US historians criticize Tokyo’s efforts to whitewash war crimes

Ben McGrath

A group of 19 American historians have condemned efforts by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to whitewash the historical record following his recent attempts to pressure a McGraw-Hill, a US publishing company, to change textbook passages concerning the Japanese military’s terrible abuse of “comfort women” during the 1930s and 1940s.

In a February 5 statement entitled “Standing with Historians of Japan,” the American academics not only criticized the Japanese government’s attempts to whitewash history but opposed any attempt by other governments to censor the past. As the title also makes clear, the historians lent support to their Japanese colleagues who have worked to investigate the truth regarding “comfort women,” or women who were coerced into “comfort stations” as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers.

Among those who signed the statement were Patrick Manning, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh who is being considered for the chair of the American Historical Association, and Hebert Ziegler, of Hawaii University and one of the authors of McGraw-Hill’s textbook that Abe criticized.

At the end of last year, the Japanese Consulate General in New York met with representatives of McGraw-Hill, to call for its textbook to be amended. The company refused. At the end of January, Abe declared that he was “shocked” by what he had read in the books and called for greater efforts to “correct” such accounts.

The statement by the American academics reads, “As historians, we express our dismay at recent attempts by the Japanese government to suppress statements in history textbooks both in Japan and elsewhere about the euphemistically named ‘comfort women,’ who suffered under a brutal system of sexual exploitation in the service of the Japanese imperial army during World War II. We therefore oppose the efforts of states or special interests to pressure publishers or historians to alter the results of their research for political purposes.”

The historians’ statement also expressed support for Japanese historians like Yoshimi Yoshiaki, a professor at Chuo University in Japan. It continued, “The careful research of historian Yoshimi Yoshiaki in Japanese government archives and the testimonial of survivors throughout Asia have rendered beyond dispute the essential features of a system that amounted to state-sponsored sexual slavery.”

Yoshiaki is a professor of modern history and author of the book, “Comfort Women,” first published in Japanese in 1995 and then in English in 2002. Yoshiaki began researching the sexual enslavement of comfort women in 1992 when victims were first beginning to come forward. He made extensive use of documents from the 1930s, found in the Ministry of Defense’s library (then known as the Defense Agency). This type of information is invaluable as many papers were destroyed in Japan during the closing days of World War II, including many that were evidence of war crimes.

While Yoshiaki made use of these documents to show the military’s role in setting up the brothels, he also stated in 2007 in the New York Times, “There are things that are never written in official documents. That they [comfort women] were forcibly recruited—that’s the kind of thing that would have never been written in the first place.”

The number of women forced into military-run “comfort stations” is estimated to have been approximately 200,000, with many of them coming from Korea, China, the Philippines, and other Asian countries occupied by Japan. Girls, often in their teens, endured horrendous conditions in the Japanese military brothels. Many committed suicide.

While some women were directly forced into sexual slavery, others were duped and then held against their will. In Korea, for example, the Japanese military relied on Korean middlemen to round up girls, often with phony promises of good jobs in factories or other work. These girls often came from poor families.

Right-wing Japanese nationalists often claim that the “comfort women” were already prostitutes and willingly worked at the comfort stations. While there is some evidence that this might be true in the early stages, as Japan’s imperialist war drive expanded, the practices of coercing and intimidating young women into becoming “comfort women” increased.

“The Japanese military itself newly built this system, took the initiative to create this system, maintained it and expanded it, and violated human rights as a result,” Yoshiaki said in 2007 comments to the New York Times. “That’s a critical difference [from prostitution].”

Abe’s attempt to revise the historical record on “comfort women” is just one aspect of a broader agenda. The government has also set aside more than a half billion dollars for a diplomatic and propaganda offensive to “restore Japan’s honor.” It recently announced the establishment of “Japan Houses” around the world to promote the country’s image and to whitewash past war crimes.

The first “Japan Houses” will be set up in London, Los Angeles, and Sao Paulo by the end of 2016, but the plan does not end there. “We are half-satisfied. By mobilizing all means, we must strengthen Japan’s information strategy…so that in a real sense, we can have (others) properly understand what is good about Japan,” said Yoshiaki Harada, a lawmaker with Abe’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

Japan also recently provided $5 million to Columbia University for a Japan studies position. It was the first time Tokyo has made such a grant in more than four decades. “There is a fear that Japan is losing out in an information war with South Korea and China and that we must catch up,” said Kan Kimura of Kobe University.

This concerted ideological campaign is part of the Abe government’s remilitarization of Japan and preparation for war. It is aimed at whipping up patriotic sentiment at home to dragoon a new generation of youth to go off to war, while blunting criticism abroad not only of past crimes, but the Japanese government’s current military build-up.

All of this has been encouraged by the United States as part of its “pivot to Asia,” designed to undermine China economically and militarily encircle it. While it is fully supportive of the “pivot,” the Abe government is also seeking to remilitarize to prosecute the economic and strategic interests of Japanese imperialism, even if they conflict with those of the US.

US military looks to expand use of Australian bases and ports

James Cogan

During a visit to Australia earlier this month, the American Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert flagged the prospect of the US military rotating a naval Amphibious Ready Group to the port of Darwin, in the country’s far north. Following agreements struck between the US and Australia in 2011, US marines are already based in Darwin for six months of the year. By 2016–2017, the deployment will consist of an entire 2,500-strong Marine Air Ground Task Force.

An Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) generally consists of a 44,000 tonne amphibious assault ship—which can carry some 1,700 troops, vehicles, landing craft and an assortment of helicopters and vertical take-off jet fighters—as well as two 20,000 tonne dock landing ships. The smaller vessels also carry landing craft and some 500 troops. The presence of an ARG in Darwin would enable the entire marine rotation in northern Australia to be rapidly embarked and deployed to operations in South East Asia or the South China Sea.

An aspect of Greenert’s visit was to receive briefings on the upgrades required to Darwin’s port to accommodate such large warships. He indicated that the US Navy would want a basing arrangement in place by 2020 at the latest.

“Right now,” Greenert told a forum at the Australian National University in Canberra on February 10, “it’s at the stage of ‘what’s the art of the possible’? What kind of infrastructure exists… what kind of support measures, and how would that fit into the two nations’ common strategic desires into the future… It’s the early stages, but we are considering it, the two of us.”

Other developments point to the further integration of the US and Australian militaries and preparations for the expanded American use of Australian bases.

The US Defense Department and the Australian Defence Force are conducting a joint study into a range of options involving the basing of other US warships in Australia. In particular, the feasibility of “rotating” an entire US aircraft carrier battlegroup to the port of Stirling near Perth in Western Australia, which was recommended in 2012 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is one of the possibilities under examination. However, more than $1 billion would need to be spent to upgrade the port to ensure it could cater for the long-term presence of nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed vessels.

The Australian Navy commissioned the Canberra, its first 27,500 tonne amphibious assault ship last November. Like similar American vessels, it carries landing craft, six to eight helicopters, a 400-strong marine assault force and up to 110 vehicles and their crews, including tanks. The Australian Army has been training its own marines over the past three years, with the assistance of the US. A second ship to transport them will come into service next year. Combined, the US and Australian militaries could dispatch a force of 3,500 heavily armed troops from Darwin, complete with air support, anywhere in the region.

In December, the Australian military opened a new $125 million logistics complex in Darwin, consisting of an array of heavily-fortified and cyclone-proof buildings to store tanks, armoured vehicles, explosives and ammunition, and general supplies. It includes repair workshops and weapons’ testing facilities.

Retired Australian Major General Peter Haddon told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “My understanding is those who are in charge today see this as a potential site for doing some of that support for the marines.”

Since the Greens-backed Labor government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard signed the agreement for the US Marines to be based in Darwin, American long-range B-52 bombers now spend up to six months a year at airbases in Darwin and nearby Tindal, making use of the large training ranges in Australia’s north. The political establishment and the mass media have been all but silent on the presence of aircraft, which can carry an undisclosed payload of nuclear weapons.

A major expansion of the key US satellite base at Pine Gap in central Australia, which provides targeting information for everything from drone missile attacks to potential nuclear strikes, was completed at the end of 2014. At the end of 2013, the US military announced that it would base its new state-of-the-art Space Surveillance Telescope at the North West Cape base in Western Australia, making the site a crucial facility in monitoring satellites orbiting the earth, particularly Chinese and Russian military satellites, and providing targeting information for their destruction.

As of 2018, Australian facilities in Newcastle and Melbourne will serve as the South Pacific maintenance hubs for all US military Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighters operating in the region, as well as the South Korea’s F-35s and Australia’s own complement of the aircraft.

The ever-closer US-Australia military relations are bound up with the so-called US “pivot” or “rebalance” to the Asia-Pacific to militarily and politically confront and isolate China. Under successive Labor and Liberal governments, Australia has provided indispensable support to the US agenda, which amounts to the threat of war if China does not make the sweeping economic and strategic concessions being demanded by Washington.

More evidence of US involvement in Sri Lankan regime-change

K. Ratnayake

Sri Lanka’s presidential election on January 8 resulted in the ousting of Mahinda Rajapakse and the installation of Maithripala Sirisena as president. While the new government’s leaders and their pseudo-left backers claim this outcome was the result of an “uprising of the people” against Rajapakse’s autocratic rule, it was in reality a regime-change operation as the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) alone has explained.

Right from the outset, it was clear that Sirisena’s sudden emergence as the “common opposition candidate” was the result of carefully-orchestrated, behind-the-scenes intrigues. On November 20, one day after Rajapakse announced the election date, Health Minister Sirisena quit the government and declared that he would be standing in the election backed by the opposition United National Party (UNP) and other parties.

The WSWS has already detailed the involvement of Washington, acting through former President Chandrika Kumaratunga and UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe. The Obama administration was deeply hostile to Rajapakse’s ties with Beijing and determined to ensure that Sri Lanka is fully integrated into the US “pivot to Asia” and military build-up against China.

More evidence has now come to light on Washington’s hand in Rajapakse’s removal.

On February 6, the Sri Lankan government’s information department web site published a report on the visit of Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera to Washington. It highlighted “the revival of the cordial relationship between the two countries” and explained that this was the “result of the fruitful discussions the Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, as the opposition leader, had with the US State Department officials, including [US Assistant Secretary of State] Biswal and former Ambassador to Colombo Michelle Sison.”

The report provided further details of Wickremesinghe’s top-level meetings in Washington. “During his one-month stay in the US last April, Wickremesinghe had met and held discussions on Sri Lanka’s political future with the senior officials at the State Department, and White House, and the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives.”

On his return to Sri Lanka, Wickremesinghe met with US ambassador Sison on May 22 at the UNP headquarters. A media report at the time noted that the focus of the discussion “was regarding the current political situation of Sri Lanka.”

When the UNP announced Wickremesinghe’s extended trip to the US last year, it was billed as a study tour at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. Clearly that was just a cover for lengthy discussions with top State Department and White House officials over “Sri Lanka’s political future”—that is, how to advance their common objective of removing Rajapakse from office. US ambassador Sison coordinated the meetings.

The US has been putting pressure on Rajapakse to break ties with Beijing since 2009 when the Sri Lankan military defeated the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the island’s long-running communal war. Having fully backed the war, Washington has cynically exploited the military’s war crimes and the threat of charges to try to force Rajapakse to distance his government from China.

Rajapakse sought to balance between Washington and Beijing but the US made clear that was untenable. In March last year, Washington flagged its impatience by pushing a resolution through the UN Human Rights Council calling for an international inquiry into human rights abuses in Sri Lanka. Wickremesinghe’s visit and discussions in the US followed in April.

The other key figure in the intrigues was former President Kumaratunga, who as a former leader and a senior figure within Rajapakse’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party, was able to broker the deal for Sirisena to defect and run as opposition candidate with the UNP’s support. She also has close connections in Washington and to the White House via her association with the Clinton Foundation. As Obama’s previous Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was the architect of the “pivot to Asia” and was deeply involved in all of its intrigues, including in Sri Lanka.

In a lengthy interview with Sirasa TV on February 3, Kumaratunga acknowledged her role, saying she had been the main architect in bringing Sirisena forward as the common opposition candidate. Kumaratunga said that many people had urged her to intervene against Rajapakse, adding: “Foreign countries strongly brought proposals [to me] on this.” She refused to name the countries or to elaborate, but the US was clearly one of the countries.

The opposition plans for the election were shown to top US and UK diplomats by UNP leaders, Karu Jayasuriya, Mangala Samaraweera and Ravi Karunanayake.

The Sunday Times editorial on February 8 noted: “It is an open secret that the former US Ambassador in Colombo reached out to the Opposition, especially the then Leader of the Opposition [Wickremesinghe]” and moved away from engagement with former President Rajapakse.

In carrying out this regime-change operation, the opposition parties exploited the deep hostility among workers, young people and the poor towards the Rajapakse government over its anti-democratic methods and austerity policies. Sirisena declared that he was fighting against the “dictatorship and family nepotism of Rajapakse” and promised economic relief for the people.

This pro-US campaign was immensely helped by pseudo-left organisations such as the Nava Sama Samaja Party who falsely painted Sirisena and Wickremesinghe as democrats. As a senior minister in the Rajapakse government, Sirisena bears responsibility for all of its anti-working class policies. Likewise, Wickremesinghe’s UNP has a long history of attacks on the democratic and social rights of workers and youth.

Having helped install Sirisena, the US is now seeking to rapidly transform its relations with Sri Lanka. During his recent visit to India, Obama said: “In this region, India can play a positive role in helping countries forge a better future, from Burma to Sri Lanka, where today there’s new hope for democracy.”

Similarly, in a speech to Brooklyn Institute on National Security Strategy, Obama’s National Security Advisor Susana Rice declared: “We’ll help countries in transition—like Burma, Tunisia, and Sri Lanka—become more open, more democratic, and more inclusive societies. We’ll support established democracies that are in danger of backsliding.”

Washington’s machinations have nothing to do with fostering democracy in Sri Lanka or anywhere else in the world. Rather, the US is seeking to ensure its dominance throughout the globe, particularly in Asia over China. Sri Lanka, which is strategically located across Indian Ocean sea lanes, is a critical element of the Pentagon’s war plans against China. The new Sri Lanka government has wasted no time in showing its readiness to align with US interests. Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Samaraweera is visiting Washington this week to meet with US Secretary of State John Kerry to discuss closer relations.

US imperialism has brought Europe to the brink of war with its reckless confrontation with Russia over Ukraine. Washington’s aggressive policies in Asia against China carry the same dangers. Workers in Sri Lanka, Asia and around the world must draw the necessary conclusions lessons and build an anti-war movement of the international working class to put an end to capitalism and its outmoded nation-state system which is the root cause of war.

Obama’s budget proposal cuts $50 million from immunization funding

Kevin Martinez

As part of the 2016 budget proposal, the Obama White House announced that it will cut $50 million, or 8 percent, from $611 million for the Department of Health and Human Services’ “317 program.” The 317 Program provides free vaccinations to children with and without insurance, as well as insured adults in response to outbreaks and disaster relief. It also funds the infrastructure needed for high immunization coverage. The announcement comes at a time when the measles has now spread to 14 states with over 120 confirmed cases.

The budget proposal also calls for $128 million to be added to the Vaccines for Children program, an entitlement program that covers insured, uninsured, and Medicaid-eligible children for vaccines. The Obama Administration has argued that through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) access to immunizations will be expanded, decreasing the need for the 317 program.

L.J. Tan, chief strategy officer for the Immunization Action Coalition, told CNN that despite the ACA now covering many children who were previously covered by the 317 program, the budget cuts will be a setback. “The program funds a lot of the states’ infrastructure for vaccine delivery,” he said. The program is also critical in monitoring the spread of the disease and interviewing those who have come in contact with it.

The announcement that the federal immunization program will be cut is in direct contrast to President Obama’s statement to NBC: “There is every reason to get vaccinated, but there aren’t reasons to not,” adding, “You should get your get kids vaccinated.”

While the Affordable Care Act requires insurance providers to pay for vaccines without cost-sharing, it does not cancel out the function of the 317 program, which acts as a safety net for Americans with and without insurance. It also provides for insured children and adults during a major outbreak such as when 317 program vaccines were used to immunize privately-insured children during 2012-13 when pediatricians did not buy enough pediatric influenza vaccines, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Most of the 317 program provides for state and local health officials to purchase vaccines, educate immunization providers, prepare and respond to outbreaks, and have infrastructure in place. The program was cut $51.5 million last year, eliminating $37.5 million for vaccine purchases. Program operations, which include public awareness and immunization provider education, were cut by $14 million.

Despite the proposed $128 million increase for the Vaccines for Children Program, millions of Americans still rely on the 317 program’s vaccines. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, more than 41 million non-elderly Americans did not have health insurance in 2013. This did not include the underinsured, whose health plans do not cover all vaccines.

Another strain on the country’s immunization system is that fewer physicians are providing the full host of vaccines to insured patients, while vaccines costs more and more and insurance reimbursement rates decline. This means that local public health providers have to pick up those who fall through the cracks.

The National Vaccine Advisory Committee, in its report to Health and Human Services wrote, “As we have learned over the years, insurance coverage alone is not enough to ensure disease control or high vaccination coverage rates. … Current vaccine financing strategies, including those offered now by the ACA, do not address the fundamental resource needs to support the immunization infrastructure.”

Even if the additional funds are going toward vaccine purchases, the ability of local health departments to prepare and respond to outbreaks has been diminished by the cuts. Chris Aldridge, senior director for infectious disease at the National Association of County and City Health Officials told theWashington Post, “When we’re looking at an outbreak, such as with measles, sometimes the concern is less about, ‘Is that person insured,’ than it is really about getting the vaccine out there and distributing it. There is still a need for vaccine purchasing and making sure we can get out there.”

Meanwhile, the measles outbreak, which began last December in Disneyland, has spread to 17 states and has affected at least 125 people. This year’s outbreak is on track to surpass last year’s total of 644 cases, the highest number since the disease was thought to be eradicated in 2000.

A private Christian school in Port Angeles, Washington, was quarantined after a 5-year-old kindergartner was diagnosed with measles. Students at Olympic Christian school who cannot show proof of immunity were told to stay home, avoid public places, and have no contact with anyone susceptible to measles until February 27, according to the county health department. According to the state health records, of the 115 students at the school, nearly 16 percent were exempted from the required vaccinations, meaning that some 18 students could be affected by the quarantine.

Three new cases of measles were also reported in Toronto, Canada, bringing the total in that country to 22. Health officials there confirmed an unvaccinated 14-year-old girl from the Niagara region was infected. Two more cases were also confirmed in Cook County, Illinois, bring the total there to 13 cases statewide. At least 12 of those cases have been tied to a suburban daycare center in Palatine, mostly occurring in children too young to be vaccinated.

In California, where the disease was thought to have first appeared, two new cases were reported in Ventura County, bringing the county total to 14, and the statewide total to 110. At least one of the cases involved a person who visited Disneyland last December. The amusement park has asked California health officials to reassure the public that the park is safe to attend.

Harper government to criminalize Canadian Pacific railway strike

Carl Bronski

Thirty-three hundred locomotive engineers, conductors and yardmen went on strike early Sunday morning after negotiators for Canadian Pacific (CP) Railways and the Teamsters Canada Railway Conference (TCRC) failed to reach agreement on a new contract. The main issue in the strike is CP’s unwillingness to address the issues of a brutal scheduling regimen and inadequate rest time for the rail workers.

Currently, employees must work a six-day-on/two-day-off schedule. Only minimal government recommended rest rules are recognized by the company, but even these are routinely ignored. Workers have reported being required to labour for up to 18 hours in a day. During their rest days, workers are “on-call” should additional overtime be demanded by the company. Furthermore, workers have no guarantee they will be anywhere near their home when their rotation ends.

Disciplinary action is regularly applied against workers resisting these grueling schedules. Grievances filed by overworked employees are systematically referred to arbitration—a process that can take months and even years to resolve.

Shortly after the breakdown of negotiations, Conservative Labour Minister Kellie Leitch issued a statement blaming the union for the impasse. “I am incredibly disappointed that the TCRC failed to reach an agreement with CP Rail,” she told reporters. “Due to this reckless disregard for Canadians and the Canadian economy, our government will review all available options to end any work-stoppage expediently, up to and including the introduction of legislation in Parliament.”

The threat from the Labour Minister is only the latest volley in a concerted government drive to effectively outlaw all forms of industrial and social dissent and trample on basic democratic rights. Since June 2011, the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has repeatedly outlawed worker job action, including illegalizing a strike by Canadian Pacific railway workers in 2012, two different walkouts at Air Canada, and a Canada Post strike. The government has also used the threat of such legislation to force “settlements” in several other disputes including against workers at Canadian National Railways.

Under these conditions, employers have taken the offensive against significant sections of the working class, demanding ever-greater concessions, including the gutting of work rules, confident that they can rely on the government to illegalize any worker resistance and to task an arbitrator to dictate the workers’ terms of employment.

In the current dispute, Leitch initiated moves to illegalize the strike a full 36 hours before the breakdown of talks. On Friday, she placed on the parliamentary order paper for Monday morning, “an act to provide for the resumption of rail service operations.” The government plans to invoke procedures so as to dramatically curtail debate and speed through the bill’s passage. All three readings of the bill are scheduled to take place on the same day with only one hour earmarked for the required “mandatory referral to parliamentary committee.”

Leitch’s moves come in the wake of appeals made by corporate associations representing the forest, agriculture and auto industries for quick government action to end the strike. Corporate interests are particularly concerned because an ongoing work-to-rule (and subsequent lockout) of West Coast longshoremen in the United States has already caused shipping bottlenecks in Vancouver, British Columbia as importers and exporters shifted their loads north of the American border.

The rail workers’ strike and other signs of working-class opposition in North America, including the current national strike by thousands of oil refinery workers in the United States, are manifestations of the pent-up anger of workers who have suffered through decades of giveaways in wages, benefits and working conditions, even as corporate profits and stock markets soar in the sixth year of a supposed economic recovery.

Workers at CP Rail should place absolutely no confidence in the Teamsters union to redress their grievances. The same issues that animated their nine-day strike in 2012 remain unresolved. Then too, the Harper government passed back-to-work legislation with Teamsters officials immediately bowing to the order and instructing the workers to comply. Several months later, CP management announced the layoff of 4,500 union and nonunion employees—23 percent of the company’s workforce—resulting in the ultimate shrinking of the Teamster local by 1,700 members. At the same time, management further increased the length of individual trains and their running speeds. CP profits soared.

The trade unions, which have colluded with big business for decades in forcing on their memberships massive concessionary contracts, united over the weekend in their determination to prevent disputes at the bargaining table from in anyway providing fuel for an industry wide workers’ offensive against big business.

Whilst the clock was running out on negotiations with CP on Saturday night, Teamsters officials, who also organize 1,800 locomotive engineers at Canadian National Railways (CN), came to an eleventh hour agreement with that company. Although contract negotiations for both CN, the nation’s largest carrier and CP, the nation’s second largest carrier, were occurring at the same time, union officials did not even conduct a strike vote amongst their CN membership. So as to further divide the two groups of workers, the release of the full terms of the Teamsters’ deal with CN and the contract ratification vote are being delayed until mid-April.

Union officials with Unifor, representing another 1,800 rail safety workers at CP, also showed no interest in mounting a united struggle against the rail companies. Although they were in a legal position to strike alongside the engineers and yardmen, Unifor ordered the rail safety workers to remain on the job after negotiating a separate contract deal with CP late Saturday night. No details of the proposed contract have been released. Unifor has for years been notorious for pushing through concessions-laden contracts in the industries it organizes, including in the Canadian auto sector.

Over the weekend, New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Thomas Mulcair issued no statement on the strike and Harper’s pending legislation. The trade union-backed NDP views support for strike action as an electrified third rail in national politics. In the face of historic attacks on the right to strike, the social democrats occasionally mouth empty phrases about “unfairness” but like the union leaders are utterly opposed to any defiance of the strikebreaking laws.

The issue of rail safety has been paramount in public consciousness for several years, particularly since the tragic rail disaster in July 2012 at Lac Megantic, Quebec when an unmanned runaway train operated by a regional carrier, overseen by only a single employee and transporting a highly volatile oil cargo careened into the town and incinerated 48 people. Subsequent investigations showed that the disaster was in large part due to reductions in government inspections and ever-more lax regulations.

In order to further ratchet up profits, more and more trains—longer in length and staffed by only a conductor and an engineer who are often fatigued—are carrying dangerous goods at high speeds across the country. CP has led the way in this drive for increased productivity and profits. A 2013 report showed that the railway had posted a 39 percent increase in personal injuries on the job and a 25 percent spike in train accidents since the ending of the last strike.

Rail workers must draw some hard lessons from their recent experiences. To find a way forward, they must break free from the grip of pro-company unions and build new organizations of struggle controlled by the rank-and-file, to mobilize a powerful strike movement to reverse the erosion of jobs, living standards and working conditions. In the face of globally organized transport companies, workers must reject the nationalism of the unions and fight to unite with their international brothers in a common struggle.

Above all, the development of such an orientation in the working class requires the fight to develop an understanding among workers of the fundamental political questions at stake—that to secure their interests, workers must embark on a path aimed at taking political power and reorganizing society internationally on the basis of socialist principles.

Obama administration intervenes against West Coast dock workers

Jerry White

President Barack Obama intervened over the weekend in the increasingly tense confrontation between West Coast dockworkers and the cargo shipping companies and terminal owners organized in the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA). The White House dispatched Secretary of Labor Tom Perez to oversee talks for a new five-year labor agreement.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), which has kept its 20,000 members on the job for nine months without a contract, faces an increasingly restive rank and file, which is opposed to another concessionary contract undermining jobs, wages and working conditions.

Accusing the ILWU of organizing a slowdown, which it said “amounts to a strike with pay,” the PMA locked out workers at 29 ports in California, Oregon and Washington State over the Presidents Day holiday weekend.

The White House move follows demands for an end to the labor dispute from major retailers, who depend on imported goods passing through the ports. A bipartisan group of US congressmen has called for the president to use the strikebreaking Taft-Hartley law, as his Republican predecessor George Bush did in 2002, to force open the ports and impose management’s dictates on the workers.

“Out of concern for the economic consequences of further delay, the president has directed his Secretary of Labor Tom Perez to travel to California to meet with the parties to urge them to resolve their dispute quickly at the bargaining table,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said on Saturday. “Secretary Perez is already in contact with the parties and will keep the president fully updated.”

Jonathan Gold, the vice president of the National Retail Federation, hailed the announcement, saying, “The slowdowns, congestion and suspensions at the West Coast ports need to end now.” This was echoed by US Representative Janice Hahn, a California Democrat, who said she hoped Perez “will work to keep both sides at the table and help them find a resolution that keeps our ports open and our workers on the job.”

The White House is intervening entirely on behalf of the shipping and terminal owners and, more generally, the corporate and financial elite in the US, which is determined to resist growing demands by workers for wage increases and other improvements. Perez is being sent to give the ILWU its marching orders: break the resistance of the rank and file to another sellout contract and prevent the outbreak of a serious struggle, which could link up with striking oil workers in the US and rail workers in Canada and become a catalyst for a movement of broader sections of the working class.

The move by the White House reflects concerns within sections of the political establishment that unilateral actions by the employers, marginalizing the union apparatus rather than utilizing its services, could provoke a movement of the working class that the unions would be unable to control. For months, think tanks and journals have been warning about the danger of a “wages push” by US workers angry over the continued erosion of their living standards even as corporate profits and the stock market soar in the sixth year of a supposed economic recovery.

The strike by over 5,000 oil refinery workers in California, Texas, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana and Washington enters its third week today, with the oil giants refusing to budge on workers’ demands for improved wages and safety conditions. The selective strike policy of the United Steelworkers (USW) union, which has limited the walkout to less than one-fifth of the 30,000 USW-organized oil industry employees, has led the workers into a dead end, and there is increasing sentiment among rank-and-file workers for a national strike.

Meanwhile, 3,000 railroad workers at Canadian Pacific walked out Sunday morning over grueling work schedules and safety issues in a strike that threatens to impact industries throughout North America, including oil, lumber and auto as well as retail goods that arrive at ports in British Columbia. The Canadian government is expected to introduce strikebreaking legislation today.

While holding the Taft-Hartley law in reserve, the White House is relying on the ILWU to smother rank-and-file opposition. Long allied to the Democratic Party, the ILWU has colluded with the employers and the government for decades to erode jobs and living standards in the name of improving “labor flexibility” and “competitiveness” with ports in Asia and Europe.

It has sought to whip up nationalism in order to divide US dockworkers from their counterparts internationally and line them up behind their “own” American employers.

As part of the Maritime Labor Alliance, the ILWU endorsed Obama’s reelection in 2012. The union praised “the President’s initiatives to increase American exports, to enforce existing buy and ship American policies, to fund and implement the Maritime Security Program, and to ensure that our nation has a fleet of US-flag vessels necessary to meet the economic, homeland and military security requirements of our Nation.”

The president’s policy of increasing exports largely depends on reducing the wages of American workers so that US firms can compete with China, Mexico and other low-wage countries. Obama’s “security” polices have meant unending war and the destruction of democratic rights in the name of the “war on terror.”

In justifying the use of the Taft-Hartley against dockworkers in 2002, President Bush, with the full backing of Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, cited not only potential damage to the national economy, but also the harmful impact of a work stoppage on the US military in the run-up to the Iraq War. The suggestion was that any industrial action constituted a threat to national security and was therefore illegitimate and illegal.

The PMA has repeatedly cited the tax on “Cadillac” health care plans under Obama’s Affordable Care Act as justification for slashing the medical benefits won by dockworkers over generations of struggle.

Under agreements first worked out in the late 1960s to introduce new technology, the ILWU accepted the destruction of jobs and a vast increase in productivity in exchange for the PMA’s acceptance of the principle that the ILWU would retain bargaining rights for all of the workers who remained and that the distribution of work would continue to be controlled through the union hiring hall.

Over the last two contracts, however, the ILWU has acceded to the demands of the PMA for a vast expansion in the use of contract workers, leading to a gradual return to the days of the hated “shape up” system, when management hired and fire workers at will and workers who loaded and unloaded ships had no guaranteed wages, hours or safety protection.

In the current talks, the PMA is offering a meager wage increase of 2.8 percent in each of the next five years and seeking concessions on pensions and contract work. For its part, the ILWU is chiefly concerned with the institutional interests of the union, seeking some type of commitment for minimum staffing levels.

On Friday, ILWU President Bob McEllrath agreed to a federal mediator’s request for a 48-hour news blackout so the union could negotiate a sellout agreement behind the backs of 20,000 dockworkers.

The intervention of the Obama administration underscores the fact that workers fighting for decent wages and working conditions confront a political struggle not only against the oil giants and ship owners, but against both parties of big business and the capitalist system they defend.

Such a struggle can be developed only in opposition to the unions, which function as tools of the corporations and government. The isolation of different struggles must be broken through the building of new organizations of struggle, controlled by rank-and-file workers, to unite the entire working class in an industrial and political counteroffensive in defense of jobs, living standards and democratic and social rights.

New evidence implicates pro-US opposition in Maidan killings during Kiev coup

Andrea Peters

Further evidence has emerged that the deadly shootings on Independence Square (Maidan) in Kiev last February, in the final stages of the NATO-backed putsch that ousted pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, were carried out by the far-right.

Recently published investigative coverage by the BBC and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) in Germany indicates that snipers were recruited by fascist forces to fire on targets on the Maidan. Until that point, police had engaged in violent confrontations with anti-government protesters but had yet to resort to live ammunition.

This suggests that the far-right forces were trying to escalate the conflict, in order to shatter plans for a negotiated settlement that European officials were trying to work out between the Yanukovych regime and the far-right, pro-NATO opposition forces.

The 98 deaths during the Maidan protests—now referred to as the “Heavenly Hundred”—were utilized to promote the myth that the fascist-led coup was a democratic movement of peaceful protesters martyred by Ukrainian riot police. The Kiev regime established the “Order of the Heavenly Hundred,” which recognizes people for “civic courage, patriotism, the upholding of constitutional principles of democracy.” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko recently declared February 20 the “Day of the Heavenly Hundred Heroes” to commemorate the “Revolution of Dignity.”

The BBC and FAZ investigations give the lie to this propaganda. They point to the anti-democratic intrigue that underlies the current Kiev regime and ongoing US provocations against Russia in the region, which threaten the world with what France’s president recently described as “total” war.

On February 11, the BBC published an interview with a man identified as “Sergei,” who was involved in anti-government protests for several weeks in early 2014. He told the news agency he was armed with a high-velocity hunting rifle by pro-Maidan operatives and posted in the Conservatory building on the Maidan along with another gunman.

Early in the morning of February 20, he began targeting government troops, who had taken up positions in the square itself for the first time and were using water cannons and crowd control methods to break up the protest encampment.

As they came under assault, the security services retreated from the square and began returning fire as they pulled out. That same day, Yanukovych’s interior minister authorized the use of lethal force.

Sergei’s account was partially corroborated by Andriy Shevchenko, an opposition Ukrainian member of parliament who joined the Maidan protests. Shevchenko told the BBC that as events on February 20 unfolded, the head of the Yanukovych regime’s riot police contacted him about the escalating situation.

“He calls me and says, ‘Andriy, somebody is shooting at my guys,’” Shevchenko told the BBC. He added, “I kept getting calls from the police officer, who said, ‘I have three people wounded, I have five people wounded, I have one person dead.’ And at some point he says, ‘I am pulling out.’ And he says, ‘Andriy, I do not know what will be next.’ But I clearly felt that something really bad was about to happen.”

Andriy Parubiy, a leader of the pro-Maidan movement who also founded the Social-National Party of Ukraine, a neo-Nazi precursor of today’s fascist Svoboda party, and is currently the deputy speaker of Ukraine’s parliament, has denied that any gunmen were found in the conservatory. He has also asserted, along with other leaders of the recently-installed Ukrainian regime, that sniper fire on the Maidan came from Russian agents.

These claims, however, are belied by photographic evidence of shooters in the building and by a recent interview in the FAZ with Volodymyr Parasyuk, a pro-Maidan leader who admits to commanding riflemen in the conservatory.

Parasyuk, who later fought against pro-Russian separatists in southeast Ukraine as part of the fascist Dnipro battalion and is now a member of parliament, told the FAZ last week that at the Maidan, “A lot of lads came to us then, who said we said we should take up arms and attack...Many had guns with them, often hunting rifles.” In an interview given to the Ukrainian press last year just after these events, however, Parasyuk made no mention of the use of firearms during the protests.

A recently published article in Business News Europe also reports that a source staying in a hotel overlooking Maidan square said that opposition gunmen demanded access to rooms and fired from hotel windows.

On February 20, dozens were killed in the violence that erupted on the Maidan. The situation appeared to stabilize the next day when the European Union negotiated a power-sharing deal between Yanukovych and the NATO-backed opposition parties. However, the deal quickly evaporated.

Parasyuk, who up until this point had worked behind the scenes directing the armed attacks of far-right forces, took to the stage on the night of February 21 in a rally held to commemorate the deaths of those allegedly killed at the hands of the Ukrainian security services. He demanded Yanukovych’s resignation and warned that his forces would storm the presidential palace the next morning if he did not resign.

Despite having just reached a political agreement to resolve the crisis, Yanukovych fled the country. Business News Europe notes that one factor in the Ukrainian president’s decision to abdicate power was “the direct physical threat to [him] from an apparent armed wing of the protesters not under the control of the parliamentary opposition.”

Hostilities ease in eastern Ukraine on first day of cease-fire

Niles Williamson

Hostilities between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists mostly ceased in eastern Ukraine Sunday as the ceasefire agreement negotiated in Minsk last week came into effect.

The four leaders who negotiated the settlement, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President François Hollande, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko spoke via telephone and agreed, according to a statement released by the French president, that the situation was “generally satisfactory despite local incidents.”

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius also confirmed that the ceasefire had gone into effect. “We can say that on the whole the truce is observed, though some ceasefire agreement violations have been registered here and there,” he told reporters on Sunday. The rebel-held city of Donetsk reported its first night in several months without artillery shelling.

Over the weekend US and Ukrainian officials, including US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt and President Poroshenko, sought to cast doubts the Minsk agreement before it went into effect. Pyatt tweeted several low quality photographs on Saturday claiming they proved that Russia was deploying heavy artillery in eastern Ukraine, violating the accord before it went into effect.

Speaking on Saturday ahead of the ceasefire deadline, Poroshenko placed responsibility for the implementation of the agreement on the separatists and warned that if new fighting broke out martial law would be declared throughout the entire country. “We are at the crossroads now,” he told reporters. “Either the enemy stops firing, and the de-escalation and the political process begins, or the enemy imposes an escalation of the conflict on us and the whole world.”

Ukrainian military units have used the lull in the fighting to shore up their positions. The Guardian reported seeing at least three trucks full of Ukrainian troops being moved toward government-held positions outside the city of Debaltseve, where as many as 5,000 Ukrainian soldiers remain encircled by pro-Russian separatists.

There were reports Sunday of rocket fire and shelling in and around the city, which serves as a key rail hub between the main rebel-controlled cities of Donetsk and Luhansk. Ukrainian troops reportedly fired on the cities of Yenakievo and Horlivka in a failed attempt to break through the blockade.

Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) were unable to gain access to the city Sunday to confirm the reports of fighting. They called on both Kiev and the separatists to give them access to all territory in eastern Ukraine. Separatist leader Denis Pushilin denied that the OSCE had asked officials in Donetsk for access to the area.

Ahead of the ceasefire deadline, Aleksandr Zakharchenko, prime minister of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), had insisted that the terms of the ceasefire did not apply to the soldiers trapped in Debaltseve as they were considered to be on separatist-held territory. “Any attempt of the Ukrainian armed forces to unblock Debaltseve will be regarded as violation of the Minsk agreements; such attempts will be suppressed, adversaries will be eliminated,” Zakharchenko said.

The pro-Russian separatists have sent cell phone text messages to the several thousand Ukrainian soldiers it has encircled in Debaltseve, calling on them to turn in their weapons and surrender.

Eduard Basurin, a spokesman from the DPR defense ministry, reported that, while hostilities had largely ceased elsewhere, rebel-held positions northwest of Debaltseve had also come under attack by machine gun and rocket fire from Ukrainian forces early Sunday morning shortly after the ceasefire deadline. Basurin stated that separatist forces “were forced to open fire in response.”

“Over the past night and during the day on Sunday, the situation in the DPR was calm for the first time in months,” Basurin told reporters. “The ceasefire regime there did not come into force in due time. Ukrainian troops blocked in Debaltseve keep on trying to break the encirclement,” he continued. “Our positions, primarily at Logvinovo, were shelled from the town all through the night.”

Shortly after the ceasefire came into effect, Dmytro Yarosh, head of the fascist Right Sector militia and a member of parliament who has been leading fighting in the east, published a statement on the website of the National Guard of Ukraine indicating that the forces under his command were still fighting despite the ceasefire. He reported that two of his “finely armed and equipped battalions continue offensive near Debaltseve and have serious achievements militarily.” His statement was removed from the website several hours later.

In a statement published on his Facebook page Friday, Yarosh had denounced the ceasefire agreement and declared that the Right Sector militia “reserves the right to extend the active hostilities under its own operational plans.”

In southeast Ukraine the fascist Azov Battalion held positions it had gained before the ceasefire in operations against rebel-held positions east of the city of Mariupol. Three of the battalion’s fighters were killed and another 50 injured during fighting in the village of Shyrokyne on Saturday before the ceasefire took effect.

The government reported shelling in the government controlled village of Zolote northwest of Luhansk early Sunday morning. An elderly couple in the nearby city of Popasna was killed Sunday morning after a Grad rocket struck and collapsed their house.

While Ukrainian military spokesman Anatoliy Stelmakh accused the pro-Russian separatists of violating the ceasefire at least ten times since it went into effect, another government spokesman, Andriy Lysenko, reported that there had been no military casualties on Sunday.

Alleged terrorist gunman shot dead in Copenhagen

Chris Marsden & Jordan Shilton

On Sunday, Danish police identified a gunman accused of attacking a café debate on free speech and then a synagogue in Copenhagen on Sunday as Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein.

The gunman was shot and killed by police Sunday morning, near a railway station in the Norrebro district of Copenhagen. He was reportedly returning to an address that was already under police surveillance. Police Commissioner Thorkild Fogde said that, “when the suspect was shot and killed during police action, he was armed with pistols.”

Once again, a man involved in a deadly terrorist attack was known to the police and security services. He was also “on the radar” of the intelligence services. He reportedly was 22, born in Denmark and known to police due to his connection with criminal gangs and convictions for violent offences and dealing in weapons. The head of Danish intelligence told reporters that police were working to determine whether he had travelled to Syria or Iraq.

The shooting at the café took place on Saturday between 3:30 and 4:00pm. The 55-year-old film director Finn Nørgaard died as a hail of 40 bullets were fired at a cafe hosting Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, who has received death threats for depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

Vilks was unhurt, but three police officers were wounded.

The gunman fled in a carjacked Volkswagen Polo that was found later by police a few kilometres away.

Just after midnight, about a half hour’s walk from the café, Dan Uzan, a male volunteer guarding a bat mitzvah party at a synagogue in Krystalgade, was shot in the head. He died later, and two police officers were wounded. Copenhagen police spokesman Allan Wadsworth-Hansen said that the gunman opened fire at the two police officers, who were wounded in the arms and legs.

The claim that the café event promoted freedom of speech is a fraud. Vilks was to be the main speaker in the café debate, entitled “Art, Blasphemy and Freedom of Expression.” In 2005, Denmark’s Jyllands Posten pioneered the type of anti-Muslim provocation that last month provoked three Islamist gunmen to kill 17 people at the offices of Charlie Hebdo and in a siege at a kosher grocery store. Jyllands Posten published 12 cartoons, most depicting the Prophet Muhammad, citing this as a contribution to “free speech”.

In 2007, Vilks drew drawings depicting Muhammad as a dog, triggering death threats and forcing him to live under police protection in Sweden since 2010. Two years ago, a woman was jailed for 10 years in the United States for plotting to kill him. Yet once again, as with Charlie Hebdo, security at the controversial debate appears to have failed calamitously. French ambassador Francois Zimeray had opened the debate, praising Denmark’s support for freedom of speech following the Paris attacks, only minutes before the shooting began.

In the period initially following the attack, the media had also cited fears of another right-wing gunman like Anders Behring Breivik, who murdered 77 people in 2011, mostly youth attending a camp organised by Norway’s ruling Labour Party.

Once again, events follow a pattern strikingly similar to the attack on Charlie Hebdo:  A provocation is staged based on whipping up hostility to Muslims.

* Police, aware of the sensitivity of the event, fail to prevent an attack.

* The alleged attacker or attackers is shot dead.

* The police and security services admit to having known the alleged attacker and their having been placed under surveillance.

The pattern is repeated also in the launching of a massive police clampdown. In Copenhagen, this involved parts of the capital being cordoned off and at least one raid on an Internet café.

Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt described the shootings as “a cynical act of terror against Denmark” and “our values.” This is in keeping with the Danish ruling elite’s right-wing record. It has repeatedly exploited anti-Islamic and anti-immigrant rhetoric to stir up divisions and divert attention away from the deepening social crisis facing the working class.

One of the pioneers of this strategy was former Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who went on to become NATO Secretary General and lead the aggressive drive against Russia over Ukraine.

Rasmussen, prime minister from 2001-09, introduced anti-terror legislation in 2002, tightened immigration regulations in line with the demands of the far right and attacked social programmes. In 2005, he backed the publication of the Muhammad caricatures and subsequently used this issue to justify a close alliance with US imperialism, which saw Denmark send troops to Iraq.

In 2008, virtually all major media outlets joined in reprinting the Jyllands Posten cartoons, only days after two foreign nationals had been arrested on terrorism charges. This included Politiken, the country’s nominal “left,” liberal publication.

Danish ruling circles continue to fan the flames of anti-immigrant chauvinism. In December, Jyllands-Posten published a study claiming that there were over 30,000 illegal immigrants in the country, and that this posed a serious problem for the welfare system. The study claimed that this number had doubled from 2008, but failed to mention that since then, immigration laws have been tightened significantly, with the implementation of a new points system that is one of the most stringent in Europe.

The Social Democrat-led government has shown no let-up in enforcing a brutal immigration policy. When former Justice Minister Karen Hækkerup took office in 2013, she declared that successful integration is only possible through limited immigration.

“It is important for Denmark’s cohesiveness that we have a tough policy on immigration,” Hækkerup said. “For a little nation to integrate its foreigners so they become Danes and part of Denmark, the numbers matter.”

In October 2014, after Hækkerup resigned to take up a job in the private sector, her successor, Mette Frederiksen, advocated the use of ankle tags on illegal immigrants. “I don’t have any problems using that tool,” she said. “If it is correct that it has never been used, then it should be in that report that I will receive from the authorities.”

Such policies have encouraged the most right-wing elements. Following the example of the anti-Muslim Pegida protests in Germany, the first such march took place in Copenhagen last month, drawing a crowd of several hundred.

A revealing Financial Times comment on the Greek debt crisis

Nick Beams

A comment by Financial Times columnist Wolfgang Münchau, published on the eve of today’s meeting of the euro zone group of finance ministers, points to significant differences over German-led insistence that the demand of the Syriza-led Greek government for debt restructuring should not be met.

Following the rejection of the Greek proposal at a meeting of the Eurogroup last Thursday, Münchau wrote that the Greek finance minister could expect a frosty reception when he once again confronted his colleagues in a “high noon” showdown.

“My advice to Yanis Varoufakis,” he continued, “would be to ignore the exasperated looks and veiled threats and stand firm. He is a member of the first government in the euro zone with a democratic mandate to stand up to an utterly dysfunctional policy regime that has proved economically illiterate and politically unsustainable. For the euro zone to survive with the current geographic remit, this regime needs to go.”

The publication of such a vigorous comment in one of the world’s major financial dailies points both to the considerable opposition in financial centres to the policies of the German government and to the fact that the Syriza program, far from representing some far-left agenda, is a thoroughly bourgeois program enjoying some measure of support in ruling political and financial circles.

Münchau pointed out that there were risks involved in Greece standing up to the European Union policy elites, including a financial collapse leading to it being forced out of the euro zone. However, he writes that Greece should nevertheless maintain its stand in demanding a new loan to cover its needs over the next few months.

The Greek government has called for the “bridging finance” while a new agreement is worked out following the expiration of existing arrangements at the end of this month. With Germany taking the lead, the euro zone finance ministers have insisted that any additional finance can only be provided within the framework of the existing program.

This has been rejected by Syriza, a position which is supported by Münchau. The Greek government, he wrote, “should stick with their position not to accept a continuation of the existing financial support program.”

In so doing they would no longer be bound by “self-defeating policy targets such as the contractual requirement to run a primary budget surplus of 3 percent of gross domestic product. For a country with mass unemployment, such a target is insane. It would, of course, be better for this nonsense to stop while Greece remains in the euro zone. But the most important thing is that it has to stop.”

In other words, even if it leads to a financial crisis in Greece and the end of the euro zone in its present form, the overriding imperative is to take a stand against the German-imposed agenda.

Münchau cited proposals from a number of academic sources as to how Greece might deal with the situation, without precipitating a withdrawal from the euro zone.

The “most sensible,” he wrote, is the introduction of a kind of parallel currency consisting of government-backed IOUs, citing a proposal by a US economist Robert Parenteau for “tax anticipation notes” based on expected future revenue. According to Münchau: “They act as a tax credit that allows government to run a fiscal deficit until the economy recovers. With such an instrument Greece could abandon austerity without abandoning the euro.”

He also cited John Cochrane, a “conservative economist from the University of Chicago, who also wants the Greek government to create IOUs, electronic money, not necessarily cash, that could be used to fund pension and other transfer payments.”

Münchau does not make the point, but the position of Cochrane is significant. The University of Chicago is the centre of the most right-wing “free market” tendency in bourgeois economists, associated with Milton Friedman. The so-called “Chicago boys” were notorious for their restructuring of the Chilean economy under General Pinochet after the CIA-backed overthrow of the Allende government in 1973. The fact that representatives of this tendency should be considering ways in which Greece can defy the dictates of the EU is some measure of the opposition to German policies in US financial and economic policy circles.

If measures for alternative financing were adopted, Münchau goes on to explain, then once set in place Greece would be able to default on its debts—mostly loans from European governments and EU institutions. Faced with a default, the official European creditors would not be able to eject Greece from the euro zone as they have no legal means for doing so. They would also be hesitant to force it out of the EU as they need Greece’s support for policy changes, such as renewing sanctions against Russia.

Setting out his bottom line, Münchau concludes that Greece should seek to avoid an exit from the euro zone. However, while such an outcome is not desirable, it would be preferable to the status quo. “The worse-case scenario would be for the Greek government to blink first, and accept defeat.” If that were to happen then the only political party left to oppose the EU agenda would be Golden Dawn, a neo-Nazi party.

Münchau’s comment is significant from a number of standpoints. It underscores the opposition to the austerity agenda, at least in its present form, emanating from sections of the US, British economic establishments, with support in some parts of Europe.

In recent weeks, US President Barack Obama, as well as Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, have remarked that some way must be developed to lessen pressure on Greece. Their central concern is not the impoverishment of the Greek working class. Rather their stand underscores the point made by Marx that, while each capitalist seeks to suppress the wages of his own working class, he views the expenditure of the workers employed by others as the source of the demand for the goods he produces. On a far larger scale, the US fears that austerity and depression in Europe—a vital outlet from American goods and investment—will rebound on the US economy itself. The US thus pushes for some alleviation.

Another important aspect of the comment is what it reveals of the tactics being adopted by Syriza itself in its conflict with the EU. Far from its program representing a confrontation with the financial oligarchy in the interests of the working people of Greece, not to speak of the rest of Europe, it is a calculated attempt to win support from American and other powerful financial interests to pressure the German bourgeoisie.

However, resistance is proving hard to overcome because it is rooted in profound economic interests.

According to Münchau, reflecting the position of many other commentators: “The Germans support austerity on ideological grounds.” However, this attempt to pass off the intransigence of the Merkel government as some kind of Lutheran-based desire for discipline, a response to memories of the hyper-inflation of 1923 or some Teutonic aspiration for order misses the real forces at work.

The German opposition is not fundamentally based on these factors. Rather, it is grounded in the fear among sections of the ruling elites that if it relents on austerity then it will have to ultimately take on responsibility not only for the debts of Greece but possibly, Spain, Portugal or even Italy. Such an outcome would seriously weaken Germany’s global economic position, especially in relationship to US finance capital, which inflicted considerable damage on the German financial system through the sub-prime crisis in 2007.

These conflicts and tensions may not be openly expressed at today’s meeting of the eurogroup, but as Münchau’s column points to, they will be seething not far below the surface.