Selling the TransPacific Partnership

Andrew Raposa 

It is extraordinary how little information is getting out to the general public, both in print and electronic media, concerning the content and dire implications of President Obama’s push for fast- track Congressional approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Accord.

Granted that Congressional discussions on TPP are held in a secretive and mysterious manner. However, significant facts have been culled from leaked, undocumented sources that provide valuable insight into the content of TPP . Given its global impact, TPP promises to be the largest free trade agreement in history.

Currently twelve nations will become signatories to the Pact: US, EU, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Peru, Chile, Singapore, Malaysia, Mexico and Vietnam. Proponents of TPP make the same claims proffered in previous trade pacts (NAFTA). The promise made is it will boost economic growth and ensure that America’s exports will go to the most vigorous and fastest growing economies in the world.

What is unspoken by these free trade propagandists is that previous trade arrangements, (NAFTA) (WTO) and (GATT) produced massive trade deficits, job losses and an increased downward spiral of living standards. Devastating agricultural losses impacted many countries; Mexico being the most harmed.

This new so-called “Economic Consensus” trade model will not only reproduce previous economic calamities but will extend special privilege and protection for those very businesses which ultimately outsource American jobs.

Past history demonstrates that under NAFTA unsustainable assurances were made: that it would prevent damage to the environment, protect workers from unsafe conditions, and provide consumer protection for safe food, drugs and other products.

Instead of promoting economic prosperity for all, these accords will serve to enrich wealthier nations and corporations and create worsening poverty in the Third World. So what resulted was the exact opposite when these safeguards were opposed or eliminated.

TPP, like NAFTA, will also undermine democratic procedures by transferring decision-making from the public sphere into the hands of a small group of unaccountable wealthy elites. TPP will become an instrument that minimizes democracy. Contained in these arguments is the time-worn and abiding caveat that whomever controls capital and labor have deep-seated interests to protect.

One becomes perplexed at the enumeration of these convictions. In the Clinton years, Americans were promised “good paying American jobs.” Past history of these lies should immediately arouse suspicions of TPP.

It has been estimated, as an example, that under NAFTA, 700,000 jobs were outsourced. During the 90’s the world was made safe for billionaires. Numerous examples exist of the unaccountable power of corporations to block nations who would regulate such activities. This led to misery for poorer nations.

TPP is not just about trade. The corpus of TPP lies in the chapter that deals with Intellectual Property Rights (IP) which covers patents, trademarks, and copyrights. IP would potentially create unprecedented assaults on freedom of speech and individuals right to read, write and publish.

According to President Obama, unlike all previous inequities in past trade agreements, nations like the US who participate in TPP, “would have a level playing field for job creation and job protection, plus the eradication of child labor. There would be rules governing minimum wage and laws governing maximum hours of labor. Additionally environmental standards would be raised.

The idea permeating all these free trade pacts is an insistence on conflating democracy and free markets. It serves as a purposeful ideological strategy. Arguably, the primary architect of this construct of unfettered markets is Milton Friedman. His book, DEMOCRACY AND CAPITALISM became de rigor in American economic political thought with respect to free markets and individual freedom. Friedman’s political theory argues for a value-free social science and, consequently, a value-free economic system. Friedman’s vaulted ideological paradigm consists of a demand that government withdraw from its regulatory commitments so capitalism can organize the economic activity of society without political interference or coercion. This thinking encourages rational individuals to pursue from the market those goods that best serve their individual self-interests.

True individual freedom of choice in the market will be guaranteed when nation states begin to decentralize their welfare activities. Only then will individual freedom be advanced. However, coercion in capitalism occurs when individuals choose not to be in a market-driven society. Moreover, Friedman does not factor in his thesis the ethical and moral claims of equality and justice. This is an ideological system that punishes individuals who choose not to enter market relations and prevents them from opting out of the system imprisoning them.

A new political approach is needed to challenge capitalist hegemony and the new political consensus. It becomes necessary to agitate for public policies that will meet the social needs of populations. Modern information technology can become an invaluable mechanism to demonstrate the many social pathologies produced by unaccountable corporate power. It is hoped that a new global awakening will occur to provoke opposition to market tyranny.

Against Imperialism’s ‘Development’

Mateo Pimentel 

The North-centric and Western version of development history begins in 19th century Europe, the mythic seedbed of global development itself. Sandra Halperin describes some of the historians in her book, Re-Envisioning Global Development: A Horizontal Perspective, who tout Europe’s “dynamic developments” as the impetus for “world-historical ‘revolutions’ in science and technology, agricultural and commercial practices, intellectual life, and social and political institutions.” Yet, there is a glaring problem with this approach: Long before Europe was a blip on the global economic map, the world already had a robust, global, and cultural system of trade. This Asian-rooted global economic system, which eventually came to include western and southern Europe, worked its way from China and beyond the Middle East. Integration into the extant global economic system would further development that eventually sparked in Europe, which most certainly was not the fountainhead that Western civilization so often pretends.

Fast forward some centuries, and several of the development philosophies that manifest after 1945 fall in line with the American push for a new global economic world order. As the United States contributed virtually half of the world’s industrial production, it was poised to continue the errant narrative of North West development. Many development concepts took a theoretical magnifying glass to welfare and human development, modernization, eliminating dependency, capacity building, human development, sustainable development, and security. Myriad approaches sought to clarify and provide different routes to development in the interest of those considered “less-developed by reigning imperium. Third World countries—initially considered “backward” by an industrialized North West and its so-called experts—were expected to benefit from America’s post-war, global imperial project for development. This economically liberalizing project speciously pretended “economic growth” and “modernization” for all its subscribers. In order to prosper, the recipe was simple: less-developed nations needed only model themselves after their developed counterparts in the industrialized world. Or so the US largely perpetuated its ruse.

Unfortunately, the post-World War II pro-market reforms that America encouraged have ended up causing serious consequences for both developed and less-developed nations alike. Laissez-faire alterations and likeminded policy (and the wars they require to sustain and propel them) inspired ungrounded claims that state intervention thwarts development. Pro-market reforms thus blossomed throughout less-developed nations in the 1990s, but the problems of neoliberal globalization’s liberal economic model betrayed the kind of development it prophesied. What is more, the consequences of today’s liberalizing economic world order differ little. The recent 2008 economic crash and global recession—the worst for America since the Great Depression—caused “developed” countries to take drastic state action to remedy financial fiascos. Banks were temporarily publically owned so as not to fail completely; certain industries threatened by bankruptcy were accordingly subsidized; and, there was the resurfacing of many Keynesian monetary and fiscal policies all around the world to stabilize precarious markets.

Against the Pro-Imperialism Paradigm

In his essay entitled “Globalization: Myths and Realities”, Philip McMichael notes the development paradigm has generally “subordinated rural populations, and hence rural studies, to the higher authority of industrialism.” McMichael suggests that theorists of development “extrapolated from the example of modern states, whose rural populations had diminished drastically as agriculture industrialized.” The world’s rural population assumed the appearance of an unlimited pool of labor, and rural issues were relegated to positions of lesser importance—even within the social sciences responsible for propagating theories of development in the first place. In fact, one development paradigm to emerge actually amplified the rural population’s significance. McMichael signals the fretful consequences of this “agro-industrialism” in order to underscore the point that the “development paradigm’s underlying belief in inexorable technological progress.” This particular take has given rise to some of history’s most intensified examples of “landlessness, hyper-urbanization, and environmental deterioration.” All of these concerns and more negatively impact states’ abilities to support an infrastructure that serves their peoples and furthers participation in the global economy. Of course, this is not accidental.

Today, too many aid agencies (multilateral and bilateral) treat development and developing country research as one and the same. Blanket approaches are thought to remedy pressing and persistent issues despite any nearsighted assumptions that the strategies and theories at work in “highly industrialized” countries ought to naturally and effectively work in states of altogether different histories. This is, of course, not to mention the fact that the globalizing capitalist system might use such institutions as crutches on which its agenda might lean in order to ease its accumulative power across an unknown landscape of popular dissidence and resistance. The system’s detractors also cite the reigning “ethnocentric” paradigm as giving a priori precedence to development philosophies that come from Western societies and cultures despite the fact that different parts of the world develop and change in very different ways and under very different conditions in which same standards cannot universally apply.

There must be a shift from the pro-imperialism approach that is now in place, which relegate the Global South, its wisdom, and its responses to North Western prescriptions for development. And if researchers today absent too much from their work for the sake of pragmatism, they risk, as John Degnbol-Martinussen says, propagandizing that “developing countries’ own traditions and inherited economic, social and political structures and institutions” have “little importance as determining factors for their societal development.” Thus, a solid point of departure for recalibrating the central areas of development approaches and research becomes consideration for the “special features of the developing countries” as having “critical importance.” Why? Because the North Western prescription for development has given birth to the most economically, socially, and politically detrimental Frankenstein in development history: neoliberalism. Neoliberalism’s principle gambit holds that maximizing freedoms for individual entrepreneurs and corporations favors business and thus alleviates or cures poverty. As a result, many still presume that a liberalized global economy maximizes human freedoms globally. Serious problems have arisen from this thinking and its corresponding policy, and the consequences have been absolutely and tragically dire for millions of people, especially in the Third World.

Room for Democracy?

After recent decades, so-called instances of democratic governance and (economic) policy reform have largely abated the threats of poverty, unequal access, violence, and modest economic growth that still afflict the world’s marginalized. Yet, the causes of such ills are completely intelligible. In addition to failed market actions, institutional development remains a problem. Neoliberalism has been the agent provocateur in stymying institutional development for the global 99 percent. Regarding human efforts on development, Peter Kingstone avers that institutions which “support a state that is restrained in its behavior, supports innovation and creativity, and yet works for equality and justice seem enormously important and incredibly illusive.”

New technologies have also developed instep with the restructuring of international capitalism and its avaricious stratification of wealth. Inequalities have also changed, and they have worsened in many cases. Large multinational corporations control the abovementioned technology, which, a la the spirit of capitalism, they do not utilize to assuage the free market’s induction of suffering that is all too often directed at the world’s poor. This predicament persists though it soundly echoes what has been true of decades past thanks to the American project for global development and economic alignment. Inadequate access to education and training, when coupled with a metastasizing economic inequality, has stifled development in growing regions, especially in Latin America during the 20th century. One thing remains clear for all countries that must today work just to counter the powerful processes which perpetuate inequality within their sovereign space: Successful countries in the last two hundred years have used what Rodrigo Arocena and Peter Senker identify as “heterodox autonomous growth strategies.”

In a historic sense, the assumption that progress, transmission, and global integration have each moved from the North West and then to other parts of the world is truly flawed. The undying myth that the West has blessed the world with progress and development borders absurdity, and it is actually quite false and extremely detrimental. The fact is that world develops in the 21^st century and no thanks to the military-industrial complex and international subterfuge propagated by powerful and industrialized nations like the US or the UK, whose unfettered capitalism, and global war on the poor, certainly rages. Specifically, the trajectories in development that arose in the wake of the Second World War are important to consider, as an age of global sustainable development dawns beyond the horizon of imperium.

Reoccurring failures amongst states, institutions, and economies, which extend the kind of development forced on Third World nations post-WWII, are many. Financial sectors and business yet wreak serious economic havoc as they have done for so long, and they fail to assess the changing balance of risks that coincide with sustainability issues and, importantly, climate change. Pro-market reforms and adjustments to states’ economic policies do not increase their capacities to foment and pursue development the way that many had forecasted decades ago. But, if neoliberal reforms do not embrace the assembly and organization of people and policy necessary to create a global, concerted movement, which can reverse the already extant negative effects wrought by old fascistic policy, then there is perhaps also little hope for correcting the detrimental effects of landlessness, hyper-urbanization, and environmental devastation that clearly dooms us all.

Reviving Tradition: One Cradleboard at a Time

Asia Alsgaard

Douglas Limón (Oneida) is an artist in White Bear Lake, Minnesota who is well known for his beadwork, however, he was drawn to cradleboard construction by the birth of his youngest son Gavino. Unfortunately, he found few people who could help him. Eventually, he was able to learn from Judy Pamp while they were attending an arts festival in Saginaw, Michigan. He was able to successfully construct a cradleboard for his son and has since continued to construct cradleboards.

Cradleboards are a traditional Native American method mothers used to carry their infants in a way that allowed them to freely use their hands. A variety of Southwestern, Eastern Woodlands, and Northern Plains Tribes have traditionally used cradleboards such as the Apache, Hopi, Lakota, Crow, Iroquois, and Penobscot among many others. Each tribe has its own unique version. For instance, the Navajo constructed cradleboards from lashed wooden rods while Oneida cradleboards were constructed using wood boards and leather strips. Other types were woven moss bags attached to wooden frames or baskets. Within any ONE tribe, the cradleboards were unique. The family would make the cradleboard around the time of the new infant’s birth. They were made with the care of the infant in mind, often with protective measures to ensure that the infant would remain safe if the board were to fall, but also with attached designs and toys. The end result was a unique product that brought the whole family together, both old and new, in its construction.

Currently, cradleboards are no longer widely used. Historically, white missionaries and societal reformers attempted to stop the use of cradleboards as a method of suppressing native culture. As a result, the knowledge of cradleboard construction has decreased within modern tribes. Even today, the practice continues to be attacked with many citing outdated studies relating the practice to hip dysplasia. Limón has worked hard to combat these misconceptions and provide opportunities for modern native peoples to relearn the traditional method of cradleboard construction.

Since 2008, Limón, at times assisted by his wife, has provided classes for Native Americans interested in learning the skill of Ojibwe cradleboard construction. Impacting his own style to the process, Limón has added beaded inlays to the baseboard. He has successfully funded TWO separate classes and is now attempting his biggest Kickstarter campaign yet.

Limón has partnered with the Native American Community Clinic (NACC) in Minnesota to provide four separate cradleboard construction classes to the clinic members. 85 percent of the members are Native American with 60 percent receiving Medicaid and 25 percent underinsured. Partially funded by a Partners in Participation grant from the Minnesota State Legislature, the total project COST is $31,495 and he hopes to raise $10,000 more using Kickstarter. In a press release he said the major expenses of the work are associated with prepping the 10 cradleboards for each class, materials, and the artists’ time taken for providing these classes. The classes are planned run through June 2015.

Despite having done previous classes and projects partially funded by grants, this one is different because of his partnership with NACC. While he notes that there were a number of reasons why he approached NACC with the idea for the cradleboard classes, one of the biggest was because of how well their goals fit together: “Artistic expression can be a powerful means of personal transformation and emotional and spiritual healing. I wanted to share that experience with other NACC clients.” With 85 percent of NACC’s clientele identifying as Native American, cradleboard construction was a perfect craft to CHOOSE. As a result, NACC was receptive to the project. The Bois Forte Urban Office plans to host the space for the classes as well as provide sewing machines.

Limón has been constructing cradleboards now for years since his foray into the craft having been prompted by the birth of his youngest son, whose cradleboard will be on exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul until 2018.  He found that much of the community wished to use and make cradleboards, but lacked the skills to do so. His first TWO classes were funded by partially by Kickstarter campaigns and partially by Minnesota State Arts Board grants. The first was in 2011 for his first cradleboard construction project where he successfully met his goal of $5,000. The Cradleboard Project culminated in four cradleboards, each one representing one of the four seasons. “They have since received a number of awards and have been exhibited at a number of locations. It’s been a very positive impact on our culture and community.”

The second raised $7,000 for his Bandolier Bag project. Bandolier Bags are traditional bead bags originating among the Ojibwe, Menominee, Potawatomi, and Ho-Chunk in the Upper Great Lakes Region of the US and Canada. This project was also met with support and enthusiasm.

Limón has largely been met with a positive response for his projects, being approached by everyone from individuals—who Limón teaches with the understanding that his student promises to pass on the skill to at least ONE other person—to the Leech Lake Tribal College. He has seen a very direct impact with past students sending photos of cradleboards they have made, with mothers and grandparents making cradleboards for their expected sons or daughters. Making a cradleboard not only preserves some of the Oneida culture, but it creates a sense of connectedness within a family and community.

However, not all of the reactions to the Cradleboard Projects have been positive. Limón has dealt with insulting comments and misinformation. More than one has cited an outdated study linking cradleboards to hip dysplasia and he has taken the effort to address this inaccurate information and explain the numerous benefits of the cradleboard. “The baby feels safe and secure when swaddled in the cradleboard. The baby is bonding with the mother. Babies raised in cradleboards typically walk before babies without cradleboards because in their upright position they strengthen their leg muscles, back muscles, and neck muscles. I also believe they GET the idea to walk sooner because they are at eye level with adults. They see everyone walking around,” he says. However, these comments have not come from within the community and they are a reminder to Limón that one of the reasons he continues to construct cradleboards is to alleviate the misinformation that exists and to foster cultural understanding.

For the future, Limón plans to continue with his cradleboard projects and exhibits. He hopes for an exhibit of all the cradleboards that will be constructed during the NACC classes. Rather than being a one-time opportunity, the classes represent to Limón the opportunity to continuously pass on the knowledge of cradleboard as a way of fostering families and communities.  He notes that his craft of choice is beadwork and that he has a “large contemporary beadwork piece I am working on. I’m not ready to unveil it but I do believe it will be the first of its kind.” With past classes in cradleboards and Bandolier bags, who know what might be NEXT.

To learn more, visit: http://kck.st/17tApqD

Photos courtesy of Dave Olsen and The Cradleboard Project.

Malcolm Fraser (1930–2015): A political assessment

Nick Beams

The passing of former Australian Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, who died unexpectedly last Saturday at the age of 84, has been met with an outpouring of thousands of words from the political and media establishment on his role as a “giant” of Australian politics.

Fraser has been hailed for his supposed adherence to small “l” liberal principles, including his opposition to apartheid in South Africa and racism in general, his support for “multiculturalism,” his opening of Australia’s doors to Vietnamese refugees and boat people after 1975, and, more latterly, his opposition to the treatment of refugees by successive Liberal and Labor governments. Fraser quit the Liberal Party in December 2009 after Tony Abbott’s election as leader, saying it had become “unrecognisable as liberal.”

But the name of Malcolm Fraser will forever be indelibly etched in history for his role in the bringing down of the elected Whitlam Labor government in the infamous Canberra Coup of November 11, 1975.

In these events, the liberal, the supposed champion of democracy, of human rights etc., was the central figure in creating the conditions for an extra-parliamentary coup carried out by the Governor-General Sir John Kerr, with the backing of the American CIA, British intelligence agencies and the Australian military and intelligence services.

There is no doubt that had Whitlam and the Labor government not accepted their dismissal and had the trade union bureaucracy, under the leadership of the future prime minister and Fraser’s successor, Bob Hawke, been unable to contain the movement of the working class in opposition to the coup, then Fraser would have backed the use of the army, as contemplated in the upper circles of the state apparatus.

Despite his supposed shift to the “left” in the latter part of his life, Fraser never resiled from his role in ousting the Whitlam government, insisting its removal was necessary and justified.

Fraser created the conditions for the coup by ensuring that the Liberals in the Senate, some of whom were wavering, refused to pass the Labor government’s budget, thereby denying the government supply, contrary to previous tradition and practice. The blocking of supply, which meant the government would run out of money, was canvassed from the first day of Fraser’s ascendancy to the leadership of the Liberal Party in February 1975 when he ousted Billy Snedden, who had lost the May 1974 election to Whitlam. Fraser maintained that such unprecedented action would only be taken if there were “reprehensible” circumstances.

Over the next months those circumstances were manufactured through the “loans scandal,” in which the Labor government sought to raise a $4 billion loan from Middle East sources, flush with oil revenues, for a series of infrastructure projects, bypassing traditional financial channels.

The “loans affair” had all the hallmarks of a CIA “dirty tricks” operation, with never-ending hints of financial impropriety (none of which was ever established), fake documents and a cast of characters to match. These included the mysterious “little commodities dealer” Tirath Khemlani and George Harris, president of the Carlton Football Club and friend of former Liberal Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies, who emerged to try to “assist” the Labor government in its attempted loan raising.

It is often thought that one of the chief motivations for the coup was the demand of the corporate elites and finance capital in particular for budget-slashing measures amid a worsening economic crisis—the global recession of 1974–75, coupled with escalating inflation, was the deepest since the 1930s and marked the end of the post-World War II economic boom.

The Labor Party, however, had already acceded to those demands in its 1975 budget, brought down by Treasurer Bill Hayden, who had been installed after Whitlam sacked the Labor “left” Jim Cairns from the position. Whitlam also removed another “left,” Clyde Cameron, from the position of labour minister.

The budget itself was not the issue. In fact, once Fraser took office he largely based his policies on Hayden’s measures, reflecting the position of the ruling elites which had praised Labor’s cuts. Not economic measures as such, but their political impact, was the decisive question.

The underlying motivation for the coup was the fear that the working class, which surged forward in a powerful wages’ offensive in 1974, securing the large rises in history, would come into collision with the Labor government over its budget measures.

Under conditions of a deepening global slump, there was a powerful international upsurge of the working class. The Heath government had been brought down in Britain in 1974, the fascist regime of Salazar had been ousted in Portugal in April 1975, and the Greek colonels’ regime had been ousted in July 1974. Coupled with the defeat of American imperialism in Vietnam in April 1975, this made the ruling classes fearful of where a conflict between the working class and the Labor government in Australia might lead. Added to these issues was the concern that questions were being raised publicly about the role of American bases in Australia and the associated US spy agencies, including the activities of the CIA.

From the very formation of the Australian federated state in 1901, the ruling classes had always relied on the Labor and trade union bureaucracy to stabilise their rule in periods of crisis. Consequently, nothing provoked more fear than the prospect of a clash between an insurgent working class and a Labor government. The Canberra coup was a surgical intervention to prevent such a situation from arising.

In the years that followed, especially from the late 1980s onward, the reconciliation and growing closeness personally and politically between Fraser and the man he ousted, Whitlam, might have appeared somewhat unlikely.

But not when their role in the 1975 crisis is considered. Fraser could not have succeeded in ousting the Labor government without the active collaboration of Whitlam himself, who, together with the then leader of the trade union movement, Hawke, did everything to ensure that the eruption of white hot anger in the working class following the dismissal did not take the form of an independent political movement against the coup. They operated according to Hawke’s assessment, made just hours after the coup as he sought to squelch any move for a general strike, that the central task was to prevent “the unleashing of forces the like of which we have never seen.”

In other words, even in the turmoil of the events of 1975, and notwithstanding Whitlam’s epithet that Fraser was “Kerr’s cur,” the two leaders played a complementary role in defence of the stability of the capitalist state. It was there that their essential unity, which was to flower in later years, was established.

Fraser came to power as the post-World War II capitalist boom was disintegrating. In the following years, after defusing the upsurge of the working class, of which developments in Australia were a part, the bourgeoisie began an offensive, finding its consummate expression in the policies of the Thatcher government in Britain and the Regan administration in the US.

Fraser’s name is not associated with the free market and austerity agenda, much as he might have liked it to have been. In his final interview screened on Australian Broadcasting Corporation television last Sunday night, Fraser said he had told Margaret Thatcher to cut early in her term, and expressed his frustration with Australian Treasury opposition to the floating of the Australian dollar. The decision to float the dollar was to become the cornerstone of the dismantling of economic regulation by the Hawke government, which came to power in 1983, and underpinned all the attacks on the working class that followed.

In ruling circles Fraser’s term of office, extending over more than seven years, has been placed under the sign “Wasted Years.” According to aFinancial Review editorial published on his death, Fraser, despite three election wins, never really got on top of the economic problems he inherited. His period in office represented a “lost economic opportunity.”

The real source of Fraser’s problems, however, was not Treasury reluctance but that the fires generated by the events of 1975 had far from cooled. As John Howard, the future prime minister, who served in the Fraser ministry, was to perceptively remark, the disparity between the parliamentary majority enjoyed by Fraser’s government and the limited extent of its economic measures was because the very “fabric” of society had been stretched thin.

Fraser himself, conscious of the criticism made of him in ruling circles, once noted that perhaps the most important contribution of his government was the change that it effected in the Labor Party.

There was some truth in that observation. Fraser’s term in office saw Labor abandon its commitment to the mild reforms of the Whitlam government and, together with the trade union bureaucracy, establish a series of mechanisms that would suppress the independent struggle of the working class in defence of wages, jobs and living conditions.

The final impetus for what would become the so-called Accord with the unions under the Hawke-Keating governments was the upsurge of the working class in the early 1980s that created the conditions for Fraser’s defeat at the 1983 general election. With the help of the unions, the Labor governments of the next 13 years implemented the “free market” agenda of “economic reform”—now held up as the paradigm to be followed by all governments—that Fraser was unable to carry out.

Throughout his rise to power and his term in office, Fraser was the archetypal Cold War warrior. He was at the forefront of involvement in the Vietnam War, first as minister of the army and then as minister of defence. In 1980, he campaigned, unsuccessfully, for a complete Australian boycott of the Moscow Olympic Games, in line with the policy of the Carter administration in the US over Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.

However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ending of the Cold War, Fraser made something of a reorientation. His fundamental outlook—based on what he saw as the defence of the interests of the Australian state—did not change. But the geo-political context did.

In his book Dangerous Allies, published last year, Fraser now saw the alliance with the US as an increasing danger. No real explanation was provided for his previous support for the Vietnam War—just that he now regarded it as a “mistake.” He castigated the Americans for not informing allies like Australia of the true situation in Vietnam. They had been at best derelict in their duty or at worst “deceitful,” implying that another decision might have been made. This of course, was a convenient rewriting of history to meet contemporary political objectives.

Fraser had come to the conclusion that the economic rise of China meant that the interests of the Australian state would be better served by an “independent” foreign policy. Warning that dependence on the ANZUS Treaty could result in “estrangement from the region in which we live,” he posed the question as to whether strategic dependence on the US created a paradox: “We need the United States for defence, but we only need defence because of the United States.”

While Fraser’s reorientation was championed by sections of the left-liberal political milieu, his geo-political outlook was based on a series of assumptions no less false than those of Soviet expansionism, which had characterised his Cold War outlook.

A core feature of the book was Fraser’s hailing of the actions of George Bush senior in prosecuting the first Gulf War against Iraq on the pretext of its invasion of Kuwait. Fraser said Bush’s call for a “new world order” was based on principles of justice that contrasted favourably with the actions of subsequent US administrations. In fact, the “new world order” was the opening declaration by US imperialism that, with the Soviet Union removed from the scene, it would pursue its ambition of unfettered global domination.

Apart from Australian geo-political and economic interests, Fraser’s reorientation was bound up with a concern for political stability at home. Having been at the centre of government at the end of the 1960s, he had seen first-hand how the Vietnam engagement, which started with broad public support, “ended with the most terrible divisions.” Vietnam was a “warning of the repercussions of intertwining our foreign policy with that of a major power.”

In recent years, Fraser pointed on many occasions to the role of US bases in Australia, noting that the major communications facility at Pine Gap was no longer a listening post but was integrally involved in daily American military activity. If the US engaged in a war then Australia would automatically be involved. The public might find out the country was at war by reading about it on Twitter or Facebook.

Fraser once commented that there would be “uproar” in the Australian public if the real activities and role of the US bases were widely known. He entertained the hope that if the dangers of the present orientation were pointed out, then a more rational foreign policy might be enacted, averting the danger of war and the accompanying social and political conflict. But his own life gives the lie to that conception.

The tumultuous political events, in which he was an active participant, were not the result of a failure to develop an enlightened policy but were rooted, in the final analysis, in the contradictions of the capitalist economy and the nation-state system. While having no appreciation of the essential driving forces of the system that he served, Fraser nevertheless ended his days at least somewhat aware that even bigger storms than those in which he directly participated lie directly ahead.

Swine flu ravages India

Arun Kumar

At least 1,911 people have died from swine flu in the past four months and a further 33,000 have contracted the disease, according to information provided by the Indian Health Ministry on March 21.

This outbreak is the latest in a series of annual outbreaks of this deadly viral disease, which first ravaged India back in 2009.

The 2009-10 swine flu epidemic that progressively spread to at least 74 countries in the world killed, according to United States’ Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates, at least 284,000 people over a course of a year-and-a-half, with India suffering at least 2,700 deaths.

No confidence can be placed in the numbers being released by the Indian Health Ministry, which has been underfunded for decades and essentially crippled by steep budget cuts this year.

Under the pro-business Hindu-communalist BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) government allocation for health care in the 2014-15 fiscal year was just $4.8 billion. This translates to an annual expenditure of a derisory $4.36 per person. It is no exaggeration to say that India has no health care system for the vast majority.

Many healthcare observers and scientists have decried the feeble and haphazard monitoring of the current swine flu outbreak and believe that the numbers of both dead and infected are significantly higher. The extreme incompetence of the Health Ministry is also attested to by the fact that it has no policy for procuring and stockpiling anti-swine flu vaccine, leaving its availability entirely to the whims of the “market.”

Even going by official statistics, the progressive increase in the number of fatalities from week to week has been staggering. For example, the Health Ministry reported that as of March 13 the death toll had reached 1,674 with a further 29,000 infected, but a week later the number of dead had crossed 1,900 with over 32,000 infected.

Exposing as a fraud Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s boast that he delivered “good governance and development” while he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat, his home state tops the list of number of dead. It has reported at least 410 dead with over 6,300 infected. Other states near the top of this tragic list include Rajasthan with at least 375 dead, Maharashtra with over 280 dead and Madhya Pradesh, long ruled by the BJP, with 230 dead.

The disease has spread rapidly across the country with little effort made by the state authorities to contain it. Even in the national capital, Delhi, swine flu has infected over 4,000 people and at least 11 have died. THREE other Indian states have experienced over 50 fatalities: 71 in Karnataka, 69 in Telangana, and 51 in Punjab.

Despite the intensity of the outbreak and the rising death toll, the Health Ministry, without having performed any proper scientific investigation, has ruled out that this could be due to a new more form of influenza virus, more virulent and deadly than the better known H1N1 strain.

In a blow to this cynical indifference on the part of the Indian health authorities, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US, found that “the recent Indian strains carry new mutations in the hemagglutinin protein that are known to make the virus more virulent.”

MIT biological engineering Professor Sasisekharan told IndiaSpend in an e-mail interview that in its genetic structure the virus is similar to the 1918 Spanish flu virus, which killed more than 40 million people.

The MIT scientist called for better surveillance and collection of scientific data in India and showed his frustration at the lack of seriousness of Indian authorities. Said Sasisekharan, “When you do real-time surveillance, GET organized, and deposit these sequences, then you can come up with a better strategy to respond to the virus.”

Even elementary measures of protection are out of reach to the vast majority of Indians, who are desperately poor. As Srikant Sharma, a doctor at the Moolchand Medcity health care center in New Delhi, commented to the media, "Swine flu spreads through respiratory droplets that are transmitted by coughing, sneezing or inhaling. A simple mask can provide 62 per cent protection against these particles, compared to 98 per cent protection with a professional-grade N95 mask with 14 layers." These masks which should ordinarily COST Rs. 2 and Rs. 90 respectively are being sold by private pharmacies for Rs. 50 and Rs. 350.

Even the vaccine—which at a PRICE of Rs 500 ($8) to Rs. 1,000 ($16) is prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of Indians, who eke out an existence on less than $2 per day—is not readily available due to shortages.

According to the Hindu, over 63 million Indians are driven into poverty every year due to health care expenditure. This is a damning statistic, especially when read with the fact that 18 per cent of all households face catastrophic health expenditures (health expenditure greater than 10 per cent of total household consumption expenditure or 40 per cent of total non-food consumption expenditure).

The few dilapidated public hospitals that exist are often in indescribable condition. With the public hospitals failing to provide the urgent medical TESTS needed for diagnosing swine flu, private hospitals are exploiting the fear and suffering of the people to make quick profits.

Despite India suffering yearly social devastation from swine flu since 2009, neither the previous Congress Party-led UPA government nor the PRESENT BJP government have taken any preventive steps to arrest future outbreaks. They have essentially left the masses to fend for themselves.

India is home to fully ONE third of the world's poorest people. Public spending for health care is, as noted earlier, essentially non-existent. India’s public health care spending amounts to a mere 1 percent of its gross domestic product.

Last year when the Congress party led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government PRESENTED an interim budget for the 2014–15 financial year, allocation for health care was reduced by 9.7 percent from the 2013-14 budget, to Rs. 337 billion ($5.4 billion).

After the Modi-led BJP government came to power in May 2014 a further Rs. 60 billion ($948 million), was slashed. In contrast this reactionary regime increased military spending by Rs. 50 billion from the amount allocated by the outgoing UPA government’s interim budget, raising it to a gargantuan Rs. 2.27 trillion ($38.35 billion).

Yet the current government claims that due to "fiscal strains" it is again compelled to slash the allocation for healthcare and other social spending in the 2015-16 fiscal year. The BJP’s electoral promise to provide “equal opportunities” for health care has proven to be nothing but a gigantic political fraud.

What the current swine flu epidemic reveals is an Indian ruling elite that is willing to spend vast amounts of public funds on the military to realize its great power ambitions, while it presides over a damning social reality characterized by mass poverty and a non-existent public health care system.

Sri Lankan president forms a “national government”

K. Ratnayake

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena announced on Sunday the formation of a “national government,” incorporating his Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) into the ruling United National Party (UNP)-led coalition.

The sudden decision to broaden the coalition was taken in secret talks on Thursday with former President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who remains a senior SLFP figure, and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, the UNP leader. Sirisena allocated 26 cabinet, deputy and state minister positions to SLFP parliamentarians in an attempt to stabilise his shaky government.

Sirisena, who was health minister under President Mahinda Rajapakse, defected from Rajapakse’s cabinet to contest the January 8 presidential election. It was a carefully engineered regime-change operation by Washington’s Obama administration with the help of Kumaratunga and the pro-US UNP. The US wanted to scuttle the Rajapakse government’s relations with China and line up Sri Lanka firmly behind the US “pivot” to Asia to encircle China diplomatically and militarily.

During the presidential election campaign, in order to garner votes, Sirisena and the UNP promised to deliver constitutional reforms, as well as economic relief for working people, within 100 days and then dissolve the parliament on April 23 to hold a general election in June.

However, discussions on constitutional reforms have dragged on for two months as a result of factional rivalry and differences within both the government and the parliamentary opposition.

The UNP initially formed a minority coalition government after Sirisena won the election. As the SLFP-led United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) has around 130 seats in the 225-member parliament, the government depended on its support. The government’s ruling partners included the Sinhala extremist Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) and Muslim communal parties.

To exploit the hostility among workers and the poor toward the anti-democratic executive presidency and Rajapakse’s authoritarian rule, Sirisena nominated constitutional reforms as a priority. He promised to abolish the executive presidency and return to a more parliamentary form of government.

The UNP proposed to curb the president’s powers and transfer them to the cabinet, headed by the prime minster. The JHU, however, accused the UNP of trying to place executive powers totally in the prime minister’s hands, and the SLFP made similar allegations.

A final proposal, said to be agreed by the ruling and opposition parties, was gazetted on March 16 as the 19th amendment to the constitution. However, the cabinet again changed the proposal this week, before it presenting to parliament.

Under the revised plan, executive powers will be transferred to a cabinet headed by the prime minister, and responsible to parliament. The president will be the head of the state, acting under the advice of prime minister, but he will be commander-in-chief of armed forces. His power to dissolve the parliament within one year after its election is to be weakened by extending to four years the period free from presidential intervention. Appointments to top state posts, including high judicial offices and the election commission, will be made by a constitutional council selected by the government and the opposition.

This façade has nothing to do with any concern for democratic rights. All these parties, including the UNP and SLFP, have thoroughly anti-democratic records. They have imposed International Monetary Fund austerity programs, police-state measures and nearly three decades of war to suppress Tamils and split the working class. The JHU, a vociferous supporter of this agenda, has only tactical differences over the form of the continuing repression.

Factional clashes are continuing within the government and the SLFP. JHU cabinet minister Champika Ranawaka declared on Monday that the amendment was a “constitutional coup” by the UNP to seize power. The SLFP’s parliamentary opposition leader, Nimal Siripala de Silva, said he would not quit that post, posing the question as to whether the SLFP as a whole had joined the government. He said the SLFP would not back the amendment unless electoral reforms were included. In another speech, Silva underscored doubts about the holding of the June election, saying that the promise to dissolve parliament on April 23 and conduct an early election was not binding.

Rajapakse is exacerbating the political crisis by seeking to assert his influence within the SLFP. Sections of the SLFP and its Sinhala extremist partners in the UPFA—the National Freedom Front and Mahajana Eksath Peramuna—backed by the opportunist Lanka Sama Samaja Party and Stalinist Communist Party, are campaigning for Rajapakse to become a prime ministerial candidate in the scheduled election. Their chauvinist slogan is “Save the motherland,” denouncing Sirisena for seeking an accommodation with the Tamil elite.

Rajapakse is going round the country, attending religious ceremonies at prominent Buddhist temples to meet monks and his supporters. He opposes the SLFP joining the ruling coalition, calling it “a time bomb” for the party.

By forming a “national government,” Sirisena is trying to scuttle the moves by Rajapakse and other opposition parties. Above all, however, the main concern of Sirisena and the UNP-led government is the growing discontent among workers and the poor.

In order to win votes, the government promised measures to address the cost of living, but the wage increase pledged for public employees was reduced to an allowance. During the past two weeks, workers in free trade zones and contract employees have held several protests demanding pay rises. Peasants from rural districts have travelled to Colombo to demonstrate, demanding reasonable prices and subsidies.

Trade unions backed by fake “lefts,” such as the United Socialist Party, have organised the protests to head-off the growing social unrest. Nevertheless, the protests are symptoms of a developing socially explosive situation.

The Sinhala communalist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) is seeking to exploit the developing opposition to the government, after providing crucial support to Sirisena as a member of his National Executive Council (NEC), an advisory body. JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake said a national government was not in Sirisena’s election manifesto, and the JVP would decide whether to continue in the NEC only after “consulting civil groups.”

Sirisena and sections of the ruling elite are clearly seeking to get all the parties of the political establishment together to consolidate the pro-US government and take on the working class and the poor. Speaking to media executives last Wednesday, Sirisena emphasised the importance of a national government and said he intended to work for such a government “at least for two years,” even after an election.

A Daily Mirror editorial on Monday glorified the declaration of a national government. It declared: “If a momentous chapter in Sri Lanka’s history began on January 8 this year, then a golden page was written yesterday when the two main political parties decided to rise beyond self-centred party politics.” Likewise, Ceylon Today quoted “market sources” saying a national government would “give stability, attract FDI [foreign direct investment] and relieve pressure on the rupee.”

Those statements indicate that alarmed sections of the ruling elite want a united effort to defend their interests, above all against the working class.

Whistleblower from UK covert police unit reveals spying on workers

Harvey Thompson

Last week, Labour Party MP John McDonnell read out a statement in parliament from a former MEMBER of an undercover Scotland Yard police unit turned whistle-blower, Peter Francis.

Francis was part of the covert Metropolitan police unit, the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), that monitored hundreds of political groups between 1968 and 2008. The SDS was replaced in 2008 by a new spying operation, the National Domestic Extremism Unit.

Francis spent four years undercover infiltrating organisations of political activists, and has named five trade unions whose MEMBERS he gathered intelligence on.

In the 1990s, Francis also infiltrated the anti-racist movement and the Militant Tendency (predecessor of the Socialist Party).

In the parliamentary statement, Francis apologised “unreservedly to all the union MEMBERS I personally spied on and reported back on whilst deployed undercover.”

He stated that union members he had spied on included “those not only engaged in working in the construction industry but also those in the National Union of Students (NUS), National Union of Teachers (NUT), Communication Workers Union (CWU), UNISON and the Fire Brigades Union (FBU).”

Part of Francis’s statement read:

“I am humbled as well as honoured to be offered to speak tonight at such an important book launch HERE at the prestigious House of Commons.

“However I cannot appear HERE for a number of reasons, including and primarily, because of some very serious outstanding legal issues/difficulties with the Metropolitan police, that continue to hang over me ever since I became a whistle-blower and therefore a potential criminal in their eyes.

“I have received clear legal advice that me, even speaking HERE today, is likely to be considered a breach of the Official Secrets Act because I have not been granted permission from the Metropolitan police or Home Secretary to speak to you.

“This remarkable, well-researched and must-read book clearly shows how police spying on political activists has destroyed lives and that I, most unfortunately and regrettably, played a part in this.

“The forthcoming Home Secretary’s public inquiry into undercover policing must include a forensic, independent (in other words, non-police) examination into all the blacklisting files compiled by the Consulting Association and then cross-reference them with corresponding Special Branch individual activists’ records to look at the areas of collusion.”

Francis is expected to give evidence to a public inquiry into undercover policing convened by Home Secretary Theresa May, and has offered to give evidence in any court case the unions and blacklisted workers may bring.

Francis said that the public inquiry headed by Lord Justice Pitchford should examine the blacklisting files alongside the police’s records of campaigners to “look at the areas of collusion”. The remit of the inquiry will be announced in July, following consultation with those who were subjected to the surveillance and others.

This month, the Daily Mirror revealed that ONE of the undercover officers in the SDS, Mark Jenner, posed as a joiner and was a member of the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians for THREE years.

Further detailed information specifically on Jenner’s role is has been made available by the Spinwatch research organisation here.

Countering police denials, in his statement Francis said, “Let me state very clearly that Mark Jenner was 100 percent one of my fellow undercover SDS police officers deployed alongside me in the 1990s.”

He added that Jenner must be called to the public inquiry “to account for his spying on, amongst numerous other political protesters, the totally law-abiding construction union UCATT MEMBERS whose only ‘crimes’ were being union members.”

Francis’s statement to parliament was timed to coincide with the book launch of Blacklisted: The Secret War between Big Business and Union Activists, by Dave Smith and Phil Chamberlain, which details the blacklisting of thousands of workers by multinational construction companies. Smith is a blacklisted engineer, who discovered that the construction blacklisting organisation, the Consulting Association, had a 36-page file on him. In a 2013 interview, he said, “After I lost my job [in 1998] at Schal, I couldn’t GET a job anywhere and this was in the middle of a building boom.”

As a result, his annual income fell from £36,000 to £12,000, making it difficult for him to support his young family.

The book describes evidence of how police covertly shared information about workers with the blacklisters. Francis says that he personally collected some of the intelligence that was stored on the blacklisting files.

Smith is also calling for an investigation into the collusion of trade union officials in the blacklisting of workers, some of whose names he reportedly saw in blacklisting files. In his interview, Smith said, “We expect the unions to take disciplinary action against these individuals. We know who they are and we have their names.”

Smith is also opposed to the building industry’s practise of union convenors being appointed and paid for by major contractors. He states in the interview, “I’m not saying every appointed convenor is corrupt. But this system calls into question whether a trade union is independent.”

When these latest revelations are added to the revelations by former US National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden, they reveal an extraordinarily widespread police state apparatus assembled to crush the inevitable growth of social opposition.

Washington, DC, homelessness rises to record levels

Trent Novak

Washington, DC’s homeless population reached record levels this winter for a second year in a row. Although official statistics on this year’s rise in homelessness will not be available until the end of “hypothermia season” in April, the number of families requiring shelter has already surpassed official expectations.

District administrators and politicians had anticipated that family homelessness would increase by 16 percent this year, but this projected figure has already been surpassed. It follows on the heels of a 25 percent increase during the winter of 2013-2014.

Homelessness has BECOME endemic throughout the Washington, DC, metropolitan region. Last year, just over 700 families sought shelter during the winter months, and it was estimated that the total would rise to around 840 families this winter before freezing temperatures begin to subside. However, 897 families were in shelters as of the middle of March, with several weeks of cold weather still ahead.

The rise in family homelessness parallels a similar rise in individual homelessness. By the end of January, more than 4,000 people were receiving emergency care, with local media sources stating that the record levels of homelessness observed last year would likely be outpaced by the time spring arrives. Last year saw a historically unprecedented 13 percent increase in overall homelessness within the city.

The rise in DC homelessness has been presided over by a series of Democratic Party administrations. While current Democratic mayor Muriel Browser criticized the “inhumane” approach of her predecessor Vincent Gray, the homelessness crisis continues to escalate.

Gray had attempted to circumvent the District’s legally binding obligation to house homeless individuals by establishing makeshift shelters in the gymnasiums of TWO defunct recreational centers. His decision was an effort to curb District payments for motel rooms scattered across the greater DC Metro area, including rooms located in parts of Maryland, which were being used as additional shelter for the “overflow” homeless population that could not be housed within DC itself. In January of last year a DC Superior Court judge overturned this policy, ruling that the crowded and noisy makeshift shelters were an unacceptable substitute for individual rooms with four walls and a bed.

An article in the Washington Post noted that Gray presided over the capital’s sharpest increase in family homelessness since the years of the Reagan administration. Last year, the Gray administration publicly estimated that at any given time, roughly 5,000 DC families were teetering on the brink of homelessness, only obtaining housing by crowding into shared apartments or drifting between multiple addresses.

For her part, Bowser took office with the stated intention of “ending chronic homelessness” in the District. However, the homeless crisis quickly threatened to exhaust the miserly $19 million in funds for “overflow” homeless services appropriated for this year. With money running out, city officials announced last month that they would soon run out of available motel rooms.

The Bowser administration then filed a formal judicial request seeking to lift the District’s legal obligation to house the homeless in private rooms on freezing winter nights. However, the motion was quickly withdrawn, with officials claiming that another set of AVAILABLE ROOMS had been found.

Last week, the Bowser administration publicly released its plan to end chronic homelessness within five years involving a limited increase in “permanent supportive housing” and permanent units. However, even if Bowser’s plans were completely fulfilled, it would still leave a substantial number of people on the street. In fact, a stated goal of the plan is to reduce the number OF SINGLE adults staying in shelters each night from about 2,200 to 950 by 2020.

Bowser’s plan also calls for the closure of DC General, a former hospital in the southeastern region of the city that has been converted into a massive homeless shelter with more than 2,000 residents. Conditions at DC General are deplorable, with residents having to contend with mildew, skin parasites, rotten food and routine drug trafficking. However, the plan is not to close the shelter based on a decrease in the population of chronically homeless, but to simply shift the homeless to smaller, neighborhood-based shelters.

The homelessness crisis in Washington, DC, is intimately bound up with the rapidly escalating COST of housing. A recent study conducted by the DC Fiscal Policy Institute found that it is virtually impossible to rent an apartment in the capital for less than $800 a month. Zumper, a rental search site, reports that DC has the fourth most expensive rental market of the 50 largest cities in the country, with the median rental cost for a single-bedroom apartment set at $2,000.

The number of residences renting for $1,400 or more a month has ballooned from 28,000 in 2002 to over 73,000, and now constitutes more than 50 percent of total housing in the city.

A February report conducted by Governing magazine found that Washington, DC, ranked second in the nation in terms of its rate of “gentrification.” A Census-based tract of city land was considered to have “gentrified” if median home value in the area jumped from the bottom 40th percentile in 2000 to the top one-third percentile by 2009-2013. The only American city with a higher rate of gentrification was Portland, Oregon.

Israel spied on US-Iran talks in effort to block deal

Patrick Martin

In a lengthy article published Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reports that Israeli intelligence services spied on the Iran nuclear talks and leaked details to congressional Republicans and Democrats in an effort to block a prospective deal.

Unnamed top White House officials served as the principal source for the article, providing descriptions of the reaction within the highest levels of the Obama administration and the US intelligence apparatus to the Israeli operation. In effect, the Journal article is a further blow struck in the mounting conflict between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government in Israel.

According to the newspaper’s account, US officials consider Israeli spying on all the parties in the Iran nuclear talks—Iran itself, the US, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia—to be a matter of routine. US intelligence services were engaged in their own spying on Israel and intercepted messages among Israeli officials that showed inside knowledge of the talks that went beyond what the US had shared in briefings of the Israeli government.

What fueled the conflict was the Netanyahu government’s decision to share secret details of the talks with American congressmen, in an effort to foment political opposition to the impending nuclear deal with Iran. According to theJournal: “The espionage didn’t upset the White House as much as Israel’s sharing of inside information with US lawmakers and others to drain support from a high-stakes deal intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program, current and former officials said.”

Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer, a former Republican congressional aide before BECOMING an Israeli citizen, began briefing both Democratic and Republican congressmen in late January, supplying secret details such as the number of centrifuges that Iran would be permitted to operate, and what types of advanced equipment it could deploy. He allegedly exaggerated the sanctions relief Iran would receive by as much as a factor of ten, the Journalreport said.

A “senior US official briefed on the matter” told the Journal, “It is ONE thing for the US and Israel to spy on each other. It is another thing for Israel to steal US secrets and play them back to US legislators to undermine US diplomacy.”

The report is a demonstration of the mounting tensions between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government in Israel, and of the sharp divisions within the US ruling elite, in both cases driven by the prospect of a change in US policy towards Iran.

The Obama administration began a secret initiative towards Iran in 2012, with talks held in Oman between State Department officials and senior Iranian officials. The talks intensified after the 2013 election of Hassan Rouhani as president.

Rouhani, a former negotiator in a previous round of arms talks with the imperialist powers, was authorized by Ayatollah Khameini to seek an agreement that would lift the crushing financial and economic sanctions imposed on Iran. These talks have been extended several times and will resume later this week in Switzerland, with a deadline of March 31 for reaching at least a framework agreement.

Netanyahu’s trip to Washington and his March 3 address to a joint session of Congress were an attempt to whip up opposition among both Democrats and Republicans in Congress to a nuclear agreement with Iran. House Speaker John Boehner invited Netanyahu to give the address without notifying the White House, and Obama and other top officials refused to meet with the Israeli leader during his visit.

Israeli officials denounced the Journal report but effectively confirmed it. Defense minister Moshe Yaalon declared that the state of Israel did not spy on the United States or its NATO allies, and had not done so since the arrest of Jonathan Pollard, an Israeli spy in the Pentagon, nearly 30 years ago.

However, foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman said the information could be obtained by spying on Iran or other participants in the nuclear talks. “All the information we gathered was from another entity, not the US,” he maintained.

The White House made little secret of its hope that Netanyahu would be defeated in the March 17 election, and Obama and other top officials denounced Netanyahu’s pre-election statements that he opposed any two-state agreement with the Palestinians, as well as his warning against high turnout among Israeli Arab voters.

In remarks to the liberal Zionist lobby J Street, White House chief of staff Denis McDonough deplored Netanyahu’s remarks and said that they could not simply be unsaid, as the Israeli leader attempted to do in the days following his reelection.

Divisions within the US ruling elite over the new Iran policy, which is aimed at reshaping the Middle East and freeing US military forces for operations against Russia, China and other potential antagonists, have reached the point of undermining the constitutional separation of powers between the executive and legislative branch.

In their attempt to derail any treaty with Iran, congressional Republicans have sought to act as a parallel government with their own foreign policy, inviting Netanyahu to address the joint session of Congress, while 47 Republican senators sent an open letter to Ayatollah Khamenei, in an effort to blow up the talks with Obama.