Trial of far-right German soldier gets under way

Max Linhof

On May 20, the trial of Franco A., a key figure in the right-wing extremist network within Germany’s state apparatus, got underway in the Senate for State Protection at the Frankfurt Regional High Court.

The state prosecutor has accused the 32-year-old first lieutenant in the Bundeswehr (German Army) of preparing an attack that would have posed a serious threat to the state, i.e., a terrorist attack. The indictment charges that the defendant planned to carry out the attack while posing as a refugee.

Franco A. in an interview with RT Germany (screenshot)

Franco A. is also accused of breaching firearms regulations as well as laws controlling military-grade weapons and explosives. He is also charged with fraud and theft. The trial is expected to last until the end of October.

The accused allegedly planned and prepared an attack on the human rights activist Annetta Kahane, a figure targeted by the neo-Nazi far-right. Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (Social Democratic Party—SPD) and the vice president of the German parliament, Claudia Roth (Greens), were allegedly also possible targets.

Franco A. was arrested in early 2017 as he sought to remove a weapon from a secret stash in a disabled toilet at Vienna airport. When his fingerprints were taken, it was discovered that he was leading a double life. He served as an officer in the German-French brigade in Illkirch, Alsace, but was also registered under the name David Benjamin as a Syrian refugee. He was allocated an apartment in Erding in Bavaria and approved for social welfare payments.

More than 1,000 rounds of ammunition and 51 explosive devices were subsequently found in his cellar. The soldier was an expert in weapons and combat techniques. He previously went through an eight-year training course in jungle combat. He learned how to plan commando operations, ambushes and surprise attacks.

Despite the seriousness of the charges, Franco A. is a free man. Germany’s Federal Court overturned the arrest warrant against him in the autumn of 2017.

In 2018, the Frankfurt Regional High Court refused to hear the charges against Franco A. The court justified this by claiming that he had more than seven months to carry out his attack. As he had not done so, there was no adequate basis for the accusations, the court asserted. It took an appeal from the state prosecutor to the Federal Court to compel the Frankfurt Regional High Court to bring the case to trial.

It is significant that the charges avoid referring to the “formation of a terrorist association,” although there is evidence that Franco A. had accomplices. As was the case in the trials of the National Socialist Underground (NSU) and the murderer of politician Walter Lübcke, the myth of a “lone wolf” or “a few bad apples” is being asserted, even though there is a wide-ranging neo-Nazi network in the military and state apparatus with which Franco A. has close ties.

During the first days of the trial, Franco A. behaved with a considerable degree of self-confidence and cynicism. He used the courtroom for right-wing extremist propaganda. He accused German Chancellor Angela Merkel of breaking her pledge of office that requires her to protect her people from harm, because in 2015 she allowed thousands of refugees to enter the country. He said he posed as a refugee to find out first-hand how the asylum system in Germany is being abused. This was the act, he declared, of a “courageous civilian and citizen.”

Franco A. rejected the allegations that he was a right-wing extremist and had planned terrorist attacks. He avoided answering questions about the origins and purpose of his weaponry.

Prior to the trial, Franco A. gave extensive interviews to the New York Times, L e Figaro and the “Russia Today” television channel. During breaks in the trial, he addressed the media.

“He evidently feels very secure,” remarked Annette Ramelsberger, the court reporter for the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Secure in the knowledge, one must add, that his backers in the state apparatus will not hang him out to dry.

The defence also conducted itself extremely aggressively. As the trial began, it described the proceedings as character assassination, a hate campaign and stigmatisation of the accused. Defence lawyer Moritz Schmitt-Fricke elaborated on this position by declaring that the federal government “in a quasi-autocratic manner” let too many refugees into the country and now wished to hold the person to account who had tried to draw attention to this wrong.

The defence sought to counter the prosecutor’s accusation that Franco A. has had “a Volkish-nationalist and racist outlook for several years,” and harbours “a special dislike for people of the Jewish faith.” Toward this end, he presented dozens of statements from family members, friends, acquaintances and former teachers. The accused is cosmopolitan, has an intense sense of justice, is “very conservative, but by no means militant,” they claimed. Without a basic commitment to democracy, he would “never have become an officer in the German Army,” they added.

However, many of the people cited by the defence are themselves from the far-right milieu. And numerous documents attest to Franco A.’s racist and nationalist outlook.

His master’s thesis, which he submitted to the Saint-Cyr French military university in 2014, was rejected on the basis that it was a “radical nationalist, racist appeal.” In it, Franco A. advanced the ideal of a homogeneous people with a single people’s will, to which the individual must subordinate himself. He opposed “mixed marriages” and denounced equality for women on the grounds that it “distorts” the role of the woman and damages the family. He attacked the United Nations’ Human Rights Charter and made openly anti-Semitic statements. He praised British Holocaust denier David Irving and blustered about a global Jewish conspiracy.

Franco A.’s obvious right-wing extremist views were covered up by his German superiors at the time, who promoted his military career.

Franco A.’s practice of documenting his appearances and ideas in pictures and recordings also confirms his right-wing extremist views. Over 33,000 chat messages, videos and audio recordings reveal the internal life of a neo-Nazi. He speaks in monologues about foreigners who want to murder Germans and concludes that he must kill them first. One of his friends calls in a chat message for a nuclear bomb to be used on refugees. Franco A. responds, “Keep note of that for later.”

Among the 129 recordings found on Franco A.’s phone are self-composed songs, radio extracts and speeches and addresses to soldiers that Franco A. intends to deliver one day. In addition, audio memos reveal his anti-Semitic and nationalist views. Extracts from these were read out by the prosecution last week. They included statements such as, “Jews and Germans are not the same people,” and “Hitler stands above everything.”

Franco A. admitted to the court that along with the pistol concealed in Vienna, he possesses three additional high-performance, illegal weapons, but he refused to say where he got them and where they currently are. One of the weapons is a G3 rapid-fire machine gun, which is used by the German army as a standard weapon.

He justified his possession of the weapons by saying he was preparing for a potential crisis, such as a conflict of Western European states with Russia or with Islamic State fighters. For this reason, he said, he joined the South chat group run by the former Special Forces soldier Andre S.

The South chat group is part of the so-called “Hannibal Network,” where dozens of elite soldiers and police officers have gathered to hoard weapons, draft death lists and prepare for “Day X,” on which political opponents are to be rounded up and murdered. Andre S. (alias Hannibal), who built the network, has neither been arrested nor charged. As in the case of Franco A., the Frankfurt Regional High Court found that there was not adequate evidence to support a suspicion of terrorism. The state prosecutor is continuing to consider possible charges.

It also emerged in court that Franco A. used numerous email and telephone identities. He justified this by referring to the prospect of a breakdown in public order.

The fact that Franco A. planned terrorist attacks under the false identity of a refugee is strongly suggested by lists and notes he authored. He wrote, among other things: “Antifa group: have an asylum seeker throw a grenade, then film it;” “blow up the Rothschild Stone in FFM (Frankfurt am Main);” and, “If we wait any longer, then they will have robots, and then it won’t matter if we can win the people to us.”

In court, Franco A. claimed he could no longer remember some of the notes, and he justified others with absurd arguments. He said, for example, that during his school days he was very interested in cinema, and the refugee with a grenade was merely an idea for a film.

Annetta Kahane, on whom Franco A. spied as a potential target, declared in a statement prior to the legal proceedings: “The trial should be understood as an opportunity to uncover armed networks and thoroughly root them out. Unfortunately, after all the experiences of recent years, our expectations are very low.”

In the Munich NSU trial and the Frankfurt trial for the murder of Lübcke, the courts did everything they could to conceal the far-right cliques within the state apparatus. While the immediate perpetrators were punished, their backers in the political establishment, the judiciary, the police and the intelligence agencies remained untouched.

New laws legalize police state operations in Germany (Part 2)

Wolfgang Weber

Germany’s grand coalition government has used the last parliamentary sessions of the legislative period to massively expand the powers of the police and secret services. Largely unnoticed by the public, the Bundestag has passed a total of nine laws and amendments. The first part of this article examined the new laws pertaining to the country’s domestic and foreign intelligence services. The second part deals with the remaining seven laws and law amendments. The final part provides a political assessment.

The new Federal Police Act

Just as Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, is being upgraded into an all-powerful super-intelligence-service, the Federal Police (Bundespolizei) is being transformed into a super police. The corresponding law was passed by the Bundestag on June 10, 2021.

Originally founded after WWII as a strictly border police force, the Federal Police was given “special policing duties” in the interior of the country in the 1990s, especially with regard to rail, shipping and air traffic. Today, with 51,000 employees, it is the largest police authority in Germany. It includes the anti-terrorist special unit GSG-9 and the country’s riot police, which is deployed against demonstrations and other protest actions. It reports directly to the German Interior Ministry.

Headquarters of the BND in Berlin Mitte (Image: Olaf Kosinsky / CC-BY-SA 3.0)

The new law greatly expands the powers of the Federal Police with a smooth transition to empowering intelligence activities. Like the secret services, the Federal Police may now also deploy state trojans—government made spyware—on social media and telecommunications services. What is striking is that the police can do so although the persons affected may have committed no crime, i.e., the police can decide to launch a cyber-attack without a judicial order within the framework of a preliminary investigation being required. In the same way, they can also identify and locate mobile phone SIM cards and communication sources.

The Federal Police is now armed with far-reaching powers of seizure and prosecution to use against foreigners. They are allowed to arrest them inside the country, e. g. on trains or at railway stations, and immediately transfer them to custody pending deportation without a court order. Regarding the population in Germany as a whole, the Federal Police is empowered to ban individual citizens from staying in certain areas and even entire localities, again without any judicial authorisation. From there, it is only a small step to the reintroduction of “protective custody” (Schutzhaft), the arbitrary incarceration without judicial order and control as it was used under the Nazis en masse by the SA, SS and Gestapo against opponents of the regime.

Finally, the law also empowers the Federal Police to transfer data of citizens under surveillance, which it has received via its own cyberattacks or from other intelligence services and state authorities, to the police and intelligence services of other EU states.

In order to close all loopholes in the surveillance and police control of the population, the Bundestag has passed six other laws in addition to the laws dealt with in Part 1 and the above Federal Police Law. All these laws drastically restrict democratic rights.

Law on the Further Development of the Code of Criminal Procedure

According to this law, passed on June 10, 2021, the police and secret services are allowed to conduct searches of apartments at night—a measure previously not permitted. This makes it possible for the police or secret services to surprise people when they are working at night on an open computer that is not protected by a password.

In addition, the scanning of car licence plates in public traffic and their subsequent storage for tracing purposes is now permitted. This opens the path to other uses of this data and its dissemination to other state agencies or right-wing extremist circles within and outside the police authorities.

Copyright Service Providers Act

This law was passed on May 20, 2021. It implements the EU Copyright Directive and obliges all major internet platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, etc., to automatically check all content uploaded with upload filters from August this year. The companies are then obliged to block such content if it violates copyright laws.

Up until now, internet platforms had to check and, when necessary, delete possible illegal content only after receiving concrete evidence of violations. Now platforms must monitor all uploads with suitable filters and automatically delete content presumed to be illegal, without any detailed investigation and/or consultation with the user.

The grand coalition has thus capitulated to pressure from major music labels and corporations which seek to maximise their profits in this manner. At the same time, the new law creates new technical preconditions for authoritarian surveillance measures and censorship of the internet.

Inventory Data Disclosure Act

According to this law of March 26, 2021, telecommunications services and telemedia providers such as WhatsApp, eBay, Facebook, Google or YouTube are obliged to hand over a user’s personal data to the police and secret services. This includes not only passwords, PINs and PUKs, IP addresses, but also data on websites visited, the frequency of such visits, etc.

The Federal Constitutional Court had declared the previous version of this law to be unconstitutional in May 2020, but hardly anything has changed in the new law. Police and intelligence services now only have to give a “grounded” reason for their request, which can include such catch-all categories as “endangering the constitutional democracy” or “aspirations hostile to the constitution.”

Act to Strengthen Security in the Passport, Identity Card and Aliens Document System and eID Act

On November 5, 2020, the obligation to store fingerprints in all identity cards was introduced. The measure was presented as an addition to the biometric data of an ID card holder, which would only be recorded in a decentralised manner. However, six months later, on May 21, 2021, the Electronic Identity Proof (eID) Act followed, legalising the central storage of all biometric data and personal details.

This law initially allows all biometric data and a person's signature to be transferred to a mobile device such as a smartphone. This was also presented as a “boon for the user” and facilitate the digitalisation of state administration. However, data protection experts emphasise that this data would thus be accessible to the secret services and police authorities via the insertion of spyware.

At the last minute before the law was passed, the grand coalition went even further: an amendment allows Germany’s individual states to collect all this eID data in central state databases—a prerequisite for eventually transferring it to a national database and an EU data centre.

Law on the Further Development of the Central Register of Foreigners

Data centralisation and surveillance take on a particularly perfidious character with this law, which was passed in its third reading on June 9 and still has to pass Germany’s second house, the Bundesrat.

Since 2016, all personal data, such as name, date of birth, date of entry, vaccination status, and biometric data such as photos and fingerprints of 11.4 million people have been stored in the Central Register of Foreigners (AZR). Of this total, 1.8 million are persons seeking protection in Germany from persecution and war. The data storage, including fingerprints, also applies to children from the age of six.

Now all of this information is being “developed further” by storing in complete length all of an asylum seeker’s documents—his or her application, transcripts of interrogations, court decisions. These documents include very private and often intimate information, e.g. on sexual orientation, political views, state of health, etc. The data from the AZR is then available at the push of a button to hundreds of authorities, first and foremost the secret services and the federal police, but also employment agencies, social and youth welfare offices and registration authorities. Until now, the passing on of such information was “only” possible upon request.

According to the government, the aim of the law is to massively speed up the identification and deportation of “undesired” foreigners and refugees by coordinating the activities of all state authorities.

Many human rights organisations, including Pro Asyl and Médecins Sans Frontières, have protested against this inhumane practice, which is reminiscent of the registration and biometric measurement of Jews, Sinti and Roma, disabled people and other minorities persecuted by the Nazis. They have urgently warned that such confidential data thus becomes virtually public and can be used to expose refugees to the propaganda and persecution of far-right networks in Germany or, in the case of deportation, the authorities of their home country.

A conspiracy of all parties represented in the Bundestag

Thirty years after the reunification of Germany and the reintroduction of capitalism in East Germany were celebrated as triumphs for “freedom” and “democracy,” these new laws have created the formal legal basis for a surveillance and police state that makes the activities of the GDR’s Stasi and judiciary look amateur in comparison.

The government led by Angela Merkel was able to rely not only on the support of the coalition parties—the CDU, CSU and SPD, but on an alliance of all parties represented in the Bundestag, from the far right Alternative for Germany to the Greens and the Left Party.

Notwithstanding occasional “critical” comments, the Greens and the Left Party also support the strengthening of the armed state apparatus. This explains why the drafting and passing of the laws have taken place without a murmur. There were no appearances on TV talk shows to oppose the laws and no protest demonstrations, as had taken place a few years ago against the new tougher state police laws or the revamped BND law. Instead, there was only deafening silence.

This is not because of any decline of public opposition. On the contrary. Yet in the past the Greens and the Left Party had partly supported protests against repressive laws in order to keep opposition under control and steer it into the dead end of appeals directed to the Federal Constitutional Court. Today these same parties are fully integrated into government policy and the state apparatus.

The Greens are involved in 11 and the Left Party in three of Germany’s separate 16 state governments. In Baden-Württemberg and Thuringia, these parties fill the post of state premier. They could have easily defeated the laws by vetoing them in Germany’s second chamber, the Bundesrat. Nothing of the sort happened. In the event of becoming part of the next federal government following this year’s federal election, the Greens and the Left Party will do nothing to abolish these laws or disband the secret services. The Greens go so far as to explicitly advocate the use of state trojans in their election manifesto.

In Germany’s leading media outlets there have been hardly any reports or critical comments about the dismantling of basic democratic rights associated with the new laws. The journalist Heribert Prantl, who used to make a name for himself by commenting on such developments, now proposes the complete abolition of the post war separation of police and secret services. In his regular column in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Prantl writes: “I advocate integrating the Verfassungsschutz into the police. The police have state security departments; that’s where the Verfassungsschutz belongs.” If that would be implemented, then it remains only to “integrate” the names as well into Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo).

The working class is facing a veritable conspiracy of all the parties represented in the Bundestag, the media and the state apparatus, working towards the establishment of a dictatorial regime. What is driving them to do this?

As is the case across the globe, the profound class divisions between the richest families and the working population has penetrated the consciousness of broad strata of the population in Germany. The 90,000 deaths in Germany caused by the official COVID-19 pandemic policy of “profits before life,” the catastrophic social consequences of the pandemic for broad, mainly already poor strata of the population, the announcement of hundreds of thousands of layoffs and plant closures in many industries are rapidly fermenting opposition and anger directed against the all-party coalition government and the capitalist profit system.

According to a February poll by the Civey polling institute, only 31 percent of respondents were satisfied with political developments in Germany, while 53 percent were somewhat or very dissatisfied. A month earlier, 38 percent had given a positive verdict and 45 percent a negative one.

The results are also revealing when respondents were asked what were the most important social and political problems. Just 11 percent replied that immigration was the most important problem, while 9 percent declared it was domestic security. On the other hand, 33 percent regarded the threat to life and health and the danger of poverty, above all of poverty in old-age, to be the most pressing problems, while 23 percent responded with unemployment or the danger of losing one’s job.

Such results stand in sharp contrast to the AfD-type xenophobic propaganda employed by the German government to justify its police and secret service laws. The poll figures indicate that profound social upheavals are on the agenda.

For 75 years, the German bourgeoisie was able to suppress the class struggle with the help of the social democratic trade unions, the SPD, the East German Stalinist bureaucracy and the Left Party. This period is now over. In the face of the ruthless imposition of the profit interests of a tiny minority of billionaires and millionaires against the vital interests of millions, strikes, mass protests and revolutionary struggles by the working class are breaking out all over the world.

In Germany, as in all other countries in Europe and around the world, the ruling class is determined to defend its profit system and immense wealth with the use of force, intensified exploitation, war and dictatorship. But it confronts opposition from a population in which the memory of two world wars commenced by the German bourgeoisie and the barbaric Nazi dictatorship is deeply rooted.

Surge in homelessness underway with ending of the evictions ban for renters

Barry Mason

Following the lifting of the ban on bailiff-led evictions by the UK Conservative government on May 31, a surge in the numbers of homeless is a certainty.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson brought in the ban on evictions at the beginning of the pandemic, seeking to placate the growing anger of workers facing the threat of losing their homes as a result of being laid off or on reduced pay after being furloughed.

A homeless person sleeping on Euston Road in London last winter (credit: WSWS)

Homelessness has been on the increase year on year in England for years. Just before the pandemic, the numbers of homeless households increased again, with the annual report by homeless charity Crisis noting that it had shot up from 207,600 in 2018 to over 219,000 at the end of 2019.

The lifting of the eviction ban, delayed several times, was central to the government’s determination to have no further lockdowns and reopen the economy in two weeks’ time on July 19—regardless of the resurgence of the pandemic through the Delta variant.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation released a survey the same day as the lifting of the ban, which showed around 400,000 renting households (representing five percent of renters) had already been served an eviction notice, or been told they may be evicted, The survey revealed that in addition around 450,000 households were currently in rent arrears, of which 18 percent had arrears of more than four months. Landlords have to give only four weeks’ notice of eviction to tenants more than four months in arrears of rent. Around one million renters (11 percent of the total), half being families with children were worried about being evicted in the coming three months, the survey found.

Workers face other pressures which will intensify an already precarious situation. The government furlough, job retention scheme which provided 80 percent of the wages (up to a maximum of £2,500) of workers laid off during the pandemic is due to finish September 30. From July 1, the state will pay just 70 percent of wages up to £2,187.50, with employers being asked to pay the rest, adding to workers insecurity, with employers no doubt considering further layoffs as a result.

In addition, the £20 a week upgrading of the Universal Credit welfare payment paid in the course of the pandemic will also end in September.

Despite the ban on evictions during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, staggering numbers of people were still made homeless. An Observer newspaper analysis published June 13 found that around 130,000 households became homeless over that period. The newspaper analysed government data, from around 70 percent of local authorities, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. It showed 132,362 households were owed “relief duty”, meaning they were assessed as already homeless. A further 106,000 were assessed as being owed “prevention duty” meaning while not legally homeless they were at risk of being so.

Housing charity Shelter chief executive, Polly Neate, said of the figure, “The ban didn’t stop tens of thousands from facing homelessness. During the pandemic, the most common triggers for homelessness were no longer being able to stay with friends or family, losing a private tenancy, and domestic abuse.”

A spokesperson from the Acorn tenants’ union told the newspaper, “The government’s commitment to tackling the crisis of homelessness has repeatedly been shown to exist only in word and not in action… Homelessness isn’t an unavoidable natural phenomenon: it can be solved if the political will exists to do so.”

Even worse levels of homelessness are on the horizon. Earlier this year a survey by housing charity Shelter revealed over six million adults, one in seven, feared becoming homeless. Adults renting in the private sector predominated with over a quarter fearing loss of their home. In addition, half of private renters experienced mental stress about their housing situation.

Shelter found that “24% of private renters have had to borrow money to pay their rent, 18% have cut back on food or skipped meals to pay their rent, 12% have cut back on heating their home to pay their rent.”

According to debt counselling charity, StepChange, a black hole of rent arrears to the tune of £360 million has been built up during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. It has called on the government to provide grants and interest free loans to tenants to avoid a tsunami of evictions.

Writing just prior to the lifting of the eviction ban, StepChange CEO, Phil Andrew stated, 'The rental eviction suspension was the last lifeline for many renters, who have been among the groups worst hit by the pandemic. The number of private renters in arrears has doubled since the start of the pandemic to 460,000 people. With evictions now resuming, many will be facing an uncertain future without additional financial support.

“Support from Government, like furlough and benefit uplifts, has been important in helping people through the pandemic, but not sufficient to keep many renters out of arrears. There are clear gaps in support which have seen a £360m black hole of rent debt build up over the course of the pandemic.”

As a result of the financial hit, landlords are concerned over the level of rent arrears built up over the course of the pandemic. The National Residential Landlords Association is calling on the government to establish a £200 million to help tenants in rent arrears. Chief executive of the landlords' association, Ben Beadle, spoke out on the scale of tenants in arears in comments to the parliamentary Work and Pensions Committee on June 9. He said, “Research shows 82 percent of renters are in arrears who were not in arrears before the pandemic. Many of these [people] are ineligible for housing allowance or discretionary payments.

“There is nothing really there [in funding terms] for people who haven’t been in arrears before but need a short, sharp injection of funds to help them sustain their tenancy, which is in the interests of everyone frankly.”

With the virus in no way under control-- new infections were above 20,000 in six out of seven days last week-- Scotland’s tenant’s union Living Rent raised the health implications of forcing vast numbers of people out of their homes. The organisation told Scottish Housing News last month, “Throughout the past fifteen months, our homes have been our frontline defence against the virus. Preventing eviction therefore remains of the utmost importance to ensure that tenants are not forced from their homes both in the context of a public health emergency, and the uncertain long-term economic consequences we face in recovery.”

Spain’s PSOE-Podemos government raises electricity prices

Santiago Guillén

The Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government has passed a new measure to increase electricity prices, already among the highest in Europe. It represents a new attack on the conditions of the working class, taking place amid a wave of austerity and anti-working class measures.

The measure was introduced days before European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen travelled to Madrid to meet with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to approve Spain’s plan to use nearly €70 billion ($85 billion) in grant money. The electricity hike is just the first of many, including new pension reform to extend the retirement age and a labour reform to cut wages and job security.

New electricity rates approved by the PSOE-Podemos government came into effect in June, which will mean a significant and immediate rise in the price of electricity for 11 million households.

Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez (PSOE), second left, walks next to Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias, second right, and First Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo, left, at the Moncloa Palace in Madrid, Spain, Tuesday, Jan. 14 2020. (Image Credit: AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

The regulated rate is the normal one among working class families, usually with less than 10 kW of contracted power. An estimated 75 percent of households have this tariff, which is normally cheaper than the free-market price. This rate also allows the poorest sectors of the population to apply for the social bonus, a discount on the bill of 25 to 40 percent for retirees, low-income, laid-off or unemployed workers, or other so-called vulnerable consumers.

The new rates, however, establish three time slots:

• The most expensive at rush hour, from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
• The cheapest at off-peak hours, from 00:00-08:00 plus weekends and holidays.
• Flat hours, covering the rest.

Thus, low-cost rates are only in the middle of the night, at dawn and on weekends. The government claims absurdly that it is “promoting energy saving” by moving consumption to lower-priced hours.

Podemos’ Consumer Affairs Minister and leader of the Stalinist-led United Left, Alberto Garzón, cynically justified the measure, saying it would make the public realize “that with small actions you can save enough euros per month by taking decisions that you were previously unaware of.”

Garzón’s argument is a patent fraud. Workers cannot cook, use washing machines and dishwashers, watch television and shower only in the middle of the night. Dressed up an empty “ecological” rhetoric, it is a transparent attack on the working class.

In winter, the situation will be even worse, as the new cost structure will pressure workers to heat their houses only at dawn. The consumer association FACUA declared that “asking for electricity consumption to be shifted to dawn is degrading for the most vulnerable consumers.”

The electricity rate hike marks a new milestone in the unbridled rise of electricity prices. In the first five months of 2021, an average consumer’s electricity bills rose 22 percent compared to the same period in 2020. April 2021 saw the highest prices in the last 10 years; between March and May, average receipt increased from 63.59 to 75.92 euros.

These prices are the result of a cartel of electricity companies consisting of Naturgy, Endesa and Iberdrola, controlling up to 90 percent of the electricity market. In setting electricity prices, they benefit from the so-called “marginalist” system that bases the price of electricity on the cost of the most expensive method of producing electricity. Thus, electricity from higher-cost, combined-cycle facilities set market prices for all electricity, though those with cheaper production costs (nuclear, wind, hydroelectric) represent a higher percentage of the total electricity generated.

Electricity prices from combined-cycle power facilities is more expensive because they consume natural gas and must pay “emission rights” for each ton of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere. These emission rights are limited by country but transferable in a market for the purchase and sale of rights that is subject to strong speculative pressures that push up prices. In Spain, in one year, emission rights prices have surged from 27 to 58 euros.

In this way, speculators earn ever more money by trading in emission rights. This first boosts prices for electricity generated by pollution-producing electric plants; this then sets the average price, though it only represents a minority of the electricity generated. Energy companies can then reap vast profits.

Due to both such speculation and the PSOE-Podemos government’s rate hike, the price of the cheapest hours of electricity in June 2021 are higher than the peak-hours price a year ago. Current peak-hours prices are double that of a year ago. June 2021 saw Spain’s highest electricity prices ever.

Moreover, Naturgy, Endesa, Repsol and Iberdrola are expected to profit massively from the €140 billion EU bailout fund adopted during the pandemic. Of this amount, 37 percent will be allocated to the so-called “ecological transition.” The “big four” energy firms have proposed more than 400 projects, valued at €60 billion euros. This is almost half Spain’s part of the EU bailout fund.

The burden of this enrichment of the financial oligarchy falls on hundreds of thousands of working families and, even worse, nearly four million unemployed and more than half a million workers subject to temporary redundancy schemes. According to government statistics, 4.5 million people suffer from energy poverty, i.e., cannot cover the cost of their basic energy needs. This leads to over 7,100 deaths a year, more than deaths from traffic accidents.

With a social crisis looming if electricity prices continue to escalate, the PSOE-Podemos government has temporarily cut the part of VAT paid on the electricity bill from 21 percent to 10 percent, although only temporarily, until December. In other words, the PSOE and Podemos intervened not to rein in the profits of the financial oligarchy, but to cut state revenues.

Even then, the measure is insufficient. It will only mean an average reduction of €7 per bill, when only in June the year-on-year increase was €28, with price increases set to continue.

Generous gifts provided to energy companies at workers’ expense would not have been possible without the collaboration of Podemos and the trade unions. Just before the last general elections of 2019, Podemos Tweeted: “We will lower electricity bills by firming up the big electricity companies.” Minister Garzón said, “Thousands of families will not be able to maintain their homes at adequate temperatures, which will have a serious impact on the health of those who have the least. No decent government should tolerate this.”

In reality, Podemos is now part of an “indecent” government, to use Garzón’s own terms.

The trade unions, Comisiones Obreras (CCOO), the General Union of Labour (UGT) and the General Confederation of Workers (CGT) have not called even token strikes or protests. CCOO and UGT sit in regional and national commissions discussing how to use the EU bailouts set to enrich the energy conglomerates. The unions also work with the PSOE-Podemos government to design pension cuts and labour reforms—austerity policies they have sworn Brussels that they will impose.

Ethiopia wracked by internal war and inter-state conflict as famine rages in Tigray

Jean Shaoul

On June 28, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced a unilateral ceasefire in Tigray. This was a stark reversal of his declaration late November that he had defeated the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in a three week-long military campaign.

He has pulled his federal forces out of Mekelle, the capital of Tigray province, one of Ethiopia’s semi-autonomous, ethnically defined provinces in the north of the country, as well as other towns in the region, ahead of advancing Tigrayan fighters. It follows the ousting of his forces from Mekelle by TPLF fighters.

In this Wednesday, May 5, 2021 file photo, Tigrayan women Tarik, 60, center, and Meresaeta, left, who fled from the town of Samre, roast coffee beans over a wood stove in a classroom where they now live at the Hadnet General Secondary School which has become a makeshift home to thousands displaced by the conflict, in Mekele, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)

Abiy said his army units were ambushed and “massacred” while passing through villages, but he denied claims that his military had been defeated as “a lie.” Nevertheless, he added, conditions had become unbearable for his troops. He claimed that his government had voluntarily withdrawn its forces in a unilateral cease-fire for humanitarian reasons, to allow crops to be planted.

Getachew Reda, a TPLF executive member, contradicted him saying that Ethiopian forces had capitulated as Tigrayan forces captured military assets, killed several hundred men and took thousands of prisoners of war. On Friday, to reinforce his point and humiliate Abiy, thousands of Ethiopian prisoners of war were paraded through Mekelle amid cheering crowds as they were taken to a nearby prison.

Reda accused the Ethiopian troops of robbing banks, looting food aid and cutting off electricity and telecommunications as they retreated.

Abiy’s loss of Mekelle marks a turning point in a war that has plunged Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous country of 112 million people, into chaos, amid escalating ethnic conflicts around the country. It threatens to destabilize the wider Horn of Africa region, in which Ethiopia has long acted as the anchor state on behalf of US imperialism.

Such a defeat for one of Africa’s most powerful armies is a major blow to Abiy’s authority. Washington’s man staked everything on what he declared would be a brief, decisive campaign to bring the restive Tigray region under control. His eight-month long military campaign has been a catastrophe as the conflict became increasingly bitter and fierce, widening to encompass drone support from the United Arab Emirates from its base in Djibouti, neighbouring Eritrean forces in the east and Amhara provincial forces in the west fighting alongside Ethiopian federal troops.

With more than half of Ethiopia’s army based in Tigray, a legacy of the 20-year-long war with Eritrea, Abiy could not rely on the military’s support and sacked his army chief, head of intelligence and foreign minister days after the fighting began and drew down Ethiopia’s peacekeeping forces in Somalia.

There have been numerous reports of wanton damage to buildings, property, and farms, with Tigrayans subject to massacres and sexual violence at the hands of the Eritrean and Amhara militias and left to starve. This served to bolster support for the TPLF, intensify secessionist demands in Tigray and drive thousands of young Tigrayans to take up arms. The majority of Tigrayans have been without electricity, communications and other essential services for the last week and are in desperate need of emergency food supplies.

While Abiy had for months denied that Eritrea had sent its soldiers to support his army in Tigray, he finally admitted this in March when he sought to place responsibility for atrocities on Eritrean forces. Eritrean troops have remained in Tigray, despite Abiy’s claim that Eritrea had agreed to withdraw them.

On Friday, Ramesh Rajasingham, the UN's acting humanitarian aid chief, told a Security Council meeting that the situation in Tigray had deteriorated dramatically and the region was experiencing “the worst famine situation we have seen in decades.” More than 90 percent of Tigray’s last crop harvest and 80 percent of its livestock have been looted or destroyed and planting for the next harvest has been seriously reduced by the fighting.

More than 400,000 face famine, although the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) says the number facing starvation is closer to 900,000. Another 5.2 million are at “emergency” or “crisis” levels.

The UN says that nearly two million of Tigray’s six million people have been displaced, with 70,000 fleeing to neighbouring Sudan. International aid agencies say their work in Tigray has been impeded because the Ethiopian federal government had cut electricity, internet and phone lines to the region, and have warned of a pending humanitarian catastrophe.

With several key bridges destroyed, little aid is entering the region, while troops along Tigray’s western border with the Amhara region had prevented food trucks from entering the province. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the UN, said that according to reports she had heard, getting aid into Tigray is now “more difficult” than it was a week ago, which is “not an indication of a humanitarian cease-fire, but of a siege.”

Fighting has continued between Tigrayan and Eritrean forces in north-western Tigray, close to the towns of Badme and Shiraro, which both Tigray and Eritrea claim as their own, with Tigrayan leaders threatening to invade the Amhara region of Ethiopia.

Abiy, a former military intelligence officer and an Oromo, took office in February 2018 as ethnic tensions mounted across the country, incited by the elites in a bid to prevent a unified opposition to their economic programme that had benefited the wealthy at the expense of the great mass of the population.

Touted as a “reformer” and given the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the 20-year-long war with Eritrea one year later, Abiy disbanded the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), a coalition of several militia groups and parties dominated by the TPLF. He replaced the EPRDF with his Prosperity Party (PP) which TPLF refused to join. Abiy retired Tigrayan military and government officials, launched corruption charges against some of their members and announced plans for the wholesale privatisation of the state-owned economy and liberalisation of the banks.

Abiy launched his murderous “law-and-order” operation against the TPLF-run regional government of Tigray last November in response to what he claimed was an attack on an army compound. That move followed the federal government’s efforts to bypass the TPLF after it rejected Abiy’s decision to postpone the 2020 elections due to the pandemic and went ahead with its own elections in September.

The military conflict in Tigray takes place amid ethnic strife and inter-communal violence across many parts of the country, with large swathes of Benishangul-Gumuz, Afar, Somali, Oromia, Amhara and the Southern Region under “Command Posts,” —in effect military rule. This meant that around 18 percent of the country, 102 out of the 547 parliamentary seats, were unable to vote in last month’s twice-postponed parliamentary elections. In two regions, Somali and Harar, polling had to be postponed until September.

The elections met few of the most basic standards for a credible vote and the results have yet to be announced. It was expected that Abiy and his Prosperity Party would win at the federal level and in most regions, enabling him to claim a popular mandate for his policies, including greater centralisation of authority in Addis Ababa, the capital.

The violent ethnic conflicts have prompted fears that Ethiopia will withdraw its more than 5,000 troops from the United Nation’s peacekeeping mission in Abyei—the highly contested region along the Sudan-South Sudan border at the heart of the tensions between the two countries—creating a security vacuum that could spark renewed fighting.

Abiy, who has lost his shine in Washington, is coming under increasing pressure over Ethiopia’s filling of its massive hydropower dam on the Nile, known as the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which both Egypt and Sudan oppose, without a binding agreement on how the water can be shared. The two downstream countries that rely on the Nile for much of their fresh water oppose any unilateral damming that may affect the river’s flow. The UN’s Security Council is set to discuss the issue this week.

Anti-Bolsonaro protests sweep Brazil as opposition draws up 23 charges of impeachment

Miguel Andrade

An estimated 800,000 Brazilians were back in the streets this Saturday. For the third time in five weeks there were demonstrations in over 300 cities across the country to oppose the herd immunity policy of Brazil’s fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro and the growth of poverty, unemployment and social inequality resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic policies of the country’s ruling class.

The country has so far seen the second worst death toll in the world—trailing only the United States—with 525,000 COVID-19 fatalities. Daily deaths remain at 2,000. A slow vaccination rollout, with only 14 percent of the population fully immunized, the reopening of schools and the circulation of the Delta variant mean the country is now facing a third surge of the virus. Experts predict that the death toll may yet double before immunization reaches the bulk of the population.

The wide participation in the demonstrations has thrown the Brazilian ruling class into a deep crisis. This Saturday’s marches had been moved up from their original planned date of July 24 as their organizers, led by the Workers Party (PT), scramble to avoid the recent outpouring of opposition provoking an upsurge in the class struggle.

People march in a protest against the government's response in combating COVID-19, demanding the impeachment of President Jair Bolsonaro, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Saturday, May 29, 2021. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)

The PT, its affiliated unions and allies in the pseudo-left tried to turn the demonstrations into a means of pressuring House Speaker Arthur Lira, a close ally of Bolsonaro elected with support of PT deputies, into accepting a new “super” impeachment petition presented on Wednesday with the support of extreme right-wing former Bolsonaro supporters.

It lists 23 impeachable offenses committed by Bolsonaro previously included separately in another 120 former petitions thus far ignored by the speaker. Organizers themselves admit that there is nothing new listed in the new petition, and that the most significant new development is the cobbling together of an alliance between the PT, the unions, the pseudo-left and the far-right.

Among the reactionary forces the PT and its allies are attempting to rehabilitate with its impeachment petition against Bolsonaro are dissident wings of the party that elected him, the Social Liberal Party (PSL) represented by the government’s former House leader Joice Hasselmann and the Koch brother stooges of the Free Brazil Movement (MBL), which spearheaded the ultra-right demonstrations of 2015 and 2016 against the PT’s former president Dilma Rousseff.

The right-wing, pro-capitalist character of the petition is made clear from the outset. The list of 23 crimes starts with “putting at risk the country’s neutrality,” a message for giant foreign trade lobbies worried about Bolsonaro’s offensive against China, which included attempts to ban Huawei from the country’s multibillion-dollar 5G market and his enthusiastic promotion of the “Wuhan lab leak” lie.

When the COVID-19 pandemic is referred to, it is mentioned under “crimes against the internal security” of Brazil, an essentially right-wing framework that sees mass death and sickness above all as a threat to the stability of Brazilian capitalism.

Accordingly, the new demonstrations saw banners of the PSL and the PSDB, the traditional party of the Brazilian right, as well as MBL leaders encouraging their supporters to attend. In Rio de Janeiro, state Congress minority leader Marcelo Freixo wore a green-and-yellow t-shirt, proclaiming that demonstrators had to “reclaim the national colors” from the fascists. This was also the motto of the speech given by Guilherme Boulos of the pseudo-left Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL) in São Paulo, where almost one kilometer of the iconic Paulista Avenue was filled with demonstrators.

Organizers of the “super” impeachment petition admit that its political impulse is drawn from recent revelations of corruption in the negotiations for COVID-19 vaccines, which have left former Bolsonaro loyalists in Congress in disarray.

The charlatan Guilherme Boulos, who is always among the first to articulate a convenient pretext for an alliance with the ultra-right, claimed on the day of the protests that the “corruption cases bring a real possibility of impeachment because they create a crisis in Bolsonaro’s own political base.” In the same fashion, Workers Party president Gleisi Hoffmann claimed the presence of the PSDB in the demonstrations “meant the movement for the impeachment is growing.”

The multimillion-dollar corruption scandal surfaced in late June, when the bulk of the petition had already been written and was being prepared for a ceremonial delivery to the House on July 24.

It was exposed when Deputy Luis Miranda of the ultra-right Democrats (DEM) party told the press on June 23 that he had personally warned the president about pressures being made on his brother, a civil servant who headed the Health Ministry’s Imports Department, to ignore a number of irregularities in a deal with the makers of the Indian Covaxin vaccine.

Miranda declared that facts he knew would “bring down the Republic.” He and his brother were immediately summoned to testify before the Senate’s Commission of Inquiry (CPI) into the pandemic, installed at the behest of the opposition. On the day of his testimony, Miranda staged a stunt, wearing a bulletproof vest over his jacket. He accused the government leader in the House, Ricardo Barros, of leading a corruption scheme, and a lobbyist connected to him of offering him six cents on every dollar of the US$320 million deal to stay quiet. He claimed to have warned Bolsonaro about the corruption, and that Bolsonaro told him he knew the schemes were sponsored by Barros. Further charges would be made that other men connected to Barros within the ministry had demanded one dollar in kickbacks for every AstraZeneca dose in another deal.

It is still not clear what motivated Miranda, a former Bolsonaro enthusiast, to expose information he claimed could “bring down the Republic.” However, the case reveals the extent of the crisis engulfing the Brazilian ruling class.

Miranda now joins a host of ultra-right figures opposing Bolsonaro who are being offered “democratic” credentials by the PT and the pseudo-left. Among them, there are a number of dissident generals, the most prominent of which is Bolsonaro’s former government secretary, Carlos Alberto dos Santos Cruz, who has made repeated warnings that Bolsonaro will follow the example of Donald Trump and provoke violence in an attempt to overturn a possible defeat in the 2022 elections.

The aim of this “broad front” against Bolsonaro is to convince Brazilian workers that the rise of Bolsonaro and the reemergence at the center of political life of the Armed Forces, which imposed a two-decade dictatorship ending in 1985, is a historical aberration. Life can return to normal, they claim, if only Bolsonaro is ousted by his former political sponsors, and they ally themselves with the PT.

The corruption charges have served a larger political goal: that of eclipsing Bolsonaro’s “herd immunity” policy, both in the CPI’s probe and in the wider public debate. The demands of the protest organizers, for vaccinations, poverty relief schemes and impeachment, accept the 2,000 daily COVID-19 deaths as inevitable, as vaccines are not available. They also propose no attempt to contain the pandemic. As WHO officials and health experts internationally have warned, and recent experience of countries with much higher vaccinations rates, such as Britain, Israel, Chile and the United States, have demonstrated, vaccinations alone cannot control the spread of the virus.

But a direct indictment of Bolsonaro’s herd immunity policy would expose the demonstrations’ organizers themselves, as all the Socialist, Social-Democratic, Communist and Workers Party governors they support, in collaboration with the unions they control, have pushed teachers, along with healthcare, transport, oil and factory workers, back into unsafe workplaces in state after state, company after company, regardless of infection rates.

The invaluable testimony by a host of leading scientists before the CPI, detailing with a number of complex models how hundreds of thousands of deaths could have been avoided with lockdowns and contact tracing, is discarded by framing the principal charge against Bolsonaro as corruption.

Not only are state governors and mayors let off the hook, but the much more powerful pandemic profiteers who made billions on the stock markets with the “quantitative easing” policies of central banks the world over, and the billionaire stockholders of giant corporations profiting from deadly working conditions are all spared. The corrupt Bolsonaro and his mobster House leader are treated as an “accident of history,” as put by numerous PT allies, from the pseudo-left’s standard-bearer Marcelo Freixo to former right-wing Speaker Rodrigo Maia.

The CPI’s rapporteur, Senator Randolfe Rodrigues, summed up the Covaxin scandal as revealing that Bolsonaro’s handling of the pandemic was, ultimately, “not ideological, but the same old corruption.” In other words, the herd immunity policy was not an expression of the capitalist crisis and warrants nothing more than a call to the police. “It was not denialism, it was corruption” became one of the main slogans on posters distributed to demonstrators on Saturday.

Brazilian workers must firmly reject the attempt to channel their struggles behind dissident factions of the ruling class. Bolsonaro is responding to the growth of social opposition with the preparation of an electoral coup based on false claims that the Brazilian electoral system is fraudulent. On Thursday, after meeting CIA director Willian Burns in the presidential palace, he claimed that unnamed “foreign powers” were behind plans to destabilize Brazil, an echo of the Cold War pretexts for the CIA-backed coup of 1964.