New revelations in the 1980 Munich Oktoberfest bombing

Dietmar Henning

On February 4, the German ARD television channel broadcast the documentary “Assassins—A Single Perpetrator? Latest revelations about the Oktoberfest bombing,” by Daniel Harrich. It uncovers how government authorities stymied investigations into the worst terrorist act in postwar German history and suggests intelligence agents could have been involved in the attack.

On September 26, 1980, a pipe bomb explosion at the main entrance of the Munich Oktoberfest killed thirteen people and injured another 211, 68 of them seriously. Although the bomber, Gundolf Köhler, who was killed in the explosion, was in contact with the far-right Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann (Armed Sports Group Hoffmann), and there was plenty of evidence of his complicity in the crime, the Bavarian State Criminal Investigations Office and federal prosecutor Kurt Rebmann rapidly committed themselves to a sole perpetrator thesis, terminating the investigation after two years.

Investigations into the case resumed last December, due primarily to the persistent research of journalist and non-fiction author Ulrich Chaussy and efforts of the victims’ attorney, Werner Dietrich, to prevent the nearly 35 year old case from disappearing from the public eye.

The ARD documentary is based on their findings. The evidence and leads that they unearthed, point “to the existence of a complex, extreme right-wing network and an act planned well in advance, in which Köhler was only the last link in a deadly chain of events,” the documentary reports.

Two previous attempts by Dietrich to have the trial reopened were unsuccessful. New witnesses, coming forward after the airing of the feature film The Blind Spot, finally induced the federal prosecutor’s office to resume investigations. The Blind Spot, also scripted and directed by Daniel Harrich, deals with the Oktoberfest bombing, the suspiciously lopsided investigation and Chaussy’s research. Chaussy is played in the film by Benno Fürmann. It was premièred at the Munich Film Festival in July 2013, and initially shown on the Arte public television channel on October 10, 2014.

Since then, an increasing number of witnesses who saw Köhler arguing with a stranger before the explosion have come forward. A female witness had already testified to the police about this in 1980. In 1983, she meticulously described to Chaussy the course of events leading up to the explosion, but allowed neither film nor sound recordings of her statement, fearing reprisals from the people behind the attack. Only now, 35 years later, was she willing to be interviewed on camera.

Someone who apparently knew in advance about the bombing was also able to be traced. Just one day after the attack, he was found in possession of leaflets, hailing the bomber Köhler, although his name had still not been released to the public at the time. This right-wing suspect then fled to Argentina but is now back in Germany. His whereabouts are known to the authorities and an initial hearing has allegedly been held.

Another witness, who has now reported to Chaussy, claims to have seen Köhler talking intensely to the occupants of a car in front of the entrance to the festival site. He says Köhler then put a bright plastic bag into a rubbish bin. The witness states that he smelled fireworks and, shortly after, the bomb exploded. He says he reported this to the investigators a few days after the attack, but his statement was never subjected to further investigation.

A key piece of evidence in the case was a severed hand that did not come from any of the victims and was attributed to the bomber, Köhler. The documentary film now includes the statement of a certain Gerd Ester, who was involved as a Federal Criminal Investigation Agency (BKA) explosives expert in the 1980 investigation. Ester claims he reconstructed the bomb and concluded that the hand could have not come from Kohler, because Kohler was bending over the bomb when it exploded and his hands would have been “atomised”.

Chaussy concludes that it was the hand of an accomplice. A female witness, who worked in Oststadt Hospital in Hanover in 1980, has also recently come forward. After the attack, she treated a patient who had lost an arm. She says he had been sitting upright in bed with “a proud glowing look on his face” and was visited by some men who were obviously right-wing radicals.

The young man had refused to explain how he came to be injured, but he apparently told someone that he had been playing with explosives which caused the accident. He disappeared after a few days, before the stitches were removed.

Finding this man today would be a difficult task. In 1997, the prosecutor general allowed all evidence retained by the Criminal Police Office (LKA) in Munich to be destroyed due to “lack of [storage] place”. Among the destroyed evidence were cigarette butts from the ashtrays in Kohler’s car, possibly smoked by his accomplices. The butts were discarded the very year that DNA analysis was first officially approved as courtroom evidence.

Chaussy and Dietrich had originally assumed the hand was destroyed after its discovery. Chaussy now claims he knows this was not the case. The severed hand was never delivered to the Office of the Federal Prosecutor General in Karlsruhe. After the bombing, the Bavarian LKA had initially sent it on to the forensic institute in Munich for serological (blood serum) examination.

There, Chaussy found a form with a stamped reception date and other documents, stating it had been impossible to verify that the hand was part of Köhler’s corpse. Apart from this, there was no trace of the missing hand. Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Eisenmenger, former head of forensic medicine at Munich University, says: “Strangely enough, we’ve compounded a large number of laboratory records over many years, but we have no records covering this particular time. We don’t know where the hand could have ended up. We don’t know whether it was incinerated, or whether it was returned. We have no firm evidence about what happened to it.”

Records of the Bavarian LKA, however, indicate that the hand was returned to the LKA. All traces of it ends there. The LKA is subject to the control of the Bavarian interior ministry, which—as Chaussy demonstrates—pressed the investigators to adhere to the solo perpetrator theory.

Max Strauß, son of former Bavarian Prime Minister Franz Josef Strauss [Christian Social Union, CSU], comments on this in the documentary: “Of course, if they uncovered something there internally, they would have taken swift action to cover for themselves in the old CSU way. It was the usual practice.” At the time, Franz Josef Strauß was the leading candidate for the Christian Democratic Union [CDU] and CSU coalition in the federal election, which took place just 10 days after the Oktoberfest bombing.

Köhler’s connection with Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann indicates the possible involvement of intelligence agencies in the Oktoberfest bombing. This paramilitary organisation was founded in 1973 by Karl Heinz Hoffmann, and was able to train neo-Nazis in the use of weapons and guerrilla warfare in Bavaria for six years, unimpeded by the authorities. Gundolf Köhler participated in such exercises in 1976 and 1977. This was known to the Baden-Württemberg Office for the Protection of the Constitution (intelligence service).

Only on January 30, 1980, eight months before the Oktoberfest bombing, was the outfit banned by the current liberal federal interior minister, Gerhart Baum. At the time, the militia had 400 members. Two-and-a-half months after the Oktoberfest bombing, another member of the paramilitary group, Uwe Behrendt, killed Jewish publisher Shlomo Levin and his partner Frieda Poeschke in Erlangen.

Hoffmann and his closest associates moved to Lebanon after the ban. Chaussy is sure there were several undercover agents in Wehrsportgruppe. The files remain unopened, but two names are now known: Walter Ulrich Behle and Odfried Hepp.

Behle, who checked into a hotel with Hoffmann in the Syrian capital of Damascus in October 1980, told a bartender at the time about the Oktoberfest bombing, boasting: “That was us.” He said they had put one bomb in a garbage bin and another in a drainage gutter.

A new witness supports the claim that there was a second bomb. He says that on the day of the attack, he saw a flame coming from a bomb that had failed to explode. He also says it was lying in a drain or street gutter.

The bartender at the hotel in Damascus immediately reported Behle’s statement to the German Embassy. When he was interrogated in Germany in July 1981, his statement was deemed to be “alcohol-related bragging”.

On August 2, 1982, Wehrsportgruppe member Stefan Wagner, who was on the run from the police, also told someone he had been involved in the Oktoberfest bombing. After the police arrested him, he was sentenced to a minimum of 10 years in prison. He then shot himself. Since Wagner allegedly could not have been at the scene of the crime on the day of the bombing, investigators called off any further investigations. Nor did they consider whether Wagner might have been involved in preparations for the bombing.

The testimony of a police officer who has now turned to Chaussy is noteworthy. It establishes a connection between Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann and the Thüringer Heimatschutz (Thuringian Homeland Security) organisation, from which the National Socialist Underground (NSU) extreme right-wing terrorist group emerged. Another lead points to the possible involvement of NATO’s secret Gladio forces, which have committed terrorist acts in Italy, Luxembourg and other countries.

According to the police officer who carried out investigations in the Thüringer Heimatschutz milieu, the organisation’s paramilitary exercises in the 1980s were conducted together with the Bavarian militia group. Two years before going into hiding in 1998, NSU terrorists Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhard were photographed at the trial of far-right terrorist Manfred Roeder. In 1980, Roeder founded the German Action Groups, which, among other things, carried out bomb attacks on the homes of refugees.

The explosives were supplied to them by Heinz Lembke, who lives in Uelzen near Hannover, where the alleged accomplice was treated in Oststadt Hospital. Swiss historian Daniele Ganser, who researches NATO’s Gladio forces, assumes Lembke was a member of these paramilitary underground armies, because he was known to be stockpiling and managing weapons and explosives from military reserves.

Lembke probably provided Köhler with the explosives, but investigators also failed to act on this clue. Lembke was found hanging by a cable in his cell in late 1981, shortly after he announced his intention to lodge a comprehensive testimony with the federal prosecutor.

Marginal notes in relevant files led attorney Dietrich to suspect that Lembke was either a confidential informant or an employee of a state or federal intelligence agency. Important files relating to him are still under wraps.

Chaussy has raised the question of whether Bavarian head of state security Dr. Hans Langemann [CSU], who previously worked for the foreign intelligence service (BND), had at that time built up a similar network of undercover agents in the radical right-wing milieu, comparable to the one later associated with the NSU. This might explain why he leaked sensitive information about Köhler to the press and thus warned the bomber’s possible accomplices. Langemann died in 2004.

Chaussy suspects that the informant network organised by Langemann proved a failure in the 1980s, as did the one involving Thüringer Heimatschutz at a later stage. Chaussy’s work on the Oktoberfest bombing and revelations about the NSU and its supporters also suggests a different conclusion: that German secret service agencies virtually amount to a state within the state, which collaborates with right-wing extremists.

SPD victory in German state election conceals growing gulf between political establishment and population

Dietmar Hennings

At first glance, the results from Hamburg’s state election on Sunday appear contradictory.

The Social Democratic Party (SPD), which is languishing in polls at 25 percent nationwide, emerged from the election victorious, with 45.7 percent of the vote. The party only missed its 2011 election result high point by 2.7 percent, when the vote took place in the wake of the failure of a Christian Democratic Union-Green Party coalition.

The CDU, whose leader Angela Merkel regularly receives high poll ratings, achieved the worst result in its history with 15.6 percent. Eleven years ago, the party garnered 47.2 percent of the vote.

The contradiction is reconciled, however, by the recognition that the politics of the SPD and CDU are virtually identical. Leading SPD candidate Olaf Scholz, who remains the city’s mayor, has played a similar role in Hamburg as Merkel has at the federal level. He is supported by bourgeois and petty bourgeois forces, who in the face of deepening social tensions and international crises, view him as a conservative force for stability. Spiegel Online commented, “In Hamburg, a masculine Merkel was victorious.”

Behind the relatively high result for the SPD, there are signs of a growing gulf between official politics and the population in Hamburg, as has been seen in several other elections in recent years.

Voter participation reached a new low. By far, the largest party was the party of non-voters. Only 56.6 percent of the 1.3 million electorate went to the polls, in an election in which young people from the age of 16 could vote for the first time. In 2001, election turnout was 71 percent.

At the same time, the new Hamburg senate is more deeply divided than ever. Along with the SPD and CDU, the Greens, at 12.2 percent, the Left Party, at 8.5 percent, the Free Democrats (FDP), at 7.4 percent and the rightward-leaning Alternative for Germany (AfD), at 6.1 percent, will all be in the new senate.

For the first time in several years, the FDP managed to surpass the five percent hurdle and celebrated the result as their rebirth. Along with representatives in three state parliaments in eastern Germany and the European parliament, the AfD is now entering a state parliament in western Germany for the first time. The party received a large number of protest votes. According to a survey, 71 percent of AfD voters voted for the party out of disappointment with the other parties, while only 26 percent did so out of conviction.

The SPD, which previously formed the government on its own, is now dependent on a coalition partner. The party lost four seats in the 121-seat senate, only controlling 58 seats. Scholz announced, prior to the elections, that he would first speak to the Greens. The FDP has also offered its services to the SPD as a coalition partner.

The AfD addressed conservative business circles during the election campaign, as well as anti-immigrant sentiments. Until December 2013, their leading candidate, Jürgen Kruse, was a professor of political economy at Hamburg’s Helmut Schmidt University. Together with the deputy chairman of the federal party, the Hamburg-born former head of the German confederation of industry, Hans-Olaf Henkel, he supported measures to benefit the Hanseatic aristocrats.

At the same time, the AfD appealed to the right with its complaints over immigration, Islam and the threats to internal security. Kruse described veiled women as “black monsters.” Bernd Baumann, number two on the party’s candidate list, agitated against immigrants from Syria and Ebola victims, according to Spiegel Online. Third-placed Dirk Nockemann maintains contacts with the extreme right. He was a member of the Constitutional Offensive Party (PRO) of jurist Ronald Schill, who was a former interior senator for Hamburg.

Hamburg has previously served as a testing ground for a diverse range of coalitions. For years, the SPD ruled alone or in a coalition with the FDP, then later with the Greens or occasionally with the STATT Party, a split-off from the CDU. The CDU governed alone and in coalitions with the FDP and Schill’s party. In 2008, the CDU and Greens formed their first coalition at the state level.

When Scholz subsequently won the election, the World Socialist Web Sitewrote, “In Hamburg, the political parties are changing, but not the politics.”

In this year’s election, the parties’ programmes were also interchangeable. In one way or another, they all called for the consolidation of the budget and the strengthening of the police. They were thereby speaking to the wealthiest elements who want to be left in peace to enjoy their yachts, polo and golf clubs—and there are plenty of those in the city. Nowhere in Germany is the concentration of millionaires as high as in Hamburg. Some 42,000 millionaires and 18 billionaires reside there.

The SPD has maintained close ties for decades with these business owners, bankers and managers. “The Hanseatic Social Democrats have a pragmatic understanding with the most important businessmen in their realm,” theSüddeutsche Zeitung wrote.

The head of the powerful Hamburg industrial association (IVH), Michael Westhagemann, said in an interview with the Hamburger Abendblatt, “We would like the current responsible policies of the SPD senate to be continued. That’s why as an industry we are absolutely in favour of a majority for Olaf Scholz rather than the unstable coalitions after the February 2015 election.”

Along with “reliable,” the press always uses such adjectives in conjunction with Scholz’s as “aloof,” “pragmatic,” “inconspicuous” and “dispassionate.” As SPD General Secretary, he earned the nickname “Scholz-o-mat,” as someone who was a technocrat and unerringly stuck to a right-wing course.

Several media outlets published pre-written commentaries shortly after the first projections on Sunday, praising Scholz and presenting him as a future SPD candidate for Chancellor. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung asked, “Election winner Scholz: could he be Chancellor?” And answered yes. Die Zeit wrote, “The right-wing Hamburg SPD, as they were often called in Berlin, could emerge as the model. And if so, why not with the originator at its head?”

The SPD’s proximity, to the Hamburg rich, the so-called moneybags, has been connected with massive social attacks. Poverty in Hamburg has risen rapidly over recent years. The wealthy districts, like the area of Nienstedten, with an average annual income of €170,000, are only a few kilometres away from the poor districts.

On the island in the Elbe, Weddel, residents earn an average of just €15,000 per year. Here, or in the high-rise-dominated districts like Mümmelmannsberg and Osdorfer Born, there are 180,000 claimants of Hartz IV welfare. Almost one-quarter of Hamburg’s 1.7 million population is considered poor, including 46,000 children. Those mainly affected by poverty, some 114,000 people, are immigrants.

While Scholz sought to win favour with the rich, the poor, migrants and demonstrators got a sense of his understanding of internal security. Under his leadership, the already right-wing state SPD has been transformed into a law-and-order party. Scholz persecuted immigrants just as harshly as demonstrators. Constitutional hindrances to his policies were brushed aside with arguments previously associated with dictatorial regimes.

It is no surprise that voter participation was at its lowest in the areas with he greatest social tensions—where the poor and unemployed live. In electoral wards like Hamburg Central, Harburg or Süderelbe, turnout was mostly under 50 percent. In the ward Billstedt- Wilhelmsburg-Finkenwerder, it was even lower, at 42 percent. In the electoral district of Billbrook, a formerly densely populated working class district and today an industrial area with a few dilapidated social housing blocks, only one-in-five voted. In the rich electoral wards, such as Rotherbaum-Harvestehude or Eppendorf-Winterhude, electoral turnout reached 68 percent. The poorer the electoral district, the lower the voter turnout.

Growing problems for Chinese economy

Oliver Campbell

Two sets of official data released earlier this month point to a significant slowdown in China which could have major implications for the world economy as a whole. Imports and exports both declined markedly in January, while price rises reached a five-year low, sparking fears that China could be entering a period of deflation, along with much of the rest of the world.

Exports fell by 3.3 percent compared to a year before while imports dropped by 19.9 percent. The fall in imports was particularly significant because China is at the head of a manufacturing chain which extends across much of Asia and its imports include part-finished goods that are assembled and then exported to their final markets in Europe and the US.

While some of the fall in the value of imports was the result of lower commodity prices, especially oil, coal and iron ore, it also reflected a downturn in manufacturing which contracted for the first time in two years. The trade figures were something of a surprise as Reuters had predicted a fall of just 3 percent in imports, and a rise of 6.3 percent of exports.

Price levels reflect the same trends. The consumer price index rose by only 0.8 percent on a yearly basis in January compared to 1.5 percent in December. It was the smallest rise since November 2009, in the immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis, when the index rose by only 0.6 percent. Producer prices, which record the price of goods as they leave the factory gate and which have fallen for the past three years, dropped by 4.3 percent on an annual basis in January, also the sharpest decline for five years.

These monthly figures form part of an overall pattern. According to official growth data released in January, the Chinese economy expanded by 7.4 percent in 2014, the lowest rate since 1990, and below the official forecast of 7.5 percent. The International Monetary Fund responded by cutting its growth prediction for China for next year to 6.8 percent.

Underscoring the industrial downturn, the official manufacturing purchasing managers index dropped to 49.8 percent in January, down from 50.1 percent in December, and the first time it has fallen under 50 percent since September, 2012. A figure below 50 percent indicates a contraction on the previous month. At the same time, the services sector, touted as a booming area of the economy, grew at its lowest level in a year.

Comments by Arthur Kroeber, head of an economics consultancy firm based in Beijing, cited in the Christian Science Monitor, point to the significance of the figures.

“The lower import volumes are a leading indicator of lower growth to come... So far it appears [to be] an orderly slowdown, not a jolting hard landing. But these things are very difficult to manage. It is quite easy to come up with scenarios of a hard landing,” he said.

The deepening crisis is a direct result of the global economic breakdown that began in 2008, and the measures carried out in its aftermath. With the onset of the financial crisis, the Chinese economy was hit by a contraction of markets, leading to some 20 million workers losing their jobs. The Chinese regime responded by launching a massive stimulus program, involving cheap credit being pumped into the economy by state banks.

This resulted in the development of a feverish real-estate bubble, and the growth of a “shadow banking” industry that has functioned as an intermediary between government banks, property developers, and highly leveraged businesses. The sector has also centred on financial products, such as derivatives, with the underlying value of the assets they represent often an entirely unknown quantity.

According to the most recent figures, China’s corporate, banking, government, and household debt now stands at 282 percent of gross domestic product, the vast bulk of it in the corporate sector, particularly property.

The oversupply in the property sector has led to the emergence of entire “ghost cities” of uninhabited housing blocks. According to official figures, the number of unsold houses nationally grew by 25.4 percent in 2014, with land sales slumping by over 10 percent. At 10.5 percent, the growth of property investment was at its lowest since 2009.

The slowing of the real estate boom, and fears of a collapse of the debt-laden financial sector, have prompted a major capital outflow, sparking fears of a liquidity crisis and a further fall in growth rates. According to the Financial Times (FT), capital outflows reached a record of $91 billion in the fourth quarter of 2014, following outflows of $56.7 billion in the third quarter.

The capital flight has prompted fears that the “carry trade”—whereby speculators take out short-term loans at low interest rates from foreign banks, and invest the funds in high-yielding Chinese assets, often in murky “shadow banks”—may be coming to an end. According to figures quoted in the FT from the Bank of International Settlements, outstanding debts of less than one year maturity skyrocketed from $121 billion in 2009, to $850 by September last year.

A study by Barclays and Ledbury Research late last year found that 47 percent of Chinese millionaires said that they planned on emigrating, with another 20 percent undecided. Some 73 percent of those planning to leave the country said they were doing so for reasons of “economic security”—an expression of the increasing nervousness in the ruling elite over the slowing economy, and the mass social struggles that it inevitably produce.

The unravelling of the contradictions of China’s economic development has produced a series of intractable dilemmas for the Chinese regime. Any attempt to rein in the massive accumulated debt could result in a further escalation of the flight of capital to foreign markets. However the continued growth of debt poses the risk of a deep-going, and sudden financial crisis. At the same time, any moves to depreciate the Chinese currency, while potentially boosting the value of exports, could result in further outflows, and a deepening liquidity crisis.

Thus far, the Chinese regime has proceeded cautiously. At the beginning of February, it cut the required reserved ratios for banks to free up deposits that had been effectively frozen, without lowering the interest rate. Beijing also lifted restrictions on trading companies in the Shanghai free trade zone borrowing in overseas markets. The pressure on the regime has been compounded by a new trade case launched by the Obama administration, against China’s subsidised exports.

Summing up the concerns of international finance a comment by Minxin Pei in Forbes late last month posed the question of how the Chinese government would respond to the prospect of years of subpar growth.

“Advocates of painful reform believe that the Chinese economy will not be able to return to a sustainable growth path unless the government aggressively tackles the interconnected mess of a real estate bubble, excess industrial capacity, and financial deleveraging (debt-to-GDP now stands around 250 percent, the highest rate of any emerging market economy).”

Any attempt to rein in credit and spending would likely lead to outright recession, rising social tensions and unrest which the Chinese government would do just about anything to avoid. Continuing stimulus, however, especially in conditions of falling growth, will only create more problems in the country’s financial system.

Lawsuits allege Missouri cities run “debtors’ prisons”

Ed Hightower

The Missouri cities of Ferguson and Jennings operate what are essentially debtors’ prisons, throwing people in jail for extended periods of time for inability to pay fines for minor offenses, according to federal lawsuits filed this month.

The lawsuits were brought by several non-profit groups—Washington-based Equal Justice Under Law, Arch City Defenders of St. Louis and St. Louis University School of Law, on behalf of 11 plaintiffs.

The US Supreme Court has ruled that the constitution outlaws imprisonment “solely because the defendant is indigent and cannot forthwith pay the fine in full.”

Ferguson was the center of protests against police violence in the St. Louis area last year after the police shooting death of Michael Brown triggered the eruption of long-simmering opposition to abuse by the criminal justice system in the area.

The lawsuits allege that court fines became Ferguson’s second-largest source of municipal income in 2013, netting $2.6 million. The city of 21,000 people issued nearly 33,000 arrest warrants that year for unpaid tickets. The lawsuit said that those arrested “were threatened, abused, left to languish in confinement at the mercy of local officials until their frightened family members could produce enough cash to buy their freedom or until jail officials decided, days or weeks later, to let them out for free.”

The lawsuit describes horrible conditions for detainees, who are “subjected to the stench of excrement and refuse in their congested cells; they are surrounded by walls smeared with mucus, blood and feces.”

Furthermore, prison officials “routinely laugh at the inmates and humiliate them with discriminatory and degrading epithets about their poverty and their physical appearance.”

Arch City Defenders, a non-profit legal defense organization serving the poor and homeless, released a white paper last year on the Municipal Court system in St. Louis County. The paper describes a patchwork of municipal courts—81 in the space of a single county—which systematically denies poor and working class people their constitutional rights to have an attorney, to have a hearing that is open to the public, and to be free from imprisonment for inability to pay debts.

St. Louis municipalities may imprison individuals for traffic violations and other minor offenses and keep them incarcerated until the fine and costs of the suit against them are paid. Nonetheless, most municipalities provide no court-appointed lawyers for the indigent.

Municipal judges and prosecutors in Missouri work on a part time basis, usually spending the balance of their working hours in practice as private attorneys. Nothing prohibits an attorney from representing criminal defendants in one court, prosecuting them in another, and judging them in yet another municipal court. The municipal prosecutor and judge positions fall to the well-connected, and to those willing to extract the most money out of traffic and petty offenders.

Municipal courts routinely deny access to the general public, with bailiffs telling friends and family of the accused that only defendants and witnesses are allowed in the courtroom. Some courts do not allow defendants to bring in children, a constitutional violation that disproportionately harms workers and the poor, who cannot afford child care. At the same time, failing to appear in court is an offense that can lead to arrest.

Working class defendants with children thus face a Catch-22: leave their kids without supervision or risk being arrested. One defendant, Antonio Morgan, reported to Arch City Defenders that he was denied entry to the court with his children only to be jailed subsequently for child endangerment after leaving them in the court parking lot.

Arbitrariness is another component of the St. Louis municipal courts. One Ferguson court employee told Arch City Defenders that the judge starts hearing cases 30 minutes earlier than the time when defendants are told to arrive. The same judge locks the courthouse doors as early as five minutes after court begins. In both cases, this petty tyranny on the judge’s part can result in a defendant’s being charged and arrested for failure to appear.

Those arrested on a warrant for failure to appear can expect to sit in jail for an extended period. None of the 81 municipal courts are open on a daily basis, with some open only once per month. Defendants who cannot afford to pay bond can stay in lockup for up to three weeks before seeing a judge.

The paper also found that those St. Louis municipalities with the lowest per capita incomes were frequently those which relied most heavily on court and traffic fines for revenue. The city of Pine Lawn, with a per capita income of just $13,000 collected more than $1.7 million in fines and court costs in 2013. The city issued a number of arrest warrants for 2014 that exceeded its population, 5,333 and 3,275 respectively.

In similar fashion, the municipality of Bel-Ridge manages to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars every year in municipal court fines, making the latter the number one source of revenue. The city collected an average of $450 in court revenue per household in 2014. In 2013 the city’s municipal court, on average, handled five cases and issued two arrest warrants per household.

In the same year, the Ferguson Municipal Court issued 24,532 warrants and 12,018 cases, or three warrants and 1.5 cases per household.

While the greater St. Louis area serves as a striking example of the conditions facing the working class, similar practices exist nationwide. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is helping Georgia resident Kevin Thompson sue DeKalb County for similar practices. Last year, Equal Justice Under Law and the Southern Poverty Law Center sued the city of Montgomery, Alabama for operating a similar “debtors’ prison” system.

Eleven-year-old Ohio girl charged with murder

Evan Blake

An eleven-year-old girl has been charged with murder in connection with the death of a two-month-old infant in suburban Wickliffe, outside Cleveland, Ohio. The child is currently being held at Lake County Juvenile Detention Center. In accordance with juvenile justice proceedings, the child’s name has not been made public.

At a hearing on February 9, Lake County Juvenile Court Judge Karen Lawson entered a “not true” plea—the juvenile equivalent of a not guilty plea—on behalf of the eleven-year-old. Lawson ordered that the child undergo a psychiatric evaluation before her next court appearance.

The deceased infant’s mother, Trina Whitehead, had allowed the baby to stay the night at the home of the accused girl and her mother. The latter had offered to care for the baby that night to give Whitehead some respite. It was Whitehead’s first night apart from the infant since its birth.

Wickliffe Police Chief Randy Ice summarized the night’s events at a press conference on Monday, February 9. He said that the accused girl, her mother and the infant were on a couch downstairs when the mother fell asleep at roughly 3 a.m. on the morning of Friday, February 6. According to the police narrative, the eleven-year-old took the infant upstairs, beat her severely, and later woke up her mother at around 3:30 a.m. with the unconscious baby, bleeding and her head badly swollen, in her arms.

The mother immediately called the police. The baby was flown to a children’s trauma center in Cleveland, where she died during surgery some six hours later. The Cuyahoga County Coroner’s office later ruled the death a homicide, the result of injuries to her brain, liver, spleen and kidney, and extensive internal bleeding.

Ice claimed that the girl did not express remorse over the death, saying, “I’m not sure she appreciated the gravity of what she did.” On the telephone call to the police from her mother, however, the girl can be heard crying in the background. She also cried during her initial hearing, hung her head throughout the proceeding, and is reportedly having emotional problems.

Media reports have largely parroted the police story of the night’s events.

Trina Whitehead has told reporters that she and the girl’s mother were best friends, that nothing in the girl’s previous behavior had given her cause for alarm, and that she seemed entirely normal. She told the Associated Pressthat she considered her friend’s daughter a “sweet girl,” and that “I definitely trusted her. I never thought my baby would be put in some type of harm.” Whitehead’s other two daughters, who are 7 and 8 years old, had in the past stayed overnight at her friend’s home without any problems.

That a prosecutor finds it appropriate to charge an eleven-year-old with murder—by definition a conscious and premeditated act—with only these facts is appalling, though by no means unusual.

The US incarcerates more children than any other country in the world, with nearly half a million children brought to juvenile detention centers each year.

According to a 2011 report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, “America’s heavy reliance on juvenile incarceration is unique among the world’s developed nations. Though juvenile violent crime arrest rates are only marginally higher in the United States than in many other nations, a recently published international comparison found that America’s youth custody rate was 336 of every 100,000 youth in 2002—nearly five times the rate of the next highest nation (69 per 100,000 in South Africa).”

In 2012, the most recent year for which statistics are available, 20 children age 12 and under in the US were accused of murder.

The US is the only country in the world that routinely jails minors for life, and remains the only nation to refuse to ratify the United Nations Convention of the Child, which prohibits, among other things, the death penalty and life sentences for children and the prosecution of children as adults.

According to a 2011 Human Rights Watch report, roughly 12 percent of youth held in juvenile facilities reported that they had been victims of sexual abuse while in detention.

While juvenile crime rates have steadily decreased since the early 1990s, legislation has moved in a generally draconian direction, leading to higher rates of juvenile life without parole (JLWOP) sentencing.

Youth given JLWOP sentences are condemned to life in prison while still in their formative years. According to the Juvenile Law Center, youth held in adult prisons are 36 times more likely to commit suicide.

Before the 2012 US Supreme Court case Miller v. Alabama, 29 states had statutes that allowed sentences of life without parole for juveniles.

The Miller case failed to ban JLWOP sentencing outright, and instead merely required judges to consider the individual circumstances of each case before condemning a youth to life imprisonment without parole.

There are roughly 2,600 prisoners in the US who were tried as juveniles and are serving their entire lives in prison, as could be the fate of 10-year-old Tristin Kurilla in Pennsylvania.

Following the reinstatement of the death penalty in the US in 1976, twenty-two executions for crimes committed as juveniles have been carried out.

CIA whistleblower calls for prosecution of officials responsible for torture

Tom Hall

John Kiriakou, the former CIA agent who helped reveal the agency’s use of waterboarding in a 2007 interview, was released from prison on February 3 after serving a two-year sentence.

Kiriakou was convicted in 2013 on trumped-up charges of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which he said was retaliation for “blowing the whistle on the CIA’s illegal torture program and for telling the public that torture was official US government policy.”

In an interview with Russia Today last week, Kiriakou called for the prosecution of those responsible for CIA torture, declaring, “no one went to jail but me.”

“But what really bothers me, is that there is no prosecution of CIA officers who obviously violated the law; those CIA officers who were conducting interrogations in which prisoners were killed.” Kiriakou said. “I have no idea why there is no outrage, and why those officers are not being prosecuted.”

Kiriakou said he was proud to have helped expose torture by the government, despite the great cost to him personally. “You know, I really do believe that it was worth it. I’m proud to have played a role, however small, in the outline of torture in the United States.”

He also recounted the subhuman conditions he faced while in federal prison, about which he is planning to write a book. “American prisoners aren’t even fed human-grade food,” he said. “And the medical care was even worse. There were almost a half a dozen deaths of prisoners when I was there in prison, and almost every one of those deaths was preventable.”

News reports from Kiriakou’s time in prison allege that he also faced harassment from the prison administration for posting on the liberal news site Firedoglake, in which he published an open letter to Edward Snowden urging him not to cooperate with the FBI and declaring that the FBI “is the enemy; it’s part of the problem, not the solution.”

Kiriakou’s 2007 interview with ABC News was the first time that the use of waterboarding by the CIA was publicly confirmed by a government agent, and earned him the enmity of the political establishment. With characteristic vindictiveness, the Obama administration indicted Kiriakou on trumped-up charges in 2012, including three counts of espionage under the WWI-era Espionage Act, which would have carried a maximum sentence of 45 years in prison.

Although the espionage charges were dropped, Kiriakou pled guilty to a lesser charge out of concern for the well-being of his family, who were reduced to subsisting on food stamps as a result of skyrocketing legal expenses. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison. He now faces a further three months of house arrest and another three years of probation.

Kiriakou was a 14-year veteran of the CIA and the head of counterterrorism in Pakistan at the time of the September 11 attacks. He oversaw the raid which captured Abu Zubaydah a few months later in March 2002, the first high-profile capture of an alleged Al Qaeda operative, who was then falsely described by the Bush administration as an Al Qaeda “mastermind” and the group’s third-highest ranking operative. Zubaydah was severely wounded in the operation, and at some point had his left eye removed by CIA agents.

It was Zubaydah’s case that Kiriakou’s 2007 interview centered on. Basing himself on an internal CIA cable, Kiriakou admitted that the agency had once waterboarded Zubaydah, describing the practice as official government policy. In fact, that cable turned out to be false, and it has since been revealed that Zubaydah was waterboarded a total of 81 times in CIA “black sites.”

Moreover, last fall’s Senate torture report, which mentioned Zubaydah a total of 1,001 times, revealed that the agency used him as a “guinea pig” for developing its “enhanced interrogation” techniques after 9/11. Zubaydah’s lawyer says that he is the only detainee known to have been subjected to all of them. One procedure, developed after it was discovered that Zubaydah had a fear of bugs, involved locking him in a tiny “confinement box” filled with insects. His lawyer says that Zubaydah has suffered permanent brain damage from his ordeal and can no longer even recognize his parents.

The Obama administration finally admitted in 2011 that Zubaydah was neither a top Al Qaeda leader, nor a member of Al Qaeda, nor even “formally” identified with the organization. Nevertheless, the administration refuses to release him from Guantanamo Bay, where is held to this day without charges. Zubaydah’s unimportance was practically admitted by Kiriakou in his 2007 interview, when he told ABC News that “we didn’t go after him because he was Abu Zubaydah. We went after him because he just happened to be in Pakistan and we thought there was a chance we could catch him.”

While Kiriakou struck an ambivalent tone during his 2007 interview, defending the effectiveness of waterboarding in obtaining information, he has since become a public opponent of the federal government’s torture program. In 2010 he wrote an autobiography, The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror, which contained a damning exposure of the policies pursued by Washington under the guise of the “War on Terror.” The book release was delayed for two years by the CIA, and one of the charges tacked onto his 2012 trial was that he had allegedly lied to the CIA’s Publications Review Board while attempting to receive clearance for his book.

Last week, Reporters without Borders released its Press Freedom Index for 2014, in which the United States sunk to 49th place in the global ranking, directly below countries such as El Salvador and Burkina Faso. Reporters Without Borders justified their decision on the basis of the US government’s continued witch-hunting of whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden, the vindictive hounding of journalists such as James Risen and Julian Assange, and the wanton attacks on journalists by riot police during the violent crackdown of protests in Ferguson, Missouri last fall.

The Obama administration, which came into office on a wave of anti-war sentiment and promising the most transparent presidency in history, has not charged a single government official for war crimes stemming from the so-called “War on Terror.” Meanwhile, Obama has indicted seven whistleblowers on espionage charges, more than twice as many as all previous administrations combined.

Last month a federal court convicted former CIA agent Jeffrey Sterling on six counts of unauthorized disclosure of state secrets for revealing details of the government’s campaign of sabotage and assassination against Iran’s nuclear program to New York Times reporter James Risen. Risen, a respected Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who himself was threatened with a lengthy prison sentence for refusing to disclose his sources as part of the investigation, denounced Obama last August as the “greatest enemy to press freedom in a generation.”

Report documents attacks on press freedom in US and Europe

Nick Barrickman

Reporters Without Borders released its 2015 World Press Freedom Index last week, documenting a global rise in censorship, repression and attacks on freedom of the press. The report, which ranks over 180 countries based upon their adherence to international press freedom standards, declares “media freedom is in retreat on all five continents.”

The report ranked the United States at number 49 on press freedom, behind nations such as Burkina Faso, Niger and El Salvador. The US fell three spots from last year, and is down 27 spots from its ranking of 20 in 2015.

The report quotes New York Times investigative reporter James Risen, who has resisted US attempts to get him to reveal journalistic sources, as saying that the US government is “an Orwellian state claiming to be the most transparent.”

While hypocritically raising the flag of “human rights” in pursuit of its foreign policy aims, the United States has moved toward openly dictatorial forms of rule at home. The report references the Obama administration’s continuing “war on information,” stemming from its persecution of a record number of reporters and government whistleblowers, including Pvt. Bradley (Chelsea) Manning, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, and the whistleblowing group WikiLeaks.

The report notes that “No fewer that eight whistleblowers … have been charged under the Espionage Act during Barack Obama’s two presidential terms, compared with just three under all the other administrations since its adoption in 1917.”

Similarly, the report notes US law enforcement’s arrest of over a dozen news reporters during peaceful demonstrations late last year against police violence in Ferguson, Missouri.

Meanwhile, regions that the US has bombed or invaded, ostensibly in the name of protecting democracy and freedom, have seen a disastrous decline in press freedom. Reporting is considered to be an “act of heroism” in places such as Libya, where Islamist militias have overrun the state after the NATO-backed ouster of Col. Muammar Gadhafi. Similarly, the slaughter of journalists captured by the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq have plunged both nations to the bottom of the list.

Out of all global regions that the report uses to break down its findings, Europe had by far the largest relative increase in attacks on press freedoms between 2014 and 2015. France (38th), the United Kingdom (34th), and several other close US allies in the “war on terror” have had their rankings plunge in recent years.

In the section titled the “European Model’s Erosion,” the report notes, “The EU appears to be swamped by a certain desire on the part of some member states to compromise on freedom of information.

The report also documents the growth of the extreme right throughout Europe. In France, the neo-fascistic National Front of Marine Le Pen, which has been increasingly embraced by the political establishment, has adopted a media strategy intended to “attack journalists,” and is known for physically targeting journalists at its demonstrations.

The report refers to a number of information “black holes,” or areas in which “independent information simply does not exist.” Unsurprisingly, many of US imperialism’s key client regimes can be located in or near this bottom-tier category. Both Bahrain and Saudi Arabia (163rd and 164th), major US allies in the Middle East, are located within this category of informational black holes.

Despite making damning admissions about the attack on press freedoms in the US, the report in large part pulls its punches on the US, while it reserves disproportionate condemnation of governments that America is seeking to overthrow or destabilize in the name of “human rights.” It denounces “Russian propaganda” in the Ukraine conflict, and seeks to make a clear demarcation between the US and “authoritarian regimes.”

But regardless of its deficiencies, the report presents a scathing indictment of the hypocritical claims of the US and other imperialist powers to be bombing, occupying and destabilizing other countries in the name of “human rights,” even as they lock up, brutalize and intimidate whistleblowers and journalists at home.

US-NATO war games prepare massive military escalation in West Africa

Thomas Gaist

US and NATO forces launched massive war games Monday in West Africa, in tandem with a slate of African militaries.

The exercises, known as Operation Flintlock 2015, are to serve as the spearhead for a comprehensive military escalation by the US and European powers and their client regimes throughout the resource-rich Lake Chad Basin. The war simulations will focus on “interoperability and capacity-building among African, Western and US counterterrorism forces,” according to a Pentagon press release.

Flintlock is being overseen by the Pentagon’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) and US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) Africa. It will be centered on military bases in Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and Tunisia, according toStars and Stripes.

More than 1,000 elite troops affiliated with the Joint-Special Operations Task Force-Trans Sahara, including some 670 African, 365 NATO and 255 US commandos will simulate a spectrum of possible military operations, according to the Pentagon. The US plans to outfit African forces with new military equipment as part of the elaborate drills and maneuvers.

Participating militaries include Mauritania, the Netherlands, Burkina Faso, Denmark, Belgium, Sweden, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Senegal, Spain, Great Britain, Mali, Czech Republic, Estonia, Lithuania and the US.

Statements from US and African military leaders make clear that the war simulations could transition to actual fighting against Boko Haram and other forces at any time. Asked about possible clashes between participating forces and Boko Haram, Special Operations Command Africa representative Bardha Azari said, “Our troops are fully prepared to handle everything.”

“Nothing is being ruled out or ruled in. These discussions are really just starting,” US Rear Admiral Kirby similarly commented Friday in response to questions about new US troop deployments to Nigeria and surrounding countries.

The launch of massive US-led war games in West Africa comes just days after Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan called for US troop deployments to Nigeria, home to the second largest proven oil reserves in all of Africa, after Libya.

Jonathan said the US should send forces to aid his government in its campaign against militant group Boko Haram, which Jonathan claimed has received weapons and aid from ISIS.

“Are they not fighting ISIS? Why can’t they come to Nigeria?” Jonathan said. “If Nigeria has a problem, then I expect the US to come and assist us.”

Jonathan’s administration recently postponed national elections, also citing the threat posed by Boko Haram, which has launched new attacks on Nigerian cities and initiated raids into Niger, Chad and Cameroon in recent weeks. The group currently controls territory the size of Belgium in Nigeria’s northeastern provinces.

The main opposition candidate campaigning against Jonathan for the presidency, Nigerian general and former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari, enjoys support from the Chicago-based AKPD political consulting firm, which is headed by Obama administration insider David Axelrod. The Obama administration has likely green-lighted support for Buhari in an effort to apply strategic pressure against the Jonathan administration, which has supported measures opening the way for new Chinese investment in Nigeria.

Flintlock’s pre-positioning of forces throughout Western Africa is bound up with broader efforts by the US and NATO to effect a sweeping reorganization and integration of imperialist-aligned military forces throughout the continent.

In coordination with the imperialist powers, the African Union (AU) is preparing to deploy a Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF) of some 8,700 troops to countries in and around the Lake Chad basin, under the pretext of fighting Boko Haram and other unnamed extremist groups. Leaders of Cameroon, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon met in the Cameroonian capital at Yaounde Monday to make arrangements for initial deployments of the MNJTF.

The Obama administration’s National Security Strategy 2015 cites the AU as the main US-friendly institution in Africa, and calls for the US to “strengthen the operational capacity of regional organizations like the African Union (AU) and broaden the ranks of capable troop-contributing countries.”

The document adds, “Ongoing conflicts in Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Central African Republic, as well as violent extremists fighting governments in Somalia, Nigeria, and across the Sahel, all pose threats to innocent civilians, regional stability, and our national security.”

These moves mark a major escalation of the already substantial US military presence in West and Central Africa and the Sahel.

US AFRICOM established a secret air base near the capital of Burkina Faso at Ouagadougou as early as 2012, which has served as the launching pad for regular air missions over Mali, Mauratania and other Saharan and sub-Saharan countries.

US and Britain deployed counterterrorism units to Nigeria in May 2014, supposedly to aid in the search for victims of a mass abduction by Boko Haram. The US Marine Corps acknowledged in late 2014 that it has constructed new “staging outposts” and “cooperative security locations” in Ghana, Senegal and Gabon.

As part of a propaganda campaign to justify a panoply of new US military interventions globally, the most recent moves in West Africa are presented as a struggle against “Islamic extremism.”

“Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country, its largest economy. It’s the motor of a continent that we acknowledge is increasingly important strategically and economically for the world,” said J. Peter Pham, Africa head at the Atlantic Council.

“And it’s held hostage by a murderous gang of violent extremists, who are growing increasingly more and more virulent,” Pham said.

In reality, the militarization of West Africa is aimed at securing US control over the vast energy and other natural resources of the region and countering the growth of Chinese influence on the continent. China has major economic interests in mining and petroleum sectors throughout Central and West Africa and the Sahel.

The strategists and think tanks of the American ruling class have predicted for years that West Africa would become the most crucial source of petroleum outside of the top OPEC producers. Already at the time of AFRICOM’s founding in 2008, the US imported some 1 million barrels of oil per day from Nigeria. US corporations account for largest share of foreign direct investment in Nigeria, mostly in petroleum and mining. Nigeria’s National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) works closely with US and European transnationals, including Chevron, Total, Agip, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil.

The Chad Basin area has some 2.3 billion barrels of oil and more than 14 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to statistics compiled by the US Geological Survey.

Studies by the US Department of Energy (DoE) project that oil production across the continent will continue to rise sharply in the coming decade, achieving a nearly 100 percent increase in production during the first three decades of the twenty-first century. The US was already receiving some 24 percent of its oil imports from the continent as whole as of 2009.

The US ruling class has long envisioned the possibility of a large-scale US invasion of Nigeria, home to some 180 million people and the most important oil pipelines regionally. A US Army report on future occupations of global “megacities” specifically singled out Nigeria’s Lagos, home to some 20 million, for one of its two main case studies.

Citing government threats, Teamsters suppress Canadian Pacific rail strike

Carl Bronski

Union officials from the Teamsters Canada Railway Conference (TCRC) capitulated to the Conservative government’s threat of imminent strikebreaking legislation and ordered an end to a strike by 3,300 Canadian Pacific (CP) Railway locomotive engineers, conductors and yardmen Monday afternoon, little more than 36 hours after it began.

Under a deal sanctioned by Labour Minister Kellie Leitch, who had vehemently denounced the strike the day before, the Teamsters and CP Rail have agreed to “mediated arbitration” over all outstanding issues in the lapsed railway contract, removing any further threat of worker job action. The crucial issues of scheduling, rail safety, and rest management and all other unresolved contractual items will now be subject to mediated negotiations and ultimately, should no agreement be reached, binding arbitration.

On Sunday, TCRC President Douglas Finnison had responded to the government’s announcement that it would be introducing legislation on Monday to criminalize the strike with the bluster that is the stock and trade of the union officialdom the world over. He declared “The pre-emptive actions by the government to minimize the workers’ voices, minimize the workers’ right to collectively bargain their own working conditions, and to clearly favour the employer … are a crucial wake up call for Canadian workers.” Finnison then vowed, “Not fighting is simply not an option the Teamsters are willing to accept. If that means it gets uncomfortable for the Government or their corporate friends, too bad!”

But by Monday the union was openly doing the Conservatives’ bidding and shutting down the strike without their even having to table a back-to-work bill in Parliament.

The Teamsters had absolutely no intention of fighting the government’s anti-democratic attack, let alone the gruelling, unsafe work schedules that CP has demanded to further boost profits and shareholder value.

From the outset it was obvious that the CP Rail workers faced a battle not only with their employer, Canada’s second largest rail company, but also with Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, which has criminalized one strike after another. Yet the union did everything to demobilize the workers and confine their struggle within the most narrow collective-bargaining framework.

In 2012, the Harper government had rushed to CP Rail’s support and illegalized a strike by the engineers and conductors. The Teamsters responded then by ordering immediate compliance.

Three years on, the same issues of forced overtime and lack of rest days remain on the table, CP Rail having had its way over the three-year life of the just lapsed concessionary contract.

Over the weekend, The TCR had already come to an agreement with Canadian National (CN), the other major Canadian railway, thereby precluding any common struggle against Canada’s two rail giants. So as to further divide the two groups of workers, the Teamsters have colluded with management to delay release of the full terms of their deal with CN and the contract ratification vote until mid-April.

Union officials with Unifor, which represents 1,800 track maintenance workers at CP, also worked to isolate the CP Rail engineers and conductors. Although they were in a legal position to strike alongside the train drivers and yardmen, Unifor ordered their membership to remain on the job after negotiating a separate contract deal with CP late Saturday night.

As for the Canadian Labour Congress, ostensibly the country’s principal labor organization, it didn’t even issue a press release denouncing the government’s moves to illegalize a strike by one of its affiliates.

The trade union-backed New Democratic Party (NDP), for its part, issued a statement Monday afternoon that stated the obvious—the government’s penchant for outlawing strikes bolsters the hand of stonewalling management negotiators. But the NDP let it be known that nothing could be done in the face of a Conservative majority government.

The reality is both the pro-capitalist unions and social democratic politicians are adamantly opposed to any worker defiance of the battery of Conservative anti-union laws, for they rightly fear it could serve as the catalyst for a working class offensive against the corporate assault on wages, working conditions and public services and threaten the profitability and “competitiveness” of Canadian big business.

Yesterday’s sorry events are only the latest in a long line of cases where the unions have used either the passage or imminent threat of strikebreaking legislation to justify their suppressing a militant struggle.

In addition to the long list of strikes the Harper government has criminalized or threatened to criminalize over the past four years—including walkouts at Canada Post, Air Canada, and CN Rail—various provincial governments have repeatedly illegalized job action. Quebec’s Parti Quebecois government, with the full support of the then Liberal official opposition, illegalized a strike by 80,000 construction workers in the summer of 2013 and Ontario’s Liberal government (which was then being propped up by the NDP) outlawed job action by public school teachers and imposed wage-cutting contracts earlier that same year.

The Harper government has also stripped tens of thousands of federal public employees of the right to strike under new essential services legislation.

On every occasion, the unions and the NDP have quickly moved back to business-as-usual with the employers and governments involved.

In a speech to parliament Monday, Labour Minister Kellie Leitch insisted that the strike had to be immediately halted in order to prevent dire economic consequences for companies dependent on rail freight transport. But even as she spoke, a CN train carrying crude oil from Alberta was still burning in Northern Ontario, two days after it had derailed, blocking the tracks and stopping all east-west train traffic for both major Canadian railroads.

Ever frequent rail accidents only highlight the unsafe and precarious nature of the rail industry as it pushes more and more precarious cargo in ever longer, heavier trains manned by over-worked crews.

Canadian Pacific management clearly banked on the Harper government’s support in the current negotiations. The company is well known for its rabid cost-cutting measures. A recent study showed a 39 percent increase in personal injuries on the job and a 25 percent spike in train accidents since the government forced an end to the 2012 strike.

Earlier that year the railway was taken over by an activist hedge fund, Pershing Square Capitol Management. Run by Bill Ackman, Pershing ousted the CEO and replaced him with E. Hunter Harrison, a railroad manager notorious for enforcing cuts and “efficiencies” to quickly boost shareholder prices. Shortly after Harrison took over, the layoff of 1,700 workers was announced, with a total of 4,500 jobs to be cut by 2016. On the news of the layoffs, CP’s stock price immediately rose to all-time highs.

Harrison previously headed Canadian National. There he was known for running longer and heavier trains to cut the amount of crews that were needed, as well as several derailments of long trains that spilled chemicals into waterways in British Colombia and elsewhere. At CP, Harrison is pursuing a similar strategy. Trains have been cut or made longer to reduce the amount of crews needed. Staff at yards and terminals have been cut and some yards closed. Capital spending—improving track, signalling, and equipment—has been curtailed.

While the government and its ostensible parliamentary “opponents” preside over the decimation of jobs, living standards and working conditions to boost the profits of predatory corporations, they have been aided and abetted all down the line by the trade unions. For them, no lie to their memberships is too big, no tactical maneuver to divide workers too difficult and no sell-out too outrageous.

Workers must draw a lesson from this most recent betrayal. The trade unions today are pro-company organizations dedicated to keeping the wheels of capitalist commerce running at the expense of their members’ livelihoods.

Workers must take the fight to defend themselves out of the hands of the trade unions and form independent, rank-and-file committees to pursue their demands. Above all, what is required is an understanding of the fundamentalpolitical questions at stake—that to secure their interests, workers must embark on a path aimed at taking political power and reorganizing society internationally on the basis of socialist principles.