EU Splits On Ukraine: How And Why

Eric Zuesse

The issue is whether to supply weapons to Ukraine.

On Friday, March 13th, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced, referring to himself in the third person, that:

"The Head of State has informed that Ukraine had contracts with a series of the EU countries on the supply of armament, inter alia, lethal one. He has reminded that official embargo of the EU on the supply of weapons to Ukraine had been abolished.”

In other words: Some EU nations, and he is keeping secret for now the identity of which ones, have contracted to supply to Ukraine's ‘Anti Terrorist Operation' or ‘ATO,' weapons to assist Ukraine in its ‘Anti Terrorist Operation.'

Then, on Saturday, March 14th, Russian Television, Russia's equivalent of Britain's BBC and America's PBS, headlined "Poroshenko: 11 EU states struck deal with Ukraine to deliver weapons, including lethal,” and added further details, besides (presumably from Russian-Government intelligence) the specific number (11) of the nations that would be supplying weapons to Ukraine. 

There are 28 member-nations in the EU. Apparently, 17 of them do not want to sell weapons to the Ukrainian Government. That's 17 EU nations which are apparently siding with Russia in opposing the extermination of the residents in the region of the former Ukraine, Donbass, where the residents had voted 90% for the Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, whom the Obama Administration overthrew in a violent coup in February 2014 under the cover of the “Maidan” anti-corruption demonstrations. 

11 EU nations want to exterminate those residents and are supplying weapons that will assist in the effort. However, Ukraine's President Poroshenko (who was elected not by all of Ukraine but only by voters outside Donbass and especially in Ukraine's northwest, but who still claims to represent and to be the legal President of the residents in Donbass, whom he's bombing) refuses to identify which ones they are.

Thus, a minority of the EU nations are assisting the U.S. to exterminate the residents in Donbass.

Meanwhile, during the past few days, German Economic News has specifically identified the following EU nations that are strongly opposed to this supplying of weapons to Ukraine: Spain, Germany, Greece, Cyprus, Hungary, Italy, France, and Slovakia.

Furthermore, Italy is increasing its cooperation with Russia.

And, early in January, the Czech Republic made clear its separation from the U.S. on this matter.

But that's only 9 of the 17 EU nations that openly oppose the U.S. Probably most of the remaining 8 are silent on account of their recognition how fateful their actual abandonment of the U.S. could turn out to be, and so they want to leave all options open, for as long as they can — and since they still can.

Moreover, Germany lost 40 billion Euros, over $40 billion, in 2014 because of Obama's sanctions against Russia, and other EU nations have also been enormously harmed by them. Angela Merkel wants to end sanctions and knows that this cannot happen until the U.S. stops its proxy-war against Russia in Ukraine. 

However, the U.S. aristocracy has benefited from these sanctions. For example, U.S. arms manufacturers are booming now, and so are the former U.S. (and still strongly Republican-Party-backing) mercenary firm Blackwater, now called Accademi. 

Moreover, on March 11th, German Economic News reported that:

“Ukraine will increase the share of military expenditure in GDP from 1.25 to 5.2 percent and spend $ 3.8 billion, the Ukrainian Finance Minister Natalia Jaresko [who is an American financier whom the Obama regime placed into that Ukrainian-Government post] says. The defense orders were received mostly by US companies like Network Technologies Corporation.

Jaresko announced on Tuesday that Ukraine plans to increase its national defense spending this year to 5.2 percent of GDP. Last year, that proportion was 1.25 percent of GDP. In sum, 2015 is planned to spend a total of 3.8 billion dollars on armaments." 

So: “The Americans have stopped the EU efforts to lift the sanctions against Russia.” This has intensified the split between the U.S. and EU.

However, though European governments are very harmed by what the U.S. Government is doing, some of Europe's aristocrats are benefiting from it, and they have considerable influence within their own governments. 

The politically extremely knowledgeable, superb classical pianist, Valentina Lisitsa, who was born in Kiev but now resides in North Carolina, was interviewed by German Economic News on 19 January 2015; and the following excerpt provides insight on this matter, and also on some of the far-right American political connections:

“German economic news: Who benefits from the war in the Ukraine?

Valentina Lisitsa: People on all levels. For example the arms companies, it will benefit the EU States, which are monopolized by a nontransparent hysteria, pushing to modernize their existing weapons arsenals. But even small government officials in Ukraine earn money; they take kickbacks from Ukrainians who buy their freedom from military service.

There are many mercenaries [the euphemism for them is ‘volunteers'] on both sides, and the private companies that are behind these guys make enormous profits. You have mercenaries from various nations on both sides. But it is interesting to observe that no one is attacking the coal mines and factories of the oligarch Rinat Akhmetov [Ukraine's richest person] in the Eastern Ukraine. Akhmetov sees with both sides to arrange that he will suffer no economic disadvantage. He supports both sides.

German economic news: A former Commander of the battalion of Azov was appointed the Chief of police of Kiev. How is it possible that a radical rightist receives such an important position?

Valentina Lisitsa: There are two aspects. First of all, the Azov battalion is indeed a radical right-wing organization. In the course of the civil war, Azov members have participated in numerous atrocities. It is not an exaggeration to say that Azov members are as brutal as ISIS members. These are not average Ukrainians. They are indoctrinated and are at the service of the oligarchs.

The second issue is more complicated. In Ukraine, there are the so-called Academy of Personnel Management (MAUP) Dnipropetrovsk. This is a private college, emerged from the very many bureaucrats of the Ukrainian State [as it devolved from communism]. However, the facility is known for anti-Semitism, xenophobia, homophobia and right-national ideas. David Duke is a graduate of the MAUP Academy, and did also an apprenticeship there. Duke is a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and was an active high-ranking member of the Ku Klux Klan. He is a world-renowned anti-Semite. MAUP also receives donations from Saudi Arabia.

If you consider the second aspect, it may not surprise you that a person such as ex-Azov Commander Vadim Troyan was appointed the Kiev Chief of Police.”

So: Obama chose the nazis to run Ukraine because they're committed to destroying Russia, and because they're also amenable to being controlled by the aristocracy. Decent Europeans are appalled, and they're the majority of Europeans; but because of the extreme media-censorship in the United States, where virtually all 'news' media that have a significant-sized audience are owned (or minority-controlled) by members of the American aristocracy, which benefits from weakening Europe and destroying Russia, there are only few Americans who even know about what is happening (except the U.S. propaganda, which demonizes Putin, and which is controlled by the U.S. Government on behalf of America's aristocrats).

The closer that things get to an irreversible harm to Russia that would spark a nuclear attack against the United States — and possibly also against Europe — the bigger the split within the EU will become, and some nations might also leave NATO and ally directly with Russia, or else go neutral, in order to avoid America's nazi (i.e., racist-fascist, anti-Russian) leadership. After all: Europe suffered greatly from Hitler's Nazis. No major nation supports Ukraine's nazis to the extent that America does.

Would the U.S. then militarily target such a former ally? Might the U.S. attack Italy, for example? Might the U.S. attack France? Might the U.S. attack Germany? If U.S. forces are still in those countries, which will almost certainly be the case, such attacks would be extremely unlikely, and they wouldn't be nuclear ones. Only Russia would get the nuclear bombs, if and when there will be a WW III. The U.S. and Russia would be destroyed, and everyone else would envy them, for their being already dead.

More and more people in Europe are coming to know how dangerous the United States Government is. In 2013, it was already recognized, even in Europe, as being by far the most dangerous government on the planet — and this was before the coup in Ukraine. (That poll from WIN/Gallup has not been repeated — or at least not publicly — since 2013, and wasn't much publicized even at the time, because it was sponsored largely by the U.S. Government, which didn't like the results and didn't want them to become generally known. For example, the poll, of 65 countries, found that, in Ukraine in 2013, "33 percent of respondents choose the U.S. as the greatest danger, compared to just five percent who picked Russia.” This did not fit the line that the U.S. Government and its aristocrats' servants in the American 'press' indoctrinate into the American people. In other words: right before the coup in Ukraine, far more Ukrainians thought that the U.S. was scary than thought that Russia was. Americans' views of foreign affairs are almost exactly the opposite of reality. For more about the systematically deceived American public, see this, and this. Every high school student in America should look at those shockingly realistic videos. It might even help to make the U.S. become a democracy again, if a WW III doesn't destroy everything and thus simply eliminate all progress.)

Quebec workers on a collision course with Liberal government

Laurent Lafrance

Workers are on a collision course with Philippe Couillard’s Quebec Liberal government.

Since coming to power 11 months ago, it has dramatically intensified the austerity program pursued by all Quebec governments, whether Liberal or Parti Quebecois (PQ), for decades.

Claiming that Quebec risks going the way of Greece if public finances are not fundamentally restructured, Couillard and the troika of former bankers and corporate executives he has named to the province’s key economic ministries have imposed billions in social spending cuts, while hiking electricity rates and user fees for day care and other public services.

A key element in the government’s austerity program is sweeping cuts to the wages, pensions and other terms of employment of the workers who administer public and social services.

With the collective agreements of the province’s half-million public sector workers—nurses and other hospital workers, public school and CEGEP (college) teachers, civil servants, etc.—set to expire at the end of March, the government has tabled a provocative “offer” riddled with concessions. These include a two-year wage freeze followed by annual pay increases of just one percent (for a total of three percent over five years), an increase in the retirement age, cuts to pensions and regressive changes to work rules and staffing levels.

Teachers, for example, would have to contend with increased class-sizes and a reduction of support for “special needs” students, while having their workweek increased by 10 percent with no increase in pay.

The assault on public sector workers follows the National Assembly’s adoption last December of Bill 3, which slashes municipal workers’ pensions and, through increased pension-premiums, cuts their real take-home pay by thousands of dollars per year.

There is mounting mass popular opposition to the Couillard’s big business agenda. Hundreds of thousands of workers and young people have participated in anti-government protests. While the public sector unions are pleading with the government for “good faith” negotiations, the palpable anger of the rank-and-file is forcing local unions to hold strike votes at a growing number of workplaces.

This week, the student union ASSE (Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante/Association for Student-Union Solidarity) announced that 30,000 students at Quebec universities and CEGEPs have voted to go on strike for at least two weeks starting March 23—the minimum support-level for it to launch an “anti-austerity strike.” More than 100,000 other students are to vote on whether to join the strike in the coming days.

For weeks there has been nervous commentary in the corporate media about the prospect of a second “Maple Spring,” a reference to the student strike which convulsed Quebec for six months in 2012.

The heightening of class tensions is palpable. The media is already trying to whip up animosity against the impending student strike with claims that the strike votes are not representative of the “silent majority” and calls for the state to enforce students’ “democratic right” to attend classes.

No one should harbour any illusions. The ruling class is determined to restructure class relations at the expense of working people and will use all the repressive powers of the state to try to stamp out opposition. Its treatment of the municipal workers is a case in point. While the media ran an unrelenting vilification campaign depicting the workers as “selfish,” the City of Montreal suspended and fired dozens of workers who participated in a protest inside City Hall last August.

It is common knowledge that if the public sector unions are compelled by the rank-and-file to call a strike, Couillard will follow the federal Conservative government’s playbook by declaring it illegal. One of the Liberals’ first actions after returning to power was to announce that they would outlaw a possible province-wide construction workers’ strike even before it began.

That said, the ruling class depends, above all, on the trade unions to contain and suppress working class opposition. In 2012, the unions isolated striking students in the face of mounting police violence and anti-strike court injunctions, then tried to force through an agreement that would have effectively implemented the government’s university tuition-fee hikes.

Several weeks later, when the Charest Liberal government’s anti-strike Bill 78 provoked mass working class opposition, threatening to produce a situation akin to that in France in May-June 1968, the unions moved decisively to shut down the student strike and harness the opposition to Charest to the election of a PQ government, as exemplified by their slogan “After the streets, the ballot box.” As for the trade union-backed NDP, it refused to provide even nominal support to the striking students or to oppose Bill 78.

The unions’ suppression of the student strike was abetted by the pseudo-left Quebec Solidaire, which sought an electoral pact with the PQ, and by CLASSE (ASSE’s predecessor) which quickly bowed to the unions’ demand it shelve any call for worker job-action, and joined in the promotion of the big business PQ as a “progressive” alternative to the Liberals.

The union bureaucracy realizes that it sits atop a membership seething with anger and anxious for a working-class counter-offensive to Couillard.

“I’ve been asked by members if I’m ready to go to jail,” exclaims an anguished Daniel Boyer, president of the Quebec Federation of Labour. “They are ready to fight a decree or a special (anti-strike) law.”

Although the government has boasted to both domestic and international big business that its austerity program is “non-negotiable,” the unions are seeking to drag out the public sector contract negotiations and ensnare workers in a prolonged campaign of protests. What they call the “ultimate weapon”—a legal, collective bargaining strike restricted to public sector workers—does not even figure in their proposed “mobilization” agenda until next fall.

At the same time, the bureaucracy is aware that its treacherous policies have alienated large sections of the working class. In an attempt to boost its credibility, the union officialdom is using various community and pseudo-left groups, organized in such union-controlled coalitions as “Refusons l’austérité” (Refuse Austerity), to give themselves a “left” cover.

Particularly prominent are many former CLASSE leaders. In an interview withLe Devoir, Richard St. Pierre, himself a former CLASSE activist who is now working for the CNTU (Confederation of National Trade Unions), explained, “There are numerous 2012 veterans now working for unions, notably many former members of CLASSE’s executive.”

A handful of bureaucrats including Marc Ranger—the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) official who headed the inter-union coalition that confined the municipal workers’ struggle to futile protests—are making use of CLASSE’s abortive “social strike” slogan, calling for a “24-hour social strike” on May 1. This would be little more than a protest limited to appeals to Couillard to change course, and aimed at boosting the unions’ authority so as to prevent the independent political mobilization of the working class.

For all their bluster, the unions are not opposed to the elite’s austerity agenda. “We are ready to negotiate in good faith,” declares the QFL’s Boyer, adding “We are not against a balanced budget, but we find that the government goes too quickly.”

While big business around the globe is seeking to dismantle what remains of the social benefits and rights the working class won through mass struggles over the last century, the unions are presenting Couillard’s austerity program as an attack on “Quebec” and the “Quebec model.” What they really mean by this are the privileges of the union bureaucracy.

More than anywhere else in North America, the unions have been incorporated into the day-to-day management of class relations, though numerous tripartite committees and “national summits,” including those that approved previous PQ austerity programs, and through their control of multi-billion dollar investments such as the QFL’s Solidarity Fund and the CNTU’sFondaction.

While criticising the Liberals for their “ideologically-motivated” austerity program, the unions don’t say a word about the record of the pro-Quebec independence PQ, with which they have been allied for decades. During the 18-month interregnum between the Charest and Couillard Liberal governments, the union-supported PQ regime imposed social spending cuts steeper than those of Charest, including cuts to university and CEGEP budgets and annual university tuition fee hikes, while bringing forward a chauvinist, anti-immigrant “Charter of Quebec values” to divide the working class.

In their struggle against austerity, Quebec workers face a political struggle, not just against the Couillard Liberal government, but the entire Quebec and Canadian ruling elite and their apparatus of repression, including the police and the courts.

To mobilize their class strength, workers must break politically and organizationally from the nationalist, pro-capitalist unions and their pseudo-left allies. In the first instance, this means building rank-and-file committees, independent of and in opposition to the union apparatus, so as to prepare a political general strike to bring down the Couillard government and mobilize workers in the Canada and the US in a united struggle against austerity and for the bringing to power of workers’ governments.

Modi bears strategic “gifts” to Seychelles and Mauritius

Deepal Jayasekera

Today Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will conclude his tour of three Indian Ocean island states—a trip that has been unabashedly aimed at asserting New Delhi’s military-strategic influence and countering China.

Having visited Seychelles and Mauritius from March 10 to 12, Modi reached Sri Lanka on Friday. His is the first bilateral visit to Sri Lanka by an Indian Premier in 28 years. It comes in the wake of an Indian supported, US-sponsored “regime change” operation in Colombo that saw Mahinda Rajapakse ousted as the country’s president by a surprise “common opposition” candidate, Rajapakse’s lieutenant Maithripala Sirisena.

The US orchestrated Sirisena’s candidacy for the January 8 presidential poll because it considered Rajapakse too close to Beijing and the new president has dutifully indicated that he will harness Sri Lanka much more closely to Washington and New Delhi.

Washington has been encouraging India to play a greater role in the Asia-Pacific region, including policing the Indian Ocean, as part of its “pivot to Asia”—its campaign to militarily-strategically isolate and encircle China.

Since coming to office last May, Modi—the head of the Hindu chauvinist and traditionally pro-US and strongly anti-China Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—has tilted India still closer to the US and its principal allies in the Asia-Pacific, Japan and Australia. His tour of Indian Ocean island states is part of this strategic realignment.

In Seychelles, Modi met with James Alix Michel, president of the island chain, and the two formalized various agreements aimed at boosting security and maritime ties.

The first Indian prime minister to visit Seychelles in over three decades, Modi, wrote in the visitor’s book at the State House in the capital Victoria: “India considers Seychelles not only as a maritime neighbour but as a trusted friend and a strong strategic partner. This visit has deepened our mutual trust and taken our cooperation to a new level.” Talking to the press after his meeting with Michel, Modi announced that New Delhi will give a second Indian-made Dronier sea-surveillance aircraft to Seychelles.

There were also agreements on cooperation in hydrography, renewable energy, infrastructure development, and the sale of navigation charts and electronic navigational charts. Modi specially hailed the pact on hydrographic survey as “a new dimension to our maritime cooperation.” In a clear boost to military cooperation, he launched an Indian-designed coastal surveillance radar system in Seychelles Wednesday.

Seychelles has also agreed to lease one of its 115 constituent islands, Assumption Island, to India for “island development.” Ostensibly, India plans to develop tourism on Assumption Island, but several media reports have suggested that New Delhi’s true purpose is to use the island to develop a listening and surveillance post. Indicating the significance of the Assumption Island project for India, Modi said that it “gives a strong boost to this [strategic] partnership.”

India has decades-long defence relations with Seychelles. At Seychelles’ request, India in 1986 dispatched the frigate INS Vindhyagiri to prevent a coup, and in 2009 it sent naval ships to patrol the island nation’s extensive exclusive economic zone. In 2014 India gifted the naval ship INS Tarasa to Seychelles to boost its surveillance and patrolling capacity. Since then several Indian ships have made port calls in Victoria.

As part of its moves to secure its pivotal oil and raw material imports and export trade, much of which goes through the Indian Ocean, China has also developed close ties with Seychelles. Beijing has managed to get Seychelles’ approval for using its harbor for refueling and docking of Chinese warships stationed in the Gulf of Aden for anti-piracy operations.

Modi’s visit to, and courting of, Seychelles are clearly part of an aggressive campaign, undertaken with US backing and encouragement, to counter China’s burgeoning influence.

In Mauritius, Modi had talks with President Rajkeswur Purryag and Prime Minister Anerood Jugnauth. He was the Chief Guest at the Mauritian National Day ceremonies on March 12 and also addressed the national parliament same day.

In a bid to counter China’s moves for developing close ties with Indian Ocean nations through significant infrastructure investments, Modi offered a US $500 million line of credit to Mauritius for infrastructure projects.

The five agreements signed between the two countries during the visit include one pledging Indian support for improving sea and air connectivity to the Outer Island of Mauritius. Official reports noted the new facilities would “enhance the capabilities of the Mauritian Defence Forces in safeguarding their interests in the Outer Island.”

Under an “Ocean Economy” MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) India will gain privileged access to Mauritius and the surrounding waters in exchange for cooperation in exploring, developing, and creating the technology to exploit marine resources, fisheries, green tourism and related industries.

In a major step in boosting India’s military ties with Mauritius, Modi on March 12 commissioned the Indian-built 1,300-tonnne Barracuda, for the Mauritian National Coast Guard. The Barracuda is the first-ever warship exported by India. At the commissioning, Modi underlined the deal’s significance as part of India’s broader strategic objectives in the region: “She [ Barracuda ] will protect your islands and your waters.. . .She will be there to help in times of disasters and emergencies. But she will do more than that. She will also help make our Indian Ocean safer and more secure.”

India has now promised to deliver a second such vessel to Mauritius.

Modi urged Mauritius to join with India, declaring the Indian Ocean to be “at the top” of New Delhi’s priorities” and insisting that it is “our responsibility to shape its future.”

Pushing for closer military ties with Mauritius, ties that are directed in fact, if not at this point in name, against China, India’s prime Minister said: “I consider our security cooperation to be a cornerstone of our strategic partnership.”

“Super cyclone” Pam hits South Pacific islands

Will Morrow

Vanuatu is being hit by the “super cyclone” Pam, a category 5 storm cell—the highest possible rating for a cyclone—which struck the small Pacific island nation last night and had its worst impact early this morning. The full scale of the damage is yet to emerge, but thousands of homes are expected to have been destroyed and there are unconfirmed reports of dozens of people killed. The storm had already left a trail of destruction in the Solomon Islands.

The greatest damage is expected in remote isolated villages on the 83 islands that make up Vanuatu, a nation of 270,000 people. Communication with many of these areas has been cut by the storm. The UN stated yesterday that while there were no confirmed fatalities, there had been an unconfirmed report of 44 people killed in the country’s Panama province. A “red alert” for Vanuatu’s southern provinces remains in place, including Malampa, Shefa and Tafea.

World Vision emergency communications officer Chloe Morrison, who is in the nation’s capital, Port Vila, said the city was littered with roofs from homes, along with uprooted trees and downed power lines. Wind speeds in the capital reportedly reached up to 340 km/h, generating sounds compared by those present to a freight train. Morrison said there was no running water or power in Port Vila.

“There are reports from other colleagues of mine of entire villages being literally blown away overnight,” Morrison told the AAP. “Local houses and leaf huts would have been picked up like confetti last night,” and tin roofs had been stripped off houses.

Many remote islands are low-lying and are particularly vulnerable to storm flooding. Local weather authorities categorized the waves whipped up by the storm as “very rough to phenomenal.” There are also fears that the storm will trigger landslides, which could bury villages and contaminate water supplies.

As with all such “natural disasters,” cyclone Pam is exposing the consequences of mass poverty and the lack of basic infrastructure. Thousands of people live in makeshift shanty towns in the nation’s capital, Port Vila.

Thousands will be left homeless in coming weeks and months and left to fend for themselves. Up to two thirds of the population relies on subsistence agriculture of yams, taro and sweet potato and face the destruction of their crops.

Earlier last night, Save the Children managing director Tom Skirrow said that up to 50,000 children were at risk. “We have been going door to door in some of the poorest slum areas and I’m hugely concerned not enough is being done to make sure children and families are safe,” he said. “Thousands of families are living in makeshift, flimsy houses which will not withstand the immense winds and rain we’re expecting,” he said.

While thousands of people have taken shelter in evacuation centres, public buildings such as schools and churches, even these have not escaped undamaged. Charlie Damon from CARE Vanuatu said that some “have been flooded and some evacuation centres have also lost parts of their roofs too, but those on the outer islands they certainly will be feeling the brunt of this as they just don’t have the facilities as we do in Port Vila.”

UNICEF worker Alice Clements said many people were without proper shelter when the storm hit. “There’s a problem with the lack of suitable shelters here. So people are scared and they’re not entirely confident, necessarily, that the shelters that they’re in are appropriate to see them through the storm.”

The storm is the largest to strike Vanuatu since the 1987 cyclone Uma, which killed up to 48 people and left 5,000 homeless. Vanuatu Meteorological Service acting director David Gibson told the Guardian that Pam was likely to be the largest storm to ever hit Vanuatu, saying Uma was a category 4 at its strongest.

While Vanuatu has borne the greatest brunt of the storm, parts of the Solomon Islands, in particular Tikopia Island and Anuta, have been severely hit. Brian Tom, a spokesman for the country’s National Disaster Management Office, told Checkpoint that Tikopia had lost 90 percent of its food crops and fruit trees, and the water was contaminated. Storms were still preventing emergency response operations. While there have been no reported fatalities, Tom said that some had been injured by falling trees.

The Pacific Island nations are among the most impoverished countries in the world. Vanuatu has an annual GDP per capita of approximately $US3,276. The most recent UN Human Development Index ranking places it at number 131 out of 186 countries worldwide. The Solomon Islands ranks even lower, at 158.

The Australian or New Zealand governments are yet to formally announce any aid to the affected countries. Australian High Commissioner Jeremy Brewer told reporters in Perth today that he had spoken to Vanuatu Prime Minister Joe Natuman offering Australian help. “We are still assessing the situation but we stand ready to assist,” he said.

Whatever funding is allocated to the disaster-affected regions will be a miserable pittance compared to what is truly required. The “aid” supplied to Vanuatu, like numerous other Pacific island countries, is to advance Australian interests. It includes funding for Australian Federal Police and other officials integrated into the country’s state apparatus with the aim of ensuring continued Australian domination in the region.

Snowden documents reveal New Zealand’s spying on China

Tom Peters

Revelations from US National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, published in the New Zealand Herald on March 11, indicate that New Zealand’s spy agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), carries out surveillance on more than 20 countries as part of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, which also includes the US, Canada, Britain and Australia.

Previous documents released by the newspaper, in collaboration with the Intercept web site and investigative journalist Nicky Hager, showed that the GCSB captures almost all communications in several Pacific Island nations and shares them with the Five Eyes.

According to a newly released 2013 document, titled “NSA Intelligence Relationship with New Zealand,” the GCSB also targets communications in China, Japan, North Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, unspecified Latin American countries and scientific bases in Antarctica.

The document describes the GCSB as “especially helpful in its ability to provide NSA ready access to areas and countries ... difficult for the US to access.” It also states that “the GCSB highly values its relationship with NSA,” which provides its New Zealand partner with “raw traffic, processing, and reporting on targets of mutual interest, in addition to technical advice and equipment loans.”

According to other documents, the GCSB hacks into cellphones and electronic devices of foreign targets, such as diplomats. It also operates at least one secret listening station inside an unspecified New Zealand embassy or high commission. Hager told the radio station bFM that further details would be released and “in some respects we’re only just at the beginning of what people are going to find out.”

The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald noted that Hager has faced state intimidation while working on stories about the Snowden documents. Last October police ransacked Hager’s house for 10 hours and seized paper files, made copies of USB storage devices, and seized his computers and dictaphone. The police were ostensibly trying to find the source for Hager’s exposure of the government’s links to far-right blogger Cameron Slater.

The new documents further demonstrate the extraordinary global reach of the NSA and its allies, whose mantra is to “collect it all, know it all, process it all and exploit it all.” They also point to the deep integration of the GCSB in the ongoing US war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Washington’s machinations against Iran and China—both countries with which New Zealand officially has friendly relations.

Hager told bFM that spying on China was “dangerous and rash” given that New Zealand is heavily reliant on exports to China, which is its largest trading partner. However, Washington has sought to integrate New Zealand into its strategic “pivot to Asia,” aimed at pushing back China’s influence in the Asia-Pacific and preparing for war against China.

Despite its economic relationship with China, Wellington relies strategically on its alliance with US imperialism to safeguard its own neo-colonial interests in the South Pacific and around the world. Labour Party leader Andrew Little, Internal Affairs Minister Peter Dunne, and numerous media commentators have defended the GCSB’s right to spy on the Pacific on the grounds that China is increasing its diplomatic and economic presence in the region.

In the wake of the Snowden revelations, Prime Minister John Key insisted that the GCSB had not broken the law, while refusing to give any details of its operations. The National Party government, like the 1999–2008 Labour government, has strengthened military and intelligence collaboration with the US. Key recently announced that New Zealand troops will be deployed to assist Obama’s renewed military intervention in Iraq. At the same time, the government is anxious not to upset the country’s economic relations with China by openly endorsing the US “pivot.”

On March 10, Key succeeded in diverting much of the media’s attention from the spying revelations by suddenly announcing that the police were investigating an “eco-terrorism” threat. The dairy company Fonterra and Federated Farmers received anonymous threats three months ago that infant milk formula would be poisoned unless the government stopped using the poison 1080 to eradicate pests in native forests. The announcement pushed revelations that New Zealand spies on China off the front pages.

GCSB acting director Una Jagose made a rare public appearance at parliament’s Security and Intelligence Committee on March 11 in an attempt to defend the agency’s activities. She bluntly declared that there was a “tension” between “New Zealanders’ call for openness and... the bureau’s need for secrecy around a lot of what it does.”

Asked by Little if the agency engaged in mass surveillance or mass collection of data in the Pacific, Jagose refused to answer directly, stating: “The connotation I get from those phrases is some indiscriminate, for no purpose, not necessary collection of information for collection’s sake, and we do not do that.” She insisted that all the GCSB’s spying was “authorised” by the government.

Despite Jagose’s obfuscation and outright refusal to answer questions, the Labour leader told the Herald that the hearing had given him “a greater level of assurance than I had perhaps a week ago” about the GCSB’s operations.

In fact, former GCSB director Bruce Ferguson confirmed to Radio NZ on March 5 that the agency’s Waihopai spy base engages in the “mass collection” of communications from the Pacific. This includes collecting the data of New Zealand citizens in the region, which was illegal prior to 2013, when a highly unpopular amendment allowed the agency to spy on New Zealanders.

On March 12, the Herald reported that according to the GCSB’s latest annual report, spying on New Zealanders has “skyrocketed” since the law change. There were “59 access authorisations which were ‘in force’ over the year ending 30 June 2014, up on 26 the previous 12 months.”

These “access authorisations,” which require a minister’s warrant, can target specific persons, “classes of persons,” places, or “information infrastructure,” such as a specific computer system or network, or a phone system.

While the government and Labour Party are closing ranks to defend the GCSB, it is all but obvious that the agency violates the privacy of millions of innocent people in New Zealand and around the world.

In what amounts to an open admission, speaking to the media on March 9, Prime Minister Key retracted a promise he made in 2013 to resign if it was found that the GCSB engages in mass surveillance. Key justified the retraction with the spurious argument that “mass collection” of private information was not the same as “mass surveillance.”

Last September, Snowden wrote that “any statement that mass surveillance is not performed in New Zealand, or that the internet communications are not comprehensively intercepted and monitored, or that this is not intentionally and actively abetted by the GCSB, is categorically false.”

UK parliamentary committee justifies mass spying on e-communications

Paul Mitchell

The UK Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) published its report “Privacy and Security” on March 12 into the activities of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). Since the inquiry began in 2013, the ISC has taken evidence, both in public and in secret, from a variety of senior figures, including the heads of Britain’s security services, MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.

The report is a whitewash, aimed at legitimising the mass surveillance apparatus exposed by former National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013.

The inquiry was convened after Snowden disclosed that GCHQ and the NSA were collaborating through the Tempora and Prism programmes to tap fibre-optic cables that carry global communications and sharing vast amounts of harvested data. Telecom companies had been forced to install equipment that duplicates the cable data and diverts it to GCHQ. According to Snowden, the UK Tempora programme was the first “full take” system developed in the world, allowing the wholesale collection of Internet traffic.

Snowden was bitterly denounced for making public the documents confirming this nefarious activity by then-ISC chair Sir Malcolm Rifkind. Snowden not only revealed the mass surveillance taking place but exposed the ISC for its role as a mouthpiece for the security services.

The UK government has adamantly refused to acknowledge the existence of Tempora and the scale of its activities, insisting that all surveillance carried out in the UK takes place in accordance with the law. The ISC merely regurgitates the government’s line. In its entire 149-page report, the words “Prism” and “Tempora” do not warrant a single mention.

Instead, the document is littered with redactions concealing exactly how much data is gathered, filtered and read. Even so, the ISC still acknowledges that agents read an unspecified “*** thousand items a day”. This figure could range from 1,000 to 999,000 and is a substantial amount of detailed surveillance of private communications and, as the ISC admits, only a tiny percentage of the data intercepted.

The ISC declares the “bulk interception” of communications to be legal and clears GCHQ of breaking surveillance rules and invading privacy. It recommends a single new law be introduced, replacing the existing “piecemeal” legislation, because the current laws could be thought to provide the agencies with a “blank cheque to carry out whatever actives they deem necessary”. The ISC calls for greater transparency but then declares it won’t be possible to “specify the detail of certain arrangements in legislation.”

The report claims bulk collection is necessary to find out the “what, when, where” of every e-mail so the intelligence agencies can use “thousands of filters” to “find patterns and associations, in order to generate initial leads.” It continues, “This is an essential first step before the agencies can then investigate those leads through targeted interception.”

The targeted interception of communications “with both ends known to be in the UK” requires a ministerial warrant specifying an individual or address. In a separate report published on Thursday, the Interception of Communications Commissioner, who oversees the warrant system, revealed that 2,795 warrants had been granted in the UK in 2014.

Communications having only one end within the UK, whether leaving or entering, can be collected based on a list of categories defined in “the Certificate” and do not have to be targeted for a named individual or address. However, the report points out that it is very difficult to determine what constitutes internal and external e-mail and that many of the activities are undertaken without any explicit authorisations.

The report describes how the agencies are increasing the number of Bulk Personal Datasets, “large databases containing personal information about a wide range of people—to identify individuals in the course of investigations, to establish links, and as a means of verifying information obtained through other sources.”

The ISC defends “bulk interception” and “large” Bulk Personal Datasets, and notes that the commissioner responsible for overseeing the activities of the agencies operates under an “unsatisfactory and inappropriate” non-statutory framework, that MI6 undertakes intrusive operations abroad but is not obliged to record them, and that agents have been disciplined or sacked for “inappropriately” accessing personal information gathered from bulk interception. Nonetheless, the ISC comes to the sinister conclusion that GCHQ’s activity is legal and “does not equate to blanket surveillance, nor does it equate to indiscriminate surveillance.”

The ISC also describes how GCHQ is particularly concerned to solve “the encryption problem” and has three main elements in a programme to that end. One is “developing decryption capabilities”—possibly the development of encryption-breaking software. The other two elements have been redacted, but according to journalist Glenn Greenwald, who worked closely with Snowden to make public his revelations, may involve attempts to pressure encryption companies to provide get-arounds.

The ISC claims that bulk interception has stopped specific threats to the UK, but “these examples cannot be published, even in redacted form, without significant risk to GCHQ’s capabilities, and consequential damage to the national security of the UK.”

Mass surveillance is offered up as the answer to terrorism, but it failed to prevent attacks such as those in London, Boston, Paris and Copenhagen. It has emerged that every recent terrorist attack in the UK or by British citizens abroad was carried out by individuals who were well known to the intelligence agencies.

Responding to the ISC report, human rights organisation Privacy International declared that it “provides a long-awaited official confirmation that the British government is engaging in mass surveillance of communications. Far from allaying the public’s concerns, the ISC’s report should trouble every single person who uses a computer or mobile phone: it describes in great detail how the security services are intercepting billions of communications each day and interrogating those communications against thousands of selection fields.

“The ISC has attempted to mask the reality of its admissions by describing GCHQ’s actions as ‘bulk interception’. However, no amount of technical and legal jargon can obscure the fact that this is a parliamentary committee, in a democratic country, telling its citizens that they are living in a surveillance state and that all is well.”

The report, which comes one month after a similar whitewash of the intelligence services by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, smooths the way for further repressive powers for Britain’s security services.

Following January’s terror assaults on the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris and a Jewish supermarket, in which 17 people were killed, the UK government and intelligence agencies demanded an intensification of their surveillance powers. Former MI-5 head Lord Evans claimed that existing anti-terror legislation was “no longer fit for purpose” and new laws were “vital” to enable the state to monitor e-mails and social media web sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Prime Minister David Cameron pledged that if the Conservatives return to power after May’s General Election, they will speed up plans for a “snoopers’ charter” Communications Data Bil l,

giving the intelligence agencies the power to access all encrypted communications.

UK government pledges further spying powers and to “move on” from Snowden

Chris Marsden

This week, UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond spoke on “intelligence and security” at London’s Royal United Services Institute. His speech was a chilling indication of the extent to which the government intends to further strengthen the apparatus of the security services.

Hammond’s speech began with ludicrous claims that Britain’s security services, MI5, MI6 and the Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) were open to public scrutiny and “accountable to Parliament. Their actions are subject to detailed Ministerial oversight…”

He even boasted of an enhanced “system of oversight” and “strengthened” safeguards against abuses.

He adopted this cynical pose only in order to insist that the security services must perforce operate in secret and be given enhanced powers to spy on everyone. This was, he continued, made necessary by the threats from “international terrorist organisations”; “potential state adversaries” that he identified as North Korea, Iran and, above all, Russia; and the “radicalisation of individual terrorists.”

Hammond then proceeded to vilify anyone opposing such repressive measures or raising concerns over democratic rights.

“Of course, there are some who will never accept that our intelligence agencies play a legitimate role in helping the State to fulfil its first duty: the duty to safeguard its citizens,” he pontificated. “There are some who remain wilfully blind to the distinction between the unacknowledged, unregulated, underhand intelligence capabilities of a repressive regime, directed against its own people, and the agencies of this and other democratic countries, where intelligence is directed towards keeping our citizens safe and is subject to the most robust systems of oversight” (emphasis added).

The exercise of wilful blindness is, of course, Hammond’s.

His assertions that massive surveillance of British citizens is a benign act of protection have been made necessary above all by the revelations of former National Security Agency (NSA) whistle-blower Edward Snowden. Among the many examples of mass surveillance he disclosed was the Tempora system run by GCHQ.

Tempora, which shares all its information with the American NSA, employs 500 analysts and monitors and stores all electronic and phone call data not only of all British citizens, but those of at least 2 billion people internationally.

Hammond knows that Snowden has created a major political problem for the ruling class by exposing their surreptitious and entirely unregulated spying on every man, woman and child in the UK. His speech was meant in the first instance to reassure Britain’s spies that they will be protected from any possible fall-out and their criminal actions would be allowed to continue.

His speech came just two days before parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) issued a report whitewashing GCHQ’s mass surveillance programme, concluding that it was “essential.”

Hammond professed to be “conscious, in the wake of the Snowden allegations and in the light of upcoming parliamentary and other inquiries” of the “need to address public concerns about the transparency of the regulatory framework and the powers contained within it.”

But, he added, “I am also clear, that this debate cannot be allowed to run on forever.”

Declaring a need to “move on, sooner rather than later,” Hammond stated that he, Prime Minister David Cameron and Home Secretary Theresa May are “determined that we should draw a line under the debate” and to then give “our agencies … the powers they need.”

There has, in fact, never been a “debate” about the illegal practices of the NSA and GCHQ. Quite the reverse. The government attempted to repress the dissemination of Snowden’s revelations. This included the despatch of security agents to the Guardian ’s headquarters to oversee the destruction of hard drives containing Snowden’s information, and threats to close the newspaper and jail its editor, Alan Rusbridger

An indication of the further powers Hammond is demanding for the security services is provided by his response to revelations that MI6 was well aware of the activities of Mohammed Emwazi, the British man dubbed “Jihadi John” by the media and thought to be the person seen in several videos executing captives of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS or ISIL).

“The exposure of the alleged identity of one of the most murderous ISIL terrorists over the last few weeks has seen some seeking to excuse the terrorists and point the finger of blame at the agencies themselves,” Hammond complained. “We are absolutely clear: the responsibility for acts of terror rests with those who commit them. But a huge burden of responsibility also lies with those who act as apologists for them.”

This turns reality on its head. Emwazi’s name only became public knowledge on February 26, after months during which it was concealed by the security services, thanks to a report in the Washington Post .

It then transpired that Emwazi had been known to the security services as an active jihadist since 2006, but was still able to leave Britain even though he was a prominent member of a watched terror cell. It has since emerged that he had known links to the July 7, 2005 London bomb plotters who killed 52 people in Britain’s worst-ever terrorist atrocity.

At least two of the four bombers responsible for explosions on London Underground trains and a bus—Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer—were also known to the intelligence services. Intelligence chiefs had warned then Prime Minister Tony Blair that Al Qaeda was planning a “high priority” attack on the London Underground network.

The US and UK security services even had a “super-grass,” Mohammed Junaid Babar, who was arrested just one year earlier after having trained Mohammad Sidique Khan in Pakistan in 2003. Babar served only four and a half years of a possible 70-year term in a US prison.

Hammond claims that the UK is not a “repressive regime.” Then what does one call a state that engages in conspiracies against its own people—up to and including allowing terrorist atrocities to take place—in order to justify blanket surveillance and a barrage of legislation eliminating long-held democratic rights?

Hammond speaks for a government with blood on its hands, including participating in the war for regime change in Libya and a planned war against Syria that involved making millions of pounds and weapons caches available to Islamist groups such as ISIS.

But there is nothing that he says or does that distinguishes him from the Labour Party—architects of the Afghan and Iraq wars and instigators, along with the Bush administration in Washington, of the accompanying “war on terror.”

Every political representative of the ruling elite is measured by their paymasters against their readiness to trample on democratic rights and to resort to ever more overt repression so British imperialism can assert its predatory ambitions by military force all over the world and impose savage austerity on workers at home.

US retail sales fall for third consecutive month

Gabriel Black

United States retail sales fell for a third straight month in February, heading in the opposite direction of economists’ predictions. Consumers spent 0.6 percent less on retail goods in February compared to January according to the advance report released Thursday by the US Commerce Department.

The US retail sales growth rate has been on a downward trajectory since January 2014. Except for a slight uptick with holiday season spending, the retail growth rate has declined or been absolutely negative for every month except one. In the past three months sales have declined absolutely, with a 0.9 percent decline in December, 0.8 percent in January, and 0.6 percent in February.

This downward trend in spending reflects the actual conditions facing millions of working people: unemployment, employment in undesired low-paying service jobs, declining or stagnating wages, cuts to hours, and a general decline in living standards. These latest figures, suggestive of recessionary trends, further underscore that there is no real economic recovery under way. Insofar as jobs are being created they are overwhelmingly low-paid, oftentimes in the service sector. Traditionally high-paying jobs have undergone massive wage cuts. For instance, vehicle manufacturing workers lost 21 percent of their income between 2003 and 2013.

Recessionary signs are emerging not only in the United States, but worldwide. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development released a report last month that stated, “[A] return to the pre-crisis growth path remains elusive for the majority of the OECD countries. In most advanced economies, potential growth has been revised down and, in some cases, there are growing concerns that persistently weak demand is pulling down potential growth further, resulting in a protracted period of stagnation.”

The only actual recovery that has occurred since the 2008 financial crisis is on Wall Street. The assets of the super-rich have soared as the stock market has been inflated by an endless supply of virtually free cash from the Federal Reserve.

The perverse relationship between the actual economy and the stock market was highlighted on Thursday when the news of a third month of decline in retail sales caused the biggest gain in five weeks on Wall Street. Speculators pushed the Dow up a total of 260 points, betting that the Federal Reserve would sustain the flow of cheap cash that undergirds the current stock market bubble.

Sales did not fall in just one sector of the economy in February but did so broadly. Auto purchases declined by 2.5 percent, the worst decline in over a year, sales at restaurants and bars also had their worst month in over a year, declining by 0.6 percent. Retail sales fell at department stores and Walmart-type retailers by 1.2 percent. Home improvement stores saw a 2.3 percent decrease and electronics stores 1.2 percent. Over the past year retail sales have risen cumulatively by 1.7 percent; during times of economic growth this rate is closer to five or six percent.

Economists had predicted that retail sales would have actually increased by 0.3 percent. The New York Times wrote, “Solid employment growth and falling gas prices should give consumers more money to spend on other items.”

The Times overlooks the fact that while the official jobless rate has declined, primarily due to workers leaving the workforce, February was the 11th straight month in a row that the labor force participation rate—a more accurate measure of unemployment—remained below 63 percent. February’s rate was the lowest since 1978. Meanwhile wages stagnated in February for non-supervisory and production workers, reflecting a larger trend of low-wage growth and wage stagnation.

The news of a sustained downturn in sales comes amidst other expressions of economic stagnation. Also on Thursday, Intel, the computer chip manufacturer, slashed its first quarter revenue estimate by almost a billion dollars. The company cited “increasingly challenging” economic conditions as the major reason behind the reduced estimate.

US Steel announced that it would lay off 412 workers at a plant in Minnesota that is going to be idled this past week. This is on top of a layoff of 1,800 workers at a plant in Alabama announced in February. The castings and machine parts producer Chassix Holdings also filed for bankruptcy Thursday. The company has about 3,500 workers, whose jobs and retirements could be put in jeopardy.

Additionally, two tech companies, Cypress and Spansion, are planning to merge and have announced a cut of 1,600 jobs between the two of them as a part of the deal. Target also announced job cuts via email this week. The company will cut about 3,100 positions, 1,700 of which are currently occupied by employees.

Investors pledge billions to Egyptian junta at Sharm el-Sheikh conference

Alex Lantier

Global investors and political officials gathered yesterday in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh for the opening of a three-day Egypt Economic Development Conference, pledging to invest billions of dollars in the bloody military junta of General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Hundreds of top officials and CEOs attended, including US Secretary of State John Kerry, Italian Premier Matteo Renzi, and Chinese Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng.

The conference amounted to a political endorsement by finance capital of the Sisi junta’s bloody repression of the working class, whose demands for bread and equality drove a revolutionary upsurge that toppled US-backed Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011. It exposed the reality behind the claims of US and world imperialism to be carrying out wars and interventions in the Middle East, Africa, Ukraine and elsewhere in behalf of “human rights” and “democracy.”

The event followed by less than a week the first execution in Egypt of the nearly 1,400 Islamists condemned to death in summary trials held last year by the Sisi regime.

In his opening address to the conference, Sisi boasted that Egypt had a long-term economic development strategy based on free market economics and private investment. “Egypt has been and will always be the first line of defense against the dangers faced by the region,” he said. “You will find Egypt, as well as the entire region, safe and secure.”

With Washington leading military interventions against Islamist forces across the region, notably in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State (ISIS), Sisi promoted the Egyptian army as an anti-Islamist force, having ousted Egypt’s Islamist president, Mohamed Mursi, in a bloody coup in 2013.

“The stability of Egyptian society is stability for the region as a whole. Egypt is a model of tolerant morals, a country that denounces extremism and violence,” he declared.

As officials and media commentators hailed Sisi for returning “stability” to Egypt, the Persian Gulf sheikdoms of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates pledged to invest $12.5 billion. Transnational corporations, including British Petroleum, General Electric and Alsthom, lined up for lucrative energy and industrial contracts, including the development of the giant West Nile Delta (WND) gas field, the construction of gas-fired power plants in Suez City, and an extension of the Cairo subway.

BP called the project a “vote of confidence in Egypt’s investment climate and economic potential.”

Major international banks and corporations are creating jobs in Egypt only because they assume that ongoing political terror will guarantee low wages and high profits. Egypt’s “investment climate,” praised by BP, is one in which workers’ protests for back wages or wage increases are brutally attacked by security forces, which have detained and tortured tens of thousands of prisoners and shot thousands of peaceful protesters in the streets of Cairo.

Hundreds of strikes and workers’ protests under the Sisi junta last year culminated in the shooting of seven workers and jailing of eight last September, when police broke up a protest demanding back wages at the Abod textile factory in Alexandria. Workers’ protests continue, however, amid deafening silence in international media.

On Thursday, AP reporters spoke to Tarek Tabl, a 52-year-old construction engineer leading one of a series of workers’ protests outside government offices in Cairo, shortly before police attacked and dispersed the protest.

Workers at Tabl’s firm are demanding back wages that have not been paid for five months. “This is only going to escalate,” he said. “I’d rather kill myself than go home and face my kids.”

Tabl criticized investments that went to privatize the construction firm where he works, leading to mass layoffs. “This is the type of investment that is producing only unemployment and chaos,” he declared.

What attracts investors to Egypt are the super-profits that can be drawn from a work force facing relentless repression in an economy where monthly wages can be as low as 1,000 to 1,700 Egyptian pounds ($131 to $220).

“This part of the world is blessed with a stunning amount of commercial potential,” Kerry said at an American Chamber of Commerce event Friday morning before traveling to Sharm el-Sheikh. He said US firms, which invested $2 billion in the Sisi junta last year, stood ready to help the Egyptian economy.

Kerry met with Sisi, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdullah for discussions on the regional political situation before speaking at the Sharm el-Sheikh conference. There, he praised the role played by Egypt in the “war on terror,” which includes the bombing of Islamist forces that have taken control of portions of Libya since the NATO-led war in 2011 that toppled Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.

The calculations involved in the conference were perhaps most bluntly laid out by Italian Prime Minister Renzi, who said he viewed both Sisi’s war on Islamism and the prevention of a new revolutionary upsurge of the Egyptian workers as key strategic interests of European imperialism.

“Your war is our war, and your stability is our stability,” Renzi told Sisi at the Sharm-el-Sheikh conference. “The issue is not about Egypt or the region only, but also about Italy and the rest of the world.”

Renzi’s comments point to the class conflicts that are developing under the surface not only in Egypt, but internationally. He is well aware of explosive opposition in the Italian and European working class to the European Union’s austerity policies, which similarly aim to impose free market policies and poverty wages on workers. Renzi is bluntly warning that a new revolutionary uprising in Egypt could spread not only throughout the Middle East, but also to the United States and Europe.

A further indication of the social physiognomy of transnational corporate elites is provided by the investment law passed by the Sisi junta earlier this month. It is designed primarily to give investors immunity from prosecution for various types of criminal behavior.

Its signature measure is a provision preventing corporate executives from going to jail for criminal behavior by their corporations. The initial stages of the Egyptian revolution in 2011 saw widespread demands by workers for the prosecution of criminal behavior by corporate executives and leading officials at state-owned enterprises.

“We cannot keep prosecuting company CEOs in cases where the company is accused of wrongdoing and sending them to jail,” Mohamed El-Sewedy, the head of the Federation of Egyptian Industries, told Ahram Online. He added that he was satisfied with the final draft of the law.

The law also sets up a single General Authority for Investment (GAFI), which will act as a rubber stamp for investment projects. Investors can require the government to process an application to liquidate their investments, should they decide to leave Egypt, in 120 days.

The law also establishes new, looser regulations for real estate sales, following court rulings upholding challenges to the legality of several high-profile land deals.

The conference at Sharm el-Sheikh is a warning not only to the Egyptian, but also to the international working class. The issues of social equality and the struggle against class oppression that led to the revolutionary uprising against Mubarak in 2011 were posed in Egypt, but they could not be resolved within the borders of one country. Workers in Egypt and around the world, including in the wealthiest countries, face the same challenge: progressive social change can come only through a revolutionary struggle of the working class for socialism.

Capitalism has reached a social and political dead end, offering nothing but escalating wars and attacks on the living standards of the masses. The easy embrace of the Sisi junta by Western officials is a warning that the military methods for suppressing internal opposition employed by Sisi are being prepared not only in Egypt, but internationally—including in Europe and America.

US ramps up anti-China “pivot to Asia”

Peter Symonds

The latest US maritime strategic document, “A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower: Forward, Engaged, Ready,” released yesterday, makes clear that Washington is pressing ahead with its “pivot to Asia” and military build-up against China. In doing so, the US is continuing to stoke up tensions in the East and South China seas, compounding the danger of war.

The document, prepared by the US Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard, and known by the acronym CS21R, is the first major maritime strategic update since 2007. In addressing “a global security environment characterised by volatility, instability, complexity and interdependencies,” it focuses on the “rising importance of the Indo-Asia-Pacific region,” and emphasises that “the economic importance, strategic interests and geography of this vast maritime region dictate a growing reliance on naval forces to protect US interests.”

CS21R insists it is “imperative” that the US maintain its global naval predominance to defend key American interests and prevent “our adversaries from leveraging the world’s oceans against us.” The document notes, “The ability to sustain operations in international waters far from our shores constitutes a distinct advantage for the United States.”

There is nothing benign about the US strategy of maintaining overwhelming naval superiority in the Indo-Pacific region. The Pentagon’s plans for war against China, known as “AirSea Battle,” rely on the ability to mount a massive offshore air and missile attack on the Chinese mainland, including China’s military and infrastructure, supplemented by an economic blockade. Under the pretext of securing “freedom of navigation,” the US navy is ensuring that it has the ability to block key shipping lanes across the Indian Ocean used by China to import energy and raw materials from Africa and the Middle East.

CS21R reaffirms the US military’s plans to “rebalance” 60 percent of its naval and air forces to the Indo-Pacific region by 2020--just five years from now. It states: “The Navy will maintain a Carrier Strike Group, Carrier Airwing and Amphibious Ready Group in Japan; add an attack submarine to those already in Guam and... [increase] to four the number of Littoral Combat Ships forward-stationed in Singapore... The Navy will also provide its most advanced warfighting platforms to the region, including multi-mission ballistic missile defence-capable ships; submarines; and intelligence surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft.”

Likewise, the Marine Corps will maintain a Marine expeditionary force in the region, as well as a Marine rotational force in Australia, backed by the latest warplanes, amphibious ships and vehicles to “give these forces the increased range and improved capabilities required in this vast region.”

The only “cooperative” aspect of this strategy is the drive by the US to strengthen its alliances and strategic partnerships throughout the Indo-Pacific region against China, which the document highlights as presenting the main “challenges when it employs force or intimidation against other sovereign nations to assert territorial claims.”

In fact, it is Washington that has deliberately inflamed maritime disputes in the Western Pacific by encouraging Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam to aggressively assert their territorial claims against China.

The Japanese government’s provocative decision in 2012 to “nationalise” uninhabited, rocky outcrops in the East China Sea known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China set in motion a dangerous and escalating confrontation. The New York Times reported this week from the Japanese Air Force base at Naha that “at least once every day, Japanese F-15 fighter jets roar down the runway, scrambling to intercept foreign aircraft, mostly from China” near the disputed islands. Sometimes, it stated, they face Chinese fighters “in knuckle-whitening tests of piloting skills, and self-control.”

While the US nominally declares its neutrality in the territorial dispute, President Obama last year publicly committed to backing Japan in a war with China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. US-Japanese military collaboration is proceeding apace, including the training of Japanese Marine units for “island defence” and the development of anti-ballistic missile systems needed to fight a nuclear war. The Japanese military is planning to station another F-15 squadron at Naha and is building a radar base on Yonaguni Island—its first new military base in decades.

Tensions in the South China Sea are even more fraught. Last December, Washington jettisoned even the pretence of neutrality in maritime disputes in the region with the publication of a State Department report declaring that China’s claims violate the international law of the sea. Behind the scenes, the US is backing a legal challenge by the Philippines, supported by Vietnam, to Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Over the past month, the US media, military and political establishment has ramped up pressure on China, denouncing its construction projects on Chinese-administered islands and reefs in the South China Sea. In comments to the US Senate in late February, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper declared that China was making “aggressive” efforts to secure control of strategic waterways. Republican Senator John McCain was even more inflammatory, suggesting that China was constructing airfields and missile bases that could deny the US Navy access to the area.

Under the guise of “freedom of navigation,” the US is determined to maintain its “right” to position substantial naval firepower in sensitive waters just off the Chinese mainland and near China’s military bases. Not only is Washington backing the Philippines and Vietnam in their territorial disputes, it is encouraging Japan and India to maintain a greater military presence in the South China Sea.

The CS21R document underscores the reckless character of American foreign and military policy. In response to the world capitalist breakdown, US imperialism is determined to maintain and reinforce its global hegemony at any cost, pursuing a strategy, whether in Asia, the Middle East or Eastern Europe, that is inexorably fuelling a confrontation with nuclear armed powers—China and Russia.

The danger of nuclear war was highlighted by the British-based Economist. In an article this month entitled “The New Age,” it concluded that “a quarter of a century after the end of the cold war, the world faces a growing threat of nuclear conflict.”

While focussed on the dangers of war over Ukraine, the article also warned of a nuclear arms race and conflict in Asia. Noting that “a crisis, say, over Taiwan could escalate alarmingly,” the magazine wrote, “Japan, seeing China’s conventional military strengthen, may feel it can no longer rely on America for protection. If so, Japan and South Korea could go for the bomb—creating, with North Korea, another petrifying regional stand-off.”