The political issues in the Verizon strike

Barry Grey

The strike by 39,000 workers against the US telecom giant Verizon is a powerful expression of the growing mood of militancy and opposition to the corporate and political establishment among workers throughout the United States and internationally. It coincides with a wildcat strike by air traffic controllers in Belgium and mass protests by workers and youth in France against austerity and attacks on job security, as well as growing strikes and working class protests across Asia, Africa and Latin America.

It follows the strike by US oil refinery workers last year and the massive resistance of auto workers to the sellout contracts imposed by the United Auto Workers at General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler, which included the first rejection by the rank-and-file of a Big Three auto contract in more than 30 years.

After working for eight months without a contract, the installers, customer service employees, technicians and repairmen in Verizon’s landline division are determined to oppose the company’s demands for new concessions that will further slash jobs, reduce pension and health benefits, and enable the company to transfer workers to distant locations for months at a time. The company, which is taking in $1.8 billion in profits per month, is demanding a cap on pensions for older workers, further shifting of health costs to employees and more expansive outsourcing of jobs.

Verizon is prepared to proceed ruthlessly against the strikers. On the eve of the walkout, the president of the company’s wireline network division noted that management had trained thousands of non-union workers as strikebreakers and moved staff to other locations to maintain operations. “Let’s make it clear,” he said, “we are ready for a strike.”

Earlier this week, Verizon sent a threatening email to all employees saying, “It is important that everyone understand what conduct the Company and the unions agreed would constitute just cause for discharge.” In the four-month strike in 1989 against Verizon’s predecessor company, NYNEX, striker Gerry Horgan was killed when a scab truck driver ran him over on the picket line.

Workers can place no confidence in the Communications Workers of America (CWA) or the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) to counter the attacks of management and carry through a serious struggle. They have collaborated with the company for decades in imposing job cuts and concessions, including the establishment of a two-tier system in which newly hired workers receive no pension and have no job protection. Since their betrayal of the strike in 2000, in which the unions sent the majority of strikers back to work while the walkout was still in progress, the workforce has been slashed by 40 percent.

In 2011, the unions called off a strike after only two weeks without obtaining a new contract or any agreement by the company to withdraw its $1 billion in concessions demands or any amnesty for workers victimized by management in the course of the walkout. More than a year later, they pushed through a sellout deal that imposed most of the take-aways demanded by Verizon.

The Obama administration’s Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) intervened to help impose that pro-company agreement on the workers. On Tuesday, Verizon said the FMCS had offered to intervene once again.

The preoccupation of the unions is to gain access to the company’s expanding wireless division, which is largely non-union, and pressure the company to expand its optic fiber cable operations. To obtain a new source of dues revenue, they are prepared to offer up the wages, benefits and working conditions of their members. A press release posted on the CWA web site Tuesday makes no mention of the company’s demands for new concessions on pensions and health benefits.

The unions combine corporatist collusion with the company and the promotion of economic nationalism and protectionism. The CWA and IBEW focus their anti-Verizon rhetoric on its outsourcing of jobs to the Philippines, Mexico and other low-wage countries. This serves to divide the working class and pit Verizon workers against their class brothers and sisters in other countries. At the same time, it provides the framework for the imposition of ever more draconian concessions, carried out in the name of boosting corporate competitiveness. The logic of this reactionary policy is a fratricidal race to the bottom between different sections of workers.

Verizon is a massive corporation that operates on a global scale. Its Enterprise Solutions division supports services in 75 countries and has a global IP network that reaches more than 150 countries. The notion that American workers can fight the company in isolation from and in opposition to workers in other countries is utterly bankrupt.

Instead of turning to the Obama administration and Democratic politicians such as Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, as pushed by the unions, Verizon workers need to turn out broadly to the working class and youth across the US and to their fellow workers in Mexico, the Philippines and internationally.

The unions enforce the subordination of the workers to the profiteering and cost-cutting of the corporations through their political alliance with the big business Democratic Party. The CWA, which has endorsed the campaign of Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination, timed the strike for the run-up to next Tuesday’s critical New York primary. It coordinated the walkout with the Sanders campaign, allowing the self-described “democratic socialist” to make an appearance on a Brooklyn picket line and promote his anti-Wall Street credentials. The CWA further instructed picketers to attend a Sanders rally Wednesday night in Manhattan.

In the Democratic primary campaign, Sanders is the most vociferous advocate of protectionist and trade war policies, echoing the America-first nationalism of the trade union bureaucracy. The Verizon unions are seeking, by means of his campaign, to corral the seething anger and militancy of the workers back into the dead-end of the Democratic Party, which has worked, no less than the Republicans, to destroy the living standards of US workers and further enrich the corporate and financial elite.

While they make noises in opposition to the company’s demand for further cutbacks in workers’ health benefits, the unions say nothing about the fact that the basis for Verizon’s demands is the need to conform to the 40 percent “Cadillac tax” on supposedly overly generous health insurance plans included in Obama’s misnamed Affordable Care Act.

Hillary Clinton’s statement of support for the Verizon strikers on Tuesday is completely cynical and hypocritical. She and her husband have taken tens of millions in bribes from Wall Street and the corporate elite since leaving the White House, parlaying their years in power to gain access to the financial aristocracy. While in power, moreover, Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that paved the way for the wave of mergers and consolidations out of which Verizon emerged as a telecom colossus.

Verizon workers need to reject the policies of the unions and break their organizational control of the strike. They should elect rank-and-file committees of action to organize a turn out to broader sections of the working class and youth and to telecom workers internationally.

This must be combined with a new political strategy—the building of an independent political movement of the working class armed with a genuine socialist program, including the nationalization of the banks and major corporations and their transformation into public utilities under the democratic control of working people.

Modi in Saudi Arabia: Consolidating Ties in West Asia

Ranjit Gupta


Some contextual background is essential to properly appreciate the significance of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 02-03 April 2016 Saudi Arabia visit.

Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have had a particularly special one-of-a-kind relationship since the beginning of the 1970s, the nature of which has no similarity with any other bilateral relationship in the world. Given this reality, there was little or no scope for India to develop any meaningful relationship with Saudi Arabia at its initiative. Something had to happen to impel Riyadh to look beyond Islamabad to New Delhi towards developing bilateral relations grounded in mutual benefit and advantage, consciously skirting the Pakistani factor.

Over the past decade, Pakistan has increasingly degenerated into terrorism-infused instability. 2015 in particular witnessed deep strains in the special Riyadh-Islamabad bilateral. This was due to a very public and emphatic rejection of Saudi requests for Pakistani troops towards the former's military involvement in Yemen, as well as the latter's ambivalence towards the Saudi-created Sunni Islamic alliance.

On the other hand, over the same period, India’s economy has been growing strongly and it was being courted by countries around the world. In terms of purchasing power parity, India is now the world’s third-largest economy, and credible international entities and analysts are predicting that India could become the third-largest economy in absolute terms by 2030 and even the largest, by 2050.

Energy is key for this to happen and sooner rather than later, India will need to import up to 90 per cent for its growing oil and gas requirements. Most of this will come from the Gulf region. Since 2005, Saudi Arabia has been India's largest oil supplier. Oil producers are facing enormous competition to maintain market share. India offers Saudi Arabia an assured, large and growing market in closer geographical proximity, and logistically the most hassle free destination than any other customer. Saudi Arabia has been India’s fourth largest trading partner for some years now with bilateral trade having increased by an incredible nine times in the past decade. India’s trade with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries has witnessed the fastest growth rate in comparison to its trade any other region.

8 million Indians live and work in the GCC countries, the largest expatriate group by far in each of the six GCC countries. There are over three million Indians in Saudi Arabia, making the Indian community there the largest Indian passport-holding population in any country in the world.

Anticipating such developments, the visionary King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia had chosen India as the second country to visit after ascending the throne. Saudi kings do not personally sign joint statements with foreign leaders. In 2006, however, in a very special gesture, he signed the 'New Delhi Declaration' with former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi, and later, the 'Riyadh Declaration' in 2010, when Singh paid a return visit to Riyadh. It is worth noting that the King spent almost four days in India - compared to a little less than two days in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia’s particularly special friend. There was nothing remotely comparable to the ‘Delhi Declaration’ in the mundane agreements that were signed with Pakistan.

An MoU on defence cooperation was signed in 2014 when King Salman as the Crown Prince had visited India.

A particularly welcome feature has been the excellent and expanding anti-terrorism cooperation extended by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the best that India receives world-wide. The US and Saudi Arabia jointly imposed sanctions on individuals linked to Pakistan's Lashkar-e-Taiba on the very eve of Modi's visit. It may be recalled that in 2012, Riyadh repatriated Abu Jundal and Fasih Mohamed to India. The issue of terrorism features particularly prominently in the April 2016 Joint Statement.

Additionally, there exist no bilaterally contentious issues. The 2006 Delhi Declaration, the 2010 Riyadh Declaration, the 2014 MoU on Defence Cooperation, and the 2016 Joint Statement issued at the end of Prime Minister Modi’s visit are documents that deserve to be read very carefully. They lay out in great detail the multi-dimensional nature of the evolving bilateral relationship between Saudi Arabia and India. The Joint Statement commends “the successful transformation of bilateral relationship in political, economic, security, defence, manpower and people to people exchanges, in recent years, which have enriched bilateral ties,” placing particularly heavy emphasis on defence, security and counter terrorism cooperation in all its multifarious dimensions.

Significantly, “the two leaders agreed to transform the buyer-seller relationship in the energy-sector to one of deeper partnership focusing on investment and joint ventures in petrochemical complexes, and cooperation in joint exploration in India, Saudi Arabia and in third countries…(and underlined) .. the importance of energy security as a key pillar of the strategic partnership.” After meeting, Prime Minister Khalid Al Falih, Chairman, ARAMCO Board, said it looks at India as “its most preferred investment destination."

All this becomes even more noteworthy because India and Saudi Arabia/UAE have sharply different perceptions regarding current conflicts in West Asia; both sides have very consciously prevented these differences coming in the way of continuing to upgrade the already excellent bilateral relations. The New Delhi-Riyadh bilateral is no longer hostage to any other relationship that either may have with any third country.

In the context of current circumstances, that India has 180 million Muslims - the third largest in the world and the least radicalised - is an extremely positive factor that cannot be ignored by any West Asian country. Hopefully, Prime Minister Modi will pay early visits to Iran and Israel too.

In fact, with the possible exception of China, no country in the world has simultaneously excellent bilateral relations with Iran, Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and the UAE as India has. All these countries are in West Asia and are India’s best bilateral relationships (excepting Bhutan) in the world despite the fact that, overall, West Asia is going through its worst ever period in its long blood soaked history.

Greece Loses its Soul

Robert Hunziker

The soul of Greece has flown away, zipping past Mount Olympus, gone.

The negotiating position of Greece à la Troika has gone from bad to worse to much worse, as suffocation of the body politic is well underway. The politicians of Greece have become pliable pawns in the hands of the all-powerful European Troika.

It’s all about saving the Banks, saving the Creditors. The people, well, they don’t count for much “they’re nothing more than numbers,” maybe worse. Plastic bureaucrats see it that way.

Zoe Konstantopoulou, a Greek lawyer and former Speaker of the Hellenic Parliament, recently (April) discussed the issues at Spanish website, tmex.es, explaining the complete loss of democracy and the governing body, a country subject to “dictates to oblivion.”

Indeed, the irony of this sordid affaire takes one’s breath away, as Greece first introduced the world to “demokratia,” or “rule by the people” in 507 B.C., the seedbed of democracy. Nowadays, Greece is a protectorate, a subject state.

According to Zoe K, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras betrayed the people by caving into the seductress of power instead of enforcing the welfare of his people by not negotiating state debt, even though he had evidence of illegality and unsustainability of Greece’s debt. If true as represented by Ms. Konstantopoulou, this is reprehensible at the very least. And, at best, it calls for a major modification of Troika memoranda in favor of the people, including some debt forgiveness, thereby not lopsidedly favoring only creditors and banks.

“The Greek people have been living through hell during the last six years, and unfortunately they trusted that Tsipras would put an end to the extreme austerity measures, which are combined with a total undemocratic regime. Unfortunately, instead of putting an end, he put his signature to a third memorandum, which is even worse than the previous two… People are back on the streets protesting for their rights and dignity because right now they’re being asked to pay taxes which amount to almost the totality of their revenue. They’re asked to give up their homes… They’re asked to surrender public property, which is privatized at very, very low prices. And, they’re also asked to give up democracy” (Zoe K).

Economic totalitarianism hits Greece with a thud.

“Back in the summer we had what equals an act of war, a direct threat to the survival of the population. The banks were closed and the people were threatened with a humanitarian disaster if they rejected the measures, which were put on the table by the Creditors with a 48-hour ultimatum. Humanitarian disaster means the people would not be able to have food or medicine. This is an unacceptable situation for Europe… the direct result of decisions by representatives of European institutions. My approach is that this is complete illegal criminal behavior….” (Zoe K).

Henceforward, the Greek parliament is a rubber stamp for the European Troika, voting on hundreds of pages of legislation in less than a day, forced to pass whatever creditors submit or be forced into bankruptcy, horrible choices alongside chewing nails.

In the summer of 2015 the Greek parliament was instructed to abolish all laws that were passed without prior approval of creditors. Thereafter, parliament did approve laws once again, but only as “drafted by creditors.” Fascinatingly, these same laws were rejected by the citizens of Greece some months previously by a 62% No vote.

Ergo, Greece should trash, throw out, annihilate voting machines and/or voting booths. They don’t count anymore!

European institutions from afar, i.e., the European Commission in Brussels, without legitimate authority over the country are “asking governments to sacrifice the people, in order to save the markets, and save the banks” (Zoe K). Americans have direct first-hand experience with these gimmicks, e.g., the years 2008-09. It’s called “bend over and spread’em,” you’re about to join jolly derriere fraternity. Over time, you’ll (have to) learn to like it!

Dreadfully, the struggle is not isolated to Greece alone, maybe all Europe is losing its soul: “There is a clear rise of Nazi parties, fascists parties all around Europe, and there is a clear rise of racism all around Europe. And, this is a direct result of the policies chosen, of the policies followed by the European governments. These are policies of xenophobia. These are policies of alienation from the principles that humanity has built through the years” (Zoe K).

“But, luckily, and happily, the people are not surrendering. They’re back in the streets. They’re claiming their rights. They’re claiming their dignity” (Zoe K).

The streets of Greece recurrently experience rioting, which has now morphed into the Necktie Movement, as lawyers, notaries, insurers, and engineers join in street protests (Source: Skirmishes in Athens as General Strike Sweeps Greece, AFP and Yahoo! News, Feb. 4, 2016).

Not only do Greece’s professional classes join in marches that include tossing Molotov cocktails at police, there are also splinter groups of protestors that oppose giving away state assets, for example, one group of protestors marched behind a banner written in Chinese, opposing the imminent sale of the Pireaus Port Authority to Chinese shipping giant COSCO.

Port of Piraeus is one of the largest seaports in Europe and the world. It has served as the port of Athens since ancient times. The sale, effective April 2016, for €280.5 million for 51% and another 16% for €88 million after five years to COSCO is part of the Greek creditors’ demands to secure a third €86 billion bailout package. This sale goes against PM Tsipras’ pre-election promise not to privatize the country’s infrastructure. “This is not a concession, it’s a giveaway of property belonging to the Greek people,” claims Constantinos Tsourakis, a worker at the port (Source: Greece Sells Largest Port Piraeus to Chinese Company, RT, April 8, 2016).

“Greece is Shipping,” its culture, its history, its esprit de corps.

Last August, Athens approved the sale of 14 regional airports to Fraport AG on a 40-year contract worth €1.23 billion.

This is neoliberalism hard at work. It champions privatization of public assets, one of its founding principles, or put another way, when the chips are down and prices at rock bottom, and when the people are looking down in despair, shift state assets to private enterprise. This is a universal principle of neoliberalism. The Chinese understand the neoliberal game and feast upon it.

Given enough time, the neoliberal contingency own everything, confidentially in private forget the public.

Meanwhile, on the streets in Athens, “The strikers are furious at government plans to lower the maximum pension to 2,300 Euros ($2,500) per month from 2,700 Euros currently and introduce a new minimum guaranteed basic pension of 384 Euros. ‘It’s true that the pension system requires reform but this reform cannot make it viable,’ lawyer Thomas Karachristos told AFP. In his case, Karachristos says next year he will be paying 88% of his salary in taxes and pension contributions,” Ibid.

Repeating an obvious protest, in order to meet the demands of the European Troika, citizens like Mr. Karachristos will be forced to pay 88% of their salary in taxes and pension contributions. Thence, white-collar, blue-collar, all colors are protesting in the streets. They’re enraged, fighting mad, livid, a call to arms. Duh!

Ground Zero Is Everywhere

Winslow Myers

The philosopher Krishnamurti once asserted that we are each totally responsible for the whole world. Global climate change, among other issues, has made this provocation seem more and more undeniable. It is impossible to shift elsewhere the responsibility we each bear for our own environmental footprint. There is no way not to make a difference.

The amount of psychic energy that Americans have invested in our current presidential race suggests that citizens feel so weighed down by the burden of our multiple challenges that we invest our preferred candidates with magical powers. We pledge our allegiance to whatever authoritative, or authoritarian, parent figure we assume can best tackle threats too large and amorphous for any one of us to get our arms around.

When Senator Sanders makes it an explicit theme of his campaign that he cannot achieve a political revolution alone, he’s acknowledging a condition of interdependence and shared responsibility that is not only domestic but also global—a new and unavoidable level of civic engagement. While his major issue has been the need for greater citizen involvement in fighting income inequality, other challenges that candidates have addressed more reluctantly also require a different level of participation. More than half a century ago we came within a hairbreadth of annihilation as a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis. To some extent the U.S. and Russia have gradually taken its lessons to heart, with improved communication between their leaders and welcome cutbacks from the grotesque numbers of warheads that had been deployed on both sides.

Now India and Pakistan have chosen to ignore the grave lessons of the Cuban near-disaster of 1962. Unable to resolve a conflict over territory in Kashmir extending back to the partition of the two nations in the late 1940s, a conflict that has already resulted in three wars, Pakistan has deployed tactical nuclear weapons on their border with India. These weapons are under the control not of the head of state, but of local commanders. Should the region slide into a nuclear war and subsequent nuclear winter, it would affect the entire earth. Like it or not, ground zero is now everywhere. “Over there” has become “here.”

Broad anthropological studies and world gatherings of scientists (see the 1986 UNESCO Seville Statement) have asserted that we humans are not doomed by our biology to behave violently. Steven Pinker’s book The Better Angels of Our Nature presents a hopeful spectrum of global trends toward less violence and war. Pinker asserts that the present moment is one of the most peaceful eras in all of history. Sadly, this must still be qualified by the phrase “relatively speaking.” Our dark side certainly shows itself too.

Indeed, a recent issue of the New Yorker carries a riveting report on the heroic efforts of activists to smuggle tons of paper records out of the offices of Assad’s security services, records which document with Nazi-like bureaucratic zeal the horrific war crimes of the Syrian regime. Human cruelty, as the survivors of Assad’s torture chambers attest, can become truly devilish in its creativity. In the South Sudan, tribesmen have been using the rape of children, including infants, as a weapon of war. The sadism of Sudanese soldiers, the keepers of Abu Ghraib, or the Assad functionaries who blowtorch and castrate dissidents testify to the distance we have yet to travel if our small planet is to become a place where each is responsible for all and love really does trump hate.

Torture and rape are unbearable enough, but a nuclear war anywhere could throw billions of people into the misery of worldwide starvation. It is a dangerous illusion to assume that our political leaders and foreign policy experts will magically prevent apocalypse—that the generals on the front lines in Pakistan or anywhere else are sufficiently trained and disciplined never to fall into fatal error. With each further deployment of battlefield nuclear weapons, weapons that the United States and other nuclear powers are also developing, the temptation grows to cross the nuclear threshold. As Lao Tzu said, “if you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” All nations share an interest in stepping back from a catastrophe where any “victory” is a mirage that briefly disguises defeat for all.

One presidential candidate, until he changed his mind after a couple of days of negative feedback, rashly proposed that Japan and South Korea be encouraged to become new members of the nuclear club. And even as President Obama convened an international conference to discuss the sequester of fissile materials against terrorists, he has also quietly agreed to an obscenely expensive long-term renewal of U.S. nuclear weapons systems. Instead, our country could still set an example for India and Pakistan, helping them understand how dangerous it would be if they repeated the same folly into which we drifted during the Missile Crisis of 1962. Setting an example demands that citizens become more engaged with foreign policy, acknowledge that there is good and evil in all of us, and bear the truth that ground zero is everywhere on one small planet.

The Security-Digital Complex

Thibault Hennoton

Most of us know that Silicon Valley, the centre of digital innovation, collaborates with the military: military objectives have always provided an excellent stimulus for research and development. ARPANET, the computer network developed in the 1970s, a forerunner of the Internet, was conceived for strategic purposes and funded by ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency). ARPA, set up in 1958 by President Eisenhower, added Defence to its name (DARPA) in 1972 and now has an annual budget of $3bn to support inventions likely to contribute to national defence.

In the 1960s, public defence contracts helped launch businesses in Silicon Valley. Although public and military subsidies have flowed ever since, most free market entrepreneurs affect not to notice the powerful role of this windfall from the public purse. Between 2013 and 2018, the amount of federal funding allocated just to digital security will increase from $9bn to $11.5bn. Amazon sells secure cloud services to over 600 government agencies and has signed a $600m contract with the CIA. Commercial agreements between public agencies and the private sector go a long way to explaining their collaboration on surveillance. A year after Edward Snowden’s revelations, the National Security Agency’s Anne Neuberger (responsible for the interface between the two worlds, said that even the infrastructure of the NSA was built by commercial companies.

The interface is in fact more like a revolving door: Facebook’s head of security joined the NSA in 2010; Regina Dugan, former director of DARPA, is currently a vice-president at Google; and Mark Penn, a former State Department adviser to Hillary Clinton is now responsible for strategy at Microsoft. Condoleezza Rice is on the Dropbox board; she was also provost of Stanford University, the institution with the closest links to Silicon Valley (Google and Cisco were created there), before she became George W Bush’s secretary of state. Rice was the main witness at the marriage between the (public) defence sector and the (private) technology one. This alliance was consecrated in March by the defence secretary, who was “so grateful” to Eric Schmidt for agreeing to head the Pentagon’s new Defence Innovation Advisory Board: being chairman of Google, he was “the perfect chairman for this.” The digital giants, which have the largest stock market capitalisations in the world, spend ever-growing sums on lobbying the US government and the EU.

DARPA keeps working discreetly to complete this osmosis. It gives millions of dollars in grants to high schools to set up hacker schools under the Manufacturing Experimentation and Outreach programme (MENTOR). It organises computing competitions such as Cyber Grand Challenge, which offers a $2m prize for the developer of the best network defence tool. Through the DARPA Open Catalog, it contributes directly to free software development, including anti-surveillance software such as the well-known anonymous communication program, Tor. Though these investments seem unconnected, or even counter, to military objectives, they ensure the state stays in touch with what is being invented beyond its purlieus.

When a long-term gamble seems too uncertain, the defence agencies still have the option of funding the most promising startups directly. Since 1999 that has been the role of In-Q-Tel, a venture capital fund created by the CIA, whose achievements include the satellite imaging software that lies behind Google Earth, and the data visualisation tool Palantir, now worth $5-8bn. Palantir was founded by one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful investors and free market enthusiasts, Peter Thiel (PayPal, Facebook), and its ability to make sense of a disordered mass of data is highly valued by spies. Among Palantir consultants are former CIA director George Tenet, and Condoleezza Rice.

Since the 1990s, with the rise of the Internet and the globalisation of electronic data, there has been a change in the university-military-industrial complex established in the 20th century, to the detriment of the universities and the benefit of Silicon Valley. In one month in 2015, the Carnegie Mellon robotics lab in Pittsburgh lost 40 employees to Uber . By replacing the universities, the big-data companies have finally achieved the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned of in his farewell speech in 1961: the “permanent armaments industry” that makes public policy “captive of a scientific-technological elite”. Its limits now extend far beyond the military’s traditional subcontractors as sole vendors of digital weaponry. The new security-digital complex is a public-private hybrid that is both narrower and more far-reaching than its predecessor.

The term cybersecurity itself favors such an enlargement, referring to both the security of critical national digital infrastructures (business centres, networks for transport, energy, waste treatment and banking) and the safeguarding of cyberspace against attacks on the security of the state (organisations with subversive aims, Anonymous, data theft).

To put it simply: the state — especially through the NSA — purchases previously undiscovered “zero-day” digital vulnerabilities from cybersecurity companies; then the intelligence agencies report these weaknesses to the management of the big digital corporations, under secret programmes such as Enduring Security Framework. In return, these companies share their knowledge of analysing and scanning personal data. This pooling of resources under government auspices means that genuinely military operations concerning the defence of vital infrastructures drift towards the functions of policing (the surveillance of individuals).

The big digital platforms are not arms dealers, because using them is not in itself lethal. But since the personal data that they handle, once sifted, may lead to the identification of targets and the use of lethal force, they could be said to be in the weapons business.

Libya War, Empire’s Worst Mistake

Farooque Chowdhury

A ruined Libya still lives in the US politics. There’s still no escape from the country devastated with imperialist intervention. It was, as is claimed, a failure in planning. But is it a failure in planning or “something” else? The oil-rich land is now reined by anarchy, and actually is not a single country.

Barack Obama, the US president, said, as news agencies reported, the biggest mistake of his presidency was a “lack of planning” for the aftermath of toppling and murdering Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, with the country descending into chaos. Asked in a Fox News interview aired in near-mid-April to cite the “worst mistake” of his presidency, the US president said it was “probably failing to plan for the day after, what I think was the right thing to do, in intervening in Libya” in 2011.

It wasn’t the first time the US president admitted the failure in its intervention in the now war-ravaged country. In a recent profile in The Atlantic, Obama called Libya “a mess”. He blamed, partly, the European coalition led by David Cameron, the British prime minister now tarnished by Panama Papers, for not doing enough. The US leader also put blame on Nicolas Sarkozy, former French leader now sunken in scandal. However, the US president blamed his own analysts for failing to understand the Libya-reality.

There’s an opposite view also. Hillary Clinton cites intervention in Libya as one of her chief accomplishments when she headed the US state department. As secretary of state, she was one of the strongest proponents of the intervention. A leading mainstream US newspaper evaluates the decision to military intervention in Libya as “arguably her moment of greatest influence as secretary of state.”

There’s Hillary’s “famous” pronouncement: “We came, we saw, he died”. Corbett Daly’s report said: “Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shared a laugh with a television news reporter moments after hearing deposed Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi had been killed. ‘We came, we saw, he died,’ she joked when told of news reports of Qaddafi’s death by an aide in between formal interviews.” (“Clinton on Qaddafi: ‘We came, we saw, he died’”, CBS News, October 20, 2011, also CNN, “Hillary Clinton’s real Libya Problem”, June 9, 2015)

Contrasting evaluations, one by Mr. Obama and another by Mrs. Clinton, of the intervention appear. The fact, which is told, appears: Libya intervention was Hillary Clinton’s war. Scott Greer refers to The Washington Post that dubbed Libya-intervention as “Hillary’s war”, and adds: “She was the one who pushed President Obama to agree to enforcing a no-fly-zone that allowed Gaddafi’s opposition to regroup and win the bloody 2011 civil war. She advocated for supplying weapons and military training to rebel forces, some of whom were affiliated with the Islamic militants who later assaulted the US compound in Benghazi.” Scott informs: “Hillary was evidently proud of her work. On the day of the Benghazi attack, she emailed a staffer a note indicating she wanted…a documentary on Libya that celebrated her as a hero.” (“Remembering Libya: Hillary’s Iraq”, The Daily Caller, May 28, 2015)

The long news report by The Washington Post that Scott referred detailed Hillary’s “pivotal role — both within a divided Cabinet and a fragile, assembled-on-the-fly international alliance” in the Libya War. The report quoted Hillary: “[W]e set into motion a policy that was on the right side of history, on the right side of our values, on the right side of our strategic interests in the region.” Citing an administration official it said “she had become a ‘strong advocate’ for US intervention.” The Post report by Joby Warrick cited one US State Department official: “‘This is important to the United States, it’s important to the president, and it’s important to me personally,’ Clinton told Arab leaders”. The Washington Post report said: “Clinton, ignoring the advice of the State Department’s lawyers, convinced Obama to grant full diplomatic recognition to the rebels, a move that allowed the Libyans access to billions of dollars from Gaddafi’s frozen accounts. At a meeting in Istanbul on July 15, she pressed 30 other Western and Arab governments to make the same declaration.” (“Hillary’s war: How conviction replaced skepticism in Libya intervention”, October 30, 2011)

Paul Mirengoff terms it as “the Clinton inspired intervention”:

“More than anyone else, Hillary Clinton pushed for, and helped effectuate, the overthrow of Moammar Qaddafi.

“Clinton’s recently released Benghazi emails confirm … that, in the words of her deputy chief of staff, Hillary was ‘instrumental in securing the authorization [to intervene in Libya], building the coalition [that intervened], and tightening the noose around Qadhafi and his regime.’” (“Clinton’s Benghazi emails confirm her lack of post-intervention plan for Libya”, Powerline, May 29, 2015)

On Hillary’s leadership in Libya intervention, John Hinderaker cites Hillary’s emails released by the US state department and writes:

“It was Hillary who, more than anyone else, pushed to overthrow Moammar Qaddafi.

“Clinton and her cohorts in NATO overthrew Qaddafi ….

“Who says Hillary Clinton is responsible for the Libya fiasco? She does. In fact, at one point she was poised to claim Libya as the notable accomplishment of her term as Secretary of State. In August 2011, Jake Sullivan, Hillary’s deputy chief of staff, wrote an email in which he summarized ‘Secretary Clinton’s leadership on Libya.’ He sent [it to] henchwoman Cheryl Mills and State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, who passed it on to Hillary. Sullivan’s email begins:

[…] it shows S’ [Secretary Clinton’s] leadership/ownership/stewardship of this country’s Libya policy from start to finish.

“The email continues, with bold print in the original:

HRC has been a critical voice on Libya in administration deliberations, at NATO, and in contact group meetings – as well as the public face of the US effort in Libya. She was instrumental in securing the authorization, building the coalition, and tightening the noose around Qadhafi and his regime.

“Sullivan goes on to itemize, day by day, how Clinton drove the Libya policy not just in the US, but in NATO as well. […]

“[S]he [Hillary] bears primary responsibility for a policy that was not just a failure, but a disaster. (“Hillary’s Real Benghazi Problem”, Powerline, May 23, 2015)

“Former US defense secretary Robert Gates also describes her [Hillary Clinton] pivotal role in the decision making in his memoir. The intervention split the administration with vice president Joe Biden and national security adviser Tom Donilon against. “‘In the final phase of the internal debate, Hillary threw her considerable clout behind Rice, Rhodes and Power,’ Gates wrote.” (CNN, “Hillary Clinton’s real Libya Problem”, June 9, 2015) These have been cited in detail in “Libya War: The unknown costs and the indemnified interventionists”, (Farooque Chowdhury, Countercurrents, June 30, 2015) The interventionist drive is public.

Interventionists are not a few individuals. Their well-connected coalition is broad with political-military-business-media-academia coterie. But the questions are: Does a leader or a group of leaders prevail in case of major decision at state/empire level? What’s the condition of the state/empire or its institutions/mechanisms/processes where one leader/politician or a group of leaders/politicians ignores assessment/analysis by those institutions, etc. while they prevail over those? Or, are there some other dynamics and relations, which empower one person or a group of persons to ignore those? Does the reality, which comes to light, signify one or a number of “diseases”?

In a state/empire plans can’t be pushed, decisions can’t be imposed by any individual, even if the individual is empire himself and the state is a monarchy. That planning/work style – individual-pressed – doesn’t bring expected output. It has been adopted on the basis of accumulated experience and handling of interests, which are not always symmetrical. Decisions making processes and institutions and organizations required for feeding the processes have been created to minimize errors and mistakes. Output is not positive whenever the arrangement is ignored.

When the arrangement is ignored? It’s ignored either with an alternative arrangement or in case of a breakdown of the arrangement. Both signify a complicated “disease”, not healthy for any state or any empire. The two US leaders’ – Obama’s and Hillary’s – contradictory position or evaluation of the Libya disaster signal the state of the state considered an imperial power.

Many parts of the interventionists’ story are unexposed. Was there intelligence failure? Was there failure in comprehending the prevailing social reality there in Libya? Was there failure in analysis of parties involved within and outside of Libya? Was there lack of exercise with possible consequences of the intervention? The questions may or may not haunt a commission of enquiry.

Blunders and debacles wait in the wing whenever immediate interests or interests of a group overwhelm collective intelligence, whenever business interests of a group manipulate collective political wisdom, whenever an individual ignores institutional wisdom. The Empire’s Libya War is such a case. The interventionists were driven by, as show the officially released Hillary mails, business interests of a few groups. They overwhelmed and manipulated institutional scholarship, and a political leadership failed to prevent the manipulation. The much discussed Hillary mails expose business-intervention nexus.

It’s – the Empire’s Libya War – not a narrow question only related to Obama’s or Hillary’s role. Role of individual leader, his or her wisdom and prudence depend on state of state mechanism, and broadly a socio-economic reality; and state mechanism is an essential requirement for securing reining interests. A failure there, a blunder here only enhances the state’s perils, and simultaneously shows quality of leadership the reining interests produce/select. It’s fact also in case of other societies. The Empire’s Libya War, one can identify it as a part of its Africa War, thus shows at least a bit of a reality, which still stands as triumphant but in decay.

Saudi onslaught against Yemen continues amid official cease-fire

Thomas Gaist

Fighting continued in Yemen’s southern city of Taiz amid the official start of a UN-brokered truce Monday. Saudi forces carried out airstrikes, and there were artillery exchanges between the Saudi coalition and Houthi militias.

The stillborn ceasefire comes amid what a consortium of aid groups, in a joint plea for expanded international aid to the war-ravaged country, described as a “catastrophic” humanitarian situation.

More than 80 percent of the population now depends on external aid for basic necessities, including food and water, and nearly 3 million Yemenis have been displaced from their homes since the war began in March 2015. The Saudi-led air and ground war has killed some 6,000 Yemenis, including at least 2,000 youths, among them a growing number of child soldiers. Essential social infrastructure and services face “total collapse,” according the UN Children’s Fund.

In developments that speak volumes about the hypocrisy and mendacity of the US “War on Terror” —in the name of which US forces have waged covert warfare across Yemen for more than a decade—Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has taken advantage of the US-backed Saudi war to massively expand its political and economic network across a broad stretch of southern Yemen.

Since the beginning of the year-old war, AQAP acquired “very large quantities of sophisticated and advanced weapons, including shoulder-fired missiles and armed vehicles,” a Yemeni official told Reuters Monday.

“In the security vacuum [following the launch of the war in spring 2015], army bases were looted and Yemen’s south became awash with advanced weaponry. C4 explosive and even anti-aircraft missiles were available to the highest bidder,” Yemeni tribal leaders told Reuters.

AQAP now administers a “thriving fuel smuggling network,” based out of Mukalla and Ash Shihr, southern port cities that were seized by the group amid the chaos produced by the launch of the Saudi-led war.

AQAP leaders are enjoying “obscene, unprecedented wealth and luxury,” with the group reaping between $2-$5 million per day through customs taxes and fuel sales, including sales to government-owned distributors.

“The campaign, backed by the United States, has helped Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to become stronger than at any time since it first emerged almost 20 years ago,” Reuters wrote Monday.

“Al Qaeda in Yemen now openly rules a mini-state with a war chest swollen by an estimated $100 million in looted bank deposits and revenue from running the country’s third largest port,” Reuters said.

So strong has AQAP’s position in the south become that the group is now reportedly demanding tens of millions worth of bribes from Yemen’s major telecommunications companies and national oil corporation.

Already brutally oppressed by imperialism and among the poorest countries in the world, since the start of the Saudi-led war in 2015 Yemen has joined a growing list of Middle Eastern and African countries that have been utterly destroyed and transformed into non-functional societies by US-led wars and proxy wars.

The US military is implicated in horrific war crimes carried out by Saudi forces, including the use of illegal cluster bombs against Yemeni villages, and multiple attacks against crowded civilian marketplaces.

Like Libya and Iraq, Yemen has been targeted by US imperialism and its regional allies due to its strategic value. The US and Saudi Arabia have made clear that they are prepared to employ limitless violence against the tiny nation in an effort to maintain their grip over the crucial waterways of the the Bab el-Mandeb straight.

With close support from Washington, Saudi Arabia called upon a coalition of more than 10 regional states, including United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Sudan and Morocco, to assist in its blood-soaked operations aimed at propping up the Hadi government, which had been imposed by the US and Saudi-controlled GCC during a “democratic transition” process in early 2012.

“Yemen is of major strategic importance to the stability of Saudi Arabia and the Arabian Peninsula,” Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies noted in a report, “The Arab-US Strategic Partnership and the Changing Security Balance in the Gulf.”

The seizure of power by Shia militiamen with alleged links to Iran, Cordesman wrote, “posed the risk that Iran might be able to outflank the Gulf, and deploy air and naval forces into Yemen.”

“Yemen’s territory and islands do play a critical role in the security of a global chokepoint at the southeastern end of the Red Sea called the Bab el Mandab or ‘Gate of Tears,’” Cordesman noted. “Any hostile air or sea presence in Yemen could threaten the entire traffic through the Suez Canal, as well as a daily flow of oil and petroleum products that the EIA estimates increased from 2.9 MMBD in 2009 to 3.8 MMBD in 2013.”

Crucially, at least one-fifth of China’s oil imports flow through Bab el-Mandeb, a fact that prompted Global Risk Analysis to proclaim, at the outset of the war, that “the war in Yemen compromises China’s naval strategy.”

The readiness of US imperialism to back the Saudi assault on Yemen to the hilt ultimately flows in large measure from Washington’s determination to maintain a military stranglehold over a key node in China’s world commercial network, in preparation for confrontation and blockade against Beijing.

French government announces youth grant in bid to halt labor reform protest

Kumaran Ira

Amid continuing protests against the Socialist Party (PS) government and the labor law reform of Labor Minister Myriam El Khomri, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls met with student organisations on Monday. He announced half a billion euros in aid for students in an attempt to defuse opposition to the PS’ austerity agenda among students and youth.

After meeting with unions including UNEF (National Union of French Students), UNL (National Union of High School Students) and FIDL (Independent and Democratic Federation of High School Students), the government announced 11 measures, worth €500 million per year.

They include imposing more taxes on short-term contracts, supposedly to encourage employers to hire workers on permanent contracts; increasing the number of available scholarships; and increasing funding for industrial studies at two-year technical institutes (IUT). After graduation, students would continue to receive financial assistance for four months, as would apprentices.

Valls declared, “Never has so much been done for the youth in our country. Never has a government struggled so much to ensure that the coming generation will be ready to succeed.” He added that these measures were not intended to “smother opposition,” but to “respond to deep concerns which require a long-term response.”

Valls’ remarks are a pack of lies. The proposed measures, even if they were implemented, would not change the deeply reactionary character of the El Khomri Law, which lengthens the work week and allows the trade unions to negotiate firm-level contracts which violate the French Labour Code. If the law is passed, youth entering the work force will find themselves eve rmore exploited, as big business seeks to dismantle the social gains won by the working class in France in the 20th century.

This is why the announcement of the law led to broad popular opposition, with 71 percent of the French people opposing the law in one poll, despite the modification of the initial bill following the outbreak of protests in early March.

When the government announced the El Khomri Law, it hoped that the law will be passed through a negotiation with the unions, as the PS has done with other social cuts under Hollande, relying on the spectacle of talks with the unions to suppress social opposition. However, it met immediately with a broad rejection among youth and workers and sparked explosive anger.

As a result, well aware of the deep discrediting of the pro-austerity PS government among the masses, the trade and student unions rushed to call protests in order keep opposition in the working class and the youth under their suffocating control. There have been five weeks of protests in France, with over 1 million youth and workers protesting on March 31.

The purpose of Valls’ measures is to provide the student unions with an excuse to call off the protests, or to liquidate them into the dead end of a symbolic occupation of a few public squares by the petty-bourgeois #NightOnOurFeet movement.

After the meeting with Valls, student unions have signaled their support to his proposal.

UNEF President William Martinet expressed his “satisfaction” and indicated that he considered Valls’ proposals as a sign that the movement had won a victory: “Because the youth mobilized and raised their heads high, they succeeded in obtaining powerful measures.” He added that after Valls’ proposal, “The forms of mobilization will change.” This is a signal that UNEF will wind down the support it temporarily gave to protests against the bill.

For its party, the UNL also signaled its approval of Valls’ measures, declaring, “This goes in the right direction.”

From the outset, the FAGE, the second-largest university student union, did not oppose the bill, praising the proposal as “really structural measures for the youth.”

The PS-affiliated Young Socialist Movement cynically declared, “These measures, that we salute with great enthusiasm, cannot make us forget our differences with the labor law.”

Their support for Valls’ reactionary proposal shows that the student unions are preparing to sell out protests against the bill. With their backing to gradually wind down further opposition, the PS is plans to pass the bill, by relying on the dip in student protests during the school holidays and exam period. This would allow the student unions to promote the paltry measures they negotiated with the PS government as a victory.

The strategy of the government was clearly laid out in a Le Monde article analyzing President François Hollande’s re-election bid in the 2017 presidential elections. Announcing Hollande’s sudden announcement of a prime-time televised address on Thursday night, the paper stated that the French president “is betting on the exhaustion of the mobilization against the labor law.”

It explained, “The executive relies on different factors to stabilise the head of state. First, the weakening of protests Saturday, against the labor law. Together with conflicts with the security forces, this leads the government to believe that the union opposition is winding down and that it could eventually become, because of the violence, unpopular with public opinion.”

The strategy of the PS and its union and political allies is not so difficult to understand. They are well aware of deep and explosive social opposition to Hollande, France’s most unpopular president since World War II. By avoiding calling out the workers, allowing police to beat and arrest protesting youth, and relying on media slanders of protesters, they aim to demoralize public opinion, demobilise workers and youth, and leave the PS in power.

The union organizations, their political satellites, and groups like #NightOnOurFeet that insist that social opposition does not require a political perspective or a political party, are bankrupt. The critical political issue facing workers and youth is the absence of a clear political perspective and a political party to lead the explosive opposition that exists to the PS in the working class.

The struggle must be taken out of the hands of the trade unions and their student union allies, and develop into a broader struggle of the working class against austerity, war, and the state of emergency, politically and organizationally independent of the union bureaucracies and the PS.

IMF downgrades growth projections, warns of “synchronized slowdown”

Barry Grey

The International Monetary Fund’s “World Economic Outlook” (WEO), released Tuesday in advance of this week’s semiannual meetings in Washington of the IMF and World Bank, gives a gloomy and fraught estimate of the state of the world economy, nearly eight years after the 2008 financial meltdown.

The IMF has again downwardly revised its projection for global growth, the fourth straight cut in a year. The WEO estimates that the world economy will grow by only 3.2 percent in 2016, a reduction of 0.2 percentage points from the projection the IMF made only three months ago. The new projection is 0.6 percentage points below the organization’s July 2015 estimate.

It is only a hair above last year’s 3.1 percent global growth rate and only marginally higher than the 3.0 rate the IMF once considered indicative of a global recession. The organization also downgraded its world growth estimate for 2017 from 3.6 percent to 3.5 percent.

Even this pessimistic prediction is ringed with warnings and caveats that strongly suggest the so-called “recovery” from the 2008 crash is teetering on the edge of a new financial crisis and slump. The WEO executive summary states that “uncertainty has increased, and risks of weaker growth scenarios are becoming more tangible.” It adds, “The fragile conjuncture increases the urgency of a broad-based policy response to raise growth and manage vulnerabilities.”

The summary goes on to speak of “still weak external demand,” a “threat of synchronized slowdown,” an “increase in the already significant downside risks,” and a “critical stage of the global recovery.”

The press release on the IMF web site is headlined “Global Economy Faltering from Too Slow Growth for Too Long.” The statement highlights as major trends: “Financial risks prominent, together with geopolitical shocks, political discord.”

At a press conference to introduce the “World Economic Outlook,” IMF Chief Economist Maurice Obstfeld said, “Global growth continues, but at an increasingly disappointing pace that leaves the world economy more exposed to negative risks.” He continued: “Consecutive downgrades of future economic prospects carry the risk of a world economy that reaches stalling speed and falls into widespread secular stagnation… We definitely face the risk of going into doldrums that could be politically perilous.”

The WEO cites as factors in the continuing economic stagnation the slowdown in China, the sharp fall in oil and other commodity prices, and the decline in growth rates for trade, productivity and investment. It notes that these trends have wreaked havoc on emerging market and developing economies, particularly those that rely on exports of commodities. It cites, in particular, the deep recessions in Brazil and Russia, both of whose 2016 growth rates it downgrades from the previous IMF estimate. However, it also notes the worsening financial position of major oil exporters, including Saudi Arabia, whose economy it projects to grow by only 1.2 percent this year.

The report warns of mounting financial problems, as oil-linked loans and other assets risk steep losses and credit conditions tighten, despite massive monetary stimulus from central banks in Europe and Japan that have driven interest rates into negative territory.

The IMF has downgraded its projections for every major advanced economy, including the US and Canada, the euro area, the UK and Japan. Growth in the advanced economies as a whole is projected to remain at the anemic pace of 1.9 percent this year and 2.0 percent in 2017. The IMF estimates US growth this year at 2.4 percent, a downgrade of 0.2 percentage points. It projects that the euro area will grow by only 1.5 percent, Japan by a mere 0.5 percent, followed by a contraction of minus 0.1 percent in 2017. Canada is estimated at 1.5 percent for 2016.

China is projected to grow by 6.5 percent, a sharp reduction from the double-digit rates of previous years but 0.2 percentage points higher than the IMF’s January projection. India is seen as a “bright spot,” with projected growth of 7.5 percent both this year and next.

The IMF predicts that impoverished sub-Saharan Africa will grow by only 3.0 percent this year, a full percentage point slower than the organization’s forecast three months ago.

Particularly striking is the prominence given in the report to the impact of “noneconomic” factors in the deepening economic quagmire. The executive summary notes: “Shocks of a noneconomic origin—related to geopolitical conflicts, political discord, terrorism, refugee flows, or global epidemics—loom over some countries and regions, and, if left unchecked, could have significant spillovers on global economic activity.”

In his press conference, IMF Chief Economist Obstfeld warned, “Across Europe, the political consensus that once propelled the European project is fraying.” He said that the refugee crisis and recent terrorist attacks, together with economic pressures such as stagnant wages, were leading to a “rising tide of inward-looking nationalism.”

He singled out as a serious danger to the world economy the “real possibility” that the UK would vote in its June 23 referendum to leave the European Union, and pointed to a backlash in the US against globalization that “threatens to halt or even reverse the postwar trend of ever more open trade.”

Here the IMF is referring, somewhat obliquely, to the mounting economic conflicts between the major powers and the explosive growth of militarism and war. It is also alluding, indirectly, to the growth of working-class resistance and the threat of a new period of revolutionary upheaval.

To cope with this increasingly dangerous crisis of the world capitalist system, the IMF calls for urgent action by the major economies to develop a coordinated plan for continuing monetary stimulus to prop up the banks and financial markets, fiscal measures to promote investment, and so-called “structural reforms” to boost competitiveness and demand. Indicative of its concern over the prospect of a new financial crisis and economic downturn, the WEO calls on world policy makers to draft contingency plans for a joint response to revive growth should the global economy stagnate further.

There is virtually no chance of serious international coordination. As recent meetings such as the G20 have demonstrated, there is no agreement among the major imperialist powers over a common economic policy. Instead, what predominate are growing tendencies toward trade and currency warfare, along the lines of the policies that preceded the outbreak of World War II.

As for the class content of the IMF’s call for “structural” economic reform, it is shown by the report’s reference to “narrowing unemployment benefits and easing job protection.”

The social reality behind the US elections

Niles Williamson

The study published this week by the Journal of the American Medical Association on the widening of the life expectancy gap in the United States sheds new light on the pervasive impact of social inequality.

The report, based on an examination of some 1.4 billion tax records, documents the fact that higher income is strongly associated with greater longevity. The study shows that the gap between the richest one percent and the poorest one percent is 14.6 years for men and 10.1 years for women. It further establishes that life expectancy for individuals in the top five percent of income earners increased by nearly three years between 2001 and 2014, while for those in the bottom five percent, the increase was negligible.

American men at the bottom one percent of the income distribution at the age of 40 have a life expectancy similar to the average life expectancy of 40-year-old men in Sudan and Pakistan, the researchers noted. Responding to the findings, Nobel Prize-winning economist Angus Deaton said, “It is as if the top income percentiles belong to one world of elite, wealthy US adults, whereas the bottom income percentiles each belong to separate worlds of poverty, each unhappy and unhealthy in its own way.”

Deaton and fellow Princeton University economist Anne Case published a report last year that showed a significant rise in the mortality rate of white, middle-aged working-class Americans over the last fifteen years, tied to a dramatic rise in deaths related to suicide, drug abuse and alcoholism—typical ills of economic and social deprivation.

Drastically worsening conditions in the US are the result not of impersonal economic forces, let alone individual failings. They are the outcome of deliberate policies dictated by the American ruling class and implemented by both of its major political parties over the past four decades to make the working class pay for the crisis and decline of US capitalism.

The working class has suffered a historic reversal in its social position. The postwar boom, when there seemed to be some truth in the reformist claim that “a rising tide lifts all boats,” has long since given way to decades of deindustrialization, increasing financial parasitism and relentless attacks on the jobs and living standards of workers. Income and wealth, under Democratic as well as Republican administrations, have become ever more concentrated in the hands of a financial aristocracy, with devastating consequences for working people and youth.

The trade union organizations that were built by the working class in the mass struggles of the 1930s and 1940s have played the most critical role in carrying through this social counterrevolution—an offensive that has been intensified since the breakdown of the world capitalist system that began in 2008.

Based on their pro-capitalist and nationalist program, the unions responded to the mounting crisis of American capitalism by becoming direct partners with the corporations and the government in imposing the full weight of the crisis on the backs of the workers. They have collaborated in the destruction of millions of jobs, the decimation of wages and benefits, and the imposition of sweatshop conditions, all in the name of increasing the competitiveness of American corporations against their international rivals. For this purpose, they took on the role of an industrial police force for the ruling class, suppressing working-class resistance. Strikes, which were a fact of daily life in America, have all but disappeared.

The bailout of the financial criminals responsible for the 2008 Wall Street crash and Great Recession was paid for through relentless austerity in the United States and around the world. Under the Obama administration, 95 percent of all income gains have gone to the richest one percent. Today, the share of the US gross domestic product that goes to workers is at the lowest level since World War II, while the percentage that goes to corporate profit is at the highest.

In an earlier period, the rash of studies exposing the desperate conditions in which millions of Americans live would have been treated by sections of the political establishment and the media as a political scandal. Today, these issues are at best given perfunctory attention by the media and quickly dropped, and generally ignored by the political establishment.

Virtually no mention is made by any of the presidential candidates of either party of reports of rising death rates and mortality for working-class people, shocking infant mortality rates among the poor, and increasing life expectancy gaps between the rich and the poor.

Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, the self-declared “socialist,” seeks to tap into seething anger over economic deprivation and insecurity by denouncing income inequality in his stump speeches, but his remarks remain notably abstract. He says little or nothing about the actual conditions working people and youth face in their daily lives, and manages to avoid any mention of the brutal austerity measures carried out by the Obama administration.

Sanders has said nothing about Obama’s imposition of across-the-board 50 percent wage cuts for newly hired autoworkers as part of his bailout of GM and Chrysler, is silent on the administration’s support for the gutting of workers’ health care and pensions in the Detroit bankruptcy, and avoids any reference to the repeated cuts in food stamps approved by the White House.

The Democratic Party, behind which Sanders is seeking to channel growing working-class opposition, is fully complicit in the social counterrevolution. From the Clintons’ abolition of welfare in the 1990s to Obama’s assault on health benefits for millions of workers under Obamacare, the Democrats have functioned as an instrument of Wall Street and the corporate elite.

A prerequisite for any serious struggle against inequality, war and the drive toward dictatorship is a complete and irrevocable break with the Democratic Party and all of the political representatives of the ruling class. Only on this basis can American workers advance a socialist program that corresponds to their interests and unite with their class brothers and sisters internationally against the transnational corporations and banks.

This perspective must be brought into the 2016 elections in opposition to all attempts to block the development of an independent and genuinely socialist political movement of the working class.