UK: Police commander at 1989 Hillsborough disaster admits causing 96 deaths

Barry Mason

The police match commander in charge during the 1989 Hillsborough football stadium disaster admitted that his failure to close a tunnel leading to the terraces “was the direct cause of the deaths of 96 people.” This is the first time that former Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield has accepted responsibility for causing the deaths.

On April 15, 1989, in Britain’s biggest sporting disaster, 96 Liverpool Football Club supporters died as a result of a crush at the Hillsborough football stadium in Sheffield, South Yorkshire. The occasion was a Football Association (FA) Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest.

With the match due to start at 3 p.m., and many of the Liverpool fans still outside the ground at the Leppings Lane end of the stadium, an order was given at 2:52 p.m. to open exit Gate C. This allowed 2,000 fans to flood in. Following the contours of the ground layout, they were funnelled into the tunnel leading to the central pens behind the goal.

These pens were already filled to capacity, as was evident to the police from their live CCTV footage. The game was abandoned shortly after it had kicked off, as fans suffering crush injuries began to spill out onto the pitch in spite of the high fencing all around.

As a result of the crush, 94 fans died at the ground with two others dying subsequently. Immediately, the police, emergency services, the Conservative Party government of Margaret Thatcher and the media, led by Rupert Murdoch’s Sun tabloid, began a cover-up by putting the blame on the fans.

The family and friends of those who died fought for more than two decades to bring out the truth of what happened that day.

In September 2012, a report issued by the Hillsborough Independent Panel showed the deaths were the result of corporate, police and emergency services’ negligence. Later that year, the High Court overturned the original accidental death verdict by coroner Stefan Popper and ordered a new inquest.

The new inquest began its hearings in a specially constructed court in the town of Warrington on March 31 last year.

Beginning March 10, the Hillsborough Inquiry began hearing evidence from the policeman in charge of events on the day of the match. Duckenfield’s evidence was heard over a total of seven days.

The inquest heard how the lies and cover-up began within minutes of the incident’s occurrence. The inquest was told that the FA chief executive came into the Hillsborough ground police control box at 3:15 p.m. that day to find out what had caused the crush. Duckenfield told him it was the result of fans getting unauthorised access to the ground, that they had forced open Gate C. He told the inquest, “What I didn’t say to Mr. Kelly, I didn’t say, ‘I have authorised the opening of the gates’, I didn’t tell him that.”

Duckenfield had been promoted to the rank of chief superintendent of F Division only two weeks prior to the day of the fateful match. One of the roles of the post was to act as match commander at Hillsborough football club. Asked at the inquest if his promotion was a result of his freemasonry links, he replied: “I wouldn’t know, sir, but I would hope not.”

Asked if he was up to the task of being a match commander at such a prestigious event as an FA Cup semi-final match, Duckenfield replied, “With hindsight, I should have thought about my limited knowledge of the role of commander in a major event that was an all-ticket sell-out, when I had not been responsible, or in that responsible position, previously. … Probably I wasn’t the best man for the job on that day.”

He would have had access to the police CCTV system showing the fans that had entered, after he had authorised the opening of the gate, heading for the tunnel leading to the already overcrowded pens behind the goal, but took no action. Faced with the consequences of his action, Duckenfield said he “froze”.

Questioning Duckenfield on behalf of the Police Federation of England and Wales, Paul Greaney QC said a child of “average intelligence” could have realised what would happen when Gate C was opened and 2,000 football supporters headed towards the terraces.

He asked, “during the critical period, you froze?” After initially prevaricating, Duckenfield replied, “Yes, sir.”

Duckenfield claimed that he could “not think of it [the consequences of his actions] on the day” because he was under pressure and had “no idea” Liverpool fans would head through the gate for a tunnel leading to the already packed terraces.

Greaney put it to him: “That failure was the direct cause of the deaths of the 96 persons in the Hillsborough tragedy?” To which he replied: “Yes, sir.”

Duckenfield told the inquest that he apologised unreservedly for lying. BBC News reported that “some relatives left their seats and walked out of the courtroom in tears.”

While accepting that his instruction to open the gate led to the deaths of the football fans, Duckenfield maintained that he was not negligent. Rajiv Menon QC, representing the families of 75 Hillsborough victims, asked, “It was gross negligence and ultimately it caused the disaster and the deaths of 96 Liverpool fans, didn’t it?”

Duckenfield replied, “No, sir. My view is it was an oversight, a mistake.”

Despite admitting to a “terrible lie” about the cause of the crush, Duckenfield claimed that he played no part in a cover-up. Menon suggested to Duckenfield a “false narrative” had been spread by the authorities to blame Liverpool supporters for the disaster, to which Duckenfield replied, “I disagree. There was no conspiracy as far as I am concerned."

The inquest was shown transcripts from the police control box where Duckenfield was directing the response to events. At 3:04 p.m., he made a call to police headquarters for dog handlers to be sent to the ground. It was only after another two and a half minutes that a request for ambulances was sent out and, at 3:13 p.m., a request for the fire brigade to attend.

Two and a half years following the tragedy, Duckenfield retired on the grounds of ill health on a full pension. He was then in his late 40s. On the stand at the inquest, he accepted his early retirement enabled him to escape disciplinary proceedings. Terry Munyard, representing some of the families, put it to him, “You retired at a time when the police complaints commission indicated that they intended to bring disciplinary proceedings against you, and by retiring you avoided those proceedings, didn’t you?” Duckenfield agreed that was the case.

As late as March last year, when he was interviewed for Operation Resolve, the criminal investigation into the Hillsborough disaster, Duckenfield said he could not add to the evidence he had already given. On the stand at the inquest he was asked by Pete Weatherby QC, representing 22 of the families, “The truth is that you followed these inquests, and you have seen the evidence that’s emerged over the months, and you have seen that the writing is on the wall and you are now driven to accepting responsibility.”

Duckenfield agreed with Weatherby’s statement.

The inquest hearings are scheduled to conclude in early 2016.

Mexican migrant workers strike over wages and working conditions

Rafael Azul

Thousands of agricultural workers went on strike last week in San Quentin Valley (Valle de San Quintín) against 15 agricultural corporations in defense of their rights, and over wages and better working conditions. Some 30,000 migrant workers work in the valley, part of a labor force of 70,000 for the entire Baja California Peninsula.

San Quentin Valley is located the northwestern state of Baja California Norte. The valley lies about 200 miles (300 km) south of San Diego, California. Because of its location, it is a major exporter of agricultural products to the United States, including strawberries, cucumbers, tomatoes, chilies, and other vegetables that are picked with labor-intensive methods.

As part of their protest, the workers barricaded the Transpeninsular highway at various points, demanding a meeting with state and federal officials to set up a mechanism to enforce workers’ rights that are guaranteed by Mexican law but ignored by the growers.

The government responded with repression. On Tuesday and Wednesday (March 17-18) police attacked agricultural workers at the Transpeninsular highway barricades near the coastal city of Ensenada. Over 200 were arrested and charged with supposed vandalism against supermarkets and stores. Many of those arrested were not at the road closing and had been dragged from their homes.

The migrant agricultural workers had blocked the Transpeninsular highway with stones and tires early Tuesday morning. The protests spread throughout the day in the region that lies between the communities of San Simón to the south and Punta Colonet to the north. Punta Colonet lies 120 kilometers from Ensenada. In the town of Camalú, a contingent of 400 day workers occupied government offices.

The Mexico City daily La Jornada reports that tens of thousands of workers, many of them Native Americans, migrate to the San Quentin Valley every year as stoop labor for giant agribusiness firms. While they are supposedly paid 100 pesos (US$7) a day, they are charged for transportation, lodging, etc, reducing their take-home pay to 40 pesos (often the100-peso base wage is contingent on a quota of work).

Since December 2014, farmworkers’ leaders had sought a 300-peso base wage, plus improved working conditions that are enforced by law. Both planters and government officials had ignored their demand.

About 100 workers were released the day after the police assault. Formal charges have been lodged in Ensenada against 54 workers for blocking the highway. According to La Jornada, a majority of the 30,000 workers may have taken part in the various protests of Tuesday and Wednesday.

On Thursday, demonstrators rallied at the San Quentin Government Center demanding the release of their comrades. The police moved in with tear gas and rubber bullets.

Leaders of the farmworkers in the Alliance of National, State, and Municipal Organizations for Social Justice (AONEMJUS) charged that agents provocateurs were sent in by the Confederation of Mexican workers, and the Revolutionary Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM and CROM, allied with the ruling Partido Revolucionario Instituticional), to discredit their struggle and provide the pretext for the police attack on the rural workers. The provocations took place in the vicinity of the highway protest and allegedly involved drug addicted youth from Ensenada recruited by the PRI, the CTM, and CROM.

The AONEMJUS accused the leader of the PRI-affiliated Farmworkers Union (STC), Jesús Espinoza, of personally organizing the provocation.

Other organizations that operate in the region, including the Commission for the Advancement of Indian People and the Parents’ Association of Lomas de San Ramón, also charged that provocateurs were used.

Both the CTM and CROM have signed sweetheart contracts with the growers behind the backs of the workers. AONEMJUS is demanding that those deals be rescinded.

An AONEMJUS spokesman declared, “This is what they have done for many years, this is how they work. Ask where the CTM and CROM are. Nowhere! Nobody knows his or her leaders! Yet they are the ones that sign collective bargaining agreements with the companies.”

In response to the workers’ action, Baja California governor Francisco Vega de Lamadrid traveled to San Quentin to discuss the situation with local authorities and supposedly to negotiate with the workers.

The governor met with the regional military commander, Augusto Moisés García, Navy admiral Victor Uribe and officials in charge of security, signaling repression, not negotiation. When AONEMJUS negotiators showed up, they were attacked by the police who even fired live ammunition; some were arrested and their fate is unknown as this article is being written. All the meetings (without AONEMJUS representatives) were held behind closed doors. The governor refused to speak to the press following the meetings.

Francisco Rueda Gómez, BC government secretary, initially promised that security forces would not be used except in the case of vandalism. Gómez also declared that “outsiders” would not be allowed in the area of the demonstrations.

Mexico is the third largest producer of agricultural foodstuffs in Latin America, and is aggressively expanding exports of labor-intensive foods into Asia and Europe. While agribusiness in Mexico is growing at twice the rate (2.8 percent per year) as the rest of the Mexican economy and generating profits for the agricultural corporations, the basis for its success is the brutal exploitation of its agricultural workers.

In addition to low wages, a form of slavery known as debt-peonage is common. Mired in debt to the growers, migrant workers often return home after a season of work with little or no money.

Besides the miserable pay, workers are forced to work 14 to 16 hours a day, they are exposed to pesticides, have no access to social services, and child labor is ubiquitous.

The farmworker protests in San Quentin Valley took place a day after 200 rural workers, among them a contingent of Taraumara Indians and their children, were rescued from slavery at farms further south in the state of Baja California Sur. The Indians, and other rural workers, from Sinaloa and Guerrero, had been enticed with false promises only to be imprisoned and made to work at plantations in subhuman conditions with little water or sanitation.

Australian spies assist Japan’s plans for intelligence agency

Peter Symonds

In a front-page article on Saturday, the Australian revealed that the country’s overseas spy agency, ASIS, has been assisting in the training of Japanese agents and the reestablishment of a centralised foreign intelligence apparatus in Japan akin to the CIA or Britain’s MI6.

The re-establishment of a foreign intelligence agency is bound up with the revival of Japanese militarism, which is being encouraged by Washington as part of its “pivot to Asia” and military build-up against China. ASIS’s involvement demonstrates just how closely Canberra is intertwined with US war plans, which rely heavily on its allies in Asia, especially Japan and Australia.

The Japanese government signalled last month that it intended to accelerate the creation of an overseas intelligence body. Seizing on the killing of two Japanese citizens by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militias, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared that it was vital “to strengthen the government’s intelligence functions” to inform “the state’s strategic decision-making.”

Japan’s notorious military intelligence agencies and internal secret police were dismantled following World War II under the US occupation. Intelligence operations continued, in collaboration with the CIA, through several agencies. Over the past two decades, however, the push for a centralised body has continued to mount. In 2006, a parliamentary committee report called for a new agency operating from Japanese embassies to collect foreign intelligence and another to perform centralised intelligence analysis.

The Australian explained: “Since 2008, members of Japan’s national security community have been travelling to Australia to be trained by ASIS so that Japan can slowly build up its espionage capability.” According to the newspaper, at least 20 Japanese agents have been trained, including several at ASIS’s highly secretive training centre on Swan Island in Victoria where exercises also involve elite Special Air Service (SAS) trainers.

The ASIS training has been critical to the Japanese intelligence apparatus which lacked foreign agents schooled in all dirty tricks and subterfuge of so-called spy craft. A WikiLeaks cable recorded a 2008 conversation in which Hideshi Mitani, the director of Japan’s Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office, told Randall Fort, head of the US State Department’s bureau of intelligence, that a “human intelligence collection capability” was a priority.

“The decision has been made to go very slowly with this process as the Japanese realise that they lack knowledge, experience, and assets/officers. A training process for new personnel will be started very soon,” the US cable read. Undoubtedly, Japanese spies have received training from the CIA and other allied agencies.

The re-establishment of a foreign spy agency is deeply unpopular in Japan. During the 1930s and 1940s, military intelligence services were intimately involved Japan’s wars and in suppressing opposition to the colonial occupation of Korea, China and other countries. The secret police in Japan ruthlessly cracked down on domestic opposition, especially from the working class, to the militarist regime in Tokyo.

The US think tank Stratfor noted that “persistent anti-militarist sentiments” remained a major obstacle to the establishment of a new spy agency. “The Japanese constitution famously contains an article, Article 9, that forbids the use of war to solve international conflicts. Though there is no intelligence equivalent to Article 9 forbidding a clandestine intelligence service, in the eyes of the public, intelligence and militarism are deeply intertwined. Memories of World War II still run deep,” it commented.

The Abe government is remilitarising across the board. Since coming to office, Abe has increased military spending, established a National Security Council to centralise foreign policy and strategic affairs, “reinterpreted” Article 9 to allow Japan to participate in US wars, and is campaigning for an end to all constitutional restrictions on the military. While the training of Japanese spies has been taking place for years, moves to re-establish a centralised overseas intelligence service will also speed up.

Currently, Japanese intelligence activities are dispersed between various agencies: the Cabinet Intelligence Research Office, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Defence Intelligence Headquarters, the National Police Agency and the Public Security Intelligence Agency.

Abe’s ambition to forge a powerful spy agency is bound up with his determination to have the means to aggressively prosecute Japanese imperialism’s economic and strategic interests—whether or not they coincide with those of the US. A Japanese intelligence apparatus would reduce Tokyo’s current dependence on the CIA and other Western spy agencies that developed during the Cold War.

According to the Australian, “the proposal to train the [Japanese] spies was put by ASIS boss Nick Warner and approved by the previous Labor government.” As Australian governments, Labor and Coalition, have integrated more and more closely into the US “pivot to Asia,” the US has also encouraged closer military and strategic ties between its two closest allies.

During a visit to Tokyo last year, Coalition Prime Minister Tony Abbott held discussions on elevating “the bilateral security and defence relationship to a new level.” Abbott and Abe resolved to reach “a framework agreement” on cooperation on military science, technology and equipment. The deal was to pave the way for the possible multi-billion dollar purchase of Japanese Soryu submarines to replace the aging Australian submarine fleet.

Abbott foreshadowed even closer military cooperation. “We want to see more interoperability between our militaries, we want to see more exercises between our militaries, we want to see over time more significant intelligence co-operation,” he said.

The Australian’s foreign editor Greg Sheridan sought to play down the significance of the newspaper’s revelation about ASIS’s training of Japanese spies. “It is good news that Japan is building a foreign intelligence agency and that the previous Labor government offered Australia’s assistance in training its personnel ... There is nothing sinister about this.”

The opposite is the case. It is one element in the far broader preparations of the US, Japan and Australia as well as other allies and strategic partners for a war with China that would have devastating consequences for the working class in Asia and internationally.

German government plans new “anti-terrorism unit”

Johannes Stern

According to media reports, the German federal police are to receive another heavily armed task force in addition to its current anti-terrorist GSG 9 unit. A spokesperson for the interior ministry confirmed that particular “consideration” had been given to the move.

Information sourced by Spiegel news magazine reveals that the new unit—flippantly dubbed “GSG 4½” by insiders—will gradually be expanded to include several hundred recruits whose equipment will resemble that of an army rather than a police force. In addition to shoulder arms and hand guns (pistols, machine pistols and heavy machine guns), the force is also to be equipped with armoured vehicles, bulletproof helmets and vests, capable of withstanding fire from assault rifles like the Kalashnikov. Unlike GSG 9, founded in 1972, the new force is also said to be capable of use in “normal police operations”.

The creation of a de facto paramilitary police force in Germany is part of an extensive domestic and foreign militarisation campaign. Apart from increasing the defence budget by €8 billion, the federal cabinet also resolved last Wednesday to upgrade the security apparatus. Next year, the interior ministry’s budget will grow by 6.7 percent to €6.6 billion, and the police, federal investigative police agency and federal intelligence service will expand to cover a total of 750 posts and receive an additional €328 million by 2019. More than €200 million of this will be directly invested in equipping the secret service and the police.

The official pretext for the formation of the special unit is the “fight against terrorism”. Allegedly the aim is “to enable (forces) to respond quickly and flexibly to attacks within Germany” and “prepare themselves specifically for terror-related emergency situations such as those in Paris and Copenhagen earlier this year” (Spiegel Online).

Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) said on Bavarian Radio: “Based on findings relating to the horrific terrorist attacks in Paris, we are called upon to increase the effectiveness of police forces in Germany”. The police cannot be said to be “perfectly equipped” when someone is armed with heavy weapons, he added.

Armin Schuster, interior ministry expert for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said it was necessary to fill the gap between the highly specialised GSG 9 elite unit and the uniformed police force with “a robust entity ... that can do that job”. He considered it “the duty of the government to provide the states with such forces when needed”. Schuster proposed that “by the end of the year, the first fully deployable section of the new anti-terrorism unit (should) be available for the federal police”. This would mean that “the first hundred-strong unit of highly trained and well equipped police agents would then be available for handling terrorist incidents throughout the country”.

In reality, Islamic terrorism serves only as a pretext for the build-up of operational forces nationwide. The perpetrators of the attacks in Paris and Copenhagen, which are now being used to justify the upgrading of the state security apparatus, were previously known to the intelligence services in both cases. Against the background of increasing social inequality within the country and the militarisation of German foreign policy, the main priority of the ruling elite is to undertake preparations to suppress mounting popular opposition.

The proposed anti-terrorism unit is part of the transformation of the federal police into a paramilitary police force, comparable with those in other European countries such as the Republican Security Companies (CRS) and the Mobile Gendarmerie in France, the Carabinieri in Italy and the Civil Guard in Spain. These garrisoned forces are under the command of the defence and interior ministries of the respective countries, and are de facto military units that take over police tasks on the domestic front when called upon. The separation of the police and military in Germany is enshrined in the country’s Basic Law, but observance of the legislation has been continually weakened.

The federal police, which emerged from the federal border police force in 2005, has trained for several years with the paramilitary units of other European countries in preparation for urban warfare and other civil war scenarios. In 2010, manoeuvres involving 26 European police forces were staged on the military training grounds of the Lehnin region in Brandenburg, where contingents of the European Gendarmerie Force (EGF), founded in 2006, also participated.

Forces drawn from eight European constabularies and headquartered in Vicenza, Italy, are multilaterally deployable and can be placed under EU, UN, OSCE and NATO command. So far, the EGF has been deployed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Afghanistan and Haiti.

Activities of the German police force have also not remained confined to their usual patrol duties. Over the past 25 years, police have been an integral part of German imperialist intervention in other countries. Since the first foreign deployment of police in Namibia from 1989 to 1994, some 9,000 German police officers have participated in a total of 28 missions. Currently, 338 German police officers are serving under the mandate of the United Nations or the European Union in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Kosovo, Georgia, Liberia and Sudan.

The German police are teaching their “colleagues” abroad what they are also preparing “at home”. In recent years, German police have frequently trained and equipped the task forces of repressive regimes, including members of the notorious but now disbanded Ukrainian Berkut special units and security forces in Belarus.

Militarisation of the police is perhaps most obvious in Saudi Arabia, where since 2009 agents of the federal police have been training Saudi border guards in the operation of heavy military equipment supplied by the EADS German-French arms company. Ulrich Wegener, who was commissioned by the then Interior Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher to establish the GSG 9 after the assassination of hostages at the Munich Olympics in 1972, set up special forces for the dictatorial Saudi regime after his retirement.

The creation of an armed-to-the-teeth, anti-terrorism unit of the federal police is a warning to the working people of Germany. It constitutes a similar development to the one in the US, where special police units (SWAT teams) terrorise the local population with heavy military hardware previously used in US-led wars, and occupy whole cities in the way that was done to quell the unrest in Ferguson last summer.

The fraud of Obama’s “Student Aid Bill of Rights”

Nancy Hanover

Last week President Obama announced a series of executive actions that he dubbed a “Student Aid Bill of Rights.”

The initiative is partially an exercise in damage control. It follows a series of lawsuits and scandals involving the Department of Education (DOE). The government agency has become the target of growing anger for protection of predatory student loan collection agencies, its bailout of the for-profit career college chain Corinthian and its overall profit-taking from student loans.

Obama’s initiative, in the form of a memorandum directed to the DOE, calls for:

• a new web site where all federal loans will be visible by July 2016

• requiring loan servicers to notify debtors when their loans are transferred or payments are late

• instructing loan servicers to apply prepayments to loans with the highest interest rate

• a “state-of-the-art” complaint system.

In addition, the administration will launch a two-year pilot program in which the federal government will directly collect the defaulted debt of a small number of loan borrowers.

It is farcical to call such rudimentary accounting and communications procedures a “Bill of Rights.”

The language merely emphasizes that there is not even a pretense of a right to higher education in this country. The 43 million Americans who owe some $1.3 trillion in student loan debt were offered zero forgiveness. In fact, Obama does not propose even one measure to actually lessen the ever-escalating cost of college or encroach on the lucrative business of student loan debt. All the “rights” remain in the hands of the government, the banks and hedge funds.

To add insult to injury, the centerpiece of the memorandum is the promise of a web site system—in a distant 15 months—from an administration who has not recovered from the political debacle of the Affordable Care Act web site.

Meanwhile Obama’s new budget calls for further cuts to students on the Income Based Repayment (IBR) and Public Service Loan forgiveness programs. These cuts will reduce government write-offs and drive up student loan volumes.

The “Student Loan Bill of Rights” is, however, something of an admission of guilt. The Department of Education has been on the hot seat for some time over its cozy relationships with debt collectors using unscrupulous and outright illegal methods and the fact that the federal government is directly profiting from student loans, to the tune of about $10 billion per year.

Earlier this month, the Department of Education said that it would terminate its lucrative contracts with five debt collection agencies that systematically lied to or misled student borrowers. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau provided evidence that student loan collectors told students that they would face legal action when that wasn’t true, and further misled students as to their options and rights.

Despite the terminations, two of the debt collection companies, Coast Professional and National Recoveries, were awarded new contracts in 2014 which may still be valid, according Inside Higher Ed. Such contracts amount to tens of millions of dollars annually. Three of the debt collection agencies, known for their clout on Capitol Hill, have filed suit against the DOE over the contracts.

Separately the Navient-owned Pioneer Credit Recovery (formerly Sallie Mae) has filed a formal protest, one step down from litigation, over the contract termination.

Navient, one of the more notorious violators, paid $97 million in a settlement last year for illegally maximizing late fees on the student loans of military personnel. Over 60,000 loans were affected by the violation of the 6 percent interest rate cap which is afforded to active duty service members. Navient’s contracts amount to $130 million annually, and Obama has come under fire from the American Legion for the administration’s failure to hold Navient liable.

On the other hand, there is worry among the powers-that-be that they are sitting on a political and economic time bomb. Nearly 7 in 10 graduating seniors in 2013, 69 percent of the total, left school with student loan debt, with an average debt of $28,400.

An extraordinary meeting was held by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on March 4, where the bank’s president William Dudley spoke at length on the macroeconomic consequences of student loans. His remarks make the real purpose of the Obama web site clear: to be an early warning system for a crash of the student loan system.

Dudley pointed to the government’s inadequate knowledge of the student loan crisis and a “data gap.” He also cited statistics that put loan repayment rates at a catastrophically low level.

“New York Fed economists have shown that for the 2009 cohort of graduates, only 17 percent of their original debt had been paid down after five years,” said Dudley. “More than 20 percent of high-balance student borrowers owe more now than when they graduated in 2009. For the 2005 cohort of graduates, only 38 percent of their original student debt had been paid down, on average, nearly ten years after graduation.”

With student loan debt surpassing credit card debt and the only form of debt that continued to grow between 2008 and 2013, the effect on overall financial stability of growing defaults and slow repayments is a concern to the Federal Reserve.

These considerations put into context the policies of a section of the Democratic Party who posture as defenders of indebted students, but are loyal advocates for the financial industry.

The most outspoken of this group is Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who reintroduced last year’s stillborn bill, the Bank on Students Emergency Loan Refinancing Act, last week. Such legislation seeks to reign in the most rapacious aspects of student loans in the hopes of increasing repayment rates and averting a collapse of the $1 trillion loan bubble.

Like Obama’s call for free community college, however, there is little chance the proposal will advance, as the Republican majority is advocating increased student loan interest rates, pegged annually. Even were students to be allowed to refinance their loans at modestly lower rates, as Warren advocates, the substantial spread between the Federal Reserve rate and the student loan rates will still net large profits for the government and banks.

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), one of the most strident defenders of Wall Street, also announced new legislation last week, “Andrew’s Law,” which would require private student loan companies to forgive outstanding debt if a borrower dies. Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), and senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Richard Blumenthal (D-CN), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), among others have joined with Warren questioning the bailout of Corinthian Colleges by the DOE and requested clear guidelines on DOE policies for loan discharges. Waters has supported a debt strike by some Corinthian students.

Obama himself floated the idea of allowing private loans (10-15 percent of the student market) to be discharged under personal bankruptcies. The Fairness for Struggling Students Act of 2015, also sponsored by a group of Democratic senators including Warren and Richard Durbin of Illinois, has also been introduced in Congress.

The administration’s nod to the bill, interestingly, was greeted with approval on Wall Street. “Obama’s proposition may encourage Americans to take on more student loan debt,” noted Zack’s, an equity research firm. “This will indeed be a boon for post-secondary education providers like DeVry Education Group Inc., Strayer Education Inc, Apollo Education Group, Inc [Phoenix Universities], Capella Education Co, Universal Technical Institute, Inc. and many more. Share prices of most of these education companies have risen following the announcement.”

This group of for-profit colleges applauded the proposal on private loans, adding the hope that the Obama measures might reverse falling college enrollments and the “decline in student demand due to hesitancy over taking a loan.”

Far from a “Bill of Rights” Obama continues to deliver a fraudulent bill of goods. At every point, his administration has protected the financial industry in looting an entire generation of students, preventing millions of young people from either attaining the education they desire or making them pay through the nose for the rest of their lives.

Unemployment benefits availability in US at lowest level in history

E.P Bannon

A recent report published by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows that state Unemployment Insurance (UI) programs are at an all-time low in terms of providing cash assistance to jobless workers. The “UI recipiency rate,” meaning the proportion of unemployed workers receiving benefits, fell to 23.1 percent in December 2014. The previous low since the program was established was 25 percent in September 1984.

The report notes that the expiration of federal emergency unemployment benefits at the end of 2013 has forced workers to rely solely on state unemployment programs. It cites the recession as the main contributing factor to the current crisis confronting jobless workers. As of March 2014, almost two million unemployed workers had lost any financial assistance.

The report deals yet another blow to the official claims that the American economy has fully recovered from the financial meltdown of 2007-2008. Since the beginning of the crisis, workers have seen mass layoffs as well as drastic cuts to social programs, wages and their standard of living overall.

The report explains that both state and federal government point to the rising level of employment as the impetus for cutting unemployment benefits. The current unemployment level of 5.5 percent is a gross underestimate, since it does not count workers who have left the labor force, because they cannot find decent-paying full-time jobs.

The US lost 7.8 million jobs between December 2007 and October 2010. Despite the growth since 2010, the US labor market is still short 5.6 million jobs to keep up with population growth. No one who has left the labor force and is no longer actively seeking work can collect unemployment benefits.

The Unemployment Insurance (UI) system is a state-administered program that is financed and, until recently, supplemented by the federal government. The system was designed to provide laid-off workers with unemployment benefits for up to 26 weeks.

After state UI programs expire, unemployed workers previously could rely on an extension of benefits by the federal government. The Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) program was passed in 2008 in the middle of the financial meltdown, providing a maximum of 63 weeks of additional benefits. Since it was scrapped in 2013, millions of the unemployed have lost these extended benefits.

In an appearance March 18 at the City Club of Cleveland, Ohio, President Obama declared that he is “going to take a little credit” for the anemic growth that has occurred over the past five years. “It was the result of decisions my administration made, with some [Democratic] members of Congress who are here, to prevent a second depression,” he said. “A lot of those decisions were controversial.”

Throughout the crisis as well as the so-called “recovery,” the Obama administration has aided and abetted the drive by the banks and major corporations to reap dizzyingly high profits through the destruction of the living standards of the working class. Despite numerous attempts at posturing as the defender of the “middle class,” neither President Obama nor any section of Congress made a serious attempt to extend unemployment benefits when they expired last year. Meanwhile, in the “2015 Economic Report of the President,” released last month, Obama outlined a plan to slash corporate taxes by as much as 10 percent.

The EPI report outlines key findings from a sample of states that have made cuts to unemployment benefits. Since 2011, nine states have cut the maximum time for which jobless workers may receive benefits: Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina and South Carolina.

As early as 2011, when unemployment was still at 8.9 percent, states already began enacting restrictive legislation designed to cut unemployment benefit payments. With the expiration of federal extended benefits, the unemployed have become totally dependent on these shrunken state UI programs, finding it increasingly difficult to obtain coverage.

Eight states saw sharp declines in short-term recipiency rates. In four states, the rates declined by between 1.7 and 8.6 times as much as the US average decline. As a result of the cuts to the duration of benefits, the recipiency rates of these eight states fell below those of all other states.

The national average UI recipiency rate in 2014 was 34.7 percent, meaning over 65 percent of unemployed workers were not receiving benefits. The overall level during this period is the lowest in the entire history of the UI program. In 21 states, over 70 percent of jobless individuals were not receiving benefits.

South Carolina has the lowest UI recipiency rate in the entire country, with only 14.8 percent of unemployed workers receiving any sort of compensation. North Carolina, which cut its duration of benefits from 26 weeks in 2013 to 14 weeks in 2014, saw a drop in recipiency rates by 14.4 percentage points—8.6 points more than the dip in the national average.

Some states have instituted “sliding scale” unemployment benefits, in which the state institutes a prolonged series of cuts to duration payments which supposedly corresponds to rising levels of employment. Kansas, for example, adopted a formula which reduced benefits from 26 weeks to 20 weeks in 2014, and will only pay out 16 weeks this year. Other states will follow a similar pattern.

In Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, where unemployment benefits cuts have been most severe, cuts in duration are following even more draconian “sliding scale” formulas. In December 2014, Florida only paid 16 weeks, Georgia paid 15 weeks and North Carolina doled out a mere 14 weeks.

Long-term unemployment is likewise an issue. UI programs only cover the short-term unemployed, with longer-term jobless workers left with no compensation whatsoever. Long-term unemployment in 2013 was more than double what it was in 2008 and shows no signs of abating. In addition, the rate of labor force participation is at its lowest level since 1978.

What the report also does not address is the low-paid character of the few jobs that have replaced those lost during the financial crisis. The vast majority of the 12 million jobs that have been created are low-wage, part-time employment. Many workers, especially youth, are forced to work multiple part-time jobs with little control over their own schedules. It is increasingly common to take on as many as two or three jobs to be able to scrape by.

Judge orders end to Pentagon stalling on torture photos

Patrick Martin

A federal judge ordered the Pentagon Friday to make public an estimated 2,100 photographs depicting torture of prisoners at US military facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, or to file an individualized certification for each photo to support claims that their release will directly threaten the lives of US military personnel.

US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein suspended his order for 60 days to give the Obama administration time to decide whether to appeal his ruling. The Pentagon has been fighting an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit seeking release of the torture photos for more than a decade, since they came to light in the course of investigations sparked by revelations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, Iraq in 2004.

The exact number of pictures and exactly what they depict are both in doubt. The figure of 2,100 refers to all images held in files assembled by military investigations into allegations of prisoner abuse. Many more such images may exist. The Pentagon has only admitted that 29 of the images depict obvious mistreatment of prisoners.

Among the images are US soldiers pointing guns at the heads of bound and helpless detainees, and at least one picture of a female prisoner pretending to sodomize a naked prisoner with a broomstick. Others resemble those already made public in the Abu Ghraib scandal, showing naked prisoners in various arrays and positions.

When Obama first took office in 2009, he ordered the photos released, then reversed himself under pressure from top military officers. The Democratic-controlled Congress then passed the Protected National Security Documents Act, amending the Freedom of Information Act to “provide that photographs could be made exempt from disclosure for a three-year certification by the Secretary of Defense to the effect that publication would endanger American lives.”

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates issued such a certification in 2009, and his successor Leon Panetta followed suit in 2012. But Judge Hellerstein issued a ruling in August 2014 that a half-page blanket certification for 2,100 photographs was inadequate, ordering that the Pentagon give a credible reason why each photograph should be withheld.

Given that the photographs have already been “scrubbed” to remove the faces and nametags of US military personnel, making identification of individual soldiers impossible, the only reason for withholding them is to suppress evidence of criminality on the part of the chain of command, leading right up to the White House.

In October, Judge Hellerstein ordered the Pentagon to produce the photographs or the individualized certifications, giving the government until January 23, 2015 to respond. When the Pentagon continued to stall, Hellerstein told federal attorneys, “I could give you more time to satisfy my ruling ... but I am not changing my view.”

In his order Friday, Hellerstein told the Pentagon to “disclose each and all the photographs unless it moves promptly to cure its failure to submit an individualized certification,” but gave the government another 60 days to appeal, “even though the Government has had ample time to evaluate its legal position and the desirability of an appeal.” Any appeal would be heard by the New York-based Second Circuit US Court of Appeals.

The Pentagon position is that release of the photographs is a danger to US military personnel, exacerbated by the emergence of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). According to Rear Admiral Sinclcair Harris, vice director for operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a December court filing, ISIS “would use these photographs to further encourage its supporters and followers to attack US military and government personnel.”

ACLU spokesman Jameel Jaffer responded, “The Obama administration’s rationale for suppressing the photos is both illegitimate and dangerous. To allow the government to suppress any image that might provoke someone, somewhere, to violence would be to give the government sweeping power to suppress evidence of its own agents’ misconduct. Giving the government that kind of censorial power would have implications far beyond this specific context.”

The Obama administration’s efforts to block release of the torture photos is in line with its policy of covering up for the crimes of the Bush administration and blocking any prosecution of those who are implicated, including Obama’s own CIA director, John Brennan.

Hellerstein’s decision comes three months after the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture, which documented in detail clear and grave violations of domestic and international law by the top intelligence agency. Since the report’s release, it has been dropped by the media, along with any suggestion that anyone should be held accountable.

Houthi militia takes over Taiz as Yemen descends into civil war

Niles Williamson

Houthi militia members seized the military airport in Taiz on Saturday without any resistance from Yemeni military forces. The capture of Taiz brings the Houthi forces within 180 kilometers of the southern port city of Aden, the hometown and stronghold of President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.

Fighters from the Special Security Forces reportedly fired their automatic weapons and volleys of tear gas to disperse large crowds of protesters who turned out to oppose the Houthis’ presence in the country’s third largest city.

Amid the country’s descent into sectarian conflict, the United States announced that it was evacuating approximately 100 US Special Operations soldiers who had been stationed at the Al Anad airbase in Lahj province. They cited security threats after Al Qaeda militants briefly seized control of the nearby city of Al Houta on Friday.

The Houthis, who belong to the Zaydi Shiite branch of Islam, began an occupation of the capital, Sanaa, in August last year to protest the slashing of fuel subsidies. They seized control of the presidential palace in January and in February forced the resignation of Hadi and his ministers. Mohammed Ali Al Houthi, a cousin of Houthi leader Abdel Malik Al Houthi, was subsequently declared the new president.

The beleaguered Hadi was able to escape house arrest in Sanaa last month, fleeing to Aden, where he has organized loyal military forces to fight against the Houthis, who are allied to former longtime dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Fighting between the competing factions escalated after the Yemeni branch of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) carried out suicide bombings Friday at two Houthi mosques in Sanaa, killing more than 130 people and wounding more than 300 others.

On Saturday, Hadi issued a televised statement calling on the Houthis to give up control of Sanaa and other cities. He accused Iran of being responsible for the Houthis’ advances and promised to push the militias back to their home province of Saada in the country’s far northwest, on the border with Saudi Arabia.

The Houthi Supreme Revolutionary Committee responded by issuing a statement condemning Hadi and the forces fighting for him. It called on soldiers, security officers and civilian volunteers to fight “terrorist forces all across the country.”

The Houthis have been receiving financial and military support from Iran and have been backed by former longtime dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh, who ceded power to then-Vice President Hadi in 2012 in the aftermath of mass Arab Spring protests. Saleh, who is living in exile in Ethiopia, still commands the loyalty of military forces in Yemen, particularly among the Special Security Forces.

Last Thursday, forces loyal to Saleh launched an attack on the airport in Aden in an attempt to push out Hadi’s supporters but were repelled. Saleh loyalists also released 300 inmates from the main jail in the city, reportedly letting several Al Qaeda militants go free. Air force jets have been flying over Hadi’s compound and launched at least two airstrikes in the last four days.

The United Nations held a closed emergency Security Council meeting Sunday afternoon to discuss a possible response to the escalating conflict in Yemen. UN special envoy to Yemen Jamal Benomar warned that if immediate action was not taken, the country “could turn into something of an Iraq-Libya-Syria combination.”

American imperialism bears the ultimate responsibility for the chaos that is now engulfing the impoverished Arab country. Intervening aggressively to maintain its strategic control of the nearby Bab-el-Mandab Straits between the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, which connect Asia and the Persian Gulf to Europe, Washington has stoked tensions inside Yemen with its ongoing drone war against Islamic militants.

The war was one of President Barack Obama’s main foreign policy initiatives, launched in December 2009 with the firing of a cruise missile loaded with cluster bombs against the village of Al Majan in Abayan province. The strike killed as many as 41 civilians, including five pregnant women and 22 children.

The Al Anad airbase has been one of the key sites used by the American military and CIA to launch drone strikes on targets in Yemen. Saleh quietly signed off on the drone operations in 2009, and Hadi was a vocal supporter of the drone war after he came to power in 2012.

After the Houthis ousted Hadi from Sanaa, the US indicated it had struck a deal with the Houthis in order to maintain its operations. “The Houthis are anti-Al Qaeda, and we’ve been able to continue some of our counterterrorism operations against Al Qaeda in the past months,” Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers told Al Monitor in January.

The American drone war, which has killed more than 1,000 people in less than six years, has taken a country with longstanding tribal and sectarian divisions and plunged it into a bloody sectarian civil war. The war has taken on the character of a proxy war between the leading Sunni and Shiite powers in the region—Saudi Arabia and Iran, respectively.

As the Houthis made their advance into Taiz Sunday, Iran’s deputy foreign minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian called on Hadi to resign and forestall the outbreak of more violence in the country. “The expectation is that President…Hadi will resign rather than repeat mistakes, to play a constructive role in preventing the breakup of Yemen and the transformation of Aden into a terrorist haven,” Abdollahian stated.

Officials from the Arab Gulf states, including Saudi Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, released a statement on Saturday backing Hadi as Yemen’s legitimate leader and announced that they were prepared to use “all efforts” to defend his administration.

“Yemen is sliding into a dark tunnel which would have serious consequences not only on Yemen but on security and stability,” the statement read. “The security of Yemen and of the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries is an indivisible whole.”

Detroit’s water shutoffs and the aristocratic principle

Andre Damon

Next month, Detroit city officials plan to resume shutting off water to tens of thousands of residents. Nearly 30,000 households that cannot afford to pay their water bills are scheduled to receive shutoff notices, affecting perhaps one in seven residents.

The resumption of mass shutoffs that began last year is taking place as the water department plans substantial rate increases, in a city where water bills are already far higher than the national average. The aim is to funnel money to Detroit’s billionaire creditors, while preparing the city’s water department for eventual privatization.

In few places anywhere on the globe is the systematized, ruthless cruelty of the ruling class—facilitated by all factions of the political establishment—so flagrantly on display as in Detroit, Michigan, the poorest large city in America.

The cutting off of thousands of families every day from one of the most basic requirements of modern life is taking place in a country with the highest concentration of billionaires in the world, overseen by a state that spends more on its military than the next ten largest militaries combined. And yet the inevitable claim is that there is simply no money, that the impoverished residents of Detroit cannot be allowed to get away without paying.

Certain comparisons are illuminating. The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) claims to be running a deficit of $22 million. It is to collect these funds—amounting to about $750 per delinquent water bill—that the city intends to raise rates and begin shutting off water to residents.

The United States Congress is now consumed by discussions over financing the US military machine to the tune of $600 billion per year, or some 27,000 times the deficit of the DWSD. Without a second thought, the politicians of big business, Democrat and Republican, allocate astronomical sums to fund the US war machine. In fact, the water department’s deficit is about one sixth of the cost of a single F-35 Lightning II fighter plane.

Then there is the unending transfer of wealth to the financial oligarchy. The wealth of the Forbes 400 billionaires, which has doubled since 2008, has hit a total of $2.9 trillion, more than 130,000 times the DWSD deficit. Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Beizos alone had his wealth increase $5.8 billion over the past year, to $34 billion. The amount of money Beizos made over the past twelve months is enough to cover the water department’s deficit 260 times over.

To protect this bankrupt social order, billions are spent every year on domestic repression. Last year, the Defense Department’s 1033 program provided local police departments with $980 million in military hardware, a figure nearly fifty times greater than the deficit of Detroit’s water department. This equipment includes belt-fed machine guns and armored vehicles, some of which were seen on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri last year.

Yet there is supposedly no money to continue providing water to the people of Detroit … Clearly the question is not one of resources, but who controls these resources, and upon what principle the productive capacity of mankind is based: private profit or social need.

The resumption of mass water shutoffs in Detroit follows the conclusion of the city’s bankruptcy, a criminal conspiracy that fully embodied the ruthlessness of the American financial oligarchy.

For over a year and a half, Detroit was run as a de-facto dictatorship by Kevyn Orr, a Wall Street lawyer turned “emergency manager.” Within months of taking office, Orr thrust the city into bankruptcy in order to carry out long-plotted plans to slash workers constitutionally-protected pension benefits and restructure the city in the interest of the financial elite. His actions were backed by the entire political establishment, up to and including the Obama administration.

The bankruptcy eliminated most health benefits for city employees and slashed the pensions of tens of thousands of municipal retirees, while creating a bonanza for a handful of billionaire speculators. Well-connected oligarchs such as Mike Ilitch, who owns Detroit’s professional baseball and hockey teams, and Quicken Loans CEO Dan Gilbert, have effectively received sections of the city as their own personal fiefdoms, accompanied by hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies from public funds.

Now the financial elite, having gotten everything it wanted in the bankruptcy, is seeking even more. Nationwide, the financial oligarchy has used the Detroit bankruptcy to set a precedent for slashing workers’ pensions and retirement benefits.

For the American ruling class, the resumption of mass water shutoffs goes beyond squeezing ever greater sums of money out of the poor. It is also the assertion of the “aristocratic principle”—that the population has no right to anything, that whatever it might receive comes only through the beneficence of the ruling class.

Bill Nowling, a spokesman for the new regional water authority, and a former PR man for Orr, expressed the thinking of the ruling class when he declared, “People have become conditioned to say ‘well, I’m short tonight. I’m going to pay my water bill next month.’” What an outrage! That workers might think that they can continue to have access to running water even if they cannot pay for it due to rising costs, declining wages and endemic poverty and unemployment.

Nowling was merely extending into practice the declaration of bankruptcy court judge Steven Rhodes last year that there is no “fundamental enforceable right to free or affordable water.”

For the ruling class, there is an important principle at stake. Workers have no right to water, as they have no right to health care, pensions, public education, a decent job with a livable income. All of this, to the extent that it still exists, will and is being taken away. Nothing is guaranteed. All must be scarified for the preservation of the capitalist system and the wealth of the ruling class whose interests this system serves.

In opposition to the dictates of the corporate and financial aristocracy, the working class must assert that it does have the right to water, and to all the necessities of life. These rights cannot be maintained within the framework of a society subordinated to the interests of a corrupt and criminal corporate and financial elite.

As Marx wrote, “Between equal rights, force decides.” The question of what will prevail must and will be decided on the arena of the class struggle.

Condemn Acquittal Of 16 PAC Personnel Accused In The Hashimpura Massacre

People’s Union for Democratic Rights

On 22 May 1987, PAC personnel of UP reached Hashimpura, Meerut, took away about 50 Muslim men from a crowd outside a mosque, shot dead at least 42 of the men, and threw their bodies into a canal. On 21 March 2015, a Delhi Sessions Court accepted that the PAC personnel had committed these murders, but acquitted the policemen charged on account of insufficient evidence. Twenty eight years after the brutal massacre of Muslims by state forces, the guilty in uniform have not been identified and are roaming free.

Nine years after the incident, in 1996, the charge-sheet was filed by the Uttar Pradesh CB-CID. In 2002, families of the victims and survivors petitioned the Supreme Court to transfer the case to Delhi. In 2006 charges were framed by the Delhi Sessions Court against 19 accused. Finally, 9 years later, the court pronounced its judgement, acquitting 16 of them, whilst the 3 remaining had died in the meantime. For relief and rehabilitation, the court has directed the matter to the District Legal Services Authority.

On the basis of the legal labyrinth resulting in the total travesty of justice, PUDR wishes to draw attention to three particular issues:

1. Deliberate Delay of 28 years: The history of the case shows that this delay began with the lack of filing of charge-sheet. Unless and until such cases where police themselves are indicted are independently investigated and speedily tried, each and every delay becomes an advantage for the accused as against the victims.

2. Violation of Right to Fair Investigation and Trial: In these intervening years, the 16 accused were never arrested or suspended. They remained in the force and some were even promoted. In short, they had the power to interfere and tamper with evidence gathering and intimidate witnesses. The right of the survivors and victims’ to a fair investigation and trial was denied from the beginning. The fact that the accused were let off on grounds of lack of identification only underlines the shoddy investigation and its complicity with the criminal policemen. PAC men were on duty at Hashimpura that fatal day and it therefore becomes the responsibility of the PAC and the government to identify the criminals in its force.

3. Denial of Compensation: No compensation has been awarded to anyone. The dead bodies were recovered. Yet, the families of the victims and survivors have been denied compensation in all these 28 years. Besides the deaths, 5 persons were seriously injured including Babuddin, who filed the first FIR that night. Even the injured were never given compensation. And even now the quantum of compensation remains undecided.

PUDR strongly believes that deliberate delay, violation of the right to fair trial and denial of compensation to the families of the victims and survivors of the Hashimpura massacre tantamount to a denial of justice. It sends a message to all citizens that policemen guilty of brutality shall enjoy impunity. We appeal to all people who stand against injustice to decry the present outcome and to demand action against all those responsible for the delay, for the destruction of evidence and shielding of the criminals.

Netanyahu Victory, Saudi Arabia And Iran

G. Asgar Mitha

Out of the four aces in the deck of cards Iran possibly holds two, US one and Israel also one in the poker game which is supposedly about nuclear issues.

The poker game between the three players is not about nuclear issues but Iran is pretending that it is about it. Iran never ever had any intentions to develop nuclear weapons to defend itself or to attack Israel for to do so it'd tantamount to suicide. It cannot and will not develop destructive weapons along humanitarian and religious grounds. The US CIA has informed the past and current US administrations that Iran does not have that capability. Knowing well, why are the US and EU3 among the P5+1 group (China and Russia are fully convinced that Iran is only interested in pursuing nuclear enrichment for power generation and scientific research) and Israel, whose spy agency Mossad considers Iran's nuclear ambitions as remote, relentlessly pursuing the game with Iran? And why is Saudi Arabia which does not even know the rules of the poker game so adamant that Iran will develop a N-bomb? Unless, of course, it fears the rise of Iran along sectarian lines and as a regional power. Saudi Arabia and the Arab monarchies are more interested in developing a power base by exporting religious fundamentalism in the Muslim countries using their oil wealth.

Netanyahu won a fourth term as Israel's Prime Minister, emerging as a hero that humiliated a mighty empire and won the support of the US Republicans - as their President of the United States - with a standing ovation on 3 March 2015 and that not in Israel but in the US itself. It snubbed the American democracy and treated the US as a colony. What a victory! He did not have to plead with some of the most powerful Republicans but rather told them that they should reject any deal the Obama administration makes with Iran. That clearly has weakened Ernest Moniz (US Secretary of Energy) with his one ace in hand and strengthened Iran's Ali Akber Salehi (Head of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran -AEOI). Both Moniz and Salehi are very seasoned diplomats and nuclear physicists. To make it worse, Netanyahu may have egged many of the Senators to write a letter to Iran to further weaken the talks but which came as a gift to hardliners in Tehran. Israel's main concern is not Iran getting nuclear weapons but that a deal with Iran would shift the Middle East balance of power in Israel's disfavor and strengthen Iran as a regional power.

Saudi Arabia's fear matches that of Israel. It too sees Iran emerging as the balancing power in the Middle East with nuclear weapons. Iran's strategic alliance with Russia and China and its indigenous development of military hardware, its proven military strategies in Lebanon against Israel in 2006, in Syria supporting Assad regime for 4 years and in Iraq against ISIS (Islamic States) have strengthened it while Saudi Arabia and the monarchies of Qatar, Kuwait, UAE and Kuwait have weakened and squandered their wealth, relying upon the US and Europeans to prop up their security and exporting religious fundamentalism. Most recently, King Salman summoned Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif with request for providing military assistance to Saudi Arabia against the Yemeni Houthis on its southern-western borders. Pakistan diplomatically declined the support stating that it cannot spare the resources as it is engaged in fighting the (Saudi supported) Taliban extremism and terrorism.

The US decided to engage Iran in direct N-talks knowing very well that Iran has no ambitions of developing nuclear weapons. Three important reasons could be offered. The first that the US has accepted Iran as the balancing regional power and wishes to swing it from the Chinese and Russia political sphere into the western influence by offering it economic incentives and removing the UN sanctions. Secondly, the US is concerned that an Iran within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) could play an even more strategic geopolitical role in Central, Southwest Asia along with China and Russia because of its enviable energy resources. Thirdly, the US petrodollar is being challenged by the Chinese yuan as an alternate petrocurrency. Iran has been operating the Kish Island oil bourse since 2008 and has been accepting payments in all major currencies except the US dollar. I've written in another article that the petrodollar is US Achilles Heel. Both Iraq under Saddam and Libya under Gaddafi - weak as they were - challenged the petrodollar and suffered the consequences. However Iran is another matter. It is strong and diplomatically and politically astute.

What is it that Iran wants as a concession to giving up its pursuit of nuclear weapons? At this point the talks are in a rather critical stage and Salehi and Moniz have held their cards close to their chest but what we only know is that the deal is about removal of UN sanctions and economic concessions. Iranian hardliner leadership is not likely to bite into the carrot that the US is dangling and would require concessions that would give them political upper hand. Iran has survived the western isolation for 35 years and as a result emerged stronger in every respect so why would it succumb and accept what they don't already need, that being economic incentives? Both Saudi Arabia and Israel would welcome the Iranian rejection. It might seem in that case that Iran would reluctantly go full speed to develop a nuclear bomb as a deterrent as it does have that capability having enriched uranium to 20% at Natanz and Fardow (Qom) in January 2014. By this action Iran clearly demonstrated to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), US and EU3 that it does have the capability to go beyond this threshold with relative ease and rather quickly. It was at this point that EU recognized the need to offer Iran concessions, ease sanctions and bring the US into the N-talks rather than it becomes a member of the exclusive nuclear club.

The failure of the N-talks and Iran not getting the concessions - economic, easing sanctions and political - it is seeking on its terms is that the US, Israel and EU3 may well start a catastrophic war in the Middle East, likely between Iran and ISIS. If it wins, then certainly Iran will be recognized as the balancing force in the Middle East - a defeat for both Israel and Saudi Arabia.