infrastructure scheme aimed at linking China throughout Eurasia via land and sea, enhancing China’s global position.

A Treasury statement cited Hammond’s speech in which he declared there were opportunities for British companies in the fields of “design, engineering financing, public-private partnerships and legal services.”

He continued, “The forthcoming Economic and Financial Dialogue in June will continue the golden era of relations between China and the UK. By deepening our cooperation on financial services, trade, and investment with international partners, we can ensure Britain’s global future.”

Hammond went as far as suggesting the UK could scale back its criticism of Chinese operations in the South China Sea. This was in sharp contrast to the US’s response to the conference. Not only did President Donald Trump not attend, but there was no senior American representative at the forum. Tensions between London and Washington will inevitably escalate as a result, especially as any retreat by the UK will hand in initiative to Germany, France and other EU powers in seeking relations with Beijing.

Mass protests intensify against Algerian regime

Will Morrow

The mass protest movement that forced the removal of Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika at the beginning of the month is continuing, with growing demands for the downfall of the regime and mounting expressions of opposition to the military.

Last Friday was the tenth successive week of protests since February 22. Hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated in the capital, Algiers, in Oran, Constantine, Bejaia and other cities and towns. For the second successive week, gendarmes put up roadblocks on all the major highway routes leading to the capital, turning away all traffic in an attempt to reduce the number of protesters in Algiers.

Nonetheless, AFP reported that the crowds of protesters filling the streets of the capital stretched for kilometres. The protesters chanted “The system must go,” and “You have pillaged the country, thieves!” News outlets reported a marked increase in slogans directed against the military and General Ahmed Gaid Salah, including, “The people do not want Gaid Salah or Bouteflika.” The Washington Postreported that demonstrators chanted, “The army isn’t the solution,” and called for Salah to “get out.”

A protest last month in Bejaia

The military, which is the backbone of the government, intervened to remove Bouteflika at the end of March in order to preserve the regime while seeking, unsuccessfully, to put an end to the protests. Bouteflika’s long-time ally and speaker of the legislative body, Abdelaker Bensalah, has been installed as interim president until elections are called on July 4.

Protesters have rejected this transition as a fraud aimed at removing only a figurehead while keeping the existing regime in power. They have denounced the government of Bensalah and Prime Minister Noureddine Bedoui as a “government of shame.”

“We want this system to leave and all the thieves to be judged,” Zohra, a 55-year-old teacher who travelled 350 kilometres to attend the Algiers demonstration with her 25-year-old son, told AFP.

Over the past two weeks, the regime has arrested a series of close Bouteflika allies in the security forces, as the military has consolidated its direct control over the state apparatus. On Monday, Abdelghani Hamel, the former head of the country’s police forces, faced trial on corruption charges.

At the same time, under the banner of an “anti-corruption” campaign aimed at providing a semblance of democratic reform, scores are being settled between different factions of the ruling elite. Five billionaires were arrested in the past week and are facing corruption charges, including four brothers close to Bouteflika’s inner circle: Reda, Abdelkader, Karim and Tarek Kouninef.

Isaad Rebrab, the country’s richest individual and founder and chairman of Cevital, Algeria’s largest private company, was arrested on Monday.

The crisis facing the government, confronted with mass opposition, was expressed in the army’s announcement, reported by Tout sur l’Algérie (TSA), that government ministers will not hold their first planned meeting on May 2. While the meeting was organized to provide a semblance of credibility to the government, with ministers to give oral answers to pre-written questions by the military, the event was called off for fear it would only trigger protests. TSA reported that the “announcement of such an event” alone was widely denounced on social media.

The ongoing protests in the working class and among young people reflect the deep opposition to conditions of social inequality and poverty. The millions who forced the removal of Bouteflika were not seeking a new fig-leaf government controlled by the military and representing the country’s billionaires and their imperialist backers, but a revolution to improve their conditions of life.

On May 4, the International Committee of the Fourth International is holding its annual International May Day Online Rally, with speakers and participants from throughout the world.

While a tiny layer of multi-millionaires and billionaires in the regime has enriched itself over decades, official youth unemployment is close to 30 percent in a country where approximately two-thirds of the population is under 30.

The explosive social anger was expressed in clashes in the eastern city of Tebessa on Sunday. Private security guards for the private bottled mineral water company Youkous fired birdshot at local villagers protesting outside the factory to oppose the lack of water for the town.

“In the morning, 20 of us went to [the factory] to find a solution for the lack of water that has affected our town for a long time and has gotten worse since the building of this factory,” one villager told El Watan. “Around 11, we were attacked by individuals with batons, swords and other arms…”

When the protesters fought back, “armed men began to shoot from the roof.” Thirteen people were shot, including one youth. Later that day the factory was reportedly burned down.

A France Info report on April 4 indicates the scale of the crisis in the public health care system. Doctor Mohamed Taileb told the news outlet: “We are lacking syringes. The gloves are torn.” He said that the facial masks necessary for treating patients with tuberculosis were no longer available. “This is not normal,” he added. “I risk my safety… Many materials to operate are missing. Glasses, oxygen masks.”

The growing struggles of the Algerian workers and youth are part of an international upsurge of struggles by the working class, including in Sudan, where protests are continuing to escalate against the military government, and in Morocco, where strikes are spreading.

The official opposition parties—stretching from that of the former prime minister Ali Benflis to the pseudo-left Socialist Workers Party (PST), which is allied with France’s New Anti-capitalist Party, and Louisa Hanoune’s Workers Party—are working to block a political struggle against the military dictatorship. They are instead seeking to channel workers and youth behind appeals for the regime to carry out democratic reforms.

Benflis issued a statement on Saturday warning the military that the holding of its sham elections on July 4 would be politically dangerous under conditions where none of the parties has any popular credibility. He wrote: “To stick stubbornly to holding presidential elections … can only expose the country to an electoral parody without candidates and without voters, and as a result the president will lose all legitimacy.”

Louisa Hanoune of the Workers Party (PT) is repeating the main demand of the PT and PST for the convocation of a Constituent Assembly, aiming to provide a pseudo-democratic fig leaf for the continued rule of a military dictatorship. Hanoune warned that the “management of this phase of transition proceeds through a national sovereign constituent assembly, an ideal solution which corresponds to the wishes of the people desiring change…”

Such statements are aimed only at sowing illusions in the working class and blinding it to the dangers it confronts, while blocking a determined revolutionary offensive. While opposition is growing to the military government, which waged a brutal civil war in the 1990s that killed over 200,000 people, the regime is preparing a violent crackdown.

The social interests of the working class and the fight for a democratic government can be achieved only through the fight by the working class—in opposition to all of the pro-capitalist parties—to take political power into its own hands, expropriate the billions of dollars plundered by the corporate and financial elite, and establish a workers’ government as part of the fight for socialism internationally.

South Korean auto manufacturers stepping up assault on wages, working conditions

Ben McGrath 

Workers in South Korea’s auto industry are facing escalating attacks on wages and working conditions as manufacturers demand ever deeper cuts. The corporations and the government, headed by President Moon Jae-in, intend to claw back all of the gains workers won through mass protests, wildcat strikes and plant occupations in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and return the workers to conditions they faced under the military dictatorship.

Automakers pointed to the decline in production and demand in the first quarter of this year compared to last year to justify their attacks on workers in the name of “remaining competitive.” Production dropped by 0.8 percent while demand fell by 0.3 percent. Exports have also declined to the US, amid threats from the Donald Trump administration to impose tariffs of 25 percent on South Korean-made vehicles, as well as falling demand from China.

Much like their American competitors following the 2008 financial crisis, the South Korean auto companies intend to carry out a drastic redistribution of wealth upwards from the pockets of the working class. However, South Korean workers are looking for ways to fight back.

Workers at Renault Samsung in the city of Busan have been engaged in protracted strike action since last October, at the plant where they produce a variety of SUV models. The company has demanded more cuts to labor costs as part of a new collective bargaining deal, pitting the Busan factory against affiliated plants in countries like Japan and Spain. Unwilling to accept this, workers voted by an 85.1 percent margin last September to go on strike.

Since then, they have staged 62 partial strikes of four hours each, the latest being held on April 19, ahead of the company’s scheduled five-day production downtime from April 29 to May 3. However, participation has dropped off, with only 44 percent of the workforce taking part in the latest strike, despite 70 percent participation on April 10.

The prolonged strike shows there is no shortage of willingness to fight the company attacks. However, the isolation and half-measures imposed upon the workers by the Renault Samsung Labor Union have clearly taken a toll. In fact, the partial strike tactic has long been used by the auto unions to allow workers to let off steam and burn themselves out while reducing the impact on the company as much as possible. In the aftermath, the union agrees to a sellout deal.

Facing the duplicity of the Renault Samsung union, autoworkers are increasingly drawing the conclusion that no matter how militant the labor unions may sound, their role is to disarm the working class and impose the demands of big business. That is why autoworkers must turn to their class brothers and sisters in other industries and across borders in Japan, China, and the United States to wage a genuine fight.

GM Korea and Hyundai workers are facing similar corporate attacks and isolation imposed by the unions. In a vote last week, 83 percent of the 2,067 workers at GM Korea’s new R&D spinoff GM Technical Center Korea (GMTCK) authorized a strike, demanding that they have the same collective bargaining agreement that their counterparts at GM Korea’s main plants work under.

Before GMTCK was established in January, workers rightly feared that the new division would be used to carry out broader restructuring, particularly following the shuttering of GM’s Gunsan plant last year. The Korean Metal Workers Union (KMWU) postured as opponents of the spinoff and closure, but ultimately accepted both.

The KMWU built up illusions in the state, appealing to the judiciary over the issue of the GMTCK workers’ contract. An Incheon court ruled earlier this month in favor of the company, stating that “while GMTCK and GM Korea share joint liability, collective agreement, unlike debt, is not a liability that needs to be met.” This will only pave the way for the deeper cuts GM has been demanding for years.

Similarly, Hyundai has been looking for a way to impose a two-tier system of wages, following in the footsteps of what the US Detroit automakers have achieved through collusion with the United Auto Workers union. Hyundai’s chosen method is the so-called Gwangju jobs project, also launched in January.

Backed with funding from the Gwangju city government as well as from the administration of President Moon Jae-in, Hyundai intends to hire 1,000 workers at a new plant, where they would receive only 35 million won ($31,000), less than half the average annual wage and benefits a worker would normally receive. The government claims an additional 10,000 jobs will be created indirectly in and around Gwangju, the second poorest metropolitan area in South Korea, where wages are already 13 percent below the national average.

The project is based on a German model used at Volkswagen from 2001 to 2009, which came to an end after concessions were enforced on autoworkers throughout the industry. As the South Korean government intends to expand this model to two more cities by June, workers must heed the warning that this is what lies in store for all.

The KMWU likewise postured as an opponent of the deal with Hyundai. However, at a signing ceremony to mark the project’s inauguration, which included President Moon, two leading officials of the union’s Kia branch also took part, providing the KMWU’s stamp of approval on the whole affair. Kia is a Hyundai affiliate. The two were later removed from their positions as a face-saving measure, but no strikes have been called in opposition.

As Hyundai moves to create this lower tier of workers, it also intends to slash as many 7,000 jobs by 2025. The leader of the KMWU’s Hyundai branch, Ha Bu-yeong, has already accepted this, saying, “Even though we accept the management's anticipation of cutting 7,000 jobs by 2025, 17,500 are scheduled to retire by then. Thus, the company has to hire at least 10,000 to keep its plant running.” Even if this dubious prospect were to come to fruition, Hyundai would seek the union’s support in cutting the wages of new hires, just as it has done in forcing older, higher paid workers out of the industry.

China hosts second Belt and Road Initiative forum

Peter Symonds

Chinese President Xi Jinping last week hosted the second forum in Beijing of one of his key programs—the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—a massive infrastructure scheme aimed at linking China throughout Eurasia via land and sea and enhancing China’s position on the world stage.

Since it was first announced in 2013, the BRI has come under increasing fire from the US, which regards it as a challenge to its own global ambitions. When Italy became the first G7 power to formally sign up to the project last month, the US National Security Council lashed out with a tweet declaring that Rome was legitimising China’s “predatory approach to investment.”

US officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, think tanks and the media have repeatedly accused China of using the BRI to create “debt traps” to pressure countries to meet Chinese demands. The criticism is entirely hypocritical. The US has for decades exploited institutions like the International Monetary Fund to impose its economic and geo-political dictates around the world.

President Xi was anxious to use the BRI forum to counter mounting US criticism and strengthen ties across Eurasia and with Africa. In opening the gathering last Friday, Xi declared that China was committed to transparency and building “high-quality, sustainable, risk resistant, reasonably priced, and inclusive infrastructure.”

Xi told the audience the BRI would promote “open, green and clean development.” Without specifically mentioning the US, he declared that “we need to build an open world economy and reject protectionism.” The remark was not only directed against the Trump administration’s trade war measures against China. It was a pitch to the European powers, which also confront the threat of punitive US tariffs.

Amid an increasingly aggressive US stance toward China—first under Barack Obama, then Donald Trump—the BRI was always designed to strengthen China’s economic and strategic position, particularly in Europe, by touting the economic benefits of closer economic and political cooperation.

Italy is the only major European power to sign up to the BRI and to send its head of government, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, to the forum. However, other major European countries sent high-level representatives to look for economic opportunities, while attempting to avoid Washington’s displeasure.

UK Chancellor Philip Hammond attended the forum to lobby on behalf of British corporations. A Treasury statement declared there were opportunities for British companies in the fields of “design, engineering financing, public-private partnerships and legal services.”

In the lead-up to the Beijing forum, despite heavy pressure from the US, the British government gave approval, in principle, for Chinese telecom giant Huawei to assist in building the country’s next generation 5G data network. US State Department official Robert Strayer warned on Monday that any involvement of the “untrusted vendor,” even in non-core elements of the network, could compromise US-UK intelligence cooperation.

German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier was also at the BRI forum. He pushed for a multilateral BRI agreement between China and the European Union, which would ensure a greater say for Germany in the implementation of projects. In a thinly-veiled criticism of Italy, Altmaier declared that the EU “in its great majority” agreed that it did not want to sign any bilateral agreements.

In all, some 5,000 foreign delegates from more than 150 countries and more than 90 international organisations attended the forum, including 37 heads of government or heads of state. Along with the Italian prime minister, Russian President Vladimir Putin attended, along with leaders from Austria, Portugal, Hungary and Greece.

On May 4, the International Committee of the Fourth International is holding its annual International May Day Online Rally, with speakers and participants from throughout the world.

Top leaders from nine of the ten countries in the Association of South East Asian Nations were in attendance, as well as four of the five Central Asian republics. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan took part, but India, which is hostile to China’s close ties with its regional rival Pakistan, was not represented by its prime minister.

Not only did US President Trump not attend, but there was no senior American representative at the forum.

Before the forum, the Chinese government set out to blunt some of the criticism of the financing of BRI projects. Malaysia Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who came to power in last year’s election, was heavily critical of Chinese investment during the campaign and suspended or cancelled several major projects, including a railway line along the country’s undeveloped east coast.

China last month renegotiated the agreement on the $20 billion rail line by cutting the cost of construction by a third. The new deal ensured that Mahathir attended the Beijing forum and gave the BRI his “full support.”

President Xi told the media that China had signed some $64 billion in deals at the three-day forum. An Al Jazeera report estimated: “To date, about $90 billion have been invested in multiple BRI-related projects, but several hundred billion more have been loosely committed and it will be years before all that capital is invested.” Overall, China has indicated that over $1 trillion will be invested in various projected.

The communiqué from this forum identified several key projects that will be fast-tracked, including Pakistan’s Gwadar port—the starting point of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to China’s southwest—and Greece’s Port of Piraeus, which China regards as a key beachhead into Europe.

The other major project is the China Railway Express—a network of railways linking London to the Chinese city of Chongqing and projected to be used by more than 14,000 freight trains every week. These infrastructure links are expected to cut costs, but from China’s standpoint also avoid too heavy reliance on sea transport through the Malacca Strait, which could be blocked by the US navy in time of war.

The US is determined to ensure that China’s BRI plans do not undermine American economic and strategic interests. At the ASEAN summit last November, US Vice President Pence slammed the BRI and declared that a US infrastructure plan for the Asia Pacific provided a better option. “We don’t drown our partners in a sea of debt, we don’t coerce, or compromise your independence … We don’t offer a constricting belt or a one-way road,” he declared.

The US, which is seeking support from allies such as Australia and Japan, has announced that just over $100 billion will be on offer for infrastructure projects. Not surprisingly, all the ASEAN countries were strongly represented in Beijing last week, as considerably more money is potentially available.

Unwilling to provide greater investment, Washington will undoubtedly ramp up the aggressive methods it has used to date to undermine Chinese influence—diplomatic intrigues, including regime-change operations, military provocations in dangerous flashpoints such as the South China Sea, and preparations for war with China.

Syriza government authorises mass evictions of refugees and asylum seekers

John Vassilopoulos

Hundreds of people gathered April 22 at the central square of Mytilene—the capital of the island of Lesbos—for a silent protest to mark the first anniversary of a far right attack on a group of mainly Afghan asylum seekers.

The asylum seekers, who included women and children, had gathered in the square to protest their internment at the Moria detention camp on the island and the delay in processing their asylum applications. They were then attacked by a fascist mob of around 200 under the nose of police units in the area, who reportedly had orders not to move against the thugs but only to disperse them. As a result, the mob was able to break through a police cordon and throw stones, bottles and flares at the asylum seekers, resulting in 35 people being injured.

The protest was organised by “Democratic Mytilene,” a local pseudo-left coalition made up primarily of Syriza and Popular Unity members, which was founded earlier this year to contest the upcoming local government elections. The group stated that “[a] year on after the events of those days, the culprits as well as their moral instigators remain unpunished. However, with their actions they continue to poison society, divide citizens and provoke hatred with their lies.”

In fact, chief among the “moral instigators” is Syriza.

As far right politics are being ever more openly adopted by the ruling elites of Europe, and fascistic movements encouraged, Syriza has only been too happy to lend its services to this effort.

In the four years since it took power in January 2015, Syriza has not only played a pivotal role in continuing and deepening the EU-dictated austerity that has pauperised millions of Greeks, but has also been at the forefront of cracking down on refugees, asylum seekers and migrants as part of the European Union’s (EU) anti-immigrant agenda.

There are currently more than 70,000 refugees interned in Greece in overcrowded camps on the mainland and islands as a result of the filthy deal cut between the EU and Turkey in 2016, which stipulates that all refugees crossing into Greece from Turkey be interned until their case is processed—with the plan that they are ultimately deported back to Turkey. For this, Athens has received more than €2 billion euros from the EU and Turkey is set to receive €6 billion euros.

Over 7,000 of these refugees are detained at the Moria camp, whose capacity is for around 2,000.

The atrocious conditions at Moria were highlighted in an Oxfam report published this January, which included testimonials from aid workers as well as asylum seekers detained at the camp.

Sonia Andreu, who manages “Bashira,” a refuge for vulnerable women asylum seekers on Lesbos, told Oxfam that she sees Moria “as hell.”

“I know women,” she said, “who gave birth, they had a C-section delivery and after four days they were returned to Moria with their newborn babies. They have to recover under dirty, unhealthy conditions.”

“It’s really difficult to see a doctor,” said Shala, an Afghan refugee in her mid-forties. “There is just one doctor for the whole camp. You have to be on your death bed before they take your problems seriously.”

On May 4, the International Committee of the Fourth International is holding its annual International May Day Online Rally, with speakers and participants from throughout the world.

According to Oxfam, there was no doctor at all for the whole of November after the camp doctor quit.

The report also highlighted the unsanitary conditions that exist as a result of overcrowding. “70 people have to share one toilet, so hygiene is very bad,” said John, an NGO worker in Lesbos. “There are many small children and babies in the camp. Sometimes people do not even have a tent and winter is coming. In the Olive Grove, there are snakes, scorpions and rats.”

Three days before the silent protest in Lesbos, 60 refugees set up a camp at Syntagma Square in Athens, opposite the Greek parliament. They made handmade placards castigating their treatment, with some reading, “Evicted by police government” and “Why make us live in tents when there are so many empty buildings?”

They were protesting their recent forced eviction on April 18 from the “Clandestina” and “Cyclopi” squats in the Exarchia district of Athens—driven out by helmeted and masked riot police. The 68 people, including 25 children, had been occupying the squats for around a year. Just one week previously, the “Azadi” and “Babylonia” squats, also in Exarchia, were evicted by around 200 riot police on April 11. During the evictions at the four locations, an estimated 200-300 refugees were made homeless.

Quoted in a post appearing on infomobile, a blog reporting on the plight of refugees in Greece, a mother of three children described her eviction from the Clandestina squat: “I was sleeping with my children, when I suddenly woke up with guns being held in front of my eyes. There was police everywhere. I tried to collect our most important belongings. The police was shouting: ‘Fast, fast!’ Two of my kids have heart problems. One of them has asthma.”

Another refugee and former resident of Clandestina told infomobile, “Everything I had is in that locked building now: My tax number, my social insurance documents, medical papers… I am at zero again. They didn’t let us take anything.”

A statement released by the Ministry for Migration Policy showed the government’s contempt for the refugees, stating that by refusing to leave Syntagma Square they “were creating a negative image of themselves among Greek public opinion.”

The camp at Syntagma was cleared on April 20 after refugees were reportedly transported to different detention centres across the country.

Exarchia has been under what is a semi-permanent occupation by state forces for weeks, with Syriza authorising such operations in order to project itself as the responsible party of law and order. Responding to the evictions on social media, Syriza deputy minister for Citizen Protection, Katernia Papakosta-Sidiropoulou, wrote, “Well done to the Greek Police for the latest, well organised operation in Exarchia. Policemen performed a check mate. They proved that they don’t wait for the month of August [when most people are on vacation] to ensure the safety of citizens.”

The evictions in Exarchia are the culmination of months of saturated reports in the Greek media on alleged criminal activity in the area, such as alleged contraband and drug trafficking operations run by migrant gangs in collaboration with anarchist groups, who have had a long presence in the district. This reportage is solely aimed at demonising refugees and asylum seekers, accompanied by the usual law-and-order chorus to clamp down on the “no-go zone” of Exarchia.

Behind the evictions there are wider commercial considerations, with the district being part of recently unveiled plans to regenerate the city centre. A February article in the pro-business capital.gr, stated that “Anaplasi PLC, whose aim is to implement urban revitalisation works, is investigating in conjunction with Attica Metro, three new scenarios of where to place a Metro stop in Exarchia, aiming to preserve the public space of Exarchia Square, which today is a haven for criminal activities.”

Exarchia, along with other run-down areas in the city centre, are seen by many investors as prime real estate and they are snapping up properties there. Speaking to the in.gr website Lefteris Potamianos, president of the Athens-Attica real estate agents’ association, stated that real estate prices in the district have gone up by 30 percent in the last year: “It’s not just apartments, but strangely also whole blocks that have been bought up and are being earmarked for airbnb apartments or hotels. All these sales have happened in the last year.”