Interpreter for 9/11 defendants at Guantanamo Bay was a CIA agent

Ed Hightower

On Monday, the military trials of five alleged 9/11 conspirators at Guantanamo Bay came to a temporary pause when it came to light that a court-appointed defense interpreter and linguist had previously worked at CIA “black sites” where the defendants had been detained and tortured.

According to the Associated Press, defendant Ramzi Binalshibh told the presiding judge that the interpreter seated next to him was someone that he and other defendants recognized from their earlier incarceration at secret CIA prisons before their transfer to the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Defense attorney Cheryl Bormann of Chicago represents Walid bin Attash, another 9/11 defendant who was present at the hearing Monday. She told the AP that Attash was “visibly shaken” to see an individual who “participated in his illegal torture” in the courtroom today.

“If this is part of the pattern of infiltration by government agencies into the defense teams, then the right people to be addressing this issue are not in the courtroom,” Bormann added.

Monday’s court proceedings were the first to take place since the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s torture of detainees at CIA and military facilities, including rectal feeding and other barbaric torture practices.

Four out of the five defendants at Monday’s hearing said that they were certain that the interpreter in question was present at the CIA detention site where they were held. Their lawyers suggested to the judge that the former CIA asset’s placement on the defense team was no accident, and they requested time to further investigate this.

On Tuesday, the Pentagon responded to the previous day’s revelations with an admission that the interpreter in question had in fact worked for the CIA.

“The member of the defense team referenced in previous hearings has in the past made readily available to prospective supervisors his prior work experience with the United States government, including with the CIA,” Pentagon spokesman Myles Caggins stated.

“The prosecution does not have any role in providing linguists to defense teams in military commission,” he added.

Defense attorney Bormann contradicted this claim in a statement to the AP, saying that the interpreters are part of a pool of linguists provided to the defense teams, and their resumes and backgrounds cannot be studied in detail.

“Now the question is what other infiltration has occurred and to what extent has it destroyed our ability to represent these men,” she said.

Further undermining Caggins’ claim was the statement by Jim Harrington, attorney for defendant Binalshibh, that the interpreter lied on his resume. Harrington told the Miami Herald on Tuesday evening that his team asked the interpreter whether he had “participated in any interrogation, questioning or done any work with respect to detainees. Any place. His resume denies it. It says he worked someplace else—Reston, Virginia, from 2002 to 2006.”

“We vetted him. He denied it,” Harrington said.

The fact that a CIA operative has found his way onto the defense team representing his former victims speaks volumes about the military commission process. Taken in context, the presence of a CIA spy on the defense team fits the show trial character of the proceedings as a whole, which have been discredited time and again by interference with the defendants’ right to counsel.

From the outset, the military tribunals against the 9/11 defendants were designed with two goals: first, to railroad the defendants into conviction by any means, including confessions extracted by torture; and second, to protect the gory details of US imperialist involvement with the Islamic fundamentalist terror groups that it arms and funds one day, and denounces, persecutes and destroys the next, depending on the foreign and domestic policy needs of the American ruling class at any given time.

Thus, the alleged conspirators in the terror attacks of 9/11—an event which has the hallmarks of US government involvement—were in many cases kidnapped from around the globe, held incommunicado and tortured, brought to Cuba for further torture and indefinite detention, and now face the death penalty in proceedings that make the secret court of Star Chamber seem equitable by comparison.

The commission is housed in a $12 million “Expeditionary Legal Complex,” where reporters sit behind soundproof glass, listening to the proceedings on a 40-second delay. A large red light bulb at the judge’s bench, seen in this video, illuminates when he or a security officer presses a button to mute the audio when the testimony may concern evidence of CIA torture or other “sensitive information.”

In January 2013, this muting device was activated without the judge’s say so, indicating that someone outside of the proceeding, and essentially above the law, can intervene and silence the audio feed at will. The Guardian later reported that this “outside” silencer was the CIA.

In February 2013, lawyers for the defendants complained of advancedsurveillance devices in attorney-client meeting rooms hidden inside of phony smoke detectors. In April of that year, defense attorneys learned that some 500,000 internal emails had been seized by the Department of Defense.

In April 2014 Judge Pohl again put the proceedings on pause following revelations that the FBI had been secretly recruiting a member of the defense team’s security detail to be an informant. In fact, the CIA agent-turned-interpreter who was exposed at Monday’s hearing was serving as a replacement for an earlier interpreter who was also working with the FBI.

After allowing for the filing of motions on Tuesday, Judge Pohl denied defense motions to halt the case until further inquiry regarding the interpreter on Wednesday, saying that this was “premature.”

The uncovering of a CIA spy on the defense team underscores the sham character of the military commissions for the accused 9/11 conspirators. The defendants are systematically denied their Sixth Amendment right to an attorney, which is meaningless when attorney-client meetings are the subjects of surveillance. No attorney, no matter how skilled, can successfully represent a client who is being intimidated from having honest, open communication with his counsel.

These most recent developments in the proceedings, coming after the release of the Senate Intelligence Report on CIA torture, also highlight the terminal crisis of American democracy as a whole. Those who are accused of terrorism are tortured, indefinitely detained, intimidated and denied the right to counsel, while US government officials who invade countries, fund terrorism, institutionalize torture, and shred constitutional rights do not face so much as an indictment.

IMF announces new $17 billion loan agreement for Ukraine

Niles Williamson

Speaking Thursday from International Monetary Fund (IMF) headquarters in Brussels, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde announced that the IMF will extend an approximately $17.5 billion bailout package to shore up Ukraine, which has been ruined by nearly a year of austerity measures and continuous fighting against pro-Russian separatists in the industrial eastern Donbass region.

Lagarde told reporters that the distribution of the loans and demanded reforms would be “a turning point for Ukraine.” Her announcement came on the same day as the declaration of a new ceasefire deal between Kiev and the separatists in east Ukraine, slated to go into effect Sunday morning.

Lagarde stated that the agreement would “support immediate economic stabilization in Ukraine as well as a set of bold policy reforms aimed at restoring robust growth over the medium term.” In Orwellian style, she claimed that the agreement was aimed at “improving living standards for the Ukrainian people.”

The response of the economic markets to the announcement of the agreement was largely negative, with the hryvnia falling as much as 3.1 percent against the dollar. The Ukrainian currency has lost 67 percent of its value against the dollar over the last year, severely impacting living standards and slashing government revenue.

The agreement is a further restructuring of the Ukrainian economy in the favor of Western business interests and away from Russia. Eldar Vakhitov, an economist at Barclays Plc in London, told Bloomberg Business, “The new program announced today covers the shortfall, though does not go much beyond that. The government in Ukraine may now turn to bondholders to discuss the restructuring of debt.”

The Ukrainian economy, which is in shambles in the aftermath of last year’s US- and EU-backed coup, contracted by more than 7 percent in 2014 and is projected by the World Bank to contract by more than 2 percent in 2015. According to the State Statistics Service, inflation has risen dramatically from 1.2 percent at the beginning of 2014 to nearly 29 percent last month. The official unemployment rate stood at 9.9 percent at the end of September last year and is expected to rise to more than 10 percent this year.

The announcement of a new loan agreement is a prelude to the implementation of further shock therapy against the working class in Ukraine. The distribution of the tranche of loans is predicated on the implementation of deeper austerity measures that will devastate the living standards of the most vulnerable layers of society.

At the end of December the Ukrainian parliament adopted a 2015-2020 economic program with a series of policies aimed at significantly lowering the living standards of the working class throughout the country. It included “large-scale privatization of state property under the appropriate economic conditions” and the financial restructuring of the state-owned oil and gas company Naftogaz. (See: “Ukrainian government prepares extreme austerity measures”)

The state budget also calls for the layoff of 10 percent of the country’s public employees and the partial privatization of health care and education. The state will also implement large-scale reform of the coal mining industry closing 32 unprofitable coal mines, idling another 24 mines and selling off 37 mines between 2015 and 2019.

Under the terms of previous IMF agreements, the Kiev regime has already slashed subsidies for natural gas and home heating. The price paid by a regular household for natural gas and home heating was raised to 56 percent and 40 percent, respectively, of the import price in 2014. Under the new budget adopted in December, the remaining price controls and subsidies would be eliminated, increasing consumer gas prices three to five times current prices.

The new loan agreement replaces the two-year Stand-By Arrangement of $17 billion agreed to last year at the end of April. Of this previous loan, $4.6 billion will be extended, bringing the total outstanding IMF loans to Ukraine to $22 billion.

In addition to the IMF agreement, the European Union pledged $2 billion in loans late last month and the United States government has also pledged $2 billion. Further negotiations with Ukraine’s sovereign debt holders to reduce borrowing costs along with other forms of assistance will bring total effective financial aid to $40 billion over the next four years.

The Kiev regime is preparing to impose martial law in order to suppress any social opposition that may emerge to its program of austerity and militarization.

A bill was submitted in the parliament this week that would make “public denial or justification of the Russian military aggression against Ukraine in 2014-2015”a felony with a possible punishment ranging from a heavy fine to five years in prison. This bill, if approved, would criminalize any opposition to or criticism of the government’s operations against the pro-Russian separatists.

In western Ukraine the government is experiencing widespread resistance to the military draft implemented in January. Anti-conscription protests have taken place in Kiev and elsewhere in the country, while draft-age Ukrainian men are reportedly avoiding the draft by fleeing across the western border into Romania.

“I do not want to fight, everyone is trying not to fight. Nobody wants to die for corrupted politicians in this regime or for this wretched Donetsk,” a 50-year-old painter, who wished to remain anonymous, told ABC News.

It is estimated that only 6 percent of conscripts have voluntarily shown up to military service in the latest round of call-ups. Ruslan Kotsaba, a western Ukrainian journalist, was detained last week after calling for a boycott of the draft and faces 15 years in prison on charges of high treason.

Greece’s Syriza government pledges to serve the EU

Christoph Dreier

After the first round of talks on Wednesday with eurogroup finance ministers over loan terms for Greece produced no results, representatives on both sides made clear their readiness to compromise on Thursday.

Before an EU meeting in Brussels, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras of the Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza) said it was time “to move on with the changes that the previous government did not make, to put an end to the corruption and to tackle tax evasion.”

“We will need to find a solution that respects the positions of all parties, so this agreement will have to be based on the core values of Europe, democracy and the vote of the people, but also on the necessity to respect the European rules,” Tsipras said.

Prior to the conference, Tsipras met with Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, British Prime Minister David Cameron, and his Latvian colleague Laimdota Straujuma. A planned meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was cancelled on short notice, due to the Minsk peace talks.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel also spoke of the possibility of a compromise before the conference. “Europe is organised in a way, and this is the strength of Europe, to reach a compromise,” she said. “Germany is prepared for that.”

Today, the Greek government will meet with the troika—the International Monetary Fund (IMF), European Commission and European Central Bank—for the first time, before the next meeting of finance ministers on Monday.

In terms of content, the German side made no concessions. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble declared that previous loan agreements with Greece were non-negotiable. “Every country is free to do what it wants. But we have this program, and this program will hopefully be brought to a conclusion, or otherwise we have no program,” said Schäuble.

His Austrian colleague Hans-Jörg Schelling spoke in similar tones, declaring, “Programs cannot be overturned by election results.”

Syriza won the Greek parliamentary elections in January with the promise to put an end to the social cuts demanded by the EU in exchange for a bailout for the indebted country. However, Syriza made clear from the outset that it would neither leave the EU nor cancel state debt.

Just two weeks after the election, the significance of the defence of the EU is clear. Far from trying to improve workers’ social conditions, Tsipras and his cabinet are trying to maintain the loan agreements with the EU under a new name and to impose this on the population.

The Greek government’s representatives began negotiations by promising to implement 70 percent of the memorandum in exchange for receiving bridge loans in the coming months. The remaining 30 percent was to be replaced by 10 reforms which are yet to be presented in detail.

As a result of EU measures, Greek state debt has skyrocketed to €320 billion, or 175 percent of GDP. By June, a total of more than €7 billion in loan and interest repayments are due, and Greece cannot finance this from its budget. The yields for short-term government bonds have recently risen rapidly. Having recognised the debt in full, it is next to impossible for the Syriza government to repay it without EU loans.

There are contradictory reports about the first round of talks among EU finance ministers on Wednesday. The German daily Handelsblatt cited a passage from a joint statement that was ultimately not agreed.

In it, it was stated, “The Greek government commits irrevocably to fulfill its financial obligations to its creditors.” Athens was prepared “to consider all possibilities for a lengthening and successful conclusion of the bailout program, although the plans of the new government must be taken in to account,” the draft stated. According to the newspaper, Greek finance minister Giannis Varoufakis initially agreed to the statement, but withdrew his consent after a phone call with Tsipras.

On the other hand, Britain’s Channel 4 News reported that Schäuble removed a formulation at the last minute that would have committed Berlin to improving the bailout program. Only then, according to this report, did Greek representatives withdraw their support.

The Greek government indicated that they had been critical of the statement from the outset and that the telephone call between Tsipras and Varoufakis had only strengthened this position. The main issue for them was that it was not about extending the current agreement, but about a new bridging agreement.

However things may have gone at the talks, the Greek government’s statements make clear that they have no fundamental disagreements with the EU leaders, but merely want to make minor modifications to and rename the EU austerity package.

Varoufakis left no doubt about this. “We understand each other much, much better now than we did this morning, so I think this is a major achievement because, you know, from understanding, the agreement follows,” he commented.

In an interview published on the Stern website on Thursday, the Greek finance minister went even further in his servility. “Angela Merkel is by far the most astute politician in Europe. There is no doubt about it. And Wolfgang Schäuble, her Finance Minister, is perhaps the only European politician with intellectual substance,” he claimed.

The two politicians praised by Varoufakis are the two most important architects of the EU’s austerity policy, which has led to an unprecedented social disaster in Greece while securing untold billions in profits for the banks. His nauseating attempts at flattery illustrate Syriza’s grovelling attitude to the EU and European capitalism.

The Minsk truce: A hiatus in an escalating war

Peter Schwarz

The truce in Ukraine agreed by the German chancellor and the presidents of Russia, France and Ukraine after 16 hours of negotiations in Minsk is merely a hiatus in an escalating war. Although few details of the agreement have emerged, Western media outlets declared almost unanimously the inevitable failure of the truce—blaming the Russian president, as usual.

In reality, the Minsk agreement only came about because the Kiev regime, which came to power in a Western-backed putsch a year ago, urgently needs a respite.

The Ukrainian army has been weakened by desertions and a succession of defeats. Fewer and fewer young men are willing to fire on their countrymen and die for a regime that offers nothing but poverty and unemployment. The only forces willing to do battle are ultra-right voluntary forces, over which the Kiev regime has tenuous control.

Financially, Ukraine is bankrupt. Its economic output has slumped by 8 percent, and its foreign currency reserves have shrunk to $6.6 billion—barely enough to fund one month of imports. Immediately after the Minsk agreement was struck, the International Monetary Fund promised a $40 billion aid package to Petro Poroshenko's regime, which could implode under pressure from an impoverished, war-weary population on the one hand, and far-right forces in the state apparatus on the other.

Washington did everything it could to strengthen Poroshenko's hand before the Minsk talks. US sources advocated delivering weapons and training Ukrainian soldiers. US President Barack Obama even placed a personal call to Putin, threatening "rising costs" for Russia if it continued "its aggressive advances in Ukraine".

In Minsk, the Russian delegation made far-reaching concessions—from “full respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine,” to transferring control of the Russian border to Kiev. According to statements by Merkel and Hollande, Putin also pressed the separatists to agree to the deal. For his part, Poroshenko repeatedly threatened to repudiate the agreement.

What is occurring is not primarily an internal Ukrainian matter, nor a confrontation between Kiev and Moscow, but a far broader geopolitical conflict.

Washington financed the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine and in 2014 supported the coup against Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in order to isolate and crush Russia. For Washington, it is not just a matter of controlling Ukraine, but also of enforcing its supremacy in the Middle East, where Moscow supports the Syrian government against Washington, and in the Far East, where a strategic Russian-Chinese alliance looms.

For the same reasons, Washington is now stoking war in Ukraine. This is the purpose of the proposed arms shipments. They would not enable Kiev to win the war, but to engage Russia in "a drawn-out, larger war [that] makes it more vulnerable on other flanks, such as the restive North Caucasus and Central Asia," as military experts told the Financial Times. "There are just not enough Russian soldiers to fight a war of attrition in Ukraine,” one of them said.

Germany backed the coup in Kiev and the Poroshenko regime as part of its objective to ditch its post-war policy of military restraint and play a greater role in world politics, as announced by the German president Joachim Gauck early last year. By actively intervening in Ukraine, which German armies occupied in both the First and Second World Wars, the German ruling class is following in the footsteps of its traditional policy of expansion to the east.

Washington and Berlin initially acted in concord. They worked closely together to build up the Ukrainian opposition, prepare the coup of February 2014, and strengthen Poroshenko's regime. Recent US demands for military escalation, however, have set off alarm bells in Berlin.

While German imperialism remains intent on integrating Ukraine into the European Union and weakening Russia via economic sanctions, it wants to avoid an escalation of the war. This would have a devastating impact on Germany and all of Europe, which have close economic ties with Russia and depend on Russian energy supplies. A drawn-out war would inevitably spill over into other European countries, cause waves of refugees, and destabilize the entire European Union. This is why Merkel and Hollande campaigned in Minsk for a ceasefire.

At the Munich Security Conference, Merkel was fiercely criticized by US officials. In an editorial Thursday, the weekly Die Zeit complained: "The US's impatience is not directed at Putin but at Chancellor Merkel. Anyone who does not allow enough time for the EU's policy of sanctions to take effect is playing into the hands of the Kremlin. If there is to be an escalation, then let it be with the sanctions!"

The article concludes, "Of course the West must not become divided. For that reason this time the US must cede to Europe's leaders."

Washington is hardly likely to concede.

It was no coincidence that the First World War erupted in 1914 in the Balkans. The region was a crossroads for the overlapping interests of the imperialist powers, which went on to fight a four-year war costing millions of lives. Similarly, the crisis in Ukraine reveals the tensions and contradictions that threaten to plunge the world for a third time into a bloody holocaust that could end civilization.

Russia is the victim and not the perpetrator of imperialist aggression in Ukraine, but the Putin regime is absolutely incapable of countering the threat of war. Emerging from the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it embodies the most reactionary layers of Russian society. By fueling nationalism and threatening military retaliation, Moscow is risking global nuclear war.

The recent developments confirm the warning expressed by the International Committee of the Fourth International in July last year: “The danger of a new world war arises out of the fundamental contradictions of the capitalist system—between the development of a global economy and its division into antagonistic nation states, in which the private ownership of the means of production is rooted.”

The only social force that can counteract the danger of war is the international working class. It must be united on the basis of a socialist program and mobilized for the overthrow of capitalism, the root cause of militarism and war. This is the program fought for by the International Committee of the Fourth International and its sections, the Socialist Equality Parties.

Port owners lock out West Coast dock workers

Jerry White

The Pacific Maritime Association, which represents cargo carriers, terminal operators and stevedoring companies, has imposed a four-day lockout on 20,000 workers at 29 ports along the West Coast of the United States. The docks were closed Thursday and will be shut again on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, following a similar lockout last weekend.

The PMA took the punitive action—which will cost workers hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in lost regular and overtime wages—in retaliation for an alleged slowdown by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU).

“PMA members have concluded that they will not conduct vessel operations on those dates, paying full shifts of ILWU workers such high rates for severely diminished productivity while the backlog of cargo at West Coast ports grows,” the PMA said in a statement.

“This is an effort by the employers to put economic pressure on our members and gain leverage in contract talks,” said ILWU President Robert McEllrath. “The union is standing by ready to negotiate, as we have been for the past several days.”

A ship waiting to be unloaded

The PMA canceled talks re-scheduled for Thursday and has not met with the ILWU since February 6. The old labor agreement expired last July 1, but the ILWU has ordered its members to continue working for nine months in hopes of reaching a federally-mediated agreement.

The pleas by the union for some accommodation on management’s terms have only been exploited by the highly profitable companies to go on the offensive. The PMA is reportedly offering a 2.8 percent raise in each year of a new five-year agreement. The association has also pointed to the 40 percent excise tax being imposed on so-called Cadillac health plans, under Obama’s Affordable Care Act, to press for an end to fully paid benefits, something won by dockworkers through generations of struggle.

Like other employers, the PMA is drawing a line in the sand against workers who are seeking to recoup income lost during the longest period of wage stagnation since the Great Depression. They are pressing for even more concessions even as corporate profits and stock markets soar in the sixth year of a so-called recovery.

The lockout occurs as the strike by oil workers nears the end of its second week. Lead bargainer Royal Dutch Shell walked out of talks this week, and negotiations have been suspended at least until February 18. Though the top five Big Oil companies (Shell, ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron and ConocoPhillips) made $90 billion in profits last year despite falling crude prices, they are resisting any demands for improved wages and working conditions.

The companies have responded to the partial strike by the United Steelworkers (USW)—involving only 5,200 of the 30,000 workers in the union—by cutting off the strikers’ health benefits and drawing in managers, contractors and other personnel to maintain production.

The employers are fully backed by the Obama administration and both big business parties. On Thursday, a bipartisan group of congressmen called for a “swift resolution” of the West Coast dispute.

“We believe this is the greatest threat our nation faces right now,” said US Representative Kurt Schrader (D-Oregon), using language normally associated with supposed terrorist threats. Schrader urged Obama—who was in the San Francisco Bay area for a cybersecurity summit Friday—to meet with the head of the PMA and the ILWU, the Los Angeles Timesreported.

In the event of a strike or lockout, the congressmen said, Obama should use the “threat to the national economy” to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act, as President George Bush did in 2002, to reopen the docks.

Port of Oakland

Echoing similar remarks made about the oil strike, White House spokesman Eric Schultz said Thursday that the president was closely monitoring the situation on the docks. He added, “We believe it should be resolved at the negotiating table.”

At this point Obama is relying on the ILWU and USW to contain and ultimately shut down these struggles before they become a catalyst for other sections of workers, including 139,000 GM, Ford and Chrysler workers whose contract expires this September.

If the unions proved incapable, however, Obama and both big business parties would use the repressive powers of the capitalist state—anti-terror laws, militarized police, national guard troops, the FBI, etc.—to try to suppress such a movement.

Since imposing deep pay and benefit cuts on auto workers during the 2009 restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler, the White House has made lowering wages and shifting health care and pension costs from corporations to workers the center of its economic policy.

In doing so, Obama has enjoyed the full collaboration of the United Auto Workers, USW, ILWU and other unions. Obama appointed USW International President Leo Gerard to his corporate competitiveness board in 2013 to cut labor costs in the manufacturing and energy sector.

The unions have done everything possible to suppress working class opposition. The slowdown by the ILWU and the limited walkout called by the USW, including small pickets with no attempt to mobilize broader sections of the working class, are largely ineffectual—and deliberately so.

The unions are allied to Obama and the Democratic Party, having spent decades collaborating with the employers to drive down the living standards of workers. The union executives are just as hostile to a movement by the working class as their corporate masters.

USW President Gerard and ILWU President Robert McEllrath are looking for some cosmetic concession, which they hope will be enough to appease workers and get them to accept yet another concessionary contract. The corporations have responded by calling the unions’ bluff and doubling down: locking out workers, cutting off health benefits and organizing strikebreaking operations, with the federal, state and local governments held in reserve.

At the same time there is a growing mood among workers that they must respond in kind and fight just as determinedly to recoup their years of losses. The re-emergence of such a sentiment is the result of the unprecedented levels of social inequality and the imperviousness of the government, which bails out banks, wages criminal wars and sanctions the looting of society by the corporate and financial elite.

For workers to find a way forward, they must break free from the grip of pro-company unions and build new organizations of struggle controlled by the rank-and-file, to mobilize oil and dockworkers in a powerful strike movement to reverse the erosion of living standards and working conditions. In the face of globally organized shipping and oil companies, workers must reject the nationalism of the unions and fight to unite with their international brothers in a common fight.

Above all, the fight to defend jobs and living standards, just like the fight against dictatorship and war, is a political struggle against Obama, both big business parties and the profit system they defend.

Education for Human Rights

 Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein

I am increasingly supportive of the proposition that education of any kind, if it is devoid of a strong universal human rights component, can be next to worthless when it should matter most: in crisis, when our world begins to unravel.

What good was it to humanity that Josef Mengele had advanced degrees in medicine and anthropology, given that he was capable of committing the most inhuman crimes? Eight of the 15 people who planned the Holocaust at Wannsee in 1942 held PhDs. They shone academically, and yet they were profoundly toxic to the world. Radovan Karadzić was a trained psychiatrist. Pol Pot studied radio electronics in Paris. Does this matter, when neither of them showed the smallest shred of ethics and understanding?

Of course we need schools to nurture curiosity and intelligence. Knowledge of complex geometry, or molecular cell biology, or Cartesian philosophy – or thousands of other facets of the great kaleidoscope of human brilliance – can be a precious thing. But when humanity topples on the cusp of real and vicious self-destruction, we don’t necessarily need people who are smart.

We need people who are kind.  People with PhD-level compassion. People who feel joy, and generosity, and love, and who have fully integrated the values that are essential to life in freedom and dignity. We need people with a strong moral compass.

Before every child on this planet turns 9, I believe he or she should acquire a foundational understanding of human rights. And I am far from being alone in this. Sixty six years ago, the authors of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – which is perhaps the most thoughtful and resonant international agreement of modern times – felt that human rights education would be so crucial that they wrote it into that great, foundational text. Article 26 reads “Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

Moreover, all UN Member States have affirmed on many occasions their belief in the centrality of human rights education as a long-term strategy for the prevention of human rights violations and conflicts; for the promotion of equality and sustainable development; and to enhance people’s participation in decision-making processes. The World Programme for Human Rights Education has been set up to encourage stronger and more consistent national action. 
  
Even in kindergarten, children should learn – and experience – the fundamental human rights values of respect, equality and justice. From the earliest age, human rights education should be infused throughout the program of every school – in curricula and textbooks, policies, the training of teaching personnel, pedagogical methods and the overall learning environment.

Children need to learn what bigotry and chauvinism are, and the evil they can produce. They need to learn that blind obedience can be exploited by authority figures for wicked ends. They should also learn that they are not exceptional because of where they were born, how they look, what passport they carry, or the social class, caste or creed of their parents; they should learn that no-one is intrinsically superior to her or his fellow human beings.

Children can learn to recognise their own biases, and correct them. They can learn to redirect their own aggressive impulses and use non-violent means to resolve disputes. They can learn to be inspired by the courage of the pacifiers and by those who assist, not those who destroy. They can be guided by human rights education to make informed choices in life, to approach situations with critical and independent thought, and to empathise with other points of view.

Sadly, they must learn that the Zeppelin Field, the shadow of Buchenwald, the glint of the machete and the horror of life today in Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, Central African Republic and elsewhere – wherever we live, they are never that far away. These lessons are surely as fundamental to life on Earth as advanced calculus.

Today, at schools such as the International School of Geneva – and it should be true of every school, everywhere – children can learn that no human being can properly be defined by a single point of reference: not nationality, not ideology or religion. As the Indian economist Amartya Sen points out in his thought-provoking book Identity and Violence, every human being has many identities,  related to gender, nationality, language, location, class, religion, occupation, political beliefs and personal inclinations. As he says, “The best hope for peace in the world lies in the simple but far-reaching recognition that we all have many different associations and affiliations; we are not rigidly divided by a single categorization of hardened groups which confront each other.”

Every child should be able to grasp that this recognition of blurred and cross-cutting identities – of the wonderful diversity of individuals and cultures within our shared membership of humanity – is a source of tremendous enrichment. It is my experience that every child, after some discussion, is enthused by the famous Martin Luther King quote looking forward “to a day when people will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

Children are fully able to grasp the implications of human rights. And they are able, too, to understand the power that human rights principles bestow on them. Every child can help to shape her or his universe: this is the lesson of that physically tiny and yet symbolically immensely powerful young woman, Malala, who has enriched the moral heritage of humanity. We do not have to accept the world as it is; indeed, we must not. We do not have to give in to the dark allure of hatred and violence: indeed, it is vital that we find the energy to resist it.

As we progress into this century, all of us will face moments of doubt, and even despair. We may well encounter terrible suffering. But the clarity of human rights values provides the only possible basis for solutions. And only with them can we answer Witold Pilecki’s simple question posed as he marched down that road near Auschwitz: Yes, indeed, we are all people. And it matters very much what happens to every single one of us.

May every educator become a human rights defender and every educational institution, a zone of tolerance and dignity. 

German Karstadt department store plans more layoffs and pay cuts

Dietmar Hennings

The German department store chain Karstadt is planning to implement up to 1,500 job cuts—15 percent of its workforce—by 2016, together with pay cuts and speedups, according to internal plans recently made public.

Just over half a year ago, Austrian real estate entrepreneur René Benko took over billionaire Nicolas Berggruen’s Karstadt group for the price of one euro. Benko’s firm, Signa Holding, then appointed Stephan Fanderl to head the company. Fanderl began by announcing the elimination of about 2,000 jobs and closure of six stores in order to make Karstadt profitable again.

Now the company’s supervisory board—which includes leading works council members and Ver.di trade union officials—is discussing a proposal stipulating detailed plans for imminent cuts and reorganisation measures.

The merchandise service centres in Dortmund and Bremen are to be closed this year. The service centre in Saarbrücken will meet the same fate in the next few years, and the one in Stuttgart will be relocated to Leonberg.

By 2016, only 8,170 full-time employees will be working in the 83 Karstadt stores, or 1,271 fewer than today. Several hundred jobs may also be eliminated at the chain’s administrative branch in Essen. Staff cuts resulting from store closures that have already been announced are not included in these figures.

The greatest bloodletting will involve sales department managers, whose numbers are to be reduced by half. This will allow a whole management level to be eliminated from the stores in order to effect a “greater and broader integration of the branches,” as the document puts it.

While hundreds will lose their jobs to reduce business costs, the remaining employees will also have to accept cuts in their Christmas and holiday pay.

The most severe measure, however, will be the division of Karstadt staff into three groups of workers: sales personnel, cashiers and employees in the newly created “product service teams.” Up to 1,100 of these workers will have the job of unpacking goods and stocking shelves. This division of labour will soon make it possible for Karstadt to pay these employees at the significantly lower rates prevalent in the logistics industry. Such wage reductions would amount on average to about €300 a month.

Responding to these concerns, Karstadt claimed it did not intend to pay these employees at the same rate as logistics workers. But employees grouped in the new “product service teams” will certainly be getting less money. General works council chairman Hellmut Patzelt has confirmed that this proposal is being discussed among representatives from Karstadt management, Ver.di and the works council.

Management justifies the assault on wages by citing Karstadt’s significantly lower “productivity” compared to its main competitors—especially the Kaufhof department stores. Karstadt’s “productivity” is allegedly 25 to 30 percent less than that of its competitors. According to the proposal, staff costs are to be cut by €64 million to €308 million per year, amounting to a reduction of 20 percent. In the future, personnel costs for all branches—with the exception of the company’s original store in Wismar, opened by Rudolph Karstadt in 1881—will not be permitted to exceed 14.5 percent of sales revenue.

The remaining employees will have to take on additional work. Going forward, one salesperson per floor will thus be considered sufficient for “basic staffing” throughout a store’s opening times, and fewer cash registers will be operated. Goods will, in future, be delivered directly to the department stores in line with the “just-in-time” retail model, which in turn will help to reduce storage costs.

Either the new product service team employees will continue to act as sales staff—renamed only for the sake of having their wages cut—or the new system has been deliberately designed to drive the entire company into bankruptcy. This would then clear the way for a break-up of the whole concern. In that case, Benko, a convicted criminal, would be able to concentrate on what really interests him: highly profitable inner-city real estate.

In 2012, Benko had already grabbed for himself the best of Karstadt, including the 28 Karstadt sports stores and three KaDeWe luxury department stores in Berlin, as well as the Alster building in Hamburg and the Oberpolling in Munich, which are also part of Karstadt property. In the meantime, Benko has profitably sold half of these two business divisions to Israeli diamond dealer Beny Steinmetz.

Benko can depend on assistance from Ver.di and the works council leadership, led by Hellmut Patzel, to implement his plans to cannibalise the company and squeeze concessions from the workforce. For more than 10 years, these functionaries have agreed to all the cuts and job dismantling plans put before them. Untold millions have been extorted from the workforce and a vast number of jobs destroyed. Investor Nicolas Berggruen, who picked clean the Karstadt group, was lauded by Ver.di as a social benefactor. His successor, Benko, was also welcomed by Ver.di with open arms.

The regional Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ) newspaper reports that the planned attacks are already underway. The paper claims to have learned “from people participating in the negotiations” that “talks involving management and employee representatives (have) already progressed quite far” behind the backs of the workforce. According to WAZ, “Among other things planned are semi-retirement deals, severance packages, a transfer company to retrain Karstadt employees, and programmes for compulsory retirement at age 63.”

The gradual dismantling of the long-standing company may be entering its final stage. Ver.di has unequivocally stated that it will continue to stand by Benko and future investors. Karstadt workers, in fighting to defend their jobs and wages, are thus confronted not only by management, but also the Ver.di service industry union.

Australia: Homeless people speak on worsening social crisis

Susan Allan

Record numbers of homeless people are living on the streets of Australia’s cities as charities and government services strain to meet growing demands from families, young people, pensioners and the unemployed seeking shelter and accessing meal programs.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, a federal homeless agency, reported in its 2013–2014 annual review that nationally those seeking assistance had increased by 4 percent from the previous year, with more than three-quarters of this increase registered in Victoria. Long the centre of the Australian manufacturing industry, working people in the state have been hard hit by years of corporate restructuring, backed by successive Labor and Liberal governments and enforced by the trade unions.

In Melbourne, the number of people sleeping rough on the streets has increased by nearly 25 percent in the last twelve months. Rising housing costs is fuelling the homelessness crisis, with just 8 percent of available homes now affordable for low income families in the city.

World Socialist Web Site reporters recently spoke with people attending the Salvation Army’s inner city café in Melbourne. Free breakfasts and lunches are regularly provided to more than 150 people daily, with the Salvation Army reporting increasing demand of between 60 and 100 percent over the last year. A wide range of people access the meal service, not just the homeless, including pensioners, single parents with young children, the unemployed and university students.

Risto originally came to Australia in 1996 from Finland. “I’ve been homeless since 2005,” he explained. “I was self-employed as a builder in carpentry but developed a health problem and was unable to continue working … I think it’s shocking that in Australia people are being forced into homelessness—government policies are terrible. We all have the right to housing, yet we are treated like this. People need to know what is happening.

Risto

“The place the Salvos gave me [in a boarding house] costs $180 a week, just to live in one room. The person I share with has come from jail. He’s been given no support since leaving prison and doesn’t know how to cope. It’s not his fault. I’ve been assaulted in some of these places, some people have mental health problems or drug problems.”

He continued: “We had a Christmas party here with 100 homeless people invited—it was just a media stunt for politicians. I think all governments have a lot to answer for, I can’t understand how this country with all these resources, and high taxes, can treat people with such little dignity.”

Kennedy a young Aboriginal man who is currently unemployed, said: “I’m here because I am on Newstart [the poverty-level unemployment benefit]. After I pay my rent of $130, I only have $270 to live on for the rest of the fortnight. It’s a one bedroom place, with a toilet and shower, that’s it. I share a kitchen. And then we have to pay for our own food and stuff, so it is pretty hard.

Kennedy

“If I have no food I come here to the café, sometimes three times a week … Before this, where I was staying all you got was a bed, a meal, a shower. That cost $350 a fortnight. It is hard to access those sorts of places and you can only stay for a short time. I had to wait four months to get in there. Last time I got sick from the food they were giving us. Most of it is donated, cooked somewhere else and then brought to the place. It’s not hygienic.

“I have a forklift and car licence. I have been looking for a job for over five years. I go for interviews but they always knock me back. I get depressed and have to take medication, and that probably stops me from getting jobs too. I am just trying to live a good life but it is so hard to even get a start.”

David has been on the disability support pension for 10 years. “The thing I have noticed since the change of government, with Abbott coming in, is that all government departments seem to be far more intrusive as to your requirements to be on a pension. I have just received a letter that I have to go and see a government doctor. I already have pre-existing conditions and I am really perplexed as to why the government is doing this. I’m concerned the changes to the DSP might mean I am taken off the pension.”

David

Several students from Colombia told theWorld Socialist Web Site that after paying their fees and rent they had nothing left to buy food. “When university re-opens after the summer break you will see many more students coming here in the exact same situation as us,” one explained.

An ex-health worker, who did not want to be identified, explained her situation. “I worked in the health industry for 20 years, but was a victim of domestic violence and had to leave my husband and I became homeless. I was unable to keep my job due to my home situation. I asked for proper safe housing but they never provided it. The place I currently stay is a long way from the city and doesn’t have facilities for people like me, so I need money for transport to come here.

“There is an organisation called Home Ground, where people who need housing line up. The lines are getting longer and longer. I have noticed increased numbers of single mothers with children. People just don’t realise how severe the situation is.”

Angelina has been unemployed for more than six months. “I’ve also been homeless for six months,” she said. “I lost my job in retail and I couldn’t get any family support, so I ended up homeless. I have no eligibility for benefits in Australia. Before I came here I worked as a social worker in New Zealand. I had problems with addiction, and it stops me from working.

Angelina

“I come here to get food and some coffee. I don’t often use their services, as I think they treat the homeless as if it’s their fault. Some of the charities are just for profit, and they’re not really interested in solving people’s problems. They just give band-aid measures. The boarding houses they run take your entire dole payment, it’s really dehumanising.

“A group of us get together and ask cafés for extra food. We take the food down to the park for people. You see more and more elderly people coming to get the food. I just find it so sad—it could be your grandmother. There are plenty of families that are homeless too, but they are not as visible because some of them are living in cars.”

Angelina denounced the major parties. “I think all the austerity measures are terrible—the rich and poor divide is growing. It’s causing massive social problems. If you really want to resolve the problems, the government needs to give people jobs, and mental health and other support.”

Australian police carry out another anti-terror raid

Peter Symonds

A raid by Australian police in Sydney on Tuesday, resulting in the arrest of two young men as terrorist suspects, has been immediately seized upon by the state and federal governments, as well as the establishment media, to fuel a climate of fear and uncertainty. The police have provided scant details of the operation, and those that have been provided should be treated with suspicion.

The two men—Mohammad Kiad, 25, from Kuwait and Omar al-Kutobi, 24, who moved to Australia from Iraq in 2009—were living in the western Sydney suburb of Fairfield in a modified garage. Police claim that they began monitoring the pair on Tuesday morning acting on an undisclosed tip-off. The two men bought a hunting knife from a military supplies shop at 3 p.m. and heavily-armed police swooped on the Fairfield property an hour later.

New South Wales Deputy Police Commissioner Catherine Burn alleged yesterday that “the men were potentially going to harm someone, maybe even kill someone.” She said that police had seized a machete, a hunting knife, a home-made flag representing the proscribed terrorist organisation IS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] and a video depicting a man talking about carrying out an attack.”

Burn claimed on the basis of the video that an attack was imminent. “We will allege that both of these men were preparing to do this act today [Tuesday].” She released no details from the video, which was reportedly in Arabic, but insisted that the “intent is clear.” Both men have been refused bail.

It is worth recalling the outcome of the massive police raids that took place in Sydney last September. More than 800 state and federal police and Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) officers stormed 15 premises and detained 17 people, leading to lurid claims that a public beheading, on the orders of ISIS, was about to be carried out in Sydney. The allegations were based on an intercepted phone conversation and the seizure of a sword.

The police later admitted that the word “behead” had not been used in the phone discussion. The sword turned out to be plastic. Of those detained, only one was actually charged with “conspiring to act in preparation for, or plan, a terrorist act or acts”—an extraordinarily sweeping and vague charge.

The raids, however, had served their political purpose—to justify the escalating US-led military intervention in Iraq and Syria, and Australian involvement in it, as well as a raft of draconian new anti-terror legislation that was rapidly pushed through the Australian parliament.

In December, the Abbott government, along with the entire media and political establishment, elevated a hostage standoff at a Sydney café involving a disturbed and unstable individual into a major national crisis. Thousands of heavily armed police flooded central Sydney in what was a dress rehearsal for the lockdown of a city. The siege was used to justify the massive build-up of the police and security apparatus and expansion of police state powers over the past decade under the banner of the “war on terror.”

Tuesday’s arrests served similar political ends. Prime Minister Tony Abbott declared that the threat of terrorism was “a serious issue” and warned that it could “get worse before it gets better.” For Abbott, the raid was a useful diversion from the continuing crisis surrounding his government after Monday’s leadership challenge, as well as a justification for further anti-terror laws.

Abbott played the war on terror card in his National Press Club speech on February 2 aimed at shoring up his leadership. He called for sweeping new legislation to make it an offense to “justify terrorism,” going beyond existing laws that illegalise organisations that “advocate terrorism.” While Abbott targeted the Islamist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir, such laws could be applied very widely to anyone who, for instance, explains that the roots of organisations such as ISIS are in the criminal wars of US imperialism in the Middle East.

During a visit last Thursday to the Australian Federal Police (AFP) headquarters, Abbott pressed for the passage of legislation which will require that Internet service providers retain the metadata for all Internet activity for two years. The law would provide the means for police and intelligence agencies to spy on the email, social media and Internet surfing of the entire Australian population.

The metadata legislation, which has provoked widespread opposition, is currently being examined by a parliamentary committee which is due to report at the end of February. “As soon as that report comes down,” Abbott said, “the government wants the parliament to deal with it, because we know … there are a whole range of people … who want to do us harm.”

The police raid on Tuesday will undoubtedly be used as a further pretext for pushing through the legislation, with the support of the opposition Labor Party and the Greens, which have voted for previous anti-democratic laws on terrorism.

The spectre of so-called “lone wolf” attacks is already widely raised in the media following police claims that the arrested men, Kiad and al-Kutobi, had no known associations with Australian citizens who have gone to the Middle East to fight for Islamist organisations. This will be exploited to justify even greater surveillance powers.

AFP Deputy Commissioner Michael Phelan declared yesterday that there was now “a new paradigm” of terrorism—low level, simple attacks that unfold quickly. “Police forces, whether they be state or federal, or our intelligence agencies need to be nimble to adjust to the threat and work out what our tactics are at a particular time.”

Federal Attorney-General George Brandis used this week’s incident to justify anti-democratic measures that were rammed through after the September police raids. He claimed that the arrests on Tuesday “may not have been possible under the old law but it was made possible by the reforms which this Senate passed when it passed the Foreign Fighters Act.”

Among its many other draconian measures, the Foreign Fighters Act increases the AFP’s already arbitrary arrest powers by allowing a police officer to detain anyone he or she “reasonably suspects” of having committed a crime. This is a far looser legal standard than the previous “reasonably believes.” The change enables police to act on all manner of rumour, suspicion and prejudice and raises the question of what was known about Kiad and al-Kutobi before they were arrested.

Indonesian government pushes ahead with planned executions

John Roberts

The Indonesian government is determined to press ahead with a second round of executions of 11 convicts despite appeals for mercy from families, foreign governments and lawyers. In the case of two prisoners, Australian citizens Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, it has brushed aside a new legal appeal launched in the State Administrative Court in Jakarta.

The latest court case follows the rejection of an appeal for a judicial review in the Denpasar District Court on February 4, following the intervention of Indonesia’s Attorney-General H. M. Prasetyo. Chan and Sukumaran were convicted along with seven others in 2006 of attempting to bring 8.3 kilograms of heroin from Bali into Australia.

Prasetyo told the media that the embassies of foreign nationals had been informed of the executions and that these would be carried out at “the right time … maybe within two weeks, maybe less than two weeks.” The authorities normally inform relatives of the exact dates, but are not legally obliged to do so.

Six prisoners were executed by firing squad on January 18, and, as in the current cases, most had been convicted of drug offences. These were the first judicial killings in Indonesia since March 2013 when three were shot. This was the only use of the country’s reactionary death penalty laws in the last five years under the previous President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

The decision by current President Joko Widodo to reactivate and accelerate executions is based on cynical political calculations. In an interview with CNN on January 27, Widodo was adamant that there would be no mercy and “no compromise” for the scores of drug offenders among the more than the 130 prisoners currently on death row.

Widodo is engaged in a law-and-order campaign to cement his ties to the politically powerful police and military apparatus established under the decades-long Suharto dictatorship. He is also seeking support from right-wing Islamist groups as his government implements deeply unpopular austerity measures and pro-market restructuring demanded by big business and foreign investors.

In the case of Chan and Sukumaran, the political considerations in Canberra are no less venal. The overriding concern of the government of Prime Minister Tony Abbott is to do nothing to upset Australia’s strategically important relationship with Indonesia. Particularly over the past decade, close ties have been forged between the police, military and security apparatuses of the two countries under the banner of the “war on terror.”

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) provided the intelligence to their Indonesian counterparts that enabled the arrest of the so-called “Bali Nine” in 2005 even though Indonesia imposes the death sentence for drug trafficking. The federal government and its agencies are legally barred from assisting a foreign country in prosecuting anyone charged with an offence punishable by death, but the AFP effectively put Chan and Sukumaran on death row.

Beside the two Australians due to be executed, probably on Nusakambangan Island off Central Java, the attorney general’s office has named Brazilian Rodrigo Gularte, Filipino Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso, French national Serge Areski Atlaoui, Ghanaian Martin Anderson, Nigerian Raheem Agbaje Salami and four Indonesians—Syofial, Zainal Abidin, Sargawi and Haran bin Ajis.

The case being brought by Chan and Sukumaran in the Administrative Court case is based on challenging Widodo’s blanket denial of clemency for drug offenders sentenced to death. Their lawyers are arguing that each case should be dealt with on its merits.

Former Constitutional Court and Supreme Court judge Laica Marzuki told the media that Widodo’s decrees denying clemency were administrative acts and therefore the Administrative Court had jurisdiction. However, the judge would not comment of the outcome of the case. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that such an appeal had only been tried once before in 2008 and failed.

The lawyers for Chan and Sukumaran were also acting on information from Mohamad Rifan, a lawyer in the 2006 case. He said that the judges had come to him after the case and said that they had not wanted to impose the death penalty and implied there had been a political “intervention” into the penalty phase of the case.

In addition, one of the trial judges, Roro Suryowati, currently a High Court judge, said this week in an interview with the News Corporation that she had voted against the death sentence and that neither Chan nor Sukumaran deserved to be executed.

Justice and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly, speaking on February 9 on the sidelines of a meeting of the Indonesian parliament, indicated that the Widodo might “review” the executions. His remarks were flatly contradicted by the attorney general’s office, which stated that the Administrative Court case would not alter the government’s plans to execute Chan, Sukumaran and the other nine prisoners.

The families of Chan and Sukumaran are in Indonesia and have made emotional appeals to Widodo to spare the two men.

No senior Australian minister has flown to Jakarta to call on Widodo to call off the executions. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop told the media “representations” were being made at the highest level from Canberra, but provided no details. “The course we are adopting is in the best interests of Mr Chan and Mr Sukumaran,” she claimed.

In fact, the Abbott government’s main concern is to maintain close relations with Indonesia. Successive Australian governments, Liberal and Labor, regard Indonesia as vital to Canberra’s interests in South East Asia and the broader Asia Pacific region. Indonesia has only assumed greater strategic importance as Canberra has integrated more closely in the US “pivot to Asia” and Washington’s military build-up throughout the region against China.