Second terrorist attack in a month in Turkish capital kills at least 37

Halil Celik

On Sunday March 13, at least 37 people were killed and 125 wounded in a car bomb attack in the middle of Ankara, the Turkish capital. Immediately after the attack, the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTUK) banned broadcasting images of the scene and of victims, while an Ankara court ordered the blocking of social media, including Facebook and Twitter.

The last terrorist attack was carried out on February 17 by the Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK), a splinter group from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), near the military headquarters, parliament and other key government institutions in Ankara, killing 29, most of them soldiers. It came four months after a suicide bombing organised by the Islamic State (IS) against a peace rally near the Ankara Railway Station left at least 103 dead.

After the attack, the Turkish ruling elite seized the opportunity to further promote nationalist and military propaganda justifying its ongoing military operations in Kurdish towns of the country.

Immediately after the terrorist attack, both Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu repeated their resolve to escalate military operations against the PKK. “Our state will never give up using its right of self-defence in the face of all kinds of terror threats. All of our security forces, including soldiers, police and village guards, have been conducting a determined struggle against terror organisations at the cost of their lives,” Erdogan said in a written statement.

Although no organization claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack, Davutoğlu said in a written statement that they had “concrete information on the terrorist group behind the attack.”

Paving the way for a possible Turkish ground invasion of Syria, Davutoğlu accused the PKK of perpetrating the attack, adding: “Our country has been targeted by multidimensional terror attacks in a thorny and unstable region. As before, and from now on, the Republic of Turkey will conduct its struggle against terror with great determination for the sake of our nation’s unity and serenity, and it will punish in the most severe way treacherous circles that aim at our country.”

These statements, and similar remarks of pro-government media commentators, indicate that the Turkish government is ready to jump at the opportunity to pursue its aim of invading Syria.

According to the state-owned Anatolian Agency, four people were arrested in connection with Sunday’s car bomb attack in Sanliurfa, a province bordering Syria, in what was taken as a sign implicating the Democratic Union Party, the Syrian offshoot of the PKK, in the attack.

Afterwards, Turkish fighter jets hit arms depots and shelters of the PKK in the mountainous Kandil and Gara regions in northern Iraq, and Turkish police launched an operation detaining dozens of Kurdish nationalists in different cities.

Since the collapse of a fragile truce in June of last year, deadly clashes have resumed between Turkish forces and PKK militants, as Turkish security forces armed with tanks and helicopters launched campaigns in towns of the Kurdish-dominated southeast. In February, Ankara also carried out artillery bombardments on Kurdish fighters acting as US imperialist proxies in Syria.

Citing “escalating terror activity in the region” and the need to ensure the “security of citizens’ lives and property”, Turkey’s ruling AKP (Justice and Development Party) declared further curfews, as security forces prepared for new operations in the ethnic Kurdish towns of Yuksekova and Nusaybin.

A months-long, devastating anti-terror operation has recently been completed in other Kurdish-populated districts of Cizre, Silopi and Idil in Sirnak province, and Silvan and Sur in Diyarbakir, leaving over 1,000 dead and forcing some 350,000 people to flee their homes.

Ankara has also escalated its attacks on the media and the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), the third-largest political party in the Turkish parliament. On Erdogan’s orders, a request for the abolition of parliamentary immunity of five deputies from the HDP, including its two co-leaders, has already been submitted to the Parliament. In addition, hundreds of HDP mayors, provincial administrators and members have been arrested on charges of being members of, or aiding and abetting “terrorist organisations”.

In written statements, three opposition parties in the Turkish parliament condemned the terror attack. The Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kilicdaroglu denounced it for targeting the “social peace and serenity” of the country, and reiterated his party’s determination to take “all kinds of political responsibilities” in the fight against terrorism.

Describing it as a “savage attack” against civilians, the HDP condemned the terrorist attack. The HDP’s Central Executive Board stated “that all of these attacks against our people will not be able to estrange us from feelings of fraternity and condemn the attack once more in the strongest way.”

Devlet Bahceli, the chairperson of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), reiterated his party’s full support for the government: “The government should not allow any weakness and negligence on this issue. Turkey’s national security is signalling a red alert because our precious nation is openly under attack and is surrounded in a compact and categorical circle of enmity.”

The ruling elite is also exploiting the attack in an attempt to remove an unpopular new anti-labour bill from the agenda.

The draft “On Amending the Labour Law and Turkish Employment Organisation Law” aims to extend temp work and widen the activity of private employment agencies. The bill also includes the creation of a severance pay fund, which would exempt the employers from paying compensation to workers whose job contract is ended due to reasons listed under Turkish Labour Law.

There is also growing dissatisfaction amongst workers, especially in the automotive sector, which has been hit by a wave of layoffs. On March 1, workers at Oyak Renault, a joint venture between French Renault and the Turkish army pension fund Oyak in Bursa went on strike, organised a march and tried to block the main road. The riot police, using tear gas, attacked the workers to disperse the crowd and detained several of them.

On May 14 last year, automotive workers at Renault and Tofas, owned by Italy’s Fiat and Turkey’s Koc Holding, organised a two-week wildcat strike, which soon spread to other carmakers, including Ford Otosan, Ford’s Turkish unit, and several auto parts makers.

Economic nationalism, war and the fight for international socialism

Nick Beams

Fundamental questions of perspective and orientation for the international working class are raised by the promotion of economic nationalism, which is assuming an ever more prominent role in the political life of one country after another under conditions of deepening economic crisis, mass unemployment and worsening social conditions.

In the campaign over Brexit—the referendum on June 23 to decide whether Britain is to remain within the European Union—both the “Leave” and “Remain” camps, reflecting different sections of the British bourgeoisie, are couching their arguments in terms of what is “best” for Britain. In the United States, the presidential election campaigns of both the leading Republican contender Donald Trump and the self-styled “socialist” Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders are making appeals on the basis of an economic nationalist agenda.

Seeking to exploit the legitimate anger and hostility of workers to the destruction of jobs and living conditions as factories are closed and jobs outsourced to cheaper labour areas, Trump promises to “make America great again” and denounces “unfair” trade deals, while Sanders lashes out against trade agreements with China and Mexico as “stealing American jobs.”

Despite their differences, the two sides share a common platform. They seek to remove the question of the “export of jobs” from its foundation—the capitalist system itself and its drive for profit.

They speak not for American workers, but express the interests of sections of the ruling class who feel themselves disadvantaged by major transnational corporations and aim to exploit the working class no less ruthlessly than their rivals.

There is no question that the various so-called “free trade” deals are not aimed at advancing economic and social conditions, but rather are designed to benefit giant corporations, enabling them to site their operations so as to secure the maximum profit at the expense of the working class.

But it does not follow from this that in opposing such agreements and their reactionary provisions workers should put a nationalist minus where the dominant sections of the corporate and financial elite put a plus. They must develop their own independent perspective based on a thoroughly worked-out and scientific analysis.

Such an analysis begins by posing the question: where is the campaign of economic nationalism leading? What would be the consequences of a return to isolated national economies? The tortured and bloody history of the twentieth century provides the answer.

The resort to economic nationalism arises out of the breakdown of the global capitalist order signalled by the financial crisis of 2008. The last great breakdown of the capitalist system, which began with the outbreak of World War I and led to the Great Depression, shows where it is heading. The rise of economic nationalism during the 1930s, as each country sought to protect itself from the collapse of the world market through the erection of customs and tariff barriers, created a disaster.

From the introduction of the protectionist Smoot-Hawley Act in the US in June 1930 to the end of 1932, it has been estimated that world trade contracted by as much as one half to two-thirds, leading to the disintegration, not advancement, of entire economies. The inevitable outcome was World War II and the relapse into barbarism.

The reactionary logic of economic nationalism was demonstrated most clearly in the case of Germany. Adolf Hitler came to power on the basis of a program of economic autarchy. But within a very short space of time an economic crisis began to develop, as this policy ran up against the constrictions of the German nation-state. Further national economic development therefore required territorial expansion—Lebensraum—and from 1936 onwards the entire economic policy of the Hitler regime was based on military conquest, a program that led directly to World War II and all of its resultant horrors.

In determining its standpoint, the working class must ground itself on a broad understanding of the role of capitalism in the historical development of mankind.

Mankind’s ascent, as Marx and, following him, Trotsky continually emphasised, is grounded on the development of the social productivity of labour, which is the basis for all social and economic advancement. In smashing down the constrictions of feudal particularism and establishing nation-states, capitalism provided a mighty springboard for the development of the productive forces and laid the basis for modern civilisation.

But the growth of the productive forces did not stop at the borders of the national state. Over the last 175 years it has increasingly assumed a global character through the expansion of international trade, the extension of investment to every corner of the world and, over the past three decades, the development of globalised production based on a further development of the international division of labour.

The globalisation of economic life is in itself an enormously progressive development. It increases the social productivity of labour and thereby lays the material foundations for the development of a society in which, for the first time in history, the economic and cultural interests of the entire world’s people, rather than a privileged few, can be met and advanced.

However, this enormous potential cannot be realised within the suffocating framework of the capitalist profit and nation-state system. Rather, these constrictions lead inevitably and inexorably to war and the descent into barbarism.

The great historical task, therefore, is not to try to drag the productive forces back into the reactionary and outmoded framework of the nation-state system—as the proponents of economic nationalism whether from the right or the “left” propose—but to liberate the productive forces by abolishing the reactionary social and political framework that constricts them.

This is not some utopian ideal. The material basis for its realisation has been created by the very globalisation of production itself. It has created an immense social force, the international working class, united objectively by the process of capitalist production and opposed by its very life-situation in every country to the depredations of the profit system.

Its task is to tear down the walls and barriers of the nation-state system, overturn the profit system, and take political power into its own hands in order to establish a new and higher socio-economic order based on the harmonious development of the productive forces on a global scale through a planned, consciously regulated and democratically controlled economy.

The sceptics and apologists for capitalism scoff at such a perspective and declare it violates so-called human nature, the highest expression of which, they insist, is the market and the capitalist profit system—a veritable libel on the human race.

But just as capitalism has created its own gravedigger in the form of the international working class, so it has forged the material foundations for a planned socialist economy. There is not a single transnational corporation or international financial institution in the world today that does not plan its global operations on a minute-by-minute, or even second-by-second basis. In its drive for profit, the capitalist system has established a vast system of information and technology spanning the world.

This complex and globally-integrated system of production and its associated information and other technologies have been created and are maintained, not by the handful of ultra-wealthy individuals who at present reap its benefits, but by the collective physical and intellectual labour of billions of working people—from the worker on the production line to those who maintain and design the technologies for its regulation.

Having created this enormous productive force, the international working class must now wrest control of it and utilise it for the development of society as a whole.

The perspective of economic nationalism advanced by the Trumps and Sanders of this world represents an attempt to drag mankind back into a new dark age.

The perspective of international socialism is the next stage in mankind’s advancement. But it can be realised only if it is consciously fought for, and that requires a decision to join and build the International Committee of the Fourth International as the revolutionary leadership of the international working class.

Current Syrian Peace Process Inutile: A New Approach Needed

Ranjit Gupta


Several initiatives have been taken to try to end the war in Syria. The first was by the Arab League, then Geneva I and Geneva II by Russia and other countries, and finally, the Vienna Process, where even a calendar of steps for bringing peace to Syria was laid out. In February 2016, followed by intensive negotiations between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, the US, Russia and 19 other countries met in Munich and an agreement for a ‘cessation of hostilities’ in Syria's civil war was announced. This agreement exempts the war against the Islamic State (IS/Daesh) and Jabhat al Nusra. Therefore, ostensibly, the wars against these two groups are continuing.

In many theatres of the multiple wars in Syria, Daesh and Jabhat al Nusra are present cheek by jowl with other Islamist groups and regime forces; and therefore, attacking the former two, permitted under this agreement, could and has led to attacks against other groups covered by the ceasefire agreement. This has led to charges of violations, particularly against the regime, Iran and Russia; and this combined with several other loopholes and serious shortcomings make this agreement unenforceable. Therefore, this ‘cessation of hostilities’ agreement reflects nothing more than well-intentioned desires and despite the welcome lull in the fighting, this is emphatically not a prelude to any longer term halt to fighting or any substantive step towards a settlement. 

Furthermore, this agreement does not remotely address the exceedingly complex underlying dynamics of ground realities in Syria at all.

Multiple wars have been simultaneously raging in Syria for some years now. The original war between the Syrian protestors and the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime; the war by over 1000 jihadi groups actively supported by Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey against the Assad regime; the war between Daesh and the Assad regime; the war between Daesh and all the other Islamist groups, including in particular Jabhat al Nusra; the war between the Kurds and Daesh; and the aerial war between a number of countries and Daesh. In these processes, five foreign countries – Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the US – have become rather deeply involved in Syria, militarily. The only aspect all of them agree on is on defeating Daesh. However, the top priorities of each are different and in several cases mutually contradictory.

Amongst these countries, the highest military priority of the US and its Western allies is defeating Daesh. The Kurds are their strongest and most successful allies in the war on the ground against Daesh, both in Iraq and in Syria. However, Turkey’s immediate top priority is the destruction of the Syrian Kurds’ power potential and the next priority is the removal of Assad. Ankara does not allow the Kurds to be part of any peace negotiations. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been publicly criticising the US with increasing vehemence, challenging it to choose between its NATO ally Turkey or what it calls the Kurdish ‘terrorists’. For Saudi Arabia, the highest priority is Assad’s removal – it continues to publicly insist that Assad has to stand down at the beginning of any transition process.

Riyadh also insists on determining the composition of the negotiating team of the “opposition” to Assad. There does not appear to be any let up in the Qatari, Saudi and Turkish support for different jihadist groups fighting in Syria, and supply of arms and funds to them continues. Iran is probably the most committed to Assad’s continuance in power over all of Syria. It has and continues to contribute significantly towards efforts to defeating Daeshin Iraq. Russia’s highest priority is to ensure that the jihadist groups fighting Assad, particularly those supported by Turkey, in the western third of the country are comprehensively defeated to ensure Assad’s continued control of this vital part of Syria, at least until transition agreements can be agreed to. In fact, in what should be considered an encouraging factor, Russia publicly chided Assad when he announced that he intends to regain control of the whole of Syria.

Day by day, Russia’s intervention is shifting the advantage in Assad’s favour, both diplomatically and militarily. Assad can no longer be defeated militarily and if he cannot be defeated on the battlefield, there is no way that he can be removed in a conference room.

For any peace process to have any realistic chance of success, it must be fully in accord with substantive ground realities. It is difficult enough for a peace process to be successful when there are only two antagonists. No peace process can possibly succeed when it involves the participation of such a large number of entities; more non-state than state actors, many of whom are engaged in a life and death struggle against others; and many entities imposing impossible-to-meet preconditions to even participate. Such an approach cannot possibly achieve positive results and should be abandoned.

A greatly intensified war against the IS with the US and Western countries acting in coordination with Russia should become the top priority. It is entirely possible that this could cause a temporary partition of Syria into zones under the control of different authorities. In fact, a review of the Sykes-Picot arrangements may be the only way for long-term stability in West Asia. The simultaneous holding of intense and continuous negotiations, strictly away from media attention, initially between empowered sherpas of the P5, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey potentially provides the most workable hope to even attempt to get out of the Syrian quagmire. The involvement of non-state groups, who are essentially proxies of states, only complicates negotiations.

Modalities of a political transition process in Syria should also be part of these discussions. While it may be politically correct to say that any peace process must be Syrian-owned and Syrian-led, the reality is that such a process simply cannot be brought about.

Media Monsters: Militarism, Violence, And Cruelty In Children's Culture

Heidi Tilney Kramer

"10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction." - Susan Sontag

Who ever thought there would be torture scenes in G and PG rated American children's films or that a video game would allow one to feel the rush of killing? Who would have imagined in their worst nightmare that the Disney corporation would try to trademark "SEAL Team 6," especially right after this elite military group killed Osama bin Laden, so they could use it for toys, Christmas stockings, and snow globes? Or that a child would write a few loving words on her desk and be arrested in front of her classmates? Who could have believed that the U.S. would torture real children in the "war on terror" campaign?

Consider that there are now only five big media conglomerates controlling over 90% of everything seen and heard. Media in the U.S. is engaging in post-9/11 rhetoric even in the world of children. Seeing little Boo, the toddler who can barely speak in Monsters, Inc., strapped in the torture chair - equipped with holes in the seat's bottom like electric chairs have for drainage of bodily fluids - convinces us to look closer at what American kids and children the world over are watching as their purported entertainment.

As cartoon images of militarism and prison fill children's heads, the school-to-prison pipeline is active in the schools of poor neighborhoods and those of color mimicking the prison system - and these children have largely been slated for a life in prison or the military. Pushing students out of the classroom and into the criminal justice system - often for minor offenses such as getting behind in their homework! - is as disturbing as the JROTC instituting programs on the middle school level as a way of getting especially inner-city, racially targeted recruits.

This is against the U.N.'s Convention on the Rights of the Child's (C.R.C.) Article 38: "Children under 15 should not be forced or recruited to take part in a war or join the armed forces...The Convention's Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict further develops this right, raising the age for direct participation in armed conflict to 18 and establishing a ban on compulsory recruitment for children under 18." The United States, along with Somalia and South Sudan, refuses to ratify this document under the guise of parental rights, but that decision allows the following problems: 21% of U.S. children are living in poverty; the U.S. is the only high-income country not to grant paid maternal leave; and the U.S. is the only country in the world sentencing under-18-year-olds to life without parole. These infractions are all against the C.R.C. Over twenty-five years old, the document will never be ratified by the United States because it interferes with business as usual, and Michael P. Farris, president of Parental Rights, actively fights the treaty. His group fears that, if instituted, "[a nation] would have to spend more on children's welfare than national defense." As the old saying goes, "It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber." The grand total in 2013 for U.S. Homeland Security and National Defense was an astounding $931 billion, or nearly $1 trillion, and part of the funding has come from cutting the school-lunch program. China has the next largest military budget, estimated at $136 billion.

Yet the propaganda continues...The Incredibles shows the 9/11 trope of a plane bent on destruction heading toward a U.S. city while the entire family ends up on the torture rack; the film also shows Mr. Incredible blasted by viscous bubbles similar to new, real-life (theoretically) less-than-lethal incapacitant sticky foam weapons being proposed for crowd control in the U.S. and abroad. And what are the children to think when their beloved Buzz Lightyear - a friend to all for two of the three films - is tortured, his personality changed, and he becomes, in Toy Story 3, prison guard for the cruel overlord in the surveillance-laden dystopia?

Children's beliefs about others are molded from a young age - just think how characters in Aladdin contributed to persuasion for the first Gulf War as even children came to see the Arabic world as mean-spirited. Henry A. Giroux explains that Disney not only included offensive language toward the region in this (and its follow-up) film, it didn't even bother to write actual Arabic where it was called for in the film, instead choosing to scribble the substitute of nonsensical scrawl.

In addition to death language, war scenes, and general barbarism, there are other disturbing depictions in G and PG rated children's movies. Nearly all African-American characters have an inner-city vibe as we see in Turbo. Often Spanish-speaking characters are presented as poor and lazy or loud as observed in the aforementioned and in Open Season. Women are shown as either "bitchy" or subservient. If you want evidence, just watch Beauty and the Beast - it's a primer for women to learn how to endure an abusive relationship (as in, "If I'm just nice enough, he'll come around"). Or watch how Ratatouille presents a woman as psychotic. Native Americans are depicted as mysterious and speak monosyllabically, as seen in Rango. Children themselves are presented as either endangered or as monsters, sometimes both, as is the case in both Toy Story and Nanny McPhee. Guns, cruelty, and bullying are in just about every kids' film in the U.S., but the Motion Picture Association of America doesn't care that the violence component is through the roof as long as no one hears cursing or sees drugs or alternative lifestyles.

How are people affected by that last one? Ritual ridicule in a brutal gender binary system is largely responsible for the mass school shootings. Our definitions of what it means to "be a man" are injected early on. Seeing Ken - depicted as supposedly effeminate - bullied and threatened by Barbie in Toy Story 3 tells boys to be wary of having nice hand-writing or any other purportedly feminine behavior. There are many, many examples of gender policing in American kids' films - take how the minion is teased for wanting affection in Despicable Me as just one example.

Meanwhile, over 6,000 were killed from the U.S. drone assassination program in Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Palestine in 2015 alone - some of the victims are children and 90% of victims are innocent bystanders. You won't see this on American TV or in the country's films. The U.S. veteran homelessness rate is appalling - and suicide rates among armed services veterans and active duty personnel have sky-rocketed. You won't see this either. The world is grappling with how to handle refugees from the fashionably long-lasting wars amid - and aiming specifically for - civilians. You'll see the refugees but no coverage of why these victims are fleeing. You won't hear the name Omar Khadr, a 15-year old Canadian citizen tortured by the U.S. or that of 14-year old Chad-citizen Mohammed El-Gharani who suffered the same fate. You won't see coverage detailing that those of Arabic/Islamic origin or background rounded up in the U.S. after 9/11 were ALL found innocent. Instead, you will see over 900 mostly Hollywood films vilifying these groups over the past century so the military-industrial complex has an eternal "enemy."

U.S. children are busy at school being patted down and going into lockdown mode, learning how to kill from video games, repeating cruelties learned from their films, and watching playground fights on YouTube, while American tax dollars are hard at work being used for nationalistic ceremonies at pro sports events and censoring directors who don't promote "patriotism." That citizens shudder at fellow hijab wearing citizens shows how the U.S. public has been sucker-punched.

We are undergoing a paradigm shift of monumental proportions wherein some are awakening to possibilities on a dimming horizon. Doing so has never been more imperative because our very survival depends on seeing what is true: that we are more alike than we are different and that the "have nots" have a my-voice-matters stake in which way life proceeds. It is time for us, "the 99%," to stand against the media and political giants engaged in separating us from one another. God bless the whole world: NO EXCEPTIONS.

"Of course the people don't want war...That is understood...But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them that they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

- Hermann Goering (at the Nuremberg trials)

UAW sanctions mass layoffs by farm equipment giant John Deere

George Gallanis

Last week, Illinois-based Deere and Co., the world’s largest agricultural machinery company, announced the layoff of approximately 125 employees. This is the third round of layoffs since last November. A total of 445 workers have lost their jobs so far.

The recent layoffs will affect two factories in Iowa, with Deere slashing 75 jobs at its Dubuque factory and approximately 50 jobs at its Ankeny factory. Layoffs at Dubuque will go into effect April 29 and the Ankeny factory will see its workforce dwindle April 15.

In February, Deere announced it was the laying off approximately 80 employees at its Davenport Works and 20 at Deere’s factory in Dubuque. Both of these cuts will go into effect April 1. In November, Deere informed approximately 220 employees at the John Deere Seeding and Cylinder factory in Moline, Illinois that they would be laid off. The workers were terminated on February 15.

The company is conducting a ruthless cost-cutting campaign to make workers pay for the impact of the global economic crisis. This is taking place only months after the United Auto Workers rammed through a sellout agreement—in the face of the mass opposition of rank-and-file workers—that facilitates the downsizing of the company and the imposition of further concessions factory by factory.

Deere stated that the actions were “taken to align the size of the manufacturing workforce at individual factories with market demand for products made at each specific location.” It is likely Deere will lay off even more in the future. Deere’s fiscal forecast for 2016 expects a 10 percent decline in sales. In a recent report, Deere saw its worldwide net sales and revenues for its first fiscal quarter decrease by 13 percent, to $5.52 billion, compared with $6.38 billion last year.

Deere’s CEO, Samuel R. Allen, stated, “John Deere’s first-quarter results reflected the continuing impact of the downturn in the global farm economy as well as weakness in construction equipment markets. At the same time, all of Deere’s businesses remained solidly profitable, benefiting from the sound execution of our business plans and the success of actions to develop a more responsive cost structure.”

In other words, Deere is counting on the collaboration of the UAW to slash as many jobs as it needs “to develop a more response cost structure,” i.e., to maintain its profits. Last October, the UAW pushed through a new six-year labor agreement, which maintains the hated two-tier wage and benefit system, increases out-of-pocket health costs and continues the erosion of living standards. The UAW claimed the contract, which covers 11,000 workers, was ratified by a margin of 180 votes; workers responded by accusing the UAW of stuffing the ballot.

The collusion of the UAW has ensured huge payouts to the company’s top executives and wealthy shareholders. In 2015, Deere CEO Samuel R. Allen made $15,770,056 in total compensation; Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Rajesh Kalathur made $4,352,810; Senior Vice President Jean H. Gilles made $4,537,306; President of Agricultural Equipment Operations James M. Field made $4,539,286; and Group President Michael J. Mack Jr. made $4,875,918.

Speaking to the WSWS, a retired Deere worker who worked at the John Deere Waterloo Works in Iowa said, “Deere is a different place now. I think they’re screwing these young people.

What’s so terrible about Deere are these tiers. It was terrible back when I was there. The tier wages screwed everything up. This kid on second shift did the same exact job as me and got half the pay and he was pissed and I don’t blame him.

“Hell. I think my pension is as much as some of these people are making these days now. And look at what the CEO is making. It’s so unfair.”

Regarding the suspicious character of last year’s contract vote, he said, “I went to the union meeting when they were going to ratify the recent contract and we listened to it for half an hour and left because we couldn’t take it. You can’t trust the vote; nothing would surprise me. The UAW are a bunch of fat cats and they sold them out.”

“The UAW should have stood up and fought to end the two-tier system, but they didn’t. It’s just a continuation.”

He further added, “You used to be able to raise a family with the wages you received at Deere, but you can’t now and that’s for most wages in the US. To me, it’s symptomatic to what’s going on in the world.”

China: Thousands of coal miners protest over unpaid wages

Peter Symonds

Thousands of Chinese coal miners protested last week in the north-eastern province of Heilongjiang after provincial governor Lu Hao boasted to the National People’s Congress (NPC) in Beijing that wages at the huge state-owned Longmay Mining Group were being paid in full and on time.

The unrest follows the announcement earlier this month by employment and welfare minister Yin Weimin that 1.3 million coal miners and 500,000 steel workers will lose their jobs as the government slashes overcapacity in basic industry. The protests are a sign of the acute social tensions building up as the Chinese economy continues to slow.

The north-eastern “rust belt” provinces have been particularly hard hit. Yet Heilongjiang governor Lu told the NPC a week ago: “Longmay has 80,000 workers down mines, and today, not one has not been paid monthly wages and their income hasn’t fallen a penny.”

Lu also foreshadowed mass layoffs saying that Longmay has more than three times as many workers as the average Chinese coal mine as measured by tonnes of output per employee. The state-owned enterprise (SOE), which has 224,000 employees in all, announced plans last September to shed 100,000 jobs. It is the largest coal producer in north-eastern China with 42 mines in four cities.

The comments provoked widespread anger. From last Wednesday, mine workers and their supporters congregated in front of government and company offices in Shuangyashan, demanding Lu and other officials address their complaints over unpaid wages. In many cases, workers have not been paid for months.

According to social media accounts, up to 10,000 people took part in the demonstrations which lasted at least three days. Photographs showed workers carrying banners saying, “We want to live, we want to eat” and “Lu Hao tells lies while his eyes are wide open.” A video showed miners being dispersed by armed police.

A protesting miner told the Financial Times that Lu’s comments about wages were false. “At the time he said that, we had not gotten our salaries for four months. That’s the key,” he said.

Speaking to the Associated Press, a local resident Li said that he knew of Longmay workers who had not been paid for six months. Another eyewitness Wang told the news agency that the wages of her family members working in the mine had been cut to less than 1,000 yuan ($US154). Other workers either did not receive their full wages or were not being paid for months.

Liu Jingjua, a shop assistant whose husband worked in the mine, told theNew York Times: “We’re demanding our own money, and some of us have been arrested. Is it illegal to ask for our own wages? We workers have to eat.”

Last Saturday governor Lu was compelled to make an embarrassing public back-down, acknowledging that wages were in arrears for Longmay workers. However, he sought to shift the blame, accusing Longmay of withholding information and vowing to “severely punish” anyone who did so in the future.

In an effort to save face, Lu called a meeting of provincial officials and issued a statement declaring that the provincial government would work with Longmay to raise money and make every effort to pay workers on time.

Lu’s reaction is a telling example of a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) bureaucrat: committed to the CCP’s agenda of pro-market restructuring and contemptuous of the working class, yet fearful of the social unrest that the government’s policies could provoke.

Lu, who has been marked out as a rising star in the CCP apparatus, was clearly keen to impress at the NPC. As governor of one of the rust-belt provinces, he was determined to demonstrate his ability to deal with so-called “zombie” companies, like Longmay, that are kept afloat by state-backed loans.

President Xi Jinping last week focussed attention at the NPC on the necessity of slashing overcapacity in basic industries such as coal, steel, plate glass and cement. He asked in particular how Longmay was coping and urged the company to “face the market”—that is, make deep inroads into jobs, wages and conditions to ensure a profit.

“Facing the market” also means abolishing the remnants of the so-called iron rice bowl, which ensured that state-owned enterprises provided health care, education and welfare to their employees. Longmay still runs hospitals and schools and is responsible for the pensions of 180,000 retired workers.

Longmay has been hit by falling prices, which have fallen dramatically by 6 percent for thermal coal and 10 percent for coking coal in the first two months of this year. The company had already been struggling, with substantial losses for at least three years. Last November the provincial government, which owns Longmay, provided 3.8 billion yuan ($588 million) to ward off an imminent default on its debts.

Last week’s protests are only the latest. In April last year, thousands of miners and their supporters marched in the city of Hegang to protest over delayed wages. The organisers were arrested and jailed. In October, the company management only averted another protest by locking workers in the mines on the day of a scheduled rally.

Moreover, coal miners in other regions are facing similar difficulties. Earlier this month, hundreds of coal miners in Anyuan in south-eastern China marched through the city of Pingxiang. The local state-owned mining company has cut back production, laid off workers and told others to stay home on drastically reduced pay. As reported by the Washington Post, up to 1,000 workers from three mines protested with banners declaring: “Workers want to survive, workers need to eat.”

While no official statistics are publicly available, figures produced by the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin have shown a sharp rise in the number of strikes for 2015 to 2,774, twice as many as for 2014. In January, another 504 strikes were recorded. The actual figure is likely to be far higher. Last November, the Chinese employment minister, Yin Weimin, cited 11,007 “incidents” involving unpaid wages—the most frequent cause of disputes—in the first nine months of 2015, a 34 percent increase from a year earlier.

With mounting levels of debt, the CCP regime is determined to press ahead with the first mass layoffs since the 1990s, with estimates of up to six million jobs being destroyed across basic industries. The government has promised to allocate 100 billion yuan ($15 billion) to fund retraining, which is far from adequate. Even with retraining, many miners and industrial workers will simply not find jobs in the slowing economy.

The CCP leadership is insisting that local government and companies must contribute to the retraining fund. In depressed areas such as Heilongjiang, the economy is already stagnant or in recession, the tax base of local administrations has shrunk dramatically and SOEs like Longmay are heavily indebted. At the NPC, provincial representatives called for greater central government financial support.

At every level of government, the CCP apparatus is acutely conscious of the potential for social unrest that spirals out of control. The rising number of strikes and protests is taking place prior to mass sackings. Moreover, since the 1990s, the growth of staggering social inequality has engendered deep resentment and bitterness. While workers struggle to get by on as little as 100 yuan a month, the CCP has opened the NPC to multi-billionaires whose interests it presents.

A former Longmay mine worker now a taxi driver, Cui, told the New York Times earlier this year: “In the 90s, everyone was poor. Now the rich are too rich, and the poor are too poor. Because of the layoffs, everyone is worried. No one has a way to live outside the mines.”

What is looming is a confrontation between the Beijing regime and the working class.

UK bill hands vast surveillance powers to police and intelligence agencies

Barry Mason

On March 1, Home Secretary Theresa May published the Investigatory Powers Bill (IPB), known by critics as the “snooper’s charter”.

It enshrines in law the previously hidden mass gathering of Internet data by the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) spying agency, as exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013.

The IPB is a far-reaching attack on privacy and democratic rights and greatly enhances the power of the growing surveillance state, as it brings the current diverse rules governing state surveillance into one piece of legislation.

In an unprecedented level of intrusion, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will have to keep records of the browsing history of everyone who accesses the Internet for a period of 12 months. State security forces will have the power to access this data unhindered, which would enable them to see every web site a person visited.

The introduction to the all-embracing bill states its purpose is to: “Make provision about the interception of communications, equipment interference and the acquisition and retention of communications data, bulk personal datasets and other information; to make provision about the treatment of material held as a result of such interception, equipment interference or acquisition or retention; to establish the Investigatory Powers Commissioner and other Judicial Commissioners and make provision about them and other oversight arrangements; to make further provision about investigatory powers and national security …”

It will establish in law the activities of GCHQ, providing the spy agency with access to all the data travelling on Internet cables passing through UK territory, its bulk storage and analysis. GCHQ’s nefarious practices, in which vast amounts of data entering and leaving the UK are hoovered up and shared with the US National Security Agency, as revealed by Snowden, will now be given legal sanction.

The IPB grants GCHQ, the National Crime Agency and, for the first time, a number of major police forces, the power to hack into mobile devices such as mobile phones and tablets and the licence to carry out non-targeted “mass hacking” of such devices.

The Home Office claim that the police power to hack individuals’ electronic devices dates back to the 1997 Police Act and would, in any case, only be used in “exceptional circumstances”. This is flatly contradicted by the head of the Metropolitan Police technical unit, Paul Hudson, who, in evidence to Parliament’s scrutiny committee, said such powers were used by police “in the majority of serious crime cases”. Hudson refused to provide any further information on his assertion in a public forum.

The Conservative government is allowing the unprecedented state surveillance of citizens on the basis that its snoopers need judicial legislation as well as the say-so of a government minister—the so-called “double lock” system. The double lock was trumpeted by the government as an assurance that the privacy of UK citizens would not be violated. This is a fraud.

In effect, the role of the judiciary will be to ensure there is a prima facia case for any hacking and establish that procedures have been followed. Their designated role under the IPB is to merely rubber stamp the minister’s decision, which will be paramount.

Moreover, access to web browsing records by the police and other security forces is totally exempt from the double lock and does not need to be authorised by a minister backed up by a judge.

The IPB also explicitly permits the use of spying techniques to bolster the country’s “economic well-being”, if this is linked to “national security” concerns. This could be widely interpreted to include many events, including industrial action taken by a group of workers.

The IPB has enormous legal implications, as it also undermines confidentiality between lawyers and their clients. Peter Carter QC, chair of the Bar Council Surveillance and Privacy Working Group, in a posting on the PoliticsHome web site on March 3 stated: “The Bill undermines the right to a fair trial because barristers will no longer be able to reassure clients that their communications, which the public interest demands should be immune from state intrusion, are in fact private and confidential. It will, for example, allow authorities to listen in on clients and lawyers who are in the middle of a legal dispute against the Government”.

An attempt by the Tories to introduce the snooper’s charter under the previous Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition was blocked when the Liberal Democrats withdrew support. Immediately following the outcome of the May 2015 election, in which the Tories gained an absolute majority, Home Secretary Theresa May announced her intentions to reintroduce the bill and make it law by the end of 2016.

The government is keen to rush the IPB through Parliament, and hopes to utilise the campaign leading up to the referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union on June 23, in order to minimise public scrutiny of its passage through Parliament.

This has led to criticism even from within the ranks of the Tory party. The Independent newspaper noted February 27, “The former Tory leadership contender David Davis said there was ‘no doubt’ that the government wanted to rush the Bill through Parliament to avoid scrutiny. Government whips have told Labour that the Bill will be published on 1 March, with a second reading—giving MPs a line-by-line debate on the Bill scheduled for 14 March. The Bill will then go to committee stage from scrutiny on 22 March, with a final vote expected in Parliament by the end of April”.

An open letter, urging the government to delay the bill, published in the Conservative supporting Daily Telegraph, had over 100 signatories including Davis, Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron and Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, as well as the directors of human rights organisations Amnesty UK and Liberty, and leading academics.

The letter does not oppose state spying on the population in principle, stating, “Intelligence agencies and the police require strong surveillance powers. Their powers and responsibilities—as well as their limits—must be clear to be effective. All three parliamentary reports on the draft Investigatory Powers Bill concluded that it does not meet the requirements of clarity, consistency and coherence”. The letter states that the “intention to pass the IPB this year is not in the nation’s interest” (emphasis added).

A draft version of the bill published in November last year was scrutinised by three parliamentary committees, as part of the pre-legislative process. Their concerns and recommendations over privacy implications were supposed to be addressed in the revised March 1 bill.

The most important of these, the Intelligence Services Committee (ISC), produced an 18-page report on the proposed bill. The ISC is tasked with overseeing the work of the intelligence services. It is composed of former ministers, appointed by the prime minister, in consultation with the Leader of the Opposition, currently Jeremy Corbyn. Its workings are kept secret, and the prime minister filters its reports to Parliament.

The ISC and the other committees, while critical of the wording and presentation of the IPB, fully support its intentions.

Online IT industry news web site The Register posted a commentary on this fraudulent “scrutiny” process last month, noting, “The Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament has warned the Government that it needs to make ‘substantive amendments’ to its draft Investigatory Powers Bill, before proceeding to outline changes which don’t appear to be very ‘substantive’ at all”. It described the ISC report as, “essentially a diligence exercise in legislative drafting” that was “largely targeted at the bill’s sloppy and rushed construction … rather than the powers contained therein”.

In response to the feeble treatment from the bodies ostensibly charged with scrutinising the bill, the Home Office did nothing more than add the single word, “privacy” to the title of Part 1 of the bill, and sent it back to be passed into legislation.

2016 NWAG SCHOLARSHIPS IN NIGERIA

NWAG to Award Scholarships to 37 Female Undergraduates in Nigerian Universities in 2016

The Nigerian Women Association of Georgia (NWAG) plans to award 37 one-time scholarships, one per state of origin as well as one for the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), in the amount of fifty thousand Naira each, to Nigerian female undergraduate students in Nigerian universities.

Interested prospective applicants are advised to download an application form at the end of this message.

Completed application can be submitted with all required documents by pdf or word version to NWAG either by electronically via email at nwagscholarship@yahoo.com or by regular mail to 

NWAG
P.O. Box 14542, 
Atlanta, GA 30324.

SUBJECT LINE OF EMAIL: NAME OF APPLICANT & STATE OF ORIGIN, AND ALL ELECTRONIC SUBMISSIONS MUST BE IN PDF OR WORD FORMAT.

All applications must be POST-MARKED BY May 31st, 2016. Late applications will not be accepted. Applications may not be faxed or hand-delivered.

Applicants are required to submit the following documents together with their completed application form:

1. Proof of State of Origin- Letter of Origination from the university or a letter from your local government office
2. Two letters of recommendation from any two of the following:
   Church Pastor/Mosque Imam, Village Head, Local Government Chairperson or One of your Lecturers.
3. 1 Letter of recommendation from either the Dean of your Faculty/School or your Head of Department.
4. Photocopy of your current university student identification card
5. A current photograph of yourself
6. An explanation of why you need and should receive the scholarship-(not more than one-half typed page).
7. A type-written, double-spaced, two-page essay on:

 “How has the current inflation and its resultant high cost of living in Nigeria, affected the quality of education in Nigeria?” 

So far, NWAG has shipped over $1m (One million dollars) worth of medical supplies to various states in Nigeria. In addition, NWAG supports ten orphanages (Little Saints, Lagos State, Seventh Day Advert, Rivers State, Susana Homes, Abia State, Ananwim Home, FCT, Zuma Memorial, Edo State, St. Anthony’s Destitute Center, Akwa-Ibom State, Tenderlove Orphanage, Anambra State, Godswill Orphanage, Kogi, The Care People Foundation, Oyo State, and Izzi 

Motherless Babies Home, Ebonyi State) with their nutritional program all across Nigeria and in Atlanta, Georgia; NWAG supports the following non-profit organizations: the Atlanta Community Food Bank, Hosea Feed the Hungry, International Women’s House, MedShare International, Sickle Cell Foundation, Southside Medical Center and Susan G. Komen. 

A Debacle In Pakistan, A Lesson For Bangladesh

Taj Hashmi

What Indian nationalist Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866-1915) once quipped, “What Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow” is no longer applicable to what is left of Bengal today, Bangladesh and the Indian state of Paschim Banga. Bangladesh in particular is at the receiving end of all traits of culture – material or immaterial. While most of the acquired behaviour is benign, some are infested with debilitating “flesh-eating” bacteria, which have already infected the body politic of Bangladesh without being considered dangerous by many.

The rapid, mindless adoption of alien culture is reflected in the language, literature, music, attire, manners, social etiquette, food habit, and most importantly, in politics and political culture of Bangladesh. As the quarter-century of Pakistani hegemony substantially moulded the political culture, so has expatriate workers’ exposure to Arab culture since the 1970s profoundly impacted the popular culture in Bangladesh. Thus, civil-military authoritarianism; state-sponsored and hypocritical Islamization programmes; and persecution of freethinkers, women, and minorities have almost become normative across the country.

The Pakistani “debacle” I’m referring to is state-sponsorship of Wahhabism, pre-modern Sharia code, and the infringement of human rights, especially of minorities and women. Thanks to its unabated growth, political Islam has already destabilized the country, and has spilled over beyond its borders. It’s no exaggeration that the country’s criminal justice system – to a large extent – has broken down, and its leftover is comparable to what prevails in Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, the age-old tribal honour system, “blood money”, and the so-called Blasphemy Law reign supreme.

Am I an alarmist for believing elements of the Pakistani “debacle” might eventually trickle down to Bangladesh? I don’t think so. Before I elaborate why I think the Pakistani “debacle” is potentially dangerous to Bangladesh, I cite just one example from Pakistan, in this regard. Recently, the whole world witnessed mammoth mass protests by tens of thousands of Pakistanis in Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad against the execution of Mumtaz Qadri, a convicted killer of Salman Taseer, a former Governor of the Pakistani province of Punjab. Qadri, the Governor’s bodyguard, gunned him down in January 2011 for his public sympathy for Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman, convicted to death in 2010 for allegedly committing blasphemy against the Prophet of Islam. Interestingly, Qadri didn’t belong to any Islamist extremist group but a Sufi order.

Are the killing of Governor Taseer and people’s support for his killer among millions of Pakistanis relevant to Bangladesh? Possibly yes. Bangladesh has already adopted the soft version of Blasphemy Law to placate extremists who have terrorized secular writers and intellectuals, and have already killed scores of them for their alleged blasphemous writings against Islam. Ominously, there are people and groups in the country who favour killing for blasphemy. Some of them are persistently asking for the Blasphemy Law – with the provision of death penalty for blasphemers – proscription of “anti-Islamic” books, organizations, and declaration of the tiny Ahmadiyya Muslim community “non-Muslim”, a la Pakistan.

As an eyewitness to the metamorphosis of the relatively liberal and secular Bangladeshi society into an illiberal, dogmatic and intolerant one during the last four decades, I think the complacent people and Government are collectively responsible for the rot. What was once unthinkable, is a reality today; and what we think will never happen in this country, might be in the pipeline, will give us an unpleasant surprise, one day! What our rulers once considered harmless or even necessary – trading secularism with Islamism – have become a big liability and threat to secular democracy in Bangladesh. I refer to the unwise rehabilitation of Islam-oriented political parties, and very similar to Pakistan, the quixotic decision to make Islam as the “State Religion” in Bangladesh.

Since Pakistan and what is Bangladesh today started their postcolonial journey together in 1947, and have inherited the state-sponsored “soft” Islamism introduced by the first Pakistani Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan in 1949, they have a common legacy with regard to the Islamization process. Very similar to General Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan, two successive military rulers of Bangladesh – Ziaur Rahman and H.M. Ershad – also legitimized political Islam in their own ways. Meanwhile, thanks to state patronage, ruling elite’s political expediency and hypocrisy, and pressure from Islamist parties like the Jamaat-e-Islami, “soft” Islamism has become crystallized, and posing a threat to liberal democracy and secularism in both Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Ever since the Liberation, the fate of civility, democracy and secularism in Bangladesh is in a state of entropy. While the gradual decline of order into disorder has become the norm, unless democracy and secularism get a breathing space, the re-staging of the Pakistani tragedy remains a not-so-distant possibility in Bangladesh. I know Bangladeshi analysts, scholars, and politicians might disagree with me. “Bangladesh is very different from Pakistan” – albeit hyperbolic and hollow – has been the common thread of their argument. I wish the argument were convincing!

The reality in Bangladesh is somewhat very different from the elite perception. Despite the Supreme Court decision of August 1, 2013, which declared the registration of the Jamaat-e-Islami illegal, ruling that the party was unfit to contest national polls, the Islamist party is yet to be officially proscribed. And despite what we got from media reports early this month that Bangladesh Supreme Court could drop Islam as the country’s State Religion following a string of attacks on minority communities, one has reasons to believe no executive decision is in the offing, in concurrence with the judiciary. Once the genie is out, it’s almost impossible to put it back into the bottle.

Islamist extremism does not drop from the heavens or sprout up from the ground. Secular leaders – over the years – prepare the groundwork for Islamist takeover, terrorism, or insurgency through corruption, despotism, hypocrisy and opportunism. This has happened in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Pakistan, and elsewhere. Bangladesh can’t remain immune to Islamist extremism, for an indefinite period. Since Islamism is an ideology-driven extremist ideology – not a law-and-order-problem – even highly efficient police and military are no match for Islamist extremism. Pakistan’s experience should be an eye-opener. Bangladesh must realize neither opportunistic politics nor political hypocrisy, but democracy and the rule of law are the only anti-dotes to Islamist extremism.

Jean-Claude Juncker Damns Obama’s Plan For Ukraine

Eric Zuesse

Jean-Claude Juncker, the most powerful person in Europe, the chief of the European Commission and therefore Europe’s closest equivalent to America’s President, said, in a little-noticed comment on March 3rd, "Ukraine will definitely not be able to become a member of the EU in the next 20-25 years, and not of NATO either.” The article reporting this, at europeonline.magazine, also observed that, "The commission, the EU‘s executive, plays a leading role in accession negotiations between the bloc and aspiring members."

The main reason why U.S. President Barack Obama had perpetrated his coup in Ukraine in February 2014, and why his CIA hired racist anti-Russian paramilitaries to carry it out as they did behind the cover of the popular anti-corruption “Maidan” demonstrations in Kiev, was in order to get Ukraine into NATO, so that U.S. missiles will be able to be placed near-enough to Moscow for a blitz-attack so as to conquer Russia. That would be America’s ultimate “regime-change” operation (toward which the regime-change in Ukraine is merely one of the most important steps); but the European Commission’s Jean-Claude Juncker has here said it’s not going to happen.

This isn’t only a reversal of what the EU had been promising to Ukraine’s government (especially promising to the post-coup government), but it’s also a drastic separation of Europe from America’s empire: a severe limitation of the control by the U.S. aristocracy, which has, ever since the time of U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush, been executing his plan to strangulate Russia by surrounding it with NATO member-nations on Russia’s western borders, and so cutting off Russia’s major trading-partner (Europe), thus squeezing Russia’s economy until a regime-change can be carried out there like was done in Ukraine, ‘democratically’ instead of by an outright invasion of Russia. This way, the threat of a NATO blitz-attack won’t even need to be acted upon, and the world’s most resource-rich nation, Russia, can thus be added to the U.S. international-corporate fold without NATO needing first to attack Russia by any such super “Prompt Global Strike” — a PGS that can destroy Russia’s command-and-control within just a few minutes, instead of within an hour or even more.

Juncker is thus challenging the U.S. aristocracy here; he’s saying that GHW Bush’s plan isn’t going to go all the way. The U.S. aristocracy can benefit by surging U.S. arms-sales that are generated from NATO’s expansions, but not into Ukraine.

As the representative of Europe’s aristocracies, Juncker is finally saying, to the U.S. aristocracy: You’re not going to control us entirely. We want to work with you on things such as TTIP, which will benefit the aristocracies of every participating nation; but, we’re not going to follow your lead regarding the conquest of Russia; we European aristocrats (the billionaires whom these government-officials represent) will instead pursue our own independent policies regarding Russia. We’re not going all the way with you on that.