Why Are Police In The USA So Terrified?

Robert J. Burrowes

In a recent incident in the United States, yet another unarmed man was shot dead by police after opening his front door in response to their knock. The police were going to serve an arrest warrant on a domestic violence suspect – the man’s neighbour – but went to the wrong address. See ‘Police kill innocent man while serving warrant at wrong address’.

For those who follow news in the United States, the routine killing of innocent civilians by the police has become a national crisis despite concerted attempts by political and legal authorities and the corporate media to obscure what is happening. See ‘Killed by Police’ and ‘The Counted: People killed by police in the US’.

So far this year, US police have killed 1,044 people. In contrast, from 1990 to 2016, police in England and Wales killed just 62 people. See ‘Fatal police shootings’.

Of course, these murders by the police are just the tip of the iceberg of police violence as police continue to demonstrate that the freedoms ‘guaranteed’ by the Fourth Amendment have been eviscerated. See ‘What Country Is This? Forced Blood Draws, Cavity Searches and Colonoscopies’.

So why are the police so violent? you might ask. Well, several scholars have offered answers to this question and you can read a little about what they say in these articles reviewing recent books on the subject. See ‘The Fraternal Order of Police Must Go’ and ‘Our Ever-Deadlier Police State’.

While there is much in these works with which I agree – such as the racism in US policing and the corruption of the legal system which is used to violently manage oppressed peoples in the name of ‘justice’ while leaving the individuals, banks and corporations on Wall Street unaccountable for their endless, ongoing and grotesque crimes against society, the economy and the environment – I would like to pose a deeper question: Why are police in the USA so terrified? This is the important question because only people who are terrified resort to violence, even in the context of policing. Let me explain why this is the case and how it has occurred in the police context in the USA.

Violence does not arise ‘out of nowhere’. And, sadly, its origin can be traced to what is euphemistically called the ‘socialization’ of children but which is more accurately labeled ‘terrorization’. You might think that this sounds extreme but if you spend some time considering the phenomenal violence – ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ – that we adults inflict on children during the ordinary course of the day – see ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’– while deluding ourselves that we are preparing them to become just, decent and powerful citizens, then you might be willing to reconsider your concept of what it means to nurture children. Tragically, we are so far from any meaningful understanding of this notion, that it is not even possible to generate a widespread social discussion about how we might go about it.

So, having terrorized children into submission so that they unthinkingly and passively accept their preordained role in life – to act as a cog in a giant and destructive enterprise which they are terrorized into not questioning and over which they have no control – each of them takes their place in the global ‘economy’ wherever they can find a set of tasks that feels least painful. The idea of seeking their true path in order to search out their own unique destiny never even occurs to most of them and so they lead ‘shadow lives’ endlessly suppressing their awareness of the life that might have been.

Some of these individuals end up as recruits at a police training facility, where they are further terrorized into believing an elite-sponsored ideology that precludes genuine appreciation of the diversity of people in the community they will later police (that is, terrorize) in the name of ‘law and order’. After all, elite social control is more readily maintained when people, including the police, live in fear.

Police training further terrorizes the individuals involved and militarizes policing by encouraging recruits ‘to adopt a “warrior” mentality and think of the people they are supposed to serve as enemies’; the equipment they use, such as battering rams, flashbang grenades and Armoured Personnel Carriers, evoke a sense of war. See ‘War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing’.

But it doesn’t end with terrorization during childhood and then police training. Police practice functions within a long-standing cultural framework which has both wider social dimensions and narrower, localized ones. And this cultural framework has been changing, more quickly in recent years too. Unfortunately, more than ever before, this framework is increasingly driven by fear and older, delusional social expectations that police are there to maintain public safety or defend the community from criminal violence have given way to militarized assumptions, language and procedures that regard virtually everyone (and certainly indigenous people and people of color) as both dangerous and guilty until proven otherwise and treat the family home and car as targets to be ‘neutralized’ with military-style tactics and weapons. And this trend has been accelerated under Donald Trump. See ‘Trump to lift military gear ban for local police’.

By triggering fear and using military-style tactics and weapons, however, the very essence of the relationship between police and civilians is more rapidly, completely and detrimentally transformed in accord with elite interests. It equates law-enforcement with counter-terrorism and community safety with social control.

Fundamentally, of course, this plays its part in ensuring minimal effective resistance to the broader elite agenda to secure militarized control of the world’s populations and resources for elite benefit.

This transformation in the relationship between police and civilians has been accelerated by training US police in the use of military tactics that the Israeli military employs against the occupied Palestinians. See ‘Israel trains US law-enforcement in counter-terrorism’.

But consider the implications of this.

As Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, has noted in discussing this phenomenon: US police are learning paramilitary and counterinsurgency tactics from the Israeli military, border patrol and intelligence services, which enforce military law.

‘If American police and sheriffs consider they’re in occupation of neighborhoods like Ferguson and East Harlem, this training is extremely appropriate – they’re learning how to suppress a people, deny their rights and use force to hold down a subject population’. See ‘US Police Get Antiterror Training In Israel’.

Moreover, the most tangible evidence that the militarized training is having an impact on US policing is that both Israel and the US are using identical equipment against demonstrators, according to a 2013 report by the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem and photographs of such equipment taken at three demonstrations in the USA. ‘Tear gas grenades, “triple chaser” gas canisters and stun grenades made by the American companies Combined Systems Inc. and Defense Technology Corp. were used in all three U.S. incidents, as well as by Israeli security forces and military units.’ See ‘US Police Get Antiterror Training In Israel’.

Given the sheer terror that drives Israeli military policy towards occupied and militarily undefended Palestine, it is little wonder that this fear is transmitted as part of any training of US police. All knowledge and technology is embedded with emotion, and fear is utterly pervasive in any military activity. Especially when it is directed in pursuit of unjust ends.

So what can we do?

If you are interested in working to reduce police fear and violence, you will get plenty of ideas in the document ‘A Toolkit for Promoting Justice In Policing’ which is summarized here: ‘15 Things Your City Can Do Right Now to End Police Brutality’.

If you want to organize a nonviolent action while reducing police fear to minimize the risk of police violence, there is a comprehensive list of guidelines here: ‘Nonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression’.

If you want to work towards ending the underlying fear that drives police (and other) violence, consider making ‘My Promise to Children’. In essence, if you want powerful individuals who are capable of resisting elite social control, including that implemented through police violence, then don’t expect children terrorized into obedience by parents, teachers and religious figures to later magically have this power.

And if you are inclined to resist violence in other contexts, consider participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’, signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ and/or using the strategic framework explained in Nonviolent Campaign Strategy for your peace, environmental or social justice campaign.

Why are the police so terrified? Essentially because they were terrorized as children and then terrorized during police training to violently defend elite interests against the rest of us. Elite control depends on us being too terrified to defend ourselves against their violence.

If humans are to survive this elite-driven onslaught, we need people courageous enough to resist police violence and other elite-driven violence strategically. Can we count on you?

Hate Crimes — Especially Against Muslims — Went Up In 2016: FBI

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Incidents of hate crimes, particularly against African-Americans, Jews and Muslims, went up to 6,121 during 2016, seeing an increase of 4.6 percent compared to the previous year, according to data released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Monday (Nov. 13).

A hate crime is defined by the FBI as a “criminal offence against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity”.

According to the FBI report, Jews and Muslims were the two most common targets of religiously-motivated hate crimes. There were increases in reported hate crimes across the board compared to 2015. Anti-Muslim hate crimes rose by nearly 20 percent, anti-white by 17 percent, anti-Latino by 15 percent, and anti-Jewish by 3 percent.

In its report, the FBI notes: “In 2016, the nation’s law enforcement agencies reported that there were 7,615 victims of hate crimes.” The data also show that, “Of the 1,584 victims of anti-religious hate crimes” 24.5 percent were victims of anti-Islamic (Muslim) bias.

“We have all witnessed the anger and prejudice that characterized last year’s election season, and that is growing nationwide in the current political environment,” said CAIR National Department to Monitor and Combat Islamophobia Director Corey Saylor.”To reverse this disturbing trend toward increased hatred and societal division, we must stand up to bigotry and the targeting of minority groups.”

CAIR’s own preliminary data, derived from different sources than the FBI, reveals that so far, anti-Islam prejudice incidents are up 9 percent in the first three quarters of 2016 over the previous year. So far this year, the organization has recorded 195 anti-Islam hate crimes.

Although the FBI report is the most comprehensive look at the nation’s hate crimes released every year, the report is known to be woefully inadequate — because it may undercount the number by the hundreds of thousands, based on other federal surveys, VOX said adding:

“But the report gives a glimpse at the numbers in a year in which concerns about hate crimes skyrocketed due to President Donald Trump’s campaign and election. Research shows that support for Trump was driven largely by racial resentment, and Trump played into that resentment with his own racist rhetoric. As a result, Trump’s election led to widespread fears that there would be an emboldening of racist acts across America. (Indeed, some attendees at the violent protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August — made up of white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and Ku Klux Klan members — cited Trump a s partial inspiration for the demonstration.)”

In the month after Trump was elected, there were more than 860 reports of hate attacks to the Southern Poverty Law Center — including school teachers making Islamophobic comments, students telling Latino peers that Trump would deport them, and outright physical violence that was seemingly motivated by racism, VOX pointed out.

There have also been reports of mosques being burned, violent attacks against Indians, and a drive-by shooting at the Tulsa, Oklahoma, headquarters for the LGBTQ organization Oklahomans for Equality. And then there were the white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, in which a Nazi sympathizer allegedly killed a woman after he drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters. Not all of these attacks have been verified as acts motivated by bigotry, but they’re certainly a cause for alarm.

Tellingly, On Saturday, Nov 11, A man wielding a hammer damaged property at two mosques in Sunset Park and Bay Ridge over the weekend, the New York Police Department said. He smashed the windows and broke a security camera at the Beit El-Maqdis Islamic Center in Sunset Park. Then, about 30 minutes later, he appeared at the Fatih Camii Mosque, according to police. “Apparently that individual used a hammer to smash a mail box and a door handle,” an NYPD spokesman told Patch. The NYPD is investigating the incidents as a hate crime.

On November 4, vandals put up hateful and anti-Semitic posters on Temple Or Rishon Jewish synagogue in Orangevale, California walls. The Department of Homeland Security is offering tens of thousands of dollars to religious institutions to help safeguard their houses of worship. Temple Or Rishon is one of the recipients of this nationwide grant program.

After Yes vote for same-sex marriage, Australian government moves to entrench discrimination

Mike Head 

Far from guaranteeing the basic democratic right of marriage equality, the Australian government’s postal survey on gay marriage has been, as intended, an exercise in political diversion and division.

The 61.6 percent to 38.4 percent yes vote in the $122 million ballot confirmed what had already been shown by scientifically-conducted opinion polls for at least a decade: strong majority support for the right of all couples, regardless of gender, to legally marry if they so wish.

Every state and territory and the overwhelming majority of electorates recorded “yes” votes, with a 79.5 percent participation rate, demonstrating a groundswell of support for an elementary democratic right that should have been recognised long ago.

The most immediate result of the survey, however, will not be legislation to provide genuine equality for same-sex couples, but laws that entrench discrimination against homosexuals under the fraudulent banners of “free speech” and “religious freedom.”

The Liberal-National Coalition government’s proposed laws, which are being backed by Labor, the Greens and the rest of the political establishment, will institutionalise the treatment of same sex couples as second-class citizens.

The “survey” was foisted on the population by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to satisfy the demands of “conservative” agitators in the Coalition and other extreme right-wing elements. It was the brainchild of elements, such as former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton and Australian Conservatives leader Senator Cory Bernardi, who saw it as a platform to try to create a social base for a right-wing movement.

At their behest, the government is now pushing through the Senate laws that would allow not just ministers of religion, but all civil marriage celebrants to refuse to marry couples on the grounds of sex, sexuality or family status. Religious educational institutions will be permitted to discriminate on the basis of sexuality in regard to employment. The government is also moving to exempt “people of faith” from existing anti-discrimination laws if they continue to denounce and vilify same-sex marriage.

For now, the most right-wing layers in the government have dropped their demands for even further discrimination. These include allowing businesses—including photographers, caterers and venue-hirers—to refuse to service same-sex weddings. But Abbott, Bernardi and others will step up their agitation for such measures to be imposed via separate legislation.

The genuine democratic principle of freedom of religion means the right to practice any form of worship. But for the Coalition’s right-wing constituency, it means the right of religious zealots to impose their doctrines on society.

For all the proclamations of a “democratic triumph,” the ballot has set a reactionary precedent for plebiscites on fundamental legal and democratic rights. The prospect now exists of right-wing agitation for “surveys” on issues ranging from proscribing Muslim women from wearing the burqa, to banning immigration to Australia by Muslims altogether.

At the same time, in the name of “equality,” the protracted plebiscite campaign was used to divert attention from growing social inequality and the other pressing economic and political issues facing the working class—not least the government’s commitment, backed by the Labor Party, to join any US-led war against North Korea.

Even as the campaign was underway, the government and the parliament were being wracked by mounting numbers of MPs being disqualified on the reactionary basis that they held dual citizenship and therefore lacked “undivided loyalty” to the Australian nation-state, which the High Court insisted was essential in times of war.

Yesterday, on the same day the survey result was released, two telling indicators of social polarisation were published. First, the latest official data showed that real wages declined on average in the September quarter, deepening a four-year fall.

This is the result of a relentless assault on the jobs, wages and conditions of the working class, spearheaded by the same corporate chiefs, such as Qantas CEO Alan Joyce, who are being promoted by the media as heroes of the marriage survey. Led by Joyce, Qantas alone has eliminated 8,000 jobs in the past five years.

Secondly, Credit Suisse, a large private bank, reported a 29 percent rise over the past year in the number of “ultra-high net worth individuals” in Australia whose net assets exceed $64 million. Among these nearly 3,000 members of the wealthy elite are the bankers and business leaders who yesterday hailed the ballot outcome as good for their companies.

From the outset, as the Socialist Equality Party warned, the postal ballot was an operation to stymie genuine marriage equality, stave off the collapse of the Liberal-National Coalition and lay the basis for an extreme right-wing movement seeking to divert and exploit the mounting working-class discontent and disaffection produced by the corporate offensive.

Significantly, the highest “yes” votes were recorded in the wealthiest electorates, where the results were above, or close to 80 percent. The lowest yes vote—and also the smallest participation rate—was in some of the poorest working-class areas of Sydney and Melbourne. In the western Sydney seat of Blaxland, covering Bankstown, a quarter of voters declined to mail in their questionnaire and the “no” vote was 73.9 percent.

Attempts are being made in the media to depict this pattern as the result of innate bigotry or backwardness in the working class and immigrant communities. This is a libel.

The abstentions and no votes reflect an underlying hostility toward the political, corporate and media elite. These areas have been devastated by decades of job destruction, declining incomes and soaring living costs. In the latest attack, Ford recently shut down its assembly plant at Broadmeadows in the heart of the Calwell electorate, in northern Melbourne, where the no vote was 56.8 percent.

Right-wing elements, including Christian and Islamic fundamentalists, targeted these areas. They agitated for a “no” vote on the basis that the ballot represented a broader assault by the “establishment” on free speech, religious practices and parents’ ability to provide their children with a religious-based education. The “no” propaganda featured false claims that religious people would be persecuted and children would be forced to perform homosexual role-playing at school.

Figures such as Bernardi and Abbott, emulating Donald Trump and right-wing movements in Europe, are propagating sectarianism and xenophobia as a means of dividing the working class and channeling mounting social antagonisms in nationalist directions. They always regarded the marriage plebiscite as part of a wider political campaign.

In a column published in Rupert Murdoch’s Australian on Tuesday, the day before the ballot result was announced, Abbott declared: “[D]efeat could turn out to be a blessing in disguise if it forces the defenders of Western civilisation out of their long complacency.”

Abbott lauded “the ability of the No case to mobilise more than 5,000 volunteer doorknockers and phone canvassers and to raise more than $6 million from 20,000-plus individual donors.” He insisted: “The challenge will be to keep the faith and stay the course for the even more important struggles ahead.”

The greatest fear of these circles, and the ruling class as a whole, is the emergence of a movement of the working class, across ethnic and religious lines, openly fighting to end the capitalist profit system and national-state divisions—the source of war, exploitation and all forms of oppression.

As the SEP explained in its October 19 statement, which correctly advocated a boycott of the plebiscite as a travesty of democratic rights: “The realisation of genuine social and democratic equality can only be carried out by the international working class, unified in a world movement on the basis of the perspective of socialist internationalism.”

The protracted decline of Italy’s Democratic Party

Marianne Arens 

With the impending parliamentary elections in Italy, which must take place in May 2018 at the latest, the Democratic Party (PD), which under Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni still heads the government in Rome, confronts a similar fate as other Social Democratic parties in Europe: they are losing voters, breaking apart and sinking into insignificance.

In the regional election that took place in Sicily on November 5, the PD candidate for regional president, Fabrizio Micari, received only 19 percent of the vote, while the PD as a party received just 13 percent. This was far behind an alliance of right-wing and fascist parties, which won the election with just under 40 percent of the vote, and Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement, which received 35 percent.

The PD won the election in Sicily five years ago. But its regional president, Rosario Crocetta, did not solve any of the burning social problems. On the contrary, he imposed a harsh austerity programme that left the infrastructure—road construction, schools, garbage collection, etc.—even more neglected. Although he was elected with much premature praise as being a fighter against the mafia, he also disappointed in this regard and even attracted the attention of the state attorney.

The social situation in Sicily is catastrophic. Many of Italy’s problems find their most concentrated expression here. For example, since the closure of the Fiat works on the island, young people have had hardly any job prospects. Over 70,000 young people under the age of 30 have left Sicily in the last year.

The vacuum left by the politics of the PD has been exploited by right-wing forces. While more than half of all voters stayed at home, and turnout reached a historic low of 46.5 percent, the 81-year-old ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is not allowed to hold political office himself until 2019 due to accounting fraud and judicial corruption, celebrated something of a comeback. He organized a right-wing alliance between his own Forza Italia, Lega Nord and the fascist party Fratelli d’Italia and even acted as a campaigner. The banker Sebastiano (“Nello”) Musumeci, who comes from the post-fascist Alleanza Nazionale and calls himself a “decent fascist,” was elected Regional President.

The election in Sicily reflects the situation throughout the country. Here too the Democratic Party is in free fall.

Less than a year ago, on December 4, 2016, then Prime Minister Matteo Renzi lost the referendum on constitutional reform. He resigned, leaving the affairs of state to his close confidant Paolo Gentiloni, but hoped for a comeback in April when he was elected chairman of the PD.

The municipal elections in June then revealed a similar picture to that in Sicily: with an extremely low turnout, the government camp collapsed. The PD lost numerous municipalities to the Lega Nord or the Five Star Movement.

In parallel with this, the PD has eroded in parliament. In February, a group of PD parliamentary deputies joined Nichi Vendola’s newly formed party Sinistra Italiana. Shortly thereafter, former party leader Pierluigi Bersani and other parliamentarians left the PD and founded the Movimento Democratico e Progressista (Mdp). They were followed by Giuseppe Pisapia with the newly founded “Insieme” (Together). And most recently, Pietro Grasso, the party’s prominent senate president, declared his resignation from their parliamentary group on October 26. In Sicily, a section of the renegades did not support the PD candidate, but the slate of Claudio Fava, the son of a mafia victim, which contributed to the poor result.

According to current opinion polls, the PD has hardly any chance of heading the next government. With just under 30 percent support, the alliance of parties headed by the PD stands well behind Berlusconi’s right-wing alliance (36 percent) and just ahead of the Five Star Movement (28 percent).

The right will also benefit from the new election law, called the “Rosatellum,” which the PD backed in October, along with the right-wing. The mixture of first-past-the-post and proportional representation favours the formation of electoral alliances and should actually isolate the Five Star Movement, which has refused to join any alliances so far. But now it is favouring the right-wing, who can form slates without first agreeing on a common programme.

The deeper reason for the demise of the PD is the anti-working-class policies it has been prosecuting for 25 years, which have completely discredited it in the working class. The traditional Italian party system imploded at the beginning of the 1990s in a huge corruption scandal. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the influential Communist Party (PCI) also dissolved itself. Its successor party, the PDS, then took on the task of stabilizing Italian capitalism.

While the right-wing governments under Silvio Berlusconi were busily lining their own pockets, the governments supported by or led by the PDS saw their task as bringing order to the public finances at the expense of the working class. The depression of wages and destruction of social rights and achievements bear their signature. In this, the PD was assisted by pseudo-left organizations such as Rifondazione Comunista, which even joined the government of former European Commission President Romano Prodi in 2006, thus sealing their own fate.

In these 25 years, the PD has moved further and further to the right and gradually absorbed into its ranks the remnants of the Christian Democrats, who, under Matteo Renzi and Paolo Gentiloni, finally took the lead.

The PD has systematically attacked the social and democratic rights of workers, and is in no way inferior to the right-wing extremists in terms of militarism and xenophobia. For example, Interior Minister Marco Minniti (PD) is responsible for a deal with the Libyan Coast Guard, which employs the most brutal means to prevent refugees crossing the Mediterranean to Italy.

Reactionary right-wing forces then moved into the political vacuum that this created. On the one hand, the Five Star Movement—which pretends to be an opponent of the establishment, but in key issues such as social and refugee policy, represents a right-wing, neoliberal and racist program—was able to profit from it. On the other hand, right-wing forces such as the Lega Nord (Northern League), which now calls itself just “Lega”, acts as a national party and follows the example of the French National Front, are gaining ground.

The Italian sociologist Ilvo Diamanti describes the decline of the PD as a “crisis of a mass party, which apparently has no answers to the needs of society today.” In this he hits the nail on the head. The parties which once called themselves “left-wing”, have abandoned any interest in the social issues facing the mass of the population. Instead, they represent the interests of capital and wealthy layers of the middle class.

The rise of right-wing and fascist forces poses a great danger. It can only be prevented by building a revolutionary socialist movement in the working class that is independent of the Social Democrats, the unions and their pseudo-left appendages.

German secret service interferes in negotiations over new government

Peter Schwarz 

Germany’s intelligence agency and representatives of the German army have interfered in the negotiations over the formation of the next federal government. They insist on increased military expenditure, a confrontational course towards Russia and ruthless measures against refugees.

On Tuesday, the President of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) Bruno Kahl gave a “keynote speech” at the Hanns Seidel Foundation in Munich. The foundation is affiliated to the Christian Social Union (CSU). In his speech Kahl warned in drastic terms of Russia’s “geo-political ambitions” and expressed doubts regarding Western Europe’s ability to adequately respond.

Kahl accused Russia of trying to “weaken the EU and push back the US, and in particular drive a wedge between the two.” The modernisation of Russian forces is “amazing” and “disturbing”, he said. Instead of being a “partner for European security”, the country is “more of a potential danger”. “Russia as a world political player is back and will remain an uncomfortable neighbour,” Kahl declared.

The intelligence chief doubted whether NATO and the West were sufficiently strong militarily “to counterbalance and deter these potential threats,” and “whether their own defence and armament capabilities were sufficient.”

Kahl also warned against China’s foreign policy. “The time of modesty is apparently over, as is the time of exercising consideration. China claims it will rank as a major foreign power by the year 2050,” he said. As an example of Chinese ambitions he cited a Chinese base in the Horn of Africa and the naval maneuvers carried out by China and Russia this summer in the Baltic Sea.

Kahl called the growing number of refugees an additional security risk. “Well over a billion people” would have a “rational reason” to leave their homeland. The number of migrants due to environmental problems will increase dramatically and reach hundreds of millions. The population of Africa has almost doubled since 1990 and it is questionable whether the campaign to combat the root causes of mass migration could “keep up with this dynamic at all.”

“Migratory pressure on Europe will increase. The question is whether European governments can maintain or create new control potential to influence this development,” he concluded.

The very fact that Kahl gave such a speech is extraordinary. Normally, the BND advises the federal government internally and does not intervene in public debates. The fact that the head of the BND went public a few days before the conclusion of exploratory talks on a “Jamaica” coalition (from the three parties’ colours—black, yellow and green, those of the Jamaican flag) composed of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Christian Social Union (CSU), Free Democratic Party and the Greens—and did so at a forum of the CSU, can only be considered as direct interference in the formation of a government.

Prior to Kahl, the chairman of the German Armed Forces Association André Wüstner had already made public demands for more military spending.

“I have so far followed the exploratory talks with horror, because defence policy and thus our Bundeswehr are apparently being ground down as a bargaining chip between other issues,” he told the German Press Agency. Security policy is being neglected not only by the Greens and the FDP, but also by the Union, he insisted. “Jamaica is playing with the future of the Bundeswehr.”

The blatant intervention by representatives of the intelligence services and the military in ongoing coalition negotiations must be taken as a warning. Based on the devastating role played by the German army (Reichswehr) and secret services in the downfall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Hitler, post-WWII Germany adhered to a strict principle of subordinating both the army and the intelligence services to civilian control—at least on paper. Not any longer.

The BND chief did not restrict his appeal to demands for increased military armament and more resources for the secret service. He also sought to influence future foreign policy. He speaks for those representatives of the German ruling class and security apparatus who, despite the current conflicts with Donald Trump, want to maintain close cooperation with the US and are skeptical about proposals to establish an independent European army, put forward by the French President Emmanuel Macron with the support in Germany of the SPD, the FDP, the Greens and sections of the CDU.

In his speech, the head of the BND emphasized that it was highly advantageous for Germany to have a power like the US on its side, and not on an opposing side. The United States was the only state that had troops in the three major geo-strategic fronts of world affairs—Europe, the Persian Gulf, and East Asia. “They have 10 aircraft carriers, which they can summon in a short time to international conflict zones.”

The 34,000 American soldiers still stationed in the Federal Republic showed “how close security policy between Berlin and Washington remains,” Kahl said. And it was only alongside the US that “Europe would be able in the next few years to form a credible counterweight to Russia on the eastern flank of Europe.”

Kahl’s speech received backing from leading media outlets. The Süddeutsche Zeitung went to press on Wednesday with the headline: “BND: Russia is ‘potential danger’.” The author of the lead article, Stefan Kornelius, reported at length on the BND leader’s speech and justified Kahl’s interference in the political process in a separate commentary under the title, “Is he allowed to do that?”

Kahl’s warning to Russia and his call to politicians to pay more attention to security is “an unusual role for a secret service chief,” writes Kornelius. But the BND boss was “no agitator,” he was “not craving recognition”. Rather, “the leading players in Germany’s security institutions” have noticed that “the seriousness and depth appropriate for Germany’s significance is missing in the discussion about protection and threats.”

Kornelius is one of those leading journalists who are closely involved in think tanks linking together the foreign policy and military establishment of Germany, Europe and the United States and whose aim is to influence public opinion accordingly. In 2014 Kornelius played a leading role in justifying the Washington and Berlin-sponsored coup in Ukraine. According to Wikipedia, he is currently a member of the Atlantic-Bridge, the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) and the advisory council of the Federal Academy for Security Policy (BAKS).

For its part the BND has both close historic and current ties with the US intelligence services. The espionage department “Foreign Armies East” of Hitler’s Wehrmacht led by Reinhard Gehlen, was taken over directly by the US after the war. This eventually became the BND, which was led by Gehlen until 1968, and remains closely linked to its American counterparts. Edward Snowden’s revelations showed that the BND and the American NSA work closely together to spy on millions of ordinary citizens.

Kahl paid tribute to this collaboration in his Munich speech. “As President of the Federal Intelligence Service, may I say that cooperation with the US intelligence services is indispensable to our effectivity,” he said.

Kahl was a surprise appointment as head of the BND in April 2016. He is a close confidant of former economics minister Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU), with whom he has worked closely since 1995. The Tagesspiegel reported that Kahl’s predecessor Gerhard Schindler, who only reached retirement age a year and a half later, had been replaced prematurely to prevent “politically motivated negotiations over the occupation of one of the most sensitive posts in Germany’s security architecture” after September’s federal election. Circles in and around the BND feared that a candidate of the Green party could possibly take over the leadership of the secret service.

Kahl has already made clear that the BND intends to intervene increasingly in political affairs. This month, the first 400 employees moved into the new BND headquarters in the center of Berlin. Another 4,000 will follow next year, while 1,200 will remain in the BND’s old headquarters in Pullach near Munich. The new building complex on a 10-hectare site on Berlin’s Chausseestrasse has cost a billion euros. It has 5,000 rooms and an elaborate, anti-surveillance technology.

Commenting on the move Kahl noted that it was a great advantage to be closer to the centre of political life. “We wanted to leave the dark walls and dark forest in Pullach and be more in the forefront.” The BND had no reason to hide—“apart from the operations we carry out”. He called for high levels of investment in security and increased training for young agents. A special study program “Master of Intelligence” is to be created. The restructuring, according to Kahl, will do the service a “great deal of good.”

Millions of workers in the US face a life of part-time, precarious employment

Jessica Goldstein

The Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly job report for October 2017 released on November 3 revealed that a staggering 4.8 million American workers are stuck working in part-time, precarious positions when they would prefer full time work, referred to officially as “involuntary part-time workers.”

Involuntary part-time workers often must piece together two or more jobs just to make ends meet. Often, these jobs are low wage and do not offer benefits, or if they do, the benefits they offer are out of reach financially for many workers. This type of life leaves many workers mentally and physically exhausted. Rushing from one job to the next, often outside of normal hours, leaves little time for family life, leisure, education, or even the ability to look for a better job.

Data from the BLS report shows that the total number of workers in this category decreased by 1.1 million over the past year, to 3.4 percent However, this is still a high number for an advanced country, and far higher than the pre-2008 crisis level of 2.9 percent. A report in the Chicago Tribune noted that the failure to return to pre-crisis levels “worries” some economists.

What mainly “worries” these economists is that the growing economic crisis in the US will further fuel opposition of masses of workers to the profit system based on the rule by the corporate oligarchs and the banks. Indeed, the reliance of the profit system on the labor of part-time, low-wage workers has created a situation in which, after ten years of so-called “economic recovery,” the US economy has not returned to its pre-2008 employment levels.

A report by Lonnie Golden, a senior research analyst on the Project for Middle Class Renewal at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, found that the trend of underemployment is more pronounced in some Midwestern areas, with Illinois having nearly doubled in its number of underemployed since 2008. Golden also remarked that 40 percent of all workers nationally, including those who work full-time, are feeling starved for enough work to make ends meet due to declining wages and the rising cost of living.

Three other revealing aspects from the BLS report point to the reality of US economic decline. First, the labor force participation rate, which is the number of workers who are working or actively seeking a job aged 16 years and older, dropped 0.4 percent to 62.7 percent from September to October. This is a very low number for an advanced economy like the US, and significantly lower than pre-2008 labor force participation rate of about 66 percent.

Second, the number of long-term unemployed, those unemployed for 27 weeks or more, dropped from the previous month by just 0.7%, accounting for 24.8% of the total unemployed, compared to the pre-2008 level of about 18 percent. However, the number of discouraged workers, that is workers who have given up looking for work, rose by 25.5 percent from September, a rise that offers a different perspective on the official unemployment rate of 4.1 percent.

Although the official unemployment rate has reportedly fallen to a 17-year low, the reality is that the shrinking of the labor force, the growth of long-term unemployment and the fall in wages and high level of involuntary part-time employment, points to an overall employment crisis in the US.

In October, the US added a total of 261,000 jobs, higher than the 150,000 benchmark required for the US economy to be considered “expanding.” The report admits, however, that much of this “growth” came from the adding of jobs lost temporarily during the month of September after Hurricanes Harvey and Irma that ripped through the states of Florida and Texas. Had the addition of these jobs not been counted in, real job growth numbers would likely show that the US economy is stagnant, or even shrinking.

The food and drinking places sector, which tends to rely more heavily on part-time and low-wage jobs, added a total of 89,000 jobs in the month of October, the most of any of the section of industry. But if one factors in the loss of approximately 98,000 jobs from this sector in September, mostly due to the hurricanes, it amounts to a net loss of 9,000 jobs.

Other industries that netted the highest amounts of job growth were business and professional services and manufacturing, with 50,000 and 24,000 jobs, respectively. Healthcare was third with 22,000 jobs, with the majority coming from the growth in low-wage ambulatory services that pay workers an average of $9.80-$16.57 per hour, according to the website payscale.com.

In manufacturing, corporations and unions have worked together to implement second and third tiers of workers, most notably in the auto industry, where older, higher-paid workers are laid off or pushed into retirement and replaced with “Temporary Part-Time” (TPT) workers who sometimes start working at less than half the standard wage rate and must often work for years before being able to move into full-time positions. The brutal conditions of exploitation faced by these workers was highlighted by the apparent suicide of Jacoby Hennings, a 21-year-old TPT autoworker at the Ford Woodhaven stamping plant south of Detroit.

Overall US wages fell by about $0.01 to an average of $26.53 per hour. With the rising cost of healthcare, transportation, food, and housing, this amounts to a deep pay cut for the majority of workers in the US. Most of the jobs added in to the economy were in low-wage sectors, such as food service and hospitality, and the growth of low-wage jobs within previously higher-paying sectors, such as the manufacturing industry.

Despite the declarations by President Trump that the economy is “roaring,” and previous statements Obama who declared that the US economy was doing “great” after the recession, the figures presented by the BLS give a very different picture. The stock market has soared while millions of American workers remain stuck in low-wage, precarious jobs that offer little chance for advancement.

Corporations rely on the growth of the precarious, part-time, “gig” economy to keep labor costs low in order to boost stock prices and to pay back their enormous debts to the banks and Wall Street.

Unions like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) promote campaigns to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour as an answer to the crisis. These campaigns do not challenge the profit system, and are aimed at keeping mass opposition from the working class at bay. They have achieved little to nothing, as evidenced by the fact that wages are actually falling and underemployment remains high. Furthermore, a wage of $15 per hour does not guarantee benefits or full-time employment, and is still far from an adequate amount and well below the average US wage rate. Such a raise would still allow corporations to remain highly profitable, and in reality would ensure that $15 per hour becomes the new maximum wage.

US rescue of ISIS in Raqqa exposed

Bill Van Auken 

An investigative report by the BBC titled “Raqqa's dirty secret” has confirmed earlier charges by Iran, Russia and the Syrian government that the Pentagon has colluded with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in the evacuation of ISIS fighters from cities and towns under US military siege.

The BBC story, based on interviews with some of those who organized the evacuation along with truck drivers who were brought in to transport the fighters and others who observed it, describes a four-mile-long convoy that included “50 trucks, 13 buses and more than 100 of the Islamic State group’s own vehicles. IS fighters, their faces covered, sat defiantly on top of some of the vehicles.”

In total, the convoy, which set out on October 12, transported some 4,000 people—ISIS fighters and their families—along with tons of arms, ammunition and explosives. The US military and its proxy ground force, the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces, assured that reporters and cameramen were kept out of Raqqa to prevent images of the long column of trucks, with armed ISIS fighters on top of them from being broadcast around the world.

The story has been largely ignored by the US media. It flies in the face of repeated statements by leading US officials vowing to “annihilate” ISIS to the last man in Iraq and Syria and debunks the greatest “fake news” story of the 21st century—the so-called US war on terror.

In the face of the evidence uncovered by the BBC, the Pentagon has been forced to acknowledge that the evacuation took place, while insisting that it was merely an innocent bystander.

“We didn’t want anyone to leave,” Col. Ryan Dillon, spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, told the news agency.

“But this goes to the heart of our strategy, ‘by, with and through’ local leaders on the ground. It comes down to Syrians – they are the ones fighting and dying, they get to make the decisions regarding operations,” he said.

This is patent nonsense.

The siege of Raqqa was organized by the US military and carried out by means of a merciless campaign of airstrikes and artillery bombardments conducted by US forces that left thousands of civilians dead and wounded and most of the city in rubble. The so-called SDF militia operates under US direction with American special operations troops embedded in its ranks.

The decision to transport armed ISIS fighters to safety elsewhere in Syria was made at the top levels of the US military and intelligence apparatus and for definite strategic reasons.

In terms of immediate objectives, Washington was eager to wind up the siege of Raqqa in order to mount a speedy offensive aimed at beating the Syrian army for control of strategically vital oil and gas fields in Syria’s eastern Deir Ezzor province. The SDF has since captured two of the largest oil fields, Al-Tanak and al-Umar.

More broadly, however, Washington has an important stake in seeing ISIS live to fight another day. The continued existence of the Islamist militia provides a pretext for the permanent occupation of Syria and Iraq in the name of fighting terrorism.

The US defense secretary Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis, gave direct expression to these objectives in a Pentagon briefing Monday, declaring that the US military would remain in Syria combatting ISIS “as long as they want to fight.”

He went on to indicate that the US intended to continue its illegal military occupation of the country until there is a political settlement ending the war that the CIA itself orchestrated to effect regime change in Syria over five years ago.

“We’re not just going to walk away right now before the Geneva process has traction,” he said, referring to the long-stalled talks between the government of President Bashar al-Assad and the so-called rebels backed by the CIA, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf oil sheikdoms.

ISIS itself emerged as a major force in the region thanks to the US war for regime change, fattening off of the billions of dollars’ worth of arms and aid funneled into Syria by the CIA and Washington’s regional allies. It continued to enjoy this support until it turned eastward into Iraq, routing the US-trained Iraqi security forces in Mosul and across much of Iraq in 2014.

In the wake of the supposed defeat of ISIS and retaking of its “capital” of Raqqa, these same forces can again be rebranded as anti-Assad “rebels” and utilized in the furtherance of US imperialism’s continuing objectives of securing regime change in Syria, preparing for military confrontation with Iran and Russia and asserting US hegemony in the Middle East by means of armed force.

Military stage coup in Zimbabwe

Chris Marsden

President Robert Mugabe is under house arrest after the military took control of Zimbabwe in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Zimbabwe’s army staged the coup in response to President Robert Mugabe’s November 6 sacking of his former vice president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, to pave the way for his wife Grace Mugabe to succeed him.

Mnangagwa, who has spent much of his life as Mugabe’s enforcer, was involved in the independence struggle and is close to the military—still the most powerful faction of Zimbabwe’s ruling elite. Grace Mugabe has sought to cultivate the support of a younger generation of capitalists around an undeclared faction known as G40, after a constitutional principle allowing anyone over the age of 40 to stand for president.

Most of the leaders of G40, apart from Grace Mugabe who is reportedly in Namibia, have been arrested, including higher education minister Jonathan Moyo‚ local government minister Saviour Kasukuwere and, most influential, finance minister Ignatius Chombo.

After earlier reports of sporadic gunfire in the wealthier suburbs of the capital, Harare, the military took control of the state television channel. Major General SB Moyo issued a statement that the army would “target criminals” around Mugabe involved in sacking Mnangagwa.

The coup is an attempt to decisively resolve the faction fighting within the ruling ZANU-PF, which has seen Mugabe demote numerous figures close to the military before he moved against Mnangagwa, his former chief of security, which finally crystalised the coup plot.

The military takeover comes two days after the head of the army, General Constantino Chiwenga, told a news conference, “The current purging which is clearly targeting members of the party with a liberation background must stop forthwith… We must remind those behind the current treacherous shenanigans that when it comes to matters of protecting our revolution, the military will not hesitate to step in.”

Unnamed spokesmen for the opposition parties, led by the pro-Western Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), were quoted in the Guardian stating that the army was “reaching out to discuss the formation of a transitional government after Mugabe steps down. Negotiations had been ongoing for several months with ‘certain people within the army’, a second senior opposition official said.”

The plan reportedly involves Mugabe resigning to be replaced by Mnangagwa, with opposition leaders taking positions as vice president and prime minister. This could likely take place only after a period of "transition," involving Mugabe's cooperation in return for securing his own future and that of his family.

The scale of pre-planning domestically is confirmed by the reaction of other key political forces to the coup.

Chris Mutsvangwa, the leader of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association, which has been in declared opposition to Mugabe since 2016, issued a statement praising the military for its “bloodless correction of gross abuse of power” that would return Zimbabwe to “genuine democracy”.

Nelson Chamisa, deputy head of the MDC, called for “peace, constitutionalism, democratisation, the rule of law and the sanctity of human life,” while Tendai Biti, Zimbabwe’s former minister of finance called for the creation of “a traditional authority” that was “inclusive with the opposition and the ruling party” and also involved the African Union and the United Nations.

The internal constellation of forces reflects the backing of key international players in Zimbabwe.

The major imperialist powers, led by the United States and the former colonial ruler, Britain, have been working for Mugabe’s downfall for years—since he was forced to take a stand against IMF-dictated structural adjustment programmes in the 1990s that had threatened the economy with collapse.

With breathtaking cynicism, UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told parliament, “We cannot tell how developments in Zimbabwe will play out in the days ahead,” but “We will never forget the strong ties of history and friendship with that beautiful country; accurately described as the jewel of Africa.”

In reality, after bloody colonial rule and then sponsorship of the racist regime in Rhodesia, post-independence in 1980 the UK returned to the offensive throughout the 2000s by supporting crippling sanctions against Zimbabwe. By 2008, they had led to the second most severe episode of hyperinflation in recorded history, peaking at 500,000,000,000 percent.

The national currency was scrapped and replaced, while the dollar became the unofficial currency. More businesses failed and workers were driven back to the land recently compulsorily seized by Mugabe.

Support for Mugabe from the African National Congress government in South Africa was key to his survival. But the sanctions, including those placed on the sale of “blood diamonds”, also had the unintended consequence of leaving Zimbabwe wide open to Chinese investment and influence. China became Zimbabwe’s largest investor and trading partner, including taking over diamond mining from the military to bypass sanctions.

The plans for the coup were therefore formulated in direct cooperation with Pretoria and Beijing.

South African President Jacob Zuma issued a statement explaining that he had spoken to Mugabe, who was “fine” and called for a peaceful transition. More significantly, Mnangagwa fled to South Africa after Mugabe moved against him and flew back from there without difficulty yesterday.

Zuma issued a statement that he was sending “the minister of defence and military veterans, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula and the minister of state security, Adv Bongani Bongo, to Zimbabwe to meet Robert Mugabe and the Zimbabwean Defence Force.”

The last thing Zuma wants is turmoil in a neighbouring state, focusing on accusations of an unaccountable leadership betraying an independence struggle, at a time when bitter conflicts threaten to rend apart the ANC and the Tripartite Alliance. Moreover, there is a danger of radicalising an estimated 1-3 million Zimbabwean economic refugees in South Africa desperately seeking work.

As for China, Mugabe had recently taken steps that impacted negatively on its investors. Last year, his government decided to end all contracts involving Chinese companies in lucrative diamond fields. Legal challenges were taken out and China said it was reconsidering plans to fund multi-billion-dollar energy and infrastructure deals signed in 2014 and 2015. Mugabe stated that private companies had “robbed” Zimbabwe of its diamond wealth and he would nationalise mining. Zimbabwe was the eighth largest diamond producer in the world with 4.7 million carats in 2014, according to Kimberly Process.

Last week army head General Chiwenga made a visit to China, where he met Defence Minister Chang Wanquan on Friday to discuss renewed relations between the two countries. He was accompanied by other officers who met their counterparts at the People’s Liberation Army headquarters. The topic of discussion will have been this week’s coup.

Reports suggest some popular sympathy for the coup, fuelled in large measure by the desperate economic straits of the bulk of the population amid the naked self-enrichment in ruling circles that became synonymous with “Gucci Grace,” her extravagant shopping trips and the playboy lifestyles of her sons in South Africa.

Almost three quarters of the population lives beneath the poverty line on less than US$1.50 a day. Unemployment stands at 90 percent and inflation is around 350 percent. Basic commodities cannot be found, let alone bought, and the electric supply could be cut by South Africa if the state-run power company Eskom does not honour its growing debt.

The military is also exploiting the prestige of the anti-imperialist struggle. But the reality of its economic and political orientation will inevitably pit it against the working class and rural poor.

War Veterans leader Mutsvangwa made clear the pro-imperialist, anti-working class economic agenda behind the coup when he urged South Africa, southern Africa and the West to reengage with Zimbabwe because rule by the military would usher in a “better business environment.” What the army will do to create such an environment will be to brutally suppress social and political opposition.

EU anti-“fake news” authority prepares mass censorship

Alex Lantier

The European Union (EU) is launching the construction of an authority to monitor and censor so-called “fake news.” It is setting up a High-Level Expert Group on the issue and soliciting criticisms of “fake news” by media professionals and the public to decide what powers to give to this EU body, which is to begin operation next spring.

An examination of the EU’s announcement shows that it is preparing mass state censorship aimed not at false information, but at news reports or political views that encourage popular opposition to the European ruling class.

The term “fake news” is taken from the campaign in the United States promoting unsubstantiated accusations that Donald Trump’s victory was attributable to Russian manipulation of the 2016 US presidential elections that publicized material harmful to his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. This campaign has developed into ever more aggressive demands for censorship of the Internet to prevent the expression of critical views and social protests.

At one US Senate hearing on the issue, former FBI officer Clint Watts called for censorship in front of sympathetic US Senators, who denounced Russia for supposedly trying to “amplify racial and social divisions” in America. Watts said, “Civil wars don’t start with gunshots, they start with words. America’s war with itself has already begun. We all must act now on the social media battlefield to quell information rebellions that can quickly lead to violent confrontations and easily transform us into the Divided States of America.”

The EU’s anti-“fake news” censorship body serves the same basic political ends. It aims to create conditions where unelected authorities control what people can read or say online. “We live in an era where the flow of information and misinformation has become almost overwhelming,” EU Vice-President Frans Timmermans declared. He added that the EU’s task is to protect its citizens from “fake news” and to “manage the information they receive.”

According to an EU press release, the EU Commission, another unelected body, will select the High-Level Expert Group, which is “to start in January 2018 and will work over several months.” It will discuss “possible future actions to strengthen citizens’ access to reliable and verified information and prevent the spread of disinformation online.” Who will decide what views are “verified,” who is “reliable” and whose views are “disinformation” to be deleted from Facebook or removed from Google search results? The EU, of course.

As in the United States, the EU anti-“fake news” campaign flows out of operations against Russia and attempts to shield from criticism the ever more unpopular EU policies—in particular, the accelerating turn by the European bourgeoisie towards militarism and authoritarian rule.

According to its press release, the EU’s new initiative began with the establishment by the EU Council, in March 2015, of the “East Strategic Communication Task Force” (East Stratcom). This was shortly after Washington and Berlin successfully organized a regime change operation in February 2014 in Ukraine, via a putsch led by the pro-Nazi, anti-Russian Right Sector militia that toppled a pro-Russian government in Kiev. This led to a bitter civil war in Russian-speaking areas of eastern Ukraine that was still raging at the beginning of 2015.

The EU was well aware of the fascistic character of its Ukrainian allies. The EU Parliament had just voted in 2012 for a resolution formally denouncing one of the parties it put in power in Kiev, Svoboda. Stating that Svoboda's “racist, anti-Semitic, and xenophobic views go against the EU’s fundamental values,” the EU Parliament appealed to democratic political parties “not to associate with, endorse, or form coalitions with this party.”

After US and European imperialism put Svoboda in power, however, European media denounced as a “supreme lie” criticism that the EU was working with neo-fascists, which it called “lying Russian propaganda.”

These are the reactionary political roots of the anti-“fake news” campaign in Europe in general, and of East Stratcom in particular. According to the current EU press release, the agency was set up “to identify, analyse, and raise awareness of Russia’s ongoing disinformation campaigns on a daily basis.” Its mission statement declares its top purpose is to ensure “Effective communication and promotion of EU policies towards the Eastern Neighbourhood,” that is, to promote the EU’s aggressive policies and its links to neo-fascists in Ukraine, Eastern Europe, and beyond.

The situation emerging in Europe is a warning to the working class. A body set up to promote forces like Svoboda and the Right Sector, which glorifies the Ukrainian forces who participated in the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews in the USSR during World War II, is to lead a drive to censor the Internet and official public life in Europe. Police-state rule in Europe is actively being prepared.

This reflects a historic collapse of democratic forms of rule across the continent that has developed over decades. The quarter century since the Stalinist bureaucracy dissolved the USSR has seen austerity at home and escalating NATO wars in the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe. European capitalism is bankrupt, and nearly a decade after the 2008 Wall Street crash, economic inequality is reaching levels incompatible with democratic forms of rule.

With tens of millions of unemployed and youth left with no future, social anger has reached explosive levels. The EU’s Generation What poll earlier this year found that more than half of European youth would be willing to participate in a “mass uprising” against the existing order. The response of European imperialism is to prepare repression and authoritarian rule at home, while denouncing criticism of its policies as “fake news” and Russian propaganda.

Significantly, a key battleground of the EU “fake news” campaign is Spain. Last month, Madrid suspended Catalonia’s elected government amid mass protests in Barcelona, after police assaulted peaceful voters in the October 1 Catalan independence referendum. Berlin, London and Paris all issued statements backing Madrid. Spanish General Fernando Alejandre threatened Catalonia with military intervention and hailed the Spanish army “of all epochs,” implicitly including the 1939 invasion of Catalonia by fascist dictator Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War.

Predictably, European media, the Spanish government, and East Stratcom are launching a campaign to denounce criticism of Madrid’s policies, and EU support for them, as “fake news.” On Monday, the British Guardian reported, “Officials working at the East Stratcom taskforce in Brussels say they have seen an increase in disinformation linked to the Catalan referendum, in line with the explosion of media interest in the story.”

To illustrate the alleged “upsurge in pro-Kremlin disinformation and false claims about the political crisis in Catalonia,” the Guardian cited a Facebook post by Moldovan politician Bogdan Țîrdea that stated: “EU officials supported the violence in Catalonia.”

As in Ukraine, the ruling elite attacks such statements as “fake news” and Russian propaganda not because they are false, but because they threaten to provoke political opposition at home.

Claims that Russia and its allies in Eastern Europe instigated the Catalan crisis or used it to smear the EU are lies refuted by Madrid’s own statements. Over a week after the October 1 referendum, Madrid hailed Moscow’s reactionary support for its internal repression. Spanish Ambassador to Russia Ignacio Ibanez Rubio said, “Spain endorses Russia’s official stance. From the very beginning, Russia has recognized that this is an internal affair of our country… So we are very pleased with Russia’s stand on the crisis in Catalonia.”

The accelerating moves towards police-state rule in Europe and the media campaign against Russian “fake news” again underscore the significance of the World Socialist Web Site’s reporting, its opposition to the EU, and its struggle against Google’s attempts to censor it. It is emerging as the leading voice against the drive to legitimize authoritarian rule and far-right politics in Europe.

France throws masses of people off unemployment insurance

Francis Dubois 

With one in every seven people in France already living in poverty, President Emmanuel Macron’s government is throwing masses of the unemployed off unemployment insurance. Its goal is to develop a massive low-wage sector.

The unemployment insurance agency, Pôle Emploi, published last week the results of its new system for monitoring the unemployed, set up 18 months ago under the previous, social-democratic president, François Hollande.

It stated that it had crossed off its rolls 14 percent of the 270,000 workers it had checked, that is, 37,800 people. Even the press was compelled to admit that, contrary to official claims from the state and employer groups, the screenings did not reveal hordes of “parasites” refusing to work. The overwhelming majority were actively seeking a job.

The screening and denials of insurance are part of an ever more draconian set of measures aimed at the unemployed, whose goal is to force workers into less skilled, lower-paid work.

According to Pôle Emploi, there are currently 6.5 million unemployed or underemployed workers in France. This is 10 percent of the country’s population, and roughly 20 percent of its workforce. Unofficial estimations indicate that this is an underestimate by up to 5 million people who are not counted in official statistics.

In September, amid its “major reform” of unemployment insurance and shortly before Macron denounced critics of his social policies as “lazy,” the government announced that it would reinforce Hollande’s policies, quintupling the number of staff screening the unemployed. The stated goal was to make the screening “drastic.” On October 17, Pierre Gattaz, the head of the Medef employers’ federation, denounced “profiteers” he claimed were gaming the system and demanded daily interrogations of unemployed workers so “the system encourages people to get jobs.”

The current controls are already draconian. Workers crossed off the Pôle Emploi list lose their benefits, that is, their only source of income, for 6 to 12 months. If they have no other sources of support, they cannot pay for rent, water, electricity or food. They are only granted one year of medical coverage. They gradually lose any chance at a decent job, or any job at all.

Workers can be crossed off the lists for missing an appointment or refusing to take a “reasonable job offer,” typically one with conditions and pay far below previous jobs, or far from home and family. Workers are pressed to accept any job and to be at the disposal of the job agency around the clock. Making a “false declaration” to avoid being crossed off the list is punished with a 12-month denial of benefits and a €3,750 fine—a vast sum for an unemployed worker.

Pressure on workers are even more intense because Pôle Emploi works with private contractors who organize training sessions, internships and activities to encourage “a return to work.”

The new screenings of the unemployed are principally designed to force workers to be more “flexible” and send into employment large numbers of people who are forced to accept working conditions that most workers would have refused until now. The goal is to push wages and levels of exploitation towards those now in Eastern Europe, North Africa or Southeast Asia.

The ruling class is pushing for a broad increase of the low-wage sector even as poverty rates are reaching catastrophic levels. On November 9, the Catholic Aid ( Secours Catholique ) charity, which took care of nearly 1.5 million people in 2017, published its annual report analyzing poverty. It also summarized data from the National Statistics Office (Insee), showing that 9 million people, or 14 percent of the population, are living under the poverty line (a bit over €1,000 per month).

People helped by Catholic Aid had an average monthly income of €548, which has gone up only €3 in the last six years. Nineteen percent had no income; 42 could not afford their rent, 41 percent could not afford their gas or electricity, 22 percent were overdrawn at their bank, 17 could not pay their water bill, and 56 percent had trouble affording food. The report pointed to “an increasingly precarious situation for families.” Fifty-three percent were foreigners without stable legal status, who therefore are barred from work or receiving social assistance.

The recent publication of the “Paradise Papers,” which lifts one corner of the veil over the massive tax evasion organized by the super-rich, highlights the contempt of the financial aristocracy and its political servants for the masses. These documents also show how specialists in “offshore” deals work with governments to block the passage of laws that would make tax evasion more difficult.

Among the major French corporations that have appeared in the Paradise Papers, there is the global oil corporation Total, defense contractor Dassault, raw materials firm Louis Dreyfus, the energy firm Engie, as well as Bernard Arnault, the billionaire CEO of the LVMH luxury firm.

While the super-rich hide hundreds of billions of euros from tax authorities, the Macron government—having eliminated the Tax on Wealth (ISF) on the very top income bracket—has the gall to throw the unemployed off the rolls because they refuse misery and social destitution.

Conservative Senator Gérard Longuet summed up the hostility of the ruling class to the poor and the unemployed on November 6, when he went on television to say: “If these hundreds of billions of euros escape taxation and enter into the state treasury, that’s a good thing, because the state overall wastes them and spends money for no good reason.”