The Universal Lesson of East Timor

John Pilger

Filming undercover in East Timor in 1993 I followed a landscape of crosses: great black crosses etched against the sky, crosses on peaks, crosses marching down the hillsides, crosses beside the road. They littered the earth and crowded the eye.

The inscriptions on the crosses revealed the extinction of whole families, wiped out in the space of a year, a month, a day.  Village after village stood as memorials.

Kraras is one such village. Known as the “village of the widows”, the population of 287 people was murdered by Indonesian troops.

Using a typewriter with a faded ribbon, a local priest had recorded the name, age, cause of death and date of the killing of every victim. In the last column, he identified the Indonesian battalion responsible for each murder. It was evidence of genocide.

I still have this document, which I find difficult to put down, as if the blood of East Timor is fresh on its pages.

On the list is the dos Anjos family.

In 1987, I interviewed Arthur Stevenson, known as Steve, a former Australian commando who had fought the Japanese in the Portuguese colony of East Timor in 1942. He told me the story of Celestino dos Anjos, whose ingenuity and bravery had saved his life, and the lives of other Australian soldiers fighting behind Japanese lines.

Steve described the day leaflets fluttered down from a Royal Australian Air Force plane; “We shall never forget you,” the leaflets said. Soon afterwards, the Australians were ordered to abandon the island of Timor, leaving the people to their fate.

When I met Steve, he had just received a letter from Celestino’s son, Virgillo, who was the same age as his own son. Virgillo wrote that his father had survived the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975, but he went on: “In August 1983, Indonesian forces entered our village, Kraras. They looted, burned and massacred, with fighter aircraft overhead. On 27 September 1983, they made my father and my wife dig their own graves and they machine-gunned them. My wife was pregnant.”

The Kraras list is an extraordinary political document that shames Indonesia’s Faustian partners in the West and teaches us how much of the world is run. The fighter aircraft that attacked Kraras came from the United States; the machine guns and surface-to-air missiles came from Britain; the silence and betrayal came from Australia.

The priest of Kraras wrote on the final page: “To the capitalist governors of the world, Timor’s petroleum smells better than Timorese blood and tears. Who will take this truth to the world? … It is evident that Indonesia would never have committed such a crime if it had not received favourable guarantees from [Western] governments.”

As the Indonesian dictator General Suharto was about to invade East Timor (the Portuguese had abandoned their colony), he tipped off the ambassadors of Australia, the United States and Britain. In secret cables subsequently leaked, the Australian ambassador, Richard Woolcott, urged his government to “act in a way which would be designed to minimise the public impact in Australia and show private understanding to Indonesia.” He alluded to the beckoning spoils of oil and gas in the Timor Sea that separated the island from northern Australia.

There was no word of concern for the Timorese.

In my experience as a reporter, East Timor was the greatest crime of the late 20th century. I had much to do with Cambodia, yet not even Pol Pot put to death as many people – proportionally — as Suharto killed and starved in East Timor.

In 1993, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Australian Parliament estimated that “at least 200,000” East Timorese, a third of the population, had perished under Suharto.

Australia was the only western country formally to recognise Indonesia’s genocidal conquest. The murderous Indonesian special forces known as Kopassus were trained by Australian special forces at a base near Perth. The prize in resources, said Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, was worth “zillions” of dollars.

In my 1994 film, Death of a Nation: the Timor Conspiracy, a gloating Evans is filmed lifting a champagne glass as he and Ali Alatas, Suharto’s foreign minister, fly over the Timor Sea, having signed a piratical treaty that divided the oil and gas riches of the Timor Sea.

I also filmed witnesses such as Abel Gutteras, now the Ambassador of Timor-Leste (East Timor’s post independence name) to Australia. He told me, “We believe we can win and we can count on all those people in the world to listen — that nothing is impossible, and peace and freedom are always worth fighting for.”

Remarkably, they did win. Many people all over the world did hear them, and a tireless movement added to the pressure on Suharto’s backers in Washington, London and Canberra to abandon the dictator.

But there was also a silence. For years, the free press of the complicit countries all but ignored East Timor. There were honourable exceptions, such as the courageous Max Stahl, who filmed the 1991 massacre in the Santa Cruz cemetery. Leading journalists almost literally fell at the feet of Suharto. In a photograph of a group of Australian editors visiting Jakarta, led by the Murdoch editor Paul Kelly, one of them is bowing to Suharto, the genocidist.

From 1999 to 2002, the Australian Government took an estimated $1.2 billion in revenue from one oil and gas field in the Timor Sea. During the same period, Australia gave less than $200 million in so-called aid to East Timor.

In 2002, two months before East Timor won its independence, as Ben Doherty reported in January, “Australia secretly withdrew from the maritime boundary dispute resolution procedures of the UN convention the Law of the Sea, and the equivalent jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, so that it could not be compelled into legally binding international arbitration”.

The former Prime Minister John Howard has described his government’s role in East Timor’s independence as “noble”. Howard’s foreign minister, Alexander Downer, once burst into the cabinet room in Dili, East Timor, and told Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, “We are very tough … Let me give you a tutorial in politics …”

Today, it is Timor-Leste that is giving the tutorial in politics. After years of trickery and bullying by Canberra, the people of Timor-Leste have demanded and won the right to negotiate before the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) a legal maritime boundary and a proper share of the oil and gas.

Australia owes Timor Leste a huge debt — some would say, billions of dollars in reparations. Australia should hand over, unconditionally, all royalties collected since Gareth Evans toasted Suharto’s dictatorship while flying over the graves of its victims.

The Economist lauds Timor-Leste as the most democratic country in southeast Asia today.  Is that an accolade?  Or does it mean approval of a small and vulnerable country joining the great game of globalisation?

For the weakest, globalisation is an insidious colonialism that enables transnational finance and its camp-followers to penetrate deeper, as Edward Said wrote, than the old imperialists in their gun boats.

It can mean a model of development that gave Indonesia, under Suharto, gross inequality and corruption; that drove people off their land and into slums, then boasted about a growth rate.

The people of Timor-Leste deserve better than faint praise from the “capitalist governors of the world”, as the priest of Kraras wrote. They did not fight and die and vote for entrenched poverty and a growth rate. They deserve the right to sustain themselves when the oil and gas run out as it will.  At the very least, their courage ought to be a beacon in our  memory: a universal political lesson.

The Great Division: the Return of Nationalism

Patrick Cockburn

Suddenly the world is full of leaders from Theresa May to President Erdogan of Turkey claiming to unite their countries while visibly deepening their divisions. Denunciations of supposed threats at home and abroad are a common feature of this new political style, whether they are tweeted from the White House or spoken at the podium outside 10 Downing Street.

“Threats against Britain have been issued by European politicians and officials,” said May this week, accusing them of deliberately trying to influence the results of the general election on 8 June. All this sounded very like Hillary Clinton convinced that Russia helped lose her the presidential election, though in the case of Britain any such calculation is highly unlikely given the common European assumption that Mrs May is going to win a landslide victory.

Defending the motherland against the evil schemes of foreigners is a political gambit that has been played out countless times since the age of Pericles, but its impact depends on the political context in which it is used. At the moment, it is peculiarly destructive as ethnic nationalism reasserts itself as a vehicle for grievances and rivalry between different nation states is reaching new heights. Populist nationalist leaders from Manilla to Warsaw to Washington are promising more than they can deliver and looking for scapegoats at home and abroad to blame when things go wrong. Nationalism has always needed real or invented threats to super-charge communal solidarity.

In an age of reinvigorated nation states, English nationalism is more dangerous than it looks. It displaces a vaguer and more inclusive British nationalism, dislocating England’s relations with Scotland and Northern Ireland. It may well be that Scotland will not become independent or Northern Ireland unite with the Irish Republic, but these options are already feasible enough to preoccupy the British state.

One destructive element in English nationalism is seldom identified. People in England understandably resent the way that their nationalism, which they see as merely sticking up for their own interests, is condemned as racist and jingoistic when Scottish and Irish nationalism (or for that matter Algerian and Vietnamese nationalism) are given a free pass as the laudable pursuit of liberty and self-determination.

There is something in this, but there is a difference between the nationalism of weak countries, whose history is one of foreign conquest and occupation, and the nationalism of larger and stronger ones who did the conquering and the occupying. Smaller countries or embattled communities always play with a weaker hand of political cards than their opponents and cannot do what they like, but this has the advantage of giving them a good grasp of the realities of power.

But states like the US, Britain, France and Russia who have an imperial past or present, have a much less accurate sense of what is feasible and what is not. Their nationalism is coloured by self-justifying myths about their own superiority and the inferiority of others. This is not just distasteful but carries the seeds of frustration and defeat. The British empire fatally underestimating the resistance of Afghans and Boers in the 19th century and the Irish, Indians and Greek Cypriots, among others, in the 20th century.

One could see the same self-destructive arrogance at work more recently in Iraq after 2003 and in Afghanistan after 2006. Public opinion at home never took on board the extent of British failure there was more complete than that of the Americans. In Iraq, the British force ended up signing a humiliating agreement with a Shia militia. No lessons were learned from defeat, as witness Boris Johnson’s glib promise to join the US in attacking President Assad.

Much of this sabre-rattling over the last week is simply part of Britain’s long-standing effort since 1940 to demonstrate its continuing usefulness as the main foreign ally of the US. But here again the political landscape is changing in a way not seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. US international leadership under Donald Trump is “mercurial and unpredictable” and Britain needs to rethink its policies in the Middle East according to a report by the House of Lord’s international relations select committee this week. Its chairman, the former Conservative cabinet minister Lord Howell, says that “in a world less automatically dominated by the US underpinning security in the region, it is no longer right to have a stance at every stage of “if we just get on with the US everything will be alright”.

This is all very true, but does not answer questions about whether or not Britain, if it does not piggy-back on US military power, has the inclination and resources to play a more independent role.

There are other doubts about how far British power and influence will survive post-Brexit. Not many Leave voters will have truly believed in Shakespearean rhapsodies about England as “a precious stone set in the silver sea”. But the proponents of Brexit were always cavalier about where Britain outside the EU would stand in a world which is getting more unstable. Appeals of varying degrees of sophistication to the spirit of 1940 forget that British victory in the Napoleonic wars and both World Wars depended on the Royal Navy and on building up a network of alliances with other powers. Having spurned the EU, this latter strategy is going to be very difficult to pursue. Already May, Johnson and assorted royals have been scurrying off to see unsavoury allies in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and among the kleptocratic monarchs of the Gulf.

One aspect of British decline is underrated: people favouring or opposing Brexit both speak in the future tense about the benefits or disasters that will ensue as Britain negotiates its departure. But one of the worst consequences of the decision is already with us and is simply that the British Government is wholly focused on Brexit to the exclusion of everything else.

Mrs May’s explanation that she called the general election to strengthen her hand in negotiating with Brussels is an admission of the dominance of the issue. There is not going to be much time to consider new policies for a changing Middle East or for anything else.

How did all this happen? In many respects, globalisation has turned out to be more destructive to the status quo than communism ever was. In its name, nationalism was discarded and derided by ruling elites who had an economically respectable reason to distance themselves from the rest of society and did not see that they were cutting through the branch on which they were sitting. The left never much liked nationalism, suspecting it of being a mask for racism and a diversion from more important social and economic issues. Populist nationalists came to power in country after country as others retreated from nationalism and they filled the vacuum.

The enhanced rivalry of nation states will be more destructive and violent than what went before. It is not just because of Donald Trump that the whole the world is becoming more “mercurial and unstable”. Everywhere divisive leaders are proposing radical changes that will exacerbate divisions.

Pakistan’s Tense Relations With Its Three Neighbors

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

The head of the Iranian armed forces warned Islamabad on Monday (May 8) that Tehran would hit bases inside Pakistan if the government does not confront militants who carry out cross-border attacks.

Ten Iranian border guards were killed by militants on April 26. Iran said Jaish-al-Adl (the Army of Justice), a militant group, had shot the guards with long-range guns, fired from inside Pakistan. Jaish ul-Adl claimed responsibility for the attack.

The group was reportedly founded in 2012 by members of Jundallah (the Army of God), a Sunni militant group that had been weakened following Iran’s capture and execution of its leader, Abdul Malik Rigi, in 2010. Its first major attack occurred in October 2013 when 14 Iranian border guards. The group claimed responsibility for attacks that killed eight border guards in April 2015

Jaish ul-Adl is a designated terrorist organization by Iran.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif visited Pakistan last week and asked Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to improve border security. Pakistan assured Iran it would deploy additional troops along its border, according to Reuters news agency.

“We expect the Pakistani officials to control the borders, arrest the terrorists and shut down their bases,” Major General Mohammad Baqeri, the head of the Iranian armed forces, was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA. “If the terrorist attacks continue, we will hit their safe havens and cells, wherever they are,” he said.

Pakistan is located at the junction of Central Asia and Middle East, which gives its location great significance. Pakistan shares its borders with four neighboring countries – Afghanistan, China, India, and Iran – adding up to about 6,975 km (4,334.1 miles) in length (excluding the coastal areas).

Pakistan has 2,430 km (1,510 miles), border with Afghanistan known as the Durand Line, which runs from the Hindu Kush and the Pamir Mountains. Pakistan shares 3323 Km (including Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu & Kashmir sector) of its land border with India. This border runs along the States of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir. Pakistan has a 523 km border with China towards the northeast. To its west Pakistan shares a 909 km border with Iran.

Tellingly, Pakistan doesn’t enjoy very good relations with three of its four neighbors namely, Afghanistan, China, India and Iran. With the exception China currently Pakistan is facing problems with its neighbors.

Pakistan enjoys exceptionally good ties with China which is exemplified by the $50 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which by linking Pakistan’s Arabian seaport of Gwadar with western China will partially offset any threat of an economic blockade on China.

Border clashes with Afghanistan

At least 10 people have been killed and dozens others wounded after a cross-border battle between Pakistani and Afghan forces during a Pakistani population census near the border. The attack on Friday left dozens of people wounded and happened near the Chaman crossing point in restive Balochistan province prompting security forces to ask people to evacuate villages on the border. Chaman, one of the two main border crossings between Pakistan and Afghanistan, was closed in the wake of the incident, with firing ongoing, Pakistani military spokesman Asif Ghafoor said.

On Sunday, the Pakistani military said it had killed more than 50 Afghan soldiers since the fighting erupted Friday at the Chaman border crossing, which divides Pakistan’s southwest Baluchistan province and Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar province.

Kabul quickly denied the Pakistan statement. “A very false claims by a Pakistani Frontier Corp that as many as 50 Afghan soldier lost their lives in Pak retaliation; totally rejected,” tweeted Sediq Sediqqi, a government spokesman. Samim Khpalwak, a spokesman for the governor of Kandahar province, instead said two troops were lost in the attack, in addition to one civilian death.

While the border clashes between Afghanistan and Pakistan are not a new occurrence, observers say this time around the situation is more “warlike.” “There have been at least two mass protest rallies in Kandahar and Torkham against Pakistan’s alleged provocation and meddling in Afghan affairs,” said Shadi Khan Saif, DW’s correspondent in Kabul.

Amid worsening ties with Afghanistan, Pakistan announced in March it had started building a fence along the volatile Afghan-Pakistani border. Islamabad said the move was aimed at restricting the movement of militants that cross over the porous border and launch attacks on Pakistani soil.

The move, however, is extremely controversial in Afghanistan and among the Pashtu-speaking people who live on both sides of the border.

Every day, thousands of Afghans and Pakistanis cross the Durand Line – the 2,430-kilometer (1,510 miles) boundary established by the British during their colonial rule. The Afghan government does not recognize the Durand Line as the official border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Pashtuns can easily travel back and forth across the border, but the deteriorating political ties between the two countries are now causing them problems.

India, Pakistan clash on Line of Control

Border clashes across the Line of Control in the disputed Kashmir region between the nuclear armed neighbors, India and Pakistan, are frequent and often bloody.

On Monday India claimed that Pakistani troops snuck across the Line of Control in disputed Kashmir, killed two Indian soldiers, and beheaded their corpses.

Pakistan has denied the Indian report. Pakistan’s Director General of Military Operations, Maj. Gen. Sahir Shamshad Mirza, said the Indian claims of a Pakistani incursion, ambush and desecration of dead Indian soldiers were an “attempt to divert the attention of the world” from the popular unrest in Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only majority-Muslim state.

Indian Defense Minister Arun Jaitley vowed Monday that the “sacrifice” of the Border Security Force personnel “will not go in vain,” adding India’s armed forces “will respond appropriately.” This language echoes that employed by Prime Minster Narendra Modi and other members of the BJP government last September when 18 Indian soldiers killed in Uri along the Line of Control.

Indian Vice Army Chief Sarath Chand denounced the Pakistani military for carrying out “extreme barbaric acts” not even seen “during war” at a press conference. He pledged Pakistan would suffer consequences, but said that rather than making threats, India’s military “will focus on our action at a time and place of our choosing.”

Responding to the Indian threats in kind, the Pakistani military spokesman said “any misadventure,” i.e. Indian attack, “shall be appropriately responded at a place and time of [our] own choosing.”

Tellingly, India and Pakistan relations were already tense over an Indian espionage scandal. On April 10, 2017 Pakistan sentenced to death Kulbhushan Jadhav, an Indian alleged spy. Jadhav was arrested on March 3, 2016, in Balochistan’s Mashkel area for his involvement in espionage and sabotage activities against Pakistan, according to the Army Public Relations.

“His goal was to disrupt development of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), with Gwadar port as a special target,” Army Public Relations Director Lt Gen Asim Bajwa had said, adding, “This is nothing short of state-sponsored terrorism… There can be no clearer evidence of Indian interference in Pakistan.”

Jadhav was tried by Field General Court Martial (FGCM) under Section 59 of the Pakistan Army Act (PAA) and Section 3 of the official Secret Act of 1923. He was charged with spying for the Indian spy agency the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) and being involved in subversive activities in the Gilgit-Baltistan region.

India has condemned Jadhav’s conviction and sentencing in the strongest terms and cited it as further reason to freeze diplomatic relations with Islamabad.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since 1947.

The Macron Denial

Binoy Kampmark

The cheer was always going to be qualified. The bubbles would be less effervescent, more a case of relieved sighing rather than frothy exultation.  After another electoral hack, and another round of threats, the French election was being played out in an era that may, in time, be given the Trump name.

The pollsters did rest a bit easier after the election result, with Emmanuel Macron outdoing his contender Marine Le Pen by fifteen percent. Their soothsayers have been failing of late, and this result provided some form of revival. But what it did show, as it did in the United Kingdom, is that the battle between the forces of nationalist nostalgia and autonomy, and the market model masquerading as prosperity and democracy, will continue to rage.

In any other set of circumstances, it would have been seen as thumping, clear, and unquestionable: a 66 percent approval for Macron, with Parisians going the whole hog with 90 per cent. But such are the times that the 34 percent, left unattended to the north and south of the country, may well become the future governing power, a disease that takes hold, and eventually conquering the host.

While it was second highest score in the second round of a presidential vote since 1965, Macron’s margin of victory becomes less significant when compared with that of Jacques Chirac’s 82.21 percent in 2002 over Marine Le Pen’s father.  An unescapable fact is that 11 million votes were cast in favour of Le Pen.

Rather than showing France revived and optimistic, the victory of Macron poses an enormous headache which is being shielded by aspirins from various quarters. Instead of considering the model of reform so desperately needed in institutional Europe, the excuse to bury, rather than examine the current revolt, is all too real.

As if showing awareness of this, figures such as outgoing president François Hollande have attempted to bring the brush of freshness to the En Marche! campaign, despite Macron’s ministerial tutelage under him.  The message here is a distorting one: centrism, an approach embracing neither left nor right, but one overwhelmingly in favour of market and banking ideals.  “It’s true that he followed me these last few years.  But afterwards, he freed himself, he wanted to propose his [own] project to the French people.”

Nor does the enormous margin favouring Macron suggest that anti-establishment resentment, nourished by dislike for the European Union, has somehow vanished.  Taken together as a bloc vote, the majority voted, in the first presidential round, against establishment, EU smugness.  (Witness, to that end, the margin favouring Jean-Luc Mélenchon.)  What followed after was a tactical play.

With some swiftness, Macron also became the alibi for other leaders, transmogrifying into rationales and justifications that seek to avoid, rather than confront, the European dilemma.  He had won, he had found the truth.  The European establishment were delighted that something sensible had transpired, that France could again lead the project of reason in Europe.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was the quickest out of the traps on that score. “He carries the hopes of millions of French people, and of many people in Germany and the whole of Europe.  He ran a courageous pro-European campaign, stands for openness to the world and is committed decisively to a social market economy.”

For the remainder group in the United Kingdom, this would have been a spur along to show that Britain’s Gallic cousins were doing the wise thing, and may well surprise in the British election.  But Prime Minister Theresa May, in full campaign mode, took Macron’s victory as a sign that she needed the numbers to stand up to him regarding Britain’s exit. (She has already indicated future trouble, given her reluctance to renegotiate the Le Touquet border agreement.)

From the stump, she claimed that “every vote for me and my team will strengthen my hand in those Brexit negotiations.”  In contrast, her Labour alternative, Jeremy Corbyn, was weak, lacking the bull dog spirit to face up to “the collective might of the European Commission and 27 other EU countries”.

For the Brexiteers, the vote suggested something quite different.  The Leave.EU group, created by Nigel Farage last year, decided that some good old fashioned venom should be thrown in. The French, went one tweet, had “rolled over” as they had in 1940, though this time, they saved Germany “the bullets and the fuel.”[1]  Farage, not wanting to be left out of the polemics, also claimed that Macron would be nothing more than Juncker’s puppet.

The CEO of the libertarian group the Freedom Association even got personal with the President elect, having a dig at Macron’s liking for the older woman. “Macron evidently likes older women, so he’ll make an excellent lapdog for Angela Merkel.”

For such reasons, mixed with sense and bile, Le Pen will not be disheartened.  Should she stay in those trenches of resentment against the forces of globalisation and European centralisation, the same agents of change Macron deems unstoppable, and even noble, she may well storm in after five years.

Deep in the character of French history is the genius of cosmopolitan enlightenment, and parochial fanaticism; collaboration with power, and resistance to it. On the landscape is now plotted the various forces that will shape the Republic for the next few years.  But Macron, every bit an establishment figure, despite claims to the contrary, promises reforms that are, in effect, non-reforms, a point that will feed rather than destroy the base Le Pen will work from.

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.