Germany carries out second expulsion of Afghan refugees

Anna Rombach

In a joint operation carried out by federal and state authorities, 26 Afghan refugees were deported on 23 January with officials putting them on a plane in Rhein-Main airport in Frankfurt, Germany and flying them to Kabul. This was the second mass deportation of this kind, following the deportation of 34 Afghan refugees on 14 December.

The young men came from Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Hamburg and Rheinland-Palatinate, where they sought to find refuge from the war in their country. Eighteen of the 26 deported came from Bavaria.

Many of those affected were seized from their homes in the dead of night, detained like hardened criminals and flown against their will to Kabul, one of the most dangerous cities in the world. Many of them had been in Germany for several years, had friends and family, and a professional qualification or a job.

The daily TAZ reported on 24 January that “several of the young men came from Kabul or the western Afghan city of Herat, while others came from the unsafe provinces of Logar, Kunar, Kapisa or Wardak.” Among them were many “who spoke German and in some cases had worked for years.”

It further stated, “Badam Haidari (31) explained in easy-to-understand German that he had lived for seven years in Würzburg. For five years and eight months he worked at Burger King, ‘always full-time.’ He never caused any trouble. ‘No stealing, no war with anyone, no fights’ …Arash Alokosai (21) from Kabul said he lived in Nuremberg for six years. He had an apprenticeship contract to manufacture vehicle bodies, but then ‘the rejection’ (of his asylum application) occurred. His girlfriend was three months pregnant. Ramin Afshar (19), also from Kabul, said he had attended vocational college in Germany. They got him out of bed on Monday morning and deported him in handcuffs.”

To avoid protest and resistance, the interior ministries provided no details about the planned deportation and only announced the timetable at the last minute.

Nonetheless, 200 people still gathered at the airport to protest the deportations. A group of Afghan refugees from the Frankfurt area organized by the “Afghan Refugees Movement” and ProAsyl, a refugee support organisation, called the demonstration on short notice. Their banners read, “Right to remain for all,” “Stop deportations—now!” and “No deportations to Afghanistan.”

Roughly a quarter of a million Afghans currently reside in Germany. Of these, around 1,600 are facing potential deportation. More than 10,000 have obtained the status of “tolerated.” Although their asylum application was rejected, authorities have suspended the deportation for the meantime. They now live in constant fear that they will be thrown out of the country.

The mass deportations are based on the repatriation agreement reached by the German government with the regime in Kabul on 2 October, 2016. The dirty deal provides a payment to the Afghan government from Germany, plus additional EU funding for every refugee they take back.

Conditions in Afghanistan today are more insecure than ever. In the first half of 2016, there were more than 1,600 recorded deaths and 3,565 injuries to civilians, the worst figures since 2009. At the end of 2016, more than 1.7 million people were internally displaced. Half a million people were forced from their homes last year alone. During the first two weeks of January there have been attacks and kidnappings in Kabul, Kandahar, Helmand and Pamir leading to more than 100 deaths.

The latest report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Afghanistan makes it clear those being deported will face countless perils and possible death. All of Afghanistan was in the grip of a domestic armed conflict, the report stated, adding that it was impossible to distinguish between safe and unsafe regions “due to the constantly shifting security situation.”

In newspaper interviews, former Afghan minister Amin Farhang, as well as former Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta—who both lived in Germany for decades—verified the findings of the refugee agency’s report. Even Hans-Peter Bartels (SPD), the parliamentary ombudsman for the armed forces, told Tagespiegel on 27 December, “Afghanistan is not a safe country. That is why the international community has decided to make further efforts at stabilisation, both civilian and military, above all by training and advising the Afghan security forces.”

In fact, the disastrous situation in Afghanistan is due to the nearly 16-year US occupation of the country, which has been backed by Germany. After ruining the country, Germany and the US—now under Donald Trump—are scapegoating immigrants who escaped the war-torn region and suggesting they are somehow associated with “terrorism.”

To whip up public opinion in opposition to the refugees, the government is claiming that only dangerous criminals and “threats” are being deported. Federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière, in a letter to the state interior ministers, wrote that since the attack on a Berlin Christmas market on 19 December, “the entire practice of deportation in our country [has been] under review,” and repatriation measures had to be enforced “more decisively in the future.”

This is contradicted by information gathered by ProAsyl, which provides an entirely different picture. “Among those deported, there were people who had committed crimes,” the report acknowledged. “But as a whole it remains unclear how large the number is and how serious the offences they are being accused of actually were.”

ProAsyl obtained information on 23 immigrants, some of whom were deported in December while others had their deportation temporarily stopped. “The people are between 21 and 57 years old, had mostly been in Germany between two and five years, sometimes even longer. Some of them were on the way to completing training or already had a job. Many were receiving medical care—for example with psychiatric problems. For most of these 23 people, nothing is known about criminal acts.”

Although deportations fall under the responsibility of the states, decisions are being taken in the offices of the federal agency for migration and refugees, and implemented by the federal police. The federal government is collaborating closely with the states.

State governments currently have no uniform policy. Refugees have been deported from Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, North Rhein-Westphalia, Hesse, Hamburg and Saarland, while other states have yet to deport anyone to Afghanistan. A proposal was made by Schleswig-Holstein for a nationwide stop to deportations.

The mass deportations have been facilitated by this month’s decision by the Green Party in 10 states to support deportations to war zones like Afghanistan. This decision obliges state governments to complete forced repatriations, which are decided solely “by the federal government’s own assessment of the local security situation.” Significantly, the Greens urge the government to better conceal deportations from the public. The federal interior ministry ought to avoid “the undignified public presentation of mass deportations,” their statement declares.

The Greens are thus jointly responsible for the shameful deportations. In Hesse, this includes Green Transport Minister Tarek al Wazir who, together with Volker Bouffier (Christian Democratic Union), leads the CDU-Green state government. The state government could choose to reject the federal government’s deportation orders—but it has not. The state government also has partial ownership of the Rhein-Main airport and oversees everything, including deportations, which go on there.

In Thuringia, Brandenburg and Berlin, where it is in government, the Left Party also supports the deportations. In these state, the Left Party claims it is only carrying out case “voluntary repatriations.” This is a cynical sham. The “voluntary” nature of the repatriation consists in the fact that refugees “voluntarily” agree to leave so they will not be forcibly deported at their own expense. The Left Party does not oppose the federal government’s deportation laws.

In Thuringia, where Bodo Ramelow’s Left Party leads the state government, they are carrying out a refugee policy just as brutal as other parties. Last year, with 1,762 “voluntary” repatriations from January to November, Thuringia was second among all German states for deportations.

In contrast to this, solidarity in the population is growing. Demonstrations against deportations are increasing and becoming larger. Many workers and young people have displayed a great willingness to help the refugees, many of whom fled imperialist war in 2015 and fled by foot to Germany through a perilous path of persecution and state repression.

Benoît Hamon wins Socialist Party presidential primary in France

Alice Laurençon

In a landslide victory, Benoît Hamon won yesterday’s second round of the ruling Socialist Party’s (PS) primary contest and became the party’s presidential candidate. According to initial figures yesterday evening, Hamon, the former education minister under President François Hollande, received 59 percent of the vote, eliminating former Prime Minister Manuel Valls, who won only 41 percent.

Two million voters cast their ballots, as opposed to the 4 million voters who participated in the primary contest for the right-wing Republicans (LR) in November, in a campaign marked primarily by vast popular disaffection with the PS government.

Hamon hailed his victory as the day “the left lifted its head once again”, declaring the vote to be “a sign of a living and vibrant left”. He pledged “to start, tomorrow, by uniting the left”, and stated his intention to “propose to [the Green Party presidential candidate] Yannick Jadot and to [former Left Party leader] Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in particular, that we create a social, economic and democratic governmental majority”.

The vote represents nothing of the sort. The result of the primary is a rejection by the electorate of the hated policies of the Hollande administration, represented most clearly in Valls’ candidacy. His defeat is a further humiliation for the government, and the PS is widely anticipated to face a debacle in the presidential contest in April-May of this year. The party is profoundly discredited after years of austerity and war; President Hollande has approval ratings of around 4 percent.

Although posing as a critic of Hollande, Hamon does not in any way represent a shift in the PS’ right-wing programme, or a reorientation to the left, let alone the working class.

Hamon is a resolute advocate of war and a law-and-order policy oriented to the security forces, and has stated his approval for Hollande’s programme of extra-judicial killings. In response to the growing danger of a large-scale war between the major powers in the wake of Donald Trump’s inauguration in the USA, Hamon has called for an offensive of French imperialism and indicated his sharp hostility towards Russia.

Calling for the creation of a universal basic income, Hamon has made certain gestures towards the pseudo-left parties linked to the PS, including his calls for discussions with Mélenchon. His proposal for a universal basic income of €600-800 a month is reactionary, however. It would not lift the unemployed out of poverty, and is intended as a substitute for a secure and well-paying job under conditions of mass unemployment and deindustrialisation, which Hamon treats as inevitable.

His programme would, however, cost hundreds of billions of euros, an expenditure that Hamon’s backers inside the bourgeoisie would not tolerate. The reactionary character of his proposal is not lost on the French population, two-thirds of whom are hostile to his universal income scheme.

Recent polls show that with Hamon as candidate, the PS will still come in fifth place in the first round of the presidential elections, with 8 percent. This puts him behind the National Front’s (FN) Marine Le Pen, LR’s François Fillon, PS-linked banker Emmanuel Macron and the former leader of the Left Party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. He would be eliminated after the first round, in a humiliating defeat for the PS.

Hamon’s victory will only exacerbate the crisis of the PS, which has been the major pillar of bourgeois rule in France for half a century. The PS is deeply divided, and large sections of the party have already expressed their opposition to aligning with Hamon’s positions. Many PS officials have pledged their support for Emmanuel Macron, rather than backing the PS candidate.

Speaking to BFMTV two days before the second round, Valls also made clear that he would not back Hamon. While stating that he would remain “loyal” to the PS if Hamon won, he also declared that he “would not defend [Hamon’s] programme” but would “move aside” during Hamon’s campaign.

Other PS officials have also already stated that they would oppose Hamon’s campaign. Pro-Valls MPs, including Christophe Caresche, Gilles Savary and François Loncle, circulated a letter last week stating that if Hamon won, they would assert their “right to withdraw from Hamon’s campaign”, and call for a Macron vote.

The calls to oppose Hamon demonstrate the depth of crisis within the PS. With support for the party haemorrhaging towards Macron, its very survival is at stake; it is deeply divided and threatened with a split after the April-May elections, if not before.

The turn of large sections of the PS to Macron, whose programme is even more explicitly right-wing than Hamon, underscores the reactionary and pro-capitalist character of European social democracy. Such parties across Europe, including Pasok in Greece and the Socialist Party in Spain, have also seen their vote collapse after decades of supporting the European Union’s (EU) austerity diktat.

François Fillon, the right-wing The Republicans’ (LR) candidate, also appears increasingly fragile. Although initially expected to win in a second round of the presidential election against neo-fascist FN candidate Marine Le Pen, Fillon was seriously damaged last week by corruption allegations.

Last Wednesday, the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné published claims that Fillon paid his wife Penelope hundreds of thousands of euros in tax-payers’ money over eight years for a job as his “parliamentary assistant” in which she did no identifiable work. Fillon is now in serious legal jeopardy, with French financial authorities announcing an investigation into the issue.

Between November, when he became LR’s presidential candidate, and last week, his approval ratings have dropped by 16 points, from 54 to 38 percent. The French bourgeoisie now faces a severe crisis, with both its traditional parties of government, LR and the PS, threatened with electoral collapse.

The FN is attempting to emerge as the main beneficiary of this collapse. Le Pen is expected to easily make it through to the second round of the presidential contest, according to the polls.

The prospect of the collapse of the two major parties of bourgeois rule in France is causing increasing unease within the European ruling class. Already reeling from the Brexit vote and from Trump’s denunciations of the EU as a tool of Germany, the crises in the PS and LR are further undermining Europe’s political order.

In a statement to the German parliament last week, recently appointed German Deputy Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel expressed Berlin’s concern over the consequences of the FN’s rise for the EU’s future. “After Brexit, if enemies of Europe manage again in the Netherlands or in France to get results”, he warned, “then we face the threat that the largest civilisation project of the 20th century, namely the European Union, could fall apart”.

The Trump administration has made it clear that it intends to exploit Brexit to use Britain as a political weapon against the EU, and particularly Germany, which it regards as a major economic competitor. France is also emerging as a battleground as Berlin and the Trump administration vie for influence, with the Trump administration rapidly building ties with the FN and Berlin seeking to keep pro-EU forces such as the PS and LR in power.

The breakdown of PS is thus a symptom of the deep factional conflicts within the European ruling elite and the growing international tensions and threat of war.

Dozens killed in Yemen in first US special forces raid under Trump

Niles Niemuth

US Special Forces carried out a raid on a number of homes in Yemen’s central Al Baydah Province on Sunday, killing as many as 57 people, including 16 civilians. One American soldier was reported killed.

The raid marks President Donald Trump’s first authorized military operation and first military fatality. The last US Special Forces raid in Yemen was in 2014, when a botched hostage rescue attempt resulted in the deaths of American journalist Luke Somers and South African teacher Pierre Korkie.

A US Central Command spokesman claimed on Sunday that 14 militants were killed in the raid but did not report any civilian casualties. According to the Pentagon, one US soldier was killed and at least three others injured in combat.

Two additional US soldiers were injured when the helicopter they were riding in was forced to make a hard landing as they sought to evacuate the American casualties. The helicopter was so damaged in the course of the raid that it had to be abandoned and was “intentionally destroyed in place.”

The attack targeted the home of tribal leader and reputed member of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) Abdulrauf al Dhahab. In addition to the destruction of a number of homes, a school, a mosque and a medical facility were all damaged in the assault.

“The operation began at dawn when a drone bombed the home of Abdulrauf al-Dhahab and then helicopters flew up and unloaded paratroopers at his house and killed everyone inside,” a resident told Reuters and the Associated Press.

“Next, the gunmen opened fire at the US soldiers who left the area, and the helicopters bombed the gunmen and a number of homes and led to a large number of casualties.”

Among those killed in Sunday’s attack was the eight-year-old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American citizen and Muslim cleric who was assassinated by Obama with a drone missile strike in Yemen in 2011. Awlaki was related to Dhahab by marriage. Nasser al-Awlaki, the child’s grandfather, told Reuters that the young girl “was hit with a bullet in her neck and suffered for two hours. Why kill children? This is the new administration—it’s very sad, a big crime."

This is the second of Anwar al-Awlaki’s children to be killed by the US government. His 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, was killed in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011, a few weeks after his father.

Two other local tribal leaders, Abdulrauf’s brother Sultan and Saif Alawai al-Jawfi, were also killed in the attack. The Dhahab brothers were allegedly motivated to join AQAP in early 2012 after a third brother, Sheikh Tariq al Dhahab, was killed by the Yemeni intelligence service.

Abdulrauf had previously been targeted for death by the Obama administration in September 2012 when a drone missile was fired at his car. He survived that attack when the missile, instead of hitting his vehicle, hit a minibus, killing 12 civilians, including a 10-year-old girl and her mother.

The US has waged a covert war in Yemen since 2002 when President George W. Bush ordered the first drone missile strike on suspected Al Qaeda members. The use of drone assassinations was dramatically expanded by Obama, who also claimed the right to use drone strikes to kill American citizens without due process anywhere in the world.

According to a tally by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, US drone strikes and other covert military operations over the last 15 years in Yemen have killed as many as 1,461 people.

The Pentagon carried out the first drone strikes under the Trump administration in Yemen on January 20, 21 and 22, killing five alleged AQAP members in Baydah province.

In addition to the ongoing drone war, the US has been facilitating a devastating aerial onslaught in Yemen by Saudi Arabia and its allies against Houthi militants since March 2015. At least 7,469 Yemenis have been killed in the Saudi-led war and some 40,438 have been injured.

The Saudi coalition has deliberately bombed food markets, schools, hospitals, factories and residential neighborhoods in its efforts to break the Houthi insurgency and reinstate the government of President Adbrabbuh Mansur Hadi.

Supported by US intelligence, bombs, fighter jets and refueling flights, the Saudi-led coalition has pushed the poorest country in the Middle East to the brink of famine. A no-fly zone and naval blockade imposed by the Saudi coalition with the support of the US have blocked the delivery of desperately needed food and medicine. Prior to the war the country relied on imports for 90 percent of its food supply.

According to the latest figures published by the UN, some 14 million Yemenis, more than half of the country’s population, are suffering from food insecurity, including 2.2 million acutely malnourished children and 500,000 children who are suffering from severe acute malnourishment. Approximately 19.4 million Yemenis currently lack access to clean drinking water or proper sanitation. The UN estimates that a child dies every 10 minutes in Yemen from preventable causes.

“Everywhere you go, you see people begging in the streets in bigger numbers, you see people rummaging through rubbish to survive,” the UN humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, Jamie McGoldrick, told the BBC.

“You hear catastrophic stories of children dying because they can’t get to health centers. People dying of malnutrition, people dying of preventable diseases. It will get worse because the problem is that the economy is in really bad shape and banking sector doesn’t function.”

Indicating the ferocity of the conflict, more than 100 fighters were killed over the weekend in clashes between troops loyal to Hadi and Houthi rebel fighters in the western city of Mokha, a major port which overlooks the Bab al Mandeb Strait, a strategic oil shipping lane. Approximately 370 fighters have been killed on both sides in the offensive which was launched by the Saudi-backed forces on January 7 with the aim of retaking the Houthi-controlled port.

Human Rights Watch again condemns Australia’s inhuman treatment of refugees

Max Newman 

The US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has once more damned Australia’s barbaric treatment of refugees and its “failure to protect children in detention,” as well as the country’s repressive counter-terrorism laws. The indictment was published in HRW’s annual World Report 2017, which catalogues violations of human rights in around 90 countries.

The report states that throughout 2016 the Australian “government continued its draconian policy of offshore transfers of asylum seekers to Manus Island in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Nauru.” This was despite “growing calls” for the government to address the abuses and “resettle those found to be refugees in Australia.”

HRW outlines the ruling last year by the High Court, Australia’s supreme court, that upheld the government’s indefinite detention of refugees. The report notes that this decision amounted to “authorizing by law” Australia’s role in “securing, funding, and participating in the detention of asylum seekers and refugees.”

HRW points out that, by contrast, the PNG Supreme Court “ruled that the detention of asylum seekers on Manus Island was unconstitutional” under PNG law. The Australian government initially defied the PNG ruling, insisting that the detainees remain indefinitely incarcerated. As noted in the report, Australia’s government eventually agreed to close the Manus Island facility, but gave no timeframe and made clear that the refugees on the island would never come to Australia.

Instead, the government moved, in the subsequent months, to forbid any adult asylum seeker who arrived in Australia by boat after July 19, 2013 from ever receiving a visa, even to visit Australia. This legislation became an essential component in a US-Australia refugee-swapping deal, in which some asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru would be transferred to the US in exchange for some heavily-vetted refugees currently languishing in camps in Costa Rica, having been denied entry to the US.

The announcement of the US-Australia swap came after numerous failed attempts by successive Australian governments, both Liberal-National and Labor, to find a “third option” for the forcible dumping of refugees into poorer surrounding countries. The report highlights the $A55 million deal struck with Cambodia in 2015 to offload refugees there. It notes that, out of the six refugees from Nauru who were “settled” in Cambodia, only two remain there, with the others returning “to their country of origin,” due to the deplorable conditions they faced in Cambodia.

The report also highlights the horrendous conditions on Manus Island and Nauru, where refugee and asylum seekers “face unnecessary delays in, and at times denial of, medical care, even for life-threatening conditions.” This was highlighted during the recent coronial inquest into the death of Hamid Kehazaei, 24, a prisoner in Australia’s detention camp on Manus Island who died from septicaemia spreading from a cut on his foot in August 2014, after authorities delayed his evacuation for medical treatment.

“Many have dire mental health problems and suffer from depression” the report states, pointing to the two incidents of self-immolation on Nauru in May last year as indicators of the effects of prolonged and indefinite detention on the mental health of those imprisoned.

“The Australian government’s offshore operations are highly secretive,” the report further notes, and “service providers working for the Australian government face criminal charges and civil penalties if they disclose information about conditions for asylum seekers and refugees.”

Despite these laws, current and former staff members at the detention centres have revealed some of the abuses. Last year, a leaked cache of over 2,000 incident reports from Nauru “exposed endemic and systematic abuse, predominantly of children.”

The HRW report also highlights the disturbing footage of children being tortured in youth detention in the Northern Territory, involving “teargassing, hooding, shackling” and being stripped naked. Noted as well is the introduction of further counterterrorism laws, featuring provisions that authorise the indefinite detention of those convicted of terrorist offences, even after they have served their sentences.

The HRW report points to a rapid escalation of the erosion of basic legal and democratic rights in Australia over the past year, with the attacks on refugees only the sharpest expression. However, this is not the first HRW report to detail such abuses, nor is it the first to document the horrors of Australia’s refugee camps. Yet, none of these reports has stopped the draconian practices.

All the major political parties—the Liberal-National Coalition, the Labor Party and the Greens—are jointly responsible for these measures. While the current Turnbull Coalition government has ramped up the assault, it was the Keating Labor government that, in 1992, introduced mandatory detention for refugees arriving by boat, making Australia the first country to do so.

In 2012, the minority Gillard Labor government, crucially propped up by the Greens, reopened the detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru, and established the inhumane regime that continues today. To cover their tracks, the Greens have been instrumental in conducting two Senate inquiries into the abuses in the facilities. Both inquiries proposed only cosmetic changes, illustrating the support by the Greens, like the rest of the political establishment, for the underlying “border protection” framework.

As the social conditions of the working class are increasingly attacked around the world by the corporate elite, asylum seekers—tens of millions of whom are fleeing US-led wars—will more and more be scapegoated by governments as a means of diverting social and class tensions in xenophobic and nationalist directions.

To fight this divisive poison, workers must unify their struggles workers across national borders, break with the political parties responsible for this crisis, and turn to an international socialist perspective. Workers must have the right to live in any country of their choosing with full citizen rights, including to work, study and receive welfare entitlements.

Germany steps up military intervention in Mali

Johannes Stern

Germany’s parliament (Bundestag) voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to extend and massively expand the German army’s intervention in the West African country of Mali.

According to the motion, which was approved by parliament in its third reading, the upper limit for the number of soldiers deployed as part the UN mission in Mali, known as MINUSMA, is to be increased by 350 to more than 1,000. The limit was increased just last year from 150 to 650. The deployment is also to be extended by a year.

An additional 300 German soldiers are deployed in Mali as part of the European Union’s (EU) training mission EUTM. This means that more German soldiers will soon be stationed in the West African country than in any other country outside Germany. The largest intervention to date was limited to 960 soldiers in Afghanistan. In Kosovo, where the German army has been operating for 18 years, 517 soldiers are currently deployed.

The army began on Friday with the shifting of NH90 combat and Tiger transport helicopters from Leipzig-Halle airport to Mali. According to the German army, they will be used to transport and rescue injured people. In addition, operations to escort convoys and conduct surveillance are also planned.

Next Tuesday, Colonel Oliver Walter, commander of the Friesland air force regiment, will send the first new contingent into action with a military order at the former Upjever airfield. The first soldiers will be deployed on February 15. The entire contingent is then to arrive in Gao, in the dangerous and restive northern region of the country, on March 1.

The German government is seeking to sell the mission as a humanitarian peacekeeping operation. In the government’s justification of the new mandate for the army, it states, “The stabilisation of Mali is a key focus of German engagement in the Sahel region and an important part of the German government’s Africa policy. The issue at stake is to help Mali towards a peaceful future and overcome the causes of flight and persecution.”

In reality, the German army is not leading Mali toward a peaceful future but increasingly towards terrorism and chaos. A few days ago, a fatal suicide bomb attack near a military base in Gao killed 70 people and many more were injured. “The hospital is overcrowded. There are decomposing bodies everywhere,” Arboncana Maiga, a resident of the city by telephone, told Deutsche Welle. “We have not experienced this before in Gao.”

The deterioration of the security situation in the area is so dramatic that the German army has increased its so-called risk payment to €110 per day. This corresponds to level six, the highest danger level. This only previously applied to the military intervention in Afghanistan.

All of this sheds light on the true character of the German military intervention in Mali and its background.

Germany is waging war and collaborating with an authoritarian and corrupt government to keep refugees away from Europe by detaining them in Africa. Above all it is using the unrest and refugee crisis as an excuse for enforcing its economic and geo-strategic interests on the continent, which has a large population and is rich in natural resources.

Africa was at the heart of Germany’s foreign policy shift from the outset. Just weeks after President Joachim Gauck and other leading politicians announced the end of military restraint at the 2014 Munich Security Conference, the cabinet adopted the guidelines for an Africa policy. These guidelines read like a blueprint for the exploitation of Africa by German imperialism in the 21st century.

The guidelines speak of a “growing relevance of Africa for Germany and Europe,” and this means, “The potential of Africa arises out of a demographic development with a future market with high growth rates, rich natural resources, potential for agricultural production and food security under its own control … African markets are developing dynamically and will—in the raw materials market and beyond—be for the German economy … increasingly interesting.”

The goal of the German government is therefore to increase “the political, security policy and development policy engagement of Germany.” The aim being pursued was “to act based on interests, early quickly, decisively and substantially,” which includes military interventions. The German government intended “to deploy the full spectrum of its available methods … cross-departmentally, political, security policy, development policy, regional policy, economic, academic and cultural.”

Since the publication of the guidelines, German imperialism has stepped up its efforts to impose its interests in Africa under the guise of the war on terror or combatting the “causes of flight.”

Already at the beginning of 2013, the German parliament agreed to support the French intervention in Mali and to station German soldiers in the country. Additional German interventions are currently under way in Senegal, Western Sahara, Sudan, South Sudan and Somalia.

The latest expansion of the Mali operation introduces a new stage in the return of German militarism to Africa. It is directly connected with the geopolitical shifts and mounting conflicts between the imperialist powers following the election of US President Donald Trump.

In an interview with Handelsblatt, German Defence Minister Ursula Von der Leyen demanded the “clear political will” to reach the NATO-mandated figure of 2 percent of GDP for defence spending and not lose any time with military rearmament. “Ships, helicopters, armoured vehicles, personnel—even when the money is there, they still need to be built or recruited and trained.”

At the same time, Von der Leyen explained that European governments had to readjust their foreign policy and “ensure security in our region as Europeans.” With reference to Africa that meant “supporting African states to bring the growing population in correspondence with the expanding economy and stabilise them against terrorism.” The “cooperation with Africa” was thus “a task for NATO. I see us Europeans assuming much more responsibility.”

The Left Party, which was the only parliamentary group to vote against the expansion of the mission, supports the offensive of German imperialism like all the other parliamentary parties and has fulfilled its “duty” in Africa for some time.

In December, the defence policy spokeswoman of the Left Party, Christine Buchholz, made her second trip to Mali to visit the troops, she went there for the first time in 2014.

In her speech in parliament, Buchholz did not oppose the deployment in principle, but merely warned of the growing danger for German soldiers. “With the capability of carrying out rescue missions, the action radius of the German army will be expanded and thus also the risk of becoming the targets of attacks,” she said.

Buchholz and the Left Party fear above all sparking an uprising of the Malian masses against the foreign occupiers. “The German soldiers are operating in Gao as foreigners, cut-off from the population. The more insecure the situation, the more isolated will be the German troops,” Buchholz told the deputies.

Loyal, the magazine of the German military reserves association, recently reported “how a German patrol in Gao not only had to struggle with the extreme heat, but also a cool response from the population. A stone was thrown at the armoured and armed vehicle of the German army.”

Corruption allegations hit conservative French presidential candidate Fillon

Alex Lantier

Two months after obtaining the presidential nomination of the right-wing The Republicans’ (LR) party, and less than a week after calling for closer ties to Moscow prior to a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, François Fillon faces corruption charges that could undermine his campaign.

On Wednesday, the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné published allegations that Fillon’s wife Penelope was paid €600,000 [US $642,000] over eight years for two jobs in which she did no identifiable work. This allegation is particularly damaging since Fillon staked his presidential bid on claims that he was not as corrupt as his main LR rivals. Former Prime Minister Alain Juppé was convicted on corruption charges in 2004, and former President Nicolas Sarkozy still is in legal jeopardy in a series of cases arising from his term in office from 2007 to 2012.

Abandoning the traditional “truce of the Republic” during election periods, French financial authorities have announced they are opening an initial investigation into the issue.

Given the widespread corruption of the French political establishment, and the timing of the exposure—coming only days after Fillon’s explosive call for an alliance with Germany and Russia against the new American administration—it appears this revelation is an element of the vicious faction fight now roiling ruling circles over how to react to Donald Trump’s coming to power.

Fillon reacted rapidly to the allegations, appearing personally on the evening news on TF1 television on Thursday to defend himself and threaten journalists reporting on the matter with legal action. “I will bring suit against the newspapers that are stating that my wife had a fictitious job,” he said, stating that he was the target of “calumny” and charges designed to “shoot down” his candidacy. He added, “There is something rotten in our democracy.”

Fillon did not deny that his wife had received the payments, however, but asserted that she had done work to justify her salary, such as looking at drafts of his speeches and receiving guests. He also repeated that he would step down if he were formally indicted on corruption charges—a statement he previously made to distinguish himself from Sarkozy.

Fillon’s sudden decision to appear on prime-time television was an acknowledgment that the details and allegations assembled by Le Canard Enchaîné could potentially deal a fatal blow to his presidential ambitions.

Penelope Fillon, Le Canard writes, was “until recently known for her talents as a judge in contests for the best pear pie or Shetland ponies, regular attendance at mass at Solesmes Abbey [a Benedictine monastery], and home-making … Surprise: the income of a woman who always presented herself as an exemplary stay-at-home mother sometimes totaled almost half the taxable income reported by the couple.”

Her pay allegedly included nearly €500,000 from the National Assembly, where she worked as a “parliamentary attaché” for Marc Joulaud, a deputy who replaced Fillon in the Assembly while Fillon was working as a minister in successive right-wing governments. Penelope Fillon’s pay, according to Le Canard Enchaîné ’s sources, went up to €7,900 per month--almost the entire €9,561 monthly budget for Joulaud’s parliamentary staff.

The weekly paper interviewed Jeanne Robinson-Behre, another one of Joulaud’s attachés, who did not recall Penelope Fillon carrying out any work for Joulaud at all. “I never worked with her, I have no information on this subject,” Robinson-Behre said. “I only knew her as a minister’s wife.”

Moreover, Le Canard adds, “In 2012 and 2013, [Penelope Fillon] was ‘literary advisor’ at La Revue des Deux Mondes, a monthly magazine owned by a family friend, businessman and man of influence Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière. In 20 months, she raked in €100,000 pre-tax, even though the director of the magazine had never met her.”

She was allegedly paid €5,000 per month, only €1,000 less than Michel Crépu, the magazine’s director at the time. However, Crépu told Le Canard, “I never met Penelope Fillon and I never saw her in the magazine’s offices. … Marc de Lacharrière phoned me once to say, ‘Could you send me some books for review we could give to Mrs Fillon, who is feeling bored?’”

Given the elasticity of the laws against influence peddling and those requiring National Assembly attachés to actually work for the deputies they are supposedly assisting, it is unclear whether Penelope Fillon’s pay packets were technically illegal. However, the affair points to the boundless class arrogance of the leading presidential candidates. They are demanding deep austerity from working people and financial sacrifices to pay for police-state and militarist policies, while living off vast payoffs, legal or otherwise, from major banks and businesses.

Fillon’s ability to have his wife hired and paid for nominal work is hardly unusual among deputies at the National Assembly. In 2014, the first year that reporting was required, Médiapart reports, 52 wives, 28 sons and 32 daughters of legislators were employed using parliamentary funds.

Moreover, Fillon’s financial arrangements were no doubt well-known in political and media circles long before Le Canard Enchaîné went into print. Those arrangements have been the subject of intense scrutiny since November, when numerous articles appeared on Fillon’s consulting firm 2F Conseil, which earned a whopping €757,000 in three years despite having no employees. It appears that these sums of money came from lucrative speaking fees paid to Fillon by various business groups and think tanks.

The exposure of the potentially most damaging element of Fillon’s finances was carefully timed. It came just after he issued a statement in Le Monde and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung attacking NATO interventions in Syria and Ukraine as costly errors and calling for the formation of a French-German-Russian alliance against Washington. Such a policy contradicts the views of candidates in or around the Socialist Party (PS)—including Emmanuel Macron and Benoît Hamon, who have insisted on maintaining ties with Washington—to which the Canard is generally sympathetic.

Under these circumstances, it appears that the allegation against Fillon is yet another indication of how international crises and conflicts are increasingly dominating the French presidential election campaign.

US union membership hits new record low

Shannon Jones

Figures released this week on union membership in the United States show a further sharp decline in both absolute and relative terms, with union rolls falling by some 240,000 in 2016. Union membership as a percentage of the labor force fell 0.4 percentage points to 10.7 percent. By way of contrast, union membership in 1980 as a share of the total workforce was over 20 percent.

The continued decline in union membership during a period of supposed economic recovery is a further verdict on the bankrupt and anti-working-class character of the unions.

Both public sector unions and those in private industry saw major membership losses, with membership in public sector unions falling by more than 120,000 and private sector membership by a similar figure. By some estimates the unionization rate is now at its lowest level in more than 100 years.

The unionization rate among public sector workers was 34.4 percent, while the rate among private sector workers was a miniscule 6.4 percent. New York state had the highest unionization rate at 23.6 percent, although this figure was down 1.1 percentage points from 2015. South Carolina had the lowest unionization rate at 1.6 percent, down 0.5 percentage points from 2015.

Trade union executives have blamed the loss in membership on the spread of right-to-work laws that ban labor agreements mandating union membership as a condition of employment. The union apparatus has benefited from its ability in many states to negotiate contracts that force workers to pay dues into its coffers.

While right-to-work laws are generally directed against the democratic rights of the working class as a whole, workers have no interest in being compelled to pay dues which support the utterly corrupt trade unions. The state sanctioning of unions as the exclusive workplace bargaining agent serves to uphold the unions’ monopoly and creates a legal obstacle for workers seeking to develop alternative forms of genuine, democratic organization.

However, in 2016, the drop in union membership did not seem to be significantly affected by the existence of right-to-work laws. The decline was across the board, covering most states and demographics. In Michigan, where a right-to-work law was enacted by the state legislature in 2013, union membership fell from 621,000 to 606,000. However, in Pennsylvania, where there is no right-to-work law in effect, union membership fell even more sharply, from 747,000 down to 685,000.

Under conditions of escalating attacks on the jobs and living standards of workers, the continued hemorrhaging of membership by the American unions is a damning indictment of these organizations. The unions exist as little more than bureaucratic shells, utterly dependent on the sufferance of the corporations and the government, which still see them to some extent as useful tools for disciplining the working class and suppressing resistance.

The reactionary nature of the unions was on display this week with attempts by union officials to cozy up to the Trump administration on the basis of shared support for economic nationalism and trade war against the overseas rivals of US capitalism. Among those praising Donald Trump was Dennis Williams, president of the United Auto Workers (UAW), who called Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Trans Pacific Partnership a “victory for American workers.”

Continuing their role as enforcers for American big business, the unions shut down a series of strikes in 2016 that erupted in opposition to employer concession demands. This included a strike by nearly 40,000 workers at telecommunications giant Verizon.

After seven weeks on strike, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) ended picketing based on “an agreement on principle” and ordered Verizon workers back on the job without even revealing details of the settlement. In the end workers were saddled with a contract that contained sharp increases in health care costs, the same concessions that they originally struck to oppose.

In Philadelphia, the Transport Workers Union (TWU) shut down a powerful six-day strike in early November by transit workers in order not to interfere with the presidential election campaign of Democrat Hillary Clinton. The TWU sent workers back to work without even presenting details of the proposed new contract. The deal included steep increases in health care costs and failed to address onerous work schedules that endangered the health and safety of workers, not to mention public transit riders.

Despite decades of declining membership, the assets of the unions remain substantial and the salaries and expense accounts of the union executives continue to swell. For example, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) reported assets of $93 million in 2016 and $327 million in receipts, not including the substantial assets of local union affiliates, which in some cases exceed those of the national union.

According to the most recent US Labor Department records, AFT President Randi Weingarten took in $497,300 in salary and expenses in 2016, putting her well within the top 1 percent of US income earners.

The CWA reported $536 million in total assets in 2016 with the union’s president, Chris Shelton, raking in $218,900. Another 14 top CWA officials collected in excess of $150,000 apiece in annual expenses and salaries.

In its most recent filings the UAW reported net assets of $945 million, with $289 million in total receipts, including $28.9 million in interest income. Williams took in $170,400 in 2015 in salary and expenses as president of the UAW. This does not include payments of $120,000 from his position on the board of directors of Navistar and payments from the UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust (URMBT).

These figures refute the claims by various pseudo-left organizations that workers should subordinate their struggles to the corrupt union apparatuses because the unions remain working class organizations. The support for the unions on the part of these outfits, including the International Socialist Organization (ISO), reflects the strivings not of the working class, but of selfish and self-absorbed social layers seeking privileged positions in the unions as well as government and academia based on racial and gender politics.

Indeed, in many cases the personnel of the union hierarchy includes supporters of the pseudo-left, such as Jesse Sharkey of the ISO, who, according to the Chicago Sun Times, takes in nearly $100,000 in annual salary as vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union.

As the corporations, with the backing of the Trump administration, ramp up their assault on jobs, living standards and working conditions, there is a burning need for workers to organize in their workplaces as well as politically. However, the vehicle for the coming upsurge of the working class is not the trade unions. Utterly hostile to the interests of the working class, these organizations will seek to disorganize and crush any resistance to the attacks of big business.

Workers need new, independent organizations such as factory and workplace committees controlled democratically by the rank-and-file. This must be combined with the political mobilization of the working class based on a socialist and internationalist program.

Canada seeks enhanced military-security collaboration with Trump-led US

Roger Jordan

In the week since the inauguration of US President Donald Trump and the promulgation of his reactionary “America First” program, Canada’s Liberal government has moved to significantly expand Ottawa’s decades-long military-security partnership with the United States.

Under conditions where Trump is launching trade war, talking about “seizing Iraqi oil,” and threatening to seize Chinese-held islands in the South China Sea, Canada’s ruling elite is seeking to further integrate Canada into Washington’s war plans.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke to Trump by telephone the day after the inauguration and discussed an initial face-to-face meeting in coming weeks. In a tacit acknowledgement that a closer alliance with Trump will prove deeply unpopular, Canadian officials have proposed that the meeting take place on US soil, for fear a Trump visit to Ottawa will provoke mass protests.

In the run-up to Trump’s assumption of the presidency, Trudeau had signalled his government’s desire to step up military collaboration with Washington by a series of key personnel appointments. Following a cabinet shuffle that saw former financial journalist and Thomson-Reuters executive Chrystia Freeland promoted to Foreign Minister, Trudeau named Andrew Leslie, a retired lieutenant-general and onetime candidate to lead Canada’s military, as Freeland’s parliamentary secretary with special responsibilities for the Canada-US relationship.

Leslie has intimate ties to the Pentagon, including from when he commanded Canadian forces in the US-led wars in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.

Speaking to the Globe and Mail earlier this week, Leslie hailed Trump’s selections for Defence Secretary and National Security Adviser, James “Mad Dog” Mattis and Michael Flynn. “Gen. Mattis,” declared Leslie, “is a very knowledgeable, scholarly warrior, and Gen. Flynn is arguably one of the world’s experts on intelligence. So they’re unique choices.”

Such effusive praise for Mattis, who was responsible for the brutal 2004 US military assault on Fallujah, a war crime, and Flynn, an aggressive proponent of US militarist violence in the Middle East and beyond, exemplifies the Canadian ruling elite’s readiness to collaborate with the most right-wing US administration in history in pursuit of its own predatory ambitions. As another anonymous senior government official enthusiastically remarked of Trump’s team, “Actually, we’re getting along quite well with these guys…They are saying very nice things to us. They are saying they love Canada.”

Canada has long been a key partner in US imperialist aggression. Since World War II, Ottawa has relied on its close ties to Washington to advance Canadian imperialist interests around the globe. In the explosion of US militarism that followed the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union, Canada played a prominent role. Canada’s military has participated in virtually every US-led war over the past quarter century and Ottawa, under Liberal and Conservative governments alike, has been particularly supportive of the US military-strategic offensive against Russia, from NATO expansion to the current “advanced” deployments on Russia’s borders.

Trudeau pledged in his 2015 election campaign to deepen the economic and military partnership between the two countries. The coming to power of Trump has added a still more ominous edge to this strategy.

Trump’s provocative declarations, that the US is being “ripped off” by NATO and that some member-states are “free riders” because they do not spend the equivalent of 2 percent of GDP on their militaries, have largely been welcomed by Canada’s political and military establishment. To reach the 2 percent target, the Liberals would have to double the current military budget to more than $40 billion.

There is also a growing clamour for Canada to join the US ballistic missile defence shield, a step that is already under consideration as part of the Liberals’ defence policy review.

Speaking with the CBC this week, Derek Burney, a former Canadian ambassador to the US who is advising Trudeau on working with Trump, said, “(Trump’s) criticism of Canada’s contribution to NATO is legitimate. We’re not alone, but if he’s concerned the United States is carrying an unfair share of the burden, he’s right. We should be spending more on defence if we want to give future life to NATO.”

Colin Robertson, a former diplomat and now a senior fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, enthused over the prospect of Trump giving Canada encouragement to take a more aggressive stance against Russia in the Arctic. “I think Trump will probably say ‘OK, the Arctic is yours. Exercise that sovereignty. Are you going to build that base in the north or not? We want to know what you’re doing.’”

In a concession to Trump, the Trudeau government has delayed finalizing its plans to deploy Canadian troops to Africa. This initiative was to be dressed up as a UN “peacekeeping mission,” but would have as its principal goal giving Ottawa a greater role in the geopolitics of a continent where Canadian mining companies have more than $25 billion in investments. Made in expectation of demands from the Trump administration for additional Canadian military commitments, the delay has reportedly riled the French and German governments. They had been banking on Canada deploying hundreds of troops to Mali early in 2017 to assist in the waging of counterinsurgency war.

With the exception of British Prime Minister Theresa May, the rulers of Europe’s major powers have responded to Trump’s economic nationalism and unilateralism by pushing back against Washington and calling for a more assertive and independent European foreign policy. Trudeau and Canadian big business, on the other hand, are bending over backwards to demonstrate their readiness to collaborate with a Trump-led America. “It is the job of the Canadian prime minister,” declared Trudeau this week, “to have a constructive working relationship with the president of the United States, and that’s exactly what I intend to do.”

Burney and senior government officials have made no secret of the fact that in renegotiating NAFTA with Trump, Canada will be quite prepared to throw Mexico under the bus if that is necessary to maintain Canadian big business’ privileged access to the US market. “Mexico has its own interests,” Burney told CTV News. “The notion that Canada and Mexico together are going to negotiate against the United States, that doesn’t hold any water for me.”

Trudeau was in Calgary this week for a two-day cabinet retreat at which relations with the Trump administration were the main topic of discussion. The Prime Minister and Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr applauded Trump’s executive order Tuesday giving the go-ahead for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which will transport Alberta tar sands oil to the Gulf of Mexico.

All this does not mean relations between the US and Canadian governments and ruling elites are not fraught with tensions. Canadian big business is troubled by its dependence on the US, particularly in the area of oil exports, and is urging Ottawa to proceed with its plans to diversify Canada’s trade. These plans include potentially striking a free trade agreement with China. Such a step would almost inevitably put Canada at odds with Trump, who has all but publicly named China as America’s principal economic and military rival.

Frictions could also emerge over how to deal with Russia, if Trump seeks an accommodation with Moscow so as to lay the basis for escalating Washington’s military-strategic offensive against China.

Some media commentators are keenly aware that in aligning with Trump, Trudeau is bolstering an administration whose aggressive policies threaten to plunge the world into trade war and potentially a global conflagration. However, bereft of any alternative strategy for defending the wealth and privileges of Canadian capitalism, they are cheering Trudeau on.

Thus, National Post columnist Michael Den Tandt, who has praised Trudeau’s overtures to Trump, published a column this week, “Batten the hatches: China and US poised to clash as never before,” that outlined a scenario of military conflict in the Asia-Pacific. Wrote Den Tandt: “All the signals coming from senior Trump administration officials—from the president himself, with his Taiwan-friendly Tweets, on down—are not of waning interest in the Pacific region, but waxing. Only rather than the softish power of multilateral trade ties, the primary instrument of American power projection will be military—aircraft carriers and nuclear deterrence.”

Trump uses press conference with UK Prime Minister May to restate anti-EU agenda

Robert Stevens & Chris Marsden

UK Prime Minister Theresa May suffered a public humiliation at the hands of US President Donald Trump during their joint press conference Friday.

May arrived in the US Thursday with her government trumpeting the fact that hers was the first visit of any foreign leader to the White House since Trump’s inauguration.

On her first day in the US, she addressed senior Republican policymakers in Philadelphia offering a series of eulogies to the “special relationship” between the US and Britain and pledging to do whatever was required to preserve it.

The “burden” of democracy for the past century had been shared with the UK and “defined the modern world” in the course of two world wars and during the post 1945 Cold War period. Today Eastern Europe lives “in freedom and peace” thanks to “Mrs Thatcher and President Reagan,” she concluded.

Maintaining the special relationship, embedded in the US-led NATO alliance, was essential to avoid “the eclipse of the West” by Russia, China and India, May declared.

In her negotiations with Trump, May was charged by competing factions of Britain’s ruling elite with firming up the promise of a US trade deal to offset the impact of Britain’s leaving the European Union in two years’ time. But this would ideally be backed up with a pledge of continued US support for NATO and Trump rowing back on his overt support for the break-up of the EU—so that the UK could placate the angry response of Germany and France and maintain the possibility of tariff-free access to the market of its largest trading partner.

The New York Times accurately summed up the crisis facing the British ruling class, noting that “Since Britain’s decline from a global power in the years just after World War II, the country’s foreign policy has rested on two pillars. First is the American-British partnership, which allows Britain to project its power and safeguard its interests globally. Second is European unity, which is essential for Britain’s economic prosperity and, by removing the centuries-old diversions of European conflict, frees up Britain to act on the world stage.”

With the breakup of the European Union, Russian resurgence and particularly “Mr. Trump’s threats to step away from Europe,” the Times warned, “both of those pillars could now be crumbling.”

Ultimately, however, the shape of the press conference was determined not primarily by Britain’s decline as a world power, but by the growing conflict between the imperialist powers that has found political expression in Trump’s elevation and his self-proclaimed “America First” agenda of trade war, protectionism and stepped up military aggression. It is the increasingly bitter struggle between the US and its major rivals, including Europe, for control of global markets and resources that imparts such an incendiary character to world politics—and which finds acute expression in the bullying rhetoric emanating from Trump.

May began her address to the press with a display of grotesque fawning before Trump. As she congratulated him on “a stunning victory” in the Presidential election, Trump smiled smugly and preened as he acknowledged the praise to someone in the audience.

She followed this by telling the media that the Queen had offered to fete Trump at a State Banquet in London on an official state visit later this year. But despite abasing herself, on all three issues of concern to Britain, May essentially walked away empty-handed.

Despite claims that she would be “frank” in raising Britain’s differences with some of Trump’s previous statements and political views, May did nothing of the sort.

All she could say regarding talks on trade was that “the President and I have mentioned future economic co-operation and trade.”

On US commitment to NATO, May looked nervously towards Trump—who earlier this month described NATO as “obsolete”-as as she told the press, “Mr. President, I think you said, you confirmed that you’re 100 percent behind NATO.”

Trump never deigned to back up May’s assertion and avoided mentioning NATO during the conference. Instead, he reiterated his readiness to come to a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin—the very issue that has thrown the European powers into panic.

In a further attempt to ingratiate herself with Trump, who has railed against the US footing Europe’s defence bill, May stated, “I have agreed to encourage my fellow European leaders to deliver on their commitments to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defence so that the burden is more fairly shared.”

One might ask, what fellow European leaders? The reality is that following the Brexit vote, the UK’s influence in Europe has collapsed and is diminishing by the day so that May is routinely excluded from all high-level meetings of EU leaders.

It was left to BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg in the short questioning period allowed, to ask Trump, “You've said before that torture works, you've praised Russia, you've said you want to ban some Muslims from coming to America, you've suggested there should be punishment for abortion.”

“For many people in Britain those sound like alarming beliefs. What do you say to our viewers at home who are worried about some of your views and worried about you becoming the leader of the free world?"

The reality of the “special relationship” was summed up in Trump’s hostile reply as he looked at May and said, “This was your choice of a question? There goes that relationship.”

Trump then proceeded to reiterate his defence of torture and said he supported it regardless of the views of any members of his administration. “I happen to feel it does work.” May stood in silence.

The theme continued as May was asked a question about Trump’s executive order to build an anti-immigration wall on the US’s southern border with Mexico. Making clear that he would not appreciate comment from May, Trump told the press for her that May had other issues to deal with.

After Trump reiterated his plans, May dutifully told her questioners that relations between the US and Mexico were the exclusive business of the US and Mexico. In contrast, when it came to Britain’s exit from the EU, Trump was free to say whatever he wanted.

For the Trump administration, “post-Brexit” Britain’s main value is not as a trading partner but a political weapon to be used against the European Union, and above all against Germany, which Trump views as a major economic rival to the US. Bracketing Brexit with his own election, and alluding to the further breakup of the EU, Trump said, “Brexit was an example of what was to come... I think Brexit will go down as being a fantastic thing for the United Kingdom... and not a liability.”

He went so far as to confide to the media that he privately referred to the EU as the “consortium” and used the occasion to complain that it had once prevented him from successfully concluding a business venture.

Trump orders military to prepare for world war

Tom Eley 

During a visit to the Pentagon on Friday, President Donald Trump issued an executive action calling for stepped up violence in Syria and a vast expansion of the US military, including its nuclear arsenal, to prepare for war with “near-peer competitors”—a reference to nuclear-armed China and Russia—and “regional challengers,” such as Iran.

“I’m signing an executive action to begin a great rebuilding of the armed services of the United States,” Trump said during the signing of the document, entitled “Rebuilding the US Armed Forces.”

During the visit, his first to the Pentagon, Trump signed a second order, “Protecting the US from Terrorist Attacks by Foreign Nationals,” that freezes visa and immigration applications from predominantly Muslim countries. The order threatens to block refugees from finding sanctuary, workers from taking jobs, students from attending school, and the unification of families.

The military order directs Defense Secretary James Mattis, who was sworn in at the ceremony, to complete a 30-day “readiness review” designed to prepare for the destruction of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, along with “other forms of Islamic terror.” Last week, Mattis was confirmed by the Senate in a 98-1 vote.

The order further instructs Mattis, in the words of the Washington Post, which obtained a copy of the order prior to its formal release, “to examine how to carry out operations against unnamed ‘near-peer’ competitors, a group which US officials typically identify as China and Russia.” And it commands the Pentagon and the Office of Management and Budget to develop a “military readiness emergency budget amendment” that would increase military spending in the current year and increase the budget for 2018 and thereafter—increases to be offset by cuts to social spending.

The Presidential Memorandum, only three pages in length, is the blueprint for world war.

The order unmistakably threatens the use of nuclear weapons. Section 3 calls for a nuclear force “to deter 21st century threats” and, menacingly, to “achieve Presidential objectives should deterrence fail.”

It further calls for a plan “to achieve readiness objectives” for the use of the nuclear arsenal “by 2022.” This would include the “modernization” of the US nuclear force, a greatly expanded missile defense system, and increased emphasis on cyber warfare, which aims to cripple the retaliatory capacity of major adversaries by targeting their digital and telecommunication command structures prior to an American strike.

These actions follow on a move by the Obama administration to implement a $1 trillion upgrade in the country’s nuclear arsenal.

The executive action did not put a price tag on new military spending, but media speculation indicates that the figure could approach an additional $100 billion per year. Trump’s military plans hew closely to a Heritage Foundation proposal that calls for the revamping of the nuclear force, the expansion of the Navy to 350 ships, the Air Force to 1,200 fighter and attack jets, the Marine Corps from 24 to 36 divisions, and the Army to more than a half a million soldiers.

The US currently spends approximately $600 billion on its military annually—excluding expenditures on the intelligence agencies and Veterans Administration— more than the next nine largest military spenders combined. American “defense” spending accounts for, by itself, over one third of all global military spending, and it consumes the great majority of the federal discretionary budget.

Increases in military spending, coupled with Trump’s promises to drastically lower taxes on corporations and the rich, must inevitably be paid for by cuts to education, health care and infrastructure, and by plundering Social Security and Medicare.

In securing the presidency, Trump capitalized on popular hostility toward Hillary Clinton’s interventionist stance on Syria and her saber-rattling against Russia. But his executive order’s demand for escalation in Syria increases the likelihood of war with both regional power Iran and nuclear-armed Russia. Russia maintains its only significant foreign military base in Syria and has so far preserved the regime of Bashar al-Assad in a war for regime change orchestrated by the Obama administration.

Trump’s order for a plan to destroy ISIS and “radical Islam,” which he declared in his Inaugural Address he would “eradicate completely from the face of the Earth,” will be drawn up by Mattis, responsible for numerous war crimes in the US occupation of Iraq, including the killing of untold thousands of civilians in the 2004 attack on Fallujah.

While the US now makes war on ISIS, it has funded and directed Al Qaeda affiliates in the regime change operations in Libya and Syria. Yet in remarks made last summer, prior to his nomination to defense secretary, Mattis claimed that, in his view, ISIS was nothing more than a stalking horse for Iran to extend its influence throughout the Middle East. It is widely rumored that Mattis left command in the Obama administration because he favored a more bellicose approach toward Iran.

Even before Trump’s order became public, figures in and around the military speculated that Mattis would propose a dramatic escalation in Syria.

Scott Murray, a retired Air Force colonel involved with previous aerial bombardment of ISIS, told NPR that this could be done by lifting rules preventing the targeting of civilians.

“Commanders could … re-examine limits on the number of civilian casualties that the military risks when it hits ISIL targets,” NPR reported. “Known as the ‘non-combatant value,’ the rule restricts the number of civilians who can be put at risk in an airstrike.”

Officers who spoke with the US government's overseas broadcaster Voice of America (VOA) complained of the Obama administration “micro-approving” actions in Syria. “Every single person had to be approved,” an unnamed Defense Department official said of a contingent of 203 Special Forces soldiers sent into Syria last year.

A high-ranking Army general, Lt. Gen. David Barno, told NPR’s Morning Edition that, in lieu of local proxies, far more US soldiers will be deployed into Syria. “I think President Trump might be looking for something with some quicker results and that could put some new options on the table,” Barno said. “He could elect to put American boots on the ground in larger numbers.”

Currently most of the 6,000 US military personnel in the region are concentrated in Iraq, where, joined by Iraqi forces, they are subjecting the city of Mosul to a massive attack. Trump’s order will likely lift the fiction that there are separate war theaters in the neighboring countries.

There was also speculation that the US could bolster the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). This would heighten tensions with NATO ally Turkey, which views the YPG as a proxy of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), against which it has waged a nearly four-decade counterinsurgency war to prevent the emergence of an independent Kurdistan.

An escalation in Syria is also prefigured by Trump’s anti-immigrant executive order, which, with the express aim of blocking refugees from fleeing the crisis, envisages the creation of “safe zones” run by the US military—in blatant violation of Syrian sovereignty and international law. Under the plan, Syria’s refugees would be placed in what would be, in all but name, US-administered camps, overseen by the US military.