US-Iran nuclear talks hint at a possible deal

Peter Symonds

The latest round of talks in Montreux, Switzerland between the US and Iran over the latter’s nuclear programs ended yesterday with signs that the framework of an agreement could emerge before the deadline of March 31.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, in remarks clearly aimed at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, declared that he would not allow politics or “external factors” to distract him from the ongoing negotiations. “No one has presented a more viable lasting alternative for how you actually prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,” he said. “So folks, simply demanding that Iran capitulate is not a plan.”

On Tuesday, Netanyahu delivered an anti-Iran tirade to an extraordinary joint session of the US Congress, denouncing what he called a “bad deal” that would lead to a “nuclear nightmare.” While he did not spell it out in his speech, the Israeli prime minister has repeatedly indicated what he regards as the alternative—military attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities if it refuses to agree to completely dismantle all its nuclear plants and programs.

In a Reuters interview on Monday, President Barack Obama outlined US demands that Iran agree to “double digit years of keeping their program where it is right now and, in fact, rolling back elements of it that currently exist.” Washington is also insisting on a highly intrusive UN inspection regime to ensure “we’ve got a way of verifying” any agreement.

According to the Wall Street Journal, US negotiators are pressing Tehran to substantially wind back its uranium enrichment plants and other facilities to ensure that it would take at least a year to produce enough nuclear fuel to construct a weapon. “While there is no explicit agreement on the 12-month break-out period, officials say there is a growing understanding on all sides that it must be part of a deal,” the newspaper reported.

Kerry is exploiting the harsh US-led economic sanctions that have crippled the Iranian economy, as well as the implicit threat of military attack, to extort major concessions from Iranian negotiators. The unsubstantiated allegation that Iran is building nuclear weapons—repeatedly denied by Tehran—is particularly hypocritical, given Washington’s acceptance of Israel’s nuclear arsenal and its refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

For Iran, the crucial issue is to ensure the lifting of all sanctions—something that Washington is yet to accept. While Foreign Minister Javad Zarif was upbeat on the prospects for a deal, he bluntly declared on Monday that the US and its allies “must once and for all, come to the political understanding that sanctions and agreement don’t go together. If they want an agreement, sanctions must go.”

Any nuclear agreement with Iran would mark a significant shift in US foreign policy. As far as Washington is concerned, such a deal has never been primarily about Iran’s nuclear programs. It has always been bound up with broader geo-political considerations—in the first instance ensuring American domination in the energy-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia.

For more than a decade under the Bush and Obama administrations, the US has imposed economic sanctions and repeatedly threatened to wage war against Iran on the pretext of destroying its nuclear capabilities. Obama continues to insist that all options, including the military one, remain “on the table.”

Washington’s overriding aim has been to fashion a regime aligned with US economic and strategic interests. With the election of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in 2013, the Iranian regime signalled its willingness to make significant concessions to reach an accommodation with the US. Now Washington is seeking to pursue the same broad objectives through negotiations on the nuclear issue.

This orientation has provoked sharp divisions in Washington, particularly among Republicans and Democrats very closely aligned to Israel and other US allies, such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, that are deeply hostile any rapprochement with Iran. Having organised this week’s speech by Netanyahu, Republican leaders are seeking to block an agreement by enacting legislation to ensure that any deal must have Congressional approval.

While well aware that a deal could damage relations with Israel and Saudi Arabia, the Obama administration is no doubt looking for Iranian concessions on a range of strategic issues in the Middle East and beyond. In its new war in the Middle East, the US has already coordinated its military operations to some degree with Iran, which is supplying advisers and equipment to prop up the Shiite-dominated regime in Baghdad.

At the same time, Washington is seeking to pacify existing allies. Kerry has flown to the Saudi Arabia to meet today with King Salman and Gulf State foreign ministers. Saudi Arabia, which has long regarded Iran as its chief regional rival, is deeply concerned that it will be marginalised if Washington ends sanctions and establishes closer relations with Iran.

However, the Obama administration’s pursuit of a deal with Iran is driven by considerations that go beyond the Middle East. Amid a deepening global economic breakdown and rising geo-political tensions, the US is engaged in an aggressive and reckless confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, while “rebalancing” its military forces to the Indo-Pacific region against China. As it prepares for possible war against two nuclear-armed powers, the US is seeking to enlist, or at least neutralise, Iran which occupies the strategic crossroads between the Middle East and Central Asia.

In a recent comment entitled, “The intersection of three crises,” Reva Bhalla, a Stratfor think tank analyst, commented that the worsening European economic crisis, tensions with Russia over Ukraine and talks with Iran were “inextricably linked.” Having foreshadowed a breakdown of the Minsk agreement over Ukraine, she argued that the US must prepare accordingly for conflict with Russia.

“But focusing on the Eurasia theatre entails first tying up loose ends in the Middle East, starting with Iran,” Bhalla wrote. “If the United States is to realistically game out scenarios in which US military forces confront Russia in Europe, it needs to be able to rapidly redeploy forces that have spent the past dozen years putting out fires ignited by sprouting jihadist emirates and preparing for a potential conflict in the Persian Gulf [with Iran].”

After noting that a US-Iranian understanding would go well beyond the nuclear issue, Bhalla suggests: “It will draw regional contours of an Iranian sphere of influence and allow room for Washington and Tehran to cooperate in areas where their interests align.” She concludes: “The United States, regardless of which party is controlling the White House, will rank the threat of a growing Eurasian conflict well ahead of de-escalating the conflict with Iran.”

The Obama administration’s ability to conclude a deal with Iran, in the face of open opposition from Israel and sections of Congress, remains to be seen. The next round of talks begins next week on March 15. Obama will review any framework agreement before proceeding to consider a full detailed agreement, scheduled to be concluded by June 30.

New York City mayor bids out final school bus routes without job protections

Sandy English

New York City’s Department of Education, now run by the city’s Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio, has announced that it is accepting bids from companies to operate a number of school bus routes, mostly for children with special needs who cannot otherwise get to school. These bids will lack the Employee Protection Provision (EPP) that guaranteed workers’ seniority rights and wage scales for over 30 years.

The move is an unmitigated disaster for over 4,000 school bus drivers, attendants (matrons) and mechanics, who will either lose their jobs or be forced to accept substantially reduced wages and benefits in New York City, where the cost of living is among the highest in the US.

This is the third in three rounds of such bids. The previous two were conducted under the administration of the former mayor, billionaire Michael Bloomberg. While his successor, de Blasio, allowed the bid awards that Bloomberg put into place to stand, and the resulting layoffs to unfold under his watch, this round will be the first entirely of de Blasio's own making.

De Blasio delayed the bid competition for over a year, all the while claiming to be open to some sort of resolution to protect workers’ jobs and wages. He passed the buck in calling on the state legislature in Albany to legislate the EPP back into city contracts. Issuing these bids has exposed the complete fraud of de Blasio’s attempt to posture as a friend of the school bus workers.

The performance period in the bids begins in 2016. With workers on the 4,000 routes in the final year of their current contract with carry-over EPP, it is unclear whether the companies will carry out immediate layoffs and wage reductions at the end of this year or whether they will be bound by the terms of the previous contract with the city. (There are rumors of a one-year contract among bus workers.)

On February 15, 2013, Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1181 shut down a strike of 9,000 school bus workers against the administration of then-Mayor Bloomberg over the issue of eliminating the EPP from the bidding process. In an attempt to mask its betrayal, it solicited and received a letter from the five Democratic mayoral candidates that, if elected, they would “revisit” the guarantee of the EPP in the bidding process.

Drivers and matrons on strike in the Bronx in 2013

While the union has said nothing to the workers about this latest attack, the failure to include EPP in the new bids has not surprised many bus workers who have seen their living standards crash in the last two years.

One school bus worker, Jose, told the WSWS, “I lost my job at Atlantic Express shortly after the strike. A lot of workers lost their jobs because when the contract expired at the end of the school year, we lost our EPP. This is what Bloomberg wanted.

“I am now doing the same work as before, driving school children and certified by the Board of Education, at a company called L&M, for a little bit more than one half of my original pay. In order to survive I need to work the weekends.

“I thought de Blasio was more for the workers, for poor people, and that is what my fellow workers thought as well. A lot of them said that we should all vote for him, and they did. I don’t trust de Blasio anymore. The union told us to vote for him as well. The union is corrupt. They are making money.”

Renne, also a former driver for Atlantic, said, “De Blasio has turned his back on us. The union has turned its back on us. I heard there was a master pick yesterday, and I’m waiting to hear what happened. I’m lucky because I have 23 years, and I am working. But I worked with a woman for six years who had 10 years with the company. When her unemployment ran out after the strike, she was forced to return to work as a new-hire and start over. As a new-hire, she is now making $11 an hour.”

A driver for the Reliant bus company said, “This morning the union rep said it will be difficult to get the EPP back. I did not say anything because I know that means we will never get the EPP again. That is a big problem. We don’t have vacation or overtime, even if we come back seven or eight o’clock at night.”

Over the last two years over five thousand workers have faced a similar fate as bids were let out in a process that began under the Bloomberg administration. But the union continued to promote the lie that was the basis for stopping the 2013 strike—that the Democrats would be different than Bloomberg.

For over 30 years, the bids were taken with the EPP guarantees. Language mandating the EPP was written into the bids after the bus workers’ 1978 strike. When Bloomberg announced in 2012 that the protections would be removed, the union treated this as the whim of a selfish billionaire. It was unable to prevent a strike, but it systematically worked to isolate it from other workers in New York City and to limit the number of pickets at garages.

Worker at union meeting in 2013

After calling off he strike, Local 1181 Present Michael Cordiello showcased his meetings with de Blasio and other Democratic politicians, and bragged that the Democratic-dominated New York State Senate would pass a law enshrining the EPP protection. Small groups of his supporters rallied at City Hall to keep up the farce that pressure would restore the EPP.

Finally, last year the de Blasio administration added a one-time $42 million budget item for the bus workers, a fraction of the $400 million that the city is saving by cutting the EPP. Only about half of the money has been used by bus companies to rehire veteran drivers. Only one company, Reliant, is using the funds, and it refuses to pay drivers overtime. At least two or three thousand laid off workers are still unable to get jobs.

In October of last year Members for Change, an opposition slate in the union, organized a rally in front of City Hall to deliver a petition to the mayor demanding that laid off workers be included in the upcoming “master pick” to fill open positions based on established seniority. No representative from de Blasio came out to meet the demonstrators, but that did not discourage the leaders of Members for Change from exhorting the bus workers to “keep agitating” with de Blasio and New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, also a Democrat.

The Members for Change slate has also appealed for support from the Federal government, and US Labor Secretary Thomas Perez is now suing to nullify the results of the last union election, which the Cordiello faction won.

The plan to destroy the rights of bus workers was first made public in a document of Cuomo’s Education Reform Commission, which is made up of billionaires, charter school operators and, significantly, Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers and former president of the United Federation of Teachers, representing more than 100,000 teachers and paraprofessionals in New York City.

In a 2012 report, the Commission noted the need to reduce “the biggest cost drivers in education and areas where spending exceeds the rate of inflation, including special education, transportation, pension and benefits.” Several times, the report emphasized the need to “Identify ways to reduce transportation costs…”

In the last few years, conditions for the entire working class in New York City have deteriorated. Not only is the city rife with police violence, but new figures show that the cost of living has increased 20 percent in the last five years. The homeless population now tops 60,000, and the poverty rate has climbed steadily upwards, due, in part, to the conditions of unemployment and slave wages to which bus workers and former bus workers have been reduced.

Many school bus workers, aware that their enemies are not only in the corporate offices but also in the White House, City Hall and the union headquarters, have asked, “What do we do now?”

Target announces layoff of several thousand workers in US

Matthew MacEgan

On Tuesday, the retail giant Target announced that it planned to cut several thousand jobs over the next two years as part of a restructuring that will free up $2 billion in costs to be invested in bolstering its online business. Chief Executive Officer Brian Cornell said about the planned layoffs, which will mostly occur at its Minneapolis headquarters, that “cutting complexity at headquarters will make us more competitive” (emphasis added).

The restructuring is part of a “revival plan” outlined by Cornell, which purportedly will drop about $2.1 billion into a handful of key product lines, the development of smaller urban stores, and the improvement of the company’s e-commerce. Target executives unveiled a five-year plan where half of that amount, $1 billion, will be spent on digital capabilities, including services that will improve sales obtained through smart-phone shopping.

Target, which has consistently lagged behind its competitors in online revenue, rewrote 75 percent of the code in its e-commerce platform in 2014, and offered free shipping during the winter holiday season in order to better compete with Amazon, Wal-Mart and Best Buy. Its holiday sales rose 3.8 percent, the highest increase in three years. The restructuring will enable 350 of its 1,800 stores, up from 139 that have the capability now, to ship online orders by October.

The company projects sales growth of 1.5 to 2.5 percent this fiscal year and claims it will have the capacity to buy back up to $2 billion worth of its own shares this year and $3 billion annually in following years. Target CFO John Mulligan told Wall Street that he expected digital sales to rise by 40 percent this year.

The restructuring announcement comes just two months after Target Canada declared bankruptcy, closed all of its 133 retail outlets in the country, and laid off 17,600 workers. The push into Canada was spearheaded by former CEO Gregg Steinhafel who invested $7 billion in the expansion in less than two years. The company recorded losses of at least half that amount.

Steinhafel was fired last May, but was still allowed to remain on the executive board for several months as an “advisor” and was provided with a severance package of $61 million. However, only $15.9 million was initially disclosed due to limitations on cash paid up front. Obscured was his acceptance of a further $33.1 million in non-qualified deferred compensation, $1.2 million from a pension that he didn’t have to pay back and $10.8 million in stock options.

The total amount exceeded what all 17,600 Canadian workers received as severance combined, and will also likely exceed severance paid to the new crop of displaced workers, many of whom are new or part-time employees who will not even receive unemployment benefits from the United States government.

Many other companies have announced layoffs in recent months. In August, Scientific Gaming Corp. bought the slot machine manufacturing company Bally Technologies and announced that it will lay off one fifth of its employees in order to save $83 million. In December, KBR, the Houston engineering and construction company, announced a major restructuring of its business that would eliminate 1,000 jobs. The company stated that it aimed to “simplify the structure, reduce overhead costs and create a more market-focused business.”

Oilfield services company Weatherford International announced last month that it planned to lay off 8,000 workers, 15 percent of its employees, in order to reduce spending following the recent sharp drop in oil prices. They expect to save around $350 million annually. CEO Bernard J. Duroc-Danner stated that “we are ready to react swiftly to a dramatically changing landscape.”

Other energy-related companies have made similar announcements that bring the total number of known oil-worker jobs lost to nearly 30,000. BP announced in January that it would be laying off workers due to slumping oil prices, but declined to disclose how many jobs would be cut. Halliburton announced last month that it will cut between 5,200 and 6,400 jobs as oil and gas production slows down. Baker Hughes revealed in January that it will lay off 7,000 workers, and Schlumberger announced that it would lay off 9,000.

Petraeus gets slap on the wrist in state secrets case

Thomas Gaist

Former top general and CIA chief David Petraeus passed classified secret information to his lover, including details of ongoing covert operations and names of undercover agents, and subsequently lied about these actions to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Justice announced Tuesday.

Petraeus transferred the notebooks to Paula Broadwell in August 2011 while he was head of the CIA. The books contained a range of state secrets including US war plans, intelligence capabilities, and minutes from National Security Council meetings and private one-on-one discussions between the general and President Barack Obama, according to the Washington Post.

Broadwell requested the information as part of her research for a biography of Petraeus, published as All In: The Education of General David Petraeus. The evidence makes clear that Petraeus knew he was passing extremely sensitive information to his mistress.

“Umm, well, they’re really, I mean they are highly classified,” Petraeus can be heard telling Broadwell on an audio recording from 2011.

Less than a month before his affair with Broadwell became public, Petraeus lied to US government investigators, saying that he never transferred any secret information to her. An FBI team seized the notebooks from Petraeus’ residence in Virginia in April 2013, nearly half a year after the retired general signed an FBI statement declaring that he no longer possessed documents containing classified information.

The FBI had ordered Petraeus questioned after discovering emails between Broadwell and Jill Kelley, a wealthy socialite known for hosting lavish parties for top Pentagon officials at her residence in the Tampa, Florida area.

Senator John McCain, a leading congressional representative of the military-intelligence apparatus, voiced his unshaken solidarity with Petraeus, saying that he had already “expressed deep regret” and that “it is time to consider this matter closed.”

“Petraeus will continue to provide his outstanding service and leadership to our nation, as he has throughout his distinguished career,” McCain said.

While Edward Snowden and numerous other whistleblowers have been threatened with death and subject to extensive vilification in the media for revealing grave crimes by the government, Petraeus will pay a fine of $40,000 and will not face any jail time, according to federal attorneys.

The former general’s treatment is in sharp contrast to the savage penalties imposed on Private Chelsea (Bradley) Manning, who exposed some of the crimes of American imperialism in Afghanistan and Iraq by downloading classified material and sending it to WikiLeaks for publication.

Manning is serving a 35-year prison term, while Julian Assange of WikiLeaks has been locked up in the Ecuadoran embassy in London where he sought asylum three years ago.

Far from being prosecuted for war crimes, for which Manning, Assange and others have provided ample evidence, Petraeus has enjoyed a well-publicized career in the upper echelons of the American military-intelligence apparatus.

Prior to his downfall, Petraeus rose steadily through the military, culminating in the command of multinational forces in Iraq during 2007-08, then command of CENTCOM and of occupation forces in Afghanistan. Petraeus assumed leadership of the CIA in September 2011, and ran the top US intelligence agency for more than a year before the Broadwell relationship became public.

Since leaving the CIA in November 2012, Petraeus has been welcomed with open arms by the financial and academic establishment, working as a globe-trotting consultant for New York investment house Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. LP (KKR) and been appointed to professorships at the City University of New York (CUNY), the University of Southern California, and the University of Exeter.

Petraeus apparently fell afoul of political currents in Washington, under circumstances that remain murky even today. He was kicked upstairs from Afghanistan to the CIA in the summer of 2011, at a time when Republican Party circles were seriously discussing him as a possible presidential or vice presidential candidate against the Obama-Biden reelection ticket.

His ouster from the CIA was also politically timely. Petraeus handed in his resignation within days of Obama’s reelection, paving the way for John Brennan, Obama’s top national security aide and the overseer of the drone missile assassination program, to return to the CIA and become its director.

His resignation came only two months after the events in Benghazi, Libya, when a US diplomatic post and a CIA annex were attacked by Islamists who had been working with the agency as part of its efforts, first to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, then to attack the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

Since then, the Republican hue and cry over Benghazi, itself motivated by an effort to discredit then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, has served to divert attention from the primary role of the CIA in the events in Libya, which remain uninvestigated to this day.

Judge limits evidence on role of main perpetrator of Boston Marathon bombings

Barry Grey

The federal trial of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev got under way Wednesday amid extraordinary security surrounding the Boston courtroom, which was packed with reporters and victims of the April 15, 2013 bombings.

Boston police closed off streets that, even during major trials, are normally kept open. Barricades kept the public at a distance, while K-9 units guarded the building, a helicopter hovered overhead, and police boats stood by in Boston Harbor.

Even before the jurors were seated, Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. issued a ruling limiting the ability of lawyers for the 21-year-old defendant to discuss the role of his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, in the planning and execution of the terrorist attack that killed three people and wounded another 264. The judge granted a prosecution motion to largely exclude evidence concerning the relationship between Tamerlan and Dzhokhar until the sentencing phase of the trial.

The ruling indicates the government’s intention to tightly control the information emerging from the proceedings so as to marginalize or exclude questions relating to extensive contacts over a period of years between the FBI and Tamerlan, who is believed to have organized the attack. The older Tsarnaev brother was killed in a shootout with police on April 19, 2013, four days after two pressure cooker bombs packed with nails and shrapnel were detonated near the downtown Boston finish line of the marathon.

In their opening statements to the jury, neither the prosecution nor defense lawyer referred to the still unexplained failure of federal agencies such as the FBI, CIA and Homeland Security Department to prevent the bombings, even though the FBI and CIA had been warned multiple times by the Russian security service of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s Islamist terrorist sympathies, the FBI had questioned the older brother and his parents, and Tamerlan had been placed on US terror watch lists.

Last year, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s defense team filed papers with the court alleging that the FBI had attempted to recruit Tamerlan Tsarnaev as an informant. The defense has requested all information relating to the FBI’s investigation of the older brother, but the government has objected to the release of such documents.

The defendant is charged with more than 30 counts relating to the bombings, many of which carry the death penalty. The charges include the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology policeman on the evening of April 18, three days after the bombings.

In 2013, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev pleaded not guilty to all charges.

In her opening statement, however, lead defense counsel Judy Clarke acknowledged that her client was involved in the terror attack. “It was him,” she told the jury. She called the bombings a “series of senseless, horribly misguided acts carried out by the two brothers,” and said Dzhokhar should be held accountable for his crime.

But she argued that her client had been lured and bullied into participating in the attack by his older brother, who was the author and chief protagonist of the crime. Clarke, who has represented defendants in a number of high-profile capital cases, is clearly seeking to convince the jury to spare her client’s life and instead sentence him to life imprisonment, the only alternative sentence if he is found guilty.

Prosecutor William Weinreb focused on the horror of the bombings and the terrible physical and emotional toll they took on innocent bystanders, including an eight-year-old child who was one of the three fatalities. He insisted that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was an independent actor, motivated by an Islamist extremist ideology and outrage over the US government’s treatment of Muslims around the world. His statement made clear that the government intends to seek the death penalty.

The Boston bombings became the occasion for the police-military lockdown of Boston and its environs, an area with over one million residents, on April 19, 2013, following the killing of Tamerlan Tsarnaev and escape of Dzhokhar. Boston and its surrounding communities were flooded with thousands of heavily armed police and National Guard troops. They occupied the streets, supported by machine-gun-mounted armored vehicles, Humvees and Black Hawk helicopters.

Residents were ordered to “shelter in place” while police, with automatic weapons drawn, carried out warrantless house-to-house searches. The mass transit system was shut down, passenger train service was halted, and businesses, schools, universities and other public facilities were closed.

It was an unprecedented police-state operation. As the World Socialist Web Site noted at the time, the scene resembled the American occupation of Baghdad. This massive mobilization of police power was deployed, supposedly, to track down one 19-year-old suspect.

Just as there was virtually no expression of opposition to this dry run for dictatorship by any section of the media or political establishment at the time, the lockdown of Boston has been omitted from current commentary on the opening of the trial. This makes all the more important the posing of some of the unanswered questions regarding the events of April 2013, which are likely to be excluded from the court proceedings as well as the media coverage of the trial.

These include:

· Why did the FBI and CIA fail to respond to warnings from Russia’s security agency FSB in 2011 and 2012 concerning Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s support for Islamist separatist and terrorist organizations in Russia’s North Caucasian regions of Chechnya and Dagestan? Why did they ignore Russia’s request that Tsarnaev be prevented from traveling to these regions?

· Why did the FBI clear Tamerlan Tsarnaev of harboring terrorist sympathies in 2011 after supposedly carrying out an intensive investigation? Why did the agency claim there was no “derogatory” information against him, even though it suspected him of having participated in the Waltham, Massachusetts murder of three Jewish men, including a “best friend,” on the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks?

· Why was he allowed to travel to Dagestan in January of 2012, without even being questioned at the airport? He remained there for six months and reportedly made contact with Islamist groups that have carried out terror attacks against Russian targets. Why was he allowed to return to the US without even being stopped at the airport and questioned on his return?

· Why did the FBI, CIA and Homeland Security Department fail to inform their state and local counterparts on the Boston joint terrorism task force of their contacts with Tamerlan Tsarnaev prior to the Boston Marathon?

These unanswered questions strongly suggest that US intelligence was seeking to use Tamerlan Tsarnaev to further its covert anti-Russian operations among Chechen and Dagestan separatists. These regions also supplied many of the foreign fighters recruited by the CIA for its proxy war for regime change against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

This connection is underscored by another critical fact ignored by the US media—the role of Ruslan Tsarni, the uncle of the Tsarnaev brothers. In the 1990s, Tsarni ran a US group called the Congress of Chechen International Organizations, which helped supply anti-Russian insurgents in Chechnya with military equipment. The organization was registered at the home of his father-in-law, Graham Fuller.

Fuller had been vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA under President Reagan, and had worked for the agency in a number of countries, including serving as CIA station chief in Kabul.

Dozens killed in fatal methane blast at east Ukraine coal mine

Robert Stevens

Thirty-two coal miners were killed, another is missing and more than a dozen hospitalised with injuries, following a suspected methane gas blast Wednesday at the privately-owned Zasyadko coal mine located near the separatist-held city of Donetsk. Eight years ago, the same mine experienced Ukraine’s worst ever mining disaster.

In a country which is virtually bankrupt and is only being kept afloat by International Monetary Fund loans, miners at Zasyadko have continued to work despite being near the frontline of a warzone.

In January, 500 miners were trapped underground at Zasyadko after artillery fired by Ukrainian armed forces hit the electricity station that supplies the pit with power. A union official told a Ukrainian TV channel there had been no fighting in the area in recent days.

At least 230 workers were in the shaft when the explosion occurred around 3:20GMT local time. During the afternoon, authorities in Donetsk announced that over 198 people had been able to escape from the mine.

While the number of fatalities has yet to be confirmed, Ukrainian parliament speaker Volodymyr Hroisman announced shortly after the blast that 32 miners had been killed. Other sources initially reported that as many as 77 miners had died in the blast.

As a rescue operation was put into place, the head of the Kievsky district in Donetsk, Ivan Prikhodko, said no communication could be established with the miners trapped underground. The Emergency Ministry and the Independent miners’ trade union said there were either 73 or 207 people underground at the time. In the afternoon, a trade union official told journalists that 47 miners remained missing inside the mine.

The sister of missing miner Alexei Novoselsky was one of about 30 relatives desperate for information about their loved ones. She pleaded in tears to a rescue worker at the entrance to the mine, “Tell me, are there survivors? Why are you concealing the truth?”

Most reports said a build-up of methane gas which ignited was the probable cause of the blast. The head of the Donetsk People’s Republic emergency services Aleksey Kostrubitsky told the media, “Presumably, it was a methane explosion.”

Zasyadko, a deep mine with levels of methane well-known to be particularly hazardous, is infamous as the location of many disasters. Since 1999, more than 240 miners have lost their lives in the pit at Zasyadko.

Following a methane explosion at a mine, it is critical that workers are rescued as quickly as possible. A medical worker on the scene who was asked about the chance of survival for those trapped in the shaft said, “It’s getting smaller and smaller all the time, because of the methane, the hot air, burns to the airways.”

The BBC reported the comments of a welder at the mine who said, “I’ve been down the pit for 23 years, and this is the fourth explosion that I can recall. If they didn’t get them out straight away, then later they will only retrieve bodies. An explosion is a terrible thing.”

The Zasyadko mine is the largest in Ukraine, employing 10,000 people and producing up to 10,000 tons of coal per day. In 2013, it produced 1.4 million tonnes of coal. The mine is part-owned by Yukhym Zvyahilsky, once an acting prime minister of Ukraine and now an MP. He is described by the BBC as “a local leader with money and influence.” During the final years of the Soviet era, from 1979 through 1992, Zvyahilsky was a director of the Zasyadko mine.

The mine plays a critical role in supplying the industrial operations of Ukrainian oligarchs, under conditions in which the civil war has led to a fall in total coal production. Due to disruption of operations, national coal production fell by 22 percent in 2014 to 65 million tonnes. By the end of 2014, Zasyadko was still supplying coal to coke and chemical works in the Donetsk region owned by Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s wealthiest oligarch. Akhmetov is the 47th richest man in the world, worth an estimated $15.4 billion. 

In November 2007, 101 miners were killed at Zasyadko in Ukraine’s worst ever pit disaster. The workers were killed after the mine filled with methane gas that then exploded. The tragedy was one of three incidents that year which resulted in fatalities.

Zasyadko opened in 1958 and was never properly modernised. Following the restoration of capitalism in Ukraine after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the vast majority of mines were left in a decrepit and unsafe condition. In the 20 years prior to 2007, just 10 out of approximately 200 pits were modernised. The majority of mines are completely run-down, with many not even deploying sensors to warn of the danger of gas.

From 1991 to 2002, pit tragedies claimed the lives of 435 miners in Ukraine, many due to explosions and fires. In March 2000, a methane gas explosion in the Barakova mine killed more than 80 miners. By 2006, according to the State Committee on Industrial Safety and Labour Protection, 6,751 industrial accidents were recorded in coalmining enterprises, with 168 of them resulting in a fatality.

In short, the Zasyadko mine, among many others in the country, is a death trap. The hundreds of miners’ lives taken at the pit in just the last 15 years are an indictment of Ukraine’s capitalist coal industry. A cemetery built next to the mine holds the graves of many miners. Reuters quoted the head of security at the mine who said, “When there’s an accident, we bury them all here. Coal is a costly business.”

The human cost of mining in Ukraine is indeed staggering. By 2007, it was estimated that for every million tonnes of coal produced in Ukraine, five miners died and 350 were injured. On average, one miner died underground each day.

The deaths at Zasyadko reveal yet again the bloody price that workers living in the former Soviet Union are paying for the restoration of capitalism—a system that sacrifices the safety of workers at the altar of profits.

Obama Justice Department: No charges against Ferguson killer cop

Andre Damon

The US Justice Department announced Wednesday that it will not bring federal charges against Darren Wilson, the Ferguson, Missouri police officer who fired at least six bullets into Michael Brown last August, killing the unarmed teenager.

The announcement is the culmination of months in which the Obama administration sought to posture as the defender of minority youth, all the while solidarizing itself with the police. The decision to exonerate Wilson was announced by Attorney General Eric Holder, who served as the White House’s point man at the height of the daily protests in the St. Louis suburb following Brown’s murder.

After Brown’s killing, Holder went to Ferguson to put on a show of support for the right to protest. At the same time, he signaled the federal government’s support for the Missouri state police captain who presided over the mass arrest of demonstrators and virtual lockdown of the town by National Guard troops and police armed with military-grade weapons.

The announcement that the government will not prosecute Wilson, despite multiple eye-witness accounts describing his shooting of Brown as arbitrary and unprovoked, is the result of political, not legal considerations. It is an unambiguous statement of support for the institution of the police and the forces of state violence in general, under conditions of mounting social anger and class tensions.

In its announcement and the 86-page report it issued explaining its rationale, the administration lined up fully behind last year’s rigged grand jury proceedings that resulted in a decision not to bring criminal charges against Wilson. The Justice Department report did not differ in any substantial way from the arguments presented by the notoriously pro-police St. Louis County prosecutor to justify the refusal to charge Wilson. This is despite the fact that Prosecutor Robert McCulloch subsequently admitted that he knowingly presented to grand jurors perjured testimony supporting the police officer.

The first piece of “evidence” presented in the Justice Department report is Wilson’s self-serving account of the events of August 9. At the same time, the report discounts the testimony of the nearly two dozen witnesses who claim that Brown had his hands up when he was killed.

The decision by the Ferguson grand jury, followed by a similar decision by a New York grand jury not to indict the police officer who choked Eric Garner to death, amounted to a carte blanche for police departments across to country to beat and kill as they see fit. Now, the Obama administration has given the federal government’s de facto seal of approval for police violence and murder.

In effect, the administration has demonstrated its backing for the transformation of the police into a militarized occupation force in working-`class communities across the country.

The epidemic of police killings has continued unabated, with the latest atrocity occurring only days ago, when Los Angeles police beat, tased and shot to death a homeless man on the city’s skid row.

The decision not to prosecute Wilson was announced alongside a separate Justice Department report accusing the Ferguson Police Department of wrongful arrests, harassment and the use of court fees to raise revenue. That report, which defines violations of democratic rights by the police entirely in racial terms, was released to provide a smokescreen for the decision not to prosecute the killer of Michael Brown.

The report on the Ferguson police department highlights the administration’s cynical use of racial politics to obscure the more fundamental class issues underlying police violence and provide a political cover for its own assault on democratic rights and the social conditions of the working class. Its main recommendation is for the hiring of more African American and minority police, as though it makes a difference whether a worker or youth is being brutalized by a black cop or a white one.

The juxtaposition of the two reports, intended to divert attention from the administration’s endorsement of police violence, actually underscores the complete compatibility of racial and identity politics with the most ferocious attacks on working people of all races and backgrounds.

The exoneration of Wilson by the Obama administration further exposes the reactionary role of the liberal and pseudo-left apologists for the Democratic Party, including fake “civil rights” leaders such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, who went to Ferguson to channel popular anger behind Obama and the Democrats, presenting Holder’s promise of a federal investigation as good coin.

The promotion of racial politics is designed to divert the attention of workers from the real source of police violence, racism and poverty—the capitalist system. That system is today producing levels of social inequality that are incompatible with democratic procedures.

As the militarization of police in America shows, the response of the corporate-financial aristocracy to the growth of social opposition is repression and the build-up of the apparatus of a police state. There can be no defense of democratic rights outside of a conscious political struggle of the working class to replace the capitalist system with socialism.

Defend the US oil workers!

Jerry White

One month into the US oil refinery strike, the oil companies are throwing down the gauntlet before the working class. This is the significance of the announcement Tuesday that global oil giant Royal Dutch Shell will train strikebreakers to resume full production at its plants in Texas and Louisiana.

A letter from Aamir Farid, Shell’s vice president of manufacturing, Americas, said the company was shifting from its “contingency plan” to its “business continuity” phase, and training “relief workers” to replace the 800 striking workers at its largest refinery, located in the Houston suburb of Deer Park, Texas. Noting that Shell had “contingency plans in place for all [United Steelworkers] represented sites for well over 12 months,” Farid said the refinery would be up to “full rotation” by midsummer.

In plain English: If workers do not agree to accept the dictates of the oil companies, they face the loss of their jobs and destruction of their livelihoods.

The provocative action by Shell—the lead negotiator for ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP and other energy conglomerates—poses the urgent need for a determined and aggressive response by the workers. Without this, the strike will inevitably result in a bitter defeat.

The strike must be expanded to encompass the entire industry. All refineries must be shut down. Delegations of oil workers should be sent to steel mills, auto factories, ports, hospitals, public schools and other workplaces to call for solidarity action, including mass demonstrations and sympathy strikes. An appeal must be made to workers throughout the world who are fighting the same multinational corporations.

To carry out such a struggle, workers must take matters into their own hands. It is necessary to make a sober evaluation of who is on the side of the workers and who is arrayed against them.

On the side of the enemies of the working class stand not only the companies, but also the unions, which function as the auxiliary agents of corporate management. The intransigence with which the companies have operated has depended entirely on the complicity and cooperation of the United Steelworkers.

The worthlessness of the USW was again demonstrated one day after Shell’s announcement. On Wednesday, after a brief conference call that followed weeks of stalled negotiations, the USW issued a groveling statement declaring its hope that “Shell will approach these discussions with an open mind as well.”

This after the oil giant made clear its plans to fire striking workers if they do not come back to work on the company’s terms!

From the start of the strike, the USW has worked hand-in-glove with the companies to isolate the strike and keep it from having any significant impact on production. The walkout is limited to only 6,500 workers out of the 30,000 USW members in the industry. Reflecting the nationalism of the USW, none of the workers at American-based companies have been called out.

Sitting on a $350 million strike fund, the USW has refused to pay cash strike benefits. It has instead forced workers to beg the union for grocery cash cards and help on utility bills.

As for the AFL-CIO, it held its executive council meeting last month in the midst of the strike, but took no action to defend the oil workers. The executives who run the unions fear nothing more than a rebellion by workers that would threaten their lucrative relationships with the corporations.

Also standing behind the oil bosses is the government. In its assault on oil workers, the companies are implementing the policy of the corporate and financial aristocracy as a whole, backed by both the Democrats and Republicans.

This policy is being spearheaded by the Obama administration, which has presided over the greatest transfer of wealth from the working class to the rich in US history. Just last month, it intervened to block a potential strike by 20,000 West Coast dockworkers. The White House is now relying on the USW and other unions to impose its program of wage cutting and shifting the cost of health care and pensions from the employers to workers.

USW officials have justified their emasculation of the strike on the grounds that they want to avoid “federal intervention in the labor dispute.” This is not merely cowardice. The USW is closely allied with the Obama administration and does not want a political confrontation with the White House.

Oil workers have powerful enemies. But they have more powerful allies: the working class as a whole, which has an immense stake in this struggle. The assault on the jobs, wages, benefits and working conditions of oil workers is repeated in innumerable forms throughout the country and internationally.

The situation confronting workers today recalls Reagan’s firing of 11,000 PATCO air traffic controllers in 1981. The isolation and betrayal of that strike by the AFL-CIO paved the way for a decade of union busting, mass layoffs and wage cutting, which marked the beginning of a counteroffensive by the American and international ruling class against workers that continues to this day.

Some five million workers, including teachers, postal workers and workers in the auto and telecommunication industries, have labor agreements expiring this year. The American ruling class is determined to defeat the oil workers before their struggle becomes a catalyst for a broader movement of the working class. Yet this is precisely what is required.

The only way to break the dictatorial hold of the ruling class over society is by mobilizing the working class in a revolutionary movement that is aimed at putting political power into the hands of the vast majority of the population—the masses of working people whose labor produces society’s wealth.

Islamic State in Af-Pak: The ‘Wilayat Khurasan’ Conundrum

Rajeshwari Krishnamurthy

In January 2015, the Islamic State (IS), in a statement, called on the militants operating in the Af-Pak region to pledge their allegiance to their chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his ‘Caliphate’. They declared ‘Wilayat Khurasan’ as active, and appointed former Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) commander Hafiz Saeed Khan as the ‘Wali’ of Khurasan.

The IS identifies ‘Khurasan’ as certain areas in present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Central Asia, India, and China. At the heart of this region lies the troubled Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and IS entry into this region will undoubtedly change several long-standing dynamics in the region’s many conflicts involving State and non-State actors.

The IS poses a serious threat to an Afghanistan that has just begun to take baby steps towards normalcy - because several terrorists strewn across the country have pledged allegiance. The IS has potential inroads in Western Afghanistan via Farah and Faryab Provinces. In eastern Afghanistan, IS supporters are already indulging in violence in Logar, Ghazni, Parwan and Zabul provinces.

However, despite the seriousness of the threat that Afghanistan faces from the IS, it is via Pakistan that a possible solution to halt and end the IS ingress can be found. It is not child’s play to enter and establish a terrorist outfit in the Af-Pak region without the patronage of the Pakistani army – which is far from keen on having a new group enter the fray.

A Musical Chair of Regional Dynamics
The IS’ entry has brought to fore an important issue: jihadists in the Af-Pak region, Pakistan in particular, have for long been in flux due to the frustrations rising from identity-crises, endgames, loyalties and relevance. This has resulted in a tendency to factionalise frequently.

Since June 2014, the Pakistani government has been carrying out Operation Zarb-e-Azb, a systematic offensive targeting and eliminating militants and terrorist groups along the Durand Line. The Operation has seen some positive results - and the Pakistani military appears to be making the most of the divisions underway among various terrorist outfits in the region. However, while this factionalism is proving useful for the Pakistani military in eliminating terrorists, the same fault-lines are being harnessed by the IS to gain a foothold in the region. Those militants who were flushed out of Pakistan due to this Operation are among many, along with some disgruntled former Afghan Taliban members, who have pledged allegiances to the IS.

The Afghan Taliban and the IS supporters in the region are already at loggerheads and the battle for control of the regions between the various groups is getting serious. More importantly, the Khurasan Council comprises mostly of Pakistani jihadists. Mullah Omar is the Afghan Taliban’s Amir-ul-Momineen, whereas the IS rejects Omar’s credentials. The al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, the TTP and other groups all have varying priorities.

And for the several young terrorists who are evidently frustrated by the lack of clarity in the agendas of al Qaeda and the Taliban, the IS is an option that offers structure and set goals and targets.

If the Pakistani army continues to exploit factionalism among the terrorists, it risks sending them straight into the IS’ hands. In fact, the cover story of the 6th issue of the IS’ official magazine, Dabiq, titled ‘Al-Qa’idah of Waziristan’, is an elaborate account by a former al Qaeda operative who lambasts the group by elaborating on its ‘flaws’.

The IS too also realises that that which is advantageous for them at the moment - factionalism - has the potential to bring great disadvantages in the future. The IS statement therefore addresses this issue by calling on the militants to “abandon disunity and factionalism.”

Regional Geopolitical Shuffle
The IS’s apparently steady entry into the region is likely to shuffle relationships not just between non-State actors but also State actors. Pakistan and Afghanistan have already set forth towards cooperation on counter-terrorism. The Pakistan-Iran relationship, long defined by their individual relationships with Saudi Arabia, will have to take a new character - one that is defined by mutual interests; neither party can afford otherwise. There is no good or bad Taliban. Pakistan must start thinking laterally for solutions. They will have to balance their fight with the IS while also curbing radicalism and extremism from within - especially vis-à-vis the sectarian schism. Counter-strategies must be simultaneously coordinated, nationally and collectively as a region. The roles of Iran and the Central Asian States are vital, and cannot be overlooked.

The IS will tread a delicate line in Af-Pak, especially in Pakistan. If they manage to establish themselves firmly in Pakistan, they cannot continue without uniting all the militant groups in Pakistan; and simultaneously, the easiest way to acquire support is by exploiting the burgeoning factionalism within the militant groups in the Af-Pak region. An alternative route the IS could adopt is to take measured steps and not gamble away the goldmine they want to acquire.

But, will the IS take the quick route in or is it willing to wait it out? Regional responses to the looming IS threat will have to be charted on these lines. Interestingly, in Af-Pak, the IS is following the same trajectory al Qaeda did two decades ago. Does that mean those charting counter-strategies are working on familiar territory? Or will the IS treat the South Asian jihadists as expendable assets?

More importantly, answers must be found for why the IS is attempting to establish control in regions geographically separated from its headquarters and that are not under its control.

Syriza's Left Platform in crisis over Greek austerity agreement

Robert Stevens

The Syriza-led government in Greece has drawn up an initial list of “reforms” for discussion with the Eurogroup. This follows its signing of the February 20 austerity extension agreement with euro zone finance ministers.

The agreement has not stemmed Greece’s sovereign debt crisis, while allowing the European Union, European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) “troika” to tighten their vise-like grip over the country.

Greece’s total foreign debt stands at around €320 billion (177 percent of GDP) and the government must pay back billions of euros to its creditors in the coming months, including €9.3 billion to the IMF. By the end of this week, €300 million must be paid to the IMF and a further €1.5 billon by the end of the month. Additional debt repayments of €6.7 billion to the ECB fall due in July and August.

Greece’s banks are to all intent insolvent, with the central bank announcing last week that deposits were still being withdrawn at a rate of €800 million a day, up from about €400 million a day in January.

This weekend Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis moved to allay any fear in ruling circles that Greece would default on its debt, stressing that the IMF would be paid off at all costs. “We are not going to be the first country not to meet our obligations to the IMF. We shall squeeze blood out of stone if we need to do this on our own, and we shall do it,” he said.

One could not better sum up the role of the Syriza government. It will stop at nothing in imposing social devastation in Greece.

On Monday, Daily Telegraph columnist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote, “Greece is preparing to tap its final pension reserves at the country’s central bank if needed to avert a devastating default to the International Monetary Fund and keep the government going over the next two weeks.”

With Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Varoufakis now fine-tuning the first of its austerity measures, the Left Platform within the party, who have long claimed that Syriza would lead a struggle against austerity, have been thrown into crisis.

The Left Platform is an amalgam of Stalinists and pseudo-left forces including the International Workers Left (DEA, the Greek affiliates of the US International Socialist Organisation). At the party’s 2013 conference it won 30 percent of the overall vote and 60 seats on the central committee of the party.

At last weekend’s Syriza Central Committee meeting, the Left Platform won four seats on the party’s 11-seat political secretariat.

Following Syriza’s election, Left Platform leader Panagiotis Lafazanis, who was handed control of the energy ministry, insisted that his faction had a list of “red lines” which could not be crossed.

The Left Platform’s first opportunity to register any opposition came at last week’s caucus meeting of parliamentary deputies. Tsipras asked deputies to register their opposition to the Syriza-Eurogroup deal if they disagreed. Although the Left Platform has about 30 deputies in parliament, many declined to vote against the deal, with Lafazanis only abstaining.

Dimitris Belantis and Stathis Kouvelakis, two central committee members, authored an “Open Letter to the MPs of Die Linke—and to other parties of the radical Left in Europe.”

The letter was timed to coincide with the February 27 vote on the Syriza-Eurogroup agreement in the German Bundestag. The vote to continue austerity in Greece received all party support and was passed by the largest-ever majority for a vote on an austerity programme. Die Linke (the Left Party) voted overwhelmingly for the package, the first time it has formally endorsed a Greek austerity programme.

The Open Letter states that the Eurogroup agreement and Syriza’s accompanying list of proposed reforms “make it impossible” for the government to implement its election program. Those documents, it notes mean, “Increasing the minimum wage to 750 euros [that is, its 2009 level] cannot be in the short-term decided ‘unilaterally’ by our Parliament. It can only be a long-term perspective, subject to the condition that it doesn’t harm the country’s ‘competitiveness’.”

Stating that, “The privatizations which are already completed will be left,” the open letter adds, “No objection of principle to privatizations is to be found at any point in the text.”

“The ‘modernization’ of the social security system… actually means drastic cuts in welfare,” it admits.

The letter continues, “Almost no bill may pass in Parliament without prior consent of the Troïka, which has now been renamed as the ‘Institutions’, and it can’t be introduced without measures compensating its financial cost.”

After describing the austerity agenda their own party is implementing, the authors state that support for the agreement will destroy whatever pretensions Europe’s “radical left” still purport to have: “For us, it is clear that the ratification of this agreement by the European parliaments, with the consent of the parties of the radical Left, goes against the interest of the Greek workers and of the Greek people.”

The Belantis/Kouvelakis intervention was a cynical ploy, as Die Linke had already declared in advance of their plan to vote for the austerity agreement. In the vote Friday, virtually all the Left Party’s 64 deputies voted in favour.

Kouvelakis responded by glossing over the significance of the Left Party voting for an austerity programme that he himself described on his Facebook page as “pure neo-liberal shit.” Answering a comment on Facebook stating, “I am sorry but your open letter will receive a closed answer,” Kouvelakis replied: “really? [T]hree Die Linke MPs voted no the deal and about ten others abstained.”

The Left Platform followed up the Open Letter by putting an amendment to the Tsipras majority’s proposal for the austerity programme to be adopted to a meeting of Syriza’s Central Committee over the weekend.

In a desperate attempt to save face, the mealy-mouthed amendment stated, “In the immediate future, SYRIZA, despite the agreements of the Eurogroup, should take the initiative of implementing steadily and as a matter of priority its commitments and the content of its programmatic governmental statement.” [emphasis added.]

Ignoring that Syriza had just signed an austerity agreement, the amendment declares that the party must put forward the “perspective of an alternative plan promoting the full realization of our radical objectives.”

The “main conclusion” of the amendment was a vague proposal that anyone in Syriza, including Tsipras, could agree on: “[D]ecisions should be taken following a discussion in the leading party instances, which have, jointly with the party and the party branches as a whole…”

The amendment was supported by figures in Syriza beyond the Left Platform faction, with 68 in favour, 92 against and six abstentions.

The Communist Tendency faction of Syriza, the Greek section of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), offered its “critical support” for the amendment.

Presenting their own resolution to the meeting, Stamatis Karagiannopoulos of the CT said if only Tsipras and Varoufakis would listen, Syriza could still have a bright future. Addressing the “Comrades of the party leadership,” the resolution stated that, “despite the seriousness of your initial compromise, you still have time to salvage this situation by changing direction and assuming the necessary radical and socialist policies.”

Within a month of coming to power, Syriza has ditched its claims to oppose austerity and erased every “red line” of the Left Platform and its apologists. Its imposition of further brutal austerity measures will bring it and all its component parts, including the Left Platform, into open conflict with the working class and demonstrate before millions their role as defenders of capitalism and its institutions.

Big business in Australia lays out its agenda

Nick Beams

Like any political crisis, the significance of the political turmoil in the ruling Liberal Party surrounding the leadership of Prime Minister Tony Abbott cannot be accurately gauged by simply focusing on the immediate forms it assumes.

The plots and counter-plots, leaks, counter-leaks and opinion polls that dominate the headlines play a role, but its real meaning is to be found in more profound developments.

The crisis erupted over mass opposition to the government’s May budget measures that found expression in the leadership spill vote last month which saw 40 percent of Liberal MPs moving to oust Abbott. Key government measures remain blocked in the Senate because opposition parties fear a backlash from voters hostile to the budget’s targeting of the lower-income families.

The government’s failure to secure passage of its measures was accompanied by a series of commentaries in the media that the crisis involved much more than the Abbott government. Rather, it was insisted that the crisis reflected the inability of the present political order to deliver meaningful “economic reform”—the code phrase for the sweeping austerity measures being demanded by the corporate and financial elites in conditions of the deepening global economic crisis which now has Australia firmly in its grip.

The broad outlines of this program are set out in the 2015–2016 budget submission by the Business Council of Australia earlier this week. The BCA, which covers Australia’s 100 leading corporations, is demanding nothing less than a continuing offensive against the social position of the working class in order to make Australia “internationally competitive.”

The BCA is not calling for further major cuts in the budget now being prepared—it says instead that the government should simply hold the line on expenditure. Its perspective is more far-reaching. It insists there must be a 10-year plan for a “fundamental reset of fiscal strategy and the budget process” to deliver “sustainable” outcomes.

According to the submission, these outcomes will not be achieved through increased taxation or economic growth. “Above all, spending policy redesign must be considered, credible and sustainable” and there has to be a “sensible discussion” about the “inevitable trade-offs that government spending involves.”

This “sensible discussion,” involving the restructuring of government spending, above all on social services and benefits for families, must be carried out on a bipartisan basis. The fall in Australia’s terms of trade—the largest drop in more than 50 years following the end of the mining boom—and the ageing of the population are “weakening the economy’s capacity to pay” for public spending. “This is the reality confronting any government of any political persuasion. Full acceptance of the need for a new approach is a bipartisan imperative.”

As with all such submissions, the BCA agenda is couched in terms of the interests of the nation and seeks to present the economic crisis as if it were some kind of natural event, like the bad weather, rather than the outcome of the contradictions of a definite socio-economic order, the profit system.

However, the essential class interests it expresses are clearly revealed. The first of what it calls “four primary goals” is: “Preserving Australia’s AAA credit rating to consolidate the government’s financial credibility, retaining financial capacity and investor confidence.”

In other words, “budget sustainability” is integral to the maintenance of profitable conditions for the major corporate and financial interests in conditions of deepening global economic turmoil.

This point is re-enforced in the second primary goal which states that restoring the budget to surplus is necessary “to build resilience and flexibility for dealing with economic shocks and volatility, and for underpinning business confidence and investment.”

The BCA is concerned that in the event of another financial crisis—all the conditions for which are being created globally—continuing budget deficits will mean that the government will not have the resources to bail out the banks and other financial institutions.

The money for this must be made available in two ways: by cutting social services and other government spending and by improved productivity, that is, the introduction of so-called reforms that increase profitability.

There is an obligatory reference to the need to maintain essential “priority services” which are “integral to community living standards and the functioning of society” but the real agenda is also revealed here as well in the reference to the provision of “an adequate safety net.” In other words, government services should not be developed in order to advance living standards but must be directed to providing only the bare minimum.

The BCA identifies its targets. “Large and fast-growing programs such as health and other aged-related programs should top the list. No area of expenditure should be pre-emptively quarantined.” Spending “redesign” must include “greater self-reliance.”

The BCA is hostile to any proposals to increase tax rates for corporations and high income earners. In fact, it wants them reduced to make Australian capitalism more internationally competitive. But there is one area in which it is in favour of an increase—taxation that falls most heavily on the working class and poorer sections of society. Any tax “reform” must include “broadening the GST base and increasing the rate.”

In seeking to explain the origins of the growing budgetary problems, the BCA criticises the way in which the massive boost to revenue as a result of the minerals boom was treated as if it were permanent. However, it conveniently passes over in silence how that revenue was utilised.

It has been estimated that, taking into account the cuts in the corporate and higher marginal tax rates, many of them initiated under the Hawke-Keating Labor governments, together with the concessions available through the superannuation system that reduces the tax rate for the rich to just 15 percent, the upper levels of society are in receipt of concessions totalling over $110 billion a year, more than enough to cover the present budget deficit.

Central to the BCA’s agenda is the demand for increased productivity, that is, a boost to profitability via so-called labour market restructuring. The BCA calls for “reshaping our workplace relations system so it is fit-for-purpose for a modern economy.”

The essential themes of the BCA submission also found expression in a major speech last Friday by the newly-appointed treasury secretary John Fraser.

Fraser pointed to changed situation resulting from the end of the mining boom and the challenging global economic environment in which the quantitative easing policies of major central banks had failed to boost investment and household spending. He then said that Australian economic growth was expected to remain below trend. Australia, he claimed, had “spent its way to a structural budgetary problem” that now had to be addressed.

On the question of corporate taxation, he was even more explicit than the BCA insisting that company tax rates were high by international standards and, in the context of far more mobile global capital, high rates were dampening investment and productivity.

He also pointed to the push in corporate circles for a reduction in wage rates and cast an envious eye at the “remarkable flexibility of labour in the United States,” echoing the views of the Abbott government’s chief business advisor Maurice Newman who has noted that the minimum wage rate in Australia is double that in the US.

Fraser insisted it was necessary to “modernise the workplace relations system” and then indicated what that would mean. “It is especially important,” he said, “that workplace laws are not impeding workplace transformation.” In other words, all present legal impediments to increased profits must be removed.

The real content of every political crisis is disclosed by what emerges from it, and so it is in the case of the upheavals surrounding the Abbott government.

Whatever the immediate political outcome, the working class is being confronted with a major offensive by the corporate and financial elites for which it must prepare through the development of its own independent perspective based on a socialist program to put an end to the bankrupt profit system.