Sri Lanka: Evicted Colombo shanty dwellers face desperate situation

Vilani Peiris

Over 580 poor families evicted in 2013 from Slave Island in central Colombo to make way for a multi-million dollar property development now confront a hopeless situation. After being promised rental money until they were provided with new residences, the shanty dwellers are not receiving adequate payments. Nor will they be provided with new homes.

The former government of President Mahinda Rajapakse evicted the families in 2013 and cleared 2.4 hectares of land as part of its plans to convert Colombo City into a South Asian commercial hub for international investors and tourists. The project involved Tata, the giant Indian corporation, which planned to build luxury condominiums with an estimated value of $US429.5 million.

Under its agreement with the Rajapakse government and the Urban Development Authority (UDA), Tata promised to provide 650 permanent homes for the displaced inner-city families in a four apartment towers. The company also agreed to pay 15,000 rupees ($112) per month for each displaced family to rent a house of 400 square feet for a period of 30 months.

Most of the families received about 15,000 rupees per month for 15 months, but the payments have stopped. A senior UDA official recently told theBusiness Times that Tata’s money was only sufficient for less than 15 months and the UDA had no funds to pay the evicted families. Moreover, no work has started on the promised apartment towers.

Slave Island residents protesting evictions in 2010

The current minority government of President Maithripala Sirisena has suspended the project until it reviews the original agreement between the Rajapakse administration and Tata, claiming that there was financial mishandling by corrupt officials.

On March 9, Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake told the South China Morning Post that the government was “examining a housing project by Indian conglomerate Tata. Tata came in and said they will put in $250 million, but they put in $20 million, use our land, and sell it back to us for a higher price.”

Tata has rejected these allegations and warned that “arbitrary actions” will adversely impact on future international investments in Sri Lanka.

Under the Rajapakse government’s plans, the UDA and the Land Reclamation and Development Board were taken over by the defence ministry, controlled by its secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, one of the president’s brothers. The defence ministry bogusly declared: “The primary goal of the project is to uplift the living standards of the people in the area and providing them a better living environment.”

The Rajapakse government aimed to remove more than 135,000 poor families from Colombo City. Thousands of families have been evicted from Slave Island, Dematagoda, Appalwatta and Ibbawatta during the past six years. The defence ministry mobilised the security forces to intimidate anyone opposing the evictions.

Most of those evicted have not been provided with permanent homes. Some have been forced to accept wooden huts without water and sanitation in the Nagalagam Street camp at Totalanga and in Weligodawatta. Several hundred families were provided with tiny flats of 400 square feet, for which they were forced to pay 100,000 rupees and then 3,900 rupees per month.

Several people who were driven out of Slave Island recently spoke to the WSWS about the conditions they now confront.

Irfan, a three-wheel taxi driver said: “The former government must take the entire responsibility for our current predicament. In the public consultation meeting held before we were evicted, the former Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse threatened us and so most of us were compelled to agree with the plan.

“I now live in Makola, a 23-kilometre drive from here. To do my job I have to be here by 8 or 9 a.m. and work till midnight. Since we don’t have an address here, I can’t put my child into a school in Colombo. We don’t want to put him into a school in Makola either because we are waiting to return to Colombo as soon as possible.”

Another three-wheel taxi driver said: “For now we have no other option but going behind [President] Maithripala’s new government. Let’s see until his 100-day program ends. If nothing comes out of it, we’ll all go and re-occupy the land.”

Another resident explained: “We know all about the problems in the multi-storey homes built for Wanathamulla and Dematagoda residents. Generally there are six to seven people in our homes. How can we even keep a coffin in a tiny house like that? There’s no space to keep household animals, like hens and goats, which provided essential food supplements to our households. We can’t afford to buy eggs and fresh milk.”

President Sirisena was a cabinet minister in the Rajapakse government and fully supported the evictions. The original plan to remove city dwellers was prepared during the 1980s by the then United National Party government. While posturing as opponents of the Rajapakse government and its brutal urban development measures, the UNP diverted the attempts of the inner-city poor to stop the evictions into various legal appeals.

When Slave Island families refused to vacate their homes, UNP parliamentarian and lawyer Sujeewa Senasinghe persuaded them to file a petition in the Supreme Court. In September 2013, the then Chief Justice Mohan Peiris declared: “[N]o one should obstruct ongoing development programs in Colombo.” Senasinghe and the UNP told the residents to submit to the court decision.

No evicted worker or poor family should expect any favourable outcome to their plight from the current government. Sirisena’s promised 100-day reform program has ended without any improvement in the conditions of life for workers and the poor.

The UNP exploited the popular hostility to Rajapakse, including among those evicted from their homes, hypocritically promoting Sirisena during the presidential election. After taking office, Sirisena appointed a committee of ministers to investigate the plight of the evicted families. This is nothing more than a cynical attempt by Sirisena and his UNP-led government to buy time before the approaching general election.

Like the former Rajapakse government, the Sirisena-UNP regime is increasingly concerned by falling foreign investment as the economic crisis deepens internationally. Whoever comes to power in the next election, they will continue to ruthlessly impose the pro-investor policies and economic measures demanded by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Unifor bows to latest GM Canada layoffs

Carl Bronski

General Motors (GM) announced late last month that it will end production of the Chevrolet Camaro sports car at its Oshawa, Ontario, assembly plant this November, axing 1,000 more jobs from its operations in that city.

Production of the Camaro will be moved to GM’s assembly facility in Lansing, Michigan. The downsizing in Oshawa will reduce GM’s total production workforce in the city that has historically been the center of GM Canada to just 2,600. As late as 2007, there were over 10,000 autoworkers employed by GM in Oshawa.

The reduction of three shifts to two at the “flex” assembly plant as a result of the relocation of Camaro production is clearly part of a drive to extort further massive concessions from GM’s Canadian workforce. No new product lines have been announced for either of the two Oshawa plants after 2016, which threatens the jobs of many of the remaining workers. And GM has said it will determine its future plans for the Oshawa plants only after the 2016 contract negotiations.

GM’s plans to end the Camaro line have-long been known by the workers and the Unifor union officialdom that purports to represent them. But rather than mobilize auto workers in a militant fight against the destruction of yet more auto jobs, the union, along with the Ontario Liberal government, have spent the past two years imploring their “partners” at GM for a model to replace the lost production.

Terms of the 2009 $10.8 billion federal and Ontario government bailout of GM and Chrysler stipulated that the companies meet loose domestic production quotas until 2016. With the imminent expiration of that agreement, more production previously located in Canada is expected to move to Mexico and the United States.

For decades now, the unions have responded to the efforts of the automakers and other transnationals to pit workers against each other in a race to the bottom by promoting rabid nationalism and imposing concessions. Unifor (the former Canadian Auto Workers union, or CAW), like the US-based United Auto Workers (UAW), has joined with management time and again in demanding workers make their own particular plants more “competitive,” i.e. accept speed-up and job, wage and benefit cuts.

Indeed the birth of the CAW in 1985 sprang directly from the promulgation of a nationalist program that divided North American workers and gave a huge opening for the Big Three auto companies to begin their practice of “whip-sawing” contracts and jobs back and forth across the Canada-US border.

Unifor’s refusal to lift a finger to fight the Oshawa job cuts should come as no surprise to the thousands of Unifor members who have lost their jobs as a result of plant closures and down-sizing. In a watershed dispute in 2012, the CAW refused to mobilize its extensive province-wide membership in strike action against the closure of the giant Caterpillar plant in London, Ontario, and urged workers there to accept severance packages.

In 2010, the last GM plant closed in Windsor, Ontario. When the announcement of the closure was made in 2008, then union head Buzz Hargrove blustered about strike action to an angry membership whilst quietly moving into discussions with the company for an “orderly shutdown.”

When auto parts plants throughout southern Ontario were closed in the wake of the 2008-2009 economic crisis, CAW officials played an active role in disbanding several plant occupations launched by militant workers. And GM workers in Oshawa will remember the antics of the CAW leadership in 2008 at the soon to be moth-balled truck plant. As workers marched through the city seething with outrage, CAW president Buzz Hargrove counselled against action on the shop floor, instead diverting the anger of the membership into a short-lived photo-op “blockade” of GM headquarters.

What has been the union’s response to the threat of unemployment that now hangs over the heads of their remaining Oshawa membership?

First, Unifor president Jerry Dias and Oshawa Local 222 chief Ron Svajlenko have made it clear that no fight will be undertaken to defend jobs. Instead, they have touted the fact that 2,100 out of the current 3,600-strong Oshawa workforce are eligible for retirement. This comes as little solace to the many workers who may still face the axe, as it is not yet clear how many employees will accept a pensioning-off under conditions where early-retirement would significantly reduce their annual income.

Secondly, the temporary preponderance of veteran workers in the plant is cynically viewed as something of a boon by the union bureaucracy. With over 2,000 workers eligible to take retirement, Unifor has been anxious to point out to management that in the event of a mass exodus from the plants by veteran workers, GM will be able to reap benefits from a two-tier contract system already in operation in the Detroit Three auto plants, under which new hires and workers with low seniority are paid far less in wages and benefits than older workers.

As Dias excitedly told reporters, “If those workers retire, they can be replaced by newly-hired employees who start at $20.50 per hour and whose wages won’t rise to the full seniority level of $34 an hour until they have been there for 10 years.”

In a bid to prepare the ground for further concessions to the auto bosses in the 2016 contract negotiations, several Unifor officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Globe and Mail that ending a “hybrid” pension program for all hourly-paid new hires would be the best way to convince GM to invest in its facilities in Oshawa and St. Catharines, Ontario. Should this concession, which would put an end to even a semblance of a guaranteed “defined” annual pension payment, be granted to GM, it is all but certain Unifor would accept that a similar provision be included in the upcoming contracts with Ford and Fiat-Chrysler.

The pro-company stance the union takes in the auto plants dovetails with its pro-big business political perspective. The CAW/Unifor has developed intimate ties with the Liberal Party, the Canadian ruling class’s preferred party of government for most of the 20th century. In the 2006 federal election, then-CAW President Buzz Hargrove campaigned for Paul Martin, who as finance minister had imposed the greatest social spending cuts in Canadian history. In 2011, then-CAW President Ken Lewenza campaigned alongside the Ontario Liberals, extolling their role in the 2009 bailout of the auto bosses.

Dias has taken up where his former colleagues left off. He stumped in last June’s provincial election for an Ontario Liberal government that, with the backing of the trade union-supported New Democratic Party, has imposed sweeping social spending cuts. In 2015, Unifor has declared its central objective to be the electoral defeat of Stephen Harper and his federal Conservative government. Toward this end, Unifor will support sitting New Democratic Party Members of Parliament, while backing Liberal candidates in the lion’s share of the other 240 constituencies.

Only last week, Dias extolled a speech made by federal Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau at a meeting of the International Association of Fire Fighters. Trudeau, who leads a party with a record of austerity and militarism similar to that of the Conservatives, values the unions for their role in containing and smothering workers’ struggles and, therefore, takes exception to some of Harper’s union-baiting.

No doubt straining the credulity of hundreds of thousands of workers who have seen their wages, working conditions and jobs cut by Conservative, Liberal and New Democratic Party governments, Trudeau lavished praise on the pro-company unions as “one of the few remaining forces that fight effectively for the fair wages that Canada’s middle class needs to make the economy grow.”

Trudeau’s remarks left Dias ecstatic. “We will be absolutely supporting the Liberals in key ridings, no question about it,” he gushed. “What the Liberals need to do—and, by the sounds of it, what they have just done—is they need to show a strong support for the labour movement in Canada.”

Fewer and fewer workers are fooled today by the bluster of their erstwhile union leaders. But to find a way forward, workers must break politically and organizationally from the unions and the New Democratic Party and Liberals and build new organs of class struggle—above all a mass workers party committed to resolving the capitalist crisis at the expense of big business through the socialist reorganization of socioeconomic life.

Polish presidential election expresses growing hostility towards Russia

Markus Salzmann

The first round of Poland’s presidential election takes place tomorrow. The favourite is the incumbent, Brunoslav Komorovski from the conservative Citizens’ Platform (PO), which is also the party of Prime Minister Eva Kopacz. His most significant challenger is Andrzej Duda from the nationalist and populist Law and Justice Party (PiS).

In February, Komorovski was considered invincible. However, since then his poll ratings have sunk dramatically. It is anticipated that a run-off will take place on May 24. The latest polls predict Komorovski with 40 percent of the vote and Duda with 30 percent. Nonetheless, presidential elections in Poland have frequently produced surprising results.

Although power in Poland rests with the government elected by parliament, the president has considerable authority. The president is supreme commander of the armed forces and, together with the foreign ministry, determines the country’s foreign and defence policy. In addition, he appoints the head of the central bank and can reject draft laws submitted by the government. President Lech Kaczynski (PiS) blocked a number of important laws of the government led by former Prime Minister Donald Tusk (PO) between 2007 and 2010.

The presidential election is also seen as a trial run for the parliamentary elections due in October.

The campaign has been characterised by agitation against Russia and the promotion of a military build-up. It focused almost exclusively on the question of who could best defend Poland against Putin. On this question, the two leading candidates barely have any differences.

Komorovski, the scion of a Polish noble family and a practicing Catholic, maintains close contacts within the army. He introduced a multi-billion rearmament programme with the government three weeks ago.

Billions are to be spent on US Patriot missiles and 70 French Caracal helicopters by 2022. The cost of the helicopters has been estimated at €4 billion, and the air defence missiles at €6.5 billion. Komorovski already proposed the establishment of a Polish missile defence shield in 2011. It is to be part of NATO’s defence systems, and in emergency situations could be equipped with Patriot missiles from other European countries, which could be in Poland within 48 hours.

Along with the Baltic republics, Poland is among the most outspoken aggressors towards Moscow within the European Union. In this it has not only sought to outdo Berlin, but also Washington. As former Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who is now president of the European Council in Brussels, declared last year that, in the confrontation with Russia, Poland was “always a step ahead of the EU and a half step ahead of the US.”

Komorovski recently indicated his support for the formation of a joint Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian army unit, the command of which is stationed in Lublin, Poland. It is to be composed of 4,500 men and be ready for deployment in 2017. The brigade is to take part in international operations and, as Komorovski explicitly declared, support Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.

The cost of the massive military build-up will be borne by the Polish population. After the election, Komorovski and the PO government intend to pursue the reform of the Polish coal industry. The coal concern Weglowa already announced plans in January to close four of 15 coalmines and eliminate 5,000 jobs. After two weeks of protests by miners, the Kopacz government temporarily postponed the coal industry reform.

Wide-ranging reforms of the pension and health care systems are also planned after the elections. There is a broad consensus between the PO and PiS on the issue.

The 42-year-old PiS candidate Duda was deputy justice minister in the government of Jaroslav Kaczynski. In addition, he was undersecretary at the chancellery of President Lech Kaczynski. The PiS, which has its base in poorer, strongly Catholic layers in rural areas and small towns, presents itself as being more socially concerned than the PO, which represents the elites in the larger cities and business. But Duda also supports social attacks and has announced a planned pension reform.

In their hostility to Russia, Duda and the PiS are attempting to outdo Komorovski. Former interior minister Ludwig Dorn, a founding PiS member, declared to the daily Gazeta Wyborcza that the abandonment of the 1997 NATO-Russia agreement was a strategic goal for his country. According to that deal, NATO promised not to station large military units any further east than Germany.

Of the 10 other candidates standing in the presidential election, only the rock musician Pavel Kukez is expected to obtain a double-digit result. He has mainly won support among younger voters with strong attacks on those at the top.

The other candidates demonstrate just how far the entire political spectrum in Poland has moved to the right.

Magdalena Ogorek is standing for the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), which emerged from the former Stalinist state party and, through Alexander Kwaśniewski, held the presidency between 1995 and 2005. The nonaligned church historian puts forward a neo-liberal programme and demands lower taxes for businesses. On the issue of military rearmament, she has complained that too much equipment is being purchased from foreign firms and not from the domestic arms industry. She has around 3 or 4 percent support in the polls.

German court rejects claims of Kunduz victims

Verena Nees

Over five years after the terrible massacre in the Afghan city of Kunduz, perpetrated by the German armed forces, the compensation claims of the victims’ families have been rejected once again.

The higher regional court in Cologne rejected the compensation claims of two surviving relatives on April 30, 2015, following the first instance judgment by the Bonn regional court on December 11, 2013.

The complainants were farm worker Abdul Hannan, whose two sons, aged 8 and 12 years old, were killed in the bombardment, and the widow Qureisha Rauf, whose husband was also killed, leaving her with six children. All together they are seeking €90,000 compensation. Their legal representative, attorney Karim Popal from Bremen, announced that he would now go before the Federal Supreme Court.

On September 4, 2009, the armed forces commander in Kunduz, Colonel Georg Klein, ordered the bombardment of two tankers stuck in a river after they had been hijacked by the Taliban. Residents of the nearby village, including many women and children, had surrounded the tanker and were tapping it for fuel. Over a hundred people died a horrible death in the fiery inferno caused by the bombardment and many others were severely injured.

The event evoked horror worldwide. In Berlin, a frantic effort was made to absolve the military leadership of all responsibility and cover up the devastating extent of the catastrophe. Colonel Klein was not only exonerated by a parliamentary investigative committee and the federal prosecutor, but also promoted to brigadier general by Thomas De Maizière, who was defense minister at the time.

Some of the Afghan families who lost relatives in the bombardment received a lump payment of US$5,000 (€4,470) each shortly thereafter. However, the government has stubbornly refused to admit to the responsibility of the German military leadership for the catastrophe.

To this day, the army high command refuses to reveal how many people were killed, as Popal complained in a press release in March. The armed forces and the defense ministry both claim they do not know how many victims there were. Other sources estimate 139 victims and NATO assumes there were 140. Most of the victims were children whose ages are recorded in available lists. “The Bundeswehr disputes the number of victims with the aim of washing its bloody hands of all guilt,” Popal said.

The Cologne Regional High Court justified its decision with the same arguments as the court of the first instance in Bonn. They denied that armed forces commander Klein was guilty of a “breach of duty by a public servant.” According to the court, Klein made use of all available sources of information before he concluded that there were no civilians present at the targeted location. The court said that he checked with an informant multiple times.

There was also alleged intelligence indicating a possible Taliban attack. According to the court, this implied that there were no grounds for an accusation of a breach of international humanitarian law invoked by the complainants, which calls for the protection of the civilian population. They also therefore had no right to compensation, the court argued.

“It was clear to see that the proceedings anticipated the evaluation of evidence. The Regional High Court made no effort to find a solution,” read the press release from Popal’s office on April 27. The attorney commented on the reference of the court to an informant and to intelligence agency indications of a possible Taliban attack: “The accused … is not in a position to publish the name of the contact person and the actual indications [of Taliban involvement]. It is still unknown today who this contact person was and nothing was reported on this in the jurisdiction either.”

This once again poses the question to what extent the intelligence agencies, army high command and political agencies were entangled in the events in Kunduz.

The rulings in both the first and second instances are also dubious from a legal standpoint. Compensation claims call for a civil court procedure, not criminal proceedings, as the emphasis of the attorney and the other jurists would suggest. The test of a compensation claim is not connected to whether there was criminal intent or a “culpable” breach of duty by a public servant. What is relevant are the facts of the case regarding “negligent breach by a public servant of his duty,” or, as Frankfurt international criminal law expert Denis Basak wrote, an “objective breach of duty.”

According to Basak, the court in Bonn should have carried out a more careful investigation on a number of points. According to Colonel Klein’s deliberately falsified report to the US flight control center, there was “enemy contact” between German soldiers and the Taliban, which he then used to justify airstrikes. He also refused to use a low flying plane to warn civilians, as the pilots of the NATO fighter jets had repeatedly requested. And finally, there was no explanation why Klein based himself on the claims of a single informant who was never at the location.

Both courts rejected such an investigation and consideration of the evidence, as well as an examination of witnesses of ISAF commander Stanley McChristal or Colonel Klein, as the complainants had requested.

Political factors are involved in the judgment. A judgment that the armed forces were obligated to pay compensation would set a precedent for future civilian victims of German military campaigns. From the point of view of the German government, this must be avoided as it prepares to engage in additional, even bloodier wars.

The massacre in 2009 was the baptism by fire of a reemerging German militarism. While official politics was still making an effort at that time to present Germany as a “peace power” and to portray the engagement in Afghanistan as a “peace mission,” it has since then carried out extensive preparations for its reemergence as a war power.

One month after the first Kunduz compensation judgment at the end of 2013, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen announced the “end of military restraint” at the Munich Security Conference. Germany was “too big just to comment on foreign policy from the sidelines” and had to “be prepared to intervene earlier, more decisively and more substantially in foreign and security policy.” In Ukraine, this policy has been put into practice. Washington and Berlin have supported a right-wing putsch in Kiev and have since then continued to provoke a confrontation with Russia.

With the help of war propaganda in the media, the government and the military leadership are working systematically to build up the armed forces and train them for war in Russia and other regions of the world. This makes clear that Kunduz was only the first step in preparing the population for future military crimes.

Syriza government endorses “war on terror” to divert opposition to austerity

Kumaran Ira

Greece’s Syriza-led government is endorsing the US-led “war on terror” and promoting militarism to divert rising social opposition to its sweeping austerity policies.

At a conference on defence and security organised by the American-Hellenic Chamber of Commerce in Athens on Tuesday, Syriza’s defence Minister and leader of the far-right Independent Greeks (Anel), Panos Kammenos, said Greece would allow NATO to use its military bases for wars in the Middle East.

Kammenos declared, “Greece is ready to undertake this initiative in NATO’s southern sector.” He added that Greece would allow the use of its “facilities, our armed forces and large bases in the region of the southern Aegean, to facilitate the forces of the alliance in the war against terrorism.”

Kammenos’ comment underscores the reactionary character of the Syriza-led government. Since it came to power in January, having campaigned on promises to end austerity, it has repudiated its promises and intensified draconian austerity measures demanded by the troika—the European Union (EU), European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Now Syriza’s austerity policies are accompanied by its support for reactionary wars conducted by the US and its European allies in the Middle East.

Commenting on Kammenos’ statement of support for US-NATO wars,Kathimerini wrote, “With the stances of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias notably different to those set out by Kammenos yesterday, government sources expressed concern over the defence minister’s comments. Diplomatic sources appeared troubled by the fact that matters of strategic importance were being broached at a conference.”

In fact, the differences inside the Syriza-Anel coalition government on the escalation of imperialist wars in the Middle East are of a purely tactical character, over how quickly and how openly to adopt a pro-war posture. Both Syriza and Anel are committed, however, to supporting US-led wars and the broader geo-strategic interests of the imperialist powers of NATO.

Soon after taking office, Tsipras made clear his support for NATO foreign policy by declining to veto EU financial sanctions against Russia over the conflict in Ukraine. Instead, Syriza voted to escalate EU sanctions against Russia as the US and NATO threatened war with Moscow. Tsipras’ support for NATO provocations against Russia was of a piece, however, with his broad support for the foreign policy of the leading imperialist powers.

Before the election campaign, during Tsipras’ meeting with officials in the major imperialist countries, Tsipras repeatedly made clear that Syriza would not jeopardise NATO policies if it were elected.

During his visit to Washington in 2013 for meetings at the Brookings Institution think tank, the New York Times published an article titled “Only SYRIZA Can Save Greece.” The article, which bore the byline of future Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, pledged Syriza’s loyalty to NATO and to US imperialism. If Syriza took office, it said, “nothing vital would change for the United States. Syriza doesn’t intend to leave NATO or close American military bases.”

The Times also praised Syriza’s proposal to restructure Greek debt as a good thing for Greece’s creditors, writing: “Banks and hedge funds know that most Greek debt is held by European taxpayers and by the European Central Bank, and what’s left is being snapped up by investors because they know it will be paid.”

Syriza’s election victory has exposed its reactionary political agenda as a party of austerity and war. As it prepares deeply unpopular measures, including further cuts to wages, pensions, and social spending and privatising state-owned companies, Syriza is considering using military force and supporting imperialist war to divert rising social tension into reactionary channels.

The Syriza-led government is signaling a more aggressive military posture as it plans sweeping austerity measures demanded by the troika.

In order to obtain a further €7.2 billion loan from the troika, Syriza is preparing to provide detailed social cuts, including to pensions and health care and structural reforms. These reforms include reactionary changes to labour laws, layoffs in the public sector, and the privatisation of state-owned companies.

Greek Deputy Prime Minister Yannis Dragasakis, who oversees the Syriza government’s economic policy, said he was optimistic on talks with the troika and hoped to strike an agreement with it at the eurozone finance ministers meeting on May 11.

He told Britain’s Guardian newspaper: “I hope on Monday a sign of progress will be given and [they say] an agreement is visible. Talks, so far, have shown there is common ground in changes and political measures and, therefore, I believe a deal is possible and in the interests of everyone.”

On Wednesday, during a telephone conversation, Tsipras discussed pension and labour reform measures with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. According to their joint statement, “They registered the progress that has been made in the recent days between Greece and its partners on the issue of the detailed package of reforms in order for the evaluation to be completed successfully.”

Amid increasing pressure for Greece to make further cuts and repay its creditors, the financial press reported that the Syriza government is already repaying its loans by increasing taxes and reducing social spending. Syriza is thus proving to be a more convenient tool for the financial elites to impoverish the working class and loot Greece.

Recently, the government ordered state entities, including pension funds, local authorities, hospitals and universities, to hand over their cash reserves to the central bank to pay off the EU. On Wednesday, the government paid the IMF €200 million and it is preparing to pay €700 million on May 12.

Greece must find more than €10 billion for its creditors before the end of August, according to BNP Paribas.

On May 6, the Financial Times wrote, “despite many predictions the country should have gone bust by now, the Syriza-led government has managed to scrape together enough funds to pay its creditors… Not only have tax receipts crept back up to where they’re almost at last year’s levels (and pre-crisis estimates) for the first quarter of the year, but spending has been slashed to where the government has paid out €1.5bn less than anticipated.”

Without any public discussion, Syriza is finding the money to pay off its creditors by systematically starving critical social infrastructure of funding. The Financial Times explained, “Healthcare spending in particular has taken a hit. A line item for ‘cover of hospital deficit’, for example, has seen only €43m in spending thus far, while it will eventually cost the government €1.1bn this year. Investment spending, budgeted at €6.4bn, has only seen €542m in payouts.”

April employment report masks extent of US jobs crisis

Gabriel Black

The US economy added 223,000 jobs in April, according to figures released Friday by the Labor Department. The official unemployment rate dropped to 5.4 percent, the lowest since May 2008.

In an online statement following the release of the figures, the Obama administration praised the report as a reflection of an “ongoing recovery” showing “substantial progress” in the economy. News commentators echoed this line, saying that the report constituted evidence of an economic turnaround.

Speaking at Nike headquarters in Oregon, Obama declared that “obviously” his policies have not “done too bad in terms of employment in this country. I just thought I’d mention that. Since there were a lot of predictions of doom and gloom.”

In reality, the jobs report looks good only in contrast to the dismal performance of recent months. The US economy added only 85,000 jobs in March, according to newly-revised figures released alongside the April statistics.

Stock analysts have called the April jobs figures announcement a “Goldilocks” report: generally positive, but not good enough to encourage the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates more rapidly, which would tend to lower stock values. Ryan Larson of RBC Global Asset Management told CNBC that the jobs report was “Probably [the] best scenario in which the market was hoping for growth but not [so strong] that the Fed needs to hike in June.” Stocks responded to the report with a rally.

Wages rose by 0.1 percent in April compared to March, below economists’ expectations, and were up by only 2.2 percent over the past year, according to the Labor Department report.

The industries that added jobs in April disproportionately pay low wages, and provide temporary and part-time work. As a CNBC headline put it, “Bad job news, good stock news.”

While only 1,000 jobs were added in the higher-paying manufacturing sector in April, a total of 182,000 jobs were added in the service sector. Administrative and waste services, a category that includes janitorial, cleaning staff, and temporary workers, added 41,300 jobs.

Food service and drinking venues added 26,000 jobs. The average wage in this sector is $11.39, with employees working an average workweek of 24.8 hours. Other industries that added jobs included transportation and warehousing, with 15,200 jobs added; hospitals, with 11,800 jobs; social assistance, with 10,400 jobs; and nursing and residential care facilities, with 8,100.

According to the National Employment Law Project (NELP), in the first four years of the “recovery,” low-wage jobs accounted for 44 percent of job growth. However, low-wage jobs were only 22 percent of the jobs lost in the recession.

While the official unemployment rate fell to 5.4 percent, this figure excludes the millions of people who are not counted as unemployed because they have simply given up on the prospect of finding a job. According to the Economic Policy Institute, there are 3.14 million such workers, and if they were counted in the official unemployment rate, it would stand at 7.3 percent.

The latest jobs figures follow a string of mass layoffs. Dow Chemical announced last Monday that it would cut up to 1,750 jobs to save costs. First Data, a tech finance company stationed in Omaha, Nebraska, this month said it would be laying off several thousand people globally in the coming months.

In April, Bell Helicopter announced 1,100 layoffs at its facility in Lafayette, Indiana. The Pennsylvania-based software developer Unisys also announced plans to slash 8 percent of its global workforce, including 1,800 workers in North America. On April 24, pharmaceutical giant Procter & Gamble announced it would cut 6,000 office jobs worldwide. The company has eliminated 20,000 office and manufacturing jobs since 2012.

During his appearance at Nike headquarters Friday, Obama credited his administration’s policies for having set up an economic turnaround, declaring “thanks to the hard work of the American people and entrepreneurs like the ones who are here today—and some pretty good policies from my administration—we’re in a different place today.”

In fact, The Obama Administration’s policies have been aimed at reviving US manufacturing on the basis of a significant reduction of workers’ wages. As a result of these policies, the National Employment Law Project concluded in 2014 that “While the manufacturing sector has grown in recent years, wages are lower, the jobs are increasingly temporary, and the promised benefits have yet to be realized.”

US begins training new “rebel” army for operations in Syria

Thomas Gaist

US soldiers have begun training some 100 Syrian fighters in a “secure location” in Jordan in preparation for military intervention in Syria, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter confirmed Thursday. Other contingents will soon begin training at camps run by the US military in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar, Carter said.

The militants will receive intelligence and air support from American forces, and the fighters will also receive monetary compensation from the US government, the defense chief said. The US will supply the new fighting groups with pickup trucks with mounted machine guns, as well as other assault weapons and communications gear.

The training will be led by some 400 US soldiers, joined by another 100 military trainers from US allies. The new training programs are intended to prepare rebels for large-scale warfare, according to sources cited by the Wall Street Journal. Nearly 4,000 rebels have already been vetted and 400 have been selected to advance to a “second level of review,” according to theJournal .

The Pentagon intends for the training facilities and recruitment efforts to “expand over time as the US demonstrates it can support recruits on the battlefield,” according to a US military official who spoke to the Journal.

The US is following an “if you build it they will come approach,” a US defense official told the Journal. US commanders anticipate that they will win substantial new recruits for the new force based on the various forms of combat support to be provided by the US Central Command (CENTCOM) to the “rebels” once they are deployed to the front in Syria.

According to official statements, the new US forces will supposedly focus on fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), rather than on ousting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Such claims highlight the intractable contradictions in US policy in the region, given that ISIS itself originated out of US-backed rebel militias fighting in Syria.

Indeed, the CIA and US military have fomented a brutal civil war in Syria since 2011, funneling weapons, funds, and other forms of support to militant groups including various tendencies linked to Al Qaeda. More broadly, the US has been the leading supporter, for decades, of extremist militants across the Middle East, relying on such groups as cheap and expendable proxies for its hegemonic agenda.

Once the US-trained “rebels” enter combat in Syria, they will almost inevitably come into conflict with the armed forces of the Assad regime. Defense Secretary Carter told the New York Times, “If they are contested by regime forces, we would have some responsibility to help them,” adding, “We have not yet decided in detail how we would exercise that responsibility.”

What this means in practice is that the US-trained “rebels” in Syria will provide a virtually unlimited array of pretexts for escalating direct US military involvement, including airstrikes and other attacks on the forces of the Assad regime, in the name of “exercising the responsibility” to protect the US stooge forces from annihilation.

In reality, US war aims extend well beyond targeting the Assad regime or eliminating any single militant faction, ISIS or otherwise. US imperialism is striving to cement its strategic domination of the entire region through the consolidation of a revised political framework, one anchored by Israel, the Saudi monarchy and, if the P5+1 negotiations spearheaded by the White House bear fruit, buttressed by a conciliatory elements within the Iranian bourgeoisie.

The main obstacle to such a region-wide deal is the steady escalation of tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Present indications are that the monarchy will continue its onslaught against Yemen, a brutal war that is understood in both Riyadh and Tehran as a proxy conflict between the two powers. The Saudi assault, carried out with state-of-the-art US weaponry, has already claimed hundreds of civilian lives.

Saudi officials vowed Friday to launch a new round of devastating strikes against Houthi positions, just hours after promising to uphold a five-day ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid into the country.

While Turkey and Saudi Arabia are also potential rivals on the regional stage, the two powers have arrived at a temporary partnership over military policy in Syria. “Our views on Syria are aligned with Saudi Arabia,” a Turkish foreign ministry spokesperson said in comments to Reuters .

Turkish media said the joint efforts with Riyadh “reflect renewed urgency and impatience with the Obama administration’s policy in the region” and reflected growing Saudi engagement in a “broader proxy war against Iran.”

The two powers have established a joint command post in the northern province of Idlib, where they have sought to rally a coalition of militants against Assad, calling itself the “Conquest Army” and including fighters from the al-Nusra Front, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria.

The Saudi-Turkish-backed coalition has already succeeded in “causing a lot of damage and capturing more territory from the regime,” an FSA adviser claimed in comments to US News and World Report. The joint Saudi-Turkish move against the Iranian-backed Assad regime serves to further ratchet up tensions between both powers and Tehran, which views the overthrow of the pro-Iranian government in Damascus as an unacceptable blow to its regional position.

The growth of tensions with Iran was emphasized by the announcement this week that Saudi Arabia may abandon a longstanding official commitment to nuclear disarmament in the Middle East and seek to acquire its own nuclear weapons.

“Our allies aren’t listening to us, and this is making us extremely nervous,” a leading Saudi academic told UPI, explaining the sudden talk of a new nuclear weapons drive. The Saudi scholar noted that a US deal with Tehran would allow Iran to make use of more than $100 billion in assets currently frozen by sanctions, freeing up fresh resources for Tehran’s regional proxy wars.

Turkish officials have similarly denounced the Obama administration’s Syria policy as not having any coherent strategy for removing Assad and as overly focused on reaching a deal with Tehran. “The region is in need of change,” a senior Turkish official told reporters.

The Turkish official criticized the “lack of tangible steps taken by the international community since the conflict in Syria broke out,” i.e., the insufficient aggressiveness of the US and NATO powers in seeking regime change in Syria.

Whatever the seriousness of the Saudi and Turkish threats against the Assad regime and its allies in Tehran, the hurling of fresh battalions of US-trained militants into the raging inferno of the Syrian civil war, which has already turned large portions of Syria into heaps of rubble while killing and displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians, will only ensure the expansion of the slaughter.

Under the banner of the “global war on terrorism,” the region’s most right-wing and pro-imperialist regimes are being mobilized behind US imperialism’s drive for new military interventions across the region. The US training program is kicking off almost simultaneously with the massive Eager Lion war games in Jordan, involving military units from 18 countries.

Next week, Obama will host a summit May 13-14 of the Gulf Cooperation Council, the organization of the six Persian Gulf monarchies: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and Oman. While the main focus will be US reassurances that a nuclear deal with Iran will not endanger the Arab sheikdoms—on Wednesday the Pentagon revealed plans for a region-wide missile defense system in the Persian Gulf—there will undoubtedly be discussions of the ongoing wars in both Syria and Yemen.

Amnesty International: Whitewashing Another Massacre

PAUL de ROOIJ

Amnesty International has issued four reports on the Massacre in Gaza in 2014. Given the scale of the destruction and the number of fatalities, any attempt to document the crimes committed should be welcomed. But these reports are problematic, and raise questions about this organization, including why they were written at all. It also raises questions about the broader human rights industry that are worth considering.

Basic Background

July 2014 marked the onset of the Israeli massacre in Gaza (I will dispense with the Israeli sugar-coated operation names). The Israeli army trained for this attack for several months before finding a pretext to attack Gaza, shattering an existing ceasefire; this was the third such post-“disengagement” (2004) attack, and possibly the worst so far. At least 2,215 were killed and 10,000+ wounded, most of them civilians. The scale of destruction was staggering: tens of thousands of houses rendered uninhabitable; several high-rise buildings struck by huge American-supplied bombs; schools and hospitals targeted; 61 mosques totally destroyed; water purification and sewage treatment plants damaged; Gaza’s main flour mill bombed; all chicken farms ravaged; an incalculable devastation.

Israeli control over Gaza has been in place for decades; with violence escalating over time, and the people of Gaza have been under siege for the last eight years. Israelis have placed Gaza “on a diet”, permitting only a trickle of strictly controlled goods to enter Gaza, enough to keep the population above starvation. Gaza is surrounded on all sides, blocked off from the outside world: military bulldozers raze border areas, snipers injure farmers, and warships menace or destroy fishing boats with gunfire. Periodically Israelis engage in what they term “mowing the lawn” massacres and large scale destruction. It is this history that must serve as the foundation of any report that attempts to describe both the intent of the participating parties and the relative consequences.

Context-Challenged – by Design

The ongoing crimes perpetrated against Gaza are chronic, and indeed, systematic. Arnon Soffer, one of Israel’s Dr. Strangeloves and “intellectual father of the wall”, had this to say about Gaza:

Q (Ruthie Blum): Will Israel be prepared to fight this war?

Arnon Soffer: [...] Instead of entering Gaza, the way we did last week, we will tell the Palestinians that if a single missile is fired over the fence, we will fire 10 in response. And women and children will be killed, and houses will be destroyed. After the fifth such incident, Palestinian mothers won’t allow their husbands to shoot Kassams, because they will know what’s waiting for them. Second of all, when 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border will be awful. It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day. 

To determine the reasons behind Israeli actions, one only has to read what their Dr. Strangeloves say – it is no secret. The aim is to create miserable conditions to drive the Palestinians off their land, warehouse the population in an open air prison called Gaza, and to disproportionately repress any Palestinian resistance. Israelis have to “kill and kill and kill, all day”. Such pathological reasoning put Israeli actions into perspective; they are major crimes, possibly genocidal. Recognition of such crimes has some consequences.

First, the nature of the crimes requires recognizing them as crimes against humanity, arguably one of the most serious crimes under international law. Second, Israeli crimes put the violence of the Palestinian resistance into perspective. Palestinians have a right to defend themselves. Third, the long history of violence perpetrated against the Palestinians, and the resulting power imbalance, suggest that one should be in solidarity with the victim.

Amnesty however refuses to acknowledge the serious nature of Israeli crimes, by using an intellectually bankrupt subterfuge; it insists that as a rights-based organization it cannot refer to historical context – doing so would be considered “political” in its warped jargon. An examination of what AI considers “background” in its reports confirms that there is virtually no reference to relevant history, e.g., the prior attacks on Gaza, who initiated those attacks, the Goldstone report, etc. Presto! Now there is no need to mention serious crimes. It also doesn’t recognize the nature of the Palestinian resistance, and their right to self-defense. Nowhere does AI acknowledge that Palestinians are entitled to defend themselves. And finally, AI cannot express solidarity with the victim; hey, “both sides” are victims!

At this point, once Amnesty has chosen to ignore the serious Israeli crimes, it takes on the Mother Teresa role sitting on the fence castigating “both sides” for non-compliance with International Humanitarian Law that determines the rules of war. Thus AI criticizes Israel not for the transgression of attacking Gaza, but for utilizing excessive force or targeting civilian targets. AI’s favorite term to describe to such events is “disproportionate”. The term disproportionate is problematic because it suggests that there is an agreement with the nature of the action, but there is only an issue with the means or scale. While AI bleats that a one ton bomb in a refugee camp is disproportionate, it would seem that using a 100kg bomb would be acceptable. Another AI favored term is “conflict”, a state of affairs where both sides are at fault, both are victims and transgressors.

Notice that while AI avoids recognizing major crimes by using its rights-based framework, it suddenly changes its hat, and takes on a very legalistic approach to criticize the violence perpetrated by the Palestinians. It manages to list the full panoply of international humanitarian law.

The key thing to watch in the upcoming International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation of the 2014 Massacre will be whether the Court will follow the Amnesty approach. Any investigation that doesn’t focus on the cause of the violence and who initiated it will result in another fraud, and no pixel of justice.

Criminalizing Palestinian Resistance

Amnesty dispenses with the Palestinian right to defend themselves by stating that the Palestinian rockets are “indiscriminate”, and proceeds to repeatedly call their use a war crime. Palestinian resistance is also told not to hide in heavily populated areas, not execute collaborators, and so on. While Palestinians are told that their resistance amounts to war crimes, the Israelis aren’t told that their attacks are criminal per se – here it is only a matter of scale.

The “Unlawful and deadly rocket and Mortar Attacks…” report repeatedly condemns Palestinian rocket firing with inaccurate weapons, deems these “indiscriminate”, and ipso facto war crimes. Amnesty confuses the term “inaccurate” for “indiscriminate”. Examining the table below suggests that Israel killed proportionately far more civilians, albeit with more accurate weapons. It is possible to target indiscriminately with precision munitions. There is also a possibility, that AI seems to disregard, that the Israeli military targeted civilians intentionally. NB: It is likely that Israel drones targeted children intentionally. A report by Defense for Children International states: “As a matter of policy, Israel deliberately and indiscriminately targeted the very spaces where children are supposed to feel most secure”.

Whose violence is indiscriminate?
Fatalities during the Massacre in Gaza 2014
Fatality type	Israeli caused deaths		Palestinian caused deaths
Civilian	1,639	74%	7	10%
Military	576	26%	66	90%
Total	2,215	100%	73	100%

Regardless of the accuracy of the weapons, the key issue is one of intent. Amnesty dwells on an explosion at the Shati refugee camp on 28 July. On the basis of one field worker, Israeli-supplied evidence and an unnamed “independent munitions expert” , Amnesty concludes that:

Amnesty International has received no substantive response to its inquiries about this incident from the Palestinian authorities. An independent and impartial investigation is needed, and both the Palestinian and Israeli authorities must co-operate fully. The attack appears to have violated international humanitarian law in several ways, as the evidence indicates that it was an indiscriminate attack using a prohibited weapon which may well have been fired from a residential area within the Gaza Strip and may have been intended to strike civilians in Israel. If the projectile is confirmed to be a Palestinian rocket, those who fired it and those who commanded them must be investigated for responsibility for war crimes.

Mother Teresa certainly provides enough comic material; an occasional joke makes it easier to read a dull report. The evidence for the provenance of this missile is taken at face value although it is supplied by Israel, but of course, it requires an “investigation” – it is suggesting that both Israel and the Palestinians should investigate this incident. If the Palestinian resistance was responsible for this explosion, then it was caused by a misfiring; thus there was no intention for consequent deaths. Suggesting that this amounts to a war crime is rather silly. But the title of the section advertising the report on the AI website suggests a motive for harping on this incident; the title reads “Palestinian armed groups killed civilians on both sides in attacks amounting to war crimes”. This conveys a rather warped and negative view of the Palestinian resistance – they kill civilians on both sides – and it suggests that it is not possible to be in solidarity with them.

Tyranny of Reasons

After any Israeli attack, Israeli propagandists regularly offer a rationale about why a given target was struck. The propagandists reported that there were rocket-firing crews at hospitals, schools, mosques, the power plant, etc. Presto! These places can be bombed whether or not these statements are true. What is disconcerting in the two reports on Israeli crimes is that AI imputes reasons for the targeting of buildings or families.

One finds statements such as:

* Amnesty International believes this attack was targeting one individual.

* The apparent target was a member of a military group, targeted at a time when he was at home with his family.

* The fighters who were the apparent targets could have been targeted at a different time or in a different manner that was less likely to cause excessive harm to civilians and destruction of civilian objects.

* The apparent target of Israel’s attack was Ahmad Sahmoud, a member of the al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ armed wing. [...] Surviving family members and neighbours denied this.

Amnesty parrots the rationales provided by the Israeli military – one only needs to look at the footnotes of its reports. And Amnesty discounts the intentional bombing of buildings to create misery among the Gazan middle class to demoralize a key sector of society. Or by destroying the power plant it is creating generalized misery. But don’t worry, Mother T will always check with the Israeli military to determine why something was targeted.

AI is Not an Anti-war Organization

One would expect a human rights organization to be intrinsically opposed to war, but AI is a cheerleader of so-called humanitarian intervention, and even “humanitarian bombing”. Even with this predisposition AI was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize – yet another questionable recipient for a prize meant to be given only to those actively opposed to wars. Today, one wonders if AI is going to jump on the R2P (Right to Protect) neocon bandwagon. A consequence of its “not-anti-war” stance is that it doesn’t criticize wars conducted by the United States, UK, or Israel; it is only the excesses that merit AI’s occasional lame rebuke – often prefaced with the term “disproportionate” or “alleged”. This stance is evident in its latest reports; here the premise is that the Israeli attack on Gaza was legitimate, but it is the conduct of “both sides” that is the object of the reports’ criticism.

Losing the Forest for the Trees

Amnesty International is a small organization without sufficient resources to conduct a proper report on the Massacre in Gaza 2014. And given the fact that it wasn’t given direct access to Gaza, it chose to focus on two aspects of the Israeli attack: the targeting of entire families, and the destruction of landmark buildings. Within these two categories it chose to focus on a handful of cases of each. The main problem is that AI harps on a few cases to the exclusion of the totality; AI loses the forest for the trees. There is no mention of some of the most significant total figures, say, the number of hospitals and schools destroyed, the tonnage of bombs dropped on Gaza, the tens of thousands of artillery shells used… and so on. The seriousness of the crime is lost by dwelling on a subset of a subset of the crimes committed. Amnesty isolates a few examples, describes them in some detail, and then suggests that unless there were military reasons for the attacks, then there should be an “investigation”. Oh yes, Amnesty has sent some polite letters to the Israeli authorities requesting some comment, but the Israelis have been rather non-responsive. Quite possibly the likes of Netanyahu, Ya’alon, Ganz, … are too busy rolling on the floor with laughter.

Given AI’s warped framework one would expect symmetry in the way the attacks are described. While AI provides the total number of rockets fired by the Palestinian resistance, AI provides no similar numbers of the tens of thousands of Israeli artillery shells fired, and the tonnage of bombs dropped on Gaza. The Israeli military propagandists were all too happy to provide detailed statistics about the Palestinian rockets, and AI does not seem to express any misgivings about using this data. It is also clear that Mother T didn’t ask the propagandists to supply statistics on the Israeli lethal tonnage dropped on Gaza.

Methodology and Evidence

Every report contains a methodology section admitting to the fact that AI didn’t have direct access to Gaza. All its research was done on the Israeli side, and by two Palestinian fieldworkers in Gaza. The inability to enter Gaza possibly explains the reliance on many Israeli military statements, blogs and the Foreign Ministry about the Palestinian rocket attacks. One can verify all the footnotes to find a significant number of official Israeli statements to provide so-called evidence. It is rather jarring to find Amnesty relying on information provided by the attacking military to implicate Palestinian resistance in war crimes. How appropriate is it to use Hamas’ Violations of the Law issued by Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or Declassified Report Exposes Hamas Human Shield Policy issued by the Israeli military?

It is also jarring to find Amnesty referring to Israeli claims that rockets were fired from schools, hospitals, and the electric power plant. This information was provided as a justification for the Israeli destruction of those sites, but in the report AI uses it to wag its finger at the Palestinian resistance. 

Amnesty’s access to Israeli victims of Palestinian rockets produced emotional statements by the victims, and complied with Israeli propaganda needs. Israeli PR was keen to take journalists or visiting politicians to the border towns to show the rocket damage, and Amnesty seems to have been pleased to go along. At the same time Israelis barred AI access to Gaza – any information coming out of the area would not be compliant with Israeli PR requirements. Thus why send any researchers to the Israeli border area?

Execution of Collaborators – Who will be Criticized

AI has announced a publication of a forthcoming report on the execution of collaborators, and one can only speculate on its contents. But AI is not opposed to wars, and at the same time it is opposed to the death sentence; it is opposed to some deaths, but silent about others. Couple this stance with an unwillingness to recognize the Palestinian right to defend themselves, and consequently AI will deem the execution of collaborators as abhorrent.

There are many collaborators in the West Bank and they are evident at all levels of society, even in the so-called Palestinian Authority government. The Palestinian Authority has even committed to protect them. Collaboration with Israel in the West Bank is a relatively low risk activity. In Gaza there are also collaborators, and these are used to infiltrate and inform on the armed resistance groups, and also to sow black propaganda. During the Massacre in Gaza, collaborators were instrumental in pinpointing the location of the resistance and its leadership. In most countries, treason/espionage in time of war merits execution, but it is doubtful that AI will accept this, and will instead urge a judicial process with no death sentence.

The key aspect of the forthcoming report will be whether AI deems the Israeli use of collaborators an abhorrent practice. Israel uses collaborators to gather information, but it is also meant to fragment Palestinian society, and to sow distrust. With a society already under massive stress due to economic hardship and military repression, collaborators are a pernicious means to break morale and undermine Palestinian resilience. Will AI criticize Israeli use of collaborators, or will its report merely castigate Hamas for the way it deals with collaborators?

Why Were These Reports Written at All?

All AI reports follow the same boiler plate formula: a brief overview, a methodology section about data sources, some emotional quotations by the victims, a section on accountability, and then some recommendations. These reports are trite, barely readable, and certainly not very useful either for legal purposes or to educate its volunteers. So why were these reports published and who actually reads them? AI would like to be known as one of the leading human rights organizations, and it must be seen as reporting on major violations/crimes. Its volunteers must be given the impression that AI cares for some of the wholesale atrocities, and not merely the retail crime or violation.

The timing of the publication of one report (“Unlawful and deadly: Rocket and mortar attacks…”) is rather curious. The report dealing with the Palestinian rockets was published a few days before the Palestinian accession to the International Criminal Court. Is that a mere coincidence? While some Palestinians are gearing up to prosecute Israel for war crimes and crimes against humanity, a leading human rights organization publishes a report which harps on the theme that Palestinians are guilty of war crimes. AI has published reports in the past that were exploited for propaganda purposes, e.g., the throwing-the-babies-out-of-the-incubators propaganda hoax. Those reports were published just in time so that they provided a justification for war.

Impotence by Design

All the reports contain a list of recommendations to Israelis, Palestinians, and other states. One is struck by the impotence of the recommendations. AI urges Israel to cooperate with the UN commission of inquiry; allow human rights organizations access to Gaza; pay reparations to some victims; and ensure that the Israeli military operates within some legal bounds. Given that Israel can do as it pleases, ignoring commissions of inquiry, loudly proclaiming that it will engage in disproportionate attacks (i.e., the Dahiya doctrine), and that it refuses compensate any Gazan due to the previous massacres, all these recommendations ring rather hollow.

Amnesty urges Palestinians to address their grievances via the ICC. It is curious that while international law provides the Palestinians no protection whatsoever, AI is urging Palestinians to jump through international legal hoops. It is also questionable to suggest a legal framework meant for interstate conflict when dealing with a non-state dispossessed native population. And of course, AI fails to mention that Israel has avoided and ignored international law with the complicity and aid of the United States.

Finally, AI requests other governments to assist the commission of inquiry and to assist in prosecution of war criminals. It remains to be seen whether the commission of inquiry will actually publish a report that has some teeth. AI also urges other countries to stop supplying weapons to “both sides”. There is no mention of the fact that the US resupplied Israel with weapons during the Massacre in Gaza in 2014. It is very unlikely that the US/UK will stop arming Israel, and thus AI’s recommendations are ineffective.

Amnesty trumpets that it has 7 million supporters world-wide, a few months ago this number was 3 million; two years ago this was 400,000, and few years ago this was 200,000. One should marvel at this explosive growth. If AI can really tap into the support of even a fraction of these volunteers, then AI can urge them to do something that has tangible results, e.g., recommending that its members/supporters boycott Israeli products or products produced by western companies complicit in Israeli crimes. Such action would be far more effective than the silly recommendations that are regularly ignored by Israel and its western backers. Alas, it is difficult to conceive that Amnesty will issue a call for a boycott to its ever expanding army of supporters. It is difficult for Mother T to change her stripes.

The Human Rights Industry

There are thousands of so-called human rights organizations. Anyone can set up a human rights organization, and thereby specify a narrow focus for the NGO, determine the parameters within which the NGO will operate – even define who is human – and now the new NGO can chime in with press releases, host wine and cheese receptions, bestow prizes, lobby politicians, launch investigations, and castigate the enemy du jour. Hey, Bono, Geldof and Angelina will hop along and sit on the NGO’s board! The human rights framework is so elastic, and it can be molded to fit legitimate purposes, but also to be manipulated for propaganda. The history of some of the largest human rights organizations show that they were originally created with the propaganda element foremost in mind. This suggests NGO output (reports, etc.) merit scrutiny not so much for what they say, but for what they omit. In the Palestinian context, a simple test on the merits of a so-called human rights organization is whether they challenge state power, call for accountability and prosecution of war criminals, and urge members to do something more than write out cheques or write a very formal and polite letters to governments engaged in criminal deeds.

Another test on the merits of a human rights NGO is whether it is in solidarity with the victims of violence, and whether victims are treated differently depending on support/demonization by “the west”. In Amnesty’s case, consider that on the one hand it provides long lists of “prisoners of conscience” (POC) pertaining prisoners held in Cuba, Syria, etc., but on the other hand it explicitly doesn’t make the list of Palestinian POC available. We have no means of knowing how many Palestinian POC Amnesty cares about, and whether its volunteers engage in letter writing campaigns on their behalf. One thing is certain, while the majority of Cuban political prisoners are considered POC, only a tiny fraction of the Palestinian political prisoners have been bestowed the POC status. And of course, Mother Teresa doesn’t give a hoot about political prisoners who might have been involved in violence – Palestinians are one stone throw away from being ignored by Amnesty International. Some victims are more meritorious than others.

In trying to justify AI’s double standard, Malcolm Smart, AI’s Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme, stated:

“By its nature, the Israeli administrative detention system is a secretive process, in that the grounds for detention are not specified in detail to the detainee or his/her legal representative; inevitably, this makes it especially difficult for the detainee to challenge the order for, by example, contesting the grounds on which the detention was made. In the same way, it makes it difficult or impossible for Amnesty International to make a conclusive determination in many cases whether a particular administrative detainees can be considered a prisoner of conscience or not.” 

AI provides yet more comic material. AI admits that Israeli military courts can determine who can be considered a Palestinian POC! The only thing the Israeli military courts need to do is maintain the court proceedings secret or not reveal “evidence”. Alternatively, they can simply imprison the victims without trial or declare that they are members of a “banned” organization. Presto! Israelis now won’t have to reply to those pesky polite letters written by AI volunteers. Once again, double standards in the treatment of victims raise questions about the nature of any human rights NGO.

Human Rights is Denatured Justice

Pushing for the observance of human rights doesn’t necessarily imply that one will obtain justice. The human rights agenda merely softens the edges of the status quo. As Amnesty’s position on the Israeli attacks on Gaza illustrate, pushing human rights can actually be incompatible with obtaining justice. Human rights are a bastardized, neutered, and debased form of justice. The application and effectiveness of international law is bad enough, but a pick and choose legal framework with no enforcement is even worse. If one seeks justice, then it is best to avoid the human rights discourse; above all, it is best to avoid human rights organizations.

Palestinians should be wary of Mother Teresas peddling human rights snake oil. In exchange for giving up their resistance and complying with AI’s norms, it is not likely that Palestinians will obtain a pixel of justice. One should be wary of human rights groups that don’t push for justice, play the role of Israel’s lawyer, and are bereft of solidarity with the victims. When the likes of AI come wagging their finger, it is best to keep the old blunderbuss near at hand.