Austrian state elections: Far-right Freedom Party makes significant gains

Markus Salzmann

The right-wing extremist Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) made significant gains in Austrian state elections in Styria and Burgenland held last weekend. In Burgenland, the governing Social Democrats (SPÖ) are preparing to enter a coalition with the far-right party.

In Styria, the FPÖ’s percentage of the vote almost trebled. With more than 27 percent, it was just behind the SPÖ (29.2 percent) and the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP, 28.5 percent), which govern in a grand coalition in Graz. In Burgenland, the FPÖ increased its vote by 6 percentage points, achieving 15 percent. The Social Democrats remained the strongest party with almost 42 percent, while the ÖVP received 29.1 percent of the vote.

The SPÖ and ÖVP, which govern Austria in a grand coalition, both suffered significant losses. In Styria, both parties saw their vote drop by more than 9 percentage points. With a loss of 5.5 percent, the ÖVP fell below 30 percent in Burgenland for the first time in several decades. The SPÖ lost 6.4 percentage points.

The Greens were unable to take advantage of the SPÖ’s poor result. In both states, the party achieved only minimal gains. The neo-liberal party Neos, founded two years ago, failed to make it into parliament in both states, which is generally viewed as the beginning of the end for the party.

The FPÖ once again ran a disgusting anti-immigrant campaign, combined with anti-European Union (EU) demagogy. The party promoted slogans such as “new homes instead of new mosques” and “jobs for our folks.” FPÖ head Hans-Christian Strache stated that his first priority if he became chancellor would be to renegotiate EU treaties.

The governing parties had nothing with which to combat the extreme right-wing campaign. On the contrary, the SPÖ and ÖVP have largely adopted the FPÖ’s policies.

This was sharply illustrated earlier this year when a number of refugees from Kosovo fled to Austria to escape the catastrophic conditions in their own country. Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner (ÖVP) initiated a campaign against the immigrants on behalf of the government. She said it was their “mission” to prevent the surge of immigrants from Kosovo. To this end, she ordered the distribution of statements in Kosovo explicitly stating that immigrants were not wanted in Austria and could face criminal prosecution.

The SPÖ’s decline was expressed particularly clearly in the election result. Sixty percent of workers voted for the right, with only 20 percent voting for the social democrats, which have played a dominant role since the Second World War. Both the SPÖ and ÖVP have sharply reduced the living standards of workers and young people with austerity measures and social cuts. The grand coalition agreed on additional measures earlier in the year to consolidate the budget.

The economic and social situation in Austria is drastically deteriorating. Unemployment has increased further over recent months. It currently stands at 9.2 percent, the highest rate in the history of the Second Republic.

Within this there is a sharp east-west divide. While unemployment in western Austria has increased relatively little, there has been a double-digit increase in eastern Austria. Unemployment in Tyrol rose by 0.2 percent, in contrast to 7.6 percent in Styria, 11.1 percent in Burgenland, 12.2 percent in Upper Austria and 13.9 percent in Lower Austria. The sharpest rise in unemployment occurred in Vienna, where at the end of May, 23.9 percent more people were unemployed compared to the same time last year.

State elections are also due this year in Upper Austria and Vienna. The latter is considered to be important for federal politics. In the capital, traditionally a SPÖ stronghold, the social democrats have been steadily losing support in recent elections and were even overtaken by the Greens in some districts.

In this context, the SPÖ has decided to move even further right by entering a government with the FPÖ. Burgenland’s state premier, Hans Niessl, told Die Presse: “A coalition with the FPÖ has not become less likely due to the election results.”

There were clearly talks between the two parties prior to the election. Niessl remarked that he was aware from informal talks that the Freedom Party would not make any extreme demands. “I don’t see any hurdle that cannot be overcome,” he said. The first coalition talks with the FPÖ began on Wednesday.

A possible coalition with the FPÖ is backed by Chancellor Werner Feymann (SPÖ). He made it clear that he had absolutely no objection. Niessl referred to joint agreements with other parties in the past, including the FPÖ. Feymann had stated clearly that a coalition with the FPÖ was possible, Niessl said. In Carinthia, the SPÖ and FPÖ reached a coalition deal after the state election in 2004 that saw Jörg Haider, the former FPÖ leader, elected as state premier.

Such a government on the federal level would be welcomed by sections of the political establishment and media in order to overcome the delay in reforms under the grand coalition. The online edition of Kurier on Sunday evening raised the demand for an SPÖ-FPÖ coalition: “The election result urgently cries out for political action, and also on a federal level,” it declared. There had been mistakes made on the immigration issue, and now Chancellor Feymann and Deputy Chancellor Reinhold Mitterlehner (ÖVP) had to personally tackle the issue of refugees, the lead article stated.

Mass abstention in Italian regional elections

Marianne Arens

Support for Italy’s governing Democratic Party (PD) is declining significantly. This was shown in elections last Sunday in seven Italian regions: Veneto, Liguria, Umbria, Campania, Marche, Tuscany and Apulia.

The elections were an important test for Prime Minister Matteo Renzi (PD). In the coming months, his government intends to intervene decisively in Libya, step up its austerity measures, and introduce electoral and constitutional reforms and a new employment law (Jobs Act).

The most evident sign of the popular disaffection with the government was the high level of abstention, with almost every second voter staying home. Overall voter participation stood at just 52.2 percent, 10 percentage points lower than in 2010.

The decline is even more dramatic when compared against last year’s European elections, when voter participation was up to 30 percent higher in these regions. The PD obtained the support of 40 percent of the electorate, which Renzi declared was a mandate for his so-called reform programme.

Little remains of this electoral success. Although the PD emerged from the election as the largest party in five of the seven regions, it lost more than half a million votes compared to the previous regional election.

In Liguria, the PD lost the state presidency to a candidate of Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia. This region, which includes the port of Genoa, was formerly considered a stronghold for the Communist Party and today is marked by devastating social decay. Youth unemployment and pensioner poverty are dominant features, along with the highest unemployment rate in northern Italy.

A wing of the PD around Pippo Sivati established the Left Network with former members of the Refounded Communism (Rifondazione Comunista) and the CGIL trade union to cover themselves with a pseudo-left figleaf and try to avoid sharing the fate of the PD. Its candidate, Luka Pastorino, postured as an alternative to the PD, even though he is a former PD member.

The Left Network received 9.6 percent of the vote, and the PD obtained 27.8 percent. Forza Italia benefited from this, becoming the largest party with 34.4 percent and securing the position of state president for its candidate, Giovanni Toti, after 10 years of PD rule.

Although the opposite occurred in Campania, ruled to date by Forza Italia, the PD did not benefit from the change. The PD obtained more votes than the right-wing camp, but their candidate for regional president in Naples, Vincenzo de Luca, cannot take up the post because he was recently convicted on corruption charges in relation to the construction of an incinerator.

Apulia will be governed by a PD president. This was formerly a stronghold of SEL (Left, Ecology, Freedom), whose leader, Nichi Vendola, governed the region for 10 years.

Vendola was a poster boy of the European ex-left, being invited to Paris and Berlin. He began his career as a member of the Communist Party (PCI) and joined Rifondazione following the split in 1991. He made it to head of government in Apulia in 2005, serving as Rifondazione’s first regional president. He then founded SEL in 2009 when he lost out to Paolo Ferrero in the race to be Rifondazione leader.

At the beginning of 2015, Vendola lost the primary election for the candidate of the centre-left camp to the PD’s Michele Emiliano, an anti-mafia state prosecutor. Vendola then withdrew from the election in Apulia and backed the ex-PD member Luca Pastorino in Liguria.

Vendola is preparing for the fact that the bourgeoisie will require a new left prop due to the decline of the PD. He has repeatedly promoted the construction of an Italian Syriza, and created an Italian Tsipras List for the European elections. But he is equally responsible for the right-wing policies of the PD as Renzi. Vendola complained on election day that Renzi was implementing nothing “from the programme that we—we and the PD—presented in 2013.”

Last Sunday’s election once again demonstrated the danger posed by the lack of a genuine socialist party of the working class. In the absence of an internationalist and socialist perspective, extreme right-wing parties like the Lega Nord and Beppe Grillo’s protest movement benefit from the growing political vacuum.

Grillo’s Five Star Movement (M5S), which advocates far-right positions on many issues, was able to pick up some votes. In Liguria, Apulia and Campania, it secured the largest increase in votes for a single party.

But the main winner of the elections was Matteo Salvini’s Lega Nord (Northern League), which is increasingly taking over the position of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia. Salvini is attempting to transform the party, traditionally based in Padua in northern Italy, into a right-wing national movement along the lines of the French National Front. He led an aggressive campaign against the euro, the European Union, and above all against so-called uncontrolled immigration in order to win right-wing voters over in the south.

The Lega Nord was not only able to hold on to its stronghold of Veneto, where its candidate Luca Zaia surpassed all polls by securing around 50 percent of the vote. It also did well in other regions. Although in 2012 the party obtained just 4 percent of the vote, it secured 20 percent in Liguria, more than 13 percent in Marche and more than 16 percent in Tuscany.

US government paid millions in Social Security benefits to ex-Nazis

Thomas Gaist

The US government paid more than $20 million worth of retirement benefits to at least 133 former Nazis over a period of more than 50 years, according to an internal auditing report released by the US Social Security Administration (SSA) last Saturday.

Many of the recipients of the federally administered retirement benefit checks were directly involved in the extermination camps and other atrocities, serving as guards, commandos, administrators and executioners with the SS and other Nazi units.

The volume of payments grew rapidly from the 1990s onward, rising from at least $1.5 million in 1999 to at least $20 million by 2015, according to the Associated Press. Some of the ex-Nazis were induced to leave the country by the Department of Justice (DOJ), which quietly made known that those who left the country voluntarily would continue to receive their benefit checks. At least $14 million was disbursed to Nazis who were never forced to leave the US at all, according to the SSA.

The SSA payments were apparently continued in order to maintain good relations between Washington and its ex-Nazi clientele, while also avoiding an unnecessary public airing of the matter. The benefits payments allowed the DOJ “to skirt lengthy deportation hearings,” the Times of Israel noted in a recent report.

Responding to the initial exposure of the payments by an Associated Press report published in October 2014, the US Congress passed the “No Social Security for Nazis Act' last December. Nonetheless, another round of pension checks was reportedly sent to some of ex-Nazis this January, an “accident” the US government has promised will be the last of its kind.

The US government has refused to release a list of recipients' names. Research by the Associated Press, however, has uncovered details concerning a small number of the recipients:

* John Avdzej became military governor of portions of Belarus during the Nazi invasion of the USSR, directing mass roundups and executions against the local Jewish population. Avdzej agreed to leave the US for West Germany in 1984, where he continued to receive SSA checks until his death in 1998.

* Nazi rocket scientist Arthur Rudolf was granted asylum in the US on the grounds that he possessed valuable technical skills, despite overseeing the use of slave labor at a Nazi V-2 rocket production factory during the war. Rudolf signed a “settlement agreement” with the US government in 1983 after his involvement with the regime's use of slave labor was exposed, and he left the US for West Germany the following year, where he formally repudiated his US citizenship at an American diplomatic facility in Hamburg

Rudolf continued to receive checks from the SSA until his death from heart failure in 1996.

* Former Nazi SS member Jakob Dezinger, who served with a Death's Head battalion, the special units tasked with running the extermination and forced labor camps, after joining the SS in 1942. Dezinger moved to Ohio after the war, where he enjoyed a prosperous career as an executive at a plastics producer.

* Martin Hartmann, also a member of the SS Death’s Head battalions, was a guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, enjoyed US citizenship until 2007, when he moved to Berlin as part of a deal to keep his SSA benefits. Official records show that Hartmann had informed the US government about his membership in the SS immediately after the war.

* Elfriede Rinkel, a guard at the Ravensbrueck concentration camp who settled in California after the war, was the only female ex-Nazi ever prosecuted by the DoJ. She continued to receive SSA checks after agreeing to leave the US in 2006.

These examples, merely the tip of the iceberg, once again confirm that despite decades of fraudulent anti-Nazi posturing by the US political establishment, active and enthusiastic Nazis were allowed to continue living and working comfortably on American soil for decades after the war's end, before enjoying a secure retirement at US government expense.

Anything but accidental, this outcome was produced by policies orchestrated over decades by the US government. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) routinely shielded, employed and financially supported known and suspected Nazi war criminals for decades after the end of World War II. At least 10,000 former Nazis entered the US between 1948-1952, according to investigations by the DOJ.

Such routinized and systematic support can only be explained as the product of the common interests of US capitalism and Germany’s Nazi regime.

While rivals for domination of the world market, US and German imperialism were united by common hatred and fear of the USSR, the first workers' state that had emerged out of the 1917 October Revolution. Though not without anxieties about unconstrained German domination of Europe, the US ruling class still viewed the Nazis and their backers as a useful bulwark against the threat of further seizures of power by the working class.

After the war, the US became a leading refuge for former Nazis. State agencies, including the CIA and FBI, recruited Nazis into the government while systematically concealing their presence from the public.

Washington recruited former Nazi spymasters to create an anti-Soviet espionage network, originally known as the Gehlen Organization, named after chief of military intelligence for the Eastern Front, Reinhard Gehlen.

After being packed with former Nazi cadres, including entire units of former Nazi SS men, under American supervision, the Gehlen Organization went on to become the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), which remains the official West German intelligence service up to the present.

The US government relied heavily on former SS troopers as it sought to assemble anti-Soviet paramilitary and intelligence units known as "stay behind" forces. Nazis who participated in the clandestine units were later rewarded by the CIA with bonus checks and arrangements that allowed them to resettle in Canada and Australia.

The $20 million in SSA checks was pocket change for the many other ex-Nazis and their descendants who continue to occupy positions of power and privilege within the German corporate and political establishment.

Nonetheless, the latest exposure of US benefit payments to Nazis starkly illustrates the longstanding fraternal relations between US imperialism and fascism. Abetted by Wall Street and Washington DC, the perpetrators of the worst crimes against humanity in history have largely gotten off scot-free, with US government pensions thrown in to boot.

US removes Cuba from list of sponsors of state terror

Alexander Fangmann

On Friday, May 29 the Obama administration removed Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list maintained by the US State Department. While this move was hailed by the Cuban state newspaper Granma as a long overdue “act of justice,” the decision in no way signals a deep-seated change on the part of the US ruling class, which still has as its long-term goal the reestablishment of Cuba as a US semi-colony. It is, rather, a tactical maneuver to undercut rival powers and establish a foothold on the island in advance of the Cuban regime’s reintegration of the country into the world capitalist market.

The decision to remove Cuba from the list was essentially a formality, as Cuba had made its removal a condition for the naming of ambassadors during the current negotiations over the normalization of diplomatic relations. On April 14, President Barack Obama submitted a request to the State Department for a 45-day review period, which expired May 29, the same day of the announcement. News reports indicate that the announcements of ambassadors will happen very soon.

The official statement from the State Department reads that countries get on the list because they “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism.” During a news conference a department spokesman, Jeff Rathke, said they had completed “certification that Cuba has not provided any support for international terrorism during the previous six-months; and that Cuba has provided assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future.”

Supposedly, the addition of Cuba to the list in 1982 was due to its having provided a haven for figures from the Colombian FARC and Basque ETA, as well as those accused of crimes in the US. Now the US government says that Cuba has “become more distant” from these groups. However, as with every government addition or deletion to that list, the decision to add Cuba was at its core a political decision, and coincided with the Reagan administration’s own support of right-wing regimes against guerrilla movements such as the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the FMLN in El Salvador that enjoyed Cuban backing during this period.

The countries remaining on the terror list include Sudan, Syria, and Iran, all three of which are the subject of ongoing imperialist operations.

The hypocrisy of the US in calling Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism is stunning. The most heinous perpetrator of state terrorism is the United States itself, and Cuba has suffered repeated attacks planned or aided by Washington. Its operatives have included the notorious terrorists Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, the latter of whom is still alive and residing in the US.

As part of a long career of terrorist acts, Bosch and Posada Carriles orchestrated what at the time was the most deadly act of terror in the Western Hemisphere when they planned and carried out the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976. The Cuban flight crashed, killing all 73 people on board, including all 24 members of the Cuban national fencing team, many of whom were teenagers who had just won gold medals at the Central American and Caribbean Championships.

Posada Carriles and Bosch both had extensive ties to the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, including to figures who would later take positions in the administration of George W. Bush, such as Otto Reich and John Negroponte.

Otto Reich, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs under George W. Bush, ran the US Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean from 1983 to 1986. That office was primarily tasked with producing propaganda on behalf of the right-wing “contra” mercenaries in Nicaragua, described by Human Rights Watch in a 1989 report as “major and systematic violators of the most basic standards of the laws of armed conflict, including by launching indiscriminate attacks on civilians, selectively murdering non-combatants, and mistreating prisoners.”

John Negroponte, Deputy Secretary of State and first Director of National Intelligence under George W. Bush, was also involved in support for the contras. However, he was notably also the US Ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985—a period during which Honduran military death squads operated with US support.

As much as Cuba claims that the decision taking them off the list is simply a matter of justice, the Castro regime has certainly gone in a long way in giving a pass to the US on this matter. Perhaps this is no surprise given that the reconciliation between the US and Cuba has been mediated by Pope Francis.

Francis, the Dirty War Pope, then known as Jorge Bergoglio, was previously the Archbishop of Buenos Aires. He worked with the Argentine military junta to “cleanse” the Catholic Church of “leftists,” a goal supported by the Catholic Church hierarchy throughout the region.

Despite this history, Raul Castro has professed his admiration for the pope, and has even indicated he may rejoin the church. Last month Castro paid a visit to Francis at the Vatican, and had a private meeting that lasted around an hour. At a news conference, Castro fawned over Pope Francis, saying, “When the pope goes to Cuba in September, I promise to go to all his Masses, and with satisfaction.”

Castro continued, “I read all the speeches of the pope, his commentaries, and if the pope continues this way, I will go back to praying and go back to the church, and I’m not joking,” also saying, “I am from the Cuban Communist Party, that doesn’t allow believers, but now we are allowing it,” a change he described as an “important step.”

At this rate, the pace of Cuba’s reintegration into the world capitalist economy will accelerate. From the perspective of the Castro regime, these developments can’t come quickly enough. Venezuela, on whom Cuba is highly dependent for fuel and assistance, is in dire financial straits. Already, American tourism to the island has increased by 36 percent, while new measures governing private cooperatives will allow for the hiring of non-partner employees.

February cease-fire collapses as fighting re-erupts in eastern Ukraine

Niles Williamson

Renewed fighting broke out Wednesday between Ukrainian government forces and Russian-backed separatists around the rebel-held city of Donetsk. The fighting reported in Maryinka and Krsnohorivka, a few miles west of Donetsk in government-controlled territory, was the most serious between the two sides since a cease-fire which came into effect in February.

Vladimir Kononov, a spokesman for the rebel Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), blamed government forces for initiating the fighting. “The Ukrainian side has carried out a provocation and started shelling our positions all along the front,” he told reporters.

“This is Kiev’s local provocation, an attempt to break deep into the DPR from Maryinka. All of this is local, not large-scale combat clashes,” separatist deputy defense minister Eduard Basurin told Interfax. However, Vyacheslav Abroskin, chief of the Donetsk province’s police force loyal to Kiev, told AFP that the cities of Maryinka and Georgiivka were the site of “intense shooting.”

The Russian-backed separatists have accused government forces of repeatedly firing mortars from Maryinka into the city of Donetsk since February. At least 15 people were killed Wednesday after government forces shelled rebel-held areas.

Kremlin spokesman Dimitry Peskov also blamed Kiev for the renewed fighting. “In Moscow, we are following very closely, and are deeply concerned by, the provocative actions by the Ukrainian armed forces that are, as far as we can see, provoking the situation,” he told reporters.

The Ukrainian army general staff blamed the pro-Russian forces, however, reporting that the separatists had launched an offensive against government positions with as many as a dozen tanks and a thousand fighters. Ukrainian government spokesman Yuri Biryukov reported that two people had been killed and at least 30 wounded in the offensive.

US State Department spokesperson Marie Harf told reporters on Wednesday that Russia was to blame for the latest round of fighting and threatened retaliation. “Russia bears direct responsibility for preventing these attacks and implementing a ceasefire. Any attempts to seize additional Ukrainian territory will be met with increased costs,” she stated.

In fact, responsibility for the bloodshed in eastern Ukraine lies squarely with Washington and its imperialist allies in Europe. Fighting broke out last year after Ukraine’s right-wing government, brought to power in a fascist-led coup backed by Washington and Berlin, launched a military offensive aiming to crush pro-Russian protests. As of June 1, the UN estimates that more than 6,400 people have been killed in the fighting and more than 1.5 million people displaced.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French Prime Minister François Hollande scrambled to arrange a cease-fire this winter, after the separatists received Russian backing and began to make significant advances against government forces. The United States then threatened to escalate the conflict by openly arming the Ukrainian regime with $3 billion worth of military equipment, including anti-tank missiles, drones, and armored Humvees. As Hollande noted, this raised the prospect of “total war” with Russia.

The renewed fighting in the east comes after a recent series of actions by the US and Ukrainian governments aimed at provoking the separatists and pressuring Russia.

While the US has postponed the delivery of lethal military equipment to Ukraine, it initiated a program to train four companies of the Ukrainian National Guard, which has incorporated members of fascistic militias such as the Azov Battalion and Right Sector. Approximately 300 US paratroopers deployed to a military base in Yavoriv in Western Ukraine in April. At least 200 troops from Canada and 75 from the United Kingdom have also been deployed to Ukraine to support the US training program.

On Saturday, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko provocatively granted citizenship to former Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili and appointed him as the governor of Odessa province in the country’s southwest. He was a prominent supporter of the right-wing coup that ousted Ukraine’s pro-Russian president Victor Yanukovych last year.

Saakashvili started a war in 2008 with Russia as Georgian president, launching an attack on Russian peacekeepers in the disputed Georgian province of South Ossetia. He is wanted on multiple criminal charges in Georgia for the violent suppression of popular protests in 2007.

The city of Odessa was the site of a gruesome massacre of pro-Russian protesters last year. Several hundred far-right supporters of the Western-backed regime in Kiev assaulted a pro-Russian protest in on May 2, 2014 driving them into the city’s trade union hall. The building was besieged by gunfire and set alight with Molotov cocktails, killing 42 people and injuring 170.

The province also borders the disputed Moldovan territory of Transnistria, a possible flashpoint where Russia has stationed peacekeepers since 1992, when a cease-fire was negotiated between the government of Moldova and Transnistrian separatists.

The Ukrainian parliament recently suspended military cooperation agreements that gave Russia the right to transit Ukrainian territory in order to rotate and resupply the approximately 1,500 troops stationed there. Russian soldiers must now travel through Moldova, which has begun arresting and deporting Russian soldiers who do not belong to the peacekeeping force and who do not provide the government with a months’ notice of their travel plans.

In yet another provocative move, the Ukrainian government approved a series of laws in April legitimizing Nazi collaborationist forces which carried out ethnic mass murder during WWII. The Nazi-collaborationist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalist and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army have been rehabilitated, with the law stipulating that surviving members and their families must be provided with social benefits.

At the same time, the Ukrainian government also approved laws which outlaw the display of the Nazi swastika as well as communist symbols and parties which espouse communist ideology. The display of the swastika has had little effect as most of the fascist groups in Ukraine display alternate neo-Nazi symbols, such as the wolfsangel used by the Azov Battalion. Meanwhile, hundreds of statues and place names recognizing Soviet-era Communist leaders and officials are being expunged with state funding.

“USA Freedom Act”: A fig leaf for illegal spying

Patrick Martin

In the wake of Senate passage of the USA Freedom Act, signed into law by President Obama on Tuesday evening, the corporate-controlled American media has gone into overdrive to portray the legislation as a major effort to curb mass surveillance by the National Security Agency, the largest single component of the vast US intelligence apparatus.

In fact, the bill—which has received the endorsement of the Obama administration and war criminals such as CIA Director John Brennan—is not an effort to curtail the vast and illegal activities of the US intelligence agency, but rather a means of ensuring that these activities can continue, now with a pseudo-legal foundation that has been explicitly endorsed by Congress.

Just as Obama barred prosecution of CIA officials for torturing prisoners, and prosecution of Bush administration leaders for waging war in Iraq based on lies, there will be no accountability for more than a decade of illegal spying on the American people. On the contrary, the program of mass surveillance of telecommunications and the Internet, directed against the democratic rights of the entire population of the globe, will intensify.

The bill makes only one significant, largely cosmetic, change in the hundreds of government spying programs directed against the American people, transferring responsibility for the retention of telephone metadata from the NSA back to the telecommunications companies. The telecoms are required to run NSA queries through their databases once the searches are approved by the FISA court, a longstanding rubber stamp for the US security services.

As the British-based Financial Times noted, the bill is “a much less significant change in the way the intelligence community actually operates” than the political furor surrounding it would suggest. “The surveillance legislation reform still leaves the US intelligence community with formidable legal powers and tools to collect data and other online information,” the newspaper continued, adding that intelligence officials regarded the legislation as damage control required after Edward Snowden’s revelations of massive and unconstitutional NSA spying.

The American media, however, treated the legislation as an historic watershed, a reversal of the build-up of state security powers that followed the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

The Washington Post headlined its analysis, “Congressional action on NSA is a milestone in the post-9/11 world.” The Wall Street Journal ran the headline, “Congress Reins In NSA’s Spying Powers,” over a story reporting that “the Senate voted to curb the collection of millions of Americans’ phone records, the first significant retrenchment of government spying powers since the 9/11 attacks.”

The most overstated and effusive presentation of the bill came in the New York Times, the principal shaper of liberal public opinion and a slavish supporter of the Obama administration. Its account was headlined, “US Surveillance in Place Since 9/11 Is Sharply Limited.” That the bill affected only one of hundreds of intrusive surveillance programs went unmentioned.

The news analysis claimed, “The legislation signaled a cultural turning point for the nation, almost 14 years after the Sept. 11 attacks heralded the construction of a powerful national security apparatus. The shift against the security state began with the revelation by Edward J. Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor, about the bulk collection of phone records. The backlash was aided by the growth of interconnected communication networks run by companies that have felt manhandled by government prying.”

This paragraph includes a mass of falsifications and distortions. First, the “powerful national security apparatus” was in existence well before September 11, 2001—indeed, the role of the CIA, NSA and FBI in permitting and even directly facilitating the terror attacks, which allowed the US government to go forward with a long-planned program of militaristic aggression, including invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, raises many troubling questions.

The “shift against the security state” prompted by Snowden’s revelations was a shift in popular opinion, not a change in the policies of either Congress or the Obama administration, both of whom defended the intelligence apparatus and demanded Snowden’s arrest and prosecution for treason. And Snowden revealed far more than the bulk collection of phone records, releasing tens of thousands of documents on myriad illegal NSA spy programs directed at both the American population and the entire world.

Nor did American companies play any significant role in opposing government spying. On the contrary, Snowden’s revelations included the exposure of collaboration by Google, Microsoft and dozens of other Silicon Valley giants, and well as the entire telecommunications industry, with the build-up of an American police-state apparatus.

The Times article notes the admission by the NSA that the telephone metadata collection program had played no role in thwarting any terrorist attack. But it then fails to ask the most obvious question: If the telephone metadata program has never been effective against terrorism, why are the NSA, the CIA, the Obama administration and the leadership of Congress so adamant about defending it and preserving it, with whatever modifications are needed to give the illusion of “reform”? What is this data really being used for?

The only politically serious answer is that the US government is creating a vast database of the social and political views and associations of the American people, to be used to direct its repression when a mass movement erupts from below, against the capitalist system.

These efforts have not been halted for a single day, either by the supposed “shutdown” of the telephone metadata on May 31, or by the planned transfer of the program from the NSA to the telecoms in six months. The US military-intelligence apparatus, by far the largest and most powerful in the world, is the main threat to the democratic rights of the American people. No amount of media propaganda and peddling of illusions in “NSA reform” can disguise this reality indefinitely.

There are, unfortunately, indications that Edward Snowden himself may be among those taken in by the pretense of surveillance “reform.” Snowden addressed an Amnesty International conference in London Tuesday, before the final Senate vote, speaking by video link from Russia, where he remains in exile. Referring to the legislation, he told the group, “This is meaningful, it is important and actually historic that this has been refuted, not just by the courts, but by Congress as well and the president himself is saying this mass surveillance has to end.”

Snowden is dangerously naïve, and misled by his associates in such groups as Amnesty, the Guardian newspaper, and the ACLU, who share a liberal political outlook imbued with illusions in the democratic pretensions of American imperialism, and particularly in the Democratic Party and the Obama administration. Despite his courage in exposing the extent of NSA spying—and the considerable, continuing threat to his own physical security—Snowden is taking an entirely credulous approach to the maneuvers of official Washington.

He argues, “For the first time in recent history we found that despite the claims of government, the public made the final decision and that is a radical change that we should seize on, we should value and we should push further.” The actual course of events is far different. The “public” was entirely excluded from the decision-making process. The military-intelligence apparatus called the shots. The Obama administration and Congress took their marching orders. The USA Freedom Act, like the USA Patriot Act before it, serves the interests of the emerging American police state.

Snowden reacted with revulsion to the massive NSA spying campaign, out of sincere democratic convictions. But the growth of a surveillance state is not simply the product of post-9/11 paranoia, or even the drive for power on the part of individual politicians, generals and intelligence officials. The growth of a police-state apparatus proceeds, as it were, organically, out of the extreme levels of social inequality in American society, and endless wars. In other words, the military-intelligence apparatus is not the cause, but one malignant manifestation, of a deep-rooted and historic crisis of American capitalism.

Whatever the gestures to civil liberties made by Obama—while he continues drone-missile assassinations, Guantanamo, and the whole panoply of American militarism—the American ruling class he serves has no intention of diminishing the repressive powers of the state machine that exists to defend its property and wealth.

There is a profound political lesson here. Courageous individuals like Snowden and organizations like WikiLeaks can make important exposures. But only the working class, in the United States and internationally, can put an end to the ongoing attacks on democratic rights. This requires the building of a mass revolutionary movement, based on a socialist and internationalist program, and directed at the defense of all the social and democratic rights of working people.

Finland government commits to austerity, moves towards NATO membership

Jordan Shilton

A coalition agreement to form a new government in Finland following April’s general election was presented last Wednesday in Helsinki.

The coalition, under the leadership of incoming Prime Minister Juha Sipilä (Centre Party), will be one of the most right-wing governments of recent years. The Centre Party will be joined by the nationalist Finns Party, formerly True Finns, and the conservative National Coalition Party (NCP) of outgoing Prime Minister Alexander Stubb. Stubb will serve as finance minister, while Finns leader Timo Soini will be appointed foreign minister. The agreement is still awaiting formal approval by each of the parties’ decision-making bodies before it is finalised.

The government will implement a significant shift in Finnish foreign policy, which will see the country integrated still further into the US-led anti-Russian NATO alliance. In the wake of the signing of a Nordic defence agreement in April by the previous government, Sipilä’s administration is to prepare a report on the benefits of NATO membership.

Throughout the Cold War, Finland sought to maintain a degree of neutrality. Along with Sweden, it never joined NATO and only entered the European Union in 1995. Previous governments, including the outgoing Stubb-led coalition, continued to rule out NATO membership.

The announcement came in the same week as Finnish aircraft and armed forces personnel participated in the NATO-led Arctic Challenge. The two-week-long military exercise includes over 100 aircraft and 4,000 personnel, and is a major provocation aimed at Moscow.

It follows the dropping of depth charges by the Finnish navy near Helsinki in April to warn an unidentified object, which was universally claimed in media reports to be a Russian submarine. The Finnish air force has accused Russia of an increased number of airspace violations over recent months.

Arctic Challenge is only the latest NATO operation to include non-NATO members Finland and Sweden. Both countries have integrated their armed forces into NATO via the Partnership for Peace (PFP) programme. Via this mechanism, both countries participated in Steadfast Jazz, a massive NATO exercise in the Baltic Sea in late 2013, and last year, the Finnish port of Turku played host to NATO’s Northern Coasts naval exercises. PFP also saw Helsinki deploy troops to Afghanistan.

Later this month, the Finnish army will conduct a major military mobilisation involving over 8,000 personnel in the Karelia region on the border with Russia. In April, the army wrote to over 900,000 reservists informing them of where they would be deployed in a crisis situation.

NATO has indicated its desire to develop closer ties with Stockholm and Helsinki. After a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Turkey last month, NATO Secretary General and former Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said at a press conference that more consultation and information sharing would take place. “We will also look at how we can conduct more exercises with Finland and Sweden,” he said.

Unveiling an increase in defence spending, Foreign Minister Soini declared that the incoming government would seek to “secure our independence and regional integrity.” He pledged to cooperate more closely with Sweden on defence matters. Soini avoided making any explicitly anti-European Union (EU) statements, even though the Finns are a Eurosceptic party that sharply criticised the Greek bailouts. He did mention that the EU required reform, but added that it was not a priority.

The promotion of militarism is designed to divert anger away from the deepening economic crisis and the severe austerity measures being prepared by the government.

Before entering politics, Sipilä was a businessman who made millions in telecommunications. Throughout the election campaign and during coalition talks, he has portrayed himself as someone who gets results through efficiency savings and increased competitiveness. The Financial Times remarked in its analysis of the new government that Sipilä was preparing to run the cabinet more like a “corporate executive board.”

The coalition agreement pledges to make over €6 billion in savings by 2021, through a combination of devastating spending cuts and attacks on public sector wages in a country of just 5.4 million people. Stubb laid out plans to freeze welfare benefit payments, increase charges for public services and slash over €600 million in education support. This latter measure marks a reversal of pre-election promises to maintain funding for schools and universities and has already provoked widespread opposition.

Other cuts will see day care charges rise and a reduction in state-funded mortgage relief. Families where one parent is unemployed or stays at home for other reasons will only be eligible for state support for a half-time day care placement.

A day after the presentation of the austerity package, Finland released its latest unemployment figures. Joblessness rose from the same period last year by 40,000, reaching 10.3 percent at the end of April.

A major task of the new government will be to impose labour market reforms, including the deregulation of labour laws and the destruction of wages and workers’ benefits to improve the country’s international competitiveness. To this end, Stubb has given workers an ultimatum: either sign up to a “social contract” between the employers’ organisations and trade unions and the government will cut taxes by €1 billion; or reject such a deal and face an additional €1.5 billion in government spending cuts.

Both alternatives would be disastrous for the working class. While the additional threatened cuts would target public services already devastated by austerity measures, the purpose of an agreement between employers and the trade unions would be to impose just as much if not more savings by launching an assault on pay and conditions.

The newspaper Iltalehti reported that the government has drawn up a list of measures that would be implemented to undermine workers’ rights and trade union powers if the social contract is not agreed. These would include increasing fines for strikes deemed illegal, reducing or removing entirely the portion of union members’ contributions which is tax deductible, and the setting up of an unemployment insurance fund to compete with the union-operated schemes. According to information from an anonymous insider, the government will consider abandoning centralised labour agreements reached with the unions in favour of sector-specific deals.

Sipilä denied the existence of such plans, but this is hardly credible—particularly given the fact that a deadline of 21 August has already been set for the conclusion of a social contract. The government has demanded that it contain a lengthening of working hours, together with a commitment to keep any pay increases “moderate” for the coming years.

The new government has declared its intention to grow the economy and reduce unemployment; above all through an investment package of €1.6 billion, which it claims will offset the negative impact on economic activity of spending cuts. In reality, this programme is to be funded by selling off state assets, as Stubb confirmed last week.

Even economists from the region’s major banks and think tanks have noted that the government’s employment goals are unachievable under the current economic conditions. Passi Holm of the PTT think tank, referring to the government’s goal of raising employment from its current level of 68 percent to 72 percent, told YLE, “Finnish economic history shows that we haven’t achieved that kind of jobs growth since after the recession of the 1990s and between 2003 and 2008. But at that time we had economic growth of about five percent.”

Currently, the government is predicting growth this year of 0.5 percent, followed by 1.5 percent in 2016.

The US arming of ISIS

Bill Van Auken

Ministers from 20 countries assembled in Paris June 2 in what was billed as a meeting of the coalition to combat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). This alliance, cobbled together by Washington, consists largely of NATO allies together with Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf oil monarchies.

Notably absent from the proceedings were three countries that have been heavily involved in the fight against ISIS: Syria, Iran and Russia. This was by US design.

At the outset of the Paris meeting, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi accused the world of having “failed” Iraq, calling attention to the recent advances of ISIS in both Iraq and Syria as well as the uninterrupted flow of Islamist foreign fighters into both countries.

For his part, US Deputy Under Secretary of State Anthony Blinken insisted that Washington and its allies are pursuing a “winning strategy,” and that it would succeed “if we remain united, determined and focused.”

Over the past several weeks, this “winning strategy” has seen ISIS capture Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s Anbar province, as well as the historic city of Palmyra in Syria. In the past few days, ISIS forces have advanced into Aleppo province in Syria, overrunning rival Islamist militias and Syrian government troops as well. This offensive has proceeded without any interference from US and allied warplanes supposedly waging an air war against ISIS.

“Focused” is scarcely a word that any objective observer would use to describe US policy in the region. While claiming to be committed to a war against ISIS, Washington and its regional allies have time and again proven themselves to be its principal sources of strength.

This movement did not exist until the US launched its criminal war of aggression against Iraq in 2003, killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and stoking sectarian tensions as part of a strategy of divide-and-conquer that deliberately pitted Shiites and Sunnis against each other.

It grew stronger based on the US-NATO war for regime change in Libya, which utilized Al Qaeda-linked militias—now affiliated with ISIS—as ground troops in overthrowing and murdering Muammar Gaddafi and plunging the country into a state of chaos that continues to this day. It was further strengthened by the US-backed war for regime change in Syria, in which ISIS emerged as the most powerful faction in the bloody sectarian war to overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad.

The latest ISIS offensive has been made possible by a massive infusion of US weapons. Prime Minister Abadi admitted Monday that the Islamists captured some 2,300 armored Humvees—worth over one billion dollars—when it routed Iraqi security forces in Mosul nearly a year ago.

In a Reuters column Tuesday, Peter Van Buren, a former US State Department official in Iraq, reported that, in addition, at least 40 M1A2 main battle tanks as well as vast quantities of “small arms and ammunition, including 74,000 machine guns, and as many as 52 M198 howitzer moil gun systems” fell into the hands of the Islamist militia.

There is an inherent logic in the flow of US arms to ISIS, which, while officially branded as America’s most dangerous terrorist threat, is at the same time the most powerful military opponent of the Assad government in Syria.

It would not be the first time that American weapons were funneled to an ostensible enemy in order to further the counterrevolutionary aims of US imperialism. Thirty years ago, a similar scenario played out in what became known as the Iran-Contra affair, with a secret network in the White House organizing the sale of arms to Iran—then labeled by Washington as a terrorist nation—to fight against Iraq and, most crucially, to obtain money to secretly and illegally finance and arm the so-called contras in a CIA-orchestrated terrorist war against Nicaragua.

Whether or not similar behind-the-scenes machinations underlie the massive rearmament of ISIS, it would appear that different factions within the US government and its gargantuan military and intelligence apparatus are waging different wars in Iraq and Syria.

For a sizable faction within the US ruling establishment, the overthrow of Assad and with it the isolation, weakening and ultimate destruction of the governments of both Iran and Russia remain the overriding strategic aims. In the absence of the so-called moderate rebels that US imperialism and its pseudo-left apologists have tirelessly attempted to conjure up, they are prepared to utilize ISIS, the Al Nusra Front and similar Al Qaeda-linked elements to further these ends.

These strategic aims far outweigh any concern over terrorism, which they believe has its own uses as a means of terrorizing the American people into accepting war and police state measures.

This orientation likewise has a long history, going back to the US backing of Islamist elements in Afghanistan with the aim of giving the Soviet Union what was then described as its “own Vietnam.” That venture produced the Al Qaeda movement, which is officially blamed for the attacks of 9/11.

On the superficial level of media analysis, it becomes increasingly difficult to make any sense of American foreign policy. The apparent pursuit of inherently contradictory policies is bound up with the unavoidable difficulties that arise from attempting to exert control over the entire planet. Inevitably, this quest produces one catastrophe after another, from Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Libya, Syria and beyond.

Behind the apparent incoherence of American policy lie objectives that, at their deepest level, are wholly irrational. That is, the attempt to prop up by military means a position of global political hegemony that is already in advanced and irretrievable decline.

The bid by Washington to overcome by means of armed violence powerful objective tendencies rooted in the historic crisis of US and world capitalism yields a succession of utterly reckless and destructive interventions that together drive inexorably toward a Third World War.

Af-Pak: Why China is Playing Mediator

Fanny Ragot

In February 2015, a new strategic dialogue was held between Pakistan and Afghanistan under Chinese coordination, illustrating Beijing’s recent commitment to support Kabul in pacifying its country.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, elected in mid-2014, has been reaffirming his willingness to set the wheels of negotiations in motion. It implies engaging in negotiations with Pakistan to resolve the problem of Pakistan’s support for the Taliban, across the Durand Line. While the dialogue is still new, China appears to be brokering these discussions.

That Beijing is evidently involving itself – in shaping the future of Afghanistan and Pakistan – more than ever underscores a considerable shift in the way China deals with its neighbourhood. Since 2001, China had been limiting its intervention to minimal security contribution; but over the past two years, a proactive tone has been used vis-à-vis improving bilateral ties with Afghanistan and the commitment of an increased Chinese economic footprint in the region.

What are Chinese Interests in this Region?First, China is extremely concernedfor its national security,particularlydue to the spread of terrorism and terrorist ideology into the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. The Uyghur separatist movement is a national security matter with important external connections. China already has some counter terrorism measures in place that it implements inside its borders. Tackling terrorism, especially the Taliban, across the Chinese border to ensure that Afghanistan does not become a strong base for Uyghur militancy complements the effort.

China also feels the need to secure a stable environment around its oil and gas pipelines,trade routes with the Gulf countries as well as all its other economic interests. China’s energy needs are constantly increasing, and Beijing cannot afford to let territories its pipeline networks run through to fall prey to terrorism and instability. The success of Beijing’s New Silk Route too depends heavily on the stability of the region.

The Chinese involvement in the resolution of the Afghan conflict also responds to a global plan of empowerment at the international level. According to China, its involvement in Afghanistan is part of its ‘Peaceful Development’ plan that focuses on stabilising and securing its neighborhood. Afghanistan was the missing piece of the Chinese regional diplomacy and ensuring stability in this country would have a beneficial effect on the neighbourhood. For Beijing, securing a peaceful neighborhood is sine qua non if it wants to meet its aspiration of becoming a global superpower.

Chinese Assets in AfghanistanWhat makes China a particularly interesting ally for Afghanistan is its position between the three main parties involved in the conflict, justifying the Afghan president’s choice to make Beijing the destination of his first official visit.

On one hand, China has had a long-term partnership with Pakistan that could be helpful for Kabul to pressurize Pakistan into taking coordinated measures to get rid of the safe havens Taliban find in the country. Despite the détente between Afghanistan and Pakistan since Ghani’s election, drawing a more suitable backdrop for cooperation than in the last decade, Pakistan does not allow fair negotiations. China actually has the power to influence the negotiations by taking on a mediator role.

Beijing can do so because it has several economic and non-economic counter-arguments to deter Pakistan from refusing to cooperate. Given the introduction of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project – for which China is mobilising $46 billion (approximately 20 per cent of Pakistan’s GDP)–Pakistan will be heavily economically dependent on Beijing. Besides, taking actions against terrorism in Pakistan is a way for China to fix Pakistan’s lack of attention vis-à-vis Chinese security interests, and to give Islamabad the means to flush out the insurgents; and which would benefit both Kabul and Beijing.

China’s links with the Taliban, which were low key before and after 2001 appear to be becoming more and more indiscreet. In November 2014, a Taliban delegation was sent to China and even though the entire contents of the discussions are still unclear,the very move of not interacting via intermediaries anymore gives China a proper space to open dialogue with them.

Overall, China benefits from strategic partnerships in its favor with Pakistan as well as the Taliban, which turn out to be of great interest not only for Kabul but also for the whole Chinese project of stabilising the region. By responding positively to Ghani’s demand of mediating the peace talks, China attested its willingness to protect its interests. Beijing’s involvement in the Afghan peace process will be a veritable test for its new foreign policy orientation as well as its diplomatic capability, especially since the US failed to durably stabilise the region.

With China taking the leadin the discussions between Afghanistan,Pakistan and the Taliban, India feels isolated owing to the sense that it has been relegated to a supporting role. However, India is unlikely to be sidelined in Afghanistan. New Delhi is still an important strategic partner for Kabul, and the future of their bilateral relations depends on how India manages to balance and maintain its ties with Kabul.

Material World: Indigenous Suicides

Alan Johnstone

It is estimated that there are 250 million people living in 5000 to 6000 distinct groups in more than 70 countries. While it may be true that indigenous peoples share a close attachment to their land, commonly lack statehood, are subject to economic and political marginalisation, and are the objects of cultural and ethnic discrimination, they exhibit wide diversity in lifestyles, cultures, social organisation, histories, and political realities. The most important factor in the history of indigenous peoples has been the European economic expansion that began a little more than 500 hundred years ago and continues to the present day. Whenever they have come into contact with more powerful nations, indigenous peoples have been pushed aside and forced to give up their traditional lands. The legacy of violence against indigenous peoples is appalling. All over the world they have been terrorised, abused and exterminated. While the mass killings of indigenous peoples have been reduced in scale over the last 500 years, they have never stopped. Indigenous peoples are among the poorest of the poor. Their living conditions are abysmal, they receive less education, they work more and earn less, and their overall health is poorer than non-indigenous populations. Given the trauma that indigenous peoples have experienced, and to which they continue to be subjected, they suffer from high rates of psychological and behavioral problems.

Throughout the world indigenous peoples suffer from high rates of alcoholism and suicide. Relocation, epidemics, depopulation, and subjugation have put indigenous peoples everywhere at high risk of depression and anxiety. Every culture provides ways by which individuals may satisfy their needs for meaning, prestige, and status. Small-scale, hunter-gatherer societies provide several: excellence in hunting, storytelling, or as a healer. Whatever its size, complexity or environment, a central task of any culture is to provide its members with a sense of belonging and purpose. What happens, then, when a people's way of life is destroyed through disease, genocide, loss of territory, and repression of language and culture? It leads to self-destruction. James Anaya, former United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples said suicides among indigenous youth, across the globe, are common in situations where tribe members have seen the upheaval of their culture, which produces in the indigenous a lack of self-confidence and grounding about who they are. ‘They see taking their own lives as unfortunately and sadly an option,’ he said.

In the United States, suicide is the second leading cause of death for American Indian and Alaska Native men ages 15 to 34, and is two and a half times higher than the national average for that age group. 75 percent of Native American men and one third of Native American women can be classified as alcoholics or alcohol abusers. These numbers are amazing, and do not even accurately reflect the far-reaching effects of alcohol abuse, such as physical problems, mental illness, community violence, unemployment, and domestic abuse. Indians die from alcohol-related causes at a rate four times higher than the rest of United States citizens. In fact, four of the top ten causes of death among Indians are alcohol related.

Australian Aboriginal people commit suicide at a far younger age than non-Aboriginal Australians, with reports of prepubescent children, some as young as eight committing suicide. Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men ages 25 to 29 have a suicide rate four times higher than the general population in that same age group in Australia.

Among the indigenous peoples in Brazil, the suicide rate was six times higher than the national average in 2013. In the Guaraní tribe, Brazil’s largest, the rate is estimated at more than twice as high as the indigenous rate over all, the study said. In fact it may be even higher. The Guaraní have long made their home in the fertile land of Brazil’s southwest, where swaths of vast forests and savannas have been transformed into farms and ranches. In the process, the tribe has been dispossessed and uprooted from its traditional way of life. Many in the tribe face extreme discrimination and live in abject poverty close to the farmers and ranchers who occupy land that was once theirs. ‘Living in this non-place, they commit suicide,’ said Professor Alcantara, an anthropologist at the University of São Paulo who has studied adolescent suicides among the Guaraní. Nearly 100 years ago, the Guaraní, who today live primarily in Brazil and Paraguay, were forced off their ancestral land when the Brazilian government granted farmers and ranchers the legal title to that land. Tribe members were placed in crowded reservations, and often separated from family members. Distress, poverty and violence against tribal leaders have led to despair among Guaraní teenagers, who feel they don’t have a future. Professor Alcantara said that over the past 10 years tribe members have come to live between two cultures — the culture of nearby cities, where they are discriminated against, and the culture of their own tribe. Young tribe members, in particular, feel that they don’t belong either to the city or to the tribe, she said.

Professor Colin Tatz of the Australian National University suggests that when you are engaged in a struggle, a struggle to survive, suicide rates are very low. In apartheid South Africa there were few suicides among blacks. When people are involved in a struggle there is a reason to exist. Of course there are other contributing causes to those high suicide rates, such as the endless cycle of death and grief within Aboriginal communities that Aboriginal kids know what death is a lot earlier than any of us and this affects children profoundly, professor Tatz explained. When they have become normalised to deaths of ‘non-natural’ causes, suicide at moments of distress becomes a normal response. ‘Since the 1960s, suicide has now become ritualised, patterned and institutionalised in Aboriginal communities,’ said Tatz.

Dr Norm Sheehan, from Swinburne University of Technology sees suicide as the direct result of colonialism:

‘Colonialism deprives the colonised of positive self-images and for me, that’s a crucial part of the Aboriginal experience. …cultural disconnection was a major cause of suicide especially amongst Aboriginal youth,’ Sheehan explained. ‘So you look at Aboriginal kids who are separated from their culture, who are called Aboriginal, treated as Aboriginals but have no understanding of what being Aboriginal is — it’s an incredible conflict to carry and there is no real cultural education happening. The knowledge of Aboriginal culture is very significant for Aboriginal communities as they take away the doubt and they bring a positive cultural perspective to people who have been deprived of that cultural perspective. Identity and selfhood are important for emotional well-being. Australia has historically denied these basic human needs to Aboriginal people. Aboriginal people were deprived of a true understanding of self because their biological make-up was seen as an impediment something that had to be erased. That’s a crime against humanity. But Aboriginal people have had to live with that legacy and develop a concept of self in a zone like that, so understanding what culture is in that context is almost impossible.’

Psychiatrist Professor Martin Graham from the University of Queensland, believes ‘ There is a deep sadness among Aboriginal peoples and that that translates to a sense of anomie perhaps. A kind of deep sense of sadness and boredom and dispiritedness relating to loss of land, loss of culture, loss of languages in some cases and a sense that none of it can be changed. So despite all of the government money going in, despite all of assistance that has been offered, despite a whole range of programs like the Life Promotion Program, for instance, this sense of deep despair remains and Norm [Sheehan] would track it back and say it’s probably related to a sense of distress at the genocide that was perpetuated by white Australians from 1788. That kind of makes sense to me but it kind of doesn’t make sense to me because if you believe another group is trying to kill you off surely what you do is fight that and try to stay alive and live longer than the bastards?’

But, the ‘refusal to die’ solution is something many governments will become wary of. In ‘Dying to Please You: Indigenous Suicide in Contemporary Canada’ by Roland Chrisjohn and co-authored with Shaunessy McKay and Andrea Smith we read:

‘We have no doubt that the most positive ANTI-SUICIDE program for Indigenous peoples that has been seen in Canada in the last few years is the Idle No More Movement, Indians behaving like Indians, which at the same time was perhaps the scariest thing seen by the government.’ The authors explain, ‘Suicidology has chosen to reformulate the question: ‘Why are Indians killing themselves at such high rates?’ as ‘What’s wrong with Indians that makes them want to kill themselves at such high rates?’… Models of Indian suicide are individualistic, relying on supposed internal characteristics instead of looking at…social, economic, and political forces impinging on Aboriginal Peoples…. We invite suicidologists to stop peering inwardly, start looking at the world around us, and see what’s happening to us all.’

Historians and politicians should stop boasting about progress and civilisation of capitalism until they understand the brutality and falsehood it brought yet while we call for a new understanding, it’s more important to advocate social change to make real change.

An abridged version of the above was published in the June issue of the Socialist Standard

Sources

http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/02/14/stolen-lives-why-are-indigenous-australians-killing-themselves/

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/opinion/sunday/suicides-spread-through-a-brazilian-tribe.html?_r=0