Colombian president receives Nobel Peace Prize for rejected accord with the FARC

Andrea Lobo

Last Friday, Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the four years of negotiations to reach a peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas. The announcement came five days after Colombians narrowly rejected the accord in a referendum marked by widespread abstention.

As the second Colombian to receive a Nobel prize—after the renowned novelist Gabriel García Marquez received the prize for literature in 1982—Santos accepted it “in the name of all Colombians.” He also announced on Sunday that the $930,000 reward will be “donated for the reparation of the victims” of the civil war.

This attempt to exploit the prize to promote national unity fell flat, however, in the face of the deep and bitter divisions revealed by the unexpected rejection of the accord in a referendum that saw only a 37 percent turnout and a margin of victory for the “no” camp of just 60,000 votes out of the 13 million ballots cast.

The selection of Santos for the Nobel Peace Prize only underscores the dubious character of this distinction, which has been bestowed on the likes of Barack Obama in the midst of military escalation in Afghanistan and drone assassinations, and figures ranging from the US war criminal Henry Kissinger to the right-wing Israeli leader and former terrorist Menachem Begin.

As is often the case, the selection of Santos for the prize was driven by definite political and economic interests. The bourgeoisie internationally has a serious stake in the Colombian accord, which it hopes will end the armed conflict, opening up the country to far more intensive penetration by transnational capital. At the same time, it would serve to turn the FARC, the last major guerrilla movement, into a new bourgeois party tasked with containing and diverting the struggles of the Colombian working class.

In the weeks prior to the vote, President Santos had declared that the only “Plan B” in the event of the accord’s rejection was “going back to war,” and that renegotiating the deal was “categorically impossible.” His top negotiator in the talks in Havana, Cuba, Humberto de la Calle, had said that a “no” vote would be the fault of the FARC and that, “There are people that are not clear that the agreement cannot be renegotiated.” De la Calle has now offered to resign, while another government negotiator complained that there were no plans to renegotiate, and FARC leaders have expressed resistance to changing the accord.

Meanwhile, Santos has renewed the ceasefire, but only until October 31, leading the FARC leaders to order their fighters to prepare to go to emergency safe zones. The Santos government has also initiated negotiations with the far-right figures leading the “no” campaign: former presidents Álvaro Uribe and Andrés Pastrana, granting them the political center stage after the referendum.

While claiming to prefer a “better accord” with the FARC, Uribe and the elements around him represent the blood-soaked interests of the aristocratic ranchers and landowners who prefer the annihilation of the remaining guerrillas and the continuation of land seizures and control.

While recognizing the “real danger the peace process will come to a halt and the civil war will flare up again,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee has now joined US Secretary of State John Kerry and other international figures in supporting the Santos-led negotiations with the FARC. The award text celebrates that, “Santos is now inviting all parties to participate in a broad-based national dialogue aimed at advancing the peace process. Even those who opposed the peace accord have welcomed such a dialogue.”

This year’s pool of 376 candidates is the largest ever—a reflection, as the head of the Nobel Institute Olav Njolstad put it, of “a world where there are a lot of conflicts…” Among the leading contenders for the prize were the White Helmets in Syria, a civil defense NGO funded by the US Agency for International Development and the British government that operates in close collaboration with the Al Qaeda-linked Islamist militias as a kind of propaganda arm in the war for regime change.

On Friday, US President Obama said that the Nobel committee “made the right decision,” and, along with John Kerry and several European politicians, congratulated Santos. These gestures around the Nobel prize notwithstanding, the rise in global warfare and the civil war in Colombia itself have been fueled by American and European imperialism’s attempt to impose global hegemony through military force.

Even before Colombia’s half-century-long war officially began in 1964, the US was already backing the landed oligarchy’s use of paramilitary and state forces to suppress armed guerrillas linked to the Stalinist Communist Party and sections of the Liberal Party that were operating in peasant communities and ended up forming the FARC.

These first efforts by the US government were embodied in Plan Lazo, a policy to “… execute paramilitary, sabotage and/or terrorist activities against known communist proponents,” as defined in a 1962 secret report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The counterinsurgency methods used to fight the guerrillas were given a cover under the US “war on drugs” beginning in the 1970s, as the FARC were reportedly using drug money to fund their operations. So, too, were right-wing paramilitaries aligned with the Colombian oligarchy, not to mention the CIA, which, in the 1980s, was transporting drugs out of Colombia to finance weapons for the Contra forces fighting against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

The continued assistance and direct US military involvement fueled the paramilitary death squads, which came to a peak with the $9 billion Plan Colombia to arm and train forces to fight the guerrillas. The plan elaborated during the Clinton administration in 1998, and implemented under Bush, became part of the “counterterrorism” efforts in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. The plan was then expanded into the Andean Regional Initiative to give military support to Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, and Panama.

During this period, the CIA and NSA were involved in a targeted assassination program using GPS-guided “smart bombs” to carry out extra-judicial killings of leaders of the FARC, which had been labeled as a terrorist group by the US State Department. Several thousand innocent peasants and workers were also extra-judicially murdered by the military and paramilitary forces under a grisly program dubbed “false positives.” Civilians were kidnapped, put into guerrilla uniforms and summarily executed and passed off as FARC combatants in order to reap bounty money offered by the Defense Ministry in conjunction with Plan Colombia.

For his part, the new peace laureate Santos has spent most of his political life immersed in this bloody imperialist violence. Part of a prominent family that owned the country’s largest newspaper, the conservative El Tiempo, of ex-president Eduardo Santos Montejo (1938-1942), Juan Manuel Santos made his way into the executive office after becoming a naval cadet in Colombia and graduating from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

After serving brief terms as a Minister of Commerce in 1991-1993 and as Minister of Finance under Pastrana in 2000-2002, he became a loyal follower of Uribe, founding the Social National Unity Party to support Uribe’s second presidency. As Defense Minister under Uribe from 2006 to 2010, he oversaw some of the most brutal attacks against the guerrillas and peasant communities as part of Plan Colombia, including the bombing of Ecuadorian territory in 2008 and the wave of “false positive” executions.

The government’s military advantage over the guerrillas was secured by 2007, but as minister and as president after 2010, he has continued to expand arms deals and military aid from the US, while increasing participation in US-Colombian joint training exercises aimed at militarizing the region.

Santos, along with the corrupt and militaristic ruling elite to which he belongs, has shared immense responsibility for the prolongation and costs of the war, which has led to more than 220,000 deaths and 6 million displaced—including over 3 million peasants expelled from key agricultural and mining areas—in more than 52 years of fighting.

The 2016 Nobel Peace Prize celebrates this political figure and a “peace accord” that grants virtual impunity for war crimes carried out by the government, the paramilitaries, and the FARC.

Santos’ economic and trade policies as minister and now president have focused on intensifying the exploitation of workers and peasants through devaluations of the peso and applying austerity measures ordered by the IMF, affecting virtually every area, with the exception of the security forces. He has also increased the economy’s dependence on mining and fossil fuel exports through trade agreements and currency devaluations, amplifying the effects of the fall in commodity prices: rising public debt, economic stagnation and an increase in the unemployment rate to over 12 percent.

Given the background of president Santos, his public approval rating of barely 21 percent and inability to garner national support for his “peace dialogues” with the FARC are no surprise. The Nobel prize—likely decided upon before the “no” vote in the referendum—was an attempt to counter popular hostility to Santos, which has become an impediment to the enactment of a deal seen as crucial for the plans of imperialism and the national ruling elite to continue their attacks against Colombia’s workers and peasants.

New data on poverty in the UK reveals mass pauperisation

Barry Mason

A recently published book, along with several reports, highlights the increasing levels of poverty and inequality in the UK. All note that the growth of poverty is particularly pronounced among young people.

A new book, Student Lives in Crisis: Deepening Inequality in Times of Austerity, published on September 21 and authored by Lorenza Antonucci, a senior lecturer in social policy and sociology at Teesside University, is based on studies of students’ lives in England, Italy and Sweden.

Antonucci shows how life chances of students with rich parents, who can subsidise their living costs at university, and the reliance on loans by many others has a “direct effect on the reproduction of inequality.”

Speaking to the Guardian newspaper Antonucci said, “The grants have gone. The loans are not enough and they (the Students Loan Company) assume that families will contribute. But families don’t have the amount of money that the state assumes they have…Students who have fewer resources are stressed and feel guilty that their family are in debt or have to mobilise their inheritance, and this puts pressure on young people at university.”

A report published in September by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) entitled, The Economic Circumstances of Different Generations: The Latest Picture, compares the financial well-being of young adults in their 30s to those of a decade earlier.

One of its findings is that, “Those born in the early 1980s were the first post-war cohort not to enjoy higher incomes in early adulthood than those born in the previous decade. This is partly the result of the overall stagnation of working-age incomes, but it also reflects the fact that the Great Recession hit the pay and employment of young adults the hardest.”

It also showed that those born in the 1980s, now in their early 30s, have a net median wealth of around £27,000 compared to those born in the 1970s who—when they were in their early 30s—had a net median wealth of around £53,000. Wealth was defined as housing, financial assets and pensions.

It went on to explain that among the reasons for the decline was the much lower rate of home-ownership among this cohort and the fall in access to better paying Defined Benefit (DB) pension schemes.

It noted, “At the age of 30, only 40 percent of those born in the 1980s were owner-occupiers, compared to at least 55 percent of the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1970s cohorts”. It adds, “Less than 10 percent of private-sector employees born in the 1980s were active members of a DB scheme compared to more than 15 percent of those born in the 1970s and nearly 40 percent of those born in the 1960s.”

A BBC news comment on the report quoted Campbell Robb of the Shelter housing charity. Robb said, “With sky-high house prices so out of step with average wages, it’s no wonder a whole generation are being priced out of a home of their own and left with no choice but expensive unstable private renting…with thousands of people forking out most their income on rent and left living one pay cheque to the next.”

A Resolution Foundation (RF) report also published September, Hanging on: The stresses and strains of Britain’s ‘just managing’ families, focuses on the nearly six million families—comprising 10 million adults—described as just managing financially. They are worse off today than 10 years ago just prior to the 2008 financial crisis.

The six million families are comprised of working age households on low to middle incomes with at least one person in work, mainly in full-time employment. The report notes, “An unprecedented pay squeeze, rising housing costs and the added financial pressure of having children mean that the typical incomes of ‘just managing’ families are lower than they were over a decade ago...While the income of ‘just managing’ families is principally wages from work, they are often topped up by welfare support because they account for two-thirds of all working families with children in receipt of tax credits. This has left them doubly exposed to Britain’s earning squeeze and cuts in welfare support to working families…”

It notes the fall in home ownership among this group, with a only a third owning their own home compared to two thirds in 1995, means they have to spend more of their income on housing. David Finch, a senior economic analyst at RF, noted, “This switch from owning to renting means that ‘just managing’ families are now having to set aside a quarter of their income on housing. As a result they have suffered over a decade of lost income growth.”

The RF’s press release noted the inability of this group to be able to save stating, “This squeeze means that such families now typically spend the entirety of their income with no money left aside for saving…over two-thirds…have less than a month’s income worth of saving.”

Finch’s warning over the level of savings is supported by recent research by the Money Advice Service (MAS). The government-funded MAS provides free-of-charge advice on money and financial decisions to people in the UK. Its Closing the Savings Gap reveals that 40 percent of the working population (16 million people) have savings of less than £100. In some parts of the country, the percentage having less than £100 in savings is even higher. In Wales, the North East and Yorkshire and Humberside, those with less than £100 is around 50 percent, while in the West Midlands and Northern Ireland it is around 55 percent.

The MAS report said 25 percent of the working population could be classed as “non-savers”. It added that; “just one emergency could easily push 16.8 million into debt.”

The reports above highlight the financial squeeze being imposed on the vast majority of the population that is fuelling staggering levels of inequality in the UK. An Oxfam briefing also published last month, How to Close Great Britain’s Great Divide, spelled out the growing chasm between an ultra rich elite and the rest of the population.

It noted, “The UK is one of the most unequal developed countries in the world. Three decades of high-level inequality have had a profound impact, leading many people to believe that they have little stake in society…” It continued, “Despite the fact that the UK is one of the richest countries in the world, one in five people live below the poverty line… According to data from the widely respected Credit Suisse, the richest 10 percent of the UK population own half the country’s total wealth (54 percent), and the richest one percent own nearly quarter (23 percent), while the poorest 20 percent of the population – nearly 13 million people – share just 0.8 percent of the country’s wealth between them.”

On taking office as prime minister, Conservative leader Theresa May professed concern for those who; “can just about manage”. While cynically pouring crocodile tears over the fate of the working class, the assembled Tories at this week’s annual conference made clear there will be no let up in their imposition of brutal austerity.

The systematic lowering of the living standards of the vast majority of the population will only continue as the Tories, following the 1997-2010 Labour government, protect the ill-gotten gains of the super rich.

Merkel promotes the return of German militarism to Africa

Johannes Stern

The German government is massively expanding its political, economic and military involvement in Africa. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is currently touring Mali, Niger and Ethiopia with a high-level delegation.

On Sunday, Merkel met President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in Mali’s capital Bamako. “We want to make a contribution to stabilising Mali so that it can make a good development,” she said. “It is important to us that we establish coherence in connection with our development cooperation and military support.”

In reality, there is no “development aid” taking place in Mali, but a military operation in which 650 German soldiers are participating. In Bamako, Merkel thanked the German troops there, saying, “Firstly, I want to thank you for your service, since this is quite a challenge given the unaccustomed temperatures and given the climatic conditions.”

An official report by the German government openly admits that what is involved in Mali is a military combat operation: “MINUSMA and French soldiers are attempting to bring the north of Mali back under the control of the government in Bamako, and in this are fighting against Islamic groups [emphasis added].” As well as MINUSMA, Germany is involved in two further missions in Mali: the EU training mission EUTM and a mission to train the Malian police to guard the country’s borders.

On Monday, Merkel met with President Mahamadou Issoufou of Niger in the country’s capital, Niamey. The chancellor announced financial support of 17 million euros, which above all is for the “fight against smugglers.” Berlin will also provide 10 million euros to equip the country’s armed forces, supposedly for the fight against terrorism.

A few days before Merkel’s visit, the German ambassador to Niger, Bernd von Münchow-Pohl, announced that following the US and France, Germany too now planned to establish a military base in Niger. “With the establishment of a German military base for aviation in Niamey, the MINUSMA mission should be supported,” Pohl was quoted saying. Germany was “ready to do more in the Sahel” and “take on more responsibility”.

The official reason for Merkel’s Africa trip is the opening of the so-called “Julius Nyerere Peace and Security Building” in Addis Ababa, which Germany had financed to the tune of 30 million euros. It contains the headquarters of the Africa Union, as well as a meeting chamber and facilities for directing military operations. Today, the chancellor is scheduled to deliver “a speech on the architecture of African peace and security,” according to a government spokesman.

The official propaganda cannot disguise the fact that Germany is increasingly pursuing a military course in Africa, collaborating with authoritarian governments to keep refugees in Africa, far from Europe, and above all in order to assert Berlin’s economic and geostrategic interests in this populous continent, rich in raw materials.

Before her departure, in an interview with news weekly Die Zeit, Merkel said, in the manner of a colonial master, “Now, of course, we can’t make the world better in one fell swoop. But if we want to pursue German interests, we must say realistically that Africa’s wellbeing is also in Germany’s interest.”

Whose “wellbeing” and which “German interests” are involved in Africa is especially apparent when one studies the current foreign policy strategy papers of the federal government and takes a look at history.

Merkel’s first extended trip to Africa since 2011 has been long prepared politically and is part of Germany’s return to an aggressive foreign policy. Just weeks after President Gauck and the government announced the end of German military restraint at the Munich Security in January 2014, Merkel’s cabinet agreed on “Africa Policy Guidelines.” This is a strategy paper of German imperialism to exploit the population and resource-rich continent in the 21st century.

In the first part of the guidelines, under the heading, “Background: growing relevance of Africa for Germany and Europe”, one reads, “The potential of Africa arises from demographic change with a future market with high economic growth, rich natural resources, potential for agricultural production and self-sufficient food security ... African markets are developing dynamically and—beyond the extractive industries—will be of growing interest to German business.”

The second section, “Our engagement in Africa”, demands “Germany’s engagement in Africa in the spheres of politics, security and development policy has to be strengthened in a targeted fashion.” The government “aims to act early and swiftly, in a decisive and substantive manner, based on values and human rights.” This also includes military interventions. The government wants “to use the whole spectrum of means available to it in the fields of politics, security, development and regional policy, business, academia and culture [emphasis in original].”

Since the adoption of the paper, Berlin is increasingly seeking to impose its economic and geopolitical interests under the guise of the fight against terrorism and the fight against the “causes of flight” in Africa. Already in early 2013, the Bundestag (parliament) decided to support the French military intervention in Mali and deploy the Bundeswehr in the country. Since then, the mission has been repeatedly extended. Other German missions are currently under way in Senegal, Central Africa, the Horn of Africa, Western Sahara, Sudan, Southern Sudan and Somalia, and all have been extended or expanded.

The crowing of the Bundeswehr in Africa, like the return of German militarism to Eastern Europe and the military interventions in the Middle East, stands in the tradition of German colonial and great-power politics. In his notorious speech to the Reichstag (parliament) on December 6, 1897, when the future Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow called for Germany, as a “nation that had come too late,” for the first time to have a “place in the sun,” he meant primarily the acquisition of colonies in Africa.

As a result, the German Empire, although never able to catch up with the leading colonial powers France and England, was able to establish the so-called “German protectorates” formed at the beginning of World War I, creating the fourth largest colonial empire on earth. This included German Southwest Africa (today’s Namibia), German West Africa (today’s Togo, the eastern part of Ghana, Cameroon, the eastern part of Nigeria, parts of Chad, the Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo and Gabon), German East Africa (today’s Tanzania and Rwanda) and German Witu (today southern Kenya).

Germany had to give up its colonies following defeat in World War I. But under Hitler, sections of the German elite were again enthusiastic for a German colonial empire in Africa, which could serve as a “tropical extension” to a Europe dominated by Germany. In a memorandum dated July 1940, the director of the Deutsche Bank and head of the Economic Colonial Political Office of the NSDAP (Nazi party), Kurt Weigelt, summarised the interests of the Third Reich as follows:

“Seen economically, the countries on the Guinea coast are of the highest worth. Based on our old local possessions (Togo and Cameroon), the Gold Coast-Togo-Dahomey-Nigeria-Cameroon form the ideal central element of Germany’s possessions in Africa. With well over 30 million inhabitants, this area is not only the optimum of the tropical extension but with a few exceptions, (copper), provides all the nationally important economic needs of the homeland.”

He continues: “It is completed from a forestry products perspective with the inclusion of French Congo, whereby it also extends to the Belgian Congo, which would also meet the needs for copper. On the way to this area, lie the iron ore reserves of Conakry and the phosphates of French Morocco (special arrangements), as well as air and marine bases at Bathhurst, or Dakar.”

Seventy-five years after the fall of Nazi Germany, the time has come again when the German elites aggressively enter the new “scramble for Africa.” As in the past, this will not only worsen the plight of the local population, but also fuel the conflict between the imperialist powers themselves.

The German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA), a Hamburg research institute that advises, among others, the foreign ministry, noted in a 2014 paper on the new German Strategy for Africa: “Increasingly, the African continent is the scene of new geostrategic rivalries between the European Union, China, the US and other leading powers such as India, Brazil and Turkey. German foreign policy is bound to reflect the new constellations and challenges and new conceptions towards Africa.”

Another factor behind the German offensive in Africa is Berlin’s fear of a revolutionary uprising of the African masses. The GIGA paper warns: “From Mauritania to Sudan, for decades a deep-seated distrust of governments and governors has existed. In the eyes of the population, these have done little or nothing [...] In the villages of the Sahel, there is hardly any electricity, few streets and the population is—apart from a few circles of the elite—completely impoverished and has no prospect of ever getting a job. The Sahel is one of the poorest regions of the world. For many years, experts have warned of social unrest.”

“Existential crisis” dominates IMF meeting on world economy

Nick Beams

The annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund held over the weekend in Washington did not confront an immediate crisis, such as in 2009 in the midst of the meltdown of the global financial system, or in 2012, when the euro was under threat.

But in a profound sense, the meeting faced something even more serious. The gathering of the world’s finance ministers and central bankers was marked by what the Financial Times described as an “existential crisis”—fears of growing protectionism and divisions in the world economy and the implications of the mounting hostility of broad masses of people all over the world, most significantly in the advanced countries, to the prevailing economic and political order.

The participants chose to label these fears as “Trump angst,” describing the Republican presidential contender as a sort of “Voldemort for the global economic order,” a reference to the villain in the Harry Potter stories whose “name is only spoken in hushed tones and behind closed doors.”

Trump, however is only a particularly vulgar expression of the decay and disintegration of the post-World War II economic order and the rupture in official politics it is producing.

IMF managing director Christine Lagarde touched on some of the growing concerns, while failing to give any indication as to how they might be addressed. Advanced economies, she said in her speech to open the meeting, remained “stuck in a low-growth, low-investment, low-inflation cycle,” and while growth in emerging markets was picking up, commodity exporters were “struggling with low commodity prices.”

“Putting it simply, growth has been too low for too long and benefiting too few,” she continued, with the social and political consequences arising from high inequality “becoming all too apparent.”

Trade had become a political football and supporters of economic integration and cooperation were “on the defensive.”

Reviewing the principles on which the IMF was founded in 1944, amid the economic carnage caused by the Depression and World War II, she noted that if the “founders were here today, they would surely be concerned. They shared a conviction that trade and openness are beneficial to those who embrace them. They agreed that multilateral dialogue is key to the stability of the global economy … Now, those principles are facing their biggest test in decades.”

Her remarks on the dangers to the IMF’s founding principles were underscored by Suma Chakrabarti, the president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. “In my lifetime I cannot remember anything like the scepticism about these fundamental values that we see today,” he said.

Some of the deep-going problems of the global economic and political order were the subject of a column by former US treasury secretary Lawrence Summers published in the Financial Times on Monday. Summing up the atmosphere at the IMF gathering, he pointed to the “spectre of secular stagnation and inadequate economic growth” on the one hand, and the “ascendant populism and global disintegration” on the other. The “pervasive concern” was that “traditional leaders were losing their grip and the global economy was entering into unexplored and dangerous territory.”

Summers has held the view for some years that the financial crisis, while very serious, is not the underlying cause of the present “secular stagnation”—a term first coined in the 1930s to describe a situation of ongoing low investment and low economic growth. Rather, low interest rates reflect an overabundance of savings relative to investment that started to emerge as far back as the mid-1980s, and this is the basic cause of the failure of predictions that growth would be restored in the years following the 2008 crash.

“After seven years of economic over-optimism,” he wrote in his column, “there is growing awareness that challenges are not so much a legacy of the financial crisis as of deep structural changes in the global economy.”

While Summers did not make the point, his remarks bring to mind much of the economic commentary of the 1920s, when it was argued that if only the correct monetary policies were pursued, it would be possible to return to pre-World War I conditions. Those attempts foundered and the economic crisis intensified, leading to the Great Depression and ultimately World War II, because the eruption of the Great War was itself the expression of a breakdown in the functioning of the global capitalist economy, the conditions for which had built up in the preceding period.

On the present situation, Summers noted there was “increasing reason to doubt” that the industrial world was capable of “simultaneously enjoying reasonable interest rates that support savers, financial stability and adequate economic growth at the same time. Saving has become overabundant, and new investment insufficient and stagnation secular rather than transient.”

It was hardly surprising that when economic growth fell short year after year and its beneficiaries were a small subset of the population, electorates turn surly, losing confidence “both in the competence of economic leaders and in their commitment to serving the wider public rather than the global elite.”

Summers is a Keynesian in his present economic outlook and he bases his policy prescriptions on what he perceives to be a deficiency in economic demand. But falling demand in itself explains nothing. It is just another description of ongoing stagnation.

The key question is why has demand, particularly investment demand, which is the dynamic force in the capitalist economy, declined? The answer to this question is to be found not in the relations as they appear on the surface of the market economy, but within the sphere of production.

In the capitalist economy, production is motivated at the most fundamental level not by the need for economic growth or a desire to meet social need, but by the drive for profit and nothing else. If profit rates exhibit a tendency to decline, investment is cut back, leading in turn to lower economic growth, giving rise to a further decline in investment spending, resulting in long-term lower growth or even “secular stagnation.”

These basic considerations are crucial in assessing the prescriptions offered by Summers and other like-minded would-be reformers of the capitalist system.

According to Summers, the task is to find a path forward through which international co-operation is supported and enhanced. This means focusing on the “concerns of a broad middle class rather than of global elites.” Accordingly, “austerity economics” must be rejected in favour of “investment economics,” and the “focus of international economic cooperation more generally needs to shift from opportunities for capital to better outcomes for labour.”

However, these two goals are incompatible within the capitalist economy. The decline in growth is the outcome of a decline in investment, which in turn reflects a fall in profit rates and profit expectations.

While profits can be accumulated for a period through financial speculation and manipulation, in the final analysis they rest on the extraction of surplus value from the working class. Thus, to shift opportunities from capital to labour means a lowering in the rate of profit, a further decline in investment and ongoing secular stagnation, if not worse.

In short, there is an objective contradiction between the political objectives espoused by Summers and underlying objective economic relations. The very measures he advocates to stem what he calls “angry politics” serve to worsen the economic situation, and the measures required to produce a restoration of profits can only bring further eruptions from below.

It is not the first time that such contradictions have made their appearance in global economics and politics. They were clearly laid out by Leon Trotsky in a speech to the Third Congress of the Communist International in June 1921. Analysing the situation confronting the ruling classes following the breakdown of the capitalist order which had erupted with World War I, Trotsky noted that “in order to restore the class equilibrium, they have to ruin the economy; in order to restore the economy, they have to disrupt the class equilibrium. That is the vicious circle that grips the economy and its superstructure.”

Marx drew out long ago that bourgeois economists believed no problem would ever arise in the capitalist economy if only it proceeded according to the text book. However, the text book is written on the assumption that capitalism, based on private profit, is a natural and therefore eternal system of socio-economic organisation, and thus contradictions such as falling profits, arising from its very foundations, are excluded or papered over.

In the real world, however, as opposed to the text book, these contradictions cannot be papered over, much less overcome by appeals from Summers and others and for the global elites to “see reason” and change course.

As in the period of the 1920s and 1930s, they will only intensify, leading to greater global conflicts as the struggle for markets and profits intensifies—a situation that leads ultimately to war—coupled with deeper attacks on the working class and the development of ever more authoritarian forms of rule to suppress the anger from below.

The only solution to the deepening crisis is not a series of impossible reforms. Rather, the task is the transformation of the increasing anger and hostility to the global economic and political order into a conscious political movement based on the program of international socialism to overthrow the outmoded capitalist profit system itself. That political lesson has been underscored by the IMF meeting.

Yemeni war intensifies following Saudi bombing of funeral

Peter Symonds

The conflict in Yemen is escalating following the criminal strikes by Saudi war planes on Saturday on a packed funeral hall that killed at least 140 civilians and wounded more than 500. The attack has provoked widespread outrage in the capital of Sanaa, not only against Saudi Arabia and its Gulf State allies that have intervened aggressively in the country’s civil war, but also against its backers—the United States, Britain and France.

The Saudi aircraft targeted the funeral of Sheikh Ali al-Rawishan, the father of Galal al-Rawishan, the interior minister in the Houthi-rebel led government in Sanaa. The interior minister and other political figures were among the dead and wounded. Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets on Sanaa on Sunday to condemn the strikes.

Ferea al-Muslimi, an analyst at the Sanaa Centre for Strategic Studies, told Reuters: “Despite all the massacres that have happened in this war, attacking a funeral is unprecedented and crosses a major red line in Yemeni culture. The air strikes killed powerful people, and their tribes and families will be drawn closer to the Houthis as they all try to retaliate.”

Saudi Arabia has denied responsibility, but its disavowal lacks any credibility as the war planes of the Saudi-led coalition are the only ones flying over Yemen. The Saudi air force has carried out thousands of sorties over Yemen in a bid to oust the Houthi rebels and their ally ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh from Sanaa and is responsible for numerous atrocities. Most recently Saudi aircraft attacked a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in August killing or wounding at least 30 people.

The Saudi attack threatens to widen the war not only in Yemen but by drawing in other countries, including the US, more directly. In a televised statement, Houthi leader Abdulmalek al-Houthi said he had evidence that Saudi Arabia was responsible for the air strikes, adding: “The Saudi war crimes in Yemen have been committed with the American green light.”

Yesterday, the US navy said that two missiles had been fired from “Houthi-controlled territory” in the direction of one of its warships, the guided-missile destroyer USS Mason operating off Yemen in the strategic Bab al Mandab strait. The missiles missed the US destroyer and Houthi officials denied responsibility for the attack. The USS Mason is part of a three-ship deployment armed with cruise missiles and carrying US Special Forces.

Saudi officials claimed yesterday that its forces destroyed two ballistic missiles fired by Houthi militia—one at a military base in Taif in central Saudi Arabia, and the second at Marib in central Yemen, which is held by the Houthi’s opponents loyal to Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi.

Hadi was installed as president in 2012 as part of a deal sponsored by the US and Saudi Arabia to end the upheavals that led to the resignation of his predecessor Saleh. The Houthis, who had boycotted the one-candidate election, moved against Hadi, seizing the capital and much of the north of the country. Hadi was forced to flee and currently resides in Saudi Arabia, which has been waging an air war since March 2015 to install him as their puppet. Saudi Arabia accuses the Shiite Houthis of being stooges for its regional arch-rival Iran.

In addition to thousands of air strikes, Saudi Arabia and its allies have mounted a naval blockade of Yemen, compounding the economic and social crisis facing the population. The country is the most impoverished in the Middle East, with one in five Yemenis in need of urgent food assistance and nine provinces on the brink of famine.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon yesterday condemned the Saudi air strikes in Yemen on Saturday and called for an international inquiry into whether the attack constituted a war crime. He dismissed Saudi denials, saying: “Aerial attacks by the Saudi-led coalition have already caused immense carnage and destroyed much of the country’s medical facilities and other vital civilian infrastructure. Excuses ring hollow given the pattern of violence throughout the conflict.”

Ban declared: “Despite mounting crimes by all parties to the conflict, we have yet to see the results of any credible investigations. This latest horrific incident demands a full inquiry.” However, as Ban himself is well aware, no serious international investigation will take place, not least because an examination of Saudi Arabia’s role would also highlight the involvement of the US and its allies.

The US is not only selling billions of dollars worth of precision-guided bombs and other military hardware to Saudi Arabia but also supporting the air war in Yemen with intelligence, targeting data and aerial refuelling. The Pentagon has deployed military personnel to coordinate with their Saudi counterparts and sent Special Forces teams into Yemen to assist in Saudi operations. In all likelihood, the US knew of, and possibly even planned, last weekend’s air strikes on Sanaa.

American officials and the media have sought both to downplay and distance Washington from the latest Saudi war crime. According to the US State Department, Secretary of State John Kerry rang Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir on Sunday to express “deep concern” over the attack. He urged them to “take urgent steps to ensure such an incident doesn’t happen again.”

Washington’s muted response to the latest Saudi atrocity is another glaring example of gross hypocrisy as the US ratchets up its war of words against Russia over its alleged attacks on civilians in Syria. Just last Friday, Kerry launched another tirade calling for “an appropriate investigation of war crimes,” declaring: “This is a targetted strategy to terrorise civilians and to kill anyone who is in the way of their military objectives.”

The reckless US actions in both Syria and Yemen, as well as its renewed war in Iraq, are creating a maelstrom of regional rivalry that threatens to engulf the entire Middle East and draw the major powers into direct conflict.

Billionaires back Black Lives Matter

Gabriel Black

The Ford Foundation, one of the most powerful private foundations in the world, with close ties to Wall Street and the US government, recently announced that it is overseeing the funneling of $100 million over six years to several organizations that play leading roles in the Black Lives Matter movement.

“We’re eager to deepen and expand this community of social justice funders,” the foundation’s announcement reads. “We want to nurture bold experiments and help the movement build the solid infrastructure that will enable it to flourish.”

Fortune Magazine wrote that the foundation’s announcement “would make anyone sit up straighter if they read it in a pitch deck [a presentation for startups seeking investor capital].” The contribution of such an immense sum of money is a gift from the ruling class that will allow Black Lives Matter to construct a bureaucracy of salaried staff and lobbyist positions. The influx of money will bring the movement greater influence through campaign contributions and integrate it even more closely with the Democratic Party and the corporate media.

The Ford Foundation will also provide various forms of consultancy and advisory assistance to a consortium of 14 groups associated with Black Lives Matter. Both the financing and the auxiliary services are to be organized through a fund called the Black-Led Movement Fund (BLMF), which is being overseen by a firm called Borealis Philanthropy.

The Ford Foundation receives the bulk of its endowment from corporate contributors and very wealthy donors through trusts and bequeathments. Established in 1936 by Ford Motor Company founder Henry Ford and his son, Edsel, it today boasts the third largest endowment of any foundation, valued at roughly $12.4 billion.

The Ford Foundation has for years maintained close ties to US military and intelligence agencies. A British historian of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Frances Stonor Saunders, described the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations in her book The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters as “conscious instruments of covert US policy, with directors and officers who were closely connected to, or even members of American intelligence.”

Today, the foundation is not formally connected to Ford Motor Company, but its board of directors is a “who’s who” of powerful corporate players, including CEOs and Wall Street lawyers. The chairperson of the board of directors is Irene Inouye, widow of deceased Democratic Senator Daniel Inouye.

The $100 million gift is an acknowledgment by a powerful section of the ruling class that the aims of the Black Lives Matter movement are aligned with those of Wall Street and the US government.

In an interview with Bloomberg News in 2015, the Ford Foundation’s current president, Darren Walker, an ex-banker at UBS, spelled out the pro-capitalist perspective underlying the foundation’s decision to bankroll Black Lives Matter:

“Inequality in many ways undermines our vision for a more just and fair world,” he said. “Indeed, the American people, and it’s not just the Trump supporters, are feeling increasingly vulnerable, increasingly insecure, and what that does is it drives wedges in our society, in our democracy. Inequality is bad for our democracy. It kills aspirations and dreams and makes us more cynical as a people… What kind of Capitalism do we want to have in America?”

The foundation’s support for Black Lives Matter is an investment in the defense of the profit system. Black Lives Matter portrays the world as divided along racial lines, proclaiming on its web site that it “sees itself as part of a global black family.”

It claims that black people are “extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, and especially ‘our’ children…” It explicitly rejects the notion that any other section of society has the right to raise grievances of its own. Its group history page notes: “Not just all lives. Black lives. Please do not change the conversation by talking about how your life matters, too.”

The petty-bourgeois leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement are now poised to exercise a significant degree of political influence directed at securing privileges within the political elite. A quick look at the founders of Black Lives Matter gives a sense of the opportunist and self-promotional character of the group as a whole. The official Black Lives Matter organization was founded by three people: Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi. The three met as members of BOLD (Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity). BOLD is one of the 14 organizations now being funded by the Black-Led Movement Fund.

One of these founders, Garza, runs an organization called the National Domestic Workers Alliance, on whose board sits Alta Starr. Starr oversees a fund at the Ford Foundation. She is also on the board of a foundation backed by billionaire George Soros, the Open Society Foundation’s Southern Initiative.

Patrisse Cullers is the director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. This organization was founded by Van Jones, a Democrat who worked under Obama as a special advisor on “green jobs, enterprise and innovation.” He is also a long time contributor to CNN. This organization also receives funds from the Open Society Foundation.

A leaked document from an October 2015 board meeting of the Soros-funded US Programs/Open Society revealed that the organization provided $650,000 “to invest in technical assistance and support for the groups at the core of the burgeoning #BlackLivesMatter movement.” The document notes that the board planned to discuss the difficulty of dealing with a de-centralized movement: “What happens when you want to throw a lot of money at a moment[sic], but there isn’t any place for it to go?” It was also raised that the Soros name could discredit Black Lives Matter if the public became aware of his financial support.

Many of the organizations on the list of Ford recipients are also members of the newly-formed “Movement for Black Lives,” which has published a policy agenda document centered on demands for greater government financing of black-owned businesses and institutions.

In an earlier period, nationalist movements such as the Black Panthers, however politically disoriented, had a genuine element of social struggle and conflict with the state. While their political program was of a petty-bourgeois character, they had a significant base of support among the oppressed. This was the period of the mass civil rights movement against Jim Crow segregation in the South and the urban rebellions in the North.

In response to the upheavals of the late 1960s, a section of the ruling class sought to cultivate a base of support among the more privileged sections of minorities that would be loyal to the status quo. As a result of policies such as affirmative action, social inequality among African-Americans has soared, with a small elite holding positions of power in corporate America and the state. This found its apotheosis in the election of Barack Obama to preside as president over a historic transfer of wealth to the financial aristocracy following the Wall Street crash of 2008.

These social transformations are reflected in the political outlook of the Black Lives Matter movement, which is devoid of any genuine element of social protest or democratic struggle. The agenda of these organizations, as underscored by the support of groups like the Ford Foundation, has nothing to do with the real social and economic grievances of millions of workers and young people of any race or ethnicity. They speak for highly privileged sections of the middle class who are fighting over the distribution of wealth within the top 10 percent of the population.

In the face of rising popular opposition to war, police violence and social inequality, the decision to advance the racialist program of Black Lives Matter is aimed at dividing the working class and preventing the emergence of an independent and unified working class movement against the capitalist system.

Toxic smog over South East Asia killed over 100,000 in 2015

John Harris

Last year, between late June and the end of October, a toxic haze smothered large parts of South East Asia, as a result of Indonesian forest fires, largely in Sumatra and Kalimantan. A recently released study estimated that around 100,300 people have died prematurely as a result of the fires, with many more affected. The figure is the mid-point in a range that puts the toll as low as 26,300 and as high as 174,300.

The study by scientists from Harvard University and Columbia University, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, estimated that the number of deaths across the region was: 91,000 in Indonesia; 6,500 in Malaysia and 2,200 in Singapore.

The estimates were calculated through a complex analysis, focussed on the impact of the fine particulate-matter in the smog on the health of adults, rather than trying to examine the effect of all the toxins present. The figures have not yet been confirmed by an analysis of the official data on mortality.

Winds carried the haze across densely populated areas, including in Indonesia, the Malaysian peninsula, Brunei, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The haze also affected parts of Cambodia and the city of Cebu in the Philippines.

The study indicates that the level of air pollution caused by the 2015 fires was the worst on record, exceeding even that of 1997. The air pollution and number of premature deaths was more than double that of another extreme haze event in 2006. The toxic smoke causes widespread respiratory, eye and skin ailments and is especially hazardous for the very young and the elderly.

In 1997, there were 10,800 known deaths from cardiovascular disease attributed to the smoke in the air, but the actual death toll is likely to have been far higher.

The study said the fires were lit in large part by Indonesian and Malaysian companies, particularly those involved in palm oil production. The two nations account for 85 percent of total global palm oil production between them, making $18.4 billion in profit in 2014. Indonesia is currently the largest producer and exporter of palm oil worldwide.

Plantation companies have signed no burn pledges and blame impoverished farmers and small-scale operators for the illegal burning. Uncertain land ownership obscures responsibility for the fires, as does the use of contractors and sub-contractors for clearing land.

Illegal burning is a cheap method to clear land. Companies burn in the dry season, as it is an opportunity to clear more land than usual. Peat lands are drained so that fires can clear native vegetation quickly, to prepare land for pulpwood plantations, logging, paper production and especially palm oil plantations.

Haze events have been an ongoing issue since records of such episodes began in 1972. Haze has occurred with varying intensity every dry season, but these events have become more hazardous in recent years. This coincides with the large expansion of land used for palm oil production. In Indonesia alone, production has increased from approximately 5 million tonnes in 1997 to an estimated 35 million tonnes this year.

The Global Fire Emissions Database reported that the 2015 Indonesian fires generated around 600 million tonnes of greenhouse gases, an amount described as “roughly equivalent to Germany’s entire annual output.” Some 97,000 fires were detected in Indonesia between July and late October 2015, and over two million hectares of forest caught fire, one-third of which were High Carbon Stock peat forests.

The study indicates that, as in 1997, the severe haze in September-October 2015 was an entirely man-made disaster, exacerbated by a combination of El Niño and positive Indian Ocean Dipole (pIOD) weather patterns, both of which delay the monsoon rains and create drought conditions, making Indonesia’s forests and peat lands dry tinderboxes.

Peat contains significant combustible organic material and can burn for weeks on end. It releases up to three to six times more fine particulate-matter (PM2.5) than fires that burn on other soils. Particulate emissions are the leading cause of global pollution-related mortality.

The primary standard for unhealthy levels of annual average PM2.5 is 12 μ g m3 (12 micrograms [one-millionth of a gram] per cubic meter of air). The study indicated that much of Equatorial Asia is close to this standard in non-haze years—with the annual mean values reported in 2011 to be around 13–14 μ g m3 for Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. People living in areas close to fire zones may experience annual average PM2.5 of 50 μ g m3.

Through the months of the haze, the average estimated fine particulate-matter exposure was approximately 60 μ g m3 across the affected regions. Singapore recorded as high as 182 μ g m3 toward the end of September 2015, when the haze was at its worst.

The World Bank released data showing air quality during high burning periods in villages near the fires regularly exceeds 1,000 on the Pollutant Standards Index (PSI). Anything above 151 is regarded as unhealthy and above 350 is hazardous. In Palangkaraya, the capital of Central Kalimantan, readings came close to 2,000 PSI in late September. These are the highest readings ever recorded during the fire season.

The brunt of this environmental and health crisis fell above all on the millions of the working poor across South East Asia, with little or no means to protect themselves. Businesses and schools across the region closed during the haze. Approximately 5 million students were affected by school closures in 2015.

The Indonesian government dismissed the findings of the studies, insisting on the official death toll of just 19. The country’s own disaster management agency, however, estimated last October that 43 million people had been affected by the haze and up to half a million suffered acute respiratory infections.

Yuyun Indradi, a forest campaigner from Greenpeace, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that the recently-published study underestimated the death toll because it did not include infant mortality. “It would be a more staggering number if that age group was added to this study,” he said.

Delvien Nasution, who lost his newborn baby Khadziya one month after she was born, told the ABC that she snored when she slept. “That means it’s difficult for her to take a breath … The doctor said it’s OK, but the smoke was getting thicker, so we decided to evacuate her to Banjarmasin.

“After several days in Banjar, her health was getting worse. The doctor said she had been poisoned by the smoke. I believe she was poisoned while she was still in her mother’s womb … The smoke was the strongest factor in her death and if we want to blame somebody, then there is the government’s part in it.”

Many people are hoping that the study will put pressure on the Indonesian and Malaysian governments to introduce laws to enable action against individuals and entities involved in illegal burning activities. It’s clear, however, from the government’s slow and inadequate response and the lack of legal action against unlawful burning that corporate profit takes priority over health and environmental degradation.

Ethiopian government massacres ethnic minorities in Oromia region

Thomas Gaist

Over one hundred people were killed during a stampede provoked by Ethiopian security forces in the East African nation’s Oromia region last Sunday, October 2. The deaths came after government forces fired live ammunition at civilians, along with tear gas and rubber bullets, during a protest in Bishoftu city.

The death toll from the incident may be as high as 600, according to Oromia media sources. Overall, at least 400 Oromo have been killed by the government since the protests began last November, according to Amnesty International’s figures.

The incident, essentially a massacre of unarmed protesters, has only succeeded in pouring fuel on the fire of anti-government protests. It comes on the heels of the massacre of more than 100 civilians by the Ethiopian government in August in Oromia and Amhara, killings that were carried out by government forces in the course of clashes in Ambo, Dembi Dolo, Nekempt, Bahir Dar, and a handful of other towns.

Local authorities have characterized the scale of anti-government agitation in Oromo as an “uprising,” with a local police commissioner denouncing “continued and sporadic efforts to block streets, disturb the peace and burn administrative buildings.”

The protests have been ongoing since November 2015, in response to the launch of the Oromia Special Zone Integrated Development Plan, which includes the seizure of farms from Oromia families and their sale to international finance capital. Some among the demonstrators demanded an independent regional government, calling for autonomy for the ethnic minority under the umbrella of the Oromo Federalist Congress.

The anti-government protesters have destroyed a textile factory and a mine, and attacked other foreign investments. Ethiopian media reported attacks on at least 11 firms, including flower, textile, and plastics producers, impacting facilities that employ over 40,000 workers, Reuters reported.

The government and Ethiopia’s state-linked media are claiming that the attacks against foreign-owned businesses are intended to undermine the regime in Addis Ababa led by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). The EPRDF blames the attacks on “dissidents based abroad” and “anti-peace forces,” responsible for “pre-planned mayhem.”

Nonetheless, the ongoing protests in Oromo region have deep objective causes, having erupted in response to confiscations of agricultural land by the EPRDF-controlled central government.

Social conflict has intensified in Ethiopia during the past year as a decade of relatively rapid economic growth, which earned Ethiopia the status of “Africa’s rising economic star” in the bourgeois press, has given way to crisis. Ethiopia’s growth rate fell by half during 2015-2016. Unemployment stands at over 24 percent in the capital city, and social turmoil is rippling across key regions. Ethiopia’s Amhara region has been rocked by a similar protest movement since July.

The East African nation has long been an important partner of American imperialism’s operations in Africa. Addis Ababa has played a leading role in US and European-backed multinational forces in the Horn of Africa, spearheading repeated invasions of Somalia on behalf of Washington. Ethiopia’s ruling establishment is currently organizing a coalition of regional powers for military intervention in South Sudan under the banner of a “Force Intervention Brigade.”

During his summer 2015 visit to Addis Ababa, US President Barack Obama praised the Ethiopian military as “tough fighters,” who relieved Washington of having to “send our own Marines in to do the fighting.”

These cozy US-Ethiopia relations are being shaken, however, as Addis Ababa is courted as a potential economic partner by China. Beijing invested over $20 billion in Ethiopian projects between 2005 and 2015. During the past decade, China’s Export-Import Bank financed 70 percent of a new Ethiopian railway connecting Addis Ababa to the interior of the continent and the Indian Sea coastline, including railway linkages to Kenya, Sudan, and South Sudan, aimed at integrating Ethiopia into the LAPSSET transportation corridor.

The clashes in Oromo highlight the predominant features of the explosive and contradictory social and political struggles developing across the continent. However brutal the government’s repression against the Oromo and other ethnic minorities, the demands of various self-styled “community leaders” for the creation of independent mini-states are backward and reactionary. They are aimed at enhancing the position of the provincial elites against that of their rivals in the capital, through the establishment of direct relations with the imperialist powers, over which the EPRDF currently maintains a stranglehold, via its control of the ruling political organs in Addis Ababa.

Coming against the backdrop of rising imperialist violence and social struggle across the continent, from Central African Republic to Zimbabwe, the ruthless massacring of Ethiopian minorities by the national government is a stark warning to the entire African and international working class.

German Supreme Court rejects compensation for Kunduz bombing victims

Verena Nees

Seven years after the German army (Bundeswehr) ordered an air strike in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing over 100 civilians, Germany’s Supreme Court has rejected compensation claims from survivors.

The court in Karlsruhe agreed with previous legal proceedings in lower courts, ruling on Thursday that the victims’ families had “no direct claim for compensation according to international law.” Such a claim could only be arranged between states, it added.

The court also decided that the plaintiffs had no right to compensation under national law. German public liability law was in principle “inapplicable in cases of military actions by the German army during foreign interventions,” the judges of the III civil Senate of the Supreme Court declared.

They subsequently cleared the man responsible for the massacre of civilians, at the time Army Colonel and now Brigadier General Georg Klein, of any violation of official duties. His military decision on 4 September, 2009, was not mistaken and was “permissible under international law.”

The ruling has wide-ranging political significance for the German government’s military planning. It strengthens the position of the military in political life and reduces inhibitions to commit future crimes during military interventions.

On the evening of 3 September, 2009, the military commander of the German provincial reconstruction team (PRT), Col. Georg Klein, ordered the bombing of two tankers captured by the Taliban from NATO after they became stuck in a river bed. At that point, several residents had gathered around the tankers to collect gasoline for free. The air strike produced a horrific bloodbath, which according to NATO figures claimed the lives of 140, including many women and children, and seriously injured many more.

The two plaintiffs in the case lost close relatives: Abdul Hannan lost his two sons aged eight and 12, and Kureiha Rauf her husband, who was survived by six children. They were representing 77 other families who also submitted claims.

Referring to the events of 4 September, the court ruled that the presence of civilian persons in the target area was “after exhausting all available reconnaissance options…not objectively recognisable.” The judges thus followed the same line of argument adopted by the Attorney General’s Office, which suspended its investigations a few weeks after the incident.

State and district courts had previously cleared Colonel Klein. However, they did say that attacks on civilians could provide a basis for compensation claims against Germany under international law if the soldier responsible was “guilty of a violation of official duties.” In the case of Colonel Klein, notwithstanding considerable contradictory evidence, they did not find any such guilt.

The Supreme Court has now effectively excluded any possibility of proving a “violation of official duties” during foreign interventions.

In this, the court based itself on the provisions in the Civil Legal Code on public liability law which came into force on 1 January, 1900, prior to the two world wars, and which have remained on the books ever since. These are limited only to the “normal course of official operations” domestically, the court declared. The position of an administrative official taking a decision could not be compared to the “combat situation for a soldier involved in a military intervention.”

The reference by the plaintiffs to Article 34 of the Basic Law was declared not applicable by the judges. The “historical lawmakers” during the drafting of the Basic Law had “neither the establishment of German armed forces nor their participation in foreign interventions in mind,” they noted. In other words: this article in the Basic Law is only applicable in peacetime, but not in times of war.

The Supreme Court has thus abandoned the legal provisions written into the Basic Law in response to the Nazis’ crimes. In Article 34, section 1, it is stated, “If any person, in the exercise of a public office entrusted to him, violates his official duty to a third party, liability shall rest principally with the state or public body that employs him. In the event of intentional wrongdoing or gross negligence, the right of recourse against the individual officer shall be preserved. The ordinary courts shall not be closed to claims for compensation or indemnity.”

These formulations are based on the principles confirmed in the Nuremberg Trials, which made it possible for the first time for representatives of a state to be held accountable for their actions abroad.

In the case of Colonel Klein, the plaintiffs’ lawyers have repeatedly referred to numerous indications that he gave the order to launch the bombing despite several warnings. Even the order by Klein to the NATO bombers was based on a false report by Colonel Klein that German troops in Kunduz had made “contact with the enemy.” Klein disregarded the suggestions of the American pilots, repeated five times, if it would not be best to conduct a “show of force” before launching an attack, because several people could be seen around the tankers. He also based his decision on a single source, who was not even at the location, but was passing on information second-hand. This would at least fulfill the “gross negligence” referred to in Article 34 of the Basic Law.

Lawyer Karim Popal announced plans for a constitutional appeal following the ruling. The applicability of public liability was a constitutional matter for which the Supreme Court was not responsible. In the case of any doubt, he planned to take the matter to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

The Supreme Court’s ruling on the Kunduz massacre must be seen in the context of the global drive to war in which the German army is increasingly involved. The massacre of civilians in Kunduz played an important role in the revival of German militarism. Any criticism of the German army commanders was sharply rejected at the time. Colonel Klein was then demonstratively promoted to the rank of brigadier general.

A few years later, leading government representatives announced that the era of German military restraint was over. Since then, a rapid remilitarisation has taken place. Thursday’s ruling marks a further step in throwing off the legal restraints placed on the German ruling elite in response to the crimes of the Nazi dictatorship. Presiding Judge Ulrich Hermann made this unmistakably clear. The issue was, he declared, to retain Germany’s “ability to be an alliance member” and the “framework for foreign policy action.”

The warmongers in the media applauded the ruling. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote on Thursday, “The Bundeswehr must not allow itself to be accused of anything here.” FAZ editor Reinhard Müller then blamed the victims for the massacre. He asserted that the Bundeswehr was “dealing increasingly with enemies, who deliberately exploited their favourable stance on human rights.” If combatants and civilians can no longer be distinguished, and “ambulances and cathedrals are no longer sacred, then the losers are known from the outset.” The soldiers had to be “as well armed as possible” and this also included legal security.

The jurist Reinhard Müller was among those in the German media who called for a military intervention in Syria last year. In a piece entitled “Order of the hour” he not only called for an “intervention” in Syria, but also for the deployment\ of the Bundeswehr domestically.