Trial begins over 2015 anti-government protest on Nauru

John Braddock

The long-delayed trial of a group of activists and former politicians involved in an anti-government protest on Nauru in 2015 began in the country’s High Court on November 14. The so-called ‘Nauru 19’—now reduced to 15 people—face charges including rioting and disrupting the legislature.

Nauru, a Pacific atoll of just 21 square kilometres with a population of less than 12,000 people, functions as an Australian semi-colony. It has a long history of oppression by the imperialist powers and a legacy of poverty and economic backwardness.

The defendants were last year granted a permanent stay of proceedings by Supreme Court Judge Geoffrey Muecke. Muecke, a retired chief judge of the South Australia District Court, found the trial could not be fair, that the government had thwarted legal representation and was persecuting the defendants. The government had also refused legal aid and placed them on a blacklist, ensuring they would struggle to find work.

The stay was removed in June by the newly established Nauru Court of Appeal after Muecke was sacked and abused in parliament by the former justice minister David Adeang. Newly-appointed Supreme Court Justice Daniel Fatiaki last month rejected another stay application and refused the Nauru 19 leave to appeal his decision.

Two defendants, former MP Squire Jeremiah and his cousin sought asylum in Australia before the government placed a ban on group members travelling overseas. Jeremiah said Nauru’s new president Lionel Aingimea had, as junior justice minister in the previous government, been closely involved in the pursuit of the Nauru 19, and was “denying us our political rights and our constitutional rights.” Former president Sprent Dabwido, also a Nauru 19 member, sought asylum in Australia earlier this year, before dying of cancer.

The protests in June 2015 erupted outside Nauru’s parliament over government corruption, with some 300 people attending. For nearly a year previously there had been no effective opposition, with five MPs suspended before they could take their seats.

The country’s then president, Baron Waqa, had sole power to appoint the cabinet from among the parliamentarians. Legal moves by the MPs to regain their seats failed. Mathew Batsiua, one of the excluded MPs, said people were angry at “the absence of checks and balances on government.” Waqa responded with increasingly authoritarian measures. These included harsh prison terms for publishing anything that “stirred up political hatred,” “caused emotional distress to a person,” or was “likely to threaten national defence, public safety, public order, public morality or public health.”

Waqa’s administration operated from 2013 as a virtual dictatorship, deporting and imprisoning opposition politicians, disciplining the police and judiciary, shutting down social media websites, and criminalising political dissent. The government’s treatment of refugees at the Australian-run detention centres frequently came under fire from rights groups.

In the lead-up to the 2018 Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) in Nauru, the government banned Australian journalists entering the country after the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) aired a program in June 2015, which coincided with the anti-corruption protests in Nauru, and another in 2016. The Nauru government accused the ABC of “blatant interference in Nauru’s domestic politics” prior to the 2016 election, and “continued biased and false reporting about our country.”

The ABC had alleged that Getax, a large Australian phosphate company, funneled more than half a million dollars in kickbacks to Waqa and other government figures. The ABC also publicised leaked emails it claimed revealed a plot to overthrow the previous Nauru government in 2010. The ABC’s reporting reflected concerns by a section of the Australian foreign policy establishment that Waqa’s administration might not have been toeing Canberra’s line closely enough.

In what was viewed as a vote for change, Waqa lost his seat in the general election held in August. He was replaced as president by Aingimea. In a Radio NZ interview in September, Aingimea defended the previous administration, of which he had been a member, and scotched any suggestion of major policy changes. He repeatedly denied government involvement in the treatment of the Nauru 19.

However, Australian lawyer Stephen Lawrence, who has represented the Nauru 19, told media in Australia and NZ that the rule of law on the island had completely “broken down.” Lawrence described the ruling that prevented the group from appealing Justice Fatiaki’s decision as “nuts,” saying the court was riding roughshod over their rights. He said the Nauru judiciary has no independence, and declared the proceedings to be a “true sham trial” and a “parody of justice.”

Lawrence added that Australian lawyers could no longer provide pro bono services, so the defendants now faced a criminal trial without their own legal representation. Their sole legal representative is the court-appointed public defender and they continue to be denied legal aid.

The Law Societies in NZ and Australia have previously called for action against Nauru. In 2015, legal academics in New Zealand published an open letter demanding the then National Party government take a “more forceful” approach and remove aid from Nauru’s justice sector. NZ Foreign Minister Murray McCully suspended $NZ1.2 million ($US0.76 million) in aid, citing concerns around “civil rights abuses and the rule of law.” It has since been restored.

Australia’s then foreign minister Julie Bishop said in September 2015 that Nauru’s legal processes were “progressing and judicial processes are being followed” and Canberra’s assistance was “not under threat.” Bishop defended the Waqa administration, insisting that its affairs were “domestic matters” that she discussed “confidentially” with the president.

Both regional powers are determined to maintain their geo-strategic dominance across the South Pacific and lock out rivals, above all China. Nauru is strategically situated adjacent to the US-controlled Marshall Islands, an American missile testing ground. It is one of the few countries in the world that continues to recognise Taiwan and has no diplomatic relations with China.

For nearly a decade from 2005, Australian governments ran a so-called Pacific Regional Assistance for Nauru program (PRAN). Modeled on Canberra’s intervention in the Solomon Islands, PRAN saw Australian officials take over key elements of the state apparatus, including the finance ministry, police and judiciary, until they were removed when Waqa became president.

However, Australian domination has continued with Canberra’s notorious asylum seeker “processing centre,” where refugees have been detained indefinitely in breach of their basic rights under international law. More than 1,000 men, women, and children who attempted to claim asylum in Australia after arriving by sea were imprisoned on Nauru after being deported by Australian Border Force officials.

The trial of the Nauru 19 is currently continuing.

Venice sees second worst flooding in recorded history

Allison Smith

Last week, massive flooding brought the city of Venice, Italy to its knees. On Tuesday, November 12, the high-water mark reached 187 centimeters (six feet), the second worst flooding in recorded history. On Friday, a new tidal surge brought another high tide of 154 centimeters (five feet). The “great flood” of 1966 holds the record at 190 centimeters (well over six feet).

As the first flood alarm sounded on Tuesday night, water rushed through the city, well above street level, flooding homes, shops, restaurants, hotels and monuments, and leaving tourists and locals to wade through the muck. Local authorities estimate that more than 85 percent of the city is under water. Dramatic video footage shows the extent of the damage.

On November 14, Italian Five Star Movement (M5S)-Democratic Party coalition Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte declared a state of emergency. The following day Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro (coalition center-right) closed Venice’s St. Mark’s Square and basilica. That wasn’t enough to protect the historic church, as flood waters left the crypt under more than a meter of water. The historic Gritti Palace hotel was also flooded, furniture floating in the lobby as workers raced to bring it to higher floors. Gritti was just finished repairing damages from last year’s storm.

A person wades through flood water in Venice, Italy, Friday, Nov. 15, 2019. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

Water taxis, the only efficient means of transportation between islands, were suspended and schools and city services remained closed for the entire week. Hotels say they are being forced to cancel reservations through December amid reports of more bad weather to come.

Not even Venice’s Libreria Acqua Alta bookshop could withstand the deluge as shopkeepers and patrons rushed to save the beloved store that has been weathering storms for many years. At least two deaths have been reported. One, a man in his 70s, died from electrocution when he turned on the flood pump in his home. The Venice Fire Brigade deployed 150 firefighters to rescue people stranded on jetties, recover boats that broke free of their moorings, and to put extra water ambulances in the canals.

Mexican tourist Oscar Calzada, 19, told AFP on Friday, “It’s shocking to see this, having water up to your knees.”

The cost of this year’s storm damage is already estimated to be hundreds of millions of euros, yet the government is only promising residents a miserly €5,000 for flood-damaged homes and €20,000 for flood-damaged businesses. Many are still recovering from record tides last year, and this sum is hardly enough to make anyone whole again.

Known as La Serenissima, the most serene, Venice is an ecologically sensitive area made up of 118 small islands inside a lagoon off the north-east coast of Italy. Exceptional tide peaks, known as acqua alta, high water, occur periodically between autumn and spring, when the astronomical tides are reinforced by prevailing seasonal winds in the northern Adriatic Sea, reaching their maximum in the Venetian Lagoon.

Climate change has increased the severity and frequency of flooding as glacier ice melts and raises sea levels. Since 1923 over half of the exceptional high tides have occurred in the past 20 years alone. In 2018, there were 121 days of acqua alta, nearly twice the number of high tides in 2017.

Adding to the problem, Venice is sinking due to shifting tectonic plates and water pumped out of the ground for industrial use in the middle of the 20th century. Between 1950 and 1970, it sank almost five inches and continues to sink about one-fifth of an inch annually.

But capitalism is the real culprit. The long-awaited flood barrier system, MOSE (Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico), approved in concept in 1988 and under construction since 2003, is still not complete despite costing nearly €6 billion. It is projected to open in 2021 or 2022, with estimated annual operating costs of €110 million per year, a tidy sum as Italy’s GDP continues to shrink following the 2008 global financial crisis.

In 2014, 35 people, including then Venice Mayor Giorgio Orsoni, a member of the Democratic Party, and Giancarlo Galan, a member of Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza party, were arrested following a three-year state-run criminal investigation into corruption, illicit party financing and tax fraud, totaling €5.3 billion.

Orsoni was convicted and sentenced to jail for accepting €500,000 in illicit funding from the Consorzio Venezia Nuova, the entity overseeing the MOSE project. However, through a plea deal, he never saw a day in jail and returned to his post as professor of law at Ca’ Foscari University. Galan received a prison sentence of two years and 10 months and a fine of €2.6 million for bribery, extortion and money laundering. He served his “prison” term in the comfort of his own home near Padua.

This past July, it was discovered that all 156 hinges—each weighing 36 tons—on the underwater barriers that were supposed to last at least 100 years are nearly rusted shut after just 10 years under water. The €200 million tender for the hinges was awarded to Gruppo Mantovani without a formal bid, and the company is under investigation for using sub-par steel. Replacing the hinges is estimated to take 10 years and cost €30 million.

Last week, Venice resident Dino Perzolla, 62, reflected the outrage felt by Venetians about MOSE, telling AFT news, “They’ve done nothing, neglected it. It doesn’t work and they have stolen six billion euros. The politicians should all be put in jail.”

Ironically, as the Veneto regional council was debating the 2020 regional budget, including measures to address climate change, the chamber room flooded.

Mass protests in Prague against Czech government

Markus Salzmann

On the eve of the 30th anniversary of the so-called Velvet Revolution, hundreds of thousands demonstrated in the Czech capital of Prague on Saturday against the corrupt right-wing government led by Prime Minister Andrej Babis. According to the police and the protest organisers, some 250,000 people participated.

In June, 300,000 people protested against the government, and recent weeks have witnessed a series of demonstrations with more than 100,000 participants. The protests are primarily directed against Babis, who is accused of abusing his political office for personal and business gains. According to Forbesmagazine, the Czech prime minister’s wealth amounts to an estimated €3.3 billion, making Babis the country’s second richest man. He has been accused of corruption in a number of cases.

People take part in a large anti-government protest in Prague, Czech Republic, Saturday, Nov. 16, 2019. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

The protests on Saturday took place the day before November 17, the date in 1989 when the first protests were held that led to the breakdown of Stalinist rule in Czechoslovakia. A few days later, on November 26, the Stalinist leader Ladislav Adamec and Vaclav Havel met at the negotiating table. By the end of December, Havel was president.

The sustained protests underscore that the restoration of capitalism in the Czech Republic and Eastern Europe has not led to prosperity and democracy, but to glaring levels of social inequality and the rise of a corrupt, authoritarian elite.

Babis personifies this development. He enjoyed close ties to the Stalinist leaders. Several investigations have confirmed that he was active on behalf of the StB intelligence agency. After capitalist restoration in 1989, he used his contacts to establish his business empire. Initially, he made his money with a company in the agricultural and grocery sectors, Agrofert, which now controls some of the country’s major media outlets.

Like many other former Stalinist functionaries in Czechoslovakia and Eastern Europe, Babis transformed himself into a vocal proponent of the capitalist market. The social democratic CSSD and post-Stalinist KSCM, which support Babis along with his ANO movement, are full of former Stalinist officials who benefited personally from the privatisation of public assets.

The Czech Republic in particular saw a rapid sell-off of public companies during the early 1990s. The Democratic Citizens Party (ODS) and the CSSD governed in a variety of alliances and with different coalition partners. But their politics always remained the same. One austerity programme after another was implemented in the interests of the Czech and European ruling elites, who promoted militarism and a repugnant campaign to scapegoat refugees and foreigners.

The major parties experienced a rapid decline. At the last election in 2017, the ODS achieved just 11 percent, while the CSSD got 7 percent of the vote. Babis benefited from this by portraying himself as an alternative to the established parties. ANO won the 2017 election with over 30 percent of the vote. The right-wing is currently deeply divided, while the CSSD has split into bitterly warring factions. The party is experiencing a dramatic drop in membership and could fail to win seats in parliament at the next election.

The protests against Babis express the anger at the entire political establishment that has led the country for the past 30 years. In contrast to the official portrayals of the Czech Republic as a country characterised by low unemployment and rapid economic growth, the reality for the working population is very different. A recent poll revealed that 38 percent of those over 40 believed that they had a better life prior to 1989. Among workers, the figure rose to 52 percent.

The protest organisers have nothing in common with the broad masses of the population. Under conditions of mass protests in countries around the world and growing anger towards traditional parties, they are attempting to contain the protests and channel them in a reactionary direction. Over recent months, a series of strikes and protests expressing the dissatisfaction of broad sections of the population have taken place across Eastern Europe, including in Poland, Serbia and Albania.

The leaders of the “One Million Moments for Democracy” movement have close links to pro-European Union liberal and conservative forces, and aim to pressure the government to adopt a more pro-European course. “We’re not making another revolution or anything like that, we are actually trying to retain what was achieved in 1989,” explained one of the organisers, Benjamin Roll. In their view, the current government’s corruption cuts across the interests of the EU.

The movement is led by the theology student Mikulas Minar. Its declared goal is to steer clear of political parties as much as possible. However, this was exposed as a transparent fraud by a meeting held between leaders of the movement and right-wing politicians, reported by the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

While some right-wing and liberal parties have backed the protests, the social democrats, Stalinists, and trade unions have opposed them. The KSCM, in particular, is drawing on the tradition of the Stalinist state party, which suppressed any independent struggle in the population. Following the protests in the summer, the party’s central committee adopted a statement explicitly supporting Babis’ ANO and praising its right-wing agenda. The statement described anti-government protests as the “destabilisation” of the Czech Republic and warned of the influence of “foreign power circles” and a “coup in the interests of right-wing elites.”

This makes clear that workers and young people in the Czech Republic and Eastern Europe confront fundamental questions of political perspective. Three decades of capitalist rule have not led to democracy and an improvement in living standards for the working class, as once promised by the advocates of capitalist restoration.

In reality, it produced a social catastrophe and the rise to power of right-wing, parasitic elements like Babis. The developing working-class movement must oppose these forces with a socialist and internationalist perspective. Arming the emerging struggles with a socialist programme requires the construction of sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in the Czech Republic and throughout Eastern Europe.

Iranian regime shuts down internet following protests over gas price hikes

Keith Jones

Iran’s bourgeois nationalist regime has been shaken by mass protests, some of which turned violent, against a dramatic increase in gasoline prices.

Demonstrations and road blockades erupted Friday only hours after the price hike took effect. The protests reportedly spread to a hundred cities and towns across the country on Saturday and Sunday, and continued, at least in some measure, yesterday. Government spokesman Ali Rabiei said there had been “gatherings in some cities, in some provinces” on Monday, but that “tomorrow and the day after we won’t have any issues with regard to riots.”

The most senior leaders of the Islamic Republic have accused ultra-reactionary forces aligned with US imperialism of using the protests to foment violence and “anarchy.”

Protesters in Iran, Credit: @Bahram_Gooor (Twitter)

In a nationwide address Sunday in which he proclaimed his support for the gas price hikes, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei named the US-based monarchist opposition, which seeks to restore the son of the hated Shah to the throne, and the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq or MEK, as instigators of the violence. The MEK has been actively promoted by many current and former Trump aides, including John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani.

In his address, Khamenei conceded there had been some deaths in what he called clashes between “thugs” and “hooligans” and security forces.

Already Saturday evening, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council had suspended internet access across the country. As of last night, the blackout remained in force, with access allowed only to a limited number of government-approved sites.

Washington, in an act tantamount to war, has unilaterally imposed a de facto economic blockade on Iran with the avowed aim of crashing its economy. Now it is hypocritically voicing support for the protesters. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who last November told the BBC’s Persian service that Iran’s leaders had to bow to US demands if “they want their people to eat,” tweeted, “The United States is with you.”

The White House issued a statement Sunday that denounced the Iranian regime for using “lethal force” against “peaceful protests.” It also said, “Tehran has fanatically pursued nuclear weapons” and “terrorism,” repeating the lies Trump has used to justify Washington’s illegal blockade, which includes an embargo on all Iranian energy exports and bars Iran all access to the world banking system, thereby throttling its foreign trade.

Blinded by imperialist arrogance, the authors of the White House statement evidently did not realize the self-incriminating character of the conclusion of their inflammatory tirade, which cited the Islamic Republic as “a cautionary tale of what happens when a ruling class abandons its people and embarks on a crusade for personal power and riches.”

Given the Islamic Republic’s internet blackout and the Western media’s animus toward the regime, it is difficult to gauge the size, composition and precise character of the protests.

Government and intelligence officials do concede that there is genuine popular anger against the price hikes, which were imposed without prior warning.

Speaking at the conclusion of a cabinet meeting Sunday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said it was “natural” that some people were opposed to the government’s plan and had the “right to give voice to their opposition.” But “the government will not allow anyone at all to [create] chaos and insecurity,” by rioting, he added.

“People started their demonstrations in peace on Saturday morning,” said Brigadier General Gholamreza Soleimani, the head of the Basij wing of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps. “But in the evening of the same day a wave of unrest was created by the support of the country’s enemies.”

Government reports put the number of persons killed during the protests at a dozen, including two security personnel and a security guard. The BBC and other Western news outlets cite government opponents inside Iran as saying the true figure is double or more than that.

On Sunday, the semi-official Fars News Agency cited an intelligence report that claimed 87,400 people had taken part in the protests. Of these, it said only a small fraction had taken part in violent activities.

Many of the protesters, said the report, “were merely present at the location of rallies and did not cooperate with rioters, and many of them have received warning messages on their cell phones from security organizations to avoid further participation in protests.”

The report further claimed there had been widespread property damage, with “more than 100 bank branches and 57 big stores… set on fire or sacked in one province alone.” It said more than a thousand people have been arrested across the country for participating in or inciting violence.

That the US and its Saudi and Israeli clients will seek to exploit growing popular alienation and anger against the Iranian regime to advance their own reactionary agendas is indubitable.

It is also true that recent years have seen growing popular opposition to the Iranian regime, in the form of strikes and demonstrations over job cuts, poverty wages and lengthy delays in the payment of wages. The final days of 2017 and the beginning of 2018 saw widespread protests against social inequality and austerity, including in poorer rural towns and cities that had hitherto served as a base of support for the regime.

The current protests and the government’s response speak to the acute social tensions within Iran as the economy buckles under the relentless pressure being exerted by Washington, and the crisis of the bourgeois nationalist regime, as it attempts to maneuver between imperialism and Iran’s workers and toilers.

Friday’s price hike imposes a 50 percent increase on the first 60 litres of gas purchased by a car owner, to 15,000 rials—the equivalent, due to the collapse of Iran’s currency, of just 13 US cents. The cost of additional litres has been raised by up to 300 percent.

The price of gas in Iran remains among the lowest in the world. The price hike, however, has sparked widespread anger because years of austerity imposed by all factions of the Iranian political establishment and punishing US-led sanctions have led to mass unemployment, shrinking incomes and ever-deepening social inequality.

Initially the government touted the price rise as a measure to combat smuggling, one moreover that was in accordance with IMF recommendations for Iran.

But in the past 72 hours, it has insisted that the real motivation was to provide greater financial support for ordinary Iranians. As early as yesterday, the government began depositing money in Iranians’ bank accounts that, it says, will compensate them for cutting back the subsidized price of gas. According to the government, ultimately a total of 60 million people or more than 70 percent of Iran’s population, will be eligible for the monthly payments.

The government first introduced small direct cash payments to Iranians in 2011, when it eliminated or rolled back subsidies on an array of staple foods and products. Under the now modified scheme, a family of five will be eligible for a payment of $US17 per month.

The Iranian press is claiming that as early as Friday, Khamenei criticized Rouhani’s government for not rolling out the subsidy increase and the gas price hike in tandem.

The Supreme Leader’s declaration of support for the gas price hikes in his statement Sunday was aimed at least in part at trying to prevent the protests from deepening the cleavages within the regime. Some of Rouhani's social conservative opponents had announced that they were going to press parliament to rescind the price hikes, saying they were illegal. But after the Supreme Leader made clear his support, they backed down.

Replying to statements by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the French Foreign Ministry echoing Washington’s denunciations of the Iranian regime’s response to the protests, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif noted that the European powers, despite their professed support for the Iran nuclear accord, have aided and abetted Washington in re-imposing the brutal sanctions.

The growing social and political crisis in Iran underscores the urgency of the working class intervening as an independent political force in opposition to imperialism, its direct agents such as the monarchists, and all factions of the Iranian bourgeoisie. The fight for a workers’ republic in Iran must be linked to the struggle to mobilize the working class and oppressed across the Middle East against Washington and imperialism as a whole.

France to host “peace summit” with Germany, Ukraine and Russia

Clara Weiss

The Élysées Palace of French president Emmanuel Macron announced on Friday that “peace talks” in the so-called Normandy format—involving Berlin, Paris, Kiev and Moscow, but not the United States—will be held in Paris on December 9. The proclaimed aim of the talks is to advance a peaceful resolution of the five-year-long civil war in East Ukraine, which has claimed the lives of at least 13,000 people. The war was triggered by the US- and EU-backed coup in Kiev in February 2014 and has heavily involved Ukrainian fascist forces like the Azov Battalion who have been terrorizing and killing the civilian population in the East.

The announcement of the talks comes amidst growing tensions between US imperialism and the leading European imperialist powers, above all Germany and France, and an escalation of warfare within the US ruling class over an impeachment probe that centers on the White House withholding lethal aid for Ukraine’s war effort against Russian-backed separatists.

The announcement was preceded by months of negotiations. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was elected in April based on promises to end the five-year conflict in East Ukraine. After initially continuing the anti-Russia campaign of his predecessor, Zelensky agreed to a high-profile prisoner swap with Russia in September. Shortly thereafter, his government announced that it would accept the Steinmeier formula.

Named after the current German president, the formula is a vague set of propositions aimed at bolstering the Minsk agreement from 2015. It technically provides for limited autonomy for the Eastern Ukrainian territories with elections held under the supervision of the OSCE and Kiev.

Tens of thousands of far-right nationalists and war veterans have demonstrated against Zelensky’s adoption of the formula. When Zelensky initiated the withdrawal of troops in October, members of the fascist Azov Battalion refused to follow his orders. The ceasefire has been violated several times in recent weeks.

Former president Petro Poroshenko, who is facing charges for corruption and high treason by this administration, denounced Zelensky’s decision as “treason.” Responding to the pressure from sections of the oligarchy and the US-backed far-right, prominent members of the Zelensky administration have since publicly posed with some of the country’s most notorious neo-Nazis.

The war is extremely unpopular in the Ukrainian population and Zelensky’s promises to end it were a central factor contributing to his electoral victory in April. Beyond the at least 13,000 who have been killed, an estimated 30,000 people have been wounded, 1.4 million people have been displaced and 3.5 million are considered in need of humanitarian assistance. Austerity measures implemented since 2014 have pushed living standards in the country down to levels of a Third World nation. In 2018, the Ukrainian population’s net wealth was below that of the population in countries like Nepal, Kenya, Bangladesh and Cameroon and only slightly higher than in war-torn countries like Syria and Mali.

Polls have repeatedly shown that the majority of the population seeks an end to the war and is most concerned by the widespread poverty and ongoing economic crisis. A recent government-conducted poll in the Donbass, the region in East Ukraine where the two separatist self-declared “republics” of Luhansk and Donetsk are located, found that the overwhelming majority of respondents prefer being integrated into the Russian Federation. Respondents overwhelmingly blamed the US and EU for the war, and opposed integration with the EU and NATO.

Zelensky’s primary motivation for the summit, however, is his determination to have his hands free to implement the most far-reaching privatization program since the restoration of capitalism in the 1990s against opposition within the working class. The other major factor is his attempts to maneuver between the European powers and the United States.

The outcome of the talks remains highly uncertain. The Kremlin has been noticeably reluctant to publicize the negotiations or to present them as a major step toward a resolution of the conflict. Recent weeks have seen a series of mutual recriminations between Moscow and Kiev with each side accusing the other of trying to sabotage the talks.

The Ukrainian oligarchy is torn over its foreign policy orientation, with all factions vying for the allegiance of the country’s violent far-right. These conflicts in the Ukraine elite are closely bound up with the growing tensions between Ukraine’s imperialist backers, above all the US, France and Germany. Zelensky’s endorsement of the Normandy talk format is widely regarded as a concession to Paris and Berlin.

France and especially Germany are important economic allies of Ukraine and have escalated their involvement in the country’s affairs since 2014. However, geopolitical tensions with Germany, in particular, continue to run high over the Russian-German pipeline Nord Stream, which the Ukrainian oligarchy, including the Zelensky administration, bitterly opposes.

The US remains by far the most important military ally of Ukraine. In Washington, the impeachment proceedings against Trump focus on his allegedly withholding military aid from the Kiev government. The anti-Trump campaign by the Democratic Party and military-intelligence agencies in recent years has focused on whipping up hysteria over Russia and accuses Trump of not pursuing a sufficiently aggressive course against Russia. A substantial faction of the Ukrainian oligarchy is still primarily oriented toward the alliance with US imperialism and seeks to further bolster Ukraine’s role as a critical military front in the US-led war preparations against Russia.

The warfare in the American ruling class over foreign policy and increasing clashes with the interests of US imperialism in both the Middle East and Europe have also provoked heated discussions in Paris and Berlin about their foreign policy orientation. The French president Macron has been pushing for the Normandy talks, in particular. The decision to host the summit in Paris is, in many respects, a demonstrative move, aimed to underscore the ambitions of French imperialism to play a leading role in Eastern Europe and Europe as a whole under conditions of growing transatlantic tensions.

In recent months, Macron, who had met with Zelensky before the latter was even elected as president, has undertaken several steps aimed at improving relations with Russian president Vladimir Putin while publicly questioning the viability of NATO. Most recently, he gave an interview to the Economist in which he described NATO as “brain dead” and warned of another world war, especially in light of the reorientation of US foreign policy. In this context he urged that “If we want to...rebuild European strategic autonomy, we must reconsider our position towards Russia.”

Echoing the concerns of the French president, a recent paper by the leading German think tank Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) discusses the potential disintegration of NATO. Stressing that the security of Germany was still primarily dependent upon NATO, the paper warns that “the changes in US policy and lack of clarity about future developments” constitute “the by far greatest endurance test for the cohesiveness of the alliance.”

Pointing to growing divisions over policies toward both Russia and China, the SWP warns: “These internal differences [within NATO] harbor considerable potential for conflict. The greatest risk is the formation of groups (bilaterialization and fragmentation), an (unintended) break with the US and, hence, a weakening of NATO.” Implicitly warning of another inter-imperialist war, pitting Germany against the US, the think tank evaluated three potential scenarios for the future development of NATO: NATO’s “Europeanization” with only a subordinate role played by the US; a continuation of the status quo with a stronger role played by Germany and ongoing political conflicts with the US; and a total breakup of the alliance and fragmentation of Europe. For all scenarios, the think tank, which has played a leading role in pushing for the remilitarization of Germany in recent years, urges a more rapid buildup of the German army.

United States has the highest child detention rate in the world

Niles Niemuth

Reviewing the findings of a United Nations study of the conservatively estimated 7 million children worldwide currently deprived of liberty by being imprisoned or detained, author Manfred Nowak reported at a press conference Monday that the United States leads the world in the rate which it detains young people under the age of 18.

Sixty out of every 100,000 children in the US are detained in either the criminal justice or immigration system. Countries that come close to the US rate include Bolivia, Botswana and Sri Lanka, while on the low end, Western Europe averages 5 child detentions per 100,000 and Canada detains children at a rate of 14–15 per 100,000.

Children in detention (AP photo)

Nowak pointed to the Trump administration’s racist war on immigrants, which has seen children torn from their parents’ arms and thrown into cages, as a key driver of the particularly high US rate, with the United States accounting for nearly one third of the 330,000 children being held in immigrant detention camps by governments around the world.

“The United States is one of the countries with the highest numbers—we still have more than 100,000 children in migration-related detention in the (US),” Nowak, a professor of international human rights, told reporters Monday. “Of course, separating children, as was done by the Trump administration, from their parents and even small children at the Mexican-US border is absolutely prohibited by the Convention on the Rights of the Child. I would call it inhuman treatment for both the parents and the children.”

Notably, the US government is the only member of the UN that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, with successive Democratic and Republican administrations refusing to submit the treaty to the Senate for final approval since it was signed in 1995. The US was one of the countries that failed to return a survey for the latest study.

“The way they were separating infants from families only in order to deter irregular migration from Central America to the United States to me constitutes inhuman treatment,” Nowak stated, noting that this also violated the UN Convention against Torture and the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both of which have been ratified by the US.

While the specific family separation policy was blocked by a court ruling, a record number of unaccompanied minors are still being detained by the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. According to a recent investigation by the Associated Press and PBS’ “Frontline” program, nearly 70,000 infants, adolescents and teenagers were held in a US government detention center over the course of 2019, an increase of 42 percent over 2018.

Nowak also pointed to the dire situation for immigrant children in Mexico, where the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been cooperating with the Trump administration’s illegal efforts to deny Central American asylum seekers access to the United States. There are currently 18,000 children in that country being held in immigration detention and another 7,000 locked up in prison.

In addition to those in Mexico’s detention centers, more than 55,000 asylum seekers, including many children, have been forced back into Mexico to wait for their claims to be heard.

Even as many of those detained have been resettled with relatives in the US or deported back to the country they fled with their families, their places are already being filled by more children who are daily being arrested for crossing the border.

Under Trump, children are being held for longer durations as his administration has pushed to put an end to legal restrictions on the amount of time a child can be held in an immigrant detention center. An initiative to detain children indefinitely with their parents was blocked by a federal judge early this year. It is well documented that locking up children with or without their parents for any length of time results in serious psychological trauma and puts them at increased risk of sexual abuse.

The staggering rate of child detention in the US is also being driven by the significant number of arrests of minors every year, leading in many cases to criminal charges and detention in the juvenile or adult penal system. According to FBI figures, there were nearly 720,000 arrests of individuals under the age of 18 in 2018, and between 2013 and 2017 nearly 30,000 children under the age of 10 were arrested by police. On average, 500,000 youth go through the country’s juvenile detention system every year.

The United States is one of a handful of countries that has set no minimum age for criminal responsibility, leaving it up to state legislatures to decide at what age children can be sentenced to prison. Thirty-four states have no minimum age for criminal responsibility and 24 states have no minimum age at which a juvenile can be charged as an adult.

Despite his outlining of the abuse of children on a mass scale by the United States government, Nowak told reporters that there would be no consequences from the UN since the US is a permanent member of the Security Council. “That’s one of the weaknesses of the United Nations,” he remarked.

Outside of North America, Nowak pointed to the 29,000 children who are being held in squalid prison camps in Syria and Iraq, having been linked to the Islamic State. Even though the largest share of the foreigners among them are French, the French government has refused to take any responsibility for them. Nowak said that even if some of them had been forced to fight for ISIS, they should be treated as victims and not as criminals.

The mistreatment of children on the a vast and global scale highlighted by the UN’s latest report is an indictment of the capitalist system, which is incapable of providing for the most basic needs of millions, including in the richest country in the history of the world. It is a system that punishes and traumatizes children for the supposed misdeed of crossing borders without required documents either on their own or with their parents. It will not be resolved through the pleas of the UN for reforms or through charity missions.

It is a system that is irrational and fundamentally barbaric. It must be overthrown and replaced by a system that guarantees every child a safe and secure life, no matter where he or she may be born, and one that eliminates borders and puts an end to war. This can be accomplished only through the revolutionary socialist transformation of society by the international working class.

US declares Israeli settlements no longer illegal

Jean Shaoul

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Monday that the United States no longer views Israeli settlements on Palestinian land seized during the 1967 Arab-Israel war as illegal.

In doing so, he is giving the extreme right-wing caretaker government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu carte blanche to accelerate the creation of new Zionist settlements and the expansion of existing ones. The US ruling is a green light for an escalation in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from East Jerusalem and the annexation of Palestinian land.

The ruling announced by Pompeo also makes clear that Washington will brook no constraints on its pursuit of US hegemony via criminal wars of conquest, annexations and the re-imposition of naked colonialism.

His announcement at a State Department press conference amounts to an argument for abrogating all existing international laws if the US views them as an obstacle to its interests. For the Trump administration, what is “lawful” will be determined by those interests and the use of military force to achieve them.

Pompeo said, “After carefully studying all sides of the legal debate, this administration agrees ... (the) establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not, per se, inconsistent with international law.”

“Calling the establishment of civilian settlements inconsistent with international law has not advanced the cause of peace,” he said. “The hard truth is that there will never be a judicial resolution to the conflict, and arguments about who is right and who is wrong as a matter of international law will not bring peace.”

The Trump administration would therefore reverse previous US governments’ “approach” to the settlements issue that held that civilian settlements in the occupied territories are “inconsistent with international law.” From now on, the legality of individual settlements would be a matter for the Israeli courts to decide.

The move granting Israel and its courts a free hand, he asserted, would “provide the very space for Israelis and Palestinians to come together to find a political solution.”

The US has never in reality opposed Israeli settlements, but rather protected Israel from all criticism and potential legal sanction. US presidents after Jimmy Carter referred to the settlements as “obstacles to peace” or “illegitimate” or “unnecessarily provocative,” rather than illegal, following a State Department finding in 1978—with Ronald Reagan disagreeing with even this watered-down designation. Irrespective of its formal position, successive administrations have backed Israel’s military aggression in the region, its expansion of the settlements and use of force against the Palestinians, using its veto power in the UN Security Council to quash at least 43 Israel-related draft resolutions.

The State Department—in recognition that Pompeo’s announcement might cause protests in the Palestinian Occupied Territories and East Jerusalem—issued a sweeping travel warning for all US government facilities, US private interests and US citizens in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem.

Under international law, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza and the Syrian Golan Heights are deemed to be occupied territories. The Geneva Conventions, enacted in the wake of the Second World War to prevent the repetition of the crimes carried out by Germany’s Nazi regime, outlawed the annexation of territory captured in war as well as the building by an occupying power of civilian settlements on such land.

While Pompeo implied that the Trump White House was simply echoing Reagan’s earlier stance, it has gone much further, reversing the 1978 State Department finding. Despite his repeated and lying attempts to respond to questions about the announcement by claiming that Washington’s new position was based on the Trump administration’s review of international law, he did not refer to the authors of this new legal reasoning or its content because there was no such review, which is conspicuous by its lack of publication.

The announcement is the latest in a series of hardline moves by the Trump administration in support of Israel’s militarist expansionism that include:

* The relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem

* The recognition of Israeli sovereignty over Syria’s Golan Heights

* The closure of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s offices in Washington and the US Consulate General in Jerusalem, which worked with Palestinians

* The ending of US funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which assists Palestinian refugees, as well as to other Palestinian organizations and programs

* The enactment of US laws that prohibit providing funds to the families of Palestinian political prisoners and individuals killed by Israel, under the pretext of “fighting terrorism”

* Moves to brand any form of criticism of Israel, including the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, as anti-Semitic

* The US withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council in protest against its scrutiny of Israel’s policies.

These moves and Pompeo’s latest declaration in support of Israel’s expansionist policies are bound up with a broader escalation of US imperialism’s military intervention in the Middle East, particularly to roll back Iranian influence in the region in the wake of the successive debacles suffered by Washington in Iraq, Libya and Syria.

Unsurprisingly, Netanyahu, who faces the likelihood within days of criminal indictments in three major corruption probes, and a battle to remain Israel’s leader after two inconclusive elections, hailed the announcement. “Today, the United States adopted an important policy that rights a historical wrong when the Trump administration clearly rejected the false claim that Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria are inherently illegal under international law,” he gloated.

He welcomed Pompeo’s assertion that the legality of Israeli settlements was a matter for the Israeli courts, rather than “biased international forums that pay no attention to history or facts.”

Netanyahu had pledged during this year’s election campaigns that he would extend Jewish sovereignty over all the Israeli settlements as well as the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea area in the occupied West Bank if re-elected. He now has the green light to proceed with this plan.

But any annexation would be a prelude to an apartheid state that would ghettoize the Palestinians, who comprise nearly half of the total population of Israel and the occupied territories. The recently passed Jewish Nationality Act enshrining Jewish supremacy provides the legal foundation for such a state. It would necessarily entail stepped-up repression in Israel and intensified Israeli military aggression in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and the broader Middle East.

Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition partners wasted no time in calling for Israel to annex settlements in the West Bank. Ayelet Shaked of the nationalist Yamina (New Right) tweeted, “Thank you President Trump and Secretary Pompeo for recognizing that there is nothing illegal about Jewish communities in Judea & Samaria. The Jewish People have the legal and moral right to live in their ancient homeland. Now is the time to apply our sovereignty to these communities.”

Pompeo’s announcement comes just days after the European Court of Justice ruled that all products made in the West Bank, including products made in Israeli settlements, must be labeled as such, a move that the pro-Israel lobby presented as anti-Semitic.

Benny Gantz, leader of the main opposition Blue and White Party and former army chief of staff who has been Netanyahu’s rival in the protracted attempt to form a new Israeli government, also welcomed the announcement. Gantz called it “an important decision, which points once more to the [U.S. administration’s] firm stance by Israel and commitment to the security and future of the entire Middle East.”

Palestinian Authority spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh said that Pompeo’s statement “totally contradicts” international law. “The US administration has completely lost credibility and can no longer play any role in the peace process.” He called on other countries to “declare their opposition” to it.

Hanan Ashrawi, an Executive Committee member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, called the move “another blow to international law, justice & peace by a Biblical absolutist waiting for the ‘rapture.’”

As usual, the European powers issued pro-forma statements reiterating their hypocritical position that Israel’s occupation and settlement program contravenes international law, while imposing no sanctions against it.

The bloodbath in Baghdad

Bill Van Auken

The death toll in the mass protests that have shaken Iraq for the last seven weeks has risen to over 330, with an estimated 15,000 wounded. Young Iraqis have continued to pour into the streets in defiance of fierce repression to press their demands for jobs, social equality and an end to the unspeakably corrupt political regime created by the US occupation that followed the criminal American invasion of 2003.

Most of those killed have been felled by live ammunition, including machine-gun fire and bullets fired by snipers, both randomly into crowds and at identified protest leaders. Others have suffered hideous fatal wounds from military-grade tear gas grenades fired point-blank into the demonstrators, in some cases with canisters ending up lodged in the victims’ skulls or lungs. In addition, water cannon have been employed, spraying scalding hot water into the protests.

Forced disappearances have been reported, while families of victims shot to death by security forces have been compelled to sign statements acknowledging the deaths as “accidental” in order to receive the bodies of their loved ones.

An injured protestor is rushed to a hospital during a demonstration in Baghdad, Iraq, Saturday, Oct. 26, 2019. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

This brutality has only succeeded in drawing ever wider layers of the population, and in particular growing sections of the Iraqi working class, into the anti-government mobilizations. In Baghdad, protesters have succeeded in occupying three strategic bridges over the Tigris River leading into the heavily fortified Green Zone, where government buildings, top officials’ villas, embassies and the offices of military contractors and other foreign agencies are located.

In the south of the country, demonstrators have once again mounted a siege of Iraq’s main Persian Gulf port of Umm Qasr near Basra, reducing its activity by over 50 percent. Oil workers announced Sunday that they were going on a general strike in support of the demonstrators, and columns of workers organized by Iraqi unions poured into Tahrir Square to back the protests. In the southern Shia heartland of Iraq, the teachers unions have led a general strike movement that has shut down most cities.

Only in the predominantly Sunni northern areas of Anbar Province and Mosul, which were bombed into rubble during the so-called US war against ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), has the protest movement failed to bring masses into the streets. This is not for any lack of sympathy, but rather the threat of a renewed military offensive against any sign of opposition. Even those in the region who have expressed their solidarity on Facebook have been rounded up by security forces, while the authorities have made it plain that anyone there who opposes the government will be treated as “terrorists” and ISIS sympathizers.

If anything approaching this level of both mass popular revolt and murderous repression were taking place in Russia, China, Venezuela or Iran, one can easily imagine the kind of wall-to-wall coverage they would receive from the corporate media in the US. Yet, the Iraqi events have been virtually ignored by the broadcast networks and the major print media. This is certainly not for lack of popular interest in the country.

After all, some two million US troops, civilian government employees and private contractors went to Iraq between the US invasion of 2003 and the withdrawal of most US troops by the Obama administration in 2011. Some 4,500 US personnel lost their lives there, while tens of thousands more came back wounded and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Within barely three years, the US intervention was renewed with several thousand more American soldiers sent in to retake cities lost by the US-trained and equipped security forces to ISIS.

The reaction of the American mass media is a guilty, shame-faced silence. The events in Iraq are a stark expression of the abject criminality and failure of the entire US imperialist project in that country, so the less said about them the better.

Those who are filling the streets are by and large comprised of a generation formed by the US invasion and occupation, along with the continuing violence that followed. They lived through what the World Socialist Web Site described at the time as an act of “sociocide,” the systematic destruction of an entire society that had before 2003 been one of the most advanced in the Middle East. The estimated death toll from this criminal war, launched on the basis of lies about “weapons of mass destruction,” is over one million, while some two million people remain displaced.

The regime that they are fighting to bring down is the direct product of the US occupation, formed on the basis of a constitution written by US officials. It was fashioned to serve Washington’s divide-and-rule strategy by organizing the puppet political government along sectarian lines, which helped fuel a bloody civil war that had further disastrous consequences.

Iraq’s current Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi is the personification of the bankrupt and corrupt political regime forged by US imperialism. Beginning his career as a member of Iraq’s ruling Ba’athist party under Saddam Hussein, he went on to become a leading member of the Stalinist Iraqi Communist Party and then went into exile in Iran as a loyalist of Ayatollah Khomeini. Brought back to Iraq by US tanks, he joined the puppet government created by US occupation authorities in 2004 as finance minister.

He, like his predecessors since 2004, has presided over the looting of Iraq’s oil wealth to enrich foreign capital, the local ruling oligarchy and a layer of corrupt politicians and their hangers-on. Meanwhile, in a country boasting the fifth-largest oil reserves in the world, the official unemployment rate for younger workers stands at 25 percent, nearly a quarter of the population is living under conditions of extreme poverty and hundreds of thousands of young people, including many university graduates, attempt to enter the labor market each year only to find no jobs.

Ironically, both Washington and Tehran are opposed to the demand of the demonstrators for the downfall of the regime. Both the US and Iran have pursued their respective interests through Mahdi’s administration, even as US imperialism fights to effect regime change in Iran in order to eliminate an obstacle to US hegemony in the oil-rich Middle East.

The US State Department, concerned for the most part in securing the US bases out of which thousands of US troops continue to operate in Iraq, had initially remained silent on the bloody suppression of protesters. Late last month, however, after it was reported that Iran had brokered an agreement between the major Iraqi political parties to support Mahdi’s remaining in power and to suppress the opposition in the streets, Washington began to make noises about respecting the demands of the protesters.

The State Department issued a vague threat of sanctions, naming no one in particular, but indicating that any official cooperating with Iran could be targeted. At the moment, the US has nothing better with which to replace Mahdi and his fellow thieves. They are the best that Washington could find after it toppled Saddam Hussein.

The New York Times, ever the pliant propaganda tool of US war aims, helped to promote the anti-Iranian narrative by publishing on Monday what it claimed was a “trove” of secret Iranian intelligence cables illustrating Iranian ties with various actors in the Iraqi government. A purportedly unknown source—perhaps within the US intelligence apparatus—provided the alleged cables to the Intercept, which handed them off to the Times.

While the US pursues its regional war aims in Iraq, and the Iranian government strives to suppress social unrest that it fears could—and with the recent protests over fuel price hikes already has—spread across its borders, the upsurge in Iraq points to a new way forward in the Middle East. Masses have taken to the streets to pursue their class interests and fight for social equality against a political elite that has promoted sectarian divisions.

This movement must be armed with the program of socialist internationalism fought for by the International Committee of the Fourth International to unify workers throughout Iraq, the Middle East and internationally in the struggle to put an end to the capitalist system, the source of war and social inequality.

German army recruits swear war oath in front of Reichstag building

Gregor Link

The German army ordered 400 soldiers to march in front of the Reichstag building, home to Germany’s federal parliament, last Tuesday in Berlin as part of a swearing in ceremony. In the presence of Federal Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, parliamentary President Wolfgang Schäuble and over 200 members of parliament, the recruits vowed to “serve the Federal Republic of Germany faithfully” and “bravely defend the freedom of the German people.”

Large parts of central Berlin were cordoned off by the police for the military ceremony. For the invited guests, a huge grandstand was erected on the Republic Square. Similar spectacles took place at the same time in six other cities throughout Germany.

The marching of the German armed forces in front of parliament must be taken as an alarm signal. Both Schäuble and Kramp-Karrenbauer have made clear in recent weeks that the time has come for the return of German imperialism to the world stage. Hardly a day goes by without one of them making new proposals, including the creation of a protectorate in northern Syria and the abolition of the parliamentary prerogative to approve foreign deployments of the German army (Bundeswehr).

In his keynote Adenauer lecture two weeks ago, Schäuble announced that Germany, in spite of its crimes in two world wars, is once again ready to “bear moral costs.” He repeated this statement to the Bundeswehr recruits.

“Creating peace is not free—it also has a moral price,” warned Schäuble. Germany cannot afford to “sit out of far-flung conflicts in a globally interconnected world in great turmoil.” There has not been a major war in Europe since the downfall of Hitler’s Third Reich 75 years ago, Schäuble continued. “But this peace cannot be taken for granted.” He concluded: “You will face tremendous tasks!”

The ghastly spectacle of German soldiers bellowing with Prussian gusto “I swear!” into the television cameras once again underscores the traditions being revived by the German ruling elite. The population is to be flooded with pro-war propaganda so as to revive German militarism and justify the pursuit of wars of aggression against widespread opposition in the population.

The hardliners in the bourgeois media were jubilant. For example, the Tagesspiegel declared “security must be visible” and stated: “AKK is on the right track.” Meanwhile, the Süddeutsche Zeitung complained that “the Bundeswehr’s attachment to society” is “threatening to be lost” and demanded an “end to this growing apart.”

From now on, the anniversary of the Bundeswehr should be celebrated in public, announced Kramp-Karrenbauer in her speech in front of the Reichstag building. She said that the reaction of state governments to her proposal to make the armed forces a more visible part of public life had been more positive than she could have imagined.

The Left Party in particular has distinguished itself as an aggressive champion of German militarism. Thuringia’s Left Party minister president, Bodo Ramelow, planned two events to glorify the Bundeswehr within two weeks. The first took place on November 7, in Oberhof, where 370 tank grenadiers in the presence of Brigadier General Gunnar Brügner and State Chancellor Benjamin-Immanuel Hoff (Left Party) swore their military oath in public.

In his speech, Hoff urged the German population “not to ignore the fact” that “wounding and death” are no longer “abstract words” for Bundeswehr soldiers. After all, the army is responsible for “deterrence and alliance defense,” as well as “foreign military deployments.” To propagate this issue, he appealed for a broad “debate in our society” on the mission and role of the Bundeswehr.

The second swearing in ceremony in Thuringia is to take place in Sondershausen. The local Kyffhäuser barracks supplies the eastern NATO front with battle tanks, among other things. As MDR reported, Thuringia Bundeswehr units currently provide the bulk of the NATO battalion against Russia in Lithuania as part of the Enhanced Forward Presence (EFP) mission.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung viewed the military ceremony in front of the Reichstag building as a first step in getting the public accustomed to a military presence on the streets. In view of the NATO exercise “Defender 2020,” in the course of which 37,000 NATO troops will march in Poland and the Baltic States next year, the question is: “Will anyone in this society stir when military convoys appear on the roads once again, like in the ’80s?”

But the German war machine is not only increasing the danger of world war in the Baltic. At the beginning of the millennium, the German government announced that the “freedom of Germany” would “also be defended in the Hindu Kush.” Today the slogan is: “German interests will also be enforced militarily off China’s coast.” According to press reports, the deployment of a German warship to the South China Sea, as well as participation in US gunboat maneuvers, has been under discussion in the Ministry of Defense for several months.

In her keynote speech at the Munich Armed Forces University earlier this month, Kramp-Karrenbauer announced the expansion of German war missions and openly demanded that German soldiers be sent as a show of force against China. With its “economic and technological power” and “global interests,” Germany cannot simply “stand on the sidelines and watch.” Instead, the army must assume the “role of an agenda-setting power” and be ready to “fully exploit the whole spectrum of military means if necessary.”

The Defence Minister made this point absolutely clear on Tuesday. Following the swearing in of the new recruits, she went immediately to the German Employers Conference in Berlin, where she proposed a major corporate tax reform to the assembled industrialists.

Kramp-Karrenbauer began her speech by saying that she had just come from the Reichstag building, “where a military swearing in ceremony has taken place in public for the first time in many years.” She explained that she was mentioning this because the question of the army and “the question that concerns you” are closely connected. Security and economic stability are taken for granted in the German population, but neither one nor the other is self-evident, she continued.

In conclusion, the defence minister offered the assembled corporate executives her services, saying, “What framework do we need, do you need as business-people, to ensure this?” She provided the answer herself: “supply security” in the energy sector—meaning unhindered access to oil and gas—is “one of the decisive competitive factors” for the German economy.

The international working class must put an end to this madness by turning to a socialist programme. A third drive by Germany for world power and the catastrophic consequences of a world war fought with nuclear weapons must be prevented at all costs. The most urgent political task is therefore the building of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei and its sister parties in the International Committee of the Fourth International as the leadership of a global movement against capitalism and war.