Cuts to pensions of Detroit retirees go into effect

Thomas Gaist

Retired Detroit city workers began receiving diminished pensions checks on Sunday, in accordance with the bankruptcy plan drawn up by former Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr and approved by the federal court system.

In all, some 32,000 active and retired city workers will be impacted by the cuts to constitutionally protected Detroit city worker pensions called for in Orr’s plan.

Cuts to pensions were authorized in December 2013 by federal bankruptcy judge Steven Rhodes in defiance of clear language in Michigan’s state constitution stating that public pensions cannot be “diminished or impaired.”

Most retirees will endure a 4.5 percent “base cut” in addition to the loss of their cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) payments and the “clawing back” by the city of nearly $240 million in annuity payments distributed to city workers over the past decade. City-funded health care benefits are to be reduced by 90 percent, from $4.3 billion to $450 million, under the bankruptcy plan.

In a transparent effort to divide and conquer the different sections of Detroit’s working class, the bankruptcy plan demands slightly less severe cuts to the pensions of retirees from Detroit’s police and fire departments, who will lose most of their COLA but will not see any immediate cuts to their pension checks.

An “Income Stabilization Fund” established by the state treasury is offering a minimal amount of supplemental payments to a small group of some 1,500 retirees, who will receive monthly checks ranging from $1 to $180. Only those pensioners who receive less than 140 percent of the federal poverty line will even be considered for the payments.

Given the rising cost of living and especially health care costs faced by retirees, many of whom pay thousands of dollars per month in health care costs for doctor’s visits and essential medications and treatments, such puny sums, offered to only a fraction of the retiree population, do not even amount to a drop in the bucket, and have clearly been devised for propaganda purposes.

The brutal fact is that Detroit retirees are facing the loss of their homes, access to medical care, impoverishment and death as a result of the cuts contained in the plan. The cuts will have much broader ramifications, as retirees will no longer be able to offer much needed support to children and grandchildren struggling amid the most desperate economic conditions since the 1930s.

The imposition of emergency management and the Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing were carried out with the full support of the Democratic Party and the Obama administration, and aimed at not only stealing the pensions of Detroit workers, but also opening the floodgates for the looting of public sector pensions and benefits nationwide.

Judge Rhodes openly revealed this agenda when he called last week for ending defined pension benefit plans across the US, and commented that failure to eliminate city worker pension plans completely during bankruptcy was a “missed opportunity.”

In a piece published Monday, “A warning to cities: Watch your pension plans,” Crain’s Detroit Business noted that the Detroit suburb of Lincoln Park’s emergency manager Brad Coulter has launched similar attacks on retiree health care and pensions along the lines of the Detroit bankruptcy.

Under Coulter’s reign, Lincoln Park has imposed cuts to pensions and ended retiree health care, offering small cash payments for retirees to purchase their own independently. This despite the fact that Lincoln Park’s pensions have not missed a single payment to retirees in the past decade, Crain’snoted.

Signaling the beginning of a new wave of attacks against tens of billions of dollars of pension obligations owed to public workers, Moody’s credit rating service downgraded Chicago’s municipal debt last week, citing the city’s supposedly unfunded pension obligations.

The New York Times published an article last week, with a headline that crowed of the “Cracks Starting to Appear” in public pension plans throughout the country. “First in Detroit, then in Stockton, Calif., and now in New Jersey, judges and other top officials are challenging the widespread belief that public pensions are untouchable,” the Times gloated.

The World Socialist Web Site spoke Monday with two retired city workers about the impact of the cuts on their pensions and health care.

Steve, who previously worked as master plumber for the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD), expressed his frustrations with the outcome of the bankruptcy. “We the retirees were supposed to be the largest creditor, and we didn’t get anything,” he said.

“Syncora, the financial insurance guarantee corporation, they ended up getting assets. They got assets that are producing income and are worth money. These were insurance companies, they collected premiums based on the city’s borrowing. Now when the city is supposedly bankrupt, they are actually receiving property, parking garages. We, the civil servants, are having everything stripped away,” Steve continued.

“With this claw back, they took the highest earning year from my account and just take 20 percent from, saying that is what you gotta pay. When we signed on with the city, they told us, ‘when you retire you will have healthcare for life.’ The city was supposed to guarantee us $1,200 per month. Now, I won’t even be able to help my kids get health insurance. They don’t have insurance, they are both students and they both work, and they can’t afford health care. They don’t know whether they will be fined or what is going to happen.

“When I took this job, I thought, what could happen to the city of Detroit? It’s been around since 1703. Instead, I could have gone to work for Weiss Plumbing. I wouldn’t have been buried alive. I wouldn’t have gotten a spinal surgery. I thought I was providing a service to the community, I thought I was trying to make it better. As city workers, we did work for 15 to 35 percent less than the private sector,” he concluded.

The World Socialist Web Site also spoke to Robert, a retired Detroit bus mechanic, who denounced the imposition of an emergency manager and the bankruptcy process as undemocratic. “Actually, Governor Snyder put us into a dictatorship with that emergency manager law. We voted it down, the whole state voted it down, and he just changed the word or two and put it through because he wanted it,” Robert stated.

“Now, they are stealing employee’s personal money with that claw back. This is our own personal money that we put in. The city did not contribute anything. A lot of retirees are right now below the poverty level and this cut is going to be terrible. And then they want to cut more? To take their own money. How hardhearted can you be?

Robert concluded by connecting the attack on workers in Detroit to the breaking of the PATCO strike in 1981. “All this stuff started with Reagan back when he fired to those air-traffic controllers. I thought the whole country should have been shut down. A strike like that would have lasted one day and it would’ve been all over.”

Obama administration bows to Israel on eve of speech by Netanyahu

Bill Van Auken

On the eve of a provocative speech to the US Congress by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Obama administration officials bent over backwards to proclaim their commitment to support and defend the state of Israel.

Netanyahu organized the speech in a deal with Republican House Speaker John Boehner without informing the White House, an unprecedented violation of international protocol. The Israeli prime minister’s aim in delivering the address, scheduled for Tuesday morning, is, on the one hand, to scuttle any negotiated agreement over Iran’s nuclear program, and, on the other, to raise his own flagging fortunes in an Israeli election to take place in little more than two weeks.

On the eve of his speech to a joint session of Congress, Netanyahu spoke to the annual meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the premier pro-Israel lobby in the US. Netanyahu declared that his impending speech before Congress “is not intended to show any disrespect to President Obama or the esteemed office that he holds.” He added, “I have great respect for both.”

This is entirely disingenuous. Netanyahu is deliberately provoking Obama by delivering a speech against his administration’s express wishes. He is betting that a confrontation with a US president who is widely unpopular in Israel will serve to mobilize his right-wing base in the upcoming election.

Recent polls have shown Netanyahu either in a dead heat with or trailing his main opponent, the Labor Party’s Isaac Herzog. The latter has condemned Netanyahu’s decision to address the US Congress as “endangering US support for Israel.”

Netanyahu told AIPAC, “The purpose of my speech is to speak up about a potential deal with Iran that could threaten Israel’s future.” Before flying to the US, the Israeli prime minister self-servingly described his controversial trip as a “fateful, even historic, mission.”

The Israeli government has long held the position that any deal with Iran on its nuclear program is unacceptable. It has persistently pushed to draw the US into a military confrontation with Iran.

While both Tel Aviv and Washington have charged that Iran has used its nuclear program to pursue the development of nuclear weapons, Tehran has insisted that it is directed solely toward peaceful purposes.

Iran and the P5+1 group—comprised of the US, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany—are set to resume negotiations this week in Switzerland. The outlines appear to be taking shape of a potential deal that would freeze Iran’s nuclear enrichment for a lengthy period—according to some reports, for ten years—in exchange for the lifting of punishing economic sanctions imposed upon the country.

Iranian Prime Minister Javad Zarif stated Monday that any deal would be contingent on the swift ending of sanctions. “If they want an agreement, sanctions must go,” he said. “We believe all sanctions must be lifted.”

Ultimately, under the deal, Iran’s nuclear status would be normalized based on its status as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Israel, which has refused to sign the treaty, rejects any such normalization. With its arsenal of hundreds of warheads, the Zionist state is determined to maintain its monopoly on nuclear weapons in the Middle East, not as a means of self-defense, but as a military club to impose its will on neighboring countries.

While the Netanyahu government and the Zionist lobby continuously insist that Tehran is bent on Israel’s annihilation, it is Israel that constantly threatens unilateral military aggression against Iran, while using assassinations and other covert operations to destabilize its government.

The Israeli press reported Monday that Washington and Tel Aviv have ceased sharing intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program. One of the fears expressed by the Obama administration is that Netanyahu will use his speech to Congress to disclose classified information about the talks in Switzerland in an attempt to derail any agreement. Last month, US officials charged that the Israeli regime had leaked such information to the Israeli media for the same purpose.

Netanyahu is also expected to use his appearance before the US Congress to lend support to two bills that would impose further US sanctions upon Iran and give Congress the power to block the treaty. Obama has vowed to veto the measures.

With the controversy over Netanyahu’s speech being described as a low point in US-Israeli relations, the Obama administration bent over backwards on the eve of the address to affirm its unwavering commitment to Israel’s security. It also renewed threats against Iran.

Washington provides Israel with $3.1 billion in annual aid, most of it military, and gives Tel Aviv virtually unconditional support in the United Nations and other international bodies.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters Monday that a nuclear deal with Iran would not preclude new rounds of sanctions or even a US military attack on the country. In the event Tehran was deemed to be out of compliance with the agreement, he said, “We can add additional sanctions to the mix if we feel like that would be successful.” He added, “We’ll even have a military option that continues to be available to the president.”

Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the United Nations, was dispatched to the AIPAC conference Monday to deliver a speech implicitly threatening US military action against Iran. “Talks, no talks, agreement, no agreement, the United States will take any steps that are necessary to protect our national security and that of our closest ally,” she said. “We believe that diplomacy is the preferred route to secure our shared aim, but if it should fail, we know the stakes of a nuclear-armed Iran as well as everyone here. We will not let it happen.” Power’s bellicose remarks won a standing ovation from the right-wing Zionist audience.

Earlier, Secretary of State John Kerry delivered remarks at the annual session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva in which he denounced the body for its “obsession with Israel” and an “unbalanced focus” on the Israeli government’s wars, occupations and apartheid policies.

Kerry’s defense of Israel came just as the Palestine Liberation Organization announced that it will bring its first complaint over Israeli war crimes to the International Criminal Court on April 1. The case will deal with last summer’s Israeli war on Gaza, which claimed the lives of 2,200 Palestinians, most of them civilians. The PLO is also planning to sue over Israel’s illegal building of settlements in the occupied territories.

Both Washington and Tel Aviv vehemently opposed the move by the PLO in January to join the ICC. In retaliation, Israel has withheld millions of dollars in monthly taxes that it collects for the West Bank’s Palestinian Authority, throwing it into deep financial crisis.

While much has been made of a supposed Democratic Party boycott of Netanyahu’s speech, as of late Monday, just 30 members of the House and two senators were reportedly planning to skip the speech—out of at total of 535 members in the two houses. Even those criticizing the Israeli prime minister’s actions are doing so from the standpoint of his injecting “partisanship” into the US-Israeli alliance, not from the standpoint of opposing the crimes for which Israel is responsible.

Millions view video showing police murder of homeless man in Los Angeles

John Burton

Shortly after noon last Sunday raw video appeared on Facebook within minutes after multiple Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers shot and killed an unarmed man on the sidewalk outside the Union Rescue Mission on Skid Row, where many of the City’s homeless live in makeshift tents on the street.

Within hours, the video had been shared on thousands of Facebook pages and racked up millions of views. While the original Facebook post has been taken down, the video can be seen in its entirety on YouTube.

Details, including the victim’s name, age and background, have not yet been released. The Los Angeles County Coroner’s office reports that he is black and in his mid-30s. Andy Bales, president of the Union Rescue Mission, has stated that the victim used the name “Africa,” and may have been an immigrant from Cameroon.

According to Bales, the victim stayed nearby and helped Mission workers keep the area clean. Other people have told reporters that the victim spoke to them of having spent long stretches in a mental hospital before showing up on Skid Row a few months ago.

A significant number of the homeless who populate Los Angeles’ Skid Row and similar neighborhoods in other major US cities suffer from serious mental illness, and there are no effective programs to house and treat them.

Skid Row has been targeted by developers who see driving the homeless away as the key to profiting through gentrification. The officers involved in Sunday’s shooting were assigned to the so-called “Safer Cities Initiative,” an LAPD task force assigned to target Skid Row residents and force them to move out.

The video, which appears to have been made by a cell phone, begins abruptly with officers rousting the victim from his small plastic tent on the sidewalk almost directly in front of the Mission. As the man spins around, waving his arms harmlessly, surrounded by four officers, a small woman can be seen standing in the background. It is not yet known whether she and the victim were associated in any way.

One of the four officers drops his billy club, leaving it on the sidewalk, to draw his firearm. The woman walks over, picks up the nightstick, and holds it as if to defend herself from officers, who by this time have knocked the victim to the ground, piled on top of him, and started beating him.

The woman was herself knocked to the ground violently by two officers, as more officers arrived and joined in the beating of the victim.

At the 20-second point in the video, the distinctive clicking sound made by a Taser during its discharge of electricity can be heard, and one of the officers appears to be jamming the Taser’s electrodes into the victim. A voice is heard yelling, “Drop the gun!” three times, and then five shots rang out in the space of three seconds.

Officers continued to point their weapons at the victim’s lifeless body for almost a minute and a half before one of them finally checked for a pulse, as stunned onlookers became increasingly angry, yelling denunciations of the police.

No gun was recovered, and there is nothing in the video suggesting that the victim ever had his hand on an officer’s weapon.

The LAPD later confirmed that two officers and one sergeant fired bullets.

At a press conference, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, a Democrat, defended the officers and called the LAPD “the most progressive force in the country.” He announced that at least two officers were wearing body cameras. Neither video has been released, however.

LAPD Chief of Police Charlie Beck immediately rushed to the defense of the officers at a Monday morning press conference, using the same lame “he was going for an officer’s gun” excuse used by Officer Darren Wilson after killing Michael Brown last summer in Ferguson, Missouri.

When officers approached, the victim “refused to comply with the officers’ commands and then began to fight with them,” according to Beck. The video clearly shows the officers as the aggressors.

Beck claimed that the victim “forcibly grabbed one of the officer’s holstered pistols,” for proof pointing to a blurry screen shot from the video that shows the victim’s hand extended into the air, not touching a gun.

Beck did not explain why, if the prostrated man was grabbing at his gun, the officer did not simply stand up, removing it from his reach.

Beck called his officers’ sickening one-sided beating and execution of a mentally ill, homeless man “a very intense situation and a brutal, brutal fight.”

Surveillance cameras mounted outside the Mission captured events before and after the shooting. The victim had been involved in a minor altercation with another homeless man. After his tent was pointed out, the officers dragged the victim out, leading to the events captured on the cell phone camera. The surveillance cameras also captured the paramedics arriving and pronouncing the man dead at the scene.

Police officers have extensive training on weapons retention, and they use special holsters that make taking weapons away from officers very difficult. No officer in a situation like this one is going to allow a vastly outnumbered, unarmed transient access to a firearm unless he is looking for a pretext to use deadly force.

Officers have been known to shout lines such as “Stop resisting” to cover up for their own brutality. Yelling “Drop the gun” signals other officers to use lethal force.

Sunday’s shooting is part of a surge in police violence throughout the United States, which is itself a direct response to deepening social tensions arising from the growth of social inequality. According to killedbypolice.net, law enforcement agencies in the United States have killed over 175 people already this year, a rate of about three people a day. In contrast, no police officers have been killed by criminal suspects so far in 2015.

Obama administration whitewashes police killings

Andre Damon

Only one day after the world was shocked and horrified by the release of a bystander video showing Los Angeles police murdering yet another unarmed man in broad daylight, the Obama administration’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing released its interim report, offering a handful of toothless recommendations that amount to a green light for police violence and murder.

In December, in the wake of mass protests against the police killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York and 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio, the Obama administration announced it was establishing the task force to “strengthen the relationships between local police and the communities they are supposed to protect and serve.”

Apologists for the Obama administration such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson sought to present the task force, together with federal investigations into several high-profile police killings, as evidence that the White House was seriously seeking to bring killer cops to justice and put a halt to police brutality.

From the beginning, however, Obama made clear that the task force would have no real power. It was staffed with many former and current police officials, including Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, who functioned as its co-chair.

At the same time as it announced the creation of the task force, the administration released a report endorsing federal programs that have transferred billions of dollars in military-grade hardware from the Pentagon to local police agencies.

In establishing the task force, Obama implied that the fundamental problem was not that police murdered hundreds of people every year, but that the population did not sufficiently support the police. He decried the “distrust that exists between too many police departments and too many communities of color.”

In announcing the task force’s findings on Monday, Obama declared that this distrust “means we’re not as effective in fighting crime as we could be.” He called the task force report “a great opportunity, coming out of some great conflict and tragedy,” to make “our law enforcement officers feel, rather than being embattled, feel fully supported.”

The recommendations in the report are in line with this goal of defending and strengthening the police. There are no proposals for significant nationwide legal or administrative measures to rein in the police. Rather, there is a laundry list of recommendations for law enforcement agencies to carry out or ignore, entirely at their pleasure.

These include calling on local police departments to implement “outside” investigations of police killings by referring probes to “neighboring jurisdictions or to the next higher levels of government.” This would mean in practice shifting investigations to other police-friendly agencies and jurisdictions.

There are no demands that killer cops or their superiors be held criminally or legally accountable for the deaths and injuries they inflict. There are no demands for the removal of officials guilty of whitewashing police killings, such as Robert McCulloch, the St. Louis County prosecutor who rigged the grand jury proceedings to prevent the indictment of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, the killer of Michael Brown.

The task force report notes that there is no mandatory federal database of police killings, and that the submission of this information by local police to the federal government is voluntary. Its response to this scandalous situation is merely to urge police departments to be more forthcoming with data.

The only substantial nationwide proposal is for the creation of a federal “Law Enforcement Diversity Initiative” to encourage the hiring of minority police officers. This is aimed at giving ammunition to the White House’s apologists, who will hail the proposal as evidence that the White House is “sensitive” to the needs of minority communities.

It is in line with the administration’s attempt to define the nationwide epidemic of police killings of unarmed people—white as well as black—as a racial question, obscuring the more fundamental class issues.

It is noteworthy that the central premise of the task force—that the problem is a “lack of trust” between the police and the population, is the same as that advanced by Obama following the exposure of massive, illegal spying on the American people by the National Security Agency. The task, Obama declared at that time, was to restore the trust of the American people in the NSA and other police and intelligence agencies.

Obama established a task force, packed with defenders of the NSA, to look into the issue and make recommendations. The result was a series of toothless proposals that in no way challenged the “right” of the NSA to violate the Constitution and intercept the communications of every single person in the US and tens of millions more around the world. The result is a level of mass surveillance today that is, if anything, even more pervasive than when the spying revelations emerged two years ago.

It will be no different with the policing task force and the epidemic of police killings.

The White House report is the product of a calculated political operation that began with the eruption of protests following the killing of Michael Brown last August. The administration responded by backing the police-military crackdown carried out by the local authorities, while carrying out maneuvers aimed at tamping down public outrage.

After the sham grand jury proceedings that exonerated Wilson, the White House announced a “civil rights” investigation. Predictably, the Justice Department has, according to media reports, found no grounds to bring charges against Wilson.

Since the killing of Brown, more than six hundred more people have been killed by police, according to an online compilation of local media reports. The murders of Brown, Garner and others, followed by the exoneration of the killer cops, sparked nationwide protests. But what have been the results?

The police have been given a virtual license to kill, secure in the knowledge that they will not be prosecuted. Meanwhile, hundreds of people have been arrested for protesting and dozens detained for posting criticisms of the police on social media.

The basic lessons is that democratic rights—including the right to live—cannot be defended by appealing to or relying on Congress, the courts, the Democratic Party or any other official institution. Basic rights can be defended only through an independent political movement of the working class in opposition to the existing economic and political system, that is, on the basis of a socialist program.

The endless series of sociopathic police killings expresses something much deeper than the individual psyches of the backward people recruited by the state to do its dirty work. These killings are ultimately an expression of the cancerous growth of social inequality, which is intrinsic to capitalism and the corporate and financial aristocracy that runs America.

Murder in Moscow: Why was Boris Nemtsov assassinated?

David North

The assassination of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov is a significant political event that arises out of the US-Russia confrontation and the intense struggle that is now underway within the highest levels of the Russian state. The Obama administration and the CIA are playing a major role in the escalation of this conflict, with the aim of producing an outcome that serves the global geo-political and financial interests of US imperialism.

The relations between the United States and Russia are approaching a point of breakdown, with potentially catastrophic consequences. The Obama administration has concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin must be removed from power, based on the Kremlin’s refusal to accept, as a fait accompli, the overthrow last year of the democratically elected Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, and its opposition to the complete economic and military integration of Ukraine into the US sphere of influence.

Especially in the aftermath of Russia’s interference in US plans to attack Syria in 2013 and its granting of political asylum to NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, Putin’s continued presidency has been deemed incompatible with US geo-political interests. Thus, the decision has been made to instigate—through international political pressure, economic sanctions, and covert operations of various sorts—Putin’s removal from power.

It is all but obvious that the Obama administration is hoping a faction will emerge within the Russian elite, backed by elements in the military and secret police, capable of staging a “palace coup” and getting rid of Putin. The personal fate of the Russian president—whether he goes the way of Serbia’s Milosevic, Romania’s Ceausescu, Iraq’s Hussein or Libya’s Gaddafi—is to be decided by the circumstances of his ouster.

In any event, Putin would then be replaced with a representative of a section of the oligarchy—a Russian version of the billionaire Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko—who is prepared to follow the US line without equivocation. The US media, of course, would hail such a development as a “democratic revolution.”

The United States is not seeking to trigger a widespread popular revolt. That is the very last thing it wants. The administration’s actions are directed entirely at convincing a section of the oligarchy and emerging capitalist class that their business interests and personal wealth depend upon US support. That is why the Obama administration has used economic sanctions targeting individuals as a means of exerting pressure on the oligarchs as well as broader sections of the entrepreneurial elite.

Significantly, Garry Kasparov—the émigré Russian neo-con who speaks for the most right-wing and aggressively anti-Putin forces in the US foreign policy establishment—wrote an opinion piece appearing in Monday’s Wall Street Journal which makes clear that the US is in close contact with the elites, discussing with them such issues as the overthrow of Putin. He calls on Western leaders to respond to Nemtsov’s killing by treating the Kremlin as a “criminal rogue regime.” He calls for the breaking off of negotiations between Russia and the West over the situation in eastern Ukraine and the immediate dispatch of weapons to the right-wing regime in Kiev.

Finally, Kasparov urges the US and EU to escalate pressure on the oligarchs in order to break their support for Putin. “Tell Russian oligarchs, every one of them,” he writes, “that there is no place their money will be safe in the West as long as they serve the Putin regime.”

It is in the context of this international power struggle that one must evaluate Nemtsov’s murder. Of course, it is possible that his death was the outcome of his private dealings. But it is more likely that he was killed for political reasons. Certainly, the timing of the killing—on the eve of the opposition’s anti-Putin demonstration in Moscow—strongly indicates that the killing was a political assassination, not a private settling of accounts.

The demonstration itself has particular significance. The organization of such demonstrations has become something of a CIA specialty, serving as a vital political backdrop and pretext for the implementation of regime-change. Individuals such as Alexei Navalny and other opposition figures are trumpeted in the US media as leaders of a “pro-democracy” movement.

There are two possible plot lines (each of which has innumerable variants) behind last Friday’s assassination:

The first is that Nemtsov was killed by elements in the Putin faction—with or without the knowledge of the president—as a warning to those in the elite who may be considering jumping ship. However, it is hard to see how such a reckless action would strengthen the regime.

The second is that he was killed by elements within the anti-Putin faction as a means of providing the fake democracy movement with a martyr. It is worth noting that in his Wall Street Journal comment, Kasparov refers to differences he had with Nemtsov over anti-Putin tactics, with Nemtsov taking a more cautious approach than Kasparov.

“Boris and I began to quarrel after Mr. Putin returned as president in 2012. To me, the Putin return signaled the end of any realistic hopes for a peaceful political path to regime change. But Boris was always optimistic. He would tell me I was too rash, that ‘you have to live a long time to see change in Russia.’ Now he will never see it.”

This statement seems to suggest significant tactical divisions in the US-backed anti-Putin camp. Perhaps Nemtsov was seen as an impediment to the implementation of violent regime-change. In such a situation, it is hardly beyond the realm of possibility that he came to be seen as someone whose “martyrdom” could best serve the anti-Putin cause.

The figure of Nemtsov is significant, as his career is rooted in the years of Russia’s first post-Soviet president, Boris Yeltsin. In the early 1990s, he emerged as a representative of a thoroughly corrupt layer of pro-capitalist compradors who were engaged in a fire sale of Soviet assets. Nemtsov formed close relations with US businessmen and was the subject of fawning treatment by the US press.

At the same time, Yeltsin, utterly corrupt and perennially drunk, had absolutely no concept of Russian national interests. The United States did whatever it wanted—in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia—without any opposition from Russia.

While Putin also emerged during the Yeltsin years—though in its later stages—it appears, in contrast to Nemtsov, that he represented sections of the old state intelligence agencies that were alarmed by the total abandonment by Yeltsin of any defense of Russian interests. Under Putin’s leadership, the traditional Russian preoccupation with a “strong state” has reemerged.

Eventually, this brought Putin into conflict with American—and, it must be added, European—imperialism. Clearly, Putin is trying to rally support for his nationalist-capitalist agenda. But this is inherently reactionary and politically bankrupt, involving Russia in an endless series of geopolitical conflicts for which it lacks the economic and military resources.

Moreover, the deep dissatisfaction of the working class with the outcome of capitalist restoration—devastating poverty and social inequality—will be intensified by the economic consequences of escalating military operations. Finally, Putin’s present-day allies in the oligarchy, beneath the weight of sanctions, grow increasingly disenchanted and are continually reassessing their options.

The Russian tragedy, arising out of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, cannot be resolved on a progressive basis except through the reemergence of the working class, armed with a revolutionary socialist and internationalist program. A mass movement of the working class, inspired by the political heritage of October 1917, is the only antidote to the poisonous atmosphere of conspiracy and counter-conspiracy that presently dominates Russian politics.

At the same time, the incredibly reckless operations of US imperialism, which can at any point escalate into a full-scale military-nuclear confrontation with Russia, must be opposed and ended through the development of a new mass anti-war movement, spearheaded by the working class and based on the principles of socialist internationalism.

Finding Peace Through Culture: A Triqui Vision

A.G

Walking down the streets of the city of Oaxaca, Mexico, one can hear merchants speak to their family and friends in many indigenous languages, such as variations of the Zapoteco and Mixteco. With 15 out of the 62 recognized ethnolinguistic groups in Mexico, Oaxaca is one of the most diverse states in the country.

As a state rich in ethnic diversity, Oaxaca attracts a good deal of cultural tourism. The need has arisen, consequently, to assist in these cultures’  reservation. The foundation Alfredo Harp Helu, for instance, participates in the preservation of Zapotecan culture. Through the foundation’s support, different centers can host workshops on indigenous textile techniques developed in the region, and provide lessons to learn native dialects. This type of philanthropy is valuable for Mexican society, as it helps preserve the colorful and millenary cultures that we often associate with Mexico.

Unfortunately not all ethnic groups in Oaxaca receive enough help to maintain their culture. There are places beyond the capital where poverty, violence and illiteracy persist. The Triqui, for example, can speak their native language, but most can no longer read or write it. Despite their recent successes in international basketball, the Triquis of Oaxaca are currently in the midst of a cultural crisis. As Federico Anaya Gallardo writes in his essay titled Contexto político y social de la reforma constitucional en la materia indígena del estado de Chiapas, “Modernization produced the surge of new social identities and new political and social groups that societies were unfamiliar with in the best of cases, and in the worst, despised.” The same explanation may be extended to Oaxacan society. In the 70’s the Triquis began organizing to fight an abusive agricultural system. In the pursuit of political rights, factions of Triqui groups were created. They all wanted peace and respect for their human rights, but had different political interests and identities, and ended up working separately.

“Some groups weren’t as peaceful as others and the clashes between them escalated into violence”, explains Emelia, a young Triqui woman whose face shows the passage of few, but cruel years. “We are famous for our violence,” she says, “but with respect to our culture, we haven’t advanced much. We have lost a lot of culture from our writing because there have been too many murders. All of the knowledge that we have goes to the grave, it worries us.”
“We are looking for a strategy on how to lessen the violence, it’s difficult, it’s not easy. But that is our vision, that someday the Triquis can live well, like humans, like we all deserve. Little by little we have advanced and accomplished things. In 2012 we signed a peace treaty amongst the Triquis.”

Even if the Peace and Concord Treaty has brought some relief to the region, the scar of past violence has kept trumping overall stability. Emelia’s eyes fill with tears as she speaks about her cousins who disappeared in 2007, yet, her voice is filled with the conviction that she will not stop trying to bring peace amongst the Triquis. “And like that, little by little we have been working with several groups, little by little with the communities, and like that, we have been advancing. And it was really hard because two of my cousins disappeared. And like that, with all the pain we worked, and we advanced, and now we have had some peace for four years.  Effectively, yes, there have been murders, but it isn’t like it was back in 2006 to 2010. Just because you weren’t a member of a certain community, you were an enemy, you were sexually attacked, physically. It was a critical situation. There’s a lot of widows and orphans thanks to the violence.”

Three years after the treaty was signed, the organization called Movimiento Unificación y Lucha Triqui (Triqui Struggle and Unification Movement, MULT) has attempted to create a house of Triqui culture in Oaxaca. This house, the MULT says, would bring together the Triquis under one same roof, and through the preservation of their culture, attain peace between the factions. There still are groups that clash, but the house promises to bring unity. “In this house there will be peace for everyone, not one group, but all of us, but we don’t have the means to start, that’s the problem. If we could receive some financial or cultural help from anyone, they could help us preserve our culture,” says Juan Domingo Pérez Castillo, natural leader and founder of the
MULT. “We want the house to be a sort of embassy amongst Triquis. For the Triquis of Oaxaca, we want this to be a place where we can document so many things from our culture. There are many young Triquis outside of Oaxaca, even in the U.S., who know they are Triqui but do not know much about us. So we want this house to be the place where they can go online, too, and do their research there.” Some of the things Juan says the house would have is a database of the curative plants they use, and have extensive information on the way the Triquis of the mountains sustain themselves. There is even talk of making a small documentary and going around the Triqui communities to have them all chip in their bit of Triqui wisdom. A major challenge they face in the creation of the house, says Emelia, is that very few living Triquis know how to read and write their language. The cost of reaching old Triqui speakers and writers is too high. “There are areas where the Triquis don’t even know how to read and write Spanish. So by keeping us ignorant, we stay separated,” says Juan. “Then alliances start forming, where groups look only to benefit themselves, instead of all the Triquis.” This does not mean that the Triqui language has been lost. There is a woman named Elena Erickson de Hollenbach who has a website where one can find books about the Triqui language. “The problem,” says Juan, “is that she came with intentions of evangelizing us too, rather than just documenting our language.” Juan says that they’re open to collaborating with any foreigner as long as they respect their beliefs and customs.

On February 2, 2015 there was a march in the city of Oaxaca where numerous MULT members walked down the main streets of the city. They were asking for the state and federal governments to implement projects that would improve the Triqui social structure including diminishing poverty and  marginalization. It culminated with the state government promising a dialogue on the 9th of February. This dialogue could lead to the creation of the House of Triqui Culture with the help and respect of the Oaxacan government. While those dialogues develop, Emelia and Juan say they will dedicate themselves to unify the Triqui communities through the maintenance of their culture, in any way possible.

House of Cards collapses

Andre Damon

In reviewing television programs, it has become customary to give readers a “spoiler warning” before discussing specific details of the plot. In the case ofHouse of Cards, Season 3, this will not be necessary, because the season has no significant plot to speak of.

House of Cards

The program, produced by Netflix, began as a sharp and scathing portrayal of the violence and corruption behind the official facade of American politics. It has been turned into an utterly trite and complacent celebration of the political establishment.

In the first season of the show, Democratic Congressman Francis Underwood, snubbed in his nomination to a cabinet post in a presidential administration he helped put in power, orchestrates his own appointment as vice president through conspiracy, in the process murdering a junior congressman.

In the second season, Underwood secures his ascension to the presidency through a plot to have the sitting president impeached. The body count rises: Underwood personally throws his mistress, reporter Zoe Barnes—whom he was using to plant stories in the press—under a subway train. He has the FBI entrap Barnes’s fellow reporter, who suspects Underwood in the murder, and convict him on trumped-up charges, locking him up for decades.

In the third season, Underwood somehow emerges from this baptism of blood as a thoroughly conventional president, although with his fair share of personal and political difficulties. The “drama” of the season largely revolves around petty, boring and completely unconvincing squabbles between Underwood and his wife, in the context of geopolitical and domestic events drawn uncritically from contemporary headlines.

The first two seasons presented a story that was half Macbeth, half Richard III. The show’s dramatic success depended on Underwood’s sangfroid, ruthlessness, cynicism and lack of sentimentality, which made for a believable character. At the same time, there were human, and even sometimes humane elements to Underwood that gave his character a certain complexity and richness.

A viewer watching season three will proceed through the first few episodes waiting for the shoe to drop, asking: When will the narrative resume? But at some point, he or she will realize that the third season bears no significant relationship to the first two. The characters are the same, the cinematography similar, but any trace of political criticism has been entirely removed, and the direction and purpose of the show have changed. The whole thing unfolds as one big bait and switch.

The political content of the show ends up supporting and justifying various pressing policy interests of the America ruling class. In dealing with international geopolitics, all the tropes of American foreign policy are parroted uncritically. The Russian state is painted as a totalitarian autocracy, clamping down on gay rights and political dissent, while the US seeks to counter Russian “aggression” while working for stability and peace in the Middle East.

Members of the pro-US, anti-Russian protest group Pussy Riot make a cameo when they are invited to a state dinner at the White House with Russian President Victor Petrov (a stand-in for Vladimir Putin). And after a jailed American political dissident in Russia commits suicide, Claire Underwood throws caution aside and does the “right thing,” denouncing the authoritarianism of the Russian state in a press conference. The irony of a First Lady of a country whose policy is torture and extrajudicial murder denouncing Russia for authoritarianism is not even considered.

Underwood’s ordering of assassinations—a reference to the unconstitutional drone murder program of the Obama administration—is presented in uncritical fashion and largely in passing. To the extent that the moral or constitutional questions involved are even considered, it is to justify these crimes.

A scene in which the Supreme Court hears testimony from the civilian survivor of a drone strike is counterpoised to a scene of Arlington National Cemetery, perpetuating the lie that drone murders are necessary to save American lives. The viewer is meant to draw the conclusion that, though drone assassination and the dozens of civilian casualties each one entails may be somewhat distasteful, they are ultimately necessary, and the real victims are the politicians and soldiers who have to carry out the killings.

Underwood’s main piece of domestic legislation, a proposal aimed at eliminating the “entitlement programs” of Social Security and Medicare, is presented as visionary, aimed at cutting through the “gridlock” of Washington and finally “getting something done.” The makers of the show seem to assume that this measure would be broadly popular, and rule out the possibility that it would evoke social opposition from the tens of millions of people who would find themselves cut off from their only source of income.

In the original 1990 British television show House of Cards, Francis Urquhart, on whose character Underwood is based, is ultimately undone both by his own crimes and the social forces he has unleashed. But in the third season of the American show, there is no consideration of any broader social forces outside of Washington.

Instead, Underwood and his wife, who once threatened to let an unborn child “wither and die” inside a woman who crossed her, are recast in the mold of affluent middle-class professionals. The action might as well have taken place in the home of a high-powered husband and wife team of proctologists.

The show’s executive producer, Beau Willimon, basically said as much in an interview with Variety magazine, declaring, “All we’re trying to do is tell the story of Frank and Claire Underwood. They happen to be politicians. Their story of ambition and power hungriness is a story you could have told on Wall Street or in a law firm or in a lot of different worlds. I don’t think House of Cards is about politics at all.”

This conception, that the broader social and political context is irrelevant to understanding the personal actions of anyone, much less of politicians, is stupid and childish, and applying it to House of Cards results in a show that resembles a daytime soap opera with desaturated colors.

All of this speaks ultimately to the views and values of the show’s affluent, well-connected actors and creators, who have accepted uncritically the broader views of the American ruling class. It has become a production of the political establishment. Indeed, it has incorporated much of the state apparatus, with cameos from major figures in the American media establishment, including Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert and NBC special correspondent Meredith Vieira.

In the process, the criminality that lay at the center of the first two seasons has been sanitized. In the first season, Underwood remarked that he came into high office with “not a single vote cast in my name,” declaring “democracy is so overrated.” But the horrible crimes committed by Underwood on his road to power have almost no relevance to the entire third season. Could there be any doubt that Underwood’s presidency would bear the marks of the crimes he committed to obtain it?

For the ruling elite and its media hangers-on, a crime, even a high crime, if committed by the rich and powerful, is seen largely as a public relations issue. If it is spun right, or even ignored, it simply goes away.

This past December, the US Senate released portions of its report on government torture, decisively proving the personal culpability of the entire Bush administration in planning and orchestrating the most horrific crimes, of which “rectal feeding” was only the most memorable. The New York Timescalled for criminal prosecutions of top officials in the Bush administration. And what now? The media has stopped reporting on it, and politicians do not raise the issue. Life goes on.

One could envision a different trajectory for House of Cards, one that would also be closer to the reality of American politics. Let us imagine for a moment what would happen if the show’s creators had held true to the characters and approach they created in the first two seasons.

In the third episode of the third season, Underwood displays his “toughness” by cancelling a scheduled joint press conference with Russian President Petrov, instead holding his own press conference where he denounces the Russian government. But to be true to his original character, Underwood should have been able to display a degree of criminality in his interaction with Petrov that would have left the Russian leader frightened and horrified. For example, taking Petrov through a secret corridor below the White House to an interrogation room where Underwood personally tortures and murders a “terrorist” suspect.

But nothing like this ever occurs. The show’s creators are afraid of what would happen if they carry Underwood’s bent for murder and terror into the White House: they would have approached a realistic depiction of the sadism and violence that pervade the highest levels of the American state. It would have been too close to the truth for comfort.

South African MP warned against investigating Russia-South Africa spy satellite

Thabo Seseane Jr.

In revelations tied to the leaked “Spy Cables” documents being published byAl Jazeera in collaboration with the Guardian, opposition Democratic Alliance MP David Maynier said he was warned off an investigation into a joint Russia-South Africa surveillance project. This is thought to be a satellite now being used by rival South African spies to snoop on each other via Russia.

Appearing on Al Jazeera on February 27, Maynier, the Shadow Minister of Defence and Military Veterans, said a satellite “was launched [for South African Defence Intelligence] on or about 14 December 2014,” under the codename Flute. The satellite surveillance programme was to be used for strategic military purposes, eventually culminating in the launch of a satellite by Russia on behalf of South Africa that was to integrate the countries’ satellite surveillance programmes to provide wider coverage over all of Africa and as far north as Israel.

According to the leak, a top-secret report from the South African State Security Agency (SSA) shows that Russia and South Africa were cooperating on a secret satellite surveillance programme, which the SSA codenamed Project Condor.

“Bizarrely,” as a press release on Maynier’s web page explains, “the State Security Agency appears to have been collecting intelligence about a satellite surveillance programme being implemented by Defence Intelligence.”

The SSA report dated August 28, 2012 represents the first time information about Project Condor/Flute has been in the public domain. It says the SSA was relying on an agent in Russia for details of the joint satellite surveillance project between the Russians and Defence Intelligence.

The disclosures came days after Al Jazeera and the Guardian began publishing what they tout as “hundreds of secret intelligence papers from agencies all over the world.” The Spy Cables include papers drafted by operatives working for Israel’s Mossad, Britain’s MI6, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and the SSA.

State Security Minister David Mahlobo said in an interview with the Mail & Guardian the leak “undermines the operational effectiveness of intelligence and its mandate to secure the state and diplomatic relations.” He denied that factionalism in the ruling party could be a factor in the revelations.

In what sounded like an early attempt to apportion blame, Mahlobo added, “We inherited an intelligence [service] from a fragmented past. We had the agents from the apartheid intelligence and those from the liberation movements. They were brought together to serve the country…”

Mahlobo’s boss, President Jacob Zuma, headed the intelligence wing of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) in exile. That the leaks happened during his term of office is supposed to be a sore point.

The Spy Cables describe Johannesburg as the “El Dorado of espionage.” Experts have said that, whereas under apartheid the country was relatively unwelcoming to the world, with the explosion in the number of embassies opened after the ANC accession to power in 1994 there was a commensurate rise in the number of spies in South Africa.

Even as South Africa aligns itself more and more with Russia and China—now the country’s biggest trade partner—through multilateral vehicles like the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) group—the country remains susceptible to pressure from the Western intelligence agencies. Britain’s MI6 and the CIA are supposed to have fostered an anti-Iranian bias among South African intelligence operatives. They warned that the Iranians were using South Africa as a recruiting ground for groups like Al Qaeda and asked the South Africans to keep tabs on their diplomats.

According to one of the leaked documents, the SSA considered spying for the CIA. Doing so, went the reasoning, might have illuminated what the US considered of most importance, and revealed some objectives of US intelligence gathering efforts.

The leaks come at a bad time for Mahlobo. Just days before the Al Jazeerascoop, the minister was forced to announce an inquiry into a signal jammer which prevented journalists from using their cell phones during Zuma’s state of the nation address on February 12.

In the press gallery, journalists prevented from covering the event in real time waved their handsets, chanting, “Bring back the signal!” DA Chief Whip John Steenhuisen rose to object to the communications blackout and was followed by other opposition party MPs who denounced it as a violation of parliamentary rules and therefore unconstitutional.

A handwritten note passed from Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa to Mahlobo caused the minister to leave the House for a few minutes. When he returned, so did the cellular networks signal.

Minutes later, Economic Freedom Fighters MPs were assaulted by armed police officers and parliamentary security personnel in identical black-and-white attire. The EFF MPs were thrown out of the joint sitting of the National Assembly and the upper National Council of Provinces for interrupting the president’s address, demanding to know from Zuma when he intended paying back the US$23 million of state funds unlawfully spent on his private compound at Nkandla.

The chaos in parliament and Maynier’s fruitless investigations into the secret spy satellite deals between Russia and Defence Intelligence are of a type. For a sitting MP to be told, as Maynier reports he was, by persons unknown, that the surveillance satellite was not something he wanted to look too closely into smacks of more than just a creeping authoritarianism. The impotence of opposition politics is increasingly clear.

These events signify the limits of bourgeois parliamentary democracy. Having lost the power of persuasion, the ruling party turns to ever greater secrecy and when necessary, demonstrations of force. The DA and EFF are unable to compel Zuma to accept any responsibility for any satellites or for Nkandla, never mind making restitution for even a fraction of any expenditure he is personally responsible for. Neither the ANC, nor the reactionary EFF and DA can give expression to the popular will of working class South Africans.

The repression in parliament is related to the skulduggery of SSA agents and their 140 foreign counterparts throughout South Africa. All together dimly reflect the gigantic social pressures unleashed by the systemic breakdown of global capitalism since 2008. None of the elite factions in any of the parliamentary parties represent a way out for the working poor and the unemployed. For the masses, the answer lies in the building of an independent working class party with a socialist international perspective.

Puerto Rico: Regressive taxes levied on workers as island’s economy falters

John Marion

For almost 10 years, since the expiration of a US federal tax credit that benefited corporate investors followed by the financial collapse of 2008, the US Commonwealth of Puerto Rico has suffered through an economic crisis used by hedge funds and bondholders to hold it hostage. As the island’s official unemployment rate remains above 13 percent and workers leave in the tens of thousands for the US mainland, predatory financiers are creating tax havens for themselves and using the federal courts to protect their interests.

The use of Puerto Rico’s crisis to attack workers’ rights was expressed last June in an emergency law that froze wages, sick leave and other benefits for government workers.

At the same time, a second law was passed giving authority to the Puerto Rican Electric and Power Authority (PREPA) to restructure its debts, which total approximately $9 billion. This law, modeled on Chapter 9 of the US federal bankruptcy code, was challenged in US District Court by investors that included Franklin Templeton, Oppenheimer, BlueMountain Capital and others.

Puerto Rico had sought to define PREPA as a “municipality” which, with state approval, could seek bankruptcy under Chapter 9. The federal law, however, explicitly states that Puerto Rico is not defined as a state for this purpose. On February 6, the US District Court for the District of Puerto Rico ruled against the debt restructuring law and in favor of investors.

Last Thursday, the island’s Resident Commissioner in the US Congress, Pedro Pierluisi, introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that would change this definition so that the restructuring can proceed. Pierluisi is the only representative to Congress from an island of 3.7 million people, and does not have a vote. In seeking to amend Chapter 9, he is looking to copy the attacks on workers that have recently occurred in Detroit and Stockton. While predatory lenders are fighting to protect their immediate interests, sections of the Puerto Rican bourgeoisie view bankruptcy as preferable to default or some types of receivership.

In his decision, District Judge Francisco A. Besosa, wrote that “plaintiff bondholders … should not be forced to live with such substantially impaired contractual rights—rights that they bargained for when they purchased the nearly two billion dollars worth of PREPA bonds that they hold collectively.” The rights of PREPA’s workers will not be treated so gingerly by the courts when push comes to shove. The electric authority employs more than 9,500 people, of whom nearly 6,800 are unionized.

Quoting a 2005 Supreme Court ruling, Besosa also issued a warning to PREPA workers and anyone who purchases energy from the agency: that he sought to “bar the government ‘from forcing some people alone to bear public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole.’”

PREPA, under “forbearance agreements” with large creditors that include Citibank and Scotiabank, is already subjected to strict reviews of its Accounts Receivable and meter reading practices. A November 2014 report issued by FTI Capital Advisors noted as a “positive observation” that the agency had lowered its cut-off period for non-payment from 55 to 50 days.

As the only provider of electricity in Puerto Rico, PREPA is essentially a state-run monopoly that runs 14 plants and services about 1.5 million customers. No doubt there are interests lining up behind the scenes to advocate for its privatization.

Puerto Rico’s General Obligation bonds were also downgraded by Moody’s on February 19. GO bonds are funded in part from the island’s 7 percent sales and use tax through a government-owned corporation established in 2006. Not satisfied with revenues from this regressive tax, the government is now trying to replace it with a 16 percent value added tax which would be applied to many imports as well as items produced on the island. It argues that there is a large informal economy that is escaping the sales tax. While the VAT (or IVU in Spanish) would supposedly include features to limit its regressivity, they come in the form of refunds that are paid out only three times a year and limited to $600.

Rather than build a movement of workers against capitalism, Puerto Rican labor unions and the New Progressive Party (NPP) are advocating pressure on the government. The San Juan Daily Star quoted Luis Pedraza Leduc of the Electrical and Irrigation Workers Union Solidarity Program as advocating “real” tax reform while “recognizing that there is an existing need to restructure the public debt.” NPP gubernatorial candidate Ricardo Roselló called for a “united front” to “bring together all sectors and allow them the necessary time to achieve a transparent and thorough discussion.”

While workers suffer, the government is giving grotesque tax breaks to the wealthy. Under laws passed in 2012, hedge funds located in Puerto Rico now pay only 4 percent tax on profits from exported services, and no tax is charged on capital gains for people who become Puerto Rican citizens. Citizenship means living on the island 183 days out of the year and, asForbes glibly writes, “your driver’s license and yacht should … move with you to the island.”

“Puerto Rico-sourced income” of residents is also not subject to US income tax. The arrogance of the financial aristocracy taking advantage of these measures was expressed by a money manager who told Forbes, “the way the US tax code is written, I could be on Mars and be taxed on intergalactic income but not if I’m sitting on this island in the Caribbean.” Last week theOrlando Centinel quoted Rudy Giuliani as saying that more such people would go to Puerto Rico if beggars were taken off the streets.

Criminality is a characteristic of the banking industry. On Friday, the FDIC shut down Doral Financial Corporation and its subsidiary Doral Bank, which have been investigated for fraud and seen their stock prices drop. El Nuevo Día reported that workers were crying and in shock as they were escorted from the building. The FDIC waited until the end of the day before tens of its agents descended on the company’s headquarters in Guaynabo.

Doral employed more than 800 people, of whom approximately 100 will become employees of FirstBank and 80 will be offered work at Banco Popular. Those two companies are buying Doral’s branches, but its central offices will be shut.

The FDIC expects to lose $750 million in the closure. Doral had total assets of $5.9 billion and total deposits of $4.1 billion. While the FDIC claimed on Friday that no deposits would be lost, it will ensure them only to its standard amount of $250,000. Doral had attempted to balance its books with a $230 million tax credit it expected from the Puerto Rican government, but regulators would not allow this maneuver.

Doral is the largest US bank to fail since three other Puerto Rican banks—Westernbank, R-G Premier Bank and Eurobank—collapsed in 2010. As of December 2014, the total losses registered by the FDIC from those failures were also about $5.9 billion.

Wisconsin unions hold rally against “right-to-work” legislation

Niles Williamson

On Saturday, an estimated 3,000 people attended a union-organized rally in Madison, Wisconsin, to protest so called “right-to-work” legislation that is moving quickly through the state legislature.

The right-wing bill, which would outlaw mandatory dues payment to a union as a condition of employment in private companies, was introduced and passed in the Senate last week. It will be introduced to the Republican-dominated Assembly today, and it is expected to be brought to a vote and approved on Thursday.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, a likely candidate for president in 2016, has pledged to sign the bill into law soon after it is approved.

The sections of the political establishment that support the measure—primarily the Republicans—are seeking to dispense with the unions as they escalate the war against the working class. In addition to the right-to-work law, Walker is also seeking to push through a raft of cuts to social programs, as was also the case in 2011, when legislation was passed severely limiting collective bargaining rights for most public sector workers.

The state’s Democrats, on the other hand, see the unions as both a significant source of cash for political campaigns and as instruments for containing social conflict and enforcing attacks on workers.

The character of the protests against the right-to-work legislation is entirely conditioned on these political considerations. While the unions would prefer the bill not pass, they are also completely opposed to any mobilization against it by the workers they claim to represent. The demonstration was mostly composed of bureaucrats, union members and supporters bussed in by union locals from across the state.

The principal speakers on Saturday, including Wisconsin AFL-CIO president Phil Neuenfeldt, focused their remarks on urging workers to testify against the bill at a limited public hearing today and “bear witness” to its passage on Thursday.

The Democrats and the unions have also not expressed any fundamental opposition to the hundreds of millions of dollars in proposed cuts to public education and social programs contained in Walkers’ latest biennial budget proposal. There has been no attempt to mobilize workers against these cuts, in Wisconsin or anywhere else.

Saturday’s protests and others earlier in the week were markedly smaller than protests in Wisconsin in 2011. In February and March of that year, tens of thousands of workers and students participated in demonstrations, which included the occupation of the capitol building in Madison, to oppose a law that curtailed collective bargaining for most public sector workers and massive budget cuts aimed at public education.

The protests were corralled by the Democratic Party and the unions, who funneled workers’ anger into a futile recall election campaign aimed at Republican politicians, including Walker.

Wisconsin Democrats boasted during the 2011 protests of imposing the deepest austerity measures in the state’s history by working with the unions. After the passage of Act 10, the public unions moved quickly to impose concession contracts on teachers and other state workers, before the bill came into effect, in a bid to maintain their bargaining privileges.

Among workers, there is little active support for the unions, which have collaborated for decades in the destruction of workers’ living standards. As is the case nationally, the unions have lost a significant membership base in Wisconsin over the last three decades. The union membership rate stood at 11.7 percent in 2014, down from its historic peak of 20.9 percent in 1989. Since the passage of the legislation curtailing public sector unions in 2011, the number of workers in the state belonging to a union has fallen by more than 30,000.

The union leaders oppose right-to-work legislation out of the knowledge that if dues payment is made voluntary, many workers will stop paying them, severely curtailing one of their main sources of income.

The dues collected from rank-and-file union members are used to fill the pockets of a bevy of well-paid bureaucrats. Among them are Wisconsin state AFL-CIO president Neuenfeldt, who collected a salary of more than $108,526 in 2010. Nationally, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka pulled in a total compensation of $368,652 in 2013, while executive vice president Arlene Holt-Baker raked in a total of $635,507.

In addition to furnishing such handsome salaries to their executives, the unions also funnel tens of millions in dues payments to fill the campaign coffers of the Democratic Party. The AFL-CIO contributed approximately $100 million to state and federal election campaigns in 2013, with 95 percent of this sum going to the Democratic Party.

This money goes to maintaining a political party which, under the leadership of President Barack Obama, has presided over the greatest transfer of wealth, from the working class to the corporate and financial aristocracy, in US history.