German public service contract: Teachers sold out once again

Dietmar Henning

After four rounds of negotiations and a series of warning strikes, the services trade union Verdi, the German Professionals Union, and the education and science trade union (GEW) reached agreement last Saturday on a pay deal for 800,000 public service workers employed by the German states. The deal covers workers in public services and authorities, street cleaners, firefighters, police, nurses and teachers.

The agreement codifies the principle of unequal pay for equal work in eastern and western Germany, and above all between teachers employed as civil servants and those employed as contracted employees.

The agreement runs for 24 months. Retrospectively to March 1, 2015, workers will receive a 2.1 percent wage increase, and a further increase of 2.3 percent in March 2016, with a minimum increase of €75. During the same period, trainees will receive €30 more per year and an additional day off.

This minimal increase will not only be reduced by inflation, but also by additional employee contributions to an elderly care programme. In the future, employees will have to pay extra contributions, even after the end of the contract in 2016. In the west, the contribution will rise this year from 1.41 percent to 1.61 percent of total wages, and a further 0.3 percent increase is due in 2016 and 0.4 percent in 2017.

In eastern Germany, employees will pay even more. Contributions are already at 2 percent and will rise in the coming years by 0.75 percent, meaning that in 2017, the rate will be 4.25 percent. Unequal pay in the east and west has thereby been permanently codified, at least where the trade union officials and state governments are concerned. Workers in eastern Germany will not be helped by the promise that their Christmas bonus will be equal to that in western Germany in five years!

Originally, Verdi demanded a pay increase of 5.5 percent over 12 months, with a minimum increase of €175. The cuts to care for the elderly demanded by the states’ collective bargaining association were rejected by Verdi, DBB and GEW.

Nonetheless, Verdi chairman Frank Bsirske (Green Party) and the DBB chairman Villi Russ praised the agreement. Bsirske described the settlement as “acceptable on balance.”

TdL lead negotiator Jens Bullerjahn (Social Democrats) was also satisfied. The finance minister in Saxony Anhalt described the agreement as “reasonable and responsible in this context.”

The context is that in 2014, the federal government, states and municipalities achieved a budgetary surplus of €18 billion, the highest in 14 years. All states were agreed that public service employees should not benefit from this.

Contract negotiations for the public sector are always a deceitful exercise. The trade union officials are closer to the public service employers than to the workers they allegedly represent. They often belong to the same political parties and frequently shift from positions in the trade unions to high posts in the public service. Bsirske was a human resources director for the city of Hannover before he moved to the leadership of Verdi in 2000.

His counterpart in the negotiations, Saxony Anhalt’s finance minister Bullerjahn, is not just a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), a party that includes many leading trade union officials. He is also a member of the EGBCE trade union, as he recently underscored in an interview with a regional newspaper.

Teachers sold out once again

The unequal pay for teachers is particularly crass and unjust. The approximately 200,000 contract teachers receive much lower wages than their civil servant colleagues, and work under conditions that are considerably worse. According to GEW, the average wage difference is €320. But even among contract teachers there are huge differences. In eastern Germany they are generally placed one or two wage levels below their colleagues in western Germany.

Most states make use of temporary contracts so as to pay teachers merely for teaching time in the classroom. During the school holidays they are then unemployed, even if they spend time preparing and reviewing lessons.

Contract teachers have been struggling for years to be treated equally. They are extremely combative and have been called out in the tens of thousands on warning strikes during negotiations over several years. And for years they have been regularly sold out.

GEW, which represents contract teachers, demanded within the framework of the teaching personnel reward regulation (L-EGO) a so-called parallel table: contracted teachers who undertook the same tasks as their civil servant colleagues in remuneration group A12 should in the future receive the E12 rate of pay instead of E11. A11 was to correspond to E11, and so on.

At first the states did not want to make an equitable offer, and ultimately presented a monthly pay increase of €30 from August 2016 for specific groups of teachers as providing access to the parallel table. The states refused to name a concrete timeframe within which this process would be completed. Since the TdL’s offer on teachers’ wages ran until 2018, teachers would have had to accept this for the coming four years.

The GEW was the only trade union to reject this proposal. By contrast, the GEW federal collective bargaining commission voted in favour of the agreement on renumeration and increased contributions to elderly care. The results were “acceptable.”

Bsirske took a hostile position towards the teachers. Responding to the question of further strikes by teachers, the Verdi leader said that he would not support the teachers and they would have to strike alone. They had opposed the compromise, so they had to “suffer the consequences”, he said.

The DBB also stabbed the contract teachers in the back. Deputy chairman of the DBB’s federal collective bargaining commission, Jens Weichelt, told MDR radio, “We were disappointed to return once again without a result.”

Contract teachers have once again been left out in the cold. To enforce their demand for equal pay, they have to strike across the country in every state. It is doubtful that the GEW will act any differently on this occasion than it has in the past and call strikes. “GEW now has to consider strategically as to how it will handle this issue in the future,” wrote the union on its web site.

Its opposition to the deal on the remuneration of teaching personnel is not of a principled character. GEW has only tactical differences with Verdi and DBB and has accepted similar sell-outs in previous bargaining rounds. But the union is under greater pressure from its members. The complete acceptance of the collective agreement would have provoked a mass exodus from the union, resulting in declining sources of income.

The GEW’s web site demonstrates that the union feared this. Immediately after the deal, the GEW responded to questions such as: “Why did we bother going out on the streets at all?” and “Are we contract teachers still adequately represented by GEW?”

Their responses are miserable and point to their hostility towards the membership. They sought to present as a success that “the issue of L-EGO was high on the agenda during negotiations and also in media reports on the bargaining round,” along with additional elderly care, which played “the main role.” This was “solely and alone thanks to a strong GEW.” But unfortunately…and so on.

One could feel sympathy towards this admission of bankruptcy if not for the fact that the working and living conditions of 200,000 teachers, hundreds of thousands of other workers and their families are at stake.

Anger is running high among trade union members over the latest result. One wrote on the GEW web site, “I am bitterly disappointed with my previous union, Teachers NRW. I will leave as soon as the strike pay for the two days is in my account.” And on a Verdi members’ blog, a member wrote of being a member for over 30 years: “I am seriously asking myself if Verdi has earned my trust.”

GEW responded by making the members, rather than themselves, Verdi or the DBB, responsible for this bankruptcy. The massive pressure built up by the tens of thousands of strikers over the past few weeks was “obviously not great enough.” It was necessary to carry on and prove a readiness for the long haul. “To weaken GEW and its ability to apply pressure by leaving is the wrong move.”

In the coming weeks, the trade union members will vote on the acceptance of the deal resulting from the negotiations. The WSWS calls upon all Verdi and GEW members to reject the sell-out by the trade unions and to vote no.

Two years ago, when GEW and the other trade unions organised a similar sell-out, we wrote, “Because the trade unions have long ago become part of this social order, they offer nothing in resistance. Their officials live on confining the resistance of the workers and diverting it. Protests and work stoppages increasingly have a purely symbolic ritual, or serve to cover up a further worsening of conditions being negotiated behind the scenes.”

“A break with the old organisations is necessary, and the adoption of a new orientation appropriate for the depth and extent of the current crisis of society. Such a policy cannot be limited to reforms, but must make the abolition of capitalism its goal.”

These words are even more appropriate today.

Leaked document exposes repressive character of US airport screenings

Zaida Green

On Friday, the Intercept published a leaked document outlining the criteria used by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to flag airline travelers for interrogation and possible detention as terror suspects. The document makes clear that the TSA’s screening program has nothing to do with its nominal purpose of keeping travelers “safe,” but is in fact a pretense for arbitrary searches and interrogations.

The document reveals that the TSA’s airport screening program, known as Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT), flags a range of behaviors broad enough to justify the interrogation of almost any traveler. These include: late arrival, sweatiness, a “powerful” grip on one’s luggage, keeping a close eye on the time, “inappropriate” talkativeness, having recently shaved, or “excessive fidgeting.”

Beyond these highly arbitrary indicators, the referral sheet includes a number of criteria that appear entirely aimed at punishing those who show opposition or frustration to the TSA’s screening procedures. Travelers are flagged if they display “arrogance and verbally express contempt for the screening process,” maintain a “rigid posture,” or show an “unusual interest in security officers.”

“The SPOT sheet was designed in such a way that virtually every passenger will exhibit multiple ‘behaviors’ that can be assigned a SPOT sheet value,” a former Behavior Detection Officer manager told the Intercept. “These are just ‘catch all’ behaviors to justify BDO interaction with a passenger. A license to harass.”

The Spot Referral Report sorts behaviors into various categories, which are assigned a number of points. Under a preliminary “Observation and Behavior Analysis”, behaviors are classified as indicators of “stress” (1 point each), “fear” (2 points each), or “deception” (3 points each). A score of four or more points justifies a “casual” interrogation, and a score of six or more justifies the involvement of a law enforcement agency.

During “casual” interrogation, travelers are subjected to a further screening process which counts “unusual items”, such as toothpaste and prepaid calling cards, and “signs of deception”, such as blushing or yawning. Displaying two or more “signs of deception” or scoring a sum of six points under both “Unusual Items” and “Observation and Behavior Analysis” justify a referral to law enforcement.

Thousands of “Behavior Detection Officers” stationed at US airports are trained under the program to detect “microfacial expressions” that reveal “mal-intent”. Approximately $200 million is spent annually on the program. Since its full deployment in 2007, SPOT has cost over $1 billion.

“Airports are rich environments for the kind of stress, exhaustion, or confusion that the TSA apparently finds suspicious, and research has long made clear that trying to judge people’s intentions based on supposed indicators as subjective or commonplace as these just doesn’t work,” said Hugh Handeyside, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project, in a statement.

A number of lawsuits have been brought against the Transportation Security Administration by travelers who were detained by SPOT-trained behavior detection officers. Nicholas George was detained for five hours for possessing Arabic flashcards and a book critical of US foreign policy. Frank Hannibal was detained for twenty-four hours for joking to his family about a supposed jar of peanut butter “explosives”. Roger Vanderklok, flying to a runner’s marathon in Florida, was detained for over twenty hours for packing his watch and energy bars in a plastic pipe.

The SPOT program is also the subject of a recent lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) against the Transportation Security Administration. The ACLU alleges that the Obama administration has improperly withheld records related to SPOT, and is demanding their release under the Freedom of Information Act.

“The TSA has insisted on keeping documents about SPOT secret, but the agency can’t hide the fact that there’s no evidence the program works,” the ACLU said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.

The “scientific” basis of SPOT has long been exposed to be a heap of lies. Reports by scientists assessing the research on portal screening in 2007, the JASON defense advisory group in 2008, and the Government Accountability Office in 2013 have all concluded that humans are only marginally effective in detecting deception, if at all.

The Department of Homeland Security concluded, “TSA cannot ensure that passengers at US airports are screened objectively, show that the program is cost-effective, or reasonably justify the program’s expansion.”

As the World Socialist Web Site wrote on March 24, “As is often the case with the projects of America’s political-military-intelligence establishment, what appears on the surface to be laughable incompetence reveals itself upon closer examination to be something more sinister… TSA’s real purpose is to bully public opinion, set authoritarian legal precedents and accustom the public to the stink of a police state.”

Greek Navy Seals in rightist provocation

John Vassilopoulos

A video by reporting agency Eurokinissi depicts a Greek Navy Seals (OYK) detachment shouting extreme right-wing slogans during the annual March 25 Greek Independence Day parade in Athens.

The men can be seen on YouTube marching through the centre of Athens, chanting, “Our dream is to enter the City, to raise the flag and sing the anthem.” “The City” [I Poli in Greek] is a colloquial term for Istanbul, while the slogan is a reference to the historic aspirations of the Greek bourgeoisie for a “Greater Greece.”

Independence Day commemorates the start of the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1821. The main parade held in Athens is a display of Cold-War style militarism, with military detachments, including missile and armoured vehicle units, marching past the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Syntagma Square in front of the Greek Parliament.

Five years ago, during the 2010 Independence Day Parade, the OYK detachment chanted, “You’re born Greek, you never become one. We’ll spill your blood, you Albanian pig.”

Modelled on the US Underwater Demolition Team (later Navy Seals) during World War II, the OYK was set up in 1953, shortly after Greece joined NATO, when the first men were sent to the United States to be trained in underwater demolition. One of the bastions of the military junta that ruled Greece between 1967-1974, in more recent years the OYK have developed strong links with the fascist Golden Dawn.

Speaking to the newspaper To Vima in 2013, a former Golden Dawn member said that the neo-Nazi party’s storm troopers were trained by “former and current members of the OYK, the LOK (Mountain Commandos) and other special units. Many of those who make up Golden Dawn’s units come, as a priority, from the army’s special forces.”

A number of Syriza MPs have issued token denunciations. In a statement posted on Facebook, Vassiliki Katrivanou said that the slogans were testament to “the existence and the activity of organized neo-fascist cells within the state apparatus.” She called on the government “to prove its political will to destroy these cells, breaking the culture of cover-ups and impunity, the consequences of which were seen [at the parade].”

Speaking to Vima FM, government spokesman and Syriza MP Gabriel Sakellaridis showed the full extent of the government’s “political will” by stating that he was “annoyed” by the “various slogans heard from some of the marchers”, before proceeding to state that he didn’t know who these marchers were despite documentary evidence to the contrary. After issuing a token condemnation, he stated, “I would obviously imagine that the relevant authorities will take the necessary steps, so that such things are not repeated again.”

The “relevant authorities” have done the exact opposite. While claiming to have ordered an investigation into the incident, Defence Minister Panos Kammenos denied that the OYK men chanted the slogan, and that the video was from last year’s parade. Eurokinnisi responded by denying Kammenos’ claims, reiterating that the footage is current.

Kammenos is the leader of the Independent Greeks (ANEL), the right-wing split-off from the conservative New Democracy, which is Syriza’s junior coalition partner. Kammenos has very close links to the military, and his control of the Defence Ministry was one of the preconditions for entering into coalition with Syriza. In an interview with the defence news web site Onalert.gr last December, he pledged to “protect the Armed Forces from some of the strange mentalities within Syriza.”

He didn’t have to work hard to counter these “strange mentalities”, which in the past included calls by some Syriza MPs to abolish military parades. On March 11, Attica Prefect Rena Dourou, previously a Syriza MP, met with Kammenos to discuss arrangements for the parade. To present the parades as “inclusive”, it was decided to remove the barriers that kept the crowd apart from the dignitary stand, while Greek flags were handed out to people by soldiers. The parade was followed by a fiesta of folk dancing, accompanied by music played by the Armed Forces Orchestra.

Including folk dancing harks back to the junta era, when such events were commonplace during Independence Day. Kammenos responded to such commentary by asking, “Was it only the junta that danced the tsamiko [a traditional folk dance]? Did the left only dance the waltz?”

The OYK’s slogan of “enter[ing] the City” was entirely in the spirit of the parade. For the first time ever, army detachments from the Evros region and the island of Rhodes took part in the parade. The River Evros marks the land border between Greece and Turkey, while Rhodes is just off the Anatolian coast of Turkey.

This must be seen within the wider context of Kammenos’ belligerent stance towards Turkey since taking over as defence minister. In February, Kammenos provocatively flew over the islets of Imia, whose ownership Greece disputes with Turkey, to drop wreaths in memory of three Greek officers killed nearby in a helicopter crash 19 years ago. In 1996, Greece came close to war over the islets. Kammenos’ provocation resulted in Turkish fighter jets being scrambled and entering Greek airspace. They were intercepted by Greek jets, while seven Greek coast guard boats faced three Turkish ones off of the islets.

This whipping up of jingoism and nationalism serves as an important political cover behind which Syriza works with the European Union (EU), European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to impose yet more austerity on the Greek working class. In the run-up to the parade, Kammenos stated, “We will show our partners with our dances and our traditional costumes that the people are a sovereign state and united.”

The openness with which the OYK detachment shouted fascistic slogans during the parade should serve as a warning to the working class and youth. Having already capitulated to the EU, ECB and IMF, the Syriza-led government will increasingly rely on repressive measures in order to quash opposition to its pursuing of the same austerity policies as its predecessors.

In the years before taking power, Syriza made great efforts to cultivate its relations with the armed forces. In June 2012, party leader Alexis Tsipras held talks with the Greek Defence Ministry and army high command to make clear his readiness to work closely with the army. “Defending the country’s territorial integrity and national independence is a non-negotiable priority for Syriza,” he said.

In October 2014, he met with the political and military leadership of the Defence Ministry to learn of Greece’s geostrategic goals. Tsipras denounced Turkey for violating the sovereign rights of Cyprus, warning that Greece’s “deterrent capability remains strong … due to the selfless stance” of military personnel.

Prior to taking power January 26, Tsipras authorised a phone call to the chief of the General Staff of the Greek Army and a meeting with the leader of the Greek Police by leading party figure Thodoris Dritsas. According to the Independent Balkan News Agency, Dritsas conveyed to the two officials Syriza’s desire “that everything goes smoothly during this critical election campaign, and that at no point should the senior government officials in sensitive positions in the state apparatus feel that there is a vacuum of power or lack of trust.”

As soon as the polls closed, Syriza’s Nikos Voutsis phoned the heads of the police and the army. According to Channel 4 News journalist Paul Mason, Voutsis, who was soon afterwards named interior minister, told them, “We trust you.”

Prior to the election, Syriza said they intended to disband riot police units and merge them into the general force. This pledge was abandoned immediately, with a Syriza deputy minister at the ministry of the interior announcing, “The police will have weapons at protests.”

Canada’s parliament approves major expansion of Mideast war

Roger Jordan

By a 142-129 vote Monday evening, Canada’s House of Commons endorsed the Conservative government’s decision to extend and expand Ottawa’s participation in the new US-led Mideast war.

Canadian Special Forces are now slated to remain in Iraq for an additional 12 months, until April 2016, providing “advice and assist” support to Kurdish militias battling the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). And Canadian CF-8 fighter jets will expand the scope of their air strikes targeting ISIS positions in Syria as well as Iraq.

Reports yesterday suggested that Canadian CF-18 bombers could be in action over Syria in a matter of days.

The vote followed two days of debate on a motion presented by Prime Minister Stephen Harper last week. After the vote Harper reiterated his claim that the military intervention is needed to counter Islamist terrorism in both the Middle East and Canada. “We cannot stand on the sidelines,” declared Harper, “while ISIL [another acronym for ISIS] continues to promote terrorism in Canada as well as against our allies and partners. Nor can we allow ISIL to have a safe haven in Syria.”

The reality is that the expansion of Canadian military operations into Syria marks a major escalation of the drive by Washington and its allies to carry out regime change in Damascus. The move is being taken without the consent of the government of Bashar al-Assad, a violation of international law that is tantamount to a declaration of war.

The fact that the US-led, Canadian-supported military campaign is aimed at the Assad regime, a close ally of Iran and Russia, was underscored by comments made by British Foreign Minister Phillip Hammond during a trip to Toronto last Friday. After welcoming the Harper government’s decision to join the Syrian air campaign, Hammond expressed regret over the British parliament’s vote against air strikes in Syria in September 2013. At that time, Washington and its allies were drawing up plans for a direct military strike on the Assad regime, following fabricated claims it was responsible for a poison gas attack near the Syrian capital.

Yet for Hammond, the mission’s ultimate goal remains the same. “We're delighted that others are able to do the lift in Syria that is equally required,” Hammond concluded.

In the parliamentary debate over Harper’s motion, the Conservatives sought to cloak the predatory aims of US and Canadian imperialism by cynically claiming to be coming to the rescue of innocents. “If the responsibility to protect means anything,” said Defence Minister Jason Kenny, “… does it not mean in an instance such as this, preventing genocide, preventing ethnic cleansing, preventing sexual slavery of women and preventing the execution of gay men by throwing them off towers?”

This is brazen hypocrisy coming from a government which boasts about its close ties with the authoritarian regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt and with the expansionist Israeli state, and which similarly justified its participation in the NATO regime change war in Libya on the basis of a “responsibility to protect” civilians. That war saw the US and its allies use Islamists as their proxies, throwing Libya into sectarian chaos. Indeed, as the Ottawa Citizenrecently revealed, Canadian military personnel openly joked about acting as “al-Qaeda’s air force” in Libya. Subsequently, the CIA encouraged many of these Islamists to travel to Syria, where many of them joined other fighters armed by the Saudis, Qatar and other US Persian Gulf client states in forming ISIS.

The “responsibility to protect” doctrine has become the central pretext for a series of aggressive imperialist operations that have wrought death and destruction on the countries unfortunate enough to be chosen for such “rescue” missions. The Canadian ruling elite was heavily involved in the development of this doctrine, which emerged from a 2001 international commission that was funded by the then Liberal government of Jean Chretien and in which Michael Ignatieff, a subsequent federal Liberal Party leader, played a prominent role.

Canada is the only western country, apart from the United States, participating in the bombing operations in Syria. This development again illustrates Ottawa’s role as a pivotal frontline partner in the US drive to maintain its hegemonic position in the Middle East, the world’s most important oil-exporting region, and beyond. Canada has also taken a leading position in the provocations against Russia over Ukraine, facilitating the supply of weaponry to the Ukrainian army and voluntary militias, while sending troops and aircraft to Eastern Europe and the Baltic as part of NATO’s military buildup.

The Conservatives’ expanded Mideast war also has an important domestic political function. As elections approach, the Harper government is preparing the most right-wing election campaign in modern Canadian history, seeking to use the purported threat of “jihadi terror” to deflect attention from the rapidly deteriorating economic situation and to whip up reaction.

Canada’s war in Syria and Iraq, which is now guaranteed to run well beyond the election, is to be used to whip up bellicose nationalism and to make scarcely veiled appeals to anti-Muslim prejudice. As part of this, the government will label all of the opposition parties as being soft on terror at home and abroad for their unwillingness to back the extension and expansion of military operations in Middle East and their refusal to unreservedly endorse the government’s legislation to dramatically expand the powers and reach of the national-security apparatus, Bill C-51.

The rejection of the government motion by the opposition parties in parliament in no way represents a fundamental repudiation of aggressive militarism as a means of securing Canada’s imperialist interests. If anything, the two days of parliamentary debate saw both the New Democrats and Liberals signal their support for military operations in the Middle East more openly than ever.

Although voting against the motion, the official opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) presented an amendment to the government’s motion that accepted the presence of Canadian military personnel in Iraq so as to assist in the supply of anti-ISIS forces. Party leader Thomas Mulcair went out of his way to emphasize the NDP’s willingness to back military aggression if backed by the UN or NATO, pointing to the 2011 war in Libya as an example. On Syria, his primary concern was not that the government is acting illegally under international law. Instead, he attacked the Conservatives from the right, claiming that the bombing of ISIS would strengthen the Assad regime—an implicit call for a more direct intervention against Damascus.

The Liberals also voted against the motion. But party leader Justin Trudeau made clear that his party supports expanding the Canadian Armed Forces training mission in Iraq by deploying more Canadian Special Forces personnel there. Special Forces personnel are already on the frontlines, where they have been siting ISIS targets for bombing.

With Trudeau’s approval, former Liberal Justice Minister and elder statesmen Irwin Cotler abstained in Monday evening’s vote. Declaring his adherence to the “responsibility to protect doctrine,” Cotler criticized the government, as he did last October, for failing to advocate a regime change war to overthrow Assad. “I remain unable to support the government in this matter,” said Cotler, “because … Canada’s mission continues to allow Assad to assault Syrian civilians with impunity.”

Quebec Premier Phillippe Couillard and his Quebec Liberal Party, which operates as a separate party from the federal Liberals, has, for its part, declared its support for the Conservative government’s war plans.

Both Green Party MPs, leader Elizabeth May and Bruce Hyer, voted against Harper’s motion. This marked a shift from the initial vote authorizing the mission last October, when Hyer gave his support to the Harper government’s deployment. May’s criticism of the expansion of the war into Syria was along the same lines as the NDP, attacking Harper for allegedly lending support to Assad. “We do not want to admit that if we are successful in Syria, we will have made Bashar al-Assad secure by removing a dreadful force that also happens to be against him,” commented May.

The Bloc Quebecois, the federal sister party to the pro-separatist Parti Quebecois, released a statement declaring that it would only back a mission that had international legitimacy. It called for support for a UN-authorized intervention to defeat ISIS.

UN warns of collapse in Yemen amid Saudi-led assault

Niles Williamson

The United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Raad Al Hussein, released a statement on Tuesday warning that the Yemen is “on the verge of total collapse.” Scores of civilians have been killed in airstrikes led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt in direct violation of international law.

“The situation in Yemen is extremely alarming, with dozens of civilians killed over the past four days,” Al Hussein stated, expressing shock at the killing of dozens of refugees by a Saudi airstrike on the Al Mazraq camp in northern Yemen. Doctors Without Borders reported that Monday’s bombing had claimed the lives of at least 40 civilians, wounding another 200.

Airstrikes by a coalition of Sunni-majority countries began last Thursday against the Iranian-supported Shiite Houthi militia and Yemeni military forces loyal to former dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh. Saudi Arabia is seeking to militarily defeat the Houthis and their allies and reinstate President Adb Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, who fled the country last week. An impending attack by Houthi militia and Saleh loyalists on Hadi’s compound in the southern port city of Aden was the catalyst for the Saudi-led assault.

The United States, which has provided intelligence and logistical support for the airstrikes, gave further support to the growing bloodbath in Yemen with the announcement on Tuesday that it would resume the delivery of weapons and military equipment to Egypt, which has pledged to send ground forces into Yemen.

US President Barack Obama approved the delivery of 12 F-16 jet fighters, 20 Harpoon anti-ship missiles, and 125 M1A1 Abrams tank kits. The shipment of new equipment and weapons had been halted in the aftermath of the military coup that brought military dictator Abdel Fattah Al Sisi to power.

The deeply impoverished Yemeni population is bearing the brunt of the expanding US-backed air war. Airstrikes have destroyed homes, hospitals, schools and critical infrastructure in civilian areas throughout the country. Bombs have been dropped on airports and power plants in the capital city of Sanaa, the Houthi stronghold of Saada, and the western port city of Hodeida. Thousands of people have already been displaced, with many fleeing the major urban areas for rural villages where they are less likely to be killed by an airstrike.

Al Hussein reported that a division of the Yemeni army loyal to Saleh along with several allied Houthi rebel brigades attacked three hospitals in the district of Dhale, resulting in an as yet unknown number of civilian causalities. The UN has confirmed that since Friday at least 93 civilians have been killed and another 364 wounded by airstrikes and ground battles in the cities of Sanaa, Sadaa, Dhale, Hodaida and Lahij.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal stated that the bombing campaign, codenamed Operation Resolute Storm, would continue until “security, stability and unity” was achieved in Yemen.

The ongoing assault has been backed with repeated threats of an imminent ground invasion, aimed at militarily defeating the Houthis, to be led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt with contingents of soldiers from Sudan and possibly Pakistan.

While Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif pledged “all potentials of the Pakistani army” in a phone call with the Saudi king over the weekend, the Pakistani government has yet to give open support to the air war. Pakistani Defense Minister Kawaja Asif and foreign affairs adviser Sartaj Aziz met with Saudi Defense Minister Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud in the Saudi capital of Riyadh on Tuesday to discuss their country’s role in the coalition. There are concerns within Pakistan that any intervention will exacerbate existing tensions between Pakistani Sunni majority and its Shiite minority.

Saudi spokesman Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri told reporters on Tuesday that the initiation of plans for a ground invasion was not “automatic” and that any eventual ground war would be targeted to specific areas of the country. Despite this equivocation, Asseri concluded that “when the coalition forces confirm the need for land operation, it will not hesitate to carry this out.”

Even as it remained unclear when a Saudi-led ground war would begin Yemeni foreign minister Riyadh Yaseen, who remains loyal to Hadi, told reporters on Tuesday that he had requested a Saudi-led invasion “as soon as possible.”

Saudi Arabia has mobilized approximately 150,000 soldiers and has positioned heavy artillery and other military equipment on its border with Yemen. Multiple exchanges of rocket and artillery fire between Houthi and Saudi forces were reported along the border on Tuesday. Explosions were heard in the Shida and Al Hisama district of Saada province and in the town of Haradh in Hajja province. Residents in the area also reported Tuesday that Saudi helicopters have made multiple incursions into Yemeni airspace all along the border.

As another component of the assault, Saudi Arabia and its partners, including Egypt, have initiated a naval blockade on Yemen’s ports under the pretext of blocking weapons and supplies from reaching the Houthi fighters. The blockade has the potential to intensify hunger in a country that currently imports 90 percent of its basic wheat and rice stock. It is estimated that if food imports were to be blocked, Yemen would exhaust its reserves in approximately six months.

Honduran death squads kill four student protesters, including a 13-year-old

Eric London

The remains of 13 year-old Soad Nicole Ham were found in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa last Wednesday after a death squad kidnapped and murdered her for participating in recent student demonstrations against the country’s crumbling education system. A medical examination of the girl’s remains, which were discovered in a plastic bag on the street, revealed signs of brutal torture.

Soad Nicole was the fourth demonstrator to be killed by death squads in Tegucigalpa last week. The bodies of Elvin Antonio López, Darwin Josué Martínez, and Diana Yareli Montoya—all between the ages of 19 and 21 and all actively involved in student protests—were also discovered in various neighborhoods of the city. Yareli Montoya, whose body was riddled with 21 bullets by masked attackers, took two painful days to die.

The victims and the timing of the killings underscore the likely complicity of the rightist government of President Juan Orlando Hernández Alvarado, with the help of his Education Minister, Marlon Escoto.

In the days prior to the disappearances, thousands of high school and university students were carrying out large demonstrations against the country’s education system. Many of the capital city’s middle schools, high schools and universities were on strike against poor education conditions and a lack of adequate school resources.

Students were further enraged by Education Minister Escoto’s callous proposal for changes to the school schedule, which is divided into morning and afternoon shifts. Under the March 16 proposal, students would be forced to travel to and from school either in the early morning or late evening hours, when darkness makes it easier for the armed gangs who roam the streets to attack them.

According to the non-profit Casa Alianza, 86 students are killed each month on the way to and from school in Honduras—a figure that has doubled since the 2009 US-backed coup that toppled the elected government of President Manuel Zelaya.

Soad Nicole herself was targeted because of a brief statement she made to a Globo-TV news crew at the scene of a demonstration in the days before her death.

As students chanted, “We need school desks and we receive gunshots,” Soad Nicole told reporters, “It’s not possible for us to be seated on the floor like dogs! We don’t even have chairs!”

Addressing the Education Minister, she added: “Man, buy chairs, you son of a bitch!”

It is a testament to the real state of social and political life in Central America that such a statement of justified indignation from a 13-year-old is sufficient to earn her the penalty of death by assassination squad.

The government has responded to the students’ demands by deploying heavily armed soldiers to fire tear gas, flash grenades and water cannon, as well as by placing schools under military lockdown. On March 17, Escoto announced that to suppress the demonstrations, the Honduran military police would begin occupying schools in the capital.

“Beginning this afternoon [March 17], the police will be at the gates to ensure that those students who want to come in to study can do so,” he said, noting further that the government had been “tolerant enough” with the peaceful student protesters.

As the crackdown on protestors continues, Escoto has taken to posting pictures of demonstrators on his Twitter account and publishing their names, sending the message that they too could end up like Soad Nicole Ham.

In the course of the demonstrations, several journalists have reported being harassed by the police, including two who said that a police official approached them, held up a pistol, and provocatively unlocked the gun’s safety mechanism. Many students have also been wounded in clashes with police.

As demonstrations began on the morning of March 16, Escoto’s office issued a statement requesting that teachers provide lists of those students who were participating in demonstrations. According to the Education Ministry, this was being undertaken so that the government could “apply corrective measures” to demonstrators.

Though the government has of course not admitted to carrying out the murders itself, there is every indication that it is precisely such “corrective measures” that were applied to the four young people whose bodies have since been found abandoned in the streets of Tegucigalpa.

Behind the brutal acts of the Lobo administration stands American imperialism, whose role in enforcing police-military terror on the countries of Central America dates back to the 19th century.

The Obama administration backed the military coup of 2009 and has supported all the regimes that followed, including those headed by coup leader Roberto Micheletti and Porfirio Lobo, winner of an election organized by the coup regime, with less than half the population voting.

Hernandez himself was named victor amid charges of vote fraud and violent intimidation by supporters of his opponent, Zelaya’s wife, Xiomara Castro. He ran in the election on a campaign promise of “a soldier on every corner,” and has since made good on his vow to militarize policing in Honduras, despite the prohibition against using troops for this purpose in the country’s constitution.

At the time of the coup, a US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told the New York Times that the State Department spoke to “military officials and opposition leaders” about “how they might remove [former president Manuel Zelaya] from office, how he could be arrested, on whose authority they could do that.”

By 2011, the Pentagon had increased military spending to the Honduran police and military by 71 percent, to $53.8 million, while providing $1.3 billion for US military electronics to the Honduran regime. In 2012, Defense Department contracts increased to $67.4 million—tripling the total from 2002. It costs the Obama administration $89 million per year to house 600 US troops at the Soto Cano air force, which was recently expanded to the tune of an additional $25 million.

Recently, the US has announced the deployment at Soto Cano of a new Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force-South, or SPMAGTF-South, consisting of 250 Marine special operations troops who are charged with rapid intervention wherever in the region Washington sees fit.

The status of Honduras as the “murder capital of the world” and one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere is the product of over a century of oppression by US imperialism. Washington invaded the country seven times in the first two decades of the 20th century to defend the interests of United Fruit Company, making Honduras the first country to be branded a “banana republic.”

The CIA used the country as a staging ground both for its 1954 coup that overthrew Guatemala’s democratically elected president, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, and for the Nicaraguan Contra forces who carried out a bloody campaign against the Sandinistas and the Nicaraguan peasantry in the 1980s. During this latter campaign, the Honduran military, with the aid of the CIA, utilized its own death squads to hunt down and murder trade unionists, leftists and students.

The recent events in Honduras underscore the fact that cold-blooded murder at the hands of the state is becoming an increasingly common element of everyday life for young people all over the world. The events in Honduras closely parallel last September’s government-backed killing of 43 student teachers in Ayotzinapa, Mexico. In both cases, the killings were carried out in response to widespread opposition to social inequality, poverty, and lack of quality social programs and education. In Honduras, as in Mexico, what follows will be a government cover-up with the full backing of the United States.

Former military dictator wins Nigerian presidency

Thomas Gaist

Initial reports Tuesday indicated that the Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) party has emerged as the victor in Nigeria’s presidential elections, which took place over the weekend.

Buhari’s apparent victory has been met with allegations of vote rigging by supporters of current President Goodluck Jonathan’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP), which has controlled Nigeria's government since the end of open military rule in 1999.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a federation of West African regimes that has organized regional military missions in league with Washington and the European powers, has given its stamp of approval to the elections and insisted that both sides accept the final vote tally.

The lead up to Saturday’s elections was marked by sharp tensions between rival factions within the Nigerian elite and state, represented by Jonathan and Buhari respectively. At least 50 Nigerians were killed during the elections, according to the National Human Rights Commission. Balloting was also accompanied by fighting in the north between insurgents and government forces.

If confirmed, Buhari’s ascendancy would represent a further extension of US political domination over Africa’s wealthiest country and largest oil producer. Buhari received years of training from the US military, graduating from the US Army War College in 1980, before becoming military dictator of Nigeria in a 1983 military coup d’etat that overthrew the government of President Shehu Shegari.

Buhari’s military junta banned strikes and public protests in 1984, and empowered the security forces to carry out arbitrary arrests and detentions of civilians, including numerous intellectuals, politicized students and journalists. To enforce these measures, Buhari’s government issued the State Security Decree #2, which legalized indefinite detention of anyone considered a "security risk" by Nigeria's National Security Organization (NSO) secret police force.

While orchestrating mass repression against political opponents, Buhari implemented right-wing economic policies aimed at further impoverishing the population, including “austerity so severe it went beyond” the social cuts demanded as part of a loan offer extended by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to the new military regime, according to James Vreeland’s The International Monetary Fund: Politics of Conditional Lending. The 1984 National Budget advanced by Buhari and his clique of officers included measures to slash the Shegari government’s 1983 budget by 15 percent and roll back public sector employment.

There are clear indications that the Obama White House favors a transition from Jonathan to Buhari. During Buhari’s campaign, the APC has reportedly relied on support from a consulting firm run by US President Barack Obama’s former senior advisor and campaign manager David Axelrod.

In January 2015, Buhari was invited as the keynote speaker for a conference, “Countdown to Nigeria’s 2015 Elections,” held by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a ruling class think tank with close ties to the White House.

The increasingly friendly relations of the Jonathan government with China likely explain the recent growth of tensions between the Jonathan administration and the Obama administration, which is seeking to counter growing Chinese hegemony in Africa through military and political means. Chinese economic concessions in the country’s massive oil sector include a 2010 $23 billion contract signed by Jonathan with Chinese firms for construction of several new oil and petrochemical facilities.

Apparently fearful of expanding US influence within Nigeria’s military establishment, the Jonathan administration moved suddenly in late 2014 to cancel a US-sponsored program to train new Nigerian military units. US officials responded to the cancellation with public threats that Jonathan’s policies were bringing US-Nigerian relations to an historic low.

Nigerian workers have been increasingly restive, with Nigeria's two main oil unions initiating and subsequently reigning in small scale strikes in September and December 2014. The industrial actions were orchestrated to let off steam among the workers and secure concessions for the union leaderships, which are "simply trying to force the government to pay them off and get a hefty Christmas present," according to sources cited by the BBC. 

Nigerian oil has taken on increased significance in the context of the collapse of Libyan oil production, formerly the main rival to the Nigerian industry, which has fallen to some 10 percent of levels achieved prior to the 2011 US-NATO war against the Gaddafi regime.

Buhari’s election comes as the US is ramping up military deployments and political interventions throughout West Africa and the continent as a whole. US Africa Command’s (AFRICOM) commander General David Rodriguez recently called for a “huge” counterinsurgency campaign throughout West Africa, targeting a range of “extremist” groups.

US, French and other European military forces are engaged in joint operations with Chadian and other local militaries in the Sahel, Mali and Central Africa, including the invasion of portions of northeastern Nigeria by a US-backed Chadian force in mid-March 2015 and the French-led imperialist invasion of Mali in 2013. Along with a slate of other local forces, including some 8,000 troops from Niger, Cameroon and Benin affiliated with the newly formed African Union (AU) Multi-National Joint Task Force, Chad’s government and military are serving as a leading proxy force on behalf US and European imperialism in the region.

US backing for the Buhari campaign is part of US efforts to secure control over the massive oil resources flowing through Nigeria's export terminals along the Gulf of Guinea. As early as 2001, the Bush administration’s National Energy Policy Development Group, headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, concluded that control of Nigerian oil and drilling developments in the Gulf of Guinea were critical to US interests.

The US military and elite US think tanks have since developed plans for militarily occupying and controlling Lagos, home to some 20 million Nigerians. Papers published in 2014 specifically citing Lagos as a necessary focus for US contingency planning included “Megacities and the United States Army: Preparing for a complex and uncertain future,” published by the US Army’s Strategic Studies Group, and “Mega Cities, Ungoverned Areas, and the Challenge of Army Urban Combat Operations in 2030-2040,” published by the Small Wars Foundation.

Saturday’s elections were the culmination of a struggle between different factions of a national bourgeois elite, with both sides equally hostile to Nigeria’s workers, oppressed masses and peasantry. Jonathan and Buhari alike represent a Nigerian ruling class that is completely dependent upon foreign capital and incapable of implementing even limited measures to raise the living standards of the population.

Buhari’s rise comes as yet further proof that Africa’s “democratic” and “independent” governments, established through “decolonization” and plagued by a never-ending series of military coups, are to be further transformed into colonial-style garrison states in service of the US and European banks and corporations.

US Army to train Ukrainian fascist militias

Patrick Martin

The US Army will begin training Ukraine National Guard battalions on April 20 at a site in western Ukraine, near the Polish border, according to an announcement made Sunday by the country’s interior minister, Arsen Avakov.

“American commandos, numbering 290, will come to Yavoriv training ground, Lviv region, on April 20,” Avakov wrote on Facebook. “This is where a long-term military exercise of 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team of the US Army and combat units of the National Guard will be held.”

Pentagon spokeswoman Eileen Lainez confirmed the deployment earlier this month, without giving the exact date of its commencement. “This assistance is part of our ongoing efforts to help sustain Ukraine’s defense and internal security operations,” she said. “In particular, the training will help the Ukraine government develop its National Guard to conduct internal defense operations.”

This suggests that the paramilitary units, most of them created by billionaire oligarchs who financed and recruited fascist and neo-Nazi volunteers, may be used for suppression of popular protests within the government-controlled portion of Ukraine, in addition to joining the battle lines in eastern Ukraine if fighting breaks out again with pro-Russian separatists.

The US role in training and equipping paramilitary forces that openly venerate Ukrainian nationalists and fascists who collaborated with the Nazi occupation forces and facilitated the Holocaust during World War II, and who sport swastika-like insignias, exposes as filthy lies the US claims to be championing democracy and human rights in Ukraine.

The training program will include Washington’s first direct and open provision of lethal weaponry to Ukrainian military units. Pentagon officials said that uniforms, body armor, night vision devices and tactical radios would be supplied—all classified as “non-lethal”—but Avakov revealed that “our American partners” will present “special ammunition” to the Ukrainian National Guard troops at the conclusion of their training.

Before the end of 2015, Ukrainian forces could be killing pro-Russian separatist troops—or Russian soldiers—with American-supplied bullets, grenades and other “special ammunition.” This increases the danger of the conflict over eastern Ukraine and Crimea escalating into a direct military clash between nuclear-armed Russia and US-NATO forces.

A total of 1,500 US troops, 600 soldiers from other NATO-member countries, and 2,200 Ukrainian soldiers will take part in a series of exercises. The first, dubbed Fearless Guardian 2015, will extend over a seven-month period, from April through November. The second, Saber Guardian/Rapid Trident 2015, begins in July and extends through October.

The US troops will be drawn from the 173rd Combat Brigade, the spearhead of US forces in southern Europe, based in Vicenza, Italy. It specializes in offensive and air assault operations, making a mockery of the claim that the Pentagon is training Ukrainian troops for defense against supposed Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine.

Avakov said that agreement on the military exercises was reached in talks between Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and US Vice President Joseph Biden during Biden’s recent visit to Kiev. He paid special tribute to the role played by Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs, and officials at the US embassy in Kiev, saying, “Without their vigor, the important and complicated preparation of training would have been impossible.”

On March 17, the Ukrainian parliament approved a bill submitted by Poroshenko permitting foreign troops to participate in multinational exercises in Ukraine this year. The operations in Ukraine coincide with similar drills being carried out in nearby countries that are NATO members, including Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

A total of 1,200 Ukrainian regular army soldiers and as many as 1,000 from the National Guard will take part in the training. Many of the 50 battalions that comprise the National Guard will send troops. Avakov listed the Azov, Jaguar and Omega battalions, as well as battalions drawn from the cities of Kiev, Kharkiv, Zaporizhia, Odessa, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Vinnytsia.

The inclusion of the Azov battalion has the most ominous implications. This is a military force of more than 1,000 soldiers founded and led by the neo-Nazi Andriy Biletsky. It carries banners bearing a modified swastika insignia drawn directly from World War II German SS units.

This battalion has played the leading role in fighting in Mariupol, the second largest city in the Donetsk region and the largest still held by the Ukrainian government. It is a center of steel manufacture and the main port on the Sea of Azov, a branch of the Black Sea.

Biletsky has publicly denounced the February 15 ceasefire agreed upon by Ukraine, Russia, the European Union and the pro-Russian separatists, and has threatened to march on Kiev and install a pro-war government. His battalion is equipped with artillery and tanks, as well as other heavy weapons.

According to a report by Reuters last week, published in Time magazine, “The Azov battalion originated from Biletsky's paramilitary national socialist group called ‘Patriot of Ukraine,’ which propagated slogans of white supremacy, racial purity, the need for authoritarian power and a centralized national economy. ‘Patriot of Ukraine’ opposed giving up Ukraine's sovereignty by joining international blocs, called for rolling back of liberal economy and political democracy, including free media.”

A March 22 article in USA Today describes a visit by a reporter to the Azov Battalion in Mariupol. It carries the headline, “Nazis Among Kiev’s National Guard.” The article includes an interview with a drill sergeant who openly praises Nazi ideology, while quoting a spokesman for the battalion who says, “It’s his personal ideology. It has nothing to do with the official ideology of the Azov.”

The spokesman, Andrey Dyachenko, adds that “Only 10 percent to 20 percent of the group’s members are Nazis,” meaning that at least 100 to 200 Nazis may be about to receive intensive military training from US commandos.

The same article quotes a member of the Armed Forces of Ukraine general staff in Kiev, Col. Oleksy Nozdrachov, who “defended the Azov fighters as patriots.”

A report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights covering a single month, November 2014, found that Ukraine’s Office of the Military Prosecutor had done nothing to investigate a “considerable” number of human rights allegations, “including looting, arbitrary detention and ill-treatment by members of certain voluntary battalions such as Aidar, Azov, Slobozhanshchina and Shakhtarsk.”

An earlier report by Amnesty International described members of the Aidar battalion engaging in “ISIS-style” war crimes, including beheading several pro-Russian separatists and sending the head of at least one victim by mail to his mother. Ukrainian nationalist militants “have been involved in widespread abuses, including abductions, unlawful detention, ill-treatment, theft, extortion, and possible executions,” the group said.

But during a recent visit to New York, the first deputy speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, Andriy Parubiy, said the National Guard battalions consisted of “disciplined Ukrainian warriors about whom films will be made and books will be written.”

These reports underscore the utterly reactionary character of the US-NATO intervention in Ukraine, which has unleashed ferociously anti-democratic and fascistic forces against the Ukrainian people, both in the eastern region and throughout the country.

A decisive turning point in the crisis of American imperialism

Nick Beams

Yesterday was the deadline for countries to sign up as founding members of the China-backed Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). It will go down in history as marking a significant defeat for the global foreign policy and strategic objectives of United States imperialism.

Against strenuous opposition from Washington, more than 40 countries have now indicated they want to be part of the AIIB. Major European powers including Britain, France and Germany, as well as Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands, are on board. Almost all countries in the South East Asian region, which count China as their major trading partner, have also signed up. India is also a signatory, together with Taiwan.

The most significant blow against the US was struck by Britain, its chief European ally, which announced its decision to join on March 12. It opened the floodgates for others to follow, including two key US allies in the Asia-Pacific—Australia and South Korea. Japan is also reported to be considering joining, possibly as early as June.

The full significance of the US defeat and its far-reaching implications emerge most clearly when viewed from a historical perspective.

One of the chief objections of the Obama administration to the new bank was that it would undermine the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Together with the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944, they constituted central pillars of the global economic order established after World War II by the United States, which played the central role in rebuilding world capitalism following the devastation of the 1920s and 1930s and the wars and revolutionary struggles it produced.

Of course, both of these institutions, together with the Marshall Plan for the restabilisation of war-torn Europe, operated to the economic and strategic benefit of American imperialism.

But while America drew enormous gains from the post-war order, it was not narrowly conceived. There was a recognition in ruling political and economic circles that if American capitalism was to survive, it would have to use the enormous resources at its disposal to ensure the growth and expansion of other capitalist powers, above all, those against which it had fought a bitter and bloody conflict.

Post-war reconstruction enabled the expansion of Germany and turned it once again into the industrial powerhouse of Europe. At the same time, concessions to Japan on the value of its currency—it was pegged at 360 yen to the dollar—opened up export markets for its industry. The decision to build trucks and other military equipment in Japan during the Korean War laid the foundations for the development of Japan’s auto industry, as it incorporated, and then developed, the advanced production techniques that had been established in the US.

The industrial and economic capacity of the United States, even when it took reactionary forms as in the case of the Korean War, was utilised to facilitate a new phase of global capitalist expansion—the post-war boom.

What a contrast to the present situation! American capitalism is no longer the industrial powerhouse of the world, ensuring the expansion of the capitalist economy as a whole. Rather, it functions as the global parasite-in-chief, as its rapacious banks, investment houses and hedge funds scour the world for profitable opportunities, engaged not in the production of new wealth, but in the appropriation of wealth produced elsewhere, often via criminal or semi-criminal operations.

In the immediate post-war period, the US was the champion of free trade, recognising that the restrictions and beggar-thy-neighbour policies of the 1930s had produced a disaster. Today, through measures such as the Trans Pacific Partnership and similar arrangements being prepared with regard to Europe, Washington seeks to forge exclusivist agreements aimed at protecting the monopoly position of US corporations. America, Obama has stated, must write the global rules for trade and investment in the 21st century.

American influence in the post-war period was not confined to the immediate economic sphere. Notwithstanding all its contradictory features, American society appeared to have something to offer the world as a whole, which had suffered decades of war, fascism and military forms of rule, along with economic devastation.

Again, the contrast with the present situation could not be starker. American democracy, once held up as a beacon for the rest of the world, is a withered caricature of its former self, no longer capable of concealing the dictatorship of the financial and corporate elites.

Social conditions are characterised by deprivation and state violence, reflected not least in the daily police killings. America has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, and in Detroit, once the centre of the American industrial economy, paying the highest wages, water shutoffs are being imposed. The US government carries out torture, abductions, assassinations and mass spying on its own people and others around the world. The country is ruled by criminals who cannot be held accountable for their crimes.

In the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the removal from the scene of its global rival, the American ruling class was gripped by the idea that while its economic position had been severely weakened—the stock market crash of 1987 was a harbinger of things to come—American hegemony could nevertheless be maintained by military means.

But as Frederick Engels had earlier explained in refuting another exponent of “force theory,” the notion that economic developments—the advance of industry, credit and trade—and the contradictions to which they gave rise could be “blown out of existence” with “Krupp guns and Mauser rifles” was a delusion.

The past 25 years of American foreign policy, based on the use of cruise missiles and drones, combined with invasions and regime-change operations grounded on lies, have produced one debacle after another.

Now the chickens are coming home to roost, as other capitalist powers, great and small, begin to conclude that hitching themselves to the American juggernaut is the surest road to disaster. That is the historic significance of their decision to join the AIIB.

How will American imperialism respond? By increasing its military provocations, threatening to plunge the world once again into war.

Charting the rise of American imperialism in the late 1920s, Leon Trotsky noted that in the period of crisis, its hegemony would operate “more openly and more ruthlessly than in the period of boom,” and that it would attempt to extricate itself from its difficulties and maladies at the expense of its rivals, if necessary by means of war.

However there is another, and, in the final analysis, decisive, aspect to the economic decline of American imperialism, marked so powerfully by the events of yesterday.

For decades, the American working class was disoriented by the idea of a continually rising power—that America’s “best days” were always ahead. Reality is now coming home with ever-increasing force.

Events are shattering the delusions of the past and will propel the American working class on to the road of revolutionary struggle, creating the conditions for the unification of the international working class in the fight for world socialist revolution.