LIVING BEYOND THE WORLD'S IMAGINATION

2 Sept 2021

Mélenchon, French unions defend their support for anti-vaccine protests

Will Morrow

In recent days, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of Unsubmissive France (La France Insoumise—LFI), and Philippe Martinez, the leader of the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) trade unions, have issued statements defending their support for the right-wing campaign against mandatory vaccination and the Macron government’s “health pass.”

Anti-vaccine protesters march during a rally in Strasbourg, Saturday, July 17, 2021. (AP Photo/Jean-Francois Badias)

The “health pass” restricts access to public places to individuals who have been fully vaccinated, have recently contracted and recovered from the virus, or can provide a negative test within the previous 72 hours (recently increased from 48). It effectively legally enforces vaccination, because negative testing will be prohibitively expensive under a reactionary decision to end free tests.

The Socialist Equality Party supports mandatory vaccination, which is an essential component of the eradication of the coronavirus. We oppose Macron’s policy as being insufficient, and not a genuine struggle to eradicate the virus. Macron is using the introduction of mandatory vaccination of the adult population as a justification for a complete ending of social distancing measures, including the reopening of schools this week and of all non-essential workplaces.

Only 65.5 percent of the French population has been fully vaccinated, while daily cases number in the tens of thousands. The premature ending of social distancing measures has already produced an average of 100 deaths per day over the past week, and is preparing an even more terrible wave of deaths. Macron’s policy is not driven by a scientifically-guided strategy of ending the pandemic and saving lives, but of preserving the profits of French corporations and the wealth of the super-rich.

The opposition of LFI and the trade unions to Macron’s law, however, has been from the right, not the left. They have given their backing to the protest movement against the “health pass” that has been dominated and politically led from the outset by the extreme right. They adopt the same reactionary arguments of the extreme right: that the introduction of mandatory vaccination is an attack on personal liberties.

Mélenchon spoke on Sunday, August 29, at the LFI Summer School, where he formally launched his campaign for the 2022 presidential elections. He declared that Macron’s response to the pandemic was a “sum of stupidities, with a complete inefficiency and an absolute brutality… We are opposed to the ‘health pass,’ because it is an attack on the liberty of the world of labour, of society, of human relations.”

Notwithstanding his reference to the “world of labour,” Melenchon’s position toward vaccination is indistinguishable from the line of the far right. The WSWS answered these reactionary arguments in its Perspective article of July 29:

The safeguarding of public health in a mass society depends on a whole host of regulations: the wearing of seatbelts and speed limits, proscriptions against drunk driving and smoking in public places, maximum occupancies for buildings, rules for handicapped parking and many other measures… It is always the most right-wing forces that oppose the protection of social rights by raising the banner of “individual rights,” the most notorious of which is the “right of profit.”
There is nothing in the least progressive about the campaign against “vaccine mandates.” It is based on appeals to ignorance, fear and anti-scientific prejudice. Those who are campaigning against vaccinations by claiming they are an intolerable violation of personal liberty are peddling anarchism and libertarianism, which has nothing in common with the interests of the working class.

Mélenchon’s reference to “liberties” presents the question of vaccination as though it were an individual democratic “right” to infect others with a deadly virus. The same reasoning could be employed to oppose lockdowns, contact tracing, and a host of other measures that involve restrictions of individual movement and are scientifically required in order to combat the virus and protect the lives of the working class. It should be rejected by workers and youth with contempt.

In fact, these are the arguments that are explicitly made by the far right. Mélenchon’s speech therefore had a second aim: of covering up the fact that he is aligned with the most extreme right-wing political forces, such as Marion Marechal Le Pen and the Patriots leader Florian Philippot, in their campaign against mandatory vaccination.

“We are fed up, when we go to protest, of having to listen to the lessons in good will from one side, and from the other, of supposedly supporting the extreme right and anti-Semites, whose actions and statements are nonsense,” he said. “We have had enough of the far-right and anti-Semites [at the protests]. Get out of our demonstrations! Keep your posters for yourselves!”

This is a reference to repeated instances involving far-right protesters being photographed at the demonstrations holding signs with fascist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, which have revolted broad sections of the population. Protesters have worn the Star of David in an attempt to equate mass vaccination with the Holocaust, while there have been repeated acts of aggression against coronavirus testing stations and vaccination centres.

Mélenchon then pledged to hold further demonstrations with anyone opposed to Macron’s law:

We want to be able to assemble with all those who wish to to say, “no,” to the “health pass,” without accepting their ravings. That is why I am asking the workers’ movement and associations to enter the fray, and allow us to form protected sections of the protest, free of prejudices, where anyone may come whatever their religion, whatever their political views, to defend the liberty of all the French… Do not let the far right take the head of these protests.

But if the far right has been at “the head” of the protests, it is because they have always been based on a right-wing opposition to Macron. Far-right forces have campaigned against the “health pass” by opposing even the most limited social distancing restrictions and the argument that the virus must be allowed to spread unhindered.

Mélenchon, like pseudo-left organisations such as the New Anti-capitalist Party and Revolution Permanente, provides them with a “popular” cover by presenting what is a right-wing movement as a left-wing workers’ movement that has inexplicably been “captured” or infiltrated by the far right. Thus, they demand that the trade unions, which have enforced Macron’s “herd immunity” policy and opposed any strikes against the reopening of schools and workplaces in unsafe conditions, more openly participate in the right-wing protests.

At the same time, Mélenchon and his LFI colleagues, like Francois Ruffin, continually downplay the dangers presented by the virus and the necessity of vaccination. While they repeatedly declare that they are personally vaccinated, they insist that this is a purely personal decision. In this way, they seek to deaden consciousness of the dangers posed by the virus, rule out the possibility that it could be eradicated through scientific policies, and effectively defend Macron’s policy of allowing the virus to spread untrammeled.

The same basic argument was made by CGT head Martinez in interviews this week. Asked if the CGT would be participating in the Saturday demonstrations led by the far-right, he replied that “the CGT will not be marching with anti-vaxers who make anti-Semitic statements, who defend unacceptable conspiratorial theories. Our union does not march either with Florian Philippot.”

Yet the union would organise a protest march against the “health pass” next month, he added. He asserted that “everything that is obligatory is not efficient. On this question, the government must convince instead of mandating.” Just as significant as what Martinez said, however was what he did not say: He said nothing about the danger posed by this week’s reopening of schools, nor the fact that the virus is infecting tens of thousands of people per day and killing almost 100—and made clear the union would not launch any campaign against Macron’s policy.

EU plans detention camps for Afghan refugees across Central Asia

Alex Lantier

After the humiliating collapse of the US puppet regime in Afghanistan on August 15, European Union (EU) officials are traveling to the Middle East and Central Asia. As German Interior Minister Heiko Maas and French President Emmanuel Macron meet officials across the region, the EU is earmarking over €1 billion for spending there.

This intervention exposes the hypocrisy of the EU powers’ statements over the US debacle in Afghanistan. They echoed the US media’s demands that the Taliban let Afghans, who helped Washington and the European powers occupy Afghanistan, flee from the Kabul airport. While posturing as defenders of Afghans’ freedom of movement, however, they are working to set up detention camps across Central Asia—in Iran, Pakistan, Turkey and beyond—to imprison Afghans and keep them from seeking asylum in Europe.

Afghan refugees in an Italian Red Cross refugee camp, in Avezzano, Italy, Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

The construction of detention camps to house refugees in neighboring countries was the subject of a special meeting of EU interior ministers on Monday night in Brussels.

The EU’s model in Afghanistan is the vast network of camps built in the Mediterranean to house millions of refugees fleeing the NATO wars in Syrian and Libya since 2011. Beside hundreds of thousands of refugees held in squalid detention camps in Europe like those of Moria in Greece or the Canary Islands in Spain, many more are held in camps in Turkey (3.7 million), Lebanon (1.5 million), Jordan (1.3 million) and Libya. EU-funded camps in Libya, in particular, are infamous for beating, sexually assaulting, murdering refugees or selling them into slavery.

The EU interior ministers summit budgeted €600 million for the upkeep of camps and maintaining good relations with countries in the region detaining Afghan refugees. In 2015, amid rising tensions between Turkey and the EU powers, around 1 million refugees in Turkey were allowed to travel on to Europe. The stated goal of ministers at the Brussels conference this week was to avoid a repeat of such events and to prevent Afghan refugees from arriving in Europe.

Arriving at the summit, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer declared, “It’s very important to accelerate diplomatic efforts. I expect the European Commission, if we agree politically today, to strongly support the neighbouring countries if they take Afghan refugees. … If we act quickly, we won’t repeat 2015.”

Similarly, the Austrian, Danish and Czech interior ministers issued a joint statement before the meeting. They declared: “[T]he most important thing right now is to send the right message into the region: Stay there, and we will support the region to help the people.”

The summit issued a “Statement on the situation in Afghanistan.” It stated, “Based on lessons learned, the EU and its Member States stand determined to act jointly to prevent the recurrence of uncontrolled large-scale illegal migration movements faced in the past …” It proposed diplomatic, construction and police initiatives facilitating the operation of EU detention camps in countries near Afghanistan, such as Iran, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkey.

It continued, “The EU should also strengthen the support to the countries in Afghanistan’s immediate neighborhood to ensure that those in need receive adequate protection primarily in the region. The need for unified and coordinated external but also internal communication is key. Targeted information campaigns should be launched to combat the narratives used by smugglers, including in the on-line environment, which encourage people to embark on dangerous and illegal journeys towards Europe.”

The statement blandly refers to EU aid to Central Asian countries to “reinforce border management capacity” and stepped-up EU “external operations for asylum capacity building.” What is involved, stripping these euphemisms away, are plans to fund and oversee a continent-wide network of border police agencies and prison camps for hundreds of thousands or millions of people.

EU Commission Vice President Margaritis Schinas boasted to the Financial Times that the EU would have ample funding for such plans .“We are at the beginning of the budgetary cycle, we’re not scraping the barrel as we were in 2015. I don’t think money will be the problem,” she said.

The overnight collapse of the US puppet regime has exposed the failure of the 20-year NATO war in Afghanistan and of the imperialist powers’ response to the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Washington sought for 30 years to use its military hegemony to counterbalance its accelerating economic decline, invading countries across the Middle East and Central Asia. While claiming millions of lives and wasting trillions of dollars, these wars also led to the greatest refugee crisis since World War II, as 82.4 million people had to flee their homes.

In this period and especially since the 2015 refugee crisis—which came amid a wave of terror attacks across Europe by Islamist networks, which the NATO powers had used as proxies in Libya and Syria—the European imperialist powers are adopting ever more fascistic, police-state policies. The targeting of refugees for mass drownings in the Mediterranean or for internment in camps, where they are being beaten and assaulted, went hand in hand with the cultivation by the ruling elite of fascistic and anti-refugee moods in the security forces and the entire state machine.

Facing the debacle of the US position in Central Asia and the discrediting of imperialist militarism among workers internationally, the EU powers are doubling down on anti-refugee policies. The day before the interior ministers meeting, as he departed for a tour of the region taking him to Turkey, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan and Qatar, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas referred to the strategic calculations and the pursuit of influence that underlie EU migration policies.

Maas pointed to the goals of his trip, calling for a “coordinated international approach to the Taliban. Our offer of support to the neighboring countries to assist them with coping with the humanitarian and economic fallout is also part of this. It is in our own interests to ensure that the collapse in Afghanistan does not destabilize the entire region.”

Similarly, before traveling to Iraq for talks, French President Emmanuel Macron gave an interview to the Journal du Dimanche addressing the US debacle and refugees. He called for “protecting” France from “large, irregular migrant flows,” asserting, “According to the High Commissioner on Refugees, there are already 850,000 Afghan refugees in Iran and 1.5 million in Pakistan. And the Tajik president, with whom I spoke two days ago, told me there is pressure on his border.”

Macron asserted that “massively increased financial contributions” are “our duty and the only way to prevent population movement that, otherwise, would be inevitable.” He also implicitly criticized the US pullout from Afghanistan and demanded that Washington pay a share of the prison camps’ budget. “We must multilateralize this issue, and the United States must carry their weight. They may not feel the migratory pressure, [but] they are not unrelated to the decision that triggered it.”

In reality, the debacle of the US-NATO war in Afghanistan is a historic exposure of the nature of imperialism and the necessity of expelling it from the Middle East and Central Asia. Nor are the EU imperialists an alternative to Washington. Their plans to replace NATO military units in Afghanistan with a regional network of EU-funded prison camps are deeply reactionary and deserve the opposition of workers across Europe and internationally—defending freedom of movement and the right of Afghans and all peoples to travel, live and work where they please.

North Korea restarts its nuclear facilities

Peter Symonds

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), there are indications that North Korea has restarted its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and associated facilities. The moves highlight the continuing tensions on the Korean Peninsula as well as with the US where the Biden administration has maintained the crippling sanctions imposed on North Korea under Obama and Trump.

In its latest annual report released last week, the IAEA stated that there were no signs that North Korea had operated its Yongbyon reaction between December 2018 and July 2021. “However, since early July 2021, there have been indications, including the discharge of cooling water, consistent with the operation of the reactor,” it stated. The UN nuclear agency has no direct access to North Korea.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un speaks during a Workers' Party meeting in Pyongyang, North Korea. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP. File)

Moreover, for five months to early July, the IAEA reported that steam coming from the reprocessing plant at the complex pointed to the extraction of plutonium from spent reactor fuel rods. North Korea has a small arsenal of nuclear weapons based on plutonium and has conducted six nuclear tests, most recently in 2017.

In the same year, President Trump issued a series of bloodcurdling threats to North Korea including a declaration on the floor of the UN that the US could “totally destroy” the country. Trump abruptly changed tack to hold a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore in June 2018. Pyongyang put its testing program on hold and in return the US halted its annual war games with South Korea rehearsing for conflict with the north.

A second summit in Hanoi in March 2019, however, ended without any agreement. North Korea had offered to permanently halt nuclear and ballistic missile tests and to dismantle its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon in return for a limited lifting of sanctions on items connected to civilian needs. Trump, however, insisted on an all or nothing approach, demanding full, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation before any sanctions would be lifted.

While the nuclear issue was the public purpose of the summits, Trump’s underlying aim, amid a dramatically escalating confrontation with China, was to draw North Korea, China’s only military ally, away from Beijing and into Washington’s orbit. However, with its economy heavily reliant on China, North Korea was clearly not prepared to turn on its ally without guarantees from Washington that were not forthcoming.

An uneasy standoff has ensued over the past two years with North Korea conducting limited tests of short-range missiles, while the US recommenced some joint military exercises with South Korea.

Tensions have not eased under Biden. After a lengthy review of US policy towards North Korea, the Biden administration in May announced a broad strategy that differed only cosmetically with the confrontational approach of Trump and Obama. Biden officials have appealed for talks without preconditions but have offered nothing to North Korea that would lead it to believe the outcome would be any different from previous negotiations and failed agreements that demanded a great deal from Pyongyang in return for limited promises.

North Korea reacted angrily to nine-day US-South Korean joint war games held last month. While the military exercises were computer-simulations, there was no doubt that North Korea was the “enemy” being targeted. Kim Yo-jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, branded the military drills as an “act of self-destruction” and warned that North Korea would step up its pre-emptive strike capabilities.

North Korea’s decisions to restart nuclear facilities and boost military capabilities are aimed at pressuring the US to make concessions. The current UN sanctions, imposed at the instigation of Washington, along with unilateral US sanctions, have cut off virtually all North Korean exports as well as sources of foreign exchange and severely limited imports of critical items such as oil and petroleum products.

The country’s economic and social crisis was further exacerbated last month by heavy flooding, which forced thousands of families to flee and destroyed vital crops. This came on top of a lengthy heat wave that also damaged the country’s agricultural output. In June, Kim Jong-un acknowledged that the food situation in North Korea was “getting tense.”

While the Biden administration has offered limited humanitarian aid to North Korea, the US strategy towards Pyongyang is basically aimed at using sanctions to cripple the economy and starve it into submission.

Biden’s special envoy for North Korea, Sung Kim, was in Seoul Korea last week for talks with top South Korean officials including the country’s lead nuclear negotiator Noh Kyu-duk. After meeting Noh, Kim reiterated the call for talks with North Korea and claimed that joint military exercises with South Korea were routine and defensive in character.

Kim absurdly told reporters that the US does not have any “hostile intention” towards North Korea. As well as maintaining a paralysing sanctions regime, the US has never formally ended the 1950–53 Korean War and has repeatedly refused to normalise relations with Pyongyang by concluding a peace treaty. The US military continues to maintain 28,500 troops along with major bases in South Korea.

Kim’s visit to Seoul has been followed by a trip to Washington by Noh Kyu-duk this week to discuss ways of restarting talks with North Korea. South Korea’s foreign ministry indicated that Noh will meet with officials from the US State Department, as well as the White House National Security Council during his trip, which ends today.

The flurry of diplomatic activity between Seoul and Washington points to renewed efforts to bully and threaten North Korea to fall into line as the Biden administration ramps up the US confrontation with China.

1 Sept 2021

Popular Resistance in the Age of Neoliberal War: The Case of Colombia

Evan King & Pambana Gutto Bassett

Since April 28 hundreds of thousands of Colombians have taken to the streets to demand the end to neoliberal reforms, chanting “el pueblo unido jamás será vencido”. Workers, women, students, unionists, pensioners, Indigenous and Afrocolombian campesinos, and youth began the strike in opposition to a regressive tax reform that disproportionately affected the poorest Colombians. Now, a month later their joint call has grown into a generalized rejection of the neoliberal and far-right government of Ivan Duque. His government is polled as the least popular in recent Colombian history, already a low bar for a State that has waged an ongoing war against its people.

Shortly after the nonviolent protests began, the government tabled the reforms, but both the Finance Minister and Foreign Minister were forced to resign in response to the people’s pressure. The demonstrations rejected them for proposing austerity measures that burden the poor in the midst of a pandemic. This victory was followed by the decades-old government response to resistance: repression, outrageous lies, racist and misogynist violence, and sheer terror. At the marches most carry only instruments and placards, and are met with murderous state forces shooting indiscriminately or targeting community leaders who defend human rights and collective decision-making. In the face of this, the protests have grown stronger in number and location. They are now across the country, proving that the demands are shared by many more than those who can brave the streets.

The right to protest is denied daily by the militarised forces that are well-equipped with U.S. funding. They shoot from helicopters, motorcycles, and from the massacres, forced disappearances, sexual violence, and real and constant fear. While the state and paramilitary focus their brutality with unprecedented intensity against the people, the protesters focus their demands on an alternative agenda that builds popular power. This agenda emerges out of the most poor sectors, and out of Indigenous and Afro-Colombia whose resistance is over 500 years old.

It cannot be denied that the resistance is led by the youth. It is mainly impoverished young people from urban peripheries who are the leading force in the “puntos de resistencia” or points of resistance. Although they face the brunt of police terror, and have witnessed the police massacre their community members and forcibly disappear, rape, and torture their neighbours, they refuse to stop organising.

Youth from the most poor sectors and their families account for a majority of Colombia’s 50 million. On the rare occasion that they are interviewed, they say things like: ‘We have no future because they have taken everything from us.’ This was already true before Covid-19 hit, but the State’s failure to ensure basic economic support during the pandemic, coupled with a wholly inadequate public health response, has made daily life an act of survival. The youth add, “Even fear. We have nothing left to lose.” The marches are an exercise in despair, coupled with a clear and utter rejection of a system that enriches the small Euro-descendant elite and the multinational corporations that buy them. The youth have an unparalleled determination to build a distinct path.

Urban middle-class university students, whose families account for about one third of the population, have not hesitated to participate in ‘the resistance’; they went on strike in 2018 and again the following year, helping to trigger the general strike. Many of them are only a generation or two away from those who suffered hunger. During the pandemic, confined to their homes, they have seen their job prospects and educational opportunities dry up, bills arrive that their families can no longer pay, and many small and medium family-owned businesses have closed. They understand that the precarity they face is a product of the disinterest of the elite in their future, and have joined the demonstrations against neoliberal reforms.

The youth in Colombia demand dramatic changes to the country’s increasing privatisation and militarisation and they are willing to put their bodies on the line to achieve it. They call for a radical transformation of the country, from a neoliberal, racist, and warring regime, to one that is democratic, participatory, and guarantees basic necessities for a life with dignity: an end to austerity and the creation of universal healthcare, education, dignified housing, and peace.

The “puntos de resistencia” are also where the youth build community, and practice the world they want for all Colombians. They are filled with solidarity and a sense of purpose. Many of the puntos host communal soup kitchens, free workshops for children, and tables for mutual aid or “mesas solidarias”. They carry out cultural work with music, dance, theatre, and painting, a reprieve as well as a creative and collaborative outlet. The youth are newer protagonists in the formation of neighbourhood assemblies or “asambleas”. There, the people meet, hold long discussions and debate, and make decisions through collective processes. Direct and participatory democracy, service-provision, as well as cultural production all flourish in resistance to the centuries-long disenfranchisement by the State, and the current militarised government crackdown.

The resistance and the protagonism of the poor, Indigenous, Afrocolombian, women, and the young are threats to the powerful. Although there has yet to be an exhaustive investigation of State crimes, preliminary reports by local human rights groups have documented 3155 incidents of police violence, including 43 homicides, 1388 arbitrary arrests, 22 cases of sexual violence, 42 blindings and at least 93 cases of forced dissapearance, in the city of Cali alone. The victims include minors as young as 13. Images of the bodies of young men can be seen floating down the Cauca River in the outskirts of urban centers. Chop houses, a gruesome tool of colonial violence, have resurfaced.

The level of violence points to a systemised plan from the top echelons of the State. The types of violence and its targets are similar to those committed by other U.S.-trained and -funded state and paramilitary forces across the Americas. These repressive tactics are elements of a particular kind of military doctrine known as counterinsurgency, a doctrine of the U.S., a nation-state borne out of white supremacist genocide and counter-revolution. This doctrine has targeted resistance movements across Latin America and the Caribbean, for decades. It is by sheer determination and dignity of the people, the resistance continues.

A Brief History of Counterinsurgency in Colombia

During the 1960s, a time of global anti-colonial struggle, the United States began formal training of the Colombian armed forces in counterinsurgency warfare. It was a declared campaign to halt the so-called spread of communism- or, the mass mobilisations by poor and racialised people to end exploitation and promote governance by the oppressed. The U.S. invested heavily in attacking the organised resistance of anyone or group that opposed U.S. interests and corporate control. U.S. military officials instructed the Colombian armed forces to target armed and unarmed actors suspected of harboring communist sympathies or “subversive thoughts”. Any advocate of rights- of workers, youth, women, Indigenous, Afrocolombians, farmers- became a potential target, and many of them were surveilled, threatened, disappeared, assassinated.

U.S. counterinsurgency manuals stated that “civilians in the operational area” such as trade unionists, students, and community organizers could be targeted with “guerrilla warfare, propaganda, subversion, [… and] terrorist activities.” This tactic: “quitarle el agua al pez,” or “drain the water to catch the fish”. The scorched earth policy has been utilised by various military and politicians who are backed by the U.S. and have responded to popular resistance with death squads and genocide.

Although the policies were State run, they relied greatly on para-state forces and funding from U.S. tax dollars, as well as informal revenue streams linked to multinational projects. Large corporations benefit from a population demobilised to defend their rights and have recorded ties to illicit activities. Much of the State violence perpetrated against Colombian civil society was outsourced to paramilitary groups, who received the Colombian state’s tacit and active support by way of arms and personnel exchanges, information sharing, and legal protection through official impunity. They became known as the “sixth division” of the Colombian military. When protesters shout “Responsabilizamos a Iván Duque, al Ministerio de Defensa y a la Policía Nacional por las vulneraciones que puedan sufrir lxs manifestantes!” “We blame (or accuse) Ivan Duque, the Ministry of Defense and the National Police for any infringements on their rights that the protestors may suffer!” They speak to a long history of state responsibility for official and paramilitary violence.

More than 18,000 Colombian military and police officials have been trained by the U.S. in the notorious School of the Americas (SOA), later renamed WHINSEC, and popularly called the “School of the Assassins” by peace activists. The Colombian state has a close relationship with this programme. According to public documents, more than 110,000 members of the Colombian security forces have received training by the U.S. Most years, Colombia is the country that sends the most military and police personnel to train at SOA in Fort Benning, Georgia. There, officers receive expert training on white supremacist and right wing ideology, intelligence gathering, anti-communism, counterinsurgency, command and control, psychological operations, and irregular warfare.

SOA graduates leave well-prepared to commit atrocities in their home countries. Some of the School’s most notorious graduates include Guatemala’s Rios Montt, El Salvador’s Roberto d’Aubuisson, Panama’s Manuel Noriega, and Bolivia’s Hugo Banzer. There are many thousands more.

The Age of Neoliberal War

This is part of a plan that Canadian journalist Dawn Paley calls “Neoliberal War”. Building on the counterinsurgency of past decades, this war differs from the “Cold War” in a number of ways. First, unlike the U.S. sponsored military dictatorships that characterized 20th century Latin America, these are carried out in nominally democratic countries. Second, unlike those dictatorships, they avoid mention of specific political systems (like “neoliberalism”) or use misinformation and vague political content. The U.S. was explicitly anti-communist, against anti-colonial struggles, and pro the free market during the Cold War. The Neoliberal War is presented as chaotic, confusing, and despite the strategy aimed squarely at suppressing resistance, and despite the carefully-planned multinational coordination, it is never called a war.

During the “Cold War”, the U.S. perfected’ a number of socio-political and military strategies to destroy the “internal enemy” (the people), known as counterinsurgency or COIN. In Colombia, this included the formation of paramilitary units, special brigades, and military intelligence agencies that engaged in sabotage, displacement, dispossession, terrorism, torture, and forced disappearances intended to subjugate the “subversive” forces in society through state-sponsored terrorism, ecocide, and genocide.

In the age of “Neoliberal War” the Colombian security forces use COIN 2.0, which has three central themes: 1) the confusion of the perpetrator of state sanctioned violence, including members of state security forces, organized crime networks and individual actors used as proxies; 2) the widening of the definition of insurgent to include broad swaths of the population (often marginalized communities dependent as well as independent of their particular ideological or partisan identity); and 3) the unleashing of mass organized violence involving the physical destruction and public display of racialized people as well as the forced disappearance of people under the opaque and depoliticized neoliberal regimes. The repetition, or continuation, of settler colonial violence is undeniable

The Case of Alvaro Herrera

Alvaro Herrera was illegally detained, beaten and forced to confess to being a vandal.

Alvaro Herrera, is a young music student, and French horn player at the Universidad del Valle in the city of Cali, Colombia. On May 28th, Alvaro was participating in a peaceful cultural event, playing music along with other members of the orchestra, when shots could be heard being fired at the crowds of protesters near the University campus. As he makes his way back home he is approached by a group of men in civilian clothing with bullet-proof vests and high-caliber assault rifles. Two of the men point their weapons at him and begin to beat him. Later, this group of unidentified assailants turned Alvaro over to the police, which debated the possibility of taking him away in an unmarked white truck near the station. As Herrera later declared, he believed the plan was to make him disappear.

After being brutally beaten in police custody, Alvaro was forced to make a false confession of being a part of an “organized group of vandals” which was recorded by a police officer and uploaded to social media. The video caused an uproar of public outrage that was able to pressure the police into releasing Alvaro days later, but many others are not so lucky.

Alvaro’s case exhibits all three central characteristics of “Neoliberal War”: 1) the unidentified armed men casually patrol the streets while the official authorities look on is part of a strategy of confusion. A strategy that blurs the line between State and non-State actors and creates a sense of paranoia amongst protesters who may not be able to distinguish who might be a potential threat or what their relation to State power could be. 2) Alvaro is forced to confess to being an “organized vandal” and is published widely on social media in a feeble attempt to reinforce the government narrative of violent criminal vandals terrorizing the population which must be met with overwhelming force. This reflects the widening definition of insurgent to include basically anyone. 3) The unleashing of mass violence. In the case of Alvaro in the form of brutal beatings and psychological torture. Both the public exhibition of this violence through viral video and the threat of forcibly being disappeared for seemingly opaque and depoliticized reasons. All of this is textbook counterinsurgency warfare financed by the United States taxpayer.

Violence and Control

As in the case of Alvaro Herrera and hundreds more currently missing in Colombia, these forced disappearances occur without the need of sophisticated intelligence operations, or the intricate network of clandestine detention centers as was the case in Argentina, Chile, Guatemala among others during the “Dirty Wars” of the 1970s and 80s. The concept of COIN 2.0 allows us to make sense of the multiple and superficially unrelated cases of violence in Colombia over the past weeks.

The violence, which appears with different intensities and geographies, has the common goal of gaining control over the popular sectors that are currently mounting a significant resistance to the established political and economic system that has regularly dispossessed and exploited them in the name of greater capital penetration and accumulation. In Colombia, we can see attempts to blame this violence on a criminal subculture or “vandals” rather than recognizing the calculated nature of an all out counterinsurgency war, financed by the United States, that is being carried out by the Colombian security forces against broad sectors of the civilian population.

Many of the mainstream outlets covering the current uprising in Colombia often ignore the complicity of powerful political figures in carrying out crimes against humanity, the nexus between mass violence and capitalism, and the role of the U.S. government in promoting “Neoliberal War”.

U.S. Wars, Endless Wars: Will They Ever End?

David Rosen

The war in Afghanistan is finally over. After 20 long years of a false war against alleged “terrorism,” the U.S.’s bloated and inept military-intelligence fortress failed yet again. Sadly, this defeat is but the latest in a nearly three-quarters-of-a-century quagmire of military defeats, stalemates and false victories. How long will this go on?

Pres. Dwight Eisenhower’s great warning made in his farewell address of January 17, 1961, has never sounded so prescient:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.

To repeat: “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

And it has persisted. Since Eisenhower’s speech and under both Republican and Democratic regimes, the complex has squandered trillions of dollars and the lives of thousands of U.S. military personnel — to say nothing of the lives of the untold number of innocent civilians in war zones — in a series of questionable campaigns in the Middle East, Central Asian and Africa, including the Afghan and Iraq wars over the last two decade.

The FY 2020 defense budget is $703.7 billion and the appropriated 2020 “U.S. Intelligence Community” budget is $85.8 budget. One estimate place U.S. “total military” at 5,137,860 personnel – i.e., active military (1,374,699), reserve military (845,000) and paramilitary (2,928,261). Another estimate reports that they are 750 overseas military base sites in 80 foreign countries and colonies (territories) around the world. In addition, there are 440 military bases in the continental U.S.

So, when is enough, enough?

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Since the end of the World War II, the U.S. has engaged in innumerable wars (both “hot” and “cold”), skirmishes, stalemates and secret or clandestine military engagements throughout the world. These efforts have transformed the U.S. military-intelligence apparatus from a global hero defending “democracy” and “freedom” to a superpower enforcing the imperialist demands of a corporatist state. A brief review of this long and bloody history will pose one question: Why?

Korean War Stalemate

In 1948, two states were formally established; the American-backed Republic of Korea (South), a right-wing dictatorship, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North), a Moscow-puppet dictatorship. Regional tensions escalated until October 1, 1949, when Mao Zedong established the People’s Republic of China.

On June 25, 1950, North Korean forces invaded the South, leading to a growing conflict between the U.S. and China. In July 1953 an armistice was signed that ended formal hostilities but not the war. In this UN-sanctioned conflict, 54,000 Americans were killed. The U.S. currently maintains an occupying force of 28,500 troops in Korea and South Korea has a “total military” of 4,599,000 personnel divided into “active military” (599,000), “reserve military” (3,100,000) and “paramilitary” (900,000).

Vietnam War Defeat

U.S. involvement in Vietnam was part of an effort to take over France’s colonial interest following its failed campaign against Viet Minh, a mix of communist and nationalists. France’s efforts dragged on from 1946 to 1954 and ended with defeat at Dien Bien Phu.

Vietnam was initially perceived as yet another skirmish like the Philippines, but ended up being not only the up-‘til-then longest war in U.S. history and its greatest military defeat. It dragged on for two decades, from 1955 to 1975, although the U.S. dropped out in ’73 following Henry Kissinger’s “secret” Paris peace deal.

The U.S. military misadventure in Vietnam involved the deployment of 540,000 soldiers leading to the death of 58,200 personnel and the wounding of 300,000 American men and women. An estimated 114,000 Vietnam vets have committed suicide. The number of killed and wounded Vietnamese – along with Cambodians, Laotians and others – is incalculable.

Cuba Invasion Fails

Fidel Castro marched into Havana on January 7, 1959, a week after U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista fled to the Dominican Republic. In April ’61, the CIA orchestrated an invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs; 1,000 CIA foot soldiers, Cuban exiles, were taken prisoner. A year later, in October ’62, the world held its breath over the Cuban Missile Crisis, a showdown between the U.S. and Soviet Union (SU).

The U.S. officially broke diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1961. A half-century later, relations were partially reestablished under Pres. Obama but returned to cold war status under Pres. Trump and remain that way under Pres. Biden.

Latin American Follies

Numerous U.S. military interventions in Latin America occurred against a background of the CIA failed efforts to topple the Cuban Revolution. They included: CIA’s overthrowing of Guatemala’s elected government (1954); the U.S.-backed dictatorships of Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier in Haiti (1957-1986); U.S. orchestrated military coup in Brazil (1964); U.S. military occupation of Dominican Republic (1965-1966); U.S. orchestrated military coup of socialist government of Salvador Allende in Chile (1973); U.S. backed Contra army in Nicaragua to suppress the Sandinistas (1974-1979); U.S. backed military, including death squads, in El Salvador civil war (1979–1992); U.S. military invasion of Grenada (1983); and U.S. occupation of Panama (1989-1990).

Operational Stalemates

For two years, from November 1979 to January 1981, the U.S. was traumatized by the Iranian hostage crisis. Iranian radicals seized the U.S. Embassy in ’70, a quarter century after the CIA and the British agents orchestrated, on June 1, 1953, the overthrow of Iran’s first elected government headed by Mohammad Mosaddeq; he was replaced by a puppet regime headed by the Shah. Pres. Carter approved Operation Eagle Claw (aka Operation Evening Light and Operation Rice Bowl), the military’s disastrous effort to free the Embassy hostages.

In the following four decades, the U.S. military and CIA have engaged in dozens and dozens of military “operations” across the globe. They range from Operation Desert Storm (under Pres. G. H. W. Bush, 1990) to Operation Iraqi Freedom (Pres. G. W. Bush, 2003-2011) to the Operation Inherent Resolve against the Islamic State (Pres. Obama). This era also saw innumerable covert CIA operations to destabilize and/or overthrow countries deemed threats to U.S. hegemony.

Parallel to these military efforts, the U.S. engaged in numerous quasi-military “humanitarian” operations to contain local crises. Among such actions were Operation Deliberate Force (Bosnia, 1994-1995) and Operation Allied Force (Kosovo War, 1998-1999). Nick Turse documented U.S. operations in 49 of 54 nations in Africa. Sadly, Pres. Clinton failed to intervene in the Rwanda genocide in which up to 1 million Tutsi people were murdered.

These operations have, for the most part, ended in stalemates that have only come back to wreck still greater military and social destabilization. The last “great” victory of the U.S. – along with 35 coalition partners – was Operation Desert Shield – aka Gulf War – under Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf.

In 2011, Pres. Obama backed a military intervention in Libya, aiding anti-Gaddafi rebels with air strikes against the Libyan Army. This failed effort helped ISIS come back to wreck still greater military and social destabilization.

Cold War Victory

The SU collapsed in 1991, leaving the U.S. the sole global superpower. The Cold War was over; the enemy defeated; the military-industrial complex’s rationale for existence over. Many Americans demanded a peace dividend and sought to shrink the bloated military budget.

Total Cold War (1948-1991) military spending (in 1996 dollars) is estimated to have been $13.1 trillion. This is an enormous drain on U.S. resources, monies that could be better spent on other aspects of social life such as education, infrastructure and health care.

War on Terror

The “war on terror” was ostensibly initiated in retaliation for acts of war conducted by al Qaeda operatives on September 11, 2001. Pres. Bush launched Operation Enduring Freedom on October 7, 2001, and, in March 2003, declared war on Iraq based on claims that it harbored weapons of mass destruction and provided training to al Qaeda. Two months later, in

May 2003, Bush delivered a victory speech aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, standing defiantly before a banner proclaiming, “Mission Accomplished,” in Afghanistan. Pres. Obama formally ended hostilities in Afghanistan as of yearend 2014; 10,000 or so U.S. troops remained in an ostensible support capacity. Over this decade-plus of hostilities, the U.S. lost 2,228 servicemen and women at a price estimated at over $2 trillion. Now, finally, the U.S. is fleeing Afghanistan. All for what?

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The U.S.’s failed war on terror may further destabilize the greater Middle East. Pakistan and Egypt suggest one tendency, military dictatorships; Saudi Arabia and Iran suggest another, religious autocracies. Starting with the Gulf War (1990-1991), destabilization has come with the bloody skirmishes at the periphery of the empire, including (Somali, 1992-1993), Yemen (2002), Libya (2011) and Nigeria (Boko Haram, 2009-present).

One of the consequences of these military initiatives is the untold number of casualties – and their families and communities/tribes – left behind. Memory lives on for a very long time while vengeance can endure forever. It’s hard to know how long the misnamed “war on terror” will drag on. However, the unasked question remains what will replace the Cold War/U.S.-despot?

An unanticipated consequence of this destabilization is the future of the nation state. A century ago, the British and French carved up the Middle East into the countries — with recognizable boarders – that are under siege today. In the eras that preceded the age of colonialism, boarders – dating back to the days of Jesus and the Romans — were as fluid as the sand. They are again in play.

And to end war, endless war by the U.S. military-intelligence-industrial complex? Cut, cut, cut the nearly $800 billion war machine and close all overseas military bases and many of the domestic bases. Otherwise, endless war will continue.

Covid cases and deaths surge in UK, fueled by reopening of schools

Robert Stevens

The terrible societal cost of the Johnson government’s herd immunity policy is clearer by the day. After 156,000 Covid fatalities and millions of infections, all indices point to a substantial increase in cases, hospitalisations and deaths.

Britain is recording over 33,000 new cases daily, with the 233,594 over the last seven days an increase on the previous week’s 228,938. The UK’s current rate of 3,420 cases per million people is higher than those of the United States, Japan, Russia, Turkey, Thailand, France and Iran.

Deaths are on the increase, with 115 a day on average, up 15 percent on the previous week. On Tuesday, following the bank holiday weekend, another 32,000 cases and 50 deaths were reported. Hospital admissions are increasing and are approaching 1,000 a day.

The government’s mantra of “learning to live with the virus” is a recipe for mass infection and death. The herd immunity agenda was aired again last week when Downing Street let it be known that there would be at least a further 30,000 deaths in the UK over the next year. Prime Minister Boris Johnson would “only consider imposing further [Covid-19 safety] restrictions if that figure looked like it could rise above 50,000.”

Such an outcome, and worse, is more than possible. Cases are surging across the country, fueled by the highly transmissible Delta variant that has spread like wildfire since the end of all lockdown measures on July 19.

In England, the UK’s most populous country, the virus is spreading out of control. Sunday’s Observer newspaper reported figures from the Office for National Statistics which estimated that in the week ending August 20, 756,900 people in England—one person in 70—were infected with Covid-19. It cited the comments of Simon Clarke, associate professor in cellular microbiology at Reading University, who noted, “community infections are 26 times more common now than they were a year ago, when the population was unvaccinated and the country was three months into its reopening.”

Not a single area in the UK has avoided being hit. Every area nationwide is recording more than 100 infections per 100,000 people, with locations in Scotland and Northern Ireland leading the way.

The Daily Mail reported, “All 10 of the highest Covid infection rates in the past week were in local authorities in Northern Ireland and the Scottish central belt.” With the resurgence of Covid fueled by an explosion of cases among young people, it is no surprise that Scotland and Northern Ireland are now the worst-affected areas as schoolchildren and teachers have been back in classrooms for weeks.

In Scotland, the first schools opened as early as August 11, and in Northern Ireland shortly after. On Tuesday and Wednesday, all schools fully reopened in Northern Ireland to another 350,000 children. Hardly any safety measures are in place, with only post-primary pupils in Northern Ireland required to wear masks in class, and only until October 8. Pupils will not have to self-isolate after coming into contact with a coronavirus case if they have tested positive for the virus themselves within the previous 90 days.

On Tuesday, Michelle O’Neill, Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister and Sinn Féin Vice President, had to self-isolate after contracting Covid.

In Scotland, the situation is, if anything, even worse, with a new record number of daily cases reported four times in the last week. On Tuesday another 6,029 new cases and seven deaths were recorded.

In England and Wales, schools reopened this week, also with next to no virus mitigation measures in place. Schools will only have to provide pupils in Year 7 and above with two, widely discredited, lateral flow tests at the start of term. The Daily Mail noted that “When 8.9 million children in England went back last September it led to Covid cases spiking four-fold in a month.” But that was under conditions in which the Delta variant—far more transmissible that the original wild version of Covid—had not become dominant in the population.

As mass infection proceeds, a grave danger is that variants even more devastating than Delta are allowed to develop. According to the i newspaper, a new strain of Delta may have emerged from one of the super-spreader events encouraged by the government last month. 53,000 people were allowed to be packed into the Boardmasters festival in Newquay, England, contributing to a surge in infections and the area now having the most Covid cases in England with more than 2,000 per 100,000 people.

The i reported that hospital staff in Devon and Cornwall now refer to the “festival variant”. It is one of around twelve different strains of Delta already discovered.

With no end in sight to the carnage being wrought by the cabal of herd immunity enthusiasts in Downing Street, hostility to the Johnson government is growing. On Monday, #JohnsonOut was the most popular hashtag on Twitter, with nearly 90,000 tweets posted in 24 hours. Many focused on the mass death sanctioned by the government over the last 18 months and the stepping up of attacks on the working class.

The tweets give an accurate picture of the sentiment held by millions. Among the comments were those responding to a short video posted by parent Lisa Diaz. Lisa has posted a number of videos in recent days—focusing on the unsafe return to schools—which have received a large viewership. Monday’s video, accompanied by the #JohnsonOut hashtag was titled, “ The British people deserve so much better ” was a powerful statement denouncing the criminal policy of Johnson. By Tuesday it had been viewed by more than 131,000 people and retweeted over 1,500 times.

Liza Diaz speaks out against the Johnson government in a Twiiter video on Monday (credit: Liza Diaz @Sandyboots2020)

On August 22, Lisa participated in the online meeting, hosted by the WSWS, “ For a Global Strategy to Stop the Pandemic and Save Lives ”.