Civilian casualties in Afghanistan hit record in 2015

Thomas Gaist

The US war in Afghanistan produced at least 11,000 civilian casualties last year, setting a new official record, according to a report by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.

The total number of civilians killed and wounded during combat actions by US and US-backed government forces, Taliban militias and other insurgent groups rose nearly five percent above 2014’s figure, according to the UN.

Afghan government forces were responsible for 17 percent of the casualties, while US and NATO forces were responsible for 2 percent, the UN found. The report identified at least 1,000 civilian casualties that could not be definitely attributed to any of the warring parties.

The UN report repeats the claims of the US military, blaming the Taliban for the bloodshed and implying that the relative drawdown of international forces carried out since 2014 has intensified the killing. In reality, responsibility for the deepening social catastrophe in Afghanistan lies squarely with American imperialism, which has fomented and waged a series of wars against the Afghan people over a period of decades.

Since the invasion in 2001, US forces have carried out a continuous reign of terror against the population, in which regular killing of civilians has been considered unavoidable “collateral damage.”

The latest UN report found that “targeted and deliberate killings” accounted for a substantial share of civilian deaths caused by American and US-backed Afghan units. Indeed, as last October’s bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz made clear, the murder of civilians has increasingly been employed as a deliberate tactic to intimidate adversaries of the US-installed Kabul government. US special forces scouted the hospital just days before it was bombed by an American gunship, working in concert with another commando team.

It was subsequently revealed that US military officers suspected the hospital of providing aid and shelter to Taliban forces, treating wounded insurgents and allowing them to use its facilities as a staging area.

The disaster inflicted on the country is being utilized to justify an expanded US military presence and permanent occupation of the country. Over the past six months, the White House has repeatedly signaled its agreement with Pentagon demands for a much larger US military role in Afghanistan, for years and decades to come.

Last October, the White House announced that it was delaying a planned “drawdown,” keeping at least 10,000 troops in Afghanistan through the end of Obama’s term. US military leaders now speak openly about their plans to indefinitely maintain a force of thousands of combat troops on the ground, along with extensive special forces deployments and a network of permanent bases.

The US determination to continue combat operations in Afghanistan is fueled by the growing breakdown of the US-backed puppet government in Kabul, the instability of which is threatening Washington’s ability to use the country as an organizing center for military operations throughout Central Asia, countering both Russian and Chinese influence in the region.

“Afghanistan is at serious risk of a political breakdown during 2016, occasioned by mounting political, economic and security challenges,” US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned earlier in February.

The fragility of the Afghan government, headed by President Ashraf Ghani, flows from the fact that it is little more than a loosely organized drug mafia, propped up by opium money and massive doses of US military violence. Until recently, the Kabul regime was headed by Hamid Karzai, a man with close family ties to the country’s leading drug trafficker. The State Department’s own Afghanistan special inspector characterized the political regime in Afghanistan as a burgeoning “narco-terrorist state” in recent testimony, noting that US anti-drug officials often refuse to visit Afghanistan out of fear for their lives.

Despite Washington’s constant rhetorical denunciations of the Taliban, the US is striving to stabilize its puppet regime by working out a compromise with sections of the Taliban via the Afghan Peace Process. US and Afghan leaders have issued increasingly open calls for members of the Islamic fundamentalist militia to join the ruling coalition in recent days.

“Any opposition group that seeks to live in brotherhood with us is welcome,” President Ghani said Monday.

“I think there are a lot of Taliban who want to come to the peace table,” US commander in Afghanistan John Campbell said on Saturday in statements from Kabul. Noting the absence of “one person who speaks for the Taliban,” Campbell called for efforts to “get the right people to the table.”

Economic problems mount in Japan and China

Nick Beams

Economic data this week from China and Japan, respectively the world’s second and third largest economies, point to the deepening global slump that underlies the turbulence on financial markets.

Japan’s economy contracted at an annual rate of 1.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2015, worse than the expected figure of 1.2 percent. The main reason was a significant fall in consumption spending, which dropped by an annual rate of 3.3 percent for the quarter, reflecting the lack of wages growth.

According to Sumitomo Mitsui Trust economist, Genzo Kimura: “The gap between prices and slow wage growth continues to widen, taking away the purchasing power from households in Japan. We’re now facing an economic bottleneck.”

Total wages in Japan have not risen by more than 1 percent for any year since 1997. For the past four years they have fallen in real terms when inflation is taken into account.

Public investment was also down, contracting at an annual rate of 10.3 percent. Far from providing a stimulus to the economy, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government is actually imposing austerity.

Growth for the full year of 2015 was just 0.4 percent, following zero growth in 2014. The results have shattered the government’s claims that so-called Abenomics would provide a stimulus to the economy.

The announcement of the latest downturn came in the wake of the surprise decision at the end of last month by the Bank of Japan (BoJ) to cut the interest rate on new deposits placed with it to minus 0.1 percent. While the rate cut was not reflected in the output results for the last quarter, it could have an impact on future consumption spending. Economists warn that consumers will not react favourably, viewing the minus rate as evidence of growing economic problems and decide to hold back on spending.

Central bankers eschew claims that they are cutting rates to lower the value of the national currency, lest they be accused of engaging in a currency war. Nevertheless, although that was not the stated aim of the rate cut, it was expected that the value of the yen would fall. However, because of increased turbulence in the global financial system, the currency’s value has actually risen since the BoJ announcement.

Since the start of the year, the yen has risen by 5.6 percent against the US dollar, eroding the competitiveness of Japanese exports.

In anticipation of the poor growth figures, BoJ deputy governor Hiroshi Nakosa called for the government to undertake decisive action to pull the country out of deflation.

The main emphasis of his remarks in a speech last weekend was the need to implement so-called structural reforms aimed at scrapping labour market regulations and implementing changes to the pension system. In other words, deepening attacks on the position of the working class, supposedly with the aim of “unlocking” economic growth.

The economic news from China was as bad as that from Japan. Exports for January fell by 11.2 percent in year-on-year terms, compared to a forecast 3.6 percent decline, while imports contracted by 18.8 percent.

The Chinese trade figures reflected the worsening slowdown around the world. Exports to the US were down by 9.7 percent year-on-year, and those to the European Union fell by 11.9 percent. Exports to Japan and South Korea, China’s two largest trading partners in Asia, fell by 5.3 percent and 15.9 percent respectively.

The Chinese slowdown was graphically revealed in figures for imports of two key industry raw materials. Coal imports were down by 9.2 percent year-on-year while the quantity of oil imports dipped by 4.6 percent.

The fall in imports overall may have been worse than the official figures indicate. The decline of 7.6 percent in December was likely understated because companies used overcharged invoices for imports as a means for moving money out of the country.

The overcharging of imports, by which mainland Chinese companies use a trading partner in Hong Kong to shift out money, is just one aspect of a growing capital flight.

The New York Times carried a report last weekend that wealthy Chinese families were trying to move large sums out of the country, fearing that the currency’s value will fall sharply and they will suffer heavy losses of wealth. The article noted that over the past year individuals and companies have moved nearly $1 trillion out of China. Foreign currency reserves, which once stood at $4 trillion, are now down to $3.23 trillion and have declined at the rate of more than $100 billion for each of the past two months.

“The swell of outflow is a destabilizing force in China’s slowing economy, threatening to undermine confidence and hurt a banking system that is struggling to deal with a decade-long lending binge,” the report said.

The Peoples Bank of China (PBoC) is trying to prevent a rush for the exits. It is using the country’s foreign exchange reserves to prevent a fall in the renminbi. But the continuing rundown in reserves, far from calming the situation, is only adding to concerns that the currency may be heading for a dramatic fall.

The Times article cited a Hong Kong money manager who sits on the boards of numerous state-owned enterprises in China. He said pessimism was becoming the consensus. Among the companies with which he was in contact, “all of them have the intention of moving money out of the country.”

In a bid to quell the outflow, PBoC deputy governor Zhou Xiaochuan gave an interview to the financial magazine Caixin in which he insisted there was no basis for concerns over the falling value of the renminbi. He dismissed suggestions that authorities would introduce tighter capital controls.

“It is normal for foreign reserves to rise and fall as long as the fundamentals face no problems,” he said, adding that it was necessary to distinguish between capital outflow and capital flight.

But it is precisely in the “fundamentals” where the problems of the Chinese economy lie. Key sections of industry have significant overcapacity, debt problems are rising and property values, while still rising in major cities, are falling elsewhere.

Figures released on Monday showed non-performing loans at Chinese banks rose by 51 percent last year, lifting the bad-loan ratio to 1.67 percent of assets, from 1.25 percent in 2014.

The percentage levels might appear small but the amounts involved are huge. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, Chinese indebtedness rose from $7 trillion in 2007 to $28 trillion by the middle of 2014.

“Three developments are potentially worrisome: half of all loans are linked directly or indirectly to China’s overheated real estate market; unregulated shadow banking accounts for nearly half of new lending; and the debt of many local governments is probably unsustainable,” it said.

Egypt: Italian student tortured to death

Johannes Stern

Italian student and journalist Giulio Regeni, who was found dead in Egypt, was buried in his hometown of Viumicello on Friday at a funeral attended by a large turnout of mourners. Since then, evidence is mounting that the Egyptian military used bestial methods to torture Regeni to death.

Reuters reported on Saturday that Regeni’s body had “seven broken ribs, signs of electrocution on his penis, traumatic injuries all over his body, and a brain hemorrhage.” This was according to an employee of the forensics authority who examined Regeni’s body.

According to a “senior source,” “His body also bore signs of cuts from a sharp instrument suspected to be a razor, abrasions, and bruises. He was likely assaulted using a stick as well as being punched and kicked.”

Spiegel Online had previously reported on autopsy results that had “brought to light grisly results”. “Regeni was apparently systematically tortured before his death. Regeni’s tormenters cut off ears and tore out finger- and toenails. His body was covered in burns and cuts, upper arm bones and shoulder blades were among those broken”, the news site wrote.

Italian interior minister Angelino Alfano referred to a second autopsy in Italy and “inhumane, animalistic and unacceptable violence” to which the victim was subjected.

What is known about the background to Regeni’s horrific torture death?

According to reports, Regeni left his apartment in the Cairo district of Dokki on January 25 at around 20:00. His planned destination was a birthday celebration near Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo. But the 28-year-old Italian never arrived. Instead, a taxi driver found Regeni’s body at the side of the highway between Cairo and Alexandria on February 3. He allegedly came across the half-naked body because the taxi happened to break down at that particular spot. However, the discovery took place shortly after the Italian government, confronted with significant pressure, had publicly urged the Egyptian military dictatorship led by Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi to support the search for Regeni.

Eventually, the Egyptian regime, at the urging of its ambassador in Rome, agreed to undertake an autopsy on the body. However, it has since denied having anything to do with Regini’s death. On Monday, a media official at the Egyptian Interior Ministry dismissed “reports in the Western media” that Regeni “was arrested by Egyptian security forces before his death.” Prior to this, Interior Minister Magdi Abdel Ghaffar disputed the claim that Regeni was ever in the hands of the authorities, asserting, “Such crimes have never been associated with the security apparatus.”

In fact, there is considerable circumstantial evidence to suggest that the junta’s security forces attacked and tortured Regeni to death for political reasons.

Regeni disappeared on the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the Egyptian revolution against long-standing dictator Hosni Mubarak. On that day, thousands of heavily armed security personnel, in uniform and plainclothes, were posted in the city centre to ensure that the Egyptian masses did not take to the streets once again to protest against the counterrevolutionary junta. This massive security build-up by itself makes it appear highly improbable that Regeni fell victim to criminals.

Based on the testimony of eyewitnesses, the New York Times reported on Friday that Regeni was “led away by two men believed to be Egyptian security agents” and that “three security officials said Mr. Regeni had indeed been taken into custody.”

According to Italian daily Il Corriere Dela Sera, a street trader told Italian investigators that plainclothes security agents had “taken [Regeni] with” them at the exit of a subway station on the day he disappeared. Regeni had been concerned about his security after he was photographed by an unknown observer on December 11 at a joint meeting with academics.

As a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Cambridge, Regeni was researching the role of the independent trade unions in Egypt, and also wrote articles under a pseudonym for the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto, which is aligned with Rifondazione Comunista (Communist Refoundation). Spiegel Onlines peculated that the “trainee academic due to his work [maintained] contact with people who were being spied upon by the security services.”

The independent trade unions and pseudo-left organisations supported the July 2013 military coup against President Mohammed Mursi and the Muslim Brotherhood. The president of the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU), Kamal Abu Aita, even joined the junta government as labour minister and backed the suppression of protests and strikes. Under conditions where rising social inequality and repression by the junta threaten to provoke another revolutionary uprising, there have been criticisms by sections of the “independent” unions of the terror methods employed by Al-Sisi.

The message being sent out by Regeni’s murder is clear: anyone in Egypt who dares to criticise the regime, even if they are foreign, must expect to be abducted and tortured to death.

Regeni’s fate is only the tip of the iceberg. According to Amnesty International, 41,000 political prisoners had disappeared into the country’s jails in the middle of 2014. Since then, there have been no more reliable figures. In the same way as before, Egyptians are disappearing on a daily basis without charges, or are condemned in show trials by a military tribunal. The numbers have increased in recent weeks. According to human rights activists, 163 people were forcibly abducted between April and June, 340 from August to November, and in January of this year alone, 66. Forty-two of these cases led to torture.

Although the counterrevolutionary Al-Sisi regime has far surpassed the Mubarak dictatorship, the same Western governments currently decrying “human rights” abuses in Syria to justify their intervention against Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin have largely remained silent on Regeni’s death. There are two main reasons for this. They see the Egyptian junta as a bulwark against another potential uprising by the Egyptian working class and also cooperate closely with Al-Sisi to impose their economic and geostrategic interests in the region. Last year, Berlin, Paris and London rolled out the red carpet for the Egyptian dictator.

In addition, Western “democracies” are increasingly resorting to Al-Sisi’s methods to suppress growing popular resistance to despised policies of austerity and war. This was clearly visible last June when the German police worked closely with the Egyptian security authorities in the arrest of the Egyptian journalist Ahmed Mansour at Berlin-Tegel airport.

Currently, the Hollande government in France is using a state of emergency to establish a police state along the Egyptian model. According to a report by Human Rights Watch researchers, special police conducted at least 3,289 raids in recent weeks. They forced their way into homes and buildings, attacked residents, handcuffed them and beat them. Just a few hours after the attacks of November 13, Al-Sisi and Hollande discussed via telephone how to “fight terrorism”.

Europe at the breaking point

Alex Lantier

This weekend's Munich Security Conference, which brought together European and international officials, exposed deep and bitter divisions wracking European capitalism. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls’ public attack on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's policy in the European refugee crisis, in which Valls demanded even more vicious attacks on refugees, was among the sharpest of a whole host of conflicts that erupted.

Having dismissed Merkel's policy as “unviable in the long run” the day before the summit, Valls said Paris was “not in favor” of her proposal to distribute throughout Europe hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing imperialist wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, on the basis of a quota system. “We need a very clear message that ‘Now, we don't take any more refugees,’” he declared.

Valls bluntly predicted that if refugees kept fleeing to Europe, the European Union (EU) would disintegrate politically and economically. Borders would keep going up in Europe to halt them, he said, and international trade within Europe and the Schengen accords on free movement between European countries would collapse, “with economic consequences we can only imagine.”

Not content to state his opposition to Merkel, Valls sought support among right-wing nationalist European politicians hostile to her policy. He first met with Horst Seehofer, the minister-president of Bavaria, whose Christian Social Union (CSU) is an outspoken critic of Merkel's refugee policy. Valls then lunched on Saturday with Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, who the previous day had called Berlin's refugee policy “stupid.”

After the summit ended, as British Prime Minister David Cameron traveled to Paris to discuss with President François Hollande the terms on which Britain would remain inside the EU, Valls warned that a British exit from the EU would mean an “irreversible dislocation” of Europe.

In less than 25 years, the entire European project announced in 1992 with the passage of the Maastricht Treaty establishing the EU has begun to collapse. At that time, shortly after the Stalinist bureaucracy had dissolved the USSR as part of the restoration of capitalism across Eastern Europe, apologists for capitalism claimed that the end of the communist danger would create unity in Europe. Far from being the cradle of peace, prosperity and unity, however, the EU is proving to be the midwife of a new eruption of chauvinism, austerity and war.

The deep and fast-growing fissures splitting the EU apart confirm Leon Trotsky's warning that it is impossible to unite Europe on a capitalist basis. “One of the basic reasons for the crisis in bourgeois society is the fact that the productive forces can no longer be reconciled with the framework of the national state,” Trotsky wrote in The Permanent Revolution. “From this follows, on the one hand, imperialist wars, on the other, the utopia of a bourgeois United States of Europe.”

The fate of millions of desperate refugees fleeing societies ravaged by decades of imperialist wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria has become the focus of intensifying geo-strategic and economic conflicts between the European powers. It is triggering clashes over borders, economic policy and conflicting interests in various parts of the world, particularly Eastern Europe, that are deeply rooted politically and historically in the bloody contradictions of European capitalism.

Anonymous German officials pointedly reminded Le Monde that they could retaliate to criticisms of German policy by objecting to the size of France's budget deficit, which violates EU rules. With European banks facing €1 trillion in bad loans and layoffs spreading throughout the EU, Berlin could press for bone-crunching austerity from Greece to Italy to France should the sell-off on financial markets trigger an economic collapse in Europe.

The unnamed German officials added that Valls' statement on refugees was “all the more unfriendly” in that it encouraged opposition to Berlin from Macedonia, Bulgaria and the Visegrad Group (the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia) as they met Monday in Prague. There, the six Eastern European countries, traditional allies of Berlin that are economically closely integrated with Germany, opposed Merkel's quota proposal on refugees. Instead, they agreed to help Macedonia close its border with Greece to block the passage of refugees into the rest of Europe.

Even as NATO militarizes much of Eastern Europe in a reckless confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, the power struggle between Berlin and Paris over refugee policy and influence in Eastern Europe is another ominous sign of a political breakdown. Since Berlin launched the re-militarization of its foreign policy in 2014, the European powers have announced plans to spend hundreds of billions more on their armed forces.

Now, as before World War I, when France cemented an anti-German alliance with Russia, and World War II, when its eastern ally against Germany was Poland, France is trying to counterbalance the rising economic and military weight of Germany by making political appeals to the East to oppose Berlin.

One of the greatest dangers facing working people is that the intensification of international conflict is accompanied by the deliberate stoking up of militarism and chauvinism to divide the working class, as starkly seen in the attacks on immigrants. As conflicts between the major European powers set Europe back onto a path of disintegration and war, the road to the unification of Europe passes through the struggle to unite the working class for the overthrow of capitalism and establishment of socialism in all of the countries of Europe.

In this fraught political context, anti-immigrant sentiment incited across Eastern Europe, in France, by parties ranging from Valls' Socialist Party to the neo-fascist National Front (FN), and in Germany, by the CSU and politicians like Thilo Sarrazin, is setting Europe on a course to disaster.

Under the impact of anti-German forces in France such as FN leader Marine Le Pen and Left Front leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, or anti-Greek sentiment stoked up by the entire German ruling elite, the anti-immigrant hysteria and militarism being promoted across Europe can explode once again into the hatred between European nations that repeatedly plunged the continent into war in the last century.

Australia Awards Scholarships

Australian Government
Bachelors/Masters/PhD Degrees

Deadline: varies, Feb-April 2016
Study in:  Australia
Course starts 2016

Brief description:

Australia Awards Scholarships, formerly known as Australian Development Scholarships (ADS), provide opportunities for people from developing countries, particularly those countries located in the Indo-Pacific region, to undertake full time undergraduate or postgraduate study at participating Australian universities and Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutions.

Host Institution(s):

Any of the Participating Australian Institutions

Level/Field(s) of study:

Undergraduate or Postgraduate Programmes that are related to your country’s priority areas for development which are listed on the participating country profiles.

Australia Awards are not available for training in areas related to flying aircraft, nuclear technology or military training.

Number of Scholarships:

Not specified.

Target group:

Citizens of one of the participating countries in Asia, Pacific, Africa, and the Middle East. See the complete list of participating countries.

Scholarship value/inclusions/duration:

The scholarship benefits generally include: full tuition fees, return air travel, establishment allowance, contribution to living expenses (CLE), Overseas Student Health Cover (OSHC), Introductory Academic Program (IAP), Pre-course English (PCE) fees, etc. See the complete list of benefits at the official website.

The scholarships are offered for the minimum period necessary for the individual to complete the academic program specified by the Australian higher education institution, including any preparatory training.

Eligibility:

To be eligible to receive a Scholarship, applicants must:

a. be a minimum of 18 years of age at the time of commencing the Scholarship

b. be a citizen of a participating country (as listed on the Australia Awards website) and be residing in and applying for the scholarship from their country of citizenship

c. not be married, engaged to, or a de facto of a person who holds, or is eligible to hold, Australian or New Zealand citizenship or permanent residency, at any time during the application, selection or mobilisation phases (note: residents of Cook Islands, Niue and Tokelau with New Zealand citizenship are eligible but must apply for a Foreign Affairs or Defence Sector (subclass 576) visa

d. not be current serving military personnel

e. not be a citizen of Australia, hold permanent residency in Australia or be applying for a visa to live in Australia permanently

f. not be applying for another long‐term Australia Award unless they have resided outside of Australia for twice the length of the total time that they were in Australia

g. have satisfied any specific criteria established by the Program Area or the government of the applicant’s country of citizenship (e.g. having worked a certain number of years in an appropriate sector)

h. be able to satisfy the admission requirements of the institution at which the award is to be undertaken

i. be able to satisfy all requirements of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection to hold a Foreign Affairs or Defence Sector (subclass 576) visa.

j. Applicants must inform the Program Area of any connection or relationship to staff employed at Program Areas or with managing contractors so that the application may be properly and transparently managed.

Read the complete eligibility criteria in the Australia Awards Policy Handbook (PDF)

Application instructions:

Check the open and close dates for your country, and select your country of citizenship/residency from the list of participating countries for specific information on eligibility, priority areas and how to apply. Deadline varies per country but falls around Feb-April 2016.Applications for Australia Awards for Africa are already closed. 

It is important to read the how to apply page and visit the  country specific pages, and the official website (link found below) for detailed and updated information on how to apply for this scholarship.

Website:

Official Scholarship Website:  http://www.dfat.gov.au/people-to-people/australia-awards/Pages/australia-awards-scholarships.aspx

Related Scholarships: Australia Scholarships for International Students

End NATO Now

Eric Zuesse

The continuation of NATO, after its counterpart the Warsaw Pact ended in 1991, is an insanity that’s driving the world inexorably toward World War III.

The trigger for that war is now being set by NATO member Turkey, which wants to invade neighboring Syria, and which has the support of the Gulf Cooperation Council (including the world’s biggest buyer of U.S. weapons, Saudi Arabia) who are massing troops and weapons on Syria’s northern border, in preparation for an invasion southward into Syria.

Once they invade Syria from Turkish territory, it won’t be enough for the Syrian army and its Russian ally to wage war against them inside Syrian territory, because the invaders will then need to be counter-attacked in order to be defeated, and so there will be an invasion of NATO-member Turkey — a counter-invasion, in defence against Syria’s invaders — a counter-invasion which, however morally necessary it will be, will trigger nuclear war, for this reason:

The NATO Treaty in its Article Five, “Collective Defence,” asserts (as summarized by NATO): "Collective defence means that an attack against one Ally is considered as an attack against all Allies.” In other words, when Syria and Russia respond to Turkey’s aggression by counter-invading Turkey, the entire NATO alliance are automatically Treaty-obligated to ‘defend’ Turkey from that justified invasion of Turkey by Syria and by Syria’s Russian ally.

Either Russia would instead abandon its ally there, which would mean for Russia to capitulate to NATO’s invasion of its ally, or else Russia would do its moral duty to its ally, and there would then be World War III, between Russia and all NATO nations, which would be an all-out nuclear war, which will end civilization and make all continued life on this planet intolerable.

This is the — after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 — entirely unnecessary danger, and the blatant evil (to be quite frank about it), of NATO’s having been continued beyond the time when it should have terminated (when and as the Warsaw Pact did in 1991).

America’s President at that time in 1990, George Herbert Walker Bush, said privately to other NATO members, contradicting the message and assurances that he and his agents had verbally given to Mikhail Gorbachev saying that the Cold War was now at an end, “To hell with that! We prevailed, they didn’t.” Bush was secretly committed to a military ‘victory’ over Russia, even though communism, which was the alleged cause of the Cold War, had ended. Bush wanted conquest; all subsequent U.S. Presidents have followed along with that evil intent.

Every moment of NATO’s continued existence after that moment has been a continuation of Bush’s lie. It has become a fatal lie now, because every subsequent U.S. President has not only continued NATO, but increased its membership, has expanded NATO all the way to Russia’s borders, and President Obama wants the next U.S. President to culminate this, when he made clear (via his ‘Defense’ Secretary Ash Carter) recently, that the U.S. will quadruple American weaponry and troops on Russia’s border in a process that’s to be completed by 2017.

Turkey can’t wait. The insanity and evil that have reigned in the West since 1991 are now set on a Turkish hair-trigger. That gun — NATO — is pointed actually against everyone on this planet, even if a Turkish madman doesn’t pull its trigger immediately.

End NATO Now. Before it’s too late.

Regional tensions and falling oil prices deepen crisis of Saudi monarchy

Jean Shaoul

The House of Saud is seeking to impose onto the working class the full cost of its oil policies that led to crude prices sinking to below $30 a barrel in January, its disastrous military intervention in Yemen, and covert wars in Iraq and Syria in support of Islamist extremists.

It is stoking sectarian tensions against its minority Shi’ite population, concentrated in the oil-producing Eastern Province, as a means of dividing and deflecting popular opposition away from the venal and sclerotic monarchy and isolating Iran, its main rival in the region.

All this has resulted in increasingly tense relations with the United States, on whom the monarchy depends.

The plummeting of oil prices, a product of the decision, backed by Washington, to reject any reduction in output in order to protect its market share and undermine the economies of Russia and Iran that have backed the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad, has since taken its toll on the Saudi economy.

Nevertheless, despite prices plunging to an 11-year low of under $30 per barrel, Saudi Oil Minister Ali Naimi said the oil policy would continue—even if prices reach $20 per barrel. While Saudi Arabia’s oil producer, the government-owned Aramco, can produce at less than $20 per barrel, the government, which is almost totally dependent on oil revenues—there is almost no revenue from taxation—needs at least $90 per barrel to maintain fiscal balance.

Naimi stressed that his oil price strategy is working, with Saudi oil exports to major consumers in Asia (Asia takes more two-thirds of Saudi oil exports) and Europe reaching multi-year highs in the first half of 2015, and exports to the US increasing, although far less the 2.2 million bpd in May 2003. Riyadh now has around 8.1 percent of the global market compared to 7.9 percent in 2014, although it is likely to have difficulty maintaining this as additional crude comes to the market from Iran and Iraq and US shale oil production is still rising.

Last year, Saudi Arabia recorded its highest budget deficit, at nearly $100 billion (15 percent of GDP) since the post-Gulf War period. Its 2016 budget deficit, projected to reach 13.5 percent of GDP, is likely to exceed this.

Despite this, the 2016 budget cut public spending by 25 percent, slashing energy subsidies, with gas prices set to increase by 50 percent. It will also raise revenues by introducing a tax on Saudi nationals for the first time—a 5 percent value added tax—and privatising government-owned companies, including Aramco, in a bid to prevent the budget deficit soaring from $98 billion in 2015 to $140 billion and limit the need to rely on its approximately $600 billion reserves.

It marks a departure from the long running basis of Saudi rule: a modicum of welfare, subsidies for health and housing, cheap gasoline and free education while the House of Saud creams off the country’s vast oil wealth without the veneer of parliamentary democracy. The removal of such benefits cannot but spark social and political opposition, under conditions where about 60 percent of the population are under 30, and 28.3 percent of young people are unemployed, with an even higher rate for young women.

There are few reliable figures on Saudi poverty. In 2011, three young bloggers were arrested for reporting on poverty in Riyadh. They had released a YouTube video showing the living conditions in the capital, as well as personal interviews and comments made by beggars. After the video was viewed nearly 800,000 times, the Saudi police arrested the youth to make sure that no one else followed their example.

Private sector growth, a crucial element in the government’s plan for creating employment for the hundreds of thousands of young Saudis entering the job market every year, fell from 5 percent in 2014 to 2.9 percent in 2015.

The new budget measures follow the issue of two series of bonds in August and cuts in government spending in October and were timed to coincide with the execution of 47 prisoners, including Nimr al-Nimr, a Muslim cleric and leading spokesman for Saudi Arabia’s oppressed Shi’ite minority, which drowned out the economic news. Nimr was tortured and convicted by a kangaroo court on charges of “disobeying the ruler” and “encouraging, leading and participating in demonstrations” that swept the predominantly Shi’ite Eastern Province in 2011.

The mass executions, along with the sharp rise in beheadings in 2015, were intended to show that no opposition would be tolerated, while Nimr’s execution was designed to exacerbate sectarian tensions within the country and throughout the region, and provoke Iran. It triggered demonstrations and firebomb attacks on the Saudi embassy in Tehran and the consulate in Mashad, to which Riyadh responded by severing diplomatic relations.

This is driven by the Saudi monarchy’s opposition to the US deal with Iran and fear that Iran’s reintegration into international relations will jeopardise its own position under conditions where the entire region is collapsing as a result of US imperialism’s shifting and contradictory policies.

It follows increasing tensions with Washington, many of whose decisions it has opposed, including the Obama administration’s refusal to prevent the ouster of Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak that sparked unrest throughout the region, including the Gulf; its willingness to work with the Muslim Brotherhood government of President Mohammed Mursi; its support for the pro-Iranian Shi’ite government in Iraq, its reluctance to intervene decisively in the war in Syria to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, Iran’s ally and a significant player in Lebanon, allowing Russia to intervene to shore up Assad.

Riyadh is determined to undermine the US-Iran rapprochement and any negotiated end to the war in Syria, which it has funded to the tune of billions of dollars as well as participating in the CIA’s covert action campaign. It seeks to draw the US into the war in Syria to salvage its position and if possible against Iran itself.

The bitter sectarian war the Saudis have stoked in Syria has not only been unsuccessful in terms of Riyadh’s objectives, but has strengthened the al-Qaeda-linked Sunni Islamist militias with their own agendas in Saudi Arabia itself. Al-Qaeda has been one of the main beneficiaries of its military intervention in Yemen.

On Monday last week, Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack on a member of the Saudi armed forces in Riyadh, although there were no reports of injuries. On January 29, IS attacked a Shia mosque in Eastern Province, killing four people and injuring 18.

Such are the tensions between the Saudi monarchy and Washington that US Secretary of State John Kerry flew to Riyadh two weeks ago to try to calm tensions in the Gulf, allay fears over the Syria talks in Geneva and assure the Gulf States of continued US support. He said, “Folks, we have as solid a relationship, as clear an alliance, and a strong friendship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as we ever had.”

Germany, however, has become increasingly concerned that Saudi Arabia is about to set the whole region aflame. The Independent newspaper reported that BND, the German intelligence agency, had published a memo last year saying that Saudi Arabia had adopted “an impulsive policy of intervention.” It characterised the Saudi defence minister and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman—the 30-year-old favourite son of the 80-year-old feeble King Salman—as a political gambler who is destabilising the Arab world through proxy wars in Yemen and Syria.

Coup threatened in Venezuela amidst deepening economic crisis

Eric London

In the midst of skyrocketing inflation, food scarcity and economic stagnation in Venezuela, the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) party is maneuvering for the removal of President Nicholas Maduro.

In December’s legislative elections, the MUD won a landslide victory over Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) as voters reacted to the failure of the “Chavista” government to address widespread poverty and economic insecurity. In the aftermath of the election, the MUD made provocative press statements giving Maduro a six month deadline to solve the crisis.

On February 11, legislative opposition leader Henry Ramos Allup delivered the most provocative statements yet. “If anyone was thinking the six months we had given ourselves to find a democratic, constitutional, peaceful and electoral solution… was too hurried, today nobody doubts that this six month period was too long.”

The statement was given in response to a decision announced that same day by Venezuela’s highest court. The court voted to uphold Maduro’s January declaration of a state of “economic emergency,” which granted the executive branch special powers to bypass the legislature in responding to the crisis.

The constitutional crisis between the legislative and judicial branches is the product of a deep fracture in the Venezuelan ruling class that threatens to boil over in the coming weeks. Ramos Allup announced that “in the coming days we will offer an exit proposal for the disgrace that is this government.”

The Venezuelan constitution allows for popular recall of elected officials, including the president. A referendum can only take place after the official’s term has reached its midway point, which in Madero’s case would be in April 2016. The number of votes required to recall Madero will be roughly 200,000 votes less than the total received by the MUD in the December legislative elections. In other words, a successful recall is a clear possibility.

But Ramos Allup alluded to something more in his speech: “There is a movement within the government that is asking for Maduro’s resignation as the lesser evil,” he said. The government “is doing everything possible to give itself a coup, I don’t have any doubt because it’s the only justification that we have after this defeat and the monumental errors of 17 years.”

The implications of these words are clear enough in a country that has had six coups d’état in the last 70 years.

Maduro has responded by making clear that his government is prepared to defend Venezuelan capitalism at all costs. Speaking Thursday at a ribbon cutting ceremony for a factory in the state of Carabobo, he said, “We are taking care of social and labor stability, and we are making a daily effort to maintain the entire productive capacity of the country.” In recent weeks, Maduro has made good on his promise by sending civil guard forces to quell isolated strikes.

The political crisis in Venezuela has been sparked by an escalating economic crisis. The failure of the nationalist, export-based economic reforms of Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chavez have ended in widespread poverty and social misery.

A 75 percent drop in the price of oil has produced a ripple effect in the Venezuelan economy, where “missiones” social programs are largely dependent on the country’s export of crude oil. In early February, Venezuela had an oil reserve of 300 billion barrels—eight times the reserves of the United States. Venezuela’s exports are expected to total around $27 billion in 2016, down from $75 billion in 2014.

In the third quarter of 2015, the Venezuelan economy shrank 7.1 percent. Inflation was at 141 percent for the year ending in September 2015, and many experts believe inflation will exceed 200 percent in 2016. There is a real possibility of a debt default, with half of the country’s $10 billion in debt payments due this November. “The country is in economic meltdown. The figures are predictably horrific,” economist Edward Glossop of the research firm Capital Economics told CNN.

Video has surfaced of food riots outside of a Central Madeirense supermarket in the town Acarigua. A scarcity of food has produced a desperate situation for millions of working class Venezuelans, with some states reporting that 70 to 90 percent of grocery stores lack basic staples like rice, chicken and corn flour.

Under these conditions of chaos, the right-wing MUD, backed by US imperialism, is creating conditions for a change in power. In particular, the US government wants to obtain access to Venezuela’s oil, which is currently processed and sold by the state-owned oil company, Petroleum of Venezuela (PDVSA).

In November 2015, documents released by whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was operating a massive surveillance operation out of the US Embassy in Caracas to hack into the computer network of PDVSA.

After the program was made public, US State Department spokesman John Kirby said that the US government “has no interest or intent to destabilize the Venezuelan government.” Kirby added, “There’s no intent to use electronic surveillance to benefit commercial gains.”

These claims are laughable. The US has funded numerous dictatorships and death squads across Latin America in an effort to more effectively extract resources on behalf of American corporations.

In 2002, the CIA was the instigator of a coup attempt against Chavez. In the months before the attempt, coup leader Pedro Carmona made regular visits to the White House and met with Bush administration officials, who gave explicit support for the coup. Twenty people were killed in the coup attempt, which fell apart when the military and hundreds of thousands of people converged on the presidential palace to demand Chavez’s reinstatement.

But the crisis in Venezuela today is a product of the failure of Chavez’s program and his so-called Bolivian Revolution. The Chavez and Maduro governments have responded to workers’ strikes with massive state repression and have based their programs on a defense of capitalism with only mild social reforms and limited nationalizations.

Their nationalist approach has left the population vulnerable to fluctuations in the world oil market, with devastating consequences for workers and peasants. Only a movement of the working class, independent of the Bolivian PSUV and linked in struggle with the workers of North and South America, can oppose efforts by MUD and US imperialism to further carve up the country on behalf of Wall Street.

Washington denounces Russia, backs escalation of Syria war

Alex Lantier

Only hours after US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov unveiled a vague plan Friday for the “cessation of hostilities” in Syria, US allies pushed for a major escalation of the war, as leaders of many major states met at the Munich Security Conference (MSC).

On Saturday, Turkish and Saudi officials confirmed that they plan to begin bombing and launch a ground invasion of Syria. “Turkey and Saudi Arabia may launch an operation from the land,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told Yeni Safak, adding that Saudi Arabia is “ready to send both jets and troops” to Incirlik air base in Turkey.

Washington has given these operations its blessing, though they threaten to unleash a war that could engulf the entire Middle East and escalate into world war. US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Friday that he expected commandos from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to invade Syria. Carter claimed they would attack the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS); however, Turkey and Saudi Arabia support Sunni Islamist forces in Syria like ISIS, and their aim would be to destroy Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Speaking to Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung Friday night, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir personally threatened the Syrian president: “There will be no Bashar al-Assad in the future.”

The Iranian military, whose units are operating alongside Russian and Syrian government forces against NATO-backed Sunni Islamist groups, warned Sunday that they would respond to military escalation by Turkey and Saudi Arabia in kind. “We will not let the situation in Syria get out of control so that some rogue states could implement their policies. If needed, we will take some appropriate decisions,” declared Deputy Chief of Staff Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev had already warned that Saudi ground operations could provoke a “new world war.” He told Handelsblatt, “A ground operation draws everyone taking part in it into a war... The Americans and our Arab partners must consider whether or not they want a permanent war.”

As Russian bombings and Syrian offensives threaten to retake the city of Aleppo from the opposition, NATO and its allies are signaling that they are willing to launch staggeringly reckless escalations to ensure the defeat of Assad and Moscow. The main MSC panel Saturday erupted into arguments over Syria as Kerry and French Prime Minister Manuel Valls attacked Russia, warning that NATO would not allow its Islamist proxies to be beaten.

Kerry accused Moscow of “repeated aggression” in Syria, declaring, “To date, the vast majority, in our opinion, of Russia’s attacks have been against legitimate opposition groups.”

He continued: “Assad and his allies, including Russia, might believe that by defying the will of the international community they can win the war. If that is what Russia and Assad think, then I believe they would have been missing the lessons of the last five years.” The US-backed opposition forces “may be pushed back here and there but they are not going to surrender,” Kerry said.

The French prime minister echoed Kerry’s hard line. “We know that to find the path to peace again, the Russian bombing of civilians has to stop,” Valls said.

Whatever the death toll caused by the Kremlin oligarchy’s air strikes in Syria, the criticisms of Kerry and Valls are hypocritical and false to the core. The central cause of the war, which has claimed 300,000 lives and forced 11 million Syrians to flee their homes, is the drive of NATO and its Middle East allies to topple Assad. Sunni Islamist militias like Ahrar al-Sham and the Farouq Brigades, which they back as “moderate opposition” forces, advocate the creation of Sunni theocracies and sectarian violence against Shia Muslims.

Medvedev, who sat next to Valls in the conference hall, replied by accusing him of fabricating his charges against Russia. “There is no evidence of our bombing civilians, even though everyone is accusing us of this,” he said.

Medvedev then attacked NATO’s stance towards Russia as hostile, comparing the situation to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. “We have fallen into a new Cold War,” he said. “Nearly on a daily basis, we are being blamed for the most terrible threat to NATO as a whole, to Europe, to America, to other countries. They make scary movies where Russia starts a nuclear war. I sometimes wonder: are we in 2016 or 1962?”

Medvedev’s reference to the Cuban Missile Crisis, which nearly led to nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union, is not an idle one. Amid escalating crises between Russia and NATO—from Ukraine, the naval standoff in the Black Sea and the Baltic republics, to Syria—ever larger sections of military-diplomatic officialdom are concluding that all-out war between nuclear-armed powers is possible or even inevitable.

The official conference document, the Munich Security Report 2016, made clear that world war is a possibility. It asserted, “for the first time since the end of the Cold War, the escalation of violence between major powers cannot be dismissed as an unrealistic nightmare.”

The fact that world leaders are bitterly arguing among themselves, while acknowledging that they are placing the world on the verge of wars that could annihilate humanity, testifies to the bankruptcy of the capitalist social order. Riven by social inequality and class tensions, torn apart by competition for profits and strategic advantage between the major powers, global capitalism has reached a dead end.

The leaders of the major imperialist powers, including the US, Germany, France and Britain, see no alternative to war. Thus, MSC Chairman Wolfgang Ischinger declared in closing remarks to the conference, “There is a need for the use of military force to make and to enforce peace. It is sad that it is so, but it is so.”

The conference report listed many regional issues as posing serious threats. It cited crises in Brazil and Turkey, the dissolution of the European Union, a British exit from the EU, “thinly veiled nuclear threats” in Eastern Europe, the need to find hundreds of millions of jobs for Africa’s rising population, and China’s rising economic and geo-strategic weight. The assembled officials are also increasingly aware of and concerned about the danger of social struggle: an upsurge of the working class from below.

Significantly, the report identified mass social anger as one of the “Top 10 Risks for 2016.” It fretted, “As slower growth and stagnating living standards stoke popular discontent, angry citizens will take to the streets.”

The conference also discussed the migrant crisis, as hundreds of thousands of Syrian, Afghan and Iraqi refugees flee war to Europe, where they have largely gone to Germany. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier used it to promote German remilitarization, a policy announced at the 2014 MSC.

“I think many of you were here two years ago, when we discussed the changing role of Germany and its responsibilities,” he observed. “Today we consider our responsibility in an absolutely different way: when the migration crisis started, we realized that this was about certain actions rather than abstract duties.”

This issue drew a reactionary retort from the French prime minister. Warning of the possible dissolution of the EU, Valls declared that Paris is “not favorable” to Berlin’s call for quotas to distribute refugees across the EU and that France would agree to take in only 30,000 refugees.

Inequality, class and life expectancy in America

Barry Grey

A study by Brookings Institution economists released Friday documents a sharp increase in life span divergences between the rich and the poor in America. The report, based on an analysis of Census Bureau and Social Security Administration data, concludes that for men born in 1950, the gap in life expectancy between the top 10 percent of wage earners and the bottom 10 percent is more than double the gap for their counterparts born in 1920.

For those born in 1920, there was a six-year differential between rich and poor. For those born in 1950, that difference had reached 14 years. For women, the gap grew from 4.7 years to 13 years, almost tripling.

Overall, life expectancy for the bottom 10 percent improved by just 3 percent for men born in 1950 over those born in 1920. For the top 10 percent, it soared by about 28 percent.

Life expectancy for the bottom 10 percent of male wage earners born in 1950 rose by less than one year compared to that for male workers born 40 years earlier—to 73.6 from 72.9. But for the top 10 percent, life expectancy leapt to 87.2 from 79.1.

The United States ranks among the worst so-called rich countries when it comes to life expectancy. But its low ranking is entirely due to the poor health and high mortality of low-income Americans. According to the Social Security Administration, life expectancy for the wealthiest US men at age 60 was just below the rates for Iceland and Japan, two countries with the highest levels. Americans in the bottom quarter of the wage scale, on the other hand, ranked just above Poland and the Czech Republic.

Life-expectancy is the most basic indicator of social well-being. The minimal increase for low-income workers and the widening disparity between the poor and the rich is a stark commentary on the immense growth of social inequality and class polarization in the United States. It underscores the fact that socioeconomic class is the fundamental category of social life under capitalism—one that conditions every aspect of life, including its length.

The Brookings Institution findings shed further light on the catastrophic decline in the social position of the American working class. They follow recent reports showing a sharp rise in death rates for both young and middle-aged white workers, primarily due to drug abuse, alcoholism and suicide. Other recent reports have shown a dramatic decline in life expectancy for poorer middle-aged Americans and a reversal of decades of declining infant mortality.

It is no mystery what is behind this vast social retrogression. It is the product of the decay of American capitalism and a four-decade-long offensive by the ruling elite against the working class. From Reagan to the Obama administration, Democrats and Republicans alike have overseen a corporate-government assault on the jobs, wages, pensions and health benefits of working people.

The ruling elite has dismantled the bulk of the country’s industrial infrastructure, destroying decent-paying jobs by the millions, and turned to the most parasitic and criminal forms of financial speculation as the main source of its profit and private wealth. Untold trillions have been squandered to finance perpetual war and the maniacal self-enrichment of the top 1 percent and 0.1 percent.

The basic infrastructure of the country has been starved of funds and left to rot, to the point where uncounted millions of people are being poisoned with lead and other toxins from corroded water systems. Flint, Michigan is just the tip of the iceberg.

Under Obama, this social counterrevolution has been intensified. The financial meltdown of 2008 has been utilized by the same forces that precipitated the crash to carry through a reordering of social relations aimed at reversing every social gain won by the working class in the course of a century of struggle. A central target of the attack is health care for working people.

Obamacare is the spearhead of a worked-out strategy to reduce the quantity and quality of health care available to workers and reorganize the health care system directly on a class basis. Corporate and government costs are to be slashed by gutting employer-paid health care, forcing workers individually to buy expensive, bare-bones plans from the insurance monopolies, and rationing drugs, tests and medical procedures to make them inaccessible to workers.

The rise in mortality for workers and the widening of the life span gap between rich and poor are not simply the outcome of impersonal economic forces. In corporate boardrooms, think tanks and state agencies, the ruling class is working to lower working class life expectancy. In late 2013, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank with the closest ties to the Pentagon and the CIA, published two policy papers decrying the “waste” of money on health care for the elderly. The clear message was that ordinary people were living much too long and diverting resources needed by the military to wage war around the world.

The social and economic chasm in America finds a political expression in the vast disconnect between the entire political establishment and the masses of working people. Neither party nor any of their presidential candidates, the self-described “socialist” Bernie Sanders included, can seriously address the real state of social conditions or offer a serious program to address the crisis.

In his final State of the Union Address last month, Obama presented an absurd picture of a resurgent economy. “The United States of America, right now,” he declared, “has the strongest, most durable economy in the world… Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction.”

In the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton and Sanders are seeking to outdo one another in seizing the mantle of the Obama administration and praising its supposed social and economic achievements.

They cannot address the real conditions facing the masses of working people because they defend the capitalist system, which is the source of the social disaster. The remedy must be based on an understanding of the disease. It is the building of an independent socialist and revolutionary movement uniting the entire working class, in the US and around the world.