This week in history: March 9-15

25 years ago: Widespread protests force Haitian military ruler from office

Prosper Avril

After days of anti-government demonstrations throughout all of Haiti’s major cities, Lt. Gen. Prosper Avril resigned the presidency on March 10, 1990. Two days earlier in the town of Petit Goave, 10,000 mourners attended the funeral of Rosaline Vaval, an 11-year-old schoolgirl who was shot down the previous Monday by a soldier breaking up an anti-government demonstration. The killing inflamed the anger of the population, provoking violent protests that shut down the capital, Port-au-Prince, and spread across the island nation.

Just the day before Avril quit office, a government spokesperson told the press, “Avril is ready to make concessions, but a hasty departure is out of the question.” He resigned the next day and by the morning of March 12 arrived via a US Air Force transport at Florida’s Homestead Air Force Base with his family. The US Atlantic Command in Norfolk, Virginia, said that Avril would be transported to his private estate in Boca Raton, Florida. However, crowds of protesters outside the air base delayed the transfer.

In the streets of Port-au-Prince, crowds lit bonfires to celebrate the news of Avril’s resignation. The demonstrations evoked those of February 1986, which brought down the despised regime of Jean-Claude (“Baby Doc”) Duvalier, and the continuing protests alarmed the Haitian ruling elite. Avril’s 18-month rule was marked by corruption, brutality and human rights violations.

The resignation was brokered behind closed doors by the US and French ambassadors and the Vatican and announced by acting army chief of staff Maj. Gen. Herard Abraham, who became interim president for 72 hours.

The deal called for Avril’s elite Presidential Guard to be dispersed to other parts of the country. A coalition of parties headed by Marc Bazin, a former finance minister and member of the World Bank under “Baby Doc” Duvalier, praised the deal. Bazin said the deal promised “free and fair” elections within three to six months and referred to the “irresponsible power of Gen. Avril, masked at times by violent and barbaric actions.”

On March 13, Supreme Court Judge Ertha Pascal-Trouillot was inaugurated by the army to head Haiti’s first civilian government since Duvalier’s fall in 1986.

50 years ago: US troop buildup in Vietnam

Phan Huy Quat

On March 12, 1965, General Harold K. Johnson, Army chief of staff, returned from Southeast Asia to brief President Lyndon Johnson on the military situation, calling for more US troops to bolster the South Vietnamese puppet regime. US officials in Saigon demanded the immediate dispatch of a full army division to add to the force of 27,000 US troops and “advisers” already in the country. A contingent of 3,500 Marines arrived in Danang March 9, signaling the beginning of a troop buildup in Vietnam that would reach 180,000 by the end of the year.

While promising military leaders an all-out war in Southeast Asia, Johnson presented the introduction of US combat troops to the public as a defensive measure to protect US military installations. US military officials admitted that the situation in South Vietnam required emergency measures. The Saigon puppet army was disintegrating, with 30 percent of all draftees deserting within six weeks of entering basic training.

With the recent installation of Phan Huy Quat in yet another military coup, South Vietnam had its ninth government since the US-supported assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem in November 1963. Tacitly recognizing the enormous superiority of the liberation fighters over the imperialist and puppet troops, in terms of morale and will to fight, US Ambassador Maxwell Taylor insisted that at least a ten-to-one numerical advantage was needed to ensure the survival of the regime. US military analysts estimated that no more than 110,00 poorly supplied North Vietnamese and National Liberation Front fighters were defeating a puppet army numbering 550,000 including regular and militia units.

75 years ago: Nazis declare “Gala Day” to celebrate conquest of Czechoslovakia

The Nazi invasion of Czechoslavakia

On March 15, 1940, the Czech people were told by the Prague wireless station that they must celebrate the anniversary of the German Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia as “Gala Day.” In Prague the main feature of the “celebrations” was a vast German military parade on the Vaclavske Namesti, complete with SS detachments, as German warplanes flew overhead.

The parade was held in the presence of Hitler’s representative Baron von Neurath, with the Czech puppet president Hacha seated next to him on the platform together with General Eminger, inspector general of the Czech military, commanding the German garrison.

In what translated as an admission by the Nazis of Czech restlessness, opposition and dissatisfaction with fascist occupation, Hitler sent Hacha a telegram telling him that it was not the intention of the German Reich to impose burdens of the Czech people that might threaten its national existence or to bring it into conflict with the needs of the Reich.

But the anniversary events coincided with the deadline that all Jewish Czech property had to be registered with the fascist authorities. German newspapers also announced that a message on “German place names in the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia” had been dispatched to the Czech government offices stating that in all correspondence with German authorities, the German names of Czech towns must be used.

To give the impression of Czech acquiescence, a contingent of 7,000 Czech government troops took part in the anniversary ceremonies with the soldiers restricted to ancient Mannlicher-style rifles with deliberately loosened triggers. Each man was equipped with only one round of ammunition.

Private houses were instructed to fly the Czech flag while public buildings hung both the German and Czech flags and those buildings used by both Czechs and Germans two swastika banners hung together with a single Czech flag.

100 years ago: The battle of Neuve Chapelle

British wounded in German trenches near Neuve Chapelle

On March 10, 1915, British forces launched an offensive against German positions in the Artois region of France. The attack was an attempt to break through the stalemate on the Western Front of the First World War, which had emerged with the onset of protracted trench warfare at the end of 1914. The confrontation became known as the “Battle of Neuve Chapelle,” after the French town at which British forces focused their initial efforts in the offensive.

The British offensive was carefully planned and coordinated. Aerial reconnaissance took detailed images of German positions, enabling British commanders to identify Neuve Chapelle as a potential weak point in German defense lines. On March 10, the offensive began with an aerial bombardment, followed by an artillery barrage aimed at severing German communication lines and defenses.

In the early morning hours, British troops secured control of Neuve Chapelle, and set about establishing their own defensive positions in the town. On March 12, the Germans launched a counterattack involving some 16,000 troops, which failed and resulted in heavy casualties. The counterattack prompted British commanders to scuttle plans for further attacks, while consolidating their hold on Neuve Chapelle, and preparing for an offensive further to the north. These plans were subsequently abandoned due to a severe ammunition shortage.

In the space of around a week of slaughter, allied forces lost 7,000 British troops and 4,200 Indian soldiers. German losses were estimated at around 10,000.

Collection agency buys Corinthian Colleges chain

Nancy Hanover

In the first transaction of its kind, the bulk of the for-profit career college chain Corinthian Colleges, Inc. (CCI) was purchased last month by a student loan guarantor/collection agency.

The Obama administration’s Department of Education (DOE) engineered the agreement in order to maintain the flow of student loan repayments by Corinthian borrowers to the federal government.

Over the last year, CCI had been kept in operation by the administration while it found a buyer. In July, the government provided a $16 million life preserver and agreed to $35 million in the form of accelerated financial aid payments, to keep the firm afloat.

The once highly profitable institution—one of the largest for-profit colleges in the US—faced criminal allegations by three federal agencies and nearly half the states’ attorney generals. The chain was accused of predatory lending and unlawful business practices throughout the US and became emblematic of the often-alleged usurious practices of the for-profit college industry.

Under a CCI program known as “Genesis” loans, students were saddled with loan origination fees as high as 6 percent and interest rates as high as 15 percent, compared to 3 percent and 7 percent, respectively, at many other student lenders.

Fifty-three of the technical college campuses, which include Everest and WyoTech schools across the US, were acquired February 4 by ECMC Group. ECMC includes Educational Credit Management Corporation, one of the largest student loan guaranty agencies in the US, and Premier Credit of North America, a debt collection agency that collects student loans on US Department of Education loans. The Group will also supervise the shutdown of another 12 campuses it did not buy.

The merged business will now operate education services—alleged in lawsuits to be cut-rate, shoddy and deceptively packaged—in combination with its in-house collection agency.

Neither ECMC nor its newly created Zenith Education Group has any previous experience in operating an academic institution. Zenith will pay $24 million for 53 of the campuses in 17 states and the rights to the online operation.

ECMC does have experience with heavy-handed and borderline-legal collection tactics, however. Founded in 1994, ECMC spearheaded the government’s efforts over two decades to counter student loan defaults via garnishment of wages, tax rebates and Social Security, according to the New York Times.

In fact, ECMC is the main private entity hired by the Department of Education to oppose the petitions of student debtors filing for bankruptcy on federal loans. It has become infamous for its ruthless policy of denying “undue hardship” to impoverished former students, many of whom seek relief due to cancer and other severe illnesses.

The federal government brokered the transaction between CCI and ECMC rather than risk a precedent-setting case in which student loan obligations were cancelled. Without the sale, all federal student loans to Corinthian students could have been voided under the “closed school” provision. A government estimate cited the potential loss to the DOE as $30 million, with an estimated 6 percent of students applying for a discharge. But the real liability could have been much higher; Corinthian, according to a legal filing, said its students held a whopping $1.2 billion in federal loans.

The sale agreement included $480 million in forgiveness for some of the students who were strong-armed into CCI’s private high-interest loans through its Genesis program; however, this does not nearly forgive the outstanding debts.

Nearly 130,000 borrowers took out loans from the company, which charged about double normal interest rates, used deceptive information about students’ job prospects, and then illegally harassed borrowers for payments. The CCI student population was primarily working-class and low-income.

But instead of cancelling all the student debts, the agreement provides a general legal liability release for the Genesis loans in exchange for $17.25 million to be paid to the DOE and a 40 percent debt reduction to qualifier borrowers. The agreement also accepted the ban, instituted by Corinthian, on students’ rights to join class-action lawsuits.

Corinthian sold “virtually all” of its Genesis notes for pennies on the dollar last year, according to Huffington Post. Those notes—totaling 170,000 loans with a face value of $505 million—aren’t part of the deal the DOE brokered between Corinthian and ECMC. The collection agencies that bought the loans will continue to pursue the students saddled with these high-interest debts.

Collection of student loans is big business. Payouts from the DOE to private debt collectors like ECMC topped $1 billion in 2014, the National Consumer Law Center reported. By 2016, the center said, it will have doubled to $2 billion.

On February 19, Corinthian’s Canadian license was revoked and 14 Ontario schools shut down, including campuses in Brampton, Mississauga, Newmarket, North York, Scarborough, Toronto, Barrie, Hamilton, Kitchener, Ottawa, Sudbury and Windsor. Canadian students will reportedly be given access to transitional funding or refunds.

Two days prior, Corinthian was suspended from trading on the Nasdaq for failing to file reports in a timely fashion to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The DOE has withheld federal funds from the institution since last June over allegations that CCI falsified job placement data in marketing pitches to students.

CCI was under investigation by more than half the states in the US, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Justice Department, with legal complaints going back as far as 10 years. The vast majority of CCI’s funding came from the federal student loan program administered by the DOE.

Under the Higher Education Act, the DOE is responsible for ensuring the effective administration and oversight of federal student aid. In other words, for years the highly profitable, publicly traded CCI (CEO Jack Massimino took home more than $3 million in compensation in 2013), depended entirely on the Obama administration turning a blind eye to its predatory and illegal practices.

The CFPB played its typical role of highlighting some of the most egregious legal violations by Corinthian while facilitating a deal to protect government revenues and enable the for-profit institution to survive—albeit with a different owner—and minimizing the transitional expense of the dirty deal at the expense of student debtors.

US auto union hails $5 billion GM stock buy-back

Shannon Jones

The announcement by General Motors Monday that it will carry out a $5 billion stock buy-back and issue another $5 billion in dividend payments has evoked an enthusiastic response from the company’s wealthy investors. This includes the United Auto Workers union, which holds over $5 billion in GM stock through its retiree health benefit trust fund, making it the company’s largest single stockholder.

The move by GM is part of a deal with former Obama auto task force member Harry Wilson, who represented a group of hedge funds seeking a share of GM’s cash hoard of some $25 billion. Wilson had initially sought an $8 billion stock buy-back, but the huge payout offered by GM satisfied Wilson, who said he would drop his bid for a seat on the company’s board of directors.

Following the settlement, Cindy Estrada, UAW vice president in charge of relations with GM, issued a statement praising the deal. “The strategic process outlined today leaves room for our members to prosper, strong product investment for customers, and a healthy, well-positioned company,” she declared.

These remarks, spoken in the language of a corporate executive, sum up the anti-worker character of the UAW. Stock buy-backs are a form of financial parasitism, aimed at siphoning off profits extracted from the labor of workers and funneling them into the pockets of investors by driving up stock prices.

The UAW itself stands to profit handsomely from this operation. When Wilson first initiated talk of a buy-back, GM shares shot up by some 4 percent, translating into a $200 million gain in the UAW’s equity stake.

The growing phenomenon of stock buy-backs is an indication of the moribund character of US and global capitalism. Instead of using profits to expand production, invest in research and development, increase employment or raise wages, companies are with increasing frequency spending billions to pad the bank accounts of executives and wealthy investors by artificially driving up the price of their stock.

The funding of payouts to investors through stock buy-backs has reached manic proportions. According to a report in the Harvard Business Review, the 449 companies in the S&P 500 index paid out 54 percent of their earnings, a total of $2.4 trillion, to buy back their own stock between 2003 and 2012. Dividend payments accounted for another 37 percent, leaving almost nothing for productive investment.

The fact that the UAW lends its support to this process is indicative of what it has become. It functions not as a workers’ organization, but as a business entity whose financial model is based on obtaining a share of the profits sweated out of the workers in return for suppressing the class struggle and helping the corporations impose layoffs, cuts in wages and benefits, and speedup.

A small army of hundreds of full-time union officials each taking in more than $100,000 per year presides over an organization whose membership continues to dwindle. In an attempt to offset its declining dues revenue stream, the UAW relies increasingly on its direct holdings of company stock, giving it an even greater incentive to help push up profits at the expense of the workers.

The announcement of the stock buyback is particularly provocative given that the UAW is set to start talks later this year with GM and the other Detroit-based automakers on a new labor agreement. Senior autoworkers have had their wages frozen since 2007, while new-hires are working at a much lower starting wage, little more than half of standard base pay and barely above poverty level.

Among autoworkers there exists a strong sentiment to eliminate the two-tier wage system and secure a real wage increase and restored cost-of-living. Sentiment is also strong to eliminate the Alternative Work Schedule, which requires ten-hour shifts without the payment of overtime, and restore overtime pay after eight hours.

By its actions, the UAW is signaling in advance of the talks that it will place no significant demands on the auto companies, which are flush with profits based on the massive concessions wrung from autoworkers. Instead, the UAW will act as a “responsible” business partner by negotiating an agreement that allows the automaker to continue enriching stockholders.

The UAW’s deep hostility to the working class is epitomized by its friendly relations with corporate restructuring specialist Harry Wilson, who, in the 2009 bankruptcy and restructuring of GM, pushed for deep cuts in workers’ pay. Wilson epitomizes the further domination of Wall Street over the auto industry that was a central goal of the Obama administration’s restructuring scheme.

Wilson was also deeply involved in talks over the Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association, or VEBA, which was set up in 2007 to handle payment of retiree health benefits. He pushed for the VEBA, controlled by the UAW, to be funded by GM stock. The deal, a payoff to the UAW, gave the union a direct incentive to hold wages and benefits down in order to keep profits high.

Other unions also value Wilson’s services. The Teamsters recently appointed Wilson to be their representative on the board of directors of trucking company YRC Worldwide. In 2011, Wilson helped the Teamsters round up investors for the near-bankrupt company in exchange for labor concessions. Wilson reportedly pocketed millions from the deal.

New York City transit faces fiscal crisis despite fare hikes

Alan Whyte

Despite plans for another round of fare hikes, New York City’s mass transit agency is confronting a deepening fiscal crisis.

Bus and subway fares in New York City, fares on two commuter railroads, as well as the tolls charged on the bridges and tunnels controlled by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) will all increase by an average of 4 percent on March 22. While inflicting another assault on the living standards of average New Yorkers, the increases do not begin to fill the MTA’s budget hole.

The most immediate challenge is the shortfall of $15.2 billion out of $32.1 billion needed for the 2015-2019 capital improvement plan, and a projected $322 million deficit in the 2018 operating budget. For the capital plan, $22 billion is needed to repair and replace rails, switches, signals and fans that clear smoke out of tunnels when fires erupt.

The plan includes the purchase of 940 new subway cars, station reconstruction on six lines and replacing tunnel lighting, 84 miles of track and 175 switches that are more than 50 years old, as well as modernizing and repairing power facilities like substations and circuit breaker houses.

There are also proposals for the expansion of the subway system in order to deal with the growing problem of overcrowding. The MTA chairman, Tom Prendergast, acknowledges that while two years ago there was only one day a year when ridership would hit 6 million people, now there are up to 29 days a year when ridership reaches that number. It has been estimated that at least 1 million more riders will crowd the subway system over the next 10 years.

The MTA chairman recently admitted “If you want to go down to a very crowded line like the Lexington Avenue line at Grand Central or 14th street, maybe two, three years ago you wouldn’t get on the first train, but you’d probably get on the second train. Now, it may take you three or four trains.”

Lee Sander, who was MTA chairman from 2007 to 2009, has said that if these projects don’t go through, “…we’re going back to where we were in the 80s, with trains falling apart, bridges falling apart, just the system collapsing. We came to a near collapse in the 80s.” He also pointed out that “…what will also occur is that we won’t have relief for the crowding on the Lexington Avenue subway if we don’t continue with the Second Avenue.”

The first phase of the Second Avenue subway is scheduled to open in December 2016. However, without the necessary funding, the next phase of construction will come to a halt. In addition, other expansion plans such as bringing the Long Island Railroad into Grand Central terminal, and linking the Metro-North Railroad with Penn Station would be ended. Also, the capital plan includes the installation of a communications-based train control system on a number of lines, allowing trains to run more efficiently and much closer together.

One of the issues discussed in recent state legislative hearings on the capital plan was the transit agency borrowing money to pay for at least some of its projects. However, the MTA is already drowning in red ink. It now has a long term debt of $34.1 billion, an amount that is larger than the debt of at least 30 countries, according to Straphangers Campaign, a passenger advocacy group.

This is the result of earlier measures taken to save the transit system’s infrastructure, which had been neglected for so many years that it was on the verge of collapse. Since 1982, the authority spent $105 billion on buying new trains and buses, reconstructing stations, and replacing hundreds of miles of tracks and signals. However, due to a lack of funding by federal, state, and city governments, the agency accumulated massive debt.

The underfunding problem continues. New York’s Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo, has called the capital plan “bloated.” His latest budget proposal offers a woefully inadequate $1.15 billion over five years. The self-described progressive New York City Democratic mayor, Bill de Blasio, has offered the authority only $40 million a year, less than half the $100 million previously contributed by the city.

The MTA and both Democratic and Republican politicians, of course, never consider taxing the city’s many multi-millionaires and billionaires to pay for the mass transit shortfall. Instead, they constantly seek to make the working population pay more through higher fares and tolls, more sales taxes, as well as financial and productivity sacrifices imposed upon transit workers.

The MTA has already cut $1 billion from its annual spending with more cuts planned every year to bring the annual savings to $1.6 billion by 2018.

A state comptroller’s report issued last October has concluded that every $1 billion that the authority borrows translates into a 1 percent fare hike. In 2015, the MTA will pay $2.2 billion, or 17 percent from its $13.5 billion operating budget just to pay “debt service.” In addition to the fare hike taking place on the 22nd of this month, another one is scheduled for 2017.

Prendergast has stated that he is open to placing an even greater financial burden on working people by charging new tolls on the city-controlled East River and some Manhattan bridges. Others, such as former MTA chairman and lieutenant governor Richard Ravitch, have proposed increasing the regressive state gas tax.

According to two recent reports, more than 20 percent of New York City residents live in poverty, and nearly half of all New Yorkers survive on less than 150 percent of the poverty line. This is in the same city that has the country’s highest concentration of the super-rich. These include the world’s fourteenth richest man, according to Forbes magazine, the former mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, who has a personal worth of $35.5 billion, enough to either wipe out the MTA’s long term bond debt or pay for the entire 2015-19 capital improvement program with a significant amount of cash left over. But under the current capitalist set-up, these vast resources will never be used for the benefit of working people and students who both work in and must use the transit system.

As the mass transit system’s fiscal crisis deepens, anger over overcrowding and deteriorating conditions continues to grow among both transit workers and riders.

Richard Ballentine, a 19-year veteran subway conductor, told the WSWS: “I think the overcrowding, breakdowns and delays have a lot to do with the mixing of new signals in with the old ones. They are trying to upgrade the system, but you put the new stuff in with the old, and there still a problem.

“When there are many delays or serious delay, sometimes I will have to miss my lunch. Anytime the passengers are stuck, I am stuck. We feel the pain together. There was a problem on the downtown train this morning. My passengers had to get off at Christopher St. and catch another train. When passengers are delayed like that, they are often made late for work. Now, I’m delayed. My train should have been leaving here at 4:21 p.m., but it won't go off until 4:45 p.m. to take me back to the Bronx where I am supposed to go before picking up my granddaughter in New Jersey. But you can’t get to a phone here to call and make new arrangements.

“I see passengers up close and personal every day, and I work every line. I don’t see why they need a fare increase. There are enough people riding the subway every day. Look how much money they are making with the tolls already. But they want to raise the fares again; I can’t see it.”

Pavlove Jean-Charles works and is a student at LaGuardia Community College. He emphasized, “The trains are so crowded. With so many more people on the trains that I see every day, there is no reason to raise the prices.

“I work in the morning and go to school in the afternoon and night. There are two or three delays on the trains I ride every day. Then the train announcements only repeat we are delayed because of train traffic in front of us. I’ve been made late for work in the morning until I decided to get up and leave my house 30 minutes earlier each day.”

Quamay Griffin explained. “I take the subway to work every day. I work as a porter at a restaurant in Manhattan. These trains are very crowded. They could speed up the trains, but they have been cutting back instead.

“I don’t like fare hikes. I need my job, but one time I didn’t have the money to pay the fare to get to work. They tell you when you don’t have the fare to talk to the station booth operator and the police will allow you to ride. They told me no, so I jumped the turnstile to get to work. When they caught me, they put me in jail. I didn’t get out until the next day. Sometimes I have to call off work because of the delays.”

Another passenger said, “Yesterday, I lost almost an hour and a half of overtime pay because two Metro-North trains were disabled at 125th Street. When we arrived at that station, the conductor told the crowds waiting on the platform that there was no room in our train, but 20 or 30 people pushed onto the train anyway. Many said that they had been waiting more than two hours to get on a train.

“Last week I had one of the worst days ever riding the subway. I had to wait for the fifth train to come by at Grand Central station before I could get on. One commuter said to me, ‘If they are treating us like animals, we will start acting like animals.’

“When I got to work, someone asked how much money do you think people have lost from train breakdowns, overcrowding and delays this year. I told my coworker that while I don’t know how much we have lost, not only will they not pay us back, but before the month is over they are going to raise fares again.”

Fraternity banned, students expelled from University of Oklahoma after racist video appears online

Nick Barrickman

The University of Oklahoma chapter of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) fraternity was disbanded this weekend after a video emerged online showing members chanting racially-charged sing-along songs at what was apparently a fraternity function.

The video was posted online by the campus activist group Unheard and features SAE members referring to African Americans as “n___ers” and making allusions to lynchings.

The fraternity was evicted from campus grounds on Monday, with University President David Boren calling for an investigation into the club’s membership and the “ringleaders” of the incident. Boren threatened to expel anyone found to have participated in the chant.

“We vow that we will be an example to the entire country of how to deal with this issue,” Boren declared. “There must be zero tolerance for racism everywhere in our nation.”

Speaking of the decision to ban the fraternity, White House press secretary Josh Earnest called the university’s response “an appropriate step.”

On Tuesday, Boren announced that two students had been expelled, citing their “leadership role in leading a racist and exclusionary chant which has created a hostile educational environment for others.”

After revoking the local chapter’s charter at the University of Oklahoma and suspending its members, SAE published a statement on its national web site apologizing “for the unacceptable and racist behavior of the individuals in the video,” and declaring that “we are disgusted that any member would act in such a way.”

Hip hop artist Waka Flocka Flame denounced the fraternity and said he had canceled plans to perform at the university. Students assembled outside the fraternity house to protest the video in the days after its release.

The fraternity, which has historical ties to the antebellum South, has been involved in a rash of incidents of a reactionary character. Founded in 1856 at the University of Alabama, SAE boasts on its web site that of the group’s 400 original members, “369 went to war for the Confederate States and seven for the Union Army.”

Today, with more than 200,000 living alumni and 15,000 active members, the fraternity has had at least 130 chapters written up for incidents that violate “health and safety” standards at campuses since 2010, according to the fraternity’s web site. A number of deaths that occurred at SAE chapters from 2006 to 2013 prompted Bloomberg News to call the organization the “deadliest frat” in America.

In 2006, a student at the University of Memphis quit the fraternity after alleging that he had been harassed for dating an African American woman. At Washington University in St. Louis, fraternity members were seen singing racist chants to black students. Valdosta State University’s chapter was denounced for flying a Confederate flag in its yard.

The fraternity includes among its alumni prominent figures in both the Democratic and Republican parties as well as sports, education and business figures. Current and formerly serving US politicians belonging to the fraternity include the former Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and current US ambassador to China Max Baucus, former Republican senator from South Carolina and current president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank Jim DeMint, and former Republican governor of New Mexico and Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson.

Business figures include Ross Perot, Jr., head of Perot Systems and son of the former presidential candidate, and billionaire financier T. Boone Pickens.

The leaked video clearly had a racist content and should be taken as a warning of a certain growth of right-wing forces on college campuses, encouraged by US militarism and the build-up of the police powers of the state. At the same time, Oklahoma University President Boren appeared to be driven in his response by the implications of the scandal for the university’s standing and by the potential for a loss of financial support from alumni and patrons.

Boren, the former Democratic governor of Oklahoma and long-time US senator, including an extended tenure as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, rushed to expel the two SAE members without allowing them any opportunity to defend themselves. His summary actions set a chilling precedent that may violate constitutionally-protected free speech rights and could be used to suppress political opposition on the left.

UK general election: Labour tries to deflect from its commitment to continued austerity

Paul Mitchell

Labour Party shadow chancellor Ed Balls claimed on Monday that the Conservative Party, should it remain in power after the May 7 general election, would carry out £70 billion worth of cuts—“the most extreme in post-war history”.

Balls presented a dossier depicting life under a Conservative “35 percent state”. This is a reference to Chancellor George Osborne’s plans to reduce public spending to 35.2 percent of national income (gross domestic product, GDP) by 2019-2020—the lowest level since the 1930s.

Osborne’s plans, Balls explained, would see three government departments—the Foreign Office, Department for Work and Pensions, and Department for Transport—“disappear.” The state-funded National Health Service “as we know it” would be gone, he went on, and the army reduced to its smallest size since the days of Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s.

The extra cuts resulted from “five hidden factors”, Balls said, including a promise to increase pensions and capital spending, and plans to increase the tax-free personal allowance to £12,500, likely to be announced in next Wednesday’s Budget. In total, this would mean that “the Tories would in the next five years need to make spending cuts which add up to a staggering total of £70 billion”, he declared.

For all Balls’s denunciations, Labour has no fundamental quarrel with the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats on slashing public spending. It was then-Labour chancellor Gordon Brown who declared in 1999 that his government was intent on reducing spending to less than 35.9 percent of GDP.

Under Ed Miliband, Labour remains equally committed to austerity and “balancing the budget”. This is why the party voted overwhelmingly with the Tory-led government in January to rush the Budgetary Responsibility Bill through parliament before the election. Committing all future governments to permanent austerity, it makes a mockery of any notion of democratic accountability.

Faced with poor poll ratings, however, Labour is desperately trying to salvage some credibility. But this resolves itself solely to the issue of how quickly spending cuts should be pushed through.

In December’s Autumn Statement, Osborne announced an additional £10 billion reduction in government spending by 2017-2018, rising to a potential £20 billion by 2019-2020 in order to achieve a £23 billion budget surplus.

Balls said that Labour would introduce a “tough but balanced and fair plan” in order to cut the deficit every year until the current budget was in surplus. He made sure not to spell out how much spending Labour would cut if it regains office, or where the cuts would fall.

Only in January, he had stipulated there would be no extra money for social care provided by local authorities, telling reporters, “There will be no additional funding for local government unless we can find money from somewhere else, but we have not been able to do that in the case of local government.”

In his bluster at Conservative intentions, Balls is creating something of a straw man. There are reports that Osborne, faced with falling inflation, a sharp drop in oil prices and lower debt servicing costs, might have to temporarily adjust government plans.

More importantly, whichever government gets into power will be confronted by a continuing economic crisis.

Last month, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) warned that all the main UK political parties are likely to raise taxes and borrow more than planned or be forced “to attack some of the foundations of Britain’s welfare state.” IFS director Paul Johnson said departmental spending had been cut less heavily than planned over the past five years and much more was needed. “The public finances have a long way to go before they finally recover from the effects of the financial crisis,” he declared.

The IFS criticised proposals by the three main parties such as removing winter fuel allowances from rich pensioners or cutting housing benefit for young people because they “would reduce spending by relatively little”. Instead, there would have to be “further large” cuts, especially to the £220 billion-a-year social security budget—about a third of total government spending—at the same time as promised increases to state pensions, which already account for 55 percent of welfare spending, take effect.

The IFS explained that if the next chancellor froze all non-pension benefits for five years, it would save only £6.9 billion a year in real terms “much less than Mr Osborne’s target”. It suggested a number of options that would involve a “fundamental reform of the benefits system” including the way pensions increases are calculated (i.e., reduce them), abolishing child benefit for all families except those receiving universal credit benefit, cutting support for poorer families with children back to 2003 levels, and forcing all council house tenants to pay at least 10 percent of their rent, a huge figure for those on benefits or low incomes.

Without such cuts, the IFS said, there would be further huge job losses in the public sector, which “would reduce the size of the government workforce, and its share of total employment, to its lowest level since at least 1971”.

Some idea of what is being planned was revealed in a report this week about the Department for Work and Pensions. Some 30,000 out of 83,000 workers are expected to lose their jobs in the next five years, if another Conservative-led government is elected. Under Labour, it would be 20,000. In 2010, more than 121,000 people worked for the department.

Six years of austerity in the UK have already taken a terrible toll, with cuts in vitally needed public services being imposed alongside the ongoing privatisation of health care and education. British workers suffered the biggest drop in real wages of all major G20 countries, which have fallen more sharply than at any time since records began. Only the wages of Greek workers have plummeted faster than those in the UK. Around 5 million people are paid below the living wage (set last year at £7.40 per hour), and there has been a huge increase in zero hours working and other insecure contracts.

To supplement low wages, millions are forced to rely on welfare top-ups, the real value of which are constantly dropping, as they have not risen with inflation. The number of people who have had their Job Seeker’s Allowance payments “sanctioned” and suspended, leaving them with no income, rose to 800,000 last year, the highest level ever.

The latest figures show that 13 million people are living in poverty, nearly a quarter of the population. Almost all the major cities in the UK, and a large number of London’s boroughs, have more than 30 percent of children in poverty. Child benefit paid to parents at £20.50 a week for the first child and £13.55 for every other child has been frozen since 2010.

Cuts already imposed nationally and carried out by local authorities have led to the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs and the reduction and closure of social services. The raft of new cuts to be inflicted by whatever government emerges from the May election will be even deeper and more widespread. To this end, councils throughout the UK have begun announcing massive cuts programmes to be finalised and passed in their 2015 budgets.

The aim of this relentless assault on living standards is to reverse all the social gains won by the working class in more than a century of struggle, including overturning the social right to public health, education and housing that formed the bedrock of the post-Second World War welfare state.

Germany’s poverty trap for welfare recipients

Elisabeth Zimmermann

More than 6 million people in Germany are dependent on social benefits, especially Hartz IV unemployment support. More than 3 million people live in poverty despite being employed. This is primarily a result of the Hartz laws, introduced by the Social Democratic Party (SPD)-Green coalition government of former SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, which forced the unemployed to accept virtually any type of work, regardless of how badly it paid.

A segment of the ARD television news program Monitor, broadcast February 26 and titled “The Long-term Unemployed: Whoever Tries to Do the Right Thing Gets Punished,” presented the stories of two young single mothers to illustrate how hard it is to break out of this poverty trap.

Jessica and Rosa were for years unemployed and dependent on welfare. Both sought and found a job-training scheme in which they were keen to participate. They put their names down for a masseuse course, hoping later to become physiotherapists.

Jessica, who became pregnant in her early twenties, initially had to take care of her son. She is now 33 years old and still trying to find a way out of the dead end of the Hartz IV system.

At first she described how good it felt to be training for a job, saying it gave her life meaning and allowed her to learn something new every day. But she was under a great deal of pressure to pull out of the training scheme because the job centre stopped paying her full Hartz IV benefits. She received only a child allowance of about €500 for her son. She said that was not enough for both of them to live on.

Jessica is currently working evenings as a cleaner, which brings in €160 a month. She has had to borrow money from friends to make ends meet. But if the job centre persists with its policy, she will have to give up the training course in order to regain the Hartz IV benefits and avoid losing her flat.

The case of Rosa, a single mother of four children, is very similar. She also wants to climb out of Hartz IV dependency and find something better than a government “one-euro” position or doing odd jobs. She has a high school diploma and speaks four languages.

Every day, she spends several hours learning to become a physiotherapist. Her education at a university hospital is free, but she does not receive any training allowance. She too desperately needs her Hartz IV subsistence benefits to be continued until she has finished her training and can stand on her own feet.

Rosa’s Hartz IV benefits were cut because she was officially classified as being unavailable for a job in the labour market. “That’s double-dealing, pure and simple,” she says. “I want to be independent. I want to go to work. And my question is: is Hartz IV there to help people or to let them sink even deeper into poverty?”

Rosa has now received a notice of eviction from the flat where she lives with her four children. She is completely worn out and says her biggest fears are “losing the apartment, losing my child, losing my trainee position.” She adds, “Actually, my whole future is at stake.”

Hartz IV, currently providing €399 a month and a rent subsidy, amounts to a poverty level existence. But the conditions attached to Hartz IV and the provisions allowing Hartz IV benefits to be reduced or eliminated push people into destitution.

These sanctions are not simply due to arbitrary decisions on the part of job centres. They are the intended consequence of the Hartz laws adopted by the SPD and Greens ten years ago. The onerous conditions for drawing unemployment support were developed in close cooperation with the trade unions and served to create and maintain a huge low-wage sector. It is a system that the current government coalition of the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union and SPD by no means wants to disown.

In the Monitor broadcast, Professor Stefan Sell of the University of Koblenz explains: “The existing Hartz IV legislation actually rules out any reasonable vocational training for those who have no vocational qualifications whatsoever. On the contrary, it forces its agents—for example, staff in job centres—to comply with the idea of getting people into any job at all, and as fast as possible. That’s the main purpose of the Hartz IV law.”

Vocational training of Hartz IV recipients is sponsored by the job centres in less than one percent of the cases. Whoever takes up this kind of job training receives €50 less than the normal Hartz IV allowance rate. If a trainee is over 30 years old or fails to meet other criteria, he or she gets absolutely nothing. This is what happened to Jessica and Rosa. Making matters worse, the resources for unemployment support have been reduced by more than half just since 2011.

Certain programs offered by the job centres have auspicious-sounding names, such as “Job Market for Single Parents” and “Active in the Future,” but they don’t amount to anything. People who take the initiative of trying to improve their employment chances by participating in a proper job-training course are punished with the withdrawal their Hartz IV benefits and left destitute.

Canada helping arm Kiev regime to fight Ukrainian civil war

Roger Jordan

Canada’s Conservative government, which is already supplying “non-lethal” military aid to Ukraine’s US-backed government, is now moving toward providing weapons to the Ukraine Army and the ultra-nationalist and fascist militia that are fighting alongside it—both directly and through a network of Canadian-Ukrainian businessmen and nationalist organizations.

Defence Minister Rob Nicholson denounced Russia while on a trip to Europe last week. In bellicose tones, he proclaimed that Ottawa would never recognize Russian “claims” to “Ukrainian territory,” stating, “Get out, Putin. Russians, get out of Ukraine. Let’s bring some stability back to that area.”

Without citing a shred of evidence, Nicholson charged that the Minsk ceasefire agreement, which brought fighting in eastern Ukraine to a halt last month, has been violated on several occasions by Moscow. “We’ve seen all kinds of instances of violations of the agreement,” claimed Nicholson.

Contrary to the Canadian government’s propaganda, the Ukrainian crisis was provoked by the United States, Germany and its allies, including Canada, and continues to be stoked by them. They helped orchestrate the fascist-led February 2014 coup that overthrew Ukraine’s elected president, Viktor Yanukovitch; have encouraged the new regime in Kiev to mount brutal civil war against the Ukrainian population in the Donbas region; and have threatened Russia with war by dramatically expanding NATO’s presence along Russia’s Eastern European borders and on the Black Sea.

Recent reports in the Globe and Mail have provided important information concerning the leading role Canadians are playing in supplying lethal and non-lethal aid to the Ukrainian army and volunteer battalions fighting the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. While the Globe, Canada’s leading big business daily, fails to make this point, the inescapable conclusion from its reports is that the Canadian government supports this aid and is facilitating it.

Conservative MPs have spoken at fundraising events organized by Army SOS, the group that is coordinating much of the supply effort. The Canadian government has deemed Army SOS’s, efforts to raise money and other donations from Ukrainian-Canadians a charitable enterprise meriting it special tax-status as a charitable organization. And, last but not least, many of the individuals involved are connected with a network of Ukrainian-Canadian organizations led by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress that for decades, under Liberal and Conservative governments alike, has been used to “partner” with so-called civil society groups in the Ukraine, helping to organize and fund pro-western political organizations and media.

Lenna Koszarny, who hails from London, Ontario, is coordinating the delivery of supplies from Army SOS to the Ukrainian Army and its militia allies. She is also a leader of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC), serving on its Ukraine advisory council.

The Globe report details how Army SOS has supplied military clothing and equipment, including guns and surveillance drones, directly to the frontlines. Frequently bypassing the Ukrainian army, Army SOS has helped supply some of the notorious extreme right-wing volunteer battalions. An Army SOS member justified this in a Globe interview with the admission that the Ukrainian government and army are mired in corruption.

In Ukraine itself, no secret is made of where this aid is coming from. As the article notes, “In the Kiev headquarters of Army SOS, a volunteer organization that aids Ukraine’s warriors in the field, the Maple Leaf hangs in both the warehouse on the first floor and the drone factory upstairs. Until recently, Canadian flags were often included with supplies delivered by Army SOS to the front – which likely explains why Canada’s colours have been seen flying on the front lines outside of the rebel capital of Donetsk.”

Canadian volunteers have also joined the fighting, apparently from quite early on, with at least one fighting for the notorious Azov battalion, which uses Nazi insignia and aims to establish an ethnically pure Ukraine. This individual, whose whereabouts are currently unknown, was quoted by media in Mariupol last year proclaiming himself a “national socialist” fighting to defend ethnic Ukrainians and their culture.

Another volunteer combatant, who fought for a battalion that has been accused by Amnesty International of carrying out abductions and possible executions, has returned to Canada where he is participating in Army SOS events to raise funds and encourage Canadian volunteers to join the fighting. At one recent event in Toronto, which was attended by two Conservative MPs, Army SOS raised C$52,000.

Even the Globe was compelled to note the glaring contrast between the government’s treatment of those who have gone to war with fascist militias in Ukraine and those going to Syria and Iraq to join the ranks of Islamic State.

The ultra-reactionary character of the “volunteers” aligned with the Ukrainian government was acknowledged by Mychailo Wynnyckyj, a Ukrainian-Canadian professor who teaches in Kiev and is involved with Army SOS. Speaking of the forces Army SOS is helping supply with money and military supplies, he said, “Would I like these fighters to be my neighbour? Probably not. But when you’re fighting a war, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

The Globe report itself noted that the militias being patronized by Army SOS—with at least the tacit support of the Canadian government—-are far from under the control of the government in Kiev and might well ultimately seek to overthrow it. “If there is a huge military defeat, the battalions could come to Kiev and stage a coup,” an anonymous Ukrainian government adviser told the Globe .

These latest revelations are entirely in keeping with Canada’s role in Ukraine over the past quarter-century. The first country to recognize Ukrainian independence in 1991, Ottawa, working in close concert with Washington and through Ukrainian-Canadian organizations, has invested heavily in pro-western groups, helping organize the 2004 Orange Revolution and the Maidan protests that ended in Yanukovitch’s overthrow .

The Harper government has also been among the most bellicose supporters of the new regime in Kiev, repeatedly calling for more sanctions and threatening military moves against Russia.

Last month, as the Obama administration stepped up the pressure on Moscow with its threat to consider supplying Ukraine with lethal military equipment, Harper signaled his government would be prepared to follow suit. Commenting during a visit by German Chancellor Angela Merkel to Ottawa, he refused to rule out any course of action, so long as a consensus is reached between Canada’s NATO allies.

The UCC, for its part, has ties to the Ukrainian nationalist movement under the leadership of Stepan Bandera that collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II. Some of its constituent organizations were founded by veterans of Bandera’s nationalist forces, which participated in the mass killings of Jews and Poles during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine.

Working through these channels, the Canadian government has forged ties with right-wing Ukrainian oligarchs and businessmen with whom it is keen to do business. Negotiations are currently ongoing on a free trade agreement between the two countries, and Ukraine is on Canadian foreign ministry list of Ottawa’s top twenty “countries of focus.”

The direct connection between these economic interests and the more immediate military goals is clear for all to see by considering the individuals involved in financing and supplying the volunteer battalions on behalf of Canadian imperialism. The UCC’s Koszarny divides her time between supplying the front with weaponry from Army SOS and working as an investment banker. Bohdan Kupych is a Ukrainian-Canadian who has led a team of software developers to produce an artillery targeting system that has been provided to battalions to assist in the shelling of separatist-held areas, attacks which have produced the deaths of hundreds of civilians.

During a recent visit to Canada, Andriy Parubiy, who led the volunteer security forces of the Maidan protesters and in the 1990s co-founded the far-right Social National Party of Ukraine with the current leader of the neo-fascist Svoboda Party, commented that Canada had been Kiev’s most reliable ally. Now serving as deputy Prime Minister in the Poroshenko regime, Parubiy remarked, “Canada has been a kind of leader in the world vis-a-vis Ukraine.”

During his trip, Parubiy met with Foreign Affairs Minister Nicholson, the parliamentary secretary to the defence minister James Bezan, and House of Commons Speaker Andrew Scheer. He told the Globe that he hoped Canada will use its influence with Washington to convince the Obama administration to supply weapons to Kiev.

The social crisis in Greece: Part Two

WSWS Reporters

“If you visit a hospital right now you will see that they are in shambles”

Today 3 million Greeks, around a quarter of the population, have no health insurance and no right to receive state-funded health care.

The European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund’s Greek austerity programme insists that spending on public health cannot rise above 6 percent of GDP. According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) figures, health spending per head in Greece dropped by 25 percent between 2009 and 2012, and has not improved since.

Imposing these unprecedented cuts has destroyed an advanced public health care system built up over decades.

The human cost has been staggering. Two health care trade unions issued figures in September 2014 showing that 850 medical clinics have been abolished, 10,000 beds shut down and 30,000 front-line positions removed. Eleven hospitals have closed since the beginning of the crisis.

Six thousand doctors at public clinics have been laid off. Funding for mental health care has been slashed by 55 percent.

Public spending on pharmaceuticals has more than halved, leading to 200 medicines being destocked by pharmacies. The budget cuts have led to new fees for prescriptions and charges for outpatient visits to hospital being raised from €3 to €5.

Evgenia Thanou is the general manager of Medicin du Monde (Doctors of the World). It provides free health care to those who can’t afford it and has five poly-clinics in Greece. The organisation provides other vital services, including helping 1,800 families with food supplies.

Evgenia Thanou

Thanou told the World Socialist Web Site, “In an interview three years ago Doctors of the World predicted that Greece was on the verge of a humanitarian crisis. … At the time we were told that we were being over the top—not just by the government, but also by other NGOs, which didn’t see this coming.

“Unfortunately we have been proved correct. If you visit a hospital right now you will see that they are in shambles. You will see patients in wards, but no staff. You will see relatives at the bedside of patients carrying out nursing duties.”

Thanou continued, “In July last year the Greek government issued health cards to people with no medical coverage. According to official statistics there are around 3 million people in Greece without such coverage, but these cards were given out to only 500,000. These cards do not grant full access to the health care system every time a person gets sick, but only cover a maximum of one sickness event per year. In effect these people are still without cover. For instance, if I get the flu now and I use my card, then if I get sick again in spring I won’t have access to the health care system.”

In 2012, a mother was told she would not be able to take her newborn baby home: “The woman was uninsured and went to a public hospital to give birth, but because she could not pay for the delivery the hospital authorities would not give her the baby. Our organization intervened in this case and publicized it. As a result, babies are not taken away from mothers anymore. However, the debt is not written off, but is transferred onto the tax code of either the mother or the father.”

This has created new problems since if a person owes more than €5,000 in tax then an immediate arrest warrant is issued and he or she is taken into custody until that debt is paid off: “For example, the situation of a woman with no health coverage giving birth in a public hospital would typically indicate that her husband already owed money in tax and for this reason had not kept up with payments into his health insurance fund and had other expenses to cover.

“Hence, even though the mother could take the baby home, there would be a danger that the husband would go to jail. In one case our organization paid the €1,500 cost of delivery so that the woman’s husband would not go to jail.”

Dental workers treating children at the Doctors of the World headquarters in Athens

The authorities have stopped at nothing to enforce suffering: “There are people being supported by Doctors of the World who would phone us from jail and we would go there to visit them with their medicine. These people had been jailed because they had exceeded the €5,000 tax limit. They had committed no crime; they hadn’t robbed anyone. They simply owed money as a result of being unemployed.”

Thanou said the situation was “very challenging and we are not here to replace the state. It’s the state’s responsibility. We’re here to assist.”

Thanou explained that people have died and many more are having their lives imperilled by the health cuts: “There are people with tumours who can’t afford the cost of chemotherapy, which costs €2,500 for a single dose. As a result there are people who have died because they have not been able to get the correct treatment from the point of diagnosis.

“We can’t give an overall number because we only see the cases that come to us. We can, however, say that people have indeed died as a result of the crisis in the Greek health care system. People with a chronic illness face many problems.

People queing to be seen at the Doctors of the World facility

“There are only one or two pharmaceutical companies that still operate in Greece. The rest have left. The ones that are still here find it more profitable to export drugs instead of supplying the Greek market. As a result, if drugs are needed these have to be reimported.

“Before the crisis there was an overconsumption of drugs supplied by multinationals via doctors and the various deals that were made. This was directly fostered and encouraged by government policy. We said that this was not right, that drugs should only be administered when they’re really needed, rather than to prop up huge pharmaceutical giants who profit at the expense of patients. However, [in 2010] patients were held to ransom [with the supply of drugs abruptly withheld], which was not right because once again it was the uninsured and innocent people who paid the price.”

We asked Thanou what she thought would happen if there were an epidemic in Greece today. She replied, “If there was an epidemic outbreak in Greece it would have a massive impact and unfortunately we don’t know what we would be able to do and how it would be tackled.

“That’s why we’re all praying that something of this magnitude doesn’t happen, because we believe that we won’t be able to cope. When the Ebola epidemic broke out, because we have people [from Africa] that pass through Greece either in transit or to stay, we were praying that it wouldn’t spread to Greece because we knew we would not be able to handle it at all.”