US Navy SEAL officers attempted to cover up evidence of war crimes

Josh Varlin

Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher, a US Navy SEAL awaiting a court-martial for war crimes charges, was systematically protected by his SEAL superiors for a year, a Navy investigation report covered by the New York Times reveals. Gallagher’s trial begins May 28 for premeditated murder, attempted murder, obstruction of justice and other crimes related to war crimes in Iraq, and there is an ongoing investigation into similar actions in Afghanistan.

The war crimes described in the 439-page report and the subsequent cover-up by Gallagher’s superiors highlight the toleration and promotion of deranged and fascistic elements within the military. The SEALs, which stands for Sea, Air and Land Teams, are the US Navy’s special operations force. They are closely tied to the Central Intelligence Agency, going back to SEAL-CIA operations during the Vietnam War and CIA recruitment from the SEALs today.

The central allegation against Gallagher, who also goes by the nickname “Blade,” is that he murdered a captive Iraqi teenager while deployed to Mosul. SEALs told investigators that on May 4, 2017, Gallagher heard that an Islamic State fighter had been wounded and was in custody. According to the Times, “Chief Gallagher responded over the radio with words to the effect of ‘he’s mine.’”

“A medic was treating the youth on the ground when Chief Gallagher walked up without a word and stabbed the wounded teenager several times in the neck and once in the chest with his hunting knife, killing him, two SEAL witnesses said.”

Gallagher then gathered SEALs for a gruesome reenlistment ceremony over the teenager’s body, complete with an American flag and photos.

That night or the next day, SEALs reported the incident to Gallagher’s immediate superior, a troop chief, as well as Lieutenant Jacob Portier, the platoon commander. Portier has been charged separately for allegedly covering up the stabbing because he lied to his own superior, Lieutenant Commander Robert Breisch, who asked if there was “anything criminal” associated with the reenlistment ceremony.

SEALs also describe Gallagher shooting his sniper rifle “about ten times as often as other snipers,” including shooting a young girl and an unarmed old man (both incidents have two witnesses). A message in a Mosul sniper nest read, “Eddie G puts the laughter in Manslaughter.”

The Times describes how “one senior SEAL” alleged that Gallagher “routinely parked an armored truck on a Tigris River bridge and emptied the truck’s heavy machine gun into neighborhoods on the other side with no discernible targets.”

One SEAL told investigators that other snipers “began shooting warning shots at any civilians they saw on the battlefield so that the civilians would run away and [Gallagher] could not kill them.”

A separate investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) is looking into Gallagher allegedly killing a goat herder in Afghanistan in 2010.

Gallagher’s alleged crimes—with most of those publicly cited in the press backed up by multiple witnesses and photo or video documentation—are an indictment of the American military. The SEALs have such a reputation for brutality, including against their own members, that Rear Admiral Collin Green, the SEAL’s top commander, “ordered a 90-day review of the force’s culture and training,” according to the Times.

On May 4, the International Committee of the Fourth International is holding its annual International May Day Online Rally, with speakers and participants from throughout the world.

Despite beginning in January, any findings or conclusions of the review have not been made public.

However, there is much more involved here than one war criminal. When SEALs attempted to report Gallagher’s actions, they were warned against it. Breisch and Master Chief Petty Officer Brian Alazzawi met with seven SEALs in March 2018, during which Breisch told SEALs “that while the SEALs were free to report the killings, the Navy might not look kindly on rank-and-file team members making allegations against a chief. Their careers could be sidetracked, he said,” according to the Times.

Alazzawi, perhaps saying more than he intended, warned SEALs that their allegations would have a wide “frag [fragmentation] radius” and could implicate many other SEALs.

One of the seven rank-and-file SEALs who attended the meeting described the message from Breisch and Alazzawi as “Stop talking about it.”

A few days after this meeting, Gallagher was awarded a medal for his conduct in Iraq.

It took another month for the SEALs to force their commanding officers to report Gallagher’s war crimes, including the stabbing of the teenager and the shooting of two unarmed civilians, to NCIS. The SEALs had threatened to go up the chain of command or directly to the press.

Either through being told by Breisch or Alazzawi or through some other means, Gallagher himself found out about the March 2018 meeting and set about turning other SEALs against those who had told officers about his crimes. He texted another SEAL chief, “I just got word these guys went crying to the wrong person.”

To a different SEAL, he texted: “The only thing we can do as good team guys is pass the word on those traitors. They are not brothers at all.”

After the internal cover-up failed, various reactionaries have lined up to defend Gallagher. Fox News has given extensive air time to Gallagher’s wife and brother. A letter calling for Gallagher to be freed pending trial was signed by 40 Republican members of Congress.

President Donald Trump, clearly seeking to mobilize fascistic elements in his base, tweeted, “In honor of his past service to our Country, Navy Seal #EddieGallagher will soon be moved to less restrictive confinement while he awaits his day in court. Process should move quickly!”

The individual crimes committed as part of the wars and occupations of American imperialism are the product of the more fundamental crime, the launching of the wars themselves. The architects of these crimes, including George W. Bush and Barack Obama, have gone unpunished after ordering aggressive military action in contravention of international law and the Nuremberg principles. The only person who faced charges related to the CIA’s torture program has been whistleblower John Kiriakou.

War by other means: US/EU sanctions aimed at crippling Syria

Jean Shaoul

This past week has seen massive queues in Syria’s capital Damascus outside petrol (gas) stations.

The fuel shortage has become far worse than during the war—bringing commercial life almost to a standstill. With domestic oil production down as a result of war damage and disruption to only 24,000 barrels per day (BPD), far less than the 136,000 bpd it needs, the government has rationed petrol. Private cars are allowed 20 litres every five days and taxis 20 litres every 48 hours. Before the war, Syria enjoyed relative energy autonomy.

This follows the ending of a credit line and oil supplies from Iran in October and US sanctions against Iran and Syria that have intensified since US President Donald Trump’s declared “the final defeat” of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Damascus sought to replace Iranian supplies via private sector importers, but this met with little success as ships have been prevented from reaching Syria after entering regional waters. In November, the US Treasury issued a warning, threatening anyone involved in shipping petroleum to the Syrian government with sanctions.

The aim is to cut off the Syrian government and its supporters from the global financial and trade systems. The Pentagon has also made it clear that despite Trump’s plan to withdraw US troops from Syria, the illegal US military presence in Syria will continue indefinitely with a “residual force.”

The US wants to preclude any reunification and reconstruction of the war-ravaged country, by carving out its own sphere of influence in Syria’s northeast. This would seize control over the country’s main oil and gas-producing region, using Syria as a base for preparing a wider and bloodier war against Iran, while encouraging Israel to play a major role in military operations against Syria.

Washington is seeking to create the conditions for a rebellion against the Assad regime, as in Iran and Venezuela, by crashing its economy and exacerbating the country’s social and economic crisis and thereby impose a pro-US regime in Damascus.

The Assad government is compelled to manoeuvre between the threats from an increasingly rapacious US imperialism, the demands of its backers in Moscow and Tehran, and the mounting anger of an impoverished working class against the war profiteers, traffickers and regime insiders benefiting from what little “reconstruction” is taking place.

Washington’s eight-year-long proxy war against Syria—along with its more than four years of intense aerial bombing—has devastated the country, causing immense human suffering.

Nearly half a million people have died. There are 3 million people living with permanent disabilities. Around 11 million people, nearly half the population, have fled their homes. Some 5.6 million are living in neighbouring countries, including 3.6 million living in Turkey, while there are 6.2 million internally displaced, creating the world’s largest refugee crisis since World War II.

The war, involving hundreds of militias fighting the Syrian regime and each other, has laid waste to industrial cities and infrastructure. Water, sanitation and electrical systems barely function in the former rebel-held areas. Schools and hospitals have been flattened. Some 2 million children are not in school.

US bombing has reduced cities and towns such as Raqqa to rubble, while in rural areas irrigation channels no longer function and grain silos have been destroyed, leading to a 40 percent reduction in food production, particularly wheat.

More than 80 percent of Syrians are living in extreme poverty, on less than $1.90 per day, in what was a middle-income country. According to a World Bank survey, 56 percent of the country’s businesses have either closed or relocated outside the country since 2009, while unemployment rose from less than 10 percent in 2010 to over 50 percent in 2015. It estimates that the cumulative loss in GDP between 2011 and 2016 was $226 billion, around four times Syria’s 2010 GDP. A third of those losses were in the oil and gas sector.

On May 4, the International Committee of the Fourth International is holding its annual International May Day Online Rally, with speakers and participants from throughout the world.

Soaring inflation, a depreciating currency that has plummeted from a pre-war exchange rate of 50 Syrian pounds to 550 pounds to the dollar, stagnant wages and plummeting purchasing power means that even the basics are unaffordable. The ever-deepening poverty is causing endless privation, compounded by frequent and lengthy water and electricity shutoffs and fuel shortages.

Many are dependent on remittances from Syrians abroad, estimated by the World Bank to be about $1.62 billion in 2016, higher than the total from salaries and wages, as well as unofficial transfers through unlicensed offices, individuals and traffickers.

The wealthy are insulated from all of this, with cafes and restaurants in the upscale neighbourhoods busy, in stark contrast to the long queues to buy subsidised bread and replace empty gas canisters for cooking.

The hardships of the war have been compounded by the sanctions imposed since 2011 by the United States, the European Union (EU) and the UN on imports such as some fuels, as well as Syrian individuals accused of financially supporting the regime. Last January, after Trump said he was bringing US troops in Syria “back home,” the EU issued sanctions against a further 11 businessmen and five associated companies, while the US Congress passed legislation, the Orwellian “Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act,” broadening existing sanctions to include non-US citizens who deal with the Assad regime, so-called secondary sanctions.

While Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates appear to be considering giving some financial support to Damascus to counter long-term Iranian hegemony in Syria, these sanctions could hit anyone—including Gulf-based companies involved in Syria’s reconstruction, variously estimated at between $250 billion (about four times Syria’s pre-war GDP) and $400 billion.

The banks block transfers from Syria, making it impossible to source European parts without using prohibitively expensive informal financial networks.

While Russia and Iran’s military support was a crucial factor in the Assad regime’s survival, they do not have the resources to make a major contribution to Syria’s reconstruction. Iran is in the grips of economic crisis, due to US sanctions, and is suffering from unprecedented floods, especially in its oil-producing region.

Syria has indicated both countries will have “first priority” in the allotment of any reconstruction funds that it receives, particularly in the energy and construction sectors. In January 2018, Damascus gave Moscow exclusive rights to extract oil and gas from areas under Assad’s direct control, and later “the restoration of oil fields and the development of new deposits.” Moscow also won a 50-year deal to run Syria’s phosphate industry.

The US and major European powers have refused any significant aid while Assad remains in power, in a bid to force his main international and domestic supporters to withdraw their backing.

Last March, international donors at an EU-hosted conference in Brussels pledged almost $7 billion, including $397 million from the US, for civilians affected by the conflict—far less than the EU said was needed. Last year, only 65 percent of the $3.4 billion required for the inside-Syria plan last year was received, while its regional refugee and resilience plan costing $5.6 billion was only 62 percent funded.

The focus was not on reconstruction, but on measures to encourage refugees to return home amid reports that the Syrian government’s treatment of returning refugees includes killings, disappearances, intimidation and sometimes compulsory military service. New legislation makes it difficult for returnees to prove ownership of the homes they fled. The EU fears an influx of refugees to Europe unless aid for both Syria and the countries hosting the refugees is forthcoming.

The US drive to crash Syria’s economy is bound up with its campaign to reimpose neo-colonial bondage over the entire region and to continue the series of ruinous wars Washington has sparked in the Middle East since 1991 in a bid to exercise unfettered dominance of the world’s most important oil and gas-exporting region.

Sri Lankan president steps up military crackdown

K. Ratnayake

An all-party conference (APC) convened by Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena on Thursday centred on strengthening an island-wide military-police crackdown in the wake of last Sunday’s terrorist bombings.

Sirisena informed the meeting that he was going to “open a security operational centre” to co-ordinate all military operations.

According to the presidential media report, all party leaders attending the APC “extended [their] fullest support to the steps taken by the president to eradicate this threat of terrorism and to ensure national security, as well as to detain the suspects.”

According to the brief report, the opposition Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna led by former president Mahinda Rajapakse, put forward 11 proposals, including strengthening the military intelligence wing.

The entire political establishment has seized on Sunday’s terrible tragedy to ram through police-state measures in the name of fighting terrorism that will be used to suppress the emerging struggles of the working class.

All the parties present at the all-party conference bear responsibility for the draconian measures being put into force. These include the parties of the ruling coalition—Sirisena’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), the United National Party (UNP) of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, Rajapakse’s Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), as well as two Muslim communal parties, Sri Lanka Muslim Congress and the All Island Muslim Congress.

Last Sunday’s terrorist bombings targeted three prominent Christian churches and three high profile hotels. Without providing any explanation, officials yesterday substantially revised the death toll down from over 350 to 253 men, women and children. Hundreds were injured, some critically.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, but analysts have pointed out that no direct evidence has been provided. The government blames National Thowheeth Jamma’ath, an Islamic extremist group in Sri Lanka, for the massacre, but claims it had international connections.

The government and security agencies received a warning from a foreign intelligence agency with details of a possible attack on April 4. However, the warning was only sent to police officers on April 11, and then only to a few high-ranking police officers in charge of elite security.

The warning identified National Thowheeth Jamma’ath as preparing to carry out suicide attacks on prominent Christian churches. No-one has given an adequate explanation as to why no action was taken prior to the attack.

Instead the government is looking for scapegoats. On Wednesday, Defence Secretary Hemasiri Fernando resigned on the president’s request. Sirisena has also asked Inspector General of Police Pujitha Jayasundara to resign.

On Wednesday, all the parliamentary parties backed the president’s proclamation of emergency regulations giving sweeping powers to the military. These include the power to ban processions and meetings, prevent or restrict publications for creating disturbance to public order or disaffection, impose curfews, seize property, including vehicles, and maintain essential services.

The military and police now have the power to arrest persons without a warrant and detain them without trial for one year on the order of the defence secretary. Confessions, which in the past have included the use of torture, can be used as evidence in court.

In an extraordinary move, Sirisena announced yesterday at a media conference that the army was carrying out a major search throughout the entire island. “Every household in the country will be checked. The lists of permanent residents of every house will be established to ensure no unknown persons could live anywhere.”

Army spokesman Brigadier Sumith Atapattu said that over 10,000 personnel have been deployed across the country. The air force has deployed over 1,000 soldiers for security duties while the navy has put its forces on active service. This is in addition to the deployment of 70,000 police, including its notorious special task force units.

This makes clear that the government and security forces are not simply targeting a small Muslim extremist group but the entire population. Sirisena justified the step by saying that similar methods had been used “during the fight against LTTE [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam] terrorism.”

The three-decade communal war against the separatist LTTE was a culmination of decades of anti-Tamil discrimination which was used to suppress Tamils and divide the working class. Now the methods of that bloody and brutal war are revived in the name of “fighting terrorism.”

The government is whipping up anti-Muslim hysteria under conditions of a resurgence of working-class struggles. Asked if he would be “proscribing the Islamic militant groups responsible for terror attacks,” the president said that if they were proscribed under the state of emergency, the ban would lapse when it was lifted.

Sirisena said that he had asked for new legislation to be drafted to enable the permanent proscription of organisations. He added that officials were studying the laws of countries such as Singapore—a one-party police state—for a model to follow.

Sirisena also said the government was also taking the advice of foreign anti-terrorist experts. The US already has teams from the FBI and the military’s Indo-Pacific Command on the ground in Sri Lanka as “advisers” to local security forces. Washington is exploiting the tragedy to strengthen its military and political relations with Colombo, as it has been doing over the past four years, at the expense of Beijing.

Sirisena also made clear that the government is not about to lift the nationwide ban imposed on social media including Facebook and YouTube on April 21. He said any lifting of the ban was delayed “due to the lack of positive behaviour in the social media” without providing any information of what constituted negative behaviour.

Amid a deep political crisis in Colombo, every faction is clamouring for tough police-state measures.

Last October, Sirisena removed Wickremesinghe as prime minister and replaced him with his arch rival Rajapakse. Sirisena was compelled to reappoint Wickremesinghe as prime minister under pressure from the US after the country’s Supreme Court ruled his dissolution of parliament was unconstitutional.

The political infighting continues, however. Yesterday Sirisena blamed the UNP-led government for “weakening” military intelligence which he claimed to have opposed. For his part, Wickremesinghe accused the president did not inform the cabinet of the advance warning of the bombings.

Yesterday, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, the brother of the former president Mahinda Rajapakse and the SLPP’s aspiring presidential candidate, said he would tackle “radical Islam.” He accused the government of not giving “priority to national security,” adding that there was too much talk of “human rights” and “individual freedoms.”

Gotabhaya Rajapakse, who was defence secretary during the final phase of the war against the LTTE, is responsible for the killing of tens of thousands of civilians in the final army operations, as well as the military-aligned death squads that abducted and “disappeared” hundreds of Tamils and anti-government critics.

These comments are just one more sign that what is underway is the rapid imposition and strengthening of the war-time police-state apparatus in preparation to brutally crack down, not on terrorists, but on the mounting struggles of the working class and rural poor.

Amazon posts record $3.6 billion profit in first three months of 2019

Niles Niemuth

Amazon announced record first quarter profits on Thursday, more than doubling the amount made during the same period last year.

The international e-commerce and tech company is controlled by CEO Jeff Bezos, the wealthiest person in modern history, with a net worth that currently exceeds $150 billion. It pulled in $3.6 billion in profit in the first three months of the year out of $60 billion in global sales. This was up from $1.6 billion in profits out of $51 billion in sales in the first quarter last year.

While Amazon retail sales are growing more slowly than in the past, the company was able to increase its profit margin by increasing the exploitation of employees and expanding sales of its cloud computing and advertising services.

“Right now, we are on a nice path where we are getting the most of out of the capacity we have,” Brian Olsavsky, Amazon’s chief financial officer, boasted in a conference call with investors. He was referring to a four percent fall in the cost for fulfilling orders, due to declines in the number of new warehouses and fewer new workers.

Costs declined despite a much-heralded increase in the minimum wage for all Amazon workers in the US last year to $15 an hour. This wage increase, praised by Senator Bernie Sanders, turned out to be an accounting trick that has allowed Amazon to claw back stocks and other benefits from workers.

Amazon-owned distribution center in Kentucky

Despite these massive profits, Amazon’s accounting department has been able to utilize a variety of tax credits and tax breaks on executive stock options to pay no federal income taxes for the last two years. In 2018, Amazon received a rebate of $129 million, for an effecting tax rate of -1.2 percent. In 2017, Amazon received a rebate of $140 million, making its then effective tax rate -2.5 percent.

Since 2009, the second largest private employer in the United States has paid just 3 percent in income taxes on $27 billion in profits, well below the 21 percent corporate tax rate signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2017.

With its record breaking first quarter, Amazon is on track to top the $11.2 billion in profits that it made in 2018. However, this is not enough for Wall Street, which responded to the earnings report by holding the company’s stock steady for the day Thursday. The message is clear: the exploitation of workers in the US and around the world must be increased ever further to ensure an even bigger haul next quarter and every quarter thereafter.

On May 4, the International Committee of the Fourth International is holding its annual International May Day Online Rally, with speakers and participants from throughout the world.

Amazon has promised that the pressure on its already hyper-exploited workers will increase with the announcement that it will transition from free two-day shipping for its Prime service subscribers to free one-day shipping.

“The one-day free shipping will come at a price to the employees,” Amazon whistleblower Shannon Allen told the World Socialist Web Site. “Coming soon to an Amazon [fulfillment center] near you: increased employee injuries, suicidal thoughts, increased anxiety and depression. And for the confident worker—isolation, increased productivity for the same amount of pay, less bathroom breaks, less water breaks, all while watching from your front-row station as your fellow employees get hauled away in the ambulance.”

“Speak up, have a backbone,” Allen appealed to Amazon workers. “That quote is written on the walls at Amazon. You have nothing to lose but your chains.”

Amazon’s workers are already among the most physically exploited, with warehouse workers in the US earning an average annual salary of $28,000 while being expected to sort and pack products and boxes at extraordinary rates. Many workers have suffered debilitating injuries due to broken equipment, strain from repetitive movement and heat exhaustion. Workers report urinating in bottles at their work stations rather than miss time sorting packages by walking to and from the bathroom.

An analysis by The Verge of documents submitted by Amazon in a labor dispute with a former worker found that the company has established an almost entirely automated system for tracking and firing workers who fail to “make rate.” More than ten percent of the workforce at one warehouse in Baltimore, about 300 full-time employees, were fired simply for missing package quotas. Extrapolated to the entire workforce across the United States, this implies that thousands lose their jobs every year for not moving quickly enough.

Out of the sweated labor of hundreds of thousands of workers around the world, Bezos added $50 billion to his net worth in 2018, making more in one second, $2,950, than the average Amazon worker in India made in an entire year, $2,796. If Bezos’ $150 billion fortune were divided up equally among his employees, each one would get a bonus of $232,000.

Bezos used his fortune to purchase the Washington Post for $250 million cash in 2013, giving him a critical tool for influencing national politics and developments in the nation’s capital. Shortly after his purchase of the paper, Amazon won a $600 million contract with the CIA. The company is currently bidding for a $10 billion contract to provide cloud computing services to the Department of Defense and is planning to open its second headquarters in northern Virginia, just five minutes from the Pentagon.

With its ability to extract massive profits from a highly exploited global workforce, Amazon is becoming the model for companies around the world. Last month, Amazon and automaker Volkswagen announced a partnership to create an industrial cloud to “reinvent [VW’s] manufacturing and logistics processes.” The joint venture promises the “Amazonification” of the auto industry, with the further casualization of labor and the implementation of technologies that allow for ever more precise tracking and control of workers’ every movement.

Amid mass beheadings, Wall Street scrambles for Saudi profits

Bill Van Auken

The hideous public beheadings of 37 men in a single day in Saudi Arabia last Tuesday have provoked scant protest from Western governments or the corporate media.

The same newspapers and broadcast networks that have summoned up their moral outrage over abuses, both manufactured and real, by governments in Russia, China, Iran, Syria and Venezuela are clearly unmoved by these criminal executions. They maintain their stony silence even though those who were decapitated with swords included three young men who were arrested as minors, tortured into signing confessions and convicted of “terrorism” for daring to join protests against the country’s monarchical dictatorship.

One of those beheaded was Abdulkarem al-Hawaj, arrested when he was just 16 by Saudi security forces for attending a protest in the country’s Eastern Province, home to most of Saudi Arabia’s Shia minority population. Beginning in 2011, the oil-rich province has seen protests over the systematic discrimination and oppression against Shias at the hands of a monarchy whose rule is bound up with the official state-sponsored religious doctrine of Wahhabism, an ultra-conservative Sunni sect.

Abdulkarem’s real “crime” was apparently the fact that he used social media to encourage participation in a demonstration. He was held in solitary confinement, beaten, tortured with electric cables and hung in chains by his wrists until he submitted to signing a false confession.

Also murdered in the barbaric execution spree was Mujtaba al-Sweikat, who was 17 when he was arrested at an airport as he was about to board a plane to the United States, where he was to become a student at Western Michigan University. His crime was also daring to demonstrate against the Saudi royal dictatorship.

His father, who represented him at his sham trial, accused the state of creating the “illusion” of a “terrorist cell” where none existed. “He was subjected to psychological and physical abuse which drained his strength,” Sweikat’s father told the court. “The interrogator dictated the confession to Sweikat and forced him to sign it so that the torture would stop. He signed it.”

As in all the other cases, the court ignored the evidence of torture and forced confessions and imposed the sentence of death by decapitation already dictated by the House of Saud.

The US government has said next to nothing about these atrocities. A State Department spokesman issued a boilerplate statement allowing that “We have seen these reports. We urge the government of Saudi Arabia, and all governments, to ensure trial guarantees, freedom from arbitrary and extrajudicial detention, transparency, rule of law, and freedom of religion and belief.”

During the same two days after the Saudi public beheadings, which included the crucifixion of one of the victims and the display of a severed head on a pike to intimidate anyone thinking of opposing the kingdom’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the US State Department managed to churn out statements condemning Russia for “gross human rights violations” in Chechnya; Venezuela for use of “intimidation and imprisonment” against the US-funded right-wing opposition; and Havana for acting to “suppress the human rights of the Cuban people.”

Washington’s patent indifference to the mass executions in Saudi Arabia exposes the cynicism and hypocrisy of all of US imperialism’s “human rights” pretensions and its feigned outrage over alleged crimes carried out by governments it views as strategic rivals or ones it is seeking to overthrow. The United States has long counted Saudi Arabia as a pillar of imperialist domination and reaction in the Middle East, and the Obama administration exhibited a similar reaction to the mass execution of 47 men in January 2016.

But just as blatant as the complicity of the US government with the crimes of the Saudi regime is the embrace of the bloody monarchical dictatorship by Wall Street and global finance capital.

In October of last year, a significant number of Wall Street moguls and chiefs of international finance houses canceled their trips to an annual Saudi investment conference known as “Davos in the Desert.” The gathering—which was attended by lower-ranking operatives of their firms—came just weeks after the brutal murder and dismemberment of the well known Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul.

A regime insider who had served as an aide to the Saudi intelligence chief and a semi-official interlocutor between the House of Saud and the Western media before falling out with Riyadh, Khashoggi’s grim fate at the hands of a Saudi military and intelligence death squad was traced by the CIA and other intelligence agencies directly to an order given by Crown Prince bin Salman.

While the death of the well-placed journalist, who had been given a column in the Washington Post after going into self-exile in the US, elicited a brief period of attention and protests from the US media and politicians, six months have passed, and the crime has largely been forgotten. US officials speak vaguely about the need for “accountability” while studiously ignoring that the author of the grisly assassination is none other than their closest ally, bin Salman.

Six months was more than enough time for Wall Street to cast aside any inhibitions and jump with both feet into the latest Saudi “Financial Sector Conference,” which convened at the King Abdul Aziz International Conference Center. While its opening came in the immediate wake of the mass executions, the conference center is miles away from Riyadh’s Deera Square where the executioners hack off heads with swords, so the Wall Street CEOs did not have to worry about staining their Prada shoes with blood.

On May 4, the International Committee of the Fourth International is holding its annual International May Day Online Rally, with speakers and participants from throughout the world.

The mood at the conference was a reprise of the giddy reception that bin Salman received during his visit the US just a year ago, when he was embraced as a visionary and “reformer” by billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Oprah Winfrey.

HSBC’s John Flint

“We are excited about the role that we can play here,” HSBC CEO John Flint told this week’s Riyadh conference. “This is an economy we have a lot of confidence in. I think the future is bright.”

He boasted that a number of former HSBC bankers had joined the head-chopping Saudi regime. “That’s been a privilege of ours, to see so many of our ex-colleagues actually in the audience and serving their country now.”

Among the others attending at the conference were BlackRock Inc’s CEO Larry Fink, JPMorgan’s chief executive officer Daniel Pinto, the World Bank’s vice president for development finance Akihiko Nishio, as well as representatives of various other banks and hedge funds.

BlackRock’s Fink was among the most effusive. He brushed aside any qualms about the hideous crimes of the Saudi regime, which include not only this week’s mass executions and the assassination of Khashoggi, but the near-genocidal US-backed war that has killed tens of thousands of Yemenis and brought millions to the brink of starvation.

“The fact that there are issues in the press does not tell me I must run away from a place. In many cases, it tells me I should run to and invest because what we are most frightened of are things that we don’t talk about,” he stated, uttering not a word more about the “things we don’t talk about.”

The magnet pulling in all of the finance capitalist parasites is Saudi Arabia’s state-run oil company, Aramco, whose income equals that of the five biggest energy conglomerates in the world and tops the combined net profits of Apple and Google.

Many of the banks and finance houses represented in Riyadh, including JPMorgan, HSBC, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, participated this month in Aramco’s floating of $12 billion worth of bonds.

Saudi Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih told the conference in Riyadh that Aramco’s bond sale was “only the beginning,” holding out the prospect that the oil giant may go for an initial public offering (IPO) as early as next year.

“There will be more,” he added. “I won’t tell you what and when, and it won’t be bonds only. Aramco sooner than you think will be accessing equity markets.”

Blackrock’s Larry Fink

Blackrock’s Fink, who described “reforms” by the Saudi monarchy as “amazing,” said he saw “very large opportunities” across the Middle East, insisting that the region is “becoming more secure.”

To describe the Middle East, after a quarter-century of US imperialist wars that have killed millions and shattered entire societies, as “more secure” is delusional.

No doubt for Fink and his fellow financial oligarchs the mass beheadings of “terrorists”--a synonym for agitators, troublemakers and dissidents--is not a problem, but rather an attraction. They feel that the defense of their vast wealth under conditions of unprecedented social inequality and an increasingly combative working class will require similar measures at home and abroad.

GM continues tax avoidance schemes while it slashes thousands of jobs

George Kirby 

In the past decade since the federal bailout of US car companies, automaker General Motors has extorted billions in tax cuts and credits from all levels of government, despite raking in massive profits.

These tax benefits have saved automakers billions while starving the public treasury of revenue. As reported by the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy 60 Fortune 500 corporations nationally paid $0 in federal taxes in 2018 despite billions in profits. GM paid no taxes on its reported $4.3 billion in profits.

Meanwhile, in the midst of downsizing, including the closure of five plants in North America, GM and other major corporations are continuing buybacks of stocks instead of investing in new plants and equipment.

In February of this year US corporations carried out $770 billion in stock buybacks as reported by Goldman Sachs, the leading global investment bank, with the GM board of directors authorizing $14 billion in stock buybacks.

According to one report, GM paid just $18 million in federal taxes between 2010 and 2016, while recording $50 billion in profits, an effective tax rate of some .036 percent.

In tax year 2017, GM had $8.6 billion in future tax credits on its books carried forward from losses prior to the 2009 bankruptcy. Federal tax laws allow companies to carry forward losses suffered in prior years, reducing or eliminating current tax liabilities. In the case of GM it carried over losses from the period prior to the 2009 bailout by the US treasury. Further, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 enacted by the Trump administration entailed a massive lowering of the corporate tax rate, already one of the lowest in the world, from 35 to 21 percent.

At the same time GM and other Detroit-based automakers have pocketed state tax credits, designed to supposedly preserve jobs. In 2015, Detroit automakers began restructuring programs, reducing investments and implementing other forms of cost cutting. In November 2018 GM announced the closure of five factories in North America and the elimination of some 14,000 jobs.

In the state of Michigan, MEGA [Michigan Economic Growth Authority] tax credits were issued in the mid-1990s to GM in order to supposedly maintain jobs in the state. A MEGA credit is worth 100 percent of a state’s personal income tax rate multiplied by the actual wages and benefit costs on new or retained jobs. If the credit exceeds the tax owed, the company receives a refund. Additionally the credit could be received for 20 years.

In 2009 Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm gave GM a tax credit of $1.07 billion over 20 years that was tied to preserving 20,000 jobs and making $2.5 billion in capital investments. During contract negotiations between the United Auto Workers and GM in 2015, the automaker agreed to a continuation of tax credits by the Michigan Economic Development Corp (MEDC) from 2015-2029.

While MEGA was advertised as a tax break to retain jobs, the auto companies never the less wiped out tens of thousands of jobs while attacks on wages and working conditions continued. Despite the recent massive layoffs, GM is still eligible for the full tax credit. Two of GM’s recently announced plant closures are in Michigan, including the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant and its Warren transmission plant. GM has also slashed thousands of engineering and other white-collar jobs in the state.

As reported by Automotive News, “By July 2014, GM's remaining tax credits were worth $2.1 billion, the last public disclosure of their value made by MEDC, according to state records.”

On May 4, the International Committee of the Fourth International is holding its annual International May Day Online Rally, with speakers and participants from throughout the world.

Aware of the anger this would generate, the administration of Republican Governor Rick Snyder signed a non-disclosure agreement in December of 2015 to prevent the amount of the tax breaks from being made public.

In the meantime, attempts by the legislature to force disclosure of the amount of the tax credits have failed.

Similar deals were struck in other states. The Job Retention Credit and Job Creation Credit enacted in Ohio under Democratic Governor Ted Strickland required GM to retain 3,700 jobs and create another 200 jobs by 2010 in Lordstown. Under these requirements GM received $46 million in “retention” and $14 million in “job creation” credits through 2018.

However, the claim that these tax credits were a job creation or retention mechanism is bogus.

The Lordstown GM plant is an example. According to one report GM received over $60 million in tax credits from the state of Ohio over the past decade to supposedly keep jobs at the Lordstown plant, which closed in March.

The policy of tax handouts to the auto companies has dovetailed with the concessions policy of the United Auto Workers based on the lie that workers have common interests with the employers.

For over 40 years, the UAW sought to sabotage and curtail working class struggle, gutting wages and creating myriad joint union-management committees to increase productivity and undermine working conditions, claiming this was necessary to boost corporate “competitiveness” and undercut the overseas rivals of US carmakers.

With The UAW national contracts set to expire in September, workers are determined to regain ground lost in the 2015 contracts that saw the implementation of further concessions, including maintenance of the two-tier system and a vast expansion of the number of super-exploited temporary part-time workers.

Despite billions of dollars in tax credits, GM and other carmakers are set to continue their assault on jobs and wages, using the threat to jobs as a bludgeon to blackmail workers. Meanwhile, all levels of government are continuing to impose cuts to social services, claiming “there is no money.”

This scandalous situation is another demonstration of the incompatibility of a system based on private ownership and private profit with the essential needs of the working class, the vast majority in society.

Leaked documents implicate French government in war crimes in Yemen

Kumaran Ira

Disclose, an independent investigative media, published on April 15 a devastating report exposing France’s role in the Saudi-led coalition’s war crimes in Yemen. The coalition has massacred thousands of civilians in operations using weapons supplied by France, Britain, the United States and other countries. Yet top French officials continued to deny this in public, issuing bald-faced lies contradicted by their own intelligence briefings.

On Wednesday, Disclose and its partners, including Radio France, Mediapart, Arte Info and Konbini revealed that the state is moving to prosecute those who helped expose these crimes. Police summoned two Disclose journalists and one Radio France journalist for questioning over the revelations.

Disclose’s report cites a classified 15-page French military intelligence (DRM) report dated September 25, 2018. The report provides overwhelming evidence that French-made artillery, tanks and laser-guided missile systems were used against civilians in a war that has turned Yemen into the world’s worst humanitarian disaster zone.

The DRM report, titled “Yemen: security situation” was given to President Emmanuel Macron for a defence council meeting at the Élysée presidential palace on October 3, 2018. The report covers French weapons sold to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), both involved in the war in Yemen, even mapping out the positioning of French-made weapons on the Saudi-Yemeni border. Macron’s foreign and defence ministers, Jean-Yves Le Drian and Florence Parly, were both present at the Élysée briefing.

The DRM report states that CAESAR howitzers, one of the most powerful weapons made by French state-owned company Nexter Systems, were deployed along the Saudi-Yemeni border. This howitzer can fire six shells per minute up to 42 kilometres. The DRM report includes a map titled “Population under threat of bombs” which, Disclose writes, “shows where 48 CAESAR guns are positioned close to the Saudi-Yemeni border, their turrets facing three different zones in Yemen, in which are located towns, villages, farms and farmers’ hamlets.”

The DRM report states CAESARs were likely used to “back up loyalist troops and Saudi armed forces in their progression into Yemeni territory.” That is, French-made guns were used to bombard Yemeni territory to prepare a Saudi invasion.

CAESAR heavy artillery is shelling zones in Yemen inhabited by hundreds of thousands of people, according to the DRM. It states, “The population concerned by potential artillery fire: 436,370 people.” Based on data from the NGO Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), Disclose writes: “Between March 2016 and December 2018, a total of 35 civilians were killed in 52 bombardments localised within the range of the CAESARs. On June 14th 2018, Saudi ‘artillery fire’ in the north of the country left two children dead and several adults wounded.”

Fully aware of the mounting death toll from the Saudi-led coalition’s indiscriminate attacks, Paris kept selling CAESARs to Riyadh. The report states, “No less than 129 CAESARs are due to be delivered to Saudi Arabia between now and 2023.” Using satellite images and open-source information, Disclose traced the itinerary of one of these deliveries from the French port of Le Havre to Saudi port of Jeddah in September 2018.

Disclose said satellite images, video and civilian photographs showed French Leclerc tanks were used in coalition offensives, including the November 2018 battle for the rebel-held port of Hodeidah. According to ACLED, they were responsible for 55 civilian deaths. French-made Mirage 2000-9 fighter planes, Cougar transport helicopters, the A330 MRTT refueling plane and two French-built warships were also involved in the offensive.

The DRM report also indicates that a new Paris-Riyadh arms deal, codenamed ARTIS, was agreed at the end of last year. This exposes as lies official denials that any such deal was in discussion.

On October 30, 2018, Parly told news channel BFM-TV: “We have no ongoing negotiations with Saudi Arabia.”

The contents of the DRM report expose this as a lie, Disclose notes: “But at that very same date, the French government was involved in negotiations over the final details of the contract with Saudi Arabia, which covered a period lasting up to 2023.” Under the ARTIS contract, France will deliver equipment, including Titus armoured infantry carriers, one of Nexter’s newest products, and the 105LG towed howitzer, from 2019 to 2024.

On May 4, the International Committee of the Fourth International is holding its annual International May Day Online Rally, with speakers and participants from throughout the world.

The signing of the ARTIS contract requires approval from the Macron administration. Disclose writes, “Before signing a contract such as ARTIS, Nexter was required to first obtain an export licence from France’s general directorate of armament, the DGA, which is part of the defence ministry. Subsequently, such contracts must be approved by the CIEEMG, a special commission that sits under the authority of the French prime minister’s office.”

In its decision, the CIEEMG supposedly considers “the internal situation of the country that is the final destination [of the weapons], and also of its practices regarding the respect of human rights.”

The French bourgeoisie’s human rights propaganda is a lying political cover for a policy of war and the enrichment of French defence contractors via mass killings and terror. Since the Saudi-led coalition intervened in Yemen’s civil war in 2015 to fight Shiite Houthi rebels it accuses of ties to Iran, Saudi Arabia has imposed sanctions and blockaded Yemen, provoking the world’s gravest humanitarian crisis. Nearly 14 million people are on the brink of starvation as the Red Sea blockade blocks supplies of food, fuel and medicine destined for more than 20 million Yemenis.

Since launching the war, the coalition has carried out an unrelenting onslaught of airstrikes in Yemen. According to the DRM, the coalition has carried out 24,000 air strikes since 2015, including 6,000 in 2018. These attacks caused at least 8,000 civilian deaths.

France has denied playing any role in these strikes. On February 13, speaking before the foreign affairs commission of France’s National Assembly, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian insisted, “We supply nothing to the Saudi air force.”

The DRM report exposes his comment as a lie, reporting that Saudi fighter-bomber aircraft are equipped with the Damocles laser-guided system made by the French defence firm Thales.

Parly publicly claimed that the French government wants to end the Red Sea blockade. On October 30, 2018, she told BFM-TV: “It is a priority for France that humanitarian aid can get through.”

This was another lie, as Parly had received evidence that French-made warships participate in the naval blockade starving millions of Yemenis, and in the shelling of the Yemeni coast.

In addition to serving its geostrategic interests, French imperialism’s weapons sales are aimed above all at the working class. Even as it covertly armed the Saudi royals, Paris was openly providing billions of euros in arms to Egypt’s bloody military dictatorship, which seized power in 2013 via a coup targeting revolutionary struggles of the working class, gunning down thousands in the streets. Macron himself personally visited Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi last month.

This implicates the Macron regime in repression of the Egyptian workers via killings and torture of tens of thousands of political prisoners. In a recent report, Amnesty International stated that “armoured vehicles were used by Egyptian security forces to disperse peaceful sit-ins across the country violently,” adding: “French vehicles were not merely assisting the security forces, but were themselves tools of repression, playing a very active role in the crushing of dissent.”

As it carries out unprecedented mass arrests of ‘yellow vest’ protesters in France itself, the Macron administration is desperate to hide its political criminality from the public. It is continuing to lie to the public about its knowledge of its own participation in war crimes in Yemen.

“To my knowledge, French weapons are not being used in an offensive capacity in the war in Yemen,” Parly told Radio Classique last week in response to the revelations of Disclose. “I do not have any evidence that would lead me to believe that French arms are behind civilian victims in Yemen,” she boldly lied.

UN official visits Julian Assange, investigating Ecuador’s illegal surveillance

Mike Head 

The United Nations special rapporteur on the right to privacy, Joe Cannataci, was finally permitted yesterday to meet with Julian Assange inside London’s Belmarsh prison.

The WikiLeaks journalist and publisher has been held virtually incommunicado, in denial of his fundamental legal and democratic rights, since the British police dragged him out of Ecuador’s embassy more than two weeks ago.

This has become a global battle for free speech and the right of the public to know the truth about the crimes being committed by governments and their state agencies around the world.

Assange is being persecuted, and subjected to an unprecedented legal assault, for publishing millions of secret documents exposing political conspiracies and corporate crimes. Without this extraordinary record of authentic investigative journalism since 2006, this information would have remained suppressed.

Confronted by worldwide protests and petitions against the illegal termination of Assange’s political asylum and the immediate launching of proceedings to extradite Assange to the US, the British government felt compelled to grant the UN access. Cannataci became the first person allowed into Belmarsh prison to visit Assange, who has even been denied his right to speak to his family.

For weeks, the UN has been investigating the blanket surveillance conducted by Ecuador’s government against Assange inside its embassy.

On April 10, WikiLeaks revealed that hundreds of thousands of documents, audio recordings, videos and photos were taken in the embassy. Assange was arrested the very next day, preventing a scheduled April 25 visit by Cannataci.

Ecuadorian officials spied on every aspect of Assange’s life for more than a year, including his medical consultations and confidential meetings with his lawyers. The obvious purpose of this illegal operation was to gather or concoct evidence that the Trump administration could use to indict and extradite Assange on manufactured conspiracy and espionage charges.

Outside the prison yesterday, Cannataci told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “There are strong indications that some elements of his privacy may have been breached.” He added: “The case is important because it concerns a very special set of circumstances where a person who is not formally under detention yet was subjected to surveillance.”

Having met with Assange for two hours, the UN special envoy reported that Assange was “in fairly good shape and certainly very cogent in replying to our questions.” This is another indication of Assange’s defiant determination to fight his removal to the US, despite the damage done to his health by his seven-year confinement inside the Ecuadorian embassy.

Interviewed by the Italian newspaper Repubblica, Cannataci pointed to the far-reaching nature of the spying. He said he was seeking access to the material currently held by the Spanish police, who are investigating an attempt to extort WikiLeaks for copies of the documents and videos.

“If and when my access is granted, that evidence might consist of thousands of hours of surveillance footage, which will take some time to watch.”

The UN rapporteur agreed with the Repubblica journalist, Stefania Maurizi, that the spying operation against Assange threatened an entire range of human rights, including lawyer-client confidentiality. “[T]here are many dimensions to the case, including freedom of expression, including whistleblowing, protection of journalistic sources,” he said.

The UN is investigating whether Ecuador violated Assange’s privacy under two cornerstones of international law—the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights—by placing him under strict surveillance.

On May 4, the International Committee of the Fourth International is holding its annual International May Day Online Rally, with speakers and participants from throughout the world.

Jennifer Robinson, a lawyer representing Assange, an Australian citizen, said in a statement that his legal team welcomed the UN’s continued engagement in the case. “It is a matter of grave concern that Ecuador expelled Mr Assange from the embassy before the scheduled UN visit could take place,” she said.

Robinson said the legal team had also requested a visit to Assange by the UN special rapporteur on torture. She recalled that the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention had ruled in late 2015 that Assange was “arbitrarily detained,” as a result of having to remain in the embassy to protect himself from US extradition, and called for his release.

Chelsea Manning, the courageous whistleblower who leaked the infamous “Collateral Murder” video and many thousands of incriminating US diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks, has been held in solitary confinement for over six weeks because she has refused to give perjured testimony against Assange before a Grand Jury. Her continued detention is a transparent attempt to force her to cooperate in the US-led vendetta against Assange.

If Assange is dispatched to the US on bogus computer hacking charges, he will soon face additional charges, carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment or the death penalty. This would set an international precedent for the jailing of journalists everywhere who expose government crimes and wrongdoing.

Since Assange’s arrest, numerous corporate publications have lined up directly behind this offensive. They have brazenly used Ecuador’s video footage and other illegal surveillance material to repeat the personal smears against Assange fabricated by the corrupt Ecuadorian regime to justify its termination of his political asylum.

These lies and slanders against Assange are in contrast to the immense support that he enjoys among the millions of workers, students and young people internationally who regard him and Manning as heroes. The mass opposition to Assange’s persecution must be transformed into a political movement to prevent his extradition and secure his freedom. The WSWS and the Socialist Equality Parties (SEP) around the world are playing a central role in this decisive fight.

Over the past 18 months, the SEP (Australia) has held a series of rallies, demanding that the Australian government immediately fulfil its obligations to Assange, as an Australian citizen, by securing his return to Australia, with a guarantee against extradition to the US.

Another rally, aimed at placing this demand at the centre of the May 18 Australian federal election, will be held in Sydney this Saturday, followed by meetings in a number of cities.

The SEP in the UK has taken part in protests and vigils calling for an all-out mobilisation against the moves to extradite Assange. It will participate in a London public meeting, called by the Julian Assange Defence Committee, today.

This crucial struggle is entirely bound up with the fight for genuine socialism. As the all-out assault on Assange and Manning by governments and the corporate media conglomerates demonstrates, securing fundamental democratic rights requires nothing less than the worldwide transformation of society by the working class to meet social needs, not the profit interests of the financial aristocracy.