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

Alex Lantier

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

US military whitewashes attack on Afghan hospital

Peter Symonds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thomas Gaist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The demise of Sanders’ “political revolution”

Patrick Martin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sri Lankan prime minister seeks financial help in China

Vilanis Peiris

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tom Peters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Canada’s defence policy review prepares major expansion of militarism and war

Roger Jordan

Canadian Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan released a consultation document earlier this month to kick off the Liberal government’s much touted defence policy review.

The document, whose principal author was the Canadian Armed Forces’ high command, is aimed at laying the political groundwork for a massive expansion of militarism at home and abroad.

It makes clear the real significance of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s repeated declarations since coming to power last October that Canada “is back” on the world stage, and his pledge to re-engage with United Nations’ “peacekeeping” missions. This multilateralist, humanitarian rhetoric is aimed at legitimizing a vast escalation of Canadian military interventions on a global scale, including in cyber and outer space, while concealing their predatory purpose.

The document is part of a phony public consultation process that is to be concluded by July. The four-member panel of experts that is conducting the policy review is to submit its recommendations to the cabinet before the end of the year. The review will conclude with the government unveiling the public articulation of Canada’s new defence policy in early 2017.

Canada’s defence policy review, as was the case with the like reviews Germany and Australia recently conducted, is being accompanied by a public relations blitz on the part of the political elite and military-security establishment aimed at overcoming the deep-seated popular opposition to military-spending hikes and increased participation in foreign wars. The corporate media is fully onboard with the push for a more aggressive foreign policy, from the pro-Liberal Toronto Star, which recently reaffirmed its support for a “genuinely robust fighting force, interoperable with our American and other allies,” to neoconservative pundits such as Conrad Black, who has described the Liberals’ defence review as an opportunity for Canada to take a major “step forward.”

The Canada-US alliance

From the outset, the consultation document makes clear Canada should deepen its longstanding strategic partnership with the United States and that Ottawa is fully onboard with Washington’s key geostrategic offensives: threatening Russia in the Baltic, Eastern Europe, and the Black Sea; the current Mideast war, which is the continuation of a decades’ long drive to strengthen US dominance over the world’s most important oil-exporting region; and the anti-China “pivot” to Asia, which is aimed at encircling and preparing for war with Beijing.

“Canada,” the document declares, “faces an uncertain, complex and fluid security environment,” including a “multi-faceted array of threats and challenges, both traditional and conventional.”

The document singles out Russian “aggression” in Ukraine, before going on to cite “geopolitical rivalries and disputes in the Asia-Pacific region,” a clear swipe at China.

Although the document makes no mention of this, Canada is already deeply integrated into Washington’s aggressive moves in the South China Sea and its broader military build-up in East Asia. In 2013, the Canadian military concluded an Asia-Pacific cooperation agreement with the Pentagon whose provisions remain entirely secret.

Having painted a picture of a menacing world, the document proceeds to make the ominous declaration that the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) must be in a position to “achieve stability in conflicts far from home.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau campaigned during last year’s election on the promise to intensify Ottawa’s already close strategic partnership with Washington. During a visit to the White House in March, he invoked Canada’s three-quarters of a century-old military-security alliance with US imperialism to pledge Ottawa’s collaboration in US military operations across the globe.

Canada’s military-intelligence apparatus is in the forefront of pushing for t his agenda . Last fall it was reveal ed that in 2013 the Canadian and US militaries held discussion s a t the highest levels about c reatin g a joint military taskforce capable of conducting offensive operations anywhere in the world. ( S ee: HYPERLINK "https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/10/06/usca-o06.html" Why are Canada’s politicians mute about the Canada-US military integration plans? )

Military-foreign policy issues played a significant role in the rallying of decisive sections of big business behind the Liberals during last fall’s election campaign. Trudeau won ruling class support by promising to raise military spending, push through numerous military procurement projects that had stalled under the Harper Conservatives, and to reset relations with the US, which the Liberals charged had been damaged by the previous government’s focus on securing Washington’s approval of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Canada’s elite now hope to move forward on all these fronts with the Liberals’ “progressive internationalist” façade providing useful political cover.

Trudeau laid out his government’s priorities in his mandate letter to Sajjan. In it, he urged the defence minister, who served with the military in Afghanistan, to strengthen Canada’s commitment to NATO and the North American Aerospace Defence (NORAD) system, renew Canada’s commitment to “peacekeeping” missions, and ensure that the military had sufficient equipment to carry out these tasks.

The consultation paper expands on these points. It calls for reopening the Martin Liberal government’s 2005 decision not to participate in the US-led ballistic missile defence system (BMD), whose ultimate aim, its name notwithstanding, is to make it feasible for the US to wage a “winnable” nuclear war. The policy review consultation document states, “Given the increase in the number of countries with access to ballistic missile technology and their potential to reach North America, this threat is expected to endure and grow more sophisticated in the coming decades.”

The document further suggests that NORAD needs to “evolve or modernize” and that this should include “expansion beyond the air and maritime domains.”

These remarks are all the more revealing in light of Trudeau’s agreement with Obama during his White House visit to expand US-Canadian cooperation in the Arctic. The consultation paper contains a separate section on the Arctic. It raises concerns about the lack of radar systems above 65 degrees north and otherwise suggests the military should become more active in the far north. While this is in part put down to increased trading activity resulting from climate change, the document goes on to pointedly remark, “Recent Russian activity in the Arctic has only added to this challenge.”

Significantly, the figures appointed by Sajjan to the four-member expert panel overseeing the review are all trusted representatives of Canadian imperialism. Bill Graham, who served as foreign and defence minister during the Chretien-Martin Liberal governments, is on record as supporting Canada’s participation in the US-led ballistic missile defence system, having described it two years ago as an “amazing new form of weapons system.”Ray Henault is a former Chief of Defence Staff, whose term in office from February 2001 to 2005 was largely devoted to overseeing the CAF’s role in the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Margaret Purdy worked for the government for decades as a defence and national-security expert, whileLouise Arbour is a former Supreme Court justice who went on to play a prominent role at the United Nations as the High Commissioner for Refugees and later headed the International Crisis Group. She is a leading exponent of the “responsibility to protect” (R2P) doctrine, which the Canadian government was central in developing in the early 2000s and which has served as the justification for one imperialist war crime after another ever since

“Peacekeeping” missions

While the Conservatives proclaimed Canada a “warrior nation,” the Liberals are seeking to conceal their and the Canadian elite’s militarist agenda behind phony humanitarian and pacifist phases. Thus, the Trudeau government is touting a commitment to “re-engage” with UN “peacekeeping.”

The claims that Canada has a special “peacekeeping” vocation were always a fraud. The peacekeeping missions Canada undertook during the Cold War were always done at the say-so of the great powers, above all the US, and with the aim of defusing crises that threatened to undermine NATO, as in the 1956 Suez crisis and the Cyprus conflict, or otherwise undermine imperialist interests.

However, the defence policy document makes clear that in the name of “peacekeeping,” the Trudeau government intends to deploy CAF troops in a very different type of mission—missions where they will be expected to violently suppress targeted groups. “Peace support missions,” states the document, “are increasingly deployed to hostile environments where violence is systemic and there is a desperate need to end violations of human rights. Unlike ‘traditional’ peacekeeping missions of the past, most current missions operate where there is no clear peace accord to be monitored.” The missions are, moreover, frequently “authorized under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, thereby allowing use of force.”

Even more revealing is the choice of examples the document offers to illustrate Canada’s involvement in “peace and security” operations. It speaks of the “combat operations” in Afghanistan; the training of soldiers loyal to Ukraine’s ultra-nationalist, pro-western government to fight pro-Russian separatist rebels; the CAF’s deployment to train Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in Iraq; and Canada’s involvement in the UN mission in Haiti.

All of these missions have been aimed at strengthening the hegemony of US imperialism, which the Canadian bourgeoisie views as vital to advancing its own global interests. In Afghanistan, the CAF waged a brutal counterinsurgency war against the Afghan population, while in Iraq it is backing Kurdish forces who have been accused of atrocities and who aim to ethnically partition the country. In Ukraine and Haiti, Canadian forces openly collaborated with far-right and outright fascist forces, most notably in Ottawa’s outspoken support for the 2014 coup in Kiev.

Military spending and domestic deployment

The defence policy review document leaves no doubt about the need for increased financial resources to be devoted to the military to ensure it has the equipment necessary to carry out its expanded role. A section on defence spending notes that the CAF has been resourced with spending levels of 1 percent of GDP for the past decade, before mentioning the commitment made by NATO leaders in 2014 to move towards spending 2 percent of GDP on the military. The Liberals have already committed to increasing military spending by vowing to implement the previous Conservative government’s plan for an additional 1 percent rise in military spending each year for nine successive years beginning in 2017.

The investments will include the purchasing of new weapons systems. The document argues this should potentially include equipment to enable defensive and offensive operations to be carried out in cyberspace and to defend Canadian satellites.

Chief of the defence staff, General Jonathan Vance, is an outspoken advocate of the purchasing of drones, and he has made no secret of the fact that he believes they should be armed. The consultation document explicitly refers to this issue as being a critical matter for debate during the review.

The procurement process to replace the air force’s fleet of CF-18 fighter jets is under way, and major purchases of sea rescue aircraft, naval destroyers and helicopters are in the works. A strong domestic armaments industry, the paper writes, enables Canada to retain an “agile and combat capable force.”

The increased resources to be made available to the CAF are not only intended for use abroad. The document outlines proposals for expanded armed forces’ deployments within Canada, to assert territorial claims in the Arctic, provide disaster relief, and collaborate with law enforcement in “counter-terrorism” activities. This last point is significant, since the definition of “terrorism” in Canadian law is so broad that political opposition and protest groups can fall under its scope.

The review consultation document ends by emphasizing the scale of operations the ruling elite envisages for the military when it states, “The CAF remain focused on defending Canada and North America and contributing to a wide spectrum of operations globally. However, the security environment has shifted and the time is right to reflect on the CAF’s role domestically, on the continent, and globally, as well as on how the CAF should be resourced and equipped.”

German public sector union holds “warning strikes”

Marianne Arens

Facing growing anger from public sector workers the Verdi trade union organized selective “warning strikes” across Germany this week. The walkouts involved bus and tram drivers, nurses, childcare workers, street cleaners, airport employees and municipal administrative workers.

“Warning strike” at Frankfurt Airport

The dissatisfaction is not only directed against the employers, but increasingly the union itself, which is negotiating the contract for public services (TVÖ) with representatives of the federal and municipal authorities. Verdi officials are posturing as militant foes of austerity and are demanding a 6 percent wage increase. This is simply an effort, however, to divert attention from the fact that the union has collaborated in the imposition of deregulation, job cuts and wage reductions for years.

The municipal employers and government representatives have made clear that, in spite of billions in budgetary surpluses for this year, they intend to impose a cut in real wages. This is the meaning of the insulting 0.6 percent raise officials have offered for 2016.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière and Thomas Böhle, president of the association of municipal employers (VKA), made the offer during the second round of bargaining in Potsdam in mid-April, even though the government had a record surplus for public spending of almost €30 billion in 2015.

In the third round of talks, which began Thursday, not only wages, but also public sector pensions were discussed. The employers’ side intends to push for workers to make larger pension contributions from their pay. Böhle and de Maizière are confident that Verdi will accept this because the union agreed to the same provision in the contract for state employees (TVL) last year.

Verdi has essentially agreed to increased pension contributions from municipal employee as long as union functionaries are consulted. In a post on its web site, the union writes, “We are only prepared to accept higher employee contributions if the necessity to take action is proven for each pension fund.” A leading Verdi executive, Wolfgang Pieper, said in an interview, “We are ready to discuss the situation of each pension fund with the employer if there is a need to take action and if that is proven.”

Verdi has already agreed to a gradual change of the pension system at Frankfurt airport. At the end of November 2015, it accepted a new contract for ground staff through which the fixed pension will be replaced by one made up of investments on the capital markets funded by the employees themselves.

The public sector has been subject to restructuring for many years, and workers have confronted real wage cuts, layoffs and increased stress on the job. Twenty years ago, the federal employees’ contract (BAT) covered 5.2 million workers. It was replaced in 2006 with the TVÖ and TVL. Today, the TVÖ applies to 2.2 million and the TVL to 800,000, amounting together to just 3 million workers.

Even when one takes account of the fact that the state of Hesse—with around 100,000 employees—left the contract alliance, the numbers clearly show how many workers have been axed. On average, 100,000 jobs have been lost each year for the past 20 years, while the demand for qualified staff in the education sector, urban infrastructure, public transport, nursing and childcare has steadily increased.

Low-wage “handling-counts” workers

New hires are increasingly receiving fixed-term contracts. In the past, someone who worked in the public sector had a job for life. But deregulation and the trend towards outsourcing and privatization have resulted in only one in three new hires receiving a permanent post.

Pieper acknowledged this in the previously mentioned interview when he said, “Fixed-term contracts play a large role in the public sector,” adding, “60 percent of new hires are fixed-term.”

Due to the so-called debt brake—which mandates spending cuts when the debt-to GDP ratio rises above 60 percent—and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble’s “balanced budget” dictate, staff cuts and privatization have been accelerated. Routes on public transport networks have been handed to private bus companies and hospitals have been merged into larger associations and privatized. In every case, washing, catering, cleaning and other services have been outsourced to sub-contractors.

The latest example is provided by Rhineland-Palatinate, where the new coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and neo-liberal Free Democrats have agreed to eliminate a further 2,000 jobs. Similar cost-cutting measures at the expense of public sector workers are being planned and implemented by all levels of government.

None of these problems are being raised as issues in the contract talks.

The negotiations are in reality a done deal, since the Verdi representatives have more in common with the employers than with the workers they allegedly represent. They belong to the same political parties, and see the same need to offload the cost for the crisis on the backs of the workers and they frequently switch places from top union posts into senior offices in the government.

The best example is Frank Bsirske, the Verdi leader. He is a member of the same trade union as Thomas Böhle from the employers’ side. Böhle is also a member of both Verdi and the SPD.

Bsirske is the longest-serving chair of a German trade union. At the same time, he sits on a number of supervisory boards, including Deutsche Bank, Postbank and IBM. He is deputy chairman of the board at energy firm RWE, and a member of the administrative council at the reconstruction loan corporation (KFW).

Before becoming union chair in 2000, Bsirske participated in a modernization program as human resources head in the city of Hanover, during which time 1,000 of 16,000 jobs were cut. Bsirske’s role became clear last year during the childcare workers’ strike, when he strangled the struggle of carers, social workers and disability support workers, forcing them to accept the same terms they had previously rejected decisively.

Those workers who have gone through so many terrible experiences with the trade unions over the years are watching the talks with extreme mistrust.

Martin, a nurse from Frankfurt, wrote to the World Socialist Web Site, “In the public sector collective bargaining poker, unfortunately only a percentage wage increase is being considered which will certainly leave the lower earners further away from those on high incomes … although staff cuts and deteriorating working conditions are briefly pointed out, Verdi ultimately accepts them as unavoidable.”

Martin works at Höchst hospital, which is being merged with facilities in Hofheim and Bad Soden to form one of the largest municipal clinic associations, the Frankfurt-Main-Taunus clinics. In the course of the preparations for the merger, 110 of 1,700 jobs were cut. Frankfurt’s director of health Rosemarie Heilig justified the move in the city’s parliament (Römer) by pointing to the clinics’ “structural deficits.” Heilig is a member of the Greens, the same party as Bsirske.

Martin explained that questions of working hours and working conditions without stress were no longer concerns of the trade union. He said, “We have long been criticizing the percentages being demanded. A pay increase by fixed amounts would benefit low earners far more. Those who earn more look forward to a pay rise too.”

Asked about working conditions, the nurse reported that staff coverage was increasingly thin. “But this is simply presented as being unavoidable. The wage increase reigns supreme over everything, as if it will cure all of our problems, which it won’t.”

He continued, “We have had the warning strikes for a few weeks. Yet we are dealing with the fusion and privatization plans. Höchst hospital is the second largest in Frankfurt. It is enormously important for the west of Frankfurt and outlying region. Actually, it is irreplaceable.”

Even prior to the merger workers faced relentless pressure on their jobs and conditions. “The laundry was closed years ago,” Martin said, “since then all of the washing is transported to Bavaria; in spite of the petrol prices, all the stuff is washed in Franken. Food is still prepared by us. Cleaning and the preparation of beds were outsourced long ago. In terms of care, the hospital’s KPHs (nursing assistants) are helping us for the moment. There are occasionally times of crisis, when it is really bad, external personnel, from a private contractor, come to help for a few weeks.”

There will be no positive changes resulting from the merger. There are already no reliable monthly schedules, and as an experienced nurse, one must be ready, “planned or unplanned,” to shift between wards, which is another major burden. The reason for this is obvious, Martin said, “They are trying to cover all of the work with internal staff, without hiring any more people.”

Nurses have to document every move they make. “For an experienced nurse, it is almost an insult. One has to constantly document what one has done. That the napkin was laid out with the food, excuse me, but I could also document that I opened the door to come in. In the past, it was not so extreme.” He said it would be preferable to use this time to provide care.

Martin said of the current wage conflict that neither the merger nor the stressful working conditions were being discussed. All of this is accepted as inevitable, including by the works council in Höchst, where the SPD and Left Party hold sway. “It appears as though everything has been agreed between the works council and management beforehand,” he said.

Verizon makes “last, best and final offer” to striking workers

Jerry White

Verizon Communications handed down its “last, best and final offer” to negotiators from the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) on Thursday. The ultimatum comes as 39,000 workers have entered their third week on strike against the telecom giant, which also plans to cut off medical insurance to strikers and their families on Saturday.

Verizon, which made $39 billion in profits over the last three years, is standing fast on its demands for “workforce flexibility changes” that would compel workers to travel long distances for temporary work assignments. In the New York City area alone, this would involve transfers of up to 80 miles away from current work locations, which could mean travel times of three hours each way.

Verizon pickets in Boston

This proposal is key to the company’s plans to continue shrinking its workforce, particularly in its wireline division. The changes would allow Verizon to ramp up the exploitation of current workers instead of hiring more employees to install and maintain the company’s landline phones and fiber optic cables. Moreover, the stress on workers’ health and family lives, the company hopes, would lead to an exodus of older, higher-paid workers. What few new workers were hired into the division would have no employer-paid pensions and would essentially be low-paid casual laborers.

In line with this strategy, the company is offering lump sums and cash incentives for “voluntary retirements” to further reduce its payroll. Since 2000, the number of workers covered by the CWA and IBEW has fallen by nearly half.

Verizon is also offering a derisory 7.5 percent wage increase over three years, which barely keeps up with the rate of inflation. Meanwhile, it wants workers to pay higher out-of-pocket health care costs to maintain their current plans, or alternately to accept inferior health care coverage. The latter is in line with Obama’s Cadillac Tax on supposedly overgenerous benefits, which has been used to shift health costs from the corporations onto the backs of workers.

Well aware of the rank-and-file anger over the union’s sellout of the 2011 strike, CWA officials responded to the offer with theatrical bluster, denouncing Verizon even though the unions have already offered an estimated $200 million in concessions.

In a text message sent to workers in New York City, where nearly a quarter of the striking Verizon workers reside, a CWA Local 1101 official wrote: “The greedy company we work for offered the same contract we left on the table last time. Our bargaining team told them to go f… themselves. Don’t believe their lies. They are going to fedex us all their last & final offer. We ask all members to bring the fedex pkg in so we can burn them en masse.”

Another text from the CWA said, “Our members need to be aware bargaining is not over. In a couple of days CWA will meet with the company and reject their proposals and will give the company our proposals.” If members did not return the packages with the final offer, the text instructed local union officials to “collect them unopened and give them to us.”

The immediate reaction of one rank-and-file worker in New York City to the text messages was, “The union clearly doesn’t want us to read the offer.” Another source reported that the CWA is opposed to the retirement incentives because it fears a race to retire by workers would severely undermine union dues revenue.

The CWA and the IBEW have long collaborated in the destruction of jobs and the erosion of wages, benefits and working conditions that have emboldened the telecommunications giant. The company took full advantage of the unions’ decision to force workers to labor eight months without a contract, spending the time training some 20,000 strikebreakers.

The telecom unions, along with the AFL-CIO, have left the striking workers isolated while shunting them from one impotent stunt to another, from photo-ops with Democratic Party candidates to appealing to wireless customers to boycott the company. The CWA has ordered thousands of AT&T workers in California, Nevada and Connecticut to continue working without a contract, blocking a strike by telecom workers on both borders.

Meanwhile, the unions are offering starvation rations for strike pay, even though the CWA sits on a so-called Defense Fund worth hundreds of millions. In some cases, workers expecting to get their first strike benefits of $200 today have been told by local officials that they don’t know when the national organization will release their money. As for helping workers whose health benefits are being ended Saturday, the unions will only provide aid in cases of extreme “emergency,” and then only after members subject themselves to degrading inquires from union committees.

These tactics are aimed at demoralizing workers and starving them into submission and have already led to some workers to cross the picket lines. While its estimates cannot be trusted, Verizon claims more than 1,000 of the striking workers have gone back to work.

With the momentum fully on its side, the company has repeatedly threatened to impose its final offer by May 20 if its demands are not accepted. At the same time, it has provided the unions an opening to accept federal mediation from the Obama administration, which imposed the company’s health care concession demands in 2011 after the CWA shut down a two-week strike.

The battle by Verizon workers is at a crossroads. The unions, which are allied with the Obama administration and the Democrats, have led workers to a dead end. A fight is possible, but only if rank-and-file workers take the conduct of the struggle into their own hands and consciously oppose the sabotage by the CWA, IBEW and the rest of the AFL-CIO and Change to Win unions. Workers should elect rank-and-file strike committees to leaflet industrial and public sector workers in their cities and call for mass demonstrations and other solidarity actions to defend them against this corporate-government onslaught.

A particular appeal should be made to telecom workers around the world, from Spain and Mexico to the Philippines and China, who are engaged in their own struggles against job cutting, privatization and other attacks. Global corporations like Verizon can only be fought through the unity and common struggle of the international working class in opposition to the nationalist poison promoted by the unions and politicians, which only divides and weakens workers.

Workers are, however, not just fighting one particularly greedy employer, but the entire capitalist system, which subordinates the most elemental needs of working people to the ever-greater enrichment of corporate executives and Wall Street investors. Both corporate-controlled parties and the trade unions defend this system.

The struggle to defeat Verizon should be the starting point for a political counteroffensive of the working class whose aim is the fight for a workers’ government and the replacement of capitalism with socialism. The giant telecommunication monopolies must be transformed into publicly owned and democratically controlled utilities in order to provide affordable and high-quality services to all.