US slaughter in Afghanistan rages on

Bill Van Auken

Less than two months after President Barack Obama announced an end to US combat operations in Afghanistan, top Pentagon officials have made it clear that these murderous operations are not only continuing, they are escalating, while plans for the withdrawal of American troops are being reconsidered.

At the end of last year, the American president declared that “the longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion.” He added that the drawdown of US forces marked “a milestone for our country.”

But the war in Afghanistan rages on, with mounting evidence that more than 13 years of US military occupation—dubbed “Operation Enduring Freedom”—have produced only a debacle for US foreign policy and a humanitarian catastrophe for the impoverished Afghan population.

The longest war in US history has claimed the lives of 2,356 American troops and left another 20,066 wounded, the vast majority of these casualties having taken place during the administration of Barack Obama. The current president promoted the intervention in Afghanistan as the “good war” and more than tripled the number of US soldiers and Marines fighting it. The cost to the US economy is estimated at somewhere between $750 billion and several trillion dollars.

In his speech last December, Obama claimed that 13 years of US war and occupation had succeeded in “devastating the core Al Qaeda leadership, delivering justice to Osama bin Laden, disrupting terrorist plots and saving countless American lives.” They had as well “helped the Afghan people reclaim their communities” and “take the lead for their own security.”

This glowing assessment was given a different spin last week when newly installed Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that Washington wanted to make sure that “the Afghans themselves are able to preserve the environment which our forces have created over the last few years—one of relative security and stability.” As a result, he said, Washington was “rethinking” its “counterterrorism” operations, as well as its stated troop withdrawal timetable.

Carter’s talk of “relative security and stability” is hogwash. All indications are that the US puppet regime in Kabul is confronting a catastrophe, and that its patrons in Washington are convinced that only an escalation of the slaughter can reverse ever more threatening trends and prevent a Vietnam-style rout.

There are presently some 10,000 US troops in Afghanistan, along with an estimated 20,000 military contractors and several hundred CIA operatives. While Obama claims to have ended US combat operations in the country, his administration has ordered a sharp increase in night assassination raids by American special forces troops against Afghan villages, as well as stepped-up aerial bombardments of suspected insurgent targets.

Both tactics aroused intense popular hostility and were formally proscribed by former President Hamid Karzai. They have received support, however, from his successor, Ashraf Ghani, who is increasingly desperate in the face of a rising offensive by anti-regime forces.

The military escalation has exacted a brutal toll upon the Afghan civilian population. The United Nations agency for Afghanistan documented 10,548 civilian casualties last year (3,699 deaths and 6,849 injuries). This represents a 25 percent increase in the number of fatalities over the previous year and the highest number of civilian deaths and injuries since the UN began systematically recording casualties in 2009.

There are mounting signs that the US-armed and trained Afghan security forces are in a state of disintegration. The special inspector general for Afghan reconstruction (SIGAR) last month quoted Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson, the then-commander of the US-led occupation forces, as stating that the level of casualties suffered by the Afghan forces (more than 5,000 Afghan soldiers and police were killed in 2014 alone) was “not sustainable,” nor, for that matter, was their desertion rate.

The clearest indication of the dire condition of the Afghan National Army and police was the recent decision by the Pentagon and NATO to classify all information on their combat capabilities as secret, after years of publicly releasing such data.

The economic and social situation confronting the country is, if anything, even more desperate. Afghanistan ranks 215th in the world in terms of per capita income, with close to half of the population living in dire poverty. The economy has begun to contract along with the decline in the US military presence and the level of foreign aid, the main sources of revenue.

Figures given out by US agencies boasting of dramatic strides in life expectancy, education and other indices have all been called into question by international agencies, with the numbers from Washington representing little more than war propaganda.

As opposed to the fraudulent claims of progress made by the White House and the Pentagon, polls have shown that a broad majority of the American public believes the Afghanistan war was not worth waging, while just 23 percent of the US soldiers who fought there believe their campaign was successful.

The turn by the Obama administration to an escalation of military operations in Afghanistan is driven by the same predatory geostrategic interests that led to the US invasion and occupation in the first place. These were based not on concerns about terrorism, but rather the desire to assert US hegemony over the energy-rich regions of the Caspian Basin and Central Asia and position the US military closer to the borders of both Russia and China.

Within the US ruling establishment, there are growing fears that a precipitous US withdrawal will create a vacuum that will be filled by Beijing and Moscow.

The “rethinking” of US combat operations in Afghanistan is taking place amid escalating US military interventions on a world scale. Washington has announced plans for a major US-led offensive against Mosul, an Iraqi city of 1.5 million, as it continues aerial bombardments in both Iraq and Syria. Almost simultaneously, it joined Turkey in announcing plans to train thousands of Syrian “rebels” to be unleashed nominally against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), but also in a war for regime change in Syria.

In Ukraine, Washington is escalating its provocations against Moscow. The new US defense secretary has signaled his support for arming the Ukrainian regime in a war that could bring the US into direct confrontation with a nuclear-armed Russia.

At the same time, the US Navy has unveiled plans to deploy four littoral combat ships—designed for combat in coastal areas—in northeast Asia as part of the “pivot to Asia,” which includes plans to shift 60 percent of US naval assets to the region in order to confront the rise of China.

As Leon Trotsky wrote in the run-up to the Second World War, while Nazi Germany was driven to “organize” Europe, US imperialism “must ‘organize’ the world.”

“History,” he warned, “is bringing humanity face to face with the volcanic eruption of American imperialism.”

This prognosis is being powerfully confirmed in the continuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the threat of military confrontation with Russia and China. The prospect of a third—nuclear—world war can be countered only by the international working class mobilizing itself as an independent revolutionary force against imperialist war and its source, the capitalist system.

The Rising Civilian Costs of the State-Vs-Extremists Conflict

Bibhu Prasad Routray

In 1956, the British authorities fighting the Communist insurgents in Malay granted a lump sum of M$12,000 to a former member of the Min Yuen, the supply organisation of the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA). The information provided by the renegade member cum police informer led to a successful ambush in which three insurgents were killed. The reward was a substantial sum, amounting to almost seven times the then average annual Malayan income. Disbursement of such generous rewards was part the psy war launched by the British against the Communists – that successfully helped cultivate large numbers of informants, ultimately leading to the decimation of the Communist insurgency.

In comparison, Korsa Jagaram alias Shivaji, who played a similar role of a facilitator in India's fight against left-wing extremism died in penury. On 1 January, Jagaram, a former cadre of the CPI-Maoist, who had risen to be a member of the outfit's West Bastar Division Committee, was attacked by a group of ten Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) cadres and killed in Kottapal, his native village in Chhattisgarh's Bijapur district. Jagaram had surrendered in May 2013. According to the prevailing surrender-cum-rehabilitation policy, Jagaram was entitled to a job and other benefits. Instead, he was recruited as a gopaniya sainik (covert operative) of the Chhattisgarh police's state auxiliary force. 

According to the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the Maoists have killed 1169 alleged 'police informers' between 2008 and 2013, accounting for 41 per cent of the 2850 civilian fatalities during the period. While a number of these informers have acted as active agents of the police establishments, those killed also include civilians whose contribution to the security force operation is only incidental. 

Birsi Kumari's is a fitting example. Three days before India sought to exhibit its 'Nari shakti' by positioning women officers as marching contingent leaders of all the three military services during the Republic Day parade, 18-year-old Birsi Kumari was tied up and shot dead by the CPI-Maoist cadres in Jharkhand's Khunti district. By all means, Kumari's nexus with the state could not have gone beyond skeletal information regarding rebel presence or movement in her village, at the prodding of a security force contingent. However, in Maoist lexicon, any contact with the state is a cardinal mistake, often punishable by death. Death is not only punitive, but is also used as a deterrent to rein in potential state-agents.

Insurgency as well as the methods to contain it revolve around the strategy of dominating the space and seeking support among civilian populations that inhabit the space. On the flip side, this often amounts to targeting people who are believed to belong to the other camp. Cleansing an area of police informers is strategic, for it ensures an unhindered extremist domination over the area. 

As Maoist ideologue Charu Mazumdar wrote in his 1969 article, "The annihilation of the class enemy does not only mean liquidating individuals, but also means liquidating the political, economic and social authority of the class enemy." Class enemies included landlords, rich peasants, government employees, rival party members, and police informers. Lest this be construed as an act of calculated provocation, such killings are manifestations of domination by the extremists over geographical areas vis-à-vis the state's fleeting presence. At one level, informers are easy prey. On the other, killing them is crucial to drain the state of its authority.

Mazumdar, who has been accused of elevating "homicidal mania to a political principle" went on to prescribe how the communists must "spring" weapons such as "spears, javelins and sickles" at the enemy to kill him. "He who has not dipped his hand in the blood of class enemies can hardly be called a communist,” Mazumdar concluded. The CPI-Maoist continues to steadfastly adhere to the ideology of retribution and Mazumdar's prescriptions.   

It is unlikely that either Jagaram or Kumari's family members would receive any compensation from the state. State governments that have wilfully defaulted on rehabilitating the surrendered extremists on a number of instances are less likely to look after the deceased and peripheral entities in its counter-maoist campaign. Worse still, its own tactic of targeting civilians and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) believed to be on the side of the extremists would continue to make the plight of the civilians in the conflict theatres miserable. 

Among several examples of the state's highhandedness is the February 2015 incident where the police arrested and tortured a group of tribals in Chhattisgarh's Sukma district. Accusing them of playing a role in the killing of a police informer Anil Thakur, the police picked them up from their homes at night, detained them in a police station and subjected them to torture. The saying, ‘being caught between the fire and frying pan’ could not have assumed a more appropriate meaning.

Peru’s Eviction of Oil Company Could Set Precedent

Four days of violent conflict within a natural gas concession known as Block 108 in the Junin province of Peru led to the death of 25-year-old protestor Ever Perez Huaman. Huaman was allegedly killed by a gunshot wound to the abdomen, and many other protestors were injured and subject to tear gas fired at them by police. The area in conflict, whose ecosystems are threatened by Peru’s largest oil and gas producer Pluspetrol, is home to Indigenous Chanchamayo communities.

Argentinian company Pluspetrol had been conducting exploratory activities since last year under a concession from the Peruvian government. In response to the company’s myriad violations against local peoples’ rights, a mass of protestors began occupying Pluspetrol’s storage area and blocked a stretch of highway last Tuesday, February 10th. According to a leader of the local Indigenous federation ARPI, Lyndon Pishagua, over 800 protestors were involved in the action—though local Indigenous communities did not participate, due to a dispute with the protest’s organizers who are mainly from outside the Junin province. Though the protest was spurred due to contamination of the community’s rivers and soil due to natural gas exploitation on Indigenous lands. Pluspetrol has become infamous for causing environmental harm to Indigenous communities in the country’s northern Amazon due to the company’s careless oil extraction methods.  In keeping with their behavior in the north, the company has denied responsibility for environmental damage in Junin.

Despite the violence that ensued, the unwavering dedication of Indigenous communities finally convinced the state of Peru to ask Pluspetrol to vacate the concession. The government has also been called upon by Energy and Mines Minister Eleodoro Mayorga to evaluate the contract it made with Pluspetrol for natural gas exploration in 2005. In response to protests and proposed inquiries, the company still purports to have met all legal requirements including having obtained consent the Chanchamavo peoples in the affected town of Pichanaki, Junin. The Chanchamayo state that a proper consultation and dialogue did not take place.

Meanwhile, negotiations are underway between Pluspetrol, the Peruvian government, and Indigenous communities along four watersheds in Loreto regarding the expiration of Pluspetrol’s oil concession formerly known as Lot 1AB, in August of 2015.

After four decades of flagrant pollution, public health crises, and the routine devastation of their ancestral lands by oil projects, the Indigenous communities of the Peruvian Amazon, including the Quechua, Achuar, and Kichwa, among others, have demonstrated that they will not continue to tolerate corporate abuse without a fight.

Starting on January 24th, nearly 400 members of the Achuar and Kichwa communities interrupted production at 14 oil wells, preventing the output of over 3,000 barrels of oil a day. Kichwa men, women and children have been protesting along the River Tigre, using cables to impede oil boats from passing in hopes of preventing further operations in the Amazonian forest. Pluspetrol has lost over 2 million dollars to date since communities started mobilizing.

This type of protest, and the abuses that necessitated it, is not an isolated incident. Since the legacy of oil drilling in the Peruvian Amazon began in the 1970s, pioneered by US-based company Occidental Petroleum (Oxy), Indigenous lands have been destroyed by innumerable crude oil spills, gas flares, and 9 billion barrels of production waste waters containing highly toxic heavy metals such as barium, lead, chrome, cadmium and arsenic dumped directly into the community’s sources of fresh water. In Block 1-AB, which Pluspetrol acquired 15 years ago, a government study found that all but 2 out of 199 people making up the seven affected communities showed blood-cadmium levels dangerously above the standard. Various Achuar communities have been shown to experience tumors, skin ailments, miscarriages, chronic illnesses, and severely high levels of heavy metals in their blood streams. As the government and Pluspetrol still fail to remedy these issues, affected Indigenous peoples confront the daily dilemma of where to find clean food and drinking water. In addition to declining health, these communities face dwindling resources: they face the contamination of streams and rivers they relied on for fishing and the pollution of groundwater under agricultural fields which causes crops to wilt and fail. Hunting grounds and ecosystems once teeming with biodiversity are now scarce, as animals are threatened with the loss and contamination of their habitats.

Indigenous leaders have argued that the government and Pluspetrol have failed to appropriately consult or acquire consent for developments, neglected to install effective plans for the remediation and prevention of environmental contamination, and have not issued due compensation to impacted communities for use and ruination of their land which contradicts Article 28 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples requiring them to do so.

Unfortunately, despite the establishment of Indigenous land rights in Peru meant to prevent such confrontations, the ongoing battle against State and corporate collusion continues to emphasize that these rights are not being implemented effectively. Though the Peruvian State has acknowledged some Indigenous lands with “Native Community” titles, in the example of the Achuar, these titles only cover a third of their ancestral territories, leaving the landscape shared by 40 Achuar communities still subject to unregulated oil drilling. Though ILO Convention 169, ratified in 1994 by Peru, declares the right of Indigenous people to free, prior and informed consent over development projects, and Articles 89 and 149 of Peru’s own Political Constitution state the right of native and rural communities to self-determination, these statues have been chronically violated by oil concessions made without Indigenous consent.  

Still, Indigenous communities have developed successful strategies for resistance over the more than four decades of abuse they have been subjected to. In 2007, the Achuar filed a class-action lawsuit against Oxy, the concessions original owner, demanding compensation and remediation of the damage left by dumping 850,000 barrels of toxic produced waters every day for decades, and in 2010, won an appeal for the case to proceed in U.S. Federal Court. Along the Pastaza River, communities have trained themselves to become environmental monitors, observing and recording oil spills. 

Starting explorations in Peru in 2004, Canadian oil company Talisman Energy also began drilling wells in Block 64 on ancestral Achuar land in the Pastaza and Morona river basins in spite of fervent opposition. Though they never obtained free, prior and informed consent from the majority of communities living in Block 64, Talisman became its sole operator in 2007. In response, Achuar leaders traveled to Talisman’s annual General Shareholder Meeting at their headquarters in Calgary, Canada, to demand recognition of their rights. Their persistence was rewarded in September 2012, when Talisman became the fifth company to discontinue drilling in Block 64 and to withdraw from the country.

Despite these accomplishments, the Peruvian government has pledged to renew the concession in Block 1-AB, which is due to expire in August 2015. Even so, after decades of corporate pollution allowed for the sake of lower production costs, the Indigenous peoples of Peru continue to demonstrate their capacity and resilience in the hopes that their rights to traditional land, compensation, and survival will ultimately be recognized.

World Bank Admitted Link to Forced Evictions in Africa

The World Bank has failed to properly enforce its environmental and social guidelines regarding Indigenous Peoples in Africa. According to a leaked report obtained by  the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the Bank knew there was an “operational link’’  between its funding for an Ethiopian development initiative and the forced evictions of thousands of Indigenous Peoples. 

Over the last decade, the World Bank created a health and education initiative that galvanized about $2 billion in funds. Members of the Indigenous Anuak people in Ethiopia’s Gambella region declared that the Ethiopian government was using some of the World Bank’s money in a program that supported forced evictions and allowed soldiers to beat, rape and kill Anuak people who refused to leave their homes.

Cultural Survival’s 2012 campaign successfully urged the governments of the US and UK, donor nations to Ethiopia, to recognize this link and pull funding for the projects that lead to the removal of Indigenous Peoples from their lands.  The campaign highlighted the Anuak people’s forced removal to state-created villages, and how those who refused to leave their lands were met with violent attacks, rape, and torture. 

According to a leaked watchdog report, The World Bank’s internal Inspection Panel admitted that there was an “operational link” between the World Bank-funded program and Ethiopian authorities’ eviction actions. The Ethiopian government has argued that the forced removal of Indigenous Peoples and the creation of villages, known as the “villagization” program, was designed to provide access to basic socio-economic infrastructures like food, healthcare, and educational facilities to the people who are being relocated and to bring “socio-economic & cultural transformation of the people.” Under this program, the Ethiopian government forcibly relocated approximately 70,000 Indigenous People from the Gambella region to new villages that actually continue to lack basic necessities and minimum health standards. The Bank’s failure to publicly acknowledge this “operational link” and to ensure the protection of affected communities means the World Bank violated its own policies based on project appraisal, risk assessment, financial analysis and protection of Indigenous Peoples, concludes the report.

The Bank’s failure to regulate land-grabbing occurring with the aid of their funding has been an issue across Africa.  The Maasai people of the Rift Valley in Kenya were also evicted from their homelands due to the creation of the Hells Gate National Park, and then again for the development of geothermal energy extraction funded directly by the World Bank. At each phase of this project, the Maasai have been being forced out of their homelands without their Free, Prior and Informed Consent. A report on an initial visit by the Bank’s Inspection Panel to Kenya’s Rift Valley to address this issue is forthcoming.  

In an article written by the First Peoples Worldwide in review of the World Bank’s new Environmental and Social Framework, which was established in 2014,  they state, “‘Not only does the World Bank’s new Environment and Social Framework (ESF) draft incentivize governments to ignore Indigenous Peoples, it strategically neglects Indigenous and human rights of Free, Prior, Informed Consent and protection from forced evictions.” Although, the World Bank is expected to be “[aligned] with international human rights laws and standards,” the First Peoples Worldwide continues to mention that the new ESF draft prioritizes loan approvals for borrowing countries over the protection of human rights and allows those borrowing countries to ‘opt-out’ of FPIC requirements if they do not recognize Indigenous Peoples on or within the land.

While there are many people unsatisfied with the World Bank’s treatment of Indigenous Peoples across the world, the Bank is soliciting feedback through a “live chat’’ with interested stakeholders on how to improve the current draft of their environmental and social framework. On their website, they encourage stakeholders to “discuss with an expert panel and to make your suggestions directly to those working to protect people and the environment every day.”  Back in 2013, the Bank admitted efforts "Must made to build capacity and safeguards related to land rights—and to empower civil society to hold governments accountable.”  In 2015, many feel the Bank's attempt at establishing these safeguards is too little, too late.

Sub-Regional Cooperation in South Asia: A New Lease of Life?

Saurabh Kaushik

During the 18th SAARC Summit held in November 2014, Prime Minister Modi remarked that regional integration in South Asia would go ahead “through SAARC or outside it, among all of us or some of us.” It is evident that SAARC as a regional arrangement has been unable to act as a ‘consensus-building’ forum, largely due to the intractable nature of problems between India and Pakistan. With Modi indicating that an alternative could be forged by taking the initiative at the sub-regional level, it is imperative to analyse the reasons for the lack of progress in this regard. Also, what do the recent trends indicate? Is sub-regional cooperation gaining momentum in South Asia and does it hold promise?

It is obvious that bilateral relationships act both as the bedrock as well as a roadblock in achieving regional cooperation. The effort to engage simultaneously in addressing bilateral irritants and bringing about deeper economic cooperation has the potential to pave the way for sub-regional cooperation in South Asia. 

There are multiple sub-regional forums in the region such as the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), South Asia Sub-regional Economic Cooperation (SASEC) and India Bangladesh Myanmar Sub-Regional Cooperation (IBM-SRC). Their failure in achieving any meaningful outcome or significant progress stems from a combination of domestic political, foreign policy, and economic factors.

Being the fulcrum of the sub-region and its window to Southeast Asia, IBM countries, i.e. India, Bangladesh and Myanmar occupy primary importance in the efforts to integrate the region. Therefore, it is important to throw some light on India-Bangladesh and Bangladesh-Myanmar bilateral relations and their changing dynamics in order to understand which way sub-regional cooperation in South Asia is headed. 

The Myanmar-Bangladesh-India gas pipeline project proposed after the discovery of the Shwe gas fields in Myanmar’s Rakhine state failed to take off. This was because Bangladesh wanted India to reduce the huge bilateral trade deficit, allow transit to Nepal and Bhutan, and facilitate the sale of electricity from these countries to Bangladesh through Indian territory in exchange for providing transit for the pipeline. Domestic compulsions in both India and Bangladesh with regard to the settlement of the Teesta Water Sharing Agreement and Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) have further delayed their economic integration. 

However, with a strong leadership at the helm in India and its resolve to reenergise the ‘Look East’ policy, things are starting to look up. PM Modi assured his Bangladeshi counterpart of a speedy resolution to LBA and Teesta waters dispute on the sidelines of the SAARC Summit. In fact, the bill to give effect to the India-Bangladesh Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) was approved by a parliamentary panel in December 2014, not even a month after the Summit. Among other things, the positive reception of the India-Bangladesh Maritime Arbitration Award announced in July 2014 on both sides also signals a reinvigorated push in the right direction.

In the case of the Bangladesh-Myanmar bilateral relationship, the Rohingya issue has been a significant challenge in the context of assuaging domestic political sentiments and has a direct bearing on foreign policy decisions. Yet, it would not be unwise to suggest that given the growing importance of the Bay of Bengal and the Indo-Pacific, both countries are well poised to intensify their cooperation. In fact, delinking the Rohingya issue and IBM-SRC to allow progress to be made on the latter could act as an incentive to resolve the former.   

There are also several economic and technical factors that have impeded sub-regional economic integration. Apart from tariffs, non-tariff barriers to trade such as export subsidies, prohibitions, quotas, import licensing, and custom procedures act as obstacles to intra-regional trade. Intra-regional trade in South Asia is a mere 5 per cent as compared to 58 per cent in the EU, 52 per cent in the NAFTA region, and 26 per cent in the ASEAN zone. The silver lining, however, is that India is playing a proactive role in revising its tariff and non-tariff regime vis-à-visits neighbours, especially Bangladesh, which should inspire some optimism.

Inadequate infrastructure and lack of border trade facilities on the ground are other major impediments that affect all countries in the region. The importance of these can be gauged by the fact that if the existing border infrastructure between Bangladesh and India’s Northeast is upgraded, trade volume can potentially go up by five to six times the current level. 

Needless to say, there are serious roadblocks to enhanced cooperation, both political as well as economic. But it is worth considering some recent developments apart from those mentioned above. A total of 73 projects, including five in 2014, have been commissioned by the ADB, amounting to US$ 6.56 billion under SASEC.  There have already been meetings between Power and Transport Secretaries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal (BBIN) on Hydropower and Regional Road Transport Connectivity this year. A series of similar dialogues will be set in motion through the course of the year. There is good reason to be hopeful. Sub-regional cooperation may finally have gotten a new lease of life, and we will be witness to its promise.

A warning to US oil workers: The United Steelworkers’ record of betrayal

Shannon Jones

With the selective strike by US oil refinery workers in its third week, a warning must be issued: There is an unbridgeable gulf between the determination of the refinery workers fighting to reverse the impact of decades of declining living standards and safety conditions, and the sabotage of their struggle by the United Steelworkers union (USW).

The USW has severely limited the strike, forcing the workers to fight with only a small fraction of their strength. It is negotiating behind the backs of the workers, refusing to disclose anything about the six company proposals already put on the table—offers so rotten that even the USW didn’t dare to bring them back to the rank-and-file for a vote. The union is promoting the self-defeating policy of petitioning the big business politicians who are all in the pockets of Big Oil.

Pickets at the Tesoro Golden Eagle Refinery in Martinez, California

USW President Leo Gerard is a trusted ally of Corporate America, appointed by Obama to sit on his trade policy and American Manufacturing Partnership committees, where he collaborates with executives to make their businesses more “competitive.” In other words, he is complicit in cutting labor costs through speedup, wage cutting and outsourcing. Gerard is well paid for his troubles, making $217,206 a year as USW president, along with additional sums in other capacities.

Vice President Gary Beevers, who is leading the oil industry negotiations, made $172,099 in 2013. The top eight USW officials collectively took home $1.5 million and the top 21 officers a combined $3.5 million, about $170,000 each. Their incomes would put them in the middle ranks of oil company management, and that is symptomatic: the union functions not as the representative of the workers, but as an industrial police force for the company.

For three decades, the USW has worked with Wall Street investment bankers to impose the crisis of the steel industry on the backs of steelworkers, retirees and their families. It has long ceased to function as a workers organization or concern itself with improving the lives of its members and their families. Instead, it operates as a business, whose sole purpose is maintaining the salaries and expense accounts of the officials who staff its offices.

The origins of the USW

The USW arose out of the militant industrial struggles of the 1930s, largely led by socialists and left-wing workers, which established the mass industrial unions. Some of the bloodiest battles of the CIO movement took place during the 1937 Little Steel Strike, including the Memorial Day Massacre, when police murdered ten striking workers in south Chicago. By the time the post-World War II strike wave was over, workers had won important gains in wages, benefits and working conditions, despite the ferocious resistance of the steel bosses.

But the leadership of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, which became the USW, was from the first dominated by a politically right-wing layer of officials, headed by Philip Murray and David McDonald, with ties to the Catholic Church hierarchy, the Democratic Party and the American government.

During the anti-communist witch-hunts of the late 1940s and early 1950s, they drove out the rank-and-file socialist militants who had spearheaded the struggle to build the union. They backed the merger of the CIO with the reactionary AFL in 1955, and consolidated a parasitic bureaucracy that ultimately presided over the collapse of both the USW and the AFL-CIO as a whole.

McLouth Steel workers in Washington DC, April, 1982

For some years, however, steelworkers were still able to make gains, thanks to the economic conditions of the post-World War II boom and the dominance of American industry in the world market.

Thus, in 1959, when the USW called a nationwide steel strike, more than 500,000 workers walked out, shutting down most of the industry for 116 days, a conflict that ended only with a Taft-Hartley injunction issued by the Eisenhower administration. The eventual settlement, despite the conservative bureaucracy, included a wage increase, the first-ever cost-of-living escalator clause, and substantial improvements in pensions and health benefits.

As late as 1970-1971, the USW was able to negotiate wage increases of 10 percent a year with only the threat of a strike, under conditions of significant struggles by other sections of the labor movement, including Teamsters, GM workers, postal workers and longshoremen.

The situation changed in the 1970s as powerful global competitors began to challenge the dominance of US industry. The recession of 1973-1974 brought mass layoffs of industrial workers for the first time since the Great Depression.

The response of the USW and other unions to this economic sea change was to embrace the policies of corporatist union-management collaboration, insisting that workers tie their future to the unconditional defense of American corporations against their global competitors. At the same time, they maintained the subordination of the working class to the Democratic Party, even as the Democrats moved further and further to the right and openly attacked workers in struggle.

Flowing from this, the unions insisted that workers accept massive concessions and downsizing in order to strengthen the competitive position of US industry. To this end, the unions offered their services to management to sabotage and suppress the efforts of workers to defend their jobs and living standards. This was accompanied by the integration of the unions into the structure of management through the creation of joint labor-management committees.

Following the decision of US Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to impose a huge increase in interest rates in 1979, mass layoffs and bankruptcies spread across the steel industry, along with demands for concessions. The USW sought to divert workers’ anger through the promotion of national chauvinism and Buy American campaigns, including anti-Japanese bumper stickers carrying the slogan “Remember Pearl Harbor.”

This nationalist poison served only to conceal the ever greater collaboration of the USW with the US-based corporate executives and their collusion in the betrayal of strikes, the imposition of wage and pension cuts, and the shutdown of scores of steel mills in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago, Youngstown and other cities.

The struggles of the 1980s

In the course of the 1980s, a series of militant strikes by steelworkers threatened to break out of the control of the union leadership. In each case, the USW worked to isolate and wear down the strikers. The USW allowed the movement of strikebreakers into the plants and stood by when so-called Democratic allies of labor mobilized police and National Guard troops to attack picket lines.

When 2,200 copper miners struck Phelps Dodge in 1983, the USW allowed the strike to drag on for months. In the meantime, Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt, a Democrat, mobilized the National Guard to attack picket lines and escort strikebreakers. As a result, the strike was crushed and the local union decertified.

Copper miners on the picket line in Morenci, Arizona during the 1983 strike against Phelps Dodge

The Workers League, the forerunner of the Socialist Equality Party, intervened in the Phelps Dodge strike to warn the workers that the USW and AFL-CIO policy would lead to disaster, and to fight for a political alternative. At that time, when tens of millions of workers still looked to the unions to defend their jobs and living standards, the Workers League advanced the demand for the unions to break with the Democrats and build a Labor Party based on a socialist program, as a means of fighting for the political independence of the working class and a mass struggle for socialist policies.

At Phelps Dodge and many other struggles, this campaign for the building of a mass political movement of the working class against capitalism won a wide hearing. Leaders of the Workers League addressed meetings of the copper miners, air traffic controllers, meatpackers and other workers involved in bitter struggles, and the Bulletin, the Workers League’s newspaper and a forerunner of the World Socialist Web Site, was the most widely read publication on many picket lines throughout the United States.

In 1985, the USW abandoned pattern bargaining in the steel industry, leading to a series of isolated and uncoordinated strikes and lockouts in which workers’ attempts to resist concessions were betrayed. Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel declared bankruptcy and cancelled its union contract. After a bitter lockout, in which workers were essentially abandoned, the USW agreed to a concessionary contract slashing wages in exchange for the creation of union-management committees at every level of the company.

Following a record six-month lockout at USX in 1986-1987, the USW agreed to concessions along with the elimination of thousands of jobs. A statement published in the Bulletin on February 6, 1987, headlined “USX betrayal: Vital lessons for all labor,” drew the lessons of this struggle:

Front page from weekly Bulletindenouncing USW betrayal of USX workers

“To say that the steelworkers who fought the record 184-day lockout, the longest work stoppage in the history of the steel industry, were betrayed by the treachery of the USWA bureaucracy is an understatement. To put it bluntly, the four-year contract, which includes $2.50 an hour wage cuts and job combinations leading to nearly 1,400 layoffs, is mild compared to what is now on the agenda.”

The Bulletin warned, “The treachery of the labor bureaucrats is opening the floodgates for a new wave of wage-cutting, union-busting and unemployment even worse than the last six years.”

The result of these betrayals was a massive destruction of jobs in the steel industry, with total employment falling from 453,000 in 1979 to 168,000 in 1995. Throughout this period, the USW sought to offset the loss of dues-paying members by establishing new sources of income through its collaboration with management.

One such scheme was the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), or “workers’ buyout.” At McLouth Steel outside of Detroit, the USW negotiated a buyout in 1988 that slashed wages and gutted work rules in exchange for workers’ ownership of 85 percent of common stock. In 1995, the company went bankrupt. The workers lost their stock and their jobs.

Restructuring the industry—and the union

When the US steel industry faced another severe crisis in the late 1990s, the USW responded by working with vulture capitalists such as Wilbur Ross, head of private equity firm International Steel Group (ISG), to restructure the steel industry on the backs of workers and retirees.

This turn by the USW was signaled by the hiring of investment banker Ron Bloom as a union advisor in 1996. Bloom, who was later appointed to President Obama’s task force overseeing the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies, was a specialist in organizing worker buyouts, operating an “investment banking advisory boutique” on Wall Street. In 1994 he was involved in the effort by United Airlines pilots to organize a buyout of the failing company in exchange for $4.9 billion in wage and benefit concessions. In the end, workers were hit with massive pension benefit cuts when the company declared bankruptcy.

As a USW adviser, Bloom worked closely with the current USW president, Leo Gerard. Bloom oversaw the imposition of concessions and job losses in the name of improving the “competitive” position of US steel companies against their overseas rivals.

According to an article in the March 4, 2007 Pittsburgh Post Gazette, the USW “pushed for mergers among more than 80 steel companies big and small, the better to face the real competition—government subsidized steel corporations overseas. That effort has included going to Wall Street to help finance the mergers.”

In addition to “sacrificing thousands of jobs,” the Gazette noted, the union also “agreed to relax work rules so that workers could be shifted more easily from one role to another,” and “worked with management to deal with ‘legacy costs,’ the increasing burden of pensions and health care for retirees.”

Locked out USX steelworkers at the Clairton, Pennsylvania Works, August, 1986

The results of the pro-company policy were catastrophic for steelworkers, their families and their communities. In 2001, for example, the USW pushed for the merger of ISG and bankrupt LTV Steel. The deal, approved by the USW, destroyed 7,500 jobs and paved the way for the elimination of health care for 50,000 retired and laid-off workers. Meanwhile, retirees’ pensions were slashed when the bankrupt steelmaker dumped the pensions into the federal Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation.

In 2003, Bethlehem Steel, another company targeted by ISG, terminated health care and life insurance benefits for 95,000 retired workers and their dependents and handed pensions over to the PBGC.

After the purchase agreement with ISG, Bethlehem CEO Robert Miller praised the role of the USW in consummating the deal. “This dramatic turnaround in the prospects for the industry has been made possible by the innovative new labor agreement with the USW,” he declared.

While wrecking the lives of steelworkers and retirees, the actions of the USW served to enrich speculators like Ross and other corporate raiders. In 2004, the 17 top steel companies reported after-tax profits of $6.6 billion. Ross later sold off his stake in ISG to an Indian entrepreneur, pocketing billions in the process.

In exchange for helping to impose concessions, the USW pressed for seats on company boards of directors. It also helped establish Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Associations (VEBAs) to handle payment of retiree benefits. By establishing VEBAs, the companies were able off to offload their retiree liabilities.

The VEBAs amounted to a payoff to union officials, who took over the task of imposing cuts in benefits. The VEBA set up by the USW at Goodyear later became the model for a similar deal between the United Auto Workers and the auto companies in 2007.

Much like its corporate “partners,” the USW has sustained itself over the past quarter-century through mergers with other, equally bankrupt but smaller unions, including the United Rubber Workers; the Aluminum, Brick and Glass Workers Union; the American Flint Glass Workers Union; and the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union (PACE), itself the product of the 1999 merger of the United Paperworkers International Union and the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers.

It was the merger with PACE in 2005 that brought the oil workers, now locked in a partial strike of the oil industry, into the USW. The oil workers did not flock to the USW to join a thriving organization with a history of fighting for its members. They were acquired by a business that calls itself a union in order to facilitate its role as subordinate of giant corporations.

The USW has pursued the same corporatist strategy in the oil refining industry as in basic steel. Following the merger with PACE in 2005, the USW worked with the Obama administration to help the private equity firm Carlyle Group acquire the Sunoco refinery in Philadelphia. The deal, consummated in 2012, involved the USW agreeing to concessions, including reductions in overtime pay.

In 2012, the USW endorsed Obama’s reelection campaign, with Gerard praising the president for turning around “an economy he inherited that was nose-diving towards a depression by focusing on jobs, manufacturing and enforcing US trade laws.” In fact, Obama’s “focus on manufacturing” consisted of working with the UAW and other unions to reduce wages, health care and pensions so sharply that manufacturers began shifting production from China, Mexico and other low-wage countries back to the US.

Meanwhile, the US president has proven to be a tool of Big Oil just like his Republican predecessor. This was shown in his kid-gloves treatment of BP after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the Justice Department’s decision last year to drop the pursuit of criminal charges against Tesoro for the 2010 explosion that killed seven oil workers in Washington state.

Even as it was endorsing Obama for a second term, the USW betrayed the three-month struggle of Cooper Tire workers in Findlay, Ohio. The workers were locked out for opposing the company’s demands for a wage cut.

Locked out Cooper Tire workers on the picket line in Findlay, Ohio, January 2013

Although the USW sat on a $150 million strike fund, it refused to provide strike benefits, handing out only a few hundred dollars worth of gift cards for groceries, and negotiating a separate contract at a Cooper Tire plant in Texarkana, Arkansas while workers in Findlay were still locked out. The USW then pushed through a contract that expanded the power of management to re-rate jobs, lower wage rates, and drive out older, higher-paid workers, replacing them with young workers making $13 an hour.

At every point during the struggle in Findlay and countless other fights over the last 35 years, workers confronted the USW not as an ally, let alone an organizer of struggle, but as an agent of management.

As this record makes clear, in the current strike the USW stands on the side of the billionaire owners of the oil industry and against the strivings of refinery workers for a decent standard of living, safe working conditions and a secure retirement.

From this, certain conclusions need to be drawn. The revival of militant working class struggles requires a break with this rotten organization, which is committed to the defense of American capitalism, and the building of new, democratic rank-and-file committees of struggle.

Above all, the working class needs a new political strategy—one that is based on the perspective of socialism, i.e., the international unity of the working class fighting for common ownership and democratic control of industry in the interests of human need, not private profit.

This requires a rejection of the American nationalism promoted by the USW and the adoption of an international strategy, based on the unity of workers throughout the world in a common struggle against the oil and steel multinationals. It requires a break with the Democratic and Republican parties, the twin parties of Wall Street, and the building of an independent party of the working class.

The Socialist Equality Party and its online publication, the World Socialist Web Site, fight to develop the program and leadership required for this struggle. We encourage oil workers interested in finding out more to contact the SEP.

UN delays war crimes report on Sri Lanka

Manusha Fernando

The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) agreed last week to delay the release of an international inquiry report on Sri Lankan human rights violations from March until September on the recommendation of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al-Hussein. The decision follows a request by Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera for a postponement.

The delay is a clear concession to the newly-installed Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena and was clearly given the green light from Washington, which had been exploiting the issue to put pressure on previous President Mahinda Rajapakse. The Sirisena government has rapidly shifted its foreign policy alignment away from China and towards the United States and its aggressive “pivot to Asia” against Beijing.

The report was prepared by an international commission appointed by the Human Rights Commissioner following a resolution approved at the UNHRC meeting last March. The resolution sponsored by the Obama administration called for an international inquiry into human rights violations during the final months of the war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009.

The Rajapakse government was responsible for terrible war crimes. According to an expert UN committee, the Sri Lankan military killed an estimated 40,000 Tamil civilians in its indiscriminate bombardment of LTTE-held territory, including of hospitals and aid distribution centres. It was also responsible for other gross violations of democratic rights, including extra-judicial killings and disappearances.

The US fully backed the communal war waged by successive Colombo governments, including its renewal in 2006 under Rajapakse, and turned a blind eye to the military’s atrocities. However, with the LTTE’s defeat imminent, Washington became increasingly concerned at Beijing’s growing influence in Colombo and used the “human rights” issue to push Rajapakse to break from China.

After backing two previous resolutions supporting internal Sri Lankan inquiries, the US last year stepped up the pressure by pushing for an international investigation inquiry last March. Such an inquiry threatened possible war crimes charges against senior government and military figures, indicating that the US was losing patience with Rajapakse.

When Rajapakse called an early presidential election last November, Sirisena quit the government and joined up with opposition parties to stand as their candidate. This political manouevre was prepared through months of intriguing that clearly involved the Obama administration. After Rajapakse’s defeat last month, the Sirisena government quickly moved to strengthen ties with Washington.

The decision to delay the UNHRC report followed Sri Lankan foreign minister Samaraweera’s visit to Washington where he met with US Secretary of State John Kerry and UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to get their support. The US and Britain have already signaled their support for the delay. A spokesman for the UN secretary general declared he would “positively engage with the new Government and support its efforts.”

UN Human Rights Commissioner Al-Hussein said that “many victims of human rights violations in Sri Lanka, including those who have bravely come forward to provide information to the inquiry team, might see this is as the first step towards shelving, or diluting, a report they have long feared they would never see.” He offered the flimsy reassurance that his decision was a “onetime postponement” and only to give Colombo government more time.

Samaraweera, however, is pushing for a “domestic mechanism” to work with the UNHRC to investigate human rights violations which he admitted had taken place during the war. He also promised to take action against those responsible for violating human rights and claimed his government would re-establish “good governance” and democratic rights.

Like the previous Rajapakse government, neither Sirisena nor his allies, including the pro-US United National Party (UNP), has the slightest interest in democratic rights. Sirisena was a senior minister in the Rajapakse government until November. The right-wing UNP started the war in 1983 and is notorious for its attacks on democratic rights.

Speaking at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, Samaraweera urged the international community, including the human rights community, “to be patient,” noting that “this is a time of fragile transition [in Sri Lanka].”

The reference to “fragile transition” highlights the unstable character of the Sirisena government as well as the political situation in Colombo. The new government fears that Rajapakse could exploit the release of the UNHRC report to whip up patriotic sentiment during parliamentary elections due in June and make a comeback that could threaten the government. Rajapakse’s supporters have already started a campaign on the chauvinist slogan of “Defend the Motherland.”

At the same time, Sirisena rests on a disparate collection of parties that include the Sinhala extremist Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) which was part of the Rajapakse government and fully supported its war and war crimes. He is also is looking for support from the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), which is using the human rights issue to press for a power-sharing arrangement between the island’s Sinhala and Tamil elites.

Even as the Colombo government requested a postponement, the TNA-dominated Northern Provincial Council (NPC) passed a resolution calling for the publication of the UNHCR report. The tensions within the Colombo government and among its allies will sooner or later lead to political crises.

The Sirisena government’s call to delay the UNHRC report is another clear demonstration that it has no intention of holding to account those responsible for war crimes and gross human rights abuses. For all its posturing about “democracy,” Sirisena, like Rajapakse, will be just as ruthless in suppressing any opposition in the working class to the austerity agenda being demanded by international finance capital and to which his government is committed.

Canada’s NDP belatedly opposes Conservatives’ draconian “anti-terror” bill

Roger Jordan

After a wait of almost three weeks, Canada’s trade union-based New Democratic Party (NDP) finally announced last Wednesday its position on Bill C-51, the Conservative government’s draconian “anti-terrorism” bill.

Speaking in parliament, party leader Thomas Mulcair vowed that the NDP will vote against the legislation, which Prime Minister Stephen Harper has falsely promoted as directed against “jihadi terrorism.”

“Mr. Harper and the Conservatives have intimidated the Liberals into supporting this deeply flawed legislation, “declared Mulcair. “We in the NDP are going to fight it.”

Mulcair noted that legal “experts warn that broad measures in this bill could lump legal dissent together with terrorism.” He added that “the bill would give significant new powers to CSIS (Canadian Security and Intelligence Service) without addressing serious deficiencies in oversight.”

The previous day, Mulcair had asked Harper about a Bill C-51 provision that would empower CSIS to use illegal means to “disrupt” any act of civil disobedience or other “unlawful” activity it deems might threaten Canada’s “economic stability” or “infrastructure.”

Under this provision, Canada’s secret police could mount all manner of “dirty tricks” against government opponents, including breaking into their homes and offices to confiscate documents, stealing funds, destroying computers and other property, planting libelous allegations and staging “false flag” acts of vandalism and other provocations. The only provisos are that a judge must approve a “disruption” target and CSIS’s illegal activities must not cause anyone “bodily harm.”

Harper’s response to Muclair was of a piece with the aggressive campaign the Conservatives have mounted in recent weeks to attack and smear anyone who has challenged their false narrative of a Canada under siege by “jihadis”—a narrative the government is pushing to justify Canada’s expanding role in the new Mideast war and sweeping attacks on democratic rights at home.

The Prime Minister refused to engage with, let alone answer the question posed by the leader of Canada’s Official Opposition. Instead he characterized it as a conspiracy theory, derisively labelling Mulcair and his NDP “the black helicopter fleet over there.”

This blustering dismissal of Bill C-51’s sanctioning of the targeting of government opponents for mass surveillance and state attack and provocations should fool no-one. Such statements come from the head of a government that has effectively illegalized strikes by federal sector workers on the grounds worker job-action threatens “economic stability”.

Time and again since 2011, the government has criminalized strikes, including by workers at Canada Post, Canadian Pacific Railways, and Air Canada. Had the trade unions not sabotaged the latest strike at CP Rail that began just over a week ago, the government was going to outlaw it invoking the very same formulation of a threat to Canada’s “economic stability” that appears in Bill C-51.

On Wednesday, Harper again denounced the NDP for daring to question Bill C-51, declaring that “the NDP's positions on this issue become more and more irrelevant, more and more unconnected to Canadians' real concerns … more and more extreme.”

Significantly, Harper’s position has been echoed by Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, who previously rushed to declare his party’s backing for Bill C-51. "The fact is the NDP has not once in its history supported strengthening anti-terror measures in this country," declared Trudeau.

Harper’s curt dismissal of any substantive discussion of Bill C-51’s provisions follow repeated statements in which he has implied that anyone expressing even the mildest criticism of his government’s pro-war, anti-terror rhetoric is an appeaser of, if not an outright apologist, for terrorist groups. Last month when Muclair raised a question over the Canadian military’s growing combat role in Iraq, Harper charged that the NDP leader is more concerned with the well-being of ISIS terrorist than Canadian soldiers.

Far from this being simply a question of Harper’s abrasive personal style, such hostility towards any critique of government policy expresses a growing crisis of bourgeois democratic forms of rule. As social tensions mount domestically, and the Canadian elite attempts ever more aggressively to assert its imperialist interests abroad, the ruling class is increasingly turning to authoritarian forms of rule and to delegitimize and criminalize any opposition.

The NDP’s belated vow to “fight” Bill C-51 in no way signifies a genuine and principled rejection of the police state measures that have been adopted in Canada since 2001 or of Ottawa’s increasingly aggressive foreign policy.

Mulcair avoided making a concrete statement on the NDP’s stand on Bill C-51 for as long as possible, waiting until the first day that the bill was to be debated in parliament to do so. Oriented and beholden to big business, the NDP only came out in opposition to Bill C-51after it had become clear that a section of the ruling elite, represented most prominently by the Globe and Mail, opposes it, because it fears such an open break with bourgeois democratic norms will further delegitimize the state and it institutions. (See:Canada: Why is the Globe and Mail denouncing Harper’s latest “anti-terrorism” bill?)

For all of his talk about fighting the bill, Mulcair’s statements and those of his colleagues have made clear that they are in full agreement with the reactionary “war on terror” narrative that the Conservative are using to justify it.

On the same day as Harper tabled the legislation, NDP foreign affairs spokesman Paul Dewar released a statement in which he rejected any attempt to question the government’s motives. Everyone in parliament was agreed on the need to keep Canadians safe, he proclaimed, before attacking the government from the right for cutting funding to the police and security agencies.

Mulcair continued along similar lines last week. In an opinion piece explaining his party’s position in the right-wing National Post, Mulcair began by emphasizing his fundamental acceptance of the government’s anti-terror narrative. “In recent months, horrific terrorist attacks have shocked the world and united Canadians. Mourning has brought us together and strengthened our resolve to defend our way of life against the cowards wanting to intimidate us and erode our freedoms,” Mulcair intoned.

Returning to a theme that has become a trademark of the NDP, Mulcair went on to note, “The government has cut the budgets of the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) and CSIS, while top officials have testified that they do not have the resources to monitor terrorism suspects while keeping other areas of policing fully funded.”

In both his article and parliamentary appearance, Mulcair demonstrated the fraudulent character of the NDP’s opposition to the Conservatives’ purported anti-terror legislation by invoking the United States and President Obama as good examples of how to approach the issue. Mulcair wrote approvingly of Obama’s counter-terrorism measures, which he said engaged with communities, and stated in parliament that the US model of Congressional oversight of the intelligence agencies should be adopted in Canada.

Such comments are made about a US president who has invoked the crimes of Islamacist terrorists whom Washington was until only recently using as proxies in a “regime change” war in Syria to justify a new US war in the Middle East. And who has presided over the National Security Agency’s blanket world surveillance operations, the persecution of whistleblowers like Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Chelsea (Bradley) Manning, and the summary execution of “terrorist” suspects by drone-strike.

Mulcair concluded his National Post article by offering the government some friendly advice, writing, “The official opposition urges the government not to railroad this bill through. Instead, hear from experts and others concerned about this bill at committee. We urge the Liberals to reconsider their position to support the bill unconditionally and hope that all parties will agree to practical amendments to strengthen oversight and protect Canadians' freedoms.”

Were such parliamentary oversight to be established it would do nothing to curb the powers of the spy agencies contained within the new law. It is only necessary to look at the situation in the United States, Britain and elsewhere to see how little such cosmetic mechanisms have restricted the illegal activities of the intelligence agencies and the growth of “the state within the state.”

While Muclair is now, belatedly striking a pose as a principled opponent of Bill C-51, the reality is he and his fellow social democrats ultimately chose to come out against it for tactical, largely electoral, reasons.

With an election due by October at the latest, the NDP desperately needs an issue on which it can differentiate itself from the Liberals. Since assuming the role of Official Opposition in 2011, the NDP has veered so far right large swathes of the population rightly see the party’s positons as virtually indistinguishable from those of the Liberals. Indeed in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, the NDP propped up a Liberal government for over 18 months, ending only last May. Moreover, Mulcair recently reiterated that in the event of a hung parliament the NDP is ready for form a coalition government with the Liberals at the federal level.

With Trudeau siding so openly with the government, Mulcair and the NDP leadership have cynically concluded that the party can use Bill C-51 as a “wedge” issue in the hopes of redeeming something of their tattered credentials as a “left” and progressive political force. In the same vein, the NDP feared that were it to embrace the Conservatives’ legislation it would bleed support to the Greens. Green leader Elizabeth May has made a point of opposing Bill C-51, warning that it could be used to “disrupt” environmental and aboriginal groups opposed to the Conservatives’ program of tar-sands development and pipeline-building.