Despite these election results, parties representing financial interests and the corporate media insist that austerity measures must go ahead.  At a time when real wages are steadily declining and unemployment has reached levels not seen for more than fifty years, the supporters of finance capital insist that the problem is public debt. They demand cuts to social services, public employment and wages and salaries.

For majorities who depend on income from labour—not on profits from capital—austerity is not a solution.  It is the problem. The one per cent, or 0.1 per cent, who depend on income from capital, insist the people are wrong. The interests of capital, regardless of the costs to others, must come first.

Austerity has led to steadily rising unemployment and declining markets in most European countries. Its most devastating effects are in Greece.  Public employment, pensions and other social services have been gutted. The country’s assets are being plundered.  Public utilities are being sold off to corporations from other countries. A quarter of the population—half of people under thirty—are unemployed. Still the supporters of capitalist interests claim that Greece has been living beyond its means.  The only way that the country can expect to get any new money is if it cuts back its profligate spending.

In fact, Greece is one of the poorer countries in Europe.  Its social services do not come close to matching the coverage, quality or cost of the social services of more prosperous countries like Germany and France. The funds that Greece gets if it agrees to austerity measures do not go to Greece, but to the banks that hold the credits that were used to pay for past government expenditures—including the Olympics. The banks that hold these debts are mainly in Germany and France and but also in the U.K., U.S., Switzerland, and elsewhere.

Faced with a 60 per cent vote against austerity in Greece, the capitalist strategy is to hope that the lure of power can induce enough of the elected representatives to switch sides and support the proposed cuts.  What the people of Greece are being pushed to do is to accept rising unemployment and worsening poverty to sustain global financial interests.  Past Greek governments can be blamed for allowing the country to descend into a state of debt peonage, but the primary blame is with the global financial institutions.  Due diligence would have made it clear that Greece could not realistically pay back the money loaned, even at the original low interest rates. As these loans were renegotiated at predictably higher rates it should have been obvious that paying back the loans was impossible.

Greece is a repeat of the U.S. sub-prime mortgage debacle. Low income, often unemployed people were enticed to purchase homes with little or no down payment at interest rates which for the first year or so were attractively low. The borrowers may or may not have been told that these rates would shortly rise dramatically, making it nearly impossible for these loans to ever be repaid. U.S. financial institutions who engaged in these irresponsible lending practices have not been held to account. European financial interests, backed by the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and transnational capital generally, continue on, pursuing their interests at the expense of public employees, social services, union conditions, and consumer income.

I take to the streets and go to rallies but maybe I should go to parliament to blow my brains out.

– Dimitris Christoulas to a friend, Business Insider, Apr 5, 2012

The cornered tend to be desperate. The insecure can lose their bearings. The Greek financial crisis is producing an assortment of warring metaphors, some more plausible than others. The common target in this whole business is Germany, implying that more than just the eurozone may be under threat. It suggests, in fact, that financial instability will, in time, lead to a nationalist critique of the European idea.

As with broader conflicts, the national is explained through the local. Global events can be seen through individual lenses, the stories of citizens who have suffered, even if those stories can unduly simplify the complex. In Greece, Dimitris Christoulas has offered the premise for the Greek protest movement. The 77-year-old retired pharmacist shot himself on Syntagma Square in Athens early last month leaving behind a poignant and powerful note. In that note, he claimed that he would ‘rather die than scavenge in rubbish bins for his food’ (Guardian, Apr 5).

Christoulas’s suicide has been labelled as the first ‘act of resistance’ akin to the revolutionary actions of Mohammed Bouazizi, the Tunisian fruit and veg vendor whose act of self-conflagration in December 2010 set the Arab Spring in motion. But what was he resisting against? Unemployment levels in Greece stand at 21 percent and GDP has shrunk. The country is now in its fifth straight year of economic contraction. Soup kitchens in Athens are full with one in every eleven residents making regular trips. A bartering economy is starting to thrive.

The country’s suicide rate has climbed dramatically. From being one of Europe’s lowest, it has officially doubled. An elderly woman, wanting to alleviate the burden on her children, set herself on fire. Such cases make the political ground rich for disaffection, an all too prominent feature in the electoral rhetoric prior to last week’s ballot. Alexis Tsipras of the Syriza party has made gains on the platform of attacking those ‘loan sharks’ who have appropriated Greek sovereignty, promising an annulment of the bailout package. Those loan sharks are, of course, German, giving outsiders the sense that Teutonic bank managers will don their jackboots and march through Athens. The German role behind the bailout has even been deemed to be an imposition of an ‘economic Fourth Reich’ by the nationalist party, the Independent Greeks.

The suicide note by Christoulas also drew on history as a weapon. The government of Lucas Papademos, he suggested, was effectively collaborating with external forces the way Georgios Tsolakoglou did with Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

Even if Christoulas was drawing a very long bow, the problem of sovereignty is certainly critical. The leaders of the New Resistance movement led by Mikos Theodorakis have been enthusiastic and exaggerating in their praise of the Syriza leader. ‘I support with all my strength Alexis Tsipras in his efforts to form a government that will terminate the memorandum and will seek to recover the sovereignty of our country.’

Many would prefer a state of unchanged, moneyed comforts – pensions that are unreduced in perpetuity; a retirement age in the late 40s that enables a good deal of the rest of life to be enjoyed. But the tragedy of the money economy is that the hard means of supporting such lifestyles requires a base, preferably not on quicksand. When that base is crumbling, the rest will follow suit. Bad governance produces discontented, even revolutionary citizens. Internal disaffection encourages an often fruitless search for external excuses.

In a sense, there is a true ‘occupation’ – an economic one ruled by a cadre of technocrats. The banksters are in indirect command, dictating the programs of several countries in Europe where the finances have been shown to be poor. Sovereignty has become subservient to repayment, conditional on financial assistance. A vicious cycle has come into play: the banks have been responsible for lending to those who cannot pay. The books have been cooked; the credentials of those receiving borrowing exaggerated. The result is pure, inconsolable misery. The blame, as ever, is easily levelled against states whose better finances are seen as a means of bullying rather than an issue of praise. German Chancellor Angela Merkel becomes less a sound economic manager than a cruel stifler of independence.

As with any complex, undermining event, several factors feature. Either the political forces are deemed complicit with external forces (notably the Germans), and are accused of collaborators as a shorthand reference; or they are complicit in accepting the entire list of expectations dictated to by Brussels. The true impoverishment that has taken place in Greece is its political promise. The people, as they always have done, will survive in spite of their efforts.

Dan Freeman-Maloy: In your book, you describe the determination of Israeli planners to develop closer ties with the European Union. Has Israel’s traditional policy of trying to limit European diplomatic involvement in the Middle East changed?

David Cronin: Yes and no.

In recent years, there has been quite a bit of strategic thinking undertaken by the Israeli foreign ministry. This was particularly the case when Tzipi Livni was in charge of that ministry.

One of the conclusions of that thinking was that Israel should not rely entirely on the US to defend its indefensible actions. There was a realisation that while the US remains the only superpower at the moment, other powers are emerging. The decision to “reach out” more to the EU was taken in that context. Israel is similarly seeking to engage more with China, India and Brazil, particularly with regard to sales of weaponry and surveillance technology.

There is a perception in some circles that European diplomats are hostile to Israel. In the first few months of this year, a series of leaked reports from EU representatives in East Jerusalem and Ramallah expressed frustration with the expansion of Israeli settlements. Yet it’s significant that these reports were drawn up by people who witness the results of Israel’s activities “on the ground”. The EU also has representatives in Tel Aviv and Brussels, who see things very differently and have been beavering away to increase cooperation between Israel and the Union.

We occasionally see newspaper articles in which Israeli ministers accuse the EU of meddling in Israel’s affairs or suggesting that the EU is biased towards the Palestinians. Yet if you dig even a tiny bit beneath the surface, you will see that this apparent tension is at odds with the real picture. The real picture is one where the EU has become so close to Israel that, I would argue, it has become complicit in Israel’s crimes against humanity.

DF: Not long after Operation Cast Lead, then NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer made a cordial visit to Israel (where his hosts drew a parallel between Israeli operations in Gaza and NATO operations in Afghanistan). You report that NATO-Israel relations may be set to deepen.

DC: We should never forget that in 2010, Israel killed eight Turkish citizens and one Turkish-American in international waters, while these activists were taking part in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. I’m not an expert on these matters but my understanding is that this attack was tantamount to an act of war against Turkey, a member of NATO.

I think it’s fair to say that if Iran had done something comparable, NATO would have reacted forcefully. Yet Israel has a so-called “individual cooperation programme” with NATO since 2006, under which both sides share sensitive information; the scope of the programme was extended in 2008. Israel’s relationship with NATO has remained strong despite how the alliance condemned the flotilla attack. Shortly before Gabi Ashkenazi stepped down as head of the Israeli military last year, he was treated to a farewell dinner by senior NATO officers in Brussels. He also was called in to give NATO advice on how to fight the war in Afghanistan.

And Israel is taking part in a NATO operation in the Mediterranean called Active Endeavour. Originally, this was supposed to be an “anti-terrorism” initiative in response to the 11 September 2001 atrocities. But it has subsequently been broadened to cover immigration. What this means is that Israel is helping Western governments, especially Greece, to prevent vulnerable people fleeing poverty and persecution from reaching Europe’s shores. It’s quite disgusting.

DF: Turning back to the EU specifically, where does the recent Conformity Assessment and Acceptance of Industrial Products (ACAA) agreement fit in the broader struggle around Europe’s preferential trade ties with Israel?

DC: ACAA sounds dull and technical. But it is deeply political.

This is an agreement reached between the EU and Israel, whereby quality checks carried out by the Israeli authorities on manufactured goods would have the same status as similar checks carried out by authorities within the EU. At the moment, it’s limited to pharmaceutical products but it could easily be extended to other goods.

This agreement is a top priority for the Israelis because once it enters into force, Israel would take an important step towards being integrated into the EU’s single market.

To their credit, some members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have been asking difficult questions about ACAA for a few years. And this has meant that the Parliament has not yet approved the agreement. It’s not clear when the Parliament will make a final decision about the matter. There was a discussion at the Parliament’s foreign affairs committee in the past couple of weeks, where it was decided to delay holding a vote on the dossier until legal assurances are provided on the question of whether or not the agreement would apply to Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

It’s significant that the Israelis have hired a top public relations firm, Kreab Gavin Anderson, to help with their efforts to break the deadlock on ACAA. Kreab’s Brussels office is headed by a guy who used to be the chief adviser to MEPs with the Swedish Conservative Party. It cannot be a coincidence that one of the MEPs most vocal in supporting ACAA, Christoffer Fjellner, belongs to that party. He is arguing that if the agreement is not approved, Europeans will have less access to medicines. This is scaremongering, in my view, and is hypocritical because Fjellner is very supportive of the big players in the global pharmaceutical industry, who are actively seeking to use intellectual property issues to prevent the poor in Africa, Asia and Latin America from having access to affordable medicines.

DF: Even people writing for quasi-official EU publications have felt compelled to question ‘the sincerity of repeated declarations encouraging Palestinian unity’ from official spokespeople. How have EU donor and diplomatic policies contributed to fragmenting Palestinian politics?

DC: Those declarations have zero credibility.

The EU always claims that it wishes to promote democracy around the world. In 2006, an election took place in Palestine. The EU’s own observation team found the election to be free and fair and something of a model for the Arab world. And then the EU decided to ignore that election because in its eyes the “wrong” party – namely Hamas – won.

I’m personally not a fan of either Hamas nor Fatah but if Hamas won a democratic mandate, that should be respected.

It’s a classical colonial attitude for an imperial power to show preference for one side in an occupied territory over another. Divide and rule. That’s exactly what’s been happening in recent years. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, and Salam Fayyad, the so-called prime minister, lack any democratic mandate. Yet they are treated as real darlings by the EU and US. Why? Because rather than resisting the occupation, they accommodate it.

In particular, they are also happy to pursue the kind of neo-liberal economic policies that are treated as sacrosanct in Brussels and Washington. Salam Fayyad used to work for the International Monetary Fund and has clearly been inculcated with its ideology.

DF: Can you describe the EUPOL COPPS programme and its relationship to the US training of PA forces in the West Bank?

DC: This is another “divide and rule” case.

The EU’s police mission for Palestine (COPPS) was originally supposed to apply to both the West Bank and Gaza. But in practice it only applies to the West Bank because the Union refuses to deal with the Hamas administration in Gaza.

What has happened is that the EU is in charge of training civil police and the US has been charged of training more militarised police units in areas under control of the Palestinian Authority. We are told that this is helping the Palestinian Authority get ready to assume the responsibilities of statehood. This is nonsense. One of the key aims of the these training missions is to boost cooperation between the PA police and Israeli forces. So the EU is really helping Palestinians to police their own occupation.

Worse again, it has been documented that police loyal to Fatah have used brutal methods – including torture – against their political rivals. Even though these police are trained by the EU, the Union says nothing about these human rights abuses. This silence is shameful.

DF: Germany is reportedly in the process of selling Israel a sixth partially subsidized ‘Dolphin’ submarine. What’s the significance of these sales?

DC: I’d put these sales in the context of wider military cooperation between the EU and Israel.

As well as helping to arm Israel, Europe is helping Israel to sell its weaponry abroad. The British Army has been using Israeli unmanned warplanes, or drones as they are generally called, in Afghanistan, for example. The ethical question of using weapons that have been “battle-tested” in an obscene manner isn’t even broached in “polite society”. Drones were used extensively to kill and maim innocent civilians during Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s attack on Gaza in 2008 and 2009.

What’s also significant is that Israeli arms companies are receiving scientific research grants from the Union. These include Elbit and Israel Aerospace Industries, the two suppliers of drones used in Cast Lead. At the moment, Israel is taking part in 800 EU-financed research projects, which have a total value of 4 billion euros. This means that my tax is helping to subsidise Israel’s war industry.

DF: Historically, France has been seen as the European power most likely to challenge the US monopoly on diplomatic initiative in the Middle East. Is this reputation still deserved?

DC: Definitely not.

Jacques Chirac demonstrated occasionally that he could be independent of the US when he was president. But Nicolas Sarkozy has been much more of an “Atlanticist” – for example, he decided that France should participate more fully in NATO than it has for a number of decades.

I’m answering this question a few days before the second round of voting in France’s presidential election. If Francois Hollande wins, then I don’t predict any major changes in terms of France’s policy on Israel-Palestine. I hope, however, that I am proved wrong.

Hollande has been quite happy to pander to the Zionist lobby in France. Both he and Sarkozy turned up at the annual dinner of CRIF, the biggest pro-Israel lobby group in Paris, earlier this year. It was clear that Hollande wasn’t there to denounce Israel’s crimes.

DF: The Greek government brazenly cooperated with Israel in blocking the ‘Freedom Flotilla II’ from challenging the Gaza blockade last summer. You’ve suggested that specific US-Israeli pressure (‘possibly even financial blackmail’) was at work, but that the incident was also a ‘logical consequence of a process that was already underway’.

DC: Yeah. This is quite closely connected to the question you asked about NATO. Greece and Israel have been working together in NATO operations a lot recently.

George Papandreou, the former Greek prime minister, was quite happy to court Israel. When it became clear that relations between Israel and Turkey had soured, Papandreou sniffed an opportunity for Greece to replace Turkey as Israel’s key ally in the Mediterranean.

Even though Greece has been going through an economic nightmare, the Athens authorities have decided to take part in a series of military operations with Israel over the past few years. Let’s not forget that Greece has been spending more on the military as a proportion of national income than most countries in Europe. You can see why the Israeli arms industry would be interested in cultivating stronger links with Greece because, even though Greece is in the doldrums financially, it’s still spending much more than it should be on weapons, while cutting back drastically on essential services like healthcare.

DF: One of your recent articles notes that many of the British officers deployed in post-WWI Palestine were veterans of the Black and Tans, the colonial force infamous for its brutality in Ireland. How has the Irish anti-colonial experience affected Irish politics on the Palestine question?

DC: Among the Irish public, there is a huge amount of sympathy for the Palestinians. The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign has been described by some Zionist watchdogs as the best organised Palestine solidarity group in the world. That’s very interesting because the IPSC relies almost entirely on volunteers.

The Dublin government is a different story. In the current Irish government, there are at least three strong supporters of Israel. These include the ministers for defence and education.

Last year, a number of Irish activists were abducted by Israel as they tried to sail to Gaza. The response of the Dublin government was extremely weak. The Irish foreign minister, Eamon Gilmore, even attended a ceremony film festival sponsored by the Israeli government soon after that incident. He appears to regard avoiding or minimising tension with Israel as a priority.

Furthermore, it should be borne in mind that it’s Ireland’s representative at the European Commission, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, who is administering the research grants to Israeli arms companies I mentioned earlier. She won’t even acknowledge that giving money to firms profiting from human rights abuses is problematic.

DF: In 2010, the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights issued a report criticizing EU maintenance of ‘anti-terrorist’ blacklists that effectively function ‘as ideological and political tools for undermining the right to popular resistance and self-determination.’ How do these lists constrain European politics on Palestine, and are there active campaigns to get them overturned?

DC: This is an important issue.

Israel has lobbied successfully over the past decade to have both the political and military wings of Hamas placed on the EU’s “anti-terrorist” blacklist. EU officials and governments have, as a result, been able to say “we don’t talk to terrorists”, even when the “terrorists” have a democratic mandate. I note, however, that there have been press reports lately indicating that Hamas has had some contacts with European governments. So perhaps this is changing a little bit. But in general, there is an enormous double standard, when the EU is happy to embrace Israel, a state that uses violence and intimidation against civilians on a daily basis, yet brands those who resist Israeli oppression as “terrorists”.

DF: Finally, in recent years the gap between European government support for Israel and public opinion has sometimes been so wide that the EU leadership has issued official apologies to Israel for polling results. What opportunities does this gap provide for strategic Palestine solidarity?

DC: The European public is way more critical of Israel than our governments are. This offers real hope.

The Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel was only launched in 2005. And it has made enormous progress. Veolia, the major French corporation, has ignominiously lost a number of major contracts around the world, for example. Why? Because of public outrage at how Veolia is involved in constructing a tramway that would effectively be reserved for Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem. This illustrates how supporting Israeli apartheid can prove bad for business if ordinary people monitor what corporations get up to and protest.

The BDS campaign is often compared to the one undertaken against South Africa. As it happens, the call for boycott was originally made by South African political activists in the 1950s. But it wasn’t until the 1980s that it had a major impact internationally. So the Palestinian BDS campaign has achieved in seven years what it took the South African campaign three decades to achieve.

The challenge now is to maintain the momentum – and intensify the pressure on Israel and its “corporate sponsors”.

1. Cronin maintains a blog.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russians began to feel that the struggle for armaments had exhausted them, especially in the absence of the necessary energy sources needed by any industrial country. The American presence in the oil zones had for some decades enabled them to grow and have control over international political decision-making without much struggle. Therefore, the Russians turned toward energy sources, oil and gas. Since the international apportionment does not bear much competition in oil sectors, Moscow sought to manipulate gas in the areas of gas production, transportation, and marketing on a large scale.

The starting point was in 1995 when Putin set the strategy of Gasprom Co. to move within the area in which gas exists starting from Russia through Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Iran (for marketing), and the Middle East. Certainly, the projects of the Nord Stream and South Stream will be a historical order of merit/insignia given to Vladimir Putin for his efforts in bringing Russia back to the international arena and for tightening the grip on the European economy which will depend, for decades, on gas as an alternative for oil or gas as well as oil, yet with prioritizing the first; i.e., gas. At this point, it was a must for Washington to hasten to create its peer project, Nabucco, to compete against the Russian project as to gain an international apportionment on the basis of which the next century will be politically and strategically determined.

Gas is the main source of energy in the twenty-first century whether as an alternative for oil, due to recession in oil reserves, or as a source of clean energy. Therefore, having control over the zones of gas reserves in the world is considered to be, for the old as well as modern powers, the basis of international conflict in its regional manifestation.

Obviously, Russia read the map well and learnt the lessons well, for the lack of world energy resources that are needed to inject industrial institutions with money and energy, and which were not under the control of the Soviet Union, was the reason behind its collapse. Therefore, Russia learnt that the source of energy of the coming century; i.e., the 21st Century, was GAS.

An initial reading of the gas map reveals that gas locates in the following areas, in terms of quantity and access to consumption areas:

1. Russia: beginning with Vyborg and Beregvya.

2. Annexed to Russia: Turkmenistan.

3. The near and further roundabouts of Russia: Azerbaijan and Iran.

4. Captured from Russia: Georgia.

5. Eastern Mediterranean: Syria and Lebanon.

6. Qatar and Egypt.

Moscow hastened to work on two strategic lines; the first of which is setting up a Russian-Chinese (Shanghai) century based on the economic growth of the Shanghai Bloc, on the one hand, and the control of gas resources, on the other hand.

Thus, Moscow set the grounds for two projects: the South Stream and the Nord (North) Stream in an attempt to face an American project that aimed at seizing the gas of the Black Sea and the gas of Azerbaijan; the Nabucco Project.

There is, then, a strategic race between two projects so as to have control over Europe and the gas resources.

• The American Project (Nabucco) which centres in Central Asia and the Black Sea and its surroundings. Its storage places are in Turkey while its path starts in Bulgaria, and moves through Romania, Hungary, Czech, Croatia, Slovenia and Italy. It was due to pass through Greece, but this idea was dropped for the sake of Turkey.
• The Russian projects — the Nord and South Streams:
a) Nord Stream: It starts in Russia and goes directly to Germany, and from Weinberg to Sasnetz across the Baltic Sea without penetrating Belarus. This helped ease the American pressure there.
b) South Stream: It starts in Russia and moves towards the Black Sea and Bulgaria, then it goes into Greece and then goes towards South Italy, Hungary, and Austria.

The Nabucco project was supposed to compete with the two Russian projects, but due to technical problems the project was delayed until 2017 though it was scheduled for 2014. This resolved the race in favor of Russia, at this stage in particular, and urged for the search of supplementary areas supporting either project:

1) The Iranian gas which the U.S. insists on making supportive of the Nabucco gas pipeline in the sense that it passes in parallel by Georgia’s gas pipeline (and Azerbaijan if possible) to reach an assembling point in Erzurum, Turkey. 2) Gas of the Eastern Mediterranean: Syria, Lebanon, and Israel.

Iran took a decision, the result of which was signing a number of agreements in July 2011, to transport gas through Iraq to Syria. These agreements make Syria the centre of assembly and production in conjunction with the reserves of Lebanon. This is a space of strategy and energy that geographically opens for the first time and extends from Iran to Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. Though it was banned and was not allowed for many years, it now shows the degree of struggle over Syria and Lebanon at this phase, and shows the emerging role of France that considers the Eastern Mediterranean as a historical region of influence and everlasting interests. The French role now goes along with the French absence ever since the World War II. In other words, France wants to have a role in the world of (gas) from which it has gained (a health insurance) in Libya and wants to gain (a life insurance) in both Syria and Lebanon.

Now, Turkey feels it is going to be lost amid the struggle for gas as long as the Nabucco project is late. Since the Nord and South Streams exclude Turkey, Turkey knows quite well that the gas of the Eastern Mediterranean has become distant from the influence of Nabucco, and so has Turkey.

History of the Game

For the Nord and South Stream Projects, Moscow established the company of Gazprom in the early 1990s. Remarkably, Germany who wanted to escape, once and for all, the repercussions of the World War II, prepared itself to be a party to the project and a partner of it, whether in terms of establishment, a terminus of the north pipeline or the storage places of the south Stream in the Germanic roundabouts, especially Austria.

Gazprom

Gazprom was founded with the cooperation of Hans-Joachim Gornig, Moscow’s German friend, who was a former vice president of the German Oil and Gas Industrial Company and who supervised the construction of the pipeline network of GDR. The one who headed Gazprom until October 2011 was Vladimir Kotenev who was a former Russian ambassador to Germany.

Gazprom signed qualitative and easy transactions with German companies, on top of which comes the companies cooperating with the Nord Stream as the giant (E.ON) company for energy, and the giant (BASF) for chemicals where the (E.ON) gets preference to buy amounts of gas at the expense of Gazprom when gas prices go up. This is considered to be a kind of (political) support of the German energy companies.

Moscow benefited from the liberalization of the European gas markets monopoly to force those markets to disconnect the distribution networks from production facilities. These clashes between Russia and Berlin turn a page of historic hostility to start a new phase of cooperation on the basis of economy as well as repudiation of a heavy weight put on Germany’s shoulders; i.e., the heavy weight of the debt-overburdened Europe that is under the thumb of the U.S. Germany considers that the Germanic Group — Germany, Austria, Czech and Switzerland — has the priority in being the core of Europe, but it should not bear the consequences of the aging of a continent nor the fall of another giant.

Gazprom’s German ventures include its Wingas joint venture with Wintershall, a subsidiary of BASF which is Germany’s largest oil and gas producer and controls 18% of the gas market. Gazprom has given its top German partners unrivaled stakes in its Russian assets. BASF and E.ON each control almost one-quarter of the Yuzhno-Russkoye gas fields that will provide most of the supplies for Nord Stream at a time, which is not a mere coincidence or simulation, when the peer of Gazprom in Germany — called “The Germanic Gazprom” — expands to own 40% of the Austrian Centrex Co., which is specialized in gas storage. The latter has qualitative expansion into Cyprus, an expansion with which Turkey may not be content.

Turkey dearly misses assuming a tardy role in the Nabucco Gas Company whereby it is supposed to start storing, marketing, and transferring about 31 billion m³ of gas which can go up to 40 billion m³ — at a later stage — in a project that makes Ankara more and more subjugated to Washington and Nato decisions without having the right to insist on joining the European Union that has rejected it several times.

As a matter of fact, the strategic ties through gas become even more strategic in politics where Moscow lobbies effectively on the Social Democratic Party of Germany in North-Rhine Westphalia, the major industrial base that is home to the RWE (Neurath power plant) for electricity utilities and E.ON subsidiary.

Such an influence is recognized by the head of energy policies in the Green Party, Hans Joseph Fell, that four German companies related to Russia play a role in formulating the German Energy Policy through a very complicated network that lobbies ministers and manipulates the public opinion via the Eastern European Economic Relations Committee that represents German companies and has close business relations in Russia and countries of the Former Soviet Union Bloc.

Therefore, there is an indispensible silence on the part of Germany vis-à-vis the accelerating Russian influence. This silence is based on the necessity to improve the so-called “energy security” in Europe.

Remarkably, Germany now considers the policy of “easing and pacifying,” suggested by the European Union to cover the Euro crisis, will hinder the Russian-German investments for a long time. This reason, together with other reasons – e.g., German dawdling in saving the Euro laden with European debts. However, it should be taken into consideration that Germany and its Germanic bloc can bear those debts alone.

Every time Europeans oppose Germany and its policy regarding Russia, Berlin asserts that the Europe’s Utopian plans are unenforceable and may push Russia to sell its gas in Asia. This will, definitely, eighty-six energy security in Europe.

This Russian-German engagement was not simple when Putin could employ the legacy of the Cold War regarding the presence of three million Russian-speakers living in Germany who comprised the second largest group after the Turks. Putin was also adept at employing a network of Eastern German officials who had been recruited to look after the interests of the Russian companies in Germany, let alone recruiting a number of ex-Eastern German State Security Service agents (ex-Stasi agents). This includes Gazprom Germania’s director of personnel and its director of finance and director of finance of the Nord Stream Consortium, Matthias Warnig, who the Wall Street Journal reported as having helped Putin recruit spies in the eastern Germany City of Dresden when Putin was a young KGB operative.

To be fair, Russia’s employment of its former relations was not unripe; rather, it was for the benefit of Germany as a whole. That made the clash between the two countries not possible as long as interests were attained by both parties without having one dominating the other.

The Nord Stream Project, the major link between Russia and Germany, has been inaugurated recently with pipeline costing 4.7 billion euros. Although the Nord Stream Pipeline links Russia and Germany, Europeans’ recognition that such a project would be part of their Energy Security made France and Holland hasten to declare it a European project. In this regard, it is good to mention that Lindner of the Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations said without hesitation that it was a European not a German project and that they would not lock Germany into greater dependence on Russia. Such a declaration indicates the apprehension of the expanding Russian influence in Germany; however, the project of the Nord Stream, in structure, represents Moscow’s plan not the EU’s.

Russians can cripple energy distribution to Poland and other countries the way they like and will be able to sell gas to whoever pays more. However, the importance of Germany to Russia lies, practically, in the fact that it constitutes a platform from which to launch its strategy across the continent where Gazprom Germania has stakes in twenty-five joint projects in Britain, Italy, Turkey, Hungary, and other countries. This — actually — leads us to say that Gazprom will — after a while — become one of the largest companies of the world if not the largest.

Not only did Gazprom leaders build this project, they also tried to interfere in the Nabucco Project that will — as aforementioned — be delayed until 2017, taking into consideration that the latter constitutes a serious challenge. Therefore, Gazprom — which owns 30% of a project designed for building a second major huge pipeline that reaches Europe roughly along Nabucco’s route; a project even Gazprom supporters call “political” — began a political auctioneering to show its muscles by stopping Nabucco or crippling it.

Nevertheless, Moscow hastened to buy up gas in Central Asia and the Caspian in a bid to starve Nabucco at the same time it is ridiculing Washington politically, economically, and strategically.

Outlining Europe’s and – later – the world’s Map

Gazprom operates gas facilities in Austria; i.e., facilities in the strategic Germanic roundabouts. It also leases facilities in Britain and France. However, the growing number of storage facilities in Austria will be the basis for drawing the energy map of Europe since it is going to provide the Slovenian, Slovakian, Croatian, Hungarian, Italian, and somewhat German benefiting from a newly established repository called Katrina, which Gazprom builds in cooperation with Germany with the aim of exporting gas to the hubs of Western Europe.

Gazprom established a joint storage facility with Serbia to export gas to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia itself. Feasibility studies have been conducted on similar storage ventures in the Czech Republic, Romania, Belgium, Britain, Slovakia, Turkey, Greece, and even France. Such a venture, on the part of Gazprom, strengthens Moscow’s position as a provider of 41% of Europe’s needed supplies of gas. This, undoubtedly, means an substantial change in the relations between the East and the West in the short, mid, and long runs. It also indicates an ebb in the American influence or a collision being prepared, considering the missile shield to establish a new world order where gas is the most essential pillar of its formation. This is a clear indication of the heating struggle in the Middle East over the gas of the eastern coast of the Mediterranean.

Nabucco in a tight spot

Nabucco was conceived to funnel gas 3,900 kilometers from Turkey to Austria and was designed to carry 31 bcm of natural gas annually from the Middle East and the Caspian region to markets in Europe. The Nato-American-French hastening towards decisively ending all matters in the Middle East, particularly in Syria and Lebanon, in a way that harmonizes with their interests, lies in the necessity to maintain calm situations supporting the investment and transportation of gas. Syria responded by signing a contract that aims at transferring gas from Iran to Syria passing by Iraq. As a matter of fact, it is the very Syrian and Lebanese gas that is the focal point of the struggle that aims at annexing it either to the Nabucco gas reserves or Gazprom, thus, the South Stream.

The consortium of Nabucco consists of the German energy companies REW, Austrian OML, Turkish Botas, Bulgarian Energy Holding Company, and Romanian Transgaz.

Five years ago, the initial costs of the rival project of Gazprom were estimated to be $ 11.2 billion and the project was expected to cost less than the Russian one. The costs, however, could reach $21.4 billion by 2017. This raises many questions about the viability of this economic project, in particular taking into consideration that Gazprom has enough deals in various regions — in an attempt to encompass Nabucco — that would feed on the surplus capacity of the gas of Turkmenistan, especially when we know that the ineffective pursuit of the Iranian gas precludes the possibility of achieving the Nabucco dream. This is, in fact, one of the unknown secrets of the struggle over Iran that has gone too far into defiance by choosing Iraq and Syria to be routes for its gas transport, or – at least – part of that route.

Thus, Nabucco’s best hope lies in gas supplies from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz 2 field which would almost be the only source of a project that seems to be stumbling from the very beginning. This manifests in the accelerating deals and in Moscow’s success in buying the sources of Nabucco, on the one hand, and the hardships encountered in achieving geopolitical changes in Iran and the Mediterranean (Syria and Lebanon), on the other hand. This comes at a time in which Turkey hastens to claim a share in the Nabucco Project either through signing a contract with Azerbaijan to buy 6 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas in 2017 or trying to lay hands on Syria and Lebanon with the aim of hampering the transfer of Iranian oil or receiving a share of the Lebanese or Syrian gas affluence (or Syria and Lebanon altogether). The race towards occupying a position in the New World Order escalates through gas and other things ranging from small military services to the strategic domes of the missile shield.

Perhaps what poses a threat to Nabucco most is Russia’s attempt to ditch it through negotiating over more advantageous and competitive contracts of gas supplies in favor of Gazprom’s Nord and South Streams, hampering, thus, any effort to endow the United States and Europe with any kind of influence, political- and energy-wise, whether in Iran or the Mediterranean. Moreover, Gazprom could be one of the most important investors or operators of the new gas fields in Syria or Lebanon. The date of August 16, 2011 was not randomly chosen by the Syrian Ministry of Oil to announce the discovery of a gas well in the Area of Qarah in the Central Region of Syria near Homs. The well has the capacity of producing 400.000 cubic metres a day (146 million cubic metres a year). However, the Syrian Ministry of Oil did not breathe a syllable about the Mediterranean Gas.

The Nord and South Streams lessened the importance of the American policy that appeared to be lagging behind. The bad history between the states of Central Europe and Russia has ebbed, Poland is slowly coming round, and the US seem willing to reconsider since it announced in late October 2011 the shift in the energy policies after the discovery of coal mines in Europe which will lessen dependence on Russia … and the Middle East. This seems to be a far-reaching or long-term goal due to the fact that there is a number of procedures to be taken before starting commercial production of coal. This coal can be attained from unconventional sources in the rocks found at thousands of feet underground by using the techniques of rock fracturing and the hydraulic fracturing of high pressure water. Those techniques are used to pump liquids and sand into a well to release gas. This issue, however, is coated with environmental risks due to the impacts of the fracturing techniques on water reserves.

China’s Participation

Sino-Russian cooperation in the field of energy is the power orienting the Sino-Russian strategic partnership. This is, in fact, what experts point to as the “base” for the double veto in the UNSC that came in favour of Syria.

Cooperation in the energy field is what lubricates the acceleration of the partnership between the two giants. It is not only a matter of gas supplies with preferences to China but it is a process that urges China to participate in gas distribution through selling new assets and facilities, in addition to attempting to have joint control over the executive administrations of the gas distribution networks where Moscow currently shows resilience in prices of gas supplies provided that they are allowed to access the local Chinese markets because of the profits there. It was agreed that Russian and Chinese experts could work together in the following domains:

“coordinating energy strategies in Russia and china; predicting and outlining prospective scenarios; and developing market infrastructure, energy efficiency and sources of alternative energy.”

Despite cooperation in the field of energy, there are other strategic interests that represent in the mutual Chinese-Russian conception of the risks of the American so-called project “Missile Shield.” Not only has Washington involved Japan and South Korea in the Missile Shield, but it has also sent an invitation to India in early September 2011 to be a partner in the very project. Moscow’s concerns intersect with Beijing’s, regarding Washington’s moves to revive the Strategy of Central Asia: i.e., the Silk Road. This project is the same as that initiated by George Bush (Greater Central Asia Project) to roll back Russia and China’s influence in Central Asia in collaboration with Turkey to resolve the situation in Afghanistan by 2014 so as to arrange for the Nato influence there. There are increasing allusions from Uzbekistan to play host of Nato for such a project. Vladimir Putin estimates what can foil the Western invasion on Russia’s back scenes in Central Asia will be the expansion of the joint Russian-Kazakhstani-Belarusian economic space in cooperation with Beijing.

This image of the international struggle mechanisms allows access to see one side of the process of the New World Order Formation based on struggling for military influence and on holding the backbone of age; namely, energy, on top of which comes gas.

The Gas of Syria

As Israel started oil and gas extraction, it was clear that the basin of the Mediterranean had entered the game and that Syria was either to be attacked or that the whole region was going to enjoy peace since the twenty-first century was the century of clean energy.

What we know about this issue is that the Mediterranean basin is the wealthiest in gas and that Syria would be the wealthiest state, according to the Washington Institute which also speculates that struggle between Turkey and Cyprus would heat due to Ankara’s inability to bear its losses of the Nabucco gas despite the contract Moscow signed with Ankara on December 2011 to transport part of the South Stream gas via Turkey.

Embracing the secret of the Syrian gas will let all know how big the game over gas is. According to China, who controls Syria could control the Middle East, grip on the Gateway to Asia, possess the Key to Russia’ house (as Catherine the 2nd put it), and could set foot on the Silk Road. Most importantly, they who could penetrate Syria for gas have the ability to dominate the world, especially since the coming century will be the Century of Gas. With the contract Damascus signed to transport Iranian gas to the Mediterranean through Iraq, the geopolitical space would open and the gas space would close on the scene of Nabucco that used to be Europe and Turkey’s lifeline. Syria, undoubtedly, would be the key to the coming epoch.

There is a higher Court than the Courts of Justice, that is the Court of Conscience. It supercedes all other Courts.

— Mahatma Ghandi, 1869-1948

Herr Stefan Hansen
CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board
Lufthansa Airlines

Dear Herr Hansen,

I write, to coin a phrase, more in sorrow than in anger, that your airline caved in to pressure from Israel and joined Air France, Alitalia, Turkish and Brussels Airlines, Jet2 and Easy Jet (mission statement: “ … to effect and offer a consistent and reliable product …”) in refusing “flytilla” passengers en route to Bethlehem in Palestine, with fully paid tickets, on to your flights to Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport.

My own experiences of flights to and from the Middle East on Lufthansa are numerous, each with heartwarming memories of conversations with crews, their kindness and their real love for the region, some with such affinity that they had moved there, embracing the complexities, uncertainties and above all the history and unique warmth of the people.

What makes Lufthansa’s stance so ironic is that as an airline, it was, for 45 years, isolated and unable to fly in to Germany, its home country, as you will know.  Thus, it is uniquely placed to understand Palestine’s isolation, its airport near destroyed and forbidden its own airline.

When Iraq was near equally isolated during the years of the embargo, Iraqi airways grounded by the terms of the UN freeze on the country’s access to just about anything, your crews and staff consistently expressed empathy, even outrage. It has to be wondered how they regard their company’s shoddy stance, adding to the siege and isolation of Palestine.

Lufthansa’s own isolation was also subject to deviant victors’ justice.  In 1945, at the end of the second World War when Germany was occupied by the Soviet Union, the US, France, and Britain, the Berlin Wall went up and, as with the Palestine – Israel wall, Germany was walled in — or walled out — depending on  the view point. Stark parallels.

British, French and US airlines had the monopoly of flights to West Germany and the Soviet Union to the East. Lufthansa, Germany’s national airline, was barred from flying to Germany.

In spite of the shameful arrogance of the restrictions, just ten years after the war ended, Lufthansa had expanded its long distance flights – to the Middle East and Americas. Yet it was not until 1990, when the Wall came down, dismantled by the people themselves, that Lufthansa’s distinctive colors finally landed back in Berlin for the first time since the Allied occupation.

I only learned this history a year before the Wall crumbled. I called Lufthansa to book a flight to Berlin. The booking agent said Lufthansa did not fly to Berlin.

“You don’t fly to your own country?”

I still recall the humiliation in his voice as he explained the chronology of a great and proud carrier, established in 1926, being barred from its homeland and capitol city’s airport.

Perhaps that was also the reason, when, on numerous visits to Iraq, traveling Lufthansa as far as Amman, Jordan and then on by road due to the embargo’s strictures, the crew would often talk the night away in the quiet hours in the galley, voicing outrage and concern at the plight of the people, the isolation. Lufthansa had flights to Iraq from 1956 until halted by the 1990 embargo.

Quite often the same crew would be operating the return flight.  They would beam, remember, welcome me back and then, invariably, ask the same question one heard throughout the Middle East: “How is Iraq? How are the people?” As if asking about a family.

Lufthansa transported 1.56 million passengers to the Middle East in just the first four months of 2010, up 41 percent from the previous year, “An expression of the historically good relationship between Germany and the Arab states”, commented analyst Juergen Pieper.

Germany’s flag carrier enjoining in barring passengers from a journey described as “a beacon of hope”, by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mairead Maguire, a gesture of solidarity with Palestinians, a people near forsaken by governments due to pressures from those now occupying Palestine’s land, is especially craven from your country which also has suffered the humiliation of occupation.

Lufthansa has joined in conspiring to scupper an initiative the world could well do with, one which Swedish writer, Henning Mankell, described of another sea borne initiative of solidarity as “a declaration of peace.”

Your company had not alone negated the rights enshrined in the founding charter of the United Nations and Vienna Convention of the right of all to travel freely, but validated the arresting of both Jewish and Palestinian welcomers of the visitors united at Ben Gurion airport, and incarcerated for holding cards of greetings – and in one case a drawing by a Palestinian child.

Perhaps Palestinian journalist Susan Abulhawa pinpoints the reason for a seemingly incomprehensible decision by the airlines, but additionally uncomfortably applicable to Lufthansa. She writes:

Everything – home, heritage, life, resources, hope – has been robbed from us to atone for Germany’s sins. To this day, we languish in refugee camps that are not fit for human beings so that every Jewish man and woman can have dual citizenship, one in their own country and one in mine.

We are the ones who find ourselves at the other end of the weapons that Germany supplies to Israel. It is Palestine that is being wiped off the map. It is our society that is being destroyed. Of course, Germany’s silence is easy and convenient, but ‘understandable’ it is not.

As one who has a deep affinity with Germany, her words make me infinitely sad.

Germany’s “Iron Curtain” has been jubilantly pulled down, whilst physically and aeronautically it now apparently endorses another one in the Middle East.

With the boycott movement ever gaining worldwide strength, it remains to be seen how it will impact on airlines complicit in sabotaging an international initiative conceived in humanity, in solidarity with a nation mourning  64 years of isolation and ever creeping dispossession, in the month that Israel celebrates Independence Day, its 64th birthday, in festivities world wide.

As for the profitability of future flights to Ben Gurion airport, in the words of an Israeli Foreign Ministry official: “We have insulted hundreds of foreign citizens … Direct damage has been done to tourism and to Israel’s good name”, he said.

Indeed, with 1500 potential extra passengers into the airport, what a dream chance for a charm offensive. Instead they were demonstrating with others against involved airlines and Israel in numerous airports in many countries.

An own goal all round it seems, Herr Hansen. And, yes, as many, I will, with sadness, be reconsidering my modest contributions to Lufthansa’s coffers in future travels.

In anticipation of your thoughts on this sorry saga,

Yours sincerely,
Felicity Arbuthnot (Dr.Hon., Phil.)

Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph.
– Haile Selassie

Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon? Have they turned their backs on their profound and noble religious traditions? Have they forgotten that God cares deeply about the downtrodden?
– Bishop Desmond Tutu

These two cautionary admonitions capture the thrust of Günter Grass’ electrifying poem, “What Must Be Said,” that has brought an avalanche of invective – some scurrilous, some vituperative, some even personal vilification – against the man who warns the people of the world as well as the Jewish people of the dangers inherent in the actions of the Zionist controlled government of the State of Israel. Such condemnations avoid direct rebuttal of Grass’ pointed cries of despair as he contemplates continued indifference to the slow yet calculated genocide that exists in Israel’s occupation of Palestine reverting instead to derogatory innuendo, ignorance of conditions prevalent in the occupied territories, ignorance of those determined to destroy Israel, and personal guilt as a German. There is no reflection on the worst sin human kind can inflict on their fellow human beings, the silence of indifference to the plight of the Palestinians or to the potential danger facing the people of the mid-east should Israel pre-emptively strike Iran.

The title of his poem, “What Must Be Said,” echoes the prophets of old, cries of those weeping in the wilderness to heed the obvious, to hear the hypocrisy that masks the reality of a nation that cries for peace as it stealthily steals more land, that demands dismantling of Iran’s nuclear plants as it declares its right to Dimona and untold weapons of mass destruction, that denounces with all brazen duplicity, indeed silences those who criticize the state of Israel while they are free to attack them as anti-Semitic.

“Why silence so long,” Grass asks of himself and answers, as must we all, that we are “slaves to an oppressive lie,” what cannot be said without condemnation because Israel has the “right” to demand and defend what it will. Is it wrong to criticize the obvious? Is it wrong to bare truth when silence once before begot a holocaust? Is it wrong for the German people to mark what they have learned through decades of reflection and reparation and not reveal what they have lived and learned? Is it wrong to speak when devastation threatens, when arrogance buries truth, when the weak have no voice, when the unknown consequence of brutal, raw, preemptive power is imminent?

I would have Günter Grass speak for me, my children and grandchildren, and all others who could suffer yet another World War, by noting the obvious that has been silenced so long:

• a state provided with the fourth greatest military machine in the world to defend less than 6 million people,
• a nation, the only nation in the mid-east with weapons of mass destruction,
• a nation that refuses to sign the mid-east nuclear non-proliferation agreement,
• a nation that has demonstrated its willingness to invade its neighbors in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and drools to bomb Iran,
• a nation that occupies a land provided for it by the same United Nations that gave Israel license to declare itself a nation,
• a nation that damns Iran for proclaiming that it will “wipe Israel off the map,” when in fact it never made such a declaration yet innocently hides its own declaration in the Likud Party Platform that the state it professes to want peace with, Palestine, shall never have a state west of the Jordan,
• a nation that is of such demonstrable threat to world peace that if it is not condemned would be a blot on all who remain silenced and thereby complicit in its crimes, and for such inaction, such indifference we must accept responsibility and condemnation; let the indignant ring their bells of anger and hatred, truth will prevail.

Who better to speak than a citizen of a country that supplies Israel with nuclear submarines capable of terrorizing its neighbors if not the world, submarines provided as reparation to a people destroyed so they can become the destroyer. “Why silence so long?” because “this must be said” with strength, conviction, integrity and honesty, and without personal fear or trepidation because the silence has been broken by a voice that resounds throughout the world in righteous thunder against the greatest danger the world now knows, an Israel that can act with impunity to crush whomever they determine to be their enemy.

Let me close this defense of Günter Grass with a story told by Professor Michael Klein years after he had escaped death at Auschwitz. Klein’s brief narrative is titled “Breaking Silence.” It captures what I believe is the real essence of Günter Grass’ plea, both in time and shame. The story reflects on Klein’s close friend, Salamon Abshalom, who had attempted escape and was to suffer death as a consequence. The story is a parable that parallels our time; what if voices had told of the Jewish plight before the trains took them to the death camps; maybe Salamon Abshalom would still be alive.

“My friend Salamon Abshalom was let out. He was barely able to walk; his hands were tied behind his back. An SS guard took him to the back of the camp yard. … He was led to the gallows and made to climb onto what looked like a stepladder. The noose was tied around his neck.

We stood paralyzed, in bewildered despair. How could the Heavens allow this to happen on this holy Yom Kippur evening? Did the Germans set up the execution specifically for Yom Kippur to humiliate the God of Israel and His people? The silence of the Heavens screamed out in our hearts and in our souls. The desecration of the God of Israel, of the people of Israel, of Yom Kippur, and the humiliation of man created in the image of God proceeded in silence as the German hangman, the Camp’s SS commander, stood over Salamon Abshalom.

Suddenly, as if from nowhere, a powerful, high pitched voice rang out over the camp yard. It sent chills down our spines, as we heard the cry of “Sh’ma Yisrael…”, Hear O Israel”, as Salamon Abshalom declaimed the eternal proclamation of the Jewish people’s belief in one God….

With his prayer of Sh’ma Yisrael arising from his last breath, he raised all of us standing Zaehlappell to the highest spiritual level. Even as his life was extinguished by the brutal murderer to whom nothing was holy, he still proclaimed the eternity of the Jewish People, in defiance of evil, in defiance of the Germans, in defiance of the silence of humanity, and in defiance of the silence of the Heavens. Salamon Abshalom proclaimed the Godliness of the Jewish People even at a time when God seemed to be totally absent.

I slowly calmed my emotions and tried to analyze my thoughts. The Germans murdered Salamon Abshalom, but I was guilty having been silent in spite of the promise we made to each other in the camps that we will tell the world of what happened. I had kept Salamon Abshalom’s memory a secret for all these years.”

Silence sacrifices the innocent because it allows continuation of slaughter; silence rests in the soul as it acidifies into self-shame; silence speaks no language, offers no aid, but ensures that time will extinguish both hope and guilt. Silence is the voice of the coward and the accomplice. Silence must be extinguished.

Hitt advised rap musicians to emblazon the confederate flag on their jewelry, their clothing, their posters, their record album covers—on everything they can think of.   Turn the image of the confederate flag into a universally recognized symbol of black pride and black defiance… do that, and watch how fast that Southern gravy bib is removed from the statehouse’s flag pole.

It was a brilliant idea.  One wonders if there’s any way this same sort of “reverse” approach could be adopted by labor unions.  As it stands now, many union leaders and members (along with the Democratic politicians who give them lip service) are so beaten down and demoralized, they seem intent on maintaining a low profile, as if they’re ashamed or embarrassed by their union affiliation.  They behave as if there was, in fact, some truth to the smear campaigns being waged by the Republican right.

But instead of offering mealy-mouthed, half-hearted defenses of their unions, what if these people took the offensive?  What if they portrayed organized labor not only as a viable institution—one acknowledged to have had glorious antecedents, a rich and storied history, a record of positive social change, blah, blah, blah—but as America’s last and only hope if the middle class is to survive?

What if, as a start, they resorted to some dramatic examples, such as pointing out that Sully Sullenberger, the pilot who resourcefully landed that jet plane on the Hudson River, was himself the chairman of his union’s safety committee, and pointing out that those 343 heroic firefighters who died on 9-11 were all union members—every last one of them?

More substantially, unions need to drive home the point that without economic leverage America’s working class will be at the mercy of the corporations (not that they already aren’t).  With federal labor laws continuing to be watered down and chipped away, and organized labor continuing to be assaulted, what’s left?  The only thing that’s going to stand between working people and the entrance to Hell is the federal minimum wage, which, at $7.25 per hour, translates to a measly $15,080 per year—that is if you’re lucky enough to work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year.

Unions are letting the game get away from them.  We’re taking too many collective insults, taking it on the chin.  On February 8, the PBS NewsHour did a report on Germany’s astonishing economic success.  Even in this disturbing, uncertain and increasingly volatile global economy, Germany has managed to pull off a minor miracle.  Although Germany has about one percent of the world’s population, it produces ten percent of the world’s exports.  Truly, an amazing success story.

But while PBS praised German management, German workers, German education, German society, and even the German government, they didn’t so much as mention the words “labor union.”  And given how many Americans mindlessly accept the notion that unions have somehow “hurt” U.S. productivity, that omission was damaging.  Was it done intentionally or inadvertently?  Considering the NewsHour’s reliance on corporate funding, along with the incessant drumbeat of flak PBS receives from the mobilized Right, we can assume the former.

There’s no denying that Germany’s economic bonanza was largely achieved by union workers.  With approximately 25 percent of its workforce unionized, Germany has about twice as many union workers as the U.S.  More significantly, most of those unionized workers are employed in the country’s high-tech, high-profit manufacturing sector—the sector that is most responsible for Germany’s recent success.

And unlike the U.S., German politicians don’t make a career of bashing labor unions, and German talk show hosts don’t make a name for themselves by demonizing national health care, equating it with “evil socialism.”  Indeed, Germany has had a rudimentary form of national health care since 1848.  As of 2004, Germany’s multi-layer health care program was 77 percent government funded, and 23-percent privately funded.  Their system works, and they’re way ahead of us.

So instead of giving those same old, tired, faux-patriotic stump speeches that glorify American virtues and accentuate American exceptionalism, our politicians need to adopt a broader, more internationalist view.  Hopefully, we’re not too stubborn to learn from other people.  Our leaders must take the initiative.  They must convince us to embrace Europe.  They must convince us to look to Germany as a model.

After a century of scheming in the Middle East and Central Asia by first Britain and then the US, the tables turned much faster than anyone could have imagined. As the pivotal 2011 draws to a close, it is the perfect moment to look at how we got here. The rollercoaster ride has been long and terrifying, and it is vital to understand where it is taking us.

From the 19th century on, it was clear to imperial strategists such as Cecil Rhodes and Halford MacKinder, motivated by the desire to conquer the world, that the “heartland”, Eurasia, was the key to securing the proposed world empire. WWI was supposed to clinch the deal, with the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate leaving the Levant “free” to be carved up and secured. The Indian Raj was the empire’s base for securing Central Asia and the Far East .

But the horrors of the war led to an unforeseen result: revolution in Russia, inspiring a growing anti-imperial movement across Eurasia. Inspired by Russian revolutionaries, the Raj seethed in discontent, demanding freedom from the British yoke, and Chinese patriots coalesced around their own rapidly growing Communist movement. Historic Turkestan was now off limits, part of the Soviet Union or in the case of Afghanistan, unconquerable.

WWII erupted as Germany attempted to snatch the world empire from the British and destroy its Russian nemesis, but this merely accelerated the decline of the Euro-imperialists, their schemes exposed as relying on mass slaughter and cold, calculating privilege for the elite of the imperial centre.

When the war ended, there were hopes that imperialism would end too. The empire had been forced to ally with the Communists to defeat the Germans, and to promise to dismantle the imperial system after WWII. This new world order was to be one of independent nations competing on a level playing field. But what should have been the last gasp of this inhuman system of “free trade” in the service of empire gained a new lease on life, as the US had escaped the 20th century’s cataclysms unscathed, and its capitalists were eager to take on the mantle of empire ceded by the bankrupt Brits.

Moreover, a new, subtle but key force in the new empire was the Jewish state established by the British and Americans in the heart of the Middle East, a blatant colonial entity which draped its imperial role in the language of anti-colonial liberation. This, despite the fact that it was created by dispossessing the native Arabs, even as neighbouring Arabs in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and North Africa were gaining nominal independence from their colonial masters.

This new playing field witnessed a long, bloody match, pitting the empire’s forces against both Communists and anti-colonial forces. After millions of deaths, it culminated in the defeat of the Communists in 1991, and a new game began, with world control once again the prize.

The dreams of revolution and an end to empire were dashed, and this new world order was once again baldly imperial, as planners accelerated their plans, epitomised by the rise of the neoconservatives with their Project for a New American Century, combining market fundamentalism and imperial aggression in a deadly cocktail where there were no longer any geographical limits.

The former Communist union, especially Turkestan, with its strategic location and oil wealth, was quickly brought into the imperial orbit. Even China was accommodated, as it acceded to the world economic order established by the empire after WWII.

But the baggage of empire continued to complicate the picture. The Islamists, so useful in the destruction of the Communist bloc, resisted imperial designs. Israel, also useful throughout the post-WWII struggle against both the Communists and the 3rd world liberation forces, established itself as an independent player and even posed as the new imperial coach, penetrating to the heart of the empire and asserting its own goals of expansion and hostility against its Muslim neighbours.

At its beheast, the resulting wars have been against the Arab and Muslim world, but two decades of attempts to subdue them have merely hardened Muslims’ opposition to empire, even as the devastation caused by imperial designs increases.

Hence, the Arab Spring of 2011 and the accession to power of Islamists via the ballot box across the Middle East . Hence, the unwinnable war against the Afghan people, that brought empire to its knees in fateful 2011, even as the slaughter of insurgents and civilians increased. Yes, the imperialists managed a clever ruse, invading Libya to depose the clownish Gaddafi, but the Islamists and fiercely independent tribes there are unlikely allies of empire.

The tsunami of resistance to imperialism surged throughout 2011 around the world, while the empire’s leaders put a worldwide “missile defence” system in place. But even as radars and missiles were installed in Europe, the rising tide reached the empire’s shores in 2011, as financial crisis led to rising poverty and unrest in the imperial centre itself.

Taking inspiration from the Arab Spring, mass demonstrations in Greece and Spain erupted and Wall Street, the empire’s “heartland”, was occupied. The “99 per cent” entered the political lexicon as the people vs the ruling elite (the 1 per cent who own half of the country’s assets). Even Israel and newly capitalist Russia witnessed mass demonstrations, as ordinary citizens began to realise how the system works, or rather doesn’t work for them. How increasing disparity of wealth is the logical result of market fundamentalism and control of the economy by financial capital.

2011 will go down in history as a year as fateful as 1917, when the blinkers fell away from the common people’s eyes in Russia and they rose up against their oppressors. But while 1917 witnessed a Communist revolution against capitalism and imperialism by a small corps of professional revolutionaries, 2011 has witnessed a mass, leaderless revolution facilitated by telecommunications, and in the case of the key Middle East, inspired by Islam.

There is no Lenin, not even a Gamal Abdel-Nasser, the one Arab leader who managed to slow down the imperial steamroller in the Middle East and is still revered for his defiance. Unlike Communist revolutionaries of yore, the new leaders in the Middle East of what must be called the Islamic revolution of 2011 are not the object of veneration, something that Islam as a religion warns against.

Revolutions always start in the weakest links. Thus, the Middle East has a head start on the revolutionary process over the West, though through the growing Palestinian solidarity movement, notably the global Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign, the struggles of East and West are increasingly seen to be one and the same. What will be the decisive test for the new revolutionaries in the Middle East and the West itself is how well they can navigate the political shoals and landmines laid by a century of empire.

How to dismantle apartheid Israel without it unleashing nuclear war on the world? How to put an end to US world financial blackmail centred on the dollar without the US strategists taking everyone else down with them? While the empire is on the defensive, it is still powerful and as its star wanes, it will only become more lethal.

The foes of empire are popping up faster than the empire’s drones can knock them off. They are found not only in Arab (and Persian) lands, or even in a skeptical Russia and still-Communist China. As the links in the system continue to fray, they are increasingly in the heart of the empire itself. Americans and Europeans will continue to develop alternatives to empire, financially, economically and politically, in their own communities and continue to link up with their comrades-against-arms in the heart of the supposed enemy in Eurasia .

More and more Americans are involved in co-ops, worker-owned companies and other alternatives to capitalism. Some 130 million Americans are part owners of co-op businesses and credit unions. As Obama cuts funding to states, the latter considers establishing their own banks and use public pensions to fund state economic development.

There is a wealth of expertise in the “heartland” of the empire that can help show the whole world the way out of the imperial dead end. The new generation in America lacks the Cold War paranoia about socialism: Americans under 30 years old are “essentially evenly divided” as to whether they preferred “capitalism” or “socialism”, according to a 2009 Rasmussen poll.

Even as the world environment degrades, even as imperial arms continue to kill, maim and choke demonstrators and insurgents both at the heart of the empire and in the heart of the “enemy”, we can take heart in the new sense of human dignity which 2011 spawned, and fight the intrigues of empire with new vigour in 2012.

The 1989 novel, titled The Third Reich, is the diary of a German office worker named Udo Bergen and his vacation in Spain. There is a girlfriend, a couple they meet, the hotel owner Frau Else, a man named Quernado who rents paddle boats to tourists and has grotesque burn scars on his body. The girlfriend leaves after a fright; the man in the couple drowns and the hotel owner’s husband is taken away to hospice with terminal cancer. The presence of a board game based on the second world war and also called The Third Reich hangs over the story like a surreal presence. Udo is an expert in board games based on World War Two and even makes extra money writing about strategies for different gaming magazines. For most of the book he and Quernado are engaged in a the Third Reich game. Udo is hoping that he can win as Germany while Quernado’s pieces represent the allies. It is as if the game is as real as life and life is only a game. Bergen even says to his game-playing friend Conrad upon his return from Spain: “We (are) all essentially ghosts on a ghostly General Staff.”

It seems that Quernado identifies Bergen as not only an opponent in the game, but as a potential embodiment of Nazi Germany itself. This is despite Bergen stating specifically to Quernado that he is much more of an anti-Nazi than any Nazi at all. Quernado ignores Bergen and plays the game as if he were fighting the war. Like much of Europe and certainly Germany, the fact of World War Two’s horrors defines everything, albeit in a rather murky manner. The game is nothing but a game except when it becomes more, as it does in the mind of Quernado. History has a similar trajectory. As long as it remains in books and museums (or games) it has little threat. It is when history becomes real that it constitutes something potentially more dangerous.

Like most of Bolano’s novels, The Third Reich comes across as if it were written in a detached fog. Although the narrator Bergen is part of every scene that occurs, his narration of the life he is in the middle of is simultaneously distant and intimate. Like fog, the closer one gets to the situation or person being described, the clearer Bergen’s tale become. Observations about the other characters in the novel are provided with an omniscience that, once considered, are mostly Bergen’s selfish perceptions. As one follows the interactions of the various characters in Bergen’s beach vacation, the egocentric nature of modern individuated society becomes apparent. Every single person portrayed lives alone amongst the crowd in the Spanish resort town. Relationships easily formed are just as easily dismissed. Friendships seem to be anything but that and love is barely more meaningful than renting a room.

Bolano is a master of style and story. The seemingly innocuous life of Udo Bergen the office worker and gamer is on second glance not what it appears. Death, sex, intrigue and the threat of violence simmer beneath the thin flesh of Bolano’s tale. After all is said and done little has changed. That is our curse. I am reminded of the line from Eliot’s The Waste Land: “Oed’ und leer das Meer.” Post industrial equals post-meaningful. Nothing plus nothing is still nothing. The charm is in the telling, not necessarily in the living. Bolano comprehends this fact and tells his story well.

As she assumes the role of keystone for the world’s major economies, the Allies who were ranged against her are now knocking at her door asking for assistance or offering gifts – or both. The foreign minister of Poland went public with a passionate plea for Germany to step in and save his country.

Her suitors are not only her former opponents but also past allies like Japan and Italy. And, in a surprising twist, Switzerland’s perennial neutrality — at least in financial matters — has also been breached. The gifts do not come wrapped in goodwill. They are simply efforts by the central banks and governments of the donors to stave off the worst effects of their own short-sighted policies and decisions.

No one will deny that Germany deserves this victory. Time and time again the country has shown its ability to rise phoenix-like from the ashes of apparent total defeat. Half way through the Series Germany’s position looked perilous as she faced financial ruin. In the third quarter she was broken in half. Yet, masterfully, despite setbacks, through rearmament and rebuilding, she revitalized her economy and reenergized her offense. But, as with every successful outcome, she had the benefit of luck and good timing.

The Western Allies and most of their trading partners, who seemed set to coast home to victory in the final moments, are now being overrun by the actions of international bankers and their own greedy but gullible politicians and populations. As a result partly from rash military engagements abroad, the buildup elephantine security structures at home, plus the need to rescue the same selfsame bankers, most are already so heavily into deficit spending they can’t revitalize their “main street” economies. Instead they glibly pretended that nothing is really wrong. Meanwhile Germany continued to protect its people, its manufacturing base and its markets, pushing its annual exports to over €1 trillion, as it waited for the ideal time to grab the prize. That time has now arrived and Germany is ready to collect.

France, once a client state of Germany during the Series, would like to pretend that it is partnering with her in this moment of victory. France’s Presient is bird-dogging the German Chancellor in much the same way as the British Prime Minister trotted after GW Bush prior to the invasion of Iraq. This is wishful thinking, as even a casual review of the circumstances will reveal that France together with most other states in the Euro Zone will soon move to client status. Germany is already controlling those who have already accepted bailouts like Greece and Ireland with little regard for their sovereignty. Italy, one of Europe’s major economies, is now being run by bureaucrats well versed in the Bundesbank’s strict approach to financial affairs. The British PM, not a member of the Euro club and facing a swelling backlash at home against austerity and tighter EU integration, can only watch irrelevantly from the sidelines as another vestige of the UK’s Great Power status moves to Germany.

NATO too has had to rewrite its goals set out by the first NATO secretary-general, Lord “Pug” Ismay, who coined a the mantra according to which the Atlantic bloc should “keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down.”

The EU summit at which Germany will set out the treaty changes needed for Germany to step in and shore up the Euro is scheduled for Dec 9. Chancellor Angela Merkel could be forgiving for wondering if the meeting should be held in the historic railway carriage at Compiegne that hosted the signing of the armistice ending WWI in 1918 and France’s capitulation to Germany in 1940. But that would probably too hasty. Time enough for that when the signatures are being attached to the EU treaty changes she is demanding and the game is finally over.

To some people, the European Central Bank seems like a fire department that is letting the house burn down to teach the children not to play with matches.

So wrote Jack Ewing in the New York Times last week.  He went on:

The E.C.B. has a fire hose — its ability to print money. But the bank is refusing to train it on the euro zone’s debt crisis.

The flames climbed higher Friday after the Italian Treasury had to pay an interest rate of 6.5 percent on a new issue of six-month bills . . . the highest interest rate Italy has had to pay to sell such debt since August 1997 . . . .

But there is no sign the E.C.B. plans a major response, like buying large quantities of the country’s bonds to bring down its borrowing costs.

Why not?  According to the November 28th Wall Street Journal, “The ECB has long worried that buying government bonds in big enough amounts to bring down countries’ borrowing costs would make it easier for national politicians to delay the budget austerity and economic overhauls that are needed.”

As with the manufactured debt ceiling crisis in the United States, the E.C.B. is withholding relief in order to extort austerity measures from member governments—and the threat seems to be working.  The same authors write:

Euro-zone leaders are negotiating a potentially groundbreaking fiscal pact . . . [that] would make budget discipline legally binding and enforceable by European authorities. . . . European officials hope a new agreement, which would aim to shrink the excessive public debt that helped spark the crisis, would persuade the European Central Bank to undertake more drastic action to reverse the recent selloff in euro-zone debt markets.

The Eurozone appears to be in the process of being “structurally readjusted” – the same process imposed earlier by the IMF on Third World countries.  Structural demands routinely include harsh austerity measures, government cutbacks, privatization, and the disempowerment of national central banks, so that there is no national entity capable of creating and controlling the money supply on behalf of the people.  The latter result has officially been achieved in the Eurozone, which is now dependent on the E.C.B. as the sole lender of last resort and printer of new euros.

The E.C.B. Serves Banks, Not Governments

The legal justification for the E.C.B.’s inaction in the sovereign debt crisis is Article 123 of the Lisbon Treaty, signed by EU members in 2007.  As Jens Eidmann, President of the Bundesbank and a member of the E.C.B. Governing Council, stated in a November 14 interview:

The eurosystem is a lender of last resort for solvent but illiquid banks. It must not be a lender of last resort for sovereigns because this would violate Article 123 of the EU treaty.

The language of Article 123 is rather obscure, but basically it says that the European central bank is the lender of last resort for banks, not for governments.  It provides:

1.  Overdraft facilities or any other type of credit facility with the European Central Bank or with the central banks of the Member States (hereinafter referred to as ‘national central banks’) in favour of Union institutions, bodies, offices or agencies, central governments, regional, local or other public authorities, other bodies governed by public law, or public undertakings of Member States shall be prohibited, as shall the purchase directly from them by the European Central Bank or national central banks of debt instruments.

2.  Paragraph 1 shall not apply to publicly owned credit institutions which, in the context of the supply of reserves by central banks, shall be given the same treatment by national central banks and the European Central Bank as private credit institutions.

Banks can borrow from the E.C.B. at 1.25%, the minimum rate available for banks.  Member governments, on the other hand, must put themselves at the mercy of the markets, which can squeeze them for “whatever the market will bear”—in Italy’s case, 6.5%.

The Real Reason Eurozone Countries Are Drowning in Debt

Why should banks be able to borrow at 1.25% from the E.C.B.’s unlimited fountain of euros, while the tap is closed for governments?  The conventional argument is that for governments to borrow money created by their own central banks would be “inflationary.”  But private banks create the money they lend just as government-owned central banks do.  Private banks issue money in the form of “bank credit” on their books, and they often do this before they have the liquidity to back the loans.  Then they borrow from wherever they can get funds most cheaply.  When banks borrow from the E.C.B. as lender of last resort, the E.C.B. “prints money” just as it would if it were lending to governments directly.

The burgeoning debts of the Eurozone countries are being blamed on their large welfare states, but these social systems were set up before the 1970s, when European governments had very little national debt.  Their national debts shot up, not because they spent on social services, but because they switched bankers.  Before the 1970s, European governments borrowed from their own central banks.  The money was effectively interest-free, since they owned the banks and got the profits back as dividends.  After the European Monetary Union was established, member countries had to borrow from private banks at interest—often substantial interest.

And the result?  Interest totals for Eurozone countries are not readily accessible; but for France, at least, the total sum paid in interest since the 1970s appears to be as great as the French federal debt itself.  That means that if the French government had been borrowing from its central bank all along, it could have been debt-free today.

The figures are nearly as bad for Canada, and they may actually be worse for the United States.  The Federal Reserve’s website lists the sums paid in interest on the U.S. federal debt for the last 24 years.  During that period, taxpayers paid a total of $8.2 trillion in interest.  That’s more than half the total $15 trillion debt, in just 24 years.  The U.S. federal debt has not been paid off since 1835, so taxpayers could well have paid more than $15 trillion by now in interest.  That means our entire federal debt could have been avoided if we had been borrowing from our own government-owned central bank all along, effectively interest-free.  And that is probably true for other countries as well.

To avoid an overwhelming national debt and the forced austerity measures destined to follow, the Eurozone’s citizens need to get the fire hose of money creation out of the hands of private banks and back into the hands of the people.  But how?

Governments Cannot Borrow from the E.C.B., but Government-owned Banks Can

Interestingly, Paragraph 2 of Article 123 of the Lisbon Treaty carves out an exception to the rule that governments cannot borrow from the E.C.B.  It says that government-owned banks can borrow on the same terms as privately-owned banks.  Many Eurozone countries have publicly-owned banks; and as nationalization of insolvent banks looms, they could soon find themselves with many more.

One solution might be for the publicly-owned banks of Eurozone governments to exercise their right to borrow from the E.C.B. at 1.25%, then use that liquidity to buy up the country’s debt, or as much of it as does not sell at auction.  (The Federal Reserve does this routinely in open market operations in the U.S.)   The government’s securities would be stabilized, keeping speculators at bay; and the government would get the interest spread, since it would own the banks and would get the profits back as dividends.

Taking a Stand in the Class War

In a November 25th article titled “Goldman Sachs Has Taken Over,” Paul Craig Roberts writes:

The European Union, just like everything else, is merely another scheme to concentrate wealth in a few hands at the expense of European citizens, who are destined, like Americans, to be the serfs of the 21^st century.

He observes that Mario Draghi, the new president of the European Central Bank, was Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Goldman Sachs International, a member of Goldman Sachs’ Management Committee, a member of the governing council of the European Central Bank, a member of the board of directors of the Bank for International Settlements, and Chairman of the Financial Stability Board.  Italy’s new prime minister Mario Monti, who was appointed rather than elected, was a member of Goldman Sachs’ Board of International Advisers, European Chairman of the Trilateral Commission (“a US organization that advances American hegemony over the world”), and a member of the Bilderberg group.  And Lucas Papademos, an unelected banker who was installed as prime minister of Greece, was Vice President of the European Central Bank and a member of America’s Trilateral Commission.

Roberts points to the suspicious fact that the German government was unable to sell 35% of its 10-year bonds at its last auction; yet Germany’s economy is in far better shape than that of Italy, which managed to sell all its bonds.  Why?  Roberts suspects an orchestrated scheme to pressure Germany to back off from its demands to make the banks pay a share of their bailout.

Europe is in the process of being “structurally readjusted” by a private banking cartel.  If its people are to resist this silent conquest, they need to rise up and, using the ballot box and public banks, throw out the new banking hegemony before it is too late.

According to official figures released by the Bahrain Center for Human Rights website, so far 44 Bahraini citizens were killed at the hands of the mercenaries of Al Khalifa regime. The Bahraini martyrs include the 6-year-old Mohammed Farhan, 14-year-old Ali Jawad Alshaikh and 15-year-old Sayed Ahmad Saeed Shams. The Bahraini organization has reported that many of these martyrs were killed while in custody. The Center has also published documents indicating that more than 1,500 Bahrainis, including about 100 women, were incarcerated since the eruption of turmoil in the Persian Gulf country on February 14, 2011 and that more that 90 journalists face life threat.

It’s also said that the Bahraini government has blocked the citizens’ access to more than 1000 opposition websites which are mainly used to organize and plan protests and mass demonstrations.

The Bahraini regime commits all of these aggressive and brutal actions with the direct involvement of Saudi Arabia and the implicit support and backing of NATO and the United States. The author of the Hidden Harmonies China blog in a March 14, 2011 post referred to the abuses of human rights in Bahrain with the flagrant, duplicitous support of the White House: “the Entry of Saudi security forces to crack down on the protesters with deadly force is a complication for U.S. policies, to say the least, since U.S. is reluctant to criticize its oil ally dictators in the region.”

He also called Bahrain the “Las Vegas” of the Middle East, host to the U.S. 5th Fleet and a haunt for the rich Saudis who are forbidden by Islamic laws at home from indulging in alcohol and other immoral enjoyments, “but who often vacation in Bahrain for these reasons.”

Bahraini citizens have uploaded several video files on the internet, showing the cruel and ruthless torturing and persecuting of the protesters by the Al Khalifa lackeys. These videos depict the Bahraini forces using tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters and killing many of them straight away. Some of these videos also show the Saudi and Bahraini cars nonchalantly running over Bahraini children and women, killing them at once.

The U.S.-Saudi project of crackdown on the Bahraini people was also empowered by many of the European cronies of Washington. In July 2011, Germany sold a set of 200 62-ton Leopard tanks to Saudi Arabia which sparked a huge controversy among the German parliamentarians and anti-war activists. According to the Daily Telegraph, Wolfgang Gerhardt, former leader of the Free Democrats, the junior collation member to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, said it was “unacceptable” the deal went through without the knowledge of his party’s MPs. However, the agreement which was worth around USD 1,252 million was concluded and the Saudi government dispatched many of these newly-bought tanks to Bahrain to accelerate and facilitate the bloody clampdown on the protesters.

The situation in Yemen, however, is far more deplorable and appalling. Allvoices.com has reported that as of September 25, 1,870 Yemenis were killed in the revolution and the majority of the martyrs were unarmed civilians taking part in anti-government demonstrations.

The Yemeni dictator who has remained defiant in the face of frequent calls by the tribal leaders, opposition groups and demonstrators to step down and give up power has turned his country into a bloodbath and made the Yemeni uprising the longest, most devastative revolution in the revolutionary wave of protests in the Middle East. The protests in Yemen started on February 3, 2011 and have continued so far. The only reaction of the international community to the brutality in Yemen was an indecisive and faltering resolution by the UNSC which called for “an end to violence” and asked President Ali Abdullah Saleh to accept a peace deal brokered by the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council. However, Abdullah Saleh, who is tacitly supported by the U.S., kept up with the brutalities and according to Yemen Times, 94 protesters were killed after the Security Council adopted the resolution 2014.

In a report published on Yemen Times on November 17, it was revealed that “ninety-four Yemenis were killed and over 800 injured since UN Resolution 2014 was issued on October 21.”

“Tentative reports show that over the last three weeks in Yemen, 124 homes, seven mosques, six public institutions including one hospital, two community wells, and 17 vehicles were effectively destroyed,” Yemen Times reported.

In the days leading to the detainment and death of Moammar Gaddafi, the Western mainstream media were only talking about the Libyan civil war, and the reason was clear: NATO had secured a UNSC resolution to enact a no-fly zone over Libya and it was in the interests of the U.S. and its European partners to give coverage to the tumultuous situation in the North African country. However, the reports and news regarding the carnage in Bahrain and Yemen were predominantly shunned and boycotted, simply because these two despotic regimes were close allies of the U.S. in the Middle East.

In a report published on Independent Australia, Zaid Jiani alluded to the violent crackdown on the protesters in Bahrain and Yemen and posed the question: “is the media downplaying these events because the two dictatorships are firm allies of the West?”

A Think Progress analysis of press coverage by the three major U.S. cable news networks – CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News – from March 14 to March 18 finds that Bahrain received only slightly more than ten percent as many mentions as Libya and that Yemen received only six percent as many mentions as Libya.

Now what concerns the independent thinkers, scholars, university professors, journalists and peace activists is that Syria has become the target of international pressure, simply because it has strong ties with Iran and resistant groups in Lebanon and Palestine, while the reactionary regimes of Bahrain and Yemen are getting away with the felonies which they commit by the virtue of their alliance with the United States.

The Arab League has vindictively suspended the participation of Syria while it has taken no practical step to normalize the situation in the turbulent and chaotic Yemen and Bahrain in which innocent people are being killed on a daily basis by their tyrannical rulers and their loyalists.

All that can be said is that the performance of the Arab League in neglecting the situation in Yemen and Bahrain and exaggerating the unrest in Syria, which is mainly caused by the foreign intervention and the West’s indifference toward the plight of the suppressed nations in Yemen and Bahrain, is an all-out hypocrisy and a clear, undeniable exercise of double standards. Who can really devise a clear-cut solution for this unsolvable dilemma?

The popular perception is that the ordinary people have been living “beyond their means”, a false and invidious conventional wisdom which masks the real nature of the crisis. For it is the elites across Europe and the Americas who have benefited most from the European Union, built on Reaganite neoliberalism, which in turn was fashioned to meet the needs of business. The neoliberal policies of all Western governments, “left” or “right” during the past three decades are the direct cause of the current highly skewed income distribution – by some accounts, worse than in any previous era of human history.

The supposed generous patriarch of this big happy family is Germany, with its hard workers and tidy streets. But while the Aesopian Greek hares are told they must tighten their belts and make do with less health and education, the fact that the Greek arms imports continue to grow — importing German weapons and “defence” systems (against what threat?) — is not mentioned. And it is not only weapons, but consumer goods from Germany that have displaced Greek products in the anonymous Euro-market, as Greece increasingly becomes northern Europeans’ decadent playground, albeit with more than its fair share of un- and under-employed.

As long as banks were lending freely to governments to finance this fool’s paradise, the lower classes were not made to feel the pinch, and the system kept chugging along. Now that government debts and bank reserves have approached their limit and reckless banks are going bankrupt, the struggle is on over who should pay for the untenable system. Since the economic elites are also the political elites, naturally they want the broad people to pay with social service cuts, reduced and delayed pensions, regressive sales taxes and the like. The intense propaganda campaign now underway is to convince the poor in the Euro-laggards that they are the guilty ones, not their own elites or the Euro-elites in Frankfurt or Berlin or wherever.

The EU was a project to end the prospect of war in Europe and to gather the broken pieces of shattered empires into a workable collective economic-political force in the world. To a surprising extent it succeeded, but without facing hard choices and a frank debate about who benefits. As the problems sharpen, any sense of collective goodwill evaporates, and chauvinist, even racist parties gain rapidly in popularity, hearkening back to faux-halcyon days of distant imperial privilege. But as history shows, the ability of individual European countries to extract surplus from colonies is not guaranteed indefinitely. The same goes for the ability of Germany to lord it over its Euro-partners. As the knives come out, the very existence of the European project comes into question.

The rich standard of living that Europe has enjoyed over the past few decades is directly a result of first the import of Third World workers (to a large extent Muslim) and then the incorporation of the ex-Socialist bloc after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. As the financial crisis plays itself out, these immigrant workers, the very ones who have served Europeans so well, are now targeted and racially profiled, as the elites try to deflect attention from their own hidden role in the ongoing crisis. This is the First World/Third World extension of the above argument about Euro-laggards, with the victims no longer the Greek hares, but Nigerian and Egyptian immigrants.

A similar tale can be told for the US , with its large immigrant population, its Tea Partiers and Islamophobes, unable or unwilling to face the underlying problems resulting from decades of neoliberal policies. In the Americas, it is China that provides the manufactured goods which are paid for by US treasury bonds piling up in Chinese bank vaults, and no one in particular is accused of being the carefree Aesopian hare — state governments merely use their deficits as the deus ex machina — but the pattern is the same.

As the people who have woken up to the reality are arrested and booted out of Trafalgar Square, Zuccotti Park, Chapman Square (Oakland) and dozens of other city commons around the world, the long cold winter of discontent sets in. However, the problems are going nowhere and the people are just waiting for the next opportunity to express their outrage.

The toppling of governments means nothing in this scenario. Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and Greece’s George Papandreou only handed over power on the explicit understanding that the “fresh faces” would carry out the austerity plans imposed by the EU heavyweights. Berlusconi’s replacement is 68-year-old, ex-EU commissioner Mario Monti, an economics professor steeped in the dogmas that brought Italy to its current impasse. Papandreou’s replacement is ex-European Central Bank vice president Lucas Papademos who immediately announced, “Our membership of the euro is our only choice.” Not much thinking outside the box from these folks, the very ones who got their people into their present fix.

Some Americans at the top are already awake. The 138 members of “Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength” (0.005% of all US millionaires) have been lobbying President Barack Obama and congressional leaders for a year now pleading with them: “Please do the right thing, raise our taxes.” Not surprisingly, no response from a president and Congress beholden to the 3.1 million other millionaires — the proverbial 1%.

Occupy Washington DC published their no-brainer proposals 17 November: redistribute income through progressive taxation, end the wars, expand health care, democratise business. This will end the budget deficit overnight, create full employment through stimulating local demand, eventually ending the foreign trade deficit, making America strong and once again the envy of the world. But, of course, Congress is captive to the current military industrial complex, and can and will do nothing.

The slow-motion drift into oblivion is surreal. Clearly momentous changes are in store for both Europe and America, and the sooner thinkers and actors get to work coming to grips with hard, cold reality, the better for the people — and for the elites, who are living on borrowed time, too. How long before the revolution?

Commentators and journalists hardly ever ask the two most important questions. Why? How?

The Euro as the currency of seventeen diverse countries with their different cultures, lifestyles, traditions, tax and spend regimes is dead.  The sooner we realise that, the better it will be for everyone.  Research by the Centre for Economic and Business Research (CEBR) predicts a rosier future after a short sharp shock of eurozone collapse.

In an article in the Telegraph, headlined “Collapse of the Euro will help Britain”, the conclusions of the research are presented as:

Britain will be better off in five years’ time if the eurozone breaks up than if the single currency survives the debt crisis, research suggests today.  The disorderly break-up of the euro would mean a short, sharp economic shock and probably a recession, but would be followed by a quicker return to strong economic growth, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research.  The economists also predict that break-up would free many eurozone members from the deficit-cutting austerity policies that threaten to subdue their growth for years.

The article quotes the research thus:

If it [the eurozone] breaks up the immediate pain is much more intense, but then there is a more stable basis and we would expect that within about 30 months growth will actually be faster than if the eurozone survives in its current form.

I am no economist, but this analysis makes a lot of sense to me and probably to most people in Europe.  In the absence of cogent explanations to the contrary from politicians who have invested a lot of capital in the Euro, and are influenced by self serving institutions and lobbyists, I believe the CEBR conclusions.

The clash between democratic ideals and the straight jacket of the Euro is succinctly put in this scenario by Jackie Ashley in the Guardian:

David Cameron and George Osborne have resigned. They did their best, but were unable to carry support, even in the Tory party, for the devastating attacks on pensions and living standards the markets demand. To prevent a British default, Reginald Pinstripe-Grey, formerly chief economist of Megabank in New York, is to be installed in the Lords as acting prime minister, leading a Government of Unity and Patriotism.  In London, representatives from the EU and German “advisers” will sit alongside the truncated cabinet. British MPs have been warned that any attempt to resist the extreme austerity measures by parliamentary vote will result in the final collapse of the British economy, and anarchy. No elections will be held in the meantime.  Orwellian fantasy? The plot of an unlikely TV drama? For many voters in Greece, and Italy too – despite joy at the disappearance of the idiotic Berlusconi – this effective suspension of democracy feels all too here-and-now.

What is happening in Italy and Greece could well be repeated in Portugal, Spain…etc. The position of the British government is curious and contradictory.  Having congratulated itself for staying out of the eurozone, British politicians, nevertheless, urge other countries to save the Euro.  If it is right for Britain to be out of the euro, surely it is right for other countries to ditch it.

It is one thing for people to enact measures through democratically elected politicians, it is quite another to be told to swallow a medicine that is causing a lot of pain by leaders of other countries and unelected bodies such as the ECB, financiers, and the IMF.

The remarks by Angela Merkel would be more accurate if turned on their head.  The austerity and hardships imposed on people to save the Euro are leading to disharmony, division and hostility between the peoples of Europe.  This is the opposite to the European ideals of unity under the banner of freedom, democracy and human rights.   Now Mrs. Merkel, these are ideals worth fighting for, not the Euro.

For Germany (and her American ally) the Euro-zone is ‘too big to fail.’ And since the European Union lacks a mechanism like the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, only Germany is in a position to underwrite the necessary major bailout. This is a financial gamble of historic proportions, and it comes at a political price: German hegemony in Europe.

Bismarck Makes Germany a Great Power

Paul Kennedy’s classic The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987) classifies Germany as the hegemonic (or would-be hegemonic) military-industrial power in Europe from the year 1870. That was when Bismarck, the ‘Blood and Iron’ Chancellor of Prussia, tricked the French Emperor Napoleon III into hastily starting a war that Prussia had long been preparing for. After a stunning defeat (Napoleon was take prisoner when the Prussians surrounded the main French army), Bismarck crowned his somewhat reluctant feudal sovereign as Kaiser Wilhelm I, ruling a vastly expanded, united German Reich (including two captured French provinces and most of the Southern German-speaking states) from his own capital, Berlin.

By the end of the 19th Century, efficient, scientifically-organized German industry was challenging Britain’s outdated industrial plant for economic supremacy. Meanwhile, Prussian militarism, supported by this industrial and financial expansion, prepared for future political hegemony and territorial expansion. During the 20th Century, two drawn-out mechanized World Wars were required to prevent the German Reich from transforming her industrial and financial power into imperial domination of the Continent. The main factors that prevented capitalist Germany’s ‘natural’ ascendancy to European hegemony were military: 1) Geography. Situated in the center of Europe between the vast Russian Empire and her ally the French Republic (still a major military power), Germany was obliged to fight on at least two fronts in both 1914 and 1940, as well as at sea against the formidable British Navy; 2) the rise of a new, and vastly richer military-industrial power, the United States, allied with France and Britain.

Defeated, Divided and Demilitarized, Germany Rebounds

In 1945, the demilitarization and division into East and West of post-WWII Germany was designed to prevent yet another attempt at hegemony, but by 1960 (the year I bought my first VW !) West Germany’s industrial plant had risen from the ruins, modernized and become competitive with U.S. industry. Moreover, demilitarization freed up huge amounts of German capital, whereas Germany’s conquerors, the U.S. and the USSR, were draining their economies in a costly arms race. Moreover, West Germany found unlikely support from an ex-enemy — Charles de Gaulle of France –who forged a close alliance with Chancellor Adenauer, while carrying out a foreign policy independent of the U.S., during the Cold War. By the 1970’s, West German leader Willi Brandt dared to break the ice of the Cold War with his independent Ostpolitik, opening up lucrative German trade with her Warsaw Pact neighbors. Today, Germany and Russia are staunch allies and trading partners to the point where Immanuel Wallerstein talks of a Paris-Berlin-Moscow Axis.

United Germany’s Great Gamble

When the Soviet Empire collapsed and the two Germany’s were reunited in 1990, far-seeing West German capital took the risk of investing huge amounts in integrating and modernizing the impoverished East. The West German investors’ bet paid off — so successfully that a former East German, Angela Merkel, is now ruling a populous, rich, and powerful united Germany, where she presides over the Berlin Chancellery established at by Bismarck back in 1871.

Chancellor Merkel, like Bismarck a Conservative, has dragged her centrist coalition, uniting all factions of German capitalism, into another daring bet. The terms? Bail out the Euro zone and end up owning it: achieve hegemonic power, without militarism. Using diplomacy and ‘soft’ power, the Chancellor will now collect the debts that the Greeks and Italians owe the Frankfort bankers as effectively as the U.S. Marines collected the Central American debts for the N.Y. bankers a century ago. Only, instead of sending gunboats, Merkel has used canny diplomacy and financial clout to engineer the fall of Papandreou and Berlesconi, Europe’s two longest-serving and popular Prime Ministers. (Papandreou was brave enough to call her bluff and announce a popular referendum on the Euro at the Nice summit, but then he shamefacedly backed down). That crafty manipulator Bismarck (who after 1870 actually preferred diplomacy to war) would have been proud of his disciple.

Two Bloodless Beheadings

The deposed Greek and Italian heads of government have now been replaced by ‘technocrats’ subservient to the German-dominated European Union Central Bank. The Chancellor has just dispatched teams of German bankers to ‘advise’ them, much as U.S. Embassy staff ‘advised’ the Mexicans and Nicaraguans: pay up or else! The advisors are there to make sure that the technocratic puppet regimes carry out the most stringent austerity measures and force the Greek and Italian working people to pay the debts previously contracted by their own bankers and rulers. This may not prove to be easy.

Meanwhile, the future implications of Merkel’s historic ‘beheading’ of two European heads of state may be as far reaching in their own way as the double beheading in Tunisia and Egypt. To begin with, Germany’s de facto imposition of these super-national ‘receivership’ regimes means an end to democracy and national sovereignty for Greece and Italy. Ancient Europe’s two historical Great Powers, the fountains of European civilization, the cradles of democracy and of the rule of law, are henceforth vassals states under the regency of German and North European banking capital.

From an international perspective, Merkel’s diplomacy and soft power have succeeded in dominating two countries where Hitler’s hoards came a cropper. As for Germany’s once-vulnerable Eastern front, Wallerstein’s Paris-Berlin-Moscow Axis has literally been sealed in concrete with the recent innauguration of the Nordstream pipeline, which will provide Germany with an endless supply of cheap Russian gas and a bottomless market for Mercedes and VWs. And this time around, the U.S., whose precarious finances also depend on the stability of the Euro, will have to support Germany, even if this means reinforcing a rival German-dominated European economy more powerful and productive than the declining American economy. Merkel’s Bismarckian diplomacy has thus succeeded in removing the three principal historical obstacles to German economic-military hegemony: 1) the geographical necessity for a Central European Power to fight a two-front war; 2) the unmatched military and economic power of the United States; 3) inadequate access to modern petroleum-based fuels.

New Possibilities for Struggle?

From the perspective of the European class struggle, this new situation creates new possibilties. For over a year now, the Greek youth and working classes have been striking and rioting against being forced to ‘pay for their crisis’, and now the Italians, with a long history of self-organization, will be called upon to defend their interests as well. These inevitable struggles will take place in the revolutionary atmosphere initiated in the Arab Spring and now gone global with the Occupy Wall Street movement of the 99%-ers. No more illusions about capitalism’s ‘trickle-down’ effect. Moreover, the new technocratic rulers of Greece and Italy and their bean-counting German advisors will be hard put to cope politically with rebellious populations who will see themselves as debt-slaves to the creditor German banks. It would take a showman like Berlesconi or a populist ‘Socialist’ like Papandreou to continue to bambozzle the masses into acquiesance, and now they are gone.

In this new situation in Greece and Italy, one can expect both a rise of national resentments and splits in the national bourgeoisie between ‘Europeans’ and local business interests (tourism, export industries) who may support the working classes, perhaps demanding exit from the Euro so as to devaluate their currencies and become competitive again. If national resentment doesn’t turn into Chavinism and if the bourgeois allies fail to dominate the popular front with the 99%, these developments may open up new prospects for struggle. The key factor will be internationalism. Only if the Greek and Italian working classes are able to unite (and draw in the Spanish, Irish and other European workers) will they escape from debt-slavery to the German-dominated European banks.

Up to now, the European labor unions and the Left parties (Communists and Socialists) have succeeded in confining class conflicts within their national borders, while limiting resistance to ritual one-day ‘general strikes,’ and channeling discontent into local and national elections. (Of course elections are now superfluous under appointed receivership governments responsible to a European super-government). Nonetheless, the entrenched, class-collaborationist national labor unions and ‘Left’ parties — although rejected wholesale by Greek youth and the Spanish indigñados — still have a powerful influence in Italy and France. If more spontaneous, self-organized, horizontal movements like the Arab Spring, the indigñados, and the international Occupy Everything movement spread into Old Europe (including Germany), the straightjacket hold of the official Left on European social movements may be broken, releasing new energies and the creation of international solidarity among the 99%.

This solidarity will be needed when the next financial bubble bursts — as it inevitably will — and turns the Great Recession (from which only the 1% have ‘recovered’) into a globalized Second Great Depression.

Workers first detected an ammonia leak in a water purification system about 3 p.m. Ammonia, when mixed into air, is toxic. The 30 gallons of ammonia were caught in a holding tank and posed no health risk, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NRC).

During the 1970s and 1980s, at the peak of the nuclear reactor construction, organized groups of protestors mounted dozens of anti-nuke campaigns. They were called Chicken Littles, the establishment media generally ignored their concerns, and the nuclear industry trotted out numerous scientists and engineers from their payrolls to declare nuclear energy to be safe, clean, and inexpensive energy that could reduce America’s dependence upon foreign oil.

Workers at nuclear plants are highly trained, probably far more than workers in any other industry; operating systems are closely regulated and monitored. However, problems caused by human negligence, manufacturing defects, and natural disasters have plagued the nuclear power industry for its six decades.

It isn’t alerts like what happened at San Onofre that are the problem; it’s the level 3 (site area emergencies) and level 4 (general site emergencies) disasters. There have been 99 major disasters, 56 of them in the U.S., since 1952, according to a study conducted by Benjamin K. Sovacool Director of the Energy Justice Program at Institute for Energy and Environment  One-third of all Americans live within 50 miles of a nuclear plant.

At Windscale in northwest England, fire destroyed the core, releasing significant amounts of Iodine-131. At Rocky Flats near Denver, radioactive plutonium and tritium leaked into the environment several times over a two decade period. At Church Rock, New Mexico, more than 90 million gallons of radioactive waste poured into the Rio Puerco, directly affecting the Navajo nation.

In the grounds of central and northeastern Pennsylvania, in addition to the release of radioactive Cesium-137 and Iodine-121, an excessive level of Strontium-90 was released during the Three Mile Island (TMI) meltdown in 1979, the same year as the Church Rock disaster. To keep waste tanks from overflowing with radioactive waste, the plant’s operator dumped several thousand gallons of radioactive waste into the Susquehanna River. An independent study by Dr. Steven Wing of the University of North Carolina revealed the incidence of lung cancer and leukemia downwind of the TMI meltdown within six years of the meltdown was two to ten times that of the rest of the region.

At the Chernobyl meltdown in April 1986, about 50 workers and firefighters died lingering and horrible deaths from radiation poisoning. Because of wind patterns, about 27,000 persons in the northern hemisphere are expected to die of cancer, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. An area of about 18 miles is uninhabitable. The nuclear reactor core is now protected by a crumbling sarcophagus; a replacement is not complete. Even then, the new shield is expected to crumble within a century. The current director at Chernobyl says it could be 20,000 years until the area again becomes habitable.

In March, an earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale and the ensuing 50-foot high tsunami wave led to a meltdown of three of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors. Japan’s nuclear regulatory agency reported that 31 radioactive isotopes were released. In contrast, 16 radioactive isotopes were released from the A-bomb that hit Hiroshima August 6, 1945.  The agency also reported that radioactive cesium released was almost 170 times the amount of the A-bomb, and that the release of radioactive Iodine-131 and Strontium-90 was about two to three times the level of the A-bomb. The release into the air, water, and ground included about 60,000 tons of contaminated water. The half lives of Sr-90 and Cs-137 are about 30 years each. Full effects may not be known for at least two generations. Twenty-three nuclear reactors in the U.S. have the same design—and same design flaws—as the Daiichi reactor.

About five months after the Daiichi disaster, the North Anna plant in northeastern Virginia declared an alert, following a 5.8 magnitude earthquake that was felt throughout the mid-Atlantic and lower New England states. The earthquake caused building cracks and spent fuel cells in canisters to shift. The North Anna plant was designed to withstand an earthquake of only 5.9–6.2 on the Richter scale. More than 1.9 million persons live within a 50-mile radius of North Anna, according to 2010 census data.

Although nuclear plant security is designed to protect against significant and extended forms of terrorism, the NRC believes as many as one-fourth of the 104 U.S. nuclear plants may need upgrades to withstand earthquakes and other natural disasters, according to an Associated Press investigation. About 20 percent of the world’s 442 nuclear plants are built in earthquake zones, according to data compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The NRC has determined that the leading U.S. plants in the Eastern Coast in danger of being compromised by an earthquake are in the extended metropolitan areas of Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Chattanooga. Tenn. The highest risk, however, may be California’s San Onofre and Diablo Canyon plants, both built near major fault lines. Diablo Canyon, near San Luis Obispo, was even built by workers who misinterpreted the blueprints.

Every nuclear spill affects not just those in the immediate evacuation zone but people throughout the world, as prevailing winds can carry air-borne radiation thousands of miles from the source, and the world’s water systems can put radioactive materials into the drinking supply and agriculture systems of most nations. At every nuclear disaster, the governments eventually declare the immediate area safe. But animals take far longer than humans to return to the area. If they could figure out that radioactivity released into the water, air, and ground are health hazards, certainly humans could also figure it out.

Following the disaster at Daiichi, Germany announced it was closing its 17 nuclear power plants and would expand development of solar, wind, and geothermal energy sources. About the same time, Siemens abandoned financing and building nuclear power plants, leaving only American-based Westinghouse and General Electric, which own, or have constructed, about four-fifths of the world’s nuclear plants, and the French-based Areva.

The life of the first nuclear plants was about 30–40 years; the newer plants have a 40–60 year life. After that time, they become so radioactive that the risk of radiation poison outweighs the benefits of continuing the operation. So the operators seal the plant and abandon it, carefully explaining to the public the myriad safety procedures in place and the federal regulations. The cooling and decommissioning takes 50–100 years until the plant is safe enough for individuals to walk through it without protection. More critical, there still is no safe technology of how to handle spent control rods.

The United States has no plans to abandon nuclear energy. The Obama administration has proposed financial assistance to build the first nuclear plant in three decades, and a $36 billion loan guarantee for the nuclear industry. However, the Congressional Budget Office believes there can be as much as 50 percent default.  Each plant already receives $1–1.3 billion in tax rebates and subsidies. However, in the past three years, plans to build nuclear generators have been abandoned in nine states, mostly because of what the major financiers believe to be a less than desired return on investment and higher than expected construction and maintenance costs.

A Department of Energy analysis revealed the budget for 75 of the first plants was about $45 billion, but cost overruns ran that to $145 billion. The last nuclear power plant completed was the Watts Bar plant in eastern Tennessee. Construction began in 1973 and was completed in 1996. Part of the federal Tennessee Valley Authority, the Watts Bar plant cost about $8 billion to produce 1,170 mw of energy from its only reactor. Work on a second reactor was suspended in 1988 because of a lack of need for additional electricity. However, construction was resumed in 2007, with completion expected in 2013. Cost to complete the reactor, which was about 80 percent complete when work was suspended, is estimated to cost an additional $2.5 billion.

The cost to build new power plants is well over $10 billion each, with a proposed cost of about $14 billion to expand the Vogtle plant near Augusta, Ga. The first two units had cost about $9 billion.

Added to the cost of every plant is decommissioning costs, averaging about $300 million to over $1 billion, depending upon the amount of energy the plant is designed to produce. The nuclear industry proudly points to studies that show the cost to produce energy from nuclear reactors is still less expensive than the costs from coal, gas, and oil. The industry also rightly points out that nukes produce about one-fifth all energy, with no emissions, such as those from the fossil fuels.

For more than six decades, this nation essentially sold its soul for what it thought was cheap energy that may not be so cheap, and clean energy that is not so clean.

It is necessary to ask the critical question. Even if there were no human, design, and manufacturing errors; even if there could be assurance there would be no accidental leaks and spills of radioactivity; even if there became a way to safely and efficiently dispose of long-term radioactive waste; even if all of this were possible, can the nation, struggling in a recession while giving subsidies to the nuclear industry, afford to build more nuclear generating plants at the expense of solar, wind, and geothermal energy?

In the past, however, many theorists of imperialism of varying political persuasion, ranging from Max Weber to Vladimir Lenin, argued that imperialism unified the country, reduced internal class polarization and created privileged workers who actively supported and voted for imperial parties.  A historical, comparative survey of the conditions under which imperialism and democratic institutions converge or diverge can throw some light on the challenges and choices faced by the burgeoning democratic movements erupting across the globe.

The Nineteenth Century

During the 19th century, European and US imperial expansion covered the world.  In tandem, democratic institutions took root, the franchise was extended to the working class, competitive parties emerged, social legislation was passed, and the working class increased its representation in the legislative chambers.

Was the simultaneous growth of democracy and imperialism a spurious correlation reflecting divergent and conflicting underlying forces, one favoring overseas conquest and another promoting democratic politics? In fact, there was a great deal of overlap between pro-imperialist and democratic politics and not simply among the elites.

Throughout the 19th and especially in the 20th century, important sectors of the labor and social democratic parties and numerous prominent leftists and revolutionary socialists, at one time or another, combined support for workers’ demands and imperial expansion.  None other than Karl Marx, in his early journalistic writings in the New York Herald Tribune critically supported the British conquest of India as a “modernizing force” breaking down feudal barriers, even as he supported (with criticism) the European revolutions of 1848.

The ruling classes, the driving force of imperialism, were divided. Some saw the democratic reforms, “citizenship”, as a means of raising mass conscriptions for imperial wars; others feared that the democratic reforms would enhance social demands and undercut the accumulation of capital and rule by the elite.  Both were right.  Along with greater popular participation came virulent modern nationalism, which fueled empire building.  At the same time  mass access to democratic rights led to heightened class organizations, which threatened or challenged class rule. Within the ruling classes, democratic institutions were seen as an arena to peacefully resolve conflicts between competing sectoral elites. But once they took a mass character they were perceived as political threats.

Imperial and class-based parties competed for voters among the newly enfranchised urban workers and rural poor.  In many cases, imperial and class allegiances “co-existed” within the same individuals.  The question of which of the two – imperialist or class consciousness – would become ‘operative’ or ‘salient’ was, in part, contingent on the success or failures of the larger competing political projects.

In other words, when imperial expansion succeeded in easy conquests resulting in lucrative colonies (especially settler colonies) democratic workers embraced the empire.  This was the case because empire enhanced trade; namely, profitable exports and cheap imports, while protecting local markets and manufacturers.  These in turn expanded employment and wages for substantial sectors of the working class.  As a result, labor and social democratic parties and trade unions did not oppose imperialism.  Indeed many supported it.

In contrast, when imperialist wars led to prolonged bloody and costly conflicts, the working class shifted from initial chauvinist enthusiasm to disenchantment and opposition.  Democratic demands to ‘end the war’ led to strikes challenging unequal sacrifice.  Democratic and anti-imperialist sentiments tended to fuse.

The conflict between democracy and imperialism became even more apparent in the case of an imperial defeat and military occupation.  Both the defeat of France in the German-French war of 1870-71 and the German defeat in the First World War led to massive democratic socialist uprisings (the Paris Commune of 1871 and the German revolution of 1918) attacking militarism, ruling class domination and the entire imperial capitalist institutional framework.

The Imperialism and Democracy Debate and “History from Below”

Historians, especially practitioners of the fashionable “history from below”, exaggerated the democratic values and struggles of the working class and understated the prolonged and deep felt support among important sectors for successful imperial expansion and conquest.  The notion of ‘inherent’ or ‘instinctual’ class solidarity is belied by the active role of workers in imperial conquest as soldiers, overseas settlers, merchant mariners and overseers.  Imperial collaborators and empire loyalists were numerous among English and French workers and, especially later, within the US labor movement.

The theoretical point is that the pre-eminence of democratic over imperial consciousness and action among workers is contingent on the practical material outcomes of imperial policies and democratic struggles.

Workers and Imperialism

Empire building makes demands on workers to produce more for less in order to export and invest profitably in colonized regions.  This led to capital-labor conflict, especially in the initial phase of imperial expansion.  As imperial rulers consolidated their control over the colonized countries they intensified exploitation of markets, labor and resources.  Imperial exports destroyed local competitors.  Profits rose, wages increased and workers turned from initial opposition toward imperialism to demanding a share of the increasing income of the export oriented manufacturers.  Labor leaders and trade unionists approved of the policies of ‘imperial preference’, which protected local industries from competition and privileged monopoly control of colonial markets.  They did so because imperial policies protected jobs and raised living standards.

Workers who were active in social struggles, blacklisted or jailed, voluntarily moved or were exiled to colonized countries.  Once settled overseas, they were given privileged access to better paying jobs as overseers, skilled employees or promoted to managerial positions.  Imperial based militant workers, once overseas, became colonial collaborators.  Many encouraged former workmates, relatives and friends to join them as successful settlers or contract workers.  The ‘domestication’ of workers and the reconciliation of democratic and imperialist sentiments was a cause and consequent of successful imperialism.

Empire Loyalism:  Not by Bread Alone

While material benefits accruing to workers from “successful imperialism” are one factor enhancing workers’ imperial consciousness, this was reinforced by symbolic gratification, the sense of being a member of the “leading country in the world” where “the sun never sets on the empire”, was equally important.  It is rare to find a country where the majority of workers express “solidarity” with the exploited miners, plantation workers or displaced peasants and indigenous small landholders in the ‘colonies’.  The stronger the hold of the colonial power, the greater the ‘colonial opportunities’, the longer the colonial ties, the deeper the economic penetration, and the stronger the sense of imperial superiority among the imperial states’ workers.

It is not surprising that the British workers, the unions and Labor Party raised few objections to the savagery of the imperial opium wars against China, the imperial-induced genocidal famines in Ireland in the 19th century and India in the 20th century.  Likewise, the French workers’ parties – Socialists especially – were in the forefront of the post WWII colonial wars against Indo-China and Algeria only turning against them in the face of imminent defeat and internal disintegration.

In the same vein, US successful colonial wars against Cuba and the Philippines, its invasions of Caribbean and Central American countries were supported by the American Federation of Labor and many ‘ordinary workers’, even as a minority of radicalized workers opposed these wars.  The ‘partial turn’ of labor against US colonial wars occurred during the Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan wars, and was a result of prolonged losses and high economic costs with no victory in sight.  It should be added that US workers, in opposing the imperial wars, expressed no solidarity with the national liberation and workers movements of the colonized countries.

Imperialism and the “True Democrats”

To argue, as some on the Left have, that imperialism does not co-exist with “true” democracy, is to argue that the last 150 years have been devoid of free elections, party competition and citizens’ rights, however abbreviated, especially over the past decade.  The reality is that imperial intervention and expansion has drawn precisely from citizens’ sense of “obligation” to uphold the democratic institutions, which has enabled imperial leaders to elicit legitimacy and active citizen support or compliance in waging bloody, even genocidal, colonial wars.

If democracy has not usually been an obstacle to imperial expansion – indeed a facilitator under certain circumstances – under what conditions have workers and citizens movements turned against imperial wars?  What has been the political response of the ruling class when the majority of the electorate has turned against imperial wars?  In other words, when the democratic institutions no longer function as vehicles for imperial policies, what gives?

From Imperial Democracy to Imperial Police State

The past ten years provide important lessons on the relation between imperialism and democracy in the United States.

Beginning with the controversial political circumstances surrounding known terrorists’ gaining access to the US and subsequently hijacking the airplanes on 9/11/2001, the US government launched two major colonial wars and numerous overt ‘clandestine’ ground and air attacks in Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, Libya and other countries.  The “global war on terror”, launched under the Bush regime, and implemented by non-elected senior militarist–Zionist officials in co-operation with NATO and Israel was supported by the democratically elected Congress.  For that matter the vast majority of the electorate, influenced by an immense propaganda campaign of fear, media manipulation and lies endorsed the wars on terror.

Given the unprecedented scope and breadth of the wars, (a global war on terror), the vast increase in military spending and the huge outlays for an all encompassing internal repressive (security) apparatus (Homeland Security), a new executive-centered police state was constructed which superseded the existing democratic institution and rights of citizens.

The trajectory of imperial politics moved from early military successes to problematic prolonged occupation.  This led to escalating resistance, growing state expenditures , a deepening fiscal crises , social decay and rising political opposition.

As in the past, contemporary imperial wars that are prolonged, costly and with no decisive victory in sight, have led to citizen disenchantment, followed by increased open rejection.  The wage and salaried majorities who voted for imperial policymakers and backed their enabling legislation, including laws (Patriot Act) which suspended basic civil and constitutional rights, have turned away from the imperial agenda.  Today the democratic majority prioritize their class, economic interests, especially in the face of a prolonged recession and unemployment and underemployment of close to 20%.  Beginning in 2008-2011 endless wars and prolonged crises have set in motion a conflict between democracy and imperialism.

In other words, the democratic majority has become an obstacle to the implementation and pursuit of imperial wars.  Imperial military activity in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, etc. did not lead to quick victories, the conquest of lucrative export markets and take-over of natural resource.  Jobs were not created and no benefit accrued to employees and workers in the imperial country.  High expenditures for arms undercut public investments in labor-intensive employment in critically overdue infrastructure projects.  The small number of dangerous jobs in occupied countries was unattractive and too risky for the unemployed.

In other words, unlike most previous imperial-colonial wars, none of the plundered wealth was used to secure workers loyalty to the empire.  The burden of empire progressively undercut wage and salaried workers’ living standards.  Over time, regressive taxation gradually eroded any sense of chauvinist grandeur or superiority.  Instead citizens of the empire developed a political inferiority complex.  Faced with determined Islamic opposition and China’s rising economic power, exaggerated bellicosity among a minority and critical introspection among the majority took hold.  Popular consciousness of “something basically wrong” in Washington and Wall Street took over.  The earlier war chants and mindless flag-waving, as the armies of Empire marched to Afghanistan and Iraq, were replaced by angry defeatism directed at misleaders.  Over 80% of the public now articulates a negative view of Congress, rejecting both war parties.  Similar negative views are held toward the White House, the Pentagon and Homeland Security.

After a decade of war and four years of economic crisis, mass protests erupted.  The “Occupy Wall Street” movement puts new options on the table, displacing the imperial agenda with a powerful denunciation of the militarist-financial elite.

The executive rulers, especially the judicial, intelligence and police apparatuses increasingly implemented arbitrary police state measures.  Tens of millions are subject to surveillance by Homeland Security.  The police state intercepts billions of faxes, e-mails, web sites and taps telephone calls.  The link between imperialism and democracy broke at the point where declining empire no longer could secure the electorate’s support or compliance.

More and more bizarre terrorist plots were fabricated by the intelligence agencies.  The Iranian bomb plot against the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington was the most primitive and crude effort to regain public support for imperial militarism in the Gulf region.  Apart from the politically influential, but infinitely small, pro-Israel Zionist power configuration, US public opinion is not distracted from its domestic agenda, its quest for jobs at home and opposition to Wall Street.

As the conflict between imperialism and democracy intensifies, the previous ‘consensus” fractured.  The White House and Congress opt for imperialism backed by a profoundly anti-democratic police state.  The majority of the electorate presses forward, utilizing their remaining democratic rights to change the political agenda from empire toward a social republic.

Conclusion

We have argued that empire and democracy have been complementary in times of ascendant imperialism.  We have shown that when wars of conquest have been short and inexpensive, and when the results have been lucrative for capital and job-creating for labor the democratic majorities joined in support of imperial elites.  Democratic institutions flourished when overseas empires provided markets, cheap resources and raised living standards.  Workers voted for imperial parties, held positive opinions of executive and legislative officials, and applauded the colonial war veterans (our troops).  Some even volunteered and joined the military.  With vast citizen support for empire, the state more or less ‘abided’ by the constitutional guarantees.  But the marriage of democracy and imperialism is not ‘structural’.  It is contingent on a series of variable conditions, which can cause a profound rupture between the two, as we are witnessing today.

Prolonged, losing, costly imperial wars that increasingly erode living standards for over a generation have undermined the consensus between imperial rulers and democratic citizens.  Early signs of this potential divergence were evident during the latter period of the Korean War, when public opinion turned against President Truman, architect of the Cold War and the US invasion of Korea.  More evidence emerged during the Vietnam War.  Faced with a prolonged, losing war, which imperiled the lives and opportunities of tens of millions of draft age Americans, millions in civilian life and the military opted to end the war and question imperial interventions.  The repressive state was still not organized sufficiently to terrorize and contain the democratic upsurge of the 1970’s.  The end of the Vietnam war represented the high point in democratic America’s quest to counter imperialism and rebuild the republic.

Subsequent small, quick, low cost and militarily successful imperial interventions in Panama, Grenada, Haiti and elsewhere did not provoke any conflict between imperialism and democracy.  Nor did imperial clandestine and surrogate wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Angola, Mozambique, Afghanistan and the Balkans elicit any significant democratic opposition since they were low cost (in lives and funding) and were not accompanied by any sharp cuts in social expenditures and incomes.

The onset of the current Afghanistan, Iraq, and global offensive wars were seen by some imperial strategists in the same light: Quick, low cost victories with few domestic costs.  One highly placed pro-Israel official in the Pentagon even argued that the invasion and occupation of Iraq would be “self-financing” via an oil grab.

The 21st century wars turned out otherwise:  They followed the Korean-Vietnam pattern, not the Central American/Caribbean pattern.  Immensely costly, the 21st century wars have not led to quick victories and, worse still, occurred in the midst of an unprecedented economic crisis, without the manufacturing and market boom of the 1950’s/1960’s which had cushioned the retreat from Korea and Vietnam.

The divergence between imperialism and democracy has become acute.  Democratic dissent has increased and the police state has become more prominent and direct.  Imperialism increasingly relies on “fabricated domestic and external terror plots” to augment the powers of the repressive machinery and rule by fiat.  White House exhortations ring hollow.  The public puts less and less credence in their rulers’ claims of ‘justifiable’ arbitrary detentions, massive surveillance and extrajudicial assassinations of US citizens (and even their children).

We now face long-term, large-scale dangers, inherent in imperial democracies.  Not because of “internal contradictions” but because sooner or later imperial powers meet their match in the form of protracted struggles by anti-imperialist and national liberation movements.  Only when imperials wars take their toll on the wage and salaried majority, does the rupture between democracy and imperialism take place.  Then, and only then, are democratic forces set in motion to create a democratic republic, with social justice and without empire.

The present danger is that imperial structures are deeply embedded in all the key political institutions and are backed by an unprecedented vast and sprawling police state apparatus, called Homeland Security.  Perhaps it will take a major external political-military shock to ignite the kind of mass democratic uprising needed to transform an imperial police state into a democratic republic.  A growing sense of isolation and impotence affects the ruling regime in the face of overseas military defeats and unyielding, deepening domestic economic crisis.  The danger is that these fears and frustrations could induce the White House to attempt to regain popular support by attacking Iran under a manufactured pretext.

A US/Israeli assault on Iran will result in a world-wide conflagration.  Iran could and would retaliate.  Saudi and Gulf oil wells would go up in flames.  Vital shipping lanes would be blocked.  Gas prices would skyrocket while Asian, EU and US economies crash.  Iranian troops with their Iraqi allies would lay siege to the US garrisons in Baghdad.  Afghanistan, Pakistan and the rest of the Moslem world will take up arms.  US forces would surrender or retreat.  The war would shatter the US Treasury.  Deficits would spiral out of control.  Unemployment would double.  This likely sequence of events would trigger a massive democratic movement and a decisive struggle between an emerging republic struggling to give birth and a decaying empire threatening to drag the world into the inferno of its own demise.

It has since emerged that despite legal requirements that police do so only with a warrant and only if surveillance intercepts are used to prevent threats to “life, limb or liberty,” authorities are not complying with strict limits laid down by Germany’s Supreme Court.

And while these disclosures may have ignited a political firestorm in Berlin, they will come as no surprise to readers of Antifascist Calling.

Three years ago, I reported that Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst or BND, was caught up in a major scandal after the whistleblowing web site WikiLeaks, published documents which revealed that the agency had extensively spied on, and even recruited, journalists for use in illicit intelligence operations.

Recalling the CIA’s long-running Operation Mockingbird program that enrolled journalists as spies in what are now euphemistically called “influence operations,” the covert manipulation of the domestic and foreign press according to WikiLeaks, showed “the extent to which the collaboration of journalists with intelligence agencies has become common and to what dimensions consent is manufactured in the interests of those involved.”

BBC News reported that “Bavaria has admitted using the spyware, but claimed it had acted within the law.” And Deutsche Welle disclosed that “several additional German states have admitted to deploying spyware,” including “Baden-Württemberg, Brandenburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony,” but like their counterparts in Bavaria, those officials also claimed they had operated “within the parameters of the law.”

As I have written many times, the secret state is bound by their own set of “laws.” Normal rules and procedures which are supposed to protect citizens from unwarranted government intrusions are deemed inoperative for reasons of “national security.”

In the United States, constitutional protections designed to guarantee the right of citizens to protest, enjoy a modicum of privacy in their daily lives or, at the most basic level, have their day in court before being executed, have been overthrown by two successive administrations who assert the right to conduct the affairs of state in secret, according to a set of legal guidelines which are unreviewable by any court.

It would appear that similar moves are underway in Germany.

‘Backdoor Functionality’

The Chaos Computer Club revealed in their analysis that when they reverse engineered the program, variously dubbed “0zapftis”, “Bundestrojaner” or “R2D2,” they discovered that the spyware “found in the wild” and “submitted to the CCC anonymously,” can “not only siphon away intimate data but also offers a remote control or backdoor functionality for uploading and executing arbitrary other programs. Significant design and implementation flaws make all of the functionality available to anyone on the internet.”

Club researchers learned that “the trojan’s developers never even tried to put in technical safeguards to make sure the malware can exclusively be used for wiretapping internet telephony, as set forth by the constitution court. On the contrary, the design included functionality to clandestinely add more components over the network right from the start, making it a bridge-head to further infiltrate the computer.”

“The government malware can,” analysts noted, “unchecked by a judge, load extensions by remote control, to use the trojan for other functions, including but not limited to eavesdropping.”

“This complete control over the infected PC, is open not just to the agency that put it there, but to everyone. It could even be used to upload falsified ‘evidence’ against the PC’s owner, or to delete files, which puts the whole rationale for this method of investigation into question.”

Their study also “revealed serious security holes that the trojan is tearing into infected systems. The screenshots and audio files it sends out are encrypted in an incompetent way, the commands from the control software to the trojan are even completely unencrypted. Neither the commands to the trojan nor its replies are authenticated or have their integrity protected.”

“We were surprised and shocked by the lack of even elementary security in the code. Any attacker could assume control of a computer infiltrated by the German law enforcement authorities,” a CCC spokesperson commented. “The security level this trojan leaves the infected systems in is comparable to it setting all passwords to ’1234′.”

Nothing ‘Magical’ about this ‘Lantern’

There are glaring similarities between the “R2D2″ package deployed by German police and “Magic Lantern” software used by the FBI. As with Bureau spyware, the German program is a keystroke logging virus installed via a malicious email attachment or by exploiting operating system vulnerabilities.

When news of the FBI program first broke back in 2000, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) obtained documents under a Freedom of Information Act request relating to the system, which were part of a suite of surveillance tools then called Carnivore.

At the time, EPIC revealed that the FBI “had developed an Internet monitoring system that would be installed at the facilities of an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and would monitor all traffic moving through that ISP.”

Once a user is spoofed into installing the malicious Trojan, it is activated when PGP encryption is used to enhance email security. When switched on, the Trojan will log the PGP password which will then allow the agents to read the encrypted communications unbeknownst to the sender. Since its first iteration in the 1990s, such programs are exponentially more sophisticated and are now capable of scooping-up virtually everything a user stores on a computer or handset.

A 2007 exposé by Wired Magazine revealed that Magic Lantern’s “computer and internet protocol address verifier” or CIPAV, “gathers a wide range of information, including the computer’s IP address; MAC address; open ports; a list of running programs; the operating system type, version and serial number; preferred internet browser and version; the computer’s registered owner and registered company name; the current logged-in user name and the last-visited URL.”

And once that data was obtained, it was siphoned-off to the Bureau’s technology laboratory in Quantico, Virginia via fiber optic splitter cables.

As whistleblower Babak Pasdar revealed in 2008, following earlier disclosures by AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein, Verizon, and other giant telecommunications firms, including AT&T, maintained a high-speed DS-3 digital line that handed the Bureau and other security agencies “unfettered” access to the carrier’s wireless network, including billing records and customer data “transmitted wirelessly.”

Just after the scandal broke, Wired Magazine disclosed that “two years before the Bavarian state in Germany began using a controversial spy tool to gather evidence from suspect computers, German authorities approached the Federal Bureau of Investigation to discuss a similar tool the U.S. law enforcement agency was using.”

“Bavarian authorities,” Wired reported, “began using their spyware in 2009. It’s not known if that spyware is based on the FBI’s, but in July 2007, German authorities contacted the FBI seeking information about its tool.”

The FBI’s assistant legal attache in Frankfurt “sent an email to Bureau colleagues on July 24, 2007, writing, ‘I am embarrassed to be approaching you again with a request from the Germans … but they now have asked us about CIPAV (Computer Internet Protocol Address Verifier) software, allegedly used by the Bu[reau]‘.”

The email uncovered by Wired was part of a huge cache of files obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in response to their 2007 Freedom of Information Act request for data on CIPAV.

In the years since those disclosures, secret state surveillance is more pervasive than ever and and now includes the “lawful interception” of GPS locational data streamed automatically to their manufacturers or hosting services by smart phones.

It appears that German secret state officials are playing a similar game. According to Der Spiegel, at least two agencies, the Bundeskriminalamt, or BKA, the federal crime investigation agency equivalent to the FBI, and some 16 Landeskriminalamt or LKAs, regional investigative bureaus, may have deployed the malware during wide-ranging investigations unrelated to terrorism.

Following Chaos Computer Club revelations, it is clear that German authorities have been caught red-handed violating a landmark decision by the Supreme Court. “The court,” Der Spiegel noted, “specified that online spying was only permissible if there was concrete evidence of danger to individuals or society.”

In a follow-up piece, Der Spiegel disclosed that the firm DigiTask was the spyware’s developer. Along with hundreds of similar firms, DigiTask is a niche security outfit that develops applications for the so-called “lawful interception” market.

In 2008, WikiLeaks released two documents concerning “interception technology for Skype and SSL in Bavaria, Germany. The first document is a communication by the Bavarian Ministry of Justice to the prosecutors office, relating to cost distribution for the interception licenses between police and prosecution. The second document allegedly presents the offer made by Digitask, the German company developing the technology, and holds information on pricing and license model, high-level technology descriptions and other detail.”

According to the WikiLeaks analysis, the DigiTask offer “introduces a basic description of the cryptographic workings of Skype, and concludes that new systems are needed to spy on Skype calls.”

We were informed in that letter that German police were interested in standing-up a “Skype Capture Unit.”

“In a nutshell: malware is installed onto a target machine, to intercept Skype Voice and Chat. Another feature introduced is a recording proxy, that is not part of the offer, yet would allow for anonymous proxying of recorded information to a target recording station. Access to the recording station is possible via a multimedia streaming client, supposedly offering real-time interception.”

“Another part of the offer,” WikiLeaks noted, was related to “an interception method for SSL based communication, working on the same principle of establishing a man-in-the-middle attack on the key material on the client machine. According to the offer, this method works for Internet Explorer and Firefox web browsers. Digitask also recommends using overseas proxy servers, to cover the tracks of all activities.”

As it turns out those proxy servers were conveniently located in the United States. This raises the distinct possibility that information captured by German secret state officials is also being shared with “partner agencies” of their close NATO ally, the CIA, FBI and NSA.

This was confirmed by CCC’s analysis of R2D2′s code. “To avoid the location of the command and control server, all data is redirected through a rented dedicated server in a data center in the USA. The control of this malware is only partially within the borders of its jurisdiction.”

“Considering the incompetent encryption and the missing digital signatures on the command channel, this poses an unacceptable and incalculable risk. It also poses the question how a citizen is supposed to get their right of legal redress in the case the wiretapping data get lost outside Germany, or the command channel is misused.”

The short answer is, they can’t.

Aside from lining the pockets of DigiTask shareholders, there are more sinister uses for the malware. As the World Socialist Web Site noted “the remote-control function could be used to load and execute malicious software, and to plant bogus digital evidence on the computer, which can then be detected if the computer was seized. A suspect would have no way of proving that this had happened.”

This would certainly be a convenient way to “neutralize” a troublesome politician, journalist or over-eager anticorporate campaigner.

‘Less Democracy’

Following similar efforts in the United States, evidence that police are illegally spying on German citizens using sophisticated malware developed for the government are neither benign nor accidental events.

As a recent article in German Foreign Policy disclosed, leading voices in Europe’s largest state are “pleading for a transition toward ‘less democracy’.” A recent book, published under the title, Dare Less Democracy, claims that the “voice of the people” and the “‘emancipatory Zeitgeist, putting everything into question,’ has a too ‘paralyzing influence” on current governance’.”

“The author,” the critical online leftist magazine observes, “demands to ‘correct the system’ for ‘more efficient policy making.’ These ‘corrections’ must include the dismantlement of democratic participation.”

Author Laszlo Trankovits, the bureau chief of the Deutsche Presse Agentur in South Africa, who had previously worked for the agency in Washington “as its White House correspondent,” explained “it should never be suggested that a ‘democratic society can do away with inequality and establish social justice’.”

“Trankovits,” German Foreign Policy notes, is “a member of the elitist Rotary-Club.” He demands that “the elite clearly ‘commits itself to capitalism and profit,’ and that ‘intelligent forms of public relations’ be used to communicate policy measures to the population. However, the demand for more ‘transparency’ is ‘counterproductive and paralyzing’ for any ‘governance efficiency’ and must be rejected.”

That drivel such as this was penned by a journalist for Germany’s leading news agency, to whit, that the media should serve as a propaganda mouthpiece for casino capitalist interests, is one more sign that democratic norms, already seriously eroded in the West, are now being rapidly jettisoned by our political masters.

With the global capitalist system on the verge of a repeat performance of the 2008 meltdown, and with a worldwide resurgence of opposition to the one-sided costs of saving a system of financial plunder borne by the working class, elite calls for “less democracy” are warning signs that stern measures, including blanket surveillance and naked police violence, are in the offing.

One of the demands voiced by protesters in the Occupy Wall Street movement is for a “public option” in banking.  What that means was explained by Dr. Michael Hudson, Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, in an interview by Paul Jay of the Real News Network on October 6:

[T]he demand isn’t simply to make a public bank but is to treat the banks generally as a public utility, just as you treat electric companies as a public utility. . . . Just as there was pressure for a public option in health care, there should be a public option in banking.  There should be a government bank that offers credit card rates without punitive 30% interest rates, without penalties, without raising the rate if you don’t pay your electric bill. This is how America got strong in the 19thand early 20thcentury, by essentially having public infrastructure, just like you’d have roads and bridges. . . . The idea of public infrastructure was to lower the cost of living and to lower the cost of doing business.

We don’t hear much about a public banking option in the United States, but a number of countries already have a resilient public banking sector.  A May 2010 article in The Economist noted that the strong and stable publicly-owned banks of India, China and Brazil helped those countries weather the banking crisis afflicting most of the world in the last few years.

In the U.S., North Dakota is the only state to own its own bank.  It is also the only state that has sported a budget surplus every year since the 2008 credit crisis.  It has the lowest unemployment rate in the country and the lowest default rate on loans.  It also has oil, but so do other states that are not doing so well.  Still, the media tend to attribute North Dakota’s success to its oil fields.

However, there are other Western public banking models that are successful without oil booms.  Europe has a strong public banking sector; and leading it is Germany, with eleven regional public banks and thousands of municipally-owned savings banks.   Germany emerged from World War II with a collapsed economy that had degenerated into barter.  Today it is the largest and most robust economy in the Eurozone.  Manufacturing in Germany contributes 25% of GDP, more than twice that in the UK.  Despite the recession, Germany’s unemployment rate, at 6.8%, is the lowest in 20 years.  Underlying the economy’s strength is its Mittelstand—small to medium sized enterprises—supported by a strong regional banking system that is willing to lend to fund research and development.

In 1999, public banks dominated German domestic lending, with private banks accounting for less than 20% of the market, compared to more than 40% in France, Spain, the Nordic countries, and Benelux.  Since then, Germany’s public banks have come under fire; but local observers say it is due to rivalry from private competitors rather than a sign of real weakness in the sector.

As precedent for a public option in banking, then, the German model deserves a closer look.

From the Ashes of Defeat to World Leader in Manufacturing

Germany emerged Phoenix-like from its disastrous defeat in two world wars to become Europe’s economic powerhouse in the second half of the 20th century.  In 1947, German industrial output was only one-third its 1938 level, and a large percentage of its working-age men were dead.  Less than ten years after the war, people were already talking about the German economic miracle, and twenty years later, its economy was the envy of most of the world.  By 2003, a country half the size of Texas had become the world’s leading exporter, producing high quality automobiles, machinery, electrical equipment, and chemicals.  Only in 2009 was Germany surpassed in exports by China, which has a population of over 1.3 billion to Germany’s 82 million.  In 2010, while much of the world was still reeling from the 2008 financial collapse, Germany reported 3.6% economic growth.

The country’s economic miracle has been attributed to a variety of factors, including debt forgiveness by the Allies, currency reform, the elimination of price controls, and the reduction of tax rates.  But while those factors freed the economy from its shackles, they don’t explain its phenomenal rise from a war-torn battlefield to world leader in manufacturing and trade.

One overlooked key to the country’s economic dynamism is its strong public banking system, which focuses on serving the public interest rather than on maximizing private profits.  After the Second World War, it was the publicly-owned Landesbanks that helped family-run provincial companies get a foothold in world markets. As Peter Dorman describes the Landesbanks in a July 2011 blog:

They are publicly owned entities that rest on top of a pyramid of thousands of municipally owned savings banks. If you add in the specialized publicly owned real estate lenders, about half the total assets of the German banking system are in the public sector. (Another substantial chunk is in cooperative savings banks.) They are key tools of German industrial policy, specializing in loans to the Mittelstand, the small-to-medium size businesses that are at the core of that country’s export engine. Because of the landesbanken, small firms in Germany have as much access to capital as large firms; there are no economies of scale in finance. This also means that workers in the small business sector earn the same wages as those in big corporations, have the same skills and training, and are just as productive. [Emphasis added.] 

The Landesbanks function as “universal banks” operating in all sectors of the financial services market.  All are controlled by state governments and operate as central administrators for the municipally-owned savings banks, or Sparkassen, in their area.

The Sparkassen were instituted in Germany in the late 18th century as nonprofit organizations to aid the poor. The intent was to help people with low incomes save small sums of money, and to support business start-ups. The first savings bank was set up by academics and philanthropically-minded merchants in Hamburg in 1778, and the first savings bank with a local government guarantor was founded in Goettingen in 1801.  The municipal savings banks were so effective and popular that they spread rapidly, increasing from 630 in 1850 to 2,834 in 1903.  Today the savings banks operate a network of over 15,600 branches and offices and employ over 250,000 people, and they have a strong record of investing wisely in local businesses.

Targeted for Privatization

The reputation and standing of the German public banks were challenged, however, when they emerged as competitors in international markets.  Peter Dorman writes:

[T]he EU doesn’t like the landesbanken. They denounce the explicit and implicit public subsidies that state ownership entails, saying they violate the rules of competition policy. For over a decade they have fought to have the system privatized. In the end, the dispute is simply ideological: if you think that public ownership should only be an exception, narrowly crafted to address specific market failures, you want to see the landesbanken put on the auction block. If you think an economy should be organized to meet socially defined needs, you would want a large part of capital allocation to be responsive to public input, and you’d fight to keep the landesbanken the way they are. (There is a movement afoot in the US to promote public banking.)

The vicissitudes of German banking in the last decade were traced in a July 2011 article by Ralph Niemeyer, editor-in-chief of EUchronicle, titled “Commission’s Dirty Task: WESTLB Devoured by Private Banks.”  He notes that after 1999, the major private banks left the path of sustainable traditional banking to gamble in collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, and derivatives.  Private German banks accumulated an estimated €600 billion in toxic assets through their investment banking branches, for which German taxpayers wound up providing guarantees.  Deutsche Bank AG was feeding its record profits almost exclusively through its investment banking division, which made a fortune trading credit default swaps on Greek state obligations.  When this investment turned sour, the German government had to bail out the financial institution into which Deutsche Bank AG dumped these toxic assets.

While the large private banks were betting on the casinos of the financial markets, lending to businesses and the “real” economy was left to the public Sparkassen, which were more efficient in serving average citizens and local business because they were not stock companies that had to satisfy shareholders’ hunger for ever-larger dividends.  Today the market share of private banks in Germany is only 28.4%, and Deutsche Bank AG dominates the segment.  But with its 7% market share, it is still well behind the public banks owned by municipalities and communities.

Neimeyer says the private banks wanted to break up the market dominance of the public banks to get a bigger piece of the pie themselves, and they used the European Commission to do it.  The Commission had been lobbied since the early 1990s by German private banks and by Deutsche Bank AG in particular to attack the German government over the country’s “inflexible” public banking sector.

The IMF, too, had long demanded that any competing public monopolies in the German banking market be broken up, citing their “inefficiencies.”  When the German public Sparkassen and Landesbanken were reluctant to turn to investment banking with its skyrocketing profits, they were branded as bureaucratic and “unsexy.”  When they were pressured to increase their returns for their government owners, the German Landesbanken did get sucked to some extent into derivatives and CDOs (fraudulently rated triple A).  But while they “lost billions in the Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Lehman Brothers Ponzi scheme,” Niemeyer says the extent to which they became involved in highly speculative transactions was “laughable in comparison with the damage done by private banks, for whom taxpayers are now providing guarantees.”

It was the public banks and Sparkassen that supplied the real economy with liquidity, and that stepped in for the private banks when they withdrew to bet in the financial casino; but it was on the failings of the Landesbanken and Sparkassen that the media focused their attention.  The real motive, says Niemeyer, was that the large private banks wanted the public banks’ market share themselves:

In order to win back this important market share, it has become a prerogative to destroy public banking in Germany completely. This unpopular move could never come from the German government itself, so that’s why the [European] Commission is being employed for this dirty job.

The Price of Success

The German public banks were brought down by knocking their public legs out from under them.  Previously, they had enjoyed state guarantees that allowed them to acquire and lend funds at substantially better rates than private banks were able to do.  But in 2001, the European Commission ruled to strip the Landesbanks of their explicit state credit guarantees, forcing them to compete on the same terms as private banks.  And today the European Banking Authority is refusing to count the banks’ implicit state guarantees in their “stress tests” for banking solvency.

The upshot is that the German public banks are being stripped of what has made them stable, secure, and able to lend at low interest rates: they have had the full faith and credit of the government and the public behind them.  By eliminating the profit motive, focusing on the public interest, and relying on government guarantees, the German public banks were able to turn bank credit into the sort of public utility described by Prof. Hudson.

The example of Germany shows that even success is no guarantee in the face of a relentless onslaught of propaganda by large privately-owned banks interested only in making money for their CEOs, wealthiest clients and shareholders. But peering behind the propaganda, the public banking model that helped underwrite Germany’s economic success might be the fast track to a U.S. banking system that serves Main Street rather than Wall Street.

There is now open speculation about the euro’s survival and even that of the European Union itself. The whole situation hangs in the balance. And all for what? Because Greece cannot pay its bills. But this was surely no surprise. Every serious person knew full well that the crisis of the Greek economy was so deep that all the rescue packages could do was to buy a little time.

The time is now up. Greece cannot pay its bills and that is that. So why all the fuss? How does it come about that the problems of a small country on the periphery of Europe can bring about a tragedy of such dimensions? One might call it a Greek tragedy, were it not for the fact that it is not at all confined to Greece. Its origins must be sought beyond the confines of Greece and its repercussions will also be felt far afield.

Why are the European leaders falling over themselves in a desperate attempt to restore confidence? Why is Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank, demanding stricter budgetary rules? Why has Mario Draghi, head of the Bank of Italy and Trichet’’s successor at the ECB, called for binding limits not on just budgets but also on a host of other national economic policies?

At the roots of the nervousness in the markets are doubts about the stability of Europe’s banks. It is no accident that bank stocks were hit hardest in the recent crash. After the last crisis there was a black hole in the banks that governments have been attempting to fill by shovelling in billions of taxpayers’ money. The result has been close to zero. The banks are not lending, the capitalists are not investing, the economies are stagnant, unemployment is growing, and now they are on the brink of a new slump.

The problem is that to this very day nobody knows what the real debts of the banks are. Decades of deregulation and uncontrolled speculation in things like hedge funds, whose workings are very obscure, mean that the danger to the global financial system is systematically underestimated, like the bulk of an iceberg that cannot be seen because it is submerged.

What is known is that French and German banks are heavily exposed to Greece. This alone explains the tender concern with which the governments in Paris and Berlin view the Greek crisis. If (or rather, when) Greece defaults, it would be followed immediately by a crisis of the banking system in the two pivotal countries of the EU. That is why they cobbled together a “rescue fund”, the European Financial Stability Facility. But it is a case of too little and too late.

The crisis that began with the bankruptcy of banks has now moved on to express itself as the bankruptcy of whole nations. If Greece is allowed to collapse, other more important economies will follow. That is why the leaders of the Euro zone have called an emergency summit in Poland. Their previous plans are in ruins. The debt exchange that was agreed to in July is now dead in the water. They will have to throw it out and grant Greece some kind of debt relief to prevent a collapse that would have devastating effects throughout Europe.

Europe and America

Sooner or later the EU authorities must decide either to relieve Greece and Ireland of their austerity programmes, or else pull the plug, pushing them over the abyss of default. Despite all the brave talk about keeping Greece inside the Euro zone, in the end they will have to take the latter course. This will have the most serious consequences’ for Europe and the world economy.

If the EU and IMF decide that they cannot continue to throw good money after bad, and withhold their support, this would push Greece into the abyss. This would signify what the markets most fear: a disorderly debt default. The social, political, and economic consequences of such a step would be incalculable – and not only for Greece. This scenario would spell chaos on an epic scale.

But this prospect is provoking alarm in ruling circles in Europe. Economists are already talking about the breakup of the euro zone, leaving Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain outside it. But if you say “A”, you must also say “B”, “C”, and “D”. Globalization means that every economy in Europe is linked to every other economy. So what happens in even a smaller economy such as Greece will inevitably affect all the others.

What would the consequences be for the rest of Europe – for Britain, France, yes, and Germany too? It would trigger a chain reaction of collapsed banks in those countries. French banks are heavily exposed to Greece, but so are German banks. British banks are rather less exposed to Greece, but heavily exposed to Ireland. Austrian banks are exposed to Italy, and so on.

The results would be catastrophic for Europe, and not only for Europe. An economic collapse in Europe would send a Tsunami racing across the Atlantic, putting pressure on the dollar and threatening to undermine the unstable financial set-up in the USA. When Greece goes, the question is immediately posed of the contagion spreading to other countries. Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy will fall like dominoes. Banks will collapse, starting with the Greek and Cypriot banks, and then proceeding to the UK and US financial system, both of which are unsound.

In order to prevent his from happening, some bourgeois economists are now discussing other possibilities: for example, a German “Marshall Plan” for Greece and southern Europe. The idea seems childishly simple: Germany received millions of dollars in Marshall Aid, which enabled it to rebuild its shattered economy after 1945. Why should Germany not do the same for southern Europe? This is what the Americans are demanding ever more insistently.

Sadly the historical parallel is misguided. In 1945 the USA enjoyed a total hegemony over its competitors. Its industry was intact, while Europe and Japan were devastated by the War. Two thirds of the world’’s gold was in Fort Knox. The dollar then was “as good as gold”. Above all, the world capitalist economy was entering into a phase of upswing that lasted almost three decades. None of these factors exist now.

Germany is the leading power in Europe but it does not possess the virtually unlimited economic reserves that the USA enjoyed in 1945. Its shoulders are broad, but not strong enough to bear the weight of the accumulated deficits of Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy and the rest. Most importantly, Europe and the world are not on the verge of a long period of upswing but, on the contrary, on the eve of a new recession and a prolonged period of economic difficulties and austerity.

Barack Obama accuses the eurozone that it is dragging the rest of the world into crisis again, conveniently overlooking the small matter of the huge US fiscal crisis and the inability of the Republicans and Democrats to agree on a serious plan for reducing the huge budget deficit.

The Americans are desperately calling on Germany to “do more” to pull Europe out of crisis. The Germans must cut taxes; they must boost the economy; they must send more money to Greece; they must lead a coordinated fiscal stimulus across northern Europe. Germany must do this and Germany must do that. But who are the Americans to tell the Germans what to do?

Yes, say the Europeans, but who pays for all this? To this question there can only be one answer: France and Germany, or more correctly, Germany, which is Europe’s banker of last resort. Those who have talked bib about a Marshall Plan for Greece are now politely requested to put their money where their mouths are. But this is easier said than done. It immediately raises political problems that cannot easily be overcome.

Eurobonds?

Twenty years ago, after the collapse of the USSR, the German ruling class had big ambitions. Their idea was that a unified Germany could dominate Europe, achieving by its economic muscle what Hitler failed to do by military means. Over the past two decades, France has been increasingly pushed into second place and Germany now rules the roost in Europe.

The idea of a closer European Union will appeal to those sections of the German ruling class that still entertain some illusions of grandeur. But the past 20 years have also convinced Germany that such ambitions can come with a very hefty price tag. This contradiction has been exposed by the recent debate on the possible creation of “Eurobonds”.

Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe in the European Parliament, is only one in a growing chorus of voices calling for the creation of Eurobonds. Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, has suggested that Europe needs to move to full fiscal union.

The Greens and SPD in Germany already back Eurobonds. But they are facing an electoral backlash, not only against fiscal union but against bailouts in general. The French have expressed guarded support for the proposal. Even the British Conservative leaders have adopted a surprisingly positive attitude (itself an indication of the seriousness of the crisis), which is causing them problems with their rank and file.

On the one hand, this idea contains a certain logic. All history shows that it is impossible to achieve a firm and lasting monetary union without some kind of political union. But here we immediately run up against new contradictions. The creation of Eurobonds would require a degree of political consensus that is simply not there. Any movement in the direction of fiscal union will meet fierce resistance. It would also require a fundamental revision of the EU’’s founding treaties.

The experience of the farce over the proposed European Constitution shows that it is not easy to get people to vote more powers for Brussels either in national parliaments or in referenda. And the mood of euro-scepticism has become even stronger since then.

But the governments of Germany and other northern European are coming under pressure from increasingly restive public opinion, unwilling to pay the debts of foreign states. The Merkel government is unpopular and has just suffered a humiliating drubbing in recent elections.

For the time being, Merkel is making the right noises: Greece must stay in the Euro Zone; the Euro must stay; Germany will do this and Germany will do that. But the fact is that Germany, the most powerful economy in Europe, is showing signs of strain. Its economy is slowing down, as a result of the general stagnation of the world economy. Its politicians are showing signs of impatience at being continually asked to put their hands in their pockets.

So far the EU has bailed out the Greek economy, or at least provided some funds with which the beleaguered Papandreou government could pay the wages of its civil servants and the pensions of its old folk. But more money than this is required. It is like pouring money down a bottomless well. And in the end, one way or the other, Greece will still default.

All that they have done is to yet again create a breathing space for Greece. But this comes at a huge cost to the Greek people, who are presented with the bill. As always, it is not the bankers and speculators who are asked to pay but the poorest sections of society: the workers, the unemployed, the old and the sick.

The price of “stabilizing the finances” and “restructuring” their economy is a brutal slashing of living standards and an increase in unemployment. This will lead to a further fall in tax revenue and thus a further increase in the deficit in the public finances. In what way this madness is supposed to help Greece to pay its debts is a mystery compared to which the Eleusinian Mysteries of old were child’’s play.

Without economic growth, tax revenues will remain stagnant, and the capacity to service debts will continue to decline. But the world economic slowdown and the merciless pressure to reduce the deficit through austerity, has plunged Greece into a deep slump. Despite all the painful sacrifices of its people, the government of Athens continues to miss its fiscal targets.

Alarm at this prospect is compelling the politicians in Brussels to take emergency measures to prevent the immediate collapse of the Greek economy. They still possess a number of instruments they can use: a relaxation of the demands of the creditors, an agreement not to press too hard on Athens to meet unrealisable fiscal targets. This would be quite a logical thing to do, on the grounds that it is not possible to squeeze blood from a stone.

There can be no solution for the problems of Europe without economic growth. Economic, social and political stability, throughout Europe, depends on it, and not only in Greece. But there is no prospect of a recovery of growth in the near future.

Protectionist tendencies

The deafening chorus shows that Europe is not short of proposals. They have proposals by the bucket load. The problem is that none of these proposals can do anything to solve the euro zone’s immediate problems. They cannot pay Greece’s debts. They cannot stop the problem from spreading to other countries. They cannot restore the shattered confidence of investors.

In the most optimistic scenario, they may possibly (just possibly) do a little to ease some problems in the long run (but, as Keynes pointed out, in the long run we are all dead). But they will do nothing to resolve the present crisis, which is clearly getting out of hand.

The hopeless confusion of the economists is illustrated by the strange spectacle of Jeff Sachs, the man who unleashed neo-liberalism onto Eastern Europe, calling for a global version of the New Deal. The problem is that any such suggestion is anathema to the Republican dominated Congress, which is hell-bent on pursuing the opposite policies.

Neither free market economics nor Keynesian stimulus policies have worked, or can work. Governments and their economist advisers are in a state of despair. There is no more money for fiscal stimulus, but austerity policies only serve to depress demand still further, aggravating the slump.

The greatest fear is that a new recession will provoke a resurgence of protectionist tendencies and competitive devaluations, as happened in the 1930s. This would have catastrophic effects on world trade and pose a threat to globalization itself. All that has been achieved in the past 30 years can unravel and turn into its opposite.

The measures recently announced by the Swiss National Bank to push down the value of the Swiss franc is a warning of the way things are drifting in the direction of protectionist policies and competitive devaluations. It was this that turned the 1929-33 slump into the Great Depression of the 1930s. The same thing can happen again.

Danger of reaction?

We have pointed out repeatedly that all the attempts of the bourgeois to restore the economic equilibrium will destroy the social and political equilibrium. Greece is proof of this assertion. Already social and political stability have been destroyed. And the realization that all the sacrifices have been in vain will make the austerity utterly intolerable.

It is possible that the Greek ruling class will seek a solution to their problems by moving towards reaction as they did in 1967. But the Greek workers remember 1967 and the crimes of the Junta. Any move in that direction now would provoke civil war.

This is recognized by an American political analyst, Barry Eichengreen (Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley.) in a recent article, significantly entitled: “Europe on the Verge of a Political Breakdown”:“ In Greece itself, political and social stability are already tenuous. One poorly aimed rubber bullet might be all that is needed to turn the next street protest into an outright civil war.”

Barry Eichengreen is not alone. Paul Mason, the economics editor of BBC2’ s Newsnight writes:

“In the chancelleries of Europe, above all in Berlin, these are questions that are impossible to mention. There is a total mismatch between political expectation and what is imminent.

“It reminds me – as so much of 2011 reminds me – of 1848. Metternich sneering out of the window at the irrelevant mob, a few hours before his unceremonious overthrow, Guizot unable to breathe with shock as he resigns his ministry, Thiers, prime minister for one day, suffering a bout of 19th Century Tourette’s in his carriage, hounded by the masses…”

These lines show that the most intelligent bourgeois strategists are seriously alarmed by the developments in Greece. The problem is not so much that this could lead to civil war. The problem is that the Greek bourgeoisie would not be sure of winning such a war. The working class is undefeated. Behind them they feel the support of the mass of the Greek population – not just the workers and peasants, not just the students and intellectuals, but also the small shopkeepers and taxi drivers who are driven to revolutionary conclusions by the sudden collapse of their living standards.

The politicians in Brussels fear that Greece is becoming ungovernable. If it has not yet become so, it is thanks to the reformist leaders. The Pasok leadership is anxious to prove its “statesmanlike qualities” and its patriotism, that is, its devotion to the interests of the bankers and capitalists. It is willing to take upon its shoulders all the odium of the austerity programme, and even to sacrifice itself on the altar of Greek and European Capital, if necessary.

In November 2001 there was an uncontrolled default in Argentina, accompanied by a run on bank deposits. The banks closed their doors, there were mass protests in the streets and the president had to flee from the roof of his palace in a helicopter. Something similar might occur in Greece, where protesters have hung a banner on the railings of parliament showing a helicopter carrying off Prime Minister George Papandreou.

The government is deeply unpopular. But who could replace it? The right-wing opposition party does not want to take over the reins of government in conditions of acute crisis with an aroused working class. It is not the right wing that the bourgeoisie is obliged to lean on to save it but the leaders of Pasok. Politicians like Evangelos Venizelos and Elena Panaritis (the non-elected, Western-educated MP advising Papandreou) and Papandreou himself are the Saviours of the bourgeoisie: their only defence against the masses.

It is the same story all over Europe. Without the reformist leaders, capitalism could not last even for a week. For that very reason, talk about the danger of fascism and Bonapartism makes no sense at the present time. The ruling class all over Europe must base itself on these organizations. The bourgeoisie does not need the fascists at this moment in time. Any attempt to move in the direction of fascism or Bonapartism at this point would simply provoke the labour movement to action.

Of course, this can change. The present crisis can last for years or even decades. However, at a certain point, the ruling class will say: there are too many strikes, too many demonstrations, too much disorder; we need to restore Order! Then there could be a movement towards reaction. But even in such a case, the ruling class would have to proceed carefully, first testing the ground by moving towards parliamentary Bonapartism.

That is not the perspective now, either in Greece or any other country in Europe. On the contrary, the pendulum will swing to the left. The working class will have many opportunities to take power into its hands before the ruling class can turn to reaction. Of course, the movement of the working class is never in a straight line.

The civil servants’ union, ADEDY, warned that it was gearing up for action over the government’s plans to extend a “labour reserve” scheme that would put civil servants on a sharply reduced salary for 12 months before reviewing their status. This shows that there are still important reserves in the working class in Greece. New layers will move into struggle to replace those that are exhausted by many months of constant activity.

We must not adopt a superficial and impressionistic attitude to events like the events in Greece. The masses cannot stay on the streets indefinitely. There will inevitably be periods of lull, in which the workers will think deeply about what has happened, criticize, differentiate and draw conclusions. It is precisely in such periods that the ideas of Marxism can gain a powerful echo, on condition that we are patient, that we listen to what the masses are saying and put forward the correct slogans.

In the revolutionary events that are coming, the advanced workers and youth will learn. If we work correctly we can help them to draw revolutionary conclusions, and come to understand the need for Marxism and a revolutionary organization.

All over Europe the working class and the youth are taking the road of struggle. In Italy there have been a general strike and mass demonstrations against the austerity plan. Berlusconi’s programme is too little for the bosses but too much for the workers. Outside parliament one evening, riot police came under a barrage of fire, paint bombs and even a pig’’s heart, hurled by angry protesters.

Moody’’s have already warned of a possible downgrade of Italy’’s credit rating on June 17 and its decision is expected by Saturday. Incessantly, implacably, the crisis is spreading and new burdens are being placed on the shoulders of the working class in every country.

What is the duty of the Marxists in this situation? We do not aim to reach the masses with our propaganda. That is beyond our ability. We aim at the most advanced elements of the workers and youth. We do not put forward “easy” agitation slogans that merely tell the workers what they already know. The workers need to be told the truth. And the truth is that under capitalism the only future that awaits them is a future of permanent austerity, falling living standards, unemployment and poverty.

We must explain that only the expropriation of the bankers and capitalists and the replacement of capitalist anarchy by a democratic planned economy can provide a way out of the crisis. In particular, we must counter the nationalist poison of the Stalinists by advancing the slogan of the United Socialist States of Europe, the only real alternative to the bankrupt bosses’ EU. Our duty, to use Lenin’’s expression, is to patiently explain.

• Originally appeared at In Defence of Marxism.