A Victory for Theresa May Will See Britain Dragged Further Towards War With Russia

Colin Todhunter

British Prime Minister Theresa May has been warned by various political leaders in Britain not to rush to attack Syrian government forces if she wins the general election in June. The Guardian reported that she might hold a vote on military action this summer. If this is the case, it would imply that she wants to press ahead without UN backing.

May appears to want the support of parliament to have the freedom to join US in airstrikes against Syria in the event of another chemical attack. This is despite the fact there is no concrete evidence that Syrian forces carried out such a recent attack, just as there was no evidence to support similar claims in 2013 when David Cameron tried but failed to get parliamentary approval to bomb Syria.

Taking about the chemical attack that occurred on 4 April in Khan Sheikhoun in Syria, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said:

“We think it would be constructive for the UN Security Council to accept a resolution that would not only investigate the incident but the accusations against Damascus. We have different facts, we don’t want to impose them but we stand for objective, impartial, honest investigation.”

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has cautioned May against unilateral military action in Syria:

“We don’t need unilateral action. We need to work through the UN but, above all, we need to bend ourselves totally to getting a political settlement in Syria.”

As with Iraq in 2003, the clear danger is that ‘evidence’ is being cooked up to fit a preconceived policy; in this case, the removal of Assad from power which was planned as far back as at least 2009: Syria is essentially a ‘war for energy, capital and empire‘.

The demonisation of Putin and Russia

Since Russia intervened at the behest of the Syrian government, the Syrian conflict has swung away from the opposition (terrorist) groups which the US has been supporting to defeat Assad, an ‘unspoken truth’ in the mainstream media (see ‘The Dirty War on Syria‘). However, the US seems increasingly desperate to intensify its military intervention to bring its plan for Syria and the wider Middle East region to fruition. This does not just mean attacking Syrian government forces. It also involves putting pressure on Russia to step aside.

Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin was told by the UK ambassador to the United Nations Matthew Rycroft that he is on the “wrong side of history” because of his support for the “barbaric” Syrian leader Bashar Assad. Rycroft added that supporting the Assad regime would result in “shame” and “humiliation” for Russia.

Rycroft said the Security Council had been “held to ransom by Russia’s shameless support for the Assad regime.” He added that Russia’s credibility and reputation across the world have been poisoned by its toxic association with Assad.

It might appear to some that Rycroft resides in an alternative universe. Where is the credibility and reputation of the US given its destruction of Panama, Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq and Syria (see ‘Five Invasion Plots, Three Continents, Identical Lies‘)? Where does its reputation lie when much of the world beyond the bubble Rycroft exists in recognises that the US has supported terror groups to destroy Syria?

Rycroft continued discussing Russia:

“They have chosen to side with a murderous, barbaric criminal, rather than with their international peers. They have chosen the wrong side of history.”

What he means by “international peers” is the often-used term “international community” which in turn means the US, NATO and its allies. This tirade against Russia and Assad is intended for the consumption of a Western public courtesy of the mainstream corporate media that peddles the narrative of the US and NATO being civilising forces in a barbaric world.

In response to Rycroft’s statements, Russia’s UN representative, Vladimir Safronkov, responded:

“Stop putting forward these unprofessional arguments and accusations against my country. These are not diplomatic. These are lies. Don’t even try to get into fights in the Arab world. Nothing will work and nothing will be achieved. All Arab countries recall your colonial hypocrisy.”

The anti-Russia rhetoric has been incessant in recent years. Following the US-instigated coup in Ukraine and with no hint of irony intended, British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said that NATO must be ready for Russian aggression in “whatever form it takes.” He added that Russia is a “real and present danger.”

Former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe Admiral James Stavridis deems Russian aggression a greater threat than terrorism. He depicts Putin as someone capable of disregarding international law and seizing situations to his advantage. This from someone who represents a country that has flagrantly disregarded international law to carry out illegal wars, torture, drone assassinations and mass murder as and when it deems necessary.

Jim Comey, director of the FBI, recently branded Russia the “greatest threat of any nation,” while answering questions at a Senate hearing on Moscow’s alleged meddling in the 2016 US presidential election. Again, no proper evidence has been offered to support this allegation and Comey failed to providence any.

Lies for perpetual war

In the UK, over the last 18 months, we have also seen Jeremy Corbyn ridiculed and attacked relentlessly. Corbyn has been described by prominent figures in the Conservative government as a threat to security and as a threat to Britain. He has been demonised in a similar to Putin. Corbyn was always going to be a target for the Establishment because he swims against the Washington consensus of neoliberal capitalism, war and imperialism.

Following Corbyn being elected as leader of the Labour Party in Britain, Michael Fallon stated:

“Labour are now a serious risk to our nation’s security, our economy’s security and your family’s security.”

If anything is a threat to Britain and the world, it is the underhand destabilisations and wars it participates in as it stands shoulder to shoulder with Washington and its agenda. Former British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray has called the UK a danger to the world.

Murray has stated:

“I’ve seen things from the inside and the UK’s foreign interventions are almost always about resources. It is every bit as corrupt as others have indicated. It is not an academic construct, the system stinks.”

As far as Iraq is concerned, Murray said that he knew for certain that key British officials were fully aware that there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction. He said that invading Iraq wasn’t a mistake, it was a lie.

It was a lie just like the ongoing demonisation of Putin and Russia is based on a series of lies. We now have the situation in Syria where deception once again trumps reality as the US seeks to gain support for broadening its military campaign to balkanise Syria and redraw the map of the Middle East. Unfounded claims about Assad using chemical weapons are front page news and mirroring the lie of WMD in Iraq. Millions are dead in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan as the US and its allies play out a continuation of a modern-day ‘Great Game’.

The US thinks it and it alone has the right to act as it deems fit to protect its interests and to maintain global dominance. No other power will be allowed to rise to challenge the US.

The US has over a period of decades created a long list of bogeymen and bogus reasons to remove leaders and destroy sovereign states that have stood in the way of its geostrategic agenda. In terms of a massive military budget, worldwide military bases, illegal wars and destabilisations, it is not Russia but the US which poses the greater threat to humanity, that much is clear.

Trajectory towards nuclear war

This is a recipe for perpetual war. It is a recipe that is leading humanity towards nuclear conflict as the US seeks to destroy Russia as a functioning state or at least replace Putin with a compliant puppet. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has pressed ahead both in a technological sense and a strategic sense to the point where it believes it can win a nuclear war with preemptive strike against Russia.

Since when did Russia become an ‘adversary’, we might ask. The answer is when Washington decided to break prior agreements with Moscow and then encircle it with troops and missiles. Eric Zeusse writes:

“The expectation and demand is clearly that Russia must allow itself to be surrounded by NATO, and to do this without complaint, and therefore also without taking military countermeasures, which NATO would call yet more “aggression by Russia.” Any defensive moves by Russia can thus be taken by the West to be unacceptable provocation and justification for a “pre-emptive” attack against Russia by NATO.”

There are well over a million dead in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya as a result of direct military intervention or covert actions by the Western powers and their allies (the death count for Iraq alone between 1990 and 2012 could be 3.3 million as a result of Western economic sanctions and illegal wars). But the ultimate price for everyone – both rich and poor – will be a world war fought with nuclear weapons.

The machinations of empire alongside a crisis of capitalism and an increasing reliance on militarism in a futile to deal with it has placed the US (and the whole of humanity) on an accelerating trajectory towards conflict with Russia (and China) that it might find impossible to escape from.

Matthew Rycroft, Theresa May and Michael Fallon all read from the same script handed to them by the neoconservatives in Washington. As they play chicken with Russia and gamble with all our lives, it is they who are on the wrong side of history.

Unfortunately, there will be no one left to prove that once they have reduced us all to ashes.

Greater Albania And The Balkan Problem

Binoy Kampmark

The Balkans has always been cursed by a recurring theme: that each entity within it can, at some point, become greater and more consuming in territory than the next neighbour. Each nation has, and in some instances continues, to nurse dreams of enlargement, pecking away at borders and assuming that few will notice.

Strategies of expansion tend to have one problem: they are hard to evaluate in the way of conventional agreement, contract or conspiracy.  For decades, historians of various shades would attribute to Imperial Germany a conscious, global goal of conquest, mistaking the plans of contingent invasion with actual policy.

In the Albanian context, the gnawing phenomenon, one of a terrier insistent on chewing away at the sinews of a larger opponent, has been taking place since Yugoslavia imploded in spectacularly bloody fashion in the early 1990s.

A cementing aspect of the old project of unity, one that saw the creation of Tito’s Yugoslavia, was Kosovo; central to the current Albanian project of consolidation and security is the increasing influence of figures within southern Serbia and Macedonia, generally Albanian nationalists of various colours of severity who dare to dream. With Serbia the tainted bogeyman of Europe, their chances are better than ever.

The writing is already being scribbled on the wall – with feverish enthusiasm.  Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama had expressed the view that an Albanian-Kosovo union would be very much on the cards if the EU were to make admission more challenging.  Kosovo’s President Hashim Thaçi was even blunter, his words having the effect of a threateningly deployed mallet: “all Albanians in the region will live in a single, united country so that the integration into the European family may continue”.

The fear to Serbia’s north, in Belgrade, is amply reflected by Serbian cabinet minister Aleksandar Vulin: “Pristina and Tirana have clearly said what their goal is, it is a ‘Greater Albania’ and unification of all Albanians, regardless of where they live, into a single ethnic area.”  Accordingly, this could “only be accomplished through a great Balkan war, and Brussels (EU) must be clear on all of this.” Given the current obsession with the unravelling of the EU, best indicated by the groans of Brexit, it is unlikely whether any eyes are being peeled on that score.

Members of a nation, as opposed to the idea of a state, remain the great problem international relations after the First World War.  No better illustration of this was offered than the nationalist gymnastics that unfolded in the aftermath of a destroyed Europe.

Demography has become central in these latest disputes.  In southern Serbia, where the breath of Greater Albania blows, ethnic Serbs are in demographic retreat before their more virile Albanian neighbours. This situation seems calm, but is actually electric, a surface energy that  may well only resolve itself by the power of the gun.

In its broader theatre, Albanian leaders are cunningly playing the pro-Western card to keep western powers on side.  This is to be expected, given the shrewdness that resourcefulness entails.  As the Albanian foreign minister Ditmir Bushati explained in his April visit to Washington, his country provided an appropriate, stern bastion against Russian influence in the Balkans.

These broader ambitions are not to be taken lightly. Technically, it could see Serbia amputated as far as Niš.  This point is perceived as another territorial reassertion, given the expulsion of Albanians from the area during the Serbian campaigns of the 1870s.

Municipalities in southern Serbia have griped and groaned over the nationalist issue, centred upon Preševo, Medveđa and Bujanovac.  Hot heads, from time to time, reach for their flags with heart.  Editorials of irritation, barely tempered, are written.

The issue of secessionist violence is far from a moot point, given the insurgency in the Prešovo Valley from 1999 to 2001 mounted by the Liberal Army of Preševo, Medveđa and Bujanovac.  The violence reached such levels that the then Yugoslav President Vojislav Koštunica urged the NATO-led KFOR to intervene, given the handbrake that had been applied to Serbian freedom of action.

In Macedonia, a country with a strong Albanian voice, similar issues are on the march.  A vigorous Albanian push (some argue putsch) remains a persistent reality for the Macedonian majority.  The fraying began last December with the opposition Social Democrats achieving a parliamentary majority by going into coalition with parties representing ethnic-Albanian interests.

The long standing VMRO-DPMNE government, backed by President Gjorge Ivanov, refused to budge, fearing the new power arrangements.  Matters duly got violent with a coalition attempt to elect a new parliamentary speaker.

The deputy leader of the Social Democrats, Radmila Šekerinska, deemed by Balkan Insight to be “Brussels’ favourite Macedonian”, was duly assaulted when Parliament was stormed by 200 protestors on April 27.  Social Democratic Union leader Zoran Zaev and lawmaker Ziadin Sela, leader of the Albanian Alliance, were also injured.

The government beef was an ethnic one. It was claimed by such figures as Ivanov that too much was in the offing by way of concessions to Macedonia’s Albanians, who were exerting a natural gravitational pull on the Social Democrats.

Šekerinska insists that that issue is tactical, designed to obscure the need to create “a new reform-oriented government” that would hold various politicians accountable for criminal theft and corruption. Prime Minister Nikola Guevski and his associates, claims Jove Kekenovski, “are ready to do anything, including ethnic conflict, to escape jail.”

Some of that is bound to be true, though blood tends to be thicker than reform in Balkan politics.  A resort to the gun over the boardroom; this is the Balkan vice, tainted by active or cynical indifference from outside powers.

‘Butcher of Kabul’ Returns To Kabul In An Afghan Peace Deal

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Lord Palmerston, the 19th century British Prime Minister, has famously said: “The Great Britain has no friends, no enemies, but only interests.” It was rephrased by Henry Kissinger as “America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.” This applies to current Afghan politics where Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former anti-Soviet “mujahideen” commander, arrived in the capital on Thursday (May 4) under a peace deal with the US/EU-client Afghan government.

According to Anadolu News Agency of Turkey, Hekmatyar, who heads the Hezb-e-Islami party, drove all the way from eastern Nangarhar province and entered the city in a heavily-armed convoy of armored vehicles and pick-up trucks packed with his top commanders and fighters.

Later, President Ashraf Ghani warmly embraced him at a special ceremony in the presidential palace and hailed the peace deal. “The talks proved that the Afghan people have no problem with each other, but because of outside hands, have occasionally witnessed conflict,” the president said in his address at the ceremony. “Afghans are victim of international terrorism,” President Ashraf Ghani said.

On his part, Hekmatyar vowed to fully support the government in Kabul in its efforts to bring peace and stability in the country. He also urged Afghan tribes to unite for the sake of defense of their areas against the enemy.

Hekmatyar also offered to act as a mediator between the Taliban and the government. “I call the Taliban ‘my brother’, good and bad people are among them. Taliban are Afghans. “Let’s end the war, live together as brothers and then ask foreigners to leave our country,” he said.

The Afghan government had released at least 55 prisoners associated with his party before the war veteran arrived in the capital in line with the September 2016 peace deal.

The peace deal

The peace deal between Hekmatyar and the Afghan government has been widely hailed by the West.

In a statement on Thursday, the European Union and Norway said they back the peace deal.

“We hope that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s arrival in Kabul encourages the wider public belief that peace in Afghanistan is possible. This signifies the moment for others to move from conflict to constitutional politics. Hence, the EU, its member states in Afghanistan and Norway call upon all armed opposition groups to come forward, commit to an equitable peace and renounce terrorism,” the EU’s Special Representative, Ambassador Franz-Michael Mellbin, said.

In September last year, the Guardian reported the peace deal under the title: ‘Butcher of Kabul’ pardoned in Afghan peace deal. The British daily report said:

“The Afghan government has pardoned one of the country’s most notorious warlords for past offences including terrorist attacks and alleged war crimes as part of a peace deal with his militant group, Hezb-i-Islami. The agreement, signed after months of negotiations, paves the way for a return to public and possibly political life for Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who holds an almost unparalleled record of human rights abuses. These include indiscriminate shelling of civilians, targeted assassinations of intellectuals and disappearances of political opponents. Hekmatyar’s followers are accused of throwing acid at women and of running an underground torture prison in Pakistan. The accord also allows for the release of Hezb-i-Islami prisoners, and obligates the Afghan government to pay for security in two or three locations inside Afghanistan where the group can choose to settle its leadership.”

Not surprisingly, Human Rights Watch called the deal “an affront to victims of grave abuses”. The HRW, in a statement said: “Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of Afghanistan’s most notorious war crimes suspects, who as prime minister in 1992 shelled his own capital, is coming home after decades in exile, thanks to a peace deal with the national unity government. His return will compound the culture of impunity that the Afghan government and its foreign donors have fostered by not pursuing accountability for the many victims of forces commanded by Hekmatyar and other warlords that laid waste to much of the country in the 1990s.”

Others see the inclusion of the armed opposition as a necessary step towards peace.

According to the Global Security, “this was the first peace agreement in the 15-year Afghan war the Taliban launched after it was ousted by a United States-led military coalition in 2001. Led by former Afghan Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the insurgent group Hizb-e-Islami is the second largest after the Taliban. While the Hizb-e-Islami faction fought alongside the Taliban against NATO coalition forces, it had been a rival to the Taliban while it was in power. The Global Security added:

“He was designated a terrorist by the U.S. in February 2003 for his past support to al Qaeda. On 19 February 2003 it was announced that the US Government had information indicating that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has participated in and supported terrorist acts committed by al-Qa’ida and the Taliban. Because of his terrorist activity, the United States designated Hekmatyar as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under the authority of Executive Order 13224. At the same time, the United States requested that the UN 1267 Sanctions Committee include Hekmatyar on its consolidated list of entities and individuals associated with Usama bin Laden, al-Qa’ida, and the Taliban, which would obligate all Member States to impose sanctions, including assets freezes, under UN Security Council Resolutions 1267, 1390, and 1455.”

Tellingly, the U.N. Security Council’s Sanctions Committee removed sanctions against Hekmatyar on February 3, 2017.

The return of the former ‘Mujahedeen” commander return to Kabul after almost 20 years affirms that the world we live in has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.

Media pundits, pseudo-left back Sri Lankan president’s call for authoritarian rule

K. Ratnayake

Last week, Sri Lankan cabinet minister Rajitha Senaratne informed a press conference that President Maithripala Sirisena was proposing that former army commander Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka should “take responsibility for disciplining the country” for a period of two years. Sirisena’s extraordinary proposition was made in the context of growing strikes and protests throughout the country against the government’s attacks on living conditions and on social and democratic rights.

This is no small matter. Fonseka is notorious for having presided over war crimes, particularly during the final years of the government’s military offensives against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). During that period, thousands of Tamil civilians were killed. Fonseka was also allegedly involved in attacking any journalists who made even the slightest criticism of the war, and branding as traitors workers and others engaged in protests to defend their democratic rights. Former President Mahinda Rajapakse and Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse considered Fonseka as sufficiently ruthless to implement their repressive measures, until he was deemed their political enemy.

Some ministers, nervous about the impact on ordinary working people of Sirisena’s proposal for a police state, tried to dismiss it as a passing remark. One minister claimed it was a “joke,” while another said that the proposal, “made lightly,” had been exaggerated out of all proportion.

Replying to a question raised in the parliament, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe denied that the government had decided to set up a special army unit. In the same breath, however, he admitted that “the government’s attention was only focused on how to maintain essential services without interruption or disruption” but refused to reveal what was discussed at the cabinet meeting.

Nevertheless, the campaign for anti-democratic measures, along with threats against working class strikes and protests, is proceeding. The Minister of Megapolis Champika Ranawaka insisted during his speech at a May Day meeting that a small group of people would not be allowed to rule the country. “Only the government has a people’s mandate for that,” he said.

More sinister is the role being played by the upper middle class layers—the so-called “civil society,” the media and the fake left—who helped Sirisena and Wickremesinghe come to power. They are now providing cynical justifications for authoritarian rule and police-state measures against striking workers and students, by branding them as political operators who are seeking to overthrow the government.

One such person is media pundit Ranga Jayasuriya, who has shamelessly argued that Fonseka is an “ideal candidate” to “head an emergency mechanism” to confront strikes. Jayasuriya wrote a column in a Colombo-based newspaper, the Daily Mirro r, titled “Why is SF [Sarath Fonseka] good enough to confront strikes?”

Jayasuriya was an acting editor of the now defunct Colombo weekly, Lakbimanews. He is currently a regular columnist for the Daily Mirror, Sri Lanka’s main privately-owned English-language daily. He was among the milieu that rallied behind the US-orchestrated regime-change operation in the January 2015 presidential election to replace Rajapakse with Sirisena. The fraternity of pseudo-left, media and NGOs worked to cover up Washington’s role in exploiting the mass opposition to Rajapakse’s rule to bring Sirisena to power.

Ten days after the change of government, Jayasuriya showered praises on Sirisena, claiming that “under his presidency, Sri Lanka may be experiencing a democratic spring.” He highlighted various cosmetic changes and called on the population to rally to him on the basis that Sirisena’s presidency risked being overturned by Rajapakse.

In defence of Sirisena’s anti-democratic agenda, Jayasuriya makes a series of desperate arguments in his recent column. He notes that “apparently” Sirisena’s proposal “is tantamount to reversing the democratic reforms upon which he has embarked,” but, in fact, this is not the case. Sometimes, he writes, one has to stifle democracy by introducing authoritarian measures, in order to defend it.

He ridiculously tries to compare Muhammadu Buhari, a Nigerian military dictator who ousted another military ruler during the 1980s, and Sirisena coming to power in Sri Lanka. He says that Buhari took power to “discipline the country,” but that it paved the way for dictatorship and counter coups.

Jayasuriya makes this comparison, not because it has any historical validity, but to argue that Sirisena came to power in order to dismantle Rajapakse’s dictatorial rule. The “strongman’s [Rajapakse’s] rule was dismantled” and now it is “patently clear” that the government is “handicapped by the relative freedom it ushered in.” He laments that “it has not led to social stability.”

Jayasuriya’s claim about Sirisena’s “dismantling of the strongman’s rule” and the establishment of “relative freedom” is bogus. Sirisena made a few minor changes, such as introducing the 19th Amendment to the constitution, which limited the powers of the Executive Presidency and set up “independent commissions” to appoint top bureaucrats and judicial officers. Jayasuriya failed to mention, however, that Sirisena has not kept his limited promise to abolish the widely hated executive presidency. His government has maintained the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act and is now preparing to replace it with harsher legislation.

Jayasuriya also fails to mention the unleashing of military, police and repressive laws against protesting workers, students and the poor. The government suppressed a strike, for example, by contract workers at the Hambantota Port, who were demanding job permanency. Naval soldiers were deployed against them last December, while protests by workers, farmers and students in Colombo are frequently met with riot police, tear gas and baton charges.

Jayasuriya tries to justify these attacks, by branding them as “acts of groups with vested interests, exploiting the limited state power and political will of the current administration” to advance the most minimum interests. According to him, “these are not protests, but blackmail.”

Ironically, in the guise of criticising the Rajapakse government’s police-state measures, Jayasuriya is, in fact, praising them. He claims that a telephone call from then Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse was enough to stop a protest of the Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA). Villagers’ protests were also stopped and Colombo slum dwellers moved to alternative houses after just a nominal protest, out of fear of Gotabhaya Rajapakse. Similarly, university student protests were not continued.

Jayasuriya has pointed out how former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the late Sri Lankan President J. R. Jayawardene crushed working class struggles and implemented ruthless and exploitative measures. His entire argument is aimed at legitimising the use of such methods against workers, youth and the poor in Sri Lanka, in order to maintain capitalist rule. He is frustrated about the government’s “failure to confront the rising wave of protests.”

He advises: “The bottom line of state power, in any state, be it democratic or authoritarian, lies in its ability and willingness to use coercive means to achieve legitimate ends, when a negotiated solution is not forthcoming.

“Sarath Fonseka’s legitimacy derives from his role as the war-winning army chief,” Jayasuriya argues, adding that he should act as Gotabhaya Rajapakse did to suppress the class struggle. If such coercive rule were not established, “the alternative to this is the gradual breakdown of governance, which to put it bluntly, for a country at our economic and social level, is more dangerous than the breakdown of democracy.”

The real fear expressed by Jayasuriya is that, if the growing struggles are not suppressed, they will transform into a social upheaval, creating a revolutionary crisis. “The government should do something to fix this mess. If it doesn’t, it will not last much longer in office.”

The popular protests are not just “outbursts of pent-up emotions,” accumulated during the Rajapakse regime, he writes. It was precisely their deep concerns about the developing social opposition that drove the upper middle class groups, including elements such as Jayasuriya, to vigorously intervene to bring to power the pro-US Sirisena regime in Colombo, while hailing it as an attempt to establish “good governance.”

Jayasuriya is not alone. Those who assisted Sirisena’s ascension to the presidency, including the pseudo-left Nava Sama Samaja Party (NSSP), the Citizens’ Power group, and the Ravaya newspaper, are now leading the attacks on workers and students protests against the government, branding them as the means for Rajapakse to return to power.

Last Thursday, NSSP leader Karunaratne attacked a strike called by the GMOA and several trade unions as a “fascist attempt to overthrow the government.” The strike was called by the unions in order to deflect mass opposition to the government’s attacks on public education, health and privatisation.

Last month, when people in and around Colombo protested against an environmental disaster and the threat to their lives from a major garbage problem, Karunaratne demanded that they should be suppressed by the police, in the same way that students were.

These upper middle class layers are deeply hostile to the working class and the poor. They sense that the growing economic crisis and political instability throughout the country is driving the development of mass social upheavals, which threaten their own selfish class interests and those of the capitalist class as a whole. They are now assisting right-wing forces to bring to power a dictatorial regime to save capitalist rule.

Death toll rises to 37 amid continuing clashes in Venezuela

Bill Van Auken 

The death toll rose to at least 37 Thursday in the nationwide protests and street clashes that have gripped Venezuela over the past month.

The identity of the latest victims reflects the violent and provocative character of the campaign being waged by Venezuela’s right-wing opposition, as well as the increasingly repressive crackdown being carried out by the government of President Nicolas Maduro.

Parallel to this political confrontation playing out in the streets of Caracas and other major cities, the country’s desperate economic crisis has unleashed a growing wave of looting by sections of the oppressed, driven to desperation over the lack of food and declining real incomes.

Hecder Lugo Perez, 22, died Friday after being hit in the head by a projectile in the northwestern city of Valencia, a center of Venezuela’s moribund auto industry and other manufacturing plants that have seen mass layoffs. The city of 1.8 million has been one of the major flash points in the looting that has swept the country, with some 70 stores sacked on Tuesday.

Killed on Thursday was Juan Lopez Manjares, 33, the student federation president at the Instituto Universitario Tecnologico Jose Antonio Anzoategui in the northeastern city of El Tigre. The student leader, a supporter of the government, was gunned down after leading a student assembly, with his assassin fleeing on a motorcycle.

Also reported Thursday was the death of a policeman, Gerardo Barrera, 38, who died from gunshot wounds suffered the day before in a confrontation with demonstrators in the northwestern town of San Joaquin.

The wave of demonstrations was touched off on April 1 after Venezuela’s Supreme Court issued a ruling abrogating the legislative powers of the country’s opposition-controlled National Assembly. The move was part of the attempt by the Maduro government to consolidate power under conditions in which the president and his policies have become deeply unpopular, not only among the well-heeled constituency of the political right, but among far wider layers of working people.

The government was compelled to reverse the measure after coming under significant criticism from within its own ranks, including by the country’s attorney general, Luisa Ortega Diaz, a government loyalist who is married to a legislator of the ruling PSUV. Symptomatic of the continuing internal crises of the Maduro government, and calculations among some of its leading figures that regime change may be near, Ortega intensified her criticisms in an interview with the Wall Street Journal this week, declaring, “It’s time to hold talks and to negotiate. It means one has to yield on decisions for the good of the country.” She also departed from the government’s blaming of all the violence on demonstrators, stating, “We can’t demand peaceful and legal behavior from citizens if the state takes decisions that don’t accord with the law.”

Demonstrations have intensified after Maduro’s announcement that he is calling a “constituent assembly” to make changes to the constitution instituted in 1999 by his predecessor as president, the late Hugo Chavez.

The government has given no clear indication of what it intends to change in the existing constitution, but has made it clear that it intends to pack the body with its own supporters, drawing 50 percent of its members from “social movements,” which are state-controlled, and 50 percent from regional elections.

Maduro has vaguely described the assembly as a path to “peace” and “national dialogue.” The right-wing opposition has charged that it is aimed at circumventing a 2018 presidential election that he would likely lose.

In a May 1 speech, Maduro claimed that the revisions to the constitution would include measures to support the “post-petroleum economy,” an oblique reference to the failure of 18 years of chavista rule to alter Venezuela’s fatal semi-colonial dependence on a single commodity, oil. It is entirely possible that the government aims to invite foreign investors to bid on parts of the state-owned oil industry, PDVSA. Late last year, the government opened up 112,000 square kilometers to open-pit mining in a $4.5 billion dollar deal with transnational mining companies.

Like the attempted suspension of the right wing-led National Assembly, there is nothing progressive about the convening of such an assembly, which will reflect not the will or aspirations of the masses of Venezuelan working people, but rather the political exigencies of the Maduro government and its principal constituencies: the military, functionaries within the state apparatus and ruling party and the boliburguesia, the layer of capitalist investors, contractors and speculators who have enriched themselves under the rule of so-called “Bolivarian Socialism.”

Under Chavez—and thanks to oil prices that topped $100 a barrel—these layers were able to pursue their interests while still providing minimal social assistance programs that reduced poverty and provided housing, health care and improved education to the more oppressed sections of the population. Chavez’s death in 2013, however, was quickly followed by the plummeting of the price of oil, the commodity that accounts for 95 percent of the country’s export earnings. Since then, the economy has contracted by 27 percent, while the inflation rate, the highest in the world, is set to reach 720 percent this year, according to an estimate by the International Monetary Fund.

With vastly reduced export earnings, the government has slashed imports of foreign food, medicine and other basic necessities in order to divert dwindling reserves to meet foreign debt payments to international finance capital.

Venezuelan working people have borne the terrible burden of paying off Wall Street. Four out of five people now live in poverty, and masses are facing hunger. Recent surveys have found that nearly a third of the population now eats two or fewer meals a day—compared to 12.5 percent in 2015—and three out of four Venezuelans had lost on average 19 pounds last year.

In the face of the right-wing campaign to topple his government, on the one hand, and growing social unrest and class tensions, on the other, Maduro has turned increasingly to the military, which has always served as the principal pillar of the movement founded by Hugo Chavez, himself a former paratrooper colonel who led an unsuccessful coup in 1992.

Military officers now head up a third of the government’s ministries and make up half of the country’s governors. Key areas of the economy, including those where the most money is to be made off of corruption, have been placed under military control, including ports, food distribution and the control of foreign exchange.

Under a decree known as Plan Zamora, the Maduro government has essentially arrogated to itself the power to impose martial law, while bringing the police under the control of the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB). On Thursday it was announced that “70 vandals” arrested during a wave of looting in the state of Carabobo will be brought before military tribunals to face charges of looting and “rebellion.”

The right-wing opposition is appealing increasingly to the military to overthrow Maduro in a coup under the pretext of defending the constitution. Venezuelan right-wing opposition leader and former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, who has demanded that the military “intervene,” claimed on his Twitter feed Friday that “85 officers of our FANB (Bolivarian National Armed Forces)” had been arrested for “having manifested their discontent.”

The New York Times, which openly supported the CIA-backed abortive coup against Chavez in 2002, published an opinion piece this week by a Venezuelan journalist, who assessed that “the possibility of a negotiated transition satisfactory to the opposition is negligible,” adding that “the alternative would be a military intervention to install a national unity government.”

Meanwhile, one of the biggest holders of Venezuelan bonds has made it clear that his firm is betting on and supporting “regime change.”

“Like most Venezuelans, we would welcome, and ultimately expect a change in regime,” Mike Conelius, who manages the $6.5 billion T. Rowe Price Emerging Markets Bond Fund, wrote investors in an email reported by Bloomberg News. The firm has posted huge profits as Venezuela has repeatedly made interest payments by slashing imports and the living conditions of masses of Venezuelan workers. It expects even richer dividends in the event of a coup against Maduro. “The cathartic moment of regime change will be quickly repriced in the market,” Conelius wrote.

Attempting to place US imperialism’s thumb more firmly on the scale, a bipartisan group of US Senators has urged President Donald Trump to intervene more aggressively against Venezuela. The Senators, who include Democrats like Hillary Clinton’s vice-presidential running mate Tim Kaine of Virginia, introduced on Wednesday the “Venezuela Humanitarian Assistance and Defense of Democratic Governance Act of 2017” to ratchet up sanctions against Venezuela and pressure on its government.

In particular, the legislation calls attention to investments by the Russian energy giant Rosneft in Citgo, the US-based subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned PDVSA petroleum company, describing the ties as a “significant risk to U.S. national security and energy security.”

The pursuit of a more aggressive policy against Venezuela, linked to the military buildup against Russia, would be entrusted in large measure to US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. He is the former CEO of ExxonMobil, whose predecessor company, Standard Oil, controlled Venezuelan oil production for half a century until Caracas nationalized the industry in 1976.

North Korea under siege

Peter Symonds

The unstable, crisis-ridden North Korean regime is increasingly under siege on all sides, as the Trump administration ramps up its threats of war on the Korean Peninsula and pressures Beijing to compel Pyongyang to give up its nuclear and missile programs. While formally an ally of North Korea, China has already voted for a series of UN resolutions imposing harsh sanctions and is currently discussing further UN penalties with the US.

A commentary published this week by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) lashed out at Beijing, accusing it of “insincerity and betrayal” and warning of “grave consequences entailed by its reckless act of chopping down the pillar of the DPRK [North Korea]-China relations.” The KCNA reiterated that North Korea would not give up its nuclear weapons, setting it on a collision course not only with the US and Washington’s allies, but also China.

The Pyongyang regime, which depends heavily on China economically, is reacting to growing pressure from Beijing to bow to US demands. In February, China announced the suspension of coal imports from North Korea for the remainder of the year, and last month reportedly turned away a fleet of North Korean cargo ships laden with coal. Beijing is deeply concerned that Pyongyang’s weapon programs have created the pretext for a US military build up in North East Asia aimed against China.

The US threat of war on the Korean Peninsula has deepened the debate within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) apparatus over North Korea, including suggestions that Beijing should pre-empt Washington with its own regime-change operation in Pyongyang or support its integration with South Korea. Such is the gulf between the two allies, once described as being as close as “lips and teeth,” that since taking office in 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping has not met North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

The US has maintained sanctions against North Korea since the 1950–53 Korean War, in which millions of civilians and troops from the two Koreas, China, the US and its allies died. While an armistice halted the fighting in 1953, no peace treaty was ever reached. North Korea is still effectively at war with South Korea and the US.

North Korea’s isolation worsened following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, which had provided economic and military aid and accounted for around 60 percent of the country’s international trade. Pyongyang was compelled to turn to Beijing for assistance and trade. It relies on China for oil and food, as well as industrial and consumer goods.

The Pyongyang regime’s own shift to capitalist restoration and pro-market relations has been significantly hampered by the US-led blockade, which has only intensified in the past 25 years. Free trade zones were established with South Korea at Kaesong—currently closed—and with China. North Korea has also engaged in the export of cheap labour, with an estimated 20,000 workers in China, Russia and the Middle East.

As the US has heightened its confrontation with North Korea, several articles in the American and international press have noted the widespread market economy that has greatly exacerbated the social divide between a wealthy elite, along with private traders, smugglers and “red capitalists,” and the majority of impoverished workers and farmers.

A lengthy article in the New York Times on April 30 noted an estimate by the South Korean intelligence agency that at least 40 percent of the population in North Korea was now engaged in some form of private enterprise. While his father reportedly attempted to crack down on marketplaces, they have flourished under Kim Jong-un, doubling to 440 and, based on satellite imagery, expanding in size.

Wealthy donju or money owners “invest in construction projects, establish partnerships with resource-strapped state factories and bankroll imports from China to supply retailers in the marketplaces,” the article explained. “They operate with ‘covers’, or party officials, who protect their businesses. Some are relatives of party officials. Others are ethnic Chinese citizens, who are allowed regular visits to China and can facilitate cross-border financial transactions, and people with relatives who have fled to South Korea and send them cash remittances.”

These political and economic elites, concentrated in Pyongyang, have access to luxury goods, including at ski and beach resorts, while most of the population eke out an impoverished existence under police-state conditions.

The New York Times article was headlined, “As the economy grows, North Korea’s grip on society is tested.” It undoubtedly reflects efforts in Washington to identify discontented social layers that could provide the basis for “regime-change” in Pyongyang—either through a “colour revolution” or the elimination of the top leadership by other means.

Yesterday the North Korean ministry of state security issued details of what it claimed to be a CIA plot to kill Kim Jong-un and other leaders. While it is impossible to corroborate such accusations, a number of American political figures and analysts have advocated assassination and regime-change in Pyongyang to achieve US ends.

Washington’s broken promises

Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe, successive US administrations have pursued the barely-disguised aim of bringing about the collapse of the North Korean government—and thus undermining China, which has maintained the country as a buffer to South Korea and Japan.

In 1994, the Clinton administration was on the brink of launching a military attack on North Korea, on the pretext of the threat posed by its nuclear program, but pulled back at the last minute in the face of potentially huge casualties, including among US troops in South Korea. Instead, Washington struck a deal with Pyongyang—the Agreed Framework—under which North Korea shut down its nuclear facilities and allowed UN inspection in return for supplies of bunker oil, the construction of two light water nuclear power plants and promises of diplomatic normalisation.

The agreement was the basis for the so-called Sunshine Policy in South Korea that envisaged the transformation of North Korea into a cheap labour platform for South Korean conglomerates. European powers offered their support, viewing North Korea not only as an investment opportunity but the means for establishing transport links across Eurasia to South Korea and Japan.

The US, however, failed to keep its side of the deal—construction of the nuclear reactors never began and it was only in the dying days of the Clinton administration that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made a highly-publicised visit to Pyongyang. The incoming Bush administration rapidly overturned the Agreed Framework and in 2002 declared that North Korea, along with Iraq and Iran, formed an “axis of evil.”

Any rapprochement with North Korea that led to an end to the US economic, diplomatic and military blockade of the country would undermine Washington’s pretext for maintaining military forces in North East Asia and its ability to use Pyongyang as a means of putting pressure on Beijing.

North Korea resumed its nuclear and missile program and exploded its first crude atomic bomb in 2006. Bogged down in its military occupation in Iraq, the Bush administration turned to China to put pressure on North Korea and reached a deal in 2007 to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear facilities and allow UN inspections in return for vague US promises to normalise relations.

The US political and media establishment constantly accuses North Korea of bad faith, but the Bush administration reneged on the bargain and eventually sabotaged the agreement. Pyongyang shut its nuclear reactor, and even began the process of dismantlement, and allowed UN inspectors into the country. Washington took just one step—the removal of North Korea from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, before insisting on far more intrusive inspections than were specified in the agreement, which quickly broke down in 2008.

In contrast to its steps to reach a deal with Iran, the Obama administration made no moves to restart talks with North Korea and ramped up sanctions in response to further North Korean nuclear and missile tests. In the final days of his administration, Obama reportedly advised Trump that North Korea would be the most pressing foreign policy issue confronting the US.

The North Korean regime, which rests heavily on the military and its police-state apparatus, has responded to its growing isolation and US threats with its own bellicose warnings and an acceleration of its nuclear and missile programs. Having few other bargaining chips, it has attempted to use its nuclear arsenal to reach a deal with the US that would end the blockade and allow the regime to attract foreign investment by transforming the country into an ultra-cheap labour platform.

Despite the bluster of North Korean leaders, their limited stockpile of nuclear weapons, far from defending the North Korean people, is transforming the country into a target for US imperialism. Its nationalist demagogy only sows divisions between workers in North Korea and in South Korea, Japan and the United States and undermines the unity of the international working class—the only social force capable of halting the drive to war.

The regime in Pyongyang is facing an economic and political crisis, as low levels of economic growth, compounded by aged and outmoded technology, equipment and industrial plant, and growing social inequality fuel divisions within the ruling elites. To consolidate his grip on power, Kim Jong-un has reportedly carried out a series of purges, including of top officials such as his uncle Jang Song-thaek, killed in 2013, who had close ties with Beijing.

The Trump administration has greatly heightened the crisis in Pyongyang and the danger of war. Besieged on all sides, it is unclear how the North Korean regime would respond to a provocation or military attack by US imperialism or South Korea.

The American and international press has not only demonised Pyongyang but greatly inflated the threat posed by the North Korean military. While on paper, North Korea’s army (KPA) is the world’s fourth largest with more than one million troops, and another seven million in reserves, much of its equipment is badly outdated and, in the event of war, would quickly be hit by fuel and other shortages.

A 2015 US Defence Department report stated: “The KPA has not acquired new fighter aircraft in decades, relies on older air defence systems, lacks ballistic missile defence, its Navy does not train for blue-water operations, and recently unveiled artillery systems that include tractor-towed rocket launchers.”

A former US military officer told the Financial Times: “Once the Korean People’s Army starts or stumbles into a decisive conventional war, they will run out of something critical like fuel or bullets or parts in 30 days tops. Based on numbers from a corps-sized unit I saw, it may even be as early as two weeks.” North Korea’s lack of a credible conventional military response heightens the danger that it could try to use nuclear weapons—with catastrophic results.

The Trump administration’s reckless brinkmanship has created a tinderbox on the Korean Peninsula, where a miscalculation or provocation could quickly escalate into a conflict that could draw in nuclear-armed powers such as Russia and China.

Greece’s Syriza government agrees to further savage austerity measures

John Vassilopoulos

An agreement to impose an additional €3.6 billion in austerity cuts has been reached between Greece’s Syriza-led government and European Union (EU) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) officials.

Tuesday’s agreement is the latest brutal component of the €86 billion austerity for loans package signed by the Greek government in August 2015. Its commitment to further austerity was conditional on the EU releasing a tranche of €7.5 billion, needed to pay off debt due to mature in July.

The talks were drawn out over a period of six months, which increased speculation that an agreement would not be reached in time for Greece to meet its obligations on its overall debt burden that remains around €300 billion—179 percent of GDP. This would lead to a crisis similar to the one in the summer of 2015 when the country verged on default and banks were forced to close.

The financial markets reacted positively to the new agreement, with Greek equities jumping 3.1 percent.

Announcing the deal, Syriza Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos declared, “The negotiation is finished with agreement on all the issues,” adding, “We now have a decision that the Greek government will be called to enforce with laws and decisions.”

What Syriza will now “enforce” is further devastating attacks on pensions, wages and workers’ rights.

Pensions are set to be reduced by up to 18 percent from 2019, affecting some 1.1 million pensioners receiving more than €700 ($767) a month. The pension cuts are worth around €1.8 billion—around 1 per cent of GDP. For low-income pensioners these are the highest cuts since the first austerity package was signed in 2010.

There have been a staggering 23 reductions in pensioners’ incomes since 2010, which have cut pensions by an average of 40 percent. According to the United Pensioners’ Network, these amount to a total of €50 billion.

Speaking about the cuts, Network president, Nikos Chatzopoulos said, “It’s not only the cuts to our pensions, but also the hikes in social security contributions and taxation, which have reduced pensioners’ incomes by more than 50 percent…There are people who can’t afford to pay for their medicines. We no longer have money to pay for electricity and phone bills.”

The tax-free threshold will be reduced from €8,636 to €5,681, which will take many low-income workers and pensioners out of the tax-free band. The measure is also set to hit low-income pensioners earning as little as €500 a month. For those who are just covered by the current threshold, this will amount to a cut of about €650 to their income.

The reduction to the tax-free threshold also equates to fully 1 percent of GDP and is set to come into force in 2020, provided current budget surplus levels remain on target. If not, then they will be brought forward to 2019.

Additional austerity measures worth €450 million are set to come into force next year, including 50 percent cuts in the heating allowance, unemployment benefit and a cut in tax relief on medical costs. There are also plans to sell off coalmines and coal power stations owned by the Public Power Corporation (PPC), amounting to approximately 40 percent of its capacity.

At the centre of the agreement was an acceptance of a large part of the IMF’s demands for further attacks on workers’ rights. While the IMF’s demand for allowing lockouts of workers by employers was kept off the table for now, the agreement took one-step closer towards repealing legislation against arbitrary mass sackings. Although these are still limited to 5 percent of a company’s workforce—up to a maximum of 30 workers a month—they no longer have to be pre-approved by the Finance Minister and the Supreme Labour Council (ASE). Under the new process, the ASE will only be able to audit whether all legislative requirements are being followed.

The agreement also includes a commitment to introduce anti-strike legislation including a fast-tracked judicial process to rule on the legality of industrial action.

The government has until May 18 to get the agreement passed in parliament in time for the meeting of the Euro group council of EU finance ministers on May 22.

The impact of the new measures, disproportionately hitting some of the poorest and most vulnerable sections of the population, will be catastrophic. Since 2010, Greece’s economy has shrunk by about 27 percent under the weight of the successive austerity measures imposed by the EU and the IMF in agreement with PASOK, New Democracy and Syriza-led governments.

Unemployment in Greece stands at 23.5 percent and is at nearly 50 percent among youth.

According to a recent study by the non-profit research organisation, Dianeosis, nearly 1.5 million Greeks—13.6 percent of the population—currently live in “extreme poverty.” This compares to 2.2 per cent in 2009. According to the study, “a family of four just at the cusp of the extreme poverty limit can spend only €7 a month for their children’s school expenses, €12 for shoes for the entire family and just €24 for hygiene products. Those that fall within the zone of extreme poverty can’t even afford the above.”

The disastrous economic situation in Greece, without precedent in peacetime, is a devastating indictment of the pseudo-left Syriza, which came to power in January 2015 on an anti-austerity ticket. Just months later this pro-capitalist party ditched its previous rhetoric and signed Greece’s third bailout package, betraying the overwhelming rejection of austerity in the July 2015 referendum.

An EU/IMF statement praised the Greek government stating, “This preliminary agreement will now be complemented by further discussions in the coming weeks on a credible strategy for ensuring Greece’s debt is sustainable.”

The IMF has insisted that Greece’s debt is not sustainable unless some debt relief is implemented. This has been a sticking point for the IMF, which is not participating financially in the austerity programme agreed with Syriza in 2015. The German government has been central in resisting calls for implementing any form of debt “haircut” since it would bear the brunt. This accounts for the reticent response to the latest agreement from Berlin. A German Finance Ministry spokesperson described it as an important “intermediate step,” but added that work is still needed. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble warned that “The [Greek] government has not yet fulfilled all the agreements.”

There remains scepticism as to whether agreement on any debt relief is possible. Stephen Brown, an economist at Capital Economics, said, “As such, worries about default and the potential for ‘Grexit’ seem set to fade for a while, but not disappear.”

In response to the measures, Greece’s private and public sector trade union federations have called for a 24-hour general strike on May 17 to coincide with the date that the austerity bill will be passed through parliament. There have been countless such actions in the last seven years, all designed to allow workers to let off steam while the measures are passed.

There is, however, a sense that this well-worn path has run its course and that the bureaucracy will be unable to contain the social anger that the new measures will impose. The head of the Adedy public sector union, Odysseas Trivalas, told the Guardian, “It will be a very hot spring. We have yet to see the details of this agreement, but what we know is that it will mean further cuts. There will be a lot of strikes and a general 24-hour lockdown when the measures are brought to parliament for vote.”

Trivalas’ posturing is designed to conceal his and the unions’ complicity in the implementation of austerity. His is a typical journey of union bureaucrats who were originally aligned with the social democratic PASOK party—architects of the first raft of austerity, which saw them wiped out in successive elections—and who have moved into Syriza’s orbit in recent years.

How the German Army covers up for neo-Nazi terrorist networks

Christoph Vandreier

One week after the arrest of the right-wing First Lieutenant Franco A., evidence is mounting that the terror suspect was part of a substantial neo-Nazi network whose existence had been covered up by German authorities.

The 28-year-old was arrested last week after being caught by the Austrian police in February when he sought to pick up a gun from Vienna Airport, which he had previously hidden there. It was then established that he had registered as a Syrian refugee in Bavaria and had apparently planned terrorist attacks against politicians and left-wing activists using a false identity.

In the last few days, new details have come to light that leave no doubt as to his racist and fascist attitudes, and terrorist intentions. His right-wing extremist opinions had long been known to his superiors and were at least covered up, if not encouraged.

Franco A. had been transferred to the German staff group in Fontainebleau in France in September 2009, where he began studying social and political sciences at the Saint-Cyr French military academy. In December 2013, he delivered a master’s thesis entitled “Political Change and Subversion Strategy.” The work was so openly nationalist and right-wing that the French school commander, Antoine Windeck, marked it as “not successful” and told his German colleagues, “If he were a French participant in the course we would replace him.”

Franco A.’s superiors then commissioned an independent historian to examine the work. This evaluation fell into the hands of the daily Die Welt, which cited the following overall assessment, “The text, in its method and content is demonstrably not an academic qualification work, but a radical nationalist, racist appeal, which the author seeks, with some effort, to underpin in a pseudo-scientific manner.”

“In some parts, the text reads like an instruction manual for racist propaganda,” it says. Franco A. utilizes “the well-known racist interpretation of genes” and “crude environmental determinism.” In some places in his master’s thesis, Franco A. also warned against an “intermixing of the races” or “intermarriage.” The majority of society cannot have any interest in the spread of human rights, he says, describing their “infectious character.” Only minorities, he said, were interested in human rights.

In the emancipation of women, Franco A. sees “a threat to the family and thus also a deliberate weakening of the people (Volk),” the expert records. In conclusion, the historian notes that the work is a call “to bring about a political change that adapts the given situation to the supposed natural law of racial purity.”

This unambiguous opinion was completely rejected by the responsible military disciplinary attorney, a sort of army prosecutor, following a conversation with Franco A. “Because of the personality profile acquired, doubts about the necessary attitude towards the set of [social] values are not only not verifiable but can be excluded,” wrote the attorney, and enthused about the “intellectual ability” of the student. For this reason, the preliminary disciplinary proceedings were “discontinued.” Neither the military disciplinary attorney nor Franco A.’s superior reported the incident to the Military Intelligence Service (MAD). Franco A. was able to prepare a new master’s thesis, passed the examination and continued his officer’s career.

In view of the openly fascist content of the master’s thesis, the behaviour of his superiors can only be understood as providing support and encouragement to radical right-wing positions. This is also underlined by the fact that Franco A. wrote to the same disciplinary attorney when he was arrested by the Austrian police in February.

“First Lieutenant A. wrote me an email in which he recalled our meeting at that time, in which I insisted that he should write to me if he was in trouble,” the attorney said in a letter sent Friday to his superior, Lieutenant-General Martin Schelleis. In it, he summarizes email exchanges between himself and Franco A. and declares that the emails have been irretrievably deleted.

The fact that Franco A.’s superiors knew about his right-wing views is also evident from the Wehrmacht (Nazi-era German army) memorabilia and Nazi symbols that were found in his possession. In an open area of the barracks where Franco A. last served, the so-called bunker, there were large murals glorifying Hitler’s Wehrmacht. Clearly, Franco A. did not have to hide his radical right-wing attitudes on the base.

On the contrary, it seems that he was regularly recruiting for his far-right terrorist group in his infantry battalion, which was stationed at Illkirch. According to media reports, the investigating public prosecutor’s office now assumes Franco A. had a number of accomplices. Die Zeit reports another first lieutenant, Maximilian T., from the battalion, who had drawn up a list of possible targets for terrorist attacks found in Franco A.’s possession.

The list includes high-ranking politicians, such as former German President Joachim Gauck, Justice Minister Heiko Maas, and Thuringia state Premier Bodo Ramelow, left-wing activists such as Philipp Ruch from the Centre for Political Beauty, but also institutions such as the Central Council of Jews in Germany.

According to Die Welt, a notebook found in Franco A.’s apartment revealed key points regarding concrete actions. Amongst others, there is a proposal to commit an attack in the guise of a refugee: “Group Antifa: asylum seeker throwing grenade, film it.” The officer also mentions the 88-year-old Holocaust denier Ursula Haverbeck. “If Mrs. Haverbeck goes to prison, then liberation action,” the notes read.

On Thursday, the Defence Ministry informed the Bundestag (federal parliament) that about 1,000 rounds of ammunition, including for pistols and rifles, had been found in the possession of a presumed accomplice of Franco A. This followed earlier reports of irregularities in the documentation of the dispensing of ammunition at the barracks. The Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, and broadcasters WDR and NDR also reported the statement of a soldier who knew of a group of soldiers who had stashed weapons and ammunition to fight on the “right” side in a civil war.

It is not the first time that fascist terrorist groups have emerged within the Bundeswehr (German army) and have been covered up by their superiors. Uwe Mundlos, who, together with other right-wing extremists, later formed the National Socialist Underground (NSU) and killed at least 10 people, had come to notice as a radical right-winger during his military service in the Bundeswehr.

During Mundlos’ military service between 1994 and 1995, he was arrested by the police for possessing a Hitler portrait and illegal right-wing propaganda material, and was later sentenced by a civil court. However, a decision by his captain to order seven days’ disciplinary detention was quashed by the South District Military Court of Appeals. Mundlos, in spite of his obviously right-wing views, was even promoted to corporal. Like Mundlos, it now appears that Franco A also enjoyed official protection.

It was not until later that it was revealed that attempts had been made during this time to recruit Mundlos as an operative for Military Intelligence. The recruitment attempt was followed by a long series of initiatives by various police authorities and secret service agencies to protect Mundlos and the NSU from prosecution, thus enabling their terrorism. According to different estimates, there were up to 150 members or sympathizers of the NSU. The fascist network which has now appeared at Franco A.’s barracks in Illkirch could be similar or even larger.