South African MP warned against investigating Russia-South Africa spy satellite

Thabo Seseane Jr.

In revelations tied to the leaked “Spy Cables” documents being published byAl Jazeera in collaboration with the Guardian, opposition Democratic Alliance MP David Maynier said he was warned off an investigation into a joint Russia-South Africa surveillance project. This is thought to be a satellite now being used by rival South African spies to snoop on each other via Russia.

Appearing on Al Jazeera on February 27, Maynier, the Shadow Minister of Defence and Military Veterans, said a satellite “was launched [for South African Defence Intelligence] on or about 14 December 2014,” under the codename Flute. The satellite surveillance programme was to be used for strategic military purposes, eventually culminating in the launch of a satellite by Russia on behalf of South Africa that was to integrate the countries’ satellite surveillance programmes to provide wider coverage over all of Africa and as far north as Israel.

According to the leak, a top-secret report from the South African State Security Agency (SSA) shows that Russia and South Africa were cooperating on a secret satellite surveillance programme, which the SSA codenamed Project Condor.

“Bizarrely,” as a press release on Maynier’s web page explains, “the State Security Agency appears to have been collecting intelligence about a satellite surveillance programme being implemented by Defence Intelligence.”

The SSA report dated August 28, 2012 represents the first time information about Project Condor/Flute has been in the public domain. It says the SSA was relying on an agent in Russia for details of the joint satellite surveillance project between the Russians and Defence Intelligence.

The disclosures came days after Al Jazeera and the Guardian began publishing what they tout as “hundreds of secret intelligence papers from agencies all over the world.” The Spy Cables include papers drafted by operatives working for Israel’s Mossad, Britain’s MI6, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and the SSA.

State Security Minister David Mahlobo said in an interview with the Mail & Guardian the leak “undermines the operational effectiveness of intelligence and its mandate to secure the state and diplomatic relations.” He denied that factionalism in the ruling party could be a factor in the revelations.

In what sounded like an early attempt to apportion blame, Mahlobo added, “We inherited an intelligence [service] from a fragmented past. We had the agents from the apartheid intelligence and those from the liberation movements. They were brought together to serve the country…”

Mahlobo’s boss, President Jacob Zuma, headed the intelligence wing of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) in exile. That the leaks happened during his term of office is supposed to be a sore point.

The Spy Cables describe Johannesburg as the “El Dorado of espionage.” Experts have said that, whereas under apartheid the country was relatively unwelcoming to the world, with the explosion in the number of embassies opened after the ANC accession to power in 1994 there was a commensurate rise in the number of spies in South Africa.

Even as South Africa aligns itself more and more with Russia and China—now the country’s biggest trade partner—through multilateral vehicles like the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) group—the country remains susceptible to pressure from the Western intelligence agencies. Britain’s MI6 and the CIA are supposed to have fostered an anti-Iranian bias among South African intelligence operatives. They warned that the Iranians were using South Africa as a recruiting ground for groups like Al Qaeda and asked the South Africans to keep tabs on their diplomats.

According to one of the leaked documents, the SSA considered spying for the CIA. Doing so, went the reasoning, might have illuminated what the US considered of most importance, and revealed some objectives of US intelligence gathering efforts.

The leaks come at a bad time for Mahlobo. Just days before the Al Jazeerascoop, the minister was forced to announce an inquiry into a signal jammer which prevented journalists from using their cell phones during Zuma’s state of the nation address on February 12.

In the press gallery, journalists prevented from covering the event in real time waved their handsets, chanting, “Bring back the signal!” DA Chief Whip John Steenhuisen rose to object to the communications blackout and was followed by other opposition party MPs who denounced it as a violation of parliamentary rules and therefore unconstitutional.

A handwritten note passed from Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa to Mahlobo caused the minister to leave the House for a few minutes. When he returned, so did the cellular networks signal.

Minutes later, Economic Freedom Fighters MPs were assaulted by armed police officers and parliamentary security personnel in identical black-and-white attire. The EFF MPs were thrown out of the joint sitting of the National Assembly and the upper National Council of Provinces for interrupting the president’s address, demanding to know from Zuma when he intended paying back the US$23 million of state funds unlawfully spent on his private compound at Nkandla.

The chaos in parliament and Maynier’s fruitless investigations into the secret spy satellite deals between Russia and Defence Intelligence are of a type. For a sitting MP to be told, as Maynier reports he was, by persons unknown, that the surveillance satellite was not something he wanted to look too closely into smacks of more than just a creeping authoritarianism. The impotence of opposition politics is increasingly clear.

These events signify the limits of bourgeois parliamentary democracy. Having lost the power of persuasion, the ruling party turns to ever greater secrecy and when necessary, demonstrations of force. The DA and EFF are unable to compel Zuma to accept any responsibility for any satellites or for Nkandla, never mind making restitution for even a fraction of any expenditure he is personally responsible for. Neither the ANC, nor the reactionary EFF and DA can give expression to the popular will of working class South Africans.

The repression in parliament is related to the skulduggery of SSA agents and their 140 foreign counterparts throughout South Africa. All together dimly reflect the gigantic social pressures unleashed by the systemic breakdown of global capitalism since 2008. None of the elite factions in any of the parliamentary parties represent a way out for the working poor and the unemployed. For the masses, the answer lies in the building of an independent working class party with a socialist international perspective.

Puerto Rico: Regressive taxes levied on workers as island’s economy falters

John Marion

For almost 10 years, since the expiration of a US federal tax credit that benefited corporate investors followed by the financial collapse of 2008, the US Commonwealth of Puerto Rico has suffered through an economic crisis used by hedge funds and bondholders to hold it hostage. As the island’s official unemployment rate remains above 13 percent and workers leave in the tens of thousands for the US mainland, predatory financiers are creating tax havens for themselves and using the federal courts to protect their interests.

The use of Puerto Rico’s crisis to attack workers’ rights was expressed last June in an emergency law that froze wages, sick leave and other benefits for government workers.

At the same time, a second law was passed giving authority to the Puerto Rican Electric and Power Authority (PREPA) to restructure its debts, which total approximately $9 billion. This law, modeled on Chapter 9 of the US federal bankruptcy code, was challenged in US District Court by investors that included Franklin Templeton, Oppenheimer, BlueMountain Capital and others.

Puerto Rico had sought to define PREPA as a “municipality” which, with state approval, could seek bankruptcy under Chapter 9. The federal law, however, explicitly states that Puerto Rico is not defined as a state for this purpose. On February 6, the US District Court for the District of Puerto Rico ruled against the debt restructuring law and in favor of investors.

Last Thursday, the island’s Resident Commissioner in the US Congress, Pedro Pierluisi, introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that would change this definition so that the restructuring can proceed. Pierluisi is the only representative to Congress from an island of 3.7 million people, and does not have a vote. In seeking to amend Chapter 9, he is looking to copy the attacks on workers that have recently occurred in Detroit and Stockton. While predatory lenders are fighting to protect their immediate interests, sections of the Puerto Rican bourgeoisie view bankruptcy as preferable to default or some types of receivership.

In his decision, District Judge Francisco A. Besosa, wrote that “plaintiff bondholders … should not be forced to live with such substantially impaired contractual rights—rights that they bargained for when they purchased the nearly two billion dollars worth of PREPA bonds that they hold collectively.” The rights of PREPA’s workers will not be treated so gingerly by the courts when push comes to shove. The electric authority employs more than 9,500 people, of whom nearly 6,800 are unionized.

Quoting a 2005 Supreme Court ruling, Besosa also issued a warning to PREPA workers and anyone who purchases energy from the agency: that he sought to “bar the government ‘from forcing some people alone to bear public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole.’”

PREPA, under “forbearance agreements” with large creditors that include Citibank and Scotiabank, is already subjected to strict reviews of its Accounts Receivable and meter reading practices. A November 2014 report issued by FTI Capital Advisors noted as a “positive observation” that the agency had lowered its cut-off period for non-payment from 55 to 50 days.

As the only provider of electricity in Puerto Rico, PREPA is essentially a state-run monopoly that runs 14 plants and services about 1.5 million customers. No doubt there are interests lining up behind the scenes to advocate for its privatization.

Puerto Rico’s General Obligation bonds were also downgraded by Moody’s on February 19. GO bonds are funded in part from the island’s 7 percent sales and use tax through a government-owned corporation established in 2006. Not satisfied with revenues from this regressive tax, the government is now trying to replace it with a 16 percent value added tax which would be applied to many imports as well as items produced on the island. It argues that there is a large informal economy that is escaping the sales tax. While the VAT (or IVU in Spanish) would supposedly include features to limit its regressivity, they come in the form of refunds that are paid out only three times a year and limited to $600.

Rather than build a movement of workers against capitalism, Puerto Rican labor unions and the New Progressive Party (NPP) are advocating pressure on the government. The San Juan Daily Star quoted Luis Pedraza Leduc of the Electrical and Irrigation Workers Union Solidarity Program as advocating “real” tax reform while “recognizing that there is an existing need to restructure the public debt.” NPP gubernatorial candidate Ricardo Roselló called for a “united front” to “bring together all sectors and allow them the necessary time to achieve a transparent and thorough discussion.”

While workers suffer, the government is giving grotesque tax breaks to the wealthy. Under laws passed in 2012, hedge funds located in Puerto Rico now pay only 4 percent tax on profits from exported services, and no tax is charged on capital gains for people who become Puerto Rican citizens. Citizenship means living on the island 183 days out of the year and, asForbes glibly writes, “your driver’s license and yacht should … move with you to the island.”

“Puerto Rico-sourced income” of residents is also not subject to US income tax. The arrogance of the financial aristocracy taking advantage of these measures was expressed by a money manager who told Forbes, “the way the US tax code is written, I could be on Mars and be taxed on intergalactic income but not if I’m sitting on this island in the Caribbean.” Last week theOrlando Centinel quoted Rudy Giuliani as saying that more such people would go to Puerto Rico if beggars were taken off the streets.

Criminality is a characteristic of the banking industry. On Friday, the FDIC shut down Doral Financial Corporation and its subsidiary Doral Bank, which have been investigated for fraud and seen their stock prices drop. El Nuevo Día reported that workers were crying and in shock as they were escorted from the building. The FDIC waited until the end of the day before tens of its agents descended on the company’s headquarters in Guaynabo.

Doral employed more than 800 people, of whom approximately 100 will become employees of FirstBank and 80 will be offered work at Banco Popular. Those two companies are buying Doral’s branches, but its central offices will be shut.

The FDIC expects to lose $750 million in the closure. Doral had total assets of $5.9 billion and total deposits of $4.1 billion. While the FDIC claimed on Friday that no deposits would be lost, it will ensure them only to its standard amount of $250,000. Doral had attempted to balance its books with a $230 million tax credit it expected from the Puerto Rican government, but regulators would not allow this maneuver.

Doral is the largest US bank to fail since three other Puerto Rican banks—Westernbank, R-G Premier Bank and Eurobank—collapsed in 2010. As of December 2014, the total losses registered by the FDIC from those failures were also about $5.9 billion.

Wisconsin unions hold rally against “right-to-work” legislation

Niles Williamson

On Saturday, an estimated 3,000 people attended a union-organized rally in Madison, Wisconsin, to protest so called “right-to-work” legislation that is moving quickly through the state legislature.

The right-wing bill, which would outlaw mandatory dues payment to a union as a condition of employment in private companies, was introduced and passed in the Senate last week. It will be introduced to the Republican-dominated Assembly today, and it is expected to be brought to a vote and approved on Thursday.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, a likely candidate for president in 2016, has pledged to sign the bill into law soon after it is approved.

The sections of the political establishment that support the measure—primarily the Republicans—are seeking to dispense with the unions as they escalate the war against the working class. In addition to the right-to-work law, Walker is also seeking to push through a raft of cuts to social programs, as was also the case in 2011, when legislation was passed severely limiting collective bargaining rights for most public sector workers.

The state’s Democrats, on the other hand, see the unions as both a significant source of cash for political campaigns and as instruments for containing social conflict and enforcing attacks on workers.

The character of the protests against the right-to-work legislation is entirely conditioned on these political considerations. While the unions would prefer the bill not pass, they are also completely opposed to any mobilization against it by the workers they claim to represent. The demonstration was mostly composed of bureaucrats, union members and supporters bussed in by union locals from across the state.

The principal speakers on Saturday, including Wisconsin AFL-CIO president Phil Neuenfeldt, focused their remarks on urging workers to testify against the bill at a limited public hearing today and “bear witness” to its passage on Thursday.

The Democrats and the unions have also not expressed any fundamental opposition to the hundreds of millions of dollars in proposed cuts to public education and social programs contained in Walkers’ latest biennial budget proposal. There has been no attempt to mobilize workers against these cuts, in Wisconsin or anywhere else.

Saturday’s protests and others earlier in the week were markedly smaller than protests in Wisconsin in 2011. In February and March of that year, tens of thousands of workers and students participated in demonstrations, which included the occupation of the capitol building in Madison, to oppose a law that curtailed collective bargaining for most public sector workers and massive budget cuts aimed at public education.

The protests were corralled by the Democratic Party and the unions, who funneled workers’ anger into a futile recall election campaign aimed at Republican politicians, including Walker.

Wisconsin Democrats boasted during the 2011 protests of imposing the deepest austerity measures in the state’s history by working with the unions. After the passage of Act 10, the public unions moved quickly to impose concession contracts on teachers and other state workers, before the bill came into effect, in a bid to maintain their bargaining privileges.

Among workers, there is little active support for the unions, which have collaborated for decades in the destruction of workers’ living standards. As is the case nationally, the unions have lost a significant membership base in Wisconsin over the last three decades. The union membership rate stood at 11.7 percent in 2014, down from its historic peak of 20.9 percent in 1989. Since the passage of the legislation curtailing public sector unions in 2011, the number of workers in the state belonging to a union has fallen by more than 30,000.

The union leaders oppose right-to-work legislation out of the knowledge that if dues payment is made voluntary, many workers will stop paying them, severely curtailing one of their main sources of income.

The dues collected from rank-and-file union members are used to fill the pockets of a bevy of well-paid bureaucrats. Among them are Wisconsin state AFL-CIO president Neuenfeldt, who collected a salary of more than $108,526 in 2010. Nationally, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka pulled in a total compensation of $368,652 in 2013, while executive vice president Arlene Holt-Baker raked in a total of $635,507.

In addition to furnishing such handsome salaries to their executives, the unions also funnel tens of millions in dues payments to fill the campaign coffers of the Democratic Party. The AFL-CIO contributed approximately $100 million to state and federal election campaigns in 2013, with 95 percent of this sum going to the Democratic Party.

This money goes to maintaining a political party which, under the leadership of President Barack Obama, has presided over the greatest transfer of wealth, from the working class to the corporate and financial aristocracy, in US history.

German Left Party leader outlines campaign against Russia

Johannes Stern

Christine Buchholz, a leading member of Marx 21, the German offshoot of Britain’s Socialist Workers Party and a parliamentary deputy of the Left Party, was recently treated to a reception buffet at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP). If there was a critical visitor to the event—and there were none, since it was “invited guests” only, along with members of the press—they might have been reminded of the saying, “He who pays the piper, calls the tune.”

The mere fact that the defense spokesperson for the Left Party delivered a lecture at the DGAP on German foreign and defense policy exposes how deeply the organization and its pseudo-left factions are integrated into German imperialism. In fact, the Left Party is playing a central role in the revival of an aggressive German foreign policy.

The DGAP is one of the largest and oldest foreign policy think tanks in Germany. It was founded in 1955 by the influential bankers Hermann Josef Abs and Robert Pferdmenges, both of whom had made their careers under the Nazis.

The DGAP today has more than 2,500 members, including major figures in the economic and political establishment. In its presidium can be found Wolfgang Ischinger, the head of the Munich Security Conference. Its managers are CEO Arend Oetker and diplomat Paul Freiherr von Maltzahn. One of its most well-known active members is the current German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU, Christian Democratic Union).

Buchholz spoke within the framework of a series of talks at the think tank, organized under the headline, “German defense policy and a new responsibility—parliamentary group speakers explain their positions.” The spokesmen of the government parties had already explained their “positions” at previous events.

The stated aim of the DGAP is to promote discussion of a new defense and military strategy for Germany. The text announcing the series of meetings reads, “2014 was a year of major security policy crises in Europe and its periphery … Germany must and will take on more responsibility in this conflict-ridden world. At the same time, the deficiencies of the Bundeswehr [armed forces] are striking.”

It continues, “German defense policy is being put to the test: What should a stronger German engagement look like in practice? Do we have the right defense mindset to tackle the threats? Where do we stand in the reorientation of the Bundeswehr? Does it have the right skills? How can the necessary changes be better conveyed to the German public? Can we fulfill our treaty obligations?”

Buchholz came to the DGAP not as an opponent, but as an ally and strategy consultant of German imperialism. Even before beginning her actual contribution, she stressed that cooperation with the Left Party was possible in foreign policy issues.

“I do not see this so narrowly, that there are no points of overlap at all,” she said. Rather than making absolute statements, she said, the question is, “How to conduct oneself with regard to specific points.” These remarks were made to an audience comprised of representatives from the world of politics and the media, senior ministry officials and a whole detachment of the military in civilian clothes and in uniform.

Buchholz was received with warm applause. The moderator of the event, Henning Rieke, head of US/Transatlantic Relations at the DGAP, praised Buchholz’s biography as “one of engagement in numerous projects of the peace movement, globalization movement and other alternative political fields.” Rieke said Buchholz, a founding member of the Left Party, could be described not only as a defense politician, “but generally as an influential foreign policy politician.”

Buchholz’s lecture, titled “New responsibility instead of old interests,” revealed the specific role that the Left Party and Marx 21 are playing in the change in German foreign policy. She justified the return of German militarism with “humanitarian” arguments, calling for a German role more independent of the US and NATO. Such arguments are playing an important role in mobilizing an entire petty-bourgeois layer for the return of German militarism. She also offered the Left Party’s services to foreign policy elites in Germany in the campaign to install pro-Western governments in strategically and economically central regions of the world.

This was particularly evident in Buchholz’s remarks on Russia. In condemning Russian “imperialism”—a term she did not employ in relation to Germany—and the alleged Russian aggression in Ukraine, Buchholz plainly stood behind the aggressive attitude of the German government.

“While Western imperialism remains quagmired in Iraq and Afghanistan,” she lectured, “Russian imperialism has awakened again.” In 2008, Russia had inflicted “a defeat upon a NATO ally, Georgia.”

Specifically, she said she agreed with the defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen. “Frau von der Leyen said the day before yesterday [at the opening event White Paper 2016]: the ‘new policies of the Kremlin began long before the Ukraine crisis.’ That is true.” Russian behavior corresponds to “a great power that imposes its interests by means of force.”

Then Buchholz presented the strategy of the Left Party: “It is obvious that Putin is relying on the use of military force. The Left Party has no sympathy with this. However, the escalation of the conflict—and this is what the response of NATO amounts to—is no more an answer. The solution can only come from within.”

Buchholz added, “Anti-militarism in Russia is the answer to Putin’s militarism. But these voices are marginalized so long as Putin can justify his policy of escalation by pointing the finger at NATO, the EU and their allies.”

In other words, Buchholz advises the German ruling class to break up Russia from the inside in order to pursue their imperialist interests, rather than relying primarily on a military confrontation. Her demand for support for “anti-militarism” in Russia is merely another expression for the promotion of a “color revolution,” as the Western powers have already organized and financed in Georgia, Ukraine and elsewhere.

Marx 21 and other parts of the Left Party played a central role in the putsch in Ukraine a year ago, together with the Greens, the government parties and their respective think tanks. They celebrated the right-wing coup as a “democratic revolution” and defended the collaboration with the fascist forces that drove elected President Viktor Yanukovych from office.

During the clashes in Kiev, Marx 21 published an interview on its web site with Ilya Budraitskis, a member of the pseudo-left Russian Socialist Movement, who praised the fascists as the “bravest and literally most militant sections of the movement.” No one went on such an “offensive against the police as the ultra-right.” When asked whether he wanted to “discuss with Nazis,” Budraitskis replied, “Maybe with some.”

With her proposal for a regime change in Russia in the name of “freedom and democracy” and the “struggle against Russian imperialism,” Buchholz stands in the anti-Russian traditions of German imperialism and the DGAP. Shortly attack the attack on the Soviet Union by Hitler’s Wehrmacht in June 1941, Hermann Josef Abs—who founded the DGAP after the war and was the spokesman for the Deutsche Bank from 1957 to 1967—described the war against the Soviet Union as a struggle “against the greatest enemy of freedom and humanity.”

US and South Korea begin joint military exercises

Ben McGrath

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula are likely to rise as annual war games between the United States and South Korea take place over the next two months. Washington and Seoul are using the large mobilization of troops and weaponry involved in these military exercises to threaten and intimidate North Korea as well as China.

The South Korean navy announced Friday that the Foal Eagle exercises had begun early. “The naval maneuver drill started ahead of the official Foal Eagle schedule inevitably to fit the schedule of the US ships so they could come here,” a naval officer told the Yonhap News Agency.

The two exercises known as Foal Eagle and Key Resolve are held each spring. Foal Eagle officially starts today and involves 3,700 US and 200,000 Korean troops. It will be followed by Key Resolve in which 8,600 American and 10,000 South Korean soldiers will take part.

The Foal Eagle naval drill will take place in the Yellow Sea, the Sea of Japan, and the East China Sea just south of the Korean Peninsula and is slated to run through to mid-March. The South Korean Navy released a statement saying, “We expect to boost joint operational capabilities between Seoul and Washington and solidify a strong joint defense posture.”

Foal Eagle comprises a series of land, sea, and air drills. Friday’s exercise began in the waters south of Korea and involves live-fire drills. Ten South Korean vessels are taking part, including the Ganggamchan, a destroyer. The USS Michael Murphy, a destroyer, is participating along with attack helicopters and patrol planes.

The US navy announced last month that one of its new littoral combat vessels, USS Fort Worth, would participate in Foal Eagle for the first time. The ship, which is designed to operate in shallow waters, carries a helicopter and a drone and is armed with missiles and a 57-millimeter gun.

Key Resolve is a computerized command post exercise focusing on crisis management and combat readiness between the two allies. Both exercises are aimed, in the first instance, against North Korea, but also underscore the US military presence close to the Chinese mainland.

Pyongyang denounced the US-South Korean exercises. An editorial in the official Rodong Sinmun last Tuesday declared, “The whole course of Key Resolve and Foal Eagle is aimed to invade North Korea through preemptive strikes.” Another editorial on Thursday warned that North Korea would “wage a merciless sacred war against the US now that the latter has chosen confrontation.” As it has in the past, the North Korean military test fired two short-range missiles off its coast today.

These bellicose but largely empty threats, like its nuclear program, are part of Pyongyang’s attempts to gain some leverage with Washington in exchange for easing crippling US-led economic sanctions and international isolation. However, this rhetoric plays directly into the hands of the US and its allies.

In the past few years, the US used the joint exercises and supposed North Korean threat to escalate tensions on the Korean Peninsula. In 2013, as the threat of conflict loomed, the US flew nuclear capable bombers to the Korean Peninsula. Last year a tense artillery exchange erupted between the North and South along the Northern Limit Line in the Yellow Sea, the disputed sea border between the two countries.

North Korea has been calling for dialogue with the South. In October, Pyongyang sent top-ranking officials to South Korea to observe the closing ceremonies of the 2014 Asian Games and hold talks with their counterparts. Then in his New Year’s address, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un offered to hold a summit with President Park Geun-hye.

In January, Pyongyang also offered direct talks with the US and to suspend a fourth nuclear test if the US would call off its annual war games with South Korea. North Korea’s last test was conducted in February 2013. Washington rejected the North’s overtures outright, indicating it currently has no interest in reaching an accord with North Korea.

The current war games also provide the US with an opportunity to highlight its commitment to the “pivot to Asia,” which has been questioned by Washington’s Asian allies as the US focuses on its confrontation with Russia in Ukraine and its new war in the Middle East. The “pivot” is aimed at diplomatically isolating and militarily encircling China in order to force Beijing to accept US hegemony in Asia.

US Republican congressman Randy Forbes, chairman of the Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee, stated last month, “Devoting credible resources to the capabilities required to ensure US presence in Asia is the only way to ensure that the ‘rebalance’ is more than just a slogan.” He continued, “Both our allies and our competitors judge our commitment to the Asia-Pacific region by the capabilities we maintain.”

The current war games take place few days after Joel Wit, an analyst at the US-Korea Institute at John Hopkins University, predicted North Korea could have as few as 10 or as many as 100 nuclear bombs by 2020 as well as the ability to mount them on missiles. Speaking at a press conference last week David Albright from the Institute for Science and International Security, Wit declared that North Korea possessing 100 bombs and intercontinental ballistic missiles was a “pretty scary scenario.”

Such statements coming on the eve of the US-South Korean exercise only further fuel tensions on the Korean Peninsula, which the US uses to put pressure on China. Albright once again blamed China for allowing North Korea to import equipment used in its nuclear program to cross their shared border: “Just cracking down on the border could do a lot, and they (China) do very little now,” he said.

With the war games scheduled to late April, the Obama administration could well exploit the tense situation to ratchet up a dangerous confrontation with North Korea.

US inflames South China Sea disputes

James Cogan

Top US intelligence and military officials used hearings of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) and House Appropriations Subcommittee of Defense on February 26 to step up accusations against China over its construction of facilities on islands and reefs in the South China Sea. The immediate result has been the rise of tensions between China and the Philippines—which lays claim to some of the same territory as Beijing—and warnings by Chinese officials for the US to stay out of the dispute.

Appearing before SASC to present a “Worldwide Threat Assessment,” Director of National Intelligence James Clapper asserted during questioning that China was making “aggressive” efforts to secure control over the South China Sea, through which passes 83 percent of China’s oil imports and global trade worth an estimated $5.3 trillion each year.

Former Republican presidential candidate, Senator John McCain, displayed satellite images that have been widely published over recent weeks, purportedly showing Chinese construction on Gaven Reef and other reefs in the Spratly Islands. McCain labelled it “a rather dramatic change” and suggested that China was aiming to construct airfields and anti-ship and anti-air missile bases that would be used to deny the US Navy access to the area.

Clapper accused Beijing of being “more willing to accept bilateral and regional tensions in pursuit of its interests, particularly on maritime sovereignty issues.” In an open rejection of China’s territorial claims, Clapper labelled them as “exorbitant.” Last December, a US State Department report dismissed China’s so-called “nine-dash line” boundary, asserting that it “does not accord with the international law of the sea.”

At the House Appropriations Subcommittee of Defense hearing, in response to a question “do we still have the naval edge there [the South China Sea],” Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert warned that if sequester budget cuts to the military were implemented, “sooner or later, we won’t have it.” In early February, Greenert visited Australia to canvas the possibility of basing US marine amphibious assault ships in Darwin and an aircraft carrier battle group in Perth and enhancing the American naval presence in the Indo-Pacific as part of the “rebalance” or “pivot” that was formally announced in November 2011.

An email sent to journalists after the SASC hearing by a Senate staffer stated: “While Washington is focused on happenings in Europe and the Levant, China has spent the last year quietly building 600 acres of tiny islands across the South China Sea…. Right now, we appear to just be watching all of this unfold while sending soft messages of our disapproval to Beijing and calculating that the costs of preventing further expansion are just too high. In another six months we could wake up to a far different operational and diplomatic situation in this maritime highway, where the Philippines and Vietnam are left with tangible reasons to question the resolve of our ‘rebalance’…”

The implication of such language is that the US military needs to accelerate its efforts to shift the weight of its air and naval power to Asia, and confront China more aggressively, in order to reassure its regional allies.

The sharpest tensions are developing between China and the Philippines. On February 26, the head of the Philippines’ military western command, Vice Admiral Alexander Lopez, told reporters that Chinese construction on Filipino-claimed territory was “continuous” and “aggressive” and added to the “destabilisation of the region.” He cited the arbitration case the Philippines initiated early last year, with US assistance, to have the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) support the Filipino claims over the islands and reefs against those of China. The officer declared: “We will not lose them. We will not lose anything. Even if we have to die for it, the world will know this is ours. Even if they have built structures on them, they are still ours…”

Beijing has repeatedly and unambiguously issued statements that it will disregard any ruling by ITLOS that found against its claims, setting the stage for a further escalation.

In response to last week’s hearings in Washington, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hong Lei commented: “It is legitimate, reasonable, and rational for China to carry out activities around islands, reefs, and waters under its jurisdiction. Outsiders have no right to make groundless accusations. We hope the United States will honour its commitments, be prudent with its words and actions, and do more to contribute to China-US relations and regional peace and stability.”

The US, however, is taking action that only inflames the situation. On February 27, the day after the hearings, the Filipino military revealed that the US Navy has been flying a Poseidon surveillance plane from a base in the western Philippines over the disputed region. According to the reports, the aircraft flew 180 hours of operations between February 1 and February 21 and on occasions had carried Filipino personnel on board.

At the end of January, the commander of the US Seventh Fleet, Admiral Robert Thomas, provoked furious Chinese condemnations after saying that he would welcome the Japanese air force joining such surveillance of Chinese activities in the South China Sea. Thomas declared: “The alleged nine-dash line, which doesn’t comport with international rules and norms, standards [and] laws, creates a situation down there, which is unnecessary friction.”

On February 28, the Wall Street Journal featured the major military purchases and build-up being made across Asia by US allies and “strategic partners” in conjunction with the “pivot.” It noted that Vietnam had taken delivery of new Russian-made submarines and jet fighters and was purchasing US surveillance aircraft, the Philippines is purchasing new naval frigates, Japan had assembled amphibious assault forces and India was “testing ballistic missiles with a range of over 3,000 miles, which could strike inside China.”

Richard Javad Heydarian, a political science professor at De La Salle University in Manila, told the newspaper: “China is bound to face greater risks of unwanted escalation and resistance.” All the developments across the region heighten the danger that a minor incident or clash could trigger an all-out war.

Manhattan terror trial vs. PLO: The hypocrisy of imperialist justice

Tom Carter

On February 23, a jury in a US district court in Manhattan found the Palestinian National Authority (PA) and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) liable for $218.5 million in connection with seven attacks that took place in Israel between 2002 and 2004.

The plaintiffs were a group of ten families whose members were injured, killed or traumatized by the attacks, which included two shootings and five bombings. Under a Clinton-era anti-terrorism statute, which allows the victims of terrorist attacks to sue in American courts, the damages will likely be tripled to $655.5 million.

The plaintiffs claimed that the PA and PLO had orchestrated the attacks and had given financial inducements and incentives to plan them. The Palestinian defendants denied responsibility for the attacks, which they had condemned, attributing the payments to individuals acting independently.

The verdict was the culmination of a six-week trial and ten years of litigation, during which the PA and PLO had repeatedly petitioned for the case to be dismissed.

The political establishment in Israel praised the verdict. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared in a statement that he expected the international community “to continue to punish those who support terrorism just as the US federal court has done and to back the countries that are fighting terrorism.” Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman called it “a moral victory.”

The Palestinian organizations expressed disappointment and announced plans to appeal the decision. Under American law, foreign states normally cannot be held liable, under the doctrine of “sovereign immunity,” but the United States does not recognize Palestine as a state. The debt-ridden PA has also claimed that there is no money to pay the judgment, prompting speculation in the press about the possible freezing and seizure of its assets.

“There is no money,” said PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi at a news conference in the West Bank. “Maybe they can get some furniture from our offices in Washington.”

The PLO, which grew out of a radical nationalist liberation movement, administers parts of the Palestinian territories in the form of the Palestinian Authority pursuant to the US-sponsored 1993 Oslo Accords. The PA has a long history of collaboration and capitulation to Israel and the United States, functioning today essentially as a junior partner in the Israeli occupation. Its funding consists largely of foreign aid.

Nevertheless, the verdict against the PA and PLO prompts a question: what if the same standard was applied universally? If the PA and PLO can be held liable in US courts for $655.5 million, surely the bill owed by the United States and Israel should run into the trillions.

For the purposes of illustration, one can calculate that the $655.5 million verdict, divided among the families of 33 individuals who died in the attacks, amounts to an award of approximately $20 million per fatality.

The Granai massacre, a 2009 US air strike in Afghanistan, caused the deaths of nearly 150 people, including, according to the Afghan government, 93 children. Multiplying the number 150 by $20 million, it follows that the United States owes at least $3 billion to the families of the victims of that one strike alone. When, one might ask, will a US federal court be hearing that case?

A July 12, 2007 helicopter attack in Baghdad—the subject of WikiLeaks’ “Collateral Murder” gunsight video—resulted in the deaths of between 12 and 18 innocent people, including two journalists working for Reuters. When will the US government be paying the $240 or $360 million it owes to the families of that attack?

Countless other examples of war crimes, indiscriminate bombings, and drone murders by the United States could be provided. How much compensation is owed to the families of the massacred civilian population of Fallujah in Iraq, which was targeted with chemical weapons such as white phosphorous in 2004?

What should be the total compensation for families in Iraq, where as many as 1 million people died as a result of the US invasion and occupation, which was launched on the basis of lies and in violation of international law? One million deaths multiplied by $20 million comes to $20 trillion—the number two plus thirteen zeros ($20,000,000,000,000).

How many more trillions are owed to families in Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, Libya and all the other regions that have suffered the “collateral damage” of imperialist mayhem? How much money is owed in Egypt, where the US is backing a military dictatorship to suppress the population? Or in Ukraine, where the US supported a putsch led by fascists? What about all the families in Vietnam, Korea, Central America, the Philippines and the former Yugoslavia?

Where is the court that will hear these cases? Should the families be able to collect compensation directly from the military brass that ordered the attacks, from the politicians who launched the wars, and from the Democratic and Republican parties that supported them? If the defendants refuse to pay, can assets be frozen on Wall Street, in Swiss banks, and in the Cayman Islands?

But no American court would ever hear these cases. Using doctrines such as “state secrets,” the “political question” standard, “sovereign immunity,” “qualified immunity” and so forth, and citing the un-reviewable “commander-in-chief” powers of the executive, the American government and courts routinely block cases that seek accountability for US war crimes.

In April 2014, for example, a US district court threw out a lawsuit over the death of US citizen Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki, the 16-year-old son of Anwar Al-Awlaki, who was assassinated by the CIA along with nine other people in a drone strike on an open-air restaurant near Azzan, Yemen. Abdulrahman’s father, also a US citizen, had been assassinated on the orders of President Obama two weeks before.

“In this delicate area of war-making, national security, and foreign relations, the judiciary has an exceedingly limited role,” the judge wrote, ruling that there was “no remedy” available to the family.

This is the same US justice system that provides immunity to war criminals, immunity to corporate and financial criminals, and immunity to killer cops. While the big-time criminals in America are untouchable, a substantial portion of the population is jailed in overcrowded, dangerous, filthy prisons. Torture, beatings, assassination, corruption, criminality, domestic spying, and official perjury go unaddressed, while draconian sentences are handed down for minor infractions or for inability to pay fees.

The American justice system is for all intents and purposes inaccessible to the broad mass of the population, which encounters it only when at the receiving end of a criminal prosecution or a bankruptcy decision that rips up workers’ contracts and pensions. The US Supreme Court, which sits at the head of this system, has been working systematically to dismantle democratic rights and roll back reforms, while advancing the “rights” of corporations and the rich.

What about the state of Israel? Will Israel be required to pay monetary compensation for each victim, for example, of the recent massacre in Gaza? Over a 50-day period last year, Israeli military forces conducted a bloody one-sided campaign that resulted in the deaths of as many as 2,300 people, the maiming of more than 10,000, and the displacement of hundreds of thousands. Throughout the campaign, Israel’s military deliberately targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure. Using the $20 million figure, Israel owes at least $46 billion—not counting damages for the destruction of property, disfigurement, and emotional trauma.

Israel has killed approximately 70,000 Palestinians since its occupation of the West Bank in 1967. Again, using the $20 million figure, Israel owes $1.4 trillion ($1,400,000,000,000,000) to families of the victims. It would take five years of the entire gross domestic product of Israel ($290 billion) to pay that sum.

Just days before the verdict in the Manhattan terror trial, Israel’s Supreme Court handed down a decision in the case of Rachel Corrie, who was killed by an Israeli military bulldozer in 2003. Israel’s Supreme Court refused to hold the Defense Ministry liable on the grounds that bulldozing the 23-year-old American activist constituted “wartime activity.” At the same time, the court refused to examine whether the killing complied with the laws of armed conflict.

The phrase “double standard” does not seem adequate to describe the depth of imperialist hypocrisy. While a US court hands down a gigantic verdict against Palestinian groups, the American state itself refuses to participate in the International Criminal Court (ICC) because it is afraid of seeing its own civilian and military officials in the dock on war crimes charges.

The US Congress is currently threatening to withhold $400 million in annual aid if Palestinian groups present a war crimes case to the ICC in connection with Israel’s 2014 Gaza campaign. Israel has responded to the threat of an ICC case by illegally withholding $250 million in customs duties collected on behalf of Palestinians.

Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov assassinated in Moscow

Andrea Peters

Russian free-market opposition politician Boris Nemtsov was assassinated late Friday in Moscow under unclear circumstances. Though there is little hard evidence as yet, the US media and government are using Nemtsov’s death to further vilify the Putin government and whip up anti-Russian hysteria.

Nemtsov was gunned down in the center of Moscow, near to the Kremlin, as he was walking home from dinner with Anna Duritskaya, a Ukrainian model. Four bullets hit the 55-year-old former government insider. According to some reports, several shots had been fired from one of three passing vehicles. Duritskaya was unharmed and was detained for questioning as a witness, along with other passers-by. According to Vesti.ru, however, “The 23-year-old model said that she suffered a terrible shock and could remember neither the murder nor the automobile.”

A special joint investigative committee established by the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) and the Federal Security Service (FSB) said that the attack was carefully planned. “It is very clear that the organizers and executors of this crime were informed of [Nemtsov’s] proposed route,” said Vladimir Markin, speaking on behalf of the official investigation.

The killing came shortly before yesterday’s anti-government march called by right-wing, pro-US critics of the Putin regime who accuse the Kremlin of stoking the conflict with Ukraine.

The investigative committee has said it is exploring the possibility that Nemtsov’s assassination was aimed at “destabilizing the political situation in the country.” It is also considering whether the murder was the act of Islamist fighters angry over Nemtsov’s support for Charlie Hebdo, the work of rogue elements on either side of the war in Ukraine, or tied to the opposition leader’s business or personal affairs.

Putin offered his condolences to Nemtsov’s family, and his press secretary Dmitry Peskov told Russia Today that “one can say with 100 percent assuredness that this is a provocation.” Pressed by the newspaperKommersant to explain this remark, Peskov pointed to Nemtsov’s hostility to Kremlin policies, his open support for the US-backed regime in Kiev and the tense political situation in Russia amid the proxy war between Russia and NATO over Ukraine.

Before anything more was known, the US political establishment and media seized on the murder to demonize the Kremlin, hail Nemtsov and promote the right-wing Russian opposition. The Obama administration released a statement this weekend demanding that Russia carry out a “prompt, impartial, and transparent investigation,” while former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul praised Nemtsov as a “real patriot who believed in Russia’s greatness.”

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, expressed “indignation” at the killing of a “strong advocate for a modern, prosperous, and democratic Russian Federation.”

The New York Times endorsed the view that Russian President Vladimir Putin was morally responsible for the murder, regardless of who carried it out. In her February 28 article, Times correspondent Julia Ioffe approvingly cited Russian opposition activist Maxim Katz’s Twitter statement that “If he ordered it, then he’s guilty as the orderer. And even if he didn’t, then [he is responsible] as the inciter of hatred, hysteria, and anger among the people.” Ioffe added, “It’s hard to argue with this last point.”

Echoing this view, US Republican Senator John McCain issued a press release that said, “Regardless of who actually pulled the trigger, Boris is dead because of the environment of impunity that Vladimir Putin has created in Russia, where individuals are routinely persecuted and attacked for their beliefs, including by the Russian government, and no one is ever held responsible.”

At this point, it remains totally unclear who carried out the killing and what their political motives were. However, the purpose to which it is being put by the US media and government is clear: to further escalate pressure on Russia, with US-Russian relations already at the breaking point over the war in Ukraine and US and NATO military deployments to Eastern European countries near Russia.

As for portrayals of Nemtsov as a persecuted Russian democrat, they are a grotesque political lies. He was one of many right-wing politicians who came to prominence by overseeing the free-market shock therapy and economic looting of Russia that followed the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the USSR and the restoration of capitalism in Russia.

After serving as the mayor of Nizhny Novgorod, a position he first received through presidential appointment, he was brought into the Yeltsin cabinet in 1997 as a member of a so-called “dream team” of free-market reformers drafted to prepare a second round of shock therapy. This included, among other measures, cutting state expenditures by raising housing and utility rates to world market levels, regardless of the population’s ability to pay.

Nemtsov’s implementation of a privatization and anti-welfare state program won him the praise of reactionary figures such as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

In their work on the restoration of market relations in Russia, Peter Reddaway and Dmitri Glinski note that Yeltsin recruited Nemtsov “because [Nemtsov] believes in the salutary role of authoritarian institutions for Russia, be they monarchical or presidential ... This view is evident from Nemtsov’s book, in which Yeltsin is depicted as a ‘genuine Russian tsar.’”

“For Russia, the weakening of presidential power would be extremely deleterious,” Nemtsov declared in 1997. “Those who insist on transforming Russia into a parliamentary republic are consciously or unconsciously pushing the country towards chaos.”

Nemtsov only discovered his ostensible concern with “democratic” issues in Russia after he fell out of favor with the Russian government in the early 2000s. He shifted rapidly into the camp of American imperialism. He was an ardent defender of the “Maidan revolution” and the fascist-led putsch that installed a right-wing, pro-US regime in Ukraine in February 2014. He was also a supporter the new Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko.

His brand of free-market opposition to the Kremlin is widely discredited in the Russian working class and has little support outside a small layer of affluent, middle class people.

Yesterday’s anti-government protest that Nemtsov and fellow opposition politicians were supposed to lead on the outskirts of the country’s capital was transformed into a memorial march in his name in the center of Moscow. Somewhere between five and ten thousand people attended the march, which organizers had feared would be a non-event before Nemtsov’s murder.

Press reports have estimated the turnout at around 50,000, many times more than was expected for the original march, which had failed to gain much traction in the broader population. In an article published the day of Nemtsov’s murder, the liberal daily Nezavisimaia Gazeta lamented the unpopularity of the opposition forces behind Sunday’s planned protest, noting, “[Russians] don’t have confidence in the opposition.”

Steelworkers union blocks broadening of oil workers’ struggle

Jerry White

With the US oil refinery workers’ strike entering its second month, the struggle has become a critical battle by the working class against some of the richest and most politically influential corporations in the world.

The strike has won the sympathy of tens of millions of working people, who have suffered decades of declining living standards and deteriorating working conditions. But the biggest obstacle to mobilizing the strength of the working class is the United Steelworkers union, which has limited the walkout to only a fraction of the 30,000 USW members employed by the oil companies nationally.

The union has restricted the strike to only 6,500 workers at 12 of the country’s 65 USW-organized refineries. This has encouraged the oil giants to maintain a hard line against the workers’ demands, which are directed against unsafe working conditions, the replacement of unionized workers with temporary contractors, and crushing out-of-pocket health care costs.

Well aware that the USW’s policy is doomed to failure, rank-and-file workers have increasingly demanded an all-out strike. Over the last several days, the USW International has dispatched members of its National Oil Bargaining Policy Committee to union meetings to try to quell the opposition before it turns into an open rebellion.

At one such meeting, held Saturday at the USW Local 1014 hall in Gary, Indiana, hundreds of striking workers from the nearby BP refinery in Whiting peppered bargaining team members Steve Garey and Jim Savage with demands for a national strike.

“We think all 200 refineries and other facilities should go on strike. That’s what a lot of us were saying at the union hall yesterday,” a worker on the picket line in Whiting told the World Socialist Web Site Sunday afternoon. “If it were up to me, we’d all be going on strike. But I’m not in charge and we don’t know what the strategy [of the USW] is.”

Asked by WSWS reporters why he thought the union hadn’t called a national strike, another picketer said, “Believe me, that question was asked a thousand times last night.”

The Chicago Tribune cited Savage as saying this was the main question at the union meetings. According to the Tribune, “[Savage] said the reason [for limiting the strike] was two-fold: to keep the government from interfering with this labor dispute and to retain some bargaining power if negotiations don’t progress. ‘If we fire all our bullets out of our gun on day one, what do we say later? If you don’t come to the table, we’ll do what?’ Savage said.”

After a month of keeping strikers in the dark, the USW, with this statement, is finally indicating its “strategy”—a combination of cowardice and treachery. The union virtually admits to emasculating the strike in order to avoid an open clash with the Obama administration. Its talk of saving “bullets” for later is deserving only of contempt.

Steve Garey had the nerve to tell striking workers that the greatest danger to their struggle was workers growing discouraged and crossing the picket lines. “We cannot betray each other,” Garey said, even as he defended the treachery of the USW leadership.

Over a month into the strike, the companies remain intransigent after making seven insulting “offers.” The USW has acknowledged that negotiations, which are scheduled to resume Wednesday, are largely a farce, with the oil companies ignoring what union bargainers admit are their “lean demands.”

The companies have dug in for a months-long battle, moving managers and strikebreakers from around the country to keep their refineries operating. Workers are stretched thin, with no health care and at best a pittance in strike pay.

If the USW has not “fired all of its bullets,” it is because it fears the development of a broader movement of workers that could quickly assume political dimensions, exposing its anti-working class alliance with Obama and the Democrats.

Having spent six years peddling the lie that Obama is a “friend of labor,” the USW does not want a clash that would show the president and the Democratic Party, no less than their Republican counterparts, to be enemies of the working class and tools of Wall Street and Big Oil.

Just last month, the White House intervened to block a strike by 20,000 West Coast dockworkers and called on the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) to impose a sellout agreement that will further slash jobs and destroy rights won by previous generations of longshoremen.

Slashing the wages of industrial workers has been the centerpiece of Obama’s “economic recovery”—i.e., the boosting of corporate profits and the stock market—beginning with halving the pay of newly hired auto workers as part of the 2009 forced bankruptcy of General Motors and Chrysler. In this drive, Obama has received the full backing of the unions, including the USW, whose president, Leo Gerard, was appointed to Obama’s Advanced Manufacturing Partnership board to help cut labor costs.

Jim Savage, the president of USW Local 10-1 in Philadelphia, epitomizes the anti-worker conspiracy of the unions, the corporations and both political parties. In 2012, he played a key role in imposing concessions, including reductions in pension and overtime payments, to induce the Carlyle Group private equity firm to take over the Sunoco refinery in Philadelphia.

There are some five million workers—teachers, auto workers, Verizon telecommunication workers and others—whose labor agreements expire this year. The Obama administration and the union executives are frightened by the prospect of the oil strike becoming a catalyst for a broader movement of the working class.

In the face of an anticipated “wages push” by American workers, the corporate and financial elite plan to escalate their war against the working class. They are determined to reduce workers to conditions of industrial slavery and poverty not seen since the 19th century.

As one striking worker in Whiting told the WSWS, “We’re fighting for all workers. I served in the military and I’ve been to many countries—the Philippines, Indonesia, many third world countries. The corporations want to turn this country into a third world country.”

Another said, “This year is going to be a big year for workers to fight back. I guarantee that by 2016, if we don’t have a revolution, we surely will be on the brink of it.”

Workers are looking to break through the sabotage of the unions and mobilize their strength. This requires the building of new organizations of struggle, controlled by rank-and-file workers and completely independent of the pro-company unions and both big-business parties.

The building of such workers’ committees must be accompanied by a new political perspective, based on a break with the two parties of US big business, the building of an independent political movement of the working class, the fight for the international unity of workers, and a socialist program, including the nationalization of the oil industry under the democratic control of the working population.

Wisconsin Governor Walker, American workers and terrorism

Patrick Martin

On three separate occasions in the past four days, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, one of the frontrunners for the Republican presidential nomination, has stressed the close connection between the struggle against the working class at home and Washington’s militarist policies internationally.

Linking the suppression of workers’ protests to the fight against terrorism, he has presented his success in defying mass demonstrations that broke out in 2011 in Wisconsin against his attacks on workers’ social and democratic rights as proof of his ability to take on and defeat ISIS.

Speaking Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in suburban Washington DC, Walker cited his experience in pushing through anti-worker legislation as proof of his fitness for the presidency. “If I could take on 100,000 protesters, I could do the same across the world,” he boasted, effectively comparing throngs of state workers and students to ISIS terrorists.

The next day, speaking before the Club for Growth, an assembly of billionaires and their political advisers meeting in Palm Beach, Florida, Walker returned to the theme. He declared that “the most significant foreign policy decision of my lifetime” was President Ronald Reagan’s smashing of the 1981 PATCO strike and mass firing of 11,000 air traffic controllers. “It sent a message not only across America, it sent a message around the world,” he said, that the Reagan administration was serious about confronting its enemies and “we weren’t to be messed with.”

Appearing two days later on “Fox News Sunday,” Walker repeated his claim that defeating public employee unions in Wisconsin was relevant to fighting ISIS terrorists, while pretending to disavow a direct comparison. “I want to make it clear right now. I’m not comparing those two entities,” he said, and then proceeded to do just that.

“What I meant was, it was about leadership,” he declared. “The leadership we provided under extremely difficult circumstances, arguably, the most difficult of any governor in the country.” He added that “if I were to run, and if I were to win and be commander-in-chief, I believe that kind of leadership is what’s necessary to take on radical Islamic terrorism.”

Walker’s initial statement at CPAC was widely described in the media as a gaffe. The problem, however, was not his implicit equation of working-class opposition with terrorist organizations that have been targeted for extermination, but rather his indiscretion in blurting out publicly what the US corporate-financial oligarchy thinks and discusses internally.

In the event, comparing public employees to ISIS terrorists has not disqualified Walker in the eyes of the media. If anything, it appears to have enhanced his stature as a serious presidential candidate.

This is certainly the case among the so-called “base” of the Republican Party that attended CPAC. Walker won the loudest ovations of any of the 13 potential candidates who addressed the group. In the CPAC straw poll, Walker vaulted from sixth place in 2014 to second place, with 21.4 percent of the vote, only narrowly behind Kentucky Senator Rand Paul.

As the WSWS noted Saturday, Walker is not the first US political figure to equate the struggle against popular opposition at home with the wars waged by American imperialism overseas. In the American ruling elite, whether among Republicans or Democrats, there is less and less of a distinction made between domestic and foreign policy. The financial aristocracy increasingly sees itself besieged and compelled at home as well as abroad to resort to force and violence.

Events of the past several years demonstrate that for the American ruling class, the main enemy is at home: the jailing of protesters on terrorism charges, such as the “NATO Three”; the lockdown of Boston after the 2013 Marathon bombing; the militarized response to protests in Ferguson and other cities over police violence; the constant invocations of “home-grown” terrorism as the pretext for the dismantling of democratic rights and the buildup of a police state.

There has been comparatively little media attention given to Walker’s open linkage of suppressing strikes and protests at home with waging war for imperialist interests abroad. The television networks and national newspapers prefer to leave such discussions to in-house assemblies of the ultra-right and conclaves of the corporate elite.

There was one revealing commentary, however, posted by right-wing columnist Peggy Noonan, on the web site of the Wall Street Journal. Noonan, a White House speechwriter in the Reagan administration, responded to Walker’s invocation of the PATCO strike as a historic turning point that showed the Soviet Union Reagan’s determination to smash opposition to his policies.

She noted that the PATCO strike had a direct international dimension, since Canadian air traffic controllers carried out job actions in sympathy with their American colleagues and there was widespread support among European workers. The Reagan administration bullied the Canadian government to force a return to work.

Noonan then wrote: “Sen. Edward Kennedy and Lane Kirkland of the AFL CIO played helpful and constructive roles” in support of Reagan’s handling of the PATCO strike.

What Noonan noted in passing was a devastating admission, confirming what the Workers League, forerunner of the Socialist Equality Party, and our newspaper, the Bulletin, explained throughout the 1981 strike: the outright hostility of both the Democratic Party and the AFL-CIO officialdom to the struggle of the 11,000 strikers, who had enormous support in the working class.

Kennedy had spearheaded the deregulation of the airline industry in the late 1970s and it was one of his aides, working in the Carter administration, who drew up the plans for strikebreaking and mass firings in the event of an air traffic controllers strike, eventually implemented under Reagan.

Kirkland played the central role in the AFL-CIO’s deliberate isolation of the strike. After a mass rally brought 500,000 workers to Washington on September 19, 1981, the biggest labor demonstration in US history, led by thousands of PATCO strikers, the unions shut down all support, blocked any solidarity strike action by airline or airport workers, and tacitly supported the jailing of strikers and the outlawing and destruction of PATCO.

It is critical that workers entering into struggle, such as the US oil refinery workers now in the second month of a bitter strike, carefully consider the significance of Walker’s statements as well as the record of the Obama administration in overseeing the buildup of the forces of state repression. The ruling class will stop at nothing to defeat the resistance of workers to its assault on living standards and social conditions. It recognizes in the working class its irreconcilable enemy.

The working class must respond with the same degree of consciousness, determination and ruthlessness.

The PATCO precedent remains of decisive importance today because the twin obstacles of the AFL-CIO and the Democratic Party remain the decisive barriers that the American working class must overcome in order to build a mass independent political movement that will challenge the profit system and advance a socialist and revolutionary program.