Workers Struggles: Europe, Middle East & Africa

Northern Ireland public sector strike

Public sector workers in Northern Ireland, organised by the Unite, Unison and GMB unions, are holding a one-day strike today. Workers employed in health and education are taking part, alongside other public sector staff, including Translink public transport employees who operate buses and trains in the province.

The action is in opposition to the Stormont government plans for austerity cuts that will slash 20,000 jobs. The Northern Ireland province is heavily dependent on public sector employment.

Rallies and marches are planned in major cities and larger towns including Belfast, Derry, Enniskillen, Omagh and Newry.

Ongoing dispute by London art gallery staff

Staff at the National Gallery in London are due to begin a two-day strike on Saturday, followed by five further days from March 24.

They first took strike action in January against the gallery’s plans to privatise two-thirds of the 600 jobs on site.

Emergency call operators in south east England escalate dispute

Telephone operators taking emergency calls for the Essex County Fire and Rescue service in south east England began an eight-day strike on Tuesday. They are represented by the Fire Brigades Union (FBU).

The action is in response to the authority introducing new shift patterns for the telephone operators. A majority of the operators are women with young families and the newly introduced shift patterns make it difficult for them to balance their work and family lives. Some of the operators have had to leave their jobs or cut their hours as a result of the new shift patterns.

Airport ground staff at two German airports walk out

Ground crew staff belonging to the Verdi union at Dusseldorf and Hannover airports began a six-hour strike Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. The action affected mainly check-in desks and baggage handling services.

According to Verdi, 90 percent of its 230 members at Dusseldorf joined the action, while 60 workers walked out at Hannover.

The employees are in dispute over a wage claim with their company, Aviapartner, which provides ground services. The strike follows four days of fruitless negotiations.

Sympathy action by Finnish air staff

The Finnish Aviation Union (IAU) held a 14-hour strike on Sunday, in sympathy with striking pilots at budget airline Norwegian Air, in a dispute over working conditions and job security.

The IAU strike led to cancellation of some flights from Helsinki. Baggage handling and customer services were the main areas affected.

On Tuesday, the Norwegian Air strike was suspended after 11 days, after the union and company officials announced they had reached a deal. The strike had grounded Norwegian’s flights, affecting 200,000 passengers. The union claimed to have secured a three-year employment guarantee, while agreeing to more flexible working hours.

French ferry workers bring Channel port to standstill

After staff held a meeting on board the cross channel ferry Berlioz, on Tuesday morning they decided to go on strike till 6 p.m. that day. The Berlioz is owned by the MyFerryLink company. It was berthed in the port of Calais and the action meant other ferries were unable to leave or enter the port, bringing all sailings to a halt.

The action follows a decision by the UK competition authorities that the company must cease running its ferry services between Calais and Dover because the company has a partnership agreement with Eurotunnel.

Irish retail staff vote for action

Staff at the Irish retail store chain Dunnes voted by a two-thirds majority to strike on Thursday, April 2. Around 5,000 staff at 107 stores throughout Ireland are expected to take part in the strike. Management at the privately owned company have threatened to carry out layoffs and redundancies should the strike go ahead.

The shop workers are members of the union Mandate. The grievances include failure of the management to negotiate on previously agreed terms, low pay and the use of contracts with no fixed hours. Such contracts result in Dunnes employees having uncertain incomes, making it impossible to enter into financial arrangements such as mortgages.

Strike by Maltese public transport workers

The Union Haddiema Maqghudin (UHM) held a two-hour strike of its members at Malta Public Transport (MPT) on Thursday evening.

The UHM is in dispute with a rival union General Workers Union (GWU) as to who has the most members at the company. There is a similar dispute at the Malta Freeport where the GWU had ordered a go-slow and work-to-rule over the weekend. In this case, GWU is claiming to be the majority union of the employees.

Middle East

Egyptian cement workers demand profit share

Six hundred employees of the Suez Cement Company came out on strike on Sunday after management refused their demand to have their full share in the company profit share scheme. Management had cut back on one month’s payment out of twelve of the share scheme.

The workers are based at the company’s Wadi Hogul branch in Suez. Their colleagues at the Moqattam branch and at the company’s main headquarters are also taking part in the action.

Suez Cement is one of Egypt’s leading cement manufacturers and employs 3,500 workers in total at five sites.

Israel trade union general strike call

Israel’s trade union federation Histadrut was planning to proceed with its general strike call in south Israel in the lead up to the general election. The action is due to affect the area from Ashdod to Eilat and will include major public corporations such as Israel Mail, the Eilat airport, the water and electric companies and Israel’s largest bus company, Egged. Local government authorities, government offices and some private companies will also take part.

The action is to protest plans by Israel Chemicals (ICL) to lay off 140 workers at its Bromine plant in the south of Israel, as part of an efficiency drive. South Israel suffers higher unemployment compared to other parts of the country.

A challenge to the strike brought by manufacturing interests was being heard at the national labour court in Jerusalem on Wednesday to outlaw the action. At the time of writing the decision was not known.

Defiant action by migrant workers in the United Arab Emirates

Several hundred migrant workers from South Asia held a defiant strike and march in the affluent business district of Dubai on Tuesday to demand higher wages. They are employed in building the Fountains Views development, a project for Dubai-based Emaar Properties. The development is to create prestigious apartments for the rich.

According to press reports, the strike and demonstration were brought to an end after one hour following negotiations between the workers and police. Riot police were called to the scene but again, according to press reports, no arrests were made.

Africa

Nigerian university staff strike over unpaid wages

Nigerian lecturers and other workers went on strike on Monday at Benue State University demanding payment of outstanding wages.

They began their indefinite strike after the state governor reneged on an agreement to pay February’s wages. Union members will not get paid while out on strike as the Academic Staff Union of Universities concluded a previous strike with the signing of a ‘no work no pay agreement’. The union has declared there will be no return to work until the outstanding salaries are paid.

Nigerian steel workers sacked after strike

Four hundred Nigerian steel workers who took strike action at the Abuja Steel Mill, Niger state, on March 4 have been sacked.

The workers had gone on strike demanding a 2013 negotiated agreement be implemented. On returning to the mill to continue their protest, as they have been doing daily, they found armed police guarding the entrance with a notice on the gate announcing their sacking.

Nigerian journalists plan picket over missing pay

Journalists at the Nigerian ThisDay, Newswatch and Times newspapers are set to picket the company over non-payment of wages.

The journalists have not disclosed the day and time of the action.

On a previous picket of the company premises, the managing director set armed police on them.

Nigerian state workers in Ogun demand unpaid wages

State workers in the Nigerian state of Ogun, members of the Joint Negotiating Council (NJC), have begun a three-day warning strike. They are demanding five months unpaid wages.

They came out on strike after an agreement brokered by the union for the Ogun state government to pay February’s wages did not materialise.

The agreement had been based on the state government using workers’ own cooperative funds to cover February’s pay, but it turned out that the payments could not be accounted for. This led to the collapse of the agreement.

Similar action is underway in several other Nigerian states.

Namibian mining service workers continue dispute

Members of the Mineworkers Union of Namibia responsible for maintenance of seawalls, mining services and fuel management at B&E International, Luderitz, Namibia, have been on strike since February 16.

The company provides services to the Namdeb diamond mining company, which is 50 percent owned by the state and 50 percent by DeBeers.

Of the 200 strikers who initially took action, 79 workers were sent back to work after a labour court order ruled their jobs were essential services.

The workers have accepted a 15 percent pay increase and 50 percent rise in medical cover but there has been no agreement on pay negotiations and allowance for 2015-16, so the strike continues.

Canadian government seizes on first Iraq casualty to press for war

Roger Jordan

The death last week of Canadian Special Forces Sgt. Andrew Doiron provides further proof of Ottawa’s growing involvement in ground combat operations in Iraq, in spite of official claims that Canadian troops are there merely to train and advise local forces.

Canada’s first fatality in its six-month deployment, which commenced last October, occurred in a “friendly fire” incident, according to official accounts. A group of Special Forces personnel had just returned with their Kurdish peshmerga trainees from the front line and were apparently involved in a mix-up in the dark near an observation post. Three of Doiron’s colleagues were seriously injured in the incident and are recovering in hospital.

The official Canadian Armed Forces’ (CAF) press release announcing the death went out of its way to suggest that the soldiers were a long way from the front lines when the incident took place. Such efforts in damage control are driven by the awareness that Canada’s involvement in ground combat in another colonial-style counter-insurgency war is opposed by the overwhelming majority of the population.

Later reports revealed that the checkpoint in question was in fact just 200 meters from the front line. Kurdish media reported that the Canadian troops had shown up unannounced on the front line to call in coalition air strikes, a claim Ottawa has disputed. It contends that the CAF forces came under fire after being given clearance to proceed towards the checkpoint.

Already in January, it emerged that on more than two occasions, Canadian forces had engaged ISIS militants in gun battles and that the CAF Special Forces personnel are spending at least 20 percent of their time on the front lines, where they are directing air strikes by US coalition forces, including Canadian CF-18 fighters, and planning attacks by Kurdish militia.

Yet when parliament had debated a motion approving the mission last fall, the government insisted that Canada would have “no boots on the ground” in Iraq and no CAF personnel would be involved in ground combat operations.

Along with 69 Special Forces deployed to northern Iraq to work with the Kurdish peshmerga, Ottawa has contributed nine aircraft to the US-led bombing campaign of ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) targets in Iraq and Syria. Six CF-18 fighter jets are striking ISIS positions in Iraq, while two Canadian reconnaissance aircraft and a refuelling plane are assisting the bombing raids.

The Conservative government has seized on Doiron’s death to increase its propaganda in favour of a prolongation and major expansion of Canada’s participation in the new US-led Mideast war.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in a statement supposedly to express his regret over the first Canadian fatality in Iraq, concentrated instead on exploiting the event to encourage support for a wider intervention.

“Almost daily we see new evidence of the violent threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL: ISIS’s alternate name). More than ever, it is imperative that we, along with the more than sixty countries in the coalition, continue the campaign to halt ISIL’s spread and reduce its capacity to carry out terrorist attacks abroad and here in Canada,” declared Harper.

Continuing in this vein, he asserted, “We are proud to do our part and grateful to the men and women to whom it falls to carry out our commitment to peace and security.”

The claim that Canadian and coalition forces are in Iraq to bring peace is a gross lie. Their engagement is just the latest in a long line of wars and aggressive interventions mounted by Washington and its allies in the Middle East. The underlying goal of the US and its Canadian junior partners is to maintain US hegemony in the world’s most important oil-exporting region against their geopolitical rivals, above all Russia and China. Though ISIS has served as the initial pretext, the war is ultimately aimed at ousting the Syrian regime of Bashar-al Assad, a close ally of Iran and Russia, and replacing it with one subservient to Washington.

The current six-month CAF mission to Iraq is due to end at the beginning of April. Under these conditions, Harper’s remarks were an unmistakable sign that the operation will soon be extended.

This was the message Harper conveyed to Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi in a telephone call on Monday. According to his web site, Harper stressed the critical role of CAF personnel in Iraq and reassured Al-Abadi of Ottawa’s ongoing commitment to the international coalition against ISIS.

Earlier this month, Foreign Minister Rob Nicholson travelled to Iraq to meet with Iraqi government officials and visit the Special Forces troops in the north. In comments to journalists, he all but admitted that Canadian troops would remain in the country after the end of the six month period, stating, “Our mandate is until April 7, but we’ve indicated that Canada is not a country that stands on the sidelines, and we’re looking at ways that we have contributed and what is available for the future.”

According to a report in the right-wing National Post, senior military officials are merely waiting for the go-ahead from the government to lengthen the mission and expand the number of Special Forces personnel on the ground. Military sources told the newspaper that the initial deployment of forces had been able to establish the logistical and medical facilities in the region that would be required for a much larger military deployment.

A separate report in the Ottawa Citizen noted that military officers were fully expecting the government to make such an announcement. The report also strongly suggested that in extending the mission the government will expand it to include ground combat operations, not just training and advice to the Kurdish militias. As Colonel Steve Day, a former commander of Joint Task Force II, the elite Special Forces’ unit that is leading the current mission, told the newspaper, “I would like to see the Canadian Special Forces, the western special forces augment the number of guys on the ground and get on the offensive by manhunting. I mean going after the leadership, the financiers, the logistic know-its, and taking apart the network.”

These comments correspond with the policy of Washington, which already has 3000 military personnel involved in “training” the Iraqi army and anti-Assad “rebels” and is now planning for the Pentagon to take a more direct role in offensive operations against ISIS, specifically in the upcoming push to retake the city of Mosul. Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul has been under ISIS control since last June.

The intensification of military aggression in Iraq and Syria will only deepen the ethnic, national and religious tensions that threaten to trigger a much broader conflict. The imperialist assaults on countries in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia over the past quarter-century have produced chaos, killing hundreds of thousands, displacing millions, and tearing asunder entire societies.

Canada, under both Liberal and Conservative governments, has played a major role in this, taking a prominent role in the 1991 Gulf War, the Afghan war, and the bombardment of Libya in 2011.

A recent statement from Canada’s Defence Ministry ruling out speculation, prompted by a comment by Defence Minister Jason Kenney, that Ottawa might deploy CAF personnel to Libya points both to the breadth of Canada’s military engagement in the Middle East and the disaster imperialism has wrought in the region. Four years after a purported mission mounted in the name of establishing peace and democracy, Libya is a country in ruins, with rival Islamist militias—the erstwhile allies of Canada and the US—engaged in a brutal power struggle.

The latest developments in the Iraq mission also serve to underline the utterly fraudulent character of the professed opposition of Liberals and the trade union-based New Democratic Party (NDP) to the CAF’s Iraq mission. The mild criticism from NDP spokespeople directed towards the government has focused almost entirely on the dishonesty of the Conservatives last fall when they claimed that Canadian forces would not be involved in combat missions.

The NDP, as it has repeatedly declared, supports the aims of the US coalition—the shoring up of US hegemony over the Middle East and western-orchestrated “regime change” in Syria.

Beholden to Canada’s imperialist ruling elite, the social democrats will not expose how this latest war emerges out of the crimes of the western powers in the region or the predatory interests that are driving Canada’s ever-deepening role in imperialist wars and aggression around the world.

Australian audiences turn off Gallipoli TV war drama

Richard Phillips

After weeks of extensive television, print media and street posters advertising its Gallipoli television mini-series, the Nine Network has been forced to bring it to an abrupt end by screening double episodes. It ended on Monday, weeks ahead of schedule.

Gallipoli mini-series

The decision to “burn off” the seven-part series, which glorifies Australian military involvement in the Allied invasion of Turkey’s Gallipoli Peninsular in 1915, came after a plunge in viewer numbers. The show, one of numerous war-themed films, television programs and other “cultural events” produced as part of the World War I centenary “celebrations,” was timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli military campaign that began on April 25, 1915.

The incursion was the first major battle of Australian and New Zealand Army Corp (Anzac) troops in World War I and has long been promoted by the Australia establishment as the “birth of the nation.” Devised by the British high command, the Gallipoli campaign was a military disaster and abandoned after nine months with more than 50,000 Allied troops killed, including over 8,000 Australians and 2,700 New Zealanders.

The first episode of Gallipoli attracted over one million viewers on February 9. A week later the audience dropped by about half-million and the show rated 19 in the weekly television Top 20. By March 2 it had less than 400,000 viewers.

Nine Entertainment CEO David Gyngell told the media that although “research panels across the country” had predicted Gallipoli would be “the biggest show on television” this year, the show had become the network’s “biggest disappointment.”

Attempting to explain Gallipoli’s failure to attract a substantial audience, the Melbourne Age’s film and television critic Craig Mathieson, who had effusively praised it as “must-see television” in the lead-up to its premiere, said the problem was viewers’ attitudes. The poor ratings, he declared, “tells us that Australia’s sense of cultural inferiority is as strong as ever.”

Mathieson’s article produced a stream of angry responses from online readers with over 420 comments posted in 48 hours. (The original article and comments can be read here).

Readers roundly criticised the film and Mathieson’s comments, citing a range of reasons including its poor script, lack of character development and blatant commercialism—all of which is certainly true.

Many, however, were repulsed by the show’s glorification of nationalism, militarism and war. Some described the show as “jingoistic,” others said it was “tacky, commercially and politically driven propaganda,” and even “glorified mythological garbage.”

The comments are significant as this anti-war sentiment finds virtually no expression within the corporate media. All of the establishment parties have lined up in support of the barrage of government-sponsored WWI centenary propaganda and an escalating nationalist and militarist atmosphere. A number of the responses drew comparisons between World War I and more recent illegal US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A concerned military veteran wrote that the country seemed “obsessed with the mythology of our Australian military.” Another ex-soldier commented, “I would like to know why young Australians were invading Turkey…. Look at the mess we have created for ourselves invading Iraq. Gallipoli is one of our inglorious past events not something to be glorified as one our nation’s finest moments.”

One writer objected to the government’s promotion of militarism in schools, while another commented: “You watch it [the mini-series] and if you are like me you just become angry and upset at the waste, and then you remember that this government is still sending our troops into harm’s way and for what reason. This time for the US in the Middle East, before that it was for the US in Vietnam, and then it was for the UK in Europe.”

Another letter warned: “If you can glamorise war, when another stupid war kicks off, they will have a steady supply of willing cannon fodder lining around the block to sign up.”

Some of the responses challenged the so-called “Anzac legend,” the long-standing nationalist myth that Australia was “forged as nation” by Anzac troops during the Gallipoli invasion. Two letters denounced this mythology as “BS” and suggest that the Anzac legend is “relatively new.”

“When you realise that a fair bit of what you were told as a kid was a distortion in the name of ‘nation building’ it’s not a narrative you want to revisit much—unless there is going to be some clear sorting of fact from legend…”

Another reader asked, “Is Gallipoli all that Australia has to write about? If you watch the coverage of all things military and all things veteran on Australian TV you’d think as a nation we had a long history of military campaigns not the few instances that are reported and reworked time and time again. You’d think it was a military state and not a democracy…”

The comments reveal hostility to war and a healthy scepticism towards the media and the government in abundance. However, there is little understanding of why the Australian media and political establishment is spending an estimated $600 million on a four-year “celebration” of Australia’s military involvement in World War I.

In fact, Australia is a medium-sized imperialist power that has relied strategically firstly on Britain then, from World War II, on the United States, and as a consequence has fought in virtually every one of their wars. These include the bloody Maori wars in New Zealand in mid-19th century, Britain’s colonial interventions in Africa—Sudan in 1885 and later the Boer War in South Africa—through to World War I and as a US ally in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and the Middle East.

The “Anzac legend” of the prowess and mateship of Australian and New Zealand soldiers at Gallipoli has entered into patriotic mythology as the means of encouraging young people to enlist in new wars and to suppress anti-war opposition. For the ruling class, the Gallipoli campaign, even though disastrous militarily, demonstrated that it was just as willing to squander young lives as the other powers and therefore had earned a seat at the imperialist table. That is why it is hailed as the “birth of the nation.”

While the influence of the Anzac mythology waned in the face of mass opposition to the Vietnam War during the 1960s and 70s, it was deliberately revived by the Hawke and Keating Labor governments from 1983–1996 and continued by subsequent Labor and Liberal administrations. Australia has been involved in virtually all the US-led wars of the past two decades in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as its own neo-colonial interventions in East Timor and the Solomon Islands.

Those who were justifiably repelled by the Gallipoli mini-series should consider why large sums of money are being lavished on present unprecedented celebrations of World War I. The deepening breakdown of global capitalism that erupted in 2008 is fuelling sharpening geo-political tensions that are once again raising the danger of world war.

The entire political establishment has lined up behind the new US-led war in the Middle East, Washington’s provocative confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, and the transformation of Australia into US base of operations as part of its preparations in the Indo-Pacific region for war against China.

All of this goes hand in hand with deep inroads into democratic and legal rights under the pretext of the “war on terror” and the fanning of nationalist and militarist sentiment to condition the population, young people in particular, for new and more devastating wars.

Six dead in Bangladesh factory collapse

Peter Symonds

At least six workers are dead after a building extension under construction collapsed yesterday afternoon in the city of Mongla in Bangladesh. According to the Daily Star, workers had half-finished pouring concrete for the roof when the structure caved in at around 1 p.m.

The four-storey building was part of the military-owned Mongla Cement Factory established by the Sena Kalyan Sangstha or armed forces welfare association. The plant is one of the largest enterprises owned by the association.

Rescue operations involving the fire service, civil defence department, coast guard and paramilitary troops from the country’s border guard continued into the night in an effort to free workers trapped in the tangle of scaffolding, concrete blocks and debris.

Three of the dead have been named: Maharuf Hawlader, Amir Akandi and Al Amin. The number of injured and those still trapped is unclear as the number of people working on the site is unknown. Many of the workers were casual day labourers who are among the most oppressed layers of the working class.

Police officer Nizamul Hoque Molla, cited by Australia’s SBS News, said that rescuers had pulled more than 50 people out alive from the ruins. Mashhurul Haque, a doctor at the Khulna Medical College and Hospital, said that 24 injured workers had been brought to his hospital. One, who was in a critical condition, had been transferred to the capital, Dhaka.

Firefighter Mizanur Rahman said that at least 35 were still trapped in the wreckage. Local residents and survivors estimated that more than 100 people were working on the site at the time of the collapse.

District administration official Mohammad Abdus Samad told France 24: “There are more bodies inside debris. We’re trying to recover the living first.” The sixth body was removed last night at about 11 p.m.

Samad said that a nine-member committee had been formed to investigate the incident and would report its findings in seven working days. Like many other investigations into industrial accidents, ferry sinkings and other disasters, this investigation will be nothing more than a cover-up.

The factory construction was being carried out by ITCL, a local company, which was acting as the local agent for the chief contractor, China National Building Material Co. Ltd. ITCL site engineer Rafiqul Islam refused to answer media questions about the cause of the roof collapse.

An official with the military-owned Sena Kalyan Sangstha suggested to the Daily Star that “the scaffolding for the roof might have been weak causing the collapse.” Injured worker Masud Kazi pointed to the same issue, telling the newspaper that there could have been problems in setting up the scaffolding.

Bangladesh is notorious for shoddy construction and the non-enforcement of building standards.

More than 1,120 people, most of them garment workers, were killed in April 2013 when the eight-storey Rana Plaza complex suddenly collapsed as a result of substandard construction, in one of the world’s worst industrial disasters.

The scale of the tragedy provoked widespread popular anger threatening the country’s highly profitable garment export industry. The government, along with US and European multi-national corporations that source their products in Bangladesh, feigned concern and staged an elaborate campaign supposedly to ensure that similar disasters would not happen again.

US and European retailers supported by two international trade unions—the Swiss-based UNI Global Union and IndustriALL Global Union—established the Bangladesh Accord Foundation (BAF) to inspect and expose dangerous construction and working conditions in the country’s garment factories.

The BAF inspection system is largely cosmetic. It will inspect only 1,500 of the country’s 5,000 garment factories and has no power to force remedial action. Factories are only inspected if listed by a BAF signatory company.

As of this month, nearly two years after the Rana Plaza collapse, initial inspections had taken place at about 1,250 factories. Follow-up fire, electrical and structural inspections have only taken place at 227 factories. Another 263 inspections have been conducted in factories with “major structural concerns.”

As the latest building collapse demonstrates, the problem of unsafe, shoddy construction extends well beyond the garment export industry. In 2013, the country had an estimated 200 qualified building inspectors to examine millions of factories and many other structures.

Pennsylvania budget underfunds education, cuts taxes for the wealthy

Samuel Davidson

The $29.9 billion budget proposed for Pennsylvania continues the under-funding of education and other social programs along with tax hikes for the working class and tax cuts for the wealthy. Newly elected Democratic Governor Tom Wolf presented the budget last week.

Tax increases for the working class underwrite much of what is new in the budget. Wolf is seeking a 20 percent increase on individual income tax from 3.07 percent to 3.7 percent. His proposal does include tax forgiveness for those earning under 150 percent of the poverty line. But outside of this exception, Pennsylvania’s income tax is a regressive flat tax falling most heavily on working class and low-income individuals.

A recent study by the Keystone Research Center shows that the richest 1 percent, who receive nearly 20 percent of all income in the state, pay just 4.2 percent of their income in state and local taxes, while the middle 20 percent pay on average 10.3 percent of their income on state and local taxes.

The state sale tax will also be increased by 10 percent, from the current 6 percent to 6.6 percent. This is expected to raise the state some $1.6 billion in new revenue. Many exemptions to the sales tax, such as legal work, accounting and dry cleaning, will be ended. While food, clothing and prescription drugs will still be exempt, sales taxes are very regressive, since lower income people spend a much larger percentage of their earnings on items covered by the tax.

In addition, so-called “sin” taxes will be increased. The tax on a pack of cigarettes will rise from $1.60 to $2.60.

The Wolf administration claims that families earning under $100,000 a year would see no tax increase because his budget includes $2.1 billion in property tax relief. Neither Wolf nor other administration officials provided any details supporting this claim, while obvious facts point to the opposite.

Seventy percent of Pennsylvania households are homeowners, which leaves 30 percent of households that will not receive any of the property tax relief in the budget. Furthermore, this 30 percent is disproportionately made up of low-income workers, young families and minority households who rent and cannot afford a home. In those cases, landlords till pocket the tax break.

In total, these taxes are expected to bring in an additional $4.25 billion. While Wolf is increasing the taxes that will fall on the working class and the poor, he is cutting taxes for the wealthy and big business. Wolf is seeking to cut the corporate income tax from its current rate of 9.99 percent to 5.99 percent next year and 4.99 by 2018, a 50 percent reduction.

Wolf brags that the cut in the tax for corporations will mean that only three other states have lower income tax on corporations throughout the entire country. He claims that the tax cut will be offset by closing tax loopholes, but Republican lawmakers counter that it will cost $1.25 billion in revenue.

Wolf is also proposing a 5 percent tax on the value of natural gas extracted from the Marcellus and other shale gas. Long criticized for being the only gas producing state without any tax on gas extraction, falling gas prices means Wolf’s proposals will fall far short of the revenue he is claiming it will produce, leaving a gaping budget hole.

Education

Wolf’s defeat of his predecessor, Republican Tom Corbett, is generally attributed to the hostility of people to the deep cuts that Corbett made to education during his four years as governor. Wolf had promised that he would restore funding to education and other social services that were cut. This claim was further presented by the state’s two largest teachers unions as well as the unions representing state workers, who will now support and campaign for Wolf’s tax hikes.

Wolf’s budget does include an additional $1 billion for public education, but a closer look reveals that education remains massively underfunded.

First of all, Wolf has tied the increased education spending to his tax hikes. For their part, the Republicans who control the state legislature have said they will only consider increased taxes if there is a deal to cut the pensions of teachers and the 79,000 other state workers in return.

Second, $400 million of the $1 billion in additional funding going to local school districts is for teachers’ pensions, which have been underfunded for years. When the amounts put into the pension plans are not included, Wolf’s proposal for education amounts to an additional $260 million that can be used by school districts to hire teachers and pay for books and other supplies.

Wolf’s proposal does not address the general underfunding of education throughout the state. When compared to the 2010-11 school year, the year before Corbett’s cuts, Wolf’s budget amounts to an additional $142 million. Counting for inflation, Wolf’s proposed education funding amounts to a cut of over $600 million.

The five-year cumulative impact of the education cuts is $2.1 billion, when the money for pensions are taken into account. When not included, the cumulative five-year deficit is a staggering $5.5 billion. This lack of funds has forced the vast majority of school districts in the state to lay off teachers, close schools and cut programs.

The same holds true for higher education. Wolf’s budget increases spending on higher education from $1.6 billion to $1.76 billion, a $160 million increase over last year. However, spending on higher education still falls $166 million short of 2010-11 levels. When inflation is taken into account, the spending cut is $318 million from 2010-11, while the cumulative impact is a cut of over $2 billion in the past five years.

Pensions

Wolf claimed that his budget would fully fund the pensions for 79,000 state workers and 49,000 public school employees, which are currently underfunded by some $55 billion. In fact, Wolf’s proposal is merely to pay into the pension funds the amount stipulated in a 2010 act that, if followed for 30 years, might restore the pension to full funding if all other assumptions prove true.

Furthermore, the $1.75 billion that Wolf is promising for the public school employees’ retirement system is based solely on the passage of the increased sales tax, which itself falls disproportionately on lower income workers and their families.

On top of this, the pensions that cover the tens of thousands of municipal workers are underfunded by $7.7 billion. Wolf made no mention of providing the funds needed to secure the pensions for these workers.

Republicans who control both chambers in the state legislature have stated that they will not consider any of Wolf’s proposed tax increases unless he makes changes to the pensions for state workers and teachers.

The contracts for the 79,000 state workers expire this summer. Most ideas being floated include moving new and younger employees into 401(k) style pensions, which do not provide guaranteed benefits. Other proposals include raising the retirement age, increasing employee contributions, and eliminating the use of overtime pay in computing pensions.

Obama’s criticism of right-to-work law: The ruling class defends the unions

Shannon Jones

On Monday, President Obama issued a statement attacking the enactment of right-to-work legislation in the state of Wisconsin that bans the collection of union dues as a condition of employment in private companies. His remarks followed the signing of the bill into law earlier that day by Republican Governor Scott Walker.

Just before signing the bill, Walker, a likely 2016 presidential candidate, said that it “sends a powerful message across the country and around the world.” Walker recently compared his defiance of mass demonstrations by Wisconsin workers in 2011 to the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

While not mentioning Walker by name, Obama said that it was “inexcusable, that, over the past several years, just when middle class families and workers need that kind of security the most, there has been a sustained, coordinated assault on the unions, led by powerful interests and their allies in government.”

Obama’s statement reflects differences within the ruling class, not over the defense of workers’ interests, since the unions do not defend those interests, but on the best means to pursue attacks on the working class. The sections of big business that Obama speaks for see the unions as useful tools in imposing cuts and are concerned about attempts to undermine them.

Notably, neither the unions nor their Democratic Party supporters have much noise about the raft of budget cuts that Walker is also preparing, including a massive attack on higher education. Similar measures have been signed and implemented by Democratic Party governors throughout the country, and by the Obama administration at the national level.

Walker speaks for those sections of the ruling establishment that see the maintenance of the unions as a waste of money, a hindrance and a not insignificant source of political funds for their big business rivals in the Democratic Party.

Right-to-work laws are reactionary, aimed at blocking any form of resistance by workers to collectively defend their interests. However, opposing these laws does not imply any support for the unions themselves. They have long ceased to defend the interests of workers and have been transformed into appendages of the corporations and the state. They function as business entities that operate for the financial benefit of the wealthy and corrupt officials who control them.

The unions have overseen the destruction of workers’ living standards and working conditions over the past several decades and intervened to sabotage and defeat every attempt by workers to resist the attacks of the employers. The task before workers is to break the grip of these right-wing organizations and build new, democratic organizations of struggle.

The role of the unions has been concretely exposed once again in the conduct of the United Steelworkers and the AFL-CIO in isolating the strike of US oil workers, ensuring that it has had the most minimal impact on production possible and, amidst growing anger among ordinary workers, moving quickly to reach an agreement yesterday on company terms.

The unions oppose the establishment of right-to-work laws on the reactionary basis that they deprive them of the ability to collect dues payments from workers to fund their bloated apparatuses and finance their political contributions. They are well aware that if workers are not required to pay dues, they face a massive loss of income, since they are despised by large sections of the working class.

In other states where right-to-work has been implemented, workers have left the unions in droves. Indeed, since the enactment of Act 10 in Wisconsin in 2011, which limited public employee bargaining rights, membership in the Wisconsin Education Council, the state affiliate of the National Education Association, has fallen by 50 percent. In Michigan, where a right-to-work bill passed in 2012, union membership declined by 48,000 in 2014, with the full impact yet to be felt.

The unions were in deep crisis even before the enactment of the latest spate of right-to-work bills. In Wisconsin, union membership has plummeted from 21 percent in 1990 to just 11.6 percent in 2014. Overall, US union membership stands at just 11.1 percent, the lowest level in more than 100 years. Strike activity has, meanwhile, virtually ceased.

The continued existence of the unions is entirely dependent on the support they receive from a section of big business and the political establishment, mainly the Democratic Party.

The enactment of right-to-work legislation in Wisconsin follows the defeat of the mass protest movement that erupted in February 2011 over budget cuts proposed by Walker. His so-called “Budget Repair Bill” imposed a wide array of cuts and threatened to strip workers of collective bargaining rights, criminalizing any form of resistance. The unions, which played no role in initiating the protests, did everything in their power to shut them down before they risked developing into a confrontation with the Obama administration.

To this end they diverted opposition to the budget bill into a campaign for the recall of Walker. They opposed calls for a general strike against Walker, limiting the struggle to a defense of the institutional interests of the unions, while abandoning any struggle against the budget cuts. The teachers rushed to agree to $330 million in concessions from their members, including a de facto $4,000 annual pay cut due to increases in health premiums. The purpose of these concessions was to make sure that new contracts were in place before the provisions of the budget bill ending the automatic dues deduction for public workers took effect. This had the effect of delaying the end of the dues check-off for the length of those contracts.

UN torture investigator barred from US prisons

Matthew MacEgan

On Tuesday, Juan Méndez, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Torture, Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, accused the United States government of refusing him access to Guantánamo Bay and other federal prisons, where he wishes to investigate the use of solitary confinement. Méndez said he has been in talks with US officials for two years without receiving a positive answer.

In his latest report delivered in Geneva, Méndez said he wants to visit federal prisons in New York and Colorado and state prisons in New York, California, Louisiana and other states. He claims that while the US State Department has purportedly been working to help him gain access to state prisons, in one of his last conversations, “they said that federal prisons were unavailable.”

Méndez said he sought to investigate US federal prisons because “it is not rare” for prisoners to spend between 25 and 30 years in solitary confinement—locked in a cell with no human contact for 23 hours a day.

He also related that he was offered access to Guantánamo Bay in 2012, but under “unacceptable” conditions—namely that US officials would only allow him to see limited areas of the compound and would not allow him to have any conversations with inmates, whether monitored or unmonitored. Méndez declined this invitation and asked the United States to provide him with a new invitation that is “acceptable,” but none has been offered.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reports that more than 80,000 inmates are held in solitary confinement on any given day in the United States, and Méndez has stated that he is particularly concerned about the use of this technique on underage offenders. Solitary confinement for children, he said, “should never happen, even for a single day.” He further claimed that this type of punishment is widely considered cruel for adults and even more harmful to children “because of their state of development and their special needs.”

Méndez has further condemned the United States for being the only country that allows children to be imprisoned for life without possibility of release. “Life sentences without the possibility of release for children are expressly prohibited by international law and treaties,” he wrote in his report. “Significantly, the United States of America is the only State in the world that still sentences children to life imprisonment without the opportunity for parole for the crime of homicide.”

“In addition, laws, policies and practices that allow children to be subjected to adult sentences are inherently cruel, inhuman or degrading because they fail to consider any of the special measures of protection or safeguards that international law requires for children,” he wrote. “Children should never be treated as if they were adults. Because children are less emotionally and psychologically developed, they are less culpable for their actions and their sentencing should reflect the principle of rehabilitation and reintegration.”

According to the Sentencing Project, approximately 2,500 people in the United States are serving life sentences without parole for crimes committed when they were children.

This issue arose in the 2012 case Miller v. Alabama, when the US Supreme Court barred mandatory life sentences without parole for youth under 18 years of age, stating that the practice was cruel and unusual and therefore a violation of the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution.

“Mandatory life without parole for a juvenile precludes consideration of his chronological age and its hallmark features—among them, immaturity, impetuosity and failure to appreciate risks and consequences,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote at that time. “It prevents taking into account the family and home environment that surrounds him—and from which he cannot usually extricate himself—no matter how brutal or dysfunctional.”

Only 12 US states and the District of Columbia have banned life sentences without the possibility of parole for juveniles, and two thirds of the children who have already received such sentences come from just five states: Pennsylvania (472), Michigan (356), Florida (355), California (293) and Louisiana (228).

Méndez also pointed to abuse of immigrant children, urging that the US government “should, expeditiously and completely, cease the detention of children, with or without their parents, on the basis of their immigration status.”

Australian pseudo-lefts defend Syriza’s austerity pact

Mike Head

At a revealing public forum at Sydney University on Tuesday night, the Australian Greens and Socialist Alliance, a pseudo-left group, lined up together behind the capitalist government led by Syriza in Greece and explicitly defended the agreement it signed with the European authorities on February 24 to impose the austerity dictates of finance capital.

In Australia, as around the world, the events in Greece have become a political litmus test. The response of pseudo-left groups such as Socialist Alliance to the January 25 election of Syriza and its grovelling capitulation, within just four weeks, has exposed the fact they have likewise become a part of the bourgeois political establishment.

Lee Rhiannon, Dick Nicholls (centre) and Adam Rorris

Each of the speakers at Tuesday’s event—Dick Nicholls of Socialist Alliance, Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon and former World Bank analyst Adam Rorris from the recently formed pro-Syriza Australia-Greece Solidarity Campaign—insisted that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s government had no choice but to abandon its election promises to repudiate the austerity measures and seek the cancellation of much of Greece’s public debt. All of them wrote off any struggle for a socialist alternative by the working class.

Nicholls, a Green Left Weekly correspondent, was the most vehement defender of Syriza’s February 24 pact. He declared that despite Tsipras and his ministers coming under criticism for doing so, they had to make “concessions.” This was the “least evil result in the circumstances.” The only other alternative, he said, was a “sudden exit” from the Eurozone, which would not have popular support.

Nicholls was also adamant in backing Syriza’s capitalist program. “The Greek economy has to become more productive,” he emphasised, “and for that it needs private investment, as well as increased public investment.” In other words, Syriza must create the right conditions for Greece’s corporate elite and foreign investors. Nicholls said Syriza favoured a “socially just and environmentally sustainable economy,” but even that was “a long way down the track.”

Nicholls specifically endorsed the economic platform that Syriza’s Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, an avowed defender of capitalism, wrote with US economic James Galbraith under the title of “A Modest Proposal for Resolving the Eurozone Crisis,” in which they argued that writing off some of Greece’s debt would positively benefit American and European capitalism. Varoufakis was a lecturer from 1989 to 2000 at Sydney University’s Political Economy Department.

Rorris, the next speaker, underscored Syriza’s efforts to assure the international financial elites that it represents no threat to their interests. He boasted of his success in getting former Liberal Party leader John Hewson to sign a statement by 40 Australian university economists before the January 25 election. The academics pleaded for the Troika—the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund—to give some debt relief to Greece so that the country had a “more sustainable pathway.” Their statement also urged any future Greek government to “get serious in dealing with public financial management problems,” which necessarily means further cutting social spending.

Rorris stressed that Syriza was genuinely committed, and not “begrudgingly,” to such “better economic management.” That was why it decided, in the February 24 agreement, to “recognise the debt as legitimate, give the banks a running veto on its plans and commit to a budget surplus by next year.”

On behalf of the Greens, who have been part of Australia’s political establishment for more than two decades, Rhiannon said she was “excited” by Syriza’s challenge to “neo-liberalism.” She condemned “some on the left” who criticised the February 24 austerity pact, insisting that “the left and progressive forces” had to unite around Syriza’s defence.

Echoing the claims of Varoufakis himself, Rhiannon insisted that if Syriza failed, the only beneficiaries would be the Greek fascists of Golden Dawn and their counterparts across Europe. In reality, the opposite is true. By imposing the austerity dictates of the financial markets and suppressing and demoralising the resistance of the working class, Syriza will serve as an antechamber for fascism, just as similar regimes did during the 1930s.

In so far as Syriza criticises the Troika’s austerity agenda, it is to plead to the US and the European powers for a more stimulatory economic policy in order to rekindle growth. US imperialism, however, no longer has the resources to undertake any such policy. Instead, it is intent on using its military power to offset its decline, and prevent the re-emergence of rival powers, including Germany.

This World Socialist Web Site correspondent asked the panelists how they had the political gall to claim that Syriza represented a way forward for the working class in Greece, Australia or anywhere else in the world when Varoufakis had publicly stated that the Syriza-led government’s goal was to “save capitalism” and Syriza had already repudiated its anti-austerity election stance.

The question was greeted by derision and laughter by the audience of about 200 people, mainly supporters of the Greens and various pseudo-left groups. The response is a telling exposure of the politics of this middle-class social layer who are hostile to an independent political struggle by workers for a socialist perspective. None of the speakers deigned to reply.

Two members of pseudo-left state capitalist groups, Socialist Alternative and Solidarity, whose Greek affiliates are part of Syriza, raised tactical differences with the bargaining stance adopted by Syriza in the negotiations leading up to the February 24 deal. They complained that Syriza would discredit itself by implementing the austerity measures. At the same time, they reiterated that “left” unity behind Syriza was “not up for debate.” They agreed with the three speakers that “solidarity” with Syriza was the paramount issue of the day internationally.

Amid a deepening economic and political crisis in Australia, where ordinary working people are increasingly hostile to both the traditional ruling parties, Labor and Liberal-National, this milieu is trying to lay the groundwork for a “Syriza-style” coalition to fill the political vacuum. Nicholls said Socialist Alliance had attempted once before to create such a formation, and “we have to try again.” Rhiannon said Syriza “pulled it off” in Greece, “and we need to do it here!” The Greens could have a “critical role” in such a project, she said, but it was “bigger than any one party.”

None of these organisations has anything to do with socialism. They are seeking, like Syriza, to cobble together new political mechanisms to enforce the requirements of the bankrupt and crisis-ridden capitalist system. Resting on sections of the capitalist elite and affluent middle class social layers, like their counterparts in Syriza’s “radical left” coalition, they are coalescing along definite class lines: for the defence of the capitalist order and the subordination of the working class to it.

Troika enforcers return to Athens to step up looting of Greece

Robert Stevens

Delegations from the European Commission (EC), European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) arrived in Athens Thursday. The representatives of the so-called “troika” were continuing “technical talks” with Greece's Syriza-led government which began in Brussels Wednesday on the austerity measures that are to be implemented over the coming weeks.

For the first time representatives from the European Stability Mechanism, which facilitates the EU’s loan agreements will also participate.

The talks were insisted on by finance ministers at Monday’s eurogroup meeting in Brussels and must be completed to their satisfaction before Syriza can receive any further loans to pay off billion of euros in debts that are due this month. It must pay almost €20 billion in the course of 2015. Without access to an outstanding €7.2 billion tranche of funds, conditional on existing austerity agreement being implemented in full, Greece will be forced to default on its €320 billion debt in a matter of weeks.

The Syriza government, which on February 20, signed off on a four month extension of the existing austerity programme, fraudulently claims that the deal meant the end of austerity.

In fact, it had agreed not to “unilaterally” move to implement even the limited measures it was elected on. Syriza insisted troika officials would no longer return to Athens to monitor the implementation of austerity. With this weeks’ events, these threadbare claims have been shot to pieces. The troika is not only back in Athens, but over the next weeks it will be co-ordinating with Syriza the imposition of even deeper austerity measures.

In a cynical attempt to save face, Syriza has insisted the troika should now be referred to as the “institutions”. Along these lines, the technical teams have been designated the Brussels Group (BG). However, the EC, ECB, and IMF representatives at the talks—Declan Costello, Klaus Masuch and Rishi Goyal—are the same troika personnel who have been monitoring austerity in Athens for years.

The German government has led the demands that Greece adhere to the cuts agreed by the previous New Democracy/PASOK government. Following the eurogroup meeting, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, warned, “Unless that takes place, nothing will happen.”

Chancellor Angela Merkel stated that Athens had to show “readiness to implement reforms and duties in one’s country”.

European Commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva said, "The Greeks won't be expected to implement 100 percent of the measures envisaged by the bailout, no country under a bailout had done so, but they will have to do a critical majority—let's say the 70 percent that was mentioned”.

This was a reference to the fact that the Syriza government, on taking office, committed itself to implementing 70 percent of the existing austerity programme and negotiating the terms of further measures. The talks, Andreeva said, would specify the austerity measures “envisaged by the Greek authorities in order to be able to reach an agreement at the latest by the end of April.”

The Greek daily Kathimerini gave some details on the all-embracing remit of the negotiations, as the representatives of the global financial oligarchy try to keep Greece under their stranglehold.

The Brussels Group/troika will visit the State General Accounting Office as well as several ministries, with the visits taking place “in three weekly waves, focusing on different aspects of the economy each time. In the first week, visiting experts will examine fiscal issues. This will be followed by structural reforms in the second week and banking matters in the third.” GR Reporternoted that the team looking at fiscal policy will “determine whether the primary surplus that was attained last year is available, how huge the hole in the budget is, and whether additional measures will be required”. The team in Athens next week “will deal with the course of the structural reforms as well as with labour legislation and privatization. The last team will hold talks on the banking sector and non-performing loans.”

Among other items to be discussed, Reuters reported, would “be spending ceilings for various levels of government and corrective mechanisms that would kick in on a quarterly basis if ceilings were breached.”

The Greek banks have no access to international capital markets and only remain afloat due to temporary higher interest loans from the ECB’s Emergency Liquidity Assistance, which approved only €600 million on Thursday.

Athens has been forced to raid every source of finance available to it in order to pay due debts and provide for the basic functioning of the state. TheGuardian reported Thursday, “The debt stricken country is resorting to increasingly desperate measures to ward off potential default. In the space of the past week it has raised six-month T-bills, tapped into the bank deposits of pensions and public sector salaries, postponed government payments for supplies to the public and private sector, and approached the Greek subsidiaries of multi-national companies for short-term loans”.

Syriza’s leaders are acutely aware of the enormous social and political backlash they face as the cuts in living standards it will be imposing are finalised and begin to be rolled out.

This accounts for the rhetoric now being employed by its leading officials. On Thursday, Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said, “The ECB in my opinion is pursuing a policy that can be considered asphyxiating toward our government”.

Earlier, he lodged an official complaint with the German foreign ministry saying he had been insulted when Schäuble had described him as being “foolishly naive” in his dealings with the media.

Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias concurred, “Germany wants to suffocate us over the state debt . . . They accuse us of squandering money . . . [what] they are doing to us is political racism”.

This followed a speech in parliament Tuesday by Prime Minister and Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras where he announced that his government would be seeking World War II reparations from the German government. The Greek government had a “duty to history, to the people who fought and to the victims who gave their lives to defeat Nazism,” he said.

Tsipras said his government was seeking billions in reparations. On Wednesday, Justice Minister Nikos Paraskevopoulos declared he was ready to implement a court ruling which found that €28 million euros was owed for the murders of 218 people in the Greek town of Distomo in 1944 by the occupying Nazi regime.

These moves are part of Syriza’s ongoing efforts to forge an anti-German coalition among sections of the European bourgeoisie aimed at securing concessions on the austerity agenda. The Syriza government is playing this charade despite every euro zone finance minister signing up to insist that Greece continue to impose devastating spending cuts and pay off its debts.

The German government dismissed Greece’s claims to reparations out of hand. Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seifert said, “The question of reparations and compensation is legally and politically closed”.

Finance Ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger said provocatively, “We won’t be conducting any talks or negotiations with the Greek side ... The aim is to look ahead jointly. Being emotive and making retrospective accusations will not help in overcoming the current problems”.

The troika’s return to Athens coincided with the release of new data revealing a further increase in the already chronic level of unemployment their policies have caused. The official jobless rate increased to 26.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014, from 25.5 percent in the third quarter. Most of the unemployed (about 73 percent) have been without work for at least 12 months.

Large parts of the economy remain mired in recession. New statistics found that in 2014 Greek industrial output fell for a seventh year by 2.7 percent.

Danger of war with Russia grows as US sends military equipement to Ukraine

Johannes Stern & Alex Lantier

Washington has begun delivering military hardware to Ukraine as part of NATO’s ongoing anti-Russian military build-up in eastern Europe, escalating the risk of all-out war between the NATO alliance and Russia, a nuclear-armed power.

The Obama administration announced on Wednesday that it would transfer 30 armored Humvees and 200 unarmored Humvees, as well as $75 million in equipment, including reconnaissance drones, radios and military ambulances. The US Congress has also prepared legislation to arm the Kiev regime with $3 billion in lethal weaponry.

Washington is at the same time deploying 3,000 heavily armed troops to the Baltic republics, near the Russian metropolis of St. Petersburg. Their 750 Abrams main battle tanks, Bradley armored personnel carriers, and other vehicles are slated to remain behind after the US troops leave. This handover is aimed at “showing our determination to stand together” against Russian President Vladimir Putin, US Major General John O’Connor said in the Latvian capital, Riga.

Washington is pressing ahead despite stark warnings from Moscow that it views massive weapons deliveries by NATO to hostile states on its borders as an intolerable threat to Russian national security.

“Without a doubt, if such a decision is reached, it will cause colossal damage to US-Russian relations, especially if residents of the Donbass [east Ukraine] start to be killed by American weapons,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said last month. He called NATO’s plans “very worrying,” adding: “This is about creating additional operational capabilities that would allow the alliance to react near Russia’s borders... Such decisions will naturally be taken into account in our military planning.”

The decision is also sharpening tensions between Washington and Berlin, which backs the current policy of sanctions and financial strangulation of Russia, but opposes moves that threaten all-out war with Russia.

Visiting Washington yesterday, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier urged a continuation of the strategy of “economic and political pressure” on Russia. Arming Ukraine, could “catapult (the conflict) into a new phase,” he warned at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank.

The mood in broad sections of the American ruling elite has turned increasingly hysterical, however, after the Kiev regime’s defeat prior to last month’s ceasefire in Ukraine negotiated by German, French, Russian, and Ukrainian officials in Minsk.

In a comment denounced by the Russian Foreign Ministry, retired Major General and TV pundit Robert Scales declared, “It’s game, set, and match in Ukraine. The only way the United States can have any effect in the region and turn the tide is to start killing Russians.”

This week, Pentagon and Congressional officials called for Washington to arm Kiev, pressing for faster action from the White House. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey are pressing for large-scale weapons deliveries to Kiev, as are leading members of Congress from both big-business parties.

“I applaud President Obama for sending a strong signal both to the people of Ukraine as well as to the Kremlin,” said Democratic Senator Dick Durbin. “But more can and must be done for Ukraine, including defensive weapons as soon as possible.”

“The fact that it appears that the president may have made a commitment to [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel while she was here, or the German ambassador, not to do that certainly has created a lot of concern on both sides of the aisle,” said Republican Senator Bob Corker.

“I don’t buy this argument that, you know, us supplying the Ukrainian army with defensive weapons is going to provoke Putin,” said Democratic Senator Chris Murphy.

With a toxic combination of maniacal aggression and thoughtlessness, the NATO alliance is lurching towards a war with Russia that could destroy the entire planet. Warnings about US policy from Berlin, which itself has led the European imperialist powers in supporting the February 2014 putsch in Kiev and backing the Kiev regime’s bloody war in east Ukraine, have at most a tactical character. The only force that opposes war is the working class, in America and Europe and internationally.

Despite Berlin’s misgivings as to US policy, the NATO alliance is pursuing its escalation against Russia. At a press conference Wednesday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and NATO Supreme Commander of European forces General Philip Breedlove laid out the ongoing military build-up across eastern Europe. They spoke at the Supreme command Headquarters of Allied Personnel in Europe (SHAPE) in Mons, Belgium, which oversees NATO operations in Europe.

Stoltenberg declared that due to the Ukraine crisis, NATO has to “expand its collective defense, as it has never done since the end of the Cold War... We will double the rapid response force from 13,000 soldiers to 30,000. We will equip the rapid response force with a spearhead of 5,000 men, which will be ready to deploy within 48 hours. And we will establish six command centers in the Baltic states and three other eastern European countries.”

Referring to NATO member states’ pledge to massively increase defense spending at the recent Wales summit, Stoltenberg pledged to “keep up the momentum.” Besides the escalation in the Baltics, naval exercises are taking place in the Black Sea, and NATO is preparing for the largest exercises for many years, with 25,000 men, in southeastern Europe.

Breedlove said he had never seen greater “unity, readiness and determination within NATO to tackle the challenges of the future together.” He was sure that this would continue.

In reality, tensions between Washington and its European allies, above all Germany, have increased in recent weeks. In its latest edition, Der Spiegelreports that Berlin is angry that “Washington’s hardliners are inciting the conflict with Moscow, first and foremost the supreme commander of NATO in Europe.”

The German Chancellor’s office criticized Breedlove for “dangerous propaganda” and making “imprecise, contradictory and even untruthful” statements.

“I wish that in political matters, Breedlove would express himself more cleverly and reluctantly,” commented a foreign-policy specialist of the Social-Democratic Party, Niels Annen. Instead, NATO has “repeatedly spoken out against a Russian offensive in the Ukraine conflict precisely at the point when in our view, the time was right for careful optimism.”

According to Der Spiegel, the US-German dispute is “fundamentally because the transatlantic partners [have] different objectives... While the German-French initiative [a reference to the Minsk peace agreement] aimed to stabilize the situation in Ukraine, for the hawks in the American administration it is about Russia. They want to push back Russia’s influence in the region and destabilize Putin’s rule. Their dream goal is regime change in Russia.”

German imperialism backed the coup in Ukraine, using the crisis to create political conditions for it to rearm within the framework of NATO and pursue its economic and geostrategic interests in eastern Europe militarily. It fears an escalation of the conflict in Ukraine, however, as it could expand into all-out war between NATO and Russia, for which the German army is not yet ready.