Turkey’s Erdogan uses terror attack to escalate repression of opposition

Halil Celik

The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), a splinter from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), has claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack in central Istanbul Tuesday, which killed seven police officers and four civilians and wounded another 36.

"The action was carried out to counter all the savage attacks of the Turkish republic in Nusaybin and Sirnak and other places," a statement declared, referring to Turkish army operations in the southeast of the country.

TAK warned “foreign tourists who are in Turkey and who want to come to Turkey: Foreigners are not our target but Turkey is no longer a safe country for them. We have just started the war.”

The BBC reported that Tuesday's attack was a “sacrifice action”, implying that it was a suicide bombing. This contradicts earlier reports on what is the fourth bomb-attack in central Istanbul this year, which stated that a remote-controlled device was detonated as a riot-police bus was passing by.

According to the Anadolu Agency, following the explosion, there were gunshots in the area, which was closed off to the public and media by police. An Istanbul 10th Criminal Court has issued a broadcast ban in Turkey on the blast. The ban covers all news, interviews and critique in print, visual, internet media and social media.

Another car bombing on June 8 hit the police headquarters of the southeastern town of Midyat, Mardin. Two police officers were killed and many others wounded.

Visiting the wounded in a hospital after the attack in Istanbul, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan once more promised to “continue our fight against these terrorists to the end tirelessly.” His statement was reinforced by Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, who said, “No matter what, the state of the Republic of Turkey will never ever make concessions in the fight against terror.”

Chairperson of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and the leader of far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) also condemned the attack, while Selahattin Demirtaş, co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), slammed the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government for failing to put an end to bloodshed. He blamed the government for creating the conditions for such attacks and called on the leaders of four parties represented in the Turkish parliament to come together at a meeting to put an end to the violence.

The PKK claimed responsibility for a similar May 12 car-bomb attack in Istanbul that wounded seven people. It has waged an armed insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984 and frequently targets passing police and military vehicles with remote-controlled car bombs in its attacks in the largely Kurdish populated southeastern areas of Turkey.

Turkish military and police forces have mounted a sweeping operation against the PKK for more than a year, during which thousands of people have been killed and some 400,000 civilians have been forced to leave their homes, while Kurdish towns go to ruin.

The latest terror attack will only accelerate and facilitate the drive of the Turkish ruling elite towards militarism and dictatorship, while confusing the masses. Immediately after the attack, Erdogan approved a law lifting the immunity of 138 lawmakers, paving the way for criminal proceedings against them.

The main target is the pro-Kurdish HDP, the third-largest party with 59 MPs, which has been consistently accused by Erdogan and his government of aiding and abetting the PKK. But other parties have also been opened to repression in order to pave the way for Erdogan’s plan to amend Turkey’s constitution to create an executive presidency, giving himself dictatorial powers.

On the same day, the Erdogan government brought forward a bill to provide legal protection “to soldiers involved in security operations against groups listed as terrorist organizations.”

The proposal includes a range of measures increasing the authority of the soldiers participating in “anti-terror operations” while requiring the prime minister’s permission to investigate or put on trial the commanders and the chief of general staff.

The bill would allow the Turkish army to participate in operations in central provinces, with a proposal from the Interior Ministry and a decision from the cabinet. A similar judicial shield was previously granted to National Intelligence Organization personnel, granting the prime minister the authority to halt all investigations into its officials.

These moves came a day after the recent wave of reshuffles in the judiciary, in which more than 3,700 judges and prosecutors who had made decisions displeasing Erdogan were replaced by the government, headed by Erdogan’s henchman, President Binali Yildirim, who replaced then Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in May after Erdogan forced him to step down.

Primary responsibility for the terrorist attacks in Turkey rests with the Turkish government and its Western allies, which have been waging a regime-change operation against the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad to which end they have gathered, organized, financed and trained Sunni-Islamist militants in a sectarian war that has devastated Syria and Iraq. It is this that has created the basis for the growth of Islamic State (ISIS).

The war in Syria, together with the anti-terror statutes, are also being employed for repression against ethnic Kurds, aimed at preventing the establishment of an autonomous Syrian Kurdish entity on Turkey’s borders.

These twin aims often conflict, given that Washington and the European powers are keen to utilise the Kurdish Peshmerga military forces against Assad and are actively contemplating the partition of Syria. This has forced Erdogan into a series of pragmatic shifts, including utilising Islamist forces such as ISIS and the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra against the Kurds. These shifts have in turn brought the AKP regime into conflict with Washington and Berlin, while Ankara's warmongering and invasive Syrian policy has brought Turkey to the brink of war with Russia. Last year, amid the escalating war against the PKK, Turkish air forces deliberately downed a Russian fighter in Syria.

According to official figures, thousands of PKK militants and some 1,000 security forces as well as civilians have been killed, while whole Kurdish towns have been destroyed over the last six months. Erdogan has responded with threats and bluster directed against his increasingly dissatisfied Western allies, who he suspects with some justification of conspiring to remove him—in particular by seeking to cultivate Davutoglu.

Turkey is also gripped by growing economic difficulties, having witnessed a dramatic fall in investment, trade and tourism that is further provoking social unrest. The only answer of the Turkish ruling elite to its worsening social, economic and political troubles is to escalate its drive to militarism and dictatorship.

Hillary Clinton signed off on drone assassinations, emails reveal

Patrick Martin

In his online endorsement of Hillary Clinton to succeed him in the White House, President Obama declared that she was more qualified than any previous candidate for the presidency. A report Friday in the Wall Street Journal indicates that these “qualifications” include personal participation in approving drone-missile assassinations.

Clinton’s role in the chain of command leading to the incineration of thousands of people in Pakistan, most of them innocent civilians, is one of the secrets concealed in the long-running investigation of her use of a private email server while Secretary of State in the Obama administration.

The Wall Street Journal article reports that in 2011 and 2012, after a series of internal disputes between the CIA and the State Department over how drone missile strikes in Pakistan were complicating US diplomatic relations with the government in Islamabad, the State Department was given the right to veto missile strikes if their timing was considered especially provocative to the Pakistani government.

The US Ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, or another official at the embassy, would be informed of drone strikes in advance by the CIA, and would then consult with the State Department, going up the line all the way to Secretary of State Clinton, about whether to formally “concur” or “non-concur” in the action.

According to the Journal, such communications would normally pass through the internal State Department communications system, with Clinton given oral briefing and responding in the same way. However, there were some instances, usually when officials were on vacation or during holiday periods, or when the high-security system was too cumbersome and an immediate reply was needed, when an aide would send Clinton an email about an impending strike, for her response.

The Journal wrote: “The vaguely worded messages didn’t mention the ‘CIA,’ ‘drones’ or details about the militant targets, officials said.”

These emails are apparently among those now considered top-secret by the intelligence agencies, although they were not so classified by the State Department at the time. As the Journal noted, “The CIA drone campaign, though widely reported in Pakistan, is treated as secret by the U.S. government. Under strict U.S. classification rules, U.S. officials have been barred from discussing strikes publicly and even privately outside of secure communications systems.”

Significantly, the Journal, whose editorial page is ferociously hostile to Clinton and treats her use of a private email server as a major criminal offense, reported that “Several law-enforcement officials said they don’t expect any criminal charges to be filed as a result of the investigation, although a final review of the evidence will be made only after an expected FBI interview with Mrs. Clinton this summer.”

It has been clear for more than a year that the email controversy is being driven by sections of the military-intelligence apparatus allied to the Republican Party and seeking an even harder line in US foreign policy than that pursued by the Obama-Clinton administration. A series of leaks has kept the issue before the public to undermine Clinton’s political standing and, potentially, sabotage her campaign entirely.

What is remarkable about the latest revelation is that it does link Clinton directly to criminal activity, only not in the sense long alleged by her right-wing political opponents. The criminal activity is her personal participation in the campaign of drone-missile assassination, conducted by the CIA and Pentagon at the direction of President Obama, in complete violation of international law.

The Wall Street Journal account indicates that State Department opposition to specific drone missile strikes was related entirely to problems of timing—a mass incineration coming on the eve of sensitive US-Pakistani talks or the visit of a top US official to Islamabad—and did not represent any objection to the program itself.

The newspaper reported, “Only once or twice during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure at State did U.S. diplomats object to a planned CIA strike, according to congressional and law-enforcement officials familiar with the emails.”

As for the CIA’s concerns about secrecy—now given voice by Republican officials, from congressional representatives on up to Donald Trump—the Journal account concedes that the drone missile program was widely publicized in Pakistan.

“Despite being treated as top secret by the CIA, the drone program has long been in the public domain in Pakistan,” the newspaper noted. “Television stations there go live with reports of each strike, undermining U.S. efforts to foster goodwill and cooperation against militants through billions of dollars in American aid.”

The language is priceless. According to this leading US newspaper, it was not the missile strikes themselves, spreading death and destruction, but the television reports about them, that were causing a political backlash in Pakistan.

As for the insistence on secrecy, this had a clear political motive. The CIA and Pentagon wished to keep the missile assassination secret, not from the Pakistani population, who could see the toll in men, women and children incinerated and maimed, but from the American people, who were not to be allowed to know what the government of the United States was doing, allegedly in their name.

Widening unrest in Papua New Guinea following police shooting of student protesters

John Braddock

Angry protests have spread across Papua New Guinea (PNG) following the police shooting of unarmed student protesters in the capital Port Moresby on Wednesday. Up to 38 students were injured, including one with a gunshot wound to the head. Initial reports that four students were killed were denied by Prime Minister Peter O’Neill.

O’Neill has been the focus of sustained student protests and mass boycotts of classes for the past six weeks. He is accused of allegedly authorising payments for fraudulent legal bills amounting to $A30 million ($US22 million). Following the occupation of the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) by heavily-armed police on May 17, the first semester was suspended and students ordered to vacate the campus.

Behind the corruption scandal is an immense social crisis caused by the collapse of the economy. PNG, which is heavily reliant on mining exports, including oil and gas, is at the sharp end of the precipitous decline in global commodity prices, mirroring the intractable problems of other so-called “petrodollar” economies.

The Australian Financial Review reported in April that, having been the fastest growing economy in the Pacific region the previous year, PNG ended 2015 “in crisis management with cash shortages and budget cuts more severe than those in Greece’s austerity package.” The government sought an emergency World Bank loan of $US300 million to tackle a foreign exchange crisis, a humanitarian disaster from a severe drought and a ballooning budget deficit. The move followed a failure to raise $US1 billion on bond markets.

Government revenues have slumped by 21 percent, prompting sweeping attacks on public services and living standards. The national health budget alone has been slashed by almost 40 percent. The student uprising followed a series of strikes early this year by power workers, miners and public servants, amid broadening opposition to the economic turmoil.

The student leadership, however, has so far limited the protests to the issue of government corruption, while emphasising their “patriotic” intentions and orienting towards the opposition parliamentary parties—which are also mired in corruption and have no solution to the social crisis.

Wednesday’s police attack erupted as 1,000 students were leaving the UPNG’s Waigani campus to go to parliament. Student leaders intended to show support for a planned motion of no confidence in O’Neill’s People’s National Congress Party government by the parliamentary opposition.

Armed police intercepted several chartered buses before the students departed. When they decided to march and began heading towards the university’s outer gate, the police fired live rounds and tear gas directly into the protest.

Radio New Zealand reported scenes of “chaos,” with hundreds of students fleeing after the police opened fire. One student, Zacharia Yakap, said “since the police were even running into the campus looking for students, the students ran into nearby bushes where the police also followed through and shot them.” Another, Stacey Yalo, told ABC News, “It is coming to a point where they are actually targeting students as if they’re criminals. They’re shooting at them. They’re out here to shoot and kill.” Journalist Rose Amos reported being kicked and punched by two police officers after seeking cover.

Port Moresby Hospital CEO Grant Muddle said they dealt with eight gunshot casualties, including four seriously wounded. All were stabilised and admitted to the hospital. A dozen other protesters were treated for injuries, while 10 students were taken to a hospital in Gerehu. Muddle said that police had shot tear gas into a crowd outside the emergency department entrance, hitting patients with gas.

Later, as outrage spread, police were reported to be on “high alert” in Mount Hagen, where there was an attack on the police station, and in Lae where students rallied. Several road blocks were erected on the main road through the Highlands region. The UPNG administration obtained a court order banning further protest action, but student leaders have not ruled out more mass mobilisations and class boycotts.

O’Neill denied that the police targeted the students, and claimed that their only response was the use of tear-gas and “warning shots” in reply to rock-throwing by protesters. Student leader Peter Nahi said O’Neill’s claims were “just not true.”

O’Neill has announced there will be an inquiry, but it will only investigate the “agitators” who he insists are responsible and not why police fired on unarmed protesters. The inquiry will “determine the underlying reasons for continued student unrest promoted by individuals outside the student body,” O’Neill declared. The ombudsman has announced a separate “independent” inquiry.

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop called for “calm” and intoned that “the right to protest peacefully and lawfully be respected.” Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told ABC television on Wednesday that he had spoken with O’Neill who informed him that he was “leaving the handling of the matter to the police.” O’Neill flatly rejected an offer by Turnbull of Australian “help.” “Of course Malcolm has got every right to call me any time he wants to, but as I indicated to him, these are internal matters for Papua New Guinea,” O’Neill declared.

Turnbull’s phone call indicates the grave concerns within the Australian ruling elite about the deteriorating situation in its former colony. Australia is PNG’s dominant source of trade, investment and aid. Australian companies, particularly timber and mining, have commercial interests estimated at over $A18 billion. Canberra continues to rely on PNG to house its Manus Island refugee detention centre, despite a PNG Supreme Court ruling that it is illegal. Currently, 56 elite Australian Federal Police officers are on duty “mentoring” their local PNG counterparts.

China increasing has its own commercial interests in the country—highlighted by the massive Ramu Nickel mine. O’Neill reportedly flew out to Beijing immediately following the protests, a visit that will be closely watched in both Canberra and Washington.

PNG occupies a key geo-strategic position in the deepening confrontation with China, stemming from the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” and US-led preparations for war. Australia’s 2016 Defence White Paper emphasised that “the security, stability and cohesion of Papua New Guinea” was vital for a “secure, resilient Australia with secure northern approaches.”

Washington’s interests in PNG were bluntly spelled out to a Congressional committee in 2011 by then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton., She declared: “Let’s put aside the moral, humanitarian, do-good side of what we believe in, and let’s just talk, you know, straight realpolitik. We are in a competition with China ... Exxon Mobil is producing it [a $19 billion gas project in PNG]. China is in there every day in every way trying to figure out how it’s going to come in behind us, come in under us.”

The shootings will only intensify popular grievances against the government, and moves to oust O’Neill could well be underway. Canberra, backed by Washington, would be intimately involved in any such development. O’Neill himself came to office in 2011 through an illegal parliamentary manoeuvre backed by the Australian government to oust his predecessor Michael Somare, who was regarded as too close to Beijing.

On Thursday, the Australian identified three former prime ministers still in parliament—the influential former independence leader Michael Somare, Paias Wingti and Julius Chan—“who may each be prepared to step into the breach until the election,” which is due in 2017. Canberra is by no means indifferent as to who that might be.

French government threatens to crush strikes as Euro 2016 football cup starts

Alex Lantier

President François Hollande and Prime Minister Manuel Valls made unprecedented threats to crush ongoing strikes against the Socialist Party’s (PS) unpopular and regressive labor law in the run-up to yesterday’s opening of the Euro 2016 football cup, amid a massive security operation.

Some drivers of the B and D express regional network (RER) lines, which offer service to the Stade de France, were on strike yesterday. Only half of trains on these lines were circulating earlier in the day, leading to delays for fans headed to the stadium, as well as for local commuters. Initial press reports indicated, however, that train service was back closer to normal in time to transport fans to the opening France-Romania game.

Both Hollande and Valls alluded to the possibility of requisitioning striking train drivers—that is, forcibly compelling them to work through a state order under threat of heavy legal penalties—to ensure that train lines taking fans to the Stade de France continued to operate.

“As a matter of principle, I exclude no hypothesis,” said Valls. “What I want is that actions be taken so that the 80,000 spectators can go to the stadium under the best conditions of comfort and safety.”

While Hollande declared that “for the moment,” he did not plan on requisitioning strikers, he made clear that the PS government was prepared to do so. He said, “If the state is called upon to do its duty, it will take all necessary measures to greet and transport people, so that the games can take place with the best possible security.”

Despite Hollande’s attempts to present the threat of state intervention to forcibly crush strikes as a hypothetical future, the PS is in fact already mobilizing the security forces to attack strikers yet again, after its earlier attack on pickets blockading oil facilities at Fos, near Marseille.

Yesterday, after police intervened to crush pickets blockading two garbage truck garages in the Paris suburb of Ivry-sur-Seine, PS mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo boasted that garbage was again being picked up in the city. “Already [Thursday] evening, we were able to get about fifty more trucks to go out and do normal garbage pick-up and start gathering the backlog,” she said. “On [Friday] morning, we have thirty more trucks in Paris.”

In the face of escalating repression and threats from the PS government, strikers also face being isolated and publicly criticized by the union bureaucracies. Under conditions where a minority of rail workers, variously estimated at 10 to 30 percent, are still on strike, the unions are trying to wind down the strike, prevent an entry into struggle of broader layers of workers hostile to the PS, and block a political struggle of the working class to bring down the PS government.

With varying degrees of explicitness, they are promoting the perspective of obtaining minor modifications to the law, negotiated with the PS, to justify ending the strike.

Striking train drivers were the target of an explicit attack from Philippe Martinez, the general secretary of the Stalinist General Confederation of Labor (CGT), the largest union in the rail sector. “I am not sure that blocking fans from going to the games is the best image one could give of the CGT,” Martinez declared, adding that the CGT “wants the Euro cup to take place as a real popular festival in the stadiums and fan zones.”

Yesterday, Labor Minister Myriam El Khomri, who presented the law to the legislature and has given her name to the law, announced that she would invite Martinez for talks, in an attempt to stop blockades by strike pickets across the country. This came after Martinez confirmed on public television that he was in “secret” back-channel talks with Valls, and refused to state what was being discussed.

For its part, the Solidarity Unity Democracy (SUD) union, close to the petty-bourgeois New Anti-capitalist Party, issued a warning to the PS that it should not launch a crackdown on strikers, for fear of an uncontrolled reaction from broader layers of workers, as after the crackdown at Fos.

“In any case,” it wrote, “if the government out of desperation decided to go down this road, it would have to take responsibility for the consequences of strongly pressuring the agents who carry out security duties. Such violence would not fail to produce a reaction of the rail workers.”

Martinez’s comments point to the dead end of an attempt to struggle against the labor law and the PS government, which has behind it the support of the entire European Union, through the union bureaucracies and allied pseudo-left parties. These organizations, which called for the election of Hollande in 2012 and support the PS government, are not only incapable of but frankly hostile to mobilizing the overwhelming opposition that exists to the law in the working class.

The Euro cup should not serve as a pretext for winding down strike action against a PS attempt to turn workers’ living standards and working conditions back decades. It has to be taken as an imperative warning that the struggle has to be taken out of the hands of the trade union bureaucracies, mobilizing broader layers of the working class in France and internationally in a political struggle. This will inevitably bring the workers into conflict with the escalating security build-up launched by the French government, in line with governments across Europe.

Security operations for the Euro 2016 cup began yesterday under the terms of the state of emergency launched by the PS after the November 13 terror attacks in Paris. They involved a mobilization of 100,000 people in cities across France—including 42,000 police, over 30,000 paramilitary forces and gendarmes, 5,000 firemen and related civil security officials, 10,000 soldiers, and 13,000 private security guards.

Yesterday, a last-minute deployment of an extra 3,000 gendarmes was announced in Paris, where numerous convoys of CRS riot police vans streaked across the downtown. Vast security operations are being set up around game sites, with searches of cars arriving in parking lots, and fans passing through multiple security checks before arriving in stadiums.

The use of security forces mobilized in the context of this vast deployment to threaten to crush strikes points to the political issues involved in the PS’ decision to impose the state of emergency. The state of emergency is not primarily a measure against terrorism carried out by Islamist networks, which are in fact mostly well known to state forces due to their role as proxies used by the NATO powers, including France itself, in wars in Syria and Libya.

While these networks were allowed to spread and grow in the context of Middle East wars, the state of emergency has served to justify a vast police mobilization directed above all at opposition in the working class.

Bond yields fall as fears rise over global economic growth

Nick Beams

Amid rising concerns over global economic growth, global bond prices surged to a record high on Friday in a “flight to safety” as equity markets in Japan and Europe experienced their worst day since the turbulence at the start of the year.

Yields on German, UK and Japanese government bonds, which move in an inverse relationship to their price, all reached new depths, with the yield on the German 10-year Bund, regarded as a benchmark for the euro zone, going as low as 0.01 percent.

The head of sovereign capital markets at Citigroup, Philip Brown, said to see the yield on the Bund so low was “shocking.” “Equities are falling and fixed income is rallying in a flight to quality—there are real fears in markets about global growth.”

The surge in government bond prices came as the European Central Bank began buying corporate bonds in addition to its purchases of government debt of €80 billion a month. The extension of debt purchases, the result of an ECB decision last March to step up its quantitative easing program aimed at pumping trillions of euros into the financial system, has been accompanied by deepening criticism from Germany.

The bond-buying program, which started on Wednesday, had been expected to only involve high-grade bonds. While the ECB has not disclosed which corporate bonds are being purchased, market analysts quickly discerned those involved. Contrary to expectations some of them are of “speculative grade” status.

One of the most prominent was Telecom Italia Spa, whose bonds are listed as below investment grade status by two of the major credit rating agencies and only qualified because of the higher grade status afforded them by the Fitch rating agency.

The new phase of ECB action was greeted with a 12-page report by Deutsche Bank chief economist David Folkerts-Landau denouncing the central bank’s program. The criticisms have been voiced before but the latest report is the most strident yet.

Folkerts-Landau said the ECB had “lost the plot” and its desperate actions—bond purchasing programs and the establishment of negative interest rates—raised the risk of a “catastrophic” mistake.

“ECB policy is threatening the European project as a whole for the sake of short-term financial stability,” he wrote.

“The benefits from ever-looser policy are diminishing while the litany of distortions, perversions and disincentives grows by the day. Savers are punished and speculators rewarded. Bad companies survive while good companies are too scared to invest.”

The report compared the ECB’s mistakes to the German Reichsbank in the 1920s which printed money, leading to hyperinflation and economic collapse. “That was a hundred years ago but mistakes keep happening despite all the supposed improvement in central banking.”

Tracing out the evolution of the ECB policy, he said that after the failure of the lowest interest rates in 20 generations to boost investment, the central bank embarked on a massive program of purchasing euro zone member government debt. But the sellers of that debt did not use the money to invest but just placed their money at the central bank, after which the ECB went to the “next logical extreme” by imposing negative interest rates on deposits. He noted that almost half of euro zone sovereign debt was trading with a negative yield, meaning that a bond purchaser who held it to termination would make a loss on the investment.

Folkerts-Landau also bought into a political row that erupted in April. At that time, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said the impact of the negative interest rate regime on small savers was at least 50 percent responsible for the rise of the right-wing German populist party, AfD, which made considerable gains in recent regional elections.

“The longer policy prevents the necessary catharsis,” Folkerts-Landau wrote, “the more it contributes to the growth of populist or extremist policies.”

These comments point to the underlying reasons for the strident opposition within the German financial system to the ECB policies. A large portion of the German financial system consists of smaller regional banks whose business model, based on investment in secure government debt, is being hammered by negative rates. The operations of these regional banks form a part of the social base of the ruling party, the CDU.

The criticism of the ECB goes beyond Deutsche Bank. This week Commerzbank, which is partly government-owned and second only to Deutsche Bank, indicated it was looking at the possibility of hoarding its cash rather than placing its funds with the ECB where it is charged at a negative interest rate of minus 0.4 percent. As one commentator noted, such an action “would be the most flagrant bank protest against central bank policy yet seen.”

The policy agenda of Deutsche Bank and much of the German financial establishment was indicated in Folkerts-Landau’s indictment. Despite its “good intentions,” he wrote, the ECB had removed the incentive for euro zone government to revamp their policies through “structural reform.” Together with the reference to a “necessary catharsis,” this points to the growing clamour in financial circles for the initiation of further sweeping attacks on the social and employment conditions of the working class across Europe—a deepening of the measures which the French government is seeking to implement through its new labour laws.

The official rationale for the actions of the ECB and other central banks is that lower interest rates are needed to boost inflation and investment. But the euro zone remains in the grip of deflation and the ECB has lowered its own 2018 forecasts for growth in the region.

Opposition to present policies is not confined to criticism of the ECB. This week the Fitch rating agency reported that negative yielding government debt globally had now risen to more than $10 trillion following a 5 percent increase in bonds with a sub-zero yield. This means that the price of the underlying bond is rising, as yields and the price move in an inverse relationship.

Initially negative yields only affected the shortest-term bonds but the phenomenon is spreading and now encompasses seven-year German Bunds and 10-year Japanese government bonds. This is impacting heavily on insurance companies and pension funds which rely heavily on positive rates on government bonds to finance their operations.

Commenting on the $10 trillion mass of negative yielding sovereign debt, Bill Gross, the former head of the world’s largest bond trading firm, tweeted: “Global yields lowest in 500 years of recorded history … This is a supernova that will explode one day.” This refers to a situation in which interest rates begin to rise, leading to a fall in the price of bonds, thereby creating massive losses for investors who have purchased them at inflated prices.

Gross is by no means the only one warning of a possible financial catastrophe. Capital Group, which manages about $1.4 trillion in funds, has warned that negative interest rates are distorting financial markets and might lead to “potentially dangerous consequences.”

The head of the Los Angeles-based bond house DoubleLine, Jeffrey Gunlach, recently described negative interest rates as “the stupidest idea I have ever heard of” and warned that the “next major event” for financial markets could be when the ECB and the Bank of Japan cancel the experiment.

Larry Fink, the head of BlackRock, one of the world’s biggest hedge funds, recently wrote in a note to investors, that there had been plenty of discussion about how low interest rates had contributed to the inflation in asset prices. But, he continued, “not nearly enough attention has been paid to the toll these low rates—and now negative rates—are taking on the ability of investors to save and plan for the future.”

In other words, out of the horse’s mouth so to speak, comes the warning that the parasitic policies which have proved so beneficial to the hedge funds and other multi-billion dollar financial speculators are undermining the central foundations on which the financial system has rested for decades.

Obama green-lights escalation of Afghanistan war

Thomas Gaist

US President Barack Obama has green-lighted a significant escalation of the war being waged by the American military in Afghanistan, US media reported Thursday evening.

The expanded role, approved by President Obama barely a year and a half after he proclaimed an end to the war in Afghanistan, includes vaguely defined authority to carry out air strikes and engage in ground combat, whenever US commanders deem such operations necessary to “enable strategic effects on the battlefield.”

The new guidelines allow “greater opportunities for U.S. forces to accompany and enable Afghan conventional forces, both on the ground and in the air,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Friday.

“U.S. forces will more proactively support Afghan conventional forces,” Earnest said.

The decision came only a few days after a group of retired generals and senior diplomats, including former Afghanistan commanders David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal, issued an open letter to Obama urging him to delay a planned reduction in the deployment of US forces.

Ongoing discussions between US Commander in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and the White House are likely to yield further expansions of the Pentagon’s operations in Afghanistan.

In the coming days, the White House is expected to “expand the authority of U.S. commanders to strike the Taliban and do whatever else is necessary” to defend the Kabul government, according to administration insiders cited by the Associated Press.

“There is a broad desire across the Obama administration to give the military greater ability to help the Afghans fight and win the war,” the AP wrote.

Judging from the formulations employed by the corporate media, one can only assume that the new war guidelines include authority to strike at Taliban sanctuaries on the Pakistani side of the increasingly tense and militarized Afghanistan-Pakistan border. In its characterization of the policy changes, the New York Times noted: “Airstrikes will no longer have to be justified as necessary to defend American troops. United States commanders will now be allowed to use air power against the Taliban when they see fit.”

“American forces will also be permitted to accompany regular Afghan troops into combat against the Taliban,” the Times wrote.

Though portrayed in US media as the outcome of “months of debate,” the decision to authorize expanded combat operations was essentially a foregone conclusion. The Pentagon’s plans to revive and expand the US war in Afghanistan, now in its fifteenth year, have been an open secret for months.

Washington is determined to maintain a strategic presence in Afghanistan, including its massive Bagram military base and a network of facilities throughout the country, which straddles crucial commercial routes connecting South Asia and China with the resources of the Caspian Sea Basin and the Persian Gulf.

After a decade and a half of continuous US warfare and occupation, waged at the cost of more than 2,000 US lives, at least $700 billion, and unfathomable death and destruction throughout Afghanistan, the Kabul regime remains so fragile that it can only be defended through a comprehensive renewal of the US war.

“Afghan forces need air and ground support from our American ally on an indefinite basis. Afghanistan doesn’t support any reduction of US troops, and their broadened presence is necessary in combating terrorism,” Afghan government spokesman Shah Hussain said Friday.

With the US-backed Afghan government tottering in the face of Taliban offensives in the southern provinces of Helmand, Kandahar, and Uruzgan and the northern province of Kunduz, the White House and Pentagon evidently concluded that no agreement produced by the Quad talks—between Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the US—could satisfy the requirements of US strategy in Afghanistan and Central Asia.

In a deliberate ploy to scuttle the Quad negotiations, the Obama administration authorized the assassination of Taliban leader Mullah Aktar Mansour, carried out on May 21 in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province. Mansour was on the verge of agreeing to join the US and Chinese-led talks, Pakistani officials said Friday.

The arming of US officers with general authority to conduct air and ground raids against a Taliban insurgency that is rooted in Pakistan’s tribal areas, coming just weeks after the provocative killing of Mansour, carries ominous implications.

The strike on Mansour, launched just three days after US representatives vowed to seek a negotiated solution via the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) at the QCG’s fifth meeting on May 18, has already strained US-Pakistan relations to the breaking point.

Mansour’s targeting has “vitiated US-Pakistan bilateral relations,” Pakistani delegates warned Friday, during talks with General Nicholson and US Special Representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Olson.

Just prior to Friday’s talks, Pakistani foreign affairs official Sartaj Aziz warned that “the time has come to review our relations with the US,” saying that the killing of Mansour “damaged mutual trust” between Washington and Islamabad.

In declaring open season on the Taliban, American imperialism is playing with fire in a Central and South Asia geopolitical tinderbox that has already been driven to the brink of war by Washington’s anti-China “Pivot to Asia.”

A US offensive against the Taliban will inevitably draw American forces into combat along the imperialist-drawn Durand line, where the Afghan and Pakistani governments are engaged in a worsening confrontation.

In early May, Pakistani efforts to develop new fortifications provoked a standoff with Afghan forces, including the complete closure of the frontier for several days. Islamabad has lodged protests in recent days over alleged Afghan intelligence agents caught attempting the crossing while disguised as refugees. On Friday, at least 40 people were killed by a bomb attack in the Afghan border province of Nangarhar.

The return of German militarism to Eastern Europe

Johannes Stern

Germany’s Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) is playing an increasingly prominent role in the NATO deployment in Eastern Europe, which is openly preparing for war against Russia.

As part of the current Anakonda 2016 manoeuvres, the largest NATO military exercise since the end of the Cold War, German combat engineers, along with British soldiers, built a 300-plus metre amphibious bridge over the Vistula on Thursday. A short time later, heavily armoured NATO tanks rolled over the bridge on their way east, towards the Russian border.

For days, the Bundeswehr web site has carried propaganda articles and videos documenting the move of German troops into Eastern Europe. They have titles such as, “Exercise Anakonda 2016—Minden Pioneers on the way to the Vistula”; “On the final straights to the NATO summit”; “Dragoon Ride II—Dragoons ride into the Baltic”; “By convoy into the Baltic—Advance to the Saber Strike exercise” and “Howitzers into the Baltic—The transfer begins”.

The reports provide an overview of the growing German contingent in the east. As part of the “Persistent Presence” manoeuvre, on May 30, “the 3rd Battery of Artillery Battalion 295, under the command of Captain P., left for exercises and training in Lithuania”. In the current naval exercise “BALTOPS” in the Baltic Sea, which includes a total of 45 vessels, 60 aircraft and 4,000 troops from 14 countries, the German Navy is involved with nine units, including the combat support ship “Berlin”, the frigate “Sachsen” and the P-3C “Orion”, a maritime patrol aircraft designed for hunting submarines.

The “march diary” of a certain Captain Bumüller of the 12th armoured brigade in Amberg provides an insight into the provocative “Dragoon Ride II”, described as a “massive land march via Poland” to Estonia, where the Bundeswehr is participating with 16 vehicles. According to media reports, the Bundeswehr is dispatching a total of 5,000 soldiers to Eastern Europe this year alone.

The historical and political significance of the German deployment cannot be exaggerated. June 22 marks the 75th anniversary of Operation Barbarossa, the attack by Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union that claimed the lives of 40 million Soviet citizens and was conducted throughout Eastern Europe as a war of extermination. Every square metre over which German tanks and soldiers are once again trampling recalls dark memories of the past crimes of German imperialism. The Nazis initially used occupied Poland as a staging area for the invasion of the Soviet Union. Later, they constructed their extermination camps there.

Following the defeat of Nazi Germany, and after the full scope of the Holocaust became known, Germany was forced to observe military restraint for a long time. This began to change with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and German reunification twenty-five years ago. In the last two years, the German ruling class has completely dropped its flowery post-war pacifist phrases. It has returned to an aggressive foreign policy with ominous parallels to that of 1941.

According to a report in Die Welt, a new Defence White Paper, which provides for the deployment of the Bundeswehr domestically and for other missions abroad, no longer describes Russia as a “partner”, but rather as a “rival”. Of particular concern to the German government is the increasing use “of hybrid instruments for the targeted blurring of the boundary between war and peace”, and the “subversive undermining of other states”.

This narrative has nothing to do with reality. Moscow’s militaristic behaviour is not progressive and increases the danger of war. But in Eastern Europe, it is not Russia that is the aggressor and that “undermines states” and “blurs the boundary between war and peace”, but the Western powers. In Ukraine, Washington and Berlin organized a coup against the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in early 2014, working closely with fascist forces. Since then, Germany has used the predominantly defensive reaction of Russia in order to systematically beef up its military and go on the offensive.

The decisions of the last few weeks to increase defence spending by 130 billion euros and the army by at least 7,000 soldiers are just the beginning. The stated goal of the German government is to gradually increase military spending to two percent of gross domestic product, as required by NATO.

News weekly Der Spiegel anticipated that Germany’s defence budget would have to “increase by five and a half billion euros year on year, by the 2024 target date”. The magazine concluded, “In the end, Germany would be the largest military power on the continent by far. Not all European neighbours will like that”.

At present, the German offensive is supported by the United States. Only last weekend, the New York Times published an ode to the return of German militarism. It wrote: “It has taken decades since the horrors of World War II, but Berlin’s modern-day allies and, it seems, German leaders themselves are finally growing more comfortable with the notion that Germany’s role as the European Union’s de facto leader requires a military dimension”. All this comes “perhaps none too soon”, according to the Times. “The United States and others—including many of Germany’s own defense experts—want Germany to do even more for Continental security and to broaden deployments overseas”.

Although Berlin is presently stepping up its defence spending within the framework of NATO, and is deploying its troops to the East as part of the US-led offensive against Russia, there can be no doubt that the future struggle for control of Eurasia, as well as the Middle East and Africa, will lead to violent tensions and conflicts between the imperialist powers, as happened before in the First and Second World War.

A current strategy paper of the German Council on Foreign Relations by Joseph Braml, published in business daily Handelsblatt on May 17, accuses the US of following the “motto of the Roman Empire ( divide et impera )”, dividing the world into blocs “in order to better control them”. The editorial culminates with the demand: “Europe, especially the leading European power Germany, should in its own interest, prepare for the United States’ ever clearer concept of the enemy”.

At the end of May, writing in Die Zeit under the headline “What unites Obama and Trump”, Theo Sommer railed against American forces in Europe. “The main purpose of their continued presence” is “hardly the defence of Europe”, he complained. “Only the smallest part of their deployment serves the deterrence of Russia”, with the rest aimed at “the protection or assertion of American interests elsewhere in the world”.

Sommer added: “Without their upstream positions in Europe, without the ports, air bases, hospitals and command centres in Italy, Spain, Germany and Turkey, the Americans would be as good as operationally incapable in the Middle East, in the Mediterranean, in the Arctic”. The same applies to Africa, he added, and one could also “ask why America’s Africa Command was based in Stuttgart”.

Sommer, the long-time editor of the liberal weekly Die Zeit, and Braml, formerly a legislative adviser in the US House of Representatives, have traditionally held a more transatlantic orientation. Their editorials are an indication of the ferocious tensions that are developing below the surface again between the post-war allies, as the imperialist redivision of the world enters a new and dangerous phase.

2016 NFP TMT Tailor-Made Training Programme for Institutions in Developing Countries

Application Deadline: 1st November 2016

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Eligible NFP Countries (see list below)

To be taken at (country): The country of the requesting organisation, in a neighbouring country, or in a combination of these locations. If the added value is explicitly explained and motivated, training may take place in the Netherlands

Brief description: The Tailor-Made Training programme (TMT), funded within the Netherlands Fellowship Programmes (NFP) is offering mid-career staff of NFP Countries the opportunity to receive training for and in their organisations.

About the Award: The Tailor-Made Training programme (TMT) is a specific type of study programme funded within the Netherlands Fellowship Programmes (NFP). A tailor-made training course is designed to meet specific needs of a requesting organisation. The Tailor-made Training programme is specifically meant to enhance the overall functioning of an organisation by training a selected group of its staff members. An organisation facing certain constraints in achieving its goals can by means of a tailor-made training course (partly) eliminate these constraints.

The programme is open to a broad range of organisations in NFP countries, from education institutions, research institutes and ministries to NGOs and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The participants of the training course are meant to be employees of the requesting organisation. Members of an association, or employees of member organisations of a federation, for example, do not qualify

The Netherlands Fellowship Programmes (NFP), funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs under the budget for development cooperation, are designed to promote capacity building within organizations in 51 (previously 62) countries by providing training and education to mid-career staff.

Offered Since: Not stated

Type: Entrepreneurship Training and Funding

Eligibility: There is a set of criteria for requesting organisations, the Dutch provider and the training itself. Below is an overview of the eligibility criteria. Criteria for the requesting organisations:

• is based in one of the countries on the NFP country list valid at the time of application;
• is not:
  • a large industrial, commercial, international or multinational organisation, which can be assumed to have sufficient resources of its own to finance staff training;
  • a bilateral donor organisation or a multilateral donor organisation;
  • an international NGO;
  • benefiting from a NICHE project.
• the field in which it operates is relevant to the sustainable development of the country the organisation is located;
• is requesting training for its own staff.

Criteria for the Dutch provider

• is registered with the Netherlands Chamber of Commerce and has its headquarters or a branch within the Netherlands;
• is directly responsible for the preparation and management of the tailor-made training course, and not acting as an intermediary;
• is experienced and able to show that the organisation has the capacity needed to manage an activity on the scale of the tailor-made training course for which the proposal is being submitted;
• is financially sound to ensure continuity throughout the tailor-made training course.

Criteria for the tailor-made training course Set-up of the training course:

• It is a group training;
• the programme does not support activities such as seminar attendances and conference visits; The requesting organisation is an organisation which submits a proposal for a tailor-made training course. A TMT will be carried out by a provider from The Netherlands. This Dutch organisation is acting on its own or is leading a consortium to provide a particular service for a particular price. The consortium partners may be registered in another country than the Netherlands.
• the programme does not support the purchase of hardware;
• the subject is relevant to the needs identified within the requesting organisation.

Selection Criteria: Embassies may opt for an ‘open call’, so that all interested organisations in the country can apply. Or, they may opt for a ‘closed call’ and invite a number of organisations in the country to participate. In this case, non-invited organisations cannot submit a joint proposal. EP-Nuffic recommends all interested organisations to contact the relevant embassy before starting to prepare a joint proposal.

Afterwards, EP-Nuffic assesses and takes into account the recommendations of the embassy.

Eligible proposals will be based on the following priorities:

• Country classification (category 1 or 2)
• Sub-SaharaAfrica
• Preference for the food security sector
• Strongest recommendation by embassy/consulate

Number of Trainees: 

• minimum number of participants is six persons;
• maximum number of participants is 20 persons;

Value of Training: Training to the tune of € 75.000 (EP-Nuffic) + € 18.750 (co-funding) = € 93.750. Co-funding may be by the requesting organisation, the Dutch training provider or a third party, or a combination of two or three of these.

Duration of Training: 2-3 weeks

Eligible African Countries: Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ghana, Benin, Guinea-Bissau, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Burundi, Tanzania, Kenya, Cape Verde, Uganda, Mali, Zambia, DR Congo, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Egypt, Namibia

Other Developing Countries outside Africa? Afghanistan, Eritrea, Nicaragua, Albania, Armenia, Georgia, Pakistan, Autonomous Palestinian Territories, Peru, Bangladesh, Guatemala, Philippines, Bhutan, Honduras, Bolivia, India, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Iran, Suriname, Jordan, Cambodia, Thailand, Kosovo, Colombia, Macedonia, Vietnam, Costa Rica, Yemen, Cuba, Moldova, Mongolia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Nepal

How to Apply: Proposals have to be submitted to the embassy or consulate of the Netherlands for your country. To ensure timely processing of proposals, embassies may deviate from the EP-Nuffic deadline and apply their own, earlier deadline. Therefore, organisations need to consult the website of the embassy or consulate for the applicable application procedures, criteria and deadlines. Read more here

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Netherlands Fellowship Programmes (NFP)

Important Notes: Embassies and consulates use earlier deadlines than 1 November, as they have to process the joint proposals before forwarding them to EP-Nuffic.

Taking Liberty: Killing Americans to Protect Israel

Jim Kavanagh

On June 8, 1967, the Israeli Air Force attacked an American reconnaissance ship, USS Liberty, killing 34 American sailors and wounding 174. Over a period of an hour-and-a-half after Israeli pilots identified the ship as American, while the sailors battled to save the ship and their lives, the Israelis attacked the ship from the air and torpedo boats, hitting it with armor-piercing rounds, at least one bomb and one torpedo, and strafing the lifeboats. The Israelis wanted no survivors to embarrass them. Israeli jets had also targeted the antenna, to keep the ship from calling for help. But, as James Bamford recounts, a couple of radiomen:

patched together enough equipment and broken antennae to get a distress call off to the Sixth Fleet, despite intense jamming by the Israelis. “Any station, this is Rockstar,” [radioman] Halman shouted, using the Liberty’s voice call sign. “We are under attack by unidentified jet aircraft and require immediate assistance.”

“Great, wonderful, she’s burning, she’s burning,” said an Israeli pilot.

But, hey, the Sixth Fleet had the message. We all know what happened next. Seen it in every movie. The cavalry was on the way. You can hear the order to American pilots: “Splash the bastards.”

Er, no. Wrong movie. (Try Exodus.) What actually happened was that the Secretary of Defense (Robert McNamara) and the President of the United States (Lyndon Johnson) twice recalled the American planes that were launched from nearby carriers to defend the ship.

That’s right, twice. When the Sixth Fleet carrier division commander resisted the Secretary of Defense—because, you know, RUFKM!—and demanded confirmation of the recall order, he was shocked to hear President Johnson come on the line personally, to say that he “didn’t care if the ship sunk, he would not embarrass his allies.”

[And let’s not pretend the plural is relevant here: there is no other “ally” that would have been granted the right to sink an American ship]

Never heard of this incident? Think about that for a second. No, five seconds. Give it some thought. Did you hear about in once upon a time somewhere, but it was treated as insignificant, and never heard of again? I bet you’ve heard endlessly, and know all about, John McCain’s POW experience at the hands of the Vietnamese?  (His father presided over the cover-up of the Liberty incident, by the way.) I wonder how this will be treated in Brian Cranston’s LBJ biopic. All The Way, LBJ went with Israel.

Why no Hollywood movie, ever, about this great story of military heroism? Isn’t it a natural, with the survivors appearing in cameos and all? What’s remembered and reported, and what’s forgotten and dismissed, and why, and under whose orders?

When you hear the great patriotic paeans to America from our President and presidential candidates, ask what they have to say about what happened forty-nine years ago today, whether they think it was OK for the President to accept—to order, in a real sense—208 American causalities so as not to embarrass Israel. And ask yourself why there is never peep one about this from any of our flag-pin-wearing American leaders or our free  media. Where, exactly, do they rank American lives on their scale of whom to protect?

What else is there that we might not be being told, today, about American lives jeopardized for Israel? Think the Iraq war, the destruction of the Iraqi state, and the Libyan state, and the ongoing attempt to destroy the Syrian state are “senseless”? Can our American school-and-media-built thought radar detect nobody who wanted, and benefitted from, the destruction of three states in the region that were militarily strong, socially-advanced, secular, and defiantly supportive of Palestine resistance? The Middle East is burning. Great, wonderful.

Remembering the Liberty is not just an exercise to boil your blood about what happened forty-nine years ago (and reading the links below will do that). Remembering the Liberty is necessary to understand what’s happening to us now, and what will happen in the future, if we obey the orders of President Trump or Clinton—either of whom will go all the way with Israel, and to protect it, will sink our ship.

There is no more urgent task—none—for progressive-minded Americans than to end American involvement in Israeli colonialism, which might start by ending Israeli impunity for the murder of Americans.