The CIA Democrats and the US midterm elections - Pro-War - Pro-Police State - 24 Sept 2018

24 September 2018

Two major polls made public Sunday project a sizeable Democratic Party victory in the US midterm elections set for November 6. A Fox News poll found a seven-point Democratic Party lead in the generic congressional ballot, while an NBC-Wall Street Journal poll found a 12-point Democratic lead among registered voters, and an eight-point lead among likely voters. Both polls found that opposition to President Trump is the driving force in the election, with particular hostility to his persecution of immigrants and his tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.

The likely swing to the Democrats comes as the two-party system as a whole faces mounting popular opposition. According to another recent poll, nearly two-thirds of voters want an alternative to the two existing parties, whose candidates are reviled as corrupt representatives of the rich who lie shamelessly and have nothing but contempt for ordinary working people. Other polls show a rising interest in and support for socialism, particularly among young people.

The Democratic Party is now expected to make the gain of 23 seats needed to win control of the House of Representatives, and perhaps much more than that, while a Democratic takeover of the US Senate, previously thought unlikely because only nine Republican-held seats were up for election, is now considered a significant possibility. The Democrats are also projected to win a large number of Republican-held governorships, including nearly every state in the industrial Midwest. What would such a political shift mean?

While working people are looking for an alternative to the reactionary policies of the Trump administration, they will not find it in the Democratic Party, a political alliance of Wall Street, the military-intelligence apparatus, and privileged sections of the upper middle class. Congressional Democratic leaders have chosen to focus their efforts first on promoting the Russia investigation, based on bogus claims of massive Russian intervention in the 2016 elections. More recently, they sought to link Republican candidates to the Supreme Court nomination of reactionary jurist Brett Kavanaugh, who is under attack due to allegations of sexual misconduct in high school, invoking the themes of the #MeToo campaign.

Neither campaign has evoked any popular enthusiasm. Only 38 percent in Sunday’s polls said that it was important that a congressional candidate share their views on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. An even lower number, 34 percent, said that a candidate should share their views on the Russia investigation. Large majorities said that healthcare and the economy—issues of class, not race or gender—were the most important.

The clearest demonstration of the political trajectory of the Democratic Party is the array of former CIA agents, military commanders and State Department officials who are its candidates in the congressional districts that the Democrats aim to capture from the Republicans. In the 115 seats which the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has designated as competitive, 30 are national-security operatives, the largest single group.

With only two exceptions, the CIA Democrats are not drawn from among the rank-and-file soldiers who comprised the bulk of those sent as cannon fodder to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and came back, in many cases, damaged in mind and body, and hostile to the wars in which they fought. Thirteen had roles as intelligence agents, war planners or diplomatic apologists for war. Fifteen were officers in the Army, Navy, Air Force or Marines—commanders, captains, majors, a lieutenant-colonel.

Not a single one is running as an opponent of the wars in which they fought/led, or of new wars against Iran, Russia, or China. One actually demands as part of his program, “an uncompromising victory over Russia and its tyrannical regime.”

While leftist critics have consistently called attention to the CIA Democrats, the corporate-controlled media has been largely silent about the friendly takeover of the Democratic Party by the military-intelligence apparatus. In its lone reference, the New York Times referred last month, in a gross underestimate, to “more than a dozen Democratic candidates this year with strong background in national security through service in the military or at the intelligence agencies.”

In another exception to the media blackout, NBC News noted, under the suggestive headline, “Their New Mission?” that “an unusually large number of former intelligence officers and operatives are campaigning for office as Democrats in this fall’s midterm elections.” This is the only time that the corporate media has even raised the most urgent question: whether the influx of state agents into the Democratic Party is itself an operation by the national-security apparatus.

The rise of the military-intelligence candidates in the Democratic Party shows the false and cynical character of the claims by “left” politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the Democratic Socialists of America that the Democratic Party can be reformed and turned into an instrument for social justice and peace.

The handful of “lefts” like Ocasio-Cortez will be dwarfed by the dozens of military-intelligence Democrats in the new Congress, to say nothing of the millionaires and political hacks who constitute the bulk of the Democratic caucus. More fundamentally, the role of the DSA and the other political appendages of the Democratic Party is to justify and provide a left cover for this fundamentally reactionary party of imperialism.

Asked how she could square her ostensibly “antiwar” politics with so many running mates from the CIA and Pentagon, Ocasio-Cortez replied that she did not believe “a person’s life experience in one way or another necessarily precludes them from running for office.” Even if that “experience” includes, like Elissa Slotkin, the Democratic candidate in Michigan’s Eighth Congressional District, three CIA tours of duty in Baghdad where she was a top aide to Ambassador John Negroponte, a war criminal many times over.

There is nothing socialist about a campaign that is waged shoulder-to-shoulder with CIA agents, war planners and military commanders—and with multimillionaire capitalist politicians like Nancy Pelosi and Debbie Dingell.

https://archive.fo/oBsh324 September 2018

Sex Hysteria: Kavanaugh, Cosby - News Media Pornography and the Enraged Middle Class - 27 Sept 2018

Kavanaugh’s nomination, Cosby’s sentencing: News media pornography and the enraged middle class

27 September 2018

Following the press and television news in the US on Wednesday might lead one to believe that a kind of madness has seized hold of the American media, along with sections of the affluent petty-bourgeoisie.

The media generated new geysers of filth in regard to the controversy surrounding the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump’s candidate for the US Supreme Court. On the same day, the degrading impact of its #MeToo campaign could be seen in the hysterical, semi-fascistic tone of the response to the sentencing of comedian Bill Cosby.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hear Thursday from Christine Blasey Ford, who says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when both were high school students. But newer allegations against Kavanaugh bumped up against one another on Wednesday. Before the population had time to digest the claim by Deborah Ramirez (reported by the New Yorker magazine September 23) that Kavanaugh had exposed himself to her at a Yale University party 35 years ago, a third woman came forward with even more sensational charges.

Michael Avenatti, best known as the attorney for porn star Stormy Daniels in her legal case against Trump, tweeted a sworn statement by Julie Swetnick, 55, claiming that Kavanaugh and others, while in high school, spiked the drinks of girls at house parties so that they might more easily “gang-rape” them.

Swetnick went on to allege that she herself became the victim of one of these “gang rapes… where [Kavanaugh’s friend] Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh were present.”

Avenatti’s tweet became the occasion, in the bland phrase of the New York Times, for “immediate, blanket coverage across social media and cable news.” The cable news channels did indeed bombard their viewers non-stop with the story—if they weren’t reporting on Cosby’s being sent to jail.

MSNBC correspondent Kate Snow, for instance, read the most graphic portions of Swetnick’s statement. The other cable channels followed suit, along with the Times, the Washington Post and the rest. CNN anchor John King asked correspondent Sara Sidner to “walk us through” the allegations, which she obliged by providing every salacious detail. Afterward, King expressed appreciation for the “live reporting” on “a very sensitive and dramatic issue.”

The Times set the stage for the day’s torrent of media smut in its morning edition, which plastered across its front page two lead articles on the Kavanaugh sexual assault allegations and a third on the Cosby sentencing. The report on Trump’s fascistic and war-mongering rant at the United Nations was relegated to a subordinate spot. The opinion pages featured a lengthy editorial (“Questions Mr. Kavanaugh Needs to Answer”) listing detailed questions for senators to ask about his sexual activities.

The American media lowers and demeans itself further with every new scandal.
It is impossible for us to determine the truth of the claims against Kavanaugh. It is certain, however, that the Democratic Party campaign against Trump’s nominee is a reactionary diversion and an effort to bury the most pressing issues. Kavanaugh is a zealous right-winger and enemy of democratic rights. But no Democrat on the Judiciary Committee will ask him, “What was your role in the attempted coup d’état, known as the Starr investigation, against Bill Clinton?” or “Why did you support torture and illegal detention as part of the Bush administration?”

None of the Democrats, the supposed defenders of women, will even forthrightly denounce him for his attacks on abortion rights. They’ve all but dropped the issue.

Speaking on CNN, the Times ’ Michael Shear inadvertently alluded to the anti-democratic character of the campaign against Kavanaugh: “One of the dynamics that we’ve seen throughout this entire #MeToo movement is that accusations that start out as a single, a solitary accusation against… a man in power, often don’t pick up the kind of steam that ultimately forces action until there’s a second allegation, and a third allegation, and beyond. And that’s what creates often the kind of pressure—overwhelming pressure that forces some action.”

Five, ten or twenty accusations do not amount to proof. Kavanaugh may have been guilty of sexual misconduct, but Shear and the rest apparently need to be reminded that every witch-hunt in history has also operated on the principle of “numbers.”

The repressive, right-wing character of the middle-class outrage over sexual misconduct, whipped up by the #MeToo campaign, is on view in the frothing reaction to Cosby’s sentencing. The comedian was convicted of sexually assaulting a Temple University employee at his home in 2004 while she was under the influence of a sedative.

The comments on the outcome of the Cosby case in the Times from readers of its article “Bill Cosby, Once a Model of Fatherhood, Is Sentenced to Prison,” are overwhelmingly vengeful and vindictive:
“I’d rather my taxes don’t go toward paying for his 3-10 year confinement. Just put him in with the general population and don’t have the guards intervene to protect him. He would be dead within minutes, but at least his last moments on earth would be filled with terror.”

“He is a beast no matter his physical condition.”

“We can only hope he dies in jail. Such a shame. Good riddance.”

“I really don’t care that he is old and has lost his sight. He should have been in prison decades ago. Let him serve his time in the dark in a cold cell.”

“Only 10 years? He deserved 100!”

Neither the Times nor the majority of its middle-class readership has ever expressed this degree of outrage about the past quarter-century of bloody, neo-colonial wars and occupations pursued by American imperialism, which has led to more than one million deaths and the displacement of tens of millions more. The destruction of societies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and beyond does not keep this social element awake at night. Drone strikes, “kill lists,” NSA spying, the persecution of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange—none of this merits more than hand-wringing or the occasional tsk-tsk, if not outright assent.

Of no concern either is the industrial slaughterhouse in America: the 5,190 workers (90 percent of them male) who died on the job in 2016, and the 3.7 million workers across all industries who had work-related injuries and illnesses.

The hysteria over the Cosby case and the Kavanaugh nomination has a logic, despite its unhinged character.

On the part of the Democratic Party and the Times, the incitement of a frenzy over sexual abuse is a conscious political operation.

For the American ruling elite, it is a pressing matter to “change the subject” from economic inequality; to weaken, dissipate and divide popular anger toward the wealthy and capitalist rule by pointing to other guilty parties—men or white people. The aim is to reduce and blunt class hatred and feeling, divide along gender lines, prevent as far as possible and for as long as possible independent political and social action by the working class, slow down and ideologically cripple such a movement, and build up a reactionary constituency within the upper-middle class.
This was the response of the Clinton campaign in 2016 to the mass support for Bernie Sanders: the manipulation of the case of Stanford student Brock Turner and the focus on Trump’s alleged sexual carryings-on.

The current furor is a repetition along even more reactionary lines. It is a reaction to the growth of popular hostility to Trump and anti-capitalist sentiment generally, to the movement of masses of the population to the left and to the increase in strike activity. The sex hysteria is meant to poison the atmosphere, pollute political consciousness, stop people in their tracks, numb and confuse them. It has the effect of completely discrediting the entire political system.

The Times and the Democrats are appealing to a well-to-do social layer that has already moved far to the right. These elements oppose Trump on a right-wing, anti-democratic basis, including the #MeToo sexual witch hunt’s explicit renunciation of due process and the presumption of innocence. All of this is entirely compatible with war, dictatorship and savage attacks on the mass of working people.

Hey Einstein? Why Not Socialism? – by James Rothenberg – 25 Sept 2018

In May of 1949, the first issue of Monthly Review came off the press, with a circulation of 450 copies. It featured an essay by none other than Albert Einstein titled, “Why Socialism?” Why so famous a scientist speaking to so few people, and then out of his field of expertise?

For one, he was asked by a friend, Otto Nathan. For two, at the age of 70 he had fully formed opinions about capitalism. Regarding the deteriorating relationship of the individual to society, he had this to say: “The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil.” This is the sort of thing that earned him 1,000 plus pages in his FBI file.
And then, three, Einstein himself posed and answered the question, “…we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society.”

Einstein had to understand things simply. In developing special relativity, he asked, what do we mean when we say two events occur simultaneously, and then proposed a simple thought experiment to test a proposition that was too obvious to need testing. Obvious to other serious thinkers for centuries, that is, but it ushered in a daring new view of the physical world.

His genius ability to see things clearly did not make him immune from criticism when it came to his secular views. He was regarded as naïve. Upon close examination, a charge of naiveté rendered against a person may mean they have not exhibited the expected deference to established norms. This lack of conformity, when conformity is so easy, makes them the object of curiosity at best, or the object of law enforcement, at worst.

In the almost 70 years since his essay, it’s out in the open now that late-stage capitalism is right on track. Capital long ago seized control of the state and its political apparatus. The reigning oligarchy is flush with satisfaction over its successes: the quasi-merger of corporation and state, corporations attaining rights over people, people becoming more and more dependent upon the very corporations that exploit them, income inequality, even greater wealth inequality, all predictive consequences of predatory capitalism.

Why do some have so much, and others so little? (It has nothing to do with work). Why do some declare wars, while others die in them? (It has everything to do with workers).

Where can it go from here?  Let’s hear from an expert. Credit Suisse’s 2013 Global Wealth Report: “Two generations ahead, future extrapolations of current wealth growth rates yields almost a billion millionaires, equivalent to 20% of the total adult population. If this scenario unfolds, then billionaires will be commonplace, and there is likely to be a few trillionaires too — eleven according to our best estimate.”

The military is outside the pale of political ideology and can be counted on for straightforwardness. From “The Future of the Army” report, September 2016: “Today’s world of haves and have-nots will be greatly magnified, with those fortunate enough to have employment and access to stunning technology living in stark contrast to the hundreds of millions struggling to survive in disrupted environments.”

The report also anticipates accelerating problems due to global climate change (accepting the scientific community consensus), deeply associated with the capitalist model. Resource competition in the northernmost part of the planet opened to commerce due to Arctic ice melt. Low-lying areas made uninhabitable by rising sea levels. Extreme droughts causing collapse of agriculture and economies, resulting in refugee crises. Natural disasters from wildfires to floods to deadly heat waves only increasing.

The ruling elite must be ever watchful for cracks in the capitalist edifice. Small signs of nervousness have begun to appear now that many of our citizens are able to mouth the word, socialism, and keep it on their stomach. People have social motivations as well as ego-driven motivations.
An economic system such as capitalism, based on profit competition, brings out the worst, predatory instincts. In contrast, socialism, based on cooperation in fulfilling society’s basic needs, brings out the best, ethical instincts. If it’s as simple as this, why is socialism so far off in the distance, and what can be done about it?

To the first part, the distance, the ruling elite has ensconced itself since the country’s inception as the propertied, law-writing class. Their problems were the problems of all social hierarchies. How to keep their privileges in place while controlling the masses. To this purpose, class division must be institutionalized and maintained through an educational system that moderates the behavior of the citizen, reducing him/her to mere observer, rather than actor, in respect to existing class arrangement. In its most insidious sense this is known as “respect for the law”.

To the second part, the pitchfork image is delightful but must be rejected in the face of the USG’s armed police force with its tear gas, rubber bullets, real bullets, tanks, helicopter gunships, missiles, and thermonuclear weapons.

For generations, socialism was taboo. Pressing for it made you a cultural outsider. This does appear to be changing. The threat is diminishing. It’s also well to realize that capitalism is doing much of the work by failing to a remarkable degree. Capitalism’s losers are everywhere. And they’re not hiding.
From the perspective of class struggle, people are on one or the other side of the barricades. This much is comprehensible. Just as comprehensible —with the second part in mind — is that there are those blind to the barricades.

Archive
https://archive.is/Cpevo

The New York Times promotes the Democratic Socialists of America – By Genevieve Leigh – 25 Sept 2018

 

 

By Genevieve Leigh
25 September 2018

On Saturday, The New York Times featured an article by Maggie Astor in their online edition headlined with the question: “Are You a Democratic Socialist?” The article, just short of an advertisement to join the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), is the latest piece in a series of favorable reviews of the organization by the newspaper.

The main purpose of the article is to convince young people interested in socialism that they should become involved in the DSA. In doing so, it falsifies the essential role and purpose of the DSA, which is an adjunct of the Democratic Party, for which the Times is the main media mouthpiece.
The questions are organized to accomplish several interrelated functions. First, several are posed to encourage anyone opposed to inequality to identify with the DSA. One question, for example, asks the reader, “Do you believe that everyone is entitled to a certain minimum standard of living?” while another asks, “In a capitalist system, do you believe government regulations are helpful or harmful?” Those who answer that they agree that everyone should have a minimum standard of living or that government regulations are helpful receive the response, “You agree with Democratic Socialists.”

Another question in Astor’s quiz dealing with health care associates support for universal health care with the DSA. It states that democratic socialists believe the health care industry should be socialized “like in Britain,” which in fact is not universal, quality health care and is suffering from relentless budget cuts and attempts at privatization.

Tellingly, however, the explanation goes on to say that “democratic socialists acknowledge that a fully socialized system isn’t politically achievable right now, so they support ‘Medicare for All’ in the meantime.” This proposal, which will never be implemented, has been taken up by leading

Democrats to give them a “left” cover, including Obama, whose Affordable Care Act has been a mechanism for cutting costs and shifting the burden of health care onto workers and young people.
Second, the quiz falsifies the actual program advanced by the DSA. There is only one question that deals directly with socialism, which asserts that the DSA advocates workers’ control of production. In fact, the DSA-backed candidates in the Democratic Party, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Julia Salazar, say nothing about transforming the relations of production or altering the basic structure of economic life. They campaign on the basis of proposals for mild reforms, claiming that these can be achieved within the framework of capitalism.

Third, the quiz obscures the most important component of the DSA’s politics and role, which is to promote the Democratic Party. There is no question, for example, “Do you support the Democratic Party and all its candidates?” Many young people interested in socialism would say no, but this is in fact the position of the DSA candidates. Ocasio-Cortez recently told CNN, for example, that she “looks forward” to “rallying behind all Democratic nominees, including [New York Governor] Andrew Cuomo, to make sure that he wins in November.”

In the 2016 elections, the DSA supported Bernie Sanders, who received widespread support for his statements of opposition to social inequality, before backing Hillary Clinton, the candidate of Wall Street, in the general elections. Sanders is now effectively a leading figure in the Democratic Party.
Notably absent among the Times’ questions is any reference to war. In the elections, the DSA candidates are saying almost nothing about foreign policy, as they cover up for the many CIA and military candidates running as Democrats, and for the pro-war, militarist program of the Democratic Party in general. This is because the DSA candidates have no fundamental differences with the foreign policy of the Democratic Party. They are instead contributing to the suppression of opposition to imperialism, a central component of any genuinely socialist program.

Perhaps the most significant question is the final one, which reads, “Ideally, how should major social or political changes be achieved?” Among the answers opposed to the views of the DSA include, “By any means necessary, including violence and/or revolution.” If one chooses this answer they are met with the following explanation: “This is a common point of misunderstanding for people who conflate democratic socialism with communism. Democratic socialists don’t support a revolution to overthrow capitalism.”

This is, in fact true, insofar as the DSA opposes the development of a revolutionary movement of the working class against the capitalist system. The implication of the question, however, is that while the DSA is “peaceful,” socialists who criticize its role as an adjunct of the Democratic Party are “violent” and associated with what an answer to an earlier question calls “authoritarian forms of communism,” including “Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism,” which are not “democratic.”

This is the traditional anti-Communist political amalgam, which falsely conflates the revolutionary uprising in Russia in 1917, led by Lenin and Leon Trotsky, with the bureaucratic counterrevolution headed by Stalin, who carried out political genocide against those who led the Russian Revolution.
Of course, the Times says nothing about the violence of capitalist society, for which the Democrats are responsible as much as the Republicans—police murders, imperialist wars, and the starving of billions of workers of the resources they need to survive. The bloodiest events of the twentieth century in the US and around the world have been carried out against the working class by the capitalist class.

As telling as any of the questions is the publication that has produced it. What sort of socialist organization claiming to challenge the capitalist system receives the blessing of The New York Times, the leading mouthpiece for the Democratic Party? This is the same newspaper that is an ardent proponent of American imperialism. It is playing a central role in spearheading the Democrats’ anti-Russia campaign, which has been used to channel mass opposition to Trump behind the pro-war policies of the military-intelligence apparatus.

The DSA is being promoted by the Democratic Party-affiliated media even as the Democrats use the anti-Russia campaign to censor the internet, the main target being genuinely left-wing and socialist publications.

The New York Times promotes the DSA because, far from posing a threat to the capitalist system, the DSA is a principal political instrument for the Democratic Party to block and divert a leftward movement of workers and young people. Those looking for genuine socialism, including workers and young people who have joined the DSA, should be advised that such a program will not come out of the pages of the bourgeois press.

Archive
https://archive.is/7dkbW

Trump’s trade war lurches forward (Socialist Worker) 24 Sept 2018

IT’S ANOTHER dramatic week for U.S. trade relations, as Donald Trump and his administration simultaneously intensify their economic attacks on China and struggle to find a solution to complex trade issues in North America. On September 24, the Trump White House imposed its second round of tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports, and the Chinese government of Xi Jinping hit back with its own duties on $60 billion in U.S. products. In a sign of the hesitations and disagreements within Trump’s administration, Trump chose to bring down the tariff rate on this latest round of Chinese commodities from 25 percent to 10 percent, and to remove most Apple products from the line of fire.

These partial retreats are meant mostly to placate Trump’s domestic critics. Trump continues to threaten a third set of $267 billion in tariffs covering the rest of China’s total exports to the U.S., and promises to raise the rate on the second set from 10 percent to 25 percent after the new year.

Donald Trump and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer in the Oval Office

Outwardly, Trump is as belligerent as ever on the trade front. He took to Twitter last week to assure his followers: “Tariffs have put the U.S. in a very strong bargaining position, with Billions of Dollars and Jobs, flowing into our Country — and yet cost increases have been almost unnoticeable. If countries will not make fair deals with us, they will be ‘Tariffed!’”

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INWARDLY, HOWEVER, the Trump administration is riven with conflicts. The Treasury Department under Steve Mnuchin has repeatedly called for talks with Chinese officials to reach a negotiated settlement. The Commerce Department under billionaire Wilbur Ross, on the other hand, looks to be totally uninterested in initiating talks. Ross has announced that China is “out of bullets” in this trade war and bound to submit to U.S. demands (for whatever reason, Ross loves shooting metaphors, as we find here and here).

Most importantly, Trump’s U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Bob Lighthizer — the official actually putting these policies into practice — is arguably a more dedicated Trumpian than the president himself. Lighthizer has spent four decades since his time leading Reagan’s trade fights with Japan preparing for an opportunity to implement a protectionist trade policy, and he sees himself as the latest in a long line of American economic warriors to take up this cause, going back to Alexander Hamilton.

Still, the combined pressure of the National Association of Manufacturers, the Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — the three largest advocacy organizations of U.S. capitalists, all of which want Trump to negotiate a rapid solution — can’t be ignored indefinitely.
The U.S. and Chinese economies are closely woven together by thousands of businesses that trade and invest large volumes of capital. Billions in profits are made annually off this relationship. It’s difficult to imagine that Trump could wrench these highly integrated economies apart, which leaves many analysts asking how exactly the trade officialdom in Washington, D.C., plans to end this conflict.

Meanwhile, Xi Jinping’s state officials are essentially mirroring Trump’s moves at each step of the process. They have also divided their tariffs into three phases to counter the U.S. attacks. Analysts Chad Brown, Euijin Jung and Zhiyao (Lucy) Lu report that the Chinese government has walked back its second set of retaliatory tariffs somewhat, lowering rates on import duties from 5-25 percent to 5-10 percent.

China imports around $160 billion in goods from the U.S. annually, giving Xi fewer targets to tax. But there are other tactics that the Chinese state can follow to impose countermeasures: selling off U.S. Treasury bonds, restricting exports of parts to U.S. manufacturers and disciplining U.S. companies operating within China, among others. Now that phase two of this tariff battle has begun, the stage is set for a volatile and uncertain period ahead. With U.S. midterm elections just six weeks away and an atmosphere of chaos eating away at the Trump presidency, it’s anybody’s guess how this conflict will play out.

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PART OF the trouble for Trump and his team is that they can’t put in place a coherent strategy in the trade conflict with China without resolving their approach on another major front: the NAFTA renegotiations.

Since coming into office, Trump has insisted that he would renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement — which he no longer calls NAFTA — raising the stakes on his promise to reach a better deal with two of the U.S.’s largest and most economically integrated trading partners, Mexico and Canada.

Consistent with his scorn for multilateralism, Trump has decided first to find an arrangement with the Mexican government of the outgoing President Enrique Peña Nieto, and only afterward to invite Canada to join the agreement. This approach, which destabilizes the NAFTA renegotiations from the start, has put Trump and Bob Lighthizer in something of a time crunch.

The Trump administration reached an agreement with Peña Nieto on September 1. Under U.S. trade law, the president has only 90 days after the announcement of a trade deal to sign an accord — otherwise, it is considered null. This leaves U.S. and Canadian negotiators a very short time to come up with a solution acceptable under the terms of the U.S.-Mexico deal.

That outcome seems increasingly unlikely. And if Canada and the U.S. don’t reach an understanding in time to incorporate the Canadian economy into a three-way agreement, the battles — both within and between all three countries — will only intensify.

The Trump administration will have to choose between signing a new agreement without Canada or relaunching negotiations with Mexico after the incoming left-populist president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), is inaugurated on December 1.

If Trump chooses to proceed toward an agreement without Canada, he will trigger a conflict with Republicans and Democrats in Congress and most U.S. capitalists, the vast majority of whom don’t want to see trade barriers erected against Canada.

Trump administration officials understand that they can’t successfully wage a trade war with China if they open up a spiraling trade conflict in North America. The White House will be forced to decide where to escalate and where to conciliate as these confrontations come to a head simultaneously.

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AGAINST THIS backdrop, most of the U.S. elite appears less worried than one might think, given all of the lucrative investments that hang in the balance in these trade fights.

One reason is because Trump’s tax cuts for Corporate America and the wealthy continue to fuel buoyant growth in profits and a bullish stock market.

The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average continue to hit record highs, and both Apple and Amazon recently became the first corporations to break $1 trillion in the total value of their stock. The outlook is rosy for the 1 Percent, and for the time being, the profits coming in are worth far more than the losses caused by Trump’s trade measures.

That said, most sectors of U.S. capital, with some notable exception like the steel industry, are trying to persuade and pressure the White House to de-escalate trade tensions with China. The number of trade lobbyists registered in Washington, D.C., has more than quadrupled since Trump took office, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Yet big business has also found some significant common ground with Trump.
While a strong majority of the U.S. ruling class clearly opposes tariffs and trade barriers, there is also widespread support for the idea promoted by the administration that China is a growing economic threat, an “unfair” and “corrupt” actor in the world system and a violator of U.S. corporate and intellectual property rights.

As the spokesperson for the Business Roundtable said, “The [Trump] administration has correctly identified the real problem of China’s discriminatory trade practices. But unilaterally imposing tariffs is the wrong way to achieve real reforms.”

A statement from the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), whose president Jay Timmons has maintained a close working relationship with Trump, further elaborated the point, and summed up the perspective of most U.S. factory bosses:

Two things are abundantly clear to manufacturers: China cheats, and another round of tariffs on China will not fix the problem. As the administration rightly notes, China attempts to force U.S. companies to hand over valuable technology, restricts foreign investment, distorts the free market to give their own companies an advantage, undercuts us in the global economy and steals manufacturers’ intellectual property. While these additional tariffs may be an attempt to create more leverage, they also increase the risks for manufacturing in America and add to mounting uncertainty.

Set aside the upside-down view that China “cheats” while the U.S. follows the rules, and the NAM statement turns out to be very revealing. While NAM is a vocal opponent of Trump’s tariffs, the group doesn’t sound that out of tune with Trump’s own right-wing, nationalist discourse on trade.
The differences between the White House and this section of the U.S. ruling class appear to revolve around the strategy and perspective for preserving U.S. dominance, but they certainly share the view that U.S. industrial power is facing a real challenge by new global competitors.

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THE THOUGHT process among U.S. trade officials runs along similar lines.
Observers were given a window into their outlook during a recent event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), an establishment think tank in Washington, D.C. A panel discussion earlier this month brought together six of the last nine U.S. Trade Representatives, dating back to the Reagan era, for a conversation on Trump’s tariffs and the future of U.S. trade policy.

All six disapproved of Trump’s overall approach to trade. But they also pointed out that the current global trading system is, in their view, out of date and in need of serious change to better serve the interest of U.S. businesses.

The task of reconfiguring the World Trade Organization (WTO), the global trading system’s most important rule-enforcer and arbiter, has been a priority of U.S. politicians and capitalists since before Trump was elected — even though the WTO was founded under U.S. imperialist leadership.
Trump’s practice of blocking appointments to the WTO’s Appellate Body is actually a continuation of an Obama-era tactic to pressure the organization into more strict obedience of U.S. commands.
Beyond this, the panelists spoke of the need to build new multilateral institutions to help preserve U.S. influence. Charlene Barshefvsky, Bill Clinton’s first trade representative, pressed for a “rewrite of the global rules” and a “new WTO.”

Obama’s first trade representative, Ron Kirk, repeated the point that Trump’s officials “haven’t misdiagnosed any of the problems. We’re basically talking about the best ways to resolve them.”
When the moderator half-jokingly asked, “Anybody want to make the case for tariffs?” the answer was somewhat surprising.

Susan Schwab, who served George W. Bush as trade representative, made the case that Trump was having more success than any other U.S. administration in curbing China’s ambitions since the Chinese state acceded to the WTO in 2001. Schwab argued:

[Y]ou could see this backtracking from commitments made [by China]...leading up to 2001 and a growing movement against not just the spirit, but also the letter of commitments with their WTO accession. And guess what? This administration has gotten their attention...

I don’t like tariffs, I’m an economist. I don’t like unilateral action, I’m an economist. And let us note for the record that these are self-imposed wounds. Anyone who pretends that U.S. imposition of tariffs isn’t hurting the U.S. economy is fooling themselves. However...we’ll find out if it’s part of a strategy at some point.

It has gotten the attention of the Chinese authorities, which I was unable to do and which you all were unable to do. Maybe — maybe — the outcome will be a change in behavior on the part of the Chinese that, in the long run, will result in a positive outcome for China and the United States and the rest of the world.

What all this makes clear is that, although prior trade leaders disagree with Trump’s specific policies, they, too, believe that the status quo in global trade is unsustainable from the vantage point of U.S. capital — and some are even willing to entertain the idea that Trump’s tactics might be working.
Socialists will have to keep their eyes on the relationship between the Trump White House, the old political establishment, and U.S. corporations and business organizations as these trade conflicts unfold in the coming months and years.

We don’t know how these clashes will bring about shifts in the global economic order. But we can predict that significant changes to the way that international trade works are likely, whether Trump remains in the White House or not.

And that just heightens the urgency of building a fighting left that can put forward its own alternative to a system that is increasingly putting economic giants on a collision course.

Archive

McDonald’s Workers and Allies Protest Sexual Harassment – by Al Neal – 19 Sept 2018

https://archive.fo/ZrR86September 19, 2018 12:18 PM CDT By Al Neal

ST.LOUIS – Barbara Johnson, an 18-year-old McDonald’s worker and leader with Show Me 15, part of the national Fight for 15 campaign, had a message to deliver to her employer yesterday afternoon: “I am a victim of sexual harassment.”

Speaking from a podium surrounded by several dozen fast-food workers and community members, McDonald’s iconic “golden arches” in the background, Johnson recounted her traumatic, on the job sexual harassment experience.

“It was November 2017. I had only been on the job a few days, but I felt today was going to be different,” she said. “I clocked in and that’s when he (her shift-leader) started saying that I had ‘juicy lips,’ was ‘thick in all the right places,’ that my ‘body looked good in the uniform’ and just kept going. After a while, he would just look over at me and start licking his lips while making threatening gestures at me.

“I was only 17-years-old then…and it terrified me,” she continued. “I didn’t know what to do or who to turn to. During my orientation sexual harassment was never brought up—we were never prepared for this and shouldn’t have to experience it in the first place. I’m here to let McDonald’s know that enough is enough. Our voices will be silent no more and we will not stop until every single voice is heard.”

“Hold the burgers, hold the fries…Keep your hands off our thighs” 

Like Johnson, the other McDonald’s workers supporting and surrounding her, went on strike demanding McDonald’s strengthen and enforce its zero-tolerance policy against sexual harassment; hold mandatory trainings for managers and employees and create a safe and effective system for receiving and responding to sexual harassment complaints; and the  formation of a committee that includes McDonald’s workers, McDonald’s corporate and franchisee representatives, representatives of leading national women’s rights groups like the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, the National Women’s Law Center and Equal Rights Advocates to address sexual harassment issues at the company.

Tuesday’s strike took place in nine other cities—Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, Orlando, Kansas City, Mo., Milwaukee, and San Francisco—and found workers themselves adding on a last minute demand: Drop Seyfarth Shaw at Work, a subsidiary of the historic anti-union law firm Seyfarth Shaw, who defended the Weinstein Company in harassment issues, and was retained by McDonald’s to address workplace sexual harassment issues.

McDonald’s did not comment on the strike but released a statement saying. “We have policies, procedures and training in place that are specifically designed to prevent sexual harassment at our company and company-owned restaurants, and we firmly believe that our franchisees share this commitment.”

 

The fast-food workers “MeToo” strike was coordinated nationally by each campaign’s “Women’s Committee” and comes four months after McDonald’s workers nationwide filed 10 sexual harassment charges, supported by the TIME’s UP legal defense fund, with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)—each individual charge describing the cringe-worthy harassment experienced by female workers.

In St. Louis, fast-food workers loaded up their vans, hit the gas pedal, and sped down Interstate-64/HWY 40. Their destination was the local EEOC office, inside the Robert A. Young federal building downtown.

Johnson was ready to march in and file her complaint against McDonald’s.
With around 30 workers and community members following behind, Johnson and her mother, Latasha Chapple, marched up the ramp only to be met by security blocking the door.
“I’m just here to file my complaint with the EEOC,” Johnson said.

“We understand, but we can’t have all of you go up into the office…this isn’t an issue for us, we’re just waiting to hear from the EEOC staff if everyone going inside is ok.”


After 15 minutes, and several private conversations and phone calls, Johnson, her mother and nine other workers were able to go inside. Only a few moments later, Johnson walked back outside, a small grin spreading across her face, as cheers went out.

“I did it…I just filed my complaint to let McDonald’s know we won’t be silent anymore.”
When asked about her daughter taking a stand and speaking out, Chapple said: “I’m hurt because it happened to my daughter, but I am so proud of her for coming out and speaking about what happened. I know it’s never easy speaking out about these things, you can see on their faces how much it hurts them, but I’m proud. I’m also angry at McDonald’s for letting it continue and I’m ready to fight back until we see real change come. As a mother…I would never want this to happen to any child, female or male, and I will keep fighting until we get justice.”

A 2016 Hart Research survey showed 42 percent of women in the fast-food industry who experience unwanted sexual behavior feel forced to accept it because they can’t afford to lose their jobs. The report found that 40 percent of female fast-food workers experience sexual harassment, and more than one in five (21 percent) who file complaints experience negative actions, including schedule changes, additional duties, reduced work hours, and denial of wage increases.
Keep that in mind next time you bite into a Quarter Pounder with Cheese.
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Archive

US Postal Workers Labor Unions Plan Day of Protest - 8 Oct 2018 - Opposing Privatization of US Postal Service

APWU President Mark Dimondstein speaks at an anti-privatization rally. | Joe Piette/Flickr

WASHINGTON – The Postal Workers (APWU) and Postal Service management agreed Sept. 20 to extend bargaining for a month after the old contract expired that day, union President Mark Dimondstein announced.

And in the middle of the talks, APWU, the Letter Carriers – each of whom have at least 200,000 members – the Mail Handlers, which is a Laborers sector, and the Rural Letter Carriers will take to the streets on Oct. 8 for a national day of action against the GOP Trump administration’s postal privatization plans.

APWU started bargaining over a new pact with USPS on June 26, with frequent sessions leading a 10-day round-the-clock sprint as the old contract’s deadline approached.  Those last talks “identified important issues that the union believes deserve more time to discuss and explore before declaring an impasse and ending negotiations for a voluntary agreement,” APWU said.

“Our goal is to reach a negotiated settlement that can be voted on by the members” said Dimondstein, the lead bargainer. “National negotiations are always challenging. At this point in time it is in the best interest of the members to stay at the bargaining table rather than declare a hard and fast impasse.”

(Florida postal protest - 2 March 2018)

The union’s goals of “fighting today for a better tomorrow” include: Fair pay hikes, retaining cost of living increases, job security and continued no lay-off protections, closing the gaps of what APWU calls a “divisive three-tier wage structure,” addressing hostile work environments, expanded postal services and “seeking better career and full-time opportunities” for part-timers.

“Negotiations are never easy. Especially in the current political environment, they will be extremely challenging. The APWU’s success will depend on how much power and leverage can be mustered with member involvement and support from the public,” Dimondstein warned.

But hanging over the bargainers’ heads is the Trump administration plan to privatize the Postal Service, a scheme first laid out in the president’s budget and due to be amplified by a report from a special committee he appointed earlier this year.

The panel, which includes various top Trump administration officials – but no workers – had an original August 30 reporting deadline, but the White House decided to push the divisive issue back until after the mid-term elections.

That will send the workers out into the streets under the theme: “The U.S. Mail – Not for Sale!!”
“Privatizers – those who want to sell the public postal service to private corporations – are hard at work. Together we can stop them in their tracks. Get ready to hit the streets with our sister postal unions, family, friends, and community allies to Save Our Service. Rallies will take place at many congressional offices throughout the country. Check with your local and state leaders for more details and for the exact time and location in your area,” the unions said in a joint statement.


(Boston MA postal protest - 27 Nov 2017)

Dimondstein warned his convention delegates, meeting in August in Pittsburgh, of that coming conflict. At least one prior report says privatization might also include an end to USPS’ exclusive franchise to carry first-class mail.
“This White House, the Heritage Foundation, and their billionaire backers, the Wall Street investors, they want their greedy hands on the public till and the public good – but they’ve started something that they’re not going to be able to stop. They think this is their time…We’re going to show them this is truly our time,” Dimondstein said.

The unions are already gathering congressional support against privatization, the Letter Carriers reported.

Led by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., 28 senators introduced a non-binding anti-privatization resolution, SRes 623, on September 20. The solons include both independents – Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a longtime postal workers supporter – and five Republicans: Jerry Moran of Kansas, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine.

Several backers of the anti-privatization resolution are in tough races this fall: McCaskill, Jon Tester, D-Mont., Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis. – the top target of a radical right “dark money” spending spree – and Tina Smith, DFL-Minn.  An identical House anti-privatization measure, HRes 993, was introduced on July 16.

“NALC is proud to see such a strong bipartisan defense in both the House and Senate against what amounts to an attack not simply on Letter Carriers and other postal employees, but the American people as well,” union President Fredric Rolando said.

“Privatization of the U.S. Postal Service would hurt both low-income and rural Americans especially who live in areas where it might not be profitable to deliver to them.” He’s urging workers to contact lawmakers to get them to sign on as cosponsors.

The union “hopes Congress progresses with sensible postal reform” to improve Postal Service “finances instead of resorting to hack-and-burn privatization policies.”
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American Postal Workers Union site  - http://www.apwu.org/issues/excessing
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Ten years after Lehman: New financial crises in the making - By Nick Beams 17 September 2018

 

Two characteristics predominate in the plethora of commentaries that have appeared on the tenth anniversary of the global financial crisis, set off by the bankruptcy of investment bank Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008.

The first is the lack of any scientific explanation of the meltdown itself. The second is the fear that, far from its causes having been overcome, a new crisis is very much in the making.

The paucity of scientific analysis is most clearly exemplified by Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the US Federal Reserve at the time and the chief architect of the bailout of the banks and other financial institutions. The tax payer-funded handout of $700 billion to Wall Street was followed by the program of quantitative easing, which pumped trillions of dollars into the financial system, underwriting an expansion of the very speculation that had set off the collapse in the first place.
Bernanke, now a fellow at the Brookings Institution and an adviser to two investment groups, has had a decade to ponder the events over which he presided, with all the research resources of the Fed, universities and well-funded think tanks available to him.

What has he come up with?

In a paper prepared for Brookings on the anniversary, he maintains that the collapse of the American real estate market was only a secondary factor in the plunge. The second and major factor through which “the crisis led to a recession was a severe financial panic—a system-wide run on providers of credit, including banks, but also, importantly, nonbank lenders like investment banks and finance companies.” The “fragilities” in the financial system “resulted in a panic and credit crunch.”
In other words, the main cause of the crisis, which took the form of a panic and a loss of confidence, was panic and loss of confidence.

While the collapse of the real estate market, above all in the sub-prime area, was only a trigger for the eruption of the crisis and the subsequent Great Recession, Bernanke has a vested interest in deflecting attention away from it because, as problems began to emerge in that area, he denied they would have any broader impact.

“We believe the effect of the troubles in the sub-prime sector on the broader housing market will be limited and we do not expect significant spill-overs from the sub-prime market to the rest of the economy or to the financial system,” he stated in March 2007.

One of the most striking features of his Brookings paper is its exposure, no doubt inadvertent, of the lack of any coherent understanding of the workings of the capitalist economy at the highest levels of the institutions that supposedly preside over it.

This has far-reaching political implications. A major role of bourgeois ideology is to mystify economic processes in order to reinforce the conception that only the powers-that-be can be allowed to organise society, because they alone possess special knowledge beyond the comprehension of the masses of working class people, who must simply accept their lot.

In fact, the emperor has no clothes, and this nakedness is revealed in a striking passage from Bernanke’s paper. “Prior to the crisis,” he writes, “the macroeconomic models used by central banks and forecasters—including the Fed’s workhorse model—provided little guidance on how to think about credit market disruptions.”

This is an astonishing admission, given the crucial role played by credit and finance in the operations of the capitalist economy. It is as if the designers of a flood mitigation system suddenly discovered, after a disaster, that, in drawing up their plans, they had neglected to take account of water.
But the source of the omission was not simply Bernanke and the other supposed “wise men” at the top of the Fed. It is rooted in bourgeois economics itself. From its very earliest days, it has treated money, and its further development as credit, as simply a technical device.
Bourgeois economics has always opposed the analysis of Marx, who showed that money arises from the contradiction in the very cell form of capitalist economy, the commodity, between a commodity’s use value and its exchange value. Use value refers to the production of material goods. But the capitalist economy is driven not by the production of material wealth to meet human needs, but by the expansion of value, which is the source of profit.

Ever anxious to sustain the illusion that those at the top are in control, Bernanke offers the reassurance that the crisis has “significantly changed economists’ views on the importance of credit factors in the economy at large,” and that they are seeking to incorporate the role of credit in macroeconomic forecasting and analysis.

But this solves nothing because, as Marx’s analysis showed, the crises of capitalism cannot be overcome by reforms to the monetary system because, while they necessarily express themselves there, they were rooted in the very foundations of the capitalist economy, in its DNA so to speak—that is, in the social relations based on profit and the market system.

Consequently, he drew out, while reforms to the monetary system, guided perhaps by better “models,” may alleviate certain problems, the underlying contradictions will inevitably find expression.

In the light of Marx’s analysis, it is significant that the prospect of such a development is reflected in the views of other writers on the anniversary.

Andrew Ross Sorkin, who covered the financial crisis while working at the New York Times, writes in a recent commentary in that newspaper that the question he is most frequently asked is, “Will we have another crisis?”

“The answer, of course, is yes,” he writes. “But it’s not a Wall Street crisis that concerns me,” he adds, “I’m worried about something far bigger.”

Sorkin notes that when he wrote his book Too Big to Fail the phrase was used only in connection with financial institutions. “Today, it is used to refer to cities, municipalities, states and countries. If you look at the build-up of debt, that’s the place to keep an eye on.”'

The economics commentator for the Financial Times, Martin Wolf, bewails the fact that so little has changed since the financial crash. The financial crisis, he writes, “was a devastating failure of the free market that followed a period of rising inequality within many countries.” Concern is now being expressed over inequality, but little has actually been done.

“Policymakers have mostly failed to notice the dangerous dependence on ever-rising debt … Few question the value of the vast quantities of financial sector activity we continue to have, or recognise the risks of further big financial crises.”

In an acknowledgement of the lack of any perspective for meaningful reform, he writes: “The persistent fealty to so much of the pre-crisis conventional wisdom is astonishing … What makes this even more shocking is that there is so little confidence that we could (or would) deal effectively with another big recession, let alone another big crisis.”

Ever anxious to maintain the illusion that it is possible to mitigate the effects of the capitalist economy, Wolf offers a list of “good ideas” to change the workings of the financial system, none of which, however, alters its fundamental operations.

In remarks that recall descriptions of the Ancien Regime in France, and its organic incapacity on the eve of the revolution of 1789 to make reforms, he does not hold out much prospect for even limited change, because “today’s rent-extracting economy, masquerading as a free market, is, after all, hugely rewarding to politically influential insiders.”

He warns that what he calls the “centre’s complacency” invites “extremist rage,” and “if those who believe in the market economy and liberal democracy do not come up with superior policies, demagogues will sweep them away.”

In an editorial board statement published on September 13, the Financial Times issued a series of warnings. While it said the banking system was better “storm-proofed” in the wake of the crisis, the next one might originate from elsewhere, not least as a result of the greater controls on banks.
“Tightening bank oversight has shifted risk,” the Financial Times writes, “notably to the shadow banking sector, or non-bank financial institutions doing the business of the banks, from lending to market making. Asset managers, hedge funds and insurance companies also now carry the kinds of risk that used to be the preserve of banks.”

It is surely a measure of the deep crisis of the financial system that measures supposedly taken to stabilise it can have the effect of increasing the possibility of another meltdown.

The statement notes that among the possible triggers for such an eventuality is the fact that regulatory changes have made banks less willing to hold large volumes of securities that might function as a shock absorber in a falling market. Another potential time bomb is the dramatic growth of passive funds, which operate “by tracking indices regardless of performance.” These, the newspaper warns, “could magnify the effect of market falls.”

According to the Financial Times, by some measures the next crisis “already looks overdue.” Debt was a principal cause of the 2008 meltdown, but it has increased. Global debt now stands at about $250 trillion, some 75 percent more than when Lehman failed. And the very measures undertaken in response to the last crisis have worked to prepare the conditions of the next.

“Ultra-loose monetary policy and quantitative easing were undoubtedly justified to help repair bank balance sheets and stimulate economic activity,” the newspaper writes. “But they magnified the debt problem. Using low interest rates to encourage investors into higher-yielding riskier assets has inflated new bubbles. Equity markets are near record highs. Property prices in key global cities are at record multiples of inhabitants’ earnings.”

Reflecting the growing fears of the world's corporate and financial oligarchs of an explosion from below, the statement points to the growing discontent “now felt as an ‘us versus them’ insurgency against political and business elites.” It warns that “the system of liberal democracy and market economics is seen by a sizeable minority in advanced economies as one run for the benefit of well-connected insiders.”

The only difference one might have with the last assessment is that it is a growing majority, rather than a minority.

The geo-political consequences of the 2008 crash, some of which are only now emerging, threaten major consequences if they interact with another financial crisis. “Nationalism and protectionism are … chipping away at the very system of international cooperation that helped contain the last financial crash. That could render still more grave the consequences of the next crisis.”

The editorial concludes that unless “mainstream politicians” are able to show that their policies work, they will be “eclipsed by today’s populists—or worse ones waiting in the wings.” This, it declares, is “the central political battle of our times,” with the danger that the “next financial calamity may strike before that battle has even begun to be won.”

Like many other media commentaries, the Financial Times editorial focuses on right-wing populists. But the greatest fear, indicated by the reference to “worse ones waiting in the wings,” is the development of the class struggle, as seen this year in the growing series of struggles by workers in the US and elsewhere. In the ten years since the crisis, the most powerful political movement has not been the rise of populist forces, but the Egyptian revolution of 2011, spearheaded by the working class—a foretaste of what is to come.

That movement was defeated, and a brutal military regime imposed, because it lacked a clear socialist perspective and a revolutionary leadership. The “central political battle of our times” is to build and develop that leadership for the enormous class battles being prepared by the ongoing economic breakdown of world capitalism.

Turkey: Hundreds of Construction Workers Arrested in Clashes At Rushed Airport Construction Site After 17 Workers Injured in Mini-Bus Crash – 15 Sept 2018

Turkish Airport Workers Protest 15 Sept 2018 (2:49 min)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyOAeCVSYXY  Or Hooktube – https://www.hooktube.com/watch?v=NyOAeCVSYXY

17 September 2018

Hundreds of Turkish construction workers were detained by police and gendarmes over the weekend after workers carried out mass protests against deadly working conditions at the site of a new airport in Istanbul.
Thousands downed their tools and angrily protested after a shuttle bus accident left 17 of their fellow workers injured. The incident was the latest in a raft of industrial accidents at the site, which workers describe as a “graveyard” due to the lack of basic safety protections and pressure from the government and the contractor to open the giant airport by the end of next month.

Hundreds of workers chanted, “We are workers, we are right. We will have our way one way or another.” The hashtag supporting the workers, “#we are not slaves” (#köledegiliz) gained strong support throughout Turkey.
Police and gendarmes used military vehicles, tear gas and water cannon to break up the protests of striking workers, according to Ozgur Karabulut, an official of the Dev Yapi-Is union. “They broke into the workers’ camp with 30 gendarmerie, broke down the doors and detained around 500 workers,” Karabulut told Reuters by phone.

Police and gendarme attack protesting workers

Construction workers posted videos of state security forces rounding up and arresting workers. While some of the detained construction workers were released on Sunday, as of this writing hundreds remain in police and gendarme stations in Istanbul.

I










stanbul Governor Vasip Sahin said that 401 people had been detained, either for refusing to work or “trying to provoke others,” according to the newspaper Hurriyet. It quoted him as saying that 275 were released on Sunday morning and the airport operator, Istanbul Grand Airport (IGA), had started “addressing the problems.”

Karabulut said on Sunday that 160 people had been released and the union estimated 360 remained in detention. “Some of our friends who were released last night were taken back to the camps, but they are not working,” he told Reuters. “We expect these protests to go on for a long time.”

Workers injured in shuttle bus accident Friday

An IGA official downplayed the protests and said that the airport would open as planned on October 29, Reuters reported. “Our workers are working to schedule, there is no disruption at all,” said IGA’s corporate communications director, Gokhan Sengul. “There was a little bit of protest on Friday triggered by provocateurs who came in on Friday like union representatives.”

For months, workers have been protesting conditions at the site, a showcase construction project for the Erdogan government, which says it will be the largest airport in the world.

In an effort to shore up its credibility, the Dev Yapi-Is union—which has gone along with these conditions—issued a statement saying that the airport construction site was “no different than a concentration camp for workers.”




In a visit to the site last April, Minister of Transport Ahmet Arslan said that 27 workers had died from workplace accidents or poor health since construction began in 2015. Workers, however, charge that this figure is a gross underestimation.

The appearance of the transport minister followed the release of a report last February in the opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet saying that the government was covering up as many as 400 deaths at the site, which employs 35,000 workers.

The workers told the newspaper that employers have put pressure on them to increase productivity after several delays in the target opening date. Many deaths go unreported, workers told the newspaper, because the government pays the families of the victims—many of whom live in impoverished villages far away from Istanbul or overseas—the equivalent to $100,000 in “hush money.”

Workers’ social media postings of squalid living conditions

Most of the fatalities, workers told Cumhuriyet, are due to the largely uncontrolled traffic of thousands of trucks around the airport site, while police officers and inspectors look the other way. One trade union official, Yunus Ozgur, told the paper that accidents killed three to four workers every week.

Workers have also complained about the poor quality of food they are served, along with infestations of fleas and bed bugs in their sleeping quarters and unpaid or late salaries. They have posted videos and pictures on social media of insects, uncollected garbage and cracks in the ceilings and walls of the company-supplied units where they are housed.

The regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is fearful of opposition from the working class as the depreciation of the Turkish lira, rising inflation and a wave of layoffs sharpen class tensions.
The growth of the Turkish economy over the last decade has been chiefly based on a 15-year construction boom under Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has overseen the building of bridges, highways and now the third airport in Istanbul. These projects, however, have been dependent on the availability of cheap credit on world financial markets, which is now drying up.

(Turkey Races to Finnish New Airport – (1:06 min)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9SxfVqyChg  – Hooktube = https://www.hooktube.com/watch?v=H9SxfVqyChg)

Last Friday, Erdogan said that the government was freezing new investments to rein in inflation and support the lira, which has dropped 40 percent against the dollar this year. The construction sector has already come to a standstill, leaving tens of thousands of workers unemployed and slowing down other sectors of the export-dependent economy, including the auto industry, with Ford, Mercedes Benz and Renault preparing unpaid “holidays” for autoworkers.

Under the state of emergency imposed by Erdogan following the US-backed coup attempt in July of 2016, the right to strike or protest was sharply curtailed. The lifting of the state of emergency in July was largely a symbolic act. As the mass arrests at the Istanbul airport demonstrate, the structure for mass state repression is fully intact.

In hopes of appeasing 130,000 metal workers last January, Turkey’s Metal Industry Employers’ Association (MESS) and three major trade unions signed a two-year collective bargaining agreement providing a 24.6 percent average wage increase. The deal followed Erdogan’s ban on a scheduled industry-wide strike on the grounds that it would be “prejudicial to national security.” Metalworkers challenged the government decree and continued their demonstrations, carrying placards saying, “If the state of emergency is for bosses, strikes are for us.”

In February, the Interior Ministry announced that 845 people had been detained on terror charges due to their protests or posts on social media critical of a Turkish military incursion in the northern Syrian town of Afrin.

Security forces kicking down the doors in workers’ quarters

During the same month, the newspaper Evrensel reported, two construction workers were detained by police when they arrived at the İzmir Adnan Menderes Airport to fly to their hometown of Diyarbakır. The two workers—Nazım Toplu and Ahmet Polat—were detained by police on the grounds that they looked “suspicious.” They were told to open their Facebook accounts to see if they had posted anything critical of the government. When they refused, saying that such demands were illegal, the police seized the workers’ mobile phones and entered their social media accounts from the phones. The two were eventually released when police said they were not targets of previous investigations.

The fatal accidents at the airport construction site underscore the deadly conditions for workers in Turkey, which functions as a cheap labor supplier for European and US-based multinational corporations. In 2014, the 28 EU countries registered a total of 3,700 work-related deaths. Turkey alone had 1,600 fatal accidents. The Workers’ Health and Work Safety Assembly, a Turkish NGO, put last year’s number of fatalities from accidents at work at 2,006. That figure was up from 1,970 deaths in 2016, the NGO said.

In 2014, 301 workers died in one of the worst industrial accidents in Turkey’s history when a fire broke out in a coalmine in Soma in western Turkey. The tragedy was the outcome of privatization and International Monetary Fund-backed “structural adjustment” plans. These were implemented by Erdogan and his predecessors from all factions of the Turkish ruling class.

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Turkey’: Istanbul’s  New Airport – A Place Where Dreams Come True – We Are Ready to Take Off in 2018 (5:21 min) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju6FJ8qRTtk – Hooktube – https://www.hooktube.com/watch?v=Ju6FJ8qRTtk
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https://archive.is/BhJuP