'Deadliest Terror In The World': The West's Latest Gift To Africa

Dan Glazebrook

Nigeria’s Boko Haram are now officially the deadliest terror group in the world. That they have reached this position is a direct consequence of Cameron and co’s war on Libya – and one that was perhaps not entirely unintended.

According to a report just released by Global Terrorism Index, Boko Haram were responsible for 6,644 deaths in 2014, compared to 6,073 attributed to ISIS, representing a quadrupling of their total killings in 2013. In the past week alone, bombings conducted by the group have killed eight people on a bus in Maiduguri; a family of five in Fotokol, Cameroon; fifteen people in a crowded marketplace in Kano; and thirty-two people outside a mosque in Yola.

In 2009, the year they took up arms, Boko Haram had nothing like the capacity to mount such operations, and their equipment remained primitive; but by 2011, that had begun to change. As Peter Weber noted in The Week, their weapons “shifted from relatively cheap AK-47s in the early days of its post-2009 embrace of violence to desert-ready combat vehicles and anti-aircraft/ anti-tank guns”. This dramatic turnaround in the group’s access to materiel was the direct result of NATO’s war on Libya. A UN report published in early 2012 warned that “large quantities of weapons and ammunition from Libyan stockpiles were smuggled into the Sahel region”, including “rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns with anti-aircraft visors, automatic rifles, ammunition, grenades, explosives (Semtex), and light anti-aircraft artillery (light caliber bi-tubes) mounted on vehicles”, and probably also more advanced weapons such as surface-to-air missiles and MANPADS (man-portable air-defence systems). NATO had effectively turned over the entire armoury of an advanced industrial state to the region’s most sectarian militias: groups such as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Boko Haram.

The earliest casualty of NATO’s war outside Libya was Mali. Taureg fighters who had worked in Gaddafi’s security forces fled Libya soon after Gaddafi’s government was overthrown, and mounted an insurgency in Northern Mali. They in turn were overthrown, however, by Al Qaeda’s regional affiliates - flush with Libyan weaponry - who then turned Northern Mali into another base from which to train and launch attacks. Boko Haram was a key beneficiary. AS Brendan O’ Neill wrote in an excellent 2014 article worth quoting at length: “Boko Haram benefited enormously from the vacuum created in once-peaceful northern Mali following the West’s ousting of Gaddafi. In two ways: first, it honed its guerrilla skills by fighting alongside more practised Islamists in Mali, such as AQIM; and second, it accumulated some of the estimated 15,000 pieces of Libyan military hardware and weaponry that leaked across the country’s borders following the sweeping aside of Gaddafi. In April 2012, Agence France-Presse reported that ‘dozens of Boko Haram fighters’ were assisting AQIM and others in northern Mali. This had a devastating knock-on effect in Nigeria. As the Washington Post reported in early 2013, ‘The Islamist insurgency in northern Nigeria has entered a more violent phase as militants return to the fight with sophisticated weaponry and tactics learned on the battlefields of nearby Mali’. A Nigerian analyst said ‘Boko Haram’s level of audacity was high [in late 2012]’, immediately following the movement of some of its militants to the Mali region.”

That NATO’s Libya war would have such consequences was both thoroughly predictable, and widely predicted. As early as June 2011, African Union Chairman Jean Ping warned NATO that “Africa’s concern is that weapons that are delivered to one side or another…are already in the desert and will arm terrorists and fuel trafficking”. And both Mali and Algeria strongly opposed NATO’s destruction of Libya precisely because of the massive destabilisation it would bring to the region. They argued, wrote O’Neill, “that such a violent upheaval in a region like north Africa could have potentially catastrophic consequences. The fallout from the bombing is ‘a real source of concern’, said the rulers of Mali in October 2011. In fact, as the BBC reported, they had been arguing since ‘the start of the conflict in Libya’ – that is, since the civil conflict between Benghazi-based militants and Gaddafi began – that ‘the fall of Gaddafi would have a destabilising effect in the region’.” In an op-ed following the collapse of Northern Mali, a former Chief of Staff of UK land forces, Major-General Jonathan Shaw, wrote that Colonel Gaddafi was a “lynchpin” of the “informal Sahel security plan”, whose removal therefore led to a foreseeable collapse of security across the entire region. The rise of Boko Haram has been but one result – and not without strategic benefits for the West.

Nigeria was once seen by the US as one of its most dependable allies on the African continent. Yet, following a pattern that is repeated across the entire global South, in recent years the country has been moving ever closer to China. The headline grabbing deal was the $23 billion contract signed in 2010 with the Chinese to construct three fuel refineries, adding an extra 750,000 barrels per day to Nigeria’s oil producing capacity. This was followed up in 2013 with an agreement to increase Nigerian oil exports to China tenfold by 2015 (from 20,000 to 200,000 barrels per day). But China’s economic interests go far beyond that. A Nigerian diplomat interviewed by China-Africa specialist Deborah Brautigam told her that “The Chinese are trying to get involved in every sector of our economy. If you look at the West, it’s oil, oil, oil and nothing else.” In 2006, China issued an $8.3billion low-interest loan to Nigeria to fund the building of a major new railway, and the following year China built a telecommunications satellite for Nigeria. Indeed, of last year’s $18 billion worth of bilateral trade between the two countries, over 88% was in the non-petroleum sector, and by 2012 Nigerian imports from China (it’s biggest import partner) totalled more than that of its second and third biggest import partners, the US and India, combined. This kind of trade and investment is of the type that is seriously aiding Africa’s ability to add value to its products – and is thereby undermining the Western global economic order, which relies on Africa remaining an under-developed exporter of cheap raw materials.

Not has China’s co-operation been limited to economics. In 2004, China supported Nigeria’s bid for a seat on the UN Security Council, and in 2006, Nigeria signed a Memorandum of Understanding on the Establishment of a Strategic Partnership with China – the first African country to do so. It is a partnership with a solid base of support – according to a BBC poll conducted in 2011, 85% of Nigerians have a positive view of China; perhaps not surprising when even pro-US security thinktanks like the Jamestown Foundation admit that “China’s links with Nigeria are qualitatively different from the West’s, and as a result, may potentially produce benefits for the ordinary people of Nigeria”. Symbolising the importance of the relationship, current Chinese Premier Li Keqiang made Nigeria his first foreign destination after taking up the role in 2013.

This growing South-South co-operation is not viewed positively by the US, which is witnessing what it once saw as a dependable client state edge increasingly out of its orbit. The African Oil Policy Initiative Group – a consortium of US Congressmen, military officials and energy lobbyists – had already concluded in a 2002 report that China was a rival of the US for influence in West Africa that would need to be deterred by military means, and China has been increasingly viewed by US policymakers as a strategic threat to be contained militarily ever since. A report by US Chief of Staff Martin Dempsey just this July highlighted China as one of the major ‘security threats’ to US domination, for example - although Obama’s ‘Pivot to Asia’ policy had already made this clear back in 2013.

Is it such a stretch, then, to think that the US might actually want to cripple its strategic rival, China, by destabilising her allies, such as Nigeria? After all, despite continued US links to Nigeria, it is China, more than any other foreign partner, who has the most to lose from the Boko Hara insurgency, as the Jamestown Foundation makes clear: “Unlike most other foreign actors in the country, [the Chinese] are investing in fixed assets, such as refineries and factories, with the intention of developing a long-term economic relationship. Consequently, stability and good governance in Nigeria is advantageous for Beijing because it is the only way to guarantee that Chinese interests are protected”. If the US increasingly sees its own strategy in terms of undermining Chinese interests – and there is every sign that it does – the corollary of this statement is surely that instability in Nigeria is the only way to guarantee that Chinese interests are threatened – and, therefore, that US strategic goals are served. The US’s lacklustre efforts in backing Nigerian efforts against Boko Haram - from blocking arms deliveries last year, to funding the fight in all of Nigeria’s neighbours, but not Nigeria itself – as well as its suspension of Nigerian crude oil imports from July 2014 (“a decision that helped plunge Nigeria into one of its most severe financial crises”, according to one national daily) would certainly indicate that.

Forcing Greek Women Into Prostitution: Capitalism At Work

Paul Craig Roberts

Demonstrators protest against government austerity measures outside the Greek Parliament in Athens

Zero Hedge reports a story from “Keep Talking Greece” that first appeared in The Times http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/europe/article4624755.ece

According to the story, the plummeting living standards forced on the Greek people by German chancellor Merkel and the European banks have forced large numbers of young Greek women into prostitution. The large increase in the supply of women offering sexual services has dropped the price to 4 euros an hour. That’s $4.24, enough for a cheese pie or a sandwich, the value that bankster-imposed austerity has placed on an hour’s use of a woman’s body. The half hour price is $2.12. They don’t even get the minimum wage.

When one reads a story such as this, one hopes it is a parody or a caricature. Although the London Times has fallen a long way, it is not yet the kind of newspaper that can be purchased at grocery store checkout counters.

The story gains credence from the websites in the US on which female university students advertise their availability as mistresses to men who have the financial means to help them with their expenses. From various news reports, mistress seems to be a main occupation of female students at high-cost universities such as NYU.

The NYU girls have it far better than the Greek ones. The mistress relationship is monogamous and can be long-lasting and loving. Prudes make an issue of the disparity in ages, but disparity in age was long a feature of upper class marriages. Prostitutes have large numbers of partners, each possibly carrying disease, and they receive nothing in return except cash. In Greece, if the report is correct, the payment is so low that the women cannot survive on the money beyond lunchtime.

This is capitalism at work. In the US the hardship comes from escalating tuition costs, with 75% of the university budget spent on administration, rather than on faculty or student aid, and from the lack of jobs available to graduates that pay enough to service the student loans. These days your waiter in the restaurant might be an adjunct or part-time university professor hoping to get a full-time job as an actor. As mistresses, the NYU girls will be doing better.

In Greece the hardship is imposed from outside the country by the European Union, which Greece foolishly joined, giving away its sovereignty in exchange for austerity. The banksters and their agents in the EU and German governments claim that the Greek people benefitted from the loans and, therefore, are responsible for paying back the loans. But the loans were not made to the Greek people. The loans were made to corrupt Greek governments who were paid bribes by the lenders to accept the loans, and the proceeds often were used for purchases from the country from which the loan originated. For example, Greek governments were paid bribes to borrow money from German or other foreign banks in order to purchase German submarines. It is through this type of corruption that the Greek debt grew.

The story told by the financial media and neoliberal economists who shill for the banksters is that the Greek people irresponsibly borrowed the money and spent it on welfare for themselves, and having enjoyed the fruits of the loans don’t want to repay them. This story is a lie. But the lie serves to ensure that the Greek people are looted in order to make good the banks’ own mistakes in overlending. The banks got both the loan fees and the kickbacks from the submarine producers. (I am using submarine producers as a generic for the range of outside goods and services on which the loans were spent.)

In Greece the loans are being paid by money “saved” by cutting Greek pensions, education and social services, and public employment, and by money raised from selling off public assets such as ports, municipal water systems and protected islands. The cutbacks in pensions, education, social services and employment drain money from the economy, and the sale of public assets drains money from the government’s budget. Michael Hudson tells the story brilliantly in his new book, Killing The Host.

The result is widespread hardship, and the result of the hardship is that young Greek women have to sell themselves.

It is just as Marx, Engels, and Lenin said.

One would think that people everywhere would be outraged. But to most of those who commented on Zero Hedge it is just something to make crude jokes about—“think about it, Viagra costs 4x the cost of pussy.” “Sure beats dating and taking a girl to dinner.” Those who represent the vaunted “Western Values” see nothing to be outraged about.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-28/meanwhile-greece-price-prostitute-drops-€4-hour

The percentage of pro-Western Russians who look to the West for leadership must be rapidly approaching zero.

What’s more important? The dignity of women or another billion dollars for the banksters?
Western “civilization” has given its answer: Another billion dollars for the banksters.

Why Are Muslims So Angry?

Alan MacLeod

Why are Muslims so Angry? The Real explanation for the rise of Radical Islam has more to do with history and politics as it does with religion.

The world was shocked by the brutal Paris attacks on November 13th. The group calling themselves ISIS took responsibility for them. Coming just months after the Charlie Hebdo shooting by individuals linked to Al-Qaeda, it left millions wondering what explained the wave of radical Islamist terror in the West. Why are Muslims so angry?

For many commentators in the West, such as Bill Maher and Sam Harris, the explanation is simple: Islam as a religion is fundamentally backward and violent and therefore must be confronted with force in order to save Western values such as freedom and democracy. In this sense, it is little more than a rehashing of Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” theory, or even the much older “White Man’s Burden.”

The real explanation owes much more to the Middle East’s history and politics than it does to badly thought out, Islamophobic theories on religion. As early as the 1940’s, Western governments had identified Middle Eastern oil as a “stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.” We would do well to underline the strategic power of oil. It is the keystone resource of the world. Without oil there is no transport, obviously. But there is also no agriculture, as it has been mechanized and oil is used in fertilizers. There would be no electricity, and therefore, no functioning offices, schools, or factories. There would be no plastics, nor any other materials with which to build. In short, who controls oil controls the world.

Western powers, particularly the US, UK and France, have been dedicated to controlling the Middle East and opposing any independent, nationalist or democratic movement that would challenge Western corporations’ right to siphon off trillions in exorbitant profits into Swiss banks. In order to oppose these secular, democratic movements, the West has found some willing allies: radical Islamist groups.

In his book “Secret Affairs: Britain’s Secret Collusion with Radical Islam”, Mark Curtis recounts the history of the region and found that, far from being enemies, these powers have funded, trained and supported virtually every extremist Muslim in the region group for five reasons:

1. “As a global counterforce to the ideologies of secular nationalism and Soviet communism”
2. “As “conservative muscle” within countries to undermine secular nationalists and bolster pro-Western regimes”
3. “As “shock troops” to destabilise or overthrow governments”
4. “As proxy military forces to fight wars”
5. “As political tools to leverage change from governments”.

The two British objectives in installing or maintaining radical Islamists in power are:

1. “Influence and control of key energy resources, always recognised in the British planning documents as the number one priority in the Middle East.”
2. “Maintaining Britain’s place within a pro-Western global financial order.”

In Egypt, the UK and France supported the Muslim Brotherhood in an attempt to overthrow the passionately secular and independent nationalist President Nasser. They even invaded the country in 1956.

In Iran, the CIA overthrew the progressive nationalist Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh. Mossadegh had dared to nationalize the oil industry, much to the chagrin of the Anglo-Iranian oil company. He was replaced by the brutal Shah of Iran. His repressive regime directly led to the 1979 revolution.

In Palestine, Israel and its Western backers nurtured the extremist Islamist party HAMAS in the hopes that it would be a counterweight to the secular, popular, and, therefore, dangerous Fatah party of Yasser Arafat.

In Afghanistan, the West backed the Mujahedeen against the Soviets, Margaret Thatcher calling the organization “genuine freedom fighters.” The Independent called Osama Bin Laden an “anti-Soviet warrior” who was putting the country “on the road to peace.”

In Libya, the West armed and supported Al-Qaeda, the organization that bombed the World Trade Center in 2001 in an effort to destroy the independent and secular strongman Colonel Gaddafi.

And the most radical, regressive Islamist regime of them all, Saudi Arabia, is the West’s key ally in the region, making a mockery of any ideas of “clash of civilizations.” The US in particular takes particular care to make sure their client state does not fall to democratic protestors. The Saudi regime trains thousands of clerics in the most radically regressive interpretation of Islam and sends them throughout the Muslim world. It also funds a myriad of television, pumping out similar messages, all with the tacit approval of Washington, London and Paris. With Saudi funding, General Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan carried out a program of radical Islamisation of his country. President Reagan shared nuclear technology with the dictator.

The great irony is that Western governments fund and support groups that seek their destruction. It highlights just how low a priority keeping their citizens safe is. Much more important is increasing the wealth and power of their elites.

Fifty years ago much of the Muslim world was decidedly secular and relatively progressive. But any hope of a return to a moderate age was crushed in the 1990’s, 2000’s and 2010’s with a succession of Western wars of aggression that obliterated much of the region. Afghanis, Iraqis, Libyans and Syrians have witnessed devastation, and the destruction of their societies. The US even helped incubate ISIS in Iraq and Syria in order to undermine the Assad regime. It should be noted that pre-war Iraq and Syria were famously secular societies, yet now they are the center of the Islamic State. If you’d seen your family killed and your town destroyed, you might be radicalized too.

In short, for decades, the Western powers have stamped out any secular, nationalist alternative to their rule by proxy with the help of jackbooted Islamist militants who are then given free reign to build up their power and influence in the vacuum. This history is not hidden from Muslims. And it has built up huge anger and resentment of Western governments. It is not because Muslims in the Middle East hate “Western” values of freedom and democracy that there is so much resentment of the West. Rather, it is precisely because they share those same values and are denied them by Western-backed dictators and radical groups that there is such resentment. As far back as 1958, the Eisenhower administration reported that there is such resentment of the US in Egypt because the US “is seeking to protect its interest in Near East oil by supporting the status quo and opposing political or economic progress” and “desires to keep the Arab world disunited and is committed to work with “reactionary” elements to that end.” Some things never change.

But the attackers were European, not Asian. They were people who had been shunned by an increasingly intolerant society.Comparing Muslim refugees to cockroaches has become mainstream in Europe while the Washington Post reported that Americans see Muslims as apes, or worse. With little economic prospects they were forced to live in ghettoized communities in the dingy suburbs, constantly told they have no place in Western society. Outcasts, they were easy fodder for Islamist groups preaching hate.

This is exactly what ISIS wants. ISIS wants Westerners to hate refugees. ISIS’ goal is to create a real “clash of civilizations” in order to drive more Muslims into its arms. The only two groups who wish for this scenario to be a reality are Islamic extremists and Western governments.

The social science on countering extremism in the West is clear. Providing young Muslims chances of a life of dignity and opportunity is key, as is the secession of wars in the Middle East and support for radical Islamist regimes.

So, far from being enemies, the Western powers and radical Jihadist groups share similar interests. For every terrorist bombing the Islamic State commits in the West, governments can introduce new rounds of repressive measures. The anti-terrorism act was passed in the wake of the September 11th bombings and was used to arrest occupy and student protestors in England. Today, the Paris shootings serve as an excuse for the US government to ban encryption, which had nothing to do with them. Ahead of the Paris Climate Conference, the French government has used emergency laws to arrest climate activists. They also serve as justifications for more invasions and more wars in the Middle East. The British government is currently trying to stir up support for bombing Syria. These wars then further provoke anger and a terrorist backlash, as governments concede. It is a vicious circle. Western governments are continuing to wage war in the Middle East and to promote radical Islamists in order to control the oil of the region, despite the fact that this makes its citizens exponentially less safe. To their governments, a few dozen, or even a few thousand deaths is a small price to pay to control the most stupendous source of strategic power.

Until we realize that we have more in common with ordinary Muslims and confront the reasons for their anger, the cycle of violence will continue.

Heaven or Hell On Earth: A Human or Planetary-Made Crisis?

Jerome Irwin

This is the question that lies at the heart of many political-economic-environmental crises in today’s world. Whatever the source, it always has something to do with humans not living within their means in harmony with other humans and the natural world around them. The very nature of humans is corrupted by the seven hellish sins of: pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony and sloth; engaged in perpetual conflict with their opposites among the seven heavenly virtues of: humility, generosity, kindness, patience, charity, temperance and diligence. It’s a perpetual Ying/Yang that seeks the creation of either a Heaven or Hell on Earth.

The crisis at the heart of the upcoming Paris Climate Conference is no different. All the lofty goals, hopes and expectations yet to be drafted by well-meaning humans will inevitably remain fraught with many such Ying/Yang frustrations and acrimonies.

Given the scale of the multitude of problems in the world – fueled by a constant out-of-control population explosion and neoliberal, fascistic war of economic-political-military-environmental terror - unless the human nature of Homo sapiens can demonstrate rapid, radical, positive change, nothing will fundamentally reduce the human or planetary crises at hand. So, unless and until some remarkable new balance or homeostasis somehow is struck between these seven sins and virtues, the Hell on Earth humans seem intent upon constantly creating for its own and other species will simply continue to escalate.
As the 2015 Climate Conference convenes in Paris, amidst on-going war tensions that threaten to engulf the world, the French government’s decision to ban civil society protests, marches and rallies around the conference, or the daily skewed spins created by the world’s mainstream press that constantly subvert the truth about so much, are reminders of what forever lies behind the catastrophe of the human crises and their parallels in the natural world. Since many of the world’s best and brightest will be prevented from convening in Paris or muzzled from discussing the real source and solution to so many perplexing human dilemmas and impasses, the real core question is whose values, ultimately, will be given the greatest precedence in the increasingly chaotic world in which the human species finds itself enmeshed?

No matter what comes out of Paris, life will go on as it always must, whether human crises manifest through further horrific events like: the Paris Tragedy of November 13th; the Syrian Civil War; mass exodus of displaced Middle Eastern, African, South American peoples, or; the endless ‘War of Terror’ waged against both humans and the planet. Yet as life goes on, will it reflect ever more corrupt-anarchic-elitist-fascist values, morals and principles that are bringing the world to its knees due to too little propensity for making positive, life-giving changes?

The physical outer world is always a mirror reflection of the inner spiritual world. The mounting planetary climate change simply an extension of escalating climatic conditions among humans that only ever seem to change in the degree of intensity and amount of violence that is perpetrated against the earth or humanity, whether the violence is: some monstrous civil war; an ignorant, mean-spirited political harangue against raising the minimum wage of the average worker, irrespective of how much obscenely more their CEO counterparts receive, or; corporate monsters like Monsanto, Pfizer, Lockheed Martin or Raytheon, to name but a tiny few; and rogue countries like Saudi Arabia, Israel, United States, amidst a rogues gallery of still unnamed others, who constantly destroy the welfare and well-being of the planet and humans alike.

Some new all-encompassing word must be found for the human tongue that can succinctly communicate for the marginalized masses and their leaders the real dimensions of this violent human-climatic crisis that, once uttered, as if by magic, will everywhere cause the penny to drop and bring about a much-needed 180 degree sea change within the affairs of the human species and its tiny planetary home hurtling together through endless unchartered space.

Yet, one way or the other, with or without we humans as fellow travelers, our Planet Earth will continue, undeterred, on her cosmic journey towards whatever unknown destination.

Nameless Heroes: The Untold Tale of Everyday Sufferers

Qazi Shibli

The catalyst for what I write now – for helping people and causes do less Good Work and more Great Work – came when I rediscovered a scrap of paper in my subconscious self. It was a photocopied page from a memory of the past and it suddenly crystallised what I was trying to do. It was one of those moments when “inspiration is when your past suddenly makes sense and you feel proud of it.

But that makes it sound like one flash of light and ta-da! it’s all sorted out. But more accurately for me, the entire process was much closer to those beautiful sand mandalas you see Tibetan monks painstakingly create. For years I have been probing, pushing, checking, trying, exploring, stumbling, feeling and trying to get closer to what I stand for, what I want to do and who I want to be. The chaotic and troublesome ruins of the world lie in the universalisation of definitions, Success, fame, respect. But somehow, these pieces of papers helped me rediscover the definitions, Look into their focal facet. Heroes always do not have a massive support. Successful do not always come down from a bungalow or a car.

With a bare Bandaged foot, this tall, brawny bearded Guy who barely can walk welcomes us near the gate to his sisters wedding. A combined queue of Pro Resistance activists from all schools of thought and ideology working enthusiastically greet us and click photographs and post it to their Facebook timelines. The host who can barely sit with his plastered foot with a mouth closed illustrates his story of pain and anguish.

Ordinary people turn inspirational, by being extraordinarily thoughtful, intelligent, resistive, kind, and honourable by questioning the traditions, observing contradictions, and refusing to accept what they have been told when their experiences tell them something different. We often have no record, however, of most of these everyday folks. For many, an essay gives life to those men and women who did remarkable things without becoming famous for doing them, who doubted and wondered and empathised and made decisions for themselves.

Shobu kotwal’s house is located in one of the posh areas of the South Kashmir township, Islamabad. He owns a shop at the bustled main town square. Shobu boards a vehicle outside his house which drops him near his shop, though he prefers to walk most of the times owing to his fascination to interact with people. Even though he leaves early up but is often late to the shop to the routine timing of the market opening.

The less known fact is that Shobu Kotwal was arrested first time in 96 when he was 13 years old and interrogated and tortured for several days inside an Army camp. After 2008 he has been arrested several times till 2009 when Indian CRPF men beat him to pulp. He was admitted in SKIMS in a state of coma which continued for next couple of months. Discharged from the hospital, within a gap of one month he was arrested once again. He has been arrested man times since, 32 if his own words were a testimony. He was beaten ruthlessly, hit with rubber bullets, cane charged, tear smoke shells on many occasions resulting to serious injuries all over his body. He has spent months together in Jails. And continues to be arrested in old, fresh cases and subsequently finds his involvement in the Anti State activities through the court.

He wears a bag that folk earlier mistook for a bag that most of the shopkeepers would keep laden on their shoulders carrying cash and important documents. Upon being frequently asked what he carries in the bag even during cricket matches, often drove him agitated. Finally one day the mystery stood unfolded, he carries a calendar with most of the dates encircled, documents, a lot of them, bundled together, some folded, some wrinkled, some pasted together, some torn, a single thing in common, they all carried the court documents and the case papers, more than 50 in count which stand a sole testimony of his alleged involvement in “Anti-State” activities. He spends most of his time in the courts and rest arrested in the Police stations. He has found the best mates in the “Case-mates”. He spends most of the time with these “Children of the Dark.” The lawyers in the court, most of them are his good friends. Though most of the times, he finds himself arguing with the lawyers owing to the difference in ideologies. One who suffers is synonymous to “theory in practise” and one who only destines is just “theory.” The one who suffers witnesses it closely looks for a solution unlike the other group that believes in suggestions. Back to the subject, A peaceful day to him, is Police waiting outside his shop to arrest him which he evades most of the times, result, he stands economically fractured. His family is on all time low, economically.

The uprising in the valley in 2008 saw fresh faces, youngesters drove to streets protesting the human rights violations. Pertinently , thousands of youth were booked under draconian Public safety act (PSA) and other unlawful activities for protesting against the Amarnath land transfer 2008, killing of two school going children that led to the mass uprising in 2010 which left hundreds dead and more importantly devastated the career of hundreds of school going children and young men. These children, most of them have been pushed to anarchy wherein the self stands taller than all and hence they look to solve each matter, trusting no institution which may have hazardous outputs in any democratic setup owing to their alleged involvment in Anti State activities and them subsequently being booked under frivolous charges.

When the psychological process of the involvement in an “Anti-state”activity unfolds. The subject involves himself in the mechanisms of "Denial" and "repression." Questions which he cannot resolve well up in being an alleged “criminal”, feelings he had not foreseen or suspected torment his heart. God's truth and earthly law take their toll, and the "Criminal" is pushed to give up, forced, even if it means dying in prison, so that he may once again be part of the people, involve himself in the daily choruses. The feeling of separation and isolation from mankind, the daily chorus take it's toll. The man decides to accept suffering to redeem himself, he believes it is the way to end isolation.

The old hags, society, at the very initiation, alienates, dubs them as “criminals” which neither the law of land claims neither does the law of God that the society claims to be their moral code of conduct. In the former case, The law has to prove the charges laden against the accused while in the latter, a person stands innocent till proven guilty.

Shobu is a name to hundreds of such nameless heroes who suffer day in and day out, who are alien to empathy and sympathy from the ones whom they allege to be resisting for, who claim to be their representatives.

IMF lifts Chinese currency to reserve status

Nick Beams

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) decided on Monday to admit the Chinese renminbi (also known as the yuan) into the basket of currencies used to value the fund’s Special Drawing Rights (SDRs).

The IMF executive board said the currency met the existing criteria to be included in a new SDR basket, which will come into effect on October 1 next year. The fund said the weighting of the Chinese currency in the basket would be 10.92 percent, placing it third after the US dollar, on 41.73 percent, and the euro, 30.93 percent, but above the weightings of 8.33 percent and 8.09 percent for the Japanese yen and British pound respectively.

SDRs, which were created in 1969 and expanded after the 2008 financial crisis, function as a global reserve currency and are used in the calculation of terms and interest rates for countries taking out loans from the IMF.

IMF managing director Christine Lagarde said the inclusion of the renminbi was “an important milestone in the integration of the Chinese economy into the global financial system” and “recognition of the progress that the Chinese authorities have made in the past years in reforming China’s monetary and financial system.”

In determining whether the renminbi should be included, the IMF review had to consider two criteria: whether the currency was “widely used” and whether it was “freely usable.”

The first condition was met some time ago, with the rise of China’s significance within international trade. China is now the largest trading partner of more than 120 countries.

The contentious point has been the second condition, because Chinese authorities control entry to the country’s financial markets and regulate the value of its currency. Unlike the other four currencies in the SDR basket, the renminbi is not freely convertible. This led to the rejection of China’s push to be included in the SDR basket at the last IMF five-yearly review in 2010, largely due to opposition from the US and Japan.

However, moves by Chinese authorities over the past year to ease controls on the movement of the currency and to liberalise the setting of interest rates, swung the balance in Beijing’s favour, with the US not opposing the recommendation that it now be included.

But an expression of underlying US attitudes has been the claim that the IMF has bent its own rules to accommodate China because its currency is not fully convertible. “They are stretching their criteria,” former US Treasury official Edwin Truman, a long-time commentator on the IMF, told the Financial Times .

One of the considerations behind the US reversal may be the considerable opposition an American veto would have provoked from other IMF members. They are already critical of the US Congress’s refusal to pass legislation to enhance China’s voting power in the organisation. At present, China, which is by any measure the world’s second largest economy, has the same number of votes in IMF governing bodies as Belgium.

Pointing to the significance of China’s moves to open up its financial markets and allow freer movement of the currency, Lagarde said: “If you had asked me a year ago whether this would happen today I think I would have reserved judgment. Clearly an enormous amount of work has been undertaken by Chinese authorities.”

While the move is largely symbolic, at least in the short-term, it will tend to increase the flows of capital into the Chinese financial markets as governments, banks and other financial institutions adjust their currency holdings to take account of the enhanced status of the renminbi.

However, so far as Chinese authorities are concerned, the decision has a longer-term significance in that it tends lessen the dominance of the US dollar within the international financial system.

In a speech delivered in March 2009, following the eruption of the global financial crisis the previous September, People’s Bank of China (PBoC) governor Zhou Xiaochuan called for reform of the international monetary system so that a single credit-based national currency, the US dollar, was not the global reserve currency. The greenback has effectively played that role since the gold backing was removed from the US dollar in August 1971, which ended the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944, and fixed exchange rates were completely abandoned in 1973.

“The frequency and increasing intensity of financial crises following the collapse of the Bretton Woods system suggests the costs of such a system to the world may have exceeded its benefits,” Zhou said. He called for “creative reform of the existing international monetary system” toward an international reserve currency with a stable value to ensure global financial stability, suggesting that a greater role for SDRs could be part of such a system.

The decision to include the renminbi in the SDR basket is by no stretch a move in that direction—the US dollar retains its dominance in the global financial system. However, Chinese financial authorities will view the shift as providing more leeway in negotiating international financial storms and lessening dollar dependence.

China has already negotiated agreements with individual countries under which the renminbi, rather than the US dollar, can be used for international transactions. Beijing will no doubt hope to move further in this direction now that its currency has been accorded reserve status.

However, the IMF decision is very much a two-edged sword because it places added pressure on the Chinese regime to further open up its financial system to international capital flows and cut back on regulations.

Central bank governor Zhou has made clear that he opposes full convertibility of the Chinese currency, which would require China’s financial markets to be completely open in the same way as London, New York, Tokyo and the European financial centres.

Last April, Zhou told the IMF that the convertibility China was seeking to achieve was not based on the traditional concept. Rather, drawing lessons from the global financial crisis, China would “adopt a concept of managed convertibility.”

From the other side, the IMF, an organisation devoted to the interests of international finance capital, sees the decision as drawing China closer into its orbit. Its announcement of the renminbi’s elevation included the following significant passage: “Authorities of all currencies represented in the SDR basket, which now includes the Chinese authorities, are expected to maintain a policy framework that facilitates operations for the IMF, its membership and other SDR users in their currencies.”

The IMF is basing its calculations on forces within the Chinese regime itself who want to push further ahead with China’s integration into global financial markets.

The head of the PBoC’s survey and statistics department told the Wall Street Journal: “We will have to build up confidence in renminbi assets from investors both at home and abroad and at the same time, prevent the financial risks associated with a more global currency. That calls for carrying out various reforms in a coordinated way.”

“Reform” of China’s financial system, however, based on its further opening up to global capital, is not simply a technical question. Under conditions of deepening financial problems in China—as evidenced in the stock market turmoil earlier this year—and a slowing economy, the issues are intensely political. Key sections of the Chinese ruling elite rely on state control of finance, and the economy as a whole, to maintain their political and economic power.

Mounting tensions between India and Nepal over blockade

Vijith Samarasinghe

The standoff between India and Nepal intensified yesterday after the Nepalese Armed Police Force detained 13 Indian border guards for allegedly crossing the border. They were released several hours later by Nepalese authorities, who accused them of carrying weapons without permission in civilian areas.

The incident is the latest in the mounting tensions between the two countries over what Nepal claims is an “undeclared blockade” of the landlocked country by India. Ethnic Madhesi protesters have blocked imports from India over the country’s new constitution, which was passed in September. Madhesi political parties, with India’s tacit backing, are demanding amendments to grant greater regional autonomy.

Police opened fire on November 21 on Madhesi protesters blocking the main highway from India in southern Nepal’s Saptari district. Two demonstrators were killed in the clashes and at least 28 people were injured, including police officers. The following day, police shot dead another person after angry protesters set fire to a police van. At least 40 people have been killed in confrontations with police since August.

Last Wednesday, the Nepalese government summoned the Indian envoy in Kathmandu to lodge a complaint after Indian border security forces fired on and injured four Nepalese in a southern border village. The envoy claimed that the Indian personnel fired in self-defence after being shot at by Nepalese smugglers.

Last Friday, thousands of students took to the streets in Kathmandu to protest against the blockade. Fuel shortages have forced schools to extend holidays and cut the number of classes. Students chanted: “Stop the blockade. Education is our right.”

The Indian government denies imposing a blockade but is clearly using the Madhesi protests as the pretext for doing just that. New Delhi keeps close ties with Madhesi parties to use them as a lever to influence policies in strategically important Nepal.

In a televised speech on November 15, Nepal’s Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli openly criticised India for continuing a blockade of cross-border trade. “It is unthinkable that a sovereign nation faces such an inhumane and severe pain, misery and blockade in the 21st century,” he declared. “Imposing a blockade to a landlocked nation is a breach of international treaties, norms and values.”

Nepal depends heavily on India for 60 percent of its imports and all its fuel supplies. Fuel has been rationed for private vehicles. Daily commuters are compelled to buy black-market fuel for as much as 250 Nepali rupees ($US2.40) a litre. Domestic flights from Kathmandu airport are routinely cancelled. Many Kathmandu households have reverted to cooking with firewood, due to the lack of bottled gas.

Hospitals are running low of essential medicines and other supplies such as medical gases. Doctor Swayam Prakash Pandit of Bir Hospital in Kathmandu told CNN: “We are running critically low on drugs used in the emergency, ICU and operation theatre.”

To ease the fuel shortage, the Nepal Oil Corporation signed an agreement in October to source fuel from China, ending the longstanding monopoly of Indian Oil Corporation as Nepal’s sole fuel supplier. Nepalese authorities also announced on November 16 that discussions were underway to source liquid petroleum gas from China.

Nepal is increasingly becoming a focus for geo-political rivalry. India, backed by the US, is intent on maintaining its dominance in Nepal, which it has long regarded as part of its sphere of influence in South Asia. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has taken an even more aggressive stance in order to counter China.

In 1989, the Indian government of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi imposed a trade blockade that lasted for more than a year, using disputes over the renewal of a bilateral trade pact as the pretext. New Delhi’s main concern was that the Nepalese government was negotiating with China to develop northern trade routes and buying Chinese weapons.

As a result of that confrontation, Nepal’s King Birendra was forced to back down from his economic demands. He also had to make concessions to the Nepali Congress Party, which, with India’s backing, mounted protests calling for the lifting of political restrictions. Birendra agreed to reforms, allowing the election of a Nepali Congress government.

Central to India-Nepal relations has been the Peace and Friendship Treaty signed in 1950, granting substantial concessions to New Delhi. However, India’s considerable control over the largely rural economy of Nepal has withered with economic globalisation and China’s rise in recent decades. Kathmandu has increasingly turned for investment to China, which in 2013 surpassed India as the country’s main investor.

In response, New Delhi is trying to exploit close ties with communalist Madhesi parties to boost India’s influence in Nepal. The Madhesi parties, which have expanded from six in 2006 to 13, form an amorphous grouping that emerged from various non-government organisations and breakaway factions of the country’s Maoist guerilla movement.

These parties do not in any way represent the interests of Madhesi workers and peasants, but rather the grasping local ruling elites who calculate that their relations with India and greater regional autonomy will enhance their political and economic position.

Bomb detonates at Japan’s war shrine

Ben McGrath

An explosion occurred in a restroom at Japan’s Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo during a national holiday a week ago. While no-one was injured in the blast, the incident highlights the controversial nature of the shrine. No individual or group claimed responsibility, but the site has been the target of attempted attacks in the past.

The shrine is an infamous symbol of Japanese militarism, where those who died in Japan’s wars, primarily World War II, are symbolically interred, including 14 class-A war criminals, secretly added in 1978.

The explosion took place around 10 a.m. last Monday near the shrine’s south gate while people at the shrine were marking the annual Niinamesai Shinto festival, a traditional harvest celebration. The shrine’s main hall was closed following the blast. The ceiling and walls of the restroom were damaged and a small fire broke out, which was extinguished before firefighters arrived

The authorities apparently believe that a single individual placed the bomb, not an organized group. Video footage reportedly captured a man entering the area near the bathroom with a paper bag and later leaving without it shortly before the explosion. A timing device, wiring and batteries were found at the scene, along with four items resembling pipe bombs in the ceiling.

The Yasukuni Shrine has long been a rallying point for right-wing Japanese politicians. On October 20, 70 lawmakers including Katsunobu Kato, head of the new Citizen Engagement Ministry, visited the shrine for Japan’s autumn festival. Representatives from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) were in attendance.

A few days earlier, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sent a ritual offering—a masakaki tree—while two more cabinet members, Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Sanae Takaichi and Justice Minister Mitsuhide Iwaki, visited the shrine.

Given the symbolism of the Yasukuni Shrine, it is possible the bombing was a misguided and essentially reactionary protest against the militarist agenda being pushed by Abe.

Following closely behind the attacks in Paris by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the Japanese government and security apparatus will undoubtedly use the incident to push for more police-state measures at home. “Terrorism should not occur in Japan,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said last Tuesday. “We will conduct strict warning and surveillance activities in order to ensure public safety.”

Until 2001, no post-World War II prime minister visited the Yasukuni Shrine in an official capacity, except for Yasuhiro Nakasone in 1985. This changed when Junichiro Koizumi, prime minister between 2001 and 2006, made six visits. Abe was the next sitting premier to go to the memorial, doing so in December 2013.

There is widespread opposition in Japan to Abe’s drive to rearm and cast off the constitutional constraints that formally prevent it from again going to war to reassert its imperialist interests, as it did in World War II.

Throughout the summer, numerous and at times large protests took place in Tokyo and throughout the country, comprised of workers, farmers, and students, calling for the scrapping of legislation that was ultimately pushed through the Japanese legislature in September. The new laws permit the government to dispatch the military without a special law being passed.

In the name of “collective self-defense,” the bills also allow Japan to militarily support allies—in other words, to take part in US-led wars of aggression in the Asia-Pacific and around the world. The laws codify the Abe government’s “reinterpretation” of Article 9 of the post-World War II constitution, which formally renounced war forever.

The shrine is also a focal point for anti-Japanese sentiment elsewhere in Asia, particularly in China and South Korea. Both Beijing and Seoul regularly express anger when Japanese politicians visit the shrine, whipping up anti-Japanese hostility in order to distract from worsening economic and social conditions domestically. In 2011, a Chinese man attempted to set fire to the shrine before fleeing to South Korea. In 2013, a South Korean man was arrested for entering the shrine’s compound with flammable materials.

More than 2.4 million individuals are interred at the shrine, having been killed in Japanese wars dating back to the Meiji Restoration in 1868. The building is not simply a memorial for Japan’s war dead, as Japanese nationalists and their apologists claim. It is a symbol of Japanese aggression before and during World War II, when it was used as a focus to encourage emperor worship and militarism.

An associated museum has military displays and literature that downplay Japanese war crimes such as the Nanjing massacre, during which the Japanese army murdered as many as 300,000 captured Chinese soldiers and civilians in 1937. It refers to World War II as the Greater East Asia War, claiming that the war was meant to liberate Asia from Western imperialism and create an Asian “co-prosperity sphere.”

After World War II, right-wing politicians attempted to rally support for and pass a law that would extend state protection to the Yasukuni Shrine. Such a law would have enabled politicians and the emperor to worship there during festivals. Between 1969 and 1974, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party attempted to pass such a law on five occasions, but failed each time.

The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and other opposition parties have sought to capitalize on the widespread popular opposition to Japan’s remilitarization, but the DPJ has no fundamental differences with the LDP.

The visits by Japanese prime ministers over the past 15 years and the overall turn to militarization make clear that Japan’s militarists and sections of the political and corporate establishment will continue to use the Yasukuni Shrine as a rallying point to try to build support for future wars of aggression.

Humanitarian disaster on the Balkan refugee route

Martin Kreickenbaum

The crisis situation for refugees seeking to enter Europe escalated November 28 on the Greek-Macedonian border. Macedonian police used stun grenades to repel refugees who have been prevented from entering Macedonia from Greece. A total of 40 people were injured and photos show refugees with severe head injuries.

Hundreds of refugees, men, women and children, have been stranded on the border in freezing weather and without food at the cordoned-off border near the northern Greek city of Idomeni. For about a week, only refugees with Syrian, Iraqi or Afghan passports have been allowed to cross the border. Refugees with other nationalities are rejected on the grounds that they do not come from “war zones.”

In particular, refugees from Iran, Pakistan, Eritrea, Somalia and Bangladesh are stranded on the Greek border and do not know what is going to happen to them. The makeshift camp at Idomeni operated by the UN refugee agency UNHCR is completely overcrowded. Hundreds of refugees are camping outdoors, without adequate sanitary provisions, and with inadequate supplies of food and clean drinking water.

In protest against the racist screening of asylum seekers at the border, the refugees have been blocking the single-track rail link between Macedonia and Greece for days. More than 60 refugees have gone on hunger strike, and eleven of them have sewn their own mouths shut.

Last Thursday around 200 desperate refugees stormed the border, throwing stones at the border policemen stationed there. The newly erected barbed wire fence along the border was demolished over a length of approximately 40 metres. Some refugees were caught in the barbed wire, others were chased by the police and forced back with batons. Only five people actually managed to get to the Macedonian side, where they were quickly intercepted and detained. Police officers armed with assault rifles moved to block the place where the border fence had come down.

“We cannot wait any longer, last night we slept in the rain,” 31-year-old Heritier Shabani told the press. He comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and arrived on the Greek island of Samos about ten days ago. The refugees do not receive any help from the Greek authorities. “If there were buses, we would return to Athens, but there are none, at least not enough,” said Shabani.

As a result, more and more refugees are stranded at the border. Of the approximately 4,000 refugees who had previously crossed the Greek-Macedonian border each day, more than 90 percent were allowed to cross because they came from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. However, hundreds of refugees arrive each day for whom the border remains closed.

The humanitarian disaster developing along the Balkan route began with the decision by the Slovenian government on 19 November to no longer allow so-called “economic migrants” into the country. The governments of Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia followed suit.

Dimitris Christopoulos from the International Federation for Human Rights fears that the “nightmare scenario for Greece” has begun, because the border closures mean the country has now gone from being a transit state to one in which refugees are detained. There was no appropriate infrastructure in Greece for looking after asylum seekers, he said. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon sharply condemned the actions of the authorities in the Balkans.

“To sort out refugees based on their adopted nationality violates the right of all people, regardless of their nationality, to apply for asylum, and their right to an individual examination of their need for protection,” Ban noted in a statement on Tuesday.

Asylum seekers from African countries such as Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea or the Republic of Congo, where no less bloody wars are raging, are routinely turned away at the borders along the Balkan route “by visual inspection” as alleged “economic refugees.” Hundreds of African refugees, taken by surprise by the developments, are now sitting in no man’s land in Croatia, Serbia or Macedonia, since they can neither move on or go back.

The real originators of the border closures are the governments in Germany and France. They are taking advantage of the terrorist attacks in Paris to further seal off Europe against refugees. The target of these racist measures, which constitute a blatant violation of international conventions on refugee protection, is to turn away as many refugees as possible at the borders of Europe.

While in Germany, the demands for a “ceiling” for refugees are growing louder, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has called for a complete stop to the influx of refugees from the Middle East to Europe. “We cannot accept any more refugees in Europe—that’s not possible,” Valls told the Süddeutsche Zeitung. The European Union must find solutions with Syria’s neighbouring countries in order to process more refugees, Valls said, “otherwise Europe is placing in question its ability to effectively control its borders.”

On Sunday, the European Union heads of state and government met with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, in an attempt to negotiate a dirty deal. In return for a payment of 3 billion euros and the prospect of opening up further EU accession negotiations, Turkey would commit itself to preventing refugees from travelling to the EU.

Turkey has so far accepted around 2.5 million war refugees from Syria, but they do not have refugee status there. Some 250,000 people live in 25 huge camps without access to work or education.

Although the war in Syria has intensified with the enormous air strikes by France and the United States, as well as Russia, and the remaining infrastructure of the country, including schools and hospitals, is being razed to the ground, Turkey has begun to reject all refugees at the border.

In March, Turkey had closed the last two open border crossings. Until recently, however, refugees who needed urgent medical help could still enter. But in recent weeks they have also been denied this possibility. “The closure of the border forces pregnant women, children, old people, the sick and injured to run a gauntlet of border guards in order to escape the horrors of the war in Syria,” said Gerry Simpson of Human Rights Watch.

As a result, hundreds of refugees are gathering in the woods in the hills southeast of Antakya, Turkey in order to be taken across the border illegally by smugglers. There, border guards mercilessly hunt down refugees, forcing them back into Syria. Refugees interviewed by Human Rights Watch tell of gunfire and severe mistreatment by the Turkish border police. Families are torn apart, and refugees herded into detention camps, before being forcibly removed to Syria.

These massive violations of the Geneva Convention are being carried out by Turkey under pressure from the European governments, which do not want to accept any more refugees, and are using Turkey to do their dirty work in pushing back refugees. In face of the inhuman treatment of the now millions of Syrian refugees, all talk of a military escalation in Syria being necessary to stop a humanitarian catastrophe is exposed as pure hypocrisy.

US: More than 3,000 laid off in closure of Fresh & Easy grocery stores

Jake Dean

Billionaire Ronald W. Burkle and his investment firm Yucaipa Companies announced the liquidation of all Fresh & Easy grocery stores in the United States in October. More than 3,000 workers have been abruptly thrown out of work with no guarantee of being relocated to one of the many other grocery chains owned by Burkle.

Based in El Segundo, California, Fresh & Easy filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October for the second time in a span of only two years. All 97 of the chain’s locations in California, Arizona and Nevada were shut down last month.

Yuciapa Companies acquired the company from the British supermarket giant Tesco in 2013, when it first filed for bankruptcy. Burkle did so by means of a $120-million loan from Tesco itself.

The closure of Fresh & Easy comes on the heels of the recent store closures by Haggen, the Pacific Northwest grocery chain. In the span of only three months, more than 3,800 grocery workers, from both Haggen and Fresh & Easy, have lost their jobs.

A public statement issued by Fresh & Easy management read: “Over the last two years, we have been working hard to build a new Fresh & Easy. While we made progress on stemming our losses and moving the business closer to break even, unfortunately, we have been unable to obtain financing and the liquidity necessary to fund the business going forward.”

The company also cited increasing competition from giant retailers such as Walmart and Target, both of which have incorporated fresh food into many of their stores. Analysts have pointed out that on many popular items Fresh & Easy charged as much as 20 percent more for its private labels than their name-brand counterparts.

David Living, a supermarket analyst at DJL Research of Waukesha, Wisconsin, stated that he had expected Fresh & Easy to collapse. “They failed because it was a poor format without an identity, and they took bad location,” he said. “You couldn’t do any worse unless you did it on purpose.”

Whatever the factors contributing to Fresh & Easy’s demise—tough competition, bad training of the staff, overpriced food—the attack on grocery workers is part of a much broader campaign by the corporations and banks to drive down the wages and living standards of the entire working class.

Grocery workers throughout the country have experienced stagnating or declining real wages, already at poverty levels, as well as being subjected to insecure and irregular employment. The closure of both Fresh & Easy and Haggen is a testament to the ruthlessness of finance capital in the drive for profits at the expense of the working class.

The timing of the announcement is also significant in terms of impact on the company’s workforce. Losing their jobs right before the holidays, a stressful time for many working class families, Fresh & Easy workers will be forced to look for low-paid seasonal work just to make ends meet.

Yucaipa Companies, founded by Burkle in 1986, specializes in private equity and venture capital with a focus on leveraged buyouts and turnarounds. With a net worth of $1.63 billion, Burkle is the 248th richest person in America. Yucaipa Companies is a controlling shareholder in a number of other multimillion-dollar companies, including entertainment distributor Alliance Entertainment, Golden State Foods foodservice, and Dominick’s, Fred Meyer and Ralphs supermarkets.

Burke is a long-time Democratic Party contributor and was at one point the business partner of former president Bill Clinton. Serving as senior adviser for Yucaipa Global Opportunities Fund, Clinton was brought on its board to persuade the Teamsters union to accept a 15 percent wage cut at trucking firm Allied Holdings. Clinton left Yucaipa in 2009.

Burkle also has strong ties to prominent California Democratic Party figures, donating to the campaigns of Senator Dianne Feinstein, Senator Barbara Boxer and former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Burkle has also cultivated a reputation as a “friend” of the trade unions, and has been publicly praised by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union. “He’s probably the best employer we ever dealt with,” said Ricardo Icaza, president of UFCW Local 770 in Los Angeles. “I have done a lot of things with him and he never looked for publicity. Never. You’d never suspect he’s a billionaire.” As demonstrated by the closure of Fresh & Easy, the question is not whether Burkle “looks, dresses or acts” like a billionaire, but his relationship to the means of production.

While Fresh & Easy was nonunion, the UFCW had attempted to unionize the company’s employees and the union represents workers at Ralphs, also owned by Burkle.

Effectively functioning as Burkle’s press agent and loyal accomplice in imposing low wages and exploitation upon supermarket workers, the UFCW has made no statement condemning the billionaire for the recent store closures, not to mention any call for uniting workers at Haggen, Fresh & Easy and the rest of the supermarket chains throughout the US in a common struggle against layoffs and low wages.