Treating Child Refugees as National Security Threats

Laura Carlsen

When the crisis of unaccompanied minors migrating to the United States burst onto the front pages last summer, it seemed at last the U.S. government would come to grips with its legacy of disaster amid the current havoc in Central America.

The United Nations documented that most of the children were fleeing violence — violence caused in part by the failure to restore constitutional order following the Honduran coup of 2009 and the unfinished peace processes after the dirty wars in El Salvador and Guatemala, where Washington propped up right-wing dictatorships for years.

The governments of those three countries — known as the Northern Triangle — certainly share some of the blame for the mass exodus, which is not as new or unprecedented as the press made out when it sounded the alarm.

But in the end, the problem isn’t one of assigning blame, but rather helping children in conditions of extreme vulnerability, right?

Apparently not.

Less than a year later, Washington has come up with its policy response to the children’s plight. Unfortunately, while purporting to address the root causes of migration, it mirrors — and in many ways intensifies — the causes that forced so many to flee.

Tucked into the administration’s 2016 budget requestthe plan has been christened “Biden’s Billion” for its major promoter and the amount he expects U.S. taxpayers to put up to support it. It divides aid into three “lines of action”: security, economic development, and governance.

Yet in every one of these areas, the response repeats errors of the past. Rather than focusing on a response to the humanitarian crisis of child refugees, it serves as a vehicle for deepening the drug war and “free-trade” agendas that have contributed to the crisis.

Rewarding Human Rights Violators

The plan requests $300 million for security assistance, a considerable increase over previous regional collaborations like the Merida Initiative and the Central American Regional Security Initiative. The increase goes mainly to the region’s police forces.

This essentially rewards known human rights violators.

In an op-ed published in The Hill, Alex Main of the Center for Economic and Policy Research explains: “Funding for International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement (INCLE) aid to Central America would double from $100 million in fiscal year 2014 to $205 million in fiscal year 2016,” he writes. “This assistance, rooted primarily in the U.S. ‘war on drugs,’ includes extensive support for the region’s police and military forces despite abundant reports of their involvement in extrajudicial killings and other serious human rights violations.”

Although fighting drug traffickers is purposely underplayed in the proposal, INCLE nonetheless expands the failed drug war model of militarizing local security forces. Experience shows that placing weapons and training in the hands of abusive police ensures that they can be — and are — used against civilians not associated with cartels, or against suspected criminals denied a right to trial.

The foreign military funding — or FMF, in bureaucratese — included in the plan, while comparable to prior levels, has a particularly ominous note to it this time around. “FMF in the Western Hemisphere,” declares the budget request, “supports our partners’ efforts to control national territory, modernize defense forces, and secure the southern approaches to the United States.”

Given that the region has no invading armies, to “control territory” means to control undefined internal populations — presumably criminals, but potentially including opposition or indigenous communities fighting for land rights against state-supported designs. “Modernizing defense forces” in the absence of external threats, means a dangerous re-militarization of nations barely emerging from military dictatorships.

And “securing southern approaches to the United States” marks a clear imposition of U.S. priorities to the detriment of the host nations. Even more outrageous is the implication that the U.S. southern border has to be protected from child migrants by creating an allied buffer some 2,000 miles deep.

Proponents of the plan note that some funding goes to human rights training. The contradiction of funneling money to human rights abusers to compel them to cease their abuse is one that they no doubt relish. It sends a mixed message by supporting corrupt and violent police at the same time it deigns to improve them.

The plan bolsters Honduran security forces even as human rights groups document uncontrolled abuses, to the extent that 94 U.S. members of Congress have called for a complete cut-off of aid to Honduran security forces. The plan apparently also funds the provision of training from Colombian security forces — the nation famous for the “false positives” scandal, a human bounty hunt in which soldiers dressed peasant farmers up as guerrillas, assassinated them, and received a government bonus.

The U.S. government has been shoveling out money to U.S. agencies and private sector firms for dubious police and judicial reform programs in Mexico and Central America for years. The result is horrors like Ayotzinapa and an increase rather than decrease in violations throughout the region. The police forces are being equipped and trained as they continue to victimize their own populations with impunity.

As the recent murders of unarmed youth in U.S. cities have shown, the United States urgently needs to reform its own police before it spends millions purporting to teach others. As in all other areas of this plan, the money would be better spent at home.

Border Punishment

The billion-dollar plan does highlight a few of the root causes of migration — namely physical and economic insecurity. But its emphasis on border security reveals its Janus-faced attitude toward migrants as threats as well as victims.

In part, this comes at the urging of immigration hawks in Congress.

Last December, John Lindsay-Poland explains, “Congress required the State Department to submit a strategy within three months that would ‘address the need for greater border security for the countries in Central America and for Mexico, particularly the southern border of Mexico.’ The strategy must also ‘support repatriation facilities for the processing of undocumented migrants returning from the United States’ as well as ‘combat human trafficking in Central America.’”

Mexico, once again, is responsible for doing the real dirty work here. Some 23,000 children have been deported at Washington’s urging from Mexico’s southern border over the past year.

The crackdown along Mexico’s southern boundary breaks with the country’s traditionally permissive attitude toward millennial migration patterns in the region. But it has not significantly decreased migration. Reports from the border describe a continued flow of migrants amid an increased presence of police, armed forces, and immigration agents. The result is more extortion and abuse.

Whose Development?

The economic development section of the plan would support the “Alliance for Prosperity,” an initiative developed with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and Northern Triangle governments. The IDB has a history of supporting large infrastructure projects that too often displace populations from their places of origin rather than rooting them through sustainable livelihoods.

This “line of action” intensifies policies that have been imposed for the last 20 years in the region: international trade facilitation, market integration, transnational investment, and export-oriented infrastructure and megaprojects.

Civil society organizations have long criticized this strategy. In a letter to heads of state in 2013, a coalition of 160 organizations stated, “Large-scale ‘development’ projects are imposed on the region’s most vulnerable populations with little or no regard for their lives or livelihoods. This results in forced displacement, especially of indigenous, peasant, and Afro-descendant communities; bloody conflicts over resources; environmental destruction and impoverishment.”

Here too, the details of the new Central America plan relate more to U.S. goals than to Central American needs. For example, the Trade and Development Agency notes that its part of the funding “prioritizes activities where there is a high likelihood for the export of U.S. goods and services.” While there’s nothing inherently wrong with opening up business opportunities for U.S. companies abroad, it’s a crass abuse of the goal of securing the safety of children in Central America.

Moreover, many of those investments include export promotion that puts local producers out of business (recall the 2 million Mexican farmers driven out under NAFTA) and infrastructure projects that serve the transnational movement of goods while destroying internal market linkages.

This creates a vicious but lucrative circle of investment-displacement-repression, as populations are forced from their lands and then criminalized as migrants, justifying enormous security contracts.

This combination of hardening borders for human mobility while opening them for goods and money is nothing new, as two decades of NAFTA have shown. We’ve seen the tragic results in Mexico.

Children and Youth at Risk

The United Nations concluded that 58 percent of the child refugees it interviewed had international protection needs, including a staggering 72 percent of Salvadoran children.

Yet for all its fanfare, the Biden plan makes no attempt to respond to this urgent need to keep children safe. In fact, through its border security measures and the likelihood of increased deportations from the United States and Mexico, it exacerbates their plight. The plan actually transfers millions of dollars out of child and maternal health to fund the new security measures.

The policies to deport migrants from Mexico are creating greater perils for them en route and back home. Father Alejandro Solalinde, who runs a migrant shelter in southern Mexico, worries that “They’re sending them right into the arms of the cartels.” That’s just what the plan does.

In a New York Times op-ed penned to promote it, Vice President Joe Biden demonizes the migrants from the very first paragraph, where he calls the child migrant crisis a reminder that “the security and prosperity of Central America are inextricably linked with our own.” Later on, he laments a “dangerous surge in migration.”

What kind of nation have we become when we treat desperate children as a national security threat?

The good news is that the plan faces a rocky road in Congress. “We’ve spent billions of dollars there over two decades,” observed Senator Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee. “And we’ve seen conditions get worse in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador.” Other members have also balked at the huge spike in security funding to governments where impunity and abuse is rampant.

There are undoubtedly some worthwhile projects within the proposed billion-dollar package, for example funding for domestic violence shelters. Washington promoters urge critics not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

But to avoid doing that, first you have to separate the two. This plan does precisely the opposite, by lumping together repressive measures that continue drug war militarization and punitive measures against youth with educational and jobs programs. It criminalizes migrants at the borders even while attempting to address root causes of migration. So, for example, the mother who has the courage to flee an abusive husband and take her children to safety will be more likely to be stopped and returned to her tormenter.

It’s laudable to turn our attention to the root causes of the refugee crisis out of Central America. But if the aid package intensifies the same policies that contributed to the crisis — as Biden’s clearly does — then we’re moving in the wrong direction. American taxpayers have no reason to throw more hard-earned money at the Washington NGOs, corrupt foreign governments, abusive security forces, and avaricious security industry that have perpetuated the failed drug war far beyond any justifiable error.

Despite the seriousness of the current situation, this is a classic case of where doing the wrong thing can be far worse than not doing anything.

Six months since the disappearance of the 43 Mexican students

Rafael Azul

On March 26, thousands rallied at Mexico City’s iconic Angel of Independence statue to mark six months since the kidnapping of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa rural normal school. The demonstration included students, teachers, workers and members of the middle class. Many carried signs demanding the ouster of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and charging the federal government with the students’ disappearance.

Six months have passed since 43 normalistas, as the rural teaching college students are known in Mexico, were kidnapped in the city of Iguala in the southern state of Guerrero, after suffering a savage armed assault. To this day, the students are still missing, and many questions remain about the role of the government, the armed forces and the police.

The bare facts are that uniformed police, accompanied by at least three gangsters, attacked five buses transporting students from the Ayotzinapa teaching college, killing six people, wounding more than 20 and disappearing 43. The Iguala police took the 43 students to the nearby city of Cocula, handed them over to its police, who in turn allegedly delivered them into the hands of a local narcotics gang, Guerreros Unidos.

Out of those facts, the government of president Enrique Peña Nieto has constructed a self-serving narrative of damage control. According to his version of events, the police acted under orders from Iguala’s corrupt mayor and his wife, who has family connections with Guerreros Unidos—end of story.

Federal authorities continue to insist that the case involves a criminal act, like many others, and reject that this crime against humanity involves anyone else—the federal police or the military. They deny that the massacre occurred as part of a war against the rural education system and the Mexican working class.

However, an investigation by the Mexico City newsweekly Proceso, with the support of UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program, exposed the role of the federal police and the military in the abduction and massacre of the students. Documentation has been uncovered that the normalistas were being watched by federal and state police from the time they left Ayotzinapa at 6:00 pm on the day of the massacre. The federal police command in Guerrero’s capital city, Chipancingo, was kept fully informed, including about the news that a massacre was taking place.

The one-sided and murderous attack took place less than three kilometers (1.8miles) from an army base—within earshot. The soldiers of the 27th infantry regiment stationed there are charged with combating organized crime; yet they did not intervene until two hours after the massacre. The armed forces so far refuse to release information or reports of their activity that night.

The crime and the kidnapping of the students led to a frantic search by relatives and volunteers. This soon turned to anger, as the magnitude of the crime became evident. Since then, the massacre in Iguala and the disappearance of the 43 normalistas have acquired global significance, triggering angry mass demonstrations month after month in Mexico, as well as protests throughout the world.

It took 10 days for the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto to abandon its attitude of studied indifference to the killings and become involved in the investigation, which it now claims is one of the most exhaustive in Mexican history. Hundreds are in custody, including police officers, drug gang members and Iguala’s former mayor and his wife.

It would take another two months before the authorities came to the conclusion that the students had been executed, then incinerated and dumped in a river. The government based its findings on testimony from some of those arrested. The Guerrero Unidos killers allegedly confessed to forming a human pyre in a ravine next to a Colula garbage dump and setting the bodies on fire at a very high temperature for over 12 hours in an attempt to hide any evidence of their crime. The killers then chopped up the remains and dumped them in garbage bags in the San Juan River.

Relatives of the disappeared normalistas reject this official version of events.

Meanwhile, hundreds of federal police plus local forces and volunteers searched for the missing. Unmarked graves were found in the region containing dozens of bodies, presumed victims of the narcotics gangs and their police associates. Most of those found have yet to be identified.

The remains fished out of the river have left no forensic evidence of any value other than part of a finger and a molar, which a DNA test proved belonged to one of the disappeared youth. Despite that, forensic experts have declared that there is no good evidence linking the finger and molar with the Colula ravine.

In Guerrero last week, a group of parents of the missing called on the National Electoral Institute (that regulates the electoral process) to cancel upcoming state elections in protest and on the grounds that all the potential candidates have links to the drug gangs and cover up for the waves of killings that have taken place. Despite intervention by the Peña Nieto administration and the federal police, killings and drug terror has not stopped, neither in Guerrero, nor in neighboring Michoacán, Oaxaca or in the State of Mexico. An atmosphere of impunity protects the police and armed forces.

Despite government protestations that the investigation into the disappearance of the student youths has been exhaustive and that many of those involved are in custody, neither the students nor their remains have been found. Relatives and supporters believe that there is no justice for them, as the government increasingly loses legitimacy.

In particular, many questions have been raised about the role of the Mexican Army. The 27th infantry regiment stationed in Iguala was fully aware of the police attack on the students as it was occurring, and may have helped with their abduction. There have been demonstrations and clashes with the military at the army base by parents demanding that their children be returned.

Defense Secretary General Salvador Cienfuegos has arrogantly refused to divulge to the public or to the legislature information in his possession on the Ayotzinapa massacre or on the execution-style killing last June, by the army’s 102nd regiment, of 22 people who had already surrendered in Tlatlaya, in the State of Mexico. The National Defense Secretariat (SEDENA) only “speaks to the President,” said Cienfuegos.

Relatives of the missing point out that when the army did arrive at the scene of the Iguala massacre, in the early hours of September 27, Omar García, one of the wounded students, was told by one of the arriving soldiers, “you guys asked for it; this is what you get for doing what you do.” García also recounted that as the assault began that night, students tried to contact the media and were told that they had been told to stay away. When federal authorities took his testimony, García said that they tried to link him to organized crime.

The Proceso report points to a possible motive for targeting the students: opposition within the teachers college and among teachers and students to the education policies of the government.

Rural teaching colleges have been particularly targeted because they are considered centers of left-wing political activism.

The teaching college in Ayotzinapa was founded in 1926 as part of a commitment by the governments that followed the Mexican Revolution (1910-1917) to expand rural literacy and rural education. By the mid-thirties, there were 36 rural teaching colleges. Typically, they take in impoverished peasant youth (140 each year at Ayotzinapa) and train them to become rural educators.

Six months after the forced disappearance of the 43 normalistas, social tensions continue to rise, while all of the major parties, from the ruling PRI and the right-wing PAN to the bourgeois “left” PRD and the Morena Party of Andres Lopez Obrador, are implicated in this historic crime.

The conditions are emerging for a revolutionary explosion against Mexico’s corrupt and criminal government. What is needed is a workers’ party, independent of all the factions of the bourgeoisie, and armed with a revolutionary socialist program based on the unity of the working class throughout the Americas in a common struggle to put an end to capitalism. Only through the building of a Mexican section of the International Committee of the Fourth International can this historic task be realized.

Brazil’s government vows “huge cuts” as economic crisis intensifies

Bill Van Auken

Brazil’s embattled Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores—PT) President Dilma Rousseff this week promised US financial news agency Bloomberg that her government “will carry out a huge cut” in spending this year in an effort to placate the financial markets and credit rating agencies.

Rousseff is embroiled in a massive kickback and bribery scandal surrounding the state-run Petrobras energy conglomerate and has faced right-wing demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of people, predominantly from the country’s middle class, calling for her impeachment and even a military coup. The latest polling has shown her approval rating falling to just 13 percent.

As Rousseff’s interview with Bloomberg makes clear, her response is to turn even further to the right, implementing austerity measures that will deepen the country’s economic slump and have the harshest impact upon workers and the poor, whom the PT fraudulently purports to represent.

“I will do everything to meet” the government’s fiscal target for a primary surplus (amount of revenue exceeding total spending, excluding interest payments on debt), Rousseff said.

That target has been set at 1.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product, equivalent to roughly $20.8 billion.

Brazil reported a primary budget deficit of 2.3 billion reais (US$721 million) in February despite tax hikes on imports, fuel and financial transactions as well as budget cuts implemented just the month before. With interest payments on the country’s debt included, the budget deficit has ballooned to 7.34 percent of GDP, the highest rate since at least 2002.

Brazil’s total public debt as a percentage of its GDP is expected to rise to 62 percent by the end of 2015. By comparison, US total public debt stands at over 102 percent of US GDP.

According to the Brazilian daily Folha de S. Paulo, an unnamed presidential advisor predicted that the government could be compelled to slash $25 billion in spending—substantially more than the $18 billion initially projected—as well as raise taxes in order to meet the surplus target.

One of the first actions taken by Rousseff’s predecessor and mentor, the former metalworkers union leader and first PT president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, when he came to power in 2003 was to set the primary budget surplus above the rate demanded by the International Monetary Fund. Rousseff has essentially continued these policies in a bid to satisfy world financial markets and foreign capitalist INVESTORS.

Following her narrow election victory last October, she brought on board as FINANCE minister Joaquim Levy, the same free market advocate who set Lula’s financial policy.

Levy is a product of the University of Chicago, the bastion of neoliberal policies that produced the economic advisers who set policies for the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. He did a stint at the International Monetary Fund and, before being tapped for Rousseff’s second administration, he was chief of asset management at Banco Bradesco SA, Brazil’s second-largest private banking group, overseeing a portfolio of more than $130 billion. In other words, Rousseff brought in a representative of the IMF and Wall Street to dictate her government’s financial policies.

Remarks made by Levy to a group of University of Chicago alumni and reported by Folha de S. Paulo last weekend stirred a brief political controversy. The newspaper reported that Levy told the private audience that, while Rousseff has a “genuine desire to get things right,” her methods are not the most effective. He also reportedly referred to already implemented austerity measures as a “joke.”

Levy claimed his remarks had been taken “out of context,” adding that “there is mutual, very solid trust” between himself and Rousseff. The PT president, meanwhile, dismissed the report as a “storm in a tea cup” and suggested that the media was trying to “create an intrigue.” She added, “Levy is very important for Brazil today and he stands very firm.” If anything, the incident served to prove that it is Levy who is in charge.

The next round of austerity measures are to be implemented as unemployment is rising and the economy is shrinking, conditions that these policies will only worsen. The latest jobs report showed that Brazil’s official unemployment rate rose to 5.9 percent in February, the steepest increase in almost two years. Meanwhile, the country’s central bank estimates a 0.1 percent decline in GDP in 2014, and projects a deeper contraction of 0.5 percent this year.

Hardest hit are the manufacturing and construction sectors. There are also growing fears that the Petrobras scandal will have a ripple effect throughout the economy as the energy firm, Latin America’s largest corporation, is responsible for roughly 10 percent of all business INVESTMENT in Brazil. Revelations about companies paying kickbacks to the ruling PT in exchange for inflated contracts have already led to two major industrial construction firms, OAS and Galvao Engenharia SA, filing for bankruptcy.

Rousseff, who chaired Petrobras from 2003 to 2010, told Bloomberg that neither she nor other board members “even saw a sign” of corruption. She added that the Petrobras board “was made up of quite qualified entrepreneurs—it wasn’t just me.”

Prominent among recent layoffs have been those in Brazil’s auto industry, which have provoked strikes and protests by auto workers. Some 13,000 jobs have been wiped out in the industry over the past year. Auto sales in Brazil fell 7 percent in 2014, and projections that they would stabilize this year are being called into question by the deepening slump.

Workers at the Ford engine plant in Taubaté, about 140 kilometers northeast of São Paulo, walked out on strike April 1 after the company announced the permanent layoffs of 137 workers. The workers were told that they had lost their jobs after they returned from a temporary furlough. They initiated a protest at the factory gates beginning on Tuesday, March 31, and by Wednesday the rest of the workforce joined them.

The action follows a February strike by 5,000 General Motors workers in São Paulo’s ABC industrial belt against the threatened layoff of 800 workers. Some 13,000 Volkswagen workers carried out a similar action in January, and 11,000 Mercedes Benz workers staged a 24-hour strike and protests blocking a highway after 250 layoffs were announced during the same period.

While in the past, the PT government had warned against layoffs and indicated that tax cuts and other favorable economic policies could be curtailed if the foreign automakers continued putting workers in the street, there has been no such threat during the latest, and deepest, round of job cuts.

The Brazilian central bank has also projected an increase in the inflation rate to 7.9 percent, ravaging the living standards of the working class, which has already borne the brunt of tax, utility and transit hikes as well as steadily rising food and housing costs.

In her desperate bid to placate her critics on the right and secure the approval of Wall Street, Rousseff is putting into motion policies that must inevitably lead to an explosive development of the class struggle in Brazil.

US auto executives handed multimillion-dollar pay packages

Shannon Jones

US auto manufacturers have revealed multimillion-dollar executive pay packages as they prepare for contract talks this summer with the United Auto Workers. 139,000 Ford, GM and Chrysler workers face a September 15 contract deadline with sentiments running high for the abolition of the two-tier wage system that pays new hires about one half of standard wages along with inferior benefits.

The Obama administration’s forced restructuring of the auto industry in 2009, which was carried out at the expense of the wages and benefits of auto workers and retirees, has led to a profit surge, with the Detroit automakers making $76 billion over the last six years and $10 billion in 2014 alone.

Auto companies are rewarding their top executives with massive salaries and stock awards.

Ford Motor reported that CEO Mark Fields took in $18.6 million in 2014. Other Ford executives also received hefty salaries, including Chief Financial Officer Bob Shanks, who raked in $6.3 million, and Executive Vice President of the Americas Joe Hinrichs, who got $6.1 million. Ford’s head of operations in Europe, Jim Farley, got $4.5 million.

Overall, Ford took in $3.2 billion in profits in 2014, including $52 million in the fourth quarter, the 22nd consecutive profitable quarter.

Earlier Fiat-Chrysler announced that CEO Sergio Marchionne was set to receive $72 million in total pay for 2014. Most of his pay package comes from bonuses and a stock award connected to Fiat’s takeover of Chrysler that led to a 61 percent surge in its share price.

Marchionne’s pay package when broken down to an average hourly rate comes to around $35,000 per hour. That compares to the $28 average hourly wage paid senior Chrysler workers. Forty-two percent of Chrysler workers earn the second-tier wage, which currently pays around $15 per hour. Last year, Marchionne said he was “violently opposed” to any conception that workers are “entitled” to pay increases.

Meanwhile, General Motors CEO Mary Barra is expected to receive a 2014 pay package of $14.4 million. The automaker recorded $2.8 billion profit last year despite recalls and lawsuits related to a deadly ignition defect. GM, which is sitting on a cash hoard of some $25 billion, recently announced a $5 billion stock buyback program and raised its stock dividend by 20 percent. Both moves benefit big investors, including the UAW, which hailed the buyback.

GM executives recently received restricted shares of stock under a new incentive plan. Barra just got 79,639 restricted shares, up from the 69,214 she got in 2014. The award is worth around $3 million at current share prices. GM President Dan Ammann got 29,685 restricted shares and Chief Financial Officer Chuck Stevens got 19,081.

The announcement of multimillion-dollar payouts to auto executives takes place in the context of stagnating and declining compensation for US auto workers. Workers at the US-based car companies hired before 2007 have not had a pay increase in over ten years.

Currently nonunion workers at the Mercedes plant in Vance, Alabama have the highest total hourly compensation among US auto workers at $65 per hour. That ranks ahead of Ford workers at $57 per hour and GM workers at $58. The corresponding figure for Chrysler is $48 per hour, which ranks behind Honda at $49 per hour and is tied with Toyota.

Chrysler employs a far higher percentage of lower-paid tier two workers than the other US carmakers. According to the Center for Automotive Research, real wages for US auto workers have fallen a massive 24 percent since November 2002. According to a report in Bloomberg, management pay has risen about 50 percent faster then the wages of unionized workers since 2009.

Markus, a young second-tier worker at Chrysler Warren Truck outside of Detroit remarked on Marchionne’s salary. “It’s amazing. They came up with $72 million, and where does that come from? It comes from us.

“It doesn’t seem like there is anything we can do about it. I see the upcoming contract will be a mess. If they give us some money, it won’t be what we expect. It is so unfair. I make $15 an hour and have a wife and four children to support.”

Dominique, another young Warren Truck worker added, “$72 million is a lot of money and our profit sharing was basically crap. I support a family. It is hard.

“They don’t even want to give you a day off. If you don’t have a PA day (Paid Absence Allowance) you are screwed. They don’t care what the reason is. A loved one could be sick; they don’t care.”

Despite these sentiments, at the recently held United Auto Workers bargaining convention the union only spoke vaguely about “bridging the gap” between first- and second-tier workers. Since 2007, the UAW has sanctioned a 30 percent reduction in hourly labor costs—through lower-tier wages, ending employer-paid retiree health care, replacing defined pension plans for new hires with 401(K)s, and abolishing overtime after eight hours.

At a post-convention press conference, UAW President Dennis Williams held open the possibility of a third-tier wage comprising lower skilled auto workers. In reality there are already a multitude of tiers in the auto factories comprised of contract workers, some of whom make barely more than the US minimum wage.

Some workers at the GM Lake Orion Assembly plant outside of Detroit already make less than the two-tier wage under terms of a special agreement signed by the UAW. The workers are employed at General Motors Subsystems Manufacturing LLC and do tasks such as arranging batches of parts in order for assembly.

Other global carmakers also reported hefty pay packages for their top executives. Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn pocketed some 17.5 million euros in 2014, about $18.8 million dollars. Outgoing Honda CEO Takanobu Ito received $1.4 million in salary and bonus in the most recent fiscal year.

Renault, meanwhile, proposed to raise the salary of CEO Carlos Ghosn to $7.85 million in 2014. The French carmaker is preparing to axe 7,500 jobs in a drive to cut costs. The most recent labor agreement froze workers’ salaries. Ghosn also received $8.34 million in salary for his role in Renault’s partnership with Nissan.

US admiral threatens Beijing over South China Sea

James Cogan

Admiral Harry Harris, the commander of the US Pacific Command, used a speech on March 31 to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra to once again issue US threats of “confrontation” over China’s construction of facilities on islands and reefs in the South China Sea.

Harris painted China’s activities in the most sinister and destructive light. Beijing was, he said, “building artificial land by pumping sand on to live coral reefs—some of them submerged—and paving them over with concrete.” He asserted that China reclaimed from the sea an area comparable to a 4.5 square kilometre Australian national park.

Harris flatly rejected China’s assertions of sovereignty over large areas of the South China Sea, dismissing its “nine-dash line claim” as “inconsistent with international law.” He declared that “the scope and pace of building man-made islands raise serious questions about China’s intentions.”

In a thinly-veiled threat to Beijing, Harris stressed the US commitment to what was initially labelled the “pivot” to Asia by President Obama. Now referred to as the “rebalance,” it involves the concentration of 60 percent of US air and naval power in the Asia-Pacific. The admiral highlighted the “rotation” of US marines, aircraft and ships to Australia, and the close integration of the Australian military into US operations.

“By maintaining a capable and credible forward presence in the region,” Harris stated, “we’re able to improve our ability to maintain security and stability. And if any crisis does break out, we’re better positioned to quickly respond.”

Harris’s comments were somewhat sensationally reported in sections of the Australian media. Michael Wesley, from the Asia Pacific School at the Australian National University, told Fairfax Media it was a “dangerous escalation” in US-China tensions. In fact, the remarks were entirely in tune with a consistent drumbeat of accusations against China since the start of the year.

Prominent figures in the US political, intelligence and military establishment are trying to make China’s alleged activities in the South China Sea a major issue of geopolitical tension. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, senators such as Republican John McCain and Democrat Jack Reed, and top admirals and generals have made sweeping claims. They accuse China of building airfields and anti-ship and anti-air missile bases that would be used to deny the US Navy access to the area and exert Chinese military control over some of the most important sea lanes in the world.

On March 19, McCain, Reed and the other Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee leaders, Bob Corker and Bob Menendez, sent a joint letter to the Obama administration demanding that it inform the Senate what “specific actions the United States can take to slow down or stop China’s reclamation activities.” The senators alleged that Chinese construction in the South China Sea was “a direct challenge, not only to the interests of the United States and the region, but to the entire international community.”

They wrote: “While other states have been built on existing land masses, China is changing the size, structure and physical attributes of land features themselves… This is a qualitative change that appears designed to alter the status quo in the South China Sea.”

The senators sent their letter amid the dismay in Washington over the fact that Britain, followed by Germany, France and Italy, ignored US objections and joined the Chinese-initiated Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Within a matter of days, the European powers undermined years of efforts by Washington to pressure countries in the region to distance themselves diplomatically, economically and strategically from China. Virtually every state in Asia, including key US allies such as Australia, Taiwan and South Korea, rushed to join the AIIB before the deadline for founding member rights expired on March 31.

The April 1 WSWS perspective noted that the intervention by the European imperialist powers to assert their own interests in closer relations with China underscored the tremendous decline in the world economic position of the United States. Compared with the vast investment and trade opportunities opening up in China and Asia as a whole, Washington has little to offer.

The perspective warned that American imperialism would respond by “increasing its military provocations, threatening to plunge the world once again into war.”

That process is at work in the South China Sea. The territorial disputes between China and states such as the Philippines and Vietnam are flashpoints that Washington can seek to inflame in order to destabilise the entire region.

On March 26, the Philippines government announced it was retaliating against China’s construction activities by resuming its own building of facilities on reefs in the Spratly Islands, which are claimed by both countries. Washington’s role in Manila’s decision is not known. Until last week, however, the Philippines had suspended its construction activity until the conclusion of a case it took to the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in The Hague, to assert its sovereignty claims at China’s expense. No ruling is expected before early 2016. Regardless of the outcome, China has rejected the court’s jurisdiction and refused to participate.

On previous occasions, Filipino efforts to erect structures on disputed territories or intercept Chinese fishing vessels led to tense standoffs between the Chinese and Filipino navies. An incident could rapidly flare into war against China by the US, which has given the Philippines security guarantees. Such a war would draw in Australia and Japan.

Various air force activities in the disputed areas could trigger conflict. In February, Filipino sources revealed that the US Navy flew a Poseidon surveillance plane from a base in the western Philippines over the Spratly Islands, risking attempts by Chinese jets to intercept it.

On March 31, China announced that, for the first time, it flew several jet fighters through the Basi Channel, which is part of the ocean separating the Philippines and Taiwan. The official Chinese news agency Xinhua boasted: “This is the first time that the PLA Air Force conducted such drills in an airspace far offshore from Chinese coastlines.” The purpose of the drill, it claimed, was to “level up the PLA Air Force’s mobility and combativeness.”

While there were no reports that Taiwan or the Philippines sought to intercept the Chinese aircraft, such encounters are virtually inevitable if China begins to regularly send military flights into such sensitive areas.

France prepares to boost military spending

Kumaran Ira

As it drafts its revised military strategy, France’s Socialist Party government (PS) is preparing a major military escalation. The government recently convened a Defense Council to review the military budget, escalate overseas military operations and permanently maintain troops deployed across France after the mass Charlie Hebdo shooting in January.

The government said that a review of the 2014-2019 Military Program Law (LPM) will take place in the summer, ensuring the armed forces receive the funding promised to them. Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian stressed the need to “protect the necessary financial resources for the LPM.”

Up to 23,000 posts in the army that were set to be eliminated by 2019 are being reinstated in order to maintain a military presence at home and abroad. Proposed measures include boosting reservists from 28,000 to 40,000, enhancing cyber-warfare operations and hiring an extra 500 intelligence specialists.

Under conditions where the ruling class has nothing to offer for unemployed youth, it is preparing to use them as cannon fodder in its escalating imperialist wars. The government is also promoting military service in France’s overseas territories for young people without qualifications. About one thousand positions will reportedly be opened up in the army “by autumn 2015.”

Plans for a permanent military build-up inside France underscore the deep concern of the political establishment over rising social discontent. Discredited by its austerity policies and unpopular wars, the French ruling elite is dramatically expanding police-state measures designed to intimidate and repress social discontent.

As part of the revised military strategy, President François Hollande stressed that the deployment of some 10,000 troops across France after the January 7 attack on the editorial offices of Charlie Hebdo will be maintained indefinitely. This is the first time the government deployed simultaneously as many troops inside France as abroad.

According to a statement issued by the Elysée Presidential palace, “The threat of a terrorist attack against our country remaining high, the head of state has decided to keep the number of troops deployed on our national territory at 10,000, to reinforce security forces led by the Interior Ministry.”

While claiming that there is no money for essential public services including health and education, the government is spending about one million euros a day on Opération Sentinelle (Operation Sentinel), a nationwide security operation, in order to mobilize these troops.

The revised military strategy comes amid sharpening geopolitical tensions between global powers. The conflict with Russia over Ukraine after the NATO-backed fascist-led coup last February has threatened nuclear war. Under the “pivot to Asia”, the US is fomenting a war drive aimed at China. Inter-imperialist tensions are also exploding within Europe amid a broad campaign for re-militarization whose most striking feature is the resurgence of German imperialism’s military ambitions.

The French ruling class is nervously watching the rise of the German military. Germany plans to boost its defense budget by 6.2 percent over the next five years, aiming to increase defense spending to more than €35 billion by 2019 and comprehensively modernize the army. Between 2010-2014, Berlin has raised defense spending seven percent to €32.4 billion, while French defense spending fell 2.5 percent over the same period to €31.4 billion.

The French ruling class is reacting by stepping up its own rearmament. Hollande’s decision to revise the military strategy comes as high-ranking military officers publicly denounced the government’s decision to cut the military budget last year. At the same time, the neo-fascist National Front (FN), benefiting from the bankruptcy of the discredited PS, is calling for the rearmament of France, making political appeals to the military.

FN leader Marine Le Pen has called for a halt to defense budget cuts, insisting on keeping a minimum military budget of two percent of GDP and increasing defense spending by €2 billion yearly, for an indefinite period.

The rearmament policy is a warning to the working class. As workers’ social rights and living standards are looted to pay for military escalation, European capitalism is preparing the type of arms race between the European powers that twice, in the last century, plunged the continent into world war.

Confronting economic decline and a rising trade deficit, French imperialism is seeking to overcome its crisis through military means. Participating in the US-led war in the Middle East, France is carrying out military operations in Africa, including in Mali and Central African Republic, aiming at re-establishing their former colonial spheres of influence.

Under the revised strategy, 10,000 troops will be mobilized for external operations. The government plans to escalate its military operations in Africa and the Middle East. France is currently involved in major military operations, including Sangaris in the Central African Republic (CAR), Barkhane in Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad, and Chammal in Iraq.

The PS government is also preparing to increase French troops in the African Sahel region. Some 3,000 French troops have been deployed in the region. Le Drian said France would “slightly increase” the number of troops participating in the Barkhane anti-jihadist operation and reduce soldiers in the Central African Republic “to give us the means to support” the fight against Boko Haram.

While not giving specific troop figures, Le Drian said that Paris has no intention of intervening in the fight against Boko Haram, but added that “we are considering logistical and intelligence support to forces from Chad, Niger, and Cameroon on the ground.”

Le Drian said the new Madama desert base situated near the Libyan border in northern Niger would be fully operational in July, ostensibly to combat the flow of weapons and jihadists from neighbouring Libya to countries including Mali or Nigeria.

Greece verges on default as creditors demand deeper austerity cuts

Robert Stevens

After five days, talks between the Greek Syriza-led government and its international creditors ended without an agreement Wednesday.

Yesterday the government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras submitted a new 26 page document containing austerity measures it described as a “comprehensive list of tax, administrative and policy reforms,” after having a previous list of proposals submitted last Friday rejected. 

As a conditions of receiving any further loans, including an outstanding €7.2 billion required to pay off billions in debts which are coming due and satisfy the four month austerity agreement it signed up to on February 20, Greece has been required to come up with a far more extensive and detailed raft of austerity measures for approval by the European Union (EU), European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

According to Reuters, Greece submitted the list too late for it to be considered by euro zone deputy finance ministers at Wednesday’s teleconference on Greece. 

According to reports, the initial assessment of the proposals by eurozone officials is that it does not go far enough in imposing further attacks on the living standards of the working class. The EU, ECB and IMF insist that Syriza ditch its entire election programme of token anti-austerity reforms and enforce measures making it easier for companies to sack workers en masse, as well as further attacks on wages and pension rights. Just prior to the Eurogroup meeting, hundreds of pensioners marched in Athens demanding increases in pensions. Similar protests were held in other cities throughout Greece.

The Financial Times noted the new measures “are similar to Friday’s initial effort and fail to address several issues that bailout monitors have insisted on, including an overhaul of the Greek pension system and greater labour market liberalisation.” It continued, “Indeed, the proposal appears to reverse reforms in several of these areas. The document includes €1.1bn in fresh spending this year…” 

Speaking to the FT, a senior EU official said that the new proposals were inadequate and that there was “no chance of any agreement” with Greece before next scheduled meeting of eurozone finance ministers in Riga on April 24.

The Tsipras government had indicated it hoped to be able to reach agreement on a new set of proposals by the beginning of the Greek Orthodox Easter (which falls on April 12). But this deadline is uncertain.

Greece’s government and banks are cut off from all access to the international money markets, with their position becoming more perilous by the hour. Even as the Eurogroup meeting began, a senior representative of the Greek government, Interior Minister Nikos Voutzis, reportedly told Germany’s Spiegel news magazine that without additional money they may not be able to pay back a €450 million loan to the IMF on April 9. A further €2.4 billion in debt must be paid back in April.

Voutzis’ announcement was quickly denied by the Greek government, but finance markets immediately began to fall on the news. One currency analyst, in response to Voutzis, compared a possible decision by Greece not to pay back the IMF loan on April to the collapse of the US bank Lehman Brothers that triggered the 2008 global financial crash.

The Guardian quoted an unnamed Greek official who complained, “a campaign of rumour, innuendo and deliberate leaks is being waged against us.” Stating further that “the banking system is at risk, outflows are growing, non-performing loans are mounting. What they are doing is criminal. The February 20 agreement was supposed to give us four months of financial stability and instead they are using it to asphyxiate us.”

Despite such rhetoric, the Syriza government represents the interests of a section of the Greek ruling elite and responds at every stage as a pro-capitalist regime seeking some arrangement with the European powers at the expense of the working class. Its new document notes, “The Hellenic Republic considers itself to be a proud and indefeasible member of the European Union and an irrevocable member of the eurozone.”

The protracted nature of the negotiations has strengthened the hand of figures in ruling circles that support Greece being forced to default and leave the euro zone.

On Tuesday billionaire investor Warren Buffett told CNBC, “If it turns out the Greeks leave, that may not be a bad thing for the euro. If everybody learns that the rules mean something and if they come to general agreement about fiscal policy among members, or something of the sort, that they mean business, that could be a good thing.”

The same day Peter Gauweiler, vice president of the conservative Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), described Greece as a "bankrupt state" and resigned his parliamentary seat—criticising German Chancellor Angela Merkel for being too accommodating. The CSU are the coalition partners and sister party of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union.

The Financial Times noted, “Merkel is also under pressure from anti-euro Alternative für Deutschland party, which has won over disaffected CDU voters.” It cited the comments of Mujtaba Rahman, analyst at the Eurasia Group risk consultancy, who said, “This resignation indicates that Merkel is very constrained, not simply from the AfD, but also within her own party. It suggests Merkel will need to maintain a hard line, which means no money without material reform from Greece on pensions and labour.”

Merkel, in a joint news conference with French President Francois Hollande in Berlin, commented that “time is of the essence” in reaching an agreement with the Greek government.

Syriza’s efforts to strike a better bargain with creditors centre on efforts to exploit antagonisms between the major powers. It has made a concerted effort to deepen Greece’s ties with China and Russia, both of which have geostrategic interests in the region. Tsipras recently welcomed representatives of the Beijing regime to the Greek port of Piraeus—a strategic facility in which China already has extensive interests.

This week, speaking to Russian news agency ITAR–TASS in the lead up to his visit to Moscow on April 8, Tsipras said his government opposed the EU’s sanctions against Moscow.

“You know that in previous years there was a blow to these [Greek-Russian] relations as previous Greek governments did not do what they could in order to deter this meaningless policy of sanctions amid the tensions in Ukraine,” he said.

Tsipras claimed that he had told EU leaders at their summit in March, “Tell me how you envisage the architecture of security in Europe? Do you envisage it with Russia opposed to us, or with Russia in a process of dialogue and mutual understanding?”

He concluded, “I did not receive an answer from many but I believe that the answer is clear: the European security architecture must also include Russia.”

On Tuesday the leader of Syriza’s “Left Platform”, Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis, returned from a two day visit to Moscow. His mission was to prepare the way for Tsipras’ visit. Lafazanis met with Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak, as well as Alexei Miller, the head of Gazprom. He told the media that Greece supported Russia expanding its proposed Turkish Stream pipeline, which aims to transfer natural gas via the Black Sea, to Greece.

Greece’s orientation to Russia cuts directly across the interests of the EU and the United States. To Vima reported that Lafazanis thought it was a “mistake to isolate Russia and that Europe will benefit from the operation of multiple natural gas pipelines.” The paper reported that Lafaznis had stated that major Russian oil companies had agreed to support exploration for oil and other fossil fuels in offshore areas in Western Greece and would consider lowering the cost of natural gas it sells to the country.

Washington’s “human rights” imperialism exposed

Joseph Kishore

The Obama administration announced Tuesday that it is resuming arms shipments to the military dictatorship in Egypt, beginning with the transfer of 12 F-16 fighter jets, missiles and the components required to build 125 tanks. In a personal call to Egypt’s ruler, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Obama also pledged to resume the annual transfer of $1.3 billion in military aid.

The White House made no effort to claim that Egypt had made “credible progress toward an inclusive, democratically elected civilian government”—the statutory condition for ending the suspension of military aid imposed in October 2013. Instead, it invoked an exemption passed by Congress late last year to override this requirement.

Resuming military aid to Egypt, the second largest recipient of such assistance from the US, after Israel, is “in the interest of US national security,” a White House statement declared. Obama told al-Sisi it was necessary for Egypt and the US to “refine our military assistance relationship so that it is better positioned to address the shared challenges to US and Egyptian interests…”

The administration could not even make a pretense that Egypt had made a turn toward democracy. The blood-soaked al-Sisi regime has not slackened its murderous repression one iota. Since coming to power, it has brutally repressed protests. Political opponents have been beaten, killed and arrested en masse. According to one count, more than 41,000 people have been locked up since the ouster of Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Mursi in 2013. More than 1,000 political opponents have been sentenced to death.

The decision to resume arms shipments to Egypt came only two days after the announcement by Ukraine’s interior minister, Arsen Avakov, that US military forces will begin direct training of right-wing National Guard militias organized by the Kiev regime, including the fascist Azov Battalion. This outfit, founded and led by neo-Nazis, has been on the front lines of the war in eastern Ukraine against pro-Russian separatists.

These are only two of the most damning exposures of the “human rights” pretenses of American foreign policy. With increasing brazenness, the United States functions as the spearhead of militarism and reaction all over the world. It is driven to support the most brutal regimes in pursuit of its program of global domination through military force.

The immediate spur for the resumption of arms shipments to Egypt is the air war against Yemen, led by Saudi Arabia and backed by the Obama administration. Egypt and Saudi Arabia have announced plans for a possible ground invasion alongside the escalating bombing campaign, with the goal of ousting Houthi forces backed by Iran. The additional military equipment Washington is sending to Egypt would undoubtedly be deployed in such a ground assault.

The two US allies leading this campaign sum up the character of the enterprise. The brutality of the Egyptian regime is matched by that of the Saudi monarchy, which rules with an iron fist, carries out beheadings with gruesome regularity, and has funneled money to Al Qaeda and other Islamic fundamentalist groups as part of the US regime-change operation in Syria.

As for Ukraine, support for openly fascistic forces has been a hallmark of the US-led operation that began last February with the ousting of the elected pro-Russian president. That putsch was spearheaded by the neo-Nazi Svoboda Party and Right Sector. Throughout Eastern Europe, the US is relying on right-wing, nationalist, racist and anti-Semitic movements and governments as part of its military-economic-diplomatic drive to isolate, undermine and, ultimately, dismember Russia.

On the other side of the world is Honduras, where death squads linked to the US-backed government of Juan Orlando Hernández have been carrying out a reign of terror against students protesting against education cuts, including the abduction, torture and murder of at least four young people. Hernández is the successor to President Porfirio Lobo, who came to power following a US-backed coup in 2009.

The US provides tens of millions of dollars annually to the Honduran police and military, headed by a regime that Foreign Policy recently described as “a cesspool of corruption and organized crime in which the topmost levels of government are enmeshed.” Hernández and Lobo have overseen the establishment of police militias with close ties to drug gangs and pushed for the direct involvement of the military in domestic repression.

The coming together of the police and military with right-wing death squads and drug gangs—funded with US money—is repeated in other countries in Latin America, most notably Mexico. The entire Mexican state is complicit in the massacre of 43 students last year, and the UN special envoy on torture declared earlier this month that the use of torture had become “generalized” in the country. None of this has had any impact on the full support the Obama administration accords the government of Mexican President Peña Nieto, which is pushing through economic “reforms” aimed at opening up the energy sector to foreign capital.

One could cite dozens of examples along these lines. The American financial aristocracy exports the blood, filth and criminality embedded in its social being wherever it seeks to dominate and control—and there is no part of the world that is exempt from this drive.

From the beginning of the rise of American imperialism, the ruling class has sought to couch its predatory ambitions in the language of “freedom,” “human rights” and “American values.” As Trotsky noted in 1924, “America is always liberating somebody. That is her profession.” At no other time, however, have the ideological justifications for aggression been so threadbare.

One final point. The ever more naked exposure of the criminality of American imperialism coincides with the further shift to the right of the organizations of the privileged middle class—the liberal and pseudo-left backers of the Obama administration.

Those who once presented themselves as “anti-war” have taken the opportunity of Obama’s election to line up directly behind US imperialism, backing US-led operations in Libya, Egypt, Syria, Ukraine and Iraq, among others. They have jumped onto the bandwagon of “human rights imperialism” precisely at the point where it is being decisively exposed before the people of the United States and the entire world.

Why (market-based) U.S. Education Reform Is Doomed

David Ellison

Bill Gates and his lieutenant, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, insist that America's schools must be run like a business. If educators faced both the accountability (standards, high-stakes testing, merit pay) and competition (vouchers/choice, charter schools) of an open, capitalistic market, then teachers would finally have to get off their duffs and get to work.

Trouble is, after nearly two decades of this, American education is no better. That's because, Gates and Duncan maintain (completely unfazed by overwhelming evidence to the contrary), we haven't implemented market-based reforms enough. So now, let's switch to the new Common Core Standards, and use them to evaluate not just schools, but individual teachers.

Sorry. Even the Common Core are doomed because they cannot cure what truly ails American education today.

A correct diagnosis, however, would involve acknowledging the Voldemorts: vexing, embarrassing issues that, frankly, we'd much prefer not to name:
America recruits most of its educators from the bottom percentiles of college graduates. (And now, thanks to "reform," my state, California, has seen a 66 percent decline in enrollment at teacher-education programs.)

Fifty percent of our students writhe in poverty, the highest rate in the industrialized world, and the single most powerful impediment to academic success.

Our communities and, therefore, our schools are now more segregated by race and class than ever before in our nation's history. (Vouchers and charters, by the way, only exacerbate this.)

Heaping insult upon injury, we usually send our least qualified teachers to staff those decrepit, segregated schools -- perhaps the most heinous moral outrage of our time.

Our families and our culture are in crisis. In fact, the United Nations ranks the United States 34th out of 35 industrialized nations in terms of childhood well-being.

Finally, our entire system of education is based upon a century-old assembly-line industrial model. We sort children according to their ages, insist they all learn identical things at precisely the same time ....

Why don't Gates and Duncan focus on any of the above dire, longstanding educational crises? Perhaps they are blinded by their ideology. Competition and other market-based strategies enabled Gates to amass his fortune. Therefore, they can't help but raise the "fortunes" of public education as well, right?

Besides, market-based educational reforms are so apparently simple, so relatively cheap. Everyone can conveniently ignore the real and shameful problems hobbling America and its public schools today. After all, to address them, we'd need to transform not just our schools, but our communities, even our very culture.

Finland did.

In the 1960s, Finnish schools were by all measures mediocre. They are now universally recognized as some of the finest in the world. In 2009, they were ranked number one.

How did Finland do it? The Finnish Parliament replaced its failed market-based reforms with a new, bold plan: Finland would put a great teacher in every classroom in the nation.

Finnish teacher-education programs are now more competitive than many medical and law schools. All prospective teachers must earn master's degrees, but the government pays their tuition. When they graduate, teachers earn salaries commensurate with other similarly educated professionals.

In Finland, there are few, infrequent national tests that have nothing to do with teacher or school evaluations. Classes are small, with usually no more than 20 students.

Critics of citing Finland as a model usually cling to two differences between it and the United States: Finland is so much smaller, with a relatively homogeneous population. They're careful to eschew any of the many other, more profound contrasts, however, such as its narrow distribution of wealth. Or the fact that the Finnish rate of childhood poverty is only about one-quarter that of the United States. Or that all Finnish children receive free health care, free preschool, and free tuition to all colleges and universities. Their parents enjoy extended, paid maternity leave, free high-quality child care, and even a governmental stipend per child. Seventy-seven percent of Finns bought a book last year. Seventy-five percent of parents read out loud daily to their children.

By the time those children enter their first, bright classroom, they are so much more healthy and better-prepared than most American kids. And then they all meet great teachers there, too.

If we in the United States are to nurture our children as well as the Finns do theirs, we must likewise accept that real reform must be holistic and far-reaching. Education is but the canary in the coal mine of our nation. If the wretched bird is dying, it warns us that there's a heck of a lot more at risk than just our public schools.

In truth, we cannot reform only American education. We must reform America.

Otherwise, our schools are doomed. And so are we.