Insurgency in Northeast India: The Chinese Link

Wasbir Hussain

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has just ended a four-day visit to China where she discussed “bilateral, regional and global issues of concern” for both countries. The range of discussions with her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, that stretched to over two hours, were rather extensive: finalising the transit issue for Indian pilgrims to Kailash Manasarovar through Sikkim to the border question, to defence contacts between the two neighbours, trade and commerce, and possibly river waters, in view of the concerns in India over the massive damming of the Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra). What is not known, however, is whether Sushma Swaraj or the new Foreign Secretary, S Jaishankar, an expert China hand who spent four years in Beijing as India’s Ambassador there, raised the issue of official Chinese arms manufacturing companies regularly selling small arms (man-portable lethal weapons like AK series rifles, light and sub-machine guns, grenades etc) to insurgents in Northeast India. China, in fact, holds the key to the availability of weapons and ammunition among the terror groups in Northeast India that is actually keeping insurgency alive in this far-eastern frontier.
One has heard the Modi Government at the Centre talking of a ‘zero tolerance policy’ on terror, something that has not been clearly articulated as yet. Going by New Delhi’s diktat to the security establishment in Assam to go all out against the insurgents indulging in violence, in the wake of the 23 December 2014 massacre of around 80 Adivasis in the state by rebels of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (Songbijit faction), one can assume that the Centre now is in favour of tough action to neutralise trigger-happy rebels. The approach seems to have yielded good results because from 23 December 2014 to 31 January 31, 2015, security forces engaged in stepped-up counter-insurgency operations against the NDFB (Songbijit) have arrested nearly 140 cadres, killed a top commander, and recovered nearly two dozen rifles, including sophisticated German HK 33 and US-make M 16 rifles and a range of AK series ones, most likely made in China. Close to 2,000 rounds of ammunition have been seized.
There is every reason to believe that unless the flow of small arms to the region is checked, insurgency cannot be eliminated or controlled in Northeast India. Any new anti-terror policy that New Delhi may formulate in the coming days would have to take this fact into consideration. It is here that the China factor will come into play, something that the Modi Government will have to confront.
In fact, if one looks at the charge-sheet filed by the National Investigating Agency (NIA) on 26 March 2011 against Anthony Shimray, chief arms procurer of the Isak-Muivah faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-IM), it becomes clear that the insurgent group was actively buying weapons from Chinese companies. The FIR lists out the plan in detail and specifically says that Shimray, accompanied by a representative of another rebel group, the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), visited the Norinco headquarters in Beijing. Norinco or the China North Industries Corporation, is one of China's largest State-owned weapons manufacturers. Bangkok-based NSCN-IM rebels paid USD 500,000 to Norinco and bought 1,800 weapons that landed at Bangladesh’s Cox Bazar in 1996 and were transported onwards to Northeast India, to NSCN-IM and NDFB camps. Half of these weapons, of course, were seized by Bangladeshi security forces while being off-loaded.
Around 2007, NSCN-IM faced desertion from its ranks with people going away with weapons. That was the time the outfit again decided to buy 1,000 weapons, mainly AK series rifles, light machine guns, sub-machine guns, pistols, rocket-propelled grenades etc. NSCN-IM approached another Chinese arms manufacturing company, TCL, and paid USD 1,00,000. The money was paid through a Thai arms dealer Wuthikorn Naruenartwanich alias Willy. The deal did not materialise due to the ‘disturbed situation’ in Bangladesh where the consignment was meant to be delivered. The NIA has electronic receipt of the payment.
Reports attributed to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said that a definite money trail exists as payment to the Chinese firm was made through normal banking channels via a leading private bank's branch in an African country. NSCN (I-M), according to the MHA, has parked its funds in bank accounts across several African nations. The NIA is bent on pursuing the Anthony Shimray arms procurement case to its logical end and has received a shot in the arm with the arrest in 2013 of Wuthikorn Naruenartwanich. His extradition to India was cleared by a criminal court in Thailand but Willy has since moved a higher court there and is awaiting its verdict on the matter of his extradition. What is clear is the Chinese link in weapons supply to rebels in Northeast India.
Bangladesh and Myanmar have been the key transit routes through which small arms made in China reaches the Northeast. The main conduits in Myanmar are the Karen National Union (KNU) and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA). These two ethnic insurgent groups have acted as the interlocking chain for the illegal weapons flow from Yunnan in China via Myanmar to Northeast India, but the most effective illegal weapons trader in Myanmar is another armed ethnic group, the United Wa State Army (UWSA).
The UWSA is the military wing of the United Wa State Party (UWSP) founded in 1989 with members of the Wa National Council (WNC), which represent the Wa ethnic group and former members of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB). The UWSA’s biggest source of revenue is its involvement in the illegal small arms network across South and Southeast Asia. It manufactures Chinese weapons with an “informal franchise” procured from Chinese ordnance factories. The main motive is to sell these weapons for huge profit to armed groups in Northeast India.
A security situation in the Northeast that remains under control is vital to the pursuance of India’s Look East Policy. Therefore, New Delhi will have to devise a strategy to neutralise insurgency in the Northeast, and that strategy will have to factor in the flow of small arms to these groups. The ability to chock this flow right at the source of its origin could well hold the key.

New Leadership Lineup in Saudi Arabia: Reading the Tea Leaves

 Ranjit Gupta

In Saudi Arabia, the incumbent King has the absolute right to designate a successor who is titled as the Crown Prince. However, with an eye to ensure acceptable successions in the future given the intense factional rivalries within the royal family and the advancing age of potential monarchs, King Abdullah established the Allegiance Council in 2006 to decide upon succession matters. Also, in March 2014, King Abdullah, controversially, created a new designation - Deputy Crown Prince - and appointed his half-brother Prince Moqren, thus placing him second in the line of succession. The appointment decree was strangely worded, stating that the appointment had been made in consultation with the Crown Prince, had been approved by the Allegiance Council, and could not be changed by anybody in the future. Disgruntled members of the royal family tweeted objections and it became publicly known that unprecedentedly a quarter of the Allegiance Council did not agree. The reality is that the Allegiance Council has functioned as a rubber stamp. The fact is that in the normal course it would have been highly unlikely that Moqren, the son of a Yemeni slave woman, who never had a front rank job, would be in the line of succession, particularly as there remained an elder brother, the youngest of the powerful ‘Sudairi Seven’, Prince Ahmed. It was clear that Moqren’s appointment was designed to ensure that Abdullah’s sons would have a prominent governmental future. 
King Salman, already 79 and in poor health, is the last of the prominent sons of the founder King, and the time is inevitably coming for the crown and other important portfolios to pass on to the next generation. For years there has been speculation of when that might happen and who would be the chosen one. 
All this was settled within a few hours of Salman’s ascending the throne and even before King Abdullah was buried. The single most important decision announced by King Salman was the appointment of the incumbent Interior Minister Prince Muhammad bin Nayif to be concurrently the new Deputy Crown Prince, unequivocally making the latter the first amongst the next generation to be in line to take the crown. He is 59 years old. The other particularly significant appointment was that of his son, Mohammed bin Salman, only 32 years old, as the new Defence Minister and also the Head of the Royal Court, a singularly important post. He will also be a member of the newly created high-powered Council of Political and Security Affairs (chaired by the new Deputy Crown Prince and Interior Minister) and head the newly created high-powered Council of Economic and Development Affairs. To assign two particularly powerful portfolios and give membership of the government’s newly created policy and implementation hubs to an untried and untested rather young individual is absolutely unprecedented. He has been clearly placed in the line to become King one day. 
The many changes also affect two of the late King Abdullah’s sons who have been removed from significant jobs by making Faisal bin Bandar Governor of Riyadh instead of Turki bin Abdullah and reinstating Khaled al-Faisal as Mecca Governor less than two years after he was replaced by Mishaal bin Abdullah.
All these appointments cumulatively herald the return of the Sudairies to overriding power after the 20 year Abdullah hiatus - 10 years as virtual regent and King for another decade. The former King’s son, Prince Meteb, remains the head of the National Guard - it would have been hazardous to remove him since the National Guard has been commanded by Abdullah since 1962 and more recently by Prince Miteb, is numerically larger than the army, as strong as the army, and fiercely loyal to the Abdullah clan.
Prince Moqren was confirmed as Crown Prince but remains the fly in the ointment. This was probably done not to rock the boat immediately on taking over. In the past once designated as the Crown Prince he has invariably become the King unless he predeceased the incumbent King like Crown Prince Sultan and Crown Prince Nayef successively. However, Moqren has no supporting constituency in the country either in the royal family or in the governmental establishment or amongst clerics or the people, and it should not be too difficult to remove him if only the ailing King Salman has enough time left to consolidate his hold on power and earn sufficient popularity with the people. In the meantime he is unlikely to be given any significant role in the new and evolving set-up.
Moqren has lost his most powerful supporter Khalid Al-Tuwaijri, the erstwhile head of the Royal Court. Despised and deeply resented by the vast majority of the royal princes, his removal was the first and entirely predictable decision taken by the new monarch upon accession to the throne.
Significantly the Oil Minister Naimi has been retained, clearly indicating that Saudi Arabia will continue its policy of retaining market share even at the risk of keeping oil prices low. Despite resultant budgetary constraints this year, the new King has showered large monetary hand-outs to a vast number of people and entities totalling several dozens of billions of dollars to garner popularity. He is the first Saudi King to use social media  and has racked up more than 450,000 new followers on the microblogging site Twitter (@KingSalman), bringing the total to over 1.75 million. King Salman has certainly got off to a very deeply personally satisfying beginning.

New Zealand: Labour leader outlines his pro-business agenda

Tom Peters

Last week’s “state of the nation” speeches by Prime Minister John Key and Labour Party leader Andrew Little served to underscore yet again the lack of any significant differences between the government and opposition. Both are committed to making the working class pay for the deepening crisis of global capitalism through harsh austerity measures and attacks on jobs and working conditions.
The speeches were delivered amid soaring social inequality and poverty. Since the 2008 economic crash, living standards for hundreds of thousands of people have collapsed, while New Zealand’s billionaires and multi-millionaires have vastly increased their wealth, assisted by generous tax cuts and the deliberate driving down of wages.
Tens of thousands of workers have been laid off by the National Party government and private companies, while basic social services such as welfare, education and healthcare have suffered from successive budget cuts. Wealthy speculators have created a property bubble, which has dramatically driven up house prices and rents, making the country one of the least affordable for housing in the world.
Little, who was installed as Labour’s new leader following the party’s third consecutive election defeat last September, spoke to an audience largely composed of business and trade union figures in Auckland. He referred briefly to the crisis facing large numbers of working people. He noted that the number of children living in poverty had risen by 20,000 to 260,000 (one in four children) since National was first elected in 2008, and declared that “the incomes of the top 10 percent are nine times the income of the bottom 10 percent.”
However, Little did not advance any policies to address this social disaster. His speech consisted mainly of pledges to boost the profits of large and small businesses, and fraudulent claims that this would lead to “better, higher paid jobs for everyone.” He emphasised that a Labour government would collaborate with the trade union bureaucracy and corporations to eliminate regulatory “red tape” and improve “productivity”—that is, to intensify the exploitation of workers.
Little’s assertion that trade unions worked with businesses to raise wages and defend jobs fly in the face of reality. In the 1980s, the Labour government launched an assault on the social position of the working class—including sweeping privatisations, tax cuts for the wealthy and the introduction of consumption tax. The union bureaucracy has worked hand-in-glove with successive governments and the corporations to suppress resistance to down-sizing and wage cutting, all in the name of boosting “international competitiveness.”
The Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU), which was led by Little from 2000 to 2011, helped to impose thousands of redundancies, including recently at state-owned mining company Solid Energy and NZ Post.
Little began his speech by blatantly falsifying the EPMU’s record, stating that in 2005 it had worked with Air New Zealand to prevent 300 engineering jobs from being moved overseas. According to Little, this was an example of “good management and a well-led workforce working together ... [to] create gains for both.” He did not mention that the following year the union agreed to 200 job cuts and in 2007 signed off on 300 more “voluntary” redundancies at the airline.
Another outcome of the EPMU’s collaboration with management in the interests of “productivity” was the explosion at the Pike River coal mine in 2010, which killed 29 men. The EPMU, which represented about half the miners, did not once protest against the dangerous conditions at the site, let alone organise industrial action. After the disaster, Little immediately defended Pike River Coal, telling the New Zealand Herald that there was “nothing unusual about Pike River or this mine that we’ve been particularly concerned about.”
Little made virtually no criticism of the Key government’s pro-market measures because Labour has accepted almost all of them—including the 2010 increase in the Goods and Services Tax, corporate tax cuts, public service cuts and the partial privatisation of power companies.
Little criticised the government’s plan to sell 8,000 of the country’s 68,000 public housing units to charities, churches, Maori tribal businesses and other private companies. The proposal will inevitably further inflate rents while delivering a windfall to investors. However, Little told the National Business Review that he would make no pledge to re-nationalise the houses as it “would be reckless to do so.”
Labour campaigned in the election on a policy of building 10,000 houses a year and selling them at market rates, which would be beyond the means of most working people. The party also joined the right-wing populist NZ First Party and Maori nationalist Mana Party in a xenophobic campaign blaming Asian immigrants for driving up property prices.
The Labour leader’s speech was well-received by the corporate media, including the editors of The Press and the New Zealand Herald. Dr Oliver Hartwich, executive director of the pro-business think tank The New Zealand Initiative, hailed Little for advocating “a reconciliation of social democracy with the market economy.”
Pro-Labour columnist Chris Trotter, writing on The Daily Blog, absurdly tried to paint Little’s speech as progressive and even “radical,” pointing to Little’s vapid rhetoric about reducing unemployment.
There is considerable anxiety in the political establishment—including liberal and pseudo-left circles—about the historic collapse in support for Labour, which has long served as a key prop for bourgeois rule. Among workers and youth it is widely seen as a party of big business and militarism, just like National. The attempt to give Labour a “left” image and boost its support following the installation of David Cunliffe as leader in 2013 was a dismal failure. The party received just 25 percent of the votes at last year’s election, its worst result in 92 years.

Federal panel calls for slashing tens of billions from veteran benefits

Tom Hall

A federal panel tasked with slashing veterans’ benefits released its final report last Thursday, calling for the shifting of new veterans onto private healthcare schemes and 401(k) retirement plans, as part of a plan to cut tens of billions of dollars in payroll expenses over the next two decades.
The Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission was established by the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), passed in January of that year, which set aside $633 billion for Washington’s worldwide military operations. It was enacted in the midst of wrangling between Obama and congressional Republicans over austerity measures, which led to the so-called “sequester” cuts automatically kicking in in March 2013, after Congress failed to reach agreement on the size and scope of the cuts.
The commission estimates that the changes will save the military $26.5 billion from 2016 to 2020, and a further $6.7 billion annually until 2033. The increasing expenses per-soldier on wages, healthcare and retirement funds, which have nearly doubled since 1998, are a major source of concern for the military. The Armed Forces spent $417 billion on uniformed compensation last year, according to an interim report by the Commission last summer, around three-quarters of which went towards retirement funding, healthcare, and other payments such as education subsidies.
The Commission consists of career politicians and retired generals with histories in and around the financial industry. Alphonso Maldon, Jr., President Obama’s appointee and chairman of the Commission, is a retired colonel who had worked in the financial sector since his military retirement. He is also part owner of the Washington Nationals baseball team. Another member, former senator Larry Pressler, was a member of Obama’s Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction commission in 2010.
The Commission, acutely aware of the unpopularity of its proposed measures, was at pains to paint the report as reflecting the mood among service members and veterans, peppering the 302-page document with anonymous testimonials from respondents to a survey conducted by the Commission.
The Commission argues for a massive overhaul of the pension system. Currently, military retirees begin receiving a defined-benefit pension, measured at 50 percent of their base pay, immediately upon their retirement if they have served for 20 years. The report calls for a shift to a hybrid plan incorporating elements of a defined contribution pension. The payout to twenty-year veterans would be slashed to 40 percent, and would be restricted to a set retirement age. However, about 75 percent of all service members would be enrolled in the federal civilian Thrift Savings Program, a 401(k)-style retirement plan.
The move in large part reflects the increasing unattractiveness of the military as a lifelong career. According to the study, approximately 17 percent of enlisted personnel stay on long enough to qualify for the current pension scheme.
The report laments the fact that beneficiaries of the current government-run military healthcare plan, known as Tricare, receive healthcare “at a significantly higher rate than do people with civilian health insurance plans.” Tricare’s inability to “effectively manage the rate at which users consume health care,” according to the report, is primarily due to the fact that out-of-pocket expenses are low when compared to civilian healthcare programs. In addition to raising out-of-pocket expenses, the commission also recommends various “nonmonetary tools” such as “preventing hospital admissions, shortening inpatient stays, and avoiding readmission,” which they implausibly claim will lead to “better healthcare outcomes.”
Towards this end, the Commision’s report calls for market-based healthcare “reform” which would phase out Tricare. Family members and retirees under the age of 65 would be forced onto the private health insurance market under a scheme reminiscent of Obamacare, in which they would receive vouchers, called the “Basic Allowance for Healthcare,” to help offset the costs. The program would be similar to the civilian Federal Employee Healthcare Benefits Program and run out of the same federal office rather than by the Defense Department.
The report also advocates cost-savings in the military’s commissary system, upon which many soldiers and their families rely for food, cutting over $500 million from the budget for commissaries by 2021, compared to the current budget of $1.4 billion. The military’s version of food stamps would also be eliminated. The Commission’s recommendations will not be included in this year’s budget, according to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, but would “inform discussions that DoD will have with Congress over the course of this year.” However, whether or not the new Republican-controlled congress will act on these recommendations remains to be seen. The initial response so far has been lukewarm. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that he opposes the plan to abolish Tricare, but added that the report deserves “thorough review and thoughtful consideration.” Marc Thornberry (R-TX), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, cautioned that the military “must compete with the private sector for talent.”
Obama, mere days after praising the Commission for their work, announced a proposal yesterday to increase funds for the VA system, funded partially by reallocating a token amount of money from an existing healthcare “choice” program for veterans, in a transparent attempt at grandstanding. House Republicans immediately voiced their opposition to his proposal, ending any possibility of its passage. The Veteran’s Choice Program that he proposes to cut into was passed overwhelmingly last summer in the Democratic-controlled Senate, and Obama himself signed the bill into law in August.
In reality, both parties support the Commission’s argument that benefit costs must be reined in, in particular the Commission’s call for the privatization of veteran’s healthcare. The political establishment seized upon a scandal last year surrounding the deaths of 40 veterans while waiting for treatment at an Arizona VA hospital to “prove” the ineffectiveness of government-run healthcare.
There is, however a clear concern within the government that cutting too deeply into military benefits, the most attractive component of otherwise relatively low-paying employment, would negatively impact the effectiveness of the military at a time when US military aggression is being increasingly utilized to counteract diplomatic crisis and economic decline.

“Smoking gun” documents prove massive Canadian spy operations

 Dylan Lubao

Confidential government documents recently published by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in collaboration with online publication The Intercept have exposed yet another mass spying operation conducted by the Canadian Communications Security Establishment (CSE), the country’s foreign signals intelligence agency. The documents, initially obtained by National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden, provide what is being widely regarded as a “smoking gun” showing that the Canadian government spies on the entire Canadian population in violation of their constitutional rights.
Codenamed “LEVITATION”, the newly unmasked program allows CSE analysts to access information on 10 to 15 million uploads and downloads of files per day from 102 different file-sharing websites, including popular sites such as Rapidshare and the now-defunct Megaupload.
The CSE asserts that LEVITATION is “mandated to collect foreign signals intelligence to protect Canada and Canadians from... threats to our national security, including terrorism.” According to its own figures, however, its analysts flag a minuscule 350 “interesting download events” per month, amounting to less than 0.0001 percent of total collected traffic.
Claims by the Canadian security-intelligence apparatus that it is spying on the entire population in order to protect them are repeated ad nauseam, in spite of all evidence pointing to the fact that the working population is the actual target of state surveillance.
In the process, millions of individuals have had their online information collected en masse, including at least two Canadian IP addresses from a Montreal-based data server that were flagged as “suspicious”. Given the fact that file-sharing websites are accessed by millions of people all over the world, it is a certainty that thousands, if not millions, of Canadians have had their internet data collected by the LEVITATION program without their knowledge or consent.
After flagging a user’s IP address, CSE analysts can plug it into an electronic database operated by the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which allows them to potentially view the past five hours of the targeted user’s online activity. The CSE also has access to a robust database operated by the American National Security Agency (NSA), which contains internet traffic logs spanning up to one year.
The power and reach of the LEVITATION program further confirms the CSE’s role as an indispensable partner and a de facto subcontractor of its American counterpart, the NSA, in its illegal global spying operations.
This decades-long partnership, under which the CSE was made responsible for eavesdropping on the Soviet Union during the Cold War, sees the two agencies routinely exchange personnel, information and material support. The NSA often provides funding for joint projects, and utilizes the CSE to conduct espionage in countries where Canada has a stronger diplomatic presence.
As Glenn Greenwald, the former Guardian journalist and an editor at The Intercept put it, “It’s really the first time that a story has been reported that involves [CSE] as the lead agency in a program of pure mass surveillance.” Greenwald was instrumental in helping to bring Snowden’s revelations about the NSA to the world’s attention.
Prior to this most recent exposé, ample evidence had already been brought to light that the CSE and its sister agencies in the “Five Eyes” intelligence partnership were spying on the phone and internet communications of Canadians and millions of others around the world.
In the summer of 2013, during Snowden’s initial disclosures, it was revealed that the Canadian government had been spying on Canadians’ communications since 2004 through the systematic collection and analysis of their communications metadata. The metadata collection program was initiated by the Liberal government of Jean Chretien and Paul Martin, and expanded by their Conservative successors led by Stephen Harper.
For months after the initial revelations, the Conservative government lied profusely about the CSE’s clandestine operations, insisting that they were targeted at “foreign” threats and not at the Canadian population.
After this explanation was exposed as a complete fraud following revelations that the CSE had collected all Wi-Fi traffic at a Canadian airport in 2012 and tracked targeted individuals for up to two weeks afterward, the Conservatives changed tack and asserted the right to collect the metadata of Canadians’ communications.
The Conservatives based their argument on the spurious claim that because metadata is the information on the “envelope” of a private electronic communication, it is separate from the constitutionally-protected contents of that communication and can be legally collected and analyzed by the government at will.
In fact, as numerous legal experts continue to insist, the collection and analysis of metadata would allow a spy agency like the CSE to construct a detailed personal profile of an individual or an organization. This includes identifying daily patterns of behaviour, friends and associates, workplaces, and political opinions and affiliations.
Numerous substantial revelations, all of them furnished by Snowden and venomously denounced by the CSE and the Canadian government, have painted a picture of a Canadian security-intelligence apparatus that operates with full impunity to track domestic political dissent for future repression and support the overseas crimes of the Canadian ruling class and its counterparts in the Five Eyes.
The CSE functions under secret Defense Minister directives known at most to a handful of cabinet ministers and a cabal of security-intelligence operatives. Furthermore, the “legal wall” that nominally separates the CSE from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), which is tasked with discovering and countering “national security threats”, is effectively null and void. CSIS routinely seeks and receives the CSE’s aid in obtaining communications data on Canadian citizens, regularly lying to the courts in the process.
It must be noted that the CSE and CSIS, along with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), have, under the direction of the ministries of Public Safety as well as Defense, blurred the lines between political dissent and “terrorism”. Under current definitions held by both ministries and the government as a whole, peaceful opposition to the government’s right-wing and anti-worker measures can and has been labeled a “public security threat” and even low-level “terrorism”.
Reports have come to light demonstrating that security-intelligence agents have surveilled and infiltrated peaceful oppositional groups such as environmentalist, aboriginal rights, and anti-capitalist organizations. Protests like those at the 2010 G20 Summit in Toronto, and the protests against the construction of the Kinder Morgan Pipeline in British Columbia, are just a few examples of the targets of state surveillance and repression.
The rapid construction of the scaffolding of a police state in Canada, represented by the blatantly unconstitutional operations of the CSE, CSIS, and the RCMP, has met with muted criticism by the corporate media and the opposition Liberals and New Democratic Party (NDP). After raising a few tepid calls for greater parliamentary oversight of these patently anti-democratic spy agencies in the immediate aftermath of Snowden’s revelations, they inevitably lapse into silence.
The reason for their silence is clear. Seven years into the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, the Canadian bourgeoisie, and its political representatives in all the main big business parties, is preparing to confront a resurgence of working class opposition to its demands for austerity and war. To an ever-increasing degree, the bourgeoisie sees dictatorship and a police state as its only option for crushing any movement of the working class towards socialism.

South Africa: Apartheid-era assassin Eugene De Kock granted parole

Thabo Seseane

In a mockery of justice, apartheid-era assassin Eugene De Kock, who was serving two life terms plus 212 years for other crimes, has been granted parole by South African Justice Minister Michael Masutha. The minister said he was being paroled “in the interests of nation-building.”
Nicknamed “Prime Evil,” De Kock confessed to more than 100 acts of murder, torture and fraud, and took full responsibility for the activities of his undercover unit. He was never tried for most of the killing and maiming he perpetrated on activists fighting white minority rule in the 1980s and early 1990s.
De Kock made his confessions in front of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) which was established a year after South Africa’s first fully democratic elections in 1994.
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, who chaired the TRC, said the decision to release him represented a milestone on South Africa’s road to reconciliation and healing. He added: “I pray that those whom he hurt, those from whom he took loved ones, will find the power within them to forgive him. Forgiving is empowering for the forgiver and the forgiven.”
Masutha denied De Kock parole last June, saying he had “made progress” towards rehabilitation but that some of the families of his victims had not been consulted “as required by law.”
In 2012, De Kock sought out the relatives of some of his victims, including the mother and widow of African National Congress (ANC) lawyer Bheki Mlangeni. The family refused him forgiveness, questioning the sincerity of his request. Mlangeni was blown up by a bomb planted in a tape recorder sent to him in February 1991 while he was working to expose the activities of Vlakplaas, the secret police unit commanded by De Kock and named after the farm that served as its headquarters west of Pretoria.
De Kock was sentenced in 1996 for the murders of Japie Kereng Maponya and the Nelspruit Five—Oscar Mxolisi Ntshota, Glenack Masilo Mama, Lawrence Jacey Nyelende, Khona Gabela and Tisetso Leballo. Four were shot and killed in an ambush in the early hours of March 26, 1992 outside Nelspruit, Mpumalanga province. The fifth, Leballo, was killed later the same day “and the body subsequently destroyed by means of explosives at Penge Mine near Weltevreden,” according to the TRC amnesty application of De Kock and nine accomplices.
The TRC was a piece of high political theatre, also carried out in the name of “nation building.” Short on truth and long on reconciliation, it was designed for the benefit of the elite, black and white, but not for justice. No submission to the commission is permissible as evidence in court. None of the accomplices named by De Kock have been brought to trial, much less the bureaucrats and politicians who ordered and facilitated the murders carried out by Vlakplaas operatives.
In a guest column in the Daily Maverick posted just before Masutha’s decision, Jane Quin asks, “[H]ow dare we as a country spend precious ... time, money and energy considering the release of the killers who are captive, when we haven’t even bothered to bring the others to book?”
Quin’s sister Jacki was shot and killed by Vlakplaas members under De Kock in a cross-border raid in Maseru, Lesotho in December 1985. The ultimate responsibility for this crime rests with the politicians, bureaucrats and assassins who planned and carried it out.
By the same token, certain prosecutors and investigators are complicit for making the call not to pursue criminal cases against those responsible. This is where responsibility and blame for the release of De Kock should be apportioned, not to “we as a country”, if that includes working class South Africans who want nothing more than to see apartheid-era oppressors brought to justice.
The consideration shown De Kock, a highly capable purveyor of state violence, runs counter to the democratic aspirations of the masses who sacrificed so much in the anti-apartheid struggle. His parole is an addendum to Nelson Mandela’s discredited narrative of “a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world” and upheld to this day by the ruling ANC and the likes of Tutu.
This explains why among mainstream commentators, the news of De Kock’s parole has been broadly well received. “We are not a vengeful nation,” veteran journalist Max Du Preez pontificated in an interview with e.tv.
Speaking at the time of De Kock’s previous, unsuccessful parole application, right-wing opposition Democratic Alliance leader James Selfe commented, “It seems ... inequitable that Mr. De Kock is ... the only one [being] punished.” In other words, since none of his accomplices were in jail, De Kock had no business being behind bars either.
A month before his inauguration in May 2009, President Jacob Zuma of the ANC reportedly paid a secret visit to De Kock at Pretoria Central Prison. According to the Sunday Independent, De Kock gave Zuma information regarding the involvement in apartheid crimes of people who have thus far gone scot-free.
This could implicate figures now serving under the ANC government, since apartheid agents are known to have infiltrated the resistance movements. Most likely, any sensational information will be kept under wraps and used to settle matters between the various factions in the ruling party behind closed doors.
Masutha granted De Kock parole at the same time he denied Clive Derby-Lewis’s bid for medical parole. “There is nothing to suggest Mr. Derby-Lewis’s condition is such that he is rendered physically incapacitated … so as to severely limit daily activity,” said Masutha.
?Derby-Lewis, who has terminal lung cancer, was convicted for aiding and abetting Polish national Janusz Walus in the assassination of Chris Hani, a member of the ANC and the Stalinist South African Communist Party. Walus borrowed from Derby-Lewis the gun he used to kill Hani in the driveway of his home in Dawn Park, Ekurhuleni on April 10, 1993.
Masutha delayed a decision on the parole application of Ferdi Barnard, another apartheid state hitman, found guilty 17 years ago of the murder of anti-apartheid activist David Webster. “I was paid a R40,000 [US$3,400] production bonus after the killing. For a job well done,” Barnard boasts in Jacques Pauw’s Into the Heart of Darkness: Confessions of Apartheid’s Assassins (Jonathan Ball, 1997).
“It was an approved operation,” he maintains, “and Joe Verster [then director of the Civil Co-operation Bureau, Barnard’s unit] knew about everything.”
Barnard was sentenced in 1988 to 63 years and two life terms, the second being for an attempt on the life of Dullah Omar, who went on to serve in the cabinet of former President Mandela.
Whatever the fate of Derby-Lewis and Barnard, the ANC government has with De Kock’s parole signalled its contempt for any popular concept of justice. Through an endless series of backroom deals, the ruling elite is cynically whitewashing the past and palming off these efforts as “nation building.” The result is a country that is safe for mass murderers, a playground of the well-connected and rich criminals.
Workers have thus gained an insight into the ANC’s attitude towards the instruments of state security. As proved by the Marikana Massacre in 2012 that left 34 striking miners dead, and as it will be in the class struggle now developing, the uniformed brutes who come after Barnard and De Kock can also expect to get away with murder.

Australian PM recommits to war and austerity

Nick Beams

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott appears to have staved off an immediate push for his removal as leader of the Liberal Party following yesterday’s address to the National Press Club, but the crisis surrounding his government will continue.
Abbott’s speech came in the wake of last weekend’s Queensland state election, which saw the ousting of the Liberal National Party government as a result of a growing wave of opposition throughout the working class to austerity and spending cuts. His address and responses to questions from journalists had one central objective: to convince the corporate and financial elites, as well as key media interests, in particular media baron Rupert Murdoch, that he was determined to press ahead with their demands to further cut the living standards of the working class.
At the same time, the prime minister scotched rumours that he might be persuaded to resign by warning the party room that he would not go quietly and that any forced removal would destabilise the entire government.
The speech began with the now stock-in-trade of bourgeois politicians around the world—lies and falsifications coupled with invocations of the bogus “war on terror” to justify militarism and deepening attacks on democratic rights. The ISIS “death cult,” Abbott said, had created “a new dark age” over much of Syria and Iraq and inspired the “terrorism” that had hit Melbourne and Sydney.
In fact the incidents to which he referred, the police killing of 17-year-old Numan Haider in Melbourne and the Lindt café siege in Sydney, had no relationship to ISIS, but arose from the actions of two disturbed individuals.
Abbott returned to this theme when he set out his agenda for the future, foreshadowing major attacks on democratic rights. He claimed people were sick of “Australian citizens” making excuses for Islamist fanatics in the Middle East and that he would be seeking new legislation to outlaw certain organisations.
“If cracking down on Hizb-ut-Tahrir and others who nurture extremism in our suburbs means further legislation, we will bring it on and I will demand that the Labor Party call it for Australia.”
He made clear that the government’s anti-terror legislation would go further. Police and security agencies had told him they needed access to telecommunications data to deal with a range of crimes and “they should always have the laws, money and support they need.”
While the invocation of the “war on terror” was part of the government’s fear campaign, it also had a deeper significance. The development of more authoritarian forms of rule is part and parcel of the economic agenda directed against the working class that Abbott recommitted himself to impose.
He pointed to the economic stagnation in Europe, the slowest growth for a quarter of a century in Australia’s economic locomotive, China, and the halving of the price of iron ore—Australia’s biggest export—as evidence of “troubled times,” insisting that the government “is more determined than ever to make the changes our country needs.”
As always, when capitalist politicians speak of “our country” or “the nation,” they are outlining the demands and interests of the ruling elites, which insist that under worsening global economic conditions attacks on the living standards of the working class must be deepened.
At the centre of those “changes” is the slashing of social services—ending “the age of entitlement” as Treasurer Joe Hockey indicated in a speech almost three years ago—to cut the budget deficit. Setting out his agenda, Abbott said: “Our problem is not that taxes are too low; our problem is that government spending is too high.”
This was a guarantee to the corporate elites that the government would seek to meet their demands for lower “internationally competitive” tax rates and that it would not touch the massive concessions that have provided billions of dollars to the rich and super-rich.
In response to a question noting that two independent reports had found that the impact of last May’s budget fell disproportionately on the lowest income earners, Abbott resorted to the twisted logic with which the government intends to try to justify its measures—the concept of “intergenerational fairness” to rationalise greater inequality.
The greatest unfairness, he said, was to load future generations with deficit and debt. Reducing the deficit was therefore the “fair thing to do” and economic growth was the fastest way to return to surplus. In reality, under the profit system, in conditions of mounting global economic stagnation, any economic growth increasingly depends on lowering wages and social services, while boosting financial speculation—both of which widen social inequality.
At the same time, Abbott tried to deflect fears that the government’s forthcoming budget in May would intensify the cuts imposed last year. As much of the hard work had already been done, he said, “We won’t need to protect the Commonwealth budget at the expense of the household budget.”
This brought a rebuke from today’s Financial Review editorial, which attacked Abbott for “slipping back into his old pre-election habit of glossing over painful cuts and reforms when there is clearly more cutting to come.”
The Murdoch press, which played a significant role in sparking the leadership speculation, indicated its appreciation for Abbott’s recommitment to the austerity program it has demanded.
Today’s editorial in the Australian began by noting that Abbott “only gave a passing hat tip to those of his critics demanding contrition and malleability, preferring to channel his inner Margaret Thatcher and pronounce he was not for turning.”
While indicating that Abbott and his MPs had to do better, the editorial said he had provided a template for the “mission to constrain budget spending” and his government was the only sensible choice.
However, the unease within the Liberal Party room, among cabinet members as well as backbenchers, over Abbott’s leadership—brought to a head following the Queensland state election defeat—has not gone away.
Asked specifically whether he still had the confidence of the party room, Abbott only dealt with the question when specifically pressed and then only to make a threat. Acknowledging, in response to questions from journalists, that the government had had a “rough couple of months” and that some MPs were not supporting him, he continued: “When things are difficult the last thing you want to do is make a difficult situation worse.”
In response to an earlier question, Abbott insisted that, while party rooms chose leaders, once parties had gone to an election, things changed and it was “the people” that hired and fired.
In other words, Abbott was telegraphing to the party room he would not go easily and that his removal would only lead to the type of turbulence that had characterised the previous Labor government’s Rudd-Gillard conflict, making a bad situation for the government worse. While these considerations may stay the hand of some of his internal opponents, the concept of après moi le deluge does not represent the firmest foundation for his leadership.
Seeking to assuage criticism from within Liberal ranks, Abbott promised that there would be no more “captain’s picks” of the type that led him to offer a knighthood to the Queen’s consort, the Duke of Edinburgh, sparking widespread condemnations of his judgement and contributing to leadership tensions. He also promised to be more “collegial and consultative.” As one journalist noted during question time, such a commitment had been delivered on 12–15 previous occasions.
While promising to eschew individual actions on secondary issues, Abbott made clear there was one area in which he would act unilaterally—foreign and security policy. Citing his denunciation of Russia over the bringing down of Malaysian Airlines MH 17 last July, he said that was the type of “captain’s call” he would continue to make in the future.
The example is revealing of another central plank of the government—its unswerving commitment to the agenda of US militarism. Abbott’s initial response to the downing of MH17 was to declare that the situation was unclear. Only hours later, however, after consultations with officials of the Obama administration, he became Washington’s leading international attack dog over the issue, culminating in his threat to “shirt front” Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Brisbane G20 summit.
Abbott’s National Press Club address was an assertion that, notwithstanding deepening popular opposition, war and austerity will remain the foundation of his government’s agenda.

Germany’s working poor and the government’s “jobs miracle”

Dietmar Henning

Despite the endless rhapsodising over Germany’s so-called “jobs miracle” by the government and media, more and more studies are proving that this “miracle” is based on the brutal exploitation of low-wage and part-time workers. The number of those who can barely manage to live on their income has increased by 25 percent compared to the figure in 2008. Evidence from the Federal Statistical Offices shows that 3.1 million employed workers were living below the poverty threshold at the end of 2013. In 2008, the number of so-called “working poor” stood at around 2.5 million people.
Those considered to be at risk of poverty are people on incomes less than 60 percent of median income, including all government payments (e.g., residential and child support). In 2013, the threshold in Germany was €979 net per month for a single person and €2,056 for a family with two children under 14 years of age.
According to statisticians, this has far-reaching consequences for those affected and especially for their children. About 379,000 employed people at risk of poverty were unable to pay their rent on time in 2013. Some 417,000 went without adequate heating. Approximately 538,000 tried to save on food costs by having a full meal only every second day. Almost 600,000 of these workers could not afford to run their own cars. Even a weeklong annual holiday is beyond the finances of approximately 1.5 million people.
Shortly before Christmas, consumer advice centres reported that more and more families have to make do without electricity on public holidays. According to the Federal Network Agency, electricity was temporarily disconnected from nearly 345,000 households in the last year alone. The consumer centres consider the number to be significantly higher.
The increase in poverty among the working population is a direct result of low wages, which even the minimum wage regulation fails to adequately supplement, and low social benefits such as those for housing and child support. Another reason for the poverty increase is the growing number of those who have no alternative but to work part-time.
It is true that the number of people employed in Germany reaches a new high almost every year. The federal government never tires of presenting this as a major success. However, the proportion of part-time and marginal jobs in Germany is higher than in most other European countries. This is by shown by a new study from the Institute for Macroeconomic and Business Research (IMK), a subsidiary of the Confederation of German Trade Unions’ (DGB) Hans Böckler Foundation.
According to the study, only Iceland, Switzerland, Sweden and Norway have employment rates—i.e., proportions of employees in the respective working-age populations—that are higher than the rate in Germany. But these rates give no indication of the kind of employment involved. The study states: “The nominal employment rate is based purely on counting the number of employees, without distinguishing between those with full-time and part-time jobs.” The high employment rate in Germany is therefore misleading, because a quarter of the country’s employees—almost 11 million people—work in part-time jobs. The proportion of part-time workers is higher only in the Netherlands and Switzerland.
In addition, the part-time workers work for only very few hours a week. People employed in marginal jobs and earning a maximum of €450 a month constitute about half of all part-time workers in Germany. These 5 million-plus people mainly work in low-wage jobs. Furthermore, another 2.35 million of the marginally employed do part-time work in addition to another job.
According to recent surveys by the Federal Statistical Office, more than 3 million people employed in Germany want to work longer hours. In particular, many women have less employment than they would like. They are unable to find a full-time job or have to care for children or relatives.
Overall, every sixth citizen of Germany was affected by poverty or social marginalisation in 2014. This amounts to over 13 million people, according to the Federal Statistics Office’s report in October. The number of working poor is growing particularly in Berlin, the Ruhr area and many eastern German regions.
While poverty is increasing, wealth is concentrating at the other end of society. Private assets in Germany have grown to well over €10 trillion, i.e., 10,000 billion euros. The hundred richest German individuals and families alone possess a fortune of €336 billion.
The gap between the rich and the poor is continually widening. This is the result of a policy which floods the financial markets in the interests of the rich with hundreds of billions of euros that end up in the bank accounts of large-scale shareholders. The billions slipped into the pockets of the super-rich are then recuperated from the workers and unemployed through austerity programmes—a massive redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top.
The trade unions bear major responsibility for these policies. Not only did they support the introduction of the miserly Hartz social benefits legislation ten years ago and the bank bailout of half a trillion euros in 2009. Above all, they play the key role in preparing the ground for the attacks on jobs, wages and working conditions carried out in the factories.
The pious oratory and quietly delivered social critique, via the DGB’s Hans Böckler Foundation, of the German Confederation is aimed at covering the union’s own tracks, while simultaneously warning the ruling class that these policies will spark social protest and open revolt. This above all the DGB and its unions fear like the plague.

German military experts demand purchase of drones

Johannes Stern

According to a report in the Welt am Sonntag newspaper, German security officials and military experts are urging the rapid purchase of armed drones.
The defence policy spokesman for the Christian Democratic Union-Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) fraction in parliament, Henning Otte, told the newspaper, “Last year, we initiated a debate about the necessity of combat-ready drones and clearly spoke out in favour of this capability.” He went on to say that it was now time “to take the next step and secure drones with this capacity for the German army.”
The defence spokesman for the CSU, Florian Hahn, expressed a similar view. He said that Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) had to “urgently take the decision this year.”
The drones were “a key question for our sovereignty in defence policy and a key capability for a modern, efficient army,” he continued. Other problems in defence policy, such as the supply of A400M transport aircraft, should not result in “a decision on the purchase of a drone being set aside,” Hahn added.
According to Die Welt, the Social Democrats (SPD) are also stepping up pressure on von der Leyen. “We expect the minister to make this decision quickly,” Rainer Arnold, the SPD’s defence spokesman, was cited by the paper as saying.
High-ranking military officials are supporting the calls from politicians. The chairman of the Bundeswehr (German army) association, Lieutenant Colonel Andre Wüstner, referring to current crises in Africa, Syria and Iraq, declared that future conflicts would be carried out by means of drones. The Defence Ministry had to finally begin purchasing and developing combat drones, he insisted.
The Air Force inspector, Lieutenant General Karl Müller, warned that if Germany did not develop its own drones, it would be internationally dependent.
According to Welt am Sonntag, the purchase of military drones is no longer a question of if, but when. A spokesman for the Defence Ministry said a policy was being worked on.
The newspaper claimed that €323 million in a secret part of the defence budget had been “allocated for the purchase of three combat-ready aircraft and two ground control stations.” The options being considered, according to Die Welt, are the Israeli model “Heron TP” and the US “Predator B.” In the medium term, the development of a European drone was the goal.
Germany’s move to acquire combat drones exposes the lies of the media and politicians that the German ruling class and its military have been forced to wage war in defence of human rights and democracy. Drones epitomize the US-led criminal wars of conquest around the world.
Washington has deployed drones mainly in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. According to research by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalists, the US military and CIA have already claimed the lives of between 2,400 and 3,900 people in Pakistan alone through the use of drones. Victims of the targeted killings, which are personally approved by President Obama, are often women and children. Often they are guests at birthday parties or weddings targeted for drone attack.
The Bild newspaper recently revealed that Germany has been more broadly involved in such methods of warfare (which are illegal under international law) than had previously been reported. Extensive documents from the German army and foreign intelligence service (BND) confirm that Major General Markus Kneip, who commanded Germany’s ISAF troops in Afghanistan and today is head of the strategy and deployment department of the Defence Ministry, personally selected individual targets for the US targeted killing programme.
The purchase of drones would give the German military the ability to conduct its own targeted killings. Although the vast majority of Germans oppose this illegal practice, plans for the development of a military drone program have for some time been systematically developed behind the backs of the population.
Already in 2009, the CDU/Free Democratic Party (FDP) government stated in its coalition agreement that it was “essential” to carry out “the sustainable development and expansion of independent national capabilities—in particular, future aircraft systems.” In the summer of 2012, then-Defence Minister and current Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière described drones as “ethically neutral weapons.” Shortly afterwards, a strategy paper entitled “Air Power 2030” was published by the Air Force that called for the development of drone technology.
“The utilisation and further development of the capabilities of unmanned aerial vehicle systems is to be optimised in all areas of surveillance-directing-impact and support, and their scope of deployment expanded,” the paper stated. The Air Force intended, according to the report, “to invest in these programmes so important for the future because we are convinced that the German army can thereby be strengthened as a whole.” The Air Force would increase “the capacity to act and the efficiency of the entire German military system” so that it could contribute “flexibly and globally at any time to German army deployments.”
Since German President Joachim Gauck and other politicians announced Germany’s return to an aggressive great power foreign policy at the beginning of last year, a systematic campaign has been waged in the media in favour of the purchase of these instruments of murder. Particularly prominent in this campaign has been Humboldt University Professor Herfried Münckler.
In June, he told public broadcaster ARD’s “Mittagmagazin” (Mid-day Magazine): “The wars of the future will be a mixture of classical wars and more modern police interventions. Drones will play an increasing role in this policing role of the military.”
He went on to say that drones were “very well equipped for such police-style missions, certainly better than combat helicopters, bombers and possibly also light infantry.”
He continued: “I think one has to realise that the development of combat-readiness on many levels is coming. Geopolitical factors play a role in this, demographics, how many young men do you have, i.e., how many victims can be risked, technological developments, tactical innovations, strategic ideas.”
He added that “Post-heroic societies like ours, societies that are not held together by particular ideals of masculinity, by the ideas of honour and sacrifice” were dependent upon “using technological assistance as a crutch to secure the capacity to act on the military level.”
In a further interview with the provocative title “To Proscribe Drones Would Be Absurd,” Münckler said incompetence in security policy was being defended by invoking morality.
German history was also a problem, he noted. Due to "an intense feeling of guilt,” Germans were adverse to developing a “heightened responsibility” to “engage in those places where something like genocide is taking place,” he declared. He complained that "because Germany stood at the centre of two world wars,” ordinary Germans were inclined “to fold their hands and do nothing.”

Oil giants take hard line against US workers on strike

Jerry White

Nearly 4,000 workers are on strike at oil refineries in Kentucky, Texas, California and the state of Washington after negotiations between the United Steelworkers (USW) union and major oil corporations for a new three-year labor agreement broke down over the weekend.
On Sunday morning, union officials called a limited strike—involving nine out of the 65 oil refineries it organizes and only 3,800 out of the 30,000 workers covered by the national agreement. The action was called after Royal Dutch Shell, the lead bargainer for the oil companies, walked out of talks without giving the USW anything it could present as a concession to help overcome rank-and-file opposition to another sellout deal.
Despite the sharp slide in crude oil prices, the energy conglomerates, which also include ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron and Marathon, are taking in windfall profits and are paying their top executives multimillion-dollar bonuses. The value of the oil company shares have more than doubled since the last contract signed by the USW in 2012.
Like workers throughout the United States, oil workers are determined to regain lost pay after more than a decade of stagnant wages and rising health care and other living expenses. In addition, many oil workers are subjected to 12-hour shifts and are forced to work as many as 14 straight days, according to the USW, resulting in fatigue and the danger of fatal accidents.
The politically connected oil industry faces little, if any, oversight—whether Democrats or Republicans are in office—from federal and state regulators despite a raft of deadly explosions, chemical releases and other environmental disasters.
Two of the refineries selected for picketing were the locations of deadly disasters over the last decade. This includes the Marathon Galveston Bay Refinery in Texas City, Texas (formerly owned by BP), where 15 workers were killed and 170 injured in a March 23, 2005 hydrocarbon vapor cloud explosion. Investigations found BP responsible for unsafe conditions due to corporate cost cutting, a failure to invest in the plant infrastructure and a lack of oversight on safety and major accident prevention. BP sold the facility to Marathon for $2.5 billion as part of a divestment plan following the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010.
The other facility is the Tesoro Anacortes Refinery in the state of Washington where seven workers were killed in an explosion on April 2, 2010. State regulators cited the company for 39 “willful” and five “serious” violations of health and safety regulations. An investigation by the US Chemical Safety Board concluded that Tesoro had a “complacent” attitude towards flammable leaks and occasional fires; did not correct a history of recurring leaks and placed workers in dangerous conditions; and did not adequately maintain equipment before the lethal blast. It also found that the accident was rooted in “a deficient refinery safety culture, weak industry standards for safeguarding equipment, and a regulatory system that too often emphasizes activities rather than outcomes.”
Last August, the Obama administration’s Justice Department shut down its four-year investigation into violations of occupational safety and environmental laws, claiming that the evidence it found “does not reach the exacting bar for criminal prosecution.”
After appeals by Tesoro’s attorneys, a judge in the state of Washington threw out 27 of the 39 “willful” violations and reduced the company’s fine from $2.39 million to $685,000. Judge Mark Jaffe could knock that down even further in a ruling expected this year.
In comments to the local media web site, click2houston.com, Josey Wales, a supporter of the oil workers, replied to comments criticizing the strikers. “[This] is about what the company wants to take away. It’s about the safety in the plants. Maybe you have not been paying attention to the explosions, fires, environmental incidents and the exposure these guys are constantly facing... These corporations don’t care if you’re exposed to cancer-causing chemicals on a constant basis on your job. But do you care if your family is? Are you ignorant enough to believe these chemicals stop at the gate around these plants? That they don’t show up in your water your family is drinking?
“My dad and grandfather both worked in the plants. They worked shift work, nights, evenings, days. They worked holidays and weekends. By the time they were 60 years old they were worn out old men. They buried friends that burned to death in fires and explosions. They buried friends that died from cancer… These plants are making record profits and the CEOs are taking home 40 million-plus a year plus stock bonuses. If you think cheap oil is going to hurt them you are ignorant to how it works. Oil companies buy oil to refine and then sell the byproducts from it. It’s the drilling companies that are laying off. The oil companies are going to make a killing with cheap oil.”
The USW has made sure the strike has the least possible impact. The Tesoro refinery in Martinez, northeast of Oakland, for example, was already operating at half capacity because of scheduled maintenance. Although the USW represents workers at refineries that account for two-thirds of the nation’s refinery capacity, the strike only affects nine facilities, responsible for 10 percent of capacity. The remaining USW-represented refineries are continuing to operate under rolling, 24-hour contract extensions, according to the union, while operations at nearly 200 unionized oil terminals, pipelines and petrochemical plants continue. There has not been a national oil workers strike since 1980 when workers were out for three months.
The sabotage of the strike is not an accident. The USW executives are opposed to any serious fight against the oil giants. While posturing as defenders of safety and workers’ living standards, the USW has collaborated with the oil companies to slash jobs and labor costs in the name of improving “competitiveness” just as it has done in the steel industry.
In 2013, President Obama appointed USW President Leo Gerard to serve on the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership Steering Committee, charged with “enhancing the nation’s competitiveness.” In his latest statement on the union’s web site, Gerard praises Obama as a champion of the “middle class” and opponent of social inequality even though he has overseen the greatest transfer of wealth from the bottom up in history.
Obama has not only let corporate criminals—like Tesoro, BP, General Motors and JPMorgan Chase—get away scot-free, he has made the reduction of American workers into a cheap labor force the center of his manufacturing strategy. The president differs from the Republicans only in his greater willingness to use the services of Gerard & Co. to suppress working-class opposition to these corporate attacks.
Phony statements of international solidarity coming from Unite, the British union, which has a record of betraying workers, is no substitute for a real struggle to unite workers internationally against the global oil giants. If the livelihoods and very lives of workers are not to be subordinated to the anarchy of the capitalist market—and the booms and busts of speculative bubbles—then the oil industry must be nationalized, placed under the democratic control of the working class and run on the basis of human need, not profit.
The conduct of this struggle must be taken out of the hands of the USW. Rank-and-file committees, consisting of the most militant and class-conscious workers, must be set up to spread the strike and shut down the entire industry. At the same time, oil workers must reach out to the broadest sections of workers and youth to fight for the development of a powerful industrial and political movement of the working class against both big-business parties and the capitalist system they defend.

The US arming of Ukraine and the danger of World War III

Alex Lantier

The World Socialist Web Site unequivocally condemns plans being worked out by the Obama administration to arm the right-wing regime in Ukraine with billions of dollars in advanced weaponry. These moves threaten to spark a direct conflict between the US and Russia, two nuclear-armed powers, and ignite a Third World War.
Discussions over arming the Western-backed government in Kiev come amidst setbacks to the offensive against eastern Ukraine launched by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko last month. According to Monday’s New York Times, “after a series of striking reversals that Ukraine’s forces have suffered in recent weeks, the Obama administration is taking a fresh look at the question of military aid.”
Washington has already sent military trainers to Ukraine and pledged $350 million in “nonlethal” military aid to Kiev. Now, the Times writes, top Obama administration officials are increasingly unified around “an independent report…by eight former senior American officials, who urge the United States to send $3 billion in defense arms and equipment to Ukraine.” These funds would provide the Kiev regime with “anti-armor missiles, reconnaissance drones, armored Humvees, and radars that can determine the location of enemy rocket and artillery fire.”
This reckless escalation is being plotted by a criminal cabal of government officials, military and intelligence operatives and their associated think tanks, including the Brookings Institution. It is dictated by the interests of a corporate and financial oligarchy that, in its pursuit of global hegemony, threatens the very future of human civilization.
The implications of the plans being put in place have been concealed from the people of the United States and the world. One of the few sober appraisals came from Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung, which warned in an article published Monday: “US arms supplies to Ukraine would be—and that can be taken almost literally—a declaration of war against Moscow.”
The newspaper cited a Russian military expert, Yevgeny Buchinsky, who warned that in response to an offensive against the Donbass by Kiev, “Russia will have to intervene and then, bluntly speaking, to take Kiev. Then NATO would be in a difficult situation. Then you would have to start World War III, which no one wants.”
These statements follow warnings from Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union, who said recently that a European war over Ukraine would “inevitably lead to a nuclear war.”
As always, the war plans of the US and its imperialist allies are couched in the language of defense—in this case, of “resisting Russian aggression.” In fact, the escalating conflict over Ukraine is the product of a campaign by the US, Germany and the European Union to seize Kiev and turn Ukraine into a military outpost of the NATO alliance, pointed at the heart of European Russia.
A year ago this month, a putsch led by the fascistic Right Sector militia and backed by Washington and Berlin ousted pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. He was replaced by an unstable, unpopular coalition of right-wing parties that made no secret of their violent hostility to Russia.
The actions of the new government, including the mass killing of pro-Russian protesters, as in the May 2014 Odessa massacre, provoked armed resistance in areas of eastern Ukraine with large ethnic Russian populations. The regime responded with bloody offensives by fascist militias against cities such as Donetsk, Luhansk, Mariupol and Slavyansk. Thousands died last year in attacks carried out in coordination with the CIA, whose director John Brennan visited Ukraine undercover.
Lacking any social base outside of a narrow layer of oligarchs and fascist thugs, the Kiev regime has failed to defeat the eastern Ukraine separatists, whom Moscow has armed and supported. Washington is responding by preparing an even greater bloodbath against the population of eastern Ukraine, directly posing the risk of full-scale war with Russia.
The international working class faces the disastrous geostrategic consequences of the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the USSR in 1991 and restoration of capitalism. This final betrayal by the Stalinists has enabled US imperialism to manipulate and inflame ethnic tensions within the former USSR.
The ultimate aim of the US and its allies is to reduce Russia to an impoverished and semi-colonial status. Such a strategy, historically associated with Carter administration National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, is again being openly promoted.
In a speech last year at the Wilson Center, Brzezinski called on Washington to provide Kiev with “weapons designed particularly to permit the Ukrainians to engage in effective urban warfare of resistance.” In line with the policies now recommended in the report by the Brookings Institution and other think tanks calling for US arms to the Kiev regime, Brzezinski called for providing “anti-tank weapons…weapons capable for use in urban short-range fighting.”
While the strategy outlined by Brzezinski is politically criminal—trapping Russia in an ethnic urban war in Ukraine that would threaten the deaths of millions, if not billions of people—it is fully aligned with the policies he has promoted against Russia for decades.
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Washington pursued this strategy by organizing “color revolutions” to install pro-US and anti-Russian regimes in ex-Soviet republics, including Georgia, Ukraine and Belarus.
A decade later, amid a far deeper economic and geostrategic crisis of global capitalism, Washington is proceeding even more ruthlessly. The crisis in Ukraine has been utilized to massively expand US and NATO forces throughout Eastern Europe, combined with new threats and ultimatums.
The only alternative to disaster is the mobilization of the international working class in struggle against imperialism, on a socialist platform. The reactionary Russian nationalism of the Putin regime, the representative of the capitalist oligarchy that emerged from the dissolution of the USSR, is bankrupt. Incapable of making any appeal to opposition to war in the international working class, the Putin government inflames ethnic tensions within the former USSR. To the extent that it seeks to counter the aggression of NATO on the basis of Russian nationalism, it only paves the way for nuclear war.
Last July, the WSWS wrote of the intensifying aggression against Russia: “Whatever the short-term outcome, the long-term implication of the agenda being pursued by the United States and the European imperialist powers leads inexorably in the direction of war with cataclysmic consequences. The greatest danger facing the working class is that decisions are being taken behind the scenes, with masses of people largely unaware of the risks facing the world’s population...
“Anyone who believes that a nuclear war is impossible because modern governments, unlike those that were in power in 1914, would not risk catastrophe, is deluding himself. If anything, the regimes that exist today are even more reckless. Beset by mounting economic and social problems for which they have no progressive solution, they are ever more inclined to see war as a risk worth taking.”
This warning is being confirmed as imperialism drives the world toward a nuclear conflagration. The building of the International Committee of the Fourth International as the leadership of a mass global antiwar, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist movement of the working class is a matter of the greatest urgency.

Obama’s “pro-middle class” budget: Cut corporate taxes, raise military spending, slash Medicare

Andre Damon

On Monday, President Barack Obama presented his budget proposal for fiscal 2016, described by the New York Times as an “unfettered case for spreading the wealth.”
In reality, the budget proposal, cynically packaged and promoted as a populist boon to the middle class at the expense of the rich, is dominated by corporate tax cuts, expanded military spending, and cuts to Medicare.
These are accompanied by a grab bag of social and infrastructure spending proposals, trivial in and of themselves, which are proposed solely to make the budget appear to favor the “middle class.” As Obama and the Democrats know perfectly well, the supposedly “progressive” elements of his budget will be rejected by the Republican Congress, while the pro-corporate and militarist meat of the proposal will be enacted.
The real character of Obama’s budget was signaled by the location he chose to unveil it. The president gave the press conference announcing the budget at the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, where he emphasized that he would significantly expand spending on the military and domestic security.
Obama declared, “We need to fund the department [of Homeland Security], pure and simple. We’ve got to put politics aside, pass a budget that funds our national security priorities at home and abroad.” The budget, he added, “gives us the resources to confront global challenges, from ISIL to Russian aggression.”
This was a reference to his proposal to lift caps on military, intelligence and domestic security spending imposed as part of across-the-board cuts mandated by the so-called “sequester” law that came into effect in early 2013.
Obama’s budget proposal would increase Pentagon spending by seven percent, adding an additional $38 billion to bring the total defense budget to $534 billion. Obama is separately proposing $51 billion in additional funding for the wars in Iraq and Syria, including money to back the so-called “moderate” opposition in Syria, as well for as the ongoing US troop presence in Afghanistan.
The budget calls for the corporate tax rate to be cut to 25 percent for manufacturers and 28 percent for other corporations, down from the current rate of 35 percent.
The proposal would also allow US corporations to repatriate past profits generated overseas at a tax rate of only 14 percent. Foreign profits would be taxed at 19 percent in the future. Currently, US corporations pay a rate of 35 percent on foreign profits, which many corporations avoid by keeping their foreign earnings abroad.
These tax cuts are accompanied by $400 billion in cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and the Department of Health and Human Services. The budget proposes to raise $66 billion over ten years by charging higher Medicare premiums to upper-income patients, a move that would undermine Medicare’s status as a universal entitlement and open the door to means testing and the transformation of the government health insurance program for seniors into a poverty program.
The plan would cut another “$116 billion in Medicare payments to drug companies for medicines prescribed for low-income patients,” according to the New York Times. It would also slash $100 billion for the treatment of Medicare patients following their discharge from the hospital, affecting primarily the elderly.
The increases in military and security spending, corporate tax reductions and entitlement cuts, which form the core of the budget proposal, are coupled with a series of social spending increases and tax hikes on the wealthy which are certain to be stripped away by the Republican-controlled Congress.
The proposed tax increases include a 0.07 percent fee on some 100 large financial corporations and an increase in the capital gains tax from 24.2 percent to 28 percent for couples making more than $500,000 per year.
These would ostensibly be used to finance a plan to pay tuition—but not increase per-pupil funding—at community colleges, which would cost $60 billion, as well as an $80 billion proposal for increasing child care tax credits. The budget also proposes $478 billion in infrastructure spending over six years. These projects would be contracted out to private for-profit companies and would not take the form of government-run public works programs.
In announcing his budget, Obama claimed that his proposal would undo the effects of the sequester budget cuts. Since their implementation, Obama and Congress have taken measures to shift the burden of the cuts to social programs and away from the military.
Obama made clear that he would not allow sequester cuts to defense spending, declaring that “if Congress does nothing to stop sequestration, there could be serious consequences for our national security, at a time when our military is stretched on a whole range of issues.” He added, “I’m not going to accept a budget that locks in sequestration going forward.”
The token social spending measures in the budget are aimed at perpetuating the fraud that the Democrats are the party of the “middle class”—as opposed to the pro-business Republicans—in preparation for the 2016 presidential election.
Despite the constant talk in the media about “partisan gridlock,” the two parties represent different factions of the same ruling oligarchy and pursue a common agenda of austerity, militarism and the build-up of the repressive powers of the state.

Egyptian court confirms mass death sentence against 183 political prisoners

Thomas Gaist

An Egyptian court confirmed death sentences against 183 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) Monday, marking the culmination of yet another historic mass show trial by the US-backed military regime.
Those convicted, 34 of whom were not even present for the trial, were charged for the killing of 11 police agents in Kardasa, Giza in August 2013, during mass protests over the massacre of demonstrators in Cairo’s Rabaa Square by state security forces.
The defendants were initially sentenced to death in December by Egyptian judge Mohammed Nagi Shehata, whose ruling was subsequently approved by Egypt’s top Islamic legal official, the Grand Mufti, before being reaffirmed by the court.
The verdict represents the latest stage in the bloody and protracted crackdown against the population implemented by the military since the July 2013 coup.
Whether or not any of the defendants in the latest case were actually involved in the alleged incident, the real crime of those sentenced to death was their opposition to the military dictatorship. Monday’s finalization of the sentences, which bring the total number of political prisoners awaiting execution to some 1,400, is intended to serve as a warning that any expression of dissent will be met with maximum brutality.
The trials have once again underscored the criminal and authoritarian character of the military regime, now led by General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who seized power in a coup backed by the US amidst an upsurge of mass opposition to the previous MB government. The military has proceeded to brutally suppress all opposition, including working-class strikes and protests against the dictatorship.
The trials themselves have been condemned internationally as a mockery of due process. Egyptian judges have been “convicting defendants en masse without regard for fair trial standards,” said Sarah Leah Whitson of Human Rights Watch.
The latest trial “flouts international law,” Amnesty International’s director for the Middle East said in a statement calling the verdict “outrageous.” Many of those convicted did not have lawyers.
“Issuing mass death sentences whenever the case involves the killing of police officers now appears to be near-routine policy, regardless of facts and with no attempt to establish individual responsibility,” an Amnesty representative wrote.
Although the defendants in this case are alleged to be associated with a bourgeois opposition party, the MB, the trials are intended as an unambiguous threat to the Egyptian working class, whose strikes were the principal factor in the fall of the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak in February 2011.
The actions of the Egyptian regime have the full backing of Washington. Even as the government has organized mass show trials on a scale not seen in recent history, the Obama administration has insured that more than $1 billion in annual US aid has continued to flow into the hands of the military apparatus.
Just one day after an Egyptian court handed down death sentences against hundreds of alleged members and supporters of the MB in April, US Secretary of State John Kerry oversaw a red carpet reception for Egypt’s Foreign Minister. Kerry praised the Egyptian government as an “important strategic partner,” commending the military government for its “positive steps,” and stressing the “common interests” shared by the US and the Egyptian government.
The al-Sisi dictatorship has carried out a policy supported by the American ruling class and its allies, both within Egypt and internationally.
Egypt has become a choice investment opportunity for international finance capital. Total Egyptian share values have doubled since the July 2013 coup, even as the regime has killed at least 3,000, including at least 1,000 MB members, imposed sweeping bans against any public demonstrations and arrested tens of thousands, sending many of them to secret prisons and torture centers. Egyptian financial markets yielded a return to investors of more than 30 percent in 2014 alone.
Al-Sisi himself has received invitations from Europe’s most powerful governments. French President François Hollande publicly embraced the military leader during a recent visit to Paris, and al-Sisi has returned these affections by placing an official call to the French politician to convey “sincere condolences” on behalf of Egypt after the Charlie Hebdo shootings.
Al-Sisi has cemented these ties through enthusiastic support for every new war and military intervention launched by the US and European governments in the Middle East and North Africa. On Monday, a Fox News opinion piece hailed al-Sisi as “Egypt’s Muslim Churchill,” lavishing praise on the military despot for his promotion of the fraudulent US “war against Islamic extremism.”
The mass executions of the al-Sisi regime mark the return of all the brutal methods of the old Mubarak dictatorship. Two hundred more Egyptians now face death, even while Mubarak has been cleared of all criminal charges, including those related to the hundreds of innocents executed during his decades of dictatorial rule and hundreds more killed and thousands wounded by his security forces during the January 2011 uprising.
MB leader Mohamed Mursi faces trial on espionage charges beginning on February 15, according to reports Monday.

Indonesian authorities prepare for more executions

John Roberts

Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s government is preparing for another round of executions, involving 11 prisoners, following the death by firing squad of six drug offenders on January 18.
In a CNN interview on January 27, Widodo dismissed clemency appeals by lawyers or foreign governments. “No compromise, no compromise,” he said. “They can ask for amnesty to the president but I tell you there will be no amnesty for drug dealers.” He specifically ruled out clemency for two young Australian men, Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan.
The next day, Attorney-General H.M. Prasetyo told members of the Indonesian parliament that his office was deciding on the timing and site for the executions. The isolated Nusakambangan Island, off central Java, he said, was an “ideal place,” for security reasons. Five of the six prisoners executed on January 18 were killed on the island by a police Mobile Brigade firing squad.
Lawyers for Sukumaran and Chan said they would apply for a second judicial review in Indonesia’s Supreme Court, based on a Constitutional Court ruling that recommended this for prisoners who have spent more than 10 years on death row. But Attorney-General Prasetyo said a meeting between his department, the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court, had agreed the pair was not eligible for a second review.
Prasetyo said the government had made no decree to enact the Constitutional Court’s ruling. “We made the decision together, that before the government issues a governmental decree on it, then [a] judicial review can only be done once,” he said. His statement underscores the government’s determination to proceed with the executions.
Events are moving quickly in the state-organised killing process. The Indonesian media reported that Sukumaran and Chan would be put to death in the next round. Widodo rejected Chan’s clemency appeal on January 22, clearing the way for the two to be executed together.
Yesterday the Jakarta Post published the names of all 11 condemned to die. They include four Indonesians and foreign nationals from the Philippines, France, Ghana, Spain and Brazil. Apart from two Indonesians convicted of multiple murders, they have been convicted of relatively minor drug offences that occurred between 1999 and 2005.
These developments have caused deep public concern in Australia. Last night, artists, musicians and hundreds of people gathered in Sydney’s Martin Place for a vigil appealing for clemency. Sukumaran’s grandmother Edith Visvanathan made an emotional plea: “I come to ask pardon from the president, the president and the people of Indonesia, to forgive my grandson and give him a second chance.”
The impetus for the accelerated application of Indonesia’s death penalty laws is coming from Widodo himself, however. Three people were executed during the five years before Widodo’s installation as president last October. Now 17 have been put to death, or scheduled to be killed, within the space of two weeks. Eleven offences, ranging from murder to subversion and corruption, are punishable by execution under Indonesian law.
Widodo’s motives are entirely political. Under conditions of a deepening global economic crisis, falling oil prices and growing demands for austerity cuts and a radical pro-market restructuring of the Indonesian economy, Widodo is attempting to shore up his relations with the military-police security apparatus and right-wing Islamist groups.
During the 1965 CIA-backed military coup that overthrew the Sukarno government, the Indonesian security forces combined with right-wing Islamist groups to murder at least half a million Communist Party of Indonesia members, workers and peasants and install General Suharto’s military dictatorship, which lasted more than 30 years. These military and Islamist forces still retain a dominant position in the Indonesian state.
The Islamist organisations blame Western influence for producing an estimated five million drug addicts in Indonesia and demand a savage response from the state. The real source of the problem, however, is the mass poverty and despair produced by the enrichment of Indonesia’s ruling oligarchy at the expense of hundreds of millions of workers and peasants. Over half Indonesia’s 250 million people live on or below the miserably low United Nations poverty line of $US2 per day.
The fate of the two condemned Australians points to the close economic relationship and strategic partnership between Canberra and Jakarta, which also underpinned the sordid manner in which Australian police authorities set up both men in 2005 for arrest, and therefore execution.
On January 23, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott publicly called on Indonesian authorities to grant clemency for Sukumaran and Chan. He declared that both had reformed and helped rehabilitate other prisoners incarcerated in Denpasar’s Kerobokan prison on the island of Bali. No specific details have been provided about Abbott’s contacts with Indonesian officials, but the Indonesian foreign ministry made it clear that Canberra’s appeals have been presented in such a way as to not endanger the bilateral relationship.
The Australian government has not denounced the reactionary death penalty or criticised Widodo’s use of it, nor threatened diplomatic or economic sanctions if the executions go ahead. Labor Party opposition leader Bill Shorten has defended the Abbott government, declaring on January 23 that it was doing “everything it can” to prevent the execution of the two Australians.
Successive Liberal-National and Labor governments in Australia have worked assiduously since the 1965 coup to cultivate and maintain the closest relations with the Indonesian ruling elite. Former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating hailed the bloody coup as the “most important contribution to stability” in South East Asia.
Canberra’s token appeals are entirely hypocritical. In 2005 the Australian Federal Police (AFP) supplied the Indonesian police with detailed information about a group of Australians—the “Bali Nine,” which included Sukumaran and Chan—who planned to import heroin into Australia from Bali. The AFP provided photographs, passport numbers and details of their movements and planned smuggling methods. The AFP knew that, as a result, the nine were likely to face death sentences.
Lee Rush, the father of one of the Bali Nine, contacted the AFP and was led to believe that the police would stop his son Scott before the group left Australia. The police reneged on this undertaking and allowed the Indonesian operation to proceed.
This AFP decision was vehemently defended by both Prime Minister John Howard and opposition leader Kim Beazley. It served two purposes. First and foremost, it sought to help rebuild the Australian political and security establishment’s connections with the Indonesian security forces, following strained relations between the two countries over East Timor in 1999–2000. Second, it side-stepped the abolition of the death penalty in Australia, where legislation also restricts the extradition of people to face possible execution overseas.
When Labor’s Beazley was asked in 2005 if the AFP had done the “right thing” in the Bali Nine case, he declared: “Australians do need to understand this—it is utterly critical for this nation that there is intimate collaboration between the AFP and the police forces of this region.”

Sydney siege inquest: An exercise in damage control

 Peter Symonds

The coronial inquiry into the December 15–16 cafe siege in Sydney began yesterday, but only for a short opening session. The carefully-managed hearing made clear that the overriding aim of the proceedings is to attempt to counter widespread public suspicion about what happened, while protecting the state and federal governments, police and intelligence agencies that were responsible for the tragic outcome.
Over the past six weeks, no official statement has been released concerning even the most elementary facts about the 17-hour siege that ended with the deaths of the hostage-taker Man Haron Monis and two hostages—barrister Katrina Dawson and Lindt cafe manager Tori Johnson. In a highly unusual step, State Coroner Michael Barnes instructed counsel assisting the coroner, Jeremy Gormly, to “answer speculation” and release some details of the events.
After outlining what he claimed would be a full investigation of the events, Gormly provided a highly-selective account of what took place on December 15–16 that pre-empted many of the issues that the inquiry is to examine. No evidence was provided to support his “release of facts,” nor was there any opportunity for it to be challenged. While Gormly declared that what he presented was only his “current interpretation,” nevertheless his comments will stand as the only official statement until the inquest resumes, which could well be months away.
Gormly’s “release of facts” dealt solely with two discrete episodes—the start of the siege after Monis entered the cafe in central Sydney at 8.33 a.m. on December 15 and its tragic conclusion when police stormed the premises in the early hours of December 16. While providing some details, the account was chiefly significant for what it excluded.
Gormly shed no light on Monis’s extensive contact with police and intelligence agencies prior to the siege, whether he was being monitored, or if he had been identified on any of the many cameras that monitor Martin Place where the cafe is located. Monis had previously protested outside the Martin Place studios of Channel Seven, which beefed up its security in response.
The 50-year-old Monis was an erratic and unstable individual—an Iranian refugee and self-proclaimed Shiite cleric who faced charges over allegations of sexual assault and assisting the murder of his ex-wife. Gormly said the coronial inquiry will seek a psychiatric assessment of Monis, as well as delve into other aspects of his life.
According to Gormly’s account, Monis was in the cafe for at least half an hour before telling the manager to lock the doors. He pulled out a sawn-off shotgun, ordered staff and customers against a wall and told them to display a flag with Arabic script, which was not that of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). At 9.44 a.m., he instructed Tori Johnson to ring the emergency 000 number and tell the operator that he and others had been taken hostage in the Lindt cafe, radio-controlled bombs had been placed in three city locations and that Australia was under attack by ISIS. The claims about the bombs were false, as were those about ISIS .
Within minutes, police and the paramilitary Tactical Response Unit were on the scene. Gormly made no mention of the fact that high-level decisions were taken to elevate the situation into a major national crisis. Around 10 a.m., Prime Minister Tony Abbott and the cabinet national security committee met and in league with the state government in New South Wales, set in motion a massive police operation that sealed off much of central Sydney.
The 000 call, which had not previously been reported to the public, lasted 12 minutes, yet no further details were released yesterday. Did Monis identify himself? Did he issue any demands? As it turned out later, after the siege was over, Monis issued very limited demands—an ISIS flag, an acknowledgement that the siege was an ISIS attack and a phone call with Abbott. Yet these demands were deliberately ignored.
Gormly’s account appears to be scripted to justify the transformation of what was a serious, but relatively straightforward police matter into a “terrorist” crisis—all in a very short time-frame. Yet as Gormly acknowledged, “it seems he [Monis] had not established any contact with Islamic State”—a fact that would have been known to Australian intelligence agencies.
The Abbott government, supported by the Labor opposition and a compliant media, seized on cafe standoff to create an atmosphere of uncertainty and fear that fed into its “war on terror” agenda of supporting the US-led war in the Middle East and ramming through a battery of draconian anti-terror laws.
Gormly’s description of the end of the siege around 2 a.m. on December 16 was likewise carefully tailored. He provided graphic details of Monis’s execution-style killing of Tori Johnson, which was widely circulated in today’s establishment media. However, what prompted the shooting was the increasingly desperate situation inside the cafe that had been created by the refusal of state and federal governments to negotiate on any of Monis’s demands.
The authorities insisted that the media suppress all news about Monis and his demands, no doubt concerned that public pressure for negotiations could mount. Inside the cafe, the hostages were frantically trying to get the message out, with one appealing to “send the fricking Islamic flag.” Gormly revealed that he would have to sift through over three hundred 000 calls, as well as many emails, Facebook pages and other social media. Just before Johnson’s murder, a third batch of hostages made a desperate escape by breaking down a door.
The decision not to negotiate with Monis and to block all media coverage of his demands is likely to remain shrouded in secrecy. Gormly indicated that there would be an examination of the police management of the siege, but foreshadowed that “we will have to bear in mind that public exposure of details of plans of that type can themselves involve security issues. That evidence may require special treatment.” The role of political actors such as Abbott will remain well outside the bounds of the inquiry.
The police storming of the cafe resulted in the deaths of Monis and Katrina Dawson, as well as the injury of three other hostages and a member of the police paramilitary assault team. Monis died in a hail of bullets, including two to the head. Dawson was hit by six police bullets or fragments of bullets, one of which severed a major blood vessel. All the other injuries were caused by police bullets.
Once they get underway, the coronial inquiry’s proceedings are likely to reveal more details of the events surrounding the Sydney siege. However, one can predict in advance that the inquest will avoid any examination of the manner in which the Abbott government and the establishment as a whole exploited the siege for reactionary political purposes and the impact of their decisions on its outcome.