Uganda’s social media tax leads to sharp drop in internet users

Eddie Haywood

Since a crippling levy on social media platforms was imposed in Uganda in July, subscriptions to online platforms have plummeted in the country. According to the Uganda Communications Commission, in the nearly one year since the social media tax was imposed, more than 5 million people in Uganda have stopped participating online altogether.

The tax imposed by the government of President Yoweri Museveni targets 60 social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Instagram, and Voice-Over-Internet-Protocol (VOIP) telephony services, such as Skype, and levies fee of 200 Uganda shillings ($0.05) per day on users.

While Finance Minister David Bahati stated the purpose behind the tax is the generation of revenue necessary to upgrade Uganda’s dilapidated communications infrastructure, as well as other public services, President Museveni stated the tax was a method to “curb online gossip.”

Overall, the tax is a significant expense for many Ugandans, and places a burden on the population, who experience impoverished conditions. According to the Economic Policy Research Centre (EPRC) in 2017, 25 percent of the population lives under the poverty line of $1.25 (UGX 4,500) a day, with over one-third of Ugandans not able to afford three meals a day.

Additionally, many Ugandans use a variety of social media platforms to connect with people in country and around the world, and the tax has threatened to cut them off from this vital communications avenue.

The tax also targets money sending platforms, such as the South African-based Mobile Telephone Networks (MTN) and its money transfer service Mobile Money, which allows Ugandans to send money to family and friends at lower rates, compared to the high cost of banking or wire transfer services.

According to the UK Guardian, mobile money transactions have declined UGX 14.8 trillion ($3.9 billion) in between just June and September. Paul Cise, a sales manager of Nov Mobile Limited in capital city Kampala, told the Guardian, “Customers are not happy about [the tax]. Many have resisted it. It has made business very difficult. I can’t manage to pay employees and pay rent.”

Also speaking with the Guardian, sales agent Florence Acen of Kyaliwajjala reported that she has lost business since the imposition of the tax, and that the levy now takes any extra earnings she formerly received from commissions, causing her to turn away poorer customers that before the tax she provided services for: “It makes us too busy for nothing. We tell them the network is off. I can’t waste my time.”

The tax provoked an immediate and furious outcry from the Ugandan masses, and last July thousands participated in demonstrations in Kampala led by popular Ugandan musician and member of parliament Bobi Wine, real name Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, calling for an immediate end to the levy.

In a brutal response, security forces mobilized to violently quell the protest, beating and detaining scores of protesters. Police also indiscriminately fired tear gas and live rounds to disperse demonstrators.

Notably, Bobi Wine, who had organized the demonstration on Twitter, tweeted a response to the heavy-handed repression, “there's no amount of bullets, teargas or arrests that will stop us. Some of our colleagues have been beaten up and others arrested. They must be freed for they have nothing against the police but rather the terrible tax.”

Underlying the imposition of a tax on platforms designed to facilitate social interactions between people is the ruling elites’ fear of social opposition. The tax on social media must be seen as an assault on the democratic rights of the Ugandan population.

The social media levy comes amid growing opposition within the Ugandan masses towards the government of President Museveni, a thoroughly corrupt regime that has ruled Uganda for more than three decades. Museveni revealed his disdain for the masses with his statement that the tax was a tactic to “curb online gossip.” Translated, what the president really intends is halting criticism of the government.

Museveni described the levy as a tax on “vices”, stating that idle people chatting online are no different than “unproductive” people who drink and smoke cigarettes.

In a verbose and ranting post on his personal blog, the president defended the tax and called social media users idle and unproductive for the Ugandan economy: “Social-media use is definitely a luxury item … using internet to access social media for chatting, recreation, malice, subversion, inciting murder, is definitely a luxury … a luxury that is costly to the country's economy.”

In short, the president called every person who signs onto Facebook or Twitter lazy and unproductive, and a drag on the Ugandan economy. In unvarnished form, Museveni is expressing the ruling elites’ complete contempt for the Ugandan masses.

Notably, the tax proposal coincided with the election to parliament of popular musician and Museveni opponent Bobi Wine in July, who organized his political campaign almost entirely online utilizing Facebook and Twitter.

Museveni and his corrupt ruling clique, like the ruling class worldwide seeking to censor and restrict internet platforms, see such online political interaction as a threat to their rule.

The Museveni government has resorted to antidemocratic and authoritarian methods to crack down on voices critical of his regime. In addition to the completely dictatorial shut down of the internet throughout the country before the 2016 presidential poll, stating it necessary to secure a free and fair vote, the Museveni regime has additionally shut down newspapers critical of the government and has carried out numerous arrests of political opponents. The social media tax is nothing less than blatant attempt by the Museveni regime to crack down on the right of the Ugandan masses to exercise free speech and expression of political views.

In 2016, journalist Joy Doreen Biira was arrested by police for “illegal filming of military raid” when she circulated images on Whatsapp and Instagram of the Ugandan military storming the palace of a regional king near Kasese in Eastern Uganda who had led a paramilitary rebellion against government forces.

The World Socialist Web Site has warned the international working class of the ruling elites’ desire to censor the internet. In January 2018 we called for an international coalition to fight internet censorship, writing: “The United States government, in the closest collaboration with Google, Facebook, Twitter and other powerful information technology corporations, is implementing massive restrictions on Internet access to socialist, antiwar and progressive websites. Similar repressive policies are being enacted by capitalist governments in Europe and throughout the world.”

No doubt that with the imposition of a tax on internet communications platforms, the Museveni government feels emboldened by the efforts taken in the United States and Europe to censor the internet.

Six million UK workers on low pay

Barry Mason

Pay for workers in the UK has declined precipitously over the last decade following the 2008 global financial crash. Successive Labour and Conservative-led governments made the working class pay for the hundreds of billions of pounds handed out to prop up the banks and the super-rich.

A new report issued by the Living Wage Foundation (LWF) shows that more than 6 million workers, including 1.2 million public sector workers, are on low pay. They earn less than the Real Living Wage—a rate set by the Living Wage Foundation and independently assessed to determine the amount people need just to get by.

The low Real Living Wage figure is set higher than the government’s National Living Wage, which establishes the statutory minimum wage rates. The Real Living Wage is currently set at £10.55 an hour in London and £9 in the rest of the UK. The Real Living Wage rate is not legally enforceable and for many workers may as well not exist. Just 4,700 employers, covering 180,000 workers, are signed up to it nationally.

The legally enforceable National Living Wage is £7.38 for under 25s and £7.83 for those older. Those under 21 get paid even less, with apprentices on a minimum rate of £3.70, under 18s on £4.20 and under 21s on £5.90. There is no weighting due to the extra cost of living in London, with a workforce in the capital of over 5.8 million. From April, the national living wage increases to just £7.70 for under 25s and £8.21 for over 25s.

The Living Wage Foundation report notes, “There are around 6 million UK jobs that pay below the Real Living Wage and more than 20 percent of those work in the public sector. According to earlier research conducted by Survation, over a third of working parents on low incomes have regularly skipped meals due to a lack of money, and almost half have fallen behind on household bills.”

The 1.2 million public sector workers on low pay include nearly two-thirds employed in local government, with nearly 400,000 employed directly rather than through subcontractors and agencies. A third of a million National Health Service (NHS) employees are low paid, with around 200,000 directly employed by the NHS.

The LWF report included comments from a public sector cleaner who said, “Life below the Real Living Wage means every month is a struggle to survive. I can’t afford the basics like the internet or a smart phone.”

LWF Campaigns and Communications Manager Lola McEvoy said, “It’s simply wrong that our teaching assistants, cleaners, carers and catering staff—paid on public money—are struggling to keep their heads above water on wages that don’t meet basic living costs.”

Despite the Tory government’s perpetual rhetoric that “work pays,” reality shows being in work is no guarantee of escaping poverty. With nearly half a million workers entering the labour market last year, the number in employment is at a record level of 32.6 million. However, many of these newly added jobs offer no security or job satisfaction.

A Resolution Foundation report issued in January posed the question “has the increase in job quantity come at the cost of job quality? The answer is ‘yes’, particularly in the jobs boom’s initial phase. Two-thirds of the growth in employment since 2008 has been in ‘atypical’ roles such as self-employment, zero-hours contracts or agency work.”

Adam Corlett of the Resolution Foundation said, “The deeper income squeeze for poorer households has been driven by government policy. … Low income households in particular have borne the brunt of a renewed living standards squeeze, driven by the freeze in the value of working-age benefits.”

Another study on poverty, issued last December by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, noted, “In-work poverty is higher than at any time in the last 20 years. The employment rate is at a record high, but this has not delivered lower poverty. The rate of poverty among workers has been rising for five years, having already risen significantly over the previous decade. Since 2004/05 the number of workers in poverty has increased at a faster rate than the total number of people in employment. This has resulted in workers being increasingly likely to find themselves in poverty. There are now almost 4 million workers in poverty in the UK, a rise of over half a million compared with five years ago.”

Holding down wages for most workers has helped fuel growing inequality. An Office for National Statistics report release last month noted, “Income inequality increased slightly in financial year ending … 2018 from 31.4 percent to 32.5 percent, based on estimates from our Living Costs and Food Survey.”

The ONS showed that the incomes of the top 20 percent increased by 4.7 percent, while the bottom 20 percent saw their income fall by 1.6 percent.

Commenting on the LRW study in a Guardian article February 28, Christina McAnea, assistant general secretary of the Unison trade union, noted, “Hundreds of thousands of workers delivering essential public services are on poverty pay. Many have second and even third jobs just to keep the wolf from the door.”

The trade unions are responsible for this dire situation thanks to their suppression of every struggle by the working class.

Research published by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) last December showed the average worker had lost £11,800 in real earnings since 2008. The UK and Italy are the only two advanced economies in which real wages are still below their 2008 level. Average wages will not get back to their 2008 level until 2024. This would mean a 16-year-long period of declining pay. The previous longest period of decline in wages was the 24 years from 1798 to 1822, covering the Napoleonic wars and the aftermath and giving rise to a protracted period political radicalisation of the working class including the subsequent birth of Chartism.

With around 3.6 million public sector workers in trade unions, the sector has a union density of just over 50 percent—compared to 2.7 million members in the private sector and a unions density of around 14 percent.

McAnea’s own union, Unison, the largest public sector union with over a million members, has played a crucial role in enforcing low-pay wage settlements. Last March, Unison was among 13 trade unions out of 14 that agreed to a sell-out pay deal of 6.5 percent for the public sector over three years. This was after health workers suffered a 14 percent pay cut over the last eight years under the austerity measures of Tory-led governments. Retail Price Index inflation over the next three years was estimated at 9.6 percent, meaning the deal was in fact a cut in real wages.

The de facto pay cut was sold “as the best deal in eight years” by the unions. But when workers checked their pay packets, they discovered pay “rises” as low as 12 pence. Many received a meagre increase of 1.5 percent, not even the 3 percent promised, with the rest of the first year increase delayed until after the annual incremental date.

This sparked a rebellion among health workers that led to them tabling a vote of no confidence in and removing the leadership of the Royal College of Nursing union.

US “retail apocalypse” expected to exceed annual high with more than 1,100 store closures announced in one day

Trévon Austin

Within the first quarter of this year, the number of retail stores set to be closed already surpasses the total number of closures in 2018. Based on information from Coresight Research, more than 6,300 stores are already set to close in 2019. Coresight counted 5,528 closings in 2018 which included the liquidation of hundreds of Toys“R”Us locations in the US, and Kmart and Sears stores.

According to Coresight’s data the record year for retail closures was 2017 with 8,139 closures, but this could be easily exceeded if the current trend continues.

On Wednesday, Charlotte Russe, Family Dollar, Abercrombie & Fitch and Chico’s all announced store closings within 24 hours of each other, accounting for than more than 1,100 locations. The series of announcements came one week after JCPenney, Gap, Victoria’s Secret and Tesla announced that they would close retail locations, totaling more than 300 stores.

Drew Myers, senior consultant with real-estate data firm CoStar Group, told USA Today that “square footage” or the size of stores is a good indicator when analyzing store closures from a real estate perspective. When taking the size of retail stores into consideration, 2018 was the highest year for store closings during the retail apocalypse, with 155 million square feet of affected retail space. According to Myers, approximately 75 percent of total square footage came from Sears, Kmart, Toys“R”Us and Bon Ton.

Essentially, 2018 was a year marked by closures of larger retail chains with significant numbers of workers made jobless. While this year has only seen 30 million square feet of closures as retailers shutter physically smaller locations it still points to the precipitous trend in retail.

The stores with the largest number of closings planned for this year are as follows:

• Payless ShoeSource plans the closure of all 2,589 of its stores, including 248 Canadian locations and 114 smaller stores in Shopko Hometown locations.

• Gymboree/Crazy 8 announced a total of 729 closings.

• Charlotte Russe’s entire chain of more than 500 stores will close by April 30, but 94 stores from an earlier wave of announcements will be closing first.

• The American mall retailer Things Remembered will shutter 422 locations.

• Ascena Retail will close approximately 400 stores.

• Dollar Tree announced it will close as many as 390 Family Dollar stores and convert about 200 Family Dollar stores into Dollar Tree locations.

• Shopko has announced 251 closures.

• GNC will shut down 233 locations.

• Gap is set to shutter about 230 locations over the next two years.

This process, dubbed the “retail apocalypse,” has devastated North American brick-and-mortar retail stores since 2010. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the retail industry has seen a myriad of buyouts, mergers and acquisitions as large and small retailers are forced into bankruptcy or outright liquidation by financial parasites on Wall Street. Major department stores such as JCPenney, Macy’s, Sears and Kmart, long time mainstays of the American retail market, have closed hundreds of stores, and well-known clothing brands such as J.Crew are unprofitable.

Workers have been particularly affected as retailers have resorted to mass layoffs and downsizings and have shifted jobs to low wage labor-intensive distribution centers to keep up with online retailers such as Amazon and Walmart. Retail stores that have seen some success have resorted to offering more online shopping. E-commerce sales jumped 43 percent at Walmart and 31 percent at Target from the fourth quarter of 2017 to the same period in 2018.

The declining living standards of the working class are feeding directly into the retail apocalypse and mass layoffs of retail workers will only exacerbate the issue. Workers’ wages have seen little to no growth in the last four decades, and any economic growth experienced since 2008 has gone to the wealthiest of the wealthy. The vast majority of jobs created since 2008 have been part-time or temporary, and retailers are closing stores in predominantly poor and working-class areas, robbing residents of employment and depriving them of ready access to food, clothing, medicine and other goods.

Studies show that 15 percent of retailers are currently at risk of shutting down and up to 25 percent of American malls could close by 2020, with tens of thousands of people losing their jobs. Retail jobs are continuously fed into massive corporations like Amazon that employ workers in sweatshop conditions and pay them paltry wages. The ongoing crisis in the retail industry is part of an escalation against the living conditions of workers and only spells disaster for the working class.

Trump signs executive order cementing secrecy over US airstrikes and shadow wars

Jacob Crosse

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday, March 7 rescinding a previously toothless measure introduced by the Obama administration in July 2016 for the reporting of civilian casualties inflicted by US drone strikes.

Unaccountable drone strikes, including targeted assassinations, were a defining feature of the Obama presidency, expanding far beyond what his predecessor George W. Bush had initiated.

Under the original order, signed under the pretext of providing “transparency” to the global assassination program, the US government was to make publicly available an annual report on civilians killed by airstrikes outside of US recognized “conventional” war zones. The annual report, which was not released in 2017, was deemed “superfluous” by the National Security Council in statement released with Trump’s newly signed executive order.

The Security Council statement continued, stating that the previous, “requirements … do not improve government transparency, but rather distract our intelligence professionals from their primary mission.”

The first report issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) following the signing of Barack Obama’s executive order in 2016, drastically under-reported civilian and combat casualties from airstrikes outside of war zones from 2009 to 2015. In that report the DNI only acknowledged 473 strikes outside of “areas of active hostilities.” The report stated that between 2,372 and 2,581 “combatants” were killed and an additional 64-116 “non-combatants” were murdered.

These figures have not been creditably substantiated by any other media, academic or reporting agency. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which has been tracking drone strikes for over a decade, estimated between 258 and 633 civilians had been killed between January 2009 and December 2015 in Pakistan alone.

Meanwhile a June 2017 report provided by the Columbia Law School Human Rights Clinic, in conjunction with the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, titled “ Out of the Shadows ,” stated that the US only acknowledged approximately 20 percent of reported drone strikes. The report also alleged that over 400 civilian casualties had occurred in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, approximately four times more than the 116 alleged casualties claimed by the US government.

The definition of what constitutes a war zone is also not clear, and is open to interpretation and revision. Recognized war zones include Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, while parts of Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya have also at times been included in what are deemed “areas of active hostilities.” These “areas” were also excluded from the policy, meaning that casualty figures were neither tracked nor fully accounted for.

The previous policy also did not require the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to report the drone strikes it conducted in remote locations such as on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In addition to relaxing requirements on reporting, the Trump administration has also adjusted limits on acceptable targets. Previous self-imposed constraints, including a May 2013 Obama instruction that individuals targeted for assassination by the military or CIA should be high-level militants with a “near certainty” of being present, have now been changed to target regular or low-level “jihadists” with a “reasonable certainty” of being present.

While Obama began his presidency by setting a deadly precedent, launching 186 drone strikes on Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan in his first two years in office, Trump has eclipsed his predecessor. According to US Central Command (CENTCOM), Trump launched 238 strikes in those same countries during his first two years in office.

It is unlikely that a true accounting of the number of fatalities inflicted by illegal US airstrikes will ever be forthcoming. The US military, as seen in the 2017 “ Mosul Massacre ,” regularly presumes that those it kills are terrorists or jihadists, regardless of the facts. Investigations into civilian casualties are only initiated by the US government after claims by non-government organizations, allied governments, journalists or academics raise concerns. These investigations are slow to release findings and, if fault is found—a rare occurrence—a hush payment of a few thousand dollars is the most victims of US imperialism can hope to receive.

Despite the shrouded, yet deadly, record of civilian casualties inflicted by drone strikes, the Democrats have mounted little opposition to the Trump’s administration escalating use of this so-called “tool.”

Democratic presidential candidates, including the “anti-war” candidates, Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie Sanders, have stated their support for drones and surgical strikes. In an interview with The Intercept in January 2018, Gabbard stated that she still believes that “the right approach [is] to take in these quick-strike forces, surgical strikes in and out … and the very limited use of drones.”

Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders publicly stated in 2015, when asked about the use of drone strikes and special forces troops under a Sanders administration, “All of that and more.” “Surgical strikes” in Yemen have targeted weddings, funerals, school buses, hospitals and street markets.

The use of drones and unmanned aerial vehicles in conjunction with artificial intelligence will continue to increase as US imperialism prepares for “great-power conflicts” with Russia and China. Two weeks ago, Boeing unveiled its “loyal wingman combat drone concept,” which it has been developing locally in Brisbane, Australia, as part of a classified program for the Royal Australian Air Force.

A similar concept vehicle for the US Air Force dubbed the XQ-58A was revealed this week and completed its inaugural flight on March 5. The XQ-58A is a stealthy drone that will be augmented with artificial intelligence targeting capabilities, and is capable of carrying small diameter bombs. With an estimated $3 million dollar cost for each drone, the Air Force expects to purchase a “high volume” of the drone, which can be operated independently or as a cooperative “swarm” under the command of a nearby manned aircraft.

Pentagon escalating buildup on Russia’s borders

Bill Van Auken

The Pentagon’s top military commander in Europe told the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday that more US troops and more warships must be deployed to the continent to counter what he described as Moscow’s “malign influence” and Russian threats to “the United States’ vital national interests.”

The testimony by Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the head of EUROCOM and NATO’s supreme allied commander, came just one day after Russia formally withdrew from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), following the Trump administration’s unilateral abrogation of the landmark nuclear accord last month.

The scrapping of the treaty heralds a resurgence of a nuclear arms race on a scale not seen since the height of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, threatening humanity with a global conflagration.

Scaparrotti laid out the Pentagon’s agenda of an escalation of the confrontation with Russia, presenting the country as a dangerous aggressor that must be stopped militarily.

“Russia is a long-term, strategic competitor that wants to advance its own objectives at the expense of US prosperity and security and that sees the United States and the NATO Alliance as the principal threat to its geopolitical ambitions,” he told the Senate panel. “In pursuit of its objectives, Moscow seeks to assert its influence over nations along its periphery, undermine NATO solidarity, and fracture the rules-based international order.”

The general’s narrative turned reality on its head. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States and NATO, in violation of an agreement reached between Washington and the Moscow Stalinist bureaucracy, have pushed steadily to the east, absorbing the former Warsaw Pact countries into NATO and deploying hostile military forces on the very borders of Russia.

Scaparrotti went on to indicate Washington’s real concerns and aims, stating: “While the United States maintains global military superiority over Russia, evolving Russian capabilities threaten to erode our competitive military advantage, challenge our ability to operate uncontested in all domains, and diminish our ability to deter Russian aggression.”

US imperialism is determined to confront any power that challenges a “rule-based international order” in which the rules are dictated by Washington, and to assure that both its military as well as its financial and corporate oligarchy are able to “operate uncontested in all domains.” This requires the transformation of Russia into an outright semi-colony.

The government of President Vladimir Putin, representing the interests of the Russian oligarchy, has pursued a bankrupt policy that zig-zags between futile appeals for reason on the part of Washington and an adventurist turn to militarism.

Scaparrotti detailed before the Senate committee the results of what he described as Russia’s “high levels of defense spending”—which amount to less than one-tenth of the US military budget. He cited in particular Moscow’s “nuclear modernization program,” which he said includes “advanced modern road-mobile and silo-based Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), new Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs), and Long Range Strategic Bombers,” as well as the development of “nuclear-armed hypersonic weapons, which could provide them the capability to attack anywhere in the globe with little or no notice.”

The general’s testimony, coming just one day after Moscow formally withdrew from the INF treaty, left no doubt that the Pentagon is actively preparing for nuclear war with both Russia and China.

While Washington has repeatedly charged Moscow with violating the treaty through its deployment of SSC-8 cruise missiles, Russia has insisted that the weapon does not breach the terms of the agreement, which bars weapons with ranges of between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. Moscow has in turn charged that the US deployment in Romania and Poland of missile defense systems that have offensive capabilities, as well as the introduction of armed drones in the region, represent violations of the accord.

Central to the US decisions to rip up the INF treaty is the fact that China, which is not a signatory to the agreement, has produced medium-range missiles to counter the US military’s “pivot to Asia” and attempt to encircle the country militarily. Washington wants to deploy similar weapons in the region.

Pressed as to the Pentagon’s strategy in the wake of the abrogation of the treaty, Scaparrotti replied, “I don’t know that we have a plan today. We’re still in a six-month period [until the treaty formally expires] here where we are looking at what our options are.”

This is hardly credible. Having deliberately scuttled the treaty, Washington clearly has plans as to how it will seek military advantage in its aftermath, including through the deployment of nuclear-armed missiles in both Europe and Asia, triggering a new arms race and placing the world on a hair-trigger for nuclear war. The supreme allied commander, who exercises more power than any US legislator or diplomat, did not care to publicly share these plans.

The Pentagon’s European commander also called for an increase in the supply of lethal weapons to the right-wing nationalist regime in Ukraine. Since the far-right coup in Kiev—orchestrated and financed by the European Union and US imperialism—plunged the region into crisis, Washington has provided the Ukrainian military with more than $1 billion in aid, though most of it has been classified as non-lethal.

In April of last year, however, the US provided the Ukrainian military with Javelin anti-armor missiles, which Scaparrotti claimed had served as a “deterrent.”

The general stated that in the wake of last November’s provocation in the Azov Sea, which led to the seizure of three Ukrainian ships that sailed into waters claimed by Russia near Crimea, the US needed “to help them get this Navy back up and begin to supply it.”

The Pentagon has deployed the destroyer U.S.S. Donald Cook in the Black Sea, just south of the Kerch Strait, leading into the Azov Sea, and, according to Bloomberg News, has pressed for Germany and France to send warships through the narrow strait in a bid to provoke Russia.

“They, frankly, don’t like us in the Black Sea,” Scaparrotti told the Senate committee. “It’s international waters—and we should sail and fly there.”

Scaparrotti delivered his testimony in advance of the release of the Pentagon’s 2020 budget request, which is expected next week. His main aim was to press the US Congress for more funding for the US escalation against Russia. Specifically, he called for the addition of two more guided-missile destroyers to the US fleet based in the region, as well as the deployment of additional US troops close to Russia’s borders, including armored units.

Chinese premier warns of grave risks and challenges ahead

Peter Symonds

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang opened this year’s annual National People’s Congress (NPC) that began in Beijing this week with a work report that highlighted the risks and dangers facing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime from a slowing economy, trade war with the US and rising “public dissatisfaction.”

The lengthy report, couched in the bland official language of the CCP bureaucracy, unusually warned that, internally and externally, “we will face a graver and more complicated environment as well as risks and challenges, foreseeable and otherwise, that are greater in number and size.”

On the economic front, Li pointed to the global slowdown in economic growth, the rise of protectionism and the “drastic fluctuations” in the international prices of commodities that China imports to fuel its giant manufacturing industries. “Instability and uncertainty are visibly increasing, and externally-generated risks are on the rise,” he declared.

Li’s target for growth of the Chinese economy was lowered to between 6 and 6.5 percent—the lowest rate of expansion since 1990—and lower significantly lower than the range set for last year of 6.5 to 7 percent. Last year’s growth came in at 6.6 percent, well below the benchmark of 8 percent, which was long regarded by the CCP as essential to prevent rising unemployment and social unrest.

Li pledged that the government would create 11 million new jobs over the year and keep the rate of urban unemployment as measured by official survey to around 5.5 percent. No targets were provided for rural unemployment and underemployment which is likely to be higher. Moreover, jobless and growth rates vary widely from region to region, with the north-eastern provinces in particular heavily hit by the closure and restructuring of state-owned industry.

Already there are reports of large-scale job losses in key industries due to falling domestic demand and the restructuring or closure of export companies. The New York Times reported last months that thousands of workers were being retrenched by Ford from its massive Chongqing production facilities which employs 20,000 workers.

Hu Xingdou, an economics professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology, told Australian-based SBSNews that “a lot of traditional companies and new internet companies closed” because of the US-China trade war.

“In the southeast and coastal areas there have been a lot of layoffs. Many companies closed after the Lunar New Year holiday. Those business owners have lost confidence in the country’s economic development and policies,” Hu said. He also suggested that the actual unemployment rate was much higher than the official figure.

While defending the government’s management of tensions with Washington, Li warned that US trade war measures were having an impact on the Chinese economy. Chinese officials are in the midst of trying to reach a deal with the Trump administration to prevent another round of heavy tariffs on Chinese goods.

The NPC is due to consider legislation designed to guard against foreign companies being forced to hand over technological knowledge as part of investment deals with Chinese partners. The new law is unlikely to satisfy the Trump administration which has repeatedly accused China of the “theft” of intellectual property.

In his work report, Li omitted any mention of the “Made in China 2025” strategy designed to boost the competitiveness of Chinese hi-tech corporations, which is also under fire from Washington. Again, this is also unlikely to appease the US which is determined to prevent China undermining the competitiveness and profitability of American companies.

While concerned about the prospect of conflict with the US, Li also warned the assembled delegates of the dangers of social unrest. “There is still public dissatisfaction in many areas, such as education, healthcare, elderly care, housing, food and drug safety, and income distribution,” he declared.

The Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin recorded a sharp increase in the number of strikes and protests by workers last year from 1,250 in 2017 to more than 1,700 in 2018, mostly over unpaid wages, factory closures and working conditions. The figures are based on strikes reported in the media or by local contacts and represent only a small fraction of the actual overall figure.

Also last year, groups of students from elite universities supported workers involved in labour disputes, provoking severe repression by Chinese authorities. A number of students are still being detained. The CCP is terrified that the activities of students might act as a catalyst for a politicization of workers and the eruption of a broad movement that challenges the regime. Thirty years ago, student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square led to wide-scale protests and strikes by workers in Beijing and other cities that were savagely suppressed by the military.

The processes of capitalist restoration in China since 1978 and the transformation of the country into a giant cheap labour hub have led to extraordinary rates of economic growth. However, while China is now the world’s second largest economy, the social chasm between rich and poor has also dramatically widened.

The CCP absurdly claims to be presiding over “a socialist society with Chinese characteristics.” In reality, the CCP represents the interests of the small layer of super wealthy oligarchs who have enriched themselves through the plunder of state-owned enterprises and the exploitation of the working class.

The class interests served by the CCP are on display at the NPC and the associated Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Among the 2,948 assembled delegates were 153 individuals with a net wealth of $650 billion, up by nearly a third from a year ago, according to the recently published Hurun Rich List. China’s wealthiest lawmaker is also its richest person, Pony Ma, founder of Tencent and with a net worth is $47 billion.

Last year’s National People’s Congress declared President Xi Jinping to be the “core” of the CCP apparatus and enshrined his “thought” as a central component of official ideology. It also voted to abolish the two-term limit on the country’s presidency and vice-presidency ensuring that Xi can hold office indefinitely. In his speech last week, Li dutifully called on delegates to “follow the guidance of Xi Jinping thought” and referred to him repeatedly as the “core.”

The World Socialist Web Site wrote at the time that the regime’s elevation of Xi as political strongman was not a sign of strength but of weakness that signaled intensifying social and political tensions in China. Li’s speech this week reflects the fears in the CCP regime that these tensions are reaching boiling point and are about to explode.

Hundreds of thousands march in Algeria to demand fall of Bouteflika regime

Will Morrow

Hundreds of thousands of people joined demonstrations across Algeria on Friday to demand an end to the regime of Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the military-backed president who has ruled the country since 1999.

Videos on social media show waves of demonstrators, predominantly youth, filling the streets of the capital, Algiers, the port city of Bejaia, and other towns, chanting “Killer regime,” “The people want the downfall of the regime,” and “Thieves, you have eaten the country!” In the north-eastern port city of Annaba, workers protested for their family members who drowned in the Mediterranean attempting to reach Europe.

Yesterday was the third successive Friday protest since the ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) announced on February 10 that it would run Bouteflika in elections this April. The protests have grown larger each week and escalated after Bouteflika’s aides submitted his election nomination forms on Sunday, promising at the same time that he would step down within a year if elected.

The protests are part of a growing radicalization in the working class and escalation of working-class struggles throughout the Maghreb and internationally against social inequality since the beginning of 2019, eight years after the revolutionary upheavals which overthrew the Egyptian and Tunisian regimes.

The 82-year-old president is a political corpse who has been incapable of speaking publicly since 2013, when he suffered a severe stroke. He has been in a hospital in Geneva, Switzerland for nearly two weeks receiving what spokespeople have called “routine” check-ups. The inner circles of his regime are seeking to gain time to select a suitable successor.

An unbridgeable class gulf separates the official “opposition” parties involved in the protests, who see Bouteflika’s removal solely as a means to improve their positions within the existing regime, from the opposition to poverty, unemployment and social inequality that is driving masses of workers and youth into struggle.

Somewhere between a quarter and a third of Algerian youth are unemployed, under conditions where approximately two-thirds of the population is aged under 30. A report by the Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights last year stated that 400,000 Algerian children drop out of school every year, especially in the countryside, where “classrooms are not equipped with electricity, water or heating, or lack toilets and school medical healthcare.” Meanwhile, over the past 20 years, a tiny layer of billionaires and multi-millionaires has flourished.

This year has seen escalating strikes throughout the country, including by port workers, a two-day nationwide teachers strike at the end of February, and strikes by transport workers in the Kabilya region.

Workers at the massive Tayal textile factory in Sidi Khettab, Relizane, which exports to Europe, launched an indefinite strike on February 27 against grueling conditions and pay that is below the legal minimum. “We are paid 600 dinars (US$5) a day, or 18,000 a month, and if we are absent, they take 1,000 dinars from us,” one striker told the French-language Reflexion last week. Autoworkers at Hyundai’s joint assembly plant in Tiaret launched a strike on Monday against their conditions.

The Algerian trade unions are doing everything in their power to contain the movement in the working class. The French-language daily El Watan published a report Thursday, “And what if there was a general strike?” It quoted Lyes Merabet, the president of the SNPSP national health union, declaring that while the union supported protests demanding Bouteflika’s removal, it would be “premature” to respond to what she nervously referred to as “anonymous calls on social media” for a general strike.

The national teachers’ federation, which covers university lectures, has called a nationwide strike on March 13, under conditions where teachers have already been calling meetings to join their students in protests. Algeria’s largest trade union federation, the General Union of Algerian Labor (UGTA), is a creation of the FLN and openly supports Bouteflika.

The political parties and organizations now calling for Bouteflika’s removal are no less hostile than those in the regime’s leading circles to any measures to address the social concerns of the workers and youth. A massive political operation is underway to ensure that, if and when Bouteflika is removed, an orderly “transition” is carried through that will involve no fundamental change to the regime besides a reshuffling in personnel.

Al Jazeera provided an account of the sordid maneuvering of these figures yesterday. It reported that thirty opposition parties gathered together on March 7 in Algiers, at the headquarters of the Talaie El Hourriyet party founded by Ali Benflis. Al Jazeera diplomatically refers to Benflis, a former prime minister under Bouteflika, only as Bouteflika’s “top challenger in 2015.”

Those present at the meeting included Louisa Hanoune, the head of the Workers Party (PT), Mohcine Belabbas, the president of the Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD), and Abderrakaz Makri, the head of the Islamist Movement of Society for Peace (MSP), as well as other public figures. The RCD’s Belabbas told the newspaper that “we need to question the nature of the regime we would like to establish after the implosion of this long-lasting system.”

Al Jazeera noted that only Mouwatana and Jil Jadid, organizations which have been actively involved in the protests, did not attend the meeting, declaring that other parties should first withdraw from the parliament. Mouwatana and Jil Jadid are also dissident factions of the regime; Mouwatana was created by another former prime minister under Bouteflika.

The article referred to proposals for a “constituent assembly” or a “temporary government” to “handle the transition process.” Workers and youth should beware that any such political formation would be nothing more than a pseudo-democratic façade to maintain the existing regime resting on the generals, who are the real decision-makers in power.

This was made clear by Benflis, who implicitly called for a military intervention in an interview with the Financial Times yesterday, declaring: “The people have gone out in their millions, and I don’t expect and don’t imagine that the National Popular Army would fail to listen to them.”

All the imperialist powers are actively monitoring and intervening in the political situation in Algeria, a major gas producer and geo-strategic center in northern Africa, to protect their interests.

The Economist published a statement yesterday, “Out with the old: How to revive Algeria,” which called for Bouteflika to step down. It warned nervously that “Far from preventing another civil war, the regime risks stoking one.” Similar calls for a fraudulent “transition,” preserving the regime minus its figurehead, have been made by the New York Times and Le Monde .

The Financial Times headlined its article: “Algeria army pressed to defuse growing anti-Bouteflika protests: Speculation mounts that military will intervene as ailing president seeks fifth term.”

In another article the previous day, the Times stated that “Algeria protests revive memories of final days of Hosni Mubarak.” It declared: “Few believe the elections can now proceed. Much could depend on another liberation veteran—General Ahmed Gaid Salah, the army chief of staff. As in Egypt, the military is a key power behind the politicians. The unknown is whether the armed forces have a contingency plan.”

The Times reference to the Egyptian military, which, under General al-Sisi, carried out a coup and murdered thousands of political opponents to drown the revolution in blood, is a stark warning.

It also points to the political lessons that must be drawn by workers and young people from the experience of the 2011 workers uprising in Egypt. Because they did not have a revolutionary, socialist and internationalist perspective and leadership, powerful struggles of the working class were channeled behind bourgeois parties, enabling the Egyptian military to carry out its coup and re-impose a brutal dictatorship.

The turn must now be toward the international working class, the fight for workers’ governments across the Maghreb and Europe and the socialist reorganization of the economy according to social need, rather than private profit. The critical task is to build sections of the world Trotskyist movement, the International Committee of the Fourth International, to arm the developing struggles of the working class internationally with a socialist and internationalist perspective.

Chelsea Manning jailed for refusal to testify against WikiLeaks

Patrick Martin

A federal judge ordered Chelsea Manning to prison Friday morning for an indefinite period of time, after the former Army private, jailed for seven years for providing information to WikiLeaks exposing US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, refused on principle to answer any questions before a secret grand jury investigating the media organization and its founder Julian Assange.

“The Socialist Equality Party unequivocally condemns the US government’s vindictive and criminal persecution of Chelsea Manning,” said Joseph Kishore, the national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in the US.

“Chelsea suffered solitary confinement, abuse and torture, and over six years of imprisonment for letting the American and world population know the truth. Yesterday, she once again stood firm to fundamental democratic principle and refused to assist the Trump administration in its vendetta to falsely incriminate WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. She is a heroic figure and she must be defended.

“Working people all over the world will never forget Chelsea’s courageous exposure, at vast personal cost, of the crimes of American imperialism. Amid a growing global strike wave, the Socialist Equality Party will do everything in its power to mobilize the working class to defend Chelsea, and free Julian Assange and all other class war prisoners.”

The Socialist Equality Parties in the UK and Australia are participating in rallies on Sunday, March 10 outside Ecuador’s London embassy and at the State Library in Melbourne, called last month to oppose the continued confinement of Julian Assange at the London embassy, and demanding that the Australian government intervene on his behalf and obtain his release from Britain with the right to return home to Australia. The demonstrations will demand the immediate release of Manning as inseparable from the struggle to free Assange.

James Cogan, national secretary of the SEP in Australia, issued the following statement Friday:

“The Trump administration's imprisonment of Chelsea Manning for refusing to give false testimony against WikiLeaks and Julian Assange is an outrage. She has suffered more than enough for her courage and service to the truth. American democracy rolls in the gutter and is rapidly descending into the sewer of dictatorship.

“The working class everywhere must come to Chelsea’s defence and take up the demand for the immediate release of Assange and all persecuted class war prisoners. The SEP in Australia will be redoubling our effort to secure Julian’s immediate return to this country with full protection. And we will be joining all international action to fight for the immediate restoration of Chelsea Manning’s freedom.”

The brief hearing before Judge Claude M. Hilton was the only part of the court proceedings involving Manning that was open to the public. Hilton rejected the argument by Manning’s lawyers that confining her to house arrest would better serve her medical needs. She has received gender reassignment surgery and requires complex medical attention. Hilton said the US Marshals Service would provide adequate care.

“I’ve found you in contempt,” Hilton declared, ordering Manning to jail immediately. The imprisonment in a federal facility in Alexandria, Virginia would continue indefinitely, he said, “either until you purge yourself [agree to testify] or the end of the life of the grand jury.”

The grand jury has been empaneled to bring espionage and conspiracy charges against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. Manning revealed that the questions she had refused to answer on Thursday all concerned her interaction with the organization, which receives documents delivered to it anonymously and avoids learning the identity of contributors in order not to undermine their security.

Manning provided WikiLeaks more than 500,000 documents which she copied from military and government archives while serving as an intelligence analyst in Iraq during the US military occupation, in 2009. The material showed extensive war crimes in both Iraq and Afghanistan, including the notorious gun-camera video of a US helicopter gunship mowing down unarmed Iraqi civilians, including two Reuters reporters, later published by WikiLeaks under the title “Collateral Murder.”

Manning was arrested in 2010, convicted in a 2013 trial and sentenced to 35 years in prison, serving a total of seven years before her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama three days before he left office.

Federal prosecutors subpoenaed Manning to testify before the grand jury and gave her immunity for her testimony, in the hopes of using it against Assange and WikiLeaks. But Manning has refused on principle to collaborate with the secret grand jury. She answered each question posed to her by invoking her rights under the First, Fourth and Sixth amendments to the US Constitution.

“All of the substantive questions pertained to my disclosures of information to the public in 2010—answers I provided in extensive testimony, during my court-martial in 2013,” she said.

A statement issued by Manning after being sent to prison reads:

“I will not comply with this, or any other grand jury. Imprisoning me for my refusal to answer questions only subjects me to additional punishment for my repeatedly-stated ethical objections to the grand jury system.

“The grand jury's questions pertained to disclosures from nine years ago, and took place six years after an in-depth computer forensics case, in which I testified for almost a full day about these events. I stand by my previous public testimony.”

The statement concludes with Manning’s courageous declaration that she “will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been historically used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech.”

Manning's lawyer, Moira Meltzer-Cohen, told the World Socialist Web Site after the decision, “Chelsea's actions speak for themselves. She is a person of tremendous honor and courage, and this latest struggle is just the most recent in a long serious of principled stands she has taken.”

Asked if she is concerned about the conditions Chelsea will face in jail, Meltzer-Cohen said that the government has made assurances that her health needs will be taken care of, but that “we all need to be vigilant that those assurances are made good on.”

Manning’s lawyers said they expected to file an appeal of Hilton’s order jailing Chelsea, citing in particular the fact that jailing for refusal to testify can only be coercive, not punitive. In other words, if they can demonstrate that Manning will never agree to testify, no matter how long she is jailed, the court cannot simply keep her in prison to punish her for her silence.

The jailing of Chelsea Manning is a particularly outrageous attack on democratic rights, carried out by a federal judge who is a byword for reactionary pro-government, pro-police and pro-employer bias, and a longtime collaborator with the national security state.

Hilton was one of a relative handful of federal judges selected by Chief Justice William Rehnquist to serve on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, the special judicial panel set up to secretly rubber-stamp requests for spying authorizations for the FBI, CIA, NSA and other intelligence agencies. The court is notorious for approving 99.9 percent of such requests. Hilton was on the panel from 2000 to 2007, during the period when the Bush administration set up secret CIA torture camps and enormously escalated the NSA spying on telecommunications and the internet.

Appointed to the bench by Ronald Reagan in 1985, Hilton proved his value to the military-intelligence apparatus early in his career, with a 1989 decision that cleared CIA operative Joseph Fernandez, charged with four criminal counts in the Iran-Contra affair, after the CIA refused to release documents required for the prosecution of the case. In effect, the intelligence apparatus ensured impunity for its own criminal operations by refusing to cooperate with the investigation by Special Counsel Lawrence Walsh, a legal dodge approved by Judge Hilton.

According to the website “The Robing Room,” which allows lawyers and litigants appearing before federal judges to rate their demeanor, legal knowledge, and bias, Hilton routinely incorporates prosecution and government briefs into his legal “opinions,” almost never rules in favor of individuals suing their employers, the police or the government, and frequently sleeps through oral arguments by defense attorneys.

One attorney, posting on the site, called Hilton, “The most prejudiced judge with regard to average and below average income United States citizens that I have ever observed. This judge has no sense whatsoever of the search for Truth and Justice and he clearly avoids any reasonable search for Truth and Justice, especially if a large corporation or the federal government is the defendant!”

The SEP in the United States and its youth movement, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE), will announce a series of meetings and demonstrations to demand the immediate release of Chelsea Manning. The World Socialist Web Site urges all of its readers and supporters to join our mailing list to get meeting announcements and updates on the campaign to free Chelsea.

More ministers quit as factional war wracks Australia’s ruling coalition

Mike Head

Last weekend, less than three months before a general election must be held, two more cabinet ministers announced their departures from Australia’s Liberal-National Coalition government. That took to six the number of top-level ministers or ex-ministers who have made similar declarations in the past month that they will not contest the looming election.

The corporate media depicted the resignations as simply “more rats deserting a sinking ship,” pointing to media polls predicting the government’s defeat. More fundamentally, however, the desertions point to an intensifying breakup of the Liberal and National parties and a deep crisis of the entire Australian political establishment.

All the ministers who decided to quit are either members of the Liberal Party’s supposed “moderate” wing, associated with Malcolm Turnbull, who was ousted as prime minister last August, or were sidelined by the “conservative” faction following the installation of Scott Morrison to replace Turnbull.

The pre-election departures came in response to the ongoing offensive by the most right-wing elements to transform the Coalition into a Trump-style populist and fascistic movement, even if means the breakup of the Coalition in its current form, one of the two key linchpins of capitalist rule since World War II. Presently led by Morrison, these layers are whipping up nationalist, anti-immigrant and anti-Chinese sentiment as a means of diverting working-class discontent over declining living conditions and ever-greater social inequality.

The most revealing departure was that of Defence Minister Christopher Pyne, who has been a leading powerbroker in the “moderate” faction for 25 years. In addition to heading the multi-billion dollar-a-year military and arms spending portfolio, Pyne is the government’s chief of business in the House of Representatives, orchestrating its legislative agenda and parliamentary tactics.

Desperate to hold the government together, at least for now, Morrison said he would keep Pyne in both posts until the election, adding to a growing list of lame duck ministers.

Pyne has remained an unabashed Turnbull supporter, despite being promoted to the senior defence ministry after throwing his faction’s numbers behind Morrison when Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton initially challenged Turnbull’s leadership last August. Following the party leadership coup, Pyne told the Sydney Morning Herald that Turnbull was “the kind of person that should have been prime minister of Australia: urbane, highly intellectual, successful, broad, visionary, clever, articulate, funny, charming, everything that a modern leader and a modern prime minister should be.”

Pyne, who was previously defence industry minister, sought to turn his economically blighted home state of South Australia, formerly heavily-dependent on the auto industry, into a naval shipbuilding and war industry hub. Nevertheless, he and Turnbull also advocated trying to convince Washington to avert all-out war, if possible, against China, which takes one-third of Australian capitalism’s exports.

The other resignation last weekend was that of Defence Industry Minister Steven Ciobo. Once a Turnbull supporter, he backed last August’s leadership coup but lost his own bid to become party deputy leader and was then demoted by Morrison from the high-profile trade ministry. The “conservative” faction had long mistrusted Ciobo, who was regarded as Turnbull’s “lieutenant” when Turnbull ousted Tony Abbott, the primary figure in the far-right group, as prime minister in 2015.

Morrison immediately replaced Ciobo with Senator Linda Reynolds, an ex-army reserve brigadier with close military ties, and declared she would be further promoted to the top job of defence minister if the government won the election. That would be a meteoric rise for Reynolds, who only became a junior assistant minister after Turnbull was removed.

These departures came hard on the heels of a similar announcement by former Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, who had quit the cabinet last August essentially in protest against Turnbull’s axing, that she would be leaving parliament. Bishop, who had been deputy Liberal Party leader since 2007, stood for election as party leader after Turnbull was ousted, but received only 11 votes. It was a rebuff not just for her personally but for the “moderate” faction. In particular, it was a blow to her Western Australian support base, which rests on sectors of the mining industry most reliant on exports to China.

This week, Bishop sent a barbed message to Morrison and his backers, giving a media interview in which she insisted that, as prime minister, she could have won the imminent election.

The latest “retirements” followed those of Industrial Affairs Minister Kelly O’Dwyer, Human Services Minister Michael Keenan and Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion. O’Dwyer had earlier told a Liberal Party room meeting that “crusades” by “ideological warriors” had hijacked the party.

The factional warfare also has engulfed the rural-based National Party, particularly since Turnbull effectively forced its leader, Barnaby Joyce, to quit his post in February 2018. This week, six National parliamentarians stepped up the right-wing aggression by demanding that the government spend billions of dollars to subsidise new coal-fired power stations. This is another move to try to head off support for far-right parties, such as Senator Pauline Hanson’s anti-immigrant One Nation, that have depicted coal-based projects as solutions to high levels of unemployment and under-employment.

The Coalition, a pillar of corporate rule, is being torn asunder. Primarily as a result of the infighting, of the 42 ministers sworn-in when the Coalition took office in 2013 led by Tony Abbott, 26—or more than 60 percent—have either left politics, been dumped from the frontbench or are planning to leave parliament in May.

The unravelling has accelerated. Nearly 40 percent of Turnbull’s post-2016 election ministry has since retired, resigned or are going to quit. Former small business minister Craig Laundy, another “moderate,” is also believed to be preparing to announce his departure.

The growing signs of economic reversal, and corporate fears of rising working class unrest, have exacerbated the tensions wracking the Coalition. An Australian Financial Review editorial this week warned of “the evident loss in popular trust in institutions, particularly in business in the wake of the banking royal commission.” That inquiry, while extremely limited, highlighted the predatory practices of the financial institutions that successive governments have propped up since the 2008 global breakdown.

China’s economic slowdown, the simmering US-China trade and technology war, the uncertainty of Brexit, declining real wages and the collapse of Australia’s six-year housing market bubble have led already to a “per-capita” recession. Statistics released this week showed that gross domestic product per person dropped 0.2 percent in the December quarter of 2018, the second consecutive quarterly fall.

Under these conditions, sections of the ruling class are once again looking to a pro-business Labor government, backed to the hilt by the trade unions, to stifle and suppress the opposition of workers and young people to the glaring inequality and deteriorating social conditions.

Invited to give a keynote speech to an Australian Financial Review business summit this week, Labor leader Bill Shorten pledged to reverse the economic stagnation and “toxic distrust” among workers by slightly lifting minimum wages. “[W]e know employers are not the class enemy,” he assured the audience.

Comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyi leading in Ukrainian presidential polls

Jason Melanovski & Clara Weiss

Some three weeks ahead of the first round of the Ukrainian presidential elections on March 31, the most recent polling of voters in Ukraine reveals that actor-comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy is now leading a crowded field of 44 presidential candidates.

According to the Rating polling agency, 25.1 percent of potential voters support Zelenskiy. The second place is almost evenly split between current President Petro Poroshenko and former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko who both received support from just over 16 percent of those polled.

As none of the candidates are expected to garner an outright majority to win the first round, a second runoff round between the top two candidates will almost certainly be held in May.

Reflecting widespread disillusionment with the country’s official politics, 31.9 percent of respondents said they did not plan to participate in the elections at all.

Prior to his entrance into politics, leading candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy had worked his way through a series of Ukrainian popular television shows to become one of the country’s most famous media figures, hosting his own programs and producing shows and movies for viewing in both Ukraine and Russia. Foreshadowing his current political campaign, in 2015 Zelenskiy appeared in a TV series called “Servant of the People” in which he portrayed a high school history teacher who unexpectedly becomes president of Ukraine after a viral video spreads showing him criticizing corruption in the country.

That a popular entertainment figure such as Zelenskiy has become the frontrunner, is indicative of the advanced political and social crisis in the country. The political establishment, which is associated with both Poroshenko and the former prime minister Tymoshenko, is widely hated and discredited.

Several polls have shown that there are more people who dislike and would refuse to vote for the next two closest candidates, Poroshenko and Tymoshenko, than people who actually support them and would be willing to vote for them.

Zelenskiy has been able to garner support for his criticism of Poroshenko’s promotion of far-right nationalism and an overt war drive against Russia, as well as by tapping into widespread social discontent by exposing corruption.

Zelenskiy is a native Russian speaker and generally speaks and performs in Russian. His comedy regularly lampoons the obvious corruption of the country’s ruling class and criticizes the exclusionist, violent and reactionary nature of Ukrainian nationalism. He has previously spoken out against the country’s banning of Russian language media and has called for language rights to be protected in traditionally Russian-speaking areas of the country, such as in eastern Ukraine.

Zelenskiy has also ridiculed Poroshenko’s campaign slogan of “Army, Language, Faith” as really meaning “To steal from the army, to selectively split people by language, so that there will be no faith in you.” He has gone further in acknowledging the truth about the imperialist-backed 2014 far-right coup that removed President Viktor Yanukovych when stating that Poroshenko “came to power through blood.”

In stark contrast to Poroshenko’s full backing of the bloody five-year-long war in the Donbass, Zelenskiy’s campaign has called for a cease-fire and negotiations while maintaining that both the Donbass and Crimea should be returned to Ukraine. He also announced that he was willing to engage in direct negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin over East Ukraine.

However, despite his social and political demagogy, Zelenskiy is running as a candidate of a section of the Ukrainian oligarchy.

While Zelenskiy is now demagogically criticizing Poroshenko from the left, he previously supported both the Western-backed Maidan and the war in the Donbass. He has said little about his plans for the country’s devastated economy that would differentiate him from other candidates and speaks in purposefully vague terms regarding his actual political agenda. Ukraine is currently the poorest country in Europe and the working class is being subjected to various IMF-enforced austerity measures.

Exposing his real political orientation toward sharp attacks on the working class, according to Bloomberg, Zelenskiy has cited French President Emmanuel Macron and Brazilian far-right president Jair Bolsonaro as role models for his politics.

Zelenskiy enjoys what he calls a close “working” relationship with billionaire Ukrainian oligarch and former head of Ukraine’s PrivatBank Ihor Kolomoyskyi. Zelenskiy’s shows appear on Kolomoyskyi’s 1+1 television and he made his campaign announcement on the same channel.

Kolomoyskyi also enjoys close ties with another presidential candidate and former prime minister, Tymoshenko, and many Ukrainians speculated that Zelenskiy’s entrance in the race was just a ploy to tear away support from Poroshenko and ensure a Tymoshenko win.

While both Zelenskiy and Kolomoyskyi have denied that they have any quid pro quo agreement in the elections, a member of Petro Poroshenko’s political party revealed on Monday that Kolomoyskyi’s PrivatBank previously transferred $41 million to bank accounts of a film production studio belonging to Zelenskiy.

Kolomoyskyi was later accused of stealing $5 billion from PrivatBank and fled the country. He is now living in Israel after coming into conflict with the Poroshenko regime. It is widely speculated that Kolomoyskyi is backing both Tymoshenko and Zelenskiy to be able to return to Ukraine and regain control over his vast business empire.

Especially because of Zelenskiy’s declared stance on the war in East Ukraine and on Russia, the possibility of his winning the election is viewed with a great deal of nervousness and suspicion by the imperialist powers and has already triggered discussions about a renewed intensification of direct imperialist intervention in the country to prevent any reorientation of Ukrainian foreign policy that would run counter to the immediate interests of imperialism.

The Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council , which has earlier made a case for a Tymoshenko presidency, warned that a Zelenskiy presidency would be a “disaster for Ukraine.” It noted menacingly that, in the case of a deadlocked and fragmented legislature coming out of the parliamentary elections in the fall, “another Euromaidan Revolution” would become “perfectly possible, perhaps even within a few months of Zelenskiy’s election. This time, however, it would likely be violent from the start, as Ukraine’s population has an unusually large supply of privately owned guns and Ukraine’s army would almost certainly side with protesters against the comedian-in-chief.”