ExoMars mission has both success and failure

Bryan Dyne

The joint European and Russian Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) spacecraft successfully entered orbit around Mars on October 19 after traveling 496 million kilometers, performing a braking maneuver that lasted two hours and 19 minutes. It is the first phase of a joint two-stage mission between the European Space Agency and the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, to investigate any possible chemical and biological signatures of life on Mars.

From the latest telemetry received, the orbiter’s instruments are all operating as expected, as it joins the growing fleet of spacecraft orbiting the red planet.

ExoMars is designed to complement and expand upon the previous and ongoing missions that are investigating whether or not life has ever existed on Mars. One of the key pieces of information is the amount of methane in the atmosphere. The Trace Gas Orbiter will study this in detail.

Artist conception of the Schiaparelli probe as it separates from its mothership, the Trace Gas Orbiter, and prepares to land on Mars. Credit: ESA

While methane has been detected by previous Mars missions (such as the ESA’s Mars Express), there has never been a dedicated mission to map the methane content and variability in the planet’s atmosphere. Moreover, there is no clear explanation as to how methane even persists in an atmosphere that is very thin and wholly unprotected from solar radiation. Methane molecules on Mars are only expected to last 400 years before breaking down.

There are two proposed solutions to this question: the first is a geological process called serpentinisation, which would involve olivine-rich rocks with liquid water well below Mars’ surface, where the environment is warmer and perhaps volcanic. The less mundane answer, however, is that the methane is being produced by pockets of microorganisms below the surface. On Earth, a significant amount of methane is produced by living creatures as a byproduct of digestion. It is possible that something similar is happening within hidden caves on Mars.

Data from TGO is expected to at least partially uncover the origin of Mars’ methane. The instruments aboard the spacecraft exceed all previous detection capabilities by three orders of magnitude. Furthermore, they are also capable of differentiating between different types (isotopes) of both methane and water, which is necessary to determine whether those molecules come from geological or biological processes.

The success of TGO was marred, however, by the loss of contact with the Schiaparelli probe. Like the ESA’s previous successful mission to Mars, Mars Express, TGO arrived with a lander, one primarily designed to test landing technologies for the second part of the mission—a combined stationary platform and rover—planned for a July 2020 launch.

What happened to the probe is only partially understood. Schiaparelli was successfully deployed from TGO while the spacecraft was still using its rockets to enter Mars’ orbit, the first time a simultaneous orbital insertion and landing have been attempted. Data relayed to Earth indicates that the heat shield held and the probe’s parachute deployed as projected. Events began to diverge, however, after the heat shield and parachute were ejected and the lander prepared for powered flight.

Like NASA’s Curiosity rover, the Schiaparelli lander was designed to perform its final descent with a series of rocket thrusters. At two meters above the ground, the thrusters were to shut off, dropping the lander a short distance with the fall cushioned by a crushable structure designed for that purpose. However, there is only data of the thrusters firing a few seconds after separation from the parachute. At this point, 50 seconds before landing, contact was lost.

A computer rendition of the ExoMars 2020 rover on the Martian surface. Credit: ESA

Efforts have been mobilized across the world to find the lost lander. The entire fleet of spacecraft orbiting Mars—the ESA’s Mars Express and Trace Gas Orbiter, India’s Mangalyaan and NASA’s Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and MAVEN—are involved in the search. In the initial stages, the ESA also employed India’s experimental Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope to search for Schiaparelli. So far nothing has been found and the current hypothesis is that the thrusters prematurely deactivated at an unknown altitude, resulting in Schiaparelli crashing into the surface of Mars.

There is a certain irony in the international efforts to locate the missing lander. Schiaparelli was designed as a proof of concept for landing on Mars only because Europe has yet to do this. The first soft landing on Mars was performed by the Soviet Union in 1971, followed by the US in 1975. In the past two decades, NASA has successfully put a series of landers and rovers safely on Mars: Sojourner (1996), Spirit (2003), Opportunity (2003), Phoenix (2008) and Curiosity (2012). Two of those, Opportunity and Curiosity, are still performing science from an average distance of 225 million kilometers from Earth.

Despite the assistance that could have been provided to ExoMars, budget cuts from the Obama administration forced NASA to cancel the project in 2013. One has to wonder if some of the motivation to end US involvement in the project spawned from the growing geopolitical tensions between the US, Europe and Russia in 2013 that culminated in the US-backed right-wing anti-Russian protests and coup d’état in Ukraine in March 2014.

The fact that Europe has had to learn how to land on Mars largely independently of the US also brings to mind the Chinese lunar rover Yutu. Rather than being able to learn from space programs that have already landed on the Moon (NASA and Roscosmos), Chinese scientists were forced to reinvent the wheel, developing whole new technologies to explore the surface of the Moon robotically.

Though the first phase of the ExoMars was only partially successful, it is still a welcome testament to the power of rational thought, scientific planning and the very human urge to understand the material world. It is, at the same time, a lesson on the benefits of collaboration across national boundaries, although mainly in the negative, with international cooperation beginning only after the failure to overcome such divisions produced an apparent disaster.

Bangladesh government accused of “kneecapping” opponents

Sarath Kumara

Human Rights Watch (HRW) late last month released a report alleging that Bangladeshi security forces have deliberately targeted and maimed government opponents. The 45-page report is entitled No Right to Live: ‘Kneecapping’ and Maiming of Detainees by Bangladesh Security Forces .

“Kneecapping” causes serious damage—to kneecaps, soft tissue, blood vessels, muscles and nerves. In some cases, the victims’ limbs must be amputated. The HRW report says the injured were denied proper medical treatment and were jailed.

The US-based human rights organisation’s accusations are another exposure of the increasingly repressive methods used by Awami League-led government of Prime Minister Sheik Hasina Wajed.

The Awami League dominates the current parliament after the right-wing Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and other opposition parties boycotted the 2014 national election. Confronting ongoing agitation by the BNP and other opposition parties, and deepening discontent by Bangladeshi workers, the Hasina government is increasingly using police-state methods to maintain its rule.

The HRW report contains testimony from 25 people, mostly members and supporters of the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami, a reactionary Islamic fundamentalist party.

Fearing retribution, most of the victims were unwilling to be identified and used pseudonyms. They told HRW that police had shot them in the leg, without any provocation, permanently disabling several individuals. Many said they were beaten by security forces before being kneecapped.

Mahbub Kabir, who worked in the marketing department of Naya, pro-Jamaat daily newspaper, was captured and shot in front of witnesses on his way to work. The security officer told Kabir: “I have shot in your leg. If you speak out, then next time I will shoot in your eyes.”

The police repression was not confined to Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital. Another victim, a 32-year-old farmer, said he was shot after a raid in Chittagong, in southeastern Bangladesh. “After beating me for a few minutes, the police tied me to a tree. Then he shot me above the knee in my left leg,” the farmer said. While the police officer involved denied the accusation, he called the farmer a criminal and said he had “no right to live.”

The attacks were highly organised and systematic. One victim told HRW: “One of the policemen was talking on his cell phone and asking a person on the other end whether they should injure or kill me. After he finished talking, the other police officers pushed me face down on the ground and shot me in my left leg. Then they put me back in the van and took me to hospital.”

Another victim, Anis, 45, who was shot in February 2013, said: “A policeman put me into handcuffs and brought me out and made me stand. He then went behind me and shot me in my left leg. I must have fallen unconscious, because the next thing is that I found myself lying on a bed at National Institute of Traumatology and Orthopaedic Rehabilitation. Four days later, my left leg was amputated.”

Nor was the repression limited to the opposition activists. Ordinary citizens accidently in the “wrong place” have also become victims.

Fazal, 18, an International Islamic University law student lived in Kutubbagh, Dhaka where the opposition held an anti-government protest. He went to get his breakfast but was caught up in the protest and grabbed by police after he witnessed officers beating three men. According to television footage, Fazal was healthy when taken into custody. He was detained along with others at Sher-e-Bangla Police Station.

Fazal told HRW: “The SI [police superintendent] said: ‘He has not been shot. Bring him out.’ They grabbed me by my collar and pulled me to the back of the police station… They said: ‘Keep quiet. Stand with your eyes shut. We are going to shoot. If you talk too much we will shoot you in the chest’.”

Fazal, who was later kneecapped and had his leg amputated, reported that one of the men said: “Give us five lakh taka [$US6,300]. We will let you go.” Fazal added: “I heard five lakhs and kept quiet. I knew my family couldn’t give five lakhs. They started hitting me with rifles. The SI who was supposed to shoot me said, ‘Blindfold him.’ They tied my eyes. I knew they were shooting me. I heard the sound. Then I woke up I found myself in the verandah, bleeding. I realised I had been shot.”

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan immediately rejected the report, telling the AFP news agency that “all the allegations against the security forces are baseless.” He claimed that the “security forces only shot at ‘criminals’ when they ‘try to escape’ or were in confrontation with police.”

Last week, Prime Minister Hasina dismissed the HRW report, telling the Hindu, India’s English-language daily, that the “human rights agencies are more vocal for the rights of the criminals than they are for the rights of the victims.”

Hasina attempted to justify the state violence by referring to police repression in the US. “What is happening in America? When they have an attack on their schools or anywhere, what do law enforcement agencies there do? Don’t they kill the attackers and rescue people? Should our law enforcement agencies not kill terrorists who attack them?”

The police repression in Bangladesh has nothing to do with countering alleged terrorism but is aimed at suppressing anti-government opponents. After the BNP-led opposition boycotted the January 2014 general election and called protests demanding new elections, the government unleashed its security forces, killing more than 100 people in that month alone.

Under the cover of combating terrorism and under pressure from the US, the Awami-led regime in June this year detained more than 11,000 people. Mass arrests continued after ISIS claimed responsibility for taking hostages at Holey Artisan Bakery, a popular restaurant in Dhaka.

While Washington has pointed to the rise of ISIS and other Islamic fundamentalists in Bangladesh, these concerns are driven by its geo-strategic manoeuvres in the Indian sub-continent and, in particular, bringing the Awami League-led regime into line with US war preparations against China.

Though the BNP and other opposition activists are the government’s current targets, its main aim is the suppression of Bangladeshi working class, peasants and the poor and their increasing opposition to worsening social exploitation and inequality.

Public rifts erupt in Australian government

Mike Head

The tensions wracking Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s Liberal-National Coalition government erupted to the surface this week, raising new doubts over its stability in the face of a deepening economic crisis and rising global geo-political tensions.

There were extraordinary scenes in parliament on Thursday, as Turnbull and Tony Abbott, the man he ousted as prime minister just over a year ago, effectively called each other liars.

Earlier in the week, Abbott denounced a suggestion by Turnbull that the government might strike a deal with libertarian Liberal Democrat Senator David Leyonhjelm to end a ban on imports of a lever-action shotgun. Abbott tweeted that was “disturbing to see reports of horse-trading on gun laws.”

Leyonhjelm, however, produced emails from August 2015, showing that he had agreed with two cabinet ministers in the then Abbott government to support migration legislation “in return for” the government placing a 12-month sunset clause on the Adler shotgun ban.

Abbott nevertheless went on television on Wednesday night to categorically insist there had been “no deal” involving his office.

During parliamentary question time on Thursday, Turnbull bluntly contradicted Abbott’s claim. He said that as a result of inquiries he made to his ministers, “I’m satisfied that the minister for justice acted in the full knowledge of the prime minister’s office at that time.”

Abbott then insisted on making a personal statement to parliament, declaring he had been “most grievously” misrepresented. It was “absolutely and utterly false” to suggest he had connived with Leyonhjelm to weaken Australia’s gun laws. Abbott said his remarks were directed against the Labor Party opposition—which had asked Turnbull to confirm Abbott’s role—but it was clear that Abbott’s vehemence was aimed at the prime minister.

Media commentators spoke of the government “shooting itself in the foot” and “blowing its brains out.” The week had begun with the government vowing to secure passage of two bills, designed to suppress industrial action, particularly on construction sites. Turnbull had invoked the previous blockage of these bills in the Senate to call the July 2 double dissolution election of both houses of parliament. By the end of the week, the government was in open disarray.

The internal warfare with the Liberal Party cannot be explained by a dispute over gun laws. Far deeper issues are involved. The confrontation followed stepped-up agitation by Abbott on several fronts, blatantly seeking to undermine Turnbull. Last week, Abbott told Fairfax Media he was “ready to serve” as prime minister again, if a call came.

Turnbull’s government is facing immense pressures, politically, economically and geo-strategically.

The July 2 election, which Turnbull called to break through a parliamentary logjam caused by the popular opposition to its plans to slash public spending, was a debacle for the governing parties. The Coalition clung on to power with only a one-seat majority in the House of Representatives and only 30 seats in the 76-member Senate.

Questions are being asked throughout the media about its capacity to impose the agenda of budget-slashing and cuts to working conditions demanded by the corporate elite. Only one bill to gut social spending—an Omnibus bill to reduce expenditure by about $6 billion over four years—has been passed since the election, and for that the government had to rely on the bipartisan support of the Labor Party.

Editorials today voiced frustration with the government’s internal brawling. Fairfax Media’s Sydney Morning Herald said Turnbull headed a “ructious party seemingly intent on in-fighting not governing.” The Australian, the Murdoch flagship, said the “continuing chaos” was placing the government’s credibility as stake.

Economically, the global stagnation and fall in mining export prices are being compounded by signs of the possible collapse of a five-year speculative property bubble. This week, Morgan Stanley became the latest finance house to warn of a looming glut of apartment construction. It predicted a surplus of 100,000 apartments by 2018, and a credit crunch for developers that would threaten 200,000 industry jobs.

The latest labour force statistics highlighted the destruction of full-time jobs. During 2016, full-time employment has dropped by 112,000 jobs, while part-time has risen by 163,000. On average, about 530 full-time jobs have disappeared each day. The official unemployment rate edged down to 5.6 percent, but only because of a falling workforce participation rate.

Treasury secretary John Fraser issued another warning that Australia could lose its AAA credit rating unless the government cut its annual budget deficit of around $40 billion. Global ratings agency Standard & Poors said it was “monitoring the success or otherwise of the new government’s ability to pass revenue and expenditure measures through both houses of parliament.”

Geo-strategically, Turnbull’s government confronts insistent demands from Washington, on which the Australian ruling elite depends militarily, to take a frontline position in military operations that could trigger open conflict with China, the country’s largest export market.

To date, despite US appeals, Turnbull has not permitted the Australian Navy to carry out a provocative “freedom of navigation” incursion inside the 12-mile territorial limits around Chinese-held islets in the South China Sea. In fact, he and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop this month criticised Labor Party leaders for advocating such operations, saying it would “escalate tensions” with China.

Washington will be looking to Australia even more for such involvement following Philippines’ President Rodrigo Duterte’s declaration in Beijing this week that he is “separating” from the US, potentially undermining Washington’s “pivot to Asia.”

This month Turnbull’s government sought to shore up its relations with Washington by finalising an “in principle” deal to expand US use of Australian military bases. This long-delayed pact, first initiated by the previous Labor government in 2011, may not be enough to satisfy the Pentagon, however.

Just weeks after the government’s narrow July 2 win, US Vice President Joe Biden arrived for a four-day visit to Australia, during which he asserted publicly that Australia must stand “all the way” with the US.

In early September, a clear signal was delivered that the US has concerns about whether it can depend on Turnbull. The Australian Financial Review published allegations that the Australian intelligence agencies, which are closely connected to their American counterparts, believe the prime minister “isn’t taking their warnings about the security threat posed by China seriously enough.”

While Abbott was in office, there was no doubt about his government’s unequivocal alignment with Washington, whether in the escalating war in the Middle East or in the Asia Pacific region.

US foreign policy concerns have been a central issue in the ouster of two previous Australian governments. Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s Labor government was removed from office on November 11, 1975 in a constitutional coup by the governor-general, operating in collaboration with the Australian security apparatus, and US and British intelligence agencies.

In June 2010, Kevin Rudd was removed via a backroom Labor Party coup orchestrated by trusted backers and “protected sources” of the US administration, including current Labor leader Bill Shorten. As diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks later confirmed, the Obama administration viewed Rudd as an unreliable ally in regard to its plans for a confrontational stance toward China. Rudd’s replacement as Labor leader and prime minister, Julia Gillard, fully committed Australia to the US “pivot to Asia” in November 2011.

In the light of this history, questions arise as to Washington’s role in the rifts rocking Turnbull’s leadership.

Germany: The liquidation of the Kaiser’s Tengelmann supermarket chain

Marianne Arens

Almost 15,500 employees of the supermarket chain Kaiser’s Tengelmann are faced with the liquidation of the corporation. On Monday morning, stores began selling off their stock in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Karl-Erivan Haub, the owner and CEO of the Tengelmann group, to which the supermarket chain belongs, instructed the store management to open up severance negotiations with the works councils. On Tuesday, the first meetings of management and works councils took place in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Eight thousand jobs hang in the balance. In North Rhine-Westphalia, between 80 and 105 stores are threatened with closure. Three thousand of the 3,500 employees in North Rhine-Westphalia could lose their jobs in the next few months. Many branches of the corporation, such as logistics and management, will also become redundant. In Berlin, 300 jobs are in danger at the Kaiser’s warehouse in Mariendorf.

In Viersen, on the left bank of the Rhine, where Kaiser’s was founded in 1881 as the first grocery chain in Germany, the logistics centre and the specialist butcher’s shop in Birkenhof face closure. The Food, Beverages and Catering Industry Trade Union (NGG) already agreed to the closing of the meat-processing plant in Viersen. In Birkenhof, about 90 workers will lose their jobs. In the logistics centre, 250 will lose their jobs.

The service union Verdi and the industry union NGG have taken up the task of maintaining “social peace.” They are responsible for sowing false hopes in one “new negotiated solution” after another, keeping a lid on the anger of the workers and preventing any open expression of protest.

Most recently, Verdi organised roundtable talks between Tengelmann CEO Haub and the CEOs of the supermarket chains Edeka and Rewe. Verdi head Frank Bsirske carefully hid the content of the negotiations from the workers and union members. However, on October 13, Haub said that the roundtable talks had failed and that the Kaiser’s Tengelmann stores would be closed.

Karl-Erivan Haub had originally planned to sell Kaiser’s Tengelmann to Edeka in the hope that profitable stores could be continued as Netto stores. Netto is a subsidiary of Edeka in which Haub’s Tengelmann group is involved. Indeed, Edeka will still have the pre-purchase rights when the Kaiser’s Tengelmann stores are sold.

Verdi and NGG supported the takeover plans because the unions hoped to get their feet through the door at Edeka. At the Edeka corporation, which is a network of independent stores, the union has had little representation up until now.

The Federal Cartel Office issued a veto, however, because the takeover of Kaiser’s Tengelmann would have given Edeka an even more dominant position in the market. When Federal Economics Minister Sigmar Gabriel (Social Democratic Party) invalidated this veto with a “ministerial permit,” Rewe—the company’s main rival—and two other competitors, Norma and Markant, took the case to court and successfully blocked the takeover.

Verdi’s roundtable, which brought together the heads of Edeka, Rewe, Norma and Markant, was supposed to allow the division of Kaiser’s Tengelmann among its competitors. On October 6, Verdi prematurely celebrated the arrival of an agreement. According to Verdi, Edeka would take over the stores in Munich and Rewe would take over the stores in Berlin. Die Zeitquoted an unnamed source who said that Edeka and Rewe saw a “rare opportunity” in the major cities of Bavaria “to substantially expand its network of stores there, where they would scarcely be able to grow on their own. In these cities, there is no inner-city location any more that could be served by the store. This explains the haggling over these stores.”

This throws a light on the “solution” sought by Verdi. In reality, it is about a gigantic market consolidation and the division of the stores among the other industry giants, which Verdi helped to organise and carry out against the will of the employees. The fact that the deal failed is yet another illustration of the cutthroat competition that has already destroyed other chains, including Hertie, Woolworths, Schlecker and Praktiker.

The losses at Kaiser’s Tengelmann are often explained in terms of the less favourable terms of purchase of the relatively small chain as compared with the large industry leaders, Edeka, Rewe, Aldi and Lidl. The threatened closings in North Rhine-Westphalia show that the more profound reason lies in the deep social crisis in that state. In the Ruhr valley, thousands of people are jobless or dependent on Hartz IV benefits. Since they often can no longer afford many products, the stores are no longer profitable, unlike the stores in Munich and Berlin, which will be sold to new owners instead of being closed.

This also sheds light on the strategy of the unions. Under conditions of capitalist crisis, they are not organising a common struggle of the workers against the bankrupt capitalist system, but aiding the carving up of the company and the sale of its stores to competing industry giants. Then they will try to hide the consequences of this manoeuvre by making an appeal to the “social conscience” of the capitalists.

On Monday morning, the works councils attached an open letter to the doors of Kaiser’s Tengelmann stores, in which they implored the heads of Rewe, Norma and Markant to stop blocking the takeover by Edeka on the terms of Gabriel’s ministerial permit.

After the failure of the roundtable, Verdi board member Stefanie Nutzenberger wrote: “We cannot understand why the talks were ended prematurely.” Verdi will “continue to do everything it can to prevent the destruction of the company.” Several spokespersons of the NGG made similar remarks.

Economics Minister Gabriel, who is also the president of the SPD, still saw the “possibility of a solution” on Friday and told the press: “In agreement with Chancellor Angel Merkel, I have called all of the participants today and told them that it would be shocking if we did not manage to save the jobs.” The “social market economy” must show that it is in a position to do this, Gabriel said.

Verdi’s Bsirske explained that the union works “in the background so that communications do not break down completely” and is looking for a solution with Economics Minister Gabriel. According to the union, the ministerial permit could still be implemented as long as none of the stores have yet been sold.

Manfred Schick, the president of the Kaiser’s Tengelmann works council in the Munich-Upper Bavaria region, said: “Instead of destruction scenarios we need a continuation concept that will hold until the courts have decided or until there is an agreement between all parties.”

In reality, the complete takeover by Edeka in accordance with the ministerial permit would inevitably have large casualties. After five years at the latest, Kaiser’s Tengelmann employees would be in danger of losing their jobs. No one would prevent Edeka boss Martin Mosa from closing the former Kaiser’s Tengelmann stores after they become Edeka stores.

Two weeks ago, the Handelsblatt wrote that there were many losers in the deal and “the workers should not celebrate too soon.” At no point has it been about “selflessly rescuing an ailing corporation. This is about hardened power interests. And the struggle for market shares.” The newspaper said that all the interested parties had coolly calculated whether a deal would put them in a better position “than if the situation escalated and Kaiser’s Tengelmann were destroyed in an uncontrolled way.”

Whatever form this power struggle takes, the cashiers, salespeople, store managers, warehouse workers, forklift operators, fish packers, truck drivers and other employees will be forced to foot the bill. At Kaiser’s Tengelmann, the workers have already been forced to make sacrifices for over five years and to give up a part of their compensation, since the unions repeatedly claimed that their jobs could be saved in this way.

The destruction of Kaiser’s Tengelmann is yet another demonstration of the impossibility of defending jobs and living standards without breaking with Verdi, NGG and the entire framework of the trade unions. For years, they have refused to mobilise the workers, and when they could not prevent a labour struggle, they have sold it out and led it to defeat every time.

Report reveals vast scale of US “secret law”

Josh Varlin

A new report from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law reveals the vast scope of “secret law” in the United States. Secret law refers to laws that are not disclosed to the public, often revealed only to select members of Congress and judges, that nevertheless guide governmental policy.

“Secret law” is a clear contradiction in terms—if something is secret it cannot be properly considered a law, and is simply a cover for arbitrary and tyrannical rule.

The report (“The New Era of Secret Law”) was authored by Elizabeth Goitein, who codirects the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program and has authored several other reports on surveillance, over classification and the public’s right to access information.

Goitein notes that secret law as it is known today “emerged after World War II and intensified after 9/11” and “has resulted for the first time [in American history] in the systematic and deliberate concealment of law.”

“National security” is used as a catch-all pretext for classifying significant legal provisions. This extends even to Congress: laws passed sometimes reference and include portions of classified reports, meaning that these reports are granted the status of law without any public disclosure.

The United States also routinely enters into secret agreements with other countries. Most such agreements are pre-authorized by the US Congress and take the form of “congressional-executive agreements” instead of treaties discussed and ratified by the US Senate. Documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests by the Brennan Center reveal that the US has “entered into 807 secret agreements with other countries between 2004 and 2014—comprising 42 percent of the international agreements concluded during this time period,” according to the report.

The proliferation of undisclosed agreements harkens back to the days of “secret diplomacy” during the first part of the twentieth century, which played a major role in setting off World War I.

Arguably the most significant—in terms of both the implications for the average person and the vast scope of secret laws—is the use of secret laws by the military-intelligence apparatus to justify surveillance of the population far beyond what public laws, let alone the Constitution, authorize.

These laws and rulings are often kept secret within the federal government or even within the same agency. For example, according to the report, “The Department of Justice refused to share its legal justification for the NSA’s warrantless surveillance programs with the NSA’s General Counsel.” In other words, not even the NSA’s own lawyers knew the pseudo-legal justification for the NSA’s spy programs.

The use of secret laws continued after the end of the Bush administration. In 2015, the New York Times revealed that four Obama administration lawyers, “work[ing] in intense secrecy,” had developed the legal justification for extrajudicial killing of Osama bin Laden. This work was so secretive that the lawyers were not permitted to discuss it and the justification with then-Attorney General Eric Holder.

The mere concept of secret law is antithetical to elementary legal principles and democratic rights developed over millennia. The report notes that the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, the Byzantine Empire’s Twelve Tables and the French Empire’s Code Napoléon all included promulgation either in their text or as an essential part of their function. Philosophers Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Hobbes and Immanuel Kant all held publicity to be a fundamental property of law in a just society.

The American Revolutionaries understood this when they framed the Constitution, which requires that Congressional deliberations be published, beginning in The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States and now collected into the Congressional Record .

During the Cold War, the modern national-security apparatus developed to meet the needs of American imperialism. Over the past quarter century since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and especially over the fifteen years since 9/11, this apparatus has grown to gargantuan proportions, and a bevy of secret laws have developed to grant it new powers and authorize its actions.

The report highlights the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court’s interpretation of the USA PATRIOT Act. The FISA Court interpreted Section 215 of the act to grant authorization for bulk collection of records rather than on a case-by-case basis. This novel interpretation—which clearly violates the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable search and seizure—was kept secret until NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the existence of dragnet surveillance programs.

The Department of Justice disclosed to the Brennan Center for Justice that “25-30 significant FISA Court opinions and orders issued between mid-2003 and mid-2013 remain classified.” These entirely secret decisions likely continue to authorize mass surveillance operations unknown to the American population.

Cases regarding inmates at Guantánamo Bay are so thoroughly redacted as to be unreadable. Not only is the public—and the detainee—deprived of the right to know court proceedings, but censorship is often so pervasive that legal analysts “cannot even discern the legal question the court is answering,” according to the report.

In a particularly Kafkaesque case, the Islamic charity Al Haramain Islamic Foundation sued the Department of Treasury’s designation of Al Haramain as a “specially designated global terrorist.” The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that while “the government should have provided Al Haramain with an unclassified version of the evidence … the error was harmless because Al Haramain could not have rebutted the evidence.”

Also of note, the report shows that at least 74 opinions from the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel issued during the Bush administration remain classified. These pseudo-legal opinions justified torture and other gross violations of international law.

The rise of the surveillance state and the accompanying use of secret law are inextricably bound up with the crisis confronting American imperialism as it attempts to reimpose colonial shackles on the Middle East and prepares for war with Russia and China while suppressing social discontent at home.

Massive cyberattack shuts down large sections of the Internet

Kevin Reed

Websites around the globe became inaccessible on Friday when the servers of Dyn—a major US provider of services that direct Internet traffic—were disabled by multiple and internationally coordinated distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Located in Manchester, New Hampshire, Dyn began reporting that a cyberattack had hit its domain name system (DNS) infrastructure on the east coast of the US at around 7:10 a.m. Friday.

The outage—which spread across the US in three waves throughout the day—impacted popular sites such as Amazon, Twitter, Spotify, Netflix, PayPal and Reddit as well as the World Socialist Web Site. The sites were shut down for hours at a time as users and readers were unable to login to their accounts or gain access to web pages from their browsers and mobile devices.

The DNS services provided by Dyn and others are critical to the operation of the World Wide Web. The servers perform the function of translating a named web address—entered as a URL such as “wsws.org” in a browser, for example—into the numeric, machine readable Internet (IP) address that identifies the actual web server on the Internet. A DDoS attack overwhelms the targeted DNS server with such large numbers of requests that it gets bogged down, becomes inoperable or crashes.

While DDoS attacks are not uncommon today, in this particular case the assault was very large in scale and sophisticated in coordination. According to Dyn representatives, the cyberattack came from tens of millions of Internet locations internationally and arrived in three waves: 7a.m., just before noon and a little after 4 p.m.

Kyle York, Dyn’s chief strategist, told the New York Times that his and other DNS host companies have been the target of increasingly powerful attacks. He said, “The number and types of attacks, the duration of attacks and the complexity of these attacks are all on the rise.”

Several media reports said that Friday’s attack likely included so-called “Internet of Things” technologies such as smart appliances, webcams and DVRs that had been infected by malware and converted into an army of remotely-controlled cyber assault devices called a botnet. Although no specific or definitive evidence has been presented, it is being suggested that the scale of the assault could only have been carried out if the DDoS hackers had commandeered such malware infected devices and pointed them at the Dyn servers.

PopularMechanics reported that the botnet issue has been building up for months prior to Friday’s attack. Earlier in October the source code for the Mirai botnet—malware specifically targeting poorly secured “Internet of Things” devices—had been released on the web. It is known that the biggest ever DDoS attack took place last September and was mounted by devices compromised by Mirai.

Major news outlets are reporting that the FBI and Department of Homeland Security are investigating the outage and determined that it was the result of a malicious attack. They are treating it as a criminal act or “an act of state sponsored cyberwarfare.” According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, an anonymous federal law enforcement official said: “Investigators have come to a preliminary conclusion as to who carried them out, but are not planning to make that public for now.”

The Dyn attack follows a number of recent events that have pointed to the vulnerability of Internet technologies to coordinated cyber assault, as well as the attempts by the US ruling establishment to use these developments for their own political and military purposes. The appearance on WikiLeaks of the hacked private email of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta has been blamed on Russia by both the Democratic Party leadership and much of the capitalist media. Meanwhile, the recent announcement that 500 million Yahoo email accounts were hacked in 2014 was also charged to an unnamed “state-sponsored actor.”

It is a well-established fact that the US government and its state-within-the-state organizations, such as the NSA, are responsible for the majority of the world’s cyberespionage and illegal malware activity. There is every reason to expect an increase in incidence of cyberwarfare as a component part of plans to ramp up militarism abroad and attacks on democratic rights at home after the November 8 elections.

Divisions grow at EU summit over trans-Atlantic trade, war drive against Russia

Alex Lantier

A two-day European Union (EU) summit ended yesterday in Brussels without agreement on the war in Syria, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada, or Britain's exit from the EU.

It is ever clearer that this summer's Brexit vote marked a major step in an ongoing disintegration of the EU. Torn by multiple conflicts, above all over the US-led war drive against Russia and China and its relations with Washington, the EU is incapable not only of reaching a common agreement on policy, but of hiding the increasingly sharp tensions among its member states.

Monday's foreign ministers summit showed that the EU would reject US pressure for more sanctions against Russia over Syria, which threaten to cripple the EU's already moribund economy. Germany, Britain and France nonetheless hoped to push through an EU resolution hypocritically condemning Russian bombing of NATO-backed opposition militias in Aleppo and referring to the possibility of imposing more sanctions against Russia sometime in the future. This failed, however, due to opposition from Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.

After long debates on Thursday night, EU leaders emerged after 2a.m. on Friday to lay out their conflicting positions on Syria and Russia.

With the Italian banking system on the verge of collapse and a constitutional referendum scheduled for December 4, Renzi apparently calculated that even mentioning sanctions was an intolerable threat to Italy, which has close trade and energy links to Russia.

“I think that to refer in the text to sanctions makes no sense,” he said. “So I think the words we wrote in the final document are the right ones—to say we need to do everything possible to promote an agreement in Syria.”

Renzi's comments drew a sharp retort from Warsaw, which has closely aligned itself with the US-led war drive against Russia. Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Konrad Szymanski claimed there was an “unequivocal” support for action against Russia. “All options cover sanctions, various tools limiting Russia in relation to what is happening in Syria today,” he said. Any “lack of change to Russian behavior in Syria will cause us to return to this topic very quickly.”

Tension also erupted between Warsaw and Berlin over the conflict with Russia. Szymanski penned a comment in the Financial Times attacking the Nord Stream gas pipeline connecting Russia and Germany via the Baltic Sea. Poland and other Eastern European states have long opposed the pipeline, negotiated in 2005 by Moscow and Berlin, fearing Germany could resupply itself with gas even if conflicts with Russia led Moscow to cut off their energy supplies.

Calling the pipeline a “Trojan horse capable of destabilizing the economy and poisoning political relations inside the EU,” Szymanski warned that it “may be subject to legal challenge by Poland or other countries, in the court [the EU Court of Justice] if need be.”

The intractable contradictions arising inside the EU reflect bitter conflicts among the major imperialist powers amid the reckless, US-led war drive against Russia and China.

Next year will mark a quarter century since the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, which founded the EU. Since then, illusions that the restoration of capitalism in the USSR and the founding of the EU would unify Europe, bringing peace, prosperity and democracy to all, have been shattered. Europe's economy is stagnating amid mass unemployment and attacks on social rights, despite trillion-euro handouts to the banks. Meanwhile, Europe is being re-militarized as NATO deploys tens of thousands of troops to the Middle East and along Russia's borders in Europe.

The EU is recklessly whipping up anti-Russian propaganda, covering up its own role in the arming of Syrian Islamist opposition militias in Aleppo and the bloody assault on Mosul. While it echoes Washington's line to justify military spending increases and incite police-state hysteria at home, the inter-imperialist rivalries inside NATO are increasingly impossible to hide.

Unwilling to give up access to profit opportunities in Russia and China, most EU powers have rejected US calls for major economic sanctions on Russia or for action against China, such as a boycott of its Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

This goes hand-in-hand with ever more visible military and economic tensions. Last year, Berlin and Paris opposed CIA plans to arm Ukrainian nationalist militias against Russia, which they feared would provoke military retaliation from Russia; this year, EU officials declared that they would not take a position in Washington's dispute with Beijing in the South China Sea. EU officials are now announcing plans for an EU army independent from Washington, provoking open declarations of hostility from the British government.

These tensions threatened to erupt into trade war this autumn, as the EU imposed a multi-billion-euro fine on Apple for tax evasion in Ireland, and Washington retaliated with a massive fine on Germany's ailing Deutsche Bank. These escalating inter-imperialist conflicts underlay the summit's failure to reach further agreement on CETA and Brexit.

Talks on CETA failed yesterday, less than two months after German and French officials called for an end to talks with Washington on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Opposition emerged from the francophone Belgian region of Wallonia, which demanded more protection for EU farmers from Canadian competition. Walloon officials also reportedly aimed to undercut Belgium's economically dominant Flanders region, whose government supports CETA.

As she left Belgium, Canadian Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland said: “It seems evident for me and for Canada that the European Union is not now capable of having an international accord even with a country that has values as European as Canada … Canada is disappointed, but I think it is impossible.”

The difficulty of negotiating such trade agreements also points to the deep conflicts that are set to arise as London begins the process of leaving the EU and tries to renegotiate its trade deals, which until now have been made under the aegis of the EU. While few details emerged of Thursday night's talks on Brexit between EU officials and British Prime Minister Theresa May, who was attending her first EU summit, tensions are clearly mounting behind the scenes.

European People's Party leader Manfred Weber threatened London because it is blocking plans for an EU army and military capability that would be independent from the US and Britain.

“When somebody wants to leave a club, it's not really normal that such a member who wants to leave a club wants to decide about the future of this club. That is really creating a lot of anger, the behavior of the British government,” he told the BBC. He added, “I think it's totally understandable if we, as Germans, as French, as Italians, think about our—not your—long-term project. Please don't stop it, don't block it, because that will have a lot of impact on the Brexit negotiations if you do so.”

Turkish bombing in Syria threatens wider war

Bill Van Auken

The threat of the US military intervention in Iraq and Syria erupting into a far wider war has increased sharply in the wake of a series of Turkish air strikes against Syrian Kurdish militia forces that are aligned with Washington.

The Turkish government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has reported that Turkish war planes carried out 26 strikes against 18 separate targets in northern Syria this week, killing as many as 200 fighters of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG.

The Kurdish militia, however, said the number killed was 15, including civilians. The bombing raids, which began late Wednesday, continued throughout Thursday.

The air strikes were followed on Friday by an intense Turkish bombardment of Kurdish YPG positions in the northern Aleppo countryside. Kurdish sources reported that more than 150 rockets struck the area, which the YPG had previously taken from the Islamic State (ISIS).

Whatever the real death toll, these attacks mark a major escalation in the Turkish military intervention in Syria, begun in August with an invasion dubbed “Operation Euphrates Shield.”

The air strikes prompted an angry response from the Syrian government, which vowed to shoot down Turkish warplanes should they carry out more raids on Syrian territory. “Any attempt to once again breach Syrian airspace by Turkish warplanes will be dealt with and they will be brought down by all means available,” the Syrian army command warned in a statement Friday.

For his part, Erdogan has indicated that Turkey will continue the cross-border attacks. “We will not wait for troubles to come knocking on our door,” Erdogan declared in advance of the air strikes in Syria. “We will see to it that the threats are destroyed, resolved at their source.”

These developments have ratcheted up international tensions over the Syrian conflict to their highest level since last November, when Turkish warplanes ambushed and shot down a Russian jet carrying out operations against Al Qaeda-linked Islamist militias on the Syrian-Turkish border.

In the event that Syria were to begin shooting down Turkish planes, Ankara could invoke Article 5 of the NATO charter requiring the US and other members of NATO to come to Turkey’s defense, unleashing an international war pitting NATO against not only Syria, but also its ally Russia, the world’s second-largest nuclear power.

At the heart of these tensions lie the fractious set of allies Washington has brought into the simultaneous interventions in both Iraq and Syria. While ostensibly these various state and non-state actors are united in a common struggle to defeat ISIS, in reality they are each pursuing their own mutually antagonistic interests.

US imperialism itself is seeking to carry out regime change in Syria, employing Islamist militias as proxy forces, while utilizing the anti-ISIS campaign in neighboring Iraq to consolidate its control of bases and secure the permanent deployment of US military forces in the oil-rich country.

At the same time, Washington has recruited the assistance of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia as the main ground force in attacking ISIS positions in Syria. This has antagonized Turkey, which has intervened in Syria on the pretext of combating ISIS, but has directed its main fire against the Kurds.

This week’s attacks are aimed at dislodging Kurdish forces west of the Euphrates River and preventing the linking up of the Kurdish cantons of Afrin in the west and Kobani in the east, which would lay the basis for the creation of a Kurdish autonomous zone along Turkey’s border. The Turkish government has expressed fear that territorial gains by the Syrian Kurdish forces will strengthen the demand of Turkey’s own repressed Kurdish population for autonomy.

In the midst of the deadly combat between Washington’s supposed allies in the struggle against ISIS, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter flew to Ankara on Friday for talks with the Turkish government on both Syria and Iraq. Carter’s remarks in Turkey appeared aimed at smoothing over tensions with Ankara, which have deepened since the abortive July 15 military coup against Erdogan, which many in Turkey believe was supported by the US. Washington, the US defense secretary said, would “continue to stand side-by-side with our NATO ally against shared threats.”

Carter also stated that there was an agreement “in principle” to allow Turkey’s participation in the ongoing siege of Mosul in northern Iraq. “Iraq understands that Turkey, as a member of the counter-ISIL [ISIS] coalition, will play a role in counter-ISIL operations in Iraq, and, secondly, that Turkey, since it neighbors the region of Mosul, has an interest [in] the ultimate outcome in Mosul,” he said.

Erdogan has expressed Turkey’s “interest” in Mosul by invoking century-old Turkish claims of sovereignty over the area.

Carter’s claim of an agreement was countered almost immediately by the Iraqi government, which had earlier indicated that it would attack any Turkish forces attempting to advance on the city. “I am unable to comment on Carter’s statement as we are unaware of any agreement to allow Turkish troops on Iraqi soil until now,” an Iraqi government spokesman said.

This is only one of the many conflicts that are surfacing in the offensive in Iraq, which has brought the mutually hostile forces of the Iraqi army, Shia sectarian militias, the Kurdish Peshmerga, Sunni tribal forces and Turkey onto the same battlefield. The ostensible objective is to drive ISIS out of the city.

There are increasing reports, however, that this is taking place, at least in part, through a deliberate funneling of the Islamist fighters into Syria, where they can be employed in the war for regime-change against the government of Bashar al-Assad. CNN reported that fighters, together with their families, have already begun arriving in the Syrian city of Raqqa.

It appears ever more likely that “victory” in Mosul, to be achieved by reducing the city to rubble and inflicting massive casualties on its civilian population, will only set the stage for a new and even more bitter conflict between the rival forces laying claim to northern Iraq and its oil wealth.

Washington and its allies are preparing for the slaughter with repeated warnings that ISIS is using the population of Mosul as human shields, thereby advancing an alibi for the mass murder of civilians in the bombardment of the city. The kinds of crimes that are being carried out was spelled out Friday with a report from northern Iraq that an air strike killed 15 women visiting a Shia shrine near the city of Kirkuk, which was the scene Friday of a series of terror attacks by ISIS. The US and its allies are the only ones carrying out bombing raids in the vicinity.

While the media parrots the line about human shields in Mosul and ignores the atrocities being carried out in the course of the offensive there, it adopts the exact opposite attitude toward events 300 miles to the west, in Aleppo. Denunciations of Syria and its ally Russia for war crimes in connection with the intense bombardment of eastern Aleppo, which is controlled by Al Qaeda-linked militias, continued even as a suspension of air strikes went into its second day on Friday and eight corridors were set up to allow civilians to leave the besieged neighborhoods.

Exceedingly few people have taken advantage of the opportunity to leave. Those that have report that the Islamist militias have used force, including live fire, to disperse those seeking to escape, and that 14 local officials who urged residents to flee were publicly executed. These reports have evoked no expression of indignation from the Western media, nor any suggestion that Washington’s proxy forces are exploiting the civilian population as human shields.

Massachusetts: Consulting firm hired to begin privatization of transit system

John Marion

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, the Fiscal and Management Control Board (FMCB) he appointed after the February 2015 systemic breakdown, and the chief administrator of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA, or the “T”) are moving rapidly toward wholesale privatization of the public transportation system.

On Tuesday, the Boston Herald reported that MBTA management is secretively paying nearly $1 million to consulting firm McKinsey & Company for “a proposal on what will be required to develop and execute” privatization plans for subway and bus lines. Should the T decide to extend the McKinsey project beyond its original six weeks, the cost per week will be an additional $156,000. In a document obtained by the Herald, McKinsey warned MBTA management that “our clients including the … MBTA are best served when our name is not used externally related to our support.”

The Herald ’s article is the second time in less than a week that secret deals favoring private corporations have come to light. The Boston Globe reported Saturday that the T had forgiven nearly half of the $1.7 million in fines levied against Keolis, which operates the system’s commuter rail trains under contract, after the February 2015 snowstorms. The forgiveness of fines was communicated to Keolis in a November 2015 letter that was kept secret until the Globe obtained it with a public records request. The unelected FMCB, which reports to Secretary of Transportation Stephanie Pollack and Governor Baker, would have been fully aware of both deals.

Maintenance of the MBTA’s buses, subways, trolleys, commuter rail, and related infrastructure has been dangerously underfunded for years. In February 2015, record snowfall from a series of storms broke the camel’s back, causing several system-wide shutdowns along with weeks of cancelled or severely delayed commuter trains. During the first two weeks of the month, only 8 percent of trains on the Fitchburg line were on time; on the Newburyport/Rockport line, only 14 percent of trains to and from Boston were on time. Many of the commuter rail stations were open air, and stranded commuters had to wait as long as four hours in the cold.

Keolis was fined more than $1.7 million for its part in the crisis, a paltry amount compared to its total eight-year contract of $2.6 billion. The $839,000 was forgiven, leaving the company to pay less than $900,000 in fines. According to the Globe, Keolis has given the contradictory explanation that it paid fines for the late trains but not for not having enough trains in service, but the MBTA accepted Keolis’s “satisfactory explanations.”

In the first three months of this fiscal year Keolis also received an extra $35 million in unrelated contract adjustments.

MBTA workers are not being treated as generously. An October 17 report from the system’s general manager to the FMCB boasts that the average daily overtime costs for the system’s 6,300 workers have been cut by $43,000 through limits placed on overtime hours. In a July interview with WBZ regarding regular wages, MBTA Chief Administrator Brian Shortsleeve expressed his expectation that the unions will agree to concessions even before the next contract negotiations in 2018.

MBTA riders will also not receive the largesse given to private contractors. As the system moves toward the requirement that all riders use stored value cards, a report to the FMCB proposes charging $5 just for the plastic card, before any value is put on it. The FMCB is also considering hiring 40-50 inspectors to watch for fare jumpers.

On October 6 the FMCB voted to privatize the MBTA’s money room, eliminating 72 union jobs and awarding a $3.6 million per year contract to Brinks. The speed at which the decision was made should serve as a warning to workers. Per the board’s report, it had “a discussion of money room security and operations” on July 11, issued a request for proposals on July 21, and made the final decision in less than four months.

Brinks will not be the only ones profiting from the arrangement. The FMCB presentation promises five new executive jobs for managing the contract.

Claiming that the laid-off money room workers will be given jobs as bus drivers, Governor Baker irritably told an October 6 audience that “nobody is going to lose an opportunity to work at the T as a result of this.” At the time of this statement McKinskey & Company were already looking at ways to privatize the jobs of bus drivers.

Brian Lang, president of UNITE HERE Local 26, sits on the FMCB but skipped the vote on money room privatization. The other four members voted unanimously to hire Brinks, while board member Steve Poftak was left to tell the press that Lang would have voted against. Local 26 represents the Harvard University Dining Services workers currently on strike.

The response of Boston Carmen’s Union Local 589’s leadership has been even more craven. While seven members of its Executive Board, including President Jimmy O’Brien, were arrested for disorderly conduct on October 6 for an anti-privatization protest outside the MBTA money room, the stunt was not geared toward the mobilization of workers. Instead, in an email sent out after the arrest, the union said only that “we’re sending a message to the public that privatization is wrong for Massachusetts.”

Similarly, in a September 19 email O’Brien “expected to have a lot of signers on a letter calling on Gov. Baker to slow down privatization,” and was satisfied that union rallies had “caused Baker to frame some of his comments to the media” differently.

In concrete terms, at the beginning of the summer O’Brien proposed to a meeting of the FMCB that the union would agree to an 11 percent pay cut for new employees if the board would agree to halt privatization.

The privatization of public transportation has bipartisan support in Massachusetts. US Representative Steven Lynch, a Democrat, State Senator Marc Pacheco and a handful of other local Democrats made a showing at an October 12 union protest. However, both houses of the state legislature have been controlled by the Democrats for decades, and gave Baker (a Republican) the privatization authority he demanded after the 2015 snowstorms.

Hungary: Last newspaper critical of government shut down

Markus Salzmann

The October 8 shutdown of Népszabadság, a newspaper critical of the government, is a further step towards the complete abolition of press freedom and the establishment of authoritarian structures in Hungary. The right-wing conservative government of Viktor Orban has silenced the last major newspaper that did not represent the government’s own line.

Mediaworks AG, which published Népszabadság, officially justified the closure with the allegedly high financial losses of the daily paper. A company statement declared that all editorial activities had been suspended because the paper was unprofitable and had lost 74 percent of its circulation in the past 10 years, despite all attempts to make savings.

The suddenness of the closure and its political background indicates that the paper was put under pressure from the highest government circles. Members of the editorial team wrote of a “coup” on the Facebook page of the newspaper, to which they still had access.

Márton Gergely, deputy chief editor, told the Austrian Standard that the editorial office had been lured into an “almost perfect trap” due to a planned move of offices. The paper’s workers “had packed all their belongings for transport,” prior to the surprise decision to close down.

In the past, Népszabadság had reported extensively on the scandals and affairs of members and confidants of the Fidesz government. For example, it recently dealt with the allegations of corruption laid against the head of the central bank, György Matolcsy, who had been appointed to the post by the right-wing government.

Népszabadság, which means “Freedom of the people,” was Hungary’s most important daily newspaper. It was founded in 1956 as successor to SzabadNép, the central organ of the Stalinist Hungarian Working People’s Party, which was regarded as the voice of the Stalinist state party.

After the reintroduction of capitalism it made a rapid about turn. In the same period during the early 1990s former Stalinists made a fortune selling off state-owned enterprises as part of the so-called “wild privatization” program,Népszabadság became an advocate of the free market. Free market radicalism and a pro-American orientation became the hallmark of the paper.

Under the direction of former Washington correspondent Andras Kereszty,Népszabadság was redesigned in the 1990s according to the American model and privatized. Shares were acquired by Bertelsmann AG, two investment funds, as well as the Socialist Party (MSZP), the successor to the Stalinist state party, which had close links to the new paper.

Népszabadság was considered “oppositional” only after the MSZP (which had ruled the country for almost two decades) completely withdrew from the government due to its ultra neo-liberal policy and following a series of corruption scandals. In this period, Viktor Orban, head of government, emerged as the country’s “strong man.” His party, Fidesz, which had started out as a socially liberal, anti-communist youth organization, developed ever more openly into an authoritarian, right-wing conservative party with xenophobic and even fascist features.

To secure his rule, Orban systematically took over the media. At the end of 2010, immediately after its takeover of power, Fidesz brought the media under its control with a new law. Now, a state media council, consisting of the party faithful and confidants of Orban, exercises a wide-ranging control over newspapers, television and Internet publications. The media council has broad authoritarian powers, ranging from censorship, to determining content, and the imposition of ruinous fines.

In order to also fully control the private media, the government passed a law in 2014 introducing a so-called advertising tax for the media, which can be used to destroy specific critical media outlets. There are many indications that the government has also directly influenced the editorial line of Népszabadság .

Mediaworks, founded in 2014, sells more than 60 media products in Hungary. The company is controlled by the Austrian investment firm Vienna Capital Partners (VCP), whose owner is Heinrich Pecina, a business partner of the well-known Hungarian media mogul Zoltàn Speder.

Mediaworks recently acquired the Hungarian publishing house Pannon Lapok Társasága, whose acquisition had been prohibited up to now for fears of a monopoly position. Media experts are convinced that the government gave the go-ahead for the takeover in exchange for the closure of Népszabadság .

In a television interview, Fidesz Deputy President Szilárd Németh bluntly indicated that the closure was politically desirable. It was high time that the newspaper was closed, Németh said. The paper, he declared, continued to behave like its Communist predecessor Szabad Nép .

At the end of last week it was announced that another Hungarian daily newspaper, Nepzava, had also been sold. Although there have been no public statements, it is probable that the new owner is the Swiss group Marquard Media, which mainly publishes lifestyle magazines in Hungary, and is likely to discontinue the paper in its current form.

Now, virtually the entire media landscape is under the control of the government. A recent statement prepared by Democracy Reporting International shows that during the campaign for the country’s recent refugee referendum, which ultimately failed due to a large number of abstentions, the state broadcaster M1 supported the government’s line in 95 percent of its broadcasts.

Immediately after the announcement that Népszabadság was to close, thousands demonstrated in Budapest. The European Union also expressed criticism, but without drawing any practical consequences. “We are very concerned,” a spokesman for the EU Commission said, noting that the commission was observing the situation of press freedom in Hungary. The president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, tweeted: “The sudden closure of Népszabadság is a frightening precedent. I stand in solidarity with the Hungarians protesting today.”

In reality, the EU largely agrees with the policy of the right-wing government in Hungary. Twenty-five years after the introduction of capitalism in Eastern Europe, and the promise of freedom and democracy, the de facto abolition of democratic rights in these countries is not only tolerated, but also serves as a role model for similar attacks throughout Europe.