First round of US-Cuba talks end as restrictions eased

Alexander Fangmann

The United States and Cuba have ended two days of talks, held Thursday and Friday last week in Havana. The first high-level discussions since 1980 are aimed at normalizing relations between the two countries. Though no significant changes were announced in the immediate wake of the meeting, both countries have described it as part of a “process.” In fact, there is now significant momentum behind a rapprochement, with Cuba eager to make accommodations to US imperialism before it faces a serious financial crisis, and the US moving to undercut Cuban ties to Russia and China.
The lack of immediate progress may set back the goal of restoring full diplomatic relations in time for the Summit of the Americas in April, which both Cuban President Raul Castro and US President Barack Obama are expected to attend.
The head of the US delegation, Roberta S. Jacobson, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, indicated that rather than meeting this kind of deadline, the negotiations may be protracted, saying, “Our efforts to normalize relations will be a continuing process that goes beyond diplomatic ties and the opening of embassies,” and that “We have made further steps in that direction.”
The most serious obstacle that has emerged is the US insistence that its officials be allowed unrestricted travel within the country, including the ability to meet with the “dissidents” that it funds in efforts to destabilize the regime. This is entirely in keeping with the ultimate US goal of replacing the current regime in Cuba with a more pliant one. However, it has provoked resistance from the Cuban delegation to the talks, led by Josefina Vidal, head of the Foreign Ministry’s US Division. She made a statement in regard to the future free movement of diplomats, that “this consideration is associated with better behavior.”
As if to underscore the US position, Jacobson hosted a breakfast meeting for dissidents on Friday. Among the attendees were a number of the 53 political prisoners recently released by the Cuban government as a result of the talks that led to this meeting.
Vidal said, “This is exactly one of the differences we have with the US government because for us, this is not just genuine, legitimate Cuban civil society.” In response to Jacobson’s claim that human rights are the “center of our policy,” the Cuban delegation pointedly referred to police shootings in the US as well as the continued detention of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.
Another sticking point in the discussions is the US designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism—an inversion of the actual relationship, in which the United States has repeatedly supported terrorist acts and harbored terrorist fugitives, such as Luis Posada Carriles, convicted in absentia of the bombing of Cubana Flight 455, in which 73 people were killed.
Vidal expressed that “it would be difficult to explain that diplomatic relations have been resumed while Cuba is still unjustly listed as a state sponsor of international terrorism.” To this end, Obama has asked the State Department to initiate a review culminating in a recommendation to be presented to him in six months, a move revealing the extent to which the list in question—which includes only Iran, Sudan, Syria, and Cuba—is a political creation. This is, of course, entirely in keeping with the hypocritical and phony character of the “war on terror.”
Whatever the Obama administration’s pretensions, Washington’s efforts to open relations with Cuba have nothing to do with the promotion of “human rights” or democracy. Rather, the goal is to deny access to Cuba’s economy by regional rivals such as Brazil and Venezuela, as well as Russia and ultimately China, in its bid to encircle and contain the latter’s rise. As if to emphasize the geopolitical calculations involved, while the meetings in Cuba were underway, the Russian surveillance ship Viktor Leonov CCB-175 was moored in Havana’s harbor.
Moreover, there are a number of business interests hoping to take advantage of cheap Cuban labor, under the discipline of either the Cuban Stalinists or a future more pliant regime based on bourgeois layers currently being cultivated through remittances and more direct forms of funding. The US Chamber of Commerce led a trip to the island last year, and there has been a growing call from wealthy Cuban exiles to scrap the embargo in order to resume direct capitalist exploitation of the island’s workers. Movement in this direction has only accelerated with the recent slowdowns in the economy, particularly oil and manufacturing which have been hit by slowing worldwide demand.
On January 15, further easing of travel restrictions for US nationals to Cuba took effect, wherein US citizens no longer have to apply for a specific license from the Treasury Department. Though tourism is technically still prohibited, a broad range of activities qualify, including professional research and meetings, journalism, educational activities, religious activities, public performances, sporting events, support for the Cuban people, humanitarian activities, and export or import of information or information technology.
Many US companies stand to profit from the changes, including agricultural and telecommunications firms which are now able to draw on more convenient financial arrangements that will fuel commercial activity. Financial services companies also stand to make swift gains from the relaxation. Travelers will now be allowed to use US-issued credit and bank cards, with MasterCard being the first to announce that its cards will be usable in Cuba on March 1.
At the same time that the US government hopes to reestablish Cuba as a semi-colony, the Cuban regime is appealing to US imperialism over fears that Venezuela, due to the recent fall in oil prices and its own ongoing economic crisis, will no longer be able to supply the nearly 100,000 barrels per day of oil to Cuba at extremely subsidized prices.
According to some estimates, the subsidies might amount to 15 percent of Cuban GDP, and economist Carmelo Mesa Lago has stated that the nominal amount of Venezuelan support is more than that which was supplied by the Soviet Union, before its support was also withdrawn in a period of falling oil prices, and ultimately the dissolution of the USSR.
The Cuban regime is gambling that it might be allowed to stay on as a labor police force and junior partner to American capitalism as it seeks to exploit cheap Cuban labor. This entirely substantiates the political evaluation of the Cuban regime made by the International Committee of the Fourth International. The efforts of the ruling layer led by Raul Castro to ingratiate itself to American imperialism is likely a futile one, but it speaks volumes that it sees more hope in Obama and the US military-intelligence apparatus he represents than in either the American or Cuban workers and their revolutionary capacity.

Mass job losses unfold in global oil industry

Gabriel Black

Baker Hughes and Schlumberger, two of the largest oil service companies in the world, announced this month that they would lay off 7,000 and 9,000 workers respectively as segments of their companies become unprofitable. The cuts are just a fraction of a larger wave of job losses throughout the United States and internationally due to the oil price decline.
West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil, the US oil index, has dropped by more than 60 percent since its previous peak in July of 2014. WTI is currently trading at $44.83 a barrel after hovering around $110 in the summer of 2014. The extreme drop in price has led to a depression of the current shale boom in the United States as well as the tar sands industry in Canada. Shale oil has been the first type of production to be hit by the price drop because it is significantly more expensive than conventional oil production.
The Dallas Federal Reserve estimates that in Texas alone 128,000 jobs will be lost by this summer if prices remain around $50 a barrel. The CEO of MBI Energy Services, Jim Arthaud, told CNN that 20,000 jobs would be lost by June simply in the region around Williams County, North Dakota, the site of a major shale boom.
Baker Hughes is in the process of being acquired by Halliburton, which recently made a job cut of 1,000 workers. Baker Hughes will lay off a whopping 11 percent of its workforce, or 7,000 people. Schlumberger’s cut of 9,000 workers represents 7 percent of its global workforce. Paal Kibsgaard, CEO of Schlumberger, warned in a statement that job cuts in the oil industry were not over.
Many smaller oil companies are going through even more significant cutbacks, as they are less able to weather the financial difficulties produced by the price drop. Laredo Petroleum, an exploration and development company located in Tulsa, Oklahoma, will fire 20 percent of its workforce and close its office in Dallas, Texas. In 2012, the company employed 340 people. Apache Corporation, a multinational oil company with about 5,299 employees in 2012, will fire 5 percent of its global workforce. Suncor Energy announced it would lay off 1,000 workers, Ensign Energy Services 700 workers, Hercules Offshore 324 workers and Civeo 200 workers, all due to the oil price drop.
US Steel, which already announced the firing of 756 workers, will now bring the total to about 1,300 workers after the announcement that it would idle its East Chicago Tin Mill, laying off 369 workers. The most profitable segment of US Steel’s operations is so-called Oil Country Tubular Goods for pipelines and oil rigs. ArcelorMittal also announced that 304 jobs would be eliminated when it shuts down its electric arc furnace at its nearby Indiana Harbor Long Carbon facility on March 1.
A survey of oil and gas managers by Rigzone shows that 44 percent of surveyed companies plan over the next six months to hire fewer workers, many of whom work on a contract basis. Of those surveyed, 29 percent said there would be no change in hiring. New drilling has dramatically slowed, with the current oil rig count at a five-year low and falling.
The oil layoffs are having devastating effects on workers, their families, and those in communities that rely on these workers for their own jobs in retail, restaurants and other service industries.
CNN spoke to John Roberts, an oil crew truck driver in North Dakota, who like many oil workers was housed in company dormitories. Roberts told CNN he was given 24 hours to leave his house when Schlumberger laid him off. Roberts is now sleeping on a friend’s couch. Aaron Neiffer, an oil rig worker, told the news agency he was worried and that “They’ve already started laying people off.” Aaron and Roberts are both married and have several children.
Chris Gabriel, the owner of a restaurant in Hominy, Oklahoma, told the local KOTV news station, “My thought is, if you’re not in oil and gas, you’re still affected by it. Every one of us are affected, especially in this area.” Gabriel, who had begun giving free meals once a week to all workers and families in the area, told KOTV the oil industry was “the oxygen and the blood for this area.”
An oil worker at Gabriel’s restaurant told KOTV, “We’re all worried about it.” Continuing, he said, “Imagine if your salary got cut in half and then somebody says, ‘Well you’re paying a dollar less for a gallon of fuel, aren’t you excited?’ No, I’m not excited about it.”
Anthony Rodriguez told KSAT news in Texas, “Everybody is cutting back and it’s a scary time.” Rodriguez, who works at an oil field supply company, said the price drop “keeps you on your toes, worried about your job every day.” KSAT also spoke to TJ Patel, a motel owner in Tilden, Texas, who said, “Companies used to stay and everybody had their own room. Now if they live within a 30-minute or hour drive they would rather go back home.”
Internationally oil cuts have also accelerating. In Mexico, over 10,000 contract service workers at the Mexican petroleum company have lost their jobs. Sir Ian Wood, the head of an oil engineering firm situated in the North Sea’s petroleum producing region, warned in a public statement that 40,000 jobs are at risk in the area this year.

Top New York state Democrat indicted for corruption

Philip Guelpa

In a major scandal that exposes the thoroughgoing rot and hypocrisy of capitalist politics, Sheldon Silver, Democrat and long-time Speaker of the New York State Assembly, was indicted last Thursday on charges of corruption. A federal magistrate issued orders to freeze more than $3.8 million in various bank accounts controlled by Silver, whose legislative salary was $121,000 a year.
As assembly speaker for the past 20 years, Silver wielded tremendous power, along with the governor and the state senate majority leader, as part of the notorious “three men in a room” who made key decisions on state government policy.
In a news conference after Silver’s arrest, US Attorney Preet Bharara stated that the indictment exposes “an overabundance of greed, cronyism and self-dealing.” Silver “illegally monetized his public position,” Bharara said. The investigations are ongoing, meaning that more indictments may be announced in the future.
The indictment against Silver accuses him of receiving a total of $4 million in bribes and kickbacks from two law firms, which he reported as legal fees. In one case, Silver allegedly steered a half-million dollar grant to a doctor who had been sending victims of asbestos-related illnesses to a law firm with which Silver was associated, generating millions in fees to the firm. In the other, he is said to have received $650,000 from a firm representing real estate interests in order to influence relevant legislation.
Silver has been linked to other recent scandals, including one involving New York’s Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, in which more than $9 million was stolen from the charity by its CEO, a close friend of Silver’s, whose wife is the Speaker’s chief of staff. In other scandals, involving charges of sexual harassment and official corruption, Silver was accused of using his power and influence to protect members of the Assembly from prosecution.
New York politicians have a long-standing reputation for corruption, with occasional legal entanglements when their activities became especially egregious (see: “Arrests of New York politicians reveal systemic corruption”). Research by Citizens Union found that 28 New York lawmakers have left office because of criminal or ethical issues since 2000. Over the past six years, six New York legislative leaders have faced prosecution, including Republican Joseph Bruno, the former Senate Majority Leader.
The state government in Albany has long been a watchword for political corruption, summed up in the slogan “pay to play,” as business interests ante up for legislators who steer state contracts to them. It has long been an open secret that Silver and other legislators appeared to have incomes much higher than could be accounted for in official disclosures, but nothing was done about it.
Claiming to take up a fight against political corruption among legislators, Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo established the “Moreland Commission” in 2013, a supposedly independent body to carry out investigations. After an initial show of support and cooperation, the legislature quickly moved to mount legal opposition to the inquiry.
A year later, Cuomo abruptly dissolved the commission without credible explanation. At the time, it was suggested that the investigation was getting too close to Cuomo allies or other powerful figures, perhaps even to Cuomo himself. A subpoena from the commission to Silver was pending, but had been stalled by legal action, when Cuomo acted. The US attorney’s office then took over the commission’s records and proceeded with the investigations, leading to Silver’s indictment.
Bharara is reportedly looking into whether Cuomo attempted to influence the commission. The governor spent $100,000 on a criminal defense attorney to represent him on this issue.
Cuomo has suggested, in an interview with the editorial board of the Daily News, that his disbanding of the Moreland Commission may have been, in part, a way of circumventing the legislature’s legal maneuvers against the investigation, thus allowing the federal prosecutor to move forward with the Silver investigation.
Silver has been associated with certain union bureaucracies, including the teachers union, that are currently at odds with Cuomo over the division of the loot in Albany.
Whatever the exact nature of the backstabbing maneuvers, Silver seems to have been done in politically, although he may well escape any legal consequences for his actions. This was the case for Bruno, the former state senate leader, whose corruption conviction was reversed, following a 2010 state supreme court ruling based on the contention that, in effect, influence peddling is standard practice for politicians.
US Attorney Bharara is clearly conscious of boundaries that must not be crossed. He is quoted in the Daily News saying, “We are not looking to criminalize ordinary politics. Nor are we demanding that elected officials be virtuous or vice-free.”
In other words, the normal practices of class rule, including the routine buying and selling of political patronage, are acceptable. Only when such activities become so egregious as to discredit the entire political system must examples be made.
Political corruption is not the result of a few, or even many, “bad apples,” as loathsome as such individuals may be. Rather, it is an intrinsic part of the system of power and privilege of the capitalist class.

ISIS kills Japanese hostage

Ben McGrath

A video purportedly showing the death of one of the two Japanese hostages held by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was released late Saturday night. The other hostage is still being held by the group, which has reduced its ransom demand from $100 million per person to a prisoner exchange involving a woman held in Jordan over a 2005 terror bombing.
The newest video is a still picture with audio showing one of the hostages, reporter Kenji Goto, holding a picture of the other hostage, Haruna Yukawa, beheaded.
The accompanying audio is Goto speaking in English and issuing ISIS’s new demand for the release of Sajida al-Rishawi. “It is simple. You give them Sajida and I will be released,” he says.
Al-Rishawi is connected to the bombings of hotels in Jordan in 2005 that left 57 people dead. Her husband and two others carried out the attack, but apparently the bomb she was carrying failed to detonate. Jordanian authorities sentenced her to death for her role. The attack was supposedly organized by Al Qaeda in Iraq, one of the organizations from which ISIS itself emerged.
Questions were raised about the authenticity of the video. Rita Katz, head of the SITE Intelligence Group, a company with ties to the US government, said, “The video was made in a different style than the other beheading videos, seemingly rushed and even lacking the usual attribution to al-Furqan Media Foundation, a primary media arm of the group.” Katz confirmed the video was real, however.
Yukawa was captured last year in August in Syria. He had hoped to become a military contractor, but was unprepared for work in the region, according to Goto, who met Yukawa and helped him enter Iraq last spring. When news of Yukawa’s capture reached Goto, who had gone back to Japan, he felt compelled to return to Syria to help Yukawa last October.
The families and friends of the two men expressed their anguish on Sunday. Yukawa’s father, Shoichi Yukawa said, “All I can do is remain calm. I hope that the photograph (held by Goto) is not my son’s.”
Junko Ishido, Goto’s mother, appealed for the Japanese government to meet the ransom demand. “I can only pray as a mother for his release,” Ishido added. “If I could offer my life I would plead that my son be released. It would be a small sacrifice on my part.”
As officials worked to confirm the video’s authenticity, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and US President Barack Obama denounced the killing. Both leaders are intent on exploiting the hostage crisis and Yukawa’s murder to escalate US and Japanese imperialist interventions in the Middle East and around the world.
Speaking to the Japanese NHK public broadcaster on Sunday, Abe said: “We will never give in to terrorism, and we will actively contribute to the peace and stability of the world together with the international community. We are not wavering at all on this policy.”
Obama stated, “The United States strongly condemns the brutal murder of Japanese citizen Haruna Yukawa by the terrorist group.”
The Japanese government is intent on using the hostage crisis to escalate its rehabilitation and legitimization of Japanese militarism, even at the expense of the hostages’ lives. Tokyo broke up efforts to negotiate the release of the two hostages, seizing the passports of Ko Nakata and Kosuke Tsuneoka, whom ISIS had contacted and asked to come to the Middle East as mediators on Yukawa’s and Goto’s behalf. Both men have continued to offer to help negotiate a settlement, but the Japanese government has refused.
The United States has been pushing Japan to expand its role in the Middle East in support of the US war drive. Just one day before the release of the first ISIS video demanding a ransom, Japan’s Defense Ministry announced that it would increase its operations at Japan’s single overseas base, in Djibouti.
The ministry said, “From the perspectives of cooperation with the U.S. military and NATO forces and sharing terrorism-related information with these forces, it will be to Japan’s benefit to increase functions of the base.” Japanese imperialism is also searching for a stronger foothold in the region, from which Japan gets 83 percent of its oil imports.
Abe’s push to remilitarize Japan is widely opposed by the Japanese people, and this hostage crisis provides the government with the perfect pretext to continue its militarist drive.
The Obama administration has encouraged Abe to pass new laws that help Tokyo bypass Article 9 of its own constitution, which bans Japan from engaging in overseas wars. These laws, set to be presented to the Japanese Diet in April, correspond to new military guidelines drawn by Washington and Tokyo last October to lay down the two countries’ joint roles.
The new guidelines call for Japan to play a larger role in assisting the United States militarily throughout the world. Abe has regularly stated that Japan could take part in minesweeping operations in the Strait of Hormuz in the Middle East as just one example of aid Tokyo could render to US imperialism’s war efforts.
Abe and his cabinet will doubtless seize on Yukawa’s death to pass these new military laws. Despite initially claiming he would not do so, Abe utilized the 2013 hostage crisis at the In Amenas gas plant in Algeria, in which 10 Japanese were killed, to pass a law allowing the Japanese military to enter a conflict zone if the pretext of a rescue mission exists.
Last summer, Abe’s cabinet also approved a reinterpretation of Japan’s constitution to allow the government to send Japanese forces overseas. Dubbed “collective self-defense,” the reinterpretation marked a major turning point for Japanese imperialism, removing constraints on the military that had existed since the end of World War II.
Small protests against Abe have also occurred with many people blaming the prime minister for Yukawa’s death. About 100 people gathered on Sunday outside Abe’s residence demanding that he rescue Goto.
Kenji Kunitomi, one of the protesters, denounced Abe, saying, “This happened when Prime Minister Abe was visiting Israel. I think there’s a side to this, where they may have taken it as a form of provocation, possibly a big one.”

At least 18 dead as Egyptian military regime violently represses demonstrations

Thomas Gaist

Egyptian security forces killed at least 18 demonstrators and wounded at least 80 more Sunday as protests rocked Cairo, Giza, Kafr al-Sheikh and Menya.
Security forces carried out mass arrests, detaining at least 134 demonstrators, according to statement by the Minister of the Interior, and deployed liberal amounts of tear gas and “birdshot.” Demonstrators shouted slogans calling for a new revolution and the end of the military junta that seized power during the summer of 2013.
Heavily armed police and military Special Forces teams as well as undercover agents dressed in civilian clothes fired on protestors sporadically throughout the day, and gunfire could be heard well into the night, according to eyewitnesses cited by Reuters. Military vehicles continued to sweep the city as night fell. A number of government buildings were set ablaze by groups of protestors, according to state media.
The apparent murder Saturday of 32-year-old Shaimaa el-Sabagh as she marched in a demonstration commemorating the nearly 900 Egyptians killed during the mass struggles of 2011 has poured fuel on simmering popular hatred of the military dictatorship headed by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Video footage shows commando-style security forces aiming rifles at el-Sabagh moments before she was killed by gunshots to her face and back.
The US-backed al-Sisi regime has responded to the protests with police state measures, imposing fortified checkpoints and dispatching heavily armed patrols across the capital. Top security officials justified the measures by claiming that scores of roadside bombs were found around the capital during the weekend.
Martial law measures imposed by the military in Sinai, including a strictly enforced curfew, will continue for at least another three months, the government announced Sunday.
Since the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government in 2013, the military regime has sought to suppress the struggles of the Egyptian workers through military-police terror. After banning public protests, it has violently repressed attempts to defy the ban, slaughtering dozens during demonstrations last year commemorating the third anniversary of the 2011 uprising.
The government handed down death sentences to more than 1,400 political prisoners in 2014, while imprisoning tens of thousands more in secret prisons and torture centers.
Repression in Egypt has been applauded by international investors and by the major imperialist powers. Among the measures implemented by the regime on behalf of big business and foreign capital was a steep cut to fuel subsidies. Al-Sisi and his top officers are now especially concerned about the impact of continued turmoil on an upcoming international investors symposium to be held in March.
Islamist parties including the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) participated in Sunday’s demonstrations, reportedly spreading the slogan that they are “reviving the revolution.” The MB, however, has already demonstrated its hostility to the working class in Egypt and throughout the Middle East. During the government of Mohamed Mursi, the MB supported US and Israeli military operations in the region and planned to impose austerity measures in league with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The release from prison of Hosni Mubarak’s two sons, scheduled for next week, has been delayed, according to Egyptian media reports published Sunday. The brothers are charged with embezzling millions of dollars in state funds.
The Mubarak brothers, who are appealing a four-year prison sentence handed down in May, were due for release under laws limiting the length of pretrial detention. It appears likely that the decision to delay their release was taken to avoid a further political provocation. Nonetheless, it is safe to assume that the al-Sisi regime plans to secure the brothers’ acquittal, as it has done for the former dictator himself. Hosni Mubarak received only a three-year sentence in the same case, which was overturned by the Egyptian Supreme Court earlier this month.
Mubarak was already cleared last November of murder charges in relation to the nearly 900 civilians killed by his security forces during the revolutionary struggles of 2011. He may be released at any time from the elite military hospital where he is currently held.

Imperialist mourning for King Abdullah

Patrick Martin

In its disgusting fawning and hypocrisy, little could top the outpouring of praise from the major imperialist powers in response to the death of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who died Friday at age 90.
Tributes have poured in from governments around the world. In London, the British government flew flags at half-mast at government buildings and at Buckingham Palace, prior to a trip by Prince Charles and Prime Minister David Cameron to Saudi Arabia over the weekend.
As for the US, the Obama administration announced that it was upending the travel plans of the president, currently in India, to make a special trip to Riyadh to visit Abdullah’s successor, his 79-year-old half-brother, Salman. The White House issued a statement noting the “genuine and warm friendship” between President Obama and the departed monarch.
It is perhaps a fitting expression of the nature of the government he will rule that Salman, the sixth of the sons of Ibn Saud, founder of the semi-feudal regime, is reportedly afflicted with Alzheimer’s. Simon Henderson, director of the Gulf and Energy Policy Program at the Washington Institute on Near East Policy, wrote last month, “Salman’s brain is evidently ravaged by dementia. Visitors report that after a few minutes of conversation, he becomes incoherent.”
It is, of course, possible for a ruler of such diminished capacity to occupy a figurehead role for a significant length of time, as Ronald Reagan did throughout most of his presidency. But these reports make it clear why it was all-important, in the view of the White House, Pentagon and State Department, that the new king’s first action was to confirm as his successor and crown prince the youngest son of Ibn Saud, Prince Muqrin, age 69.
Even more critical, from the standpoint of American imperialism, was the designation of Prince Mohammed ibn Nayef, the interior minister, as deputy crown prince and presumed successor to Muqrin. At age 55, the prince is the first potential occupant of the throne chosen from the generation of grandchildren of Ibn Saud. As chief of Saudi Arabia’s antiterrorism operations, he has worked closely with the American CIA and Pentagon. The Wall Street Journal noted in a column, “Prince Mohammed was long seen as Washington’s preferred candidate among the younger princes who aspired to be king.”
The close collaboration between Washington and the Saudi regime speaks volumes about the nature of American intervention in the Middle East. Despite claims by countless administrations that US foreign policy promotes democracy, American imperialism has long relied on the most reactionary and oppressive regime in the Middle East. For 70 years, there has been an agreement that the US will back the Saudi monarchy, arming it to the teeth against both domestic and external threats, in return for Saudi oil supplies and Saudi backing to US foreign policy generally.
While for more than a decade US administrations have embraced the “war on terror,” now described by the Obama administration as the “struggle against violent extremism,” the basis of American foreign policy in the Middle East has been an alliance with a state that espouses Islamic fundamentalism and finances and arms right-wing Islamic fundamentalist groups throughout the region.
In the 1980s, the Reagan administration and Saudi Arabia jointly sponsored the Afghan mujaheddin, the guerrilla force of Islamic fundamentalists recruited by the CIA and sanctioned and paid for by Saudi Arabia, to fight the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan. The US-Saudi collaboration in Afghanistan gave rise to Al Qaeda, headed by Osama bin Laden, son of a construction magnate made wealthy by his contracts in Saudi Arabia. Saudi money—including some from the monarchy itself—financed the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, and 15 of the 19 suicide hijackers were Saudis.
But the Bush administration whitewashed these connections, first invading Afghanistan, then fabricating a connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11 in order to justify its criminal invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. While the Saudis offered verbal opposition to the US intervention, (because they regarded Saddam Hussein as a bulwark against Iran), the US military had full access to Saudi bases to carry out military and intelligence operations during the war.
More recently, Saudi Arabia backed the US-NATO war against Libya and intervened heavily within Syria as part of the US-orchestrated campaign to destabilize the regime of Bashar al-Assad, which is allied with Iran, the Saudis’ main regional rival.
The US-Saudi alliance has been an unmitigated disaster for the people of the Middle East. Iraq, Syria, Libya and now Yemen, on Saudi Arabia’s southern border, have been destroyed as functioning societies, devastated by military onslaught (either directly, as in Iraq and Libya, indirectly as in Syria, or remotely, via drone missiles, as in Yemen).
Saudi military forces invaded the sheikdom of Bahrain—the headquarters for US naval operations in the Persian Gulf—to suppress popular opposition to the ruling family. In 2013, Washington and Riyadh backed the coup of General al-Sisi in Egypt and the reimposition of military dictatorship on the most populous Arab state.
In Syria, Saudi dollars and Saudi-supplied American weapons helped fuel the rise of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), leading to last summer’s debacle, when ISIS fighters conquered most of western Iraq, including the country’s second-largest city, Mosul. Now Saudi pilots have joined in the US-led bombing campaign in Syria, the forerunner of a much broader and bloodier conflict.
The latest example of US-Saudi collaboration is the Saudi-led decision by OPEC to reject any reduction in oil production as prices have plunged. This action is aimed at bankrupting Iran and Russia, the two main allies of Assad in Syria, by slashing the oil export revenues on which the governments of both countries depend.
This is something of a double-edged sword, however. In the US, the oil price plunge has devastated the fracking industry and begun to create mass unemployment in Texas, North Dakota and other states. In Saudi Arabia, the drop in oil prices has put a hole of nearly $40 billion in the national budget, forcing it to draw down international reserves.
Both poverty and unemployment are spreading in the country, despite its oil wealth. A recently cited CIA country study estimated that 506,000 young people will enter the job market in Saudi Arabia in 2015, where more than half the population of 27 million is under 25 years of age. Given that only 1.7 million out of the 8.4 million wage earners in Saudi Arabia are actually Saudi citizens—the vast majority are immigrants—the regime faces what one imperialist strategist described as “an incredible challenge in terms of internal stability.”
The most reactionary force in the region—the Saudi monarchy—is aligned with the most reactionary force on the planet—US imperialism. The result is a noxious combination of economic convulsions, widening sectarian and tribal conflicts, and escalating imperialist military intervention.

Syriza wins Greek elections

Alex Lantier

In a broad electoral repudiation of the policies of the European Union (EU) and the outgoing government of conservative Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) took first place in legislative elections yesterday in Greece.
According to initial projections by the Greek Interior Ministry, Syriza won 36.34 percent of the vote, more than projected and far surpassing Samaras’s New Democracy (ND) party’s 27.84 percent. Thanks to the 50-seat bonus given to the party with the largest number of votes, Syriza is expected to have 149 seats in parliament compared to ND’s 76. This is two short of the 151 needed for an absolute majority in the 300-seat parliament, so it appears Syriza will have to look for partners to form a governmental coalition.
The neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party is projected to take third with 6.30 percent of the vote (17 seats), the To Potami (River) party 6.03 percent (16 seats) and the Stalinist Greek Communist Party (KKE) 5.47 percent (15 seats). The social-democratic PASOK got only 4.72 percent (13 seats) and the Independent Greeks, a split-off of ND, 4.68 percent (13 seats).
Voters at the polls denounced EU austerity policies, which have led to economic collapse on a scale unseen in Europe since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. Since 2009, job and budget cuts have thrown millions of Greeks into unemployment, deprived them of health care, cut Greece’s economic output by 25 percent and wages even further, and pushed youth unemployment to 60 percent.
The electoral repudiation of the Greek capitalist class’s traditional parties of rule, PASOK and ND, reflects mass outrage with austerity dictated by the banks. However, Syriza is a bourgeois party that is committed to the EU, the euro and the defense of capitalism. While it has made a few vague promises about improving Greek life, it has been engaged in intense discussion behind the scenes aimed at reaching an accommodation with the European banks.
In a victory speech delivered at Athens University, Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras said he would find a “new viable solution” for Greece and Europe. “The troika, that is the past,” Tsipras said, referring to the EU, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which together arranged austerity policies with governments in Athens.
However, Tsipras promptly promised to work with Greece’s lenders, the most important of which are the agencies making up the “troika.” He said that the Greek government would be “ready to negotiate with our lenders a mutually acceptable solution” and would “prove all Cassandras wrong. There will be no conflict with partners.”
These comments echoed previous pledges that a Syriza government would “maintain a balanced budget, and will commit to quantitative targets.”
Tsipras’s main aim is to make some sort of deal with the banks of Europe, including a revision of the terms of the repayment of Greek debt. Indeed, there are sections of the ruling class in the United States and Europe that are concerned that such a revision is necessary in order to ensure that Greek bonds can be repaid.
Officials in Germany, which has led the campaign against any let-up in austerity measures, stressed that there should be no abatement in the attack on Greek workers. Jens Weidmann, the president of the Bundesbank, Germany’s powerful central bank, insisted that the Greek government should not “make promises that the country cannot afford.”
All discussions over the course of policy are taking place within the framework of defending capitalism in Greece and throughout Europe. At most, Tsipras is hoping for some concession that he can hail as a victory in order to bide time and prepare a further attack on the working class.
The main challenge facing the working class in Greece and internationally is to grasp the full dimensions of the political struggle opening up before it. In a Syriza government, workers face a determined enemy. Even Syriza’s own Thessaloniki program, from which it is preparing to beat a hasty retreat in talks with its European “partners,” pledged only 2 billion euros in new social spending, whereas the EU has cut over 60 billion euros from Greek budgets since 2009.
In the run-up to the elections, Syriza officials were busy behind the scenes reassuring journalists, economists and politicians that an election victory posed no danger to the banks. European news site EurActiv wrote: “Key to Syriza’s ascent, party officials say privately, is a calculated effort to moderate the radical leftist rhetoric that prompted Der Spiegel to name Tsipras among the most dangerous men in Europe in 2012.”
Former Syriza leader Alekos Alavanos stressed that the party would pose no threat to the banks in an interview with the Financial Times of London two days ago. “Even Mr Tsipras’ predecessor as Syriza chief, Alekos Alavanos, questions whether the party’s rhetoric matches its intentions,” the FT concluded, citing Alavanos’s remark that Syriza “now is a moderate party.”
Economist Jean-Marc Daniel reassured France’s 20 Minutes that Syriza would do no long-term harm to the stock portfolios of the affluent and the super-rich. “The stock market does not usually like the beginning of ‘left’ governments, but it picks up gradually as they abandon their program. What is most striking about Alexis Tsipras, is that he is already diluting his program,” Daniel said.
If representatives of finance capital state so openly and with such confidence that Syriza is no threat to them, this is because Syriza has been thoroughly vetted by the banks and intelligence agencies. Since Syriza emerged as a major electoral force in Greece in 2012, Tsipras has met publicly with the Greek army and repeatedly traveled to the major capitals of the euro zone and to Washington—after declaring himself an admirer of President Barack Obama’s economic policies.
No solution to the crisis facing the Greek working class can be found within the framework of the pro-capitalist and nationalist program of Syriza. What is required is the building of an independent political movement of the working class, based on an internationalist and socialist perspective.

Australia & India: A New Era in Defence Cooperation?

Stephen Westcott

Following a particularly productive year in Indo-Australian relations that saw great strides most notably in defence cooperation, it is timely to reflect upon the events and ask two key questions: what is the status of the bilateral defence relationship entering 2015?; and what, if any, developments are likely to be seen in the coming year?

India-Australia Defence Relations: Looking Back
Since their nadir in 2008-2009, Australian-Indian relations and defence ties have markedly improved. Indeed, defence and security engagement between the two countries have steadily increased to culminate in the signing of the New Framework for Security Cooperation (NFSC) on 18 November 2014 during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s bilateral visit to Australia. The NFSC combined and expanded several previous agreements and commits both countries to hold annual high-level summits, cooperate closely on counter-terrorism and international crime, hold regular bilateral maritime exercises and focus on the early operationalisation the Civil Nuclear Energy Cooperation Agreement (CNECA) to assist India’s quest for energy security. Most of the statements in the lead up to and after the signing of the NFSC have shown that both sides intend to make maritime security the key pillar in the defence cooperation. 

There have been plenty of false starts in the Australian-Indian defence cooperation efforts in the past. In 1998, Australia immediately suspended its defence cooperation with India after the nuclear weapons test. When the fledgling Quadrilateral Initiative in 2007 that saw Australia, India, Japan, Singapore and the US participate in a maritime exercise drew a strong hostile Chinese reaction, the newly elected centre-left Labor government publically withdrew in 2008 in a move that annoyed many Indian officials who saw it as Australia bowing to Chinese pressure.

The New Rapprochement: New Governments and Convergences
Defence ties were restored in 2009 but only moved tentatively forward until June 2013 when the Defence Ministers met in Perth, Australia, and agreed to establish bilateral maritime exercises. This rapprochement however appears to have stronger foundations than the preceding efforts and will likely endure for two key reasons. 

Firstly, over the past five years governments on both sides of the political spectrum in Australia and India have been working hard to remove the key issues of contention between them, removing the likelihood of change of government producing another change of heart. Indeed, in 2009 the Labor government sought to undo the damage caused by its withdrawal in 2008 by establishing a strategic partnership with India and signing the Joint Declaration on Defence Cooperation in 2009 as well as formally dropping its opposition to uranium sales in 2012. The last major obstacle between the two countries’ relations was removed when Prime Minister Abbot signed the CNECA in September 2014 during his bilateral visit to India, thus finally clearing the way for the sale of Australian uranium to India. 

Secondly, both Australian and Indian interests have been increasingly converging. Modi’s government has been keen to revamp India’s ‘Look East’ policy into an ‘Act East’ in a search for greater economic ties and also more substantial political connections. As Australia has a similar political system, is a reliable regional provider of raw resources and services needed by the Indian economy, and has a highly skilled and professional defence force, it has moved from the periphery to being comfortably within the scope of this policy. Australia for its part has been showing growing interest in the Indian Ocean, formally identifying the Indo-Pacific (as opposed to the Asia-Pacific) as the key security focus in its 2013 Defence White Paper. 

Is there a China Factor?
Providing an additional, if publically unspoken, adhesive are both countries’ serious concerns about China’s incursions into the Indian Ocean, which have been growing more numerous and bolder over the years. Of particular concern has been the emergence of Chinese submarines evidently practising long-range deployments in the Indian Ocean, with the latest incident of note occurring when a Chinese nuclear submarine surfaced just off Sri Lanka in September 2014. While China has legitimate interests in safeguarding its commercial routes that pass through the Indian Ocean, India is inherently concerned about the Chinese military potentially surrounding it by land and by sea as well as eroding its’ dominance in what it has long considered its backyard. Australia likewise has been concerned by China’s aggressive posturing in the South China Sea and is particularly interested in ensuring that no nation is able to establish a maritime advantage in its’ own neighbouring waters.

Defence Ties: Looking Ahead
Heading into 2015, Australian-Indian defence ties are likely to deepen significantly, especially in the field of maritime security. The first formal bilateral maritime exercise between the two countries is scheduled to be conducted in 2015, although the exact date has yet to be published. While piracy in the Indian Ocean may be on the decline, there is also plenty of room for bilateral cooperation over other illegal maritime activities such as the prolific smuggling of people and narcotics in the region. Australia also has several state-of-the-art defence training facilities such as the Submarine Escape Facility in Western Australia that would be of definite interest to the Indian defence forces, and 2015 could see arrangements for joint training courses to be run in the near future. 

Nonetheless, one should not get too ecstatic about these developments and possibilities. As the former Australian Defence Minister Stephen Smith noted, “Australian Indian relations are like a Twenty-Twenty cricket match-short bursts of activity followed by lengthy periods of inactivity.” Only time will tell whether this period of engagement will peter out like those before it or finally move beyond brief flirtations and develop into a self-sustaining relationship. That being said, there is every reason to be optimistic that this time they are built on firmer foundations.

The Fall of Rajapaksa: Why Democracies Fail Strongmen

D Suba Chandran

Last January in 2014, none would have predicted the fall of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa. At that time, he was gathering momentum politically every passing day; political opposition within Sri Lanka – both inside and outside the Parliament was perhaps the weakest; and he had earlier vanquished the LTTE, the biggest threat to Sri Lankan polity until then.

There was no opposition to him; none of the leaders from the opposition party, including Ranil Wikramasinghe was confident of fighting against Rajapaksa at that time. There were no threats from any of the sub-regions in Sri Lanka – either from the east or the north politically or otherwise. There was no non-State actor that could even remotely pose a challenge to Rajapaksa. His family had by then taken absolute control over the entire State. From the Parliament to media, not many dared to question Rajapaksa and his family. In fact, he felt so strong, that he even preponed the election schedule.

And what an election it turned out to be, strengthening the very core of democratic ideals in South Asia! In retrospect, he is not the only leader in South Asia, who got elected to power democratically by the people, and further got elevated almost into a demi-god or a messiah, only to be dethroned subsequently by the same people who elected them. The list in India alone is long enough; it includes Sheikh Abdullah, Laloo Prasad Yadav, Mamta Banerjee, NT Ramarao, Jayalalitha and many others. While some like Jayalalitha have bounced back electorally, others like Laloo are still trying to float. What causes the rise and fall of these strong men and women? What makes the democracies to elect them strongly, and also make them fall?

Revenge of Minorities?For the fall of Rajapaksa, the simplest explanation provided so far is too simple to agree with. It talks about the revenge of minorities in Sri Lanka, meaning, the Sri Lankan Tamils and Muslims voted completely against Rajapaksa. Perhaps, the minorities did not vote for Rajapaksa; but the minorities in Sri Lanka put together do not constitute an electoral majority! This means, a substantial section of the Sinhala community have also voted against Rajapaksa.

Ethnically, the Sri Lankan Tamils (a section of them being Muslims) constitute less than 12 percent and the Sinhalese constitute close to 75 percent. In religious terms, the Buddhists constitute 70 percent, while the Hindus, Muslims and Christians form the rest. Revenge of minorities’ theory may not do justice to the larger aspirations and anger within Sri Lanka against Rajapaksa, his family and their naked pursuit and abuse of power.

Over Confidence and Arrogance of Rajapaksa Family?Second, perhaps Rajapaksa’s arrogance and over confidence brought his downfall. From the Airport to the rural areas, one could see huge banners of Rajapaksa, a problem afflicted with political leaders starting from South of India. The banner culture reflects a particular attitude of the political leadership, bordering megalomania. In Tamil Nadu for example, one of the previous losses that Jayalalitha suffered was attributed to this attitude.

Democratically elected leaders, in certain cases get themselves alienated from the very people who have voted them to power. When sycophants’ takeover and build a wall between the leader and people, and when the former get carried away and start listening to a self serving cabal, it is an invitation to disaster.

Added to the above problem is allowing one’s family to abuse the system. This has become a South Asian trait and a bane to democracy in the region. The “Rajapaksa brothers” have become a governance issue and even dynastic; the general perception in Sri Lanka about Rajapaksa, his brothers and wards has been highly negative – not only amongst the minority communities, but also the majority.

In fact the recent Sri Lankan Presidential election concluded was not about electing a new leader. It was all about dethroning Rajapaksa and his family members. The new President Maithripala Sirisena was an unknown name, even within Sri Lanka; by no stretch of imagination, even his own family members would vouch that his popularity carried the day for him. Not many Tamils and Muslims who had voted for him in the elections had actually heard his name before or seen his photograph. Nor the UNP, the main opposition in Sri Lanka was so strong, that it factored substantially in the electoral result. It was Rajapaksa’s unpopularity that elected Sirisena.

Rajapaksa’s decision to prepone the election presumably based on the advice of an astrologer – Sumanadasa Abeygunawardena and invite a Bollywood Star – Salman Khan to campaign for him defeats all political logic. What went wrong with a towering political leader, who was shrewd enough to defeat the LTTE? At the end, it is neither star power of one’s own, or imported from Bollywood that secures the win. It is people and democracy.

Development vs Devolution vs Decentralization: It’s the Combination Stupid

Third, the most important issue that the democrats in South Asia should understand is relating to good governance, efficient administration and decentralized power. What makes men and women as “strong leaders” is not their charisma, but their ability to make positive use of the same to deliver goods to people. True, Rajapaksa had vanquished an enemy and won the War. True, Rajapaksa restored the road and rail networks. But development has to go along with democratic governance and political decentralization. Rajapaksa’s fall should be a big lesson to all the strong men and women in South Asia.

Despite their individual popularity and even an emphasis on developmental projects, what people need is a clean government, good governance and corruption free administration. Rajapaksa may have restored the Yal Devi, the famous and historic train service linking Jaffna with Colombo; and reopened the A-9 Highway after the Civil War and necessary demining, linking the Northern Province with the rest of Sri Lanka. But, this has not cut much ice amongst the Tamils in northern Sri Lanka. In South, Rajapaksa may have built a huge international airport in Mattala and a deep sea port in Hambantota. And a super expressway connecting the Kattunayake international airport with Colombo city. But that has not resulted in Sinhalese voting for Rajapaksa. People in north and south, cutting across ethnic divides, were expecting not just developmental projects, but good governance, devolution of powers and corruption free administration.

Unlike the predominant perception outside Sri Lanka, not all Tamils in the island are pro-LTTE. In fact, the mainstream Tamil leadership was equally targeted by the LTTE during 1980s and 1990s. There were/are genuine political grievances, which Rajapaksa ignored completely; overwhelmed with the military victory over the LTTE, he ignored the mainstream. Perhaps his advisors questioned the need to devolve political powers, after the LTTE had been militarily defeated. The 13th amendment could have been a starting point, totally sidelined unfortunately.

A substantial lesson that the big leaders have to learn in South Asian context is the need for empowerment of the regions and providing adequate space for political voices from different spectrums. Beating one’s own chest about winning the war or vanquishing an enemy will yield fewer dividends in the long run. As a political turning point becomes history, people start living in their present. Democratically elected leaders will have to understand that the people want a better future and a comfortable present and hardly have time to bask in the glory of a past, how much ever glamorous it was.

The new President today has more challenges to address. But there is enough for him to start with. The fact that the election was violence-free and there was a smooth transition underlines the fact that the democratic institutions are still intact. Perhaps, one should also credit Rajapaksa for accepting the defeat and ensuring the smooth transfer of power. Well done and congratulations Rajapaksa. Whatever may have been your flaws while in power, you have accepted its loss with so much grace. You may have missed a huge opportunity to build the nation, after the military defeat of the LTTE; but by peacefully handing over power to the next President, you have earned some credit. Perhaps, the Begums of Bangladesh have something to learn from Sri Lanka on this issue. Perhaps, the other strong men and women who have been elected by the system, should also learn from Rajapaksa’s defeat. Democracies in South Asia may elect strong leaders, but will also not hesitate to throw them out, using the same ballots.

All the best Sri Lanka. 2015 should be a new beginning.

Governor's Rule and PDP's Dilemma

Shujaat Bukhari

Even after a high voter turnout that was witnessed for the first time in last 28 years, Jammu and Kashmir failed to get a government. Eighteen days after the results to tumultuous assembly elections were declared, political parties could not cobble up together to stake a claim. This resulted in state slipping into Governor’s rule and N N Vohra taking over the reins of the administration.

The Governor’s rule has disappointed people at large as they were expecting a government in place. Since Omar Abdullah, who headed the NC-Congress coalition for six years declined to continue as caretaker Chief Minister which he could have till January 18 when the term of the Assembly would end, there was no alternative but to fill the vacuum with a spell of Governor’s rule.

Not only the people had voted for a change, which was reflected in results and the look forward for better governance, but people particularly in Kashmir had pinned hopes for a speedy rehabilitation process for flood victims. Kashmir had seen severe floods in September affecting nearly a million people. A proper government is need of the hour to address their requirements.
However, the fractured mandate that these elections threw up has temporarily blocked the road to formation of a government. Not only were the seats divided among many parties but the clear division on the communal lines also played a significant role in this delay. As Jammu preferred BJP, this marked the beginning of the end of a fragile unity of a state that is diverse in nature. In contrast Kashmiris voted for all – from PDP to NC and Congress. Regional aspirations must have played a role in Kashmir but not the religion. Even as people were outraged on the hanging of parliament attack convict Afzal Guru during Congress led UPA, the Sopore constituency where from he hailed ironically returned a Congress candidate to the Assembly. Ladakh region, which has four seats, chose Congress, though by default. All the three out of four (one Independent won from Zanskar) were elected purely on their personality cult and not because of Congress, which has otherwise been routed in entire India.

Out of 87-member house, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) emerged as the single largest party with 28 followed by BJP with 25, National Conference 15, Congress 12 and others 7. Both NC and Congress extended support to PDP to form the government to keep BJP away and this could be possible with the support of few independents. Reports suggested that both BJP and NC had a “failed” round of negotiations in Delhi two days after the results were declared. But both parties denied the same.

For PDP, the situation turned piquant. On the one hand they maintained that they couldn’t trust NC and going with Congress, according to a PDP insider was “against the mandate of people”, but on other they had to walk on a razor’s edge to deal with BJP.

Both PDP and BJP are ideologically poles apart. BJP’s integrationist agenda for Kashmir is diametrically opposite to PDP’s Self-Rule. Still they had opened up backchannel communication and even exchanged papers for stitching up an alliance. PDP’s patron and old horse of Kashmir politics, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, weighed more on having BJP alliance and to give time to mature it was not his worry. By exploring this option he wants to carry along the Jammu region, which has overwhelmingly voted for BJP. “There would be a vacuum if we would go with NC or PDP as there would be zero participation in the government from Jammu as no elected member could join cabinet from the Hindu dominated belt” a senior PDP leader explained. So the motive was to seek more time to find a middle road.

But Omar Abdullah’s decision to call it a day halfway prompted the Governor to recommend his rule. The talks between PDP and BJP have not been called off and BJP has not refused to discuss three crucial points of Mufti’s agenda, viz resumption of dialogue with Pakistan and separatists, keeping Article 370 off the table, strengthening cross LoC CBM’s and withdrawal of Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) from certain areas. Sources say that structured dialogue could begin anytime. But the political grapevine is that BJP may further drag the process keeping in view the elections in Delhi scheduled to be held next month.

Not only are the non-BJP parties upping their ante against PDP but the separatists have also joined the chorus. Their standard response vis-à-vis elections have always been that it was a futile exercise. But with the changing situation in which BJP is poising to come into power in Jammu and Kashmir, even the hardest among hard-liners, Syed Ali Geelani, issued a literal warning to PDP. “If the state is handed over to the people having fascist ideologies, then a ‘do or die’ like situation will be created for our nation because our lives, property, faith and our culture will be in danger and with the help of armed forces, Kashmir would be made a testing lab for the projects like ‘home coming’ and ‘save daughter and bring daughter-in-law’.” he said adding that Muslim identity was at stake. This seems Mufti’s most testing time in his 50-year-long career.

Whatever unfolds in the coming weeks, the fact is that the state is in a chaotic situation where the administration has to be manned by a few bureaucrats. Successful elections, which always are a challenge in Jammu and Kashmir, had rekindled the hope for a stable government but it worsened those prospects and a commoner in Kashmir is fuming as why political parties could not put their inherent acrimony behind and move forward to give them a government they deserved. With Governor’s Rule in place, only worry now is that Delhi is not repeated in Jammu and Kashmir. No one wants a re-election in the state.

Ukraine premier’s pro-Nazi version of World War II: USSR invaded Ukraine, Germany

Lena Sokoll

In a recent broadcast of “Tagesthemen”, the main newscast of Germany’s ARD public television channel, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk grotesquely distorted the history of World War II, accusing the Soviet Union of having invaded Germany and Ukraine.

Remarkably, this brazen and thoroughly calculated falsehood, designed to promote the myth of a joint German-Ukrainian struggle against a Soviet-Russian aggressor, went unchallenged by the presenter. It has not been denounced by the broadcaster in retrospect.

The interview, conducted with Yatsenyuk during his visit to German Chancellor Angela Merkel on January 7, consisted largely of anti-Russian ranting. Presenter Pinar Atalay’s innocuous and unfocused questions remained unanswered, and only amounted to brief interruptions to Yatsenyuk’s castigation of Putin, Russia and the Soviet Union.

Yatsenyuk said, “Russian aggression in Ukraine is an attack on world order and order in Europe. All of us still clearly remember the Soviet invasion of Ukraine and Germany. That has to be avoided. And nobody has the right to rewrite the results of the Second World War. And that is exactly what Russia’s President Putin is trying to do.”

Atalay made no comment on this scandalous historical lie, i.e. that the Soviet Union—not Nazi Germany—had invaded Ukraine. The television station responded to a complaint about the programme from the Public Committee for Public Service Media, remarking that the quality of the simultaneous Russian-German translation was too poor for the presenter to question the statement during the ongoing interview. In fact, however, the “Tagesthemen” news item was a recording of the interview, and there was no critical response to Yatsenyuk’s lie from the programme’s director or ARD.

Five days after the interview, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper attacked not Yatsenyuk and ARD, but the Russian foreign ministry, which vehemently rejected the Ukrainian prime minister’s account, citing the proceedings of the Nuremberg Trials.

“As to the Second World War,” wrote Russia correspondent Kerstin Holm in the newspaper, “the thinking of the Russians is set in concrete ... But disabused countrymen remember that Russia, in the wake of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, was an aggressor in World War II and was responsible for the Katyn massacre”.

Holm also claims that “Liberation could at best be said to apply to the expulsion of the Nazis, but not to the Sovietisation of reconquered areas”.

The German government did not distance itself from Yatsenyuk’s remarks or comment on his statements. Foreign office spokesman Martin Schäfer said: “Like anyone here in Germany—politicians, citizens or sports celebrities—the Ukrainian prime minister has the right to tell the German media whatever he deems appropriate. That is part and parcel of our extremely important right to freedom of expression”.

Thus, the results of the Nuremberg Trials and the denial of German guilt in the Second World War are declared to be matters of opinion. In fact, the German Wehrmacht (army) and Waffen-SS waged a war of extermination in Ukraine, whose barbarism still stands out among the countless atrocities and crimes of the Nazi dictatorship and the world war that it wanted and started.

On June 22, 1941, German Wehrmacht troops stormed across the borders of the USSR without any declaration of war, aiming to engulf the enemy in a Blitzkrieg and push them far back into the interior of the country. While the northern and central sectors of the army had orders to capture Leningrad and Moscow, the southern army sector marched on Kiev. It was supported in this by two battalions of Ukrainian nationalists, code-named “Nachtigall” and “Roland”, marching in German uniforms and under German army command.

These Ukrainian battalions were recruited from the rabid anti-Semitic and anti-Communist Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) under the leadership of Stepan Bandera. After the invasion and with the approval of the German occupiers, they took over management of police stations and launched pogroms. In late June 1941, the German occupiers incited the first major pogrom, in the Galician city of Lviv, which was carried out with the active support of the OUN. The public hunting down of Jews claimed at least 4,000 lives.

Many massacres and pogroms followed. The largest single extermination took place shortly after the sacking of Kiev on September 29-30, 1941 in the ravine of Babi Yar. Approximately 33,000 Kiev Jews were killed, including elderly people, women and children who had not been able to flee from the advancing army. The massacre was one of the crimes prosecuted at the Nuremberg Trials. Approximately 850,000 Jews were murdered in the German war of extermination in Ukraine.

Judaism and Bolshevism were synonymous in the propaganda of the Nazis and the OUN. The murder of Jews was seen and propagandised as equivalent to the anti-Soviet struggle. The brutal terror waged against the Jews and the determination to destroy particularly the Jewish people in occupied Ukraine flowed from the German Reich’s resolve to annihilate the Soviet Union and the impact of the world’s first socialist revolution.

The Wehrmacht’s conquest of Ukraine not only entailed a deep incursion into Soviet territory. It also cut off the rest of the USSR from Ukraine’s fertile agricultural land and large coal reserves. While the USSR was weakened by hunger, Nazi Germany exploited Ukraine’s resources, deporting over a million Ukrainians to work in German industry and agriculture as slave labour.

The German occupiers were therefore unwilling to tolerate any notion of an independent Ukraine. When the OUN proclaimed Ukraine’s independence in Lviv on June 30, 1941, Bandera was taken into “protective custody” in then Sachsenhausen concentration camp. This was not the end of collaboration between the German occupiers and Ukrainian fascists, however.

OUN supporters remained active in administration and as an auxiliary police force in the organisation of the Holocaust in Ukraine. Tens of thousands of them served as volunteers in SS divisions, directly aiding the Nazis in combat against the Red Army.

The current Ukrainian leadership, which was backed by Germany in the coup d’état that brought it to power last spring, stands unashamedly in this bloody tradition of Ukrainian nationalists and fascists. They extol Stepan Bandera as a national hero and rely on an alliance with Germany against Russia as the basis of their political power.

Members of Yatsenyuk’s government maintain close relations with fascist elements and place them in key positions.

Interior Minister Arsen Avakov appointed the fascist, Vadim Trojan, chief of police for the Kiev region in November 2014. Trojan was commander of the extreme right-wing Azov volunteer battalion, some of whose members wear helmets with swastikas and SS runes in the fighting against pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Another commander of the Azov battalion, Andrij Bilezki, told the BritishTelegraph newspaper: “The historical mission of our nation in these crucial times is to lead the white races of the world in the final crusade for their survival”.

The installation of such violently reactionary forces in power in Kiev and the support given to them by the imperialist powers of NATO requires the rewriting and falsification of history. This is the significance of Yatsenyuk’s statements to ARD, and the silence of authorities in Germany on them.

The coming fight over wages in the US

Jerry White

Amidst general proclamations of “economic recovery” in the United States, there is a nervousness within the corporate and political elite over the consequences of the real state of social relations in the country—above all, extraordinary levels of social inequality. Several leading newspapers and think tanks have pointed to the long-term stagnation of wages and the lack of social mobility, especially among young workers, as the catalyst for a potential eruption of class conflict in 2015.

In a January 17 blog entry, “Driving the Obama Tax Plan: The Great Wage Slowdown,” New York Times columnist David Leonhardt writes: “Wages and incomes for most Americans have now been stagnant for 15 years. They rose at a mediocre pace for much of President Bush’s tenure in the 2000s, before falling sharply during the financial crisis that dominated the end of his presidency.” Leonhardt claims that Obama “helped break the back of the crisis.” However, he adds, “the recovery on his watch has been decidedly mediocre, too — especially in terms of paychecks.”

What is involved is a historic restructuring of class relations in the United States. Leonhardt notes: “There is little modern precedent for a period of income stagnation lasting as long as this one. Official records don’t exist before World War II. But the best estimate is that the Great Depression may be the only other modern time in which incomes for most households in the United States have grown so slowly—or not at all—for so long.”

Leonhardt cites a new report by the Democratic Party-aligned Center for American Progress, whose coauthors—Obama's former economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, and British Labour Party Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer Ed Balls—warn, “When democratic governments and market systems cannot deliver such prosperity to their citizens, the result is political alienation, a loss of social trust, and increasing conflict across the lines of race, class, and ethnicity…”

Leonhardt, following the line of Summers and Balls, presents the historic decline of wages in the United States as the outcome of cosmic economic forces—globalization, disparities in education, technological change and the like—divorced from any analysis of the policies of the ruling class and its political representatives. While counseling his readers that “no politician, of either party, can quickly alter the basic forces behind the great wage slowdown,” he hails a number of paltry proposals from the Obama administration as a significant step toward resolving the growth of social inequality.

In fact, the slashing of wages has been the deliberate policy of successive Democratic and Republican administrations over the last three-and-a-half decades, starting with the administrations of Democratic President Jimmy Carter and Republican President Ronald Reagan. Responding to the globalization of production and the long-term decline of American capitalism, the ruling class went on the offensive: a systematic campaign that involved the destruction of tens of millions of industrial jobs, wage-cutting and union-busting on the one hand, and the promotion of the most reckless forms of financial parasitism on the other.

This process has vastly accelerated under Obama. Beginning with the forced bankruptcy and restructuring of the auto industry in 2009, which led to the halving of wages for tens of thousands of new-hires, the Obama administration and US big business utilized chronically high levels of unemployment to transform American workers into a highly exploited, low-wage work force, hired and fired at will, with virtually no job security or guaranteed level of hours, wages and benefits.

As a result, the proportion of labor’s share of the gross domestic product—in the form of wages, benefits and government outlays for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—is now at the lowest level since the Second World War.  At the same time, the share of GDP going to corporate profits is at the highest-ever postwar level.

With consummate cynicism, Obama, in his State of the Union address tomorrow, is expected to call on Congress to pass tax increases on capital gains and on the biggest financial firms to fund tax credits for childcare and college tuition. The effort is a political fraud, since the president knows that the Republican-controlled Congress will not pass any of these proposals.

What is most striking about the proposals to deal with wage stagnation is their paucity. Even if the Obama administration passed its meager tax proposals, they would do nothing to reverse the historic decline of working class living standards. Every other proposal, “profit-sharing” and “employee stock ownership,” is aimed at further tying the fate of the working class to American capitalism and its struggle for market share and profits.

In its efforts to forestall independent action by the working class over wages, the ruling class is seeking to mobilize the right-wing, pro-corporate trade unions. Earlier this month, the AFL-CIO—which has been instrumental in suppressing the class struggle and driving down wages —held a “National Summit on Raising Wages” in Washington, DC.

The keynote address, delivered by Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, was filled with demagogy about social inequality and Wall Street greed, along with obsequious praise for the trade union functionaries she was addressing. The Massachusetts senator avoided any criticism of the Obama administration itself, which has funneled trillions of dollars to the banks as part of the greatest transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top in American history.

The emergence of a movement by workers in the United States and throughout the world to fight for better living standards is inevitable. Young workers and students, in particular, confront a future of economic insecurity far worse than the conditions faced by their parents or even their grandparents.

To carry out this fight, the working class must be armed with a clear perspective and strategy. The Socialist Equality Party urges workers to establish independent and genuinely democratic rank-and-file committees, organized in opposition to the trade unions and their defense of the capitalist system and subordination of the working class to the Democratic Party.

The experiences of the working class over the last three-and-a-half decades have shown that such a fight involves a struggle against not just this or that greedy employer or political administration, but in opposition to the entire economic and political system.

This is a political struggle, which requires uniting the working class—black, white, immigrant and native-born, young and old, in the United States and internationally—on the basis of a common revolutionary perspective and program. The capitalist system has failed and must be replaced with socialism, the rational organization of the world economy on the basis of democratic control and production for human need, not private profit.

More than half of US public school students living in poverty

Andre Damon

For the first time in at least half a century, low-income children make up the majority of students enrolled in American public schools, according to a report by the Southern Education Foundation (SEF).

The percentage of public school students who are classified as low-income has risen steadily over the past quarter century, under both Democratic and Republican administrations. In 1989, under 32 percent of public school students were classified as low-income, according to statistics from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) cited by the report. This rose to 38 percent by 2000, 48 percent in 2011, and 51 percent in 2013.

These figures are the result of decades of deindustrialization, stagnating wages and cuts to antipoverty programs. Since the 2008 financial crisis in particular, the US ruling class, with the Obama administration at its head, has waged an unrelenting assault on the social rights of working people, carrying out mass layoffs, driving down wages, and slashing social services during the recession and the “recovery.” The SEF report makes clear that it has been the most vulnerable sections of society, including children, who have been made to bear a disproportionate burden due to these policies.

The study defines low-income students as those qualifying for either free or reduced-price lunches. Students from families making less than 135 percent of the federal poverty threshold are eligible for free lunches, while those making under 185 percent of the federal poverty line are eligible for reduced-price lunches.

The report was published last week in the form of an update to a 2007 study, entitled “A New Majority,” which warned that low-income students had for the first time in decades become the majority in the historically impoverished American South, and were well on their way to becoming the majority in the US as a whole. In 2006, the year covered by the report, low-income students constituted 42 percent of students enrolled at public schools. Seven years later, the figure has risen by a shocking nine percentage points.

The 2007 report noted that in 1959, “Historical correlations suggest that close to a majority of the school-age children in the South were in households living below the recently defined American poverty line.” It added, “Somewhere between 1959 and 1967, it is likely that for the first time since public schools were established in the South, low income children no longer constituted a majority of students in the South’s public schools.”

“By 1967, the percentage of low income children in the South and the nation had declined to unmatched levels,” the report continued, but noted that the improvement “came to a halt in 1970 when the percentage of low income children leveled off and remained essentially constant over five years. In 1975 the trend lines for low income students in the South and across the nation began to creep upward. After 1980, the Reagan Administration convinced Congress to enact large federal cutbacks in anti-poverty programs, and the numbers of low income children in the South started to rise sharply.”

The vast historical retrogression exposed by the report is further emphasized in the breakdown by state. The report notes, “In 1989, Mississippi was the only state in the nation with a majority of low income students. It had 59 percent. Louisiana ranked second with 49 percent.”

Low-income students now comprise the majority in 21 states, and between 40 percent and 49 percent of students in 19 others. While all states had significant numbers of low-income students, the share of poor students in the South and West is “extraordinarily high.” It notes that “thirteen of the 21 states with a majority of low income students in 2013 were located in the South, and six of the other 21 states were in the West.”

Mississippi has the highest share of low-income students, at a shocking 71 percent, or nearly three out of four, in 2013. Second was New Mexico, where 68 percent of public school students are low-income. These are followed by Louisiana, with 65 percent; Arkansas, with 61 percent; Oklahoma, with 61 percent; and Texas, with 60 percent. California, the country’s most populous state, has 55 percent of its public school students in poverty.

Poor students require far more resources than their affluent peers if they are to keep up. But rather than provide resources according to need, the Bush and Obama administrations, under the “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top” programs, have channeled resources away from schools with a high share of students in poverty, which are declared to be “underperforming.”

The SEF report warns, “With huge, stubbornly unchanging gaps in learning, schools in the South and across the nation face the real danger of becoming entrenched, inadequately funded educational systems that enlarge the division in America between haves and have-nots.”

The study is the latest in a series of reports showing the increasingly desperate social conditions facing children in the United States.

In September, the US Department of Education released statistics showing that the number of homeless children increased by eight percent in the 2012-2013 school year, compared to the year before. There were 1.3 million homeless children enrolled in US schools, a figure that is up by 85 percent since the beginning of the recession.

In April, Feeding America reported that 16 million children, or 21.6 percent, live in food insecure households. The share of all people in the United States who are food insecure has increased from 13.4 percent in 2006 to 21.1 percent in 2013.

In April 2013, the United Nations Children’s Fund released a report showing that the US has the fourth-highest child poverty rate among 29 developed countries. Only Lithuania, Latvia and Romania have higher child poverty rates. The US fell behind even Greece, which has been devastated by years of austerity measures dictated by the International Monetary Fund.