Rohingya refugees abused and killed in camps in Malaysia/Thailand

John Roberts

As delegates from 19 countries gather today in Bangkok for a meeting on “irregular migration in the Indian Ocean,” more evidence has emerged of the horrors facing thousands of Bangladeshis and Rohingya Muslims from Burma fleeing persecution and poverty. All of the countries attending the meeting, in one way or another, bear responsibility for their plight.

According to estimates by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), at least seven boats containing 2,600 dehydrated and starving refugees are still adrift in the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea—testimony to the badly coordinated and half-hearted official rescue efforts.

Another 3,500 Rohingya and Bangladeshi refugees have managed to reach shore in Malaysia and Indonesia after those governments ended the policy of driving the boats out to sea and granted temporary shelter to some for one year. The UN estimates that at least 120,000 asylum seekers have left from Burma and Bangladesh so far this year.

For years, Rohingya and Bangladeshi refugees have been forced to rely on often unscrupulous traffickers who have used well-established routes via sea to southern Thailand and then through jungle pathways across the border into northern Malaysia. The extent of the trade makes clear that officials, including at high levels, were involved.

Refugee boats were left stranded at sea by the traffickers when Thai authorities closed down transit camps in the south of the country earlier this month after the discovery of 33 corpses provoked popular outrage.

BBC journalist Jonathan Head uncovered evidence of involvement of Thai government officials and businessmen in the transit camps. His report published May 22 included an interview with a local Thai official who had closed down one camp but was ordered by the central government to send the Bangladeshi migrants to a detention centre where it was common knowledge that detainees would be “sold back to the traffickers.”

A police officer spoke of a large camp in the military zone on the Thai-Malaysian border big enough to accommodate 1,000 trafficked migrants that could not be shut down as the military had not given its approval.

Over the past week, Malaysian police have uncovered a network of 28 camps near the Thai border where refugees were imprisoned and maltreated in order to extort more money from their relatives. Police believe that one camp held up to 300 people, while others were smaller.

Malaysia’s national police chief Khalid Abu Bakar told Time: “I am not surprised by the presence of smuggling syndicates. But the depth of the cruelty, the torture, all this death has shocked me.” He confirmed on Monday that at least 139 possible graves had been found near the camps, which included crude wooden cages for those who attempted to escape.

Forensic teams have begun working to find and recover bodies. Only one body has been discovered above ground in a wooden holding pen. It was so badly decomposed that forensic investigators had to remove it in five separate bags.

Brad Adams, Asia director of the US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), said: “Survivors describe how they flee persecution in Burma only to fall into the hands of traffickers and extortionists, in many cases witnessing deaths and suffering abuse and hunger.

One Rohingya woman told HRW that she had been held in camp on the Thai side of the border and severely abused to force her relatives to pay a ransom. “The brokers beat me with sticks and bamboo and put out cigarettes on my legs and ankles because I could not raise the money,” she said.

Adams pointed to official involvement in the trafficking operations. “Interviews with officials and others make clear that these brutal networks, with the complicity of government officials in Burma, Bangladesh, Thailand and Malaysia, profit from the desperation and misery of some of the world’s most persecuted and neglected people,” he said.

After denying the existence of camps or graves in northern Malaysia until as late as this month, Malaysian authorities have been forced to detain 12 police officers for alleged involvement in the human trade. Government ministers, however, are continuing to try to play down the extent of the trafficking.

Former chief of the UN Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking, Matthew Friedman, told the Guardian that there were reports on the camps going back 10 years which had been passed onto authorities, “but there was no follow-up.”

The Rohingya are a persecuted Muslim minority in Burma where they are branded by authorities as “illegal Bangladeshi immigrants” and have no citizenship rights, even though many have lived in Burma for generations. Even as the US was forging closer relations with Burma’s military backed government in 2012, the Rohingya were subjected to a new wave of state-sanctioned violence that resulted in scores of deaths and drove tens of thousands from their homes.

Having fled persecution in Burma, the Rohingya face similar treatment in Bangladesh where they have been herded into detention camps, official and unofficial, where they face appalling conditions. The government has just announced that it intends to force 32,000 registered Rohingya refugees from two official camps in the Cox’s Bazar district, a tourist area, out of sight onto Hatiya Island in the Bay of Bengal.

The Special Meeting on Irregular Migration in the Indian Ocean being convened today in Bangkok by the Thai military junta supposedly to “comprehensively work together to address the unprecedented increase of irregular migration across the Bay of Bengal in recent years.”

Attending are all the chief culprits in human trafficking trade, including Burma, Malaysia and Indonesia. Far from addressing the horrific situation facing the refugees, the assembled countries will no doubt seek to cover up their own responsibility while imposing even more obstacles to those seeking asylum and forcing them to ever more desperate lengths.

The Burmese delegation has already made clear that it has no intention of alleviating the plight of the Rohingya in any way. On Wednesday, Buddhist monks and nationalists from the reactionary Habyelsaw Tadaban organisation held a march of 300 through Rangoon, denouncing the Rohingya as “beasts” and demanding the government make no concessions in Bangkok.

Why did the US Army ship live anthrax?

Patrick Martin

US military officials revealed Wednesday that the Army bioweapons laboratory at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah shipped live anthrax samples to 18 facilities in nine US states, as well as to a US military base in South Korea.

A Pentagon spokesman said the anthrax spores were supposed to have been killed by gamma radiation, with dead samples shipped to commercial laboratories and the US military base as part of a program that began last year to test methods for recognizing anthrax in the field.

Workers at a Maryland lab that received an anthrax shipment in March 2014 noticed on May 22, 2015 that the spores appeared to be growing, and the lab reported this to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia.

A CDC spokesman said, “The lab was working as part of a DOD [Department of Defense] effort to develop a new diagnostic test to identify biological threats. … Although an inactivated agent was expected, the lab reported they were able to grow live Bacillus anthracis (anthrax).”

The CDC has taken over investigation of the shipments, collecting samples from the various labs and testing them to confirm the anthrax is live. Dugway Proving Grounds tested the remainder of the batch from which the samples were extracted, labeled “AG1,” and found it was live, officials said, indicating that the entire batch had not been properly irradiated.

If the official accounts are to be believed, the shipments of live anthrax represent an almost unfathomable degree of negligence and recklessness. Live samples of one of the deadliest biological warfare agents were sent in FedEx packages all over the United States. The labs receiving shipments have not been identified by name, but they are located in California, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin, as well as Maryland.

It is less than 14 years since the mailing of anthrax spores through the mail infected 22 people, including 12 US Postal Service employees. Five people died, three of them postal workers. This was an act of domestic terrorism, allegedly carried out by a disgruntled scientist at the US Army’s germ warfare laboratory in Frederick, Maryland. The accused scientist, Bruce Ivins, committed suicide and the case against him was never proven in court.

There are conflicting reports about how many people have been directly endangered by the shipments within the United States. Pentagon officials claim that there was no danger to FedEx workers or the public from the shipping of the packages. Eighteen labs received and opened shipments over the course of 14 months, but only four lab workers so far have been put in post-exposure treatment. These were described as “Defense Department workers,” suggesting that government personnel were working inside the commercial labs.

While only one sample was sent to Osan Air Base in South Korea, at least 22 people in a laboratory there were exposed to the live anthrax bacteria, including five Air Force personnel, ten Army personnel, three civilian officials and four contractors. All are now receiving precautionary medical treatment, although none have shown any symptoms of exposure, according to the Pentagon.

While further details are lacking, the disproportion between the number of samples and the number of those treated suggests that what took place at Osan Air Base was by far the most serious breach of safety. This is particularly ominous, since the base is located in Pyongtaek, on the edge of the Seoul metropolitan area, the world’s second-largest, home to 25 million people.

And it raises other questions, given the massive and intensifying campaign of political provocations directed against North Korea and China. Only five months ago, the US government publicly denounced North Korea for an alleged act of cyberwarfare in the hacking attack on Sony Pictures, provoked by the studio’s production of a film, The Interview, which revolved around a CIA plan to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The White House promised retaliation, but refused to spell out what form that might take.

It is entirely conceivable that anthrax bacteria were sent to South Korea for some other purpose than field-testing diagnostic tests.

Army Chief of Staff General Raymond Odierno discussed the handling of the anthrax bacteria samples during a breakfast meeting with reporters Thursday. He said the military personnel at Dugway had followed correct procedures to make the anthrax inactive before shipping it out. “The best I can tell, there was not human error,” he said. This is certainly a peculiar assertion, since it suggests that the dispatch of potentially lethal bacteria to 19 locations was deliberate and not a mistake.

Odierno was responding to questions about two breakdowns in safety procedures for handling deadly germs and viruses at the CDC last year. In one case, researchers at a lab equipped to handle live pathogens sent what they thought were killed samples of anthrax to another, less well-equipped lab. The samples turned out to be live. In the other case, CDC scientists shipped out what they thought was a relatively harmless strain of bird flu, but it turned out to be extremely virulent.

The live anthrax samples from Dugway were sent out during this same period, beginning in March 2014, and continuing until last month.

US seizes on FIFA corruption to pursue campaign against Russia

Robert Stevens & Chris Marsden

Seven top FIFA officials were arrested in Zurich on Wednesday, the result of indictments handed out by the US government against fourteen individuals. They are charged on 47 counts, including racketeering, fraud and money laundering, linked to footballing activities in North and Central America and the Caribbean.

The arrests are bound up with a network of corruption in which sums of money were allegedly transferred as part of efforts to manipulate the location of World Cup games and win lucrative marketing contracts. They are also connected to the strategic interests of the American ruling class, including the ongoing campaign against Russia, which was selected by FIFA to host the 2018 World Cup.

The indictments have provoked the biggest crisis in the 111-year history of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association—the World Football Federation. They were prompted by two investigations: one by the US Department of Justice, FBI and the Internal Revenue Service, and another by the Swiss government, which made the arrests and is preparing extradition to the US.

Several of those charged were seized in a military-style operation, as Swiss police raided a luxury hotel in Zurich where FIFA officials had gathered ahead of the governing body’s annual congress.

It is alleged that bribes and kickbacks totalling more than $150 million were paid to influence FIFA decisions. Two current FIFA vice presidents were arrested: Eugenio Figueredo and Jeffrey Webb, along with Jack Warner, a former vice president who is charged with vote selling connected with the selection of South Africa to host the 2010 World Cup.

Also indicted were a number of sports marketing executives, including José Margulies, who allegedly served as an intermediary to facilitate illicit payments between the sports marketing executives and football officials.

The fraud also implicates major corporations, including one unnamed multinational sports company—identified in the media as Nike—that agreed to pay $40 million to the affiliate of the Brazilian football team to become its sole provider of equipment and gear.

Given the sordid history of FIFA, the allegations will likely have a solid foundation. Four other people and two companies have already pleaded guilty to charges in the case. Allegations of bribery have long dogged FIFA. Vast fortunes are at stake when it comes to hosting prestigious sporting events, such as the World Cup and Olympics. Bribery has become endemic in the allocation of these events.

Mass sporting events, which are backed and sponsored by gigantic corporate interests, are fundamentally managed no differently than anything else organised by big business and the imperialist powers.

The decision by the Obama administration to pursue and file the charges, however, is both hypocritical and politically motivated. Indeed, the sums cited in the criminality within FIFA are dwarfed by the corrupt practices associated with the US and global financial system.

Following the arrests, FBI Director James Comey said, “If you corrupt our shores with your corrupt enterprise, whether that is through meetings or using our world-class financial system, you will be held accountable for that corruption. Nobody is above or beyond the law.”

Loretta Lynch, the Obama administration’s attorney general, spoke of a culture of “rampant, systemic and deep-rooted” corruption. In the attempt to justify action against individuals residing in and largely operating outside of the US, Lynch said, “In many instances, the defendants and their co-conspirators planned aspects of this long-running scheme during meetings held here in the United States.”

Comey and Lynch speak as representatives of a US elite that is guilty of criminality on a much larger scale. Their “world-class financial system” is one that allowed a parasitic elite to indulge in financial skulduggery that collapsed the world’s banking system in 2008, leading to a global recession. And they rewarded these same people for their criminal behaviour with trillions of dollars of public money.

“Rampant, systemic and deep-rooted” corruption is an apt description of the daily operations of US banks, yet no executive of a major bank has been arrested or prosecuted.

The well-documented financial corruption within football’s ruling body is being utilised by the US primarily as a propaganda weapon against Russia.

The arrests were timed to coincide with FIFA’s presidential elections. Its current chief, Sepp Blatter, was expected to win a fifth term at FIFA’s annual congress in Zurich in a vote scheduled for today.

The raid and arrests are only the opening shot. Ten other members of FIFA’s executive committee were questioned by Swiss prosecutors Thursday over the ballot in December 2010 for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, which were awarded to Russia and Qatar. The final bidders to host the 2022 World Cup included the US.

The main target of the operation is Blatter, the figure most closely associated with the Moscow and Qatar decisions, who has been president of FIFA since 1998. One federal official told the New York Times that Blatter’s fate would “depend on where the investigation goes from here.”

The decision in favour of Qatar met with immediate allegations that the World Cup had been bought. Qatar, which has no historical connection to the sport, and which had publicly spent millions on securing the lucrative deal, was widely suspected of bribery. It was, in addition, regarded as an inappropriate venue—with political and sporting figures from rival bid countries shedding crocodile tears over the deaths of hundreds of construction workers and over the fact that players would have to compete in excruciating summer temperatures.

In the aftermath of the 2010 announcements, US authorities began an investigation into the allegations of corruption. However, notwithstanding Qatar having triggered the inquiry, the decision to make mass arrests and to attempt to scupper Blatter’s election is primarily motivated by the mounting hostilities between the US and Russia.

Moscow’s hosting of the 2018 World Cup has been turned by figures with the US ruling elite and their allies internationally into a question of paramount importance.

Senator Robert Menendez, who in April was indicted on federal corruption charges, said he was “especially pleased that Swiss and US authorities are investigating FIFA’s granting of the World Cup to Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022”, as he had “long been concerned about FIFA’s selection of Russia.”

He was supported by Senator John McCain, who jointly authored a letter to FIFA declaring, “In light of President Blatter’s continued support for Russia hosting the 2018 FIFA World Cup—despite Russia’s ongoing violations of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and other challenges to the post-WWII security architecture—we ask that you reconsider your support for President Blatter’s fifth term as FIFA President.”

This follows a letter to FIFA last month from 13 US senators requesting that Blatter step in to take the World Cup away from Russia.

It should be recalled that at the height of the Ukraine crisis, the US led an attempt to undermine the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, citing the existence of Russia homophobic laws and its record on human rights.

In April, Blatter met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi, following a call by Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko for a boycott of the 2018 event. Blatter went on record to confirm that whatever sanctions were in place against Moscow by the US and the European Union would have no impact on 2018.

In a televised interview, Putin said of the arrests, “This is clearly an attempt to block the re-election of Blatter as president of FIFA and is an extremely serious breach of the principles of how international organisations work.”

Europe’s football federation UEFA has withdrawn its support for Blatter’s election. Former UEFA president Lennart Johansson, who lost the 1998 FIFA presidential election to Blatter, said that the UK should now step in and host 2018. The federation is also considering boycotting the 2018 World Cup if it is held in Moscow and Blatter is re-elected.

UK Culture Secretary John Whittingdale has said, “We’re not yet at the stage of boycotting the World Cup…but there is no question that something has got to be done.” Prime Minister David Cameron supported Blatter’s removal, he added.

Sunil Gulati, the president of US Soccer, said yesterday that he would instruct the US delegation to vote against Blatter in today’s elections, supporting instead Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan.

Wall Street buybacks: Another expression of parasitism

Nick Beams

In the biological world, a parasite lives at the expense of the host, sucking out its nutrients and life forces, and sometimes killing it. Analogies of course have their limits, but nonetheless they can be suggestive. And this is certainly so in the case of the rampant financial parasitism that has become the dominant feature of the American economy and, by extension, the world economy as a whole.

An article published in the Wall Street Journal this week details some of the impact of hedge funds on the operations of major US corporations, and the way in which their insatiable drive for profit through financial manipulations is sucking the lifeblood out of the economy and contributing to its deepening breakdown.

The article is based on a study conducted for the newspaper by S&P Capital IQ. It found that companies in the S&P 500 index had “sharply increased their spending on dividends and [share] buybacks to a median 36 percent of operating cash flow in 2013, from 18 percent in 2003.” The doubling of this rate was accompanied by a fall in spending by those companies on plant and equipment, from 33 percent to 29 percent over the same period.

The study found that in companies targeted by so-called “activist investors”—that is, hedge funds that hold hundreds of millions and sometimes billions of dollars on behalf of their wealthy investors—the figures were even higher. Targeted companies reduced capital spending from 42 per cent to 29 percent of operating cash flow and increased spending on dividends and share buybacks to 37 percent of operating cash flow from 22 percent.

One of the main factors facilitating these operations has been the provision of ultra-cheap money by the US Federal Reserve, which has kept official interest rates at almost zero, leading to historically low interest rates in financial markets. Hedge funds are able to use borrowed money to acquire major share holdings in corporations and then push for share buybacks and the payment of increased dividends. The buybacks, in turn, can be financed through borrowed funds at low interest rates.

The aim is to produce a rise in the share price of the company or generate an increased dividend flow returning large profits for the “activists,” often accompanied by job cuts or the outright closure of parts of the targeted company deemed not to be making a sufficient contribution to “shareholders’ funds.” At the end of the process, vast profits have been pocketed, without a single atom of new wealth being created, while productive capacity has been curtailed.

The consequences of these vampire-like operations are most prominent in major industries. The US energy giants, which have splurged billions on buybacks, dividends and mergers, have refused for decades to invest in infrastructure, leading to a situation where workers are subjected to 16-hour days and increasingly unsafe working conditions. Likewise, the auto industry firms and telecoms are notorious for their resistance to wage increases, while engaging in the same financial manipulation.

The deeper the economic crisis, the more frenzied the speculation. The article noted that since 2010 the number of activist campaigns directed at securing buybacks and increased dividends had risen by 60 percent. Last year there were 348 such campaigns, the most since 2008, and a further 108 in the first quarter of this year. Hedge funds now control $130 billion in assets, more than double the amount they held in 2011. This means that once they leverage these funds through borrowing at ultra-low rates, they can target virtually any corporation.

Would-be reformers of the capitalist economy will no doubt argue that these dangers can be overcome through the development of mechanisms or increased regulations to promote the “good” side of corporate activity—research and development and real investment—while taking action to control the “bad” side—parasitism. But the question remains: Why has it emerged now?

Underlying tendencies at the very center of the capitalist economy are at work. The long-term downward pressure on the rate of profit, which has led to the continuous restructuring of the American and global capitalist economy over the past four decades, is the driving force behind the rise of speculation and parasitism.

Well-known voracious hedge-fund investor Carl Icahn, cited in the Wall Street Journal article, pointed to these trends saying the economy was “being dragged down by too many mediocre CEOs, and it’s dangerous if profitability is going down despite interest rates being at zero.”

However, his resort to a “bad man” theory of economics does not pass even a preliminary examination. The same tendencies are also clearly visible in Europe and throughout the world’s major capitalist economies where, despite ultra-low interest rates, investment remains at historically depressed levels, reflecting a lack of profitable outlets.

Furthermore, any attempt to separate out the “good” and the “bad’ sides of corporations runs up against the fact, as Marx explained at the time of the emergence of joint stock companies in the middle of the 19th century, that the origin of parasitism is lodged in their very structure. The formation of such companies, he wrote, “reproduces a new financial aristocracy, a new kind of parasite in the guise of company promoters, speculators and merely nominal directors: an entire system of swindling and cheating with respect to the promotion of companies, issuing of shares and share dealing.”

For a whole period of capitalist development, notwithstanding swindling and cheating, the corporation or joint-stock company facilitated the development of the productive forces through the aggregation of capital to finance large-scale developments, which sustained the living standards of the mass of the population. Those days have long gone.

The elevation of parasitism to the basic mechanism of profit accumulation is bound up with the objective crisis of capitalism and, connected to this, the absolute stranglehold of the financial aristocracy over every aspect of economic and political life. Swindling, cheating and the destruction of the productive forces—above all through the impoverishment of the most important productive force of all, the working class—is a symptom of the rot and decay of the entire socioeconomic order.

It establishes the unanswerable case for the taking into public ownership of the major corporations, the banks and the entire finance industry as part of the socialist restructuring of economic life. This is the prerequisite for establishing a society where the productive forces, created by the labor of the working class, can be used for social advancement.

Australian government moves to revoke citizenship rights

Mike Head

As part of a stepped-up drive to stoke and exploit fears of terrorism, the Australian government announced on Tuesday that it will legislate “within weeks” to give itself the power to arbitrarily cancel the citizenships of people alleged to be planning or supporting terrorist acts.

Against a backdrop of Australian flags, and flanked by newly-appointed ministers and ministerial envoys for counter-terrorism and citizenship, Prime Minister Tony Abbott called two media conferences to unveil the plan, plus the appointment of a new “counter-terrorism co-ordinator.”

The anti-democratic character of the government’s plan is underscored in its “discussion paper” which describes citizenship as an “extraordinary privilege,” not a fundamental political right. To quality for this “privilege”, a person must adhere to “core Australian values.”

Over the past eight months, on the pretext of fighting Islamic fundamentalists, Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s government has already sent troops and airforce bombers to join the US-led war in Iraq and Syria, and introduced a barrage of laws to provide for mass telecommunications surveillance and override basic legal and democratic rights.

Now it is bringing forward plans to dismantle the right to citizenship, which can leave people stateless, and deny them other essential rights, such as to vote, reside, and access healthcare, welfare and other social programs.

The initial measure being drafted will reportedly allow the immigration minister to strip citizenship from individuals who have dual-nationality. That will be done without any trial or conviction for a criminal offence, simply on the basis of “advice through the intelligence agencies,” according to Immigration Minister Peter Dutton.

At present, citizenship can be revoked for an Australian-born person only if they serve “in the armed forces of a country at war with Australia.” The government claims that it wants to “modernise” that power by extending it to anyone participating in or aiding terrorism. However, this opens up broad grounds to strip citizenship from people for political reasons.

As a result of the “anti-terrorism” laws adopted since 2002, by Liberal-National and Labor governments, someone can be convicted of a vaguely-worded terrorism offence—such as “conspiring to prepare for a terrorist act”—without any evidence of the time, location, methods or target of an actual plot. People can also be convicted for “promoting” or “counselling” a hypothetical terrorist act, which could include voicing opposition to US and Australian militarism in the Middle East.

Under the government’s proposal, these sweeping laws could be used to cancel citizenships without any proof of such activity. Dutton said the process would be “similar” to the one used by the government, acting on the advice of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), to deny visas to refugees.

There would be appeals available to a tribunal or court, but it would be very difficult practically for anyone stripped of citizenship while overseas to challenge a ruling. The courts also have a proven record of supporting supposed “national security” decisions, and blocking attempts by those denied visas to even know why they have been classified as “security risks.”

After a reported rift in cabinet on Monday night, the government postponed, for now, a second measure to strip citizenship from any targeted individual, even if they were Australian-born and had no dual nationality. Some ministers are said to have opposed that step, essentially on tactical grounds, because it would openly violate international law by rendering people stateless.

Instead, the “discussion paper” states that the government is still considering a plan to revoke citizenship “where there are reasonable grounds to believe the person is able to become a national of another country and would not become stateless,” even if the person has not applied for that alternative nationality.

The paper declares the government’s intention to follow other US allies in being able to cancel citizenship rights for vague reasons. The document states: “The United States, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, France and many other European countries have powers to revoke citizenship on broad national security grounds.”

The discussion paper asks people to submit their views to the immigration department by June 30. In a bid to drum up support for these measures, a government and media witch hunt has begun, directed in the first instance against an application by the wife and five children of an alleged Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) fighter to return to Australia.

Without any proof of the family members committing any criminal offence, Abbott declared that Khaled Sharrouf’s wife Tara Nettleton and their children would be shown “no leniency” because “crime is crime is crime.” Abbott insisted: “It is a crime, a very serious crime under Australian law, for people to go abroad and fight or assist terrorist organisations.”

Anti-democratic powers already exist to cancel the citizenship of someone who acquired it by application, but only if they are convicted of a serious crime committed before being granted citizenship, or made a criminally false statement to obtain it.

Significantly, the discussion paper speaks of wartime obligations. It proclaims: “All Australians are responsible for respecting and protecting our country” and must be prepared to “defend Australia should the need arise.” It advocates that all citizens, including the native-born, make a “Pledge of Commitment” that would include swearing “allegiance to Australia and an undertaking not to act contrary to that allegiance.”

If enacted, such requirements would have far-reaching implications, effectively outlawing political opposition to war and militarism, and laying the ideological basis for military conscription. Potentially they could be used to remove citizenship from people campaigning against Australian involvement in US-led wars, or opposing conscription, as was imposed on young men during the Vietnam War.

This “citizenship” campaign dovetails with the four-year centenary “celebrations” of Australia’s participation, as part of the British Empire, in World War I. Both programs are seeking to silence anti-war sentiment and cultivate a new preparedness to fight and die for “the nation,” as tens of thousands of young men did 100 years ago. This is under conditions of escalating war tensions with China, as well as the intensifying war in the Middle East and a mounting US confrontation with Russia.

Former Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock, who spearheaded the Howard government’s anti-refugee offensive a decade ago, and one of Abbott’s parliamentary secretaries, Senator Concetta Fierravante-Wells, will tour the country to “lead a national debate about the obligations of being an Australian citizen.”

The “debate” will also feed into the government’s drive to demolish welfare entitlements. The discussion paper highlights legislation passed last year to allow welfare payments to be “cancelled on national security grounds” and canvasses “additional powers like suspending certain privileges of citizenship,” including voting rights.

Both Labor and the Greens quickly indicated their readiness to back the government’s initial legislation, which was first mooted by the previous Greens-supported minority Labor government in 2013.

In line with Labor’s total support for the Middle East war and the Abbott government’s “anti-terrorism” laws, opposition citizenship spokeswoman Michelle Rowland said Labor was “absolutely committed to doing everything in a bipartisan way to keep our citizens safe.”

Greens immigration spokeswoman Penny Wright voiced concerns about “a person’s ability to exist in the world” without nationality status, but insisted only on “appeal rights” to a judge—precisely the legal fig leaf that the government is proposing.

Works council elections at Germany’s ThyssenKrupp: What way forward?

Dietmar Henning

The election of the new works council at ThyssenKrupp’s Duisburg steel factory began yesterday and runs until 6 June. It is the outcome of a successful appeal of last year’s works council election.

The opposition list “Interest Group for a 35-hour work week” demonstrated that company representatives, in close collaboration with works councilors from the IG Metall trade union, engaged in massive intimidation to influence the election. Four members of the list, including the leader Fred Wans, successfully challenged the works council election at the labour court in Duisburg. In mid-March, the state labour court in Düsseldorf confirmed the ruling, paving the way for new elections.

The list, led by Wans, was founded last year and is in opposition to the IG Metall-dominated works council, which has imposed several rounds of wage cuts and continuous lay-offs on the workforce, in cooperation with the trade union. The opposition list has won support as many of the 13,000 workers are increasingly outraged and frustrated with the machinations of the IG Metall works council and the trade union.

To this extent, the founding of an opposition list against the mafia-like structures of IG Metall in the plant is an expression of the beginning of a rebellion by workers against IG Metall’s works council representatives and the trade union. IG Metall, in cooperation with the company, has done everything to try to suppress the opposition.

The opposition list was successful in combatting IG Metall’s intimidation, but now the question is posed: what way forward in the struggle against the corrupt machinations of IG Metall?

It is necessary to take a decisive step forward and recognise the reality that the problems of ThyssenKrupp’s workforce cannot be resolved in Duisburg with a perspective confined within the limits of trade unionism. Workers in every other plant, not only in the steel sector, but in all other industries and public administrations, not merely in Germany but all over the world, confront the same challenges.

In the face of the scale of these problems, it is an illusion for workers to believe that a less corrupt and more militant trade union can represent their interests. Any genuine initiative to launch a principled defence of worker’s rights requires a political perspective based on two principles. First, it must be directed internationally towards establishing a global alliance among workers, and secondly, it must oppose the capitalist system and the drive for profits and take up the fight for the socialist reorganization of society.

Thus far, the leadership of the opposition list has avoided discussing these fundamental political issues. Instead, the opposition led by Wans has sought to form alliances based on the lowest common denominator of trade unionist politics. In the current works council election, it has joined together with a second opposition list. This organisation, which has existed for years, calls itself “Workforce List” and is led by works councilor Binali Demir, who is also a city councilor for the Left Party in Duisburg.

Also standing in Wans and Demir’s joint list is Yasar Firat, cofounder of the “Workforce List.” Firat was a member of the Left Party at the time of the Workforce Lists founding, although he subsequently left. He justified his departure with the explanation that it wasn’t possible to do anything for workers interests in the party. In the past, Firat stood on the IG Metall list and was elected to the works council.

After Wans’ list emerged in opposition to IG Metall, Firat joined. At an employees’ meeting he accused the presiding IG Metall majority of corruption in the selection of candidates for the union list. He is currently involved in a legal dispute over this with IG Metall, with the first hearing due on 1 June.

The cooperation between Wans, Demir and Firat has been justified with the claim that the opposition must be united. To achieve this, they argue that it is necessary to exclude politics.

The first step is to campaign for workers’ interests in the plant against IG Metall, it is argued. Thus the joint list of Wans, Demir and Firat has confined itself to promising workers to overturn the contracts agreed to by the works council containing the greatest attacks on wages and working conditions.

The concentration on minimal trade union demands cannot resolve the fundamental problems confronting the workforce and has an inevitable logic. It will lead to the subordination of workers to industrial and economic constraints, transforming the works council opposition of today into tomorrow’s corrupt social partners.

Rumours have recently been circulating that ThyssenKrupp could be preparing to sell off its entire steel subsidiary, following the increase by Swedish investment firm Cevian Capital of its stake in ThyssenKrupp to 15 percent last year. The consequence would be mass layoffs and a further deterioration of working conditions, if not the destruction of the steel subsidiary.

What will happen if the steel market collapses due to the sustained global economic crisis, and company management or an investor like Cevian demands the elimination of steel production in Duisburg?

Would the opposition in the works council then call for wage cuts and lay-offs so as to prevent the shutdown of the plant? Would it assist in the destruction of the plant in conformity with social partnership?

Or would it make the campaign for the unconditional defence of jobs the prelude to a broader mobilisation of the entire working class to overthrow the government, to prepare the way for the transformation of the major industrial concerns and financial institutions into nationalised property? In the face of the global capitalist crisis, this is the only realistic way to bring an end to the downward spiral of social conditions. Such questions must be thoroughly thought out and discussed by workers.

It must be understood that the reason for the transformation of the trade unions and their works councils into tools of management and government is not simply the widespread corruption of their officials and works councilors. The degeneration of the trade unions is an international phenomenon and has deep objective roots in the changes in world economy. The globalisation of production has undermined the framework of all nationally-based social and labour market policies.

While the trade unions in the past could apply pressure on companies and achieve at least partial improvements for the workers, today it is the exact opposite. The trade unions and works councils blackmail the workers so as to implement cuts to wages, benefits and working conditions to secure a competitive advantage for the corporations.

At the same time, their interests correspond ever more with those of the state. The German government has responded to the crisis of capitalism and the European Union (EU) with the revival of German militarism. Since German President Joachim Gauck announced the end of military restraint at the beginning of last year, a major military build-up has been under way.

To obtain the billions required for the military, the government is planning major social attacks. Massive social and political class struggles are inevitable. To combat the opposition to layoffs, social cuts, and military interventions by the German army, basic democratic rights like the right to strike are being eliminated. This is the significance and goal of the contract unity law which the grand coalition adopted in the Bundestag last Friday.

The struggle against job cuts and the deterioration of working conditions is directly connected with the struggle against militarism and the preparations for war. This requires an internationalist and socialist programme. The clarification of these political issues is urgently necessary if an oppositional movement in the factories capable of fighting for the interests of the working class is to be built.

Whoever seeks to avoid this political conflict has already taken the first step towards adapting to company management, the system of social partnership, corruption, and the betrayal of workers’ interests.

ThyssenKrupp workers should draw the lessons from the shutdown of Opel’s Bochum plant. In Germany, there was hardly any other workforce which rebelled more often against the collaboration of the company, works council and IG Metall. But time and again, the internal factory opposition led by the DKP (German Communist Party), Left Party and other pseudo-left groups came to the aid of IG Metall and its social democratic works councilors.

Elevated into the works council by the workforce, these forces continued where IG Metall’s social democratic works councilors had left off. In the end, works council chairman Rainer Einenkel, a Left Party member, imposed the shutdown of the plant. He was assisted in this by leading officials in his party, including Sevim Dagdelen, Gregor Gysi, and Sahra Wagenknecht.

The entire ThyssenKrupp workforce and ultimately all workers confront political tasks. The only way to fight for workers’ interests in the factories is to turn to an internationalist and socialist perspective. This is the perspective fought for by the Partei für Soziale Gleichheit (PSG). Click here to contact the PSG to discuss this perspective.

The assault on health care in Russia

David Levine

According to a document recently leaked to the Russian news outlet RBC, an agreement has been reached between the Russian Ministry of Health and the Moscow city government to lay off approximately 14,000 doctors in 2015-2017. This follows the axing of 9,500 health care jobs in the Russian capital in 2014.

Last month, the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation (SPRF) released a report revealing that policies depicted by the government of President Vladimir Putin as an effort to improve social conditions have led to a decline in access to social services and a worsening of the country’s infrastructure, particularly with regards to health care. As a consequence of so-called “optimization” measures, Russia last year experienced a 3.7 percent growth in the number of deaths in hospitals, a 2.6 percent increase in the mortality rate in hospitals, and “a deterioration of the quality of life of the population.”

The SPRF report also found a rise in the number of patients dying at home and an increase in the number of emergency calls that failed to result in the provision of care. The reaction time of emergency services in many areas exceeds the regulatory maximum several times over. The waiting time for non-emergency services is also excessively long in many regions. In Penza Oblast, for example, patients routinely wait more than six weeks for an ultrasound screening.

Approximately 17,500 towns and villages in Russia have no health care infrastructure whatsoever. Over 11,000 of them are located more than 20 kilometers from the nearest medical institution where a physician can be found.

Accounts Chamber auditor Aleksandr Filipenko explained: “879 small towns have no local health center or general practitioner’s office. This deficit is not being compensated for by mobile services. A number of regions of low population density (e.g., Omsk Oblast, Kamchatka Krai and Primorsky Krai) have no mobile medical teams at all.”

Furthermore, as the SPRF report points out, 35 percent of all Russian cities, towns and locales are not covered by public transportation services.

The total number of hospital beds in Russia fell by 33,757 in 2014, continuing a long-term trend, as did the total number of employed medical personnel, which dropped by about 90,000. According to the SPRF, the country now faces a deficit of tens of thousands of doctors and nurses. While there is some indication that earnings for health care workers have increased, according to the SPRF this is largely the result of employees working multiple jobs.

A few weeks after issuing its report, the Accounts Chamber stated that during the first quarter of 2015, Russia’s Mandatory Medical Insurance Fund had collected only 22 percent of its expected income. The fund’s budget has a 76 billion ruble deficit for the first quarter alone, even though the planned deficit for the entire year had been 43 billion rubles. While thus far the deficit has been covered by borrowing from the country’s reserves, this emergency financing will soon run out.

The report adds, “Under conditions where the accessibility of medical care for the population is declining, the growth of for-pay medical services may indicate that free medical care is being replaced with for-pay care.” In 2014 alone, there was a 24.2 percent increase in the total volume of for-pay services provided.

Cuts to medical services in Russia have been met with protests. In Ufa, a city of over 1 million people with only one emergency medical station, physicians at the station went on hunger strike on March 19. Their demands included an end to discrimination and “administrative pressure” on workers, the hiring of new emergency medical personnel, and the restoration of pediatric emergency teams. The physicians continued working during the strike. Of the 13 participants, some were hospitalized before the strike ended on April 27.

In Moscow last year an estimated 5,600 people participated in a street protest against the layoff of doctors. The demonstration was held in response to an announcement that several hospitals in the country’s capital would be closed and 7,000 physicians thrown out of work. Moscow doctors have continued to plan protest actions, demanding, among other issues, an increase in government support for medical institutions, an end to layoffs, and the allocation of time for doctors to make home visits to patients.

Queen’s Speech 2015: UK Conservatives lay out agenda of austerity and repression

Chris Marsden

Yesterday’s Queen’s Speech laid out one of the most politically and socially reactionary legislative agendas ever undertaken by a British government.

It was presented in the most cynical terms imaginable, with the Conservatives pledging to “adopt a one nation approach, helping working people get on, supporting aspiration, giving new opportunities to the most disadvantaged and bringing different parts of our country together.”

In reality, though unspecified, the speech commits the government to tens of billions in additional spending cuts—in what was described as a “long-term plan” to bring “public finances under control and reducing the deficit, so Britain lives within its means.”

Further attacks on essential social provision include a Schools Bill that contains a commitment to creating an extra 270,000 places in independent but state-funded Free Schools by 2020. A Housing Bill will extend the right of tenants to buy their home at a discount from council properties to cover 1.3 million housing association properties—threatening to eliminate vast tranches of subsidised public housing.

A desire to demonstrate a commitment to austerity and secure a base of support in the middle class is what motivates its pledge to enact “tax lock” to supposedly ensure that income tax, VAT and national insurance will not rise during the next parliament.

To impose the attacks outlined requires a raft of anti-democratic legislation, including a trade union bill introducing a 40 percent threshold for strike ballots to be recognised and stricter requirements still for strike votes in “essential services” that collectively will outlaw most strikes. The government is also set to lift the ban on use of agency staff as a scab workforce.

The austerity planned is savage and includes a planned cut of £12 billion for welfare which experts predict will double the numbers using food banks to 2 million.

Claimants, particularly the young, will be victimised. Those aged 18 to 21 years old will be required to “earn or learn”—only able to claim a strictly controlled youth allowance for six months before they will have to start an apprenticeship paying only £2.73 an hour, or training to continue to receive money.

Immigrants will be witch-hunted. An Immigration Bill sets out new offences including “illegal working,” allowing the police to seize wages paid that will be defined as the “proceeds of crime.” The bill will allow for migrants to be evicted more quickly and for the policy of “deport first, appeal later” to be sped up and extended. Labour’s proposal to make it an offence for businesses and recruitment agencies to hire abroad without first advertising in the UK will also be adopted.

Existing anti-democratic legislation built up under successive Labour and Tory administrations will be supplemented by a Counter-Extremism Bill. This will severely curtail freedom of speech, assembly and movement, introducing Banning Orders for organisations seeking to “undermine democracy or use hate speech” and Extremism Disruption Orders restricting the movement of individuals. The broadcasting watchdog Ofcom will be given the power to take action against channels broadcasting “extremist content”, including the power to pre-vet and censor programmes.

The Communications Data Bill, known as the “snoopers’ charter”, will finally be put before parliament after being blocked by the Tories’ former coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats. It will force data Internet and phone companies to store personal information for 12 months, including details of messages sent on social media, webmail, voice calls over the Internet and on gaming platforms, as well as emails and phone calls.

A manifesto pledge to abolish the Human Rights Act within 100 days, replacing it with a British “Bill of Rights,” has been downgraded to a commitment to a one year consultation on the issue. The proposal was framed in anti-European rhetoric, stressing that it would “break the formal link between British courts and the European Court of Human Rights, and make our own Supreme Court the ultimate arbiter of human rights matters in the UK.”

This was opposed by some leading Tories for being too overt in exposing the government’s contempt for democratic rights—threatening its ability to pass the legislation with an already slim 12-seat majority.

Conservative Environment Secretary Liz Truss insisted the new legislation was “absolutely” going be delivered at some point. But even this tactical retreat was met with a bitter attack by Rupert Murdoch’s the Sun, with a front page article denouncing the Human Rights Act because its provision for “securing the right to privacy and a family life… ended up being used to let illegal immigrants stay in Britain.”

The government will press ahead with its plan to hold a referendum on continued membership of the European Union (EU) before the end of 2017, as well as further devolution in Scotland, Wales and to English cities and regions—both of which involve an existential threat to the UK.

The Tories have not yet set a date for a referendum on Europe, but Prime Minister David Cameron will proceed with efforts to renegotiate British obligations to allow additional powers for parliament to block EU legislation and various measures to curtail freedom of movement of European citizens. These include limiting the right to benefits and no right of entry for accession countries to the EU.

This throws UK economic life into a long period of uncertainty, with some leading companies and banks threatening to leave the UK in the event of a vote against EU membership. Any retreat would bring further defections of Tory voters to the UK Independence Party.

Cameron has been helped by Labour, which has summarily dropped its opposition to holding a referendum after its election defeat. It will support EU membership, but Labour caretaker leader Harriet Harman stressed that the party “shared” some of Cameron’s desire for change and reform. Beating the anti-immigrant drum, she stressed, “I think that we have got the same concerns that you should contribute into the benefits system before you take out.”

Devolution measures are headed by a Scotland Bill, guided by the recommendations of the Smith Commission formed in the aftermath of last year’s defeated referendum on Scottish independence. This includes proposals giving the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood the power to set income tax rates and bands, control over a share of VAT and some welfare benefits—but not corporation tax. This is, however, the key concern of the Scottish National Party (SNP) which has 56 MPs after all but wiping out Labour north of the border, and will be a contentious issue.

A Wales Bill will be enacted, alongside proposals to devolve more powers to England’s cities over housing, transport, planning and policing as pioneered in plans for Greater Manchester in two years’ time. The aim of all these measures is to encourage regional competition for the favours of big business, as well as to facilitate public spending cuts and the break-up of the National Health Service through localised funding allocation.

To further inflame nationalism, the government will bring in rules whereby only English MPs can vote on English laws—affecting those measures that fall within the remit of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly.

The former leader of the SNP, Alec Salmond, linked the issue of EU membership to a threat to stage a second referendum on Scottish independence. “If we arrived at a situation where Scotland as a nation was dragged out of the European Union against the majority will of the Scottish people then that might well be the material change in circumstances that brought forward another referendum,” he said. The SNP would lobby for a “quad-lock” clause requiring a majority vote in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland for an EU exit.

Left Platform: Syriza’s last line of defence

Robert Stevens

After four months in office, the Syriza government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is in a deep crisis, with Greece’s state coffers almost empty and the country’s main banks on the verge of collapse.

Syriza came to power on a wave of opposition to the staggering levels of unemployment, poverty and social devastation, the result of more than five years of austerity. After signing a February agreement with the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) “troika”, committing it to completing the austerity programme in place, Syriza has been seeking agreement on what scale of austerity it is politically able to impose.

After cutting public spending by €2 billion and seizing another €2 billion from the state assets of the country in order to pay back over €13 billion to the creditors, financial and political circles calculate that Greece cannot now make further debt repayments without receiving external funding. A further €1.6 billion is due to the IMF in June.

Syriza has offered one austerity proposal after another, but has been continually rebuffed for not being comprehensive enough. After months of delays, Syriza is now being called on to impose unprecedented attacks on the living standards of an already pauperised population. With the crisis reaching an endgame and Syriza’s anti-austerity credentials in tatters, its Left Platform, an amalgam of pseudo-left forces, Stalinists and Maoists, are demanding of the Tsipras wing that the party retain some semblance of its previous anti-austerity garb.

At Syriza’s 2013 conference, the Left Platform won 60 seats on the Central Committee and has about 30 percent of Syriza’s MPs in its caucus. It plays a critical role in deceiving the working class in Greece and internationally, touted constantly by pseudo-left forces internationally as the “radical” anti-austerity element within Syriza. Indeed Tsipras is currently being hailed in ruling circles for showing his mettle and facing down the “hard-line” Left Platform that was recently referred to by Britain’s Economist magazine as “The Wild Ones.”

One of the main components of the Left Platform is the Internationalist Workers Left (DEA). Antonis Davanellos is a leading DEA figure and a member of Syriza’s Central Committee and Political Secretariat. In a May 18 article, he wrote, “We made the [February 20] commitment to repay the debt ‘in full and on time,’ and we renounced any ‘unilateral action’ to implement our party’s program, which would have built a more solid alliance of workers and popular masses in support of the government.” In return, “We got nothing” in the form of concessions, he adds.

Since February 20, Davanellos notes that Syriza has proceeded to ditch its anti-austerity rhetoric in response to the troika’s demands. He explains how, despite this, “[W]e tried to defend the ‘red lines’ that the government promised would not be crossed—even though these were far less than the commitments that Tsipras made at the Thessaloniki International Fair in September 2014, which in turn were inferior to the program approved by SYRIZA at its founding conference.” As a result of this political collusion, Davanellos admits, “Today, the ‘red lines’ have disappeared.”

Noting that Greece, “has almost exhausted the reserves of public funds, bringing the critical moment very, very near”, he warns, “The political consequences of this retreat—because it is no longer possible to speak about a ‘compromise’—will be dire. SYRIZA cannot be transformed into an austerity party.”

On the contrary. Syriza has been revealed as precisely such a party.

Commenting on the demands of the Left Platform, George Pagoulatos, a professor at Athens University of Economics and Business, told the Financial Times, “The fight within Syriza is now between the pragmatists and those who want to claim the mantle of anti-austerity that Tsipras is about to lose.”

In his statement to this week’s Central Committee Tsipras said, “I will not accept the agreement [to be reached with the troika] passing through parliament with borrowed votes,” adding, “If I bring an agreement to parliament, it will be honest and beneficial for the people. So I will not accept negative votes from MPs of Syriza and the [right-wing coalition partner] Independent Greeks [Anel].”

In the event, a resolution of the Left Platform to the meeting won the support of almost half the members on the body. It was supported by 75 votes (44 percent of those attending) to 95 against, with one abstention. The text of the resolution stated that the troika intended “to milk even the last euro from the country’s reserves and to push an ‘unprotected’ government to full submission and exemplary humiliation.”

It states, Syriza has “no other option but to proceed to a counterattack with an alternative plan that is based on SYRIZA’s pre-electoral pledges and the government’s programmatic announcements. What is required is “a progressive policy against the Memoranda, [that] includes first and foremost the suspension of servicing the debt.”

Leading figures within the Left Platform are in favour of Greece withdrawing from the euro zone and reverting back to its former currency, the drachma and “an eventual exit from the eurozone.”

However, the resolution in reality calls for an “acceptable compromise”, based on four planks, including low primary budgetary surpluses and a debt restructuring. It then formally demands other measures be implemented, which Syriza ditched from its programme long ago, such as the nationalisations of the banks. While verbally opposing further cuts in wages and pensions, the resolution hardly differs from the Tsipras wing in its pathetic proposal for the “indispensable reinstatement of collective conventions and the gradual rise of the minimum wage to 751 euros [its 2009 level].”

Kathemerini noted of the Central Committee vote, “Still, some members of the Left Platform were said to be concerned about the repercussions of an overly militant stance.”

Just prior to the vote, Left Platform leader Panagiotis Lafazanis told parliament, after a representative of the fascist Golden Dawn referred to him as the leader of a faction, “I represent the government and the government has a collective policy. At this moment this is the policy that I am outlining and expressing.”

The claims of the Left Platform to be in any way progressive are exposed by its filthy record. They were enthusiastic supporters of Syriza’s coalition agreement with the xenophobic Independent Greeks (Anel), claiming they were a dedicated anti-austerity tendency.

Prior to January’s election, Lafazanis paved the way for Syriza’s imminent collaboration with Anel, stating, “We will work with forces, which will responsibly be able to follow policy against the memoranda, policy in a progressive direction. This is the basis of our cooperation.”

The Left Platform are opposed to the unity of workers in Greece, Europe and internationally in a common struggle against austerity and the capitalist system, based on the fight for socialism. They offer no alternative to austerity, but rather austerity implemented by Syriza in the interests of the Greek bourgeoisie.

What is being prepared in Greece is a major confrontation between Syriza and the working class. As the full social and political implications of Syriza’s pro-capitalist programme becomes evident, the Left Platform are seeking to prevent the development of an independent movement in the working class.

Stathis Kouvelakis is a leading Left Platform representative and a member of Syriza’s Central Committee. In a debate in April organised by Britain’s Socialist Workers Party, he warned that Syriza had won the support of many workers and young people and “if you don’t actually do what is necessary to keep that type of support, then it will backfire in an enormously unpredictable way. The popular anger might turn against Syriza quite quickly, much more quickly than a lot of people think, because the political landscape in Greek society is not at all stabilised.”

He stressed, “It is not a peaceful situation in which we can say, ‘We have stable constituencies’ and so on and so forth. Everything is in flux OK so it can backfire in a very violent way.”

Global tensions surge as NATO, Russia hold rival military exercises

Alex Lantier

Militaries throughout Eurasia and North America are on high alert as NATO and Russian forces hold rival military exercises.

Moscow responded to the beginning of large-scale, two-week-long air exercises by the NATO powers in the Arctic on Monday by launching its own air defense maneuvers. Roughly 250 Russian aircraft and 12,000 servicemen were mobilized in the Urals and western Siberia as 100 NATO aircraft and 4,000 servicemen from Germany, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States operated in the Arctic.

NATO’s Arctic exercises, code-named Arctic Challenge, will continue until June 4. The day after, the annual exercises held by NATO in the Baltic Sea region will begin, bringing 4,500 troops from 17 NATO member-states to Russia’s northwestern border.

The Russian Defense Ministry called its operations a “massive surprise inspection” of Russian air defense capabilities. According to Russian media, the maneuvers are meant to train Russian forces to respond to large-scale air attacks from abroad. Beginning last Monday and running until Thursday, their purpose is to prepare the Russian armed forces for a larger military drill, Center 2015, to be held in September.

Yesterday, 10 Russian warships supported by naval aircraft carried out exercises in the Barents Sea, a part of the Arctic Ocean largely consisting of Russian territorial waters.

Meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday in Washington, President Obama denounced Russia for holding its military drills, calling the Kremlin’s posture “increasingly aggressive.”

Stoltenberg, for his part, criticized Russia for not being “more transparent” in holding its military exercises. “We urge the Russians not to… do these kinds of snap exercises,” he told CBS News. “Every nation has a right to exercise its forces, also Russia,” he continued, “but they should do it in a more transparent and predictable way in order to avoid any misunderstandings.”

The denunciations from Obama and Stoltenberg are hypocritical and absurd. It is NATO, not Russia, that is driving the explosive military standoff around Russia’s borders. Having provoked a military crisis by toppling a pro-Russian Ukrainian regime in Kiev in a far-right putsch last year, then launching a proxy war against pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, NATO is now methodically surrounding Russia with hostile military exercises.

According to Russia’s envoy to the NATO alliance, Aleksandr Grushko, the number of NATO exercises close to the Russian border has doubled over the past year, to over 3,000. NATO is also doubling to 30,000 men the size of its European rapid reaction force, which is designed to quickly prepare for combat with Russia in Eastern Europe.

Britain is sending its biggest warship, the HMS Ocean, to the Baltic Sea this week to deploy a unit of Royal Marines in Poland and join naval drills off Russia’s coast at Kaliningrad.

US and Canadian airmen and military aircraft are jointly carrying out NORAD’s annual “Amalgam Dart” exercises in the Arctic. These are billed as operations to train NORAD forces to detect and respond to potentially hostile flights into North America from across the Arctic Ocean and the North Pole—that is, from Russia.

In recent weeks, US forces have also held joint military exercises with Romania and Bulgaria in the Balkans, and with Georgia in the Caucasus. Last month, US troops began training fighters from far-right militias inside Ukraine itself for combat against pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine.

With international tensions at the breaking point, NATO’s decision to hold multiple military exercises on Russia’s periphery is utterly reckless. In March, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that early in the Ukraine crisis he had placed the Russian military, including its nuclear forces, on alert.

A report last November by the European Leadership Network (ELN) think tank in London found that since the February 2014 putsch in Kiev, 40 “near miss” incidents had almost led to military clashes between Russian and NATO forces. That danger has since been heightened, with armies across Europe on a hair trigger, and thousands of NATO aircraft and military units surrounding Russia. A few collisions or miscalculations could lead to a clash with potentially catastrophic consequences.

Russia and China recently concluded their first joint naval exercises in the Mediterranean Sea, operating out of the Crimean port of Sevastopol, a region of Ukraine that chose to rejoin Russia after the Kiev putsch in a move that was denounced by the NATO powers. Russian and Chinese warships carried out multiple operations, including live-fire exercises, in the eastern Mediterranean. For the Chinese navy, this exercise was by far the most far removed from its home base in China it has ever held.

The holding of military exercises preparing for large-scale conflict demonstrates that the major capitalist powers, above all Washington and its imperialist allies in Europe and the Asia-Pacific, are gearing up for a Third World War. This is the outcome of decades of US-led wars in the Middle East and Central Asia that followed the dissolution of the USSR, and more recently the Ukraine crisis and Washington’s anti-Chinese “pivot to Asia.”

As wars surge across the Middle East in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and the standoff escalates between the United States and China in the South China Sea, NATO’s confrontation with Russia completes the picture of a Eurasian landmass beset by bloodshed and the imminent danger of war. Under the pressure of a crisis of global capitalism, masses of workers worldwide are being dragged into a horrendous conflict in which they have no interest, and which is developing largely behind their backs.

The critical task facing the international working class is to mobilize itself politically in struggle against capitalism and war. It cannot give any support to the maneuvers of the Putin regime in Moscow or its Chinese counterpart, collections of corrupt business oligarchs which emerged from the restoration of capitalism and which are incapable of appealing to anti-war sentiment in the working class. They oscillate between attempts to work out a deal with imperialism and military bluster that only increases political and military tensions.