Tracing Potential US View of ISIS As Strategic Asset

Robert J. Barsocchini

Gelhorn prize winner Gareth Porter notes this week that in 2008, after the US had destroyed Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands of people and sending millions fleeing, George W. Bush wanted to establish indefinite military occupation of the country.  But the then Iraqi government lead by prime minister Nouri al Maliki “rebuffed that demand” and forced the largely defeated US “to agree to withdraw all combat forces in a strict timetable.”

In 2007, Hillary Clinton, an advocate for expanding the US military empire and a supporter of the illegal invasion of Iraq, and who would become Obama’s secretary of State, had already called for Maliki’s removal, expressing the general feelings and pretexts of the neocon-dominated Bush regime.

For example, as Porter noted in 2008, the “former US military proconsul” wrote an op-ed at the time expressing “that the United States has both the right and power to preempt Iraq’s national interests in order to continue to build its military empire in the Middle East”.

The Bush regime began expressing an “intention to try to intimidate al-Maliki”.

Obama, who, with sec-state Clinton, continued Bush plans for regime change across the region and offered protection to all members of the Bush cadre who engaged in aggression, torture and other war crimes against Iraq and elsewhere, informed the New York Times in 2014 that he “did not just start taking a bunch of airstrikes all across Iraq as soon as ISIL [ISIS] came in”, as “that would have taken the pressure off of al-Maliki.”

“Dair Mar Elia south of Mosul, Iraq’s oldest monastery of the Assyrian Church of the East, dating from the 6th century. It was destroyed by ISIS in 2014.”

Maliki determined Iraq, devastated by the US invasion, was incapable of itself repelling the militant group.  He thus specifically asked for US assistance in the form of airstrikes against ISIS, which was taking control of Mosul and Tikrit.

Maliki was “rebuffed” by Obama, as NYT put it, but Obama assured the paper that standing by while the Sunni death squad (which became a factor largely as a result of the US invasion) seized Iraqi territory was not related to Bush regime plans to intimidate al Maliki or to create a pretext for the US to reestablish bases in the country, but just the opposite: it was for Iraq’s own good, to encourage it to be self-reliant; to ensure, seemingly paradoxically and in opposition to previous US intentions, that US forces would never be needed in Iraq again.

But despite Obama’s best efforts to help Iraqis stand on their own feet by rebuffing Maliki’s requests for airstrikes and instead allowing ISIS to pressure him, the situation inexplicably, and undoubtedly to the horror of US officials, “shifted dramatically in favor of the U.S. military’s ambitions”, Porter continues, of establishing indefinite basing in the country.

As ISIS took Mosul, oil refineries, and other territory, al Maliki buckled under Obama’s well-intended “pressure” and stepped down under murky circumstances.  Obama then decided ISIS had applied enough pressure to move Iraq towards independence, and soon began airstrikes against the group.  However, he then oddly changed his mind, determining the result of watching ISIS take over key points in the country and refusing airstrikes should no longer be an independent Iraq, but reestablishment of the US occupation.  As the Wall Street Journal reported in June 2015, the “Obama administration is considering opening a hub of new bases in Iraq” to “deepen the US role in the war against Islamic State.”

Assessing what happened, Maliki, says he thinks the US allowed ISIS to expand in Iraq to disrupt the country’s reconstruction and create a pretext for renewed and indefinite US military presence and operations – an analysis similar to Naomi Klein’s “shock doctrine“.

The US is now, as Porter notes, back on track with its 2008 goals, currently “negotiating on an agreement that would station U.S. forces in Iraq indefinitely”.

Similarly, regarding Syria, John Kerry, who became Obama’s secretary of state after Clinton, said on a leaked tape that the US was “watching” ISIS grow in strength in Syria and hoping the death squad would “threaten” Assad.  Ousting Assad and installing a US proxy, who would better understand the need for Syria not to be self reliant (or worse, Russia reliant), but rather to have US armed forces indefinitely stationed in the country, has been a longstanding, sometimes openly stated US goal.  The US has been making efforts to conquer Syria since 1948 and has made several attempts.  Recently declassified CIA documents shed new light on efforts in the 1980s.

As Porter notes this week, the “initial plan for the defeat of ISIS in Syria, submitted to Trump in February, called for an increase in the size of U.S. ground forces beyond the present level of 1,000” and would involve troops occupying Syria for “many years across a wide expanse” of the country’s east, though a group of US officers has been pushing for an even more “ambitious” plan, including perhaps “many thousands” of troops.

The plan “bears striking resemblance to the one developed for Hillary Clinton by the Center for New American Security when she was viewed as the president-in-waiting.”

A Defense Intelligence Agency document from 2012, though somewhat unclear and partially censored, may be an early indication of the US viewing the ISIS death squad as a strategic asset in the region that could eat away at (“pressure”, “threaten”) leaders the US seeks to remove.

The NYT columnist who interviewed Obama in 2014, above, recently published an opinion piece saying he thinks the US should stop fighting ISIS in Syria and allow it to eat away at the Syrian government.  Neither in this piece or another NYT article that covers the leaked Kerry tape, cited above, does NYT mention evidence that the US already views ISIS in this sense.  (Or that this is not an anomaly, but standard behavior for the US.)  Nor does it mention that the US is not invited to operate in the country anyway – the Syrian government continually calls for the US to leave – making US operations in Syria illegal; a crime of aggression.

Fantasies of Worth: Macron’s French Mission

Binoy Kampmark

The outcome of the French presidential elections did not suggest a France on the verge of rapid, vigorous renewal. It suggested the opposite, a state in atrophy, the Fifth Republic in terminal decline before unleashed historical forces.

Dejected, voters feared by way of a majority that Marine Le Pen was simply too potent to be catapulted into the Élysée Palace on May 7.  A coalition of sentiment and convenience converged, giving the 39-year-old opportunist a chance to market himself as France’s saviour.

For all that, Emmanuel Macron still did not convince the twelve million who swooped to Le Pen, or the four million who preferred to destroy their ballot papers in a huff of disapproval of both candidates in the runoff election. Hardly peanuts from the perspective of voter behaviour.

And marketing himself Macron is.  Essential to this campaign is an effort to link victory to a broader, European, if not global one.  (When France is in internal crisis, it often looks to save the causes of others.)

“The world needs what the French have always taught.  For decades France has doubted herself.”  Such self-doubt can hardly be a terrible thing, putting the brake on overly patriotic, and parochial measures. But not for Macron, who promises that his mandate would give back to the French the confidence “to believe in themselves”, to effectively convince the world that French power, far from being on the decline to some retirement home of geopolitics, was on “the brink of a great renaissance.”

This hardly seemed to be the case, given the admitted fracture on the president’s part of France’s political fabric, and the state of emergency that keeps the state apparatchiks busy.  Since 2015, the Fifth Republic continues to live in a state that made Macron speak of “a living fraternity” open and welcoming, rather than private and fearful.  Such vague calls cry out for evidence, though Macron had better things to worry about.

He will have much convincing to do. One will be to inject his En Marche! Movement – now named République en marche – into Parliamentary elections, again humming the theme of centrist wisdom.  To garner victory, he will need a majority of the 577-seat National Assembly through issuing a siren call for defections.  On Monday, Macron published a list of 511 candidates for the June legislative ballot.

Short of that, the prospects of La Cohabitation with a prime minister of different political persuasion may be in order, one where the leader in the lower chamber is approved by majority.  Such situations have previously led to an un-greasing of the pathway of policy reform, and stress a distribution of power away from the executive to the parliament.

So far, Macron’s man for the prime minister’s office is Édouard Philippe, mayor of Le Havre and of the Les Républicains party.  He has indicated that, in all manner of things, one may well lean, when required, to the left of politics or the right.  (Do we sense here a French variant of the British “wobbler”?)

What matters to Philippe are issues of economic freedom and “freedom of thought, freedom of expression.” He concedes to being right wing, “and yet the general interest must be to dictate the engagement of the state, of elected officials and of the citizen.”

As of Macron, Philippe was not entirely convinced prior to his appointment that the soufflé had come together quite as promised.  There was little doubt, in his mind, that new President had the “power of seduction and reformist rhetoric,” but he could hardly be compared on the charm metre to a John F. Kennedy.

None of these views detract from the visible fact that Macron’s choice is very much one that seeks to court establishment values, whilst sending teasing signals to the conservatives.  Bruno Retailleau of the French senate smelled an enormous rat, suggesting that Macron had moved to weaken “the right in the parliamentary elections.”

Reform, it would seem, is being promised from within the establishment, making use of traditional figures to bring about a change.  Philippe’s party is that of the old guard, of Nicolas Sarkozy and failed, disgraced presidential candidate François Fillon. As Le Pen suggested, with some substance and disdain, the nomination of Philippe is telling on one level, that of a “perfect summary of the last 10 years in France”. The forces of the traditional left and right, in other words, would continue to have the dance of State.

To add some padding to these tactics, Macron is also facing a range of decisions on how to pursue the “road map” of European change with the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel. On the one hand, the centrist wants greater EU centralisation within the euro bloc, not to mention that headache of headaches, a budget; on the other, he wishes to quell technocratic urges and trim unneeded bureaucracy.

What, then, should this suggest?  A policy of a “Europe of two circles,” one capitalising on Brexit, has been suggested by Macron’s economic aide and mastermind, Jean Pisani-Ferry, along with traditional observance of the EU-imposed public deficit limit.  Given what is currently happening to the unfortunate continent, he might as well go for three, all turbulent, concentric, and in need of severe repair.

Australia: Tribunal to hear challenge to union-company wage-cutting deal

Oscar Grenfell 

The Fair Work Commission, the federal government’s industrial tribunal, ruled on Friday that it will proceed to a full-bench hearing in the legal challenge brought by Penny Vickers, a Brisbane supermarket worker, to a 2011 agreement between Coles and the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA), the country’s largest retail union. The deal slashed wages for thousands of low-paid workers.

The case was the subject of nervous commentary in the financial press last month, with business figures, Labor and Liberal-National politicians and union bureaucrats all warning that if the agreement is overturned, it will threaten the entire framework of enterprise bargaining that has been used to decimate the jobs, wages and conditions of workers for the past 25 years.

At a Fair Work Commission hearing on Thursday, lawyers for Coles, a supermarket giant, and the SDA, came together in a bid to block the case from proceeding, arguing that it was not in the “public interest.”

On Friday, Fair Work Commission Vice-President Adam Hatcher rejected this argument, stating, “I consider that the number of employees to which the 2011 agreement applies is so large as to make the question of the termination of the 2011 agreement a matter of public significance...” No date has been set for the full-bench hearing.

The ruling was a blow to the company, and the union, which have worked to quash the legal challenge since it was brought last year, with both seeking to delay its progression through the industrial tribunal and prevent a full bench hearing. There are also suggestions that Coles and the SDA have sought to prevent the disclosure of the impact of their agreement on thousands of workers.

In comments cited in the Sydney Morning Herald, Vickers warned against attempts by the company and the union to present a small group of workers who would back the 2011 agreement. “There is no utility or point in hearing from 85 like-minded, handpicked, above-award-pay day workers, out of Coles’ workforce of over 75,000,” Vickers said. “It would be a waste of time and resources.”

Coles and the SDA reverted to the 2011 deal after another worker, Duncan Hart, prosecuted a successful challenge to a 2014 agreement, which also included pay levels below award-mandated rates, in a 2015 Fair Work Commission case.

According to an investigation last year by Fairfax Media, some 43,000 Coles workers since 2011 have been paid less than they were owed as a result of the two agreements. The average underpayment is estimated at $1,500 a year, a substantial sum given that many of supermarket’s employees work on a casual or part-time basis, with annual wages as low as $10,000–$15,000. The wage-cutting saved Coles up to $100 million a year.

Vickers is arguing that the 2011 agreement fails the “Better Off Overall Test” (BOOT) in current industrial legislation, which supposedly requires that no worker be worse-off as a result of an enterprise agreement. Her invocation of the clause, routinely violated by the major companies and the unions, has triggered calls from Liberal-National politicians, former Labor figures and union officials to remove BOOT from legislation.

The line-up of the SDA with Coles, against one of the workers they falsely claim to represent, is a graphic expression of the thoroughly corporatised character of the trade unions, which function as an arm of company management, enforcing pay cuts and suppressing industrial, political and legal opposition from workers.

The Fairfax Media investigation found that the SDA had signed similar agreements with a host of major employers. Under a 2013 deal between the union and fast-food chain McDonald’s, workers reportedly receive almost one-third less than the award-mandated minimum wage. Total underpayment is estimated at around $50 million per year, with fast-food employees who earn as little as $10 an hour among those hit by the deal.

Around 60,000 employees at Woolworths,’ Coles’ main competitor, have also allegedly been underpaid by tens of millions of dollars as a result of an SDA agreement. Fairfax claimed workers at Hungry Jacks, another fast food outlet, have been underpaid by up to $5,000 a year, while their counterparts at KFC have also been affected.

All up, around 250,000 workers, most of them young and impoverished, have been covered by SDA wage-cutting agreements. Many of the deals have slashed or abolished night and weekend penalty wage rates, upon which retail and fast food workers have traditionally relied. In other words, if Vickers’ challenge is successful, it could have far broader implications.

It is not just the SDA, that is implicated in Coles’ wage-cutting deals. The Australian Workers Union (AWU), the country’s largest union, also sought to have Vickers’ challenge thrown out of court last week, and was a party to the 2011 and 2014 Coles agreements.

All of the major unions, including the national umbrella organisation, the Australian Council of Trade Unions, have maintained a stony silence on the case brought by Vickers. They are fearful that it threatens a host of pro-business arrangements and deals, which have netted the union bureaucracy substantial sums of money.

The AWU, for instance, including when it was headed by current Labor Party leader Bill Shorten, signed a series of pro-business agreements slashing wages and conditions for cleaners and other low-paid workers. 

Other unions, such as the Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union (CFMEU), promoted as “left-wing” and “militant,” have also enforced real wage cuts. The CFMEU has had close ties to property developers involved in “phoenix operations,” in which the business is liquidated, and employee awards and entitlements withheld. The union also imposed a 5 percent pay cut affecting up to 900 workers at the Maryvale paper mill in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley in February. 

A spate of recent cases have made clear that underpayment is the new norm, either directly enforced by the unions, or as a byproduct of their collaboration in the destruction of secure, full-time work over the past three decades, which has spurred a rise and rise in casual, low-paid employment. To cite only a few examples:

● In May operators of six Little Vienna sandwich chain stores in Sydney were fined in the Federal Circuit Court after it was alleged some employees were underpaid $111,781 between December 2012 and April 2015. The migrant workers received between $11 and $13 an hour.

● Last month Fairfax reported that celebrity chef, George Calombaris, had allegedly underpaid around 200 workers in his high-end restaurants by a total of $2.6 million. Calombaris said the underpayment was a result of “poor processes in classifying employees.”

● Also in April, Guardian Property Services, a major cleaning company, agreed to compensate underpaid workers by up to $50,000 each. The move followed allegations that cleaners had been given a flat-rate of $14 an hour and were denied entitlements, including superannuation and annual leave.

Other cases have emerged at restaurants and cafes across the country, along with seafood businesses, among cleaners and even security guards at state-owned art galleries in Victoria. The reports come amid the lowest national wage growth since records began in 1969, of just 1.8 percent across the private sector in 2016.

The wage theft, which amounts to a vast redistribution of wealth from the poorest sections of the working class to the corporate and business establishment, is a direct product of the enterprise bargaining system set in place and defended by successive Labor governments and the trade unions.

India intensifies repression in Kashmir

Kranti Kumara & Wasantha Rupasinghe 

Indian authorities are intensifying their repression in disputed Kashmir, while ratcheting up tensions with Pakistan, which they hold wholly responsible for the mass opposition to Indian rule in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), India’s northernmost and only majority-Muslim state.

The Indian military has resumed large-scale sweeps of civilian areas in J&K in an attempt to terrorize villagers suspected of supporting anti-Indian, Pakistan-backed insurgents. Meanwhile, Indian and Pakistani troops stationed along the Line of Control (LoC) that separates Indian- and Pakistani-held Kashmir have resumed heavy cross-border firing, forcing thousands of civilians to flee.

A sense of imminent threat pervades disputed Kashmir and indeed South Asia as a whole, as the region’s rival nuclear powers exchange bellicose threats.

India’s government and military have repeatedly vowed that they will punish Pakistan for an alleged May 1 incursion by Pakistani troops inside Indian-held Kashmir and the killing and subsequent beheading of two Indian soldiers. On Saturday, after Pakistan Army Chief Qamar Javed Bajwa toured Pakistani “forward” positions along the LoC, its military press office issued a statement threatening that any incursion by the Indian Army across the LoC “will be a miscalculation,” that shall be answered “with full force” and could “lead to unintended consequences.”

Indian security forces mounted house-to-house searches May 4 across twenty villages in Jammu and Kashmir’s Shopian District, which lies near the state’s summer capital Srinagar. Authorities called the operation, which involved helicopters, drones and more than four thousand soldiers, paramilitaries and police, “unprecedented.”

Patterned after Israeli Army tactics, the raids were presented as a rapid response to intelligence reports of Islamist Kashmiri insurgents hiding in Shopian. However, an unnamed “senior Army official” was subsequently cited in the Indian Express as saying the operation was in fact long planned and “had little to do with any immediate provocation.”

In the end, the Shopian raids only provided further evidence of Kashmiri Muslims’ mass alienation from, and opposition to, the Indian state. Villagers spoke of a warlike atmosphere and bitterly complained that security forces had ransacked houses and vandalized property. In several villages, the residents were all ordered to congregate in a central area, where they were detained by gun-toting security forces, as others searched their homes.

In some places villagers fought back, with hundreds pelting security forces with stones.

After ten hours, the military called off the operation, having failed to ferret out even a single insurgent. However, as they withdrew, an army convoy came under brief gun attack, resulting in the death of one of the military’s civilian drivers and the wounding of two soldiers.

Antigovernment protests have convulsed Jammu and Kashmir, especially the northern parts of the Kashmir Valley, for the better part of a year.

There is a decades-long history of mass protests against Indian authorities in J&K. But India’s ruling elite has been rattled by the intensity of the wave of opposition that erupted last July after security forces killed—likely via summary execution—Burhan Muzaffar Wani, the 22-year-old commander of the Hizbul Mujahideen, a Kashmiri separatist Islamist insurgent group.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government have pressed security forces to resort to ever-harsher measures to suppress the protests, while lashing out at Pakistan, including with scarcely veiled threats to support the separatist insurgency in Pakistan’s southwestern province, Balochistan.

Last summer and fall, scores of young people were killed and thousands wounded as security forces systematically sprayed protests with pellet-gun fire. Nevertheless, youth, including teenagers and in at least one case a school of girls, continue to risk their lives by coming onto the streets to impede security operations.

In an incident that underscores both the extent to which the half-million Indian security forces deployed in J&K are a law unto themselves and their difficulty in cowing the protests, Indian army troops charged with providing security for an April 12 parliamentary by-election tied a 26-year-old Kashmiri youth, Farooq Dar, to the jeep heading their convoy, so as to dissuade protesters from pelting them with stones.

After video and photos of Indian troops using Dar as a “human shield” appeared on Twitter, BJP General Secretary Ram Madhav complimented the officer who had ordered him seized and tied to the jeep, declaring, “Everything is fair in love and war.”

As for the by-election, it proved a fiasco. Only 7.5 percent of eligible voters cast ballots. Consequently, India’s Election Commission cancelled the by-election in J&K’s Anantnag constituency and ordered that a second vote be held May 25.

The Kashmir crisis is rooted in the reactionary 1947 communal partition of the subcontinent into an expressly Muslim Pakistan and a predominantly Hindu India. The Congress Party of Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi presented itself as the victim of Partition. In reality, the Congress leaders readily accepted and enforced it, so as to get their hands on the capitalist state machine erected by South Asia’s departing British colonial overlords, secure the privileges of the native bourgeoisie, and defuse the threat that the mass anti-imperialist movement could come under the leadership of an increasingly rebellious working class.

In the ensuing seven decades, both the Indian and Pakistani bourgeoisies have manipulated and abused the Kashmiri people, while placing their rival claims to control all the territory of the former British Indian princely state of Jammu and Kashmir at the center of their reactionary military-strategic rivalry.

In the late 1980s, when mass opposition erupted in J&K to the rigging of the 1987 state elections by Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress Party government, Pakistan intervened to turn it in a communalist direction and advance its own interests against India by organizing and arming Islamist insurgents, including former Afghan mujahedeen.

The Indian elite, for its part, has increasingly fanned Hindu communalism. This process finds its apogee in India’s current government, which is formed by the Hindu supremacist BJP and led by Narendra Modi, who presided over the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat.

Since coming to power in May 2014, Modi and his BJP have taken numerous actions that could only antagonize and frighten India’s Muslim minority. They have promoted legislation criminalizing beef consumption and encouraged Hindu chauvinist vigilante groups that have lynched Muslims under the guise of cow protection. In March, Modi appointed a Hindu priest and arch-Hindu chauvinist, Yogi Adityanath, as chief minister of India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh. Adityanath, who personally commands a vigilante Hindu youth group, the Yuva Vahini (Youth Battalion), has sent a spasm of fear through Muslims and Dalits (the former Untouchables) by targeting the buffalo-meat business, a major source of employment and income for both groups.

Whatever legitimacy the Indian state had in Jammu and Kashmir is rapidly being eroded as the result of the never-ending repression, New Delhi’s open promotion of Hindu communalism, and its eagerness to pursue confrontation with Pakistan, even at the risk of a war—a war whose first battleground would likely be Kashmir and that could potentially have catastrophic consequences for all South Asia, if not the world.

Modi and his government have rejected out of hand any discussion about the grievances of the people of J&K until the “violence” stops, just as it is refusing any serious high-level contact with Islamabad until Pakistan demonstrably halts all logistical support to the anti-Indian insurgency in Kashmir from its territory.

In pursuing this hard line, Modi and the Indian elite are seeking to leverage New Delhi’s new status as a prized strategic ally of Washington in its military-strategic offensive against China. With the aim of integrating India into its anti-China “Pivot to Asia,” the US has showered strategic favors on New Delhi for the past decade, while downgrading relations with Pakistan.

In 2016 this reached a qualitatively new level, with the Modi government signing an agreement giving the Pentagon routine access to Indian air bases and ports and the US supporting India’s provocative and illegal late September cross-border strike inside Pakistan.

Some sections of Indian’s ruling elite are becoming concerned that Modi’s Kashmir policy is untenable.

In a May 3 column in the Hindu, M.K. Narayanan, who served as India’s National Security Adviser for six years ending in 2011, warned that India has effectively lost control of the situation in J&K and argued that to avert a disaster, in the form of an “intifada,” New Delhi should abandon its “muscular policy” and even reach out to Islamabad.

Narayanan, who for years helped oversee the repression in Kashmir, makes a number of damning admissions. These include that Pakistani interference and “terrorism” are not the main cause of the current wave of popular protest in J&K and that the Pakistan-supported insurgent and separatist political groups have little control over it.

There is little chance, however, that the Modi government will heed Narayanan’s counsel, nor does he have anything new to propose when it comes to reconciling the people of Kashmir to the Indian state.

The reality is that the intractable dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir has now become enmeshed with the US drive to contain and thwart China, adding a massive new explosive charge to each.

A progressive solution to the grievances of the Kashmiri people can only be realized through the united struggle of the working class of India and Pakistan against imperialism, imperialist war and South Asia’s reactionary, communal-laced nation-state system, and for the Socialist United States of South Asia.

The London Conference on Somalia: Imperialists plan military buildup in Horn of Africa

Thomas Gaist 

Although promoted in the name of “political reform,” “economic development,” and “drought relief,” the “London Conference on Somalia,” hosted by the British government in London from May 12 to 13, served as a planning forum for imperialist military projects in Somalia and the Horn of Africa. The main outcome of the conference was a Security Pact that commits the United Kingdom and unnamed “international partners” to support the creation of a new Somali National Army (SNA). The SNA force is planned to include 18,000 regular soldiers, 4,000 special forces, and a Somalia Air Force and Somalia Maritime Force, and will be tasked with defending the Federal Government of Somalia (FSG).

In opening remarks to the conference, British Prime Minister Theresa May outlined a “revised federal constitution” and a “political agreement on resource and power sharing,” based on agreements signed by Somalia’s regional elites in April. The revised Somali constitution, May said, will enable the FSG regime in Mogadishu to gain support for a centralized army, by granting greater political autonomy to Somalia’s semi-autonomous regional governments in Somaliland and Puntland.

“Somalia’s forces need to be built up through a federated model that also brings in regional forces,” May said.

In exchange for their collaboration with the security framework, the African national elites assembled in London can expect financial and military backing from the United Kingdom and the “international community,” May made clear.

“In return, the international community will back these reforms with better targeted support for economic recovery. This will include the targeting of donor support on key investment priorities…and support for mobilising development finance and working towards securing debt relief,” May said.

The British PM assured attendees that the SNA will enjoy support from the American and British militaries and their regional allies. She touted the array of foreign military projects under way inside Somalia, including “the UK’s commitment to train Somali forces in Baidoa, the UAE’s development of a state of the art training facility, America’s training and equipping of Danab Special Forces and Turkey’s work to train Somali officers and NCOs.” 

European Union (EU) High Representative Frederica Mogherini offered “reengagement with international financial institutions” as an incentive for Mogadishu’s fulfillment of its pledges to build up Somalia’s security apparatus and enact “structural reforms” to its economy. Mogherini vowed that EU financial support to Somalia will increase from €800 million to €3.5 billion by 2020.

“The European Union is ready and willing to accompany this process. But I want to be very clear; before we can make decisions about our financial support, we need to see effective coordination and burden sharing in managing this transition towards a Somali-owned security system, with full participation by regional countries. We are ready and willing to be fully engaged in this process,” Mogherini said.

In comments outside the London Conference, United States Secretary of Defense James Mattis told reporters he was “heartened” by talks with Somalia’s president, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed. The former Marine Corps general, who personally oversaw the US military’s genocidal assault against Fallujah, Iraq, praised President Mohamed as “a very good leader in terms of understanding the need for military security.”

When asked whether the Pentagon is preparing further deployments of US ground troops, beyond the dozens of US paratroopers sent to Somalia in mid-April, Mattis replied: “That’s a decision [more US troops to Somalia] we’ll take if it’s broached to us, and we’ll decide yes or no.”

“The Somali people have to be defended,” said Mattis.

Washington is absolutely determined to maintain its grip over Somalia, even if this means a significantly larger air and ground war, comparable to those in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. American imperialism cannot accept the loss of Somalia, which overlooks the Gulf of Aden and the Mandeb Strait, the most important commercial waterway and strategic chokepoint worldwide. The Pentagon’s largest military base in Africa, Camp Lemmonier in neighboring Djibouti, is a central logistical and command hub for US military operations throughout Africa, the Middle East and Eurasia.

“The US government is clearly aiming at a military solution,” retired UN Africa official Peter Schumann told Deutsche Welle, commenting on the attitude of the Trump administration toward the London Conference.

Humanitarian experts are warning that any further military escalation in Somalia will severely disrupt relief efforts, amid record-breaking levels of drought, famine, and disease. The number of malnourished children living in Somalia may grow to nearly 1.5 million in the coming year, surging by more than 50 percent from last year’s total, according to UNICEF. Across Somalia as a whole, “6.2 million are severely food insecure, 439,000 are at risk of famine, and 275,000 malnourished children are at risk of starvation,” the UN secretary general reported Thursday. The worst of the famine is concentrated in “Bay, Bakool, Banadir, Gedo, Lower Shabelle, Nugaal, Middle Shabelle and Banadir regions,” according to ReliefWeb.

“The international humanitarian system is at its breaking point,” Dominic MacSorley of the humanitarian NGO Concern Worldwide said.

The Western and African troops tasked with defending the FSG will confront a Somali population that is increasingly restive, desperate, and sympathetic to the insurgents. The militaries of no fewer than five other African states, with national interests opposed to those of the FGS, are active on Somali territory. In his remarks from London, Somali President Mohamed acknowledged the dire situation confronting his regime by pleading for the major powers to supply his government with heavy weaponry.

“For far too long, our security forces and terrorist groups have been fighting using the same type of light weapons, mostly AK47s,” he said. “Somalia must have qualitatively better equipment and weapons than the terrorists.”

Somalia’s president warned: “If we don’t have more sophisticated and better weaponry, this war will definitely continue for another 10 years.”

US officials brushed aside President Mohamed’s request, pointing to the longstanding arms embargo against Somalia. The Trump administration has nonetheless proven ready to arm the regional powers with high-tech armaments. Last week, the White House approved the sale of $250 million worth of high-tech weapons to the Kenyan government of President Uhuru Kenyatta. The sale includes “12 MD530F Cayuse Warrior light attack helicopters, 24 heavy machine gun pods, 24 HMP400 machine gun pod systems, 24 M260 rocket pods, 4,032 M151 high-explosive rockets, 1,536 M274 smoke rockets, 400,000 rounds of .50 calibre ammunition and communications/navigation equipment.”

Responding to speculation about the withdrawal of AMISOM, President Kenyatta pledged last week that the Kenyan Defense Forces (KDF) will remain in Somalia until al Shabaab is “completely defeated.”

Yemenis dying of cholera as Trump meets with UAE ruler

Bill Van Auken 

Health authorities in the Yemeni capital of Sana’a have declared a state of emergency as a rapidly spreading cholera epidemic has claimed the lives of over 180 people in the span of little more than two weeks. Abdullahkim al-Kuhlani, a spokesman for the health ministry, reported that there have been 11,034 suspected cholera cases reported across several Yemeni provinces.

The disease is rarely seen and easily treatable in populations with ready access to food and clean water. It has the potential to wreak a catastrophic death toll, particularly among children in Yemen. The country’s basic infrastructure, including water, sanitation and health care systems, has been laid waste by a US-backed bombing campaign that has been waged by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for over two years.

An estimated 12,000 civilians have been killed with tens of thousands more wounded and millions displaced in this war, which is being fought by the wealthy Arab Gulf oil sheikdoms against the poorest nation in the Arab world.

Saudi Arabia and its fellow reactionary Sunni monarchies intervened in a bid to restore the US- and Saudi-backed regime of Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, who was installed in a one-candidate election in 2012 and then overthrown three years later by Shiite Houthi rebels allied with military forces loyal to ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The systematic targeting of health care facilities has left barely 45 percent of the country’s hospitals still functioning, while the blockade imposed upon the country, with the aid of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, has cut the supply of essential medicines by more than 70 percent.

Two thirds of the population have no access to safe drinking water, while the cutoff of food imports has placed 17 million Yemenis at imminent risk of famine, while leaving three million malnourished Yemeni children in “grave peril” of death, according to the United Nations. Under these conditions, cholera can spread like wildfire.

In the clearest signal yet that Washington is preparing to substantially escalate the US support for this criminal war—initiated under the Democratic administration of Barack Obama—the Trump White House has organized back-to-back meetings and massive arms deals with the crowned rulers of the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

On Monday, Trump welcomed to the White House Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and the de facto ruler of the UAE. Trump appeared with the royal dictator in the Oval Office, calling Sheikh Mohamed a “very special, very special person, highly respected.” He said that the sheikh “loves his country. And I think loves the United States, which to us is very important.” Sheikh Mohamed, whose regime systematically suppresses all political opposition, subjecting its opponents to forced disappearances and routine torture, remained mum.

On the eve of the UAE ruler’s visit, the US State Department gave its approval for a $2 billion deal under which Lockheed Martin and Raytheon will provide the oil sheikdom with Patriot missile systems.

Trump’s meeting with Sheikh Mohamed is to be followed at the end of this week by his first overseas trip since taking office. The first stop is Saudi Arabia. As with the UAE, Trump’s meeting with the dictatorial Wahhabi monarchy in Riyadh is being accompanied by another massive US arms deal.

A senior White House official told the Reuters news agency last Friday that Washington is close to completing $100 billion worth of new arms sales, including advanced missile systems, fighter jets and other heavy weapons. The official added that over the next decade, the sales could amount to $300 billion.

The weapons sales represent only a slight departure from the policies pursued under the Obama administration, which oversaw the sale of over $115 billion worth of weapons and military services to the Saudi monarchy. At the same time, it established a “Joint Planning Cell” in Saudi Arabia through which the Pentagon coordinated US military and intelligence support for the Saudi war against Yemen. US planes also provided mid-air refueling of Saudi fighter jets to enable the murderous bombing to continue around the clock.

While the Obama administration provided the bombs and missiles and other aid needed to murder thousands of Yemenis as part of a policy aimed at assuaging Saudi Arabia’s anger over the 2015 nuclear deal reached between Tehran and the US and other major powers, the Trump administration has denounced the agreement and threatened to rip it up.

After a horrific Saudi “double-tap” bombing of a packed funeral hall in Sana’a in October 2016 that left 827 civilians killed or wounded, the Obama administration halted a planned sale of precision-guided munitions as a token gesture, while continuing to provide the support without which the war on Yemen could not have continued.

Such minimal restrictions are now being lifted, and the Trump administration is adopting a relentlessly hostile stance in relation to Iran, which both Saudi Arabia and Washington have charged, without substantiation, of providing major assistance to the Houthi rebels.

In March, US Defense Secretary James Mattis formally requested approval for stepped-up Pentagon support for the Saudi war in Yemen. A memo submitted to the White House claimed that such aid would serve to combat “a common threat” supposedly posed by Iran, US imperialism’s principal regional rival for hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East.

The immediate aim of an increase in US military aid is to support a planned operation by UAE military forces to seize Hodeida, the country’s main port, through which 70 percent of the country’s imports now flow. The taking of the port would tighten the stranglehold imposed by the naval blockade, potentially condemning millions to death by starvation.

The more far-reaching objective being pursued by Washington is the imposition of US imperialist hegemony across the Middle East through a military confrontation with Iran and the preparation for a global conflict with Washington’s principal rivals, Russia and China.

Palace coup in the Austrian People’s Party

Peter Schwarz 

On Sunday, the Presidium of the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) elected 30-year-old Sebastian Kurz as the new party leader, granting him dictatorial powers. Kurz has a free hand in the selection of leading personnel, the content of the party programme, the details of electoral slates, conducting coalition negotiations and the selection of ministers. Editorials speak of a “one-man party.”

The new party leader will take part in the next national election with a slate named after him (The Kurz/New Peoples Party slate), which will be supported by the ÖVP, but which can also nominate non-party members. “The ÖVP will continue to function as a framework and financial donor, but only one person will determine the direction of travel: Sebastian Kurz,” commented the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Kurz, who has been foreign minister for three years in the grand coalition of the Social Democrats (SPÖ) and the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), had been preparing the putsch-like takeover of the party presidency for months. He sought to distinguish himself through an aggressive refugee policy, which hardly differs from that of the right-wing extremist Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), touring through the federal states and conspiring against former party chair Reinhold Mitterlehner.

On Wednesday, an exasperated Mitterlehner finally quit the party chairmanship, as well as his offices as vice chancellor and economics minister, making way for Kurz. Kurz then presented the party with a seven-point ultimatum, to secure himself unlimited power over the party.

Point 3 reads: “The party leader shall have the right to determine personnel decisions, he alone shall be responsible for the federal slate [of candidates] and shall have a veto on provincial slates.” According to point 4, he chooses “the General Secretary and the government team and no longer needs a decision of the executive committee.” Point 5 gives him a “free hand for negotiating coalitions” and point 6, the right to “specify the political direction of the party.”

In an interview with Kronen Zeitung, Austria’s most prominent tabloid, Kurz explained that his conditions were “non-negotiable.” He would be “no longer available to the party” if they were not fulfilled. On Sunday evening, the party presidency accepted the ultimatum at a crisis meeting and unanimously selected Kurz as the new party leader.

Kurz is now seeking the dissolution of the grand coalition and early elections this autumn. Both the SPÖ and the FPÖ have indicated that they agree. The election is expected to pave the way for the right-wing extremist FPÖ into government, which is currently running at 30 percent in the polls, ahead of the Social Democrats (28 percent) and the ÖVP (21 percent). Less than a year after the defeat of the FPÖ candidate Norbert Hofer in the presidential election, the FPÖ would thus be able to enter government.

Kurz has left no doubt that he is prepared to form a government together with the right-wing extremists. However, he only wants to do so if he can take over the office of chancellor. To expand his parliamentary base, he has already begun inviting representatives of other parties to his election slate. Matthias Strolz, head of the liberal NEOS party, which, with 5 percent of the vote, has been represented in parliament since 2013, complained on Twitter: “Sebastian Kurz, stop calling our people. That is shameless and scheming.”

The SPÖ is also prepared to form a government with the FPÖ. It has already done this at state level in Burgenland, and Chancellor Christian Kern, a former manager, has repeatedly made clear that he would also be ready to do so at federal level.

The transformation of the ÖVP into an authoritarian election association serves to prepare the way for an extremely right-wing government, which will pursue anti-working class, anti-democratic and militarist policies. A party leader who neither accepts democratic decisions nor brooks opposition in the ranks of his own organisation will not do so as head of government.

The ÖVP is one of the major, traditional conservative parties of Europe, and has repeatedly headed the Austrian government since 1945. The fact that it is now undergoing such a profound change shows how far advanced is the erosion of democratic principles in ruling circles.

The bourgeois media tirelessly denounces Turkish President Erdogan, Russian President Putin, and Hungarian government leader Orbán for the use of authoritarian methods and heading parties that follow lockstep in their path. But when this happens on their own doorstep, they not only keep silent, but support it.

The daily Die Presse came to the defence of the ÖVP against the accusation that what was now going on in its ranks “was a pre-fascist coup, an authoritarian turn, the return of the 1930s” and that “its protagonist is located somewhere between Viktor Orbán and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.”

This, according to Die Presse, is pure hatred, because “Every boss of a larger company in Austria has that: sovereignty over personnel questions and the strategic direction of his company. Yes, he can even choose the name of his company. The ÖVP leader is now getting something like this.”

Presenting the command structure of a company as a model for the organisation of a political party—one cannot formulate the breakdown of any form of democracy more clearly. President Donald Trump acts according to the same principles, viewing any unwanted parliamentary or judicial decision as an interference with his authority and the business interests of his family, and is increasingly turning to authoritarian methods of rule.

The erosion of bourgeois democracy is a result of the deep, international crisis of capitalist society and heralds fierce class battles. After decades of a tiny minority enriching themselves at the expense of the majority, social tensions are approaching the boiling point. The ruling elites are reacting by drawing closer together and turning to the right.

In Austria, the mechanisms of social partnership and political compromise were institutionalised after the Second World War in a manner only otherwise seen in Scandinavia or Germany. Time and again, social democrats and conservatives ruled in a grand coalition, developing an impenetrable network of nepotism and corruption. The anger and frustration that this generated are now being exploited by Kurz in the call for a strong man. His politics, however, are not directed against the privileges of the ruling elites, but against the remaining social achievements of the working class.

Sebastian Kurz, who began his political career 14 years ago in the ÖVP youth organisation and who was promoted by today’s European Commissioner Johannes Hahn and other party officials, is often compared with the new French president, Emmanuel Macron. Macron also began his political career in the ranks of the establishment, only now to present himself as a “new face” standing above the old parties. Both look for their real base within the security apparatus and the military.

In Germany as well, Kurz’s authoritarian aspirations meet with sympathy. The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) praised him, saying he stood “for freshness and a new beginning.” Although Austria is smaller than the German states of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, it enjoys “nine federal states and countless groups of influence alongside the federal administration.” To “provide fresh wind…these federal structures” should be broken up.” “Only then,” concluded the FAZ, “will Austria modernise, as is urgently needed. This applies primarily to the economy and the state finances.”

In other words, an authoritarian party and a right-wing, dictatorial regime are necessary to restructure the economy and state finances at the expense of the working class.

China hosts international launch of One Belt, One Road initiative

Nick Beams

The two-day international Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) forum, which concluded in Beijing yesterday, has underscored the shifts and conflicts in geo-economic and political relations resulting from the rise of China to the position of the world’s second largest economy.

While it received little attention in the media, the fact that the US was little more than a bit player at an economic gathering, dubbed by some as advancing the 21st century equivalent of the post-war Marshall Plan, points to the historic decline of its economic position.

The forum, which included the heads of 28 states and representatives from 100 countries, was the international launch of the so-called One Belt, One Road project initiated by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013.

Invoking the history of the Silk Road of medieval times, the BRI envisages the construction of a series of ports, railway lines and roads connecting the major economic centres of China with Europe.

The forum was convened in a $1 billion complex constructed north of Beijing and was accompanied by a massive publicity campaign by the Chinese government.

Opening the gathering on Sunday, Xi had two objectives: to win international support for the BRI, which envisages the expenditure of more than $1 trillion on infrastructure projects, thereby enhancing China’s global position, and to cement domestic support for his regime as he enters his second term as president.

“Spanning thousands of miles and years, the ancient silk routes embody the spirit of peace and co-operation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning and benefit,” he said, hailing the initiative as the “project of the century.”

“We should foster a new type of international relations featuring win-win co-operation; and we should forge partnerships of dialogue with no confrontation and of friendship rather than alliance.”

Under conditions where both Russia and China face increasing pressure from the United States, President Vladimir Putin was given pride of place among the international representatives at the forum’s opening.

Xi told his Russian counterpart that their countries were the “ballast stone” of world stability. Behind the smiles and handshakes however, there are tensions between the two powers. Russia has its own plan for extending its economic and political influence in central Asia and the former republics of the Soviet Union under its Eurasian Economic Union and there are fears that it could be subordinated to the BRI.

Both Xi and Putin sought to keep the issue in the background, with Putin emphasising that the Chinese and Russian projects were complementary and that Eurasian integration is a “civilisation project for the future.”

For his part Xi said the BRI was not aimed at cutting across the initiatives of other countries. Besides the Russian EEU project, Turkey has a plan to link up Turkish speaking states in a so-called “Middle Corridor.”

Xi insisted that the Chinese project was not intended to replace existing partnerships. “The aim of Belt and Road is not to reinvent the wheel. Rather, it aims to complement the development strategies of countries involved.”

However, for all Xi’s words about the need for greater openness, co-operation, the rejection of protectionism, the need to develop win-win outcomes, coupled with assurances that China is concerned about development for all, international tensions made their presence felt.

Japan the second largest economy in the Asia region boycotted the forum altogether viewing it as a means through which China is seeking to enhance its regional and global power.

India also boycotted the forum because of what it called “sovereignty issues.”

These relate to the Chinese decision to label the $50 billion Xinjiang to Gwadar port project which passes through parts of Pakistani-occupied Kashmir, which India claims, as the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The Indian snub came after considerable efforts by the Chinese to secure its attendance, issuing assurances that it would abide by international rulings on the Kashmir question.

Indian external affairs spokesman Gopal Baglay said the CPEC was being promoted as a flagship initiative of the One Belt One Road and “no country can accept a project that ignores its core concerns on sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Behind the official reason there are concerns that Chinese investment will strengthen Pakistan economically.

The heads of states attending the meeting came from less developed countries with the major powers sending lesser representatives, reflecting both concerns about whether the project will actually materialise, while seeking at the same time to place themselves in the best position to exploit economic advantages that do arise.

Germany, which is regarded as a key player in the initiative because of its position as the major European economy at the head of the new Silk Road, sent the economics and energy minister Brigitte Zyrpies. She was accompanied by a significant representation of German big business.

But she expressed reservations about the project, saying at the outset that Germany would not sign a joint statement unless certain guarantees demanded by the European Union on free trade and the establishment of a “level playing field” were met.

“Germany does want to take part, but tenders need to be open to everyone; only then will German companies take part,” she said. “It must also be clear what is actually going to be built. At this point, it’s not clear.”

She also noted that Chinese restrictions on allowing foreign companies to buy assets were also a problem. “We want German companies to be able to operate in China in the same way Chinese companies can in Germany.” But at this point there was no clear timetable for dismantling restrictions.

In the event, Germany, along with other European powers, including Britain, did not sign a communiqué on trade because of concerns over transparency over procurement as well as social and environmental standards. There are also concerns among European officials about the growth of Chinese influence in central and eastern Europe.

While it joined other European countries in expressing reservations on how it would operate, Britain expressed its overall support for the project. Its delegation was headed by the chancellor of the exchequer in the May government, Philip Hammond, who was accompanied by representatives of UK banking and financial firms.

In March 2015, the Tory government of David Cameron defied pressure from the US and its own security agencies and decided to join the Chinese-sponsored Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, a decision that reflected the interests of the City of London in exploiting the opportunities, which could open up.

And those interests were very much on display again at the BRI forum. Sherry Madera, the City of London’s special adviser for Asia, said London could play a key role in financing the initiative.

She said that while the UK was talking about Brexit, Asia was talking about business.

“We’ve always been a global financial centre. Banks and investors from the US, Middle East and Asia are all within easy walking distance, and that is the ecosystem that is London. That’s what makes it by far the most important global financial centre, far and away beyond the likes of Hong Kong or New York.”

Initially the United States had decided to send only a minor official to the forum but given the size of the gathering and the fact that countries throughout South East Asia were taking part, it decided to upgrade its representation, sending Matt Pottinger, the senior director for East Asia on the National Security Council.

Powerful sections of the US political establishment regard China and its economic initiatives as the single most important threat to the global position of the United States.

These views were reflected in an opinion piece published on Fox News by John Moody in the forum headlined “China’s silky threat to American leadership.”

It said while the Sunday talk shows were obsessing about Trump and sacked FBI head James Comey, China was hosting a top-level gathering “which will kick off the biggest challenge ever to America’s place in the world economy.” The initiative was a “brazen attempt to seize worldwide economic leadership from the United States” binding emerging trading partners to Beijing “by offering them access to China’s vast consumer market.”

Apart from the potential for international conflicts set off by the project, the Xi regime confronts problems in the Chinese economy itself.

The project is widely regarded in ruling circles not only as a means of expanding China’s global position but also as providing an outlet for excess industrial capacity.

But how willing Chinese firms and banking institutions are to invest in projects that may not earn them a sufficient return, and from which they could even incur losses, is another question.

On the eve of the forum, the Financial Times reported that investment in BRI projects declined last year “raising doubts about whether commercial enterprises are committed to a strategy for a new Silk Road defined as much by geopolitics as by profit-seeking.”

According to the report, foreign direct investment from China to countries identified as being part of the BRI declined by 2 percent in 2016, falling an additional 18 percent so far this year. It cited bankers and representatives of state-owned enterprises who complained that the government was pressuring them to undertake BRI projects that were not profitable.

This development points to a conflict between the motivations of the regime to advance the project in the interests of its domestic and international political concerns and the logic of the market, which pushes investment towards the more developed economies.

There is no question that the unification of the Eurasian landmass through the most modern transportation systems could provide significant economic advancement.

But in a global socio-economic order dominated by the striving for private profit, together with the divergent aims of capitalist nation-states and imperialist great powers, the project has already become a mare’s nest of conflicting interests.

The global ransomware attack and the crimes of the US spy agencies

Andre Damon

Over the past four days, some 350,000 computers have been infected by the so-called “WannaCry” malware, including 70,000 devices such as MRI scanners, blood storage refrigerators and operating equipment used by Britain’s National Health Service. As a result of the attack, the NHS was forced to turn away emergency room patients and divert ambulances, potentially resulting in serious illnesses and even fatalities.

The worm is a piece of “ransomware” that encrypts users’ data until the creators receive a payment. It uses “exploits” developed by the US National Security Agency as just a small part of the NSA’s catalog of hacking tools.

When NSA researchers discovered the vulnerability in the Windows operating system targeted by “WannaCry,” they refused to inform Microsoft. The company found out about the existence of the vulnerability only shortly before the general public, when it was leaked by the Shadow Brokers hacker group on April 14 of this year.

On Saturday, Microsoft President Brad Smith, in a tersely worded blog post, faulted the NSA for failing to share its knowledge of the exploit. “This attack provides yet another example of why the stockpiling of vulnerabilities by governments is such a problem,” he wrote, adding that “this most recent attack represents a completely unintended but disconcerting link between the two most serious forms of cybersecurity threats in the world today—nation-state action and organized criminal action.”

He concluded, “We need governments to consider the damage to civilians that comes from hoarding these vulnerabilities and the use of these exploits.”

Microsoft is far from blameless when it comes to the NSA’s operations. It has established a standing practice of reporting bugs to the US government before they are repaired and publicly acknowledged, allowing the NSA to use these vulnerabilities to break into systems.

Regardless, Smith’s statement represents a stinging indictment of the operations of the US intelligence apparatus, implying that its actions are only once removed from those of criminals.

The hacking tools used in the “WannaCry” malware serve an even more malevolent purpose than any ransomware: illegal spying on the population of the whole world as part of a systematic practice of subversion and cyber aggression.

In May 2013, NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the US intelligence apparatus collects, processes, reads and catalogs a vast quantity of private communications, both in the United States and internationally. Snowden explained that the stated aim of the NSA, the “signals intelligence” arm of the US intelligence apparatus, is unfettered access to all private information. Its mottos are, according to a leaked internal presentation, “Collect it All,” “Process it All,” “Exploit it All, “Sniff it All” and “Know it All.”

Illegal domestic surveillance operations authorized by the Bush administration after 9/11 resulted in the vastly expanded scale of government spying that was exposed by Snowden. With the collaboration, both voluntary and coerced, of the major telecommunications companies, the US government was able to vacuum up nearly all phone conversations, email and chat messages exchanged on digital devices.

In subsequent years, common communications platforms substantially improved their security capabilities, with nearly all Internet communication systems enabling encryption by default. These developments prompted US intelligence officials to complain of the Internet “going dark” to the NSA and CIA, prompting repeated calls by politicians, including Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, to criminalize the use of encryption.

The NSA responded by vastly expanding its use of “Tailored Access Operations,” the arm of the NSA devoted to “computer network exploitation,” commonly known as hacking. The agency adopted the slogan, “Your data is our data, your equipment is our equipment—anytime, any place.”

The NSA worked to build up a catalog of cyber weapons, known as “exploits,” which allow it to easily break into almost any Internet-connected device. One internal NSA document from 2012 claimed that the NSA worked with the largest telecommunications and technology companies in the world to “insert vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems, IT systems, networks and endpoint communications devices used by targets.”

The NSA’s massive team of security researchers—the largest in the world—also worked to discover and exploit vulnerabilities within existing products, keeping these bugs a secret from manufacturers in order to allow the NSA to exploit them to gain access to computers, networks and Internet-connected devices before other researchers could discover them and recommend fixes to manufacturers.

In addition to using these tools to carry out mass surveillance, the NSA weaponized them in order to carry out cyberattacks against Washington’s geopolitical adversaries. The most notorious of these efforts was the release of the Stuxnet worm in 2010, which ruined some 1,000 Iranian nuclear centrifuges. The cyberattack was coordinated with a series of car bomb murders, attributed by the media to the US and Israel, which killed at least three Iranian nuclear physicists.

The fact that over 70 percent of the initially reported “WannaCry” infections took place in Russia raises the very real possibility that the current disaster is the result of a Stuxnet-like cyberattack by the United States. The other country disproportionately affected was China.

Speaking in Beijing on Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, “As for the source of these threats, Microsoft’s leadership stated this directly. They said the source of the virus was the special services of the United States.”

White House Homeland Security adviser Tom Bossert declared that finding those responsible for cyberattacks is “something that sometimes eludes us. Attribution can be difficult here.”

Bossert’s statement contrasts sharply with the declaration by the director of national intelligence in October 2016 that the US spy agencies were “confident that the Russian Government directed… recent compromises” of emails related to the Clinton campaign.

That declaration was part of a vast campaign by the Democratic Party, the media and much of the political establishment aimed at demonizing Russia by claiming it had “hacked” the 2016 US elections. As part of that campaign, media outlets, led by the New York Times, sought to present Russia as a global hacking powerhouse, subverting the spotless US electoral system.

One can only imagine what would have happened if, instead of the current malware attack mainly affecting Russia and largely bypassing the US in its initial stages, the situation had been reversed. The media would be up in arms about Russian “hackers,” with demands that the Trump administration retaliate with sanctions, cyberattacks and more menacing military moves. The Democrats would be in the forefront of calls for new war-mongering resolutions in Congress.

An examination of the facts exposed by the “WannaCry” attack, however, show that the world’s biggest band of cyber criminals by far is headquartered in Washington, D.C.