Rising inequality, poverty in Ann Arbor, Michigan

Naomi Spencer

Washtenaw County, Michigan has been held up as a “bright spot” in a state decimated by years of plant closings and deindustrialization. Located in Southeast Michigan it has been favorably contrasted to nearby Detroit, which recently went through bankruptcy and has suffered staggering losses of jobs and population.

The county has been held up as a “knowledge economy” model for recovery in Michigan. Along with the University of Michigan (U of M) in Ann Arbor and nearby Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Washtenaw County is home to substantial hospitals and research facilities as well as numerous technology startup companies.

However, alongside the increase in high-skill “knowledge jobs” over the past ten years, inequality has soared and the wages of the majority of working families have declined.

A study released March 30 by the Center for Labor and Community Studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn finds that fully 37 percent of Washtenaw County residents cannot make ends meet.

The authors found that “despite net positive job growth the area’s economy has produced increasing inequality and alarming long-term trends in employment patterns and earnings.” (The study, “Growing Together or Drifting Apart? Economic Well-Being in Washtenaw County’s new “Knowledge Economy,” can be found here in PDF.)

The study emphasizes that workers earning the least have suffered the greatest losses in real wages, while those in the top income bracket saw gains. The bottom 37 percent of Washtenaw County workers earned less than $32,000 in 2013.

This amount is less than a “basic needs budget” as defined by the Michigan League for Public Policy (MLPP), which takes into account cost of living by county.

Even as the economy plunged into recession and home values declined, rent rates continued to spiral—further burdening the poorest sections of workers and those who lost their homes to foreclosure.

Housing inflation is partly driven by the cost of attending U of M, one of the most expensive public universities in the United States. Out-of-state annual tuition has a list price of more than $41,000 for 2014-2015.

A construction boom on luxury apartments has driven the cost of an average one-bedroom apartment over to $1,500 a month in downtown Ann Arbor. Many units are priced at $2,500 or more per month, and condos are listed for well over $1 million.

Meanwhile, property management agencies across the city have jacked up rents more than 10 percent in the past year alone. Most report 100 percent occupancy and waiting lists of six to eight months.

Not surprisingly, Washtenaw County’s housing costs are the highest in the state. According to the MLPP, this pushes the basic monthly needs budget for a family of four in the county to $5,340.

That means that if both parents in a household are working, they would need to earn more than $32,000 apiece in order to meet the annual basic needs budget of $64,080.

The MLPP budget includes nothing beyond housing, childcare, food, transportation, health care, and household and personal expenses (including a phone bill). It does not include debt payments, utility bills, or budget for unexpected expenses, savings, or spending for a vacation or holiday. Many families are one medical emergency or car breakdown away from destitution, bankruptcy, or eviction.

One in four Washtenaw County households—many with dual wage earners—are struggling to meet basic needs. As a result, more than one in five children live in poverty based on the MLPP budget.

One indication of the social crisis is the rising number of homeless public school children in the county. The federal Education Project for Homeless Youth (EPHY) estimated that at least 1,400 children would need assistance with basic supplies in fall 2014 due to living in unstable situations. “I think there’s an expectation that we’re rebounding and we’re getting back on our feet,” Washtenaw County’s EPHY coordinator, Kristin Duff, told MLive.com. “The housing issue is a very big issue and there aren’t simple solutions. It’s disheartening because there aren’t enough resources for these families.”

An Ann Arbor City Council-commissioned analysis of housing affordability in the county in January 2015 found that a majority of renters—56 percent—were “rent burdened,” paying at least a third of their income toward keeping a roof over their heads. One in three renters were found to be paying more than half of their incomes into rent.

That analysis found that among residents earning less than $35,000 a year, fully 9 in 10 are rent burdened.

Between 2005 and 2013, the U of M-Dearborn study reported that the county saw an increase of 15,000 “knowledge jobs,” a gain of 23 percent. Behind this growth in knowledge-based employment is a large increase in low-wage service jobs. Indeed, as the knowledge-based economy grew, industrial jobs in the county plummeted by 12,000—a decline of 31 percent.

Workers who were laid off from plants such as the Ford Visteon or Willow Run auto factories in Ypsilanti were faced with entering occupations in retail, hospitality, and customer service—all jobs averaging less than $10 an hour. As a consequence, Ypsilanti is nearing a 30 percent official poverty rate and the city’s population has declined by double digits since 2000.

The U of M-Dearborn study found that nine of the ten most common jobs countywide pay less than $32,000, and these same poverty-level jobs were projected to see the largest growth over the next five years.

The study also reveals a widening inequality within the knowledge economy. At U of M, the authors note, “income inequality between tenure-track and other faculty has been growing, and among all employees those in low-wage jobs have experienced real wage declines,” while higher-paid employees have seen gains.

Including its medical center, the University of Michigan employs some 38,000 workers, accounting for nearly one in five jobs in Washtenaw County. Between 2005 and 2013, employment on the Ann Arbor campus grew 21 percent. Tellingly, the study finds that that low-wage employment at U of M grew by 72 percent over the same period.

These statistics reflect the scale of attacks on the position of academics, especially adjunct and part-time faculty and researchers in higher education across the country, including at institutions that are flush with cash like U of M.

“This new knowledge economy is not going to deliver,” UM-Dearborn continuing education specialist David Reynolds, one of the study’s authors, told the Ann Arbor News. “It’s delivering greater inequality and the erosion of the standard of living of the majority.”

Obama declares “national emergency” based on alleged cyber threats from Russia, China

Thomas Gaist

In yet another escalation of the drive by the US ruling class to establish unconstrained control over the world’s information networks, US President Barack Obama issued an executive order Wednesday declaring a “national emergency” over cyber attacks on US targets. The order authorizes economic sanctions and the seizure of financial assets and other forms of property from any entity considered a “security risk.”

Obama’s six-page order, “Blocking the Property of Certain Persons Engaging in Significant Malicious Cyber-Enabled Activities,” warns that the sweeping powers, are necessary to combat an “unusual and extraordinary threat to national security” stemming from cyberattacks against US infrastructure. The order also asserts new powers to impose travel restrictions against alleged security threats, which can be exercised against any “partnership, association, trust, joint venture, corporation, group, subgroup, or other organization.”

The executive order also authorizes the US secretary of the treasury to impose financial sanctions on foreign entities accused of hacking American computer systems, clearing the way for escalated confrontation with the Russian, Chinese and Iranian governments, all of which US officials now regularly accuse of sponsoring hacking operations against Western banks and corporations.

The legislation “will give us a new and powerful way to go after the worst of the worst,” Obama wrote in an online post. In a strong indication that the order will be used as the pseudo-legal basis for new sanctions and other provocations against US rivals, Obama directly accused Russian and Chinese hackers of launching cyber attacks on American troops.

“The same technologies that keep our military strong are used by hackers in China and Russia to target our defense contractors and systems that support our troops. Networks that control much of our critical infrastructure—including our financial systems and power grids—are probed for vulnerabilities by foreign government and criminals,” Obama wrote.

“Our primary focus will be on cyber threats from overseas,” Obama wrote, vowing that the White House would move aggressively to ensure that full use is made of the expanded cyberpolicing powers.

Obama also boasted about his administration’s efforts to expand direct data sharing between corporations and the government. The US government is “working to improve our ability to quickly integrate and share intelligence about cyber threats across government and with our foreign partners” and “working to share more information about threats and solutions with industry,” he wrote.

The supposed threat of cyber attacks against US companies and infrastructure is a major component of US war propaganda aimed at preparing public opinion for war with a number of targets, above all China and Russia.

Following the lead of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the US media and political establishment hyped accusations beginning in November that North Korea had launched a cyberattack on Sony Pictures. The US government subsequently imposed sanctions against North Korean officials supposedly involved in the attack.

Wednesday’s decree grants broadly defined emergency powers to the Treasury Department modeled on those give to the “counterterrorism” agencies in the wake of 9/11.

The order gives the government “a powerful new tool” against “those who would exploit the free, open, and global nature of the Internet to cause harm,” according to Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, and will enable the Treasury to project power against overseas US cyber-adversaries, according to John Smith of the US Office of Foreign Assets Control.

The US government requires “the full range of tools across the spectrum in order to actually confront the cyber threats that we face,” White House cybersecurity chief Michael Daniel told reporters Wednesday.

Claims of the US government to be defending legality are laughable. US cyber operations systematically violate democratic protections established in the Bill of Rights against arbitrary searches and seizures. The FBI has aggressively sought changes to Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure which would dramatically loosen Fourth Amendment-based warranting requirements for electronic hacking operations by the government, and effectively enable agents to implant malware on any computer they choose, without asking a judge for specific authorization.

As a result of programs initiated under the Bush administration and expanded under Obama, the National Security Agency and other federal bureaucracies already enjoy virtually complete access to data stored on the servers of the major telecommunications providers. FBI Director James Comey insisted in appearances last year that major cellphone providers grant back doors into their security systems to ensure that US agents free access to cellular data of US smart phone users. Obama has presided over the expansion of programs run by the NSA and FBI to collect, analyze and share personal data from the general population in vast quantities.

Rather than a concern for security, the Obama administration’s cyber-emergency decree is part of efforts by the US government to establish essentially limitless powers for its intelligence agencies to spy on and hack rival governments and working people around the world.

Numerous experts have warned that complex malware technology deployed by US agencies is accelerating the spread and evolution of weaponized software. Extensive purchasing by the US government of “zero day” hacking “exploits,” programs specially tailored to exploit previously unknown vulnerabilities in widely used software platforms, has fueled the growth of markets for new offensive hacking techs and other pathological forms of software.

Germanwings crash: Details are clearer but motive remains unknown

Christoph Dreier

Ten days after the crash of Germanwings flight 4U9525, recovery teams have located the second “black box,” the flight data recorder, of the Airbus 320. Brice Robin, the public prosecutor in Marseille, told a press conference that the discovery of the recorder constituted “an indispensable addition to understand what happened, especially in the final moment of the flight.”

The black box logged approximately 500 parameters. This includes data on speed, altitude, engines, the actions of the pilots and various control readings from the aircraft. “These facts are crucial to us in determining the truth,” said Robin.

Until now, only the first “black box,” the cockpit voice recorder had been analyzed. Those recordings indicate that when the pilot left the cockpit to use the restroom, copilot Andreas Lubitz locked him out and took control of the plane. According to statements by the French public prosecutor, the recordings prove that Lubitz intentionally altered the course of the flight, setting it on a collision course with a mountain. During this time he is supposed to have been breathing calmly and had possibly put on an oxygen mask.

These assumptions could be confirmed by the second black box. Investigators are especially hopeful for information that would reveal when and by whom the plane’s descent was initiated. This information could also clarify whether the copilot in fact locked the captain out on purpose, or if it was due to a malfunction of the door’s locking mechanism. The discovery of other technical problems is also possible.

Independently of the flight recorder’s information, the public prosecutor in Düsseldorf presented on Thursday new findings that suggest Andreas Lubitz had planned the alleged act in advance. On Thursday, authorities disclosed that a computer was found in the home of the copilot which may have belonged to him. The browser history from March 16 through 23 contains several relevant search queries.

According to the prosecutor, one search “was concerned with medicinal treatments, another with information on methods for committing suicide. On at least one day, the person concerned spent several minutes grappling with search terms relating to cockpit doors and their security measures.”

While details about the crash itself are becoming clearer, the motive remains largely unexplained. On Monday, the Düsseldorf prosecutor announced that inquiries into the personal and professional life of Andreas Lubitz had “provided no viable information regarding a possible motive.”

However, there are indications of serious psychological problems. According to investigators, prior to obtaining a pilot’s license, Andreas Lubitz had been suicidal and spent a long time under psychiatric care. A press statement from the public prosecutor explained that “since then, and until recently, Lubitz had taken sick leaves for further visits to neurologists, psychiatrists and therapists, but suicidal tendencies or aggression toward others had not been confirmed.”

Tuesday evening, Lufthansa said that following an interruption in his training, Andreas Lubitz had informed the company’s flight school in Bremen that he had recovered from a serious depressive episode. He underwent a psychological examination in which nothing abnormal was found, and he was able to continue his training. For reasons of personal data protection, Germanwings—a Lufthansa subsidiary—was not informed of his medical history, said a company spokesperson.

By this point, investigators from the public prosecutor’s office had already found torn up doctor’s notes in the copilot’s residence that would have excused him from work on the day of the crash. Clearly, Andreas Lubitz wanted to hide his health problems from his employer.

There has been much unsubstantiated speculation in the press about the nature of Lubitz’s illness. The Bild newspaper claimed that the investigation had shown that he had been involved in an auto accident ten days prior to the crash. It claimed he had gone to a doctor afterwards on account of problems with his vision.

Citing information from an unnamed European government official, CNN claimed that the copilot’s girlfriend of many years had said he suffered from psychological problems.

However, the 26-year-old did not “know the extent of the problems.” The couple had been “optimistic” that together they could cope with the health problems of the Germanwings employee. According to Spiegel Online, Lubitz’s girlfriend had assumed that he was on his way to recovery.

In light of the fact that he was deemed fit to carry out his work and had a stable social life, the indications of possible psychological problems fail to explain his alleged act. Diagnoses of depression or bipolar disorder, which it has been assumed Lubitz suffered from, can indicate the possibility of suicidal planning, but have no direct relationship with the intentional and planned killing of 149 completely innocent people, most of whom were strangers to Lubitz.

Depression researcher and former head of the Max Planck Institute in Munich, Professor Florian Holsboer, explained on Monday on the German talk show “Tough but Fair,” that sometimes a person diagnosed with depression will take the life of other people when he commits suicide, but these are normally close relatives. However, this was not the situation with the Germanwings flight. “Depressed people do not commit such acts,” he said and suggested that a delusional idea could have played a role.

According to suicide expert Thomas Bronisch, even in cases of delusion, such acts are very rare. “If you consider everyone who has schizophrenia, the proportion who commit a serious crime or kill someone is smaller than the proportion in the average population. There is absolutely no evidence that psychologically disturbed people are fundamentally more dangerous,” he said.

Even if a psychological diagnosis of the copilot were substantiated, it would only provide a description of his condition, not an explanation for his act. The killing of 149 innocent people defies a simple explanation. In the final analysis, it can only be explained in the context of a deeply brutalized and dysfunctional society.

This makes all the more remarkable the readiness of politicians and the media to use this disturbing act of violence to present quick solutions that amount to calls for increasing the power of the state apparatus.

The Germanwings crash has supposedly demonstrated the limitations of security measures taken at airports. Interior minister Thomas de Maizière announced on Thursday that identification would now be checked on all flights within Europe. The minister said that the crash had made it clear how little is known about passengers.

Demands to dismantle the right to patient confidentiality have gone even further. Christian Democratic Union traffic expert, Dirk Fischer, demanded a loosening of the confidentiality requirement for patients of certain professions: “Pilots must go to doctors dictated by their employers. These doctors must be exempt from the duty of confidentiality,” said the Rheinischen Post .

The president of the pilot union Cockpit, Ilja Schulz, sharply denounced such plans in the same newspaper. “If my doctor were exempt from the duty of confidentiality, I would not tell him about any of my problems because I would be afraid of having my pilot’s license revoked,” Schulz said. “If the duty of confidentiality remains in place, on the other hand, a doctor can provide real help.”

The president of the German Medical Association, Frank Ulrich Montgomery, also spoke against loosening the requirement. “Both patient secrecy, which is protected by the constitution, and the duty of doctors to keep patient information confidential are precious assets as well as a human right for all German citizens,” said Montgomery.

Iran makes sweeping concessions to US in nuclear “framework” deal

Keith Jones

Iran and the P-6—the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany—announced Thursday that they have finalized the “parameters” for an agreement to “normalize” Iran’s civil nuclear program.

Reached after eight days of heated bargaining, during which time the US twice threatened to quit the talks, yesterday’s agreement will form the basis for a final agreement to be reached no later than June 30.

Should a final agreement be reached, it would represent a significant shift in US-Iranian relations, bound up with US efforts to bring Iran more closely in line with its operations in the Middle East. At the same time, the deal places onerous restrictions on Iran, while holding out the possibility for a resumption of the US-backed war drive at any time in the future.

While the first paragraph of the US fact sheet outlining the parameters’ agreement stipulates “important implementation details are still subject to negotiation, and nothing is agreed upon until everything is agreed upon,” the four pages that follow contain sweeping concessions on the part of Iran’s clerical-bourgeois regime.

These include:

* Submitting to the most intrusive International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection ever devised. IAEA inspectors will have carte blanche to enter any site or facility in Iran that they deem “suspicious” in perpetuity.

* Dramatically curtailing Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium and its existing stockpile of enriched uranium. For the next 10 years, Iran will be allowed to operate just 5,060 of its 19,000 centrifuges and those it does operate must be “first-generation,” i.e., extremely slow.

* The dismantling of much of Iran’s civil nuclear infrastructure. The core of the heavy reactor at Iran’s Arak heavy water research reactor is to be “destroyed or removed from the country” and the facility redesigned and rebuilt so as to prevent the production of weapons-grade plutonium.

The punishing US and EU sanctions that have halved Iran’s oil exports since 2011 and frozen it out of the world banking system will be “suspended”—not permanently removed. Moreover, their suspension will begin only when Iran has made good on all parts of the deal that are immediately applicable.

If it any time the US and EU declare that Iran has not complied with any aspect of the agreement, the “sanctions will snap back into place.”

Tehran will have to fulfill even more onerous conditions before the UN Security Council resolutions on the Iran nuclear issue will be lifted. Iran will not only have to implement all the above-enumerated “key nuclear steps,” but also “address the IAEA’s concerns about the Possible Military Dimensions” (PMDs) of its nuclear program. The US used this device against Saddam Hussein, demanding that he prove Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.

Even were the PMDs issue to be resolved to the satisfaction of the IAEA—an international body dominated by the US and its allies—the UN Security Council Resolutions that target Iran will in reality no more be eliminated than the punishing US-EU economic sanctions. Tehran has agreed that the “core provisions in the UN Security Council resolutions” limiting Iran’s access to “sensitive technologies” and providing a host of punitive measures will be incorporated in a new UN Security Council resolution.

Should a still-to-be-defined “dispute resolution process” fail to resolve a complaint about Iran’s implementation of the final nuclear deal levelled by any of the P-6 powers, the way will be open, under the parameters’ agreement, for the re-imposition of all previous UN sanctions.

Yesterday’s agreement was announced in Lausanne, Switzerland by the EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, and Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif. US President Barack Obama, however, quickly seized center stage.

In a White House appearance early Thursday afternoon, Obama touted the agreement as a huge diplomatic coup for the US, while boasting that Iran had been brought to heel by the “toughest sanctions in history.”

He underlined that if the “parameters” are not transformed into a final accord acceptable to the US, or if Iran violates any element of the final deal, “all options” will be on the table for him and any future US president. “All options on the table” is a favorite US euphemism for punitive action up to and including all-out war.

Speaking to sections of the political establishment that oppose an accommodation with Iran—this includes virtually the entire Republican Party and much of his own Democratic Party—Obama argued that the only realistic alternative was “another war in the Middle East.”

Obama went out of his way to reassure Washington's traditional Mideast allies, especially Israel and Saudi Arabia. He announced that he is inviting the leaders of the Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council to a summit at Camp David. Later, he called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and reportedly told him that “there is no daylight (between us) when it comes to our support for Israel’s security and our concerns about Iran’s destabilizing policies.”

Iran’s government is also claiming victory. Foreign Minister Zarif said the agreement demonstrated that the Iranian people “will never bow to pressure.” The reality is that the Iranian bourgeoisie, reeling under the sanctions’ devastating impact on Iran’s economy and terrified of a challenge from the working class, is desperate for a rapprochement with US and European imperialism.

The US ruling elite and their corporate media speak ominously of Iranian “aggression” and failure to adhere to international law. What hypocrisy!

It is the US that has waged an unrelenting campaign against Iran since the 1979 revolution overthrew the tyrannical regime of the US-backed Shah. This has included supporting and arming Iraq during the Iraq-Iran War, a decades-long economic embargo, numerous threats of military attack, and a covert war against Iran’s nuclear program involving cyber-warfare and, in collaboration with Israel, the assassination of Iranian scientists.

While the US repeatedly threatens Iran with war if it does not demonstrate to Washington’s satisfaction the peaceful character of its nuclear program, it turns a blind eye to Israel’s nuclear arsenal.

Obama’s attempt to effect an accommodation with Iran has angered Washington's traditional Mideast allies and is being bitterly contested within the US military-security and political establishments.

Israel’s Netanyahu, who, like the Saudi oil sheiks, fears that an Iranian-US rapprochement will erode his state’s regional influence, lost no time yesterday in railing against the agreement. “This deal,” proclaimed Netanyahu, “would legitimize Iran’s nuclear program, bolster Iran’s economy, and increase Iran’s aggression and terror throughout the Middle East and beyond.”

The Republican Party leadership was also quick to denounce the agreement. Illinois Senator Mark Kirk claimed, “Neville Chamberlain got a better deal from Adolf Hitler,” while Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton termed yesterday’s agreement “a list of dangerous concessions that will put Iran on the path to nuclear weapons.” Cotton authored an “open letter” signed by 47 Senators to Iran that claimed any deal entered into by the Obama administration could be repudiated by Congress or a future president.

Republican Senator Bob Corker, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he would press forward with legislation requiring Congress endorse any final agreement with Iran before it can take effect.

Obama and his domestic critics share the same basic strategic goal, i.e., shoring up US hegemony over the Middle East and the entire globe. They differ at present on the tactics to be employed in regards to Iran in pursuit of that aim.

Under conditions where repeated US wars have blown up the Middle East and there already is a tacit Washington-Tehran alliance in opposing the Islamic State in Iraq, Obama calculates that the Iranian regime can be enlisted in helping restabilize the region under US dominance.

Even more importantly, the proponents of a deal with Iran calculate that if this oil-rich country can be brought into Washington’s strategic orbit, it will greatly strengthen the US’s hand in confronting its more significant and formidable adversaries, Russia and China.

The Atlanta “cheating” case and the crisis of public education in the US

Jerry White

On Wednesday, four former elementary school teachers, two principals and five administrators in Atlanta, Georgia were convicted on state racketeering charges for inflating the results on standardized tests taken by public school students. The brutal and vindictive treatment meted out to the educators is a watershed in the campaign to vilify teachers and further dismantle the public education system in the United States.

The Fulton County prosecutor argued that charging educators under the state’s Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, which is ordinarily reserved for organized crime cases, was warranted because the educators personally benefited from changing the answers on the tests through bonuses and promotions. They face 20 years or more in prison.

In fact, an investigation by the Georgia governor’s office in 2009 found that a “culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation infested the district,” led by then-Superintendent Beverly Hall, with teachers facing humiliation, demotion and firing if they did not meet student achievement targets.

The convictions followed an unprecedented seven-year probe by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation that was characterized by a “Salem witchcraft mentality,” according to the defense attorney for elementary school teacher Dessa Curb, the educator acquitted of all charges.

The seven-month court case had the air of a show trial, with police mug shots of the defendants plastered across the web site and pages of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which launched the initial investigation into rising test scores and demanded that an example be made of the educators who did not make plea bargains.

With a certain glee, the newspaper reported the chilling scene after the jury rendered its decision, when the middle-aged educators handed their jewelry and personal belongings to attorneys and loved ones before they were handcuffed by deputies and hauled off to jail to await sentencing.

Scandals involving doctoring test scores are the inevitable outcome of the punitive “teacher accountability” schemes that have been promoted by both big business parties to scapegoat teachers for the consequences of decades of budget-cutting, teacher layoffs and the growth of poverty, which the best teachers in the world cannot possibly overcome.

The obsessive promotion of standardized testing began with former President George W. Bush’s 2001 "No Child Left Behind Act," which was co-authored by Democrat Edward Kennedy. It has been accelerated under Obama’s Race to the Top program, which rewards school districts that tie teachers’ pay and jobs to “performance” and “valued added” targets, while accelerating the closing of “failing schools” and their replacement with for-profit charter operations.

It has long been the reactionary argument of these so-called school “reformers” that the needs of children are being sacrificed to the supposed selfishness of teachers, by which they mean demands for decent pay, smaller classroom sizes, more supplies and a measure of job security.

The campaign against teachers is above all aimed at destroying what remains of the egalitarian and democratic character of public education and intensifying the drive toward a class-based school system, where the children of the wealthy enjoy the best that money can buy, while the sons and daughters of the working class are relegated to 19th century-style “poor schools.”

If anyone should be held accountable for conspiring to undermine and destroy education, it is those who have systematically starved the public schools of resources in order to provide more tax breaks and business opportunities to the super-rich. These include the billionaire oligarchs Eli Broad and Bill Gates, the Pearson textbook and testing empire, and other corporations seeking to cash in on the $1.3 trillion “education market.”

Along with them should be President Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, who have overseen the wiping out of hundreds of thousands of teachers’ jobs and the closing of more than 4,000 schools. Not to be left out are the leaders of the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association, who have not only sided with the Atlanta witch-hunt, but facilitated the attack on teachers and promoted the expansion of charter schools.

While workers are persecuted without mercy, the perpetrators of crimes that have destroyed the lives of tens of millions continue to operate with impunity. The entire US economy is based on “racketeering” and conspiracy against the people.

The Wall Street banks, credit rating agencies, federal regulators, news media and politicians from both big business parties conspired to cover up the financial criminality that led to the 2008 economic crash. While millions lost their homes, jobs and savings, the financial aristocracy was not only not held accountable, it was made richer than ever.

The US government launches wars based on lies, invades countries, and organizes “regime change” operations in blatant violation of international law. The highest levels of the state and military-intelligence apparatus are implicated in torture, yet no one is held accountable.

The Obama administration dispatches drones to assassinate anyone it chooses, including American citizens, and deploys the largest domestic spying apparatus in history, and the only ones who are made to pay are those who expose these unconstitutional crimes, such as Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning. The police brutalize and murder unarmed citizens with no fear of prosecution, while the full weight of the capitalist state, including militarized police departments, falls upon those who dare to protest.

This is class justice in America.

Newroz In Self-Ruled Syrian Kurdistan

Zanyar Omrani

This year’s Newroz (New Year) had a bloody start with two suicide explosions which changed the atmosphere of the Newroz times. The explosions happened in the two main squares of Hasakah, the Newroz celebrations sites. The explosions claimed at least 35 lives and 150 people were injured.

I was in Qamishli at the time of the explosions. We were getting ready to go the Newroz celebrations when we heard that lots of people have been killed and injured by these suicide attacks. Together with some local journalists, we headed toward Amuda to prepare some reports of the conditions of the injured in the hospital.

Travelling in the green meadows of Kurdistan after some hours of wet weather could have taken us to a never-never land, had it not been for the sad news we had just received.

Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan), contrary to the common idea of a mountainous Kurdistan, is totally a land of meadows; meadows which made green the only color possible to see except for the Turkish barbed wire and border watches.

The small town of Amuda is the capital of the Jazira (Cizire) canton in the Kurdish democratic self-rule. At the hospital, I saw a desperate woman; she told me her 13-year-old daughter had been injured in the explosions, “Nazhbir and her sister went to the gathering to celebrate Newroz when suddenly the explosions happened.”

Mohamad Khidr, one of the injured people hospitalized in Qamishli hospital, said that, "In the afternoon, we went to the streets to celebrate Newroz. It was around 6 p.m. when suddenly a massive explosion happened near us. We were all scared and started to run away. The second explosion happened behind us. I was injured in my leg and I bled heavily. I walked like 200 hundred meters with the injured leg. A few minutes later, the YPG (People's Protection Units) cars arrived and we were rushed to the hospital.”

After the recent defeat of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Kobane in Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan), now the Islamist fundamentalists have increased their assaults in Jazira (Cizire) canton. Jazira canton is located in northeast Syria, sharing borders with Turkey from the north and the Kurdistan Regional Government from the east. Amuda is the center of the canton, with Qamishli and Hasakah being the big towns of the canton.

AgidChuli, a Syrian Kurdish journalist, said, “The Asayish (the police) of the Kurdish self-rule had asked for the cancellation of the celebration based on the information they had obtained. But this was not taken seriously in Hasakah.”
Mohamad is 4, and he participated in the celebrations with his father. Now both are injured and hospitalized in Amuda hospital. I managed to get a few minutes to talk to his father in the midst of the chaos in the hospital and listen to his narration of what had happened, “Despite all the anxiety and my wife’s plead with us to not to go to the Newroz celebrations, Mohamad and I decided to go. Newruz has always been a very important day to us; we didn’t want to miss it.”

Another of the injured is a middle-aged man called Ahmad, who is severely burned. Ahamd too is getting treatment in the hospital. He is in a dire situation and it is very difficult for him to speak, “The blast wave hit me and I had a terrible vertigo. I felt like all my body was on fire.” He has a bizarre feeling when he looks in the mirror; “I can’t believe this is me in the mirror.”

The management board of Amuda hospital has asked the fellow citizens to donate blood. Dr. Fares Hamo, head of the Hygiene and Health Council, said, “The majority of the casualties were women and children.” He added, “The people’s response to the blood donation call was great and admirable.”

There are restrictions on the Syrian Kurdish populated areas due to their war against the Islamist forces. This includes medicine and treatments, too, and the hospitals are not in their best conditions, lacking enough facilities for the treatment of the injured. The doctors and the hospital staff are not happy with this.

After the HasakahNewroz explosions, the co-leaders of Jazira canton condemned the suicide attacks and made a statement, “We offer our deepest condolences to those who lost dear ones, and we promise to make Jazira canton a safe place for all peoples.” And they declared three days of public mourning in memory of the lost ones.

The Atmosphere in the Other Cantons

Newroz is celebrated very simply in Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan) every year. There are no complicated customs, no 13-Bedar, and no Haft-Seen, but there are specific strong political messages. People wear colorful Kurdish traditional outfits, and while playing zorna and dahol, they dance around the Newroz fire and jump over it. The Yazidis in Rojava, who live in a few villages, celebrate ÇarşembaSor on the Wednesday of the 3rd week in April. They believe that this year 6763rdNewroz was held. Everyone is talking about the Kaveh and Zahhak legend. Statues of Kaveh the blacksmith is seen at some squares in some Rojava towns. However, the political aspect to Newroz has a long history. FarhadYousif, a Kurdish journalist, explains, “The Syrian government used to resort to different tactics in different periods of time. Until 1985,any gatherings to celebrate Newroz was forbidden. In 1985 the Ba’th regime forces attacked the people in a gathering in Afrin and killed many of them. People defended themselves and managed to control a local police station. This shocked the Assad regime and forced them to decrease the security measures for Newroz in the years to come.” According to Farhad, the government did not want to get drawn into the Newroz issue, since their actions to make people forget Newrozwere counter-productive. First, they tried to change the name to Eid-Alshajar (tree holiday) or Eid-Arabi’(spring holiday). “In their next move, they named it Mother’s Day and declared it an official holiday.” In Farhad’s words, “At those times around 500 thousand people in Aleppo would gather to celebrate Newroz and even Syrian intelligence authorities would attend the gathering, too, but it was not stated officially. As the relations between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Hafiz Assad’s government darkened, and Abdullah Ojalan, the PKK leader, was arrested in 1999, stricter security measures were established for Newroz celebrations. Adana Agreement was the peak of these strict measures.”

It was in 2008 when the Syrian intelligence forces attacked the people in the gathering and killed three teenagers all of whom were called Mohammad. Speaking about the 2011 events and the establishment of the three Rojava cantons, Farhad added, “From 2011 on, Newroz celebrations have been held impressively and every year better than the previous one. This year too, the celebrations were going to be impressive in the three cantons, but they were cancelled in Jazira and Afrin cantons for security reasons and respect for the martyrs.”

There was heavy raining at the time of the celebration in Kobane canton, but it did not affect the celebration and people attended enthusiastically.
They need to start a happy spring, as they have been through a difficult winter.

People in colorfully-patterned Kurdish outfits attended the celebration, while carrying YPG (People’s Protection Units) and YPJ (Women’s Protection Units) flags.

The celebrations in Kobane were held with a commemoration of martyrs MazloumDoghan and Arin Mirkan and in celebration of self-ruled Rojava and hopes for democratic Syria. In the beginning, the audience observed a minute of silence for the martyrs.

Anwar Moslem, the co-leader of Kobane canton, after congratulating the new year, talked about the Kobane resistance for some minutes. There were performances by the music and theater groups, too.

“Na’imo, the mad” too participated in the celebration. He is a young man from Kobanewho is called mad by the people. He stayed in the town until the end of the Kobane siege, although he was wounded. It is said that when people were leaving the town, he would stand at the border gate and, looking into people’s eyes, would say, “You’re leaving, too? Ok! Go then!”

There are currently on-going heavy clashes in Til Hamer and Sarikani fronts. The military forces also celebrated Newroz by making fires. RashoQamishlo, who is in the Til Barak front, said, “We will not abandon Newroz because of ISIS war, since the fire flames raise our morale. We will not abandon our goals.”

In Amuda, the capital of the Jazira canton, Newroz was different. After the Hasakahsuicide explosions, people were shocked and worried. The bazaars were closed and the town was calm, and some people were busy cleaning up trash. Announcements and posters for Newroz gatherings from different parties and organizations could be seen on the walls.

Few people were in the calm streets and people gathered only in local teahouses. The Hasakah explosions had made the town quiet and without any excitement. The owner of Awrin Sweetshop was worried. We had a short chat. He had prepared lots of sweets and confectionary for Newroz, but the cancellation of the celebrations precluded any selling. Wandering around the town, I went to a fruitshop owned by Ahmad Abdullah. He complained that the situation is not satisfactory; “We aren’t in good conditions; the borders are closed down and Newroz wasn’t well received.”

The Majority of the people were watching Newroz celebrations in Diyarbakr (or Amad as called by the Kurds) on their TVs. Like every year, Abdullah Ojalan’sNewroz message is read out to people. Ojalan offered his specific salutations to Kobane resistance in this year’s message.

Some other people held a small Newroz celebration in a kindergarten in Qamishli.

The children celebrating Newroz in Syria, who have hopes for better days to come, share 700 kilometers of borders with ISIS.

Sri Lanka : Deterioration Of The Legal Intellect: Part II

Basil Fernando

Geekiyanage Premalal De Silva filed a Petition in the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka in 1989 alleging that some officers of the Panadura Police arrested him in May 1989, without a warrant, on a false charge of robbery and that he was tortured and subjected to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment while in custody.

In September 1990, the Court delivered a judgment confirming the arrest of De Silva as alleged by him. The judgment held that no cogent evidence had been produced by the respondent police officers to justify suspicion against De Silva and that his detention following arrest, without producing him before a Magistrate as required by Section 36 and 37 of the Criminal Procedure Code, was unlawful. It also confirmed that while in police custody De Silva was subjected to torture and inhumane treatment and that the 2nd and 3rd Respondents had been adequately identified as police officers involved in De Silva’s arrest and the subsequent violation of his rights and that by such acts the officers had violated Article 13(1), Article 13(2), Article 13(4), and Article 11 of the Constitution [Premalal De Silva v. Inspector Rodrigo and others, SC Application No 24 /89].

The Court held that the two police officers, named as 2nd and 3rd Respondents, and the State are jointly and severally liable to compensate the Petitioner. However, then the Court made the following unusual order: “…if the Petitioner has disappeared the compensation is payable to his legal representative….”

While the Supreme Court was considering the Petition, the police officers arrested De Silva. They arrested him when he went to sign the Police Book, as required by the Order of the Magistrate. Thereafter, De Silva disappeared. When De Silva did not return home after several hours of his visit to the Panadura Police Station his father went to the Police Station to look for him. Thereafter, De Silva’s father also disappeared. A short time after the father’s visit to the Police Station, the mother of De Silva went to look for both of them. She too disappeared.

Thus, as revenge against a complaint being lodged by De Silva, De Silva himself, his father, and his mother were made to disappear, and they remain disappeared to this day. In other words, they were illegally arrested, killed, and their bodies disposed of in secret

The very same day, when the three members of the family had been subjected to this treatment, a group of police officers also came looking for De Silva’s younger brother. The younger brother managed to escape by giving a false identity and thereafter went into hiding. Today, De Silva’s younger brother is the sole survivor of the family.

This triple disappearance in revenge of a complaint made by a citizen against illegal arrests and torture by police officers showcases the absence of redress for human rights abuses suffered at the hands of security officers in Sri Lanka. By way of severe reprisals, the complainants are intimidated and thus discouraged from making complaints against security officers.

The name of the petitioner in the fundamental rights case was Premalal De Silva; the name of his father was Jinson De Silva, the name of his mother was Greta De Soyza. While Premalal had filed the fundamental rights petition, his father and mother had submitted affidavits affirming that they have visited the Petitioner while he was in the custody at the Panadura Police Station.

In his Petition, Premalal complained, among other things, of being taken into a room by five police officers and treated in the following way:

“… he was taken tied up in a crouched position with his hands over his knees and suspended on a pole passed through his hands and knees. The two ends of the pole were placed on two tables. The 3rd respondent then rotated him and the 2nd respondent struck his soles with an iron rod. The 4th respondent too assaulted him with the iron rod. The 3rd respondent walked on his body and kicked him. At the same time, they questioned him about a robbery said to have been committed with one Sisira at a cigarette agency. One Sisira was brought in and the police questioned him as to whether the petitioner is the other person who joined in the robbery to which Sisira answered in the negative. As a result of the assault, he sustained injuries on his hands and legs….”

The Judicial Medical Officer’s Report indicated 11 injuries and the Officer reported that the injuries were consistent with the history given by the Petitioner. It was after the examination of all evidence in the case that three judges of the Supreme Court – Kulatunge J, H.A.G. De Silva J, and Dheeraratne J, concurred that the arrest of the Petitioner was violative of his rights under Article 13(1), that his detention was violative of Article 13(2) and 13(4), and that the Petitioner had been subjected to torture and inhumane treatment in breach of Article 11 of the Constitution. Furthermore, they held that the 2nd and 3rd Respondent police officers and the State are jointly and severally liable to compensate the Petitioner.

However, what the police officers did in order to cover up their wrongdoing against the Petitioner was to have the Petitioner and his two witnesses, his father and mother, killed. It was sheer luck that his younger brother was able to escape the same fate by falsifying his identity. The intention of the police officers was to kill the entire family, with the expectation that, thereby, there would be no one to pursue the case being heard against them in the Supreme Court.

Despite the Supreme Court finding two officers to have violated the fundamental rights of the Petitioner, both officers continued to work and continued to receive promotions in their capacities as officers. One of them retired at the end of his term; the other still continues to work in the police service as an officer in charge of a police station.

In any country cold-blooded and planned murders of a father, a mother, and a son would have shocked the entire society and the State would have been prevented from ignoring such a heinous crime. But in Sri Lanka, even such a crime committed by those meant to enforce the law does not disturb anyone’s conscience. The extent to which the legal intellect of Sri Lanka has been paralysed is bewildering. However, today there is hardly anyone left whom such terrible spectacles may bewilder.

One fundamental element of a civilised legal system is that the state will do everything it can, and put all its resources in order, to take legal notice of every murder, and to have the perpetrators of such murders brought to justice. This norm is no longer operative in Sri Lanka.

The state has demonstrably failed to act in the face of murder and other serious crimes. People who hold office as law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and judges do not feel a sense of obligation to ensure the implementation of law, even in the face of gruesome murders and other serious crimes.

Discussions on the impact of the 1978 Constitution and its so-called system of power of executive presidency remain superficial even as measures are being discussed to amend the obnoxious clauses of this Constitution. What no one wants to consider is the 1978 Constitution was made with the view to completely derail the rule of law system in Sri Lanka. The success of that derailing project is so complete that today even the failure to prosecute a murder has become an insignificant matter.

To anyone who is left with an iota of legal sensitivity, this triple murder of a father, a mother, and a son, carried out solely with the view of subverting the law, should become a challenge.

If there is a will, even now, it is not too late to investigate this ugly and horrible affair.

Fracking Comes To Germany

Eric Zuesse

On Wednesday, April 1st, German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet approved a measure to bring fracking (the patents for which are owned mainly by “large American companies, including Halliburton, Baker Hughes and Schlumberger”) into Germany. This is a prelude not only to U.S. President Obama's secret Trans-Atlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP) pact with Europe to subordinate national laws and regulations to trans-national mega-corporate panels that will be dominated by U.S. firms and that will override the participating nations' environmental and labor regulations and consumer protections (and harm European economies generally), but it is also a major step toward removing Europe from Russia's energy-market, and bringing U.S. and European oil companies to dominate there instead.

German Economic News headlined on April 1st, "Precursor to TTIP: Federal Government brings Fracking to Germany,” and reported that:

The controversial shale gas extraction (fracking) process is coming to Germany: In order not to provoke excessively large protests at home, the federal government highlighted that fracking is initially allowed only for testing purposes. But in fact, the draft law of the Federal Environment and the Federal Ministry of Economics, approved today by the the Cabinet, also allows subsequent large-scale extraction of shale gas….

The American interest in a continuing conflict simmering in Ukraine also causes Europeans to fear that Russian gas could stop and thus drive Europe to give up our still considerable resistance against fracking. Some US politicians have personal interests, such as the US Vice President Biden, whose son works for a Ukrainian fracking company.

Last year [U.S. agent, friend of Angela Merkel, and EU Council President, Donald] Tusk wrote in a commentary in the Financial Times that 'excessive dependence on Russian energy' is an EU weakness. Currently, the EU countries derive 44 percent of our natural gas from Russia and 33 percent from Norway. … Objectively, there is no reason to be afraid of the Russians: Even Angela Merkel acknowledged a few months ago that Russians have always accurately fulfilled their gas contracts and therefore are a reliable partner.

Halliburton and Baker-Hughes have merged, and are the two major owners of fracking patents. Schlumberger is third. ExxonMobil is a distant fourth. So, this could produce a huge boost to those stocks.

The fact that the only independent economic analysis of the impact of the TTIP finds that, without a doubt, it will harm European economies, and especially will increase the inequality of wealth in both the U.S. and EU, suggests that the U.S. aristocracy's control over European aristocracies must be rather strong in order for the TTIP to be moving forward toward approval by, apparently, people such as Merkel and Tusk. Merkel has already shown that she is the EU's enforcer of austerity (“the Washington Consensus”) upon the residents in Greece and Spain in order to guarantee payments to the bondholders of those countries; but in the present instance, the aristocrats whom she is serving are specifically, if not only, American ones. And, in particular, the oil companies that will be primary beneficiaries of her pro-fracking maneuver are mainly American ones. She comes from the former East Germany, and, apparently, hates Russia just as the CIA-connected Barack Obama does. 

After the Cabinet meeting, a joint press conference was held with Ukraine's Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, in which he said and she seconded, that Ukraine was ready to join the EU and was making the required progress toward rooting out corruption, and toward other matters. He said that the only barriers against that are Russian aggression, and a shortage of money from Germany and from other Western nations. The two leaders stated that the front-line against the threat from Russia is Ukraine, and Merkel promised to do what is needed in order to help. 

As a Russian news report put it: “Reassuring each other in their heartfelt friendship, mutual hatred of Russia, and the bright prospects of Ukraine being on the way into Europe, the heads of Government remembered their shared history. Yatseniuk again accused Russia of trying to 'privatize the history of Ukraine', referring to the debate on the participation of Ukrainians in the victory over Nazi Germany. The Prime Minister of Ukraine proposed to celebrate 8 May as a day of reconciliation and European solidarity.”

Fateful Steps That Led To The Crisis In Ukraine (Part Two: Conclusion)

Thomas Riggins

This article picks up where Part One left off and explains in more detail the two conceptions of Ukrainian statehood discussed by Richard Sakwa in his new book Frontline Ukraine.

First the 'monist' conception of Ukraine. In this view Ukrainian culture and statehood had been held back for the past several hundred years. In fact, ever since the Treaty of Pereyaslavl of 1654. This was a treaty between the ruler of much of what is now Ukraine and Russia in which Russian suzerainty became established. A program of Russification had been undertaken in the 1800s. Basing themselves on the primacy of the Ukrainian language as the official national language the monists seek to undo the Russification they think has been imposed on them in the past. This will entail their imposing monist values in turn on those segments of the population not sufficiently infused with their version of Ukrainian nationalism-- especially those who speak Russian as their first and preferred language.

One of the major influences on this outlook was Dmytro Dontsov (1883-1973). Dontsov had been a Marxist in his youth but morphed into an ultra-right Ukrainian nationalist after the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. He became a Russophobe who wanted Ukraine to become a major nation on the European model. Sakwa quotes him as follows: we want, "unity with Europe, under all circumstances and at any price -- that is the categorical imperative of our foreign policy."

The most important monist organization was (and is) the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) a home spun fascist group which has integrated the teaching of Dontsov into their ideology. Dontsov was never a member but he wrote for them and provided a fascist outlook of his own creation distilled from the Italian and German (NAZI) models he had studied.

The OUN’s ideology is based on something called “integral nationalism.” This ideology views the nation as an organic whole— the state is supreme and superior to the individual. There is a supreme leader, a totalitarian one party state, and hostility to all forms of socialism (especially communism) as well as to bourgeois democracy. The Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine describes it as follows : “The nationalists insisted on the primacy of will over reason, action over thought, and practice over theory. Their doctrine of nationalism was infused with aspects of the irrational, voluntaristic, and vitalistic theories popularized in Western Europe by such philosophers as Henri Bergson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gustave Le Bon, Georges Sorel, and Oswald Spengler. In the place of objective scientific discovery the nationalists propagated myths and favored an ideologically ‘correct’ image of the Ukrainian past.”

The same source describes their political program as follows: “The political order of the future Ukrainian state was to consist of a one-party system and would be based on a principle of supreme leadership (vozhdyzm). There would be only one political organization, which would consist of a supraclass of ‘better people.’ The state [i.e., the OUN] structure would be formed from a hierarchy of leaders under the supreme leader (vozhd), who would function both as leader of the movement and head of state. Propaganda and educational materials for young cadres would consistently underline the role and authority of the leader.”

In the late 1930s Stepan Bandera became the leader of the OUN. During World War II the OUN alternated between working with the German occupation and participating in the massacre of Jews, Poles, and Russians, and fighting against it, depending on its perceptions as to whether or not the Germans would go along with an independent OUN run Ukraine or not. In 1943 Bandera’s followers massacred 70,000 Poles the majority of whom were unarmed men, women, and children (the future Ukrainian state was for Ukrainians). This mass killing took place in Volyn in the Western Ukraine. Also, Sakwa says, by 1945 the OUN had, in Eastern Galicia, killed 130,000. Many people had their eyes gouged out (including women and children) and were then hacked to death. This was the fate of suspected “informers” and their families.

This was massive ethnic cleansing. Russians and Jews were also targeted. One can perhaps understand why many Russian speakers in the eastern Ukraine took up arms in 2014 when they saw the flags of the OUN proudly displayed in Kiev after the overthrow of the elected government.

After WWII the OUN kept fighting against the forces of the USSR and People’s Poland until 1949. Bandera had been imprisoned by the Germans during the war when he was no longer useful and had started to fight against them when he saw they would not support an OUN run independent Ukraine but had been released towards the end of the war to fight against the USSR. He stayed on in West Germany and was eventually hunted down and assassinated by the KGB in 1959.

When Ukraine became independent in 1991 liberal-democratic forms of government and a market economy began to replace the Soviet forms that preceded them, but they have not really taken root. It turned out that all the old animosities and contradictions from the past had not been overcome but had only lain dormant.

After 2007 statues in honor of Bandera started cropping up in cities in the western Ukraine. The home grown fascism and ethnic hatred of the OUN was on the march again. The Maidan demonstrations in early 2014, which led to the overthrow of the legally elected Ukrainian government, even witnessed 15,000 people marching in celebration of Bandera’s 105th birthday. The Svoboda Party, a neo-fascist mass party tinged with anti-semitism along with the Fatherland Party of Yulia Tymoshenko (a right-wing anti-Russian pro NATO nationalist mass party) both supported this commemoration of the former Nazi ally and war criminal.

The Russian speakers in the eastern Ukraine who saw the Soviet era in a positive light were shocked. They were the core of the original Soviet Ukraine to which much of the western Ukraine was added as new territory after WWII and which had been been ruled until then as parts of other European states (Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland). These new areas are part of the heartland of the OUN and are permeated with fascist ideology left over from their pre Soviet experiences. It is in these troubled waters that US imperialism and its NATO puppets are currently fishing.

Sakwa sees the core of the problem between the Donbas area rebellion (eastern Ukraine) and the western Ukrainian integral nationalists as primarily ideological. The Kiev government and rebels represent opposite world views. Basically, Kievian monism has an idealized conception of a pure Ukrainian nationalism that must be imposed on the country. It denies the reality on the ground of a pluralistic national population and seeks to make reality conform to its vision rather than adapt its political outlook to reality. (Sakwa points out this is also going on in the Baltic states.)

So what does the pluralist view entail? Due to all the changes in the boundaries of Ukraine over the last hundred years or so— territories switching back and forth due to wars and then to governmental policies-- the borders of the Ukraine today are very different than they were before WWII.

There are other peoples, nationalities and languages in Ukraine besides the Ukrainians (even though they are the vast majority). About 78% of the people are Ukrainian, 17% Russian and 5% are others (about seventeen different ethnic groups). About 7 million Russians live in the country and they want their language and customs respected— as do the other ethnic groups as well. [The 2.4 million people in the Crimea are included in the above breakdown.]

The official national language is Ukrainian with 18 regional or territorial languages also recognized. The pluralists want Russian also recognized as a national language while also agreeing that Ukrainian has pride of place— i.e., should be taught to all.

As Sakwa puts it, “The pluralist model argues that all the people making up contemporary Ukraine have an equal stake in the development of the country, and thus opposes the nationalizing strain, although without repudiating some of its concerns.”

The reason there is a rebellion going on in parts of the eastern Ukraine is that the extreme nationalists who are in the western Ukraine (although monists and pluralists are to be found everywhere they do predominate in some regions) feel that since they are the majority they can force their views on all the other people in Ukraine (the others are not “true” Ukrainians).

As V. Goldstein writes (pointed out by Sakwa) in Forbes magazine (5/19/14) “the culture, language and political thinking of western Ukraine have been imposed upon the rest of Ukraine.” Dr. Goldstein (who teaches Slavic studies at Brown University) also explains why this imposition was attempted (rebellion was the backlash): “the objective has been to humiliate and put down Ukraine’s Russian speaking population. The radical nationalists of western Ukraine, for whom the rejection of Russia and its culture is an article of faith, intend to force the rest of the country to fit their narrow vision.”

It is this vision, with its roots in irrationalism, fascism and the anti-Semitism and ethnic massacres of WWII, that President Obama, Secretary of State Kerry and NATO along with the leaders of the EU, as well our domestic right wing jingoists and puppet mass media are defending as “democracy, freedom, and national sovereignty.” Blut und Bodin.