https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cN6RhXbLQM&ab_channel=acTVismMunich
Tuesday, September 8, 2020
Assange extradition hearing resumes: the future of a free press on trial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QI3LcmyZSWE&ab_channel=TheGrayzone
Rochester, New York police tortured and murdered a man in March, video shows
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/05/poli-s05.html
“You’re trying to kill me”
Rochester, New York police tortured and murdered a man in March, video shows
By Samuel Davidson
5 September 2020
“You’re trying to kill me,” were some of the last understandable words spoken by Daniel Prude, a 41-year-old African American man, as seven police pressed his hooded head down to the pavement, covering his nose and mouth with their hands.
Footage from body-cam video shows police torturing Prude for several minutes while he lay naked, handcuffed and hooded on a freezing Rochester, New York, street on March 23.
The video, released this week by lawyers for Prude’s family, shows Prude, who was having a mental health episode, complying with police orders to lie face down and prone on the pavement with his hands behind his back.
Since the release of the video, the seven officers involved have been suspended with pay. Prude’s family is calling for their arrest.
The video shows that police handcuff Prude so tightly that his wrists began to bleed. Four officers are seen walking around him as he lay face down on the cold pavement, other police are heard off camera.
One officer tells him he is being arrested for breaking a window, but no attempt is made to move him to a police car, or put a blanket over him or between him and the freezing cold pavement.
The police are seen smiling and one is heard laughing as Prude, still on the street, tries to arch his body away from the pavement. Officers taunted their black victim, with one telling him that his skin had turned white from the cold.
At one point, Prude rolled over and sat up, still naked and handcuffed. The video shows that for over four minutes police made no effort to move him to a patrol car or provide him with a blanket or jacket.
While Prude was talking to the three or four officers in front of him, another officer walked up behind him and without any warning slipped a hood over Prude’s head, preventing him from seeing.
Left sitting, naked on the street, with his arms handcuffed behind his back and a hood over his head, Prude began to cry out and get more and more upset as he was being tormented by the police.
After another two minutes, three or four officers pushed Prude over and slammed his head into the pavement. One officer placed his knee on Prude’s back and at least two officers held his head down with their hands on his face covering Prude’s nose and mouth with the hood.
Prude’s words became muffled as he begged for his life. “You’re trying to kill me,” are the last understandable words he said. Throughout the video officers can be heard laughing and joking about his situation.
Even after an ambulance arrived to provide aid, the police did not release Prude from this position and no attempt was made to provide medical attention. Prude was held on the ground for nearly three minutes.
As he became unconscious the medics were brought over but one of the officers continues to hold his head to the ground with his hands on his face. One of the medics noted that Prude’s body was very cold and asks if they have taken his temperature. One cop noted that it is freezing out and that he has been out for 30 minutes.
The medics finally began to perform CPR as they moved him to a stretcher and took him to a nearby hospital.
Despite the efforts of doctors, Prude never regained consciousness and he died seven days later. The medical examiner ruled it a homicide by asphyxiation. “Complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint,” the report said.
“I placed a phone call for my brother to get help,” Joe Prude, Daniel’s brother, said at a press conference Wednesday, “Not for my brother to get lynched.”
“When I see that he was lynched, that was a full-fledged ongoing murder, cold-blooded. Nothing other than cold-blooded murder. The man is defenseless, butt naked on the ground, he is cuffed up already.”
A resident of Chicago, Daniel Prude had come to Rochester to visit his brother and family. Joe said he was concerned when his brother was talking of killing himself and went out in the early morning.
Tashyra Prude, Daniel’s 18-year-old daughter, in a video statement posted by the Guardian said, “When I see the video, I heard the officers tell my father to get on the ground, and he said ‘okay sure’ and he got down. They said, ‘put your hands behind your back’ and he put his hands behind his back. They laid him flat on his stomach with no problem.
“My father did not resist, he did not fight, I don’t understand how anybody could say or feel that he was a threat to the police when he complied with all orders.
“This is wrong, this is unjust and it has happened too many times. We all loved our father, I loved our father dearly, to see him in that state is heartbreaking. To this day, I’m still waiting for him to call me and say ‘I’m coming home.’”
There is no official national count of people who have been killed by police or while in police custody. However, the Killed by Police website, which gathers the information from local news accounts, lists 680 people so far this year placing the US on track to have over 1,000 people murdered by police by the end of this year.
The website notes that this is an undercount as they do not necessarily see all the accounts, or many may never make it into the papers. Daniel’s death is not listed as he died seven days after his encounter with the police.
Protests erupted throughout the United States and around the world in May after George Floyd was killed by a police officer pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck for over 8 minutes.
The murder of Daniel Prude is an exposure of the claims that having more black mayors, police and other city officials will help prevent such murders.
Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren, Police Chief La’Ron Singletary and Deputy Chief Mark Simmons are all African-American. Of the nine city councilmembers, five are black and one is Latino; three are women.
The body-cam video was only released by attorneys for Prude’s family five months after his murder. Warren, Singletary and Simmons all sought to conceal the tapes which expose the brutality of their police department. The seven officers involved in the murder were allowed to remain on duty until the family made the video public. Now Warren is trying to divert people’s anger with proposals to require newly hired police to live within Rochester’s city limits.
Rochester, along with much of upstate New York, is mired in poverty. Childhood poverty in the city exceeded 56 percent in 2017, falling only a few percentage points since then. Xerox and Kodak, both of which once employed tens of thousands of workers in Rochester, have all but ceased to exist.
As in many former industrial cities, decent housing and schools are in short supply and the opioid drug epidemic is taking a massive toll. The coronavirus pandemic has only compounded these problems.
Under conditions of growing inequality and social unrest the true role of the police as defenders of the ruling elite and the entire capitalist system is becoming evident.
5 September 2020
“You’re trying to kill me,” were some of the last understandable words spoken by Daniel Prude, a 41-year-old African American man, as seven police pressed his hooded head down to the pavement, covering his nose and mouth with their hands.
Footage from body-cam video shows police torturing Prude for several minutes while he lay naked, handcuffed and hooded on a freezing Rochester, New York, street on March 23.
The video, released this week by lawyers for Prude’s family, shows Prude, who was having a mental health episode, complying with police orders to lie face down and prone on the pavement with his hands behind his back.
Since the release of the video, the seven officers involved have been suspended with pay. Prude’s family is calling for their arrest.
The video shows that police handcuff Prude so tightly that his wrists began to bleed. Four officers are seen walking around him as he lay face down on the cold pavement, other police are heard off camera.
One officer tells him he is being arrested for breaking a window, but no attempt is made to move him to a police car, or put a blanket over him or between him and the freezing cold pavement.
The police are seen smiling and one is heard laughing as Prude, still on the street, tries to arch his body away from the pavement. Officers taunted their black victim, with one telling him that his skin had turned white from the cold.
At one point, Prude rolled over and sat up, still naked and handcuffed. The video shows that for over four minutes police made no effort to move him to a patrol car or provide him with a blanket or jacket.
While Prude was talking to the three or four officers in front of him, another officer walked up behind him and without any warning slipped a hood over Prude’s head, preventing him from seeing.
Left sitting, naked on the street, with his arms handcuffed behind his back and a hood over his head, Prude began to cry out and get more and more upset as he was being tormented by the police.
After another two minutes, three or four officers pushed Prude over and slammed his head into the pavement. One officer placed his knee on Prude’s back and at least two officers held his head down with their hands on his face covering Prude’s nose and mouth with the hood.
Prude’s words became muffled as he begged for his life. “You’re trying to kill me,” are the last understandable words he said. Throughout the video officers can be heard laughing and joking about his situation.
Even after an ambulance arrived to provide aid, the police did not release Prude from this position and no attempt was made to provide medical attention. Prude was held on the ground for nearly three minutes.
As he became unconscious the medics were brought over but one of the officers continues to hold his head to the ground with his hands on his face. One of the medics noted that Prude’s body was very cold and asks if they have taken his temperature. One cop noted that it is freezing out and that he has been out for 30 minutes.
The medics finally began to perform CPR as they moved him to a stretcher and took him to a nearby hospital.
Despite the efforts of doctors, Prude never regained consciousness and he died seven days later. The medical examiner ruled it a homicide by asphyxiation. “Complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint,” the report said.
“I placed a phone call for my brother to get help,” Joe Prude, Daniel’s brother, said at a press conference Wednesday, “Not for my brother to get lynched.”
“When I see that he was lynched, that was a full-fledged ongoing murder, cold-blooded. Nothing other than cold-blooded murder. The man is defenseless, butt naked on the ground, he is cuffed up already.”
A resident of Chicago, Daniel Prude had come to Rochester to visit his brother and family. Joe said he was concerned when his brother was talking of killing himself and went out in the early morning.
Tashyra Prude, Daniel’s 18-year-old daughter, in a video statement posted by the Guardian said, “When I see the video, I heard the officers tell my father to get on the ground, and he said ‘okay sure’ and he got down. They said, ‘put your hands behind your back’ and he put his hands behind his back. They laid him flat on his stomach with no problem.
“My father did not resist, he did not fight, I don’t understand how anybody could say or feel that he was a threat to the police when he complied with all orders.
“This is wrong, this is unjust and it has happened too many times. We all loved our father, I loved our father dearly, to see him in that state is heartbreaking. To this day, I’m still waiting for him to call me and say ‘I’m coming home.’”
There is no official national count of people who have been killed by police or while in police custody. However, the Killed by Police website, which gathers the information from local news accounts, lists 680 people so far this year placing the US on track to have over 1,000 people murdered by police by the end of this year.
The website notes that this is an undercount as they do not necessarily see all the accounts, or many may never make it into the papers. Daniel’s death is not listed as he died seven days after his encounter with the police.
Protests erupted throughout the United States and around the world in May after George Floyd was killed by a police officer pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck for over 8 minutes.
The murder of Daniel Prude is an exposure of the claims that having more black mayors, police and other city officials will help prevent such murders.
Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren, Police Chief La’Ron Singletary and Deputy Chief Mark Simmons are all African-American. Of the nine city councilmembers, five are black and one is Latino; three are women.
The body-cam video was only released by attorneys for Prude’s family five months after his murder. Warren, Singletary and Simmons all sought to conceal the tapes which expose the brutality of their police department. The seven officers involved in the murder were allowed to remain on duty until the family made the video public. Now Warren is trying to divert people’s anger with proposals to require newly hired police to live within Rochester’s city limits.
Rochester, along with much of upstate New York, is mired in poverty. Childhood poverty in the city exceeded 56 percent in 2017, falling only a few percentage points since then. Xerox and Kodak, both of which once employed tens of thousands of workers in Rochester, have all but ceased to exist.
As in many former industrial cities, decent housing and schools are in short supply and the opioid drug epidemic is taking a massive toll. The coronavirus pandemic has only compounded these problems.
Under conditions of growing inequality and social unrest the true role of the police as defenders of the ruling elite and the entire capitalist system is becoming evident.
Federal task force kills suspect in slaying of right-wing Trump supporter in Portland
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/05/port-s05.html
By Niles Niemuth
5 September 2020
A special fugitive task force led by federal agents shot and killed 48-year-old Michael Forest Reinoehl in Washington state Thursday evening, just hours after a judge in Oregon issued a warrant for his arrest in relation to the killing of a Trump supporter at a protest in Portland on August 29.
The news of Reinoehl’s killing broke only minutes after President Donald Trump tweeted a demand that the police take action against the anti-fascist activist. “Why aren’t the Portland Police ARRESTING the cold blooded killer of Aaron “Jay” Danielson?” Trump wrote. “Do your job, and do it fast. Everybody knows who this thug is. No wonder Portland is going to hell!”
A member of the far-right Patriot Prayer organization, Danielson, 39, was shot and killed last Saturday during a right-wing provocation in which Trump supporters drove pickup trucks through downtown Portland while firing paintballs and engaging in fist fights with anti-police violence protesters.
Following the Thursday shooting of Reinoehl, a father of two, Attorney General William Barr issued a ghoulish statement applauding what appears to have been a summary execution carried out by US marshals, FBI agents and state and local police. Barr’s statement twice referred to Reinoehl as a member of Antifa, when, in fact, the deceased had explicitly denied membership in the shadowy, if even existent, organization.
Barr called the killing of Reinoehl “a significant accomplishment in the ongoing effort to restore law and order to Portland and other cities.” He went on to say: “The streets of our cities are safer with this violent agitator removed, and the actions that led to his location are an unmistakable demonstration that the United States will be governed by law, not violent mobs.”
This followed an interview in which Barr defended the police shooting on August 23 of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, declaring that the police were seeking to execute an arrest warrant and that the victim, now paralyzed from the waist down, was armed. Eyewitnesses to the shooting of Blake claim he was unarmed when he was shot in the back seven times by a veteran Kenosha police officer.
Barr has issued no condemnation of the pro-Trump vigilante, Kyle Rittenhouse, who murdered two protesters in Kenosha last month, and Trump has openly defended the killer.
Reinoehl had regularly participated in anti-police-violence protests in Portland. He took responsibility for Danielson’s death, telling freelance journalist Donovan Farley in an interview posted Thursday by VICE News that he had shot Danielson in self-defense, fearing that he and a friend were about to be stabbed. “I had no choice,” he said. “I mean, I had a choice. I could have sat there and watched them kill a friend of mine of color. But I wasn’t going to do that.”
“I was confident that I did not hit anyone innocent and I made my exit,” Reinoehl added.
He explained that he had not yet turned himself in to the police because he believed they were collaborating with right-wing groups that were “hunting” him, and that he would not be safe in police custody. “They’re out hunting me,” he told Farley. “There’s nightly posts of the hunt and where they’re going to be hunting. They made a post saying the deer are going to feel lucky this year because it’s open season on Michael right now.”
The law enforcement task force that tracked down and killed Reinoehl in Lacey, Washington, the Pacific Northwest Violent Offenders Task Force, included agents from the US Marshals and the FBI as well as officers from the Lakewood Police Department, the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department and the Washington State Department of Corrections.
Witnesses reported hearing dozens of shots fired during the encounter. According to the US Marshals, Reinoehl “produced a firearm” after being approached in his vehicle by officers, prompting them to open fire. “Task force members responded to the threat and struck the suspect, who was pronounced dead at the scene,” the Marshals stated. Bystander video of the aftermath shows heavily armed officers standing around Reinhoel’s body as they secure the area.
Lt. Ray Brady of the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office, the department that is overseeing the local investigation into the shooting, told the media that four officers had fired their weapons, but he could not confirm if Reinoehl had opened fire.
Portland has been the scene of nightly protests against police violence and racism for more than three months, part of the wave of nationwide and international multi-racial protests that erupted in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd by four Minneapolis police officers at the end of May.
The situation was dramatically escalated in July when President Trump deployed federal agents—including the US Border Patrol’s paramilitary BORTAC force—under the guise of protecting Portland’s federal courthouse. Federal police in riot gear fired tear gas and “less lethal” rounds at demonstrators, in one instance fracturing a protester’s skull. Most chillingly, federal agents began abducting protesters and throwing them into unmarked vans, in snatch-and-grab operations reminiscent of Latin American dictatorships.
At the end of July, federal forces pulled back in the face of growing protests, with an agreement by Democratic Governor Kate Brown to deploy the state police against the protesters. Now, Trump and Department of Homeland Security Acting Director Chad Wolf are once against discussing deploying federal agents against the protests in Portland.
“We’re ready, willing and able to send in, you know, a massive group of people that are really highly trained,” Trump said Tuesday during a visit with law enforcement officials in Kenosha. “We could solve that problem in less than an hour in Portland,” he stated.
He then nodded to Attorney General Barr and added, “At some point, Bill, we’ll just have to do it ourselves.” As a first step, state police have been deputized by the US Marshals to act as federal agents, allowing for protesters they detain to be charged in federal, rather than state, courts.
Trump has been using the protests against police violence—most recently the demonstrations against the Blake shooting in Kenosha—to wage a law-and-order campaign and whip up his fascistic base in the lead-up to the November 3 presidential election.
During a campaign speech in Latrobe, Pennsylvania Thursday afternoon, Trump promised he would “bring to justice” the “rioters, looters, violent extremists, anarchists.” He boasted that “We have over 400 right now under arrest.”
He declared his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, to be a “puppet of the socialist, Marxist and cop-hating extremists.” He later stated that while Biden would “appease the domestic terrorists,” his plan was “to arrest them and prosecute them.”
For his part, Biden has responded with his own law and order ad campaign, denouncing anti-police-violence protesters who engage in vandalism or looting and placing the blame for violent clashes between police and demonstrators on Trump, even though in most cases the cities that have seen significant protests and police repression are run by Democratic administrations.
The author also recommends:
Biden launches massive “law and order” ad campaign
[3 September 2020]
Trump incites vigilante violence against peaceful protests in Wisconsin
[31 August 2020]
Police violence continues unabated three months after the murder of George Floyd
[26 August 2020]
5 September 2020
A special fugitive task force led by federal agents shot and killed 48-year-old Michael Forest Reinoehl in Washington state Thursday evening, just hours after a judge in Oregon issued a warrant for his arrest in relation to the killing of a Trump supporter at a protest in Portland on August 29.
The news of Reinoehl’s killing broke only minutes after President Donald Trump tweeted a demand that the police take action against the anti-fascist activist. “Why aren’t the Portland Police ARRESTING the cold blooded killer of Aaron “Jay” Danielson?” Trump wrote. “Do your job, and do it fast. Everybody knows who this thug is. No wonder Portland is going to hell!”
A member of the far-right Patriot Prayer organization, Danielson, 39, was shot and killed last Saturday during a right-wing provocation in which Trump supporters drove pickup trucks through downtown Portland while firing paintballs and engaging in fist fights with anti-police violence protesters.
Following the Thursday shooting of Reinoehl, a father of two, Attorney General William Barr issued a ghoulish statement applauding what appears to have been a summary execution carried out by US marshals, FBI agents and state and local police. Barr’s statement twice referred to Reinoehl as a member of Antifa, when, in fact, the deceased had explicitly denied membership in the shadowy, if even existent, organization.
Barr called the killing of Reinoehl “a significant accomplishment in the ongoing effort to restore law and order to Portland and other cities.” He went on to say: “The streets of our cities are safer with this violent agitator removed, and the actions that led to his location are an unmistakable demonstration that the United States will be governed by law, not violent mobs.”
This followed an interview in which Barr defended the police shooting on August 23 of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, declaring that the police were seeking to execute an arrest warrant and that the victim, now paralyzed from the waist down, was armed. Eyewitnesses to the shooting of Blake claim he was unarmed when he was shot in the back seven times by a veteran Kenosha police officer.
Barr has issued no condemnation of the pro-Trump vigilante, Kyle Rittenhouse, who murdered two protesters in Kenosha last month, and Trump has openly defended the killer.
Reinoehl had regularly participated in anti-police-violence protests in Portland. He took responsibility for Danielson’s death, telling freelance journalist Donovan Farley in an interview posted Thursday by VICE News that he had shot Danielson in self-defense, fearing that he and a friend were about to be stabbed. “I had no choice,” he said. “I mean, I had a choice. I could have sat there and watched them kill a friend of mine of color. But I wasn’t going to do that.”
“I was confident that I did not hit anyone innocent and I made my exit,” Reinoehl added.
He explained that he had not yet turned himself in to the police because he believed they were collaborating with right-wing groups that were “hunting” him, and that he would not be safe in police custody. “They’re out hunting me,” he told Farley. “There’s nightly posts of the hunt and where they’re going to be hunting. They made a post saying the deer are going to feel lucky this year because it’s open season on Michael right now.”
The law enforcement task force that tracked down and killed Reinoehl in Lacey, Washington, the Pacific Northwest Violent Offenders Task Force, included agents from the US Marshals and the FBI as well as officers from the Lakewood Police Department, the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department and the Washington State Department of Corrections.
Witnesses reported hearing dozens of shots fired during the encounter. According to the US Marshals, Reinoehl “produced a firearm” after being approached in his vehicle by officers, prompting them to open fire. “Task force members responded to the threat and struck the suspect, who was pronounced dead at the scene,” the Marshals stated. Bystander video of the aftermath shows heavily armed officers standing around Reinhoel’s body as they secure the area.
Lt. Ray Brady of the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office, the department that is overseeing the local investigation into the shooting, told the media that four officers had fired their weapons, but he could not confirm if Reinoehl had opened fire.
Portland has been the scene of nightly protests against police violence and racism for more than three months, part of the wave of nationwide and international multi-racial protests that erupted in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd by four Minneapolis police officers at the end of May.
The situation was dramatically escalated in July when President Trump deployed federal agents—including the US Border Patrol’s paramilitary BORTAC force—under the guise of protecting Portland’s federal courthouse. Federal police in riot gear fired tear gas and “less lethal” rounds at demonstrators, in one instance fracturing a protester’s skull. Most chillingly, federal agents began abducting protesters and throwing them into unmarked vans, in snatch-and-grab operations reminiscent of Latin American dictatorships.
At the end of July, federal forces pulled back in the face of growing protests, with an agreement by Democratic Governor Kate Brown to deploy the state police against the protesters. Now, Trump and Department of Homeland Security Acting Director Chad Wolf are once against discussing deploying federal agents against the protests in Portland.
“We’re ready, willing and able to send in, you know, a massive group of people that are really highly trained,” Trump said Tuesday during a visit with law enforcement officials in Kenosha. “We could solve that problem in less than an hour in Portland,” he stated.
He then nodded to Attorney General Barr and added, “At some point, Bill, we’ll just have to do it ourselves.” As a first step, state police have been deputized by the US Marshals to act as federal agents, allowing for protesters they detain to be charged in federal, rather than state, courts.
Trump has been using the protests against police violence—most recently the demonstrations against the Blake shooting in Kenosha—to wage a law-and-order campaign and whip up his fascistic base in the lead-up to the November 3 presidential election.
During a campaign speech in Latrobe, Pennsylvania Thursday afternoon, Trump promised he would “bring to justice” the “rioters, looters, violent extremists, anarchists.” He boasted that “We have over 400 right now under arrest.”
He declared his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, to be a “puppet of the socialist, Marxist and cop-hating extremists.” He later stated that while Biden would “appease the domestic terrorists,” his plan was “to arrest them and prosecute them.”
For his part, Biden has responded with his own law and order ad campaign, denouncing anti-police-violence protesters who engage in vandalism or looting and placing the blame for violent clashes between police and demonstrators on Trump, even though in most cases the cities that have seen significant protests and police repression are run by Democratic administrations.
The author also recommends:
Biden launches massive “law and order” ad campaign
[3 September 2020]
Trump incites vigilante violence against peaceful protests in Wisconsin
[31 August 2020]
Police violence continues unabated three months after the murder of George Floyd
[26 August 2020]
German imperialism and the strange case of Alexei Navalny
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/05/pers-s05.html
5 September 2020
On August 20, the pro-Western Russian politician Alexei Navalny fell ill on a flight to Moscow. After he was transferred to a hospital in Berlin, the German government announced categorically that he had been poisoned with a “Novichok” nerve agent.
Politicians and media outlets in Western countries, and above all in Germany, have declared that the Russian government is responsible for Navalny’s poisoning and have escalated their calls for a confrontation with Russia. A certain pattern is repeating itself. An incident takes place and immediately it is declared by media outlets that Putin or Assad is responsible, requiring an immediate response.
Even the most routine homicide case involves a great deal of investigation before the alleged perpetrator is publicly named. But in this case, the entire Western media immediately and unanimously concluded who was to blame.
Assuming that Navalny was poisoned, one would think there would at least be a range of suspects. Is it not possible that an individual or individuals could have poisoned Navalny not because they support the Putin regime, but because they oppose it?
After all, the German government is under immense pressure from the United States to stop the construction of the Nord Stream II gas pipeline and the latest events have already accelerated calls for an abandonment of the project.
Germany has historically looked upon Eastern Europe as its sphere of influence, or, to use Hitler’s term, “Lebensraum.” Now, almost 80 years since the start of Operation Barbarossa, which led to over 27 million Soviet deaths, Germany is once again leading the charge for a conflict with Russia.
In an interview with the Rheinische Post newspaper, German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer explicitly threatened the Russian government with retaliation.
The “Putin system” is an “aggressive regime, which seeks without scruples to enforce its interests by violent means and repeatedly violates the international norms of behaviour,” she said. The poisoning of Alexei Navalny, she asserted, is proof that in Russia outlawed chemical weapons are used against people. The Putin regime is thus “on the same level as regimes, such as that in Syria, which have used chemical weapons against their own civilian population.”
The unsubstantiated and in many cases thoroughly disproven allegations that the Syrian government deployed chemical weapons against civilians have repeatedly served as pretexts for the Western powers to launch air strikes on the country.
The rhetoric is equally aggressive on the opinion pages of the main newspapers. The German financial daily Handelsblatt raged on August 25 that it had to be made clear that "the West has a bite as well as a bark, and that its approach of cozying up to Moscow is at an end.” On September 3, Der Spiegel demanded, “The time for toughness is now. Now is the time to hurt the man in the Kremlin.”
Chancellor Angela Merkel threw fuel on the fire on Wednesday when she declared at a press conference that German Army toxicologists had proven “beyond doubt” that Navalny was the victim of a crime and had been poisoned by a nerve agent from the Novichok family. She delivered an ultimatum to the Russian government to “answer very serious questions,” and announced that the European Union and NATO would take joint action.
Both organisations responded immediately to Merkel’s demands. In a statement on Thursday, the EU threatened Russia with sanctions. In a letter to the EU high representative for foreign affairs, Josep Borrell, 107 European Parliament deputies demanded an investigation “within the structures of the United Nations or European Council” to “investigate the real background to this crime.” The initiative for the letter was taken by the German Green Party deputy Sergey Lagodinsky.
It would be the height of naiveté to believe that the possible poisoning of Navalny is the reason for this aggressive campaign against Russia. His case merely serves as a pretext to intensify the offensive against Russia that NATO has long been pursuing. Germany, in particular, is exploiting the case to take a further step towards its long cherished goal of emerging once again as a major military power.
Nothing said about the Navalny case by the media or politicians can be taken at face value. The hypocrisy of the alleged concern over his fate is impossible to overstate.
After the murder of the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and the Slovakian investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancé, there was no talk of sanctions, even though strong evidence in both cases pointed to the involvement of powerful circles within the government and big business. Both countries are members of the EU and NATO.
Just this week, the Slovakian businessman Marian Kocner was acquitted by a court of Kuciak’s murder, even though several witnesses identified him as having ordered the journalist’s assassination.
The Saudi regime was never confronted with the threat of sanctions after it ordered the murder and dismemberment of oppositional journalist Jamal Khashoggi in its consulate in Istanbul.
No evidence has yet been presented to prove “beyond doubt” that Navalny was poisoned by a nerve agent from the Novichok family. The laboratory in Munich that presented the evidence is neither neutral nor independent. It is under the command of the German Army, which is playing a leading role in NATO’s military build-up against Russia and has a direct interest in discrediting the Russian government. Twenty years ago, the German foreign intelligence agency (BND) played a major role in “proving” the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the charge that served as the major pretext for the US-led war on Iraq but was later proven to be without foundation.
But even if one accepts that Navalny was poisoned, this in no way proves the involvement of the Putin regime. Novichok was produced in Soviet laboratories during the 1970s and 1980s, but after the dissolution of the Soviet Union it, like everything else, could be obtained with money. For example, it is known that the BND purchased a sample of Novichok from a Russian military scientist in the 1990s and passed it on to its Western counterparts, suggesting that they are in a position to produce Novichok. The nerve agent has also been discovered in private hands and has been used to settle scores among Bulgarian gangsters.
It is moreoever inexplicable why the former intelligence agent Putin would be so foolish as to first poison Navalny, then allow him to leave for a German clinic two days later, where he must have assumed the poison would be discovered.
As the World Socialist Web Site explained in an article this week, Navalny has ties to right-wing extremists, oligarchs competing with the Kremlin, and Western intelligence agencies. He has many enemies who have an interest in disposing of him. It is also possible that he trod on the toes of one of his mentors, who may have seen the attack as an opportunity to discredit Putin.
In 2014, the German ruling class drew the conclusion that it was necessary to assume more “international responsibility” and launch a major military build-up. “Germany is too large to comment on world politics from the sidelines,” said then-foreign minister and current German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier at the Munich Security Conference.
Since then, the country has launched a massive rearmament programme, participated in several military interventions in the Middle East and Africa, and joined the NATO military build-up on Russia’s borders. The revival of militarism has been accompanied by the trivialisation of the Nazis’ crimes and the strengthening of far-right forces such as the Alternative for Germany. With the coronavirus pandemic, these developments have intensified.
Already prior to the Navalny affair, the German Society for Foreign Affairs (DGAP) published an aggressive comment from its president, Tom Enders, calling for Germany to pursue a “courageous and combative” foreign policy. Enders was head of Airbus before switching to the DGAP. Airbus, along with Boeing, is not only the world’s largest producer of civilian aircraft, but also Europe’s largest arms manufacturer.
The fact that German imperialism is now turning against Russia follows an historical pattern. In its struggle for “living space in the East,” the Nazi regime invaded the Soviet Union and sought to exterminate large sections of the Soviet population. In its deepening conflict with Russia, the German bourgeoisie is drawing on these criminal traditions once again.
Peter Schwarz
On August 20, the pro-Western Russian politician Alexei Navalny fell ill on a flight to Moscow. After he was transferred to a hospital in Berlin, the German government announced categorically that he had been poisoned with a “Novichok” nerve agent.
Politicians and media outlets in Western countries, and above all in Germany, have declared that the Russian government is responsible for Navalny’s poisoning and have escalated their calls for a confrontation with Russia. A certain pattern is repeating itself. An incident takes place and immediately it is declared by media outlets that Putin or Assad is responsible, requiring an immediate response.
Even the most routine homicide case involves a great deal of investigation before the alleged perpetrator is publicly named. But in this case, the entire Western media immediately and unanimously concluded who was to blame.
Assuming that Navalny was poisoned, one would think there would at least be a range of suspects. Is it not possible that an individual or individuals could have poisoned Navalny not because they support the Putin regime, but because they oppose it?
After all, the German government is under immense pressure from the United States to stop the construction of the Nord Stream II gas pipeline and the latest events have already accelerated calls for an abandonment of the project.
Germany has historically looked upon Eastern Europe as its sphere of influence, or, to use Hitler’s term, “Lebensraum.” Now, almost 80 years since the start of Operation Barbarossa, which led to over 27 million Soviet deaths, Germany is once again leading the charge for a conflict with Russia.
In an interview with the Rheinische Post newspaper, German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer explicitly threatened the Russian government with retaliation.
The “Putin system” is an “aggressive regime, which seeks without scruples to enforce its interests by violent means and repeatedly violates the international norms of behaviour,” she said. The poisoning of Alexei Navalny, she asserted, is proof that in Russia outlawed chemical weapons are used against people. The Putin regime is thus “on the same level as regimes, such as that in Syria, which have used chemical weapons against their own civilian population.”
The unsubstantiated and in many cases thoroughly disproven allegations that the Syrian government deployed chemical weapons against civilians have repeatedly served as pretexts for the Western powers to launch air strikes on the country.
The rhetoric is equally aggressive on the opinion pages of the main newspapers. The German financial daily Handelsblatt raged on August 25 that it had to be made clear that "the West has a bite as well as a bark, and that its approach of cozying up to Moscow is at an end.” On September 3, Der Spiegel demanded, “The time for toughness is now. Now is the time to hurt the man in the Kremlin.”
Chancellor Angela Merkel threw fuel on the fire on Wednesday when she declared at a press conference that German Army toxicologists had proven “beyond doubt” that Navalny was the victim of a crime and had been poisoned by a nerve agent from the Novichok family. She delivered an ultimatum to the Russian government to “answer very serious questions,” and announced that the European Union and NATO would take joint action.
Both organisations responded immediately to Merkel’s demands. In a statement on Thursday, the EU threatened Russia with sanctions. In a letter to the EU high representative for foreign affairs, Josep Borrell, 107 European Parliament deputies demanded an investigation “within the structures of the United Nations or European Council” to “investigate the real background to this crime.” The initiative for the letter was taken by the German Green Party deputy Sergey Lagodinsky.
It would be the height of naiveté to believe that the possible poisoning of Navalny is the reason for this aggressive campaign against Russia. His case merely serves as a pretext to intensify the offensive against Russia that NATO has long been pursuing. Germany, in particular, is exploiting the case to take a further step towards its long cherished goal of emerging once again as a major military power.
Nothing said about the Navalny case by the media or politicians can be taken at face value. The hypocrisy of the alleged concern over his fate is impossible to overstate.
After the murder of the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and the Slovakian investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancé, there was no talk of sanctions, even though strong evidence in both cases pointed to the involvement of powerful circles within the government and big business. Both countries are members of the EU and NATO.
Just this week, the Slovakian businessman Marian Kocner was acquitted by a court of Kuciak’s murder, even though several witnesses identified him as having ordered the journalist’s assassination.
The Saudi regime was never confronted with the threat of sanctions after it ordered the murder and dismemberment of oppositional journalist Jamal Khashoggi in its consulate in Istanbul.
No evidence has yet been presented to prove “beyond doubt” that Navalny was poisoned by a nerve agent from the Novichok family. The laboratory in Munich that presented the evidence is neither neutral nor independent. It is under the command of the German Army, which is playing a leading role in NATO’s military build-up against Russia and has a direct interest in discrediting the Russian government. Twenty years ago, the German foreign intelligence agency (BND) played a major role in “proving” the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the charge that served as the major pretext for the US-led war on Iraq but was later proven to be without foundation.
But even if one accepts that Navalny was poisoned, this in no way proves the involvement of the Putin regime. Novichok was produced in Soviet laboratories during the 1970s and 1980s, but after the dissolution of the Soviet Union it, like everything else, could be obtained with money. For example, it is known that the BND purchased a sample of Novichok from a Russian military scientist in the 1990s and passed it on to its Western counterparts, suggesting that they are in a position to produce Novichok. The nerve agent has also been discovered in private hands and has been used to settle scores among Bulgarian gangsters.
It is moreoever inexplicable why the former intelligence agent Putin would be so foolish as to first poison Navalny, then allow him to leave for a German clinic two days later, where he must have assumed the poison would be discovered.
As the World Socialist Web Site explained in an article this week, Navalny has ties to right-wing extremists, oligarchs competing with the Kremlin, and Western intelligence agencies. He has many enemies who have an interest in disposing of him. It is also possible that he trod on the toes of one of his mentors, who may have seen the attack as an opportunity to discredit Putin.
In 2014, the German ruling class drew the conclusion that it was necessary to assume more “international responsibility” and launch a major military build-up. “Germany is too large to comment on world politics from the sidelines,” said then-foreign minister and current German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier at the Munich Security Conference.
Since then, the country has launched a massive rearmament programme, participated in several military interventions in the Middle East and Africa, and joined the NATO military build-up on Russia’s borders. The revival of militarism has been accompanied by the trivialisation of the Nazis’ crimes and the strengthening of far-right forces such as the Alternative for Germany. With the coronavirus pandemic, these developments have intensified.
Already prior to the Navalny affair, the German Society for Foreign Affairs (DGAP) published an aggressive comment from its president, Tom Enders, calling for Germany to pursue a “courageous and combative” foreign policy. Enders was head of Airbus before switching to the DGAP. Airbus, along with Boeing, is not only the world’s largest producer of civilian aircraft, but also Europe’s largest arms manufacturer.
The fact that German imperialism is now turning against Russia follows an historical pattern. In its struggle for “living space in the East,” the Nazi regime invaded the Soviet Union and sought to exterminate large sections of the Soviet population. In its deepening conflict with Russia, the German bourgeoisie is drawing on these criminal traditions once again.
Peter Schwarz
Monday, September 7, 2020
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