Peter Schwarz

Germany Defends Its Cooperation with NSA: Angela Merkel's
government said on Monday that its cooperation with American
intelligence was fully regulated by strict legal guidelines after
a magazine reported that the U.S. National Security Agency was
in close cahoots with German spies. (Voice of America)

The claim by European governments that they were unaware of the extensive wiretapping undertaken by the US intelligence agency NSA is simply a lie. In fact, various European intelligence agencies, and in particular Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND), work closely with the National Security Agency (NSA) in the surveillance of electronic communications.

This is clear from an interview with former NSA sub-contractor Edward Snowden published in the latest issue of the news magazine Der Spiegel.

To the question: “Are the German authorities and German politicians involved in the monitoring system”, Snowden answered: “Yes, of course. They [NSA people–Ed.] are in cahoots with the Germans, as with most other Western countries.”

The interview is based on written questions submitted by encryption specialist Jacob Appelbaum and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras in mid-May to Snowden, before he went to Hong Kong and began revealing the comprehensive monitoring activities of the NSA and Britain's GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters).

In the responses from Snowden, now published for the first time, he suggests that such international intelligence cooperation also serves to bypass national legal restrictions and shield political leaders. Intelligence agencies that exchange information never ask where it originates, he explains. “In this way, they can protect their political leaders from the backlash, if it should come out how massively people's privacy is being violated worldwide.”

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Peter Schwarz

"When the CIA used European airspace to kidnap alleged terror suspects in order to torture them (so-called “extraordinary renditions”), quite different standards applied. Not a single government made claim to their sovereignty to close their airspace, although the flights were clearly illegal."

The forced landing of the Bolivian president’s plane in Vienna has exposed European governments’ protests against massive surveillance by the US intelligence agency NSA as a sham.

Evo Morales was forced to land in Vienna on Tuesday because several European countries—including France, Italy, Spain and Portugal—closed their air space to his aircraft, which was en route from Moscow to La Paz. This was due to incorrect suspicions that American whistleblower Edward Snowden was aboard the plane.

The incident was a disgrace, especially for the French President François Hollande. On Monday, he had criticized the NSA interception measures undertaken by the United States. “We cannot accept such conduct among partners and allies. We demand that this cease immediately”, he said.

On Tuesday, he then functioned as a deputy sheriff for the US intelligence services, endangering the life of the President of Bolivia in order to deliver up to the United States the man who revealed the scope of NSA wiretapping.

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Johannes Stern

Peter Schwarz: German industry, government planning for resource wars

Germany is making intensive preparations to conduct new wars to secure resources. This was the unmistakable message of a lead article in Germany's business newspaper Handelsblatt, “Expedition Resources: Germany's new course.”

The article shows the real face of the German bourgeoisie. As in the first half of the twentieth century, when it twice played a central role in plunging humanity into world war, it is again moving to enforce its imperialist interests through war. “The previous political measures to secure raw materials are reaching their limits,” the Handelsblatt states. Dependence on raw materials is the German economy’s Achilles heel, the paper writes: “Industry is plagued by the fear that the high-tech sector in Germany could be cut off from essential supplies.”

The very same business circles that financed Hitler are again banging the war drums.

The article cites an interview with Dierk Paskert, the manager of the Resource Alliance founded in 2011. Members of the alliance include Volkswagen, ThyssenKrupp, Bayer and BASF—firms that either directly supported Nazi war plans, or whose predecessors did. Now they work closely with the German government to plan how Berlin will secure access to critical raw materials across the globe, by force if necessary.

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Peter Schwarz

Johannes Stern: The return of German imperialism

A year ago, leading German industrial companies launched the Resource Alliance (Rohstoffallianz) for the purpose of securing the supply of selected raw materials for its shareholders and corporate members. To achieve this goal, it is calling for the use of military assets.

In an interview with Reuters on Monday, the manager of the Resource Alliance, Dierk Paskert, called for “a strategically oriented foreign economic and security policy” to ensure the supply of raw materials for German business.

Although this policy should be guided by the “objective of free and transparent commodity markets,” Paskert said, “it would be naive to take this for granted in the near future.” Developments had moved in “exactly the opposite direction, unfortunately.” Therefore, Paskert concluded, “we [Germany], together with our partners in the EU and NATO, must take on more responsibility in foreign economic and security matters.”

“Taking responsibility in security matters” is a euphemism for military operations. This is indicated by the reference to NATO, a military alliance. — Paskert is calling for resource wars.

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Peter Schwarz

The poster reads: "This definitely is...a Madrid without hope".

The aim of this anti-Islamic campaign is to divide the working class, suppress opposition to imperialist war, whip up right-wing forces, and direct growing social tensions into reactionary, racist channels.

The anti-Islamic film The Innocence of Muslims has triggered a storm of protest extending from Indonesia in Southeast Asia to Tunisia in northwestern Africa. The sheer magnitude of the protests demonstrates that they are not simply a response to the ravings of individual religious fanatics, but an expression of broad popular opposition to the US and its European allies, which have plunged the affected countries into war, humiliated their peoples, and exploited them as cheap labor.

The ruling circles of Europe have responded to the protests by defending the anti-Islamic propaganda in the name of free speech, while suppressing demonstrations against these racist provocations and strengthening their own state apparatuses. The most striking example is France, where the government has banned all protests against the defamatory Muhammad cartoons published by the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

This buildup of state power is directed against the entire working class. The ruling class anticipates violent class struggles. Social contradictions and tensions in Europe are rapidly increasing as the euro crisis intensifies and a new recession gathers pace.

The French government claims it is acting in defense of freedom of expression, but grants this right only to the satirical magazine while denying it to those who feel offended and denigrated by the caricatures. In other countries, too, freedom of expression is used to justify the defamatory cartoons while protests against them are criminalized.

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Peter Schwarz

Less than a year ago the demise of the euro and the breakup of the European Union were generally conceived of as unthinkable. Now, they are the dominant themes in European politics and in the media.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently warned parliament, “If the euro fails, Europe fails.” Similar warnings have been made by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Not only the notoriously euro-skeptical British press, but also such pro-European papers as France’s Le Monde and Germany’s Die Zeit are no longer excluding the failure of the common European currency.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has described the economic consequences of such a development in the starkest terms. The collapse of the euro zone would cause an economic crash that would instantly wipe out half of the value of Europe's economy, plunging the continent into a depression as deep as the 1930s slump, he has declared.

But the alternative proposed by Merkel, Sarkozy and Barroso to avoid such a catastrophe is not less disastrous. It amounts to setting up a dictatorship of the financial markets over every aspect of social life. Recent events in Greece and Italy confirm this. In each country a government of experts selected by the EU is being formed without any democratic legitimacy. Its task is to decimate the living standards of the people by implementing unprecedented austerity measures.

In fact, “saving” the euro by means of austerity measures and the breakup of Europe are not opposite, but rather parallel political strategies serving the same basic aim. The recent EU summit in Brussels set the course for both. It dictated punitive austerity measures for Greece and Italy and subordinated the Greek budget to the control of the “troika”—the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank. At the same time, it did not exclude the exit of Greece from the euro zone.

Merkel’s chancellery has already prepared studies on the financial implications of such a step, and if one country leaves the euro zone, it will hardly be possible to avoid the exodus of others.

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Peter Schwarz
WSWS

On January 1, Hungary took over the presidency of the European Union for six months.

On the same day, a new law came into force in Hungary placing the public and private media under the control of the government and virtually eliminating freedom of the press. The coincidence of these two events is significant. Freedom of expression and democracy in general are disintegrating throughout Europe.

The right-wing Hungarian government has lost no time in demonstrating its power over the media. No sooner had the law come into effect than the newly created Media Council launched proceedings against the small, left-liberal broadcaster Tilos Radio. It was charged with having aired a song by rapper Ice-T four months ago. Since very few Hungarians would understand the rapper’s American slang, the Media Council simultaneously published a Hungarian translation of the disputed text in order to demonstrate its allegedly harmful effect on children.

The next to be targeted by the Media Council was the TV channel RTL Klub. This broadcaster is also regarded as relatively liberal and critical of the government. It has been accused of “sensationalism” in its reporting of the “brutal murder of one brother by another in a southern Hungarian village.” The photo it published of a bloodstained mattress was said to be “damaging to young people and even adults.”

Both cases demonstrate that the new law gives the government a blank check to silence media outlets on the basis of virtually any pretext. While the Media Council makes moral accusations such as “glorifying violence,” “placing youth at risk” and “pornography” in order to take action against targeted media outlets, the pro-government broadcasters, which poison the social atmosphere daily with hateful tirades against Roma, Jews, homosexuals and “communists,” need not fear sanctions.

Thus far, no penalties have been imposed on Tilos Radio or RTL Klub, but the Media Council has the power to revoke their licences or bankrupt them by levying draconian fines. The Council consists solely of members of the ruling party, Fidesz. At its head is Anna Maria Szalai, a long-standing confidante of Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

The European Commission, responsible for ensuring compliance with EU treaties, has so far reacted timidly to the trashing of press freedom in Hungary, although there have been disputes over the new media law for months, and even within the EU some isolated critical voices have been heard.

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Peter Schwarz
WSWS

On November 20 in Lisbon, NATO adopted a new strategic concept. It is the seventh in the 61-year history of the military alliance and the first since 1999.

The summit was preceded by months of preparation and discussion. A group of experts chaired by former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright issued recommendations for the new strategy in May.

After a long tug of war, the strategic concept has now been adopted and was presented to the public in Lisbon. Those attending the summit celebrated it as a historic breakthrough. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel said, “This summit will go down in history. The strategic approach is clear, and it shows we are all working on the same footing.”

In reality, the eleven-page document barely manages to paper over the fault lines that have opened up between the 28 members of the largest military alliance in the world. It is a verbal compromise between divergent interests. The different factions were able to agree on many formulations only at the last minute.

Where the summit was unanimous was that the military should in the future play a far more important role in political and social life. In addition to collective defence with conventional and nuclear weapons, the new strategy sanctions international interventions of various kinds, such as those NATO has already conducted in the former Yugoslavia and is presently carrying out in Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and elsewhere in the world.

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Antoine Lerougetel & Peter Schwarztp://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/sep2010/roma-s16.shtml">WSWS

[Stop this state persecution of Roma!]

The French government’s policy of mass expulsions of Roma has led to a sharp conflict between Brussels and Paris.

In a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, EU commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Viviane Reding accused the French government of “discrimination on the basis of ethnic origin or race” and of calling into question “the common values and laws of our European Union”. She described the French policy as a “disgrace”.

The statement by Reding, a Christian Democrat from Luxembourg, was unusual both in its tone and its content. She accused two French ministers, Eric Besson (immigration) and Pierre Lellouche (European affairs), of having lied to her and implicitly compared the actions of the French government with those of the fascists during the Second World War.

“I personally have been appalled by a situation which gave the impression that people are being removed from a Member State of the European Union just because they belong to a certain ethnic minority”, she said. “This is a situation I had thought Europe would not have to witness again after the Second World War.”

Later she stressed:

“Let me be very clear: Discrimination on the basis of ethnic origin or race has no place in Europe. It is incompatible with the values on which the European Union is founded. National authorities who discriminate ethnic groups in the application of EU law are also violating the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which all Member States, including France, have signed up to.”

It was her personal conviction, Reading concluded, “that the Commission will have no choice but to initiate infringement action against France”.

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