Canadian NDP declares willingness to enter coalition with Liberals

Dylan Lubao

Thomas Mulcair, the leader of the trade union-backed New Democratic Party (NDP), has reiterated that his party is amenable to forming a coalition government with the Liberals—until recently Canadian big business’s preferred party of government—after this year’s federal election.

Mulcair touted the possibility of Canada’s social democrats joining hands with the Liberals, who when they last held office carried out the greatest social spending cuts in Canadian history, in an interview on The West Block, a Global TV political affairs program, in late December.

Asked by West Block host Tim Clark if the NDP would ally with the Liberals in the event that no party wins a parliamentary majority, Mulcair said his party would “wait and see” the election results before determining its course of action. However, he went on to emphasize that it was the NDP that proposed the abortive 2008 coalition pact between the two parties, whcih the the Liberals later scuttled.

“Don’t forget,” said Muclair, “we’re the ones who made it a priority in 2008 to put the coalition idea on the table. We wrote it and signed it and the Liberals walked away from it.”

For good measure, Mulcair noted that he personally had played an important role in negotiating the 2008 coalition deal, which unravelled after the Canadian ruling class rallied round Conservative Prime Minster Stephen Harper and his use of the undemocratic office of the Governor-General to shut down parliament so as to prevent opposition MPs from exercising their constitutional right to defeat the government.

While Mulcair is concerned that if he is too forward in promoting a coalition it could cause NDP votes to bleed to the Liberals, this is hardly the first time he has placed on record his readiness to ally with them. “We’ve always said we’re ready to work with other parties,” declared Mulcair when the coalition question was raised last February. “We’re a progressive party. We want to get results.”

The NDP is currently the Official Opposition to the ruling Conservatives. But opinion polls have long shown it badly trailing both the Conservatives and the Liberals, who suffered their worst ever electoral defeat in 2011.

Mulcair’s West Block comments were directed at the trade union bureaucracy, large sections of which have indicated that they will drop their traditional across-the-board endorsement of the NDP, in favour of a call for a “strategic vote” for the candidate best-positioned to defeat the Conservative nominee.

The unions’ “Anybody But Harper” campaign is being modeled after their “Stop Hudak” campaign—the drive the unions mounted in Ontario to prevent the coming to power of Tim Hudak and his Conservatives. In practical terms, this campaign meant stumping for the re-election of a Liberal government that, with the NDP’s backing in a minority parliament, had imposed massive social spending cuts and a two-year public sector wage freeze and illegalized teacher job action.

By highlighting the NDP’s role in the abortive 2008 coalition, Mulcair is trying to reassure the union bureaucrats that any frictions over the unions’ throwing much of their considerable organizational and financial muscle behind the Liberals will not be an impediment to the social democrats joining hands with the Liberals in a coalition if the parliamentary arithmetic makes this possible. Indeed, Muclair’s remarks were meant to remind the unions that the social democrats were the chief protagonists of the coalition in 2008 and stand ready to reprise that role in 2015.

The NDP post-2011

Mulcairs’s comments were also an effective admission that the social democrats’ best chance at entering the halls of power is in an alliance with the Liberals.

Since becoming the Official Opposition in 2011, the NDP has hemorrhaged working class support, witnessed repeated defections from its ranks to the Liberals, and been drubbed at the polls in a string of provincial elections and federal by-elections, as well as several high-profile mayoralty races.

The NDP had placed great stock in capturing power in British Columbia in May 2013, with the aim of using it to showcase a pragmatic, business-friendly NDP. Instead, the right-wing Liberals were returned to office for a fourth successive term in an election marked by a near record-low turnout.

The NDP, which in 2009 had formed its first ever government in Nova Scotia, was trounced in the 2013 Nova Scotia election. After four years in which it implemented major social spending cuts, hiked various regressive taxes and electricity rates, and upheld Nova Scotia’s notorious anti-union “Michelin bill,” the Nova Scotia NDP was reduced to third place, winning just seven of seats.

Underlying the decline in the NDP's political fortunes is its unstinting defense of capitalism and its anti-worker record when in power, which have alienated wide sections of the working class. A political vehicle of the trade union bureaucracy and privileged sections of the middle class since its formation in 1961, the NDP has shifted ever further to the right over the past three decades, repudiating its milquetoast national reformist program and embracing capitalist austerity and imperialist war.

It responded to its sudden and entirely unanticipated elevation to Official Opposition in 2011 by mounting a full court press to convince the Canadian the ruling elite it could supplant the Liberals as their “left” party go government. Toward that end, the NDP immediately moved to purge any reference however nominal to socialism from its constitution and chose Mulcair, a former Quebec Liberal cabinet minister, to replace the late Jack Layton as party leader.

Mulcair has taken every opportunity to reassure the ruling class that his party will not raise income taxes for the wealthy, although they are at record lows, will maintain corporate tax rates below those in the US, and reduce taxes still further for small business. With much fanfare, he recently announced an NDP government would raise the federal minimum wage to $15, but this would not even take effect until 2019 and actually increase the wages of less than 1 percent of all Canadian workers!

As under Layton, Mulcair’s NDP has supported an aggressive, imperialist foreign policy, lauding Canada’s participation in the NATO war for regime change in Libya, echoing the Harper government’s full-throated support for last summer’s Israeli invasion of Gaza, and endorsing Canada’s role in the overthrow of Ukraine’s elected president and the subsequent NATO threats and aggression against Russia.

The NDP’s opposition to Canada’s participation in the new US-led war in the Middle East is founded upon purely tactical considerations. The NDP fully supports the US-drive to expand its strategic dominance of the world’s most important oil-exporting region by combating ISIS and deposing the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, but would prefer this be accomplished by funnelling weapons and funds to local militias.

Contrary to the attempts by the corporate press to paint irreconcilable differences between the NDP, Liberals, and Conservatives, the official record demonstrates that all of them are committed to defending the interests of Canadian big business at home and abroad, differing only in terms of tactical considerations and questions of lifestyle and identity politics.

The 2008 coalition agreement

The NDP have been in a de facto alliance with the Liberals for most of the least ten years, beginning with Layton’s 2004 decision to establish a “blue ribbon” committee led by NDP elder statesman Ed Broadbent to investigate the possibility of an NDP-Liberal coalition and the NDP’s decision the following spring to back the Martin Liberal government and its budget in exchange for a few tiny social spending increases.

The NDP’s coalition committee met steadily until 2008, when Layton signed a formal agreement to enter into a Liberal-led coalition government.

An analysis of the proposed 2008 coalition's policy accord furnishes all the evidence necessary to completely dispel any notion that a Liberal-NDP coalition would be a “progressive” alternative for Canadian workers—a coalition that the NDP is again actively courting.

The policy accord took as its starting point a commitment to “fiscal responsibility”—a euphemism for subservience to big business and its mantra of international competitiveness. It outlined the need for investment in key sectors of the economy, like auto and forestry, to “create and save jobs”, but made this contingent on raising corporate profits through plant closures, job cuts, and contract concessions, including wage cuts.

Particularly noteworthy was the NDP's complete abandonment of two of its main “progressive” policy planks from the 2008 election campaign—the rescinding of the Conservative government's five year, $50 billion scheme of corporate tax cuts and the withdrawal of Canadian Armed Forces’ troops from Afghanistan. In the name of acting “on the economy and in the interest of Canadian families,” the NDP pledged in the coalition agreement to fully implement the Conservative-Liberal corporate tax cut and to back Canada playing a leading role in the neo-colonial Afghan counter-insurgency war through 2011.

Current Liberal leader Justin Trudeau has sought to quash all talk of a coalition, saying that there are “very big impediments” to such a partnership with the NDP. Given that the two parties share right-wing, pro-business positions, and have collaborated closely in provinces like Ontario to the detriment of the working class, Trudeau’s dismissal of a coalition should be recognized for the ploy it is. The Liberals calculate they will be able to oust the deeply unpopular Conservatives and return to power without the help of the NDP or at least without having to enter a formal alliance through a coalition or policy accord in a minority government situation.

Workers should take note that the Harper government has itself only broadened and extended the anti-working class offensive mounted by their predecessors in the successive Chretien-Martin Liberal governments. Between 1995 and 1998 the Liberals carried out the greatest social spending cuts in Canadian history, slashing tens of billions from Medicare and post-secondary education and shredding unemployment insurance. Then in 2000, they dramatically slashed corporate and capital gains taxes, in what the neo-conservative National Post hailed as a “Canadian Alliance” budget.

The Chretien-Martin Liberal governments also massively expanded the national security apparatus, including adopting the draconian 2001 Anti-Terrorism Act and approving systematic spying on Canadian’s electronic communications, and began the rearmament of the Canadian Armed Forces, while joining US-led wars in the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.

Various considerations will inevitably play a role in determining whether a Liberal-NDP coalition government will ultimately manifest itself after the upcoming elections. What is abundantly clear is that the Canadian working class will pay dearly for such a government, which will remain faithful in all essentials to the current Conservative program of capitalist austerity and predatory war.

Up to six million face Obamacare penalties for 2014

Toby Reese

February 15 marked the final day to sign up for a health insurance plan for 2015 on the Federal Health Insurance Marketplace or on one of the state-run exchanges set up under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). With limited exceptions, uninsured people who failed to sign up by this deadline face substantial fines for failure to obtain coverage in 2015.

According to projections released last month by federal officials, as many as six million people will have to pay a penalty for going without health insurance in 2014, the first year of Obamacare coverage. This means that between two and four percent of all taxpayers lacked medical coverage for all or part of 2014. Another 15 million to 30 million people were uninsured but qualified for an exemption.

Under the “individual mandate” of the legislation, popularly known as Obamacare, individuals and families who do not have insurance through their employer or through a government program such as Medicare or Medicaid—and have not enrolled in a plan that meets the Minimum Essential Coverage requirements (MEC) of the ACA—face a tax penalty.

The penalties are up substantially this year, rising from $95 or one percent of income in 2014, to $325 or two percent of income in 2015, whichever amount is greater. The fee, referred to by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as the “Individual Shared Responsibility Payment,” will automatically be taken from tax refunds or added to the tax owed, unless an exemption is met.

While there are reportedly over 30 exemptions, the most common include having a gap in coverage that is less than three months and conditions of economic hardship, in which annual premiums available for purchase exceed eight percent of household income.

The fee for not having health insurance is calculated as either a flat dollar amount or as a percentage of income over a certain threshold, whichever is greater. Using the flat dollar method, a family will be charged $325 per adult and $162.50 per child, up to a maximum of $925.

For a married couple with two children with a household income of $75,000 filing taxes jointly, the threshold for 2015 is set at $20,600, leaving $54,400 to be charged at the two percent rate—a $1,088 penalty.

Marisa Bowlden told a local California ABC news station, “I was fined over $300 for myself not having insurance and over $300 for my husband. ... I just want to know who did I hurt by not being covered? Am I truly a criminal and NEED to be “fined” … ? really crazy government we have. I can’t stand how the working family gets hurt.”

“Open enrollment” for Obamacare plans began November 15, 2014, and ended February 15 in most states. Although millions of working families and individuals have yet to file their taxes for 2014, and have not yet seen the effect of the new tax penalties, it may also be too late to avoid the penalties for 2015.

Stan Dorn of the Urban Institute told the Washington Post, “It’s the fact that if you didn’t apply by February 15, you have no way of escaping the penalty in 2015. … It’s not something a lot of people have necessarily thought through."

As in 2013 and early last year, the federal HealthCare.gov web site faced technical glitches again during the last week of 2015 enrollment. According to the web site, many individuals were unable to complete the enrollment online or faced extended hold times and were unable to enroll over the phone before the deadline. As a result, the site states that enrollment for these individuals only—who must verbally attest to meeting one of the stipulated conditions—will be allowed until February 22 to complete their sign-up.

Many of the state exchanges had similar issues and have followed suit, extending their deadlines by one week for those experiencing difficulties. The state of Washington has decided to extend the enrollment period for another two months to encourage more sign-ups.

In describing the “Individual Shared Responsibility Provision,” the IRS website states, “It is important to remember that choosing to make the individual shared responsibility payment instead of enrolling in minimum essential coverage means you will also have to pay the entire cost of all your medical care. You won’t be protected from the kind of very high medical bills that can sometimes lead to bankruptcy.”

In other words, if you cannot afford health insurance and seek medical care, you will be charged for the health services and you will be fined by the government.

Compounding the economic hardship for working families and individuals, those who did purchase a plan and received a premium subsidy from the federal government must now go through a reconciliation with the IRS. If an individual or family ended up earning more money than reported when applying for health insurance, they may now owe back part or all of the subsidy they received to help pay for the health plan. The Treasury Department estimates that 4.5 million to 7.5 million people received Obamacare subsidies in 2014.

Households were told to estimate their projected income for the year when they initially signed up for coverage, a task made difficult for some families due to fluctuating incomes and periods of joblessness. Households were instructed to report changes in income, but unemployment, multiple part-time jobs, or self-employment oftentimes make it difficult for families to calculate their annual earnings until they complete their tax filings.

Janice Riddle told CNN that when she filed taxes, she was forced to pay back $470 for each month she received the subsidy in 2014 due to forgetting to report her new job to have the subsidy reduced. After stating that she did not even use the health coverage, she exclaimed, “I was blindsided that the subsidy has to be paid back.”

Adding to the public’s bewilderment, the IRS has issued three new forms for individuals who bought health insurance through an exchange or did not have minimum essential coverage. These individuals will need to fill out the Health Insurance Marketplace Statement (1095-A), Premium Tax Credit (Form 8962) and/or Health Coverage Exemptions (Form 8965). The three forms include 28 pages of instructions and additional calculations for determining the tax refund or payment. Many individuals and families who file their taxes with the simplest 1040EZ form will no longer be able to use it if they get a tax credit.

Many people who count on tax refunds to make payments on credit cards, home repairs or other necessary household spending may be shocked to find their entire tax refund absorbed by the IRS due to the new method of linking taxes to the health care system.

The White House currently claims that over 11.4 million have signed up for private health coverage as a result of ACA. In the coming year, many will begin to understand the implications of Obamacare and its goal of undermining the entire health system in the United States.

The reality of the health care overhaul is coming home for millions of Americans in the form of these tax penalties and subsidy repayment demands. Those who have actually purchased coverage have also discovered that legislation touted by the Obama administration as providing “near universal,” quality health care often comes with annual deductibles in excess of $5,000 and other high out-of-pocket costs.

The central aim of the health care overhaul is to dragoon millions of ordinary Americans—under threat of financial penalty—into purchasing cut-rate policies from private insurance companies, who are profiting from the new stream of cash-paying customers. The legislation is also aimed at providing the framework for businesses and the public sector to end employer-sponsored health insurance and foist the responsibility for obtaining health coverage more squarely on the backs of the working class.

Obama, port owners line up against West Coast dockworkers

Rafael Azul

Dispatched to San Francisco by President Obama, US Labor Secretary Thomas Perez met Wednesday with representatives of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and the Pacific Maritime Association, days after the employers’ association locked out 20,000 dockworkers at 29 ports along the West Coast of the United States.

The purpose of the meeting, held under a media blackout, was to give the ILWU its marching orders to squash the resistance of dockworkers and impose another sellout agreement that will attack long-time job protections, living standards and working conditions.

The White House intervention follows calls by a bipartisan group of congressmen and a major retail association—dependent on imports that flow through the docks—for Obama to use the Taft-Hartley Act to break any strike that might erupt. The administration is particularly concerned that dockworkers could link up with the ongoing strike of oil workers and become a catalyst for a broader movement of workers against more than a decade of stagnant wages.

The Los Angeles-Long Beach area has become a cauldron of social opposition. Oil workers are striking at the nearby Carson refinery, and workers at the Torrance ExxonMobil refinery, which was hit by an industrial explosion Wednesday, expressed their determination to join the walkout in defiance of the United Steelworkers selective strike policy.

On Thursday evening, the United Teachers Los Angeles said its 31,000 teachers and other professional employees might strike for higher wages after the UTLA accepted unpaid days off during the 2007-2009 recession and no wage increases for eight years.

On Wednesday, the PMA distributed its “best and final offer” to employees at ports from Los Angeles, California to Seattle, Washington, a move that could lay the groundwork for the declaration of an impasse and a full lockout at the docks. Over the last two weeks the PMA has locked out employees for six days, costing workers thousands of dollars in lost overtime and holiday pay.

The PMA is using lockouts and the threat of a government intervention to prevent workers from engaging in any kind of job action to resist the ongoing destruction of jobs and casualization of the workforce. The PMA is also offering an insulting three percent annual raise in the five-year contract offer. Fearing that it could not push such a deal through rank-and-file workers, the ILWU has extended the contract for nine months, giving the PMA and the government ample time to prepare a strikebreaking operation.

In 2002, the ILWU gave employers the right to use computer technology to slash jobs, and in 2008 it allowed automated cargo-handling equipment. In addition, management won the right of bypassing the union hiring hall on a case-by-case basis, to employ its own permanent and contingent workers, as new technology was introduced into the ports. This undermined the achievement won in the 1934 San Francisco general strike, which abolished the hated “shape up system,” where management picked which workers would have a job that day.

The 2008 contract went a long way toward eliminating some of the agreements on guaranteed hours and the sharing of work linked to the introduction of labor saving container technology in the 1970s.

Disputes were left up to a so-called neutral arbitrator. In practice, the union insists that the arbitration has not been neutral and demands the right to replace those arbitrators that have links to the industry and big capital. The PMA has refused.

Six years into the global financial crisis, longshore workers are in no mood for another giveback contract. Three years ago, in a bitter dispute in Longview, Washington against EGT, a grain exporter, the rank and file showed their determination to fight despite government threats. President Obama mobilized the Coast Guard to escort ships headed to the EGT terminals, openly siding with management against the ILWU.

In the agreement that ended the dispute, brokered by former Democratic governor Chris Gregoire, the ILWU made concessions that gave the company and the port of Longview the right to utilize non-ILWU workers and blacklist militant workers from their facility.

More recently, in 2014 in the port of Los Angeles, dockworkers refused to cross and instead joined picket lines set up by port truck drivers, until they were forced back to work by the ILWU itself. In a cynical maneuver, the ILWU and port management agreed to temporarily extend the previous labor agreement so an arbitrator could use the no-strike pledge in the contract to order dockers to cross the truckers’ picket lines. This severely undermined the drivers’ fight to formalize their status as employees instead of “independent contractors” who could be hired and fired at will, and forced to pay for the maintenance, fueling and insuring of trucks they leased from the port operators.

Now the PMA is coming for more.

On the weekend of February 7 and 8 and on the following three-day holiday weekend, the PMA locked out ILWU personnel. The employers association also sharply reduced night shift work. The move virtually paralyzed the unloading of ships in 29 West Coast and Hawaiian ports that handle one fourth of US trade worth about one trillion dollars annually. The PMA claimed it was responding to an ILWU-organized go-slow tactic that has been in effect since October 2014.

The employers claim the ILWU in Southern California has unilaterally cut shifts for crane operators from 110 per day to 35, “resulting in tens of thousands of containers sitting on the docks”; of not providing skilled workers through the hiring hall as needed by the PMA; and of not sending out skilled crane operators. The ILWU, for its part, insists that changes in port operations and shortages of trailers for the shipping containers have made the work slow.

The dispute takes place as rapid technological changes are transforming the entire industry. The congestion at the Ports in Los Angeles, Oakland and elsewhere is in large part the product of the development of mega ships, capable of carrying more than 10,000 20-foot containers, that exceed the outmoded capacity of many US ports.

Citing Neil Davidson, ports analyst at London-based Drewry Shipping Consultants, the Financial Times wrote: “US container terminals are the least productive in the developed world, largely because operators, worrying about labor unrest, have been reluctant to invest in modern equipment.”

The ILWU has repeatedly acceded to the demands for labor saving changes while seeking to defend the institutional interests of the union apparatus, primarily a minimum number of dues-paying members. The problem is not technology, however, but the control of technology by large corporations and financial institutions, which are only interested in increasing the exploitation of workers and boosting profits.

The contingency of labor that now looms over the West Coast docks is part of global process: workers on tap, subcontracting, zero hour contracts, pay for performance, a modern form of the shape up. To fight, dockworkers must take the conduct of the struggle out of the hands of the ILWU and mount a struggle to mobilize the broadest layers of the working class—truckers, teachers, oil workers and others—against the giant corporations, both big business parties and the capitalist system they defend.

French government survives confidence vote over austerity law

Antoine Lerougetel

The Socialist Party (PS) government of Prime Minister Manuel Valls easily survived a censure motion presented after Valls used clause 49-3 of the French constitution on Wednesday to override parliament and impose the pro-austerity Macron Law without a vote. The censure motion received 234 votes, well below the majority of 289 required in the 577-seat National Assembly.

On Wednesday, it became clear that many PS deputies of the so-called “rebel” (frondeur) faction preferred not to vote openly for the law, designed by PS Economy Minister and former investment banker Emmanuel Macron. The law allows for large-scale privatizations of state assets, longer Sunday work without overtime pay, streamlining of layoff procedures and liberalization of medical and legal professions. Hollande’s free-market economic policies, aligned with the reactionary demands of the European Union (EU), enjoyed a 3 percent approval rating in a poll late last year.

Numbering some 40 deputies, the PS “rebels” had pledged to vote down the law, along with the 10 Stalinist French Communist Party (PCF) deputies as well as the Greens. Together with the right-wing Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), this might have possibly formed a majority in the National Assembly and voted down Macron's reactionary law. This would have dealt the Valls government and President François Hollande a humiliating blow and created a crisis in France's relations with the EU, which all factions of the PS are determined to avoid.

Valls therefore spared his PS colleagues the embarrassment of voting for the law and resorted to clause 49-3. He then had to face a motion of no confidence drafted by the right-wing UMP (Union for a Popular Movement), which itself called for deeper austerity. If the PS government had lost the vote, it would have been forced to resign and parliament would have been dissolved.

Predictably, however, none of the PS “rebels” wanted to vote against the Valls government, to which they had already granted confidence in a vote last autumn.

They all fear that, in the case the fall of the government triggered new elections, they would be swept out on a wave of popular hostility to the PS. As L'Obs noted, “Even for the frondeurs, who threatened to deprive the government of a parliamentary majority over the Macron law, their hearts weren’t necessarily in it.”

“No one for a moment raised voting for the censure motion,” explained PSfrondeur spokesman Christian Paul. “We are full members of the parliamentary majority.”

One PS “rebel,” Benoît Hamon declared, “I have no wish to sanction the government which I support.” He endorsed Valls' “education, foreign, defense and security policies.”

In the event, none of the frondeurs voted against the government. The 234 votes against were the 198 UMP deputies, 30 of the conservative UDI (Union of Democrats and Independents), one Green, 6 of the 10 PCF deputies, and 2 of the neo-fascist National Front.

The law will now go through the Senate which, having a right-wing majority, will doubtless be amended in way that drives policy further to the right. It will then return to the National Assembly for a final vote.

The result of the censure vote highlights the bankruptcy of any attempt to oppose the austerity policies imposed on workers through the parliamentary system, instead of through the mobilization of the working class.

The PS “rebels” and long-standing PS allies who have promoted them, such as the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) and Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the Left Front, stand exposed as reactionary political frauds. Despite their posturing, they have supported PS austerity measures ever since President François Hollande was elected in 2012.

The six PCF deputies who voted to censure the government—calculating that the PS majority was safe, and that they could afford the luxury of making an impotent “symbolic” protest—ended up further abasing themselves by voting for the UMP's reactionary censure motion.

They voted for a text that demands stepped up budget cuts and attacks on the working class, declaring, “By avoiding reforming the State, our pension system, trade union relations, and the labor code, this minimal measure [the Macron Law] is a missed opportunity to rebuild our country, like our European partners who have already carried out these reforms.”

US court overturns “terrorism” charge against Australian Guantanamo prisoner

Richard Phillips

After protracted legal action by former Guantanamo prisoner David Hicks, a US Military Commission Review has unanimously upheld the 39-year-old Australian citizen’s appeal against his bogus “providing material support for terrorism” conviction. The decision is yet another demonstration that the US-led “war on terror” and its associated crimes are built on lies.

The court declared yesterday that “the findings of guilty are set aside and dismissed, and appellant’s sentence is vacated.” A Pentagon spokesman told the media that the US would not appeal the decision. The ruling follows the recent quashing of the same conviction against a Sudanese citizen Noor Uthman Muhammed who was released from Guantanamo in 2014.

Of the almost 800 people who have been imprisoned at the Guantanamo hellhole since 2002, only six have been convicted by the military commissions. Three of those verdicts, including Hicks’s, were overturned after the prisoners’ release with the other three currently being appealed.

Hicks’s “terrorism” conviction violated due process and was invented after the Australian citizen had already been imprisoned. It was imposed as part of a US military commission plea deal for his release in 2007.

Commenting on yesterday’s court ruling, Hicks told a press conference that he “had been waiting for this decision for years,” and it was “a relief because it’s over.” He was not interested in an apology from the government, he added, because “it wouldn’t change anything and would, in any case, be insincere.”

Hicks, however, declared that the federal government should pay for ongoing medical expenses caused by his incarceration. “It’s due to the torture, of being kept in metal rooms in freezing conditions for years, it’s not being able to move, it’s not being able to exercise: the body deterior­ates over five and a half years, even without the added torture, such as stress positions, and being beaten,” he said.

Hicks was repeatedly asked to respond to media and government claims that the quashing of the terrorism charge was on “a legal technicality.” His lawyer Stephen Kenny said that the charges against Hicks were based on a lie and reaffirmed that his client “had never breached any Australian, international or US laws.”

Badgered by the journalists, Hicks declared: “I think they [all those accusing him of terrorism] are supporters of torture.” His brief but blunt response was spot-on. All of those who yesterday defended Hicks’s incarceration, despite the fact that the US court decision had overturned the conviction, were directly or indirectly involved in his persecution, torture and 2007 show trial.

The chief culprit, former Prime Minister John Howard, declared that, “The US verdict is about the legal process in that country” and that Hicks was “not owed an apology by any Australian government.” In fact, the Howard government gave the green light for the indefinite incarceration of Hicks, covered up his torture and refused to render him any assistance.

Current Prime Minister Tony Abbott, one of Howard’s ministers, said that Canberra “did what was needed” because Hicks had been “up to no good.” “I’m not in the business of apologising for the actions that Australian governments take to protect our country. Not now, not ever.” My government, Abbott declared, would be “absolutely relentless in the fight against terrorism.”

In other words, the Abbott government not only defends the previous violations of the Geneva Conventions, due process and the presumption of innocence, but is preparing even greater attacks on basic legal rights under the banner of the phony “war on terror.”

Hicks was captured by Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan in late 2001, sold to the US military and sent to Guantanamo where he was incarcerated for five and a half years. He was subjected to beatings, sleep deprivation and other forms of torture, including extended periods of solitary confinement. He was also denied access to a lawyer and family contact for almost two years.

From the outset the Howard government used the bogus terrorist allegations against Hicks to justify its backing for the Bush administration’s “war on terror” and invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Howard, Attorney General Phillip Ruddock and Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer constantly defamed Hicks as “a terrorist,” declaring that his on-going detention was justified.

Senior government ministers rejected detailed evidence from lawyers and international human rights bodies that the Australian citizen was tortured and insisted that Hicks was “healthy” and being treated well. Ruddock even claimed that sleep-deprivation, which was used on Hicks, was not torture.

In early 2007 Hicks was told that unless he accepted a plea bargain arrangement he would remain incarcerated in Guantanamo for years. He was one of the first to face the Guantanamo military commissions. Commenting yesterday on the plea deal, Hicks’s former military lawyer, Dan Mori, said: “Did I feel dirty participating in that little show trial? Absolutely.”

The deal, in fact, was a political “fix”, concocted by the Howard government with the Bush administration to protect Canberra from mounting domestic opposition to Hicks’s treatment. In return for pleading guilty, Hicks was given a seven-year suspended sentence, a seven-month prison term in an Australian high security prison, a one-year media gag and other anti-democratic restrictions. Australia was the only country outside the US that formally recognised the military commissions.

The Labor Party was just as culpable as the Howard government for Hicks’s ordeal. Its response yesterday was utterly hypocritical. Labor opposition leader Bill Shorten initially declared that “there has been an injustice done.” But his parliamentary secretary Jim Chalmers, like Howard, later told Sky News: “These are decisions of the US courts fundamentally and it’s probably not appropriate for Australians to apologise for a decision taken by a US court.”

During Hicks’s detention, Labor leaders, state and federal, provided unwavering bi-partisan support to the Howard government and only began voicing mild criticism in 2006 after public opposition emerged calling for his repatriation.

Elected to power in late 2007, the Rudd Labor government kept Hicks incarcerated in a South Australian high-security prison and on his release enforced the one-year media ban and a draconian control order. Hicks was required to report to police three times a week for six months and could not leave his home between midnight and dawn or use mobile phones or the internet unless authorised by the Australian Federal Police.

In 2011, when Hicks published a detailed account of his treatment (see: “Guantanamo: My Journey—David Hicks exposes torture and government criminality”), the Labor government began prosecuting him under “proceeds of crime” laws. Labor only abandoned the case after it became clear that Hicks’s lawyers could subpoena government officials.

While Hicks has now been found innocent, those guilty of illegally incarcerating him and hundreds of others, remain scot-free. No one in the Bush or Obama administrations or the US military has been held accountable for torture and other crimes committed as part of the “war on terror.”

Nor has any action been taken against members of the Howard government in Australia who aided and abetted Hicks’s detention, or the Rudd, Gillard and Abbott administrations that used the “war on terror” to justify their involvement in Washington’s criminal wars and their attacks on basic legal and democratic rights at home.

US-backed Kiev regime faces military debacle in east Ukraine war

Alex Lantier

Reports of the fighting in the strategic east Ukrainian city of Debaltseve make clear that the US-backed Kiev regime sustained a humiliating defeat this week.

Late Wednesday, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko claimed that six soldiers had been killed and 100 wounded in a hurried evacuation of Debaltseve. He justified the evacuation by claiming that 2,475 soldiers and 200 military vehicles had been pulled out in time from the encirclement maneuver launched by Russian-backed forces of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR).

Yesterday, Poroshenko revised the casualty count upwards to 13 killed, 157 wounded, 90 captured, and “at least” 82 missing. However, according to theNew York Times, “the number of dead would likely grow considerably higher.”

With estimates of the number of Ukrainian soldiers trapped in the Debaltseve area ranging from 5,000 to 8,000, it appears the Kiev regime's losses are to be counted in the thousands. Yesterday, DPR leader Alexander Zakharchenko declared, “We have completed an operation to clear Debaltseve. Unfortunately, Ukrainian authorities have failed to listen to reason and lay down arms ... The losses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the [Debaltseve] pocket are estimated at around 3,000 to 3,500.”

Zakharchenko said that DPR authorities were negotiating with the Kiev regime for the return of the bodies of the fallen and the release of Ukrainian prisoners of war.

“The amount of equipment Ukrainian units have lost here is beyond description. We have taken loads of ammunition both in Debaltseve and Uglegorsk,” said Zakharchenko. He added that the Kiev regime had “lost its best units and a large amount of hardware and ammunition in the Debaltseve trap.” He said many fighters from the Ukrainian 128th mountain rifle brigade, the 8th special force regiment, and the far-right Ukrainian National Guard had been killed.

DPR officials claimed yesterday that they were ending major combat operations. DPR Defense Ministry spokesman Eduard Basurin said, “On the whole, the situation along the contact line is gradually stabilizing. Units of the DPR’s armed forces strictly abide by a ceasefire and don’t fall for sporadic provocations by Ukrainian troops.”

Basurin reported, however, that fighting was still ongoing to crush isolated groups of Kiev regime fighters on the outskirts of Debaltseve.

Interviews of Ukrainian troops by Western journalists sympathetic to the Kiev regime painted a picture of total collapse. Ukrainian supply lines to Debaltseve were cut off for a week by DPR forces prior to the final assault, the Guardian reported, calling the Kiev regime’s situation in east Ukraine “catastrophic.”

“We knew that if we stayed there, it would definitely either be captivity or death,” Ukrainian Lieutenant Yuriy Prekharia told the Guardian .

Ukrainian troops refused a DPR offer to let them to retreat unharmed if they abandoned their arms, and they repeatedly came under artillery and small arms fire as they fled. Medic Albert Sardarian said that after his column of armored vehicles carrying 1,000 men came under artillery fire, survivors had to flee on foot, leaving their dead and wounded behind.

As Ukrainian soldiers fleeing from Debaltseve arrived in Artemivsk, New York Times journalists reported, “Many soldiers were in a demoralized and drunken state. Shellshocked soldiers from the battle in Debaltseve wandered the streets through the day Wednesday, before beginning to drink heavily…At Biblios, an upscale restaurant in Artemivsk, soldiers staggered about in the dining room, ordering brandy for which they had no money to pay, and then firing shots into the ceiling as other guests quietly fled the premises.”

The debacle suffered by the Kiev regime exposes the utterly reckless and frankly stupid character of the policy pursued by Washington and its EU allies in Ukraine.

One year ago, Washington, Berlin and the other NATO powers backed a putsch led by pro-Nazi forces of the Right Sector, exploiting the right-wing, pro-EU Maidan protests to topple President Viktor Yanukovych. The putsch had no popular support, and the Maidan protests rarely gathered more than a few thousand people bused in from western Ukraine. The regime that emerged, led by right-wing forces, including the fascist, anti-Russian Svoboda Party, deeply alienated the population in the more pro-Russian industrial heartland of east Ukraine.

The initial attempts of the Kiev regime and its CIA backers to subjugate east Ukraine by sheer military terror, relying on fascist militias and select units of the Ukraine army that it considered to be reliable, have failed. Popular opposition and covert Kremlin support for east Ukrainian forces has sufficed to defeat those units that Kiev could throw against the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Nevertheless, Washington is pressing Kiev to prepare for a renewed offensive and is still discussing directly arming the Ukrainian army against Russia with US weapons. While Washington pursues a strategy that could trigger a direct conflict between NATO and Russia, a nuclear-armed power, its proxy regime in Kiev is disintegrating.

In west Ukraine, the population is evading or resisting draft orders to obtain more cannon fodder for the east Ukraine war. At the same time, Ukraine’s economy, cut off from its main industrial base in east Ukraine and its export markets in Russia, is collapsing.

“The country is at war that they cannot afford to fight. There is no economy any longer. When you look at where the industrial base of Ukraine is, and the conflict going on in the east, there is absolutely no doubt as to why it is happening,” Gerald Celente of Trends Journal told Russia Today. “That $160 billion loss of trade with Russia has destroyed the economy, when it was already in a severe recession. It went from very bad to worse than depression levels.”

Ukraine’s Gross Domestic Product has shrunk 6.5 percent. Workers’ purchasing power is collapsing, with inflation expected to reach 27 percent this year and the hryvnia, the Ukrainian currency, losing roughly half its value against the dollar. In the meantime, Kiev is slashing wages, industrial subsidies, and social spending, throwing large sections of the working class out of work.

The Kiev regime’s reverses do not, however, signify an end to the conflict in Ukraine, which is driven above all by NATO’s drive to tear Ukraine out of Russia’s geostrategic orbit, to humiliate Russia and prepare to reduce it to the status of a semi-colonial dependency of the NATO powers. The only force that can stop this offensive is the international working class, mobilizing itself in struggle against NATO’s war plans.

Without such an intervention, NATO’s Ukrainian proxies will simply regroup and launch a renewed assault—as they did in the aftermath of the previous ceasefire negotiated in Minsk last September.

Poroshenko reacted to the defeat in Debaltseve by calling for what would be a new, major escalation of the conflict: deploying European Union (EU) troops as peacekeepers to east Ukraine to confront Russian-backed forces. He claimed this deployment would aim to enforce the terms of the second Minsk cease-fire agreement announced last week, which both sides in Ukraine have ignored.

“The best format for us is a policing mission from the European Union. We are convinced that this will be the most effective and optimal solution in a situation when promises of peace have not been kept,” Poroshenko declared. He said Kiev would “launch official consultations with our foreign partners” to this effect.

Oleksandr Turchynov, the head of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, called for EU troops to also deploy to Ukraine’s border with Russia—an utterly reckless move that would position EU troops for a direct attack on the centers of European Russia.

Illinois budget to cut $6.7 billion from pensions, health care, social services

Kristina Betinis & Alexander Fangmann

The budget unveiled Wednesday by Governor Bruce Rauner of Illinois is an open declaration of class war against the working people of the fifth-largest US state, one of the major centers of the industrial working class, where some of the most important class battles in American history have been fought.

Rauner, the newly elected Republican governor, called for spending cuts totaling $6.7 billion. Nearly half of the cuts will come from the pensions and health benefits of state employees, while the remaining half will hit Medicaid, higher education, transportation and other state services.

The cuts detailed by the governor’s office include:

• $2.2 billion from shifting most state employees to a scaled-back pension plan imposed on new hires in 2011, cutting their future benefits

• $700 million from health benefits for current state employees, to be imposed in upcoming contract talks with the public employee unions

• $1.5 billion from Medicaid by tightening eligibility standards, reducing payments to hospitals and nursing homes by 12 percent, and curtailing so-called “optional” services for adults such as dental care and podiatry

• $387 million from higher education, including $209 million from the University of Illinois

• $127 million from mass transit for the densely populated Chicago metropolitan area

• $167 million by denying Department of Children and Family Services aid to young adults aged 18 to 21

• $600 million from state aid to local governments, devastating the budgets of cities, towns, counties and villages throughout the state

• $82 million from mental health and substance abuse services and services for those with special needs, including adults living with autism and epilepsy

Many of Rauner’s targets are the state’s most vulnerable residents: homeless youth, poor families, the sick, immigrants, the disabled. The Medicaid cut is particularly cruel, since both enrollment and expenditures have doubled between 2000 and 2011, an indication of the enormous social need for health care.

Rauner rejected any tax increases on the wealthy and proposed only a single minor spending increase, about $300 million for elementary and secondary education, which he had promised in his election campaign.

In his address to the state legislature, Rauner called for other longer term attacks on the working class, including significant reductions in workers compensation and unemployment insurance, further pension cuts, tax cuts for business and reduced regulation of businesses.

Far from facing opposition from the Democrats at either the state or federal level, Rauner is taking a leadership role in a bipartisan nationwide assault on the living standards of the working class, who are being bled to further enrich the financial aristocracy.

Representatives of Rauner’s office and state Republicans have met over the last several weeks to discuss the proposed budget with US Senator Dick Durbin, the state’s top Democrat, as well as Michael Madigan and John Cullerton, the Democratic leaders of the Illinois legislature.

After the budget was unveiled, Speaker of the House Madigan emphasized his openness to Rauner’s approach, saying, “There are no non-starter proposals.” Senate President Cullerton expressed his enthusiasm for getting to work with Rauner on the budget after the governor’s State of the State address on February 4.

The attack on state worker pensions builds on the momentum of attacks by local Democratic Party politicians in Stockton, California and Detroit, where flagrantly illegal and unconstitutional attacks on pension benefits have been pushed through using federal bankruptcy laws.

In Illinois the previous Democratic administration of Pat Quinn began the attack on pensions, first splitting state workers in 2011 into two tiers, then enacting a 2013 law that gradually eliminated the differences between Tier 1 and Tier 2.

Last year, a state court ruled that reducing pension benefits was a violation of the state constitution. The Illinois state supreme court is to hear arguments on the case on March 11.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, a Democrat and the daughter of the House speaker, will argue that the 2007-2008 financial collapse so upset the state’s finances that it is justified under the broad grant of “police power” to the states under the 10th Amendment to the US Constitution to override the state constitutional provision protecting public employee pensions, a legal argument that is both preposterous and reactionary.

The day after Rauner’s budget was issued, President Obama visited the south side of Chicago for a photo-op ceremony establishing a US national park honoring Pullman porters, and to give his well-publicized endorsement of Mayor Rahm Emanuel for reelection. Neither Obama nor Emanuel said anything about the devastating attack on jobs, living conditions and social programs just announced in Illinois.

There was good reason for their silence. Obama at the national level and Emanuel in Chicago have carried out equivalent attacks on the social rights of working people. Obama’s budget, issued February 2, calls for record levels of military spending, continued spending freezes and cuts for most federal programs, and a draconian $400 billion cut over ten years in Medicare.

Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff, has spearheaded the attack on public education in Chicago, closing 50 public schools and firing thousands of teachers. He has also pushed for pension cuts to Chicago municipal workers, eliminated health care for retirees and slashed mental health and other city services.

Emanuel is personally close to Bruce Rauner, and they come from the same social milieu—the extremely wealthy North Shore—with Emanuel himself having worked as an investment banker after a stint in Congress, just before entering the White House to serve in the Obama administration. Rauner was an adviser to Emanuel in his implementation of school “reforms” which led to the Chicago teachers’ strike in 2012.

German finance minister demands unconditional surrender from Greece

Christoph Dreier

Within the space of a few hours, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) rejected outright written requests by the Greek government on Thursday for an extension of its previous credit agreement with the EU. Schäuble wants to create a precedent for all of Europe by completely humiliating the Syriza government.

“The letter from Athens is not a substantial proposal towards a solution,” declared Schäuble’s spokesman Martin Jäger in Berlin on Thursday, adding that the application took the form of a request for a bridge loan and did not meet the requirements of the program. “The letter does not meet the criteria agreed upon in the Euro group on Monday.”

In fact, Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has made far-reaching concessions in his letter to the head of the euro group of euro zone finance ministers, Jeroen Dijsselbloem. The letter describes the European Union’s (EU) brutal austerity program as “remarkable efforts in economic adjustment” that had to be brought to a “successful conclusion.”

Varoufakis recognized the “financial and administrative terms” of the loan agreement with the EU and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and applied for its six-month extension. The so-called Memorandum is part of this agreement, but is not explicitly mentioned in the letter.

The letter expressly welcomes the monitoring of measures by the institutions of the European Central Bank (ECB), the European Commission and the IMF, i.e. the “troika” which is so deeply hated by the Greek population. Following its election, Syriza had declared it would not work with this body.

Finally, Varoufakis said he was ready to work “closely with our European and international partners” and refrain “from unilateral action that would undermine the fiscal targets, economic recovery and financial stability” of Greece.

The letter’s far-reaching relinquishing of national sovereignty was masked only by a few vague formulations, such as proposing “flexibility in the existing arrangement” and avoiding any direct reference to the “troika” and the “memorandum”.

But for Schäuble, even these concessions by Syriza are not enough. He is demanding unconditional surrender. Already on Tuesday, Schäuble had demanded that Athens explicitly recognize the Memorandum and pledge not to reverse any of the cuts and mass layoffs previously imposed under its terms. Schäuble believes that concessions to Greece will serve to legitimize demands from other European countries—especially Italy and Spain—for a moderation of EU austerity policies.

At this point, as he negotiates the terms of surrender, Varoufakis is not being allowed even the mildest verbal concessions that are desperately needed by Syriza to maintain some small degree of political credibility. The situation confronted by Varoufakis and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras resembles that once faced by the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. In 1988, after having already repudiated his organization’s core principles, Arafat was pressured by the US to make still more humiliating concessions to Israel. He asked, “Do you want me to striptease?”

There remains some possibility that Germany may decide to pull back slightly from its ultimatum. Schäuble’s demands on Athens had been unanimously supported by the representatives of the Euro group at its Monday meeting. On Thursday, however, some representatives urged more negotiations with the Greek government.

Germany’s social-democratic Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel criticized his cabinet colleagues, demanding that Varoufakis’ letter “be used as a starting point for negotiations and not publicly rejected out of hand.” At the same time, he agreed with Schäuble “that what was in the letter was insufficient to reach an agreement.”

EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said the letter from Athens could pave the way for a “reasonable compromise in the interest of financial stability in the euro area as a whole.” However, he was not prepared to comment further on the proposals.

Italian Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan said Athens’ proposals must be “taken seriously.”

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls called Syriza’s plans “very encouraging” and indicated that a solution could be reached quickly. Schäuble’s own stance was supported by the Finnish and Latvian governments.

Greek government sources said that Tsipras and the German chancellor Angela Merkel spoke on the phone on Thursday for 50 minutes. The telephone conversation took place in a positive atmosphere, German television channel n-tv reported.

On Friday, the euro group is due to meet to discuss the Greek application. A Greek government spokesman announced on Thursday that the finance ministers could “accept or reject” Greece’s request, but no other option was on the table. He said the meeting would show “who wants a solution and who does not.”

But these are words without substance. Even if the euro group engages in further negotiations on Friday, the only issue will be how to phrase the terms of Syriza’s capitulation. Less than four weeks after its election victory, Syriza’s strategy of petty maneuvers with the EU lies in tatters.

Syriza hoped to exploit differences between the European powers and policy differences between Germany and the United States to obtain some political leeway.

In another development, Syriza’s subordination to the ruling elite within Greece was confirmed, with the election of the new President.

The government nominated right-winger Prokopis Pavlopoulos, who received the votes of 233 of the 300 seats in the Greek parliament. This vast majority was not necessary to secure Pavlopoulos’ election; just 151 votes would have been enough in the final round of voting.

The 64-year-old Pavlopoulos sits on ND’s central committee. He has repeatedly held high state and government posts, including most recently that of Minister of the Interior from 2004 to 2009.

In this latter position, Pavlopoulos in 2008 sent in police to brutally attack protesters after the police shooting of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos. Hundreds of people were arrested in the ensuing police crackdown.

Pavlopoulos’ election has already sparked off conflicts inside Syriza. European MP Manolis Glezos described the election as blatant disregard for the will of the people. One member of parliament refused to vote for Pavlopoulos. The adoption of a deal with the EU on the terms demanded by Schäuble could rapidly provoke a major government crisis.

Obama’s terror summit: An exercise in hypocrisy, falsification and self-delusion

Bill Van Auken

President Barack Obama, on both Wednesday and Thursday, addressed sessions of a summit on “countering violent extremism” convened in Washington and attended by representatives of 65 countries.

While repeatedly insisting on the need to talk “squarely and honestly” about “root causes” of terrorism, the American president’s remarks amounted to a string of barely coherent banalities—including quotations from a Valentine’s Day card from a 12-year-old—all aimed at covering up the incontrovertible causal connection between terrorism and the chain of catastrophes unleashed by US wars of aggression over the past decade.

The three-day talk shop involved no decisions, commitments or changes in policy. Threadbare rhetoric about religious inclusion was joined with laughable tips on how to recognize a young person being swung to “radical extremism” that seemed to have been cribbed from a Drug Enforcement Administration brochure on warning signs that your child may be using marijuana.

To the extent that the gathering had a discernible purpose, it was to bolster propaganda justifications for continuing war abroad and police state measures at home.

Obama vowed that the US would remain “unwavering in our fight against terrorist organizations,” outlining plans to continue and expand US military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria and beyond.

He argued that the crusade against “violent extremism” was to be waged not just against “terrorists who are killing innocent people,” but also at the “ideologies, the infrastructure of extremists—the propagandists, recruiters, the funders who radicalize and recruit or incite people to violence,” a category so broad and ill-defined as to potentially include virtually anyone who condemns the supposedly “moderate” policies of US imperialism.

The contradictions underlying the propaganda exercise were beyond glaring. Obama proclaimed in his speech that the struggle against terrorism required “more democracy” and “security forces and police that respect human rights and treat people with dignity.” Yet Washington counts as its closest allies in this struggle the tyrannical monarchy in Saudi Arabia and the military-controlled regime that rules Egypt, infamous for their repression, beheadings and mass killings.

Obama absurdly attempted to present terrorism as the product of “twisted ideologies” of groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS along with mistaken “ideas,” “notions,” and “strains of thought” among broader sections of the Muslim world.

“The notion that the West is at war with Islam is an ugly lie,” Obama insisted in his remarks. Indeed, Washington is an equal opportunity aggressor. It is preparing even bigger wars against non-Muslims from Eastern Europe to East Asia.

This “notion” may have arisen from the fact that the populations residing in countries containing some of the world’s greatest energy reserves as well as pipeline routes for their extraction happen to be majority Muslim, and therefore have borne the tragic brunt of Washington’s drive to militarily assert hegemony over these lands.

The struggle against terrorism, Obama stated, requires confronting the fact that too many people “buy into the notion that the Muslim world has suffered historical grievances—sometimes that’s accurate—... buy into the the belief that so many of the ills in the Middle East flow from a history of colonialism or conspiracy ...”

Historical grievances? Who does Obama think he’s kidding? Millions throughout the Arab world do not have to harken back to French and British colonialists in pith helmets when it comes to grievances. In recent decades, US imperialism has laid waste to one predominantly Muslim country after another.

It thrust Afghanistan into never-ending carnage that has killed millions since the US-sponsored mujahideen war of the 1980s. In Iraq, it carried out an illegal war of aggression that claimed over a million lives. In Libya it backed a war for regime change that left the society in ruins and ravaged by armed conflict between rival militias. And in Syria, it has stoked a civil war that has killed nearly 200,000 and turned millions into refugees.

In Iraq, Libya and Syria, Washington has carried out interventions to overthrow secular Arab regimes, acting as the catalyst for the growth of Islamist forces like Al Qaeda and ISIS. In the last two countries, it actually armed and supported these elements, using them as proxy forces.

If the top officials in the Bush and Obama administration had been paid agents of Osama bin Laden, they could not have done a better job at promoting the rise of those ostensibly targeted by the US-sponsored summit against “violent extremism.”

All of the hypocrisy, deceit and self-delusion on display at this week’s summit could not mask the fact that the policies pursued by Washington over more than a decade have resulted in a debacle.

In the wake of the Soviet Union’s dissolution, US imperialism embarked on a series of escalating interventions based on the conception that it could use its military superiority to offset its economic decline. The end result has been havoc and destruction.

This extends now to Ukraine which has been plunged into a civil war that has torn the country in two as its economy implodes and its army disintegrates, and which threatens to draw the US and nuclear-armed Russia into military confrontation. Washington’s fostering of a fascist-led coup to effect regime change in Kiev, portrayed as a master stroke a year ago, has only produced another disaster.

In any functioning democracy, there would be consequences for global catastrophes on the order of those produced by the last two US administrations. They would not only be the subject of public debate and congressional hearings, but the cause of forced resignations and criminal prosecutions.

In the US, there is nothing. There is no mechanism for any criticism of a government that only continues lying to the public and lying to itself. No one takes responsibility, and no one is held accountable.

With next year’s presidential campaign taking shape, the front-runners are Republican Jeb Bush, whose brother oversaw the criminal war in Iraq, and Democrat Hillary Clinton, who as secretary of state hailed the savage lynch-mob murder of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi by an Islamist militia, declaring amid gales of laughter, “We came, we saw, he died.” There could be no clearer measure of the sclerotic character of the US political system.

Responsibility extends beyond the White House, Congress and the two major parties to the media, whose “terrorism experts” continuously churn out lies and drivel justifying US militarism, and to academia, which remains either directly complicit or silent.

That every section of the US ruling establishment is deeply implicated in these crimes and catastrophes is symptomatic of profound economic, social and political crises gripping a capitalist system that is fully subordinated to the enrichment of a tiny minority engaged in financial parasitism at the expense of working people, the vast majority of the population.

With no progressive solution to these crises, the American ruling class is driven toward even more bloody military adventures, posing the increasing threat of the ultimate act of “violent extremism,” a Third World War.