Terror attack on Egyptian mosque kills at least 235 worshippers

Niles Niemuth

At least 235 worshippers were killed Friday in an attack by Islamist militants on a Sufi mosque in the town of Bir al-Abed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Another 109 people were injured in what the Egyptian government has declared to be the deadliest terrorist attack in the country’s modern history.

The attack began when a possible suicide bomb was detonated inside the mosque just as afternoon Friday Prayers were finishing. As people fled the mosque they were fired on by masked men in pickup trucks. Vehicles had been set on fire to keep anyone from escaping. When ambulances arrived on the scene to tend to the dead and wounded, the gunmen opened fire on the paramedics, dramatically increasing the number of casualties.

In a televised address shortly after an emergency meeting with his cabinet ministers, Egyptian President Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sisi promised a swift response against those responsible for the attack. “The armed forces and the police will avenge our martyrs and restore security and stability with the utmost force,” Sisi declared.

Several hours later, Egyptian jetfighters descended on the mountains surrounding Bir al-Abed purportedly killing an unspecified number of fighters and destroying the vehicles used the attack.

The government also announced that in response to the attack it would be delaying the opening of the Rafah border crossing between the Sinai and the Gaza Strip. The crossing would have been open Saturday through Monday to allow crucial supplies into what is effectively an open-air prison for Palestinians maintained by Israel in conjunction with the Egyptian dictatorship.

While no group has claimed responsibility for the attack, it is likely to have been carried out by Sunni militants loyal to the Islamic States of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) who view Sufi Muslims as apostates.

An Islamist insurgency has been underway in the Sinai since 2013 when Egyptian President Mohammed Mursi was ousted in the military coup that brought Sisi to power. Until recently attacks had been mostly limited to military targets, check points and troop convoys.

The Sinai, a largely desert area that has a limited military presence, was used as a transit point for Islamist militants and weapons being funneled from Libya and Tunisia into Syria as part of the US effort to overthrow the Russian- and Iranian-backed Assad government.

With the official defeat of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, many of the foreign fighters are now returning to the Sinai and the wider region across North Africa.

Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, a Sunni Islamist militia which has been waging an insurgency against the Egyptian military in the Sinai, pledged allegiance to ISIS in 2014. The group claimed responsibility for the 2015 bombing of a Russian passenger jet which was flying out of the resort town of Sharm El Sheikh, killing all 224 onboard.

A commander of the group declared in January that they would eradicate Sufis living in the Sinai in including in the area where Friday’s attack took place. An elderly Sufi cleric was executed by the ISIS affiliate in late 2016 and Sufi shires have been targeted for destruction.

Other Islamist militias active in the Sinai include Ansar al-Islam a group which has purported ties to Al-Qaeda.

The attack brought perfunctory condemnations and words of support for the military dictatorship in Cairo from leaders around the world.

While sending his condolences US President Donald Trump used the opportunity to push for an expansion of the imperialist wars already being waged by the US in the Middle East and across Africa under the threadbare pretext of the so-called war on terror. “The world cannot tolerate terrorism, we must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence!” the president tweeted.

He followed up with a tweet which exploited the attack to push his reactionary anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim agenda. “We have to get TOUGHER AND SMARTER than ever before, and we will. Need the WALL, need the BAN! God bless the people of Egypt.”

Germany’s Social Democrats prepare for grand coalition with Merkel

Peter Schwarz

Four days after the failure of the exploratory talks on the formation of a Jamaica coalition between the conservative, liberal and Green parties, Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) is preparing the way for a continuation of the grand coalition.

On Monday the party executive had voted unanimously against participating in government and in favour of new elections. But after negotiations between SPD leader Martin Schulz and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and an eight-hour meeting involving the SPD leadership, General Secretary Hubertus Heil announced the change of course early Friday morning. The SPD is “firmly convinced that it is necessary to talk,” he said. The SPD will not exclude itself from government talks, he added.

However, the SPD did not want to explicitly commit to a grand coalition at this stage. “Within the SPD, the grand coalition is not automatic,” stated executive member Manuela Schwesig. But this is merely aimed at buying time so as to implement the new course.

It is now up to party leader Schulz to prepare the party for a change in course and explain it to the membership. That was the message from Willy Brandt House, the SPD’s headquarters. Schulz declared over Twitter that he would have the membership vote on the SPD’s participation in government. The SPD has planned a party congress for early December.

Along with a continuation of the grand coalition, another possibility currently being discussed is the SPD’s support for a minority government of the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU). But this is less likely. The offer is merely “the first step back into the grand coalition,” wrote Spiegel Online.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung stated that the minority government option would be “wrong” because it would weaken Germany in foreign policy: “In the situation in which Germany finds itself, and also the role that Germany possesses in Europe, it is inconceivable that the government would have to fear the securing of an agreement in its own parliament for every difficult decision.”

President Steinmeier, whose SPD membership has officially lapsed, has applied major pressure on his party over recent days to enter the government. He now no longer wants to let any time slip, and has invited the leaders of the SPD, CDU and CSU to Bellevue Palace next week to discuss how things are to proceed. He also intends to hold separate talks with the parliamentary leaders of the Free Democrats (FDP), Greens and the right-wing extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD).

The SPD decided to go into opposition after it received its worst result in 70 years in the September 24 election, in which the CDU and CSU also suffered substantial losses. The governing parties lost a total of 14 percentage points. The SPD fears that it will decline into insignificance, and that the working class will turn to the left if it remains in government in spite of the devastating verdict of the electorate.

After the talks on a potential CDU-FDP-Green coalition dragged out for weeks and ultimately collapsed, their priorities changed. President Steinmeier, President of the Bundestag (parliament) Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU), and other leading state representatives insisted that new elections had to be avoided at all costs. The reason for this was their concern that the widespread social dissatisfaction would find political expression in a new election campaign and that a protracted government crisis would undermine Germany’s international standing.

They rapidly gained supporters within the SPD. Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, who continues to serve temporarily in that position, Hamburg Mayor Olaf Scholz and other representatives of the party’s right-wing criticised Schulz, who continued to insist that the SPD should remain in opposition. On Thursday, Schulz relented.

A third installment of the grand coalition would differ significantly from its predecessors from 2005 to 2009 and 2013 to 2017. Emerging out of a major electoral defeat, the government will lack any democratic legitimacy. As a result, it will respond in a much more authoritarian and ruthless manner than its predecessor to pressure from below. Reading the newspaper commentaries on the SPD’s change of course leaves no room for doubt about this.

On Monday, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) was still paying “respect” to the FDP, because they torpedoed the Jamaica talks and “spared” Germany “a government full of contradictions.” The FAZ is now praising the SPD in the warmest tones because the party has bowed to the “state’s interests.”

“When the midwife bearing the name President intervenes in the labour ward of parliamentary democracy, all party desires must retreat in the face of the state’s interests,” wrote the conservative mouthpiece of the Frankfurt stock exchange.

The Weimar Republic, with which it compares the current situation, did not fail because the state elites—Reich President, the general staff, judiciary, and bourgeois parties—aligned themselves with the most reactionary forces and even appointed Hitler as chancellor, but rather because the “party landscape in an increasingly fractured spectrum” gained “the upper hand over the well-being of the state,” the FAZ wrote.

This is the classic justification for every dictatorship: as the social and political conflicts intensify, the parties—the political expression of social interests—and thus democracy, bow before the “well-being of the state.” On August 4, 1914, when the SPD voted for war credits for the First World War and opponents of the war were thrown in prison, Kaiser Wilhelm uttered the infamous statement, “I no longer recognise any parties, I recognise only Germans.”

Die Zeit is also enthusiastic about the SPD’s return to government. “The most important thing now is that Germany gets a new government soon that is not only capable of administering day-to-day business, but also of tackling the country’s problems, providing an answer to French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposals for renewing the EU, and responding to crises,” wrote the SPD-aligned weekly newspaper.

The SPD has long been the most aggressive party when it comes to “tackling the country’s problems” in the interests of the ruling elite and responding to international crises. The abolition of social and democratic rights has largely been implemented by the SPD—from the Hartz laws to the raising of the age of retirement to 67, the contract unity law, which suppresses smaller trade unions, and the Facebook law, which censors the Internet.

President Steinmeier, the driving force behind the grand coalition, was in 2003, as head of Gerhard Schröder’s chancellor’s office, the actual author of the right-wing Agenda 2010. As foreign minister, he played a leading role in 2014 in the revival of German militarism, and his successor Sigmar Gabriel is pressing ahead with strengthening the German army and the construction of an independent European army. It was Gabriel who made the statement that the rise of Trump should not only be seen as a threat, but as an opportunity for German big business to intervene more decisively in new regions of the world.

The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP) warned in its statement on the federal election, “All of the established parties—from the CDU/CSU, to the FDP, Greens, the SPD and the Left Party—support the policies of militarism, the strengthening of the domestic repressive state apparatus, and social cutbacks. They organise the social attacks at the federal and state level. They are all conspiring against the population.”

This is now being confirmed. The grand coalition is deeply unpopular, as shown by its losses in the federal election. If it is continued, it will be the result of a conspiracy behind the scenes. The SGP rejects this and demands new elections.

The policies of social cutbacks, strengthening of the state apparatus and militarism are being met with widespread opposition among workers and youth. But this opposition requires a political perspective; otherwise the right-wing will profit from the mounting frustration. The SGP is fighting for the building of a socialist alternative, which connects the struggle against war with the fight against social inequality and capitalism.

Net neutrality and the drive to censor the internet

Andre Damon

Wednesday’s move by the Trump administration to end net neutrality marks a milestone in the offensive by the US government and major corporations to put an end to the free and open internet, paving the way for widespread government censorship of oppositional news and analysis.

Under the current law, upheld by numerous court decisions and reaffirmed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 2015, companies that provide internet access to users, known as internet service providers (ISPs), cannot block or impede their users’ access to any website or service.

But the draft proposal published by FCC chairman Ajit Pai Wednesday, and expected to sail through the approval process next month, would put an end to the decades-long treatment of internet services as a public utility, allowing the internet monopolies Comcast, Charter, AT&T and Verizon full ability to block, throttle and promote internet traffic at will.

This will allow them to block or limit access to websites, such as the World Socialist Web Site, WikiLeaks and other sources of politically critical news, entirely at their discretion, as well as peer-to-peer file sharing networks, which were used by news outlets to bypass censorship in the past.

The ending of net neutrality will also have a substantial economic impact. By scrapping most government regulation of the internet giants, the ISPs will be able to use their monopoly power to jack up prices for consumers. While most people will be relegated to a slow and largely censored internet, the ability to communicate information freely will be reserved for those who can pay exorbitant premium rates.

Moreover, by forcing content providers to pay for premium access, the ending of net neutrality threatens to massively entrench existing communications monopolies, while restricting access to smaller businesses and user-supported sites and services, which will not have the financial resources to compete with the technology and media giants. ISPs will be free to increase costs for smaller sites and services, potentially driving them out of business.

Major media outlets, which have for years been inveighing against the independent blogs, websites and other news outlets that gained readership at their expense, will no doubt seek to use the ruling to bring to bear their economic leverage to regain their former control over the political discourse.

The power that is being handed to a few corporations is staggering. The four largest telecommunications companies control more than 75 percent of high-speed internet service. More than half of American households have only one ISP to chose from, and most other households have only two providers to choose from.

Now, these giant monopolies, which have already demonstrated that they act as proxies for the government by collaborating in the NSA’s illegal mass surveillance programs, will be able to block access to entire websites.

While the major social media and content distribution companies, including Facebook and Google, have claimed to oppose the move, they do so entirely from the standpoint that ending net neutrality will give internet service providers greater power to compete with their businesses.

Facebook, Twitter, and Google, which owns YouTube, have made clear that they fully support internet censorship, which is the essential content of the ending of net neutrality.

This week, Facebook announced that it would notify users when they read content from accounts accused by US intelligence agencies of spreading “Russian propaganda,” creating a backlist of outlets presenting critical sources of news and analysis.

This followed the announcement by Google executive Eric Schmidt that the company would “de-rank” RT, Sputnik and what it called “those kinds of sites,” in its search and news products. This is an open-ended statement of intent to censor not just Russia-connected news sites, but effectively all political opposition. Schmidt’s comments were a confirmation of statements by the World Socialist Web Site that Google is seeking to limit access to sites based on political criteria.

Google’s YouTube, meanwhile, has gone on a censorship spree, taking down videos and banning and demonetizing channels it claims are spreading “extremist” views.

The ending of net neutrality plays a key role in this censorship drive. Under conditions that existed prior to the ending of net neutrality, users were able to bypass these forms of heavy-handed censorship by turning to smaller and more open platforms to find and share information.

But with the ending of net neutrality, the social media and streaming monopolies will be able, by cutting deals with the ISPs, to strangle their upstart competitors, keeping users locked into platforms that increasingly serve as little more than distribution networks for state-approved propaganda.

Billions of people all over the world have embraced the internet precisely because it promised a free and unimpeded way to access and share information. Oppositional and socialist organizations, excluded for decades from the public discourse by the effective monopoly exercised by major newspapers, TV, and radio stations, found an audience hungry for information suppressed by the increasingly discredited establishment media.

The government’s lies—from the “weapons of mass destruction” that justified the invasion of Iraq, to government complicity with Islamist organizations it was supposedly fighting in the “war on terror,” to mass surveillance and the corrupt and oligarchic nature of American politics—have been exposed by internet publications.

Now, under conditions of a mounting war threat and soaring social inequality, public access to alternative sources of information is seen as an intolerable threat, to be shut off and suppressed.

Internet communications are not a luxury, but a vital social need and should be treated as a public utility. However, under conditions in which three billionaires control as much wealth as half the US population, and all of social and economic life is controlled by a shrinking number of powerful corporations, the provision of all social rights, from communications to the most basic necessities of public infrastructure, are treated as privileges available only to the increasingly small sliver of the population that is able to pay for them.

The demand for the most basic social rights, including the freedom of the press and the freedom of speech, comes into conflict with the capitalist system.

The defense of a free and open internet is inseparably bound up with the struggle against capitalism, based on the independent and international mobilization of the working class around a socialist program.

The massive and bloated technology monopolies, who now see their primary function as being the blocking, not the dissemination, of information, must be seized and turned into publicly owned utilities, with the aim of providing the entire world’s combined knowledge to the whole global population.

Queensland election highlights political crisis across Australia

Mike Head 

Tomorrow’s election in the northern state of Queensland has become a concentrated expression of the breakdown of the long-standing two-party parliamentary system, as well as of the deeper political impasse confronting the working class in Australia and internationally.

Various media polls point to both traditional ruling parties, Labor and the Liberal National Party (LNP), struggling to push their respective votes over 30 percent, opening the door for the extreme right-wing One Nation to possibly pick up enough seats to enter government for the first time anywhere in Australia.

One Nation is cynically exploiting the public disgust toward the political establishment, falsely depicting its pro-business agenda as “anti-elite,” while trying to divert social and political disaffection in poisonous nationalist and anti-Asian and anti-Islamic directions.

The election outcome could reverberate across the country, potentially accelerating the collapse of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s Liberal-National government. More fundamentally, the crisis poses the necessity for the working class to break out of the political straitjacket of the Labor Party and the trade unions and turn to an alternative socialist perspective.

The LNP is openly prepared to enter a coalition with One Nation, an avowedly anti-immigrant and xenophobic party. Labor has insisted it will not do a deal with One Nation, warning that would create “instability.” But Labor MPs are publicly cosying up to Senator Pauline Hanson’s party, sharing its rabid nationalism.

The seething hostility to the two “major” parties is the product of decades of mounting attacks on the jobs, living standards and basic services of the working class to satisfy the dictates of the financial elite. This corporate offensive has been imposed by one government after another, both Labor and LNP, and enforced by the trade unions, which have smothered every outbreak of opposition by workers.

Years of bitter experiences have demonstrated the political dead-end confronting millions of working people across Australia’s third most populous state. Over the past decade, in particular, the 2008 global financial meltdown and the subsequent implosion of the mining boom that propped up the state economy have produced mass unemployment—up to 20 percent officially—and social misery in working class and regional areas.

This economic and social breakdown has produced unprecedented political fluctuations. Five years ago, in 2012, the two decade-old Queensland Labor government of premiers Peter Beattie and Anna Bligh was thrown out of office in a landslide that reduced Labor to a parliamentary rump of just seven seats.

Just three months after the 2009 state election, Bligh had repudiated her electioneering promises to defend, not cut, public services. She announced a $15 billion sell-off of public enterprises, axing thousands of railway and other jobs.

Explicitly backed by the then federal Labor government, Bligh declared that her decision was essential to restore the state’s AAA-credit rating on the global financial markets after the 2008 crash.

The trade unions proceeded to suffocate the opposition of rail and other workers, paving the way for the election of a LNP government. For her services, Bligh was well rewarded—she is now the CEO and public face of the Australian Bankers Association, directly representing the interests of the financial oligarchy.

The incoming LNP government, led by Premier Campbell Newman, set about slashing healthcare and other essential social services, axing 14,000 public sector jobs, in an effort to appease the financial markets and attract rapacious investors. That assault allowed Labor to scrape back into office in 2015, with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk heading a precarious minority government.

Over the past three years, Labor has refused to restore the services gutted by the LNP. Nor has it been able to reverse the economic decline, despite offering huge subsidies to corporate operators, including royalty rebates, infrastructure funding and other concessions worth an estimated $500 million over the next five years for the Adani company’s proposed coal mine in central Queensland.

Instead, hand-in hand with its desperate pro-business measures, the Labor government has undertaken a law-and-order offensive, boosting police numbers, resources and powers to deal with anticipated social unrest. Palaszczuk also joined her state counterparts and Turnbull’s government in introducing police-state provisions, such as extended detention without charge, under the guise of combatting terrorism.

Labor’s main pitch to voters has been to play upon fears of another LNP government, headed by Tim Nicholls, who was the Newman government’s treasurer and personally championed its mass job destruction. Labor’s main election advertising slogan warns of “cuts and chaos” under a LNP-One Nation coalition.

Beneath the sloganeering, Palaszczuk’s essential appeal has been to business leaders to back Labor as a more reliable instrument for inflicting their requirements. At Labor’s official campaign launch last Sunday, she insisted the election was “a choice between certainty and uncertainty, a choice between stability and instability.”

Cynically, the trade unions are doing everything they can to corral their members behind yet another corporate-dominated Labor government. Their election slogans, such as “It’ll be grim under Tim [Nicholls],” are designed to block any examination of Labor’s record, especially under Bligh. Palaszczuk was a key minister—the transport minister—in Bligh’s hated government.

The Greens are playing a parallel role. While trying to win an inner-Brisbane seat from Labor, by appealing to upper middle-class voters in gentrified suburbs, they are essentially backing Labor’s retention of office. Likewise, the pseudo-left Socialist Alliance is running a candidate in a central Brisbane electorate to provide a safety valve for discontent, but allocating its preferences to the Greens and Labor.

All the most critical political issues facing working class and young people have been buried throughout the campaign. Behind a wall of phony election promises, both Labor and the LNP have avoided any discussion about their commitments to the financial markets to reduce the state’s ballooning public debt. There is a conspiracy of silence about the reality—as soon as the election is out of the way, the next government will intensify the assault on the jobs, conditions and basic services of the working class.

Above all, there is no mention of the escalating danger of a catastrophic war, triggered by Washington’s aggression against North Korea and China, with both Labor and the Coalition pledging unconditional involvement in any US military operation.

One Nation, which also backs US militarism, has no solutions to the social distress it is capitalising on. Its program mainly rests on promoting the profit interests of national-based business operators who are being squeezed by the big banks and transnational corporations. The poorest and most vulnerable members of society would be the primary victims of its anti-welfare and divisive policies.

Polling has shown that only about 13 percent of intending One Nation voters are motivated by its policies, whereas 45 percent are simply determined to “shake things up” or dislike the old parties. One Nation is also wracked by its own rifts, with its latest federal Senate nominee, Fraser Anning, splitting from the party before he was even sworn into office last week.

This right-wing formation is only able to feed off the political alienation because the working class remains sidelined and suppressed by Labor and the unions, which have been at the forefront of enforcing the social devastation. Alongside similar experiences in Europe and internationally, this demonstrates the urgent necessity for a conscious political turn to the only progressive alternative: a socialist and internationalist program.

Hundreds of paper mill jobs to be axed in US Pacific Northwest

Hector Cordon 

Up to 300 workers will have their jobs cut in the one-industry town of Camas, Washington when the paper mill, which has operated since 1885, closes down several of its operations. Approximately 120 to 140 workers will remain in the huge facility, which, at its height in the early 1970s, employed over 2,600 workers.

Multinational paper products giant Georgia-Pacific, a subsidiary of Koch Industries, says weak copy-paper demand is forcing it to halt production of paper used in printers and copiers, as well as wood pulping operations and other related procedures. It plans to implement these production and job cuts in the second quarter of 2018 while continuing its profitable paper towel manufacturing operations.

“The paper mill is the reason Camas exists,” Peter Capell, city administrator, told the local media. “The biggest concern we have about this is the people. They have mortgages, college payments, retirement. It’s something I wouldn’t wish on anybody.”

In August, NORPAC (North Pacific Paper Company), located in Longview, Washington, announced the shutdown of its Paper Machine No. 1, one of three such machines, and the slashing of half of the production workers, or approximately 50 jobs. One Rock Capital Partners moved rapidly after buying the mill from Weyerhaeuser in 2016, unilaterally imposing a ten-percent wage cut and significant reductions in retirement benefits on the nonunion workforce this past May.

Georgia-Pacific’s notice comes less than a month after West Linn Paper Company announced plans to immediately close its Willamette Falls, Oregon mill, eliminating 250 jobs. The mill was previously closed in 1996 by James River Corporation and reopened a year later as a nonunion operation.

Greg Pallesen, president of the Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers (AWPPW), sought to direct workers’ anger and opposition in a nationalist direction, blaming “cheaper” Asian paper imports. The anti-Asian agitation—which echoes the America First nationalism of Trump and his fascistic former aide Stephen Bannon—has nothing to do with defending workers’ jobs. Its aim is to subordinate the working class to the profit interests of the corporations and impose further wage and benefit cuts in the name of making American capitalism more competitive.

This is why the national AWPPW and Local 5 (the bargaining agent for the Camas workers) have remained silent about the overwhelming rejection by rank-and-file workers of Georgia-Pacific’s retrograde contract offer and their vote last August to authorize strike action.

The company’s contract offer would create a two-tier structure, with new employees earning lower wages and benefits. In addition to a 20 percent reduction in wages, new hires would lose the defined pension plan, have fewer holidays, reduced vacation pay and no wage increase.

For current employees, wages would only increase a miserly one percent on average, while allowing only health care plans with reduced benefits and higher deductibles. In addition, the proposed contract would allow the contracting out of floor work, maintenance and production.

That this contract has been in negotiation since 2014 gives the highly paid executives at Georgia-Pacific and the billionaire Koch brothers every reason to believe that the union will sanction the latest round of job cuts. The AWPPW’s capitulation in 2010 to Georgia-Pacific’s imposition of a concessions-filled “last, best and final” ultimatum provides additional grist to their belief. Despite every member voting “no” at that time against the proposed contract and authorizing a strike, the AWPPW, revealing its pro-corporate orientation, refused to conduct any struggle against G-P, let alone mobilize thousands of paper mill workers facing similar attacks by other wood and paper corporations.

In defying the strike authorization vote by rank-and-file workers, the union is acting as a labor police force for the corporations, facilitating the slashing of 300 jobs now and even more in the future. This betrayal will only lead to more social devastation in the region, including a new wave of home foreclosures, drug overdoses and suicides.

Since the purchase of Georgia-Pacific by the Koch brothers in 2005 for $21 billion, the number of better-compensated unionized G-P employees has dropped from 22,000 to 11,800 currently. While the brothers’ far-right inclinations and support for the Republican Party are notorious, the states of Washington and Oregon have both been longtime bastions of the Democratic Party. The promotion of economic nationalism and the political subordination of workers to the Democratic Party has been used to block workers from taking up the struggle which is necessary: an industry-wide battle combined with a political struggle against both pro-corporate parties, the Democrats and Republicans.

Paper mill workers have to draw the lessons of the 2010 Longview Fibre Paper and Packaging Inc. (now owned by KapStone Paper and Packaging) contract struggle. In the 2010 contract fight, a bitter conflict in which workers rejected two offers, the second time by 634 to 1, workers were ultimately forced to accept concessions after the union offered an unconditional return to work. Two years later, after years of losing money, Longview Fiber earned $118 million.

In the 2015 contract negotiations, this time with the new owner KapStone, a strike was called after the company declared an impasse and unilaterally imposed its final contract offer. After a seven-day strike, the AWPPW sabotaged the struggle and offered another unconditional return to work, which the company accepted. Upon ratification, which occurred two years after the previous contract expired, the AWPPW could only cite the rehiring of four workers accused of strike misconduct by the company to falsely declare the strike a “victory.”

This record shows that paper mill workers can place no confidence in the AWPPW. Only through the formation of rank-and-file committees that will appeal for industry-wide support, nationally and internationally, can a genuine struggle be organized to defend the jobs and living standards of all workers.

The real maternal mortality rate in the United States

Benjamin Mateus 

It is a known national embarrassment that among OECD countries, the United States ranks 30th in its maternal mortality death rates, only behind Mexico.

In 2000, the Millennium Summit of the United Nations established eight international development goals for the year 2015 that were adopted by the 191 member states. One of these goals was to decrease the maternal mortality rates globally by 75 percent.

A Lancet 2016 systematic analysis of this global effort highlighted that only 10 countries achieved the reduction in maternal mortality rate (MMR) of 75 percent in the period from 1990 to 2015. Overall, global maternal deaths did decline by 30 percent. Most of those reductions occurred after the Millennium declaration.

However, the MMR increased in 26 countries, including a 56 percent rise in the US from 16.9 deaths per 100,000 in 1990 to 24.7 deaths in 2015. Luxembourg, Canada and Greece were the other developed countries with a rise in MMR, but their overall rate is still two to three times lower by comparison. The other countries with rising MMR include many of the sub-Saharan African nations as well as islands such as Jamaica, Saint Lucia, American Samoa and Guam.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines maternal death as the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of the pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and site of the pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management, but not from accidental or incidental causes.

Maternal mortality rates for 48 US states, Washington DC, Texas and California, from data published by The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and MMR from the CDC.

In 2000, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) set a national goal for maternal death no higher than 3.3 deaths per 100,000 live births by 2010. In that year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported an MMR rate of 13.2. Despite this national goal, the CDC reported that the US MMR had risen to 17.8 by 2009. Yet, many had argued that these reported statistics were still well below the actual magnitude. Delays in adopting the new standards for reporting maternal deaths, using nonstandard questions or having no pregnancy questions on the death certificate, made them unreliably low.

Maternal death rates are calculated by collecting the data from death certificates. These are compiled by each state and reported to the CDC’s Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance system. In the US, the manner in which death certificates were filled out and their relation to pregnancy were inconsistent and did not capture the relationship of that death to a woman’s pregnancy.

Before 2003, only three states collected data according to the WHO criteria. Fifteen states had pregnancy questions with variable timeframes from termination of pregnancy to the death, while 32 states and Washington DC did not have pregnancy questions on their death certificates.

It was only in 2003 that the HHS secretary approved revisions to the death certificate that captured pregnancy related questions. However, only four states—New York, Montana, Idaho and California—adopted these changes immediately. California elected to capture a one-year period on their death certificate versus 42 days, thereby combining both maternal and late maternal deaths. It would take another 11 years for 44 states and Washington DC to trickle in and implement these changes. Virginia was the last state to adopt the revision to the death certificate in 2017.

A damning study was published in 2016 in Obstetrics and Gynecology, titled “Recent Increases in the US Maternal Mortality Rate: Disentangling Trends from Measurement Issues.” The observational study “analyzed vital statistics from maternal mortality data from all US states in relation to the format and year of adoption of the pregnancy question [on their state death certificate].” The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics is the official source for the reporting of MMR in the US and comparison with other nations as reviewed above. Studies conducted before 2003 had noted an under-reporting of maternal deaths in the National Vital Statistics System and are considered inaccurate. This study intended to address this discrepancy.

As the authors note, maternal deaths are rare events and therefore difficult to analyze state by state, except in the most populous. Reportedly there were 396 deaths in 2000, increasing to 856 deaths in 2014. They examined California separately because it chose to define maternal mortality within one year of pregnancy instead of 42 days per the WHO guidelines. Though Texas adopted revisions to their death certificate in 2006, they were analyzed separately because of a sharp rise in 2010 that saw maternal mortality double. The data for the other states and Washington DC were combined into four groups, according to when they initiated revisions to their death certificates.

“Unadjusted data from all states regardless of revised death certificates demonstrated that US maternal mortality more than doubled from 9.8 deaths per 100,000 in 2000 to 21.5 in 2014,” the study notes.

For group 1 (24 states and Washington DC) who did not have a pregnancy question on their death certificate in 2003, but had made revisions to their death certificates before 2013, the statistical modeling adjusted mortality rate provided a correction factor of 1.932. That means they adjusted for the undercounting in the years before revision such that the new MMR was calculated at 18.2 in 2000, increasing to 22.8 in 2014.

For group 2 (14 states) that had a nonstandard pregnancy question, the correction factor was 2.067, changing the MMR to 18.4 in 2000 and rising to 24.5 in 2014.

Group 3 included eight states that had not revised their death certificates as of late 2013 and could not be adjusted for their analysis. Not surprisingly their rates are lower, at 8.0 to 10.4 in the intervening years. Group 4 comprised three states that followed the WHO guidelines. Their MMR was 14.0 in 2000, rising to 19.9 by 2014.

Though Texas revised its death certificate in 2006, it was analyzed separately. Adjusted MMR for 2000 to 2010 was 17.7 to 18.6. After 2010, a sharp twofold rise was seen, jumping to 33.0 in 2011 and rising to 35.8 by 2014. The authors note that this data remains puzzling and unexplained. They write, “In the absence of war, natural disaster, or severe economic upheaval, the doubling of a mortality rate within a 2-year period in a state with almost 400,000 annual births seems unlikely.”

When California adopted revisions to their death certificate, their MMR doubled from 10 in 2003 to 21.5 to 2004. The state moved to implement measures that addressed postpartum hemorrhage and hypertensive disorders that contributed to the reduction in mortality as seen in the graph.

Maternal deaths revised upward

Overall, the study found that adjusted MMR for 48 states and DC was 18.8 in 2000 and rose to 23.8 by 2014, an increase of 26.6 percent. This data was based on 7,269 maternal deaths and 46,722,133 live births in the intervening years. Twenty percent of the observed increase in the unadjusted rise was the result of a real increase in maternal mortality, and 79.9 percent was the result of improved ascertainment.

It is a scandal that the richest country in the world has a chronic underfunding of the state and national vital statistics system such that accurate and reliable data cannot be obtained to enact necessary timely changes. By any standard in the financial sectors, an 80 percent disparity in such accounting would have the news media clamoring to report the event and congressional hearings would follow in days, with senators demanding answers to such negligence. But this is intentional if viewed from a socioeconomic perspective. If this were considered important, then resources would be directed to nationalizing and augmenting the woefully lacking maternal services in the US.

Four million women give birth each year in the US. Pregnancy remains the top reason for admission to the hospital. Where such statistics could garner attention and demand action, for nearly 15 years we have remained blind to this existing travesty. The US has no national review of maternal deaths.

Given the projected shortage of 8,000 to 9,000 physicians and midwives by 2023, the impending cuts to Medicare, and virtually zero interest within the two big business parties to address the crisis of maternal health care, there is little chance to correct this without a concerted effort on the part of the working class to demand accountability as part of the overall fight to replace the for-profit health care system with socialized medicine.

Thanksgiving in Los Angeles: From Hollywood’s American dream to social nightmare

Marc Wells

While the Hollywood establishment is fully engaged in other matters, the social reality in Los Angeles on the Thanksgiving holiday stands in stark contrast to media depictions of the entertainment capital as the place where the American dream comes true.

Last June, a report revealed that the number of homeless in Los Angeles County jumped to 58,000, a 23 percent increase from 2016. In recent weeks, a hepatitis A outbreak among the homeless population has prompted officials to declare a state of emergency in some areas. Last month, it was reported that this year there are thousands fewer shelter beds than in 2009, with only 0.3 beds per homeless person.

Part of LA's Skid Row

According to the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, an estimated 1.4 million people in Los Angeles County live with food insecurity. Put differently, approximately one out of every six people do not know where their next meal will come from. Exorbitant housing and soaring transportation costs are pushing families with two incomes into food deprivation.

An index of worsening conditions is given by a 68 percent increase in the youth homeless population (18- to 24-year-olds) over 2016. Los Angeles community colleges report that one in five students is homeless, while two-thirds cannot afford proper nutrition.

The situation for homeless youth is believed to be worse than reported. Bill Bedrossian, the CEO of Covenant House California, a nonprofit organization that serves homeless 18- to 24-year-olds, commented that his organization has seen an increase of young men and women in recent years. Half of them are former foster kids.

Moreover, homeless youth are often more "invisible" than other homeless, Bedrossian says, as they often find refuge with friends or keep odd hours, instead of sleeping on sidewalks or registering in shelters.

This phenomenon was also confirmed by Nathan Sheets, director of operations and programs for the Center at Blessed Sacrament in Hollywood, California, an organization that provides support for the homeless. “The numbers underestimate many of those youth who stay with friends and relatives,” Sheets told the WSWS.

The solution to social problems by the establishment is either to hide or institutionalize them. Homelessness enjoys both treatments.

On one hand the severity of social inequality is rigorously concealed by diversion campaigns. On the other, politicians, especially Democrats, propose hundreds of millions of dollars not to address the underlying issues typical of capitalist society, such as social inequality, but to make homelessness an institution with which society should learn to permanently coexist, while private contractors are given the chance to enrich themselves off public funds.

It doesn’t require exceptional imagination to foresee that the proposed tax cut bill passed by the US House of Representatives last week, which includes an estimated $1.5 trillion tax cuts for corporations, will produce deadly conditions for the socially vulnerable, as the budget for aid programs are slashed and crucial entitlement and social programs like Social Security and Medicare are threatened.

Skid Row Thanksgiving

Downtown Los Angeles has long been an area of homeless encampments. Every year, the Los Angeles Mission Downtown organizes the “Skid Row Thanksgiving,” serving meals to the homeless. Hundreds of tents are situated in the area around 5th Street and San Pedro Street.

The urban landscape here resembles deeply impoverished communities in underdeveloped countries. California, a state that alone ranks as the world’s sixth largest economy in terms of gross domestic product also scores the nation’s highest poverty rate.

George and his children

A WSWS reporting team visited Skid Row on Thanksgiving Day and spoke to a few volunteers.

George, a social worker from Lakewood working with foster kids, substance abuse and family therapy, shared his thoughts on social inequality: “Capitalism is self-centered. When is ‘enough’ enough? Our priorities are off. Tony Stark in ‘Ironman’ said: ‘World peace means having a bigger stick than the other guy.’ I don’t believe in that at all.

“As a social worker I believe in the cause of the common people in our society. We don’t put the needs of the few ahead of the needs of the many.

“I just got my master’s in social work last year and I have to live with my in-laws, to whom of course I’m grateful. My parents were immigrants from Tonga with eight kids. We faced the immigrant struggle and dealing with the trauma of poverty. I lost two brothers to drugs and gang. I took out loans, graduated, now rebuilding, saving, but it’s hard.”

Chico

Chico, an actor, noted, “America is supposed to be the land of milk and honey, but it really is sardines and vinegar for so many. The billions spent for the military? We are told we must prepare for the worst, but the worst is already happening here. We must take that money and take care of people.

“The reality is that the poor is going to turn on the rich. When the village speaks… and the village is speaking now!”

Kymm, a real estate agent, pointed her finger to the high-rises on the Downtown Los Angeles skyline: “If you think about the amount of money that’s circulated in those buildings, just one of them, like US Bank, would wipe out the homeless issue. When you think of the amount of money just in Los Angeles, you can see the ability to change the conditions.

“I’m in real estate, I know how much those high rises are worth. Still they [bank executives] are able to walk out and walk over a homeless person on their way to a sushi dinner. We can’t expect the solution to come from Washington. We should think globally too. We start locally to mushroom globally. We cannot accept that women, children, the elderly and the ill should live on the streets.”

Kymm and her family

Kim and Rubin expressed their concern over ever increasing levels of social inequality. Kim stated, “Southern California has a lot of money. But what we see here is a lot of regular people willing to sacrifice their holiday to help others in need. Our system, our government are a little messed up. Politicians are out for themselves and their businesses. They don’t care about the little person.”

Kim and Rubin

Rubin interjected: “The rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. An average person making between $25, 000 and $50, 000 cannot afford living in California where home prices keep going up. Many end up living on the street. Other governments like in Canada at least give people free health care. Not here in the US, especially here in California, with all the wealth. It’s sad to see so many people below poverty line.”

Commenting on the wealth concentration in the US, in light of reports that the wealth of Bezos, Buffett and Gates equals that of the bottom 50 percent of the US population, Rubin stated that “having three people who have that much wealth, there’s something wrong. How can you keep that much money and be indifferent to so many people struggling?”

Amazon announces new cloud to host “Secret” government data

Evan Blake

Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing company owned by Amazon, announced Monday that they are launching a new “AWS Secret Region” cloud designed to host government data classified as “Secret.” The AWS Secret Region is the most recent product of the company’s $600 million deal reached in 2013 with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the military-intelligence apparatus, and signals the complete integration of Amazon with the government and spy agencies.

While no details have emerged about the cost, security architecture or design of the Secret Region cloud, leading company and state officials are hailing it as the culmination of Amazon’s deepening partnership with the American spy agencies.

In a post on the “AWS Government, Education, & Nonprofits Blog,” the company proudly proclaims, “With the launch of this new Secret Region, AWS becomes the first and only commercial cloud provider to offer regions to serve government workloads across the full range of data classifications, including Unclassified, Sensitive, Secret, and Top Secret. By using the cloud, the U.S. Government is better able to deliver necessary information and data to mission stakeholders.”

Summarizing the significance of the new storage cloud, Teresa Carlson, vice president at AWS Worldwide Public Sector, said in a statement, “The U.S. Intelligence Community can now execute their missions with a common set of tools, a constant flow of the latest technology and the flexibility to rapidly scale with the mission. The AWS Top Secret Region was launched three years ago as the first air-gapped commercial cloud and customers across the U.S. Intelligence Community have made it a resounding success. Ultimately, this capability allows more agency collaboration, helps get critical information to decision makers faster, and enables an increase in our Nation’s Security.”

John Edwards, the chief information officer of the CIA, declared, “The AWS Secret Region is a key component of the Intel Community’s multi-fabric cloud strategy. It will have the same material impact on the IC at the Secret level that C2S has had at Top Secret.”

The “AWS Top Secret Region” that Carlson and Edwards refer to is a private, off-the-grid computing cloud used solely by the 17 agencies that comprise the military-intelligence state apparatus. The cloud, known as the Commercial Cloud Service (C2S), stores large portions of the internet and telecommunications data collected by the IC agencies. It is a component of the Intelligence Community Information Technology Enterprise (IC ITE) program launched in 2011 in response to the data breaches carried out by Chelsea Manning, which exposed the war crimes carried out by American imperialism in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In a speech given before the 2017 AWS Public Sector Summit in Washington DC last June, Edwards heaped praise upon Amazon for the benefits that the C2S cloud has brought the CIA and other spy agencies. He declared, “It’s the best decision we ever made. It’s the most innovative thing we’ve ever done. It is making a material difference and having a material impact on both the CIA and IC [intelligence community].”

Edwards noted that the cloud has led to significant cost savings, while providing the IC with the ability to “scale vast infrastructures in seconds.” He revealed that “adoption of the cloud across the IC is growing at 208 percent year-over-year.”

Edwards went on to characterize the C2S cloud as the equivalent of a superhero, possessing the superpowers of Speed, Power, Scalability, Strength, Durability and Truth, with each attribute as a separate heading on his PowerPoint slides.

Regarding the “Strength” of the C2S cloud, he stated, “I’m never gonna say that anything you do in the cyber world is totally invincible, but this is pretty close. … I would argue and say that this is probably the most secure thing there is out there.”

Edwards’ claims that C2S is nearly impenetrable are belied by revelations made last week that a massive database created by the Department of Defense (DoD) and hosted on an AWS server has been publicly exposed. The database contained upwards of 1.8 billion internet posts from thousands of people across the world that had been compiled by the Pentagon over the past eight years, apparently as part of a vast intelligence-gathering operation. In all likelihood, this database was classified as Top Secret and therefore could have been hosted on the supposedly impenetrable C2S cloud.

Breaking the story, US cybersecurity firm UpGuard wrote, “UpGuard Director of Cyber Risk Research Chris Vickery discovered three Amazon Web Services S3 cloud storage buckets configured to allow any AWS global authenticated user to browse and download the contents; AWS accounts of this type can be acquired with a free sign-up.”

Describing the character of the released documents, UpGuard noted, “The repositories appear to contain billions of public internet posts and news commentary scraped from the writings of many individuals from a broad array of countries, including the United States, by CENTCOM and PACOM, two Pentagon unified combatant commands charged with US military operations across the Middle East, Asia, and the South Pacific.”

The character and immense scale of this data gathering operation provide a glimpse into the profoundly antidemocratic spying activities which the Pentagon and spy agencies engage in every day, and which Amazon has been profiting from handsomely in recent years.

The internet posts compiled by the Pentagon included “content captured from news sites, comment sections, web forums, and social media sites like Facebook, featuring multiple languages and originating from countries around the world,” according to UpGuard.

As Google and other tech companies are working with the American state to censor the internet and countries around the world prepare their own plans for internet censorship—all in the name of combating the bogeyman of “fake news”—the Pentagon has secretly been engaged in mass surveillance of the global population’s online activity, in close consultation with Amazon.

The creation of the new Secret Region cloud, alongside the broader drive toward internet censorship and surveillance, highlights the growing integration of all the major tech corporations with the state in preparation for a vast expansion of war abroad and attacks on democratic rights within the US.

Last Thursday, the Senate voted to approve the $700 billion National Defense Authorization Act by a voice vote, after it quickly passed through the House of Representatives by a bipartisan vote of 356 to 70. While significantly increasing troop levels and providing funding for more ships and military equipment, the budget also mandates the creation of “e-commerce portals,” which will eventually lead to the funneling of billions of dollars directly to Amazon.

US expands military offensive in Somalia

Eddie Haywood 

Since the beginning of the year, the US has rapidly expanded its forces and significantly ramped up its military offensive in Somalia, conducting at least 28 air strikes in 2017. By comparison, 13 such air strikes were carried out in 2016, and five during 2015.

On Tuesday, AFRICOM stated that a US air strike killed more than 100 at a training camp purportedly belonging to the Somali-based Al-Shabaab militia. The air strike impacted an area around 125 miles northwest of capital city Mogadishu. US officials claimed the strike was carried out at the request of the US-backed Federal Transitional Government (FTG).

Speaking on the US pretext for the attack, a spokesperson from AFRICOM told the media, “Al-Shabaab has publicly committed to planning and conducting attacks against the US and our partners in the region.”

The attack is part of the broader US campaign against Al-Shabaab, in which the US has carried out repeated drone strikes against militants in the several weeks since a truck bombing in central Mogadishu by Al-Shabaab killed over 350. Increased air strikes augment a ramped-up military offensive by the Trump administration in the Horn of Africa.

The expanded campaign comes with new rules of engagement enacted by the Trump administration in March, granting broad authority to US forces to conduct open-ended warfare. These loosened restrictions on rules that were ostensibly in place to protect the civilian population from US bombardment make it clear that Washington is preparing for a dramatically expanded military offensive in Somalia.

Al-Shabaab maintains a strong presence in the center and south of the country, but has steadily lost ground since 2011, when US-backed forces from the African Union routed the militia that had taken control over most of Mogadishu.

In deploying the largest contingent of US military troops in the country since 1993, AFRICOM has increased its troops in Somalia to more than 500 soldiers. In launching an all-out offensive in the country, the deployment includes special operations personnel, including Green Berets and Navy Seals, the elite commandos known for carrying out US imperialism’s gravest crimes.

For its part, the Pentagon sought to downplay the significance of the increased troop levels. Lt. Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Politico, “I would not associate that with a buildup, as you’re calling it. I think it’s just the flow of forces in and out as different organizations come in that might be sized a little differently, and I certainly don’t think there’s a ramp-up of attacks.”

Despite this, the increased number of US troops taken together with more than twice the number of air strikes over the previous year constitutes a significant expansion of the American military campaign in the country.

Robyn Mack, spokesperson for AFRICOM, said, “[The larger] advise and assist mission [is now] the most significant element of our partnership [in Somalia].”

For the better part of a decade, the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab militia has sought to topple the US-backed government in Mogadishu. The US, in carrying out its offensive against the militia, has been augmented by over 22,000 troops from the African Union, consisting of forces from several African countries, together with the Somali army. The African Union mission, called AMISOM, having officially lead the US-backed offensive since 2007, is set to withdraw its forces in December 2020.

Retired Brigadier General Donald Bolduc, who headed AFRICOM until June, spoke of the expansion to Politico: “We had to put more small teams on the ground to partner in a regional way with the Somali government. So we changed our strategy and we changed our operational approach. That’s why the footprint went up.”

AFRICOM’s expansion follows the template set in 2016 in the northern Somali region of Puntland, when AFRICOM deployed elite soldiers to assist the Somali army in routing ISIS militants who had taken control of the city of Qandala.

Outlining Washington’s strategy as a move toward a more proactive military offensive in the country, Bolduc said, “Puntland was the example we used. We said, ‘We can do this in the other areas.’ So we changed our strategy and we changed our operational approach.”

Being more specific, Bolduc said, “Do we get into contact with the enemy? Yes, we do—our partners do and we’re there to support it, and sometimes we come into contact by virtue of how the enemy attacked them.” Bolduc went on, “Taking out high-value targets is necessary, but it’s not going to lead you to strategic success, and it’s not going to build capability and capacity in our partners to secure themselves. So we provided a plan that complemented the kinetic strikes.”

Since the end of the Mohamed Siad Barre dictatorship in 1991, the US has been engaged in an effort to secure a puppet regime in Mogadishu. The consequent decades of war and conflict stoked by US imperialism have left the country in complete disarray, with the population experiencing conditions of mass deprivation and misery.

According to UN figures, more than half the population does not have access to clean water sources, and 73 percent are completely impoverished. Due to the destruction of vital infrastructure, the Somali masses have been deprived of access to decent health care and education.

The US-backed FTG government has no popular support anywhere in the country, and is viewed with outright hostility by the majority of Somalis. The military offensive and drone strikes carried out by the US and its proxy forces have killed thousands of Somalis. The consequent destruction of Somali society has led to the emergence of Al-Shabaab.

The American military expansion in the Horn of Africa must be seen in the context of China’s far-reaching and expanding economic influence on the continent, together with Beijing’s recent opening of a navy base in Djibouti, which has provoked Washington’s ire. Washington is seeking to neutralize Beijing’s influence by military force.

In establishing its first overseas base, some five miles from the joint US/French military base Camp Lemonnier, Beijing agreed to pay the Djibouti government $100 million per year. Beijing claimed the base is merely a “logistics facility.”

Last week, China’s POLY-GCL Petroleum Group signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of Djibouti to invest $4 billion in a natural gas project at Damerjog near the border with Somalia. In six months, the company will begin construction on the project, which includes a pipeline, a liquefaction plant, and an export terminal. The pipeline is projected to transport 12 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year from Ethiopia to Djibouti.

China Railway Group and China Civil Engineering Construction Corp (CCECC) have financed 70 percent of the construction for an electrified Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway, the first such cross-border railway on the continent. The commercial rail line connects Ethiopia’s capital with the Rea Sea port in Djibouti, and carries 90 percent of the trade from Ethiopia’s goods.