Lowe’s lays off thousands of workers as “retail apocalypse” continues

Trévon Austin

The home improvement retailer Lowe’s announced an unspecified number of layoffs, expected to number in the thousands. According to the company and its employees, layoffs will consist of assemblers, who piece together items for customers, and maintenance and facility-service jobs such as janitors. Lowe’s will outsource these jobs to third-party companies.

“We are moving to third-party assemblers and facility services to allow Lowe’s store associates to spend more time on the sales floor serving customers,” a spokesperson for Lowe’s said.

The layoffs at the home improvement giant coincide with the further contraction of the retail sector of the economy. On Tuesday, Walgreens announced it will close 200 US stores, a few months after the pharmacy giant said it planned to cut $1.5 billion in annual costs by 2022. The shutdowns, whose locations have not yet been revealed, will start in the fall. On Wednesday competitor CVS Health said it would reduce the number of stores it planned to open over the next few years from 300 to 150 after announcing in May that it was closing 46 under-performing stores.

Although Lowe’s refused to say how many jobs will be lost, the company said the targeted workers will receive transition pay and have an opportunity to apply for other open positions. According to a securities filing in February, Lowe’s employed approximately 190,000 full-time and 110,000 part-time employees in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Lowe’s employees expressed indignation about the company’s move and CEO on The Layoff, an anonymous online discussion board for mass layoffs.

One worker said, “[The CEO] really is a sack of s–t. He doesn’t care one bit about ANY employee..”

“Lowe’s doesn’t create jobs without taking away jobs. In order to build the technology center in Charlotte Marvin [Lowe’s CEO Marvin Ellison] needed funding while at the same time he needs to increase the dividends paid to shareholders,” another said.

US military testing domestic wide-area surveillance with high-altitude balloons

Kevin Reed

A report in the Guardian on August 2 revealed that the US military is conducting a “wide-area surveillance test across six midwest states using experimental high-altitude balloons.” The test—which involves up to 25 unmanned solar-powered balloons launched from rural South Dakota and drifting 250 miles through an area spanning portions of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and Missouri—was uncovered from documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission.

According to the FCC document, titled “Experimental Special Temporary Authorization,” shared with the Guardian, the Pentagon contractor Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) was given permission to conduct “high altitude MESH networking tests over South Dakota to provide a persistent surveillance system to locate and deter narcotic trafficking and homeland security threats” between July 12 and September 1, 2019.

A mesh network is a type of communications infrastructure whereby every node (in this case a balloon) is connected to and interacts with all other nodes (the other balloons) dynamically to exchange information and transmit it to receivers on the ground.

US Army high-altitude wide-area persistent surveillance balloon [Credit: US Army]

The Guardian quotes Arthur Holland Michel, the co-director of the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College in New York, who said, “What this new technology proposes is to watch everything at once. Sometimes it’s referred to as ‘combat TiVo’ because when an event happens somewhere in the surveiled area, you can potentially rewind the tape to see exactly what occurred, and rewind even further to see who was involved and where they came from.”

Each of the SNC balloons is equipped with “satellite-like vehicles” with sophisticated sensors that can detect moving objects within a 25-mile radius. The balloons also have nine high-resolution cameras capable of recording panoramic images that are then stitched together simultaneously to provide a wide-area view of entire cities. The SNC balloons will fly at altitudes of up to 65,000 feet and carry hi-tech radar designed to “track many individual vehicles day or night, through any kind of weather.”

According to the Guardian, the surveillance test has been commissioned by the US Southern Command (Southcom), a joint effort by the US army, navy, air force and other forces responsible for disaster response, intelligence operations and security cooperation in the Caribbean and Central and South America.

The FCC documents say that the networking technology also includes video indicating that the SNC system will deploy the so-called Gorgon Stare technology of the US Air Force. Gorgon Stare is a Wide-Area Persistent Surveillance (WAPS) system with Wide-Area Motion Imagery (WAMI) capability. According to an SNC press release from July 2014, an earlier iteration of Gorgon Stare was deployed for reconnaissance in Afghanistan and it “provides unprecedented, real-time situational awareness—both for troops in contact and commanders who are directing large scale operations.”

Bond markets point to global recession

Nick Beams

Global bond markets are sending a clear message that significant sections of the world economy are moving into a recession, if they are not already in one.

This week yields on government bonds have been falling as investors seek a “safe haven.” At the same time the price of gold, the ultimate store of value, has been steadily rising and has topped $1,500 per ounce, its highest level in six years.

The immediate trigger for the rush to safety was the new tariff threat against China by the Trump administration and the devaluation of the Chinese currency, the renminbi, on Monday, which led to the decision by the US Treasury to name China as a “currency manipulator.”

The Treasury decision may not immediately have a direct effect, but it has raised the spectre of a global currency war, as central banks around the world cut their interest rates, thereby lowering the value of their currencies, or prepare to do so, in what has been characterised as a “race to the bottom.”

Yesterday three central banks in the Asia-Pacific region cut their rates. The New Zealand central bank reduced its rate by 0.5 percentage points, double the cut that had been expected. Thailand’s central bank cut its base rate by 0.25 percentage points, contrary to market expectations it would keep it on hold. India’s central bank dropped its rate by 0.35 percentage points, taking it to the lowest level in nine years.

The major central banks are also expected to move as well. The European Central Bank has signaled it is ready to carry out further monetary stimulus at its meeting next month. The US Fed is expected to announce a further reduction in its base rate by at least 0.25 percentage points, and possibly more, following its rate reduction last month.

St Louis Fed President James Bullard said yesterday he thought the US central bank “can do more policy adjustments.”

US President Donald Trump has continued his demand for a reduction in US rates, saying the Fed moves should be “bigger and faster,” and has again indicated the focus should be on positioning the US in what is emerging as a global currency conflict.

“Incompetence is a terrible thing to watch, especially when things could be taken care of so easily,” he tweeted. “It would be much easier if the Fed understood, which they don’t, that we are competing against other countries, all of whom want to do well at our expense!”

The growing global financial turbulence led to major swings on Wall Street. The Dow fell by 589 points in early trading before moving up to finish only 22 points down for the day. The S&P 500 index finished 0.1 percent higher after falling by as much as 2 percent when trading began.

The yield on 10-year Treasury bonds, which move in the opposite direction to their price, dipped below 1.6 percent before rising slightly.

In a somewhat concerned editorial published yesterday, the Wall Street Journal took issue with the US decision to impose new tariffs on China. It noted that multiple reports from the White House indicated Trump had overruled all his economic advisers, save the anti-China hawk Peter Navarro, in making the move. Since then, it said, “global and American economic conditions have been heading south.”

It pointed to the contradictions in the Trump economic agenda. The trade policy was contributing to exchange rate instability, leading to a rising dollar as capital flowed into the US seeking a safe haven. China was not manipulating its currency but was setting a lower peg to reflect supply and demand.

“We aren’t predicting a recession, but then few thought we were in a recession in mid-2008 either,” the editorial said, warning that economic expansions do not end on their own, but flow from policy mistakes. Calling for at least a trade truce, it concluded: “Mr Trump’s willy-nilly trade offensive could be the mistake that turns a slowdown into the Navarro recession.”

The signs of a global slowdown, if not an outright recession, are most evident in the trade-sensitive Asia-Pacific region, as shown by yesterday’s central bank rate cuts, and in Germany.

Figures released yesterday show that industrial production in Germany, the euro zone’s largest economy and the key driver of economic growth, fell by a larger-than-expected 1.5 percent in June. According to a Reuters’ poll, analysts had predicted it would drop by just 0.4 percent.

With industrial production now down by 5.2 percent from its level in June 2018, there are fears that Germany is heading for its first recession in six years.

Commenting on the latest data, Carsten Brzeski, the chief economist at the financial firm ING, said: “All in all, we would characterise today’s industrial production report as devastating, with no silver lining.”

In its report on the German data, the Financial Times said the figures “highlight how a crisis in the carmaking industry and an intensifying trade war between the US and China have turned Germany from being the powerhouse of the euro zone into one of its weakest performing members.”

While the car industry is the focus of the decline, industrial production was down across the board. The deputy head of economic research at Commerzbank said the crisis in the car industry was continuing “unabated.” He warned, “However, the main reason for this weakness is now likely to be significantly weaker foreign demand.”

Alexander Krueger, an economist at Bankhaus Lampe, said the ongoing “plunge in production” was “scary,” and the longer it continued “the more likely it is that other sectors of the economy” would be dragged into it.

India dramatically intensifies repression in Kashmir

Keith Jones

India’s Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government is mounting an unprecedented military-security crackdown in the disputed Jammu and Kashmir region to quell popular opposition to the patently illegal changes that it has made to the region’s government and relations with the central government.

In what is tantamount to a constitutional coup, the BJP government issued a presidential order early Monday morning stripping Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), India’s only Muslim-majority state, of the special semi-autonomous status it has had since independent India’s constitution came into force in 1950. It then ordered J&K bifurcated, hiving off the sparsely populated but strategically important Ladakh area, and proclaimed that Ladakh and the remainder of J&K will henceforth comprise two Union Territories, with significantly diminished powers. In effect, J&K has been placed under the legal-political thumb of New Delhi and its stridently Hindu communalist government.

Underscoring the BJP government’s reactionary antidemocratic aims, these changes were conceived in secret and implemented by stealth, in a conspiracy orchestrated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his henchman, Home Secretary Amit Shah, and the country’s president, Ram Nath Kovind, himself a long-time cadre of the far-right Hindu chauvinist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), together with the most senior members of the state bureaucracy and the army and intelligence agencies.

Not only were the people of Jammu and Kashmir not forewarned and their elected representatives not consulted about the impending changes. India’s so-called supreme law was modified behind the backs of the entire population, including the most senior leaders of the opposition and the BJP’s own allies in the governing National Democratic Alliance. To provide a pseudo-democratic cover for this conspiracy, the BJP subsequently had parliament pass two motions endorsing the changes to J&K’s constitutional status, borders and government, but even then debate was limited to just a few hours.

Kashmir under a state of siege

In the weeks prior to Monday’s coup, the BJP government poured tens of thousands of additional troops into J&K under the pretext that Pakistan-supported anti-Indian insurgents were poised to launch a major strike.

Since Monday, the J&K region has been subject to a military-security lockdown that is unprecedented even within the context of the anti-Indian insurgency that has convulsed the region and exacerbated Indo-Pakistani tensions since 1989.

Indian authorities have cut off all internet, cell and landline phone and regular television service. Schools have been shut down, and much of J&K has been placed under Section 144, a British colonial criminal code provision under which all gatherings of four or more people are illegal. At least a hundred prominent political leaders, including the foremost spokesmen of the traditional pro-Indian section of J&K’s Muslim elite, have been arrested. These include two former J&K chief ministers—People’s Democratic Party leader Mehbooba Mufti and J&K National Conference head Omar Abdullah—and the chairman of the J&K People’s Conference, Sajjad Gani Lone.

An eye-witness report published yesterday by the pro-BJP Indian Express gives a chilling description of the current situation in Srinagar, J&K’s largest city: “The (Kashmir) Valley’s connection with the inside and the outside world has been cut… Residents are not allowed outside their neighbourhoods. The administration hasn’t issued curfew passes to even its own employees, and security personnel don’t accept government IDs as passes.

“The press isn’t welcome. Most of the TV crew that have flown in are parked in a 1-sq-km area of Zero Bridge in the city... [M]ost government buildings, schools, colleges, courts have been occupied by paramilitary forces flown from outside the state… Roads are closed … and daily essentials are drying up across homes.”

The three authors of the Indian Express report acknowledge that those to whom they have been able to speak, including government employees, are overwhelmingly opposed to the Indian state’s actions and fear that they are aimed at “changing the demography of Jammu and Kashmir” so as to “reduce the share of Muslims in the population.”

The geostrategic and domestic aims of Modi’s constitutional coup

The BJP government’s assault on Jammu and Kashmir has multiple aims.

First, it is meant to signal that New Delhi is determined to bring a quick end to the Kashmir insurgency on its terms, and that, to do so, it is ready to dispense with legal-constitutional norms and intensify the “dirty war”—replete with “disappearances” and summary executions—which the Indian state has waged in J&K for the past 30 years.

A second, related aim is to strengthen New Delhi’s hand vis-à-vis both Pakistan and China. The “constitutional strike” the Modi government has mounted on Kashmir complements the air strikes it ordered deep inside Pakistan in late February, ostensibly in response to a Pakistan-supported terrorist attack. That strike and a subsequent retaliatory Pakistani air raid on J&K brought South Asia’s rival nuclear-armed powers the closest they have been to all-out war since 1971.

By “fully integrating” J&K into the Indian Unions—despite its internationally recognized status as a disputed territory—New Delhi is announcing that it will no longer entertain Pakistan’s calls for J&K’s status to be part of any “peace dialogue” between Islamabad and New Delhi.

Sri Lankan parliamentary parties back extension of emergency rule

Saman Gunadasa

Sri Lanka’s parliament last week officially approved President Maithripala Sirisena’s fourth extension of a state of emergency. Official opposition parties gave it their tacit support by abstaining during the July 31 vote.

The endorsement came four days after Sirisena declared that the railways and other public transport industries were essential services, effectively banning strikes or any other industrial action by workers in those sectors.

Any violation of these laws is punishable by “rigorous imprisonment for a term not less than two years and not exceeding five years,” and “all property, movable or immovable, of the person convicted, shall be forfeited to the Republic.”

Sri Lanka’s state of emergency was imposed a day after suicide bombings by Islamic terrorists on three churches and three luxury hotels on April 21. The parliamentary parties and the pseudo-left Nava Sama Samaja Party attended an all-party conference called by the president on April 25, supporting the emergency powers and the nationwide deployment of the military in so-called “anti-terrorist” operations.

During last week’s parliamentary vote, 40 MPs from the United National Party (UNP)-led ruling coalition endorsed the extension of emergency powers, with two Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MPs voting as individuals against it.

All the parliamentary opposition parties abstained, including the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) headed by former President Mahinda Rajapakse, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and other TNA MPs.

Notwithstanding the SLPP’s tacit approval of the emergency powers, Kanchana Wijesekera, a second-rank leader of the party, feigned concern about the repressive measures.

“It seems the government is misusing emergency regulations to curtail the rights of workers and to suppress anti-government protests,” he told the media. “Therefore, we will have to reconsider supporting the extension of the emergency regulations next time.”

Wijesekera’s claims are a cynical attempt to hoodwink the population. Rajapakse and his SLPP back Sirisena’s draconian measures, knowing full well that the main target of the emergency powers is not “terrorist” organisations but the working class.

Former President Rajapakse’s government was notorious for its use of emergency measures and Prevention of Terrorism laws (PTA) against workers, youth and the poor. Strikes were banned under essential service orders and arbitrary arrests were widespread. His government ended its bloody war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam with the murder of tens of thousands of Tamil civilians.

In 2011, Rajapakse reluctantly revoked the emergency laws in response to growing mass opposition and international criticisms but incorporated its repressive measures into the PTA. Sirisena, who was a senior minister in Rajapakse’s regime, fully supported these actions.

Sirisena, who was elected president in 2015 following a US-led regime change operation, his Sri Lanka Freedom Party and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s UNP-led government are deeply discredited and face rising mass opposition.

Rajapakse and the SLPP are appealing to the military and extremist Sinhala-Buddhist groups, in the hope of winning government in elections later this year. The SLPP has declared it will establish a “stable and strong government”—a euphemism for autocratic forms of rule.

The JVP, which supported Sirisena’s presidential bid in 2015, has now distanced itself from his anti-democratic regime. This posturing is exposed by the party’s ongoing support for emergency rule and the essential services anti-strike regulations.

Likewise, the TNA, a central prop of the pro-US Wickremesinghe government, has no qualms in supporting the ongoing state of emergency, even though the Tamil people faced decades of draconian measures and anti-democratic rule. Straight after the April 21 terrorist attacks, TNA leaders Mavai Senadhirajah and M. A. Sumanthiran appealed to the government not to withdraw the military from the occupied North and East provinces.

Notwithstanding the intense infighting between the main factions of Colombo’s political elite, the Sri Lanka capitalist class fears the resumption of workers’ strikes and student protests and is united in its efforts to impose anti-democratic laws.

Sri Lanka’s parliamentary parties are using the fact that the suicide bomb attacks were carried out by an Islamic fundamentalist group to whip up anti-Muslim sentiment. This is a crude attempt to divide and weaken the working class and to justify the military’s ongoing “anti-terror” operations.

Last week, Army Commander Mahesh Senanayake told a parliamentary select committee that “some Islamic terror suspects are still at large and … still carrying out clandestine operations.”

Senior defence and intelligence establishment officials and political leaders had been warned of an impending terror attack and did nothing to prevent it. The attacks were used to try and stampede the population into supporting moves to step up the suppression of democratic rights and an assault on the social and living conditions of working people and the poor.

The trade unions and the pseudo-left formations, such as the Frontline Socialist Party and the United Socialist Party, have said nothing about the extension of the emergency and the anti-democratic strike bans. Their ongoing silence is assisting the ruling elite to prepare the ground for dictatorial methods of rule.

French-backed Libyan militia airstrike kills 42 civilians

Alex Lantier

On Monday, a month after military strongman Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) bombed a refugee detention camp near Tripoli, killing 44 people, LNA aircraft repeatedly bombed a government building in the southern Libyan city of Murzuq. In three strikes, they killed 42 people and left over 60 wounded, including 30 in critical condition. Victims of the bombing reportedly included guests from a wedding that had recently taken place at a nearby venue.

Murzuq municipal councilman Ibrahim Omar reported that 200 local dignitaries had assembled at the building “to settle social differences.” He added, “No armed or wanted people were among them. … Haftar bombed unarmed civilians.” Omar called for humanitarian aid, saying that the local hospital was overflowing and could not cope with the large number of casualties from the bombing.

The LNA released a statement declaring that it had targeted “Chadian opposition fighters,” which, according to Al Jazeera, is a phrase that in LNA briefings “usually refers to Tebu tribesmen opposing them in the area.” Haftar’s forces had occupied Murzuq, the center of an oil-rich region in the southwest of the country, in April. However, the LNA apparently lost control of it after sending many of its forces northwards to attack Tripoli.

The House of Representatives of the rival Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli issued a statement that the LNA’s bombings “have gone beyond war crimes to crimes against humanity.”

Responsibility for the atrocity in Murzuq lies above all with the NATO imperialist powers. After going to war with Libya in 2011, backing various Islamist and tribal militias to destroy Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime and plunging Libya into a decade of bloody civil war, they are now waging a bitter proxy war across the country.

After the LNA bombing of the Tajoura refugee camp near Tripoli last month, US officials vetoed a neutrally worded UN Security Council resolution drafted by the UK, calling for a cease-fire.

Monday’s attack in Murzuq came the day after French President Emmanuel Macron called Egyptian military dictator Abdel Fattah El Sisi, one of Haftar’s main backers, to discuss strategy in Libya. The Egyptian State Information Service reported that Sisi “reiterated that Egypt supports efforts exerted by the Libyan National Army (LNA) to fight terrorism and uproot terrorist organizations that pose threats to security of both Libya and the Mediterranean region.”

Tensions are rising with the Italian government, which funds the GNA to operate coastal patrols and build concentration camps to keep refugees from reaching Italy. Rome has repeatedly demanded a “unified” European position on Libya, trying to compel France to support the internationally recognized GNA.

While France has consistently backed Haftar against the Italian-backed GNA, which officially has UN recognition, Washington also appears to be swinging behind the LNA. In April, as the LNA attack on Tripoli began, Trump spoke personally with Haftar via telephone, effectively giving him the green light. Reversing earlier calls by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for a cease-fire in Libya, the White House released a statement hailing “Field Marshal Haftar’s significant role in fighting terrorism and securing Libya’s oil resources.”

Britain to join US naval blockade of Iran

Jean Shaoul 

The UK is set to join the US “international maritime security mission” in the strategic Strait of Hormuz. It has already deployed a destroyer, the HMS Duncan, and a frigate, the HMS Montrose, to the Persian Gulf to escort UK-flagged vessels—some 47 to date—through the Strait.

The decision reverses Britain’s earlier proposal to launch a European-led operation supposedly to protect tankers in the Gulf. It signifies a further intensification of the drive to war against Iran, carried out behind the backs of the British people, who are deeply hostile to another war of imperialist plunder in the Middle East.

Announcing the decision, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said the UK wanted to build “the broadest international support to uphold freedom of navigation in the region.” He continued: “The deployment of Royal Navy assets is a sign of our commitment to our UK-flagged vessels and we look forward to working alongside the US and others to find an international solution to the problems in the Strait of Hormuz.”

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said Britain’s “approach to Iran hasn’t changed. We remain committed to working with Iran and our international partners to de-escalate the situation and maintain the nuclear deal.”

Both statements are a pack of lies. They come amid a US-led war drive targeting Iran after Washington unilaterally suspended the 2015 Iranian nuclear accord, launched a major military buildup in the region and demanded that US allies support it.

The Trump administration’s provocative move, in the guise of “protecting shipping lanes” through the crowded 21-mile-wide sea lane through which one-fifth of the world’s oil supplies passes, establishes a patrol of warships aimed at blockading Iran.

General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, first announced the mission early last month when he called on US military allies worldwide to join a US-led battle fleet that would surround Iran. The Pentagon would provide “command and control” ships to direct operations, he stressed, while America’s allies would provide escort vessels to follow US orders.

The purpose of this US campaign of “maximum pressure” is to secure complete control not only over Iran’s economy, but also over the oil supply of Washington’s main imperialist rivals in Europe and East Asia, and of Asia’s two most populous countries, China and India. Far from seeking an international “solution” to the escalating conflict between the US and Iran, Washington is seeking Tehran’s total submission to its dictates.

Commander Rebecca Rebarich of the US Department of Defense welcomed the British decision, saying, “This is an international challenge and we look forward to the opportunity to work together with the Royal Navy and with additional partners and allies who share the common goal of ensuring the free flow of commerce.”

The decision of Britain’s newly appointed prime minister, Boris Johnson, to join the US war fleet flows from his close relations with the Trump administration and his advocacy of deepening ties with the US, based on securing a post-Brexit free trade deal with the anti-European Union president. It represents a shift in Britain’s position from initially seeking to de-escalate the Strait of Hormuz crisis and reflects its increasing isolation from its former European partners.

Just two weeks ago Britain balked at joining a US-led mission, calling instead for a “European-led maritime protection mission” in the region. Jeremy Hunt, Britain’s then-foreign secretary and challenger to Johnson for the premiership, said at the time that the European-led force would “not be part of the US maximum pressure policy on Iran, as we remain committed to preserving the Iran nuclear agreement.”

But London, which has long served as Washington’s bridgehead to Europe, was unable to convince Berlin and Paris, co-signatories along with the US, Britain, China and Russia to the nuclear deal, to sign up to Trump’s flotilla. This was not because France and Germany are any more pacifist than the US and Britain. Rather, they view Washington’s unilateral torpedoing of the nuclear deal, its re-imposition of sanctions against Iran, Trump’s statement that he had been 10 minutes away from bombing Iran, Britain’s illegal seizure of an Iranian tanker off Gibraltar on US orders, and Iran’s seizure of a UK-flagged tanker, the Stena Impero, as cutting across their own geostrategic and commercial interests in the energy-rich region.

While they recognize there is now little chance of rescuing the nuclear accord and their commercial relations with Iran, they are keenly aware that joining the US military coalition against Iran, given their own limited military resources vis a vis the US, would mean submitting to the Pentagon’s command and ceding the political initiative to Washington.

Speaking on television last week, Olaf Scholz, Germany’s vice chancellor and finance minister, said, “I’m very skeptical about that [US-led mission], and I think that’s a skepticism that many others share.” It was important to avoid a military escalation in the region, and “That’s why I think this is not a good idea.”

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas insisted that Germany would not join the US task force, saying, “Germany will not take part in the naval mission proposed and planned by the United States. We are in close coordination with our French partners. We consider the ‘maximum pressure’ strategy to be wrong.” He warned that while Berlin favoured a European mission, it was difficult to make progress on that. On Monday, he told reporters, “At the moment, the Britons would rather join an American mission. We won’t do that.”

France’s foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said that Paris was pursuing the possibility of a European “mission for monitoring and observing maritime security in the gulf” that was “the opposite of the American initiative, which is the choice of maximum pressure to make Iran go back on a certain number of its objectives.”

Far from easing tensions, such a “monitoring” operation in one of the world’s most incendiary flashpoints would serve to escalate the crisis. It is a bid by the European powers to grab a share of oil and gas resources in the strategic Persian Gulf region.

Deputy government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer left the door open for possible German participation in a US mission in the future. Nevertheless, the EU continues to distance itself from the US, saying it will continue working with Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, despite the Trump administration’s decision to impose sanctions and freeze assets he holds in the US.

Britain’s decision has prompted a furious response from Iran. President Hassan Rouhani has warned that the Anglo-American task force risks “the mother of all wars.” He added, “A strait for a strait. It can’t be that the Strait of Hormuz is free for you and the Strait of Gibraltar is not free for us.”

This was a reference to Iran’s seizure of the Stena Impero near Hormuz in retaliation for the Royal Navy’s seizure of an Iranian oil tanker off Gibraltar, which it is still holding after more than a month. Rouhani insisted that the US lift all sanctions, which he called an act of “economic terrorism,” if it wants to have negotiations.

His remarks mark a recognition that the Strait of Hormuz crisis could lead to an open-ended war with catastrophic consequences. As the US and Britain move closer to war, all the major powers are seeking to expand their military forces.

Layoffs in global auto industry hit Mexico, India, China and the US

Jerry White

A rolling wave of layoffs in the global automotive industry is hitting workers on virtually every continent. A survey of recent headlines from auto industry and other news publications yields a grim picture of the relentless job-cutting.

“Tens of thousands losing jobs as India's auto crisis deepens,” writes Reuters, reporting on 350,000 auto assembly and parts workers who have been cut in recent months during India’s worst sales downturn in a decade. Maruti Suzuki has halved its production targets and is laying off six percent of its temporary workforce, with analysts predicting that up to a third of the three million workers employed in the industry nationwide will be dismissed.

“Shrinking Chinese car market sparks fears over foreign groups’ future,”reports the Financial Times, noting that Chinese plants owned by Ford and PSA are running at 11 percent and 1 percent capacity, respectively, and some 220,000 workers have lost their jobs in China’s first sales decline in three decades.

“Bosch sees stagnating sales, job losses as auto industry slows,”declares an Automotive News Europe article, citing an executive from the German-based auto parts conglomerate, who says, “Our plans foresee a stagnation in vehicle production in the coming years … the tailwind is gone.” Volkswagen has already announced 7,000 white-collar job cuts, and Daimler, Siemens and others are expected to follow suit.

“UK Auto Industry Facing a Slow Death,” CNN reports, nothing that the industry is facing its worst crisis since the 1970s, with production dropping by a fifth in the first half of the year and investment falling 70 percent.

A Reuters article headlined “Warning light flashing for Slovakia's auto industry” describes the fate of 3,000 workers laid off at Volkswagen’s plant in Bratislava, which “has sent shockwaves through Slovakia, the world’s biggest car producer per capita.”

One-day strike in 2017 by BMW workers in UK

In the US, GM shut down the 78-year-old Warren Transmission plant in suburban Detroit last week, following on the closure of the Lordstown, Ohio assembly plant and the Baltimore transmission plant. The Oshawa, Ontario plant is set to close at the end of the year, and the Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant faces closure in January 2020.

In Mexico, at least 650 out of the 1,800 workers at the General Motors assembly plant in San Luis Potosí, 250 miles northwest of Mexico City, will lose their jobs on August 12 when the company reduces the number of shifts from three to two, according to information recently cited by the Unifor union in Canada.

Antonio, a worker at the GM plant in Silao, Mexico, told the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter: “I’ve been investigating here in Silao, but there is no information about layoffs at SLP (San Luis Potosí). There is total silence from the union. The firings are yet another assault against workers—stock owners always looking after their capital. We need to fight together in order to have more strength.”

Another Silao worker, who preferred to remain anonymous, said that pressure from GM management and speed-up have increased recently. “The other detail is about how small our bonuses have been,” he added, explaining that this has led “several workers to resign.”

On August 1, Mexico’s National Chamber of Transformation Industries (Canacintra) reported that Volkswagen had laid off 2,000 workers over the previous 30 days as a result of the termination of production of a model. The Mexican Association of Auto Distributors announced on July 31 that Nissan Mexico was carrying out a “deep restructuring” in response to a fall in sales of 15 percent in the first semester of 2019. In January, the company carried out 1,000 layoffs at assembly plants in Aguascalientes and Morelos. The Mexican economy is in near-recession, with job creation during the first semester of 2019 at the lowest point in a decade.

The Chevrolet Equinox crossover produced at the San Luis Potosí factory is also built by Canadian workers at GM’s CAMI plant in Ingersoll, Ontario. The 2,800 workers there are also being hit by layoffs the week of September 30, and more are slated for the final quarter of 2019.

With the pig-headed nationalism typical of the union bureaucracy, Mike Van Boekel, the Unifor president at the Ingersoll plant, boasted that GM Canada had told him the layoffs in Canada would be temporary, while the shift elimination in San Luis Potosí would be permanent. “Unfortunate for the Mexico plant, but it’s good news for us at least that we’re not losing the shift,” he told a local radio station.

In late 2017, workers at the CAMI plant fought a bitter month-long strike against GM’s demands for increased wage and benefit concessions. The day after GM threatened to shift Equinox production to Mexico, Unifor shut the strike down and signed a sellout contract. Opposed to a common struggle by autoworkers across North America, Unifor then responded to GM’s announcement that it would close the Oshawa assembly plant by launching a racist campaign calling for a boycott of “Mexican cars.”

There is no such thing as a “Mexican” car, any more than there is a “Canadian,” “American” or “Chinese” one. The global auto industry is an interconnected whole, involving the labor of tens of millions of production workers, engineers and technicians around the world, in addition to the workers who extract the raw materials, all of whom contribute to the building of what are, in fact, world products.

GM closed its Warren Transmission plant last week

It is impossible to fight the global onslaught of the transnational corporations on the basis of the narrow nationalist program of Unifor, the United Auto Workers, IG Metall in Germany, the CTM in Mexico or any other union. In opposition to the global strategy of the corporations, autoworkers must develop an internationally coordinated response to defend the jobs, working conditions and living standards of workers around the world.

Under the whip of the financial markets, the global automakers are embarking on yet another wave of mergers and acquisitions to bolster returns to their richest shareholders. Through increasing tie-ups, including Ford-VW and renewed talks of a Renault-Fiat Chrysler merger, the corporations hope to counteract falling sales by expanding into the markets of their former rivals and creating economies of scale to close “redundant” factories and share the immense costs involved in the brutal struggle to dominate new technologies, including electric and self-driving vehicles.

While electric vehicles (EVs) make up only a tiny portion of current world sales—around 1 percent in the US—analysts say this will rise to about 10 percent in the mid-2020s and over 50 percent by 2040. As of January 2019, global automakers had committed over $300 billion to electrification, according to a recent report by the United Auto Workers union.

Due to the much reduced mechanical complexity of EVs—the electric transmission of the Chevy Bolt, for example, has 80 percent fewer moving parts than a traditional internal combustion engine transmission—Ford is telling investors that EVs could lead to a 30 percent reduction in labor hours per unit. This could lead to the elimination of 35,000 powertrain workers in the US over the next several years, according to the UAW, and traditional automakers could outsource the production of lithium batteries, electric motors, automotive electronics, advanced braking systems and other new technologies to low-wage manufacturers within or outside the US.

The UAW has predictably responded to this threat by offering to work with the corporations and the US government to create a “new industrial policy” to beat back China, which, the union laments, “is expected to be home to 62 percent of global lithium-ion battery manufacturing capacity by 2023.” This includes a trade war policy that treats advanced vehicle technology as a “strategic sector to be protected and built in the US.”

This policy, which is identical to that of Trump, divides the international working class, encouraging a fratricidal race to the bottom and dragooning workers behind their “own” capitalists as the rival nationally-based ruling elites prepare to drag mankind into another world war—this one producing a thermonuclear holocaust.

The past decade has seen an increasing wave of struggles by autoworkers. This includes Toyota and Honda workers in China (2010); Maruti Suzuki workers in India (2011-12); Hyundai and Kia workers in South Korea (2013); Renault workers in Turkey, Mercedes-Benz and other workers in Brazil and Fiat Chrysler, GM and Ford workers the US (2015); BMW workers in Britain and Ford workers in Romania (2017); VW and Daimler workers in Germany(2018); VW workers in Hungary and auto parts workers in Matamoros, Mexico (2019).

These growing struggles must be coordinated and guided by an international strategy aimed at uniting every battalion of the working class against the transnational corporations and replacing the capitalist system with a scientifically and democratically planned world socialist society.

As Mexican economy stagnates, ruling Morena party imposes state law to suppress social protests

Don Knowland

On August 1 the so-called Law of the Garrotte, which effectively criminalizes opposition demonstrations, marches and protests, went into effect in oil-rich Tabasco, the home state of Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO). The majority of the state Congress made up of deputies from AMLO’s party, the Movement for National Regeneration (Morena), rammed through the legislation.

The law imposes a six- to 13-year sentence for interfering with “the execution of public private works and works or roads or communication channels,” and for “the extortion, coercion, attempt to impose or impose fees or totally or partially prevent free movement of people and vehicles, machinery, specialized equipment or the like.” The sentence increases to 10 to 20 years if violence accompanies an attempt to impose fees, or minors are used in blockades.

Morena depicted the legislation as an attempt to end shakedowns related to public and private works. But it has unleashed a firestorm of opposition from Mexico’s other major parties, the former ruling party, the PRI (Institutional Revolution), as well as the Party of National Action (PAN) and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

While the handwringing by these right-wing bourgeois parties, all of which are responsible for bloody acts of repression, amounts to a hypocritical political gesture, the charges they level are nonetheless true.

The PRI charged that the Morena deputies were “acting as accomplices of a regime that wants to replace politics and dialogue with brute force.” The Tabasco PRI deputy who had proposed the higher sentence for extortion claimed he had not intended to “criminalize social protests,” or impede the right to free expression.

Another Tabasco PRI deputy, Ingrid Pantoja, said that the law is a “betrayal of the people,” intended as a pretext “to inhibit the right of citizens to exercise any type of demonstration against the federal, state government, municipality or any other public entity, even if they are peaceful.” Pantoja gave as an example that any citizen could go to prison for protesting the privatization of water promoted by the Morena mayor of the Tabasco city of Villahermosa.

The national president of the right-wing PAN, Marko Cortés Mendoza, called the law an attempt by the Morena government “to build a totalitarian and controlling system, which has gradually limited the checks and balances of all Mexicans.” He said PAN did not oppose “regulating” marches, but ruled out “repressing and criminalizing those who exercise their constitutional right to march in protest.”

Cortés Mendoza said “it is paradoxical” to see how AMLO—who 26 years ago seized oil wells for more than 10 days, generating losses according to Pemex, the national oil company, of more than 40 million pesos—now seeks to stifle such actions. PAN Senator Kenia López Rabadán said López Obrador would have faced more than 50 years in jail under the new law, since he led seizures of oil wells on four occasions.

The Extraordinary National Directorate (DNE) of the PRD said the law was intended to “protect the interests and businesses of Morena, and not to protect Tabasco citizens ... they just want to defend juicy businesses that will give them a lot of money.”

The DNE emphasized that “it is obvious that said law seeks to avoid protests before the imminent construction of the [$8 billion] Dos Bocas refinery by Pemex, to begin in August … money is what moved them to make those constitutional changes, and now it turns out that blocking a street is more painful than a homicide, or someone accused of rape in the state of Tabasco.”

India’s Hindu supremacist government abrogates Kashmir’s autonomy

Keith Jones

India’s Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government illegally stripped Jammu and Kashmir, the country’s only Muslim-majority state, of its special constitutional status Monday, and split it into two Union Territories. One is comprised of the Jammu and Kashmir divisions of the now abolished state, and the other of the sparsely populated, but geostrategically significant, Ladakh region.

Through actions that are tantamount to a constitutional coup, the Indian state has not just abrogated the broad autonomy that Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) enjoyed—at least on paper—under articles 370 and 35 (A) of the Indian constitution. The new governments of the bifurcated state have been given a status inferior to that of the Indian Union’s remaining 28 states, enabling New Delhi to exercise wide powers over the territories’ affairs in perpetuity.

Monday’s actions have explosive international and domestic ramifications. They will further inflame tensions with Pakistan, and constitute a further stage in the Indian ruling elite’s turn toward authoritarian forms of rule and the promotion of Hindu communal reaction.

Fearing mass popular opposition to its actions, the BJP government has poured tens of thousands of additional troops into Jammu and Kashmir, cut off internet, cell phone and landline access across much of the region, including in Srinagar, J&K’s summer capital, and arrested prominent opposition politicians. As of midnight yesterday, several districts, including Srinagar and Jammu, have been placed under Section 144 of the Criminal Code, meaning all gatherings of more than four people are prohibited.

Kashmir and the Indo-Pakistani military-strategic rivalry

Control over the territories that comprised the former British Indian princely state of Jammu and Kashmir has been at the center of the reactionary military-strategic rivalry between New Delhi and Islamabad since the 1947 communal partition of South Asia, into an expressly Muslim Pakistan and a predominantly Hindu India.

As a result of the 1947-48 Indo-Pakistani war, Jammu and Kashmir was itself partitioned, splitting South Asia’s Kashmiri-speaking population between Indian-administered J&K and Pakistani-held Azad (“Free”) Kashmir. Ever since, both countries have vowed to “reclaim” the part of Jammu and Kashmir held by the other.

The abrogation of J&K’s legal autonomy and its fuIl “integration” into the Indian Union are aimed at demonstrating New Delhi’s resolve to end the Indo-Pakistani conflict on its terms and to force a quick and bloody end to the anti-Indian insurgency that has convulsed the state for the past three decades. Successive Indian governments—whether headed by the Congress Party, the BJP, or a “Third Front” of casteist and regional parties—have responded to the insurgency with massive state violence, including disappearances and summary executions of alleged insurgents and widespread torture of civilians. With more than half a million Indian army troops and paramilitaries in a state with a population of just 14 million, the mobilization of the repressive forces of the Indian state in Kashmir has been justly compared to that of Israeli security forces on the West Bank.

Pakistan, for its part, has sought to manipulate the mass alienation from New Delhi among the Muslims of the Kashmir Valley to further its own reactionary agenda. This has included sidelining secular Kashmiri nationalists, while providing arms and other logistical support to Islamist anti-Indian Kashmiri insurgents.

In 2016, two years after Narendra Modi and his BJP came to power in New Delhi, a new wave of mass protests erupted in J&K. The BJP government’s response was twofold: to order a vicious crackdown, which left over a hundred dead and thousands of protesters, the overwhelming majority of them young people, blinded; and to ratchet up tensions with Pakistan. First in September 2016 and again this February, the Modi government ordered military strikes inside Pakistan in what it claimed was retaliation for Pakistan-supported terrorist attacks. The latter “surgical strike” resulted in a Pakistani counterattack and a dogfight over disputed Kashmir that brought South Asia’s nuclear-armed rivals the closest they have been to all-out war since 1971.

Islamabad has condemned India’s tightened control over J&K, saying no “unilateral” step by New Delhi can alter its “disputed status, as enshrined in United Nations Security Council resolutions,” and is vowing to push back. As “party to this international dispute,” declared a tersely worded Foreign Ministry statement, Pakistan “will exercise all possible options to counter [India’s] illegal steps.”

Subsequently, Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary summoned the Indian High Commissioner (ambassador) and handed him what Islamabad characterized as a strong démarche, that “conveyed Pakistan’s unequivocal rejection of these illegal actions as they are in breach of international law and several UN Security Council resolutions."

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, meanwhile, urged all parties to “exercise restraint,” according to his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric. Dujarric added that a UN Military Observer Group “has observed and reported an increase in military activity” along the Line of Control that separates Indian and Pakistani-held Kashmir.

Rewriting the constitution by executive fiat

The domestic implications of the BJP government’s actions are no less incendiary.

J&K was stripped of its special status, dismembered and transformed into two Union territories through a presidential order, that illegally excised some sections of the constitution and rewrote others, and through two motions rammed through parliament Monday in a matter of hours.

Bangladesh primary school teachers demand government nationalise schools

Wimal Perera

Hundreds of teachers and workers at non-government primary schools in Bangladesh are continuing their agitation to demand that the Awami League-led government nationalise their schools.

The protestors, who represent tens of thousands of non-government primary teachers at over 4,000 schools, are also calling for permanent jobs and enlistment in the official Monthly Pay Order (MPO) scheme. The MPO is a pay system for teachers in state-controlled public schools and government-approved institutions.

In 2013, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League-led government took over about 26,000 schools in the face of mass action by Bangladesh teachers. Four thousand private schools, however, were not included in the program.

There are many categories of educational institutes under non-MPO educational institutes. These include primary and secondary schools, colleges, technical and vocational institutions and Islamic-based madrasas. Teachers and employees at these schools depend on student tuition fees. An estimated 16,000 non-government school teachers do not receive regular salaries.

The non-government primary teachers began a sit-down demonstration outside the National Press Club in Dhaka on June 16. On July 3 they started a hunger strike. About 230 fell sick during the protest, including six from dengue fever, one of whom—a teacher from Faridpur—died on July 12. The teachers have told the media that they are determined to win their demands.

The government does not care “about our ordeals,” Rabindranath Barman, a primary teacher from Panchbibi, Jaipurhat, told the New Dawn newspaper. “We’re defying the rain, sun, dust, mosquitoes, and constant noise of vehicles… We can’t sleep properly and even we don’t have any bathrooms here,” he said.

Shipra Rani Dey from the Alamin Bazar primary school on Hatiya Island, about 160 kilometres from Dhaka, told New Dawn that she had been involved in the protest for 27 days with her toddler son. The Alamin Bazar school was established on the remote island in 2006 and has over 200 students.

Shipra explained that her husband was bedridden and that she was the only person working in her six-member family. She had worked for the last 13 years but not received a regular salary. “I won’t go home unless I get a positive message from the government,” she said.

Bangladesh non-government school teachers are organised in a range of different unions—the Non-government Primary School Teachers’ Association; the Non-MPO Educational Institutions Teachers’ and Employees’ Federation; and the Bangladesh Besarkari Prathamik Sikkhak Samity—to name just a few.

Russian authorities continue crackdown on opposition protests

Clara Weiss

At a new protest by the bourgeois liberal opposition in Moscow on Saturday, the Russian authorities continued their violent crackdown, arresting at least 600 people. Led by pro-US opponents of President Vladimir Putin, the protesters are demanding that opposition candidates who have been barred from participating in the Moscow City Council elections on September 8 be placed on the ballot.

Russian news outlets suggested that the turnout at the protest on Saturday was similar to that of the previous week, when between 3,000 and 5,000 people marched through the city center. The protest was met with a military-style presence of the Russian national guard and its subdivision, the OMON paramilitary forces, resulting in the arrest of over 1,300 people.

Like the previous protest, the one on Saturday had not been authorized. Organizers officially called it a “stroll.” Many of the protesters carried Russian flags. The presence of police and paramilitary forces was similar to the previous week, with at least as many OMON and police forces as there were protesters. Planes belonging either to the Russian national guard or the police flew over the city center.

OMON and the police used teargas at Pushkin Square, shut down several central subway stations, and beat protesters with cudgels. There were multiple reports of passersby being violently arrested. Among them was Alexander Svidersky, a deputy of the ruling United Russia party and member of the district electoral commission, who was arrested while walking his dog in the city center. According to eyewitnesses, OMON even stormed a local McDonalds restaurant to arrest several protesters who were trying to hide there.

The Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported that many of the arrested had their fingerprints and mug shots taken. The newspaper said that in the lead-up to the protests, there were threats from the authorities that young men participating would run the danger of being drafted into the military. The official number of arrested is 600, but Russian newspapers suggest that approximately the same number were detained as at the previous week’s demonstration, that is, well over 1,000.

Most leading figures of the liberal opposition, including the right-winger Alexei Navalny, and most election candidates who were barred from the ballot, among them Ilya Yashin and Lyubov Sobol, are now in prison, serving sentences of up to 30 days (in the case of Navalny). Sobol was dragged out of a cab on Saturday and arrested while on her way to the rally. One of her aides was arrested on Friday and charged with instigating “mass unrest,” a charge that carries up to 15 years in jail.

The continuation of the violent crackdown on opposition protests is a sign of deep political and social crisis in Russia. Predictably, the pro-imperialist media in the West has hailed the protests as a welcome challenge to the authoritarian presidency of Putin. The EU condemned the crackdown on the protests, and the US embassy in Moscow declared that Saturday’s response by the Russian authorities “undermines the rights of citizens to participate fully in the democratic process.”

Such statements are thoroughly hypocritical. The governments in both the EU and the US are responsible for violent crackdowns on protests in their own countries, including against supporters of Catalonian separatism in Spain and the yellow vest protests in France. They have set up concentration camps for immigrants and refugees. US President Donald Trump has been inciting fascist violence through his tweets and rallies, resulting in a series of mass shootings just over the past two weeks that have claimed the lives of dozens of people.

The imperialist powers support the opposition protests not out of any concern for democratic rights, but because, of all the fractions of the Russian oligarchy, the liberal opposition’s program aligns most closely with the interests of Western imperialism.

Study calls for closure of over half all health clinics in Germany

Tino Jacobson & Markus Salzmann

A study by the Bertelsmann Foundation, which promotes “reform processes” and “the principles of entrepreneurial activity” to build a “future-oriented society,” proposes closing more than half of all clinics in Germany. Less than 600 of the current 1,400 hospitals would be maintained under the plan, according to the report, published on July 15, commissioned by the Berlin Institute for Health and Social Research.

With the grotesque argument that only the closure of clinics could achieve more staffing, better equipment and higher quality, the report also calls for further reductions in hospital stays and an even greater focus on generating profits.

According to the authors, around 5 million people a year in Germany stay unnecessarily in hospital. They could just as well be treated as outpatients, reducing the number of hospital stays to 14 million a year.

The reduction in the number of clinics is justified by the fact that “many hospitals are too small and lack the necessary equipment and experience to handle life-threatening emergencies.” By reducing the number of clinics, the report’s authors claim, a variety of complications and deaths could be prevented. In the future, the focus would primarily be on the quality of hospitals with accessibility no longer a top priority.

Brigitte Mohn, a board member of the foundation, funded privately by the Bertelsman Group, one of the world’s largest mass media companies which is also active in the service sector and education, summed up the goal of “future hospital care” with undisguised cynicism, “The reorganisation of the hospital landscape is a question of patient safety and, above all, has to pursue the goal of improving the quality of care.”

On patient care, Mohn added, “If a stroke patient reaches the nearest clinic after 30 minutes but does not find a suitably qualified doctor and the medically necessary specialist department, it would be better to drive for a few minutes longer to a well-equipped clinic.”

Mohn is a member of the family that owns Bertelsmann. Her mother, the company matriarch Liz Mohn, is one of the richest women in the world, with a fortune of around three billion euros. Brigitte also sits on the supervisory board of Rhön-Klinikum AG, an operator of private clinics that would benefit from the closure of municipal hospitals. Among others, Rhön-Klinikum AG operates the University Hospital of Marburg and Giessen, where hundreds of workers protested against low wages and poor working conditions earlier this year.

The consequences of decreasing the accessibility of clinics is obvious. More complications and deaths will occur because patients cannot be treated quickly enough. In addition, ambulances, emergency physicians and paramedics will face a significant additional burden.

The argumentation of the study is extremely mendacious. The Cologne / Leverkusen region was selected as a model, which is one of the most densely populated areas in Germany. According to the Bertelsmann study, 24 out of a total of 38 hospitals should be closed in this region by 2030.

Even here, the study estimates that about ten percent of residents would require more than 30 minutes to reach the nearest hospital after the proposed shutdowns. According to the study, this could be reduced to about three percent if a different “speed model” were used. In plain language, this means that ambulances would face completely unrealistic higher speed assumptions in order to increase accessibility.