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https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/03/31/spa1-m31.html
Alice Summers
30 March 2022
Weapons sent to Ukraine by Spain’s “progressive” Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government are being used by a neo-Nazi militia, the Azov Battalion.
In a March 15 video posted on YouTube by the National Corps, the political wing of the Azov Battalion, a militia member can be seen unwrapping and demonstrating how to use weapons. The video explains that these anti-tank missiles are Instalaza C90 grenade launchers from Spain, RPG-75 grenades from Czechia and Pansarskott m/86 portable missiles from Sweden.
The description of the video reads: “Azov video instructions on how to use disposable rocket-propelled anti-tank grenade launchers to destroy light armoured vehicles and enemy tanks.”
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez (PSOE), second left, walks next to Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias, second right, and First Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo, left, at the Moncloa Palace in Madrid, Spain, Tuesday, Jan. 14 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Manu Fernandez]
The arming of neo-Nazi groups gives the lie to the absurd claims made by Spain and the other imperialist powers that they are defending “democracy and freedom” in Ukraine against the dictatorial and expansionist ambitions of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was desperate and reactionary, but it is a response to decades of imperialist encirclement, threats and provocations. NATO is waging a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, with far-right paramilitary units like Azov acting as imperialism’s shock troops.
The Azov Battalion was founded in 2014 by the anti-Semite Andriy Biletsky. It incorporated many members of Biletsky’s former ultra-nationalist, white-supremacist organisations, Patriot of Ukraine and the Social-National Assembly. These tendencies traced their political roots back to the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, headed by Nazi-collaborationist Stepan Bandera, and its affiliated Ukrainian Insurgent Army.
Azov, which uses Nazi insignia and openly glorifies Ukrainian Nazi collaborationists, was officially incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard in November 2014, months after a far-right coup in Kyiv toppled pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, in which Azov had played a key role. Since then, it has received arms and training from the government.
It is only one of the more prominent of around 80 far-right militias in Ukraine built and equipped to fight Russian-speaking separatists in the east of the country. Many of these organisations are now fully integrated into the Ukrainian army.
Another of these groups is the neo-Nazi C14, led by Yevhen Karas. In a speech at the start of February at a seminar named after the Nazi-collaborationist Bandera, Karas gloated of having received large quantities of weaponry from “the West.” He said they were being armed because of their eagerness to kill Russians.
“We are now being given so much weaponry,” Karas declared, “not because as some say ‘the West is helping us’, not because they want the best for us, but because we perform the tasks set by the West, because we are the only ones who are ready to do them. Because we have fun: we have fun killing and we have fun fighting … That is the reason for the new alliance [with] Turkey, Poland, Britain and Ukraine.”
The NATO powers’ arming of neo-Nazi groups is not an unfortunate and unforeseen side-effect of a supposed defense of the Ukrainian people, but a deliberate policy choice. These forces are being armed and emboldened because of their rabid Russophobia and willingness to act as pawns for imperialism.
Spain’s PSOE-Podemos government has fully involved itself in the imperialist war drive against Russia. There are around 800 Spanish troops deployed in Eastern Europe against Russia, including a detachment of 130 airmen and four Eurofighter jets that regularly mount provocative missions from Bulgaria into the Black Sea near the Russian coast. There are also three Spanish warships patrolling the waters of the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea with NATO naval groups.
According to a communication from Spain’s Defence Ministry at the start of March, Madrid has sent 1,370 C90 grenade launchers, 700,000 rounds of ammunition and an unspecified number of machine guns and light machine guns. Many of these arms will have ended up in the hands of the neo-fascist militias.
“It is a very important delivery because it allows a very individualised defence and can be used even by people who don’t have much experience in using weapons,” Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles said in a television interview in early March. “Ukraine is a country which is being attacked and Ukrainians are carrying out a legitimate defence of their lives, which are the most important things we have,” she added.
Asked last week about whether Spain will send more weapons to Ukraine, Robles refused to rule this out. During a visit to the Albacete-Los Llanos air base in the east of Spain, she stated: “In principle it is a possibility, as long as Ukraine needs them and asks us for them.”
“When these deliveries are carried out,” she continued, “it will be done in the same way as last time, with much carefulness and discretion, because there is a great risk for the people that make these transfers and for the countries which received this material.”
No “care” or “discretion” was exercised to prevent weapons from being funneled to neo-Nazis.
According to right-wing newspaper Okdiario, dozens of former Spanish soldiers have also travelled to Ukraine to join in the war against Russia. Figures from the Ukrainian government’s ‘International Brigades’ website, which encourages foreigners to come to Ukraine to fight, indicated that more than 12,000 Spaniards had searched for information on how to enlist.
The PSOE-Podemos government has tacitly encouraged civilians and retired soldiers to travel to Ukraine. Asked about the consequences of fighting in Ukraine, Spain’s Justice Minister Pilar Llop replied, “It is possible that people from different nationalities can go. … Our justice system does not prohibit this possibility.” Spain’s National Intelligence Centre (CNI) is reportedly monitoring the activity of Spaniards fighting in Ukraine in case they become “radicalised.”
Pablo Iglesias, the founder and former leader of “left populist” Podemos party has responded to revelations of his party’s arming of Ukrainian neo-Nazis with mealy-mouthed criticism.
Taking to Twitter on 16 March, Iglesias declared, “It is very serious that arms sent to Ukraine by our government have ended up in the hands of a neo-Nazi group. If this is true, the poor argument that these Nazis only had British arms falls to pieces. Condemning the invasion of Russia does not justify arming Nazis.”
Iglesias did not draw broader conclusions from the fact that the party he led is arming neo-Nazis. His empty criticisms notwithstanding, Podemos parliamentary spokesperson Jaume Asens said this month that it is “legitimate for the international community to provide aid to the [Ukrainian] state under attack.”
Spain’s own armed forces are riddled with fascists. In December 2020, WhatsApp messages from top retired air force officers were leaked in which they threatened mass murder and called for a coup. “As a good fascist,” one declares, “[I believe] there is no choice but to start shooting 26 million sons of b*tches,” their estimate of how many left-wing voters there are in Spain.
A few weeks later, a WhatsApp chat of 121 active-duty soldiers was released in which they denounced communism and voiced their support for the fascist retired officers. At the same time, numerous videos emerged of Spanish soldiers singing fascist songs while making the fascist salute.
Iglesias downplayed the issue at the time, responding to the fascistic coup threats by saying: “What these gentlemen say, at their age and already retired, in a chat with a few too many drinks, does not pose any threat.”
Podemos is a pro-war party tied to all Spanish imperialism’s recent crimes. Before taking power with the PSOE, it recruited leading officers, including former Air Force General and Chief of the Defence Staff Julio RodrÃguez, who led the Spanish army’s participation in the US-led neo-colonial wars in Libya. RodrÃguez is now a leading member of Podemos and Podemos Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Diaz’s chief of staff.
An anti-war movement of the working class internationally must urgently be built to prevent the ruling class from plunging the planet into a potentially nuclear conflict. This requires a ruthless break with middle class, pro-imperialist parties like Podemos, and the building of sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in Spain and in every country.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/03/31/miss-m31.html
Johannes Stern
@JSternWSWS
30 March 2022
Four weeks ago, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced tripling of the military budget, Germany's biggest rearmament offensive since the end of the Second World War. Since then, things have proceeded rapidly. The decision to procure dozens of nuclear-capable F-35 stealth bombers is now being followed by a plan to establish a national missile defence system.
Launch of an “Arrow 3” missile (United States Missile Defense Agency, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
On Tuesday, a parliamentary delegation from the Bundestag's defence committee travelled to Israel to explore the purchase of the US-Israeli “Arrow 3” system, which has been in operation in Israel since 2017. It is designed to destroy enemy long-range missiles in the upper atmosphere or even in space. The range of the approximately seven-metre-long missiles is put at about 2,400 kilometres.
Plans for the installation of the multi-billion-dollar system are already well advanced, apparently. The missile radar systems would be “set up at three locations in Germany” and “report their surveillance data to the National Command Post in Uedem (Lower Rhine),” Bild am Sonntag reported on 27 March. The radars are “so powerful that the protective screen could also cover Poland, Romania or the Baltic states.”
The procurement of the system is part of the NATO war offensive against Russia and the assertion of German imperialism aiming to organise Europe under its leadership. Bild am Sonntag quotes the main spokesman on the defence budget committee, Andreas Schwarz (Social Democratic Party, SPD), saying, “We must protect ourselves better against the threat from Russia. To do this, we need a Germany-wide missile defence shield quickly. The Israeli Arrow 3 system is a good solution. We can also stretch the Iron Dome over our neighbouring countries. This would give us a key role in Europe's security.”
On Sunday evening, Scholz also confirmed the plans. He had “resolved not to divulge the details of a plan that has not yet been finalised,” but he explained on the ARD television channel that the missile defence system was “certainly one of the things we are discussing.” It was “urgently necessary that we provide the Bundeswehr [Armed Forces] with more resources, with more tanks, more air defence capabilities, and enable it in many other ways so that it can perform the task it has to perform.”
As in his war speech to the Bundestag on February 27, the chancellor justified the planned arms build-up by the supposed threat from Russia. “We must all prepare ourselves for the fact that we currently have a neighbour who is prepared to use force to assert its interests,” he stressed. “And that’s why we have to join forces to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
This is the familiar propaganda. In fact, the imperialist powers use “force” all the time to advance their economic and geostrategic interests. The wars of aggression and regime change operations in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria in the last 30 years alone, which violated international law, have destroyed entire countries and cost millions of lives.
The “turning point” in foreign policy proclaimed by Scholz was prepared for a long time. The systematic military encirclement of Russia by NATO and the imperialist powers—above all Germany and the USA—has deliberately provoked Putin’s reactionary attack on Ukraine. Now, the German ruling class is using the situation to reassert itself as the dominant power in Europe and organise the continent under German leadership.
Germany was “the country with the largest military expenditure in the European Union,” Scholz said. He went on to cite the NATO target of each member state’s spending two percent of its GDP on the military. “If we now meet the two percent, we will be the country in the European NATO alliance with the highest military expenditure and with the strongest defence infrastructure,” Scholz boasted on television. The Bundeswehr would play “a central role for alliance and national defence, especially with our capabilities on the ground.” Along with the USA, only Germany would have “the force that is necessary for the entire alliance. And we will have to organise it accordingly.”
Scholz repeatedly threatened Russia. Germany would “make itself so strong that no one will dare to attack us. And that is the message we are also sending to the Russian president: Don’t you dare!” He said he had repeatedly emphasised what President Joe Biden “has now also said in Poland: NATO's mutual assistance commitment applies to us.” We will “defend every inch of NATO territory. An attack on the Baltic states, on Poland, on Slovakia or other countries would be like an attack on ourselves.”
Neither his interviewer nor Scholz explained to the television audience what these statements meant. The so-called “mutual assistance obligation,” governed by Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, states “that an armed attack against one or more” parties “shall be considered as an attack against them all” and “that in the event of such an armed attack each of them ... shall render assistance to the party or parties under attack ... including the use of armed force.”
In other words, if the Ukraine war, which is being systematically fuelled by the imperialist powers through arms deliveries and the massive build-up of NATO troops in Eastern Europe, spreads to an Eastern European NATO country, Scholz and the German government are committing themselves to going to war against Russia. The consequence would be a devastating third world war.
Unlike during the German invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II, which cost between 30 and 40 million lives, Russia today has nuclear weapons. These could be used in the event of a “threat to Russia’s existence,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov and former Russian President and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, currently deputy head of the Russian Security Council, warned a few days ago. Influential circles in the NATO powers openly regard the use of nuclear weapons as a legitimate option.
An article on the World Socialist Web Site posed US President Biden two questions that Chancellor Scholz should also answer: 1) When in your election campaign did you state that you would risk a nuclear war with Russia? 2) How many hundreds of millions, or billions, of people do you expect will die in the United States, Europe and throughout the world in a nuclear exchange with Russia?
If the German ruling class has its way, the working class must bear the cost in every way, as cannon fodder on the battlefield and in the form of massive social attacks. To his interviewer’s question whether he could promise “that the debt ceiling will be reintroduced in 2023,” Scholz replied succinctly, “It’s in the constitution.” That is as brief as it is clear. Every cent that flows into military rearmament will be squeezed out of the population again--even if it means impoverishing the majority of working people.
Today’s speeches by German leaders are increasingly reminiscent of the belligerent tirades during the First and Second World Wars. “Yes, there are tougher days ahead for us in Germany, too,” declared German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Sunday. “And the whole truth is: many hardships still lie ahead... Our solidarity and support, our steadfastness, even our willingness to make restrictions, will be required for a long time to come.”
The working class must reject the despotic rearmament and war plans of the ruling class as well as its demand to endure “hardships” and “restrictions” for the sake of German imperialism. Not a cent for German militarism! Never again war! There is only one way to prevent a relapse into world war and barbarism—the building of an anti-war movement of the international working class that abolishes the cause of war—capitalism—and fights for a global socialist society.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/03/31/abud-m31.html
Oscar Grenfell
@Oscar_Grenfell
30 March 2022
In a budget that included major cuts to healthcare, public education, the arts, climate-change mitigation and other key areas of social spending, the Liberal-National Coalition government has allocated tens of billions of dollars to the military, on top of unprecedented spending on the war machine over the past decade.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Defence Minister Peter Dutton declared that the budget represented a “record investment in defence.” All up, $48.6 billion was handed to the Department of Defence and the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), the electronic spying agency, representing a 7.4 percent increase on spending in 2021–22.
A Royal New Zealand Air Force NH90 helicopter and an Australian Defence Force MRH90 land at Sam Hill Airfield in Shoalwater Bay Military Training Area in Central Queensland [Source: Australian Department of Defence]
The budget provides for military expenditure over the coming year at over 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).
The annual spending is part of a far broader build-up. The 2022–23 allocations are in keeping with government declarations that some $575 billion will be spent on defence over the decade, including $270 billion on military hardware. They lock in measures announced by Morrison over recent weeks, including a $38 billion fund over 20 years to pay for the largest increase of military personnel since the Vietnam War, from roughly 60,000 to around 80,000.
The budget papers state that the military spending is necessary because the world has entered “a period of profound uncertainty and disruption.” Morrison likewise declared: “In these uncertain times it is vital that Australia is well-positioned to tackle the challenges our country and our region face.”
The references to “safety” and “defence” are a sham. The vast expansion is aimed at deepening Australia’s frontline role in the aggressive, US-led confrontations with Russia, and above all China, aimed at ensuring the geo-strategic hegemony of American imperialism. The 2 percent of GDP is in line with the public insistence of senior US politicians and military figures that no less can be allocated to the military by key American allies.
Notably, the budget papers explicitly refer to “an increasingly assertive China,” dispensing with the previous norm of bland references to “mounting tensions” with unnamed “foreign adversaries.”
The bellicose character of the military expansion is summed up by one of the headline spends, a $10 billion increase to ASD funding over the decade. The allocation, hailed by the spying agency as the biggest in its 75-year history, will contribute to the development of its REDSPICE (resilience, effects, defence, space, intelligence, cyber and enablers) program.
Strikingly, no attempt is made to hide the fact that the primary focus of REDSPICE is offensive cyberwarfare. Previously, the ASD’s cyber operations have been falsely presented as “defensive,” but now the agency and government ministers are openly bragging of plans for cyber attacks.
A vague ASD outline of the REDSPICE program leads with a declaration that it will “triple current offensive cyber capability.” The “global footprint” of the ASD will be quadrupled, while its staff will be doubled, from 1,900 to 3,800.
The boasts underscore the utterly hypocritical condemnations by the US and its allies, including Australia, of purported Russian and Chinese hacking. Publications by WikiLeaks and US National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden have already exposed American agencies and those of its allies as the biggest purveyors of malware viruses, hacking activities and mass spying operations in the world, all of which are being increased.
The joint US-Australia base in Pine Gap plays a central role in the interception of foreign satellite data, and in the planning of US drone strikes and operations throughout the Indo-Pacific and the Middle East. Together with at least three ASD facilities, it is crucial to the global activities of the US-led “Five Eyes” intelligence network.
The ASD announcement, coming on the heels of a government-media campaign over purported “Chinese cyberware,” is clearly directed against Beijing. The major expansion of the ASD is also a warning of escalating surveillance within Australia, directed against social and political opposition, including to war.
Another $1.2 billion has been allocated to a “national space mission,” in line with the growing militarisation of outer space.
Australian aid to the right-wing, US-backed Ukrainian regime is listed in the budget at $156.5 million. That includes almost $100 million spent on two military shipments dispatched to the country over the past month, as part of the US-NATO confrontation with Russia that threatens to widen into a world war.
The budget papers also hint at the central importance of AUKUS, the aggressive military pact announced between the US, Britain and Australia, directed against Beijing. Unveiled last September, AUKUS provides for the ever-greater integration of the three country’s militaries across the board, openly preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific.
A key measure was the announcement that Australia will acquire nuclear-powered submarines. The budget papers make no mention of the cost of acquiring these submarines, which will likely be bought off the shelf from the US or Britain. Previous estimates, however, have put the purchase and running of the vessels at over $100 billion.
The government provoked a major diplomatic clash with France by abandoning an existing contract with a French company to construct 12 diesel-powered vessels. The budget reveals that the decision cost $3 billion last year, and another half billion dollars in contract fees over 2022–23, indicating the high priority given to acquiring nuclear powered subs.
Some $882 million, of a projected $45 billion, is allocated over the coming year to the construction of nine Hunter-Class frigates.
The budget also does not mention the spending associated with the expansion of military personnel over the next 20 years. Some analysts, however, have indicated that the initial stages of the program are factored into existing defence force funding.
The government has also pledged to develop a submarine base on the Australian east coast in Brisbane, Newcastle or Port Kembla that can host both Australian and allied nuclear-powered subs. That base is tipped to cost $10 billion over a decade. Another $4.3 billion has been pledged to build a large-vessel dry dock berth in Perth to aid the stationing and construction of warships on the Australian west coast strategically located on the Indian Ocean.
None of those projects is explicitly referenced, pointing to the far greater allocation of public funds to the military that is to come.
Other, ostensibly non-defence, budget measures have clear military implications. Under “regional development,” $1.5 billion is allocated for the construction of “new port infrastructure” in the Northern Territory. Defence Minister Dutton has hinted at the construction of a new port in Darwin that would rival the existing facility, which is under lease to a Chinese company—a move opposed in Australian and US military circles. Another $9.2 billion has been allocated to “maritime surveillance.”
The response to the budget’s military expenditure has been mixed, with the most hawkish figures declaring that it does not go far enough.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a think-tank that has continuously agitated for a more aggressive stance against China, complained that the government’s “megaprojects,” including the acquisition of major offensive weapons such as the submarines, “simply aren’t delivering in relevant capability in meaningful timeframes.” At the same time, it praised the ASD expansion as a “promising” step in the development of “asymmetric approaches” to warfare.
An article in the Australian similarly complained that “AUKUS remains a statement of intent rather than a pact that will deliver any quick defence capability to Australia. The first of the nuclear submarines are decades away, if they arrive at all.
“[G]iven China’s rapid rise as a naval power, why doesn’t the government buy far more anti-ship missiles and more long-range land-based missiles…?” it asked.
Labor leader Anthony Albanese has repeatedly stressed that the government and Labor are as one on all “national security” issues associated with the drive to war against China. To the extent that he has criticised the Coalition, it has been from the standpoint that Labor is better placed to preside over the vast military build-up.
Albanese has committed a Labor government to spend 2 percent of GDP on the military. He has announced his own funding initiatives, including a plan to fit tomahawk missiles to the existing fleet of Collins Class submarines while preparations are underway to acquire the nuclear-powered vessels.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/03/31/whit-m31.html
Kevin Reed
30 March 2022
Federal prosecutors rested their case after calling a final witness on Wednesday in the trial of four men who are accused of conspiring to kidnap and kill Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer prior to the 2020 presidential election.
It was the 13th day of the jury trial in US District Court in Grand Rapids, Michigan, of Adam Fox, 38, Daniel Harris, 24, and Brandon Caserta, 33, from Michigan, and Barry Croft Jr., 46, from Delaware. The men were arrested on October 8, 2020, for plotting to take Whitmer hostage, tie her up and execute her in a tribunal in response to the governor’s COVID-19 policies.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer [Credit: AP Photo Paul Sancya]
Chastity Knight, 40, answered questions from prosecutors about Croft, her longtime companion, telling them he was “antigovernment” and “thought the government’s not for him. The government doesn’t help the people out. They like to line their own pockets.”
Knight, who is from Bear, Delaware, cried on the stand when she identified Croft’s daughter as the person who offered him something to eat while he was preparing an explosive during training in Luther, Michigan. During that training session, Croft was recorded saying to his young daughter, “Honey, I’m making explosives. Can you get away from me, please? … I love you. Get out of here.”
On Tuesday, the prosecution presented the jury with Croft’s Facebook posts from 2020, including one from Memorial Day that had a photo of a noose and said, “Which governor is going to end up dragged off and hung for treason first? It’s really a spin the bottle match at this point and I’m sure a few mayors are in the running!!! God bless the constitutional republic!!!”
Several days later, he posted on Facebook about seizing state capitols and “putting these tyrants’ addresses out here for rioters.” According to the FBI this post was liked by accused coconspirator Fox.
Other Facebook posts from defendant Caserta were presented. In March 2020, shortly after Whitmer imposed a statewide lockdown order, Caserta wrote, “The government has stolen enough from me. They’ve claimed ownership over my body and my property. Now they take away my place to live and source of income because of this?”
Caserta called the governor a “psychopath” and wrote that the purpose of the Second Amendment is the “ability to kill agents of the government when they become tyrannical.” In May 2020, Caserta posted, “I may kill dozens of agents but eventually die in the process. I will not be chipped and I will not be vaccinated even if that means losing everything I have.”
In August, Caserta wrote that he would shoot “tyrants” after beating them with his hands and feet, letting them “beg til they couldn’t beg any more because their mouth is so full of blood.”
He continued, “There is no remorse for immoral cowards. Empathy is only reserved for the good.”
In response, Caserta’s attorney, Michael Hills, said that none of the messages presented by the prosecution referred to kidnapping. The lawyers for the four defendants have argued that their clients were frequently high on marijuana and easily manipulated by the FBI. They claim the men would never have followed through on their wild verbal threats if they had not been goaded along by government informants.
On Monday, undercover FBI agent Tim Bates who was known to the group as “Red,” testified that he fooled the others into believing that he knew someone in the mining industry who could get high-grade explosives.
He described Fox and Croft as leaders of a plot to kidnap Whitmer and said they were thrilled as they watched videos of powerful explosives, before driving north to scout her vacation home. The plans to make a bomb is key to the prosecutor’s case because it was to be used to blow up a bridge near Whitmer’s second home in northern Michigan to divert police response to the kidnapping. The men were arrested when they attempted to purchase the explosives they intended to use in the bomb-making.
A total of 14 men, some of whom were members of the militia group Wolverine Watchmen and linked to the fascist Boogaloo movement, were arrested and charged. Six were indicted on federal crimes and the remaining eight were charged with state offenses. Two of the six charged by the US Justice Department, Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks, subsequently pleaded guilty and testified against their codefendants during the trial.
In their testimony, both Garbin and Franks said they willingly participated in the development of the kidnapping plan and trained for it. Garbin revealed that the kidnapping plot was intended to ignite a civil war in the US involving antigovernment groups that would prevent Joe Biden from winning the presidential election. Franks said he planned to sacrifice his life in an armed confrontation with the governor’s security team and law enforcement officers.
Other key prosecution testimony was provided by several FBI informants who joined the Wolverine Watchmen after law enforcement officers were alerted to discussion of violence against government officials by members of the militia group.
When the prosecution rested the defense moved for a direct acquittal on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence against the men to move the case to jury deliberations. This standard motion in a criminal trial was quickly denied by US District Judge Robert Jonker, who said the testimony of Garbin and Franks was sufficient evidence to move forward.
The seriousness of the case and its connection with the wider threat of fascism in the US was highlighted on Wednesday when FBI agents raided a home in the Detroit suburb of Hazel Park following alleged death threats made against trial participants. According to an FBI representative, threats were made against Judge Jonker, two defense attorneys and one witness. The FBI said no arrests have been made and gave no details about the nature of the threats.
The plot against Whitmer was part of a broader conspiracy by fascistic militia elements to kidnap and/or kill governors who opposed Donald Trump’s attempt to lift all pandemic restrictions and force workers back into unsafe work locations, factories and schools in 2020. In addition to the plot against Whitmer, plots were also reported against Virginia Democratic Governor Ralph Northam and Ohio Republican Governor Mike DeWine.
Following demonstrations on April 15 at the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing and the Capitol buildings in Virginia and Minnesota, Donald Trump notoriously tweeted: “Liberate Michigan,” “Liberate Minnesota,” and “Liberate Virginia.” Trump and other fascistic figures within the Republican Party encouraged the protests that included Confederate flags and Nazi emblems. These demonstrations and the plots against the governors were dress rehearsals for the attempt to overturn the results of the November 2020 elections that culminated in the mob assault on the US Capitol in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/03/31/coup-m31.html
Jacob Crosse
30 March 2022
Official White House phone logs turned over to the House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on Congress have revealed a nearly eight-hour gap in the record of calls made by or to President Donald Trump. During virtually the entire time the US Capitol was under attack by far-right Trump supporters and fascist militia elements, there is no record of Trump making a single phone call, despite previous reports that he was in contact with multiple Republican politicians and political operatives throughout the day.
The White House phone logs were turned over to the select committee earlier this year after the Supreme Court, in an 8–1 decision with arch-conservative Justice Clarence Thomas being the lone dissenter, rejected Trump’s claims of “executive privilege” over the records. The records were initially reported on Tuesday by Bob Woodward of the Washington Post and Robert Costa, a former Post reporter now at CBS News, and verified by reporters for the New York Times. The logs show that an unexplained gap of 7 hours and 37 minutes on January 6, 2021, from 11:17 a.m. through 6:54 p.m.
Donald Trump at a rally to contest the certification of the 2020 US presidential election results by the US Congress in Washington on 6 January 2021. Credit Jim Bourg Reuters
The fact that the official White House call logs, which are supposed to be objective records of the actions of government officials, show not a single phone call by the president during the attack on the Capitol by his supporters, seeking to capture lawmakers and delay the certification of the electoral college vote, has no innocent explanation. The scale of the omission or erasure is unprecedented, eclipsing the infamous 18.5 minute gap uncovered in the Richard Nixon White House tape recordings during the Watergate scandal.
While the records, some 11 pages, do not show Trump talking to anyone during the entire course of the insurrection, the records do show Trump at other times constantly on the phone with his political allies, feverishly working to overturn the election of Biden and with it democratic forms of rule in the United States.
The gap in the records is made even more conspicuous given the volume of calls Trump made the morning of January 6 to his co-conspirators. Among those Trump talked to prior to speaking at the “Stop the Steal” rally outside the White House which preceded the attack on the Capitol include former advisor Steve Bannon (8:37 a.m.), his personal coup lawyer Rudy Giuliani (8:42 a.m., 9:41 a.m.), White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows (9:03 a.m.), Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan (9:24 a.m.), Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley (9:39 a.m.), fascist White House adviser Stephen Miller (9:15 a.m.) and Georgia Sen. David Perdue (11:04 a.m.). The last call on the log is listed as an “unidentified person” at 11:17 a.m., believed to have been Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler.
Hawley, who is listed on the records in the evening as well, was the first US senator to object to certifying the 2020 election for Biden. Hawley and over 135 other Republicans continued to object to the certification of Biden, even after the attack on the Capitol, which caused at least five deaths.
In their report for the Post, Woodward and Costa write that Bannon spoke with Trump twice the morning of the attempted coup, during which “Bannon urged Trump to continue to pressure [Vice President Mike] Pence to block congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory … according to people familiar with the exchange.”
Previous public reporting has established Trump’s penchant for using non-government phones to avoid scrutiny, including frequently using the phones of Secret Service agents or of advisers like Scavino to make and receive phone calls.
The frequent use of “burner phones” by high-level Trump administration officials was further exposed in a recent Rolling Stone interview with a mid-level pro-Trump operative, Scott Johnston, formerly of Women for America First (WFAF). WFAF sponsored the rally at the Ellipse on January 6 and Johnston, who has testified before the select committee, claimed that rally organizers Amy and Kylie Kremer were “constantly” using “burner phones … to talk about” plans for the January 6 rally in Washington D.C.
Johnston said that he knew the organizers used non-traceable burner phones to talk with Trump’s inner circle, including Eric Trump, his wife Lara Trump, Mark Meadows and Katrina Pierson, a Trump surrogate. Johnston knew they were using the non-traceable phones because, he said, “I’m the one that bought the burner phones.”
In a pathetic statement Tuesday, Trump claimed to have “no idea what a burner phone is, to the best of my knowledge I have never even heard the term.” Actually, of course, Trump learned much of his political style in the school of the construction industry Mafia, where burner phones are just as essential as knee-breaking, tire chains and concrete blocks.
In another statement on March 29, Trump doubled down on the legitimacy of his attempted coup: “While they say that January 6 was an ‘attempted coup,’ which it was not, they should add that the Election on November 3 was the actual coup … Our country is paying a big price for that Rigged Election!”
While Trump claims to have never heard of a burner phone, there is no doubt the White House logs have been manipulated to shield his criminality. On Wednesday the Guardian reported that the gap is not just a case of Trump using non-traceable phones to hide his illegal coup plotting, instead it appears at least one phone call, placed at 2:26 p.m. by Trump to Utah Sen. Mike Lee, has been deleted from the records.
The Guardian notes that Trump called Lee, “with a number recorded as 202–395–0000, a placeholder number that shows up when a call is incoming from a number of White House department phones, the sources said.”
This specific call by Trump is notable because it was accidental: Trump had been trying to reach Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville. Lee has confirmed that upon receiving the call from Trump, he passed the phone to Tuberville, who spoke to Trump for less than 10 minutes. While Tuberville has never confirmed all the details of the call, he has admitted that Trump inquired about the whereabouts of Pence.
That this call, it appears, has been purposefully deleted is just the latest example of Trump wantonly violating the Presidential Records Act. Last month it was revealed that throughout Trump’s presidency and after the coup, Trump and his advisers had a routine of destroying and burning official government records. After Trump left the White House, he even stowed away over a dozen boxes of sensitive files at his resort compound Mar-a-Lago, which were only recently recovered, some of them hastily taped back together.
Despite the obvious criminality and the mountain of evidence, the Department of Justice has yet to announce even an investigation into Trump’s brazen and repeated violations of the Records Act.
Other known calls involving Trump that were not recorded on the official log include at least one call with former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a call with Pence at 11:20 a.m. and at least one call with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, during which Trump sided with his fascist foot-soldiers, telling McCarthy that they were apparently “more upset of the election than you are.”
After the gap, the next phone call recorded on the logs is at 7:01 p.m. between Trump and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone. Trump continued to make phone calls to his advisers and coup lawyers, including Dan Scavino, Cleta Mitchell, Rudy Giuliani and Jason Miller.
Despite not showing any phone calls for nearly 8 hours, part of which could be explained by the fact that Trump was speaking at the Ellipse urging his far-right supporters to go to the “Capitol” and “fight like hell,” the logs show that at 1:21 p.m. Trump met with the White House valet, indicating that he had returned to the Oval Office.
The next entry in the log is nearly three hours later, at 4:03 p.m. The log states that Trump went to the Rose Garden and at 4:07 p.m. He “participated in a videotaping session of a message to supporters” (those who were fighting the police inside the building) asking them to “peacefully” halt their attack on the Capitol.
At 4:07 p.m. the log states Trump returned to the Oval Office, where he apparently did nothing before going to the “Second Floor Residence” at 6:27 p.m.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/03/31/chev-m31.html
Determined Richmond, California Chevron workers join global movement against spiraling cost of living
Eric London, Katy Kinner
30 March 2022
The situation confronting 600 striking Chevron oil workers in Richmond, California, encapsulates the irrationality of the capitalist system: Skyrocketing oil prices greatly enrich a tiny layer of executives and shareholders who add nothing to the production process. But this same rise in the cost of living makes it harder and harder for workers who actually refine the oil to fill their own cars with the gas they need to drive to work.
The corporate media has effectively ignored the strike, which is now in its second week, for fear that it will trigger a broader movement against the cost of living among workers in all industries and in every country. There is a growing movement of workers in the US and across the world against rapidly rising food and gas costs exacerbated by the war in Ukraine between the US/NATO and Russia. The emerging movement for higher wages spans from 5,000 teachers in Sacramento and 40,000 grocery workers in Southern California to truckers in Spain and teachers in Iran and Sudan.
Striking Richmond, California oil workers (WSWS Media)
The strike began after the Richmond workers voted down two local contracts pushed by the United Steelworkers, which is patterned on the union’s national agreement for 30,000 oil refinery and petrochemical workers. USW President Tom Conway has boasted that the pro-company deal, which includes an average annual raise of only 3 percent over the next four years, will not “add to inflationary pressures.”
In Richmond, the USW is helping the company by keeping workers in the dark. Though negotiations supposedly took place Wednesday, the USW provided workers with no substantive information about what happened.
Even though the USW is staffed by bureaucrats making over $100,000 or $200,000 a year and has assets of $1.5 billion, workers angrily report that the USW has not yet paid out any pay from the union’s giant “Strike & Defense Fund.” Many workers did not even know when they would begin receiving checks, and for what amount.
Workers must understand this for what it is: a blatant attempt by the USW to end the strike on terms favorable to the company.
In an interview with Reuters yesterday, USW Local 5 Vice President BK White said the company was employing delay tactics to “see how many of our people will cross the picket line.”
First, workers have reported that it is other unions at the plant who are the ones ordering workers to cross USW picket lines. Moreover, if the USW says the company is delaying, then why has the USW delayed immediate payment of adequate strike pay to replace lost earnings, which is the most effective way to prevent workers from being pressured into returning to work? On Wednesday, the WSWS called Local 5 headquarters and asked a union official when workers would begin receiving strike pay, but the official said he could not answer and the WSWS did not receive a call back.
The truth is that the USW and Chevron are not “negotiating” against one another, they are working together to conspire against the workers and to break their strike.
A World Socialist Web Site campaign team visited picket lines and were immediately confronted by USW bureaucrats who yelled at workers, ordering them not to speak to the WSWS. This did not deter workers from readily discussing their reasons for striking with WSWS reporters. Out of concern over retribution from the USW and Chevron, the workers asked to use pseudonyms.
The workers’ have many different concerns, including safety and unpaid “stand-by” time, but the most urgent according to most workers was the rising cost of living.
A striking oil worker in Richmond, California (WSWS Media)
Janice, a worker with 14 years of experience at the plant, said she found the company’s 2.5 percent wage increase offer to be insulting. “My main issue is pay,” she said. “Every contract we get closer to the minimum wage. A 2.5 pay increase is a pay cut. I went to put gas in my Yukon the other day and it wouldn’t fill up all the way because the pump wouldn’t go above $100.”
Jim, a younger worker, told the WSWS, “Health care is a major issue. The payments on our Kaiser health care plan just went way up. On top of this the cost of living is going way up. Rent is $2,400 to $2,500 for a three-bedroom place, and that’s still far away from the refinery. People have to move farther and farther away because they cannot afford to live in the Bay Area. I live an hour from work and gas costs $6 a gallon.”
Nancy, who has worked at the refinery for 20 years, said, “The company attempted to coerce us with a $2,500 signing bonus, which after tax is just a mere drop in the bucket. And there is not enough transparency from the union. Many unions are having their members cross our picket lines right now, though not all of them.”
There is profound discontent among the workers over the impact of the pandemic, which has seriously impacted their families and coworkers. While masses of working people have suffered greatly during this period, both physically and financially, the ruling class has used the pandemic to enrich itself even further, keeping production going as 1 million people died in the US alone.
“Two years into this pandemic, we have been the ones keeping things going,” Nancy said. “We have been making the gas so all the nurses and doctors can get to the hospital, we have been making gas so the oxygen trucks can make deliveries. And now management is working as scabs in the refinery, but they have spent the last two years sitting at home safely.”
Don, another striker, told the WSWS, “As for COVID, we had nine or 10 people out with COVID on a daily basis testing positive. And if you are out sick for a while, they will write you up for it even if you have COVID. If you take up half your sick time, they give you a ‘step,’ and under the absence control program, three steps can lead to a firing. And when the contract ended, we went from being ‘essential workers’ to having the police from four different agencies get called out on us. The company painted a property line at all the gates to intimidate us.”
Newly painted "property line" at the refinery gate. Workers could not confirm its accuracy. (WSWS Media)
Striking Chevron workers were eager to learn about the newly formed Oil Workers Rank-and-File Committee (OWRFC), an organization controlled by oil workers themselves aimed at carrying forward their struggle and linking Richmond workers with oil workers across the US and the world.
If workers want to win their demands, it is urgent that they organize among themselves, to coordinate action, share accurate information and communicate with one another and their coworkers at other oil plants.
The OWRFC calls for an understanding among workers that there will be no return to work until the company meets the following demands:
a 40 percent raise and the restoration of cost-of-living adjustments (COLA)
abolition of forced overtime and the restoration of the eight-hour day
expansion of paid time off
an end to unpaid “standby”
fully paid medical benefits
the hiring of more full-time workers
worker-run health and safety committees
the abolition of corrupt joint “labor”-management committees
workers’ control over production rates and input over capital expenditures
fully paid pensions and retiree medical benefits after 25 years of service
the elevation of contractors to full-time positions with the same pay and benefits.
In a statement to the striking workers, a veteran Marathon Petroleum worker in Texas and member of the OWRFC said, “The striking workers in Richmond should know that the issues over which they have decided to strike are not unique to them, as the USW would have them believe. USW national and local reps used intimidation and other thuggish tactics to push through an illegitimate agreement, the contents of which were all but written by the government.
“The union’s goons have told workers at all locals that they were the only ones willing to strike over the deal, which ensures a reduction in the standard of living for all workers through real wage reductions over the next four years. When workers called the union’s bluff, USW officials pointed to the example of the ExxonMobil workers in Beaumont, letting them know in no uncertain terms that, should workers dare go against the union’s wishes and seek a better deal through the traditional means, a work stoppage, the USW would isolate those workers and slowly starve them into eventual capitulation, at which point they would end up with a worse contract than the one they initially voted against.
“The union is without doubt letting these workers in Richmond believe that they were the only ones unhappy with this four-year agreement, but that could not be further from the truth.
“Chevron workers should know that the OWRFC was founded by and for workers who are tired of the USW’s lies and false ‘solidarity,’ and that we stand ready to fight with them for the fair contracts we all deserve. The agreement that was forced to ratification with underhanded strategies benefits the oil companies for whom we work, who are making unbelievable profits due to this administration’s warmongering, and the myriad other companies who see profits soar during international military conflict rather than the workers who keep these facilities running and generating necessary products.
“We all experienced the greed of these corporations during the height of the pandemic, as they expected us ‘essential workers’ to continue performing our duties at the risk of the health and well-being of ourselves and our loved ones. Now, they demand more sacrifice from us so they can continue to make obscene profits and increase the value returned to their shareholders through higher dividends and multi-billion-dollar stock buybacks.
“We will not allow this to happen; the workers can and must work together to ensure that we are not further marginalized and subjected to worse working conditions and lower wages while also suffering from the effects of inflation, which is at a level not seen for several decades, and the breakdown of the global supply chain. United, we have the ability, and responsibility, to ensure that we, and the next generation of oil workers, can adequately provide for ourselves and our families the lives that we all deserve.”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/03/30/blin-m30.html
Jean Shaoul
30 March 2022
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken flew to the Middle East at the weekend to hold an extraordinary meeting with Middle East leaders.
His ostensible purpose was to discuss the region’s relations with Iran, but his overarching mission was to secure full backing for the US/NATO war drive against Russia.
Blinken (third right) at the Negev Summit (Source: Secretary Antony Blinken Twitter)
The hastily arranged meeting, attended by leaders from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Morocco, all of whom signed the Abraham Accords with Israel in 2020, and Egypt, was hosted by Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. It was held in Sde Boker, a town in Israel’s Negev desert. Jerusalem would have been too contentious a location for Israel’s newfound allies, still supposedly committed to a “two-state solution” to the decades-long Israel/Palestine conflict.
The Negev summit comes amid US concern that its longstanding Middle East allies are not firmly on board the Biden administration’s war drive against Russia in a bid to assert US hegemony.
On Tuesday, Blinken met Morocco’s King Mohammed VI and the UAE’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed in Rabat. The UAE hosts numerous Russian oligarchs, has bought weapons from Russia, initially refused to denounce Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, abstaining from a resolution at the United Nations Security Council, and declined calls from US President Joe Biden. Its welcoming of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, who survived US imperialism’s covert war for regime change with Russian help, for a state visit to Abu Dhabi has infuriated Washington.
Tel Aviv has desperately sought to balance between the US and Russia, despite having acted for years as the custodian of US imperialism’s interests.
Israel is home to many immigrants from both Russia and Ukraine on whom it is reliant as a source of cheap labour for its high-tech industries. It has formally supported the US/NATO war drive in Ukraine, but has been very reticent in public, with Bennett ordering his cabinet to remain silent on the issue and refusing to publicly mention “Russia” or “Putin” or criticize Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Senior US politicians and officials have criticised Israel for “sitting on the fence.”
Victoria Nuland, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, called on Bennett to come out of his “comfort zone” and provide Ukraine with military aid while joining the sanctions against Putin, adding that the US did not want Israel “to become the last haven for dirty money that’s fuelling Putin's wars.”
While Israel has sent humanitarian aid to Ukraine, it has refused Kiev’s requests to send arms, including US-made anti-aircraft Stinger missiles or drones, or supply it with Israeli arms company NSO’s Pegasus spyware. Bennett has sought to avoid antagonising Russia, even paying a flying visit to Moscow as the first Western leader to meet Putin after the invasion of Ukraine. He has refused to impose sanctions on Russia or Russian oligarchs, despite Nuland’s insistence that joining the financial sanctions was more important than Israel providing military aid to Ukraine.
A Ukrainian official accused Bennett of using his role as mediator “to justify the fact that Israel is avoiding transferring military aid to Ukraine or joining the sanction slapped on Russia,” while also pressuring Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to accept Russian President Vladimir Putin’s conditions for ending the war—a claim Bennett denied.
Some 30 to 40 Russian oligarchs reside in Israel, where many hold Israeli citizenship. As new immigrants, they do not have to report on their source of income for a 10-year period, while charitable donations to academic, cultural, and other public institutions serve to protect their interests in the public arena. Indeed, Yad VaShem, Israel’s Holocaust Museum, was forced to turn down tens of millions of dollars from the Israeli-Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, after its appeal to the US not to include him in sanctions failed.
At least five cabinet ministers in the present coalition government, including Minister of Defence Benny Gantz, the Speaker of Israel’s parliament and a former political prisoner in the Soviet Union Yuli Edelstein, Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Housing Minister Ze’ev Elkin and Justice Minister Gideon Sa’ar, have links to Israel’s Russian oligarchs.
Israel relies heavily on its trade and investment links with Russia, importing about $1 billion of Russian coal, wheat, diamonds and other goods annually, and exporting about $718 million in agricultural products to Russia in 2020.
Crucially, Israel coordinates its hundreds of airstrikes on Syria with Russia, attacking government positions and fighters and facilities belonging to Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iranian forces, which have played a key role in defending the Assad regime against the oppositionists armed and trained by the Sunni Gulf states, Turkey and the CIA.
Tel Aviv’s too open public opposition to Russia’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine would contradict its own diplomatic campaigns against the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement that opposes Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories and the International Criminal Court that is investigating suspected crimes committed during Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza in 2014, its 15-year blockade of the enclave and military occupation of the West Bank. It was for this very reason that former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu turned for support and trade with far right and authoritarian governments including Brazil, Hungary, Ukraine, India, China, the Philippines and Russia.
The petro-monarchs in the Gulf have also been less than enthusiastic about the Biden administration’s war drive. They have been angered by:
Washington’s lack of support for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak during the Egyptian revolution in 2011.
Its failure to openly prosecute the proxy war for regime change in Syria.
Its lack of overt support for the Saudi-led war against the Houthis who toppled Riyadh’s hated puppet in Yemen, President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, that has turned the country into the world’s greatest humanitarian disaster.
Its distancing from the Gulf nations’ public split in 2017 with Qatar, which they accused of supporting Iran and extremism.
Its treatment of Saudi de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as a pariah for ordering the murder of insider turned dissident Jamal Khashoggi in its Istanbul consulate in 2018.
And above all:
President Joe Biden’s apparent political withdrawal from the Middle East, where Saudi Arabia and Iran have backed opposing sides in regional wars and political conflicts in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria for years, in favour of its “great power rivalry” policy with China and Russia; and
His efforts to revive the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which is accused of supporting their own restive Shia populations.
The Gulf rulers have sought to end their overwhelming reliance on the US and turned to Russia and China for trade and investment. They have refused US demands to increase oil production to lower prices on the world market.
The US has sought to reassure them that Washington will not agree to Iran’s demand for the US to lift its designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organisation. Neither would the US allow Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons.
The growing distance between the US and its allies takes place amid the disastrous economic impact of the war in Ukraine, threatening shortages of wheat and other products from Ukraine and Russia in a region already seething with discontent, poverty and inequality.
Blinken, who also met Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, later flew on to Rabat where he discussed the contentious issue of the Western Sahara. There, in his meeting on Tuesday with the UAE’s de facto ruler, he sought to reassure the Gulf monarchs of Washington’s determination to help them fend off attacks from the Iran-aligned Houthi group in Yemen.
Speaking in advance of his trip to neighbouring Algiers, the Algerian capital, the following day, he said he would discuss how “to alleviate some of the burden that this [the war] is placing on people, including throughout the Middle East.” This was code for trying to persuade Algeria to become an alternative gas supplier to Russia, thereby reducing his allies’ dependency on Moscow for its energy needs and reducing gas prices.
