Cleanup continues after West Virginia oil train explosion

Clement Daly

Cleanup operations continue in southern West Virginia, a week after a massive oil train derailment prompted hundreds of evacuations and a state of emergency declaration by Governor Earl Ray Tomblin. Cleanup crews continued pumping oil out of the derailed cars over the weekend.

Last Monday, A CSX train transporting 109 tankers of crude oil from North Dakota to a terminal in Yorktown, Virginia, derailed near the town of Mount Carbon in Fayette County, West Virginia. The train had just passed through Montgomery—a town of nearly 2,000—only two miles before the accident.

According to CSX, 27 tanker cars, each carrying up to 30,000 gallons of crude oil, left the tracks, causing fires and massive explosions. Nineteen of the derailed tankers were either punctured and leaking or still on fire days after the accident.

No one was killed in Monday’s accident, and the train’s engineer and conductor were unharmed. One resident was treated for smoke inhalation, and one house was destroyed. Morris Bounds told the Charleston Gazettethat he happened to look out his kitchen window at the time of the accident and saw the train cars barreling towards his house. The 68 year-old escaped by immediately running out his door into the snow in his socks.

“The house was blowing up behind me,” Bounds said. “The walls were coming in.”

Bounds’ neighbor Carl Rose saw the scene and told the Gazette, “The cars were still shooting off the track as he was running out his front door.”

Bounds said he was thankful his wife was not at home and 15 family members who were visiting him had left the day before.

Contrary to initial reports, none of the tanker cars made it into the Kanawha River or nearby Armstrong Creek, although it remains unclear how much crude oil might have leaked into the two waterways. West Virginia American Water closed its water intake downstream from the accident, eventually cutting off water to about 2,000 customers serviced by its treatment plant in Montgomery. Water was restored later in the week.

About 200 residents living within a half-mile radius of the accident site were evacuated, some of whom went to stay with friends and family, while others went to emergency shelters and hotels. About 800 households lost power until damaged lines could be restored on Tuesday.

The investigation and cleanup operations have been hampered by severe winter weather in the region. The immediate cause of the accident is not yet known, and it is unclear what role, if any, the severe weather might have played.

The use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and the development of horizontal drilling techniques have unleashed an oil boom in the US in recent years. However, inadequate or non-existent pipeline infrastructure has driven oil producers in the newly opened fields to increasingly rely on the nation’s rail network as the most cost-efficient means of delivering their crude oil to refineries and terminals. Since 2009, rail transport of oil has increased from 21,000 barrels a day to 1.1 million, according to federal data.

In particular, the Bakken Shale formation of North Dakota and Montana has benefited from these new drilling techniques. The Bakken oilfields were first tapped with the new methods in 2007, and production has soared since then. By 2011, production had already outstripped existing pipeline capacity, and producers turned to railway transport for the extremely volatile form of crude oil.

Federal regulations and oversight of the nation’s railroads have not kept pace with these developments and are woefully inadequate to the new reality of ever-longer trains pulling massive shipments of hazardous materials for hundreds of miles through towns and cities.

An editorial in the Charleston Gazette noted, “[T]he Federal Railroad Administration has only 76 agents, aided by a few dozen state inspectors, to examine America’s 140,000 miles of track, plus bridges. This means that less than 1 percent of U.S. track can be inspected yearly.”

“Railway fines for safety violations are so small they have little effect,” the editorial continued. “In 2013, the Federal Railroad Administration issued $14 million in fines—to an industry whose top seven corporations reaped $84 billion [in] profits.”

The result has been a string of oil train disasters in recent years in Canada, Virginia, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Alabama. In 2013, a derailment of a 74-car oil train carrying Bakken crude in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, killed 47 people and destroyed some 30 buildings. Last year, a shipment of Bakken crude on the very same CSX route from North Dakota to Yorktown, Virginia, derailed and caught fire in Lynchburg, Virginia.

There have been at least 21 oil train accidents in the US and Canada since 2006, according to federal data reviewed by the Associated Press, and officials expect these disasters to continue. A study conducted last July by the U.S. Department of Transportation anticipates an average of 10 derailments a year over the next two decades, causing billions in damage and possibly killing hundreds of people.

For its part, the multi-billion dollar CSX Transportation company, which operates 21,000 miles of track in 23 states and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, has used its money and influence to push for continued deregulation of the industry. According to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), CSX is considered a “heavy hitter,” spending more than $15 million on federal elections since 1990.

The campaign contributions have flowed to both Republicans and Democrats alike, with the company favoring whichever political party is in power. Until the Republican sweep of incumbent Democrats in the last mid-term election, every federal office holder in West Virginia since 1990 had received money from CSX.

Former West Virginia Representative Nick Rahall—the ranking Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee until this year—received more than $62,000 from CSX since 2000, including $22,000 last year for his failed reelection bid. Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito has accepted nearly $53,000 from the company since she first entered Congress in 2000. Likewise, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin has received $30,700 since arriving in Congress in 2010.

“The company has lobbied heavily to protect its interests,” CRP explains. “CSX has spent millions of dollars lobbying against bills that would strengthen railroad antitrust laws, as well as bills that would give the federal government more power of oversight and regulation.”

Inmates riot against miserable conditions at south Texas prison

Evan Blake

Prisoners being held at the Willacy County Correctional Center in south Texas rioted on Friday, protesting the squalid living conditions and miserable medical care services at the for-profit prison. The prison is located in Raymondville, Texas, less than 50 miles from the Mexican border, and all of the nearly 3,000 inmates are noncitizen prisoners.

The protest began on Friday when prisoners refused to eat breakfast or report for work in protest over the horrendous medical services provided at the facility.

According to the operators of the prison, Utah-based Management and Training Corporation (MTC), prisoners “broke through” the prison’s housing structures later Friday afternoon. The inmates allegedly wielded pipes and set ablaze three of the ten 200-foot-long Kevlar tents that house the prisoners.

Local, state and federal authorities quickly surrounded the facility to prevent anyone from escaping, using tear gas to suppress the uprising. The US Bureau of Prisons (BOP) stated on Saturday that the agency is in the process of moving 2,800 inmates to nearby facilities in an attempt to “regain complete control” of the prison.

On Saturday evening, FBI spokesman Erik Vasys said that the protest “is not resolved, though we’re moving toward a peaceful resolution.”

Last June, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) issued a damningreport on for-profit Criminal Alien Requirement (CAR) prisons, including Willacy. For the report, the ACLU conducted site visits to twelve CAR prisons and interviewed approximately 270 prisoners, using pseudonyms to prevent retaliation from guards.

The report found living conditions at Willacy and all other CARs to be deplorable. Willacy is the second largest of thirteen CAR prisons in the US, five of which are located in Texas. In total, CAR prisons house more than 26,000 noncitizen prisoners. The vast majority of people held in CARs are guilty only of illegal entry or reentry into the US, while most others are in prison for minor drug offenses.

The report notes that CARs are “some of the only federal prisons operated by for-profit companies instead of being run as federal institutions by the Bureau of Prisons (BOP); they house exclusively non-citizens; and they are low-custody institutions with lesser security requirements than the medium and maximum-security institutions run directly by BOP.”

The accelerating growth of prisons since the beginning of the “War on Drugs” in the 1970s has produced enormous profits for private, for-profit prison operators, with the three corporations that own CARs reporting roughly $4 billion in revenue in 2012 alone.

The ACLU report notes that at CARs, “Medical understaffing and extreme cost-cutting measures reportedly limit prisoners’ access to both emergency and routine medical care.” The facilities are often a great distance from prisoners’ families.

Prisoners’ access to education, legal assistance, drug treatment and work opportunities is severely limited compared to citizen prisoners in BOP-operated institutions, despite the fact that many CAR prisoners have lived in the United States for lengthy periods of time.

Nicknamed “Tent City” or “Ritmo” (a portmanteau of “Gitmo,” the nickname of Guantanamo Bay detention camp, and “Raymondville”), Willacy was originally run by MTC as an immigration detention facility under a contract with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency from 2006-2011.

Following numerous reports of abuses, ICE removed its remaining 1,000 detainees from Willacy in 2011. About a month later, MTC obtained a $532-million contract through BOP to repackage the facility as a CAR prison.

At Willacy, roughly 200 prisoners are packed into each Kevlar tent, with a mere three feet of space separating each bed and no personal space whatsoever for prisoners. The report notes, “There is no privacy between beds, nor in the five bathrooms where toilets and showers are in the open with no partitions.”

The ACLU said prisoners “told us about insects and spiders that crawl in through holes in the Kevlar and bite them. They reported that their clothes are washed without detergent and mixed in the same laundry loads as mops and other cleaning equipment.”

In contrast to many prisons, where isolation units are employed strictly for punishment, at CAR facilities they are frequently used to house any surplus population when there are not enough beds in the larger housing structures. Sergio commented, “They treat us like animals.”

At Willacy, approximately 300 people, or roughly ten percent of the prison’s population, are held in extreme isolation cells, known as the Special Housing Unit (SHU), at any given time. New arrivals to the facility are often held in SHU until space opens up in one of the Kevlar tents.

The ACLU reports that “Prisoners who have been confined in the SHU report that the extreme isolation drives men to the verge of psychosis… Some prisoners reportedly attempted suicide or self-mutilation.”

Friday’s protest marks the third, and largest, protest at Willacy since 2011. In 2012, prison officials shut off the facility’s water for two days without providing any drinking water or usable toilets. When the water began to turn yellowish green, some prisoners protested, with up to 80 taken to SHU isolation cells.

In 2013, prisoners protested again after overflowing toilets leaked sewage throughout one of the prison’s tents. The ACLU writes, “Maintenance repaired the toilets later that evening, but the leaders of the strike were reportedly taken to extreme isolation as punishment.”

The ACLU report documents the types of atrocious medical care that prisoners protested against. According to the report, prisoners said that “Willacy cuts corners on medical treatment by refusing to provide any preventive dental care or teeth cleaning. And when a prisoner has a toothache stemming from a possible cavity or infection, the only treatment Willacy will provide is extraction.”

The case of Santiago, 45, is particularly striking. Born just across the border, but raised in Texas, Santiago was deported to Mexico on drug charges, and has been in the CAR prison system since 2012 for illegal reentry into the US. Four months after arriving at Willacy, he fell drastically ill.

The ACLU writes that, “To see a doctor, he squeezed into a cell with 25 other ailing inmates and waited eight hours. Staffers denied his pleas for blood work.” Several weeks later, he was told by a visiting doctor that he has Hepatitis C. Almost two years later, at the time of the ACLU report’s release, he hadn’t received any type of treatment or advice on how to care for the disease.

In 2012, roughly 300 prisoners at another CAR prison in Natchez, Mississippi, run by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), rioted over inadequate access to food, severe mistreatment by guards, and deplorable medical care. That uprising led to the death of one guard and left 20 other people injured.

After that protest, Frank Smith, head of the prison watchdog Private Corrections Working Group, declared, “The big problem is CCA tries to cut corners in every possible way. They short-staff, they don’t fix equipment, and things just get more and more out of control, and that’s what leads to these riots. It’s just about maximizing short-term profits.”

US expands “secret war” in Afghanistan

Thomas Gaist

The Obama administration is considering new proposals from the Pentagon to delay troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and increase the number of US forces to be stationed in the country on a permanent basis, US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter announced this weekend during a joint conference with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

Carter and Ghani indicated that formal arrangements for a larger long-term US troop presence, maintenance of US bases previously planned to close, and stepped up “counterterrorism” operations by US forces in Afghanistan may be finalized as early as the beginning of March.

“President Obama is considering a number of options to reinforce our support for President Ghani’s security strategy, including possible changes to the timeline for our drawdown of US troops,” Carter said.

President Ghani stressed “the comprehensive nature of the partnership” being worked out between his government and the Obama administration, adding that he was personally grateful for Obama’s executive decree in December 2014 ordering an additional 1,000 US troops to remain in the country on an indefinite basis.

More than 10,000 US troops remain in Afghanistan, and an array of US Special Forces and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) paramilitary units are continuing to carry out combat missions against alleged insurgents throughout the country.

Despite the proclamation of an official end to US combat operations in Afghanistan beginning December 31, 2014, recent weeks have seen a “significant increase in night raids" and a “tempo of operations unprecedented for this time of year,” the New York Times reported in mid-February.

“The official war for the Americans—the part of the war that you could go see—that’s over. It’s only the secret war that’s still going. But it’s going hard,” said an Afghan security official cited by the Times.

The US forces are leading the missions and directly engaging targets, “not simply going along as advisors,” the Times noted.

Assassination teams are regularly dispatched against “a broad cross section of Islamist militants,” the Times reported. The US-led death squads include elite soldiers under the command of Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security, as well as CIA paramilitary groups, US Army Rangers and Navy SEALs.

The raids represent a continuation and intensification of the counterinsurgency strategy implemented by the US during the official occupation, which sought to stabilize the US puppet government in Kabul by murdering anyone suspected of supporting armed opposition to the Karzai regime.

As early as 2005, a top US military general declared that this strategy was leading to the total defeat of the Taliban. When the Obama administration ordered the US military to add 30,000 additional troops to its overall occupation force in 2009, General Stanley McChrystal vowed that the insurgency would be defeated by 2011.

Similar assessments were made by US leaders during the occupation of and then the “surge” of troops into Iraq, along with enthusiasm about the readiness of the Iraqi national army, which has subsequently been shattered by the seizure of large sections of the country by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

Unflagging optimism of US commanders and politicians notwithstanding, the US targeted murder programs in Afghanistan have also clearly failed. Taliban forces have regained control over large portions of the country during the past year, inflicting casualties against government and US-led International Security Assistance Force coalition troops, as well as the civilian population, at the highest rate since the US occupation began in October 2001.

In the absence of substantial support from the US military, the Afghan government stands little chance of defeating the resurgent Taliban, according to experts cited by Stars and Stripes.

“The overly positive assessments are repeated so often that the leaders in the military and civilian world start to believe it,” director of the Kabul-based Afghanistan Analysts Network told the Department of Defense-based newspaper.

The Pentagon’s claims that violence is down in Afghanistan is “borderline insane,” International Crisis Group’s lead Afghanistan analyst Graeme Smith told Stars and Stripes.

“You’re saying that the war is getting smaller, and its not; its getting a lot bigger. Policy needs to adjust to deal with the fact that the inferno is growing,” Smith said.

More than 5,000 Afghan security forces, who received their paychecks from the US government were killed during 2014 in fighting with Taliban and other anti-government militants, according to statistics provided by Kabul.

Civilian fatalities have reached their highest levels since 2009, according to a UN report released last week, which confirmed the deaths of at least 3,600 noncombatants and wounding of another 6,800 in 2014.

Amdist the ongoing catastrophe that is a result of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, US policy makers and generals are clearly determined to intensify operations against its population for years to come.

With reports of growing Chinese political influence in Afghanistan, including the cultivation of ties with sections of the government as well as with the Taliban, Washington is determined to maintain its military grip on the country and Central Asia as a whole, which remain important linchpins in its drive to control the Eurasian landmass.

Turkish troops enter northern Syria

Patrick Martin

A force of 600 Turkish troops entered northern Syria Saturday in the first-ever incursion by Turkey since the Syrian civil war began in 2011. The convoy of nearly 200 military vehicles, including 39 tanks and 57 armored cars, evacuated 40 Turkish soldiers guarding the tomb of Suleyman Shah, an ancestor of the Ottoman dynasty that ruled Turkey for 500 years.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu appeared at a press conference Sunday, flanked by military officials, to declare that the evacuation had been conducted successfully and the troops had returned with the loss of only a single soldier, under circumstances that were not explained.

The remains of Suleyman Shah were transported to a new location in Syria, just across the border from Turkey, which will be occupied by Turkish troops from now on. Instead of a group of 40 soldiers serving as semi-hostages deep in Syrian territory, the Turkish military now has a bridgehead on the border with Aleppo province, one of the key battlegrounds in the Syrian civil war.

The Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad said it was informed of the Turkish incursion ahead of time but did not give its consent. A spokesman for Damascus, which no longer controls the area where the tomb was located, denounced Turkey’s “flagrant aggression” on Syrian territory.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which had surrounded the site of Suleyman’s tomb, made no effort to resist or attack the withdrawal convoy, Turkish officials said. When ISIS forces first surrounded the tomb, the Turkish military reinforced the guards with special forces troops.

The Turkish incursion was made possible by the victory of US-backed Kurdish forces who retook the border city of Kobane earlier this month, after months of air strikes by the US, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf sheikdoms that reportedly killed several thousand ISIS fighters. The Turkish military convoy drove straight through Kobane on their way to the tomb, with the agreement of the Syrian Kurdish force, the YGP.

After removing every artifact from the tomb, located on the Euphrates River, the Turkish troops blew up the building, leaving only rubble behind. On their return to the Turkish-Syrian border, in what one news report called “a hugely symbolic move,” Turkish troops raised the Turkish flag over a portion of the Syrian border district of Eshme chosen as the tomb’s new location.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, “Our flag will continue to fly in a new place to keep alive the memory of our ancestors.”

The tomb of Suleyman Shah, whose death is dated 1236, was declared a Turkish enclave inside the French colony of Syria under the terms of the 1921 Treaty of Ankara, one of multiple agreements that finalized borders after World War I.

The incursion is of far more than historical or ceremonial significance. Not only did it represent the first military operation by Turkey inside Syria, it was coordinated with the Syrian Kurdish forces who up to now Turkey has treated with hostility because of their links with the outlawed Kurdish nationalist PKK inside Turkey.

In an action that coincided with the Turkish incursion—whose size and scope would certainly have distracted the attention of ISIS forces—the Syria YPG launched an offensive late Saturday night aimed at expanding its control of the northeastern province of Hassakeh, pushing back ISIS forces around the town of Tal Hamis.

Pro-Kurdish media sources claimed that the YPG “managed to advance and took over some 20 villages, farms and hamlets in the area.” Warplanes from the US and its Arab allies carried out strikes against ISIS positions that were coordinated with the YPG offensive.

While Syrian Kurdish forces began pushing eastward, Iraqi Kurdish forces have pushed westward, gaining ground at the expense of ISIS and reportedly cutting the main highway between Mosul, the largest Iraqi city held by ISIS, and the Islamic fundamentalist group’s headquarters at Raqqa, Syria.

In late January, Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga troops captured the town of Kiske, west of Mosul on the highway to Raqqa. They had first attempted to capture Sinjar, another town on the highway, but were stalled there and moved further west.

The Associated Press reported Friday that ISIS troops had been forced to withdraw from the town of al-Bab, in Aleppo province, and that there was heavy fighting between ISIS and Syrian army troops near the Deir el-Zour air base, the last major outpost of the Assad regime in eastern Syria.

The Washington Post reported Sunday that ISIS forces were also under pressure around the city of Tikrit, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein and a longtime stronghold of Sunni opposition to the US invasion and conquest of Iraq. Some 10,000 Iraqi Shiite militiamen, together with some regular Iraqi Army troops, assembled south and east of Tikrit on Saturday in preparation for a major offensive.

The Post reported that “Qassim Soleimani, the leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force, was also in the city to oversee the operation, according to local officials.” Iran has been providing military advice and limited air support to the Shiite militias that have done most of the recent fighting against ISIS in central Iraq, north and northeast of Baghdad.

Both the Turkish incursion and the actions of Kurdish, Shiite and Iraqi army troops suggest that major US-backed military operations may already be under way. The highly publicized official leak of plans for a coordinated onslaught on Mosul in April or May may well be deliberate disinformation, aimed at disguising offensive operations that would begin much sooner, including saturation bombing as well as ground assaults.

European Union leaders hail Syriza austerity agreement

Robert Stevens

Over the weekend, euro zone leaders welcomed the four month austerity programme agreed between the Eurogroup and Greece on Friday.

The agreement remains conditional on the Syriza-Independent Greeks government submitting proposals to the Eurogroup, containing the exact “reform” measures that it will implement by the end of April. According to Friday’s agreement, the measures must be “sufficiently comprehensive” and in accord with the 2012 austerity programme that the government of Alexis Tsipras has now signed on to.

No final deal is yet in place, as Syriza’s proposals have to then be agreed Tuesday by the European Commission, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, known as the “troika.” Even as he tried to sell the deal as one that allowed Greece some respite, Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis was forced to acknowledge, “If the list of reforms is not agreed, this agreement is dead.”

The Tsipras government began work on the proposals Saturday morning and details have not yet been made public. Nikos Pappas, Tsipras’ chief of staff, said Sunday, “We are compiling a list of proposals to make the Greek civil service more effective and to combat tax evasion.”

The agreement was endorsed by Germany’s governing coalition. Volker Kauder, the parliamentary leader of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, told Welt am Sonntag, “The Greeks have to do their homework now. Then, an extension of the aid programme can be approved by the German Bundestag. Greece has finally realised that it cannot turn a blind eye to reality.”

Thomas Oppermann, the leader of Merkel’s junior coalition partners, the Social Democratic Party, cautioned that Greece had to respond with proposals that would satisfy the Eurogroup. Offering Tsipras his “full support,” Oppermann added, “It is good that Greece is ready to carry out structural reforms. But this really has to happen now.”

Hans Michelbach, an MP for the Christian Social Union (CSU) and head of the party’s small-medium business wing, warned, “Without reliable considerations from Athens, the deal is worth nothing.” Gerda Hasselfeldt, the chair of the CSU group in Bavaria, said: “We won’t make a rotten compromise. There can be no payment without reward.”

One German government official said that German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble “believes if a country doesn’t respect the rules, we are better off without them. We can’t have a situation where we are constantly having to spend our time on a country that makes up 2 percent of the bloc’s GDP.”

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung summed up by saying, “Things will get serious on Monday.”

Syriza’s strategy since they were elected was based on trying to counter the hardline position of Germany, supported by several other countries, that Greece implement all remaining austerity measures that the previous New Democracy/PASOK government agreed. Greece held regular discussions with French President François Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, among others. The support of the Obama administration in the US, which has expressed its support for a reflationary strategy in Europe, was also solicited.

In the end this perspective failed miserably, with Greece forced to remain within the existing austerity programme and all 19 eurozone finance ministers in favour.

With a few caveats, France endorsed Germany’s position. Hollande said Saturday, “The right solution is to extend the finance allowing Greece to ensure its transition and honour its commitment.”

As the European Union displayed its reactionary character to the workers of Greece and the entire continent, Tsipras praised his capitulation to the EU as a victory. He said the deal proved the EU was “an arena of negotiation and mutually acceptable compromise and not an arena for exhaustion, submission and blind punishment.”

“We won a battle, not the war,” he said.

The Economist bluntly summed up the harsh terms to which Syriza is now committed as follows:

Syriza “was elected on a pledge to tear up Greece’s bail-outs and leave austerity behind… It is difficult to square these promises with last night’s agreement. Greece has secured no change to the terms of its epic debt, which stands at over 175% of GDP. Its behaviour will continue to be supervised by the institutions formerly known as the troika. It is obliged to refrain from passing any measures that could undermine its fiscal targets; that appears to torpedo vast swathes of its election manifesto, which included all manner of spending pledges.”

The magazine warned, “Greece still faces an immediate funding squeeze. The bail-out funds can only be released after a ‘review’ of the bail-out provisions; that, according to the agreement, will not happen before the end of April.”

Reviewing the scale of Greece’s economic crisis and the billions in due debts that must be paid back in the weeks ahead, it concluded, “The government has reached a €15 billion ceiling on T-bill [Treasury bonds] issuance imposed by the troika, and there was no suggestion… that it might be lifted. The next two months will be painful indeed.”

In response to the deal, the supposed “left” within Syriza felt obliged to make a few noises in protest.

Giorgos Katrougalos, the deputy minister of administrative reform, had announced he would resign if “red lines,” which he did not specify, were crossed.

On Sunday, Syriza’s most senior figure, 92-year-old Manolis Glezos, said the party had broken its promises to “annul the bailout, annul the troika [of bailout monitors from the European Commission, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank] and annul all the austerity legislation.”

The government was “renaming fish as meat …without changing the actual situation.”

Pointing out that Syriza were only granted a few terminological concessions by the Eurogroup, Glezos said the troika was now known as “the institutions,” the austerity agreement “the contract” and Greece’s international lenders “the partners.”

Glezos’ comments amounted to rebellion on its knees. He concluded, “I apologise to the Greek people for participating in this illusion,” and called only for Syriza supporters to demand explanations from governing officials.

The most ludicrous statement was issued by the Communist Tendency, which is part of Syriza’s Left Platform and a section of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT).

Describing the “request to the Troika for a six-month extension of the loan agreement” as a “grave political mistake,” the statement called for, “No more retreats! The government must formulate an alternative collision plan with the blackmailers and their local lackeys, a plan that favours the working masses!”

In the most obsequious terms possible they declare, “We call upon our comrade, the Prime Minister, and the leftist ministers, to formulate an alternative plan to finance and implement the Thessaloniki programme [Syriza’s election manifesto] without relying on the loans of the extortionist ‘partners’.”

Immediately after Syriza formed a governing coalition with the right-wing xenophobic Independent Greeks, the Communist Tendency also denounced this as a “grave mistake.” One wouldn’t know from these statements that the Communist Tendency has two members on Syriza’s Central Committee. Once they spouted their rhetoric as a small opposition party. Today, they do it as the loyal opposition in a governing party committed to imposing brutal attacks on the living standards of the working class.

Obama administration forces five-year agreement on West Coast dockworkers

Dan Conway

A tentative agreement was reached Friday between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) that outlines terms of a five-year contract between West Coast dockworkers and their employers.

The agreement, which covers 20,000 workers and must be approved by ILWU members, was reached after the extraordinary intervention of the White House. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez flew to the West Coast late last week to give the ILWU its marching orders. Perez had threatened to move negotiations from San Francisco to Washington in order to force a settlement in the event that the union and PMA could not reach a deal by Friday.

The ILWU, which has close ties to the Democratic Party and the Obama administration, quickly capitulated and reached an agreement.

Also directly involved in last week’s negotiations were Obama’s billionaire Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. They were joined by a growing chorus of Democratic Party politicians, business spokesmen and media representatives—all demanding that an agreement be reached as soon as possible, and that the White House use the Taft-Hartley Act to break any strike by dockworkers.

The agreement follows the PMA lockout of workers at 29 West Coast ports for six days earlier this month, resulting in thousands of dollars in lost wages for dockworkers. The PMA had earlier reduced night shifts for dock workers, which the employers organization claimed was a response to a worker slowdown on the ports. The PMA also shut off health benefits for dockworkers during this period.

While details of the agreement have yet to be released, the PMA announced a last and final offer in the days leading up to the agreement that included a miserly pay rise of 3 percent, along with an 11.1 percent increase in maximum pension benefits.

However, negotiations were mainly being used to push for even greater casualization of the port labor force, including the reintroduction of zero-hour contracts aimed at moving back toward the notorious “shape up” system, in which workers had no guaranteed hours.

The aim of the ILWU in the negotiations has been to keep a dwindling dues base of members as it collaborates in implementing measures demanded by the port companies. The union has also worked to keep the dockworkers isolated, including from the ongoing strike of oil refinery workers. In this, the ILWU has played a complementary role to that of the United Steelworkers (USW), which is involved in negotiations with the oil industry.

Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka expressed gratitude for the proposed agreement. “This will go a long way toward helping to move cargo efficiently through the nation’s busiest container port. More than ever, we need labor and management working together with all our stakeholders to solve industry challenges,” he said.

ILWU President Robert McEllrath and PMA President James McKenna released a joint statement, declaring their mutual collaboration. The two said they were “pleased that our ports can now resume full operations.”

The ILWU has repeatedly caved in to the PMA’s demands to eliminate the gains of dockworkers won over decades of struggle. In 2002, the ILWU explicitly gave employers the right to cut jobs, with the introduction of newer computer technologies. In 2008, it gave management the right to bypass the union hall on a case-by-case basis, paving the way for increasing casualization.

The union reached an agreement with the PMA right at the point when the latter’s bargaining position was at its weakest. After complaints on Friday by the National Retail Federation that stoppages were costing the US economy approximately $2 billion a day, and that West Coast ports were undergoing “crisis level” congestion, PMA President McKenna declared, “The system can only take so much. At some point, this will collapse under its own weight.”

The direct intervention of the White House in the dockworkers dispute underscores the nervousness within the ruling class over the growing anger among workers throughout the country—the product of record social inequality, stagnating wages and the unrelenting attack on job security and other social rights.

In addition to the oil refinery strike, which has effected numerous plants along the West Coast of the US, there is growing sentiment among teachers in Los Angeles, California for a struggle against deteriorating working conditions and the attack on public education.

In this context, the task of the unions is to isolate the working class, prevent a unified struggle and enforce the dictates of the companies, backed by the state and the Obama administration.

US oil workers strike spreads to more plants in Texas and Louisiana

Jerry White

The strike by oil workers in the United States expanded over the weekend, with 1,350 workers walking out of a refinery in Port Arthur, Texas—the largest refinery in the US—and two other refineries and a petrochemical plant in Louisiana.

As the walkout enters its fourth week, 6,550 oil workers in California, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Texas, Louisiana and Washington state are engaged in the largest oil walkout since 1980.

The expansion of the strike is the first since February 8. It takes place as the United Steelworkers (USW) is coming under sharp criticism from rank-and-file workers who are demanding an all-out strike by the 30,000 USW workers in the oil industry. (See: “Oil refinery workers denounce USW treachery, call for national strike”)

From the beginning, the aim of the USW has been to contain the struggle of oil workers, limiting it to partial strikes that have had only a minimal impact on production. This has encouraged the oil giants to maintain their hard line against workers’ demands for improved wages, safety conditions and limits on contract workers.

Last Thursday, lead industry bargainer Shell put forward another insulting offer—the seventh in a row. Well aware they could not sell such a deal to their members, USW negotiators rejected it.

Workers at the Port Arthur site, on the Gulf of Mexico about ninety miles east of Houston, walked out Friday at midnight. The 600,000 barrels per day refinery is run by Motiva Enterprises, a joint venture between Shell and Saudi Refinery, Inc. On Saturday at midnight workers at Motiva refineries in Convent and Norco, Louisiana and a Shell Chemical plant in Norco joined the strike.

On the eve of the expanded strike, Motiva President and CEO Don Romasko issued a memo to the company’s employees praising the supposed generosity of Shell and the rest of the oil industry. Romasko—who pocketed $10 million in his four years at Tesoro before taking the leading position at Motiva—highlighted a 6.5 percent wage increase over three years (less than inflation) and a proposal to maintain, rather than increase, the 20-25 percent of health costs that workers already pay to keep their families insured.

Romasko also boasted that the industry planned to do a “workload balance assessment” to evaluate fatigue on the job—a meaningless gesture that the companies would circumvent to continue the widespread practice of 12-hour days and 14 consecutive days of work before a break. Any limits on contractors, Romasko declared, were “unreasonable,” adding that that the oil companies need to keep “flexibility in hiring to accommodate economic cycles and maintenance/turnaround schedules,” according to a report in the New Orleans Times Picayune. These appeals did little to persuade workers. Oil workers at the two Louisiana plants had “overwhelmingly” voted to authorize a strike last year, according to a USW spokesman.

The widespread support for the walkout in Texas and Louisiana gives the lie to the claims that workers in the southern US states are conservative and unwilling to fight the corporations. Like their northern counterparts, they are more than willing to engage in a struggle to recoup losses after decades of eroding living standards and working conditions.

The major obstacle to developing such a fight are the trade unions, which are allied with the employers and government and have spent the last three-and-a-half decades suppressing every form of working class resistance to the corporate war against workers.

The expansion of the oil strike coincides with the capitulation of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) to President Obama’s demands that the union cave in to ultimatums from the Pacific Maritime Association. The ILWU and the PMA announced that an agreement was reached over the weekend, which must be approved by dockworkers.

Desperate to prevent a political confrontation with the Obama administration, the ILWU is working to block a potential strike by 20,000 West Coast dockworkers that would immensely strengthen the fight of oil workers and other sections of workers, including Los Angeles teachers who have not had a raise in eight years.

While providing unlimited resources to bail out the banks and fuel the stock market bubble, the Obama administration has made the permanent lowering of wages—and the shifting of health care and pension costs from the employers and the government onto the backs of workers—the center of its economic policy.

A report issued by Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors last week boasted that the US economy has recovered from the global financial crisis faster than other countries because it had dealt with “structural imbalances.” This includes reducing government spending on public education and other social services at the fastest rate since World War II and sharply lowering expenditures on health care. Real wages, the report noted, have fallen by 0.3 percent since 2010. The number of salaried workers afforded overtime protection had fallen from 45 to 39 percent.

The picture of the future painted by the Obama administration was even more chilling. Stable jobs and employer-paid health care and pensions would be replaced by greater “labor market fluidity,” reducing workers to the status of desperate migrant laborers without the slightest job protection. The administration also wants to remove “unnecessary” licensing and training, which it terms an “obstacle to work.” This coincides with the cost-cutting drive by the oil industry to replace experienced workers with lower-wage contractors.

While workers have suffered through the longest period of wage stagnation since the Great Depression, the richest one percent of the population has swallowed up 95 percent of all income gains since 2009. The top five oil companies—Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP and ConocoPhilips—made $90 billion in profits last year and are squandering billions on stock buybacks and dividends for their wealthy investors.

The oil strike is the first of many struggles that mark the resurgence of open class conflict in the US.

To oppose the corporate giants, oil workers must break through the straightjacket of the USW and other pro-company unions. The strike must be spread to every refinery, chemical plant and oil terminal in the industry. This requires the formation of rank-and-file strike committees, independent of and in opposition to the USW.

The fight for decent wages and safe working conditions brings workers into a direct political struggle with the Obama administration and both big business parties. The Democrats and Republicans will not shy from using militarized police and anti-terror laws to defend the interests of Big Oil and Wall Street.

Oil workers confront not only the intransigence of the oil companies. Behind the oil companies stands the entire ruling class in America, which is drunk with wealth and power and, having been protected from the collective resistance of the working class by the trade unions for decades, believes it can get away with anything. The ruling class is determined to make workers pay for the multi-trillion dollar bailout of the banks and the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on war and repression.

The intransigence of the corporate and financial elite must be met with an equal intransigence of workers—through the unification of their struggles in a powerful political movement aimed at breaking the grip of the financial aristocracy and reorganizing economic life, including the multinational energy conglomerates, to meet the needs of working people, not private profit.

The capitulation of Syriza and the lessons for the working class

International Committee of the Fourth International

The petty-bourgeoisie is “capable, as well shall see, of nothing but ruining any movement that entrusts itself to its hands.”— Friedrich Engels (1850).

***

It has taken less than one month for the Syriza government in Greece, led by Prime Minister Alexander Tsipras, to repudiate its anti-austerity election program and betray, totally and utterly, the impoverished working people whose votes placed it in power.

Even in the entire squalid history of “left” petty-bourgeois politics, it is difficult to find an example of deceit, cynicism and truly disgusting cowardice that quite matches that of Prime Minister Tsipras. Certainly, from the standpoint of the time that elapsed between election and betrayal, the Syriza government has probably set a new world record.

In the hours following an agreement that is nothing less than a complete capitulation to the European Union, Tsipras let loose another barrage of demagogic lies in a pathetic attempt to deny the magnitude of Syriza’s prostration and to cover up his own political bankruptcy.

“We kept Greece standing and dignified,” declared Tsipras, in a televised statement that seemed oblivious to reality. He claimed that the agreement with Eurozone finance ministers “cancels austerity.” Tsipras added: “In a few days we have achieved a lot, but we have a long road. We have taken a decisive step to change course within the euro zone.”

Not a word of this is true. The Eurogroup statement signed by Syriza commits its government to “refrain from any rollback of measures and unilateral changes to the policies and structural reforms.” In other words, the Greek government will continue to enforce the existing austerity measures implemented by the previous government.

Moreover, Syriza is to prepare further “reform measures, based on the current arrangement,” specified in the hated Memorandum, which Tsipras had previously pledged to repudiate. And though Syriza had insisted that it would write down Greece's enormous debt, the agreement with the Eurogroup states that the country will “honor their financial obligations to all their creditors fully and timely.”

Far from cutting off ties with the “troika,” the government has now promised to “work in close agreement with European and international institutions and partners,” specifically mentioning the European Central Bank and the IMF, which together with the EU make up the troika. As before, “any disbursement of the outstanding tranche of the current [European Financial Stability Facility] programme” depends on a review by “the institutions.” Thus, Greece is to remain in the stranglehold of the troika.

Tsipras and his negotiating partner, Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, received no concessions from the European Union other than minor changes in the wording of the agreement, which have no practical significance whatsoever.

While Tsipras and Syriza apologists attempt to present the government’s miserable betrayal as a heroic victory, the capitalist press in Europe and the United States has not minced words about the scale of the prime minister’s capitulation.

“If this was meant to be the challenge to German economic orthodoxy, it failed,” writes the Financial Times of London. “The Germans prevailed on all the substantive issues.”

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung states, “With the new government led by the left-wing Syriza party, Greece is continuing the old bailout program. Funding will only be provided if the country undertakes reforms.”

Le Monde describes the agreement bluntly: “Athens is promising to finish the work of the previous conservative government of Antonis Samaras, enacting reforms imposed by the troika of creditors (IMF, ECB, EU) that have not yet been implemented.”

And The Wall Street Journal, enjoying the spectacle of Tsipras’ surrender to the EU, predicts further humiliations. In an article titled “Tsipras Can Expect More Humble Pie,” the principal voice of US finance capital writes: “Mr. Tsipras has capitulated on many issues in the past week ... But he will have to capitulate on plenty more if he is serious about putting Greece’s place in the euro zone once again beyond doubt.”

From the standpoint of the interests of the working class, the agreement signed by the Syriza government is a criminal betrayal. But from the standpoint of the real social and economic interests represented by the Syriza regime—sections of the Greek ruling elite and the affluent upper middle class—the deal is no more than a disappointment. Notwithstanding Tsipras’ demagogy—intended mainly to deceive and disorient the working people of Greece—the negotiating strategy of Syriza was determined entirely by its subordination to capitalist interests.

The Greek ruling class and the upper middle class may have hoped to achieve an easing of conditions that inhibited the access of Greek-owned businesses to financial credits. But they had no desire for a confrontation with EU bankers and were utterly opposed to any measures that might destabilize European capitalism, let alone threaten their own corporate and financial interests in Greece.

The real economic and social agenda of the Syriza government was made entirely clear by Yanis Varoufakis in his remarks, behind closed doors, at a February 11 meeting of the Eurogroup. “We are committed to deep structural reforms,” he stated, adding that the Syriza government “will be the most reform-oriented government in Greek modern history, and among the most enthusiastic reformers in Europe.”

Lest there be any mistaking Syriza’s commitment to the protection of capitalist interests, Varoufakis declared: “On privatization and the development of publicly owned assets, the government is utterly undogmatic; we are ready and willing to evaluate each and every one project on its merits alone. Media reports that the Piraeus port privatization was reversed could not be further from the truth .” [Emphasis added]

Varoufakis also denounced “misleading reports” that “have caused misunderstandings with our partners by insinuating that we have rolled back previous reforms and added to our budget.”

Far from contemplating an exit from the euro zone, Varoufakis assured his “dear colleagues” that Syriza considered Europe to be “whole and indivisible, and the government of Greece considers that Greece is a permanent and inseparable member of the European Union and our monetary union.”

Finally, Varoufakis assured the euro zone finance ministers that they had absolutely nothing to fear from Syriza. He regretted that there were some who were displeased by Syriza’s victory. “To them I have this to say,” Varoufakis proclaimed. “It would be a lost opportunity to see us as adversaries.”

Indeed, Varoufakis was so successful in convincing the ministers of Syriza’s utter subservience to the troika that they saw no need to make any concessions at all. Having nothing to fear from the Syriza government, they treated it with same combination of contempt and ruthlessness that large banks usually display in their dealings with failing small businesses.

The events of the past month constitute a major political experience for the working class in Greece, Europe and internationally. The role played by Syriza is a devastating exposure of the essentially reactionary character of a form of “left” middle class politics that developed amidst the ruins of the radical student politics of the 1960s and 1970s. While the working class was led to defeat after defeat by the old Stalinist, social democratic and reformist labor organizations, sections of the middle class benefited, directly and indirectly, from the explosive rise in global stock exchanges following the accession of Thatcher and Reagan to power and the international ascendancy—especially after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism in China—of neo-liberal policies.

As it grew increasingly affluent, the social and political attitude of sections of the privileged middle class toward the working class passed from estrangement and indifference to increasing hostility. This socio-economic process was reflected in the ideological repudiation, by these layers, of Marxism, whose identification with the revolutionary role of the working class and the struggle against capitalism had become totally unacceptable.

In place of the politics of proletarian class struggle, the affluent middle class embraced a panoply of “identity agendas”—of race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation—which formed the base of the political program upon which it pursued its interests. Far from desiring any overturn of capitalist class relations, this affluent social milieu and its political parties have been preoccupied, principally, with achieving a more equitable distribution of wealth within the richest 10 percent of society. Envious of the extremely rich, they despise and fear the working class.

Syriza is only the most prominent of the countless political organizations spawned by this socio-economic process. It differs from such organizations as the Left Party in Germany and Podemos in Spain, not to mention many smaller groups throughout the world, only in that it is the first to assume the leadership of a national government.

The World Socialist Web Site’s characterization of these parties as pseudo-left is not a rhetorical exercise but a precise political definition. They are bourgeois parties representing elite sections of the middle class that are bitterly hostile to the workers. They are not allies but relentless enemies. Working people must break with them, and seek to destroy any political influence they have over the working class.

Syriza's various apologists, who only weeks ago hailed its election as “a new dawn for the Greek people” and “a mighty step forward,” will, no doubt, declare that nothing else could have been done. In supporting Syriza, they reveal their class interests.

As for Syriza, having endorsed the program of austerity and reaction, it is placing itself in direct conflict with the working class. As he seeks to impose the dictates of the banks in Greece, Tsipras will have to rely ever more directly on the state and police to suppress working class opposition. The pseudo-left forces that have backed the Syriza government will fall in line.

The working class cannot demand more radical policies from governments staffed by Syriza or other pseudo-left groups. It can only defend itself by building new working class parties that are entirely independent of all sections of the capitalist class, based on an internationalist revolutionary program, directed toward the establishment of workers’ power, the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of a world socialist society. This is the historic task to which the International Committee of the Fourth International is committed.

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The upcoming Academy Awards: Selma, American Sniper and other issues

David Walsh

The 87th Academy Awards ceremony will take place Sunday evening, hosted by actor Neil Patrick Harris, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California. If recent ceremonies are anything to go by, the event will be thoroughly scripted and lacking in spontaneity. Occurring at a time of unprecedented global tension and volatility, virtually no hint of the external world will be permitted entry into the self-absorbed proceedings.

As much as the Academy Awards broadcast becomes more embalmed with each passing year, it still passes for a major public occasion in the US. In fact, its generally stilted and meticulously stage-managed character places the awards show in the same category as every other event on the official calendar.

For good reason, the audience for the tedious three-hour plus broadcast has generally shrunk in recent years. The 2014 show attracted some 44 million viewers, one of the highest totals of the new century, but was still considerably down from the 57.25 million in 1998.

The awards show remains big business, both in terms of box office revenue eventually generated for the films that win major honors and advertising money for television network ABC, which broadcasts the ceremony. The price of a 30-second commercial this year is $1.95 million, and the network anticipates netting some $100 million.

The American film industry as a whole remains big business ($31 billion in revenue in 2013), despite declining ticket sales. According to the tracking firm Rentrak, North American movie ticket revenue was down more than five percent in 2014, to an estimated $10.35 billion (about 30 percent of the global total), the third such year-over-year decline in the past five years.

The declines in frequent film attendance among 18- to-24-year-olds (17 percent) and 25- to 39-year-olds (also 17 percent) were especially marked. According to one industry analyst, the film industry is “losing that younger audience because they’re agnostic about how they get their content.” The generally poor quality of the films coming out is also no doubt a factor at a time of widespread economic hardship.

The entertainment and media market in the US is estimated to be worth between $550 and $600 billion dollars, the largest in the world and a third of the global total. The export of US entertainment services, including film, television, music, sports, gaming, Internet, etc., is calculated to be worth half a trillion dollars worldwide.

Too much is at stake on Sunday evening, in other words, to let genuine considerations of artistic excellence ultimately hold sway.

As for the nominations themselves, a host of arbitrary, subjective and “political” factors no doubt plays a role. This is Hollywood, after all.

The eight nominees for best picture, for example, vary widely in quality. The crassest elements in the film industry and media are protesting, as they have done in response to the Academy Award nominations a number of times in the past several years, that the highest-costing and largest-grossing films are “underrepresented” in this category. In fact, none of the seven top-grossing films received a best picture nomination. The budgets of the highest-grossing films averaged $151 million, while the budgets of the nominated films averaged $21 million (low by contemporary Hollywood standards).

Boyhood, The Grand Budapest Hotel and Selma, despite their limitations, are worthwhile nominations. Whiplash, Birdman, The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything contain intriguing moments and performances. Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper is a terrible film, which mythologizes the Iraq war and one “American hero,” sniper Chris Kyle. Mr. Turner, which did receive three other nominations, and Foxcatcher, with five, certainly deserved to be nominated for best film.

Complaints have been raised about the failure of Ava DuVernay and David Oyelowo to receive nominations for best director and best actor, respectively, for their contributions to Selma, the film about the 1965 voting rights march. Certainly, the inclusion of Bradley Cooper, who does little more than drawl and draw a bead on outgunned Iraqis in Eastwood’s film, at the expense of Oyelowo, is a travesty.

The failure of any black performers or directors to gain nominations this year has stirred the charlatan Al Sharpton and his National Action Network into action. In a statement, the group, which plans a protest outside the award ceremony Sunday, called on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences “to accelerate [its] push to be more inclusive. With all of this year’s acting contenders being white and no women in the directing or writing categories. It’s obvious that the Academy has a diversity problem they are going to have to fix.” Sharpton’s outfit exists to pressure large corporate entities to employ a greater share of the African American upper middle class that it speaks for.

The question of American Sniper is a more vexing one. Why has the film found a popular response?

There are no doubt numerous factors. For one thing, Eastwood’s film had the good fortune to appear in movie theaters when there was virtually no competition. A number of the big-budget films that came out simultaneously were ignominious flops. Moreover, in its action sequences, American Snipercontains a certain tension and drama, and the film claims to depict a war the concrete facts and details of which few Americans know much—and are no doubt curious—about.

Eastwood’s own personality and career are somewhat complex issues. The actor-director, deservedly or not, has the reputation of being vaguely “antiestablishment.” His body of work as a director is generally poor, often abysmally poor, but it does contain a few genuine and humane bright spots, including True Crime (1999) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006). His love of jazz and jazz musicians is also well known, reflected in his directing Bird(1988), a fictional tribute to legendary saxophonist Charlie Parker, and producing the documentary Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1989).

As we have noted, American Sniper ’s script downplays the filthy right-wing and anti-Muslim bigotry to be found in Kyle’s autobiography. Unlike the actual sniper, who apparently reveled in the killing of Iraqis, Cooper’s character looks sorrowful after each murderous episode and even tells a fellow soldier on one occasion to shut his mouth when he begins to celebrate.

Nonetheless, the claim that American Sniper is any sense “antiwar” or has merit because, in the words of producer Harvey Weinstein, “it introduces America to PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder],” is preposterous.

As we noted in a comment January 31 on the WSWS: “The sequences set in Iraq present the American forces as engaged in a righteous campaign against an almost inconceivably savage and evil foe. American Sniper ’s attitude toward Iraqis, and Arabs generally, is hostile and contemptuous. The US forces represent order, modernity, civilization and sanity; the Iraqis—superstition, backwardness, treachery and violence. The American soldiers are obliged, according to the logic of the film, to exterminate great numbers of Iraqis both in self-defense and as some sort of act of public hygiene.”

The success of American Sniper is nonetheless troubling, and indicates some of the cultural and political problems in America, where the population has been bombarded with foul notions on a daily basis for the past several decades. The promotion of militarism has been especially poisonous. The American people are led to believe at every opportunity that the professionalized armed forces, with whom they have little to do on a daily basis, are made up of “heroes” protecting them from unspeakable evil. Skepticism and mistrust no doubt abound, but the relentless propaganda has its impact, including in weakening the instinctive empathy for the suffering of others.

The population is unaware to a large extent, thanks to the campaign of lies of the government and the media, of the atrocities being committed by the American military on a daily basis, and it is largely unprepared for the sinister role this mercenary force is readying to play in every part of the globe and in the US itself.

What’s being celebrated in American Sniper, after all, is especially despicable. Snipers have more often than not been portrayed in American films as cowards or worse. In films like The Manchurian Candidate (1962),The Day of the Jackal (1973), Two-Minute Warning (1976) and numerous others, the killer-sniper is presented as the lowest form of human life. And America has had its experience with real-life snipers, from the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, the University of Texas tower shootings in 1966 and beyond.

Whether American Sniper wins the best picture award or not depends to a large extent on how intimidated and cowed Hollywood liberalism is by the ultra-right and its spurious claim that wide layers of the population are enamored of the American military and the semi-fascist Kyle. By any logical artistic or intellectual standard, Eastwood’s film should not have a chance, but one shouldn’t hold one’s breath.