The Real Causes of Deficits and the US Debt

Jack Rasmus

With the Senate and House all but assured to pass the US$4.5 trillion in tax cuts for businesses, investors, and the wealthiest 1 percent households by the end of this week, phases two and three of the Trump-Republican fiscal strategy have begun quickly to take shape.

Phase two is to maneuver the inept Democrats in Congress into passing a temporary budget deficit-debt extension in order to allow the tax cuts to be implemented quickly. That’s already a ‘done deal’.
Phase three is the drumbeat growing to attack social security, Medicare, food stamps, Medicaid, and other ‘safety net’ laws, in order to pay for the deficit created by cutting taxes on the rich. To justify the attack, a whole new set of lies are resurrected and being peddled by the media and pro-business pundits and politicians.

Deficits and Debt: Resurrecting Old Lies and Misrepresentations

Nonsense like social security and Medicare will be insolvent by 2030. When in fact social security retirement fund has created a multi-trillion dollar surplus since 1986, which the U.S. government has annually ‘borrowed’, exchanging the real money in the fund created by the payroll tax and its indexed threshold, for Treasury bonds deposited in the fund. The government then uses the social security surplus to pay for decades of tax cuts for the rich and corporations and to fund endless war in the middle east.

As for Medicare, the real culprit undermining the Medicare part A and B funds has been the decades-long escalating of prices charged by insurance companies, for-profit hospital chains (financed by Wall St.), medical devices companies, and doctor partnerships investing in real estate and other speculative markets and raising their prices to pay for it.

As for Part D, prescription drugs for Medicare, the big Pharma price gouging is even more rampant, driving up the cost of the Part D fund. By the way, the prescription drug provision, Part D, passed in 2005, was intentionally never funded by Congress and George Bush. It became law without any dedicated tax, payroll or other, to fund it. Its US$50 billion plus a year costs were thus designed from the outset to be paid by means of the deficit and not funded with any tax.

Social Security Disability, SSI, has risen in costs, as a million more have joined its numbers since the 2008 crisis. That rise coincides with Congress and Obama cutting unemployment insurance benefits. A million workers today, who would otherwise be unemployed (and raising the unemployment rate by a million) went on SSI instead of risking cuts in unemployment benefits. So Congress’s reducing the cost of unemployment benefits in effect raised the cost of SSI. And now conservatives like Congressman Paul Ryan, the would be social security ‘hatchet man’ for the rich, want to slash SSI as well as social security retirement, Medicare benefits for grandma and grandpa, Medicaid for single moms and the disabled (the largest group by far on Medicaid), as well as for food stamps.

Food stamp costs have also risen sharply since 2008. But that’s because real wages have stagnated or fallen for tens of millions of workers, making them eligible under Congress’s own rules for food stamp distribution. Now Ryan and his friends want to literally take food out of the mouths of the poorest by changing eligibility rules.

They want to cut and end benefits and take an already shredded social safety net completely apart–while giving US$4.5 trillion to their rich friends (who are their election campaign contributors). The rich and their businesses are getting $4.5 trillion in tax cuts in Trump’s tax proposal—not the $1.4 trillion referenced in the corporate press. The $1.4 million is after they raise $3 million in tax hikes on the middle class.

Whatever financing issues exist for Social Security retirement, Medicare, Medicaid, disability insurance, food stamps, etc., they can be simply and easily adjusted, and without cutting any benefits and making average households pay for the tax cuts for the rich in Trump’s tax cut bill.

Social security retirement, still in surplus, can be kept in surplus by simply one measure: raise the ‘cap’ on social security to cover all earned wage income. Today the ‘cap’, at roughly US$118,000 a year, exempts almost 20 percent of the highest paid wage earners. Once their annual salary exceeds that amount, they no longer pay any payroll tax. They get a nice tax cut of 6.2 percent for the rest of the year. (Businesses also get to keep 6.2% more). Furthermore, if capital income earners (interest, rent, dividends, etc.) were to pay the same 6.2% it would permit social security retirement benefits to be paid at two thirds one’s prior earned wages, and starting with age 62. The retirement age could thus be lowered by five years, instead of raised as Ryan and others propose.

As for Medicare Parts A and B, raising the ridiculously low 1.45 percent tax just another 0.25 percent would end all financial stress in the A & B Medicare funds for decades to come.
For SSI, if Congress would restore the real value of unemployment benefits back to what it was in the 1960s, maybe millions more would return to work. (It’s also one of the reasons why the labor force participation rate in the U.S. has collapsed the past decade). But then Congress would have to admit the real unemployment rate is not 4.2 percent but several percentages higher. (Actually, it’s still over 10 percent, once other forms of ‘hidden unemployment’ and underemployment are accurately accounted for).

As for food stamps’ rising costs, if there were a decent minimum wage (at least US$15 an hour), then millions would no longer be eligible for food stamps and those on it would significantly decline.
In other words, the U.S. Congress and Republican-Democrat administrations have caused the Medicare, Part D, SSI, and food stamp cost problems. They also permitted Wall St. to get its claws into the health insurance, prescription drugs, and hospital industries–financing mergers and acquisitions activity and demanding in exchange for lending to companies in those industries that the companies raise their prices to generate excess profits to repay Wall St. for the loans for the M&A activity.

The Real Causes of Deficits and the Debt

So if social security, Medicare-Medicaid, SSI, food stamps, and other social safety net programs are not the cause of the deficits, what then are the causes?

In the year 2000, the U.S. federal government debt was about US$4 trillion. By 2008 under George Bush it had risen to nearly US$9 trillion. The rise was due to the US$3.4 trillion in Bush tax cuts, 80 percent of which went to investors and businesses, plus another US$300 billion to U.S. multinational corporations due to Bush’s offshore repatriation tax cut. Multinationals were allowed to bring US$320 billion of their US$750 billion offshore cash hoard back to the U.S. and pay only a 5.25 percent tax rate instead of the normal 35 percent. (By the way, they accumulated the US$750 billion hoard was a result of Bill Clinton in 1997 allowing them to keep profits offshore untaxed if not brought back to the U.S. Thus the Democrats originally created the problem of refusing to pay taxes on offshore profits, and then George Bush, Obama, and now Trump simply used it as an excuse to propose lower tax rates for repatriated the offshore profits cash hoard of US multinational companies. From $750 billion in 2004, it’s now $2.8 trillion).

So the Bush tax cuts whacked the U.S. deficit and debt. The Bush wars in the middle east did as well. By 2008 an additional US$2 to US$3 trillion was spent on the wars. Then Bush policies of financial deregulation precipitated the 2007-09 crash and recession. That reduced federal tax revenue collection due to collapse economic growth further. Then there was Bush’s 2008 futile $180 billion tax cut to stem the crisis, which it didn’t. And let’s not forget Bush’s 2005 prescription drug plan–a boondoggle for big pharmaceutical companies–that added US$50 billion a year more. As did a new Homeland Security $50 billion a year and rising budget costs.

There’s your additional US$5 trillion added by Bush to the budget deficit and U.S. debt–from largely wars, defense spending, tax cuts, and windfalls for various sectors of the healthcare industry.

Obama would go beyond Bush. First, there was the US$300 billion tax cuts in his 2009 so-called ‘recovery act’, mostly again to businesses and investors. (The Democrat Congress in 2009 wanted an additional US$120 billion in consumer tax cuts but Obama, on advice of Larry Summers, rejected that). What followed 2009 was the weakest recovery from recession in the post-1945 period, as Obama policies failed to implement a serious fiscal stimulus. Slow recovery meant lower federal tax revenues for years thereafter.

Studies show that at least 60 percent of the deficit and debt since 2000 is attributable to insufficient taxation, due both to tax cutting and slow economic growth below historical rates.

Obama then extended the Bush-era tax cuts another US$803 billion at year-end 2010 and then agreed to extend them another decade in January 2013, at a cost of US$5 trillion. The middle east war spending continued as well to the tune of another $3 trillion at minimum. Continuing the prescription drug subsidy to big Pharma and Homeland Security costs added another $500 billion.

In short, Bush added US$5 trillion to the US debt and Obama another US$10 trillion. That’s how we get from US$4 trillion in 2000 to US$19 trillion at the end of 2016. (US$20 trillion today, about to rise another US$10 trillion by 2027 once again with the Trump tax cuts fast-tracking through Congress today).

To sum up, the problem with chronic U.S. federal deficits and escalating Debt is not social security, Medicare, or any of the other social programs. The causes of the deficits and debt are directly the consequence of financing wars in the middle east without raising taxes to pay for them (the first time in U.S. history of war financing), rising homeland security and other non-war defense costs, massive tax cuts for businesses and investors since 2001, economic growth at two thirds of normal the past decade (generating less tax revenues), government health program costs escalation due to healthcare sector price gouging, and no real wage growth for the 80 percent of the labor force resulting in rising costs for food stamps, SSI, and other benefits.

Notwithstanding all these facts, what we’ll hear increasingly from the Paul Ryans and other paid-for politicians of the rich is that the victims (retirees, single moms, disabled, underemployed, jobless, etc.) are the cause of the deficits and debt. Therefore they must pay for it.

But what they’re really paying for will be more tax cuts for the wealthy, more war spending (in various forms), and more subsidization of price-gouging big pharmaceuticals, health insurance companies, and for-profit hospitals which now front for, and are indirectly run by, Wall St.

How Corporate Power Killed Democracy

Richard Moser

Corporate Power is the Fusion of the Corporation and the State

The rise of Corporate Power was the fall of democracy.  Over the long haul, US politics has revolved around a deep tension between democracy and an unrelenting drive for plunder, power and empire. Granted that our democracy has been seriously flawed and only rarely revolutionary, yet the democratic movements are the source of every good thing America has ever stood for.

Since the mid-1970s, when the corporations fused with the state, a new imperial order emerged that killed what remained of representative democracy. Not only would corporations exercise public authority as only government once had, but government would coordinate and serve corporate activity. Power and profits became one and the same. Corporate power has replaced democracy with oligarchy and justice with a vast militarized penal system. Instead of innovative production, they plunder people and planet.

To achieve this new order, elections and the economy had to be drained of any remaining democratic content. Both Democrats and Republicans were eager to have at it.

By the 1990s “Third Way” Democrats like Bill Clinton abandoned what was left of the New Deal to try to outdo the Republicans as the party of Wall Street. The Republicans pioneered election fraud on a national scale in 2000, 2004, and 2016; a lesson the Democrats learned all too well by the 2016 Primary. Neither major party wants election reform since free and fair elections would threaten the system itself.

So-called private corporations like Facebook, Google and Twitter control information and manage the 1st Amendment. The corporate media now broadcast propaganda and play the role of censor once monopolized by the FBI and CIA. The migration of propaganda work to civilian organizations began under Ronald Reagan.

While both major parties offer the people nothing beyond austerity and the worst kind of identity politics, the big banks like Goldman Sachs gained positions of real influence with both Republican and Democratic administrations and always with the Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve.  Without pubic money and political protection the banking system — the headquarters of the mythical free market — could not function.

The Rise of Corporate Power

Corporations made the first big power grab in 1913 when the Federal Reserve was created.  Banks were given the power to impose corporate regulation on the “cutthroat competition” of the free market.  Competition was chaotic and lowered profits. Corporations killed not just democracy but the free market as well.

Corporations also had their own private militarized police force. The Pinkertons, infamous for attacking striking workers, was the largest armed force in the US in the early decades of the 20th century: larger than the US Army at that time.

The mid-1970s were nonetheless a pivotal time as corporations achieved unmatched political supremacy and overthrew a brief period of relative economic democracy. Corporate power was the reaction to the American revolution that occurred between 1955 and 1975.

The corporations wanted to lower wages while maintaining high levels of consumption and profit.  Their solution was to deny workers raises while offering instead record levels of credit and debt. And for that move they needed massive banks.  Finance capital then leveraged even greater profits by repackaging debt as an investment and selling the world on their scheme. And for that maneuver to work banks needed to act with the full faith and confidence of the US government.

The shift to austerity for workers and power for bankers began during the mid-1970’s as wage increases no longer tracked productivity.  During the last two years of the Carter Administration — with a majority Democratic congress — those trends continued and were dramatically accelerated by Reagan who empowered bankers, revised tax codes and redistributed wealth. By the 1990’s the corporatization of government was more or less complete.  Take Robert Rubin’s career for example: he was a 26 year veteran of Goldman-Sachs and Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary.  Along with Henry Paulson, Alan Greenspan and Larry Summers, Rubin rewrote economic rules in the image of the corporation: a law unto themselves and in direct command of the power of the state.[1]

A well-funded revolving door insures the power of “Government-Sachs.”

After the 2008 crash $19 trillion was destroyed as everyday people lost their homes, jobs and pensions but the banks received the largest global bailout in history.  Big banks grew larger and more powerful than ever. Not only were there no indictments, but Obama returned Summers, Timothy Geithner and Ben Bernanke to power despite their roles as architects of the crisis. Hillary Clinton pandered to them, Trump railed against them, but after the 2016 election Trump appointed Goldman-Sachs executives to key postions.

Property is the Creature of the State

In order to kill the economic underpinnings of democracy, Corporate Power rigged the game. So deep is the fusion between the corporations and the state that profits are now created largely by political means. There is nothing “free” about this market; instead it is driven by political intervention every step of the way. From start to finish, the supply chain of corporate profits is government action.

   ▪     Big corporations, like Google, Facebook, and Apple start by appropriating technologies developed at the public expense by governments and universities.

▪     Corporations win billions in subsidies, including five $trillion a year for fossil fuels. Corporate power depends on what now seems a permanent regime of “quantitative easing” or virtually free money for finance capital.

▪     Workers are exploited for profit. Low wages and labor standards at home and abroad are enforced by law and trade agreements.

▪     Most discretionary spending in the US federal budget is for the military-industrial complex which is, with the possible exception of China, the largest centrally planned economy in the world.

▪     Tax codes permit and encourage corporations to avoid taxes and hoard capital.  The amount staggers the imagination: corporations and billionaires shelter between 21 and 31 $trillion from fair taxation, a sum equal to the GDP of the US and Japan combined.  Political representatives enforce the fiction that the government is broke and austerity measures must be imposed.

▪     The corporate system still relies on plundering the natural world. The largest cost of resource extraction is environmental destruction.  Pollution costs to the tune of 2.2 $trillion are “externalized” and taken off the corporate ledger books.

▪     Risk is externalized and the public pay.  The government committed 16 $trillion  to the bank bailout between 2008 and 2015.

If the true costs of risk, labor, research and development, environmental damage, war, and taxes were charged to their accounts, what corporation could claim profits? On environment costs alone, almost no industry would be profitable.

The fusion of the corporation and the state, not free-market capitalism, is the true political economy of the U.S.

The State is the Creature of Property

Want to kill democracy? Rig the elections and restrict political rights.

While there are many, many, many ways to prove that big money rules America, Supreme Court decision “Citizens United” provides compelling evidence that corporations wield state power.  Instead of insuring that the people have protections like the Bill of Rights against the corporations that now govern, “Citizens United” repealed the 1st Amendment by recognizing corporations as people and protecting money as a form of free speech.  Corporate power is cloaked and protected, the peoples’ rights are stripped and rejected.

Justice Steven’s dissenting opinion in “Citizens United” argued:

“The Court’s…approach to the First Amendment may well promote corporate power at the cost of the individual and collective self-expression the Amendment was meant to serve. It will undoubtedly cripple the ability of ordinary citizens, Congress, and the States to adopt even limited measures to protect against corporate domination of the electoral process.”

The “corporate domination of the election process.” Done.

Given that the top 0.1% is now worth as much as the bottom 90% and that long-standing inequalities in wealth have only increased during the Obama Administration and are sure to continue under Trump, the super-rich have the capacity to drown out all others voices and secure their domination of politics in the US.

The price tag for federal elections held in 2016 was $6.5 billion. A tidy sum for an election so bankrupt and dismal that over 90 million eligible voters stayed home and at least 1.75 million that did vote refused to do so for President. Millions more could do no better than hold their noses and vote, once again, for some fabled lesser of two evils.

Corporate Power Must Be Confronted

It’s late in the day. In a 2014 study — the most comprehensive of its kind — Princeton and Northwestern University researchers have demonstrated the utter lack of democracy in the US. Corporate Power and the US Empire killed American democracy while political cowardice and propaganda have us looking for other perpetrators. No it’s not the Russians. Its our own history, culture and political system.

Corporate power has created a world so unequal that there is no way to change it within the existing political framework.  Teams of researchers using data that span thousands of years have concluded that the current extremes in wealth are setting the stage for conflict.  In The Great Leveler, historian Walter Scheidel, concludes that only mass mobilization wars, transformative revolutions, pandemics or state collapse have redistributed wealth once it has reached current extremes.

Americans have always dreamed that we are an exception to history but we are not.   Not only will “incremental change” or the “lesser of two evils” or faith in the wonders of technology fail to prevent disaster — such ideas have delivered us to the crisis we now face.  We long for an easy way out — a way that does not demand risk — a way without the only kind of struggle that has ever made history. Of the most likely outcomes that lie ahead transformative revolution and transformative social movements like Standing Rock, are our best chance to minimize violence, reduce harm and create a better world.

Corporate Power is so destructive to democracy and dangerous to the planet because it recognizes no limits other than those imposed upon it. Corporate Power has but one reason for being: the maximum possible profit and the maximum possible power.   Corporations must grow or die but now their growth threatens ecocide, perpetual war and the death of democracy.  Such a way of life cannot be sustained. There are but few possible outcomes: the internal contradictions of system will drive us to desperate crisis, or we intervene first, rebuild democracy, protect the planet, and overthrow the corporate dictatorship.

Australian government foreshadows draconian anti-foreign interference laws

Peter Symonds

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull yesterday announced sweeping new anti-democratic laws that will expand the definitions of treason and espionage, criminalise “foreign political interference” and require anyone deemed to be “a foreign agent of influence” to be named on a national register.

The new legislation is above all aimed at criminalising and suppressing anti-war opposition as Australia increasingly integrates into the US military build-up in Asia and its drive to war against North Korea and China. It is an attempt to create a political climate in which any questioning of Australian and US foreign policy and the drive to war is illegitimate.

Yesterday’s announcement has been preceded by a hysterical media campaign over the past year against foreign, namely Chinese, influence—fed by the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and other security agencies. It reached fever pitch last week with lurid new allegations against Labor senator Sam Dastyari over his relations with Chinese billionaire Huang Xiangmo.

Taking his cue from this campaign, Turnbull, without a shred of evidence, declared: “Foreign powers are making unprecedented and increasingly sophisticated attempts to influence the political process, both here and abroad.” Leaving no doubt as to the enemy, the prime minister expressed his concern about “disturbing reports about Chinese influence.” He then added that it was not just China, then referred to “Russian influence in the US election.”

There is no doubt, however, where the demands for tougher laws have come from. A series of top figures connected to the American intelligence and military establishment, including US Senator John McCain and ex-National Intelligence Director James Clapper, made high-profile visits this year and publicly expressed concern about Chinese influence in Australia.

Behind the scenes, Washington has undoubtedly been exerting its influence on the government, both directly and indirectly through the Australian intelligence and military apparatus that has the closest of ties with the US. The United States has a long history of direct interference in Australian politics—including in the ousting of two prime ministers, Gough Whitlam in 1975 and Kevin Rudd in 2010.

While the draft legislation is not publicly available, a media release yesterday indicated the extent of the draconian measures that are to be enacted in three bills, in what Turnbull described as the “most significant overhaul of our espionage, counterintelligence, political donations legislative framework in decades.”

* The National Security Legislation Amendment (Espionage and Foreign Interference) Bill “strengthens and modernises a range of offences including espionage, sabotage, and treason and introduces new offences targeting foreign inference and economic espionage.” The bill will criminalise “covert and deceptive activities” that currently “fall short of espionage” and establish a new “secrecy regime” to block the disclosure of classified documents. The new definition of espionage will include possessing and receiving sensitive information, not just passing it on.

Severe penalties, of up to life imprisonment, will apply for espionage and “offences against government,” including treason. Jail for foreign interference offences, including providing support for foreign intelligence agencies, is up to 20 years, “leaks of harmful information up to 20 years, new sabotage offences up to 25 years, and “theft of trade secrets” 15 years.

* The Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Bill will establish a registration scheme, along the lines of the US Foreign Agents Registry, for entities, former parliamentarians and senior public officials who act on behalf of foreign individuals or entities. While Turnbull declared that registration would not “be any kind of taint and certainly not a crime,” it will undoubtedly provide the basis for intimidation and media witch-hunts.

* The Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Funding and Disclosure) Bill bans “donations from foreign bank accounts, non-citizens and foreign entities” and will apply not only to political parties, but “all political campaigning,” including by independent candidates, trade unions, interest groups and advocacy groups such as GetUp that has opposed government policies.

The first two bills will be referred to Senate committees with reports due in February. The government intends to try to push the last bill banning foreign donations through parliament this week.

The extraordinary scope of the new legislation is underscored by the nature of the attacks on Senator Dastyari, who last week was accused of activities that were tantamount to treason. During parliamentary Question Time yesterday, the prime minister again denounced Dastyari, declaring that he had “sold Australia out.”

What were Dastyari’s so-called crimes? Last week’s sensationalised “revelations” concerned firstly, a press conference given by the senator to the Chinese media in which he said that Australia should keep out of territorial disputes in the South Chinese Sea between China and its neighbours. In other words, Dastyari is being lambasted for publicly expressing views at odds with the Australian establishment’s support for the aggressive and provocative US stance over the disputes.

Secondly, it was revealed that Dastyari met with billionaire Huang in October last year and suggested, amid the media furore over their relations, that the two take the elementary precaution of turning their phones off and speaking outside. Last week, Attorney General George Brandis declared that this amounted to advising his “benefactor” in “counter-surveillance techniques,” implying that he had leaked state secrets to a Chinese national.

Yesterday, Brandis drew a direct link between the new legislation and Dastyari, saying: “In my view, the conduct alleged against him does not reach the threshold of the existing laws of treason and espionage” so new laws were needed “because of the gap.” In other words, any opposition, no matter how limited, to Washington’s confrontational strategy against China is to be criminalised, along with any attempt to evade ASIO’s widespread and intrusive spying operations.

It is not only Dastyari who is in the gunsight. Brandis also suggested that ex-Labor foreign minister Bob Carr and former Coalition trade minister Andrew Robb would need to register as “foreign agents.” Carr, who has been previously criticised for advocating a more conciliatory approach to China, heads the Australia-China Relations Institute, which he declared yesterday was fully funded by the University of Technology Sydney.

The current anti-China campaign and new legislation is a sharp warning to the working class. If the government, along with the intelligence and security apparatus, is prepared to take such action against senior figures in the political establishment, it is preparing far worse against workers and youth who oppose the drive to war. Australia is being put on a war footing and the door is being opened for police raids, mass arrests and internment camps for “traitors” and enemy aliens as was carried out during World Wars I and II.

Under the banner of the bogus “war on terror,” successive Coalition and Labor governments have already erected the scaffolding of a police state that has undermined basic democratic rights and legal norms. Now a new stage has been reached as the Turnbull government, backed to the hilt by the Labor opposition, prepares for a US-led war against China in which the Australian military and bases would play a key role.

Brazil, US and 20 other countries carry out military exercise in the Amazon

Gabriel Lemos 

Military units from 20 countries, including Peru and Colombia, as well as the US, Germany and Japan, participated last month in military exercises dubbed Amazonlog 2017.

Coordinated by the Brazilian military command, they marked the first such international war games in Brazil’s strategically sensitive Amazon region. The exercise was centered in the city of Tabatinga, in the state of Amazonas, on the triple border that separates northwestern Brazil from Peru and Colombia.

According to Gen. Guilherme Theophilo, the Brazilian military commander of the Amazon region between 2014 and 2016, who was responsible for the military exercise, Amazonlog’s purpose was to create a multinational logistical support base to work on humanitarian aid and prepare for responding to airplane crashes and natural disasters, such as extreme drought, floods and earthquakes.

Participating in the exercise were 2,000 troops, including 1,550 Brazilians, 150 Colombians and 120 Peruvians. The US deployed 30 soldiers and a C-130 military cargo plane.

In an interview with TV Bandeirantes, General Theophilo said that “the initial idea of the operation came from an experience that the officers of the Brazilian army’s logistical command had when they went to Europe and participated in multinational NATO logistical bases to deal with refugees from Africa and the Middle East.”

The experience that General Theophilo referred to was the NATO military exercise Capable Logistician 2015, held two years ago in Hungary. Brazil participated as an observer. While Capable Logistician 2015 resulted in the creation of a NATO military base in Hungary, General Theophilo denied that any such intention was involved in Amazonlog 2017.

Also, according to General Theophilo, the military exercise included the presentation of “dual employment material, both for peace and for war.” Beginning with the Amazonlog 2017, he hopes that the humanitarian actions of the Organization of American States (OAS) will be carried out with the prior contribution of every nation of the continent.

According to a report published on the UOL website on November 2, titled “Brazil drills to create a military base with the US, Colombia and Peru in Amazon,” “members of the armed forces say that the great concentration of troops will also have an impact on combating of arms and drugs in the region.”

The silence of the Brazilian corporate media—as well as that of the pseudo-left—on Amazonlog 2017 was broken only a few times in order to echo the words of General Theophilo, who classified as a “conspiracy theory” any suggestion that the presence of US troops in the Amazon constituted a threat to Brazil’s national sovereignty. According to him, “The US has very great expertise in humanitarian aid. Only from hurricanes, the United States had this year four and quickly the country rebuilt itself.”

As the coverage of the WSWS has made all too clear, particularly in terms of the criminal neglect of disaster victims in Puerto Rico, what the general said is sheer nonsense.

Under the pretext of carrying out “humanitarian actions” and prosecuting the “war on drugs,” the South American versions of the “human rights” crusades and “war on terrorism” employed elsewhere, the Amazonlog 2017 military exercise marks a new stage in US imperialism’s offensive in the region.

Washington’s “pivot to Asia” has its counterpart on the American continent, with its “pivot to Latin America” and a resort to increasing militarism in the region both to compensate for China’s growing influence and to secure Washington’s own strategic interests.

According to a secret document from the US State Department published in 2010 by Wikileaks, Brazil’s niobium mines—a chemical element employed in the aeronautics industry of which Brazil controls 98 percent of global reserves—are considered strategic and essential by the United States.

The Amazon has 21 percent of Brazilian niobium reserves, along with tantalum—employed in the electronics industry—of which Brazil also has the largest reserves in the world—copper, gold, iron, oil and gas and other mineral resources that are in large part concentrated on indigenous lands and whose exploitation is still very limited. In addition, the Amazon Rainforest, 60 percent of which is in Brazil, is also one of the most important environments on planet Earth, with one-third of its rain forests, the largest biological diversity and the largest freshwater basin in the world.

In addition to American interests in Amazonian mineral resources, Amazonlog 2017 took place amid a US military buildup around the world, with a program to expand its military bases that includes Latin America, a region US imperialism has long regarded as its “backyard.” Brazil is surrounded by more than a dozen US bases in neighboring countries, mainly in Peru and Colombia, Brazil’s main partners in the military exercise. While Latin America’s largest nation, Brazil is one of the only countries in the region that does not have an American military base, and Amazonlog 2017 could pave the way its first one. At the time, a proposal is also under evaluation to allow the US to start using the Brazilian satellite launching base of Alcântara, Maranhão, one of the world’s best because of its proximity to the equator.

The Amazonlog operation also took place amid tensions between the US and Venezuela, which have only escalated since last August, when President Donald Trump declared that “we have many options for Venezuela, including the military one.”

Since 2016, Brazil has received more than 30,000 Venezuelan immigrants, who have entered the country through the Northern State of Roraima. According to the Ministry of Justice, in the first half of 2017, the number of requests for asylum from Venezuelans has almost doubled compared to 2016, reaching 7,600 by June 2017. If the US decides to resort to its “military option” against Venezuela, the flow of refugees will increase dramatically, and Amazonlog 2017 is a way for Brazil and neighboring countries to prepare for it.

According to João Roberto Martins Filho, professor at the Federal University of São Carlos, who spoke to BBC Brazil for a May 4 report titled “US Army will participate in an unprecedented military exercise in the Amazon at the invitation of Brazil,” the rapprochement between Brazil and the US represented by Amazonlog 2017 is “a break from what has been happening since 1989, marked by a distancing from the US by the Brazilian armed forces.” This distancing coincided with the launching of a massive American military offensive in the Middle East, which initiated the last 25 years of uninterrupted US wars.

One milestone in the military distancing between the United States and Brazil was the creation of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUL) and its South American Defense Council in 2008 at the height of the bourgeois nationalist regimes in the subcontinent identified with the so-called “Pink Tide.” That same year, the US Fourth Fleet was resurrected in Florida to increase the reach of US imperialism at a time when China was poised to become Brazil’s and other Latin American countries’ main trading partner. From then until 2014, the US tripled its deployment of special operations troops in Latin America.

It was also this distancing that led the Brazilian government to enter military agreements with European countries. In 2011, Brazil signed a US$10 billion agreement with the French government for the construction of five submarines with the transfer of technology, including for a nuclear one. And in 2013, it bought 36 Gripen fighters from Sweden for US$4.5 billion.

But in the midst of the collapse of the bourgeois nationalist regimes in the region—in Argentina with the defeat of Peronism by Macri, in Brazil after the impeachment of Workers Party’s (PT) Dilma Rousseff, in Venezuela with the enormous crisis of the Maduro regime—the regional integration proposed by UNASUL in various areas, including in terms of the military, is weakening and leading to a rapprochement with the United States.

Martins Filho also said that if this rapprochement continues, it would lead to a greater alignment of Brazil’s defense policy with that of the OAS and the Inter-American Defense Board (IADB), the latter created in 1942 by the United States during the Second World War. During the Amazonlog 2017 exercises, General Theophilo confirmed that the ministry of defense is creating a multinational logistics control center with the support and participation of these two entities.

Besides that, according to the May 4 BBC Brazil report, in March the US Army inaugurated a technology center in São Paulo to “develop partnerships with Brazil in research projects focused on innovation,” which was followed by the signing of the Master Information Exchange Agreement between the two countries.

Hector Luis Saint Pierre, professor of international relations of the State University of São Paulo (UNESP), also interviewed by BBC Brazil, said that there is also a rapprochement with the US “motivated by economic interests… I have noticed officers defending the thesis that we do not need technological autonomy in the Armed Forces if we can count on partnerships like with the US.” He continued saying that this is a “liberal perspective on the military that is gaining momentum,” as opposed to the nationalist stance that the PT governments defended, which led, for example, to the construction of the nuclear submarine.

This “liberal stance,” which tends to increase the dependence of Brazil’s armed forces on the US, is driven in large measure by the enormous economic crisis affecting the country, with the military budget reduced by 44 percent from 2012 to 2017. Considering that other military exercises like the Amazonlog 2017 are expected to happen every two years, it is likely that they will take place with greater coordination and participation of the American military.

Samuel Alves Pereira, also a professor of international relations at UNESP, was quoted in the November 2 UOL report as saying that Brazil’s military alignment with the OAS and the Inter-American Defense Board tends to change the country’s defense strategy. According to him, “these bodies address the issue of defending a multidimensional perspective, in which the armed forces of Latin American countries are more encouraged to work on internal security,” while the United States would take action against possible external invasions of those countries.

After Amazonlog 2017, Defense Minister Raul Jungmann traveled to the United States, where he met with the under secretary of state for political affairs, Thomas A. Shannon Jr., ambassador to Brazil from 2011 to 2013, and discussed the possibility of a South American Security Authority to combat organized crime, which tends to further diminish the power of the UNASUL’s South American Security Council.

Jungmann, on November 17, also participated in a conference at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where he “asked for the two main democracies in the Hemisphere to discuss and adopt a true long term State agenda,” reported the Defense Ministry web page. Michael Matera, director of the CSIS America’s Program, opened Jungmann’s conference saying that “Brazil and the US are at a time when our national interests and the views of our two presidents coincide more closely than has been the case in many years on issues as varied as Venezuela, regional threats to security as well as the serious global threat represented by North Korea.”

On the same day, Jungmann held a meeting with the United Nations (UN) Department of Peacekeeping Operations, where he told Empresa Brasileira de Comunicação he would like to see the country assume the military command of the UN’s “stabilization” mission in the Central African Republic, where Brazil is supposed to send 1,000 troops next year, and that Brazil was invited to take over the military command of the mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These preparations are taking place after Brazil’s 13-year military command in Haiti, which ended in October.

At a time when Africa is being disputed by China, European—and particularly French—imperialism and by the US, a Brazilian military presence would certainly factor into the plans of American imperialism on the continent.

The rapprochement of Brazil’s armed forces with that of the US and the realignment of Brazil’s defense strategy to US imperialism are clear warnings to the Brazilian and Latin America working class, a region that has witnessed dozens of US-backed coups and right-wing military dictatorships over the last 50 years.

These developments urgently pose the need for an independent working class movement against war in Brazil and throughout Latin America. In a region marked by the promotion on the part revisionist movements of various substitutes for such a movement, from Castroist guerrillas to the “democratic socialism” of the Workers Party in Brazil and Chavismo in Venezuela, the urgent task facing the Brazilian and Latin American working class is the struggle against imperialism through the construction of an internationalist and socialist movement, that is, the construction of the national sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International.

Catalan election campaign begins amid Popular Party government repression

Paul Mitchell & Chris Marsden

Campaigning has begun in the Catalan regional elections scheduled for December 21. The elections are a travesty of democracy, proceeding in the shadow of the repression instigated by Spain’s Popular Party (PP) government.

The former Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, and four other ministers remain in exile in Belgium. They are seeking to avoid arrest under the provisions of Article 155 of Spain’s constitution, through which the PP imposed direct rule over Catalonia in response to the October 1 referendum on independence organised by the separatist coalition heading the regional government.

On Monday, Spain’s Supreme Court refused bail for imprisoned former Catalan Vice-President Oriol Junqueras, former Interior Minister Joaquim Forn and the leaders of the civic groups Catalan National Assembly and Omnium Cultural, Jordi Sanchez and Jordi Cuixart, respectively. Like Puigdement, they are accused of sedition, rebellion and embezzlement for making a unilateral declaration of independence (DUI) following the October 1 referendum. The court declared that a “criminal repetition” of the independence process could take place if the prisoners were released.

Six other imprisoned former ministers were released on bail of €100,000 only after they agreed to abide by the terms of Article 155 illegalising their political avowal of independence. Article 155 was used for the first time ever against Catalonia, accompanied by the dispatch of troops and thousands of Civil Guards, who launched brutal attacks on voters in the referendum.

The PP’s decision to keep the four separatist political leaders in prison was taken despite Puigdemont’s Catalan European Democratic Party (PDeCAT) and Junqueras’ Republican Left (ERC) coalition having declared the October 1 referendum to be “advisory” and the October 26 unilateral declaration of independence (DUI) purely “symbolic.” They are both taking part in the December 21 election after earlier branding it illegal, and have omitted any reference to the DUI in their election programmes.

Even this is not enough for the government of Mariano Rajoy. It is intent on making clear that any attempt to resuscitate the “independence process” will be met with further repression. In an October 29 interview with El Mundo, PP parliamentary spokesman Pablo Casado stated, “Article 155 is a warning. Any secessionist challenge, whatever the majority it may have, is not going to succeed.”

The PP’s turn to police state measures has implications that go far beyond moves to repress the Catalan separatists. The PP government delegate in Castille-La Mancha, José Julián Gregorio, has warned the region’s Socialist Party (PSOE), which is in coalition with the pseudo-left Podemos, that its policy “begins to be worthy of the use of article 155.” Alfonso Alonso, PP leader in the Basque Country, also warned that the region could end up in the “same situation” as Catalonia because it has the “same ingredients.”

Nor is the threat of police and military repression to be confined to Spain’s regions. It is an essential weapon in the arsenal of a fragile and unpopular minority government seeking to impose savage cuts and crush all opposition to its attacks on democratic rights in pursuit of austerity, militarism and war.

The PP utilised a lesser-known Budget Stability Law for the first time in Catalonia to prevent the use of state funds for the October 1 referendum, claiming it was an “exceptional” intervention to stop a “situation of manifest illegality.” In November, however, the PP announced that it would exercise weekly control of finances of Podemos-backed Madrid Mayor Manuela Carmena and threatened her removal, even though her administration has cut the city’s €2 billion debt by one third. More recently, the Ministry of Finance sent letters to 22 large city councils, mostly in the poorer south, including Seville, Cádiz and Granada, warning them to pay their unpaid suppliers or it would take over.

The dangers posed by this planned offensive are magnified thanks to the bankrupt political perspective pursued by the Catalan separatists. Despite their invocations of the historic struggle waged against Francoite fascism and the fact that they have fallen foul of the PP, the Catalan nationalists have as little intention of defending the working class as do the PSOE-Podemos administrations being attacked elsewhere in Spain.

A major reason the PDeCAT/ERC coalition launched their independence bid was to deflect mounting social opposition to their implementation of savage cuts since the 2008 global economic crisis. The separatist parties blamed every attack they made on Catalonia being forced to pay too much tax to support less prosperous regions of Spain. They appealed to a middle class layer on this basis, while focusing on promoting cultural nationalism in a manner that divided workers in Catalonia and Spain, and in Catalonia itself, where large sections of the working class are Spanish-speaking and supporters of independence are in a minority.

The pseudo-left Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP) played a pernicious role in dressing up secession in a left guise and portraying it as the answer to austerity. Following the 2015 regional elections, it held the balance of power and, in return for enabling the ERC and PDeCAT to form a government and continue with austerity, successfully demanded an independence referendum. The common concerns of workers and youth, Spanish and Catalan, were subsequently buried under an avalanche of divisive nationalist rhetoric just as the need for unity has become of paramount importance in confronting a capitalist class facing an unprecedented crisis of rule.

The real aim of the separatist parties was always to continue developing Catalonia as a low-tax and low-wage investment platform for the major corporations and banks. Like the October 1 referendum, mobilisations on the street were carried out only to back up appeals to the European Union to support greater tax-raising powers and other concessions for Catalonia from Spain’s central government, similar to those already granted to the Basque region.

When the EU instead backed Rajoy’s clampdown and banks and corporations began pulling out of Barcelona, the nationalists declared that the referendum and DUI were meant to be “symbolic” and not binding, while Puigdemont stated that he was “always open to another relationship with Spain.”

Former Catalan Vice-President Junqueras said that they had all been “naïve.” He continued: “We didn’t think the state would dare to apply these levels of oppression. Or that the European Union would tolerate the PP government, in the name of the unity of Spain, taking so much tough action against the people and institutions of Catalonia.” CUP Barcelona councillor and former Generalitat deputy Eulàlia Reguant stated the problem was that “the coercive capacity of the state” had been “underestimated.”

The working class must take an independent stand against Madrid’s repression in Catalonia, including demanding the release of the four political prisoners, the dropping of all charges and the cancellation of Article 155.

On the eve of the October 1 referendum, the International Committee of the Fourth International issued a statement titled “Oppose the state crackdown on the Catalan independence referendum!” We explained: “The PP crackdown enjoys the support of the major European powers and the United States—which fear the break-up of a member of the European Union and the NATO alliance—despite fears that Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s measures are inflaming separatist sentiment.”

The statement insisted that “the only viable policy against the danger of war and dictatorship is to fight to unify the working class in Spain and Europe in a struggle against capitalism and for the socialist reorganization of society. This can be carried out only in revolutionary struggle against all of Spain’s bourgeois factions… Only the formation of workers’ governments in every country and the unification of Europe on a socialist basis can prevent a descent into social reaction and war and permit the harmonious development of Europe’s economy to meet the needs of its population.”

International Olympic Committee bans Russia from 2018 Olympics in political provocation

Josh Varlin

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) Executive Board announced Tuesday that it had decided to ban the Russian Olympic team from participating in the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea.

The sham decision is a political provocation. It has much less to do with steroid use by Russian athletes than with US imperialism’s aim to humiliate and isolate Russia before the court of world public opinion.

The Russian flag and national anthem will be neither seen nor heard at the games. Russian athletes will be forced to undergo a series of demeaning anti-doping tests that will not apply to other countries’ athletes. Even if the Russian athletes make it to the games, they will be effectively stripped of their nationality, forced to compete as “Olympic Athletes from Russia” (OARs) and barred from wearing Russian uniforms. If Russian athletes win the gold medal, the Olympic flag will raise as the Olympic anthem plays at the medal ceremony.

IOC President Thomas Bach said in a press release yesterday that these measures were required because Russian doping “was an unprecedented attack on the integrity of the Olympic Games and sport.”

The purpose of all of this is to present the image of Russia as the ultimate pariah state. The IOC, second only to FIFA in its corruption and parasitism, is continuing its long tradition of subordinating itself to the designs of world imperialism. As for the “integrity” of the Olympics, the founder of the IOC, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, is infamously known for openly supporting the IOC’s decision to host the 1936 Olympiad in Nazi Germany. The New York Times wrote in 1999 that “three IOC presidents were complicit in promoting the 1936 Berlin Games,” including the Swedish Sigfrid Edström. Edström wrote to an Olympic financier in 1933 that “It is too bad that the American Jews are so active and cause us such trouble” about the Berlin selection. “It is impossible for our German friends to carry on the expensive preparations for the Olympic Games if all this unrest prevails.”

Today, the selection of Olympic host cities and the distribution of tens of millions in advertisement and TV contract revenue remains a subject of graft and corruption. It is in this context that the Russian punishment must be understood.

The IOC decided to “suspend the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) with immediate effect.” Vitaly Mutko and Yuri Nagornykh, the Russian sport minister and deputy sport minister, respectively, at the time of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia, are banned from participating in any future Olympic games. Russian Olympic officials are likewise removed from participating in the IOC and other Olympic bodies for the time being. Dmitry Chernyshenko, who led the Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee, was withdrawn from the Coordination Commission on Beijing 2022, and ROC President Alexander Zhukov was suspended from IOC membership.

The ROC has been ordered “to reimburse the costs incurred by the IOC on the investigations,” as well as to pay an additional US$15 million to establish an Independent Testing Authority to contribute to international anti-doping measures.

As of this writing, the Russian government has not responded to the IOC decision. It is possible that Russian athletes will boycott the games over the IOC’s maneuver. On Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said a boycott was “not being considered.”

The current focus on alleged Russian doping began in 2015, with a 300-page report from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), accusing Russia of systemic doping during the 2014 Sochi Olympics. At the time, the Washington Post called for Russia to be banned from the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The IOC instead had individual sports’ governing bodies decide whether to accept Russian athletes.

Most of the accusations are based on the testimony of Grigory Rodchenkov, who, according to his account, played a major role in the Russian doping system in Sochi in 2014. Rodchenkov moved to the United States in November 2016 after being identified by WADA as organizing the doping and extorting money from athletes. According to the New York Times, he is currently “under the protection of American authorities.”

Rodchenkov’s handwritten diaries are central to the IOC case. While one IOC report, issued in July 2016, was based almost exclusively on his diaries, a second report issued in December of that year brought in additional evidence, including forensic evidence.

The IOC reports, issued by Canadian attorney Richard McLaren, describe collaboration between Rodchenkov (who at the time headed Russia’s anti-doping agency), the Ministry of Sports, and the Federal Security Services (FSB) in systematically switching out urine samples of athletes to cover up widespread doping.

On December 2, three days before the IOC Executive Board decision was announced, the IOC Disciplinary Commission issued a report to the Executive Board synthesizing IOC findings and offering recommendations. The Disciplinary Commission, chaired by former Swiss President Samuel Schmid, did not present any additional evidence because some evidence was collected confidentially, and the commission wanted to “avoid differentiation between confidential and non-confidential information.”

The filthy New York Times led press coverage of the scandal, launching accusations that Russian athletes are systematically doping, and publishing multiple articles based on Rodchenkov’s account. The Times ’ coverage on Russian athletics dovetails with its broader anti-Russian campaign, focused on alleged Russian intervention in the US 2016 presidential election.

For its part, Russia has denied that the doping was state-orchestrated. Mutko, who is now the deputy prime minister, said in October that “State-doping support system has never existed in the Russian Federation” and that “individual officials who worked in different sports organizations and might have been connected to each other, unfortunately, violated the anti-doping rules.”

It is entirely possible that the Russian government engaged in doping to boost its medal count and fan the flames of Great Russian chauvinism during the 2014 games. American sports corporations are by no means innocent in encouraging such forms of cheating, as well as gratuitous violence. Major League Baseball and baseball team companies spent years covering up steroid use among its players. The National Football League is likewise responsible for profiting as its players suffer unrecoverable brain trauma, while the National Hockey League encouraged “enforcers” to brutally hit opponents, causing severe brain and physical damage to their own bodies, in order to boost TV ratings and ad revenue.

The move to bar the Russians was no doubt influenced by powerful US corporate sponsors with ties to American politicians and the military-intelligence agencies. Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, GE, Bridgestone Tires, Intel, Visa, McDonalds and many more are listed as official Olympic sponsors.

The extreme right and the turn toward militarism in Germany

Johannes Stern

Last week’s party congress of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the xenophobic, anti-immigrant party of the extreme right, marked a new stage in the legitimization of fascistic politics in Germany. Seven decades after the fall of Hitler’s dictatorship, the German media treated the congress of fascists as a major and legitimate political event, while German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier made a show of inviting two AfD leaders to his official residence for coalition talks.

Even though the right-wing extremist and Volkish nationalist wing under Björn Höcke dominated the Congress, the establishment media and politicians criticised the AfD not for its extreme militarism and xenophobia, but for its lack of unity.

As the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung complained on Monday, the AfD displayed “an embarrassing chaos.” And this after its parliamentary group had presented itself as “united and politically capable.” The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung expressed a similar view, complaining that “not only the moderates, but also the radicals were merely observers of a leaderless party.” The news channel Phoenix even broadcast the congress live on television and commented on the disputes between the various party factions as if it were a sports match.

The AFD congress must be taken with the utmost political seriousness. The AfD is a vehicle for far-right forces which advocate the filth long considered to have been left behind in Germany: racism, Volkish nationalism and militarism. Alexander Gauland was elected as the party’s new co-leader, a man who praised “the achievements of German soldiers in two world wars” during the federal election campaign and demanded that the federal ombudsman for integration, Aydan Özoguz, a German of Turkish descent, should be “disposed of” in Turkey. Economics professor Jörg Meuthen was confirmed in his position as party leader.

The AfD will thus be led by two figures with close connections to the right-wing extremist “wing” within the party. Both participated this year at a meeting organised by Höcke at the Kyffhäuser, a monument from the era of the Kaiser, which in the 1920s became a meeting place for Volkish nationalists and later the Nazis. In 2016, Höcke blustered there—in the presence of Gauland and Meuthen—about the “furor Teutonicus” (Teutonic fury) and the emergence of a “new mythology” for the German people.

Gauland’s election is directly bound up with an intervention by the Höcke faction. To block the election of the “moderate” candidate, the state leader of the AfD in Berlin, Georg Pazderski, the Höcke faction sent Doris Sayn-Wittgenstein into the race. The spokeswoman for the AfD in Schleswig-Holstein delivered a provocative speech, agitated against anti-fascists and defended the neo-Nazi Identity Movement. She not only paved the way for Gauland, but stood in the traditions of her class—the German high nobility. Heinrich Prinz zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, one of her forefathers, was a highly decorated officer in the Wehrmacht. He was, among other things, a participant in the war of annihilation against the Soviet Union.

The right-wing extremist and militarist traditions and cliques that twice drove the world into catastrophe during the 20th century are only able to raise their heads again so aggressively because they enjoy support from the state apparatus. The AfD party congress was secured by heavily armed police, who sprayed demonstrators with water cannon as the AfD delegates cheered them on. “Stand firm. In this spirit, let the water flow! It always hits the mark,” the AfD-affiliated Dresden judge Jens Maier enthused on Twitter.

Over the past week, the head of state, in the person of President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, gave his blessing to the right-wing spectacle in Hanover. After a meeting with Steinmeier at Bellevue Palace, AfD parliamentary leader Alice Weidel tweeted, “Yesterday, Alexander Gauland and I were guests with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. As well as the exploratory talks on forming a government, the topic was the election of our federal executive in Hanover.”

It is no mere coincidence that Steinmeier, in his attempt to install a right-wing government, praises the AfD. When he was foreign minister, Steinmeier proclaimed the “end of military restraint” in 2014 and was heavily involved in the right-wing coup in Ukraine. Under his direction, the Foreign Ministry initiated a so-called review process in order to break through the deep-rooted popular opposition to militarism and war. Steinmeier authored strategy papers advocating the militarisation of Europe under German leadership, and he boasted in a series of speeches and articles about “Germany’s new global role.”

The AfD’s militarist positions overlap with those of leading personnel in the state and military, and are largely shared by all parties in parliament. In its programme, the AfD demands, “Given the current threats facing Europe and the US’ new geopolitical orientation…the return of the armed forces to combat readiness.” They have to be “reformed in a way that their combat readiness is also guaranteed in deployments of the highest intensity. For this, comprehensive structural, personnel and material changes are essential.” A few days prior to the AfD’s party congress, the general inspector of the German armed forces’ military services spoke in virtually identical terms during a panel discussion.

The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei—the German section of the International Committee of the Fourth International—analysed the objective driving forces behind the return of German militarism as early as September 2014 in a resolution, in which we warned, “The propaganda of the post-war era—that Germany had learnt from the terrible crimes of the Nazis, had ‘arrived in the West,’ had embraced a peaceful foreign policy and had developed into a stable democracy—is exposed as lies. German imperialism is once again showing its real colours as it emerged historically, with all of its aggressiveness at home and abroad.”

This prognosis is now being confirmed, underscoring the urgency of the building of the SGP. All other parties—with the Left party in the lead—are opposed to new elections because they fear a socialist development in the working class much more than the rise of the far right. The SGP is the only party opposing this madness. We call for new elections to build a socialist alternative to capitalism, fascism and war.