Curtain Descending: Fascistization of America

Norman Pollack

When does a qualitative change occur in the course of a nation’s history, particularly when traces of the New appear steadily and throughout in the Old? Gradualism is deceptive. We conveniently think, e.g., of the Nazi Revolution, when in Germany, especially its Bismarckian side, exhibited an authoritarian bent that led to the cartelization of capitalism, from which internal hierarchy poisoned—from a democratic standpoint—social structure, ideology, political values, the people ground down into a uniform massive congealment of consciousness. The folk, its mystical antecedents in the distant past (Wagner’s creative energies did not arise in a vacuum), enveloped in fog, created a disposition to mythologize, under strong leadership, its mission in the world. Enter Hitler. If he didn’t exist, he would have had to be invented.

But he did, and the 20th century would never be the same. Weimar was part holding action, part churning out the social forces of the future (despite its astonishing gifts in literature, painting, architecture, etc.). Creativity is not a sure sign of democracy. Primordial structure and political economy roll again, perverting and taking hostage of whatever they touch, everything in their grasp. Germany could not escape its destiny, nor transcend its past.

Nor could America, a lineal pattern of development founded on capitalism (the relative absence of feudalism, but the presence of plantation slavery, made over however to ensure that itself was an adjunct of capitalism) which denied from the outset the equitable distribution of wealth and power, and thus foretold a future, not unlike that of Germany: homogenization of thought feeding into its own self-serving mythology of exceptionalism and national greatness. Both the US and Germany had vital labor movements—consensus, for America, quite meaningless until following World War II, political consciousness in Germany always facing a tough uphill battle.

Analogies abound where they are not expected, the appearance (only!) of freedom in America. its at best adulterated form in Germany. A convenient test of reality in this respect would be the prevalence of MILITARISM in the respective histories/political cultures, and here both pass with flying colors, America’s the more deceptive (though just as accentuated) because aligned with a “free world” (aka, entrepreneurial) mindset. Among the world’s most uncomplicated and intensive capitalistic formations—what I term its purist foundations—the US, one notes, provides the ideal social laboratory for testing the salience of capitalism, whether as alienation or the consolidation of industry and banking, or, a proclivity to military advancement.

One can perhaps only guess the reasons for the historical and societal alignment of capitalism and militarism, but if not divinely attributable it is possible to trace their close relationship to a demiurge of profit maximization, intracapitalist rivalry, and, since 1917, the fear of socialism. On these counts alone, even subtracting for cultural differences, America and Germany are not that far apart. But let’s leave Germany, and focus on America. (Japan, in its own way, would duplicate some of the features of the other two, particularly the genesis and mode of industrial organization.)
These preliminary observations are a way of saying, America today, under Trump, is not something new to its own internal history. We demonize Trump, when in reality he stands on the shoulders of American presidents, their parties, their policies, and their practices—in sum, government itself—going back in recognizable form to McKinley (Open Door), T. Roosevelt (battleship navy), and Wilson (liberal internationalism, i.e., antiradical global stabilization). To experience qualitative change, which I think Trump does bring on, because of its visibility and overtness, does not make light of the past, simply acknowledges the accretive details as making possible the turning of a corner long in the making. Trump is the face of capitalism approaching its undisguised capacity for inflicting harm. As a total social system we can expect more Trumps down the road, provided not interrupted by a nuclear holocaust.

The firing last night of the acting AG, the invitation to dissident State personnel to get lost, the obduracy on the immigration issue, the plutocratic underside of federal appointments, these are but straws in the wind. It can only get worse, and perhaps never better, as the Constitution becomes a freely interpreted document of political gangsterism and hatred for the “softness” of human rights. Capitalism has robbed Americans of compassion. The present crew will have it its own way, because the polity knows of no other way than showing deference to the sources of power, an elite structure combining capitalism and the state, the latter organized first and foremost to expanding the advantages of the former. Trump brings back the Social Darwinian features of the earlier capitalism (circa 1880s-90s) while projecting forward its totalitarian attributes looking to a dystopian future of further concentration, manipulation of the people, and war-provoking tendencies.

We’ve already seen these characteristics in more attenuated form (although Vietnam certified the cruelty and go-for-broke mental set energizing the momentum forward). Those looking back years from now may see in Trump the moderate or liberal fascist, so terrible what is yet, or maybe yet, to follow in his wake. All bets are now off. Let’s hear it for torture, for stripping the social safety net of significant protections, for a world of conflict (an ingrained doctrine of permanent war already on the table thanks to Obama, as a transitional figure), and for Fortress America solidified, thrown back on itself, when it becomes clear to the leadership in business and government that undisputed world dominance is no longer within reach. Plow on, Ship of State; take pride in the consistency of American capitalist development.

Fake News Inquiry: Old Wine in New Bottles

Binoy Kampmark

London.

Any inquiry into fake news is much like having a Royal Commission into the make up and motivation for Halal food. (The latter absurd proposition has been put forth by a few Australian politicians irritated by the Islamist bogeyman.)  Neither mission is particularly helpful, other than to illustrate a mounting ignorance about a phenomenon that always was.

In the United Kingdom, the Culture, Media and Sports Committee has made an announcement that it will investigate claims about the public being persuaded by untruths and the dazzling influence of propaganda.

Invited submissions are to consider, among others, such questions as to what fake news is and where “biased but legitimate commentary shade into propaganda and lies”; the impact of such news on “public understanding of the world, and also on the public response to traditional journalism”.

In the hyperbolic words of committee chairman Damian Collins MP, the rise of such fabrications constituted “a threat to democracy and undermines the confidence in the media in general”.  The point is almost prosaic, given that Britain has been labouring under such fabrications and propaganda for a good deal since the seedy reign of tycoon Rupert Murdoch commenced.

A society that actually reads The Sun for factual enlightenment is bound to be a victim of the now touted propaganda that is supposedly afflicting the public. It is astonishing that the only reason that “fake news” has renewed currency is because of recent flavourings emanating from the alt-right, or from the Kremlin. In truth, the condition is a pre-existing one in the fourth estate.

Fake news is standard: cereal, wheat and bran, the fibre of the information world.  It has been the foodstuff of media for decades, if not centuries. What matters now is the outrage felt by those in news outlets who believe that a tinge of objectivity still remains in the process of news production.  It ignores that news that is often not authentic has always been the mainstay of journalism, a case of unchecked sources, careless investigation or, in some cases, pure invention.

Much of journalism, for all its purported merits, supplies an illusion of objectivity. Government spin doctors have capitalised, and some, such as former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s terrier-like Alastair Campbell, were formerly of the press.  Campbell, as Director of Communications and Strategy, knew exactly how information might gestate and, in time, mutate into “news”.

If one was to be rude about it, calculated dissimulation would be far more appropriate.  Consider the way a person is interviewed on the arrival of a press crew.  The subject interviewed is placed in an artificial setting pretending to read papers he has never touched, nor is interested in.  The camera is trained in such a manner suggesting an open office space with light, when the office is essentially a closet space with a dying plant in the corner. The fake walk is staged, as is the fake reading with shuffling paper.

The Australian watch dog media program, Media Watch, over the course of its history regularly exposed instances of flagrant abuse of the supposed rule of authenticity. Journalists pretended to be in one city when they were evidently in another.  Scenes were staged, car chases manufactured.  Reports were filed from hotel rooms.

Similarly, Evelyn Waugh touches upon this very idea of exaggeration in Scoop (1938), the classic novel on Fleet Street journalism in its sensationalist form.  Truth is something otherwise left to others.  Instead, the herd instinct kicks in and clamours.

Imaginary bodies, tracks of devastation and mutilation, will be conjured up for good copy.  Fictional stories will stem from arranged liaisons, much in keeping with Clint Smoker in Martin Amis’ Yellow Dog (2003).  Again, the State will always volunteer its own version to be circulated to the unwitting press corps: in the Vietnam War, it was the infamous body count masking the US inability to win; in Iraq 2003, it was spectral Weapons of Mass Destruction.  Fakery all round; fakery through and through even from self-appointed defenders of Freedom’s Land.

The death of the credible investigative journalist in the wake of the teeming blogosphere, and the nature of how news is actually crafted, suggests that fake news had a crown well and truly made before it was brought out during the US election campaign in 2016.

Fake news is no longer the preserve of the ruthless press oligarch, disturbed tabloid journalist, or a communications official: it is the democratic preserve of the people.  It caters for those who wish to be deceived, since truth is not so much uncomfortable as mind splittingly painful.

Where, then, does the burden lie to combat such material?  Where it always did: at the end of the production process (for news is undeniably produced, as opposed to discovered). It is the consumer of news who remains judge, the reader, however well informed. All agents have responsibility to oversee it, to question it, but the ultimate point of reception should be the greatest questioner, checking, reading, painstakingly, between the lines. Unfortunately, much in the way of news is merely read to affirm a pre-existing position.

Such inquiries as those proposed by the UK parliament cannot mask a broader purpose, which is to rein in the influence and spread of alternative media. This will be achieved through imposing on social media outlets obligations to stop, in the words of Collins, “the spreading of fake news,” a point analogous to tech companies who “have accepted they have a social responsibility to combat piracy online and the illegal sharing of content”.  The firm, gagging hand of censorship is being readied.

One would have thought that views not connected to the conventional organs of the Mainstream Press add to, rather than spoil, the broth. Percolating through the media networks, some semblance of a picture can be attained.  Not so for mainstream stalwarts who believe that their profession is the mainstay of a bright, spoken truth.

Britain and the ‘Yemeni Threat’

Dan Glazebrook

Britain is backing a Saudi invasion of Yemen that has cost thousands of innocent lives. It is providing advanced weaponry to the Saudis, training their military, and has soldiers embedded with the Saudis helping with targeting; and there is suspicion that British soldiers may even be involved in flying sorties themselves.

This is true of today. But it also describes exactly what was happening in the 1960s, in a shameful episode which Britain has, like so much of its colonial past, effectively whitewashed out of history.

In 1962, following the death of Yemeni King Ahmad, Arab nationalist army officers led by Colonel Abdullah Al-Sallal seized power and declared a Republic. The Royalists launched an insurgency to reclaim power, backed by Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel and Britain, whilst Nasser’s Egypt sent troops to support the fledgling republican government.

In his book ‘Unpeople’, historian Mark Curtis pieces together Britain’s ‘dirty war’ in Yemen between 1962 and 1969 using declassified files which – despite their public availability and the incendiary nature of their revelations – have only ever been examined by one other British historian. British involvement spanned both Conservative and Labour governments, and implicated leading members of the British government in war crimes.

Just as today, the side under attack from Britain clearly had popular support – as British officials were well aware. Christopher Gandy – Britain’s top official in Yemen’s cultural capital, Taiz – noted that the previous regime was “unpopular with large elements and those in many ways the best”, describing it as “an arbitrary autocracy”. Another British official, in the Prime Minister’s office, wrote that Nasser had been “able to capture most of the dynamic and modern forces in the area whilst we have been left, by our own choice, backing the forces which are not merely reactionary (that would not matter so much) but shifty, unreliable and treacherous” Even Prime Minister Harold Macmillan admitted it was “repugnant to political equality and prudence alike that we should so often appear to be supporting out of date and despotic regimes and to be opposing the growth of modern and more democratic forms of government”. Thus, wrote Curtis, “Britain decided to engage in a covert campaign to promote those forces recognised [by Britain itself] as ‘shifty’, ‘treacherous’ and ‘despotic’ to undermine those recognised as ‘popular’ and ‘democratic'”.

At the request of Mossad, MI6 appointed Conservative MP Neil MacLean to run a guerrilla war against the new Republican government. At first Britain’s role was primarily to support and equip Jordan’s involvement in the war; just as today, it was British fighter jets carrying out airstrikes on Yemen, with British military advisors embedded with their allies at the most senior level. This involvement stepped up a gear in March 1963, however, when Britain began covertly supplying weapons to the Royalist forces themselves via their Gulf allies. The following month, says MI6 biographer Stephen Dorrill, millions of pounds worth of light weapons were shipped from an RAF station in Wilstshire to the insurgents, including 50,000 rifles. At the same time, a decision was taken by Britain’s foreign minister (shortly to become Prime Minister) Alec Douglas-Home, MI6 chief Dick White and SAS founder David Stirling to send a British force to work directly with the insurgents. But to avoid parliamentary scrutiny and public accountability, this force would be comprised of mercenaries, rather than serving soldiers. SAS soldiers and paratroopers were given temporary leave to join this new force on a salary of £10,000 per year, paid by the Saudi Prince Sultan. An MI6 task force was also set up, to facilitate weapons and personnel supplies, and authorisation was given for British mercenaries to lay mines. The same time as these decisions were taken, Douglas-Home told parliament “our policy in Yemen is one of non-intervention in the affairs of that country. It is not therefore our policy to supply arms to the Royalists in the Yemen”. Foreign minister Rab Butler was more uneasy with such barefaced lying, especially when evidence began circulating of exactly what Britain was up to; a memo he sent to the PM in 1964 complained that his job of rebuffing UN claims that Britain was supplying the Royalists was made slightly more difficult “since we know that this is in fact true”.

British officials also knew that their insurgency had no chance of winning. But this was not the point. As Prime Minister Macmillan told President Kennedy at the time, “I quite realise that the Loyalists will probably not win in Yemen in the end but it would not suit us too badly if the new Yemeni regime were occupied with their own internal affairs during the next few years”. What Britain wanted, he added, was “a weak government in Yemen not able to make trouble”. Nor was this only Macmillan’s personal opinion; his foreign policy advisor Philip de Zulueta wrote that “All departments appear to be agreed that the present stalemate in the Yemen, with the Republicans and Royalists fighting each other and therefore having no time or energy left over to make trouble for us in Aden, suits our own interests very well…our interest is surely to have the maximum confusion in the tribal areas on the Aden frontier” with Yemen.

Labour came to power in the autumn of 1964, but the policy stayed the same; indeed, direct (but covert) RAF bombing of Yemen began soon after. In addition, another private British military company Airwork Services, signed a $26million contract to provide personnel for training Saudi pilots and ground crew involved in the war. This agreement later evolved into British pilots actually carrying out bombing missions themselves, with a foreign office memo dated March 1967 noting that “we have raised no objection to their being employed in operations, though we made it clear to the Saudis that we could not publicly acquiesce in any such arrangements”. By the time the war ended – with its inevitable Republican victory – an estimated 200,000 people had been killed.

At the same time as Britain was running the insurgency in North Yemen, it was fighting a vicious counter-insurgency campaign in South Yemen – then a colonial protectorate known as the Federation of Southern Arabia. This federation comprised the port city of Aden, under the direct colonial rule of the UK, and a series of sheikhdoms in the pay of the UK in the neighbouring hinterland. Its inhabitants were desperately poor, with one British commander noting that “there is barely enough subsistence to support the population”. These were the conditions behind a major revolt against British rule that broke out in the district of Radfan in April 1964 and would not be quelled for 7 months. The methods used to do so were typically brutal, with the British High Commissioner of Aden, Sir Kennedy Trevaskis suggesting that soldiers be sent to “put the fear of death into the villages”. If this didn’t work, he said “it would be necessary to deliver some gun attacks on livestock or men outside the villages”, adding that “we might be able to claim that our aircraft were shooting back of [sic] men who had fired at us from the ground”. The British use of airstrikes against the risen peasants was massive: historian John Newsinger writes that in just 3 months in 1964, British jets fired 2508 rockets and 200,000 cannon rounds, whilst British bombers dropped 3504 20-pound bombs and 14 1000-pound bombs and fired 20,000 cannon rounds. The government took Trevaskis’ advice and targeted crops in what Newsinger correctly described as a “deliberate, calculated attempt to terrorise and starve them into surrender.” Although the Radfan rebellion was eventually crushed, the British lost control of the hinterland to the National Liberation forces less than three years later, swiftly followed by Aden itself.

The 1960s was not the first time Britain had aided and abetted a Saudi war against the Yemenis, however. In 1934, Ibn Saud invaded and annexed Asir – “a Yemeni province by all historical accounts” in the words of the academic and Yemen specialist Elham Manea – and forced Yemen to sign a treaty deferring their claims to the territory for 20 years. It has never been returned to Yemen and remains occupied by the Saudis to this day. Britain’s role in facilitating this carve up was significant. As Manea explains, “During this period, the real power was Great Britain. Its role was crucial in either exacerbating or containing regional conflicts….[and] in the Yemeni-Saudi war they intensified the conflict to the detriment of Yemen”. When Ibn Saud claimed sovereignty over Asir in 1930, the British, who had been neutral towards disputes between the Peninsula’s various rulers hitherto, “shifted their position, perceiving Asir as ‘part of Saudi Arabia’… This was a terrible setback for [Yemeni leader] Yihia and drove him into an agreement with the British in 1934 which ultimately sealed his total defeat.” The agreement forced Yihia to recognise British sovereignty of Aden – Yemen’s major port – for 40 years. Britain then provided military vehicles for the Saudi suppression of the Asiri revolt and subsequent occupation that followed.

So the current British-Saudi war against Yemen is in fact the third in a century. But why is Britain so seemingly determined to see the country dismembered and its development sabotaged? Strange as it may seem, the answer is that Britain is scared of Yemen. For Yemen is the sole country on the Arab peninsula with the potential power to challenge the colonial stitch-up reached between Britain and the Gulf monarchies it placed in power in the nineteenth century, and who continue to rule to this day. As Palestinian author Said Aburish has noted, the very “nature of the Yemen was a challenge to the Saudis: it was a populous country with more than half the population of the whole Arabian peninsula, had a solid urban history and was more advanced than its new neighbour. It also represented a thorn in the side of British colonialism, a possible springboard for action against their control of Saudi Arabia and all the makeshift tributary sheikhdoms and emirates of the Gulf. In particular, the Yemen represented a threat to the British colonisation of Aden, a territory which considered itself part of a greater Yemen which had been dismembered by colonialism”. The potential power of a united, peaceful, Yemen was also highlighted by Aden’s High Commissioner Kennedy Trevaskis, who noted that, if the Yemenis took Aden, “it would for the first time provide the Yemen with a large modern town and a port of international consequence” and “economically, it would offer the greatest advantages to so poor and ill developed a country”.  A peaceful, united Yemen – with over half the peninsula’s population – would threaten Saudi-British-US hegemony of the entire region. That is why Britain has, for over 80 years, sought to keep it divided and warring.

Fussing About The State Visit: Queen Elizabeth II And Trump Traumatic Disorder

Binoy Kampmark

London: Trump Traumatic Disorder has been making its away across the Atlantic, numbing British officials, activists and commentators on one vital point: Should President Donald J. Trump be able to see the Queen on an official state visit?

A good of deal of this was sparked by Trump’s executive order banning travel from seven Muslim majority states.  On a daily basis, academics feature on BBC Radio 4 speaking about how travelling to the United States, notably with a Muslim name, is now a disturbing improbability.  Internally they are wounded; externally, they are outraged.

The UK Home Secretary has also been full of advice for Trump, suggesting that his travel ban was a rich gift to the Islamic State, a “propaganda opportunity” born from wrongheaded and divisive thinking.

Before the Home Affairs Committee, Rudd claimed that the order did not, on the face of it, amount to a “Muslim ban” per se, but the Islamic State would “use any opportunity they can to make difficulties, to create the environment they want to radicalise people, to bring them over to their side. So it is a propaganda opportunity for them, potentially.”

To US Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, Rudd was also unhappy, shooting off a message of disapproval at the ban, citing “difficulties and the response that was taking place in London and across the country.”

In a very British way, one often coated with a hypocritical varnish, a ban, or downgrade of Trump’s visit is being debated amongst a range of other possibilities.  Should it, for instance, be downgraded from dizzy formal state visit with state banquet to something less?  Previous US presidents have tended to visit usually within months of the inauguration, but the idea of a State visit is deemed a plush, serious affair.

In Britain’s glorious past and current present of courting blood hungry dictators, sadistic beasts and mindless buffoons, it should hardly register a comment. State interests, notably from those states with an imperial pedigree, have seen all manner of flexibility triumph over principle. Money, strategic interests and geopolitics all talk the most loudly at a state banquet.

But Trump’s ability to rile even in his absence, to shock even as a shadow of menace, is fast becoming the stuff of legend. He is generating an absurd premise: that he, as a politician, is singular and should, therefore, be treated accordingly.

This cult of perverse exceptionality should be discouraged.  A whirl through previous state visits in history should suffice to do this, starting with the post-colonial cast of characters Britain so enthusiastically backed as puppets for its waning cause.  In 1973, the murderous Mobutu Sese Seko, president of Zaire, received the state treatment. His resume was deemed suitable in one way: his halt of any possible Soviet influence during the Cold War.

Zimbabwe’s seemingly immoveable post-independence leader, Robert Mugabe, now deemed a maniacal, destructive pariah, was accepted as a royal guest in 1994.  It was also an occasion to award him a knighthood, one he was stripped of in 2008.  It was all so appropriate: a leader celebrated for being trained and nourished in the British tradition, and one who used it to throw grenades back at the scorned imperial mother.

Strategic interests have always mattered, though influence exerted during these vists could be exaggerated.  The visit by Indonesia’s President Suharto (1979), whose hands were caked in the blood of internal repression, was awkward at best. The visit by Japan’s Emperor Hirohito in 1971 was even frostier, marked by silent crowds and turned backs from former prisoners of war.

While generally being an overflowing font of nonsense, UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson at least had a point in saying that the record suggested that Trump could pass muster. If the Queen could host in all seriousness Robert Mugabe and Romania’s infamous, megalomaniacal Nicolai Ceauşescu, then the UK could “probably cope” with Trump.

Johnson’s refusal to attack Trump in the Commons conformed to a long held policy not to berate the United States, and certainly not its president.  Besides, he had received assurances from Trump’s inner circle that the travel ban would not affect British citizens.

This is the sort of event to be recognised for what it is: ceremonial concealment, false posturing, a ridiculous effort in the modern era for Britain to exert “soft power”.  It is also soft power that falls significantly flat at points, notably when it comes to visiting French Presidents. From Charles de Gaulle’s 1960 state visit onwards, the banquet has been a battle ground of gastronomic resentment and mistreatment.

What seems unusual was Prime Minister Theresa May’s moment of weakness, the lap dog’s enthusiasm for wanting to seem enthusiastic about an imperial master.  “Theresa the Appeaser,” chided Mike Gapes, Labour MP for Ilford South.  On her visit to Washington, the British leader seemed to ignore the tradition that Her Majesty’s Government usually waits before dolling out the full blooded invitation.  Caution and prudent assessment of the leader’s unfolding record should take place.

As Lord Ricketts, permanent secretary at the Foreign Office from 2006 to 2010 explained in a letter to The Times, “It would have been far wiser to wait to see what sort of president he would turn out to be before advising the Queen to invite him. Now the Queen is put in a very difficult position.” Far better, in other words, to have runs on the board, whether elected or as a dictator, before being given the royal Britannic treatment. The Queen will generally tolerate any old thing.

Besides, delighted Simon Tisdall in The Guardian, the two million signatories of the online petition calling for the invitation to be rescinded should also “take comfort from suggestions that state visits can carry the kiss of political, if not mortal, death.” Witness all those royals who are now nothing more than historical murmurs: the Shah of Iran in 1959, banished by the mullahs; or King Mohammed Zahir Shah of Afghanistan (1971), his family erased by history. Visit, suggested Tisdall in rather sinister tone, and be damned.

Recriminations in Australian Greens threaten split

Oscar Grenfell 

Ongoing tensions within the Greens erupted last week, with prominent representatives of rival groupings issuing bitter recriminations against one another. The conflict centres on how the Greens, an increasingly discredited party of the political establishment, can reverse its declining support amid mounting hostility toward the entire parliamentary set-up. This threatens to provoke a split.

On Friday, former party leader Bob Brown accused Lee Rhiannon, a federal senator from New South Wales (NSW), of destabilising the party. Brown stated: “When it comes to political white-anting, Lee is the Greens version of Tony Abbott.” He was referring to former Liberal-National Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who was ousted by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in a factional coup in 2015, and has since been accused of undermining the current government.

Brown also claimed: “NSW voters have often told me they won’t vote Green until Lee goes. That’s why Labor loves her.” Rhiannon responded by declaring that the Greens were at a “crossroads” and needed to make a populist appeal.

On Sunday, the Greens national council sent a letter to all members, warning that “the formation of formal factions is incompatible with our party structure and rules.” The edict follows the establishment of “Left Renewal,” a grouping within the Greens whose supporters include close associates of Rhiannon.

The public flare-up is the latest in a series of conflicts which have escalated since the federal election of July 2.

Amid a collapse in support for Labor and the Liberal-Nationals, the Greens’ national Senate vote was down almost 5 percent compared with 2010. Their highest votes were in the most affluent inner-city electorates of Sydney and Melbourne, underscoring that the party’s base is overwhelmingly among privileged sections of the upper middle-class.

Party leader Richard Di Natale, Brown and national officials blamed the poor result on Rhiannon and other figures in the NSW Greens, who were denounced by Labor MPs and the Murdoch press as “lunatic lefties” during the campaign.

In reality, the fall in support for the Greens was a result of its open integration into the political establishment, which has eroded illusions that the party represents an alternative to Labor and the Liberal-Nationals.

The Greens’ 2016 election campaign centred on assurances that it was a “responsible party” and overtures to Labor for the establishment of a coalition government committed to the austerity dictates of the corporate elite.

This followed the Greens’ participation in a de facto coalition with the former federal Labor government of Julia Gillard. While propped up by the Greens between 2010 and 2013, the minority Gillard government dramatically escalated the assault on healthcare, education and welfare, and aligned Australia with the US “pivot to Asia,” a massive military build-up in preparation for war against China.

The Greens at the state level have replicated this model. Most recently, from 2010 to 2014, the Tasmanian Greens played a leading role in a Labor-led coalition government that moved to close public schools and dramatically reduce public spending at the behest of the financial elite.

Since the 2016 election, Di Natale has elevated figures associated with the right-wing of the party to positions of greater prominence and demoted others with ties to Rhiannon. For instance, last September, former Wall Street banker Peter Whish-Wilson, who has advocated the abolition of weekend penalty rates, among other openly pro-business policies, was appointed the Greens’ treasury spokesperson.

The tensions within the Greens have escalated in response to polling indicating a further decline in the party’s support. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, internal figures show a drop from 11.2 percent at the beginning of 2016 to around 10 percent at the end of the year.

The Rhiannon wing, which has close ties to various trade unions, protest groups and the pseudo-left organisations, has responded by warning that the party risks being bypassed by a developing movement of workers and young people against the major establishment parties. Their concerns are entirely tactical. Like Di Natale, Rhiannon has been a leading figure in the Greens for decades, and has enthusiastically supported all its parliamentary manoeuvres, including its participation in the Gillard government.

In her comments last week, Rhiannon called on the Greens to adopt populist and anti-capitalist rhetoric and seek to reverse the party’s declining support by appealing to the broad hostility to social inequality, the assault on public spending and the destruction of jobs, wages and working conditions.

Rhiannon declared: “We need to be able to inspire people and demonstrate that the Greens can challenge ruling elites and end the obscene and growing inequality both at home and abroad. The Bernie Sanders experience in the US shows that people with radical and anti-establishment policies can win mass support. How the Greens inspire people to join with us and vote for us is our challenge in 2017.”

Bernie Sanders won some 13 million votes in last year’s US Democratic Party primaries by posturing as a socialist and opponent of the “billionaire class.” Proving that his rhetoric was aimed at shoring up the right-wing Democratic Party, he then endorsed Hillary Clinton and called on his supporters to vote for her—the favoured candidate of the banks and the military-intelligence apparatus. Since the election, Sanders has declared that he would be “delighted” to work with US President Donald Trump in implementing protectionist measures, such as tariffs on Chinese and Mexican goods and tearing up trade agreements.

In a significant comment last week, hinting at how she believes the Greens can win back support, Rhiannon declared: “The Greens are at a crossroads, with Labor appearing to move left on some issues and minor parties also pulling our votes away.”

What Rhiannon means by Labor moving “left” is in fact its adoption of demagogic “Australia First” rhetoric, which has only intensified in the wake of Trump’s election. Labor leader Bill Shorten has called for limits on overseas workers entering Australia on temporary “457” work visas, and for subsidies and other protectionist measures to shore up the market share and profits of Australian-based corporations. The “minor parties” to which Rhiannon referred include One Nation and other xenophobic organisations, which have won a degree of support by blaming immigration and “foreign competition” for the social distress affecting working class and regional communities.

Rhiannon is advocating that the Greens compete with the populist right-wing. The Greens’ senator has a long history of advocating economic nationalist measures. In late 2015, for instance, she denounced the US-led Trans Pacific Partnership, a trade bloc directed against China, on the grounds that it would “constrain our sovereignty over critically important issues.” She has prominently called for the protection of Australian steel companies by the introduction of procurement policies that mandate the use of Australian-produced steel in public construction. Rhiannon has also previously called for government subsidies to the car industry and other sections of manufacturing, on the pretext of defending “Australian jobs.”

Each of these campaigns has been carried out in alliance with the unions, which use protectionist rhetoric against “foreign competition” to divert attention from their collaboration with the major employers in the destruction of jobs, wages and conditions. At the same time, the unions and the Greens seek to divide Australian workers from their counterparts around the world, who face similar attacks on their living standards, working conditions and social rights, as a result of the ever-escalating race for "international competitiveness" on the part of the ruling elites of all countries.

Rhiannon’s orientation has been supported within “Left Renewal.” While the federal senator has stated she is not a member of the faction, its political line is indistinguishable from hers.

At a Left Renewal public meeting in Sydney last week, young representatives of the faction warned that the Greens would be “left in the dust” if the party did not change its approach. Like Rhiannon, speakers repeatedly invoked Sanders as the model to follow.

Representatives of the pseudo-left groups Solidarity and Socialist Alliance hailed the emergence of the new faction as a step forward for the “left.” In reality, the entire axis of the Left Renewal project within the Greens is aimed at confining political discontent and alienation in the working class and youth within the existing parliamentary set-up.

Italian court sentences ex-Latin American dictators for Operation Condor

Cesar Uco & Bill Van Auken

An Italian tribunal last month sentenced two former Latin American dictators and six other former officials and military officers to life in prison for their part in the deaths of 23 Italian citizens. These 23 victims were among the tens of thousands of opponents of Latin America’s fascist-military regimes who were murdered, tortured and illegally imprisoned under a US-backed campaign of repression known as Operation Condor in the 1970s and 1980s.

Those sentenced on January 17 included Peru’s former dictator (1975-1980) Gen. Francisco Morales Bermúdez, 95, and Gen. Luis Garcia Meza, 87, who imposed a bloody reign of terror over Bolivia from 1980 to 1981. Garcia Meza is already serving a 30-year prison term in Bolivia for the crimes of his dictatorship.

Receiving the same sentence were: Morales Bermúdez’s prime minister, Pedro Richter Prada and former commander-in-chief of the Peruvian Army Gen. German Ruiz Figueroa; Garcia Meza’s minister of interior, Luis Arce Gomez; former Uruguayan Foreign Minister Juan Carlos Blanco (1973-76); and two former Chilean military officers, Hernán Jerónimo Ramírez and Rafael Ahumada Valderrama.

During the 1970s and 1980s, dictatorships in Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Peru, with the aid of the US CIA, developed Operation Condor as a program of coordinated continental repression, pooling their police-military resources in order to hunt down exiles and send them back to their deaths, while allowing secret police death squads to freely cross borders.

Ten years ago, when the proceedings were initiated, an Italian judge issued orders for the preventive detention pending extradition of 140 officials of Latin America’s former dictatorships. By the time the trial ended last month, the number had been whittled down to 27 by bureaucratic hurdles thrown up by Latin American governments, as well as the deaths of many of the accused, including Argentina’s genocidal generals Jorge Videla and Roberto Viola, along with former Uruguayan dictator Gen. Gregorio Alvarez, all of whom who had been sentenced to prison in their own countries for the crimes of their dictatorships.

While the verdict has been hailed by some human rights groups as a victory and an official confirmation of the cross-border crimes carried out under Operation Condor, there was outrage among many of those present, particularly relatives of Uruguayans who were abducted, tortured and murdered by the dictatorships. Uruguay accounted for 33 of the 42 Italian citizenships whose disappearances and deaths were the subject of the trial at its outset. Yet, only one of the Uruguayans on trial, former foreign minister Juan Carlos Blanco, was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Of the 19 accused found not guilty by the court, 13 were Uruguayans, many of them notorious military assassins and torturers.

The most damning of the acquittals, in terms of the court’s credibility, was that of Jorge Tróccoli, a retired Uruguayan naval captain, who openly acknowledged torturing prisoners under the dictatorship and who served as a liaison between the Uruguayan dictatorship and infamous School of Naval Mechanics (ESMA), one of the main torture centers in Argentina. Tróccoli wrote books and gave interviews defending his crimes as acts of “war.”

Tróccoli’s verdict was the most significant because he was the only defendant who was actually within the grasp of the Italian justice system. Having secured Italian citizenship, he fled to Italy in 2007 after proceedings were initiated against him in Uruguay. Uruguayan attempts at extradition were stymied, and Tróccoli has been able to live well beyond the means of a retired Uruguayan naval officer in an expensive area on the Amalfi Coast in southern Italy ever since, apparently the beneficiary of protection from intelligence agencies.

While the rationale for the court’s decisions will only be provided in the coming months, it appears that it allowed Tróccoli to go free on the defense of “due obedience,” the claim that he was “only following orders” that was rejected when used by the Nazi defendants at Nuremberg. In his case, this defense was patently false, given his own public admission that no one ordered him to torture, and testimony by other officers that there were no sanctions against those who refused to participate in these crimes.

In a video interview in Rome, a young Uruguayan woman expressed her anger over the court’s decision: “They are genocidal. It is a shame what is happening. I’m completely outraged. I traveled thousands of miles to have an answer and have convictions. And, again, my parents are missing. I do not know their fate. I was born in a clandestine center. I’m 39 years old and I thought I would go free today.”

Raul Sendic, the vice-president of Uruguay who attended the final court hearing, was considerably more sanguine, declaring himself “disappointed” but “not in a position to pass judgment on this court.”. Sendic, whose father Raul, a founder of the Tupamaro urban guerrilla movement, spent a dozen years in prison under the Uruguayan dictatorship, is a member of the Frente Amplio (Broad Front), the electoral alliance into which the ex-guerrillas entered to pursue bourgeois politics.

Another notable aspect of the trial was the Italian prosecution’s position that, while Washington clearly was aware of Operation Condor—evidence against some of the defendants came from State Department files—it was not a participant in its crimes.

There is ample evidence however, that the CIA and the US government had a direct and guiding hand in the repression.The position of the Italian authorities was likely driven by political considerations, both the desire not to antagonize Washington and the knowledge that the US would never allow any ex-officials to stand trial under international law.

One of the main architects of Operation Condor, Manuel Contreras, the former head of Chile’s notorious secret police, the Directorate of National Intelligence, or DINA—who was also identified as a paid “asset” of the CIA—testified that two notorious assassinations carried out by his agents had been approved and jointly organized by the CIA.

The first was that of Gen. Carlos Prats, the ex-chief of the Chilean army, who had opposed the US-backed coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet. He and his wife were murdered in 1974 with a car bomb in Buenos Aires, where they had sought refuge. The second assassination was that of Orlando Letelier, the former foreign minister in the overthrown government of Salvador Allende and a key figure in the international opposition to Pinochet. He was also killed in a car bombing in 1976 together with his aide, Ronni Moffitt, in the streets of Washington, D.C.

Declassified documents also made it clear that then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was fully informed of Operation Condor by the foreign minister of Argentina’s military dictatorship, Admiral Cesar Guzzetti, in at an OAS meeting in 1976. Kissinger voiced his support for the crimes, urging his Argentine counterpart to “do them quickly” and assuring him “We want you to succeed.”

The most prominent among those found guilty who is not already imprisoned in his own country was Peru’s Morales Bermúdez. He was convicted in connection with the murders of three Argentines of Italian origin who had fled to Lima as refugees from the Videla dictatorship.

In a January 23 article, the Spanish daily El Pais described in detail the fate of the three:

“The Argentine Carlos Alberto Maguid was kidnapped in Lima, Peru, on April 12, 1977. At the time of his capture, he enjoyed political asylum in the country... at a central bus stop, four officers of the Peruvian Army put Maguid in a white Volkswagen and took him to the Ministry of War, where his military countrymen were waiting for him. It is unclear whether he was executed in Peru or taken to Argentina.

“Montoneras María Inés Raverta and Noemí Esther Gianetti de Molfino were kidnapped in the same city three years later... Both were taken to the military recreation area at Playa Hondable …and handed over to the Argentine military.

“The torture sessions included electric shocks in the vagina, drowning in the sea, beatings and a Tupac Amaru-style torture, using vehicles instead of horses. …Raverta was delivered by the Peruvian authorities to the border with Bolivia. She was never heard from again. Molfino was kept alive a little longer; her body was found weeks later in a hotel in Madrid.”

According to El Pais, the court established that Morales allowed Argentine military personnel into the country and offered them assistance in “torture in facilities of the Peruvian state and hiding the enforced disappearance.”

In a July 2015 interview with the Peruvian daily El Comercio, Morales Bermúdez denied that Operation Condor had a presence in Peru. In his defense, he insisted that the military regime he headed was “determined to lead the country to the democratic system by withdrawing from power.”

All of this is lies. Morales Bermúdez came to power in 1975, with the backing of the CIA, in a right-wing military coup that overthrew his predecessor, General Juan Velasco Alvarado. Velasco’s military regime had antagonized Washington by pursuing a left-nationalist course, establishing ties with the Soviet Union and Cuba, while carrying out nationalizations, even as it sought to repress the Peruvian working class.

Morales Bermúdez implemented the demands of the IMF and coordinated the policies of his regime closely with those of Washington and the other Latin American military dictatorships, including through collaboration with Operation Condor. His so-called “reforms” led to economic collapse and a growing resistance from the Peruvian working class that forced the military to relinquish power.

There is no extradition treaty between Italy and Peru, and previous governments refused to send Morales Bermúdez for trial. Given his advanced age and the right-wing character of the current government of President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, it is even less likely that he will be sent to serve his sentence.

Drug distributors fined for failing to report suspicious orders of opioids

Brad Dixon

Drug distributors have recently been hit with millions of dollars in fines for failing to report “suspicious orders” of prescription painkillers to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). These drug distributors, along with drug manufacturers and retail pharmacies, have contributed to the growing opioid epidemic in the United States.

The opioids that are manufactured by companies such as Purdue Pharma and Insys Therapeutics are distributed to retail pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens by drug distributors, also known as drug wholesalers, who act as middlemen.

The Controlled Substances Act (CSA) requires these drug distributors to identify and report “suspicious orders” of controlled substances to the DEA. Still, drug wholesalers have repeatedly failed to do so, while industry lobbying has curtailed enforcement of the law by the DEA. The recent penalties and fines reflect more the flagrant manner by which the drug distributors have allegedly violated the law, than any renewed effort by regulators to clamp down on the practice.

Earlier this month, McKesson, the nation’s largest drug distributor, paid a record $150 million civil penalty for alleged violations of the CSA. The settlement with the Justice Department requires the company to suspend its sales in Colorado, Ohio, Michigan and Florida for multiple years, although this will be done on a staggered basis that critics say will minimize the order’s impact.

The settlement follows a $13.5 million civil penalty McKesson agreed to in 2008 for failing to develop a system to detect and report suspicious orders of controlled substances. The 2008 settlement required the company to develop a compliance program, but a government investigation found that the company failed to adhere to it.

This past December, drug distributor Cardinal Health agreed to pay $44 million to resolve allegations that it failed to report suspicious orders placed in Maryland, Florida and New York. In Florida, for example, the company’s own investigator warned in 2010 against selling narcotics to the Gulf Coast Medical Pharmacy. The warnings were ignored. While wholesale distributors would normally expect to send 65,000 doses of oxycodone to a pharmacy of this size, Cardinal shipped more than 2 million doses to Gulf Coast in 2011 alone.

Cardinal announced a few weeks ago that it had also reached a $20 million settlement with the state of West Virginia to resolve a lawsuit alleging similar practices in that state between 2007 and 2012. Cardinal flooded West Virginia with 241 million oxycodone and hydrocodone pills during this period, more than any other drug distributor. West Virginia also settled lawsuits with other drug wholesalers, including a $2.5 million settlement with Miami-Luken and a $16 million settlement with AmerisourceBergen.

In nearly all cases, the companies denied any wrongdoing as part of the settlement.

McKesson, Cardinal and AmerisourceBergen are the three largest wholesale drug distributors, accounting for 85 percent of all drug shipments in the United States. The San Francisco-based McKesson, for example, which is currently number five on the Fortune 500 list, had $190.8 billion in revenues and $2.3 billion in profits in 2016, according to the company’s annual report.

The fines imposed on the drug wholesalers are minuscule in comparison to their revenues; they are simply another business expense necessary to keep the profits rolling in.

Previously, the DEA had focused its enforcement efforts on doctors, retail pharmacies, and drug manufacturers. In 2005, the DEA began to aggressively crack down on companies distributing prescription opioids by launching its “Distributor Initiative.”

According to an October 2016 investigation by the Washington Post, starting in 2013 there was political pushback against DEA enforcement, as the pharmaceutical industry ramped up its lobbying of congress. DEA leadership began delaying and blocking enforcement actions, while agency lawyers demanded higher standards of proof to initiate civil cases.

As a result, the number of civil cases filed by the DEA dropped from 131 in 2011 to only 40 by 2014.

In 2014, members of congress, led by Republican representatives Tom Marino of Philadelphia and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, proposed legislation that would weaken the DEA’s enforcement powers. Between 2014 and 2016, McKesson, Cardinal, AmerisourceBergen and the Healthcare Distribution Alliance, the drug distributor trade group, spent $13 million lobbying congress in favor of the legislation, known as the Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act.

The Act, which passed and was signed into law by Obama in 2016, requires the DEA to show that there is an “immediate” instead of “imminent” threat to the public before the agency can suspend the licenses of wholesalers, a much more onerous standard to demonstrate. Companies that fail to report suspicious orders can postpone or prevent the DEA from taking action against them by simply submitting a “corrective action plan.”

Enforcement by the DEA has been further hampered by the revolving door between pharmaceutical companies and the DEA officials charged with regulating the industry. An investigation by the Washington Post this past December found that at least 42 DEA officials had been hired by pharmaceutical companies or their law firms since 2005.

This includes officials from the DEA’s Diversion Control Division, which is charged with preventing prescription drugs from reaching the black market and has the power to suspend or revoke the licenses of doctors, pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies. A total of 31 former employees in the diversion division left to work for the pharmaceutical industry or law firms that represent it, including five DEA officials who went to work for McKesson.

“The DEA diversion officials who have gone to the industry since 2005,” reports the Post, “include two executive assistants who managed day-to-day operations; the deputy director of the division; the deputy chief of operations; two chiefs of policy; a deputy chief of policy; the chief of investigations; and two associate chief counsels in charge of legal affairs and enforcement actions against pharmaceutical companies.”

“The high rate of turnover makes you really wonder whether those officials were acting in the interests of the DEA rather than the companies they were regulating,” Craig Holman, an expert on revolving-door issues at Public Citizen, told the Post.

“Just by seeing your colleagues going that way, that tells you that you can shape your future employment prospects if you behave accordingly,” Holman said.

The irresponsible promotion and distribution of prescription painkillers by unscrupulous pharmaceutical companies, wholesale distributors, and retail pharmacies has exacerbated the opioid epidemic in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of opioid overdose deaths in the United States has nearly quadrupled since 1999. Sixty-one percent of the 41,055 drug overdoses in 2014 were due to opioids, an increase of 14 percent compared to the previous year. 

Quebec City mosque assailant identified with ultra-right

Jacques Richard 

New information continues to come to light confirming the chauvinist, ultra-right wing views of Alexandre Bissonnette, the 27 year-old Laval University student who has been charged with five counts of murder and six of attempted murder over Sunday evening’s attack on a Quebec City mosque.

Bissonette contacted police only minutes after the assault on the Islamic Cultural Center of Quebec and surrendered to them shortly thereafter. Weapons, including an AK-47 automatic rifle and a high-powered hand-gun, were found in his car.

According to eye-witnesses, the masked gunman who opened fire on Muslims at evening prayer reloaded his weapon twice during the attack.

Sunday’s shooting left six Muslim-Canadians dead and caused nineteen other to be hospitalized. The dead included Canadians of Algerian, Moroccan, and Guinean origin. Most, if not all, were longtime Canadian residents. One was a professor at Laval University. Several others worked for the Quebec government.

Two of the wounded remain in a critical condition. Doctors have stated that they may suffer lifelong impairment.

According to authorities, at his arrest Bissonette expressed remorse, or at least concern about the fatalities, and spoke about taking his own life.

Police claim he has given no explanation for his actions. Nor apparently did he leave any on his computer or social media.

However, he was clearly acting on the basis of ultra-right wing political views.

Since Sunday night, numerous people who encountered Bissonnette in recent years, from the spokesman for a refugees support group, to fellow Laval University students, have said he was virulently anti-immigrant and an unabashed admirer of Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s neo-fascist National Front, and of US President Donald Trump.

Both Le Pen and Trump have systematically stoked anti-immigrant chauvinism and Islamophobia.

Last Friday, just two days before the mosque massacre, Trump signed a patently anti-democratic and discriminatory executive order, excluding refugees, visitors and US permanent residents from seven Muslim countries from entering the US.

According to several associates of Bissonnette, Le Pen’s high-profile visit to Quebec last spring served to radicalize him.

Those who viewed Bissonnette’s Facebook page before it was taken down on police order, report that in addition to confirming his support for Le Pen, the National Front and Donald Trump, it showed him to be an admirer of the Israeli Defense Forces and a gun-enthusiast.

Olivier Banville, the former president of the Parti Québécois (PQ) club at Laval University, told the Montreal daily Le Devoir that Bissonnette was in discussion with him for a time in 2014 about joining the pro-Quebec independence party.

Significantly this was when the PQ was championing a so-called Quebec Charter of Values— chauvinist legislation that would have banned public sector workers, at the cost of their jobs, from wearing religious head-coverings and other “ostentatious” religious symbols. An exception was to be made for “discrete” crucifixes.

Media reports have portrayed Bissonnette as an introvert and a loner who had been subjected to bullying throughout much of his youth.

That he is likely psychologically troubled in no way detracts from the political character of his actions and, even more importantly, the culpability of the political establishment and capitalist elite.

In Canada, as in and the other imperialist “democracies,” the ruling elites have promoted a noxious political and social environment through their phony “war on terror” narrative. They have carried out wars of aggression in the Middle East, sweeping attacks on democratic rights, and policies aimed at redistributing wealth to the most privileged sections of society.

Canada’s current prime minister, the Liberal Justin Trudeau, denounced the Harper Conservative government’s open appeals to Islamophobia as “divisive.” However, Trudeau and the Liberals voted for Harper’s Bill C-52, which in the name of fighting “Islamic terror,” has armed the national security apparatus with what even the Globe and Mail, the traditional mouthpiece of Toronto’s Bay Street banks, describes as police-state powers.

Now Trudeau is bending over backwards to placate Trump, because the Canadian ruling elite views a close alliance with Washington as vital to aggressively pursuing its own imperialist interests on the world stage. Trudeau has scrupulously avoided criticizing Trump for his ban targeting Muslim travelers to the US, his plans to militarize the Mexican border and other flagrantly anti-democratic and chauvinist actions.

For the past ten years Quebec’s political establishment and corporate media have promoted the lie that immigrants, especially from Muslim countries, are a potential threat to "our democratic values."

The amalgam between Muslims and terrorists is never far away. Last August, for example, Jean-François Lisée, the new leader of the Parti Québécois, the alternate governing party of the Quebec ruling class since the 1970s, issued a demand on his Facebook page for the "banning of the burka BEFORE a jihadist uses it to hide his or her movements for an attack."

In the aftermath of Sunday’s atrocity some journalists have acknowledged, if only very partially, its connection to Quebec’s reactionary debate over “excessive accommodation” to minorities. Michèle Ouimet, a columnist with the Montreal daily La Presse, pointed to an "unhealthy climate fueled by trash radios that allow themselves to say anything and chroniclers who vomit on Muslims and Jews."

In an official statement, Philippe Couillard, the Liberal Premier of Quebec, obliquely referred to this climate by saying: "The words that are spoken and the words that are written are not insignificant."

The two parties most openly associated with the chauvinist discourse on Quebec “identity,” the PQ of Lisée and the Coalition Avenir Québec of Francois Legault, immediately rejected any link between their anti-immigrant appeals and the horrific act carried out by an ultra-rightist most likely influenced and encouraged by their positions. The two have promised to continue to demand a public debate on banning the chador and the burka in public—although Lisée thought it politic concede that his earlier warning that a burka could be used to conceal an AK-47 assault rifle was "not a good idea."

Couillard's statement, however, was entirely demagogic. His government has mounted an all-out assault on workers by slashing social programs and pensions, while cutting taxes on the rich and big business. At the same time, it has tabled legislation that directly targets the Muslim community by forbidding access to health care, education, and other essential public services (except in emergencies) to women who cover their faces for religious reasons.

German Social Democrats prepare for conflict with the US

Peter Schwarz 

The shuffling of posts in the leadership of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) last week was a carefully prepared operation.

On January 24, the SPD made the surprise announcement that the former president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, would run as its candidate for chancellor in this autumn’s federal election. Schulz also becomes chairman of the SPD, replacing Economics Minister Sigmar Gabriel, who, in turn, takes over the post of foreign minister from Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who is due to assume the post of federal president.

Journalists close to government circles have gone to great lengths to present this change of posts as a personal, spontaneous decision made by Gabriel. Der Spiegel claimed that Gabriel decided only last Saturday to renounce the chancellor candidacy, taking by surprise all of the others involved, including Schulz. Such reports are aimed at obscuring what really took place.

When one examines the political positions of Gabriel and Schulz, a very different picture emerges. The ruling circles in Germany are repositioning themselves. They consider the nationalist policy of the new US president, Donald Trump, to be not only a danger, but also an opportunity for them to realize their own great power ambitions. They regard the SPD as the most suitable instrument to achieve this end.

That is why Schulz has been built up by the media as the “bearer of hope” for the SPD, bringing with him the chance for an election victory. In fact, Schulz personifies the despised politics of the SPD like no other. As a long-standing member of the conservative Seeheim circle in the SPD and the de facto leader of a grand coalition in the European Parliament, he belongs to the right wing of the party.

In a long interview with the Handelsblatt newspaper on January 24, Gabriel made clear the SPD’s agenda. Trump, he said, “means business,” but this was no cause for timidity. He continued, “If Trump starts a trade war with Asia and South America, this opens up opportunities for us… Europe should now work quickly on a new Asia strategy. The spaces that America leaves free must now be used.”

He added that if “US protectionism leads to new opportunities for Europe throughout Asia, we should take advantage."

In order to facilitate such a turn to Asia, Gabriel is striving for a core Europe under German leadership. He listed as top priorities “strengthening Europe, developing a common foreign and security policy… and, above all, building our own Asia, India and China strategy.”

Brexit could provide the decisive impulse. “The exit of Great Britain is being discussed much too defensively,” he said. “It is also an opportunity to increase the cooperation of a group in the EU” and “strengthen core Europe enormously.”

A few hours after the interview was published, Gabriel announced the change of posts in the SPD leadership. Three days later he was foreign minister.

Gabriel’s course was supported by the Swedish EU commissioner, Cecilia Malmström, who is responsible for trade policy. She announced that the EU had a long list of countries wishing to conclude trade agreements, including Japan, Mexico and members of Mercosur, the South American trade bloc. Many of these countries have been negotiating much more intensively with the EU since the election of Trump.

On Thursday, SpiegelOnline published a commentary by its Brussels correspondent titled “Trump can be Europe’s chance.” He presented Trump’s isolationism as providing new possibilities for European trade, but went further, writing that “an even more long-term opportunity for Europe” was the “imminent loss of moral leadership by the US.” [Emphasis in the original.]

This explains why Schulz is seen as a suitable candidate for the implementation of this policy. He has spoken out relatively clearly against Trump and now plans to exploit the widespread indignation over Trump’s racist and authoritarian policies to advance the interests of German imperialism, presenting Germany as the embodiment of “Western values.”

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who worked very closely with former European Parliament President Schulz, has also distanced herself from Trump, but her own party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), is deeply divided on the issue of refugee policy and nationalism. Its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), is cooperating with ultranationalist parties such as Hungary’s Fidesz and has expressed some sympathy for Trump.

In order to regain lost SPD voters, Schulz wants to promote “social justice” in the upcoming election campaign and turn to people who “work hard.” But apart from a few rhetorical thrusts against tax evaders and highly paid executives such as former VW boss Martin Winterkorn, he has nothing to offer. Such hollow denunciations do not cost him anything, and Winterkorn is no longer in office. At the same time, Schulz defends the anti-working class Hartz laws as “necessary reforms,” and is not even prepared to commit himself to an increase in the meagre minimum wage, on which it is impossible to live.

He has little chance of winning back the millions of former SPD voters who, as a consequence of SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s Agenda 2010, now spend their lives trapped in precarious, low-paid jobs. His appeal is to well-paid union and party officials and sections of the middle class, who are quite prepared to fall in behind Germany’s great power ambitions in exchange for a few moralistic phrases. Schulz would be prepared to govern in a coalition with the Greens and the Left Party.

Last Saturday, the printed version of Der Spiegel published a long article, which, underpinned by economic data, bluntly formulated the foreign policy objectives of German imperialism. The article projected a “radical break” in transatlantic relations between Germany and the US and “perhaps even the transformation from friend to foe.” It went on to advise “preparing countermeasures” and “seeking out allies, in Asia, for example.”

According to the article, the federal government is planning a “chain of trade agreements” that “give German companies access to the boom region in the Pacific.” The article specifically touts the prospect of “better relations with China,” adding that, “A new Berlin-Beijing axis could at least partially replace the old transatlantic order.”

This perspective is a mixture of megalomania and delusion. Contrary to the line taken by much of the German media, the US under Trump does not plan to withdraw into isolationism, but rather to replace economic methods of imperialist dominance with naked military force.

Barely noted by the German media is the fact that when visiting the Pentagon, Trump signed not only an executive order banning migrants, but also an executive order for a “great rebuilding of the Armed Forces.” Following the Obama administration’s decision to upgrade the US nuclear weapons program at a total cost of $1 trillion, Trump’s “rebuilding” will increase annual military spending from $600 to $700 billion.

Leading representatives of the Trump administration have threatened China with a blockade of the islands in the South China Sea—an action that would amount to a declaration of war. Trump’s government will not remain idle if Germany and Europe seek to move more aggressively into Asia at the expense of the US.

The foreign policy outlined by Gabriel and Schulz and the transformation of the US “from friend to foe” set the course for a military confrontation with the world’s biggest nuclear power, which Germany fought in two world wars in the last century.