Germany’s defence ministry protects fascist networks in the armed forces

Gregor Link

Last weekend, Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) expressed her “fundamental confidence” in Germany’s Special Forces Command (KSK). She announced that the secretive fighting unit would not be disbanded despite a long string of far-right scandals and serious weapons offences.

“In an organization like the Bundeswehr [Armed Forces],” she said, right-wing extremists can never be “ruled out in absolutely every instance,” even more so “in the special forces.” She has arranged for the command to be sent back to Afghanistan to “secure” the redeployment of German troops there.

KSK unit at the Bundeswehr Day 2017 (Image: Tim Rademacher / CC BY-SA 4.0)

By deciding to leave the KSK largely untouched, the defence minister is protecting the fascist networks that have developed within the force. Extensive stockpiles of ammunition and explosives, which are said to have been funneled toward a nationwide fascist network that recruits members from across the state and security apparatus and is preparing for a violent coup on a “Day X,” disappeared from the KSK and other special units.

Given detailed witness statements and press research that painted a picture of a “shadow army” in May 2020, the Defence Ministry felt compelled to convene a “KSK task force,” which was officially charged with investigating “right-wing extremist ties” within the elite unit. The “task force” is comprised of KSK Commander Markus Kreitmayr, Germany’s most senior military brass; Inspector General Eberhard Zorn, as well as Defence Commissioner Eva Högl (Social Democratic Party, SPD). In reality, it served to shield the unit, along with its armed parallel structures, from the critical gaze of the public.

For example, Kreitmayr, who was supposed to take action against those in possession of the unit’s “lost” war materiel, instead ordered an illegal “ammunition amnesty” under which KSK soldiers could hand over privately stashed Bundeswehr stocks without fearing any consequences. The public only learned of this by chance during the trial of one of the soldiers involved, who maintained an underground weapons cache. In March, his two-year sentence was suspended.

Although criminal and military investigations are underway against the KSK commander because of the amnesty measure, Kreitmayr will not be suspended but will assume a new leadership position “in rotation.” His successor as KSK head will be Brigadier General Ansgar Meyer, who currently commands the German contingent of NATO’s “Resolute Support” mission in Afghanistan.

That Kreitmayr’s blatant attempt to obstruct justice was only the tip of the iceberg is borne out by other details that have come to light recently. According to a report by Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland, the possibility of returning the stolen ammunition without punishment “was evidently known in the Defence Ministry (BMVg) at least since last summer.”

The Bundestag (federal parliament), however, was not informed of this. “The Inspector-General personally deleted the relevant passage in the report to the parliamentarians,” according to TV news show Tagesschau.

The working group’s “final report,” signed by Inspector General Zorn and published early last week, now claims that “more than 90 percent” of the defence minister’s “60 measures” announced last summer have “already been implemented” and that “comprehensive structural changes” have been implemented that are “effectively tantamount to a reorganization of this unit.”

The World Socialist Web Site commented on the alleged “reform measures” at the time. It stated: “The defence minister’s move is primarily a damage control operation. The discredited right-wing extremist force is not to be disbanded but rather organised more effectively and given more influence within the Bundeswehr as a whole.”

This assessment has since been fully confirmed. For example, the Bundeswehr website states that “exchanges of the KSK with special forces of other branches of the armed forces and the police as well as international exchange in training” should be “specifically promoted” in the future. However, research by broadcaster ZDF suggests that it was precisely such regular “exchanges with other special forces,” which, under the auspices of politicians, benefited the development of the nationwide terrorist networks.

As for the grandiloquent announcement of the “disbanding” of a KSK company in which the right-wing extremist activities were particularly comprehensively documented, this turns out to be a mere regrouping. On its website, the Bundeswehr explains that the “formal dissolution” of the company was not connected with the suspension and disarmament of its members but was the prelude to “personnel decisions” that could include “transfers out of the unit or to another area of the KSK.”

In parallel with these manoeuvres, the Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD), which reports directly to the Defence Ministry, also established a “working focus” on the KSK and was given broad powers to monitor telecommunications. The ministry thus strengthened the authority under whose eyes the armed command structures had developed: both Robert P. alias “Petrus” (a KSK soldier and administrator of the far-right “Nord” chat group), and André S. alias “Hannibal” (a former KSK instructor and alleged head of the group) were, at least temporarily, “informants” of the military intelligence service.

In 2018, MAD agent and former KSK soldier Peter W. had to stand trial on suspicion of having warned his informant, “Hannibal,” about the ongoing investigations against the latter’s network. At the time, Peter W. was also acting as an official “contact person” for the investigating Federal Prosecutor General and the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA).

In June 2020, various media outlets finally reported that eight KSK soldiers were regularly provided with information about the trial of their comrade by at least one MAD agent. “The head of evaluation at MAD” had “passed on internal documents from ongoing investigations to a KSK soldier,” who had subsequently forwarded them, Tagesschau reported.

Such an approach is standard practice for a secret service whose annual report unapologetically describes its task as protecting Bundeswehr soldiers in contact with suspected right-wing extremists “from unjustified suspicion.”

That the KSK, riddled with right-wing extremists and intelligence operatives, is again being deployed to Afghanistan, the country where it was used to torture and murder people, speaks volumes.

The unit was the first German force to set foot on Afghan soil in 2001 as part of “Operation Enduring Freedom.” Just weeks later, KSK soldiers allegedly physically abused Murat Kurnaz, who was born and raised in Bremen, Germany, at a US airbase in Kandahar province before transferring him to the torture chambers at Guantánamo, where he was subsequently detained without charge for five years with the knowledge of the German government.

American special forces who then collaborated with the KSK in “processing” so-called “capture-or-kill” lists later reported hearing “music from World War II” at the German troops’ debauched drinking parties.

Significantly, on 1 September, outgoing KSK Commander Kreitmayr will take over the post of head of training at the Armed Forces Base, previously held by Brigadier General Georg Klein. Klein, who in turn was promoted within the Armed Forces Base Command, is responsible for the Bundeswehr’s bloodiest war crime to date.

In 2009, the then Bundeswehr colonel, working closely with members of the KSK, ordered the bombing of two tanker trucks in Afghanistan’s Kunduz province, resulting in the deaths of between 100 and 140 people, including many children of primary school age. As documents obtained by Wikileaks later showed, the operational command knew in advance “that the bombing would result in numerous deaths and injuries without adequate action being taken immediately before and after the incident.”

Kramp-Karrenbauer’s rehabilitation of the KSK sends an alarm. In the face of growing social tensions, the ruling layers need such forces and methods to enforce their interests abroad and at the same time to suppress growing resistance at home.

As early as 2017, former KSK Commander and Brigadier General Dag Baehr publicly described a “KSK deployment at home” as a scenario that urgently needed to be rehearsed. In June 2020, a whistleblower reported that soldiers in the unit were ordered by superiors to write essays about a “KSK deployment inside the country.” Last month, a former Bundeswehr colonel who “helped build” the KSK, according to a report by broadcaster ZDF, appeared at an anti-lockdown demonstration in the capital and declared that “the KSK should be sent to Berlin for a change” to “clean things up properly.”

German construction industry union colludes with employers to drag out bargaining

Marianne Arens

Last week, building industry employers in Germany prematurely broke off collective bargaining for some 890,000 workers in the main construction sector. Although the existing contract expires on June 30, the third round of negotiations will not take place before August.

The employers are sticking with their first offer, a total pay increase of 3 percent with a two-year contract, which they had already presented in May. It is an obvious provocation that aims to postpone discussion as far as possible into the autumn. The industry negotiators are the Saxony-based building contractor Uwe Nostitz, vice president of the Central Association of the German Construction Industry, and Jutta Beeke, managing director of the Echterhoff Bau Group in Osnabrück, for the Main Association of the German Construction Industry.

The IG BAU trade union is doing nothing to oppose the move. Union President Robert Feiger and chief negotiator Carsten Burckhardt merely complained about the ruthless behaviour of the employers saying, “They showed a complete lack of understanding; they were without any concept, they were without any plan.” This had never happened before. “They left the hall before our eyes.”

Construction workers in Detroit (Source: WSWS Media)

Without any resistance, the union is acquiescing to delaying tactics aimed at letting the main construction season pass and dragging out the dispute into the winter, if possible. After last week’s meeting of the federal bargaining commission, the union leaders said they wanted to go into arbitration as the next step. At the same time, Burckhardt stressed that the union was “ready for further talks; our door was and still is open.”

The union is demanding 5.3 percent more in wages and salaries, compensation for the often long commuting times to construction sites and the alignment of incomes in the former East Germany with levels in the west of the country. These demands are at best a drop in the bucket.

The construction industry is one of the few sectors, which despite the coronavirus pandemic, has benefited from growth and was able to make high profits. Nevertheless, workers must slave until they drop and are constantly exposed to physical danger. The construction industry has a 48-hour workweek. Working hours go up to as high as 10 hours a day, and in the summer a six-day week is also possible, often with no overtime pay. As a result of the complex subcontractor arrangements, there is a lack of regulation on large construction sites, and workers are subject to arbitrary treatment.

They have worked through the entire pandemic, bearing the brunt of the construction boom and risking their health, safety and livelihoods. Over the course of just five days, from June 9 to 14, no less than three fatal accidents occurred in the German construction industry.

In early June, a 34-year-old laborer fell to his death in Karlsruhe. The man was working on the site of a new building for the KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology). He was carrying weather stripping on the roof. It was around noon, and it was hot, when he suddenly fell 20 metres, succumbing to severe injuries at the scene of the accident. Although the cause of the accident has not yet been clarified, it was immediately claimed that there were “no indications of fault on the part of third parties.” However, the man was working alone on the roof in the midday heat without sufficient personal protective equipment.

Another terrible accident occurred three days later near Göttingen, when a crane fell over on a construction site in Esebeck. One construction worker from Southeastern Europe was killed instantly, and a second was so badly injured that he had to be put into an artificial coma following emergency surgery. This took place on a Saturday, when normally no work should be done.

At that time, only workers from a subcontractor, which owns the crane, were working at the apartment building site. An expert has since determined that the crane was defective: a screw to secure it against overload had broken off or had been removed for some time. At the time of the accident, a weight of almost 2.2 tonnes was hanging from the crane, although it was approved for only 1.25 tonnes. The crane tilted and smashed through the ceiling of the building on which the two men had been working. Both fell into the depths and were buried under concrete parts.

The capitalists put profits before lives. To save time and money, workers are put under enormous pressure to labor under unsafe conditions. Construction equipment is jerry-rigged or not repaired, with deadly consequences.

Just two days later, another fatal accident occurred in Freiberg am Neckar in the Ludwigsburg district. A 49-year-old excavator operator fell into a construction pit and was crushed between the upended excavator and a wall. Several eyewitnesses immediately ran over, joining forces to raise the excavator a little and pulled the worker out from under it, but in vain. He died of his injuries in hospital.

In addition to the deadly conditions, time and again migrant workers from Eastern Europe are cheated out of their wages. When they complain, it turns out that the subsidiary or subcontractor is insolvent. Anger among workers is rising as a result.

In August 2018 in Buntingford, UK, Romanian excavator driver Daniel Neagu, who was sacked and cheated out of his wages, got in a digger and demolished five newly built terraced houses. They subsequently had to be rebuilt. A judge sentenced Neagu to four years in prison as a result.

The extreme exploitation and workers’ growing anger highlights the importance of the perspective advanced by the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP). Workers must build action committees in the construction industry to take up a common struggle against the criminal methods of the building and subcontracting companies. In doing so, they must act independently of the trade unions and above all the IG BAU.

The IG BAU emerged 23 years ago from its predecessor organisation Bau-Steine-Erden. Under Klaus Wiesehügel, the union leader for 18 years, it developed into a kind of right-wing auxiliary police, attacking foreign migrant workers and stirring up racist sentiments in the name of the fight against moonlighting in construction.

Since then, the IG BAU has lost two-thirds of its 700,000 members. Today, it has only 247,000 members, even though it includes not only construction workers but also workers in building cleaning and waste collection, disposal and recycling (so-called “environmental management”).

The IG BAU executive members all sit on the supervisory boards of large construction companies, for which they are well rewarded. Burckhardt is on the supervisory board of Hochtief AG together with his fellow union executive member Nicole Simons. Ulrike Laux, a member of the supervisory board of the WISAG holding company Aveco, currently shares responsibility for the dismissals of long-serving WISAG workers at Frankfurt Airport.

Leaked documents confirm UK discussed possible military response by Russia to Black Sea/Crimea provocation

Chris Marsden

Classified UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) documents supposedly left accidentally at a bus stop in Kent confirm that the incursion by HMS Defender into Russian territorial waters of Crimea were a calculated provocation, planned at the highest levels of the government and the armed forces.

Two sets of documents were found sodden by a member of the public on last Tuesday morning. One set details discussion held Monday evening on the possible reaction by Russia to HMS Defender’s passage through disputed waters off the Crimea coast that took place on Wednesday. The other leaks outline plans for a possible UK military presence in Afghanistan after the US-led NATO operation ends.

The member of the public, who wishes to remain anonymous, handed the documents to the BBC, allowing for them to be made known prior to the military incursion Wednesday, possibly making it impossible to carry out had the state broadcaster not sat on them.

A screen grab taken from a video released by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Wednesday, June 23, 2021, show a view of the British destroyer HMS Defender as it sails near Crimea in the Black Sea. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

The almost 50 pages of documents include emails and PowerPoint presentations of alternative routes that might have been taken by the Defender, a Type 45 destroyer that is part of the UK Carrier Strike Group led by the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, now heading to the Indo-Pacific region. They originated in the office of a senior official at the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

It was already announced earlier this month that the Defender was to break away from the larger strike group and conduct what the MoD insists was an “innocent passage through Ukrainian territorial waters,” with guns covered and the ship's helicopter stowed in its hangar. But the documents confirm that the UK was aware of a possible hostile response by Russia and decided to proceed anyway.

The UK’s pose of innocent intent is premised on the assertion that the waters concerned are Ukrainian. The 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea determines that the passage of a foreign ship is regarded as “innocent” when “it is not prejudicial to the peace, good order, or security of the coastal state.” But Russia has claimed sovereignty over the waters off Crimea since it was annexed in 2014, amid rising tensions with the rightist government installed by a coup in Ukraine that was backed by the United States and the European imperialist powers.

An official at the Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ), which encompasses the UK Army, Navy and the Air Force, asks, “What do we understand about the possible 'welcome party'…?”

Potential Russian responses were outlined ranging from “safe and professional” to “neither safe nor professional.” The documents concluded that “neither safe nor professional” was a distinct and growing possibility.

It was noted that recent interactions in the eastern Mediterranean between Russian forces and the Carrier Strike Group had been unremarkable, “in line with expectations.” However, “Following the transition from defence engagement activity to operational activity, it is highly likely that RFN (Russian navy) and VKS (Russian air force) interactions will become more frequent and assertive.”

Two routes were considered, including passing through “a short stretch through a ‘Traffic Separation Scheme’ (TSS) close to the south-west tip of Crimea,” or one that kept HMS Defender out of contested waters. This was rejected because it would be portrayed as “the UK being scared/running away,” when the UK’s intent was to reinforce Ukraine’s claim to the disputed waters.

“We have a strong, legitimate narrative,” the documents stated, with the presence of embedded journalists, Jonathan Beale from the BBC and Marc Nicol of the Daily Mail, providing “an option for independent verification of HMS Defender's action.”

The Defender sailed about 12 miles off the cast of Crimea, where it was first shadowed by 20 Russian aircraft and two coastguard ships before warning shots were fired and bombs dropped in its path by Russian jets.

Most of these papers are marked “official sensitive,” to be distributed on a “need to know” basis. But the papers also include a document marked “Secret UK Eyes Only,” addressed to Defence Secretary Ben Wallace's private secretary, which outlines the recommendations for the UK to possibly stay in Afghanistan, following the end of NATO’s Operation Resolute Support.

It notes an American request for British assistance, warning that “Any UK footprint in Afghanistan that persists... is assessed to be vulnerable to targeting by a complex network of actors.”

The deliberations are bound up with discussions over Britain’s post-Brexit foreign policy, including over where arms export campaigns put the UK in competition with European powers. But the main concern is over the intentions of President Joe Biden's new administration, including the fact that there is “still much continuity from the previous administration” regarding its focus on China and the Indo-Pacific.

The leak was a major political embarrassment, with the MoD initially stressing that the employee concerned with the loss of documents had reported it promptly last week and that “It would be inappropriate to comment further.”

This satisfied no one, given that the leak clearly came from the office of a senior official at the MoD and could indicate something more than carelessness. A police investigation has been announced, reportedly involving a “top official”, who may even face prosecution under the Official Secrets Act—given that the documents should never have been removed from the building and the strange place they were then discovered before being passed to the BBC.

A source told the Daily Telegraph, “The Ministry of Defence Police were immediately informed and have launched an urgent investigation. Nothing is being ruled out at this stage and it is entirely possible that this could result in a prosecution for the person responsible.”

An incensed Rear Admiral Chris Parry, a former naval commander, told the Telegraph, “In future if people find sensitive documents, they should take them to the police. You might as well take it to the Russian embassy as the BBC.”

“The person responsible should be severely dealt with. They should lose their security classification. This person has proven themselves untrustworthy with secrets at the highest level.”

Amid a potential government crisis, Labour has said nothing about the reckless provocation carried out by the Royal Navy that ramped up tensions with Russia and could have sparked military conflict. Afterwards Moscow summoned British Ambassador Deborah Bronnert to the Foreign Ministry, with Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warning that should such an event occur again, “we can bomb… on target.”

Labour’s sole concern is to support a swift investigation by Wallace and the Conservative government to reassure the House of Commons and the public that no military operations had been put at risk. Shadow Defence Secretary John Healey said, “Ultimately ministers must be able to confirm to the public that national security has not been undermined, that no military or security operations have been affected and that the appropriate procedures are in place to ensure nothing like this happens again.”

World Health Organization calls for vaccinated people to wear masks as global COVID-19 cases rise

Bryan Dyne

The rate of new confirmed coronavirus cases globally, which has declined steadily since the end of April, largely as a result of the global vaccination drive against COVID-19, is again beginning to rise as the Delta variant continues to spread internationally.

Daily cases reached their most recent nadir on June 21, which had a 7-day average of 359,833 reported new infections of the coronavirus, according to Worldometer. Since then, cases have been rising, reaching 368,854 on June 26. Daily confirmed deaths worldwide caused by COVID-19 currently stand at just over 8,000, a figure which is expected to rise in the coming weeks following the rise in infections.

In total, there have been nearly 182 million known cases and more than 3.9 million recorded deaths caused by the pandemic.

A worker in protective suits takes a break amid graves at a newly opened cemetery for the victims of COVID-19 in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia, Monday, Nov. 16, 2020. (AP Photo/Binsar Bakkara)

The dangers of the spread of the Delta variant were made clear on Friday by World Health Organization official Dr. Mariangela Simao who warned that, according to CNBC, “People cannot feel safe just because they had the two doses. They still need to protect themselves.”

Dr. Simao continued, “Vaccine alone won't stop community transmission. People need to continue to use masks consistently, be in ventilated spaces, hand hygiene... the physical distance, avoid crowding. This still continues to be extremely important, even if you're vaccinated when you have a community transmission ongoing.”

The World Health Organization’s warning about the continued need for vaccinated people to wear masks constituted an unstated rebuke of the US Centers for Disease control, which last month encouraged unvaccinated people stop masking, leading to the abandonment of mask mandates throughout the country.

The current uptick in cases has been caused, from an epidemiological standpoint, by the fact that the Delta variant is 2.5 times as transmissible as the original variant of the disease, a result of the virus mutating and optimizing itself for human infection over the course of the past 18 months and hundreds of millions of cases. It was this variant that was responsible for the cataclysmic surge in cases and deaths in India this past March, April and May, when cases in that country soared to nearly 400,000 a day, at the time about half of the world’s cases.

The Delta variant also causes four times as many serious cases and hospitalizations, a major factor in the surge in daily deaths in India in April and May, which peaked at more than 4,600, a third of daily deaths globally. And even that horrific figure is widely regarded as a vast undercount, especially in India’s rural regions.

Similar instances of skyrocketed case counts are now underway in countries across the world. New cases in the United Kingdom have increased six-fold in the past two-and-a-half months to 13,900 a day, with the Delta variant now accounting for at least 90 percent of all new cases in the country. In Russia, new cases have more than doubled since the beginning of June to more than 18,700, while new cases in Indonesia have more than tripled to 16,800 over that same period.

Cases in South Africa have increased 15-fold in April, standing at 14,800 cases per day. Equally dramatic spikes have occurred in Zambia, Namibia and, to a lesser extent, Tunisia. Numerous countries in Latin America have also seen their case counts double or triple over the past few months thanks to the Delta variant, including Colombia, Paraguay and Venezuela. This list also includes Trinidad and Tobago, a country which has had its number of total cases triple since April, and which was recently gifted a derisory 80 vials of coronavirus vaccine from the country’s United States embassy.

That the virus has been allowed to mutate to become so dangerous, however, is the direct result of the homicidal policies of herd immunity promoted by the world’s capitalist governments. In the United States, for example, where the Delta variant is on track to become the dominant variant by the end of June (July at the latest) and which has already suffered more than 619,000 deaths, states across the country are letting even the most basic protections, such as mask mandates, fall by the wayside.

Moreover, schools are slated to fully reopen in a the fall, a measure championed by President Joe Biden and his administration and which will inevitably lead to an increase of community transmission across the country. Even now, outbreaks of the Delta variant, especially among the unvaccinated, have emerged in Missouri, a state with one of the nation’s lowest vaccination rates.

The dangers of such policies was underscored on Friday by a Wall Street Journal report revealing that half of the adults infected in a recent outbreak of the Delta variant in Israel had been fully vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The outbreak raises the danger of both the fact that vaccines are not infallible when community transmission is allowed to continue, and the fact that the Delta variant is capable of, at least in some cases, breaching the protections provided by the vaccines.

In response to the resurgence of the pandemic, World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters at a press conference on Friday, “Delta is the most transmissible of the variants identified so far, has been identified in at least 85 countries, and is spreading rapidly among unvaccinated populations.”

He continued, condemning the reduction of public health measures around the world, noting “It’s quite simple: more transmission, more variants. Less transmission, less variants. That makes it even more urgent that we use all the tools at our disposal to prevent transmission: the tailored and consistent use of public health and social measures, in combination with equitable vaccination.”

Key witness against Assange admits to lying in exchange for US immunity

Oscar Grenfell

Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson, a convicted criminal from Iceland, has admitted that the main allegations he made against Julian Assange, which form a central component of the US indictment against the WikiLeaks founder, were lies proffered in exchange for immunity from American prosecution.

The revelation, contained in an extensive article by Stundin, a well-known Icelandic biweekly, is dramatic confirmation that the US attempt to prosecute Assange is a criminal enterprise.

It again demonstrates that the American Espionage Act charges against Assange, and the proceedings for his extradition from Britain to the US, are a pseudo-legal cover for an extraordinary rendition. In this operation, the US Justice Department has collaborated with individuals whom it knows to be criminals, in the concoction of a fabricated indictment that was then submitted to the British courts.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange greets supporters from a balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in London. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, File)

In June 2020, US prosecutors issued a new superseding indictment against Assange, months after the first week of British court hearings for his extradition.

The document contained the existing 17 Espionage Act charges against Assange, over WikiLeaks 2010 and 2011 publication of US army war logs from Iraq and Afghanistan and hundreds of thousands of American diplomatic cables. Leaked by the courageous whistleblower Chelsea Manning, the material included evidence of widespread war crimes, as well as the intrigues and conspiracies of American imperialism on a world scale.

The June indictment did not contain additional charges. It was a transparent effort to bolster the 18th count against Assange, which accuses him of attempted computer intrusion in league with Manning. In the January 2020 British court hearings, that charge had been demolished by defence evidence, showing that Assange and Manning had not hacked into any American computer system.

At the same time the US was faced with a growing public recognition that the Espionage Act charges against Assange were an attempt to criminalise press freedom, in violation of international law and the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

American prosecutors responded by incorporating false testimony they had already secured from Thordarson and Hector “Sabu” Monsegur, a criminal hacker turned FBI supergrass. The information they furnished was aimed at bolstering the narrative that Assange was a common-variety hacker and criminal, not a journalist and publisher.

Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson pictured in 2019 (Credit: Facebook)

In an interview with Stundin, Thordarson has walked-back virtually all of the claims he made for the indictment. According to Stundin, his statements are corroborated by previously unpublished documents and chat logs. The June indictment refers to Thordarson as “teenager” and Iceland as “NATO Country 1.” It asserted as fact that:

• In 2010, Assange “asked Teenager to commit computer intrusion and steal additional information, including audio recordings of phone conversations between officials in NATO Country-1, including members of parliament.” As per Stundin, “Thordarson now admits... that Assange never asked him to hack or access phone recordings of MPs.” Instead Thordarson is now claiming that such recordings were provided to him by a third party, without any involvement by Assange. Thordarson says he later offered to show the files to the WikiLeak's founder, without knowing what they contained.
  
  
• “[T]hat Mr. Assange and Teenager failed a joint attempt to decrypt a file stolen from a NATO country 1 bank.” Thordarson now says this refers to encrypted files which were widely circulated online in 2010, and were believed to relate to the collapse of Icelandic Landsbanki in the financial crisis two years earlier. The files were thought to have been uploaded by a whistleblower, and there is no indication that Assange had any involvement in the leak or dissemination of the material.
  
  
• That Assange “used the unauthorized access given to him by a source, to access a government website of NATO country-1 used to track police vehicles.” Thordarson now says he had access to the site as a volunteer in a search and rescue team, and that Assange never requested to look at it.
  
  
• That in 2011 Assange oversaw and approved of communications between Thordarson and Monsegur, the head of the Lulzsec hacking group, including over planned cyber attacks targeting Iceland. By that stage, Monsegur had been caught by the FBI and had become an informant. Studin states that based on documents provided by Thordarson, “There is no indication WikiLeaks staff had any knowledge of Thordarson’s contacts with aforementioned hacking groups, indeed the logs show his clear deception.”

More broadly, the Studin article sheds further light on Thordarson’s relationship with WikiLeaks, which has consistently been exaggerated by the American authorities and the press. It notes that he was never a member of the organisation, but insinuated himself into a peripheral role in 2010 by volunteering for it. Almost immediately, Thordarson began moonlighting with journalists and hackers by falsely presenting himself as a prominent WikiLeaks representative.

This fraudulent behaviour escalated in the summer of 2011, when Thordarson initiated contact with Monsegur. According to Studin, “all indications are that Thordarson was acting alone without any authorization, let alone urging, from anyone inside WikiLeaks.”

By August 2011, the game was up, and Thordarson was being pursued by WikiLeaks members, along with $50,000 in merchandise sales he had diverted into his bank account by impersonating Assange. It was then that Thordarson, apparently, emailed the FBI and offered to provide them with information.

It has long been public knowledge that in August 2011, a planeload of US state operatives arrived in Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital. They claimed to be there to investigate threats to Iceland’s cyber-security, which the US State Department had first warned of the year before. When Iceland’s Interior Minister Ögmundur Jónasson found out that this was a false pretext, he surmised that the operatives were there to entrap Assange and sent them packing. Studin has now confirmed that the agents had flown in to pick up Thordarson, less than 48 hours after he offered to cooperate with the FBI.

Notwithstanding the initial setback, the relationship between the Icelandic criminal and the American spies was rapidly consummated. They took possession of files that Thordarson had illegally stolen from WikiLeaks, and repeatedly flew him out of Iceland, all expenses paid.

Thordarson’s fortunes changed in 2013 and 2014. In a series of court cases, he was convicted of embezzling from WikiLeaks and others, impersonating Assange and molesting multiple underage boys. A psychiatric assessment presented to the court found that Thordarson was a sociopath.

Having seemingly been dropped by the US authorities, Thordarson was picked up again by the American government after they orchestrated Assange’s expulsion from London’s Ecuadorian embassy in April 2019, and unveiled criminal charges against him. In May 2019, Thordarson was granted an immunity deal by the Trump administration, signed by Kellen S. Dwyer, the deputy of Attorney General William Barr.

In exchange for providing his lies against Assange, Thordarson was given immunity from any American prosecution. The US authorities also agreed to hide from Iceland and other countries any wrongdoing committed by the conman, even if it involved hacking and threats to their national security. According to Stundin, Thordarson has made the most of the deal, beginning a major crime spree involving theft on a large scale, forgery and financial deception.

The involvement of Thordarson exposes the attempted US prosecution of Assange as an illegitimate dirty tricks operation, carried out in violation of national laws spanning multiple countries, and international legislation. For the past decade, the American governments of presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden have collaborated at the highest level with a peodophile and conman to subvert Iceland’s national sovereignty, frame a journalist and lie to British courts.

US allies are also implicated in this operation. The British Conservative government and Labour opposition have facilitated Assange’s extradition hearings based on these sordid foundations. In her January ruling, British District Court Judge Vanessa Baraitser upheld all of the substantive US allegations against Assange, including Thordarson’s lies, only ruling against extradition on the grounds that the WikiLeaks founder’s health has been destroyed and he would die in a US prison.

The Australian government and Labor opposition have refused to defend Assange, despite him being an Australian citizen, and declared their great confidence in the British “legal process.” The latest revelations brand them as the accomplices of the US intelligence agencies and their criminal stool pigeons in violating the rights of an Australian journalist.

The Thordarson revelations show that workers, students and young people everywhere must take up the demand that the Biden administration immediately drop all charges against Assange; that the UK authorities end the extradition proceedings and immediately grant Assange’s unconditional freedom, and that the Australian government uphold the rights of a citizen.

The filthy and criminal character of the US pursuit of Assange, moreover, shows that the American government is seeking to establish a precedent that could be used to destroy any publisher, political activist or worker who takes a stand against it. Under conditions of a major escalation of the class struggle, and growing social and political opposition, this precedent must not be allowed to stand.

Ignoring warnings of a third COVID-19 wave, Indian government eases restrictions

Wasantha Rupasinghe

Just weeks after the devastating second wave of COVID-19 peaked, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and state government are easing the already limited restrictions, paving the way for another disaster. These moves are a continuation of the Indian ruling elite’s decision, from the outset of the pandemic, to place big business profits above human lives.

India’s total COVID-19 cases are now over 30 million with the death toll nearing 400,000. Despite a relative decline, the number of daily cases and deaths is still very high at around 50,000 and just over 1,000 respectively—down from 400,000 and 4,000 at the height of the second wave. Coronavirus infections, however, are expected to surge again with the spread of new Delta and Delta Plus variants. The ministry of health figures are widely regarded as gross underestimates.

The lowering of daily cases and deaths is largely the result of the limited restrictions imposed by the various state governments. The central government and other state governments, however, are rapidly moving to ease restrictions and fully reopen the economy despite warnings from experts that the situation could rapidly worsen.

People wait to receive COVID-19 vaccine in Mumbai, India, Thursday, April 29, 2021. (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)

Dr. A Fathahudeen, who, according to BBC, “has treated thousands of Covid patients,” told the news agency that another wave was “inevitable.” It was possible, he said, that “we can delay and contain it with appropriate measures like sequencing—to keep an eye on mutations—and strictly enforcing safety protocols…. If we don’t do all this, then the third wave could sneak up on us faster than we can imagine.”

Confirming this warning, Maharashtra state reported last week that there had been 10,000 daily infections for four consecutive days, with the state accounting for one fifth of India’s COVID-19 cases. The state capital, Mumbai, is India’s financial centre.

The worsening situation led Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray to declare that “there should be no hurry in relaxing the coronavirus-induced restrictions.” However, Thackeray’s government, like many other state administrations, has already allowed businesses to reopen.

India Today reported that a health official had told a meeting with Thackeray last week that “The Delta Plus variant could stoke a third wave in Maharashtra. It could spread at double the rate.”

Local and international media have published videos and photos revealing massive crowds at railway stations, markets and shopping malls failing to observe social distancing, a situation encouraged by the lifting of limited lockdown measures.

This is occurring as the Delta variant of COVID-19, first detected in India, and which created the devastating second wave in the world’s second most populous nation, is surging around the world. The Delta variant is reported to be 60 percent more transmissible than the previously dominant variant and shown to be partially resistant to some vaccines.

A June 22 statement by the Indian ministry of health declared that another coronavirus variant—locally named as “Delta Plus,” which is a mutation of the Delta or B1617 variant—was now a “variant of concern.”

The ministry of health said that nearly two dozen cases had been detected in three Indian states, including the worst-impacted Maharashtra. It warned that its characteristics included, “increased transmissibility, stronger binding to receptors of lung cells and potential reduction in monoclonal antibody response.”

According to medical experts, the variant is resistant to the recently authorised monoclonal antibody cocktail treatment (a potent intravenous infusion of antibodies to neutralise the virus) for COVID-19. On June 24, local media reported that Madhya Pradesh state recorded the first death from the Delta Plus variant.

Although the first Delta variant emerged in India last October, the Modi government failed to invest the necessary resources to investigate and attempt to deal with it.

This criminal negligence, along with its ongoing refusal to enact a national lockdown and other basic measures like properly-funded mass testing, contract tracing and other urgently needed resources to upgrade the rundown public healthcare, led to the second wave of the pandemic, and the latest, even more dangerous variant.

The Modi government is attempting to justify its refusal to establish a national lockdown by claiming that the only way to control the pandemic is through a national vaccination program. But the vaccination program is chaotic and moving at a snail’s pace, leaving the overwhelming majority of the country’s more than 1.3 billion people vulnerable.

According to a June 22 Reuters report, India had fully vaccinated only 5.5 percent of the 950 million people eligible with about 18 percent having received just one dose.

“Since May vaccinations have averaged fewer than 3 million doses a day, far less than the 10 million health officials say are crucial to protect the millions vulnerable to new surges. Despite India being the world’s largest vaccine producer, the maximum daily achievable vaccine supply rate is 4 to 5 million doses,” Chandrakant Lahariya, an expert in public policy and health systems, told Reuters.

The news agency report cited other experts who pointed out that vaccinations in rural areas, where two-thirds of India’s population live, have “faltered.” “Maintaining the pace will prove challenging when it comes to injecting younger people in such areas,” Delhi-based epidemiologist Rajab Dasgupta said.

Even in the national capital New Delhi, which was devastated by the second wave, “more than 8 million residents had yet to receive a first dose, and inoculating all adults there would take more than a year at the current pace,” health authorities told Reuters.

Indian news reports also point to huge disparities across districts in the country’s COVID-19 vaccination coverage. The Scroll.in web portal revealed on June 7 that areas such as the western Assam district, bordering Bangladesh, had only administered 3.2 doses per 100 people. Mahe districts, in the union state of Puducherry in southern India, had the best coverage with 63 doses per 100 people.

Of the 10 districts with the lowest vaccination coverage, six (ranging between 4.86 doses per 100 people and 5.37 doses per 100 people) were in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state with over 200 million population.

Scroll.in reported that, Chennai, capital of Tamil Nadu, had the highest vaccine coverage of India’s largest cities, with over 40 doses per 100 people. Mumbai had 34.14 doses per 100 people, Bengaluru Urban was marginally lower at 32.30 doses and the national capital, New Delhi, had 23 doses per 100 people.

Despite Chennai being the “best performer among all of India’s bigger metros, coverage in 34 of Tamil Nadu’s 37 districts is less than the national average, Scroll said. Northeastern India, as a whole, is reported to have large disparities with coverage in 72 of the region’s 115 districts less than the national average.

An article published on June 24 by the Print cited warnings by Priyanka Kishore, head of India and South East Asia Economics at Oxford Economics. “States are easing lockdowns based on lower test positivity rates rather than vaccination progress. This risky strategy increases the chances of renewed outbreaks that would further delay the recovery.”

Protests and coup threats as Peru enters fourth week without certification of presidential vote

Bill Van Auken

Lima was the scene again Saturday of dueling demonstrations between supporters of Pedro Castillo, the former teachers strike leader who won Peru’s June 6 second-round election, and those of his right-wing rival Keiko Fujimori, who is trying to overturn the results with baseless allegations of fraud in what has been described as a slow-motion coup.

At Fujimori’s rally, right-wing supporters chanted “Peruvians want a new election.” Castillo used his rally to issue pledges of loyalty to Peru’s existing capitalist order, including a call for the chief of the country’s central bank to remain in the position that he has held for the past 15 years. There the crowd chanted “the people united will never be defeated.”

Three weeks have passed since Peruvians went to the polls, and election authorities have yet to officially declare the winner. This is despite all of the ballots having been counted, leaving Castillo with 50.125 percent to Keiko Fujimori’s 49.875 percent, a slim margin of 44,058 votes.

Pedro Castillo addresses June. 26 rally in Lima (Credit: Andina)

The protracted delay in recognizing Castillo’s victory has provoked protests in Peru’s mining corridor, where he won overwhelmingly among the impoverished population. Workers erected barricades across roads, halting truck traffic and threatening to paralyze mining operations, the most crucial sector of the Peruvian economy.

Fujimori is the daughter of the former dictator Alberto Fujimori, now imprisoned for crimes against humanity and corruption during his decade-long rule that ended in 2000. If she fails to secure the presidency, she herself faces the prospect of imprisonment on corruption charges relating to the massive bribery and kickback scandal surrounding the activities of the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht, in which every living Peruvian ex-president and virtually every political party are implicated.

The Fujimori camp, backed by powerful sections of the Peruvian ruling class and the bulk of the media, has promoted the lie that Castillo’s election victory was the result of fraud. With the aim of nullifying 200,000, it mobilized an army of lawyers to file a series of challenges alleging irregularities in election districts in Peru’s impoverished Andean and southern region, where Castillo won overwhelmingly.

While the National Electoral Tribunal (JNE) has dismissed the challenges submitted by Fujimori’s lawyers as baseless, they are moving ahead with appeals. In a further bid to paralyze the body’s deliberation, Luis Arce Córdova, a Fujimori supporter resigned from the tribunal last Wednesday claiming that he did not want to “validate false constitutional deliberations”.

This attempt to deny the JNE a quorum was remedied at the end of last week with Arce’s replacement by Víctor Raúl Rodríguez Monteza, a fellow prosecutor who, like Arce, is implicated in a corruption scandal involving the bribing of judges in the port city of Callao.

Among the latest attempts to have the election overturned has been an appeal by the fujimoristas to the Organization of American States (OAS) to intervene by conducting an audit of the results. They have specifically cited the 2019 Bolivian election, in which the OAS intervened with baseless claims of fraud. This paved the way for a coup against President Evo Morales, who was forced to resign by the military and was replaced by a right-wing regime.

In all of this there is an element of playing for time by the Fujimori camp with the aim of organizing sufficient forces within the state apparatus to execute an extra-constitutional coup.

This threat was made explicit in a June 14 letter to the high command of the Peruvian armed forces signed by retired senior commanders, including 23 Army generals, 22 Navy admirals and 18 Air Force lieutenant generals (the list was slightly padded with the “signatures” of dead officers). The communique called upon the military to “act rigorously” in order to “remedy” the “demonstrated irregularities” in the handling of the election results in order prevent the coming to power of an “illegal and illegitimate” commander-in-chief.

Among the most revealing episodes in the electoral coup plot is the revelation that Vladimiro Montesinos, Alberto Fujimori’s powerful chief adviser and intelligence chief and longtime “asset” of the US Central Intelligence Agency, has played an active role in the attempt to overturn the election results, including by bribing members of the National Electoral Tribunal (JNE).

Montesinos is imprisoned in the maximum security naval prison in Callao, serving sentences for bribery, embezzlement and illegal gun-running, and facing trial on other charges related to massacres, extra-judicial executions and torture carried out on his orders. Nonetheless, it has emerged that he was able to make 17 calls, apparently from the office of the prison’s director, to a right-wing former commando and senior fujimorista operative, over the past month.

The substance of these conversations was made public with the release of audiotapes by Fernando Olivera, a center-right politician who first came to prominence in 2000 with his release of the so-called “vladi-videos,” videotapes showing Montesinos handing millions in bribes to political and media figures. The intelligence chief had made the tapes himself to blackmail anyone failing to sufficiently support the Fujimori regime. The release of those tapes played a significant role in the collapse of Fujimori’s decade-long dictatorship, with the ex-dictator fleeing to Japan and Montesinos to Venezuela.

In the audiotapes released last week Montesinos is heard telling the retired commando colonel Pedro Rejas Tataje to contact Guillermo Sendón, a political operative sympathetic to Fujimori, indicating that he could facilitate the bribing of three members of the electoral tribunal. In another audiotape, Sendón tells Rejas Tataje that the three JNE members would vote in favor of Fujimori in exchange “tres palos” (three sticks) meaning a million dollars each. Sendón said he had already been in contact with Luis Arce Córdova, the prosecutor who abruptly resigned from the tribunal.

The ability of Montesinos to play an active role in the attempt to overturn the election is incontrovertible evidence of support by elements of the military in the coup plotting.

Also revealing was Montesino’s advice to the fujimorista operative that he could seek assistance from the US Embassy. The US State Department last week issued a statement praising Peru’s election as a “model of democracy in the region,” but never naming Castillo as its victor, clearly leaving Washington’s options open. For his part, Montesinos, one of the most sinister figures in recent Latin American history, enjoyed an intimate relationship with the embassy and the CIA dating back to the 1970s, when he supplied Washington confidential intelligence on the bourgeois nationalist military regime of Gen. Juan Velasco Alvarado.

In the face of the coup threats and an increasingly hysterical campaign denouncing him as a communist, Pedro Castillo has moved ever further to the right in a bid to win the confidence of the Peruvian ruling class.

This shift was at the heart of the speech he delivered to the mass rally in his support on Saturday. He made the most news by stating he intended to maintain Julio Velarde as president of the Central Reserve Bank of Peru (BCRP). Velarde, a favorite of the International Monetary Fund, is affiliated with the right-wing Christian People’s Party, whose ex-president Lourdes Flores is among the most prominent supporters of Fujimori’s bid to overturn the election.

“We are not communists, we are democrats, we respect Peruvian governance and institutionalism,” Castillo told the crowd. “We are respectful of this Constitution and, in this context, I ask doctor Julio Velarde that his work in the Central Reserve Bank remain permanent. This is necessary not only for economic tranquility, but to open the doors for the big investments that have to be made democratically, with rules.” He went on to declare himself “respectful” of the “dignity” and “loyalty to the homeland” of the Peruvian military.

The authoritative big business mouthpiece Bloomberg declared Castillo’s announcement regarding the central bank “the most favorable move for the markets” that he has taken since his election.

International finance capital is taking the measure of Castillo and determining that just like another former union leader turned president, Lula of Brazil, he is a man with whom they can do business.

The hysterical and increasingly dangerous anti-communist campaign within the Peruvian ruling class to overturn the election and revive the Fujimori dictatorship is driven by fear not of Castillo, but of the impoverished layers of the working class, peasantry and urban poor who voted for him. Peru’s stark levels of social inequality have been greatly exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, with the country posting the worst per capita death toll in the world and millions driven into unemployment and poverty. Combined with unending corruption scandals that have discredited every political party and state institution, these conditions threaten to ignite a revolutionary explosion.