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Month: July 2021

Stop Ireland’s Support for the Israeli Rogue State

An Open Letter to the Irish Ambassador to Israel


19/07/2021

Irish composer (and occasional German resident) Raymond Deane has written an open letter to Ireland’s ambassador to Israel, condemning Ireland’s continued support for Israel. The open letter is below, but first Raymond has written some background information for theleftberlin.com on Ireland’s relationship to Palestine.

Ireland is probably the EU country most sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. This has a clear historical basis. Arthur Balfour, who in 1917 signed the Declaration naming Palestine “a national home for the Jewish people”, had 30 years earlier earned the nickname “Bloody Balfour” as colonial supremo in Ireland and opponent of Irish Home Rule. On Irish (partial) independence in 1922, the brutal Black and Tan paramilitaries were transferred from Ireland to British-occupied Palestine. The partition of Ireland (1921) and that of Palestine (1947) have caused endless bloodshed.

While this solidarity runs deep among Irish people, successive governments have faced the quandary of how to reflect it superficially while simultaneously appeasing their overlords in Washington and Brussels (or Berlin). This compares with Ireland’s traditional commitment to “military neutrality” to which successive governments have paid lip-service while simultaneously allowing Shannon Airport to be used by the US Air Force, joining NATO’s Orwellian “Partnership for Peace”, and supporting moves towards the creation of an EU army.

In 2018 Senator Frances Black tabled the Occupied Territories Bill criminalising trade with territories deemed occupied under international law. This was supported by the entire Senate and by all political parties except the right-wing Fine Gael – which, unfortunately, happened to be in government, and is still the major component in a three-party coalition. Foreign Affairs minister Simon Coveney blocked the legislation, citing a legal opinion from the Attorney General claiming that the bill would break EU trade law – an opinion widely discounted by legal experts.

In May 2021 the Dáil passed a motion tabled by the centre-left Sinn Féin party declaring that the building of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories constitutes de facto annexation. Clearly the government felt unable to resist popular sentiment again in the aftermath of Israel’s latest onslaught on Gaza. However, Coveney inserted an amendment condemning “the violent acts of Hamas and other militant groups, including the firing of rockets and incendiary devices from Gaza into Israel, [and] the disproportionate and indefensible response of Israel bombing civilians…” Armed resistance to oppression, although mandated under international humanitarian law, is condemned as the cause of Israel’s “disproportionate… response.” It was assumed that Sinn Féin would reject it and the bill be shelved, but Coveney’s bluff was called and – rightly or wrongly – the amendment was accepted.

The outrage from Israel and its unconditional defenders was predicable. Notable among the latter was the former Fine Gael minister for “justice, equality and defence” Alan Shatter, who in an incendiary article in the Jerusalem Post on June 1, referred scurrilously to “the motion’s antisemitic objective of achieving a Judenrein [sic] east Jerusalem and West Bank” and compared Ireland to Iran!

In the same paper three weeks later, the Irish ambassador to Israel Kyle O’Sullivan tried to undo the damage Shatter’s undiplomatic piece may have occasioned, but without overtly disagreeing with him. In turn, I wrote the following reply to Mr. O’Sullivan and copied it to Minister Coveney. I am still awaiting a reply from either gentleman:

The letter

Your Excellency, Ambassador O’Sullivan:

As an Irish citizen, I wish to object in the strongest terms to your article Ireland pushes Israel to resolve the Palestinian conflict, published in the Jerusalem Post on 23d June. Your protestations of “friendship” and “respect” for a rogue state like Israel are an affront to the victims of that state’s oppression, and imply contempt for the norms of international law and international humanitarian law of which Israel is flagrantly in breach.

Your contention that “[p]eople who live with the threat of terrorist attacks and atrocities… cannot afford to look at things in the same way as people who do not live with this threat” is clearly meant as an apology for the deeply-felt solidarity with the Palestinian cause felt by so many conscientious Irish people. It fails to contextualise Palestinian acts of resistance within the framework of Israel’s ongoing occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands, and its disposession and disenfranchisement of Palestinian people.

Clearly your willingness to shift the blame for Israel’s criminality on to the shoulders of its Palestinian victims complies with Irish government policy: one recalls the amendment to that effect with which the government vainly attempted to palliate the recent Dáil motion condemning the settlements as de facto annexation.

Your distinction between “a sovereign state defending itself, and a terrorist group indiscriminately attacking civilians” constitutes a tendentious and one-sided interpretation of the relationship between Israel and (specifically) the Gaza Strip that is open to several objections.

Firstly, it is questionable to describe a state such as Israel that has no clearly defined and internationally accepted borders as “a sovereign state”, particularly when it extends its supposed sovereignty to colonial settlers living illegally within occupied territories.

Secondly, the phrase “defending itself” again attributes victim status to Israel, whereas under international law its stance towards the Palestinian people is defined as “belligerent occupation”.

Thirdly, the description of Hamas as “a terrorist group”, while reflecting US and EU policy (no testimony to its accuracy), omits any recognition of the fact that in 2006 Hamas won an election described as “free and fair” by observers such as former US president Jimmy Carter, although the adjective “free” hardly applies to an election taking place under occupation. The profoundly anti-democratic refusal of the US and EU to accept the result of that election and the refusal of the Ramallah regime to accept Hamas’s offer to share power can be blamed for much subsequent bloodshed.

Fourthly, you fail to mention that under international law Palestinians under occupation have the right to armed resistance.

Fifthly, the assertion that Hamas “indiscriminately attack[s] civilians” implies that Israel is innocent of such attacks. The reality is that Israel’s periodic assaults on Gaza – in particular its bombardments of high-rise buildings – have caused predominantly civilian fatalities and injuries. Further: if Israel’s slaughter of civilians is not indiscriminate, then it is intentional and calculated, and its criminality all the greater.

Sixthly, you fail to mention that since 2007 Israel (abetted by successive Egyptian dictatorships) has imposed a blockade on Gaza that was condemned by the UN in 2008 as collective punishment and described by former UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk as a crime against humanity. In 2010 Micheál Martin, then minister for foreign affairs and now Taoiseach, described the blockade as “inhumane and unacceptable” – an assessment that our government appears to have conveniently forgotten.

You assert that “the Irish government has always supported Israel’s right to exist, including with its Jewish character, and its right to defend itself in accordance with international law.”

This again raises a number of questions.

Firstly, it is universally accepted under international law that no state has a “right to exist.” Use of that phrase by Israel’s unconditional defenders translates as “Israel’s right to exist as an apartheid state and belligerent occupier of Palestinian lands”. If the Irish government supports this non-existent “right”, then it is complicit in Israeli abuses of that “right.”

Secondly, it is startling – if true – that the Irish government supports Israel’s purported “Jewish character,” an ethnocentric and sectarian designation comparable to describing Northern Ireland as “a Protestant state for a Protestant people”. This “Jewish character” was enshrined in Israel’s racist 2018 Nation-State Law which was condemned by the UN, the EU and the entire Arab world. Is the Irish government now standing apart from this consensus, and if so, has it informed the Irish people of the fact?

Thirdly, it is quite clear that Israel’s actions, whether or not one can characterise them as “self-defence,” are not “in accordance with international law.” Indeed no state on earth has violated more UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, and Israel has even rejected the applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention to its policy of colonial settlement, now established as “a national value” by the Nation State Law.

Further: you claim that the Irish and Israeli governments “agree that international relations should be based on the principles of the UN Charter, and that government should be based on the rule of law, on democracy and on respect for human rights and human dignity. When we differ, we differ about the application of these principles and values in a particular case, not about the principles themselves.”

Regarding the latter point, it is fallacious to make a distinction between the acceptance of principles and their application. The ultimate consequence of such logic is that any crime is acceptable as long as those perpetrating it believe themselves above the law.

The remainder of your formulation is equally vacuous. Article 1 of Chapter 1 of the UN Charter calls for “respect for the principle of… self-determination of peoples”. The very foundation of the state of Israel in 1948 entailed the suppression of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, and the 2018 Nation-State law explicitly confines that right to Jewish people.

The rule of law in Israel/Palestine is twofold: one set of laws for Jews, and another for Palestinians – whether resident in “sovereign” Israel or under occupation. There is a word for such a system, a word recently deployed by Human Rights Watch and by the Israeli human rights organisations B’tselem and Yesh Din: that word is apartheid, and it is conspicuously absent from your article. To suggest that the “human dignity” of those living under such a system is respected is another insult to those whom the Israeli state has robbed of everything except self-respect.

Equally absurd is your reference to “states like Ireland and like Israel who do not have the geopolitical muscle to simply impose their preferences”. Israel possesses illicit nuclear weapons and can draw on the full “geopolitical muscle” of the USA – not to mention the diplomatic and trading muscle of the EU – to “impose its preferences.”

You assert that “[n]o other workable and decent alternative has been proposed than a two-state solution…”

This is factually dubious: potentially workable and decent proposals for a single democratic and non-sectarian state have repeatedly been put forward down the years, most recently the joint Israeli/Palestinian One Democratic State Campaign; on the other hand, no practicable blueprint for achieving a “workable and decent” two-state alternative has been outlined, nor has such an alternative ever been unambiguously accepted by any Israeli government. At a time when even Leo Varadkar [leader of Fine Gael] is mooting the possibility of a united Ireland, your enthusiasm for the ongoing partition of historic Palestine is a little mysterious.

Finally, you assert that “[t]he Irish government opposes any form of sanctions or boycotts against Israelis or Israel”. This hardly comes as a surprise. Israel has been in violation of the human rights clause (Article 2) of the EU-Israel trade agreement ever since it was signed in 1995, yet has suffered no consequences. Indeed in 2019 the EU Commission refused even to register a Citizens’ Initiative aimed at “stopping trade with Israeli settlements.” The Irish government has refused to ratify Senator Frances Black’s Occupied Territories Bill on the basis of unpublished legal advice apparently suggesting that EU trade law trumps international humanitarian law.

The government’s blanket opposition to “any form of sanctions” actually constitutes an unprecedented guarantee of impunity for the Israeli state, while the rejection of boycott flies in the face of Irish history from the days of the Land League to the exemplary campaign against South African apartheid. Would the current Irish government have opposed the latter campaign? One can only speculate…

Your claim “that in Ireland there is widespread public sympathy for the humanitarian situation of the Palestinian people” disingenuously attempts to depoliticise our solidarity with a people whose violent disposession and colonisation bears so many parallels with our own history. As long as the Irish government persists in distancing itself from such solidarity, it will be open to the accusation of complicity with Israel’s politics of oppression. The imposition of sanctions on Israel is the only acceptable way to bring civil society’s campaign of boycott and divestment to an end.

Yours sincerely –

Raymond Deane

Dublin

Rhineland floods are the result of human-made Climate Change

Unless we stop dependency on energy companies, the floods will continue.


18/07/2021

by Mark Bergfeld, who grew up in the area

I grew up in Erftstadt, went to school in Kerpen and played soccer (ages 6-19) in most of the towns and villages hit by the floods. I also was a local council candidate and have been part of progressive mobilisations in the area.

The flooded areas of the Rhein-Erft Kreis and in particular Erftstadt are both historically and economically intertwined with lignite coal mining, one of the dirtiest fossil fuels. All lakes in the region are former open cast coal mines and Garzweiler still operates today.

Most of my friends’ dads worked for the energy company RWE, and many young guys in the area still regard it as a good employer which affords them a decent life. When I was in school we would regularly visit the open cast coal mine down the road to learn about lignite.

But the lignite mining industry does not only dominates our cultural identity, career aspirations and education system – it also shapes our political representation. Gregor Golland (CDU) who earns 120k Euros for his part-time job at RWE, is also the representative in the Nordrhein-Westfalen (NRW) state parliament.

RWE’s political and economic power are a major obstacle to moving toward carbon neutrality and shifting away from fossil fuels. Unfortunately, the German federal government will only exit from coal production in 2038. This constitutes a breach of the Paris Climate Agreement.

The devastation that Erftstadt and other towns in the regions are seeing are not due to technical issues but human-made climate change. However, there is a technical issue at hand which cannot be neglected.

The dams are breaking because they haven’t been built for such scenarios. The little streams have turned into rivers because they have been straightened and folks built their houses on the banks. Such ‘technical issues’ need to be addressed in Erftstadt and across the EU.

Importantly, there is a political dimension to this man-made disaster. The EU Commission has put forward its #Fitfor55 package. It offers too little, too late. Germany is putting its car and coal industries before human lives in Erftstadt and elsewhere.

Erftstadt will never be the same after this. Towns like Blessem stand in ruins. The collective trauma can be witnessed already. Politicians are only gearing up for the federal elections in September by promising money for home owners and those affected by the floods.

But in the cracks & amidst the ruins old social networks are being reactivated and new mutual aid networks are emerging. I don’t know whether they will be strong enough to dislodge the power of the CDU and RWE. But they sure will be important for others when catastrophe strikes.

To finish up: Greta Thunberg has consistently said that politicians should listen to climate scientists. In September, the German electorate should punish all those who have been denying climate science or putting the coal and car industry’s interests above people and planet.

It requires equitable solutions to the climate crisis. This means folks need green union jobs that provide them with a strong occupational and cultural identity that lignite and the car industry once provided. That is a small piece of the puzzle that will need to be addressed.

Covid, crisis, migration: How is the European working class changing?

Interview with Beatriz Casas González, one of the authors of Coalition of Labour: Worker’s Voice in Europe


16/07/2021

Hello Beatriz. Could you start by just saying a few words about who you are?

Hi Phil. I’m a migrant worker from Spain, currently based in Munich, where I work as a social researcher. I do empirical research on labour in different settings, ranging from factories to hospitals. Before that I lived in Berlin, and later in London. During that time, I was a student and part of different grassroots movements, like the [Spanish anti-austerity movement]15-M and the labour union UVW [United Voices of the World].

Now, I’m a PhD scholar of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, RLS), and investigate workers’ perception of domination in digitalised factories.

Transform! Europe has just issued a new dossier Coalition of Labour: Worker’s Voice in Europe to which you contributed the chapter on Germany. What is the aim of the dossier, and how did you get involved?

I got to know about the possibility of participating in the empirical research that Transform! Europe was planning through the RLS-network. The project immediately appealed to me, so I got in touch with the organisers in Germany and Italy and applied to be part of it.

The purpose of the research was to find out how people in different European countries – Italy, France, and Germany – felt about their living and working experiences. We wanted to know how the changes in the labour markets in those countries affected peoples’ lives and self-perceptions, how they relate to politics in a broader sense, meaning welfare state institutions, labour unions… and to other workers as well.

We also asked our interviewees – men and women in very different life and work situations – about their prospects and wishes for their personal and collective future. And of course, how the COVID-19 pandemic, and the responses to it, affected them on different levels.

The product of this empirical research is a lively picture, a sort of colourful mosaic made of peoples’ testimonies— who, despite their differences, often share common experiences of inequality and injustice, but also of solidarity and hope.

You say that ‘the so-called German “employment miracle” has been accompanied by a rising prevalence of low hourly pay’ – with many people being paid well below the minimum wage and having to work unsocial hours. How strong is the German economy, and are workers benefiting?

This is an interesting question, and the answer to it depends on how we define the German ‘economy’. Our research tells us something which is by no means new, but still worth emphasising one more time: that the ‘economy’, far from being distinct, homogeneous system, closed in itself, is in fact marked by inequalities, conflicting interests, blurred limits and interdependencies with other social spheres –like the household, the ‘informal’ economy, the education system, etc.

The strength of the German economy, like every other one, depends upon the exploitation of both waged and unwaged, visible and invisibilised labour, in the workplace, in the household, in other countries… Thus, the benefits of relative minority go hand in hand with the life and work precarisation of many others, and with the reproduction and further deepening of inequalities on the grounds of class, gender, nationality, ‘race’, etc.

And, again, this is nothing new, but far from outdated either. It has indeed been further aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the political responses to it.

The dossier also covers France and Italy. How do you think Germany compares with what is happening elsewhere in Europe?

Of course there are differences not only among countries, but also within them, among workers. However, the interviews exemplify the general deterioration of the working conditions of European workers: great contractual instability and the perception of a decreasing control over one’s own employment situation were common among respondents.

Job insecurity is coupled with low compensation, and more people, here and in the other two countries we considered, are faced with a trade-off between decent employment conditions and earning enough for meeting their own needs. Workers are increasingly forced to accept overtime and working multiple jobs as the only viable solution to low wages.

In the interviews I conducted in Germany, the interviewees widely held the belief that the conditions of the labour markets were exceptionally favourable, in comparison to other countries. Again, there are aspects where this might be the case. Still, slash workers, that is, people doing more than one job at once, were common among the respondents in Germany too.

How has Covid-19 affected German workers and unemployed people? For example, what was the experience of Kurzarbeit?

The Kurzarbeit is a very good example of how the responses to the COVID-19 in Germany have affected workers unequally, and sometimes even reinforced existing inequalities.

First, because Kurzarbeit was a measure which especially applied to employees in relatively secure employment relations. Those workers who were, for instance, in probation time, subcontracted, temporary workers, apprentices… they didn’t get any Kurzarbeit, in most cases, they simply lost their jobs during the crisis.

Just like people working in the gastronomy sector. One of the interviewees, a young man doing several jobs at the same time, one of them as a waiter, told us how the combination of lockdown plus years of gentrification in the city where he works and lives meant that the bar where he worked had to shut down, and he lost his main source of income overnight.

So, we see also there how this current crisis is intertwined with other elements of our capitalist systems that were already there, and then got reinforced or accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. But also among those workers who did get Kurzarbeit we find big differences.

Our interviews show how for those workers in employment situations with relative high levels of employment security and pay, a reduction of working time and wage didn’t imply serious financial constraints. Moreover, Kurzarbeit gave them the possibility of having more free time for other activities, which they often perceived as more meaningful than labour, like political activism, leisure, family time…

On the other hand, for workers with part-time jobs, earning 600€/month, a reduction of wage and working time meant not being able to pay their rent anymore.

Your findings on the politicisation of migrant workers appear to be contradictory. On the one hand, the non-Germans who you interview tend to have a higher level of political awareness. On the other, you report that for various reasons (language, a sense of only being here temporarily, precarious jobs), migrants are also less engaged in German politics. Is this a contradiction? If not, how can it be resolved?

Yes, I find this also very interesting. In my experience as a migrant worker, and as a person who has been engaged in different kinds of social and labour movements with a great majority of migrant people, I don’t necessarily see it as a contradiction. I think it has to do with the little openness and approachability of institutions like traditional labour unions towards migrant people, in particular, and towards ‘atypical’ workers, in general.

It is not by chance that migrant people are overrepresented among ‘atypical’ workers, by which I mean fix-termed, part-time, temporary, often precarious workers, all things that today, and since a couple of decade, are not so ‘atypical’ anymore…

So, it’s a mixture of factors, on the one hand, these structural obstacles: as you said, the language barrier; the sense of only being here for a short period of time, whether this ends up being the case or not is another question; the lacking citizenship rights, that is, not being able to vote in most of the elections in Germany; not having enough labour-free time because of multiple, precarious jobs…

And on the other hand, as I said, the still unresolved problem with traditional labour unions, which unfortunately fail to make space for the needs and circumstances of migrant workers, among other groups of workers.

However, the fact that migrants are often not engaged in German politics, because of all these reasons, does not mean that they are not politically engaged in Germany at all. I mentioned before the grassroots movement 15-M, of which I was part during my time in Berlin. Following the financial crisis of 2007, the 15-M expanded from Spain to different cities across Europe, where mostly young, highly qualified people, without future perspectives in their country of origin but thirsty for a radical change in the system, migrated.

The 15-M as such does not exist anymore, neither in Spain nor elsewhere, but some initiatives that were launched under its spirit, like the “Oficina Precaria” in Berlin, are still active and they do a very important job, supporting and giving advice to migrant people who struggle with the job centre, abusive employers and landlords, etc.

This is an example of self-organisation by migrant workers, not through the official institutions, but in response to them. That is, either looking to compensate a lack of support, like in the case of labour unions, or looking to solve problems with those institutions, like the job centre.

Your report says that the gender pay gap has narrowed in Germany in recent years – but only by a few percentage points. What is changing, and is it changing quickly enough?

The gender pay gap has to do with various factors, but at the origin of it there is a gender division of labour. This is a structuring feature of our capitalist and patriarchal systems, deeply rooted in our minds, cultures, institutions, etc., and therefore not so easy to subvert. This gender division of labour is also another expression of capitalist exploitation, and a key factor upon which the strength of the German ‘economy’, about which we talked before, depends. And the same applies to the French, the Italian, the Spanish…

What is changing? Look, I always try to be optimistic and find reasons for hope, but with regards to this issue, I don’t see much change, unfortunately. If I look in my personal circles, If I look at the numbers and statistics, if I look at other empirical, qualitative reports…everywhere I see that women do most of the unpaid, invisibilised reproductive work. Very often on top of their waged activity.

Of course, there are many people exploring other ways of caring for each other that break with this patriarchal and exploitative model: collectivising care, challenging gender roles and expectations, questioning productivist ways of living, feeling and thinking, and looking for other sources of meaning and fulfilment beyond economic success and the centrality of waged labour. But in my view, this isn’t changing quick enough, no. Maybe such a transcendental change, affecting the very core of our systems, can’t undergo a quick change.

One of the women I interviewed for the report told me about her experiences as a single mother and a precarious worker. She told me about her lacking control over her own work and free time, the negative experiences with the job centre, the lack of state support, having to do multiple jobs, on top of caring for her son alone. She told me about her worries about the future, since she knew public pensions in Germany wouldn’t suffice for carrying a decent life, as she saw in the case of her mother.

Hers is not a single case, but paradigmatic of a structural phenomenon: it’s not only, as I said before, that women do most of the unpaid, reproductive work, often on top of waged labour. Also, women are over proportionally affected by precarity and old-age poverty. And I don’t think this is a “system failure”, but again, a very defining feature of our systems.

Many of your interviewees say that they have a poor work-life balance. Do you this that this affects more people now than in previous years? Why?

I think that poor work-life balance is a result of lacking control over own’s work-time and work-free time, and this has to do, on the one hand, with the precaritisation of work and life. As the report makes clear, precaritisation is a general trend in all three countries under consideration.

We know this already from many other studies over the past decades; this is indeed nothing new; but despite not being new, this trend is far from being over or reverted. So, yes, I think in that sense, this phenomenon is something that affects more people now than before. But, and this is the key aspect, it does not affect everyone in society equally: it is a class issue.

Moreover, poor work-life balance has also to do with other topics we have already touched, like the unequal division of reproductive work among women and men, and the overrepresentation of women in precarious work and life situations throughout their lives. In that sense, it is also a gendered phenomenon. It has also a cultural dimension, I think, related to the centrality of waged labour in our lives, and its construction as a symbol of status at the expenses of other aspects of social life.

That is, being ‘busy’ has a positive connotation in our society, even when it has negative consequences for our mental and physical health. But, again, this is not in the first, a purely cultural phenomenon, and by no means a free choice, at least for most people: it has structural causes and consequences.

What do you think was the most important finding of the dossier?

The dossier concludes with an important ambiguity: although the material and subjective conditions for the formation of a ‘European working class’ are far from given today, most workers we interviewed sent a message of unity and solidarity with other workers across countries.

There is a sense of not knowing exactly how, and on what grounds, this solidarity should be constructed. But the will and the intuition of this unity is there, despite national borders, despite fragmentations in the structure of the labour markets, even despite a clear idea of what ‘working class’ actually means today.

There is still a will, even a need, for alliances among workers, within and across countries. This arises, so the people we interviewed, from the awareness that the individual situation, the personal experiences of injustice, precarity, lack of autonomy, the financial constraints… all this is not something affecting only them as individuals. They know it is a collective problem, and as such, the solution needs to be collective.

And it must come from below, from the people themselves, with their differences: employed, unemployed, underemployed, moonlighters… This isn’t easy, I know, they know. But the alternative, the things as they are now, is for most of them not a realistic option either.

Beatriz and the other authors of the Coalition of Labour: Workers’ Voices in Europe Dossier will be introducing their findings an an online book launch on Monday, 19th July

News from Berlin and Germany: 17th July 2021

News from Berlin compiled by Ana Ferreira


Every third Berliner has no right to vote at all

1.3 million Berliners, more than a third of the city´s population, are not allowed to vote in elections to the House of Representatives and the Bundestag, or in referendums. For years, the number of city residents without political representation has been rising. Those without political representation are not evenly distributed across the city: the largest proportion of non-voters, over 70 per cent, is in constituency 415, in Lichtenberg. At the other extreme is constituency 923, in Weissensee, where only 1.4 per cent of residents do not have the right to vote. Source: rbb

NEWS FROM GERMANY

Attac launches campaign for wealth tax

An Attac campaign for the appropriate taxation of wealth started with an action in front of the Frankfurt stock exchange. Under the slogan “Who pays? With wealth tax out of the crisis!”, Attac demands the reintroduction of wealth tax, the reform of inheritance tax as well as a one-off wealth levy to compensate for the burdens of the pandemic. In detail, Attac demands a taxation which prevents a further concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, as well as an inheritance and gift tax, also applied to heirs of large estates, including business assets. Source: attac

Former police chief accused of sexual assault

The ex-head of the Thuringian police union is alleged to have sexually assaulted his former female employee, but it was only after the allegations became known in April, more than a year after the investigations began, that Kai Christ resigned from his post as regional head of the GdP. In June 2021, the public prosecutor’s office in Erfurt closed the investigation against him. Sufficient suspicion could not be established, according to this. However, some questions remain: if Christ is innocent, what is the deal with masturbation videos he sent to the employee? And why did Christ resign only a year after the investigation began? Source: taz

Call for Mini jobs to be scrapped

A new study from the Bertelsmann Foundation, “Get out of the mini-job trap,” is calling for mini-jobs to be abolished. Usually, the system works well for individuals who want a small side income, but increasingly this possibility has also been taken on by individuals with low qualifications and women who want to combine work with family. Among issues pointed outar that this group is not entitled to unemployment benefits. And its workers might not build up an adequate pension, and are at a higher risk of old-age poverty. The economists are therefore calling for low-income workers to be better cushioned, by making social security contributions due. Source: iamexpat

More and more children live in poverty

Child poverty in Germany is growing. This is the central finding of a study from the Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband. While the poverty rate of under-18s was still 18.2 per cent in 2010, it has risen to 20.5 per cent by 2019. The study also examined differences in child poverty between the federal states. For instance, in various western states the issue seems to be bigger in the so-called “new federal states”. The study also warns of a further worsening of child poverty due to the Corona pandemic. The Paritätische demands, among other things, the introduction of a needs-based income-related basic child benefit. Source: nd

German Communists banned from standing in the general election

This is a bureaucratic manoeuvre which could be used in the future against Muslims and the Left


14/07/2021

On 8th July 2021 it was announced by the Federal Election Commissioner (Bundeswahlleiter) that the German Communist Party (DKP) will not be allowed to contest the coming national election in September. The reason given for this was that the party had repeatedly handed in its financial report too late. As financial reports have to be compiled following a lot of time-consuming work by accountants, it is not surprising that small parties often find it difficult to follow the timetable.

This bureaucratic problem could lead to a full ban of the DKP. In 2018, the German law on parties was amended. The new law – which takes effect retroactively from 2015 (or 2016, the exact date is disputed) – contains the following passage:“An organisation loses its legal status as a party when they do not take part in a national or local election with their own election proposals for six years.”

This means that if a party decides not to take the expensive step of contesting local elections, it only needs to miss one general election to lose its legal status. If the DKP challenge to this decision fails, they will lose their legal status on the 29th of July. This has several implications.

In an interview with the newspaper junge Welt, DKP chair Patrik Köbele explained: “the loss of party status has two implications: that, like every random association, we can be banned by a decision of the interior minister, and that it is no longer possible to issue a certificate that would enable donations to be written off against tax. The latter is an attack on the financial base of the DKP.”

Increase in state bans

The ban of the DKP is not an isolated case. At the beginning of this year, Germany’s main anti-fascist organisation, the VVN-BdA (Association of people persecuted by the Nazis – Federation of antifascists) had its charity status removed, as did the anti-globalisation organisation attac. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Verfassungsschutz) has put the junge Welt newspaper under observation.

Flags of the Kurdish organisations PKK and YPG are banned in Germany, and a recent ban has been issued on the non-existent flag of Hamas. Bans on Palestinians and their supporters go much further than Hamas. We have reported on several instances of how organisations and individuals giving a platform to Palestinian voices have had concerts cancelled and funding removed in recent months. Even the Jewish Voice for Peace (Jüdische Stimme) has had its bank account closed.

This is not just a matter for the Left and supporters of Palestine. In the run up to the election, and under the name of “fighting Islamism”, a working group of MPs from the governing party, the CDU, is considering “if and how the introduction of a mosque register is constitutional.” The CDU/CSU fraction in the Bundestag is demanding surveillance of mosques by the security services. Many mosques have been under surveillance for quite some time.

Meanwhile, the German State seems to be a lot more sanguine about the far right. A Thüringen court recently rescinded the decision to view the AfD as a “test case” and a possible danger to democracy. This at a time when the growing Nazification of the AfD is becoming increasingly clear. This is before we get to the Nazis who are organising in state institutions like the police.

Meanwhile the number of right wing extremists in Germany who are sanctioned to own weapons is growing. The “NSU Complex”, which led to the trial of five Neo-Nazis has shown an astonishing level of state support for the Nazis. It does seem that the state is, as the saying goes, “blind in the right eye”. This means that any bans will be used disproportionately against the Left and religious minorities.

An attack on us all

I am not a member of the DKP – but of another party, die LINKE. I have significant political differences with the DKP and believe that it is a mistake for them to stand in elections and to split the Left vote. However, they are part of the wider political Left, and such debates should be resolved through comradely discussions and not state bans.

This is not least because any strengthening of the state’s ability to decide which parties are “legitimate” – and which are not – could be used against all of us. The German state has already banned left-wing organisations. One of the first acts of the Nazi government in 1933 was to Enabling Act which banned the KPD. A similar ban was issued by Konrad Adenauer’s CDU government in 1956. In both cases, the “fight against communism” was used to justify wider repression and attacks on civil liberties.

When push comes to shove, the state is not neutral. Black Lives Matter has made clear what many of us already knew – there is a high level of racist police violence, both in Germany as well as the USA. Demonstrations against racism are often heavily policed, particularly those containing a significant number of young Muslims. Meanwhile demonstrations of Corona deniers – often with a strong Nazi presence – are generally allowed to run rampant.

Ultimately, the people who would ban the DKP would be the same people who prevent serious investigations into the AfD, who allow a serious Nazi presence in the police and security services, and who are maintaining a neo-liberal racist state. They are not our friends. Any ban on the DKP will only strengthen the power of this state.

As LINKE MP Niema Movassat says

“with the loss of their party status, the DKP loses the specific protections for parties – such as against banning orders. The interior minister can ban the DKP relatively easily. With the history of the persecution of Communists in this country, this all has a politically unsavoury taste”.

A ban on elections is not the same as a full ban of the party, but it is a distinct possibility, depending on how we react.This means that the starting point for any serious socialist is not to question whether the DKP followed their bureaucratic obligations to the last detail, nor to bring up specific differences we may have, say, on the nature of the Chinese state. This is not why the DKP is under attack. If they are successfully removed, right wing forces will be coming for socialists, Muslims and other minorities next.

But if we stand together, we will all be stronger.