Will There Finally be Peace With Justice in Colombia?

JACK LAUN

We have now reached the final days for the disarming of the FARC guerrillas, as established by the Peace Accord provisions agreed upon by the Santos Administration and the FARC leadership. What, we may reasonably ask, are the prospects for achieving a lasting peace? There are a number of considerations to take into account in assessing whether the FARC’s demobilization will bring peace with justice.

First, there is a serious question whether the Colombian government will be able (and willing!) to dismantle paramilitary forces which are active in many parts of the country. In some areas, such as in the municipality of Apartado in northern Antioquia, the presence of paramilitary forces has been a constant dating back to the time when General Rito Alejo del Rio told a Colombia Support Network (CSN) delegation to Apartado that he as commander of the Seventeenth Brigade of the Colombia Army could vouch for the safety for investors in the region based upon what we later learned was active collaboration of the Brigade with paramilitary forces. I met a few days ago with representatives of the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado, and they informed me that the paramilitary presence and threats to the Community continue and that Seventeenth Brigade troops on occasion accompany paramilitaries and convey threats to the community, which is our Wisconsin sister community. Without demobilization of these paramilitary forces, there is a real prospect that former FARC personnel will run a serious risk of a repetition of the genocide of the Union Patriotica party members in the 1980’s and 1990’s. 

Second, the failure of the Colombia government to provide basic public necessities to many rural communities, such as farm-to-market roads, subsidies for campesino crops, agricultural credit and extension services, and municipal water and sewerage services, leaves rural residents in many parts of Colombia without adequate resources. This in turn leads many campesinos to look to coca cultivation as the only practical means of earning the money which their family needs in order to survive. In the past the Colombian government has tried to introduce alternative economic pursuits, such as raising chickens or other farm animals, but as long as the basic rural infrastructure does not exist, these efforts will not succeed. Indeed, a CSN delegation to Puerto Asis and Santa Ana in Putumayo Department several years ago observed the failure of the Colombian government’s alternative economic program for nearby rural communities, precisely because the basic infrastructure was lacking. 

Third, and of fundamental importance, the Santos Administration and the Colombian Congress have adopted a model for rural development, the ZIDRES, or Zones of Interest for Rural Economic and Social Development, which is antithetical to the type of campesino agriculture practiced in most rural areas in Colombia. The ZIDRES model, similar to models in Honduras and other Latin American countries, allows for “baldios”, lands that have never been titled but are often used by campesinos, to be incorporated into large-scale agricultural units run by foreign businesses, which will result in many campesinos being converted from independent producers to day laborers on the extensive lands developed by multinational businesses. The operation of Minnesota-based Cargill, the richest agricultural company in the world, on lands it acquired in irregular fashion in the eastern plains area of Colombia, is instructive of what is likely to happen as the ZIDRES model is applied. The FARC suggested a different model, one which has been used in different areas of Colombia for several years, the Campesino Reserve Zone (Zona de Reserva Campesina, or ZRC), in which areas would be set aside as agricultural lands to be worked by campesinos organized for that purpose. Rather than advance this model, the Colombian government has held up applications for permits for new ZRC’s, including for one supported by CSN in southern Cauca Department in the vicinity of the Carol Chomsky memorial lands.

Fourth, the reliance on mining, which President Santos stated at the beginning of his first term should be the “locomotive” of growth in the economy, is misplaced. The open-pit or mountaintop removal model for taking gold, silver, coal and other minerals from the earth is very damaging to the environment, which is especially serious for Colombia, one of the most bio-diverse countries in the world. And development of infrastructure to support mining and other industrial operations, such as the construction of major roads through environmentally sensitive areas in the Amazon foothills, such as the highway construction in Putumayo Department from San Francisco in the Sibundoy Valley to Mocoa, should be avoided. 

Fifth, the Colombian government has not developed an adequate response to the extensive drug trade and illegal mining operations that have brought violence to many areas in Colombia. The use of coca crop spraying with glyphosate, as dictated by the U.S. Government, has not materially reduced coca production, nor has the manual eradication campaign conducted by the Colombian government succeeded in reducing coca production in the country. As Johann Hari has shown in his recent book, “Chasing the Scream”, the premise behind the so-called “War on Drugs” is erroneous. Treatment of addicts matched with legalization of drug use and management by the government is an effective way of taking the profit out of the drug trade and thereby reducing the terrible costs it inflicts upon society. As far as the illegal “wildcat” mining activities are concerned, the Colombian government needs to attack the corruption which leads to these activities and makes them profitable. 

Sixth, the Colombia Congress and the Santos Administration need to pay serious attention to popular mobilizations, and negotiate with representatives of these mobilizing organizations, rather that increasing the military budget and funding the anti-riot police (the “ESMAD”) to squelch legitimate protest by citizen groups. Failure to respond to the reasonable demands of these popular organizations will result in insufficient support for government measures and failure properly to implement changes necessary to achieve justice and peace.

Seventh, the Colombian government needs to keep its word in preparing communities for demobilized forces and in obtaining Congressional approval for agreed-upon measures to set up a functional system of Jurisprudence for Peace. As United Nations High Commissioner for Peace Todd Howland observed to a CSN delegation several months ago, the expense to the Colombian Government effectively to implement the Peace Accords will be very substantial and the Government has not requested all of the funds it might have from the United Nations Security Council. With the uncertainty of what contribution the Trump Administration will agree to make to help with implementation of the Peace Agreement, obtaining sufficient funds to carry out all of the agreed-upon actions may be a tremendous challenge. 

Still, even given the difficulties outlined above, Colombia has a chance to proceed to a more just society and one at peace. We must hope that the efforts of so many people in this direction will succeed, even against serious impediments in the road to peace.

New Zealand: Police suppressed images of bodies in Pike River mine

Tom Peters

On June 19, TV3’s Newshub aired more footage taken inside the Pike River Coal mine in New Zealand’s South Island, which exploded in November 2010, killing 29 men. The video, recorded in early 2011 by cameras lowered into the mine through bore-holes, shows a pair of glasses, rubber hosing and a wooden pallet.

It also clearly shows at least two intact bodies, and there are less clear images of what may be more bodies. These images have not been made public but have been viewed by the families and reporters.

The video is part of several hours of footage suppressed by police for more than six years. It was released to the victims’ families only after some excerpts were leaked and broadcast in April. That video showed members of Mines Rescue working inside the drift tunnel that leads into the main body of the mine. It discredits repeated National Party government claims that the mine is too dangerous to re-enter to investigate the precise cause of the explosion and to recover bodies.

The latest footage shows that the interior of the mine after the explosion was not what the families and the public were led to believe. Last December cabinet minister Judith Collins, who was the police minister at the time of the explosion, told TV3 there could be no manned re-entry because “infernos” had made the mine “a terrible mess.”

Prime Minister Bill English attempted to dismiss the latest footage as “nothing new,” saying the Royal Commission had examined it. He told Newshub “the implication that somehow there’s been a cover-up is complete nonsense.”

In fact, the government and police have worked to prevent any real investigation into the disaster and to shield Pike River Coal’s management and owners from prosecution. A Royal Commission in 2012 found that the mine had violated numerous safety regulations in order to reduce costs. It had inadequate methane gas monitoring, poor ventilation and no emergency exit.

Yet police refused to lay any charges. The government’s Labour Department charged CEO Peter Whittall with breaches of health and safety laws, but the charges were dropped in 2013 in a backroom deal with Whittall’s lawyers.

Echoing the government, a police spokesperson told Radio NZ that “only one body has potentially been captured in the imagery,” and this had previously been reported. This refers to a much grainier image of a body that was released in 2011.

Sonya Rockhouse, whose son Ben died in the mine, told the World Socialist Web Site there were at least two bodies in the footage recently released to the families. She said the families “were there every day of the Royal Commission hearings and we never saw footage like that. Our lawyers had not seen it either.”

“The fact that we have to fight for every little piece of information, that’s what blows me away,” she said. “You’d think they’d be wanting to help us find the answers, but no.”

Rockhouse described the Royal Commission as “a total waste of money. When it finished I thought: Is that it? There were several people who should have been on the stand that weren’t.” Former Pike River CEO Gordon Ward refused to give testimony, as did other company directors. The commission had no power to hold anyone legally accountable for the disaster.

She denounced the police for refusing to charge Whittall, saying “one of the main reasons they gave for not bringing charges was that WorkSafe [the Labour Department] was going to be charging him. WorkSafe laid charges and then they dropped them. In a perfect world you would think that the police would revisit [their decision] and place charges.”

Rockhouse and Anna Osborne, who lost her husband Milton in the mine disaster, have appealed for a judicial review of the regulator’s decision to drop charges against Whittall. Their initial appeal was rejected in February by the Court of Appeal and the case will now be heard in the Supreme Court in October.

Rockhouse said even if they are successful it would be a “symbolic victory.” Because Whittall only faced civil, not criminal, charges he cannot be extradited to New Zealand. Like other members of Pike River’s management, he has moved to Australia.

“We don’t have corporate manslaughter laws in this country,” Rockhouse said. “Our death rate for workplaces is up to 31 so far this year. We need to start making people accountable for that. There are several people that should be in jail because of Pike River and they aren’t because of our stupid laws.”

Rockhouse agreed with the WSWS that there were similarities between Pike River and the Grenfell Tower fire in London, which killed at least 79 people. In both cases, she said, there had been “a lack of a duty of care by the people who are in charge who have the money. They chose the cheapest option. I think it’s terrible, putting that cladding on the building when they knew it wasn’t up to code.”

There is widespread sympathy in the working class for the families’ demand for justice. A poll published by Newshub on June 19 found that 45 percent supported a re-entry of the mine, 35 percent were opposed and 20 percent were uncertain.

The opposition Labour Party and New Zealand First have criticised the government and promised to organise a manned re-entry of the drift tunnel if they are elected following the September 23 election. Labour leader Andrew Little told Newshub, “More and more evidence now is mounting to say there’s something in there that we haven’t been told, it’s not right, it doesn’t match up with the official story. We’ve got to get in there.”

Both parties, however, supported the deregulated environment that led to the disaster. Pike River mine was developed between 2004 and 2008, under the then-Labour government, and was allowed to open despite the many safety breaches. Labour MP Damien O’Connor admitted in 2012 that the party had failed to act on warnings that the deregulation, including the dismantling of the specialist mining inspectorate during the 1990s, would inevitably lead to a catastrophe.

New Zealand First was a coalition partner in both Labour and National-led governments, supporting their agenda of pro-business deregulation.

The trade union bureaucracy is also deeply implicated in the disaster. The Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union had about 70 members at Pike River. Immediately after the disaster Little, then leader of the EPMU, defended the company, telling the media it had “a good health and safety committee” and the union was not aware of any problems in the mine.

In fact, the union was aware of the dangerous conditions in the mine, which prompted a spontaneous walkout by a group of miners on one occasion. It remained silent and did not organise any industrial action to challenge management over the health and safety issues at Pike River.

The EPMU, which was renamed E Tu in 2015, has not commented on whether it knew about the suppressed footage showing that the mine can be safely re-entered to conduct a proper investigation.

Gulf confrontation worsens as deadline looms for Saudi ultimatum to Qatar

Peter Symonds 

The extraordinary ultimatum delivered last week to Qatar by Saudi Arabia and its allies—Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain—is due to expire next Monday with no sign of any resolution to the increasingly tense standoff.

The Saudi-led bloc imposed an economic, diplomatic and transport blockade on Qatar in early June, accusing it of supporting “terrorists” and criminals in the region. Its demands include shutting down the Al Jazeera news network and other Qatari-backed media, halting its support for the Muslim Brotherhood and other organisations, and handing over political opponents.

Qatari officials have flatly rejected the accusations and sharply criticised the hypocrisy of Saudi Arabia and its allies, which have backed right-wing Islamist groups in the Middle East and more widely. In an interview this week with Sky News, Qatar’s Finance Minister Ali Sharif al Emadi noted that “Osama bin Laden is not Qatari, he’s Saudi. People who hijacked the planes and bombed New York, 15 of them were not Qataris, they were Saudis and UAEs.”

Sheikh Saif bin Ahmed Al Thani, director of the Qatari government’s communications office, issued a statement last Friday saying the demands demonstrate “the illegal blockade” was not about terrorism but “limiting Qatar’s sovereignty, and outsourcing our foreign policy.” Saudi Arabia is demanding Qatar follow Riyadh’s foreign and military policy and pay reparations for the alleged damage caused by its policies.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, who met with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday, declared the demands were non-negotiable. “It’s up to the Qataris to amend their behaviour and once they do, things will be worked out but if they don’t they will remain isolated,” he tweeted.

This hardline stance was echoed by the UAE’s ambassador to Russia, Omar Ghobash, who indicated in an interview with the Guardian on Wednesday that the four-nation bloc was considering tougher penalties on Qatar, including secondary sanctions on countries that trade with Qatar.

“One possibility would be to impose conditions on our own trading partners and say you want to work with us then you have got to make a commercial choice,” Ghobash said. He also raised the possibility of expelling Qatar from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which he said was certainly under discussion.

Asked if the confrontation could lead to military conflict, Ghobash declared that the risk was “not from our side.” In reality, the aggressive Saudi-led blockade is an act of war in itself that has been followed by an ultimatum designed to be rejected. Bahrain accused Qatar of “military escalation” after Turkey last weekend airlifted armoured vehicles to Qatar and hinted it might send more troops. Turkey has rejected a demand to remove its troops.

The confrontation has led to an open rift in Washington as Tillerson seeks to end the brawling between US allies in the Gulf triggered by President Donald Trump’s encouragement of Saudi Arabia. After the demands of the Saudi-led bloc were made public, Tillerson declared last weekend they would be “very difficult for Qatar to meet” but suggested the list included “significant areas which provide a basis for ongoing dialogue leading to a resolution.”

Tillerson’s remarks put him at odds with Trump who supported the blockade, saying it was “hard but necessary.” Trump effectively gave the green light for Saudi Arabia’s aggressive actions against Qatar as part of the intensification of Riyadh’s confrontation with Iran throughout the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia and its allies are waging a brutal war in Yemen against Houthi rebels allegedly backed by Iran, and are supporting the US war in Syria aimed at ousting the Iranian- and Russian-backed government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Tillerson’s bid to defuse the standoff in the Gulf is backed by the Pentagon and the State Department, which are deeply concerned at the implications for the huge US Al-Udeid air base in Qatar, home to 11,000 American troops and forward headquarters for the US Central Command.

While the Pentagon undoubtedly has plans for a confrontation with Iran, its present focus is on thwarting Iran in Syria as the “war on terror” against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) more openly becomes a conflict to remove the Assad regime. US war planes bombing Syria fly out of its base in Qatar. The Pentagon registered its disapproval of the blockade by approving a $12 billion sale of advanced weapons to Qatar this month.

In a letter to Tillerson, Republican Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, publicly cut across Trump’s backing of the Saudi-led blockade this week by declaring he would “withhold consent” from all US arms sales to Gulf countries until their dispute was resolved. He wrote that the conflict among the Gulf states “only serves to hurt efforts to fight ISIS and counter Iran.”

The threat to halt arms sales would not apply to deals already approved but could affect the $110 billion package of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia that was agreed during Trump’s trip to Riyadh last month. While the Trump administration could ignore the existing protocol of seeking Corker’s approval, the senator’s letter shows that significant sections of the US political establishment regard the conflict between American allies in the Gulf as a disaster.

A New York Times editorial threw its weight behind Corker’s threat to arms sales as “a way to end the impasse and force some sort of resolution.” It branded the “dangerous dispute” as a diversion from fighting ISIS and other serious challenges, and warned that “nothing good can come of this dispute if it is allowed to persist.”

The public divisions in Washington over the US stance toward the Gulf dispute highlight the reckless, incoherent and crisis-ridden character of American foreign policy in the Middle East and internationally. A quarter century of US-led wars in the region has left millions dead, destroyed entire societies and profoundly destabilised the nation-state system imposed by French and British imperialism after World War I.

The standoff between the Saudi-led bloc with Qatar adds another potentially explosive trigger to the existing powder kegs, particularly in Syria and Yemen, that could set off a region-wide and international conflict involving all the major powers.

Petya ransomware attack shuts down computers in 65 countries

Kevin Reed 

In the second massive cyberattack in 44 days, both originating from malicious software developed by the US National Security Agency, personal computers in at least 65 countries were shut down Tuesday by an epidemic of ransomware known as Petya.

The attack had its greatest impact and first manifestation in Ukraine, where an estimated 12,500 computer systems were infected. Initial reports of the malware came when Ukrainian computer users attempted to update their copies of the tax and accounting software MeDoc. From there, the ransomware spread quickly all over the world, with major outages reported in Belgium, Brazil, Germany, Russia and the United States.

Among the corporations hit by the attack were the American pharmaceutical giant Merck, the British advertising agency WPP, the French multinational Saint-Gobain, the Russian steel and mining company Evraz and the Australian factory of the chocolate company Cadbury. In Ukraine, government ministries, ATMs and transit and airports systems were paralyzed and workers at the Chernobyl nuclear disaster site were forced to monitor radiation levels manually because their computers became inoperable.

In the US, Heritage Valley Health Systems, a Pennsylvania health care provider, was forced to cancel operations at its hospitals in Beaver and Sewickley due to the computer outage caused by Petya. According to some security experts, the latest ransomware attack represents a more sophisticated and lethal application of the malware than previously encountered.

The Petya ransomware causes computers to stop functioning and brings up a red screen with white letters that says the hard disks on the system have been encrypted with “military grade encryption.” The files on the system will be restored, the message explains, only in exchange for a payment of $300 in bitcoin electronic currency to a specified email address. It is not clear if making the ransom payment leads to the restoration of file access.

Once cybersecurity experts identified the email account, it was shut down.

The virus attacks Windows-based computers by taking advantage of the EternalBlue vulnerability. EternalBlue is known as an “exploit” or “bug” in the Windows operating system that can be used to cause unexpected behavior. Although Microsoft had released security updates to address the EternalBlue issue when they became aware of the problem last March, the latest attack is a “new variant” of Petya that can circumvent previous software patches.

Once a single system has been infected, the ransomware has the ability to move from computer to computer on a network without users doing anything. The Petya virus also has the ability to utilize unprotected machines to access networking features and infect machines that have been previously protected. Because of these innovations, some security experts are referring to the new ransomware as GoldenEye.

It is well known that the EternalBlue exploit was developed by the NSA as part of its arsenal of cyberwarfare weaponry for use against the rivals of US imperialism. Due to a combination of recklessness and stupidity, however, the NSA’s arsenal servers were hacked earlier this year and the tools were stolen by as-of-yet unidentified hackers.

In April, an Internet group known as Shadow Brokers published information about the NSA arsenal, including details about exploits that take advantage of vulnerabilities in enterprise firewalls, anti-virus products and Microsoft software.

The Petya attack comes less than two months after the outbreak in early May of the WannaCry ransomware, which spread around the world in a similar manner. In that instance, the malware shut down hundreds of thousands of computers in more than 150 countries.

So far, the NSA has not acknowledged any responsibility for the malware code that has now disrupted the economy in countless countries and endangered the lives of millions of people on two separate occasions. Computer security experts are coming forward in increasing numbers to demand that the NSA work with specialists to help defend computer systems from the destructive mayhem that the agency has unleashed upon society.

Although no one has taken responsibility for the latest epidemic, the location and timing of the Petya attack—centered in Ukraine and launched one day before a holiday marking the break of Ukraine from the USSR—points to possible political motivations. Some media outlets, as well as the Ukrainian government, have begun making well-worn and unsubstantiated allegations about “Russian hacking.”

Australian university staff face cuts to pay, jobs and basic rights

Mike Head

Enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA) negotiations underway across Australia point to an intensifying push—driven by government funding cuts—to impose real reductions in wages, as well in the conditions of university workers, both academic and non-academic.

Students at the country’s 39 public universities are also bearing the brunt of the offensive, facing higher fees, fewer and larger classes, fewer full-time teachers and worsening access to educational assistance and advice.

The federal Liberal-National government’s latest multi-billion dollar cuts, set out in its May 1 “Higher Education Reform Package,” remain stalled in parliament because of the widespread public opposition to the government’s agenda of slashing education, health care and welfare.

But the university administrations are already accelerating the pro-business restructuring of higher education that began three decades ago and was stepped up under the previous Labor government’s “education revolution.”

At numbers of universities, managements are demanding the elimination of hard-won basic rights, including limits on workloads, casualisation and sackings, as well as restricting annual pay rises to around 1 percent—well below the official inflation rate of about 2 percent.

While claiming to oppose the assault, the trade unions that cover the universities, the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) and the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), are seeking to keep workers in the dark about the magnitude of the attacks taking place nationally, isolate their members campus-by-campus and prevent or curtail any industrial action.

At Western Sydney University, for example, the administration is demanding a 1 percent annual pay rise in the next three-year EBA, plus the removal of restrictions on teaching hours and the employment of casual staff, and the abolition of appeal mechanisms for dismissals for alleged misconduct.

The NTEU is seeking to confine staff members to the most limited forms of industrial action. On June 16, the union obtained an order by the Fair Work Commission (FWC)—the federal industrial tribunal—for a postal ballot to be held over the next month on a range of options that do not exceed work stoppages of between 5 minutes and 24 hours. The other options consist of token bans or partial bans on various duties, including performing unpaid additional work.

Such a ballot request is the clearest signal of the NTEU’s determination to block any meaningful struggle against the university’s demands and the underlying program—with which the NTEU agrees—to transform universities into corporate institutions subordinated to the profit requirements of Australian big business.

Similar management demands have been issued around the country over the past six months. Last December, Murdoch University in Western Australia applied to the FWC to terminate the existing union EBA without a new deal in place—a move that would overturn basic conditions and cut pay scales by up to 39 percent. That application is still proceeding, despite a token letter-writing campaign by the NTEU to convince the administration to resume EBA talks.

At nearby Curtin University, where EBA negotiations have gone on for 13 months, the NTEU has proposed no industrial action against the management’s “non-negotiable” proposals for the removal of controls on academic workloads and misconduct or unsatisfactory performance dismissals, and for annual pay rises of just 1.05 percent. Instead, the union this month called on the management to conduct a ballot on its demands.

At other universities, because the unions have fragmented workers via the EBA process, back-room negotiations are still underway, or have yet to begin, on agreements to cover the next three or four years.

The corporate restructuring of the universities dates back to the 1980s when the Hawke Labor government reintroduced fees, first for international students, then domestic students. The basic social right to free education at every level, including tertiary, was junked to turn universities into revenue-generating institutions servicing the vocational and research needs of the financial elite.

While enrolment levels have been substantially increased since then, in order to produce more highly-skilled graduates for employment purposes, public funding contributions per student have been cut by successive governments, both Labor and Liberal-National. This has made universities ever-more reliant on attracting corporate funds and recruiting full-fee paying international students.

In 1974, federal funding accounted for 90 percent of public university budgets. By 2010, the figure was 42 percent, and close to 20 percent in the so-called elite universities with the biggest corporate partners and wealthy donors. Meanwhile, international students have become cash cows, not only for universities but the capitalist class as a whole. In the past year they generated $22.4 billion in income, making them the third largest source of foreign revenue after coal and iron ore exports.

Through its “reform package,” the federal Coalition government aims to intensify this process. In addition to the $4 billion in federal funding cuts enforced since 2011–12, mostly under the previous Labor government, the plan will slash another $2.8 billion over four years. This will include 2.5 percent annual “efficiency dividends” in 2018 and 2019, on top of a similarly damaging 3.5 percent “dividend” inflicted by the Labor government in 2013.

The government also plans to strip $3.7 billion from universities by closing the Education Investment Fund, which pays for university facilities, including classrooms, research labs and student hubs.

These cuts—totalling some 10 percent of university budgets—will require the elimination of between 7,000 and 9,500 full-time jobs by 2021, or the replacement of an even greater number of full-time positions with part-time or casual employment.

Universities have long been slashing their full-time staff in order to cut costs and replace tenured academics with insecure and financially-stressed casuals, who are regarded as more compliant with management dictates.

Only 6.4 out of every 100 new full-time equivalent positions created at Australian universities between 2009 and 2015 were tenured teaching and research academic jobs. The share of teaching undertaken by tenured academics dropped from 46 percent in 2005 to less than 40 percent in 2015.

The government’s package will further blow out student-staff ratios, which have deteriorated from 15.6 to 1 in 1996 to 21.3 to 1. At the same time, students’ fees will rise by 7.5 percent, above and beyond the inflation rate, and graduates will be forced to pay back their fees, via the HELP loan scheme, at much lower salaries and faster rates.

Far from opposing the corporate transformation, the unions are its arch-exponents. Like the rest of the union movement, the NTEU has become an instrument for forcing sacrifices on its members to make Australian capitalism “globally competitive” in a world dominated by ruthless financial markets.

In its submission to a Senate committee inquiry on the federal government’s package, the NTEU’s criticisms centred on the impact on the universities’ money-spinning capacities. “Any additional cuts would put Australian universities, students and graduates at a competitive disadvantage globally,” it argued, and would be “detrimental to the capacity and reputation of Australia to sustain a world-class university system.”

This entirely nationalist outlook goes hand-in-hand with promoting Labor and the Greens as alternatives, and whitewashing the role of the 2007–13 Greens-backed Labor government. According to the submission, “Australian students and universities have already contributed close to $4 billion in budget repair since the election of the Coalition government in 2013.”

In reality, Labor, assisted by the unions, implemented most of those cuts before it was thrown out of office in a landslide defeat in 2013.

Major crisis in Australian public school infrastructure

Karen Holland

According to recent research, Australian public schools will need to cater for hundreds of thousands more students over the next decade, while media reports indicate that many schools are already “bursting at the seams.”

In 2015, the Australian Centre for Educational Research (ACER) warned that new public schools would need to be built for an estimated 400,000 additional students during the next decade. In response to the findings, ACER’s chief executive at the time, Geoffrey Newcombe, warned: “If we don't start to invest more in infrastructure in schools, then we'll be teaching children sitting under trees.”

In early 2016, public policy think tank, the Grattan Institute, increased this already astounding projection to 650,000. Its research found that in order to accommodate the increased numbers, from 400 to 750 new schools would need to be built over the next 10 years, costing $A6–11 billion. Among these would be around 250–500 primary schools.

Unsustainable overcrowding is already well underway. Many schools are either full or well over capacity, particularly in the state capital cities, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Students in some schools are using the floor, corridors and balconies during classes, while at others, start times and lunch breaks are being staggered. On Sydney’s lower north shore, students at one public primary school attend classes in portable classrooms erected at the local high school.

In New South Wales (NSW), figures released by a state parliamentary inquiry in August 2016 reveal that more than one third of schools are full, while 8 percent are “stretched beyond their limits.” In Sydney’s inner west, half of its 30 schools are already full or over-capacity.

In Melbourne’s rapidly growing outer suburbs, schools are also facing surging student numbers. The student population at Alamanda College in Point Cook, which teaches Kindergarten to Year 9, has increased by 500 percent in three years. The school runs on four timetables, with staggered break times to ensure students have enough space in the playground.

North Melbourne Public School, in the inner city, has reportedly provided students with “lap desks,” along with pre-recorded lessons, in one double classroom, with four classes being conducted at the same time.

A recent report on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s radio Background Briefing program indicated that inner city schools were “jam-packed” due to the surge in new apartments accommodating the larger numbers of families wanting to live close to the city and to their workplaces.

The crisis in public school infrastructure has been decades in the making. It is a direct consequence of two and a half decades of ruthless cost cutting by Labor and Liberal governments, both state and federal, resulting in the closure of hundreds of public, government-funded schools across the country. Most severely affected have been schools in the states of Victoria, NSW, South Australia and Tasmania.

In Victoria, the Steve Bracks and John Brumby Labor governments shut down or merged 150 schools from 1999 to 2010. Prior to that, between 1992 and 1999, the Kennett Liberal government closed more than 300, meaning that in just under two decades, more than 450 Victorian schools were forced to shut their doors.

In NSW, the Greiner Liberal government closed 8 primary schools in northern Sydney in the early 1990s, with the sites being “snapped up” by local private schools. Then, despite data showing that school enrolments had risen by 60 percent between 2003 and 2008, the state Labor government began closing schools in 2008–09, in Sydney’s popular inner west. Principals, parents and teachers accused it of bullying or bribing them into accepting these closures or amalgamations.

Between 2009 and early 2016, according to the NSW Teachers Federation, 57 schools were shut down in smaller regional towns, by both Labor and Liberal state governments. The scale of popular opposition forced the holding of a public inquiry, which found that the governments had not, in fact, “consulted” with local school “stakeholders,” as they had claimed, but had made the closure decisions unilaterally, and well in advance.

Many of the closed school sites were sold off to private developers or property investors, with state governments amassing tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars out of the deals.

Recently, the NSW Liberal government blamed the current infrastructure crisis on a “historic lack of planning.” While that is no doubt an element, an analysis of the closures during the past decades reveals a conscious and deliberate political strategy, on the part of all state governments, to de-fund, run down and eventually sell off public schools, thereby forcing parents to send their children into the private school sector, which is far better funded through both government and private sources.

Unable to ignore growing community anger about the school overcrowding crisis, the NSW Liberal government announced last week that it would allocate $4.2 billion from its state budget to build and upgrade 120 schools over the next four years. Boasting that this would be “the biggest NSW government investment­ in education infrastructure in history,” the government listed its intended new projects. Out of more than 150, just 30 are proposals for new schools. The rest will involve upgrades or expansions of existing schools “to provide additional new teaching spaces.” Considering the Grattan Institute’s estimation of a minimum requirement of 213 new public schools in NSW over the next 10 years, this is worse than inadequate.

Moreover, no mention has been made of, or funding allocated to, the extra staffing and resources that will be needed to adequately support students and teaching staff in these new spaces.

To what extent private funding will be involved in the construction and maintenance of these projects has not been revealed. In Victoria, where the privatisation agenda is most advanced, the state government has just announced that 15 new government schools will be built under “Public Private Partnerships (PPPs)” across the state in the next two years. The private sector will be contracted for 25 years to finance, design, construct and maintain these schools. This is part of a plan, not to improve the public education system, but to increasingly hand it over to the profit-making private sector, a plan that has already been exposed as a failure in the US and the UK, and antithetical to the educational needs of students and teachers. This agenda has been carried out with the full support of the education unions.

As for the federal government, its latest education budget, known as Gonski 2.0, has just been passed by the federal parliament. Touted as a mechanism for creating “needs-based funding” and “equity” in Australian schools, in reality it will play a central role in furthering the privatisation agenda. Australia already has one of the highest number in the world of school students attending private schools—now at 40 percent, compared to 9 percent of school students in the US and around 7 percent in the UK.

Overall, Gonski 2.0 will deliver increased public funding to private schools, and even less to public schools than the first “Gonski” budget did. The outcome will be ever greater inequities in the country’s increasingly dysfunctional public school system.

Iraqi-Americans stuck in deportation limbo

David Brown & Usman Khan 

The deportation of roughly 200 Iraqi nationals, predominantly Chaldeans, in the Detroit area was halted Monday when the Eastern Michigan District Court expanded a Detroit area stay to affect detained Iraqi immigrants nationwide. However, without a further decision deportations will resume on July 6.

Friends and family members have been holding protests outside the federal courthouse in Detroit in defense of the immigrants, many of whom came to the country as children and have spent decades living and working in the US.

Initially, 114 immigrants were detained in the Detroit area as part of a broader Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sweep on June 11. Since then at least 80 more have been arrested nationwide. An ICE spokesman told reporters that as of April 17, there are final removal orders for a total of 1,444 Iraqi citizens living in the US.

While the Detroit ICE office told MLive that these deportations “address the very real public safety threat represented by criminal aliens,” family members and protesters who gathered outside the courthouse last week described those detained as ordinary people with minor offenses.

Diana Hormez, whose brother was recently detained, spoke to the WSWS: “My brother got snatched at that time because he had some minor legal offenses against him. He’s worked in construction and in a party store which his friend owned. He’s a great guy.”

Diana Hormez

Like many of the immigrants, Hormez’s brother has lived in the US for decades and has built a life. “He has been living in the US since he was 3 years old,” she said. “He came over here on a visa. He’s now 40 years old and he has children.”

Hormez explained that being arrested as a teenager has haunted him ever since and prevented him from becoming a citizen:

“He has had problems but he has never run away from the consequences of what he did. He has served his time in jail, he has done parole, and he has gone to the immigration office once a month, every month, like he is supposed to. My brother’s not a murderer. He has been trying for so long to get his citizenship but because of his legal offenses he was never able to get it. My father got his citizenship and I was born here so I’m a citizen but my brother has not been able to get his citizenship.”

Many of those arrested were sent to detention facilities hours away in Ohio, but may be sent even further from their families. “They are taking many of the people they picked up, from the facility in Youngstown, Ohio, where they are currently being held, and they are moving them to facilities in Louisiana and Arizona,” Hormez said. “Apparently, that’s the next step before they get deported. The ACLU intervened and managed to get them to stop the deportations for now but it is just a temporary measure.”

The initial stay was granted on June 22 in response to a petition from the detainees, citing the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Convention Against Torture, as legally barring their deportation to a war zone where their “life or freedom would be threatened.”

A protest of Iraqi immigrants in Detroit

Instead of arguing that the detainees could be legally deported, the US government argued that the District Court has no jurisdiction and detainees could only have challenged their deportation by appealing their final removal order when it was issued. In some cases the final removal orders were issued over a decade ago, well before ISIS seized Northern Iraq and specifically targeted Chaldeans and Kurds.

In March, the Iraqi government agreed to accept deportees from the United States in exchange for being removed from the Trump administration’s travel ban. The travel ban was initially stopped by lower courts, but the Supreme Court decided unanimously Monday to allow the Trump administration to implement the ban, with minor adjustments, prior to a final ruling.

The current district court decision halting deportation to Iraq is only a temporary reprieve. The support of the “liberal” wing of the Supreme Court for Trump’s discriminatory measures on the basis of “national security” demonstrates the inability of the highest court to defend basic constitutional and democratic rights.

Eleven patients die after alleged oxygen-supply failure at Indian hospital

Deepal Jayasekera 

India’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has asked the Madhya Pradesh chief secretary to provide a report on the death of at least 11 patients, including two children, at a state-run hospital in Indore. The patients are alleged to have died after the sudden failure of oxygen supplies at Maharajah Yaswanth (MY) Hospital in the early hours of June 21.

The NHRC said that if press reports about the deaths were true, it indicated “gross negligence” by hospital authorities and amounted to a violation of the right to life of patients. It requested the Madhya Pradesh state government to complete the report within four weeks.

The incident, however, goes beyond MY Hospital. It exposes the parlous state of India’s entire public health sector. Successive governments at the national and state levels have refused to provide adequate funds, while promoting highly profitable private hospitals. MY Hospital is the largest state-run health facility in central India.

MY Hospital authorities denied any problem with oxygen supplies. Divisional commissioner Sanjay Dubey, who is also affiliated with MGM Medical College, to which MY Hospital is attached, rejected allegations of “medical negligence.” He said legal action was being considered against a newspaper that published what he claimed was wrong information about the deaths.

“There is no negligence. I have been to every ward of the hospital and there was no break in oxygen supply,” Dubey said. “It is a tertiary sector hospital with 1,400 beds and on an average, there are 10–12 deaths every day.” Sixty to seventy patients are placed on oxygen every day, he continued, and if “the oxygen supply had been cut off, the rest of the patients should also have died.”

A Times of India report, however, quoted an anonymous senior hospital official who confirmed there was a “disruption” in oxygen supplies at around 3 a.m. “The [oxygen] supply was cut off for nearly 15 minutes. Those who could survive the duration survived,” the official said. “The critical ones died.”

While MY hospital authorities continue to deny any oxygen disruption they have refused to offer any reason for the deaths. Hospital authorities have also seized all the death records of patients from the wards, intensive care units (ICU) and neonatal ICUs.

Hospital superintendent Dr. V. S. Pal admitted to the media that 11 patients died on June 21, yet refused to provide any information. “I can assure that no medical negligence has taken place,” he said, but “I am not at liberty to disclose details.”

Questions about oxygen supply at MY Hospital are not new. In late May 2016, two children died at the facility when they were accidentally given nitrogen gas, instead of oxygen in a paediatric operating theatre.

Total government expenditure on health in India is currently about 1.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), among the lowest levels in the world. In 2011 the Indian government’s Planning Commission and High Level Expert Group Report on Universal Health Coverage for India said public health expenditure should be increased to 2.5–3 percent of GDP. Six years later, spending has not reached even half of this target.

Public health expenditure per capita is also among the lowest internationally, with China spending 5.6 times more per person than India and the US 125 times more. As a result, Indians have to personally fund more than 62 percent of their health expenses, compared to 13.4 percent in the US, 10 percent in the UK and 54 percent in China.

Due to meagre government allocations, India’s public health care is both under-financed and short-staffed, with the situation in rural areas far worse than in urban centres. There is an 81 percent shortage of specialists at rural community health centres. About 31 percent of the country’s rural population has to travel over 30 kilometres to get much-needed medical care.

Under these conditions, private hospitals increasingly dominate, reaping massive profits from Indian patients and others in the region. In 2013, India’s private health care sector was worth $US81.3 billion annually and that figure is expected to increase by 17 percent by 2020. According to official figures, the private health sector accounts for 63 percent of hospital beds and over 134,000 patients travelled to India seeking treatment in private hospitals last year.

The vast majority of working people and rural toilers cannot afford the high costs of private health care or health insurance. According to recent data from the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority, 76 percent of Indians have no health insurance. Indian government contributions to health insurance total around 32 percent, compared to 83.5 percent in the UK.

By contrast, the political and business elite have access to high-quality private health care at home and abroad. Last month, Union Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Ram Vilas Paswan flew to London for heart surgery. Early this year, Sonia Gandhi, president of the opposition Congress Party, flew abroad for medical tests and treatment.

Trump and Modi trumpet Indo-US “strategic convergence”

Deepal Jayasekera 

US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged to strengthen the Indo-US “global strategic partnership” when they met at the White House Monday for their first bilateral meeting.

Modi, an arch-communalist and faithful errand boy for big business, and Trump, the billionaire autocrat, lavished praise on one another, while emphasizing the “strategic convergence” between the US and India.

Under Modi’s three year-old Bharatiya Janata Party-led government, India is increasingly serving as a frontline state in US imperialism’s military-strategic offensive against China. India has dramatically expanded bilateral and trilateral military-strategic ties with Washington and its principal Asia-Pacific allies, Japan and Australia, and has thrown open its military bases to US warplanes and battleships for routine resupply and repair.

At a joint press conference and in the statement they issued summarizing their talks, Trump and Modi vowed to “expand and deepen” the Indo-US alliance, with Modi endorsing Washington’s provocative stance on North Korea and the South China Sea dispute, and Trump extending several strategic “favours” to India.

“The relationship between India and the United States has never been stronger, has never been better,” Trump told the press conference. Characterizing the “security partnership between the United States and India” as “incredibly important,” the US President added: “Our militaries are working every day to enhance cooperation between our military forces. And next month, they will join together with the Japanese navy to take place in the largest maritime exercise ever conducted in the vast Indian Ocean.”

The latter is a reference to the Malabar Exercise, a yearly Indian-hosted naval war game. In 2015 it was transformed into a trilateral affair with the addition of Japan as a third permanent participant, alongside the US and India.

A key US strategic objective is to use India to enhance its domination over the Indian Ocean, the waterway that bears most of China’s exports to Europe, Africa and the Middle East and most of the oil and other resources that fuel China’s economy.

For his part, Modi said India is committed to working with the US across the Indo-Pacific region “in order to protect our strategic interests” and to developing a “bilateral architecture that will take our strategic partnership to new heights.” He went on to laud Washington for naming India a Major Defense Partner of the US, which gives it access to advanced US weapons systems that the Pentagon allows only its closest allies to purchase, and for the India-US Defense Trade and Technology Initiative, under which New Delhi and Washington are working on the codevelopment and coproduction of armaments.

“The strengthening of India’s defense capabilities, with the help of the USA, is something that we truly appreciate,” said Modi. Both the joint statement and Modi in his press conference remarks referred to plans to enhance Indo-US “maritime security cooperation,” but provided no details.

Earlier this year, Admiral Harry Harris, the head of the US Pacific Command, revealed that the US and India are sharing intelligence on Chinese submarine and ship movements in the Indian Ocean. Washington has repeatedly urged New Delhi to agree to joint naval patrols in both the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, including the South China Sea.

With a view to boosting India’s military capabilities and demonstrating the importance it attaches to the US partnership with India, the Trump administration approved, on the eve of Modi’s Washington visit, the sale of 22 naval Predator surveillance drones to New Delhi for $2.3 billion.

Underlining the drones’ potential importance in countering China, the New York Times observed, “The drones, which have never before been sold to a non-NATO country, could be especially valuable if they are flown over the Andaman and Nicobar Islands [which lie close to the western end of the Straits of Malacca], giving India control of a so-called choke point that is one of China’s greatest marine vulnerabilities.”

As a further strategic “favour” to India, the Trump administration agreed to the inclusion of strong language critical of Pakistan in the joint statement. It said the two leaders “called on Pakistan to ensure that its territory is not used to launch terrorist attacks on other countries” and “to expeditiously bring to justice the perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai, Pathankot, and other cross-border terrorist attacks perpetrated by Pakistan-based groups.”

Over the past year Modi has mounted a bellicose campaign against Pakistan, labeling it the “mother ship” of world terrorism and asserting an Indian right to mount illegal cross-border raids inside Pakistan until it stops all logistical support to anti-Indian Kashmiri separatists from inside Pakistan. Soon after arriving in the US on Sunday, Modi made a point of trumpeting the “surgical strikes” India conducted inside Pakistan last September, saying that as a result “the world experienced our power and realized that India practices restraint but can show power when needed.”

Just hours before the Trump-Modi meeting, the US State Department designated Syed Salahuddin, the chief of Hizbul Mujahideen, a pro-Pakistan Kashmir separatist militia, a “global terrorist,” fulfilling a longtime Indian request. Hailing the action, Indian officials said it “vindicated” New Delhi’s stance that the popular unrest in Kashmir is a result of Pakistani-backed terrorism.

The South China Sea, North Korea and Afghanistan

The Pentagon and US State Department were ecstatic when Modi signed on to US-scripted language on the South China Sea dispute in a joint statement issued with Obama in January 2015. Ever since, India has faithfully parroted the US position, painting Beijing as the aggressor, when it is the US that, in the name of “freedom of navigation” and “overflight,” is asserting the right to deploy its military might off the coast of China.

What stands out in the most recent statement emanating from an Indo-US leaders’ summit is New Delhi’s staunch support for the Trump administration’s stance on North Korea. India is giving full-throated support to Washington even as it declares the end of “strategic patience” with Pyongyang, with the transparent aim of stoking a crisis on the Korean Peninsula so as to pressure and threaten China.

According to the joint statement, Modi and Trump “strongly condemned” North Korea’s “continued provocations” and “pledged to work together to counter” its “weapons of mass destruction programs, including by holding accountable all parties that support these programs.”

In keeping with Washington’s ratcheting up of tensions with Pyongyang, India recently halted all trade with North Korea except for food and medicine. Until that ban, India had been North Korea’s second-largest trading partner after China.

Trump thanked India at the White House lawn press conference “for joining us in applying new sanctions” against North Korea, adding, “the North Korean regime is causing tremendous problems and is something that has to be dealt with, and probably dealt with rapidly.”

The joint statement also said the two countries would work together in Afghanistan, where the US war of occupation is now in its seventeenth year. Modi reiterated this point at the press conference, saying “both India and America have played an important role in rebuilding Afghanistan and ensuring its security.” He pledged to “maintain close consultation and communication” with Washington over Afghanistan.

Important sections of India’s elite had wanted Modi to raise their concerns over the impact of Trump’s economic nationalist “America First” policies, including new limits on H1-B visas, which are widely used by Indian IT firms. But the Indian prime minister was at pains to downplay differences with Washington, so as not to in any way impede the further strengthening of the Indo-US strategic alliance, which the Indian bourgeoisie views as vital to realizing its own great power ambitions.

Modi hailed the US “as our primary partner for India’s social and economic transformation,” claimed that Trump’s “vision” for “making America great again” converges with his plans for a “new India,” and in the most obsequious language repeatedly thanked Trump “for spending so much time with me.”

Trump praised Modi for his pro-big business policies, but made clear that he expects Modi’s government to do much more to open India’s economy to US investment and exports.

Prior to Monday’s summit there was a raft of anxious commentary in the Indian press about Trump and whether his administration will prioritize ties with India to the extent that both George W. Bush and Obama did. However, in its aftermath there was a collective sigh of relief from India’s corporate media.

China, meanwhile, has grown increasingly alarmed by the extent to which India has aligned itself with Washington. In a comment published Monday, the state-owned Global Times noted that “the US has cozied up to India” in recent years “to ratchet up geopolitical pressure on India.”

It continued with a blunt warning: “To assume a role as an outpost country in the US’ strategy to contain China is not in line with India’s interests. It could even lead to catastrophic results.”

Greek waste disposal workers strike against mass layoffs

Christoph Vandreier 

Approximately 10,000 waste disposal workers were thrown out of work last week by the Syriza government in Greece so as to balance the budget and fulfill potential demands from county’s creditors as rapidly as possible.

Following the enforcement of brutal pension cuts, privatisations and tax hikes for the poorest sections of the population in order to meet its loan repayment obligations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Union (EU), Syriza is now turning to a brazen attack on public sector workers.

A powerful strike developed against the firings, with waste disposal workers walking off the job last Monday, bringing rubbish collection in Athens, Thessaloniki and other cities to a halt. Workers are currently blockading waste disposal facilities to prevent a state-organised strike-breaking operation. Only hospitals and other services necessary for public health have been excluded from the strike.

Workers are showing tremendous determination. “Work is all that we want, anyone around the world can understand that. Jobs so we can feed our families,” Manolis Skoulas told Xinhua.

Skoulas formerly worked in construction, but lost his job during the economic crisis and was hired by the state waste disposal service in 2011. He has two young children and is among the workers who were laid off. “I don’t know what to do. I’m 51 years old. Nobody will hire me in the private sector. They prefer younger, cheaper workers,” he reported.

These are typical comments from waste disposal workers, who carry out physically demanding work and earn no more than €700 per month. Now they are being laid off without compensation.

The government is well aware of heightened social tensions and is therefore treating the striking workers with extreme brutality. Demonstrators who gathered in front of the Interior Ministry in Athens on Monday were harshly attacked by police. According to news agency AMNA, a state prosecutor is preparing criminal proceedings against the striking workers for endangering public health. The mayor of Thessaloniki, Jannis Boutaris, has announced he will contract a private company for waste disposal.

The mass lay-off of waste disposal workers marks a new high point of the social attacks organised by Syriza in Greece.

Some of the workers being laid off have been employed by the state waste disposal service for 16 years, but have remained on temporary contracts through this time. In this way, several governments have used this as a means of securing political loyalty. The Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza) promised in its election campaign to end this precarious system and to hire the workers permanently.

But Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras had barely taken office when he defended the system and merely extended the contracts for another eight months. The auditor’s office declared this practice unacceptable last week because the jobs were not open-ended. The contracts of the 10,000 workers were therefore void and could not simply be extended, according to the court.

The Syriza government had no intention of taking this as an opportunity to fulfill its election pledge and provide the workers with security by hiring them permanently. Instead, Interior Minister Panos Skourletis used the decision to impose the mass lay-offs. He insisted on the demand of the IMF and EU that every new hire in the public sector must be accompanied by four lay-offs in order to balance the budget.

According to this, the government will only replace the 10,000 laid-off workers with 2,500 at the state waste disposal service. In this way, Skourletis will cut 7,500 jobs in one go. This amounts to roughly one quarter of the workforce. In addition, he intends to newly advertise the 2,500 positions so that older workers, who have been carrying out the demanding labour for many years, will hardly have any hope of being rehired.

However, it is entirely unclear whether the creditors’ stipulations apply in this case, since it is not concerned with new hires in the strict sense of the term but the transformation of existing working conditions. Skourletis and Tsipras are rushing to loyally enforce the austerity demands and are going beyond the cuts called for.

On June 14, Tsipras boasted in the daily Die Welt that he was the best in Europe at budget cutting. “In the two years our government has been in office, we have implemented more reforms than all of the other European states combined,” he said. His government has now “taken a step still further” and tabled budget proposals for 2019 and 2020 to satisfy the creditors.

In fact, Syriza has gone further than any other government in ensuring the banks, IMF and EU that they will pay back all of Greece’s debt. Just to obtain the last loan tranche, the Syriza government enforced pension cuts of between 9 and 18 percent, slashed the tax-free earnings limit from €8,636 to €5,681, and cut subsidies for home heating, unemployment and other social welfare benefits. Privatisations and mass lay-offs were also made easier.

These policies have been met with strong resistance by the working class. In May, strikes were held by seamen, journalists, and public sector workers. Protests and demonstrations occur regularly. Bus drivers in Thessaloniki took strike action because their wages were not paid for months. The current strike by waste disposal workers, both in its length and intensity, has gone far beyond previous protests.

To suppress this opposition, Syriza is working closely with the trade unions, which have regularly restricted strikes and led them into a dead end. On Tuesday, officials from the union representing city and municipal workers, POE-OTA, met with Tsipras to discuss how the strike could be ended. Trade union leaders subsequently noted how well the discussions had gone and said they looked forward to an “improved offer.” But in the face of the anger among the workforce, they declared that the strike will continue until Thursday.