Turkish election authorities order re-vote in Istanbul

Ulas Atesci & Keith Jones

After weeks of disputation, Turkey’s Supreme Election Council (YSK) has bowed to the demands of the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the AKP (Justice and Development Party)-led government and ordered Istanbul’s March 31 mayoral election be re-run on June 23.

Earlier, election authorities had dismissed the AKP’s complaints about election irregularities in Turkey’s largest city and allowed the candidate of the opposition Nation Alliance, the CHP’s Ekrem İmamoğlu, to be sworn in as Istanbul’s mayor. The Nation Alliance is a coalition between the far-right Good Party and the CHP or Republican People’s Party, the party of the traditional Kemalist capitalist elite that dominated the politics of the Turkish Republic till the turn of the 21st Century.

During the five weeks culminating in Monday’s 7 to 4 YSK ruling annulling the results of the March 31 election, Erdoğan and his AKP advanced a long series of dubious and outright anti-democratic arguments to press for the March 31 Istanbul mayoral election to be set aside. Erdoğan proclaimed, for example, that İmamoğlu’s 14,000 vote margin of victory was immaterial given the number of votes cast.

Ultimately, the YSK justified its decision to cancel the mayoral election on the grounds that some of those who supervised the vote were not, as required by law, civil servants. However, it did not annul the other elections held simultaneously with the vote for mayor, including for the city’s various districts, a majority of which were by won by the AKP-led People’s Alliance.

Only the latest in a long series of authoritarian actions by Erdoğan and his right-wing Islamist populist regime, Monday’s canceling of the March 31 Istanbul election sparked an immediate popular outcry, including large angry spontaneous protests in the streets of Istanbul.

It comes as the 17-year-old AKP national government and the Turkish bourgeoisie and its republic face a confluence of political, economic and geopolitical crises. Turkey’s economy fell into recession in the fall of last year, driving the official unemployment rate to 14.7 percent in the December–February quarter, even as inflation hovered around 20 percent and the lira continued to depreciate significantly.

The economic crisis has been exacerbated by the unraveling of relations between Ankara and Washington, for seven decades the Turkish bourgeoisie’s principal military-security partner. The US and Turkey are at loggerheads on multiple fronts. These include: Turkey’s purchase of the Russian-made S-400 air defence system; Washington’s partnering with the YPG, the Syrian offshoot of the PKK, the Kurdish nationalist movement against which the Turkish state has waged a bloody counter-insurgency war in the country’s southeast for the past 35 years; the US sanctions and war preparations against Iran; Washington’s promotion of Israel and Saudi Arabia as its principal Mideast allies; and Washington’s push to exclude Turkey from a significant role in the development of offshore Eastern Mediterranean energy resources.

If Erdoğan and his AKP went to such lengths to overturn their defeat in the Istanbul mayoral election, it is because they calculate they cannot accept divisions within the state apparatus as they seek to negotiate the geopolitical and economic headwinds—a threatened breakdown of the US-Turkish alliance and an eruption of class struggle.

Home to one-fifth of Turkey’s population and responsible for almost a third of the country’s total economic output, Istanbul plays an outsized role in Turkish politics. Erdoğan’s own rise to power began with his election as the city’s mayor in 1994 and he and his supporters have controlled the city’s administration ever since.

The principal target of Erdoğan’s authoritarian measures, including what no doubt were extreme behind the scenes pressures to bully the YSK into ordering the re-vote in Istanbul, is not his capitalist political rivals, but the working class.

Erdoğan and his top ministers have repeatedly pledged to Turkish big business and foreign investors that in the coming months the AKP led government will carry through sweeping economic “reforms”—i.e., social spending cuts and other “pro-market” measures aimed at bolstering the competitive position of Turkish capitalism. In so doing, Erdoğan has frequently drawn attention to the four-year period before Turks next go to the polls, suggesting that this places the government in a strong position to ram through unpopular measures.

As around the world, the past period has seen a growth in working class militancy in Turkey. The March 31 nationwide local elections gave distorted expression to the growing anger against the AKP government. Although the combined vote for the AKP and its electoral ally, the ultra-chauvinist MHP (Nationalist Movement Party), narrowly surpassed 50 percent, there was a sharp turn against the ruling bloc in Ankara and the major cities of western Turkey. This was rooted in anger over the increasingly dire economic situation and indicates a major erosion of support for the AKP among the urban poor, whose support it had cultivated through limited social-welfare programs provided by the state and AKP-aligned Islamist charitable foundations.

Significantly, much of the criticism emanating from Turkish big business circles and foreign investors of Erdoğan’s successful push to overturn the outcome of the Istanbul election is that it will delay the government’s promised austerity drive as the AKP will be loath to alienate voters prior to the June 23 re-vote.

The CHP responded to the YSK’s decision to force a re-vote by accusing the government of a “civil coup.” It also called into question the legitimacy of the results of both the April 16, 2017, referendum, which approved constitutional changes vastly increasing the powers of the president, and the June 2018 parliamentary and presidential elections. There were widespread allegations of electoral improprieties in both 2017 and 2018. Notably the Supreme Election Council played a significant role in determining the referendum outcome, which Erdoğan won only narrowly despite severe limits being placed on the opposition campaign due to a state of emergency, when it ruled that it would count ballots that “had not been stamped” by its officials “as valid unless they could be proved fraudulent.”

However, the CHP quickly made clear it would contest the June 23 elections and is determined to channel the opposition to Erdoğan’s anti-democratic actions into establishment channels. Reprising the role it had played in April 2017 when there were widespread protests against the referendum result, the CHP appealed for calm and an end to street demonstrations. Eager to demonstrate to both big business and Erdoğan that the CHP shares their apprehension that anti-government protests could quickly spin out of the establishment’s control, Istanbul’s defrocked mayor Imamoğlu sought to becalm the protests by declaring “everything is going to be all right,” and this soon became the opposition’s mantra.

Much of Turkey’s pseudo-left openly supported the CHP, a right-wing pro-imperialist party, in the March 31 election. Now they are using the canceling of the March 31 Istanbul election to redouble their efforts to subordinate the working class, in the name of the “defence of democracy,” to the Turkish bourgeoisie and in particular that faction most orientated to Washington, NATO and the European Union.

Several pseudo-left groups that stood their own candidates, including the Stalinist Turkish Communist Party (TKP), have already announced they will withdraw in favour of the candidate of the CHP and Good Party’s Nation Alliance, Imamoğlu.

The Kurdish nationalist People’s Democratic Party (HDP), which is closely aligned with the illegal PKK, backed the Nation Alliance mayoral candidates in the major cities of western Turkey, although the CHP and Good Party leadership have, if anything, been even more hostile to the recognition of the democratic rights of the Kurds than the AKP.

Sharing the CHP’s more pronounced orientation to Washington and the EU, the HDP will likely endorse Imamoğlu in the re-vote. But an HDP member of Parliament signaled that if Erdoğan was ready to make concessions to the Kurdish bourgeoisie, the AKP could yet garner the HDP’s support. “If you want to win the elections in İstanbul,” HDP MP İmam Tascier told Rudaw, “you have to gain Kurds’ votes... Whoever takes a step to solve the Kurdish question, Kurds [will] vote for it. If AKP do this, they might vote for AKP. If it does not and CHP does, they might for it.”

This horse-trading underscores the right-wing, anti-working class character of all the parties of the Turkish and Kurdish bourgeoisie.

The European imperialist powers, which are adamantly opposed to Erdoğan’s attempts to fashion a more independent role for the Turkish bourgeoisie in the Middle East, the Balkans and elsewhere, were quick to condemn the election commission’s canceling of Imamoğlu’s election win.

The EU demanded the YSK justify its “far-reaching” decision “without delay” and Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Mass called the canceling of the election “incomprehensible.”

It is very possible Washington and the EU will join forces to cynically invoke Erdoğan’s authoritarian actions to increase pressure on Ankara to fall more in line with their respective predatory policies.

However to date, the reaction of the Trump administration has been low-key. The State Department did not oppose the call for a rev-ote. It merely noted it was “extraordinary” and urged the re-vote be “free, fair and transparent.”

Behind the scenes high-stakes negotiations between Ankara and Washington are ongoing, with Turkey pressing its claim for the establishment of a buffer zone in north-eastern Syria at the expense of American imperialism’s YPG proxies, and the US threatening Turkey with a massive downgrade in military-security ties, even possible expulsion from NATO, if it doesn’t abandon the S-400 purchase.

The democratic rights of working people can’t be defended by aligning with any faction of the Turkish or Kurdish bourgeoisie. Rather the deepening crisis and fissures within the Turkish bourgeoisie and its state, rooted as they are in the breakdown of world capitalism, must be answered by the development of an independent political movement of the working class, fighting for workers’ power and the perspective of international socialism.

“Unequal Germany”—new study examines regional differences

Elisabeth Zimmermann

In recent years, the poverty report of the Joint Welfare Association and other studies have revealed the extent of the gulf between rich and poor in Germany. A new study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES), which is close to the Social Democratic Party (SPD), shows another aspect of this: grave regional differences.

On behalf of the FES, experts from the Institute for Regional and Urban Development Research (ILS) in Dortmund investigated the extent of the unequal living conditions in Germany’s 402 districts and district-free cities. The study, presented at the end of April, bears the title: “Unequal Germany—Socio-Economic Disparities Report 2019.”

In contrast to other studies, which mostly examine only one or two criteria, numerous indicators have been used as a basis: How high are the municipalities in debt? What are the incomes and rents? How many old people and children live on social assistance? What are the conditions of the infrastructure, medical care and other services?

On this basis, Germany was divided into five regions:

* Dynamic large and medium-sized cities with a risk of exclusion (22.7 million inhabitants), in which particular groups are prevented from participating fully and equally in economic life. The study cites cities such as Munich and Hamburg, as well as Gera and Frankfurt on the Oder.

* Strong surrounding region (13.7 million inhabitants), which includes the surrounding areas of Munich, Hamburg, Frankfurt am Main and Stuttgart.

* Solid middle (32.8 million inhabitants). The study includes a large part of West Germany outside the big cities. Typical examples listed are the Odenwald, the Sauerland and Göttingen.

* Rural areas in permanent structural crisis (8.1 million inhabitants). The rural areas in eastern Germany are particularly affected.

* Cities in permanent structural change (5.4 million inhabitants). These include many cities in the Ruhr area such as Duisburg, Dortmund, Gelsenkirchen, the Saarland and cities in Rhineland-Palatinate.

A key finding of the comprehensive study is that social and economic inequality has consolidated despite economic growth and employment growth in recent years.

And this economic growth is just about to dry up, with forecasts being revised downwards several times in recent months. The intensification of the capitalist economic crisis, the uncertainties associated with Brexit, worsening trade war and technological upheaval are threatening tens of thousands of jobs. The announcement of massive job cuts at Ford, VW, Bayer, Siemens and other corporations are just the beginning.

The FES study notes that more than 13.5 million people in Germany live in regions with severe structural problems. But even in the “dynamic boom regions” the gulf between poor and rich is growing. Here, middle-income people, families with children and pensioners are threatened with poverty. Many are driven out because they can no longer afford the rising rents and cost of living in the growing cities.

The situation has been further aggravated in that since 2017, almost one in five households in receipt of Hartz IV welfare payments do not have their full housing costs recognised and so are virtually pushed below the actual subsistence level.

Furthermore, the study states: “The causes of the structural problems are different. While urbanised regions in the west of the country have to deal with the loss of important old industrial sectors (e.g., mining and heavy industry), the aftermath of German reunification and the subsequent collapse of entire economic sectors and labour markets in the GDR [former East Germany] are felt in the predominantly rural regions of eastern Germany.”

This is a sugar-coated description of the wiping out of the formerly nationalised industry in the GDR by Western capitalist corporations with the help of the Treuhand privatisation agency and the former Stalinist bureaucracy. They destroyed millions of jobs, while enriching themselves obscenely.

The study notes that child poverty is a problem in almost all major cities and their surrounding areas. “Very high values of 25 to nearly 40 percent in the Ruhr area, Bremen, Berlin and in some East German cities indicate that here large parts of the population experience poverty and also encounter further social disadvantages during their lives,” the report states.

Elsewhere, the report notes: “For example, the risk of poverty for children and older citizens is a general problem in large cities. The extreme values between the dynamic large and medium cities with risk of exclusion and the urban regions in the ongoing structural change are not far apart (child poverty: Halle on the Saale with 31.9 percent; and Gelsenkirchen with 39.5 percent; poverty in old age: Frankfurt am Main with 8.8 percent; and Offenbach am Main with 8.9 percent).”

The FES study also provides empirical data on life expectancy, health, education and other areas. But it says nothing about the causes of this development and the intensification of social inequality: the capitalist profit system.

As with a similar study from 2015, this study’s authors want to submit policy suggestions for “equal living conditions in Germany,” an objective that is also in the federal government coalition agreement, concluded by the Christian Democrats and SPD.

One of their proposals is that federal and state governments finance highly indebted municipalities with debt cuts, subject to strict conditions. Yet, it is precisely this policy that has led to the catastrophic financial situation in many over-indebted communities.

It recalls the EU’s austerity policy in Greece, where billions in credits were used to rescue the banks, with German banks benefiting in particular. Millions of workers paid for it with the loss of their jobs, massive cuts in wages and pensions, and the destruction of the health system. A social catastrophe was unleashed that had never been seen outside wartime, and this catastrophe continues.

The extent of the concentration of wealth and poverty in Germany is clear from a study by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW). According to this, the 45 richest households in Germany possess as much wealth as some 20 million households of the poorer half of the population. The figures on which this study is based date from 2014. Social polarisation has continued to increase since that time.

This development is the result of a dramatic redistribution of social wealth from the bottom upwards—itself an international phenomenon. This did not simply fall from the sky, but is the result of the policies pursued by all governments over the last decades.

In Germany, with the introduction of Hartz IV, the SPD-Green Party government created a huge low-wage sector with insecure jobs, which has contributed significantly to the widening social polarisation. The subsequent governments under Angela Merkel have followed suit, and now the grand coalition is preparing further sharp attacks on the working class to finance the rapid rearmament of the German military.

Netanyahu agrees a ceasefire with Hamas—for now

Jean Shaoul

Israel ended its weekend bombardment of Gaza, the most ferocious flareup since the 2014 war, after agreeing to yet another Egyptian-brokered ceasefire reached on Monday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to facilitate Qatar’s transfer of funds to Gaza and to ease Israel’s blockade in return for a distancing of Gaza’s protests from the border and an end to nightly riots and the launching of incendiary balloons into southern Israel. This was essentially the same terms it had agreed just six weeks ago. It was Israel’s failure to deliver that had led to this latest clash. But three days after the ceasefire, Ha ’ aretz was warning that Gaza was still waiting for Israel to implement measures to ease the blockade.

Netanyahu authorised the massive assault on Gaza in response to rockets launched from Gaza that killed two Israelis, following Israel’s tightening of restrictions on Gaza’s fishing limits. His decision came just days after being sworn into Israel’s new parliament following the victory of his far-right bloc in last month’s elections. It was the necessary down-payment to ensure that his about-to-be formed ultra-nationalist coalition will protect him from corruption charges and a hefty prison sentence. 

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the most powerful military in the region, launched more than 150 aerial strikes and shelled at least 200 sites in the tiny Palestinian enclave, targeting multi-storey residential buildings, mosques, shops and media institutions. Turkey’s Anadolu news agency was in one of the buildings destroyed.

Israel sealed off access to Gaza’s territorial waters and closed all its land entrances to prevent anyone from leaving or entering Gaza, only allowing in fuel for the territory’s sole power plant.

According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, the 27 Palestinians killed in the shortest and most violent attack in recent years included at least 14 civilians, with the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirming that two pregnant women and three infants were killed by Israeli strikes. Another 154 Palestinians were wounded.

Israel, for its part, suffered the loss of four civilians, the first casualties since 2014, as more than 700 rockets were launched from Gaza. While some of the rockets were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome system, most landed without causing damage or injury.

Netanyahu boasted, “In the past two days, we’ve renewed the policy of assassinating senior terrorists,” referring to the targeted assassination of Hamed Ahmad Abed al-Khoudari on Sunday, the first such killing in four years. “We’ve killed dozens of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists and we toppled terror towers,” he added, referring to the IDF’s destruction of entire apartment buildings that destroyed or damaged more than 830 homes and left more than 350 Palestinians homeless.

“The campaign is not over and requires patience and judgment. We are preparing to continue,” he threatened, indicating that a resumption of aerial bombing, if not an outright invasion, might resume at any time.

Netanyahu came under ferocious attack from his right-wing coalition partners who were virulently opposed to the ceasefire. Bezalel Smotrich, a member of the Union of Right-Wing Parties who is angling to become Israel’s next minister of justice, said, “We should have killed 700 terrorists”—one for every rocket fired from Gaza.

This was from a man whose party agreed to an electoral alliance, brokered by Netanyahu, with the fascist and anti-Arab terrorist Jewish Power, comprised of followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, who advocated the “transfer” of Palestinians to neighbouring Arab countries and a ban on intermarriage between Jews and Arabs. The precursor to Jewish Power, Kahane’s Kach Party, was banned as a terrorist organization.

Benny Gantz, the former chief of staff and head of the Blue and White coalition that sought to unseat Netanyahu as prime minister, excoriated the ceasefire as “another surrender to the blackmail of Hamas and terrorist organizations.”

Gantz had launched his campaign with a video boasting about how many Palestinians had been killed under his command during the 2012 and 2014 wars against Gaza. This merchant of death faces a civil lawsuit for killing six Gazan residents on July 20, 2014.

Netanyahu also came under fire from a rival within his own Likud Party, Gideon Saar, who said, “Timed intervals between rounds of violence directed at Israel and its citizens are getting shorter, while Gaza’s terror organizations are getting stronger. The round of fighting has been delayed rather than prevented.”

Netanyahu, for his part, was determined to bring the hostilities to an end before the events held May 8 and 9 to mark Israel’s Memorial Day, “Independence Day,” which Palestinians mark as the Nakba (Catastrophe), and the Eurovision Song Contest, which Tel Aviv is hosting May 14-18. The latter is already proving to be a commercial disaster, with tickets sales and hotel bookings down on forecasts, despite heavy promotion and subsidies.

According to the daily Ha ’ aretz, Israeli military officials had warned politicians “that if significant steps are not taken to implement understandings with Hamas [to ease the blockade], the group controlling the Gaza Strip will struggle to prevent other organizations in the coastal enclave from acting against Israel,” a reference to Islamic Jihad. Yet despite the warnings, “there has not been an increase in aid or goods going into the Strip.”

The IDF has been discussing a broader military campaign in Gaza in the coming months that would have devastating consequences.

A 2017 document, published by Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, also warned that without a significant change to the humanitarian situation in Gaza, Hamas, the bourgeois clerical group that emerged out of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and controls Gaza after winning the 2006 elections, was in danger of being outmaneuvered by more extreme forces. Last March, Hamas faced down protesters angry over new taxes and their abysmal living conditions in the Strip, which will soon become uninhabitable.

Israel confronts, not only the consequences of Gaza’s economic and social collapse, but also the crisis engulfing President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA). This stems in large part from Netanyahu’s decision to stop the transfer of Palestinian tax revenues because of its stipends to the families of those accused of terrorist activities against Israel, a cut of some $138 million. Abbas is responding by refusing all tax monies owed to the PA, $100 million a month, in order to precipitate a crisis and secure international aid. As a result, he has been unable to pay PA workers their full salaries.

A further factor in Abbas's calculations is the expected launching of US President Donald Trump’s “deal of the century,” to be announced in June, that will provoke a furious backlash from Palestinian workers. Extensive leaks make clear that what the US envisages is not a Palestinian state alongside Israel but some sort of “autonomous” rule in disconnected bits of PA territory to be funded by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf petro-monarchs.

Without substantial economic aid, the PA is staring into the abyss. Unable to fund its institutions, Abbas faces the prospect of mass protests by workers whose livelihoods depend upon the PA and who reject the US plan. While Qatar has agreed to send $300 million to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and $150 million to the besieged Gaza Strip, after the ceasefire was announced on Monday, this is a drop in the ocean.

Two weeks ago, Nikolay Mladenov, the UN’s envoy to the Middle East, stated that without measures to resolve the PA’s economic crisis, the situation could escalate into major violence threatening the existence of the PA and the stability of the entire Middle East.

Venezuela tensions mount after arrest of coup leader

Bill Van Auken

Washington has stepped up threats of military intervention in Venezuela following moves by the Maduro government to arrest a group of right-wing politicians in the National Assembly who participated actively in the abortive April 30 coup called by the US puppet and self-proclaimed “interim president” Juan Guaidó.

On Wednesday night, agents of Venezuela’s SEBIN internal security agency arrested the vice president of the National Assembly, Edgar Zambrano. Zambrano is the leader of the right-wing Democratic Action (AD) party, whose last elected president, Carlos Andrés Pérez, directed the repression that led to as many as 3,000 deaths during the 1989 popular uprising known as the caracazo and was subsequently impeached for corruption. Zambrano was leaving a meeting at the AD headquarters when he was surrounded by security agents.

After he refused orders to get out of his car, the police brought in a tow truck which towed him and his car to jail. He reportedly had US $9,000 on his person at the time of his arrest.

He and several other National Assembly deputies have been charged by the country’s Supreme Court with treason, conspiracy, civil rebellion and other crimes in connection with the April 30 events, which were initiated by Guaidó, who posted a video of himself and the leader of his far-right, US-funded Voluntad Popular party, Leopoldo Lopez, who had escaped house arrest, and a few dozen armed men in uniform.

On April 30, Guaidó and Lopez appealed to the Venezuelan military to rise up and overthrow the government of President Nicolas Maduro. In the course of the day, it became clear that the coup had no significant support either within the military or the civilian population. Soldiers who had been brought to the event under false pretenses turned themselves in, and an appeal by Guaidó to the population to storm the La Carlota air base in eastern Caracas failed miserably, while provoking violent clashes in which five people lost their lives.

Zambrano and others were photographed and filmed at the site where the coup leaders sought to gather support, a highway overpass in the Altamira section of the capital. They are seen trying to persuade soldiers to join in an attack on the base and standing with civilians who mounted heavy machine guns on the overpass, apparently preparing for a massacre.

Others named by the court have sought to flee. Richard Blanco of the Alianza Bravo Pueblo, a minor right-wing party that split from the AD, sought refuge in the residency of the Argentine ambassador in Caracas. Two other deputies charged in relation to the coup, Mariela Magallanes and Americo De Grazia, entered the Italian embassy seeking protection from arrest.

Meanwhile, Maduro has announced the dismissal of dozens of Venezuelan military personnel who had been involved in the coup attempt. The most senior among them was the chief of the SEBIN internal security force, Gen. Manuel Figuera. Five lieutenant colonels, four majors, four captains, six lieutenants and 35 sergeants were also arrested.

Some 25 of these military personnel sought refuge in the embassy of Brazil, whose fascistic president, former army captain Jair Bolsonaro, has provided enthusiastic support for Washington’s regime-change operation.

Leopoldo Lopez, who was convicted for inciting violence in the so-called La Salida (Exit) demonstrations which were launched in 2014 in an attempt to force out the government after the right-wing opposition had lost both presidential and municipal elections, has been granted protection by the Spanish embassy, which has allowed him to continue issuing calls for Maduro’s overthrow.

The initial attempts by the Maduro government and its judicial system to hold accountable those responsible for the attempted coup of April 30 have evoked howls of protest from Washington, the European Union and the United Nations.

Washington issued a statement in the name of its “virtual embassy” in Venezuela, denouncing the detention of Zambrano as “illegal and inexcusable” and warning that there would be “consequences,” without specifying what form they would take.

The European Union called the arrest “another flagrant violation” of Venezuela’s constitution and a “politically motivated action aimed at silencing the National Assembly.”

And the United Nations human rights office demanded the “immediate release” of Zambrano and demanded that the Maduro government “cease the attacks” on the National Assembly and its members.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza called attention to the grotesque hypocrisy of these denunciations, declaring that those who were leaping to the defense of the coup organizers were complicit in the coup. He pointed out that in the countries whose governments were condemning Caracas, “sedition and military rebellion also constitute grave crimes.”

Arreaza in particular blasted the UN human rights office for failing to condemn the attempted coup of April 30 and defending the impunity of its organizers. “Is it the case that military coups are organized in defense of human rights?” he asked.

What would be the reaction of the US government if a group of politicians and a handful of soldiers called for an assault on Andrews Air Base outside of Washington and set up machinegun positions on a Highway 495 overpass? One can safely assume that such an incident would produce far more bloodshed than the clashes in Caracas, and that the perpetrators would have been prosecuted on treason, sedition and terrorism charges.

Meanwhile both Washington and Guaidó—whom the Maduro government has yet to charge, no doubt fearing his arrest could provoke a US attack—are continuing to encourage a revolt by the military to topple the Venezuelan president.

US Vice President Mike Pence, in a speech delivered on Tuesday to the annual Conference of the Americas held by the US State Department made a point of announcing that sanctions imposed just three months earlier on the now renegade commander of SEBIN, General Figuera, had been lifted “in recognition of his recent actions in support of democracy and the rule of law” and urged others “follow the example” set by Figuera.

Figuera, a veteran commander of Venezuela’s National Guard, a unit used in the repression of struggles of the working class in Venezuela, is an unlikely champion of “democracy.”

Pence’s speech included preposterous claims that the Maduro government had entered a pact with Iran to bring Hezbollah “terrorists” into Venezuela and from there dispatch them throughout the hemisphere. The claim seemed aimed at joining the two major arenas of US threats of war into one, justifying attacks on both Iran and Venezuela. The vice president likewise denounced Russia for using its trade and political ties with Venezuela to gain “a foothold in this hemisphere.”

Pence summed up by declaring: “The United States of America will continue to exert all diplomatic and economic pressure to bring about a peaceful transition of democracy in Venezuela. But to those who continue to oppress the good people of Venezuela, know this: All options are on the table.”

The only “military option” that he announced in the speech was the US Navy’s deployment next month of the USNS Comfort, a hospital ship, to countries bordering Venezuela next month, ostensibly to provide aid to Venezuelan migrants.

Discussions are underway within the Trump administration on far more aggressive forms of US military intervention. These reportedly include dispatching US military units, including special forces troops, to neighboring countries, first and foremost Colombia, and the deployment of a naval armada off the Venezuelan coast in a show of force.

US Senator Rick Scott, a Florida Republican, issued a call on Wednesday for the US to mount a naval blockade of Cuba to enforce the sanctions against the export of Venezuelan oil decreed by the Trump administration. Scott called last week for the US to send troops to Colombia to break through barriers on the Venezuelan border to force through “humanitarian aid.”

All of these proposals, which pose the threat of a bloodbath and a potential confrontation between the US and nuclear-armed Russia, express the mounting frustration in Washington over the failure of the regime-change operation centered upon Guaidó to produce the desired results. The Venezuelan military has thus far failed to turn against Maduro, and the broader masses of Venezuelans, however much they are hostile to the Maduro government, see in the right-wing CIA-trained opposition an enemy in service of US imperialism and the country’s traditional ruling oligarchy.

Under these conditions, the threat of a direct US military intervention to assert Washington’s control over Venezuela and its oil reserves, the largest on the planet, only continues to grow.

Papua New Guinea government faces no-confidence vote

John Braddock

Opposition MPs in Papua New Guinea (PNG) are preparing to move a no-confidence motion in an attempt to remove Prime Minister Peter O’Neill. The People’s National Congress (PNC)-led government is disintegrating in the wake of a series of high-profile resignations.

The 26 opposition parliamentarians or MPs have allied with two dozen MPs who quit O’Neill’s coalition in the past two weeks and are offering to accommodate other government members. A successful vote in the 111-seat parliament will require the support of 56 MPs.

Lobbying intensified over the weekend, with the opposed camps gathering at hotels on either side of Port Moresby, each announcing they had the numbers to secure a majority. Some 1,000 extra police are being deployed in the capital.

The government won a procedural vote on Tuesday, by 59 votes to 50, to adjourn parliament until May 28, giving O’Neill more time to consolidate support. The no-confidence motion has to be vetted by a parliamentary committee to check that it meets legal requirements before being tabled.

The opposition has named James Marape, a former O’Neill ally, as their choice for prime minister. Marape’s sudden resignation as finance minister last month, citing a “lack of trust” between the two, sparked the defections.

Shifting allegiances within the country’s unstable and corrupt political establishment are not unusual. Nevertheless, the current groundswell of desertions is the most significant in O’Neill’s nearly eight years in office and takes place amid widespread popular hostility to all the parliamentary parties.

On May 3, the latest tranche of nine MPs resigned from O’Neill’s PNC. It included three cabinet ministers, Health Minister Puka Temu, Defence Minister Solan Mirisim, and Forestry Minister Douglas Tomuriesa. Six other government MPs joined them in a press conference last Friday announcing their decision to resign.

This followed the resignations of eight PNC parliamentarians the previous week. Radio NZ reported that at a PNC caucus meeting O’Neill was urged to resign but he refused. Meanwhile, the PNC’s main coalition partner, the Pangu Pati, has all but collapsed, with at least half its MPs opposed to party leader Sam Basil and defecting to the opposition.

O’Neill’s government is widely regarded as illegitimate. In the 2017 election he won a second five-year term in an undemocratic and disputed poll, with a significantly decreased majority. The election was mired in bribery and corruption, ballot rigging and the wholesale omission of names from the electoral roll.

Ongoing turmoil is an expression of explosive social tensions produced by the government’s austerity policies imposed in response to the country’s economic crisis, worsened by the collapse in global energy prices. Following protests by students and workers, the government has increasingly turned to police-state measures.

The current crisis has erupted over a new $US16 billion natural gas contract. Former Prime Minister Mekere Morauta has denounced the deal signed last month with French company Total, as a potential “disaster” for PNG.

Mekere contends that O’Neill hijacked the approval process, putting government finances and landowner interests at risk. Mekere claimed O’Neill shut out the State Negotiating Team and the Department of Petroleum, meaning the gas agreement was largely the work of private companies.

Mekere said this risks royalties and development levies not being paid, as happened with the $US19 billion ExxonMobil LNG project. Further, billions of kina (the PNG currency) worth of concessions and exemptions were given away, Mekere claimed, in line with the demands of project partners.

The deal also fails to meet laws on the supply of gas for the domestic market. The agreement provides for a maximum of 5 percent of gas from the project for domestic purposes but the government’s Natural Gas and National Energy policies call for 15 percent, the former PM said.

There is deep popular dissatisfaction over the failure of the massive gas projects to produce any benefits for the population. Landowners in the Highlands region have been waiting years for royalties, levies and dividends owed them.

In February 2017, more than 1,000 protesters gathered at the ExxonMobil site to demand overdue payments, estimated at over 1 billion kina ($US256 million). In response, the government intensified a police-military operation, involving 300 personnel, to protect the company’s operations.

A 2018 report by Australian academic Paul Flanagan, “Double or Nothing: the Broken Economic Promises of PNG LNG,” declared the projects have been a disaster for PNG’s people. The impoverished population would have been better off “on almost every measure of economic welfare” without the ExxonMobil deal, the report concluded.

The litany of economic failures included lower than expected GDP gains, which “focused on the largely foreign-owned resource sector.” Meagre government earnings from the project saw revenue, predicted to be around 1.4 billion Kina ($US590 million) per year in 2016 come in at less than K0.5 billion.

Intensifying the political crisis, a court ruling in Singapore on April 5 dealt a blow to a challenge by O’Neill to one of Mekere’s initiatives as prime minister. The court rejected legal action to wrest control of the Singapore-based PNG Sustainable Development Program (SDP), which holds an estimated $US1.4 billion.

Earnings from the SDP’s shareholding in the formerly BHP-owned Ok Tedi gold mine are meant to fund community development. O’Neill wants more direct control over the SDP’s billions. Claiming that the SDP is being run in a “highly unsatisfactory manner” and that it has failed to benefit local people, he has vowed to continue the legal fight.

The political infighting in ruling circles involves a sordid grab for the control of financial spoils. The only beneficiary of the exploitation of PNG’s vast natural resources has been a layer of business leaders and politicians who operate in the interests of the mainly US- and Australian-based banks and corporations.

The decline in the living standards of ordinary people has been stark. A major recession hit the non-resource sector from 2015. By 2016, household incomes had fallen by 6 percent, employment by 27 percent and spending on government services, including education, health and infrastructure, by 32 percent.

The growing political instability is viewed with alarm by the regional powers, Australia and New Zealand, which have backed O’Neill. PNG is of vital economic and strategic importance to both in their drive to dominate the South West Pacific and counter China’s growing influence.

Local authority funding cuts worsen poverty and social inequality in Scotland

Stephen Alexander

The £11.1 billion budget settlement for Scottish local government, passed earlier this year by the Scottish National Party (SNP) administration in alliance with the Scottish Green Party, is being portrayed as a means of fortifying local finances against austerity measures imposed by successive British Labour and Conservative governments.

It is nothing of the sort.

The funding package ostensibly includes a real-terms spending rise, if £187 million of new revenue raising powers handed to local government this year are included. Councils can now increase council tax by 4.79 percent annually, while the Greens secured additional revenue raising powers via a workplace parking charge and local tourism taxes.

But, contrary to the claims of the SNP and the Greens, recent figures published by Audit Scotland, the official public finance watchdog, estimate that core spending on services across Scotland’s 32 local authorities will decline by 1.5 percent as a result of the 2019/20 budget. This follows a funding cut of 7 percent over the past five years.

Many services are also facing yearly cost increases many times the overall rate of inflation. These include burial plots (20 percent), meals in care homes (5 percent), youth swimming lessons (11 percent), as well as home care (8 percent) and home nursing (8 percent).

Since 2013/14, funding has fallen by more than 10 percent for eight councils, with over half of all local authorities experiencing a budget cut of more than 8 percent, according to Audit Scotland.

Both urban and rural areas are affected.

The remote, rural and island council areas of Eilean Siar (the Outer Hebrides), Shetland, and Argyll and Bute have lost 15.4 percent, 14.1 percent and 13.2 percent, respectively. These areas already suffer high service delivery costs because they are geographically dispersed, with isolated communities. Public finances are also impacted by depopulation.

Edinburgh and Glasgow, Scotland’s most populous cities, followed closely behind with cuts of 11.4 percent and 10.5 percent.

The cuts are being imposed by councils that are controlled by the SNP, Labour and Conservatives. SNP-Labour controlled Edinburgh City Council has tabled £47 million in spending cuts and tax rises this year, including 200 job cuts. Glasgow’s minority SNP administration is pursuing similar policies to cover a budgetary black hole of £42.2 million.

Part of Glasgow’s budget deficit arose from the council’s recent £500 million settlement of an equal pay dispute, which saw 12,000 workers in predominantly female jobs in care, catering and education support underpaid for more than decade. The council leadership re-mortgaged £548 million in public assets, including museums, concert halls and sports venues, ensuring that the settlement will be clawed back through protracted annual spending cuts to pay off private financiers.

Neighbouring council areas in the Greater Glasgow conurbation have been hit by massive cuts. Inverclyde has lost 10.3 percent of its budget over the past five years, followed by North Lanarkshire (10 percent), West Dunbartonshire (9.8 percent), South Lanarkshire (9.5 percent), Renfrewshire (9 percent), Clackmannanshire (8.4 percent), South Ayrshire (8.4 percent) and East Ayrshire (8.3 percent).

Once the heartland of Scottish industry, the region has borne the brunt of decades of de-industrialisation imposed with cross-party support at both local and national levels of government. It now suffers some of most severe and highly concentrated levels of social deprivation in the UK and across Europe.

In the northeast, Aberdeen City Council, run by the Conservatives in coalition with suspended Labour councillors and various “independents,” has seen its funding fall by nearly 10 percent over the past five years. It intends 200 job cuts as part of £45 million in budget cuts for 2019/20. This follows the elimination of 329 full-time equivalent positions last year.

Council areas in Scotland’s north, including Aberdeen, Highland, Moray, and Argyll and Bute, now have 4,905 fewer full-time jobs than in 2008/9, Aberdeen’s daily the Press and Journal reports. This amounts to a fifth of the workforce at both Aberdeen and Highland councils.

Having cut frontline services to the bone, councils have begun to defund some services entirely. Others are conditional on user fees.

Cultural services have been among the hardest hit in recent years, with £90 million slashed from their budgets. This includes £22 million from libraries, £5 million from museums and galleries, £20 million from sports, and £30 million from public parks and leisure attractions.

Dozens of libraries are now threatened with closure, with as many as 40 percent to be shut in East Dunbartonshire. The impact on literacy levels, social isolation and mental health will be devastating and long lasting, particularly in the poorest areas, where they are often the only means for accessing the Internet and educational resources.

As a recent Audit Scotland report explains:

“Libraries now help people apply for benefits using their computers but a survey by Citizen’s Advice found that people from the most deprived areas were less likely to be able to use a computer than those from the least deprived areas. It also found that of people seeking benefits advice, 25 percent would need help and 27 percent would not be able to manage at all.”

Primary and secondary education, which accounts for approximately 40 percent of local budgets, is now effectively being rationed in state schools.

Subject options for fourth year secondary school pupils have fallen to five or six, whereas students in private schools and a select number of state schools have access to as many as nine. Teachers and parents have warned that many students are dropping art, music and drama, as well as some languages, to focus on core subjects prioritized by employers.

Families also face a growing number of tuition charges, which are already widespread for music lessons and instrument hire. A number of councils are now rolling out fees for revision classes, with East Renfrewshire Council, for instance, charging some families £13.50 per day or £62 a week for exam revision classes over the Easter break.

Scottish councils increased their income from sales, fees and charges by £241 million to £1.3 billion last year. Fees are expected to rise exponentially this year, with just eight councils in the north and northeast expecting revenues of £1 billion for 2018-19. These include exorbitant hikes to daily parking and annual permits, as well as entrance fees for leisure, culture and sports facilities, and inflating childcare costs.

Where user fees are difficult to collect or otherwise impracticable, services are being eliminated entirely. Meals on wheels deliveries for the elderly and disabled, for example, have been discontinued by many councils. But a staggering 50 percent of elderly admissions to hospital exhibit symptoms of undernourishment, according to the Scottish Human Rights Commission.

The growing dependence of councils on local taxes and charges will compound social inequality, leaving services in the poorest areas underfunded and subject to vastly higher charges. The brunt of the new levies will fall disproportionately on the working class, contributing to growing numbers of working poor.

One in five Scots, 1.03 million people, now live in relative poverty, which is calculated at 60 percent less than median income. These government figures include 240,000 children, two-thirds of which are from working households.

At current trends, the proportion of Scottish children trapped in relative poverty will increase from 23 percent in 2018 to a 20-year high of 29 percent by 2023/24, according to the Resolution Foundation think tank.

Insys Therapeutics executives, makers of oral fentanyl spray, convicted of racketeering

Ben Mateus

Last week, Dr. John Kapoor, founder of Arizona-based Insys Therapeutics Inc., and four colleagues were found guilty of conspiring to bribe and force physicians to prescribe a highly addictive painkiller called SUBSYS, which is an oral spray of the synthetic opioid fentanyl, a drug that is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine.

They were also convicted of misleading insurers into paying for the drug. According to Reuters, Dr. Kapoor, a billionaire, is the highest-ranking pharmaceutical executive to be convicted in the United States in connection with the opioid crisis. He faces up to 20 years in federal prison.

As of 2016, Dr. Kapoor was worth $2.1 billion, with his shares in Insys representing $650 million of his net worth. At that time, the company’s stock was up 296 percent since its 2013 initial public offering. However, it was noted by critics that its $331 million in sales in 2015 was due in large part to use of SUBSYS by patients without cancer. SUBSYS was approved in 2012 by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be used only for cancer patients with intractable pain.

Since 2015, Insys and the sales representatives and prescribing physicians on its payroll have been embroiled in legal battles over alleged violations of federal anti-kickback statutes, based on charges that Insys has been paying physicians to prescribe the drug. CBS News correspondent Jim Axelrod reported that in 2016 Insys made 18,000 payments to doctors that totaled over $2 million.

By 2016, Insys found itself under investigation by several states for unapproved uses of the drug. It had already settled with the state of Oregon for $1.1 million. Last year, the company paid more than $150 million to resolve a US Justice Department investigation into its schemes to pay kickbacks to doctors to prescribe the powerful opioid medication. Dr. Kapoor was arrested in October of 2017.

According to US Attorney Andrew E. Lelling, “Today’s conviction marks the first successful prosecution of top pharmaceutical executives for crimes related to the illicit marketing and prescribing of opioids. Just as we would street-level drug dealers, we will hold pharmaceutical executives responsible for fueling the opioid epidemic by recklessly and illegally distributing these drugs, especially whole conspiring to commit racketeering along the way.”

Amidst mounting legal troubles and an uncertain future, Insys shares have fallen more than 90 percent.

The opioid crisis began in the early 1990s, specifically with Purdue Pharma and its drug Oxycontin. State and federal regulators noted a sudden dramatic rise of deaths attributed to opioids as well as a sharp increase in the practice of prescribing narcotics for the treatment of pain.

Purdue gave false assurances to physicians and patients that its product had a very low risk of causing addiction. The FDA essentially rubber-stamped its findings and set the stage for what is considered as the first wave of the opioid crisis. To increase sales, the company promoted the use of opioids for non-cancer-related pain, even though efficacy and risk data was lacking. By 1999, more than 86 percent of patients using opioids were non-cancer patients.

Over the following decade, the pharmaceutical industry was effective in preventing restrictions on opioid over-prescribing through lobbying and use of advocacy groups. Court proceedings protected the pharmaceutical companies and their executives, while sealing the courts’ findings from the public.

The second wave of the opioid crisis took hold around 2010 when measures to decrease opioid prescribing led to deaths associated with the abuse of heroin. With restrictions placed on the prescription of narcotics, heroin was cheap and widely available. Death associated with heroin abuse rose 286 percent from 2002 to 2013, according to the National Capital Poison Center. Because heroin is usually injected, the crisis also contributed to a rise in communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS and hepatitis B and C.

The third and current wave began in 2013 with the rapid increase in illicitly manufactured synthetic opioids such as fentanyl. A study by Kiang, Basu, Chen and Alexander published in JAMA Network Open earlier this year noted that opioid-related mortality rates from synthetic opioids had rapidly increased in the Eastern United States, while mortality associated with natural and semi-synthetic drugs such as oxycodone had remained stable.

The study found that in 28 states, the mortality rate from synthetic opioids had more than doubled every two years. In the District of Columbia, the rate had tripled every year since 2013.

The authors wrote: “Most opioid-related deaths are occurring among young and middle-aged adults. This equates to a significant loss of life. Nationally, overall opioid-related mortality resulted in 0.36 years of life expectancy lost in 2016, which was 14 percent higher than deaths due to firearms and 18 percent higher than deaths due to motor vehicle crashes; 0.17 years of life expectancy lost was due specifically to synthetic opioids.”

Among the 64,000 drug overdoses in 2016, the sharpest rise was seen among those using synthetic opioids. As of 2017, 29,000 deaths in the US were attributable to fentanyl analogs.

China to hit back if new US tariff threat goes ahead

Nick Beams

Talks between US and Chinese trade representatives, which start in Washington today and will extend into Friday, appear to be the last chance to avert a full-scale trade war between the world’s number one and number two economies.

Earlier this week, the US said it will escalate tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods. China has indicated it will retaliate if the threat is carried out.

On Sunday Trump tweeted that the US would lift tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese products from 10 percent to 25 percent on Friday and that a 25 percent tariff on $325 billion worth would be imposed “shortly.”

As a result, it appeared unlikely that the talks would go ahead. However, Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, the country’s chief negotiator, decided yesterday to come to Washington to meet with his counterparts US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

The character of the negotiations has undergone a qualitative change. They had been intended to wrap up the months-long negotiations and come to a final deal, which would then be presented to US President Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping for signing.

That perspective has been cast to the winds. It is extremely doubtful if anything like it can be put together again, given the US actions and demands.

The US has claimed that China backtracked on previous agreements to write its concessions into Chinese law but then retreated, saying the measures would be carried out by regulations that carry less weight.

According to reports in the Wall Street Journal, the US is demanding China submit an inventory of laws and regulations that it would enact to guarantee that it was complying with any agreement. In other words, the US would effectively dictate economic policy to the Chinese government.

Beijing appears to have rejected this demand, regarding it as an infringement on its national sovereignty.

The Chinese decision to attend the talks is based on the hope that negotiations will be able to continue in some form and so prevent, or at least delay, a rapid escalation of the trade conflict.

Even that limited prospect is under a cloud given that the position of both sides is hardening.

Yesterday Trump posted a further inflammatory tweet: “The reason for the China pullback and attempted renegotiation of the trade deal is the HOPE that they will be able to ‘negotiate’ with Joe Biden or one of the very weak Democrats, and thereby continue to ripoff the United States ($500 billion a year) for years to come.”

Trump was referring to remarks by former Vice President Biden earlier this week suggesting that it was implausible that China would “eat our lunch” and that China was “not competition for us.”

Uncertainty over the talks caused share prices to plunge on Monday with the Dow down more than 450 points. It fell a further 200 points on Tuesday, but recovered after Trump offered some prospect of a trade deal, and finished flat.

In an effort to calm the stock market, Trump said: “China has informed us that they are coming to the US to make a deal… We’ll see but I am very happy with over $100 billion in Tariffs filling US coffers … great for US, not good for China.”

In fact, the revenues from tariffs, which so far have totaled about $34 billion, are not paid by Chinese exporters but by US importers.

While Trump stepped up the war of words against China, the office of US Trade Representative yesterday filed the necessary papers for the tariff hike scheduled tomorrow. It stated that in recent negotiations “China has chosen to retreat from specific agreements agreed to in earlier rounds.”

China has responded to the latest US threats by saying it will retaliate if the US goes ahead.

“The escalation of trade friction is not in the interests of the people of the two countries and the people of the world,” a Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesman said. “The Chinese side deeply regrets the action. If the US tariff measures are implemented, China will have to take necessary countermeasures.”

Trump’s press secretary Sarah Sanders said that the US had indications that China wanted to “make a deal” and that “our teams are in continued negotiations.”

However, that prospect looks increasingly unlikely. One of the main sticking points has been the US insistence that existing tariffs on Chinese goods would not be lifted immediately after an agreement was signed but would be reduced progressively as the US deemed China was complying. This was to ensure that there was an “enforcement” mechanism.

The US also maintained that it should retain the right to impose additional tariffs without a retaliation by China. These demands had already been rejected by Chinese negotiators who have insisted any enforcement mechanism should operate both ways.

But now it is confronted with the threat of new tariffs coupled with the insistence by Washington that it be allowed to rewrite Chinese law according to a list that it has drawn up.

Both sides are under considerable domestic pressure. Trump wants to secure some kind of agreement fearing that failure to do so will see sharp falls on the stock market.

He is also concerned that trade war escalation will severely impact several US states that form a considerable portion of his electoral base. These states have already been hard hit by Chinese retaliation to existing US tariffs directed against American agricultural products. Some rural areas are reporting the worst situation since the farm crisis of the 1980s.

At same time Trump is fearful that if he too readily comes to an agreement he will be attacked by sections of both the Republican party and the Democrats for making a “weak” deal. These layers maintain that trade as such is not the central issue. The US must secure the imposition of so-called “structural reforms” that suppress China’s industrial and technological development, which is regarded as an existential threat to the economic, and ultimately military, dominance of the US.

On the Chinese side, Vice Premier Liu He may be willing to undertake the “reforms” demanded by the US and pull back somewhat on subsides to state-owned industries, to which the US objects on the grounds they are “market distorting.” But he is also under pressure.

Powerful sections of the ruling regime will not agree to conditions that recall the imposition of the “unequal treaties” that formed a key component of the imperialist domination of China in the 19th century and the early part of the 20th.

The immediate issue is the threat of additional tariffs set to come into force on Friday. If Trump withdraws them at the last minute, then he is certain to come under attack for bluffing and having his bluff called.

However, if they are imposed and China retaliates, the trade war will undergo a major escalation.

Pompeo lays down the law during UK visit

Robert Stevens

The reckless character of US imperialism’s actions was underscored by the visit this week of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to London.

Preceding the state visit of President Donald Trump to the UK next month, Pompeo’s remit was to demand that Theresa May’s government toe the line in backing the global geo-strategic imperatives of US imperialism… or else.

Virtually every word out of Pompeo mouth was a threat—either to the UK, to Washington’s “strategic adversaries” Russia and China, or to those countries it is actively preparing to attack, including Venezuela and Iran.

Pompeo met with Conservative Prime Minister May, held a joint press conference with Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, and gave the Margaret Thatcher Lecture on the US/UK relationship at the Centre for Policy Studies in London.

Of particular concern was Britain’s developing economic relationship with China, which is understood by the Trump administration as an existential threat to its plans for global hegemony.

Only two weeks ago, the May government provisionally agreed, at a meeting of the National Security Council (NSC), to allow Chinese conglomerate Huawei to supply “noncore” infrastructure to its planned 5G network. This flies in the face of US calls for a boycott of Huawei’s products and its warning that cooperation with Huawei threatens NATO security.

The decision exposed the conflicting interests of different factions of the British ruling elite and approval of the policy required the casting vote of May herself. Such are the tensions over the UK’s future political and economic strategy that the decision was leaked—the first time this has happened following an NSC meeting—with the anti-China defence minister and pro-US hawk Gavin Williamson sacked as a result.

The prospect of Chinese access to UK infrastructure prompted furious denunciations from Washington, led by Pompeo, including threats that the US could end electronic surveillance and intelligence coordination with Britain. Pompeo warned last month, “We’ve made clear that if the risk exceeds the threshold for the United States, we simply won’t be able to share that information any longer.”

In its drive for global domination, the US is breaking up the post-war order, with every country once deemed an ally now cast as a potential adversary. Immediately prior to Pompeo’s arrival in London, he cancelled a scheduled trip to Germany in order to visit Iraq.

In Baghdad, he issued further threats against Iran, declaring that the US opposes states “interfering” in other countries and stands ready “to ensure that Iraq is a sovereign, independent nation.” This was just three days after the US announced the dispatch of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and US Air Force bombers to the Persian Gulf region to threaten Iran.

Such hypocrisy cannot conceal the fact that the US is interfering in every country, including those that are historically its closest allies. On the UK decision to work with Huawei, Pompeo warned, “From America’s perspective, each country has a sovereign right to make its own decision about how to deal with the challenge.” But this had strict limits that the US would enforce. “With respect to 5G… we are making our views very well known.”

Like a mafia boss making the offer that cannot be refused, he added that he had “great confidence that the United Kingdom will never take an action that will break the special relationship.”

The consequences were made clear: “The US has an obligation to ensure the places where we operate, places where US information is, places where we have national security risks, that they operate within trusted networks and that is what we will do.”

This designation covered the entire planet.

In response, Hunt promised that the UK would not “compromise” its ability to share intelligence with the US. No final decision had been made on cooperation with Huawei on the UK’s 5G and the government was still “considering the evidence.” He hailed “the security relationship that we have with the United States,” which has “underpinned the international order since 1945,” adding that “the preservation of that is our number one foreign policy priority.”

The political destabilisation of the UK by the Trump administration is extraordinary in its scope. While heavily supportive of Brexit—as a means to further undermine what Trump describes as the European Union “cartel”—Trump insists that Brexit must be on US terms. This conflicts with sections of the UK bourgeoisie who see Brexit as an opportunity to better exploit global investment and trade opportunities, especially with China and India.

The UK and the US are also in conflict over Iran. Last week, Washington refused to extend waivers to eight countries that had previously been allowed to continue to import Iranian oil and natural gas, although at reduced quantities.

In a sharply worded response last Thursday, a statement from Brussels signed by the high representative of the European Union and the foreign ministers of France, Germany and the UK declared that they “take note with regret and concern of the decision by the United States not to extend waivers with regards to trade in oil with Iran.” It went on to say, “We also note with concern the decision by the United States not to fully renew waivers for nuclear non-proliferation projects in the framework of the JCPoA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).”

It added, “We deeply regret the re-imposition of sanctions by the United States following their withdrawal from the JCPoA.”

Trump abrogated the UN-endorsed JCPoA nuclear accord last year, threatening tougher sanctions against Tehran, which are now being implemented.

France, Germany and the UK stressed that the JCPoA remained “a crucial element of the global nuclear non-proliferation regime and essential for our national and shared European security.”

In a further rejoinder to the US, they declared, “The remaining participants to the JCPoA are committed to working on the preservation and maintenance of financial channels and exports for Iran, together with third countries interested in supporting the JCPoA.”

Referencing Washington’s declared “great power” adversaries, it insisted, “We encourage all countries, including Russia and China as JCPoA participants, to make their best efforts to pursue the legitimate trade that the agreement allows for, through concrete steps.”

US bellicosity against Iran was ratcheted up in London. Pompeo denounced the Iranian leadership as “lawless” and bracketed it with China and Russia, warning, “Now is not the time for either of us [the US and UK] to go wobbly…”

Where there was unanimity between Pompeo and the May government was over the regime-change operation against Nicolas Maduro’s government in Venezuela. Pompeo was asked his thoughts on UK Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn’s “endorsement” of Maduro, a reference to Corbyn’s criticism of the US for “outside interference” in Venezuela.

This was a planted question, with Sky News reporting that it came from townhall.com —a website with close links to Trump.

Pompeo responded, “It is disgusting to see leaders, in not only the United Kingdom, but the United States as well, who continue to support the murderous dictator Maduro… It is not in either of our country’s best interests for those leaders to continue to advocate on their behalf.”

Hunt made sure to equate the Maduro regime with socialism. In a reply summing up the fear of the ruling elite over the growth of political opposition within the working class to social inequality, which is fueling an international strike wave and rising opposition to militarism and war, Hunt said that Labour Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell “describes this [the Maduro government] as socialism in action and I think people need to draw their own conclusions about what his own plans might be for the UK.”