Manning At Harvard: The Fears of Veritas

Binoy Kampmark

“I have an obligation to my conscience – and I believe to the country – to stand up against any efforts to justify leaks of sensitive national security information.”

Michael Morrell, former Deputy Director, CIA, Sep 14, 2017

Michael Morrell could barely stomach the revelation, which tormented him like indigestible gruel. Chelsea Manning was coming to Harvard’s Institute of Politics.  “Harvard,” noted Alex Ward, “gained a celebrity, and it just lost a distinguished public servant.”

In a letter to Douglas Elmendorf, dean of the Kennedy School, Morrell, the former acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency, barely contained his disgust at the decision making Manning a visiting fellow.

In quitting his post at the Belfer Center for his scandalized conscience, one favourably attuned to drone warfare and torture, Morrell recycled and regurgitated the tried and untested themes that remain the staple of the secret state.  “Senior leaders have stated publicly that the leaks by Ms Manning put the lives of US soldiers at risk.” (Even Morrell stops short of citing deaths or injuries.)

Morrell saw in Manning the efforts of a celebrity criminal on the road of justification. “The Kennedy School’s decision will assist Ms Manning in her long standing effort to legitimize the criminal path that she took to prominence, an attempt that may encourage others to leak classified material as well”.

The last assertion is precisely the reason why Manning should be garlanded with floral tributes of acknowledgement on getting to the Kennedy School.  Even President Barack Obama, whose administration proved crack addicted to prosecuting whistleblowers under the Espionage Act, had to concede as a presidential candidate that revealing abuses and corruptions were indispensable to the health of the republic.

Despite hardening on getting to the White House, Obama did issue an executive order and sign a law beefing up whistleblower protections in 2012.  As ever, he preferred to keep the intelligence community in its traditional, singular nook, where officials remain squeamish about notions that a whistleblower might be anything better than a flag tarnishing traitor.

Obama did make one concession on Manning’s legacy in reducing her draconian 35-year old prison sentence, deeming it “very disproportionate relative to what other leakers had received.”  Not exactly the sort of statement to expect for a person who had supposedly put US soldiers at such mortal risk.

The president, nevertheless, made it unquestionably clear that Manning was an example of gold standard deviance, what should not be done when advancing a cause.  “I feel very comfortable that justice has been served and that a message has still been sent.”

The Manning appointment cast an eager cat amongst very puzzle pigeons.  Appearances were cancelled, notes sent more in sorry than anger.  Current CIA director Mike Pompeo was certainly one of those explicit in describing Manning as an “American traitor,” a point he made to Harvard’s Rolf Mowatt-Larssen after cancelling a scheduled appearance at the university.

While it was not a decision taken “lightly,” the CIA director had made the miraculous discovery of having a conscience, a troubled one which “will not permit me to betray [CIA staff] by appearing to support Harvard’s decision with my appearance at tonight’s event.”

Again, in robotic unison with other CIA officials past and present, Pompeo would assert that Manning’s actions, according to “many intelligence and military officials,” had “put the lives of the patriotic men and women at the CIA in danger.”

Even worse for Pompeo was that the Manning decision was something of a stab wound, cruel, indifferent to servicemen and women, not least of all the director himself, who had gotten a degree from that university.  “I am especially saddened because I hold a degree from Harvard Law School.”

Any academic institution worth its sacred salt ought to have a wide tent, suitably capacious, to accommodate the wounded, the tainted heroes, the credible deviants.  If an institution appoints fellows from an organisation that overseas insurrections, disruptions and the occasional off-the-record killing, it would surely be appropriate to have that person’s counter, the whistleblower, the person who reveals, to provide some context.  Patriotism, a refuge for the scoundrel that it is, affords space for the many.

Reading Pompeo’s letter reveals an exercise of acne-ridden disappointment, the pubescent whose voice is just breaking, a pain that the world of grey is far more evident in his circles than one of light and dark.  “The very motto of Harvard ‘Veritas’, truth, is a core principal [sic] of the agency I now lead.  We deliver the truth to America’s leaders everyday.”  Touching that an agency specialising in mendacity, dissimulation and disinformation should be so dedicated to the holy verities.

One such salient verity is worth recounting, notably in terms of its whistleblowing legacy.  Farcically bitter as this is, a former CIA employee was sentenced to 30 months in prison for revealing that waterboarding was deployed in the heyday of the “War on Terror”.  It proved to be the very person who exposed its practice, rather than any perpetrator, whose identity had been unlawfully revealed.  Presumably John Kiriakou would have such doors to academic fertilization and discussion closed, his mind forever caged by the law’s presumption that he had betrayed his country. Veritas indeed!

Manning’s role remains Socratic in its tragedy, remarkable in its endurance.  Far better a fallen individual who has served time in actually breaching laws to expose crimes and misdemeanours, than counterfeit saints or pious servants revered by the choristers of patriotism.

Killings Are Killing Secularism In India

Arshad M Khan

Gauri Lankesh was shot to death on September 5, 2017.  A consistent critic of Hindutva politics and right-wing Hindu extremism, the journalist-activist edited Gauri Lankesh Patrike her own weekly.  She was not the first.  In August 2015, Malleshappo M. Kalburgi, a noted scholar who was opposed to superstition in Hinduism, was assassinated.  Both Lankesh and Kalburgi were staunch proponents of the theory that their Lingayat religion was distinct from Hinduism.

Also in 2015, in February, it was Govind Pansare, a left-wing politician who also opposed religious superstitions (like, for example, the ritual to ensure a male child), and also lobbied vocally for the Anti-Superstition and Black Magic Act.  Then there was rationalist Narendra Achyut Dabholkar, who made debunking religious superstition and mysticism his life’s work.  In August 2013, he was shot and killed as he took his morning walk.  Following his death, the Anti-superstition act he had worked so hard without success to get through the Maharashtra state government was finally enacted.

The killings of three rationalists, i.e. atheists, and a strong dissenter have cast a pall.  Voices are being stilled.  There is much more as evidenced by the complicity of authorities in instances of mass killing, their mono-cultural narrow vision in a multicultural and multi-religious society, and insurgencies in many parts of the country.

Celebrating 70 years of independence last August 15, India has much to be proud of including strong economic growth.  Yet in this new century India’s steps are clearly faltering given its darker side, and, while it tries to assume a role on the world stage, the state within is cause for some despair.

Last month on August 25th, following the rape conviction of Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh — a former Sikh, styled the guru of bling for his flamboyant lifestyle — thousands of his Dera religious supporters ran amuck burning buildings, vehicles, railway stations and bringing life to a halt in the states of Haryana and Punjab, and even in parts of Delhi.  More than 30 people died and a curfew was imposed.

Indeed gurus are popular:  Mr. Modi has appointed a saffron-robed, Hindutva firebrand religious leader, Yogi Adityanath as Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state.  This was after local elections there in which communalism was an essential ingredient of his party’s victory.

Also on August 25th, activists across the country observed Kandhmal day in memory of the victims of an anti-Christian pogrom in 2008.  Kandhmal is in the state of Orissa just southwest of Bengal and over a thousand miles east from Punjab.

A 2016 documentary directed by K. P. Sasi vividly illustrates this notorious incident.  Titled Voices from the Ruins:  Kandhmal in Search of Justice, it relates the story simply and without resort to emotion.  The effect is devastating as the horror of pitiless violence unfolds.  In this orgy of arson and bloodshed, the victims were Adivasi and Dalit Christians — converts continue to be remembered as Dalits in their communities.  Dalits are the lowest caste of Hindus formerly known as untouchables.  The Hindutva perpetrators destroyed over 350 churches and 6500 dwellings.  Eight years later fear and intimidation still rule, and the more than 56,000 people who were displaced have not returned.  Churches and homes remain the ruins they were after the pogrom.

Devastating as it was, it is an event not as well known as the 2002 Gujarat riots directed against another minority group, the Muslims, in which at least 1000 were killed.  Gujarat is a 1000 miles south of Punjab.  The geography of the three incidents is an indicator of how  communal hatred has infected people across the nation.

Rana Ayyub, (author of Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Cover Up and a friend of Gauri Lankesh) is the journalist who, at tremendous personal risk, exposed administrative and police complicity through a sting operation sponsored by Tehelka magazine.  She has just been honored in Vancouver with a Courage in Journalism Award.   On her heels, the Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) has secured the convictions of 119 individuals including a minister (Indira Jaising, Outlook magazine, March 2015).  The founders of CJP are paying for their success:  Several cases have been filed against them, including criminal charges for such transgressions as accepting about $290,000 over a ten year period from the Ford Foundation.   Some use these cases to question their veracity; others say they are being subjected to a campaign of harassment in the courts.

The last twenty-five years have seen the delicate fabric of communal amity rent repeatedly for political gain by upper caste Hindu nationalist parties.  For instance, Prime Minister Modi’s new laws against cattle slaughter not only affect a $10 billion industry employing mostly Dalits and Muslims, but added to the incendiary rhetoric his ruling party have  fostered a climate of hate leading to tragic events.  Attacks against Muslims and Dalits have intensified.

On June 22, 2017, three days before the Muslim holiday of Eid, four boys were returning home to Mathura on the train from Delhi following a shopping trip.  Recognized as Muslims, they were taunted as beef eaters and then set upon.  In a moving train with other travelers looking on, they were beaten severely and 16-year old Junaid Khan stabbed fatally.  One should note that much of southern India eats beef as does the northeast, and of course Christians, Muslims and Sikhs.  Kerala’s legislature protested the Modi slaughter restrictions by having a beef breakfast.

Gau rakshak or cow protectors, whose vigilante bands now number over 200 in Gujarat alone, are terrorizing innocents.  Their attacks on meat-eating Dalits, who skin carcasses for sale to the leather tanneries, and on Muslims have led to several deaths hitting the headlines lately.

Thus on April 1st this year, a dairy farmer from Haryana was transporting cows purchased legitimately at a cattle fair in Rajasthan back to his home, when he was set upon by gau rakshaks.  Beaten mercilessly, Pehlu Khan died from his injuries two days later.  The police have done nothing so far to apprehend the suspects despite the man’s family traveling to the capital, New Delhi, and holding a vigil demanding justice.

Last year on September 13, 2016, two men again legally transporting a cow and a calf were attacked by a cow-protector gang and also severely beaten.  One of the men, Mohammad Ayub, died from his injuries shortly thereafter at a hospital in Ahmedabad.  The police first registered a case of attempted murder naming the vigilantes as Janak Ramesh Mistry, Ajay Sajar Rabari and Bharat Nag Rabari.  But as Pratik Sinha, a human rights activist, reported in a Facebook post after Ayub’s death, the police filed a second case underlining India’s present-day reality.  This time, instead of naming the assailants, they wrote down ‘unknown’.  The license plates of the cars involved in the attacks are also known.  Dalits and Muslims can expect little in the way of justice.   Except for a belated word, Mr. Modi has remained notoriously silent on the issue.

Overall figures for minority communal violence according to official statistics are  averaging 700 per year, leading to thousands of deaths.  In such an environment of hate, it is not surprising some were celebrating Pakistan’s recent victory over India in the 2017 ICC Champions Trophy finals by a record margin.  For this 15 celebrants were arrested in Madhya Pradesh and charged with sedition.  When this farce could not be sustained, they were charged with disturbing ‘communal harmony’.

Legislators in the U.S. became concerned enough to send Indian Prime Minister Modi a letter.  Dated February 25, 2017, it was signed by 26 congressmen and 8 senators and expressed grave concern over the ‘intolerance and violence’ against religious minorities.  They specifically cited the killings of Hasmat Ali in Manipur, Mohammad Saif in Uttar Pradesh, and two Sikh men during demonstrations protesting the desecration of their holy book.  Innocent Sikhs were also the target of revenge attacks after Indira Gandhi was assassinated by a Sikh bodyguard.  Almost 2000 were killed.

In the April 2015 issue of National Geographic, a magazine few would call political, an eye-popping map of India is displayed in its signature graphic style. A rusty, dried-blood light brown, mapped carefully adjacent to areas of government control, it reveals almost a quarter of the country where the Naxalite rebellion coupled with the Adivasi (another minority) struggle for land rights has taken hold. The area runs south from the Nepal border, to Kolkata (Calcutta), then along the Bay of Bengal almost to Chennai (Madras).  Westwards, it approaches close to Varanasi (Benares) on the Ganges, then towards Nagpur in Central India and to Bangalore (India’s IT capital) in the south.  Add the insurgencies in Assam, Manipur (minorities) and Kashmir (minority Muslim) which is bleeding again, and fully a third of the country is in strife.  Figures vary but frequently quoted is 100,000 dead in Kashmir with no end in sight.

Post independence the promise of the first prime minister’s socialist secularism brought forth a focus on education and heavy-industry development.  Flourishing first class technological institutes and rapid industrial growth was one result.  Yet illiteracy proved stubborn, and the country mired by corruption and strife became bogged down in an inequality stasis with crushing poverty, where it still remains.  Jawaharlal Nehru had fought for India’s independence, and as India’s first leader strongly emphasized a secular state.  Wealthy and highest caste (Brahmin), educated at elite Harrow and Trinity College Cambridge before taking law and the bar exams through Inner Temple, he became a Fabian socialist.  Is he turning over in his grave?

Water contamination widespread across regional Australia

John Harris

Official water safety reports, obtained by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) after a protracted legal battle, provide an insight into the state of water supply in rural towns across New South Wales (NSW), Australia’s largest state. They reveal that state and local governments and corporations display complete indifference toward the health of working people.

In the past five years, more than 100,000 NSW residents have been issued with boil-water alerts because of water contamination. The five worst-affected areas are Grafton, Kempsey, Scone, Jindabyne and Merimbula.

The 40,000 people who live in Grafton, a town approximately 600 kilometres north of Sydney, are at risk of being exposed to cryptosporidium, a parasite that can cause respiratory and gastrointestinal illness. NSW Health reported that the cause is the discharge of faecal matter from cattle into the Clarence River.

Residents in Grafton and the surrounding areas have been issued 10 boil-water alerts since 2006—approximately one a year—in response “to the inability of the water supply system to manage risks.” The region lacks the appropriate infrastructure and standards to ensure safe drinking water.

A case study conducted by Ocean Watch revealed that industrial liquid wastes are licensed to be discharged directly into the Clarence River from surrounding businesses, including aquaculture (prawn farms), sewage treatment works and timber mills from Grafton and surrounding areas.

The Healthy Rivers Commission’s Independent Inquiry into the Clarence River System (1999) identified that the major causes of pollution in the Clarence River are run-off from urban and rural residential areas; erosion and run-off from grazing and cultivated land; discharges from sewage treatment plants and septic systems; and run-off from irrigation areas.

In the Kempsey area, approximately 200 kilometres south of Grafton, cyanobacteria, a toxic blue-green algae, has contaminated water systems and placed 15,000 residents at risk. The ABC reported that “grazing dairy cattle and raw sewage discharges near the Steuart McIntyre Dam” have been the source of the algae contamination.

The Steuart McIntyre Dam supplies water to Kempsey and the nearby towns of Jerseyville, Frederickton and Clybucca. The document presented by the ABC warned that “all pathogen groups,” including e-coli, are present in the region’s water systems.

In 2014, the Kempsey Shire Council made the decision to source its water supply from the Steuart McIntyre Dam. After the change, the Council declared that “residents may notice a slight difference in the taste of the water since this change. A slightly earthy taste in the water is normal due to the background algae growth that occurs during summer in the Dam. Residents are assured that the drinking water is monitored on a daily basis … and is safe to drink.”

An article published in the Macleay Argus in 2013, Kempsey’s local newspaper, declared that “sporadic issues with odour and discolouration of drinking water… are within national guidelines and pose no threat to public health.”

A spokesperson from shire council explicitly stated in the article that the installation, operation and maintenance processes associated with filtration were not being completed because of the cost. He stated: “No water filtration means lower costs and increased risk, but the risk can still be managed properly.”

Residents at Merimbula, a town 450 kilometres south of Sydney situated on the Bemboka River catchment, have received four boil-water alerts from the Bega Valley Council in the past decade.

The ABC report documented that the catchment is contaminated by “onsite sewerage system discharges,” “failures and presence of septic systems” and run-off from dairy farms upstream. It warned that chlorine-resistant pathogens had not been filtered or received chemical treatments, threatening more than 40,000 residents in the area.

In the Upper Hunter, approximately 6,000 residents in Scone, Murrurundi and Aberdeen, regional towns situated northwest of the industrial city of Newcastle, are rated at “very high risk” from dangerous pathogens flowing from an abattoir and septic tanks in the catchment.

Such contamination is not without precedent. Orica, the Australian transnational offshoot of the British giant ICI, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of mining and commercial explosives, discharged effluent containing high concentrations of arsenic into the Hunter River near Newcastle in 2011.

The revelations are by no means limited to regional and rural areas, Doctor Ian Wright, a Western Sydney University professor and leading water scientist, reported last month that millions of litres of highly toxic water were escaping from a derelict coal mine into one of Sydney’s water catchments.

Wright reported the existence of heavy metals far exceeding safe environmental in the Wingecarribee River, pointing to extremely high median concentrations of nickel (430 ug/L), manganese (12667 ug/L), and zinc (1400ug/L)—which is 120 times higher than the normal baseline level.

Across regional and rural NSW, the cost of introducing water filtration systems is estimated to be between $1.5 billion and $2 billion. Since 2012, only a measly $7.3 million has been invested into programs to improve drinking water quality.

Last year, the Sydney Catchment Authority axed 80 jobs, including five of its six leading scientists, after the NSW state government merged it with the State Water Corporation to form WaterNSW.

State and local governments insist that no money exists for the installation of high-quality filtration systems across the country to guarantee the provision of safe, healthy drinking water for all communities and families. Yet corporations are making record profits and the richest sections of society are amassing ever-greater amounts of wealth.

The exposure of contaminated drinking water in regional Australia recalls the lead contamination of the water supply in the US city of Flint, Michigan. The Flint council switched its water supply to the highly-polluted Flint River, away from the Detroit catchment, to slash operation costs.

Healthy water is one of the most basic requirements of life. From the US to regional Australia, the anarchy of the capitalist market and the class contempt of the ruling elite has placed the health of tens of thousands of people at risk.

Germany: Trial of neo-Nazi terror group whitewashes role of intelligence services

Dietmar Henning

After more than four years of proceedings, the German federal prosecutor’s office ended its summation on Tuesday and demanded a lifelong sentence and subsequent preventive detention for Beate Zschäpe. Zschäpe is the surviving member of the trio of neo-Nazi terrorists known as the National Socialist Underground (NSU). The federal prosecutor, Herbert Diemer, also called for long prison sentences for other defendants on trial in Munich.

Over the course of seven days, the prosecution laid out in detail the case against the accused. Excluded from the trial and from prosecution from the very beginning were state agencies, in particular the German domestic intelligence agency, the Office for Constitutional Protection, which is heavily implicated in the crimes of the NSU.

As a member of the NSU, Zschäpe was involved in 10 murders and over 30 attempted murders, three bomb attacks, and 15 robberies. The state prosecutor claimed she bore especial guilt, even though she may never have shot any of the victims herself. If the court follows the recommendation of the prosecution, Zschäpe will spend the rest of her life in prison.

Diemer also demanded long prison sentences for four other defendants. He requested 12 years’ imprisonment for the former neo-fascist NPD (German National Democratic Party) functionary Ralf Wohlleben, as an accessory to murder in nine cases. Wohlleben had, amongst other services to the NSU, supplied the “Ceska” pistol used by the group to murder nine immigrants.

André Eminger is to be sentenced to 12 years of imprisonment. He was found guilty of being an accessory to attempted murder. Eminger rented the camper used by NSU members Uwe Böhnhardt and Uwe Mundlos in June 2004 to drive to Cologne, where they planted a bomb in the city’s Keupstraße. The court followed the request of the federal prosecutor to detain Eminger in court. Until now he had remained free.

Holger Gerlach helped Zschäpe and her companions, Mundlos and Böhnhardt, to live undetected by providing them with identity papers. Gerlach has been charged with supporting a terrorist organization and the prosecutor has demanded he serve a five-year prison sentence.

The prosecutor also requested a youth penalty of three years for Carsten S., who procured the weapon on behalf of Wohlleben. The prosecutor adjudged that S. deserved a mitigated sentence after making a full confession.

The role of the domestic intelligence agency was never considered by the court. Diemer had already given the intelligence services a clean bill of health at the start of the trial. Its agents had made a decisive contribution to the investigation, Diemer claimed. There were no persons pulling the strings to be uncovered. Any other interpretations were “senseless rumours” and a “will-o’-the-wisp.”

As the WSWS wrote at the start of the trial, the entire NSU proceedings were structured to cover up the involvement of the state in the crimes of the NSU. At an early stage the prosecutor’s office concluded that the NSU consisted of just three people, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt, who died under mysterious circumstances before their arrest, and Beate Zschäpe. Any investigation into other NSU members was thereby excluded from the start.

Several parliamentary investigation committees have concluded that the NSU must have consisted of more than three members. Members of the neo-Nazi organization “Blood and Honour,” which has since been banned, supported the trio when they went underground. They collected money for the gang at neo-Nazi concerts and applauded their crimes in their publications.

Lawyers, who represent the relatives of victims in the case, have repeatedly maintained that the NSU must have consisted of a larger group of neo-Nazis.

Lawyer Stephan Kuhn, who represents a victim of the bomb attack in the Cologne Keupstraße, told Spiegel Online earlier this week that explosives and 20 various firearms had been found in the last apartment to be occupied by Mundlos, Böhnhardt and Zschäpe. The origins of 17 of these weapons had not been ascertained. “This is a clear indicator of other supporters that the prosecutor has not investigated.” There are also further indications that others around the NSU had not been identified.

Lawyers for the victims have repeatedly raised these claims in court together with evidence pointing to the involvement of state agencies. For their part, intelligence officers and their undercover agents who were summoned as witnesses refused to provide statements, declared they could not remember, or simply lied.

It is now known that about 40 undercover agents and informers were in contact with the three NSU terrorists. The neo-Nazi group Thuringian Homeland Security, in which the trio initially became radicalised, was the creation of undercover agent Tino Brandt, who built up the organisation with money provided by the secret service. After the trio went “underground” in 1998, they were covered up by the secret services for the following 13 years.

The exact extent of the collaboration between the secret services and NSU remains unclear. It is documented that the Hessian secret service agent Andreas Temme was actually at the scene of the murder of one of the victims, Halit Yozgat, in Kassel in 2006. Temme has alleged absurdly he knew nothing of the murder and has been backed by his superior officers. Other agents have received similar cover from higher-ups.

The Thuringian investigative committee notes in its final report that the search for the NSU terrorists was so amateurish as to lead to the “suspicion of deliberate sabotage.”

In his interview with Spiegel Online, Kuhn also reported that the prosecutor’s office had suppressed evidence that could have demonstrated collusion between the intelligence agencies and the NSU. According to Kuhn, the prosecutor’s office “structured the investigations in such a way that it could decide which results of the investigation should be submitted to the court and which should not.”

There were a total of nine other investigations against potential supporters, which were to be pursued separately, plus a broader investigation (structural procedure) of unknown supporters, in particular suppliers of weapons. In these proceedings, the lawyers of the sub-defendants would not have the right to inspect files.

“If the prosecutor’s office did not wish the parties to the proceedings to be aware of an interrogation, he ensured that the interrogation of the witness took place in the structural procedure. This provided the legal leeway to prevent the presentation of an interrogation in court,” Kuhn said.

The prosecutor also requested on a number of occasions that the court reject applications by the lawyers of the civil case claimants for the interrogation of witnesses. Kuhn said, “The federal prosecutor’s office thus used its position in a manner that indicated it feared certain investigations could reach the public domain.”

As one example, he cited the application by a subsidiary lawyer to invite to the stand a former official of the secret service, with the cover name Lothar Lingen. Lingen had admitted to the federal prosecutor’s office he had intentionally destroyed files related to the NSU to prevent their content being revealed. “He said that based on the number of undercover agents in Thuringia nobody would have believed that the federal constitutional protection did not know about the NSU.” The prosecutor’s office claimed in the trial, against its better knowledge, that this was speculation and that Lingen would not be recalled as a witness.

It is evident that, despite the attention to detail in the case of the five accused, the aim of the NSU trial was to conceal the role played by secret services. This has taken place as more information emerges about the activities of the far-right in the security agencies and German army (Bundeswehr).

The German army officer Franco A., who had registered as a Syrian refugee and planned the assassination of politicians, received cover from superiors and was part of a larger network involving the far-right Identity movement. A. also had connections to a terror cell in Rostock, which planned political assassinations. The cell included a policeman and a lawyer.

Last week, the federal administrative court in Leipzig ended its long-standing trial of Joachim Freiherr von Sinner, the former head of the foreign secret service BND in the city of Mainz. Von Sinner had taken down two photographs of Christian Wulff, then the German president, because he opposed Wulff’s statement that Islam belonged to Germany. The court decided against any punishment for von Sinner based on his right-wing extremist views on politicians and Islamism. “Here the threshold for punishment has not yet been exceeded,” declared judge Ulf Domgörgen.

According to the weekly newspaper Die Zeit, von Sinner had planned “exercises of a paramilitary nature” with fellow thinkers from the police, the Bundeswehr and the BND. The aim of such exercises was to make the “resistance” against Muslims as effective as possible. All proceedings against von Sinner have been terminated.

German conservative newspaper threatens Poland with territorial demands

Peter Schwarz

The Polish government is demanding reparations from Germany for the war crimes committed during the Second World War. The demand is not new, but has never before been raised so persistently.

The chairman of the governing right-wing nationalist Law and Justice Party (PiS), Jaroslav Kaczynski, breathed new life into the reparations debate in late June. Ever since, Prime Minister Beata Szydlo has issued repeated demands on the issue. She told the RNFFM radio station on September 7, “Poland has a right to reparations, and the Polish state has the right to demand them.” Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski stated that Poland’s demand amounted to €840 billion.

The Bureau of Research of the Polish parliament published a 40-page report on Monday justifying the Polish demand. According to this, an official 1953 statement in which the Polish government relinquished its right to claim reparations from Germany is not legally valid because it was made under pressure from the Soviet Union and only applied to the German Democratic Republic (GDR), not Germany.

The German government has emphatically rejected the Polish demand. Government spokesman Stefan Seibert declared last Friday that in 1953, Poland relinquished its claim to further reparations “legally and with applicability to Germany as a whole,” and subsequently confirmed this on numerous occasions. “From our point of view, this question is therefore fully settled, legally and politically.”

Threats from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Comments in the German media have also rejected the Polish demand. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), and its Sunday edition, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, have adopted a particularly aggressive tone.

One FAZ comment noted that the German government must resist Warsaw’s demands. “If they do not do so, they will leave the door wide open to similar demands from other countries—Poland was certainly not the only victim of Nazi aggression.” A video comment by the FAZ was titled “Tough luck for Poland.”

An article in the September 10 edition of the FAZ, headlined “Dangerous discussion,” by historian Gregor Schöllgen went even further. He threatened Warsaw with a refusal to recognise Poland’s western border should it continue to insist on its reparations demand. “Whoever makes an issue out of the demand for reparations is also making an issue out of Poland’s western border,” he wrote.

Schöllgen did not call into question the horrific crimes perpetrated by the Nazi regime in Poland. “Hardly any other country suffered more under the German war of annihilation, conquest and plunder than Poland,” he wrote. “More than five-and-a-half million Poles did not survive it and the subsequent occupation.”

But he claimed that Poland’s demand for compensation was settled when the Polish border was moved westward. “With the possession of formerly German territories, a large proportion of the compensation claim made by the Polish People’s Republic against Germany was covered,” he added.

The Soviet Union and Poland’s formal relinquishing of reparation payments in 1953 took account of the fact “that with the separation of German eastern territories, including all immovable and movable property, gave enormous wealth to Poland,” stated Schöllgen.

This interpretation of history leads him to threaten that a demand will be made for the return of the German territories ceded to Poland after World War II. Since the Federal Republic recognised the Oder-Neiße line in 1970 as part of Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik as Poland’s western border, only neo-Nazis, associations of expelled peoples and right-wing elements in the CDU/CSU have demanded the return of the “lost eastern territories.”

Schöllgen makes use of extremely aggressive language. “Anyone raising the demand today for Polish reparations from Germany must know that they could be playing with fire,” he wrote, and referred to a statement by German Foreign Minister Walter Scheel (Free Democrats), in 1972. “As part of such a discussion, one can never avoid the fact that former German territories were seized. One would then have to take account of personal damages [a reference to those killed while fleeing Poland] and material losses that have arisen,” Scheel said.

“Whoever makes an issue of Poland’s western border inevitably also makes an issue of Poland’s eastern border,” continued Schöllgen. “And anyone making an issue of Poland’s eastern border inevitably raises the issue of Poland’s relationship to Ukraine and Belarus.”

This is a barely concealed attempt to incite demands among Poland’s eastern neighbours for demands of Polish territory. Poland was forced after the war to give up parts of its former territory to the Soviet Union, which today belong to Belarus and Ukraine.

Legally justified

From a legal standpoint, the Polish demand is not unjustified. Peter Loev, deputy director of the German-Polish Institute, stated to Focus magazine, “In purely legal terms, Poland certainly has grounds to demand reparations.”

Poland’s relinquishing of the right to claim reparations in 1953, which came about at Moscow’s initiative, did in fact apply in practice to the GDR, since Poland never had an opportunity to claim reparations from the Federal Republic after its separation in 1949. The relinquishing of reparations was Moscow’s response to the workers’ uprising of June 17, 1953 in the GDR. The Kremlin regime, weakened after Stalin’s death, sought in this way to lessen the economic crisis in the GDR because it feared the uprising could spread throughout Poland and to the Soviet Union itself.

The 1953 relinquishing—in addition to all agreements reached between West Germany and Eastern European states prior to 1990—contained the proviso that only a peace treaty would finally clarify the question of reparations. This is how the German government interprets the Two-plus-four agreement which sealed German reunification and fully re-established German sovereignty. In this agreement, Germany once again explicitly recognised the inviolability of the Oder-Neiße border.

However, Poland was not party to the agreement. The use of the term “peace treaty” was deliberately avoided at the time so as not to unleash another reparations debate. Despite this, the German government now claims that Poland relinquished all future claims to reparations because they did not make the claim at the time.

Germany enjoyed a substantial financial benefit thanks to the unsettled issue of reparations. The Federal Republic has paid a mere €73.4 billion since 1945 in compensation payments globally, according to Schöllgen’s calculations, including payments to Israel and Jewish organisations, surviving victims in Eastern Europe, forced labourers, and anyone else he could find. Poland received only a small percentage of this.

A reactionary demand

But even though Poland’s demand for reparations has a legal basis, it is politically reactionary. The PiS government is not concerned with compensating the victims of the Nazi regime. Warsaw is not demanding any compensation for victims who are still alive, who have a miserable existence under their rule, but rather transfers into Polish state coffers. But PiS is using the reparations demand above all to incite right-wing nationalist ideas.

PiS emerged from those elements in the leadership of the Solidarnosc movement who misdirected the uprising of Polish workers into the dead end of the Catholic clergy, Polish nationalism and capitalist restoration.

The restoration of capitalism had catastrophic consequences for the Polish working class. The shipyards and factories, where Solidarnosc enjoyed a mass base, have largely been shuttered. The country wound up serving the major corporations as a cheap labour location. More than 3 million Poles have left the country and work for low wages abroad. A quarter century after capitalist restoration, poverty rates are horrendous.

Incapable of mitigating the social crisis, PiS is mobilising petty bourgeois and impoverished sections of the population in backward rural areas, and developing dictatorial forms of rule to suppress all forms of opposition, which is widespread. According to a recent poll, 82 percent of those aged 19-29 and 52 percent of all voters described themselves as opponents of the government. Only a minority of them said they back the bourgeois opposition, which advocates a programme of economic liberalism and defends the European Union.

PiS’s model is Marshall Pilsudski, who ruled Poland as a dictator from 1926 to 1935. Leon Trotsky described the Pilsudski regime at the time as “an antiparliamentary and, above all, anti-proletarian counterrevolution, with whose help the declining bourgeoisie attempts—and not without success, at least for a time—to protect and preserve its fundamental positions.” Like Mussolini in Italy, Pilsudski mobilised petty-bourgeois forces to intimidate the working class.

The PiS government is also coming under increased pressure on the foreign policy front. To date, the European Commission has initiated legal proceedings against Poland for violating EU treaties due to the lack of judicial independence. Hysterically anti-Russian like Pilsudski, the PiS government relies heavily on the US and lives in constant fear of the US abandoning it, or of Germany forming an alliance with Moscow at Warsaw’s expense. PiS is responding to this mounting foreign policy pressure with the demand for reparations.

Growing war danger

State demands for reparations are generally not an effective method to make good past wrongs. They do not combat the roots of fascism and war, but rather reproduce them. They are a source of persistent conflict, intensify international tensions, and create the ideal breeding ground for chauvinist propaganda. They poison the political climate and set an international precedent that could trigger a flood of further demands. A cautionary example in this regard is the Versailles Treaty of 1919, which compelled Germany to pay crippling war reparations and contributed significantly to the rise of the Nazis and the Second World War.

The fact that 72 years after the end of World War II, Berlin and Washington are seeking to outdo each other with demands and threats shows how tense and poisonous the political climate in Europe has become. The tensions and conflicts that transformed Europe into a battlefield are once again breaking out.

Berlin, which likes to point the finger at the reactionary regime in Warsaw, is no less reactionary. In striving to subordinate Europe to its interests, Berlin is displaying growing arrogance. As we have explained in earlier articles on this subject, Germany cannot return to the pursuit of great power policies and militarism without resurrecting all of the reactionary ideological ballast from the past. It is a sign of how far the media and academic establishment has shifted to the right that a respected contemporary historian is calling Poland’s western border into question in the FAZ.

The FAZ and its Sunday edition have long played a leading role in this process. In the historians’ dispute of the 1980s, they served as a platform for Ernst Nolte, the most well-known Nazi apologist among German post-war historians. In recent times, they have defended the right-wing extremist professor of history Jörg Baberowski, who supports Nolte and described Hitler as being “not vicious.” They have published several hysterical attacks on the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei and its youth organisation, the IYSSE, because they politically exposed Baberowski and attacked him publicly.

We wrote in an article two years ago on the issue of Greek demands for reparations from Germany: “The compensation for past injustice—like the fight against the austerity dictates of the troika and the struggle against war and fascism—is inseparably bound up with a socialist perspective. It demands the unification of the European working class on the basis of a revolutionary program, with the goal of abolishing the European Union, establishing workers’ governments, turning the large corporations and banks into public institutions, and reorganizing society within the framework of the United Socialist States of Europe.”

Truckers announce strike against attack on Labour Code in France

Kumaran Ira

After a one-day protest strike Tuesday against French President Emmanuel Macron’s decrees aiming to destroy the Labour Code, truckers have announced that they will take strike action. However, the government has announced that it will not back down on the labour decrees that it has negotiated with the trade unions and business groups. It is insisting that the decrees will go into effect at the end of September.

The decrees aim to increase French companies’ global competitiveness by giving them more flexibility to hire and fire, tear up and rewrite contracts, cut wages, and attack social benefits.

On Wednesday, the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) and Workers Force (FO) unions called for extendable strike action starting on September 25 to demand the retraction of the decrees. The transport federations of the French Democratic Labour Confederation (CFDT) and the French Christian Workers Confederation (CFTC), who refused to join the CGT protest strike on Tuesday, called a strike for September 18.

Jérôme Vérité, the general secretary of the CGT transport federation, declared, that “of course,” fuel depots in France would be a target. “This will be a strike that will have very concrete impacts on the French economy,” he said. Patrice Clos of FO said there would be “strong and powerful actions.”

In a communiqué, the CFDT asked workers to “make their anger known” against the “social typhoon” that the decrees will cause in the transport industry.

The government is promising, however, not to give an inch on the decrees and is insisting that demonstrations “are not supposed” to modify the content of the decrees. After the first day of action on Tuesday, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe warned that strike action would have no impact on the policy his government would adopt.

He said, “I respect opposition, it exists, it is there, I am listening to it.” However, he stressed that he had no intention of giving in to opposition to his unpopular measures, asking, “Where will democracy be if the parliamentary majority is systematically put in question?”

In fact, it is the government that is trying to trample democracy underfoot. After record abstention in the second round of the legislative elections, Macron’s parliamentary majority was in fact elected by a minority of France’s registered voters. Now that Macron is trying to destroy the social rights of the working class, 68 percent of the French population oppose his decrees, and 55 percent of the population supports strikes against this policy, whereas Macron’s approval ratings have collapsed down to only 30 percent.

Philippe’s intransigence underscores that workers cannot obtain a victory in this struggle under the leadership of the trade union bureaucracies. They have negotiated the labour law with Macron and will not carry out any serious struggle against it. The unions and their petty-bourgeois political allies, Jean-Luc Mélenchon of Unsubmissive France (LFT) and the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), are hostile to the revolutionary mobilisation of the working class that is the only way to stop the austerity offensive of Macron and the European Union (EU).

Now, Macron intends if needed to use all the repressive powers granted to him by France’s reactionary state of emergency against the workers, to ram through his decrees.

The political lessons of previous strike struggles against government austerity measures must be drawn. Even when truckers and refinery workers mobilised in powerful strikes in 2010 and 2016, the trade unions isolated them, and the conservative and Socialist Party (PS) government sent riot police to requisition the workers and break the strike.

In 2016, after four years during which they mounted no opposition to PS President François Hollande’s attacks on the working class, the trade unions were forced to call strikes to avoid the eruption of wildcat strikes and protests by workers and youth hostile to the labour law of the PS. But the PS managed to ram the labour law through by mobilising the police-state apparatus under the terms of the state of emergency to crush the strikes and to assault protest marches.

The actions carried out by the unions and their political allies simply aim to avoid being outflanked on their left by rising social anger in the working class against Macron. The unions—which are petty-bourgeois bureaucracies without a mass membership base, financed to the tune of 95 percent of their €4 billion yearly budget by the state and the employers—neither have the ability nor the intention to lead a determined opposition to Macron’s attacks.

In fact, Macron’s decrees, which aim to grant the unions a “union check” financed by the employers and pay out subsidies to the unions to “train” union officials, give the unions a major role in legally approving new contracts cutting their members’ working conditions and violating the Labour Code. This is because the government is confident that they are trusted tools of the state machine against the interests of the working class.

After the truckers’ strike was announced, government spokesman Christophe Castaner warned Thursday that, as in 2010 and 2016, the government will move rapidly to forcibly reopen fuel depots if they were blocked by strike action.

“The principle of taking strike action is fair, but the principle of holding France hostage cannot be so,” Castaner said on France Info. “And so we cannot imagine that a few dozen or a few hundred people could hold up traffic in our country.”

Without stating explicitly that he planned to mobilise the police forces, Castaner stressed that the government would crush blockades of the fuel depots, stating that “it will be necessary because one cannot paralyze France, one cannot prevent people from going to work.”

Castaner’s comment is a warning to workers entering into struggle against Macron’s government and facing the state of emergency, which Macron intends to make permanent by writing its main provisions into common law. To block the rise of a police state in France imposing a historic regression in social conditions via an authoritarian crackdown, workers must organise independently of the trade unions and in opposition to the pseudo-left parties close to the PS, that first introduced the labour law last year.

The working class must build new organisations of struggle to replace the empty shells of the trade unions, and above all, a new political leadership to mobilise political opposition to social cuts, and unify workers across Europe in a struggle against austerity and militarism. This is the task that the Parti de l’égalité socialiste (PES), the French section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, sets itself.

The PES insists that the confrontation with Macron cannot be waged as a trade union struggle, but as an international, revolutionary struggle for socialism and to defend all the social rights that workers won in Europe during the 20th century, which are now under threat. In this struggle, the natural allies of workers in France are the workers of the rest of Europe and the world, fighting militarism and the rising danger of police-state rule.

The legacy of the Cassini spacecraft

Don Barrett 

The Cassini spacecraft has been one of the most productive, versatile and inspiring astronomical platforms ever made. Launched on October 15, 1997, this spacecraft, simply by its own exploits, stands as a triumph for a generation of scientists across the globe, and testament to humanity’s vast capacity for exploration far beyond Earth. Friday morning, after nearly 20 years of operation, including 13 years in the system of Saturn, its rings, and its icy moons, Cassini’s journey ended.

Sunlight illuminates the hexagon-shaped jet stream around Saturn's north pole. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

Cassini’s demise was as meticulously prepared as its life. As part of the planning for the spacecraft’s final mission extension in 2010, its controllers debated what to do when Cassini finally ran out of fuel. Two propellant systems were available to perform maneuvers at Saturn, but the bulk of the steering was accomplished by gently nudging the spacecraft towards various moons. Using minuscule adjustments in position, Cassini used a succession of gravity assists to change its orbit, allowing it to conserve its fuel and last more than three times its initial mission specifications.

But even with careful management, the fuel reserves would eventually be exhausted. Rather than leave an uncontrollable spacecraft in orbit and potentially contaminate one of the nearby moons biologically, it was decided that Cassini would end its mission by performing a risky series of 22 dives into Saturn’s rings, taking the spacecraft closer to the planet than it had ever been. On its final orbit, Cassini plunged into Saturn’s atmosphere, taking one last series of atmospheric measurements before becoming a part of the planet it had studied since 2004.

The spacecraft’s first major achievement upon reaching Saturn was the successful landing of the Huygens probe onto Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, the only soft landing ever conducted beyond the inner Solar System. The data provided by Huygens provided humanity’s first glimpse into a world shrouded by a dense nitrogen, methane and hydrogen atmosphere.

Titan was also studied extensively in 127 targeted encounters by Cassini, its infrared cameras and radar capable of piercing the thick clouds encircling the moon. The portrait that emerged was incredibly rich: Titan was revealed as the only body in the solar system supporting surface liquid, with active streams, rivers, and lakes punctuating the landscape, some of which have changed over the duration of the mission.

Cassini also discovered geyser-like plumes jetting from the moon Enceladus. Its dust analyzer found these plumes produced salt crystals with an “ocean-like” composition, suggesting a water origin. The last close flyby, in 2015, was targeted to pass directly through a plume, the risky maneuver that found molecular hydrogen, further evidence of a subsurface ocean with hydrothermal vents potentially capable of supporting life.

The moon Iapetus, known for centuries to have a bright side and a dark side, was imaged in great detail by Cassini. Images showed even the smallest craters puncturing the dark hemisphere, revealing underlying bright ice. Together with Earth-based observations, a consistent picture emerged of Iapetus accumulating spots of dark debris on its leading hemisphere billions of years ago, leading to a feedback mechanism where this darker area warmed and sublimated underlying ice, which accumulated in the now brilliant areas elsewhere on the moon.

Saturn’s rings, previously studied by the Pioneer and Voyager flybys, proved to have dynamics even richer than expected when imaged constantly over many years. Cassini discovered complex waves rippling through the ring systems and found new shepherding moons responsible for them. The “gap” in Saturn’s rings named after Cassini’s namesake was found to be littered with mile-sized boulders. A concentration of material in Saturn’s A ring, which may birth a new moon, was discovered in 2014, and final images of this region were recorded in Cassini’s last days.

Cassini even performed myriad experiments on its way to Saturn. It carried out studies of Venus, Earth, the Moon, asteroid 2685 Masursky and Jupiter. When Earth and Cassini were on opposite sides of the Sun, radio waves sent between mission control and the spacecraft were used to test Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity by measuring the effect of the Sun’s gravity. Cassini’s measurements agreed with general relativity to one part in 51,000.

Even with the vast amounts of data collected by Cassini, many questions remain unanswered about Saturn and many new ones were raised by Cassini itself. The elementary length of a “day” at Saturn, based on rotation of its core, remains inexact. And the age and exact mass of the rings remains undetermined.

The technical challenges posed by an extended mission to Saturn needed 15 years of pre-launch planning and the combined resources of NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency, 17 countries and thousands of scientific personnel to solve. Scientists at NASA who have spent their entire working lives on the mission—the initial work began in 1982—were visibly emotional on the final day of what one called “the perfect spacecraft.”

Cassini required mastery of technologies built over many decades to produce electrical power from radioactively-heated thermionic generators, to operate autonomously because of the two-hour delays in round-trip radio communications, to allow recovery, far beyond the reach of direct human intervention, from unexpected spacecraft anomalies, all the while serving as a stable platform from which its suite of complex scientific instruments could be pointed and the data collected relayed back to Earth.

The Huygens lander represented a different set of challenges, not only to survive its high-speed deceleration to a soft landing on Titan, but to do so supported primarily by measurements made by Cassini itself, which had the additional duty of storing and relaying Huygens’ weak signal to Earth.

Despite Cassini’s success, no other major missions to the outer Solar System are being planned, nor are simpler missions to Saturn under active development. Only one other mission with comparable budget, the Mars rover Curiosity, has been launched in the last two decades. Cassini represents the last echoes of an epoch in which flagship-class missions of exploration beyond Mars were funded and launched.

And yet the technology available to enable such missions has vastly improved since Cassini was constructed. Moreover, the spacecraft has shown us just how much there is still to be learned in our stellar neighborhood. Mission concepts for exploration of the ice and potentially even the oceans lying under the surfaces of Saturn’s Enceladus and Jupiter’s Europa exist. They await an epoch in which the scientific aspirations of humankind can be fully given the material resources required to realize them.

Bomb attack on London Underground sets stage for further state repression

Steve James

The explosion of a suspected homemade bomb on a packed Underground commuter train in southwest London Friday morning has become the occasion for a massive police and intelligence operation.

Before anything about the origins of the attack aboard a train at Parsons Green station had officially been made public, the government called a meeting of its COBRA emergency committee. The meeting was convened in the afternoon amid speculation that the UK’s terrorism threat level could be raised from “severe” to “critical”—the highest level. Late Friday evening, Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May announced in a televised statement that the threat level was being raised to critical for an undefined period. 

She stated, “For this period, military personnel will replace police officers on guard duties at certain protected sites that are not accessible to the public,” adding, “The public will see more armed police on the transport network and on our streets…” Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said this would free up 1,000 armed police officers for use on the streets.

Earlier, May seized the opportunity to push for more surveillance powers, declaring, “[W]e are looking very carefully at the powers that our police and security service have to make sure they have the powers they need,” while “working with the Internet companies.”

She also announced a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron “to talk about what more we can be doing to ensure that we deal with the terrorist propaganda, with the extremist propaganda, with the hatred that is put out across the Internet.”

During the evening, Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack via its news agency. 

The rush hour attack appears to have been deliberate and indiscriminate. Passengers close by reported hearing a loud bang and seeing a “wall of flame” coming down the train. A number of people suffered burns, while others were injured in the panicked rush that followed the explosion, as commuters scrambled to exit the station.

The London Ambulance Service reported that 29 people were taken to hospital, mostly with flash burns. As of early Friday evening, 21 were still receiving treatment at Imperial, Chelsea and Westminster, and St George’s hospitals.

One passenger spoke of a seeing a burning “white builder’s bucket” in a supermarket bag, with “a lot of wires hanging out of it.” Images and videos circulating on social media appeared to confirm this.

The Daily Mail and other sources said the wires appeared to be fairy lights, which have been used in homemade explosive devices in the past. It appears that the “bucket bomb” device did not explode as intended. Later reports stated the device had a timer of some sort, and a circuit board was recovered from the scene.

Another eyewitness heard a “large bang on the other side of the tube train,” then a “really hot, intense fireball” flew above his head, singeing his hair. He saw people with facial burns.

Another told the Guardian: “Suddenly there was panic, lots of people shouting, screaming, lots of screaming.” He continued, “I saw crying women, there was lots of shouting and screaming, there was a bit of a crush on the stairs going down to the streets. Some people got pushed over and trampled on.”

A woman, Emma Stevie, who was on the train when the explosion happened, described being caught in a “human stampede” as people tried to escape from the train. “I wedged myself in next to a railing, I put myself in the fetal position. There was a pregnant woman underneath me, and I was trying really hard not to crush her. I saw a poor little boy with a smashed-in head and other injuries. It was horrible.”

Transport services were badly disrupted. Train service on the District Line, which crosses the entire width of London, was suspended between Wimbledon and Edgware Road stations. The entire line was subsequently shut down. Roads around Parsons Green station were closed, and bus routes terminated.

Police immediately launched a major operation with a huge manhunt. The incident, initially handled by the British Transport Police, was handed over to the Metropolitan Police’s SO15 anti-terror unit and declared to be terrorist-related. Police, including heavily armed and protected Counter Terrorist Specialist Firearms Officers, were deployed on the streets, a cordon was thrown up around the area, and houses and flats near the station were evacuated by the police. Helicopters circled overhead.

Shortly before midday, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley announced that “hundreds of detectives” were “involved looking at CCTV, forensics work and speaking to witnesses.” Rowley reported that the security service MI5 and the GCHQ spy network were “bringing their intelligence expertise to bear on the case.”

The Guardian reported Friday evening that the police have obtained CCTV images that capture the bomber as he boarded the train with the bomb.

As with all such outrages, there is no reason to assume that the attack comes as a surprise to the British intelligence agencies.

An indication that the security services know more about whoever carried out the attack than they are letting on came in the form of a tweet put out by US President Donald Trump, who called the perpetrators “sick and demented people who were in the sights of Scotland Yard. Must be proactive!”

Asked about Trump’s tweet, Prime Minister May rebuked the US president, saying, “I never think it’s helpful for anybody to speculate on what is an ongoing investigation.” The Metropolitan Police described Trump’s comment as “pure speculation.”

The truth is that over the past decade, most terror attacks in Britain and Europe have been carried out by individuals, often radicalised Islamists, who were known to the state, had been monitored for years, and whose associations were of direct use to the major powers in their neo-colonial wars in Africa and the Middle East.

Similar statements were made by May and the British police after the May 22 Manchester Arena suicide bombing attack in which 22 people died. This was in response to US intelligences sources revealing, within hours, the identity of the bomber, Salman Abedi, and the fact that he was well known to British intelligence.

It is now established fact that that Abedi did not act alone, but was part of wider network that had been monitored and allowed to operate by British intelligence for years.

Similarly, the June 3 attack on London Bridge and Borough Market, which killed eight people and injured 48, was perpetrated by three individuals all of whom were well known to the intelligence services and police.

This is the fourth time that the threat level has been placed at "critical" in the past 11 years. The last occasion was following Manchester attack, amid official warnings that another assault was “imminent.” Nearly 1,000 armed troops were mobilised and put onto the streets, mainly in London, to reinforce counterterrorism officers.

The June deployment was in line with Operation Temperer, a covert plan devised by David Cameron’s Conservative government, when May was home secretary.

Temperer followed a series of terror attacks in France by known intelligence assets and informers in 2015. These were seized on by the French state to implement Operation Sentinelle, which deployed 10,000 troops and imposed emergency powers allowing indiscriminate searches and arrests without judicial consent and increased surveillance. Presented as anti-terror measures, the emergency powers are still in effect two years later, to be used against social opposition in the working class.

Temperer was “accidentally” made public when minutes associated with it were uploaded to the National Police Chiefs’ Council website earlier this year. The minutes revealed plans for up to 5,100 troops to be placed on the streets to “augment armed police officers engaged in protective security duties.”

The Daily Mail noted that Temperer could be triggered by the COBRA committee following terrorist attacks, and that the military top brass recognised that the “Army played an important part in national resilience and supported the work going forward.”

“National resilience” could mean almost anything, and makes clear that Temperer is in place to back up the police with the army as and when required. Temperer was kept secret at the time because, according to the Daily Telegraph, then-Prime Minister David Cameron was concerned that comparisons would be made with British Army operations in Northern Ireland during the “Troubles,” the decades-long dirty war against Irish republicans.