Foreign Policy For Sale: Greece’s Dangerous Alliance With Israel

Ramzy Baroud

For a brief historical moment, Alexis Tsipras and his political party, Syriza, ignited hope that Greece could resurrect a long-dormant Leftist tide in Europe.

A new Greece was being born out of the pangs of pain of economic austerity, imposed by the European Union and its overpowering economic institutions – a troika so ruthless, it cared little while the Greek economy collapsed and millions of people experienced the bitterness of poverty, unemployment and despair.

The Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza) came to power in January 2015 as a direct outcome of popular discontent with the EU. It was a time where ordinary people took a stance to fend for whatever semblance of sovereignty that was not wrestled away from them by politicians, bankers and powerful bureaucratic institutions.

The result, however, was quite disappointing. Tsipras, now a Prime Minister, transformed his political discourse, and gradually adopted one that that is more consistent with the very neoliberal policies that pushed his country to its knees in the first place.

Syriza sold out, not only politically and ideologically, but in an actual physical sense as well.

In exchange for bailout loans that Greece received from European banks within the period 2010 to 2015 (estimated at $262 billion), the country is being dismembered. Greece’s regional airports are now operated by German companies and the country’s main telecommunication firm has been privatized, with sizable shares of it owned by Deutsche Telekom.

“The only thing missing outside the office of Greece’s privatization agency is a sign that reads: ‘A Nation for Sale’,” wrote Greek political economist, C. J. Polychroniou.

Unsurprisingly, economic subservience is often a prelude to political bondage as well. Not only did Syriza betray the aspirations of the Greek people who voted against austerity and bailouts, it also betrayed the country’s long legacy of maintaining amicable relationships with its neighbors.

Since his arrival at the helm of Greek politics, Tsipras has moved his country further into the Israeli camp, forging unwise regional alliances aimed at exploiting new gas finds in the Mediterranean and participating in multiple Israeli-led military drills.

While Israel sees an opportunity to advance its political agenda in Greece’s economic woes, the Greek government is playing along without fully assessing the possible repercussions of engaging with a country that is regionally viewed as a pariah, while internationally becoming condemned for its military occupation and terrible human rights record.

Israel moved to pull Athens into its own camp in 2010, shortly after the Turkish-Israeli spat over the ‘Mavi Marmara’ attack ensued. Israeli commandos attacked the Turkish Gaza-bound boat, killing nine Turkish nationals and injuring many more.

Although Turkey and Israel have, since then, reached a diplomatic understanding, Tel Aviv has moved forward to create alternative allies among Balkan countries, exploiting historical conflicts between some of these countries and Turkey.

Bilateral agreements were signed, high diplomatic visits exchanged and military exercises conducted in the name of deterring ‘international Jihad’ and fighting terrorism.

Greece and Cyprus received greater Israeli attention since they, on the one hand, were seen as political counterweight to Turkey and, on the other, because of the great economic potential that they offered.

Just one month after the ‘Mavi Marmara’ attack, the then Greek Prime Minister, George Papandrous, visited Israel, followed by an official visit by Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to Greece – the first of its kind. That was the start of a love-affair that is growing deeper.

The main motivation behind the closeness in relations is the Leviathan and Tamar gas fields, located in the territorial waters of several countries, including Lebanon. If Israel continues with its plans to extract gas from an energy source located off the coast of Lebanon, it will increase the chances of yet another regional war.

When Tsipras came to power on the shoulders of a populous political movement, Palestinians too hoped that he would be different.

It was not exactly wishful thinking, either. Syriza was openly critical of Israel and had “vowed to cut military ties with Israel upon coming to office,” wrote Patrick Strickland, reporting from Athens. Instead the “ties have, nonetheless, been deepened.”

Indeed, soon after taking power, the ‘radical left’-led Greek government signed a major military agreement with Israel, the ‘status of forces’ accord, followed by yet more military exercises.

All of this was reinforced by a propaganda campaign in Israel hailing the new alliance, coupled with a changing narrative in Greek media regarding Israel and Palestine.

One George N. Tzogopoulos has been particularity buoyant about the Israel-Greek friendship. Writing a series of articles in various media, including the rightwing Israeli newspaper, the Jerusalem Post, Tzogopoulos suggests that, unlike the older generation of Greeks who have sided with Palestinians in the past, the young generation is likely to be pro-Israel.

“This process (of converting Greeks to loving Israel) will take time, of course, because it is principally related to school education,” he wrote in Algemeiner. “But the change in coverage of Israel by Greek journalists is a good omen.”

That ‘change of coverage’ was also notable in the recent official visit by Israeli President, Reuven Rivlin, and his meeting with Tsipras and other Greek officials.

In the meetings, Rivlin complained of Palestinian obstinacy and refusal to return to the ‘peace process’, thus causing a ‘serious crisis.’

The ‘radical left’ leader said little to challenge Rivlin’s falsehoods.

Greece was not always this way, of course. Who could forget Andreas Papandreou, the late Greek leader who gave the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) diplomatic status in 1981, and stood by Palestinians despite American and Israeli threats?

It is that generation that Tzogopoulos and his likes would like to be gone forever, and replaced by morally-flexible leaders like Tsipras.

However, signing off to join an Israel-led economic and military alliance in an area replete with conflict, is a terribly irresponsible move, even for politically inexperienced and opportunistic politicians.

For Greece to be the “strong arm of imperialism in the region” – as described by the leader of the Socialist Workers Revolutionary Party in Greece – is “completely stupid” as it will, in the long run, bring “catastrophic results for (the) Greek people.”

But Tsipras seems incapable of looking that far ahead.

The Demonization of President Vladimir Putin Must Stop

Ludwig Watzal

No other world leader is more demonized and slandered by the Western media than the Russian President Vladimir Putin. All the major US media outlets and corporations caricature one of the most rational and thoughtful leaders on the international stage. Compared to Donald Trump, Theresa May, and Emanuel Macron, not to speak of the most overrated Angela Merkel, Putin has a vision of the role of the nation-state in international politics. He can be called the Russian Bismarck. The closest to him, what the role and importance of the nation-state are concerned, is President Trump.

At least, there is still one US voice of reason what Russia and Putin are concerned. Professor Stephen F. Cohen, the best expert on Russia in the whole United States, strikes a blow for Putin with excellent, rational and thoughtful arguments. He contrasts sharply with the created “Russiagate” and Russophobic hysteria, which, up till now, are rumors. So far, there hasn’t been any shown evidence of so-called Russian hacking or Russian collusion, not by the 17 US Intelligence Agencies. Not to speak of the Clinton/Obama mafia that invented this whole myth with the FBI, DOJ, the Intel community, especially Clapper and Brannan, and the other subordinate crooks in the Obama administration. Without Obama’s knowledge and approval, this conspiracy against a newly elected US President could have never taken place.

Without the massive propagandistic support of the mainstream media in the US, the UK, and Australia, not to speak of their scribblers in Western Europe, especially in Germany, this anti-Russian propaganda would have failed. Even more important are people such as Stephen F. Cohen, a voice in the wilderness. Whether the major propaganda outlets such as CNN, MSNBC or the BBC will listen, can be doubted. Too much for their reputation is at stake.

India Pakistan: The Coming War

Tapan Bose

Photos of grieving women and old men hugging the casket soldier killed on the Jammu and Kashmir border skirmish are appearing on the front pages of newspapers almost every day. Dressed in battle fatigues and bullet proof jackets, Indian army jawans and personnel of the Border Security Forces are constantly moving through border hamlets and paddy fields to take position to fire across the border. Devastation is visible all around — blood stains on the floor, broken windows, injured animals and splinter marks on the walls. By mid -January this year (2018) a chain of hamlets and towns along the Indo-Pak border in R.S.Pura sector have become empty. Over 40,000 villagers have abandoned their homes to escape heavy shelling by Pakistani forces. The BSF had fired over 9,000 rounds of mortar shells across the Jammu IB in the last few days as part of “pinpointed” retaliatory action against this “unprovoked” firing from across the border. In Nichal village in Samba district, an old man waiting to receive body of his son felled by Pakistani bullets appealed to Prime Minister to either engage Pakistan in dialogue, or engage it in a full-fledged war to get lasting peace in Jammu and Kashmir. It is the Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has virtually frozen all high-level contacts with Pakistan and vowed to continue doing so until Islamabad stops providing all logistical support for the anti-Indian insurgency in Kashmir. There is no indication that Mr. Modi is going to change his stance in near future.

Bilateral relations between India and Pakistan has been virtually reduced to soldiers firing at each other across the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. During 2017 there were nearly 860 hostile military actions on the Indo-Kashmir border. According to information in the first month of 2018 there were more than five incidents of exchange of fire every day on the Jammu Kashmir border. Earlier this month, the Press Trust of India (PTI) cited a report from Indian intelligence sources that claimed 138 Pakistan military personnel were killed in the preceding year in “tactical operations and retaliatory cross-border firings” along the LoC. The same sources put the death toll of soldiers on the Indian side at 28. Both militaries are known for boasting of enemy fatalities, while downplaying casualties on their own side.

In retaliation of heavy Pakistani firing and shelling that killed Border Security Force Constable K.K. Appa Rao, Indian army in August 2017 had initiated “Operation Arjun”, which targeted farms and residences of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) officers and retired Pakistani Army officers. An official document accessed by IANS revealed that “Operation Arjun” continued till September 24, with the BSF using small and medium arms as well as aerial weapons, causing heavy casualties and damage on the Pakistani side. According to reports, in January 2018, Indian side has fired around 9000 rounds of mortar shells across the international border in Jammu as part of “pinpointed” retaliatory action against this “unprovoked” firing from across the border.

With both sides accusing the other of “unprovoked firing” across the Line of Control (LoC) the situation is on a knife’s edge. These violations in the Jammu and Kashmir region are significant as these compound bilateral military, political, and diplomatic tensions. These have the potential to escalate into bigger military engagement in the aftermath of terror incidents.

Since late 2008, India-Pakistan “comprehensive peace dialogue” has been in limbo. However, till 2016 the incidents of violation of ceasefire were about 300 per year. On September 28, 2016, India responded to the Uri attack by mounting surgical strikes on militant bases. After the “surgical strike” the incidents of ceasefire violations have increased exponentially. The cross border firings spread to the international border in Punjab as a result of which villages on both sides of Punjab had to be evacuated. The US endorsed India’s Sept. 2016 “surgical strikes” inside Pakistan. While India asserts terrorist infiltration from Pakistan is the primary cause for cease fire violations, Pakistan claims that the outstanding bilateral disputes are the issue. Even if terrorist infiltration were to end, there is no certainty that the ceasefire violations would end. The situation is complicated by the new military belligerency which is behind the massive rise in the cease fire violations during last year.

A further consequence of Washington’s downgrading of relations with Pakistan in favour of India, is that it has emboldened the Indian ruling elite in its dealings with Pakistan. Seizing on the deterioration in US-Pakistani relations, General Bipin Rawat, the Chief of Indian on January 12, 2018, issued a warning to Pakistan. He said that Indian forces were ready to call Pakistan’s ‘nuclear bluff’ and cross the border to carry out any operation if asked by the government. Pakistan Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif responded the next day, with his own warlike message. He said, Indiana army chief’s statement “Amount to (an) invitation for (a) nuclear encounter. If that is what they desire, they are welcome to test our resolve. The general’s doubt would swiftly be removed, inshallah [God willing].” Earlier in the day, Director General of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor had also responded to the Indian army chief’s ‘nuclear bluff’ assertion by warning that India will be given a befitting response if they engage in any misadventure.

Pakistan has been stockpiling strategic nuclear weapons for several years. There are reports that recently it has deployed tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons as its first line of defence against any large-scale Indian invasion or impending invasion. Pakistan claims that Indian has been planning attack them under its “Cold Start” strategy.

Pakistan has long viewed Afghanistan as vital to giving it “strategic depth” in its rivalry with India. Washington’s promotion of India as a major player in Afghanistan is exacerbating tensions in the region. Trump administration’s encouragement of India has helped expand the Indo-Pakistan strategic conflict onto Afghan soil. It has emboldened Afghanistan which, has adopted an increasingly hostile and aggressive policy towards Islamabad. Islamabad frequently accuses Indian intelligence of working in tandem with Afghan intelligence to foment terrorist attacks inside Pakistani territory, including by supporting the separatist insurgency in Baluchistan.

The Pakistan claims that US government’s efforts to upset the “balance of power” in the region has forced them to deploy tactical nuclear weapons and expand its military-strategic ties with Beijing. With the US government providing India access to its most advanced weapon systems, and Pakistan moving to strengthen its strategic ties with China, the region is increasingly being polarized into rival Indo-US and raising the danger that a war between India and Pakistan could draw in the world’s great powers.

As we have seen in the past, when India and Pakistan dialogue process on key disputes is under way, cease fire violations go down. When the governments stop talking to each other, and bilateral tensions go up, the forces deployed on the line of Control, gain autonomy and local factors tend to have a dramatic influence on ceasefire violations. Instead of resuming bilateral dialogue, which is the only way disputes can be resolved, both governments have adopted unsustainable militarist approach which has the potential of engulfing the region in a larger war, which would cause massive bloodshed and enormous damage to both countries.

The fear that under the BJP rule, India will be increasingly drawn into US imperialism’s game plan for extending its hegemony over this region to counter China’s growing economic and military power is real. The USA has always fought their wars in other people’s territories bringing utter devastation to the people and the economy. That continuous localized military clashes, can lead to large-scale war is an established historic fact. We have become so used to this perpetual cycle of instability and constant confrontations, along the Indo-Pakistan border that we have lost sight of the inherent danger that these confrontations pose to peace in South Asia. As a result, despite our best efforts, the next big war in the Asia-Pacific, like most military conflicts, may come as an apparent surprise when we least expect it. For what is clear is that the current instability in the Asia-Pacific cannot endure indefinitely.

The present confrontation and jingoism has to stop, it harms lives of people on both sides. There is grave concern that after 70 years of independence a large proportion of the populations of both countries are still steeped in poverty, hunger, disease and homelessness. It is incumbent that the concerned citizens of both countries lead the way by giving a joint call emphasizing the absolute need for the two countries reestablish the relations that existed at the end of last century or beginning of this century when both governments were talking to each other. The dialogue should however not be limited to politicians, the armies or bureaucrats. Civil society organisations of both the countries must be a party to the dialogue as they alone will persuade the states to alter their course.

The Facade Of Repatriation For The Rohingyas

Badrul Islam

The 680,000 Rohingyas escaping from the jaws of death in Myanmar, to Bangladesh, were recovering from their traumatic experience, when the news of an agreement finalized by the governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh, caused a lot of concern and depression among them. Firstly, apart from the main “Citizenship” factor and unreasonable “verification procedure”, the humanitarian aspect was completely neglected; the new agreement 2017 (based on agreements of 1992-93), indicates nothing about the continuation of nutritional program and health support, for a large number of, malnutritioned children, pregnant and lactating mothers, victims of rape and, the very elderly men, recovering from various wounds; secondly, attitude towards the Rohingyas have not changed; the government and citizen avoid using the term “Rohingya” and use degraded adjective “kalar” to describe them; thirdly, the exclusion of the UNHCR and other international agencies, confirms that there is no guarantee for their security and safety of their lives and property. Where are they returning to? On a 124-acre land at Hla Pho Khung camp near Maungdaw township where 30,000 people will be accommodated in 625 prefab buildings i.e. 80-84 people per building, will be cramped in like animals in a pen. Perimeter of this complex will be surrounded by wire mesh fence topped by barbed wire.

Under the above circumstances, the Rohingyas have pleaded to Bangladesh authorities “kill us here (camps), rather than send us back to uncertainty and, possibility of another holocaust and, be buried inside mass grave”–dead men tell no tales. From the Palong Khali camp (on bank of river Naf) bordering Myanmar, Rohingya leaders, using loudspeakers have voiced their strongest protest for Myanmar to hear. Rohingya organizations, worldwide, in a joint statement have shared the “serious concerns” on the plans, for the repatriation, have drawn attention of the heads of governments, with request to pressurize Myanmar, to ensure a congenial environment and revise the agreement, for their safe return under aegis of UNHCR.

It is difficult to fathom the intention and actions, of Myanmar. 0n the one hand, they are showing positive signs, like removing and placing in reserve, Major General Maung Maung Soe(Army) and Brigadier Thura San Lwin(Border Guard),both in charge of Rakhine state during counter action against the insurgents, and responsible for “excessive force and clearance operation”; the President, on 70th anniversary of independence, calling for reforms of nation’s military-drafted constitution(a point highlighted by late U Ko Ni); and Suu Kyi initiating the Union Enterprises for Humanitarian Assistance for Rakhine state. 0n the other hand, they are not making it clear, whether the changes, will affect, both the Rohingyas and the Rakhine Buddhists. Point to be noted, in Rakhine state both Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingyas co-existed but, after the mayhem of the Rohingyas and burning of their villages, the areas occupied by Rohingyas is deserted and is declared” devastated area “. As per state law, land is now owned by the government, with the sole discretionary power to use as it pleases. Rakhine Buddhist land remains intact. Will Rohingyas get back their land and compensation for crops destroyed?

The UN Special Rapporteur Yang Lee recently banned from entering Myanmar, for continuing her work has said “I am puzzled and disappointed by this decision. This non-cooperation can be viewed as strong indication that something terribly awful is happening in Rakhine, as well as the rest of the country.” Lee’s comments, widely accepted internationally , can be corroborated by two facts: (1) the Myanmar government has stubbornly denied access to UN aid agencies, media, and visiting dignitaries amidst specter of more mass graves, like the one discovered on December,18,2017 at village Inn Din and, Lt.General Aye Win, this time, admitted that the 10 Rohingya bodies were first mutilated by civil vigilantes and next, together with army, buried them in the grave- this an important admission, considering that, the same general, in his earlier investigative report, has confirmed that there is no “evidence of atrocities”; recently The Associated Press reported of at least five mass graves containing bodies of Rohingya civilian Muslims- again denied by government (2) a network of government spies and informers are vigilant throughout the country, specifically in Rakhine state area, ensuring censorship over media, control over movement of international and local personnel. Ministry of Communication, citing police confirmed that two Reuter’s reporters were arrested for possessing “important and secret government documents related to Rakhine state and security forces”. Also two police officers, arrested for supplying the documents, under government’s “0fficial Secret Act”. All this to ensure government is not threatened.

The Tatmadaw failed to heed the warning from the Kofi Anan Commission to Myanmar that, “excessive army operation to counter the terrorists would make matters worse”;-and so it happened, and of its handling, human rights critics say, “ Sku Kyi and her government are still burying their heads in the sand over the horrors unfolding in the Rakhine state”– this is confirmed, by Myanmar informing on February 2018, the UN Security members, “time is not right to visit”, requesting postponement till March/April 2018. Is Myanmar hoping that strong stench from dead bodies and tracks of other irregularities will be covered by then? It is time to stop manipulation of Rohingya crisis.

A ten member Rakhine Crisis Advisory Board was constituted by Myanmar to reassess the implementation of the recommendations made by the Kofi Anan Commission. Its Chairman Surakiart Sathirathri, former Thai foreign minister, parroted the notion that international aid agencies provided material support for the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA).Its other member Roelof Petrus Meyer from South Africa says, “the team was taken on an orientation trip to Rakhine state including repatriation centers, but it is difficult to opine from such general observation, but citizenship issue is complicated”. Bill Richardson (former US diplomat) also a member, termed this commission a “white wash”. Recommendations for solution to Myanmar crisis, stipulated in the Kofi Anan Commission report ,as per the co-founder of Thailand based Fortify Rights, is “a rare exception in that, it produced actionable suggestions and criticism of government policies.” It received worldwide acceptance and all, urged government for its quick implementation.

Myanmar seriously needs to get rid of its “cynical attitude” and “islamophobia hyperbole”. It must get rid of the delusion that its manipulative reports against the Rohingyas are having a ripple effect. ARSA has been severely criticized worldwide, even by Muslim countries. At same time, the world leaders do not agree that 4% family oriented Rohingyas, would become a threat for the over 89 % Bamar Buddhists, that forms the government, military, police and “chauvinistic” religious groups. Leaders throughout world have called for arms embargo and targeted sanctions against Myanmar.

It is high time for Myanmar and its friendly partners, China, India and Russia, to take into cognizance the facts at hand and form the right environment by solving the main problems within Myanmar :-

1. Peace and national reconciliation with 135 ethnic groups in spirit of 1947 Panlong agreement. The recent January 19, 2018 conflict between tatmadaw and KIA (powerful militant) confirms government has to “go the extra mile” to solve it.
2. Citizenship of Rohingyas for which dialogues must be opened with British government to scrutinize Aung San- Atlee agreement, 1947 and Burma’s constitution of 1947 and 1948 as parliaments of those years have honored Rohingya citizenship.
3. Establish democracy, as the President mentioned, by reforming the military drafted constitution.
4. Revise repatriation plan taking into account all humanitarian aspects describe above.

Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winner in Economics, 2001 said, “Our global system is characterized by a lot of inequities. It seems increasingly important to try to redress these inequities.” Let us hope Myanmar will do it.

Templates Of Denial: Selective History And Poland’s Holocaust Law

Binoy Kampmark

Holocaust history has never been far away from political manipulation.  The deaths of millions tends to supply various causes: for those who survive, radicalisation can be imminent.  For those who participated in the killings, justification and denial can combine in cruel fashion.  Some, prompted by guilt, embrace the memories of those slain with a zeal akin to a civil religion; others would prefer to minimise its significance.

Complicity behind the deaths of millions of Europe’s Jewry is one of those catastrophes of civilization that becomes abstract in certain states.  In the United States, it has assumed the form or a civil religion with its own brand of high priest memorialisers.  In Poland, the country where the Third Reich’s death camps reached previously unmatched forms of mechanistic slaughter, a sense of distancing has been taking place.  That it took place on Polish soil was bad enough.  But what of the role played by Polish citizens more broadly?

This is a question that has been answered by the efforts of Polish President Andrzej Duda to outlaw accusations that Poland was complicit in the commission of Nazi crimes during its occupation.  The law in question, passed by the Polish Senate at the start of this month, effectively affords immunity against assertions of collaboration, while punishing those who say otherwise.

Duda’s remarks on this have resembled that of a public relations hireling keen on keeping the image of company and country pristine.  The law “protects Polish interests… our dignity, the historical truth… so that we are not slandered as a state and as a nation.”

As nation states are essentially fictions, slandering them should be, in principle, difficult if not impossible.  But the chest beating, bayonet thrusting patriot sees it differently.  Truth must be rationed, controlled and sanitised.  All that is inconsistent is excised as part of a “template of denial” that employs legal tactics (penalising the questioners), political methods (pressuring other states to acknowledge the officially sanctioned version) and foisting, subtly or otherwise, blame upon the victims.

Duda has to take the step of sounding balanced on this, which is always a prelude to confirming a position of enthusiastic partisanship.  The law, he claimed, “takes into account the sensitivity of those for whom the issue of historical truth, the memory of the Holocaust, is incredibly important.”

He is not entirely off point on this, in so far as historical truth here entails an appreciation of Nazi German accountability. What matters here is that such an appreciation is exclusive, singular and separate, removing Polish reactionary complicity, one rich in anti-Semitic poison.  In other words, the law designates accountability for some (the Germans did it, which is handy for everyone else) and removing it from others (we were victims, and had nothing personally against the Jews, who we were powerless to defend).

The text leaves the reader in little doubt about how memory is being streamlined and managed, declaring that “whoever accuses, publicly and against the facts, the Polish nation, or the Polish state, of being responsible or complicit in the Nazi crimes committed by the Third German Reich… shall be subject to a fine or a penalty of imprisonment of up to three years.”  Using the term “Polish death camp” would, by way of example, be outlawed.

Such words offer meagre protections for those – amongst them Holocaust survivors – to question Poland’s stained role, though there is a defence if the criticism forms “part of artistic or scientific activities”.  The issue there is less an accusation that runs contrary to facts as those that run contrary to a court or state institution’s understanding of those facts.  Power colours reason; politics can intervene to corrupt judicial opinion.

Duda will not necessarily have it all his way, though the pathway of the law’s application does not look particularly pebbled or potted.  The Constitutional Tribunal has been asked to review the bill to see whether it squares with various fundamental rights, notably free speech.  The catch here is that the law may well come into effect before the judges can get busy, lending a certain superficiality to the outcome.

Countries have been lining up in criticism.  Israel was unremarkably furious; France, having had its own tussle with Holocaust memory, expressed concern at this attempt to “rewrite history”.  US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson offered a lecturing finger, one typical of those in civil religion land. “Enactment of this law adversely affects freedom of speech and academic inquiry… We believe that open debate, scholarship, and education are the best means of countering misleading speech.”

States will, whatever Tillerson says, make attempts to control the narrative of histories in which they participated.  Each country has its self-imposed injunctions on history, selective readings that anoint certain heroes while singling out certain villains.  In Turkey, to claim that there was an Armenian genocide pursued as part of an aggressive Turkification program remains punishable.

In a similar way to the intended effect of the Polish Holocaust law, Article 301 of the Turkish penal code, enacted in June 2005, operates to protect the state against instances of denigration, be it of the Republic itself, its institutions, and the very idea of Turkishness.  A meek defence, which has had little effect, can also be found: “Expressions of thought intended to criticize shall not constitute a crime.”

While US institutions are constrained by constitutional protections that enable various versions of history to slosh around with some impunity, certain narratives will always be hounded into exile and shrieked into oblivion.  One such instance of this is criticising the deployment of two atomic bombs against Japan during the Second World War.

The Smithsonian found this out on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Second World War’s ending.  Attempts to depict the cruelties behind the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 were harangued as unpatriotic drivel, committing the sin of moral equivalency.  The pilots could only ever be seen as heroes possessing a terrible responsibility.  The Japanese brute needed to be subjugated.

Poland’s new Holocaust law is an announcement that it refuses to take the hand of various Western European powers in determining historical sense and sensibility.  Again, central and eastern European powers are tapping their wells of resentment against the moralisers from the west.  Fittingly, if a touch tragically, the Holocaust has provided testy affirmation of this.

Racist rampage in the Italian election campaign

Marc Wells & Marianne Arens

Four weeks before the Italian elections, a bloodbath shook the small town of Macerata. On February 3, six young people were shot by a racist gunman, who drove around indiscriminately firing at dark-skinned passers-by.

Among the victims, who come from Mali, Nigeria, Ghana and Gambia, there is also a young woman. All are aged between 21 and 33. Five are still in hospital, one is seriously injured and had to undergo surgery. The gunman, Luca Traini (28), shot at but missed five other migrants during his Saturday morning rampage. He also shot at the party headquarters of the Democratic Party (PD), which currently heads the government in Rome under Paolo Gentiloni.

When the mayor realized there was a shooting spree taking place, he halted public transport and called on people to stay at home. After two hours, Traini was captured by police on the steps of a war memorial and arrested. Wrapped in an Italian flag, he gave a fascist salute and shouted, “Viva Italia!”

Traini, bearing a fascist tattoo on his temple, is known locally as a fascist and racist. In his apartment, as well as Hitler’s Mein Kampf and books on Mussolini’s social republic of Salò, police also found a flag with the Celtic Cross, which neo-Nazis consider a symbol of the “supremacy of the white race”. Last year, Traini had run as a candidate of the Lega Nord (Northern League) in the local elections in the neighbouring village Corridonia, but without receiving a vote.

The former separatist party is participating in the general election on 4 March as “Lega”. Its nationalism and unrestrained witch-hunting of immigrants undoubtedly encouraged the perpetrator’s fascist delusions. For example, for days, the newspapers had reported on the statement of Lega member Attilio Fontana, who said the most important thing now was “to protect our ethnicity, our white race” from extinction by the wave of migration.

Traini justified his action citing a recent murder of a young woman, Pamela M. of Macerata, whose body was found dismembered in two suitcases. Writing about the suspect, a Nigerian drug dealer, the Lega leader and its top candidate Matteo Salvini had said, “What was this WORM still doing in Italy? He was not a war refugee, he brought the war to Italy. The left has bloodstained hands. Deportations, deportations, more border controls and again deportations!”

After Traini’s murderous action, Salvini issued another statement, in which he half-heartedly condemned the shooting, but placed responsibility on a lax immigration policy: “Violence must always be condemned. However, I have a duty to tell the Italians HOW to avoid incidents like those in Macerata. For example? By sending the illegals home.”

The Lega is in a right-wing alliance for the election with Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and the fascists of Fratelli d’Italia. They hope to replace the ruling Democrats with a mixture of right-wing incitement and fanciful election promises. Polling almost 38 percent in surveys, they are currently ten points in front of the government camp (28 percent).

Silvio Berlusconi is also making targeted use of right-wing demagogy. In a TV broadcast on Sunday evening about the rampage, he described the offender as crazy and sweepingly charged all refugees of being “a social bomb that can explode at any time”. According to Berlusconi, there are 600,000 irregular immigrants in Italy allegedly living from the proceeds of crime.

As for the third major party, the MoVimento 5 Stelle (M5S, Five Star Movement) of Beppe Grillo, its lead candidate Luigi Di Maio picked up on the slogan of the “social bomb” and charged that Berlusconi, together with Renzi, was responsible for mass immigration into Italy. For months, the “Grillini” have stood at about 27 percent in the polls, making it the strongest single party.

The policy of the Five Star Movement is just as right-wing, nationalist and xenophobic as that of the other parties. In the EU, it sits in the same political grouping as the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD), the Sweden Democrats and Britain’s UKIP, and also has declared fascists among its VIPs, such as the father of M5S candidate Alessandro Di Battista, who emphasized in front of the camera, “Am I right-wing? No, I’m a fascist.”

In the election campaign, the Five Star Movement benefited from being the only major party that has never been in government. The two other major political camps have been identified for years with the right-wing policies of the banks and the EU. While Berlusconi stands for shameless personal enrichment, the PD restructures the public finances at the expense of the working class.

In a government statement on the bloody crime in Macerata, Gentiloni did not say a word about the racist aspects of the crime but emphasized his confidence in the judiciary and the “sense of responsibility of all political forces.” He concluded his statement with a nationalist appeal, “Hatred and violence will not divide us, the Italian people.”

As a governing party, the PD has long practiced what the right-wing demands: the systematic attack on African migrants. With the active help of the EU, Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni and his Interior Minister Marco Minniti have signed a dirty deal with the Libyan Coast Guard. They finance Libyan Islamists and smugglers in the Mediterranean to keep migrants out of Europe. They consciously accept the fact that people not only drown, but also perish in Libyan torture camps.

In the hospital, one of Trainis’ victims, a Mr. Wilson from Ghana, told about his odyssey of war, flight and expulsion. He had arrived in Italy on a dinghy, saying, “I saw people, especially black Africans, being shot or sold. People were treated like cattle there.”

Italy is in a devastating social crisis. Anyone who is in their twenties today has seen nothing but social decline in their lives. Officially, youth unemployment is at almost 35 percent, and in reality is much higher, especially in the south. Ever-new austerity measures and “reforms” such as Renzi’s “Jobs Act”, the pension reforms, healthcare reforms or the “Buona Scuola” have led to hundreds of thousands of young Italians leaving the country.

All parties, from the open fascists to the PD, are responding to the social crisis by inciting xenophobia and racism to divert social anger and outrage onto the most vulnerable in society, refugees and migrants. This is the dirty mechanism of the Italian election campaign.

Will India invade the Maldives?

Rohantha De Silva

Indian media reports indicate that New Delhi is actively considering invading the Maldives, a tiny Indian Ocean archipelago that is the object of intense geopolitical competition between India and the United States, on the one hand, and China on the other.

Exiled opposition leader and former Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed is publicly campaigning for India to intervene militarily, claiming India must act to “save democracy” in the Maldives and prevent it from being “sold off,” “piece by piece,” to China.

The Times of India reported Wednesday that India’s armed forces are “on standby for any contingency in the Maldives from evacuation of Indian tourists to military intervention.” It added that India’s military is ready for “deployment at short notice,” already has military personnel in the Maldives under existing defence cooperation agreements, and could readily divert “warships currently on patrol on (its) western seaboard … if required for military intervention. “

India’s government, along with the US, Britain, and the European Union, has strongly condemned Maldives President Abdulla Yameen for imposing a 15-day state of emergency and suspending basic democratic rights so as to thwart a February 1 Supreme Court ruling that overturned Nasheed’s conviction, ordered the release of eight jailed opposition legislators, and restored 12 legislators to their seats in parliament.

Yesterday, New Delhi refused to receive a “special emissary” from the Maldives government tasked with explaining its actions.

Traditionally, India has had very close relations with the Maldives, which, as a fellow member of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), it views as a part of its sphere of regional dominance.

The strategic significance of the 1,192-island state has grown exponentially as the Indian Ocean, site of the world’s busiest commercial sea-lanes, has emerged during the past decade as a pivotal arena of global geostrategic competition.

However, to the chagrin of India and the US, Yameen’s four-year-old government has forged close economic ties with China, agreeing to participate in the maritime component of its One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative and signing a free trade pact with Beijing last December.

Large sections of the Indian media and at least one BJP legislator are publicly urging New Delhi to act decisively to ensure that the Maldives is aligned with New Delhi and its partner Washington.

“This is an opportunity for India to stake its claim to being a player once again,” said Manvendra Singh, who in addition to being a BJP politician edits “Defence and Security Alert,” “especially since any global role is always dependent on a country’s performance in the neighbourhood first.”

In an editorial titled “India must play hardball if it wants to be part of the Maldives’ return to stability,” the Hindustan Times called for coercive diplomacy, including sanctions, and if necessary military intervention.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government have, for their part, kept their cards close to their vests.

Under Modi, India has massively expanded its military-security alliance with the US, mounted cross-border military raids in Pakistan and Myanmar, and engaged in a seven-week military standoff with China over a remote Himalayan ridge claimed by Bhutan, a tiny kingdom New Delhi has long treated like a protectorate.

Military intervention in the Maldives, however, would present a number of difficulties. First, the Maldives’ security forces have up until this point proven loyal to the government. Second, for India to intervene to topple an internationally recognized government would violate New Delhi’s longstanding claims, however hypocritical, to uphold the international principle of “state sovereignty.” Finally, while there is little doubt New Delhi could have US and British assistance in invading the Maldives, to do so would shatter any pretense that India remains committed to “strategic autonomy.” This would both antagonize China and provoke opposition among Indian workers and toilers who, unlike the Indian bourgeoisie, have no enthusiasm for serving as local satraps for American imperialism.

Whatever unfolds in the coming days and weeks, India’s response to the political crisis in the Maldives—the unmistakable signs the Modi government is weighing the pros and cons of military intervention and the brazen media discussion about the need to thwart Chinese influence in the Maldives—underscores that South Asia and the Indian Ocean region have been sucked into the maelstrom of great-power conflict and that this is leading inexorably toward military competition and conflict.

Yameen is the half-brother of Abdul Gayoom, who with India’s staunch support ruled the Maldives as an autocrat from 1978 to 2008. He became president in 2013 after a contested election and since then the Maldives has continued to be buffeted by political crisis. With Yameen’s government expanding the Maldives’ ties to China, the US and Britain, and India somewhat more cautiously, have increasingly promoted Nasheed, first by securing his release from prison on medical grounds in 2015.

The latest stage of the crisis began when the Supreme Court on Feb. 1 unexpectedly reversed its own previous rulings. The order to restore the twelve legislators, many of them defectors from Yameen’s own party, directly threatened his government as their return to parliament would strip it of its majority.

However, Yameen blocked the judgment from being implemented, and after imposing the state of emergency, had two of the Supreme Court Justices jailed, and then prevailed on the remaining three justices to reverse the Feb. 1 ruling.

Maldives’ police claim to have “evidence” that the earlier verdict was manipulated, with Supreme Court justices accepting millions of rupees in bribes and conspiring with the former president and autocrat Abdul Gayoom. Gayoom has been taken into police custody and is to be charged with attempting to overthrow the government.

With Yameen increasingly resorting to antidemocratic authoritarian measures to protect his fragile rule, Nasheed is claiming to be spearheading a campaign to restore democracy to the Maldives.

But his appeals for the support of India, the US and other western imperialist powers and on an explicitly anti-China platform have become ever more unabashed.

In a statement published in the February 7 Indian Express, Nasheed pledged his fidelity to the strategic interests of India and the US, denouncing Chinese investment in the Maldives and the OBOR as a threat to “the security of the entire Indian Ocean region.”

Later the same day, he tweeted, “Maldivians see India’s role positively: in ‘88 they came, resolved the crisis, and left. They were not occupiers but liberators.”

The reference to ’88 is to the deployment of 1,600 Indian troops to the Maldives in 1988 to thwart a coup attempt by Maldivian businessman Abdulla Luthufi, which used fighters from a Sri Lankan Tamil separatist organization, the People’s Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE).

Of course, Nasheed glosses over the fact that for decades India backstopped Gayoom’s autocratic regime.

The Indian press is full of alarmist accounts of China’s attempts to dominate the Indian Ocean. In fact, everything they accuse China of doing, India and its US ally have long been engaged in.

In 2013, Washington sought to bully the Maldives into signing a Status of Force Agreement (SPFA) that would have provided the legal framework for a massive US military presence across the archipelago, including military bases and diplomatic-style immunity for all American military personnel.

M.K. Bhadrakumar, a former career Indian diplomat and critic of India’s burgeoning strategic alliance with the US, pointed to the real issues motivating India’s relations with Maldives in an Asian Times article titled, “Maldives crisis: US-Indian strategic alliance forming.”

“Hand-wringing about a ‘democracy deficit’ notwithstanding,” writes Bhadrakumar, “the real aim is to counter China’s growing presence in the Indian Ocean.”

The “script,” he goes on to note, “has a striking resemblance to what happened in Sri Lanka.” There, Washington and India used the January 2015 presidential elections to orchestrate a “regime change,” by getting Maithripala Sirisena to defect from the government and stand as the “common opposition” candidate against the sitting president, Mahinda Rajapakse, who was deemed too close to China.

The strategic plans of the US, into which India is now being incorporated, call for Indian Ocean and South China Sea chokepoints to be seized, so as to enforce an economic blockade against China in a war or war crisis. Pointing to this, Bhadrakumar writes, “The real US-Indian game plan is to create a ‘second island chain’ connecting Maldives with Diego Garcia and Seychelles to curb the presence of Chinese submarines in the Indian Ocean and to control the sea lanes through which China conducts the bulk of its foreign trade.”

China, as would be expected, has voiced opposition to any Indian intervention in the Maldives. “The current situation in Maldives is its internal affairs,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang on Wednesday. “China follows the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of others.”

State-owned Global Times was much blunter. It declared New Delhi “has no right to meddle” in Maldives, adding, the “small country of the Maldives has long faced a choice: should it free itself from India’s control and consolidate its independence as a sovereign state or not?”

French President Macron proposes 35 percent increase in military spending

Alex Lantier 

Yesterday, the French Council of Ministers viewed the Military Planning Law (LPM) for the 2019-2025 period, which imposes a vast increase in military spending. Total spending over this period is to be above €300 billion, and the yearly budget will increase by more than 35 percent to reach €44 billion. This is to fulfill Emmanuel Macron’s pledge, during last year’s presidential election campaign in France, to increase military spending to 2 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Defense Minister Florence Parly indicated that despite the spending increase, France would seek to strictly adhere to European Union (EU) limits on budget deficits. “I’m aware that the 2 percent for defense go together with Brussels’ 3 percent [limit on state budget deficits],” she told Le Monde. That is, the increase in military spending will correspond automatically to a massive reduction in social spending and in popular living standards.

This exposes the policies pursued across Europe, under the aegis of Macron and the Grand Coalition government that the German bourgeoisie is trying to assemble in Berlin. The banks and the armed forces are waging an offensive against the workers to make them pay for the militarization of Europe. They want to smash social rights won in struggle after the Russian revolution of October 1917 and the foundation of the Soviet Union, and the collapse of fascist regimes in Europe after World War II, in order to prepare the continent for new wars.

In France, they are planning the effective invalidation of the Labor Code by Macron’s labor decrees, the imposition of salaries below the minimum wage, mass job cuts in auto, the privatization of the railways and the elimination of the railway workers’ guaranteed rights, and the end of lifetime employment in the public service. Deep cuts to pensions and health care are announced for the end of Macron’s term. At the same time, Macron has handed over billions to the rich by eliminating the wealth tax (ISF), and is handing the general staff hundreds of billions of euros.

The rate of defense spending hikes is to go from €1.7 billion per year in 2018-2022, to €3 billion per year in 2023-2025. This suggests that the deep cuts to pensions and health care planned for the end of Macron’s terms is largely destined to finance France’s military machine.

Across NATO, governments are pouring hundreds of billions of euros per year into the armed forces, after Washington recently declared that Russia and China, both nuclear powers, are priority targets outranking Al Qaeda. US Senate Democrats have just agreed to a $165 billion increase in US military spending, while Spain plans to more than double its yearly military budget to €18.47 billion.

The basis of the accord to try to form a Grand Coalition government between conservatives and social democrats in Germany is austerity destined to finance a massive, €35 billion increase in yearly German military spending, that would make Germany the EU’s main military power.

The French LPM is part of this international arms race that the imperialist powers in North America and Europe are launching. According to initial press reports, it foresees a 14 percent increase in spending on salaries for the armed forces, including for 6,000 new recruits.

Spending on military equipment and weapons systems is to increase 34 percent, with an accelerated timetable for the production of Scorpion armored vehicles, four Barracuda-class submarines, and three Multi-Mission Frigates (FREMM). Finally, so-called “strategic” spending, aiming to maintain the long-term military power of the French state, is also projected to explode.

Increased spending on nuclear weapons alone is to amount to €17 billion over the time period covered by the law. There are also to be large increases in spending on cyber-warfare, the designing of new weapons (aircraft carriers, tanks, and fighter planes) and the planning of a European tanker aircraft—key to waging war independently of the United States. Currently, French and European armed forces still depend on US tanker aircraft for their imperialist interventions overseas.

Macron will likely demand even greater increases in military spending in the coming years, however, as he also repeated his call for a return to universal military service last month, in a speech at the Toulon naval base. The cost of the reintroduction of universal military service and its extension to women would reportedly be in the tens of billions of euros.

This militaristic policy, carried out in coordination with all the NATO imperialist powers, constitutes a warning for workers internationally. After a quarter century of imperialist wars following the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union, which cost millions of lives across the Middle East and Africa, world capitalism is yet again on the verge of large-scale war. The conflict for which Macron and the NATO powers are preparing would be a devastating global conflict, aiming to maintain the hegemonic world position of the imperialist powers.

When it speaks more openly about its appetites, the imperialist press admits that this is what NATO is preparing. Thus, in January, the influential British weekly The Economist wrote, “powerful, long-term shifts in geopolitics and the proliferation of new technologies are eroding the extraordinary military dominance that America and its allies have enjoyed. Conflict on a scale and intensity not seen since the second world war is once again plausible. The world is not prepared.”

These lines constitute a warning that humanity is teetering on the brink of a new world war. They shed a cold light on what Berlin, Madrid, Paris and the Trump administration are preparing, that is, conflict “on a scale and intensity not seen since the second world war.” This is why, as well, Sweden has resumed yearly publication of a book destined to the entire Swedish population on what to do in case of nuclear war, and the Kremlin issued instructions in November that Russian industry should be prepared for total war mobilization.

For European workers, among whom opposition is rising to the policy of wage cuts or freezes and social austerity imposed across Europe since the 2008 Wall Street crash and economic crisis, it is also a warning on the emerging struggles of the working class. In 2018, large-scale strike action has already been taken by German and Turkish metal workers and British rail workers. In France, retirement home workers struck and rail strikes are being prepared, faced with Macron’s privatization plans.

It will be impossible to defend the wages and social rights of the working class in Europe without a political struggle against militarism and war, in which the main allies of workers in France will be their class brothers and sisters in the other countries.

US massacre of Syrian troops threatens to unleash wider war

Bill Van Auken

US warplanes and artillery batteries carried out an unprovoked massacre of up to 100 pro-government troops in the northeastern province of Deir Ezzor Wednesday, signaling the initiation of a new and far more dangerous stage in the more than three-year-old direct US military intervention in Syria.

The Syrian government denounced the attack as a “war crime” and “direct support to terrorism,” insisting that its forces came under US attack as they were carrying out an operation against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) elements between the villages of Khasham and al-Tabiya on the eastern side of the Euphrates River.

While the Pentagon proudly claimed to have killed 100 pro-government fighters, Damascus allowed that the US strikes claimed “the lives of dozens, injuring many others and causing massive damage in the area.”

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, meanwhile, said it had confirmed only 20 dead among the pro-government forces.

Whatever the precise number of casualties—the Pentagon’s figures are suspect given that the bombings and artillery barrages were not followed up by any ground attack—the incident marks a major escalation of US aggression against Syria, eclipsing the firing of 59 US cruise missiles last April in response to an unsubstantiated allegation of a chemical weapons attack in Idlib province.

The only previous US attack resulting in comparable bloodshed was the September 17, 2016 US airstrike against a Syrian army position near the Deir Ezzor airport, which killed 62 soldiers and wounded some 100 more. The Pentagon claimed that attack was the result of an “unintentional, regrettable error.”

This time around, the US military said that it was exercising its “inherent right of self-defense” in attacking the forces of a government whose territory American troops are occupying without either its consent or any mandate from the United Nations.

The official story from the Pentagon is that a column of 500 pro-government fighters, including tanks and artillery, had attempted to take control of territory east of the Euphrates River that had been seized by the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the US proxy ground force that is overwhelmingly dominated by the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia. It accused the government forces of launching “an unprovoked attack on a well-established SDF position,” where US Special Forces “advisors” who direct the Kurdish fighters were deployed.

Pentagon officials speaking on condition of anonymity told the media that they believed Russian military contractors operating with the Syrian government forces were among the dead.

The Russian Defense Ministry reported that it had no military personnel in the area. It also said it was aware only of 25 Syrian militia members having been wounded in the US strikes.

Russia’s Defense Ministry added in a statement that the American attack once “again showed that the US is maintaining its illegal presence in Syria not to fight the Daesh group [ISIS], but to seize and hold Syrian economic assets.”

The area where the fighting took place is a center of Syria’s oil and gas fields. The village of al-Tabiya is the site of the Conoco gas plant, which was previously run by ConocoPhillips until the energy corporation turned it over to the Syrian government in 2005. After the area fell under ISIS control, the Islamist militia used gas and oil exports to secure much of its financing.

Washington is determined to deny the Syrian government control over these resources and to that end has sought to carve out a US zone of control covering roughly 30 percent of the country, while cutting off its borders with Turkey and Iraq.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry raised pointed questions about the US version of events, particularly the vast disparity between the claim of 100 Syrian government troops killed and, on the other side, a total of one SDF fighter wounded.

"First of all, how could a 500-strong unit attack a headquarters with tank and artillery support and, as a result, inflict an injury on one counter-attacker?” asked Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova. “How could those who were in that headquarters remain in those conditions for the half hour or more needed to call in and ensure air support?”

“How, within such a short period of time, could a decision have been made to open massive fire for effect on Syrian armed forces?” she continued. “To clarify all these questions, and to get a full picture of what happened, relevant information is now being gathered, both through our military experts and through the Foreign Ministry.”

Despite the words of protest from Moscow, the Pentagon reported that it had used its “deconfliction line” with the Russian military to provide advance notice of its strike on the Syrian government forces and remained in contact during and after the attack. “We had a very productive conversation,” said Pentagon spokesperson Dana White. “...we told them, they knew what was happening. They agreed not to attack Coalition forces. So, from that respect, it was successful.”

The attack on Deir Ezzor is part of a steady ratcheting up of the multisided conflict in Syria, provoked overwhelmingly by Washington’s announced decision to maintain a permanent US military occupation of the country and pursue a “post-ISIS” policy centered on the original US objectives of Syrian regime change and rolling back Iranian and Russian influence in the region. Until launching the anti-ISIS campaign in 2014, Washington had sought the ouster of the government of President Bashar al-Assad by means of supporting and arming the Al Qaeda-linked militias out of which ISIS itself emerged. This sparked the bloody seven-year-long war that has claimed the lives of some 350,000 Syrians, while displacing millions of others.

Since invading the country over three years ago, the US military has relied primarily on the Kurdish YPG as its proxy ground force, but it also continues to arm and train Islamist militia groups. During the US-backed siege of Raqqa and other formerly ISIS-occupied towns, the US military and its Kurdish proxies organized the evacuation of large numbers of ISIS fighters and their redeployment to Deir Ezzor in order to turn them against the Syrian government forces advancing on the province’s strategically vital oil and gas fields.

To the west, the Turkish invasion of the Kurdish-controlled enclave of Afrin, which came in response to US plans to organize a 30,000-strong “border security force” based largely on the Kurdish YPG and create what Ankara sees as a de facto Kurdish state on its border, threatens to escalate into a direct conflict between the US and Turkey, ostensible NATO allies.

On Wednesday, the top US commander in Syria and Iraq, Lt. Gen. Paul Funk, visited Manbij, the Syrian city on the western side of the Euphrates that has been occupied by the YPG and its US Special Forces handlers. The visit came just one day after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan demanded that the American forces withdraw from Manbij, vowing that the Turkish military would extend its offensive into the city.

Asked if he was worried about the Turkish threat, Gen. Funk responded, “It’s not in my job description to worry; my job is to fight.”

Meanwhile, both the US and French governments have issued condemnations of Damascus over bombings in Idlib province and Eastern Ghouta, as well as unverified allegations of using chlorine gas against civilian populations. The State Department issued a statement saying that the bombings “must stop now.”

The hypocritical Western media, which went largely silent as the US killed tens of thousands of civilians and razed entire cities to the ground in last year’s sieges of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, has suddenly woken up to report the civilian casualties resulting from the bombardments by Syrian and Russian warplanes. Once again they are churning out propaganda to prepare for a military escalation that has the potential of triggering a direct military confrontation between the world’s two major nuclear powers, the US and Russia.

Wall Street plunges amid fear and panic

Nick Beams

Wall Street saw another plunge in stocks yesterday, with the Dow Jones index falling by 1,032 points—the second time in four days it has dropped by more than 1,000 points. A large portion of the sell-off, which impacted on all other market indexes and went across the board, took place in the last hour, indicating that further selling may be yet to come.

The Dow finished down by 4.2 percent, the S&P 500 dropped 3.8 percent, taking the fall from its January high to 10 percent, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 3.9 percent. The interest rate on the benchmark 10-year treasury note rose to touch 2.9 percent, but fell back to 2.82 percent as money moved out of stocks into government debt.

Markets across Asia plunged dramatically today and remain in the red. With several hours of trading remaining, the Nikkei index in Japan had fallen over 2.5 percent; the STX in Singapore was down 1.8 percent; the All Ords in Australia down 1 percent; and the Kospi in South Korea down 1.6 percent. The Hong Kong and Shanghai exchanges in China were the worst impacted, with the Hang Seng down 3.3 percent and the Shanghai composite down 4.1 percent by lunch.

Six days after the Wall Street sell-off began last Friday, some of the market mechanisms driving it have become clearer. The initial fall was triggered by the news that wage growth in the US last year was 2.9 percent, above market expectations. This intersected with a rise in bond market interest rates, with the yield on the 10-year treasury bond rising to its highest point in four years, following earlier forecasts that the decades-long bull-run in bonds, which has seen interest rates fall to historic lows, is coming to an end.

The violent reaction of the market to a marginal increase in wages resulted not from the increase itself but what it might portend: a resurgence in the class struggle in the US and internationally as workers push back against the continuous suppression of wages that has been a feature of the global economy for 30 years and particularly since the global financial crisis of 2008.

The suppression of wages has been a key factor in the surge in stock prices, fuelled by the quantitative easing policies pursued by the US Federal Reserve and other central banks to pump trillions of dollars into financial markets.

The return of volatility to the equities market last Friday had such a significant impact because of a complex set of new financial products created by the financial markets over the past period, centring on the volatility, or VIX, index.

Through a process of “financial engineering,” finance houses and major banks, including some of the biggest names such as Barclays, Credit Suisse, UBS and Citigroup, created a series of financial products, based on the VIX, that could be traded on the markets. This involved “shorting the VIX,” that is, placing bets that the volatility index, which set record lows throughout 2017, would continue to remain calm.

Before the eruption of this week’s sell-off, the S&P 500 index had gone more than 400 days without recording a drop of 5 percent or more, a situation not experienced since 1959.

Betting on low volatility was one of the major sources of gains from the stock market throughout 2017, when the VIX averaged 11—its lowest point since records began in 1990. In trade this week it has risen as high as 50.

The assumptions behind this strategy bear a striking resemblance to those that drove the trading in mortgage-backed securities in the lead up to the 2008 crisis, which was set off by the bursting of the sub-prime bubble. Those in the sub-prime market assumed that it would always provide a positive return because, while there may be ups and down in regional markets, the national market as a whole would not fall. That assumption was shattered by the nationwide fall in US house prices in 2007–2008, leading to the meltdown.

Likewise “shorting the VIX” was based on the assumption that the calm in the markets over the past year would continue indefinitely. That was upended last Friday, setting in motion the sell-off and forcing major traders to unwind their positions.

A major feature of the turmoil, pointing to the growth of fear and panic, has been the speed of events.

On Monday, the market finished down by 1,157 points, after crashing by 900 points in the space of just 11 minutes during the last hour of trading.

On Tuesday, the market opened at more than 500 points down, then finished up by 567 points. From bottom to top, it saw a swing of 1,200 points, with 29 changes of direction during the day.

On Wednesday, it hit an intra-day high of 381 points before closing 19 points down. This was followed by a continuous fall from the time markets opened yesterday.

Exacerbating the sell-off is the fact that much of the trading is based on borrowed funds, subject to margin calls—the borrower has to return cash to the lender if the asset on which the loan is based falls in value. Faced with demands for cash, borrowers have to liquidate investments, leading to a further market downturn and a negative feedback loop as lower asset values trigger further margin calls.

Margin trading is only the tip of the international debt iceberg. The Bank for International Settlements estimates that the ratio of global debt to gross domestic product (GDP) is 40 percent higher today than a decade ago. Standard and Poor’s has reported that global non-financial corporate debt has risen by 15 percentage points to 96 percent of GDP in the past six years, with 37 percent of companies deemed to be “highly leveraged,” compared to 32 percent in 2007. With interest rates on the rise, the ability of companies and even governments to service this debt is called into question.

While trading in complex derivatives based on the VIX has been the immediate trigger for the market plunge, broader developments indicate this is a financial inflection point.

One of the continuous themes of the commentary on the market gyrations, including in a tweet by US President Donald Trump, is that the market is acting at variance with the direction of the real economy, which is showing signs of growth.

Such commentary ignores what has been the central feature of the rise and rise of the financial markets since 2008. The surge in US stock prices, rising by more than 350 percent from their low in March 2009, has taken place amid low growth—the weakest recovery from a recession in the post-war period. The “real economy” is characterised by historically low levels of investment and low productivity as profits have been diverted into ever-more risky forms of financial speculation.

The key factor in sustaining the markets has been the inflow of cheap money from the Federal Reserve, which has expanded its balance sheet from around $800 billion before 2008 to more than $4 trillion today. Speculators have operated on the assumption that the Fed is ready to step in and ensure the market will not fall precipitously, a key factor in the decline in market volatility.

That assumption is now being called into question. Confronted with an uptick in US economic growth, the Fed has started to lift interest rates, indicating that three rises may be enacted this year. Other central banks are moving in the same direction. The Bank of England indicated yesterday that interest rate rises in the UK may come sooner and be larger than expected. The European Central Bank is also under pressure to start winding back its program of quantitative easing which has sent interest rates to record lows, in some cases into negative territory.

The Fed and other central banks are concerned that if they intervene with more cheap money this may lead to a rise in inflation. That is how they characterise their greatest fear of all: an intensification of the class struggle as workers seek to regain the losses in their wages and living standards.

The market crisis is also being fuelled by the key policies of the Trump administration, supported by the Democrats, of massive tax cuts for the corporate and financial elites and a boost to military spending for war. These measures are set to push the US budget deficit toward $1 trillion from its current level of close to $700 billion.

The result will be more government bonds on the market, leading to a fall in their price, and lifting interest rates, as the two move in an inverse relationship. Even before the announcement of the latest measures to vastly increase military spending, New York Federal Reserve president Bill Dudley said in a speech last month that the current fiscal path was unsustainable and the adverse effects of the tax cuts on the budget bottom line would outweigh any positive effects on capital spending and output.

The likelihood of these measures causing interest rate rises is being exacerbated by geo-political tensions. Under conditions in which the Fed is withdrawing from bond purchases, the US is mounting a trade war against the second largest purchaser in the recent period, China. Last month, in anonymous comments, high-placed Chinese financial officials told Bloomberg they were considering pulling back on bond purchases, partly in response to the more aggressive moves by the US on trade. If this takes place, for either financial or political reasons, it can only further roil US financial markets.

Whatever the immediate outcome of the present turmoil, some clear economic and political facts of life have been established. None of the contradictions of the capitalist system, which exploded to the surface in 2008, has even been tackled, let alone overcome.

The past period has been marked by the drive to war, with the growing danger of a nuclear conflagration either on the Korean peninsula or elsewhere. At the same time the banks, finance houses and capitalist oligarchs, along with the world’s central banks, have responded to the disaster into which they plunged the world a decade ago by creating new speculative “weapons of mass financial destruction,” setting up the conditions for the eruption of a crisis even more serious than that of 2008.

The world working class must take stock of the situation. The response of the ruling classes to the current meltdown will be to impose ever-deeper attacks on its social rights than those initiated a decade ago.

The capitalist system has no political and economic legitimacy, and threatens to plunge the mass of humanity into a disaster. It must be overturned in the struggle for an international socialist program by the world working class.