Czech government resigns amidst intensifying political crisis

Markus Salzmann 

The Czech prime minister, Bohuslav Sobotka, announced the resignation of his government a full half year before scheduled parliamentary elections. The surprise announcement is aimed at preventing a complete meltdown of the Social-Democratic Party, which is widely despised for its anti-working-class policies.

President Milos Zeman has a free hand in deciding how to proceed. The constitution does not set a deadline for the acceptance of the resignation request. Zeman can commission Sobotka to continue official business until the scheduled election dates on October 20 and 21, call an earlier election, or appoint another government.

There are speculations that Zeman could name Finance Minister Andrej Babis as the new prime minister. For his part, Sobotka has said he will only continue to lead the previous coalition government if Babis is removed from his post.

Corruption and accusations of tax evasion against Babis sparked the current government crisis. The anti-fraud authorities of the EU accuse him of pocketing €160 million funding between 2004 and 2013 for his network of companies. In addition, he is alleged to have used a tax loophole at the end of 2012 to save millions, shortly before the entry into force of a new law.

Babis, who was a member of the Communist Party before the introduction of the capitalist free market, owns a business empire consisting of more than 250 agricultural, food and chemical companies at home and abroad. His holdings include daily newspapers and a radio station. He is often referred to as the Czech Berlusconi or Trump. The business magazine Forbes estimates his fortune at $2.7 billion.

Babis first entered politics in 2011, the year he founded the political movement ANO, an acronym for “Action of Dissatisfied Citizens” as well as the Czech word for “yes.” Babis posed as a hard-working entrepreneur who would “clean out” the corrupt political establishment. In 2013, the conservative government led by Petr Necas collapsed as a consequence of its own corruption scandal and ANO became the second-strongest party, winning 20 percent in the election in the same year.

Babis took over the Finance Ministry in the government formed in January 2014. In addition to the Social Democrats (CSSD) of Prime Minister Sobotka and ANO, the coalition also included the Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL). The relationship between the Social Democrats and ANO remained tense. Although a member of the government, Babis continued to pose as the enemy of all other politicians whom he stated “had never learnt anything decent in order to make a career.” His slogan was “We are not politicians, but we work hard.”

The Social Democrats responded by accusing Babis of combining his business and political interests. At the end of last year, parliament passed a law against conflicts of interests on the part of politicians, a measure explicitly aimed at Babis. The latter then handed over his companies to a trustee fund. His wife sits on the board.

While ANO rose in the polls, the Social Democrats sagged. With about 28 percent, ANO is currently the strongest party and could nominate the next head of government, while the Social Democrats hover around 17 percent. Forecasts for the regular election date in October predict 10 percent for Sobotka’s party, even less than the estimated level of support for the Communist Party (KSCM).

ANO won the regional elections held last year. The CSSD lost seven of the nine regions it had won in 2012 while the Communist Party suffered even more massive losses.

The declining influence of the Social Democrats is also reflected in the drastic fall in membership. In early April, Pravo reported that in just two months more than 800 members had left the party, and this trend is continuing. The KSCM, the biggest party in the country, is shrinking dramatically. The successor party to the former Stalinist state party had around 50,000 members four years ago. Now it has fewer than 40,000.

With the resignation of the entire government, Sobotka is seeking to stop the decline of the Social Democrats. He refused to dismiss Babis, declaring that he did not want to make him a martyr.

The government coalition had agreed on a right-wing, neo-liberal programme in 2014, centred on rigorous austerity and rearmament both at home and abroad. This programme has since been put into practice.

In mid-April, in addition to the regular police forces, the government deployed 500 police armed with machine guns in pedestrian zones, airports and railway stations. The pretext was an obscure “terrorist threat.” Interior Minister Milan Chovanec called it “a preventive measure.” According to the Social Democrats, there is no concrete indication of a threat, but if necessary, up to 600 soldiers could also be deployed, he announced.

The Czech government rejects the EU’s quota system for the distribution of refugees across the continent and took in just 71 asylum seekers permanently last year. Nevertheless, Sobotka has blamed refugees for the terror alert.

Sobotka has also repeatedly called for a European military alliance against “the influx of migrants” and “Russian aggression.” Defence Minister Martin Stropnický (ANO) plans to increase the budget of his department to 1.4 percent of gross domestic product by 2020 and to 2 percent by 2025. The government plans to increase the army by 5,000 and massively rearm it. In addition to the purchase of reconnaissance and combat drones, negotiations are taking place for acquiring 12 military helicopters. The government plans to invest a minimum of CZK1.5 billion in the modernisation of combat equipment.

On Tuesday, Stropnický confirmed the plans for higher armament spending after talks with American Defence Secretary Mattis. US President Donald Trump has repeatedly demanded that NATO members increase their defensive budget to 2 percent of GDP as soon as possible. The cost of the rearmament is to be paid for by the population in the form of fresh cuts in social welfare.

In recent years, there have been strikes and protests. In April, drivers for the regional bus lines seeking increased wages joined the strikes. The strikers have found broad support from layers of the population who face similar conditions.

The minimum wage in this sector is currently 98 kroner (€3.62) for one hour driving and 88 kroner (€3.25) for turnaround breaks, plus additional allowances of around 6 kroner (22 cents). The bus drivers demanded 130 kroner (€4.80) and better working conditions. According to the Czech transport union, some bus drivers work more than 300 hours a month.

Sobotka and his government strongly condemned the strike by bus drivers. Sobotka said it was “superfluous,” and the billionaire Babis declared there were no funds available for the drivers. Pavel Bělobrádek, the leader of the Christian Democrats, declared that the government would not yield to demands that the minimum wage be increased to €460 per month.

Young “gig economy” worker hounded to his death over debt repayment

Barry Mason 

A verdict of suicide was recently recorded at the inquest of a young worker, Jerome Rogers, who had been plagued by debt following two parking fines.

At the inquest in south London, assistant coroner Jacqueline Devonish said, “It’s evident that he [Rogers] was stressed by being in debt.”

Jerome Rogers was only 20 when he tragically took his own life, by hanging, in March last year. He had earned his living as a self-employed courier for City Sprint, using his motorbike to deliver blood supplies to hospitals throughout London.

Rogers had incurred two parking fines for £65, which had been owed to Labour Party-run Camden council. Because the fines were not paid, the debt quickly mounted up in the course of a few months. Eventually he owed a total of £1,019 because of non-payment of penalties and bailiffs fees.

Camden council passed the debt to Newlyn Plc, a Liverpool-based national debt Collection Company used by many local authorities and high street firms. Public concerns about the methods used by the company and others like it are well documented.

A Times article in February, 2011 stated that Newlyn “has been accused of adding extra costs to debts, cutting corners and aggressively chasing people for money they say they do not owe."

It cited a former employee, who revealed the “questionable practices of a company chasing unpaid fines and arrears for local authorities.” The Times wrote, “Steve Williams (not his real name), an ex-employee of Newlyn, says that when an unpaid parking debt is passed to Newlyn, it will add an extra sum--often about £80.”

In 2016, Jerome was twice visited by Newlyn Plc bailiffs--first on January 19 and again on March 7. On the first visit, the partner of Jerome’s mother, Bentley Duncan, paid off £507. Jerome also agreed to pay the bailiff off at a rate of £128 a week, which would have constituted an enormous chunk of his wages. Jerome had suffered several bouts of severe asthma over the winter months making him unfit to work on several occasions. This meant that in the months prior to his death, his weekly earnings were between just £38 and £89.

After his mother’s partner had paid off part of the debt, Jerome carried out internet searches for payday loans in an attempt to clear the rest. A bailiff, Ross Cutler, contracted by Newlyn to collect the debt, texted Jerome on February 26, reminding him payment was due the next day. According to the Guardian, Jerome then began making internet searches on how to commit suicide, as well as continuing to search for potential loans.

Cutler made a second visit to Jerome’s home on March 7 and on this occasion seized Jerome’s motorbike as an asset against the debt, thus depriving him of his only means of making a living and paying off the debt.

Cutler clamped the vehicle and then sat in his car for two hours outside Jerome’s house. The bailiff claimed he did this to allow Rogers more time to find the money owed.

In her assessment, the assistant coroner said, “I've considered the actions of the bailiff sitting outside the house for a prolonged period having not told Jerome the reason he was outside. Could that have been viewed as a form of harassment? Did it increase Jerome's stress levels? My personal view is sitting outside a person's house, when you are a bailiff, would be intimidating."

According to the assistant coroner, Jerome had been searching the internet for ways to commit suicide even while Cutler was there. Jerome then left his house while the bailiff was still present.

After several hours, Jerome’s family reported him missing to the police, after it emerged that he had sent his girlfriend a text saying he loved her and to remember him. The following day Jerome’s body was found in nearby woods by his brother Nat and a family friend.

The assistant coroner questioned the bailiff’s valuation of Jerome’s motorbike. There is evidence that the bailiffs may have acted illegally as they are not legally entitled to seize items used as tools of a trade if their value is less than £1,350. Newlyn had valued the bike at between £1,500 and £2,000. The family obtained a valuation from motorbike manufacturer Honda giving the value as only £400. This was because the bike had clocked up a further 17,000 miles due to it being used by a motorcycle courier.

Newlyn admitted they had no facility to be able to search the value of motorbikes.

Speaking to the Guardian, Tracey Rogers, Jerome’s mother, said, “We are shocked that bailiffs have the power to seize people’s tools of trade, which will prevent them from working and earning money to pay off their debt… We will continue to campaign for changes in the law so that no other family has to go through what we are going through. After Jerome’s death I got a letter from a man who said he had contemplated suicide because of the way he had been treated by bailiffs. I have to do this for Jerome. I can’t just pretend things are normal after the inquest. Nothing is normal anymore.”

A report “Taking Control” jointly issued in March by the Citizens Advice, Step Change Debt Charity and the Children’s Society commented on a law that came into effect in 2014 to supposedly control the actions of bailiffs and “clean up” the debt enforcement business. It found that bailiffs still regularly intimidated people, failed to accept affordable payment offers and failed to recognise the needs of vulnerable people.

The use of bailiffs to retrieve debts is on the increase.

A Money Advice Trust report, “Stop The Knock,” published in 2015, noted, “Local councils in England and Wales instructed bailiffs to collect debts on 2.1 million occasions last year.” This was an increase from the 1.8 million visits in the year up to August 2013.

The report showed “the readiness with which councils instruct private bailiffs to collect unpaid debts--despite the serious negative impact this can have on individuals and businesses in financial difficulty.”

Such is the scale of the debt collecting industry that a reality TV programme--Can't Pay? We'll Take it Away --has been created around it. This tends to demonise those in debt and glorifies bailiffs as playing a vital and useful role in society.

According to the Debt Support Trust charity, nearly half of people struggling with debt in the UK have considered suicide to resolve their situation.

At the beginning of the year, debt charity Step Change released statistics for its work in 2016. Nearly 600,000 people had contacted it, amounting to an enquiry every 53 seconds. Use of its website had doubled since 2011, with 3.3 million searches. It reported, “For the first time in at least eight years, the overall average unsecured debt of our clients increased, from £13,900 to £14,251.”

Jerome Rogers, a young low-paid worker, could find no way out of his predicament and was literally hounded to his death. He was offered no help or respite from the institutions of the capitalist state, meeting only the most brutal response from the council, courts, police and bailiffs.

The crisis that engulfed Rogers was ultimately an outcome of the precarious situation facing millions of people, where just one incident can spiral out of control and push them over the edge.

Today, one in five UK workers—over 7 million people—are in “precarious” employment. In 2012, 180,000 were employed in the UK as couriers in a highly exploitative fast-growing sector. Many of these are poorly paid and part of what is described as the “gig economy.” Their employers generally classify them as self-employed so they can avoid paying sick pay, holiday pay or pensions.

With the continuing imposition of austerity measures and the spread of such employment, millions more are likely to find themselves in the very same dreadful circumstances that led to Rogers taking his life.

Hunger affecting millions of children in UK

Joe Mount 

Hunger affects an increasing number of children in Britain. Up to three million children in Britain are threatened with malnutrition outside term time, when they are not provided with school meals, according to new research.

A third of these children qualify for free meals provided by schools during term time and often go hungry during school holidays. Two million are from working households that earn poverty wages, but do not qualify for free school meals.

This was the conclusion of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Hunger, who commissioned two months of research, including 52 written submissions, interviews with panels of expert witnesses and consultation with charities that provide food relief.

The APPG was established in 2013 by several members of parliament (MPs) led by Frank Field, the right wing Labour MP for Birkenhead in the North West. Field chairs the Work and Pensions Select Committee and was briefly the welfare minister in Tony Blair’s 1997 Labour government.

The study details the causes and impact of malnourishment affecting children. Many must go days or weeks without a proper meal due to empty cupboards, while others rely upon poor-quality, cheap food that is low in nutrients such as cereals. Hunger also affects parents who feed their children before themselves.

Hunger blights young lives across the country, with over half a million children in London facing food insecurity during school breaks.

A significant proportion of teachers notice hunger among pupils when students return from school breaks. A survey of 600 teachers, conducted by the National Union of Teachers, found that half of them reported pupils affected by hunger during school holidays. The majority believed the problem has worsened in recent years.

The study found that children return to school “malnourished, sluggish and dreary” and struggle to concentrate on their schoolwork. Those with an inadequate diet return to school lagging behind by weeks or months in intellectual and physical development compared to their better-off peers. This creates a further social barrier to healthy development and maturation into functioning adults.

Academics from Birmingham City University told the inquiry, “For vulnerable and low-income families the risks relating to nutrition, learning, emotional well-being, social interaction and financial security are most pronounced during 13 weeks of school and nursery holidays… this is most pronounced during long summer holidays where parents and carers find themselves under increased pressure to feed children and provide activities for them … upon returning to school, children and their wider family network experience decreased health and well-being, are less prepared for school and see an increase in referrals to specialist services.”

The report cites one case where a group of children participating in a holiday football tournament had to drop out due to exhaustion, after not eating a full meal for several days prior to the event.

Increasing numbers of “food insecure” households rely upon emergency food assistance, but provision is insufficient, sporadic and geographically sparse due to the lack of funds and organisation. Many rely on charities, and food banks have mushroomed across the country, involving tens of thousands of volunteers. The crisis is intensifying, with the Trussell Trust food bank network reporting a doubling of cases in 2016 compared to the previous year. Over a million food parcels are now distributed by the Trust each year.

Teachers are taking on an increasing burden of feeding children by running breakfast clubs and after-school activities. Many teachers pay with their own money to feed children who begin the new term hungry. Volunteer groups run a limited number of holiday food projects nationally.

The report states that immediate causes of the malnutrition crisis are the increased financial burdens that arise during school holidays due to increased childcare costs, fuel bills and other outgoings associated with caring and providing activities for children full-time outside school. Other families struggle due to working fewer hours to look after children, reducing their household income.

A survey by Kellogg’s found that 41 percent of low-income parents suffered isolation because they cannot afford to go out and entertain their children during holidays.

Increasing numbers of children are growing up in poverty, which affects almost a third of children in Britain. Many families live on the edge of destitution, threatened by unemployment, low pay, insecure contracts, welfare benefit sanctions, unexpected bills and debt. Recent years have seen a sharp growth in impoverished working families, with two-thirds of poor children living in households with at least one working adult.

Economic instability is causing a precipitous decline in living standards of the working class in Britain and internationally. Over the past decade, wages have flat-lined while household budgets are battered by inflation, with food costs rising.

The underlying causes--which the report’s authors, as supporters of the profit system cannot address--are rooted in the social misery inflicted upon the most oppressed layers of society by the capitalist ruling elite.

The responsibility for imposing these conditions lies with successive governments of all political stripes and their allies in the trade unions. The then Labour government bailed out the super-rich after the 2008 financial crash and began imposing harsh austerity measures to pay for it. This has been escalated by Conservative-led governments since 2010. Government strategy is the wholesale destruction of what remains of the welfare state, taking away social services and benefits upon which millions depend. Recent benefit cuts alone will force up to 200,000 more children into poverty and leave many families up to £3,000 worse off, according to research by the Child Poverty Action Group and the Institute for Public Policy Research.

That millions of children face hunger in the world’s fifth-richest country is a stark indictment of the failed capitalist system. The effects of hunger only entrench the social gulf dividing rich and poor. The crisis exposes the irrationality of the market system that results in tonnes of food being dumped in landfills if it cannot be sold for a profit.

The proposals advanced by APPG on Hunger to resolve the growing phenomenon of child malnutrition do not seriously address the crisis.

The report’s authors suggest palliative measures, including using the revenue from a sugary drinks tax to fund volunteer-based charitable organisations, appealing to the “rich cultural tradition” of middle class philanthropy. They call for a “government lead in giving local authorities duties to convene churches, community groups, businesses, schools and public bodies in their area.”

In fact the resources to address the hunger crisis exist. However, any serious attempt to deal with the question of mass poverty requires a frontal attack on the entrenched profit interests of the super wealthy. This cannot be implemented through impotent appeals to the existing political structures, but requires the independent mobilization of the working class on a socialist program.

US corporate profits up 13.9 percent on cost-cutting and low wages

Barry Grey 

Former Obama administration officials joined the Trump administration and the media in hailing the April employment figures released Friday as proof that the US economy has reached “full employment” and essentially completed its “recovery” from the Great Recession.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the US economy added 211,000 private-sector non-farm jobs in April and the official jobless rate dropped to 4.4 percent, the lowest level in more than a decade.

“JOBS, JOBS, JOBS!” tweeted President Donald Trump. “Great news,” Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta said on Twitter, adding later in a statement, “The steady and sustained increase in job creation equals new paychecks for American workers and income for American families.”

Jason Furman, the chief economic adviser in the Obama administration, said, “The momentum in the job market is really impressive.” The New York Times wrote that the report showed “a labor market closing in on full capacity,” particularly in “the country’s flourishing urban centers.”

On Monday, Cleveland Federal Reserve President Loretta Mester, speaking in Chicago, said, “We have met the maximum employment part of our mandate and inflation is nearing our 2 percent goal.”

The message from the ruling elite is clear: This is as good as it gets.

To present the jobs report as proof of a healthy economy, certain aspects of the report itself had to be downplayed or ignored, including the fact that average job creation so far this year, 185,000 a month, is actually lower than in 2014 and 2015. Even more significant, the number of people not in the labor force actually rose by 162,000 last month, and the proportion of the population in the labor force fell by a tenth of a percent. At 62.8 percent, the labor force participation rate remains only marginally above a four-decade low.

While the share of prime working age Americans (25 to 54) who are employed rose in April, it remains well below the level at the peak of the last economic cycle and even further below the level in 2000. This means there are millions of working-age people who have been effectively excluded from the job market as a result of decades of factory closures and mass layoffs, a process that has intensified since the 2008 financial crash. These millions of people, living on the edge of society, are not even counted in the official unemployment rate.

Moreover, the vast bulk of the new jobs created in April were once again in the cheap-labor service sector, where many workers receive poverty-level wages. The statistic that is perhaps most revealing about what is being presented as the “new normal” for a healthy economy is the miserable year-on-year average wage increase of 2.5 percent, barely above the official inflation rate.

Even in 2006 and 2007, annual wage growth for non-managerial workers of 4 percent or more was normal. That has been cut almost in half.

On Saturday, the same day the Wall Street Journal reported the April employment figures, the newspaper featured a front-page article on US corporate profits in the first three months of 2017 that pointed to the real driving forces of the new “full employment” economy. Profits at S&P 500 companies surged an estimated 13.9 percent in the first quarter, the biggest quarterly profit gain in five years.

At the heart of the profit bonanza, the Journal explained, was a relentless and ongoing drive to cut costs by holding down wages, cutting jobs and slashing spending on new plants and equipment. US big business, the newspaper wrote, was reaping “the benefits of years of belt-tightening” under conditions of a pickup in demand.

Because of the continuing focus on slashing costs, profits rose nearly twice as fast as revenue. Spending on equipment and buildings, i.e., productive investment, rose by a mere 1.5 percent in the first quarter. Half the sectors of the US economy actually cut capital spending from a year earlier.

The Journal provided some examples. Caterpillar, the heavy machinery giant, reported a quarterly sales increase of about 4 percent, while doubling its profit, excluding restructuring costs. The company has cut its global workforce by at least 16,000 since late 2015, a reduction of roughly 10 percent. It has closed or announced the shutdown of plants in South Carolina, Florida, North Carolina, Illinois and Belgium.

The energy sector, partially recovering from the oil price collapse of previous years, saw a 31 percent rise in revenues from the year-ago period. Based on its ruthless cost-cutting over the past two years, including the elimination of over 200,000 jobs, the sector enjoyed a profit boost of 647 percent.

Exxon Mobil, whose former CEO Rex Tillerson is now Trump’s secretary of state, reported a doubling of its profits in the first quarter, while its capital expenditures dropped by 19 percent, as it “remained disciplined in its investment.”

Much of the cash being taken in by the top corporations on this entirely regressive basis is being funneled to big shareholders in the form of dividends and stock buybacks.

On Sunday, the Financial Times devoted its “The Big Read” page to an article extolling the achievements of 3G Capital, an investment fund that partnered with Warren Buffett to buy the food conglomerate Heinz in 2013 and merge it with Kraft Foods two years later. What the newspaper called “The lean and mean approach of 3G” has resulted in more than 10,000 Heinz and Kraft workers—one-fifth of the work force—being laid off and seven factories closed down.

3G’s “brutal but disciplined attack on costs” produced a 58 percent surge in profits within two years, and a profit margin of 28 percent. This compares to an average profit margin in the food industry of 16 percent.

Such is the utterly parasitic secret to the much-touted “recovery” in the US economy and job market. A combination of speculation that feeds off of the destruction of productive forces and ever greater exploitation of the working class benefits a new aristocracy by impoverishing ever broader layers of the US and world population.

Nazi traditions of Germany’s Armed Forces come to the fore

Peter Schwarz

Last Thursday, Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen apologized to Germany’s generals for reproaching the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) with having an “attitude problem” and a “wrongly understood esprit de corps.” Since then systematic attempts are being made to hide the full extent of the right-wing conspiracy in the military.

After the arrest of 28-year-old First Lieutenant Franco A, who is accused of preparing terrorist attacks while falsely pretending to be a refugee, it soon emerged that his neo-Nazi sympathies had long been known and tolerated by his superiors, and that such views are widespread in the Bundeswehr. Now suspicions are growing that Franco A is part of a larger network reaching into the leadership structures of the Bundeswehr.

In the Fürstenberg Barracks in Donau-Eschingen, a meeting room decorated with memorabilia from the Wehrmacht (Hitler’s army) was discovered. The hurried attempts at a cover-up and an order from General Inspector Volker Wieker, the Bundeswehr’s highest-ranking general, to search all barracks and Bundeswehr buildings for such commemorative Wehrmacht items cannot hide the fact that the preservation of Wehrmacht traditions and the toleration of neo-Nazi views in the Bundeswehr are not individual lapses, but a widespread, systemic phenomenon.

In some barracks, no search is necessary to recognize the continuity of Hitler's Wehrmacht. A look at the name of the barracks is enough.

Two barracks are named after Hitler's most famous military commander, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Three bear the names of fighter pilots awarded hero status under the Nazis—Hans-Joachim Marseille, Helmut Lent and Hermann von der Lieth-Thomsen—and two bear the names of tank commanders who were prominent in the war of extermination against the Soviet Union—Dirk Lilienthal and Adelbert Schulz. Another one is named after Paul von Hindenburg, a key figure in the First World War, who, as German president, appointed Hitler as Reich chancellor in 1933.

In the Leclerc Barracks in the French town of Illkirch, where Franco A served in an infantry battalion, the traditions of the Wehrmacht and the Nazis were obviously a matter of course. According to Spiegel Online, investigators find “more and more signs of a far-right fellowship in the barracks around Franco A.”

Although German soldiers have been stationed there only since 2010, the wall of the recreation room, the so-called “bunker,” was painted with Wehrmacht soldiers. The base commander admitted he had visited the bunker, but said the large-scale depictions of the Wehrmacht soldiers were not evident to him.

Already in 2012, there was a scandal at the Leclerc barracks when soldiers spread a four-meter-wide swastika on the ground during an international football match. This case was reported to superiors and the Ministry of Defence, in contrast to the neo-Nazi attitudes of Franco A. However, except for minor fines for three soldiers, it did not have any consequences.

Militaristic propaganda by politicians, the media and historians also plays an important role in the promotion of Wehrmacht traditions. Three years ago, leading politicians, including von der Leyen, announced that Germany must once again play a global political and military role appropriate to its economic clout. Bundeswehr soldiers have been sent to Afghanistan, Mali and other countries and are now accustomed to fighting and killing. This inevitably boosts the glorification of the Wehrmacht.

An important ideological step in the rehabilitation of the Wehrmacht was already made in 1999, when, after a fierce public debate, the travelling exhibition “The Crimes of the Wehrmacht—War of Annihilation 1941-44,” which had attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors over four years, was cancelled and its director Hannes Heer dismissed.

At the time, the WSWS commented, “All those who have an interest in preserving the myth of the Wehrmacht, from the nationalist German historians and magazine columnists to the parties in the SPD-Green government coalition and the ‘tradition-conscious’ Bundeswehr generals, to the right-wing extremist skinheads on the streets—all felt encouraged by the dismissal of Heer.” This has now been confirmed.

First Lieutenant Franco A's Infantry Battalion 291 is directly involved in the international war efforts of the Bundeswehr. “This battalion stationed in France is no ordinary unit, but a kind of pioneer organization for special tasks,” reports the website NachDenkSeiten. “The battalion is present where it is geopolitically precarious, such as in Lithuania or Mali. It is also involved in politically explosive maneuvers like Operation 'Sabre Strike' 2015 in Poland, which was commanded not by NATO but by the US Army.”

According to Der Spiegel, Franco A was a member of the staff responsible for planning “international exercises and maneuvers.” His superior, the battalion commander Colonel Marc-Ulrich Cropp, has excellent international and political connections. He participated in training missions in the US several times; from 2008 to 2010 he completed elite training with the US Marine Corps. He then headed the planning department for operations of the Bundeswehr special forces in the German Ministry of Defence.

In the Ministry of Defence, Cropp worked closely with high-ranking politicians, according to NachDenkSeiten. This included the head of the planning staff, Ulrich Schlie, a member of the Atlantik-Brücke, which describes itself as “private, non-profit, nonpartisan association with the goal of building a bridge between Germany and the United States.” Membership is by invitation only. Schlie began his career working with Wolfgang Schäuble and as a foreign policy advisor to Roland Koch (both leading Christian Democratic politicians). Cropp also worked with Schlie’s successor Géza Andreas von Geyr, who also came from Schäuble’s circle and was vice president of the secret service BND from 2010 to 2014.

Franco A also seems to have maintained international contacts. In January 2017, he attended the elite “Officers' Ball” at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna. According to the organizers, the annual social event is “a meeting place not only for officers of the Austrian Armed Forces and Viennese society, but also for European politics and business.” Its sponsors included the major international armaments companies Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, BAE Systems and General Dynamics.

Franco A's visit to the Officer’s Ball became known because afterwards he hid a gun in a toilet at Vienna airport, which was discovered by maintenance staff. At the beginning of February, Franco A fell into a trap laid by the Austrian police as he sought to pick up the gun from its hiding place.

Franco A's neo-Nazi views, their cover-up by his superiors, the prominent status and international connections of his battalion, and many unresolved questions indicate that he was a cog in a wider conspiracy. The great effort being undertaken by the law enforcement authorities certainly suggests this. Following his arrest, which took place only three months after he went to recover the gun in Vienna, 90 police officers searched 16 buildings in Germany, Austria and France.

However, the public has been informed only about two accomplices so far. One was found to be in possession of 1,000 rounds of ammunition and other material from Bundeswehr bases. The other is said to have drawn up a list of possible targets of a terror attack, which includes left-wing activists and Bundestag (parliamentary) deputies, former President Gauck, Justice Minister Heiko Maas, and Jewish and Muslim associations.

While the media report extensively about every newly discovered piece of Wehrmacht memorabilia, the background and possible links of this sinister network are veiled in silence.

Japanese PM plans to remove constitutional shackles on the military by 2020

Peter Symonds

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced a timetable last week for the revision of the country’s post-war constitution by 2020—a long-held ambition of the ruling right-wing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

The Abe government is seeking above all to significantly modify Article 9 of the constitution that nominally renounces war as a means of settling international disputes and vows never to maintain military forces. By removing the legal shackles on Japan’s already substantial armed forces, the constitutional revision would be another major step toward Japanese remilitarisation.

Speaking last Wednesday on the 70th anniversary of Japan’s constitution, Abe declared: “2020 is the year when a new Japan will kick off, and I strongly hope the year will see the constitution come into force.” Well aware of widespread public opposition to militarism, Abe said the country “must hold fast to the idea of pacifism.”

In reality, under the smokescreen of “pro-active pacifism,” the Abe government has already boosted military expenditure, including lifting the ceiling of 1 percent of gross domestic product, established a US-style National Security Council to concentrate power in the hands of the prime minister and enacted unconstitutional legislation in 2015 allowing for “collective self-defence”—that is, to go to war with its ally, the United States.

Abe wants to remove any doubt about the legitimacy of the Japanese military—the Self Defence Force (SDF), so named in order to manoeuvre around Article 9. “We need to make sure, at least within our generation, that the argument that ‘the SDF may be unconstitutional’ will no longer be made,” he said.

Any constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds vote in the Japanese Diet, or parliament, followed by its support in a subsequent referendum. Abe’s concerted push for constitutional change is the first in 70 years. Having acquired a two-thirds majority in the Diet as a result of last July’s upper house election, he is exploiting the danger of war with North Korea, and rising tensions with China, to try to overcome long-standing opposition.

In his comments, Abe warned that Japan faces a “deteriorating security situation.” Authorities have heightened a sense of alarm over North Korean missile tests by warning there will be just 10 minutes to respond to any attack. Late last month, the entire Tokyo subway system was shut down briefly following a failed North Korean test.

The LDP is using the North Korean threat to push for what would be another breach of the constitution—the ability of the Japanese military to acquire offensive weapons and to carry out “pre-emptive” strikes against an enemy, such as North Korea. The party’s policy council announced in March it would present a proposal during the current parliamentary sitting, to be included in the next five-year defence plan.

The government’s underlying militarist agenda was underscored by the fact that Abe’s remarks last week were released in a pre-recorded video at a gathering of parliamentarians affiliated to the ultra-nationalist Nippon Kaigi organisation.

Nippon Kaigi represents significant layers of the Japanese ruling elite who have never accepted what they term the “occupiers’ constitution”—that is drafted under the post-war US occupation of Japan—and regard it as an intolerable impediment to Japanese imperialism’s ability to pursue its interests by military means if necessary.

Nippon Kaigi also calls for the promotion of patriotism among young people, the boosting of military forces and the defence of national interests, reputation and sovereignty. By defending “national reputation,” the organisation seeks to whitewash the war crimes of Japanese militarism throughout Asia in the 1930s and 1940s and to legitimise paying homage at the notorious Yasukuni Shrine to Japan’s war dead, including class A war criminals.

While not widely publicised, Nippon Kaigi has some 38,000 members and its associated parliamentary grouping has 280 members out of the 717 parliamentarians in both houses. Abe is a special adviser to the extreme right-wing organisation and, as of last year, 16 of his 20-member cabinet belonged to it.

The LDP has already signalled sweeping constitutional changes in a draft released in 2013 that substantially modifies Article 9 and makes deep inroads into basic democratic rights. These include moves to restore the emperor as head of state, granting the power to the prime minister to declare an emergency and assume “emergency powers,” curtailing freedom of speech and assembly and imposing duties on citizens, such as to respect the national flag and national anthem. While the LDP has shelved its highly controversial draft, the document still animates its aim.

Japan’s wartime military regime in the 1930s and 1940s, headed by the emperor, not only ruthlessly prosecuted the invasion of China and war with the US and its allies. It imposed extensive police-state measures at home. Abe’s call for a “new Japan” is in reality the revival of militarism to pursue the economic and strategic interests of Japanese imperialism. He said last month: “Now is precisely the time to unchain ourselves from the post-World War II regime, and that includes rewriting the constitution.”

The opposition to this reactionary agenda was highlighted by a rally in Tokyo last Wednesday, estimated at 55,000 people, to protest against the government’s plans to revise the constitution. The organisers, however, invited leaders of the main opposition parties—the Democratic Party, the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) and the Social Democratic Party—all of which are part of the political establishment.

The opposition parties promote the myth that pacifist phrase-mongering, along with the current constitution, will halt the growing danger of war. While critical of the Abe government, they all join in the demonising of North Korea as the US and its allies, including Japan, step up war preparations against Pyongyang.

Speaking at the rally, Kazuo Shii, leader of the Stalinist JCP, attacked North Korea’s development of nuclear missiles as “absolutely unacceptable” and appealed for a diplomatic solution to the present tense stand-off. He berated the government for dispatching navy vessels for joint exercises with US warships off the Korean Peninsula, saying it showed Japan’s military was “subordinate” to the US.

The JCP’s promotion of Japanese “independence” from the US, far from being at odds with the government’s agenda, meets up with Abe’s push for Tokyo to press for its own interests, even if they come into conflict with Washington. While adhering to the US alliance, Abe has carried out extensive diplomatic efforts since coming to office in 2012 to extend Japanese influence throughout Asia and the world.

Honeywell Aerospace cuts retiree health care benefits

Jessica Goldstein

On April 29, Honeywell Aerospace International announced it would stop paying health care benefits for all retirees from its aircraft components plants in South Bend, Indiana and Green Island, New York. Retirees from these plants received letters informing them that their benefits will be terminated on June 30 of this year.

The Fortune 100 company took this action after locking out 350 workers at the two plants for nearly 10 months. The United Auto Workers union isolated the embattled workers who repeatedly defied efforts by management and the UAW to impose sweeping health care concessions.

Under the new five-year contract deal imposed by the UAW, the Honeywell workers will receive paltry wage increases that were more than chewed up by increases in copays and deductibles. The contract also eliminated pensions for all new hires starting after May 3, 2016, and initiates a 401(K)-style retirement plan for all other employees with a meager 2 percent contribution from the company.

The draconian cuts came as a shock to retirees, some of whom suffer from life-threatening conditions. Before the announcement, retired workers were guaranteed lifetime health care and prescription benefits as a result of contract gains won over generations of struggle. As the widow of one Honeywell retiree told the South Bend Tribune, “It went from, ‘We will have insurance and pay nothing until we die,’ to a couple of years ago, ‘Now we have to pay for it,’ to now telling us we’re not going to have it at all… Is the next thing to be taken from us our pension?”

Most Honeywell retirees depend on company benefits to supplement the federal Medicare program, which provides limited health coverage to persons over the age of 65. The stripping away of benefits is literally a death sentence for many retirees who will be unable to pay thousands of dollars per month for hospital and doctor visits, therapies and prescriptions.

Honeywell announced its decision days before the Republican-controlled US House of Representatives passed the American Health Care Act bill, which will significantly raise the cost of health coverage for workers over the age of 60. The AHCA will provide a maximum tax credit of $4,000 per year for individuals unable to afford high out-of-pocket expenses. It also grants states the ability to apply for waivers that allow insurance companies to charge older people up to five times as much as younger people for the same health care plans. The bill has yet to be voted on in the Senate.

The decision by Honeywell is a part of a decades-long corporate effort to strip retirees of their health care benefits. The Kaiser Family Foundation has found a 16 percent drop over the past two decades—from 40 percent in 1999 to 24 percent today—in the percentage of large corporations providing retiree health benefits. Far from opposing this, the UAW and other unions have collaborated in these attacks, in the name of making US corporations “more competitive” and profitable.

In the mid-2000s, Delphi Corporation CEO Steven Miller summed up the outlook of the American ruling class. Complaining that “people are living longer these days,” he said it no longer made “economic sense” to pay for retiree medical benefits like it did when “you worked for one employer till age 65 and then died at age 70.”

Honeywell is stripping retirees of their hard-earned benefits as it enjoys immense profits. Shares of Honeywell International Inc. (HON) traded at $131.41 as of last Friday. In August 2015, the US Navy awarded Honeywell Technology Systems an $805 million contract for C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) systems for surface ships and submarines used for military provocations in the Middle East, South China Sea and the Korean Peninsula.

Honeywell CEO David Cote, who was paid a total of $34.5 million in 2015 and cashed in another $36 million in stock options, is set to retire next year in 2018 with a $168 million golden parachute. Cote was the most frequent visitor to the Obama White House and in the 2016 election cycle the company’s political action committee donated nearly $10 million to federal candidates, with 40 percent going to Democrats and 60 percent to Republicans.

The brutal treatment of the Honeywell workers exposes the lies by the UAW and other unions, which have claimed that Trump’s “America First” economic nationalism and buildup for war would be a boon for workers. On the contrary, the billionaire president is spearheading the ruling class’s war against workers around the world and “at home.”

The UAW has not even bothered to issue a statement about the benefit cuts on its websites or Facebook pages. Todd Treder, Vice President of UAW Local 9, issued a statement to the local press saying, “the union is exploring options for preserving the health benefits of retirees.” He went on to say that “It’s something that our International Union lawyers are looking at currently… It’s just something that caught us all off guard.”

The claims by the UAW that it knew nothing about plans to eliminate retiree health benefits are suspect at best. The UAW International intervened directly to impose the sellout deal to end the lockout after starving rank-and-file workers into submission with $200 a week strike benefits. At the same time, UAW officials gave themselves a healthy raise in 2016. President Dennis Williams received a salary of $171,087 in 2016, a gain of 7.6 percent from 2015, while Norwood Jewell, UAW vice president for the union’s aerospace division, took in $154,142 in salary, an over 7 percent rise. This is in addition to pay for positions on various corporate boards and joint labor-management businesses.

If UAW lawyers are currently “looking into” retiree medical benefits, this means they are cooking up another Voluntary Employees Beneficiary Association or VEBA like the ones the UAW has negotiated in the auto industry. Under this scheme, the corporations dump their health care obligations, at a fraction of the cost, into a union-controlled fund. The UAW then has a financial incentive to cut benefits.

Afghanistan-Pakistan border clash erupts amid seething regional tensions

Sampath Perera & Keith Jones 

Relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan are fraught after a clash Friday over their disputed border killed at least twelve people and possibly many more, while forcing up to ten thousand villagers to flee for their lives.

The hostilities between Afghanistan and Pakistan come amid a surge in tensions between India and Pakistan that threatens to escalate into border clashes, tit-for-tat military incursions, and even all-out war between South Asia’s rival nuclear-armed powers.

India’s military and government have repeatedly vowed that they will inflict bloody punishment on Pakistan for an alleged May 1 cross-border raid by Pakistani troops that killed two Indian soldiers.

Friday’s clashes erupted near the Chaman border crossing between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistani census officials were prevented by Afghan security forces from canvassing villages that the latter insist are within Afghan territory. A spokesman for the governor of Afghanistan’s Kandahar province told the New York Times the Pakistani census team “crossed the frontier in disputed territory as they were trying to include two villages in the counting.”

Islamabad disputes this, saying that it had informed Afghan officials of the census operations, that the census-takers remained within Pakistani territory at all times, and that Afghan forces opened fire on them. “Since April 30,” declared a statement from the Pakistani military, “Afghan Border Police had been creating hurdles” to conducting the census in the “divided villages of Killi Luqman and Killi Jahangir in the Chaman area, on the Pakistani side of the border.”

Fighting between Afghan and Pakistani forces reportedly raged for hours, only ending late Friday. Initial reports said twelve people had died, including civilians and troops from both countries, and scores had been wounded. However, on Sunday the Inspector General of Pakistan’s Frontier Corps in Balochistan, Major General Nadeem Anjum, told a press conference that Pakistani forces had in fact killed 50 Afghan security personnel, injured some 100 hundred more, and destroyed four or five Afghan border checkpoints. According to Anjum, the fighting ended when the battered Afghan forces pleaded for a ceasefire.

Kabul has rejected Anjum’s claims as “baseless.”

Two “flag” meetings Saturday between local Afghan and Pakistani commanders failed to reach any resolution to the dispute. But at a third meeting on Sunday the commanders reportedly agreed to collaborate in a geological survey to better delineate the border.

Nevertheless, troops on both sides of the border remain on alert and the Chaman border crossing, one of the two major conduits for trade and NATO supplies from Pakistan to landlocked Afghanistan, remains closed.

Friday’s Afghan-Pakistan border clash was the worst in years. It comes as the US military is about to forward to the Trump administration its recommendations for breaking the “stalemate” in the now fifteen-year-old Afghan war. The Pentagon’s recommendations reportedly include deploying some 5,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan.

Although the details of the Trump administration’s Afghan policy have yet to be finalized, it has already made clear that it views a bolstered American presence in Afghanistan as vital.

Invariably, the US media and political and military-intelligence establishments frame the US involvement in Afghanistan from the standpoint of the phony “war on terror.” But the real factors driving US policy toward Afghanistan today, as in 2001, are its proximity to oil-rich Central Asia and states that Washington views as major strategic rivals—China, Russia, and Iran.

Trump’s National Security Advisor, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, visited Kabul and Islamabad in the middle of April, just days after the US military bombed Afghanistan with the largest nonnuclear weapon in its arsenal, the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bomb.

During his visit, McMaster pressed Pakistan to do more to support the US war in Afghanistan, including by taking military action against the Haqqani Network, a Taliban-allied militia said to have bases in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas. Whilst in Kabul and to the visible satisfaction of his hosts, McMaster declared that Pakistan security forces “must go after the militant groups”—i.e. the Taliban and its allies—that have established safe havens in Pakistan “less selectively,” and “pursue its interests in Afghanistan, and elsewhere, through the use of diplomacy and not through the use of proxies.”

Relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan have been in free fall for years. Kabul has long charged that Islamabad is allowing the Haqqani Network and some other Taliban factions space to function so as to ensure that it has a decisive say in any “political settlement” of the Afghan War. For five years or more, Islamabad has countercharged that Afghan intelligence is providing backing to the so-called Pakistan Taliban, which has carried out numerous terrorist attacks inside Pakistan, including frequently targeting the country’s Christian and Shia minorities.

Afghanistan has also become an increasingly significant battleground in the strategic rivalry between India and Pakistan.

For decades, Pakistan was Washington’s principal ally and military partner in South Asia. But over the past decade the US has downgraded its ties with Islamabad to pursue closer relations with India. With the aim of integrating India into its military-strategic offensive against China, Washington—under Democratic and Republican administrations alike—has lavished strategic “favours” on India, while dismissing Islamabad’s increasingly alarmed warnings that the US has overturned the regional balance of power and is thereby encouraging Indian belligerence.

Last Thursday, Indian Army chief General Bipin Rawat gave a bellicose address in which he called for dramatic hikes in India’s military spending and a push to develop new alliances so as to strategically encircle China and Pakistan. Rawat touted Afghanistan for its potential to assist India’s strategic ambitions, including in the encirclement of both India’s main rivals. “It,” said Rawat, “not only helps us in creating (a) two-front dilemma for our western neighbour (Pakistan), but also encirclement of our northern neighbour (China) from the west.”

Rawat’s call to strengthen relations with Afghanistan is all the more provocative as Islamabad has repeatedly accused Indian and Afghan intelligence of conspiring together against Pakistan.

With Washington’s encouragement, New Delhi has already greatly expanded relations with Kabul, including military-security ties.

In recent months India has also openly encouraged Kabul to adopt a more assertive attitude towards Islamabad. The shift in policy has coincided with India’s own increasingly aggressive posture against Pakistan. Last August, India launched a campaign to isolate Pakistan internationally and brand it as a “state sponsor of terrorism.” Then in late September, it declared it had mounted an illegal cross-border strike inside Pakistan-held Kashmir and publicly boasted that this represented the repudiation of its purported policy of “strategic restraint” vis-à-vis Pakistan.

Last December, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani infuriated Islamabad by joining with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in attacking Pakistan as a supporter of terrorism during the “Heart of Asia” international conference on Afghanistan. Accusing Pakistan of providing safe havens to the Taliban, Ghani demanded, “I want clarifications on what is being done to prevent the export of terror.”

Kabul has also aggressively opposed Pakistan’s efforts to fence the border between the two states and amplified its opposition to the current border—a British colonial-imposed frontier known as the Durand Line that Afghan governments have always refused to recognize.

Last June, when Pakistan sought to fence and otherwise harden the border at Torkham, border clashes ensued in which one Pakistani officer and two Afghan soldiers were killed.

Islamabad has responded in kind. It has launched a brutal campaign of deportations against Afghan refugees, many of whom have lived in the country for years, even decades. Last February, after a series of terrorist attacks, Islamabad closed its border with Afghanistan for over a month, on the grounds that the attacks were orchestrated by Pakistan Taliban forces operating from inside Afghanistan.

European Council endorses Irish unification in hardline negotiations over Brexit

Steve James

The European Council (EC) has set out aggressive terms for forthcoming negotiations over Britain’s planned exit from the European Union (EU), of which one of the most explosive is the position it took on Northern Ireland.

Three priority issues were set out before any talks on trade could begin—the residency rights of EU and UK citizens after Brexit, the payment owed by the UK to the EU, and avoiding a “hard” border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland.

The EC showed unanimity when it agreed within minutes at its summit April 29 that there can be no “cherry picking” by the United Kingdom of the four single market freedoms—the free movement of goods, capital, services, and people.

Berlin’s purpose is to weld Europe together in line with the strategic and economic interests of German imperialism. Concessions to London would undermine German domination of the EU and intensify pressures leading to the bloc’s disintegration.

In relation to Northern Ireland, the meeting declaration stated, “The European Council acknowledges that the Good Friday Agreement [the 1998 settlement bringing about power-sharing between the Republican and Unionist parties] expressly provides for an agreed mechanism whereby a united Ireland may be brought about through peaceful and democratic means. In this regard, the European Council acknowledges that, in accordance with international law, the entire territory of such a united Ireland would thus be part of the European Union .” [Emphasis added]

The EC position on Ireland is a challenge to British imperialism on the territory of its oldest colony and expresses how Brexit is threatening the breakup of both the EU and the British nation state. The EU and Germany intend to show that they are willing to unleash explosive conflicts with the British ruling elite over the fate a region where, as little as 20 years ago, tens of thousands of British troops were deployed in a dirty war against Irish republicans that cost thousands of lives.

The EC statement followed a venomous spat early in April between Spain and the UK over Gibraltar, when the EU sided unequivocally with Spain over the status of the strategically placed territory seized by Britain in 1704. At the time, Michael Howard, former British Conservative leader, reminded the Spanish government of the Malvinas/Falklands War in 1982 when “another woman Prime Minister sent a taskforce half way across the world to defend the freedom of another small group of British people against another Spanish-speaking country.”

Over the issue of Ireland, another former Tory leader, Iain Duncan Smith, railed against “a deliberate and outrageous attempt to meddle in the affairs of a nation state.”

Duncan Smith added, “They are trying to lean on bits of the UK to create trouble. That is quite unacceptable. They won’t have to pick up the pieces of what they are doing.”

The official British response was more measured. A spokesman noted, “It is clear that the majority of the people of Northern Ireland continue strongly to support... Northern Ireland’s continuing position within the UK.”

Inclusion of the Northern Ireland border as one of the pre-conditions to talks was a result of intensive lobbying across Europe by the Republic of Ireland’s government. Ireland, north and south, faces severe economic disruption because of Brexit, with the South’s substantial agricultural trade with the UK facing the imposition of tariffs.

Most concern is focused on the border, however, which is all but invisible. A “hard” external EU border between Northern Ireland and the Republic could drastically impede cross border commerce, travel and commuting, in addition to threatening disruption to the cross-border utilities and services.

Although all parties and both the Irish and British governments agree there should be no “hard” border, there is no agreement on how, or even whether, this can be ensured under the current constitutional arrangements. One means of avoiding a hard border, therefore, is for Northern Ireland to remain in the EU with some form of ill-defined “special status,” while juridically remaining part of the UK. Another is for Ireland to leave the EU. This is the context of the sudden demands for Irish unification within the EU.

Provision for eventual Irish unity was included in the Good Friday Agreement in order to bring the bourgeois nationalists of Sinn Fein into the British government of Northern Ireland. A referendum can be called should a majority in both North and South appear to be in favour. However, until last year nobody, least of all Sinn Fein or the government of the republic, viewed unification as anything other than a distant prospect.

All this changed with the Brexit vote.

Unlike England and Wales, Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU by 56 to 44 percent, despite the largest party, the hard-right Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), campaigning to leave. The result led to the collapse of the Northern Ireland power-sharing Executive and Assembly through which the DUP and Sinn Fein had jointly ruled for the preceding 10 years. Using the pretext of a long running energy scandal, Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuiness resigned, shortly before his death in March, and the party refused to nominate a successor. The resulting elections saw the pro-British unionist parties lose their overall majority for the first time since Ireland was partitioned in 1921.

Talks to revive power sharing have been going in circles ever since. Sinn Fein is considered to have “parked” the Assembly, preferring a renewed push towards “special status” within the EU and eventual unification. Northern Ireland Secretary of State James Brokenshire has been forced to repeatedly push back the deadline before which a new agreement on reviving the Northern Ireland government must be reached, while taking over responsibility for state spending, including a new round of education cuts. The latest deadline is June 29, three weeks after the snap June 8 British general election.

Unification has also become a subject for intense discussion among the Irish political establishment. The Irish parliament is due to release a 1,200-page report, entitled “Brexit and the future of Ireland,” next week. This is the first official report in the history of the republic to set out a road to unification.

The report mulls over the economic impact of Brexit to Irish-based capital, considers the constitutional and legal basis for a new referendum, what might be the transitional governing arrangements, whether Northern Ireland should be independent to a degree, for example, as a region of a federal Irish state. The report also explores whether the British government would pick up the bill of current state spending and the public sector deficit.

Among the questions considered is the prospect of terrorism from loyalist supporters of Northern Ireland remaining in the UK. A submission from the Pat Finucane Centre, a human rights group, notes, “Loyalists have always attacked a soft target—the Catholic civilian population. They do not need huge amounts of high-quality modern weaponry to do so.”

The submission goes on to recall the high level of collusion between British military and intelligence forces and loyalist paramilitaries during 30 years of the “Troubles” following the deployment of British troops to Northern Ireland in 1969.

Macron wins French presidency

Alex Lantier 

Emmanuel Macron, the former Rothschild banker and economy minister of France’s outgoing Socialist Party (PS) government, was elected president on Sunday. He received 65 percent of the vote against Marine Le Pen, the candidate of the neo-fascist National Front (FN).

Both candidates were deeply unpopular. Abstention in Sunday’s second-round run-off election reached 26 percent, the highest in a French presidential election since 1969. Fully 12 percent of voters, a record 4.2 million people, cast blank or spoiled ballots to express their hostility to both candidates presented by the French political establishment. Thirty-four percent of voters aged 18 to 24, 32 percent of voters aged 25 to 34, 35 percent of the unemployed, and 32 percent of manual workers abstained.

Macron voters overwhelmingly selected their candidate not on the basis of support for his program of austerity, militarism and law-and-order policies, but in order to keep the FN out of power. One Ipsos poll found that 61 percent of the French people so mistrust Macron’s agenda of social cuts and war that they do not want him to have a majority in the National Assembly after the upcoming legislative elections in June.

As for the FN, its broad unpopularity was underscored by the fact that the combined number of voters who abstained or cast a blank or spoiled ballot was larger than the number of people who voted for Le Pen.

Nonetheless, in a brief and perfunctory victory speech, Macron appealed to Le Pen’s party and to her voters, ignoring the vast majority of the French electorate that had supported him or abstained. Macron addressed a “Republican salute” to Le Pen, promising to pay attention to the “anger, anxiety and doubts” that had driven millions of people to cast ballots for the neo-fascist candidate.

Macron, a supporter of the PS government’s state of emergency, which suspends basic democratic rights, pledged to step up the French state’s law-and-order policies. Making clear that he would build on the vast police and military deployments the PS has ordered since the imposition of the state of emergency two years ago, Macron promised to “ensure in an implacable and resolute manner your security, and the unity of the nation.”

Macron struck a militaristic tone, declaring that he would focus on the “war on terror” and the defense of the European Union, as well as on “morally uplifting our public life.”

Marine Le Pen spoke before an audience of FN officials. “The French people have chosen a new president of the Republic and voted for continuity,” she said, adding that she had contacted Macron to “give him my best wishes that he will succeed in the face of the enormous challenges France is facing.”

She referred to the support given by the PS and its political allies to Macron’s campaign in order to present her far-right party as the only opposition to the incoming president, declaring that the FN and its allies would be “the leading force for opposition to the new president’s program.” She continued: “The forces that have supported Macron have discredited themselves and cannot claim to represent a force that could create an alternative government, or even a political opposition.”

Le Pen pledged to initiate a “deep transformation” of the FN in order to renew its image and turn it into a broader party that could aspire to win over a majority of the electorate and ultimately take power. She thanked Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, the leader of the right-wing Rise Up France (DLF) party, for his endorsement, and predicted that more right-wing parties would rally to neo-fascism in the coming period.

Macron’s election resolves nothing. It only creates the conditions for broader and more explosive political crises and class conflicts in the coming months. He is coming to power amid a historic collapse of the two-party system that has ruled France since the May-June 1968 general strike, consisting of the PS and the Gaullist party, now called The Republicans (LR).

PS candidate Benoît Hamon and LR candidate François Fillon were eliminated in the first round of the election, both parties having been discredited by their decades-long record of austerity and war. The open cultivation of law-and-order and anti-Muslim sentiment, first under right-wing President Nicolas Sarkozy and, in particular, under PS President François Hollande’s state of emergency, accelerated the FN’s emergence as a major force in the French political mainstream.

Hollande’s repeated invitations of Marine Le Pen to the Elysée presidential palace during his presidency played the same role as Macron’s appeal to the FN in the name of national unity last night: to show that the PS and Macron view the FN as legitimate political partners.

Like Hollande, Macron appears to be cultivating the FN as a political base for his deeply unpopular program. He has pledged to use the PS’ anti-democratic labor law to tear up contracts and social spending by decree, escalate defense spending, and reestablish the draft in preparation for an era of major wars.

Macron’s response to the election result underscores the correctness of the Parti de l'égalité socialiste’s (PES) call for an active boycott of the second round of the elections. The PES rejected the claim that Macron could be relied upon as a lesser evil who would defend social and democratic rights, block the FN’s rising influence and present a genuine political alternative. Instead, the PES explained that the central task was to prepare the working class politically for the struggles that would erupt against the new president, whether that turned out to be Le Pen or Macron.

This revolutionary perspective contrasted sharply with the parliamentary ambitions and barely disguised support for Macron of various PS allies, such as Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Unsubmissive France (UF) movement and the New Anti-capitalist Party. While Mélenchon declined to openly call for a Macron vote, he made no secret of his support for Macron, going so far as to offer to serve as his prime minister, in which position he would take responsibility for Macron’s aggressive foreign and military policy.

Mélenchon appealed last night for voters to give UF a strong delegation in the National Assembly in the June legislative elections, which would strengthen his bid to become Macron’s prime minister.

With Macron running a right-wing campaign and both the PS and the Gaullists supporting Macron against Le Pen, the FN was able to win a record 11 million votes, posing demagogically as a populist alternative to Macron. Le Pen lost by a decisive margin of 30 percent. However, she doubled the vote that the FN received the only other time it competed in the second round of a presidential election. In 2002, her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, won 17.79 percent of the vote against the Gaullist Jacques Chirac.