European Union rearms for World War III

Johannes Stern

Following the announcement last week by the US Defense Department of its biggest ever arms deal involving the purchase of nearly 500 F-35 fighters, Europe replied in kind on Monday. At the world’s largest air show in Le Bourget near Paris, the German defence minister Ursula von der Leyen, together with her colleagues from France, Florence Parly, and Spain, Margarita Robles, signed major agreements to develop a joint European air combat system (Future Combat Air System—FCAS).

Ursula von der Leyen (left), Future Combat Air System (right). Credit: WikiMedia Commons.

The cost of FCAS, which is announced to be operational by 2040, is immense. Up to €8 billion will flow into joint development alone. Overall, costs are expected to be more than €100 billion. The Handelsblatt newspaper reports that “by the middle of the century” the FCAS project could devour “up to €500 billion.” The same sum would finance Germany’s entire education budget for 27 years!

The massive armaments project is part of plans to transform the European Union into a major military power capable of waging war independently of and, if necessary, against the United States.

According to a report posted on the official web site of the German Defence Department: “FCAS is not just a fighter plane, but a composite system.” Under the proposed “‘System of Systems,’ manned fighter aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles (‘remote carriers’) would be integrated into a network. In addition, navy vessels and land vehicles could be included in the network. Air force, navy and army could thereby act closely together.”

After the unveiling of a first model of the new NGWS (New Generation Weapon System) at Le Bourget, von der Leyen said: “Today is an important day in two respects: firstly, the Franco-German fighter plane system is a big step forward in modernising the Bundeswehr (German army). But secondly, it is also a great day for the European Defence Union, because for the first time we are jointly launching a European fighter system,” Thirdly, it is “a great day for European industry, which will be given a huge boost by this fighter plane system.”

The inspector general of the German air force, Lieutenant General Ingo Gerhartz, praised the joint development of the NGWS as a sign of “Europe’s great innovative power.” The head of the French military aircraft manufacturer Dassault Aviation, Eric Trappier, assessed the project as an important step towards achieving autonomy with regard to armaments and military requirements. Up until now, European countries have tended to buy US defence equipment. “Now we are offering Europeans a European plane that is independent of US technology,” he told the French news channel CNews.

The decision by central European powers to develop a US-independent air combat system will further exacerbate transatlantic tensions.

Most recently, at the beginning of May the US administration warned the EU against excluding US arms companies from European defence projects, describing the creation of independent European military structures, such as the European Defence Fund and enhanced EU defence cooperation (Pesco), as “deeply worrying.” A US letter dated May 1 to the EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini stated that the provisions made for both projects represented “a dramatic step back in three decades of growing integration of the trans-Atlantic defence industry.”

In response to US threats and Washington’s preparations for war against Iran, which are also directed against the economic and geostrategic interests of European powers in the region, leading EU nations are aggressively stepping up their own foreign and defence policy.

In the “Strategic Agenda for 2019-2024,” which will be adopted at the EU summit in Brussels today, the EU sets out its claim to be a world power in the future. Europe strives to “reinforce its global influence” and “influence the course of world events,” the document reads. To achieve this goal, the EU must “move forward towards a genuine European Defence Union.” This would “allow Europe to take further responsibility for its own security” and “improve its strategic autonomy.”

These plans are explicitly directed at preparing for war. The section titles “Protective Europe” states that the EU should “focus on areas where cooperation can result in clear benefits, such as in defence industry and research, cyber-defence, military mobility, hybrid crisis management, and missions and operations abroad.” Leading political and military strategists openly declare that the EU is preparing for conflicts with other major powers, entailing the danger of a third world war.

We find ourselves “in a historically unique situation in which Europe is being challenged or under pressure from three major powers—from a revisionist Russia, an economically and politically expanding China and an America, under President Trump, moving on several fronts against the EU,” declared the new president of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), Tom Enders, in a recent interview. Enders was previously head of Europe’s second largest European arms company, EADS.

“There can only be one answer,” Ender continues. “The governments of Europe must not allow themselves under any circumstances to be further divided, but must find joint answers, especially in foreign policy, foreign trade and security policy. And those in charge should not be dissuaded by threats from Washington.”

Above all Enders maintains that Germany is obliged to take the lead in developing an independent European military and great power policy. We need “a public, non-ideological, strategic debate in Germany, based on the realities of power-politics, not sentimentalities, and starting from our special responsibility for the development of Europe.” A country that “pretends to have no national interests, but always takes the moral high road and as a vegetarian in a world full of carnivores ignores the need for military measures” made a “common foreign and security policy for Europe” impossible.

Thirty years after the reunification of Germany and the restoration of capitalism in Eastern Europe, the German ruling class is openly returning to its former militaristic traditions. In a commentary headlined “Europe Needs More,” Wolfgang Schäuble, acting president of the German Bundestag and former interior and finance minister, called for the rapid development of “a European army” as “an effective instrument of security and defence policy.” In addition, it was necessary to agree “upon the type of threatening situations joint forces should be used for,” he writes.

In order to enforce this war policy in the face of the growing popular resistance, Schäuble argues, among other things, to abolish parliament’s scrutiny of military intervention enshrined in the country’s Basic Law, following the crimes committed by German imperialism during the First and Second World Wars. Accordingly, every Bundeswehr mission outside NATO territory requires the prior approval of the Bundestag.

“If Europe is serious about common defence, we have to change national laws and seek legal harmonisation,” Schäuble writes. That applies “to all partners in the Union. Even Germany with its historically justified narrow constitutional requirements—note: parliamentary accord—will have to move.”

As was the case in the 1930s, massive military rearmament and preparations for war require an authoritarian and ultimately a fascist program. That is why French President Emmanuel Macron recently paid tribute to the fascist dictator and Nazi collaborator Philippe Pétain, and the ruling class in Germany calls for “more tolerance towards the right wing” (ex-president Joachim Gauck) while tolerating right-wing extremist terrorist structures with close links to parts of the military, police and intelligence apparatus.

The fact that all the imperialist powers are preparing for war makes clear that workers and young people are faced with revolutionary tasks. European capitalism cannot be tamed any more than American capitalism. In the Manifesto of the Fourth International published at the beginning of World War II, Leon Trotsky stated: “The task posed by history is not to support one part of the imperialist system against another but to make an end of the system as a whole.”

This task is raised again today with great urgency. In order to prevent a fresh lapse into world war and barbarism, the working class must take up a struggle against all of the capitalist warmongers based on an international socialist program.

Italy: Captain in court for saving people in distress at sea

Marianne Arens 

In Italy, the captain and nine crew members of the NGO ship Juventa are under investigation. Pia Klemp, who has rescued about 5,000 people in distress in a total of six missions, faces up to 20 years imprisonment and heavy fines.

Following her biology studies, the 36-year-old captain from Bonn, Germany, had worked for the marine conservation organization Sea Shepherd and participated in missions against illegal whaling. Klemp, who initially started as a simple deckhand, later becoming a petty officer, worked her way up to become captain. From 2015, she has participated in maritime rescue operations on several ships of the non-governmental organizations Youth Rescue and Sea-Watch.

In August 2017, the Juventa, belonging to the Berlin association Jugend rettet(Youth Saves) was confiscated in the harbour of the Italian island of Lampedusa. The official Maritime Rescue Center (MRCC) in Rome had piloted it to where several Coast Guard ships with blue lights flashing and armed crew were waiting for them and secured the ship.

Since then, the Sicilian prosecutor in Trapani has initiated a lawsuit against the captain and nine other crew members, who are accused of “aiding illegal immigration, which is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Specifically, they are accused of having collaborated with people smugglers and returned dinghies to Libya for re-use. The prosecution is relying on fabricated evidence and statements. Italian intelligence agents had bugged the Juventa, intercepted the crew’s mobile phones, and placed undercover investigators in their ranks.

Pia Klemp believes that the allegations are easy to refute. The whole thing was nothing more than “fictitious, amateurish nonsense,” she told Switzerland’s Basler Zeitung. “We have only followed international law, especially the law of the sea, where it is the top priority to save people in distress,” Klemp said. She did not expect a conviction and was prepared to go “as far as Strasbourg” (the European Court for Human Rights) if necessary. But the trial was already having grave consequences: “Rescue at sea is being criminalized. We are already being paralyzed. And that’s why people are dying on the Mediterranean.”

The aid organizations SOS Méditerrannée and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) have explicitly warned that many more people could die. The risk of drowning when crossing the Mediterranean today is four times higher than last year. Since then, Italy has consistently blocked its ports for rescuers, with at least 1,151 people having drowned in the central Mediterranean.

Those who manage to be rescued at sea usually have a year-long odyssey through North Africa behind them. In Libya, thousands of refugees are trapped in barbarous internment camps, where they face torture, rape, slavery and even murder. An EU delegation had already officially defined these prisons as “concentration camps.”

But this is not stopping the EU states tightening up their laws to prevent refugees from escaping from this hell to Europe. On June 11, at the behest of far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini (Lega), the Italian government passed a decree further obstructing rescue at sea. It threatens private rescuers who bring those rescued into Italian territorial waters with fines between 10,000 and 50,000 euros.

News weekly Der Spiegel wrote on June 14, “The dreams of Europe’s hardliners have come true: rescue at sea is almost halted, the routes across the Mediterranean are more or less closed.”

However, it is not only Europe’s “hardliners” who are responsible for this, as Der Spiegel suggests. It is not just the representatives of the far-right such as Salvini, Sebastian Kurz (Austria) or Horst Seehofer (Germany) who are involved in the decisions, but also the Social Democratic governments in Spain and Malta and the Syriza government in Greece, a close partner of Germany’s Left Party.

Since 2015, the EU has withdrawn its own rescue vessels from the Mediterranean and financed violent militias such as the Libyan Coast Guard to act as the doorkeepers of the EU, preventing refugees from reaching Europe. At the same time, more and more people are being displaced by new armed conflicts in the Maghreb and Central Africa and are forced to flee.

On June 3, a group of lawyers filed for an injunction against the EU with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague accusing the EU of crimes against humanity because of its refugee policy. This policy has led to more than 14,000 deaths in the Mediterranean in the last three years. According to the 244-page indictment, the EU and the Italian government specifically have targeted NGOs “with intimidation, defamation, harassment and official criminalization.. This indictment and the WSWS report on it reveal that the EU has a deliberate policy of mass murder.

The fate facing the crew of the Juventa is not the only case in which those openly conducting rescue missions are being criminalized and hampered with legal proceedings. The London-based Institute for Race Relations (IRR) research group has recently produced a study about how often EU citizens end up in court for assisting refugees.

One month ago, Lifeline captain Claus-Peter Reisch was fined 10,000 euros in Malta for not having properly registered his ship, which had saved migrants from drowning, according to the court.

Even on land, the authorities are acting increasingly aggressively against people who help migrants, refugees and those without legal papers. Last year alone, the IRR listed 99 cases in which people had already been charged or convicted for even minor acts of assistance. In the previous year, there had been only half as many, namely 45 cases. As the Berlin Tagesspiegel comments, the Reisch and Klemp cases are just “the visible tip of a pretty impressive iceberg.”

The list included such scandalous cases as the mayor of Riace, who had taken refugees into his community. He was placed under house arrest while the Salvini government deported all immigrants from his village. It also affected six Tunisian fishermen who had rescued shipwrecked people, as well as a Spaniard living in Morocco who had volunteered to monitor the coast to inform sea rescue services of emergencies. A French mountaineer was also prosecuted after helping a Nigerian family on the Italian-French border and bringing the pregnant mother to a hospital.

Those carrying out sea rescues, such as Pia Klemp and Claus-Peter Reisch and many others who use their lives and money to help people who are fleeing, face lawsuits that could destroy their livelihoods. Last but not least, the apprehension of the WikiLeaks founder and courageous journalist Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy and his detention in the maximum-security prison in Belmarsh has literally unleashed and intensified these attacks by state authorities. As the WSWS pointed out, it has ushered in “a new stage in the destruction of democratic rights.”

However, in its report the London group IRR also points to the increase in solidarity and readiness to help in the population. Opposition to this brutal policy is clearly growing throughout Europe and around the world. This is shown by the willingness to donate and the support that the rescue teams are receiving. A petition on Change.org calling for the immediate release of the Juventa crew has received well over 200,000 signatures so far.

Commenting on the Juventa captain, Peter Scott Smith, the son of well-known World War II veteran Harry Leslie Smith, said in a tweet, “In days gone by, Pia Klemp would have rescued Jews from annihilation. The fact that she could face twenty years imprisonment in 2019 for rescuing refugees in distress condemns the EU for hypocrisy and abetting crimes against humanity for allowing this show trial in Italy.”

In May, a foundation in St. Gallen awarded the crew members of Juventa the Grüninger Prize, which is endowed with 50,000 Swiss francs. The name commemorates the Swiss border guard Paul Grüninger, who, during the Nazi period, took Jews to Switzerland and was sacked as a result by the Swiss government.

At the conclusion of her interview with the conservative Basler Zeitung, Pia Klemp told the astonished journalists: “I do not want a society where someone has to be a cleaner for 50 years, and instead of a pension, has to apply for welfare, while elsewhere there are bankers who have millions in their accounts, even though they have contributed to the financial crisis. I just do not want this predatory, criminal capitalism.”

The lawyers for Pia Klemp and the Juventa crew expect an indictment before autumn.

US-Turkey conflict nears breaking point

Ulas Atesci

Amid US war preparations against Iran, tensions between Washington and Ankara are soaring over the Turkish government’s purchase of Russian S-400 anti-aircraft missiles in defiance of US threats.

On June 6, acting US Defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan wrote a letter to his Turkish counterpart, Hulusi Akar, threatening to break off military cooperation with Turkey, notably over the F-35 fighter program, and to subject Turkey to a wide range of sanctions.

Washington claims Turkey’s use of the S-400 would undermine NATO and US-Turkish military interoperability, and enable Russia to gain intelligence on the F-35.

“If Turkey procures the S-400,” Shanahan wrote, “our two countries must develop a plan to discontinue Turkey’s participation in the F-35 programme.” He then added: “While we seek to maintain our valued relationship, Turkey will not receive the F-35 if Turkey takes delivery of the S-400.” Shanahan also threatened to exclude Turkey from a Brussels meeting on the F-35 and to cancel training of Turkish F-35 pilots in America.

On Tuesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Turkey would nonetheless take delivery of a Russian-made S-400 system “very soon.” That same day, a Turkish Defense Ministry statement complained that Shanahan’s letter was “not in line with a spirit of alliance” and was “improperly worded.”

While affirming that Ankara still has “the option to change course on the S-400,” Shanahan made clear that US retaliation against the Erdoğan government will go far beyond canceling Turkey’s order for more than 100 F-35s, and excluding Turkish companies from continuing to participate in the consortium that is building the F-35.

“Turkey’s procurement of the S-400,” said Shanahan, “will hinder [Turkey’s] ability to enhance or maintain co-operation with the United States and within NATO, lead to Turkish strategic and economic over-dependence on Russia, and undermine Turkey’s very capable defense industry and ambitious economic development goals.”

Washington is contemplating drastic methods to whip Ankara into line. Last August, its doubling of US tariffs on Turkish aluminum and steel exports led to a collapse of the Turkish lira, helping tip Turkey into its first recession since 2009. Shanahan threatened Ankara with sanctions under the 2017 anti-Russian Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA).

“Pursuing the S-400 purchase,” warned Shanahan, “will cause a loss in jobs, gross domestic product, and international trade.”

“President Trump,” he added, “committed to boost bilateral trade from $20 billion currently to more than $75 billion, however that may be challenging if the United States imposes CAATSA sanctions. … There is strong bipartisan US Congressional determination to see CAATSA sanctions imposed on Turkey if Turkey acquires the S-400.”

On April 10, Republican and Democratic leaders of the US Senate Foreign Affairs and Armed Services Committees published a column in the New York Times titled “Turkey Must Choose between the US and Russia,” criticizing Turkey’s plans to buy the S-400 system and vowing CAATSA sanctions would be imposed if it did.

Ankara is trying to maneuver a path between the United States, its main military ally for three-quarters of a century, and Russia, with which it has formed a shaky alliance in recent years to counterbalance what it viewed as hostile US actions.

In its June 8 letter, Turkey’s Defense Ministry said Shanahan's letter is aimed at “finding a solution to the existing problems within the framework of strategic partnership” and “comprehensive security cooperation” and emphasizes “the importance of continuing negotiations.”

Erdoğan took a less conciliatory stance. “I’m not saying Turkey will buy S-400 defense systems, it has already bought them; we’ve closed the deal,” he told a Justice and Development Party (AKP) group meeting in Ankara on June 12. “This system will be delivered to our country next month.”

Ankara also threatened trade retaliation if Washington imposes sanctions. “There are steps we will take [against the US] if they impose [sanctions] against us. These steps will be announced when needed,” Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu told the state-run Anadolu Agency on June 14. Previously, Ankara intimated that, if excluded from the F-35 programme, it might purchase Chinese J-31 or Russian Su-57 fighters.

This weekend, Erdoğan told reporters, “We will not swallow our words” on the S-400. But he nonetheless held out the possibility of reaching a deal with Washington: “All my hope is that we will have a thorough meeting with Mr. Trump at the G-20 summit.”

Serious as it is, the dispute between Washington and Ankara over the S-400 is merely the flashpoint for far deeper and intractable geostrategic conflicts.

For most of the 17 years that Erdoğan has led Turkey’s AKP government, he has backed and sought to profit from the never-ending wars of aggression the US has waged in the Balkans, the Middle East and North Africa since 1991. Nevertheless, US-Turkish relations have become increasingly explosive, especially since the eruption of the Syria war.

Initially, Erdoğan eagerly supported the drive the US launched in 2011 to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Baathist regime. Turkey helped arm the Islamist militias Washington used as its shock troops in the first years of the war. But Ankara recoiled when, after the defeat of its Islamist allies, Washington made Kurdish nationalist militias—linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) against which Ankara has fought a bloody counterinsurgency in southeast Turkey for the past 35 years—its main proxies in Syria.

Relations between Turkey and its traditional NATO allies unraveled still further when Washington and Berlin backed a failed 2016 coup attempt against Erdoğan. The western powers, especially the US, deemed it entirely unacceptable that Turkey had turned towards closer relations with Russia and China, amid growing its conflicts with the US and other NATO allies over strategic issues including their backing for the Syrian Kurdish militias.

It was shortly after the coup—which failed because Erdoğan, alerted by Moscow, was able to make a timely appeal to his voters to come into the streets to defend him—that the AKP began to talk about buying the S-400.

In the ensuing three years, Ankara has maintained its support for Al Qaeda-linked Islamist forces against the Russian- and Iranian-backed Syrian regime, while developing a shaky alliance with Moscow and Tehran based on limiting US power in Syria. The S-400 purchase is one of a number of arms and other commercial deals that is being touted by Moscow and Ankara as a means of solidifying their ties.

Recent months have seen intense US-Turkish talks. But there is no sign of a resolution to their conflicts, especially over Syria. Ankara has long insisted that it must extend the “safe zone” it currently controls in northwest Syria east of the Euphrates. Its aim is to smash the Kurdish-led proto-state there and chase the main US-linked, PKK-allied Kurdish militias from the region. Washington, however, continues to militarily support the Kurdish YPG, viewing the YPG-controlled enclave in northeastern Syria as an important beachhead for future operations against Damascus and the Assad regime’s Iranian and Russian backers.

According to an official from Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), composed largely of ethnic-Kurdish troops, the US has sent an “aid convoy” of heavy weapons and military vehicles including 200 trucks to the northern Syrian town of Kobani, on the Turkish border. It is reportedly tasked with building “new bases” in the region.

Geopolitical differences are growing between the US and Turkey, including on US sanctions and war preparations against Iran, which is a major provider of energy to Turkey; Washington’s promotion of Israel and Saudi Arabia as its principal Mideast allies; and the US push to exclude Turkey from offshore Eastern Mediterranean energy resources.

Underlining the depth of the latter conflict, Ankara reportedly may position S-400 missiles near the Eastern Mediterranean.

Washington and the European Union (EU) powers have opposed Ankara’s efforts to get a share of that region’s energy resources. A June 14 summit in Malta that brought together France, Italy, Spain, Malta, Portugal, Greece and Cyprus released a joint declaration urging Turkey to halt “illegal” drilling in the region. It asked the EU “to remain vigilant on the matter and, in case Turkey does not cease its illegal activities, to consider appropriate measures in full solidarity with Cyprus.”

Washington and the EU see these resources as a critical alternative for Europe to Russian gas imports. Erdoğan replied: “No one can stop us from pursuing rights and interests of Turkish Cypriots in Eastern Mediterranean.” Over US and EU objections, a Turkish drill ship began offshore operations there on May 3.

Increased privatisation of UK mental health services jeopardises patient care

Ajanta Silva 

Notwithstanding the Tory government’s bogus promises for the National Health Service (NHS) via the 10-year Long Term Plan (LTP) to improve mental health services, harrowing stories of abuse, neglect and lack of services repeatedly make the headlines.

Drastic funding cuts, shutting down of mental health units, wards and entire hospitals, along with outsourcing of mental health services, have crippled the care that the most vulnerable people in society depend upon.

Years of funding cuts have not only put enormous pressure on emergency, ambulance and general practitioner services, they have exacerbated the suffering of people with mental health issues and learning disabilities, leading to increases in suicides and self-harm. Meanwhile, the treatment of people with mental health emergencies hundreds of miles away from their homes has become a regular occurrence due to lack of facilities.

In England, total bed capacity has been slashed from 160,254 in 2009 to 129,992 in 2019, according to official NHS England figures. Over the same period, available beds for mental illness and learning disability have been cut by a third, from 29,330 to 19,368.

Official figures show a drastic fall in the combined workforce of NHS England mental health nurses and learning disability nurses over the last decade, from 46,155 in 2009 to 39,549 in 2019. The number of doctors in specialist psychiatry training has plummeted by hundreds. Currently more than half of the mental health patients who need specialist care and support are first seen and taken to safety and care by the police, rather than specialist doctors, nurses and paramedics.

The main beneficiaries of this deliberate run down of services are the private companies who provide much of the available mental health services nationwide. During the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government’s five years alone (2010-2015), 25 percent of mental health service contracts were awarded to private providers.

Although it is difficult to gauge the full scale of how much public money has been looted by private mental health care companies, several Freedom of Information (FOI) requests have shed some light on the sums involved.

In 2018, one such FOI request asked Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust how much money they had spent on inpatient beds in private psychiatric hospitals in each of the past five years. The data showed a dramatic increase. Hertfordshire spent just £1,126 in 2012-2013. In 2013-2014, this shot up to £222,284 and rose to £ 981,449 in 2014-2015, to £1,509,788 in 2015-16, and £1,463,838 in 2016-17. It should be noted that the huge rise from 2013-14 coincides with the introduction of the 2012 Health and Social Care Act, which allowed a vast increase in private sector involvement in the NHS.

In 2017, BBC FOI researcher George Greenwood reported he had sent FOIs to all 81 NHS mental health authorities across the UK. He wrote at the time, “From the 40 authorities able to respond in full, data shows the cost of treating patients privately went up from £71m in the 2012 financial year to a projected £101m for the 2016 financial year.”

Some recent documentaries and reports reveal the dire situation in mental health support and care.

*A BBC Panorama undercover investigation recently revealed the physical and psychological abuse and trauma suffered by patients with learning difficulties at privately run Whorlton Hall Hospital in County Durham. The private owner of the facility, Cygnet Health Care, issued a statement saying they were “shocked and deeply saddened” and suspended all the workers involved. But they did not explain how their business interests in maximizing the profits from NHS funding contributed to substandard care and institutional abuse.

Around 2,300 people with learning difficulties are in centres like Whorlton Hall, which are privately owned and profit from NHS funding. The hospital charges the NHS £3,500 a week for each patient.

*A second-year physics student at Bristol University, Natasha Abrahart, aged 20, who was suffering from social anxiety, committed suicide April last year. The coroner’s inquest recently held into her death ruled that a series of failures by mental health services had contributed to her death. Natasha had been referred by the university GP services to Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust in February 2018, following the first of several suicide attempts. The inquest found that there was “an unacceptable delay” in Natasha having a specialist assessment and her “risk of self-harm was not adequately assessed.”

NHS trusts have been forced to downsize their services and cut down bed numbers and staff due to the government’s funding squeeze. The inevitable outcome has been a devastating erosion of patient care and support. In 2017, Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust was looking to make cuts worth about £24 million.

*In April, The Priory Group, a private mental health care company, was fined £300,000 for breaching health and safety law following the death of a teenage girl in its care. Amy El-Keria committed suicide while receiving treatment at the Priory-owned Ticehurst House in East Sussex in November 2012. A previous inquest into her death, held in Horsham in 2016, was critical of staffing levels and training and risk assessment procedures at the hospital.

A Sunday Mirror investigation found “at least a further 11 deaths following failings in care at The Priory group’s clinics since her case” in 2012. They reported that “a lack of aftercare plans left some needlessly vulnerable to taking their own lives.” The private hospital group left suicidal “patients unattended, with materials that could be used to take their own lives” and “falsified records were identified as matters of concern in two deaths.”

The Priory Group, owned by US company Acadia Healthcare since 2016, has been funneled billions of pounds from the NHS and Social Services budgets. In 2017 alone, The Priory Group had total revenue of £797 million. The vast majority of this came from the public purse. It received £418 million from the NHS and £302 million from Social Services.

In May, Corporate Watch, a non-profit organization, published a devastating exposure of The Priory Group’s profits and tax avoiding arrangements.

Corporate Watch noted that the fine the company received following Amy’s death “represents less than two days profit for the Priory group, which made an operating profit of £62 million in 2017.”

The expose found:

The Priory Group gave its boss at the time of Amy El-Keria’s death a £458,000 “golden goodbye” when he left that year—more than half again what the company was fined for the suicide.

Priory has paid out £171 million in interest to owners Acadia Healthcare in the two years since the US company bought it. And Advent International, the US investment firm that owned Priory at the time of Amy’s death, made a £375 million profit when it sold the company in 2016. In the year Amy El-Keria died, Priory received a £1 million tax rebate from the government, thanks in part to a Channel Islands tax avoidance scheme set up by Advent International.

Even if the Tory government puts another £20 billion into the NHS, as a part of the Long-Term Plan (LTP), it is inevitable that this money will mostly line the pockets of private company owners waiting to plunder lucrative parts of the NHS. The LTP’s main aim is not the restoring of already crippling services millions of people depend on, but making the looting of the NHS easier.

Sri Lankan government moves to criminalise “fake news”

Naveen Dewage

The Sri Lankan cabinet recently approved two proposals to amend the country’s Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code in order to criminalise “false news” and “hatred statements.”

Tabled by the acting Minister of Justice and Prison Reforms Ranjith Maddumabandara, one of the proposals calls for fines of up to 1 million rupees ($US5,715) or a five-year prison sentence, or both, for anyone found guilty of “false news distribution.” The other change would impose as yet unspecified fines or imprisonment for “hatred statements.”

Maddumabandara presented the planned measures following requests from parliament’s Sectoral Oversight Committee on National Security, which includes MPs from all political parties in the ruling coalition and the official opposition.

The request underscores the unanimity and determination of all factions of Sri Lanka’s political establishment to censor the internet and social media as well as print and broadcasting outlets.

The terms “false news” and “hatred statements,” which are not defined in the proposed measures, will be used to persecute all perceived political opponents, including, in particular, socialists, workers and youth challenging the government and the state apparatus.

Attempting to justify the laws, the government information department declared: “Law and order authorities as well as civil society leaders have been increasingly concerned about the rising social tensions and worsening ‘hate speech’ messaging both on the internet as well as in public statements by various groups in recent weeks following the shock suicide bombing attacks on Easter Sunday, April 21st.”

The so-called civil leaders and law-and-order authorities raising these concerns are none other than President Maithripala Sirisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, parliamentary opposition leaders and the military and police top brass.

Sirisena responded to last April’s Easter Sunday terrorist attacks by reactivating the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), which grants wide-ranging powers to the police and the military, and by extending the draconian measures for a second month.

A total ban on social media was lifted only after users were warned “to act in a responsible manner.” Two weeks after the terror attacks the ban was re-imposed for two days when government and opposition-instigated racist thugs went on a rampage against Muslims. One person was killed, many others were injured, and widespread destruction of property took place. Police and security forces turned a blind eye to the attacks.

A year ago, in March 2018, Sirisena totally banned social media for about two weeks when Sinhala-Buddhist racist groups launched violent anti-Muslim attacks at Digana in the central hills district.

The “concerns” of Sirisena, Wickremesinghe and the parliamentary opposition about “false news” and “hatred statements” are as fraudulent as their claims that emergency laws and mass deployment of the military are needed to stop terrorist attacks. Key government and opposition leaders as well as the defence hierarchy were warned in advance of the Easter Sunday bombing attacks and have exploited the tragic death of hundreds of innocent people to introduce police-state measures.

Sri Lanka’s criminalisation of so-called false news and hate speech is a direct attack on freedom of expression and part of a broad-ranging international assault on the internet, social media and investigative journalism.

In the US, the Trump administration is collaborating with the giant Google and Facebook corporations to censor socialist and anti-war content on the internet. Similar restrictions are in place in the UK, Germany, France, India and other countries.

The escalating attacks on investigative journalism and freedom of the press are highlighted by the arrest and jailing of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in Britain and the Trump administration’s attempt to extradite him to the US on espionage charges.

Early this month Australian Federal Police launched unprecedented raids on the Sydney office of the state-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation, a national network, and the home of a senior journalist for News Corp. The police seized hundreds of digital files in the raids, claiming the journalists had published secret government documents.

Underlying the determination of the ruling classes to censor and control the internet is their fear of the resurgence of working-class struggles internationally and growing interest in socialism. Internet and social media platforms are being widely used by workers and youth to organise their struggles and fight for their social and democratic rights.

Social media usage is widespread in Sri Lanka. According to recent reports, Sri Lanka, which has a population of just 21 million, has active social media usage by 6 million people, or almost a third of the country’s citizens.

As Colombo moves to criminalise “false news,” it is also seeking new methods to intensify its control of the internet.

The Sri Lankan president’s media division has reported that Chinese President Xi Jinping told Sirisena during his recent visit to Beijing that he would send technical experts and equipment to Sri Lanka to help “trace individuals who propagate false information through social media.” Xi’s offer was in response to requests from Sirisena.

China uses high-powered Internet surveillance techniques to clamp down on the growing opposition of workers, students and intelligentsia to the repressive bureaucratic regime.

Colombo systematically blocked websites during its 26-year communal war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The war ended in 2009 but the blockades continued. Like its predecessor, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government has targeted social media and websites, and maintains its special Internet military intelligence unit established during the war.

Last November, the Telecom Regulatory Commission, which is under the control of President Sirisena, blocked lankaenews.com, and demanded the extradition of its editor-in-chief from the UK, after the publication began criticising him.

Shakthika Sathkumara, a writer, has been held in remand since April after being falsely accused of spreading hatred and disrupting communal harmony after he posted a short story in his Facebook account. He has been repeatedly remanded in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Sathkumara was taken into custody following a complaint by extreme-right Buddhist monks who are in the forefront of whipping up anti-Muslim sentiment.

Colombo’s planned new measures to censor and control the Internet and social media are clear moves towards the establishment of dictatorial forms of rule. Workers and youth must vehemently oppose this crackdown.

Canada rules out overture to China, vows to extradite Huawei CFO to US

Roger Jordan

Canada’s Justin Trudeau-led Liberal government has rejected out of hand a plan to defuse tensions between Canada and China by using its powers under Canadian law to block extradition to the US of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese tech giant Huawei.

Relations between Ottawa and Beijing have dramatically deteriorated since Canadian authorities, acting at Washington’s behest, seized Meng while she was changing planes in Vancouver last December 1. The daughter of Huawei’s founder and principal shareholder, Meng is currently under house arrest awaiting the outcome of a hearing on a US request she be extradited to face trumped-up charges of circumventing US sanctions against Iran.

Last week, the Globe and Mail revealed that former Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was advocating in discussions with business leaders that Ottawa seek to mend fences with China by using its legal prerogative to shut down the Meng case and send her home.

Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland hastened to shoot the idea down, reiterating the government’s phony claims that global geopolitics played no role in Meng’s “lawful” arrest.

In the preceding weeks Chrétien had been widely touted in establishment circles as a possible special emissary to Beijing. Canada’s prime minister from 1993 to 2004, Chrétien has numerous contacts in China’s oligarchy and capitalist restorationist political elite due to his role in spearheading Canadian-Chinese business ties in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and his family connections to the Desmarais clan. The billionaire Desmarais family were among the earliest western investors in China.

Those supporting dispatching Chrétien to Beijing had argued he would be well-positioned to plead for a reset in Canada-Chinese relations. Beijing has responded to Meng’s arrest, and to Ottawa’s initiation—again at Washington’s urging—of an inquiry into Huawei’s possible exclusion from the country’s 5G network, by arresting former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig and businesman Michael Spavor on charges of undermining state security. Beijing has also restricted imports of Canadian canola and pork.

Speaking in Washington last Thursday after meeting with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Freeland declared that any talk of releasing Meng would set a “very dangerous precedent.” Canada, she insisted, must not “alter its behavior when it comes to honouring an extradition treaty in response to external pressure.

“We could easily find ourselves in a situation where, by acting in a single specific case, we could actually make all Canadians around the world less safe,” Freeland continued. “And that is a responsibility I take very seriously.”

Freeland’s argumentation is absurd, given that Canada initiated “external pressure” on China when it chose to arrest Meng on Washington’s behalf, knowing full well that her effective kidnapping could only be viewed by Beijing as a calculated provocation.

In reality, it is the aggressive policies pursued by the Trudeau government, including in multi-billion dollar modernization of Canada’s armed forces, and the deepening of Canada’s partnership with US imperialism in its aggressive policies around the world—including in its reckless military-strategic offensives against Russia and China and its drive for regime-change in Venezuela—that represent the chief danger to Canadian citizens, wherever they may be.

Freeland also repeated the government’s lying claim that there has been “no political interference” in the Meng case.

In reality, Trudeau was informed about the plans to detain Meng at Vancouver airport several days ahead of time. She was seized on the very day that US President Donald Trump met Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Buenos Aires G20 summit with the aim of bullying Beijing into accepting US trade demands or face the imposition of tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods and services.

Moreover in the half-year since her arrest, it has become ever more apparent that Huawei is in Washington’s cross-hairs as part of an economic, diplomatic and military offensive aimed at thwarting China’s ambitions to become a major player in cutting-edge high tech industries.

Trudeau and Freeland’s determination to support the US in its confrontation with China is bound up with Canadian imperialism’s dependence on American economic and military power in advancing its own predatory global interests. Since 2013, the Canadian Armed Forces has been party to a secret pact with the American military that allows personnel and information sharing as part of a military build-up in the Asia-Pacific region aimed at isolating and preparing for war with China. Canadian warships and submarines have participated in provocative US “freedom of navigation” exercises in and around the South China Sea.

Freeland’s firm rejection of any rapprochement with China sets the stage for Trudeau to meet with Trump at the White House tomorrow. During their talks, Canada’s prime minister is expected to urge the US president to publicly pressure Beijing to release Kovrig and Spavor. Trudeau and Freeland are thus providing Trump with yet another pretext to escalate his reckless trade war with China, which threatens to plunge the world economy into a deep crisis and is laying the basis for a global military conflict.

Trudeau is also expected to confer with Trump about speedy passage of the renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement, which goes even further than its predecessor in transforming the North American continent into a protectionist trade bloc, from which US and Canadian imperialism can vie with their rivals around the world for markets and profits. Rebranded by Trump as UMSCA, the new agreement gives Washington a veto over any free trade deal that Canada or Mexico might strike with China.

None of this means that those in the capitalist establishment like Chrétien and former Business Council of Canada head John Manley who advocate Canada defy the US in the Meng affair represent any sort of progressive alternative. Their differences are simply over how best to advance the rapacious interests of Canadian imperialism.

Their efforts to avert the further unraveling of Canada-Chinese ties are driven by their fears that Canadian big business is too reliant on the US economy, and thus highly vulnerable to Washington’s turn to “America First” protectionism and unilateralism.

When the Trudeau government came to office in the fall of 2015, there was widespread support within ruling class circles for its objective of significantly expanding economic ties with China. Reversing the policy of the previous Conservative government, Canada joined the Chinese-led Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and announced exploratory talks with Beijing on a Canada-China free trade pact.

But long before Washington, to use Chrétien’s words, “trapped” Canada into arresting Meng, this had begun to unravel as a result of the intensifying conflict between Washington and Beijing.

The Trudeau government effectively abandoned its free trade initiative some 18 months ago, and the corporate media, spearheaded by the Globe and Mail and National Post, initiated an increasingly shrill campaign to portray China as a strategic threat and menace to “Canadian democracy.”

The Meng arrest and Beijing’s retaliatory moves have been used to effect a further shift in Canada’s foreign policy.

While under Trudeau and Freeland Canada has become ever more deeply integrated with US aggression and intrigue the world over, important sections of the ruling elite are pressing for Canada to tack even closer to the US in its anti-China drive.

The Globe and Mail has published numerous editorials denouncing China as the aggressor and portraying Canada as an innocent victim of Chinese bullying. It has also regularly turned over its columns to US political leaders like Democratic Senator Mark Warner and Republican Marco Rubio, so they can rant against the threat Huawei purportedly represents to US and western security. Last week, the Globe trumpeted the results of a poll it had commissioned and which it claimed shows that a majority of Canadians want Huawei banned from the country’s 5G network.

With Canada’s federal election only four months away, Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer is staking out an even more hardline position vis-à-vis China than Trudeau. In a foreign policy speech last month, Scheer vowed to launch a complaint against Chinese trading practices at the World Trade Organization, restrict Chinese state-owned companies’ access to the Canadian market, and pull Canada out of the AIIB. Underscoring the incendiary implications of such steps, Scheer also denounced China as a threat to Canada’s “security and prosperity in the 21st century,” and promised to open negotiations with Trump on joining the US-led ballistic missile defence shield, which is aimed at making a nuclear war “winnable.”

For their part, the trade union-backed New Democrats have endorsed Meng’s detention, claiming they have confidence in the “rule of law” in Canada, and have signaled their support for banning Huawei from the country’s 5G network.

While remaining conspicuously silent on Canada’s military alignment with Washington against Beijing, the NDP and their union backers have championed economic nationalist and protectionist measures aimed at China. The most prominent example of this was the role played by leading union officials, like Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) President Hassan Yussuf and Unifor’s Jerry Dias, in supporting the Trudeau government during the NAFTA renegotiations. The CLC and United Steelworkers opposed Trump’s tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum imports with the argument that Canadian-produced steel and aluminum is needed for US warplanes and other weaponry.

Massive blackout affects 50 million in Argentina and Uruguay

Rafael Azul 

On Sunday, June 15, the most massive blackout in Argentine history took place in the South American southern cone. The blackout had its biggest impact in Argentina and Uruguay; it affected virtually the entire territory of both countries. Bordering sections of Brazil, Chile and Paraguay were also affected. Except for the southernmost province (Tierra del Fuego), Argentina suffered a total blackout. Twelve hours after the lights went out, power had still not been fully restored.

Public transport was virtually paralyzed. In Buenos Aires, the subway and light rail systems stopped running, and buses were delayed due to non-performing traffic signals.

The immediate cause of the blackout appears to have been a sudden imbalance between the demand and supply for electricity. A sudden collapse in supply, even at a time of low demand (Sunday at 7:07 a.m.), triggered a series of shutdowns that resulted in this calamity.

The electricity shutdown was tentatively blamed on the “collapse of the Argentine Interconnection System (Systema Argentino de Interconexión, SADI),” which links up several sources of electricity generation, including parts of nations that border Argentina. Initially, spokespersons from the Argentine Department of Energy speculated that the SADI failure had to do with “some meteorological event” that damaged transmission lines.

While the exact cause of this blackout has yet to be revealed, the underlying cause is the collapse of the electrical infrastructure as a result of capitalist Argentina’s decades-long economic crisis and high levels of corruption.

The SADI grid links two main subsystems of high-tension power lines between generating plants and distribution plants; the latter send electricity into homes and factories. Tierra Del Fuego province is independent of the SADI network; for that reason, along with some regions in eastern Uruguay, it did not experience the shutdown.

On the day of the blackout, government authorities appeared flummoxed about the exact causes of this catastrophic event. Energy Secretary Gustavo Lopetegui expressed regrets on behalf of the Macri administration and assured everyone that Macri himself was closely following events. “We have no information of why it [the blackout] happened. … It was an extraordinary event that should not happen again,” said Lopetegui. He promised additional information in the next few days, and assured his listeners that the electrical grid was “a robust system.”

Lopetegui’s words notwithstanding, it is no secret the Argentine electrical grid is suffering from decades of neglect, despite massive subsidies to electrical utilities and substantial hikes in electricity rates, supposedly to maintain and improve the infrastructure. As a result of the collapsing electrical infrastructure, the number of brownouts and blackouts across Argentina has increased year to year. Sunday’s multinational blackout was in fact totally predictable.

The Department of Energy at one point suggested that the origin of the imbalance was linked to problems at the hydroelectric Yacyretá Dam, on the Paraná River, and the Salto Grande Dam on the Uruguay River between Argentina and Uruguay. Yacyretá’s electricity is shared by Paraguay and Argentina.

According to this account, the entire grid shut down due to a malfunction at Yacyretá, followed by the shutdown of generation in Salto Grande, leading to a chain reaction along the SADI grid.

In recent decades, there have been many warnings in Argentina of the lack of proper maintenance and investment in the electrical grid. Despite substantial subsidies to firms and massive increases in electricity prices, needed investments have not taken place.

The Yacyretá Hydroelectric Dam, at the center of the current catastrophe, is illustrative of this crisis.

While the Yacyretá Dam may not have been the source of the blackout, it is in urgent need of repair. In May of this year, Ricardo Colombi, governor of Corrientes Province, issued a serious warning: “Due to lack of maintenance, the [Yacyretá] dam has already lost some of its defenses; two of its turbines have been shut down and the others are operating at 75% capacity.”

Colombi also warned of the cracks in the dam. Beyond the resulting blackout from a rupture of Yacyretá, he sounded the alarm that the collapse of the Yacyretá Dam would affect “half the country,” putting the lives “of millions” in danger.

Calling for emergency measures to repair Yacyretá, Colombi warned of the consequences of its rupture: “The enormous amount of water that would flow would wipe out in minutes the cities of Resistencia and Corrientes, and also the cities of Santa Fé and Paraná; not to mention the other cities that are on the margins of the river including the entire Paraná Delta and the Federal Capital” (the city of Buenos Aires is 600 miles south of Yacyretá).

There have been many warnings in Argentina of the lack of proper maintenance and investment in the electrical grid over the last 30 years. Despite substantial subsidies to firms and massive increases in electricity prices, needed investments have not taken place, and in many cases have been siphoned off through a network of graft and corruption.

Furthermore, true to their pro-business approach and general level of capitalist corruption, successive Argentine governments have taken a hand-off approach when it comes to policing the utilities and protecting their profits. Yacyretá is no exception.

From the time construction began in 1983, during the Videla military dictatorship, until its opening in 1998, Yacyretá has been a legendary case study of the corruption and cronyism that characterizes Argentine capitalism. Included in this web has been the Macri family itself, through its various holding companies, which have profited from Yacyretá contracts, according to a 2018 investigation published in Primera Hora, city of Misiones’ daily newspaper.

In 2016, as part of its program of “shock therapy,” the Macri administration announced increases in the price of energy, transportation, and water of between 200 and 500 percent. In reality, however, as the bills came in the mail, the actual hikes in many cases exceeded 1,000 percent. These tarifazos provoked mass popular protests. The tariff hikes were repeated in 2017 and 2018.

As a result of the collapsing electrical infrastructure, the number of brownouts and blackouts across Argentina has increased annually, particularly during the summers. Adding to the human cost of the blackouts are cuts in water supplies for many communities, as electrically operated pumping stations shut down.

The Argentine working class, in the face of these and other attacks on its living conditions, is more and more at the edge of a massive popular explosion.

Australian whistleblower trials shrouded in secrecy

Mike Head

Two prominent criminal trials of whistleblowers, whose leaks exposed war crimes and illegal operations by the country’s US-linked military and intelligence services, are likely to be largely conducted behind closed doors after the Australian government issued “national security information” certificates.

Defence lawyers are still contesting the full extent of the secrecy orders, one of which was issued this month, and the other last year. Such certificates can lead to entire trials being held behind closed doors. Defendants and their lawyers also can be excluded from hearings or viewing the evidence being used by the authorities.

The Liberal-National government’s determination to block any public scrutiny of these crucial hearings constitutes wartime-like censorship. It violates the basic principle of open trials and the basic legal rights of the accused—essential centuries-old protections against authoritarianism.

Not a word of criticism has appeared in the corporate media. This is another demonstration of the Australian establishment’s commitment to the US military alliance and its preparations for war.

The secrecy edicts have the same basic purpose as the two major police raids conducted this month against Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and News Corp journalists accused of reporting similar leaked exposures. As the Australian Federal Police chief declared, the raids were conducted to protect Australian involvement in, and access to, the US-led global Five Eyes surveillance network.

One raid, on the home of a News Corp journalist, concerned leaked plans to legalise spying on Australian citizens by the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), the electronic monitoring and cyber warfare service.

The latest secrecy certificate relates directly to the ABC raid. David McBride, a former military lawyer, is accused of leaking information about the killing of civilians, including children, the desecration of bodies and other abuses carried out by Australia’s Special Forces as part of the US-led invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.

These leaks are potentially devastating because Special Forces commandos have undertaken all the frontline ground attacks conducted by Australia in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are also the troops who would be mobilised internally to deal with “domestic violence” under last year’s expanded military call-out legislation.

Even though McBride was committed to stand trial in May, police conducted an eight-hour search of the ABC headquarters, clearly seeking to also incriminate the journalists to whom McBride allegedly gave the material.

McBride is charged with theft of Commonwealth property, three counts of breaching the Defence Act and one count of the unauthorised disclosure of information. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges. He does not dispute leaking the material, but insists that it was his duty to reveal it to the public.

During a brief hearing this month, a prosecution lawyer said the full brief of evidence could not even be served on McBride, despite him being arrested more than nine months ago. That was because of the government’s certificates, issued under the National Security Information (Criminal and Civil Proceedings) Act 2004. He requested a two-to-three week delay to allow the prosecution and government to work out how to deal with sensitive material.

Speaking to reporters outside the court, McBride said everything involved in the case was classified secret, but the case was “not about secrets, it’s about lies.” His defence, he said, was “that it is an army officer’s duty to rebel against an unjust and illegal and immoral regime.” McBride said he would not agree to a proposed plea bargain which would keep the evidence hidden.

Inside the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Supreme Court, McBride sought to limit further delay in the case by consenting to a private hearing to determine the bounds of “national security” information before he receives the full brief of evidence. He is representing himself to avoid having a security-vetted lawyer—another requirement of the legislation.

The case was adjourned until June 27 for a further mention.

The other trial relates to the illegal bugging of the East Timorese government’s cabinet room by the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) in 2004, conducted during negotiations on a lucrative oil treaty with the tiny state.

ASIS’s electronic surveillance was just part of a concerted campaign of economic and diplomatic bullying by Canberra, from the day that it sent troops to occupy the territory in 1999, supposedly to protect the Timorese people.

ASIS is the country’s external spy agency. It is a key part, together with the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), the electronic monitoring and cyber warfare service, of the Five Eyes network, which is crucial to Washington’s escalating trade war and military build-up against China.

In the case, currently before the ACT magistrates court, a former ASIS officer, known only as Witness K, and his lawyer Bernard Collaery are charged with communicating information about an ASIS operation. They face jail terms of up to two years.

By charging Collaery, as well as Witness K, the government is also attacking the principle of lawyer-client privilege, a centuries-old protection against authoritarian rule.

This case too has been subject to extraordinary secrecy and delay. A preliminary hearing, closed to the public, to decide how to deal with sensitive evidence is set down for August. Witness K and Collaery will have faced the courts for more than 14 months by that time.

In both cases, Attorney-General Christian Porter issued certificates declaring that evidence in the trials was “likely to prejudice national security.” Like all the police-state laws imposed on the pretext of the “war on terrorism,” the 2004 Act extends far beyond alleged terrorist plots or acts.

Initially used to help convict “terrorist” suspects, the Act is now being utilised in “security” trials. As the WSWS warned from the outset, these measures can be used to cover-up and suppress opposition, even internal dissent, to the criminal wars and abuses—past, present and under preparation—of the US and its allies, including Australia.

Pushed through federal parliament in 2004 with the backing of the opposition Labor Party, the Act hands the government vague and far-reaching powers.

Any certificate issued by the attorney-general is “conclusive evidence”—making it virtually impossible to challenge. “National security” is defined to mean “Australia’s defence, security, international relations or law enforcement interests.” That covers all the predatory interests of Australian imperialism and its US and other Five Eyes partners.

The Act permits trials on terrorism, espionage and “other security-related” charges to be held in complete secrecy. In closed-court sessions, judges also can allow government witnesses to testify in disguise via video and exclude lawyers who fail to obtain security clearances.

The staging of secret trials is another component of a global war on journalists and whistleblowers, in order to intimidate and persecute anyone who exposes the criminal operations of the US-led military-intelligence apparatus. This offensive is being spearheaded by the bid to extradite Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder and journalist, to the US, and the re-imprisonment of the whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who laid bare Washington’s murderous and anti-democratic operations around the world.