Boeing rejects pilot simulator training for 737 Max 8

Bryan Dyne

Aerospace giant Boeing is proposing to proceed with new pilot training for its 737 Max 8 aircraft without the use of hands-on flight simulators. This cost-cutting measure continues the policy that led to the crashes of Lion Air Flight 610 last October and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in March, which killed a combined total of 346 passengers and crew.

According to CNN, part of Boeing’s plan to bring the grounded 737 Max 8 back into service is a computer-based training program which, like the company’s recommended pilot training on the aircraft before the two crashes, does not involve any time in an actual flight simulator. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which must ultimately approve any retraining regimen for the jet, has not yet announced its official training requirements.

Boeing’s proposal comes amidst mounting evidence of shoddy construction of its commercial jets, including its 737 Max line, which was brought into service in 2017 and quickly became the company’s biggest-selling aircraft and pushed Boeing’s stock price and profits to record highs. The FAA said Sunday that more than 300 Boeing 737 jets, including the Max, may have faulty wing parts that do not meet strength and durability standards. The FAA said it plans to order airlines to remove and replace the parts on impacted aircraft. It added that as many as 148 parts made by a Boeing supplier could be “susceptible to premature failure or cracks.”

The affected parts are slat tracks, which sit on the front of the wing and move along a track to create lift. They play an important role during take-off and landing.

Boeing’s proposal to skip flight simulator training for pilots when its grounded fleet of 737 Maxes is cleared to resume service is not an innocent one. Much of the criticism the company has faced is that the original training for the Max 8 for pilots who had flown previous versions of the 737 aircraft was an hour-long course on a tablet. This was part of a scheme by the company to reduce the cost of the new plane for airlines and minimize the time needed to get it into the air. Corners were cut in order to beat back a challenge from Boeing’s European-based rival Airbus, whose new short- and mid-range commercial jet was threatening to capture lucrative markets long dominated by the US giant as well as the rapidly growing Asian market.

At the time, the company, the FAA and the pilots unions all agreed that the minimal training was adequate.

The airplane manufacturer is proposing more of the same in order to hold onto market share for its most profitable aircraft. Flight simulators cost upwards of $15 million each and pilots typically train for hundreds of hours before they even get inside a real cockpit.

The CNN report came only one day after Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg gave an interview to CBS News in which he admitted that the company did not correctly implement the installation of its new Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), an automated anti-stall system that is believed to have been responsible for both crashes. Muilenburg also acknowledged that “our engineers discovered” the problem, but the company kept it hidden from the airlines, pilots and regulatory agencies until it was exposed by the crashes, both of which occurred within minutes of takeoff when MCAS was triggered by a faulty sensor and repeatedly forced the nose of the plane sharply downward.

In the same interview, Muilenburg attempted to shift scrutiny from Boeing’s leadership onto the workers, claiming that “there appears to have been a maintenance issue with” the angle-of-attack sensor, which fed data to MCAS that made the software force the two planes into a lethal nosedive. In previous comments, Boeing spokespeople have attempted to blame the pilots.

Muilenburg’s comments are further undercut by new reports revealing that Boeing changed how the MCAS software worked without informing those who knew about the system. The program was originally installed on the 737 Max 8 to compensate for the plane’s tendency to stall, a consequence of mounting a larger engine on the same body design as earlier 737s—another decision driven by Boeing’s desire to produce its answer to Airbus as quickly and cheaply as possible.

Originally, MCAS was capable of changing the pitch of a plane by only 0.6 degrees and it relied on input from two different sensors. However, Boeing changed the software to make it more aggressive, giving it the ability to automatically pitch the plane upward by 2.5 degrees, and allowing it to be triggered by input from a single sensor—one of the plane’s two angle-of-attack sensors.

FAA officials were not even directly aware of the existence of MCAS. An internal FAA review of its jetliner certification process found that no senior agency official participated in crucial assessments of the MCAS system, instead relying on Boeing employees to perform safety tests and analyses of potential hazards, under the terms of the 2005 Organization Designation Authorization program—a measure designed to further weaken federal oversight of the company.

Those that did sign off on MCAS were not made aware of the changes in the system because of FAA rules declaring that since the system had been certified, the changes did not warrant additional safety tests. This meant that the officials in charge of pilot training were not alerted to the change.

Mike Sinnett, a Boeing vice president, defending these decisions last November in response to the outcry over the Lion Air crash, said, “It’s been reported that it’s a single point failure, but it is not considered by design or certification a single point.” He added that this was so “because the function and the trained pilot work side by side and are part of the system,” ignoring the fact that many if not most of the pilots flying the 737 Max 8 did not know of the existence of MCAS.

What is absent from the press reports, however, is any suggestion that Muilenburg, Sinnett or any of Boeing’s leadership should be prosecuted in connection with the deaths of 346 people. Muilenburg was paid $23 million last year in compensation for Boeing’s accelerating rise on the stock market, achieved by a brutal cost-cutting drive, including the elimination of thousands of jobs. He was also rewarded for enriching big investors and speculators by overseeing billions in stock buybacks and dividend increases.

At least 116 injured in Russia factory explosions

Clara Weiss 

On Saturday, June 1, three blasts at the Kristall factory in the Russian city of Dzerzhinsk injured 116 people. As of this writing, 17 are still hospitalized. The factory produces explosives for the Russian military, including the FAB-500, the most powerful air bomb in the Russian defense industry.

Dzerzhinsk is a city of about 260,000 people, located in the Nizhny Gorodski oblast in central Russia. A former center of the Soviet chemical industry, more than 40 percent of the population are still employed in manufacturing. The Kristall factory, built in the Soviet period, now belongs to the major state-owned defense cooperation Rostech, which employs over 400,000 people. Its head, Sergei Chemezov, is a leading member of the ruling United Russia party and was put on the US sanctions list in 2016 as a close ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

The blasts reportedly occurred at a unit in the factory that produces the highly explosive chemical trinitrotoluole (TNT), a standard component of dynamite. They were so powerful that windows in more than 300 apartment buildings, 70 kindergartens and 31 schools as well as several cultural buildings and gyms were shattered or torn out of the walls, spanning a radius of at least 3 kilometers. Footage of the blasts shows a major mushroom cloud rising over the city. Many buildings were also left without electricity.

An ensuing fire destroyed three storage units at the factory and two plants, and damaged the building of the factory management. The fire spread over 1,200 square meters, including 800 on the factory site as well as 400 cubic meters of the nearby forest. Some 400 firefighters were needed to extinguish the fire.

Among those injured were 44 workers at the factory. One of them is still in the hospital in critical condition. Many of the injured were local residents, including at least one child. Most residents had wounds inflicted by flying glass from shattered windows. It is generally believed that the number of injured was reduced because the blasts took place on a Saturday, when schools and kindergartens were closed.

Nikita Tumakov, who witnessed the blasts from his apartment, told a Russian newspaper: “At 11:50 a.m. the first explosion occurred. I was sitting at home in my room on a chair, and I was thrown off [the chair]. Everything in the apartment was turned upside down. Then I went out on the balcony, began to take a video, and the second explosion came with a major wave. My balcony was shaking.” Other residents confirmed that the effects of the blast could be felt in neighboring districts of the city. The blasts triggered a panic in the city, with many residents fleeing to the homes of friends or relatives in the region.

A state of emergency was declared in Dzerzhinsk as well as in the nearby villages of Pyra, Zhelnino, and Kordon Lesnoi. Workers in neighboring factories were evacuated.

On Sunday, workers of the city administration, nearby factories, volunteers, and other local residents spent hours trying to remove the rubble and broken windows. The damage caused is estimated to be in the millions of rubles (hundreds of thousands of US dollars).

The city’s mayor has assured the population that no toxic chemicals were released by the blasts and that radioactivity in the city was not increased above the allowed maximum. However, on social media, residents have expressed suspicions about these official assurances. The Russian state and its local agencies are notorious for downplaying, if not outright lying about, the scope of such disasters.

While no official explanation has been given for the blasts, everything indicates that gross violations of basic safety procedures at the factory were the cause. The general director of the Kristall factory had been removed from his position just before the latest blasts because of “problems with factory safety” after another explosion at the Kristall factory on April 4 had destroyed an entire shop. After all of these explosions, almost nothing remains of the original factory buildings (click here for footage).

The Kristall factory is only a particularly stark example of the dangerous workplace conditions facing millions of workers in Russia on a daily basis. On August 31, 2018, another blast at the Sverdlov factory in Dzerzhinsk, which also produces explosives for the military and is directly adjacent to the Kristall factory, killed six people.

According to a report by the Russian Ministry of Labor, 2,600 people died in 2017 because of accidents in production. This was an increase of 5 percent from 2016. The by-far deadliest occupations are in mining and construction. In stark contrast to the numbers provided by the Russian government, the International Labor Organization has estimated that some 15,000 workers in Russia die at their workplace every year, and that some 190,000 workers die annually as a result of exposure to dangerous conditions at work.

Responsibility for these deaths lies with the Russian oligarchy, which has emerged out of the destruction of the USSR by the Stalinist bureaucracy. Making close to no investments in new technologies and equipment, this oligarchy’s criminal neglect of basic infrastructure has resulted in countless fires and explosions at both factories and public buildings. Most recently, this included a horrific fire at a shopping mall in the mining city of Kemerovo a year ago, which took the lives of at least 64 people, many of them children, and a fire at a shoe factory in early 2018, which killed 10 migrant workers from China.

Warnings mount that trade war could bring recession

Nick Beams

An investigation by Chinese state authorities into why FedEx misdirected two packages sent to the technology company Huawei is likely to assume greater importance in the ongoing conflict with the US following a report that the misdirection was the result of “internal protocols” set up to comply with measures directed against the company by the Trump administration.

The misdirection took place when the packages shipped from Japan were sent to the FedEx global hub in Memphis instead of the intended recipient in China. When the news broke, FedEx apologized for the misdirection and said that “no external party required FedEx to make these shipments.”

But according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, citing a person familiar with the matter, changes in the company’s “internal protocols” to comply with the US crackdown on Huawei caused the company to misdirect the packages. “New restrictions on doing business with Huawei affected how FedEx handles Huawei’s packages,” the report said.

Beijing has launched an investigation into FedEx for “undermining the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese clients” and the commerce ministry has said it will compile a list of “unreliable” foreign companies following the US measures directed against Huawei that block it from US supplies of components.

The deepening economic confrontation between the US and China has been joined by the Trump administration’s decision to impose tariffs on Mexican goods, rising from 5 percent this month to 25 percent by October, on the demand that it take action to cut the flow of immigrants and refugees into the US. This has brought a series of warnings from Wall Street analysts of the consequences for financial markets and the economy more broadly.

Morgan Stanley recently warned that a global recession could start within nine months if the Trump administration goes ahead with its threat to impose a 25 percent tariff on an additional $300 billion worth of Chinese goods and Beijing launches retaliatory action. In a separate analysis, JPMorgan Chase said the probability of a US recession in the second half of this year had risen to 40 percent from 25 percent a month ago.

In a report to investors, Chetan Ahya, Morgan Stanley’s chief economist, wrote that markets were underestimating the impact of the trade conflict. “Investors are generally of the view that the trade dispute could drag on for longer, but they appear to be overlooking its potential impact on the global macro outlook.”

These views were echoed by John Normand of JPMorgan Chase in London. He wrote: “The move down in markets over the past month is all about trade war, but I don’t think this is fully in the price. The economic data were weakening before tariffs went up so we’ve yet to see the economic consequences of trade.”

Manufacturing figures from May showed weakness across Asia and Europe, which underscored the global ramifications of the conflict between the US and China, he noted.

Manufacturing in the US is slowing markedly. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that US factories “are on track for their weakest showing this year since 2016.” It continued: “Manufacturing job growth has stalled since late last year and output has fallen in three of the past four months as demand for business equipment and commodities weakens in the US and abroad.”

In addition, orders for durable goods were down 0.1 percent in April from a year earlier, the first year-to-year decline since 2017.

Bank of America (BofA) has lowered its forecast for profit growth and drawn attention to the risk of recession arising from the trade conflicts. Savita Subramanian, the head of US equity strategy at BofA, has cut her estimate for profit growth in S&P 500 companies as rising tariffs impact costs. “Globalisation has benefited S&P 500 margins for decades, and protectionism coupled with rising wages/input costs poses risks to peak margins,” she wrote in a note to clients.

The indirect impacts from trade tensions, including falls in consumption spending, falling confidence and the ban on Huawei, among other issues, “are likely more extreme than direct impacts,” she added. “Worst case—an economic recession.”

A former governor of the People’s Bank of China, Dai Xianglong, has warned that if the economic conflict between the US and China continues to escalate it will have a major impact on the global economy.

“The consequences of the US-China trade war not only will be reflected in both countries, but will also extend to relevant regions, extend to the whole world,” he told a press event in Beijing last week. “If the China-US trade war continues to grow larger,” he added, “it may cause the global economy to decline and may cause a global financial crisis.”

The prospect of recession is reflected in the continuing fall in yield on long-term bonds, as investors seek safety, pushing up bond prices and bringing down yields.

The gap between the yield on three-month and 10-year Treasury bonds is growing—a movement regarded as heralding a recession. And the yield on the 10-year bond could go even lower, according to JPMorgan analysts. They expect the yield on 10-year bonds to be 1.75 percent at the end of the year, compared with a previous forecast of 2.45 percent.

The downward revision was made following Trump’s move to impose tariffs on Mexico. The tariff hikes against China had already brought considerable uncertainty, but the action against Mexico has added another dimension. Some companies, seeking to dodge the effect of the China tariffs, had been looking to shift some of their operations to Mexico, but those plans have now been thrown awry.

There is now general uncertainty over where the Trump administration could next strike. Will it be the threatened imposition of a 25 percent tariff on auto imports, hitting Japan, Germany and South Korea, or something completely unexpected like the tariffs against Mexico?

A graphic example of the turmoil was provided yesterday when the New York Times reported that, under pressure from US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and the director of trade and manufacturing policy, Peter Navarro, the administration was considering imposing tariffs on aluminium imports from Australia.

Australia was exempted from the 10 percent tariff imposed on aluminium in May last year on “national security” grounds and since then its exports to the US have sharply increased.

In the event, Trump rejected the push from within his administration. But the reasons for his decision, at least for now, only served to reveal the underlying content of the accelerating economic warfare. The cancellation of the Australian exemption was rejected on advice from senior officials at the Defense and State Departments, who argued that it would undermine the US-Australia alliance.

Australia is regarded as a frontline state in the military preparations against China, with its vital communications facilities and basing of US forces. As Trump put it when questioned on the report, “We’re doing a very special relationship with Australia.”

Algerian army suspends July 4 presidential elections

Will Morrow

On Sunday, the Algerian Constitutional Council cancelled presidential elections scheduled for July 4. Interim President Abdelkader Bensalah had called the elections in April, only a week after the resignation of long-time President Abdelaziz Bouteflika amid mass protests demanding his ouster and the fall of Algeria’s military regime.

The decision came amid continuing mass weekly protests of workers and youth in cities across Algeria, opposing the elections, Bensalah and the military dictatorship. In recent weeks, protesters repeatedly chanted slogans denouncing the elections and the military brass, such as “No elections with the gang,” “No dialog with symbols of the old regime.”

So overwhelming was the popular opposition to these elections, correctly identified as a fig leaf to maintain a corrupt regime, that no parties dared to stand candidates in them. Judges refused to participate in the preparation of election lists, with the Judges’ Club association issuing a statement noting that the election was “rejected by the people.” In the end, the Constitutional Council called off an election that was proving to be an embarrassment for the regime and only threatened to trigger a broader eruption of mass opposition.

The Constitutional Council’s suspension of the elections is not, however, an attempt to bow to the will of workers and youth and build a democratic regime. Power remains in the hands of military strongman General Ahmed Gaïd Salah. And by postponing the presidential election without setting a future election date, the Constitutional Council has effectively left Bensalah and Prime Minister Noureddine Bedoui, who are widely despised, in power indefinitely.

In its communiqué announcing its ruling, the Constitutional Council stressed that its purpose in postponing the election was to preserve the existing regime. It wrote, “it is essential to create adequate conditions to organize this election transparently and without bias, in order to preserve constitutional institutions that help realize the aspirations of the sovereign people. It is the duty of the head of state to summon the electorate and complete the electoral process through the election of the President of the Republic and the swearing of the constitutional oath.”

While the Constitutional Council issued its statement claiming to defend the aspirations of the Algerian people, the military regime is locking up and killing politicians and public figures in an effort to terrorize the population.

Reports and videos posted on social media show that demonstrations over the past month have more and more taken up slogans directed against the military, including “No to the Egyptian solution,” a reference to the 2013 coup of dictator Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. While the regime is seeking to find some means of ending the protests, it is preparing a no less brutal crackdown than its counterparts in Egypt and Sudan, where the military government yesterday launched an assault on civilian protest encampments in Khartoum, using live ammunition to kill at least 35 people.

Last Friday’s demonstration in Algeria included widespread protests against the state-overseen killing in prison of Kamel Eddine Fekhar, a Kabyle separatist and former leader of the Front des forces socialistes (FFS), which is affiliated with France’s big-business Socialist Party. Arrested without a warrant on March 31, immediately after giving an interview published on Facebook, he was charged with “threatening state security” and “inciting racial hatred.” Fekhar allegedly died as a result of a 50-day hunger strike on May 28.

Fekhar’s death attracted international condemnation, with Amnesty International calling it “a result of nothing more than having expressed his opinions.”

Fekhar’s lawyer, Salah Debouz, pointed to the chilling effect the military regime intends for his death to have. “Now, anyone publishing his views or expressing an opinion on social media can be arrested for having criticized one or another official,” he told Le Point on June 3. “I think there are many more people in this situation than is known, because they do not have the means to pay for a lawyer and no one hears anything about them. It is easier to repress them.”

Louisa Hanoune, the general secretary of Algeria’s Workers Party (PT) and a close ally of the Bouteflika family, remains in prison after having been arrested on May 10 while appearing as a witness at a military trial of Bouteflika’s brother Saïd. Her arrest followed statements attempting to present herself as a critic of the military and was aimed at sending a message that any criticism of the army will be met with violent repression.

Hanoune had compared the Algerian army to the bloodstained Egyptian military dictatorship of General al-Sisi, effectively warning against support for Gaïd Salah. “Once in power, al-Sisi ordered the imprisonment of even the naive people among the activists and political parties who supported him, believing that the army would open a true democracy,” she said. The army has viciously retaliated, imprisoning Hanoune and preventing her doctors from visiting her.

The different bourgeois opposition parties are seeking to find a means of channeling workers and youth behind a fraudulent transition that, while utilizing more democratic phraseology, will leave the country in the hands of the corporate elite and be no less impervious to the social demands of the Algerian workers and rural oppressed for an end to crushing poverty and unemployment, particularly among the youth. Between a quarter and a third of youth are unemployed in a country where 70 percent of the population is aged under 30.

On June 3, El Watan reported that a collection of autonomous trade unions, which receive funding from the CIA front National Endowment for Democracy, and the self-proclaimed “Civil Forum for Change,” had launched a call for a new “responsible, serious and rational dialogue, as a means of resolving the present crisis” without Bensalah and Bedoui. The pseudo-left Workers Party and Socialist Workers Party, which is allied to the New Anti-Capitalist Party in France, are seeking to channel opposition behind a no less fraudulent demand for a “Constituent Assembly.”

Such demands are aimed at channeling the working class behind factions of the bourgeoisie, and preventing the working class from waging a struggle to take political power into its own hands, establish a workers government on the basis of socialist policies, and seek to extend its revolutionary struggles across the African continent and internationally. The fight for socialism is the only basis upon which the democratic and social demands of the working class can be fulfilled.

Military massacres protesters in Sudan

Bill Van Auken

Security forces in Sudan launched a bloodbath early Monday morning, using live ammunition to break up a more than five-month-old sit-in outside the country’s defense ministry in Khartoum, where tens of thousands of Sudanese have regularly gathered to demand an end to military rule and the transfer of power to a democratically elected government.

The Sudanese Doctors’ Committee put the confirmed death toll late Monday at over 30 and said that at least 116 people had been wounded. At least one of those who was killed is a child, an eight-year-old cut down by gunfire. The casualty figures are expected to rise dramatically, with many protesters still unaccounted for, and reports of security forces dumping bodies into the Nile River. Similar murderous repression reportedly has also been unleashed against protesters outside of the Sudanese capital.

Victims of Monday’s massacre

Troops from various military and police units descended upon the encampment, led by soldiers wearing the desert camouflage fatigues of the Rapid Support Force (RSF), a brutally repressive paramilitary outfit that has been used by the regime in Khartoum to suppress regional rebellions in Darfur and in the east of the country. The RSF is led by Lt. Gen. Hamdan Dagalo (popularly known as “Hemeti”), the deputy chair of the country’s currently ruling junta, the Transitional Military Council (TMC), and widely viewed as an aspiring dictator.

The troops rushed in using tear gas, stun grenades and live ammunition. Video posted online showed soldiers with whips surrounding and flogging unarmed demonstrators, including elderly men and women.

Photographs were also posted of snipers deployed in high rise buildings overlooking the protest site. They opened fire on anyone attempting to record the events with cellphone cameras.

One protester recounted: “They shot me in my right thigh because I was carrying someone with a bullet wound to his head ... An officer hit me with his gun and I dropped the man I was carrying. He then stepped away and shot him again in the head and told me ‘now you can go bury him.’”

In addition to shooting and beating protesters, the troops burned down tents erected at the sit-in and sealed off the area with machine gun-mounted trucks.

There were also reports of armed security forces besieging local hospitals where the wounded had been taken, firing live ammunition inside the facilities and blocking volunteers and doctors from entering. Video shared by doctors showed security forces beating medical staff at the Royal Care Hospital in Khartoum.

Protesters driven out of the site outside the defense ministry continued to demonstrate and erect barricades in the streets of Khartoum and the neighboring city of Omdurman. In neighborhoods throughout Khartoum, people poured into the streets to protest the junta’s actions, barricading streets with bricks and burning tires and blocking bridges. Similar mobilizations were seen in Omdurman. Firing by security forces continued to be reported in both cities as well as elsewhere in Sudan.

Protesters erect barricades in streets of Khartoum

Among the chants heard were: “If you disperse the sit-in, we will protest in every street” and “You’ll have to kill us all.”

Shortly before the military onslaught against the protesters, the regime cut off power to the area. The internet was also shut down throughout Sudan.

The ruling Transitional Military Council (TMC) issued a preposterous statement claiming that the crackdown had targeted only “unruly elements” from a neighborhood adjacent to the protest site, nicknamed “Colombia” and known for a high crime rate.

“What is going on is targeting Colombia adjacent to the sit-in area and not targeting the sit-in. Dangerous groups infiltrated among the protesters in the sit-in area,” a spokesman for the TMC said.

He went on to call for a “return to negotiations” between the junta and opposition groups organized under the umbrella of the Forces for the Declaration of Freedom and Change (FDFC) as “the quickest way to resolve the problem.”

In the face of mass protests, the TMC seized power on April 11 in a preemptive coup against the 30-year ruler of Sudan, President Omar al-Bashir. Its aim has been to preserve the military-dominated regime by ousting its chief.

The assault on the protest had been openly prepared for days after negotiations between the junta and the civilian opposition front broke down over whether a military or a civilian would head a transitional regime during a proposed two-year transitional period in preparation for presidential elections.

Demonstrators remained in the streets, rejecting the protracted transition and demanding an immediate end to the ruling junta.

On Saturday, the ruling TMC issued a statement declaring that the “sit-in has become a threat to the country.”

While Washington issued a pro-forma statement from an undersecretary at the State Department condemning the “coordinated and unlawful violence” in Khartoum and a vague opinion that the Sudanese people “deserve a civilian-led government that works for the people, not an authoritarian military council that works against them,” the reality is that the military crackdown was prepared in the closest collaboration with the principal US allies in the region.

The shift toward iron-fisted repression immediately followed a tour conducted by the head of the TMC, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and his deputy, Lt. Gen. Dagalo, of the three countries that have been the main backers of the military regime, which are also Washington’s chief allies in the Arab world: Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

It is clear that Cairo, Riyadh and Dubai—with Washington’s tacit blessing—gave the green light for the bloodbath.

The assault on the sit-in recalls the even bloodier crackdown organized by Egypt’s dictatorial ruler Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Cairo’s Rabaa Square in 2013, killing at least 1,000 people, including women and children, who were protesting the Sisi-led coup that toppled Egypt’s elected president, Mohamed Morsi. Having drowned in blood the Egyptian revolution that overthrew the 30-year US-backed dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak in 2011, el-Sisi has no intention of seeing a similar revolutionary upheaval struggle unfold unhindered in Egypt’s southern neighbor, Sudan.

The Cairo regime issued a statement demanding that “all Sudanese sides commit to calm, self-restraint and return to the negotiating table.”

As for Saudi Arabia and the UAE, their ruling monarchs have pledged $3 billion to prop up Sudan’s ruling junta. The Sudanese military has in return sent troops to support Saudi Arabia’s and the UAE’s near-genocidal war against Yemen.

During their visit, the UAE’s ruling crown prince, Mohammed bin Zayed, pledged to help the Sudanese generals “preserve Sudan’s security and stability.”

Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the organizer of last year’s brazen murder of Jamal Khashoggi as well as dozens of beheadings of political dissidents, presumably offered similar backing.

After the meeting in Riyadh, Lt. Gen. Dagalo stated that “Sudan stands with the kingdom against all threats and attacks from Iran and the Houthis (Yemen’s anti-Saudi rebels).”

Such allegiance undoubtedly trumps all other considerations in Washington, where the focus of Middle East policy has been the consolidation of an anti-Iranian axis in preparation for a new and far more dangerous US imperialist war of aggression in the region.

At the same time, there is fear within US imperialist circles as well as among the ruling strata throughout the Middle East and North Africa that the popular revolt in Sudan will feed the growing wave of strikes and mass protests in Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and throughout the region.

For the masses of Sudanese workers and poor, the way forward lies not through the calls by the bourgeois- and petty-bourgeois-led opposition for a civilian-led transitional government, which would also serve as a façade for the continued rule of Sudan’s small, wealthy elite and its military henchmen.

The only means of defeating the counterrevolutionary conspiracies of Washington, its regional allies and the Sudanese ruling clique lies in an independent struggle led by the working class to take power and seize the country’s wealth as part a broader struggle of the working class throughout the region and internationally to put an end to capitalism and build a socialist society.

Mental health crisis in Australia’s refugee camps

Max Boddy 

Reports have emerged of a wave of suicide attempts by refugees incarcerated by Australia on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island since the May 18 federal election, in which the Liberal-National Coalition was returned to power.

Sudanese refugee Abdul Aziz Adam, back in Manus after recently receiving a human rights prize in Geneva, last Thursday tweeted that at least 31 men had tried to commit suicide since the election.

Another Manus detainee, Iranian-born journalist Behrouz Boochani, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), the situation was “out of control.” He reported that numerous detainees also were not eating due to depression, and the poorly-equipped local hospital at Lorengau was over-run. “I have never seen Manus Island like this,” he said. “I have never seen people like this.”

Boochani told Australia’s SBS News that Lorengau hospital staff were frustrated because they were unable to cope with the sudden, large numbers of refugees arriving at the hospital.

So torturous are the conditions confronting the more than 500 asylum seekers still on Manus—some for nearly seven years—that many have inflicted bodily injury to themselves. Photos published on Aziz Adam’s Twitter account show a man being led off to a medical van with deep bloody lacerations along his torso, abdomen and arms.

Manus Island chief of police David Yapu described the situation as “very critical,” saying it is something the Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Australian governments needed to look at “because the more they [the refugees] live [here] they develop this stress and depression.”

Yapu later announced the deployment of a heavily-armed paramilitary police unit, notorious for violent abuses, to Manus because of “daily” suicide attempts and rising tensions. “Attempted suicide is usually by weapons, overdose on medicines and hanging,” he said. “It’s become a concern to us.”

The dispatch of the riot squad indicates the readiness of the PNG authorities to once again unleash brutal repression against the refugees. Police violence has been used repeatedly in the past in order to suppress resistance to the barbaric indefinite detention imposed on them by the Australian government, most recently in November 2017. Police killed one detainee and seriously wounded several others in February 2014. What followed was a blatant official whitewash.

Accurate reports on the latest unrest have been limited, due to government censorship. Australia’s Border Force Act, adopted with the backing of the Labor Party, makes it a crime, punishable by two years’ imprisonment, for anyone providing medical or other services to the detainees to publicly disclose any information on the conditions in the detention facilities.

The Liberal-National government has made no direct comment on the situation in the camps, which currently imprison 906 men and women: 547 on Manus and 359 on Nauru.

The medical crisis worsened immediately after the Australian election. Many detainees evidently saw the Coalition’s re-election for another three years as the death knell of any possibility of freedom.

During the election campaign, Prime Minister Scott Morrison sought to deflect rising working class discontent by blaming immigrants for “congestion” in Australia’s major cities and announcing a cut in the annual immigration quota.

Morrison also stepped up the assault on refugees, vowing to repeal recently passed medical evacuation legislation, which supposedly permits seriously ill detainees requiring medical treatment to be temporarily transferred to Australian hospitals.

Since the legislation came into effect in February, only 40 emergency transfers have taken place. The legislation gives the home affairs minister and the intelligence agencies veto power over the transfers.

Morrison is remembered for his time as immigration minister, during which he launched “Operation Sovereign Borders” in 2013. This military operation set a global precedent for repelling refugees, utilising the Australian navy to seize refugee boats and forcibly turn them around. Because of the operation’s military secrecy, the number of boats that were intercepted or sank at sea is unknown.

In reality, however, the election of a Labor Party-led government would have done nothing to change the horrors faced by the detainees. Labor leader Bill Shorten had vowed that a Labor government would “fully resource” Operation Sovereign Borders.

Moreover, it was the Gillard Labor government, kept in office by the Greens, that re-opened the prison camps in 2012. Prime Minister Julia Gillard specifically declared that refugees would be detained for many years, in order to deter asylum seekers.

During this year’s election campaign, Labor leaders claimed it was never their intention to detain refugees indefinitely. This was a lie. In 2013, Labor’s reinstalled Prime Minister Kevin Rudd decreed that no detainee would ever be permitted to enter Australia, effectively consigning them to languish in the camps indefinitely.

In a bid to head off the growing public support for the refugees, Labor had promised to accept an offer by New Zealand to transfer 150 asylum seekers from the camps annually, but this would still have left many more incarcerated for years.

Whether or not Labor would have honoured this arrangement, it would have changed nothing for those who remained imprisoned. In the election, the Socialist Equality Party was the only party unconditionally defending the basic democratic right of all refugees and immigrants to live, study and work in Australia, or anywhere in the world, with full citizenship rights.

New Zealand budget delivers billions for the military, starves public services

Tom Peters

The Labour Party-led government delivered its second budget on Thursday, which it fraudulently promoted as a “wellbeing” budget. Finance Minister Grant Robertson told parliament it would address “New Zealand’s poor mental health outcomes, significant numbers of children living in poverty” and the environmental crisis.

In fact, despite nationwide strikes by teachers and nurses, the budget continues to starve essential services, including healthcare, education and housing, which have been subject to more than a decade of severe austerity measures since the global financial crisis of 2008.

The aim of the Labour-led government, no less than the 2008-2017 National Party government, is to keep taxes low for the rich and corporations, while making the working class pay for the crisis of capitalism and intensifying preparations for war.

The economy faces deepening turmoil internationally, driven primarily by the Trump administration’s economic war against China, New Zealand’s largest trading partner. Robertson warned in a post-budget speech on Friday: “There is a global slowdown and it is impacting on New Zealand… The US-China trade war is showing no sign of actually stopping at this point.”

The New Zealand Herald’s financial commentator Brian Fallow noted that an “air of dark foreboding” surrounded the budget’s discussion of international risks. There was also “the increasing risk that Britain will crash out of the European Union without a deal, or of a shooting war in the Gulf.”

Economic growth for the year to June 2019 is expected to be 2.4 percent, down from a previous Treasury forecast of 2.9 percent. Treasury expects gross domestic product (GDP) to expand by 3 percent next year, but most media commentators have described this as overly optimistic. Any further reduction would mean spending cuts. The government’s self-imposed “budget responsibility rules” mandate that core government spending remain under 30 percent of GDP.

According to an analysis by the Herald, overall spending is about 5.4 percent more than last year’s budget, when inflation and population growth are accounted for.

The most significant funding boost is to the Defence Force, increasing its allocation by an extraordinary 23 percent, from $4.11 billion last year to $5.06 billion in 2019-2020. Much of this will go toward buying four new air force planes. The Labour-led government, with the right-wing nationalist NZ First playing a major role, is upgrading the military in order to fully integrate the country into the US build-up to war against China.

Likewise, the intelligence agencies, the Government Communications Security Bureau and the Security Intelligence Service, received a funding boost of about 25 percent each. With social unrest and global tensions rising, the aim is to further enhance their ability to spy on the population in New Zealand, the Pacific region and countries such as China.

The opposition National Party, which leaked key details of the budget two days early, hypocritically denounced Labour for having “money for tanks but not for teachers.” In fact, the spending is part of a bipartisan plan, announced in a 2016 Defence White Paper, to spend $20 billion on military upgrades over 15 years. Labour and the Greens backed the plan, while NZ First demanded even more money be spent on war preparations.

An increase of $614 million for the Ministry of Education will barely cover population growth and inflation. It does not address the deep crisis in schools. The day before the budget was announced, 52,000 teachers took part in one of the biggest strikes in New Zealand’s history to demand pay increases of 15 to 16 percent—following an effective decade-long pay freeze—smaller class sizes, more resources and less workload.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, along with much of the media, promoted an extra $1.9 billion in funding for mental health, suicide prevention and addiction treatment programs. The money, however, spread across five years, is completely inadequate given the scale of these social problems. And it is not matched by increased capacity in hospitals.

Funding for the country’s District Health Boards is $300 million below what is needed to maintain current services, according to the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists. “Many hospital services will continue to struggle with increasing demand, and current unmet need for services is unlikely to be addressed,” the association stated.

There is a worsening situation in public hospitals, including a drastic shortage of staff. Tens of thousands are languishing on surgery waiting lists, including elderly people and young children. Last year, 30,000 nurses and healthcare assistants held a nationwide strike demanding improved wages and staff-to-patient ratios. The struggle was eventually shut down by the New Zealand Nurses Organisation, which imposed a sellout deal.

This year, 3,000 junior doctors have conducted five separate strikes. Ambulance paramedics, anaesthetic technicians and midwives have also taken industrial action.

Claims that the budget will reduce poverty, which affects one in four children, are completely hollow. The decision to index unemployment benefit increases to the average wage is expected to lift weekly welfare payments by a miserable $17 by the year 2023. The government’s own Welfare Expert Advisory Group recommended increasing poverty-level benefits by 47 percent, which the government rejected.

There are no measures to properly address the housing crisis. At least 40,000 people, one in 100, are homeless, but the budget only provides funding for just over 1,000 new emergency housing places.

The median weekly rent hit $500 in April for the first time, after a 5.3 percent annual increase. The government’s main response has been the Kiwibuild scheme, which underwrites private developers to build houses and sell them for profit. The scheme has proven to be a debacle. Labour promised it would deliver 100,000 “affordable” houses over 10 years, but so far only 79 have been built, most of them priced around $500,000 or more—well beyond the reach of most families.

Claims that the budget will deliver “environmental wellbeing” are a fraud. A Zero Carbon Bill, mandating carbon neutrality by 2050, is completely meaningless because none of its emissions reduction targets can be enforced. A $229 million budget allocation to “clean up waterways” will largely provide handouts for the agriculture industry, one of the main sources of pollution.

The Ardern government’s second budget sets the stage for increased social inequality and class struggle. Secondary teachers are planning further industrial action, starting next week. Other sections of the working class and young people will follow, coming into ever-more direct conflict with the Labour Party and its pro-business program of austerity and militarism.

Australian billionaires celebrate soaring wealth, while wage case leaves millions in poverty

Mike Head

Just two weeks after a federal election in which the issue of worsening social inequality was almost totally buried, the annual Australian Financial ReviewRich List has glorified the growth of the fortunes of the super-rich.

“The so-called ‘top end of town’ just got richer,” the financial newspaper trumpeted on Friday. Its editorial said the Rich 200 List “celebrates this opportunity society in which people can get ahead, and in doing so create wealth, jobs and more prosperous futures for many others.”

This was published a day after the federal government’s Fair Work Commission ruled that the minimum wage must remain below the poverty line for many working class families. Such are the “prosperous futures.”

According to the Rich List: “The 200 wealthiest individuals or families in Australia now control wealth totaling $341.8 billion.” That is up by 21 percent from 2018’s tally of $282.7 billion. Members of the “top 10” did even better. Some virtually doubled their fortunes in 12 months.

The results illustrate once again the acceleration of social inequality since governments around the world bailed out the financial elite after the 2008 global economic breakdown. The 200 people on the list represent a tiny fraction—0.0008 per cent—of the population.

The newspaper continued: “[T]he 2019 Rich List is one full of records: 91 billionaires, an average wealth of $1.7 billion (up from $1.4 billion), and a cut-off of $472 million—a healthy $85 million higher than last year.”

When the Rich List was launched in 1984, the first full year of the Labor government of Bob Hawke, the 200 richest people had a combined wealth of $6.4 billion. There has been a staggering 53-fold increase in wealth for the top 200 in just 35 years. Building on the vast redistribution of wealth carried out by the Labor government from 1983 to 1996, they have more than doubled their share in three decades.

Despite the myth of Australia being a relatively egalitarian society, it now ranks eighth most unequal, in terms of wealth, among the so-called developed nations.

Most of the bonanza has come from speculative and parasitic activity. Of the 200 on the Rich List, nearly a third—63—are “property moguls.” Their profits have come from soaring house prices, at the expense of homebuyers. As a result, Australian household debt levels are among the highest in the world.

Another 39 on the list made their money through “investment” or “financial services,” reflecting the growing domination of the financial elite. A further 29 “cashed in” through “retail” empires, despite a wave of store closures and job losses. Mining magnates made up 20 places on the list, boosted by a temporary global surge in iron ore prices.

There were 14 technology entrepreneurs listed, led by Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes, the co-founders of Atlassian, an IT software company. The doubling of its Nasdaq-listed shares in recent years meant their combined wealth nearly doubled in 2018, from $10.32 billion to $19.38 billion.

Few industrialists appeared on the list, due to the continuing devastation of basic industry. One exception was Anthony Pratt, described as the “cardboard box king.” For the third year in a row, he took the No. 1 spot with an estimated wealth of $15.57 billion, up from $12.90 billion.

In reality, the exception proved the rule. Nearly half of his box-making and recycling operations are now based in the US. President Donald Trump slashed the corporate tax rate and granted instant write-offs for investment, so Pratt’s overall pre-tax earnings grew 15 percent to $1.26 billion.

Second on the list was iron ore billionaire Gina Rinehart, worth $13.81 billion, followed by Meriton apartment developer Harry Triguboff, who “defied the property slowdown to lift his wealth from $12.77 billion to $13.54 billion.” Hong Kong-based property developer Hui Wing Mau was in fourth spot, on $9.09 billion.

The Financial Review presented the extravagance of the wealthy as a necessary part of “being rich.” Once they “made it to the top, it’s expensive to look the part.” It reported: “Through all of the housing turmoil, they have traded, upgraded and extended their mansions and penthouses, seemingly oblivious to the downturn outside their gates.”

Last September, Atlassian’s Cannon-Brookes bought Fairwater, the biggest private waterfront estate on Sydney Harbour, at Point Piper, for $100 million, breaking all records for an Australian home. The year before, Atlassian’s co-founder Farquhar, bought an adjoining harbour-front residence for what was then a record $71 million.

Those buying mansions since the start of 2018 included Jerry Schwartz (Vaucluse, Sydney for $67 million), Richard Scheinberg (Bellevue Hill, Sydney, $58 million), Owen Kerr (South Yarra, Melbourne, $30 million), Prudence MacLeod (Potts Point, Sydney, $14 million), Tony Tartak (Airlie Beach, Queensland, $14 million) and John Kinghorn (Mosman, Sydney, $10 million).

Mining magnate Clive Palmer, who spent an estimated $60 million on an election advertising campaign for his far-right United Australia Party, which advocates for lower taxes on the wealthy, bought four luxury residences around Queensland for $24 million.

These purchases provide only a limited picture of the obscene levels of inequality. A 2017 report, based on previously unavailable data, showed that the top 1 percent owned about 20 percent of total household wealth, and the richest 10 percent had more than half. The poorest 40 percent owned less than 3 percent. The bottom 20 percent had a negative balance of minus 0.2 percent. That is, they owned nothing, or their personal debts exceeded their assets.

The latest Poverty in Australia report, released last October, found that there were over 3 million people (13.2 percent) living below an austere poverty line of 50 percent of median income. This included This poverty line was just for a single adult living alone, or $909 a week for a couple with two children.

Nevertheless, the Fair Work Commission judges rejected calls to raise the minimum wage to a “living wage.” They said the increase required “to lift these household types above the relative poverty line would run a significant risk of disemployment and of adversely affecting the employment opportunities of low-skilled and young workers.”

Fair Work Australia president, Justice Iain Ross, one of the former high-ranking trade union officials on the tribunal, admitted that many households were below minimum standards for a “healthy living.” Among them were part-time working single parents with children and single-income couples, both with and without children.

The tribunal increased the minimum rate by just 3 percent to $19.49 an hour, or an extra $21.60 a week, not even enough for a daily cup of coffee. In effect, the judges gave a green light to the expansion of super-exploitation, absurdly claiming that low-paid jobs could often act as a “stepping stone” to higher-paid employment.

Fifty-five inmates killed in Brazilian prisons

Gabriel Lemos 

Between last Sunday and Monday, 55 inmates were killed in four prisons in Manaus, the capital of the northern Brazilian state of Amazonas. According to the Amazonas government, the murders were caused by a fight between two internal factions of “Família do Norte” (Northern Family), Brazil’s third largest criminal organization, which controls the drug traffic in the northern region of the country.

The inmates were strangled or stabbed to death with sharpened toothbrushes, according to the secretary of Penitentiary Administration of Amazonas, Marcus Vinícius de Almeida. Eleven of those killed were “provisional” inmates, that is, they had not been tried or convicted yet of any crime. Forty percent and 65 percent of the inmates in Brazilian and Amazonas’ prisons, respectively, are in the same situation.

The first response from fascistic president Jair Bolsonaro’s justice minister of the government, the far-right Sergio Moro, who is responsible for Brazil’s public security system, was to transfer the leaderships of the factions responsible for the deaths to federal prisons. According to Moro, federal prisons are “based on those American ‘super-max’—they are maximum security prisons with individual cells, which they cannot escape from, where there is no rebellion, and no communication of the prisoner with the outside.”

Moro has also sent troops of the penitentiary intervention task force to the state of Amazonas. Created in 2017 by the government of President Michel Temer, the penitentiary intervention task force is assigned to “backing state governments in situations of extraordinary crisis in the penitentiary system to control inmates’ riots and solve other problems,” according to a statement released by the justice ministry.

What led to the creation of the task force were the deaths of 126 inmates in the first 15 days of 2017 in riots that occurred in the three Brazilian states, among them Amazonas, where the riots began. Far from being an isolated and unexpected incident, this week’s deaths are part of what has become the norm in the terrible and inhumane Brazilian penitentiary system.

The escalation of this slaughter has been caused by a 300 percent increase in the prison population in the last two decades, especially since the beginning of the “war on drugs” initiated by former Workers Party (PT) president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2006.

The situation has been worsened by the Brazilian economic crisis, which, according to the Justice Ministry, led to a 75 percent cut in the prison system’s budget in 2018. Furthermore, with the increase in incarceration rate showing no sign of abating, in both 2015 and 2016, 85 percent of the funds for the building of new prisons had already been slashed.

Brazil has the third largest prison population in the world, with more than 700,000 inmates crammed into facilities designed to accommodate only a little more than 400,000. The inhuman conditions of overcrowding and lack of proper sanitation led to the deaths of 6,380 inmates under state custody between 2014 and 2017.

In 2017, 80 prisoners were beheaded in clashes inside penitentiaries in six Brazilian states.

The precarious Brazilian penitentiary situation particularly affects the state of Amazonas, one of the poorest in the country, with the most crowded prisons. The state penitentiary system has 11,390 prisoners in facilities built for 2,554, and in the Anísio Teixeira complex (CAJ), the prison where this week’s massacres began—the same one where the 2017 riots began—there are 929 prisoners in cells meant for 454.

This situation in Amazonas is aggravated by the fact that the CAJ and the other prisons where this week’s massacre took place have been privatized since 2014. This for-profit prison operation is essentially criminal in nature. The company that manages the prisons, Umannizzare Prisional Management, receives from the state government of Amazonas 4.7 thousand reais per month per inmate, almost twice as much as for inmates in the rest of the country. At the same time, in 2015, out of the 250 employees that were supposed to be working in the CAJ, the company had hired only 153. Umannizzare employees have also filed several labor suits against the company, and a prison guard was killed during one of the riots in the prison.

The situation of the Brazilian penitentiary system has become even more explosive with the repressive measures of Bolsonaro government, which are being enthusiastically supported by Workers Party (PT) state governors.

Justice Minister Sérgio Moro, the former judge in charge of the federal attorney’s office linked to the “Operação Lava Jato” (Car Wash Operation) which indicted former PT president, Lula da Silva for corruption, is an advocate of “law and order” measures that tend to strengthen Brazil’s repressive apparatus, even in face of the tragic consequences of such policies over the last two decades.

With utter contempt for workers suffering daily at the hands of the murderous Brazilian security forces, he tweeted a week before the massacre, on May 16: “The solution cannot be impunity for anyone who violates the law, kills, steals private property or diverts public money. It is not possible to be lenient with violent crime, organized crime or corruption. This is the spirit of the anti-crime bill.”

Moro was referring to the bill he sent to the Brazilian Congress in early February which amends several points of the Brazilian penal code. One of the most outrageous measures in Moro’s bill—which has caused wide revulsion to the point of pressuring the Brazilian Congress to threaten to reject it—alters the definition of legitimate self-defense. The change would allow police officers to walk free if they murder suspects as a result of “fear, surprise or violent emotion.” The measure codifies Bolsonaro’s campaign promise of a carte blanche for police murders, as “fear” is invariably—from the United States to Brazil, Mexico and Central America—the universal excuse of fascistic officers who shoot even kneeling suspects in back of the head.

In addition, Moro’s anti-crime bill increases penalties for those who resist a legal order—a clearly intimidatory measure—and reduces the possibility of alternative sentences and the postponing imprisonment while the case is reviewed by an appeals court.

In a BBC report, Moro said, “What has been done in the anti-crime bill is a proposal for a selective hardening. These are measures that enhance investigations, that harden the serving of sentences ... Let’s toughen the regime against the kind of crime that really needs hardening.”

Significantly, those most enthusiastically embracing Moro’s anti-crime bill—which rather than reducing crime will inevitably increase the level of imprisonment in the country—have been the PT’s governors in the northeastern state of Bahia, Rui Costa, and of Ceará, Camilo Santana.

Soon after the announcement of Moro’s bill, Costa said that “I conceptually declare my support [for the bill],” advocating “toughening legislation to combat high rates of violence.” In addition to being an advocate of military police repression in Bahia, Costa is facing a teachers’ strike at state universities that began in early April. In a report of the Bahia News website of May 29, Costa defended the slashing of the striking teachers’ wages, saying that “otherwise it turns into vacation.”

Camilo Santana, the governor of Ceará, announced on Wednesday a draconian austerity program in the state, which freezes both hiring and the wages of the state’s public sector workers. In early 2019, the state of Ceará went through a crime wave that made Santana one of the Bolsonaro government supporters. After hiring a known promoter of inmate torture, Mauro Albuquerque, to head the state’s prison system in early 2019—as a “reward” for his work under another PT governor in the neighboring state of Rio Grande do Norte—he has backed Bolsonaro’s proposal to extend the anti-terrorism law, which was approved by former PT President Dilma Rousseff in 2016, to include actions such as “setting fire to buses” and “damaging public buildings.”

In February, in an interview for Exame magazine, Santana bluntly said that “it is necessary to review the laws of Brazil, which must be tougher,” and that this is why he participated in the announcement of the anti-crime bill in Brasilia, which he viewed as “an important step in the fight against crime.”

These attitudes of the PT state governors have stripped the party of its mask of alleged opposition to the Bolsonaro government. Their pro-Bolsonaro stance also includes their support for the federal government’s reactionary pension “reform”. In the same interview with Exame, Camilo said, “I have always been in favor of the pension reform ... I have a huge pension deficit that is growing like a snowball. I have taken a number of measures over the past four years, but reform is needed at the national level.”

France illegally arming Libyan coastguards to stop refugees from Africa

Anthony Torres & Alex Lantier

While hundreds of thousands of refugees are attempting to escape Libya to Europe, the Macron government in France is providing the Libyan coastguard with six ships to catch refugees sailing to Europe and return them to Libya, where they are imprisoned in concentration camps. The policy, which has been condemned by multiple human rights organizations because of the prevalence of torture, rape, slavery and murder in the camps, is both barbaric and illegal.

At a February security conference in Munich, Minister of the Armed Forces Florence Parly informed Faïez el-Sarraj, the President of the Government of National Unity based in Tripoli, that France had purchased six boats for Libya. The purpose was to stop the flow of migrants attempting to journey across the Mediterranean. According to the press, the ships, built by the company Sillinger, which equips the French special forces, include dedicated supports for the Libyan regime to mount machine guns.

On May 10, the Paris Administrative Court rejected the request of eight human rights organizations—including Amnesty International, Doctors without Borders, Cimade, and Migreurop—to suspend the boats’ delivery. They had pointed to European and UN embargoes against the sale of arms to Libya, and the “foreseeable consequences of the delivery of the six boats for the human rights of migrants and refugees intercepted and returned to Libyan soil.”

In the French-language press, a deafening silence reigns over the atrocious conditions in which refugees are being held in Libyan camps built with the financial support of the European powers. By 2017, human rights organizations and CNN had reported torture, sexual abuse and murder in the detention centers.

Last November, La Croix interviewed Vincent Cochetel, special envoy of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, on the conditions for refugees detained in Libya.

When asked whether the practicing of slavery in Libya reported in 2017 was disappearing, Cochetel replied: “On the contrary, these practices have increased in number. As it is more difficult to leave Libyan soil, traffickers need to monetize their investment by exploiting even more detainees who are sold or lent by the day. In addition, detention situations have deteriorated.”

He added, “We don’t know much about detention centers controlled by traffickers and militia. But … since the beginning of the year, 14,595 people have been intercepted at sea by the Libyan coastguard and repatriated to Libyan soil. Some of them were finally able to return home with the help of the International Organization for Migration. But it is clear that a large proportion of them have been sold to traffickers to be used for labour on farms or construction sites, or even, for women, for sexual exploitation.”

Cochetel’s testimony underscores that the denunciations of human trafficking by European countries are entirely cynical, because the concentration camps they have built are an essential component of the financial strategy of these networks. According to Cochetel, Libyan law specifies that any irregular foreigner must “pay a fine or hard labour. This legal framework promotes human trafficking and the detention system is part of its business model.”

Libya is currently experiencing a resurgence of civil war between the militias that NATO powers supported during the imperialist war waged in 2011 to destroy the Gaddafi regime. The growth in military conflict, against the backdrop of a struggle for influence between Paris, Rome and other regional powers in the strategic and oil-rich country, only intensifies the suffering of refugees.

Marshal Khalifa Haftar, in conflict with the puppet government in Tripoli, launched an offensive in early April to conquer the capital. According to UN agencies, at least 278 people were killed, 1,332 injured and 35,000 displaced. The International Committee of the Red Cross stated: “The humanitarian situation in and around Tripoli has deteriorated severely in the past three weeks.”

Michael Neuman of MSF, an NGO that still has staff on the ground in Libya, testified to La Croix: “Libyan coastguards are menacing when they intercept migrants at sea, and systematically send them to detention centres. France is complicit in these practices.”

Nevertheless, despite unequivocal evidence, the Paris Administrative Court approved the transfer of the six French ships to Libya to force the refugees to remain in that country: “The decision to make such a free transfer of equipment intended for the Libyan armed forces is not detachable from the conduct of France’s external relations.” The court therefore declared itself incompetent to issue a judgment preventing the transfer of the vessels to the Libyan coastguard.

In other words, French foreign policy is not “detachable” from the torture, rape and murder of thousands of refugees, and a calculated disregard for their basic democratic rights. French policy follows the strategy of Rome, which has also concluded agreements with militia, particularly in Sabratha, to prevent boats from departing for Europe.

This also underlines the fraudulent nature of the official propaganda calling upon workers and youth to vote for pro-EU parties, supposedly to block the rise of neo-fascist organizations. In fact, the imperialist war in Libya has paved the way for the criminalisation of European foreign policy, in line with the xenophobia openly incited by the extreme-right.

This is an unforgettable lesson in the nature of the imperialist war in Libya—as well as the charlatanry of the pro-imperialist petty-bourgeois “left” who applauded NATO’s bombing of Libya as a “humanitarian” operation to liberate the country from Gaddafi.

Postmodernist essayist Bernard Henri-Lévy and the leaders of Olivier Besancenot’s New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) insisted that the country should be bombed, and that rebel Islamist or tribal militias must be armed in order to overthrow the regime. In 2011 Professor Gilbert Achcar of the NPA said that French imperialism should be called upon to protect Libya: “We are in a situation where the population is really in danger and there is no other alternative to protect them.”

These representatives of the wealthy middle classes, whose careers depend on their presence in the official media or on the state funding of their university research, have all adopted the view that imperialism could liberate Libya through a democratic revolution. It was a pack of lies. Now their “democratic revolution” has restored slavery and the most atrocious abuses, partly financed and facilitated by European money and military equipment.