War, the Democratic Party and the 2016 elections

Joseph Kishore

In the aftermath of the New York primaries held earlier this week, the Democratic Party establishment is moving to draw to a close a nomination process that has exposed the widespread hostility toward its front-runner, Hillary Clinton. In doing so, the Democrats are preparing to select as their candidate an individual who personifies the corrupt political nexus between the military-intelligence complex and the financial aristocracy.

An extraordinary article appearing on the web site of the New York Times on Friday provides further documentation of what has been a defining element of Clinton’s long political career: her close relationship with the military brass and avid support for imperialist war. This relationship goes back to the training she received from her Republican, anticommunist father, Hugh Rodham. As first lady, Clinton actively supported the war policy of her husband Bill (including the bombing of Yugoslavia). As senator, she developed her ties with the Pentagon while serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The Times article, “How Hillary Clinton became a Hawk,” written by White House correspondent Mark Landler, is not an exposé, but rather a sympathetic account of Clinton’s war credentials from a newspaper that has endorsed her and done everything it its power to ensure her nomination.

The timing of the article’s publication was clearly coordinated with the Clinton campaign itself. The Times held off publication of the lengthy article, evidently long in preparation, until after the New York Democratic primary, so as to preclude the piece stoking the widespread anti-war sentiment in that state and negatively impacting Clinton’s vote. It comes, moreover, as Clinton, shifting from the primaries to the general election contest, is eager to assert her right-wing credentials and win over sections of the military and corporate elite that are wary of the campaign of Republican front-runner Donald Trump.

The Times article presents Clinton as the consistent war hawk within the Obama administration, often butting heads with the president himself. She “backed Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s recommendation to send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan [in 2009] before endorsing a fallback proposal of 30,000”; she “supported the Pentagon’s plan to leave behind a residual force of 10,000 to 20,000 American troops in Iraq”; and she “pressed for the United States to funnel arms to the rebels in Syria’s civil war,” later calling for a no-fly zone to be imposed against the Syrian government.

Whether it involved US military intervention in the Middle East and Central Asia, or provocations against China and Russia, Clinton invariably adopted the most right-wing positions. Clinton’s willingness to go to war, the Times writes, “will likely set her apart from the Republican candidates she meets in the general election.” The article continues, “For all their bluster about bombing the Islamic State into oblivion, neither Donald J. Trump nor Senator Ted Cruz of Texas have demonstrated anywhere near the appetite for military engagement abroad that Clinton has.” She is, Landler adds, the “last true hawk left in the race.”

Clinton, according to Landler, has worked for decades to develop close relationships with the military, seeking out ties with “not just civilian leaders like Gates, but also its high-ranking commanders, the men with medals.”

Among those Clinton cultivated as a senator from New York (between 2001 and 2008) was now-retired General Jack Keane. (“Sometimes he dropped by her Senate office; other times they met for dinner or drinks”). Keane is currently chairman of the board of the Institute for the Study of War and played a major role in developing the Bush administration’s 2007 “surge” in Iraq.

This connection highlights the politically incestuous character of the cabal that decides policy behind the backs of the American people. Keane’s “institute” is funded by large defense contractors, including Raytheon, General Dynamics (where Keane serves on the board of directors) and DynCorp. Its president is Kimberly Kagan, wife of Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute and sister-in-law of Robert Kagan, the right-wing geostrategist who founded the Project for the New American Century. Robert Kagan’s wife is Victoria Nuland, Obama’s assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, who oversaw the 2014 coup in Ukraine that toppled a pro-Russian government.

Other individuals courted by Clinton include Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Stanley McChrystal, both of whom headed US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan at different times during the Bush and Obama years.

Reading about the way Clinton and her advisors discuss war policy, one gets the sense that the German general staff in World War II operated with greater deliberation. The Times cites one conversation from 2010 involving Gates, Obama and Clinton over plans to send an aircraft carrier into the Yellow Sea to threaten North Korea and intimidate China. Landler writes that Clinton, supporting Gates’ aggressive proposal, declared, “We’ve got to run it up the gut!”—a “Vince Lombardi imitation [that] drew giggles from her staff.”

It is not difficult to visualize how this combination of recklessness, stupidity and worship of military force could lead in almost any part of the world to a war that quickly spiraled out of control.

The Times article paints a portrait of an individual who operates with an incredible level of recklessness, driven by the narrowest and most cynical calculations as to what will benefit her political career. There is more than a whiff of Clair Underwood, the wife of the president in the fictional House of Cards series—though, if anything, Underwood is more discriminate in her conspiracies. Behind these political considerations, however, lies a commitment to use the military to assert US domination in every corner of the globe.

Clinton’s warmongering is an expression not only of her own particular political persona, but of the nature of the party to which she belongs. The Democratic Party is the political mouthpiece of sections of the military-intelligence bureaucracy and finance capital, employing the “left” gloss of identity politics to secure a base among sections of the complacent and pro-war upper middle class.

Clinton’s Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders, has, for his part, worked very deliberately to prevent the issue of war from becoming a significant factor in the nomination contest. He has referred to American foreign policy as little as possible, and then only to criticize Clinton for what he invariably calls her “foreign policy blunder” of backing the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Sanders is now preparing to carry out his oft-repeated pledge to support Clinton in the event that she wins the Democratic nomination. Extreme dangers confront the working class. The relentless escalation of military violence by the Obama administration—increasingly directed at Russia and China, both nuclear-armed powers—will be followed after the elections by new and more provocative operations. The deeply felt hostility to war that exists among broad sections of the population can find no expression within the framework of the two-party system.

In announcing its candidates in the US presidential elections on Friday, the Socialist Equality Party placed the fight against war at the center of its campaign. We warned that “the ongoing preparations for global warfare, which could lead to the deaths of billions of people, are cloaked in lies and secrecy.” Our campaign will “alert workers and youth to the immense dangers they face and build the foundation for a powerful new anti-war movement.”

Over the next six-and-a-half months leading up to the November election, the SEP’s candidates, Jerry White and Niles Niemuth, will expose the war conspiracy of the ruling elite and work for the building of a political movement of the working class against war and the capitalist system that breeds it. We urge all our readers to support and help build this campaign .

Military Spending is the Capitalist World’s Fuel

Pete Dolack

It is common for activists to decry the enormous sums of money spent on the military. Any number of social programs, or schools, or other public benefits could instead be funded.

Not least is this the case with the United States, which by far spends the most of any country on its military. The official Pentagon budget for 2015 was $596 billion, but actual spending is far higher. (Figures for 2015 will be used because that is the latest year for which data is available to make international comparisons.) If we add military spending parked in other portions of the U.S. federal government budget, we’re up to $786 billion, according to a study by the War Resisters League. Veterans benefits add another $157 billion. WRL also assigns 80 percent of the interest on the budget deficit, and that puts the grand total well above $1 trillion.

The War Resisters League notes that other organizations estimate that 50 to 60 percent of the interest would be more accurate. Let’s split the difference — if we assign 65 percent of the interest payments to past military spending (midway between the high and low estimates), then the true amount of U.S. military spending was $1.25 trillion. Yes, that is a gigantic sum of money. So gigantic that it was more than the military spending of every other country on Earth combined.

China is second in military spending, but far behind at US$215 billion in 2015, according to an estimate by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Saudi Arabia ($87.2 billion), Russia ($66.4 billion) and Britain ($55.5 billion) round out the top five. And lest we chalk up the bloated Pentagon budget to the size of the U.S. economy, the official $596 billion budget constituted 3.5 percent of its gross domestic product, the fourth-highest ratio in the world, while China spent 2.1 percent of its GDP on its military. But if we use the actual total of U.S. military spending, then U.S. spending as a share of GDP leaps to second place, trailing only Saudi Arabia.

The U.S. maintains military bases in 80 countries, and has military personnel in about 160 foreign countries and territories. Another way of looking at this question is the number of foreign military bases: The U.S. has around 800 while the rest of the world combined has perhaps 30, according to an analysis published in The Nation. Almost half of those 30 belong to Britain or France.

Asking others to pay more is endorsing imperialism

Is there some sort of altruism in the U.S. setting itself up as the gendarme of the world? Well, that’s a rhetorical question, obviously, but such self-deception is widespread, and not just among the foreign-policy establishment.

One line of critique sometimes heard, especially during this year’s presidential campaign, is that the U.S. should demand its allies “pay their fair share.” It’s not only from Right-wing quarters that phrase is heard, but even from Left populist Bernie Sanders, who insisted during this month’s Brooklyn debate with Hillary Clinton that other members of NATO ought to pay more so the Pentagon budget can be cut. Senator Sanders said this in the context of pointing out the superior social benefits across Europe as compared to the U.S., but what it really implies is that militarism is justified.

Setting aside that Senator Sanders’ record on imperialism is not nearly as distant from Secretary Clinton’s as his supporters believe, it is a reflection of how deeply imperialism is in the bones of United Statesians when even the candidate positioning himself as a Left insurgent doesn’t seriously question the scale of military operations or their purpose.

So why is U.S. military spending so high? It’s because the repeated use of force is what is necessary to maintain the capitalist system. As top dog in the world capitalist system, it’s up to the U.S. to do what is necessary to keep itself, and its multi-national corporations, in the driver’s seat. That has been a successful project. U.S.-based multi-nationals hold the world’s highest share in 18 of 25 broad industrial sectors, according to an analysis in New Left Review, and often by commanding margins — U.S. multi-nationals hold at least a 40 percent global share in 10 of those sectors.

A partial list of U.S. interventions from 1890, as compiled by Zoltán Grossman, a professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington state, lists more than 130 foreign military interventions (not including the use of troops to put down strikes within the U.S.). Consistently, these were used to impose U.S. dictates on smaller countries.

At the beginning of the 20th century, U.S. President William Howard Taft declared that his foreign policy was “to include active intervention to secure our merchandise and our capitalists opportunity for profitable investment” abroad. Taft overthrew the government of Nicaragua to punish it for taking a loan from a British bank rather than a U.S. bank, and then put Nicaragua’s customs collections under U.S. control and handed two U.S. banks control of Nicaragua’s national bank and railroad. Little has changed since, including the overthrows of the governments of Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Brazil (1964) and Chile (1973), and more recently the invasion of Iraq and the attempted overthrow of the Venezuelan government.

Muscle men for big business

We need only recall the statement of Marine Corps general Smedley Butler, who summarized his highly decorated career in 1935, in this manner:

“I spent thirty three years and four months [in] the Marine Corps. … [D]uring that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.”

The bipartisan refusal to acknowledge this is exemplified in U.S.narratives concerning the Vietnam War. The “debate” that is conducted in the corporate media is only between two “acceptable” viewpoints — an honorable effort that tragically failed or a well-intentioned but flawed effort that should not have been undertaken if the U.S. was not going to be “serious” about fighting. Never mind that tonnage of bombs dropped on Vietnam were greater than what was dropped by all combatants in World War II combined, 3 million Vietnamese were killed, cities were reduced to rubble and millions of acres of farmland was destroyed. By what sane measure could this be said to be fighting “without really trying,” as Right-wing mythology still asserts?

No modern corporate enterprise would be complete without subcontracting, and the Pentagon has not stinted here. That is not a reference to the massive, and often guaranteed, profits that military contractors enjoy as more supply operations are handed over to connected companies, but rather to the teaching of torture techniques to other militaries so that some of the dirty work of maintaining capitalism can be undertaken locally.

The U.S. Army’s infamous School of the Americas, lately masquerading under the deceptively bland-sounding name Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, has long been a finishing school for the personnel enforcing the rule of military and civilian dictatorships throughout Latin America. Major Joe Blair, who was the director of instruction at the School of the Americas from 1986 to 1989, had this to say about the curriculum:

“The doctrine that was taught was that if you want information you use physical abuse, false imprisonment, threats to family members, and killing. If you can’t get the information you want, if you can’t get that person to shut up or stop what they’re doing, you assassinate them—and you assassinate them with one of your death squads.”

The change of the name more than a decade ago was cosmetic, Major Blair said while testifying at a 2002 trial of School of the Americas protestors:

“There are no substantive changes besides the name. They teach the identical courses that I taught, and changed the course names and use the same manuals.”

The entire history of capitalism is built on violence, and violence has been used to both impose and maintain the system from its earliest days. Slavery, colonialism, dispossession of the commons, draconian laws forcing peasants into factories and control of the state to suppress all opposition to economic coercion built capitalism. The forms of domination change over the years, and are often financial rather than openly militaristic today (although the armed fist lurks in the background); regardless, exploitation is the lifeblood of wealth. Demanding that the cost of this should be spread around is a demand to continue exploitation, domination and imperialism, and nothing more.

Zika virus expected to spread in US

David Brown

Over the past week, leading health officials warned that they expect cases of local Zika virus transmission to emerge in the United States. The virus is currently spreading throughout Latin America and is responsible for a sharp spike in birth defects and neurological disorders. So far, cases within the US have been limited to people who contracted the virus abroad, and their sexual partners.

On Sunday, Dr. Anthony Fauci who works for the National Institutes of Health, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that with “infections that are quite similar to Zika, like dengue and chikungunya, which are transmitted by exactly the same mosquito and have been in the Caribbean, South America for awhile, we have seen in the past little clusters of local transmitted cases within the country.” He added that there was no cause for alarm because “in the past, we have successfully prevented [outbreaks] from becoming sustained and disseminated.”

In a New York Times op-ed piece, the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College warned that without a coordinated response the Zika virus could sweep through the Gulf Coast, creating “a catastrophe to rival Hurricane Katrina.” He noted that the same mosquitos, poverty, and overcrowding that allowed Zika to infect over a million Brazilians in a couple of years exist throughout the Gulf region.

The Zika virus is spread primarily by the Aedes Aegypti mosquito, which is well adapted to urban environments. It is capable of breeding with just small amounts of stagnant water like that found in discarded tires, plastic containers, or drainage ditches. Crowded housing conditions with torn or insufficient screens then allow the mosquito to spread the disease widely.

Secondarily, the Zika virus can be sexually transmitted, which can extend an outbreak beyond the extent of the Aegypti mosquito.

Fundamentally, Zika is a disease of poverty. Basic sanitation and water infrastructure significantly reduce mosquito populations, and the cost of mosquito netting to prevent bites averages less than 50 cents a year per person.

The US territory of Puerto Rico, where 45 percent of the population is below the poverty line, demonstrates this. As of mid-April there were four cases of Zika contracted abroad and 471 cases transmitted locally by mosquito in Puerto Rico, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). In comparison, there were no local mosquito transmissions in the states and 358 travel-associated cases.

Stephen Waterman, a CDC researcher, told NBC News that 15 to 20 percent of Puerto Ricans are at risk of contracting the virus, or nearly half a million people. A major outbreak would hit the island particularly hard due to budget cuts to health care resulting from its $72 billion debt crisis. San Jorge Children’s Hospital is the largest on the island, and has had to close wings, leave 100 staff positions unfilled and cut pay when the territory failed to make a $250 million payment to hospitals last year.

Funding to combat the disease and prepare for potential outbreaks is entirely lacking. The CDC’s request for just under $2 billion in funding from February is still being negotiated behind closed doors in the Senate. The amount requested is slightly more than the daily discretionary spending of the Department of Defense.

In the meantime, the CDC is relying on $589 million previously allocated to fighting the Ebola epidemic that killed over 11,000 in West Africa, for fighting the Zika virus.

The full impact of the current Zika epidemic is impossible to measure. The extent of the Zika virus in Latin America can only be roughly estimated because there are no simple tests for the presence of the virus, and the majority of people who contract the disease show no symptoms. The epidemic within Brazil was only discovered at least a year after it began, due to the sharp spike in microcephaly cases.

Worldwide, over 2 billion people live in areas that are conducive to Zika transmission.

Moreover, the long term effects of the Zika virus are poorly understood. Some of the microcephaly cases caused by Zika meet the criteria of an exceptionally rare condition known as fetal brain disruption sequence, where the fetal brain first develops and then collapses. It is a much more severe condition than the brain failing to fully develop in more traditional cases of microcephaly.

In addition to birth defects, Zika is associated with neurological disorders in adult patients, particularly Guillain-Barré syndrome, an autoimmune nervous disorder, as well as inflammation of the brain or spinal cord. Before the Zika outbreak, these conditions were usually temporary, but a recent study of six patients in Recife, Brazil showed five had “sustained motor dysfunction,” one had cognitive decline and one had vision problems after they were discharged.

Although the Zika virus was first isolated in Uganda in 1947, little is known about it. There is no scientific consensus on whether the neurological disorders caused by the disease in the current outbreak are new. They could be the result of a new strain of the virus evolving, or it could have been a longstanding feature of Zika fever that went unnoticed until the massive outbreak in Brazil made the connection obvious.

It is an indictment of the capitalist system that diseases like Zika can be known for 70 years and yet not studied because there is no profit to be made. Without a fundamental change in social conditions, including universal health care to catch new diseases quickly and medical research based on social need instead of drug companies’ profits, epidemics like Zika and Ebola will continue to emerge.

German government backs draconian refugee “integration” law

Martin Kreickenbaum

The leaders of the grand coalition government in Berlin agreed on the key features of an integration law for refugees last week.

The planned legislation does nothing to help integrate refugees into German society. Instead, it is an attack on basic democratic rights. For years, the “war on terror” has served as a pretext for strengthening the security apparatus both inside Germany and abroad. Now the alleged “integration of refugees” is being used to expand the country’s low wage sector and the use of forced labour, and as a pretext to abolish fundamental rights such as the freedom to choose where one lives and what one does for a living.

Beginning with the heading “fostering and requiring,” every line of the 15-point paper reeks with the stench of authoritarianism. The “fostering” means in practice that refuges will be restricted, controlled and threatened with the loss of their residence permits. The legislation exposes the fraudulent character of the official “welcoming culture” in Germany, because the planned measures will systematically marginalize refugees.

The so-called integration courses are presented as an important way of teaching refugees the German language, and about the history and legal system in Germany. However, these courses are only offered selectively and they serve, at the same time, as a cudgel for pressuring refugees and putting pressure on them.

Refugees from Syria, Iran, Iraq and Eritrea will have privileged access to integration courses. Asylum seekers from Afghanistan, for example, will be excluded, although 77 percent of their applications for asylum were accepted last year, according to the human rights organization ProAsyl. However, they are not viewed as having “good prospects of remaining” because the German government is working intently with the puppet regime in Kabul on a deportation agreement.

Access to integration courses is so important because permanent residence documents are only issued when refugees can demonstrate that they have “integration achievements.” In the past, recognized refugees normally received a permanent residence permit automatically after three years. Now, recognized asylum seekers must be able to provide evidence of linguistic competence, vocational training or a secure job, and pass a background check that shows whether they represent a “danger to public safety.”

Moreover, asylum seekers will be threatened with the loss of social services if they violate their “duty to cooperate with integration measures.” However, the “integration measures” have neither been specified—since they do not yet exist—nor have the refugees been eligible for them up until now.

In reality, the demand for integration courses far exceeds what federal and state governments have made available. While the Federal Interior Ministry wants to offer 300,000 places in integration courses each year, the need is twice as high as this. According to the German government, the integration courses are already at 120 percent of capacity.

However, not only the number, but also the quality of courses lags far behind what is needed.

The number of hours of instruction provided to reach a B1 linguistic competence, which is adequate for a simple understanding, is capped at 600. The same amount of instruction is provided to all refugees, regardless of whether they are academics accustomed to lifelong learning or illiterate individuals who have next to no schooling. As a rule, the teaching staff works for a meagre fee, which has to cover all social security contributions and, at the end of the month, amounts to scarcely more than a starvation wage.

However, instead of expanding and improving the course offerings, the maximum number of students per class will be increased from 20 to 25. This will lower the quality of instruction and make it even more difficult for refugees to achieve the required level of linguistic ability.

The orientation course, which covers German history and the German legal system, will now have 100 instead of 60 lessons. In the future, the orientation course will “contain content appropriate to the emphasis on teaching values.” Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière spelled out what this means, demanding that everyone who wants to live in Germany must “know German culture and accept our basic values. I expect respect, politeness and readiness to help from everyone.”

He implies that refugees lack “respect” and “readiness to help.” At the same time, the deterrence policy of the German government is responsible for the mass death of refugees in the Mediterranean, and this same government is seeing to it that people who are fleeing from war and persecution are held in deportation prisons and deported back to their countries of origin.

The federal government also wants to exploit the refugees in order to expand the low wage sector. It is planning to create 100,000 jobs for asylum seekers that will pay around €1 per hour. The example of the German €1 jobs shows that such forced labour measures almost never lead to a transition to the normal job market. In fact, this is not at all what the coalition government intends.

The remarks of Bavarian Social Minister Emilia Müller (CSU) underscored its real purpose when she tried to explain the “customs of the German working world” to refugees. In a racist tone, she explained that in this way asylum seekers would learn “important values like punctuality, responsibility and conscientiousness, on which our working world is based.”

In Bavaria, where the forced employment of refugees is already being practiced, asylum seekers who reject the work assigned to them are punished with cuts to social services. The human rights organization ProAsyl called the job market program “authoritarian integration pedagogy for refugees.”

Only a section of the refugees will benefit from the promised access to vocational training support. Moreover, the supposed legal guarantees of residence during the training period are a sham. No actual residence permit will be provided, only a certificate for the temporary deferment of deportation. And even this will be taken away if the refugee breaks off training because of a shift in job aspirations. Career guidance and preparations measures are not part of the plan.

The planned “integration law” and its actual effects are most sharply expressed in the planned residence condition. According to the paper, a more equal distribution of refugees is required in order “to ensure integration and to prevent social flashpoints.” A violation of this residence condition “leads to noticeable consequences for those who are affected.”

This tightened residence condition on recognized asylum seekers was initiated by the Green Party Minister President of Baden Württemberg, Winfried Kretschmann. This condition is not simply counterproductive. It is illegal. Both Article 26 of the Geneva Refugee Convention and the European asylum right, spelled out in Article 33 of the qualification guidelines of the EU, guarantee recognized refugees the right to freedom of movement.

The forced resettlement of refugees into structurally weak regions, which will tear apart families and social networks that provide assistance in job searches, vocational training and continuing education and visits to the authorities, will drive recognized asylum seekers into isolation and exclusion and increase their dependence on social services .

The government claims that migrants in large cities create “ghettos” and “parallel societies” and French banlieues are consistently brought up as a example. The social flashpoints in the cities are, however, not a consequence of ethnic concentration, but of the impoverishment of broad layers of the population and the polarization of society into rich and poor.

The French banlieues are not distinguished by their ethnic homogeneity, but by their “miserable infrastructure,” as migration researcher Oltmer put it. There is “no access to transportation, no opportunity for consumption, no work,” which leads to the isolation of the residents of these satellite cities.

“There are no ‘ghettos’ in Germany,” stated Oltmer. On the other hand, poverty is rapidly growing in the large cities. In Berlin, the Parity Association counted more than 727,000 people under the poverty line in 2013, more than 21 percent of the entire population. In Cologne, almost every fifth person lives under the poverty line. In both cities, the section of the population living in poverty has grown dramatically since 2006, in Berlin by 25 percent, in Cologne by more than 30 percent.

It is not refugees or migrants who are responsible for this, but the massive low wage sector, the expansion of casual work and the drastic decrease in social services as a consequence of the Hartz laws. Social flashpoints are a direct consequence of the antisocial policies of the German government, which now wants to hold the refugees responsible and make them a scapegoat.

Chancellor Angela Merkel (Christian Democratic Union) said the fact that the federal government is viewing integration as a legal task was “qualitative progress.” Social Democratic Party head and Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel called the paper a “historic step,” since “for the first time in the history of the republic, Germany has an integration law.” However, the legislative plans of the grand coalition have nothing to do with “integration.” Instead, the law serves to attack and divide the entire working class.

Divisions grow over European Central Bank policy

Nick Beams

Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, has responded sharply to German politicians who have criticised the bank’s negative interest rate regime as being responsible for the rise of the right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD).

The attacks on the ECB, which have come from several quarters of the German political establishment, were set off by remarks from finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble in which he said Draghi could claim at least 50 percent responsibility for the AfD’s strong support because of ECB policies that are hitting German pensioners and savers.

At a press conference on Wednesday, following a meeting of the ECB’s governing council, which made no change on interest rates and asset purchases, at least half the questions focused on German criticisms of the ECB’s interest rate regime.

Draghi insisted the ECB was independent, that it did not take orders from politicians and that any challenges to the central bank’s independence would risk delaying investment as well as lowering business and consumer confidence.

“We have a mandate to pursue price stability for the whole of the euro zone, not only for Germany. This mandate is established by the Treaty, by European law. We obey the law, not the politicians, because we are independent, as stated by the law. And by the way, this applies to all countries, to all politicians in the euro zone,” he said in response to a question about how he answered to his German critics.

Draghi’s response to another question on how “guilty” he felt about the rise of the AfD, pointed to the growing national divisions within the euro zone. Would a non-Italian president run different policies, he asked rhetorically. Yes, he would, but then added that his predecessor Jean-Claude Trichet, a Frenchman, had given an interview two days before in which he had said: “I would have done the same things that Mario did.”

Asked whether he was aware that German citizens were worried about their pension schemes because they are receiving little or no yields, Draghi said the ECB was monitoring these developments very closely. He said it was necessary to resist the temptation to blame low interest rates as the cause of everything that had gone wrong.

Low interest rates were a symptom of low growth and inflation; economic problems were not a consequence of monetary policy, and for a return to higher interest rates there had to be higher growth and higher inflation. But there is little sign of that as indicated by the economic data provided in Draghi’s opening remarks to the press conference.

He reported that in the final three months of 2015, on a quarter by quarter basis, real growth in euro area GDP was just 0.3 percent, having been dampened by “relatively weak export demand”—an indication of the deepening stagnation of the world economy as a whole. He expected first quarter growth for 2016 to be around the same level. Draghi said risks remained “tilted to the downside” and were being impacted by subdued growth prospects in emerging markets as well as dampened by “ongoing balance sheet adjustments”—a reference to the constrictions on lending because of the continued high levels of bad loans held by banks in a number of countries, particularly in Italy. Draghi repeated his call for the pace of “structural reforms”—attacks on employment conditions—to be stepped up.

The official rationale for the negative interest rate regime and the purchases of financial assets by the ECB at the rate of €80 billion a month is that these measures are needed to return inflation rates to a level close to, but below, 2 percent. However, inflation remains persistently low.

Inflation in the euro zone area was zero in March, compared with -0.2 percent in February, and Draghi warned that inflation rates could again turn negative in coming months. However, he claimed that they would pick up in the second half of the year and rise further in the next two years, supported by the bank’s monetary policy measures and an expected economic recovery. These forecasts will be taken with a large grain of salt as the ECB has been continuously predicting such improvement only to find that the stagnation continues.

On the specific attack on him made by Schäuble, Draghi said he had held a “quiet” and “very friendly” discussion with the German finance minister at the recent spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund, where Schäuble had said that “he didn’t mean what he said, or he didn’t say what he meant.”

The conflict may have been papered over for now but it will continue to fester because it is not a result of differences between two individuals but is rooted in the political economy of German capitalism.

As a recent comment by the Financial Times columnist Wolfgang Münchau noted, while it may seem irrational for the German finance minister to question the independence of the ECB, there was a “powerful” reason why this was happening.

The ECB policy is seen as an attack on “Germany’s economic model,” which is “heavily dependent on the country’s peculiar banking system.” If banks and insurance companies get into trouble, “the model could collapse.”

The dispute was not about monetary policy philosophy but about money “pure and simple.” The Sparkassen group, consisting of more than 430 banks, as well as local savings and small mutual banks – dependent on positive interest rates—were “losing tons of it” as a result of the negative interest rate regime.

Many German companies, he noted, are dependent on their local bank to provide them with easy credit under conditions were corporate bond markets were underdeveloped, as is the market for venture capital. Changes to the banking system had been blocked by political pressure because the management boards of the Sparkassen “power base for local politicians.”

If low interest rates persisted for many years, this could threaten the “very existence of many savings banks.” According to Münchau this might be a “good thing” because it would force an overdue restructuring of the country’s banking system but there would be resistance leading to a “balance of terror,” with the ECB fearing a German backlash against its policies and the Germans trying to sit through it.

As he noted, this is not the way a “healthy monetary union” is supposed to work and the Schäuble intervention was a “reminder” that the “collective spirit that was so strongly present in the first years of the euro zone” had gone and this constituted “the biggest danger to the long-term viability of Europe’s monetary union.”

Thirteen Mexican oil workers reported killed with toll rising at Pemex plant

Bill Van Auken

Thirteen oil workers were reported dead and another 136 injured in the wake of Wednesday’s massive explosion at the Pajaritos Petrochemical Complex in the southern Gulf port of Coatzacoalcos. Tensions rose sharply Thursday, as hundreds of family members and coworkers of those still missing confronted heavily armed Mexican army troops backed by trucks mounted with machine guns deployed outside the facility’s entrance.

Pemex acknowledged that the death toll could still rise. The state-run oil company reported that 13 of the injured were in critical condition, some with severe burns to their respiratory systems from toxic gases, and put the number of missing at 18. The workers and their relatives, however, insist that this is a gross underestimation, with local media reporting as many as 80 missing workers.

The massive explosion was heard in towns as far as six miles away, and a towering plume of smoke rose over the plant, which manufactured vinyl chloride from highly flammable and toxic chemicals. The compound is used in the manufacture of PVC.

Survivors reported seeing workers’ shattered bodies thrown into the air by the force of the blast, walls toppled and windows blown out. Initially, residents of the surrounding area were told to stay inside their homes because of the danger posed by toxic gas. On Thursday, officials claimed that the danger had passed.

José Antonio González Anaya, the director general of Pemex, issued a statement promising a thorough investigation of the disaster and to determine culpability, “if there is any.”

Pemex is presenting all information in relation to the explosion, and, by the estimation of those seeking lost loved ones, doing it very slowly and badly. However, the plant itself was run by a private corporation, Mexichem, which gained control of the facility three years ago. This was on the eve of President Enrique Peña Nieto’s announcement of his so-called energy reform, hiving off Pemex enterprises to private capital. Mexichem, whose stock prices fell sharply Thursday, has remained largely silent on the tragedy.

“The magnitude of the explosion and the lack of communication with dozens of workers provoked among their families the sensation of being tricked, abandoned and frustrated, of being victims of an attempt to hide what had really happened,” commented local journalist José Luis Ortega Vidal.

Among the missing are employees of half-a-dozen different private contracting firms that were carrying out maintenance at the facility.

An employee of one of these firms, Alberto Díaz López, told the local newspaper NotiSur that a chlorine gas leak had been discovered, but that management had refused to evacuate workers from the area.

“We asked them if we could leave, but they told us that no, that this would be under control; when they said this they brought in electricians and welders, so that at the moment of the second explosion all of them were inside,” the worker said. He estimated the number of workers at the blast site at over 100.

There is a long history of fatal incidents at Pemex. The explosion is the worst disaster since 2013, when a gas explosion at the company’s headquarters in Mexico City left 32 dead. A year earlier, an explosion and fire at a Pemex gas facility in the northern state of Tamaulipas killed 30.

Just last February, a worker at the Pajaritos plant was killed, and in the same month two workers were killed and eight injured in an offshore oil platform fire in the Gulf of Mexico.

González Anaya, the Pemex director general, had just returned from a trip to the US for meetings with Wall Street financiers, rating agencies and oil company executives in a bid to privatize as much of the state-run oil company as possible, bidding it out to foreign investors and foreign energy conglomerates.

The company has been hard hit by the collapse in global oil prices. Production has fallen steadily for over a decade, declining from 3.4 million barrels in 2004 to 2.1 million barrels today. Earnings before taxes plummeted 124 percent last year, from 481 billion pesos in 2014 to negative 128 billion pesos in 2015.

The Pemex director made clear during his New York trip that the Mexican authorities are seeking private companies to take over majority interests in virtually every phase of oil production, including exploration, production, refining and transportation.

It has already reached a $2 billion deal with the private equity firms KKR, whose executives include former CIA director David Petraeus, and First Reserve Corp.

Asked how the disaster in Coatzacoalcos would affect these efforts to woo foreign investors, González Anaya dismissed the question: “It was an accident, and when there are human losses it makes it very regrettable, but I believe that one thing has nothing to do with the other.”

This is a lie. The privatization process and the destruction of Pemex jobs, working conditions and worker safety go hand-in-hand.

Pemex has carried out a series of sweeping cutbacks, putting over 10,000 jobs on the chopping block, attacking workers’ pensions and contracting out work in an attempt to cut losses and make the company more attractive to foreign investors. González Anaya is preparing another 100 billion pesos ($5.77 billion) worth of cost cutting for this year. The inevitable effect is the degeneration of facilities and increasingly unsafe conditions for Mexican workers.

Workers and family members gathered outside the gates of the devastated chemical plant Thursday turned their wrath against the van of an official in the National Oil Workers Union of the Mexican Republic (STPRM), breaking out its windows, flattening its tires and trying to turn the vehicle over. When another union van arrived on the scene, workers pelted it with rocks and chased it away.

The anger is well placed. The STPRM, a corporatist union apparatus tied closely to the government and the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), has been a full and well-paid partner in ripping up pension rights, jobs and conditions of Pemex workers.

The union’s corrupt president, Carlos Romero Deschamps, who is also a PRI senator, received some $21 million in payouts from the government in return for services rendered.

Part of those services is provided in the operations of the so-called Joint Commission on Safety and Health, which acts as a loyal servant of management, suppressing workers’ complaints and paving the way for each new accident and new death.

The criminal conditions confronting Pemex workers are reproduced on the other side of the US-Mexican border, with US oil workers suffering a total of 1,189 fatalities between 2003 and 2013. Thousands of oil refinery workers struck in February 2015 against health and safety conditions, including dangerous levels of mandatory overtime, and in defense of wages and benefits. That struggle was sabotaged and betrayed by the United Steelworkers union.

2016 World Press Freedom Index:Leaders Paranoid About Journalists

Reporters Without Borders

Click on the image for an interactive map

Most of the movement in the World Press Freedom Index unveiled today by Reporters Without Borders is indicative of a climate of fear and tension combined with increasing control over newsrooms by governments and private-sector interests.

The 2016 World Press Freedom Index reflects the intensity of the attacks on journalistic freedom and independence by governments, ideologies and private-sector interests during the past year.

Seen as a benchmark throughout the world, the Index ranks 180 countries according to the freedom allowed journalists. It also includes indicators of the level of media freedom violations in each region. These show that Europe (with 19.8 points) still has the freest media, followed distantly by Africa (36.9), which for the first time overtook the Americas (37.1), a region where violence against journalists is on the rise. Asia (43.8) and Eastern Europe/Central Asia (48.4) follow, while North Africa/Middle East (50.8) is still the region where journalists are most subjected to constraints of every kind.

Three north European countries head the rankings. They are Finland (ranked 1st, the position it has held since 2010), Netherlands (2nd, up 2 places) and Norway (3rd, down 1). The countries that rose most in the Index include Tunisia (96th, up 30), thanks to a decline in violence and legal proceedings, and Ukraine (107th, up 22), where the conflict in the east of the country abated.

The countries that fell farthest include Poland (47th, down 29), where the ultra-conservative government seized control of the public media, and (much farther down) Tajikistan, which plunged 34 places to 150th as a result of the regime’s growing authoritarianism. The Sultanate of Brunei (155th, down 34) suffered a similar fall because gradual introduction of the Sharia and threats of blasphemy charges have fuelled self-censorship. Burundi (156th, down 11) fell because of the violence against journalists resulting from President Pierre Nkurunziza’s contested reelection for a third term. The same “infernal trio” are in the last three positions: Turkmenistan (178th), North Korea (179th) and Eritrea (180th).

“It is unfortunately clear that many of the world’s leaders are developing a form of paranoia about legitimate journalism,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. “The climate of fear results in a growing aversion to debate and pluralism, a clampdown on the media by ever more authoritarian and oppressive governments, and reporting in the privately-owned media that is increasingly shaped by personal interests.

“Journalism worthy of the name must be defended against the increase in propaganda and media content that is made to order or sponsored by vested interests. Guaranteeing the public’s right to independent and reliable news and information is essential if humankind’s problems, both local and global, are to be solved.”

Published annually by RSF since 2002, the World Press Freedom Index is an important advocacy tool based on the principle of emulation between states. Because it is now so well known, its influence over the media, governments and international organizations is growing.

The Index is based on an evaluation of media freedom that measures pluralism, media independence, the quality of the legal framework and the safety of journalists in 180 countries. It is compiled by means of a questionnaire in 20 languages that is completed by experts all over the world. This qualitative analysis is combined with quantitative data on abuses and acts of violence against journalists during the period evaluated.

The Index is not an indicator of the quality of the journalism in each country, nor does it rank public policies even if governments obviously have a major impact on their country’s ranking.

Dramatic rise in poverty among German retirees

Sybille Fuchs

Recent estimates and reports predict that poverty among Germany’s elderly will rise dramatically in the years ahead. The broadcaster Westdeutsche Rundfunk (WDR) reported April 21 that almost half of new pensioners in 2030 would, in spite of working all their lives, only receive a pension equivalent to the Hartz IV social welfare benefit. A large proportion of current employees earn too little to obtain a higher pension when they retire.

This grim outlook for the future generation of pensioners is anything but an unintended consequence of the pension reform pushed through by the Social Democratic Party (SPD)-Green government of Gerhard Schröder, as Labour Minister Andrea Nahles and Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel (SPD) now both claim. The Hartz laws passed during their party’s time in office from 1998 to 2005 served to create a huge low-wage sector.

At the same time, the Schröder cabinet, with its ministers Walter Riester and Franz Müntefering, adopted a gradual increase of the retirement age to 67 as well as a reduction of the legal minimum for pensions from 47.5 to 43.5 percent of average income.

These measures of the Social Democrat-Green government continue to be praised to this day in the highest tones by big business and neo-liberal economists. For workers, they mean that almost half of future retirees face the threat of old-age poverty.

Thanks to the reforms of the SPD-Green government, the number of those in low-wage or part-time jobs, who are only able to pay minimal amounts into the pension insurance system, has increased massively. In addition, there are those who, due to illness, raising children or unemployment, have an employment history with gaps.

According to the poverty report from the Paritätische Gesamtverband, a voluntary welfare organisation, poverty among pensioners has grown 10 times compared to the rest of the population since 2005, with many pensioners compelled to work in miserable paying jobs to make ends meet.

The argument about a demographic shift with which all parties justify increasing the retirement age is a barefaced lie. Whether sufficient old-age security can be paid is much less dependent upon the birth rate in a society than it is on the productivity of labour, which has increased greatly over the past century. Today, many more people—including children, pensioners, the sick, those with disabilities—could be provided for if the super-rich elite composed of the financial aristocracy and big business did not appropriate the wealth produced by society.

The SPD-Green government claimed that the rise in the retirement age and the inevitable reduction in the pension rate could be compensated for by implementing the “three pillar model.” The state pension would simply be topped up by company pensions and the newly introduced Riester Pension, based on capital investments. This pension, named after then labour minister and former IG Metall trade union head Walter Riester, was to be made palatable to workers with some state funding.

The fact that the Riester Pension was a fraud is now clear to everyone. Even Bavarian state Premier Horst Seehofer of the right-wing Christian Social Union declared recently, “The Riester Pension has failed. We need a major pension reform.”

Investigations into the cause of its failure have demonstrated that precisely those in need of a top-up because they lack access to a company pension could not afford the contributions for the investment-based pension even with state assistance, since they are compelled to spend all of their earnings on the necessities of life. The result is that more privileged layers have been able to “riester,” i.e., top up, their already substantial pensions.

These facts were further confirmed in a study published in the summer of 2015 by the German Institute for Economic Research and the Free University of Berlin. The study was published in a discussion paper series within the university’s department of economic science.

According to this, the top 20 percent of income earners receive almost 40 percent of state assistance. For the bottom 20 percent, only 7 percent of the funding is given. For 2010 this meant that for the €2.79 billion of assistance made available by the state, more than €1 billion was given to people with a net income of more than €60,000 per year. Only 6.4 million people were able to “riester,” i.e., benefit from the pension.

In addition, a vast majority of the investment-based pension fund was destroyed in the course of the 2008 economic crash. As a result, many mistrust the banks and insurance firms and have no desire to entrust them with the money for old-age provision. In contrast to pensioners, the banks and insurance firms have done good business out of the Riester Pension.

A further reason for the failure of the investment-based pension plan is the zero interest rate policy of the European Central Bank.

The number of those over 65 in poverty has been continually rising for years. A further increase in the risk of old-age poverty is to be expected over the next 10 years in regions with high unemployment levels or in rural areas, but especially in the eastern German states and the Ruhr region. Particularly hard hit are women, single people, people with low qualifications and persons with an immigrant background. This was shown in an October 2015 study by the Ruhr University Bochum in cooperation with IT.NRW, which was commissioned by the Bertelsmann Foundation.

The federal government’s coalition agreement between the Christian Democrats and SPD in 2013 agreed a pension package aimed at dealing with some of the worst disadvantages. However, the impact of this has protected nobody to date from old age poverty, let alone helped to prevent future increases.

This includes the mothers’ pension, through which women who had children prior to 1992 would receive less than €30 per child per month, from which health and caring insurance charges still had to be deducted. However, this pension was not paid for out of taxpayers’ money, but from contributions paid by pension funds.

Retirement at the age of 63 was also introduced, but this is limited to employees who have paid pension contributions for 45 years, who have relatively good pensions and often company pensions as well, meaning they are less likely to be at risk of old-age poverty.

The catastrophe facing future pensioners has forced the governing parties to take action, fearing further causes for social unrest. Politicians in the SPD, whose popularity levels have slumped below 20 percent, have announced a “comprehensive package of reforms.”

The CDU is also concerned about its voter base. According to a report by the Rheinische Post, mid-term finance planning sees increased spending of 35 percent, €6.5 billion, by 2020 to provide the basic minimum for pensioners. Pensioners will benefit from the support for the basic security if their payments do not meet the minimum requirements for the necessities of life. The federal government anticipates that to pay for the basic security for pensioners in 2020, €8.81 billion will have to be spent, roughly a third more.

But old age poverty will hardly be reduced as a result. How can anyone today living on an income at the level of the basic necessities of life afford rising rents and care and doctors’ fees, which are only partially covered by health insurance?

“If pension rates drop as in previous years, then it will come close to the level of social welfare, which not only damages the good reputation of pension insurance, but also its function as social security,” warned former CDU labour minister Norbert Blüm in the Saarbrücker Zeitung. A system in which one receives no more by paying contributions than by paying nothing at all “is self-defeating,” he said.

On the occasion of the 125th anniversary of the introduction of the state pension by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1889, current Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed her concern about its continued existence.

Labour Minister Nahles and Vice Chancellor Gabriel are calling for a “comprehensive concept” for future generations of pensioners. But the “life achievement pension” that is currently on the agenda is a deceitful promise. It is supposed to guarantee a state top-up to people who have worked their whole lives but receive a pension below the absolute poverty rate. A precondition for this will be that they have invested in private pension provision, which is virtually impossible. Who will be able to benefit from this?

According to the Bremen-based scientist Rudolf Hickel, the WDR figures on future old-age poverty are actually very optimistic because they do not project a future financial crash like that of 2008, which many experts already anticipate.

European powers on verge of new military intervention in Libya

Johannes Stern

The European powers are exploiting the mass drownings in the Mediterranean Sea to expand their military engagement in the region and prepare a new intervention in Libya.

Concretely, the EU intends to expand its military mission in the Mediterranean and take action against refugees on the Libyan coast. This was agreed at a meeting of EU foreign and defence ministers on Monday in Luxembourg.

Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz declared it was important that “we are already active on the Libyan coast.” His German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier (Social Democrats), declared, “We currently have a mandate allowing us to combat the operations of smugglers and taking refugees from the Mediterranean, meaning emergency rescue at sea. That more in addition will be necessary, and even possible, goes without saying.”

By expanding the EUNAVOR Med Sophia mission, which was officially agreed upon exactly a year ago, warships in the Mediterranean would be permitted to take action against smugglers in foreign territorial waters. To date, the operation was in its second phase “merely” in seas outside of Libyan sovereign waters and was aimed at stopping refugee boats and arresting alleged smugglers. According to EU diplomats, the expansion and extension of the naval operation will be agreed at the end of May or in early June.

In fact, under the guise of a struggle against “criminal smugglers,” much more comprehensive plans for a new military intervention in Libya are being discussed. The French delegation presented a strategy paper in Luxembourg according to which EU ships would be tasked with policing the weapons embargo imposed on Libya to prevent the supply of weapons to Islamist militias aligned with Islamic State in Libya, media reports said. Steinmeier proposed that the subject should be dealt with and reviewed in a further UN Security Council resolution.

The German foreign minister and his French counterpart Jean-Marc Ayrault also reported in Luxembourg on their brief meeting on Saturday in Tripoli with Fayez al-Sarraj, the prime minister of the imperialist-backed Libyan unity government. Ayrault described the visit as an “extremely important stage” and opined that the unity government now required “the support of Libyans, the parliament and the international community.” Steinmeier declared, “We have to proceed with caution and attempt step-by-step to empower this government in Tripoli.”

The EU’s goal is to install the puppet Sarraj, who thus far only “rules” over a militarily secured “green zone” in Tripoli, and receive his agreement for a direct military intervention.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote on the EU and Steinmeier’s goals: “Along with economic assistance—the EU has already offered a small package of €100 million—the issue above all is how the unity government can be put in a position where it can extend its control beyond the capital city throughout the country, where militias rule and the terrorist organisation Islamic State (IS) is active. To strengthen the security forces, a civilian mission within the framework of the joint security and defence policy is being considered.”

In truth, the plans go well beyond a “civilian mission.” In Luxembourg, the foreign and defence ministers decided to support the new unity government to rebuild security forces. Although Berlin proposed training these troops in Tunisia out of security considerations, the British government stated it would consider conducting training in Libya. In addition, British Defence Minister Michael Fallon called for the collaboration of NATO to train the coast guard.

Based on a military source, British media reported that Britain already has special forces present in Libya and was preparing for the arrival of regular army units in a matter of weeks. According to the Daily Star, the plans are “robust” and comprise Apache helicopters, warships, Tornados and Eurofighter jets based in Cyprus. British Prime Minister David Cameron had declared his support “in principle” for “British units together with French, Italian and American troops marching into Tripoli to stabilise and secure the city.”

Such a mission has long been secretly prepared. In mid-March, the Italian government, which has been pressing for a war in Libya for some time, confirmed similar plans. Italy was to lead a UN mission with up to 6,000 soldiers, which would be supported by air strikes from the Sicilian air bases of Trapani and Sigonella. Western agents and special forces have been in Libya for some time to train and arm militias, and armed drones have already been flying out of Sigonella.

The German government, which withheld its support in 2011 for the NATO bombardment of Libya, is also preparing a military intervention. Defence Minister Ursula Von der Leyen (Christian Democrats) made clear in January in reference to the installation of the unity government in Libya and the struggle against IS in Libya, “Germany will not be able to evade its responsibility to make a contribution there.” After the Luxembourg meeting, she stated that it was now decisive that “Libya itself formulates the type of assistance it requires.”

What the German government understands by “assistance” was made clear in an interview with Wolfgang Ischinger, the head of the Munich Security Conference (MSC), in Monday’s edition of Die Welt. According to Ischinger, who for the first time last week held a “core group meeting” of the MSC in “Africa’s capital” Addis Ababa, Germany “ought to have joined” the Libya mission five years ago. The bombardment that destroyed the society, killed tens of thousands and turned millions into refugees, was “not wrong, but necessary.” However, they had forgotten “to think about the day after and to use just as much energy to stabilise the country.”

Ischinger gave free rein to his dream of a new and comprehensive German policy of colonial occupation. Africa was “not a troop training ground” and “the military intervention” could “only be the first step. Steps two and three are much more important and difficult, because we have to use more resources for them. It requires people to take care of justice and the police, to maintain the administration and order, promote rebuilding and growth.”

He added: “The crises in Africa are the places where we can show that we have learnt from our mistakes. In particular that one requires comprehensive concepts for the overcoming of crises. And for that, one cannot take half measures.”

Ischinger left no doubt about what he meant by this. Responding to a question from Die Welt on whether Europe would have to “fight,” he said: “Who else? We can no longer rely on the US Sixth Fleet to regulate the problems for us. Obama has repeated that America is no longer running around with a fire extinguisher and providing security around the world. An emancipation of European security policy in the sense of a forward-looking and independent policy of crisis prevention and fighting to realise its own interests is therefore unavoidable.”

A glance at the numerous foreign policy strategy papers prepared in Berlin in recent years reveals what these “own interests” are and on what traditions the German elite, which already fantasised about a hegemonic position in Africa under the Kaiser, is drawing.

Germany’s entry into the new scramble for Africa has been planned for some time and is part of Germany’s return to an aggressive imperialist foreign policy.

The “Guidelines for an Africa policy” adopted by the German government early in 2014, refer to the “Growing relevance of Africa for Germany and Europe,” which, among other things, arises out of the increasingly dynamic economy and the “rich natural resources” of the continent. Therefore, the German government intended to “target” the strengthening of “Germany’s engagement in Africa politically, in security policy and economic policy,” act “early, quickly, decisively and substantially,” and “deploy the entire range of available resources … across government departments.”