US Army Chief of Staff urges increase in British military spending

Julie Hyland

In an exclusive interview with the Telegraph, General Raymond Odierno, US Army Chief of Staff, has expressed concern at the level of British military spending. “I would be lying to you if I did not say that I am very concerned about the GDP investment in the UK,” he said.

“In the past we would have a British army division working alongside an American division. Now it might be a British brigade inside an American division, or even a British battalion inside an American brigade.”

“It is about having a partner that has very close values and the same goals as we do,” he said, adding, “We all need to be able to invest and work together.”

Odierno was speaking to the Telegraph’s Con Coughlin during the “Future of War” conference in Washington. Held by the New America Foundation think tank, the programme claims to examine how “developments both in the technological drivers of warfare and the enemies we face have erased the boundaries between what we have traditionally regarded as ‘war’ and ‘peace’.”

According to Coughlin, “Ever since the Cold War ended more than two decades ago, America has never entertained any serious doubts about Britain’s ability to fulfil its commitment as a vital military ally when tackling threats to the Western alliance. Until now.”

Odierno’s comments demonstrated that cuts in the UK defence budget were eroding US “confidence in our commitment to global security,” Coughlin wrote.

Railing against the failure of the Conservative-led government to ring-fence defence spending from its austerity measures, Coughlin complained that this had “diminished” the UK’s military presence globally, jeopardising the transatlantic alliance.

“The big question is whether, with the general election approaching, the concerns raised by senior American figures will persuade any of the main political parties to make defence a priority in their election manifestos,” he stated.

The Telegraph article is part of a concerted campaign to silence and intimidate widespread anti-war sentiment in the face of a significant expansion of militarism.

Last September’s NATO summit underscored how the civil war in Ukraine—provoked and manipulated by the US and the European Union—has been used to militarise Europe. It agreed to establish a 5,000-strong Rapid Reaction Force targeted at Russia and new NATO command posts in six eastern member states—Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. In total, some 30,000 NATO troops are to be stationed on Russia’s borders.

The summit committed all 28 members to spend at least 2 percent of GDP on the military. Britain is one of just four countries that currently meet the NATO target. The government has insisted that this will be maintained, irrespective of its commitment to even harsher spending cuts. A Ministry of Defence statement highlighted the commitment to spend £163 billion on the military over the next decade, including “new strike fighters; more surveillance aircraft; hunter killer submarines; two aircraft carriers; and the most advanced armoured vehicles.”

The government has already pledged 1,000 troops for the NATO build-up on Russia’s borders, sent “military trainers” to Ukraine and refused to rule out supplying the right-wing Kiev regime with weapons. British troops took part in last week’s provocative parade of US military and armoured vehicles in Narva, Estonia, just 300 yards from the Russian border. Any incident, no matter how trivial, has the potential to produce a catastrophe.

With a general election on May 7, the Conservative Party—like Labour and the Liberal Democrats—is reluctant to have any discussion on the implications of NATO and UK actions. Nor will any of the parties admit openly that while spending on schools, hospitals and other vital services is to be slashed even further after the election, military spending will not only be ring-fenced but increased.

The Economist opined, “The hangover from what are perceived to have been costly and unsuccessful campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan and a sour, introspective national mood, reflected in a Commons defeat for the government in August 2013 over action in Syria, has made the political establishment fearful of making the case for what the chief of the defence staff, General Sir Nick Houghton, in a speech before Christmas, described as ‘a grander role, a greater ambition, a place beyond the ordinary … a nation which has values as well as interests, and which considers it has a leadership role in the world’.”

Odierno’s comments follow President Barack Obama’s reported warning to Prime Minister David Cameron over the level of British military spending in January. This theme was continued in a number of interviews with former leading NATO personnel, including former general secretaries Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

Their criticisms are now being employed and amplified by sections of the ruling elite to insist that the issue of defence spending must be “weaponised” in the election.

Of most significance is the ever more overt intervention of leading military personnel into this campaign.

Such are the tensions that, according to reports, last month Cameron barred General Houghton from delivering an intended speech. Houghton was due to address a Chatham House think tank conference titled, “Rising Powers and the Future of Defence Cooperation,” but Downing Street vetoed his appearance after reading an advanced copy of his speech, which was thought to criticise the government.

The cancellation was denounced by Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Graydon, a former head of the Royal Air Force. In a letter to the Times, Graydon described it as “deeply regrettable.” Houghton “might have said that unless the UK commits itself to a minimum defence budget of 2 percent of GDP for the future, our credibility in Europe… will be zero,” Graydon wrote (emphasis added).

Admiral Lord West of Spithead, former head of the Royal Navy, went further. Citing Lord Nelson, “I hate your pen and ink men; a fleet of British ships of war are the best negotiators in Europe,” West wrote in his letter to the Timesthat increased resources for the military were necessary to let “people like Putin and others [know] that we are serious about defence and hard power.”

Just days after Houghton’s cancelled appearance, General Sir Adrian Bradshaw, the most senior British military officer in NATO, addressed the Royal United Services Institute where he warned of “an era of constant competition with Russia” that must be taken into account fiscally. NATO’s build-up on Russia’s borders was necessary, he insisted, “in order to convince Russia, or any other state adversary, that any attack on one NATO member will inevitably lead them into a conflict with the whole alliance.”

On Saturday, Sir John Sawers, former chief of the Secret Intelligence Service MI6, told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme that Russia poses “a state-to-state threat” and that the UK must take steps to defend itself and its allies.

“What’s really important is that we're able to fulfil all of our defence commitments and I think that that’s going to require a reversal in the trend in defence spending,” he said.

Also at the weekend, the former head of the Army, General Sir Peter Wall, called for the major parties to make manifesto commitments on defence spending. Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s “The World This Weekend,” Wall said, “We military folk would like to see manifesto commitments to levels of defence expenditure and it’s of concern to us that all parties would probably be content to have this conversation not happening at the moment.”

Germany: State of emergency in Bremen following alleged terror scare

Dietmar Henning

Bremen, a city of 550,000, was in a state of siege over the weekend. Military clad police armed with machine guns patrolled the inner city on Saturday and Sunday, in front of the city council, the Senate and cathedral. The police checked vehicles, searched apartments and a building belonging to a Muslim association. Data storage devices were confiscated, and Muslims temporarily detained.

Bremen’s interior senator, Ulrich Neurer (Social Democrats, SPD), and the state prosecutor justified the civil war-like conditions by stating that there was a concrete terrorist warning from a federal authority, without naming the authority or the precise details of the warning. According to Spiegel Online, the authority was a German intelligence agency, meaning either the domestic intelligence agency (BFV), foreign intelligence service (BND) or the military surveillance agency (MAD).

The questioning of individuals, searching of properties and arrests by the police did not confirm the terrorist threat. No weapons were found, the people who were questioned were found guilty of nothing, and two people who were detained had to be released because there were no grounds to hold them.

Late on Sunday evening, the presence of heavily armed police in the city centre was reduced, with only the Jewish community still being patrolled by police.

Allegedly, a 39-year-old man of Lebanese origin procured machine guns to sell to others. “This evidence was so concrete that we could not rule out an attack in Bremen,” Interior Senator Neurer commented on the stage of the investigation, which has been ongoing since the beginning of the year.

The state prosecutor claimed that the suspect was distributing the weapons to people who were close to an Islamic cultural centre. But although the police searched the Islamic cultural centre of Bremen e. V. and the home and workplace of the man, they found no weapons.

The Lebanese man, together with another man who was said to be his accomplice and whose home was also searched by the police, were temporarily detained. Both have been set free, but further investigations into their activities are ongoing. The police have accused them of breaching the law on the control of military weapons.

Responding to the question if the information about suspected weapons had been set aside or was simply false, Neurer answered, “We don’t know the result of that. We have pursued all evidence.”

Neurer defended the major operation. In Bremen, there was “a major Salafist scene,” he told Bavarian state radio. “There are many people who have joined IS [Islamic State] and have fought in Syria, and a number of men from Bremen who have already been killed.”

Later he gave more details on exact numbers and declared that the Bremen state intelligence service was observing 360 Salafists. Nineteen Muslims from Bremen, some of them children, had travelled to fight in Syria, he said, four have supposedly died in the fighting and two have returned.

The main target of surveillance were Salafists in two associations. For some time, the cultural and family association (KuF) was suspected by authorities. The group runs a mosque in Bremen-Gröpelingen and was banned by Neurer in December 2014.

Already in 2011, the Munich state court convicted two KuF founding members with promoting the terrorist group Al Qaeda and other organisations with close ties to it. One of the two was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison, because the court believed that he intended to travel to an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan.

SPD interior politician Burkhard Lischke also defended the civil war-style exercise in Bremen. When such warnings are made, there is no action by the authorities that can be too reckless, he told radio station NDR Info. He announced that this would not be the last exercise. He expected further terror scares, because IS intended to bring terrorism to Europe’s cities.

The police trade union (GDP), a member of the German trade union confederation (DGB), also defended the operation. GDP Chairman Oliver Malchow said on ZDF television’s “Morgenmagazin” that the large operation was “certainly not an overreaction.” It had been based on a justified suspicion, and therefore such an operation was necessary. The concrete threat in Germany had not just existed since the attacks in Paris and Copenhagen, he added.

Rainer Wendt, the chairman of the German police union (DPolG), told the daily Passauer Neue Presse, “Terrorism is no longer abstract, but rather very concrete.” The German public would have to get used to this, he said.

Neurer bluntly admitted that an aim of the Bremen operation was intimidation: “We focused on a group. We wanted to make these people insecure, but we have not found enough evidence for further measures.”

The Bremen action had been prepared systematically over recent months. Germany’s security agencies have suspended democratic rights for a third time this year on the basis of a warning of a terrorist attack.

In January, a Pegida demonstration and all counter-demonstrations were banned in Dresden because of a terrorist threat. In mid-February, the carnival procession in Braunschweig was cancelled. In neither of these two cases did the police or intelligence agencies provide any concrete evidence of an acute terrorist threat.

Wolfgang Bosbach (Christian Democrats, CDU), chairman of the interior parliamentary committee in Germany’s federal parliament, nonetheless declared, “After Dresden, Braunschweig and Bremen, it is increasingly difficult for me to say that only an abstract threat exists.”

Prior to this, there had only been one official terror warning in two decades after the September 11 attacks in the United States. Then, four years ago, Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière (CDU) warned of a terrorist attack. The police closed off the dome and roof terraces of Germany’s parliament building for some time, because there was allegedly evidence of plans by Islamist terrorists to attack the Bundestag.

The veracity of this terror warning was never confirmed. But it immediately triggered calls for a strengthening of state powers. This has also been the case since the events over the weekend in Bremen.

In a comment by Joachim Käppner, the Süddeutsche Zeitung demanded an increase in police numbers as well as a strengthening of legal restraints, such as the law on the temporary storage of data. This would enable the police “to follow over several months who had telephoned or emailed with suspects and when.” Käppner cynically added, “That would have also been good to know with regard to the NSU (neo-fascist) killers.”

Käppner’s audacity is breathtaking. The racist murders and attacks by the National Socialist Underground were not made possible because the intelligence agencies knew too little, but because they covered up and protected the NSU. The close connections between the intelligence agencies, the Nazi scene and NSU have been proven. The Munich state court is currently examining the suspicion that an employee of the Hesse state intelligence service, Andreas Temme, who was present at the NSU’s eighth murder, of Halil Yozgad, had been informed of the attack prior to it taking place.

The suspects in the terrorist attacks in Boston, Paris and Copenhagen, who are now also being used as proof of the terrorist threat, were known to the intelligence agencies. The strengthening of the state is not directed against Islamic terrorism or right-wing extremists, who are often built up and financed by the state authorities. Rather, under conditions of growing social tensions domestically and the growth of German militarism abroad, it is directed against the growth of opposition within the working class.

In Hamburg, Mayor Olaf Scholz (SPD) declared entire areas of the city to be no-go zones early last year, suspending fundamental democratic rights. Several demonstrations were broken up, over 100 residency bans imposed and hundreds of people arbitrarily detained and searched because they wore black clothes or appeared to be “left.” Today it is the Salafists who are the target of the state’s expanded powers; tomorrow it will be workers and youth protesting against poverty, job losses and war.

Pennsylvania Democrat calls for cuts to pensions for municipal workers

Douglas Lyons

Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale, a Democrat, is calling for cuts to the pensions benefits of tens of thousands of municipal workers throughout the state, which are underfunded by $7.7 billion. The alternative, he warned, was a Detroit-style bankruptcy.

DePasquale refrained from using the word cuts, but his proposals amount to a reduction in pension payments to recipients. His ideas on how to “save” pensions are as follows: elimination of counting overtime work and accrued leave payments towards pensions; raising the eligibility age, along with the length of service, needed to collect benefits; increase employee contributions; and most insidiously, combining the pensions into a statewide system “segregated by classes” of workers such as firefighters and emergency medical technicians and non-uniformed employees, which simplify and facilitate pension reductions in the future.

A separate report issued by the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority (PICA), an overseer and financial adviser to the city of Philadelphia, has called for more drastic measures. The pension system would be eliminated and replaced with a 401(k)-type plan, while increasing employee contributions and terminating the deferred retirement option. All in all, current and future municipal workers would have smaller pensions and paychecks and face a battle to keep pensions in the future.

The proposed pension cuts are contained in the report “Municipal Pension Funds” issued in January by DePasquale, and a separate report titled “Philadelphia’s Pension System: Reducing Risk and Achieving Fiscal Stability” by the PICA, a group of former state and local officials.

The auditor general report purposely stokes up a sense of fear to give an impetus to an immediate “reform” of municipal pensions. “Without effective legislative reform municipalities may ultimately have no choice but to: decrease pension payments to retirees, pass the increased burden on to taxpayers, or some combination of both option,” DePasquale warned. He continued, “We should not allow our retirees to live in fear of their pension payments being reduced. ... Ultimately a delayed solution will impact the retired public employees and every taxpayer in the commonwealth.”

To augment his fear-mongering, DePasquale told the media in a news conference, “The problem is too big to ignore. We saw what happened in Detroit: Retirees got 10 cents on the dollar. Basically, they got screwed.” It is significant that the report uses Detroit as a reference, warning workers if they do not accept these reactionary proposals, they will lose even more in the future.

In a similar fashion, the PICA points out that the Pennsylvania Constitution does not explicitly guarantee an obligation by the city of Philadelphia to uphold the contract with municipal workers, holding out the prospect that even retired workers could see their pensions cut. For instance, it says, “Since there is no explicit constitutional provision mandating pensions or any other retirement benefit in this state, statutory provisions are enough to reform pension plans. No constitutional amendment is necessary.”

The Auditor General report classifies pensions on three levels of distress based on their current assets and how much growth is expected versus how much expected benefits will be paid. Level one municipalities are underfunded by 10 to 30 percent and labeled “minimally distressed,” whereas level 2 ones are 30 to 50 percent underfunded (“moderately distressed”). Level 3 are over 50 percent underfunded (“severely distressed”). Overall, 438 municipalities are level one, 102 at level two, and 22 at level 3.

The most distressed municipalities are located in or around major cities such as Scranton and Philadelphia. Philadelphia has less than 50 percent funded and owes more than $5 billion in pension obligations. Out of the 10 most populous cities in the US, Philadelphia ranks second from the bottom, above only Chicago. Scranton is the worst off in the state, only 23 percent funded (77 percent underfunded), and the city has the possibility of facing bankruptcy in three to five years. Pittsburgh fares only a bit better with a little over half of its pension obligations funded.

In reality, however, the situation is worse as each city’s projections are based on overly optimistic returns on investments: Scranton 8 percent; Philadelphia 7.85 percent; and Pittsburgh 7.5 percent. If more realistic rates of 5 to 7 percent were used, each city would be in even worse shape.

The shortfall has risen by $1 billion in a two-year timeframe and will continue to climb dramatically as local governments don’t make the needed payments to keep the plans solvent.

A bill already in the legislature attacking municipal pensions will be given an impetus by these reports. Representative Seth Grove, a Republican from the city of York, has sponsored it and been joined by other politicians, business and municipal governments. It would set up a 401(k)-type plan, which almost all local governments will have to adhere to if it becomes law. The retirement age will also be extended and no health benefits will be paid to retirees.

While the two reports and the legislation are directed against municipal workers, similar cuts to pensions face the 77,000 state workers and tens of thousands of teachers throughout the state, whose pensions are underfunded by more than $50 billion.

New Democratic Governor Tom Wolf has pledged to fix the problem by working with the various government employee and teachers unions to impose cuts to benefits on their members and increase employee contributions. 

On top of this, Wolf may have to deal with a spillover effect from the scandal involving former State Treasurer Rob McCord, a Democrat who has been indicted on charges of corruption during his failed campaign for governor in 2014.

State and municipal pensions will be one of the first items on the agenda for the Democratic governor and the Republican-controlled state House and Senate. Republican Jake Corman, the Senate majority leader, told the Wall Street Journal: “Pension reform is our No. 1 issue. It’s something that has to be done …We’re not going to have any discussion on revenue until we get expenditures under control.”

Ten thousand education workers strike at two Toronto universities

Carl Bronski

Teaching assistants and contract professors at York University in north Toronto began a strike Monday night after voting down a contract offer that failed to address concerns over job security for the non-tenured teaching staff and tuition costs for international graduate students.

The job action effecting 3,700 workers comes a day after picket lines went up at the University of Toronto (U of T), where over 6,000 teaching assistants are on strike against the administration’s inadequate funding package that has not increased since 2008. Strikers at both universities are members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE).

Over 100,000 students are affected by the strikes. At York, the university has cancelled all classes. At U of T, the administration has announced that classes will not be affected, although student tutorials and labs have been cancelled and grading discontinued. Despite the university’s assurances, some classes have already been postponed.

CUPE members at York voted by 71 percent against a contract offer after the local union bargaining team recommended that the administration’s proposals be rejected. At U of T, over 1,000 teaching assistants who attended a meeting to decide whether to send a proposed contract to a membership-wide ballot as part of the final ratification process, ignored the unanimous recommendation of their local union executive endorsing the tentative deal and voted overwhelmingly in a show of hands to reject the agreement. Observers said the rejection was by 90 percent or more.

Even before picket lines went up, the U of T’s chief spokesperson in the dispute, Provost Cheryl Regehr, made an unsuccessful attempt to interfere with the democratic vote, suggesting to the press that the decision of the mass membership meeting be unconstitutionally over-ridden in favour of a second “full” vote to be organized by the union.

The last strike by teaching assistants at U of T occurred in 2000. That dispute lasted three-and-a-half weeks. The strike at York follows a three-month job action six years ago that saw the Liberal provincial government use back-to-work legislation against the strikers.

During that dispute, local officials of CUPE threatened to challenge the legality of the back-to-work legislation and continue the strike. But it subsequently backed down after pressure from the national union. The CUPE leadership has reportedly long considered the York membership “too radical.” Angered by what they considered the CUPE leadership’s sellout of a bitter strike in 2000, the local six years ago sought to exclude the national from directly participating in the negotiations.

The strike at U of T arose over the school administration’s current system of poverty-level compensation. Although teaching assistants would be paid $43.97 per hour in the first year of the contract that was just rejected (a slight increase over the past contract), the staff are only entitled to earn a maximum of $15,000 per year–a stipend well below the Ontario poverty line. Furthermore, the limited amount of hours teaching assistants are allowed to work negatively impacts on students needing their assistance, especially under conditions where class and tutorial sizes continue to increase.

At York University, a major area of dispute is over the university’s practice of renewing teacher contracts at the very last minute (or not renewing them at all) and, if renewed, extending the offer for only one term or even one semester. The membership is demanding that non-tenured teaching staff be assigned to courses for up to three years.

Both disputes, however, highlight much broader issues in post-secondary education. Tuition costs have increased steadily over the past decade even as the quality of a university education continues to be diluted as schools embrace a business model philosophy geared towards the specific research demands of their corporate donors. In addition, the road for post-graduate students to a tenured professorship has become ever more difficult, with universities using contract employees to teach ever increasing numbers of classes. At York, 64 percent of undergraduate classes are now taught by contract faculty.

These trends are a North America-wide phenomenon. Last week, contract or “adjunct” professors and teaching assistants in college campuses across the United States staged protests and walkouts to highlight the plight of the super-exploited part-time instructors that now comprise the majority of faculty on campuses. In the United States, adjunct faculty, who perform the same tasks as full-time, tenured faculty now comprise 75 percent of the 1.8 million instructors at colleges and universities. Many work without any benefits and are essentially temp employees working from semester to semester without a contract and subject to termination at management’s whim. Nationally, the median salary per three-credit course is $2,700.

Spokespeople for the administrations at both U of T and York have cited the provincial Liberal government’s austerity strictures on net financial increases on newly-bargained contracts to justify their refusal to meet their employees’ demands. The executive officers of both universities, nonetheless, are happy to accept annual salaries ranging from $250,000 to $775,000.

The Liberal government of Premier Kathleen Wynne has insisted that the already cash-starved universities and colleges cut $40 million in spending from their budgets in 2014, and an additional $80 million this year.

The austerity budget the Ontario Liberal government tabled in May and which was hailed by the unions as the most “progressive” budget in decades stipulates that for three years beginning in 2015 there will be no increase whatsoever in government program spending. Due to inflation and population growth, this nominal spending freeze will translate into real, across-the-board, spending cuts of well over three percent per year or more than 10 percent by 2018. Moreover, this comes after years of Liberal austerity measures.

Declaring the recession over, the Liberals in 2010 announced a multi-year program of tax cuts for big business, while initiating, in the name of deficit reduction, an austerity drive. For much of this period, the government was propped up by the provincial New Democratic Party (NDP) of Andrea Horwath with the unions’ whole-hearted support.

Students at both York and U of T have voiced strong support for the striking workers. They too continue to suffer under the policies of the government. Already, the average Ontario undergraduate student pays $7,100 in annual tuition fees, graduating with an average debt of $27,000. Graduate students pay on average $8,000 in tuition per year. These figures do not take into account additional compulsory fees, which run into the hundreds of dollars per year. Under the government’s new tuition-fee framework, annual tuition in 2016 will cost $8,000 and $9,000 for undergraduate and graduate programs, respectively.

In their drive to channel ever-greater amounts of society’s wealth into their personal bank accounts, the ruling elite is determined to systematically reduce the living standards of education workers whilst returning to the days when only the sons and daughters of the wealthy had access to quality education. That is why the fight to defend the rights of education workers and students alike is, above all, a struggle for social equality and a vast redistribution of wealth to meet the needs of society as a whole.

Brad Duguid, Ontario’s Minister of Training, Colleges, and Universities, announced that college and university undergraduate tuition fees will be allowed to rise by 3 percent per year for the next four years. Graduate university and professional programs will be allowed to raise their tuition fees by 5 percent per annum.

They are already paying the highest tuition fees in the country, and must contend with mounting debt, growing youth unemployment and stagnant wages.

Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath praised last month’s Liberal post-secondary fee hike announcement, calling it a “good first step.” The trade union-backed NDP has propped up the minority Liberal government for the past year-and-a-half as it has implemented an austerity budget that cut billions from social spending and imposed concessions contracts on teachers by legislative fiat.

Students now shoulder 44 percent of university operating costs, up from 15 percent in 1980, when the average cost of tuition was $830.

To compensate for years of chronic under-funding, post-secondary institutions have increasingly courted the private sector for donations. Big-business influence on university campuses across the province is ubiquitous. Many buildings and even individual classrooms bear the names of corporate brands or wealthy donors. In philanthropy, as in business, the ruling class demands a profitable return on investment, and achieves this by pressing for research and academic programs to be ever more closely tailored to its needs.

Georgia woman’s execution postponed for second time in a week

Kate Randall

For the second time in less than a week, a Georgia woman’s execution has been postponed only hours before her lethal injection was scheduled to take place. The move by prison authorities is the latest macabre twist in Georgia authorities’ drive to execute the first woman in the state in 70 years.

Kelly Renee Gissendaner, 46, received a temporary reprieve last Wednesday when her execution scheduled for that day was postponed due to winter weather and “related scheduling issues.” Her execution was then rescheduled for 7 p.m. local time the following Monday at the state prison in Jackson.

As the hour approached, the Georgia Department of Corrections (DOC) stated that prior to the execution, pentobarbital, the drug to be used in the lethal injection, had been sent to an independent lab to test its potency, and that it fell within the “acceptable” testing limits.

However in the hours leading up to the scheduled execution, “The Execution Team performed the necessary checks,” according to DOC, and “at that time, the drugs appeared cloudy.” Prison officials said they immediately consulted with a pharmacist, and that in “an abundance of caution,” the execution had been postponed.

On news of the postponement, cheers went up outside the prison among the several dozen people who were standing vigil in support of Gissendaner, including some women who had been in prison with her. However, their relief will most likely be short lived. Although a new execution date has not yet been set, Gissendaner has exhausted all likely avenues of appeal.

Gissendaner was convicted and sentenced to death for the February 1997 murder of her husband, Douglas Gissendaner. Last Wednesday, the State Board of Pardons and Paroles, the only entity in Georgia authorized to commute a death sentence, denied Gissendaner’s appeal for clemency. A federal judge in Atlanta also rejected a request to halt her execution, a decision that her lawyers appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

With her execution approaching on Monday, Gissendaner’s attorneys appealed to the Board of Pardons and Paroles to “bestow mercy” and commute her sentence to life without parole. Although the board said they would consider the last-minute appeal, at around 6 p.m. Monday they announced that their previous decision would stand, clearing the way for the execution. Also on Monday, the Georgia Supreme Court voted 5-2 to deny her appeal.

Gissendaner did not commit the murder of her husband, according to prosecutors, but plotted with her boyfriend at the time, Gregory Owen, who ultimately carried out the murder, stabbing the victim to death. Owen pleaded guilty and received a life sentence with eligibility for parole after 25 years and testified against Gissendaner at her trial. Gissendaner turned down a similar plea deal.

In a clemency petition, Gissendaner’s attorneys cited the post-conviction testimony of her trial lawyer, Edwin Wilson, who said that he hadn’t thought a jury would sentence her to death. “I guess I thought this because she was a woman and because she did not actually kill Doug,” Wilson is quoted as saying, adding that he should have urged her to take the deal.

Gissendaner would be the first women put to death in Georgia since the 1945 execution of Lena Baker, a black maid. Baker was executed after being convicted in a one-day trial for killing her white employer. She was issued a posthumous pardon by Georgia authorities in 2005, after six decades of lobbying by her family, who maintained that she likely killed her boss because he was holding her against her will. Baker said at trial that he had threatened her life and appeared ready to hit her with a metal bar before she fired the fatal shot.

Since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 1,402 executions have been carried out in the US states that practice the death penalty. Gissendaner would be the 16th woman put to death.

Capital cases in Georgia have been pivotal in charting the modern course of the US death penalty. A 1972 case involving a Georgia death row inmate, William Henry Furman, led to a de facto moratorium on capital punishment in the US from 1972 to 1976. The US Supreme Court ruling in Furman v. Georgia, however, did not outlaw the death penalty outright, but called only for consistency in its application.

Furman, an emotionally disturbed and mentally disabled African-American, was convicted of carrying out a murder during a home invasion and was sentenced to death after a one-day trial. Ruling in the case, a five-member majority on the Supreme Court called a temporary halt to executions because of “the discretion of judges and juries in imposing the death penalty,” which enable it “to be selectively applied, feeding prejudices against the accused if he is poor and despised, and lacking political clout.”

Another Georgia case, Gregg v. Georgia, led to the reinstitution of the death penalty in 1976. In the case of condemned inmate Troy Leon Gregg, the justices ruled that the death penalty serves two principal social purposes, retribution and deterrence, and does not violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment.” The high court held that the state of Georgia could constitutionally put Gregg to death. Gregg escaped from prison and died following a bar fight before he could be recaptured and executed.

As with all state-sponsored killings, Kelly Gissendaner’s execution will do nothing to contribute to the societal good. The drive on the part of authorities to see her death sentence carried out is based on vengeance and will not prevent similar brutal crimes. In fact, if anything her execution will worsen conditions for other incarcerated inmates.

In a vigil on the eve of her scheduled execution, those gathered argued that the mother of three had turned her life around in prison, earning a theology degree in 2011, and going on to counsel other prisoners on gaining education and training to prepare for life outside prison. The condemned woman’s lawyers have argued that in an effort to keep this information out of the clemency proceedings, prison employees who might have testified to Gissendaner’s rehabilitation and model behavior behind bars were intimidated by prison authorities.

Douglas Gissendaner’s parents and sisters were intent on Kelly Gissendaner’s execution, but two of the couple’s three children asked the parole board to spare her life. In statements submitted with the clemency application, Kayla and Dakota Gissendaner wrote that they had moved from bitterness to anger to forgiveness in their relationship with their mother.

“The impact of losing my mother would be devastating. I can’t fathom losing another parent,” wrote Kayla Gissendaner. “My mom has touched so many lives. Executing her doesn’t bring justice or peace to me or to anyone.”

In their clemency petition, Gissendaner’s lawyers also emphasized that prosecutors had originally offered a deal to their client that would have spared her life. “At one time, therefore,” the lawyers wrote, “all the parties involved in the case thought a sentence less than death was appropriate for Ms. Gissendaner.”

Cleveland court filing alleges Tamir Rice caused his own death

Tom Hall

A response filed last Friday by the city of Cleveland to a lawsuit by the family of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was shot and killed November 22 by police while playing with a pellet gun, has prompted widespread outrage for callously blaming Rice for his own death.

Tamir Rice was shot and killed by Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann within one second of his arriving on the scene in response to a 911 call about a child playing with a gun in a nearby park. Despite Rice’s murder being captured on video, Loehmann remains at large while the case has been referred to a local grand jury, reminiscent of the infamous cover-ups of the murders of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in Staten Island last summer.

Meanwhile, the city’s response to the lawsuit filed in January on behalf of the family by attorneys Walter Madison and Benjamin Crump makes clear its refusal to admit any wrongdoing in Tamir Rice’s killing. The affirmative defense contained in Friday’s filing argues that the killing was “directly and proximately caused by the failure of [Tamir Rice] to exercise due care to avoid injury,” that the damages claimed by Tamir’s family were “caused by their own acts,” and that the government of Cleveland is legally immune from being held responsible for the killing. The filing also asked that the case be dismissed with prejudice.

The incredible claim that an unarmed 12-year-old boy was responsible for his own death provoked mass outrage over the weekend, prompting Cleveland officials to backpedal. The city is now attempting to paint the filing as the result of a mere oversight or breakdown in communication. Barbara Langhenry, the city’s law director, claimed that the lawyer who drafted the document used “routine” legal formulae and failed to understand “that this is an emotional situation and not take that position with a child.”

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson held a press conference Monday to offer a tepid “apology” to Tamir’s family. Making the highly implausible claim that he only became aware of the wording of the court filing that very Monday, Jackson apologized only for the poor choice of words, and promised a new filing in the next few days.

“We are apologizing to the family and to the citizens of Cleveland for our poor use of those words and our insensitivity,” Jackson said, making clear that the new filing would differ not in substance but only in the “use of words.” Jackson then began to shed literal crocodile tears, affecting being choked up, comparing his grandson to Tamir Rice, while continuing to cover up for the shooting and denying any responsibility by the city.

The Rice family and their attorneys held their own press conference yesterday in response, which rejected the mayor’s phony “apology.” They replayed the widely circulated surveillance video showing the murder, with a counter added on the top right corner of the screen which measured the time between the arrival of Loehmann’s cop car and his shooting of Tamir Rice at .792 seconds. “The city’s answer is disrespectful to my son Tamir,” his mother Samira Rice said. “I have yet to receive an apology from the police department or the city of Cleveland in regards to the killing of my son and it hurts.”

Attorney Benjamin Crump, who has also represented the families of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin, rejected out of hand the city’s claim that the filing was a mistake or oversight. “The city had over 30 days to deliberate and articulate its decision on Tamir Rice and they chose the words that they chose … Any time that they try to justify—other than to say that they made a mistake—anything short of that is disrespectful from the family.”

The current version of the civil suit against the city of Cleveland, filed at the end of January, names officer Loehmann and his partner Frank Garmback as well as more than a hundred 911 operators and city employees as additional defendants. It contains 27 allegations, ranging from civil rights violations to the battery of Tamir’s 14-year-old sister, Tajai. Tajai was tackled to the ground, handcuffed and placed in the back of a squad car after she ran toward Tamir as he lay dying, while Loehmann and Garmback failed to administer first aid. After arriving at the scene, Samira Rice was forced by police to choose between staying with Tajai or accompanying Tamir to the hospital.

The police killing of Tamir Rice was one of several throughout the country last year involving victims holding toy weapons, including an earlier incident in the state of Ohio. In August, police in Beavercreek shot John Crawford III in a local Walmart while he held a pellet gun that he had just picked up off the shelf. The shooting took place within seconds of police arriving on the scene, and was also caught in its entirety on surveillance cameras. All of the officers involved escaped charges after a grand jury declined to indict them.

A lawsuit over that killing is also pending, to which Beavercreek officials have also responded by denying any responsibility and asking for the case to be dismissed. They argue that the shooting was the “direct and proximate cause of intervening superseding third parties over whom these Defendants had no control.”

US-trained Afghan security forces committing “systematic” torture and extra-legal killings

Thomas Gaist

Afghan government security forces and affiliated paramilitary units, developed under the US occupation, are engaged in a daily, ongoing campaign of terror against the country’s civilian population, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released this week, “Today We Shall All Die.”

The puppet regime in Kabul, established by the US and NATO powers after the overthrow of the Taliban government in October 2001, presides over a web of criminalized security forces and politicized crime syndicates that oppress and plunder the population, all while drawing on a steady stream of resources from Europe and North America, HRW found.

“The administration of former President Hamid Karzai installed many powerful warlords and failed to confront others, while many others have been funded by and worked alongside international forces, further entrenching them politically into the fabric of Afghan society. In this way impunity in Afghanistan is both a domestic and foreign problem for which the solution resides not only in Kabul but in foreign capitals such as Washington, DC,” HRW wrote.

Forces aligned with the Kabul government regularly commit a range of criminal violations of the basic rights of the population, including extra-legal killings, disappearances, extortion, robbery, rampant sexual abuse and arbitrary detentions. Money flowing into Afghanistan from US and European governments for security and logistics contracts is channeled by high-ranking Afghan officials to maintain private militias, HRW found.

“The perpetrators of these abuses are persons in positions of authority or persons who operate with their backing … they occupy positions in almost every level of government, from local militia commanders to ministerial rank,” HRW reports.

To prepare the report, HRW interviewed some 120 members of communities across eight Afghan provinces that have been affected by the violence. Based on these interviews, HRW drew up eight case studies of leaders within the official Afghan security forces and the broader network of semi-formal militant groups that wield power in the hinterland.

One militant leader highlighted by the report, Abdul Shujoyi, was recruited as a fighter for the Afghan Security Guards (ASG) and worked directly with US occupation forces beginning from at least 2009.

Elder villagers interviewed by HRW stated that “everyone has seen [Shujoyi] with the Americans,” with the militant leader paying frequent visitings to a US facility known as Forward Operating Base (FOB) Anaconda.

Shujoyi spends “a good deal of time on the US base at Khas Orugzgan,” according to investigative work published by the Sydney Morning Herald. “Cover by US Special Forces has emboldened and protected Shujoyi,” a reporter for the Herald found on the basis of extensive interviews with local sources.

By 2011, at the instigation of US Special Forces officers who used their connections to the government to override the opposition of the local governor and tribal leaders, Shujoyi rose to command elements of the Afghan Local Police (ALP), a militia network set up by US forces occupying the country in coordination with the government in Kabul.

ALP forces under Shujoyi’s command repeatedly raided villages around Kukhtaba, robbing and murdering inhabitants, including children, in 2011 and in following years, HRW reported. Multiple accounts from villagers state that Shujoyi’s forces killed local children by stoning.

In November 2012, local residents submitted a list of 121 victims they said were killed by Shujoyi’s men since 2009, while also reporting that militants under Shujoyi’s command regularly raped villagers, and stole their motorcycles and wheat yields at gunpoint.

HRW highlighted another figure, Commander Azizullah, who served as a senior officer with the Afghan Security Guard (ASG), while it was involved in joint combat operations with US forces.

A UN report from 2010 found that Azizullah repeatedly engaged in arbitrary detention and execution of children. After joining the ALP in 2011, reports emerged that Azizullah was overseeing similar abuses, including forcible conscription of child soldiers into his militias.

A village teacher told HRW that he was arbitrarily detained and savagely beaten by ALP militiamen led by Azizullah during a 2012 raid. The ALP forces arrived in Ranger trucks accompanied by US military personnel, the teacher said.

Azizullah remained in command of a local ALP detachment as of June 2014, according to HRW.

Kandahar police chief Abdul Razziq, a man with close ties to the US military who received praise from a top US general for establishing “security” in areas under his control, encourages systematic use of torture by forces under his command, a separate UN report found.

Referring to the professional murderers and thugs surveyed in the report, HRW noted that “the Afghan government has empowered rather than apprehended them” and has done so “with the backing of the US and other international supporters.”

Indeed, what the psychopathic criminals depicted in the HRW report all have in common is their close collaboration with the US military and its special operations units. In its drive to reorganize and dominate global politics, US imperialism forges alliances everywhere, with the most depraved forces, as the necessary instruments of its global agenda of subjugation and mass murder.

Before leaving office, in the wake of the US-orchestrated power sharing agreement that placed Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah in power last fall, the Karzai government granted sweeping amnesty to state criminals, HRW reported. As under Karzai, top Afghan military, intelligence and administration officials of the Ghani regime directly carry out and supervise murder, torture and rape, HRW found.

The formal end of US combat operations in Afghanistan on December 31, 2014, has by no means halted the US-directed slaughter. US commandos continue to carry out a “secret war” throughout the country, coordinating and directly executing targeted assassinations against anyone suspected of opposing the government.

The first act of the Ghani regime’s “national unity” government was to sign off on the permanent occupation of the country by some 10,000 US troops, who will continue to enjoy full legal immunity for civilian “collateral damage” produced by their operations.

Netanyahu delivers anti-Iran tirade to US Congress

Bill Van Auken

The speech delivered Tuesday by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to an extraordinary joint session of the US Congress consisted of a hysterical anti-Iran tirade and an implicit denunciation of the Obama administration for what was portrayed as an outright betrayal of the security interests of both Israel and the US.

Netanyahu’s appearance, organized behind the back of the White House, marked an unprecedented—and constitutionally dubious—bid by an American political party to bring a foreign head of state before Congress in order to condemn and undermine the policies of a sitting president.

For Netanyahu, who described his trip to Washington as a “historic, even fateful mission,” the political motives were transparent. With Israeli elections just two weeks away and polls showing his support fading, the speech provided Netanyahu with a means of shifting attention from deteriorating economic and social conditions in Israel to the supposed “existential threat” posed by Iran’s nuclear program.

It also gave him the opportunity to be televised accepting multiple standing ovations from the US Congress. Democrats and Republicans proved equally obsequious to the Zionist lobby, rising to their feet at least 15 times during the 39-minute diatribe.

While roughly 55 of the 232 Democrats in both houses of Congress stayed away from the address—not out of disagreement with Israeli policy, but out of loyalty to Obama—the party’s congressional leadership showed up.

The speech was delivered simultaneously with a third session of talks between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in the Swiss town of Montreux. The negotiations between Iran and the P5+1—the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany—are proceeding under the pressure of a March 31 deadline to reach a tentative agreement on Iran’s nuclear program.

Netanyahu’s clear aim was to derail any deal with Tehran. US officials had feared he would use the speech to disclose classified information on the negotiations in order to achieve this aim. Instead, the Israeli prime minister relied on crude scaremongering and Islamophobia in what was clearly an attempt to convince Congress to intervene and disrupt the talks.

He portrayed Iran as both a terrorist state and an expanding empire that would resort to nuclear war to achieve its aims.

“We must all stand together to stop Iran’s march of conquest, subjugation and terror,” he said, adding that “the greatest danger facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons.”

The deal being negotiated by the Obama administration, he charged, would “inexorably lead to a nuclear-armed Iran whose unbridled aggression will inevitably lead to war.”

No one in either major party or in the corporate media pointed out the hypocrisy that saturated Netanyahu’s speech. The head of the Israeli government, which possesses hundreds of nuclear weapons and refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, charges Iran, a signatory to the pact, with nuclear malfeasance. The Israeli government, which has waged repeated wars of aggression against the Palestinian people and all of its Arab neighbors, while recognizing no restrictions on its borders, accuses Iran, which has invaded no one, of “aggression.”

To promote these lies, Netanyahu equated Iran not only to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), but even to Nazi Germany.

At one point, he turned the attention of Congress to the presence in the gallery of Elie Wiesel, who has made a lucrative career as Washington’s semi-official Holocaust spokesman, and repeated the refrain “Never again.” Wiesel was seated with Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, who finds herself at the center of multiple corruption scandals within Israel itself.

This cheap invocation of the Holocaust to justify a policy of aggressive war against an oppressed country is as fraudulent as it is morally obscene.

President Barack Obama responded to the speech by stating that there was “nothing new” in Netanyahu’s remarks and that he had failed to “offer any viable alternative.”

An unnamed “senior US official” who spoke to the Washington Post was more blunt, declaring, “The logic of the prime minister’s speech is regime-change, not a nuclear speech.” The official added, “Simply demanding that Iran capitulate is not a plan.”

This is the essence of Netanyahu’s policy. His demand that Iran accept the complete dismantling of all of its nuclear facilities—to which it is entitled under international law—cannot be achieved by negotiations, but only through a war to subjugate the country.

Washington has itself repeatedly engaged in saber rattling against Iran, with US representatives insisting even this week that should Tehran fail to accept or subsequently violate a nuclear agreement, the military option remained “on the table.”

Since the end of 2013, however, after it was compelled to back down from its threat to launch an air war against the Iranian-backed regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the Obama administration has shifted its policy toward reaching an accommodation with Iran.

It is this policy, not the danger of nuclear attack, that Tel Aviv sees as an existential threat. The Zionist regime requires a continuous state of war and confrontation to sustain its rule. A deal with Iran would undermine its central claim to legitimacy.

Before the 1979 Iranian revolution, US imperialism relied on the dictatorial regime of the Shah as a pillar of stability and counterrevolution in the Middle East. Elements within the US ruling establishment no doubt harbor the hope that such a relation can be revived. As Netanyahu’s appearance demonstrated, there are sharp divisions within the US ruling elite over how to pursue such a strategy.

In its latest military intervention in Iraq and Syria, Washington has coordinated its actions with those of Iran, which has supplied the Shia-dominated Iraqi regime with substantial military aid. The Wall Street Journalreported Tuesday that in a newly launched operation to retake the Iraqi city of Tikrit, Iran was “throwing drones, heavy weaponry and ground forces into the battle, while the US remained on the sidelines.”

Israel, which has provided logistical support to the Islamist “rebels” in Syria and has tried to forge a de facto anti-Iranian alliance with the reactionary Sunni monarchies of the Gulf, perceives any thaw in US-Iranian relations as a threat to its hegemonic aims in the region, as well as to Washington’s unconditional support for the aggressive policies with which it pursues these aims.

Tel Aviv opposes Iran in large measure because its aid to the Syrian government, to Hezbollah in Lebanon and to Hamas in Gaza, while posing no existential threat to Israel, limits Israel’s ability to militarily impose its dictates on the peoples of the region.

Washington, on the other hand, is pursuing far broader objectives. Its negotiations with Tehran are directed not merely at curbing its nuclear program, but at creating conditions in the region that will facilitate US imperialism’s “pivot” toward escalating military confrontation with both Russia and China.

Speaking in Geneva, Kerry pointed toward this shift, declaring, “Israel’s security is absolutely at the forefront of our minds, but frankly, so is the security of all the other countries in the region, so is our security in the United States.”

Netanyahu’s provocation in the US Capitol has been accompanied by statements from both Democrats and Republicans reaffirming support for Israel, which translates into over $3 billion a year in mostly military aid. In an interview with Reuters Monday, Obama said Netanyahu’s actions would not prove “permanently destructive.”

Such reassurances notwithstanding, Netanyahu’s speech is not the cause of the tensions between Washington and Tel Aviv, but rather a symptom of an increasing divergence of strategic interests between US imperialism and its Israeli client state.

Wealth of world’s billionaires surges past $7 trillion

Joseph Kishore

The combined net worth of the world’s billionaires has reached a new high in 2015 of $7.05 trillion, according to the latest compilation published by Forbes magazine on Monday.

There are a record 1,826 billionaires, each with an average wealth of $3.8 billion. Relative to last year, the world’s billionaires have increased their combined wealth by more than 10 percent, from $6.4 trillion in 2014, while the total number of billionaires has grown by 11 percent.

In introducing its report, Forbes noted the striking disconnect between the continued surge in the wealth of the world’s ultra-rich and the state of the world economy. “Despite plunging oil prices and a weakened euro, the ranks of the world’s wealthiest defied global economic turmoil and expanded once again,” the magazine commented.

This growth in the wealth of billionaires is bound up with the continued rise in global equity markets. The FTSE All-World Index surged to record highs last month, and US markets have continued to break records. Stock ownership is overwhelmingly concentrated in the hands of the wealthy, who have been the prime beneficiaries of “quantitative easing,” record low interest rates and other government policies.

The wealth of the world's billionaires

The United States, the home of Wall Street and center of global financial capital, again has far and away the highest number of billionaires—536. Since the beginning of the so-called “economic recovery,” in 2009, some 95 percent of all income gains in the United States have gone to the top 1 percent. Meanwhile, nearly one in four children in the country lives in poverty.

At the top of the list of billionaires in the US are familiar names, including Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, whose individual wealth alone surged by $3.2 billion, to $79.2 billion. Among Americans, Gates was followed by investor Warren Buffet, the list’s biggest gainer for the year, who now has a net worth of $72.7 billion, up $14.5 billion from last year.

Further down the list, one finds individuals like hedge fund manager Steven Cohen, a personification of the essentially criminal character of American capitalism. A year ago, Cohen’s former hedge fund, SAC Capital Advisors, pleaded guilty to insider trading charges. Cohen himself was never charged, and he simply transferred his fortune to a new firm, Point72 Asset Management. Cohen made $1.3 billion last year, bringing his total net worth to $11.4 billion.

If categorized as a separate country, California, with 131 billionaires, would be second on the Forbes list, following only the US as a whole and China. Among the new billionaires in California are Travis Kalanick and Garett Camp, co-founders of Uber, a car-sharing service that specializes in coordinating drivers who are paid low wages, with uncertain and irregular hours. Such labor is increasingly being seen as a model for the American economy as a whole.

Carlos Slim, the Mexican telecommunications magnate, was second on the global list, with $77.1 billion. Half of Mexico’s population of 122 million people lives in poverty, defined as an income of less than about $6 a day (2,329 pesos a month). Slim’s personal fortune is roughly comparable to the combined annual income of these 60 million impoverished Mexican workers.

While Slim is the richest single individual in Latin America, the country with the largest number of billionaires in the region is Brazil, with 54. Half of Brazil’s 60 million children live in poverty.

Overall, the country with the second largest number of billionaires is China, with 213, followed by Germany, India and Russia.

China, which remains a cheap labor platform for world capitalism, is home to 71 of the 290 billionaires on the Forbes list this year, or about a quarter of the total. The richest individual in China is Wang Jianlin ($24.2 billion), a real estate magnate, followed by Jack Ma ($22.7 billion), the founder of Alibaba Group, an Internet trading company.

A surge in equity markets in China last year has benefited not only Chinese billionaires. Forbes commented, “If you invested in the companies run by billionaires on the top 20 China billionaire list, you’re tracking their wealth right into your brokerage account.” The initial public offering of Alibaba last year became an international spectacle of speculation and greed, netting global investors tens of billions in profits.

On India, Forbes commented that the country’s 90 billionaires “are riding high on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promise of ‘good times.’” The right-wing Hindu fundamentalist politician, elected last year, has quickly pushed through a raft of pro-business measures, while promoting the country as the world’s sweat shop.

The richest Indian is Mukesh Ambani (net worth of $21 billion), the chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries Limited. About 60 percent of the population in India, or 750 million people, live on less than $2 a day.

Russia has seen a significant decline in the number of billionaires, from 111 to 88, dropping from third to fifth on the overall list of countries. This is one result of the economic crisis that has engulfed the country, due to the sharp drop in oil prices and crippling economic sanctions imposed by the United States and Europe. One of the primary aims of these sanctions is to encourage a section of the Russian oligarchs, fearful of the impact on their wealth, to turn against the government of Vladimir Putin.

Certain broader comparisons are revealing. The debt that Greece owes the banks of Europe, for example, is about $90 billion. The wealth of the world’s billionaires is more than 77 times this amount.

In the United States, the city of Detroit has a debt of $6.9 billion, or one one-thousandth of the collective wealth of the world’s billionaires.

Both Greece and Detroit have been dragged through a disastrous restructuring dictated by the banks and endorsed by the entire political establishment, resulting in mass impoverishment and the decimation of living standards.

The Forbes list gives expression to the parasitic character of world capitalism as a whole. Whatever the particular sector of the economy with which their wealth is associated—finance, manufacturing, telecommunications—the fortunes of the ultra-rich are invariably tied to surging stock markets.

The concentration of such enormous sums in the hands of so few is not simply the product of abstract economic processes, but deliberate government policies, intensified since the financial crash of 2008. As the World Socialist Web Site noted at the time, the crisis was “the form in which a fundamental restructuring of the American and global economy, and the social and class relations upon which it is based, is taking place.”

Since 2009, when the policies of bank bailouts, near-zero interest rates and “quantitative easing” were fully implemented, the wealth of the world’s billionaires has nearly tripled. Led by the Obama administration in the US, the ruling class has funneled trillions of dollars into the financial markets while carrying out a relentless assault on the working class.

The universal character of these processes makes clear that what is at issue is the very nature of the existing economic order. The extraordinary growth of social inequality and the immense transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top are expressions of a bankrupt and diseased social system, capitalism. The decay and crisis of this system are producing the means for its own demise—the eruption of social conflict and class struggle on a world scale.