CETA’s Threat To Seed Freedom

Heidi Chow

Seeds are an emotive issue. Across the globe, generations of farmers have been able to save seeds from each year’s crops, store them, exchange them and re-use them in the next season. Seeds are the source of our food and for many communities seeds lie at the heart of culture. Women are traditionally the seed-savers, passing on knowledge down the generations, which seeds are suitable for different climatic conditions, soil types, which foods go well together when cooked, which seeds planted next to each other fix the nitrogen in the soil and so on. In my trip to Ghana last year, I met with rural communities, where seeds play an important part of the funeral process, as families ensure their loved ones have enough seeds for their after-life.

Farmers’ seeds and their rights to keep their seed systems are under threat. Seed corporations are pushing for more regulation and laws that increase corporate control over seeds and prevent farmers from saving and exchanging seeds. Bilateral trade deals, often negotiated in secret, have been a powerful vehicle in driving this agenda forward, posing a major threat to farmers’ freedoms and rights to their own seeds.

CETA will accelerate seed privatisation

The proposed trade deal between EU and Canada – the Comprehensive Trade and Economic Agreement (or CETA for short) is hurtling towards completion. CETA has attracted as much opposition as the more widely known TTIP (EU-US trade deal) as it shares the same problems of undermining democracy and threatening public services. But buried on page 164 of the CETA agreement in legal jargon is clause 20.31 which embeds a controversial commitment to push for more corporate control of seeds.

In this clause, both parties commit to ‘promote and reinforce the 1991 Act of the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plant’ (or known as UPOV based on the French acronym). This convention, though technical and benign-sounding, is a dangerous and powerful tool for accelerating seed privatisation. It was agreed in 1961 and its latest iteration in 1991 has been especially controversial, as it grants strong monopoly powers to seed corporations and stops farmers from saving corporate seeds.

Even if farmers avoided purchasing corporate seeds, their own seeds are under jeopardy. UPOV 91 and patent laws allow companies to take seeds from farmers’ fields, reproduce them, homogenise them and then privatise their version of that seed as one that they have ‘discovered.’ The seeds then become the intellectual property of the seed company and farmers are forced to pay royalties.

Basically, UPOV strengthens the power of corporations over global food systems at the expense of small-scale producers. If CETA is approved, the EU and Canada (who are already signed up to UPOV 1991) would be committed to promoting UPOV with other countries and in other trade deals. This would have ramifications for farmers across the globe who are fighting to keep their seeds.

But what have farmers’ own seeds got to do with free trade? Seed corporations, like Monsanto, would argue that their investment (and future profits) in seed research needs legal protection. Farmers who save and exchange their own seeds or corporate seeds are seen as threats to future profitability. Across Asia, Africa and Latin America, around 70-80% of seeds that farmers use are farm-saved seeds either from their own production or through exchanging seeds in communities, so corporations are keen to break into these markets and trade deals are being used as a way for spreading the UPOV framework.

How you can help stop CETA

Even with Brexit, CETA could be approved before we leave the EU, meaning we would be subject to some of its provisions for up to 20 years. CETA has been hailed as the blueprint for future trade deals, so stopping CETA would deal a massive blow to the corporate agenda that CETA represents.

Stand in solidarity with the millions of small-scale food producers who are fighting for their freedom to keep their own seeds and help halt this dangerous trade deal.

Take action now to make sure the European parliament votes against CETA

Australian government hails New Zealand’s brutal welfare system

Tom Peters

Australian Social Services Minister Christian Porter last month announced a far-reaching assault on the country’s welfare recipients. Legislation will be introduced next year, essentially seeking to push impoverished beneficiaries off welfare into low-wage and insecure jobs. Porter singled out students, young carers and parents as the initial targets, but the government has made clear that this is only the beginning.

The attacks are part of a broader austerity agenda supported by both the ruling Liberal-National Coalition and the opposition Labor Party. Since the July 2 election, the major parties have already worked together to cut spending on welfare, pensions and tertiary education and remove tax concessions for working families. The entire political establishment agrees on making the working class pay for the deepening economic crisis, while protecting the fortunes of the super-rich.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s government, assisted by the corporate media, is engaged in a cynical propaganda campaign to present its welfare cuts as a means to help people “trapped” in welfare “dependency” find work and improve their lives.

The brutal reality of what is being prepared can be seen in New Zealand’s welfare system, which Canberra has touted as its model. Australian Human Services Minister Alan Tudge visited New Zealand this month to consult Prime Minister John Key’s government.

Tudge wrote in the Australian on October 5 that Key and Finance Minister Bill English’s so-called reforms had “made most ground in two cohorts that have particularly high future costs: single parents and under-18s who enter the welfare system. I was told that there are 40 percent fewer sole parents under 20 on welfare than seven years ago.” He claimed that New Zealand’s approach was “about changing lives for the better” and “not driven by cost savings.”

The truth is that New Zealand’s welfare system is extremely punitive. Over the past six years tens of thousands of people pushed off benefits, forced into insecure work or simply left to fend for themselves. The National Party government has overseen the destruction of the tens of thousands of jobs since the 2008 financial crisis, including mass layoffs in the public sector and state-owned companies.

Poverty and inequality have increased sharply as a result of austerity measures, accompanied by an increase in the sales tax in 2010, and the encouragement of rampant financial speculation in the housing market, driving up the cost of living.

During 2010, then-Social Development Minister Paula Bennett launched a raft of attacks on sole parents, sickness beneficiaries and young people. Seeking to demonise the poor, she provocatively declared, without any evidence, that “too many people view welfare not as a last option but as a way of life” and were trying to “milk the system.”

From September 2010, sole parents with children aged 6 and over were forced to look for part-time work or have their benefits cut by Work and Income New Zealand (WINZ). In April this year, the work obligation was extended to parents of children aged over three.

In 2011, the government announced “intrusive” monitoring of benefits for 16- and 17-year-olds not employed or studying, and single parents aged 18 and under. Payments were largely replaced with “payment cards” that must be used at a limited number of stores. The delivery of welfare to these young people was outsourced to “community and other organisations,” which were offered financial incentives to reduce the number of 18-year-olds going onto a benefit.

Data released in October 2013 showed that in the first two years of the new sole parents regime, benefits were suspended or cancelled for nearly 13,000 people. In October 2015, Radio NZ reported that on a given day there were roughly 2,000 children living in households where already miserably-low benefit payments had been cut, mostly because a parent had missed an appointment.

Following decades of welfare cuts by successive National and Labour Party governments, child poverty has soared. According to Unicef, about 28 percent of New Zealand children, or 305,000, are living in poverty after housing costs are taken into account, up from 24 percent in 2013 and 15 percent in 1984. In August, Otago University reported that out of 41,000 homeless people in New Zealand, 53 percent were families with children, compared with 42 percent in 2001.

Support has also been stripped away from thousands of disabled children. In March 2015, figures showed that the number of people receiving child disability allowances, a payment of $46.25 a week, had fallen by more than 11,000 since 2009, from 45,800 to 34,500 in 2014. According to the New Zealand Herald, the cut was “achieved both by tightening criteria and by simply not publicising the allowance.”

The government’s offensive escalated in 2013, despite numerous reports of people in need being systematically denied welfare. Over the previous two years, unemployment rose from 144,500 to 170,000 people or 7.3 percent of the population, but those on the unemployment benefit dropped by almost a quarter from 65,281 to 50,390.

The government declared it was determined to “save” $1.6 billion by 2016–17 through further cuts. In mid-2013, nine existing benefits were replaced with three new benefit categories: Jobseeker Support, Sole Parent Support and Supported Living (previously the Invalid’s Benefit).

The Sickness Benefit was scrapped and those receiving it, 58,000 people, forced to look for work. Last year, the Cancer Society condemned the government for placing hundreds of cancer patients on the Jobseeker payment and threatening them with cuts.

Harsh new sanctions were introduced. Newshub reported in May that since the 2013 changes a total of 165,177 benefits had been reduced or cancelled, mostly for failing to attend an appointment. A small number were also punished for failing a drugs test or refusing to accept a job offer.

As a result of poverty-level benefits, combined with increasingly draconian sanctions, tens of thousands of welfare recipients are in debt to the government. Many homeless families in Auckland and other centres have borrowed heavily, in some cases tens of thousands of dollars, to stay in hotels and motels due to the lack of affordable housing. Figures released in August showed that 60 percent of beneficiaries nationwide owe WINZ an average debt of $2,584 per person, compared with 49 percent in 2008 who owed an average of $2,021.

Like its Australian counterpart, the New Zealand Labour Party has no fundamental disagreement with the government’s attacks. The 1999–2008 Labour government presided over growing poverty and inequality, and refused to reverse the 1990s National government’s savage cuts to unemployment, sole parent and sickness benefit levels. In its 2014 election campaign, Labour accepted the policy of pushing tens of thousands of single parents off welfare and praised the government’s austerity policies.

Thai military consolidates power as royal succession delayed

Peter Symonds

In a sign that the Thai military is further tightening its grip on power, Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn and heir apparent has been effectively sidelined following the death of his father King Bhumibol Adulyadej last Thursday. In his place, the junta announced on Saturday that 96-year-old Prem Tinsulanonda, a former head of the army and prime minister, would act as regent for an indeterminate length of time.

Just hours after the king’s death was announced, the military-appointed National Legislative Assembly was convened in a special session in order to approve Virijalongkorn’s ascension to the throne. However, following a meeting between the crown prince and General Prayuth Chan-ocha, the prime minister and head of the junta, the succession was called off. The assembly members held a silent tribute to Bhumibol and went home.

Virijalongkorn is yet to make a public statement. Instead, his comments have been relayed by Prayuth, who declared on Thursday night that the crown prince had asked for time to mourn his father before being proclaimed as king. On Friday evening, Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam insisted there must be “a regent for the time being in order not to create a gap.”

Under the country’s constitution, Prem, as head of the Privy Council or king’s advisory body, automatically assumed the role of regent, exercising all the constitutional powers of the monarch. Prem and Prayuth held a private meeting with Virijalongkorn on Saturday. Prayuth then declared in a televised message that “his highness’s only wish is to not let the people experience confusion or worry about the country’s administration.”

According to Prayuth, the crown prince indicated that his succession to the throne would take place only after elaborate religious rites and the cremation of his father’s body. No date has been set for the cremation, which could be months or years away. Government officials have indicated to the media that it could be a year—the time announced by Prayuth as the period of national mourning.

The extraordinary lengths to which the junta has gone to manage the succession is an indication, firstly, of the crucial role played by Bhumipol as a linchpin in the Thai state apparatus, and secondly, the extent of the country’s protracted political crisis. The military mounted two coups, in 2006 and 2014, to oust telecom billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra and his sister Yingluck Shinawatra respectively as prime minister.

Thaksin, who won office in 2001, initially had the backing of the country’s traditional elites—the monarchy, military and state bureaucracy including the courts—but lost their support as his pro-market policies cut across their privileges, patronage and business networks. As the economy deteriorated, these elites were increasingly hostile to the limited social concessions made by Thaksin and Yingluck to the urban and rural poor.

Prem’s appointment as regent ensures that the military retains full control of all the levers of state power. Prem is an arch-royalist who had a long career in the military before being appointed army commander in 1978 over more senior candidates for the post. The support of the palace was crucial in his appointment as prime minister in 1980, heading a military-backed government.

The king’s backing also aided Prem to fend off coup attempts by dissident factions of the military in 1981 and 1985. When he stepped aside in 1988, he was immediately installed in the Privy Council and functioned as the king’s closest adviser and functionary. He is widely believed to have helped orchestrate the 2006 coup that ousted Thaksin, accompanied by sustained protests and agitation by royalist “yellow shirt” supporters.

The military junta is clearly concerned about Virijalongkorn’s installation on the throne. Not only is his extravagant jet set lifestyle widely known but he is suspected in Bangkok ruling circles of having been courted by Thaksin. While Thailand is nominally a constitutional monarchy, the king has indirectly wielded considerable power through the military and state apparatus.

By delaying the succession, the junta has ensured that Prem, as regent, can sign off on the new constitution drawn up by the military to ensure that it retains extensive political powers and to sideline parties associated with the Shinawatras. The constitution was formally approved in a contrived August 7 referendum, after all opposition or criticism was banned and hundreds of people were arrested.

By installing Prem as regent, the military has also bought time, either to groom Virijalongkorn as the next king or install a replacement. Prem is known to be close to Bhumibol’s daughter, Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, who is more favourably regarded in ruling circles.

More broadly, however, the military is fearful of social and political unrest as the economy continues to be hit by global economic stagnation. The death of the king provoked immediate falls on the share market and in the Thai currency. Moreover, the enormous social gulf between rich and poor is continuing to generate hostility and opposition to the junta as it implements austerity measures on behalf of the wealthy elites at the expense of working people.

The junta is using Thailand’s notorious lèse-majesté law to clamp down on any criticism or opposition to the monarchy, an institution on which the military has relied heavily for decades. The number of arrests and prosecutions for insults, no matter how slight, to the king escalated sharply following the 2014 coup. Information related to the king’s death has to be formally authorised. The country’s three main mobile service providers have been told to ask customers to report “inappropriate content on the royal institution” on social media.

UK: Self-employed face poverty wages and financial insecurity

Thomas Scripps

Over half (55 percent) of London’s self-employed earn low monthly pay, according to research by the Social Market Foundation. Seventy-seven percent of these workers have no income besides their employment earnings and, in 2011, 67 percent earned less than a full-time employee on the London Living Wage at the time—that is, less than £15,000 a year.

Though London has the highest proportion of its working population in self-employment (roughly 18 percent) of any area in the UK, this dire picture is by no means uncommon. The self-employed make up an increasingly large proportion of the British labour force—15 percent. That is roughly 4.7 million people—a figure up by a quarter from 2000.

The growth of this employment sector accelerated in the aftermath of the 2008 recession, with self-employment being responsible for a substantial section of the apparent jobs recovery. A myth has been built up by the ruling elite that this phenomenon is expressive of a desire among large numbers of people to “be their own boss” and indicative of the wealth of opportunity available to enterprising new businessmen and women. Studies proves this to be false.

As opposed to being small businessmen, only 17 percent of Britain’s self-employed employ anyone themselves. Moreover, a substantial number live in very precarious financial situations. Research from the Social Market Foundation (SMF), published in March, found that almost half of the UK’s self-employed workers (49 percent) were on low pay on an hourly basis, rising to over half (55 percent) when considered on a monthly basis. This compares to 22 percent and 29 percent for employees. Self-employed workers are more likely to live in low-income households, with 28 percent—roughly 600,000 people—in that position, compared to 19 percent of other employees.

Low rates of pay are not made up for by pensions, savings or investments, with 64 percent of low-paid self-employed workers having none compared to 36 percent of low-paid employees.

These statistics translate into the damning fact, revealed by HM Revenues and Customs data, that 80 percent of the UK’s self-employed workforce was living in poverty in the year 2012-2013. Further investigation by Tax Research UK found that this percentage only fell to 77 percent when income from additional sources—pensions for example—is taken into account. According to a report by Royal London, less than a quarter of self-employed individuals are members of a pension scheme.

These figures paint a devastating picture of an escalating social crisis affecting millions of people. But they take on a greater significance in light of recent employment trends and of the Thatcherite origins of the drive towards a large self-employed sector. In the short-term, the turn to self-employment is bound up with the collapse in available jobs following the 2008 global financial crash and resulting recession.

According to the Office for National Statistics, of the 1.1 million increase in the total number of workers in the UK between the first quarter of 2008 and the second quarter of 2014, around two-thirds were self-employed. The proportion of self-employed workers of the total labour force rose 2 percentage points (from 13 percent to 15 percent) over the same period.

Proof that this increase is indicative not of some harmless restructuring of the labour market, but of a general decline in living standards across Britain, can be found in the falling earnings for the self-employed. Since 2008-2009, their incomes have fallen an average of 22 percent. Self-employed individuals were working two hours a week longer than employees in 2014. More than one in 10 work 60 hours a week or more, compared to less than one in 20 for regular employees.

The situation since 2008 is only the latest stage in a process stretching back through much of the post-war period. Over the past 40 years, the proportion of the labour force classified as self-employed has risen substantially, from 8.7 percent in 1975. The decades since have witnessed a succession of economic crises and assaults on the working class, as the development of globalisation forced the bourgeoisie internationally to restructure economies and enhance the exploitation of labour. It became necessary for the capitalist class to break down previously accepted standards of pay and protection for workers, and to develop less secure forms of employment such as zero-hours contracts and self-employment.

Officially, 900,000 are employed on zero-hours contracts, with the real figure estimated to be much higher, and another 1.7 million are in temporary work. All told, a fifth of all British workers are now employed under what are described as “non-standard work arrangements.” It is estimated that by 2018, there will be more self-employed in the UK than public sector workers.

The interests of big business in this transformation were articulated in theDaily Telegraph newspaper earlier this year in an article, “The self-employed will overtake the public sector with the ‘gig economy’,” written by financial journalist Matthew Lynn.

Nominally an analysis piece on the rising importance of the self-employed sector, the article’s main purpose was a denunciation of public sector employment. Writing with naked disdain, Lynn decried, “An army of public sector workers, heavily unionised, with generous pay, lots of time off, and lavish pensions. Councils stuffed with bureaucrats doing non-jobs, and quangos recruiting a growing army of diversity workers. An over-manned and feather-bedded public sector that is intent on voting itself ever more generous pay and conditions.”

It is not just public sector employment—and the required government spending—which so irks the Telegraph, but the very idea of decent pay, adequate time off and the right to pensions. As the ruling class seeks to impose a globally competitive economy, self-employment, much like zero hours contracts, temporary and part-time work, which tend to be poorer paid and lack basic protection, are seen as a much more suitable forms of employment.

Prime Minister Theresa May’s recent promises to protect the self-employed with new legislation should be treated with as much disdain as her more general claim to be putting forward a progressive programme for working people. Former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose government created levels of social inequality last seen in Victorian England, made similar promises in 2001. May has even recruited Matthew Taylor, a former Blair adviser, to work on the Tories’ self-employment policies. To quote Taylor, “New forms of employment have many advantages for workers and consumers but there are challenges and risks. We need to approach this issue with an open mind, recognising that within our flexible system of employment the same type of contract can have a diverse range of impacts on the people who use them.”

Speaking of Taylor’s appointment, Seamus Nevin, head of employment and skills policy at the Institute of Directors, said, “It is important that the government works to ensure our employment regulations and definitions are flexible so that we protect workers and give them access to training and development, while still enabling innovation and enterprise to prosper.”

The Rosenburg Files: Germany’s justice ministry was a stronghold of former Nazis

Verena Nees

It is a long-known fact that following the Second World War, hardly a single judge or prosecutor from the Nazi regime was held accountable for their vicious verdicts and enforcement of the regime’s Race Laws. Almost all of them were able to continue their legal careers in the post-war Federal Republic of Germany.

Now it has become clear why. Until the 1970s, the federal justice ministry (BMJ) was a stronghold of former NSDAP (Nazi Party) members. They exercised a decisive influence on case law, legislation and the appointment of judges and prosecutors. They ensured that tens of thousands of Nazi criminals escaped prosecution and amnestied their former party comrades and placed them in leading positions. And in the struggle for their rehabilitation and compensation, they made sure the surviving victims of their jurisprudence under the Third Reich faced massive obstacles.

On Monday in Berlin, the final report of the Independent Scientific Commission on the Nazi past of the BMJ, “The Rosenburg Files,” were presented to Federal Justice Minister Heiko Maas.

The commission, headed by historian Manfred Görtemaker and lawyer Christoph Safferling, was launched in 2012 by the then justice minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger. For four years, the commission studied a variety of sources and personnel files of the ministry and of the Supreme Court covering 1949-1973, when the ministry had its headquarters in the “Rosenburg” country villa near Bonn.

Both in terms of personnel and in pertinent facts, the commission concludes that the much vaunted 1945/46 clean break in the field of justice did not take place until the 1970s. The researchers were as surprised at the massive number of former NSDAP members at management level who had held senior posts under the Hitler regime as the former Nazis themselves.

Following the founding of the BMJ in 1949, there were hardly any efforts to appoint judges and prosecutors who had been dismissed or persecuted by the Nazis as Jews or political opponents. Instead, the ministry utilised a network of former Nazi jurists, citing their necessary “legal experience.”

Of the 170 individuals studied among the management staff—heads of department, deputy directors and division heads (known then as speakers)—53 percent had belonged to the NSDAP. One in five had even been a member of the Sturm Abteilung (SA) thugs; many had previously worked in the Reich Justice Ministry or other ministries of the Nazi regime. During the 1950s, the percentage rose even higher, in 1957 reaching a climax with 77 percent NSDAP members and 33 percent SA members. These numbers only decreased slightly at the end of the 1960s, according to the recent findings. But here too there was still a “large unknown,” Manfred Görtemaker said on Monday.

The management level of the BMJ thus included more Nazis than in other ministries and federal bodies for which research has been published in recent years—such as the Foreign Ministry (2010), the Federal Criminal Office (2011), the Secret Service (2015) and the Federal Interior Ministry, which a preliminary study presented in 2015 showed comprised 66 percent former Nazi Party members.

The most scandalous cases revealed in the report on the BMJ include:

* Franz Massfeller, responsible for family and race law in the Reich Ministry of Justice before 1945, a participant in subsequent meetings of the Wannsee Conference (which had agreed the extermination of the Jews) and commentator on the Blood Protection Act. From 1945 to 1960, he was undersecretary in the BMJ and Head of Family Law.

* Eduard Dreher, before 1945, First Public Prosecutor at the Special Court in Innsbruck and responsible for numerous death sentences for minor matters. Active in the BMJ from 1951 to 1969, finally as Head of Section; he even wrote the commentary to the Criminal Code.

* Ernst Kanter, before 1945 “Judge General” in occupied Denmark, where he worked on 103 death sentences. From 1949 to 1958 he was Head of Section in the BMJ.

* Josef Schafheutle, responsible in the Reich Ministry of Justice before 1945 for political crimes and after 1949 undersecretary and Head of Department II (Criminal Law) in the BMJ.

* Walter Roemer, before 1945 First Public Prosecutor at the Munich I State Court, where he was involved in the executions of resistance fighters in Stadelheim prison. After 1949, undersecretary and director responsible for Public Law in the BMJ, which dealt with basic rights and human rights.

* Hans Gawlik, before 1945, public prosecutor at the Breslau (today, Wroclaw) Special Court, participant in numerous death sentences, after 1945 defender of the SS Security Service (SD) and some Einsatzgruppe leaders in the Nuremberg trials and, after 1949, head of the Central Law Enforcement Agency in the BMJ. This even warned German war criminals about prosecutions abroad and hindered the work of the Ludwigsburg Central Office for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes.

* Max Merten, 1942-1944 at Military Administration under commander of the armed forces in Thessaloniki, where he organized the plundering and deportation of more than 50,000 Greek Jews. Although this made him one of the biggest war criminals, he headed the “enforcement” unit in the BMJ for several months in 1952.

Manfred Görtemaker ascribes the employment of old Nazis in the Federal Ministry of Justice to the “incredible communist baiting” of the post-war Adenauer government. “Anti-communism was the glue” between the judiciary of the Federal Republic and the Nazi dictatorship. “In recruitment, one could be a Nazi, the main thing was to be anti-communist.”

The consequences for the legal system after the war were fatal, according to the two scientists. Christoph Safferling elucidated this with reference to the case of Eduard Dreher. This Nazi prosecutor was a key figure in the statute of limitations debate. In connection with the introduction of an “Administrative Offences Law” in 1968, he brought about a retrospective shortening of the statute of limitations from 20 to 15 years for so-called aiding and abetting, also known as a “cold statute of limitations.”

This was a “large-scale action,” Safferling said, to exonerate Nazis as mere “armchair perpetrators.” Thousands of Nazi criminals accused of aiding and abetting murder, and whose trials had already begun, were released without punishment because their crimes were now time-elapsed in 1960. These included employees of the Reich Main Security Office, whose trials did not begin until 1968/1969.

The signature of the Nazi justice system was maintained in other areas of legislation, such as in the juvenile justice system, in family law and sexual offences, and in discrimination against minorities such as Roma and Sinti or homosexuals.

Last Monday, Justice Minister Christoph Maas and Safferling directed special attention to a secret War Book with emergency decrees, which the BMJ had drafted at the beginning of the debate on the Emergency Laws. The Notstandsgesetze (Emergency Laws) were ultimately passed by a grand coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Social Democratic Party (SPD) in 1968 against fierce resistance. They contained provisions restricting fundamental rights in the event of a military attack, in disasters and in an “internal emergency”. The post-war German constitution had excluded these kinds of emergency regulations as a result of the experiences with the Enabling Act (Ermächtigungsgesetz) of the Nazis.

As “The Rosenburg Files” show in detail, officials at the Federal Ministry of Justice had responded as early as 1959 to a request from the government, and in just a few days had outlined 45 emergency decrees, which initially remained under wraps. The “experienced” Nazi jurists proposed seriously undermining the court system, which would have paved the way for extraordinary courts and introduced the notorious “protective custody” from the Nazi period. Among other things, they based their proposals on the war economy regulations of 1942.

Christoph Safferling underlined the Nazi continuity of BMJ regulations: “[I]n his plans, Undersecretary Schafheutle even considered occupying areas using German troops.” The secret “War Book” was an outright constitutional breach, he said.

The facts concerning the “secret martial law” had “particularly affected” him, Justice Minister Maas said on Monday, and pointed to today’s threats to “democracy and freedom, even in democratic countries.”

However, he was not referring to the recent emergency plans of the Interior Ministry for a future war in Europe; a return to an aggressive German foreign policy and the plans for domestic Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) missions. Instead, he pointed to the United States, where “excesses in the fight against terrorism” following the attacks of 9/11, which had included torture, had created a veritable “enemy criminal law” against suspected terrorists.

Tensions rise between Poland and France after failed arms deal

Clara Weiss

Relations between France and Poland have worsened substantially after the Polish government pulled out of an arms deal with European company Airbus that had been planned for years. Poland had originally intended to buy 50 helicopters from Airbus at a cost of over €3 billion as part of its rearming programme. The Polish government now intends to buy the helicopters from an American arms concern instead.

Airbus is a German-French-Spanish company with its headquarters in Toulouse. The French government owns an 11 percent share in the firm.

The negotiations over the major arms deal were initiated by the Citizens Platform (PO) government in 2015. The government responded to the Ukraine crisis with a massive programme of military rearmament directed at Russia. Unlike the current governing Law and Justice Party (PiS), it based itself on closer collaboration with Brussels and the leading European powers, France and Germany.

The PiS had declared its opposition to the talks at the time. When the PiS assumed power last autumn, negotiations became increasingly tense. In February, it was announced that the Polish government was considering breaking off talks with Airbus and purchasing the helicopters from a US firm.

The Polish defence ministry then announced a halt to the talks on October 5, with the explanation that the proposed deal did not correspond to Poland’s national interests. The main concern was to protect jobs in the Polish arms industry. Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz accused France of being responsible for the breakdown in talks. A few days later it was revealed that Poland would buy Black Hawk helicopters from the US firm Lockheed Martin.

The French government and Airbus both expressed deep frustration at the collapse of the deal. Airbus published an open letter to the Polish government. In it, Airbus pointed out that the Polish government was responsible for breaking off talks: “We feel as though we have been led around by the nose by the current Polish government for months.” The firm concluded with the warning, “Of course we will adopt appropriate measures.” A company spokesman angrily declared, “We have never been treated like this by a government as customer.”

The French government, which gave its backing to the concern from the outset, joined in the blame game. French President François Hollande cancelled a planned visit to Warsaw on October 13. An October 10 planned visit by French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian was also cancelled. Alain Juppe, the potential presidential candidate for the right-wing Republicans, stated that Poland was not yet “mature” enough for the European Union.

France also cancelled the invitation of the Polish delegation to the next Euronaval Congress. The congress is the largest meeting of leading European concerns in the area of naval arms and is organised by the French defence ministry. The Reuters news agency reported, based on government sources, that Poland’s actions would have wide-ranging consequences for the relations of both countries.

Reuters cited a French source close to the matter as stating, “The Franco-Polish bilateral relationship will undeniably be extremely affected by this decision.”

“The contract’s cancellation will force us to review all the defence cooperation that we have with Poland and see what can be maintained and sadly what can’t in the current context,” according to the source. Cooperation in the arms sector is an important component of French-Polish economic relations, which were substantially expanded under the PO government from 2010 to 2014.

Diplomatic tensions escalated further on Wednesday when Polish deputy defence minister Bartosz Kownacki declared on television in a chauvinist outburst, “The French side invited us a long time ago and are now showing us the door. And yet these are the people who we taught to eat with a fork a couple of centuries ago, which may explain their behaviour today.” A spokesman for the governing party, Beata Mazurek, desperately sought to distance herself from Kownacki’s comments, describing them as “unfortunate” and “not very diplomatic.”

The failed deal will be a heavy economic blow for Airbus, which faces financial difficulties, and could be used as a pretext to cut thousands of jobs in France.

But behind the rapidly deteriorating relations between France and Poland are the deepening national conflicts in the wake of the Brexit vote and sharpening tensions between leading European powers, above all France and Germany, and the US.

This background was clear from an angry statement by Hollande. In an explicit reference to Poland and the Baltic states on 6 October, he said, “There are European states that think the US will always be there to protect them and go as far as only buying weapons from the United States and not from Europeans.”

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls stated that the main thing concerning him about the failed deal was the consequences “for the concept of European defence.” He said, “It is a bad decision which underscores the political contradictions in Poland.”

The right-wing PiS government has declared itself against a union represented by Berlin and Paris, and rejects the founding of a European army. The PiS speaks on behalf of a section of the Polish bourgeoisie that fears the predominance of France and especially Germany within the EU and is therefore orienting towards a stronger alliance with the US.

This fear was increased by Brexit. Within the EU, Britain blocked German and French attempts to form a European army and, as a close supporter of the US, it backed the military build-up against Russia. The Polish government considers the European army to be an effort by France and Germany to create an army in competition with NATO that is not under the control of the US government.

This fear is shared by significant sections of the US ruling elite. As a report from the US Atlantic Council think tank from last summer, authored by a leading British NATO general and the former representative of the Polish defence ministry responsible for arms purchases, said, “Poland should undertake firm opposition to any EU plans (such as may be

contemplated in the new Global Strategy on Foreign and Security Policy) envisaging an EU military force. Any weakening of NATO cannot be countenanced, especially at this political juncture, and particularly with a putative British exit from the EU weakening the Union’s collective military posture outside of NATO.”

However, there are deep divisions within the Polish bourgeoisie about its foreign policy orientation. A report in the opposition-aligned Gazeta Wyborczaon the helicopter deal warned that Poland could not afford to irritate important partners like France under conditions of Brexit and talks over reorganising the EU.

The newspaper cited Maksymilian Dura from the Defence24.pl portal, who said, “The moment chosen to break of the talks was fatal, directly prior to the planned visit of President François Hollande on October 13. The world will get the impression that we are not reliable.”

Former defence minister in the previous PO government, Tomasz Siemoniak, criticised the PiS for the failed deal as “amateurs” who had completely underestimated the consequences of the decision for Polish-French relations.

France creates National Guard targeting the working class

Anthony Torres

Adopting the neo-fascist National Front’s (FN) proposal to create a National Guard, which was officially validated by French President François Hollande on Wednesday, the ruling Socialist Party (PS) is preparing for large-scale military operations inside France. The large number of reservists in such a National Guard shows that it is not intended to attack small groups of terrorists during terror attacks in France. Rather, it aims to repress social protests and strikes.

The PS proposal would turn the 63,000 men of the existing military reserve into a unit of 84,000 men and women. This would create a force posture allowing it to deply 9,250 troops across France, instead of the current 5,500. The unit could also participate in foreign wars, like the US National Guard, which participated in the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

According to a Senate report by Gisèle Jourda (PS) and Jean-Marie Bockel (Union of Democrats and Independents), the National Guard would aid the army in large-scale operations inside France: “If it becomes stronger, better structured, more numerous, with a territorial spread that anchors it on the entire territory of France, including areas currently deserted by the military, the military reserve could be an effective National Guard. It would give the active army operational assistance on the level required by the new needs of our territory.”

The National Guard is to be formed of volunteers “with or without previous military experience,” as well as former soldiers who have left the army less than five years ago. Its budget will increase from €211 million for the current reserve to €311 million.

Hollande is forming the National Guard after imposing a state of emergency, ostensibly over a series of attacks by members of the Islamist militias being mobilized by the NATO countries, including France, for the war in Syria. This war, which now threatens to escalate into an open conflict between Russia and NATO, as well as Hollande’s unpopular austerity measures such as the PS labor law, have brought social tensions in France to unprecedented heights.

Hollande, who has repeatedly invited FN leader Marine Le Pen to the Elysée presidential palace to promote the neo-fascist party, has yet again taken an element of the FN’s program to accelerate the construction of a police state. He had already tried this year to inscribe the principle of deprivation of nationality, associated to the Nazi-collaborationist Vichy regime, in France’s constitution.

When she proposed to create a National Guard in 2014, Le Pen had in mind not only external enemies (raising the military budget and restoring universal military service), but also the interior enemy, that is, the working class. She said: “We will ensure and prioritize the defense of the national territory … in particular thanks to the creation of a National Guard of 50,000 reservists, men and women, who can be mobilized on short notice, less than 24 hours.”

What the French ruling elite fears is not terrorism—which is in fact an instrument to intensify its exterior military interventions and justify reinforcing its internal repressive powers—but opposition in the working class to its policies of austerity and war.

France is creating its National Guard amid explosive military and social tensions across Europe. In this context, the bourgeoisie is resorting in numerous countries to the construction of paramilitary militias more or less directly tied to far right forces. In Ukraine, in Poland, in the Czech Republic, and beyond, the ruling elites are pressing ahead with the construction of paramilitary units that are nationalist, or even explicitly pro-Nazi.

In Ukraine, the US-backed National Guard, which recruits fascist and neo-Nazi volunteers, emerged from the NATO-backed putsch in Kiev in 2014. The “Azov” battalion, which has over 1,000 soldiers, was formed and led by neo-Nazi leader Andriy Biletsky. It deploys banners marked with a modified swastika, copied from SS units during World War II, and helped crush opposition to the far-right regime in Kiev in Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine.

The French press has avoided raising the Ukrainian, Polish, or Czech militias while discussing the French National Guard. However, an examination of the other national guards that it cited shows that internal repression is at the heart of the preoccupations of the French ruling class. The National Guard in the United States deploys troops against urban riots and mass protests against police violence.

In the context of the greatest economic and military crisis since the 1930s, the forms of political life more and more resemble those analyzed by Leon Trotsky and the Fourth International (FI) at its foundation in 1938. They warned that, amid extreme class tensions, the police and the army were no longer able to carry out the repression that was necessary to the bourgeoisie. The ruling class therefore turned to the construction of more or less legal paramilitary units.

The Transitional Program that founded the FI explained: “The bourgeoisie is nowhere satisfied with the official police and army. In the United States even during ‘peaceful’ times the bourgeoisie maintains militarized battalions of scabs and privately armed thugs in factories. To this must now be added the various groups of American Nazis. The French bourgeoisie at the first approach of danger mobilized semi-legal and illegal fascist detachments, including such as are in the army. ... The bourgeoisie keeps itself most accurately informed about the fact that in the present epoch the class struggle irresistibly tends to transform itself into civil war. The examples of Italy, Germany, Austria, Spain and other countries taught considerably more to the magnates and lackeys of capital than to the official leaders of the proletariat.”

As in the 1930s, the working class is the only social base for democracy in France and worldwide. Deep opposition exists among workers to the building of an authoritarian state. But the only way to prevent the installation of such a regime is the political mobilization of the workers against war and austerity, and for the defense of democratic rights. Today, all the different parties of the bourgeoisie are seeking in one or another way to reinforce state repression.

The indefinitely-extended state of emergency installed by the PS has exposed the limits of the capacity of the existing repressive forces to crush opposition from workers and youth. During this year’s strikes against the labor law, the FN-linked Alliance police trade union organized protests, backed by the PS and the Stalinist General Confederation of Labor, to express their “fatigue,” their anger at “anti-cop sentiment,” and to demand more funding and resources.

The profound instability of the political and social situation and the possibility of civil war are widely discussed inside French intelligence services. French domestic intelligence chief Patrick Calvar said, “We are on the verge of civil war. We must therefore anticipate and block any groups that might at one moment or another set off confrontations between communities.”

These are the political conditions that are pushing the PS to supplement the forces of the army, the gendarmerie, and the police with the new National Guard.

Nearly half of all “millennials” lack even $1 of retirement savings

Genevieve Leigh

Forty-eight percent of young Americans belonging to the millennial generation, classified as someone between the ages of 18 and 30, currently lack even a single dollar in retirement savings, and have no access to a traditional pension, according to a GenForward poll by the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago.

The poll, taken this September, surveyed 1,851 adults age 18-30 and was conducted using a sample drawn from the probability-based GenForward panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. young adult population.

The section of the poll focused on the financial situation of today’s youth revealed that nearly half of those polled, 49 percent, reported that they were “somewhat” to “extremely” concerned about themselves or someone in their household being forced to work reduced hours or taking a pay cut. The same number expressed “somewhat” to “extreme” concern about the possibility of being laid off from work.

With American student debt totals coming in at over $1.2 trillion, and growing by $2,726 every second, it may be no surprise that when asked “How much financial difficulty would you have if you had to pay an unexpected bill of $1,000 right away?”, 53 percent of the millennial generation answered “A lot.” Only a little over a third reported the likelihood of their parents being able to help with an unexpected bill, and 56 percent said that it was “somewhat” to “very” unlikely their parents would be able to assist with paying for college or paying off their student debt.

Another section of the survey asked those polled about the barriers that they believe prevent them from achieving their economic goals. Asked to rank the degree to which each was a barrier from the choices of “lack of jobs in the community,” “not having a high enough level of education or technical skills” and “wages not increasing fast enough to get ahead” most identified stagnant wages as the most crippling.

The survey results also reveal a generation of Americans whose opinions on the state of the national economy are completely at odds with President Barack Obama’s boasting of a complete economic recovery since the 2008 financial crash. Only 3 percent of millennials said that they believe the economy has completely recovered since 2008. In fact, the largest portion of those surveyed, 40 percent, believe that the national economy has recovered only about half way.

The precarious financial situation facing so many young Americans today is not a reflection of a lazy or complacent generation, as so many mainstream media outlets insist, but rather is an indictment of a decrepit and decaying capitalist system that has nothing to offer its youth but mass student debt, a shrinking job market composed of unfulfilling part-time employment, and the growing threat of a nuclear third world war.

Distinguished by record levels of food insecurity, student and credit card debt, underemployment and unemployment, the state of the millennial generation in the US is a reflection of the growing social crisis internationally. Despite living in the most advanced capitalist country, the youth in the US face many of the same struggles, bound up with poverty and job insecurity, as youth around the world.

A recent study conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) shows that one in eight young people in OECD states, a group comprised of countries that make up the developed world, live in poverty and 15 percent of youth are unemployed. The report echoes the state of affairs in the US, citing the figure of ten percent of jobs destroyed in OECD member states from 2007 to 2014, while in Spain, Greece and Ireland, the number of employed youth was cut in half.

The social crisis facing the millennial generation in the United States has found political expression in the presidential race largely in the form of disgust and a rejection of both political parties. The survey conducted by the Black Youth Project at University of Chicago showed that 70 percent of millennials believe that Hillary Clinton is not honest or trustworthy and 80 percent say the same of Donald Trump.

US escalating covert war in Somalia

Jordan Shilton

The Obama administration has covertly deployed hundreds of US troops to Somalia to wage a secret war in the impoverished East African country alongside private contractors and soldiers from African allied states, a New York Times article revealed Sunday.

Under the pretext of protecting US and African troops from terrorists in the al-Shabaab Islamist militia, the Obama administration has authorized the use of air strikes in the country.

As the Times bluntly noted, the mission, which is referred to in military circles as the “Somalia campaign,” has several hundred troops in the country at any one time and is “a blueprint for warfare which President Obama has embraced and will pass along to his successor. It is a model the United States now employs across the Middle East and North Africa—from Syria to Libya—despite the President’s stated aversion to “boots on the ground” in the world’s war zones.”

The revelation, coming just days after government officials informed the public that the US had launched missile strikes in Yemen, demonstrates that the Obama administration has dragged the American people into yet another war without even a semblance of public debate.

The Somalia operations come on top of large-scale military interventions in Afghanistan, where US military forces have been waging war since 2001; Syria, where Washington is backing Islamist extremists to overthrow the Russian-backed Assad regime; and Libya, where US Special Forces have been deployed and air strikes have been carried out since August under the pretext of targeting the Islamic State.

In total, the Times notes that the US military has carried out air strikes in seven countries this year and special forces operations in “many more.”

The US is waging war in Somalia in support of the shaky Transitional Federal Government (TFG), which barely controls territory outside of the capital, Mogadishu. The regime was only able to establish itself following a brutal US-backed invasion by neighboring Ethiopia and thanks to ongoing support from African Union (AU) soldiers.

Between 200 and 300 US Special Forces under the control of Africom (African Command) collaborate regularly with Somali National Army units and soldiers from Ethiopia, Uganda, Djibouti and Kenya to plan and conduct ground operations against al-Shabaab.

According to Obama’s semi-annual briefing to Congress on foreign military operations, the US forces are not only present to target al-Shabaab, which is aligned with al-Qaida, but also to provide “advise and assist” support to regional counter-terrorism efforts. This has been one of the favored formulations to justify the deployment of US soldiers to war zones around the world, such as in Iraq, where the alleged advisers frequently operate on the front line in fighting against ISIS.

Africom has repeatedly dismissed reports that its frequent air strikes, including at least 13 this year, have led to civilian casualties. In one of the most recent incidents Africom denied claims by officials in the autonomous region of Galmudug that a US drone strike killed 22 local soldiers and civilians last month in the city of Galkayo.

Even strikes authorized to support offensive operations launched by Somali forces in conjunction with US soldiers are routinely labelled as “self-defense” actions.

Significantly, the US forces are not only fighting but also engage in joint interrogation sessions with Somali forces. Ominously recalling the methods employed in Afghanistan and Iraq, where US troops worked hand-in-glove with local authorities guilty of torture and abuse of prisoners, the Times merely noted in passing that after such sessions, US forces hand over prisoners to be interned in Somali prisons.

The suggestion that the US war in Somalia is defensive is absurd. Control over the strategically-important country, which lies adjacent to some of the most important sea lanes in the world for the transportation of oil and other commodities, is seen as essential by the US ruling elite if Washington is to retain its global hegemonic position.

The Times’ attempt to cast the catastrophic conditions in Somalia, which has not had a functioning government for over two decades, as the result of the actions of the al-Shabaab Islamist militia is highly disingenuous. In truth, the US bears chief responsibility for the more than a quarter century of bitter fighting and endemic poverty that has gripped the strategically-located country in the Horn of Africa.

In 1991, Washington withdrew its longstanding support for the regime of Siad Barre, leading to its collapse. It then seized on a famine crisis to legitimize the deployment of 30,000 troops to the country in a bid to establish a US client regime. After the Battle of Mogadishu, in which 18 US soldiers were killed, President Clinton withdrew the troops.

But the US withdrawal did not mean it remained on the sidelines. In the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration established the first permanent US military base in Africa in neighboring Djibouti, from where air strikes and drone operations have been flown.

In 2006, the US played a key role in backing an Ethiopian invasion to topple the moderate Islamic Courts regime, which had ousted the US-backed TFG. The ensuing fighting killed tens of thousands, and the brutality of the Ethiopian occupiers fueled increased support for al-Shabaab. The invasion included more than a week-long shelling campaign against Mogadishu, which reduced large parts of the capital to rubble and turned hundreds of thousands into refugees. US air strikes and naval bombardments were organized to back Ethiopia’s military operations.

After capturing Mogadishu and reinstating the TFG, the Ethiopian force was supplemented by troops from Uganda, Kenya, Djibouti and Burundi under the auspices of an African Union “peacekeeping” mission.

US “advisers” were in Somalia almost without interruption from 2006. It only came to light in 2014 that around 120 US soldiers had been operating there since 2007, first alongside the Ethiopian invasion and later as part of the AU mission.

US operations in Somalia are only part of a vastly expanding array of military deployments organized by Africom across the continent.

In an annual briefing to the Senate Armed Services Committee, it was noted earlier this year that in fiscal year 2015, Africom “conducted 75 joint operations, 12 major joint exercises, and 400 security cooperation activities.” As well as its permanent military base in Djibouti, the US military has drone bases in Uganda, Seychelles, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan and Niger.

The dramatic expansion of US military activity in Africa since Africom was established in 2007 reflects Washington’s determination to subjugate the resource-rich continent, consolidate its geostrategic and economic hegemony and block the emergence of its rivals in Africa, above all China but also the European imperialist powers, which are seeking to reestablish domination over their former colonial possessions.

The ever more aggressive character of the operations conducted by Africom was demonstrated earlier this year with the appointment of General Thomas Waldhauser as its new commander. The four-star Marine Corps general has led US operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.

During an appearance in front of the Armed Services Committee, Waldhauser vowed to expand the “war on terror” throughout Africa and stated he would request the authority to carry out targeted killings without presidential approval.

One area of major focus for Africom is the Sahel region south of the Sahara. US forces have been deployed to Cameroon and Niger, where they have been engaged in training the country’s armed forces using the pretext of combatting the terrorist group Boko Haram.

The Intercept reported two weeks ago based on secret documents obtained via a Freedom of Information request that the Obama administration is planning to spend an additional $100 million to establish a new drone base which will be capable of hosting MQ-9 Reaper drones, which are larger and considered more lethal than the notorious Predator drones used to rain death and destruction down on thousands throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

Just days before the Times revealed the covert operations in Somalia, the US military newspaper Stars and Stripes confirmed that a fleet of F16 fighters have been deployed in Djibouti since July in preparation for a possible “crisis response” mission in South Sudan.

The country, which gained its independence from Sudan in 2011 with Washington’s backing, has substantial energy resources and is crucial to the US strategy of preventing expanding Chinese influence. But it has been gripped by civil war almost since its independence.

The US-directed assault on Mosul and imperialist hypocrisy

James Cogan

The long-planned, US-directed offensive to recapture the northern city of Mosul from Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has begun. On Monday morning, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared on national television: “Today, I declare the start of these victorious operations.”

The assault on Mosul starkly raises the boundless hypocrisy of the US and European resolutions in the United Nations, and incessant media coverage, accusing Russian-backed Syrian forces of “war crimes” against civilians as they attempt to retake the eastern sectors of Aleppo from Islamist militias. In Iraq, the US, its allies and its puppet government in Baghdad have begun a savage onslaught against a far larger city, in which as many 1.5 million civilians, including 600,000 children, are trapped.

Lise Grande, the United Nations’ humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, told theNew York Times on the weekend: “The United Nations is deeply concerned that in a worst-case scenario, the operation in Mosul could be the most complex and largest in the world in 2016, and we fear as many as one million civilians may be forced to flee their homes.”

The New York Times nevertheless welcomed “The Coming Battle for Mosul” in its October 14 editorial. It declared that the city must be “liberated” from “terrorists’ rule”—regardless of the human cost. Barely two weeks ago, its editorial labelled Russia an “outlaw state” because it was behind an assault in Aleppo that “threatens the lives of 250,000 more people.”

The difference between the two battles, as far as the imperialist hypocrites are concerned, is that the Islamist extremist groups under attack in Aleppo are being supported and used by Washington and the European powers to attempt to overthrow the Russian-backed Syrian government. Civilian casualties are therefore “war crimes.”

ISIS, by contrast, is considered an obstacle in Washington because it used the weapons and recruits it gained as a result of US-led intrigues in Syria to seize large areas of western and northern Iraq in 2014, threatening the pro-US puppet regimes in Baghdad and the Kurdish region. Any civilians killed in the process of recapturing Mosul will therefore be brushed aside as “collateral damage.”

In both Syria and Iraq, US objectives are the same: asserting its dominance over the key oil-producing region of the world.

Mosul is being attacked by up to 20,000 Iraqi Army personnel and 10,000 Kurdish Peshmerga troops, reinforced by some 6,000 Iraqi police, thousands of anti-ISIS Christian, Turkmen and Sunni militias and thousands of militia loyal to the Shiite-based political parties that control the Baghdad regime.

Behind-the-scenes, the US military is monitoring and effectively commanding the onslaught. American, British, French, Australian and Jordanian jet fighters and helicopters are providing air support to the disparate government forces. US Marine and French Army units are giving artillery fire support. Hundreds of American, British, Australian, German and Italian special forces and “trainers” are involved in the battle, advising Iraqi and Kurdish units and directing air and artillery attacks.

Every atrocity that the Russian regime and its Syrian client-state are responsible for in Aleppo will be more than matched, and most likely exceeded, by the US-backed forces in Iraq. Past experiences, including the assault earlier this year on the western Iraqi city of Fallujah, leave little doubt as to the outcome of the attack on Mosul. Entire suburbs will be reduced to rubble from both the air and the ground, regardless of how many desperate civilians are hiding in their homes. The city’s electricity, water and sewerage systems will be destroyed. Medical services and transport networks will be rendered dysfunctional.

The potential destruction of Mosul and large-scale civilian casualties is being justified in advance as unavoidable, due to fanatical ISIS resistance. The estimates on the number of ISIS militants still in the city range from just a few thousand to over 10,000. Lurid accounts have appeared of extensive preparations by ISIS for protracted, street-to-street fighting. US and Iraqi officials, citing Mosul residents, have told media that buildings and cars have been rigged with explosives, minefields widely laid and roadblocks erected on the main thoroughfares. A tunnel network has allegedly been constructed linking various areas of the city.

Mosul, to recall the alleged 1968 US military statement in regard to the Vietnamese town of Bến Tre, must be destroyed “to save it.”

The indifference for the lives and well-being of the city’s population is revealed in the leaflets that were dropped, in the tens of thousands, over the city on Saturday night. According to a Reuters report, one leaflet advised: “Keep calm and tell your children that it [the bombardments] is only a game or thunder before the rain… Women should not scream or shout, to preserve the children’s spirit.” Another ominously warned: “If you see an army unit, stay at least 25 metres away and avoid any sudden movements.”

The Iraqis who survive their “liberation” from ISIS by US-led forces will be forced to flee the unliveable ruins of the city for overcrowded and inadequate refugee camps. No serious preparations, such as pre-built tent cities with hospitals, food and water supplies, have been made to cope with such a situation. Aid agencies fear that tens of thousands will die from injuries, exposure, disease, dehydration or starvation.

The assault on Mosul will join the long list of horrors and crimes that have been inflicted on the Iraqi people by US imperialism and its military machine for over 25 years, in its quest for hegemony over one of the most resource-rich and strategically-significant regions of the world.

The thousands who die will join those who lost their lives as a result of the 1991 Gulf War; the subsequent sanctions imposed on Iraq; the legacy of depleted uranium weapons’ contamination; the 2003 invasion; the murderous Sunni-Shiite sectarian warfare that was deliberately provoked by the US occupation; and the operations of the US-backed Iraqi government forces after most American troops were withdrawn in 2010-2011.

Credible estimates place the cumulative death toll over a 25-year period at well over 1.5 million and as high as two million. Since 2003 alone, at least four million Iraqis have been internally displaced or fled the country as refugees.

The defence of the masses of Iraq and the Middle East against imperialist oppression must be at the very forefront of the struggle for an international anti-war movement of the working class, based on a revolutionary and socialist perspective.