Sunday 20th of July 2025
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merzian dirty work....

 

Forget the fog of war. Even in war, and sometimes especially in war, some things are exceedingly clear. Regarding the so-called ‘Hamas-Israel War’, for instance, it is obvious that in reality it is not a war at all but a genocide, namely the Gaza Genocide, carried out by Israel against the Palestinians whose unbroken resistance will be the stuff of legends, and of history too.

 

Moscow, beware: Germany just discovered the joys of illegal war
Kant is spinning in his grave, while Friedrich Merz is devising maxims from hell

BY Tarik Cyril Amar

 

Likewise, in the case of Israel’s current assault on Iran – really, of course, a combined US-Israeli attack from the get-go – there is no room for doubt that it is criminal and a “blatant act of aggression,” as multiple experts in international law agree. That’s because in essence, Israel is not acting with a UN mandate – which it would not have received – or in self-defense.

The legal basis for this compelling assessment is not complex and there is no room for good-faith debate: Israel’s attack violates Article 2 (4) of the foundational UN Charter, which is recognized universally as jus cogens, that is, a binding norm: no pick and choose.

The few generally accepted, narrowly defined potential exceptions to this article’s comprehensive prohibition on the use of force, such as an erroneous incursion, certain operations at sea, or a rescue of nationals, clearly do not apply. The Israeli onslaught also does not have the blessing of the UN Security Council, and it cannot possibly count as lawful self-defense under Article 51. 

So far, so simple. If anyone tries to make this look complicated by flagrantly misapplying and abusing the notion of a ‘preemptive strike’, you are dealing with Israeli or Israel-Lobby disinformation and propaganda. That too is anything but surprising.

Yet what is more puzzling than the above is the response of the governments, and often the mainstream media of the West, to this clearly criminal Israeli attack. After years of invoking international law to go after Russia, it turns out that the same leaders and talking heads will tie themselves into 5-D pretzels to let Israel get away with whatever Israel feels like doing on any given day.

This is not really news either, of course: Western ‘elites’, with Washington always in the lead, have behaved no better when serving as accomplices in Israel’s Gaza Genocide. But there is something peculiar and noteworthy about how exactly some important Western politicians and their media and ‘think tank’ experts spin the attack on Iran.

Take, for instance, Germany. Its chancellor Friedrich Merz has gone out of his way to loudly endorse the assault on Iran. He has even exposed himself to ridicule and some – if far too little – criticism by employing revoltingly indecent language. Calling Israel’s actions “dirty work” (it sounds even worse in the original German: “Drecksarbeit”) that must be done and for which we all should be grateful, Merz has revealed his double racism: As a German and a historian, I can only say that a German leader praising Jews for doing “our” dirty work is, to put it very mildly, extremely boorish. Defining the criminal killing of Iranians as that “dirty work” adds a very nasty “colonial” flavor reminiscent of say, Kaiser Wilhelm II gloating over massacring Chinese during the so-called Boxer Rebellion.

While Merz has been clumsy enough to couch his obnoxious ideas in equally obnoxious language, he has by no means been alone. All too many prestigious German publications, such as the staid Frankfurter Zeitung or the also important Merkur newspaper, have hurried to either simply agree with Merz or at least to excuse and relativize his vile statement. In addition, rather overworked all-purpose ‘experts’, such as the reliably conformist and rarara-russophobic Christian Mölling, have used their perma-perk in Germany’s streamlined talk shows to cynically diminish international law and help dress up Israel’s newest crime as so necessary that it trumps all law anyhow.

Mölling was self-unaware enough to openly argue that some countries (read: Israel) can’t afford the “luxury” of accepting “normative limits” and that international law, anyhow, might be “protecting the wrong ones” (read: Iran). It’s breathtakingly brazen and intellectually primitive, and also historically speaking, very German in the worst sense: If we or our friends (read: Israel) feel constrained by international law, then that’s a problem not for us or our friends but for international law.

And now, let’s take a step back and think for a moment like a German who was not a conformist intellectual mediocrity: Enlightenment giant Immanuel Kant. For those with ears to hear and brains to process, Kant has taught us that reason and ethics demand that the justifications for our actions ought to be generalizable in good conscience. In short, when we act, we should be able to show that we are acting according to a fair and reasonable rule.

Let’s generalize into such a rule, then, what German leader Friedrich Merz has just said and what all too many German mainstream representatives agree with: A country (here: Israel) that feels sufficiently afraid (as judged by that country) of another country (here: Iran) has a right (that trumps international law) to attack that other country without provocation and even during ongoing negotiations.

Interesting. Consider that German elites have been fanning war hysteria relentlessly. Not a day seems to go by without some German general, spy, or politician warning their fellow Germans that Russia is at least likely, really almost certain, to attack within the next five years or so. Evidence: zero.

Indeed? So, if we are all supposed to be so afraid of Russia in Germany, does that now mean that according to Merzian logic we may as well one day launch a preemptive strike on Moscow? After all, we could then say we felt threatened and our military and the intelligence services were telling us that the Russians were coming. And moreover, we’d probably claim that we, the Germans, were proudly doing the ‘Drecksarbeit’ for all of NATO (minus, most likely, the US). And isn’t doing the ‘Drecksarbeit’ now officially a good thing in Germany, again? 

Absurd, you say? Yes, absolutely. Exactly as absurd as Israel’s pretexts for attacking Iran. And yet those have been officially endorsed by a German chancellor, including self-revealing dirty language. Let’s hope that Moscow does not take seriously what Merz says. Because if Moscow did take it seriously, then by Merzian logic, it should feel very threatened indeed by Berlin – and again by Merzian logic, who knows where that might lead.

https://www.rt.com/news/620438-germany-iran-israel-kant/

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

EU shame....

European leaders pressured the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to issue a negative assessment of Iran and “bear a share of the blame” for Israel’s attack on the Islamic Republic, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

Israel attacked Iran shortly after the UN nuclear watchdog declared Tehran to be in breach of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), despite Iran's claims its uranium enrichment program is peaceful. The US joined the Jewish state’s air campaign to strike Tehran’s nuclear sites shortly before Washington announced a ceasefire had been reached between Israel and Iran.

Speaking at the Primakov Forums meeting in Moscow on Tuesday, Lavrov accused European leaders of pressuring the IAEA's director, General Rafael Grossi*, into publishing an accusatory report on Iran. 

“The Europeans have taken a purely neocolonial position... They were actively preparing Grossi so that he would put the most ambiguously negative formulations into his report,” the top diplomat said.

The UK, France, Germany, and later, the US ran with the IAEA assessment and pushed a resolution through the IAEA Board of Governors that condemned Iran for allegedly violating the NPT, he added.

READ MORE: UN official gave Israel cover – and Iran paid the price

 

“A few days later, Israel launched its attacks,” Lavrov said.

https://www.rt.com/news/620441-europe-partly-responsible-israel-attack/

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

*GUSNOTE: ACCORDING TO SOME TRUSTWORTHY RESEARCH, GROSSI IS AN AGENT (SECRET) OF ISRAEL WHO GOT THE JOB AFTER THE PREVIOUS IAEA DIRECTOR "DIED" IN SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES.... GROSSI ACTUALLY "GAVE" ISRAEL THE NAMES AND LOCATION OF THE IRANIAN NUCLEAR SCIENTISTS THAT ISRAEL SOON AFTER ASSASSINATED...

THE POINT MADE BY THE TRUSTWORTHY RESEARCH IS THAT THESE ASSASSINATIONS WERE DONE BY LOCAL ASSETS, NOT BY ISRAELI PLANES THAT COULD NOT VENTURE INTO WESTERN IRAN WITHOUT BEING SHOT DOWN — OR RUNNING OUT OF FUEL...

germany's fear....

 

In an act of political censorship, Deutsche Bank terminates publisher Mehring Verlag’s account    Mehring Verlag

 

At the end of May, Postbank, which is now wholly owned by Deutsche Bank, terminated the business account of Mehring Verlag, the German language publishing house of the World Socialist Web Site and Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party). And in June, it also closed the personal account of its managing director, Wolfgang Zimmermann. The closures were made without explanation but are clearly a case of political censorship.

Mehring Verlag is the leading publisher of Leon Trotsky’s works in Germany. It has published and repeatedly reissued Trotsky’s masterpiece The History of the Russian Revolution, his analysis of Stalinism The Revolution Betrayed, his unparalleled writings on the rise of Nazism in Germany, and many other works by the most important Marxist of the 20th century in affordable, high-quality editions.

Mehring Verlag has also published numerous books on contemporary issues, examining key political, theoretical and cultural questions based on the Marxist method.

Among these is A Quarter Century of War: The US Drive for Global Hegemony by David North, editor-in-chief of the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) and chairman of the Socialist Equality Party in the US. The book analyses US-led wars from 1990 to 2020 and is essential for understanding the eruption of American militarism under President Trump. Other books by North address Zionism, the ideology of the Frankfurt School and postmodernism, the consequences of the Soviet Union’s collapse, Trotsky’s relevance today, and the growing danger of war.

Christoph Vandreier’s book Why Are They Back? published in 2018, explores the resurgence of fascism in Germany and remains highly topical given the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). Mehring Verlag also published DDR—40 Jahre Stalinismus (The GDR—40 Years of Stalinism) by Wolfgang Weber, a Marxist critique of the Ulbricht and Honecker regimes in the former East Germany.

This is just a small section of the publisher’s program, which is fully listed on Mehring Verlag’s website.

The closure of the business account—effective July 28—is clearly aimed at sabotaging Mehring Verlag’s work and impeding the distribution of its books. No other plausible explanation exists. Mehring Verlag and its predecessor have maintained an account with Postbank, now fully integrated into Deutsche Bank, for 45 years without a single incident.

The closure of the managing director’s private account, entirely unrelated to the publishing house, constitutes personal harassment.

German banks have for some time targeted dissenting voices by terminating their accounts. While this initially focused on far-right, conspiracy fanatics, and anti-vaccine groups, now left-wing, socialist and pacifist organizations are increasingly being targeted.

Last year, Deutsche Bank also closed the account of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP), which works closely with Mehring Verlag. That same year, Berliner Sparkasse shut down the account of the Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East association and demanded a full list of its members. The Maoist MLPD, which successfully sued Commerzbank in 2009 over account termination, lost a similar case in 2022.

Banks work closely with the domestic intelligence agency (Verfassungsschutz), which was led for years by far-right figure Hans-Georg Maaßen. Organizations denounced by this opaque and unaccountable body as “left-wing extremists”—such as the SGP, for opposing austerity, war and capitalism—risk losing the financial basis for their operations and livelihoods.

Security agencies directly influence banks. Last year, speaking to the Report Mainz programme, Thomas Seidel, a former Federal Criminal Police officer, urged banks to consult intelligence reports as the “basis” for terminating bank accounts.

The attack on Mehring Verlag is inseparable from the return to war and militarism and the assault on social and democratic rights. What is unfolding in Trump’s America—the ICE-Gestapo’s hunt for migrants, the domestic deployment of the military, gangster-style foreign policy, and the illegal bombing of Iran—is also developing, in varying forms, across all imperialist countries, including Germany.

The hundreds of billions of euros being spent on rearmament, the associated cuts to social programs and growing inequality are incompatible with democracy. As the establishment parties lose influence, they crack down more aggressively on any opposition. While they and their foundations are lavishly funded with tens of millions from state coffers, they seek to financially strangle socialists.

Deutsche Bank, responsible for the account closure, was deeply complicit in Nazi crimes: it financed Auschwitz, supported the Reich’s war buildup and SS projects, and profited from the trade in stolen gold from murdered Jews. It also took part in the “Aryanization” of the Ullstein publishing house, whose books—including Erich Maria Remarque’s anti-war classic All Quiet on the Western Front—were banned and burned by the Nazis.

After the war, the Allies planned to dismantle Deutsche Bank and prosecute its executives for war crimes. But German capital prevailed, and the bank was re-established as a national financial institution led by Nazi-linked managers.

The attack on Mehring Verlag reveals what the ruling class in Germany fears most: the spread of ideas that threaten the foundations of its tottering, rotten capitalist system—namely, the program of socialism. As the great French writer Victor Hugo said 150 years ago: “One can resist the invasion of armies; one cannot resist the invasion of ideas whose time has come.”

We call for a broad campaign to answer Deutsche Bank’s attack, raise awareness of Mehring Verlag’s books, and support the development of its publishing program.

Protest the closure of the Mehring Verlag bank account

The attack on freedom of expression must be stopped. We urge all readers to protest the arbitrary termination of our account!

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/06/25/dmzc-j25.html

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.