Markets too dependent on central banks, BIS warns

Nick Beams

Two crucial meetings of central bank governing authorities take place on Wednesday, both of which could have major consequences for the international financial system, in the short and longer term.

The US Federal Reserve will decide on its interest rate policy, while the Bank of Japan will discuss a review of its quantitative easing program, under which it annually buys 80 trillion yen ($US785 billion) worth of bonds and other financial assets.

The US Fed is generally expected to again keep its base interest rate on hold, after increasing it by 0.25 percentage points last December. The main focus will be on the statement of its open market committee and remarks by chairwoman Janet Yellen as to the future direction of policy.

Financial markets are less sure about what may emerge from the meeting of the Bank of Japan (BoJ) policy board. It will consider a comprehensive review of its monetary policy in the face of its evident failure to meet its stated objective of lifting inflation toward 2 percent. According to data from financial markets, inflation is expected to remain close to zero for the indefinite future.

BoJ governor Haruhiko Kuroda has insisted that his policies will lift Japanese inflation toward 2 percent on a sustainable basis by the end of his term in 2018. He will push to maintain the ultra-easy monetary policy, and will likely attribute its failure to uncontrollable external factors, such as the fall in oil prices and slowing Chinese growth. But the policy board is divided on the issue, and any sign of tightening could have an impact on international bond and other financial markets.

If markets believe that monetary policy could be tightened, even if only slightly, this could send bond yields rising and bond prices falling (the two move in opposite directions), leading to losses for speculators who have banked on the continuation of ever-cheaper money. In the past week or so, bond yields have started to rise on the basis that the policies of the major central banks are running out of steam.

The two meetings are being held in the wake of the quarterly review issued by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basle, sometimes referred to as the central bankers’ bank. It repeated earlier warnings that markets are too dependent on the actions of the major central banks.

The BIS said central banks had “reasserted their sway over financial markets in recent months, after two quarters punctuated by bouts of sharp volatility.” While markets had proven “resilient” to a number of political developments, in particular the Brexit vote, “questions lingered as to whether the configuration of asset prices accurately reflected the underlying risks.”

In other words, the rise in both equity and bond markets could be creating the risk of the sharp downturn and market turbulence.

In presenting the review, Claudio Borio, the head of the BIS monetary and economic department, said it was “becoming increasingly evident that central banks have been overburdened for far too long.”

“A more balanced policy mix is essential to bring the global economy into a more robust, balanced and sustainable expansion,” Borio said. The BIS, one of the few financial institutions to warn of the build-up of risks before the 2008 crisis, has long expressed the view that excessive dependence on monetary policy has only boosted financial asset prices, while doing little or nothing to increase activity in the real economy.

Borio said the continuing decline of bond yields and the flattening of the yield curve, as longer-term bond yields move toward those at the shorter end, was a “tell-tale sign of low growth.”

“Adding to the sense of gloom,” the BIS official continued, “was talk of the prospect that the global economy would be stuck in low gear into the distant future. And similarly discouraging were discussions of the need for permanently lower interest rates to counter secular weakness.”

Borio said there had been a “distinctly mixed feel” to the recent rise of share markets, with “more push than pull, more frustration than joy. This explains the nagging question of whether market prices fully reflect the risks ahead. Doubts about valuations seem to have taken hold in recent days. Only time will tell.”

In its review, the BIS pointed to the apparent “dissonance” between record low bond yields and sharply higher stock prices with subdued volatility, which “cast a pall over such valuations.” Before the financial crisis, low bond yields pointed to lower growth or a recession, while high stock prices pointed to economic expansion.

“Banks’ depressed equity prices and budding signs of tension in banking funding markets added another sobering note,” the BIS review stated.

The BIS also pointed to rising concerns over the stability of the Chinese financial system. It said that the “credit to GDP gap” in China had reached 30.1, the highest level to date. This is well above levels reached before the Asian financial crisis that broke in 1997, and above levels reached in the US before the sub-prime mortgage bubble led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008.

Commenting on the growth of Chinese debt, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the international business editor of the UK-based Daily Telegraph, noted: “Outstanding loans have reached $28 trillion, as much as the commercial systems of the US and Japan combined. The scale is enough to threaten a worldwide shock if China ever loses control.”

The problems facing Chinese authorities are being compounded by low global growth and the apparent slowing of the US economy.

The Financial Times reported yesterday that US imports from China dropped “sharply” in July, “in the latest sign that that the engine of growth for the world’s developing economies is sputtering.”

According to figures from the US Federal Reserve, US merchandise imports from China have been contracting in value terms since March and in volume terms since April.

Elissa Braunstein, an economist at the UN Conference on Trade and Development, described the result as “extraordinary,” given that reports of US growth and a higher dollar should boost the American demand for imports.

“It is going to be much harder in future [for emerging market exporters]. If exports are going to deliver the growth they promised, you really need external demand,” she said.

NATO sends 4,000 combat troops to Poland and Baltic states

Johannes Stern

NATO will deploy an additional 4,000 soldiers in Poland and the Baltic states in May 2017, with some units sent to Eastern Europe in advance. This was confirmed by a NATO spokesman after the US-led military alliance held consultations in Split, Croatia at the weekend.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, about 1,000 American soldiers from the 2nd Cavalry Regiment are to be relocated to Poland in April from their German base in Vilseck. The German Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) will take command of a 1000-strong battalion in Lithuania. The UK and Canada will provide about 1,000 soldiers each in Estonia and Latvia.

The sending of additional NATO troops to Eastern Europe is part of preparations for war against Moscow laid out in early July at the NATO summit in Warsaw. This includes the establishment of a NATO missile defence system in Romania and Poland and the formation of a 5,000-strong rapid reaction force (Very High Readiness Joint Task Force—VJTF), agreed at the NATO summit in 2014.

As the imperialist powers escalate their intervention in the Middle East, and the US-led coalition bombs Syrian government troops, these measures increase the risk of a direct clash with nuclear-armed Russia. Leading NATO generals have left no doubt that the planned deployments are not a routine exercise, but part of a wider NATO military offensive against Russia.

The Wall Street Journal quoted the Czech General Petr Pavel, who said: “This force is to serve as a deterrent and if necessary as a fighting force.” The rules of engagement differ from those of other units in the region, since they are not “exclusively about a training presence”, he said.

Currently, the VJTF is preparing for possible war operations against Russia. Since the beginning of September, 4,000 NATO troops from 14 nations are training for an “emergency situation” with around 500 vehicles on the military training area at Senne, near Paderborn, as part of the large-scale manoeuvre titled “Venerable Gauntlet.”

In a report titled “NATO manoeuvres in the Senne dust”, a local journalist from the Lippe Zeitung describes the exercise: “High-tech drones circle in the sky, snipers spy out the situation from the thickets, and in the middle of the Senne, a tank guards the area. The sun beats down on the parched grass, when suddenly hell breaks out on the Senne. Artillery fire breaks the silence, explosions hurl sand and pieces of grass several hundred feet into the air, and on the ground, tank tracks roll through the Senne dust.”

The units, operating under British command, had “half a million rounds of ammunition available.” From January 2017, “the NATO Rapid Reaction Force” is to “defend the territory of NATO members from any enemies’ military.”

One can only assess the full seriousness of the situation by reviewing the circumstances in which the NATO manoeuvres are taking place. At a visit to the Baltic at the end of August, American Vice President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Angela Merkel had promised to support the Baltic states in the event of conflict with Russia.

At a joint press conference on August 24 in Tallinn, with Estonian premier Taavi Rõivas, Merkel said, “We are pleased that we can offer mutual support in relation to Air Policing according to Article 5 of the NATO Treaty. We have jointly supported the decisions in Warsaw. Germany will be the framework nation in Lithuania. … I think that means we are showing that in the NATO alliance we stand up for each other.”

Just a day before, following a meeting in the Latvian capital Riga with the presidents of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Biden had assured them, “We are committed absolutely, thoroughly, 100 percent to our NATO obligations, including and especially Article 5.”

The words of Merkel and Biden have far-reaching consequences. Article 5 of the NATO Treaty stipulates, “The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all,” and that “if such an armed attack occurs, each of them … will assist the Party or Parties … including the use of armed force.”

To put this plainly: If one of the extreme anti-Russian governments in the Baltics provokes a border conflict with Russia, Washington, Berlin and the other NATO powers are committed to go to war against Moscow.

When Biden vowed in Latvia to do this on the United States’ “sacred honour”, the WSWS asked: “What would a war between the United States and Russia look like? What is the likelihood that such a conflict would entail the use of nuclear arms, given the fact that the US maintains its right to the ‘first strike’ use of nuclear weapons, and Russia has stated it will respond to incursions into its territory by all means at its disposal, including the use of its nuclear arsenal? How many millions of people in Russia, the US, Europe and beyond will die in such a conflict?”

Although Western politicians and the military know well that their aggressive actions against the world’s second-largest nuclear power could trigger a nuclear World War III, they are advancing their war plans behind the backs of the population.

According to an official report by the Bundeswehr, 25 European army chiefs met last week with representatives of the United States and NATO at the invitation of the German Inspector of the Army, Lieutenant General Jörg Vollmer. They discussed “the decisions of the NATO summit in Warsaw and their impact on the various land forces”. Other topics discussed included “the presence of NATO in the Baltics and in Poland and contingency planning for the southern flank of the Alliance.”

What is meant by “contingency planning” can be read in the studies and papers produced by Western think tanks and governments. A study by the Institute for National Strategic Studies states that it believes “defence strategists need to refocus on a possible confrontation and a conflict with Moscow. ... This applies to conventional, nuclear and missile forces of NATO.”

The “Civil Defense Guideline”, which German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière presented at the end of August in Berlin, calls on the population to prepare for attacks using biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.

What is the significance of a red-red-green coalition in Berlin?

Christoph Vandreier

Following the Berlin state election on Sunday, Mayor Michael Müller (SPD) announced coalition talks would start with the Christian Democrats (CDU), Left Party, Greens and Free Democrats (FDP) on Wednesday. Even though SPD-CDU-Green or SPD-CDU-FDP coalitions are mathematically possible, the most likely outcome is a coalition between the SPD, Left Party and Greens.

Politicians at the state and federal levels of all three parties have spoken out positively about such a coalition. “The Left Party in Berlin contributed to the budget being balanced,” SPD Bundestag parliamentary group chairman Thomas Oppermann told Deutschlandfunk. “I think it could be a model for Berlin.”

The election result on Sunday showed the growing opposition and anger of a majority of the population to the entire political establishment. The so-called people’s parties, the SPD and CDU, which had governed Berlin in a coalition, were punished at the polls with both achieving their worst election results in the entire post-war era. In this situation, the Left Party and Greens stand ready to continue the hated programme of austerity and the buildup of the state apparatus at home and abroad within the framework of a red-red-green coalition.

Green Party lead candidate Ramona Pop spoke out in favour of an SPD-Green coalition on election night, claiming that it was the coalition that a majority of Berliners wanted. The Left Party was even louder in its calls for a red-red-green coalition. The Berliner Zeitung commented, “Klaus Lederer can barely be held back. The Left Party leader would like most of all to “take the rebellious momentum” in the capital city “to change something on the federal level from Berlin.”

A red-red-green coalition would not be a coalition of the “majority” or of the “rebellious.” It would be a coalition of bankrupts, who are in favour of sweeping attacks on democratic and social rights, and are widely hated among the population. Since the reunification of Germany, the three parties have always held a majority in the Berlin state House of Representatives, but they have never won so few votes as they did on Sunday.

Compared to the 2011 election, the three parties together lost over 5 percent of the vote. Although the Left Party gained 3.9 percent, it fell well short of the results of its predecessors, the PDS in 2001 and PDS-WASG in 2006. In 2011, the SPD and Greens could have formed a coalition without the Left Party, but the SPD opted for a coalition with the CDU.

In the 10 years prior to this, the SPD and Left Party formed the so-called red-red Senate in Berlin and carried out sweeping social austerity. After they rescued the Berliner Bankgesellschaft state bank with billions in guarantees, the SPD and Left Party imposed more brutal cuts than any state government in the history of the German Federal Republic.

They exited the Municipal Employers’ association so as to cut wages by some 10 percent in the public sector. They acted similarly at the state-owned Berlin transport companies. They privatised over 100,000 apartments, drove up rent prices and cut university and school budgets.

With these right-wing policies, the SPD and Left Party paved the way for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). The right-wing extremist party won a disproportionate number of votes among workers in the east of the city. These are areas where the Left Party has dominated politics and administration since reunification, and once again lost a significant number of votes. In the Left Party stronghold of Marzahn-Hellersdorf, the AfD even finished as the largest party.

According to a poll by Infratest Dimap, only 26 percent of AfD voters voted for the party because they were convinced by its programme. By contrast, 69 percent gave their reason as disappointment with the other parties. Despite their overall increase in votes, the Left Party lost 12,000 votes to the AfD.

The AfD was also strengthened by the fact that its right-wing programme has been adopted and made respectable by the three nominally “left” parties. While the SPD bears direct responsibility for the inhumane living conditions of refugees in Berlin and has deported thousands, the Left Party and Greens have repeatedly criticised these policies from the right.

Sahra Wagenknecht, who appeared at Left Party election campaign events in Berlin, denounced refugees earlier this year, declaring, “Whoever abuses the right to hospitality has forfeited the right to hospitality.” She went on to speak of “significant problems” which were bound up with the integration of refugees and contained “potential dangers.” Similar statements came from Green representatives like Boris Palmer.

On the issue of the buildup of the state apparatus, the positions of the SPD, Left Party and Greens are virtually indistinguishable from those of the AfD. All three parties agree that the police force has to be strengthened and expanded. In its election programme, the Left Party demanded “sound training and equipping” of the security forces and the hiring of “more police officers.”

Nothing could better sum up the character of a red-red-green coalition than this unanimous demand for a strong state. Such a coalition would continue with austerity policies and brutally suppress all opposition. But red-red-green would not simply be a repeat of the red-red Senate. It would be a model for a coalition at the federal level between the SPD, Left Party and Greens. The Left Party is signalling to the ruling class that under conditions of a deep capitalist crisis, it is the force most capable of defending German imperialism’s interests at home and abroad.

In the week leading up to the election, Left Party parliamentary group chairman Dietmar Bartsch attacked the grand coalition in the Bundestag. He called for a “state capable of action” and accused the federal government of having “weakened, humiliated and neglected the police.” He directed a warning to SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel, adding, “Europe’s crisis was never greater than today. And it’s not only Brexit. Look at what the situation is in the member countries! It is, I believe, the greatest crisis that Europe ever had. That’s why we need a political shift here in Germany.” And, “Yes, the Left Party wants to take responsibility for this political change in government. Just so that is clear for everyone!”

This can only be understood as a warning: In foreign policy, a red-red-green coalition would mean not less, but more war and an even more aggressive German foreign policy. Already during the election campaign, Gregor Gysi, the former Left Party parliamentary group chairman and the public face of the party, told the conservative Die Welt that he had “never demanded that Germany has to leave NATO.” “An agreement could be reached” with foreign minister Steinmeier and the SPD on foreign policy issues like the war in Syria, he added. Prior to this, in the summer interview on public broadcaster ARD, Wagenknecht reassured listeners that Germany “will of course not exit NATO on the day we enter government.”

The coalition being sought with the parties of Hartz IV social attacks and unabashed German militarism underscores the reactionary character of the pseudo-left groups that function either within the Left Party or in its environs. Marx 21, Socialist Alternative (SAV) and the Revolutionary International Organisation (RIO) conducted an election campaign for the Left Party not in spite of, but because of its right-wing politics. They are therefore already fully responsible for the anti-working class policies of a red-red-green coalition!

The moves towards a red-red-green coalition underscore the significance of the election campaign of the Partei für Soziale Gleichheit (PSG, Socialist Equality Party). The PSG participated in the election in order to build an international movement against capitalism and war. However, from the outset, the PSG emphasised that this required a struggle against the right-wing politics of the SPD, Greens and Left Party, and all of their pseudo-left hangers-on.

The Blind Men of Hindostan

Vijay Shankar

In coming to grips with threats and challenges that confront a nation, the lines that demarcate the traditional; by which is meant those that demand a military response, from non-traditional is blurred. The confusion renders discernment problematic as very often one morphs to the other leaving little trace of what first causes were. It also places leadership in a quandary of comprehension as to what nature the threat is and what combination of tools from the State’s armoury of national power would be appropriate to confront it. The dilemma is analogous to a story in primary English text of my days titled “The Six Blind Men of Hindostan.” The tale is told of six blind men who came upon an elephant: each felt and sensed different parts of the pachyderm; the first wrapping his arms around a leg swore it was as the trunk of a tree; the second ran his fingers along the torso exclaimed, no it is like a wall; while the third holding the tail vouched it was more like a rope; the fourth stroking its head and feeling the swish of the elephants ear deposed, forsooth it’s like a fan; while the fifth and sixth grasped the tusk and the trunk and vowed it must be akin to a spear or related to a snake. But, as we know, the truth in its entirety is composed of all six vital elements that made the elephant. The same may be said of the various threats that speakers thus far addressed; each one’s subjective narrative is true, but it is limited by the inability to account for the totality of truth, that is the elephant-of-state is an integrated whole of all those elements and the State can be destabilised by trauma to any one of them.

Contemporary history of the Anglo sphere has had disproportionate influence on structuring world order and defining economic and societal values. Driven by the philosophic motivation of free will and a belief of liberal laws delivering what is best for mankind it does not make an attempt to transform the dangerous inequities amongst nations, the tyranny of the carbon economies, the domination of military power or indeed the ‘emperor of challenges’, climate change. The last is intertwined with all other threats, traditional or non-traditional, whether in the political, economic, demographic or military dimension. And therefore it is to climate change that I shall focus your attention.

Amongst Mahatma Gandhi’s many pronouncements on the ills of mercantilism and industrial capitalism the one that was prophetic in its sweep and profundity were his lines written in December 1928 for Young India: “God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism in the manner of the West. If an entire nation of 300 million [sic] took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts.” Gandhi intuitively came to the conclusion that industrialisation was designed for inequity and an anarchic carbon economy was untenable as we quickly snuff-out life on the planet.

There is today no doubt that the climate predicament has been accelerated by the manner in which the carbon economy has evolved. Its impious upshots have the world’s people’s finger prints on it for its impact has broadened and intensified while its sway on politics and society comes at a time when politically the global perspective is more diffused and society blinkered in its view of development. The November 1970 Bhola cyclone that hit the entire coast of erstwhile East Pakistan is one of the deadliest natural disasters of living memory; the official death toll was estimated at 500,000. The storm surge partially inundated the Sundarban island of Bhola, displacing millions unleashing mass migrations the effects of which were political, military as well as demographic. The consequences are apparent even today. One of the chief causes of the disaster was global warming, melting ice-caps and rising sea levels; these are manifest in the increased periodicity of calamitous climate events and the scale of disasters.

The on-going civil war in Syria has left 250,000 people dead and millions either displaced within the country's borders or have sought refuge abroad. And, while the proximate causes were largely political, new perspectives argue that climate change helped to trigger Syria's descent into violence. The recent Syrian drought is the worst in 500 years. The dry spell, which has lasted about 15 years, has caused farms to fail and livestock to perish. The continuous collapse of harvests forced as many as 1.5 million citizens to migrate to the urban centres of Homs and Damascus. The drought had displaced Syrians long before the conflict began, and what is alarming is that we completely missed it. Climate change, displacement and war are the trinity that have changed the face of sub-Saharan Africa, Libya and Iraq. It has set into motion violent demographic dynamics as the planet has not seen before.

There is another foundational problem that is linked to the system that we live and labour in. The Peace of Westphalia (1648) established a new system of political order in central Europe, based upon the concepts of coexisting sovereignty; balance of power and non-interference. As European influence spread through imperial conquests, these principles, especially the concept of sovereign states, became central to prevailing world order. The scheme of nation states is structured to channelise political energies towards nationality, sovereignty and the urge for domination rather than concentrating on new ideas to relieve and reconstitute the relationship between States such that uncertainty and turmoil that currently obtains is replaced by the larger reality of common destiny. However, the awkward irony is that these principles that came into acceptance among and within what was essentially a cohesive entity, are at odds with the globalised world that we live in. Perhaps the time has come when the Westphalian model itself requires a critical review for the ‘emperor-of-challenges’ is provoking man to think of an alternate way to exist.

In this belligerent milieu of nation against nation and nations feeling the heat of relations within and without; illusions of world order stand in denial of reality. Some of the symptoms that have emerged are an increased and vicious securing of spheres of power and economic influence; competition between autocracy, liberalism and collectivism; an older religious struggle between radical Islam and secular cultures; and the inability to regulate the anarchic flow of technologies and information. As these clashes are played out the first casualty is the still born hope of an enlightened order that comes together to face its common destiny. Sovereign democratic processes have feeble impact on the challenges ahead be it the carbon economy, climate events or in restructuring the system we live in. Communications which can serve as the vehicle that catalysis the spread of new ideas of the larger reality has failed us, finding satiation in egocentric intrusiveness. The reason for the inability to mobilise collective action are amply clear, for it is the spiritual nature of the quest for development to the exclusion of all else that blinkers political philosophy to things ‘as they are rather than what they could be.’

So why has the political domain remained unaffected by the many crises that antagonise man? Is it myopia or a self-destruct lemming-like impulse? If it is the latter then our destiny is sealed if the former then there is at least the hope of the corrective lens of statesmanship that may generate a future more benevolent, less bigoted, more tolerant and clear eyed about man’s common destiny and a philosophical passage from the individual to kinship.

The WADA Hack: Transparency And The Uneven Playing Field

Binoy Kampmark 

The disclosure of confidential material has its own sometimes fraught ethics.  When it comes to medical information, assumptions abound that confidentiality comes first.  Not, however, in international sports, a notorious field where the corrupt rub shoulders with the desperate; where perspectives of the supposedly level playing field meet unevenness and disadvantage.  In such a case, disclosures can be both political and financial weapons.

The hack by the cyber espionage group Fancy Bears of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) data storage system has, to that end, produced a range of reactions.  Transparency supporters have given it a good wink and in some cases, even a dismissive shrug.  Germany’s discus thrower and 2012 Olympic Champion Robert Harting was content to tweet that, “We don’t hide anything. Go transparency!”

Australian Jock Bobridge, who had been prescribed prednisolone and glucocorticoids over a five-year period, explained that such prescriptions for rheumatoid arthritis were permissible.  “Regarding the WADA hacks and ‘leaks’ of my personal information I’d like to make it clear I have no problem with this info becoming public.”

That transparency drum has also been beaten by three-time Tour de France winner, Chris Froome, who insisted that nothing leaked on the issue of taking therapeutic use exemptions was particularly shattering.  “I’ve openly discussed my TUEs (therapeutic use exemptions) with the media and have no issues with the leak which confirms my statements.”

Other individuals such as tennis figure Petra Kvitova revealed that she received therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) for hydrocortisone, and initially the banned anabolic agent DHEA, subsequently revoked by WADA.

The reaction from a spokesperson for two time Grand Slam winner Kvitova and the Czech tennis federation was all anger at the disclosure, arguing that her asthma condition had been “no secret”.  “To say that Petra Kvitova suffers from asthma,” shot back Karel Tejkal with highbrow propriety, “is the same revelation as saying she’s won Wimbledon.”

The picture emerging from the disclosure is that of top athletes who have been battling range of illnesses and lingering ailments within various rules of demarcation set out by WADA and general sports officialdom.

Venus Williams, who netted silver in the mixed doubles at the Rio Olympics, could not hide the fact that she was suffering from the energy-draining disease Sjogren’s Syndrome, a condition that necessitated her seeking exemptions. Those exemptions, she explained, had been established by the Tennis-Anti-Doping Program.

Sports officialdom had to race out explanations and clarifications in the wake of the disclosure.  After all, athletes had tested positive for an assortment of goodies that may well have fallen foul of the establishment but for the fact that they were permitted by medical certificate.  Delle Donne was certainly far from conflicted by this, expressing a round of thanks for the hackers “for making the world aware that I legally take a prescription for a condition I’ve been diagnosed with, which WADA granted me an exception for it.”

The often righteous Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) similarly noted that various exemptions were bound to be legitimate.  “Despite the efforts of the hackers to twist these assumptions to prove foul play, in obtaining a TUE, the athletes have operated entirely within the rules of clean, fair sport.”  Various conditions were legitimately treated by TUEs.

Gymnast Simone Biles, to reassure those watching the unfolding saga, insisted that she did “believe in clean sport, have always followed the rules, and will continue to do so as fair play is critical to sport”.

Biles, having tested positive for methylphenidate after four tests conducted on Aug 11, 14, 15 and 16, had been issued certificates from the International Gymnastic Federation for the daily use of the drug in quantities of 15 mg, and therapeutic use over the year period from September 2012.

It is precisely such behaviour that did not impress Russian president, Vladimir Putin.  “It seems,” urged Russia’s suspicious leader, “as if healthy athletes are taking drugs legally that are prohibited for others, and people who are clearly suffering from serious illnesses, major disabilities, are suspected of taking some kind of substances and banned from the Paralympic Games.”

The hack has not merely revealed the way transparency can, inadvertently, create an economy of openness in a world that tends to lack it. It also shows the complexity, and unevenness of the drugs regime, where sports figures suffering from illness were still permitted various approved medications to effectively manage impairment and debilitation.

This stands in total contrast to the supposedly “war-like ideology” adopted by anti-doping agencies, which has struck some scholars as being akin to “the public discourse sustaining international efforts against illicit drugs.”  False assumptions about fairness in sports and the “level playing field” have been made in such a belligerent quest.

A crude form of social Darwinism has evidently been abandoned in certain, specific instances, where the doctor dispenses the certificate of medical mercy to enable a top performer to continue.  Much has been left to WADA to explain in that regard.  Such exemptions, in other words, may well be legal, but do they square with the evangelical world of the anti-dope crusader?

‘Burkini’ And French Imperialist Mind

Andre Vltchek

In Europe, oppression is never really called by its true ugly name. It is constantly concealed by lofty slogans such as culture, even tolerance. Repression, discrimination and harassment are administered in order for the ‘entire society to be free’.

Or so at least the official narrative goes.

In France, recent and ugly row overso-called burkinis, a swimsuit used by many Muslim women all over the world, has demonstrated how little tolerance there really is in today’s Europe for other cultures and for different ways of life.

Recently, France’s highest administrative court has ruled that “burkini bans” being enforced on the country’s beaches are illegal and a violation of fundamental liberties. Still, more than 90 percent of French people are supporting the ban, which is thoroughly illogical and philosophically as well as ethically indefensible.

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What is suddenly so shocking about a woman wearing a wetsuit on some French beach? And let’s face it: burkinis are nothing else but a wetsuit, which is commonly used on countless beaches of California, Australia, and Europe, in fact all over the world, by surfers and other water sport enthusiasts.

Just compare these images and these. Can you really tell much of a difference?

According to Wikipedia, a wetsuit is:

“…A garment, usually made of foamed neoprene, which is worn by surfers, divers, windsurfers, canoeists, and others engaged in water sports, providing thermal insulation, abrasion resistance and buoyancy.”

If courts manage to resurrect the ban (and actually some municipalities have already declared that they will uphold it no matter what), are the French police going to interrogate women on public beaches, while trying to determine whether they are wearing these plastic garments simply because they are planning to go surfing, or because of their religious beliefs? Would the first reason be allowed, while the other one forbidden?

Are we heading towards an era when people will be forced to confess to the authorities, why they are choosing to cover their bellies and shoulders? And is this going to re-define the meaning of ‘freedom’?

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Who would be free to cover and who would not? Would the French state be permitted to decide what is the legitimate menace from which a woman should be allowed to protect herself from?

For instance, would the cold be ok? Imagine Paris, in January or February;100 degrees Celsius below zero… Most of the women you pass on the streets (Christian, Muslim and atheist) are “fully covered”, aren’t they? What can you see of them? Nothing, almost nothing! Their entire bodies are covered; their heads are covered, even their feet and hands are covered (unlike the hands and feet of women wearing burkinis). You travel to Grenoble in the winter, and the chances are that women will even be covering their faces with scarves. You know why, right? Because they are cold! Is this reasonOK, or should the French authorities demand that they expose their bellybuttons or shoulders or legs, in order to prove how “European”, how “French” they are?

Fine, so covering yourself up from the cold is most likely admissible; it is not ‘un-European’.

But what about the heat; is it OK to protect yourself from sun? In almost the entire Southeast Asia, but also in some parts of Latin America and the Sub-Continent, women want to be as white as possible. Unlike Western women, they hate suntan. I used to live in Vietnam and in Indonesia, as well as in many parts of Latin America, so I know… In the summer in Hanoi, you spot those (mainly secular, I emphasize it here!) elegant ladies on designer scooters, covered from head to toe: their feet are covered; they wear gloves, long dresses (áodài) or pants, most likely a helmet and underneath one more layer of headwear, plus sun glasses. Sometimes their mouth and nose is ‘protected’ by some fabric as well. While French women are fighting against the cold during the cold winters, hundreds of millions of women all over the world are covering themselves up because they are fighting against the sun. Could that be tolerated in France? Or is it unacceptable; just more evidenceof how badly foreigners are ‘integrating’?

But back to the beach… Would wetsuits or burkinis or whatever they are called by,be out-rightly banned, or only when a woman decides to go into the water? And as we know, when we go diving, we all, men and women, have to ‘cover ourselves up’ fully. So even if a woman would not be allowed to enter the water unless she exposes herself, could she still be covered if she would intend to go diving, surfing, or kayaking? Would there be some‘benevolent set of exceptions’?

And one more question: ‘If all women were to be required to expose themselves (by the new French law), then how much has to be actually shown?’ Could 60% of their skin be covered, or would only 40% be tolerated? Is there going to be some new and precise measuring device supplied to the police, calculating whether the law hasactually been broken?

And what about the punishment? Should women be fined? Should they be arrested, or even deported? Should they be forced to show their legs? Should police simply kick them out of the beaches? I really want to know.

Does it all sound absurd? But of course! But sadly, it is also real. To ban or not to ban burkini is one of the most passionately debated topics in Europe today!

*

That Europe is a ‘beacon of freedom’ is something that only Europeans (and far from all of them) truly believe. While anti-immigrant bigots are protesting against those relatively few migrants arriving at the EU doors every year, Europe annually literally regurgitates millions of its citizens, those who cannot stand living in what they see as a sad, oppressive and deteriorating continent. Legal and illegal European migrants are heading for North and South America, for Southeast Asia, China, even Sub-Continent and parts of Africa. Annually, they are entering millions of arranged marriages in order to secure local residency permits; others are crisscrossing Asia during their ‘visa runs’.

Many of the European migrants living abroad are very far from being ‘culturally sensitive’.Those who have plenty of money are buying off entire coastal areas of Asia and Africa. Entire nations like Thailand, Cambodia or Kenya are getting culturally ruined.

It is hardly ever debated in Europe:what is actually more damaging to local cultures – thoseMuslim women covering their bodies and hair on the streets and the beaches of Europe, or those literally millions of European potbellied, drunk,and half naked men in their sixties and seventies, promenading themselves publicly with their local teen female or male ‘acquisitions’ all over the Asian and African cities, villages and beaches?

And what about the European women, with their exposed breasts, wearing hardly detectable bikinis on the beaches of the once conservative Muslim communities of Indonesian Lombok or Southern Thailand?

I hate to write about this topic fleetingly, in such a short essay. I have lived, for many years, in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. The destruction of local cultures and entire communities by European migrants amounts toan extremely disturbing and painful topic, worthy of in-depth analyses. I mainly address these issues in my novels.

But this absurd anti-burkini outburst in France suddenly forced me to react, as it is thoroughly one-sided and hypocritical.

*

My ability to cope with today’s Europe is quickly evaporating. I still go there, perhaps 4 times a year, to meet my translators and publishers, to show my films, to give a speech here and there, or to see my mother who married a German around a quarter of century ago. I plan to stay for a week, but mostly I escape after 2-3 days.

The continent rubs me up the wrong way. I feel terribly un-free there. I’mforced to eat lunches and dinners at particular designated hours (as if Europe does not have tens of millions of doctors, pilots, writers, sex workers, firefighters, train operators and others who are on totally different schedules). In September I cannot buy a windbreaker that I forgot to pack, as only clothes for cold weather are now available in all department stores. I stopped renting cars in Europe, as even passing the speed limits by 5km/h kept getting me endless (electronically processed) fines. Unlike in China or in Cuba, I am not allowed to film or photograph at European train stations or at some ‘sensitive areas’. I was even stopped and chased away when I filmed the ice skating ring in front of the Municipality building in Paris! Surveillance cameras keep watching me from almost every corner, and the mainstream media feels ridiculously censored and submissive to the regime.A few months ago, when I travelled from Lebanon to Germany on Air France via Paris, both my suitcases were cut open by a saw, and then delivered to the final destination in plastic bags. “For security reasons they were ‘checked’ at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, as your bags were travelling from the Middle East,” I was told.

Of course I have a choice to stay for a while or to leave. And mostly, I leave. I frankly dislike 21stCentury Europe, so why should I stay for longer than is necessary.

But many foreigners do not have this luxury. Their countries were raped, plundered and destabilized by the West, by NATO, by the US and by Europe. They are trying to survive, somehow. Surprisingly, only very few come to Europe! Very, very few compared to the millions of Europeans who are annually shutting the door behind their backs and leaving – leaving permanently, for distant shores.

Other ‘foreigners’ were born in Europe, but were never accepted. Were they to be born in Brazil or modern day South Africa, no one would even blink. They are Muslims, so what? They want to cover themselves on the public beaches? Well, it is hot and unusual, but illegal! How could it be illegal?

Europe is not at peace with itself. It robbed all over the world, it became rich because of colonialist and neo-colonialist plunder, but there is no joy behind its walls. Whenever I speak to Greeks, French, Germans, Italians, Czechs or Danes, I clearly feel it. Most Europeans do realize that their continent is in decline.

When one does not like his or her home, why not to re-think its concept, and rebuild it? Why not bring in totally new, even foreign ideas? Why stick to what makes it so oppressive?

But again, European ‘logic’ is quite different! The more dissatisfied people become, the more conservative and inward looking they get. Foreigners irritate them, or they even horrify and infuriate them. Unless they totally ‘adopt’ (abandon their culture), the majority of Europeans want them out.

In reality, Muslim women wearing burkinis is not about burkinis at all. At the beginning of this essay, we already illustrated how absurd the anti-burkini laws and regulations really are.

It is about something else. It is about the globally disliked culture of colonialist oppression and exceptionalism, flexing its muscles once again, at home and abroad. It is actually much more terrible than it looks. The movement to ban burkinis has its roots in a horrible past, when entire nations and cultures were annihilated by European barbaric expansionism.

So read between the lines:

“You can wear any wet suit, but not a burkini. It is exactly the same thing, but the wetsuit is our own invention (and therefore it is right), while the ‘burkini’ was designed by and for ‘the others’ (therefore it is clearly wrong). Remember, only our definitions are allowed on this Planet.

We are not religious or cultural fundamentalists (because only ‘the others’ can be), but we will protect our right and freedom to tell the world what can be believed, thought or even worn. Amen!”

This is the iron, unapologetic logic of the imperialism.

Therefore, poor burkinis should be defended! Let’s all buy them, even us, men. After all, when you look at those old black and white photos depicting European swimming pools and beaches, many dudes were wearing almost identical all-covering stuff, and so were the women. Just see it here!

War danger surges as India blames Pakistan for attack on Kashmir base

V. Gnana

Seventeen Indian soldiers were killed and at least 20 critically injured Sunday when fighters assaulted an Indian military base at Uri, near the Line of Control, the de facto border between India and Pakistan in the disputed Kashmir region

The fighting lasted from approximately 5:30 to 8:30 AM and all four of the assailants were reportedly killed in the engagement. Indian authorities responded by “heightening” the already massive security presence in the Kashmir Valley.

Coming amid escalating tensions in South Asia fueled by the US drive to make India a frontline state in its war drive against China, as well as escalating social and political unrest in Kashmir itself, yesterday’s attack heightens the danger of a major war breaking out in Asia.

Currently, no organization has claimed responsibility for the Uri attack. However, India immediately accused Pakistan of being responsible and vowed that the deaths of its soldiers will be avenged.

Tensions between India and Pakistan have been on the boil for weeks. New Delhi has responded to the mass unrest in Jammu and Kashmir, its only Muslim-majority state, and the strengthening of Pakistan’s already close ties with China by launching a diplomatic offensive targeting Pakistan for its brutal repression of an ethno-nationalist insurgency in Balochistan. Implicit in this campaign, which Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to take to the floor of the United Nations General Assembly this week, is that India is ready to support the dismemberment of Pakistan.

The Indian Army has accused the deceased Uri base assailants of belonging to the pro-Pakistan Kashmiri Islamist group Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM). They claimed the JeM fighters had crossed over from the part of the disputed Kashmir region that is controlled by Pakistan and launched their attack on the military base from the side furthest from the Line of Control (LoC) and presumably least well-guarded.

“Initial reports indicate that the slain terrorists belong to Jaish-e-Muhammad tanzeem,” said the Indian Army’s Director General of Military Operations, Lt.-General Ranbir Singh. “Four AK-47 rifles and four under barrel grenade launchers, along with a large number of war-like stores, were recovered from them.”

Indian government officials, active and retired military leaders, and the press have responded to the Uri attack with bellicose threats.

“I assure the nation that those behind this despicable attack will not go unpunished,” vowed Prime Minster Modi, while his Home Minister Rajnath Singh, tweeted, “Pakistan is a terrorist state and should be identified and isolated as such.”

Numerous statements from establishment figures stressed that a turning point has been reached.

While Modi and his top security officials conferred on their next steps, the General-Secretary of the ruling Hindu chauvinist BJP, Ram Madhav, said the “Days of so-called strategic restraint are over. If terrorism is the instrument of the weak and coward, restraint in the face of repeated terror attacks betrays inefficiency and incompetence.”

His comments were echoed by Shekar Gupta, the former editor of the Indian Express: “If Pakistan thinks [the] Uri attack will have the usual Indian non-response, it’s delusional. This India has moved on from old strategic restraint.”

Powerful elements within India’s military-security establishment, as well as the Hindu supremacist groups that constitute a key base of support for the BJP, have long advocated that India answer a Pakistan-based attack with a cross-border strike. Islamabad has signaled it will consider any such action as tantamount to an act of war, raising the prospect that Indian “retaliation” could quickly lead to all-out war between the rival nuclear-armed states.

Amid the chorus of bellicose statements, Lt.-General Ranbir Singh said the military was prepared to give “a befitting reply” to “any evil designs of the adversary.”

Though covert ties have long existed between Islamist anti-Indian Kashmiri groups, including the JeM, and factions of Pakistani intelligence, Pakistan rejected Indian charges that it was involved. “India immediately puts blame on Pakistan without doing any investigation. We reject this,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Nafees Zakaria.

A Pakistan army statement said that the allegations were “unfounded and premature,” reiterating Islamabad’s stance that Pakistan no longer allows anti-Indian Kashmiri insurgents to infiltrate India-controlled Kashmir from its side of the LoC.

Washington issued a statement condemning the Uri attack and reaffirming its strategic partnership with India, while avoiding comment on New Delhi’s charge that the Pakistan was responsible. US State Department spokesman John Kirby said that Washington “strongly” condemned the attack. “We extend our condolences to the victims and their families.” “The United States,” added Kirby, “is committed to our strong partnership with the Indian government to combat terrorism.”

The Uri attack underscores the reactionary role both of the various pro-Pakistani Islamist militias that exploit mass social anger in Kashmir with the Indian government, and the bellicose response of the Indian government. The resulting conflicts deepen communal-sectarian and regional tensions in the Indian subcontinent, and raise the danger of a war between nuclear-armed Pakistan and India.

Such a war could have cataclysmic consequences. Because of the growing military-strategic disparity between India and Pakistan, Islamabad has deployed tactical nuclear weapons. This has prompted New Delhi to signal that if Pakistan employs “battlefield” nuclear weapons it will consider the nuclear threshold to have been breached, i.e. India is prepared to reply with thermonuclear weapons.

India and Pakistan first clashed over Kashmir in 1947-48 in the immediate aftermath of the communal Partition of the former British Indian Empire into a Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India. Kashmir was also the central issue in the second of the three declared wars India and Pakistan fought and in their 1999 undeclared Kargil war.

In recent years the region has been dubbed a “nuclear flashpoint” and even the “world’s most dangerous nuclear flashpoint” because of the toxic and explosive character of the rivalry between the Indian and Pakistan bourgeoisies, who have managed to equip themselves with nuclear weapons even as they fail to provide the vast majority of the people of South Asia with the basic necessities of life.

Adding to the explosiveness of the Kashmir conflict is the region’s growing importance to China. Beijing is building a pipeline and transportation corridor from western China through Pakistan-controlled Kashmir to the Arabian Sea port of Gwadar, Balochistan. For Beijing the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has great strategic significance as it would allow it to partially circumvent US plans to impose an economic blockade against it in the event of a war or war crisis by seizing Indian Ocean and South China Sea chokepoints.

Mass unrest in Kashmir

The assault on the base in Uri came as Indian security forces violently repress mass protests against the Indian administration of Kashmir.

Indian-administered Kashmir has been in the grip of deadly unrest for more than two months. There have been almost daily protests and clashes with security forces, in the region’s worst violence since 2010. More than 85 people have been killed in almost daily anti-Indian protests and rolling curfews prompted by the July 8 killing by Indian security forces of Burhan Wani, a leader of the Islamist, pro-Pakistan Hizbul Mujahideen militia.

On Saturday, thousands defied the curfew to attend the funeral of a schoolboy, eleven-year-old Nasir Shafi, whose body was found riddled with pellet wounds. Police reportedly fired tear gas at mourners.

The Central Reserve Police Force, an Indian paramilitary unit, told the Jammu and Kashmir High Court that it had fired 1.3 million pellets in 32 days.

“It is the first time I have seen so many pellet-injured people. Pellets were also used during the 2010 unrest, but this time they [government forces] are using them on a large scale,” a Kashmiri doctor, who did not want to be named, told Al Jazeera. “We get, almost every day, people injured with pellets and many of the patients lose their eyesight.”

Another doctor at a hospital in Indian-administered Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar, said 756 people have been hit in the eyes by pellets over the past 72 days.

In this fraught context, the attack on the base at Uri heightens military tensions in the region and internationally. As Washington aggressively confronts the Chinese regime in the South and East China Seas, it is also building up India as a counterweight against China in the Indian Ocean region.

When Modi met US President Barack Obama in June they issued a joint statement promising to increase military cooperation across the Indian Ocean and Asian Pacific regions and in all “domains…land, maritime, air, space and cyber space.”

Last month, India signed an agreement giving the US military routine access to its ports and military bases for resupply, repairs and rest. Washington, for its part, has recognized India as a “Major Defense Partner,” meaning it can now buy the advanced US weaponry made available to the Pentagon’s closest allies.

Pakistan, in increasingly shrill language, has warned that the ever-burgeoning Indo-US alliance has overturned the balance of power in South Asia, thereby fueling an arms and nuclear weapons race and encouraging New Delhi to act more aggressively.

But Washington has blithely ignored these concerns, while demanding that Pakistan do more to support the US occupation of Afghanistan and encouraging India, behind the scenes, to make the CPEC a major issue in its relations with Beijing on the grounds that the corridor project violates Indian sovereignty. New Delhi, like Islamabad, claims that all of Kashmir rightfully belongs to it.

Confronted by the burgeoning Indo-US strategic alliance, Pakistan and China are drawing ever closer.

The India-Pakistan conflict has thus become enmeshed with the US-China confrontation, adding to each a massive and highly explosive new charge.

Berlin election results show growing anger towards establishment parties

Johannes Stern

The results from the election for the Berlin state House of Representatives show the growing anger and alienation of large sections of the population from official politics. All of the parties are hardly distinguishable from each other and represent the same right-wing, anti-social programme. All of them have taken part in different governments in the capital city over the past 25 years and created a social catastrophe. They received payback for this at the polls on Sunday.

The so-called people’s parties of Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Social Democratic Party (SPD), who formed the previous Berlin state government and are also in a coalition at the federal level, suffered heavy losses of more than 6 percentage points each. With 21.6 percent, the SPD achieved one of its worst results since German reunification. The CDU, with 17.5 percent, had its worst result in Berlin since the founding of the Federal Republic. Compared to 2011, the Greens lost 2.5 percent and ended up at 15.2 percent of the vote.

The Left Party was able to increase its vote somewhat from its catastrophic result five years ago, finishing with 15.7 percent. But Left Party lead candidate Klaus Lederer’s attempt to portray himself as the election victor is absurd. In 2011, voters punished the Left Party for its 10 years in coalition with the SPD, with its support collapsing to 11.7 percent. Just 10 years earlier, the PDS, the Left Party’s predecessor that governed in the eastern part of Berlin until reunification, had obtained 22.6 percent of the vote.

The Free Democrats (FDP), following their historic low in 2011 of 2 percent, will return to the House of Representatives after securing a little over 6 percent.

Under conditions where the working class has not yet built a leadership to intervene independently into political events, the right-wing extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD) was able to profit from the widespread anger and disgust at the establishment parties. In Berlin, for the 10th state election in a row, the AfD surpassed the hurdle for representation in a state parliament, with 14.1 percent. The majority of those casting ballots for the AfD voted for the right-wing party out of protest. According to market research firm Infratest Dimap, only 26 percent of AfD voters backed the party out of conviction. Sixty-nine percent voted for the AfD out of disappointment with the other parties.

In 2011, thanks to a huge media campaign, the Pirate Party secured 8.9 percent of the vote in its first election, channelling the mounting dissatisfaction of mainly young voters with its demand for more transparency and consultation. But over the past five years, the Pirate Party has been quickly exposed as yet another bourgeois party and rapidly lost support. On Sunday, with less than 2 percent of the vote, it missed the 5 percent required for parliamentary representation by a long way.

Under conditions of a deepening crisis of bourgeois rule, which currently finds expression in the decline of the established parties and the rise of the AfD, the ruling elite views a red/red/green (SPD/Left Party/Green) coalition as the best option to enforce a programme of austerity and the build-up of the state apparatus at home and abroad. The SPD’s lead candidate, Michael Müller, already spoke out during the election campaign for cooperation with the Greens and Left Party. He saw “a lot of common ground with the Greens” and would “also conduct coalition talks with other parties,” he stated on election night.

Left Party representatives pledged that they were not only prepared for a red/red/green coalition in Berlin, but also at the federal level. As party chairwoman Katja Kipping declared, the election result was not only a “tremendous signal” for Berlin, but also “for the federal level.” The chair of the Left Party parliamentary group in the Bundestag (federal parliament), Dietmar Bartsch, commented, “Sahra Wagenknecht is of course prepared for a different constellation at the federal level.”

The Partei für Soziale Gleichheit (PSG, Socialist Equality Party), which took part in the elections with a statewide list of candidates and direct candidates in Wedding, Tempelhof-Schöneberg and Friedrichshain, had warned in its election statement, before the results of the balloting, of the danger of red/red/green:

“The Berlin election is seen as a trial run in laying the foundations for an SPD-Left Party-Green coalition at the federal level, a so-called red-red-green government. Such an administration would not represent progress. In 1998, the SPD and Greens formed a coalition, which sent the Bundeswehr on foreign combat missions for the first time since World War II, and cut wages and benefits. Now this alliance is to be revitalized using the Left Party in order to impose the next round of social cuts and pave the way for further German militarism.”

Throughout the entire election campaign, the Left Party signalled to the ruling elite that it was a reliable partner in the implementation of these reactionary plans.

Along with a few promises on social issues, the Left Party demanded in its election programme “appropriate training and equipping” of the security forces and the hiring of “more police officers.” A few days ago in the Bundestag, Bartsch accused the grand coalition of being “responsible for misguided policies on hiring and cost-cutting.” They had made the police a “victim of cuts” over recent years and, since 1997, “eliminated 17,000 positions in the police.” But what was necessary was a “state capable of action.” This included “well trained and equipped personnel in the public sector, particularly in the police.”

The Left Party is preparing the same shift on the issue of war that the formerly pacifist Greens carried out 18 years ago. During the election campaign, Bodo Ramelow, who was the first “left” minister president and leads a Left Party/SPD/Green coalition in Thuringia, told Der Spiegel that the Left Party was “not pacifist.” For her part, Wagenknecht said in a summer interview with public broadcaster ARD, “Germany will of course not leave NATO on the day we enter government.”

While all parties are demanding the domestic build-up of the state and war—and the tensions between the major powers increase and a new world war is threatened—the PSG placed the building of an international movement against war at the centre of its election campaign. The PSG noted on thousands of placards, tens of thousands of leaflets, at stalls and public meetings, and in appearances online and on television, that such a movement had to be based on the working class, oppose the capitalist system, fight for a socialist programme, and be international.

The PSG was not concerned with winning the largest number of votes with superficial slogans, but to prepare for the coming developments that will confront the working class with the question of war or revolution. On this principled basis the PSG received more votes than ever before in an election in Berlin. With over 2,000 votes, it was able to achieve a significant increase from the 1,690 votes won in 2011.

In the districts in which the party concentrated its campaign, the PSG won even higher percentages. In the Mitte 6 district, Peter Hartmann won 0.9 percent of first votes. Ulrich Rippert, the PSG chairman, and Andreas Niklaus, each won 0.6 percent in their districts, and Christoph Vandreier and Endrik Bastian got 0.5 percent. In Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Markus Klein secured 0.3 percent.

62 dead, 100 wounded as US bombs Syrian army near Deir ez-Zor

Alex Lantier

At least sixty-two Syrian troops died and 100 were wounded on Saturday when US jets bombed a Syrian government base on Al-Tharda mountain near Deir ez-Zor. Remarkably, the US Central Command has still not apologized for the attack, even though its bombing allowed the Islamic State (IS) militia to storm and capture the base shortly afterwards.

This massacre is a flagrant act of war that threatens to escalate the Syrian conflict into an all-out war pitting the US-led NATO alliance against Syria and its allies, including Russia. Everything suggests that the attack, coming in the initial days of a US-Russian ceasefire in Syria openly criticized last week by the US army brass, was deliberately committed by forces inside the US government hostile to the ceasefire.

The US military’s refusal to formally apologize for the massacre is staggeringly reckless. Syrian troops fighting US-backed Islamist opposition militias are being aided on the ground by units from Iran, China, and Russia. The Pentagon is signaling to these countries—which not only have powerful forces in Syria but, in the case of China and Russia, nuclear weapons—that their own troops may end up as targets of US military action, as they operate alongside Syrian forces.

Syrian and Russian officials denounced the bombing as US aid to IS, while Russian officials called an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to demand explanations from Washington. The Syrian Foreign Ministry declared, “At 05:00 pm, on September 17th, 2016, five US aircraft launched a fierce airstrike on Syrian Army positions on al-Tharda Mountain in the surroundings of Deir ez-Zor Airport. The attack lasted for an hour.”

It accused Washington of complicity with IS: “The attack launched by the ISIS terrorists on the same site, taking control over it...highlights the coordination between this terrorist organization and the US.”

What emerged from the contradictory accounts of the bombing provided by the feuding factions of the US military-intelligence machine is a picture of a massacre prepared and executed in cold blood.

The Obama administration relayed regrets via Moscow to Damascus for the “unintentional loss of life of Syrian forces,” anonymous senior US officials told the press. However, the US Central Command (Centcom), responsible for the Pentagon’s operations in the Middle East, issued a perfunctory statement making no apology to the Syrian military for its losses.

“The coalition air strike was halted immediately when coalition officials were informed by Russian officials that it was possible the personnel and vehicles targeted were part of the Syrian military,” it declared, blandly adding: “Syria is a complex situation with various military forces and militias in close proximity, but coalition forces would not intentionally strike a known Syrian military unit, officials said. The coalition will review this strike and the circumstances surrounding it to see if any lessons can be learned.”

Such claims that US fighters were unaware of who they were bombing are simply not credible, and are flatly contradicted by other accounts in the media.

An anonymous Centcom official told the New York Times that US surveillance aircraft tracked the Syrian army units “for several days” before US fighters attacked them. “The attack went on for about 20 minutes, with the planes destroying the vehicles and gunning down dozens of people in the open desert, the official said. Shortly after this, an urgent call came into the American military command center in Qatar… The call was from a Russian official who said that the American planes were bombing Syrian troops and that the strike should be immediately called off.”

Nevertheless, the US jets continued to bomb the Syrian base for several minutes before ending the attack, according to the Centcom official’s account.

The attack at Deir ez-Zor shows that Washington and its allies are not seeking a cease-fire and de-escalation, let alone peace. They are pursuing the same strategy adopted by the NATO powers in Syria ever since 2011: pursuing regime change by backing Islamist militias like IS or the Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra Front against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. The latest attack has shown that, even after IS mounted repeated terror attacks in Europe and the United States, a definite collaboration still exists between US and IS forces to escalate the war.

After Saturday’s attack, US think tank operatives quickly came forward in the media to do political damage control. Aaron David Miller of the Wilson Center warned the Times that the air strikes would “feed conspiracy theories that Washington is in league with IS” and allow Russian President Vladimir Putin to “blast the US on the eve of the UN General Assembly.”

This is cynical propaganda. As they backed Syrian opposition militias, top US officials and journalists were fully aware of their terrorist character. Times journalist C. J. Chivers dedicated a friendly 2012 video to the Lions of Tawhid militia, which set off truck bombs in Syrian cities. This was only one of dozens of US-backed opposition militias that carried out atrocities across Syria, including IS, whose operations in Syria only began to be targeted last year after it carried out repeated terror attacks in Europe.

The dominant factions of the US government want war, and Moscow’s strategy—negotiating truces with Washington, and backing Assad while accommodating US military operations in Syria—is totally bankrupt. Hostile to and afraid of appealing to antiwar sentiment in the working class, particularly in the United States, the Kremlin has sought to deal with the US war drive through talks with the US government. This strategy has failed, as Russian officials were all but forced to admit, in the face of US military opposition to the cease-fire.

After the emergency meeting of the UN Security Council called by Moscow, Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin charged that the US attack was a deliberate attempt to derail the joint US-Russian-brokered ceasefire, pointing to the “highly suspicious” timing of the attack.

“It was quite significant and not accidental that it happened just two days before the Russian-American arrangements were supposed to come into full force,” he said. “The beginning of work of the Joint Implementation Group was supposed to be September 19. So if the US wanted to conduct an effective strike on Al Nusra or ISIS, in Deir ez-Zor or anywhere else, they could wait two more days and coordinate with our military and be sure that they are striking the right people… Instead they chose to conduct this reckless operation.”

“One has to conclude that the airstrike has been conducted in order to derail the operation of the Joint Implementation Group and actually prevent it from being set in motion,” Churkin added.

This assessment was echoed by the DEBKA File publication, which has close ties to Israeli intelligence. “The Pentagon and US army are not following the orders of their Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama in the execution of the military cooperation accord in Syria concluded by US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva on Sept. 12,” it wrote.

It cited concerns by top US defense officials that the terms of the cease-fire give Russia too much of an “opportunity to study the combat methods and tactics practiced by the US Navy and Air force in real battlefield conditions.” For this reason, the Pentagon is opposing it even after it was agreed to by Kerry: “Washington sources report that Defense Secretary Carter maintains that he can’t act against a law enacted by Congress. He was referring to the law that prohibits all military-to-military relations with Russia as a result of Moscow’s annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine.”