Truth, Lies and Conspiracy in the 2016 Election

Stacy Keltner

The use of terms like “truthiness,” “post-truth,” and “post-factual” has risen during the 2016 election season, especially in media coverage of Donald Trump, who has become the poster boy for what David Roberts earlier coined “post-truth politics.” Trump himself (or his ghost writer, depending on who you believe to be more truthful) has described his own rhetorical strategy as “truthful hyperbole,” an innocent and effective form of exaggeration. In the recent presidential debate between Clinton and Trump, Clinton cashed in on the image of Donald-in-Wonderland — rolling her eyes, smiling, laughing, dismissing his claims and positions as baseless imaginative meanderings, and urging us to check the facts through a fact checker on her website. Of course, those cracking ceilings in glass houses…

Truthiness is not unique to Trump or the current election season. In his 2004 work, The Post Truth Era: Dishonesty and Deception in Contemporary Life, Ralph Keyes succinctly sums up the contemporary sense of truth in what he calls the post-truth era: “In the post-truth era we don’t just have truth and lies, but a third category of ambiguous statements that are not exactly the truth but fall short of a lie. Enhanced truth it might be called. Neo-truth. Faux-truth. Truth lite.” Harry S. Truman justified this kind of “truth” by distinguishing between the “real truth,” which depends on accuracy, and “political truth,” which depends on one’s intentions (which Truman claimed should at least not be corrupt) and the ability to utter the “truth” with believable conviction. Consider Ronald Reagan’s expression of regret during the Iran-Contra scandal: “My heart and my best intentions still tell me that is true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.” Or, Bill Clinton’s own heart-felt and confident statement that [h]e “did not [depending on how you theorize being and nothingness] have sexual relations [depending on how you define sexual relations] with that woman.” And, don’t forget all of those weapons of mass destruction that G. W. Bush and his entourage were sure… or, well, believed were… or, well, must be…  or, well, might be (near the oil) in Iraq. Politicians are notorious for playing fast and loose with the truth, especially when an election is at stake, and this election cycle may have created the most stunningly post-truthful climate yet.

One of the most interesting phenomena this election cycle has been the increase in conspiracy theories. Compounded by the 24-hour news cycle and the prevalence of digital and social media to be sure, conspiracy theories have proliferated. Some are fueled by fake websites and news stories; some by partisan fantasies; some by people just trying to make sense of politics; and some by the candidates’ own campaigns (e.g., Russian espionage, the birther movement). Some are serious and sinister; some are funny; and, some are based on loose connections and the truthiness of feeling, longing, and the ability to keep a straight face. Conspiracy theories are not new, and they range in legitimacy. At times, they serve an important function. Born of a public trying to make sense of a phenomenon or event that just doesn’t make sense in light of the facts, conspiracy theories are a manner of grappling with truth. Yet, the sheer volume of conspiracy theories (as well as all of the discussions labeled conspiracy theories) this election season has left reason reeling.

Trump himself is, admittedly, one of the biggest fans of juicy conspiracy theories and touts a lot of them, sometimes just for the sake of an interesting discussion, which is one of the main sources of his Donald-in-Wonderland image. Clinton surrogates have complained that the mainstream media does not hold Trump accountable, allowing his multiple conspiracies (e.g., see here, here, and here for a start) to circulate as if they are legitimate. At the same time, Clinton’s surrogates have given flight to conspiracy theories of their own, (e.g., Trump the Kremlin puppet). Anti-Clinton surrogates on the left and the right have complained that the mainstream media has given Clinton a pass in not pressing her to answer important questions about her private email server and the Clinton foundation, ultimately leading to speculations and discussions dismissed as themselves conspiracy theories. The rationality used to explain (or, evade) basic facts is no help either. According to our current standards of truth: through an analytic process, facts are to be distinguished into their most discrete elements; then, we must conclude, those facts cannot be put back together without direct admissions of their connections (e.g., foreign governments donating money to a private foundation is a fact distinct from that government receiving benefits, which is also distinct from the fact that the one receiving funds and giving benefits is the same person; and, those three facts cannot be correlated according to our analytic reason without a fourth fact that admits the connection. – To suggest otherwise is to engage in conspiracy theories). Whatever the origin of the conspiratorial atmosphere of the 2016 election – the result of Trump’s and/or Clinton’s candidacies, the death of investigative journalism, or the fate of analytic reason itself – political life is losing sight of any reality principle. Engrossed in the virtual, fictional reality of conspiracy theories, any search for the truth can be debunked as itself conspiracy theory.

Jaded by the ubiquity of political truthiness, trust in the current candidates and the political process itself worsens daily. This election season, both candidates are struggling in the polls with respect to honesty and trustworthiness. In response, the Clinton and Trump campaigns, as well as all of the journalists and commentators supporting them, are intent on deflecting our focus from one to the other (e.g., Clinton’s private email server, Trump University LLC) or at least to someone or something else (e.g., “Russia,” “cyber-terrorists,” “biased media,” “extremists”). The consequence of all this political truthiness is the complete loss of confidence in any kind of stabilizing element, like truth, rendering facts and reason frail, if not obsolete.

Hannah Arendt claimed in her famous 1971 New York Times article“Lying in Politics: Reflections on the Pentagon Papers,” that “[t]ruthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings.” Lying in politics is nothing new. Yet, Arendt noted, there is something distinctly new about the political lies exposed in the Pentagon Papers; namely, political lying plays a new role in the modern world. The traditional function of lying in politics has always been the furthering of a political end. Political lies to this individual or another and about this thing or that traditionally function to attain a political end. However, as the Pentagon Papers show, political lying has come to serve something else: a completely fictitious reality. According to Arendt, the ultimate goal of the war itself was to create and legitimize an image of U.S.-American “omnipotence,” depending less on actual power than on the image of power, effecting a spectacularly “defactualized world.” The Pentagon Papers did not reveal something unique that came to pass, but a structural reality of modern political life.

Though the defactualized or post-truth world of politics is not new, and its virtual actuality has been exasperated through technological developments and the rise of digital and social media, the political imaginary this election cycle has taken on an exaggerated and schizophrenic form, demonstrated dramatically by the rise of conspiracy theories. The most unfortunate consequence is the ease with which critical analysis and questioning is now so easily dismissed. Consider Joseph Uscinski’s recent claims about the rise of conspiracy theories this election season – an exemplary case in point.According to Uscinski, an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Miami and co-author of a scholarly book on American conspiracy theories, conspiracy theories are most effective when employed by “outsiders, electoral losers and statistical minorities.” For Uscinski, the “two outsiders” of Sanders and Trump created an environment that has made even the establishment insider, Clinton, have recourse to conspiracy theories. Uscinski claims (1) Trump’s conspiracy theories forced Clinton to “push back” with her own conspiracy theories about Trump’s connection to Russia, and (2) referencing an article by senior staff writer Michael Grunwald of Politico as evidence, Clinton has had “to give lip service” to what Uscinski calls “Sanders’ economic conspiracy theories,” which includes, according to Grunwald, a “doom and gloom” vision of America based on the “complaint” that the economic system is rigged and the political system is corrupt. Thus, one of the central theses of the left (which includes millions of academics, activists, students, and workers the world over) concerning the economic inequalities of U.S.-American neoliberalism is a “conspiracy theory” of Bernie Sanders.

If the consequences of the surge of conspiracy theories are dire for critical thought, its benefits for Clinton and establishment politics are clear. Establishment insiders can deflect all critiques as equivalent to the imaginative meanderings of a 3 a.m. Trump twitter storm. Reducing critique to conspiracy is the biggest and most dangerous conspiracy theory yet.

America’s Epidemic Of Violence

Arshad M Khan

Multiple killings in the U.S. are becoming so common (almost daily in the week past) that they no longer attract top billing in the news.  Moreover,  incidents of road rage leading to murder are also increasing at an alarming rate.  On Friday, the Eisenhower Expressway in President Barack Obama’s adopted hometown of Chicago was closed for two hours in the morning because a man killed another driver and severely wounded a female passenger after an altercation.  Here’s the shocker:  a few hours after the expressway re-opened, there was yet another road-rage killing on it.

One obvious cause points to the new concealed-carry rules being promulgated by legislators permitting handguns in vehicles.  Add to it delays caused by decaying infrastructure (closed lanes undergoing repairs and so forth) leading to frayed nerves and angry drivers.  What’s more the constant killing at home and abroad seen on TV news serves to make it a commonplace instead of a horrendous act.  And there we have it, an armed and ready time-bomb waiting to go off.

A new international study by the Legatum Institute ranks the U.S. at #33 in ‘Safety and Security’, behind all developed countries.  It is no surprise for the situation is palpably worse than memory recalls.  The U.S. is also ranked #15 in ‘Personal Freedom’ while Canada earns top place.

 

The almost daily multiple-killings recently, led this author to Wikipedia, which divides mass killings into several categories.  One of them should give pause.  In the section labeled ‘Religious, political or racial crimes’ eight events are listed for the U.S., all since 2012 except for an arson and firearm incident in 1972.

What has this administration done to precipitate an orgy of such crimes, seven in total and surpassed only by Israel, once secular though now, sadly, a haven of bigotry?  The only difference from the past is U.S. involvement in multiple never-ending wars causing dreadful destruction, record disruptive displacements and civilian casualties — so many countries devastated in such a short space of time.

And so appropriately to a funeral:  Uri Avnery the prominent peace activist, who fought for Israel’s independence and was severely wounded, once wrote (and I paraphrase).  In those days no one wore a kippa.  It would have been considered backward in a forward-looking socialist milieu.  He decried the now bearded, kippa-wearing Israeli soldiers spewing religious hatred.  The incident evoking his outrage was of a seriously wounded Palestinian lying helpless, denied medical aid while minor Israeli injuries were being tended to, and then being finished off with a shot to the head.

So was it a surprise to see a kippa-wearing black American president eulogizing the late Shimon Peres?  Some leaders were wearing kippas, others not.  The French president was certainly not, given France’s war on religious symbols.  Suffice to say that religiosity, as opposed to private faith, polarizes diverse populations.

The aforementioned Uri Avnery, who knew Shimon Peres for decades, had a revealing and balanced article tracing his biography from the age of 10!  It was written on September 23, just after Peres had the stroke that led eventually to his death a week or so later.  Robert Fisk was less  generous in Britain’s The Independent recalling the Qana incident and talking about wading through a stream of blood.  He was there shortly after, and can not forget it.

Peace is anathema to war, and war begets violence.  The sages have it right when they tell us:  As we sow, so shall we reap …

Mysterious Killing Of Muslim Brotherhood Leaders In Egypt

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Two Muslim Brotherhood leaders have been killed in suspicious circumstances by the Egyptian security forces.

A ministry statement carried by the official MENA news agency said 61-year-old Dr. Mohammed Kamal, a physician by profession, was killed along with Yasser Shahata Ali Ragab in an exchange of gunfire as police tried to arrest the two late on Monday (Oct 3, 2016) night.

But a Brotherhood statement posted on its official website shortly after reports of the shootout surfaced said Dr. Kamal had been arrested by police, suggesting he was killed after being taken into custody.

The statement went on to say: Here’s our reply to your heinous crime, to the murderous military junta. …..We announce it, as also the founding Imam Hassan Al-Banna announced it: “To die for the sake of God is our highest aspiration”.

London-based Brotherhood leader Mohamed Soudan told Turkish news agency Anadolu:

“Authorities announced the death of Kamal and Shehata shortly after local media reported that they had been arrested. This means that both leaders had been liquidated,” he said.

Dr. Kamal was twice sentenced in absentia to life in prison on charges of setting up an armed group and setting off an explosion near a police station, while Ragab was sentenced in absentia to 10 years in jail.

Dr.Kamal was one of the most prominent leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and a member of the Guidance Bureau. He was previously in charge of the supreme Administrative Committee, known as the youth committee.

He was accused of planning the June 2015 killing in Cairo of Egypt’s chief prosecutor, Hisham Barakat.

Dr. Kamal was also accused of master minding the assassination attempt on Egypt’s former mufti, Sheikh Ali Gomaa, in Cairo in August 2016. Tellingly, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis claimed responsibility for the attack.

Gomaa was a key supporter of the military’s 2013 coup. In public speeches, he has been advocating the use of force against the Muslim Brotherhood.

Harsh crackdown

The mysterious killing of the two Muslim Brotherhood leaders once again highlights the brutal policies of the US-backed military government of Filed Marshall Abdel Fatah el-Sisi who came to power in July 2013 by overthrowing the elected President Mohammad Morsi.

Since President Morsi’s outer, the military government has been carrying an extensive crackdown on Morsi’s supporters and other government opponents. Thousands of the group’s members, including its top leadership, have been jailed for opposing the coup.

On February 2, 2015, an Egyptian court sentenced 183 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood to death on charges of killing police officers, part of a sustained crackdown by authorities on anti-government elements. The men were convicted of playing a role in the killings of 16 policemen in the town of Kardasa in August 2013 during the upheaval that followed the army’s coup against president Mohamed Mursi.

Egypt has mounted one of the biggest crackdowns in its modern history on the Brotherhood since the overthrow of President Mursi, the country’s first democratically-elected president.

Thousands of Brotherhood supporters have been arrested and put on mass trials in a campaign which human rights groups say shows the government is systematically repressing opponents.

The Newsweek wrote in August 2015, under Field Marshall el-Sissi, Egypt is enduring what Human Rights Watch’s Joe Stork calls “a human rights crisis that is the worst in memory.” Peaceful assemblies are outlawed; police shoot demonstrators and abuse thousands of political detainees with impunity.

Anyone opposing the regime faces severe repression, but the Muslim Brotherhood is particularly targeted. “The new regime moved very quickly to decapitate the organization, which meant arresting the top three tiers of the organization,” says Eric Trager of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Since Morsi’s fall, tens of thousands of members have either been detained or fled into exile, and only a minority of the Brotherhood leadership has managed to escape, mainly to Istanbul.

Their leader, Mohammed Badie, was sentenced to death in April 2014 along with 682 other Morsi supporters in a trial that lasted just eight minutes. The thoroughly politicized courts have also sentenced Morsi to death, in May 2015. By comparison, Hosni Mubarak, the country’s dictator for 30 years, got three years for corruption charges.

In March 2014, a court in Egypt sentenced 528 supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi to death. They were convicted of charges including murdering a policeman and attacks on people and property. The group was among some 1,200 Muslim Brotherhood supporters on trial, including senior members.

The speed of the case, and the severity of the outcome, are unprecedented in Egypt, according to legal sources. In a case centred on the killing of a single police officer, more than 520 defendants have been sentenced to death, at a breathtaking pace.

The Human Rights Watch reported in January 2015, Scores of Egyptians died in government custody in 2014, many of them packed into police stations in life-threatening conditions. Yet the authorities have taken no serious steps either to improve detention conditions or to independently investigate detainees’ deaths. Some detainees appear to have died after being tortured or physically abused, Human Rights Watch found.

The Human Rights Watch reported that in July and August 2013, many of Egypt’s public squares and streets were awash in blood. In response to anti-government protests by the Muslim Brotherhood supporters, police and army forces repeatedly opened fire on demonstrators, killing over 1,150, most of them in five separate incidents of mass protester killings.

The gravest incident of mass protester killings occurred on August 14, when security forces crushed the major pro-Morsy sit-in in Rab’a al-Adawiya Square in the Nasr City district of eastern Cairo, killing at least 817 and likely more than 1,000. Human Rights Watch researchers documented the dispersal of the Rab’a sit-in and found that security forces opened fire on protesters using live ammunition, with hundreds killed by bullets to their heads, necks, and chests.

The Rab’a and al-Nahda square dispersals were both preceded and followed by other mass killings of protesters, the Human Rights Watch said.

The War Hysteria!

Mohammad Ashraf

After the attack on the Uri Army camp in Kashmir, and the subsequent “Surgical Strikes”, an orchestrated War Hysteria has been created throughout the country which has been given a boost by the corporate media by turning its studios into virtual War Rooms. People have even been advocating the use of nuclear weapons. In fact, some people from the Pakistani side have openly threatened the use of nuclear weapons. It is easy to talk about war and use of various kinds of weapons siting in comfortable air conditioned studios. It is only the people living in border areas who have been again displaced in anticipation of hostilities that know the impact and the consequences of a conventional war, forget for the time being a nuclear war!

The villagers living close to the border have been forced to leave their crops unharvested and take shelter in interior areas because of the threat of war looming over their heads. India and Pakistan have fought four wars since their creation as two separate countries in 1947. The wars of 1947 and 1999 were limited to the borders of J & K while as the wars of 1965 and 1971 were total wars all along their borders. In earlier wars, the most affected were always the border residents. There were some casualties due to bombing raids conducted on air bases, bridges, and other military targets. But now the two countries have graduated to the highest level. With missiles and some of these capable of carrying nukes, it is a different scenario. Even the rockets and missiles possessed by both sides even if carrying non-nuclear warheads can destroy entire localities. The use of nukes of which both possess more than 200 would be the Armageddon not only for the sub-continent but the entire South Asia. There would also be disastrous effects on the rest of the planet.

To give an idea of a nuclear explosion effects, it would be interesting to take a quote from the AtomicArchive.Com.“Nuclear explosions produce both immediate and delayed destructive effects. Blast, thermal radiation, and prompt ionizing radiation cause significant destruction within seconds or minutes of a nuclear detonation. The delayed effects, such as radioactive fallout and other possible environmental effects, inflict damage over an extended period ranging from hours to years. Most damage comes from the explosive blast. The shock wave of air radiates outward, producing sudden changes in air pressure that can crush objects, and high winds that can knock objects down. In general, large buildings are destroyed by the change in air pressure, while people and objects such as trees and utility poles are destroyed by the wind.Approximately 35 percent of the energy from a nuclear explosion is an intense burst of thermal radiation, i.e., heat. The effects are similar to the effect of a two-second flash from an enormous sunlamp. Since the thermal radiation travels at roughly the speed of light, the flash of light and heat precedes the blast wave by several seconds, just as lightning is seen before thunder is heard. Next is the “Fallout”. Fallout radiation is received from particles that are made radioactive by the effects of the explosion, and subsequently distributed at varying distances from the site of the blast”. Another quote from Scroll, “If India and Pakistan fought a war detonating 100 nuclear warheads (around half of their combined arsenal), each equivalent to a 15-kiloton Hiroshima bomb, more than 21 million people will be directly killed, about half the world’s protective ozone layer would be destroyed, and a “nuclear winter” would cripple the monsoons and agriculture worldwide”.The warmongers in the studios including some retired generals need to be shown the Hollywood movie “The Day After” to fully gauge the effects of a nuclear war if it breaks out now in the sub-continent. Unfortunately, if one follows the confrontation track with some “surgical” or “non-surgical” strikes, there is every possibility of quick escalation which can end in a nuclear clash!

One wonders why these two poor countries with teeming millions below poverty line should think of total destruction and annihilation.The answer is the presence of the “Beneficiaries of Conflict” within these countries and the “Merchants of Death” from abroad selling their wares to them! The total armament business in the world exceeds $ 1000 billion and India is the largest buyer. Similarly, Pakistan spends a major chunk of its budget on defence especially buying of armaments from abroad. For these “Merchants of Death” selling their wares to them, peace in the world means lesser jobs back home! This was even mentioned by Lockheed in one of its posters to its employees! Unfortunately, both the countries are not really ruled by the genuine and sincere people. One is an “Upper CasteHindu Corporate Republic” as described by Arundhati Roy and the other is the Country of “My Feudal Lord”! A coterie of feudal land lords!One fails to understand why don’t the leaders on two sides think of the teeming millions living in abject poverty? Had the money being spent on armaments on two sides been invested in ameliorating the lot of the poor, these two countries would have been the best welfare states!

Both the countries for all their differences and conflicts have the “Whipping Boy” of Kashmir. For last 70 years Kashmiris are being used as guinea pigs by the two countries to uphold theirconflicting ideologies of the so called “Secularism” and the “Two Nation Theory”. It is the worst misfortune of Kashmiris that they have got entangled in this mess for no fault of theirs. For last three months Kashmir is under total siege. People have been deprived of the basic human rights by the use of the most brutal and the harshest use of force. The “War Hysteria” is being created deliberately to divert attention from the issues confronting the two sides. India is creating a hue and cry to drown the woes of Kashmiris while as Pakistanis facing terrorism in every nook and corner, want to muzzle their own internal political problems. The conflict over Kashmir, an extremely sensitive emotional issue, suits both sides. The only sufferers in this match are the Kashmiris in particular and the millions of poor on the two sides of the divide.It is the right time now to end all “Surgical” and “Non-Surgical” strikes; bring down the “War Hysteria” and save Kashmir by giving relief to Kashmiris by restoring their fundamental human rights. The only choice is to hold an unconditional dialogue among all stakeholders to sort out the basic political problem once and for all. The alternative is a mass suicide!

German media steps up drumbeat for war and militarism

Johannes Stern

Leading German media outlets are responding to the intensification of the Syrian war with calls for more war and militarism. The lead article in Tuesday’s edition of the Süddeutsche Zeitung by Hubert Wetzel is a thinly veiled appeal for an intervention by tens of thousands of ground troops in Syria. Wetzel focuses his anger on the alleged retreat carried out by the United States under President Barack Obama.

Obama saw “little need to invest American money, blood and prestige in this dusty corner of the world,” Wetzel wrote. His “persistent retreat from the Middle East” had “contributed to the creation of a vacuum,” and the space was being “filled by chaos alone.” Among the producers of the “chaos” Wetzel naturally avoided naming the NATO powers, which have been spreading death and destruction throughout the region for more than 25 years, but instead pointed to Iran and Russia, which “in the Middle East are conducting the most brutal type of geopolitics conceivable.”

While “all of the desperadoes and outlaws, who are fighting from Tunisia to Libya, Egypt, Syria and Iraq […] brought, in the bloodiest sense of the word, their greatest firepower” and fire “out of all cylinders,” the “US President, who was once the sheriff in this part of the world, only [has] a pocket knife,” Wetzel complained. But this did not provoke “respect or fear from anyone.” On the contrary: the “world power America” has “nothing more to say” in the Middle East and as a result is “not taken seriously by its allies, and certainly not by its opponents.”

Wetzel and the Süddeutsche Zeitung place chief responsibility for the “dark future” resulting from this state of affairs on the American population. “Obama’s employer, the American people,” wants “the US no longer to be the sheriff,” he rages. “There is no support worth talking about in the population or Congress for a large intervention in Syria, Libya or Iraq to defend an abstract regional or global order.”

In an essay in the latest edition of Der Spiegel, Dirk Kurbjuweit attacks the European population in similar terms. “The public in the West is like a jury which decides on intervention.” “The Germans” above all, have had “enough of wars for all time, and therefore let their politicians know their view in polls: we’d rather not.” Kurbjuweit complained that politicians “can take decisions against prevailing opinion. But in the case of the Syrian war, Angela Merkel has not done this yet.”

What Kurbjuweit is proposing are wars in violation of international law and justified with pseudo-humanitarian arguments. “Interventions ended the wars in the Balkans,” he wrote. “The West sent bombers, without the authorization of the UN in the case of Kosovo. This was a violation of international law. And there was no trial. But the killing is over.”

To enforce massive military interventions against the will of the population, Kurbjuweit proposes, in all seriousness, labeling those as war criminals who reject militarism and war. “Can failure to act be a war crime?” he asked provocatively. “A difficult question. But the question ‘how could it happen?’ is about responsibility. And responsibility on these issues begins at an early stage.”

Kurbjuweit’s cynical programme is thus, “Pacifism, yes, but an armed pacifism. For it, the old formula does not apply: war, never again.”

Wetzel and Kurbjuweit are part of an entire layer of German journalists with close ties to foreign policy think tanks and government circles, which have been relentlessly propagating the poison of militarism for more than three years, despite the historical crimes of German imperialism.

As early as 2013, Wetzel called in a comment for the firing of “a salvo of cruise missiles on the headquarters of Bashar al-Assad’s army.” Kurbjuweit, who has since become deputy editor of Der Spiegel, published his notorious article “The transformation of history” just days after German government representatives announced the end of the era of military restraint at the Munich Security Conference.

In it, Kurbjuweit attacked Fritz Fischer, who, in his 1961 book “Germany’s aims in the First World War,” demonstrated that the German empire bore considerable responsibility for the outbreak of World War I. Fischer’s theses were ‘in principal “outrageous,’” he cited the Berlin political scientist Herfried Münkler as proclaiming.

On the Second World War, Kurbjuweit provided a platform for the now dead Nazi apologist Ernst Nolte, who had propagated the notion since the Historikerstreit of the 1980s that fascism was a legitimate response to Bolshevism. Nolte declared in the article, among other things, “I am more and more convinced that we should attach more weight to the role played by the Poles and the British [on the question of war guilt] than is usually the case.” At the same time, he blamed the Jews for “’their own part in the gulag,’ because some Bolsheviks were Jews.” Kurbjuweit remarked that this “has long been an argument of Jew-haters,” only then to add, “But this man [Nolte] was not wrong about everything.”

Kurbjuweit also cited the Berlin-based historian Jörg Baberowski, an outspoken defender of Nolte, as saying, “Hitler was no psychopath, he was not vicious. He did not want the extermination of the Jews to be discussed at his table.”

Two-and-a-half years have passed since these despicable statements and it has become ever clearer that the relativising of the historical crimes of German imperialism has served to prepare new wars and crimes. The latest articles from Wetzel and Kurbjuweit provide further evidence of this.

Tunisian men reveal new details of torture at CIA black sites

Kevin Martinez

A document issued by Human Rights Watch Report (HRW) this week contains interviews with two Tunisian men who were tortured and detained by the CIA and US military for 13 years.

The men described torture that surpassed what the 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA’s global kidnapping program (or “extraordinary rendition”) revealed, including the threatened use of an electric chair, daily beatings with rods while their arms were suspended over a metal bar above their heads, having their heads dunked into barrels of water, and other acts of savagery.

The two men, Rudha al-Najjar, 51, and Lotfi al-Arabi El Gherissi, 52, are both citizens of Tunisia and were released and repatriated to their country only last year. They had never been charged with a crime and received no compensation for their 13 years of torture and detention without charge.

Today they are penniless, unable to work, and suffer ongoing mental and physical trauma as a result of their captivity and torture. Their wives have long ago divorced them and they now rely on their families for help.

Although the two men never met one another while in CIA custody, they both described similar conditions and inhuman treatment at the hands of American authorities. Human Rights Watch was able to determine, using the heavily redacted Senate torture report as a guide, that the men were held at the notorious “Salt Pit”, a converted brick factory in Kabul, Afghanistan, referred to as “Detention Site COBALT.”

Laura Pitter, national security counsel at HRW told media, “These terrifying accounts of previously unreported CIA torture methods show how little the public still knows about the US torture program.”

Indeed, the Senate Intelligence Committee could only release in December 2014 a heavily redacted executive summary of the still classified 6,700-page report on the CIA’s torture program. The Obama Administration fought tooth and nail to prevent even the summary from becoming public knowledge. Al-Najjar and El Gherissi were but two of the 119 men the US government officially admitted to having held in CIA detention centers, or “black sites,” around the world.

The two men’s statements shed light on the little-known early days of the CIA’s torture program which was ostensibly modified after the death of Gul Rahman, an Afghan man, on November 20, 2002. The CIA’s report of Rahman’s death absolved the agency of any wrongdoing, and told how prisoners would be kept in their cell in diapers. In the agency’s own words, “This is done solely to humiliate the prisoner.”

When the guards ran out of diapers they would improvise with a “handcrafted diaper secured with duct tape” and “If the guards don’t have any available diapers, the prisoners are rendered to their cell nude.” This cruelty was personally approved by CIA director George Tenet in a 2003 memorandum.

Although the CIA promised new guidelines after the murder of Rahman, the brutality continued unabated.

The Senate Summary says the CIA believed al-Najjar to be a bodyguard of Osama Bin Laden, while El Gherissi said his torturers accused him of being involved with Al-Qaeda or having terrorist contacts. Both men deny the allegations and the US government has provided no proof to the contrary.

Al-Najjar was kidnapped by US and Pakistani forces on May 22, 2002 in Karachi, while El Gherissi was captured in the town of Peshawar, on the border with Afghanistan, on September 24, 2002. The CIA took custody and had them held in several locations in Afghanistan, including COBALT site, which al-Najjar and El Gherissi called the “Dark Prison.” It was there they suffered the worst abuse. They were eventually given to the US military and languished at Bagram airbase until December 9, 2014, when they were handed over to the Afghan military, who repatriated them back to Tunisia six months later, on June 15, 2015.

During their time in American custody, the two men had no contact with the outside world. Tina Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network, sought a federal court review on the legality of the detention, but the courts denied her request, siding with Obama’s Justice Department, which argued that the Bagram airbase was beyond the jurisdiction of US courts. Foster was denied access to speak to either man and the Supreme Court rejected her appeal.

Foster told the Guardian, “Even after President Obama was elected and vowed not to continue the torture program, his administration continued to argue that US courts should not review our clients’ cases and prevent us from speaking with them. As a result, our clients were held incommunicado and their abuse was effectively concealed for more than a decade.”

The torture that al-Najjar and El Gherissi describe is enough to make one nauseous. Al-Najjar describes being waterboarded, “Until I couldn’t breathe anymore.” His head was repeatedly dunked to a bucket of water to get him to “talk.” Al-Najjar was also submerged into a large tub of ice water strapped to a board. He said, “They would do this until I couldn’t handle it anymore and I was on the verge of completely falling apart.”

Even more gruesome, the two were shown a makeshift electric chair, a metal chair with electric wires attached to finger plugs attached to a wall pipe, which their captors threatened to use on them.

Both men were chained to a metal rod above their head for 24-hour periods with their toes barely touching the ground, and sometimes not all. This made it impossible to sleep as they were essentially hanged by their wrists and beaten with rods by American interrogators. For al-Najjar, this continued for roughly three months, while El Gherissi endured it for a month. Loud music was played nonstop for 24 hours and the prisoners were kept in total darkness and complete isolation, only able to hear the screams of other prisoners. Al-Najjar described it as “the worst experience in his life.”

CIA agents also bent al-Najjar over and inserted an object into his anus. These “exams” had no medical purpose whatsoever and according to documents from The Intercept were done with “excessive force.”

Perhaps most disturbing of all was the presence of an American doctor, a modern day Josef Mengele, who oversaw the torture. While al-Najjar was in custody, the doctor would periodically check on him to see if he was still alive and administered injections to reduce the swellings from the beatings. “But once the swelling went down, this doctor would give the green light for the torture to begin all over again,” al-Najjar said.

The torture only stopped when the doctor told his torturers, “if he stays for another week, he will die.”

Al Najjar only ate once every three days and told HRW that the food was “disgusting,” with pebbles, hair, dirt, and one time a cigarette butt. One could only drink the foul water provided if they “were on the verge of death and completely dehydrated,” but even that was not enough.

CIA cables described al-Najjar as “clearly a broken man… on the verge of a complete breakdown” whose torture “became the model” for countless other prisoners at the site.

In the video interview released by HRW, El Gherissi says, “The damage is on my back. I can’t sleep on it. And my eyes, I can’t see very well. And my feet … I can’t walk for a long distance. Sometimes I wonder what I should do?”

The Senate report on CIA torture states that records at COBALT were rudimentary and “the full nature of CIA interrogations” remains “largely unknown.” The Senate investigation found that prisoners at the site were subject to “multiple periods of sleep deprivation, required standing, loud music, sensory deprivation, extended isolation, reduced quantity of food, nudity and ‘rough treatment.’” However, the accounts of al-Najjar and El Gherissi are proof that prisoners were subjected to much worse.

John Brennan, a top intelligence official in 2002 who was briefed about al-Najjar’s torture, is now director of the CIA. He fought viciously to try to stop the release of even the limited revelations of the Senate report’s executive summary. The full Senate report on CIA torture remains classified by the Obama administration. Undoubtedly, it contains many more horrors the military-intelligence apparatus does not want the public to know about.

Yahoo spied on “hundreds of millions” of email accounts on behalf of US spy agencies

Nick Barrickman

Web services provider Yahoo has been secretly scanning the emails of all its users on behalf of the US government, according to a report by Reuters Tuesday. According to the news agency, Yahoo executives received a secret directive in May 2015 requiring the web company to craft a “custom” wire-tapping program with the intent “to search… hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest of the National Security Agency [NSA] or FBI.”

“This represents the first case to surface of a US Internet company agreeing to an intelligence agency’s request by searching all arriving messages,” the report continues, noting previous instances of service providers agreeing to scan certain accounts on a limited scale.

According to the Reuters account, US intelligence officials supplied Yahoo with “a set of characters” to search for in each incoming communication. “That could mean a phrase in an email or an attachment,” the report states. Reuters did not say what phrases or content the government had been searching for, or whether similar directives had been issued to other internet companies. The Reuters story further reveals the near-seamless collusion of the major web service providers and telecommunications companies with the US intelligence agencies as they conduct mass surveillance of the population.

The revelation of mass data collection lays waste to US officials’ claims to be respecting US citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights. “It’s really staggering in its breadth and seems to go beyond the NSA programs we have known about for awhile,” said Andrew Crocker, chief attorney of the Electronic Freedom Foundation to USA Today of the revelations. “It’s hard to even anticipate what kind of arguments the government could make for the constitutionality or legality of this program,” he said.

The wire-tapping led to the June 2015 resignation of the company’s chief information security officer, Alex Stamos, whose security team had discovered the program and initially believed it to be the work of hackers.

Yahoo responded feebly to the reports of mass spying, stating, “Yahoo is a law abiding company, and complies with the laws of the United States.” On Wednesday, the company declared that the Reuters story had been “misleading” and “the mail scanning described in the article does not exist on our systems.”

The latest revelation of complicity in the US’s surveillance programs against the population has placed Yahoo’s viability as a brand in question. Last week, the company revealed that nearly 500 million email users had their accounts compromised by hackers, which has led to the company’s security protocol being examined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In addition, Yahoo’s $4.8 billion sell-off of its web media division to telecommunications firm Verizon has been placed in question due to the latest revelation.

While other internet corporations released press statements denying any complicity in similar surveillance practices, a report in the Intercept noted that, rather than being attributed to US officials, the Yahoo story had been sourced to former employees of the company itself. This raised “the possibility that similar orders have been issued to other major service providers,” though the latter have not come forward yet. Similarly, Joseph Lorenzo Hall of the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, DC told USA Today that he “would be surprised if other large email providers were not also targeted.”

The report Tuesday is not the first time Yahoo and other service providers have been found to be in collusion with US government spying.

The June 2013 revelations of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden showed that internet companies such as Yahoo, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Skype, YouTube and others had long been complicit in the US government’s PRISM program. Under PRISM, the US government has the ability to record and store all web-based data hosted by the selected companies. According to the NSA at the time, nearly 91 percent of data collected online by the intelligence agency came by way of the PRISM program.

An October 2014 report by the Intercept revealed that the NSA and the Central Security Service (CSS) had struck secret contractual agreements with “specific named US commercial entities to conduct SIGINT [signals intelligence] enabling programs and operations” on private communications.

The latest revelation also exposes the fraud of the misnamed USA Freedom Act, enacted by the Obama administration in June 2015 in an effort to head off popular anger at the NSA spying programs. Billed at the time as having “sharply curtailed” US surveillance, the USA Freedom Act merely placed the task of mass data collection into the hands of private corporations working in close collaboration with the US government, while laying the groundwork for an ever-expanding surveillance of the population.

According to the Guardian, “[T]his Yahoo story seems to be an escalation of this type of… ‘upstream’ surveillance, which was once done by the NSA by secretly wiretapping internet cables.” The comment continues, “[S]ince many email companies have started encrypting their emails… The US government now seems to be moving to force internet companies to do this type of mass surveillance for them, on the companies’ servers, where the data remains accessible.”

Escalating war games in the South China Sea

Peter Symonds

Even as Washington ramps up its war plans in Syria and confrontation with Russia, the South China Sea continues to be a dangerous flashpoint, with a flurry of military exercises by the United States and its allies.

Tensions in the South China Sea have dramatically worsened over the past five years as the Obama administration has encouraged countries like the Philippines and Vietnam to take a more aggressive stance in their territorial disputes with China. The stand-off has only escalated in the wake of a ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in July in favour of the US-backed Philippine legal challenge to China’s maritime claims.

Washington is now exploiting “freedom of navigation” as the pretext for strengthening military ties with South East Asian countries and pushing its Asian allies to consolidate their own military relations. The South China Sea is critical to the Pentagon’s AirSea Battle strategy for war against China, which foreshadows a massive aerial and missile bombardment of the Chinese mainland, supplemented by a naval blockade.

The result is a dangerous intensification of military activity in the South China Sea as indicated by the current war games taking place. These include:

* Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Singapore have begun three weeks of joint military exercises, including in the South China Sea. The activities involving troops, warships and military aircraft are taking place under the umbrella of the Five Powers Defence Arrangement signed in 1971 that commits members to consult if Malaysia or Singapore come under attack.

* Indonesia is currently staging its largest ever air force exercise near its Natuna Islands in the South China Sea. More than 2,000 air force personnel are taking part in the exercises, which involve Russian Sukhoi and F-16 fighter jets. While China acknowledges Indonesian sovereignty over the Natunas, its maritime claims intersect with Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone, resulting in confrontations in June between Chinese fishing vessels and the Indonesian navy.

* Despite rising tensions between Washington and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, the two countries are engaged in joint military exercises involving amphibious landing drills. About 1,400 US Marines and sailors are operating with 500 Philippine military personnel “to prepare to operate better during a natural disaster or conflict.” Duterte has declared that the war games will be the last with the United States, but his remarks were softened by the Philippine Defence Department, which declared that it had received no orders regarding the suspension of future exercises with the US.

* Two US warships—the guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain and submarine tender USS Frank Cable—visited Vietnam’s Cam Ranh Bay on Sunday as part of US efforts to boost military ties with Hanoi. The port call was the first by American naval vessels to the strategic base since relations between the two countries were normalised in 1995. The visit followed the seventh round of joint naval exercises that began last week.

The Chinese response to the US military build-up in the South China Sea and throughout Asia has been on the one hand to boost its own military, while on the other to seek an accommodation with Washington. There is nothing progressive about the actions of the Chinese Communist Party regime, which represents the interests of a super-rich oligarchy, not the working class in China or internationally. All its moves—including the reclamation of islets and reefs in the South China Sea and joint naval exercises last month with Russia—are seized on by the US to justify its military expansion in Asia, and only heighten the danger of war.

The Pentagon’s determination to maintain US dominance in the South China Sea was expressed very directly by retired Admiral Dennis Blair, former commander of US Pacific Command and National Security director.

Speaking on Monday on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Four Corners” program, Blair said: “If the Chinese had their way and the entire South China Sea were their own territory which they could keep the United States and other armed forces from operating [in], it would be absolutely intolerable for the United States and we’re not going to allow that to happen.”

The US has repeatedly pointed to Chinese reclamation activities in the South China Sea, including the building of docks and runways, as proof that Beijing is militarising its islets to assert its dominance over surrounding waters. Blair, however, was dismissive of the installations’ military value saying: “In serious war fighting neutralising it [the facilities], it’s probably 10 to 15 minutes worth of work.”

Blair made a specific call for Australia to join the US in conducting joint patrols in the South China Sea to “show when they need to they will send their armed forces into international airspace and water.” The US navy has already conducted three provocative “freedom of navigation” operations to intrude within the 12-nautical-mile territorial limits claimed by China around its islets.

The admiral also referred to the dangers of war, pointing to “a notable inability for the two of us [the US and China] to understand what’s going on on the other side and to find compromises… that’s the kind of relationship that can sort of escalate over time.” Asked if this meant conflict, he said: “Yes, yeah… misunderstanding and then fear and conflict.”

Also interviewed on the program, Professor Graham Allison, from the Harvard Kennedy School, warned: “I would say in general when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power you’re in a period… of severe structural stress in which lots of things can go wrong, not because someone wants a war… Who should rule the South China Sea? Xi Jinping thinks China should, and the Americans say no for 70 years we’ve been there as the predominant power… Now can you imagine that leading to a conflict that then escalates to a war that neither would’ve chosen? Unfortunately I can.”

The Obama administration’s “pivot” or “rebalance” to Asia, formally announced in 2011, to ensure America’s continued dominance in Asia includes a military build-up and planning for just such an eventuality. The Pentagon is already committed to dispatching 60 percent of its overseas naval and air force assets to the Asia Pacific by 2020, including its most advanced weaponry. Last week US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter announced the “third phase” of the military “rebalance,” including the development of a new range of weapon systems particularly designed for war against China.

With Washington having created a tense standoff in the South China Sea, any incident or accident, involving China and the US or one of its allies, carries the danger of triggering a chain of events that leads to conflict between two nuclear-armed powers.

Beating the drums for war with Russia

Bill Van Auken

On September 30, the World Socialist Web Site warned: “It is evident… that the question of whether an escalation of the US intervention in Syria can wait until after the US election of November 8 has become the subject of heated debate within the US ruling establishment.”

It has taken barely a week for this assessment to find decisive confirmation. It has been fully established that the Obama administration is holding precisely such a debate.

On Wednesday, the so-called Principals Committee, consisting of the secretaries of defense and state, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA director, as well as top presidential security aides, convened at the White House to consider proposals to attack Syrian government forces with cruise missiles as well as other acts of military aggression.

Both the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff are reportedly in favor of such an escalation, which carries with it the real prospect of a direct armed confrontation between the US and Russia, the world’s two largest nuclear powers.

Reflecting the growing support within sections of the US establishment for a far wider war, key sections of the media, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, have weighed in on the side of those within the military and intelligence apparatus advocating a new eruption of American militarism.

Among the most explicit examples is an opinion column by John McCain, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, published in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal. McCain indicts the Syrian government and its ally, Russia, for having “slaughtered countless civilians” through “relentless, indiscriminate bombing.” This is being written by an individual who was one of the most enthusiastic proponents of the “shock and awe” war in Iraq that cost over 1 million Iraqi lives.

The Republican senator writes: “The US and its coalition partners must issue an ultimatum to [Syrian President] Assad--stop flying or lose your aircraft--and be prepared to follow through. If Russia continues its indiscriminate bombing, we should make clear that we will take steps to hold its aircraft at greater risk.”

McCain also calls for the creation of “safe zones” for Syrian civilians protected by the US military and “more robust military assistance” to the so-called “rebels.” He acknowledges that this strategy “will undoubtedly entail greater costs,” but provides no specific indication as to the nature of these costs or who will pay them. McCain does not even hint at the catastrophic global implications of a military confrontation between Washington and Moscow.

Similarly, in an editorial Wednesday, the Washington Post asserts that Washington’s policy has failed in Syria because the US has “refused to use military pressure against the regime of Bashar al-Assad.” The newspaper complains that the Obama administration’s failure to carry out a more direct military intervention in Syria has resulted in “the shrinking of US influence, to Russia’s gain,” and approvingly cites CIA and Pentagon proposals for cruise missile attacks and the provision of more sophisticated weaponry to the “rebels.”

Finally, the New York Times published a front-page lead article Wednesday warning that Russia was using the period between now and the January 2017 inauguration of the next US president as a “window of opportunity” to “move aggressively” in providing military support for the Syrian government. The article favorably reports proposals for US air strikes and goes on to cite unnamed US officials as arguing that Washington could turn Syria into a “quagmire” for Russia, “particularly if the Arab states that support the rebels supply them with antiaircraft weapons and Islamic terrorists decide to retaliate by attacking Russian cities.”

This passage echoes an earlier warning from the top US State Department spokesman that the response of Islamist forces to Russia’s military actions in Syria could “include attacks against Russian interests, perhaps even Russian cities.”

The implications are unmistakable. Washington exerts overwhelming operational influence over the Islamist militias that have constituted the principal fighting force in the five-year-old, CIA-orchestrated war for regime change in Syria. Just as it directed them to attack the government in Damascus, it could order them to do the same in Moscow.

The article is supplemented by an opinion piece by Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman, who writes in his signature bully boy style, “Isn’t it time we give Putin a dose of his own medicine?”

While acknowledging that a military confrontation with Russia poses the direct threat of nuclear war, he declares, “But we also cannot just keep turning the other cheek” in regard to “Putin’s behavior in Syria and Ukraine.” He denounces Russia for “mercilessly bombing civilians in Aleppo” and twice charges Russian President Vladimir Putin with violating “basic civilized norms.”

Even from a columnist who has established the gold standard for cynicism and deceit, Friedman’s invocation of “basic civilized norms” leaves one somewhat slack-jawed.

There is not a single war of aggression launched by US imperialism for which he has failed to serve as a fanatical cheerleader. The same man who today laments the Russian bombing of east Aleppo in 1999 wrote in response to the US bombing of Serbia: “It should be lights out in Belgrade: every power grid, water pipe, bridge, road and war-related factory has to be targeted… [W]e will set your country back by pulverizing you.”

Less than four years later he played the same role in relation to Iraq, declaring before the 2003 invasion that he had no problem with “a war for oil,” and writing afterwards that the US had attacked Iraq “for one simple reason: because we could...”

Such are the civilized norms observed by the man from the Times .

Underlying the frenzied support for military escalation in Syria is the fact that the various terrorist organizations Washington has used as its proxy forces--including those directly affiliated to Al Qaeda--are on the verge of a complete debacle in Aleppo, threatening a strategic defeat in the five-and-a-half-year war to bring down Assad, an ally of Russia and Iran, and install a US puppet government in Damascus.

Such an outcome would represent a serious reversal for the policy pursued by US imperialism for the last quarter century, in the wake of the Moscow Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union. Washington saw this development as opening an unobstructed path to its pursuit of global hegemony. It adopted the policy of exploiting its military supremacy as a means of offsetting the decline in its global economic position.

The element of hysteria in response to Moscow’s actions in Syria stems from the fact that both Russia and China are beginning to frustrate this policy.

The media’s lurid claims of Russian aggression notwithstanding, there is no question that in Syria, as in Ukraine and the South China Sea, it is US imperialism that is the aggressor, provoking defensive reactions from both Russia and China. That, however, does not impart any progressive content to the policies being pursued by the Russian government. If Putin could get a deal with Washington that preserved the interests of both his government and those of US imperialism, he would sign it in a minute.

Unable to do so, and in the face of growing economic crisis and signs of social unrest at home, Putin has resorted to the promotion of Russian nationalism and an increasing reliance on the residual military power he inherited from the Soviet Union.

In the past few days, the Russian government has ordered the deployment of additional surface-to-air missile batteries to Syria and suspended an agreement with Washington for the destruction of weapons-grade plutonium. At the same time, pro-government Russian newspapers have warned of the threat a third world war and the government has launched a major civil defense exercise in preparation for just such an eventuality.

A policy of national defense by a regime that represents the interests of Russia’s capitalist oligarchy can only fuel the drive to world war. The masses of Russian working people confront the ultimate consequence of the Stalinist liquidation of the USSR in the form of a growing threat of nuclear holocaust.

The only force that can prevent a new world war is the international working class, organized independently and mobilized in a struggle against capitalism, the source of war. This requires the building of an international socialist leadership, and there is no time to lose.

We urge all of our readers to attend the November 5 emergency conference in Detroit, “Socialism vs. Capitalism & War,” as a critical step in this fight. Visit the conference web site and register today!

Syriza government assaults Greek retirees

Katerina Selin

On Monday, the Greek government headed by the pseudo-left party Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left) mobilised police to brutally attack a small group of retirees who marched through Athens city center to request a meeting with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. Police blocked the street to the parliament building with police cars and forcibly dispersed the demonstration.

When angry pensioners tried to break through the blockade and overturn a police car, units of riot police tossed tear gas into the crowd at close range. Elderly men and women, some with crutches, had to retreat, gasping for breath. Despite the attacks, the retirees held a small rally. A large poster read “Struggle to survive - restoration of pensions - free public health care.”

Around 25,000 Greek pensioners are affected by the new drastic cuts introduced by the Syriza government. In recent months, the government has already implemented pension cuts, which had been agreed as part of the last austerity package. From Tuesday onwards, additional professions, including media technicians, sailors, lawyers, notaries and gas station owners, are being forced to accept a reduction in their supplementary pensions of up to 40 percent. In Greece, thousands of people are dependent on supplementary pensions.

The reckless and brutal attack on defenseless pensioners once again exposes the reactionary nature of the pseudo-left Syriza government. The development confirms the warning made by the World Socialist Web Site that police violence against refugees, which reached a new peak this year, was in fact directed against the entire working class.

The Athens police is under the command of Syriza MP and Minister for Public Safety Nikos Toskas, an army general, who as a member of the social democratic PASOK already headed the office of the Deputy Minister of Defence between 2009 and 2011, and worked as Secretary of State in the Department of Defense in the first Syriza government, from January to September 2015.

The government is apparently concerned that the tear gas attack could fuel further protests. According to media reports, Tsipras has instructed Toskas to immediately prohibit any further use of tear gas against demonstrating workers and pensioners and assume political responsibility for the incident. The criticism of the police, both in the ranks of Syriza and the opposition, is utterly cynical. The use of such gas against the pensioners was not an oversight, but rather revealed the true function of the police as an instrument of the bourgeois state. In reality, the ruling class needs an aggressive police force to defend its property and enforce the austerity measures against workers.

Last week, the Greek Parliament officially approved the establishment of a new privatization fund, which envisages the sale of state run gas and water works. On September 27, 152 MPs from the ruling parties Syriza and Anel (Independent Greeks)—i.e., all but one, who was absent due to illness—voted for the package, while 141 members of the opposition voted against. International creditors had demanded that the privatization plans be adopted before releasing the next financial tranche to the country of 2.8 billion euros. In Athens, there were demonstrations against the privatization, and employees of the water works in Thessaloniki and Athens went on strike on the day of the vote.

The current austerity measures are part of the third memorandum, agreed by the Syriza government in 2015 with the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund (the so-called Troika). In mid-October, representatives of the Troika went once again to Athens to check on the “progress” of the country’s austerity measures.

On Monday, the Greek government presented in Parliament its budget for 2017, which provides for a growth target of 2.7 percent and a primary surplus of 1.8 percent. These targets are to be reached through massive cuts and tax increases totalling around one billion euros in 2017 (together with the measures agreed in 2016 making a grand total of about 3-4 billion euros). On October 15, new price increases (on heating oil and excise tax on electricity) come into force. In 2017, an increase in the price of petrol is planned together with the introduction of a special fee for telephones, as well as special taxes on items such as cigarettes and coffee.

The country’s national debt is expected to increase in absolute terms to 318.6 billion euros, with the ratio of debt to GDP falling slightly from 178.9 to 174.8 per cent. The government claims that it needs to make major savings to fund limited social spending. The “Social solidarity income” (KEA), which so far exists only in some municipalities, is to be extended from January 2017 to all of Greece—affecting about 700,000 persons.

The KEA is a pittance in light of the social plight of thousands of Greek families and, like the Hartz IV laws in Germany, is aimed at increasing labor flexibility. A family of two adults and two children will be entitled to 400 euros a month, which will be calculated in line with parental income. Unemployed single parents with one child will receive 300 euros. Any person receiving more than 100 euros social grant in addition to their income, will receives just half the money in cash and the other half in the form of a social ticket, which can be used in shops. Those under 65 must participate in work schemes.

The EU is pushing for the rapid implementation of further brutal austerity measures in Greece. In a discussion on Greek economic policy in the European Parliament on Tuesday the EU’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici called on the Greek government to fulfill all the demands of the EU institutions by the following Monday.

Creditors are insisting on a reform of the labor market. Since April of this year, an independent “group of experts to review Greek labor market institutions” has been reviewing a number of proposals relating to the minimum wage as well as the legal regulation of strikes and contract bargaining. On September 27, the “experts”, including two German professors, published their recommendations and are negotiating with the Greek Minister of Labour, Greek unions and employers’ associations.

Six years of austerity have led to an unprecedented social decline in Greece. This finds one expression in a significant decline in the population. Recent figures from the Greek statistics authority ELSTAT show that the gap between birth and death rates from 2011 to 2015 continues to rise. The country’s population has decreased by about 90,000 people. That corresponds to the population of a major Greek city. During the year 2011, 4,671 more deaths were registered than births. By 2015, 29,365 more people died than were born. The data for 2016 indicates a further reduction in the population.

This development is a direct result of austerity. Young people have no financial security to start a family, while elderly people die prematurely from the lack of health care. The country’s suicide rate has risen dramatically during the crisis.

As the social divide increases, so too does the harassment by the authorities of the most oppressed layers of the working class. One particularly shocking case of class justice took place in the city of Larissa on September. A 51-year-old woman was sentenced to 15 years in prison and a fine of 150,000 euros for alleged fraud and misappropriation of state funds. Twenty years ago, she had forged her school records in order to apply for a job as a cleaner in public nursery schools.

The case against this woman, which is now before the Court of Appeal, throws a spotlight on the social situation in Greece under a supposedly leftist government. Not one of the bankers, businessmen or politicians who enriched themselves in recent years with criminal activities in the state apparatus or in the financial markets, and who caused the country’s economic crisis has been prosecuted, let alone sent to prison.

These class tensions find expression in a widespread rejection of all bourgeois parties, in particular Syriza. A survey by Public Issue published on Sunday in the Syriza-affiliated newspaper Avgi, estimates that 90 percent of respondents are dissatisfied with the government and 80 percent dissatisfied with the opposition. A recent election forecast, drawn up by the University of Macedonia, gives Syriza just 16 percent of the vote with the conservative New Democracy (ND) polling at 28.5 percent.