Two giant German banks plan merger

Gustav Kemper & Peter Schwarz

On March 17, the CEOs of Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, Christian Sewing and Martin Zielke, announced the start of negotiations on a merger of the two banks.

Speculation about a possible merger have surfaced a number of times following the financial crisis of 2008, but the economic rationality of such a decision was repeatedly called into question. The vehemence with which the German government in particular is now pushing for the merger of the two banks can only be explained by political motives: it is part of the effort to establish Germany and Europe as world powers capable of competing with the US and China.

This is made clear by the “National Industrial Strategy 2030,” which the German Economics Minister Peter Altmaier presented to the press in February 2019. The strategy calls for the formation of “national champions,” “big and strong players on a level playing field with competitors from the US or China.”

As justification, the paper states: “The emergence of a comprehensive world market in more and more regions increasingly raises the question of the critical size required for an industrial player to compete successfully in international competition.” The examples given include various industries and spheres in finance and banking.

The driving force behind the merger plans of Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank is German finance minister Olaf Scholz (SPD), who has been holding talks at an international level for months with rival international banks to explore the opportunities for German institutions on the world market. One year ago, Scholz appointed a finance industry insider, Jörg Kukies, as secretary of state at the finance ministry. Kukies is the former head of the German branch of the US investment bank Goldman Sachs, which also acts as adviser for Commerzbank.

While Germany is a major industrial powerhouse and third in terms of exports worldwide, behind China and the US, it lacks a major bank to match those of its main rivals. In terms of total assets, Deutsche Bank ranks 15th in the world, behind four Chinese, four American, three Japanese, two French and one British bank. Ranking second among German banks is the DZ-Bank, which is placed 51st in world rankings. Commerzbank is Germany’s third-largest bank (54th place in world rankings).

After a merger, the “Deutsche Commerzbank,” with total assets of over 1,800 billion euros would rank ninth in the world and third in Europe, behind the British HSBC (2,350 billion euros) and the French BNP Paribas (2,000 billion euros).

As long as goods and capital circulated relatively freely internationally, the weakness of its banking sector was not a fundamental problem for the German bourgeoisie. The international financial crisis of 2008, however, ushered in merciless rivalry on the global financial markets. The conflicts between the imperialist powers are coming to a head. Free trade is being replaced by the trade war, championed by the US.

The efforts of the German government to create “national champions” are directly related to its striving to once again become a world power, which requires a corresponding build-up of the country’s military forces. The German army has undergone a process of permanent rearmament following the announcement by former foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in 2014 that Germany was “too big to comment on world politics only from the outside.”

In order to become a world power, however, German imperialism needs not only a powerful army, but also a globally active bank to finance trade, domestic and foreign investment and its defence industry. The Achilles heel of the German economy is its financial dependence on the US—most recently confirmed by the billions in fines lodged by the US against major German players such as Siemens, VW and Deutsche Bank. Other examples are the US sanctions against Iran and other countries. China's growing financial power is also being followed in Berlin with concern.

Deutsche Bank played a major role in the First and Second World Wars. Already at its founding in 1870, it set itself the goal of “finally conquering for Germany a place on the table of financial mediation...” This policy then laid the foundation for financing German imperialist expansion in Asia, Africa and South America.

Some economists and financial experts have questioned the viability of the merger project. They fear that the two troubled banks will pull each other into the abyss. “Two sick patients do not make a single healthy one,” some commented, with reference to the low profitability and the relatively high cost overheads of the two institutions.

Commerzbank's share price has fallen 42 percent and Deutsche Bank's 71 percent during the past five years. Between 2015 and 2017, Deutsche Bank reported billions in losses, largely resulting from criminal charges for speculation lodged in the US. In the last ten years alone, Deutsche Bank has had to pay up 17 billion euros in fines.

For the German government, however, the merger of the two banks is a political project not an economic one. It is to be financed by massive job losses and drastic cost reductions. The Verdi trade union anticipates that 60 percent of bank branches will close. At present, Deutsche Bank has 2,064 branches, (1,409 in Germany) and Commerzbank about 1,000. Together, the two banks employ 140,000 people. Estimates of expected job losses vary between 30,000 and 40,000 jobs.

The business magazine Capital speculates “whether the current management of Deutsche Bank really has the strength and ruthlessness necessary to dismantle tens of thousands of jobs.” In this respect the bank management can rely on the support of the SPD and Verdi, which are both determined to create a “national bank champion.”

Harald Christ, an executive member of the SPD’s economic forum and former holder of a leading position at Postbank and Deutsche Bank, told the broadcaster n-tv that Germany confronted a fatal dependency should it lack its own powerful major bank. For a merger, “of course, the focus is on lowering costs,” he explained, “which means costs of material and staff.”

The Verdi union, whose representatives sit on the boards of both banks, have announced temporary protest strikes against the feared job cuts to begin on March 28. These, however, serve merely to let off steam, while Verdi and its works council officials work behind the scenes to develop the plans for job cuts.

Defying US threats, Turkey vows to deploy Russian air-defence system

Keith Jones 

Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, vowed Wednesday that Washington’s ever-escalating threats will not deter Ankara from proceeding with the purchase and deployment of the Russian-made S-400 air defence system.

Speaking two days after a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow at which the S-400 purchase and the potential for expanding Russian-Turkish military-strategic ties were among the principal topics of discussion, Erdogan did not just reiterate that the S-400 purchase was “irreversible.” He said that due to “constant” “provocations from the US” the delivery of the S-400 could well be brought forward from July.

Earlier Wednesday, Erdogan’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, warned that if the US carries through on its threats to punish Turkey for exercising its sovereign right as a NATO state to choose its own weapons and weapon-systems, Ankara could buy a second S-400 air-defence system from Russia.

Referring to Washington’s offer to sell Turkey Patriot missiles, but only if it abandons the $2.5 billion S-400 deal, Cavusoglu told Turkey’s NTV, “If they don’t sell the Patriots, we could buy a second S-400 system or another one from someone else.” He added that Turkey could also purchase Russian fighter jets, if Washington cancels its order to buy the US-made F-35 stealth fighter.

Erdogan and Cavusoglu’s remarks came in response to a column entitled “Turkey Must Choose between the US and Russia” that the Republican and Democratic leaders of the US Senate Foreign Affairs and Armed Services Committees published in the New York Times Tuesday.

Republican Senators Jim Inhofe and Jim Risch and Democrats Jack Reed and Bob Menendez wrote that if Turkey proceeded with the S-400 purchase in defiance of Washington, it would “have profound consequences” for the “country’s place in the world, its relationship with the United States and its standing in NATO.”

They went on to list a long series of punitive actions that Washington could, and in most cases they said, would, take if Ankara did not bow to US demands that it abandon the S-400.

The list began with the cancellation of Turkey’s order to purchase more than 100 F-35s. This and the ouster of all Turkish companies from the jet-fighter’s production chain are guaranteed, they asserted, should Ankara deploy the S-400. “Turkey,” they continued, “will be sanctioned as required by US law,” under the anti-Russia Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA).

Adopted in 2017, CAATSA provides for sanctions of varying scope and severity. But the senators indicated Turkey would face the full brunt of possible punitive measures. Economic sanctions they vowed, would hit “Turkey’s economy hard—rattling international markets, scaring away foreign direct investment and crippling Turkey’s aerospace and defense industry.”

Tuesday’s column represented bipartisan Congressional support for the ultimatum US Vice President Mike Pence delivered at an event last week, attended by Foreign Minister Cavusoglu, to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of NATO.

Indeed, the headline the senators chose for their column was meant to echo Pence’s claim that “Turkey must choose,” between “remain(ing) a critical partner” in NATO and close US military-security partner or buying the Russian-made S-400. In the latter case, declared Pence, the US “will not stand idly by.”

The US claims Turkey’s deployment of the S-400 would undermine NATO and US-Turkish military interoperability and enable Russia to gain intelligence on the functioning of the F-35. Whilst there are no doubt military-technical, as well as financial reasons, behind Washington’s opposition to Ankara’s S-400 purchase, it is only a flashpoint for more significant and intractable geopolitical differences.

Washington is determined to break the shaky alliance Ankara has forged with Russia and Iran in recent years, and to reduce Turkey to its traditional role as a pliant US client state anchoring American imperialism’s military-strategic interests in the Middle East, southeastern Europe, and the Black Sea.

The Turkish bourgeoisie, including for most of the past 17 years that Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) have led Turkey’s government, has supported and sought to profit from the never-ending wars of aggression the US has mounted or fomented since 1991 in the Balkans, the Middle East, and North Africa.

But to its consternation, Washington has repeatedly ignored and thwarted the interests and ambitions of its supposed junior partner.

Matters came to a head during the Syria war. Erdogan eagerly supported the US drive to overthrow Bashar-al Assad’s Baathist regime and helped arm the Islamist militias Washington used as its shock troops in the first years of the war. But Ankara recoiled when the US, in response to the defeat and collapse of its Islamist allies, made the Kurdish YPG—an offshoot of the PKK against which Ankara has been fighting a bloody counter-insurgency war in south-east Turkey for the past 35 years—its main proxy army in its regime-change war in Syria.

While maintaining its support for Assad’s Sunni Arab opponents, Ankara struck a shaky alliance with Assad’s chief allies, Moscow and Tehran, on the basis of their common interest in limiting and rolling back US power in Syria.

As Turkey’s S-400 purchase attests, the subsequent attempts of the US to bully and coerce Turkey into pulling back from closer ties with Russia and Iran have only served to antagonize Ankara and strengthen its determination to lessen its dependence on Washington.

That said, Erdogan’s overriding objective is to establish a buffer zone in northern Syria, as a first step to smashing the YPG-led proto-Kurdish state in Syria (the Rojava Republic).

During his visit to Washington for last week’s NATO foreign ministers meeting, Cavusoglu insisted that Turkey remains committed to the US-led war alliance and voiced support for NATO’s plans to counter Russian “aggression,” including by mounting a provocative naval exercise in the Kerch Strait, the passageway between Crimea and the Russian mainland that separates the Black and Azov Seas.

However, Washington’s ever-escalating threats and provocative actions against Turkey—but also across the Middle East, including its encouragement of Israeli aggression and its illegal and incendiary drive to embargo and crash Iran’s economy—are giving Ankara pause.

Speaking at a Turkish Heritage Organization function in Washington earlier this week, Gulnur Aybet, one of Erdogan’s senior advisers, warned that the US was pushing Ankara into Russia’s strategic embrace. “If the United States continues to approach Turkey with a zero-sum game,” said Aybet, “then the doors which are currently open for the future of (US-Turkish) relations could turn toward another partner, and that is Russia.”

In its conflict with Turkey over the S-400, Washington claims to speak in the name of NATO as a whole. But NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg acknowledged last week that under NATO rules the decision to buy the S-400 is Turkey’s and Turkey’s alone to make. Moreover, although they have their own geopolitical differences with Turkey, the major European powers have conspicuously failed to second the US threats and bullying over the S-400 issue.

According to many analysts, Erdogan and the AKP regime are still hoping—despite US imperialism’s ever more aggressive and reckless actions in its attempt to staunch the erosion of its world power—that Washington will not follow through on the more severe of its threatened reprisals, for fear of precipitating a complete breakdown in the three-quarters of a century-old US-Turkish military-strategic partnership.

Washington, as the senators’ New York Times op-ed highlighted, is confident that it can seriously damage the Turkish economy. In August, Trump’s decision to double US tariffs on Turkish aluminum and steel imports precipitated a collapse in the value of the Turkish lira, and helped tip Turkey into its first recession since 2009.

Eight months later, with its economy being battered by both high-inflation and recession, Turkey is even more vulnerable.

Erdogan has promised Turkish big business that his government will implement “economic restructuring,” i.e. slash social spending, cut corporate taxes and otherwise boost investor returns. But Wednesday’s announcement by his finance minister of what was billed as first steps to tackle the economic crisis was panned by much of domestic and international business as inadequate and a retreat from taking “tough decisions.”

Meanwhile, Erdogan and his AKP, which suffered significant losses in Turkey’s major cities in the March 31 local elections, are pressing the national electoral commission to set aside the results of the election for mayor of Istanbul and order a revote. Erodgan has justified this demand with claims the elections were marred by “organized crime” and the patently anti-democratic claim that a 13,000-vote margin of victory given the size of Istanbul’s electorate is irrelevant.

The US has signaled that it might yet seek to leverage the election controversy to fan opposition to Erdogan and his government within Turkey and internationally.

The Western press, spearheaded by the New York Times, has been lionizing the AWP’s main electoral opponent, the CHP-led Nation Alliance, as a democratic antidote to the authoritarian, Islamist Erdogan.

That Erdogan is a vicious enemy of the working class, who has run roughshod over democratic rights is indisputable. But the CHP is a rightwing, ultra-nationalist party that supports the brutal oppression of the Kurds and is allied with the Good Party, a split-off from the fascist MHP. Like the Kurdish nationalist HDP, which backed its candidates in the March 31st elections in Istanbul, Ankara, and the other major cities of western Turkey, the CHP is distinguished from the AKP principally by its even more pronounced orientation to US imperialism, NATO, and the European Union.

The confluence of geostrategic, economic and political crisis rocking the bourgeois Turkish Republic underscores the urgency of the working class constituting itself as an independent political force in opposition to imperialism and all the rival parties of the bourgeoisie and fighting for a workers’ government and the Socialist United States of the Middle East as the only means of securing the social and democratic rights of the working people, including the democratic rights of the Kurds and other ethnic and religious minorities.

Pre-emptive military coup ousts Bashir to protect Sudan’s elite

Jean Shaoul

Sudan’s army has stepped in to oust President Omar al-Bashir, in an effort to put an end to the months of mass protests and strikes calling for the ouster of his regime.

Awad Ibn Auf, the minister of defence and deputy president, announced Thursday that the military had arrested al-Bashir, who seized power in a coup in 1989, suspended the constitution, shut border crossings and closed the country’s airspace for the next 24 hours.

He declared a three-month state of emergency, putting the country under military rule, and said that the army would oversee a two-year transitional period leading up to elections. Political prisoners would be released, he claimed.

The military coup follows four months of social unrest triggered by a government decision that tripled the price of bread. The spontaneous protests quickly developed into nationwide anti-government demonstrations calling for al-Bashir to step down. The movement drew in ever broader sections of the population with nationwide strikes of workers, including at Port Sudan on the Red Sea, and several work stoppages and protests at major telecom providers and other corporations.

Al-Bashir responded with brutal measures aimed at crushing resistance to the government, including the use of live ammunition by snipers, tear gas and baton charges. At least 60 people have been killed, including children and medics, some of whom died in prison as a result of torture.

Security forces arrested hundreds of demonstrators, with at least 800 sentenced to lengthy terms of imprisonment. Women were sentenced to floggings. There have been numerous arrests of oppositionists, including leaders of the main opposition Umma Party and the Sudan Communist Party (SCP).

In February, al-Bashir announced a year-long state of emergency, making mass demonstrations illegal, and dismissed his cabinet and all the 18 provincial governments, replacing the governors with military and security officers.

This did little to curb the widespread unrest over unemployment, soaring inflation and controls on accessing foreign currency and cash that have made living conditions intolerable. There is enormous popular hatred of al-Bashir’s regime for its never-ending wars in different parts of the country, brutal repression, corruption and indifference to endemic poverty.

The regime has suppressed all opposition to its policies over the last 30 years and waged war against its own people in South Sudan and Darfur, with armed conflicts still ongoing in South Kordofan and Blue Nile provinces, in what has become known as Sudan’s third civil war.

Al-Bashir announced his resignation from the ruling National Congress Party (NCP), appointing his close associate Ahmad Harun as deputy head of the NCP, who called for a “national dialogue.” But this was understood as a manoeuvre to win over some elements of the bourgeois opposition and maintain NCP rule via stage-managed elections in 2020—where Harun or Bashir would run.

The powerful movement of the Sudanese working class is part of a growing movement of strikes and demonstrations by workers across North Africa—in Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco—and around the world.

Sudan’s rallies have been led by a coalition that includes the Sudanese Professional Association (SPA) of doctors, lawyers and teachers, the National Consensus Forces (NCF), Sudan Call, the Unionist Gathering and the Umma Party.

The Stalinist SCP played the crucial role in subordinating the working class to the bourgeois opposition tendencies through its call for “the broadest possible alliance of political parties, armed groups, mass democratic organisations, professional unions, workers’ and peasants’ movements, as well as students’ and women’s unions.”

Limiting the movement to al-Bashir’s ouster would always serve to give the regime a facelift, as has now been proven. The SCP’s popular front with the Islamic opposition Umma party is treacherous. Sadiq al-Mahdi, a former premier (1985-89) and a leader of the Umma, led calls for “the handing of power to a select military command that is qualified to negotiate with representatives of the people to build a new system to achieve peace and democracy.”

Masses of workers and youth have come out onto the streets, not for a military coup or political reshuffle at the top, but rather a fundamental transformation of the entire social order. Since Saturday, the anniversary of the military coup ‎that forced Jaafar Nimeiri to step down in ‎1985 after 16 years in power following massive protests, there have been mass demonstrations outside the military’s headquarters in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum. At least 800,000 people took part Saturday, with the number swelling to 2 million the next day, the biggest protest against the government in Sudan’s tumultuous history.

There were reports of some soldiers intervening to protect demonstrators after ‎security forces tried to disperse a mass sit-in outside the defence ministry, with al-Bashir’s gunmen killing at least 20 people.

On Monday, A l-Ahram Online reported after Sunday’s meeting of the National Defence and Security Council, headed by al-Bashir, “It has become clear that the army has picked its side.” The council issued a statement published by the Sudanese official news agency that “the protesters ‎represent a segment of society that must be heard.” ‎It had cooked up a deal for al-Bashir to step aside, with the military intervening “on the side of the people.”

According to Al-Ahram , the army was split over al-Bashir’s replacement, with one faction opposed to Defence Minister Auf because, like al-Bashir, he is wanted by the International ‎Criminal Court for war crimes in Darfur when he was head of military intelligence. Al-Bashir’s forces are accused of killing up to 400,000 people. Other military figures tipped for the post are retired Armed Forces Chief of General Staff Lieutenant-General Emad Al-‎Din Mustafa Adawi and Lieutenant-General Kamal Abdul-Marouf, the military’s joint chief of staff. ‎

The coup was clearly green-lighted by the United States and the UK, the former colonial power in Sudan, along with Sudan’s neighbour, the Egyptian dictator General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who made his second visit to the White House earlier this week. El-Sisi’s discussions with President Donald Trump were held against the backdrop of a similar attempt to neuter anti-regime protests in Algeria—with the military announcing the resignation of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika—as well as the raging civil war in Libya.

Referring to Libya and Sudan, el-Sisi said, “We cannot afford a leadership emerging in Libya or Sudan that tolerates, or even worse condones, militant Islamic activity. This is why … we are keeping a close eye on any possible transition of power in Sudan.”

On Wednesday, the US, Britain and Norway, who played a key role in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended a 30-year civil war and paved the way for the secession of South Sudan, issued a statement backing a pre-emptive coup. The statement said, “The time has come for the Sudanese authorities to respond to these popular demands in a serious and credible way. The Sudanese people are demanding a transition to a political system that is inclusive and has greater legitimacy.”

While the fall of al-Bashir was greeted with euphoria, the demonstrations have continued. Some protesters mocked the announcement, with one tweeting, “LOL, Awad Ibn Auf probably walked out [after] that speech and went straight to Bashir at his house arrest.”

The Sudanese Professionals Association said, “It’s a coup and we’re not budging” and called for protests to continue until authority is passed on to “a civilian transitional government that represents the revolution’s forces.”

But attempts to present a civilian transitional government as capable of producing a flourishing democracy that would resolve the enormous social and economic problems confronting Sudanese workers are no less fraudulent than a military transitional council. Either way, the country remains dominated by a small, wealthy clique. The only way to establish a democratic regime in Sudan is through a struggle led by the working class to take power and expropriate the ill-gotten wealth of the entire ruling class, in the context of a broad international struggle of the working class against capitalism and for the building of socialism.

Amid corruption scandals and deals with IMF and Washington, Ecuador’s government betrays Assange

Bill Van Auken

The decision by the Ecuadorian government of President Lenín Moreno to invite the British police into its London embassy to drag out Julian Assange, opening the way to the extradition of the WikiLeaks founder to the US, is a flagrant violation of international law and a shameful new chapter in the cowardice and submission of Latin America’s national bourgeoisie to US imperialism.

Not only did the Ecuadorian government throw open the doors of its embassy to the British police snatch squad, it announced on Thursday that the day before, without any notification to Assange or his attorneys, the country’s foreign ministry had summarily stripped the journalist of his Ecuadorian citizenship, which he had been granted in 2017 as part of an attempt to secure his release from the embassy under diplomatic cover.

Government officials claimed that there had been unspecified “irregularities” in the decision to grant Assange citizenship. The motive for abrogating the decision was clear: the Ecuadorian constitution prohibits the extradition of the country’s citizens and requires that they be tried for any crime under the country’s laws.

President Lenín Moreno announced his filthy deal with US and British imperialism in a video posted on his Twitter account, in which he claimed that he had secured guarantees from London that Assange would not be extradited to “a country where he could face torture or the death penalty.” This lie was exposed immediately, as the US Justice Department released an indictment, and UK authorities made it clear they were awaiting proceedings for extradition to a country where the death penalty is in use and that has practiced torture on an international scale.

Assange’s Ecuadorian lawyer, Carlos Poveda, denounced the government’s arbitrary, antidemocratic and extralegal actions. “At the minimum, we should have been notified so that we could exercise the right of defense,” he said. He insisted that the law establishes that any termination of asylum must be first reviewed with the asylee, who has the right to argue his case.

Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Jose Valencia went before the country’s National Assembly on Thursday to justify the illegal act carried out by the government in summarily stripping Assange of his asylum.

Valencia’s presentation, which was interrupted by shouts of “traitor” and “ vendepatria ” from opposition legislators, consisted of nine points, comprised of lies and absurdities.

He claimed that Assange, who has been held under increasingly draconian conditions in the embassy, largely cut off from the outside world, had engaged in “countless acts of interference in the internal affairs of other states,” had behaved badly toward embassy officials, and had made “insulting threats” against the Ecuadorian government, including the “infamous and slanderous” charge that it was “acting under pressure from foreign countries.”

The same Valencia had last week denounced the “insulting” warning by WikiLeaks that his government had reached an agreement with UK authorities to turn Assange over to the British police.

Valencia went so far as to claim that the handing over of Assange was done in part out of concern for his health, and then went on to complain about how much the embassy had spent on his food, medical expenses and laundry.

The immediate context for the Ecuadorian government’s action is a raging corruption scandal implicating President Moreno and his family. The so-called INA Papers, an extensive set of documents, emails and other social media communications, have implicated Moreno in crimes ranging from official corruption to perjury and money laundering.

At the center of the scandal is a scheme in which the Chinese company Sinohydro, which built a hydroelectric dam in Ecuador, deposited $18 million in payoffs in an offshore company, which in turn transferred the money to a set of 10 shell companies that included INA Investments Corp, owned by Edwin Moreno, the president’s brother. The company’s name was taken from the common syllable in the names of the president’s three daughters, Irina, Cristina and Karina.

An opposition legislator, Ronny Aleaga, who said he received the dossier anonymously, has insisted that the documents establish that the company was placed under the directorship of figureheads to conceal the president’s connection to the scheme.

The documents were first published in February 2019, prompting a congressional investigation. On March 26, WikiLeaks’ Twitter account called attention to the investigation, while citing a New York Times report that Moreno had been in discussion with the Trump administration—via a May 2017 trip to Quito by Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort—on handing over Assange in return for debt relief.

Foreign Minister Valencia responded immediately to the tweet, calling it “an absurd lie to harm the dignity of our country” and vowed the Ecuadorian government would take action.

Subsequently, Moreno and his subordinates tried to twist the WikiLeaks tweet of news already reported and well known in Ecuador into proof that Assange, held virtually incommunicado in the London embassy, was personally responsible for hacking the president’s phone and emails.

Within two days of the WikiLeaks tweet, the Ecuadorian national assembly, in which Moreno’s party and other right-wing parties hold the majority, passed a resolution calling on the Foreign Ministry to retaliate against Assange over the leak of the INA Papers.

The Ecuadorian president mounted a cynical campaign, claiming that he was the victim of an invasion of privacy and that the INA Papers had included “private photos” of himself and his family, all for the purpose of distracting public attention from the extensive evidence of his wholesale corruption.

With the expulsion of Assange from the London embassy, Moreno’s government has escalated this campaign. Maria Paula Romo, Ecuador’s interior minister, stated that Assange and WikiLeaks were involved in a plot to “destabilize” the Moreno government, which allegedly involved two “Russian hackers” working inside Ecuador, Ricardo Patiño, a former Ecuadorian foreign minister, and, possibly, the Venezuelan government of President Nicolas Maduro. She claimed that evidence of this plot would be turned over to Ecuadorian prosecutors imminently.

All of this is a geyser of mud aimed at diverting attention from the corruption charges against Moreno and deflecting the growing popular anger against his right-wing government. Recent opinion polls have placed his favorable rating at barely 17 percent.

Moreno made clear his intention to betray Assange from the moment he took office in 2017. He referred to the Australian-born journalist as a “hacker,” an “inherited problem” and “a stone our shoe.”

The previous government of President Rafael Correa had granted asylum to Assange in 2012 because of the clear evidence that he faced political persecution for exposing imperialist war crimes of the US government, mass surveillance and antidemocratic conspiracies carried out by Washington, other governments and transnational corporations.

When the government in Quito decided to grant Assange asylum in its London embassy, its then-foreign affairs minister, Ricardo Patiño, declared that Washington’s vendetta against the journalist “could endanger his safety, integrity and even his life." He continued: "The evidence shows that if Mr. Assange is extradited to the United States, he wouldn’t have a fair trial. It is not at all impossible that he could be subjected to cruel and degrading treatment and sentenced to life imprisonment or even capital punishment.”

What has changed in the nearly seven years that Assange has spent trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy? The Trump administration has only made the threats against the journalist more explicit, with former CIA director and now Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declaring WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service,” whose activities are not protected by the First Amendment. Former attorney general Jeff Sessions insisted that bringing Assange back to the US in chains to face a rigged trial was a “priority” for the US Justice Department.

The change is not in the threat to Assange, but rather in the sharp turn to the right by the government of Lenín Moreno, part of a wave of reaction that has accompanied the ebbing of the so-called Pink Tide throughout Latin America.

Nowhere has this been more evident than in the policies pursued by Moreno, who was the handpicked successor of the former president, Correa, who had declared himself a supporter of “Bolivarian revolution” and “21st century socialism.”

Moreno has pursued a policy aimed at subordinating Ecuador to the international banks and financial institutions economically and to US imperialism politically. Earlier this year, he concluded deals with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other international financial institutions for $10 billion in credit in exchange for implementing draconian austerity measures that have seen the axing of over 10,000 public-sector jobs, along with half of the government’s ministries, as well as the slashing of taxes on the rich, the gutting of labor laws and the scrapping of subsidies for fuel prices.

These policies have provoked mass protests and a general strike against the Moreno government.

At the same time, Moreno has courted the approval of the State Department and the Pentagon, becoming one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the US-instigated coup in Venezuela and the so-called “interim president” Juan Guaidó.

Correa, Ecuador’s former president, condemned the action of the Moreno government. “The biggest traitor in Ecuadorian and Latin American history, Lenín Moreno, allowed the British police to enter our embassy in London to arrest Assange,” he said. Moreno, he added, “has demonstrated his lack of humanity to the world, turning in Julian Assange—not only an asylee, but also an Ecuadorian citizen—to the British police,” which both placed his life “at risk” and “humiliates Ecuador.”

Similarly, former Ecuadorian foreign minister Guillaume Long issued a statement Thursday denouncing the arrest. “The surrender of Julian Assange, dragged by the British police after entering our diplomatic mission to remove him, is a national shame and a historical error that will leave a deep mark on Ecuador for a long time,” he said.

Long added that the government’s decision violated rulings of the United Nation and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and “will be remembered by future generations of Ecuadorians as an act of servility, vileness and ethical degradation.”

The betrayal of Assange is part and parcel of the Moreno government’s turn to the right and accommodation to US imperialism, which have spelled a frontal attack on the Ecuadorian working class. The defense of Assange and of basic democratic rights depends upon the struggle to unite the working class in Ecuador, Britain, the US and internationally in struggle against the capitalist system.

Australian prime minister calls crisis election for May 18

Mike Head

With his faction-wracked government beset by deepening economic and political crises, Prime Minister Scott Morrison today set May 18 as the date for an Australian federal election.

Even the extraordinary timing of Morrison’s announcement was revealing. It is an anxious bid to shut down parliament immediately and go to the polls as quickly as possible before the economic situation worsens and further rifts erupt in the ruling Liberal-National Coalition.

Morrison went to government house at 7am to ask the governor-general to not just dissolve parliament, as usual for an election, but to prorogue it. Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove prorogued—that is, suspended—the Senate as of 8.29 am, exercising his power to do so under section 5 of the Constitution.

Senate estimates hearings scheduled for today and tomorrow were immediately cancelled. This ends any further, even limited, parliamentary scrutiny of last week’s budget and its fraudulent economic predictions, on which both the government and the opposition Labor Party have based all their election pledges.

At an 8am media conference, Morrison declared that the election was a “clear choice” between the Coalition and Labor as to whom voters should “trust” to build a “strong Australia.”

In reality, the established parliamentary parties offer the working class—the vast majority of the population—no choice. This includes the Greens and an array of right-wing populists and “independents.” All support the existing capitalist profit system and its agenda of austerity and militarism.

Far from “trust,” there is seething hostility toward the political establishment elite after decades in which successive Coalition and Labor-led governments have enforced ever-widening social inequality, falling wages and conditions, deteriorating public services, and participated in US-led wars.

The Socialist Equality Party will stand candidates in the election to oppose this entire agenda. The SEP will be the only party to expose the lies of the political establishment and the corporate media, and tell the truth: the only way forward for the working class lies in unifying its struggles globally to abolish the capitalist profit system and establish workers’ governments to carry out a socialist program.

Such is the fraud of the official election campaign that both the old ruling parties have adopted the phony catch cry of a “fair go” as their central theme. Morrison told the media conference he believed “in a fair go for those who have a go,” insisting that this could be achieved only through individual “hard work.”

Acutely aware of rising working-class unrest, Labor Party leader Bill Shorten issued a video in which he again declared that his party stood for “a fair go for Australia.” He repeated the bogus claims he made in last week’s budget reply speech that a Labor government would make Australia less unequal.

These unabashed lies by both parties were further exposed just before Morrison called the election. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) effectively demolished all the economic forecasts in last week’s budget. It issued a sharp downgrade for global growth predictions, and said Australia’s economy was slowing twice as fast as comparable countries.

On top of the international downturn and trade war tensions ignited by the US, the IMF said an “unexpectedly” rapid and large fall in house prices in Australia meant the country’s economy was in “a delicate situation.” The IMF’s representative Thomas Helbling told the Australian Financial Review: “That’s always a big concern in a budget.”

The IMF’s blunt assessment is another warning that whichever party forms the next government, it will rapidly abandon its election vows of “fairness” and deepen the brutal austerity drive.

The IMF slashed its 2019 growth estimate for Australia from 2.8 percent to 2.1 percent, far below the budget’s unreal forecasts of 2.75 percent in 2019‑ 20 and 2020‑ 21, and 3 percent in the following two years. That alone means cutting billions of dollars from social spending in order to meet the demands of the financial markets for a budget surplus.

As for “fairness,” the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) issued a report that exposed this fraud. It stated that Australia’s richest individuals are increasing their proportion of national income to some of the highest levels in the developed world, while “middle-class Australians” are being squeezed into lower incomes or absolute poverty at some of the fastest rates internationally.

By “middle class,” the OECD means most of the working class—those households earning between $US19,537 and $US52,097 a year in purchasing power parity dollars. While upper income Australians, as a proportion of the population, grew by 2 percentage points between the mid-1980s and the mid-2010s, their share of income grew by 7 percentage points.

Median incomes in Australia had doubled since the mid-1990s, but housing costs had lifted by 250 percent, education expenses had increased by 150 percent, and “over-indebtedness” had soared, placing households in what “looks increasingly like a boat in rocky waters.”

Between 2007 and 2015, the OECD found the share of “middle-income households” falling into poverty in a single year was 4 percent, double the rate of the developed world and the same rate as impoverished Greece.

These statistics provide only a pale picture of the inequality and falling living conditions imposed by the corporate ruling class and its political servants, both Coalition and Labor, over the past four decades. Since the global financial breakdown of 2008-09, this social assault has only intensified, with full-time jobs being casualised, young workers being pushed into low-paid and insecure work, and more than a million jobless and disabled workers forced to try to survive on sub-poverty welfare payments.

In office since the Labor Party suffered a landslide defeat in 2013, the Coalition between the Liberals and the rural-based Nationals is being torn apart. The most right-wing factions, around Morrison, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton and ex-Prime Minister Tony Abbott, are seeking to divert rising social discontent and political disaffection in xenophobic and nationalist directions.

Given the government’s instability, sections of big business are again looking to the Labor Party, backed by the trade unions, to take office to suppress the resistance of the working class, as the Hawke and Keating governments did from 1983 to 1996 and the Rudd and Gillard governments from 2007 to 2013.

Australia: Another toxic factory fire endangers working-class suburbs

Peter Byrne

Last Friday an enormous fire engulfed a factory used to store chemical waste in the northern Melbourne suburb of Campbellfield. A worker, Vignesh Varatharaja, a refugee originally from Sri Lanka, was badly burned and had to be hospitalised and placed in an induced coma. About 175 firefighters were needed to quench the blaze.

A massive toxic plume of black smoke, visible from central Melbourne 30 kilometres away, covered a large area in the city’s north and triggered emergency health alerts. Residents in the working-class suburbs of Campbellfield, Broadmeadows, Pascoe Vale and Coburg were advised to take shelter indoors immediately. Eleven local schools were closed for the day, while 12 more reportedly telephoned families asking them to collect their children.

As it is not known exactly what chemicals were being stored at the site, the health danger posed by the fire remains unknown.

Firefighters at the scene of the blaze

The fire is only the latest in a series of incidents in Melbourne involving toxic and other industrial waste storage. All have affected working-class areas and all were the product of the subordination of public health and safety to the corporate profit interests.

There have been eight factory fires in Melbourne since October. One of the schools affected by Friday’s fire, Broadmeadows Primary, has been forced to shut down multiple times in recent years due to dangerous fires, including at Coolooro’s SKM Recycling factory and at a nearby tyre dump. In the western suburbs, an enormous fire erupted in Tottenham last September in a factory used to store chemicals.

The Tottenham fire triggered ongoing investigations by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The Age reported that the EPA discovered a massive, illegal toxic dumping operation across Melbourne’s northern suburbs, with up to 19 million litres of waste stockpiled. This is ten times more than was previously estimated.

In recent months, investigators uncovered multiple warehouses in Epping and Campbellfield. “When discovered,” the Age wrote, “the warehouses were packed almost floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall with industrial-size plastic containers and drums.”

The newspaper also reported that government documents last December assessed the potential consequences of a fire or spill at these sites as “MAJOR” and representing a “danger to life.”

Despite this, the state Labor government in Victoria has done nothing to resolve the toxic waste storage crisis. Corporate operators continue to get away with blatantly unsafe practices, and the EPA remains an underfunded and largely toothless body.

The EPA inspected the Campbellfield factory that went up in flames last Friday as recently as March 13. According to the Age, inspectors found “leaking containers and spilled chemicals on the factory floor,” with safety breaches described as “extremely alarming.” The site had more than 400,000 litres of chemicals, three times the authorised amount.

The EPA suspended Bradbury Industrial Services’ licence to process toxic chemical waste. Yet apparently no other sanction was imposed, nor any steps taken to resolve the health and safety hazard. Another inspection was carried out last Thursday, the day before the fire, with EPA staff reportedly discovering that the site still had 300,000 litres of chemicals.

The Herald Sun reported: “The site has a chequered history. The first non-­ compliance notice issued to Bradbury Industrial Services was in 2012, when operating under a different name—Resolve Waste Management. The company was given an official warning for not complying with site requirements. It was also fined $15,000 in 2016, but not convicted, after a 2013 fire at another Campbellfield site in Merola Way.”

Despite these circumstances, Labor Premier Daniel Andrews issued an extraordinary statement on Friday—before any serious investigation had commenced into the cause of the fire—declaring that “this is not a suspicious fire.”

Toxic waste disposal is big business. Three major corporations dominate the market—SUEZ Recycling & Recovery, Veolia Environmental Services, and Cleanaway Waste Management. Cleanaway is listed as one of the top 100 companies on the ASX stock exchange, with annual revenues of $1.5 billion. A 2017 government report found that these corporations process about 80 percent of all hazardous waste, with the other 20 percent handled by smaller business operators.

As reported by the Age: “This new ‘business model’ sees cowboy operators—and organised crime gangs—offer to remove waste at below-market rates to businesses wanting to avoid paying expensive disposal fees to licensed operators. Many of the chemicals being found at illicit sites are used by heavy industry and are expensive to dispose of properly. In many cases, landlords or a local council are forced to pay to clean up the mess left behind by rogue operators.”

A firefighter who works in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, and who has responded to numerous factory and warehouse fires, told the World Socialist Web Site: “The reality is that we don’t know how many [chemical sites] there are out there. These are big businesses. What are they going to get from the government? What fine will they get? They’ll get f*** all. They’re willing to take the hit when they get caught because of the money they’re making. It’s huge.”

The ability of waste disposal operators to act with impunity is a consequence of the state Labor government’s promotion of deregulation and privatisation measures aimed at boosting corporate profit rates. Every sphere of social life is now subject to corporate profiteering, including the disposal of hazardous waste.

The needs and interests of working-class people count for nothing. Workers in Campbellfield and surrounding suburbs have been badly affected by the protracted de-industrialisation of the economy, which was worsened by the liquidation of the Australian car industry in 2013 that saw the shut-down of the Coolaroo Ford plant. Yet nothing has been done by governments—Labor or Liberal—to address the depression level joblessness in the area—23 percent in Coolaroo and 25 percent in Broadmeadows.

The trade unions have policed the many factory closures in the area and continue to enforce onerous and unsafe working conditions in remaining plants. Workers at the Campbellfield toxic waste factory were covered by the Australian Workers Union (AWU), which is yet to explain its failure to ensure the safety of workers in the factory and surrounding suburbs.

Twenty of the 50 workers at the plant reportedly migrated to Australia on refugee and bridging visas, which makes them ineligible for unemployment benefits. The AWU’s only response has been to set up an online fund appeal for the badly injured worker.

Greece: Syriza government mobilises riot police against refugees

John Vassilopoulos

Riot police attacked refugees, including women and children, with tear gas and stun grenades over three days last week in the village of Diavata, 60 kilometres south of the Greek-Macedonian border. The attack by police was brutal, with fires started by exploding stun grenades.

Around 900 refugees, mostly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, set up a makeshift camp with around 100 tents in Diavata last Thursday, next to the official refugee camp in the village. This followed a false report on social media claiming that the border was now open for refugees to cross and continue their onward journey into Northern Europe. By Sunday, the area had been cleared of the 60 or so remaining migrants, who were sent back to the camps in which they were being held. Police detained those who could not produce valid ID.

Dozens of refugees demanding “open the borders” also occupied Larissa Station—Athens’ central railway station—last Friday, asking to be transported to the border. This resulted in the cancellation of scheduled intercity trains and suburban rail services. The station was cleared by the afternoon.

The source of the social media post, according to a news report on Greek TV station Ant1, was a supposed NGO, “Caravan of Hope.” It claimed that Greece was to open the border with North Macedonia on April 5 at noon. The same report showed footage of a refugee’s mobile phone containing the same social media message in Arabic.

On Monday, three men who were arrested on Saturday appeared in court in Thessaloniki. A Palestinian, aged 28, a Syrian, 32, and an Iraqi, 28, were charged with resisting arrest and sentenced to 12 months in prison. All three told the court they were misled, with the Palestinian man stating, “We were told that the Red Cross and other NGOs would take us out [of the country]. I believe we were fooled.”

Some reports made unsubstantiated claims that behind the hoax were networks of traffickers who have a vested interest in the border being opened. But the lie seems more likely to have been a right-wing initiative aimed at stoking tensions between Greece and Macedonia.

Greece’s land border with Macedonia has been closed to refugees since early 2016. This was around the same time that the European Union and the pseudo-left Syriza government cut their rotten deal with Turkey, which stipulates that all refugees crossing into Greece from Turkey will be interned there until their case is processed and they are ultimately deported back to Turkey.

Whatever the source of the false report, it served to highlight the desperation of the more than 70,000 refugees who are being detained in overcrowded camps on Greece’s mainland and islands.

Dealing with the massive backlog of asylum claims involves processes that few refugees understand, and has pushed refugees—many already traumatised from the brutality of the wars they have fled—to breaking point. Some are being forced to wait for years in hellhole camps before they are even formally interviewed regarding their asylum claim. Speaking to the Associated Press at Diavata, Shapour Karimi, 43, an Iranian and father of one, said, “I arrived a year and a half ago and they have set my (asylum application) interview for December 2021.” He added, “What will I do all this time? A solution must be found so we can depart.”

One of the asylum seekers present at the Diavata camp before the riot police attacked spoke to the BBC. Bilal Jaf, a 25-year-old Kurdish migrant from Iraq, said, “We’re afraid that the police will try to evacuate our makeshift camp… I have been living in Greece for 11 months, waiting for my asylum request to be examined. I don’t know for how long I should wait for that.”

In an interview on Friday on state radio ERA 1, the Syriza-led government’s Migration Policy Minister Dimitris Vitsas praised the police’s conduct in Diavata, stating, “They are doing their job in the best possible way.”

In a separate Open TV interview, Vitsas displayed the government’s callous contempt for the plight of refugees, declaring that a refugee’s “first obligation is to respect the laws of the state, which one could say is hosting him. This must be understood.”

He slandered the refugees at Diavata, stating that some of them “will want to act tough and that as time goes on and they can’t get what they want they will start to do other things such as attacking the police. I call on them not to have their kids in front of them because this is not very brave.”

Syriza Public Order Minister Olga Gerovassili declared that “the borders for another country will not open” and warned refugees “mustn’t risk the privileges that they have and they shouldn’t use their children as human shields because some traffickers gave them false hopes.”

Syriza took power in January 2015 and played a pivotal role in continuing and deepening the austerity that has pauperised millions of Greeks. It has served as a reliable partner of NATO, with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras promoting Greece under its governance as a force for stability “in the Balkans as well as in the unstable region of Southeastern Europe.”

Its crackdown on refugees, asylum seekers and migrants is of a piece with its overall bourgeois, pro-imperialist agenda.

There is little to distinguish the comments of its ministers from the fascistic anti-immigrant rhetoric espoused by far-right forces throughout Europe and internationally. As far-right politics are being ever more openly adopted by the ruling elites of Europe, and fascistic movements encouraged, Syriza is only too happy to lend its services to this effort. In enforcing the EU’s anti-immigrant policy on the continent’s southern border, Syriza willingly acts as the jailer of all refugees stranded within its country’s borders.

As for the “hosting” to which Vitsas refers, this is a lie contradicted by numerous reports on the atrocious conditions facing refugees in what are essentially concentration camps run by Greece. The Diavata camp is one of three temporary facilities on the Greek mainland, with an official capacity for 936 people. In January, the infomigrants web site reported on the horrific conditions at the camp, with many detainees struggling to survive in freezing conditions during a cold snap.

The report noted, “The camp is full to capacity, with around 800 registered asylum seekers. On top of these, there are between 500 and 650 people living at the site without having been registered by migration authorities.” It cited the comments of Mike Bonke, the country director of the Arbeiter Samariter Bund, an NGO providing support services to Diavata: “Most of them have built their own makeshift shelters and tents, which are not providing them with the protection needed… They have no (safe) heating, washing and sanitation and cooking facilities.”

In a statement last month, Emmanuel Goué, head of the Doctors Without Borders mission, said, “Greece has become a dumping ground for the men, women, and children that the European Union has failed to protect.” He added, “What was once touted as a ‘refugee emergency’ has given way to inexcusable levels of human suffering across the Greek islands and on mainland Greece. The EU and Greek authorities continue to rob vulnerable people of their dignity and health, seemingly in an effort to deter others from coming. This policy is cruel, inhumane, and cynical, and it needs to end.”

UK cancer patients’ lives imperilled, suffering deepened by treatment delays

Ajanta Silva

The plight of cancer patients in the UK is one of many indicators of the devastating impact of funding cuts to the National Health Service (NHS). These have been carried out by the Conservative-led government and their devolved counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

In England alone, more than 127,000 cancer patients have been left waiting more than two months to start their treatment over the last five years. According to official NHS figures released in January, almost one in four patients were waiting longer than the officially set targets of treating them within 62 days after an urgent GP referral is made and cancer is diagnosed. Figures show the long waits have reached their highest levels since records began in 2009.

NHS Scotland statistics for October to December 2018 show nearly one in five people diagnosed with cancer were waiting more than two months for treatment. Treatment for women with cervical cancer during that period has seen an alarming drop in the numbers starting treatment—just 53.7 percent of patients—compared to 89.7 percent between July and September 2018. Only one Scottish health board out of 15—NHS Lanarkshire—met the Scottish government’s 95 percent target of cancer patients beginning treatment within two months from diagnosis.

In Wales, a significant shortage of specialists poses real risks to cancer care and treatment. Only three extra cancer doctors joined NHS Wales in the past five years, according to Royal College of Radiologists (RCR) figures. This is in spite of rising cancer rates and patient numbers.

Speaking to the BBC, Dr. Martin Rolles, the RCR’s cancer lead in Wales, said, “The risk really is the deteriorating quality of the service. We won’t be able to give the patients the time they need. Individual oncologists will struggle to see patients in a timely manner, so there may be increasing delays in treatment.

“There are increasing risks because overworked doctors tend to make mistakes. It will affect the quality of the patient experience and it will affect the quality of the very good service that we try to provide in Wales.”

Statistics released by the Department of Health in Northern Ireland show a huge failure in missed targets for 95 percent of patients starting treatment within 62 days following an urgent GP referral for suspected cancer. About four out of 10 patients were left waiting longer than two months without treatment in 2018. Patient experience is going from bad to worse, with only 60.5 percent of patients getting treatment within the expected timeframe in December 2018—compared to 66.8 and 68.7 percent, in the same month in 2017 and 2016, respectively.

To achieve the best and successful outcomes, and to alleviate anxiety, fear, depression and the suffering of patients, cancer treatment should be started as early as possible when the diagnosis is confirmed.

In England, however, the target set by the government for NHS trusts currently stands at only 85 percent of patients beginning treatment within two months.

Even this arbitrary target of leaving 15 percent of patients without early treatment was breached by many NHS trusts, due to pressures they are under as a result of funding cuts.

According to the Macmillan cancer charity, “[A]lmost three quarters of NHS hospital trusts in England (73 percent) missed the 62-day target in December 2018, with 52 trusts—over one in 3—missing it by 10 percentage points or more.”

Macmillan points out that an “average 2,630 patients waited longer than 62 days to start treatment after an urgent GP referral per month in 2018, compared to 1,711 in 2014 (a 54 percent rise).” This happened regardless of the fact that the more than “62-day patient numbers only rose by 25 percent from 2014 to 2018 comparatively.”

Responding to this year’s cancer waiting times, Dr. Fran Woodard, executive director of policy and impact at Macmillan Cancer Support, said: “January 2019 marks five years since the 62-day cancer target was first missed and despite the best efforts of hard working NHS staff, more than 127,000 people have been left waiting too long to start vital treatment throughout that time.”

“Behind the numbers are real people who tell us how delays cause real anxiety for them and their loved ones at a time when they are already trying to deal with the many worries cancer is throwing their way.”

One of the main factors in treatment delay is staff shortages, especially of clinical oncologists—those who treat cancer patients with chemotherapy, radiotherapy and immunotherapy. A census carried out by the Royal College of Radiologists in 62 major cancer centres in the UK found that more than 7.5 percent of consultant posts, which amount to 70 full-time posts, were vacant. Most of the vacant posts had been unfilled for at least a year. These centres mainly rely on the good will of the full-time doctors who work over six hours extra a week in average.

The long delays patients experience in getting their diagnoses confirmed with investigative procedures and tests, including obtaining biopsies from tumours, histopathology reporting of biopsies, CT scans and MRI scans, contribute to long waits in commencing cancer treatment.

The removal of malignant tumours, which needs specialist surgical interventions, is also affected by pressures such as staff shortages, lack of beds and long waiting lists for surgical operations.

There is a massive backlog for patients who need surgeries, with 220,000 patients waiting more than six months and 36,857 waiting more than nine months.

Referral to treatment (RTT) waiting times for consultant-led elective care in England reveal the human cost of the pressures created by relentless NHS funding cuts over the last eight years. NHS England’s statistical press release last month stated that the “number of RTT patients waiting to start treatment at the end of January 2019 was 4.2 million patients. Of those, 2,157 patients were waiting more than 52 weeks.”

A senior doctor who works in a Cancer Treatment Centre in Wales spoke to the WSWS about the crisis that leads to treatment delays. “I have seen a surge in patient numbers and referrals for cancer treatment over the last five-six years. But our facilities, resources and staff levels have not increased with the rising demand. We work several hours unpaid extra every week to fulfil the needs of the patients.

“One of the main problems we face in starting early treatment for patients with cancer is the delays getting biopsies and surgical interventions done. I think the surgical teams are struggling to keep up with the demands for surgical operations.

“Having CT scans [using x-rays and a computer to create detailed images] and MRI scans [that create images using magnetism and radio waves] done for inpatients is not too difficult. However, PET scans [creating 3-dimensional (3D) pictures of the inside of the body], which we require prior to starting treatment, are not readily available because there aren’t enough machines.

“Although we get all the investigations, necessary tests and imaging done, sometimes treatments get deferred due to lack of beds in the oncology/haematology ward. Treatments for patients who need intensive treatment and whose conditions are severe cannot be started in the day unit.

“We have a severe shortage of oncology trained nurses and the other staff. The government does not train enough specialists in cancer treatment and care. Under these conditions, it is inevitable that we miss the treatment targets.”

The patient suffering and human cost of vital treatment delays are yet to be fully gauged.

What is certain is that the statistical proof of the failure to treat cancer patients in a timely manner will do nothing to stem the assault on the NHS by the political representatives of the ruling elite. In the face of damming evidence to the contrary, a Tory government NHS spokesperson downplayed the plight of cancer patients, saying that “more people than ever before are coming forward for cancer checks, with a quarter of a million more getting checked this year and thousands more being treated within the two-month target.”