https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZxsGok7iiM
Monday, August 10, 2020
Workers have a right to know about COVID-19 in their plants!
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/10/auto-a10.html
Statement of the Autoworker Rank-and-File Safety Committee Network
10 August 2020
Autoworkers are being deprived of the most basic information about the spread of COVID-19 in their plants and workplaces.
We know the coronavirus is spreading in the factories, and the so-called safety measures aren’t stopping it. We see workers get sick on the line. We share what little information we can get using social media and word of mouth. Some of our brothers and sisters will even take it upon themselves to post on Facebook when they test positive to alert others, because they know the companies won’t inform anyone.
Work is becoming a daily horror movie. At Ford Dearborn Truck in Michigan last week, two people got sick, and they were whisked away and people on the line didn’t know what was going on. At Fiat Chrysler’s Belvidere plant in Illinois, someone tested positive, and they were also snuck off the line by management.
At Toledo Jeep, we know that 75 workers have tested positive or are waiting for results. There were already at least 44 cases at GM Wentzville by the end of July. The companies keep saying these infections were contracted outside the plants, but why should we believe them?
Then they have the gall to try blame us for not being careful enough in our daily lives, while they keep us packed together on the lines, unable to social distance, and don’t pay us when we have to quarantine.
It’s not just the Big Three. At the auto parts plants and suppliers like Faurecia, Lear, Syncreon and others, our brothers and sisters are also being kept in the dark and subjected to the same deadly conditions. And our brothers in Mexico have told us how General Motors simply sends workers who feel sick back to the line, potentially infecting others.
The UAW is doing nothing to help us. When we ask for information or raise our concerns, they defend the companies and try to say that we can’t do anything. But it’s no surprise they’re working with management to cover up the spread of cases, given everything we know about the bribery and crimes they’ve engaged in.
The companies and the UAW couldn’t care less about protecting workers’ privacy. All they care about is keeping the lines running. They’re using HIPAA and privacy laws as a smokescreen, hoping we don’t ask too many questions.
The real reason they don’t want to admit how many cases are in the plants is because they know they’d have an uprising on their hands if workers knew the full truth.
We say: Workers have a right to know how far COVID-19 is spreading in their workplaces!
We completely reject the justifications given by the companies and the UAW for depriving us of this vital information. Their arguments have no basis in science or public health. All they’re thinking about is profit. How can we protect ourselves or make informed decisions about our health and safety if we don’t know where a disease is that can kill us, or kill our families?
We demand the following:
All workers must be immediately notified of any cases of COVID-19 and all areas and shifts that are affected. This information cannot be kept secret from workers.
The companies must keep a total count of positive and potential COVID-19 cases, updated in real time, that is available to all workers.
Workers must have regular, universal testing. Temperature checks and self-reporting symptoms are just so much PR.
We will not be targeted, written up, terminated or harassed in any way for taking time off to get tested and get results, or for raising concerns about safety.
When there’s a case confirmed, the factory should be closed for at least 24 hours for deep cleaning, not just the affected area, but the whole plant.
Social distancing must be implemented at all times—when entering and leaving the plant and during bathroom, lunch and other break times.
Whenever conditions are not safe, we have the right to refuse to work without any threat of retaliation by management or the union.
The same corporate politicians who forced us back to work before it was safe are now trying to force our children and their teachers to go back to school while the pandemic is even more out of control. Things are only going to get worse until we all stand together—autoworkers, teachers, nurses and healthcare workers, service workers, transportation and delivery workers—and fight for our rights, in the US and in every country.
We call on our brothers and sisters: raise these demands! Share this statement on social media. Join a rank-and-file safety committee or organize one at your plant. Workers deserve to be treated like human beings, not slaves.
The WSWS Autoworker Newsletter will assist autoworkers and other workers in establishing safety committees. Email the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter at autoworkers@wsws.org to learn more.
Biden’s blueprint for a right-wing presidency: Part one
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/10/bide-a10.html
By Patrick Martin
10 August 2020
This is the first part of a two-part article. The second part will be posted Tuesday, August 11.
The next milestones in the 2020 elections are fast approaching, with presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to name his running mate this week, the Democratic National Convention opening next Monday and the Republican convention the week after.
This is an appropriate occasion to review the political program advanced by Biden, and rebut the incessant claims by the media that the Democratic nominee, and the party as a whole, have moved to the left and that there exist wide, even unbridgeable differences between the Democrats and Republicans on virtually every significant political issue.
Since the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination ended in March, with the decision of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders to quit the race and endorse the former vice president, the claims of a “shift to the left” by the Democrats have become a media drumbeat.
These claims are usually coupled with suggestions that Sanders exerted political pressure through joint committees set up by the Biden campaign to cover six major areas, including climate change, criminal justice reform, education, health care, immigration and the economy.
The conclusions of these committees—each staffed by five Biden representatives and three Sanders representatives—have been submitted to the platform committee for the Democratic National Convention and an 80-page draft platform assembled, made public July 21.
While the Biden campaign flatly rebuffed some of the signature proposals of Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren—no “Medicare for all” and no “Green New Deal,” for example—there were concessions made in terms of incorporating language and even some specific policies in areas like forgiveness of student loan debt.
But the effort to promote this process, both by Sanders himself and his pseudo-left apologists, has obscured a more fundamental feature of the emerging Biden campaign: its complete subordination to corporate America and to the demands of the military-intelligence apparatus.
This has not involved any internal reorientation for the candidate himself. On the contrary, Biden is a deeply reactionary figure who personifies the role of the Democratic Party as a venue for Wall Street and the CIA to reach agreement on the next steps for American imperialism.
It was only a year ago that Biden was caught on tape reassuring wealthy donors at a fundraising event in Manhattan, “No one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change” if he won the Democratic nomination, defeated Trump in 2020 and was sworn in as president in January 2021.
Throughout the Democratic presidential primary contest, Biden campaigned as the candidate who would restore what he called a “normal America,” i.e., America as it was under the administration that preceded Trump, with Barack Obama as president and himself as vice president.
The draft Democratic platform
This theme is underscored in the draft Democratic Party platform, which refers to the “Obama-Biden Administration” a dozen times, always in the most flattering terms, and presents a picture of American life in the years 2009-2016 that is unrecognizable to anyone who actually lived through this period of deep economic crisis, endless austerity and wage-cutting, and continuing wars and other imperialist atrocities.
The harking back to the halcyon days of Obama-Biden leaves out one overriding political question: If the Democratic administration was such a success, how was it possible for the Republicans to take control of Congress—the House of Representatives in 2010, then the Senate in 2014—and finally win the White House under Trump in 2016?
We shall return to that question later on.
The Democratic draft platform is perhaps most remarkable for what it avoids rather that what it discusses. The word “capitalism,” for example, does not appear in the 80-page draft. There is no reference to the 2008 financial crash, to the bailout of Wall Street, to the forced bankruptcy of the auto industry and the cutting of wages for newly hired workers by 50 percent, or to the protracted stagnation in jobs and living standards, all hallmarks of the “Obama-Biden administration.”
In the arena of “Obama-Biden” foreign policy, there is no mention of drone missile strikes or assassinations, the US-NATO war on Libya, the US encouragement of the Saudi war in Yemen, Obama’s “pivot to Asia,” involving the deployment of US warships and warplanes against China, the US-backed coup in Honduras, or the US-backed coup in Ukraine, spearheaded by fascists and anti-Semites.
Much of the platform consists of liberal-sounding boilerplate about economic and social justice, expanded access to health care, saving the environment and restoring an “economy that works for everyone” (a rhetorical tip of the hat to Sanders here). But the actual proposals are far more modest than Sanders’ demagogy: a $15-an-hour minimum wage; a public option to be added to the Affordable Care Act; making sure “investors pay the same tax rates as workers,” (not exactly a radical redistribution of wealth); rejoining the Paris Accord on global warming, a purely cosmetic gesture; and some forgiveness on student loan debts after borrowers have made payments for 20 years (half their working life!)
The platform begins with a brief section on the coronavirus pandemic, the overriding public health and social issue confronting the entire population of the country. This perfunctory passage says nothing about the campaign to force workers back to their jobs in unsafe workplaces, or the reopening of the schools. It does not advocate any new lockdown or other emergency action to save the millions of lives now threatened.
The language is peculiarly out of touch with the real conditions facing working people. “In states and cities across the country, too many parents are being forced to choose between keeping their jobs and keeping their children safe,” the platform reads, offering expanded child care as a solution. Actually, workers are concerned that it is their jobs that are putting their lives and the lives of their children in danger.
The grand total of four pages on the coronavirus is dwarfed by subsequent passages elaborating on measures to build up the fortunes of minority and female entrepreneurs, which is a veritable obsession of the platform.
When Marxists characterize identity politics as the politics of the black, Hispanic and female petty-bourgeoisie, this is not just a phrase, but a sociological reality: the Democratic platform calls on the government to “equalize established pathways for building wealth” for individuals from these social groups, and develop “policies that provide seed capital in order to access the economic security of asset ownership.”
In class terms, the Democratic Party does not seek to reduce the class wealth gap, the yawning social gulf between the multimillionaires and billionaires at the top of society and everybody else. It aims only to “close the racial wealth gap,” in other words, to bring a thin layer of blacks, Hispanics and women into the privileged upper class, where they can join in the exploitation of the entire working class, black, white, Hispanic and immigrant.
Biden and Wall Street
Biden indulges in a bit of anti-Wall Street rhetoric from time to time, but always within careful limits, and always with a nod and a wink to his real constituency, the super-rich, to let them know that this is just election-year demagogy that will have no real consequences.
In May, as trillions in federal relief funds flowed to Wall Street and corporate America, the Biden campaign criticized the Trump administration for “carrying out what is now the largest corporate bailout in American history in a way that is systematically rigged in favor of big businesses, the wealthy, and the financial sector—and against the working people and middle class families.”
This was an apt enough description, but the statement did not acknowledge that the CARES Act, which funded the bailout, was passed 96-0 by the Senate and by a voice vote in the Democratic-controlled House. Biden later told a group of wealthy backers that as a result of the popular backlash against the bailout there would have to be some financial sector reforms, and that he would “look at the institutional changes we can make, without us becoming a ‘socialist country’ or any of that malarkey.”
Other domestic policy proposals combine the most meager possible reform proposals with an occasional pie-in-the-sky promise (presumably drawn from the Sanders-Warren camp) that no one in the Biden campaign or the congressional Democratic leadership takes seriously.
Thus, the section on poverty fulminates, “In the wealthiest country on earth, it is a moral abomination that any child could ever go to bed hungry.” True enough, but then why did the Obama-Biden administration cut food stamps? Biden now promises to increase benefits, and to “remove barriers that keep the formerly incarcerated from accessing food assistance.” Don’t starve those just released from prison: What a monument to Democratic Party generosity!
The health care section pledges to “build a health care system that is driven by the needs of patients and the people who care for them, instead of the profit motives of corporations.” However, Biden proposes to leave these profit-seeking corporations—drug companies, hospital chains, equipment manufacturers, insurance companies—in charge of the provision of health care. The platform adds, “Democrats will fight any efforts to cut Medicare benefits, and support finding financially sustainable policies [my emphasis—PM] to expand Medicare to cover dental, vision and hearing.” In other words, when pigs fly.
One of the grosser hypocrisies of the platform is a brief declaration on press freedom: “Democrats roundly reject President Trump’s denigration of the free and independent press, which has endangered reporters’ lives, helped fuel conspiracy theories, and deepened distrust between Americans and their government.” But it was the Obama administration that prosecuted more journalists and whistleblowers than any other US government in history, including jailing Chelsea Manning and initiating the campaign against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.
On immigration, the Democratic platform speaks of “righting the wrongs of the Trump administration.” Presumably this language was chosen to avoid discussing the “wrongs of the Obama-Biden administration,” which deported more undocumented workers than any previous administration and pioneered the methods—internment camps, separation of parents and children—that Trump has developed full blast.
Biden calls for reforming the leadership and training of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, i.e., not for their abolition, not even the abolition of the BORTAC special forces unit unleashed in the city of Portland last month.
Significantly, in an interview last week with journalists from the National Association of Black Journalists and National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Biden was careful to distance himself from the suggestion that his professed opposition to Trump’s border wall meant that a future Biden administration would tear it down.
“There will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration, number one,” he said. Then he declared his support for using surveillance technology instead of a physical wall. “I’m going to make sure that we have border protection, but it’s going to be based on making sure that we use high tech capacity to deal with it. And at the ports of entry—that's where all the bad stuff is happening.”
To be continued.
10 August 2020
This is the first part of a two-part article. The second part will be posted Tuesday, August 11.
The next milestones in the 2020 elections are fast approaching, with presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to name his running mate this week, the Democratic National Convention opening next Monday and the Republican convention the week after.
This is an appropriate occasion to review the political program advanced by Biden, and rebut the incessant claims by the media that the Democratic nominee, and the party as a whole, have moved to the left and that there exist wide, even unbridgeable differences between the Democrats and Republicans on virtually every significant political issue.
Since the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination ended in March, with the decision of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders to quit the race and endorse the former vice president, the claims of a “shift to the left” by the Democrats have become a media drumbeat.
These claims are usually coupled with suggestions that Sanders exerted political pressure through joint committees set up by the Biden campaign to cover six major areas, including climate change, criminal justice reform, education, health care, immigration and the economy.
The conclusions of these committees—each staffed by five Biden representatives and three Sanders representatives—have been submitted to the platform committee for the Democratic National Convention and an 80-page draft platform assembled, made public July 21.
While the Biden campaign flatly rebuffed some of the signature proposals of Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren—no “Medicare for all” and no “Green New Deal,” for example—there were concessions made in terms of incorporating language and even some specific policies in areas like forgiveness of student loan debt.
But the effort to promote this process, both by Sanders himself and his pseudo-left apologists, has obscured a more fundamental feature of the emerging Biden campaign: its complete subordination to corporate America and to the demands of the military-intelligence apparatus.
This has not involved any internal reorientation for the candidate himself. On the contrary, Biden is a deeply reactionary figure who personifies the role of the Democratic Party as a venue for Wall Street and the CIA to reach agreement on the next steps for American imperialism.
It was only a year ago that Biden was caught on tape reassuring wealthy donors at a fundraising event in Manhattan, “No one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change” if he won the Democratic nomination, defeated Trump in 2020 and was sworn in as president in January 2021.
Throughout the Democratic presidential primary contest, Biden campaigned as the candidate who would restore what he called a “normal America,” i.e., America as it was under the administration that preceded Trump, with Barack Obama as president and himself as vice president.
The draft Democratic platform
This theme is underscored in the draft Democratic Party platform, which refers to the “Obama-Biden Administration” a dozen times, always in the most flattering terms, and presents a picture of American life in the years 2009-2016 that is unrecognizable to anyone who actually lived through this period of deep economic crisis, endless austerity and wage-cutting, and continuing wars and other imperialist atrocities.
The harking back to the halcyon days of Obama-Biden leaves out one overriding political question: If the Democratic administration was such a success, how was it possible for the Republicans to take control of Congress—the House of Representatives in 2010, then the Senate in 2014—and finally win the White House under Trump in 2016?
We shall return to that question later on.
The Democratic draft platform is perhaps most remarkable for what it avoids rather that what it discusses. The word “capitalism,” for example, does not appear in the 80-page draft. There is no reference to the 2008 financial crash, to the bailout of Wall Street, to the forced bankruptcy of the auto industry and the cutting of wages for newly hired workers by 50 percent, or to the protracted stagnation in jobs and living standards, all hallmarks of the “Obama-Biden administration.”
In the arena of “Obama-Biden” foreign policy, there is no mention of drone missile strikes or assassinations, the US-NATO war on Libya, the US encouragement of the Saudi war in Yemen, Obama’s “pivot to Asia,” involving the deployment of US warships and warplanes against China, the US-backed coup in Honduras, or the US-backed coup in Ukraine, spearheaded by fascists and anti-Semites.
Much of the platform consists of liberal-sounding boilerplate about economic and social justice, expanded access to health care, saving the environment and restoring an “economy that works for everyone” (a rhetorical tip of the hat to Sanders here). But the actual proposals are far more modest than Sanders’ demagogy: a $15-an-hour minimum wage; a public option to be added to the Affordable Care Act; making sure “investors pay the same tax rates as workers,” (not exactly a radical redistribution of wealth); rejoining the Paris Accord on global warming, a purely cosmetic gesture; and some forgiveness on student loan debts after borrowers have made payments for 20 years (half their working life!)
The platform begins with a brief section on the coronavirus pandemic, the overriding public health and social issue confronting the entire population of the country. This perfunctory passage says nothing about the campaign to force workers back to their jobs in unsafe workplaces, or the reopening of the schools. It does not advocate any new lockdown or other emergency action to save the millions of lives now threatened.
The language is peculiarly out of touch with the real conditions facing working people. “In states and cities across the country, too many parents are being forced to choose between keeping their jobs and keeping their children safe,” the platform reads, offering expanded child care as a solution. Actually, workers are concerned that it is their jobs that are putting their lives and the lives of their children in danger.
The grand total of four pages on the coronavirus is dwarfed by subsequent passages elaborating on measures to build up the fortunes of minority and female entrepreneurs, which is a veritable obsession of the platform.
When Marxists characterize identity politics as the politics of the black, Hispanic and female petty-bourgeoisie, this is not just a phrase, but a sociological reality: the Democratic platform calls on the government to “equalize established pathways for building wealth” for individuals from these social groups, and develop “policies that provide seed capital in order to access the economic security of asset ownership.”
In class terms, the Democratic Party does not seek to reduce the class wealth gap, the yawning social gulf between the multimillionaires and billionaires at the top of society and everybody else. It aims only to “close the racial wealth gap,” in other words, to bring a thin layer of blacks, Hispanics and women into the privileged upper class, where they can join in the exploitation of the entire working class, black, white, Hispanic and immigrant.
Biden and Wall Street
Biden indulges in a bit of anti-Wall Street rhetoric from time to time, but always within careful limits, and always with a nod and a wink to his real constituency, the super-rich, to let them know that this is just election-year demagogy that will have no real consequences.
In May, as trillions in federal relief funds flowed to Wall Street and corporate America, the Biden campaign criticized the Trump administration for “carrying out what is now the largest corporate bailout in American history in a way that is systematically rigged in favor of big businesses, the wealthy, and the financial sector—and against the working people and middle class families.”
This was an apt enough description, but the statement did not acknowledge that the CARES Act, which funded the bailout, was passed 96-0 by the Senate and by a voice vote in the Democratic-controlled House. Biden later told a group of wealthy backers that as a result of the popular backlash against the bailout there would have to be some financial sector reforms, and that he would “look at the institutional changes we can make, without us becoming a ‘socialist country’ or any of that malarkey.”
Other domestic policy proposals combine the most meager possible reform proposals with an occasional pie-in-the-sky promise (presumably drawn from the Sanders-Warren camp) that no one in the Biden campaign or the congressional Democratic leadership takes seriously.
Thus, the section on poverty fulminates, “In the wealthiest country on earth, it is a moral abomination that any child could ever go to bed hungry.” True enough, but then why did the Obama-Biden administration cut food stamps? Biden now promises to increase benefits, and to “remove barriers that keep the formerly incarcerated from accessing food assistance.” Don’t starve those just released from prison: What a monument to Democratic Party generosity!
The health care section pledges to “build a health care system that is driven by the needs of patients and the people who care for them, instead of the profit motives of corporations.” However, Biden proposes to leave these profit-seeking corporations—drug companies, hospital chains, equipment manufacturers, insurance companies—in charge of the provision of health care. The platform adds, “Democrats will fight any efforts to cut Medicare benefits, and support finding financially sustainable policies [my emphasis—PM] to expand Medicare to cover dental, vision and hearing.” In other words, when pigs fly.
One of the grosser hypocrisies of the platform is a brief declaration on press freedom: “Democrats roundly reject President Trump’s denigration of the free and independent press, which has endangered reporters’ lives, helped fuel conspiracy theories, and deepened distrust between Americans and their government.” But it was the Obama administration that prosecuted more journalists and whistleblowers than any other US government in history, including jailing Chelsea Manning and initiating the campaign against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.
On immigration, the Democratic platform speaks of “righting the wrongs of the Trump administration.” Presumably this language was chosen to avoid discussing the “wrongs of the Obama-Biden administration,” which deported more undocumented workers than any previous administration and pioneered the methods—internment camps, separation of parents and children—that Trump has developed full blast.
Biden calls for reforming the leadership and training of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, i.e., not for their abolition, not even the abolition of the BORTAC special forces unit unleashed in the city of Portland last month.
Significantly, in an interview last week with journalists from the National Association of Black Journalists and National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Biden was careful to distance himself from the suggestion that his professed opposition to Trump’s border wall meant that a future Biden administration would tear it down.
“There will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration, number one,” he said. Then he declared his support for using surveillance technology instead of a physical wall. “I’m going to make sure that we have border protection, but it’s going to be based on making sure that we use high tech capacity to deal with it. And at the ports of entry—that's where all the bad stuff is happening.”
To be continued.
German government continues to boost military spending and cover for fascists
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/10/germ-a10.html
By Johannes Stern
10 August 2020
In response to the dangerous further spreading of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany and Europe, the ruling class is not reacting with an offensive to protect public health and to eliminate the deficiencies in the health system but is mobilizing further billions for rearmament and war.
On Thursday, the Defence Ministry informed members of parliament about the so-called 25 million euro proposals, which are to be handed over to the Budget Committee by the end of the year. All armament projects with an estimated cost of more than €25 million must be discussed and implemented by this committee.
The military blog “Augen geradeaus!” (“Eyes Front!”), which has close links to the Defence Ministry, has published an initial list of the 29 (!) such planned proposals. Among them are:
* A successor to the G36 assault rifle, the Bundeswehr’s (armed forces) previous standard weapon. The first proposal for a new system, consisting of a basic weapon and accessories, is to be presented to the Budget Committee at the end of October.
* In addition to the 138 new fighter jets already launched in April, 38 Eurofighters (the latest version, Tranche 4) are to be procured. The corresponding proposal is also to be adopted in the last week of October.
* Also, there are numerous naval upgrade projects, including 31 Sea Tiger naval helicopters and the development and procurement of a so-called “naval drone.” The purchases are part of a comprehensive upgrade of the German navy. Among other things, four multi-purpose combat ships MKS180 are to be built in the next few years, at a cost of around €6 billion. These will be joined by further F125 frigates and Class 212A submarines.
* The tank units are also to be further upgraded. “The old Marder infantry fighting vehicle is to get a service life extension for its thermal imaging targeting system, and the Leopard 2 main battle tank will receive a distance-activated protection system,” reports Augen geradeaus! Also, a successor model to the Badger armoured engineering vehicle is planned, and the Boxer armoured transport vehicle will be built as a new model for joint fire support teams.
* It is also planned to increase ammunition stocks. Several proposals will address this. In the first week of September, the Budget Committee will discuss the “supplementary procurement of the RBS15 Mk3 sea/land target drone for the first and second batch of corvettes,” in mid-September the procurement of new GBU-54 guided bombs for the Eurofighter, and in October and November new ammunition for the 125 frigates, torpedoes and new tank ammunition.
* Significantly, the Special Forces Command (KSK), which is riddled with right-wing extremist terrorist structures, is also to be upgraded and will receive, among other things, “new reconnaissance and combat vehicles and medium-sized tactical support vehicles to replace the Serval.” From the outset, the WSWS has made clear that the announced restructuring of the KSK was primarily intended to make the elite right-wing extremist force more effective.
The billion-euro armament projects are aimed at expanding Germany’s ability to make war. At the beginning of the week, the frigate “Hamburg” set sail with 250 soldiers to intervene in the escalating proxy war of the regional and great powers in Libya. In spring, the grand coalition had expanded and extended numerous foreign deployments of the Bundeswehr.
A few days ago, in an interview with Die Zeit, Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) demanded that it was “high time” to aggressively discuss “how Germany must position itself in the world in the future.” She said that Germany was expected to “show leadership, not only as an economic power.” It is about “collective defence, it is about international missions, it is about a strategic view of the world, and ultimately it is about the question of whether we want to actively shape the global order.”
To enforce the geostrategic and economic goals of German imperialism internationally, the German bourgeoisie is not only rearming its own military but also its allies within the European Union. It is becoming increasingly clear what militarist and fascist traditions it is resuming 75 years after the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.
According to an official report from the Defence Ministry, the handover of the first of a total of 44 German Leopard 2 battle tanks to the Hungarian army began at the end of July. The handover ceremony took place in the garrison town of Tata in the presence of Parliamentary State Secretary Thomas Silberhorn (Christian Social Union, CSU), who praised the military cooperation between Germany and the EU with the extreme right-wing Orban regime.
“Hungary is modernising its land forces and Germany is a strategic partner in this process,” said Silberhorn. The use of the same weapon systems and close cooperation in the training of tank crews increased the interoperability of the armed forces and was “an important component of the Common Security and Defence Policy,” he said. The German government would “continue to be committed to close military cooperation between the two countries and thus also to strengthen cohesion in Europe based on the values and interests of the two countries.”
The Defence Ministry’s report does not go into more detail regarding the “values and interests” underlying the “military cooperation” between Berlin and Budapest. But the fascist character of the handover ceremony in Tata was obvious. Official participants in the event included, among others, members of the notorious neo-Nazi rock band Kárpátia, who had even written their own song for the tank handover—commissioned by the Hungarian army.
An entry on Kárpátia’s Facebook page says that the band “was asked to write a march by tank crews in Tata in March.” The timing for the song could not have been “better, as the first Leopard 2A4 tanks” have now been delivered, “followed by 40 more Leopard 2A7 tanks in the next few years.” One was “lucky enough” to “admire these big cats, listen to them rumble, to see them get down to it...” It is no “big secret that the band has always been pro-military” and “satisfied with the development of the armed forces.”
On Facebook, the band has published numerous pictures showing members of Kárpátia in martial gear posing in front of German battle tanks. Their posts clearly show their ideological outlook. They glorify Miklos Horthy, the former Reich administrator, anti-Semite and Hitler ally, drum up support for a new and “ethnically pure” Greater Hungary. The lyrics of their songs drip with fascist and militarist ideology. According to media reports, the Hitler salute can be regularly seen at Kárpátia concerts, and singer János Petras rants against Roma and Jews.
Following the ceremony, the Hungarian government, which awarded Petras the country’s Golden Cross of Merit as early as 2013 and itself rehabilitated Horthy and Hungarian fascism, has defended its cooperation with Kárpátia. In response to an inquiry by Der Spiegel, the defence ministry in Budapest declared that the “tank march” was about “love of the homeland and respect for the soldiers. We are pleased that a work of art has been created that popularises military service and the military vocation as widely as possible.”
This is also the attitude of the German government. According to Der Spiegel, the Defence Ministry has stated that it does not want to take “a position on the internal affairs of the Hungarian armed forces.” It is becoming increasingly clear that the extreme right-wing terrorist networks in the Bundeswehr, the police and the secret services exist and can operate largely unchecked, mainly because these fascist forces enjoy the official support of the capitalist state and its political representatives.
10 August 2020
In response to the dangerous further spreading of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany and Europe, the ruling class is not reacting with an offensive to protect public health and to eliminate the deficiencies in the health system but is mobilizing further billions for rearmament and war.
On Thursday, the Defence Ministry informed members of parliament about the so-called 25 million euro proposals, which are to be handed over to the Budget Committee by the end of the year. All armament projects with an estimated cost of more than €25 million must be discussed and implemented by this committee.
The military blog “Augen geradeaus!” (“Eyes Front!”), which has close links to the Defence Ministry, has published an initial list of the 29 (!) such planned proposals. Among them are:
* A successor to the G36 assault rifle, the Bundeswehr’s (armed forces) previous standard weapon. The first proposal for a new system, consisting of a basic weapon and accessories, is to be presented to the Budget Committee at the end of October.
* In addition to the 138 new fighter jets already launched in April, 38 Eurofighters (the latest version, Tranche 4) are to be procured. The corresponding proposal is also to be adopted in the last week of October.
* Also, there are numerous naval upgrade projects, including 31 Sea Tiger naval helicopters and the development and procurement of a so-called “naval drone.” The purchases are part of a comprehensive upgrade of the German navy. Among other things, four multi-purpose combat ships MKS180 are to be built in the next few years, at a cost of around €6 billion. These will be joined by further F125 frigates and Class 212A submarines.
* The tank units are also to be further upgraded. “The old Marder infantry fighting vehicle is to get a service life extension for its thermal imaging targeting system, and the Leopard 2 main battle tank will receive a distance-activated protection system,” reports Augen geradeaus! Also, a successor model to the Badger armoured engineering vehicle is planned, and the Boxer armoured transport vehicle will be built as a new model for joint fire support teams.
* It is also planned to increase ammunition stocks. Several proposals will address this. In the first week of September, the Budget Committee will discuss the “supplementary procurement of the RBS15 Mk3 sea/land target drone for the first and second batch of corvettes,” in mid-September the procurement of new GBU-54 guided bombs for the Eurofighter, and in October and November new ammunition for the 125 frigates, torpedoes and new tank ammunition.
* Significantly, the Special Forces Command (KSK), which is riddled with right-wing extremist terrorist structures, is also to be upgraded and will receive, among other things, “new reconnaissance and combat vehicles and medium-sized tactical support vehicles to replace the Serval.” From the outset, the WSWS has made clear that the announced restructuring of the KSK was primarily intended to make the elite right-wing extremist force more effective.
The billion-euro armament projects are aimed at expanding Germany’s ability to make war. At the beginning of the week, the frigate “Hamburg” set sail with 250 soldiers to intervene in the escalating proxy war of the regional and great powers in Libya. In spring, the grand coalition had expanded and extended numerous foreign deployments of the Bundeswehr.
A few days ago, in an interview with Die Zeit, Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) demanded that it was “high time” to aggressively discuss “how Germany must position itself in the world in the future.” She said that Germany was expected to “show leadership, not only as an economic power.” It is about “collective defence, it is about international missions, it is about a strategic view of the world, and ultimately it is about the question of whether we want to actively shape the global order.”
To enforce the geostrategic and economic goals of German imperialism internationally, the German bourgeoisie is not only rearming its own military but also its allies within the European Union. It is becoming increasingly clear what militarist and fascist traditions it is resuming 75 years after the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.
According to an official report from the Defence Ministry, the handover of the first of a total of 44 German Leopard 2 battle tanks to the Hungarian army began at the end of July. The handover ceremony took place in the garrison town of Tata in the presence of Parliamentary State Secretary Thomas Silberhorn (Christian Social Union, CSU), who praised the military cooperation between Germany and the EU with the extreme right-wing Orban regime.
“Hungary is modernising its land forces and Germany is a strategic partner in this process,” said Silberhorn. The use of the same weapon systems and close cooperation in the training of tank crews increased the interoperability of the armed forces and was “an important component of the Common Security and Defence Policy,” he said. The German government would “continue to be committed to close military cooperation between the two countries and thus also to strengthen cohesion in Europe based on the values and interests of the two countries.”
The Defence Ministry’s report does not go into more detail regarding the “values and interests” underlying the “military cooperation” between Berlin and Budapest. But the fascist character of the handover ceremony in Tata was obvious. Official participants in the event included, among others, members of the notorious neo-Nazi rock band Kárpátia, who had even written their own song for the tank handover—commissioned by the Hungarian army.
An entry on Kárpátia’s Facebook page says that the band “was asked to write a march by tank crews in Tata in March.” The timing for the song could not have been “better, as the first Leopard 2A4 tanks” have now been delivered, “followed by 40 more Leopard 2A7 tanks in the next few years.” One was “lucky enough” to “admire these big cats, listen to them rumble, to see them get down to it...” It is no “big secret that the band has always been pro-military” and “satisfied with the development of the armed forces.”
On Facebook, the band has published numerous pictures showing members of Kárpátia in martial gear posing in front of German battle tanks. Their posts clearly show their ideological outlook. They glorify Miklos Horthy, the former Reich administrator, anti-Semite and Hitler ally, drum up support for a new and “ethnically pure” Greater Hungary. The lyrics of their songs drip with fascist and militarist ideology. According to media reports, the Hitler salute can be regularly seen at Kárpátia concerts, and singer János Petras rants against Roma and Jews.
Following the ceremony, the Hungarian government, which awarded Petras the country’s Golden Cross of Merit as early as 2013 and itself rehabilitated Horthy and Hungarian fascism, has defended its cooperation with Kárpátia. In response to an inquiry by Der Spiegel, the defence ministry in Budapest declared that the “tank march” was about “love of the homeland and respect for the soldiers. We are pleased that a work of art has been created that popularises military service and the military vocation as widely as possible.”
This is also the attitude of the German government. According to Der Spiegel, the Defence Ministry has stated that it does not want to take “a position on the internal affairs of the Hungarian armed forces.” It is becoming increasingly clear that the extreme right-wing terrorist networks in the Bundeswehr, the police and the secret services exist and can operate largely unchecked, mainly because these fascist forces enjoy the official support of the capitalist state and its political representatives.
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