Five years after Japan’s nuclear disaster, TEPCO executives charged

Ben McGrath

In the lead up to the fifth anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, three former Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) executives were indicted late last month over their role in the meltdown of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant.

Tsunehisa Katsumata, TEPCO chairman during the accident, and Sakae Muto and Ichiro Takekuro, both former heads of the company’s nuclear division, have all been charged with negligence. It is the first time anyone has been indicted over the nuclear disaster. While the limited charges are largely to deflect continuing public anger, they have been opposed by the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Three out of six nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant went into meltdown after being hit by a tsunami caused by a magnitude-9 earthquake on March 11, 2011. From the outset there has been a conscious and ongoing effort to cover up the gross negligence of the company and the government.

TEPCO only admitted last month that it had known that a meltdown had occurred but waited two months before making the information public. Widespread confusion marked the evacuation process in 2011 and is believed to have caused the deaths of at least 44 people, mostly hospital patients or residents in nursing homes.

In 2008, three years before the disaster, an internal TEPCO document predicted that a 15.7-meter high tsunami could potentially strike the Fukushima plant. These warnings were ignored. TEPCO, the fourth largest power company in the world, did nothing to increase the height of its existing 10-meter seawall, which proved completely inadequate when the 14-meter tsunami struck the plant in 2011.

The government has consistently attempted to protect TEPCO, which has a long record history of covering up safety incidents.

Prosecutors initially declined to bring any charges against TEPCO officials making it likely that the three executives will only receive a slap on the wrist if they are found guilty at all. The three face up to five years’ jail or can pay a paltry fine of one million yen ($8,800). The trial is not likely to start for at least six months.

Ruiko Muto of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Plaintiffs Group told the media, “This is a relief for the tens of thousands of victims who are still dealing with hardships and anguish.”

Muto’s citizen group was formed to review the prosecutors’ decision after they initially refused to press charges against the TEPCO officials. Under Japanese law, citizen groups can demand such a review.

After the first group’s demand for charges against TEPCO officials was rejected, a second body, known as a Committee of Inquest for Prosecution, was formed. It reached similar conclusions but once again no charges were filed. Another committee was established to demand indictments and while rare, its decision is binding on prosecutors.

The culpability of TEPCO and Japanese governments, present and past, is beyond doubt. A report by the Japanese parliament’s Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC) in 2012 stated that there was a “cozy relationship between the operators, regulators and academic scholars” that “prioritized the interests of their organizations over the public’s safety.”

Over 15,000 people were killed in the earthquake and tsunami in northern Japan. While no deaths have been directly linked to the release of radiation from the reactors, there are widespread concerns that health problems may emerge in the future. It is also unclear what impact the disaster will have on the environment. Greenpeace Japan has stated in a recent report that it had found high concentrations of radiation in new leaves and mutations in fir trees and butterflies.

Five years since the disaster, water continues to flow into the stricken TEPCO plant where it becomes contaminated with radioactivity. The radioactive water is being pumped into tanks with more than 1,000 tanks now full and the number growing. TEPCO has stated that it may take 40 years to complete the complex decommissioning of the reactors and clean-up.

More than 160,000 people were forced to evacuate the area following the Fukushima meltdown and about 59,000 people continue to live in barrack-style temporary homes. While the government has built some public housing, 7 percent of the homes built in the three prefectures of Fukushima, Iwate and Miyagi remain empty, highlighting the refusal of the government to adequately meet the needs of the victims. High rents have prevented some of those in temporary housing from moving.

Nuclear plants in Japan are being brought back online in defiance of public opinion polls which regularly indicate that a majority of those surveyed oppose the use of nuclear power.

Two reactors were restarted last August and October respectively at the Sendai nuclear plant in Kagoshima Prefecture by the Kyushu Electric Power Company. The Sendai plant is just 50 kilometres from the Mount Sakurajima volcano, which erupted on February 5. Kyushu Electric Power management said there was no impact from the eruption and the company would not be taking any special precautions.

In January, Kansai Electric Power Company activated its No. 3 reactor, followed by its No. 4 reactor in late February, at the Takahama plant in Fukui Prefecture. The No. 4 reactor, however, has experienced operating problems on two occasions and has been shut down. Contaminated water was found leaking during tests on February 20. It was reactivated on February 26 but shut down suddenly three days later. The exact cause is still not known.

While these issues continue to fuel popular hostility to nuclear power, the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) is attempting to capitalise on this by placing the blame solely on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Naoto Kan, the DPJ prime minister at the time of the nuclear disaster, pleaded ignorance during a recent interview with the Telegraph. “There was so little precise information coming in,” he cynically told the British newspaper. “It was very difficult to make clear judgments. I don’t consider myself a nuclear expert, but I did study physics at university.”

Kan’s immediate goal is to deflect criticism over the DPJ government’s behavior during the disaster ahead of this summer’s election for the upper house of the Japanese Diet. He criticized Abe’s government for “closing its eyes” to the lessons of the disaster, and warned of the potential for a second, claiming that his previous support for nuclear power had changed “180 degrees.”

The ongoing attempts of Japanese governments to protect TEPCO over the Fukushima disaster are another demonstration that the drive for profits takes precedence over the health and safety of millions of ordinary people.

As the World Socialist Web Site explained in “Nuclear power, private ownership and the profit system” published on March 24 2011, “The problem is not nuclear power per se, but the social and economic order under which it is developed.

“So long as nuclear power remains the province of private corporations and the market, the health of the environment and the safety of humankind will be subordinated to the drive for profit and enrichment of executives and big shareholders. Only under public ownership and democratic control by the working population—i.e., under socialism—is the safe harnessing and development of nuclear power conceivable.”

Steel workers strike in Mexico

Rafael Azul

On Saturday March 5, more than 3,500 workers at the ArcelorMittal (AM) steel plant in the port city of Lázaro Cárdenas in Michoacán, México went on strike against the world’s largest steelmaker. The workers rallied at the Miners Monument, marched to the plant, and set up a picket line to protest summary dismissals and other violations of their contract. There are also reports that workers are engaged in a plant occupation.

Last year 300 workers were laid off from the coke facility at the plant. The strikers are demanding their rehiring and the reopening of the sheet steel facility, where over one thousand workers were sacked in 2014.

ArcelorMittal management released a statement declaring the walkout illegal and calling for three-party talks between management, the union and the administration of President Peña Nieto. The workers are members of the National Miners, Metal and Steel workers Union (SNTMMSRM). The Labor Ministry (STPS) issued a statement, saying, “With respect to the occupation of the AM Mill, the STPS calls on the National Miners, Metal and Steelworkers Union (SNTMMSRM) to take the road of negotiations and respect for the law.”

The STPS has a history of intervening on the side of big business to make strikes illegal, or “inexistent,” in the language of Mexican legislation. It has happened repeatedly, both under National Action Party governments (PAN) as well as under PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) administrations. In some cases dubious interpretations of Mexican law have been rubberstamped by the Labor Ministry to justify mass layoffs and other attacks on Mexican miners.

AM and a Mexican firm, the Villacero Group, benefited from the 1991 privatization of the state-owned Sicarsa steel mill, at fire sale prices. The government of president Raúl Salinas justified the give away price (USD 170 million, a fraction of its yearly revenues) declaring that the firm required an investment of USD 2 billion to modernize. Far from modernizing the mill, the new owners allowed it to continue to deteriorate.

In 2006, AM absorbed Villacero’s half, following the events of jueves negro(Black Thursday). On April 20, 800 federal police officers violently invaded the plant to expel 500 workers who had been occupying it for nearly three weeks. They killed two workers and wounded 41.

Last March, AM threatened to close the mill and lay off thousands of workers. At the time, the SNTMMSRM bureaucracy argued against a strike claiming they could keep the layoffs to a minimum. SNTMMSRM again stood in the way of the strike last July insisting that it was necessary to aid management as it faced critical competition in the Mexican market from Chinese steel. The union sided with the company’s economic nationalism, claiming China was dumping steel products at below market prices.

The Lázaro Cárdenas mill, the largest in Mexico, employs 7,000 workers. ArcelorMittal, a Luxemburg-based transnational corporation headed by Indian billionaire steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, operates in 27 countries and has a work force of 320,000.

In parallel with the negotiations with ArcelorMittal México, the company is also negotiating with the United Steelworkers union (USW) in the US, which has forced 13,000 AM workers in the US to work without a contract since last September. The USW has offered massive concessions to the steelmaker, in line with the sellout agreements it has imposed on workers at US Steel and specialty steelmaker Allegheny Technologies (ATI). At the same time, the USW has pledged to strengthen its “partnership” with US Steel and AM by pushing a virulently nationalist campaign for tariffs against steel from China, Russia, Japan, Brazil and other countries.

Mass layoffs at Bombardier hit Germany

Dietmar Henning

In mid-February, Canadian aerospace and train manufacturer Bombardier announced around 7,000 global job cuts in the coming two years, approximately 10 percent of its worldwide workforce. Of these, 3,200 jobs will be eliminated in the train division, which has its headquarters in Berlin.

The specific details of the international layoff plans have been announced over the last week. Several days ago, the 5,500 Bombardier employees in Belfast, Northern Ireland, involved in the production of aircraft wings were informed that 1,080 jobs would be lost. The largest number of lay-offs will take place in Canada, where 2,400 positions are to go in Quebec and an additional 430 in Ontario.

The 1,430 job cuts announced in Germany by Bombardier will chiefly impact its three plants in eastern Germany: Hennigsdorf near Berlin, as well as Görlitz and Bautzen on the Polish and Czech borders.

As many as 700 jobs will be shed in Görlitz, where 2,800 workers are currently employed, and 230 in Bautzen, which has a workforce of 1,200. The approximately 1,000 workers at the two neighboring plants are temporary contract workers who will be affected most of all by the lay-offs.

In Hennigsdorf, 270 jobs will be cut, including 70 contract workers. Currently, 2,850 workers are employed there, making it the company’s largest German location.

The remaining 230 job cuts are distributed across Bombardier’s five sites in western Germany: Kassel, Frankfurt, Mannheim, Braunschweig and Siegen. According to company spokesman Andreas Dienemann, the company’s headquarters in Berlin will not escape layoffs, Tagespiegel reported. Around 600 workers are employed there.

When the Hennigsdorf workers were informed about the lay-off plans at a special employees’ meeting, around 1,000 workers protested against the job cuts in front of the factory gates.

While workers have reacted with surprise and anger, the works council and IG Metall trade union are already collaborating with company management to work out the details of the lay-offs. Bombardier’s Dienemann said that the job cuts would be implemented by the end of 2017 in line with a so-called social agreement. To this end, talks had been initiated with the works council to negotiate a plan.

Central works council chair Michael Wobst claimed that the timetable for commencing talks on a social plan was “totally unclear.” At the same time, he said the works council feared the ending of production at Hennigsdorf and the retention of only development work and a small prototype production facility. An additional several hundred jobs were at risk. “Details about the planned measures have to be presented in full,” he demanded.

Wobst’s claim that he is not fully informed lacks all credibility. He knows very well about the planned measures. He is, after all, deputy chairman of the supervisory board. On this body, he sits alongside the investor representatives as well as the heads of the works councils from each location: Jürgen Runge (Mannheim), Gerd Kaczmarek (Bautzen), Jürgen Korstian (Siegen) and Erhard Peter (Kassel). For IG Metall, two representatives from the Berlin-Brandenburg-Saxony district sit on the supervisory board: district head Olivier Höbel and Anne Karl, trade union secretary for student work, employees and engineering.

IG Metall and the works council’s claims of surprise are not genuine, but rather part of a deliberate double-game. The contrived outrage and calls for a few symbolic protests are aimed at concealing the fact that the works councils, IG Metall officials and company management are collaborating intimately to enforce the lay-offs with as little opposition as possible.

At the beginning of a joint meeting of IG Metall and the central works council last Friday, several trade union officials announced plans for major actions. “The planned job cuts are from our point of view a short-term smash-and-grab operation which is definitely not necessary,” said Jan Otto, IG Metall chief for eastern Saxony. “We are not going to accept it lying down.”

After the conference in Schönefeld (Dahme-Spreewald), things sounded very different. “The lack of a concept from management is becoming an existential threat to the sites in the east and west,” IG Metall district leader Höbel stated in the manner of a co-manager.

The works council and IG Metall consider that management failures are to blame for Bombardier Transport’s poor finances. The company was criticised again for outsourcing some production to low-wage locations, where “quality of work [is] lower.” “Over the course of years, we have pointed out the mistakes from our point of view,” said Bautzen’s works council chair Kaczmarek.

Höbel demanded negotiations with the employer’s side after the conference. According to Dienemann, these have already begun.

The works councils and IG Metall have received backing from local SPD and Left Party politicians. Stefan Brangs (SPD), state secretary for labour in the state economic ministry in Saxony, spoke of a shock for the region. Brangs was sent to the eastern region after 1989 by the public sector and transport union (ÖTV), subsequently the united services union ver.di, first to Leipzig and then Dresden.

In 2001, he became ver.di spokesman in Saxony, and from 2004 he sat in Saxony’s state parliament for the SPD. Since 2006, he has also been a member of the SPD’s Saxony state executive. In December 2014, he moved from parliament into the state ministry of economy, labour and transport. He called for conducting talks with the company, stating, “We expect Bombardier to provide a sustainable future concept for the company.” But this is precisely what Bombardier is working on. From the standpoint of the internationally active corporation, the lay-offs are absolutely unavoidable if it is to remain “secure for the future,” a euphemism for maintaining competitiveness.

Mirko Schultze, Left Party state parliament member for Görlitz, expressed his disappointment for workers at the Görlitz plant and in the region. It was now necessary to try everything “together with IG Metall” to either avoid the cuts or at least “make them in as socially responsible a manner as possible.”

From Diegfried Dainege, the mayor of Görlitz, he demanded a “clear recognition of the workforce’s position.” Prior to taking over the mayoral post at Görlitz city hall in 2012 with the support of the Greens, CDU and the free market FDP, he was a Bombardier manager at the Görlitz facility.

Dainege is a typical example of the transformation of Stalinist bureaucrats. He began working as an engineer at WEB carriage construction in Görlitz in 1979, while at the same time joining the Stalinist state party (SED) and assuming several leading regional positions.

During the reintroduction of capitalism in the GDR in 1990, he was head of production and rose to become director of production (1995) and general manager (1998) for Bombardier Transportation, which took over the remnants of the East German train manufacturing industry. In 2010, he switched to the company’s head office in Berlin, serving for two years as general manager, “Head of Operations Performance Management & Production Technology.”

If the works council and IG Metall now claim to have developed a “plan of action,” which is to commence with nationwide protests at Bombardier sites on March 17, this has only one goal: a means is to be created to allow the justifiably outraged workforce to let off steam, while enforcing the lay-offs and diverting attention away from the close collaboration between IG Metall, the works council and company management.

Behind the scenes, the works council and IG Metall have long reached an agreement with management to facilitate the job cuts. All that is now being negotiated are the conditions and course of action.

IMF issues new warning on global economy

Nick Beams

The International Monetary Fund warned this week of a further weakening of the global economy following the release of figures showing a significant decline in Chinese and global trade.

In a major speech to the National Association for Business Economics in Washington on Tuesday, the first deputy managing director of the IMF, David Lipton, said that it was “most disconcerting” that the rise in “risk aversion” was leading to a “sharp retrenchment in global capital and trade flows.”

He noted that emerging markets experienced a capital outflow of $200 billion last year compared to a net inflow of $125 billion in 2014. “Trade flows meanwhile are being dragged down by weak export and import growth in large emerging markets such as China, as well as Russia and Brazil, which have been under considerable stress,” he said.

Lipton made his remarks following the release of data showing that Chinese exports experienced their biggest contraction since 2009. It was another sign that, far from the world economy being on the road to “recovery,” global demand is continuing to fall.

Chinese exports in February were down by 25.4 percent in dollar terms from a year earlier, after falling by 11.2 percent in January, while imports declined by 13.8 percent, after dropping by 18.8 percent in January. While the figures may have been somewhat distorted because of issues related to the lunar New Year holiday, the combined January and February falls add up to a marked decline over the previous year, and no one is expecting the March data to show any improvement.

The Chinese results are the latest in a series of reports showing a decline in world trade, especially over the past two years, as a result of intensifying recessionary trends. In the years before the financial meltdown, world trade grew at about twice the rate of growth for the world economy. Since 2011, it has been in line with or even below that figure.

Last year, the value of global trade fell by 13.8 percent in dollar terms, the first contraction since 2009. Figures released last week for the US, the world’s largest economy, show the same trend as the second largest economy, China. US exports fell by 2.1 percent, while imports were down by 1.3 percent. The value of goods exports from the US was the lowest since February 2011.

Lipton concluded his speech by repeating the official mantra that “global economic recovery continues.” However, everything that came before showed the opposite to be the case.

“The IMF’s latest reading of the global economy shows once again a weakening baseline,” he said. “Moreover, risks have increased further, with volatile financial markets and low commodity prices creating fresh concerns about the health of the global economy.”

These concerns were being fed by the “perception that in many economies policymakers have run out of ammunition or lost the resolve to deploy it.” Repeating the call issued by the IMF prior to the recent G20 meeting in Shanghai, he said it was “imperative that advanced and developing countries dispel this dangerous notion by reviving the bold spirit of action and cooperation that characterized the early years of the recovery effort.”

He claimed the G20 meeting had recognized that the global economy remained too weak and had provided “some reassurance that countries stand ready to act if necessary.” In fact, such are the divisions within the G20 that proposals for cooperation did not even make it onto the agenda of the meeting. As a number of media reports noted, the gathering was characterised by the efforts of every country to blame every other country for the worsening situation.

Lipton pointed both to what he called “unresolved legacies” and the “emergence of new risks.” In many parts of Europe, government and private debt remained high, as well as banks’ non-performing loans. In the US, unfilled infrastructure needs “diminish economic prospects,” while in Japan, “deflation is putting the recovery at risk.”

On top of these “legacies,” new risks had developed. “The global economic slowdown is hurting bank balance sheets and financing conditions have tightened considerably,” he warned. “In emerging markets, excess capacity is being unwound through sharp declines in capital spending, while rising private debt, often denominated in foreign currency, is increasing risks to banks and sovereign [government] balance sheets.”

Lipton pointed out that the decline in stock market indices for this year implied a loss of market capitalization of more than $6 trillion, equivalent to about half the total losses incurred in the most acute phase of the 2008 financial crisis. While the decline on a global scale was 6 percent, some markets had experienced losses of 20 percent.

He warned that protracted low global demand coupled with financial turbulence created the risk of “negative feedback loops” between the real economy and markets, generating deflation and “secular stagnation”—a situation where the level of savings permanently outstrips the demand for investment funds.

In other words, low global demand, in large measure the result of low investment, leads to financial volatility, which in turn leads to reductions in investment, further lowering demand.

Lipton said commodity exporters had to recognise that commodity prices “may well be permanently lower.” This assessment has also been made by Goldman Sachs, one of the largest banks operating in commodity markets. In a series of reports issued this week, it said the recent spike in prices was likely to be temporary, and the 20-month decline had further to run before supply was cut and markets rebalanced.

Lipton repeated the now obligatory statement from the world’s major economic institutions that the lessons of history had to be learned and zero-sum policies, in which one country attempts to alleviate its position at the expense of others, had to be eschewed, because in the long run, they made all countries worse off.

One of the chief mechanisms of such zero-sum games is competitive currency devaluation. But such measures are being intensified, not reduced. While all central banks insist that their quantitative easing programs, through which they pump money into the financial system, together with negative interest rates are not aimed at lowering the value of their currency, this is their effect.

Following the decision by the Bank of Japan to introduce negative interest rates at the end of January, a further step in this direction is expected today when the European Central Bank governing council meets. It is widely forecast to extend its quantitative easing program and take interest rates further into negative territory, exacerbating the tensions in financial markets.

The Hillary Clinton emails: A record of imperialist crimes

Tom Hall

Last Monday, the US State Department published the last batch of declassified emails from a private, unsecured server used by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during her tenure as secretary of state. This latest release draws to a close a year-long review by US intelligence agencies of 52,000 pages of Clinton emails, ostensibly motivated by concerns over possible leaks of classified material.

To date, more than 30,000 emails dating from Clinton’s four-year tenure as secretary of state have been released to the public. Clinton played a central role in the prosecution of aggressive wars in Afghanistan, Syria and Libya as well as the carrying out of drone assassinations and other illegal actions in a number of additional countries, including Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Yet in its extensive reporting of the email scandal, the American media has virtually ignored the actual content of these emails, which contain a wealth of information about the day-to-day functioning of the Clinton State Department.

A review of even a small sampling of the emails, which are available on the State Department’s web site, reveals the reason why: the emails are a damning indictment of the criminal activities of not only Hillary Clinton herself, but the entire imperialist state apparatus, with the corporate-controlled media in tow. The emails could easily serve as evidence in future war crimes trials of Clinton and other top US officials.

One particularly revealing email from 2010, cited by the Intercept web site but not picked up by the national media, recounts the experiences of former ambassador Joseph Wilson (whose CIA agent wife Valerie Plame was outed by the Bush administration in retaliation for his criticisms of the war in Iraq) during a recent trip to Iraq in his capacity as an executive for a US engineering firm. The Obama administration, elected by exploiting mass anti-war sentiment, continued the US occupation of Iraq for three years during Obama’s first term in office, when Clinton was secretary of state, prolonging a conflict that claimed more than 1 million lives. Since then, US troops have returned to Iraq, ostensibly to fight ISIS, as part of the US war for regime-change in neighboring Syria.

Wilson’s email begins: “My trip to Baghdad (September 6-11) has left me slack jawed. I have struggled to find the correct historical analogy to describe a vibrant, historically important Middle Eastern city being slowly bled to death. Berlin and Dresden in World War II were devastated, but they and their populations were not subjected to seven years of occupation.”

Describing the rampant racism and sadism among US occupation troops, Wilson writes, “Shirts with mushroom clouds [for sale at a gift shop on a US military base at the Baghdad airport] conveyed the Baghdad weather as 32,000 degrees and partly cloudy. Others referred to Arabs as camel jockeys and those were the least offensive… The service people don’t see themselves there to bring peace, light, joy or even democracy to Iraq. They are there to kill the ‘camel jockeys.’”

Hundreds more emails deal with the US-led proxy war in Libya, in which Clinton played a leading role. As a recent series of articles in the New York Times confirmed, Clinton was the leading advocate in the White House for the clandestine arming of “rebel” militias comprised largely of Islamic fundamentalists, which comprised the main fighting force against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi.

One email from February 2011, written by a veteran diplomat before the launching of the US-NATO war that ended with the murder of Gaddafi, lays out proposals for the construction of a future “post-Gaddafi” political order in Libya. The memo recommends the use of the United Nations to lend political legitimacy to the imperialist carve-up of the country.

“A UN ‘hat’ for multinational/international assistance efforts could be effective,” the author states bluntly. However, the extensive involvement of Italy, whose participation in the war marked a return to the scene of its bloody colonial occupation, should, the author recommends, be “kept relatively low-profile.” Another email chain discusses how to disburse the tens of billions of dollars of frozen Libyan assets stolen by the imperialist powers during the regime-change operation.

Many other emails concern the organization and coordination of the Obama administration's drone assassination program, which has killed thousands in Afghanistan and Pakistan alone. “Twenty-two of the emails on Mrs. Clinton’s server have now been classified as ‘top secret’ at the demand of the CIA because they discuss the program to hunt and kill terrorist suspects using drone strikes, as well as other intelligence operations and sources,” the New York Times noted two weeks ago, prior to the latest release. “The emails [also] contain direct and indirect references to secret programs,” the newspaper added obliquely.

One such secret program was the bribing of high-ranking officials in the Afghan government by the CIA. “[The US embassy in Afghanistan's] line has been and will be the standard approach--that we refrain from comment on stories discussing intelligence matters,” one embassy official writes in a 2010 email, in response to an impending New York Times story revealing that Muhammad Zia Salehi, head of the Afghan National Security Council, was on the CIA payroll. Later reports by the Times revealed that former President Hamid Karzai for years received shopping bags full of cash from the CIA on a regular basis.

Dozens of emails document the collusion between the corporate-controlled media and the State Department in containing the fallout from the release of US diplomatic cables by Wikileaks. In one 2010 exchange, Washington Postwriter Craig Whitlock reaches out to the State Department to request “a mechanism to receive [the] State [Department's] input” before running a series of articles based on cables revealing the existence of a secret US drone base in the Seychelles Islands, off the coast of Somalia.

The exchange demonstrates that the major newspapers, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, provided the State Department with advance printed copies of every cable about which they planned to write, along with drafts to the White House, to be redacted or censored at their discretion. In a conversation between Whitlock’s State Department handlers, they note approvingly that the practice “was extremely helpful in preparing our redaction requests, as well as anticipating what damage control we’d need to do in diplomatic channels.” Another email describes an editorial by the Washington Post calling for the prosecution of Wikileaks editor Julian Assange and Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning as “helpful,” adding, “We’ll try and get pickup in [the] international media.”

Clinton also received hundreds of emails via her private server from Sidney Blumenthal, a former advisor in the Bill Clinton administration, who served as the head of Hillary’s 2008 presidential campaign. Blumenthal, then an employee of the Clinton Family Foundation, functioned as a de facto backchannel intelligence gatherer and advisor for Clinton, despite not officially being a member of her staff. It was Blumenthal’s 2015 testimony to the House Select Committee on Benghazi, the Republican-controlled body set up for the purpose of torpedoing the likely presidential run of Clinton, which revealed the existence of Clinton’s private email server.

Blumenthal sent Clinton a wide array of intelligence reports from foreign countries targeted by US imperialism. In one email, he passes on concerns that Islamist militias in Libya might retaliate against the assassination of Osama bin Laden, using weapons obtained from the United States. In another, he recounts the furtive dealings between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian military to smother the Egyptian revolution, writing that the two will “continue to work together secretly in an effort to establish a stable government” and create “a secure environment throughout the country” for investment.

In another email, Blumenthal advises Clinton on how to orchestrate the cover-up of the circumstances surrounding the assassination of bin Laden in a cross-border raid into Pakistan by US Special Forces. As a report by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh later made clear, the official version of bin Laden’s death was a collection of lies from start to finish.

“Show [the pictures of bin Laden’s body] to members of Congress in a special secure room, something like when members were permitted to view Abu Ghraib pictures,” Blumenthal writes. “Each of them will emerge speaking to the national and local press on what they have seen… Having members of Congress testify to the reality of the photos will suppress any potential ‘Deather’ movement, that the administration has either fabricated the event or suppressed some aspect of it.”

What the ultimate outcome of the Clinton email scandal will be is not yet clear. An FBI criminal investigation into the emails is ongoing, with signs that the case might be headed to a grand jury. On Wednesday, a former employee of Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, Bryan Pagliano, who set up the private email server in Clinton’s home, was granted immunity by federal investigators as part of the investigation.

Leaked Australian document reveals plans for mass surveillance of immigrants

Max Newman

A document leaked last month revealed that the Australian government is preparing an extensive build-up of spying and anti-democratic measures aimed against immigrants from working class backgrounds. While few details were contained in the document, it sets out what can only be described as a police-state framework of mass surveillance.

Once again, the government is exploiting escalating scare campaigns globally and in Australia about terrorism to overturn fundamental legal and democratic rights. It is bringing forward a blueprint for continuous monitoring of immigrants and more severe citizenship tests to block access to the basic democratic rights of permanent residence and citizenship.

The document, obtained by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) “Lateline” program, reports a series of recommendations to the national security committee of cabinet following a meeting last November. The final plan is due to be unveiled by Immigration and Border Protection Minister Peter Dutton in the first half of this year.

One key recommendation is to change the visa system in order to “remove direct access to permanent residence” and “better align visa and citizenship decision-making with national security and community protection outcomes.”

This proposal would further strip working class immigrants of the right to become citizens. Under the Australian Citizenship Act, people seeking citizenship must have lived in the country for four years and have had permanent residency for at least 12 months.

The government has already removed access to citizenship for any refugees who succeed in reaching Australia. They are granted only Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs), which deny them permanent residency, and also bar them from bringing their family members, even their spouses and children, to Australia.

The leaked recommendations indicate an expansion of this draconian regime to any refugees selected by the government from overseas or those granted humanitarian visas to enter Australia, and possibly to wider layers of immigrants.

The document also calls for an “enforceable integration framework” by revamping the “Citizenship Test and Citizenship Pledge to strengthen accountability for commitments made at Citizenship conferral.” These measures are designed to further restrict access to citizenship and justify new powers to revoke citizenships, thus stripping individuals of fundamental democratic rights of residence, voting and access to health, education and welfare services.

Following the still-unexplained 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US, the Howard Liberal-National government, supported by the Labor Party, imposed a new citizenship test. It forced applicants to answer 30 written questions, all in English, on Australian “values,” history and society.

As well as requiring people to identify with “values” defined by the government, the test was designed to discriminate against non-English speaking migrants and poorer immigrants who could not afford thousands of dollars for English lessons.

The legislation gave the government enhanced powers to deny citizenship, and basic democratic rights that come with it, to anyone who was regarded as being not of “good character” or who received an adverse security assessment by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the domestic spy agency. This gave governments and ASIO wide scope to bar citizenship to anyone regarded as a political threat to the ruling establishment.

These mechanisms were taken further when the Australian Citizenship (Allegiance to Australia) Act was introduced last December, again with bipartisan support. This legislation hands the government the power to strip citizenship from any dual citizen by ministerial decree on the basis of allegations of involvement in terrorism, fighting for a foreign force or other offences.

The leaked document proposes stricter “security checks” on the intake of 12,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees that the government promised last September as millions of people fled the devastating wars instigated by the US and its allies, including Australia, in the Middle East. The government’s commitment was only made reluctantly, amid an outpouring of public support for the refugees.

According to the document, the security checks must exceed “those put in place by European countries to manage the irregular movement of people across continental Europe.” The screening regime imposed by the government is already so severe that only 26 Syrian refugees had been settled in Australia by last month.

The document recommends that “these additional screening criteria be applied to the entire Humanitarian Program,” thus extending the assessments conducted by ASIO to every person seeking a humanitarian visa.

Going further, the document proposes a “visa risk assessment tool that establishes an intelligence-led threat identification and risk profiling capability incorporating immigration as well as national security and criminality risk for visa applicants.”

This would require “enhanced access, use and protection of sensitive information to strengthen intelligence-led, risk-based decision making across the continuum, from pre-visa stage through to post-citizenship conferral.” This proposal is tantamount to a monitoring system for all visa holders for their entire lives, even after they become citizens.

The pretext for this surveillance is the threat of terrorism and “Australia’s potential exposure to the risks posed by extremism and radicalisation of migrants, including humanitarian entrants.” The document cites last year’s terrorist attacks in Paris and “social unrest” in Cologne—both highly dubious events that have been seized upon by media outlets and governments around the world to ramp up police powers and anti-refugee xenophobia.

Likewise, the document invokes two equally doubtful events in Australia—the 2014 Sydney cafe siege and the police killing of Abdul Numan Haider, an Afghani teenager, in Melbourne, Victoria—to justify placing all immigrant families under surveillance.

Without providing details, the document advocates measures that enhance “social cohesion” to reduce the “risk of radicalisation.” It refers to an “extremist landscape” in Australia that has been “significantly influenced by our refugee intake and subsequent related migration from relatives and spouses (chain migration).” In other government documents, references to “radicalisation” and “extremism” have gone far beyond terrorism to include left-wing, environmental and anti-capitalist activism.

In a particularly inflammatory and xenophobic section, the document states: “The most prominent ethnic group amongst Australian Sunni extremists are the Lebanese.” It asserts that the majority of these extremist “cohorts” were from the refugee intake during the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war “as well as their extended families and Australia-born descendants.”

As well as pointing to ethnic and religious profiling, the document calls for the tighter selection of immigrants on “an economic basis”—that is, on their capacity to be profitably exploited by employers and the corporate elite more generally.

In the name of “social cohesion” the document disparages family reunion immigration and claims better “integration” by “Skill stream migrants” who are better equipped with the “three E’s”: “English language proficiency, education and employment.”

Once it was leaked, Immigration Minister Dutton denied seeing the cabinet document. Nevertheless, he confirmed its thrust. He insisted that the government would be “tough in terms of the screening processes” because “this is a very serious time for our country, for Western democracies ... people will pretend to be refugees when they’re not.”

Labor leader Bill Shorten said nothing about the content of the document, instead criticising the government as “disturbingly” leak-prone on “national security.” Labor’s shadow immigration minister Richard Marles echoed Shorten’s comments, while saying the document “verges dangerously down the path of putting in place a discriminatory immigration policy.”

In truth, the document’s recommendations are completely in line with the regressive agenda pioneered by the Labor Party, which first introduced the mandatory detention of refugees in 1992 and reopened the offshore detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island in 2012. Labor has also voted for the barrage of anti-terrorism and citizenship legislation, overturning basic democratic rights.

Refugees face disastrous conditions in Greece

Katerina Selin

As European governments move to seal their external borders, tens of thousands of refugees fleeing to Europe are trapped in Greece, leading to a rapidly escalating humanitarian catastrophe. Each day hundreds of refugees risk the dangerous journey from their war-torn countries in the Middle East via Turkey and the Mediterranean to Greece. Most of them are trying to get to Western Europe via the Balkan route. In late February, the Macedonian government closed its border to Greece for the transit of refugees. Since then, the number of refugees in Greece has risen to over 30,000. According to the Greek state television ERT, last Thursday there were some 25,000 refugees on the Greek mainland and nearly 7,000 on the Aegean islands.

Idomeni

Thousands of exhausted people face desperate conditions at the border, in the hope they may soon be able to continue their journey north. Idomeni in the Kilkis region has been transformed from a tiny village of 154 inhabitants into a giant refugee camp. Meanwhile, over 13,000 people are camping in a field near the border fence and the railway tracks. Every day, hundreds more refugees arrive from other regions of Greece.

News station ERT has broadcast shocking images of the conditions faced by the refugees. Families from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries have been living for almost two weeks in temporarily shelters. Nearly half are women and children.

There is a shortage of food and basic consumer goods. The refugees have already consumed all the food and used up the money they had brought with them on their hazardous journey, and are now dependent on local aid organisations. A seventeen-year-old boy who had fled with his younger brother from Afghanistan told ERT that they had spent 8,000 euros for the trip and were now destitute.

Every day, refugees stand in long queues to get sandwiches. Volunteers complain that the food rations are not enough to feed everyone. Long queues also form outside the temporary toilet blocks.

In the Greek daily To Vima, the spokeswoman for the MSF refugee mission, Vika Markolefa, warns against the danger of epidemics, “We are very concerned about the health situation. Since there are not enough toilets and showers, many people are forced to go in the fields. When it rains, faeces spreads everywhere. This is particularly tragic for children, who are always playing on the ground. We fear the outbreak of an epidemic that could spread through the water.”

During the day, refugees try to keep away the cold by making fires using everything they can get their hands on, including wood, waste, and plastic. On Thursday night, it began to rain without pause. The wet and cold make the already horrible conditions in Idomeni even worse. There are not enough tents to go round. That evening, about 1,600 people were forced to sleep in the open in the rain, as temperatures dipped below 10 degrees Centigrade. The ground has turned into a mud pit. Even the tents no longer offer protection from the wet, so more and more children fall ill. The new, dry tents being erected over the next few days do not offer enough space for everyone.

About 5,000 more refugees have found a place in temporary shelters that were set up in the former military barracks at the nearby villages of Cherso and Nea Kavala. Two more accommodation facilities are to be set up in the villages of Drosato and Kentriko in the Kilkis region.

Anger and despair are spreading among the refugees. At a protest last Monday, refugees broke through the border fence and were brutally repulsed by the Macedonian military using tear gas. On Thursday morning, there was another demonstration in Idomeni. Protesters sat down on the railway tracks, calling out in English, “Open the borders,” and blocked the onward journey of a freight train. Many held up their children and carried homemade posters saying “Help us” and “Freedom.”

The Macedonian government opens the border for just a short time each day, permitting only a small number of refugees to enter its territory. According to the Greek newspaper Ethnos, only 320 people were able to pass through in the 24 hours before Friday evening. The refugees are at the mercy of the bureaucratic harassment of border guards. During the arduous passport control process many are rejected for lack of correct documents or inaccuracies in names and birth dates.

After Monday’s protests, the Macedonian government massively increased its security measures at the border town of Gevgelija. Hundreds of soldiers, police officers and police dogs were mobilised to deter the helpless and unarmed refugees. These forces are being used to extend the border fence, and have deployed additional water cannons to repress any potential protests. Macedonian helicopters also fly over the area. According to Spiegel Online, several of the Central and Eastern European Visegrad countries have also sent police officers and advisors to the Macedonian border.

Aegean islands and Piraeus

Amid these disasterous conditions, refugees continue to arrive in Greece every day. In the Aegean islands of Lesbos, Chios and Samos, several ferries and ships remain in port and are being used as emergency shelters.

In recent weeks, the Greek Armed Forces have erected four huge concentration camps, called “hotspots,” on the islands of Lesbos, Samos, Chios and Leros. According to recent figures, almost 3,000 refugees are accommodated there. Many have suffered traumatic experiences and are physically weak. A fourteen-month-old baby from Syria died last Wednesday night at the hospital on Lesbos from severe shortness of breath. The infant had arrived that day with its mother after crossing from Turkey to Greece.

Most of the refugees are carried by ships from the Aegean Islands to the port of Piraeus in Athens. On Thursday alone, more than 1,000 refugees arrived in the port, including many families with small children, for whom there is little accommodation. They sit and sleep in the harbour waiting rooms or are driven in buses to the train station, from which they depart to Athens.

Currently, about 2,000 people are in Piraeus. Some registration tents have now been established.

Doctors are on duty, bringing medicines and undertaking vaccinations to prevent the spread of disease. At least 16 children have been hospitalised with high fever.

Reception centre in Elliniko

In mid-December of last year, the government had begun to set up a camp at the former airport in the Athens suburb of Elliniko. Since the airport was shut down in 2001, the site has mainly been used for sports events such as the 2004 Summer Olympics. In winter, the hockey stadium was opened up for refugees. In February, the Greek army erected about 150 ten-person tents in the baseball stadium. Some 4,000 people are now housed in the two stadiums and at the old airport.

Families sleep on the floor and go to nearby beaches to bathe themselves and their children, to brush their teeth and wash their clothes in the icy sea water. “We have no washrooms,” a young man told ALPHA TV. “There are also no staff to clean the toilets. The stench is unbearable and many people are sick. There are no doctors.”

In Elliniko camp on Thursday, several Afghan refugees protested against the border closures. Women and children sat on the street and held banners reading, “Please open the borders,” “Let us go,” and “European Union: why racism?”

Victoria Square in Athens

Hundreds of refugees who have travelled on from the port of Piraeus to the centre of Athens are stuck on Victoria Square in the north of the city. Afghan families, who are denied the onward journey via the Balkan route, sleep here on the asphalt, scantily wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags. Many children are sick. All around, mountains of garbage have accumulated. In the trees on the middle of the square, refugees have hung cardboard signs demanding, “We want justice,” and ask, “Where are our human rights? We want open borders to Macedonia.”

Volunteers from the charity “Praxis” and the Red Cross deliver medicine, food and water. Every day, residents come to assist the refugees. A pensioner regularly shares out hot soup.

As in Germany and other European countries, a wave of solidarity has engulfed the whole of Greek society, which has itself been plunged into crisis and poverty by the EU’s incessant austerity measures.

In Piraeus and Athens, many volunteers support the care of refugees. From the capital and other parts of Greece, people come with clothing and home-cooked food. The “Network for Social Solidarity” organised a huge collection campaign of necessities for refugees. On its Facebook page, more than 7,800 people had promised help by Friday afternoon.

“While the presence of citizens [at Piraeus port] is impressive, the city authorities are noticeable by their absence,” the newspaper To Vima noted on Wednesday. Volunteers complain that the volunteers are not being coordinated, there are hardly any state representatives on site and the daily needs of refugees are not being assessed. The entire task of organisation is almost entirely in the hands of volunteers.

The Greek authorities are seeking to hinder the refugees’ onward journey to the border. An employee of MSF told the British Independent newspaper that travel agencies on the islands of Lesbos and Leros had been instructed by the authorities not to sell tickets to refugees. The number of ferry or hydrofoil crossings has been cut and some of the buses in Athens, for which refugees had already bought tickets to Idomeni, are not operating.

The appalling conditions in Greece are the direct result of the entire inhumane refugee policy of the European Union, which is based on closing borders and deportations. The government of the pseudo-left Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left) is working closely with the German government to conclude a deal with Turkey to keep refugees from coming to Greece.

Like Turkey, Greece plays the role of border guard for Fortress in Europe due to its strategic position on the Mediterranean. The government of Alexis Tsipras has massively deployed the military to coordinate refugee policy, thus strengthening the status of the military apparatus within the state.

The ministry of defence is headed by the right-wing populist Panos Kammenos of the Independent Greeks (ANEL). His deputy, Dimitris Vitsas (Syriza), is now taking over the management of the newly-created “coordination centre for managing the refugee crisis,” in which several ministries are represented.

Amid growing class antagonisms in Greece, the bourgeois parties in Greece are closing ranks. It is significant that Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias has explicitly defended his coalition partners and stated that ANEL politicians should not be called right-wing because they too had shown humanity and solidarity to refugees. ANEL is a right-wing split-off from the conservative New Democracy, and is notorious throughout Greece for its xenophobic chauvinism and connections to the extreme right-wing milieu, particularly in the police and the armed forces.

The pseudo-left Syriza has betrayed all its electoral promises and offered itself to the European institutions as the force that could best implement a comprehensive austerity programme against the working class. Now it is taking the same path in relation to refugee policy. It is participating in the NATO mission in the Aegean and acts as the right hand of the EU in sealing off Europe against thousands of people fleeing war and misery.

Bank for International Settlements warns of build-up of global debt

Nick Beams

The governing council of the European Central Bank (ECB) will meet this Thursday where it is expected to expand its quantitative easing program through an extension of its asset-purchasing program and possibly lower interest rates further into negative territory.

But there are growing doubts about the efficacy of these policies amid ongoing euro zone deflation and worries that they are dangerously backfiring.

Since ECB president Mario Draghi promised in 2012 to “do whatever it takes,” the ECB has pumped billions of euros into the financial system without halting deflation or stimulating the real economy. Its only impact has been to fuel further speculation in financial markets.

In a note issued Monday, the chief economist at Société Générale, Michala Marcussen, summed up the general sentiment in financial markets. She expected a further cut in the deposit rate and an extension of long-term refinancing operations and added: “Our main concern is that, whilst the bank will continue to signal its willingness to do whatever it takes, its ability to provide further significant stimulus is becoming more limited.”

There are growing concerns that, not only is the policy ineffective, it is creating the conditions for a further financial crisis. In its quarterly review issued on Sunday, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), sometimes referred to as the central bankers’ bank but whose main role is an informational service, noted that the “uneasy calm,” to which it had pointed in December, had “given way to turbulence.”

Introducing the review, Claudio Borio, the head of monetary and economic research, said previously the BIS had highlighted that “the tension between the markets’ tranquillity and underlying economic vulnerabilities had to be resolved at some point. In the recent quarter, we may have been witnessing the beginning of its resolution.”

Borio then reviewed the two most significant developments of the past three months. First, there was the stock market turbulence in January when equities experienced one of their worst starts to the year in history. This was followed by the “briefer but perhaps more worrying episode in the first half of February” which focused on the “health of global banks” as their valuations plunged to new lows. The “main source of anxiety,” especially after the Bank of Japan’s decision to shift to negative interest rates at the end of January, was “the vision of a future with even lower interest rates, well beyond the horizon, that would cripple banks’ margins, profitability and resilience.”

A research paper published as part of the review warned it was difficult to predict how individuals and financial institutions would operate if interest rates stayed below zero for a long period of time and whether the mechanisms by which central bank moves are transmitted to the rest of the economy would “continue to operate as in the past.”

So far the banks had not passed on the cost or negative interest rates, under which they are charged for money deposited with the central bank, and it is by no means certain what the long-term consequences would be. “The viability of the banks’ business model as financial intermediaries may be brought into question,” the review said.

Pointing to a “certain composure” that had returned to markets since the turbulence of the first two months, Borio said it was necessary to look beyond the markets’ oscillations between hope and fear to the “deeper forces at work.”

“Once we do so, the clues are not hard to find. Against the backdrop of a long-term, crisis-exacerbated decline in productivity growth, the stock of global debt has continued to rise and the room for policy manoeuvre has continued to narrow,” he said.

In other words, while debt has continued to mount, the underlying economy has grown very slowly and in some cases stagnated. In the euro zone, for example, output is still yet to return to the levels reached prior to the 2008 crisis, while investment, which is the driving force of real growth, remains at around 25 percent below its previous trend.

According to Borio, debt was at the root of the events of 2008 and since then it had continued to grow in relation to global gross domestic product. Dollar-denominated debt to emerging market economies has played a prominent role, doubling from 2009 to some $3.3 trillion. Now there was evidence it was being reduced with the emergence of a “worrying vicious cycle between US dollar appreciation and tightening financial conditions for firms or countries that have heavily borrowed in dollars.”

Summing up the significance of financial market turbulence, he said “we may not be seeing isolated bolts from the blue but the signs of a gathering storm that has been building for a long time.” The report indicated that “central banks have been overburdened for far too long” and the confidence of financial institutions “in central banks’ healing powers—probably for the first time—has been faltering.”

The latest analysis of the BIS, which has been a long-time critic of the rationale behind quantitative easing—that problems resulting from the growth of debt can be alleviated by creating still more debt—underscores the bankruptcy of all bourgeois policy in the face of the deepening contradictions of the global capitalist order.

The quantitative easing program has done nothing to promote economic growth. Its main consequence has been to transfer untold wealth into the hands of the parasitic financial elites, worsening the social conditions of the working class and widening social inequality, while at the same time creating the conditions for another financial meltdown.

But the program advanced by its critics in the BIS—the purging of debt and the intensification of attacks on the working class through so-called “structural reforms”—amounts to nothing less than a prescription for a return to the conditions of the 1930s.

This political and economic fact of life has far-reaching implications for the international working class. It increasingly demonstrates that it is confronted not with a conjunctural downturn, from which there will be some “recovery,” by one or another means, but a breakdown of the entire capitalist economic order, for which it must advance its own solution based on an active political struggle for an international socialist program.

US airstrike massacres 150 at al-Shabaab training camp in Somalia

Joseph Kishore

US military airstrikes launched in Somalia over the weekend killed more than 150 people. The attack took place at what the US Pentagon yesterday said was an al-Shabaab training camp about 120 miles north of the country’s capital, Mogadishu.

The strikes mark a significant escalation of US operations in the Horn of Africa, a region that borders the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a critical oil passageway that links the Mediterranean and the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean.

The airstrikes, carried out on Saturday against the Al Qaeda-affiliated group that controls parts of northern Somalia, are the deadliest in Africa in years. Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook asserted without providing evidence that the targets were graduating from the Raso training camp and posed an “imminent threat” to the US and US-backed African military forces in Somalia.

The Pentagon also claimed that there were no civilian casualties, though it would categorize anyone at the location as by definition a terrorist or military target. Those killed, according to an official cited by the New York Times, were “standing outside in formation” when a combination of drones and manned airplanes destroyed the camp and killed almost everyone present.

The Pentagon said that it had been monitoring the camp for weeks prior to the strike.

The attack on the training camp follows a years-long campaign of drone strikes in the impoverished North African country targeting individual leaders of al-Shabaab. In December of last year, a drone strike assassinated what the US said was one of the organization’s leaders, Abdirahman Sandhere, and two other individuals.

The strikes against the training camp indicate that the Obama administration is expanding its undeclared war in the Horn of Africa, aimed at bolstering the position of the corrupt regime of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, based in Mogadishu. In recent months, al-Shabaab has carried out a series of attacks on Somali forces and those of a coalition of African countries that is backing the government with the support of the US.

Al-Shabaab has also carried out a number of terrorist attacks, including a January 22 suicide bombing and shootout at a restaurant in Mogadishu that killed 25 people.

While implemented under the framework of the “war on terror,” the main interests of the US in the region lie in Somalia’s geostrategic location. The country’s northern coast lies along the Gulf of Aden, which connects the Red Sea to the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. On the other side of the Gulf of Aden lies Yemen, where the US has backed a brutal Saudi-led bombing campaign that began in the spring of last year.

Just to the northwest of Somalia lies Djibouti, where the US has its only permanent military base in Africa, Camp Lemonnier, the center of its drone operations throughout the continent. The water pathway between Djibouti and Yemen, known as the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, is listed by the US Energy Information Association as one of the major global oil transit choke points. Some 3.8 billion barrels of oil and petroleum products were transported through the strait in 2013, including much of the oil exported from the Persian Gulf to Europe and the US.

More broadly, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait is a key access point to the Indian Ocean, which now includes the most significant global trade routes, connecting Europe and the Middle East to Asia, including China.

In addition to the US, Britain has also taken a recent interest in the region, announcing last October that it was sending hundreds of troops to Somalia and South Sudan.

In their determination to retain control of the Horn of Africa, the major imperialist powers have stoked a series of civil wars and internal conflicts between different tribal and national factions. The population has been left to destitute poverty. Somalia, which has a population of more than 10 million people, has a gross domestic product per capita of just $112 and a life expectancy of 52 years. Some 1.1 million people are internally displaced.

Al-Shabaab itself arose out of factions of the Islamic Courts Union, which gained control of Mogadishu in 2006 after 15 years of civil warfare, before being toppled at the end of the year by an Ethiopian invasion orchestrated by the US. In 2007, the US backed the formation of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), comprised of about 22,000 troops from Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Ethiopia and Djibouti.

After al-Shabaab launched an offensive against Mogadishu in 2010, AMISOM forces, again backed by the US, responded with a campaign that eventually drove the organization out of the capital and from the southern portions of the country. This was followed by regular drone strikes targeting the organization’s leaders.

The operations in Somalia are part of a broader escalation throughout northern Africa, overseen by the US military’s Africa Command and aimed largely at countering the growing influence of China on the continent. In recent months, the Obama administration has announced the deployment of troops and Special Operations forces to both Cameroon and Mali, and the US and European powers are also preparing for a major military escalation in Libya.

Conflict to Co-existence: Debating Heritage and Homogenisation

Asanga Abeyagoonasekera

“From amidst the Samanola’s montane rings

And sprawling glades there serenely springs

The Lotus-the Buddha’s Sacred Feet,

Ushering Loving-kindness wide, in surfeit

This is our heritage and birth-right

And our eternal Guiding Light”  

- Mahagama Sekara

translated by Prof Vini Vitharana

The singing of the Sri Lankan national anthem in both Sinhala and Tamil at Sri Lanka’s 68th national independence day elicited much discussion. Introducing the singing of the national anthem in Tamil was a sign of reconciliation. However, this led also led to hurt sentiments in certain sections of society.

Despite the criticism, the operatic version of Danno Budunge Opera version gained much popularity; with Youtube hits of more than seventy three thousand - an earlier version by Nanda Malini stands at eleven thousand hits.

One should also remember that the internationally reputed musician James Ross who has conducted over 950 works also played this beautiful song at the Nelum Pokuna Theater, which was breathtaking to most in the audience. This author was fortunate to meet Ross a day before his performance, when he explained the beauty of this song and that he would play with much respect. Kishani Jayasinghe who sang the operatic version did perform well in her own sphere, however, this author feels that this particular song should by sung or played with a resemblance to the traditional culture which is unique to Sri Lanka. This is because the soul of the song revolves around Buddha, Dhamma and the sacred Anuradhapura, the heart of Buddhism.

What is unique must be preserved. This includes the cultural mythology of a nation that to an extent still stands as the reference point to Sri Lankan identity. Anything global is often seen as a homogenisation of the local, and the tension with rising globalisation is the collision between what is considered global versus what is local. Preserving local culture is a challenge for many nations nowadays. The cultural fabric of Sri Lanka, which is closely knit with village temple, irrigational water tank and the mythology is far more embedded than newer movements emboldened through modern slogans.

Mythology derived from the Greek word ‘Mythos’ meaning the story, which is significant from earlier socialisation to shape cultural values and behaviour. What exists should be preserved as it is, and the great poet Mahagama Sekara paints the picture of this birth right clearly. This message must permeate to all levels, including Sri Lankan youth.

The youth bulge in South Asia is an asset for countries but unfortunately has not fully tapped in the field of economic development. The youth population below 30 years is around two-thirds of the global population. Last week, Sri Lanka witnessed a massive youth demonstration by degree-holders in Colombo demanding jobs from the government. The protest had to be aborted forcefully by the police using water cannons and tear gas. At the same time, within the city of Colombo, Young Global Leaders, a youth group of the World Economic Forum discussed solutions to many issues including providing a better future for the youth in South Asia.

According to the World Bank’s latest report, more than 40 per cent of the population lives on less than Rs. 225 a day. This is a very low figure, which needs serious attention from the government. A top priority of policy-shapers should be creating better living conditions for the less privileged of society. While the affluent of society including ministers can afford to fly to Singapore for medical treatment and higher education, not many ordinary citizens can afford the same health care or education - it is therefore important to provide first class services within the country.

In a move to introduce positive reform to increase women’s representation in political office by 25 per cent for the forthcoming local government elections, Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe managed to get the relevant bill passed with much criticism from many parliamentarians. It is a great deed and a move towards women’s engagement in decision-making, which is required. President Paul Kagame of Rwanda is an example of bringing more women to his cabinet and parliament to recognise the importance of women’s representation in Rwanda. Rwanda has achieved an impressive level of gender equality; no country in the world has a larger percentage of women in its parliament than Rwanda - more than 50 per cent. Going further in amending the constitution to support women, representation-setting limits should not have less than 30 per cent in cabinet with 64 per cent of people in parliament being women. 42 per cent are in the judiciary with women mayors and women ministers.

In Sri Lanka, the number of female MPs stands at 5.6 per cent, which is less than 15 of the 225 members of the House - among the lowest in South Asia. This is an important area for improvement in Sri Lanka which has more than 40,000 war widows and many other women involved directly in economic activity.