New evidence implicates pro-US opposition in Maidan killings during Kiev coup

Andrea Peters

Further evidence has emerged that the deadly shootings on Independence Square (Maidan) in Kiev last February, in the final stages of the NATO-backed putsch that ousted pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, were carried out by the far-right.

Recently published investigative coverage by the BBC and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) in Germany indicates that snipers were recruited by fascist forces to fire on targets on the Maidan. Until that point, police had engaged in violent confrontations with anti-government protesters but had yet to resort to live ammunition.

This suggests that the far-right forces were trying to escalate the conflict, in order to shatter plans for a negotiated settlement that European officials were trying to work out between the Yanukovych regime and the far-right, pro-NATO opposition forces.

The 98 deaths during the Maidan protests—now referred to as the “Heavenly Hundred”—were utilized to promote the myth that the fascist-led coup was a democratic movement of peaceful protesters martyred by Ukrainian riot police. The Kiev regime established the “Order of the Heavenly Hundred,” which recognizes people for “civic courage, patriotism, the upholding of constitutional principles of democracy.” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko recently declared February 20 the “Day of the Heavenly Hundred Heroes” to commemorate the “Revolution of Dignity.”

The BBC and FAZ investigations give the lie to this propaganda. They point to the anti-democratic intrigue that underlies the current Kiev regime and ongoing US provocations against Russia in the region, which threaten the world with what France’s president recently described as “total” war.

On February 11, the BBC published an interview with a man identified as “Sergei,” who was involved in anti-government protests for several weeks in early 2014. He told the news agency he was armed with a high-velocity hunting rifle by pro-Maidan operatives and posted in the Conservatory building on the Maidan along with another gunman.

Early in the morning of February 20, he began targeting government troops, who had taken up positions in the square itself for the first time and were using water cannons and crowd control methods to break up the protest encampment.

As they came under assault, the security services retreated from the square and began returning fire as they pulled out. That same day, Yanukovych’s interior minister authorized the use of lethal force.

Sergei’s account was partially corroborated by Andriy Shevchenko, an opposition Ukrainian member of parliament who joined the Maidan protests. Shevchenko told the BBC that as events on February 20 unfolded, the head of the Yanukovych regime’s riot police contacted him about the escalating situation.

“He calls me and says, ‘Andriy, somebody is shooting at my guys,’” Shevchenko told the BBC. He added, “I kept getting calls from the police officer, who said, ‘I have three people wounded, I have five people wounded, I have one person dead.’ And at some point he says, ‘I am pulling out.’ And he says, ‘Andriy, I do not know what will be next.’ But I clearly felt that something really bad was about to happen.”

Andriy Parubiy, a leader of the pro-Maidan movement who also founded the Social-National Party of Ukraine, a neo-Nazi precursor of today’s fascist Svoboda party, and is currently the deputy speaker of Ukraine’s parliament, has denied that any gunmen were found in the conservatory. He has also asserted, along with other leaders of the recently-installed Ukrainian regime, that sniper fire on the Maidan came from Russian agents.

These claims, however, are belied by photographic evidence of shooters in the building and by a recent interview in the FAZ with Volodymyr Parasyuk, a pro-Maidan leader who admits to commanding riflemen in the conservatory.

Parasyuk, who later fought against pro-Russian separatists in southeast Ukraine as part of the fascist Dnipro battalion and is now a member of parliament, told the FAZ last week that at the Maidan, “A lot of lads came to us then, who said we said we should take up arms and attack...Many had guns with them, often hunting rifles.” In an interview given to the Ukrainian press last year just after these events, however, Parasyuk made no mention of the use of firearms during the protests.

A recently published article in Business News Europe also reports that a source staying in a hotel overlooking Maidan square said that opposition gunmen demanded access to rooms and fired from hotel windows.

On February 20, dozens were killed in the violence that erupted on the Maidan. The situation appeared to stabilize the next day when the European Union negotiated a power-sharing deal between Yanukovych and the NATO-backed opposition parties. However, the deal quickly evaporated.

Parasyuk, who up until this point had worked behind the scenes directing the armed attacks of far-right forces, took to the stage on the night of February 21 in a rally held to commemorate the deaths of those allegedly killed at the hands of the Ukrainian security services. He demanded Yanukovych’s resignation and warned that his forces would storm the presidential palace the next morning if he did not resign.

Despite having just reached a political agreement to resolve the crisis, Yanukovych fled the country. Business News Europe notes that one factor in the Ukrainian president’s decision to abdicate power was “the direct physical threat to [him] from an apparent armed wing of the protesters not under the control of the parliamentary opposition.”

Hostilities ease in eastern Ukraine on first day of cease-fire

Niles Williamson

Hostilities between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists mostly ceased in eastern Ukraine Sunday as the ceasefire agreement negotiated in Minsk last week came into effect.

The four leaders who negotiated the settlement, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President François Hollande, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko spoke via telephone and agreed, according to a statement released by the French president, that the situation was “generally satisfactory despite local incidents.”

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius also confirmed that the ceasefire had gone into effect. “We can say that on the whole the truce is observed, though some ceasefire agreement violations have been registered here and there,” he told reporters on Sunday. The rebel-held city of Donetsk reported its first night in several months without artillery shelling.

Over the weekend US and Ukrainian officials, including US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt and President Poroshenko, sought to cast doubts the Minsk agreement before it went into effect. Pyatt tweeted several low quality photographs on Saturday claiming they proved that Russia was deploying heavy artillery in eastern Ukraine, violating the accord before it went into effect.

Speaking on Saturday ahead of the ceasefire deadline, Poroshenko placed responsibility for the implementation of the agreement on the separatists and warned that if new fighting broke out martial law would be declared throughout the entire country. “We are at the crossroads now,” he told reporters. “Either the enemy stops firing, and the de-escalation and the political process begins, or the enemy imposes an escalation of the conflict on us and the whole world.”

Ukrainian military units have used the lull in the fighting to shore up their positions. The Guardian reported seeing at least three trucks full of Ukrainian troops being moved toward government-held positions outside the city of Debaltseve, where as many as 5,000 Ukrainian soldiers remain encircled by pro-Russian separatists.

There were reports Sunday of rocket fire and shelling in and around the city, which serves as a key rail hub between the main rebel-controlled cities of Donetsk and Luhansk. Ukrainian troops reportedly fired on the cities of Yenakievo and Horlivka in a failed attempt to break through the blockade.

Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) were unable to gain access to the city Sunday to confirm the reports of fighting. They called on both Kiev and the separatists to give them access to all territory in eastern Ukraine. Separatist leader Denis Pushilin denied that the OSCE had asked officials in Donetsk for access to the area.

Ahead of the ceasefire deadline, Aleksandr Zakharchenko, prime minister of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), had insisted that the terms of the ceasefire did not apply to the soldiers trapped in Debaltseve as they were considered to be on separatist-held territory. “Any attempt of the Ukrainian armed forces to unblock Debaltseve will be regarded as violation of the Minsk agreements; such attempts will be suppressed, adversaries will be eliminated,” Zakharchenko said.

The pro-Russian separatists have sent cell phone text messages to the several thousand Ukrainian soldiers it has encircled in Debaltseve, calling on them to turn in their weapons and surrender.

Eduard Basurin, a spokesman from the DPR defense ministry, reported that, while hostilities had largely ceased elsewhere, rebel-held positions northwest of Debaltseve had also come under attack by machine gun and rocket fire from Ukrainian forces early Sunday morning shortly after the ceasefire deadline. Basurin stated that separatist forces “were forced to open fire in response.”

“Over the past night and during the day on Sunday, the situation in the DPR was calm for the first time in months,” Basurin told reporters. “The ceasefire regime there did not come into force in due time. Ukrainian troops blocked in Debaltseve keep on trying to break the encirclement,” he continued. “Our positions, primarily at Logvinovo, were shelled from the town all through the night.”

Shortly after the ceasefire came into effect, Dmytro Yarosh, head of the fascist Right Sector militia and a member of parliament who has been leading fighting in the east, published a statement on the website of the National Guard of Ukraine indicating that the forces under his command were still fighting despite the ceasefire. He reported that two of his “finely armed and equipped battalions continue offensive near Debaltseve and have serious achievements militarily.” His statement was removed from the website several hours later.

In a statement published on his Facebook page Friday, Yarosh had denounced the ceasefire agreement and declared that the Right Sector militia “reserves the right to extend the active hostilities under its own operational plans.”

In southeast Ukraine the fascist Azov Battalion held positions it had gained before the ceasefire in operations against rebel-held positions east of the city of Mariupol. Three of the battalion’s fighters were killed and another 50 injured during fighting in the village of Shyrokyne on Saturday before the ceasefire took effect.

The government reported shelling in the government controlled village of Zolote northwest of Luhansk early Sunday morning. An elderly couple in the nearby city of Popasna was killed Sunday morning after a Grad rocket struck and collapsed their house.

While Ukrainian military spokesman Anatoliy Stelmakh accused the pro-Russian separatists of violating the ceasefire at least ten times since it went into effect, another government spokesman, Andriy Lysenko, reported that there had been no military casualties on Sunday.

Alleged terrorist gunman shot dead in Copenhagen

Chris Marsden & Jordan Shilton

On Sunday, Danish police identified a gunman accused of attacking a café debate on free speech and then a synagogue in Copenhagen on Sunday as Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein.

The gunman was shot and killed by police Sunday morning, near a railway station in the Norrebro district of Copenhagen. He was reportedly returning to an address that was already under police surveillance. Police Commissioner Thorkild Fogde said that, “when the suspect was shot and killed during police action, he was armed with pistols.”

Once again, a man involved in a deadly terrorist attack was known to the police and security services. He was also “on the radar” of the intelligence services. He reportedly was 22, born in Denmark and known to police due to his connection with criminal gangs and convictions for violent offences and dealing in weapons. The head of Danish intelligence told reporters that police were working to determine whether he had travelled to Syria or Iraq.

The shooting at the café took place on Saturday between 3:30 and 4:00pm. The 55-year-old film director Finn Nørgaard died as a hail of 40 bullets were fired at a cafe hosting Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, who has received death threats for depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

Vilks was unhurt, but three police officers were wounded.

The gunman fled in a carjacked Volkswagen Polo that was found later by police a few kilometres away.

Just after midnight, about a half hour’s walk from the café, Dan Uzan, a male volunteer guarding a bat mitzvah party at a synagogue in Krystalgade, was shot in the head. He died later, and two police officers were wounded. Copenhagen police spokesman Allan Wadsworth-Hansen said that the gunman opened fire at the two police officers, who were wounded in the arms and legs.

The claim that the café event promoted freedom of speech is a fraud. Vilks was to be the main speaker in the café debate, entitled “Art, Blasphemy and Freedom of Expression.” In 2005, Denmark’s Jyllands Posten pioneered the type of anti-Muslim provocation that last month provoked three Islamist gunmen to kill 17 people at the offices of Charlie Hebdo and in a siege at a kosher grocery store. Jyllands Posten published 12 cartoons, most depicting the Prophet Muhammad, citing this as a contribution to “free speech”.

In 2007, Vilks drew drawings depicting Muhammad as a dog, triggering death threats and forcing him to live under police protection in Sweden since 2010. Two years ago, a woman was jailed for 10 years in the United States for plotting to kill him. Yet once again, as with Charlie Hebdo, security at the controversial debate appears to have failed calamitously. French ambassador Francois Zimeray had opened the debate, praising Denmark’s support for freedom of speech following the Paris attacks, only minutes before the shooting began.

In the period initially following the attack, the media had also cited fears of another right-wing gunman like Anders Behring Breivik, who murdered 77 people in 2011, mostly youth attending a camp organised by Norway’s ruling Labour Party.

Once again, events follow a pattern strikingly similar to the attack on Charlie Hebdo:  A provocation is staged based on whipping up hostility to Muslims.

* Police, aware of the sensitivity of the event, fail to prevent an attack.

* The alleged attacker or attackers is shot dead.

* The police and security services admit to having known the alleged attacker and their having been placed under surveillance.

The pattern is repeated also in the launching of a massive police clampdown. In Copenhagen, this involved parts of the capital being cordoned off and at least one raid on an Internet café.

Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt described the shootings as “a cynical act of terror against Denmark” and “our values.” This is in keeping with the Danish ruling elite’s right-wing record. It has repeatedly exploited anti-Islamic and anti-immigrant rhetoric to stir up divisions and divert attention away from the deepening social crisis facing the working class.

One of the pioneers of this strategy was former Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who went on to become NATO Secretary General and lead the aggressive drive against Russia over Ukraine.

Rasmussen, prime minister from 2001-09, introduced anti-terror legislation in 2002, tightened immigration regulations in line with the demands of the far right and attacked social programmes. In 2005, he backed the publication of the Muhammad caricatures and subsequently used this issue to justify a close alliance with US imperialism, which saw Denmark send troops to Iraq.

In 2008, virtually all major media outlets joined in reprinting the Jyllands Posten cartoons, only days after two foreign nationals had been arrested on terrorism charges. This included Politiken, the country’s nominal “left,” liberal publication.

Danish ruling circles continue to fan the flames of anti-immigrant chauvinism. In December, Jyllands-Posten published a study claiming that there were over 30,000 illegal immigrants in the country, and that this posed a serious problem for the welfare system. The study claimed that this number had doubled from 2008, but failed to mention that since then, immigration laws have been tightened significantly, with the implementation of a new points system that is one of the most stringent in Europe.

The Social Democrat-led government has shown no let-up in enforcing a brutal immigration policy. When former Justice Minister Karen Hækkerup took office in 2013, she declared that successful integration is only possible through limited immigration.

“It is important for Denmark’s cohesiveness that we have a tough policy on immigration,” Hækkerup said. “For a little nation to integrate its foreigners so they become Danes and part of Denmark, the numbers matter.”

In October 2014, after Hækkerup resigned to take up a job in the private sector, her successor, Mette Frederiksen, advocated the use of ankle tags on illegal immigrants. “I don’t have any problems using that tool,” she said. “If it is correct that it has never been used, then it should be in that report that I will receive from the authorities.”

Such policies have encouraged the most right-wing elements. Following the example of the anti-Muslim Pegida protests in Germany, the first such march took place in Copenhagen last month, drawing a crowd of several hundred.

A revealing Financial Times comment on the Greek debt crisis

Nick Beams

A comment by Financial Times columnist Wolfgang Münchau, published on the eve of today’s meeting of the euro zone group of finance ministers, points to significant differences over German-led insistence that the demand of the Syriza-led Greek government for debt restructuring should not be met.

Following the rejection of the Greek proposal at a meeting of the Eurogroup last Thursday, Münchau wrote that the Greek finance minister could expect a frosty reception when he once again confronted his colleagues in a “high noon” showdown.

“My advice to Yanis Varoufakis,” he continued, “would be to ignore the exasperated looks and veiled threats and stand firm. He is a member of the first government in the euro zone with a democratic mandate to stand up to an utterly dysfunctional policy regime that has proved economically illiterate and politically unsustainable. For the euro zone to survive with the current geographic remit, this regime needs to go.”

The publication of such a vigorous comment in one of the world’s major financial dailies points both to the considerable opposition in financial centres to the policies of the German government and to the fact that the Syriza program, far from representing some far-left agenda, is a thoroughly bourgeois program enjoying some measure of support in ruling political and financial circles.

Münchau pointed out that there were risks involved in Greece standing up to the European Union policy elites, including a financial collapse leading to it being forced out of the euro zone. However, he writes that Greece should nevertheless maintain its stand in demanding a new loan to cover its needs over the next few months.

The Greek government has called for the “bridging finance” while a new agreement is worked out following the expiration of existing arrangements at the end of this month. With Germany taking the lead, the euro zone finance ministers have insisted that any additional finance can only be provided within the framework of the existing program.

This has been rejected by Syriza, a position which is supported by Münchau. The Greek government, he wrote, “should stick with their position not to accept a continuation of the existing financial support program.”

In so doing they would no longer be bound by “self-defeating policy targets such as the contractual requirement to run a primary budget surplus of 3 percent of gross domestic product. For a country with mass unemployment, such a target is insane. It would, of course, be better for this nonsense to stop while Greece remains in the euro zone. But the most important thing is that it has to stop.”

In other words, even if it leads to a financial crisis in Greece and the end of the euro zone in its present form, the overriding imperative is to take a stand against the German-imposed agenda.

Münchau cited proposals from a number of academic sources as to how Greece might deal with the situation, without precipitating a withdrawal from the euro zone.

The “most sensible,” he wrote, is the introduction of a kind of parallel currency consisting of government-backed IOUs, citing a proposal by a US economist Robert Parenteau for “tax anticipation notes” based on expected future revenue. According to Münchau: “They act as a tax credit that allows government to run a fiscal deficit until the economy recovers. With such an instrument Greece could abandon austerity without abandoning the euro.”

He also cited John Cochrane, a “conservative economist from the University of Chicago, who also wants the Greek government to create IOUs, electronic money, not necessarily cash, that could be used to fund pension and other transfer payments.”

Münchau does not make the point, but the position of Cochrane is significant. The University of Chicago is the centre of the most right-wing “free market” tendency in bourgeois economists, associated with Milton Friedman. The so-called “Chicago boys” were notorious for their restructuring of the Chilean economy under General Pinochet after the CIA-backed overthrow of the Allende government in 1973. The fact that representatives of this tendency should be considering ways in which Greece can defy the dictates of the EU is some measure of the opposition to German policies in US financial and economic policy circles.

If measures for alternative financing were adopted, Münchau goes on to explain, then once set in place Greece would be able to default on its debts—mostly loans from European governments and EU institutions. Faced with a default, the official European creditors would not be able to eject Greece from the euro zone as they have no legal means for doing so. They would also be hesitant to force it out of the EU as they need Greece’s support for policy changes, such as renewing sanctions against Russia.

Setting out his bottom line, Münchau concludes that Greece should seek to avoid an exit from the euro zone. However, while such an outcome is not desirable, it would be preferable to the status quo. “The worse-case scenario would be for the Greek government to blink first, and accept defeat.” If that were to happen then the only political party left to oppose the EU agenda would be Golden Dawn, a neo-Nazi party.

Münchau’s comment is significant from a number of standpoints. It underscores the opposition to the austerity agenda, at least in its present form, emanating from sections of the US, British economic establishments, with support in some parts of Europe.

In recent weeks, US President Barack Obama, as well as Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, have remarked that some way must be developed to lessen pressure on Greece. Their central concern is not the impoverishment of the Greek working class. Rather their stand underscores the point made by Marx that, while each capitalist seeks to suppress the wages of his own working class, he views the expenditure of the workers employed by others as the source of the demand for the goods he produces. On a far larger scale, the US fears that austerity and depression in Europe—a vital outlet from American goods and investment—will rebound on the US economy itself. The US thus pushes for some alleviation.

Another important aspect of the comment is what it reveals of the tactics being adopted by Syriza itself in its conflict with the EU. Far from its program representing a confrontation with the financial oligarchy in the interests of the working people of Greece, not to speak of the rest of Europe, it is a calculated attempt to win support from American and other powerful financial interests to pressure the German bourgeoisie.

However, resistance is proving hard to overcome because it is rooted in profound economic interests.

According to Münchau, reflecting the position of many other commentators: “The Germans support austerity on ideological grounds.” However, this attempt to pass off the intransigence of the Merkel government as some kind of Lutheran-based desire for discipline, a response to memories of the hyper-inflation of 1923 or some Teutonic aspiration for order misses the real forces at work.

The German opposition is not fundamentally based on these factors. Rather, it is grounded in the fear among sections of the ruling elites that if it relents on austerity then it will have to ultimately take on responsibility not only for the debts of Greece but possibly, Spain, Portugal or even Italy. Such an outcome would seriously weaken Germany’s global economic position, especially in relationship to US finance capital, which inflicted considerable damage on the German financial system through the sub-prime crisis in 2007.

These conflicts and tensions may not be openly expressed at today’s meeting of the eurogroup, but as Münchau’s column points to, they will be seething not far below the surface.

The human rights disaster in America

Andre Damon

Antonio Zambrano-Montes, a 35-year-old Mexican national, was shot to death by police in Pasco, Washington last Tuesday as he was backing away from officers with his hands up. A video of the shooting clearly corroborates claims by Zambrano-Montes’s family that he was killed “execution style.”

Police claimed that Zambrano-Montes, who had lived in the city for ten years and worked as an orchard picker, may have been “armed with a rock” before he was shot multiple times. Protests erupted over the weekend, with more than a thousand demonstrating in Washington state on Saturday against the killing.

The United States has invaded, bombed and destabilized dozens of countries on the grounds that their regimes perpetrated human rights abuses. In his State of the Union address earlier this year, President Obama declared that America leads the world “with the example of our values.” He added, “That’s what makes us exceptional.”

Not only is this sanctimonious drivel completely at odds with the reality of American imperialist foreign policy, which employs mass murder, support for extreme right forces, subversion and provocation as its stock-in-trade, it is belied by the reality of life within the United States itself.

The wave of police violence in the US is one aspect of an escalating assault on the democratic rights of the working class that makes a mockery of the official human rights rhetoric. Were these events occurring in a country targeted for conquest or regime change by the CIA and the Pentagon, that country would be declared a human rights disaster area.

According to a web site that keeps track of police shootings, Zambrano-Montes was the 122nd person to be killed by police in the United States since the start of the year. In the five days since the shooting, another ten people have been killed by police: two black, two white, one Latino. The names and identities of five others have not been released.

In virtually all of these fatal police shootings, the victims have been blasted by a fusillade of bullets, their bodies riddled by ten, fifteen, twenty or more rounds fired off by the killer cops.

The recent incidents of wanton police violence include:

The beating of an elderly Indian man in Alabama as he walked in the street, leaving him partially paralyzed.

The beating of a 13-year-old schoolgirl by police in Baltimore, Maryland.

The killing of 17-year-old Jessica Hernandez as she sat in a car with her friends in Denver, Colorado.

The killing of Kristiana Coignard, a mentally disturbed teenager who was carrying a kitchen knife, in Longview, Texas.

Most of the killings and beatings that are widely known to the public have been captured on videotape, like the shooting of Zambrano-Montes. Countless similar incidents go unreported by the local and national media.

It is now six months since the August 9 police shooting of Ferguson, Missouri teenager Michael Brown, an act of wanton violence that sparked protests locally and nationally. The immediate reaction of the political establishment, from the local authorities to the Democratic governor to the Obama White House, was mass repression, including the declaration of a state of emergency and the deployment of the National Guard and militarized police with helicopters and armored vehicles to occupy Ferguson.

This was followed by a politically motivated decision not to indict Brown’s killer, officer Darren Wilson, in a sham grand jury proceeding. Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who choked to death Staten Island resident Eric Garner in broad daylight, was likewise exonerated.

These rulings signaled a counteroffensive by the state to intimidate and criminalize opposition to police violence and murder.

New York City, under the leadership of Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio, announced the formation of a special police unit armed with machine guns. The unit will be deployed for “dealing with events like our recent protests,” as New York Police Commissioner William Bratton put it. Across the country, scores of people have been arrested for posting anti-police comments on the Internet.

The wave of police beatings and killings is only one component of the escalation of state violence and the assault on democratic rights. Despite numerous “botched” executions, including the horrific state murder of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma last April, in which the prisoner writhed in pain for an hour, America’s capital punishment assembly line continues to exact its toll, with eight people executed so far this year.

America’s vast prison gulag, which incarcerates the largest inmate population in the world, is increasingly assuming the social role of the debtors’ prisons of Dickensian England. Last week, the Vera Institute of Justice released areport documenting the extent to which American jails have become “massive warehouses” for the poor.

The organization found that more than half of the people in jail were incarcerated because they were unable to pay a bail of $2,500 or less. It concluded that “a guilty plea may, paradoxically, be the fastest way to get out of jail.”

The brutality of the “justice” system in the US is only the most visible expression of the violent and exploitative character of American society. It embodies the response of the ruling class to ever-rising levels of social inequality, which have increased at an unprecedented rate over the six years of the Obama administration.

The corporate and financial elite, whose wealth has doubled since 2009, gorges itself at the expense of an increasingly impoverished working class. The state, headed by a military-intelligence-police apparatus that operates above the law, looks on the population with distrust, fear and hatred.

Killer cops shielded by the politicians and the courts, the militarization of the police, the criminalization of social protest—these are aspects of dictatorial forms of rule being put into place to defend the interests of the financial aristocracy against the inevitable eruption of class struggle in America.

British unions recommend health service workers accept another pay cut

Ajanta Silva

Unions in England are recommending National Health Service (NHS) workers drop their opposition to a pay freeze for 2014-15 and accept a miserly one percent rise in 2015-16. This represents yet another pay cut.

NHS workers have already suffered a four-year pay freeze, had their pay slashed by 10-15 percent, experienced worsening job conditions and have been forced to contribute more towards their pensions.

Eight unions involved in the NHS, including Unison, Unite, GMB, Society of Radiographers and Royal College of Midwives, suspended a 12-hour strike on January 29, declaring it was “the best deal that could be achieved through negotiation.”

A key reason for ending the strike is to prevent any embarrassment for the Labour Party as the May general election looms. Labour has made the NHS a major issue in the election, although it is committed to austerity measures and cuts to public spending.

The unions claimed that they had received a “not insignificant” last-minute concession from the Conservative/Liberal-Democrat coalition. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt signed the pay proposal just two days prior to the planned strike with the “hope that this offer will enable Trade Unions in dispute to suspend planned industrial action.”

The strike went ahead in North Ireland where the unions have not got any pay deal as such to sell to their members.

The government proposal includes a one percent pay rise for workers up to pay point 42 from April 2015, with a £200 per year increase for the lowest paid—those on pay point 8 or below. Pay point 1 will be abolished and workers moved to pay point 2 (£15,100 a year). These increases will be paid for by freezing the pay and incremental progression of those earning over £56,000.

The proposal excludes any back pay for 2014-15, one of the key issues behind the strike, effectively continuing the four-year pay freeze for another year.

As a part of an agreement, Hunt demanded the unions “commit to work together with the NHS employers to ensure this remains affordable” and “to commit to talks on further reforming of Agenda for Change pay system” to make sure “it can continue to deliver flexibility, capacity, fairness and value.”

The NHS Employers Association said it was “delighted” and praised the unions for making the “right decision” by calling off the strike. Chief Executive Danny Mortimer declared, “If the unions proceed to fully accept the proposed pay agreement it will demonstrate a commitment and signal the start of a period of negotiations to deliver long-term pay reform in the NHS.”

The Department of Health has already given some idea of what reforms it has in mind in its submission to the NHS Pay Review Body—the end of enhanced pay for working unsocial hours and annual incremental pay progression, which it declares are not affordable within the current financial climate.

After suspending the union action, Unison Head of Health Christina McAnea, lead negotiator for the health unions, said, “The two strike days staged by health workers last year have moved the government to negotiate with the unions.” She claimed that “these new proposals deliver pay rises of between 5.6 percent and 2.2 percent for more than 200,000 of the lowest paid workers in the NHS.”

The Chartered Society of Physiotherapists’ Jill Barker was more circumspect. After saying “this new offer represents a better deal than originally proposed by government”—not difficult given the government didn’t want any pay rise—she admitted, “The offer certainly isn’t brilliant.”

Many NHS workers already rely on unsocial hours enhancements, work in the Staff Resource Pool (Bank) or do other jobs to keep their heads above water. By accepting this rotten pay deal, unions not only pit one section of workers against the other, but pave the way for further inroads into pay terms and conditions.

In Scotland, the same unions did not even call a ballot when the government implemented the Pay Review Board-recommended below-inflation pay rise. In Wales, the scheduled four-hour walkout on November 10 last year was called off by Unison after accepting a deal with the Labour Party-led Welsh Assembly, which restrains pay for two years.

Unite and GMB officials in Northern Ireland complain they have not got a pay proposal which matches the one in England. Michael Mulholland, GMB regional officer, said, “NHS workers are furious and the public will want to know why the Department of Health [Northern Ireland] is not putting the offer in England on the table as they are expected to do.”

The attacks on NHS workers is a vital element in the government’s £20 billion cuts to the NHS budget over the last five years, as a part of the austerity measures implemented in the aftermath of the 2008 financial breakdown. It is demanding a further £10 billion in cuts by 2021.

Last year, the World Socialist Web Site warned, when NHS workers balloted to strike, “A mandate for strike action by the members of Unison, Unite, GMB and the RCN will not be used to galvanise opposition to pay restraint but to dissipate and demoralise resistance, while convincing the government that the services of the unions are required to forestall a general mobilisation. Where they cannot prevent strikes, the unions are only prepared to hold them on a token basis.”

The pseudo-left Socialist Workers Party and Socialist Party, in contrast, proclaimed it as proof of a resurgence of the unions as a force to defend the working class and oppose austerity. After the unions suspended the January 29 strike action, portraying the government proposal as a victory, theSocialist Worker urged “every activist now has to fight for a No vote and get the action back on.”

The Socialist Party complained, “More could be achieved if we had a determined and strong leadership. NHS England bosses all but admitted they were in a difficult position and wanted to end the action. In these circumstances, it is a poor negotiator indeed who manages to come up with less pay than the small amount that was asked for.”

No one will be able to resuscitate these putrefying union corpses as fighting organs of the working class. Time and again, unions have proven that they are not only against mounting any genuine opposition to these attacks, but work as an extended arm of the ruling elite in imposing them. On every occasion, the pseudo-lefts cover for their betrayals and try to convince workers that the union bureaucrats will fight if only enough pressure is applied.

What is required to fight back is the urgent building of action committees independent of the unions. We call on the NHS workers to reject with contempt this utterly rotten pay deal and to intensify their struggle under a socialist programme.

Australia: Labor forms minority government in Queensland

Mike Head

Two weeks after the January 31 state election, Labor Party ministers were sworn in today to form a minority government in Queensland. State governor Paul de Jersey, who represents the monarchy, yesterday invited state Labor leader Annastacia Palaszczuk to form government after the Electoral Commission declared that Labor had won 44 seats.

Voting was so close in numerous seats that it took 13 days to determine the outcome of the election. Labor will rely on the vote of conservative independent MP Peter Wellington to hold a precarious one-seat majority in the 89-seat parliament.

There was speculation that de Jersey would delay his decision, and accept the urging of the outgoing Liberal National Party (LNP) government to retain it as a caretaker administration for several months pending the outcome of a possible challenge to the result in one seat. These machinations highlight the unelected governor’s far-reaching powers to decide who takes office in times of uncertainty and crisis.

The lengthy delay and the narrowness of Labor’s victory underscore the fragility and volatility of the parliamentary system in Australia. At both state and federal levels, one government after another is being ousted at elections because of intense public hostility to the austerity programs pursued by Labor and Liberal National governments alike.

In the Queensland election, Campbell Newman became the state’s first premier to lose his own seat, because of deep opposition to the LNP’s destruction of more than 14,000 public sector jobs, decimation of health, education, housing and other basic services, and its plans to deepen the assault by privatising $37 billion worth of public assets.

Newman’s first-term government was defeated in a large election swing against the LNP just three years after Labor had been reduced to a rump of seven MPs, because of Labor’s own $15 billion privatisation operation, which axed thousands of jobs.

The unprecedented political reversal was also driven by the widespread loathing for the budget-slashing launched by the federal Liberal National government of Prime Minister Tony Abbott, which itself came to office in 2013 because of the popular anger toward the similar austerity drive by the previous Labor governments.

Labor’s hold on office in Queensland may still depend on the outcome of a possible court challenge to the result in the Brisbane electorate of Ferny Grove, which the LNP lost to Labor by just 409 votes. The fourth-placed candidate in that seat, from mining magnate Clive Palmer’s Palmer United Party (PUP)—who received 993 votes—was ruled ineligible after the election because he was an undischarged bankrupt.

The LNP has said it will apply to the Court of Disputed Returns for a fresh election in the seat, which could not be held until April 11 at the earliest. Lawrence Springborg, who replaced Newman as LNP parliamentary leader, is still manoeuvring for the support of the two MPs from Katter’s Australian Party to form an alternative minority government if the LNP wins back the seat. Like the PUP, Katter’s party is a right-wing populist formation.

Whatever the final result, the working class faces an intensified assault on jobs, living standards and social services, amid a sharp and deepening slump in the former mining boom state. Now that the election campaign is out of the way, all the pretences of an imminent economic recovery are being dropped.

Even before Labor’s appointment to government was announced yesterday, incoming Treasurer Curtis Pitt began to warn of further austerity measures, claiming that revised economic growth figures would pose bigger challenges for the new government than expected.

A Deloitte Access Economic Report earlier this week forecast a 3.6 percent economic growth rate for 2015–16, making a mockery of the state Treasury’s prediction of 5.75 percent, on which both the LNP and Labor fashioned their election commitments.

Pitt professed to be surprised by the downward revision, saying it meant “an ongoing economy that is sluggish” and “higher unemployment.” Labor’s election pledges and budget calculations, like those of the LNP, were based on fraudulent claims that Queensland would experience a sudden reversal from a year of contraction as liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports commenced.

In reality, plunging global oil prices, to which LNG prices are tied, were already undercutting LNP projects. Hundreds of jobs are now being axed in LNG projects, on top of the thousands destroyed in coal mines over the past two years.

Officially, the state’s jobless rate rose from 6.2 to 6.5 percent in January, but this vastly understates the impact of mine closures and project cancellations and their knock-on effects throughout the state.

Arrow Energy shelved its multibillion-dollar LNG project and QGC’s parent company, BG Group, reduced the value of its LNG operation by $5 billion. Santos will cut $50 million from its spending on its coal seam gas to LNG project, and Origin is believed to be shedding hundreds of jobs. The impact will flow on to revenue for the state government, with royalties likely to fall even further than forecast.

Interviewed on radio on Thursday, Pitt was asked whether front line public services would benefit from job creation programs. He declared that the Labor government would reject the “old-school” stereotype of restoring public sector jobs and instead “engage the private sector” by offering payroll tax rebates to employ apprentices and trainees. Pitt also refused to promise any drop in soaring electricity, water and gas prices.

During the campaign, Labor refused to promise to restore the public sector jobs eliminated by the Newman government and the previous Labor government. Palaszczuk, who was a leading minister in the last Labor government, attacked the LNP from the right, accusing it of promising to spend too much money on the basis of asset sales.

Labor vowed to eliminate state debt faster than the LNP by restructuring electricity and other government enterprises, and diverting two-thirds of their dividends each year from social spending into debt repayments. This will mean deeper cuts to essential services, as will Labor’s vow to save $645 million over four years by cutting government spending on consultancies, contractors and advertising.

On election night, Palaszczuk, who belongs to the state Labor Party’s dominant Australian Workers Union apparatus, signaled that her government will rely on the trade unions to suppress opposition to its measures in the working class, as they did under the two decades of state Labor government under Anna Bligh and her predecessor, Peter Beattie.

Australian PM prejudices rights of terrorist suspects to fair trial

Will Morrow

Two days after the police raid and arrest of two young men on allegations of terrorism, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott used his parliamentary privilege on Thursday to make deeply prejudicial statements about the case and attempt to stoke an atmosphere of fear and hysteria over “home-grown” terrorist threats.

Responding to an already prepared question by a member of the Coalition government, Abbott gave lurid details of what he claimed was a video seized from the home of the two men, 25-year-old Kuwaiti Mohammad Kiad, and 24-year-old Iraqi Omar al-Kutobi.

Abbott said that he had been shown the “pre-attack” video by police that proved the young men were acting in the name of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)—which Abbott has taken to referring to as “the death cult.”

Abbott claimed that one of the arrested men was shown “kneeling before the death cult flag with a knife in his hand and a machete before him.” Abbott read out what was purportedly an English translation of the man’s statements in Arabic: “I swear to almighty Allah, we will carry out the first operation for the soldiers of the caliphate in Australia. I swear to almighty Allah, blond people, there is no room for blame between you and us. We owe you only stabbing the kidneys and striking necks.”

Abbott asserted: “I do not think it would be possible to witness uglier fanaticism than this, more monstrous fanaticism and extremism than this, and I regret to say it is now present in our country.”

Police have claimed that the video provides evidence that a so-called “lone-wolf” terror attack was imminent. The video, however, has not been made public, and there has been no verification of the government’s claims or of the accuracy of the English translation. As with every purported terrorist incident, the official version presented by the state cannot be taken at face value. In case after case, in Australia and internationally, it has later been exposed as riddled with falsifications and distortions.

After massive police raids in Sydney and Melbourne last September, assertions of a plot to publicly “behead” someone, made on the basis of a phone-call intercept, later proved to be baseless. The word “behead” was never actually been used, and the “weapon” turned out to be a plastic ornament owned by an individual who was not even charged.

A hostage incident in Sydney at the Lindt Café in December was blown up by the government, police and media into a national terrorist crisis. It rapidly emerged that the hostage-taker, Man Haron Monis, was a disturbed man who was well-known to police and had no connection to ISIS or terrorist organisations. No attempt was made to negotiate a peaceful conclusion and it ended with police storming the café and the death of Monis and two hostages (see: “The Sydney siege: Official lies and contradictions”).

Several lawyers have publicly condemned Abbott’s comments on the latest incident as outrageous and deeply prejudicial. Having publicly read out evidence that would be used in the trial of the two young men, and effectively declared them guilty, Abbott has ensured that they will be unable to receive a fair trial.

Prominent Australian barrister Robert Richter QC said that if Abbott had made his statements outside of parliament, he could have been held in contempt of court. “To make those sorts of inflammatory utterances is calculated to influence the judicial process, and it’s being done for a political purpose,” he said.

Criminal lawyer Adam Houda also pointed to the political calculations underlying Abbott’s statements and the timing of the police raid itself. He suggested it was aimed at diverting attention from the deepening crisis facing Abbott’s government. The raid took place in the immediate aftermath of a leadership challenge to the prime minister last Monday, and ongoing opposition to Abbott in the Liberal Party.

“He wants to milk this situation politically for all it’s worth,” Houda said. “And the unfortunate result is that it will also bring unfair prejudice to the matters now before the court and also undermine the court process.” He added: “Is it coincidental that every time the Prime Minister is in the sh**, his mates find him a terrorist?”

Abbott’s comments are part of a broader agenda of the government, Labor opposition and media to use the alleged threat of terrorism to justify their reactionary program of war abroad and the tearing up of democratic rights at home.

The massive “anti-terror” raids last September were timed to coincide with the Abbott government’s announcement that it was sending fighter jets and Australian combat forces to join the renewed US-led war in Iraq. This week’s widely-publicised arrests come amid preparations by the Obama administration to further escalate US military operations in the Middle East.

Australian forces are an important component of Washington’s military strategy and planning in Iraq and Syria. In a speech on Thursday, Vice-Admiral David Johnston, the head of the Australian Defence Force’s Joint Operations Command, stated that the coalition had conducted 2,000 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria since August, 13 percent of these were carried out by six Australian F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter-bombers. Johnston alleged that 8,000 ISIS fighters had been killed, mostly from airstrikes, and that Australian planes had killed “hundreds.”

The Abbott government also dispatched 200 special forces commandos to Iraq, who have been attached to three brigades of the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service (CTS). The CTS forces have a documented record of functioning as sectarian Shiite death squads. They stand accused of murdering numerous perceived opponents of the US-backed puppet Shiite government in Baghdad (see: “Australian special forces working with sectarian Shiite troops in Iraq”).

The Abbott government has used the latest police raid to justify a series of draconian laws passed in the wake of the September raids, and to call for an even greater build-up of state powers. During his speech on Thursday, Abbott declared that “the anti-terror legislation recently passed by the parliament was helpful in securing this arrest.” Along with many other anti-democratic provisions, the legislation lowered restrictions on the power of police to make arrests, by requiring that they only “reasonably suspect” someone of having committed a crime, rather than the previous legal standard of “reasonably believes.”

Abbott explicitly tied the arrests to another tranche of the government’s anti-democratic legislation, which will soon come before parliament. Thelegislation will require Internet providers and social media platforms to hold metadata of all their users for two years, allowing intelligence agencies to trawl through it and build up a detailed profile of anyone’s life. Abbott declared that the bill “must be passed if our community is to be as safe as it should be in these difficult times.”

The latest arrests are also being used to fan anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant xenophobia, which is aimed at diverting growing social tensions in Australia into reactionary nationalist channels. In response to another staged question about how al-Kutobi was allowed to enter Australia, Minister of Immigration and Border Protection Peter Dutton declared that intelligence agencies had been “pushed to the limit and beyond” by the influx of refugees to Australia. He has foreshowed a review aimed at even tougher anti-immigrant measures.

The Labor opposition has given its unequivocal backing to the Abbott government’s anti-terror campaign and the deployment of the Australian military into Iraq. In comments to reporters following Abbott’s parliamentary speech on Thursday, Opposition leader Bill Shorten attacked Abbott, not for undermining the legal rights of the two suspects, but for compromising their conviction. He declared that it would be “terribly concerning if we’ve compromised a national security trial because the prime minister’s just gone too far.”

Siemens unveils another round of job cuts in Germany and worldwide

Elisabeth Zimmermann

The German electronics firm Siemens announced February 5 it was slashing 7,800 jobs globally. Most of the job losses will occur among white collar administrative workers, while 1,200 positions in the company’s energy sector will be eliminated. Of the total, 3,300 jobs are to be shed in Germany.

One of the main targets of the latest cuts is the Siemens site in Erlangen, Germany, where 900 jobs are to be cut. Three of the firm’s four departments have their headquarters in Erlangen. In Nuremberg, 300 jobs are to be cut, 500 at the corporate headquarters in Munich, and 300 in North Rhine-Westphalia. The remaining 1,300 job cuts in Germany are spread across the rest of the company’s locations.

Already at the end of May last year, company CEO Joe Kaeser announced at an investors’ conference in New York that a total of 11,600 jobs would be affected by the company’s restructuring. The latest decision from company management fulfills this announcement. It does not include the jobs that are no longer at Siemens due to the sale or outsourcing of entire departments.

The latest job cuts were prepared in close cooperation with the IG Metall trade union and the works council. Prior to the announcement of the figure, the Siemens business committee met for two days during the first week of February.

The committee, with equal representation from union and management, was led by the new human resources chief Janina Kugel, who is a close associate of CEO Kaeser. She collaborated closely with Birgit Steinborn, who took over the chair of the central works council a year ago and has been deputy chair of the board of directors since the end of January.

Steinborn assumed the leading position on the board from former IG Metall head Berthold Huber. The great value the company places on the collaboration of IG Metall was shown by the selection of Huber for the prestigious post of president of the Siemens Foundation.

Steinborn has worked hand in glove with the previous chairman of the central works council, Lothar Adler, over recent years. According to media reports, Adler earned €360,000 annually from Siemens until his retirement last year. Like Adler, Steinborn has a direct financial interest in the exploitation of Siemens workers.

As deputy chair on the board, Steinborn will make more than €300,000 annually. In total, “worker representatives” on the Siemens board received over €1.8 million, according to a company report.

The trade union board members are supposed to give the majority of these payments to the Hans-Bückler Foundation, run by the German trade union confederation (DGB). The representatives are allowed to retain €33,000 apiece. Due to this rule, the so-called meeting payments for board members, which the trade unionists are allowed to keep for themselves, have increased drastically. For Steinborn, this will amount to another €30,000 annually.

A large portion of the restructuring was directly planned and proposed by the works council and IG Metall. In order to cover up their role as co-managers, some union officials beat the protest drum from time to time.

Thus the IG Metall regional head for Bavaria, Jürgen Wechsler, stated the trade unions were not against “the reduction of superfluous bureaucracy and the slimming down of unnecessarily complicated processes.” But they emphatically opposed “a restructuring which, as always, is combined with employee reductions.”

Birgit Steinborn also sought to cover her tracks. She said that she expected difficult negotiations. She said, speaking in Munich February 6, that everything now had to be done “to further reduce the total of around 3,300 affected workers, whose posts are being eliminated, by deploying them somewhere else … I am fed up with job losses always being presented as the only solution.”

Who is Steinborn trying to fool? One cuts programme has followed another at Siemens for years, and on each occasion the IG Metall and works council played a key role in implementing job cuts.

In just the six years that Kaeser’s predecessor, Peter Löscher, led the company, the Siemens workforce was reduced from 475,000 to 370,000. The cuts were carried out through savings programmes, as well as the sale of entire departments. At the end of March last year, Siemens still employed 359,000 workers, of whom 117,000 worked in Germany. Today, with the announcement of the next round of cuts, the total workforce stands at 343,000, and 115,000 in Germany.

The latest announcement is only the beginning of another round of cuts and the destruction of jobs. The former medical technology department with around 50,000 workers has been outsourced and will be run as a legally independent company. At a later point it may be floated on the stock market.

Workers affected by such outsourcing have seen the results of previous outsourcings, sales and fusions, which have all led to further job cuts, as in the cases of Osram and Nokia-Siemens Networks. The sale of the mobile telephone division to BenQ resulted one year later in the bankruptcy of the company and the loss of all jobs.

Beyond the already announced 1,200 job losses, the Siemens energy department will bear the brunt of future restructuring measures and cuts. It has already been confirmed that 300 jobs will be cut at the steam turbine and generator plant in Müllheim in the Ruhr region, where 4,800 workers are employed.

Last year, Siemens purchased the American compressor producer Dresser-Rand for $7.6 billion, intending to profit from the fracking boom in the US. At the time, the price of oil was above $90 per barrel. The oil price has now fallen to below $50 per barrel, in part due to the economic warfare by the US, Europe and Saudi Arabia against Russia. Many suppliers for the oil industry have already announced thousands of layoffs as a result.

While workers at Siemens worry over the future of their jobs, the business press is demanding an acceleration of the social attacks and job cuts. As a comment in daily Die Welt February 7 stated, “If Siemens was an American company, everything would move faster.” Layoff protections and co-determination were putting the brakes on the cuts, the newspaper said, warning, “The major American competitor General Electric can only laugh at such blockages.”

Japanese PM calls for constitutional change in keynote speech

Peter Symonds

In a keynote policy speech on Thursday to the Japanese parliament or Diet, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe laid out his agenda of militarism, austerity and pro-market restructuring. “A rocky road lies ahead of all of these goals—the greatest reform effort since the end of the war,” he declared. “However, we must undauntedly make progress in carrying out these reforms.”

Central to Abe’s “reforms” is the revision of the country’s constitution, especially Article 9 that places constraints on the use of the military to prosecute the economic and strategic interests of Japanese imperialism overseas. Abe used his speech to launch a public campaign for constitutional change, exploiting the recent barbaric killing of two Japanese hostages by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militias.

The New York Times highlighted Abe’s “impassioned plea for change” explaining that at times he seemed “to shout at the chamber.” He exclaimed: “People of Japan, be confident! Isn’t it time to hold deep debate about revising the constitution? For the future of Japan, shouldn’t we accomplish in this parliament, the biggest reform since the end of the war?”

Since coming to power in December 2012, Abe’s right-wing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government has, under the fraudulent banner of “pro-active pacifism,” taken far-reaching steps to remilitarise. With the encouragement of the United States, it has expanded the military budget, adopted a more confrontational posture towards China, established a national security committee and last July “reinterpreted” the constitution to allow for so-called “collective self-defence”—that is, Japan’s participation in US-led wars and military operations. At the same time, Abe is waging an ideological campaign to whitewash the crimes of the Japanese military during the 1930s and 1940s.

The constitutional “reinterpretation” is an outright negation of Article 9, which formally renounced war and declared that land, air and sea forces would never be maintained. Since the 1950s, successive Japanese governments have subverted the post-war constitution by establishing substantial “self-defence” forces that have been deployed to support the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Abe has long regarded Article 9 as an intolerable restriction on the ambitions of Japanese imperialism and called for an end to the “post-World War II regime” and Japan’s transformation into a “normal nation.” However, the chief political obstacle to constitutional revision is the deep-seated hostility of the working class to war and militarism, which is reflected in consistent opinion polling showing a majority of voters oppose any changes to Article 9. While the LDP won a snap election called by Abe last December to consolidate his hold on office, a Kyodo News opinion poll, taken just days later, found 55 percent of respondents did not support Abe’s military and security policies.

Under the existing constitution, any amendment requires a two-thirds majority in both houses of the Diet as well as a majority vote at a subsequent referendum. Since its adoption in 1947, no amendments have been made to the Japanese constitution. The LDP and its coalition partner New Komeito have a two-thirds majority in the lower house, but not in the upper house where the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) is likely to block changes.

Nevertheless, the Abe government is determined to press ahead. The LDP’s sweeping plans for constitutional change have already been presented in 2013 in the form of a new draft constitution that eliminates key democratic rights, restores the emperor as head of state and drastically modifies Article 9.

Since winning last December’s election, Abe has repeatedly made statements calling for changes to the constitution. Following the execution of two Japanese hostages, he told an upper house committee on February 3 that amending Article 9 was necessary “to carry out our duty of protecting the lives and assets of Japanese citizens.” He has foreshadowed changes to allow the Japanese military to carry out rescue operations of hostages, including through the use of force.

A day later, Abe met with Hajime Funada, head of the LDP’s Headquarters for the Promotion of Revision to the Constitution, to discuss plans for constitutional revision. Funada reportedly recommended that concrete amendments be timed to take place after upper house elections due in mid-2016. He also suggested that the LDP propose amendments on “environmental rights,” “a provision to deal with emergency situations” and “a provision to maintain fiscal discipline” to garner wider support from opposition parties, before pressing ahead with deeply unpopular changes to Article 9.

While the opposition DPJ, Japanese Communist Party as well as the LDP’s New Komeito ally declare themselves formally opposed to changes to Article 9, all of these parties have joined in the government’s confrontational stance towards China, particularly over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea. The previous DPJ government was responsible for dramatically escalating tensions with Beijing by “nationalising” the rocky outcrops in 2012.

Abe’s speech to the parliament on Thursday not only threw down the challenge on constitutional revision, but foreshadowed legislation to give legal force to last year’s constitutional “reinterpretation” and laid out an extensive domestic agenda aimed at carrying through pro-market restructuring. These measures included changes to labour laws that will undermine working conditions and jobs, and “all-encompassing agricultural reform” that will impact heavily on the LDP’s own base of support in rural areas.

Abe’s speech was covered in markedly different ways in the media. While the Japanese press paid little attention to Abe’s remarks on the constitution, they were centrally featured in the report in the New York Times, which in recent months has been paying more attention to the Japanese government’s military policies. While not critical of Abe’s militarist orientation, the articles do suggest a growing unease in American ruling circles over its implications for US interests.

As part of its “pivot to Asia,” the Obama administration has been actively encouraging Japan to take a more aggressive approach to China, to expand its military capacities and to end legal and constitutional restrictions on taking part in US-led wars. In its preparations for war against China, the Pentagon envisages Japan as one of its key allies. While it is fully committed to the US alliance at present, the Abe government is pressing ahead with remilitarisation in order to prosecute the interests of Japanese imperialism, which could, in the future, come into conflict with those of the United States.