Financial Truancy, “Economism” And Moral Ambiguity In Public Debate Today

Khaldun Malek

“No condition of life to which man cannot get accustomed, especially if he sees them accepted by everyone around him” –Tolstoy

The recent expose’ of the so-called “Panama Papers” brings to light again the morally troubling issue of tax havens and the flight of capital from taxation. The fallout from this, as is now widely known, has had serious political implications. There is already a major political casualty in the form of the former prime minister of Iceland, who resigned amidst allegations of financial impropriety by a member of his family. Politically, the issue remains a highly charged one; even David Cameron, who in recent times was one of the most vocal proponents of reforms to curb the excesses of the financial truancy of both rich corporations and individuals has not been entirely absolved from the scandal.

Some financial analysts have claimed that this is merely the tip of a very large iceberg. If true, the implications are staggering, because it gives pause to even the deeply worrying report recently published by Oxfam highlighting the global inequities of wealth which exists today. While economic inequality is a serious source of concern, it is merely a part of a larger pattern of discrimination and deprivation that afflicts all societies in the present. This question extends to far more than just economic ones; in fact, arguably the fixation on economic inequality is in danger of shifting attention away from more fundamental questions of social justice and fairness. It also gives an undue emphasis on an economic solution rather than a real one.

One of the key, though somewhat under-emphasised, aspect of Thomas Piketty’s global best-seller has not been to show the extent of the gaps between the rich and the poor but rather more pertinently how periods where the gaps have narrowed have been the rare exception rather than the rule. This in a sense gives us a more realistic appraisal of history. Seldom has the pursuit and agglomeration of wealth given pause to anything other than its own validation. If history is any guide, the impulse to accumulate wealth and power for its own sake is a universal drive that seems to transcend faith, cultures, language, politics and geography – as much as most faith and wisdom traditions counsel us against the deep spiritual and social ruin that will eventuate from such a pursuit. But in a global public culture dominated by a vain and arrogant, but more problematically, parochial ‘secularity’ promoted by the West and their allies, such discourses carry little weight.

Worryingly, even among the more visibly religious nations, there seems to be little enthusiasm to find alternative visions of progress and development.Even so called ‘alternatives’ to the dominant paradigms might not – on closer scrutiny – be so different. I think underneath the enthusiasms amongst Muslim nations, for example, over so called“Islamic” finance, the same ideological drives persist. Financial institutions no doubt understand its attractions as a marketing exercise; a more affluent, growing Muslim middle class enthusiastically embraces a means of increasing their wealth whilst palliating their ‘spiritual’ concerns!As global banks pursue this new wonderful marketing vehicle, we see hordes of both private and public conspirators – government agencies, university academics, financial consultants and so on – selling the public this new ‘product’!

However, at its centre nothing changes, and the practices of the past (profiteering for its own sake, the continued hegemony of the institutional structure of the present financial system, the ongoing valorisation of liberal capitalist values et al) continues. The terms of the process are now couched in a different language but the functioning and logical aims of the exercises remain the same. Moreover, the way in which global society speaks of the problem today – the way it has been conceived and what has been perceived as its effects is quite removed from similar episodes of social and economic distress in the past. I’ll come back to this later.

I’d wager that even the Wall Street Sit-In, applauded globally as a powerful indictment of the failures of a financial system run amok (a dubious pyramid scheme dressed under the sanctimony of the world’s most respectable financial institutions), symptomatizes the widespread moral vacuum surrounding the issue. Exemplified as a serious mass movement critique of developments which eventually led to the financial crisis of 2008, what it truly reflects is a reaction against the symptoms of failure rather than an outright questioning of the moral validity of its causes. In other words, one cannot help but wonder whether many of those who came would have bothered to do so if they had not themselves been affected by the fallout. If the prevailing system had continued to lavish the same returns it had done prior, would have there been a call to re-examine its principles or values? And what exactly are the majority angry about? The failure of the system? Or of the principles which underpin them? Then why is there a lacuna of serious attempts to frame these issues in broader terms? If we do not take the time to think within the context of the kinds of society we are trying to build, then to paraphrase Santayana, we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past in an unending vicious cycle.

One thing is clear. History tells us that the cycles of boom and bust is a natural part of the economic order. However, what is peculiar to the current malaise, is a seeming inability to articulate the problem(s) within any kind of moral compass. The way we talk about economic activity is disconnected to any view of how this is an intrinsic part of how we imagine the kinds of societies we wish to have. Even when we are angry about disparities between the rich and poor, this is seen and discussed in isolation from thinking about wider morality. It has not always been so. Even in the most celebrated totem of free-market thinking, Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations”, published more than two centuries ago, the idea of free enterprise and the freedom of exchange, was an attempt to augment a liberalism and individual autonomy thought in the best interests of an Enlightenment morality. Free trade was seen as a critical element in the flourishing of a ‘good’ society. It was grounded on a moral claim (what Smith terms as “moral sentiments”), not the kind of vacuous argument put forward today by economists talking about “efficiencies”.

This laxity, described so vividly by Tony Judt, as ‘economism’ (“the invocation of economics in all discussions of public affairs”) is frankly, intellectually lazy. He asks a deeply pertinent question, “why do we have such difficulty even imagining a different sort of society from the one whose dysfunctions and inequalities troubles us so?”. Why is it we no longer seem to have the wherewithal to question the present in fundamental ways? Why is it so difficult to conceive “a different set of arrangements to our common advantage”? And perhaps most worryingly, we appear to lack a sufficient vocabulary to enter a public discourse without need for an arbitrative reference to profit and loss, or what Judt refers to as an “etiolated economic vocabulary”.

These questions are, of course, not new. Decades before the publication of his report which became in 1942, the foundation of the British welfare state, William Beveridge had given a lecture in Oxford in which he bemoaned the dangers of obscuring proper political philosophy with classical economics in public debates. In some ways anticipating the intellectual malaise we face in the present, he warned of the deleterious effects of restricting public policy considerations to mere economic calculus.

We seem to live in an age where the functioning of society is seen in almost purely instrumental terms. The economic and commercial, the pursuit of leisure, securing justice and fairness, political participation and the fulfilment of spiritual needs and religious obligations are almost always discussed and seen as separate realms of values and conduct – microcosmic and through separate flows of life seemingly unconnected with one another. This is of course, a false depiction of the human condition. Under such conditions, it is extremely difficult – if not downright impossible – to speak of ‘society’ in a collective and holistic sense. All things are judged in their own terms and in their own sense; it is almost as if the kind of Thatcherite verbiage (“there is no such thing as society, merely individuals” and so on) we thought we had left behind in the 80s, has quietly subsumed the principles of public debate over everything from education, health, transport, housing and so on.

Over two centuries ago, one of the key figures of the European Enlightenment, and perhaps its keenest observer of the emergence of commercial capitalism, Marquis de Condorcet, anticipated the dire prospects that “liberty will be no more in the eyes of an avid nation, than the necessary condition for the security of financial operations”. For many of us today, this may actually sound too familiar for comfort.

Just Say No To Corporate Rule

Ron Forthofer

In May 2014, Senator Elizabeth Warren talked about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. "From what I hear, Wall Street, pharmaceuticals, telecom, big polluters and outsourcers are all salivating at the chance to rig the deal in the upcoming trade talks. So the question is: Why are the trade talks secret? You’ll love this answer. Boy, the things you learn on Capitol Hill. I actually have had supporters of the deal say to me, 'They have to be secret, because if the American people knew what was actually in them, they would be opposed.'"

In May 2012, Senator Ron Wyden, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee’s Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs, and Global Competitiveness, said: “Yet, the majority of Congress is being kept in the dark as to the substance of the TPP negotiations, while representatives of U.S. corporations—like Halliburton, Chevron, PHRMA, Comcast, and the Motion Picture Association of America—are being consulted and made privy to details of the agreement.”

A May 2012 letter to the US Trade Representative from 30 law professors in a few of the countries that are involved with the TPP negotiations also pointed out that: “There is no representation on this committee for consumers, libraries, students, health advocacy or patient groups, or others users of intellectual property, and minimal representation of other affected businesses, such as generic drug manufacturers or internet service providers. We would never create US law or regulation through such a biased and closed process.”

If you aren't already concerned about a deal being negotiated on behalf of giant corporations at the public's expense, consider the following. One chapter in the deal, the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) system, threatens democracy and the sovereignty of governments.

For example, Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist at the World Bank and recipient of the 'Nobel Prize for Economics' in 2001, addressed this issue regarding NAFTA in January 2004. He said: “But hidden in NAFTA was a new set of rights -- for business -- that potentially weakened democracy throughout North America. Under NAFTA, if foreign investors believe they are being harmed by regulations (no matter how well justified), they may sue for damages in special tribunals without the transparency afforded by normal judicial proceedings. If successful, they receive direct compensation from the federal government....

In an October 2015 article, Stiglitz and Adam Hersh added: "Imagine what would have happened if these provisions had been in place when the lethal effects of asbestos were discovered. Rather than shutting down manufacturers and forcing them to compensate those who had been harmed, under ISDS, governments would have had to pay the manufacturers not to kill their citizens. Taxpayers would have been hit twice — first to pay for the health damage caused by asbestos, and then to compensate manufacturers for their lost profits when the government stepped in to regulate a dangerous product."

According to Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, the TPP ISDS "tribunals are staffed by private lawyers who are not accountable to any electorate, system of legal precedent or meaningful conflict of interest rules. Their rulings cannot be appealed on the merits. Many ISDS lawyers rotate between roles – serving both as “judges” and suing governments for corporations, creating an inherent conflict of interest."

Allowing trade lawyers to have the final say on cases that threaten our health and well being as well as the health of the ecosystem and its ability to support all life forms is insane! This disastrous settlement process tramples democracy and sovereignty and prioritizes profit over our health and well being as well as our ecosystem and its ability to support life. An old Cree prophecy seems relevant:

Only after the last river has been poisoned,
Only after the last fish has been caught,
Only then will you find money cannot be eaten.

If this corporate-designed settlement process doesn't convince you to oppose the TPP, consider its rules for financial services. According to Public Citizen, these rules were written under the advisement of giant banks and work to undercut legislation meant to re-regulate Wall Street. Thus the TPP would expand the reach of failed policies that played a major role in creating the disastrous 2008 financial crisis. The TPP rules would also prevent nations from protecting their currencies in time of crisis. It's as if the 2008 crisis didn't happen.

Paul Krugman, another 'Nobel Prize winner in Economics' and a supporter of NAFTA, said it well in his March 9th column. "But it’s also true that much of the elite defense of globalization is basically dishonest: false claims of inevitability, scare tactics (protectionism causes depressions!), vastly exaggerated claims for the benefits of trade liberalization and the costs of protection, hand-waving away the large distributional effects that are what standard models actually predict."

Krugman concluded: "So the elite case for ever-freer trade is largely a scam, which voters probably sense even if they don’t know exactly what form it’s taking."

The TPP and other deals such as the currently being negotiated Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership will, if enacted, transfer more wealth to the top from the rest of us while further threatening our ecosystem. These deals must be stopped -- our lives and the lives of future generations depend on us stopping it now!

Bangladesh: The Wages Of A Noxious Mix

Fazal M. Kamal

Regardless of whatever entertaining but ineffectual verbiage administration leaders may spew and regardless of the incredibly inane—and entertaining too—stuff law enforcement honchos may regurgitate, the dreadful reality in Bangladesh is that nothing that they declare is of any consequence in stemming the trend of random murders that seems to persist unrelentingly.

As recent times have been worse than before, with more being killed almost at will in various parts of the country, it appears, that in spite of a whole lot of revelations (if prevarication can be euphemistically called that) and repeated assurances, the powers that be have been unable to substantiate their aural pronouncements with tangible results. Like actually getting the murderers.

That purported law enforcement personnel across the world have some rotten apples among them, isn’t anything surprising. That in many countries—both advanced and not-so-advanced—rogue elements in the police forces are known to engage in atrocious behavior sometimes leading to torture and death of innocent persons, is also not an unknown or unheard of fact of life in the real world replete with human flaws.

Given that backdrop, the inefficiency, a lack of discipline, an obvious absence of appropriate training mingled with politicization and avarice can and in fact do create both a toxic environment and brutal modus operandi for law enforcement entities which often lead to offensive declarations (to state it mildly) that can only be described as unbridled hubris. Consequently, the benefits from such noxious bodies are barely discernible, if at all.

In the Bangladesh instance, it’ll be most inadvisable to ignore the very recent uptick in mayhem and murder especially given the perception that anything’s possible in this country, and that it’s easy to, literally, get away with murder. And in view of the facts it’s, at the very least, difficult to deflect these and similar beliefs plainly because over the years murders, rape, torture, et al have received indulgent passes, astounding the citizenry.

As Prof. Ali Riaz of Illinois State University stated: “The official explanations for these incidents have been quite confusing and somewhat contradictory. On the one hand, the government has insisted that these are unrelated incidents and that they do not pose any challenge to the security of the country; on the other hand, it has claimed that these are ‘homegrown’ militants who are engaged in these heinous acts. While the country's home minister does not see any cause for concern for the safety of citizens, the chief of police has asked the citizens to create their own ‘security circle.’”[!!! -- Couldn’t help adding those exclamation marks given the contents of official statements.]

Simultaneously, compounding the confusion, administration leaders have often—and within hours of a murderous incident—declared that these are the handiwork of the political opposition. This has by now become an extremely predictable ploy with clockwork regulatory but comprehensively failing to convince anyone except only the author of these bizarre contentions themselves.

Here, then, is one reaction to this game plan: “The government is increasingly targeting the opposition and closing off its legitimate political activity, but it’s precisely that polarized political environment and limiting of the opposition’s space to participate in the political process that is creating new space for the extremists,” observed Lisa Curtis, a South Asia expert at the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center in Washington.

And in an opinion piece London journalist Gwynne Dyer asserted: “She [Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina] also insisted that these murders were the work of the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), or more precisely of its political ally, the Jamaat-e-Islami, the country's largest Islamist party. She firmly denied that foreign extremist forces such as Islamic State or al Qaeda (which would certainly approve of the killings) were active in the country.”

Having stated that background Dyer concludes, “This probably seems to Ms Hasina to be sound, practical politics, in a country where 90% of the population is Muslim. … It's also good politics for her to blame the violence exclusively on the opposition parties, since admitting that foreign Islamists are involved would mean that she was failing in her duty to defend the country. But the result of her pragmatism and passivity has been a rapid expansion in the range of targets that are coming under attack by the extremists.”

Of course, it’s a known fact that not all the victims were “atheist bloggers” or “irreligious thinkers” because some of those murdered, in reality, had absolutely nothing in common with “atheists” or “bloggers” but were law-abiding and God-fearing individuals who were simply going about their business. And then, there are the yet-unsolved (and possibly never-to-be-solved) cases of young women raped and killed.

But that’s a whole other story.

In the meantime, let’s be clear here: To the honorable members of the Cabinet: No, these cannot by any stretch of anyone’s imagination be isolated episodes; they’ve been occurring with shockingly tragic frequency. And to the law enforcement kahunas: The people of the country expect salubrious effects from your actions and words; not pontification in any shape, size or color primarily because that isn’t any segment of your mandate.

Carnage In Syria

Mary Scully

Just so we're clear on what supporting the Assad regime & foreign military intervention in Syria means:

Making a sarcasm out of the ceasefire, Syrian airstrikes in Aleppo for the past six days have killed over 200 people. The bombing is targeting residential areas & according to witnesses, no neighborhood of the city has not been hit. That death toll is expected to rise. Wednesday they bombed a hospital operated by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF/Doctors Without Borders), killing 27 people including children & three doctors. One of the doctors killed was the city's last pediatrician.

The Syrian military denies bombing the hospital & claims it has not been in residential areas where air raids were reported. Putin made a great display in March of ordering Russian warplanes out of Syria & has previously denied bombing civilian targets. The Russian defense ministry has not been available for interrogation about the current bombing, including of the hospital, even though it is reported that Russian warplanes are involved. So again, it isn't immediately clear whether the bombing is done by Syrian bombers or allied Russian bombers. But since they work in concert, is there an operative useful distinction?

This photo of people, including many infants & children, being rescued from bombed out buildings or people fleeing the bombing is played out all over Aleppo. Those rescuing them are of course civil defense volunteers, not Assad first responders.

Many people hold stubbornly to support for the Assad regime because it is (at least ostensibly) opposed by the US. The proof of Assad's political criminality is in the bombing which has gone on for at least five years, killed an estimated 470,000 people, & created one of the most massive refugee crises in the world.

No military intervention in Syria & Iraq! Stop the bombing, including by Syrian & Russian warplanes!

Unsafe Edinburgh schools expose scandal of privatisation

Steve James

In January, Storm Gertrude blew down a wall at Oxgangs Primary School in Edinburgh, Scotland. No one was injured and the school opened after a few days, but in March investigations into the collapse revealed “serious defects” in the 10-year-old building’s construction.

Thereafter, 17 schools across the city were closed when Edinburgh Schools Partnership (ESP), the private consortium that built and manages the schools, was unable to offer assurances that the buildings were safe. Over 8,000 pupils were told their schools could be closed indefinitely.

At the time of writing, 16 of the schools remain closed; their pupils bussed around the city to alternate schools and temporary classrooms. ESP has still not completed a survey of affected buildings.

Faults so far revealed focus on the metal ties holding the inner and outer brick walls together. These appear to have been either too short to safely strengthen the outer wall, despite being embedded in mortar, or, in the case of “header” ties that should be placed at the top of the walls, missing altogether. That such elementary faults should only come to light because of a collapse testifies to extraordinary incompetence, dangerous short-cutting and a complete lack of independent oversight of the buildings’ construction.

ESP’s inability to provide any reassurances regarding the remaining schools indicates a possibility that all 16 schools are suffering from the same fault. Some reports suggest they may all need to be pulled down and rebuilt.

All 17 schools were part of a £360 million deal between Edinburgh City Council and ESP under the then Public Private Partnership (PPP) scheme launched in 2001 by the Labour government of Tony Blair. ESP effectively built and owned the schools, renting them back to the city council under a lucrative long-term contract. ESP originally included Miller Construction and Amey Asset Services. Finance was provided by the Bank of Scotland and the European Investment Bank.

Similar arrangements were used across the UK.

Scotland saw a rash of school and public building contracts. Glasgow City Council, for example, demolished and rebuilt as many as 29 schools, many of them unnecessarily, under a £1.2 billion project run by the 3ED consortium that included the lender Halifax, Hewlett Packard and, again, Miller Construction. In the light of the Edinburgh fiasco, Glasgow has been forced to survey many of its recently built schools, as have Fife and Stirling. Many other authorities, including NHS Grampian and Aberdeen, have raised concerns about other buildings constructed by Miller.

Commenting on the experience, leading Edinburgh architect Malcolm Fraser told the press, “Everyone realised these buildings were shoddy ... and in terms of quality of the environment made for children and financially they were unbelievably expensive.”

Fraser, who resigned in 2007 from an architectural advisory panel to the Scottish Executive, said of the lack of scrutiny, “Contractors are entrusted to police themselves, so in cases like this there is no independent engineer, no independent architect tasked to stand outside the process, inspect the work and ensure these sort of things don’t happen.”

Fraser implied other problems might be waiting to be discovered: “When everything is covered up it’s very hard to tell where these other problems might lie. You almost need to take a school to bits to find out that these issues are there. You don’t really understand there is a problem until something catastrophic goes wrong...”

According to the Scotsman, untangling corporate responsibility for the disintegrating Edinburgh schools will be difficult. While Miller Construction has now been purchased by FTSE 250 construction group Galliford Try, as many as six other firms were involved in the construction work and nine offered professional advice, design and planning.

But the Oxgangs collapse has exposed more than shoddy construction. The missing ties, which could easily have caused fatalities, express an extraordinary transformation, in which social spending under successive Scottish governments has been subordinated to a complex tangle of financiers and offshore infrastructure funds.

Started under the Conservative’s Private Finance Initiative, extended by Labour’s Public Private Partnership, the process has continued under the Scottish National Party (SNP) and its funding vehicle the Scottish Futures Trust.

Shareholders, for example, in ESP’s parent company, ESP (Holdings) Ltd, include Luxembourg-based Palio (No 19) Limited, PFI Infrastructure Finance Limited is owned by Jersey-based 3i, while Semperian PPP Investment Partners No 2 Limited is also controlled by a Jersey-based group. Aberdeen Infrastructure (No 3) Limited’s registered office is in Canary Wharf, London.

Reselling of interests in the Special Purpose Vehicles set up for each project has resulted in a host of investment outfits holding stakes in schools, hospitals, community centres and other public buildings, deriving guaranteed revenue streams from them. 3i, for example, in addition to its share in Edinburgh’s schools, has a stake in Angus schools, Gartnavel Royal Hospital, an elderly care centre in Edinburgh, and Midlothian Community Hospital. The PFI scheme for East Dunbartonshire is 50 percent controlled by Inisfree Nominees Ltd, which is owned by Coutts and Co Trustees (Jersey). Coutts is in turn part of RBS. Semperian PPP Holdings owns the other 50 percent of the East Dunbartonshire project.

Over a period of many decades, this bewildering range of companies are set to profit hugely from ongoing PPP and PFI projects. Over the lifetime of the Edinburgh schools project alone, for example, some £532 million is expected to be handed over by Edinburgh City Council for buildings whose total capital value is only £129 million. The Guardian reported that, in total, as of April 2013 Scottish local authorities alone owed £12.5 billion in PFI-related payments that will peak in 2025 at £550 million a year, and will not be cleared until 2041.

A raft of new projects are being organised under the auspices of the Scottish Futures Trust (SFT). Presented by the SNP as a “non-profit” model of financing public projects, the SFT, chaired by Sir Angus Grossart who also chairs Noble Grossart merchant bank, is nothing of the sort. In comparison with the PFI and PPP schemes, there appears to be somewhat more oversight of spending plans, but the basic arrangement is the same. Private consortiums mobilised by the SFT carry the upfront costs for new buildings and infrastructure. In return, they are guaranteed decades of repayments and maintenance costs.

The Guardian reported that Aberdeen’s new western peripheral road will cost £469 million to build. But, via the SFT, contractors will recoup £1.45 billion over a 30-year contract. Taken together, the legacy of PPP and PFI obligations, combined with new SFT contracts, means that the Scottish government is likely to have run up £50 billion of debts by 2020, compared with an annual budget of £30 billion. Scottish local authorities carry an additional £14.8 billion of debt.

The consequences are predictable: An ever increasing pressure on already stressed public finances to maintain expensive, unsupervised and often unnecessary contracts will result in endless demands for the further evisceration of social spending on services to the most vulnerable. None of this has featured in the Scottish general election, to be held May 5. Since all the parties are implicated in the private finance schemes, none has the slightest interest in highlighting, let alone opposing, their consequences.

IMF, European Union, Syriza government prepare more austerity in Greece

Alex Lantier

The European Union (EU) and the Washington, DC-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) are set to demand fresh austerity measures on top of those agreed by Greece’s Syriza government last year, as part of the country’s €86 billion bailout plan agreed last summer.

Syriza (the “Coalition of the Radical Left”) agreed last July to impose massive austerity measures, trampling on both its election pledges to end EU austerity and a landslide “no” vote in a referendum it had called on EU austerity. In yet another act of political treachery, Syriza is preparing billions of euros more in austerity measures against the Greek population in talks with the IMF and the EU.

With €60 billion of the €86 billion aid package still remaining to be disbursed, the IMF and EU are insisting on €3 billion in permanent cuts to yearly spending. If Greece fails to make these so-called “contingency” cuts, they will withhold the remaining funds, forcing Greece to default on €3.5 billion in debt payments coming due this summer—echoing the EU threat to force Greece to default last summer.

US officials supported EU calls for Greece to implement new austerity measures as a precondition for writing off a portion of Greece’s massive debt, which successive bailouts have raised to a whopping and unviable 177 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

Late Wednesday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, “Obviously, you know, we’re very supportive of the efforts that members of the EU have made to deal with the financial challenges posed by Greece’s finances. Part of that agreement included Greece following through on a number of structural reforms. And we certainly believe that—that Greece has a responsibility to do that.”

Under questioning before the US House Financial Services Committee, US Treasury Under-Secretary Nathan Sheets confirmed that the IMF would agree to disburse funds to Greece only if Syriza imposed harsh new social cuts. He also confirmed that this was the position of the Obama administration and the US Treasury itself.

Sheets told the House committee, “The IMF has made clear that it will be involved in a Greek program in the sense of providing resources only if they are convinced that the reform program that’s being put forward is a significant one and it’s one where the Greek authorities themselves have significant ownership. ... Let me further say that the IMF’s position on requiring a strong program and only joining the program if there is significant debt relief is very much supported by the Treasury.”

The comments of Sheets and Earnest came after Syriza objected to the terms of the “contingency” cuts being demanded by EU officials, and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras appealed to EU Council President Donald Tusk to schedule a meeting of Eurozone leaders to discuss the issue. Tusk snubbed Syriza’s request, however.

Syriza government spokeswoman Olga Gerovasili pointed out that the fresh demands for austerity violated the terms of the July 2015 bailout and tried to present them as demands coming from Washington and undermining the EU’s positions. She declared, “The IMF is making demands which go beyond what was agreed. These demands undermine efforts by both the Greek government and European institutions.”

Tusk made clear that the EU in fact agrees with the demands currently being advanced primarily by Washington and the IMF, however, bluntly rejecting Tsipras’ request for a prime ministers’ meeting that could theoretically agree to loosen the financial noose strangling Greece. “I am convinced that there is still work to be done by the ministers of finance who have to avoid a situation of uncertainty for Greece,” Tusk said.

In fact, Syriza’s impotent protests addressed to the EU are a cynical cover. Behind the scenes, it is pursuing the austerity agenda it imposed starting immediately upon taking office in January 2015, scrapping its pledge to end the EU austerity Memorandum a few weeks after taking power.

Greece is already facing a serious cash crunch, unsure whether it will pay pensions and public sector workers’ salaries next month. Tsipras has been forcing state entities, including the health service and the water utility, to empty their bank accounts and deposit the proceeds with Greece’s central bank to help alleviate the shortage of funds.

In the meantime, EU officials are praising Syriza government for being very willing and helpful in closed-door negotiations of austerity measures against the Greek population.

European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs Pierre Moscovici praised Syriza for aggressively negotiating deeply unpopular cuts to pensions, privatizations, and income tax reforms. “We are 99 percent of the way there, we have converged on almost all aspects,” Moscovici said, adding, “As for the contingency mechanism, which in our view is not really justified by data but politically necessary, let’s work on that.”

Nonetheless, with Syriza rapidly sinking in the polls and anger mounting in the working class over its austerity agenda, there is rising speculation inside the political establishment that the new austerity measures might bring down Tsipras’ government.

Seven out of 10 Greeks oppose the ongoing austerity negotiations, according to a recent KAPA poll, which also found that Syriza would only receive 18.4 percent of the vote, roughly half of the vote it received last year, compared to 21.4 percent for the right-wing New Democracy (ND).

However, sources from inside Syriza told London’s Financial Times, the leading publication of European finance capital, that Tsipras would not call snap elections or schedule a new referendum on austerity in yet another attempt to provide himself political cover for his pursuit of austerity. This suggests that he would press ahead negotiating the austerity measures with the EU and imposing them himself.

“It’s not like last year,” former Syriza youth activist Stefanos Akrivakis told the FT. “Alexis has disappointed so many people he can’t risk holding a referendum on the measures or a general election.”

US military whitewashes attack on Afghan hospital

Peter Symonds

The Pentagon’s final report into last October’s deadly US airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hospital in northern Afghanistan is a brazen whitewash. The protracted attack by an AC-130 gunship on the medical facility in Kunduz killed 42 civilians, some of whom were burned alive in their beds, and others mowed down as they attempted to flee.

General Joseph Votel, commander of US Central Command, told a press conference yesterday that the attack on the MSF hospital was not a war crime because it had not been intentional. He claimed that neither the gunship crew members nor the Special Forces on the ground directing the attack “knew they were striking a medical facility.”

The report blamed the deaths on “human errors compounded by process and equipment failures.” None of those involved will face a court marshal or criminal charges. Instead, 16 American military personnel have been punished with “administrative actions” that range from suspension and removal from command to letters of reprimand. None have been named, and some are still active in overseas war zones.

The Pentagon’s account of events on the night of October 3 is riddled with contradictions. The AC-130 supposedly took off early without the crew being briefed and without a database being uploaded to the aircraft’s computers that would have identified the Kunduz hospital as a protected building. MSF had previously provided coordinates to the US military, and the hospital was marked with the organisation’s insignia.

The report claimed that the hospital had been mistaken for the intended target—the National Directorate of Security building that had been taken over by Taliban forces—some 400 metres away. The aircraft’s data link failed and it came under fire, forcing it to move to a safe distance. The coordinates provided by Afghan ground forces supposedly directed the aircraft’s weapons at an empty field, forcing the crew to rely on visual identification.

At 2:08 am, the AC-130 gunship, which is armed with 40mm and 20mm cannons as well as a 105mm howitzer, began its devastating attack. Within minutes, MSF personnel contacted the American military saying they were under fire, but the onslaught continued.

According to the Pentagon report, the Special Forces commander on the ground finally called off the attack at 2:38 am—half an hour later. A MSF inquiry based on eyewitness statements found the assault continued for between 60 and 75 minutes, clearly contradicting the Pentagon’s claims.

Moreover, the Pentagon report itself concluded that the hospital was not being used by the Taliban as a base of operations—negating Afghan government allegations to the contrary. No one was firing or carrying out hostile acts from the hospital. Yet the Special Forces commander on the ground ordered the attack anyway in violation of rules of engagement that authorise airstrikes only to protect US or allied forces.

At his press conference, General Votel justified the attack by declaring that the American aircraft was operating in “an extraordinarily intense combat situation” in which it was trying to support Afghan troops. At the same time, he claimed that it was often not possible for trained operators to tell if fire was coming from a particular building or location.

The Pentagon’s account is simply not credible. If the aircraft was plagued by equipment failure and the crew had difficulty identifying the target, why was the mission not simply aborted?

Doctors Without Borders has reiterated its call for an independent inquiry. MSF President Meinie Nicolai told the media: “Today’s briefing amounts to an admission of an uncontrolled military operation in a densely populated urban area, during when US forces failed to follow the basic laws of war...

“There are questions here, on the self defence called in by the troops, even though it was a quiet evening. Why didn’t they call off the operation if they had such a malfunctioning system, they had a duty to take precautions, and they had doubts about the target?” Nicolai said.

John Sifton, Asia policy director of Human Rights Watch, told the New York Times that the failure to bring criminal charges was “inexplicable”. He said that the Pentagon’s assertion that no war crime had been committed because the attack was unintentional was “flatly wrong”, pointing out that recklessness or negligence did not absolve someone of criminal responsibility.

In reality, the Pentagon’s elaborate account of human errors and equipment malfunctions stinks of a carefully contrived cover-up. A far more straightforward explanation is that the US military deliberately targeted the hospital either to assassinate a particular “high-value” individual, or to destroy a facility that treated everyone, including wounded Taliban fighters.

The responsibility for what is clearly a war crime rests not just with the immediate operational commanders but with the Pentagon top brass and the Obama administration. Hundreds of civilians have been slaughtered as a result of indiscriminate drone attacks in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and other countries.

Moreover, in nearly a decade-and-a-half of war in Afghanistan, the Pentagon has routinely denied responsibility for civilian deaths. It has only acknowledged such crimes when, as in the case of the Kunduz hospital, the evidence is overwhelming. In the wake of the Kunduz slaughter, the US military provided a so-called condolence payment of $6,000 to the families of the dead and $3,000 to injured victims.

The Pentagon’s whitewash of the airstrike on the Kunduz hospital is in marked contrast to the immediate US condemnation of an alleged Syrian government attack on a MSF hospital in the city of Aleppo on Wednesday. At least 27 patients and staff were killed in the attack.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said that the US was “outraged” by the attack. Without waiting for facts and details, he declared that “it appears to have been a deliberate strike on a known facility and follows the Assad regime’s appalling record of striking such facilities.”

Kerry’s denunciation of the Aleppo attack simply underscores the crimes of the Obama administration for which no one has been held accountable.

Civilian deaths in Syria surge as US-Russian brokered ceasefire unravels

Thomas Gaist

More than 200 civilians, including 35 children, were killed as military violence erupted across Syria this week, leaving the ceasefire agreement brokered by US and Russian diplomats in February in tatters.

The renewed fighting, the latest upsurge in a war that has already killed more than 400,000 people, is pushing Syria deeper into conditions of social collapse. Recent days have witnessed a “catastrophic deterioration” in the security situation, with violence across Syria “soaring back to the levels we saw prior to the cessation of hostilities,” and military forces displaying a “monstrous disregard” for civilians, according to UN human rights official Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein.

Syria’s social and health infrastructure has been devastated by more than five years of the US-orchestrated war for regime change. “Almost half of Syria’s ambulances have been destroyed; more than one-third of its hospitals no longer function; and the flow of pharmaceutical imports has slowed to a trickle,” Debarati Guha-Sapir of the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters said Friday.

More than 346 medical facilities have been subject to strikes during the Syrian war, according to Physicians for Human Rights. On Wednesday, air strikes of unknown origin destroyed the Medicines sans Frontiers-linked (MSF) al-Quds medical center in Aleppo, killing at least 50 civilians and two MSF doctors. Both US and Russian military spokesmen denied responsibility for the strikes.

The surging violence has centered on Aleppo, where some 250,000 civilians are trapped under siege conditions, living amid the ruins of city already decimated by five years of war. Only one remaining commercial throughway, controlled by US-backed Islamist militias, connects the city to the rest of the country, and the population now faces stepped up attacks from gunships and artillery.

In contrast to the US media and the political establishment’s endless denunciations of Russia’s intervention in Syria, the essential cause for the breakdown of the cease-fire and slide back toward all-out civil and proxy war is the uncompromising determination of the US ruling class to overthrow the Assad government, toppling a crucial regional ally of both Russia and Iran and replacing it with an American puppet.

On Monday, the White House announced that at least 250 US special forces soldiers would be deployed to Syria, a decision taken on the heels of the announcement of an additional 200 US ground troops to Iraq.

In testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter made clear that these are only preliminary moves in a much broader war plan.

“Based on the results we’ve had, and our desire to continue accelerating ISIL’s lasting defeat, we are conducting the ‘next plays’ of the military campaign,” Carter said.

In the coming weeks, US-backed Iraqi national forces will “leverage Apache attack helicopters” in support of their offensive against the northern city of Mosul, where hundreds of US Marines are already carrying out artillery bombardments against surrounding villages.

In Syria, US commandos are working to establish bases of operations that will enable further special operations deployments by US-aligned governments in Europe and the Persian Gulf. They will seek to “train and equip motivated local anti-ISIS forces, especially among the Sunni Arab community,” Carter said.

Beyond Iraq and Syria, the US is preparing a range of “counter-ISIS” operations, including in South and Southeast Asia, Yemen and West Africa, Carter said.

The US military aims to “collapse ISIL’s control of Mosul and Raqqa by bringing to bear in support of them the full might of the US military,” Carter said.

The Pentagon, with full backing from the White House, is moving forward with the so-called US Plan B for Syria.

As Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook declared on Monday, the US military will “continue to look at every single opportunity we have, working without local partners, to see how we can accelerate this campaign.”

American support for the ceasefire was, all along, a tactical maneuver, aimed at buying time for US forces to prepare a renewed push, under conditions where Russian-backed Syrian and Iranian forces have increasingly routed the US-backed insurgency, threatening to derail the regime-change operation launched by Washington in 2011.

The escalation of US ground wars in Iraq and Syria, coming despite President Obama’s repeated promises that the renewed US war in Iraq and Syria, launched in 2014 as “Operation Inherent Resolve,” would not see US “boots on the ground,” is being carried out with the backing of the entire Democratic Party establishment.

The most recent escalations were hailed this week by both US Democratic Party presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

Senator Clinton, who has previously criticized the White House for not waging a more “robust” war in Syria and demanded expansions of the US air and ground wars, including the establishment of a “no fly zone,” issued a campaign statement supporting the White House’s authorization of an expanded commando war in Syria.

Last November, Clinton delivered a bellicose address to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), declaring that, in Syria, “a more effective coalition air campaign is necessary, but not sufficient.”

“Air strikes would have to be combined with ground forces,” Clinton said, calling for a ground invasion to carve out “safe zones” along with the imposition of a “no fly zone” throughout Syrian airspace.

In addition to a general expansion of US war-making throughout the Middle East, Africa and Asia, Clinton’s “plan to defeat ISIS” calls for expanded surveillance of social media globally.

Senator Sanders’ own endorsement of the administration’s policies makes clear that he is not in any sense running as an antiwar candidate, but rather as another imperialist politician.

“The president is talking about having American troops training Muslim troops, and helping supply the military equipment they need. I do support that effort,” Sanders told media this week.

The preparations for an expanded US ground war in Syria, whose full character will likely not be revealed until immediately after the 2016 US elections, are taking place amid US war preparations in Eastern Europe, the South China Sea and throughout Eurasia, that pose the growing threat of a third world war.

The demise of Sanders’ “political revolution”

Patrick Martin

In the wake of his losses in five out of six northeastern primaries, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has effectively conceded that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. On Wednesday, the Sanders campaign issued layoff notices to several hundred staffers.

In a series of media interviews, Sanders and his top campaign aide Tad Devine indicated that the candidate would bow to demands from leading Democrats that he stop criticizing the frontrunner for her ties to Wall Street, and instead direct his attacks against the likely Republican nominee, billionaire Donald Trump.

Thus the Sanders campaign ends not with a bang, but a whimper. The candidate has every right, however, to declare “mission accomplished.” His main concern, as the campaign developed, was how to keep his supporters within the Democratic Party. Millions of youth and workers attracted by calls for a “political revolution” and denunciations of the “billionaire class” are now to be dragged to the polls to cast their votes for Clinton, a Wall Street lackey and war criminal.

The mass support for Sanders was the product of the experiences American workers and youth have made with the capitalist system, particularly over the past 15 years, during which they have seen nothing but war, economic crisis and deteriorating wages and social conditions.

A Harvard University survey of young adults aged 18 to 29, made public this week, found that 51 percent of those surveyed did not support capitalism, compared to 42 percent who did. One-third of these young adults affirmatively supported socialism, and near-majorities agreed that health care, food and shelter were basic human rights. This is in a society where socialism has been virtually criminalized and both major parties, the media and academia all sing the praises of the profit system.

As the WSWS wrote in February, “Sanders is not the representative of a working class movement. He is rather the temporary beneficiary of a rising tide of popular opposition that is passing through only its initial stages of social and class differentiation.” His entire campaign has been dedicated to preventing this leftward movement from breaking out of the straitjacket of the Democratic Party.

Sanders began his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination with no expectations of electoral success or even significant influence. His aim was to play the role of previous left-liberal candidates, like Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton, and use the presidential primary process to give the Democratic Party a “left” face. The Clinton campaign itself welcomed his participation, counting on Sanders to allow her to position herself as the “responsible progressive” during the primary contests.

To the surprise and shock of the corporate-controlled media, Democratic Party officials and the candidate himself, Sanders won an immediate hearing, first among young people and then more broadly. It was noticeable that the more radical and enthusiastic his followers became, the more the senator dropped his longstanding pretense of “independence” and insisted that the Democratic Party was the only possible political avenue. His “political revolution” turned out to be nothing more than getting out the vote for the Democrats, his “socialism” merely warmed-over liberalism, without the slightest threat of any inroad against capitalist property.

Sanders avoided the overriding issues of war and militarism, on which Clinton was most vulnerable given her role as secretary of state in the Obama administration, responsible for the US-NATO war in Libya, the US-instigated civil war in Syria, and the campaign of drone missile assassinations, among other crimes.

Now that Clinton has effectively clinched the Democratic Party nomination, Sanders’ role will be to foster illusions that the Democratic standard bearer, a proven servant of American imperialism with a political record stretching back four decades, can somehow be pushed to the left.

Speaking at a rally in Bloomington, Indiana on Wednesday, Sanders made perhaps the clearest statement of his own political role. “Our job, whether we win or whether we do not win,” he said, “is to transform not only our country, but the Democratic Party—to open the doors of the Democratic Party to working people and young people and senior citizens in a way that does not exist today.”

He expanded on this political alchemist’s theme of transforming the Democratic Party at a rally Thursday in Springfield, Oregon, where he declared, “The Democratic Party has to reach a fundamental conclusion: Are we on the side of working people or big money interests? Do we stand with the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor? Or do we stand with Wall Street speculators and the drug companies and the insurance companies?”

And the devil must decide whether to stand on the side of the angels!

The class character of the Democratic Party is not open to question. It is an integral component of the two-party system, which the American ruling elite employs to manage its affairs of state and to suppress all opposition from below.

As for Sanders, he will get a cameo appearance at the Democratic convention while Clinton will “move to the center” for the general election campaign, i.e., she will seek the support of sections of the Republican establishment, Wall Street and the military wary of a Trump or Cruz White House.

Among the pseudo-left groups, where enthusiasm for Sanders has prevailed, his defeat may prompt an alteration of tactics, but not of political orientation. Their enthusiasm for his campaign was in no small measure bound up with the fact that they saw it as a means of entry of their own organizations into the capitalist establishment. They will continue to pursue that goal, including through support for the Greens, a bourgeois “third party” in the political orbit of the Democrats.

Throughout the election campaign, the Socialist Equality Party has explained both the objective significance of the mass support for Sanders and the role of the candidate himself as a vehicle for strengthening the Democratic Party. We have stressed that Sanders was not the leader of a movement from below, but an instrument of the political establishment for containing, misdirecting and ultimately dispersing that movement.

Sri Lankan prime minister seeks financial help in China

Vilanis Peiris

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe visited China early this month to patch up strained relations between the two countries and seek financial assistance. Since taking office in January 2015, President Maithripala Sirisena’s administration has distanced Sri Lanka from China and lined up behind US imperialism.

During his three-day visit from April 6, Wickremesinghe met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Li Keqiang and other officials, making several agreements.

The Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government is facing a balance of payment crisis and a huge foreign debt burden. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has indicated it would offer a loan of around $US1.5 billion loan, but this is not sufficient to avert a financial crisis so the government has turned to other avenues, including China, to beg for assistance.

Relations with China soured when Sirisena’s government suspended several major projects that commenced during former President Mahinda Rajapakse’s government, funded by Beijing banks and companies. The pretexts for the suspensions were “irregularities, corruption” and “absence of proper environmental impact assessments.” The real reason was the shifting of Colombo’s foreign policy away from Beijing, in favour of Washington and India.

Sirisena, formerly a minister and leading figure in Rajapakse’s government, defected from it to contest the presidential election in a regime-change operation, backed behind the scenes by the US and assisted by India. Washington and New Delhi were hostile to Rajapakse’s close political and economic ties with Beijing. The Obama administration wanted Sri Lanka firmly lined up behind the US “pivot to Asia,” a military and strategic encirclement of China.

Sirisena’s suspension of the Chinese-funded Colombo Port City (CPC) project was particularly significant. Sri Lanka’s single largest foreign investment, involving $1.4 billon, it was meant to reclaim 233 hectares (575 acres) of land from the seafront adjacent to Colombo harbour.

Chinese President Xi opened this project when he visited the country in September 2014. It was considered to be a component of China’s “Maritime Silk Road,” placing Sri Lanka at the centre of links between China, South East Asia, the Middle East and Africa. After building the complex, the contractor, the China Communications Construction Company (CCCC), was to gain control of 108 hectares.

The Maritime Silk Road forms part of Beijing’s plans to defend its vital trade routes, including the sea lanes through the Indian Ocean, in the context of US war plans against China. India and the US objected to the CPC project, with media reports that New Delhi claimed it was a threat to the security of India and the Indian Ocean.

Beijing has continually pressed the Colombo government to restart the project. Just before Wickremesinghe’s visit, the Chinese government said Colombo had to pay $125 million in damages for delaying the project. CCCC claimed it would lose $380,000 a day as a result of the suspension of work, which would also affect about 5,000 workers directly and indirectly.

During Wickremesinghe’s visit, it was agreed that the suspension would be lifted, but with the Chinese company handed a 99-year lease over 20 hectares, instead of previously-promised outright ownership.

This new condition is a message to New Delhi and Washington that Sri Lanka’s pro-US and pro-India policy has not changed. Wickremesinghe later told a Colombo press conference that a 40 percent stake in the CPC would be offered on the stock market, giving Indian and other companies the opportunity to invest. At the same time, to appease China, he said that Chinese companies would be given control over a section of the CPC in order to develop a financial district.

Wickremesinghe said the CPC would be included in the government’s Western Province Mega Polis program, which seeks to develop a cluster of cities for financial, commercial, tourism and industrial ventures to attract foreign investments.

Sri Lanka has accumulated debts to China to the tune of $US8 billion. During the Rajapakse government, an estimated 70 percent of infrastructure projects depended on Chinese funds. Wickremesinghe has proposed that Chinese state-owned companies convert billions of dollars of this debt into equity in these projects and domestic companies.

Development Strategies and International Trade Minister Malik Samarawickrama, who accompanied Wickremesinghe to Beijing, said the government was keen to sell some state-owned enterprises to China as well.

Wickremesinghe also offered 1,000 hectares for an exclusive Chinese economic zone in the Hambantota area in the country’s south. The previous Rajapakse government built a seaport and airport in this region with the Chinese-funded loans. Wickremesinghe said that by offering the land to China he wanted to make use of these under-utilised facilities.

Acknowledging Wickremesinghe’s offer, Chinese Premier Li told the media: “We welcome the resumption of the Colombo Port City project, and stand ready to work with Sri Lanka to push forward the construction steadily.” The Chinese government also gave $500 million to Colombo as a grant. However, Sri Lanka’s request for debts to be transformed into equity has yet to be agreed.

A joint statement issued at the end of Wickremesinghe’s visit said: “The two sides will use the development of a 21st Century Maritime Silk Road as an opportunity to further advance infrastructure development, the China-Sri Lanka FTA [Free Trade Agreement] negotiations, promote joint ventures and expand cooperation.”

China’s eagerness to patch up the relations with Colombo and accommodate some of its requests shows Beijing’s strategic concerns, amid the US aggressive military drive, which also involves stronger US ties with India.

India has officially kept silent on the Colombo government’s concessions during Wickremesinghe’s China visit. Expressing concerns within the Indian elite, however, the Times of India commented: “Sri Lanka has accepted China’s bidding to make the Indian Ocean an economic hub, ignoring India’s concern.”

In an effort to placate New Delhi, Wickremesinghe told his Colombo press conference: “The project [Colombo Port City Project] will not have any impact on Indian security. We have discussed it with India and we are willing to discuss it with India further.”

Wickremesinghe’s visit to China underscores both the magnitude of Sri Lanka’s economic crisis and the geo-political tensions engulfing the region as the US ramps up its military preparations against China.

On Anzac Day, New Zealand leaders talk peace, prepare for war

Tom Peters

Monday April 25, a holiday in Australia and New Zealand, marked 101 years since the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) troops landed at Gallipoli as part of the Allies’ disastrous failed attempt to invade Turkey during World War I.

The first Anzac Day ceremonies in 1916 glorified the thousands killed at Gallipoli in order to encourage more young men to fight and die for the British Empire. Such efforts failed to produce sufficient recruits. In the face of growing anti-war sentiment in the working class, the New Zealand government introduced conscription later that year. Altogether 18,000 New Zealanders died in World War I and more than 41,000 were wounded—more than 5 percent of the country’s population.

This year’s military-led dawn services, in towns and cities throughout the country, were held against the backdrop of escalating geo-political volatility, resembling the tense periods leading up to World War I and World War II. All the imperialist powers, led by the US, are once again preparing for war. Washington’s aggressive “pivot to Asia,” aimed at encircling and subordinating China, involves a vast military build-up in the Asia-Pacific region.

American allies are supporting the drive toward war. US Secretary of State John Kerry praised Australia and New Zealand for “continuing the legacy of ANZAC” by contributing troops to the current war in Iraq and joining US military exercises that are aimed against China.

New Zealand’s population has been deliberately kept in the dark about the country’s military alignment against China. The ruling elite is highly conscious that there is no support for armed provocations that could spark a conflict between nuclear-armed powers, with potentially catastrophic consequences for the entire world.

At the same time, the government has spent more than $100 million on exhibitions, films, books and events celebrating the centenary of World War I. The aim is to promote obedience and respect for the military and ideologically prepare the country, especially young people, for new wars.

Prime Minister John Key, in a brief Anzac Day video address, declared that “we lost far too many men” at Gallipoli, but praised those who “fought for the values and principles that underpin our country.” He did not elaborate what these values were. New Zealand’s ruling elite joined World War I to defend the British Empire and extend New Zealand’s colonies in the Pacific by seizing German-held Samoa and part of Nauru.

At the dawn service in Wellington, governor-general and former army chief Jerry Mateparae declared: “Our hope is that there will be a time when war and conflict are consigned to history.” He immediately added, however: “For now, the reality of our situation is that we still need people who are prepared to serve their country in our Defence Force—in our Navy, Army and Air Force.”

None of the speakers at any of the services referred to the enormous increase in military spending being planned in Australia and New Zealand to assist the countries’ integration into US war plans. The NZ government plans to spend $11 billion over the next decade on new planes, frigates and other hardware.

In a video statement, opposition Labour Party leader Andrew Little said: “New Zealand’s international reputation is about peace. It’s why we’re nuclear-free, but we should never forget about the tragedies of war because it’s the best way to avoid them in future.”

What a fraud! Labour has always been a pro-imperialist party. It supported New Zealand’s participation in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and Bush’s occupation of Iraq. The 1999-2008 Labour government also sent troops to East Timor and the Solomon Islands to support the Australian-led military occupations. Little recently called for “troops on the ground” in Iraq and Syria.

Labour’s defence spokesman Phil Goff has repeatedly attacked the government from the right for reducing military spending. This month, Labour and its ally, the right-wing populist NZ First Party, called for a major increase in funding and recruitment into the navy.

NZ First leader Winston Peters, who Labour sees as a potential coalition partner for next year’s election, hypocritically stated in his Anzac Day speech: “Let us commit ourselves to working for a world where differences between nations can be resolved without resort to war.” At the same time, he hailed “the contribution our service veterans have made—not just in the two world wars but in Korea, Malaya, Vietnam, Kuwait, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Timor and [the Solomon Islands] and the many other theatres.”

This month, NZ First’s defence spokesman Ron Mark attacked moves to close two army training areas, accusing the government of being “short-sighted with respect to what it takes to train and prepare for war.” The party has also called for unemployed youth to be encouraged to train in the army.

NZ First and Labour have sought to whip up anti-Chinese sentiment—blaming Chinese immigrants for the housing shortage and unemployment. The xenophobic campaign aims to divert social tensions and align New Zealand with Washington’s anti-China “pivot.”

The references to peace in the Anzac Day speeches reflect fears that the government’s World War I propaganda may backfire, amid deeply entrenched anti-war sentiment. A New Zealand Herald editorial noted: “The centenary of the Great War is not yet halfway through and already we have probably read enough of it, just like those who were living through it.”

The Herald also published a comment by the Ministry of Culture’s chief historian Neill Atkinson. He wrote that Anzac Day “can be a powerful force for unity and understanding, offering a form of collective solace and sense of belonging,” but warned that “tensions regularly surface in debates on topics that challenge the popular Anzac narrative, including wartime dissent, conscientious objection and military executions.” He called for recognition of “those who supported, endured or opposed the war.”

One sign of hostility to the militarist “narrative” is the support for anti-war sculptures installed anonymously in Wellington the night before Anzac Day. They depict the brutal “field punishment” endured by conscientious objector Archibald Baxter and others during World War I. Dozens of comments on the Dominion Post’s web site applauded the objectors. One said: “They believed no one should have been fighting that war. They defended their comrades by striving for an end to senseless killing. They were quite prepared to die for that.”