The Great 9/11 Cover-Up

Eric Zuesse


Did you happen to notice that after more than a decade of the ‘news’ media’s demanding publication of “the missing 28 pages” (which turned out actually to have been 29 pages) from the U.S. Congress’s investigation into 9/11, the document’s press-coverage, finally, on 15 July 2016, turned out to have been little-to-none? And did you notice that the little there was, said it contained nothing important? Perhaps you didn’t get to know even this much about the press-coverage of it, because the U.S. Congress, which had been hiding the document ever since 2003, dumped it on a Friday night, in order for it to receive as little press-coverage as possible.

Well, what that document actually showed, and proved (and cited FBI investigators who could then have testified in public, if requested), was the opposite of unimportant: that the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud (who was known in Washington as “Bandar Bush,” because of his closeness to the Bush family), had secretly been paying the Saudi handlers of at least two of the 15 Saudis among the 19 9/11 hijackers, and that Bandar’s wife and other relatives were also paying those hijackers-to-be, and their families — thus enabling the future hijackers to obtain the necessary pilot-training etc., for the 9/11 attacks.

How much news-coverage of this was there in the U.S.’democracy’ that is supposed to be informing the public about such things, instead of continuing the cover-ups of them?

Why do U.S. ‘news’ media hide it — after having demanded for more than ten years that the ‘missing 28 pages’ become published?

But that’s not all there is to the cover-up: As I mentioned and documented in my July 20th news-report on “9/11: Bush’s Guilt and the ’28 Pages’,”  U.S. President George W. Bush was also involved in the 9/11 operation: He had instructed his National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to block his obtaining from U.S. government sources any specific information about what the attacks would entail, or about the date on which they would occur. (Presumably, he already knew, via his private communications with Prince Bandar or someone else who was in on the event’s planning, all that he had wanted to know about the coming event.) When CIA Director George Tenet, on 10 July 2001, was practically screaming to Rice to allow him into the Oval Office, to meet privately with the President to inform him of how urgent the situation had become to take action on it, she said: “We’re not quite ready to consider this. We don’t want the clock to start ticking.” Tenet was shocked, and dismayed. That encounter with Rice was intended to urge the President to establish a hit-team to take out bin Laden, so as to avert the operation — whatever it was, or would turn out to be. The way that Chris Whipple put this, in his terrific report in Politico magazine, on 12 November 2015, titled “The Attacks Will Be Spectacular”, was that, “they did not want a paper trail to show that they’d been warned.”

Apparently, “Bandar Bush” knew the details, but his friend George W. Bush did not — Bush needed “deniability” — it’s not for nothing that he was able to say, after the event, as Condoleezza Rice was to put it when speaking to reporters on 16 May 2002, “This government did everything that it could in a period in which the information was very generalized, in which there was nothing specific to react to … Had this president known of something more specific, or known that a plane was going to be used as a missile, he would have acted on it.”

How does she now square that statement with her having told Tenet, on 10 July 2001, “We’re not quite ready to consider this. We don’t want the clock to start ticking.”? What ‘clock’? Why not? No one asks her — especially not under oath.

Is that the way things happen in a democracy, even 15 years after the event?

On 10 September 2012, Kurt Eichenwald, who had reported for The New York Times, was then issuing his new book on the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, 500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars, and he headlined an op-ed then in his former newspaper (which thus could hardly have declined to accept it),“The Deafness Before the Storm”, describing the most puzzling aspect of the lead-up to 9/11:

It was perhaps the most famous presidential briefing in history.

On Aug. 6, 2001, President George W. Bush received a classified review of the threats posed by Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, Al Qaeda. That morning’s “presidential daily brief” — the top-secret document prepared by America’s intelligence agencies — featured the now-infamous heading: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” A few weeks later, on 9/11, Al Qaeda accomplished that goal.

On April 10, 2004, the Bush White House declassified that daily brief — and only that daily brief — in response to pressure from the 9/11 Commission, which was investigating the events leading to the attack.

Administration officials dismissed the document’s significance, saying that, despite the jaw-dropping headline, it was only an assessment of Al Qaeda’s history, not a warning of the impending attack. While some critics considered that claim absurd, a close reading of the brief showed that the argument had some validity.

That is, unless it was read in conjunction with the daily briefs preceding Aug. 6, the ones the Bush administration would not release. While those documents are still not public, I have read excerpts from many of them, along with other recently declassified records, and come to an inescapable conclusion: the administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed. In other words, the Aug. 6 document, for all of the controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that came before it.

Those “briefs” still are not published. And now, after the revelation, by Chris Whipple, that Condoleezza Rice was under instruction from her boss not to allow him to be informed too early for “the clock to start ticking,” we can understand why there is still so much that hasn’t yet been released to the public, in our ‘democracy’, about who was really behind 9/11.

On 17 April 2016, Paul Sperry in the New York Post headlined “How US covered up Saudi role in 9/11”, and he reported that his own investigation showed: “Actually, the kingdom’s involvement was deliberately covered up at the highest levels of our government. And the coverup goes beyond locking up 28 pages of the Saudi report in a vault in the US Capitol basement. Investigations were throttled. Co-conspirators were let off the hook.” But isn’t it time, now, to demand that Bush’s role also be explored — not only that the Saud family’s (especially Bandar’s) role in it be prosecuted? After all, Bush was the one who took a Presidential oath.

Or: Is the U.S. not enough of a democracy, for that to happen — for the Constitution to be enforced, by the U.S. President after Bush (the President who will not prosecute his intended successor)? How total must the non-accountability at the top be, before we call the country a “dictatorship” — only a fake ‘democracy’?

Regarding the actions that brought down the three World Trade Center Buildings, WTC1, WTC2, and WTC7, there also is good reason to distrust the official ‘history’. Witness accounts both by firefighters and by the general public were videoed at the time saying that they heard multiple explosions, which indicated controlled demolitions after the two plane-crashes into WTC1 and WTC2. Other witnesses of the WTC7 collapse also heard explosions. Regarding WTC7, there was testimony from the owner of the WTC, Larry Silverstein, saying that he instructed the Fire Department not to go into WTC7 but simply to “pull it.”(And his subsequent statement saying he didn’t really mean that and he meant only to “pull” the firefighters from that building, which actually had none, was debunked.) Even the government’s “Final Report on the Collapse of World Trade Center Building 7” acknowledged (p. 48) that there had been “(2) a freefall descent over approximately eight stories of gravitational acceleration for approximately 2.25 s[econds]” meaning that that 8-story segment had been blasted so that, throughout those 8 stories, there was zero resistance to the collapsed portion falling through it from above. This alone constitutes solid and conclusive physical proof of the official lie, though itself published in the official source. And yet on the very next page in that official document is stated, “Blast events did not play a role in the collapse of WTC 7. … There were no witness reports of such a loud noise.” But there were such witness reports; and, anyway, the very admission (on the prior page) that there was free-fall over an 8-story segment of the building, constitutes acknowledgement of physical proof that there had been controlled demolition on WTC7. Further, there has even been expert testimony that nano-thermite was used to bring down each of these buildings. But clearly, whatever the truth of the matter is, the U.S. Government has been lying, and continues to lie, about 9/11. For at least the past 16 years, we’ve been living in a dictatorship. And the evidence suggests that this has been the case ever since at least 1981.

The United States — Proud Sponsor Of Democracy Propaganda

James Rothenberg

Consumers are familiar with the term, sponsored by. Someone put up some scratch and in turn gets the right to sell their wares. It’s a business deal. We’ve seen the word “sponsor”, in this sense, prefaced by another word, like “official”, or “proud”. Official sponsor means something like…actually it doesn’t mean anything beyond what sponsor means. It’s merely trying to sound important. Now proud sponsor means something like…no, actually there’s no content to it either but it seems to be trying to puff up the sponsor. What do we really care about how proud they are of, what, to sell us something? Whether official or proud, the US market for democracy propaganda doesn’t stop at US borders but reaches around the globe, making it a full-time sales effort.

Words can sometimes mean nothing. How about these? Do you think your choice of candidate is “honest and trustworthy”? This is a popular subject in the upcoming presidential election. A Google search yields about 350,000 results from the four words, Trump, Clinton, honest, trustworthy. It should be more though.

A Google search for the three words — advertising, honest, trustworthy — yields over four million results. But we still fall hook, line, and sinker for advertising’s inaccuracy, exaggeration, misdirection, manipulation, exploitation, lies of omission and outright lies. It works, and works so wonderfully that it is the engine for consumer mass commercialization. We’re a great country as long as we keep shopping, this taking a little liberty with a line from one G.W. Bush.

Politicians no more have to tell the truth than advertisers do. That’s not their job. They’re in sales and, as such, occupy the lowest rung in Washington. Marlon Brando once said that actors are the lowest rung in Hollywood. Same thing. Both get pushed out front where they act as instruments of those with permanence in the establishment structure. At best, they become part of the structure.

There have been some intelligent calls recently for 3rd party candidates to be included in the presidential debates. The attention that Sanders has gotten in the Democratic primaries, and Trump in his primaries, has exposed a fault in the two-party paradigm. There are signs the public is beginning to refuse its gruel.

There’s a serious hitch in the call for debate inclusion. It was privatized some time ago and is now the province of the Democratic and Republican parties. The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) is a private corporation owned and run by these two parties in their own interest, just like any other corporation.

The CPD has recently been sued by the Green Party and the Libertarian Party. The basis for their case was that outside, and relatively unfunded, parties do not enjoy the access to the wider public to rise to the arbitrary criteria set by the CPD for inclusion, this being polling at 15% nationally. The argument, then, is how are we going to reach 15% if we can’t debate our ideas in front of a national audience?

With circular reasoning, the judge ruled for the CPD on the basis that the low poll numbers of the parties established that they did not merit inclusion. This is made to order for the controlling Democratic and Republican parties. They get their own debate, just what the CPD was set up for. And some think they can’t get along.

Imagine what would happen if the Republican and Democratic parties suddenly vanished into thin air. Would we miss them? Lots of people would have to figure out what to call themselves, maybe start from scratch. What do the parties add beyond convenience? And what is the price of this convenience? Look at the distasteful candidates that they have produced for the rest of us, one of which is a sure thing come November. Guaranteed.

Politics should not be thought of as a profession, lest one miss the point. It is a business. Both counter-revolutionary parties have wealthy individuals, wealthy and influential groups, and really wealthy and powerful corporations behind them pushing for their own interests. The politician will be well fed so long as they are. In the end, it’s all about the party, pleasing the party, and the party pleasing those it owes.

Trump is something of an anomaly in that his own party can’t seem to keep him on its stomach. There’s little likelihood that it could come to pass, but if it did there’s also little likelihood that he would stray in a presidential role from party policy.

I was a participant in a small meeting with then Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand. The subject was raised of a Bush/Cheney impeachment effort due to their lying the country into an invasion of Iraq, a war of aggression for those familiar with the precedents established at Nuremberg. Would she get behind this effort in the House if she believed, as we did, that this was a crime of the highest order. Her reply? Forget it, the party leadership will never allow it! That’s party for you.

Neither Trump nor Clinton do very well when people are polled about their honesty and trustworthiness, but the question is not apropos. They’re making sales pitches, and we’re choosing between brands. Which is more honest? Coke or Pepsi? It’s nonsense, and as a poll question it distracts from what is really going on. Looking for honesty and trustworthiness in politicians is like looking for it in a CEO of a multi-national corporation. If you’re not sitting in the board meeting, you’re not deserving of it. You’ve no right to it.

Could be we don’t really care that politicians deceive us so long as they entertain us. Look how long it’s been going on. By our actions we seem to enjoy it. The roots, cheers, and chants are symptomatic of a defeated personality. Our willing participation in Washington’s two-party election charade is a form of surrender. To be exact (and I can’t remember where to credit the phrasing) it is surrender by appointment.

India and Pakistan exchange threats and accusations

Sampath Perera & Keith Jones

Relations between India and Pakistan remain heated, with South Asia’s rival nuclear-armed powers accusing each other of promoting terrorism and exchanging bellicose threats.

Under conditions where the US has overturned the balance of power in the region through its aggressive campaign to harness India to its anti-China “Pivot,” the danger of the India-Pakistan tensions climaxing in war, whether by design or miscalculation, is rapidly rising. Moreover, unlike their previous three declared wars and numerous war crises, a clash between Indian and Pakistan threatens to rapidly draw in the US and China on opposed sides.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi ratcheted up tensions still further last month with repeated denunciations of Islamabad for human rights abuses in Balochistan, where Pakistan’s military is fighting a “dirty war” against an ethno-nationalist insurgency. Modi’s remarks constituted an almost unprecedented intervention into Pakistan’s internal affairs. They were widely understood in both India and Pakistan as constituting an implicit threat that New Delhi will press for the dismemberment of Pakistan if Islamabad does not curb its support for the separatist insurgency in Indian-held Kashmir and otherwise bend to New Delhi’s demands that it accept Indian regional dominance.

Indian officials have made it known that they intend to continue raising the Balochistan issue, including possibly at this month’s UN General Assembly. According to a report in the Hindu, India’s Bharatiya Janata Party-led government is developing a “game plan” that could include giving Balochi separatist groups greater “political space” to operate in India.

For its part, Pakistan has repeatedly pointed to India’s Balochistan campaign as corroboration of its charges that Indian intelligence is providing aid and arms to the Balochi insurgency. In response to Modi’s remark, first made at the G-20 summit in China and then repeated later in the week at an ASEAN-India Summit, that “one single nation” in South Asia is spreading terrorism, the Pakistan Foreign Ministry issued a statement that declared: India is that “single nation”; “India is financing terrorism in Pakistan and open evidences are available on its involvement in subversive activities.”

Balochistan is critical to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a massive infrastructure connectivity project, which Beijing is supporting with $46 billion in investments. At the heart of the CPEC is the building of a network of pipeline, rail, and road links connecting Balochistan’s Arabian Sea port of Gwadar with western China.

New Delhi has repeatedly stated its opposition to the CPEC, citing the fact that the corridor will pass through Pakistan-held Kashmir—territory India claims is rightfully hers.

In recent weeks, this opposition has grown more strident. Indian government representatives, including Modi when he met privately with Chinese President Xi last weekend, have repeatedly told Beijing that they consider the CPEC a threat to India’s core strategic interests.

China’s response has been, at least to this point, measured. Under Modi, India has integrated itself ever more completely into the US strategic offensive against China. Nevertheless, Beijing still hopes India can be dissuaded from becoming the fourth partner in a NATO-type anti-China alliance that would be led by Washington and include its principal Asian-Pacific allies, Japan and Australia.

Pakistan, by contrast, has reacted to the Indian campaign against the CPEC with bellicose threats. Speaking last week at a seminar on the progress of the CPEC, Army chief General Raheel Sharif warned of “conspiracies” against Pakistan by its “enemies” and vowed “fool proof security to CPEC.” The military, added Sharif, would soon form a special “security division” in Balochistan to protect the CPEC, just as it has already done in the country’s north. “Whether it is Modi or RAW (India’s premier intelligence agency) or anybody else,” said Sharif, “we fully understand (the) tricks of the enemy.”

On assuming office in May 2014, Modi made a show of seeking closer ties with Pakistan and relaunching the long-stalled India-Pakistan “comprehensive peace dialogue.” But it quickly emerged that as part of his government’s more assertive pursuit of India’s great power ambitions Modi was intent on changing the “rules of the game” with Pakistan. Modi instructed Indian military commanders to take a more aggressive stance in cross-border firing incidents along the disputed Line of Control (LOC) in Kashmir, leading in 2015 to the most serious military clashes in a decade.

India’s increased aggressiveness towards Islamabad is being fuelled by the military-strategic boost it is receiving from Washington. The US has elevated India to the status of “Major Defense Partner,” has begun co-developing weapons-systems with India, is actively supporting India in increasing economic and strategic ties with East Asia and Africa, and is trying to gain it admittance to the Nuclear Suppliers Group in defiance of the current rules.

Of course, all this comes with a price. Washington is harnessing India to its predatory global agenda and transforming it into a “frontline state” in its confrontation with China. Last month, New Delhi signed an India-US Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) that gives US combat planes and warships and their personnel routine access to Indian military bases for resupply, repairs and rest.

Pakistan’s ruling elite, however, is alarmed at the dramatic downgrading of its strategic partnership with US imperialism. For decades, it was Washington’s principal partner in South Asia, playing a significant role in the US’s Cold War intrigues against the Soviet Union, and in return receiving substantial military aid. Now, Washington cavalierly dismisses Islamabad’s warnings that the US’s patronage of India has destabilized South Asia and is fuelling a nuclear-arms race.

Further heightening Islamabad’s strategic anxiety is the relentless pressure from Washington for Pakistan to bear still more of the burden in the Afghan War, although large parts of the country have already been transformed into killing fields. Angered that Pakistan has not moved aggressively to shut down bases of the Haqqani network—an Islamist group allied with the Taliban and with which both US and Pakistani intelligence worked closely during the Afghan civil war of the 1980s—the US has in recent months curtailed both economic and military aid to Pakistan. The US Congress also scuttled a deal to sell Pakistan F-16 fighter jets.

All of this has made the Modi government more confident in pursuing a hard line against Islamabad. Demonstrating that it has no interests in lessening tensions, New Delhi sent a letter to Islamabad on August 24 in which it said that if there were to be any talks between India and Pakistan they should be limited to discussing “an end to cross-border terrorism and incitement to violence from Pakistan” and when Pakistan will end “its illegal occupation” of Kashmir.

The conflict between the Indian and Pakistani bourgeoisies, including their rival claims to Kashmir, is utterly reactionary. It is the outcome of the 1947 communal partition of the subcontinent. The division of South Asia into a Muslim Pakistan and a Hindu India has served as a mechanism for maintaining imperialist domination of the whole region. The rival ruling elites, meanwhile, have used the conflict as an instrument of their class rule; to incite communalism and nationalism so as to deflect social anger over the failure of bourgeois rule in both countries to provide the masses with the rudiments of a decent life and split the working class.

Now this explosive conflict is becoming ever more inextricably intertwined with the confrontation between US and China, adding to each a massive new incendiary charge.

The tensions between Washington and Islamabad notwithstanding, the US has longstanding ties to Pakistan’s ruling elite, especially the military, and it has not abandoned its efforts to keep Pakistan within its stable of client states. But the logic of its relentless campaign to isolate, strategically encircle, and prepare for war against China and of its push to make India its main strategic partner in South Asia and a frontline state in its anti-China offensive is to push Islamabad and Beijing into each other’s strategic embrace.

Beijing’s decision to proceed with the CPEC was clearly bound up with the Modi government’s twin decision to ally India more closely with Washington, including in the South China Sea dispute, and its refusal to participate in China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative of which the CPEC is a part.

Washington, it should be noted, albeit for different reasons and as of yet not publicly, is as bitterly opposed to the CPEC as is India. This is because the CPEC would have major strategic value for Beijing, providing it with a means of partially circumventing the economic blockade that the Pentagon plans to impose on China in the event of a war or war crisis by seizing Indian Ocean and South China Sea “chokepoints.”

Significantly, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry responded to last month’s agreement opening Indian bases to the US military by expressing concern that it would contribute to “polarising the region by disturbing the strategic balance in South Asia and escalating the arms build-up.” The term “polarizing the region” was clearly a reference to the hardening of a US-Indian alliance on the one side and a China-Pakistan alliance on the other.

Last Sunday, a Pakistani daily, the Express Tribune, reported that it had seen Pakistan cabinet documents dating from July that authorize the negotiation of a “long-term strategic framework agreement” between Beijing and Islamabad “for enhancing defence and security cooperation.”

Working conditions worsen in Germany

Dietmar Henning

Working conditions in Germany have worsened substantially in the past few years. Stress and pressure on the job are on the increase, according to a report of the Federal Employment Ministry headed by Andrea Nahles (Social Democratic Party, SPD) published in response to a petition from the Left Party.

Just under a quarter of employees regularly work past 6 pm. The number of people who work in the evening has grown from five to 8.8 million, and the number of night workers (working between 11 pm and 6 am) has grown from 2.4 to 3.3 million. As the total number of employees has also increased, the overall percentages have remained approximately the same, however.

However, in the case of weekend work, the situation is different. Not only the absolute number, but also the percentage of workers who work on the weekend has grown substantially. In 1995, six million employees, or 18.8 percent of workers, regularly worked on the weekend and on holidays. In 2015, this number had increased to 8.8 million or one quarter (24.7 percent) of employees. Women accounted for 4.7 million weekend workers, compared to 4.2 million men.

The number of shift workers has also increased from 3.8 million in 1995 to 5.6 million in 2015, and the number of women engaged in shift work doubled, from 1.3 to 2.5 million.

The number of workers who work longer than is required by their contracts has also risen substantially. Twenty years ago, 1.3 million, or 4.2 percent of a total of 32 million employees, worked more than 48 hours per week, Last year this number was 1.7 million, or 4.8 percent of a total of approximately 36 million employees.

These statistics are based on data provided by the Federal Labour Office’s Institute for Work and Career Research (IAB) and the Federal Statistical Office’s micro census. The German Trade Union Association (DGB) regularly provides its own numbers in a survey for its “DGB Good Work Index.” These differ from the numbers of the federal government, as they also take into account on-call hours.

According to the DGB numbers, 60 percent of all workers regularly work longer than required by their labour contracts. Almost every fourth employee works more than 45 hours per week and every sixth employee works more than 48 hours. About 70 percent of those who work more than 45 hours feel “rushed or under time pressure at work.” A third of these workers say their overtime is often unpaid.

The IAB counted 997 million paid and 816 million unpaid overtime hours last year, coming to a total of 1.8 billion. This corresponds to 860,000 full-time positions.

However, while the number of overtime hours is on the rise, full-time work is on the decline. While some workers are forced to work more and more, millions can find nothing but part-time jobs that do not provide them with an adequate income.

These statistics show that social reforms the working class fought for in the 1950s and 1960s—the eight-hour day, the five-day work week, paid overtime, weekend bonuses, paid sick leave, etc.—have already been destroyed. Young men and women who are entering the job market today, if they can find a job at all, are encountering conditions that prevailed under early capitalism.

The unions, which once fought for the 35-hour week and for Saturdays off under the slogan “On Saturday, Father belongs to me,” are now leading the way in dismantling these earlier achievements.

The “Agenda 2010” of the red-green (SPD and Green Party) federal government under Gerhard Schröder, who opened the floodgates to low-wage work and social cuts, would not have been possible without the energetic support of the unions. Peter Hartz, after whom the Hartz laws are named, embodied in his person the merging of the SPD, unions and capital. He was a member of the SPD, of the IG Metall union and the Volkswagen board of management all at once.

The dismantling of social achievements is by no means completed, however. Business groups have long demanded not only a de facto, but also a legal dissolution of the eight-hour day.

“The labour law must be quickly adapted to changes in the working world and in society,” the head of the employer association Südwestmetall, Stefan Wolf, said recently. He opposed the eight-hour day and the legally required eleven-hour break between two working days. “An up-to-date labour law would, for example, define the maximum working time in a week, which the workers could then distribute individually throughout the week in agreement with the employer,” Wolf suggested.

Federal Labour Minister Andrea Nahles (SPD) supports the flexible working conditions demanded by the corporations. In June, she spoke with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in favour of relaxing laws regulating working time, indicating that she would prefer these issues to be regulated by wage and company agreements rather than by law.

This would allow employers to lengthen working times and launch savage social attacks against the workers, but it would benefit the union functionaries and works councils. They would receive positions and perks in exchange for their help in carrying out new attacks on working conditions. They would police the workers and work to strangle opposition to the attacks. This is why the unions are urging Labour Minister Nahles to anchor their own role in the relaxation of working hours in legislation.

Another consequence of the increase in flexible working times is growing poverty among retirees, as contributions to retirement and social security are sinking in consequence.

The effects of this situation are already being felt. Currently, according to the Labour Ministry, just under six percent of 65 year olds have a “mini-job.” That comes to almost a million people, or 22 percent more than in 2010. The number of those over 75 who have mini-jobs has risen 57 percent since 2010.

Earthquake disaster aggravates social crisis in Italy

Marianne Arens

The severe earthquake in Italy two weeks ago caused widespread devastation in the Gran Sasso region and cost 295 people their lives. It has, moreover, intensified the social crisis in Italy.

In Amatrice, Accumoli, Pescara and Arquata del Tronto, many thousands lost their homes. About 4,000 people, including many small children, the disabled and elderly, are still living in makeshift camps or shelters, and about 400 injured are still in hospital. On Monday, September 5, the body of the last missing person, a young Afghan, was recovered. His brother had continued to search for him to the end.

Two weeks after the earthquake, it is becoming increasingly clear that this was a man-made disaster, brought about by corruption, negligence and irresponsibility on the part of the government.

In Amatrice, numerous buildings collapsed which were supposedly built to be earthquake-proof. One of these was the Romolo Capranica primary school, opened just four years ago. Its construction was supported with large amounts of money from a special fund for earthquake-resistant construction—and yet it collapsed. A church tower supposedly renovated so as to be earthquake-proof, collapsed, burying a family of four.

Also in Amatrice, the hospital, the Hotel Roma and many other buildings collapsed. The town accounts for 224 of a total of 295 deaths. In contrast, the small town of Norcia, in the middle of the earthquake zone, remained almost without any severe damage. Norcia, an exception, decided a few years ago to undertake the serious earthquake-proofing of its buildings. There was not a single death there.

The media has reported cases of building corruption and fraud, and almost unbelievable indifference. The state prosecutor’s office has launched several investigations for manslaughter, already visiting 15 debris fields. Senior State Attorney Giuseppe Saieva explained that what had happened was not simply a “tragic fate.” The buildings were apparently constructed with “more sand than cement,” he said, and in breach of all regulations.

It has long been known that in Italy, 70 percent of buildings are not earthquake-proof, even though more than 24 million people live in earthquake-prone areas, where there has been a severe earthquake on average every five years in the last 150 years. For 45 years, there have been legal requirements for earthquake-proof building, but they obviously apply only in theory.

As the anti-Mafia journalist Roberto Saviano noted in an article for Die Zeit, after the “wave of generosity and readiness to help,” now “a second wave of indignation and consternation about the fact that fraud, corruption and incompetence” dominate the tragedy.

The misery of the earthquake-stricken areas has exacerbated the social crisis and dissatisfaction with the government. Nearly 300 earthquake deaths point to the enormous irresponsibility of all Italy’s governments over the last 50 years, and also condemn the present government of Matteo Renzi of the Democratic Party (PD).

As always, Renzi seeks to cover this over with lofty promises and phrasemongering. But after two and a half years of the Renzi government, it is well known that the words and deeds of this self-proclaimed “demolition man” stand diametrically opposed.

Renzi can currently be seen practically on a daily basis seeking to mollify earthquake victims. He even sent a message from the G20 summit in China promising help for the survivors. Renzi has appointed Vasco Errani (PD), former regional president of Reggio Emilia, as reconstruction commissioner. A project called “Casa Italia” was launched, a “complex strategy for our country,” in order “to create the best conditions for life and work.”

According to Renzi, following the search for those trapped, now a whole new phase should begin. The Italian government supposedly wants to rebuild following new, safe guidelines. But this is the same promise made by every government following every earthquake, and none has kept it.

For months, the Renzi government has been losing influence. Especially in May, when the working class took to the streets in France, Renzi’s poll numbers fell. It has become increasingly clear that in Italy, Renzi plays the same role as the Socialist Party politicians Francois Hollande and Manuel Valls in France; responding to the economic crisis with harsh attacks on the working class, deregulating the labour market and imposing drastic pension and education cuts.

Italy is a social powder keg, but the working class has not had a chance to articulate its opposition so far. The trade unions and pseudo-left groups have placed themselves on the side of the Renzi government and provide it flanking cover. For this reason, the protests have so far taken the form of support for the nationalist and pro-capitalist Five Star Movement of Beppo Grillo. In the local elections in June, Grillo’s protest movement overtook Renzi’s PD, and the Five Star Movement has formed the city administrations in Rome and Turin.

The Renzi government has grandly announced “reforms” such as the “Jobs Act,” as well as pension and education reforms at the expense of the workers, the poor and the elderly. But this has still not enabled it to get a grip on the budget deficit, the banking crisis, or the high level of unemployment. The banking crisis has deprived thousands of small depositors of their savings, and the recent financial crisis threatens to trigger a run on the banks.

All this is contributing to the fact that confidence in the government is ebbing away constantly. His current pose as the country’s caring father for the earthquake victims cannot remedy this. At the end of August (after the earthquake), a poll found that Renzi could lose the forthcoming referendum with the “no” votes currently running eight points in front of the “yes” votes.

The referendum is to decide on a constitutional amendment changing the electoral law and severely limiting the Senate as a second parliamentary chamber. Renzi has linked its passage with his own political fate. It will be the first popular vote on his government’s policies, since previously he has never had to face the electorate. He secured his office as head of government three years ago in a sort of intra-party palace coup against Enrico Letta.

The British Guardian commented on the referendum: “If he wins, Renzi will have been chastened but ultimately vindicated by the vote. But if he loses, the reality of Italian politics is that no one is quite sure what will happen.” The newspaper sketches the scenario of a second “Brexit,” should the Eurosceptic Five Star Movement win the subsequent parliamentary election. Renzi himself has since denied he would resign if he loses the referendum. The elections, he stressed, “only take place in 2018.”

The reasons behind the failure to form a government in Spain

Alejandro Lopez

Last week, acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, leader of the right-wing Popular Party (PP), failed to be invested as prime minister—raising the possibility of a third election being called in less than a year. Beyond PP votes, he was only able to muster the support of Citizens and the sole deputy from the Canaries Coalition, or 170 in total. The 180 deputies of the Socialist Party (PSOE), Podemos and the Basque and Catalan nationalist parties voted against.

The failure to form a government in Spain has nothing to do with any principled political differences. All the parties are committed to austerity, the European Union (EU) and NATO.

The great unmentionable in Rajoy’s failed investiture is the ruling class’s fear of the workers and its moves to block a politically independent revolutionary movement of the working class. Since the beginning of the global economic crisis in 2008, an unprecedented increase in social inequality has taken place; it is now 14 times the European average, reflecting a vast transfer of wealth from the working class to the rich.

Social gains and concessions workers secured in the 1970s, amid the collapse of the Franco's fascist regime and the transition to bourgeois democracy, have been rolled back.

This is the product of policies pursued by the PSOE government of Jose Luís Rodríguez Zapatero (2008-2011), then Rajoy’s PP government, as well as by nationalist forces in Spain's regional governments. Three labour reforms paved the way for mass redundancies, wage cuts and a vast increase in temporary and part-time working. Article 135, passed by both the PSOE and the PP, enshrined austerity in the Constitution.

The restructuring of class relations in Spain has thrown millions into poverty. Unemployment remains at 20 percent, half among the youth, and hundreds of thousands have migrated in search of work. Some 13 million people, a third of the population, are at risk of poverty.

Meanwhile, Spain’s super-rich have profited out of this imposed misery. The latest data released by the Spanish Tax Agency on Tuesday revealed that 508 people declared assets worth over €30 million in 2014, an 8 percent rise from the previous year. A total of 181,874 people submitted tax statements worth a combined €555 billion.

Workers have responded to worsening conditions with thousands of strikes and protests, but the trade unions have blocked their efforts, isolating one strike after another and functioning as “social partners” with government and business.

Working class support for the PSOE has haemorrhaged. The party suffered its worst electoral defeats in the December and June elections since the first post-Franco elections in 1977. It is riven by a bitter factional dispute between those who support an agreement allowing the PP to rule and those who are attempting to maintain the PSOE as a safety valve for social opposition, however discredited that has become.

This would involve some sort of deal with the pseudo-left Podemos party, which is already in various alliances and coalitions with the PSOE at local and regional levels. Earlier this week, PSOE leader Pedro Sánchez repeated that the PSOE was against Rajoy's reappointment and that he was going to “open up a dialogue with other political parties to search for a solution to the current blockade.”

At the same time, demands have intensified in the press for Sánchez to resign, blaming him for “slamming the door” on an alliance with the PP and provoking new elections. Among the most vehement is the pro-PSOE El Pa ís, which editorialised, “We have repeatedly asked the PSOE abstain in the investiture of Rajoy and allow him to form a government, however little he deserves it. That possibility has vanished by the stubbornness of Sanchez on his journey to nowhere.”

It declared that Sánchez “should have resigned after two consecutive historic defeats” and for leading the PSOE to “irrelevance.”

El Pa í s is pushing for an internal coup within the party with numerous articles, editorials and quotations of leading PSOE officials, including regional leaders and former PMs Zapatero and Felipe Gónzalez. They oppose any agreement with Podemos.

After its creation in 2014, Podemos gained electoral support with demagogic denunciations of the ruling “caste” and corruption. But these were never more than the pleas of upper middle class layers who had failed to profit out of the crisis as well as the “super-rich” had. Since then, it has held round-table discussions with big business, recruited among the top army brass, dropped its verbal opposition to the EU and NATO, and defended Greece's Syriza government, signalling that it too had abandoned its anti-austerity posturing.

The image of anti-establishment Podemos has deteriorated rapidly. After increasing its vote in elections to the point that it was widely expected to eclipse the PSOE as the main opposition party in the June elections, it came grinding to a halt. After allying with the Stalinist-led United Left to create Unidos Podemos, it lost 1.2 million votes, signalling that layers of workers and youth have grown tired of the party and see it as another right-wing, pro-capitalist outfit.

In a recent article in International Viewpoint, Podemos co-founder Josep Maria Antentas, a leader of the Pabloite Anticapitalistas, complained: “voters have seen Podemos say one thing and do the opposite: rejecting left unity and then making an alliance with United Left; saying they would never form a joint government with PSOE, only to then make an offer to do just that; refusing the label ‘left’ and then embracing the label of ‘social democracy’.”

According to Antentas, Podemos’ shift to the right has not finished. There is “a general desire on the part of the Podemos leadership to further moderate the party’s positions in order to increase its governmental and institutional credibility, especially among those potential voters still suspicious of Podemos.”

This article is in fact a damning self-exposure by Antentas of the role of the pseudo-left in creating a Frankenstein monster like Podemos. Were it to come to power, it would threaten workers and youth with the same brutal austerity measures in Spain as Syriza has done in Greece. Local administrations led by Podemos have already shown its class character, reducing public expenditure, persecuting migrants and attacking striking workers.

Despite favourable coverage given to Podemos and its leader, Pablo Iglesias, in some sections of the media, others have reacted with immense hostility—not out of fear of Podemos, but because it is exploiting anti-capitalist sentiments of workers and youth, which can quickly escape its control.

In addition, although Podemos does not support Catalan independence, its call for a referendum is bitterly opposed for threatening the break-up of Spain.

As the European Union begins to break up amid growing inter-imperialist antagonisms, already seen in the Brexit vote, the emergence of separatist tendencies in Spain is seen as a major threat to political stability. Sections of the Spanish army have already declared their intention to intervene in Catalonia if the drive to secession continues.

UK political crisis deepens over Brexit

Robert Stevens

On Thursday, European Council President Donald Tusk met British Prime Minister Theresa May at Downing Street for private talks.

The meeting was billed as one to discuss preparations for the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union and plans for a European Council summit in October. A summit of the leaders of all EU countries, with the exception of the UK, will be held in Bratislava next week. The September 16 summit, to discuss the post-Brexit future of the EU, is listed as “informal”, as the UK has not yet left the EU. The UK’s prime minister is not invited.

Tusk is to chair the Bratislava summit. He declared, prior to meeting May, that he was supportive of a hard line being taken in negotiations between the UK government and Brussels over the terms of Britain’s exit. Tusk said, “We need to protect the interests of the members of the EU that want to stay together, not the one which decides to leave. It sounds brutal but it must be obvious for all of us that we are in this process to protect our own European interests, the interests of 27 countries.”

Tusk is demanding that the UK swiftly triggers Article 50, beginning the two-year process for its formal exit. Before he met May, there was a hostile tone to a Tweet of his reading, “Ball in UK court to start negotiations. In everybody’s best interest to start asap.”

May, who supported the referendum campaign to remain in the EU, and whose Conservative Party is split down the middle on the issue of leaving, reiterated to Tusk her position that Article 50 would not be triggered this year. A Downing Street spokesperson said, “The Prime Minister said it would be important to work together to make sure the process is as smooth as possible.”

The UK “would take time to prepare for the negotiations,” with May, “reiterating that Article 50 will not be triggered before the end of the year.”

May’s position is at odds with many Tory MPs and the wider party, with intractable divisions over Europe surfacing this week. With May in China at the G20, where her mantra of “Brexit means Brexit”, was opposed by both the US and Japanese administrations, leading Brexit figure David Davis gave a statement to open Parliament. He told MPs that Britain would leave the EU and that it was “improbable” that the UK would remain a member of Europe’s Single Market if “a requirement of membership is giving up control of our borders.”

Davis was appointed Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union in May’s first Cabinet, after she succeeded David Cameron, who resigned following the referendum vote. But he came under immediate attack not only from the pro-Remain opposition Labour Party, but also from sections of his own party opposed to losing full access to the Single Market.

Davis was sharply rebuked within 24 hours by a spokesman for May who stated that Davis was giving “his opinion” and not government policy. However, speaking in parliament Wednesday, she refused to provide a direct answer to MPs who asked her to confirm if the UK would remain a member of the Single Market. “We will not reveal our hand prematurely and we will not provide a running commentary on every twist and turn of the negotiation,” she said.

There is no indication that any compromise with Britain will be forthcoming from the EU. The vote for Brexit is only one manifestation of the fracturing of the entire EU project.

Europe’s leading power, Germany, is taking a hard line against the UK—with Chancellor Angela Merkel declaring at the outset that Germany’s interests will be placed at the forefront of Brexit negotiations with the UK. Sigmar Gabriel, leader of her Social Democrat coalition partners, and the economy minister, warned recently that if other states followed the UK in exiting, the EU would go “down the drain.” He called for a punitive stance to be taken against Britain, asserting, “If we organise Brexit in the wrong way, then we’ll be in deep trouble, so now we need to make sure that we don’t allow Britain to keep the nice things, so to speak, related to Europe while taking no responsibility.”

This week, Guy Verhofstadt revealed that he will represent the European Parliament, along with negotiators from the EU, in Brexit talks with the UK. In July, Verhofstadt rehearsed the EU’s fundamental opposition to allowing the UK access to the Single Market while the UK restricted the free movement of people in order to cut immigration levels (a central demand of the anti-EU wing of the Tories). Verhofstadt warned, “The European Parliament will never agree to a deal that de facto ends the free movement of people for a decade while giving away an extra rebate in exchange for all the advantages of the internal market. What would stop other countries from asking the same exceptional status?”

He added, “The only new relationship between Britain and the European Union can be one in which the UK has an associated status with less obligations but equally less rights. And if this is not feasible, the fall-back position will be an ordinary trade agreement between Britain and the EU.”

The vote to leave the EU took place in opposition to the strategic interests of the majority of Britain’s ruling elite. Its representatives are now loudly voicing their concerns that the government is bereft of any strategy following the Brexit vote.

On Thursday, Financial Times columnist Philip Stephens wrote, “The Brexiters now trumpeting a bright independent future see departure from the EU as an event. In truth it will be a long, tortuous process—a slow burn, if you like, with costs, economic and political, that will reach well into coming decades.”

Stephens was scathing of May, writing, “When she tells the House of Commons that she has no intention of prematurely showing her negotiating hand, what she really means is that she does not yet have such a hand.” He added, “The media fanfare surrounding a lengthy cabinet discussion about Brexit … belied the absence of any substantive convergence towards strategic objectives.”

On Friday, the Economist wrote that 77 days after the Brexit vote, “May’s mantra, ‘Brexit means Brexit’, has become a tired cliché.”

It stated, “The case for staying in the single market is simple: economists say this will minimise the economic damage from Brexit. A ‘hard’ Brexit that involves leaving the single market without comprehensive free-trade deals with the EU and third countries would mean a bigger drop in investment and output.”

Central to the efforts of Labour’s right-wing coup plotters to remove Jeremy Corbyn as leader is the aim of refashioning the party as the political tool to reverse the referendum result.

Given that the Tory party is bitterly and irrevocably riven over Europe, the plotters, with the backing of the UK and American intelligence apparatus, see Labour as the most effective means to establish a pro-EU, pro-NATO vehicle representing the strategic interests of British imperialism.

Britain’s access to the Single Market was at the centre of the most vocal attacks yet made on Corbyn by Owen Smith, his challenger for the leadership, in a debate hosted by the BBC Thursday. Smith stated that if elected Labour leader, he would campaign for a second referendum. Asked by the moderator if he would “ignore the Brexit vote”, Smith replied, “Well, exactly.”

New York City surpasses London, Tokyo for highest rents

Philip Guelpa

The shortage of affordable housing and the consequent high rates of homelessness in New York City, already severe before the 2008 crash, have worsened steadily since then. A recent study, reported by the Wall Street Journal, found that New York has now surpassed London and Tokyo as having the highest cost for rental apartments anywhere in the world.

While rents have increased dramatically, income has lagged far behind. A study by Apartment List reports that, while median New York rents have risen by 64 percent since 1960, median income rose only 18 percent, a difference of 46 percent. Not surprisingly, another study found that nearly two thirds of New Yorkers suffer severe economic hardship, leading many into homelessness. Research published last year found that workers earning the minimum wage of $8.75/hour cannot afford to live in New York City.

As a consequence of this disconnect between housing costs and incomes, homelessness has reached record levels. About 60,000 people, more than a third of them children, spend each night in homeless shelters, a situation that has now become chronic. Many thousands more are out on the street, living “in the rough.” A large proportion of the latter suffer from mental or physical illnesses. This level of homelessness is the highest since the Great Depression, and 87 percent greater than a decade ago.

Even the 60,000 figure understates the scale of suffering. According to the Coalition for the Homeless, during fiscal year 2015 “more than 109,000 different homeless men, women, and children slept in the New York City municipal shelter system.” That included over 42,000 different children. These numbers reflect the precarious economic circumstances faced by a significant portion of the city’s population, who live on the edge of homelessness.

Conditions in the homeless shelters continue to deteriorate. The horrid state of these shelters is no secret. A variety of reports have highlighted the problem for years, and yet no significant improvements have been made. The combination of grossly inadequate funding and a maze of absurd and contradictory bureaucratic procedures have created Kafkaesque conditions in which tens of thousands of homeless people are trapped.

As recently highlighted by the New York Times, in an article entitled “How Do Rent-Burdened New Yorkers Cope?” the acute lack of affordable housing and consequent sharp disconnect between stagnant or declining incomes and increasing housing costs force many of those who still have a home to pay substantial portions of their incomes for rent (in some cases over 50 percent). Consequently, they must subject themselves to severe austerity by making painful cuts in necessities such as food, clothing, and medical care.

One of the people profiled in the article, 70-year-old Parvati Devi, a retired hairdresser and manicurist, spends 51 percent of her income (consisting of Social Security and food stamps) on rent and utilities. She is a virtual prisoner in her home. “Today I’m staying in the house not to spend money. It’s difficult to have a quality of life,” she told the Times.

Another, Kay Urbant, who is in her 60s, was laid off in 2008 and has had difficulty finding steady work since then. She has also suffered from a cardiac condition. “I sometimes don’t sleep at night not knowing what I’ll do next.”

This kind of precarious existence leaves large numbers of city residents highly vulnerable to losing their homes. One unexpected expense can mean disaster.

By contrast, there is no shortage of housing affordable to the city’s wealthier residents. Indeed, the rush by developers to construct high-end units, facilitated by the loosening of regulations by the city, such as those on height restrictions, is reaching the point of creating a glut on the market. Some builders of new luxury housing are being forced to offer incentives in the competition to attract wealthy tenants.

In one rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in Brooklyn, the developer is offering three months free rent for those who sign a new lease. Even with this discount, one-bedroom apartments would still effectively cost approximately $3,400 per month, which is far out of reach for the majority of New Yorkers. According to a recent study, the median monthly rent for “entry level” apartments in Brooklyn rose 50 percent from 2009 to 2016, to $2,481. By contrast, during that same period, high-end units dropped 4 percent, to $4,783.

Overall, only about a quarter of the new apartments under construction are considered to be “affordable,” despite the tremendous demand. Even this is an overestimate, given the grossly unrealistic formula by which the city calculates what is affordable for most New Yorkers.

The extreme need was illustrated in one recent case in which 87,700 people applied for just 200 low- and middle-income apartments in one Brooklyn development. By contrast, it is projected that 38,000 new market rate units (i.e., affordable only to those with high incomes) will be built over the next three years.

The relative abundance of high-cost and high profit housing for those with high disposable incomes stands in sharp contrast to the critical deficit in availability of housing affordable for the great majority of city residents and the systematic depletion of assistance for those struggling to find a place to live.

Due to severe underfunding, city-issued rent assistance vouchers are available for only about a third of people in the shelters, and it is well documented that private landlords systematically discriminate against people who attempt to use these vouchers to help pay their rents. A variety of other federal and local programs providing rent assistance for low-income families, such as Section 8 and Human Resource Administration (HRA) vouchers, and the city’s Advantage program, which formerly provided a limited degree of assistance, have been severely cut back or eliminated altogether.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, both Democrats, have each proposed programs or made promises regarding housing and homelessness that have been unfulfilled or turned out to be far less than they appeared.

Cuomo, for his part, in a move apparently aimed at undermining de Blasio, a perceived political rival, torpedoed renewal of the state’s 421-a tax abatement program, which required a certain percentage of “affordable” units to be included in new housing developments that participated in the program. This program, which had been in place for decades, was quite lucrative for developers, but had a negligible impact on the shortage of affordable housing. Cuomo has repeatedly feigned interest in reviving or replacing the program, but has made no substantial efforts in that regard.

At the same time, the governor promised $2 billion to build “supportive housing” (designed for individuals suffering from substance addiction or mental illness), but has actually provided only $150 million. The lack of funding has markedly reduced availability of such units. In 2014, 6.3 percent of shelter residents were placed in supportive housing, in 2015 only 5 percent, and the projection for this year is 4.6 percent.

De Blasio has promoted a “ mandatory inclusionary housing ” scheme, which is styled as a way of promoting the construction of affordable housing by providing developers with a variety of incentives, which would, in part, compensate for the loss of 421-a. The developers would be allowed to construct buildings with a majority of “market rate” units and a smaller number offered at what the city considers affordable rates. However, this program is meeting substantial local opposition from existing residents who justifiably fear that the supposedly “affordable” portion of the new apartments will, in fact, be out of their reach, due to the skewed method used by the city to calculate levels of affordability.

Even the durability of this supposed affordability is questionable. ProPublica recent revealed de facto collusion by the city with landlords. It revealed that the city has been extremely negligent in collecting data that would be needed to gauge landlords’ obligation to comply with rent caps for existing buildings receiving tax abatements under 421-a.

The administrations of both current Democratic mayor de Blasio and his predecessor, Republican Michael Bloomberg, have shown extreme favoritism to private developers for the construction of buildings with predominantly market rate apartments, covered by a fig leaf of supposedly affordable units. This, in effect, amounts to city-sponsored gentrification.

The inability of either Democrats or Republicans to make any meaningful improvement (indeed quite the opposite) with regard to the critical lack of affordable housing and the directly related increase in homelessness is not the result of bad policies or lack of funds. Rather, it expresses the reality that there is no solution to these twin crises under capitalism.

The idea that decent, affordable housing for all is a social right is anathema to the ruling class. All the programs now proposed are predicated on mechanisms whereby private developers can maximize profits. As also being experienced in the health field under Obamacare, if such programs fail to provide for the needs of the working class, the attitude is “so be it.”

A huge social explosion is imminent. The critical lack of affordable housing in New York and elsewhere must soon reach the point at which workers will no longer tolerate these unlivable conditions.

North Korea carries out fifth nuclear test

Ben McGrath & Peter Symonds

North Korea announced on Friday it had conducted its fifth nuclear test, timed to coincide with the 68th anniversary of the founding of the regime. The US and its allies immediately condemned Pyongyang and will undoubtedly use the detonation to ratchet up their pressure, not just on North Korea, but also China, in line with Washington’s confrontational “pivot to Asia.”

The test, eight months after the fourth one, was conducted underground at Pyongyang’s nuclear testing facility at Punggye-ri in the northeast of the country. North Korea previously conducted tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013. The magnitude of the blast has been variously estimated at between 10 and 20 kilotons, more than twice the size of the previous largest explosion, of 6 to 7 kilotons, in 2013.

“We successfully conducted a nuclear explosion test to determine the power of the nuclear warhead,” North Korea’s state television reported. “We will continue to strengthen our nuclear capabilities to protect our sovereignty. We have now standardized and minimized nuclear warheads ... We can now produce small nuclear warheads any time we desire.”

Pyongyang’s attempts to build a nuclear warhead that can be mounted on a ballistic missile are reactionary and in no way defend the North Korean people. In fact, the blast plays directly into the hands of the Obama administration, which has exploited North Korea’s nuclear program and the regime’s bellicose, but largely empty threats, to justify its military build-up in North East Asia and the strengthening of military ties with Japan and South Korea.

The North Korean test comes amid escalating geo-political tensions in Asia as the US seeks to reassert its dominance and undermine China through a diplomatic offensive and military expansion throughout the region. It comes in the wake of the East Asian Summit in Laos, where President Barack Obama further exacerbated maritime disputes in the South China Sea by insisting that China abide by the July 12 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling in The Hague that rejected China’s territorial claims in the sea.

After the detonation, Obama, who spoke with South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye and Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, denounced Pyongyang “in the strongest possible terms as a grave threat to regional security and to international peace and stability.” He called for “serious consequences,” including new sanctions. Discussion is underway in the UN Security Council on further punitive measures against Pyongyang.

Abe held a teleconference with Obama yesterday in which he reportedly told the US president that the international community had to make “a resolute response” and North Korea should pay “a price for its provocative actions.” Obama said he “completely agreed,” according to a Japanese official.

Park declared: “Such provocation will further accelerate its [North Korea’s] path to self-destruction.” All three South Korean parliamentary parties condemned the test. A belligerent statement by the military command warned: “We will bolster our deterrence strategy and missile combat ability in alliance with the US, including an operation plan for a pre-emptive strike [against North Korea].”

The stage is being set for a dramatic escalation of tensions. An article in the New York Times suggested that the US policy of “strategic patience”—the gradual escalation of sanctions on North Korea—had failed. The “uncomfortable choice” facing Obama was between “a hard embargo… [that] risks confrontations that allies in Asia fear could quickly escalate into war” or negotiations that would only “reward” North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

NBC news went further, listing other options that included a cyber attack or a direct military attack on North Korea’s nuclear facilities and arsenal. Joint US-South Korean exercises this year rehearsed new operational plans agreed last year—OPLAN 5015—for a pre-emptive attack on North Korea and “decapitation” raids on its top leaders, including Kim Jong-un.

The Obama administration is already ratcheting up its pressure on China, demanding that it take tougher measures against North Korea, its ally. US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter declared: “I’d single out China. It’s China’s responsibility. China shares important responsibility for this development and has an important responsibility to reverse it.”

Speaking at a press conference, Chinese Foreign Minister Hua Chunying called on North Korea to live up to its commitment of denuclearization and called for a return to six-party talks involving the two Koreas, the US, China, Russia and Japan. He “urged all parties to speak and act cautiously with a larger picture in mind”—a remark directed as much at Washington as Pyongyang.

Beijing is caught in a bind. On the one hand, it opposes North Korea’s nuclear programs as they provide a pretext for the US to continue to expand its military presence and could be used by militarist sections of the ruling elite in Japan and South Korea to develop their own nuclear weapons. In South Korea, Won Yu-cheol, the former floor leader of the ruling Saenuri Party, again called for the country to build its own nuclear arsenal.

On the other hand, the Chinese government is acutely concerned that intense pressure on the crisis-ridden North Korean regime could precipitate its collapse—a situation that the US and South Korea could exploit to try to install a government aligned with Washington on China’s northern border. As a result, Beijing is wary about cutting off essential supplies, including of oil and food, to Pyongyang.

The chief responsibility for the tense situation on the Korean Peninsula lies with Washington. The Obama administration has effectively scuttled any return to the six-party talks by insisting that North Korea give up its nuclear programs in advance of any negotiations.

The US is likely to further increase its military presence as part of its build-up throughout the region against China. Immediately after the fourth test in January, Washington began discussions on deploying “strategic weapons” to the Korean Peninsula—in other words, nuclear warheads and delivery systems. Washington and Seoul also used the opportunity to agree in July on the deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery to South Korea.

The US election campaign is playing into the tensions. Republican candidate Donald Trump blamed his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton for allowing the North Korean nuclear program to grow in strength and sophistication. “Hillary Clinton’s North Korean policy is just one more calamitous diplomatic failure from a failed secretary of state,” he said.

Both candidates have clamored to present themselves as more militaristic than the other during the campaign, an indication that no matter who becomes president, the risk of war will increase.