Fifteen Years Later, Physics Journal Concludes All Three WTC Towers Collapsed On 9/11 Due To Controlled Demolition

Jay Syrmopoulos

Over the past 15 years many highly respected academics and experts have come forward to challenge the official narrative on the collapse of the WTC towers forwarded by the U.S. government. The official government position holds that the collapse of all three towers was due to intense heat inside of the buildings.

But a new forensic investigation into the collapse of the three World Trade Center towers on 9/11, published in Europhysics News – a highly respected European physics magazine – claims that “the evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that all three buildings were destroyed by controlled demolition.”

While many in the mainstream have attempted to label anyone questioning the official narrative as “tin foil hat” conspiracy theorist, many highly respected experts have come forward to lampoon the idea that the buildings collapsed due to the intense heat and fires following two terrorist-directed plane crashes.

“Given the far-reaching implications, it is morally imperative that this hypothesis be the subject of a truly scientific and impartial investigation by responsible authorities,” the four physicists conclude in the damning report.

The new study is the work of Steven Jones, former full professor of physics at Brigham Young University, Robert Korol, a professor emeritus of civil engineering at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, Anthony Szamboti, a mechanical design engineer with over 25 years of structural design experience in the aerospace and communications industries and Ted Walter, the director of strategy and development for Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, a nonprofit organization that today represents more than 2,500 architects and engineers.

The comprehensive study in Europhysics Magazine directly challenges the official narrative and lends to a growing body of evidence that seriously questions the veracity of the government narrative.

In 2002, the National Institute of Standards and Technology remarked that the case was exceptionally bizarre. There were no other known cases of total structural collapses in high-rise buildings caused by fires and so it is deeply unusual that it should have happened three times in the space of one day, noted NIST.

Official investigations have never been able to thoroughly and coherently explain how this might have happened and various teams tasked with examining the collapse have raised difficult questions about the veracity of the government’s story.

Perhaps most damning of all, the experts claimed that after a thorough forensic analysis of video footage of the building’s collapse, it revealed signs of a controlled implosion. Additionally, Jones has co-authored a number of papers documenting evidence of unreacted nano-thermitic material in the WTC dust.

The authors of the study note that the buildings fell with such speed and symmetry that they there was no other feasible explanation for the sudden collapse at free fall speeds – directly refuting studies that attempted to debunk the idea that the building fell without resistance. These respected experts’ new forensic analysis only adds to the growing movement of people calling for a new and impartial investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center.

Revealing the scope and breadth of public disbelief in the official government narrative surrounding the events of 9/11, even presidential candidate Jill Stein has recently called for a new investigation.

The original source of this article is The Mind Unleashed

Comparing the French and Indian Nuclear Doctrines

Marie Pavageau

Generally speaking, countries’ decisions to go nuclear are based on traumatic episodes that shaped their national identity and must never happen again. The 1956 Suez Crisis was the trigger for France's nuclear programme when it realised it was vulnerable to Soviet nuclear threats and a reluctant US. India's experience was shaped by the 1971 Bangladesh war when both China and the US ganged up and resorted to nuclear threats against India. Curiously, both India and France have a similar notion of international affairs - that of strategic autonomy where they refuse to depend on bigger powers for their security or projection of interests. 

The trigger for the nuclearisation of both countries was based on both abandonment and heightened threat intrinsically linked with their doctrines of strategic autonomy. It is for this reason the similarities and contrasts in their nuclear doctrines are important to study.

Four key similar elements can be identified in the two doctrines: both countries have a “minimal deterrence” doctrine. In France's case, this has resulted in a massive reduction in the size of the arsenal from its peak a few decades back. In India's case, the growth has been at a snail's pace and estimates by experts show that the actual weapons arsenal will remain small relative to other nuclear states. Second, they both threaten their adversaries of unacceptable damages in an event their national interests are threatened, albeit the quantum of such damage remains undefined. Third, both countries view their anti-missile defence systems as complementary to their deterrents by reducing vulnerability (however minimal) to a first strike. Finally, both countries avoid mentioning the target of their respective deterrents. For France, this is something new as Russia was frequently mentioned as the target during the Cold War. India, though, has maintained a policy of not naming its intended target except once, immediately after the 1998 nuclear tests, when the letter from then Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to the then US President Bill Clinton expressly mentioned China as the intended target.

The differences in the nuclear composition and doctrine though are many. Both India and France exercise absolute civilian control over their nuclear weapons, but with a major contrast in their command process. France’s control is autarkic with the French president exercising absolute and sole authority over weapons launch. India’s exercise authority is collective through the executive council and the launch order has to go through the executive, i.e. the National Security Adviser.   

It can also be argued that French strategic autonomy known as auto-suffisance is also more "autonomous" than India's in that it is able to ensure its independence from any external pressure. 99 per cent of the French deterrent – apart from its uranium imports – are “made in France” (for example its missile technology, Rafale jet-fighters, SNLE submarines). India’s deterrent still relies on foreign technologies. For example Russia is sought out for its nuclear propulsion technologies. Similarly India is on a never ending quest for air land and sea propulsion as well as seeking technology transfers on almost every aspect of modern weaponry. It can be also be argued that India's "missile revolution" coincides far too conveniently with the lifting of dual-use technology sanctions on India and finally its desire to import reprocessing technology means that even the material actually available for the nuclear device is prone to external interference.

The divergences continue in the arena of No First Use (NFU). France has an explicit first use policy while India is seen as moving from an NFU to a first use policy. The upgrading of the deterrent horizontally (in terms of quantity) and vertically (in term of quality) suggest a possible future change in their nuclear doctrine towards a “preventive strike.” This has been presaged both in the 2003 doctrine “in the event of a major attack against India, or Indian forces anywhere, by biological or chemical weapons, India will retain the option of retaliating with nuclear weapons.” 

But perhaps the greatest area of divergence comes in the form of leadership credibility, or the countries' perceived will to use its weapons to defend itself. While both arsenals remain opaque, France engages in a publicity exercise with each new president publicly stating an evolution of its nuclear posture. Its officials then widely circulate this posture, solicit opinions and views and clarify each iteration to other countries. India on the other hand is yet to review and revise its 2003 doctrine despite a vastly changed international environment and refuses to clarify or discuss the same.  More importantly, French leaders do not shy away from stating their will to use the deterrent, while Indian prime ministers tend to downplay their resolve either by use or omission of words.

Overall, the difference in the two deterrents, their composition and thought reflects the two countries' requirements well. However, the seeming lack of leadership credibility – either in the public willingness to use, lack of autarky, and lack of revision of the Indian deterrent and doctrine – seriously erode the doctrine's credibility.

New Zealand: Maori king cuts ties with Labour Party

John Braddock

The New Zealand Maori king, the traditional figurehead of the central North Island Tainui tribe, used a speech on the 10th anniversary of his coronation last month to end his personal support for the Labour Party. Kiingi Tuheitia endorsed the Maori nationalist Maori and Mana parties, saying he would like to see the Maori electoral seats return to “Maori control.” Labour currently holds six of the seven parliamentary seats reserved for registered Maori voters.

Tuheitia blamed comments by Labour leader Andrew Little that he could not work with the Maori Party, which was established following a split from Labour in 2004 after the Labour government cut off tribal claims to the foreshore and seabed. The Maori Party, which currently has two MPs, has been a coalition partner in the conservative National Party-led government since 2008, providing “Maori” credentials for its offensive against the working class.

Maori, who make up 15 percent of the population, can register for either the general roll or the Maori roll at elections. Maori MPs can also represent general electorates and hold places on the party lists in the mixed-member proportional voting system. Calculations are now emerging in the Maori political elite that if a unified Maori movement can take the seven Maori seats, that bloc could be used as a lever to decide whether Labour or National governs.

Last month, the Mana and Maori Parties began discussions about working together in next year’s election. The talks are driven by ambitions within both parties for a more direct role in government. Neither would have any compunction in collaborating with any government to impose the next stage of the austerity agenda demanded by big business. Neither party has any broad support, particularly in the Maori working class, and face the prospect of electoral annihilation.

The Kīngitanga movement, which Tuheitia leads, is formally apolitical, but has traditionally been a bulwark of support for Labour. The king’s close relation, Nanaia Mahuta, has held the Hauraki-Waikato seat since 2002. After unsuccessfully challenging for Labour’s leadership in 2014, Mahuta was relegated to 12th place in Little’s caucus line-up, considered a slap in the face by the Maori political establishment.

In July, the Maori Party voted to install Tukoroirangi Morgan as its new chairman. A personal advisor to the king, Morgan is a right-wing figure at the head of the Tainui tribe’s extensive business operations. Between 1996 and 1999, Morgan was an MP for the anti-immigrant, populist NZ First Party. After losing his seat he joined Tainui’s corporate leadership, overseeing more than $NZ1 billion in assets and investments.

Morgan immediately declared the Mana and Maori parties could co-operate to take the Maori seats off Labour and hold the balance of power. “I make no secret about it: that’s the agenda,” Morgan told the Politik blog.

The king also endorsed Mana leader Hone Harawira, saying: “Hone has the strength to fight for what he wants, he’s got the loyalty of the people he represents.” Harawira quit the Maori Party in 2011. After siding with National for two years he bitterly claimed the Maori Party had betrayed the people who voted for it. He established Mana as a new political trap for the working class, posturing as “radical” and “pro-poor.” Mana became discredited in the working class, however, when it allied with Kim Dotcom’s pro-business Internet Party in the 2014 election, which saw Harawira lose his seat.

Harawira welcomed Tuheitia’s comments, describing “unity” as “a core element of Mana’s very existence.” Harawira claimed to oppose “the current government’s agenda of allowing the rich to get richer at the expense of the poor and the dispossessed, and selling off the nation’s assets,” even as Mana seeks “unity” with the Maori Party, part of that government, which has been instrumental in imposing austerity on the working class.

The possibility of a Mana-Maori Party alliance is being hailed by some pro-Labour commentators. The trade union-funded Daily Blog proclaimed that following the recent deal between Labour and the Greens to formally align for the election, the “only way we get a truly progressive Government in 2017 would be if Labour-Green + MANA-Maori Party had the majority.”

Far from being “progressive,” these are bourgeois parties, all lurching further to the right under the impact of the global economic crisis and drive to war. The Maori nationalist parties aim to block any movement to the left by the working class, while advancing claims by the privileged indigenous elite for a greater share of the profits and positions available within capitalism.

Tuheitia called for a Maori share in New Zealand’s “sovereignty” by 2025, implying a formal role for the Maori tribal leaderships in the country’s constitutional set-up. He promised to call another meeting of tribal leaders before the end of the year to pursue Maori property rights over fresh water sources, including those essential for hydro-electricity generation.

Under the rubric of “self-determination,” Maori leadership groups, such as the Iwi Chairs Forum, have backed successive attacks on the public sector in order to divert funds towards Maori trusts and business. This has included the drive to establish publicly-funded, privately-run charter schools and the Whanau Ora scheme, which has been used as a wedge to privatise welfare delivery.

Maori nationalism, the ideology of both Mana and the Maori Party, has been promoted by Labour and National governments over several decades. Its purpose is to divide workers along racial lines to prevent any unified struggle against austerity and militarism, and to subordinate Maori workers to the wealthy elite that Tuheitia represents. Treaty of Waitangi settlements—multi-million dollar payments to Maori tribes, ostensibly as redress for the crimes of colonialism—have enriched a thin layer of Maori entrepreneurs who are deeply involved in the exploitation of workers of all races.

By 2013, Maori corporations owned $NZ42.6 billion in assets, an increase of 15 percent compared with 2010. Tainui Group Holdings (TGH) has turned a $170 million payment from its 1995 Treaty settlement into assets worth $1.1 billion, rivalling the South Island’s Ngai Tahu tribe and Auckland’s Ngati Whatua. Its investments and holdings include farming, fishing, property development, a major retail park and hotels. When the government partially privatised state-owned electricity company Genesis Energy in 2014, TGH purchased 5 million shares. It owns the ground leases for the Huntly Power Station, Waikato University and parts of Hamilton’s central business district.

There is a vast gulf between the tribal elite and the Maori working class, which is mired in poverty and unemployment. According to researcher Max Rashbrooke in his 2015 book Wealth and New Zealand, wealth inequality within the Maori population is twice as great as among European New Zealanders. As the country’s economic and social crisis deepens, the appeals for Maori “unity” from Mana and the Maori Party aim to obscure this fundamental class division in order to prevent Maori workers from uniting with their non-Maori counterparts against the capitalist system.

Russian elections take place amid deepening economic and geopolitical crisis

Vladimir Volkov

Elections to the Russian State Duma are to be held on September 18. The so-called “party of power,” the pro-Kremlin United Russia (UR), is expected to retain control over parliament. The vote takes place under conditions of a deepening socioeconomic crisis and escalating geopolitical tensions with the imperialist powers.

Fourteen parties are running candidates in the elections, four of which have representatives in the current parliament. This includes the three parties of the “systemic” opposition; Gennady Zyuganov’s Communist Party of “red” Russian nationalists and Stalinists; Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s far-right, chauvinist Liberal Democratic Party; and A Just Russia, a member party of the Socialist International, headed by former Federation Council Chairman Sergey Mironov.

These organizations act not so much as opponents of the current government, but as obedient participants in a loyal opposition called upon to assist in supporting the current regime’s image.

Media reports indicate that, regardless of results of the elections, the current parliamentary opposition parties will be represented in the new Duma as a result of the Kremlin’s manipulations of election procedures and behind-the-scenes agreements on the allocation of parliamentary seats.

In the previous parliamentary elections in December 2011, a significant number of voters cast ballots for parties other than UR. This frightened the Russian government, which subsequently sought to minimize the likelihood that such a scenario would be repeated.

The elections were advanced from December to September in order to reduce the duration of the election campaign to a minimum, such that it would take place under conditions when the majority of Russia’s voters are on their summer vacations or away in the countryside.

Legislative term limits were also extended. Members of parliament now serve five instead of six years, and the president is in office for six instead of four years. This measure also had the effect of creating a gap in time between the parliamentary and presidential elections.

Finally, reinstating a process that was abolished in 2003, half of the parliamentary seats will be allotted not by proportional representation, but by a first-past-the-post method in single-seat districts.

All of these measures are antidemocratic in character and intended to deprive the population of the ability to influence the election results.

Under President Yeltsin in the 1990s, parliamentary elections were held as an immediate prelude to the presidential election. The Duma elections in December 1995 were separated from the presidential election in June 1996 by just half a year. The success of the pro-government party in the parliamentary elections, which had been achieved from the very beginning by means of crude falsifications, became the basis for the winning of the main “prize”: the triumph of the Kremlin’s candidate in the presidential election.

In the 2000s, the interval was reduced to three months. Vladimir Putin’s election as president in March 2004 was preceded by the parliamentary election of December 2003. The same process repeated for Dmitry Medvedev’s election in March 2008, and then once again for Putin’s election in March 2012.

The acute deterioration of the socioeconomic situation—the result of Western-imposed sanctions, a 50 percent fall of the ruble’s exchange rate, and the collapse of oil prices —altered the state of affairs.

United Russia, which embodies a thoroughly corrupt system built upon the unity of government and big business, is viewed with skepticism and hostility by much the population. The Kremlin, therefore, attempts to promote the idea that the president, as the “leader of the nation,” stands above state structures and inter-party disagreements, and cares about the people.

Putin has signaled a certain distancing from United Russia through the activities of the so-called People’s Front, formed in the spring of 2012, which constantly makes public criticisms of certain bureaucrats and thereby creates an appearance of a direct connection between the president and society.

The decision to separate the parliamentary and presidential elections (the latter will take place in 2018) is meant to give the ruling clique maximum discretion on the question which is most vital for it—the selection of the next president, whose authority must not be directly associated with the success or failure of the state’s current activities.

At the same time, the restoration of first-past-the-post elections in certain districts is meant to ensure United Russia a majority in the Duma regardless of the results of the party list votes. A significant number of United Russia supporters are running as nominally independent candidates in the single-seat districts.

All the other parties participating in the elections perform a primarily decorative function. According to polls and preliminary estimates, none of them has a real chance of overcoming the 5 percent threshold for entry into parliament. They differ little from the four official parliamentary parties, and are running campaigns built on virtually empty demagogy—along the lines of “for all that is good and against all that is bad.”

Rodina [Motherland], the Russian Party of Pensioners for Justice, Communists of Russia, and Patriots of Russia call for the reform of Russian capitalism, with an emphasis on patriotism and slogans of social justice. The Green Party, Civic Platform, Civilian Power, and the Party of Growth contend that the same goals should be achieved by defending the interests of private entrepreneurship and the so-called middle class.

Grigory Yavlinsky’s Yabloko [Apple], which had a parliamentary faction in the 1990s and has been actively promoted over the past decade and a half as the only true “liberal opposition party,” belongs to a somewhat different category, as does the People’s Freedom Party (PARNAS), which has criticized the government more harshly than the other parties.  Both of these parties serve as a channel for the expression of the views of the pro-Western liberal opposition.Yabloko’s leaderGrigory Yavlinsky was coauthor of 500 Days, one of the programs for a forced transition to the capitalist market developed at the end of Gorbachev’s perestroika.  

In PARNAS, the tone is set by a triumvirate consisting of former Prime Minister (2000-2004) Mikhail Kasyanov, the liberal nationalist Vyacheslav Maltsev from Saratov, and the Western conservative, Professor Andrey Zubov from Moscow. While Kasyanov insists that “Putin must go,” and Maltsev calls for “impeachment” of the president, Professor Zubov voices an anticommunist version of history, according to which the “Putinists” are “heirs of the Bolsheviks,” and Russia, as previously, is ruled by the “Cheka-NKVD-KGB.”

As the elections unfold, the government is desperately trying to hide the scale of its internal disagreements. However, the real state of affairs is expressed in the succession of corruption scandals involving security agencies, as well as the recent resignations of many key figures from among President Putin’s closest allies. The last such instance was the resignation of the former head of the presidential administration Sergei Ivanov .

On economic policy, there is intra-governmental disagreement between the “Kudrin line” and the “Glazyev line.” The proposals of former Finance Minister Aleksey Kudrin are focused on maintaining a regime of financial stability and low inflation at all costs, which would necessitate raising the retirement age, a new, harsh reduction of social spending, and other austerity measures. The central bank, the ministry of finance, and a number of other key government structures support Kudrin in this.

In contrast, Sergey Glazyev, an economic adviser to the president, advocates a “mobilization” version of expanding the economy through credit for targeted state programs, as well as an increase in spending on wages and social needs. This supposedly should revive consumer demand and stimulate a recovery from the extended recession. Each side accuses the other of incompetence, threatening the bases of stability of the state.

In the first half of 2016, Russia’s GDP fell by 0.9 percent year-on-year, despite the temporary stabilization of the ruble and a modest improvement in a number of industries.

On issues of foreign policy, there are forces advocating a more aggressive attitude toward the West. There have been reports in the media that after the recent Ukrainian provocation in Crimea, there was discussion of the question of attacking Ukrainian territory in retribution. It is becoming increasingly difficult for President Putin to maintain the balance of forces in the highest echelons of the state and achieve consensus on the maneuvers in which he engages with the West, combining saber-rattling and militarist gestures with efforts to achieve compromise and agreement.

Whatever results the elections bring, the immiseration of the Russian working class will deepen. All sections of the ruling elite are united in their commitment to make the country’s workers pay the price of the socioeconomic and geopolitical crisis facing Russia. Post-Soviet capitalism has led the Russian masses into a dead end, the only exit from which is the program of international socialism—the continuation of the struggle initiated in the 1917 October Revolution under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, which will see its hundredth anniversary next year.

Wells Fargo executive overseeing fraud receives $124.6 million retirement

Gabriel Black

[description] Carrie Tolstedt has made tens of millions overseeing massive consumer fraud as Wells Fargo’s Vice President for community banking.[description]

The executive who oversaw the massive customer defrauding scheme at Wells Fargo retired this year with a $124.6 million retirement package, including stock options, special reserved shares, and other perks.

Carrie Tolstedt, Senior Executive Vice President of Community Banking at Wells Fargo, retired July 31, 2016, just weeks before the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency settled with the bank over allegations that it had opened over one million customer accounts without the customers knowing, in many cases deducting fees and other service charges.

During her nine years in the post, Tolstedt, 56 years old, was repeatedly rewarded and praised for boosting the bank’s earnings. Her total compensation came to $27 million over the past three years. Last year the bank rewarded her with a $7.3 million bonus pay on top of her $1.7 million salary. The bank stated, “under her leadership, Community Banking achieved a number of strategic objectives, including continued cross-sell ratios, record deposit levels, and continued success of mobile banking initiatives.”

In a statement announcing her retirement earlier this year, the bank said, “Tolstedt’s team is a leader in building and deepening customer loyalty and team member engagement across the business, which today serves more than 20 million retail checking households and 3 million small business owners, and employs 94,000 team members.”

Tolstedt’s success at “deepening customer loyalty” and promoting “cross-sell ratios” amounts to enforcing a bank-wide culture of illegal predation on its customers.

According to the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the bank opened 1.5 million deposit accounts and more than half a million credit card accounts without customers’ authorization. This practice involved moving customers’ money without their permission and, sometimes, the creation of fake email addresses. Most accounts were quickly closed down, in order to make day-to-day sales quotas, but many remained open.

The CFPB described these practices as “widespread.” Sabrina Bertrand, a former Wells Fargo personal banker, told CNN Money, “I had managers in my face yelling at me.” She continued, “The sales pressure from management was unbearable. They wanted you to open up dual checking accounts for people that couldn’t even manage their original checking account.”

Wells Fargo says that it has fired 5,300 employees over the past few years for their role in the fraud. The thousands of workers who were pushed into this behavior, however, are not the culprits but the victims of a bank-wide policy. These workers were under threat of losing their jobs if they did not play their role in the illegal operations that were pushed and decided upon by the management of the company.

According to the lawsuit filed by the city of Los Angeles, district managers discussed sales for each employee “four times a day.” Anthony Try, another Wells Fargo personal banker, told CNN Money, “Management was fully aware of this, [but] turned a blind eye… It was ingrained in the culture for a long time.” He said, “There would be days where we would open five accounts for friends and family just to go home early.”

As is characteristic of the financial industry, those who are actually responsible are walking away with astronomical sums. Tolstedt, as stated, will get nearly $125 million in retirement payments. According to Bloomberg, 17 million of unvested shares could be denied to Tolstedt, but this is a fraction of the overall amount. CEO John Stumpf has made $19.3 million each year for the past four years, and is expected to receive the same this year.

Stumpf both knew of the fraudulent behavior at Wells Fargo and rewarded Tolstedt with huge bonuses each year. He praised her as a “role model for responsible leadership” and “a standard-bearer of our [Wells Fargo’s] culture.” His total lack of accountability has disquieted some investors, with Wells Fargo’s stock dropping 7.5 percent since the depth of the scandal was made known last week.

Meanwhile, the $185 million settlement with Wells Fargo allows the bank to avoid any admission of wrongdoing. No executive at the bank has been fined let alone criminally charged.

Even the fine is small change for a bank that made $9.3 billion of profit in its second quarter this year. Tolstedt, herself, salted away nearly as much as the amount of the fine while working for Wells Fargo. Also, because the bank will be able to log the fine as part of its business losses, it has the potential, as with many bank settlement fines with the US government, to write-off part of the fine in its taxes.

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that federal prosecutors have launched their own preliminary investigation, different from the one filed by the city of Los Angeles. If such an investigation resulted in charges, it would likely follow the host of sweet-deal agreements that the federal authorities have made with banks. These rarely target the executives of a bank, and when they do they amount to small wrist-slap fines.

Though greed plays a role in the decisions of these executives, it must be emphasized that the rampant fraudulent behavior at Wells Fargo is not merely the result of personal failings of this or that banker.

The world economy has entered into historically unprecedented territory in the past decade. Amidst widespread economic stagnation, the most “competitive” banks and companies must resort to increasingly fraudulent and illegal activity to satisfy share markets. This is compounded by the regime of near-zero interest rates, which diminishes profits to be made from deposit banking while creating a frenzy in the financial markets for all sorts of fraudulent and speculative behavior. In this economic climate, deposit banks are aggressively pushing as many financial products as possible per customer. It would therefore not be surprising if some of the other leading banks are revealed to have been involved in similar if not worse behavior.

UK reneges on its promise to take in Syrian refugees

Jean Shaoul

One year after former Prime Minister David Cameron promised to settle 20,000 Syrian refugees by 2020, only 2,800 have arrived in Britain.

This is just over half the rate of 4,000 a year needed to meet the paltry commitment, under conditions where there are more than 4.8 million refugees from the war-torn country.

The British government’s refusal to honour even its own pledge exposes its callous contempt for the millions of victims created by its participation, both overt and covert, in predatory US-led wars in Syria, Iraq and Libya—waged ostensibly to protect the people of the Middle East and North Africa from the brutality of Islamic State (ISIS) and similar Islamist forces.

The civil war in Syria, with all its atrocities, is the product of the five-year long attempt by the US and its allies to topple President Bashar al-Assad via a constantly shifting coalition of armed proxies and to install a more pliant, pro-American regime. Its purpose was to ensure US control over the Middle East as part of a broader campaign to dominate the entire Eurasian landmass, where it confronts Russia and China.

The Obama administration and its partners, including Saudi Arabia, the Gulf petro-monarchies and Turkey, turned to extreme right-wing Islamic fundamentalist forces, such as ISIS and various al-Qaeda-linked outfits, to carry out their objectives. Having played a key role in spawning such groups, the imperialist powers then exploited their existence to justify further military intervention in Iraq and Syria and attacks on democratic rights at home.

Cameron refused to take part in a broader European Union programme to relocate refugees who reached Europe. Instead, he pledged to increase humanitarian funds to refugee camps in the Middle East in order to ensure that the refugees did not make the attempt.

He grudgingly established a separate scheme—the “Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme”—to specifically take in Syrian refugees, ignoring the vast numbers of refugees from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iraq and elsewhere.

Cameron announced Britain’s promise to accept 20,000 refugees over five years following the outpouring of public anger over the plight of Syrian refugees last summer, particularly after the heartrending image of the body of three-year-old Alan Kurdi washed up on a Turkish beach. “Britain should fulfil its moral responsibility to help those refugees,” he said.

The scheme was to be particularly targeted at helping women and girls, survivors of violence and torture, children and adolescents, refugees with medical needs and disabilities and those at risk due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.

The proposed number to be taken under the scheme exposed his promise as a fraud, and even this minuscule number was hedged with tight conditions. The programme would only be open to refugees registered in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt and Turkey, not those already in Europe. It later emerged that the scheme would be funded by the Department of International Development’s refugee aid budget, with only £20,530 per annum for each refugee over their five years on the programme being made available to local authorities for their housing and education needs.

Furthermore, the implication of the five-year funding is that the programme will then be terminated. Instead of asylum and the right to residency, refugees are being offered a short term stay in a move clearly intended to evade Britain’s obligations under international law, not just in this case but more broadly.

Most of the refugees have been dispersed across 118 Local Authorities, mainly in Scotland and northern England. Other Local Authorities explained that the main reason they have been unable to take part in the programme was a lack of suitable flats and houses, or childcare and school places. According to the parliamentary watchdog, the National Audit Office, an estimated 4,930 extra homes and 10,664 school places are needed for the refugees, putting the 20,000 target at risk.

An even smaller number of people from countries other than Syria—just 652—were brought to the UK as refugees under the Gateway Protection Programme in 2015.

In another token gesture, Cameron also set up a Minister for Syrian Refugees, a special cross-Whitehall post that was promptly axed by his successor as prime minister, Theresa May, in July.

Last May, at the height of criticism over his response to the plight of child refugees, Cameron promised to take in 3,000 vulnerable children and their carers, including unaccompanied minors, from the Middle East and North Africa, by 2020, approximately 700 a year. This would include a large number who had parents already in the UK.

However, the children must have arrived in Europe before 31 March 2016 to qualify—a restriction inserted to prevent parents sending their children to Britain. This is of a piece with the government’s attitude towards highly vulnerable children separated from their parents. Most of these children are in the Jungle Camp in Calais.

It is unknown how many children have entered the UK under this scheme—presumably, none at all—since the government has so far refused to say how many unaccompanied child refugees it has taken in under that commitment, even refusing a Freedom of Information request to do so. Earlier this month, the Information Commissioner ordered the government to disclose the figures, but this has not been honoured as yet.

More broadly, according to the Refugee Council, only 30 percent of children who arrived in Britain alone have been granted asylum so far this year. Typically, they are granted short term leave to remain that expires after two and a half years. The top two countries of origin for new applications in 2016 from unaccompanied children were Iran and Afghanistan.

The Council reported that so far this year, the government has locked up 47 children in immigration detention, which only served to exacerbate their plight, despite promising six years ago to end the practice. The Government announced a few months ago that it was closing Cedars, the specialist family detention unit. Given the lack of specialist resources, this only means they will be held in facilities even less well equipped to care for them.

Last year, there were 1.25 million first-time applications for asylum in EU countries, more than double the number in 2014--mostly by Syrian, Afghan and Iraqi nationals. The UK received just 38,370 first-time asylum applications in 2015--3.1 percent of the EU total.

According to the Migration Observatory, asylum applicants and their dependents comprised a mere 7 percent of Britain’s net migration in 2014, down from 44 percent in 2002. Just 36 percent of first time asylum applicants were accepted in 2015, with 35 percent of those who appealed winning the right to stay.

A recent Home Affairs Select Committee report on the migration crisis warned that the government was unlikely to fulfil its 20,000 target of Syrian refugees. It noted the horrendous situation facing asylum seekers in the refugee camp known as the Jungle in Calais, but called for Britain to accept just 157 unaccompanied children from it who had family in the UK.

Its main concern was the need for greater “border security” and further steps to control migration. It noted that beefed up security at airports and major ports was displacing “malevolent attention” to smaller points of entry that lacked resources, and called for security to be tightened up at these entry points “as a matter of urgency.”

US special forces flee “moderate” rebels in Syria

Bill Van Auken

US special operations troops were compelled to flee from a village in northern Syria Friday after their lives were threatened by elements of the so-called Free Syrian Army, the amorphous group of Islamist militias that Washington has backed in its five-year-old war for regime change.

A video posted online showed a column of vehicles carrying the American special forces operatives speeding out of the village as a crowd of Islamist jihadis waving automatic weapons chanted anti-American slogans and death threats.

“We’re going to slaughter you,” the so-called “moderate rebels,” shouted. “Down with America. Get out you pigs.”

An individual who appeared to be leading the demonstration shouted, “The collaborators of America are dogs and pigs. They wage a crusader war against Syria and Islam.” Another man shouted, “Christians and Americans have no place among us.”

The appearance of the video coincided with the first report carried by theWall Street Journal that the Pentagon had deployed a unit of 40 special forces troops to assist the Turkish army, which invaded Syria last month in an operation dubbed Euphrates Shield. It marks the first such direct attempt at US-Turkish collaboration in Syria since the Obama administration ordered the deployment of several hundred special operations troops in the country last spring.

While ostensibly the joint operation is aimed at routing the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) from towns it has occupied in northern Syria, Ankara’s overriding aim is to drive back Syrian Kurdish fighters of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and prevent them from consolidating an autonomous Kurdish entity on Turkey’s border.

The videotaped incident took place outside the village of al-Rai near the Turkish border. It is on the road leading south to the ISIS-held town of al-Bab, which is seen as a strategic link between the predominantly Kurdish cantons of Kobani and Afin. The YPG Kurdish forces are determined to take the town, while Turkey is determined to deny it to them.

Until recently, the YPG has served as the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the principal US proxy ground forces in the war against ISIS, and had been armed, trained and supported by US special forces “advisers.” The attempt to deploy American special operations troops with the Turkish-backed militias raised the real prospect of US soldiers confronting each other on opposite sides of the battlefield.

The US alliance with the Kurdish forces was undoubtedly a factor in the anger of the so-called FSA fighters depicted in the video. These Sunni sectarian militias, however, are not only hostile to the Kurds, but also share the essential ideology of Al Qaeda.

The confrontation, which was largely blacked out by the US media, exposes the real character of the so-called “moderate opposition” backed by Washington and its regional allies—principally Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar—as well as the intractable contradictions created by the criminal and reckless policy pursued by Washington over the past five years in its systematic destruction of Syria.

The episode also provided embarrassing—from the Obama administration’s standpoint—confirmation of the charge levied by Russia that Washington is either unable or unwilling to pressure the Islamist militias that the CIA has armed and paid to abide by the terms of a ceasefire agreement reached last week between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

“Despite the fact that the ceasefire regime in Syria envisaged by the Russian-US agreement has lasted for four days now, the issue of the general ability of the ‘moderate opposition’ to observe it remains open,” Russian Defense Ministry representative Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said on Friday. “All attempts by our American partners to demonstrate to the world at least some manageability of their opposition activists in Syria have now failed,” the general added.

Vladimir Savchenko, the chief of Russia’s center for reconciliation of the warring parties in Syria, reported Friday that over the previous 24 hours there had been 39 separate instances of the so-called rebels shelling government positions and civilian areas. He said that the attacks indicated that the US-backed armed opposition was “once again using the ceasefire regime to restore its combat capabilities and regroup its forces.”

Russian officials have expressed particular frustration over Washington’s failure to provide information on the exact locations and the numbers involved of the so-called “moderate rebels,” which under the ceasefire agreement are supposed to separate themselves from the Al Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, which recently renamed itself Jabhat Fatah al-Sham.

The reality is that the Al Qaeda forces are the dominant armed militias attacking the Syrian government of President Bashir al-Assad, and the existence of a “moderate,” much less secular, opposition is a propaganda invention of the US and its allies. The CIA-supported militias are largely integrated with the Al Nusra forces and could not survive independently of them.

Meanwhile, the US has attempted to foist the blame on the Syrian government and its ally, Russia, for the failure of a column of trucks bearing relief supplies to reach the besieged city of Aleppo. US officials have made it clear that Washington is prepared to utilize the delay as a pretext for abrogating the ceasefire deal, including most critically, the creation of a “joint implementation center” to coordinate US and Russian military operations in Syria.

“If, by Monday we have continued to see reduced violence and no humanitarian access there will be no Joint Implementation Center,” State Department spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Friday.

The blocking of the aid column is bound up with the security of the road leading from the Turkish border into “rebel”-held eastern Aleppo, which has been repeatedly shelled by the US-backed militias. The al-Nusra forces that predominate in the area, moreover, have held public demonstrations vowing to block any UN aid in protest against the ceasefire agreement.

The Obama administration has also resisted Russian proposals that the terms of the ceasefire deal be made public and be presented to the United Nations Security Council for its endorsement.

Underlying this reticence are deep divisions within the US state itself over the agreement with Russia. Pentagon officials, including the top uniformed commanders in the Middle East, have publicly expressed reservations over the agreement, indicating that they are not committed to implementing it, despite its having been approved by the US president.

Obama met Friday with Kerry, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, who reportedly opposed the ceasefire, and other top security officials.

Underlying the political divisions within the US government and statements by top generals bordering on insubordination are not only differences over the crisis-ridden US strategy in Syria. More fundamentally, the US military brass is focused increasingly on a direct military confrontation with Russia, the world’s number two nuclear power, and sees the ceasefire as cutting across the preparations for such a catastrophic conflict.

The international significance of the Berlin election

Peter Schwarz

In Germany, the Berlin state elections on Sunday are being held under conditions of a dramatic international crisis. The consequences of the 2008 financial crash remain unresolved; the European Union, which since the Second World War has formed the basis of relative stability in Europe, confronts an existential crisis; the conflict with Russia and the war in Syria are escalating; and inside Germany, social tensions are growing as more and more people work in precarious conditions for low wages.

The ruling class has responded to this crisis with the promotion of militarism and by building up the repressive apparatus of the state. Since leading representatives of the government announced the “end of military restraint” two years ago, German soldiers, tanks and warplanes are engaged have been deployed to NATO’s border with Russia for the first time since the Second World War. The German Armed Forces train and arm Kurdish fighters in Iraq and fly reconnaissance missions over Syria. The military and defence budget has been increased by billions of euros.

The government has massively expanded the police and surveillance apparatus. The threat of terrorist attacks and the propaganda campaign against refugees and Muslims, fuelled by the media, serve as the pretext.

This policy is supported by all the parliamentary parties. The call for security, more police and increased monitoring has been the focus of their Berlin election campaign. The widespread opposition to this policy has deeply discredited these parties. The times when the so-called “people’s parties” – the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) – could win 40 percent or more of the vote are long gone. In Berlin, where polls place the SPD as the strongest party, it is polling at just 23 percent. The CDU, the Greens, the Left Party and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) are polling between 18 and 14 percent.

Amid the broadening hatred of the political establishment, it is mainly the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) that has profited from the growing anger and indignation with the establishment parties. In the last nine state elections, the AfD has managed to enter each state parliament on its first attempt, exacerbating the crisis of the old parties. While in times of political crisis, the ruling class has previously been able to rely on a “grand coalition” of the SPD and CDU to ensure stable majorities, these parties are now viewed with such widespread contempt that they are no longer capable of securing a governing majority together.

Under these circumstances, the ruling class is seeking new political props to protect its power and suppress the opposition to militarism and social austerity. This is why the outcome of the election may be the formation of a “Red-Red-Green” government, that is, a coalition consisting of the Social Democrats, the Left Party, and the Green Party. This combination on the state level may well prove to be a test run for a coalition of the SPD, Left Party and the Greens at the federal level. Berlin SPD leader Michael Müller, who serves as governing mayor of Berlin in a coalition with the CDU, has expressed his support for such a “Red-Red-Green” alliance.

In one year, in September 2017, the next Bundestag (federal parliament) will be elected. State elections in Germany have always been seen as a trial run for the federal election. So far, the SPD and the Greens have refused an alliance with the Left Party at the federal level and in western States. Only in the east, where the Left Party, as successor to the old ruling state party in the former East Germany enjoys greater influence, has it been included in government at the state level. This is now changing as a result of the deepening crisis. SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel has indicated that he would now be ready for such a government.

In the Berlin election campaign, the Left Party has done everything possible to prove its reliability to the ruling class and its support for increased state powers and militarism. In its Berlin manifesto, it calls for a massive increase in police personnel and the expansion of police powers. Last week, the Left Party’s parliamentary leader in the Bundestag, Dietmar Bartsch, attacked the Merkel government from the right on this issue. He called for “a state that has the capacity to act”, and accused the federal government of having “weakened, humiliated and neglected the police.” Addressing the SPD, Bartsch added, “Yes, the Left Party wants to take responsibility for this political change in government.”

However, the Left Party has a problem. It, too, has massively lost credibility because of its right-wing policies. It is highly discredited in Berlin, where it spent ten years in the state administration between 2002 and 2011 implementing a policy of social austerity. For this reason, it is mainly pseudo-left groups like SAV and Marx21, which have found a home and a livelihood inside the Left Party, that have carried out the leg work in its election campaign. The co-thinkers of the American International Socialist Organisation, the British Socialist Party and Socialist Workers Party and the French New Anti-Capitalist Party, are all active in Germany’s Left Party, energetically promoting it and seeking to provide it with a left fig leaf.

Increasingly, these groups, which are based on affluent sections of the middle classes, the trade union bureaucracy and other better-off layers, reveal themselves for what they really are: a crucial prop of bourgeois rule.

In the United States, these political outfits promoted the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, who described himself as a socialist and won 13 million votes in the primaries, only to then support the candidate of Wall Street and the military, Hillary Clinton. In Britain, they act as cheerleaders for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is encouraging hopes of a shift to the left by the Labour Party, but refuses to fight against its right-wing parliamentary faction, which is plotting to bring him down.

The election campaign carried out by the Partei für Soziale Gleichheit (PSG) in Berlin is of great significance. As the German section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, the PSG has placed the building of an international movement against war at the centre of its campaign, of a movement that is based on the working class and combines opposition to war with the struggle against capitalism and for a socialist society.

It has stressed that the working class cannot take a step forward without breaking with the SPD, the Greens, the Left Party and their pseudo-left coterie. The PSG campaign is aimed at raising the political consciousness of the working class, and preparing for the future, when growing sections of the working class will come into sharp conflict with the ruling parties.

Death toll rises in Bangladesh factory fire

Sarath Kumara

In another industrial tragedy in Bangladesh, the Tampaco Foils factory near Dhaka caught fire on Saturday, and then collapsed. The number of workers killed had risen to 34 by yesterday. With around 50 people injured and six still missing, the death toll may further increase.

This disaster highlights the unsafe conditions and shoddy construction for which Bangladesh is now notorious. It is the largest factory fire in the country since the Tazreen Fashions fire in November 2012, in which 112 workers were burnt to death. In another catastrophe, the Rana Plaza building collapsed near Dhaka in April 2013, killing around 1,200 apparel workers.

The blaze engulfed the multi-storey Tampaco Foils factory in the Tongi industrial zone, killing 23 workers immediately. Because inflammable chemicals were stored in the food and cigarette packing factory, the inferno spread quickly. An explosion occurred around 6 a.m., when workers were nearing the end of the overnight shift. A boiler eruption was suspected but investigators said they were also examining whether a gas leakage caused the blast.

The initial rescue operations were difficult because there were “still flames here and there as there are a lot of chemicals in the factory,” senior fire service official Masudur Rahman told Reuters on Sunday. Ajit Kumar Bhoumik, a senior fire department official, added: “We do not know when the search will be completed as it is a huge task.” He said more excavators and trucks were needed to clear debris, as well as “more manpower and other resources.”

In a show of support and force, the army was called into work with civil defence and police personnel, who used cranes and other equipment to pull away rubble and remove slabs of the collapsed building.

Thirteen people were treated at the Dhaka Medical College hospital, including six in critical conditions. Victims’ families were devastated. Mina Rani Dey, the mother of a missing cleaning worker, Rajesh Babu, told reporters: “He came to work early in the morning on Saturday. He has not returned. His father has become sick because our son has not returned.”

The plant was congested because production had been expanded to meet rising orders. The factory owner, Syed Mokbul Hossain, a former member of parliament, claimed it was “fully compliant” with safety standards. However, police later told Reuters that the factory owner and seven other top managers went into hiding as the death toll rose.

Farid Ahmed, deputy inspector general of the country’s factory inspection department, said police had filed a case by the family of one of the victims, and expected to receive more complaints.

In a display of official concern, Mikail Shipar, secretary of the Ministry of Labour and Employment, said: “We checked the design of this factory and initially it is our understanding that it was a one floor building and later the floor had been raised, similar to [the] case of Rana Plaza.”

Knowing that the disaster will again raise the issue of the lack of industrial safety in Bangladesh, Shipar claimed that the ministry would investigate the safety measures of all factories in the Tongi industrial zone. It would also “formulate a project to inspect all the factories in all four industrial zones in the country.”

Such pledges are made after every tragedy. The obvious question is why the government had not previously scrutinised the safety of the factories.

As with previous disasters, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Bangladesh Awami League-led government is looking for scapegoats. Industries Minister Amir Hossain Amu told reporters on Sunday: “Stern action will be taken against those responsible for the fire. No one will be spared.”

This is just rhetoric to deflect the mass anger, locally and internationally, over the government’s callous attitude toward those toiling in poor working condition in such factories.

The factory made food and cigarette packaging for local and global brands, including British American Tobacco, Nestlé and Nabisco Biscuit & Bread, a unit of food giant Mondelez International.

In a bid to cover-up its responsibility for the disaster, according to one report, Nestlé said it was “shocked and saddened” by the deaths and the injuries, and its thoughts were with those affected. But such conglomerates make use of such factories, precisely because of the low costs, which necessarily entails, shoddy construction and appalling working conditions, as well as poor wages.

It was likewise with Bangladesh agro-processed food products chain Pran, which conceded that it is a customer of Tampaco, which supplied it with flexible packaging material for snacks and confectioneries. A spokesman said: “After this fire we will meet our other suppliers and review their safety measures as well … Our supply management team does routine visits to all our suppliers’ plants and we will strengthen these more now.”

Government officials said they had mainly focused on safety in garment factories but were now going to consider other industries as well. This is another pretence. The editorial of the Bangladeshi newspaper, New Age commented on Tuesday: “[T]here has so far hardly been any example in which errant owners or government officials were punished, although the country witnessed several hundred such disasters in different industrial sectors in the past few decades.”

Referring to the Rana Plaza case, the newspaper noted: “[I]t is also true that as the trial has already taken several years to start for various reasons, none can say for certain the victims will get justice, at least, in near future.”

The Awami League-led government is determined to keep production costs low, particularly via cheap labour conditions, in order to attract foreign investment, regardless of the cost in workers’ lives. Whatever cosmetic changes are made in the industrial sector, there will be no genuine improvement of workers’ safety conditions and living standard under the corporate profit system.

Right-wing campaign after anti-terror operation in Germany

Katerina Selin

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière ordered the arrest of three terrorist suspects on Tuesday morning in a major police operation in the state of Schleswig-Holstein. More than 200 officers from the Federal Criminal Agency (BKA), the federal police and police from several states participated in raids on three refugee accommodation centres and a number of apartments.

The special forces unit GSG9 arrested three men, aged 17, 18 and 26, all of whom turned out to be Syrians, in Ahrensburg and Großhansdorf, east of Hamburg, and in Reinfeld near Lübeck. The authorities allegedly secured thousands of dollars, false passports and mobile telephones from the suspects. The accused are now in investigative detention.

The operation was immediately exploited by politicians and the media to encourage xenophobic sentiments and to campaign for a strong state.

De Maizière declared to the media, “According to what is known so far, information from the BKA suggests the perpetrators had connections to the Paris attackers.” There was the “suspicion that the detainees came to Germany on behalf of Islamic State.” Their passports were produced in the same workshop of a smuggling organisation that produced those for the Paris attackers, who killed 130 people last November. The three allegedly passed themselves off as refugees in November 2015 to travel through Greece and the Balkan route to Germany.

Although de Maizière added the obligatory sentence that one could not place all refugees under suspicion, this is merely a cynical cover for his right-wing rhetoric. He immediately added that there were “refugees who sympathise with terrorism.”

Bavaria’s interior minister Joachim Hermann (Christian Social Union) spoke out and demanded “strict border controls and clear identification of those who come to us in this country.” Hermann claimed, “The obvious gaps in control of the immense influx of refugees, above all last autumn, has had dire consequences.” ISIS was exploiting “the security gaps deliberately” to “smuggle attackers to Europe concealed as refugees.”

The ruling class is using the same propaganda methods that dominated the media in the wake of the New Year’s Eve events in Cologne. While at the beginning of the year, they associated foreigners and refugees with “criminals” and “rapists,” they are now trying to stigmatise refugees as terrorists. This campaign plays directly into the hands of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), which commented confidently on its web site, “Once again, the warnings of the AfD Schleswig-Holstein have been confirmed by reality.” Chancellor Merkel had “opened the borders of the federal republic and has left our country in a virtually defenceless state.”

The same message was taken up by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in an article by Reinhard Müller, headlined, “The consequences of openness without limits.” Müller asserted that there was a “high abstract risk from fundamentalist attackers,” and called on the federal government to speak out clearly about “what the result of openness without limits is.” The “opening of the borders” remained a “big experiment with literally many unknowns.” His solution was a stronger state: “In the Middle East, in the core area of the Islamist terror organisation, Germany’s influence is limited. But hopefully not here at home,” according to Müller.

The jurist Reinhard Müller was among those journalists calling last year for a military intervention in Syria. In a piece titled “Need of the hour” he called not only for an intervention in Syria, but also for the deployment of the German army domestically.

The limited information surrounding the anti-terror intervention in Schleswig-Holstein leaves open many questions. As the interior minister himself had to admit, there was, “according to the current stage of the investigation,” no “evidence of concrete plans for an attack.” At no point had any risks been associated with the people involved. The domestic intelligence agency had been spying on the men for nine months. According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, a foreign intelligence agency cracked their coded chat messages with ISIS.

Why would such a suspected “terrorist group” be taken out in a major police operation now? The timing of the operation has clearly been guided by political motives. Days before the Berlin election, in which the CDU has led the way with a law-and-order campaign, the federal government wants to create an hysterical atmosphere and demonstrate the strength of the state.

Several government representatives and politicians praised the actions of the security forces. They were “alert and acted decisively,” according to de Maizière. Federal justice minister Heiko Mas (Social Democratic Party, SPD) declared that the arrests showed “that our authorities act decisively against suspected terrorists.” And the interior minister of Schleswig-Holstein, Stefan Studt (SPD), praised the cooperation between federal and state police officers.

The true circumstances and background surrounding the “anti-terror operation” in Schleswig-Holstein remain unclear for now. But all politicians and journalists are silent on the real origin of terrorism. The imperialist wars in the Middle East, in which Germany actively participates, have not only destroyed entire societies and created the conditions that nourish terrorism. At the same time, the major powers, above all the United States, have armed and funded Islamist organisations to enforce their interests in the region.

In the Syrian civil war, they support so-called rebels, made up chiefly of the former al-Nusra Front, which are composed of Islamist jihadis fighting for the overthrow of the government.

The World Socialist Web Site has pointed to the connection between war policies and the domestic buildup of the state, writing, “The Western powers are cooperating in Syria with the same forces which serve at home as the pretext for constructing a police state and for military interventions in the name of the ‘war against terrorism.’”