One fifth of world suicides linked to unemployment

Barry Mason

Previous studies have shown that there is a correlation between unemployment and suicide. However, data on the direct effect of unemployment on suicide was not so readily available. A new study by Dr. Carlos Nordt of Zurich University’s Psychiatric Hospital and published on theLancet Psychiatry web site in February sets out to address this situation.

The study aims to “enhance knowledge of the specific effect of unemployment on suicide by analysing global public data classified according to world regions.”

It concludes that around 45,000 people commit suicide each year because they have become unemployed. It shows that for the year 2008, the beginning of the economic crisis, suicides associated with unemployment were nine times greater than previously thought.

The study covers 63 countries in four regions of the world over the years 2000 to 2011. Researchers used this time period to be able to contrast the period of relative economic stability (2000-2007) with that of economic crisis (2008-2011). The regions were the Americas, including the US and Mexico; northern and Western Europe, including France, Germany and the UK; Southern and Eastern Europe, including Greece, Italy and Romania; and non-American and non-European regions, including Australia, Japan and South Africa.

The study uses data on suicide deaths from the World Health Organisation (WHO) mortality database and economic data from the International Monetary Fund’s world economic outlook database.

It notes that, as with previous economic crises, “current data from Europe, the USA and Asia suggest an association between the 2008 economic crisis, rising unemployment rates and increased rates of death by suicide.”

The study uses different statistical tools in an attempt to isolate the specific effects of unemployment on suicide rates. Among its findings are that the figures of an increasing unemployment rate lag behind figures of an increase in suicide by six months. Such a time lag points to an increase in stress, insecurity and a deterioration of mental health as workers are earmarked for possible redundancy. The threat of unemployment needs to be included in the suicide figures, explain the authors. The study concludes that “suicide due to unemployment might be severely underestimated if studies focus only (on) the time period of the economic crisis.”

Another finding is that the suicide risk associated with unemployment was greater in those countries with a lower unemployment rate. The finding points to the isolating impact of unemployment and its associated feelings of worthlessness in counties where unemployment is not generally widespread.

It is not just the person being made unemployed that is affected by increasing levels of unemployment. Loss of a job also affects the risk of suicide of other members of the family. Men and women are equally at risk of suicide after losing their jobs.

Over the period 2000 to 2011, the relative risk of suicide after becoming unemployed increased by about a quarter. A fifth of nearly a quarter of a million suicides each year in the 63 countries, across the four regions, resulted from people being made unemployed.

Roger Webb and Navneet Kapur of the Centre for Suicide Prevention at the University of Manchester added in a commentary in the Lancet that suicide cases linked to the economic downturn were “only the tip of the iceberg of a wider range of social and psychological problems. Many affected individuals who remain in work … encounter serious psychological stressors due to pernicious economic strains other than unemployment, including falling income, zero-hour contracting, job insecurity, bankruptcy, debt and home repossession… [We] require a better understanding of other psychological manifestations of economic adversity, including non-fatal self-harm, stress and anxiety, low mood, hopelessness, alcohol problems, anger, familial conflict and relationship breakdown.”

The paper concludes with a call for the need to focus on suicide prevention work. It notes that “the interaction of fiscal austerity with economic shocks and weak social protection seems to escalate health and social crises, at least in Europe.”

The austerity measures imposed on Greece by the European Union have had a devastating impact on health, including mental health. The BMJ Open, an online journal, published a report in May 2014 on suicide levels in Greece. It noted: “In 30 years the highest months of suicide in Greece occurred in 2012. The passage of new austerity measures in June 2011 marked the beginning of significant, abrupt and sustained increases in total suicides. Suicides by men in Greece also underwent a significant, abrupt and sustained increase in October 2008 when the Greek recession began…”

A report published in 2013 showed unemployment has a disproportionately harder impact on those who already have mental health problems. The report, published on the online science journal P los One, was based on research done by Kings College London’s Institute of Psychiatry. It collected data from 27 countries across Europe on 20,000 people before and after the 2008 economic crisis.

An examination of the research published on the Institute of Psychiatry'’ web site explained, “In 2006, unemployment was at 7.1 percent for people without mental health problems, compared to 12.7 percent for people with mental health problems. In 2010, this rose to 9.8 percent and 18.2 percent respectively, corresponding to an increase of 5.5 percent for people with mental health problems vs. 2.7 percent increase for people without mental health problems.”

Netanyahu exploits Islamist attacks on European Jews

Jean Shaoul

Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has once again urged European Jews to leave Europe and emigrate to Israel, following the killing of a Jewish man outside the main synagogue in Copenhagen. He did so previously following the attack on a Jewish supermarket in Paris where four Jews were killed in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. The four bodies were later flown to Israel, where they were buried.

The bid to increase the number of Jewish immigrants to Israel from Europe is part of a broader push to capitalise on the terrorist attacks in the two European capitals by Netanyahu’s Likud party and the Zionist political establishment.

Netanyahu issued a statement after the Copenhagen attack saying, “Israel is your home. We are preparing and calling for the absorption of mass immigration from Europe.” The statement said, “Jews have been murdered again on European soil only because they were Jews.”

He made a similar call after last month’s attacks in Paris when he tweeted, “To all the Jews of France, all the Jews of Europe, Israel is not just the place in whose direction you pray, the state of Israel is your home.”

Netanyahu said his government had initiated a $45 million project “to encourage the absorption of immigrants from France, Belgium and Ukraine.” Israel already offers substantial inducements to Jewish immigrants, including cash grants, tax breaks, subsidies, and loans. He added, “To the Jews of Europe and to the Jews of the world, I say that Israel is waiting for you with open arms.”

According to Ha ’ aretz, the government is setting up a “special ministerial committee” that “will convene … to discuss steps to encourage immigration from France and from Europe in general.”

France’s Jewish community that numbers half a million, the largest in Europe, is a major target. According to the Jewish Agency, 7,000 immigrants arrived from France in 2014, three times the number in 2012. Sofa Landver, Israel’s minister for immigrant absorption, expects more than 10,000 to immigrate this year. She said that the government would continue “to promote the ingathering of the exiles, a vision that has accompanied the people of Israel since the state’s establishment.”

Netanyahu’s actions are in part motivated by narrow electioneering considerations, aimed at outdoing his political opponents in their efforts to be seen to be protecting Jews. “I went to Paris not just as the prime minister of Israel but as a representative of the entire Jewish people,” he said, referring to his visit to Paris following the terrorist attacks on the staff of the Charlie Hebdo magazine and a kosher supermarket in the city.

In a reference to US House Speaker John Boehner’s controversial invitation to address a joint session of Congress over Iran on March 3, Netanyahu said he would be speaking on behalf of all Jews, “Just as I went to Paris, so I will go anyplace I’m invited to convey the Israeli position against those who want to kill us.”

Netanyahu’s calls for Jews to move to Israel—like those made by his political opponents in the Israeli ruling elite—are also motivated by concerns about the demographic situation in Israel and Palestine.

Of Israel’s 8 million population, about 1.6 million or 20 percent are Palestinian, while a further 4.5 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and Gaza. Without a Palestinian mini-state, the Palestinian population, whose fertility rate is higher than that of Israeli Jews, will soon exceed that of the Jewish population. Jewish immigration to Israel is seen as vital if Jews are not to become a minority within Greater Israel.

Crucially, it is also part of a broader push to capitalise on the attacks by equating Palestinian opposition to Israel’s brutal occupation and crushing oppression with Islamic terrorism and the US-led “global war on terror” focused on the oil-rich Middle East. Netanyahu hopes to reverse Israel’s increasing political isolation by demonstrating the universality of the struggle against Islamic militants.

Following the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001, Netanyahu said that it was “very good” for Israel, because it would “generate immediate sympathy” for its war against the Palestinians.

This is why Netanyahu and his ilk have mounted a hysterical campaign in the Israeli media, claiming that Jews can never be safe in a Europe awash with Jihadis intent on destroying and conquering the Christian West. His reactionary and divisive campaign is the flipside of another equally reactionary agenda aimed at dividing the international working class.

Several surveys have pointed to the rising number of incidents against Jewish property and institutions in Western Europe. But this renewal of anti-Semitism is being fuelled in large measure by the actions of the Israeli government—its murderous wars against Gaza in 2006, 2008-2009, 2012 and most recently last year, as well as its daily humiliation of the Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the torpedoing of peace talks with the Palestinians and defiance of countless UN resolutions—that have outraged international public opinion, including many Jews.

Popular anger against Israel is being channelled by the Islamists and other reactionary right-wing forces—not against the perpetrators, but against the Jewish people.

More than one Israeli commentator has pointed out that Jews are safer in Europe than in Israel, where they face the constant threat of war against the Palestinians, the possibility of being caught up in the vicious sectarian war in Syria where Israel has actively supported the Islamists, not to mention the continuous threats of war against Iran.

While they do not admit it, it points to the essentially dead end of the Zionist project that was supposed to provide a safe haven for the Jews in a capitalist nation-state at the expense of the Palestinians already living there.

Europe’s Jewish leaders have criticised Netanyahu’s pleas for Jews to leave Europe. Rabbi Jair Melchior, Denmark’s chief rabbi, said he was “disappointed” by Netanyahu’s call for European Jews to immigrate to Israel, and that “Terror is not a reason to move to Israel.”

But others have gone further, playing to Netanyahu’s right-wing agenda by calling instead for additional security and surveillance measures. Rabbi Menachem Margolin, the director of the European Jewish Association, said he regretted that “after every anti-Semitic attack in Europe, the Israeli government issues the same statements about the importance of aliyah[immigration to Israel], rather than employ every diplomatic and informational means at its disposal to strengthen the safety of Jewish life in Europe.”

Margolin accused European Union leaders of not doing enough to combat anti-Semitic attacks and prejudices, saying there was a need to “secure all Jewish institutions 24/7,” and demanded that European governments and EU institutions establish a European task force to protect Jewish institutions and reinforce educational efforts against what he called “rampant anti-Semitism.” He added, “European leaders need to support us in fighting the battle on terror in our homeland.”

The answer to the increasing attacks on Jews lies not in additional policing and the strengthening of the state apparatus, which will be used not for the defence of workers of any denomination or ethnicity under attack, but for their further suppression. These events pose the urgent necessity of uniting the working class, Muslim and Jewish, across national and religious barriers in the fight against imperialism, their local proxies the Zionist and Arab ruling elites, and the drive to war, and for the socialist federation of the Middle East.

Australian PM outlines sweeping new “anti-terror” measures

Mike Head

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott yesterday delivered a televised “national security” statement at the Australian Federal Police (AFP) headquarters in Canberra, flanked by three ministers, scores of police, military and intelligence officials and six Australian flags.

Having barely survived a challenge to his leadership of the Liberal Party two weeks ago, Abbott was clearly intent on establishing his credentials as a security strongman, while seeking to stoke fears of terrorism to justify harsh new anti-terror laws and Australian participation in the expanding US-led war in the Middle East.

His speech sought to further politically exploit the December 15–16 Martin Place café siege in central Sydney, which his government elevated into a major terrorist emergency. Abbott timed the address to follow Sunday’s release of the official review of the siege, which sought to justify the government’s response to the incident and whitewash the extensive relations between the deranged hostage-taker, Man Haron Monis, and various police and intelligence agencies.

Once again, as he did in releasing the review, Abbott declared that the siege demonstrated the need for even greater “counter-terrorism” powers and that Monis’s ability to gain citizenship and to get bail on several criminal charges required a further crackdown on asylum seekers, welfare recipients and the rights of people accused of offences.

Abbott’s rhetoric was alarmist, replete with phrases such as “rising dangers,” “ominous signs” and a “new dark age” in the Middle East. Of course, there was no reference to Australia’s participation in the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003, which created the conditions for the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and other Islamist militias.

As “evidence” of a worsening threat of domestic terrorism, Abbott cited “the frenzied attack on two police officers in Melbourne and the horror of the Martin Place siege,” as well as the arrest of 20 people in six “counter terrorism operations” since September.

As the World Socialist Web Site has documented, last year’s incidents in Melbourne and Sydney involved unstable individuals who were well known to the police and spy agencies. Abbott’s comments on the 20 arrests furtherprejudiced the prospect of a fair trial for these defendants, who face an array of unsubstantiated charges.

In fact, his speech pointed to the modus operandi involved in the police raids: conduct mass arrests, regardless of whether any evidence exists to support a prosecution, in order to conduct escalating terrorist scare campaigns. “Police do not have the luxury to wait and watch,” Abbott declared. ”Some of these raids may not result in prosecution.”

The prime minister outlined sweeping proposals to overturn the supposed “benefit of the doubt” given to people applying for visas, citizenship, welfare, legal aid and bail. In the first place, this is designed to promote anti-immigrant, particularly anti-Muslim, sentiment and give greater powers to government officials and the spy agencies to bar access to residency and other basic rights. Beyond that, it has wider implications for the treatment of all those facing accusations by the police and security authorities, including the presumption of innocence for those on trial.

Abbott also declared that the government would strip Australian citizenship from dual nationals accused of fighting in the Middle East and revoke “privileges” of citizenship for any Australians “involved in terrorism,” including the right to leave or return to Australia, and access to welfare.

Further, the prime minister declared: “Organisations and individuals blatantly spreading discord and division … should not do so with impunity.” He vowed to enforce the “terrorism advocacy laws” passed last year—which are so broad that they can outlaw expressions of opposition to the US-led interventions in the Middle East. He foreshadowed unspecified “stronger prohibitions on vilifying, intimidating or inciting hatred.”

Abbott declared his intention to ban Hizb ut-Tahir, an Islamic fundamentalist group that opposes terrorism, but criticises US and Australian military operations in the Middle East. However, the words “discord and division” are wide enough to cover anyone opposing these operations, or the government’s deepening austerity drive and the plans for enhanced mass surveillance.

Abbott reiterated his demand for the rapid passage through the Senate of the metadata retention bill, which will force Internet and phone companies to keep all their data for two years so that the security agencies can trawl through the records to compile detailed dossiers on the movements and political activities of millions of people.

The prime minister signaled a further boosting of the security apparatus, including the appointment of a National Counter Terrorism Coordinator, on top of the $630 million funding increase announced last year.

In comments calculated to incite anti-Islamic sentiment, and divide the working class, Abbott accused Muslim leaders of not speaking out enough against terrorism. He also encouraged anti-immigrant xenophobia, declaring: “No one should live in our country while denying our values.”

At the same time, Abbott insisted that “everybody, not just Muslim community leaders” needed to “speak up clearly”—an implicit threat to anyone refusing to line up behind the fraudulent “war on terror.”

Labor Party leader Bill Shorten, flanked by Australian flags as well, pledged bipartisan backing in advance for the government’s yet-to-be-detailed measures. National security should be “above politics,” he said. “We believe that when it comes to fighting terrorism, we are in this together.”

Aware of public opposition to the government’s moves, especially the data retention bill, Shorten said there should be a “strong presumption” in favour of individual liberty. However, this presumption could be “reduced, rebutted or offset” if the current laws “are proved to be inadequate.” In other words, Labor will support the measures with minor modifications, as it did on the Abbott government’s first three tranches of “counter-terrorism” legislation last year.

Greens leader Christine Milne, also wary of the popular reaction, said there was “no justification” for the proposed measures. Last year, the Greens used similar language to criticise aspects of the government’s previous legislation, while stating their underlying support for the security agencies.

Milne urged the government to instead focus on “social cohesion.” The Greens last year tabled a Social Cohesion Bill to develop programs to “stop young Australians from becoming radicalised.” In fact, the police and spy agencies already conduct an array of such programs, which include operations to place informers inside targeted groups, where they can be used to stage or provoke alleged terrorist plots.

Such entrapment activities, which have been involved in most of the terrorist arrests over the past 15 years, are being stepped-up. The Sydney siege review mentioned a new AFP-led multi-agency National Disruption Group, which was described as “managing referrals to the Countering Violent Extremism intervention program.” This involves identifying “at risk” individuals for “case management,” sometimes as a bail condition.

Editorials today in the Australian and the Australian Financial Reviewendorsed Abbott’s speech, underlining the support throughout ruling circles for the deepening assault on fundamental legal and democratic rights. Under conditions of a worsening economic situation and escalating demands by the corporate and financial elite for the cutting of social spending, wages and working conditions, these measures will be used, not just against Muslims and immigrants, but rising social unrest in the working class.

US seizes on video to escalate repression at home and war in Somalia

Thomas Gaist

US officials vowed Sunday to ramp up domestic surveillance and covert operations targeting “extremism” in immigrant communities, in response to a video, apparently produced by the Somalia-based militant group al Shabaab, threatening attacks against malls in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

The video specifically cited the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, located near the largest concentration of Somali immigrants in the US, as a possible target.

Despite admitting that there is no direct evidence of preparations for an attack and encouraging mall-goers to continue shopping, US security officials are proclaiming that the threat justifies a huge expansion of domestic covert operations aimed at identifying “extremists.”

In a special joint statement Sunday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) revealed that they have already been working in tandem with police departments at the state and local level for “months” to coordinate the expansion of such operations.

“In recent months, the FBI and DHS have worked closely with our state and local public safety counterparts and members of the private sector, to include mall owners and operators, to prevent and mitigate these types of threats,” the statement said.

The DHS has launched “engagements” along these lines in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Columbus, Chicago and Boston, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson revealed during last week’s Summit on Countering Violent Extremism at the White House.

Interviewed on “Meet the Press,” Johnson claimed that the al Shabaab video represents a qualitative escalation of the threat posed by extremist groups, proving the need for aggressive DHS intelligence programs

“We’re in a new phase in global terrorist threat right now. The public needs to be particularly vigilant. ‘If you see something, say something’ has to be more than a slogan,” Johnson said.

Johnson warned that social media is enabling terrorist groups to “inspire independent actors” in “communities” and “homelands.”

“We need a military approach. But also, a whole of government approach, a Homeland Security law enforcement approach, which includes countering violent extremism engagements and initiatives here on the homeland,” Johnson said.

“We need to be involved in the relevant communities in this country,” Johnson said, in a barely concealed appeal for the expansion of counter-intelligence targeting Muslim immigrant communities.

The FBI has a “huge job in front of them,” former top FBI official Jim Kallstrom told Fox News, calling for heightened security at US malls and border crossings.

The New York Police Department has seized on the incident to ratchet up its own preparations for counter-insurgency operations against the US population, implementing “precautionary measures” and placing personnel on high alert.

Under the guise of combating extremism, the US ruling elite is kick-starting a campaign of persecution and intimidation against Somali and immigrant communities as one component of generalized preparations for mass repression against the working class as a whole.

Aside from providing the rationale for a fresh round of police-state measures inside the US, the hyping of the al Shabaab video by the media is bound up with efforts to condition public opinion, in advance, for new military operations in the Horn of Africa and other hotspots across the African continent. Some 120 US Special Forces personnel are already deployed in Somalia as part of an undeclared war that has been waged since at least 2007, the US government finally revealed last year.

The video comes just days after the US issued a formal condemnation of al Shabaab in connection with a bombing attack on a hotel in Mogadishu that killed a top minister in the Somali government. Hellfire missiles launched by a US drone on January 31, killed at least five Somalis, four of them civilians, according to witnesses cited by Agence France-Press (AFP). Two other drone strikes in January against Somali targets killed at least 45 in a single day, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ).

Virginia bill shields companies producing lethal injection chemicals

Joe Williams & Nick Barrickman

Earlier this month, the Virginia state Senate passed legislation in a 23-14 vote that would make secret “all information relating to the execution process.” This information would include the names of companies involved in producing, compounding, transporting and administering chemicals used in the state’s lethal injection protocol. The proposed state law is currently being reviewed by the state House and prepared for a vote.

The legislation would mandate that anyone “engaged to compound … manufacture or supply the materials … for use in [an] execution,” as well as “the name of the materials or components used to compound drug products for use in the execution,” would be exempt from all requirements that the state reveal their identities under the Freedom of Information Act. In addition, the bill would hide all “names, residential or office addresses, residential or office telephone numbers, and social security numbers” of individuals involved in the administering of the lethal drugs.

The bill is similar to a number of legislative motions that have passed across the country, including in Ohio, where early last year death row inmate Dennis McGuire writhed in agony for nearly a half hour before succumbing to the effects of an experimental drug concoction.

Although a self-proclaimed opponent of the death penalty, Virginia’s Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe has been named as a “chief booster” of the bill, according to the Washington Post. Other supposed opponents of capital punishment have flocked to his side, demonstrating the complete lack of principled opposition to the death penalty within the political establishment.

Supporters of the legislation have attempted to present the action as a measure to ensure security for companies doing business with the state. Department of Corrections spokesperson Lisa Kinney implied that such measures were being taken due to the possibility that manufacturers of the lethal chemicals were in jeopardy from the public, citing fears of “harassment, threats, or danger.”

“The death penalty exists in the commonwealth, and we’re merely trying to ensure that those sentenced to death are able to have the choice of lethal injection,” said Secretary of Public Safety Brian Moran. “I continue to believe the majority of Virginians support the death penalty,” he absurdly asserted, after having endorsed legislation that was enacted to protect executioners from public scrutiny.

Senate Minority leader Richard Saslaw, a Democrat, attempted to smear death penalty opponents by accusing them of engaging in a sadistic plot to make executions as painful as possible in order to bring more support to their movement. Claiming that it was in fact the opponents of capital punishment sought a return to the electric chair, he said their argument was that “if you make the death penalty too humane … then people will think there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty.” He offered no evidence for this accusation.

The legislation comes as many states have had difficulty obtaining the drugs used to kill prisoners due in large part to a European Union ban on exporting drugs to be used in executions. Rather than ending the barbaric practice, states have sought out alternative methods, including untested drug combinations that often come from unregulated private sources, particularlycompounding pharmacies that are only loosely regulated by state and federal authorities.

This has resulted in a number of grotesque execution scenes across the country, as inmates have been subjected to execution methods that violate the US Eighth Amendment clause barring cruel and unusual punishment. Virginia is also considering a bill that would authorize the use of the electric chair in cases where the necessary drugs are unobtainable, in addition to the law shielding companies from public accountability.

In January of 2014, Ohio executed Dennis McGuire with an untested two-drug cocktail after failing to procure the standard three-drug combination. The result was a horrifying, 25-minute process in which McGuire went into convulsions and writhed in pain, shocking the witnesses and provoking international outrage.

Virginia was the site of the very first execution in the Colonial United States, and executed more people than any other state between 1608 and 1976, with a total of 1,277, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC). Since the reinstatement of capital punishment by the US Supreme Court in 1976, Virginia has executed 110 people, second only to Texas.

According to Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, the victims of Virginia’s execution regime include more women, and the youngest prisoners, of any state. In one notorious 1998 case, a prosecutor successfully argued that DNA evidence that may have posthumously exonerated Joseph O’Dell should be destroyed, as he had already been executed and “it would be shouted from the rooftops that ... Virginia executed an innocent man.”

US federal study predicts 10 oil derailments per year

Jeff Lusanne

A recently revealed report by the US Department of Transportation estimates that trains hauling ethanol or crude oil will derail an average of 10 times a year over the next two decades. The estimated damage of such derailments is $4 billion, and the chances are that some derailments would be near populated areas and cause fatalities. Both ethanol and certain varieties of domestic crude oil have proven to be highly volatile in derailments, causing explosions, fires and leaks.

The study was completed last July, in response to both accidents and steadily rising traffic. Railroads have always carried hazardous fuels and chemicals, but many shipments are “loose car” traffic to and from specific industries, and travel mixed with other non-hazardous freight. In 2005 and 2007, Congress passed legislation calling for the increased use of biofuels, which increased the amount of ethanol in gasoline.

This created a boom in ethanol production, and the creation of “unit trains” of ethanol, headed from big processing plants largely in the Midwest to refineries where the ethanol was blended with gas. Then, in 2011, a boom began to take off in crude oil produced in the Bakken region of North Dakota and Montana. Pipelines were not available to carry the capacity, nor would it be feasible to build them to the various locations of production and refining, so the traffic went to rail.

Since 2006, there have been at least 33 ethanol train accidents and 21 oil train accidents involving a fire, derailment or a significant fuel spill in the US and Canada. There have also been many other freight train derailments, but when a unit train of oil or ethanol derails, the entire train is a hazardous risk.

Yet the unit trains of oil and ethanol are very profitable. They don't have to be switched en route, which would require time and labor, and they travel very long distances—1,000 to 2,000 miles, from regions in the Midwest and Canada to refineries and terminals mostly on the East Coast. Long-distance unit-train shipments have been sought out by railroads for decades, as they reap higher profits.

While the money comes in, the study anticipates 15 derailments in 2015, declining to about five a year by 2034. It estimates 207 total derailments, of which 10 would be “higher consequence events” causing extensive damage and potential fatalities.

Last week saw one of these events, as a train of crude oil operated by CSX derailed near Mount Carbon, West Virginia. Twenty-eight of the tank cars on the 109-car train derailed, and many caught fire, producing enormous fireballs and leaking oil onto the ground. The home of Morris Bounds was destroyed, and the 68-year-old man barely escaped by running out his door immediately prior to the impact of the derailment.

That accident only failed to cause more property damage and threat to the lives of the public and employees based on the luck of its location. At many other places immediately nearby, the route of the oil train passes through communities large and small along the industrious Kanawha River Valley.

The federal analysis notes that oil and ethanol travel through communities with an average population density of 283 people per square mile, and 16 million Americans live within a half-kilometer of a route carrying the traffic.

Federal regulators responded to the release of the study by saying that regulations for stronger tank cars and better braking need to be put in place. But the tank cars in the accident were a newer variety, CPC-1232, with certain features that are supposed to improve durability to prevent damage in the event of a derailment.

As the risks of carrying oil by rail become tragically clear, railroads reaping money off the oil trains are also seeking to reduce crew size on trains to just one person. While trains currently have an engineer and conductor, railroads want to merge that into one position. This decision stems from a drive to reduce labor costs, not as a means of improving safety or operations.

While the engineer operates the train, the conductor reads signals that direct traffic, communicates with the dispatcher of rail traffic, manages paperwork about the train’s cargo, including information on hazardous materials. The conductor also handles all work on the ground, which includes throwing switches, switching out freight cars and fixing mechanical problems. This is dirty, dangerous work and it is done year round, night or day, in all weather.

The rationale railroads provide for eliminating conductors is the upcoming federal mandate for railroads to implement a new technology called Positive Train Control (PTC). It will provide constant enforcement of speed restrictions and protection from collisions. Once implemented, trains would receive continually updated information about its authority for movement at a given speed in a given area, and equipment in the locomotive would enforce these restrictions.

That would not prevent all accidents, however, but only those associated with certain mistakes by a crew or faulty equipment. Implementation is still in progress, while the danger of oil train derailments becomes clearer. In response, the Federal Railroad Administration in January proposed a rule that would make two-man crews mandatory. The Obama administration has not signed off on the rule, while railroads are lobbying to prevent it.

The railroads are not the only organization pushing for one-person crews: unions want in on the spoils as well. Last fall, conductors at BNSF Railway were presented with a contract by their own union, the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail & Transportation Workers (SMART), that proposed the elimination of an in-cab conductor. It would have created a position of “master conductor,” a roaming, on-the-ground conductor.

Conductors at BNSF, including in the territories carrying much of the Bakken oil from the wells to its next handler, voted down the contract, recognizing it as a betrayal even though incentives were offered. The SMART union was angling against the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET), which represents engineers. SMART, figuring on one-man operation, rather than opposing it wanted the concessions contract to include certain perks that would ensure the BLET would take the hit when one-man operations were introduced.

This continues a long tradition of bitter conflict between the union bureaucrats, even as the craft members work side by side every day.

The supposed concern of railroads for “safety” is belied by their treatment of operating employees. Both engineers and conductors effectively work on-call, with no set schedule. The railroads utilize 21st century technology, like remotely controlled engines, but employ 19th century methods in planning and scheduling crews. Employees are expected to answer the phone at any hour and report to work within two hours. They will then operate up to a 12-hour shift, which only includes the time that they operate the train, not the time it takes to reach the train from a crew base. Sometimes, crews will even “die” on the train—exceed the 12 hours—and have to sit, unpaid, until their taxi arrives.

On top of that, workers are permitted and often made to work six shifts in a row, and only then are given 48 hours rest. But those shifts can be at varying times, day and night, making solid rest potentially impossible.

Railroad operating crews are also expected to work weekends and holidays, and have little ability to get a substantial amount of time off. For example, at CSX, where the most recent oil train derailment occurred, the attendance policy assigns points for missing a call. The first attendance warning comes at 20 points. A missed call with no excuse is 10 points, a missed call for sickness is 4 points, and a missed call for sickness with a doctor’s note is 3 points.

Republicans move to pass right-to-work legislation in Wisconsin

Niles Williamson

A spokeswoman for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker announced Friday that he was prepared to sign so-called “right-to-work” legislation introduced by fellow Republicans in the state legislature. The bill would outlaw labor contracts that require workers to pay union dues or other fees as a condition of employment.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald called for an Extraordinary Session on Friday allowing for the bill to be introduced in the State Senate yesterday and put to a vote as early as Wednesday.

After passage in the senate, the bill will then go to the state assembly, where the Republicans hold a significant majority, for approval next week. The legislative rules for an Extraordinary Session will make it harder for Democratic members of the senate and assembly to use extended public hearings and legislative debate as a delaying tactic.

Walker, a possible Republican candidate for President in 2016, had insisted during the 2014 state gubernatorial election that he would not hesitate to sign right-to-work legislation into law if passed in the Republican-controlled state legislature. If, as expected, the legislation passes and Walker signs it into law, Wisconsin will become the 25th “right-to-work state.”

The introduction of right-to-work legislation comes immediately after Republican budget proposals in Wisconsin and Illinois that would cut hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from social programs and public universities.

Walker’s proposed 2015-2017 budget cuts $300 million from the University of Wisconsin system, nearly $100 million from primary and secondary public schools and $15.6 million from SeniorCare, a state program for providing health care to elderly individuals who don’t qualify for Medicaid.

While AFL-CIO President Phil Neuenfeldt has denounced the budget proposal as “full of shortsighted and backwards priorities,” the union has done little to oppose the budget, promoting feeble protests and calling for the lobbying of Democrats and Republicans in the legislature.

The principal aim of Wisconsin’s right-to-work law, like others that have been passed throughout the US, is to undermine the ability of the working class to collectively organize and fight for its interests. It is backed by sections of the corporate and financial elite, generally associated with the Republican Party, which wants to dispense with the unions as it intensifies the assault jobs, wages and social programs.

From the standpoint of the trade unions, however, the right-to-work laws are seen as a threat to their institutional interests and their role as a mechanism for suppressing working-class resistance. The Democratic Party in Wisconsin and other states has opposed such legislation because it sees the unions as a critical means of containing the class struggle and enforcing austerity measures.

Among workers, there is a widespread and entirely justified hatred of the unions—the result of decades in which the unions have collaborated with the corporations and the state in imposing cuts, layoffs and other attacks. When similar right-to-work laws were signed into law by Republican governors in the former industrial union strongholds of Michigan and Indiana in 2012, the trade unions and the Democratic Party proved incapable and unwilling to mobilize the working class to oppose the measures.

The Wisconsin AFL-CIO has called for union members to testify before the Senate Labor Committee and to attend protests at the capitol building on Tuesday and Wednesday. Such activities are designed to blow off steam and dissipate opposition to the legislation. The union will work to keep any significant protests that emerge from getting out of their control as they did in 2011. The AFL-CIO has not called for any strikes in opposition to the legislation.

The current proposal from Walker comes four years after the governor pushed through a round of attacks on public education and the working class, coupled with a bill that removed collective bargaining rights for most public employees, known as Act 10.

Hundreds of thousands of workers and young people protested the reactionary Act 10 throughout the state in February and March of 2011 in mass demonstrations, job actions by teachers, walkouts by students, and the occupation of the capitol building. A call put out by the Socialist Equality Party for a general strike to bring down the Walker government and block the passage of the bill was taken up widely by protestors but rejected out of hand by the unions.

While workers indicated their hostility to the austerity measures included in the legislation, the unions insisted on their willingness to accept deep cuts to workers’ wages and benefits. Their only real concern was maintaining their institutional interests, foremost among them the automatic dues check-off that fills their coffers.

Prior to the full implementation of Act 10, public sector unions hastened to sign contracts that included significant concessions but maintained the collection of dues as well as the union’s role in managing public workers.

After the passage of Act 10, a futile recall campaign targeting Walker and a number of Republican legislators was launched by the trade unions, the Democratic Party and their pseudo-left affiliates. The campaign was designed to cover for the union’s capitulation to Walker, disperse the protests and disorient workers, turning them back behind the Democrats.

Walker easily defeated Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, a Democrat, in the 2012 gubernatorial recall election. As with other Democrats, including former Governor Jim Doyle, Barrett had boasted of imposing deep austerity on public workers with the aid of the trade unions. Walker won reelection in 2014 against multimillionaire Democrat Mary Burke, a former business executive, who boasted of being a “fiscal conservative.”

The unions fully back the attack on workers that is being carried out in various forms throughout the country by Democrats and Republicans. Across the border in Illinois, Democrats have supported unconstitutional attacks on state workers’ pensions. To the east, in Michigan, Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, a Democrat, oversaw the bankruptcy of Detroit, backed by the Obama administration. The unions have supported them in this campaign as they are politically tied to the Democratic Party and support unconditionally the capitalist system.

Opposition to the right-to-work law in no way implies support for the unions themselves. In fact, the defense of the democratic rights of the working class, and opposition to the assault on its jobs, wages and social programs, is possible only by breaking with these reactionary organizations and forming new organizations of struggle, pitted against both big-business parties and the capitalist profit system.

US oil strike highlights sacrifice of workers’ safety to corporate profit

Jerry White

Following the breakdown of talks Friday between the United Steelworkers union (USW) and industry bargainer Shell Oil, no date has been set to resume negotiations for a new three-year labor agreement covering 30,000 workers in the US oil industry.

The USW expanded the strike to three additional refineries and one chemical plant in Texas and Louisiana over the weekend, but the union continues to restrict the strike to just 6,500 workers at 12 of the 65 USW-organized refineries in the US. This plays into the hands of the oil giants, who are continuing production and refusing to budge on workers’ demands for improved safety and working conditions.

The top five Big Oil companies, which made $90 billion in profits last year, are pressing for a three-year freeze in wages and the expanded hiring of lower-paid contractors to replace union workers.

In a letter to striking employees, Shell management claimed its ability to hire and fire contractors was beneficial to full-timers. “Hiring flexibility is a proven way to protect our core Shell workforce and the long-term economic viability of our workforce,” the company wrote. “This strategy has served us all well, as we have not had to conduct any layoffs in decades.”

In fact, the exploitation of contractors, a policy long accepted by the USW, undermines the conditions of all workers. While the USW officials are motivated solely by the potential for increased dues income, the expansion of contract labor is part of the drive to cut costs, which is also behind the deadly conditions and impossibly long schedules in the industry.

Monday's flare-up at the BP Whiting Refinery. Source: The Times of Northwest Indiana

On Monday morning, a massive flare-up occurred at BP’s Whiting installation in Indiana, lighting up the sky as striking workers stood at picket lines outside the refinery. The release of burning gas, which BP said was due to a compressor problem, lasted for half an hour, workers said.

“As an operator, I rely upon my maintenance people to tell me what is and what is not safe,” Gary Roth, an operator at Tesoro’s Carson refinery, told the World Socialist Web Site Monday. “There are people inside of that refinery who have so much knowledge about the inner workings of each and every piece of equipment, and to lose those people would be to lose our safety.

“The contractors are not familiar with the equipment like our own people. The union maintenance workers can go and put their hand on a compressor or another piece of equipment and know something has to be taken care of because there is an issue. Unless you work with this kind of equipment day in and day out, you cannot do that.”

Gary

Over the last three-and-a-half decades, the oil industry, like the steel, auto, mining, trucking, airline and other industries, has carried out a relentless drive to slash jobs and reduce labor costs, while using new developments in technology to increase the output of the remaining workers. The multinational corporations have no intention of retreating and granting the next generation of workers such “outmoded entitlements” as guaranteed hours, job security, health insurance or pension benefits.

Announcing that it had rejected Shell’s seventh offer on Friday, the USW issued a statement with the headline: “Industry demands more blood, will not engage in meaningful talks to address critical safety issues.”

The union listed the companies’ refusal to address “well-documented and widespread safety deficiencies,” reduce “excessive overtime,” or fill permanent vacancies with full-time maintenance workers. “Management refuses to entertain any discussion that impedes on what the companies insist are their sole and exclusive rights—without regard for consequences that can be deadly to employees and destructive to their operations,” the USW wrote.

All of this is true. But the source of the problem is not the companies’ unwillingness to work with the trade unions in labor-management committees. Such committees have long existed. In the name of boosting “corporate competitiveness” and profits, they have agreed to the steady erosion of safety and working conditions.

The real problem is the private ownership of the oil industry by a handful of immensely powerful energy conglomerates that subordinate every aspect of production—from safety and environmental protection to manning levels and infrastructure upgrades—to the drive to increase profits and investor returns. While the oil companies have responded to falling crude oil prices by slashing jobs, reducing exploration and cutting wages and benefits, the one thing they have not stopped is dividend payouts and stock buybacks for the benefit of their richest investors.

Scene of last week's explosion at ExxonMobil's Torrance, California refinery.

Under capitalism, the private owners have “sole and exclusive rights” over decisions concerning production and the allocation of financial resources. This is despite the fact that these resources are derived from the sweat and labor of the working class.

That is why the fight to guarantee the health and well being of oil workers and the safety of surrounding communities is inseparable from the fight to nationalize the oil industry under the democratic control of the working class. Only in this way can energy production be organized on the basis of human need, not private profit.

The USW and the unions in general are hostile to socialism and defend without question the so-called “right” of the capitalists to privately own the means of production. That is why no matter how many appeals USW negotiators make to the corporations to change conditions “that can be deadly to employees and destructive to their operations,” the sacrifice of workers’ lives and limbs will continue.

Because they have collaborated for decades in corporate cost cutting, the unions have been complicit in the undermining of safety. Next month, the USW is hosting the 2015 Health, Safety and Environment Conference at the Westin Convention Center and Hotel in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In addition to being a junket for union bureaucrats, the March 9-13 conference is a celebration of labor-management “partnership” and a platform to promote the Obama administration and the Democratic Party.

One of the keynote speakers is Joseph Main, Obama’s assistant secretary of labor in charge of the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). Main epitomizes the elevation of union bureaucrats into corporate management and the government. A long-time safety director for the United Mine Workers, he became a safety consultant for the mine bosses before being hired by Obama to head MSHA.

During his tenure, some of the deadliest mine accidents have occurred, including the 2010 blast that killed 29 West Virginia miners at the Upper Big Branch Mine. The coal operators have received nothing but wrist-slaps for their criminal negligence.

The Obama administration has treated oil bosses no differently. From the kid-glove treatment of BP in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill to last year’s decision by Obama’s Justice Department to drop any investigation into the safety violations that led to the fatal explosion at Tesoro’s Anacortes, Washington refinery, the Democrats have proven to be no less servile to Big Oil than the Republicans.

On the picket line in Anacortes this weekend, workers told the World Socialist Web Site that safety, long working hours and fatigue were overriding concerns, along with efforts to undermine their health benefits. The oil companies, flush with profits, had no reason to squeeze the workers further, one striking worker commented, but “they were doing it just because they could.”

Strikers were angered over the limited strike policy of the USW, which left only a fifth of the industry’s USW workers to take on some of the largest companies in the world. They pointed out that Shell oil workers just down the road were still working while Tesoro workers were walking the picket lines. Others had no doubt that Obama would respond to a strike by all oil workers by declaring it a “national security threat” and illegal.

On the picket line at the BP refinery in Whiting, Indiana, one worker said, “Every one of these refineries is a ticking time bomb.” Referring to the corporations, he added, “Safety costs them and they want to keep as much money in their pockets as possible.”

Under the Democrats and Republicans, another striker said, “The poor are getting poorer, the rich richer, and workingmen have no power. The political process is against you. It doesn’t matter which party it is, they’re both full of crooks. The only time the two parties work together is when it’s against us.”

Among the workers there was solid support for a national strike.

White House economic report calls for cutting corporate taxes

Andre Damon

On Thursday, the White House released its “2015 Economic Report of the President,” presenting it as an argument for “middle-class economics.”

The document seeks to justify Obama’s scheme, spelled out in his most recent budget proposal, to slash corporate taxes by up to ten percentage points. The report attempts to obscure the fact that such a windfall for the corporate-financial elite will dramatically increase social inequality, claiming instead that it will “increase productivity, output and living standards.”

The document falsifies both present economic reality and the development of the US economy in the post-World War II period in order to argue for further pro-corporate “reforms.”

It declares that, in the aftermath of the 2008 Wall Street crash, “a successful multifaceted policy response, including actions by the President, Congress, and the Federal Reserve, combined with the determination of the American people, has enabled the US economy to dig out of that deep hole, putting more people back to work, reducing the unemployment rate, and creating a virtuous cycle in which higher consumer purchasing power supports greater economic activity and job creation.”

In reality, the majority of new jobs have been low-wage, including a large percentage of part-time and temporary positions. Wages have stagnated or declined, and benefits have been slashed. Millions remain unemployed and millions more have dropped out of the labor market.

Combined with virtually unlimited cash handouts to the banks, the lowering of working class living standards has provided the basis for the so-called “recovery”—a recovery for the rich and the super-rich, not the working class.

In his introduction to the report, Obama declares, “Since the crisis, we’ve seen our deficits cut by two-thirds, our stock market double, and health care inflation at its lowest rate in 50 years.”

Here, Obama praises the fruits of his own right-wing policies, including the pumping of trillions of dollars into the banks, the slashing of funding for social programs, and the use of the Affordable Care Act to slash corporate and government health care costs.

The report includes damning acknowledgments of the decades-long redistribution of wealth in America from the bottom to the top, carried out by Democratic and Republican administrations alike. It notes, “In the United States, the top 1 percent has garnered a larger share of income than in any other G-7 country in each year since 1987,” a process that has accelerated under the Obama administration.

The report shows that, since 1973, the income share of the top 1 percent in the US has ballooned from 7.7 percent of the total to 17.5 percent, while the income share of the bottom 99 percent has fallen from 68.1 percent to 53.0. The document also notes that the labor force participation rate, particularly for males, has plunged in recent decades.

However, it presents the growth of social inequality as though it were an entirely impersonal process, the result of cosmic forces divorced from the struggle of social classes and the policies of governments and politicians.

This is deliberate. The aim is to grant the American ruling class and its two corporate-controlled parties a political amnesty for the ruthless offensive they have carried out against the vast majority of the American people. This, in turn, facilitates the attempt to dress up right-wing, pro-corporate proposals for future action in “progressive” and even “egalitarian” trappings.

The growth of social inequality is directly bound up with a decades-long assault on the American working class. The president’s report purports to review the economic history of the US since World War II, but fails to mention any of the key events in the escalating ruling class offensive.

There is no mention of the near-bankruptcy of New York City in 1975, which was used to impose a de facto banker’s dictatorship and sweeping cuts in municipal workers’ jobs and compensation. Similarly passed over in silence are the 1979–1980 bailout of Chrysler, which was used to begin the wave of wage and benefit concessions that have continued ever since, the 1981 smashing of the PATCO air controller’s strike and ensuing decade of strike-breaking and union-busting, and Obama’s forced bankruptcy of GM and Chrysler in 2009, which included the halving of the wages of all newly hired workers. Nor is there any mention of the relentless attack on social programs at the federal, state and local levels.

In a report whose main proposal is a drastic lowering of corporate taxes, there is no examination of the relationship of taxation to inequality—for example, the fact that inequality has soared in parallel with the repeated cutting of the top personal income tax rate from 90 percent in the early 1960s to the present level of 35 percent.

While the more than 400-page document is full of generalities and amorphous proposals, it gets right down to business when arguing that taxes for US corporations should be slashed. The report declares that “business tax reform offers the potential to boost productivity by improving the quantity and quality of investment in the United States.”

This is the standard free market pabulum that was once the province of the Republican Party. In Reagan’s day, it was known as “supply side” economics. It has since been fully embraced by the Democrats.

The basic conceit is the assumption that the corporate ruling elite will use its increased wealth from lower taxes to invest in new production, hire more workers, raise productivity and, with it, wages. But the White House Council on Economic Advisers, which drafted the report, acknowledges therein that productivity has been rising in the US since 1995 while wages have stagnated, and that the current “recovery” has seen a level of corporate investment far below that of previous recoveries.

The authors write, “Investment spending has grown more slowly than usual for a business‐cycle expansion.” They note that instead of investing, “corporations used a good part of those funds to buy back shares from their stockholders,” pushing up stock prices.

In other words, the ruling elite has used the windfalls provided from virtually free cash from the Federal Reserve, falling wages and benefits, and increased exploitation of workers—compliments of its political servants in Washington—to further enrich itself. It has taken advantage of the largesse of the Fed and the White House to expand its parasitic activities at the expense of the productive forces and the working class.

There is not the slightest reason to doubt it will continue to do so after its taxes have been reduced further, something of which the Obama administration is fully aware.

Meanwhile, the reduction in government revenues will be used as an argument for further cuts in social programs and workers’ wages and pensions.

Stock markets rise after Greece signs new austerity agreement

Robert Stevens

Europe’s stock markets rose Monday in response to the four-month extension of austerity agreed Friday between the Greek government and the euro group.

Stocks shot up in all the main markets save London, closing at their highest levels in seven years. Japanese equities hit a new 15-year peak. The FTSE Eurofirst 300 rose by 0.6 percent and Germany’s Dax by 0.7 percent. London’s FTSE 100 rose sharply and was due to reach a record level, before falling only due to a plunge in the shares of the crisis-ridden HSBC bank. Greece’s own stock markets were closed for a public holiday.

The financial aristocracy believes Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ deal will allow it to continue raking in billions of euros in profits by savaging workers’ living standards in Greece and across Europe. Commenting on the austerity deal, Erik Nielsen, global chief economist of UniCredit, said, “Europe has drawn the line in the sand—and markets had absolutely no problem with that.”

Summing up the results of less than a month of talks, in which Greece’s Syriza-led government did not win even minor concessions, Nielsen called it a “complete political surrender” on Syriza’s part.

The first condition of the agreement was for Syriza to submit further proposals by Monday evening to the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund “troika”, detailing how it would strictly adhere to the austerity programme agreed to by the previous New Democracy/PASOK regime.

Syriza complied totally with this humiliating demand. To ensure that its proposals would not be rejected, Syriza officials spent the entire weekend and Monday in talks with troika representatives, honing a suitable austerity agenda. One Greek government source told the Guardian, “It will be put over this evening although when exactly that will be we just don’t know. Right now they are drawing up and crossing out [proposals] … It is changing all the time.”

In the end, Syriza left nothing to chance. On Monday evening, Athens stated that it would instead submit its proposals on Tuesday morning.

This followed a warning in Monday’s Financial Times, which noted: “Euro zone officials have for weeks complained that [Greek Finance Minister] Mr Varoufakis’s reform proposals were not sufficiently detailed and had not come with estimates of how much they would affect the economy and government budgeting. Officials who have seen the weekend submission from Athens have indicated it is similarly vague.” [emphasis added]

Another official acknowledged Athens’ proposals amounted to “a list of actions to be taken” without a detailed breakdown of numbers.

Reuters reported Monday evening that a government official said Syriza’s list “will include reforms to fight tax evasion, corruption” and “measures to reform [the] public sector, [and] cut bureaucracy”. Also included are “reforms to regulate tax arrears and bad loans.”

Syriza uses these standard euphemisms (“reforming public sector, cut bureaucracy”) because, like the right-wing New Democracy government before it, it is a reactionary bourgeois party trying to cover up its plans to cut workers’ jobs and pay and increase productivity.

Syriza’s capitulation has only fueled demands for further concessions from the European Union.

The German government, which has insisted that Greece carry out the troika’s austerity directives to the letter, has responded to Syriza’s capitulation with even more vociferous demands. Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said, “The ball is in the Greek government’s court. If Athens wants to see changes in individual points, then that is okay. But if these changes lead to further spending, then they need to save elsewhere or look to gather more revenue.”

The statement issued by the euro group Friday stipulated, “The Greek authorities commit to refrain from any rollback of measures and unilateral changes to the policies and structural reforms that would negatively impact fiscal targets, economic recovery or financial stability, as assessed by the [EU, ECB and IMF] institutions.”

Among those who Syriza first turned to as a supposed counter to the austerity being demanded by Germany was European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. Not only did Juncker endorse the German position before the ink was barely dry on Friday’s deal, he was leading the chorus for Syriza to tear up any promise it had made to alleviate the social devastation visited on the Greek people over the past five years.

Speaking Monday to Wirtschaftswoche, Juncker said Syriza cannot raise the minimum wage because “It’s very difficult claiming privileges that other states don’t have.” He said Spain, Ireland and Portugal had already passed through a “vale of tears,” and that Greece could not be treated differently, “especially on raising the minimum wage.”

As Syriza desperately tried to make its proposals “sufficiently comprehensive to be a valid starting point” ahead of negotiations on a harsher austerity package in April, IMF head Christine Lagarde insisted that Syriza had to tackle “vested interests, protected professions, rigidity in some markets.”

She said, “I hope that the structural reforms that are so needed in the country can be implemented. ... There’s been a lot of talk about it, but now it’s time to get on with the work.”

In fact, there is every indication that Syriza’s capitulation to the EU austerity diktat will only fuel the collapse of the Greek economy and the drive for deeper attacks on the working class.

Greece’s banks remain in deep crisis, with their access to funds cut off by the ECB. Due to fear of a financial collapse as Greece’s previous credit agreement with the troika was due to expire, €1 billion were withdrawn from Greek bank accounts last Friday.

According to JP Morgan, outflows from Greek banks last week total €3 billion. In just under two months, €25 billion in deposits have been withdrawn from Greek banks. J.P. Morgan estimates that on this basis, the banks will run out of collateral to obtain new ECB loans in just eight weeks. This is down from the 14 weeks it estimated only last week.

Alan McQuaid, chief economist at Merrion Stockbrokers, described the latest deal as “kicking the can down the road,” adding that “it’s better than nothing and for the time being it will be seen as positive, assuming they can deliver these reform promises today.”

Peter Dixon, equity strategist at Commerzbank, cautioned, “We have cleared the first hurdle, but Greece has to come up with a serious set of measures now. Over the course of the next few months, we will be having more discussions and possibly a lot more market volatility.”

Gary Jenkins, chief credit strategist at LNG Capital said Syriza “now have four months to try and demonstrate that they have an action plan which is acceptable to their European partners and to their own people. It is not inconceivable that we are all back here in four month’s time with a heightened risk of either a Greek exit [from the eurozone] or default—or both.”