Following new UN sanctions, North Korea tests more missiles

Peter Symonds 

North Korea has reacted to the imposition of further US and UN sanctions last week by condemning the punitive measures and conducting another round of missile tests yesterday.

According to South Korea’s military, Pyongyang fired what appeared to be “multiple unidentified projectiles, assumed to be surface-to-ship missiles” from the country’s east coast. The launches are the latest in an accelerating series of tests in recent weeks.

Far from defending the North Korean people, the missile-testing plays directly into the hands of the US and its allies by providing a pretext for its military expansion in the region and repeated threats of war against Pyongyang. On Tuesday, an American nuclear-powered attack submarine, the USS Cheyenne, docked at the South Korea port of Busan, following a port call in April by the nuclear guided-missile submarine, the USS Michigan. Both submarines are capable of launching Tomahawk cruise missiles.

The US Navy is building up what President Donald Trump described as an “armada” off the Korean Peninsula. Two aircraft carriers—USS Carl Vinson and USS Ronald Reagan—are already in the area, together with their strike groups of destroyers and cruisers, and have been engaged in exercises with Japanese naval vessels. Another aircraft carrier—USS Nimitz—and its strike group are en route to create an unprecedented US naval presence in the region.

The US finally pressured China and Russia into agreeing to extra UN sanctions, which were incorporated into a Security Council resolution passed last Friday. The new penalties were limited in scope, subjecting another four North Korean entities, including the Koryo Bank and Strategic Rocket Force, as well as 14 individuals, to a global travel ban and freeze on assets held overseas. While the new measures did not require a public Security Council vote, Washington insisted on a vote to intensify the pressure on North Korea.

The UN sanctions followed further unilateral American measures announced last Thursday by the US Treasury, which blacklisted nine companies and government institutions, including two Russian firms, along with three individuals, for allegedly supporting North Korea’s weapons programs.

The Trump administration has placed huge pressure on China to exploit its economic clout to force North Korea to abandon its nuclear and missile programs. Previous UN sanctions imposed crippling economic penalties, banning the purchase of a range of North Korean minerals and restricting the import of coal—the country’s top export commodity. Beijing, however, is reluctant to take further steps, such as cutting of oil and food supplies, fearing that would provoke an economic and political crisis in Pyongyang that Washington would exploit.

Speaking at the Security Council, US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley again made a thinly disguised threat to take military action if North Korea did not accede to US demands. While paying lip service to seeking a peaceful, diplomatic resolution, she warned: “Beyond diplomatic and financial consequences, the United States remains prepared to counteract North Korean aggression through other means, if necessary.”

Liu Jieyi, China’s ambassador to the UN, reiterated Beijing’s call for dialogue with North Korea, declaring there was “a critical window of opportunity for the nuclear issue” to be settled through negotiations. He urged “all parties concerned to exercise restraint” and called for the US to suspend the deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-ballistic missile battery in South Korea.

Beijing is well aware that the US military build-up in Asia is not primarily directed at North Korea and its limited nuclear arsenal. The THAAD system is just one aspect of the Pentagon’s inter-linked, anti-missile systems in the Asia Pacific that are part of US military planning for nuclear war with China. The sophisticated X-band radar associated with the THAAD installation is able to peer deep inside the Chinese mainland and provide advanced warning of any missile launches.

Significantly, newly elected South Korean President Moon Jae-in called on Wednesday for a suspension of the controversial THAAD deployment. His office said two THAAD launchers already in place could remain, but the installation of a further four would depend on an environmental impact assessment—which could take months. During South Korea’s recent presidential election, Moon exploited widespread opposition to THAAD by posturing as an opponent but stopped short of calling for its immediate removal. The proposed suspension is a blow to US war preparations that will undoubtedly provoke a reaction in Washington.

North Korea denounced the UN sanctions on Sunday and underscored the growing breach with China by lashing out at Beijing’s support for the measures. A foreign ministry spokesman declared that Washington and Beijing had “railroaded” the resolution through the Security Council in “a high-handed and arbitrary act in pursuit of their own interests, trampling upon international justice.” Pyongyang said the sanctions would not stop the development of its nuclear forces “even for a moment.”

The US Treasury’s decision to blacklist two Russian companies appears to be a warning to Moscow not to boost ties with Pyongyang as relations between North Korea and China deteriorate. Articles have appeared in the American media highlighting trade and transport links between Russia and North Korea.

The USA Today this week estimated that trade between the two countries grew by 73 percent in the first two months of the year, compared to the corresponding period last year. It added that a Russian company had opened a new ferry line in May to the North Korean port city of Rajin. It also cited talks about upgrading rail links, and an agreement to expand the employment of North Korean workers as cheap labour in Russia’s timber and construction industries. However, as the article pointed out, North Korean trade with Russia was just $130 million annually, compared to $6.6 billion with China.

Speaking last Friday, Russia’s deputy UN ambassador, Vladimir Safronkov, said the US sanctions against Russian firms were “very puzzling and deeply disappointing.” He added: “Instead of trying to work through the bilateral backlog in our work, Washington is doing exactly the opposite and undertaking unfriendly steps.” This would make it “more difficult to cooperate on international affairs.”

The latest North Korean missile tests will only heighten the geo-political tensions surrounding the Korean Peninsula and thus the danger of war. The Trump administration has repeatedly declared that time is short for a diplomatic solution, pointing to the alleged threat posed by North Korea’s development of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of hitting the American mainland.

Those warnings were underscored when Vice Admiral James Syring, head of the US Missile Defence Agency, testified to the US House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. He said North Korea’s missile tests in recent months were of “great concern.” His agency assumed that Pyongyang could already “range the United States with an ICBM carrying a nuclear warhead.”

This unsubstantiated assumption is precisely what Trump officials have repeatedly invoked as the pretext for pre-emptive military attacks on North Korea.

Germany to withdraw military aircraft from Turkey

Johannes Stern

The German cabinet has decided to transfer some 260 German soldiers, along with Tornado reconnaissance aircraft and a tanker aircraft, to Jordan from the Turkish air base at Incirlik.

“In view of the fact that Turkey is currently unable to allow German parliamentarians visits to Incirlik, the cabinet has today agreed that we will move the Bundeswehr [Armed Forces] from Incirlik to Jordan,” Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen (CDU, Christian Democratic Union) said following the cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

A parliamentary vote on the continuation of the operation against the Islamic State (IS), in which the Bundeswehr has been involved since the end of 2015, and which is also directed against the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, was not necessary, she said. “The unanimous opinion was that there is no need for a new mandate, because the [existing] mandate itself does not specify Incirlik as a base, but the area of deployment—and that concerns Syria and Iraq and the neighbouring states.” Von der Leyen said the German military deployment in Syria and Iraq would continue from Jordan.

The withdrawl of German troops from Turkey is a foreign policy watershed. It is the first time that a NATO member has withdrawn its forces from a support base in another member state due to political conflicts.

The US-led military alliance was critical about the planned withdrawal of the Bundeswehr. Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was “in regular contact with the Turkish and German governments regarding this issue,” and it was “regrettable that this matter could not be resolved otherwise,” a NATO spokesman told German daily Die Welt .

The official reason for the German withdrawal is a ban on visits to Incirlik by Bundestag (federal parliament) deputies imposed by the Turkish government, which was not lifted even following the visit of German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel (SPD, Social Democratic Party) to Turkey on Monday.

The Turkish government justified this policy attitude by citing Germany granting asylum to Turkish officers who were involved in the failed coup in July 2016. A total of 414 Turkish soldiers, diplomats, judges, and government employees, who are suspected by the Turkish government as being part of the coup, have filed asylum applications in Germany. For Ankara, the Die Welt correspondent Deniz Yücel being detained in Turkey, whose release the German government has called for, is also a matter of “terrorism” and “espionage”.

German-Turkish relations were in a deep crisis even before the failed coup attempt against Erdoğan, which enjoyed at least the tacit support of some in ruling circles in America and Germany.

In June 2016, the Bundestag passed a resolution describing the mass murder of up to 1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as a “genocide”. Erdoğan warned at the time that the initiative could lead to “damage to the diplomatic, economic, political, and military relations between the two countries,” and prohibited Bundestag members from visiting German soldiers stationed at Incirlik.

In recent months, political conflicts between Germany and Turkey have intensified. In the runup to the Turkish constitutional referendum, the German authorities imposed bans on Turkish government members from visiting several cities, and German politicians and the media organized a veritable hate campaign against Turks. In addition to the right-wing extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Greens and the Left Party were also particularly prominent in the campaign.

Even now, the supposed opposition parties are supporting the decision of the government. In the Left Party newspaper Junge Welt, the Left Party representative in the Bundestag Defence Committee, Alexander Neu, described the announcement by the government as a “long overdue step.” He wrote, “After an eternal back and forth, the government now also seems to have concluded that there is no alternative in the conflict about visitation rights for Bundestag deputies to German soldiers in Incirlik than to withdraw the Bundeswehr from there.”

Speaking to broadcaster ARD, Green leader Cem Özdemir demanded arms supplies to Turkey also be stopped: “The only possible answer must now be to make it clear that we are withdrawing the soldiers. I will only believe this government when they are gone. No more support for Incirlik, and an immediate stop to arms supplies to Turkey.”

Far-reaching geopolitical questions lie behind the withdrawal of the Bundeswehr from Turkey. In the context of the collapse of the postwar order and growing conflicts between the great powers, German imperialism is feverishly trying to develop as an independent great power and to reorient its strategy for the Middle East.

In particular, representatives of the Greens and the Left Party have long believed that a too close cooperation with Ankara places limits on the operations of German imperialism. They argue for more open cooperation with Kurdish militia such as the PYD, linked with the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which is banned in Germany, but which plays an important role as a proxy force in the war for regime change in Syria.

In this regard, Left Party spokesperson Katja Kipping warned: “Even if the Tornadoes are launched from Jordan, no one can rule out the results of their reconnaissance being passed on to the Turkish army within the framework of NATO, and being used to attack Kurdish units in Syria, which are a real bulwark against the terror of IS.”

At the same time, Kipping demanded that thought be given to the exclusion of Turkey from NATO, which was in a “deep political crisis”. “We should seriously discuss whether Turkey can remain a member of NATO.” Erdogan posed a “blatant security risk” and was destroying “not only the rule of law and freedom in Turkey, but he is also bolstering the military crisis in Syria and Iraq with his expansionist plans.”

The attempt by the Left Party to market German imperialism and NATO as a pacifist alternative to Erdogan is a mockery. Germany has repeatedly participated in NATO and the USA’s wars of aggression over the past 25 years and is now increasingly prepared to act against its American “ally”, further increasing the danger of war.

During his last visit to Washington, Gabriel had threatened that Germany would not only withdraw the Tornado reconnaissance aircraft stationed in Incirlik, but also German crews on the NATO “Awacs” reconnaissance aircraft at Konya in Turkey. For him, the conflict was far more than “a bilateral problem”. The Americans were “clear what serious consequences it would have for the fight against IS if the Bundeswehr had to be withdrawn there.”

Yesterday, Gabriel delivered a vehement denuncation of the Saudi offensive against Qatar, which is supported by President Trump, and which is ultimately aimed at Iran. Gabriel supported the emirate and warned against “Trump-ising” the Middle East. The “recent massive armaments deal of American President Trump with the Gulf monarchies” would exacerbate the risk of a new arms race. This was “a completely wrong policy, and certainly not Germany’s policy.”

While Trump and the Saudis are heading towards a confrontation with Tehran, the German government is banking on opening up the country to develop new energy sources and markets for German exports in the Middle East. To impose its interests, Berlin is increasingly ready to forge its own military alliances in the region.

Congressional Republicans seek to obliterate record of CIA torture

Tom Carter 

It was reported last week that the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture is being “retrieved” from executive agencies in the Trump administration. Congressional Republicans have demanded the confiscation of all copies of the report in order to cover up and, if possible, erase entirely the record of the investigation into the agency’s torture program.

A heavily redacted executive summary of the report was released to the public in December of 2014, but the full 6,700-page “Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program” remains secret. Only a limited number of copies were made, which were distributed to a handful of federal executive agencies. Since 2015, when the US Senate passed into the hands of the Republican Party, the new committee Chairman Richard Burr has led efforts to suppress the report, declaring that the report should become a “footnote to history.”

In a statement released June 2, Burr declared, “I have directed my staff to retrieve copies of the congressional study that remain with the executive branch agencies and, as the committee does with all classified and compartmented information, will enact the necessary measures to protect the sensitive sources and methods contained within the report.”

The 525-page executive summary documents the secret rendition and torture program launched during the Bush administration, as well as subsequent efforts to cover up the agency’s crimes. Even with its extensive redactions, the summary paints a picture of the CIA as a globe-spanning criminal conspiracy, deceiving, kidnapping, torturing and murdering its way around the world with impunity. In a network of secret dungeons in various countries, its agents gave free reign to their violent and porno-sadistic impulses.

Among the facts presented in the executive summary are the following:

• The report introduced the broader public to the sadistic practice of “rectal feeding,” in which pureed food is pumped into the victim’s rectum “without evidence of medical necessity.” One medical officer described the brutal technique: “you get a tube up as far as you can, then open the IV wide. No need to squeeze the bag—let gravity do the work.” In one case, a torture victim was “diagnosed with chronic hemorrhoids, an anal fissure, and symptomatic rectal prolapse.” In other words, his large intestine was protruding from his body.

• Around 22 percent of the individuals kidnapped and tortured by the CIA “did not meet the standard for detention.” In other words, even according to the CIA’s own policies, many of the victims were entirely innocent and the CIA knew it.

• In November 2002, Gul Rahman, a blameless victim who was apparently mistaken for someone else, was murdered at the secret COBALT torture camp in Afghanistan. Rahman was “shackled to the wall of his cell in a position that required the detainee to rest on the bare concrete floor,” and the warden “had ordered that Rahman’s clothing be removed when he had been judged to be uncooperative during an earlier interrogation.” He died of hypothermia. The CIA subsequently presented the warden with a “cash award” of $2,500, praising him for his “consistently superior work.”

• The regime of torture, degradation and humiliation took its toll on the victims physically as well as mentally. The victims developed “psychological and behavioral issues, including hallucinations, paranoia, insomnia, and attempts at self-harm and self-mutilation.” One victim, as a result of repeated waterboarding, became “hysterical” and “distressed to the level that he was unable to effectively communicate.”

The committee’s report characterizes the CIA as a collection of bumbling incompetents when it comes to actually gathering intelligence, tangled up in their own deceptions, preoccupied with petty intrigues and turf wars, and constantly misleading the rest of the state as to their activities.

During the committee’s investigation into its torture program, the CIA was combative and belligerent throughout, resentful of any semblance of democratic oversight, destroying evidence, lying shamelessly, provoking and threatening its would-be overseers. At one point it hacked into Senate computers in an effort to delete incriminating files.

The Trump administration apparently intends to comply with the requests to return copies of the report. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has returned the report. The CIA and its inspector general’s office have also returned the report. Additional copies are believed to be held by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Department, the Justice Department and the Department of Defense.

President Trump, for his part, boasted during his election campaign that he would encourage torture, which is defined as a war crime under international law. “Would I approve waterboarding? You bet your ass I’d approve it, in a heartbeat,” he declared at one rally. “And I would approve more than that.” The day after his inauguration, Trump visited CIA headquarters to pledge his “love” and “1,000 percent” support for the agency.

Instead of prosecuting the criminals exposed by the report, the American government is doing the opposite—tracking down and confiscating the evidence. Indeed, Burr’s reference to the need to “protect the sensitive… methods contained within the report” suggests that torture, murder and war crimes are “methods” that the US intelligence agencies plan to continue to employ in the future—and in secret.

In their efforts to suppress the report, Burr and his co-conspirators have been emboldened by the positions taken by the Obama administration, which opposed the investigation throughout. From the moment Obama took office, under the mantra of “looking forwards not backwards,” he refused to investigate or prosecute CIA torturers. The Obama administration took no action when the CIA destroyed evidence or hacked into Senate computers in an effort to destroy evidence.

Once the report was prepared, the Obama administration tried to delay its publication until 2015, in hopes that the new Republican leadership in Congress would abandon or bury the project. During his last two years in office, his administration litigated against any effort to secure the report’s release under the Freedom of Information Act, including by vigorously opposing a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The Obama administration rested on close ties with the CIA, employing the agency for its campaign of terror and mass murder using drones in the Middle East. During the 2016 elections, none of the Democratic Party’s presidential contenders, including Bernie Sanders, called for the prosecution of torturers. Hillary Clinton bragged of her support in the “intelligence community,” relying on the support of the intelligence agencies to attack Trump as being insufficiently belligerent with respect to Russia.

Only one copy of the report appears likely to survive the attempt to erase the history of the torture program. In December of last year, federal district Judge Royce Lamberth, sensing which way the winds were blowing, ordered a complete copy to be preserved.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is one of the most powerful institutions in the legislative branch. The formal title of the committee is “United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence,” reflecting the fact that eight of its 15 members consist of two members (one from each party) of the Senate Appropriations, Armed Services, Foreign Relations and Judiciary committees. The fact that such a prominent body in the government issued such a damning report on the CIA, only to have it essentially overruled by the CIA and its allies, demonstrates how illusory and threadbare the forms of democratic rule are in America.

It goes without saying that if a working class youth in any number of America’s poverty-stricken cities is caught shoplifting or possessing illicit drugs, the state prosecution is swift and merciless. If that youth is suspected of committing a particularly heinous crime, sections of the corporate media squeal for the death penalty. But 6,700 pages of evidence of CIA criminality of the most cold-blooded and bestial character results in the prosecution of exactly nobody. The only person convicted and jailed to date in connection with CIA torture is former agent John Kiriakou, who was prosecuted for publicly acknowledging that torture had occurred.

The fact that the CIA criminals who perpetrated these atrocities have walked around free for years after their crimes were exposed, with scarcely a word about it breathed in the media, and without any political figure calling for their arrest and prosecution, is one of the greatest scandals in American history. Instead, the CIA and its political allies are browbeating their critics while they confiscate the evidence in broad daylight. One torturer, James E. Mitchell, contributed an article to the Wall Street Journal in December 2016 in which he bragged that “waterboarding works” and characterized himself as a patriot.

The fate of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report is a historical milestone in the collapse of the rule of law and the emergence of a police state in America. Words like “rot,” “decay,” “erosion” in connection with America’s democratic institutions no longer seem adequate. The American government functions ever more openly as a crude instrument of plunder, money-making, war and repression in the hands of the military/intelligence/corporate-financial elite.

Terror attack in Iran exacerbates war tensions in Gulf

Keith Jones

Nineteen people, including all six assailants, were killed as the result of a coordinated terrorist attack Wednesday morning that targeted Iran’s Parliament complex in central Tehran and the mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic’s founder-leader, some 15 miles to the south.

The attack, which took Iranian elite forces close to two hours to end, also wounded 43 people, some gravely.

Islamic State (ISIS) quickly claimed responsibility for the twin assaults, which showed a considerable degree of sophistication. The assailants, five men and a woman, were armed with AK-47s, hand grenades and explosive vests.

ISIS has long vowed to target Iran. Not only does the Sunni fundamentalist terror group view Shiite Muslims (who comprise the vast majority of Iran’s population) as apostates. Iranian fighters and logistical support have played a major role in the Syrian government’s largely successful military campaign against ISIS.

Yesterday’s attack comes in the midst of a major geopolitical crisis in the Middle East, triggered by Saudi Arabia’s attempt to force Qatar, a tiny oil-rich Gulf emirate, to drastically curtail its economic and diplomatic relations with Iran. On Monday, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Maldives and the embattled Saudi-supported government of Yemen severed all relations with Qatar and initiated an economic blockade against it—punitive measures that stop just short of war.

Iranian authorities charged that Saudi Arabia and Washington orchestrated yesterday’s terror attack. Little more than two weeks ago, Donald Trump made Saudi Arabia the site of his first foreign visit as US president. While there, he denounced Iran as a terrorist menace and proclaimed America’s unstinting support for the Saudi effort to forge a Sunni Arab military alliance against Iran.

On Tuesday, Trump issued a series of tweets hailing the Saudi action against Qatar.

In a clear reference to the Saudi absolutist regime, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted in response to yesterday’s attack: “Terror-sponsoring despots threaten to bring the fight to our homeland. Proxies attack what their masters despise most: the seat of democracy.”

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) were more explicit. In a statement issued Wednesday they noted the attack came shortly after a “joint meeting of the US president with the heads of one of the reactionary regional states that has constantly been supporting” terrorists.

The IRGC referenced the Saudi regime’s long history of colluding with the US military-intelligence apparatus to support Islamist terrorist groups, including ISIS. It said “public opinion in the world, especially the Iranian nation … believes” that (ISIS’s) acknowledgment of responsibility for the terror attack in Tehran indicates Riyadh’s and Washington’s “complicity in this wild move.”

The Revolutionary Guards’ statement threatened retaliatory action, saying the “IRGC has proved that it would not leave unanswered the shedding of innocent blood.”

Yesterday’s attack exacerbates an already explosive situation.

The US-armed Saudi regime has repeatedly threatened Iran. According to news reports, on Tuesday, just hours before the attack in Tehran, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said: “Iran must be punished for its interference in the region.”

Last month, Saudi Defense Minister and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman vowed the Saudi regime would ensure that the “battle” with Tehran was waged “in Iran,” not the Saudi homeland.

The US political establishment, Democrats and Republicans alike, and the Pentagon, continue to threaten and bully Iran, which they view as an intolerable obstacle to unbridled US hegemony over the world’s principal oil-producing region.

Yesterday, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to proceed with legislation imposing new sanctions on Iran. As it is, existing US sanctions are so threatening that most European businesses continue to refrain from extensive business dealings with Iran, despite the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and the lifting of the punishing economic sanctions that the European Union imposed on Tehran in concert with Washington

Although the US elite is determined to settle accounts with Tehran, and plans for war with Iran are under constant review, there are sharp divisions in Washington over the Saudi blockade against Qatar.

US officials were reportedly informed of the action just before it was publicly announced.

Qatar plays a pivotal role in US military operations. It is the site of the forward operating base of the US Central Command, from which the US wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan are largely organized and directed, and an air base that is home to 11,000 US troops.

While Trump has supported the Saudi campaign against Qatar, the US military has publicly declared its appreciation for the emirate’s support, and various members of Trump’s administration have indicated they believe the Saudi action threatens the unity of the US-backed Gulf Cooperation Council.

Yesterday, Trump, under intense pressure, appeared to pull back somewhat. A day after he called King Salman of Saudi Arabia to draw up a list of demands for Qatar to fulfill, he called the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin HamaAl-Thani, to offer to mediate the dispute.

The US president combined this with actions meant to underscore his administration’s hostility to Iran. Only after many hours did the White House issue a pro forma statement condemning the ISIS attack on Tehran. In the statement, Trump repeated his and the Saudis’ stock propaganda denunciation of Tehran, declaring: “We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote.”

Washington’s encouragement of Saudi belligerence against Iran has thrown the relations between its client regimes in the Gulf into turmoil.

Qatar is threatened with food shortages due to the closing of its only land border, that with Saudi Arabia. Moreover, the emirate is roiled by fears the confrontation with Saudi Arabia could escalate. According to the Financial Times: “As tensions swirl, (the Qatari capital) Doha has been gripped by fear of military escalation or a Saudi-backed coup against the emir.”

The New York Times reported that Trump’s support for Saudi Arabia has “sent a chill through other Gulf states, including Oman and Kuwait, that fear that any country that defies the Saudis or the United Arab Emirates could face ostracism as Qatar has.” The Times cited Gerald M. Feierstein, a former top Middle Eastern diplomat in the Obama administration, as saying: “Everyone in the region is looking over their shoulder, thinking, ‘This is potentially us’.”

The Saudi’s anti-Iran offensive and the support provided it by Washington are not just raising the hackles of Iran and various Gulf states; they are exacerbating tensions between various regional and great powers.

Israel is egging the Saudis on. Meanwhile Turkey has come to Qatar’s support. Ankara has become increasingly estranged from Washington, including because of the US readiness to use Kurdish forces as its shock troops in the Syrian war and its role in the failed July 2016 Turkish coup.

Yesterday, Turkey’s parliament rushed through legislation authorizing the dispatch of Turkish troops to Qatar. Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif flew to Ankara yesterday for talks with Turkish leaders about the crisis in the Gulf.

The tensions in the Middle East have also become a new source of frictions between Germany and the US.

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel published a blistering attack on US policy in the region. “Apparently, Qatar,” he complained, “is to be isolated more or less completely and hit existentially. Such a ‘Trumpification’ of relations in a region already susceptible to crisis is particularly dangerous.”

Gabriel made clear he was not just objecting to Trump’s tweets about Qatar, but US policy toward Iran. “Trump’s recent giant military contracts with Gulf monarchies raise the risk of a new spiral in arms sales,” he wrote. “This policy is completely wrong and is certainly not Germany’s policy.”

Berlin is no less rapacious than Washington. But it views the US drive against Iran as an impediment to its own predatory ambitions, which include capturing Iran’s markets and oil resources through the development of closer economic ties.

The eruption of a war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which would rapidly bring in the US and other powers, cannot be excluded. Whatever the immediate outcome of the current crisis, it points to the unravelling of geopolitical relations, and the consequent surge in inter-state rivalry and great power conflict, in the Middle East and around the world.

UK election dominated by growing threat of state repression

Chris Marsden

The most significant comment of the UK general election was made by Prime Minister Theresa May Tuesday. Declaring her four-point plan to clamp down on terrorism, she promised, “If our human rights laws stop us from doing it, we will change the laws so we can do it.”

This threat goes beyond even the reactionary implications of the anti-terror agenda she outlined. These measures include ending “safe spaces” on the Internet by censorship and forcing ISPs to facilitate mass state surveillance by abandoning end-to-end encryption. They also target what May called the “real world”—especially the public sector, where teachers, doctors and other professionals will be transformed into a network of informers to police both “extremist” thought and any movement designated as such by the state.

Martha Spurrier, the director of Liberty, said of May’s statement, “What she means is this: If the right to liberty or to a fair trial or not to be tortured gets in the way, she’ll just scrap them—casually disposing with values set down to stop tyranny after the horrors of the second world war.”

Most significant of all is the fact identified by the Guardian that tearing up human rights laws “would involve declaring a state of emergency.”

May’s Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Damian Green has said changes to human rights laws would involve “a derogation” from the European Convention on Human Rights. A European Court of Human Rights fact sheet stresses that “the right to derogate can be invoked only in time of war or other public emergency threatening the life of the nation.” The fact that the Tories plan to call a state of emergency was confirmed by Green, who cited France’s declaration following the November 2015 Paris terror attacks. These involved suicide bombings and mass shootings of 130 people at the Bataclan theatre.

The “exceptional measure” in France banning public assemblies or individuals from protests has since been renewed five times and overwhelmingly employed against the working class. A report by Amnesty International notes that between November 2015 and May 5, 2017, there were 155 decrees issued under the state of emergency prohibiting public assemblies and 639 preventing individuals from taking part in public assemblies. The vast majority targeted protests against reactionary labour law reforms and affected “hundreds of activists, environmentalists, and labour rights campaigners.” The report cited “unnecessary or excessive force” used against peaceful protesters “who did not appear to threaten public order”.

Massive numbers of armed police are a routine sight on the streets of Paris. Only this week, thousands were mobilised after a lone individual attacked police officers with a hammer and was shot. As a result of the attack, newly elected President Emmanuel Macron is able to employ law and order rhetoric to the full in the campaign for the legislative elections on June 11 and 18.

The parallels with Britain are both obvious and ominous.

The Tories have used the terrorist outrages in Manchester and London to shift the general election narrative onto charges that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is a “friend” of terrorism, an enemy of Britain and a threat to national security.

The hysterical tone was set by the government, with Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson declaring, “For 30 years he has been soft and muddle-headed on terror. He has been soft and muddle-headed on defence, he has taken the side of just about every adversary this country’s had in my lifetime.”

This message was amplified by hysterical press coverage. The Daily Mail devotes 13 pages to attacks on Corbyn, Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott and Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell as “[a]pologists for terror... cosying up to those who hate our country, while pouring scorn on the police and security services and opposing anti-terror legislation over and over and over again.”

The Sun editorialised, “Your vote would be to install Britain’s first Marxist government... It would be the gravest mistake this country has ever made. Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell have posed as calm and respectable to get elected. It is a gigantic fraud. They are bad men who have spent their lives in the company of truly evil people.”

Corbyn has responded to a barrage of attacks on him by forfeiting every position he once declared to be a principle, without a murmur. He has pledged support for NATO, Trident nuclear weapons and additional funding for the army, MI5 and MI6. He said this week, “We will protect the people of this country from any threat that they face anywhere in the world. We will invest properly in our police service, we will invest properly in our armed services—the numbers in the armed services have gone down, the navy are crying out for more ships, the air force are crying out for more surveillance aircraft. We would fund them properly to achieve all of that.”

Crucially Corbyn has focused all his attention since the Manchester suicide bombing on denunciations of May for cutting 20,000 police and pledging that Labour will provide 10,000 additional police. This is under conditions where his earlier statement—linking the terror threat to Britain’s wars for regime change in Iraq, Libya and Syria—has been confirmed in a way that should have sealed the fate of the Tory government.

It has been proved beyond doubt that MI5 and the police had such intimate knowledge of and connections to Manchester suicide bomber Salman Abedi that he could have only acted as he did because he was a protected asset. In the past several days, it has now emerged that the police and secret services were similarly aware of the three terrorists who killed eight people in London.

The ringleader, Khuram Butt, had been reported to the authorities on numerous occasions and was, last year, even the subject of a Channel 4 documentary, “The Jihadis Next Door.” Police said Monday that Butt had been under intense investigation in 2015, but this had been “dropped.” Yesterday, however, “UK counter-terrorism sources” told CNN he was still “a figure in one of just 500 active counter-terrorism investigations...”

In March 2016, the 22-year-old Youssef Zaghba, 22, was arrested as he tried to travel to Syria from Italy and told the police, “I’m going to be a terrorist.” His name was put on the Schengen Information System, which automatically warns other European nations if criminals are trying to enter the country. But when Zaghba arrived at Stansted airport in Britain this year, he was allowed through.

According to Irish security sources, Rachid Redouane was also known to police in the UK and was once “being observed.” He was arrested in 2009 in Scotland, after trying to travel to Northern Ireland by ferry on a fake passport. He was refused asylum in Britain that year, but was granted a residence card following his marriage to an English woman in Ireland in 2012.

It is only thanks to Corbyn’s self-censorship that May, who was home secretary and then prime minister throughout this period, can hope to pose as a defender of the public’s safety. But the implications go beyond possibly gifting the Tories victory today.

Corbyn cannot and will not raise these issues because he is intent on heading a government that is acceptable to Britain’s ruling class and trusted to protect its interests. But the net effect of his retreats and evasions is to miseducate, disarm and demobilise the millions of workers and youth who looked to him for leadership and to pave the way for a steeper descent into savage austerity, authoritarian forms of rule, militarism and war.

Understanding the geopolitics of terrorism

Bill Van Auken

The latest in a long series of bloody terrorist attacks attributed to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) unfolded in Iran early Wednesday with coordinated armed assaults on the Iranian Parliament (Majlis) and the mausoleum of the late supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, Imam Khomeini. At least 12 people were killed and 43 wounded.

The reactions of the US government and the Western media to the attacks in Tehran stand in stark contrast to their response to the May 22 bombing that killed 22 people at the Manchester Arena and the London Bridge attacks that claimed nine lives last Saturday.

The Trump White House released a vicious statement that effectively justified the killings in Iran, declaring, “We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote,” an attitude that found its reflection in the relative indifference of the media to the loss of Iranian lives. It is clearly understood that terrorism against Iran serves definite political aims that are in sync with those of US imperialism and its regional allies.

For its part, Tehran’s reaction to the attacks was unambiguous. It laid the responsibility at the door of the US and its principal regional ally, Saudi Arabia. “This terrorist attack happened only a week after the meeting between the US president (Donald Trump) and the (Saudi) backward leaders who support terrorists,” Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said in a statement, published by Iranian media. The attack was understood in Tehran as a political act carried out in conjunction with identifiable state actors and aimed at furthering definite geostrategic objectives.

The same can be said of the earlier acts of terrorism carried out in Manchester and London, as well as those in Paris, Brussels and elsewhere before them.

The Western media routinely treats each of these atrocities as isolated manifestations of “evil” or religious hatred, irrational acts carried out by madmen. In reality, they are part of an internationally coordinated campaign in pursuit of definite political objectives.

Underlying the violence on the streets of Europe is the far greater violence inflicted upon the Middle East by US, British and French imperialism, working in conjunction with right-wing bourgeois regimes and the Islamist forces they promote, finance and arm.

ISIS is itself the direct product of a series of imperialist wars, emerging as a split-off from Al Qaeda, which got its start in the CIA-orchestrated war by Islamist fundamentalists against the Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan. It was forged in the US war of aggression against Iraq that killed close to a million Iraqis, and then utilized in the 2011 war to topple Libya’s leader Muammar Gaddafi. Fighters and arms were then funneled with the aid of the CIA into the war for regime change in Syria.

The latest round of terror has its source in growing dissatisfaction among Washington’s Middle Eastern allies and its Islamist proxy forces over the slow pace of the US intervention in Syria and Washington’s failure to bring the six-year war for regime change to a victorious conclusion.

The people giving the orders for these attacks live in upper-class neighborhoods in London, Paris and elsewhere, enjoying close connections with intelligence agencies and government officials. Far from being unknown, they will be found among the top ministers and government officials in Damascus if the US-backed war in Syria achieves its objectives.

Those who carry out the terrorist atrocities are expendable assets, foot soldiers who are easily replaced from among the broad layers enraged by the slaughter carried out by imperialism in the Middle East.

The mass media always presents the failure to prevent these attacks as a matter of the security forces failing to “connect the dots,” a phrase that should by now be permanently banned. In virtually every case, those involved are well known to the authorities.

In the latest attacks in the UK, the connections are astonishing, even given the similar facts that have emerged in previous terrorist actions. One of the attackers in the London Bridge killings, Yousseff Zaghba, was stopped at an Italian airport while attempting to travel to Syria, freely admitting that he “wanted to be a terrorist” and carrying ISIS literature. Another was featured in a British television documentary that chronicled his confrontation with and detention by police after he unfurled an ISIS flag in Regent’s Park.

The Manchester suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, was likewise well known to British authorities. His parents were members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), who were allowed to return to Libya in 2011 to participate in the US-NATO regime-change operation against Muammar Gaddafi. He himself met with Libyan Islamic State operatives in Libya, veterans of the Syrian civil war, and maintained close connections with them while in Manchester.

What has become clear after 16 years of the so-called “war on terrorism”—going all the way back to the hijackers of 9/11—is that these elements move in and out of the Middle East, Europe and the US itself not only without hindrance, but under what amounts to state protection.

When they arrive at passport control, their names come up with definite instructions that they are not to be stopped. “Welcome home, sir, enjoy your vacation in Libya?” “Bit of tourism in Syria?”

Why have they enjoyed this carte blanche? Because they are auxiliaries of US and European intelligence, necessary proxies in wars for regime change from Libya to Syria and beyond that are being waged to further imperialist interests.

If from time to time these elements turn against their sponsors, with innocent civilians paying with their lives, that is part of the price of doing business.

In the aftermath of terrorist actions, governments respond with stepped-up measures of repression and surveillance. Troops are deployed in the streets, democratic rights are suspended, and, as in France, a state of emergency is made the overriding law of the land. All of these measures are useless in terms of preventing future attacks, but serve very well to control the domestic population and suppress social unrest.

If the mass media refuses to state what has become obvious after more than a decade and a half of these incidents, it is a measure of how fully the linkage between terrorism, the Western intelligence agencies and the unending wars in the Middle East has become institutionalized.

Innocent men, women and children, whether in London, Manchester, Paris, Tehran, Baghdad or Kabul, are paying the terrible price for these imperialist operations, which leave a trail of blood and destruction everywhere.

Putting a stop to terrorist attacks begins with a fight to put an end to the so-called “war on terrorism,” the fraudulent pretext for predatory wars in which Al Qaeda and its offshoots are employed as proxy ground forces, operating in intimate collaboration with imperialist intelligence services and military commands.

Preventable deaths quadruple in Australian nursing homes over ten years

Oscar Grenfell 

A landmark study, published in the Medical Journal of Australia last week, recorded 3,291 premature deaths in aged-care nursing homes from potentially preventable causes between 2000 and 2013. The research found such deaths increased more than four-fold over a decade.

The staggering figures are an indictment of the aged-care and nursing home sector, which is increasingly dominated by profiteering corporations as a result of the policies of successive federal and state governments, Labor and Liberal-National alike.

The study leader, Professor John Ibrahim of Monash University, told the Australian Financial Review: “We have uncovered a ‘systems’ problem, rather than a problem with a few bad nursing homes or individuals.”

The data, the most comprehensive of its kind yet released, provides a statistical snapshot of the experiences of thousands of elderly people and their families, who are forced to pay exorbitant sums for little more than a bed, often substandard care and a poor quality of life.

The study was based on coronial data for 21,672 deaths in accredited nursing homes over the 13-year period.

Some 98.5 percent of incidents which caused premature deaths occurred inside nursing homes, rather than when residents were in hospital or elsewhere. Falls were responsible for 81.5 percent of non-natural fatalities. The other two main causes, non-intentional choking and suicide, accounted for 7.9 percent and 4.4 percent of preventable deaths, respectively.

The high number of suicides tallied with 2015 figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, released last week, which found that males over the age of 85 had the highest proportion of suicides, at 39.3 per 100,000 people. That number is more than double the ratio for teenagers, another at-risk demographic.

Commentators noted that the tragic indices were directly related to the growth of poverty among the elderly, along with the rising cost of medical procedures and housing.

Other causes of death documented in the Medical Journal of Australia study included asphyxia and aspiration (23 deaths), thermal injuries or burns (23 deaths), poisoning (18 deaths) and drowning (15 deaths).

The survey noted the sharp rise in the number of nursing home deaths resulting from “external causes,” rather than natural causes, from 1.2 per 1,000 admissions in 2001-02, to 5.3 per 1,000 in 2011-12. It stated that while improved reporting might have contributed to the rise, it was likely that deaths caused by falls and other injuries were still being attributed to natural causes. That would mean the real number of preventable deaths could be far higher.

The report said the increase raises “an important question” about “governance structures” in nursing homes.

A number of recent cases have highlighted the unsafe conditions in some nursing homes.

On Thursday, the federal Department of Health announced there were still “significant and immediate risks” to residents of a nursing home for elderly people with dementia and mental health issues in Oakden, South Australia. The facility, run by the state Labor government, is the subject of a maladministration probe by the Independent Commissioner Against Corruption.

Among the accusations are that residents were sexually assaulted by staff, left in pain for hours because of the use of incorrect catheters and suffered broken bones that were undetected for days. There are also reports that residents were given excessive doses of medication. A 70-year-old resident died in 2008 after being assaulted by another resident who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and was allegedly known to be violent.

Oakden’s accreditation, which entitles it to federal funding, was suspended for six months in 2007, but nothing appears to have been done to prevent the subsequent mistreatment of residents. The South Australian Labor government reportedly received warnings of a high risk of injuries or deaths at the facility in 2014, but the reports were dismissed.

Last month, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported allegations that Kevin Williams, a resident at the Bupa Modbury aged-care facility in Adelaide was mistreated before dying of an infected ulcer on his right hip. Williams’ family claim he was handled roughly and often not showered.

In another case, Shirley Carter, a resident at the Opal Raymond Terrace Gardens nursing home in New South Wales was allegedly found with maggots inside her mouth the day before she died last October. Carter’s daughter claimed she was also not given sufficient medication to alleviate intense pain.

Many other cases of mistreatment and neglect have been alleged in the media and by residents’ relatives. In a number of instances, attempts have been made to scapegoat individual nursing home workers.

As the Medical Journal of Australia notes, however, premature deaths are part of a systemic crisis across the industry. A national report last year found that only 8.2 percent of nursing home workers thought staffing levels were adequate at all times. The average staff ratio at any given time was one worker to more than 38 residents, with one registered nurse for over 59 patients.

Successive governments have cut funding for federally-subsidised placements into nursing homes, reducing the quality of care, especially for the poor, and increasing pressures on over-worked staff.

In its 1994-95 budget, for instance, the federal Labor government of Paul Keating slashed $250 million from the sector, while introducing entry bonds for residential facilities. The Coalition government of John Howard cut $1 billion from aged-care funding in 1996-97.

This agenda was deepened by the Labor governments of Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd from 2007–13. Labor’s “Living Longer, Living Better” aged-care policy, introduced in 2012, abolished any distinction between “high-care” and “low-care” beds in nursing homes, removing restrictions on charging some prospective residents accommodation bonds.

The measures were aimed at abolishing any government-provided safety net for elderly people requiring care, and transforming the sector ever more into a lucrative, for-profit market. An article in Crickey in 2014, noted that Japara, a nursing home operator, floated on the stock market for $450 million in the wake of the changes. Other providers have also turned to private equity.

A report in April by the right-wing, pro-business think-tank, the Centre of Independent Studies (CIS) lauded the policies introduced by Labor, and the bipartisan support for further changes earlier this year. Under the fraudulent banner of “consumer directed care,” the latest measures create the conditions for the further curtailment, or even abolition, of federal funding to nursing homes. The CIS declared that this “presents an important opportunity to showcase the benefits of market-based reforms.”

In reality, the opening up of aged-care to the market has already created a social disaster, especially for poor and working-class families. In February, the Daily Telegraph reported that federal authorities had exempted 215 nursing homes from the nominal $550,000 cap on nursing home accommodation bonds, thus lifting the average amount that elderly people and their families have to pay. The estimated average bond, or equivalent accommodation fees, is around $370,000.

John Deere plans $5.2 billion takeover of German road construction company

George Gallanis

John Deere, the world’s largest agriculture machine company, announced June 1 that it planned to purchase the German-based Wirtgen Group, the largest road construction equipment manufacturer in the world, for $5.2 billion in cold hard cash. The announcement comes less than two years after Deere and the United Auto Workers (UAW) told hourly workers that the company did not have enough money to raise wages and end the two-tier wage system in the 2015 contract.

Wirtgen produces equipment primarily for road construction and maintenance, manufacturing equipment under five separate brands. Employing between 7,000 to 8,000 workers around the world, it has independent dealers in roughly 100 countries and factories in India, China, and Brazil, with 20 percent of its business handled in the US and the rest overseas. In 2016, the company reported sales of €2.53 billion ($2.85 billion).

Deere’s move to acquire Wirtgen follows a recent general decline in the Iowa-based company’s sales over the past three years due to declining agricultural commodity prices, leading to lowered equipment sales. Deere is betting on the Wirtgen acquisition to boost its overall profits. The impetus for the purchase is also in part due to recent promises made by US President Donald Trump to introduce a national program to rebuild roads, bridges and other infrastructure. The proposal is aimed at privatizing public assets and providing a profit windfall to companies like Deere.

During the 2015 negotiations for a new labor agreement, Deere and the UAW rejected out of hand the demands of rank-and-file workers to improve pay and benefits for 11,200 hourly workers. The fact that Deere has $5 billion or more in available cash on hand points to the likelihood that Deere has hoarded a stockpile of money over the years, a common practice among major corporations.

Illinois-based Caterpillar is currently the target of an FBI investigation for stashing away billions in offshore tax shelters, although it is also expected to greatly benefit from Trump’s corporate tax and infrastructure proposals.

The UAW functions as a wholly owned subsidiary of Deere. For 20 years, Deere workers have endured a two-tier wages and benefits system imposed by the UAW, which pays workers hired after 1997 sharply lower wages for doing the same job. Meanwhile, wages for tier-one workers have barely kept up with inflation. At the time of implementation of the two-tier wage system in 1997, Deere and the UAW told workers it was a temporary sacrifice to maintain profits.

Since then, the UAW and Deere have peddled the same line negotiation after negotiation. During the 2015 negotiation, Deere and the UAW used the downturn in sales to ram through another sellout contract amid charges by workers of union vote-rigging.

Deere’s profits have seen a downfall from previous years, however, according to a statement published on Deere’s web site, its net income of $1.94 billion “still represented the sixth-highest total in company history.”

Jenny, a worker from Iowa, told the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter, “It’s unfair treatment to workers. Deere can afford to give workers a raise in their paycheck and better benefits, but any company will do anything to not give workers anything. Yes, workers are very tired of being treated unfairly. So, the next contract they will say ‘no’ to more givebacks. Enough is enough.”

Asked about the role of the UAW, she said, “UAW leadership are in bed with the management. UAW no longer cares for the workers. UAW has become a company union rather than a workers’ union.”

The planned acquisition of Wirtgen follows a wave of mergers and acquisitions in recent years fueled by the voracious drive by Wall Street for more profit. The global economic slowdown is leading to a brutal competition for a share of a small pool of profits leading to an inevitable consolidation of the global industry and a new wave of plant closings, mass layoffs and wage and benefit cuts. This underscores the need for an internationally coordinated counteroffensive by agricultural, construction and road equipment manufacturing workers around the world.

Australian government exploits hostage-taking to escalate “war on terror”

Mike Head

Twice in less than a week, Australian’s political and media establishment has inflated events involving mentally disturbed young men into major “terrorist attacks.”

Last Wednesday night saw the extraordinary police handling of an incident involving a mentally ill trainee chef on a Malaysia Airlines flight from Melbourne airport. It generated media headlines and images of para-military police, toting semi-automatic rifles and wearing helmets and body armour, storming the plane. Police later conceded that the man’s actions were not terrorist-related at all.

This Monday, the terrorist scare campaign intensified when a deranged and drug-addicted former Somali refugee killed a man and took a hostage in the Melbourne suburb of Brighton. Before any of the facts were known, the media and the federal and state governments declared that his actions were a terrorist attack, even though Yacqub Khayre phoned a TV station to claim to be acting for both Al Qaeda and Islamic State, two rival organisations that are at war with each other. About 20 minutes later, Khayre was shot and killed by police commandos.

Over the past 24 hours, information has emerged further contradicting the depiction of Khayre as a terrorist. Instead, while many questions remain unanswered, the evidence points to a deeply troubled young man with a long history of “ice” addiction and alcohol abuse, being preyed upon by both Islamic fundamentalists and police-intelligence agencies, which targeted him as a potential undercover informant.

Khayre, who arrived in Australia as a child in 1991, fleeing the conflict in Somalia, had been known to the police since at least 2007. As a 19-year-old, he was convicted of more than 40 offences including burglary, aggravated burglary, theft, unlawful assault and drug possession. Later that year, he was convicted of armed robbery offences while on bail. Altogether, he was sentenced to three years’ jail, but the prison terms were suspended and he was released on probation in unclear circumstances.

Less than two years later, Khayre was charged with involvement in an alleged conspiracy to make a futile suicide attack on the Holsworthy army base in Sydney. He was held in a “super-maximum” security prison, often in solitary confinement, between August 2009 and December 2010, only to be acquitted by a jury. According to the evidence at the trial, the “plot” was concocted by a police undercover agent who entrapped a number of young men. Three of the accused were convicted and sentenced to 18 years’ imprisonment, but Khayre was found not guilty by the jury. It became clear that he had fled Somalia after supposedly being sent back there to seek an Islamic “fatwah” for the attack.

Secret US diplomatic cables previously published by WikiLeaks demonstrate that in August 2009, senior Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Victorian state police officers proposed grooming Khayre, while in prison, as a police informant to generate more “terrorism” cases.

In an assessment provided to Michael Thurston, the US consul-general in Melbourne, two senior officers, AFP counter-terrorism coordinator Damien Appleby and Victoria Police detective inspector Andrew Gutske, characterised Khayre “as a ‘weakling’ who struggled with the harsh day-to-day life in Somalia... The AFP believes that Khayre may be turned while in prison to serve as an informant in related cases.”

Throughout the media barrage over the past day about the “terrorist threat,” no explanation has been provided for this briefing of the US consulate, nor for the proposed ‘grooming.’ There has been no statement that Khayre’s recruitment did not proceed.

Reportedly, however, Khayre was placed in a prison “deradicalisation” program in 2009. These programs, run by the police and Islamic clerics, are another means of enlisting informants, who can be threatened with further prosecution if they fail to cooperate.

It seems that Khayre’s incarceration worsened his drug and mental health problems. In 2012, he was arrested during an “ice”-affected violent home invasion. He pleaded guilty to aggravated burglary, theft, intentionally causing injury, recklessly causing injury and giving a false name, and was sentenced to five years in prison, with a non-parole period of three years.

That non-parole period was later extended until last November because Khayre twice, in 2014 and 2015, tried to set prison facilities alight.

Despite the obvious questions raised by the attempted police cultivation of Khayre, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, the police-intelligence authorities and the corporate media have flooded the airways with sensationalist declarations of heightened terrorist dangers and called for yet more expansions of police powers and resources.

Turnbull, who heads a fragile and unstable government, has been particularly aggressive. He demanded to know why Khayre was on parole and outlined draconian proposals that could mean barring parole to anyone vaguely accused of having a “terrorist background” or “violent record.”

The prime minister called a media conference yesterday morning, flanked by Acting AFP Commissioner Mike Phelan, to immediately link Khayre’s actions to the latest attacks in London, where evidence has also emerged that the British security agencies were well aware of the activities of the perpetrators.

Seeking to stampede public opinion, Turnbull declared: “The events in Brighton in Melbourne last night, coming so soon after the attack in London, have shocked all Australians. This terrorist attack by a known criminal, a man who was only recently released on parole, is a shocking, cowardly crime… and it underlines the need for us to be constantly vigilant, never to be deterred, always defiant, in the face of Islamist terrorism.”

As well as insisting on unprecedented parole laws, Turnbull called on state premiers and territory chief ministers, who are due to meet Friday, to further boost police powers. He boasted that he secured their support last year for a “post-sentence detention regime,” whereby prisoners convicted of “serious” offences can be kept in prison, potentially for life, even after their sentences have expired.

This legislation, which went through the federal parliament last December with Labor’s backing, was part of the eighth package of “anti-terrorism” laws imposed since 2014, mostly since Turnbull ousted Tony Abbott as prime minister in September 2015. That was on top of more than 60 laws introduced under the banner of the “war on terrorism” by Coalition and Labor governments since 2002. Turnbull’s government is about to go further, releasing a report advocating greater powers to call out the military to deal with “domestic violence.”

At his media conference, Turnbull also sought to drum up public support for expanding Australia’s protracted military involvement in the US-led wars in the Middle East, which have killed millions of people, devastated entire societies and created the breeding grounds for Islamic fundamentalists to recruit disturbed and disaffected young people around the world.

“In the field, the Australian Defence Force is taking the fight up to and destroying ISIL with our allies and partners,” Turnbull asserted.

This is a bipartisan offensive. Victorian Labor Premier Daniel Andrews declared yesterday he would give the police chiefs whatever extra resources they requested. Already last December, his government announced it would boost police numbers by 20 percent, or 3,100 police officers, in the next four years. At the same time, it introduced legislation to ban parole for people convicted of “serious” crimes. Yesterday, Andrews bragged of having the toughest parole laws in the country, but Turnbull still insisted they were too weak.

Like their counterparts in Britain, across Europe and in the US, Liberal-National and Labor governments alike are seizing on alleged terrorist attacks to justify erecting a police state framework in the face of the rising class tensions generated by widening inequality and attacks on welfare, essential social programs and working class living standards.

These measures are accompanied by the intensified witch-hunting of Muslims, to divide the working class along communal and ethnic lines and create the ideological conditions for escalating Australian participation in the catastrophic wars provoked by the US in the Middle East.