Albuquerque moves to escalate evictions of homeless campers

D. Lencho

The city of Albuquerque, New Mexico, has begun measures to clear out a homeless encampment less than a mile southwest of the downtown city hall. The encampment, known as Tent City, sprang up last year when homeless people set up tents alongside a fence on First Street, not far from the city’s railyards.

Tent City, which is near a Rescue Mission and several churches where the city’s homeless can go for food and limited services, grew to nearly 40 tents by January. The city installed a few portable toilets after getting complaints from residents in the neighborhood, a working-class area of mostly modest houses, but not far from a number of gated condominium and apartment complexes.

City councilmembers, citing complaints from residents and reports from undercover police of illegal activities—including drug use, prostitution and violence—began calling for the removal of the homeless from the area.

A number of advocacy organizations, among them the New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness and Albuquerque Homeless Shelters & Services for the Needy, visit the encampment to offer services which barely scratch the surface of the social crisis faced by the city’s homeless.

Albuquerque and its surrounding metropolitan region have over 900,000 residents, the most populated city out of a statewide population of a little over two million. Metro Las Cruces, with around 214,000, is a distant second. The number of homeless in Albuquerque has been growing steadily in recent years.

The web site of one organization, St. Martin’s Hospitality Center, states, “Over the course of the year, there are as many as 17,000 people who are without homes in New Mexico.” Between 12,000 and 15,000 of them are in Albuquerque, where some services exist, even though they are far from adequate.

The web site also lists facts and figures that point out the dire situation for homeless people in Albuquerque:

• “The MOST proximate cause of homelessness in America is poverty; Albuquerque’s poverty level is ranked the fifth highest in the nation
• “Lack of affordable housing is another major contributor to homelessness.
• “Most of the homeless in Albuquerque are long-time New Mexico residents.
• “Twenty percent (1 out of every 5) of New Mexico’s residents live below the 2008 poverty level of $10,400 in annual income.
• “In fact, 46% of jobs with the most growth between the years of 1994 and 2005 pay less than $16,000 per year.

With the city still feeling the impact of the murder of homeless camper James Boyd less than a year ago (by two Albuquerque Police Department (APD) officers), and its aftermath, the city was cautious at first. On January 23, however, deputy chief administrative officer Gilbert Montano, claiming that a “criminal element” had infiltrated the area, announced that the city would begin the process of removing the campers.

Montano told reporters, “We compassionately care about our homeless population, but public safety certainly comes first in this situation.” On February 2, the city announced that it had sent APD officers and social workers with its “Albuquerque Heading Home” initiative to “suggest” that people move out by the next day, offering them food, clothing and ten-day motel vouchers.

By the next day, there were still around 14 remaining tents. Once the vouchers run out, homeless people will have little recourse other than returning to the camp. In fact, other campsites have appeared in other sections of the city, particularly at parks and under freeway overpasses and bridges.

The city is planning to begin evicting people using “nuisance abatement” orders. Montano said, “We are not going to pull them out, and drag them out and move them along. But we will go through the court process. We will file an eviction notice to get them out of there.” On February 5, a private attorney filed a petition to stop the evictions. The next day, the judge turned down the petition for a temporary restraining order, and the authorities are expected to begin handing out three-day notices to the remaining homeless on February 9.

After removing the remaining occupants of Tent City, the city plans to prevent it being used by homeless campers again by landscaping the area and installing an “Innovation Trail” from the railyards to downtown Albuquerque.

US official admits to UK role in rendition to Diego Garcia

Jean Shaoul

A senior official from the Bush administration has admitted that the then Labour British government was complicit in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition, interrogation and torture. Britain colluded in the use of the British overseas territory of Diego Garcia by the US for its criminal activities.

The admission flatly contradicts the lies and evasions of the British government. Over a period of years, the Labour government—whose first Foreign Secretary Robin Cook famously boasted that Britain would pursue an “ethical foreign policy”—including former Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, denied any involvement on no less than 54 occasions.

The lies started to unravel in 2008, when then Labour Foreign Secretary David Miliband said that information had “just come to light” that Diego Garcia had been used as a refuelling stop for extraordinary rendition flights on just two occasions in 2002. He still denied that any detainees had ever set foot on the island, which is leased to the US.

Since then, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron has continued the lies, claiming that Britain was not involved in the rendition program. The Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition has issued statements that fell apart within days, refused to provide any meaningful answers to Freedom of Information requests from human rights organisations or the media, and resisted any public inquiry into the UK’s role in the horrific crimes of US imperialism.

Shortly after taking office in 2010, Cameron promised an independent inquiry into the issue. But in 2013 he reneged on that pledge in favour of a toothless inquiry by the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee that can be relied on to whitewash the government’s role when it eventually publishes its report.

The claims by Lawrence Wilkerson, former US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff between 2002 and 2005, add to the growing pressure on the British government to come clean on its involvement in the CIA’s rendition programme, global network of secret prisons and criminality. This includes kidnapping, illegal detention for years under the most inhumane conditions, torture, water boarding, sexual assault, sleep deprivation, forcing inmates to stand on broken limbs, and murder, for which no officials have stood trial.

Wilkerson’s claims—along with other evidence—could pave the way for a flood of litigation against the government. Last July, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Poland had actively assisted the CIA’s European “black sites” program.

Wilkerson’s information came from four well-placed CIA and intelligence sources, including a veteran of the renditions programme and an official who was “very much plugged in to what was going on at the CIA.” After he retired, he said Diego Garcia was known as a place to get things done “out of the limelight.”

While there was no permanent detention facility there, it was used as a transit location when other places were full, insecure or unavailable. “So you might have a case where you simply go in and use a facility at Diego Garcia for a month, or two weeks, or whatever, and you do your nefarious activitiesthere.” [emphasis added]

He added that the British authorities must have been aware of what was going on, saying, “It’s difficult for me to think that we could do anything there of any duration to speak of without the British knowing—at least the British on the island—knowing what we were doing.” Furthermore, “A general theme I heard was that the British were very cooperative with everything.”

This is very similar to statements by Michael Blyth, a British Royal Marine, who was head of security on Diego Garcia in 2001-2002. He said in testimony to the High Court that while a permanent site was ruled out, the possibility of using the island “for the purpose of prisoner transfers and/or detention was raised occasionally ... by US officials.”

The UN former special envoy on torture, Manfred Nowak, stated in 2008 that he had been told detainees were held on Diego Garcia in 2002 and 2003. Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star US general, also said that detainees were held on Diego Garcia, but later retracted his claim.

Swiss senator Dick Marty, who led a Council of Europe investigation into the CIA’s use of European territory and air space, said that the island had been used and that some CIA officers had helped him during his investigation.

Time magazine cited a regional intelligence officer saying that a suspected Al Qaeda terrorist known as Hambali, believed to have been involved in the 2002 Bali bombing in which 202 people died, was taken to Diego Garcia and interrogated following his capture in August 2003.

Abdel Hakim Belhaj is a Libyan dissident opposed to former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who is suing the British government and three officials for “extraordinary rendition” via Diego Garcia, where his aircraft refuelled, to Libya in 2004. His lawyers have cited documents found in abandoned government offices in Tripoli after the 2011 NATO-led invasion of Libya to topple the Gaddafi regime and install a puppet government.

A letter from the senior MI6 officer, Sir Mark Allen, to Libya’s intelligence chief Musa Kusa, shows that thanks to help from British intelligence, the CIA planned to use Diego Garcia as a stopover for rendering him and his pregnant wife to be tortured in Libya. Belhaj claims that during his more than four years in a Libyan prison he was interrogated by US and British intelligence agents.

While it has been known for decades that Diego Garcia has some kind of US detention facility, the British government turned down an informal request from the US in 2001 to use it for a Guantanamo-type facility to hold hundreds of suspected “terrorist” prisoners from Afghanistan. The official UK government position is that it never gave the US explicit permission to use the island for its rendition, detention and torture program.

Successive British governments have sought to cover up what was going on.

To cite but one of the most damaging examples: Last July, when asked in parliament about the records of flights to and from the island, Conservative Foreign Office Minister Mark Simmonds claimed the records were “incomplete due to water damage” in June 2014. A week later, he said the “previously wet paper records have been dried out… no flight records have been lost as a result of the water damage.”

But in September, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee was told that the papers had been “damaged [by water] to the point of no longer being useful.”

Ministers refused to answer questions raised in parliament over whether the US had sought permission to use Diego Garcia for Belhaj and his wife’s rendition to Libya.

Last August, David Miliband implied that further evidence could well emerge—and as a former Labour Foreign Secretary, he is in a position to know.

In December, it was revealed that Britain had made repeated requests that its role be struck out from the US Senate Intelligence Committee’s executive summary of its report into torture by the CIA, itself only a summary of a 6,700-page classified report. In the event, the CIA and the Obama administration insisted that all references to the participation of other governments were omitted.

New Sri Lankan government brings down election budget

Saman Gunadasa

The Sri Lankan parliament on Saturday endorsed an “interim budget” tabled on January 29 by Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake. The budget is aimed at winning increased electoral support for the new minority government, which was formed by Maithripala Sirisena following his defeat of Mahinda Rajapakse in the January 8 presidential elections.

President Sirisena’s government is dominated by the pro-US United National Party (UNP) but Rajapakse’s former ruling coalition, headed by the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), still has a majority in the parliament. Sirisena defected from the government to stand as the opposition candidate but remains a member of the SLFP.

The Sirisena government and its pseudo-left backers, such as Nava Sama Samaja Party (NSSP), presented the interim financial measures as a “Robin Hood budget” which snatches wealth from the rich and distributes it to the poor.

These claims are bogus. The budget is aimed at hoodwinking workers and the poor with a series of cosmetic concessions and the imposition of several taxes on the wealthy. Karunanayake, in fact, has begun talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) over Sri Lanka’s debt. This will mean that new social austerity measures will be imposed whichever government comes to power after the parliamentary election scheduled for May.

The budget cuts taxes on 13 essential food items, including wheat flour, sugar, milk powder, canned and dry fish and green gram (mung beans) by between 10 and 15 percent. The cost of rice, the main staple food, however, has not been reduced. Just before the budget, the government cut petrol, diesel, kerosene and gas prices by 22, 14, 20 and 16 percent respectively.

Public sector workers’ monthly salaries will be increased by 10,000 rupees ($US75)—50 percent of the rise paid this month and the remainder in June. The monthly pension was increased by just 1,000 rupees.

The vast majority of private sector workers, including low-paid estate workers and garment workers, will not get any increase. Finance Minister Karunanayake claimed that if the government forced private companies to increase workers’ salaries, “the companies will have to close.” In a crude attempt to deflect the anger of workers, he issued an empty appeal for big business to grant a 2,500-rupee increase. This rise is unlikely to be paid.

Other budget proposals include increases in the guaranteed price for paddy, potatoes, tea, rubber and milk from small farmers and a 50 percent write-off of less than 100,000-rupeee loans to farmers. The agricultural fertilizer subsidy will continue and Samurdhi payments, a limited welfare program for the poor, were doubled for those receiving between 250 and 1,000 rupees per month. Karunanayake also announced that expenditure for education and health would be increased to 6 and 3 percent of the GDP respectively, up from 1.7 and 1.3 percent.

In 2006, the Rajapakse government imposed a virtual salary freeze. Over the past decade the cost of living in Sri Lanka has skyrocketed dramatically so the promised salary increases and price reductions in basic food items will not significantly reverse the decline in the living standards of ordinary working people. According to a Census and Statistics Department survey for 2012–2013, a family of four needs over 41,000 rupees per month to cover basic living costs.

The Sirisena government’s cosmetic budget measures, which were presented during the January presidential election campaign as part of a so-called 100-day program, were an attempt to exploit the deep popular opposition among working people to Rajapakse’s austerity measures.

As former leading member in the Rajapakse administration, Sirisena backed all of its attacks on the working class and the poor. His decision to quit the Rajapakse government and run for president was orchestrated by pro-US former Sri Lankan president Chandrika Kumaratunga and UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe with Washington’s backing. The principal aim of the regime-change operation was to end Rajapakse’s orientation towards Beijing and bring Sri Lanka firmly into line with Washington’s “pivot to Asia” and its preparations for war against China.

Karunanayake’s budget tax measures against the rich are politically calculated and temporary. These include a onetime “Mansion Tax” on houses built after the year 2000 and valued at over 150 million rupees or larger than 10,000 square feet. Other measures include a special 25 percent “supergain tax” on any company whose profits exceed Rs. 2,000 million; a 200-million rupees per month tax on liquor manufacturers; and one-off impost of 1,000 million and 250 million rupees on satellite and mobile telephone operators respectively.

While there was disquiet in big business circles about these policies, Karunanayake insisted that the government would “not act unfairly in collecting these taxes” and indicated some taxes were aimed at cronies of the previous government. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said that he had told several CEOs, who claimed to have difficulty paying the taxes, to just wait for a year for a relief.

In line with IMF demands, major social attacks are now being prepared against the working class and the poor. A few days after being appointed finance minister, Karunanayake held discussions with IMF representatives about obtaining loans to reduce the current debt burden. In his budget speech Karunanayake claimed that the new government had inherited an 8.8 trillion rupee debt, more than 1 trillion rupees higher than expected.

“The state of the economy is much more precarious than what we previously thought. The debt is exorbitant,” Karunanayake said. The sudden discovery of a higher debt is entirely predictable and will be used to justify future retrogressive social measures. Karunanayake told the Daily Mirror that he wanted “to make the financial process more disciplined” with “‘conditionised’ loans.”

Karunanayake claimed that he could reduce the projected 2015 budget deficit from 4.6 to 4.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by cutting “unnecessary costs” and pledged to carry out the previous government’s promise to reduce deficit to 3.8 percent of the GDP by 2016.

UNP chief and current prime minister, Wickremesinghe has a clear track record. As prime minister from 2001–04, he slashed state sector spending and jobs and bolstered the privatisation of state-owned industries. His widely discredited economic programme was called “Regaining Sri Lanka.”

Behind government and media claims of budget “concessions,” the new Sri Lankan government is preparing even more ruthless attacks on the working class and the poor that will set the stage for sharp class battles.

Munich Security Conference: Threats and provocations against Russia over Ukraine

Johannes Stern

The 51st Munich Security Conference, held in the Bavarian capital at the weekend, was dominated by the escalation of warmongering against Russia by the imperialist powers.

All the protagonists to the conflict—including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, US Vice President Joseph Biden and US Secretary of State John Kerry—came together at the Bayerischer Hof luxury hotel. With Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in attendance, they used the conference as a platform to ratchet up the conflict with Moscow.

In her opening speech on Friday, German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen praised Germany’s leading role in NATO’s arming of the Eastern European states and establishment of a rapid reaction force against Russia. “Germany is not only a framework nation and initial facilitator of the new NATO spearhead,” she declared, “We are helping to build the Multinational Corps Northeast and set up NATO bases in NATO’s eastern and southern member states.” She boasted of the “tireless commitment of the [German] government to strengthening the role of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and ensuring a united position of the EU in its relations with Russia.”

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg followed her. He praised the decision of the NATO defence ministers at their meeting last Thursday to upgrade their forces in eastern Europe as the “greatest strengthening of our collective defence since the end of the Cold War,” and left no doubt that the measures were directed against Russia.

Although the imperialist powers provoked the Ukraine crisis and have systematically escalated their military, economic and diplomatic offensive against Russia, Stoltenberg cast Russia as the aggressor. “Here in Europe,” he said, “we see a dangerous pattern of Russian behaviour: annexation, aggressive actions and intimidation. The conflict in Ukraine is deepening, with a horrific cost to civilians. The causes are clear and cannot be denied. Russia continues to provide training, equipment and forces in support of the separatists. And it continues to destabilise Ukraine in utter disregard for the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

On Saturday, German Chancellor Merkel spoke. Although she had only just returned, along with French President Hollande, from “peace” talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, she fiercely attacked Russia. She declared that Moscow’s actions, “first in Crimea, then in eastern Ukraine,” had “violated the foundations of our living together in Europe.” The “territorial integrity of Ukraine as well as its sovereignty have been flouted” and international law broken, she continued.

With regard to the discussions with Putin, Merkel tried to lower expectations. “It is uncertain whether [the talks] have been successful,” she said, “But it is my view and the view of the French president that it was in any case worth making the effort. I think we owe that at least to the people affected in Ukraine.”

In fact, the German government is largely responsible for the conflict in Ukraine, which has already cost more than 5,000 lives, forced hundreds of thousands to flee, and brought NATO and the US to the brink of war with Russia, a nuclear power. Berlin collaborated with Washington in backing last February’s putsch in Ukraine, utilizing fascist forces to bring a pro-Western regime to power to launch a brutal war against eastern Ukraine and stoke up the conflict with Russia.

The speech by Ukrainian President and oligarch Petro Poroshenko in Munich was virtually a declaration of war on Russia. He began by waving Russian passports in the air—supposedly proof of the presence of Russian soldiers in eastern Ukraine. Then he appealed to the West, particularly Germany, to supply weapons to the Ukrainian army.

The Ukrainian question would remain unresolved, he asserted, as long as Western officials refused to provide “solid, practical support.” Ukraine needed “defensive military support to ensure the ceasefire and containment of aggression,” he added.

In the course of the conference, a conflict developed over whether weapons should be supplied to the Ukrainian army, which now faces military defeat. While in the US the camp advocating the delivery of lethal weapons is growing, the representatives of the German government warned the security conference against such plans.

In response to a question from US Senator Bob Corker (Republican from Tennessee), Merkel said she understood the impulse to send arms. However, she said, the idea that weapons supplies alone would enable the Ukrainian army to proceed against a superior opponent was illusory. “It cannot be won militarily,” Merkel declared. “That is the bitter truth.”

Nevertheless, those opposing Russia were not weak or defenseless, Merkel said, because their strength was rooted in the economy. It was wrong to doubt the effectiveness of sanctions, she insisted. “I am 100 percent convinced that we will win with our principles,” Merkel declared, adding that “when some in the European Union say after just two months we can’t see any effect of the sanctions, then I can only say: ‘That’s not how you win the battle.’”

While the German government stresses that the conflict cannot be won militarily, and proposes to force Russia to submit through economic pressure, a section of the American elite is ever more aggressively advocating supplying weapons. Following Merkel’s speech, US Senator John McCain (Republican from Arizona) attacked the German government in an interview with broadcaster ZDF.

“If one looks at the position of the German government, one could believe they had no idea, or they couldn’t care less, that people in Ukraine were being slaughtered,” the former Republican presidential candidate and chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee said. He asked whether Merkel wanted merely to watch “as a country in Europe was destroyed for the first time since the Second World War.” He added that he was disappointed with the Europeans, but had “expected nothing else.”

Despite the growing tensions between the US and Germany about further actions against Russia, both sides were keen to appear as united as possible before Monday’s meeting between Merkel and Obama in Washington. Secretary of State John Kerry tried to play down the differences regarding weapons deliveries.

“I assure you that there is no split, only people who are trying to create one,” Kerry said in his speech on Sunday. “We are working closely together.” The US was also seeking a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine conflict. “We all agree that this problem cannot be resolved militarily,” Kerry said.

Prior to this, his German counterpart, Foreign Minister Steinmeier, sharply attacked Russia once again. Moscow must “be clear that there is a good future for Russia only with and not against Europe,” he declared. The speech of Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, who accused the US and EU of ratcheting up the conflict in Ukraine, had “not contributed anything,” Steinmeier added.

Behind the mantra of a “diplomatic solution,” the German ruling elite is preparing for war. The chairman of the Federal Armed Forces Association, André Wüstner, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur: “If you want peace, you must prepare for war.”

He called for a massive military build-up. “In order to achieve the optimum deployment capability of the German Armed Forces,” he said, the government must “gradually raise the defence budget over the coming years, from 2016, initially by one billion euros.”

The political significance of the US oil workers’ strike

Jerry White

More than 5,000 refinery workers in the United States are striking against the largest oil conglomerates in the world in a fight for improved living standards and working conditions. Although the United Steelworkers (USW) leadership has deliberately limited the struggle—calling out less than one-fifth of the 30,000 oil workers it organizes—the strike is a harbinger of a renewal of open class struggle in the United States with far-reaching implications in the US and internationally.

The strike and other signs of working-class opposition, including the brewing struggle of West Coast dockworkers, are manifestations of the pent-up anger of workers who have suffered through the longest period of wage stagnation since the Great Depression, even as corporate profits and the stock markets soar in the sixth year of a supposed economic recovery.

In recent months, major think tanks and corporate-controlled publications have warned about the danger of “wages push” by American workers in 2015. Late last year, President Obama held a meeting with the Business Roundtable—which includes top executives from Big Oil—where he complained there was a “disquiet in the general public” over the fact that “wages and incomes still haven’t gone up significantly.”

While Obama has since issued meaningless rhetoric about “inclusive prosperity” and “middle class economics,” his policy has been to transform American workers into a highly exploited cheap labor force. The relentless lowering of wages, begun with Obama’s restructuring of the auto industry, has led to the record corporate profits.

Even though the drop in oil prices has affected their earnings, the big five oil companies—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell—made $89.7 billion in profits last year. While spending tens of billions on stock buybacks and dividends for their super-rich investors, they are drawing a line in the sand against any raises for workers.

The White House has urged the oil companies and the USW “to resolve their differences using the time-tested process of collective bargaining.” This only means that Obama is looking to the “time-tested” USW bureaucracy—whose president, Leo Gerard, sits on Obama’s corporate competitiveness board—to strangle the strike before it can become a catalyst for a wider movement over wages.

The fact that the oil strike has broken out at all is significant. For more than 30 years the class struggle in the US has been suppressed by trade unions, which have functioned as direct adjuncts of the corporations and the state in the systematic destruction of workers’ living standards. Every aspect of life—above all, the explosive growth of social inequality—has been affected by the virtual exclusion of any organized working-class resistance.

Nothing the working class ever gained—the right to organize, the eight-hour day, decent wages, pensions, public education and other social rights—was achieved through the beneficence of the ruling class and the government. It was only wrenched through mass struggles. So fierce were these battles—which characterized much of American history from the 1870s to the 1980s—that they were generally referred to as “labor wars.”

The breakthrough eighty years ago with the formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was the result of a series of semi-insurrectional struggles, led by socialist and leftwing militants in Toledo, Minneapolis and San Francisco. This was followed by the sit-down strikes in Flint, Michigan, which implicitly challenged the private property of the capitalist owners. Then, in 1937, Chicago cops brutally attacked striking steelworkers, leaving 10 unarmed workers dead in the Memorial Day Massacre of 1937.

However, the newly formed CIO remained subordinate to the Democratic Party, and this political alliance had far-reaching implications for the labor movement. The alliance with the Democrats, a capitalist party, meant an abandonment of any fundamental change in social relations, and the new unions quickly made their peace with American capitalism. This was cemented in the purging of the socialist pioneers who built the industrial unions and the alliance of the CIO with American imperialism. The merger of the AFL and the CIO in 1955 marked the final repudiation of any radical social struggle.

The crisis of the labor movement was exacerbated by the decline in the global position of the United States in the 1960s and 1970s and the end of the period of the postwar boom, when American imperialism held unquestionable sway over the world economy. When the American ruling class abandoned its policy of class compromise and adopted an aggressive policy of class war—symbolized by Reagan’s 1981 firing of 13,000 striking PATCO air traffic controllers—the trade unions not only capitulated; they aided and abetted these attacks.

In the name of boosting the “competitiveness” and profitability of US corporations, the AFL-CIO deliberately isolated and betrayed strike after strike—PATCO, Phelps Dodge, AT Massey, Hormel, Eastern Airlines, Pittston and countless others. The cumulative impact was the transformation of the unions into organizations that in no way represented the working class. The betrayals provided a lucrative path for union bureaucrats, who had no association with any form of class struggle, directly into the structure of corporate management and the capitalist state. As a result, strikes, which were a common feature of American life for a century, have virtually disappeared.

The United Steelworkers is a case in point. Far from opposing the dismantling of the steel industry, the USW colluded with Wall Street and corporate asset strippers to wipe out the jobs and pensions of hundreds of thousands of workers, while preserving the interests of the union executives.

The dissolution of the American labor movement was part of an international process. The global integration of capitalist production undermined the nationally based unions in every country. In order to attract investment, the unions have all been transformed into a labor police force to suppress the class struggle and lower workers’ living standards.

Along with the degeneration of the unions there has been a parallel development in the ranks of the middle-class “left” organizations, which have written off the working class and obsessively focused their attention on race, gender and everything but class. Many of these pseudo-left forces have found lucrative careers trying to keep workers tied to the discredited trade unions.

Now this “sleeping giant”—the American working class—is stirring once again. This will bring to the fore the basic yet unmentionable contradictions of American political and social life: the class struggle.

The reawakening of the working class, strategically located in the center of world imperialism, is a powerful threat to the American ruling elite, which will no longer be the unchallenged master in its own house.

The movement of the American working class is being driven by a profound economic logic. The myth of the land of unlimited opportunity has long been dissipated. Several generations of workers have known nothing but the relentless decay of their living standards. The long suppression of the class struggle by the trade unions has not done away with social tensions, but only ensured that, once released, they will take on an ever more revolutionary character.

The reemergence of social struggle raises complex and difficult political questions. It is necessary to reconnect with the immense traditions of class conflict in the United States, while absorbing and learning from the lessons of history.

The development of a Marxist orientation in the working class will require a relentless exposure of the role of the trade unions and a determined campaign to break their stranglehold over the working class. It requires the fight to develop an understanding among workers of the fundamental politicalquestions at stake, that to secure their interests workers must embark on a path aimed at taking political power and reorganizing society internationally on the basis of socialist principles. It is to this basic task that the Socialist Equality Party is dedicated.

East Timorese prime minister resigns, “national unity” government formed

Patrick Kelly

Xanana Gusmão has formally resigned as prime minister of East Timor, as part of a wider political realignment within the country’s ruling elite. Gusmão nominated as his successor Rui Araujo, of the formerly opposition party Fretilin, with other Fretilin members to join a new “national unity” government.

Gusmão announced last year that he planned to resign. He served as East Timor’s first president from 2002, following the granting of formal independence to the previously Indonesian-occupied half-island. In 2007 he was installed as prime minister, after collaborating the previous year with an Australian-instigated military intervention that led to the ousting of the Fretilin government of Mari Alkatiri. Gusmão’s resignation, more than two years before the end of his second term in office, comes amid escalating economic and social crisis in East Timor

More than 15 years after the Australian military led a bogus “humanitarian intervention” into the statelet in 1999, the claim that the social interests and democratic rights of the Timorese working class and rural poor could be advanced through the formation of a separate capitalist nation state stands exposed as a cruel illusion.

Despite the government reaping billions of dollars in oil and gas revenues—Timor’s energy reserves are the country’s only significant natural resource and source of economic activity—the vast majority of ordinary people remain in desperate poverty. Mass unemployment, especially for young people, wracks the capital Dili, while in rural areas much of the population remains confined to a subsistence existence. A report released late last year by the International Food Policy Research Institute found that Timor trailed only Burundi and Eritrea in having the most widespread hunger of any country. The report also noted that Timor has high levels of underweight children under 5, more than one in three, similar to Niger and Yemen.

At the same time, a narrow Timorese elite has emerged that has amassed enormous personal wealth through lucrative government contracts and related dealings with transnational oil and gas companies.

Now, however, this elite confronts the threat of state bankruptcy and collapse. Only one significant oil and gas project has been developed since so-called independence—the Bayu-Undan field in the Timor Sea, which delivers more than 90 percent of government revenue. This field is due to run dry within the next decade. The far larger Greater Sunrise field remains undeveloped, amid an ongoing standoff between the Timorese government and Woodside Petroleum, which is backed by the Australian government, over where any tapped oil and gas should be processed. Dili is demanding a processing plant be constructed in Timor, while Woodside is holding out for either a pipeline to Australia or a floating facility in the Timor Sea.

The dispute has coincided with far reaching shifts in the international energy market, driven by the rise of natural gas fracking operations in the US and other countries. The recent plunge in the world oil price has fuelled concerns in Timor that the Greater Sunrise project will be rejected as insufficiently profitable by Woodside and the minor consortium partners, America’s ConocoPhillips and Anglo-Dutch Shell.

In its desperation to get Greater Sunrise started, Gusmão last year quietly suspended a crucial legal case in The Hague’s International Court of Justice. The case was an attempt to overturn a 2004 treaty that divided the Greater Sunrise resources between Timor and Australia, despite the vast majority of the reserves lying outside Australia’s lawful territory. Behind closed doors, negotiations are underway between the Australian and Timorese governments.

The escalating economic crisis has driven the rapprochement between Fretilin and Gusmão. Previously bitter enemies within the ruling elite have now closed ranks, attempting to shore up their common class interests.

In 2006, Fretilin leader Mari Alkatiri denounced then President Gusmão for his role in triggering a split in the Timorese armed forces and instigating anti-government riots that provided the pretext for Australian military intervention. After the 2007 elections, in which Fretilin won the most seats in parliament but were denied the opportunity of forming a coalition administration, Mari Alkatiri accused Gusmão of heading an “illegal government.” In 2008, Alkatiriaccused Gusmão of staging a so-called assassination attempt against himself, and also suggested that “rebel” soldier Alfredo Reinado had been set up as part of Gusmão’s efforts to bolster his grip on power.

Now all this has been put aside. In February 2013, Gusmão and Alkatiri announced a “new political arrangement,” in which Fretilin would collaborate with the ruling parties in the country’s parliament and in return would be consulted in different areas of government decision making. For the last two years, Fretilin has effectively functioned as a government party, approving Gusmão’s budgets and voting for other legislation—including numerous anti-democratic laws promoted by Gusmão. A media bill unanimously endorsed by the parliament last year ordered journalists to “promote public interest and democratic order” and “encourage and support high quality economic policies.”

Gusmão appointed Alkatiri chief of the Oecuse region, which is to be developed as a cheap labour “Special Social Market Economy Zone,” attracting investment from transnational textile and other manufacturers. Alkatiri’s evolution, from resistance leader to sweatshop-foreman-in-chief, underscores the utter bankruptcy of bourgeois nationalism.

Alkatiri is now set to play a more prominent role, although he reportedly promised Gusmão that he would not seek to again become prime minister. With Gusmão’s resignation, the “restructuring” of the government is likely to incorporate several Fretilin ministers.

There is no doubt that the imperialist powers are manoeuvring to shore up their interests amid the political realignment in Dili. Canberra ousted Alkatiri in 2006 because he was regarded as too closely aligned with Portugal and China. Gusmão was installed as the Australian government’s man—though he has since sought to manoeuvre with rival powers, using a turn to China and other countries as leverage in the Greater Sunrise dispute. In April last year, both Gusmão and Alkatiri spent a week in China, seeking closer economic and diplomatic relations.

Gusmão’s nominated successor, however, Rui Araujo, has close ties with Canberra and Washington. Previously completing a medical degree in New Zealand, Araujo was installed as deputy prime minister for a period in 2006 after Alkatiri resigned as prime minister. A US diplomatic cable, sent from the Dili embassy on July 10 that year and later published by WikiLeaks, lauded Araujo for his “intelligence and sincerity [and] technical and managerial skills,” adding that he “has a good relationship with the Embassy and USAID.”

Canada’s opposition parties acquiesce to government’s draconian “anti-terror” bill

Roger Jordan

Canada’s opposition parties have signaled that they will mount no serious opposition to the Conservative government’s latest “anti-terror” bill—legislation that would dramatically expand the powers of the national security apparatus and attack core democratic rights.

The Liberals, who polls indicate are the best positioned to unseat the Conservatives in the coming federal election, have announced they will vote in favour of Bill C-51 even if the government rejects the various amendments they intend to propose. The trade-union based NDP, the current official opposition, has thus far refused to say whether it supports or opposes the legislation. Like the Liberals, what criticisms it has made have been confined to the lack of “oversight mechanisms.”

Under Bill C-51, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS), the country’s premier spy agency, is to be empowered to use illegal means to “disrupt” purported threats to Canada’s national security, a major shift from its current role as an intelligence-gathering agency. “Disruption” techniques could include breaking into homes, interfering with bank accounts and other personal data, and intercepting mail and other packages.

While the government is promoting Bill C-51 as an “anti-terror” law, the legislation stipulates that CSIS can use illegal means against a wide range of threats to Canada’s national security, including threats to its economic stability or territorial integrity, foreign espionage and subversion. CSIS, it should be added, has long subjected a wide array of dissident groups to surveillance, including leftist, environmental and aboriginal groups.

The legislation’s only restrictions on CSIS’s right to “disrupt” are that a judge must approve the target through the issuing of a “disruption” warrant and the secret police’s dirty tricks must not cause bodily harm.

Bill C-51 would also grant the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) additional powers of preventive arrest. Persons whom the authorities contend “may” commit a terrorist act could be detained for up to seven days without charge. Police will also be able to arrest individuals for a new offence of “promoting or advocating” terrorism, a vague formulation that could apply to political opponents of the government’s aggressive war in the Middle East, or potentially even those who use strong language in denouncing the ruling elite’s austerity measures.

The evidence thresholds for detention-without-charge and arrests are to be reduced for terrorist offences.

Neither of the opposition parties has questioned the implications of any of these measures for democratic rights.

Even prior to the bill’s tabling on January 30th, the Liberals announced that they were ready to back it. Last Wednesday, party leader Justin Trudeau confirmed that the Liberals will vote in favour of the bill in parliament, even if their minor amendments to strengthen parliamentary controls over the spy agencies are not adopted. “This bill can be improved, but as a whole, it does include measures that will keep Canadians safe,” declared Trudeau.

The NDP is reportedly now leaning in favor of opposing Bill C-51. But its long silence and refusal to challenge the bill’s sweeping attack on democratic rights indicate that while it may ultimately vote against Bill C-51, its opposition will be muted and pro forma.

In a statement released the same day Prime Minster Stephen Harper outlined the legislation, NDP Foreign Affairs spokesman Paul Dewar attacked the government from the right. After citing the NDP’s call for more third-party oversight of the national security apparatus, Dewar called for more funding for the security services, commenting, “We are also concerned about the cuts Conservatives have made to the police, intelligence and broader security agencies in recent years.”

Fully accepting the reactionary framework of the government’s anti-terrorism rhetoric, and siding with the Conservatives against anyone seeking to question their motives, he went on, “Everyone in Canada is united in our determination to keep this land strong and free. From time to time we will disagree on how to achieve this goal but no matter what differences we may have, we believe all parliamentarians must approach this complex issue with the respect and dignity it deserves and we know that every Member of Parliament is committed to the safety and security of all Canadians.”

NDP leader Thomas Mulcair continued the party’s avoidance of any reference to the bill’s substantive measures during his parliamentary appearance last week. Referring to a Conservative comment that parliamentary oversight of the security agencies would amount to “red tape,” Mulcair rhetorically asked if the government thought “the safety of Canadians” was just “red tape.”

Harper’s government has responded to the opposition by stating that CSIS’s activities are already scrutinized by the Security and Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC). This government-appointed “watchdog” was formed with the explicit aim of removing scrutiny of the intelligence agency’s’ activities from the purview of parliament. It has a long history of apologizing for, or covering up, CSIS misdeeds, including CSIS’s complicity in the torture of Canadians whom it fingered to foreign intelligence agencies. In recent years, the SIRC has issued highly praiseworthy reviews of CSIS, even as one revelation after another has come to light exposing their involvement in mass spying against the Canadian population and lying to the courts.

While the Conservative government now lauds the work of the SIRC, it has in fact shown little regard for it, using it to make patronage appointments and leaving two of its five seats vacant for almost a year. Previous Conservative appointees include Arthur Porter, who is currently imprisoned in Panama fighting extradition to Canada to face charges of accepting millions in bribes, and Chuck Strahl, who was compelled to resign last year due to a lobbying scandal.

While the Conservatives reject any additional oversight of the national-security apparatus, thereby underscoring their contempt for democratic rights, the opposition parties are suggesting that Canadians’ rights would be secure if only the government followed the example of the US, Britain and Australia, where a handful of legislators, vetted and sworn to secrecy, review the activities of their countries’ respective spy agencies.

The fact that the assault on democratic rights has been just as severe in countries where parliamentarians enjoy a formal supervisory role—as underscored by the blanket spying operations of the US National Security Agency (NSA)—is passed over by the Liberals and NDP in silence.

Much of the coverage in the mainstream media has portrayed the unwillingness of the opposition to openly criticize Bill C-51 as a product of their unease at being labelled “soft on terror” by Harper and his Conservatives in the upcoming federal election campaign. There is no denying that Harper is preparing to conduct far and away the most right-wing election campaign in modern Canadian history, whipping up a climate of fear over the purported threat posed by Islamist terrorism and championing Canada’s participation in the new Mideast war.

However, the more fundamental reason for the opposition’s lack of criticism is that the ruling elite as a whole is in broad agreement with the destruction of democratic rights and the construction of a police state. They see it as essential in dealing with the growing opposition among the working class to their strategy of aggressive war abroad and attacks on social rights at home.

Both the Liberals and NDP have proven themselves to be loyal defenders of the Canadian bourgeoisie and its state.

In the immediate aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, it was a Liberal government under Prime Minister Jean Chretien that brought forward Canada’s first major piece of anti-terror legislation, creating a new category of criminal offenses with special rules and harsher penalties. The 2001 Anti-Terrorism Law undermines basic legal and democratic principles, such as the right to remain silent. It also includes an all-embracing definition of terrorism which in the future could be invoked against striking workers or militant anti-government protest over issues such as the environment.

Neither the Liberals nor NDP have condemned the mass surveillance being conducted by Canada’s signals intelligence agency, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), even after the government admitted that it is systematically spying on the metadata of Canadians’ electronic communications.

The NDP has lined up time and again on the side of the state in opposition to the population. In the wake of the police brutality at the G20 protests in Toronto in 2010, they defended the police operation as appropriate. Then, when the Quebec provincial government brought in its draconian Bill 78, banning demonstrations throughout the province and effectively illegalizing the 2012 Quebec student strike, the NDP refused to criticize the law on the spurious grounds that it was a “provincial” matter.

Shia insurgents disband US-backed Yemeni government

Thomas Gaist

Tribal-based militant groups associated with the Houthi insurgency moved last week to dissolve Yemen’s parliament and other official government institutions, completing a slow-motion process that began last September when the insurgents seized effective control of the capital Sanaa.

After laying siege over the four intervening months, the militants took over the presidential palace and personal residence of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi in January, conducting negotiations with Hadi at gunpoint in his home.

Hadi initially agreed to Houthi demands for control of large sections of the Yemeni state, but he resigned within days, together with the country’s prime minister and leading cabinet members. The Houthis have taken advantage of the ensuing power vacuum to establish a new “Revolutionary Committee,” and they are currently engaged in discussions aimed at formation of some sort of coalition government.

Yemen has been a critical base of operations of American imperialism, and the Obama administration is currently considering means to maintain its control. This includes the option of working with the Houthis, despite Obama’s recent enthusiastic celebrations of the toppled Hadi regime as a “model” for US policy throughout the region.

The US developed close relations with long-time Yemeni ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh and his successor. Saleh left office in 2012, and his successor Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi worked closely with a US special envoy to coordinate Yemen’s participation in the “war on terror.” Both Saleh and Hadi also relied on financial support from Saudi Arabia, a chief US ally in the region, which has cut off aid in response to the Houthi takeover.

Indicating that the Obama administration is willing to work with the Houthis to insure the continuity of the US drone war and US special forces operations targeting Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), an administration official told the Los Angeles Times, “We’re talking with everybody, everybody who will talk with us.” Thus far, however, the Houthis have reportedly refused to meet with US emissaries.

“The central question for US officials is whether that next government can be persuaded to join in counterterrorism against Al Qaeda at all—let alone as enthusiastically as the last government,” the Times noted.

While framed in terms of a struggle against Al Qaeda, the main concern of US imperialism is to ensure that it controls Yemen, which occupies a key geostrategic position, particularly for oil transport.

At the same time, other factions of the US state have called for military action against the Houthis. Senator John McCain has called for more “boots on the ground” and has demanded a region-wide military escalation against Iran and its allies, including the Houthis.

The Houthi takeover demonstrates that “Iran is on the march” throughout the Middle East, McCain has warned.

In a paper released in late January, Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), pointed to the strategic interests at stake for the American ruling class. “The United States has been involved in a low-level war in Yemen for years and seems to be losing it decisively. Yemen may seem far away, but it is on the border of Saudi Arabia and a critical center of the oil exports that feed the global economy, as well as that of the United States. Yemen is also the center of al Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula—arguably the most direct terrorist threat to the United States.”

Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia—the main regional allies of the US—have also expressed opposition to the Houthis.

In a reflection of rising tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the Saudi-dominated Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has issued a formal condemnation of the new government. The coup represents a grave threat to “the security and stability of the region and the interests of its people,” the GCC said.

The Houthi victory represents a significant blow against the Saudi monarchy, which waged a brief and disastrous military campaign against the militants in 2009.

The Houthi takeover also threatens to spark a civil war within Yemen itself. The new Houthi-led government is already preparing air strikes against targets in the country’s western provinces including Maarib, where much of Yemen’s oil resources are located, according to sources cited by Asharq Al-Awsat. “The situation is very, very seriously deteriorating with the Houthis taking power and making this government vacuum in power. There must be a restoration of legitimacy of President Hadi,” declared UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

These developments are part of a broader breakdown of the nation-state framework throughout wide areas of Africa and Asia, which is accelerating under the impact of endless neocolonial wars and occupations by the US and European powers.

Yemen’s commanding position overlooking one of the world’s most critical strategic arteries—the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which controls access to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal—means that whoever controls Yemen’s government can potentially halt the flow of North African oil shipments, as well as US and European grain exports to Asia, into the Indian Ocean.

“Yemen is one of the worst places on earth to cede to terrorists due to its key strategic location, including a long border with Saudi Arabia. It also dominates one of the region’s key waterways, the Bab al-Mandeb Strait which controls access to the southern Red Sea,” noted a US Army War College paper, “The Struggle for Yemen and the Challenge of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.”

The Egyptian military regime of Abdel Fattah El Sisi also has massive interests at stake, having allocated more than 60 billion Egyptian pounds for the New Suez Canal project.

Stock markets fall on fears of Greek exit from euro zone

Robert Stevens

Financial markets fell in Greece and internationally Monday, in response to Greek prime minister and Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras’s speech to parliament the previous evening.

Presenting a series of limited reforms, including a gradual increase in the minimum wage and restoration of pension rights, Tsipras said his government would not seek an extension of the “troika” (European Commission, European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund) austerity programme, due to expire on February 28.

Athens’ stance that it will not extend the troika’s cuts, but will instead reverse some of the austerity policies imposed by previous governments, sent stock markets in Greece plunging. Within minutes, the Athens market was down 4.15 percent, while Greece’s main banks fell by 8 percent overall. By noon, the banks had fallen by 25 percent in three days.

The yield (interest rate) on two-year Greek bonds rose to 20 percent, forcing up the cost of government borrowing. The Wall Street Journal noted this was a sign that investors are worried that Greece could default on its debt. New data from the Greek Court of Auditors revealed the nation’s foreign debt amounts to €324 billion, exceeding 180 percent of GDP.

The fall in Greek stocks had a knock-on effect on markets throughout Europe, with Germany’s DAX down 1.7 percent, Spain’s IBEX 35 down 2.2 percent and Italy’s FTSE MIB down 2.0 percent. Wall Street fell by 70 points on opening.

On Monday evening, rating agency Moody’s, which on Friday put Greece’s sovereign debt rating on review for a possible downgrade, cut the credit rating of five major Greek banks.

The British government convened its emergency COBRA committee. The meeting was attended by Prime Minister David Cameron and representatives from the Treasury, the Bank of England, the Foreign Office and the Business Department. Cameron’s spokesman said, “We need to be prepared to deal with uncertainties in financial markets. It is something we want to be vigilant about...clearly there are global economic inter-dependencies and London is a major financial centre.”

On Wednesday, a “euro group” meeting of euro zone finance ministers will discuss the Greek crisis. The Syriza-Independent Greeks coalition government is to present its debt restructuring proposals to the meeting. Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis signaled that he is seeking a deal with EU governments, stating, “At Eurogroup, I will not be a yes man, but I will say ‘yes’ to proposals that make sense.”

A finance ministry official said Athens will request a bridge loan from the euro group, including the return of €1.9 billion in profit made by the European Central Bank and other central banks on Greek bonds.

Syriza is not opposed in principle to the troika’s demand that Greece implement “structural reforms” slashing workers’ living standards.Kathemerini stated: “Behind the public rhetoric, the Greek government has shifted to a more cooperative tone in recent conversations with the troika, according to an official representing the creditors.”

Varoufakis told parliament that the government would implement around 70 percent of the current troika-agreed programme. Reports emerged Monday afternoon that Varoufakis would propose an “intermediate” bridging agreement until September 1 and, according to the Guardian, may table “10 new reforms to cover the parts of the bailout programme which it is now rejecting.”

Syriza’s central preoccupation is the defence of Greek and European capitalism. Varoufakis told the Guardian, “[A]llowing it [the euro] to fragment would be catastrophic…it is the moral duty of the critics of the euro zone to fix it, to make sure it doesn’t collapse, because if it does, the cost will be immense not just for the Greeks but the Brits, everyone.”

After a week in which European Union (EU) leaders from London to Romeinsisted the Syriza government repay Greece’s debts, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said Monday: “Greece shouldn’t assume that the overall mood in Europe has changed to the point that the euro zone would endorse Mr. Tsipras’s entire government agenda without limitations.”

Greece could be forced to default on its debt in a matter of weeks, if agreement cannot be found at a February 16 euro group meeting. EU finance ministers have declared this the deadline for Greece to agree on an extension of the EU’s austerity programme. Kathemerini reported Monday, “Without concessions, the government may run out of money before the end of March, forcing Tsipras either to cave in to European demands or abandon the single currency.”

Financial Times columnist Wolfgang Münchau, a staunch advocate of Syriza’s debt restructuring programme, warned, “It was an utterly disastrous week of economic diplomacy. All that separates us from Grexit are a few more weeks like that one.”

While pointing to the dangers of Greece leaving the euro, he noted that that pressure from hostile European leaders, led by Germany and the markets, could force Syriza to climb down even further on its anti-austerity rhetoric: “Watch out for euphemisms in which programmes become contracts, the troika turns into a consultant, and austerity becomes growth-friendly consolidation.”

Germany, with Chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble leading the calls, is ever more vocal in insisting that Greece continue to strictly impose previously agreed austerity. On Monday, Schäuble said , “ Without a programme, things will be tough for Greece.”

Other European powers consider looser credit and rescheduling of Greek debt repayments as the best tactic to force austerity on Greece and ensure the money they have loaned to Greece is paid back. At Monday’s G20 meeting, French finance minister Michel Sapin said, “We need financing, otherwise Greece would be subjected to market panic.”

Whereas the EU “cannot just say ‘we’ll fund, we’ll fund,’ ” he cautioned, “It’s not possible for the Greek government to hear ‘we’re going to continue as if nothing has happened,’ even if it’s not for long.”

Washington is also concerned about the consequences of Greece being forced from the euro zone, particularly under conditions where it is seeking to ensure it remains part of the NATO alliance, as both Russia and China try to cement closer political and economic ties to Athens.

The Financial Times reported Monday, “The Obama administration is pushing euro zone leaders to compromise more with Athens as fears grow that a protracted stand-off could damage the global economy.”

Citing “mounting concern in Brussels and Washington about the hard-line stand taken by some euro zone governments, particularly Germany,” the article cites an unnamed senior US official who said, “I don’t think our attitude has changed but what’s changed is that suddenly the situation in Greece is looking more problematic.... We believe that any fragmentation would have a severe spillover effect.”

The Obama administration is despatching the Treasury department’s top Europe official, Daleep Singh, to Athens. The Financial Times noted that US “officials said they were pushing euro zone officials to put aside any consideration of Greek exit from the euro and help find ways for Athens to spur growth.”

In a veiled call for further austerity, he added, “They [Greece] need to hold on to the gains from the reforms they’ve already made and they need to press forward with the kind of structural changes that a lot of people believe are needed to make Greece more competitive.”

Obama refuses to rule out arming Kiev following talks with Merkel

Patrick Martin & Barry Grey

At a joint White House press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday, President Barack Obama made clear he was considering authorizing the dispatch of advanced weapons to the US- and NATO-backed regime in Kiev, to be used against pro-Russian separatist forces in eastern Ukraine.

Obama indicated that he would wait to see the results of talks set for Wednesday in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, between Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, French President François Hollande and Merkel before making a decision on sending US arms to Kiev. The talks are aimed at brokering a new cease-fire agreement between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists following the collapse of an agreement reached last September.

At the press conference following talks with Merkel, Obama said: “If, in fact, diplomacy fails, what I’ve asked my team to do is to look at all options. What other means can we put in place to change Mr. Putin’s calculus? And the possibility of lethal defensive weapons is one of those options being examined.”

Obama then added, “I want to emphasize that a decision has not yet been made.”

The US president left open the sending of weapons such as antitank missiles and armored vehicles to the Kiev regime, which has lost territory in the east of the country to rebel forces in recent weeks, despite warnings from prominent officials and some newspapers internationally that doing so could dramatically escalate the conflict and trigger a military conflict between NATO and Russia, with the possibility of a nuclear Third World War.

Merkel and the leaders of Britain and France have made clear in recent days that they oppose a US move to directly arm Kiev. Instead, they call for tougher economic sanctions combined with increased NATO military forces in the Baltic states and Eastern Europe to compel Moscow to accept the transformation of Ukraine, a former Soviet republic, into a staging ground for US and European imperialist moves to reduce Russia to a semicolonial status.

In her remarks, Merkel indicated her opposition to the dispatch of American weapons to Ukraine, saying, “I don’t see a military solution to this conflict.” But she stressed that Europe and the US were united in backing the Ukrainian regime, which came to power last February in a US- and German-backed coup led by fascist militias, and forcing Russia to end its support for pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk, Luhansk and other Russian-speaking regions.

“On certain issues we may not always agree,” she said, suggesting that Germany would continue to back the US-led offensive against Russia even if Washington decided to arm the Kiev government.

Obama, for his part, seemed to echo Merkel, saying there “may be some areas where there are tactical differences” while the US and Europe remained united in basic strategy and goals.

US military and civilian officials, including some within the Obama administration, are pushing for a decision to begin sending heavy arms to Kiev. At the Munich Security Conference last Saturday, US Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, NATO’s military commander, said sending weapons to help Ukrainian forces crush the separatists should not be ruled out.

At a Senate confirmation hearing last week, Obama’s choice to become the next defense secretary, Ashton Carter, said he would be inclined to back Ukraine with American arms.

Ukrainian President Poroshenko triggered the latest crisis in eastern Ukraine by ordering an offensive by Ukrainian military forces, including some battalions of neofascist “volunteers.” It is inconceivable that he would have done so without Washington’s approval.

The Russian-backed forces routed the invaders around the Donetsk airport and have pressed a counterattack, taking control of an additional 500 square kilometers of territory and threatening the town of Debaltseve, which sits on the main road between Luhansk and Donetsk. As many as 3,000 Ukrainian troops are trapped in the town and could be forced to surrender.

Washington, NATO, the European Union and the media have portrayed the fighting in eastern Ukraine as a Russian invasion, although the vast majority of combatants are drawn from the Donbass region, where most people are Russian speakers and the government in Kiev is widely hated.

Obama repeated the claims of “Russian aggression” at the onset of his joint press conference with Merkel, saying that “Russian forces continue to operate” in Ukraine, “training separatists and helping to coordinate attacks.”

Last week’s sudden trip by Hollande and Merkel to Kiev and Moscow, setting the stage for Wednesday’s summit in Minsk, appeared to be driven by concern that a US decision to provide billions in weapons to Ukraine was imminent and could escalate the crisis enormously.

A top official of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe told journalists at the Munich conference that he feared weapons deliveries would turn the crisis into an “existential conflict for Russia against NATO.”

Similar concerns were expressed in the American media, albeit by a small minority in the US national security establishment. The New York Timespublished an op-ed Monday by Professor John Mearsheimer under the headline “Don’t Arm Ukraine,” which asked rhetorically whether the United States would accept Canada or Mexico joining a hostile military alliance.

Even the rabid anti-Russian publicist Anne Applebaum, a Washington Postcolumnist, expressed concern about “a new World War” emerging from the Ukraine crisis, although she offered the lesser evil of “a new Cold War” in which NATO would “build a Berlin Wall around Donetsk in the form of a demilitarized zone and treat the rest of Ukraine like West Germany.”