Roger Jordan
In the wake of the revelation that Canadian special forces had engaged Islamic State fighters in a gun battle, further exchanges of fire have taken place on two separate occasions.
Last Monday, at a military briefing on the progress of the mission in
Iraq, officials also noted that Canadian CF18 jets had intensified
their bombardment of ISIS targets, striking 12 times within a week.
Although they did not indicate how many of these attacks had been
directed by Canadian ground troops, the military had confirmed the
previous week that special forces were pinpointing targets from the
ground with lasers during air attacks.
The growing involvement of Canada’s armed forces in ground combat
makes a mockery of the Conservative government’s claim that the
six-month deployment to the US-led Mideast war, authorised in early
October, is purely a training and assistance mission to support the
Iraqi army and Kurdish militias. On the contrary, it appears ever more
likely that it will be the prelude to a broader deployment of Canadian
ground troops in alliance with US imperialism.
Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper responded to the latest
developments by claiming that the military’s actions were in keeping
with the goals of the original mission. Answering criticism that
Canada’s military was spending more time at the frontline than the
several thousand soldiers now in Iraq on “training” missions from other
countries, he told the House of Commons on Wednesday, “I do not know
what other militaries are doing, but I know that ours is doing exactly
what parliament asked it to do, and that Canadians are behind it.”
Other leading officials have been more explicit in pointing out that
military operations in Iraq are entering a new stage. Paul Forget, the
military official who revealed the latest two cases of Canadian special
forces returning fire, commented that such incidents could be expected
to increase. “The role of our specialists was initially to show them
some basic aspects. At this point we are in a position to advise them,
assist them in a combat zone,” he told reporters. The military has
stated separately that Canadian troops are spending 20 percent of their
time in Iraq on the front line of battle.
Although the Canadian special forces gun battles with ISIS are the
only combat incidents involving Western forces in Iraq that have
officially been recognised, a spokeswoman for the international
coalition involved in the mission indicated that other countries may be
doing more than is being publicly admitted. Questioned by the CBC as to
why it was only Canadian troops who were involved in firefights, she
responded that she could only comment on incidents that had been
reported to the high command.
The special forces mission was initially scheduled to last six months
when it was approved last October. On top of the growing number of
combat incidents, there are further signs that an expansion of Canada’s
operation is already being prepared.
General Tom Lawson, chief of the Defence staff, travelled to Irbil
last week for meetings with leading Kurdish regional officials. The
defence department noted that his discussions included a meeting with
the chancellor of the Kurdistan regional security council, Masrour
Barzani. The department commented that the meeting was held “to exchange
information, and update them on Canada’s ongoing contribution to the
advice and assist mission.”
BasNews, a Kurdish media outlet based in the city, reported that
Lawson was pressed by officials on the need for more Western assistance,
including armoured vehicles and arms.
Another factor fuelling this speculation is that Ottawa continues to
refuse all attempts to disclose the costs of Canada’s Iraq mission.
Defence Minister Rob Nicholson has said only that figures will be
published three months after the conclusion of all operations.
The natural evolution of the mission as portrayed by the military top
brass and defence politicians has been carefully prepared by the ruling
class. From the outset, the deployment of Canadian air power and
special forces in the Mideast war was a predatory move to assist
Washington in the consolidation of its predominance in the region.
Harper is going all out to stir up the most reactionary and
jingoistic Canadian nationalism over the conflict. Hailing the troops
for their courageous role following the recent clashes, he declared that
it was a “robust mission” and added, in the style of a military
commander, “If those guys fire at us, we’re going to fire back and we’re
going to kill them.”
This marks a ratcheting up of the flag-waving nationalism and
militarist propaganda that have characterised Harper’s period in office.
From the Libya intervention in 2011, to the investment of additional
resources to upgrade the Canadian military and its deployment around the
world, the Conservative government has sought to implement an
aggressive foreign policy. This is being justified by the false
portrayal of Canada historically as a democratic and peace-making power,
expressed most cynically in Harper’s speech on the anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War last August.
There is also a domestic component to this strategy. The Harper
government is using the nationalist fervour whipped up over Iraq to
enforce a further draconian assault on democratic rights. On Friday, it
tabled its latest anti-terrorist bill, which grants even more
wide-ranging powers to the intelligence services and gives police the
right to detain people without charge for an extended period.
A right-wing nationalist campaign of militarism abroad and attacks on
democratic rights at home is to be the Harper government’s platform in
the upcoming federal election due later this year. Since the twin
attacks on armed forces personnel by disoriented individuals last
October, Harper has sought to present Canada as a country under siege
from terrorists so as to justify the continued build-up of state power
and his government’s latest military intervention.
Any attempt to question this right-wing agenda is to be met with
intimidation and the threat of repression. This was illustrated by the
manner in which Harper responded to questions posed by the leader of the
official opposition New Democrats (NDP), Thomas Mulcair on the Iraq
mission. Mulcair stated that the recent clashes with ISIS were a breach
of the original mission approved by parliament last October, accusing
the Harper government of misleading Canadians.
Harper retorted, “I know that the opposition thinks it is a terrible
thing that we are standing up to the jihadists. I know they think it is a
terrible thing that some of these jihadists got killed when they fired
on the Canadian military.”
The equating of even the most limited questioning of the government’s
course with support for the terrorism of ISIS has ominous implications.
Under Canada’s anti-democratic terrorist laws, supporting a terrorist
group is a criminal offence punishable by a long prison term. The
technique of associating political opponents with Islamic
fundamentalists has been employed by Harper previously, labelling former
NDP leader Jack Layton as “Taliban Jack” for his advocacy of talks with
the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The reality is that the NDP, and the opposition Liberals, are in full
agreement with the turn by Canada to a more aggressive foreign policy.
Despite voting in opposition to the Iraq deployment last October, the
NDP and Liberals both supported a so-called humanitarian mission to the
region, as well as sending arms to the Kurds.
The NDP’s true position was clearly indicated by the remarks of Paul
Dewar, the party’s foreign affairs spokesman, who said of the exchange
with Harper and other government officials in parliament, “This isn’t
about who can say that they support the troops more than the other.”
3 Feb 2015
Thousands march against water charges in Dublin and other Irish cities
A protest against the plans of the Fine Gael-Labour Party coalition
to introduce water charges in Dublin Saturday attracted 20,000 people
according to its organisers. Thousands of others joined protests in
cities and towns across Ireland including Cork, Donegal, Galway,
Letterkenny, Limerick, Sligo and Waterford.
The water charges are a measure agreed by the Dublin government as part of the multi-billion euro bailout programme concluded with the troika of the International Monetary Fund, European Union and European Central Bank in 2010. They are only the latest attack in the sustained drive to make working people pay for the economic crisis, which began with the collapse of Ireland’s banking system in 2008. Since the bailout was organised, every major political party has backed devastating austerity measures resulting in thousands of job losses in both the public and private sectors, wage drops of 20 percent and more, billions in budget cuts for essential services, and tax increases.
As a result, the ruling Fine Gael and Labour and the main opposition party Fianna Fail now command less than 50 percent of public support. Sinn Fein obtains around 20 percent of the vote and “independents”—smaller parties or local politicians who usually were former members of the major parties—around 30 percent.
But despite this level of opposition to austerity and political disaffection, Saturday’s protest was far smaller than the 80-to-100,000 that protested the water charges in Dublin last December. It was “organised” by disparate groups, including the group “Dublin Says No”—founded in February last year—and the Peoples Movement for Change. Behind their grand titles and insistence on a “no politics” agenda stand various individuals claiming anarchist, republican or Green politics and others.
They seek to capitalise not only on hostility to the major parties, but also frustration and anger towards groups such as Right2Water, The Anti-Austerity Alliance, etc., and—the real leadership of the protests so far—the pseudo-left Socialist Party and Socialist Workers Party. These groups have opposed the protests becoming the focus for a political struggle against capitalism based on socialist policies, in favour of invocations of “People Power” behind which they seek alliances with various trade union bureaucrats and “left” and not-so-left Independent members of parliament. This has both demobilised opposition and left working people prey to various political charlatans who ensured that Saturday’s protest was fairly small, disorganised and without political direction.
There was a lot of anger about the day’s events. Typical was Eric who explained, “I’ve been to all the protests against the charges. But this is the worst so far. No one knows where to go or what is happening. Some people are going to the General Post Office, others to Leinster House (Parliament House) or the dole office. I want the organisers to explain what they thought they were doing.
“Now it gives the politicians the luxury of saying it was only a small crowd, that the movement is dying out. But people haven’t been giving in. They want to fight,” Eric added.
Leading figures from the SP and SWP were on hand, continuing to insist that “people power” will be able to defeat the charges through a militant non-payment campaign when bills are due in April. The perspective of pressurising the government to change course represents a repetition of the politics advanced by the same pseudo-left forces in previous popular protests, such as the demonstrations against the household charge and the property tax. The lack of any political perspective to guide the mass public opposition resulted in the government being able to enforce both deeply unpopular measures.
Eoin, an IT worker from the “Clonmel says No” campaign explained why he had come to the Dublin protest with his family. “The reality of modern Ireland is a two-tier society. I’m supposed to be on a 40-hour week but it is much longer most weeks. I first got involved in protesting against austerity with my boys’ school. They were put in a condemned building where council workers were not allowed to work. Then I got involved with people in Clonmel fighting evictions and homelessness.
“The banks should have been allowed to fall. It would have been a private loss. It has happened before and this time Anglo-Irish should have gone. We have to remove the power of corporates from politics, use their revenue and give power to the people. The three things missing from every corporate office in Ireland is accountability, responsibility, transparency. I think the independents have done a good job exposing this and getting action such as the investigation involving Garda McCabe [a policeman and whistleblower on corruption].
“Today is the first time I’ve become aware of the Socialist Equality Group. It needs to be promoted in all ways. We have to support those who stand for the common good for the ordinary people.”
Roisin, a modern history student, said, “It is good you are having a meeting about Trotsky. He was one of the greatest revolutionaries in history and we need someone like him now. It’s obvious that capitalism has nothing to give people today and that the old political structures and paradigms are falling apart.
“I don’t trust a lot of the independents, though. Some of them jumped ship from the old useless parties but haven’t really changed their views. There are some left-wingers, but they seem to me to be getting more and more sucked into the system. They are talking about people power. But real people power is a revolution and I think lots of people are fed up enough to do it.”
Barbara said, “The political landscape has changed. Ireland still has a relatively protected welfare system, but now it's been rolled back like in all western countries. Greece had a lot more to lose that’s why they went out on a new way with Syriza.
“Once public utilities start to be sold off, that’s what people fear. They know that once the water goes it will be the health service next that would be completely privatised. So all this will filter down. The cuts are never-ending and that is the reason why people are seeking change more than they did two or three years ago.
“My view is that we should not just look at water, but we need to look through a wider lens of social justice. It’s not just about water, it’s about inequality. It’s about poverty. It’s about homelessness. This is Ireland Incorporated. It is no longer a country representing the people.”
Oisin said, “Right now I am stuck in the Irish educational system, so I know as much about politics as I do about basic education, which is next to nothing. But I think the only way is to jump ship and cancel the debt, like Greece says. It was the government and the politicians that borrowed the money, unbeknown to the people. The Irish people will wake up and see that the government will first make 10 percent cuts, leading up to 100 percent cuts. And we will have to fight.”
The water charges are a measure agreed by the Dublin government as part of the multi-billion euro bailout programme concluded with the troika of the International Monetary Fund, European Union and European Central Bank in 2010. They are only the latest attack in the sustained drive to make working people pay for the economic crisis, which began with the collapse of Ireland’s banking system in 2008. Since the bailout was organised, every major political party has backed devastating austerity measures resulting in thousands of job losses in both the public and private sectors, wage drops of 20 percent and more, billions in budget cuts for essential services, and tax increases.
As a result, the ruling Fine Gael and Labour and the main opposition party Fianna Fail now command less than 50 percent of public support. Sinn Fein obtains around 20 percent of the vote and “independents”—smaller parties or local politicians who usually were former members of the major parties—around 30 percent.
But despite this level of opposition to austerity and political disaffection, Saturday’s protest was far smaller than the 80-to-100,000 that protested the water charges in Dublin last December. It was “organised” by disparate groups, including the group “Dublin Says No”—founded in February last year—and the Peoples Movement for Change. Behind their grand titles and insistence on a “no politics” agenda stand various individuals claiming anarchist, republican or Green politics and others.
They seek to capitalise not only on hostility to the major parties, but also frustration and anger towards groups such as Right2Water, The Anti-Austerity Alliance, etc., and—the real leadership of the protests so far—the pseudo-left Socialist Party and Socialist Workers Party. These groups have opposed the protests becoming the focus for a political struggle against capitalism based on socialist policies, in favour of invocations of “People Power” behind which they seek alliances with various trade union bureaucrats and “left” and not-so-left Independent members of parliament. This has both demobilised opposition and left working people prey to various political charlatans who ensured that Saturday’s protest was fairly small, disorganised and without political direction.
There was a lot of anger about the day’s events. Typical was Eric who explained, “I’ve been to all the protests against the charges. But this is the worst so far. No one knows where to go or what is happening. Some people are going to the General Post Office, others to Leinster House (Parliament House) or the dole office. I want the organisers to explain what they thought they were doing.
“Now it gives the politicians the luxury of saying it was only a small crowd, that the movement is dying out. But people haven’t been giving in. They want to fight,” Eric added.
Leading figures from the SP and SWP were on hand, continuing to insist that “people power” will be able to defeat the charges through a militant non-payment campaign when bills are due in April. The perspective of pressurising the government to change course represents a repetition of the politics advanced by the same pseudo-left forces in previous popular protests, such as the demonstrations against the household charge and the property tax. The lack of any political perspective to guide the mass public opposition resulted in the government being able to enforce both deeply unpopular measures.
Eoin, an IT worker from the “Clonmel says No” campaign explained why he had come to the Dublin protest with his family. “The reality of modern Ireland is a two-tier society. I’m supposed to be on a 40-hour week but it is much longer most weeks. I first got involved in protesting against austerity with my boys’ school. They were put in a condemned building where council workers were not allowed to work. Then I got involved with people in Clonmel fighting evictions and homelessness.
“The banks should have been allowed to fall. It would have been a private loss. It has happened before and this time Anglo-Irish should have gone. We have to remove the power of corporates from politics, use their revenue and give power to the people. The three things missing from every corporate office in Ireland is accountability, responsibility, transparency. I think the independents have done a good job exposing this and getting action such as the investigation involving Garda McCabe [a policeman and whistleblower on corruption].
“Today is the first time I’ve become aware of the Socialist Equality Group. It needs to be promoted in all ways. We have to support those who stand for the common good for the ordinary people.”
Roisin, a modern history student, said, “It is good you are having a meeting about Trotsky. He was one of the greatest revolutionaries in history and we need someone like him now. It’s obvious that capitalism has nothing to give people today and that the old political structures and paradigms are falling apart.
“I don’t trust a lot of the independents, though. Some of them jumped ship from the old useless parties but haven’t really changed their views. There are some left-wingers, but they seem to me to be getting more and more sucked into the system. They are talking about people power. But real people power is a revolution and I think lots of people are fed up enough to do it.”
Barbara said, “The political landscape has changed. Ireland still has a relatively protected welfare system, but now it's been rolled back like in all western countries. Greece had a lot more to lose that’s why they went out on a new way with Syriza.
“Once public utilities start to be sold off, that’s what people fear. They know that once the water goes it will be the health service next that would be completely privatised. So all this will filter down. The cuts are never-ending and that is the reason why people are seeking change more than they did two or three years ago.
“My view is that we should not just look at water, but we need to look through a wider lens of social justice. It’s not just about water, it’s about inequality. It’s about poverty. It’s about homelessness. This is Ireland Incorporated. It is no longer a country representing the people.”
Oisin said, “Right now I am stuck in the Irish educational system, so I know as much about politics as I do about basic education, which is next to nothing. But I think the only way is to jump ship and cancel the debt, like Greece says. It was the government and the politicians that borrowed the money, unbeknown to the people. The Irish people will wake up and see that the government will first make 10 percent cuts, leading up to 100 percent cuts. And we will have to fight.”
UK: Blair government colluded in extraordinary rendition of Libyans
Jean Shaoul
Documents produced in a court case in London show that former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair and British intelligence were complicit in the rendering of dissidents to Libya to be tortured and interrogated.
The case brought by 12 opponents of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi refutes claims by leading figures in the former Labour government and the present Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, above all those of Blair, that Britain had no involvement in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition and torture programme. They reveal Blair for what he is: a criminal and a liar.
The case comes at a time when Blair is coming under increasing pressure over his role in delaying the findings of the Chilcott Inquiry into the Iraq war, now not expected until after the general election in May.
Blair wrote a fawning letter to then Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, addressing him “Dear Muammar,” saying, “I trust that you, and your family, are well,” and signing it, “Best wishes yours ever, Tony.”
According to the Guardian, the purpose of the letter, written in April 2007 when Britain was collaborating in efforts to send dissidents back to Libya, was to inform Gaddafi that the UK was about to fail in its attempts to deport two Libyans allegedly linked to an opposition organisation, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG).
Blair said that he was “disappointed” that Britain would be unable to send more regime opponents back to Libya. He wrote, “With regret, I should let you know that the British government has not been successful in its recent court case here involving deportation to Libya. I am very disappointed by the court’s decision.”
He added, “I believe it is essential that this decision is not allowed to undermine the effective bilateral co-operation which has developed between the United Kingdom and Libya in recent years. We have made such progress. It is important, for the good of both our peoples, that we continue to do so, not least in the crucial area of counter-terrorism.”
He wanted to offer “a personal word of thanks” to Gaddafi “for your assistance in the matter of deportation.”
He commented on “the excellent co-operation of your officials with their British colleagues,” which was “a tribute to the strength of the bilateral relationship, which has grown up between the United Kingdom and Libya. As you know, I am determined to see that partnership develop still further.”
Blair’s letter is one of hundreds of documents recovered from abandoned government offices in Tripoli after the 2011 NATO-led invasion of Libya to topple the Gaddafi regime and install a puppet government—an illegal war in which Britain took full part. The documents are being studied by a team of London lawyers who are bringing damages claims on behalf of a dozen Gaddafi opponents that claim they were targeted by the two countries’ agencies, to piece together the evidence of Britain’s involvement.
It is for this reason that the British government sought to have the case struck out without admitting liability, to prevent any exposure of its criminality, lies and cover ups. But the High Court threw out the bid, saying that the allegations “are of real potential public concern” and should be heard and dealt with by the courts.
The government is unlikely to accept the decision that will mean officials being called to give evidence under oath without an appeal.
For years after 9/11, around 54 foreign governments including the Blair Labour government helped the CIA set up “black sites” in their own countries, provided intelligence to kidnap, interrogate and torture detainees and allowed their airspace and airports to be used for secret flights transporting detainees.
Blair and other ministers, including former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, denied allegations of British involvement in mistreatment of detainees, and mounted a cover-up operation. These denials have been proved to be lies during court cases brought by detainees—notably that of British resident Binyam Mohamed, held as a suspected “enemy combatant” in Guantanamo Bay between 2004 and 2009. He and 15 others received around £1 million in compensation after UK courts proved in 2010 that MI5 were complicit in their unlawful interrogation and torture. Ministers authorised the multi-million pay-out to British men who were held in Guantanamo Bay to prevent their evidence of Britain’s collusion with the US emerging in open court.
In December 2012, the British government paid out £2.2 million to Libyan dissident Sami al-Saadi and his family, who stated under oath that the British intelligence authorities forcibly transferred them to Libya where he was subsequently detained and tortured.
Another Libyan, Abdel Hakim Belhaj, has initiated a civil case against the British government and three officials for “extraordinary rendition.” Belhaj offered to call off the proceedings in exchange for just £3 in damages, an admission of liability for what was done to him and his wife, and an apology from the British government. The government rejected the offer and sought to get the courts to block the case.
Last October, the Court of Appeal ruled that the case could be heard in the English courts, as it involved particularly grave violations of international law and human rights, and was not barred by either state immunity or the act of state doctrine. It rejected the Foreign Office claim that it would damage the UK’s foreign relations and national security interests.
In the 2011 operation, NATO backed the very same Islamist forces, the LIFG, of which Belhaj was a leader and whose members it was earlier illegally rendering to Libya. The same powers now once again oppose the Islamists in the ongoing civil war in the war-torn country.
The current case is being brought by 12 Gaddafi opponents—six Libyan men, the widow of a seventh, and five British citizens of Libyan and Somali origin—against Britain’s spy agencies, MI5 and MI6, the Home Office and the Foreign Office. Using evidence from the recovered documents, they are alleging false imprisonment, blackmail, misfeasance in public office and conspiracy to assault, and demanding damages. They claim that the British government worked closely with Libya and used information from two opposition leaders, Sami al-Saadi and Abdel Hakim Belhaj, both illegally rendered to Libya where they were tortured, as evidence against them during partially secret proceedings in London.
The men’s lawyers argue that the information led to five of the 12 men being subject to control orders. Furthermore, neither the High Court nor the Special Immigration Appeal Commission were aware of the UK’s role in the kidnapping of the two men who provided the information against the men or that the information was extracted under torture, which would have been inadmissible evidence in court.
As these cases demonstrate, the entire state machinery is involved in criminality: torture, abduction, extraordinary rendition and the denial of due process. More fundamentally, they are the direct outcome of a broader criminal enterprise—the commissioning of illegal wars of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq, the criminal sponsorship of “regime change” in Libya and Syria and routine assassinations by drones of people deemed terrorists in Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere.
That the government is seeking to stop such cases getting to court testifies to its plans for further criminality, including supporting and arming Al Qaeda-linked outfits as part of the US-led scheme to stoke up a sectarian civil war and install a client government in Syria, and a possible intervention against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, prior to regime change in Iran.
There is no question that the British government will use the same methods at home to deal with the growing working class opposition to social inequality and ever-worsening social and working conditions.
Documents produced in a court case in London show that former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair and British intelligence were complicit in the rendering of dissidents to Libya to be tortured and interrogated.
The case brought by 12 opponents of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi refutes claims by leading figures in the former Labour government and the present Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, above all those of Blair, that Britain had no involvement in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition and torture programme. They reveal Blair for what he is: a criminal and a liar.
The case comes at a time when Blair is coming under increasing pressure over his role in delaying the findings of the Chilcott Inquiry into the Iraq war, now not expected until after the general election in May.
Blair wrote a fawning letter to then Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, addressing him “Dear Muammar,” saying, “I trust that you, and your family, are well,” and signing it, “Best wishes yours ever, Tony.”
According to the Guardian, the purpose of the letter, written in April 2007 when Britain was collaborating in efforts to send dissidents back to Libya, was to inform Gaddafi that the UK was about to fail in its attempts to deport two Libyans allegedly linked to an opposition organisation, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG).
Blair said that he was “disappointed” that Britain would be unable to send more regime opponents back to Libya. He wrote, “With regret, I should let you know that the British government has not been successful in its recent court case here involving deportation to Libya. I am very disappointed by the court’s decision.”
He added, “I believe it is essential that this decision is not allowed to undermine the effective bilateral co-operation which has developed between the United Kingdom and Libya in recent years. We have made such progress. It is important, for the good of both our peoples, that we continue to do so, not least in the crucial area of counter-terrorism.”
He wanted to offer “a personal word of thanks” to Gaddafi “for your assistance in the matter of deportation.”
He commented on “the excellent co-operation of your officials with their British colleagues,” which was “a tribute to the strength of the bilateral relationship, which has grown up between the United Kingdom and Libya. As you know, I am determined to see that partnership develop still further.”
Blair’s letter is one of hundreds of documents recovered from abandoned government offices in Tripoli after the 2011 NATO-led invasion of Libya to topple the Gaddafi regime and install a puppet government—an illegal war in which Britain took full part. The documents are being studied by a team of London lawyers who are bringing damages claims on behalf of a dozen Gaddafi opponents that claim they were targeted by the two countries’ agencies, to piece together the evidence of Britain’s involvement.
It is for this reason that the British government sought to have the case struck out without admitting liability, to prevent any exposure of its criminality, lies and cover ups. But the High Court threw out the bid, saying that the allegations “are of real potential public concern” and should be heard and dealt with by the courts.
The government is unlikely to accept the decision that will mean officials being called to give evidence under oath without an appeal.
For years after 9/11, around 54 foreign governments including the Blair Labour government helped the CIA set up “black sites” in their own countries, provided intelligence to kidnap, interrogate and torture detainees and allowed their airspace and airports to be used for secret flights transporting detainees.
Blair and other ministers, including former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, denied allegations of British involvement in mistreatment of detainees, and mounted a cover-up operation. These denials have been proved to be lies during court cases brought by detainees—notably that of British resident Binyam Mohamed, held as a suspected “enemy combatant” in Guantanamo Bay between 2004 and 2009. He and 15 others received around £1 million in compensation after UK courts proved in 2010 that MI5 were complicit in their unlawful interrogation and torture. Ministers authorised the multi-million pay-out to British men who were held in Guantanamo Bay to prevent their evidence of Britain’s collusion with the US emerging in open court.
In December 2012, the British government paid out £2.2 million to Libyan dissident Sami al-Saadi and his family, who stated under oath that the British intelligence authorities forcibly transferred them to Libya where he was subsequently detained and tortured.
Another Libyan, Abdel Hakim Belhaj, has initiated a civil case against the British government and three officials for “extraordinary rendition.” Belhaj offered to call off the proceedings in exchange for just £3 in damages, an admission of liability for what was done to him and his wife, and an apology from the British government. The government rejected the offer and sought to get the courts to block the case.
Last October, the Court of Appeal ruled that the case could be heard in the English courts, as it involved particularly grave violations of international law and human rights, and was not barred by either state immunity or the act of state doctrine. It rejected the Foreign Office claim that it would damage the UK’s foreign relations and national security interests.
In the 2011 operation, NATO backed the very same Islamist forces, the LIFG, of which Belhaj was a leader and whose members it was earlier illegally rendering to Libya. The same powers now once again oppose the Islamists in the ongoing civil war in the war-torn country.
The current case is being brought by 12 Gaddafi opponents—six Libyan men, the widow of a seventh, and five British citizens of Libyan and Somali origin—against Britain’s spy agencies, MI5 and MI6, the Home Office and the Foreign Office. Using evidence from the recovered documents, they are alleging false imprisonment, blackmail, misfeasance in public office and conspiracy to assault, and demanding damages. They claim that the British government worked closely with Libya and used information from two opposition leaders, Sami al-Saadi and Abdel Hakim Belhaj, both illegally rendered to Libya where they were tortured, as evidence against them during partially secret proceedings in London.
The men’s lawyers argue that the information led to five of the 12 men being subject to control orders. Furthermore, neither the High Court nor the Special Immigration Appeal Commission were aware of the UK’s role in the kidnapping of the two men who provided the information against the men or that the information was extracted under torture, which would have been inadmissible evidence in court.
As these cases demonstrate, the entire state machinery is involved in criminality: torture, abduction, extraordinary rendition and the denial of due process. More fundamentally, they are the direct outcome of a broader criminal enterprise—the commissioning of illegal wars of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq, the criminal sponsorship of “regime change” in Libya and Syria and routine assassinations by drones of people deemed terrorists in Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere.
That the government is seeking to stop such cases getting to court testifies to its plans for further criminality, including supporting and arming Al Qaeda-linked outfits as part of the US-led scheme to stoke up a sectarian civil war and install a client government in Syria, and a possible intervention against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, prior to regime change in Iran.
There is no question that the British government will use the same methods at home to deal with the growing working class opposition to social inequality and ever-worsening social and working conditions.
Australian politics in upheaval after election shock in Queensland
James Cogan
The ousting of the Queensland state Liberal National Party government after just one three-year term in office is the latest expression of the immense hostility and alienation of masses of people toward the entire political establishment and its austerity agenda. While no challenge has yet been mounted, the leadership of Prime Minister Tony Abbott—whose unpopularity is being blamed for the result—is being openly questioned in the ranks of his federal Liberal/National Party coalition and in the pages of the major newspapers.
A definite pattern has emerged in Australian political life. Elections, at both the federal and state level, have an entirely negative character, with the working class, in particular, going to the ballot box in order to repudiate the sitting government and its policies.
Three years ago, Anna Bligh’s Queensland Labor government, which had rammed through the privatisation of state assets and spending cuts, suffered a devastating election defeat and was reduced to a rump of just seven seats in parliament. Now, it appears that Labor will be back in office, possibly as a minority government, after posturing, in a thoroughly hypocritical campaign, as the main opponent of privatisation.
Likewise in Victoria, a reviled Labor government was thrown out in 2010 only to be returned last November after the one-term Liberal government was ousted over its anti-working class policies.
In Queensland, voters sought not only to punish the state government of Premier Campbell Newman for sacking public servants and moving to privatise assets, but, as in Victoria, to signal their opposition to the policies of the federal Abbott government. Abbott’s conservative coalition has only been office for 17 months, since the defeat of the Gillard-Rudd minority Labor government in September 2013. It faces seething hostility toward spending cuts to health and education that it sought to implement in its first budget last year, and, according to opinion polls, faces the prospect next year of being the first one-term federal government to be thrown out since the 1930s.
Abbott’s personal disapproval rating is now plumbing the lows recorded by former Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard just before she was deposed by her predecessor Kevin Rudd. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull—whom Abbott successfully challenged for the Liberal leadership in 2009—have been named as potential replacements. In just the last 10 years, a total of ten national leaders of the two major parties have been ousted in inner-party coups or following election defeats.
For more than 30 years, successive Labor and Liberal governments have attacked the working class with economic and social restructuring in the interests of business “international competitiveness” and profitability. The demands for savage wage cuts and the dismantling of what remains of the social welfare state are intensifying amid the impact of the global economic slump and developing deflation. Growth in China, Australia’s largest export market, is slowing markedly. Commodity prices for major exports such as iron ore, coal and gas have plummeted, slashing billions from the tax revenues of federal and state governments and blowing out their budget deficits. Investment into new mining projects has dried up, leading to tens of thousands of job losses. The Australian currency has plunged from $US1.10 in 2011 down to 77 cents, heightening cost pressures on business.
The tremendous electoral volatility stems from the incompatibility of the agenda of the ruling elite with the interests of the millions of ordinary people. The Queensland result, which saw the largest swings against a first-term government in Australian history, reflects the growing international outrage over the attempt by governments in every country to impose the burden of the economic crisis on the backs of the working class.
The editorials and commentary in today’s newspapers testify to the bewilderment and fear in ruling class circles over the resultant parliamentary impasse. Every government that seeks to meet the demands of the financial and corporate elite is threatened with defeat as soon as it has to face an election.
Paul Kelly, the editor-at-large of the Australian, wrote: “The dysfunctional crisis plaguing Australia’s political system is deepening with the potential cost to the nation only becoming more severe.”
The Australian Financial Review editorialised: “Australia’s political system has lost the capacity to make the sort of difficult policy decisions required… The longer this continues, the more likely Australia will head down a Greece-lite path that will provoke, or exacerbate, the next crisis.”
In a similar vein, the editorial of the Australian bemoaned that Queensland voters had not only destroyed the Newman government and potentially “sealed the fate of the Prime Minister,” but “may have also destroyed any hope there is for a return to the era of reforming government that characterised the 1980s and 90s.” It concluded that the “broader question for Australia’s political parties is who can successfully design, communicate and implement policy change in the modern era”?
The most pressing issue is the crisis of political perspective and leadership in the working class. The electoral ousting of a pro-capitalist party and its replacement with another does not advance the interests of the working class one iota. The Labor Party is not a “lesser evil”, but an apparatus that is committed to the same policies of war and austerity as the traditional conservative parties.
The political independence of the working class from all the parties of the ruling class is inseparable from winning the most politically-conscious sections of workers and youth to a socialist and internationalist perspective.
The ousting of the Queensland state Liberal National Party government after just one three-year term in office is the latest expression of the immense hostility and alienation of masses of people toward the entire political establishment and its austerity agenda. While no challenge has yet been mounted, the leadership of Prime Minister Tony Abbott—whose unpopularity is being blamed for the result—is being openly questioned in the ranks of his federal Liberal/National Party coalition and in the pages of the major newspapers.
A definite pattern has emerged in Australian political life. Elections, at both the federal and state level, have an entirely negative character, with the working class, in particular, going to the ballot box in order to repudiate the sitting government and its policies.
Three years ago, Anna Bligh’s Queensland Labor government, which had rammed through the privatisation of state assets and spending cuts, suffered a devastating election defeat and was reduced to a rump of just seven seats in parliament. Now, it appears that Labor will be back in office, possibly as a minority government, after posturing, in a thoroughly hypocritical campaign, as the main opponent of privatisation.
Likewise in Victoria, a reviled Labor government was thrown out in 2010 only to be returned last November after the one-term Liberal government was ousted over its anti-working class policies.
In Queensland, voters sought not only to punish the state government of Premier Campbell Newman for sacking public servants and moving to privatise assets, but, as in Victoria, to signal their opposition to the policies of the federal Abbott government. Abbott’s conservative coalition has only been office for 17 months, since the defeat of the Gillard-Rudd minority Labor government in September 2013. It faces seething hostility toward spending cuts to health and education that it sought to implement in its first budget last year, and, according to opinion polls, faces the prospect next year of being the first one-term federal government to be thrown out since the 1930s.
Abbott’s personal disapproval rating is now plumbing the lows recorded by former Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard just before she was deposed by her predecessor Kevin Rudd. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull—whom Abbott successfully challenged for the Liberal leadership in 2009—have been named as potential replacements. In just the last 10 years, a total of ten national leaders of the two major parties have been ousted in inner-party coups or following election defeats.
For more than 30 years, successive Labor and Liberal governments have attacked the working class with economic and social restructuring in the interests of business “international competitiveness” and profitability. The demands for savage wage cuts and the dismantling of what remains of the social welfare state are intensifying amid the impact of the global economic slump and developing deflation. Growth in China, Australia’s largest export market, is slowing markedly. Commodity prices for major exports such as iron ore, coal and gas have plummeted, slashing billions from the tax revenues of federal and state governments and blowing out their budget deficits. Investment into new mining projects has dried up, leading to tens of thousands of job losses. The Australian currency has plunged from $US1.10 in 2011 down to 77 cents, heightening cost pressures on business.
The tremendous electoral volatility stems from the incompatibility of the agenda of the ruling elite with the interests of the millions of ordinary people. The Queensland result, which saw the largest swings against a first-term government in Australian history, reflects the growing international outrage over the attempt by governments in every country to impose the burden of the economic crisis on the backs of the working class.
The editorials and commentary in today’s newspapers testify to the bewilderment and fear in ruling class circles over the resultant parliamentary impasse. Every government that seeks to meet the demands of the financial and corporate elite is threatened with defeat as soon as it has to face an election.
Paul Kelly, the editor-at-large of the Australian, wrote: “The dysfunctional crisis plaguing Australia’s political system is deepening with the potential cost to the nation only becoming more severe.”
The Australian Financial Review editorialised: “Australia’s political system has lost the capacity to make the sort of difficult policy decisions required… The longer this continues, the more likely Australia will head down a Greece-lite path that will provoke, or exacerbate, the next crisis.”
In a similar vein, the editorial of the Australian bemoaned that Queensland voters had not only destroyed the Newman government and potentially “sealed the fate of the Prime Minister,” but “may have also destroyed any hope there is for a return to the era of reforming government that characterised the 1980s and 90s.” It concluded that the “broader question for Australia’s political parties is who can successfully design, communicate and implement policy change in the modern era”?
The most pressing issue is the crisis of political perspective and leadership in the working class. The electoral ousting of a pro-capitalist party and its replacement with another does not advance the interests of the working class one iota. The Labor Party is not a “lesser evil”, but an apparatus that is committed to the same policies of war and austerity as the traditional conservative parties.
The political independence of the working class from all the parties of the ruling class is inseparable from winning the most politically-conscious sections of workers and youth to a socialist and internationalist perspective.
US AFRICOM commander calls for “huge” military campaign in West Africa
Thomas Gaist
US Africa Command (AFRICOM) head General David Rodriguez called for a large-scale US-led “counterinsurgency” campaign against groups in West Africa during remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC last week.
Rodriguez’s statements are part of a coordinated campaign by the US to massively expand its military operations in the resource-rich region, as it combats the influence of China and other powers.
The US should prepare for operations in at least four West African countries as part of a “huge international and multinational” response aimed at forces affiliated with Boko Haram, Rodriguez said.
AFRICOM is already preparing an “across the board response to the threat,” Rodriguez said.
Echoing recent comments from US Secretary of State John Kerry during his visit to Lagos, Nigera that the US is ready to “do more” militarily in Nigeria, Rodriguez called on the Nigerian government to “let us help more and more.”
In similar remarks at a the US Army West Point academy last week, US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) chief General Joseph Votel said that US commando teams must prepare for new deployments against Boko Haram and the Islamic State.
“[Boko Haram] is creating fertile ground for expansion into other areas,” Votel said.
“While it isn’t a direct threat to the homeland, it is impacting indirectly our interests in this particular area and creating another area of instability,” the top US special forces officer said.
Votel warned that radical Islamic groups are gaining tens of thousands of new fighters.
Votel cited ongoing SOCOM operations in the Philippines, begun in 2002, as a model for how US commandos can project US power by building relations with allied militaries. Votel will travel to Norway in early February to talk with NATO allies about US war preparations, including new military operations in the Arctic directed against Russia, according to Defense News .
Rodriguez and Votel’s statements coincided with plans announced by the African Union last week to deploy a 7,500-strong multinational force in the name of fighting Boko Haram and “other extremist groups.”
The AU multinational force will serve as the vehicle for further infiltration of US forces into West Africa, while providing support for and legitimizing the already significant US military presence in the strategically crucial, resource region. The intervention will proceed amidst elaborate war game exercises led by US Special Operations Command (SOCOM), known as Operation Flintlock, to be coordinated with a number of West African and European militaries beginning in mid-February.
US Congressional leaders are also pushing for a new war in Nigeria and the surrounding region. Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Ed Royce was scheduled to meet with the Nigerian ambassador to the US today, Ade Adefuye, known to be a strong advocate of US military intervention in Nigeria, according to Nigeria’s the Guardian.
Representatives Patrick Meehan and Peter King demanded that the US implement “a comprehensive strategy to address Boko Haram's growing lethality” in letters to Secretary Kerry posted in mid-January.
The Obama administration is also preparing to approve the sale of Cobra jet fighters to Nigerian government, according to the Guardian.
Last week, Chadian jet fighters and ground troops launched cross-border attacks against the Nigerian towns of Gamboru, Kolfata and Malumfatori, reportedly driving Boko Haram fighters out of the area. Boko Haram launched repeated assaults against northern capital of Maiduguri, home to some 2 million residents, reportedly utilizing heavy weapons including RPGs and artillery. The Nigerian military claims that hundreds of Boko Haram fighters were killed during the attacks.
South African mercenaries are fighting alongside Nigerian troops against the militants, according to reports late this week.
US Africa Command (AFRICOM) head General David Rodriguez called for a large-scale US-led “counterinsurgency” campaign against groups in West Africa during remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC last week.
Rodriguez’s statements are part of a coordinated campaign by the US to massively expand its military operations in the resource-rich region, as it combats the influence of China and other powers.
The US should prepare for operations in at least four West African countries as part of a “huge international and multinational” response aimed at forces affiliated with Boko Haram, Rodriguez said.
AFRICOM is already preparing an “across the board response to the threat,” Rodriguez said.
Echoing recent comments from US Secretary of State John Kerry during his visit to Lagos, Nigera that the US is ready to “do more” militarily in Nigeria, Rodriguez called on the Nigerian government to “let us help more and more.”
In similar remarks at a the US Army West Point academy last week, US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) chief General Joseph Votel said that US commando teams must prepare for new deployments against Boko Haram and the Islamic State.
“[Boko Haram] is creating fertile ground for expansion into other areas,” Votel said.
“While it isn’t a direct threat to the homeland, it is impacting indirectly our interests in this particular area and creating another area of instability,” the top US special forces officer said.
Votel warned that radical Islamic groups are gaining tens of thousands of new fighters.
Votel cited ongoing SOCOM operations in the Philippines, begun in 2002, as a model for how US commandos can project US power by building relations with allied militaries. Votel will travel to Norway in early February to talk with NATO allies about US war preparations, including new military operations in the Arctic directed against Russia, according to Defense News .
Rodriguez and Votel’s statements coincided with plans announced by the African Union last week to deploy a 7,500-strong multinational force in the name of fighting Boko Haram and “other extremist groups.”
The AU multinational force will serve as the vehicle for further infiltration of US forces into West Africa, while providing support for and legitimizing the already significant US military presence in the strategically crucial, resource region. The intervention will proceed amidst elaborate war game exercises led by US Special Operations Command (SOCOM), known as Operation Flintlock, to be coordinated with a number of West African and European militaries beginning in mid-February.
US Congressional leaders are also pushing for a new war in Nigeria and the surrounding region. Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Ed Royce was scheduled to meet with the Nigerian ambassador to the US today, Ade Adefuye, known to be a strong advocate of US military intervention in Nigeria, according to Nigeria’s the Guardian.
Representatives Patrick Meehan and Peter King demanded that the US implement “a comprehensive strategy to address Boko Haram's growing lethality” in letters to Secretary Kerry posted in mid-January.
The Obama administration is also preparing to approve the sale of Cobra jet fighters to Nigerian government, according to the Guardian.
Last week, Chadian jet fighters and ground troops launched cross-border attacks against the Nigerian towns of Gamboru, Kolfata and Malumfatori, reportedly driving Boko Haram fighters out of the area. Boko Haram launched repeated assaults against northern capital of Maiduguri, home to some 2 million residents, reportedly utilizing heavy weapons including RPGs and artillery. The Nigerian military claims that hundreds of Boko Haram fighters were killed during the attacks.
South African mercenaries are fighting alongside Nigerian troops against the militants, according to reports late this week.
Limited strike called at US oil refineries as national contract expires
Jeff Lusanne
Production workers at nine oil refineries walked out Sunday morning after the United Steelworkers union (USW) called a selective strike when it failed to reach a new three-year labor agreement. The contract covers 30,000 workers at more than 200 refineries, oil terminals, pipelines and petrochemical plants across the United States.
The highly profitable corporations, including multi-national giants Exxon, BP and Shell, are refusing to budge on their demands for wage and benefit concessions, excessive overtime, unsafe staffing levels and the contracting out of work.
“We told Shell that we were willing to continue bargaining for a fair agreement that would benefit the workers and the industry, but they just refused to return to the table,” said USW International Vice President Gary Beevers, who heads the national negotiations.
The USW has called out workers at only nine out of 65 refineries—three Marathon facilities in Texas and Kentucky; two Shell refineries in Texas; and three Tesoro refineries in California and Washington state. Workers at the other refineries are working on the basis of 24-hour contract extensions. There has not been a national strike of petroleum workers since a three-month stoppage in 1980.
Although the USW reached a last minute deal in 2012—and repeatedly extended the national contract before reaching an agreement in 2009—union officials apparently felt they could not ram through another sellout contract against a restive workforce. Like workers throughout the United States, oil industry workers are looking to recoup years of stagnant wages, particularly under conditions of record industry profits and incessant talk of a robust economic recovery.
Workers are also angered over deadly working conditions. US refinery workers die at a rate three times faster than their European counterparts. In 2010, seven workers were killed in an explosion at Tesoro refinery in the state of Washington. Despite a record of unsafe conditions and a largely pro-forma environmental case by the Obama administration, no one has been held accountable.
One oil worker from Huntington, West Virginia, commented on the union web site, “Hope you guys are able to agree on a fair contract that keeps all your employees and surrounding communities safe. Where I work it seems as if ‘the company’ is only concerned about safety when someone has been injured or after an incident has occurred. They repeatedly ignore safety issues on a daily basis including the understaffing you guys face.”
Under these conditions, USW officials have made rhetorical criticisms about the “richest companies in the world” refusing to provide better pay and health coverage. The union has called for “substantial wage increases,” after accepting increases of 2.5 percent in the first year and 3 percent in the second and third years in the 2012 contract.
The USW took over national oil industry contracts in 2005 after the union absorbed the remnants of the former Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW) union. The USW is notorious for its collaboration with Wall Street in the restructuring of the steel industry, which destroyed the jobs and pensions of hundreds of thousands of workers while preserving the assets of the union apparatus. In the face of new layoffs due to the impact of dropping oil prices on demand for pipeline and oil rig steel, the USW has resorted to its stock-in-trade economic nationalism, denouncing “foreign steelmakers,” not the oil and steel monopolies for the destruction of jobs.
The USW has continued its policy of labor-management “partnership” in the oil industry, leading to the conditions that workers are now looking to fight. The corporations, however, are taking a very hard line.
At BP’s Whiting, Indiana refinery, pay was frozen last week for 800 salaried, non-union workers. Whether the same demand is being placed on the 1,065 USW workers at the refinery has yet to be seen, but the USW has not announced a strike.
In 2013, Exxon Mobil’s CEO R.W. Tillerson was paid $28 million, Chevron’s CEO J.S. Watson was paid $24 million, and the CEOs of Phillips 66, Hess, Valero, Tesoro, and Marathon were all paid between $10-20 million.
Since 2012, when the last USW contract was negotiated, refiners’ shares have more than doubled on the S&P 500, and they have benefitted from refining the booming domestic oil production. In the last several months, though, the global collapse of oil prices has led to mass layoffs in the domestic oil production industry. Refiners are using the fall in the price of oil and gas as reason to refuse the USW’s request for a pay raise in the contract.
Production workers at nine oil refineries walked out Sunday morning after the United Steelworkers union (USW) called a selective strike when it failed to reach a new three-year labor agreement. The contract covers 30,000 workers at more than 200 refineries, oil terminals, pipelines and petrochemical plants across the United States.
The highly profitable corporations, including multi-national giants Exxon, BP and Shell, are refusing to budge on their demands for wage and benefit concessions, excessive overtime, unsafe staffing levels and the contracting out of work.
“We told Shell that we were willing to continue bargaining for a fair agreement that would benefit the workers and the industry, but they just refused to return to the table,” said USW International Vice President Gary Beevers, who heads the national negotiations.
The USW has called out workers at only nine out of 65 refineries—three Marathon facilities in Texas and Kentucky; two Shell refineries in Texas; and three Tesoro refineries in California and Washington state. Workers at the other refineries are working on the basis of 24-hour contract extensions. There has not been a national strike of petroleum workers since a three-month stoppage in 1980.
Although the USW reached a last minute deal in 2012—and repeatedly extended the national contract before reaching an agreement in 2009—union officials apparently felt they could not ram through another sellout contract against a restive workforce. Like workers throughout the United States, oil industry workers are looking to recoup years of stagnant wages, particularly under conditions of record industry profits and incessant talk of a robust economic recovery.
Workers are also angered over deadly working conditions. US refinery workers die at a rate three times faster than their European counterparts. In 2010, seven workers were killed in an explosion at Tesoro refinery in the state of Washington. Despite a record of unsafe conditions and a largely pro-forma environmental case by the Obama administration, no one has been held accountable.
One oil worker from Huntington, West Virginia, commented on the union web site, “Hope you guys are able to agree on a fair contract that keeps all your employees and surrounding communities safe. Where I work it seems as if ‘the company’ is only concerned about safety when someone has been injured or after an incident has occurred. They repeatedly ignore safety issues on a daily basis including the understaffing you guys face.”
Under these conditions, USW officials have made rhetorical criticisms about the “richest companies in the world” refusing to provide better pay and health coverage. The union has called for “substantial wage increases,” after accepting increases of 2.5 percent in the first year and 3 percent in the second and third years in the 2012 contract.
The USW took over national oil industry contracts in 2005 after the union absorbed the remnants of the former Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW) union. The USW is notorious for its collaboration with Wall Street in the restructuring of the steel industry, which destroyed the jobs and pensions of hundreds of thousands of workers while preserving the assets of the union apparatus. In the face of new layoffs due to the impact of dropping oil prices on demand for pipeline and oil rig steel, the USW has resorted to its stock-in-trade economic nationalism, denouncing “foreign steelmakers,” not the oil and steel monopolies for the destruction of jobs.
The USW has continued its policy of labor-management “partnership” in the oil industry, leading to the conditions that workers are now looking to fight. The corporations, however, are taking a very hard line.
At BP’s Whiting, Indiana refinery, pay was frozen last week for 800 salaried, non-union workers. Whether the same demand is being placed on the 1,065 USW workers at the refinery has yet to be seen, but the USW has not announced a strike.
In 2013, Exxon Mobil’s CEO R.W. Tillerson was paid $28 million, Chevron’s CEO J.S. Watson was paid $24 million, and the CEOs of Phillips 66, Hess, Valero, Tesoro, and Marathon were all paid between $10-20 million.
Since 2012, when the last USW contract was negotiated, refiners’ shares have more than doubled on the S&P 500, and they have benefitted from refining the booming domestic oil production. In the last several months, though, the global collapse of oil prices has led to mass layoffs in the domestic oil production industry. Refiners are using the fall in the price of oil and gas as reason to refuse the USW’s request for a pay raise in the contract.
Russian central bank cuts interest rate amid growing economic chaos
Nick Beams
The surprise interest rate cut by Russia’s central bank last week is both a response to the worsening global economic outlook and a product of repeated interventions by the United States to plunge the country’s economy into crisis, with the aim of forcing Russian President Vladimir Putin to submit to Washington’s dictates over Ukraine.
Commenting on the decision last Friday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest gloated that the rate cut of 2 percentage points showed the chaos in the Russian economy resulting from US actions.
“There are specific and clear economic costs associated with President Putin’s expedition into eastern Ukraine,” he said. “We’re hopeful that as these costs mount it will prompt President Putin to re-evaluate his strategy.”
If Putin does not, the US will step up the pressure in the hope that mounting economic problems will lead to regime-change.
The desperation move by the central bank underscores the bankruptcy of the Putin government, which is a creature of criminal oligarchs whose fortunes are derived from the theft of state property carried out through the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and restoration of capitalism.
The Putin regime has no independence from international finance capital. It has sought to whip up Russian chauvinism to counter the economic, diplomatic and military offensive of the imperialist powers, led by the United States, but now faces growing discontent and social opposition from the working class as the Russian economy, devastated by the collapse of oil prices and speculation against the rouble, descends into recession.
In the past eight months, the Russian economy has been hammered by the more than 50 percent fall in the price of oil and the impact of financial and economic sanctions imposed by the US and the European Union aimed at restricting access to global financial markets. The result has been a downward plunge in the value of the rouble, falling more than 50 percent against the US dollar over the past year, together with a sharp decline in economic growth.
In December, the Russian central bank sought to counter the run on the rouble by dramatically lifting overnight interest rates by 6.5 percentage points to 17 percent. It was the sixth interest rate increase in a year. Friday’s decision saw the rate lowered to 15 percent in an indication that the central bank is responding to pressure from both the Putin government and Russian corporate and financial interests.
“The lobby of bankers and industrialists is growing, with clear, almost aggressive pressure on the central bank to cut,” David Nangle, the head of research at Moscow-based Renaissance Capital commented in an email.
Pressure from the government was reflected in comments on January 15 by Putin’s chief economic adviser Andrey Belousov, who said doing business was “impossible” with interest rates at 17 percent. His remarks were made a day after Dmitry Tulin, a long-time veteran of the central bank seen as more favourable to calls by bankers for lower interest rates, was put in charge of monetary policy.
Announcing the rate cut decision, the central bank said it was motivated by evidence of a “cooling economy.” It claimed the risk of inflationary pressure would be contained by a “decrease in economic activity.”
This Russian version of bankers’ speak is aimed at covering over the rapidly worsening situation. The gross domestic product of Russia is expected to fall by more than 3 percent in the first half of this year, with signs that it could be even worse thereafter. Data released last week showed that real wages fell by 4.7 percent in the year to December, with real disposable income declining by 7.3 percent.
While there are specific factors at work in the Russian economic crisis, arising from the aggressive push against the Putin regime by the US, the economic turmoil is also an expression of developing global trends. The central bank decision to lower interest rates came in the wake of a series of moves by other countries, including Denmark, India, Singapore and Canada, to ease monetary policy in order to lower the value of their currencies in the face of intensifying deflationary pressures.
The strength of those pressures was underscored with the release of figures last week showing that prices in the euro zone fell by 0.6 percent in the year to January. This was equal to the low reached in July 2009 during the depths of the financial crisis. While falling oil prices were responsible for some of the decline, the so-called core measure of inflation, which strips out volatile items such as food and energy, slowed to a record low of just 0.6 percent.
Monetary easing and the consequent lowering of currency values has two objectives: to lessen deflationary pressure and to make export prices more competitive in international markets. However, as these measures become more widespread, what might have been seen as a way out for an individual country becomes transformed into a general currency war.
So far, this conflict has not fully developed because the value of the US dollar has risen in international markets. The greenback has absorbed the effect of other countries’ devaluations. But at a certain point a strong dollar can have adverse impacts both on US exports and the bottom lines of major American corporations.
Last Friday’s data on US gross domestic product showed some of those effects. Overall GDP growth in the fourth quarter fell to 2.6 percent, down from 5 percent in the third, with a major contributing factor being a fall in exports. That alone contributed 1 percentage point to the decline.
In a comment published February 1, Financial Times columnist David Luce drew attention to what he called “the perils of a strong dollar.” Luce hastened to assure his readers that “we are not about to replay the 1930s” and that the world’s major economies were not engaging in “beggar thy neighbour” policies and “Great Depression-style devaluations.” However, he warned, there were significant “undertows.”
“The Europeans and others are stepping up quantitative easing to revive growth, not to undercut the US. But the effect is the same,” he wrote. The higher value of the dollar was having an “increasingly strong effect on the corporate bottom line because almost half of the revenues of S&P 500 companies came from overseas, and an even higher share of net profits.” The effect of a stronger dollar is to lower these earnings.
At a certain point, the US may take measures to counter the wave of global devaluations, thereby intensifying economic conflicts.
Viewed in this context, US efforts to create economic and financial chaos in Russia, which ranks as the world’s ninth largest economy, parallel its recklessness on the political and military front.
The surprise interest rate cut by Russia’s central bank last week is both a response to the worsening global economic outlook and a product of repeated interventions by the United States to plunge the country’s economy into crisis, with the aim of forcing Russian President Vladimir Putin to submit to Washington’s dictates over Ukraine.
Commenting on the decision last Friday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest gloated that the rate cut of 2 percentage points showed the chaos in the Russian economy resulting from US actions.
“There are specific and clear economic costs associated with President Putin’s expedition into eastern Ukraine,” he said. “We’re hopeful that as these costs mount it will prompt President Putin to re-evaluate his strategy.”
If Putin does not, the US will step up the pressure in the hope that mounting economic problems will lead to regime-change.
The desperation move by the central bank underscores the bankruptcy of the Putin government, which is a creature of criminal oligarchs whose fortunes are derived from the theft of state property carried out through the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and restoration of capitalism.
The Putin regime has no independence from international finance capital. It has sought to whip up Russian chauvinism to counter the economic, diplomatic and military offensive of the imperialist powers, led by the United States, but now faces growing discontent and social opposition from the working class as the Russian economy, devastated by the collapse of oil prices and speculation against the rouble, descends into recession.
In the past eight months, the Russian economy has been hammered by the more than 50 percent fall in the price of oil and the impact of financial and economic sanctions imposed by the US and the European Union aimed at restricting access to global financial markets. The result has been a downward plunge in the value of the rouble, falling more than 50 percent against the US dollar over the past year, together with a sharp decline in economic growth.
In December, the Russian central bank sought to counter the run on the rouble by dramatically lifting overnight interest rates by 6.5 percentage points to 17 percent. It was the sixth interest rate increase in a year. Friday’s decision saw the rate lowered to 15 percent in an indication that the central bank is responding to pressure from both the Putin government and Russian corporate and financial interests.
“The lobby of bankers and industrialists is growing, with clear, almost aggressive pressure on the central bank to cut,” David Nangle, the head of research at Moscow-based Renaissance Capital commented in an email.
Pressure from the government was reflected in comments on January 15 by Putin’s chief economic adviser Andrey Belousov, who said doing business was “impossible” with interest rates at 17 percent. His remarks were made a day after Dmitry Tulin, a long-time veteran of the central bank seen as more favourable to calls by bankers for lower interest rates, was put in charge of monetary policy.
Announcing the rate cut decision, the central bank said it was motivated by evidence of a “cooling economy.” It claimed the risk of inflationary pressure would be contained by a “decrease in economic activity.”
This Russian version of bankers’ speak is aimed at covering over the rapidly worsening situation. The gross domestic product of Russia is expected to fall by more than 3 percent in the first half of this year, with signs that it could be even worse thereafter. Data released last week showed that real wages fell by 4.7 percent in the year to December, with real disposable income declining by 7.3 percent.
While there are specific factors at work in the Russian economic crisis, arising from the aggressive push against the Putin regime by the US, the economic turmoil is also an expression of developing global trends. The central bank decision to lower interest rates came in the wake of a series of moves by other countries, including Denmark, India, Singapore and Canada, to ease monetary policy in order to lower the value of their currencies in the face of intensifying deflationary pressures.
The strength of those pressures was underscored with the release of figures last week showing that prices in the euro zone fell by 0.6 percent in the year to January. This was equal to the low reached in July 2009 during the depths of the financial crisis. While falling oil prices were responsible for some of the decline, the so-called core measure of inflation, which strips out volatile items such as food and energy, slowed to a record low of just 0.6 percent.
Monetary easing and the consequent lowering of currency values has two objectives: to lessen deflationary pressure and to make export prices more competitive in international markets. However, as these measures become more widespread, what might have been seen as a way out for an individual country becomes transformed into a general currency war.
So far, this conflict has not fully developed because the value of the US dollar has risen in international markets. The greenback has absorbed the effect of other countries’ devaluations. But at a certain point a strong dollar can have adverse impacts both on US exports and the bottom lines of major American corporations.
Last Friday’s data on US gross domestic product showed some of those effects. Overall GDP growth in the fourth quarter fell to 2.6 percent, down from 5 percent in the third, with a major contributing factor being a fall in exports. That alone contributed 1 percentage point to the decline.
In a comment published February 1, Financial Times columnist David Luce drew attention to what he called “the perils of a strong dollar.” Luce hastened to assure his readers that “we are not about to replay the 1930s” and that the world’s major economies were not engaging in “beggar thy neighbour” policies and “Great Depression-style devaluations.” However, he warned, there were significant “undertows.”
“The Europeans and others are stepping up quantitative easing to revive growth, not to undercut the US. But the effect is the same,” he wrote. The higher value of the dollar was having an “increasingly strong effect on the corporate bottom line because almost half of the revenues of S&P 500 companies came from overseas, and an even higher share of net profits.” The effect of a stronger dollar is to lower these earnings.
At a certain point, the US may take measures to counter the wave of global devaluations, thereby intensifying economic conflicts.
Viewed in this context, US efforts to create economic and financial chaos in Russia, which ranks as the world’s ninth largest economy, parallel its recklessness on the political and military front.
Romney pullout gives Bush advantage in Republican money race
Patrick Martin
The official withdrawal of Mitt Romney from the race for the Republican presidential nomination, only three weeks after he indicated interest in a third presidential campaign, means that former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is likely to enjoy a huge financial edge over potential challengers for the nomination.
Romney’s announcement Friday, in a five minute conference call with supporters and fundraisers, came after a series of rebuffs for the 2012 Republican nominee, most notably from media mogul Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, as well as from casino boss Sheldon Adelson and hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer.
The Journal lashed the prospect of another Romney candidacy in a harshly worded editorial that began, “If Mitt Romney is the answer, what is the question?” Congressional Republicans were also distinctly negative about a possible Romney candidacy.
Pressure from the as yet undeclared Jeb Bush campaign was reportedly a major factor in both Romney’s decision and the timing of the announcement, more than a year before the first actual contest of the nomination campaign. Dozens of Republican Party operatives and fundraisers, including Romney’s own Iowa caucus coordinator, had aligned themselves with Bush.
Romney and Bush had a face-to-face meeting January 22 at a Romney vacation home in Utah, although it is not known what role that may have played in the decision to pull out.
What is remarkable is how openly the American press describes the process by which a few dozen multimillionaires have begun weeding out the Republican presidential field. The New York Times said the decision not to run “came after days of increasingly gloomy news reached the Romney family.” The newspaper continued: “Donors who supported him last time refused to commit to his campaign.”
The Times quoted one such fundraiser, California investor William Obendorf, who mobilized billionaires such as Charles Schwab and Betsy DeVos (Amway), among others, to pressure Romney not to run.
The Washington Post described three weeks of phone calls by Romney and top aides with Republican money men: “Romney was warned this month that, unless he acted to show interest in another campaign, there could be little left of the financial and political network that carried him to the nomination in 2012.”
After the Romney announcement, Brian Ballard, a Romney fundraiser in 2012 who is now attached to the Bush campaign, gloated to the Post, “It’s a great day for Jeb Bush. I think Jeb had 75 percent of the money folks here. This brings in the other 25 percent.”
It is, indeed, the “money folks” who control the Republican Party, just as they do the Democratic Party. The sentiments of working people—who for the most part would prefer a close encounter with the Ebola virus to a third Bush in the White House—count for nothing in this process.
Romney’s announcement of non-candidacy included an endorsement of “our next generation of Republican leaders, one who may not be as well known as I am today, one who has not yet taken their message across the country, one who is just getting started.” The language was a clear slap at Jeb Bush.
This was followed by a Romney dinner engagement with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a potential challenger to Bush, although spokesmen for both Romney and Christie said the meeting was a previously planned social event and not an endorsement.
Christie is expected to be Bush’s main rival for Republican establishment fundraisers, but the New Jersey governor is hampered by state and federal laws that bar direct solicitation of contributions from Wall Street firms that handle the state’s huge bond business.
The Times noted Sunday that Christie and Bush had “plunged into all-out battle this weekend for the biggest unclaimed prize in American politics and the decisive advantage that could go with it: the billion-dollar donor network once harnessed by Mitt Romney.”
The newspaper cited “hundreds of phone calls” being placed to generate the $50 million to $100 million war chest each candidate must assemble just to be judged a “credible” candidate by corporate America. Other candidates were seeking to exploit the opening left by Romney’s withdrawal, including Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Florida Senator Marco Rubio.
Besides Bush, Walker received the biggest boost from the media in the wake of Romney’s withdrawal, with favorable reports on his standing in Iowa, the first contest in the 2016 campaign. A Des Moines Register poll found him leading a thoroughly splintered Republican field, with 15 percent, followed by Kentucky Senator Rand Paul at 14 percent, Romney at 13 percent. Jeb Bush placed only sixth, with eight percent.
The official withdrawal of Mitt Romney from the race for the Republican presidential nomination, only three weeks after he indicated interest in a third presidential campaign, means that former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is likely to enjoy a huge financial edge over potential challengers for the nomination.
Romney’s announcement Friday, in a five minute conference call with supporters and fundraisers, came after a series of rebuffs for the 2012 Republican nominee, most notably from media mogul Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, as well as from casino boss Sheldon Adelson and hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer.
The Journal lashed the prospect of another Romney candidacy in a harshly worded editorial that began, “If Mitt Romney is the answer, what is the question?” Congressional Republicans were also distinctly negative about a possible Romney candidacy.
Pressure from the as yet undeclared Jeb Bush campaign was reportedly a major factor in both Romney’s decision and the timing of the announcement, more than a year before the first actual contest of the nomination campaign. Dozens of Republican Party operatives and fundraisers, including Romney’s own Iowa caucus coordinator, had aligned themselves with Bush.
Romney and Bush had a face-to-face meeting January 22 at a Romney vacation home in Utah, although it is not known what role that may have played in the decision to pull out.
What is remarkable is how openly the American press describes the process by which a few dozen multimillionaires have begun weeding out the Republican presidential field. The New York Times said the decision not to run “came after days of increasingly gloomy news reached the Romney family.” The newspaper continued: “Donors who supported him last time refused to commit to his campaign.”
The Times quoted one such fundraiser, California investor William Obendorf, who mobilized billionaires such as Charles Schwab and Betsy DeVos (Amway), among others, to pressure Romney not to run.
The Washington Post described three weeks of phone calls by Romney and top aides with Republican money men: “Romney was warned this month that, unless he acted to show interest in another campaign, there could be little left of the financial and political network that carried him to the nomination in 2012.”
After the Romney announcement, Brian Ballard, a Romney fundraiser in 2012 who is now attached to the Bush campaign, gloated to the Post, “It’s a great day for Jeb Bush. I think Jeb had 75 percent of the money folks here. This brings in the other 25 percent.”
It is, indeed, the “money folks” who control the Republican Party, just as they do the Democratic Party. The sentiments of working people—who for the most part would prefer a close encounter with the Ebola virus to a third Bush in the White House—count for nothing in this process.
Romney’s announcement of non-candidacy included an endorsement of “our next generation of Republican leaders, one who may not be as well known as I am today, one who has not yet taken their message across the country, one who is just getting started.” The language was a clear slap at Jeb Bush.
This was followed by a Romney dinner engagement with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a potential challenger to Bush, although spokesmen for both Romney and Christie said the meeting was a previously planned social event and not an endorsement.
Christie is expected to be Bush’s main rival for Republican establishment fundraisers, but the New Jersey governor is hampered by state and federal laws that bar direct solicitation of contributions from Wall Street firms that handle the state’s huge bond business.
The Times noted Sunday that Christie and Bush had “plunged into all-out battle this weekend for the biggest unclaimed prize in American politics and the decisive advantage that could go with it: the billion-dollar donor network once harnessed by Mitt Romney.”
The newspaper cited “hundreds of phone calls” being placed to generate the $50 million to $100 million war chest each candidate must assemble just to be judged a “credible” candidate by corporate America. Other candidates were seeking to exploit the opening left by Romney’s withdrawal, including Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Florida Senator Marco Rubio.
Besides Bush, Walker received the biggest boost from the media in the wake of Romney’s withdrawal, with favorable reports on his standing in Iowa, the first contest in the 2016 campaign. A Des Moines Register poll found him leading a thoroughly splintered Republican field, with 15 percent, followed by Kentucky Senator Rand Paul at 14 percent, Romney at 13 percent. Jeb Bush placed only sixth, with eight percent.
Tsipras rushes to reassure EU, banks on Greek debt
Robert Stevens
Greek Prime Minister and Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras reassured Greece’s creditors Saturday that his government would do nothing to jeopardise the country’s euro zone membership. He insisted Greece would not default and would not make unilateral demands in talks over its €323 billion debt.
In an e-mailed statement to the Bloomberg news agency, he said: “Despite the fact that there are differences in perspective, I am absolutely confident that we will soon manage to reach a mutually beneficial agreement, both for Greece and for Europe as a whole.”
“No side is seeking conflict and it has never been our intention to act unilaterally on the Greek debt,” he added.
He stressed that any declaration by his government so far—such as its refusal to negotiate with the “troika,” consisting of the European Union (EU), the European Central Bank (ECB), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)—“in no way entails that we will not fulfil our loan obligations to the ECB or the IMF.”
Late Friday, Tsipras contacted ECB head Mario Draghi to personally assure him that Athens was seeking an amicable solution on the issue of debt repayment.
These comments followed Friday’s press conference between Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis and Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the head of the euro group of finance ministers. Varoufakis said Greece was “working from the standpoint of the best possible cooperation with its institutional partners and the International Monetary Fund, but not with a [bailout] programme that we think is anti-European.”
Responding to Varoufakis’ comments that Greece was requesting an international conference to deal with Greece’s total debt, Dijsselbloem said: “As for the thought of a conference on debt restructuring, you must realise that this conference already exists and it’s called the euro group.”
Expressing the international financial oligarchy’s contempt for the democratic will of the Greek people, he added: “The problems of the Greek economy have not disappeared overnight with the elections.”
While Syriza has made a few, well-publicized gestures to break with previous Greek governments’ slavish obedience to the “troika,” it is signalling to Greek and international finance capital that its policies are compatible with EU austerity and NATO foreign policy. Last week, it voted to support economic sanctions against Russia.
On Friday evening, Varoufakis was interviewed on the BBC “Newsnight” program about Syriza’s economic policies. He said that while Greece would no longer meet with the “troika,” negotiations would still be held with each of the institutions separately.
“I have never said that we are not interested in discussion with our creditors,” Varoufakis declared. “Indeed, exactly the opposite. I’ve said we are very keen to enter into fruitful negotiations with the European Central Bank, the IMF, the European Commission, every single member state of the euro zone.”
Varoufakis pledged that Syriza would push ahead with “structural reforms” in Greece, correcting the BBC interviewer, who had said that Syriza’s manifesto called for EU austerity measures to be reversed. “Not only do we not want to reverse structural reforms, we want to deepen them and make them more extensive,” Varoufakis said.
Asked what he thought of the government’s statement that full privatisation of the port of Piraeus would be halted, he said: “The particular investment in the port of Piraeus that has been unfolding over the last few years has my full support. I would like to be part of an attempt to attract to this country foreign direct investment that has a similar effect on raising productivity and competitiveness.”
His only complaint was that previous privatisations were “a kind of fire sale,” where “assets that are potentially very valuable… are being sold off during a deflationary crisis for peanuts.”
Varoufakis’ “clarifications” and Tsipras’ assurances were made as representatives of the “troika” and the German government warned that a refusal by Greece to pay off its debts would result in the cancellation of further loans. Without further loans, including a tranche postponed when the previous New Democracy government was unable to reach agreement on new austerity measures, Greece will default.
Greece must pay back €3.5 billion in the course of February and March. If it fails to reach an agreement with the nation’s creditors by the end of February, the ECB could cut off credit to Greek banks, threatening their collapse. Further payments of €1.5 billion are due in June. In July, €4.7 billion is up for repayment, as is €3.6 billion in August.
An estimated €700 million to €1 billion a day was withdrawn from Greece’s four main banks last week. On Friday, Standard & Poor’s put the banks on review for a potential downgrade of their credit ratings as their share prices plunged.
On Saturday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel refused to countenance any moves to restructure or write down Greece’s debt. She told the B erliner Morgenpost, “I don’t see a further debt haircut.” Europe would work with Greece and other debtor nations only “if these countries undertake their own reform and saving efforts.”
On Friday, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said, “If I were a responsible Greek politician, I wouldn’t lead any debates over a debt haircut.” He warned, “We’re prepared for any discussions at any time, but the basis can’t be changed.”
The onerous terms of the €240 billion in loans agreed by the “troika” with Greece over the last five years were “exceptionally generous,” Schäuble declared, adding that Berlin would work only “in this framework and no other.”
Syriza is seeking to win support in the ruling class internationally against German-led policies of austerity and tight credit, particularly from the United States and other European countries dissatisfied with various aspects of German policy, such as France, Italy, and Spain.
This week, Tsipras and Varoufakis are visiting European capitals in what the Guardian described as a “charm offensive.” Tsipras is to visit Italy and France and will meet European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker ahead of the European Union leaders’ February 12 summit. Greek officials are not currently scheduled to travel to Germany.
On Sunday, Varoufakis met with his French counterpart Michel Sapin. Varoufakis is also scheduled to meet with UK Chancellor George Osborne, and, according to the Financial Times, “may also meet investors in London, where Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank are trying to fix meetings.”
Indications are that the French government will prove as intransigent as Germany in support of austerity measures against the working class. On Friday, Reuters cited a source close to President François Hollande who said Hollande and Merkel were agreed “that it is important to respect the choices of the Greek people and for Greece to respect its commitments” to its creditors.
The Greek government has appointed the Franco-American investment bank Lazard Frères to assist in “debt and fiscal management” ahead of negotiations over repayment. Lazard advised the Greek government on the debt restructuring agreed in 2012. Trumpeted as a substantial debt “haircut,” it led Greece’s debt to skyrocket to 175 percent of gross domestic product today.
Over the weekend, Russia moved to cement ties with Greece. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told CNBC it would consider lending money to Greece if requested by Athens. He said, “If such a petition is submitted to the Russian government, we will definitely consider it, but will take into account all the factors of our bilateral relationships between Russia and Greece, so that is all I can say.”
Greek Prime Minister and Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras reassured Greece’s creditors Saturday that his government would do nothing to jeopardise the country’s euro zone membership. He insisted Greece would not default and would not make unilateral demands in talks over its €323 billion debt.
In an e-mailed statement to the Bloomberg news agency, he said: “Despite the fact that there are differences in perspective, I am absolutely confident that we will soon manage to reach a mutually beneficial agreement, both for Greece and for Europe as a whole.”
“No side is seeking conflict and it has never been our intention to act unilaterally on the Greek debt,” he added.
He stressed that any declaration by his government so far—such as its refusal to negotiate with the “troika,” consisting of the European Union (EU), the European Central Bank (ECB), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)—“in no way entails that we will not fulfil our loan obligations to the ECB or the IMF.”
Late Friday, Tsipras contacted ECB head Mario Draghi to personally assure him that Athens was seeking an amicable solution on the issue of debt repayment.
These comments followed Friday’s press conference between Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis and Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the head of the euro group of finance ministers. Varoufakis said Greece was “working from the standpoint of the best possible cooperation with its institutional partners and the International Monetary Fund, but not with a [bailout] programme that we think is anti-European.”
Responding to Varoufakis’ comments that Greece was requesting an international conference to deal with Greece’s total debt, Dijsselbloem said: “As for the thought of a conference on debt restructuring, you must realise that this conference already exists and it’s called the euro group.”
Expressing the international financial oligarchy’s contempt for the democratic will of the Greek people, he added: “The problems of the Greek economy have not disappeared overnight with the elections.”
While Syriza has made a few, well-publicized gestures to break with previous Greek governments’ slavish obedience to the “troika,” it is signalling to Greek and international finance capital that its policies are compatible with EU austerity and NATO foreign policy. Last week, it voted to support economic sanctions against Russia.
On Friday evening, Varoufakis was interviewed on the BBC “Newsnight” program about Syriza’s economic policies. He said that while Greece would no longer meet with the “troika,” negotiations would still be held with each of the institutions separately.
“I have never said that we are not interested in discussion with our creditors,” Varoufakis declared. “Indeed, exactly the opposite. I’ve said we are very keen to enter into fruitful negotiations with the European Central Bank, the IMF, the European Commission, every single member state of the euro zone.”
Varoufakis pledged that Syriza would push ahead with “structural reforms” in Greece, correcting the BBC interviewer, who had said that Syriza’s manifesto called for EU austerity measures to be reversed. “Not only do we not want to reverse structural reforms, we want to deepen them and make them more extensive,” Varoufakis said.
Asked what he thought of the government’s statement that full privatisation of the port of Piraeus would be halted, he said: “The particular investment in the port of Piraeus that has been unfolding over the last few years has my full support. I would like to be part of an attempt to attract to this country foreign direct investment that has a similar effect on raising productivity and competitiveness.”
His only complaint was that previous privatisations were “a kind of fire sale,” where “assets that are potentially very valuable… are being sold off during a deflationary crisis for peanuts.”
Varoufakis’ “clarifications” and Tsipras’ assurances were made as representatives of the “troika” and the German government warned that a refusal by Greece to pay off its debts would result in the cancellation of further loans. Without further loans, including a tranche postponed when the previous New Democracy government was unable to reach agreement on new austerity measures, Greece will default.
Greece must pay back €3.5 billion in the course of February and March. If it fails to reach an agreement with the nation’s creditors by the end of February, the ECB could cut off credit to Greek banks, threatening their collapse. Further payments of €1.5 billion are due in June. In July, €4.7 billion is up for repayment, as is €3.6 billion in August.
An estimated €700 million to €1 billion a day was withdrawn from Greece’s four main banks last week. On Friday, Standard & Poor’s put the banks on review for a potential downgrade of their credit ratings as their share prices plunged.
On Saturday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel refused to countenance any moves to restructure or write down Greece’s debt. She told the B erliner Morgenpost, “I don’t see a further debt haircut.” Europe would work with Greece and other debtor nations only “if these countries undertake their own reform and saving efforts.”
On Friday, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said, “If I were a responsible Greek politician, I wouldn’t lead any debates over a debt haircut.” He warned, “We’re prepared for any discussions at any time, but the basis can’t be changed.”
The onerous terms of the €240 billion in loans agreed by the “troika” with Greece over the last five years were “exceptionally generous,” Schäuble declared, adding that Berlin would work only “in this framework and no other.”
Syriza is seeking to win support in the ruling class internationally against German-led policies of austerity and tight credit, particularly from the United States and other European countries dissatisfied with various aspects of German policy, such as France, Italy, and Spain.
This week, Tsipras and Varoufakis are visiting European capitals in what the Guardian described as a “charm offensive.” Tsipras is to visit Italy and France and will meet European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker ahead of the European Union leaders’ February 12 summit. Greek officials are not currently scheduled to travel to Germany.
On Sunday, Varoufakis met with his French counterpart Michel Sapin. Varoufakis is also scheduled to meet with UK Chancellor George Osborne, and, according to the Financial Times, “may also meet investors in London, where Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank are trying to fix meetings.”
Indications are that the French government will prove as intransigent as Germany in support of austerity measures against the working class. On Friday, Reuters cited a source close to President François Hollande who said Hollande and Merkel were agreed “that it is important to respect the choices of the Greek people and for Greece to respect its commitments” to its creditors.
The Greek government has appointed the Franco-American investment bank Lazard Frères to assist in “debt and fiscal management” ahead of negotiations over repayment. Lazard advised the Greek government on the debt restructuring agreed in 2012. Trumpeted as a substantial debt “haircut,” it led Greece’s debt to skyrocket to 175 percent of gross domestic product today.
Over the weekend, Russia moved to cement ties with Greece. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told CNBC it would consider lending money to Greece if requested by Athens. He said, “If such a petition is submitted to the Russian government, we will definitely consider it, but will take into account all the factors of our bilateral relationships between Russia and Greece, so that is all I can say.”
Sri Lanka: A Silent Revolution
Asanga Abeyagoonasekera
The dramatic build-up to the Presidential election in Sri Lanka on 08 January 2015 turned out a silent revolution. The common candidate who ran against the then President Rajapaksa was from within his Government. President Sirisena’s intended crossover pre-election was planned in utmost silence. Earlier commentaries published under this column over 2014 also reflected this trend in the regime’s character. "Stronger Democratic Values for a Better Tomorrow" and "Train to Jaffna" demonstrated why a largely popular regime could lose its governance focus despite being the very regime that ended a three-decade war. Both these commentaries were questioned by the former secretary to the Ministry of External Affairs as to why this author’s expression illustrated sentiments against government policies. In response, this author maintained that these were recommendations to the government to strengthen its democratic values, and questioning questionable policy was one’s right to the freedom of expression. This month’s column is written in a free political environment.
Less than 500,000 votes gave President Sirisena his victory. Much of the voter base responsible for the political overhaul lay in the majority of the minority population and the rest on the floating vote and new voters featuring strongly the social media generation. Over the final three weeks of the election campaign, social media was used as a tool to expose the Rajapaksa regime of allegations which could not be effectively countered on the same platform. Of nearly 1.5 million users of social media active on the election platform, a majority expressed the need for change by voting or otherwise. This was the silent revolution similar to the format in many places that toppled strong regimes, such as in the Middle East, and geographically closest to Sri Lanka, India.
This change expressed by voters was democratically achieved. The new interim budget introduced this year isa great relief to many common citizens who would feel great relief from the high cost of living. The RTI (Right to Information Act), repealing of 18th amendment and bringing back the 17th amendment to secure Independent Commissions will cement the aim towards good governance and restoring citizen power. After RTI, websites such as ipaidabribe.lk that report on corruption and quantify the amount of corruption could be strengthened like in India. Political corruption could be minimised by introducing new tools, for example for the Election Commissioner to understand the growth of assets of individual political candidates, to analyse the difference of asset growth from election to election, and to see the growth of assets of politicians. RTI will also give power to ordinary citizens to question the ministries, provincial, local councils and departments of their budget allocation and spending.
Sri Lanka, with its new administration, will need to do some serious reforms especially to strengthen the loss-making institutions, fight corruption and introduce meritocracy at all levels. The journey from 2009 after winning the war from a factor-driven economy to a efficiency-driven economy is an improvement but to qualify to the next level - an innovation-driven economy – energy must be focused on producing the best knowledge workers and invest in innovation and R&D. Sri Lanka, with its ancient history, was a nation of great engineers who built amazing irrigation systems. This will have to be emulated to restart its role in innovation by creating the right eco system.
The importance of innovation to a society was discussed at the foot hills of Davos earlier in January 2015, where this author participated as a Young Global Leader from Sri Lanka. The World Economic Forum was founded more than four decades ago by Prof Klaus Schwab, a visionary who got the great minds of the world to Davos to discuss global issues and design solutions. This time, the theme was "the new global context." It is evident that the horrors by many terrorist extremist groups, the economic instability and social political changes that are taking place are the reasons for a new global context with a better vision and direction by our leaders. The massacres in Paris, Nigeria and Peshawar threaten democratic values. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, “This year has started with a bang that shook us to the core. This terrible attack against Jewish citizens, journalists and police forces in Paris shows us all that we are facing challenges that don’t stop at the borders of Europe.” The millions that rallied in France with forty world leaders was a great example of the existing strength to preserve the true values of democracy. Trust is another area that needs to improve. As Prof Schwab said, "How can we restore trust in our future in our institutions? Trust is not only related to ethical behaviour. Trust means a leadership responsibility, where you respond to the needs of those who have trusted you with leadership." The contribution from science and technology discussions explained many developments in information management, DNA, robotics, brain science and many more including the neural processing units (NPU) that will transform the computational processing when commercialised this year.
2015 ushers in an era that strengthens the citizen’s power through technology. It was clear from the usage of social media in the Sri Lankan elections. The traditional processes of election rallies and massive political campaigns played a negative role as most citizens are owners of a super computer in their hand. The processing power of today's smart phone is equal to a super computer of several decades ago. The transition manifested in Sri Lanka’s political overhaul towards good governance. This transfer of power to the citizens is a positive thatmust be strengthened and used to its fullest over the coming months and years.
As Rousseau says "Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains" - it seems modern technology has helped to break the chains and empower individuals for the silent revolution.
The dramatic build-up to the Presidential election in Sri Lanka on 08 January 2015 turned out a silent revolution. The common candidate who ran against the then President Rajapaksa was from within his Government. President Sirisena’s intended crossover pre-election was planned in utmost silence. Earlier commentaries published under this column over 2014 also reflected this trend in the regime’s character. "Stronger Democratic Values for a Better Tomorrow" and "Train to Jaffna" demonstrated why a largely popular regime could lose its governance focus despite being the very regime that ended a three-decade war. Both these commentaries were questioned by the former secretary to the Ministry of External Affairs as to why this author’s expression illustrated sentiments against government policies. In response, this author maintained that these were recommendations to the government to strengthen its democratic values, and questioning questionable policy was one’s right to the freedom of expression. This month’s column is written in a free political environment.
Less than 500,000 votes gave President Sirisena his victory. Much of the voter base responsible for the political overhaul lay in the majority of the minority population and the rest on the floating vote and new voters featuring strongly the social media generation. Over the final three weeks of the election campaign, social media was used as a tool to expose the Rajapaksa regime of allegations which could not be effectively countered on the same platform. Of nearly 1.5 million users of social media active on the election platform, a majority expressed the need for change by voting or otherwise. This was the silent revolution similar to the format in many places that toppled strong regimes, such as in the Middle East, and geographically closest to Sri Lanka, India.
This change expressed by voters was democratically achieved. The new interim budget introduced this year isa great relief to many common citizens who would feel great relief from the high cost of living. The RTI (Right to Information Act), repealing of 18th amendment and bringing back the 17th amendment to secure Independent Commissions will cement the aim towards good governance and restoring citizen power. After RTI, websites such as ipaidabribe.lk that report on corruption and quantify the amount of corruption could be strengthened like in India. Political corruption could be minimised by introducing new tools, for example for the Election Commissioner to understand the growth of assets of individual political candidates, to analyse the difference of asset growth from election to election, and to see the growth of assets of politicians. RTI will also give power to ordinary citizens to question the ministries, provincial, local councils and departments of their budget allocation and spending.
Sri Lanka, with its new administration, will need to do some serious reforms especially to strengthen the loss-making institutions, fight corruption and introduce meritocracy at all levels. The journey from 2009 after winning the war from a factor-driven economy to a efficiency-driven economy is an improvement but to qualify to the next level - an innovation-driven economy – energy must be focused on producing the best knowledge workers and invest in innovation and R&D. Sri Lanka, with its ancient history, was a nation of great engineers who built amazing irrigation systems. This will have to be emulated to restart its role in innovation by creating the right eco system.
The importance of innovation to a society was discussed at the foot hills of Davos earlier in January 2015, where this author participated as a Young Global Leader from Sri Lanka. The World Economic Forum was founded more than four decades ago by Prof Klaus Schwab, a visionary who got the great minds of the world to Davos to discuss global issues and design solutions. This time, the theme was "the new global context." It is evident that the horrors by many terrorist extremist groups, the economic instability and social political changes that are taking place are the reasons for a new global context with a better vision and direction by our leaders. The massacres in Paris, Nigeria and Peshawar threaten democratic values. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, “This year has started with a bang that shook us to the core. This terrible attack against Jewish citizens, journalists and police forces in Paris shows us all that we are facing challenges that don’t stop at the borders of Europe.” The millions that rallied in France with forty world leaders was a great example of the existing strength to preserve the true values of democracy. Trust is another area that needs to improve. As Prof Schwab said, "How can we restore trust in our future in our institutions? Trust is not only related to ethical behaviour. Trust means a leadership responsibility, where you respond to the needs of those who have trusted you with leadership." The contribution from science and technology discussions explained many developments in information management, DNA, robotics, brain science and many more including the neural processing units (NPU) that will transform the computational processing when commercialised this year.
2015 ushers in an era that strengthens the citizen’s power through technology. It was clear from the usage of social media in the Sri Lankan elections. The traditional processes of election rallies and massive political campaigns played a negative role as most citizens are owners of a super computer in their hand. The processing power of today's smart phone is equal to a super computer of several decades ago. The transition manifested in Sri Lanka’s political overhaul towards good governance. This transfer of power to the citizens is a positive thatmust be strengthened and used to its fullest over the coming months and years.
As Rousseau says "Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains" - it seems modern technology has helped to break the chains and empower individuals for the silent revolution.
Japan-South Korea: Antagonism Despite Alignment
Sandip Kumar Mishra
On 29 December 2014, Japan and South Korea concluded a military intelligence-sharing agreement related to the North Korean nuclear and missile programmes. It is a three-way pact in which the US is the connecting party. The negotiations between South Korea and Japan on a similar but bilateral pact got into controversy two years ago when the information about it became public in South Korea. The recent agreement, even though limited in scope and trilateral in character, was considered to be the right note for the beginning of the new year. This year is the 70th anniversary of the Japanese surrender in World War II. Just as former Japanese Prime Ministers Tomiichi Murayama and Junichiro Koizumi expressed remorse over wartime atrocities on the 50th and 60th anniversaries, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is also expected to at least reiterate the old Japanese position.
In another move in early January, a high-level economic consultative meeting between the two countries happened in Seoul in which both agreed to boost their economic relations despite politically strained ties. It is interesting to note that despite the acrimonious verbal exchanges, which both countries have quite frequently, their bilateral trade is almost US$90 billion and neither tries to hamper their bilateral economic exchanges with their political disputes.
Furthermore, in the second week of January, a parliamentary delegation from South Korea visited Japan with South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s message to improve bilateral relations. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reportedly responded that he would like to make this year “a year to improve Japan-South-Korea relations.” These moves indicate that Japan and South Korea may be able to forge a cordial relationship with each other and would move forward in resolving their differences. The top leaders of both countries who apart from a few awkward encounters such as in November 2014 at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum have not met each other after assuming their positions - Shinzo Abe in 2012 and Park Geun-hye in February 2013 - might finally have a direct dialogue in 2015.
But amidst these positive moves there have also been the old acrimonious murmurs that seem to be straining the attempts to move forward in the bilateral relationship. On 27 January, South Korea expressed concern that Shinzo Abe may backtrack from the Japanese apology on the comfort women issue, which was expressed by former Japanese Chief Secretary Yohei Kono in 1993. China also expressed similar doubts because Abe recently made a statement that he might change the terms of apology which was used in 1995 and it would reflect his government’s present position. The Japanese government has also not announced any specific date about the release of Abe’s statement on the 70th anniversary which would be in August this year.
Japan considers that it has put in ‘maximum efforts’ to address the comfort women issue and South Korea should therefore not put any precondition for a summit meet between the two leaders. Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshidhide Suga made this statement in reaction to the South Korean President Park Gue-hye’s remarks on 13 January in which she asked for a more sensitive response from Japan on the comfort women issue before expecting direct talks between the two countries.
On 18 January, South Korea also protested to Japan against the distribution of the Korean version of Japan’s Defense White Paper, which claimed Takeshima as a Japanese territory. The islands, which South Korea calls Dokdo, have been in Seoul’s possession for more than six decades, and Korea has a historical claim over it.
The long trajectory of Japan and South Korea relations indicates that even though both countries share a common friend in the form of the US and a common threat in North Korea (also China during the Cold War), their bilateral relations have always been complicated. There have been impressive economic, cultural and educational exchanges between the two countries for the normalisation of relations since 1965, but they continue to have negative political postures against each other because of historical disputes related to textbooks, Yasukuni Shrine visits, comfort women and also territorial disputes such as Dokdo/Takeshima.
Basically, it is politically convenient for leaders of both the countries to continuously use the controversial issues for their vested political interests. Common people in South Korea are more interested in economic opportunities and their daily lives. While they do not seek another Japanese apology, Japanese political provocations may sometimes induce them to behave otherwise. Similarly, Japan’s common people are not eager about these controversial issues but when there are huge politically motivated emotional outbursts from Korea, Japanese people also become more adamant. This vicious cycle does not allow Japan and South Korea to move forward towards a future-oriented relationship and it seems that the trend of antagonism despite alignment in their bilateral relations would continue in the near future.
On 29 December 2014, Japan and South Korea concluded a military intelligence-sharing agreement related to the North Korean nuclear and missile programmes. It is a three-way pact in which the US is the connecting party. The negotiations between South Korea and Japan on a similar but bilateral pact got into controversy two years ago when the information about it became public in South Korea. The recent agreement, even though limited in scope and trilateral in character, was considered to be the right note for the beginning of the new year. This year is the 70th anniversary of the Japanese surrender in World War II. Just as former Japanese Prime Ministers Tomiichi Murayama and Junichiro Koizumi expressed remorse over wartime atrocities on the 50th and 60th anniversaries, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is also expected to at least reiterate the old Japanese position.
In another move in early January, a high-level economic consultative meeting between the two countries happened in Seoul in which both agreed to boost their economic relations despite politically strained ties. It is interesting to note that despite the acrimonious verbal exchanges, which both countries have quite frequently, their bilateral trade is almost US$90 billion and neither tries to hamper their bilateral economic exchanges with their political disputes.
Furthermore, in the second week of January, a parliamentary delegation from South Korea visited Japan with South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s message to improve bilateral relations. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reportedly responded that he would like to make this year “a year to improve Japan-South-Korea relations.” These moves indicate that Japan and South Korea may be able to forge a cordial relationship with each other and would move forward in resolving their differences. The top leaders of both countries who apart from a few awkward encounters such as in November 2014 at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum have not met each other after assuming their positions - Shinzo Abe in 2012 and Park Geun-hye in February 2013 - might finally have a direct dialogue in 2015.
But amidst these positive moves there have also been the old acrimonious murmurs that seem to be straining the attempts to move forward in the bilateral relationship. On 27 January, South Korea expressed concern that Shinzo Abe may backtrack from the Japanese apology on the comfort women issue, which was expressed by former Japanese Chief Secretary Yohei Kono in 1993. China also expressed similar doubts because Abe recently made a statement that he might change the terms of apology which was used in 1995 and it would reflect his government’s present position. The Japanese government has also not announced any specific date about the release of Abe’s statement on the 70th anniversary which would be in August this year.
Japan considers that it has put in ‘maximum efforts’ to address the comfort women issue and South Korea should therefore not put any precondition for a summit meet between the two leaders. Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshidhide Suga made this statement in reaction to the South Korean President Park Gue-hye’s remarks on 13 January in which she asked for a more sensitive response from Japan on the comfort women issue before expecting direct talks between the two countries.
On 18 January, South Korea also protested to Japan against the distribution of the Korean version of Japan’s Defense White Paper, which claimed Takeshima as a Japanese territory. The islands, which South Korea calls Dokdo, have been in Seoul’s possession for more than six decades, and Korea has a historical claim over it.
The long trajectory of Japan and South Korea relations indicates that even though both countries share a common friend in the form of the US and a common threat in North Korea (also China during the Cold War), their bilateral relations have always been complicated. There have been impressive economic, cultural and educational exchanges between the two countries for the normalisation of relations since 1965, but they continue to have negative political postures against each other because of historical disputes related to textbooks, Yasukuni Shrine visits, comfort women and also territorial disputes such as Dokdo/Takeshima.
Basically, it is politically convenient for leaders of both the countries to continuously use the controversial issues for their vested political interests. Common people in South Korea are more interested in economic opportunities and their daily lives. While they do not seek another Japanese apology, Japanese political provocations may sometimes induce them to behave otherwise. Similarly, Japan’s common people are not eager about these controversial issues but when there are huge politically motivated emotional outbursts from Korea, Japanese people also become more adamant. This vicious cycle does not allow Japan and South Korea to move forward towards a future-oriented relationship and it seems that the trend of antagonism despite alignment in their bilateral relations would continue in the near future.
Indian Ocean: Exploring Maritime Domain Awareness
Vijay Sakhuja
Attacks on maritime targets such as the USS Cole and MV Limburg off Yemen by al Qaeda, the 2008 Mumbai attacks by the Pakistan based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), and the 2014 attempt on Pakistan Navy ship by al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) have exposed the weaknesses of surveillance systems and intelligence agencies of the Indian Ocean littorals. Likewise, the rise in piracy attacks in Southeast Asia and Gulf of Aden/Somalia have highlighted the sophistication of pirate communication networks, which the naval and maritime forces could not penetrate. Security agencies concur that a robust intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and communication network is the key to robust counter-terrorism and anti-piracy operations and can effectively reduce the risk of attack by the perpetrators.
In the Indian Ocean, three wide-area CISR networks have been set up to respond to threats and challenges posed by non-State actors such as terrorists and pirates. These networks receive vital information from multiple systems such as the Automatic Identification System (AIS), the long-range identification and tracking (LRIT), satellites and shore based Electro-optical systems and radars to enable real-time data of ships operating in the oceans.
The Information Fusion Centre (IFC) is a Republic of Singapore Navy (RSN) initiative, and was established in 2009 at the Changi Command and Control Centre (CC2C) in Singapore. It is a 24/7 regional maritime focal point and undertakes a number of activities to enhance maritime situation awareness. The IFC is a symbol of effective mechanism of ‘multi-agency co-operation and interoperability amongst national and regional maritime agencies’ and an enabler for technological and operational interoperability among maritime forces which ensures timely regional responses to crisis. The IFC is linked to nearly 45 agencies from 28 countries and manned by the RSN personnel and 30 multi-national staff called International Liaison Officers (ILOs) from 12 countries who work together to generate a maritime situation picture.
Likewise, the Information Management and Analysis Centre (IMAC) at Gurgaon in India is an Indian Navy initiative and connects national coastal radar stations and other maritime systems and collates, fuses and disseminates critical intelligence and information about ‘unusual or suspicious movements and activities at sea’ for use by Indian agencies. It is part of the National Command Control Communication Intelligence (NC3I) network and was commissioned in November 2014.
The Piracy, Maritime Awareness and Risks (PMAR), a European Union initiative for capacity-building of Eastern and Southern African/Indian Ocean (ESA-IO) region, aims to enhance maritime situational awareness and counter-piracy capability of the regional States. It provides a real-time Maritime Situational Picture (MSP) of the Western Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden to the Regional Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (RMRCC) under the control of Kenya Maritime Authority (KMA) in Mombasa and the Anti-Piracy Unit of the Indian Ocean Commission (IOC) in the Seychelles. The PMAR is a roll on project and will be operational for fifteen months (July 2014 and October 2015); earlier, it had focused on the Horn of Africa (2010- 2012) and Gulf of Guinea (2011- 2013).
In the past, a number of multilateral information-sharing and intelligence exchange mechanisms such as the Shared Awareness and Deconfliction (SHADE), the Contact Group for Piracy off the Coast of Somalia (CGPCS) and the Djibouti Code of Conduct (DCoC) were set up in the Indian Ocean to counter piracy in the Gulf of Aden, and maybe wound up given that only 11 incidents of piracy were reported during 2014.
While these are noteworthy initiatives, there are at least three challenges for a robust MDA in the Indian Ocean. The IFC and IMAC lack institutional and technological networking to generate a common maritime picture for the Indian Ocean countries. Further, given that maritime security is transnational and transoceanic, these are not linked to similar agencies/systems in other regions such as the MARSUR, an initiative of the European navies. Second, the PMAR is temporary in nature and would be withdrawn/shifted to another region by the EU on completion of the stipulated fifteen months. Third is the necessity of obtaining and sharing additional information about shipping given that AIS is prone to data manipulation.
As far as a pan-Indian Ocean MDA is concerned, the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) is a useful platform to explore the above idea. After all, the idea of the IFC may have had its genesis in the 18th International Seapower Symposium at Rhode Island, US, where Chiefs of Navy of the participating countries acknowledged that information-sharing is critical for maritime domain awareness, and since then it has become a ‘common thread championed at various security dialogues and forums’.
The IMAC could consider inviting ILOs from Indian Ocean countries and enhancing multi-national naval cooperation. It is also a good idea to explore if IMAC can support regional Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) and Search and Rescue (SAR) operations, and augment environmental surveillance through situational information.
Attacks on maritime targets such as the USS Cole and MV Limburg off Yemen by al Qaeda, the 2008 Mumbai attacks by the Pakistan based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), and the 2014 attempt on Pakistan Navy ship by al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) have exposed the weaknesses of surveillance systems and intelligence agencies of the Indian Ocean littorals. Likewise, the rise in piracy attacks in Southeast Asia and Gulf of Aden/Somalia have highlighted the sophistication of pirate communication networks, which the naval and maritime forces could not penetrate. Security agencies concur that a robust intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and communication network is the key to robust counter-terrorism and anti-piracy operations and can effectively reduce the risk of attack by the perpetrators.
In the Indian Ocean, three wide-area CISR networks have been set up to respond to threats and challenges posed by non-State actors such as terrorists and pirates. These networks receive vital information from multiple systems such as the Automatic Identification System (AIS), the long-range identification and tracking (LRIT), satellites and shore based Electro-optical systems and radars to enable real-time data of ships operating in the oceans.
The Information Fusion Centre (IFC) is a Republic of Singapore Navy (RSN) initiative, and was established in 2009 at the Changi Command and Control Centre (CC2C) in Singapore. It is a 24/7 regional maritime focal point and undertakes a number of activities to enhance maritime situation awareness. The IFC is a symbol of effective mechanism of ‘multi-agency co-operation and interoperability amongst national and regional maritime agencies’ and an enabler for technological and operational interoperability among maritime forces which ensures timely regional responses to crisis. The IFC is linked to nearly 45 agencies from 28 countries and manned by the RSN personnel and 30 multi-national staff called International Liaison Officers (ILOs) from 12 countries who work together to generate a maritime situation picture.
Likewise, the Information Management and Analysis Centre (IMAC) at Gurgaon in India is an Indian Navy initiative and connects national coastal radar stations and other maritime systems and collates, fuses and disseminates critical intelligence and information about ‘unusual or suspicious movements and activities at sea’ for use by Indian agencies. It is part of the National Command Control Communication Intelligence (NC3I) network and was commissioned in November 2014.
The Piracy, Maritime Awareness and Risks (PMAR), a European Union initiative for capacity-building of Eastern and Southern African/Indian Ocean (ESA-IO) region, aims to enhance maritime situational awareness and counter-piracy capability of the regional States. It provides a real-time Maritime Situational Picture (MSP) of the Western Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden to the Regional Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (RMRCC) under the control of Kenya Maritime Authority (KMA) in Mombasa and the Anti-Piracy Unit of the Indian Ocean Commission (IOC) in the Seychelles. The PMAR is a roll on project and will be operational for fifteen months (July 2014 and October 2015); earlier, it had focused on the Horn of Africa (2010- 2012) and Gulf of Guinea (2011- 2013).
In the past, a number of multilateral information-sharing and intelligence exchange mechanisms such as the Shared Awareness and Deconfliction (SHADE), the Contact Group for Piracy off the Coast of Somalia (CGPCS) and the Djibouti Code of Conduct (DCoC) were set up in the Indian Ocean to counter piracy in the Gulf of Aden, and maybe wound up given that only 11 incidents of piracy were reported during 2014.
While these are noteworthy initiatives, there are at least three challenges for a robust MDA in the Indian Ocean. The IFC and IMAC lack institutional and technological networking to generate a common maritime picture for the Indian Ocean countries. Further, given that maritime security is transnational and transoceanic, these are not linked to similar agencies/systems in other regions such as the MARSUR, an initiative of the European navies. Second, the PMAR is temporary in nature and would be withdrawn/shifted to another region by the EU on completion of the stipulated fifteen months. Third is the necessity of obtaining and sharing additional information about shipping given that AIS is prone to data manipulation.
As far as a pan-Indian Ocean MDA is concerned, the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) is a useful platform to explore the above idea. After all, the idea of the IFC may have had its genesis in the 18th International Seapower Symposium at Rhode Island, US, where Chiefs of Navy of the participating countries acknowledged that information-sharing is critical for maritime domain awareness, and since then it has become a ‘common thread championed at various security dialogues and forums’.
The IMAC could consider inviting ILOs from Indian Ocean countries and enhancing multi-national naval cooperation. It is also a good idea to explore if IMAC can support regional Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) and Search and Rescue (SAR) operations, and augment environmental surveillance through situational information.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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