Cerro León: Ayoreo Indigenous Territory Threatened by Government Prospecting in Paraguay

Paola Canova

By early December of 2014, in the northern Chaco region of Paraguay, bulldozers from the Ministry of Public Works and Communications (MOPC) were scheduled to open their way through the thick forest into Cerro León, a unique geological formation at the center of the Defensores del Chaco National Park, the largest protected forested area in the country. Encompassing 780,000 hectares, the park is home to an array of ecological diversity unique to lowland South America, including numerous animal and plant species in risk of extinction. Known by the Ayoreo Indigenous peoples asCucarani, Cerro León extends for about forty kilometers in diameter and is comprised of a succession of hills located within their ancestral territory. According to local NGO Iniciativa Amotocodie, some of the last Ayoreo in so-called voluntary isolation continue to inhabit part of this area. 

The project, entitled "Geological Prospection of the Defensores del Chaco National Park,"  calls for extraction and analysis of rock samples with the goal of evaluating the possibility of using Cerro León as a source of stone materials for pavement.  Ultimately seeking to convert part of the area into a rock quarry, this project violates national laws as well as international treaties ratified by the Paraguayan government.  Its launch was scheduled not only lacking the environmental permits required by the Secretary of the Environment (SEAM), but  also obviating the requisite process of consultation, which, according to Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization, is a fundamental right of  Indigenous peoples affected by such undertakings in their territories.

This  impending advance on Cerro León and the park where it is located only came to light following a recent newspaper investigation which appeared on December 26 in Paraguay’s most widely circulated newspaper (ABC Color). In a quick move, the Ayoreo organization Union de Nativos Ayoreo del Paraguay(UNAP) organized a two-day road blockage to protest the threat to their territory. Simultaneously, another Ayoreo organization,  Asociacion Garaigosode del Paraguay (AGPA), with the support of local NGOs Tierraviva and Sobrevivencia, advanced a precautionary writ of amparo against the MOPC and SEAM opposing any exploitative activity in the park. In a positive turn for the Ayoreo, by January 14, 2015, a judge had approved the amparo.

An environmental impact report for this project, a legal prerequisite for obtaining an environmental license, was drafted by the MOPC and designates provision for specific tasks as well as a timeline. Curiously, however, there is no official date on this document. The indiscretion of the MOPC is further highlighted by the fact that, in the report, initial advancement into Cerro León is scheduled for December 1, although the SEAM only officially acknowledged receipt of the report ten days later. It is clear that the MOPC had begun, at the very least, to plan action before being granted the necessary license. During this time both institutions also sidestepped the required consultations with the Ayoreo. Moreover, they audaciously appealed the writ of amparo only a day after the Minister of SEAM visited the Ayoreo to negotiate lifting the blockage -- assuring the Ayoreo protection of their territory and their involvement in a process of consultation.The supporting lawyers for the Ayoreo responded to the appeal requesting the ratification of the writ of amparo. Despite compelling evidence of actions taken by both governmental institutions involved (which included the promulgation of a law modifying the use of the protected area for economic purposes), the Cartes administration publicly denied intentions of accessing inexpensive raw materials. Acquisition of these raw materials would eventually benefit private construction firms for roadworks in the Chaco region.

In a somber precedent for the protection of the Indigenous rights and the environment in Paraguay, on February 9, 2015, the national court of appeals  revoked the amparo promoted by the Ayoreo and their lawyers which was temporarily protecting Cerro León. This is an undeniable message that the current administration will push aside the rights of Indigenous peoples, their territories and the environment if  they obstruct economic development and private lucrative interests. The ongoing events at Cerro León further expose the vulnerability of the Chaco region, especially its Indigenous peoples, to a  resurging wave of looting and frontier-style development which has historically characterized this region. Several additional NGOs have added their support to the Ayoreo by forming a coalition to defend Cerro León. The decision to preserve it or release it to imminent depredation  now rests, ironically, in the hands of the Secretary of the Environment.

South Africa: ANC provincial premier renounces electronic-tolling populism

Thabo Seseane Jr.

Having reached the limits of his populist pretenses, Gauteng province Premier David Makhura of the African National Congress has called on motorists to pay the widely hated electronic tolls introduced on the province’s roads in December 2013.

Gauteng has the smallest land area and the largest population of any province of South Africa, with more than 12 million people, and includes both the country’s largest city, Johannesburg, and the national capital, Pretoria.

In comments later denied by his office, the Saturday Citizen quoted Makhura as saying, “We have to respect the government’s decision for it has the upper hand. If I was to advise anyone in Gauteng, I would say, ‘Please continue to pay.’”

He was speaking at a meeting on February 6 to discuss the recommendations of a panel set up last year to review the socioeconomic impact of e-tolls. Makhura himself appointed the panel amid a faction fight which pitted a group of Gauteng ANC leaders including Makhura and ANC Provincial Chairman Paul Mashatile against members of the party’s national leadership, particularly Transport Minister Dipuo Peters. (See: “South Africa: ANC and unions exploit popular anger over electronic toll collections”)

ANC top brass are seen as unsympathetic to the 10-percentage-point drop suffered by the party in Gauteng provincial assembly representation in elections last May. With metropolitan elections looming in 2016, Gauteng party leaders felt compelled to adopt a populist posture. They denounced e-tolling “in its current form” in an attempt to deflect widespread disgust with ruling party arrogance and corruption, including more than US$20 million unlawfully spent on “security upgrades” at the private country home of President Jacob Zuma.

The February 6 meeting discussed recommendations from the review panel which included a hybrid funding model. This would rely in part on increasing fees for tyres and vehicle license fees, funding from provincial taxation as well as reduced-cap e-tolls. Makhura said all that is still to be decided is how the e-tolls will be paid, the tariff rates and who will be exempted.

Last November SANRAL, an agency of the national government tasked with implementing and overseeing the e-toll system, raised only R415 million (US$35.96 million) in a bond auction, or R100 million less than it was hoping for. At a bond auction on February 4, SANRAL raised just two thirds of the R600 million it was targeting. This is roughly the monthly amount the agency needs for debt servicing, road maintenance, operating costs and the refinancing and repayment of maturing bonds. Business Day editorialised that the turf war between the Gauteng ANC and ANC national leaders “has now become a critical operational issue [for SANRAL] that is a matter of weeks away from developing into a full-blown crisis.” The newspaper observed that the lukewarm response to the latest two bond auctions is despite SANRAL debt being guaranteed by the Treasury.

As far as international financiers are concerned, the problem is that the Treasury also guarantees such ill-managed or unprofitable entities as the power utility ESKOM, the Land Bank, South African Airways and the South African Post Office. Every time the national government issues a guarantee allowing some state-owned entity to borrow funds needed to stagger on, the international credit rating agencies record the amount as a minus on the South African sovereign balance sheet, thereby potentially lowering the credit rating of the country as a whole.

Having imposed rolling blackouts on the country throughout the first week of February, ESKOM raised US$1.25 billion in its first international bond sale in nearly two years. Since then Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s have downgraded the company’s credit rating amid a R225 billion funding shortfall in the five years to March 2018. Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene is expected to give details in his budget speech later this month of how the government intends to raise the R20 billion it has pledged to ESKOM.

The utility is increasing charges to consumers to help plug the gap, beginning with a 12.69 percent increase in April. Nomura economist Peter Attard Montalto said annual tariff increases of as much as 25 percent may be necessary to keep ESKOM viable.

This is the backdrop against which Makhura’s comments should be read. Given a choice between meeting the needs of Gauteng’s people and pandering to the greed of international finance, Makhura will toe the line and choose financiers.

The ANC has no perspective independent of the demands of finance capital. As expected of it, it now seeks to strong-arm Gauteng road users into meeting the demands of ruthless bondholders who are already cutting SANRAL off from funding because public opposition to e-tolls threatens their bond income.

Only three bidders participated in the last SANRAL auction. The agency has lost six bidders since the Gauteng government set up the e-toll review panel in June. SANRAL chief financial officer Inge Mulder said the lack of liquidity in the market as a result of the collapse of mass-market lender African Bank—forcing a rescue underwritten by the central bank—had also contributed to higher bond spreads for most state-owned companies.

SANRAL has the equivalent of US$350 million of bonds maturing by September.

Malaysia’s highest court jails opposition leader on trumped-up charge

John Roberts

A five-judge panel of the Federal Court, Malaysia’s highest judicial body, on February 10 upheld a Court of Appeal decision to overturn a High Court acquittal of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim in 2012 on the trumped-up charge of sodomy. Anwar was immediately consigned to jail to serve out his five-year sentence.

The ruling, enforcing Malaysia’s reactionary anti-homosexual laws, was a political one. It underscored the continued subservience of the courts to Prime Minister Najib Razak’s United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), which has autocratically ruled for 58 years since the country’s formal independence from Britain.

A large riot police contingent was present outside the Kuala Lumpur court to control hundreds of supporters of Anwar and his opposition People’s Alliance (PR). Inside the court, the five judges left as the 67-year-old Anwar denounced the verdict. Anwar told the judges that “in bowing to the dictates of your political masters, you have become partners in the murder of the judiciary.”

The judges heard the case over eight sitting days last year then took more than two months before delivering last week’s verdict. Despite their declaration last year that the case was a complicated one, and the delay in issuing their ruling, the judges provided no written judgments outlining their reasoning, which would be normal in a major case.

The court dismissed Anwar’s contention that he was the victim of a political conspiracy involving Najib and the government. Without any examination of the prosecution case, the judges simply declared that there was overwhelming evidence for the conviction and that the claim of a conspiracy was “a mere allegation unsubstantiated by any credible evidence.”

As soon as the decision was announced, the prime minister’s office issued a statement declaring that the courts were independent and calling for the verdict to be accepted. The police have begun to use the county’s anti-democratic laws to crack down on critics. Cartoonist Zulkiflee Anwar Alhaque was detained last Tuesday for a series of allegedly seditious tweets on the case and police named two opposition parliamentarians for investigation under the Sedition Act.

The only legal option left to Anwar is to appeal to the King for a pardon. Such an application would involve an admission of guilt. The verdict will exclude Anwar from any participation in the next scheduled national election in 2018, which was the government’s intention all along. By removing Anwar from political life, it hopes to destabilise the opposition coalition.

In the original trial and subsequent proceedings, the prosecution relied on one witness, Saiful Bukhari Azian, a former Anwar aide, who claimed that Anwar had sexual intercourse with him in June 2008. The prosecution maintained that DNA evidence collaborated Saiful’s statements.

The defence presented evidence that Najib, who was then deputy prime minister to Abdullah Badawi, and his wife and senior police officers, met with Saiful two days prior to the alleged sexual encounter. These meetings with senior UMNO figures continued after the alleged act, before Saiful formally reported it to police.

In attendance at Saiful’s meeting with Najib was the chief prosecutor in Anwar’s trial, Muhammad Shafee Abdullad, who also happened to be Najib’s lawyer. Anwar’s defence lawyers called on the court to force Shafee to step down as prosecutor and for Shafee, Najib and his wife to be called as witnesses, but were repeatedly turned down.

The High Court trial judge, Mohamad Zabidin Mohd Diah, ruled that Saiful was a credible witness in May 2011, but seven months later acquitted Anwar as the prosecution case crumbled when it was clear that the DNA evidence was corrupted.

The DNA sample was supposedly obtained in a medical examination more than two days after the alleged act. The sample had not been frozen initially as required and prosecution witnesses admitted there were up to 10 other DNA profiles in the sample. At least one police officer was proven to have tampered with the sample. Expert forensic testimony discredited the evidence.

A major factor in the Najib government’s ability to jail Anwar on a trumped-up charge is the acquiescence of Washington, which is intent on establishing closer economic and strategic relations with Malaysia.

This was evident in the aftermath of the 2013 national election, which the Najib government would have lost but for a widespread gerrymander. The opposition won 51 percent of the vote to the government’s 47 percent, but only 89 parliamentary seats as against 133 for the ruling coalition.

Hundreds of thousands of Malaysians took part in the largest demonstrations in the country’s history, denouncing the anti-democratic character of the election. Anwar and other opposition figures used the mass protests to appeal to the “international community”—that is, particularly Washington—to intervene.

However, Obama congratulated Najib on his election “victory,” effectively giving Najib the green light to crack down on the rallies. The US State Department issued a pro-forma statement raising concerns about election irregularities, then buried the issue. Anwar, who was always concerned to ensure that the rallies did not spiral out of control, promptly called them off.

At the time of the election, the Brookings Institute, a US think tank, noted that the Obama administration’s relations with Najib’s government were warming. “Najib has fundamentally repositioned Malaysia internationally,” it stated. “He has moved away from the old UMNO policy of seeking to divide Asia from the United States and has seen the United States as an important partner for Malaysian and ASEAN.”

Last April, Obama made the first trip to Malaysia for an American president since 1966 and signed a “Comprehensive Partnership” with Najib, but pointedly refused to meet with Anwar. To emphasise the closeness of their relationship, Obama and Najib both holidayed in Hawaii last December, played golf together and reportedly discussed the international situation.

Malaysia, which sits adjacent to the Malacca Strait, is strategically vital for the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” and its preparations for war against China, which include the ability to mount a blockade of Chinese shipping through South East Asia.

It is not surprising that the US issued only a perfunctory statement on the Federal Court decision. National Security Council spokesperson Bernadette Meehan told the media that the US was “deeply disappointed” in Anwar’s conviction and that the case raised “a number of serious concerns about the rule of law and fairness of the judicial system in Malaysia.” Undoubtedly the issue will be quickly buried.

The response is in marked contrast to Anwar’s arrest and frame-up on bogus charges of sodomy and corruption in 1998, when US Vice President Al Gore strongly supported Anwar and condemned his persecution. Amid the 1997–98 Asian economic crisis, the US was pressuring the Malaysian government to implement the International Monetary Fund’s far-reaching pro-market prescriptions to open up the country to foreign investment. As finance minister, Anwar agreed with the IMF’s demands, but was sacked, arrested and charged by UMNO Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who was intent on imposing capital and currency controls to protect UMNO-related companies.

Both then and now, Washington’s attitude has not been determined by concerns over legal and democratic rights, but rather US economic and strategic interests in Asia.

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.