Illegal forest fires send another lethal haze over parts of Indonesia

Owen Howell

After three weeks of improved air quality, the thick haze of smoke from deliberately lit forest fires, which began to spread across Indonesia in July, has returned to the province of South Sumatra. On October 14, the haze descended on the provincial capital of Palembang, causing the city’s Air Pollutant Index (API) to soar to an all-time high of 921. The return of the smog forced the closure of Palembang’s airport and most of its schools.

The Sumatran provinces of Jambi and Riau continue to be severely affected by the deadly haze. The air quality in Jambi, where the blanket of toxic smoke has taken on an ominous orange glow in the sky, has been described by the Air Quality Monitoring System as “unhealthy” and “hazardous.”

Indonesia’s Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) issued a warning on October 15 to Sumatran residents about more smoke on the way from revived forest fires. Spokesman Agus Wibowo said the agency has used weather satellites to detect 1,547 hotspots in a total of six provinces. The fires, intensified by the El Niño weather pattern, have so far destroyed more than 320,000 hectares of forest.

The haze began in July this year when vast stretches of land on Sumatra and Borneo islands were burned. The national government sent 9,000 military, police, and disaster agency personnel to fight the ravaging fires, using dozens of aircraft for water bombing and cloud-seeding to trigger rain.

By August the haze had spread to Singapore and Malaysia, where the API reading registered in places at 223, or “very unhealthy.” The Malaysian government closed over 400 schools across the country and a heated diplomatic dispute with Indonesia ensued. Over the past two months, the widespread haze has engulfed Brunei, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

This year’s fires are the worst on Indonesia’s record since the catastrophic haze of 2015. The Southeast Asian haze is a yearly occurrence which has steadily grown in intensity throughout the last two decades. The air pollution crisis is caused every dry season (from July to October) in the region by the industrial-scale slash-and-burn practices of palm oil companies in Indonesia. Every year the fires are lit in the provinces of South Sumatra, Riau, and West Kalimantan, the country’s central locations for palm oil and pulpwood plantations.

Companies resort to these land clearing methods as a cheaper and faster alternative to the typical use of heavy construction equipment. Clearing land through the use of machinery and chemicals can cost up to $US200 per hectare, but fire costs only $US5 per hectare. Then, as the clearing takes place on the swampy peat forests of Sumatra and Borneo, the peat soil, which is acidic, deficient in nutrients, and often ridden with plant diseases, has to be made suitable for agriculture. With chemicals and fertilisers, the cost per hectare is $US2,800, but with fire, only $US140. Burned land can also be sold illegally at a higher price.

The excessive drainage of peat land for agricultural use has resulted in the top layer of peat drying out making it very flammable. In the dry season, the carbon-rich peat, now drained, can potentially be a highly toxic contributor to the haze.

The fires themselves cause damage both to small village communities and the region’s invaluable biodiversity, as well as releasing huge amounts of carbon to the atmosphere.

The haze is responsible for a sudden rise in debilitating health problems, especially among poorer sections of the population, who are exposed to the haze for sustained periods while at work, yet are afforded limited medical access. Excessive inhalation of the smoke from forest fires has been linked to various cardiovascular conditions, including acute ischemic stroke and even cardiac arrest.

Children, the elderly, and those with respiratory issues such as asthma are the most likely to be afflicted by the pollution. As of September, there were 885,026 cases of severe respiratory infections in South Sumatra, Riau, and West Kalimantan.

As a protective measure against the smog, authorities have repeatedly advised residents to wear masks when going outdoors. The face masks, handed out at medical clinics, are notorious for offering almost no protection at all from the thick, choking haze.

Amid government panic over the situation, President Joko Widodo threatened to sack firefighters if the fires were not soon extinguished, as Tempo reported in August. Following this line of attack, provincial police have been engaged in various efforts to blame the fires on impoverished farmers and thereby direct attention away from the pulp and palm oil companies.

The truth, on the other hand, is no secret to Indonesian workers. Amiruddin Noer, a taxi driver from Jambi, told Channel News Asia, “it’s not just individuals who set the land on fire. There are a lot of companies too, but they are untouchable by the police.”

Those lighting fires face a fine of $US706,600 and a prison sentence of up to 10 years if convicted. However, a recent finding by Greenpeace Indonesia showed that several plantations owned by palm oil companies, whose lands were known to be burned every dry season for the past four years, were never punished with serious sanctions.

The Environmental Affairs and Forestry Ministry announced it had sued more than 60 companies, 20 of which are foreign-owned firms, believed to be responsible for the blazes. Successive Indonesian governments have promised to tackle the forest fire issue and hold companies accountable, suing them for “negligence”.

In September 2015, at the height of the crisis, Widodo stated that the recurrent haze problem was “not a problem that you can solve quickly.” Addressing an angry public, he declared: “You will see results soon, and in three years we will have solved this.”

The same companies which were discovered burning wide expanses of land during the crisis of 2015 have been found carrying on identical practices four years later, with devastating consequences for Indonesia’s natural environment and the conditions of life of its working class.

Solomon Islands deal with Chinese developer highlights Pacific tensions

John Braddock

A province of the Solomon Islands, a small island state in the southwestern Pacific, has agreed to lease a large island to a Chinese company to develop into a special economic zone, sparking concerns in the US and among its regional allies, New Zealand and Australia.

The Central Province agreement, signed on 22 September, gives the Beijing-based Sam Group an exclusive five-year development lease, renewable for 75 years, for Tulagi and its surrounding islands. The Xiamen International Trade Group, a second Chinese company, is also listed as a party to the agreement.

Radio NZ reported that the Central Province premier, Stanley Manetiva, confirmed he had signed the “strategic cooperation agreement” in Honiara with representatives of Sam Group. But he said it was not legally binding and the company would have to comply with local laws and respect landowner rights.

“We want the investors to come to our province,” Manetiva said, “but we must be mindful… that the people are our priority.” A statement by the Sam Group said the two parties hope to carry out “comprehensive cooperation in energy, chemical industry, investment, trade and other fields in addition to existing cooperation.”

Manetiva noted that the recent diplomatic switch by the national government to Beijing had opened up investment opportunities. Weeks earlier, defying pressure from the US Trump administration, the Solomon Islands and Kiribati governments sealed diplomatic ties with China after severing relations with Taiwan. Solomons Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare visited Beijing, signing agreements covering education, economic and technical cooperation and foreign affairs. China is the Solomons’ largest market, taking 65.2 percent, or $US326 million, of its total exports in 2017.

The New York Times, a mouthpiece for the US foreign policy and intelligence establishment, reacted with a provocative and dishonest article on October 16. Authored by Sydney-based correspondent Damien Cave, it bluntly alleged the Tulagi agreement was further proof of Beijing’s “military ambitions” in the important strategic area, “where Allied forces fought a bloody battle with Japan in World War II.”

Cave asserted that the “secretive” deal with Sam Group—which he accused, without any evidence, of having “close ties to the Chinese Communist Party”—alarmed US officials who regard the Pacific islands as “crucial to keeping China in check and protecting important sea routes.” Beijing, the writer declared, was “moving in with plans to effectively take control.”

The article, subsequently republished by the New Zealand Herald, quoted New Zealand-based Anne-Marie Brady, a prominent critic of Beijing, who claimed: “The geography tells you that this is a good location. China is expanding its military assets into the South Pacific and is looking for friendly ports and friendly airfields just like other rising powers before them.”

The contention that China seeks a military foothold in the Pacific reprises an alarmist campaign waged by the Australian media in April last year, stoking fears that Beijing was about to establish a naval base in nearby Vanuatu. The construction of a wharf on the island of Espirito Santo, funded with Chinese aid, the Sydney Morning Herald intoned, was “a globally significant move that could see the rising superpower sail warships on Australia's doorstep.”

The Vanuatu government vehemently denied the claims. Foreign Minister Ralph Regenvanu criticised the Australian media’s “paranoia” about China, and declared that, being non-aligned, Vanuatu was “not interested in any sort of military base in our country.”

The propaganda offensive vilifying China on the basis of threadbare claims turns reality on its head. Its purpose is to justify the aggressive diplomatic, economic and military build-up for war in the Pacific by the US and its allies launched by the Obama administration in 2011, and intensified under Trump. The imperialist powers are the ones stepping up their military operations across the region aimed at Beijing.

In August Mike Pompeo became the first US Secretary of State to visit Micronesia and negotiate an extension to a regional security agreement. It was necessary, he said, to face off “Chinese efforts to redraw the Pacific.” Under a so-called Compact of Free Association, the US military has exclusive access to the vast airspace and territorial waters of the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau. US imperialism carried out more than 100 nuclear bomb tests in this region in the years following World War II, with devastating consequences for the environment and indigenous peoples’ health.

Australia and New Zealand are following suit. Australia, the US and Papua New Guinea (PNG) have agreed to establish a naval base on Manus Island, blocking a Chinese proposal to build a port nearby. Australia previously outbid China to fund a major regional military base in Fiji. In a visit to the Solomons in June, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison reiterated Canberra’s “security partnership” with Honiara, an agreement that includes more joint military exercises.

Following the intervention of top-level US officials in 2018, the Australian government moved to stop Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei from providing a new internet cable to PNG and the Solomon Islands, on “security” grounds. The Solomons’ government had signed a contract with Huawei in 2017 to build the cable, but then agreed to renege on the contract.

There is opposition within the Solomons to the Tulagi deal. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation claimed on October 18 that many islanders did not “want to do business with Chinese operators” and are vowing to block it. Deputy opposition leader Peter Kenilorea Junior, who opposed severing ties with Taiwan, said there were no safeguards for “the interests of Central islands province peoples and the resources.” The Sam Group would be able to survey for oil and gas developments, despite a sizeable anti-mining movement on the island, he said.

Successive US administrations have regarded the southwest Pacific as Australia and New Zealand’s “patch” to police, as part of US dominance over the Pacific, established by its defeat of Japan in World War II. In return, Canberra and Wellington have long exploited the Pacific’s resources and cheap labour.

Pacific states, however, are seeking to reduce their dependence by increasing diplomatic and economic relations with China. Rifts over climate change, which poses an existential threat to low-lying islands, have intensified geo-political tensions. The Pacific Islands Forum held in Tuvalu in August was marked by a dispute over the Australian government’s refusal to limit coal production to cut carbon emissions.

The response by Washington, Canberra and Wellington to developments in the Pacific is part of a broader xenophobic campaign against supposed Chinese “interference” in politics and business designed to whip up anti-Chinese sentiment in preparation for military conflict abroad, and to attack fundamental democratic rights at home.

Major distributors and manufacturers of opioids avert trial by reaching $260 million wrist-slap settlement in Ohio

Brian Dixon & Benjamin Mateus

On Monday, three major drug distributors and Teva Pharmaceuticals, the Israel-based manufacturer, avoided a landmark federal opioid trial by reaching a wrist-slap settlement with two Ohio counties for $260 million. The agreement was reached shortly after midnight and announced in the morning.

Under the agreement, the nation’s three largest distributors, AmerisourceBergen, McKesson, and Ohio-based Cardinal Health—the three distribute 90 percent of all medicines to pharmacies, hospitals, and clinics in the United States—will pay $215 million.

Teva will make a cash payment of $20 million to Cuyahoga and Summit counties to be paid by 2021. They will also donate $25 million in the drug Suboxone used in the treatment of opioid addiction. Henry Schein, a smaller New York-based distributor, reached a $1.25 million settlement, while Walgreens, another defendant in the lawsuit, will have its trial delayed.

The settlement is seen as a “bellwether” case for opioid lawsuits moving forward. As part of these settlements, the drug companies make no admission of guilt in the opioid overdose crisis which has ravaged the US. Avoiding trial also keeps closed internal documents that would expose the inner workings of these manufacturers and distributors.

There have been more than 2,300 federal lawsuits filed against said companies over the upwards of 400,000 deaths attributable to the use of opioid drugs. Most of these cases had been filed by cities and county governments nearly two years ago, with many states filing cases only more recently.

The two Ohio counties had been seeking more than $8 billion for damages sustained to recoup medical expenses and establish long-term addiction treatment facilities for individuals affected by the opioid epidemic. There were no discussions within the mainstream news outlets as to why the sum of the settlement fell so astronomically short of the original amount being demanded.

Still under wraps is an ongoing negotiation between the three distributors and two manufacturers, Teva Pharmaceuticals and Johnson & Johnson, with federal and state attorneys on a global settlement worth $48 billion. What remains to be determined is how the money will be distributed to various states and county governments. It is also unclear how much of these funds will proceed to pay legal fees, sit in general funds for state legislatures or ultimately provide a modicum of relief for the numerous catastrophes created by this epidemic.

Democratic Attorney Generals Josh Stein of North Carolina and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania have been leading the negotiations for a national settlement. The proposed deal would have the three distributors and Johnson & Johnson give $22 billion in cash paid out over 18 years. Teva pharmaceuticals would give $250 million including additional drugs for the treatment of addiction valued at $23 billion. The distributors would also provide $3 billion in distributions services for over ten years.

Another proposal is to create a national trust fund where cities, counties, and states would apply for money. And still another model being considered is to apportion the money into state, city and county coffers with the largest for general public funds to be used for treatment.

In a recent sobering report published last week by the Society of Actuaries, the cost of the opioid epidemic on the US economy was placed at from 2015 to 2018 at $631 billion. For the present year 2019, the midpoint cost estimate is $188 billion, which means that the cost of the opioid crisis over the last five years could be covered by reallocating the US military budget for 2019.

The breakdown in the cost of the crisis includes $205 billion in excess healthcare for the management of individuals with opioid use disorder, infants born with neonatal abstinence syndrome, or neonatal withdrawal syndrome. Premature death from drug overdose accounts for $253 billion in lost lifetime earnings. Criminal justice costs that include police engagement and legal proceedings, lost property due to crime, and cost of jails and prisons totals $39 billion.

Additionally, child and Family Assistance and Education Programs, which are government-funded, contributed another $39 billion. Lost productivity, costs associated with absenteeism, reduced labor participation, time incarcerated and employer costs for disability and workers’ compensation benefits total $96 billion.

The projected cost of the opioid crisis since 2001 is estimated at $1.5 trillion, according to nonprofit health research and consulting institute Altarum. From 2016 to 2020 the cost curve has doubled. The cost is born predominately by workers and their families in the form of lost wages. It is estimated that there is $800,000 per person in lost wages at an average age of 41 among overdose deaths. In 2017, more than 72,000 deaths were reported, and in 2018, 68,000.

Meanwhile, in 2018, Teva pharmaceuticals had revenues totaling $18.9 billion. Johnson & Johnson totaled $81.6 billion. According to Health & Pharmaceuticals, the United States alone holds over 45 percent of the global pharmaceutical market. In 2016, this share was valued at around $446 billion. Six of the top ten companies were from the United States.

The 2017 National Survey on Drug Use and Health provided a snapshot of the state of the drug abuse epidemic in the United States. The report found that 1 in 12 American adults (19.7 million) had a substance abuse disorder and 1 in 5 (46.6 million) had a mental health illness. More than 8.5 million of these have both disorders.

The treatment of substance abuse disorder can take years or last a lifetime. As the staggering numbers demonstrate, confronting the social burden of this long-standing criminal assault on the health of the nation would require the reallocation of the vast resources which will remain locked away in the bank vaults of these companies and their shareholders or squandered on war.

However, the purpose of the present settlements, in line with the goals and purpose of these various political representatives of the financial oligarchs, including the judicial system, is to rapidly shut down legal maneuverings and claim the limited settlements as a victory over the pharmaceutical giants.

Germany, US threaten war amid Russia-Turkey summit on Syria

Alex Lantier

As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan flew to the Russian resort of Sochi for a summit yesterday with President Vladimir Putin on the war in Syria, Berlin and Washington issued bloodcurdling threats of all-out war in the Middle East.

In Washington, where a bitter debate is unfolding over Trump’s Middle East policy, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threatened war with Turkey, a NATO ally and major regional military power. Asked for his reaction to the Turkish military offensive against the Kurds, Pompeo replied: “We prefer peace to war. But in the event that kinetic action or military action is needed, you should know that President Trump is fully prepared to undertake that action.”

The most aggressive proposal, however, came from Berlin, where Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer called for a massive European Union (EU) force to occupy northern Syria, supposedly working in coordination with Russia and Turkey. “My proposal is that we would set up an internationally controlled safe zone, involving Turkey and Russia,” she said. “I believe that would be a strong political and diplomatic response of the European powers in NATO.”

Tens of thousands of troops from Germany, Britain, France and other EU states would be mobilized under this proposal, in the largest EU overseas occupation force in decades. Roderich Kiesewetter, a former German army staff officer serving as a foreign policy specialist for Kramp-Karrenbauer’s Christian-Democratic Union (CDU), estimated that 30,000 to 40,000 troops would be involved.

Kramp-Karrenbauer is to argue for her proposal at tomorrow’s NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels.

This proposal testifies to the vast shift to the right in official European politics over the last decade. For the first time since the fall of the Nazis in 1945, Berlin is proposing an international military operation; previously, it supported wars launched by Washington, Paris or other powers. Since Berlin began to remilitarize its foreign policy, however, shortly after Washington backed off from bombing Syria in 2013, politicians and right-wing extremist academics have ceaselessly promoted militarism to try to overcome deeply rooted popular opposition.

Amid a military buildup across Europe, France and Sweden have announced timelines for restoring the draft. Collectively, the EU powers have pledged to pour hundreds of billions of euros into their militaries over the coming years. Kramp-Karrenbauer’s remarks show that this buildup aims not to make Europe safe for democracy against foreign invasion, but to prepare the EU powers to wage their own neocolonial wars in oil-rich regions key to their strategic interests.

Imperialist circles in both America and Europe are outraged at the military and financial advantages that could accrue to Russia, Iran and China from their defeat in Syria. One recent essay from the US Brookings Institution think tank complained: “The prospect of lucrative reconstruction deals has triggered a deluge of interest from governments and firms looking to profit from Syria’s devastation. The regime’s closest allies, Russia and Iran, have been the most prominent beneficiaries of the Syria reconstruction gold rush, with China not far behind.”

As a trade war escalates between Washington and the EU, with threats of billions of dollars in trade war tariffs on both sides, US-EU geostrategic divisions are also widening. However, the EU powers also view the defeat of NATO’s Islamist and Kurdish proxies in Syria, and the victory of the Russian-backed Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad, as a threat to their strategic interests and world position. As Berlin seeks to advance its own independent interests, it does so—for now—under the increasingly thin and unsteady cover of the NATO alliance.

In an article titled “What the Syrian debacle means for the Middle East and Europe,” German news magazine Der Spiegel warned: “Now that the U.S. has withdrawn from northern Syria, a trio of autocrats is dividing the country up between them. … Rarely has a single act in global politics triggered such a rapid chain of events as the U.S. pullout from Syria last week.”

Calling Trump’s Kurdish policy “the end of a world power,” Der Spiegel continued: “A changing of the guard is taking place in Syria. The West has surrendered. The Europeans and the Americans have repeatedly condemned the atrocities in Syria, but they have done little to prevent them. Meanwhile, the despots—Assad, Erdogan and Putin—are emerging as the victors. And the consequences will be felt far beyond the Middle East.”

EU denunciations of Middle East despots reek of hypocrisy. The plain fact is that the imperialist powers currently face a humiliating defeat in the Middle East, where they bear responsibility for decades of wars launched on the basis of lies and provocations, like the claim that the Iraqi regime had weapons of mass destruction used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

A general retreat of NATO forces is now underway across Syria and Iraq, where Washington and its European allies have been involved in bloody wars of plunder ever since NATO led the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq. Taken collectively, these wars killed or wounded millions, and turned tens of millions of people into refugees. The hasty retreat of the remaining US troops from northern Syria is now leading to an outpouring of protests.

The population of Syrian villages through which convoys of US armored vehicles passed pelted them with tomatoes or eggs, or allegedly shouted slogans denouncing them for betraying Washington’s Kurdish allies. After they crossed the border into Iraq, these convoys were met with further protests and calls in English of “Fuck off.”

A further blow to the US military position in the Middle East came from the neocolonial puppet regime set up by the 2003 US war in Iraq. Now more closely aligned with Iran, it is reeling under a scandal over its bloody repression of mass protests at the beginning of the month, in which Iraqi troops killed 121 people—shooting them in the head and torso. This comes also amid a wave of ongoing mass protests in Lebanon.

Suddenly, yesterday, the Iraqi regime countermanded US Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s claim that US troops leaving Syria would remain in Iraq to fight terrorist groups. The Iraqi army issued a statement that US forces only have the permission to transit through Iraq and leave, not to remain there.

Berlin’s proposal for EU military occupation of northern Syria is, no less than Pompeo’s open threat of all-out war with Turkey, a call for a vast escalation of imperialist violence in the Middle East. It involves the danger of a direct military confrontation with Russia, a major nuclear-armed power whose forces are allied to the Syrian government. It would inevitably collide not only with military opposition in the region, but with growing protests and anti-imperialist sentiment among Middle East workers and youth.

While Kramp-Karrenbauer proposed to coordinate her deployment with the Russian and Turkish officials, there was every indication yesterday that Moscow opposed it. Asked about Berlin’s proposal, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov evaded the issue, implying that Moscow had not even considered the possibility at all. “It is a new initiative, there is no clear position on it. One would have to look at it,” he said.

However, German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle interviewed Ruslan Mamedov of the Russian Council for Foreign Policy think-tank, who bluntly declared: “The official Russian position is that all foreign troops must leave Syria. I do not believe any sort of safe zone under the joint control of EU countries and Russia will develop.”

As for Erdogan, he participated in a seven-hour meeting with Putin in Sochi aimed at eliminating the remaining NATO-backed militias in Syria and avoiding the outbreak of war between Turkish and Syrian army units operating in close proximity along their common border. The resulting agreement, subsequently approved by Assad after a telephone conversation with Putin, divides the Syrian-Turkish border into zones patrolled by Turkish troops, along which military action against Kurdish fighters may continue if they do not leave, and an area jointly held by Syrian border guards and Russian military police. Alleged Islamic State (IS) fighters are to stay in prison camps where they were kept, in horrific conditions, by NATO-backed Kurdish troops. Finally, it reaffirms the 1988 Adana accord committing Syria not to host forces of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), against which Turkey has waged a decades-long war.

Marking Moscow’s distance from Washington and its European allies who had troops in Syria, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared: “We do not particularly look at the United States and its stance. That stance is quite variable and contradictory, and of course, the coalition led by the United States is in Syria illegally. That is well known.”

The military crackdown in Chile: Pinochet returns

Andrea Lobo

Forty-six years since the CIA-backed fascist coup of Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean oligarchy is returning to dictatorial forms of rule to suppress the growing protests of hundreds of thousands of workers and youth.

The protests are motivated by intense anger over decades of social counterrevolution, including privatized pensions and utilities, poverty wages and draconian labor regulations. In response, the Sebastián Piñera administration has swiftly invoked the 1980 Constitution established under Pinochet and wielded a police-state apparatus that has remained essentially unscathed and under the control of fascistic officials.

A police crackdown in Chile has at least 11 dead amid mass protests. (AP Photo/Luis Hidalgo)

On Saturday, Piñera imposed a state of emergency, suspended democratic rights, deployed the military and enforced nighttime curfews across Santiago and other major cities.

Tanks and military detachments with assault rifles have charged demonstrators at the major plazas and bridges, accompanied by the Carabinero police, water cannons and helicopters. Videos on social media have shown soldiers, even in plainclothes, shooting live rounds in daylight and at night, taking pictures of protesters, and snatching them from their neighborhoods.

On Tuesday, the Moneda Presidential Palace in Chile confirmed that 15 civilians have died. It claims to have arrested over 2,600 protesters since Friday, when demonstrations triggered by a fare hike at the Santiago Metro spread across the country, incorporating broader demands against social inequality.

At least 88 people have suffered gunshot wounds, according to the National Human Rights Institute, while the military has shot dead at least two demonstrators—in La Serena on Sunday and in Curicó on Monday. Referring to the second case, the sub-secretary of Interior, Rodrigo Ubilla, warned Tuesday, “A person whose death cannot be reported is the one last night on Route 5 South. When the Public Ministry forbids informing something, it’s a prohibition.”

The Chilean working class has made clear that it will fiercely oppose a return to dictatorship. After calling for a general strike to end the military deployment and state of emergency, dockworkers closed the main ports, and copper miners in the Escondida mine, the largest in the country, struck Monday.

Developments in Chile are part of an upsurge of working-class militancy internationally. In Latin America, mass strikes and demonstrations against austerity have taken place in Ecuador and Honduras. There is an ongoing wave of strikes among autoworkers, miners and teachers in the center of global capitalism, the United States, a wildcat strike of thousands of railway workers in France, and an overwhelming strike authorization vote of 110,000 postal workers in the UK.

Soldiers patrol in armored vehicles as a state of emergency remains in effect in Santiago, Chile, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2019. Protests in the country have spilled over into a new day, even after President Sebastian Pinera cancelled the subway fare hike that prompted massive and violent demonstrations. (AP Photo/Luis Hidalgo)

Unable to prevent growing sectors of the working class from intervening in demonstrations and striking, the main trade union confederation in Chile, the Workers United Center (CUT), which is controlled by the Stalinist Communist Party (CP), was compelled to call a general strike Wednesday “until we mediate responses from the government and a speedy exit of the current crisis of the democratic institutions.”

Senate president, Jaime Quintana, speaking for the nominal opposition within the ruling class, declared Tuesday: “Categorically, as the opposition, we don’t seek to destabilize the Piñera government, which has to urgently allow itself to be backed and announce a social agenda with immediate benefits.” Quintana heads the Party for Democracy, which led coalition governments with the Socialist Party, the Stalinist Communist Party and the Christian Democrats that ruled during 25 of the last 30 years since Pinochet left power in 1990.

The pseudo-left Broad Front coalition, whose leading parties also participated in previous ruling coalitions, has justified repression by denouncing protesters for “unacceptable and unjustifiable vandalism.”

These statements demonstrate that the trade unions, Stalinists and Social Democrats are working to repeat their historical betrayals of the Chilean working class by keeping growing social opposition chained behind the class enemy and its repressive apparatus.

Prior to the Pinochet coup, these forces channeled the revolutionary upheaval against the pro-business policies of the US-backed government of Eduardo Frei, behind support for the popular front (called “Unidad Popular”) led by Salvador Allende. The working-class uprising peaked in the factory and land occupations and the building of cordones industriales, or industrial networks of worker-controlled factories, between 1969 and 1973.

Despite knowing of an imminent military coup planned by Washington and fascist sectors of the Chilean military and ruling class, the Unidad Popular leaders promoted the military as the “people in uniform,” while rejecting calls by the cordones to arm workers to fight the impending coup. They instead deployed soldiers to repress strikes and occupations. Not having its own party to fight independently for its revolutionary aspirations, workers were betrayed and left physically and politically unarmed in the face of the 1973 military coup and fascist repression under Pinochet.

The revival of Pinochet-style repression in Chile is part of an international process. The police-state repression in Catalonia, the military crackdown in Ecuador, and the growth of fascism in Germany, Brazil and the United States explode the claims of the capitalist ideologues that the dissolution of the Soviet Union nearly three decades ago marked “the end of history.” In response to the growth of social opposition and the class struggle, the ruling elites are resurrecting all the political filth and reaction of the 20th century.

The basic factor behind the turn of the ruling class to authoritarianism is the extreme growth of social inequality, which is incompatible with democratic forms of rule. In Chile, inequality has returned to the levels of 1882, when the mining and banking fortune of the oligarchic Edwards family equaled seven percent of Chile’s GDP.

Today, the fortune of the Luksic family, of $17.4 billion, equals roughly six percent of GDP. A handful of oligarchs, with the closest connections to US and European imperialism, control every level of government. This includes the billionaire president, Sebastián Piñera. The layers of the upper-middle class represented by the trade unions, the CP, the Broad Front, and their apologists are hostile to any protests against social inequality and capitalism.

The lessons of the bloody betrayal in Chile in 1973 are of strategic importance to workers entering the class struggle against capitalism in Chile and internationally.

In what should be taken as a warning by the working class, Bloomberg columnist John Authers, wrote Tuesday, “If it can happen in Santiago, it could happen anywhere. That is an uncomfortable message that the rest of the world should take from the sudden breakdown of civil order in Chile.”

As the IMF warns of a “synchronized slowdown” of the global economy and geopolitical conflicts escalate, the ruling class everywhere is demonstrating that it will brutally oppose any impingement upon its wealth.

Events in Chile demonstrate that the working class must take the lead in the defense of democratic rights and opposition to inequality. However, to avoid the catastrophic betrayals of popular frontism, the spontaneous wave of class struggles globally must be consciously armed with a socialist and internationalist program. This means the building of sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in Chile and throughout Latin America.

New Zealand government introduces class-based immigration restrictions

Tom Peters

On October 7, New Zealand’s Labour Party-led coalition government announced draconian class-based restrictions on immigration.

From February 2020, the government will reopen the Parent Category visa nearly four years after the previous National Party government suspended it, blocking thousands of parents from joining their adult children in New Zealand.

Under changes to visa requirements, however, a resident or citizen must earn over $106,000 a year to bring one parent to NZ, or $159,000—more than three times the median salary—to bring two parents. Before 2016, the income required to bring one parent was $65,000.

Officials estimate that 85 percent of parents currently on the waiting list will be ineligible for residency under the new rules. In addition to the income restrictions, admissions under the Parent Category will be capped at 1,000 per year, compared with 5,500 before the scheme was suspended.

The crackdown mirrors attacks on immigrants and refugees and the promotion of right-wing nationalism throughout the world. The Trump administration has reduced the US refugee intake to 18,000, its lowest level in history, imposed class-based restrictions to block millions of poor migrants, and imprisoned tens of thousands in concentration camps.

The government of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, with its right-wing, anti-immigrant partner NZ First playing a major role, is part of the same reactionary tendency. NZ First leader and Foreign Minister Winston Peters, who has frequently ranted against Asian and Muslim immigrants, told the media he had pushed within the government for the new immigration restrictions.

The entire political establishment, however, is seeking to scapegoat foreigners for social inequality, which continues to soar under the Labour-led government. Tens of thousands of people are homeless due to rampant speculation by property investors. One in four children lives in poverty and Auckland City Mission estimates that one in 10 people suffers from food insecurity. Teachers, nurses and doctors have held mass strikes to protest the crisis caused by under-staffing and under-funding in schools and hospitals.

The ruling elite is attempting to sow divisions based on nationality and ethnicity to stop the development of a unified struggle of the working class. New Zealand is a very diverse country, with more than 20 percent of its five million inhabitants born overseas, including in India, China and Pacific island nations such as Tonga and Samoa.

Several migrant organisations denounced the government for barring members of these communities from bringing their parents to New Zealand. June Ranson, chairwoman of the NZ Association for Migration and Investment, told TVNZ the government’s stance was that “ordinary people aren’t allowed to bring in their parents and it’s basically for the very privileged few of the rich.”

New Zealand Chinese Youth Federation president James Sun said the policy was particularly harsh for immigrants from the one-child generation, whose parents had no other children to support them in China.

Speaking to Radio NZ, Harry Chen, a bus driver in Auckland, said, “New Zealand’s economy is not going well. I’m earning less than before and the cost of living is high. Now the requirements for earnings has been raised to such a high level, I don’t think me and my partner can ever get all of our parents over.”

The Auckland-based Indian Weekender said there were “huge emotions within the wider communities as many found the whopping salary requirement… unreasonable.” Its October 9 editorial called the Labour-NZ First policy “outrageous and insulting to the hard-working migrants in this country.” It noted the National Party’s “deafening silence,” i.e., tacit agreement with the government.

The parent visa change is only the latest attack on immigrants. In August, it was reported that the number of people gaining New Zealand residency dropped from 51,750 in 2016 to 34,881 in the 12 months to July 2019, the lowest level in two decades. Stricter residency criteria have forced tens of thousands of people onto temporary visas, making them more vulnerable to exploitation and deportation.

The Ardern government has also restricted the right of foreign students to work in New Zealand, contributing to an estimated 2,500 fewer foreign student enrollments in 2019. The Tertiary Education Union, reflecting the nationalism of the trade union bureaucracy, demanded further cuts in August, saying universities were “over-reliant” on Chinese students.

These policies demolish the media propaganda following the March 15 Christchurch terrorist attack, depicting Ardern’s government as a beacon of “kindness” and humanitarianism in contrast to Trump, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Hungary’s Viktor Orban and others. In fact, the fascist Brenton Tarrant, who massacred 51 people in two mosques, used nationalist and anti-Muslim rhetoric similar to that of NZ First, which is part of the government.

The Greens’ immigration spokesperson Golriz Ghahraman made a mealy-mouthed criticism of the new policy, tweeting: “Restoring parent visas is a good move, but… reserving the right for the wealthy is unfair.” Only days before on October 4, Ghahraman had heaped praise on the government for removing, two years into its term, a racist ban on refugees from Africa and the Middle East. “We’re proud to be part of a government that is demonstrating its commitment to the idea that human rights are universal—regardless of race, nationality or religion,” she said.

In fact, New Zealand’s annual refugee intake of just 1,000, rising to 1,500 next year, is one of the lowest in the world. In May, the Ardern government announced $25 million to support the Australian government’s anti-democratic campaign to prevent asylum seekers reaching the country by boat.

In their 2017 election campaigns, both Labour and NZ First, supported by the Greens, scapegoated foreigners, especially Chinese people, for the housing bubble, low wages and pressure on public services. Ardern promised to slash annual immigration by up to 30,000 per year (about 40 percent).

Shortly before the election, sections of the media, backed by NZ First and supporters of the union bureaucracy, launched an anti-Chinese campaign directed against National Party MP Jian Yang, who was accused by pro-US academic Anne-Marie Brady of being an agent of Beijing. The attack was aimed at aligning New Zealand more closely with Washington’s war preparations against China.

The government and opposition parties are positioning themselves for another election next year that will be dominated by anti-immigrant xenophobia, nationalism and anti-Chinese propaganda.

The Socialist Equality Group (NZ) calls on working people to reject the toxic nationalist and anti-immigrant politics that are exploited to divide workers, prepare for war, and divert attention from the real source of the social crisis: the capitalist system. The working class must demand that everyone have the right to live anywhere in the world, with full democratic rights and protection from exploitation.

Russia: At least 15 dead, five missing after illegal dam breaks in Siberia

Clara Weiss

A dam collapse Saturday in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia unleashed a flood of water that killed at least 15 people, most of them gold miners, with another five still missing.

The collapse came at 6 a.m. local time, releasing flood waters, carrying clay, stones and dirt, that swept away poorly constructed shelters in which between 74 and 80 miners were living at the time. Besides the dead and missing, another 26 workers were injured and hospitalized, three of them in serious condition.

Since the mine was over 260 kilometers from the next town, it took a long time for rescue and medical teams to arrive. Hundreds of people were involved in cleaning up the site of the disaster. The dam that broke was one out of four dams that were illegally constructed in this area to facilitate the mining of gold in the river.

Both the dam and the construction of the shelters for the workers on the Seiba River near the village of Shchetikino were in flagrant violation of Russian law and basic safety measures. The liberal Novaya Gazeta reported that the plans for the dam were never reviewed, let alone approved, by the regulatory agencies.

However, it is highly likely that the regulatory agency Rostekhnadzor did not in fact want to know about the existence of the dam. The newspaper pointed out that all four dams had a height of 5 to 10 meters and were widely visible from afar as well as on satellite images.

Residents of surrounding villages had been complaining for months about the gold mining works which, among other things, have led to heavy pollution of the rivers. Moreover, there had been several dam collapses in the recent past. One possible explanation for the dam collapse is that it followed an earlier collapse of another dam farther up the river.

The construction of the shelters was likewise illegal. They stood downstream from the dams, making it inevitable they would be flooded completely in the case of collapse. The deputy head of the regional ministry of emergencies told Novaya Gazeta: “When the dam started to collapse because of the rain, the water flooded in the direction of the dwellings of the gold miners. Everything [bad] that could happen did happen.”

An investigation has been initiated into the causes of the disaster. According to the latest reports, the main theory considered by the investigation is that serious violations of the rules of the conduct of the gold mining work caused the dam to collapse. The head of the company that owns the gold mine, Sisim, and the head of the company’s mining department were arrested. The offices of the company have been raided. Sisim is part of the Sibzolot holding, one of the biggest gold mining companies in Russia. It has been fined repeatedly for illegal extraction practices in the past.

The Kremlin has promised the families of the dead miners a miserable compensation payment of 1 million rubles (roughly $15,660) per dead miner.

Whatever the immediate causes of the disaster, it lays bare the blatant criminality with which private companies operate in Russia, while enjoying the tacit consent of the state. It is the latest in a series of disasters that were entirely preventable and, ultimately, qualify as social murder.

The restoration of capitalism in the USSR was carried out by the Stalinist bureaucracy and openly criminal elements, which merged into a new ruling oligarchy that has based its vast fortunes on a combination of open plunder of social wealth, ruthless exploitation of the working class and mafia-like operations carried out, more often than not, in tandem with the state and government.

The virtual absence of any kind of safety measures and regulations of workplaces and locations where large crowds gather has been the direct result of this counterrevolution. Workplace accidents and major fires in clubs, shopping malls and residential houses are a regular occurrence in Russia and throughout the former Soviet Union, and have claimed thousands of lives since 1991.

Most recently, a horrific fire in a shopping mall in March 2018 in Kemerovo claimed the lives of 64 people, many of them children. The region of Kemerovo has historically been a major centre for the mining industry and is directly adjacent to the Krasnoyarsk region where the dam broke. As was the case with this dam and the shelters for the miners, the company overseeing the construction of the shopping mall disregarded basic safety measures.

Like Kemerovo, Krasnoyarsk is an important mining region. In particular, it is the centre for the extraction and production of aluminum in Russia and home to large sections of the country’s impoverished industrial working class.

In 2018, the average monthly income in the Krasnoyarsk region was 27,853 rubles per month ($436) but large sections of the population live on much less. In 2017, 15.7 percent of the population brought home between 14,000-19,000 rubles a month ($219-$300), 19.2 percent earned an average of 19,000 to 27,000 rubles a month ($300-$423) and 22.4 percent earned an average of 27,000-45,000 ($423-$704). Only 15.4 percent of the population earned over $704 a month and only 7.8 percent more than $940.

Workers in Lebanon reject tax hikes, demand the government’s resignation

Jean Shaoul

Five days of mass protests—the largest since 2005—over the government’s attempts to place the full burden of the international banks’ demands on the working class have rocked Lebanon. Demonstrators have demanded the government’s resignation and an end to the corruption that pervades every aspect of life in the country.

The protests, which are uniting workers across religious affiliations despite the confusion deliberately generated by Lebanon’s division for electoral purposes into 18 officially recognised sects, have reached almost every city and province. They are part of a broader upsurge in the class struggle that is taking place all over the world and testifies to the primacy of class over ethnicity, nationality and religion.

On Saturday, there were sympathy protests of more than 1,300 people outside the Lebanese embassy in London, with similar protests taking place in the United States in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Cleveland, Dearborn, Houston, Washington, D.C., New York, San Francisco, North Carolina, Illinois, Minnesota, and Florida.

On Thursday, workers took to the streets of Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, and the northern port city of Tripoli, which is the bastion of Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s Future Movement. They blocked the roads to demand the end of the government’s proposal to levy a $6 per month charge on WhatsApp and other Internet-based telephone calls. In a country where telephone charges are among the highest in the world, the proposed tax was the last straw.

As in earlier protests this year, public anger has been fueled by longtime hardships that include 37 percent youth unemployment, low wages, the soaring cost of living and dollar shortage. This has been compounded by the government’s tax hikes and austerity measures, the non-functioning of the electricity and water sectors, and fury over the corruption that is endemic throughout Lebanon’s political and economic life. According to the World Bank, more than a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line.

All this has only served to enrich Lebanon’s financial elite who benefit from the country’s status as a tax haven for the rich. Just 1 percent of the people own 58 percent of Lebanon’s wealth, while the poorest own less than 1 percent. More than 14 million Lebanese currently live outside the country, more than double the country’s current population of just 6 million.

Police were deployed en masse to crack down on the protests. They used massive force, including tear gas and water cannon, to disperse the mainly peaceful crowds, leading to angry clashes between protestors and police. More than 60 people were injured the first day and 52 the second day. Two Syrian workers died as a result of smoke from a fire near the demonstrations. Scores of people were arrested, with most released the following day.

The government’s use of the security forces and their equipment to put down civil unrest—as was widely noted—was in stark contrast to its inability to cope with the more than 100 forest fires that broke out across the country just days earlier. Then, the government was forced to call for help from neighbouring countries to put out the fires. Its own firefighting helicopters, bought at a cost of £13.9 million, were out of action, due to a lack of maintenance.

Faced with mass opposition, the government—fearing the protests could further destabilise the country, whose economy is staring into the abyss—swiftly backtracked. But the protests, reflecting pent-up anger and deep-seated grievances, only escalated.

On Friday, demonstrators began to call not just for Hariri’s resignation but the resignation of the entire government, saying they would stay out on the streets until the government resigned. They shouted slogans such as “We are one people united against the state. We want it to fall” and “Revolution, revolution!”

The government ordered the closure of all schools and banks because of the demonstrations.

Government posts are distributed to key political dynasties, billionaires and key members of Lebanon’s sects, which, entrenched in power since the end of Lebanon’s 15-year-long civil war in 1990, refuse to surrender the rewards of cronyism and patronage.

As well as anti-government demonstrations in Tripoli, protesters in the southern Shi’ite city of Nabatiyeh tore down posters of Nabil Berri, speaker of Lebanon’s parliament and head of the Hezbollah-allied Amal Movement, denouncing him as a thief. According to eye-witnesses, Berri’s supporters responded by attacking protesters in the southern port city of Tyre on Saturday.

Demonstrators blocked roads throughout the country, including in the Beka’a Valley, a predominantly Shi’ite area. Hariri’s government depends on Hezbollah’s support for its survival. Protesters also targeted Christian President Michel Aoun and his son-in-law and foreign minister, Jebran Bassil, for the country’s systemic corruption.

By Saturday, downtown Beirut looked like a war zone, with the streets littered with broken glass, upturned litter bins and burning tires, and banks and many shops and restaurants shuttered, and the main airport blocked by demonstrators.

Hariri demanded that unless his fractious coalition agreed on his budget proposals without imposing new taxes within 72 hours, he would resign. On Saturday, four government ministers from the Christian Lebanese Forces party, including the labour minister, social affairs minister and deputy prime minister, resigned.

The following day, the remaining factions announced that they had agreed on a final budget that did not include any additional taxes or fees. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah emerged as a key government supporter, warning that any change in government would only worsen the situation, since it could take a long time to form a new government and solve the crisis.

But none of this impressed the Lebanese people. Yesterday, the main labour union declared a general strike, and banks, businesses, schools and universities remained closed as the cabinet agreed on a long-stalled 2020 budget. It includes halving current and former politicians’ salaries and benefits and requires the central bank and private banks to contribute $3.3 billion to a “near-zero deficit” for the 2020 budget.

Protesters said this was not enough and demanded the government resign.

The protests follow earlier mass protests in May over budget proposals to cut public sector wages, pensions and benefits, as Hariri’s fragile government sought to put together an austerity budget aimed at slashing state expenditure and reducing the budget deficit.

Lebanon has a national debt of $86 billion—at 150 percent of GDP, this is one of the highest debt-to-GDP ratios in the world. The debt was recently reduced to junk-bond status by the credit ratings agencies. Lebanon must satisfy onerous economic and fiscal conditions if it is to access the $11 billion in loans pledged at the CEDRE conference in Paris last year.

On September 2, Hariri declared a state of economic emergency and vowed to speed up “financial reforms”—tax hikes and austerity measures to be borne by the working class—including a freeze on public sector hirings, the closure of loss-making public enterprises and the few remaining public services, ending of $2 billion worth of subsidies to the country’s barely functioning electricity sector, and further privatisations, including the telecoms sector.

Last month, gas stations and companies that import and distribute petroleum-based products staged strikes, leading to long lines of vehicles at petrol stations. This came in the wake of the refusal by Lebanese banks to supply dollars to their clients, including the gas importers and distributors, wheat millers and telecoms firms—in order to preserve the financial institutions’ hard currency reserves—forcing companies to buy dollars at a higher rate from currency exchange offices.

The dollar shortage is the result of the decline in the central bank’s foreign currency reserves, the reduction in remittances from Lebanon’s diaspora, falling foreign investment, particularly from the Gulf, and rising balance of payments deficits as imports far exceed exports.

In addition, the country’s economy has been particularly badly hit by the US-driven war for regime change in Syria, with whom Lebanon—once part of Syria until the post-World War I carve-up of the region by Britain and France—has historically had close family, social and economic relations. This has turned Lebanon into a proxy battleground for influence in the region between the imperialist powers and rival regional states, with the result that no political event in Lebanon can be understood as a purely domestic issue.

These events bring fresh confirmation that the bourgeoisie in Lebanon, reliant as it is upon the major imperialist and regional powers, as in all the former colonial countries, is incapable of securing workers’ entirely legitimate aspirations for economic security.

The only progressive solution is for the workers to bring down the political establishment, expropriate the billionaires that run the country and transform the key sectors of the economy into public utilities. The Lebanese protesters can only achieve their fundamental aims through the revolutionary mobilisation of the working class in a broader struggle with their class brothers and sisters in the region against capitalism and imperialism and for socialism.

Australian media companies protest government attacks on press freedom

Oscar Grenfell

Australia’s largest media companies launched a major public campaign yesterday against a government crackdown on press freedom. All of the country’s most prominent daily newspapers, including those owned by News Corp and Nine Entertainment, blacked-out their front-pages to protest government attacks on the media, including raids targeting journalists and the prosecution of whistleblowers.

The blacked-out covers of News Corp papers across the country

The campaign, titled “Your right to know,” follows Australian Federal Police raids in June targeting the Sydney headquarters of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the home of Annika Smethurst, a News Corp political editor.

Since these unprecedented operations, over stories exposing alleged Australian war crimes in Afghanistan and plans to expand domestic spying, Coalition government ministers have refused to rule out prosecution of the journalists involved.

The threat is a clear application by the government of the “Assange precedent.” The arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London last April, and the unveiling in May of 17 US Espionage Act charges against him over lawful publishing activities, has opened the floodgates for an assault on journalists and media freedom around the world.

A press release by the campaign yesterday stated that it “shines a spotlight on the continued threats to media freedom, which hinder attempts to hold powerful people and organisations to account by intimidating and harshly punishing those who dare to speak out, often when they have nowhere else to turn.”

The front page of the Sydney Morning Herald on Monday

It explained: “The move aims to push the Federal Government into lifting its veil of secrecy. It follows the passing of about 75 laws related to secrecy and spying over the past two decades which effectively criminalise journalism and penalise whistleblowing, even when they reveal wrongdoing or important information about decisions the government is making.”

“Your right to know” television advertisements have pointed to the implications of the draconian legislation for ordinary people. They have noted that under various secrecy laws and regulations, whistleblowers are prevented from disclosing to journalists information ranging from abuses in aged-care facilities to government surveillance measures.

The ABC’s managing director David Anderson has warned that “Australia is at risk of becoming the world’s most secretive democracy.” Hugh Marks of Nine Entertainment stated: “This is much bigger than the media. It’s about defending the basic right of every Australian to be properly informed about the important decisions the government is making in their name.”

In articles and statements on Twitter, journalists have highlighted the oppressive conditions they face. The Australian’s national security editor Paul Malley, for instance, wrote: “I’d love to be able to tell you about my most recent experience reporting on a sensitive national security matter, but if I did I might end up in jail.”

The campaign has been launched amid a series of whistleblower prosecutions.

David McBride, a former military lawyer who leaked documents revealing Australian army illegality in Afghanistan, faces years in prison for violating secrecy offenses. Witness K, a former Australian Secret Intelligence Service agent, and his lawyer, Bernard Collaery are being prosecuted for detailing Australian spying on East Timor. Richard Boyle, an Australian Tax Office employee who blew the whistle on abuses of power, including aggressive debt collection practices, has been charged with 66 offenses.

The media corporations, along with the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, the union which covers journalists, are demanding a series of legislative changes.

These include the right to contest police warrants covering journalists and media organisations; public interest exemptions for journalists under security laws; whistleblower protections; new limitations of which documents governments can label as secret; a “properly functioning” freedom of information system and the easing of defamation laws.

The campaign expresses a groundswell of hostility among journalists to authoritarian measures aimed at suppressing evidence of government wrongdoing and muzzling the press.

The concerns of the media conglomerates are very different. For decades, they have functioned as partners of governments and the intelligence agencies, willingly suppressing information about a raft of “national security” issues, including Australia’s frontline role in the US confrontation with China and the persecution of Assange.

Their opposition to the government measures is based on fears that recent legislation could undermine their lucrative business models and open them up to costly and damaging legal actions. Many of the statements from the corporate publications have been plaintive appeals to restore the cosy, decades-long relationship between the establishment media and the authorities.

The tepid character of the official campaign was summed up by an editorial in the Age yesterday which declared that the publication was not “looking for an opportunity to put national security at risk.”

It stated: “The Age does not believe raids on journalists should be banned. But we argue police should make their case to a senior judge and any search warrant issued be deemed in the national interest.” The newspaper called only for the “right balance” to be struck between “transparency and common sense.”

For their part, senior opposition Labor MPs have cynically sought to exploit the campaign. At a parliamentary inquiry yesterday, Labor Senator Kristina Keneally waved copies of the blacked-out newspapers at representatives of the Australian Federal Police.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese made a pile of the papers in the House of Representatives. He tweeted that he was “Proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with Australian journalists fighting to protect freedom of the press.”

Journalists and defenders of democratic rights should reject this posturing with the contempt that it deserves. Successive Labor governments have imposed draconian “national security” legislation, especially on the bogus pretext of the “war on terror.”

In opposition, Labor has given bipartisan support to a series of repressive laws. This included the passage, last year, of unprecedented foreign interference and espionage legislation.

Along with expanding jail terms for whistleblowers, the laws are explicitly aimed at creating the conditions for the prosecution of journalists. They make it a criminal offense to “deal with” information that “harms” “national security.” “Deal with” is defined to cover a long list of activities: “collect,” “possess,” “make a record of,” “copy,” “alter,” “conceal,” “communicate,” “publish” and “make available.”

The bipartisan crackdown also demonstrates the need for journalists to break the protracted silence of the Australian media over the persecution of Assange. In line with the support of the political establishment for the US-led vendetta against the WikiLeaks founder, the corporate publications have for many years blacked out information on his dire plight, while repeating the slanders concocted by the US intelligence agencies to discredit him.

In an opinion piece published by the Sydney Morning Herald on Monday, Jennifer Robinson, one of Assange’s lawyers, outlined the direct relationship between the persecution of her client and the attacks on press freedom in Australia.

Robinson wrote that publications such as the New York Times and the Washington Post had acknowledged that the US indictment against Assange “criminalises journalistic practices used by those newspapers to report in the public interest.”

The lawyer continued: “Not only has Australia refused to stand up for Assange and condemn this attack on free speech, the government has run with the precedent at home.

“There is no denying the parallels with the AFP raids on Australian journalists and the Assange indictment: both involve receipt and publication of classified information about Afghanistan, including evidence of possible US and Australian war crimes.”