The Segregation Wall

Natasha Roth

Some people call the wall in the West Bank a ‘security fence’; others refer to it as an ‘apartheid wall’. The International Court of Justice, in its 2004 advisory opinion declaring the construction illegal, called it simply ‘the wall’. Media style guides tend to suggest ‘West Bank barrier’ or ‘separation barrier/wall’.

But the wall doesn’t only separate; it segregates. In 1963, Malcolm X gave a speech in which he spelled out the difference: separation is between equals; segregation is forced on the weak by the strong. A segregated community is ‘regulated from the outside by outsiders’.

The wall was undertaken unilaterally by Israel (originally proposed by Yitzhak Rabin). Its route and dimensions are exclusively Israel’s to decide. Palestinians do not get a say in where the wall will run or how much of their land they will get to keep. The wall is unfinished – and, in some places, easy to cross; every day, up to 40,000 Palestinians enter Israel illegally from the West Bank in order to work – but it is already twice the length of the Green Line, snaking deep inside the West Bank in order to bring Israeli settlements ‘inside’ Israel.

In rare instances, tireless campaigning and endless demonstrations have succeeded in rerouting it, but they are exceptions and the outcomes are by no means final. Some Palestinian villages are sliced in two by the wall; others are cut off from their land; al-Walaja will be entirely circled by the wall once it is completed. In East Jerusalem, neighbourhoods on the ‘other’ side of the wall face chronic water shortages and lack of municipal services. The impact on the economy of many villages located on or near the route of the segregation wall has been catastrophic. In all that it does and signifies, the wall is segregation in theory and in practice.

The Civil Rights movement in America is an inspiration to the ongoing struggle against the Israeli occupation. Its vocabulary can help us too.

China: Implications of Modi’s Visit on Northeast India

Wasbir Hussain

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s high-on-optics China visit may have generated enough signals about the two Asian giants attempting to move beyond the status quo on key fronts, but in Northeast India, the mood after the trip, if anything, has been gloomy. That is because there has been no indication that the concerns of the region - that include China building mega dams on the Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra) or even planning to divert the river, or the issue of people from Northeast India, particularly Arunachal Pradesh, being given stapled visas by China - were raised by India or accepted by the Chinese of their own as matters that need consideration or re-consideration.

No wonder, as the three-day visit came to a close, Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi lamented over Modi not raising the issue of China building dams on the Tsangpo, close to the Indian border as the river enters Arunachal Pradesh. “By not raising the serious issue and putting it on the backburner, the Prime Minister has done grave injustice to Assam and its people,” Gogoi said. If Gogoi did some thinking aloud on the issue of dams that can deplete the quantum of water flow on the Brahmaputra, Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Nabam Tuki expressed “shock” at the “inappropriate response” from New Delhi to a section of the Chinese official media showing a map of India that excluded Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir. “Arunachal Pradesh is an integral part of India and we expect a strong stand from the Centre to settle this (border) issue once and for all,” Tuki said.

If Sino-Indian ties have been held hostage by the events that led to or followed the 1962 war, the two nations will have to take the bull by the horns and make direct attempts to resolve the border issue. How long, after all, can China continue claiming the whole of Arunachal Pradesh, some 90,000-odd square kilometre of this Indian frontier state? Once again, during the Modi visit, one could see a status quoist approach on the subject. The joint statement only went to the extent of re-stating that the two sides wanted an early political settlement of the boundary question that serves the basic interests of the two countries. It said this endeavour must be pursued as a ‘strategic objective’ by the two governments.

Of course, there is a very interesting sentence in the joint statement that talks about the two nations reaffirming their commitment to “push forward negotiations on the framework for a boundary settlement based on the outcomes and common understanding achieved so far...” If a settlement has to be reached keeping in view the “outcomes and common understanding achieved so far,” one must remember the 2005 agreement between the two nations on ‘Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the India-China Boundary Question’. Article Seven of this Agreement says: “In reaching a boundary settlement, the two sides shall safeguard due interests of their settled populations in the border areas.” If Beijing is to honour this 2005 commitment, China simply cannot or should not lay claim on Arunachal Pradesh that has a settled population along the border who have time and again expressed their unflinching allegiance to India as its citizens.

If Beijing can keep reiterating that the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) is an integral part of China, New Delhi too could have reiterated during Modi’s China trip that Arunachal Pradesh is India’s integral part, a state that has a well ‘settled population’ along the border. By saying so, India would not have gone anywhere beyond the 2005 Agreement that China has been a signatory to. Modi has proved on several occasions during his one-year in office that he is a decisive Prime Minister, something India had not seen in the immediate past. It was, therefore, not surprising to find him announcing India’s decision to “extend electronic tourist visas to Chinese nationals.” Expectedly, China welcomed this move but refrained from saying whether it would reciprocate. All that a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson was willing to say was this: ‘China is willing to make joint efforts with India under the Chinese laws and regulations so as to facilitate the exchanges of China and Indian people and seek for new development.’ No prizes for concluding (not guessing) that Beijing was silent on the issue of providing stapled visas to people from Arunachal Pradesh wanting to visit the country to drive home its claim on the territory.

The way market forces are beginning to dictate or determine bilateral ties between nations, the border dispute between India and China can remain on the backburner for an indefinite period and there can be business as usual on other matters. But that may not be the case on the issue of waters of shared rivers between the two neighbours. China has already operationalised a unit of the 500 MW Zangmu dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo, 3300 metres above sea level. Besides, Beijing has already cleared the construction of three new dams on the Yarlung Tsangpo. A 640 MW dam, obviously bigger than the Zangmu project, is to come up at Dagu, around 20 km upstream of Zangmu. Two smaller dams are on the cards at Jiacha and Jiexu, also on the middle reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo. China has made it clear it would ‘vigorously’ push hydropower projects in Tibet in its current Five Year Plan (2011-15) to reduce the energy shortfall in the region. Northeast India aside, China’s massive plan to dam the Yarlung Tsangpo has raised serious concerns in other lower riparian states like Bangladesh. Green groups at home are mounting pressure on New Delhi to respond because they fear this would lead to reduction in the water flow on the Brahmaputra and cause other disasters like massive siltation.

New Delhi is disadvantaged because of the absence of a water treaty between the two nations. The only agreement that India and China have on the subject is over hydrological data-sharing. Once again, the Chinese have made no effort to indicate it was ready to share its plans about building dams on trans-boundary rivers. The only official mention of the subject during the Modi visit was a reiteration on providing flood-season hydrological data and “assistance in emergency management.” The two sides, of course, agreed to further strengthen cooperation through the Expert-Level Mechanism on the provision of flood-season hydrological data and emergency management, and exchange views on other issues of mutual interest. This actually means nothing as Beijing has been less than transparent on what its plans are on rivers that flow out to India, particularly the Yarlung Tsangpo.

Yes, New Delhi and Beijing did note the increasingly important role played by Indian states and Chinese provinces in advancing the bilateral relationship. The two sides agreed to establish a State/Provincial Leaders’ Forum and the first meeting of the Forum, attended by  Prime Minister Modi and Premier Li Keqiang, was held in Beijing on 15 May 2015. Whether the possible role of states in India’s Northeast figured in this Forum is not known, but unless border regions are factored in any confidence-building measures, the desired results may not really be achieved.

Mexican president deploys military in Jalisco state

Kevin Kearney

At the urging of the US government, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has seized on acts of violence in Guadalajara, Mexico—the country’s second-largest city and the capital city of Jalisco state—to re-escalate the discredited and deeply unpopular militarization policies associated with his predecessor Felipe Calderon.

A May 2 Wall Street Journal article reported that the governor of Jalisco, Aristoteles Sandoval, stated in a press briefing that “presumed gang members” had engaged security forces in several firefights. Most seriously, he noted that on May 1, when an army helicopter spotted a convoy of “presumed gang members,” the helicopter was fired on. Three soldiers were reported killed, 12 were said to be wounded and others missing, according to Monte Alejandro Rubido, Mexico’s commissioner of national security. In addition, the presumed gang members blocked roads in the neighboring states of Colima, Guanajuato and Michoacán, according to Rubido.

The violence was immediately attributed to the New Generation cartel of Jalisco, which media outlets describe in the most frightening terms as startlingly powerful and holding a broad area of the country. Indeed, New Generation is said by the Journal to be carrying out simultaneous operations in the states of Veracruz, Colima, Guanajuato and Michoacán, thereby encompassing the entire central region of Mexico between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and surrounding the nation’s capital.

The newspaper described the cartel as having “received paramilitary training from foreign military veterans, including elements from the United States.” Like another Mexican criminal group known as the Zetas—which is said to have been formed by army deserters previously trained by the United States—New Generation has also allegedly been trained by foreign mercenaries.

“Former members of the Kaibiles, Guatemala’s feared army special forces, and Mexican military veterans have given strategic and paramilitary training to the gang,” said Alejandro Solorio, state public security commissioner. Allegedly, captured cartel members have said that an American veteran— “a very aggressive, very wild US Marine”—has been training the group’s gunmen. “We believe he was paid a fortune to give them training,” says Solorio. “They have ranks and a hierarchy like armies do. … They are very united behind their leader and have made loyalty a supreme value,” added Alfonso Quintero, a retired Mexican air force captain who now specializes in intelligence issues, according to the Journal.

The newspaper further quotes unnamed officials who say the cartel’s weapons—rocket-propelled grenades, anti-tank missiles and 50-caliber sniper rifles—come mainly from Central American and US black markets and that soldiers have seized makeshift factories in Jalisco’s mountains where cartel members manufacture their own assault rifles.

Another article ran in Forbes magazine shortly after the incident entitled, “Washington Toughens Warning for Jalisco, Home to Thousands of Americans, as Mexico Fights Cartel.” It detailed the US response to the fighting noting, “The unprecedented level of violence last week that struck parts of the Mexican state of Jalisco persuaded the Obama Administration to update its travel warning for Mexico on May 5.” The article goes on, “Without naming the Jalisco Nueva Generación (New Generation) cartel the State Department warned that ‘violent clashes between criminal organizations and government authorities, and related disturbances including barricades of burning vehicles blocking major roads and highways, are ongoing concerns that typically occur without notice.’”

According to Forbes, the Mexican government was expected to launch an “all-out offensive” against the cartel in response.

By May 13, the Wall Street Journal declared, “Thousands of troops, backed by armored personnel carriers and quasi-military federal police, are pouring into Jalisco.” The Mexican government has since announced that that the military will now take over the regional “war” against the cartel and has gone as far as appointing an experienced general to lead the war effort.

Sergio Aguayo, professor at El Colegio de México and visiting professor at Harvard University, told the Journal, “a major offensive is about to happen. The military will spare nothing. The problem is that they have a poor history with respect to human rights of non-combatants.”

Ominously, Diego Petersen, a columnist with the Guadalajara newspaper El Informador, noted, “The helicopter incident was a declaration of war… The coming months are going to be very hard in Jalisco.”

The response to the spate of violence in Jalisco indicates the Nieto government and his backers in Washington want nothing less than a complete and open-ended military deployment throughout central Mexico. But this could prove difficult for, as the Journal points out, Nieto and the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) returned to power in large part by obscuring their support for domestic drug war militarization. Pieto “attempted to distance himself from his predecessor Felipe Calderon’s strategy of deploying troops against the gangs. That six-year effort had left some 100,000 Mexicans dead, more than 20,000 others missing and the Mexican public terrified.”

Indeed, until the slaughter of student protestors in Ayotzinapa last year, the Nieto administration had some mild success in distancing itself from the domestic military excesses of its predecessor. Since 2012, in place of the overt use of military force against the population, Nieto and his PRI party have opted to render more subtle—but no less critical—political services to US imperialism, primarily by denationalizing the country’s oil industry.

Such political services are, in a manner of speaking, the party’s historic specialty. It has almost single-handedly dismantled—or as it is referred to euphemistically in the bourgeois press “reformed”—all the social gains won through the Mexican revolution over the last several decades. The opening of the oil industry to US multinationals in 2013 was its crowning achievement.

However, US imperialism requires much greater tribute from the Mexican ruling class. Nieto is now expected to show that he can develop the iron fist of the Calderon administration to guarantee the investment of oil multinationals.

Violent drug gangs do exist in Mexico, but their roots lie in the desperate conditions that prevail in large portions of the country and the lack of any means through the political system for workers and youth to address mass unemployment and poverty. Moreover, as the state murder of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa demonstrated last year, drug gangs often operate in conjunction with Mexico’s political elite.

The “war” against the cartels is a dress rehearsal for a far more dangerous enemy: Mexico’s increasingly restive working class.

As early as January 2015, these concerns were expressed in an essay by Kathryn Haarh of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute, entitled, “Addressing the Concerns of the Oil Industry.” Haarh notes, “The December 2013 Constitutional Reform and August 2014 secondary legislation to permit private investment in Mexico’s oil and gas sector represent significant opportunities for private oil and gas companies. While the overall geopolitical risk landscape in Mexico is low, cartel-related violence and other criminal activities continue to draw concern from international oil companies and other foreign investors. As foreign energy companies prepare to bid on Round One contracts, the Mexican Government, state security entities, and civilian security organizations have begun to put in place the elements of a more secure operational environment.”

Although Haarh uses mildly coded language in her essay, it is clear that profits, not public safety, are the foremost concerns of the government and military. While the paper carefully couches everything in terms of dealing with drug cartels, it notes in the “key observations” section, “Negative public opinion over fracking in Veracruz, the impact of the Energy Reform bill on Pemex labor contracts and the oil and gas sectors marginally increased vis-à-vis the government’s public relations campaign representing the commercial and security benefits of energy liberalization.”

The Mexican bourgeoisie behind Pena Nieto and the PRI has worked quickly to allay any and all concerns before the bidding starts. On February 12, 2015, La Jornada published an article stating that legislative deputies “approve regular suspension of rights and guarantees.” The article notes a unanimous approval of the new interpretation of article 29 of the Mexican constitution designed to facilitate the declaration of martial law by the executive. This new, more malleable version of article 29 was already approved in the Senate in 2014. In an article on the Senate passage, La Jornada’s Victor Ballinas noted that the new legislation was not in any way limited to the drug war and would in fact allow a declaration of martial law in cases of, “… serious disturbances of the peace, revolutions, violent social explosions, general strikes. …”

Quebec criminalizing working-class struggle

Keith Jones

Quebec’s Liberal government is intensifying its assault on worker rights and its drive to criminalize popular resistance to its austerity program.

Municipal Affairs Minister Pierre Moreau pledged Friday that Quebec will give the province’s municipal governments new powers to impose cuts in real wages and other concessions on municipal workers.

“You’ve asked for new tools,” Moreau told the annual meeting of the Union of Quebec Municipalities (UQM), “and we’re going to give them to you.” Changes to the “labour relations framework at the municipal level” would be discussed, he said, when the province and municipalities begin negotiations on a new fiscal pact this August.

Quebec City Mayor Régis Labeaume has long been urging the provincial government to give municipalities the power to lock out their employees. But he and Montreal Mayor Dennis Coderre have recently gone further, calling for the effective end to collective bargaining at the municipal level. The mayors of Quebec’s two largest cities are demanding municipal governments be empowered to impose contracts on their employees by decree, when “negotiations” reach an impasse.

According to Labeaume and Coderre, it is “unfair” that the provincial government can adopt “emergency” legislation to impose contracts on provincial public sector works, and indeed all workers in the provincially-regulated sector of the economy, but the municipalities can’t and must instead appeal to the Quebec government to intervene. Municipalities shouldn’t be “at the mercy of another government,” complained Coderre Friday.

The provincial Liberal government, Moreau told Quebec’s mayors, is willing to consider granting municipalities the power to impose contracts by fiat and lock out their workers. However, he added, there are other alternatives, including binding arbitration. “There are serval possibilities,” said Moreau, “many more than just lockouts. … Labour relations will be part of the discussions, but I won’t tell you today where we’ll land because then there would be no discussion.”

Labeaume, Coderre, and UQM President Suzanne Roy all welcomed Moreau’s announcement. “We’ll begin,” said Roy, “by really sitting down to work on this dossier and see exactly how we can have good tools to enable us to intervene in respect to (worker) remuneration.”

Last December, the Liberal government rammed through a municipal pension “reform” (Bill 3) that forces municipal workers, including firefighters and municipal transit workers, to pay thousands more dollars annually in pension contributions, while slashing pension benefits. In addition to suspending inflation-indexing for current retirees, Bill 3 puts in place a mechanism for permanent pension cuts.

The municipal pension cuts were only a first volley in a frontal assault on public and social services and the jobs, wages and working conditions of the workers who administer them.

Claiming that Quebec must fundamentally restructure public services to avoid a Greece-type situation, the Liberals are implementing billions in social spending cuts, while raising electricity rates, daycare fees and various regressive taxes and user-charges.

Faced with widespread and mounting popular opposition, the government, with the full support of big business and the corporate media, is resorting to repression and police violence.

It is an open secret that Premier Philippe Couillard and his Liberals are preparing to criminalize any major job action on the part of 550,000 provincial public sector workers—hospital workers, nurses, civil servants, teachers, CEGEP instructors and school board employees—from whom they are demanding massive concessions. These include a two-year wage freeze, an increase in the retirement age, a reduction in pension benefits, and work-load increases. For public school teachers, this will mean a hike in class-sizes and a reduction in support for “special needs students.”

While the union bureaucrats plead with Couillard “for good faith negotiations,” the government is not letting any opportunity slip to demonstrate that it intends to suppress worker opposition.

The government obtained a ruling from the provincial labour board that an “anti-austerity” walkout by 10,000 CEGEP (pre-university and technical college) instructors on May Day would constitute an “illegal strike.” It is now prevailing on the administrations of the ten CEGEPs where the one-day walkout went ahead, contrary to the instructions of the leaders of the Confederation of National Trade Unions and the Centrale des syndicats du Québec (CSQ), to take disciplinary action.

CEGEP Rosemont in east-end Montreal has, for example, suspended six teachers.

At the government’s urging, hospitals and health care facilities are seeking to stamp out workplace agitation. They are forbidding things like leafleting and wearing union-supplied t-shirts with a political message that have been standard practice in every contract negotiation for half-a-century.

According to a recent article in La Presse at one Montreal health care facility, CIUSSS de l’Est-de-l’Île, ten workers have been disciplined for wearing anti-austerity t-shirts, with one even being suspended.

“Since the election of the Liberal government, we’re facing unprecedented repression,” Marc Cuconati, the president of the union local that represents orderlies at Montreal’s Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital, told La Presse. “Every protest action is smothered and gagged.”

As the WSWS has previously explained, the government was determined to stamp out this spring’s “anti-austerity” student strike, taking a hardline stance that from the outset matched the repression it unleashed against striking students in 2012. Education Minister François Blais repeatedly asserted that there is no democratic right of students to strike and said his goal was to end the decades-long “acceptability” of this practice in Quebec. For weeks police were declaring protests illegal on virtually a daily basis. When students at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) staged an occupation to protest the aggressive deployment of security guards and police on their campus, Premier Couillard personally instructed the university’s rector to have the occupation violently broken up.

Motivating this turn toward state repression and violence is the fear of the government and big business of mass popular opposition, above all the mobilization of the working class.

But while it uses the police and courts to intimidate workers and youth, the ruling elite relies on the unions to contain and politically suppress working class opposition, reprising the role that the pro-capitalist unions have played for decades.

In May 2012, when hundreds of thousands of workers came into the streets to oppose Bill 78, the draconian anti-student strike law, the unions quickly intervened to prevent the emergence of a broader challenge to the then Charest Liberal government’s austerity agenda. The unions announced that they would obey Bill 78, which stipulated that they had to instruct their members who worked at universities and CEGEPs to help break the strike, and redoubled their efforts to channel the opposition movement behind the election of the big business Parti Québécois (PQ). With the unions’ support, the PQ came to power in September 2012 and promptly implemented austerity measures that went far beyond those of Charest.

When students launched their anti-austerity strike this spring, the unions rushed to announce they would have no part of it.

The unions are seeking to straitjacket the public sector workers, whose contract expired March 31, in a collective bargaining system designed to enforce the dictates of big business and its government. The union leaders are adamant that the public sector workers can take no significant action till a lengthy mediation process is completed and “essential services” are negotiated. Moreover, if a strike is ever called it must follow to the letter the anti-worker laws passed by various Liberal and PQ governments.

A walkout in defiance of these laws or a future back-to-work bill would be an “atomic bomb,” exclaimed CNTU Vice-President Francine Lévesque last month.

Underscoring their real attitude to the fight against big business’s austerity drive, the union bureaucrats have responded to the PQ’s selection of the multi-millionaire press and telecommunications baron Pierre-Karl Péladeau–a notorious rightwinger—as its new leader by reaffirming their support for the PQ. Quebec Federation of Labour President Daniel Boyer had claimed to oppose Péladeau, but no sooner was he crowned PQ leader than Boyer declared he is ready to give him a “chance.” When Péladeau called for a “national” economic summit in his maiden speech in the National Assembly as PQ leader, Boyer rushed to endorse the proposal.

In their struggle against austerity, Quebec workers face a political struggle and not just against the Couillard Liberal government, but the entire Quebec and Canadian ruling elite and their apparatus of repression, including the police and the courts.

However, they have even more powerful allies—workers across Canada, the US, and around the world.

To mobilize their class strength, workers must break politically and organizationally from the nationalist, pro-capitalist unions. In the first instance this means building rank-and-file committees, independent of and in opposition to the union apparatuses, so as to prepare a political general strike to bring down the Couillard government and mobilize workers in Canada and the US in a united struggle against austerity and for the bringing to power of workers’ governments.

US CEO pay hits record high

Nick Barrickman

A new study released by executive pay research firm Equilar and published earlier this month by the New York Times shows that compensation for chief executive officers for the largest US companies hit a new record in 2014.

The top 200 highest-paid US CEOs each made an average of $22.6 million in compensation, including salaries as well as stocks, options, bonuses and other forms of pay.

This represented a significant increase over 2013’s average of $20.7 million. This figure was more than double that recorded by the firm in 2006, when it first began publishing numbers on executive compensation.

Together, the top 15 highest-paid chief executives took home over $1.1 billion in pay last year. Ranking highest on the list is David M. Zaslav of Discovery Communications, which the Times refers to as “the cable group behind Shark Week and shows like ‘Cake Boss.’” Last year saw Zaslav’s pay shoot up 368 percent to over $156,000,000, making him the highest-paid CEO on Equilar’s list since Tim Cook of Apple was awarded a package of over $378 million in 2011.

Nicholas Woodman, chief executive officer and founder of camera maker GoPro, saw his compensation package shoot up more than 4,000 percent in a single year, to over $77,400,000 after his company’s initial public offering last year, making him the fifth-highest-paid CEO.

Satya Nadella of Microsoft, who declared earlier this year that he would carry out a broad “restructuring plan” resulting in the layoff of 18,000 people—14 percent of its total workforce—raked in over $84,300,000 in 2014, making him the fourth highest-paid CEO.

Margaret C. Whitman of Hewlett-Packard saw her income climb by 11 percent to $19,612,164 last year after announcing over 50,000 job cuts since taking over as CEO. Similarly, Virginia M. Rometty of IBM saw a growth in pay of 28 percent to $17,942,400, even as her company carried out thousands of layoffs over the course of 2014.

Last year, the typical top-200 CEO pay package was roughly 339 times greater than the $51,939 median household income of a family in the United States. By comparison, the ratio in pay between a CEO and a worker in 1978 stood at about 30-to-1. According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the growth in CEO pay outstripped even the growth of the stock market throughout this period.

As lavish as the pay for the top CEOs was, their total compensation paled in comparison to hedge fund chiefs. According to another study released earlier this month by Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine, the top 25 highest-paid hedge fund managers made nearly $11.62 billion for themselves in the past year, amounting to roughly $500 million apiece.

The growth in CEO pay comes as companies sit atop the largest cash hoard in history, with US corporations alone holding $1.4 trillion on their balance sheets. Instead of using this money to invest, hire workers or raise wages, companies are using it to buy back shares, increase dividends and engage in an orgy of mergers and acquisitions. US corporations recently spent over $500 billion buying back their own stock, according to a report in theFinancial Times.

The growth of CEO pay has continued despite claims by Democratic politicians and federal regulators that they have taken measures to restrain massive payouts for executives. The New York Times noted in a piece earlier this month (“For the Highest-Paid C.E.O.s, the Party Goes On”) that the Dodd-Frank bill of 2010, the main “financial reform” passed in the wake of the 2007-2008 economic crisis, was underpinned by “a belief that more transparency would lead to some much needed belt-tightening” in terms of CEO pay. The Times bluntly declares that “it hasn’t worked.”

“It’s a common story. Chummy boardrooms, easily achieved performance targets and large discretionary bonuses—these are the hallmarks of executive compensation today,” the Times concludes that “there is little chance that the feeding frenzy will end anytime soon.”

While the financial elite continues to rake in obscene amounts of wealth, conditions of poverty and social inequality prevail for the vast majority of the population. A report released on Thursday by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), found that levels of international social inequality were the highest on record since the organization began recording statistics. Significantly, in the United States, the total wealth of the bottom fifth of the population fell by 26 percent between the years 2007-2013.

Far from being the outcome of impersonal economic forces, the enormous enrichment of the corporate/financial elite has been the product of conscious efforts by both Democratic and Republican administrations to enact a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top of society, facilitated through the pumping of trillions of dollars into the financial system by the Federal Reserve and other central banks. Rather than leading to productive investment and job creation, the influx of cash has largely been pocketed by the corporate and financial elite in the form of executive pay, increased dividends, and soaring stock prices.

USA Freedom Act stalls in the Senate

Thomas Gaist

The US Senate failed to pass the so-called USA Freedom Act Saturday, as a 57-42 vote fell three votes shy of the 60 needed to bring the measure to the Senate floor. Several other measures to replace or revise the expiring Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act also were blocked, marking a temporary setback for efforts to continue the bulk collection of telephone metadata.

Promoters of the USA Freedom Act, approved by the US House of Representatives in a 338-88 vote earlier this month, claim that the law would have ended bulk collection of telephone records and metadata carried out under Section 215, which empowers the NSA, FBI, and other government agencies to seize and spy on telephone records and other forms of private data, including bank and credit card statements.

In addition to providing a facade of “reform,” the Freedom Act was also to serve as the vehicle for renewal of other surveillance powers established by the Patriot Act that are currently set to expire on June 1. The Senate will reconvene May 31, with the prospect that failure to enact last-minute legislation would remove the legal authority for a sub-set of the NSA’s vast activities.

Leading congressional supporters and opponents of “surveillance reform” alike are united by their support for the maintenance of the massive surveillance programs, which they present as necessary instruments in defense of the American people against “terrorist” attack.

Democratic Senators Barbara Mikulski and Barbara Boxer issued dire warnings about the possibility that spy powers may lapse, saying that the failure of the Republican-led Senate to pass new surveillance legislation called into question the “ability to govern.”

“This is as serious as it gets,” Boxer said, saying that legislation to reauthorize and update the Patriot Act spy powers is necessary to “protect the country.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said failure to renew the Section 215 powers was creating a “high threat period” by hampering surveillance.

A second attempt to pass emergency legislation extending the spy powers is to proceed on May 31. The Obama administration announced last week that the NSA has begun “winding down” operations associated with Section 215 in anticipation that such efforts will fail. Both the NSA and the White House have refused to offer specifics about the surveillance programs they claim are being closed down.

Like the USA Freedom Act itself, the failure of Congress thus far to renew the Patriot Act powers is being hailed, falsely, in some quarters as a major victory for democracy and blow against the illegal mass spying.

Wired magazine enthused that expiration of Section 215 would represent an “end to bulk collection of telephone data,” and proclaimed that “the government’s bulk collection of phone records from US telecoms is on hold.”

The Guardian announced last week that the failure of Congress thus far to renew Section 215 represents a “wholesale rollback of a wide swath of post-9/11 domestic surveillance.”

“The tides are shifting,” a spokesperson for the American Civil Liberties Union said in response to the non-renewal of 215, praising the Senate for “taking a stand against simply rubber-stamping provisions of the Patriot Act that have been used to spy on Americans.”

A spokesman for Demand Progress hailed the vote as “a victory for democracy over totalitarianism” and for “open government over secret law.”

Republican Senator Rand Paul, who waged a much-publicized 10-hour filibuster Wednesday against renewal of Section 215, tweeted over the weekend that ongoing moves in Congress have the potential to “end illegal NSA spying once and for all.”

One barely knows where to begin in countering such absurdities. First of all, the provisions in the USA Freedom Act do not even address the bulk of the pseudo-legal framework that underpins the criminal spying operations.

Even if the Patriot Act were repealed completely, this would amount to little more than the purely formal curtailment of one section of the legislative and executive authorizations for mass surveillance programs that began long before the bill’s passage.

Solely on the basis of Executive Order 12333, a decree issued by the Reagan administration and updated during subsequent presidencies, US government spies are empowered to collect any and all data from foreign sources that they deem relevant for intelligence and national security purposes. In the age of global communications, when virtually all forms of data are stored simultaneously on servers located on multiple continents, such power to collect data overseas effectively empowers the NSA to collect all data worldwide.

In an admission that must raise doubts about the government’s claim that the mass spying is necessary to fight “terrorism,” the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General issued a report on the use of Internet activity logs, one of the activities authorized under Section 215, and concluded that it was unable to “identify any major case developments that resulted from records obtained through Section 215 orders.”

Rather than targeting terrorists, the NSA and FBI are compiling ever-growing databases on the social, political and cultural affiliations of the American people, as part of systematic preparations for mass repression against the population. Washington’s security agencies are collecting virtually every type of data in existence, and analyzing and disseminating the latter throughout the state apparatus through the use of “fusion centers,” as well as direct wholesale transfers of bulk data from the NSA to the FBI and other police agencies.

Surveillance technologies are becoming increasingly integrated into covert and paramilitary operations by federal, state and local police agencies. Police agencies down to the local level now routinely deploy StingRays and other surveillance technologies to seize cell phone data in bulk from crowds and cell phone towers.

Just last week, new NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden showed that the spy agency developed malicious hacking and surveillance software designed to download onto smartphones by piggybacking on apps sold by Google and Samsung. By deploying from leading corporate platforms, the NSA’s IRRITANT HORN program can potentially infect tens of millions of devices with spyware that gives the agency unfettered control over the devices and data stored in their memory.

Such is the behind-the-scenes reality of the “surveillance reform” touted by promoters of the USA Freedom Act. As the stage-managed wrangling in Congress drags on, the actual spying programs continue to grow in complexity and scale.

The stubborn fact, laid bare for all to see through the heroic actions of Snowden and other whistleblowers, is that the US ruling elite is charging ahead as rapidly as possible with plans to expand and develop its mass surveillance programs, as part of an agenda to prepare repression against impending political upheavals.

While one cannot be certain of the precise outcome of the theatrics on Capitol Hill, there is no doubt that one or another legal basis will be found or invented to suit the needs of the state. The military-intelligence apparatus now operates as a law unto itself, doing whatever is necessary to expand and defend its own power and interests and those of its masters on Wall Street.

Moves for a “left alliance” government accelerate in Portugal

Paul Mitchell

The parliamentary election due to be held in Portugal between September 20 and October 11 is unlikely to result in a government with an absolute majority.

The latest polls show the right-wing Social Democratic Party (PSD)-Peoples Party (CSD-PP) coalition government neck and neck with the opposition Socialist Party (PS), with around 37 percent each.

The PS has been unable to significantly capitalise on the disaffection with the government. This is despite years of deeply unpopular spending cuts, wage freezes and tax increases, record unemployment and the sight of hundreds of thousands of young people being forced to emigrate.

Smaller fake left parties could hold the balance of power and calls have been growing for them to take part in a “left alliance” government. The Democratic Unitarian Coalition (CDU), comprising the Communist Party (PCP) and Green Party (PEV), is polling around 10 percent. The pseudo-left Left Bloc (BE) is getting 3.5 percent and Livre (Free) is at 2.5 percent.

Livre was launched in November 2013 on the slogan “Freedom, Left, Europe, Ecology,” by Rui Tavares who was elected to the European Parliament in 2009 for BE but then defected to the Green group. The party received 70,000 votes in the 2014 European Union (EU) elections on a similar programme to that of Podemos in neighbouring Spain—nominally anti-austerity but like Syriza in Greece pro-capitalist and pro-European Union. This includes restructuring the country’s debt, criticism of “party apparatuses” and corruption and promises of a “new way” of so-called participatory politics. To that end, it has joined up with several other petty bourgeois protest groups in a common electoral platform named Tempo de Avançar (Time to Move On).

Tavares says, “People are frustrated not only with the policies of the mainstream centrist parties, but also with their style of politics and the lack of democracy within parties.” He claims that an “overwhelming” proportion of Livre members come from the 40 percent who did not vote in the 2011 general election.

Tavares says the new party could win four or five seats in the election and would use them to broker an alliance between the PS and other ostensibly left-wing parties, declaring, “Socialists say that radical left parties are only protest ones. On the other hand, these radical left parties say that the PS is not… a really left-wing party. We refuse to take part in this. Livre’s strategy consists in breaking up this impasse.”

Lisbon University political scientist André Freire told the website Precarious Europe, “In the electorate, there is a disappointment not only with the PS position in the political spectrum, which is seen as too close to the centre, but also with a left that is not available to rule… If the PS reaches a large relative majority, not an absolute one, it will be finally possible to have a left-wing coalition.”

In a belated attempt to distance itself from the PSD-CDS-PP coalition and steal the ground from under Livre and prevent its growth along the lines of Syriza and Podemos, the PS has proclaimed itself anti-austerity and said it would no longer carry out International Monetary Fund (IMF) demands.

PS leader António Costa Costa declared, “We will carry out a reverse policy,” adding, “There must be an alternative that allows us to turn the page on austerity, revive the economy, create jobs, and—while complying with euro area rules—restore hope to this country.”

He announced a package of 55 measures, including increased spending on health care and education, rolling back labour reforms, reviewing a tranche of privatisations and a four percent cut to corporate tax planned by the coalition government. He also called for cutting social security contributions for workers and employers, increasing public sector pay and introducing a new inheritance tax.

However, it was the PS which agreed to the 2011 bank bailout and the accompanying Economic Adjustment Programme, which has been responsible for austerity. The PS subsequently signed up to the EU’s Budgetary Pact (Costa’s “euro area rules), which requires Portugal to cut its public debt from 130 percent to 60 percent of GDP over 20 years and produce budgets in which the deficit does not exceed three percent of GDP.

In making his wildly optimistic promises Costa is basing his hopes on the faint signs of improvement in the Portuguese economy, a window of opportunity opened up by what the IMF calls the “trifecta of record-low interest rates, a weakening euro, and low oil prices” and the hope that Syriza will wring some concessions out of the EU.

The Portuguese government is taking advantage of borrowing money at low interest rates offered by the ECB’s quantitative easing programme to pay off the high interest loans associated with the 2011 bank bailout. In this way, it will pay back €10 billion ($11.4 billion) this year and €16 billion euros next year at much lower cost—a form of “restructuring” of the debt, which has been a core policy of the PS, PCP and BE.

However, the IMF is not as optimistic as Costa. In its latest review it says that while Portugal’s bailout has been a “success” (for the banks and big business), the country remains “highly vulnerable” and faces “an acute growth challenge.”

Total combined public and private debt still remains at more than 370 percent of GDP, the highest in Europe. The IMF complains that previous structural reforms have been “insufficiently robust” because of rulings by the Constitutional Court. It demands the next government impose a “comprehensive reform of public sector wages and pensions” and the “rigid” labour market.

Costa cannot look to Greece for salvation either. The EU, and Germany in particular, is adamant that any concessions to Greece will encourage monetary discipline to collapse across southern Europe. According to William Buiter, Citigroup’s chief economist, if there is a Greek exit from the euro Portugal, which has similar economic “pathologies” as Greece, is likely to be the next in line for “contagion.”

The PCP and BE offer no progressive alternative to the PS. The PCP calls for a mixture of meagre reforms based on economic nationalism, explicit acceptance of capitalism and support for the state. A constant PCP theme has been to blame “big capital and its power centres” for increasing exploitation, liquidating “social rights” and destroying “what remains of our country’s sovereignty.”

Through its control of the main trade union confederation, the CGTP, the PCP has limited strikes and protest actions to urging President Anibal Cavaco Silva (PSD) and the Constitutional Court to veto some of the government’s austerity measures.

The BE was formed in 1999 out of the merger of three groups, including the Revolutionary Socialist Party (PSR) affiliated to the Pabloite United Secretariat—a group with a long record of providing a political cover for social democratic and former Stalinist parties.

The party benefited from the PS government’s pro-capitalist, pro-austerity policies, attaining around 10 percent of the vote in elections to the National Assembly and 16 deputies in 2009.

But then the BE supported Manuel Alegre, the PS candidate in the 2011 presidential elections, the troika bailout of Greece and the imperialist military intervention into Libya. With little to distinguish it from the PS, voters abandoned it in droves in the 2014 EU elections. The party has fractured, culminating last November when five different motions were submitted to its congress on what direction the party should take.

Australia deeply embedded in US military build-up in Asia

Peter Symonds

Just over a week ago, the remarks of US Assistant Defence Secretary David Shear to a Senate committee in Washington triggered strenuous denials in Canberra that the government had any intention of allowing the Pentagon to base nuclear-capable B1 strategic bombers in Australia.

Shear indicated that the US would move the bombers, as well as surveillance aircraft, to Australia as part of its military build-up against China throughout the Asia Pacific region. He was specifically speaking at a Senate hearing entitled “Safeguarding American Interests in the East and South China Seas” focussed on how to challenge Chinese territorial claims.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott reacted immediately, declaring that Shear had “mis-spoken” and that the “US does not have any plans to base those aircraft in Australia.” He also insisted that the Australian alliance with the US was “not aimed at anyone” but was simply “a force for stability” in the region.

The purpose of Abbott’s comments was two-fold. In the first instance, the Australian government was concerned not to trigger a reaction from China, which remains the country’s largest trading partner. Above all, however, the entire political and media establishment is determined to block public debate and to keep the population in the dark over the integration of Australia into US war preparations against China.

As it turned out, Shear did not “mis-speak.” Last Friday’s Australian reported: “It seems we will probably be hosting some American B1 supersonic bombers after all. Canberra and Washington are in negotiations about who pays what for extensions to the runway at the Tindal air base in the Northern Territory. One of the main purposes of extending the runway at the base, near Katherine, is so that the B1 bomber can use it.”

The article by foreign editor Greg Sheridan, who is well connected in Canberra and Washington, prompted no reaction from the Abbott government or the wider media. Sheridan, a strident supporter of closer US-Australian military ties, was at pains to play down the plans, maintaining the fiction that the “rotation” of US warplanes through Australian air force bases did not constitute a basing arrangement.

Sheridan lashed out at “Mr Shear’s foolish, ill-advised and uncoordinated testimony” because the US official had let the cat out of the bag. “Both the Australian and US governments have refused to explicitly link US force rotations through northern Australia with any plan to counter China militarily, much less to specific moves responding to the increased Chinese presence in the South China Sea,” he wrote.

Nevertheless that is exactly what the US is preparing. For months, the Obama administration, in league with the media, have been whipping up a scare campaign over Chinese land reclamation on rocks and reefs under its control in the South China Sea. Now the Pentagon is drawing up plans for so-called “freedom of navigation” operations—provocatively sending warships or warplanes within the 12-mile territorial limit to directly challenge Chinese sovereignty over these islets.

Regardless of the public denials, the Australian government and military is intimately involved. The previous Labor government made Australia a central component of the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” including the US military build-up in the Indo-Pacific region against China. Under Abbott, US forces have gained growing access to Australian bases. Nuclear capable B-52 bombers are already “rotating” through Australia as are some 1,100 US Marines.

Washington clearly wants more than support for a US provocation against China in the South China Sea. In a comment in the Age last week, Bonnie Glaser, a senior Asia analyst for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, argued that Australia should join the US to implement “a cost-imposition strategy” aimed at changing China’s behaviour.

After painting China as the aggressor, Glaser calls for the US and Australia to “respond to Chinese coercive actions by using naval forces” She insists that, since “risk-averse strategies” such as diplomatic pressure have not worked, “an effective counter-conversion strategy must involve assuming greater risk.”

The obvious question is: greater risk of what? The language employed in strategic circles is to obscure the fact that what is being prepared is a military challenge to China that could easily lead, whether deliberately or accidentally, to a clash escalating into open conflict between two nuclear armed powers. That is why the Pentagon wants to “rotate” nuclear-capable aircraft through northern Australia.

Despite the official denials, the Australian and American governments and militaries are clearly engaged in closed-door discussions about the South China Sea. Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) head Peter Jennings told the Sydney Morning Herald on May 16 that Australia should send military aircraft and ships to stop China from asserting territorial control across important trading routes. Jennings chairs the Abbott government’s advisory panel for drafting the next key Defence white paper.

Encouraged by Washington, the Australian government is also strengthening military ties with Japan—the other cornerstone of the US “pivot.” Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last weekend and foreshadowed an agreement to allow easier entry for Japanese military personnel into Australia for training exercises, and vice versa.

Already a contingent of 40 Japanese troops will take part for the first time in the major biennial Exercise Talisman Sabre exercise starting in July involving as many as 30,000 military personnel from the US, Australia and New Zealand. Australian Defence Minister Kevin Andrews is as yet “still undecided” on whether to invite Chinese observers.

Australia’s growing integration into US war preparations is generating deep concern in Beijing. Wang Zhengyu from the China Institute of International Studies told the Australian Financial Review last Friday that Beijing drew no distinction between American B1 bombers “rotating” through the Northern Territory or “basing” there.

“Whatever it is, it would be a very bad signal for regional security,” Wang said. “It could be the straw which breaks the camel’s back in the Australia-China relationship. It would be a step too far.” His comments echoed the warning contained in an editorial in the state-owned Global Times newspaper that hosting B1 bombers would cross a “red line” for which Australia could “pay a dear price.”

The price is likely to be paid in economic relations. Significantly last week, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang signed a series of deals in Brazil providing a massive $US4 billion in credit facilities to the country’s giant iron ore producer, Vale. The credit is a much-needed life line for Vale amid sharply falling iron ore prices and fierce global competition, especially with the major Australian producers.

Hundreds dead in refugee graves in Malaysia

John Roberts

Malaysian authorities announced yesterday that they had found mass graves containing hundreds of corpses of refugees in the Malaysian northern state of Perlis. The graves were discovered last week in 17 abandoned transit camps accommodating Rohingya Muslims attempting to escape oppression at the hands of Burma’s military-backed government and Bangladeshis fleeing poverty.

Transported south to Thailand’s border with Malaysia, the Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants were reportedly held against their will in the makeshift jungle camps until they handed over more money or their families back home paid ransoms. Such large-scale and financially lucrative operations could not have existed without the criminal involvement of state officials in both Malaysia and Thailand.

“The only way these kinds of camps could operate was with the support of the military, police and politicians who were either directly involved or were paid to look the other way,” Human Rights Watch Asia spokesman Phil Robertson, told the Guardian newspaper yesterday.

According to the Malay-language newspaper Utusan Malaysia, police found 30 large graves containing hundreds of corpses a week ago, near the towns of Padang Besar and Wang Kelian. The Star Online reported 100 bodies in Padang Besar alone.

Malaysian Home Affairs Minister Zahid Hamid claimed that he was shocked by the find but admitted that the camps had probably been operating for at least five years. He said more camps and mass graves are likely to be discovered.

The Malaysian camps were close to others in southern Thailand where 33 corpses were unearthed earlier this month. The Bangkok Post reported that the existence of these camps was an open secret. However, the discovery of the graves caused outrage in Thailand, forcing government authorities to shut the camps.

The closure of the usual routes from Burma and Bangladesh via southern Thailand to Malaysia contributed to the current maritime refugee emergency. An estimated 7,000 refugees are still trapped at sea. Up to 2,000 are in immediate danger without proper food or water supplies on overcrowded boats. Scores of people are believed to have died in the past two weeks.

While Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Burma all denied entry to these vessels, over 3,500 refugees have come ashore or been rescued by fishermen and civilian boats in the past two weeks.

On May 20, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia held a four-hour emergency meeting over the mounting crisis and Indonesia and Malaysia agreed to allow some boats to enter. Thai officials said any change in policy would have to comply with domestic laws. Since then, some rescue operations have been mounted.

The temporary change in Malaysian and Indonesian policies, which came after popular outrage internationally and within the two countries, is entirely cynical. The policy is limited to boats already at sea and the provision of emergency food and shelter, conditional on “international community” assisting in the repatriation or resettlement of the refugees within one year.

Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur are also calculating that the onset of the monsoon season, from now until October, will temporarily end the current boat arrivals.

Four Malaysian naval vessels began searching for boats on Friday but the government of Prime Minister Najib Razak has limited the search area to Malaysia’s territorial waters.

Indonesia President Joko Widodo, who ordered his navy to carry out search and rescue operations on Friday, made his first public comments on the crisis last weekend. On Saturday he declared that the decision to accept the migrants was a “good solution.” The next day, however, he said that Indonesia could not afford the costs and it needed international support.

On the same day, Indonesian disaster management agency Sutopo Purowo Nugroho said that the government would begin sending back home 720 Bangladeshi refugees starting this week, claiming that they were “economic migrants.” Nugroho said that United Nations High Commission for Refugees and the International Organisation for Migration would fund the repatriations.

The claim that the Bangladeshi refugees were “economic migrants” has not be substantiated and, moreover, violates what should a basic democratic right of workers to live and work in any country of their choice.

As well as a life of poverty, those forced to return to Bangladesh could face reprisals. Yesterday Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina publicly attacked the migrants, denouncing them as “mentally sick” and “tainting our image on the international arena.”

International support is limited. In line with its reactionary “border protection” policies, the Australian Liberal-National government, with bi-partisan backing from the opposition Labor Party, has refused to allow any of the Rohingya asylum seekers and Bangladeshis to settle in Australia.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott hailed the initial decision of Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia to use their navies to prevent the refugee boats from landing, which, if not overturned, would have condemned many to death at sea.

Washington’s response is no less cynical. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf last week declared that the US was “ready to help countries of the region bear the burden and save lives.” She added that the US was willing to consider requests to resettle some of the refugees, without indicating how many or on what conditions.

Washington’s overriding concern is not the fate of the refugees, but to use the crisis to deepen its diplomatic and military ties across the region as part of undercutting Chinese influence. The Pentagon has announced that it is preparing to carry out maritime aviation patrols and was interested in “working with local partners to help with this issue.”

Since late 2011, the US has forged closer ties with the military-backed regime in Burma effectively turning a blind eye to treatment of the Muslim Rohingya minority who are denied basic citizenship rights and are subject to state-sanctioned persecution. Like the government, opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy does not defend the democratic rights of the Rohingya, who are branded as “illegal immigrants.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met government leaders in Burma last week and called for an improvement in conditions for the Rohingya “so that people don’t feel that their only choice is to put their lives at risk by leaving and taking to sea.” The remarks are purely cosmetic. Washington is primarily concerned with strengthening relations with the Burmese regime and has no intention of pressing too hard on “human rights” issues.

Thousands of Ukrainians protest Kiev regime’s draconian utility price hikes

Alex Lantier

Protests are mounting against decisions by the NATO-backed regime in Kiev to drastically increase prices for energy, water, and other basic necessities. Protesters reportedly set up a mock gallows near government buildings in downtown Kiev this weekend. The protests follow a march on May 16 of an estimated 5,000 people in Kiev to protest the price hikes.

The right-wing government in Kiev is slashing spending on subsidies to basic goods to funnel the money to the Ukrainian regime’s Wall Street creditors and boosting military spending on the war against Russian-backed forces in east Ukraine. As a result, consumer prices for basic necessities are skyrocketing.

On May 1, hot and cold water prices rose by 71 percent. A month before, natural gas prices had increased by 285 percent, passing from just over 1,000 hryvnia (US$48.20) to over 4,000 hryvnia per thousand cubic meters of gas.

Ukrainians were already struggling to pay their utility bills, with one report in January showing that nearly 30 percent of Ukrainians were unable to pay their bills after utility rates rose 35 percent last year and prices for food, transport, and medicine increased between 50 and 200 percent. Now, broad layers of the Ukrainian people are threatened with destitution.

Protesters at the May 16 rally in Kiev carried signs denouncing the government, such as “[Prime Minister Arseniy] Yatsenyuk means poverty for Ukraine.”

On May 21, protesters set tires on fire outside the Ukrainian parliament in Kiev, clashing with police and fighting to gain entrance to the parliament.

The protesters came from the “Financial Maidan” movement, which is demanding that private loans taken out by Ukrainians in foreign currency be restructured, based on the exchange rates before last year’s NATO-backed putsch installed the current regime in Kiev. Now, after the hryvnia collapsed from roughly 5 to 20 per US dollar, the cost of servicing foreign loans owed by private citizens has quadrupled.

Social anger is rising in Ukraine at the reactionary and undemocratic policies of the Kiev regime, which is plundering the country’s economy in the interests of international banks and a handful of multibillionaire oligarchs in Ukraine. There has been widespread draft dodging against attempts to conscript western Ukrainians to fight Russian-backed forces in east Ukraine, as well as protests by coal miners who lost their jobs as industrial subsidies were withdrawn and mines were forced to close.

Already in March, a poll by the Kiev-based Research and Branding Group found that 58 percent of Ukrainians disapproved of President Petro Poroshenko’s performance, and only one-third supported him. Yatsenyuk was even more unpopular, with only a 24 percent approval rating. Only 8 percent of those polled said they thought Ukraine was going in the right direction.

This is a devastating verdict on the reactionary character of the putsch launched last year with the backing of Washington, Berlin, and the European Union (EU) to install a pro-NATO, violently anti-Russian regime in Kiev. The move plunged the country into a civil war that has claimed at least 6,000 lives, forced 1.5 million people to flee their homes, and cost billions of dollars, even as Ukraine’s economy and currency collapsed.

The putsch was the outcome of a series of rightwing, pro-EU protests on Independence Square (Maidan), billed by its Western backers as a struggle for democracy against the pro-Russian regime of President Viktor Yanukovych. He had refused a deal with the EU in 2013 calling for precisely the type of deep subsidy cuts and looting of the population now being carried out by the Kiev regime. Yanukovych feared that popular opposition to this agenda would lead to the collapse of his government.

In response, the CIA and its European counterparts mobilized anger in a thin layer of the urban middle classes in Kiev and western Ukraine desperate to join the EU. With protests by a few tens of thousands of people, backed by US and EU officials and fascist anti-Russian gangs such as the Right Sector, they succeeded in defeating riot police and toppling Yanukovych’s regime.

The far-right regime in Kiev, which enjoyed no backing in the country’s industrial heartlands in east Ukraine that are economically and culturally tied to Russia, plunged the country into civil war. The result has been the social and economic disintegration of Ukraine, and the emergence of a proxy war in Ukraine between NATO and Russia that threatens to erupt into an all-out global war.

The current protests in Kiev are an initial expression of the deep opposition that exists in the working class in Ukraine and internationally to the reckless warmongering and financial looting carried out by the Kiev regime and its NATO backers.

Ukraine’s first-quarter gross domestic product fell by a stunning 17.6 percent over last year, and is expected to fall a further 8.5 percent this year. Ukraine has also been devastated by the cutoff of relations with its main trading partner, Russia. Production in the war-torn provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, previously centers of the country’s heavy industry, has fallen by 50 and 87 percent, respectively, according to Der Spiegel.

A fifth of civil servants are to be fired, pensions have been slashed, and state spending has been cut 17 percent, further undermining the economy.

Nonetheless, US and European investors are demanding that Ukraine continue to pay back billions of dollars in loans, bleeding it white. Last week, a consortium of financial firms including Franklin Templeton Investments, T. Rowe Price, TCW Group, and BTG Pactual Europe announced it was in talks with Kiev to avoid taking any losses on their holdings of Ukrainian debt.