UK Conservative Party chair Zahawi forced to resign

Robert Stevens

The continuing crisis of Britain’s ruling Conservatives saw the sacking of party chairman Nadhim Zahawi on Sunday. Zahawi was fired after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s “ethics adviser” found he committed multiple “serious breaches” of the ministerial code by failing to be transparent about his tax affairs.

This followed 10 days of intensifying claims from tax experts, opposition MPs and newspaper exposures that the multi-millionaire tried to avoid paying tax.

Newly Appointed Prime Minister Rishi Sunak holds his first Cabinet Meeting the morning after assuming office. Nadhim Zahawi is on the right of the table (third nearest camera). October 26, 2022, London, UK [Photo by Simon Walker/No 10 Downing Street / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Zahawi was appointed party chair by Sunak in November. Sunak only took office himself in October, as the third prime minister in six weeks, following the forced resignations of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Zahawi remains Tory MP for Stratford-Upon-Avon.

Zahawi was promoted to education secretary in October 2021 by Boris Johnson and again promoted—as the last chancellor in his administration—from July 2022 to September last year. Zahawi was then replaced as chancellor by Kwasi Kwarteng when Truss replaced Johnson.

Zahawi and his wife are among numerous senior government figures who have amassed vast wealth. They made a fortune from various companies and have built a £100 million property portfolio. More than half the property was bought while Zahawi served as a government minister. Among their assets are five personally owned residential properties—worth at least £17 million. Three are in London, one in Warwickshire and one in Dubai.

The Guardian revealed on January 20 that Zahawi “agreed to pay a penalty to HMRC [HM Revenue and Customs] as part of a seven-figure settlement over his tax affairs…” The newspaper was “told that the former chancellor paid a penalty imposed by HMRC—part of an estimated £5m tax bill.” The newspaper noted, “Penalties are applied if someone does not pay the correct tax at the right time.”

HMRC’s investigation centred on a 42.5 percent stake in YouGov held by Zahawi’s father through an offshore vehicle in Gibraltar, Balshore Investments. YouGov, an Internet-based market research, opinion polling and data analytics firm, was co-founded in 2000 by Nadhim Zahawi. The Balshore shares were eventually sold for an estimated £27 million in 2018. The disposal of the profits and tax receipts was the basis of the HMRC tax investigation.

According to the newspaper, “A source familiar with the payment” said a penalty was triggered as a result of a non-payment of capital gains tax due after the sale of shares in YouGov. Zahawi could have been subject to larger penalties had he not reached a settlement towards the end of last year.

Experts estimate the tax due was about £3.7 million in capital gains tax from the sale of more than £20 million in YouGov shares. Zahawi attributes this to an error that was “careless and not deliberate.”

Sunak refused to fire Zahawi at that stage, instead requesting an ethics adviser, Sir Laurie Magnus, to investigate his tax affairs.

Pressure intensified last Thursday when HMRC’s chief executive, Jim Harra, told MPs on the cross-party public accounts committee that under law, “There are no penalties for innocent errors in your tax affairs”. He added, “If you take reasonable care, but nevertheless make a mistake, whilst you will be liable for the tax, and for interest … you would not be liable for a penalty.”

Magnus found that when Zahawi was appointed chancellor on July 5 last year, he filled in the relevant form with no reference to the HMRC investigation. Zahawi started his “interaction” with HMRC in April 2021, settling the dispute in August last year with an agreement signed in September.

Under the ministerial code, ministers must update a declaration of interest form, including details of any tax problems. Ministers are required to make senior civil servants aware of any potential issues that could arise. There is no evidence that Zahawi did this when acting as chancellor of the exchequer.

Magnus found that Zahawi breached the ministerial code from the outset by treating the HMRC investigation into him as a non-issue, with a face-to-face meeting in June 2021. Zahawi claimed that he did not realise this was a formal probe into his tax affairs.

Zahawi’s dubious financial dealings were no surprise to anyone in Whitehall. The Observer revealed on Sunday that Sunak “was told there could be a reputational risk to the government from Nadhim Zahawi’s tax affairs when he appointed him as Conservative party chair in October.”

But for Sunak, such warnings were small fry, as he and his wife possess a fortune of at least £730 million. Last year Sunak entered the Sunday Times Rich List, with the WSWS noting that he was “the living embodiment of government in the service of the financial oligarchy … of rule of, by and for the oligarchy.”

Government and business are increasingly the same thing, with the financial aristocracy running both.

Another of Johnson’s chancellors, Sajid Javid, was a multi-millionaire on entering parliament in 2010 with a fortune made in banking, as well as a property millionaire—who owned three homes—two properties in London and one in his constituency of Bromsgrove. Sky News reported this month that he is “in talks about a role with an investment firm with close links to SoftBank, the giant Japanese conglomerate.” The conglomerate, Centricus, is a “London-based group which manages more than $40bn in assets.” Prior this Javid, who previously held the position of health secretary, had share options in a California tech firm behind health sector software. These were only sold after MPs pointed out the clear conflict of interest.

Despite a parliamentary majority of over 70, stemming from Johnson’s defeat of Labour in the 2019 general election, the Tory government is increasingly unstable. Sunak was handed power by the financial markets’ removal of Truss, who committed the crime of outlining massive tax breaks for the rich without premising them on intensified austerity against the working class.

Zahawi is the second minister to be forced to resign in a government barely 100 days in office. Gavin Williamson stepped down as Cabinet Office minister less than a fortnight into Sunak’s new government. Sunak’s deputy prime minister, Dominic Raab, is being investigated over claims of bullying.

Sunak was only able to take office in the first place and his rotten government continue in the saddle due to its being propped up by the Labour Party and trade union bureaucracy.

Johnson and Truss were kept in place by Labour leaders Jeremy Corbyn and Sir Keir Starmer on the basis of a de facto coalition in the “national interest”. This allowed the bourgeoisie time to reorganise its affairs and remove Truss on the basis that Sunak’s new chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, be tasked with massively ramping up the offensive against the working class.

Labour is incapable of mounting any popular challenge to Sunak. Following Zahawi’s fall, Labour’s Shadow International Trade Secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds declared “There are now very serious questions for this Prime Minister who promised integrity, promised accountability, but that isn’t what he is delivering. Instead, he has been weak, he has vacillated and has once again put party before country.” Everything is being funneled through the parliamentary set-up, with Thomas-Symonds stating, “The Prime Minister should now be coming out and giving us an explanation of these matters.”

The Zahawi affair only confirms that there is no fundamental political opposition to the Tories within the parliamentary set-up, with the two main parties in agreement with intensifying NATO’s war against Russia and deepening the offensive against the working class.

Concern and anger in China over ending of zero-COVID policy

Lily Zhou

The Chinese government’s abrupt ending of the zero-COVID policy that was successful in containing the pandemic has been met with a mixture of shock, concern, anger and opposition as the virus has rapidly spread through the population of 1.3 billion people. While the official death toll since the beginning of December stands at 60,000, modelling by Airfinity conservatively estimates the figure at 700,000.

Qianmen pedestrian shopping street on the first day of the Lunar New Year holiday in Beijing, Sunday, Jan. 22, 2023. [AP Photo/Andy Wong]

Under relentless pressure from the major imperialist powers to “open up,” the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime seized on small middle-class protests last month demanding “freedom” and an end to zero-COVID to dramatically accelerate the lifting of all restrictions. In adopting the murderous herd immunity policy of governments around the world, the CCP has promoted the same lies that the latest variants are “mild,” no worse than the flu and “living with the virus” is necessary to revive the economy.

With the traditional media heavily controlled by the state, the only avenue for the expression of opposition to this sudden about-face is social media, which is itself heavily monitored and censored. Most social media platforms such as Weibo and Zhihu are predominantly used by sections of the middle class, including students, as well as young and middle-aged people. Nevertheless, social media does provide a glimpse into the sentiments of working people that find no expression in the official press or for that matter the Western media which, with staggering hypocrisy, now accuse China of the practices prevalent elsewhere in the world such as falsifying or minimising health statistics.

Soon after the complete lifting of zero-COVID measures in mid-December and the rapid surge in infections across in the country, social media platforms were completely dominated by discussion of the pandemic. Many were sharing their symptoms after testing positive, talking about how most people they knew were infected and complaining about the difficulty of seeing a doctor or even getting an antigen test. Those who had not been infected were preoccupied with discussing preventative measures. A week or two later, as the death toll rose, obituaries of celebrities, intellectuals and veterans started to emerge, as well as posts from ordinary working people about the deaths of loved ones.

While the social media discussion of COVID has ebbed, it has become more critical. The themes have included: the stark contrast between everyday experiences and the state propaganda; why was the lifting of zero-COVID so rushed; the efficacy of vaccines and the potential for re-infection; and reports of long-COVID symptoms already experienced by many.

The three posts below and a selection of the responses give an indication of the discussions underway. All three are still posted.

1. The first post on January 16 on Weibo from Zhejiang Province stated “Wanna know how my grandfather passed away?” It described in detail how he was initially all right after being infected but his symptoms worsened very rapidly after leaving hospital. He died very quickly, just 15 days after being infected. The post received 9,000 likes, 1,000 comments and was reposted 1,700 times. Among the responses were:

• One could really say that your grandfather was murdered by those health care experts who promoted that [Omicron] is a mere cold, that [infections] are all asymptomatic and that zero-COVID should be lifted.
• I’m sorry for your loss. Are you in Wenzhou [a city in Zhejiang]? A lot of elderly people passed away. I don’t understand how it came to become this terrible.
• I was at the hospital a couple days ago but could not get access to a bed. I had to stay in the Emergency Room. It was filled with elderly people, and basically every day we had someone passed away…. My whole perspective about life was challenged during that couple of days.
• A small group of evil people and whiners instigated [opposition] among gullible young people, which in turn accelerated in the making of this catastrophic tragedy….
• My grandfather had a fever and passed out on Dec 27, was hospitalized on Dec 28, was able to get out of hospital twice, was conscious the whole time, but passed away on Jan 10. I cannot find a reason to celebrate this New Year?
• My grandfather passed away very abruptly as well. The day before [his death], he told me not to worry and was not willing to go to the hospital. He left the next morning, but the hospital would not even write down COVID [as the cause] on his death certificate. What a world! At the same time, daily COVID infections were reported [officially] to be a dozen cases across the country.
• Most people in my office [at work] are young and strong and are under 40. However, 90 percent of them still have lingering symptoms even after a whole month. Older people should be even more cautious.” 

2. A song titled “Everything will be fine very soon” was composed and published in mid December. It was then posted again on the state-owned Xinhua news agency’s official account on Chinese TikTok on December 16. The song was released as mass infections spiraled around China and was performed at CCTV’s New Year Gala, a program broadcast to the entire country and watched by hundreds of millions of people on the eve of Chinese New Year. The song’s lyrics are:

No discomfort, dear?
Everything will be fine soon.
At the end of a special year
There are always worries.
You don’t have to be afraid.
Because I’m always here.
Be brave! Hit the road with an open heart!
We’ll go to movies together
We’ll go to pubs together
We’ll run away together
We’ll meet friends and drink together
We will talk about our worries
We will sunbathe together
We will hang out together
Together in the sunset
Masks will no longer separate
Each other's beautiful faces

The song provoked angry reactions. Some of the most widely liked comments in a thread on Zhihu about the song were:

• The lyric is so disgusting. Is it a comfort? No, it’s empty wishful thinking. And also on the line about masks, do you have to be this anti-intellectual?
• It would fit this song even better if it includes a line about “injecting bleach into your veins.”
• If you have a deceased family member, how would you feel about this lyric? This song is even more sinister than Liu Huan’s song that told laid-off workers [in the 90s] to “Start all over again.”

This song referenced in the last response, “Start all over again,” was published in 1997 with state backing after mass layoffs and shutdowns of state-owned factories resulted in the destruction of tens of millions of jobs. Many workers were never able to “start all over again.”

3. A lengthy post on Zhihu on January 15 entitled “Our lovely son left us forever” received 1,204 comments. It stated in part:

“My son was just two years and one month old. He was usually very healthy and only had four fevers after he was born. We never had thought that he would have left us due to COVID. Propaganda from official media said that children infected with Omicron would have more moderate symptoms, so we thought he could just stay home and be given antipyretics. We also knew that our neighbour’s kid was alright taking [Ibuprofen antipyretic liquid] after being infected….

“On the death report, the cause was not COVID. We looked at data from the US, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and saw some really similar cases of death from encephalitis induced by COVID. Most of them were under the age of 13, and a lot more children under the age of 5. None of these were mentioned by the media in China….

“I always felt like I took him to the hospital too late. However, at that time, doctors at the hospital were under very difficult conditions as well. Most of them kept coughing during work. Now, I often wake up in the middle of the night and think of him… I miss him so much but there’s no way I can go back in time.”

The responses included:

• Hugs. I just lost my daughter under similar conditions.
• After lifting zero-COVID, I have been living at a rented place because I have to go to work. My mother, wife and kid have been staying at home all the time. I bring all life essentials to their door after disinfecting everything with ethanol. That’s the only reason why they have not been infected so far. My kid is too young—only two months old—and I’m extremely worried.
• My kid was infected when he was only a little over 20 days old. It did damage to his/her heart, and some of the lab indices are still somewhat elevated 42 days later.
• The same happened to my daughter. I am still very heart broken thinking back on that day [when she passed away]. It’s been a month, but I miss her every single day.
• My mother-in-law is a doctor. More than 90 percent of doctors and nurses are working despite being sick themselves. My mother-in-law started seeing patients the second day after she tested positive, performed a surgery on the third day. She was over 60 but only got one day off….

South Korean intelligence officials raid headquarters of union confederation

Ben McGrath

The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) and National Police Agency raided the headquarters of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) on January 18 on the basis of allegations that union officials had violated the country’s draconian National Security Act.

The NIS, South Korea’s counterpart to the CIA in the US, has accused four officials of having connections to North Korean agents. Intelligence and police officers also raided the offices of the Korean Health and Medical Workers’ Union (KHMU), a shelter for impoverished workers on Jeju Island, and the homes of the accused officials. All of the raids were supposedly conducted in search of documents related to the charges.

The union officials include a KCTU executive, a KHMU official, a former official at the Kia Motors union, and the owner and director of a shelter and neighboring memorial hall on Jeju Island for the victims of the Sewol ferry sinking in 2014. The last is said to be a former Korean Metal Workers’ Union official at steel manufacturer Posco.

KCTU members protest police raid and arrests. [Photo: KCTU Facebook]

While the police have raided or attempted to raid KCTU offices in the past related to strikes and protests, it is the first time they have carried out a search and seizure for documents under the National Security Act. The 1948 law makes socialism illegal in South Korea. It is also the first time the NIS has been directly and openly involved in a raid on the KCTU.

In a statement on January 18, the KCTU, which postures as a militant labor organization, said, “The government is reviving the police state through accusations of supporting North Korea as well as the ideology that put forward the National Security Act in order to cover up the incompetence and realities of the Yoon Suk-yeol government. The administration is desperately focusing on harming the KCTU and the labor movement, talking about seditious influences that have infiltrated labor unions in conjunction with today’s search and seizure warrant.”

An article in the right-wing JoongAng Ilbo newspaper based on anonymous NIS sources alleged that five North Korean agents had been in contact with the four KCTU officials. It claimed that the chief agent Ri Kwang-jin works for North Korea’s Cultural Exchange Bureau, which is allegedly tasked with generating dissent in South Korea. The NIS claims the four KCTU members met the North Korean agents between 2017 and 2019 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and Hanoi, Vietnam.

The NIS alleges that slogans used by the KCTU during rallies last August 15 marking the anniversary of the end of Japanese rule, included anti-US and anti-conscription slogans that were generated by the North Korean agents. No evidence has been provided to back any of these accusations.

The NIS has a long history of violent repression since its founding in 1961 as the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA). Military dictator Park Chung-hee, who came to power that year in a coup, established the KCIA as a tool to crush political resistance to his regime. The KCIA participated in a number of operations including the kidnapping and torture of political dissidents; the infamous 1974 fabrication of the “People’s Revolutionary Party” and execution of eight individuals the following year amidst anti-government protests; and the kidnapping in Japan and near assassination of Democrat and future president Kim Dae-jung in 1973.

While undergoing name changes, the NIS retains this reactionary character, demonstrating that even after South Korea has “democratized” in the 1980s, the police state apparatus established under the military dictatorship remains in place.

In recent years, the NIS ran an online smear campaign in 2012 against then-presidential candidate Democrat Moon Jae-in. The NIS also participated in the forced dissolution of the Unified Progressive Party in 2014. It claimed that members of the party had founded an organization to aid North Korea in the event of war even though the courts admitted that no such organization existed.

The current government of right-wing President Yoon Suk-yeol has revived the old KCIA motto “We work in the dark to serve the light” for the NIS—a sign that a campaign of dirty tricks and repression is going to be stepped up.

The chief target of this reactionary campaign is the opposition in the working class to deteriorating economic conditions, the spread of COVID-19, and the integration of South Korea into US war plans against China. Workers and youth speaking out against the government will face accusations of sympathizing with or being agents of North Korea.

Building on the attacks carried out on the working class by the previous Moon Jae-in government, Yoon came to power in May pledging to repress workers’ resistance to assaults on their working and living conditions.

The KCTU does not defend the interests of the working class. Despite its radical-sounding rhetoric, the KCTU leadership signaled to the government in December that it would wage no genuine fight against the stepped-up assaults on workers, when it helped engineer the defeat of a major strike of truck drivers.

During that strike, President Yoon denounced the drivers as akin to a North Korean threat. Under pressure from the government, the truckers’ union, Cargo Truckers Solidarity, and the KCTU called off the strike with none of the drivers’ demands being met. The unions made no attempt to expand the struggle to other sections of the working class.

Turkey to hold elections in May amid deepening political, social crisis

Barış Demir & Ulaş Ateşçi

Turkish President and Justice and Development Party (AKP) leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has announced that presidential and parliamentary elections, legally scheduled for June 18, will be held on May 14. This has sparked a political crisis.

On Saturday, Erdoğan sought to legitimise his candidacy, stating: “The constitutional amendment adopted in 2017 is so clear that there is no room for the slightest debate. Turkey switched to a new system of rule with the 2018 [presidential] elections, so in this respect, the timer has reset.” He added, “The president elected in 2018 is the first president of the new system.”

According to the constitution, parliament can decide to renew the elections with a three-fifths majority. The president also has the power to renew elections. However, the constitution stipulates that for Erdoğan, who was elected president in 2014 and 2018, to run again, parliament must decide to hold elections, otherwise it would be unconstitutional. It states: “In the event that the Parliament decides to renew the elections during the second term of the President, the President may run for another term.”

The response of the bourgeois opposition, led by the Kemalist Republican People's Party (CHP), to this unconstitutional attempt reveals its political bankruptcy. In Turkey, as in the rest of the world, there is no faction of the ruling class that defends democratic rights.

After Erdoğan's announcement, CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu argued that it was impossible to oppose Erdoğan on this issue. He said: “Let’s say we object to it, where will it go? To the Supreme Election Board [YSK]. Who appointed those members? Erdoğan. Who will object to its decision? There is nowhere to appeal. Even the Constitutional Court.” He added: “Therefore, we do not consider to focus on whether Erdoğan should be a candidate or not.”

The Nation Alliance (“Table of Six”), led by the CHP, issued a statement after it met on Thursday, admitting that Erdoğan’s candidacy would be unconstitutional. They said: “Turkey is ruled by a government that acts with lawlessness. In this context, in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution and the law, which are so clear that they leave no room for doubt, it is not possible for Mr. Erdoğan to run again in the elections to be held on May 14, unless the Parliament decides to renew the elections.”

Nevertheless, the “Table of Six” legitimised the elections by impotently accepting them. They stated: “However, we are confident that in the 100th anniversary of our Republic, our nation will say ‘Enough’ to this unlawful order and we would like to state that we are ready for the elections that Mr. Erdoğan plans to hold on May 14th with the support of our people, our belief in ourselves and our love for our country.”

This right-wing bourgeois alliance, to which various pseudo-left tendencies have declared their support against Erdoğan, is not an alternative to the People’s Alliance of AKP and its fascistic ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). Rather, it is a rival that is at least as pro-imperialist and hostile to the working class and to democratic rights. Its position on the elections is also a sign of what the bourgeois opposition will do if Erdoğan decides to reject the legitimacy of the election results.

The Nation Alliance includes the far-right Good Party, an MHP split-off; the Islamist Felicity Party, from which the AKP emerged; the Future Party of former AKP Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu; and the DEVA party of former AKP Economy and Foreign Minister Ali Babacan.

Turkey is going to the elections amid the escalating US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, as the cost of living and unbearable social conditions drive the working class everywhere increasingly into struggle and the turn of the ruling class to authoritarian forms of rule.

In the face of growing anger and opposition among working people, Erdoğan has sought to ban strikes, on the one hand, and taken populist measures on the other. These measures include a 50 percent increase in the minimum wage for 2023, and new regulations on contract work and pensions. However, this is unlikely to appease mounting discontent among the broad masses.

In Turkey, where official annual inflation is over 60 percent and nearly 90 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, class tensions are particularly acute. All factions of the ruling class are well aware of them. This is why the bourgeois opposition alliance is as determined as the Erdoğan government to prevent the masses from mobilising in defense of basic social and democratic rights.

Recently, the Erdoğan government pushed for an undemocratic ruling blocking one of its rivals, Ekrem İmamoğlu, the CHP Mayor of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB), from running for the presidency. In 2019, İmamoğlu won the Istanbul metropolitan municipality, which Erdoğan's AKP had ruled for 25 years, despite the government’s attempts to steal the election by re-running it.

In December, however, an Istanbul court sentenced İmamoğlu to two years, seven months and 15 days in prison and a political ban for allegedly “insulting” public officials. The final ruling has not yet been made. However, it can be finalized quickly if Erdoğan decides this is needed to halt İmamoğlu’s candidacy.

Currently, polls suggest that neither Erdoğan’s People’s Alliance nor the Nation Alliance will secure the necessary majority in the presidential and parliamentary elections. The Kurdish nationalist Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), with over 10 percent, or around 6 million votes, may therefore play a critical role in the outcome.

The government is holding a suit before the Constitutional Court, threatening to close the HDP as a trump card before the elections. Last week, the court rejected the HDP’s request to postpone the case until after the elections. On January 5, it also blocked official election funding for the HDP from the treasury. However, as a pro-EU and pro-NATO party, the HDP has no progressive response to this reactionary and undemocratic state repression.

When the “peace process” between Ankara and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) collapsed in 2015 amid the imperialist regime-change war in Syria, the HDP, which was part of the peace talks, came under mounting repression. The emergence of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) as the main US proxy in Syria and of a Kurdish enclave there, terrified the Turkish bourgeoisie. They feared a Kurdish enclave could form in Turkey, a country with over 20 million Kurds.

As violent clashes with the PKK erupted again, the Erdoğan government embarked on a relentless anti-democratic crackdown against the HDP. With CHP support, several HDP MPs were stripped of parliamentary immunity and some were imprisoned, including HDP co-chairs Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ.

The HDP has more and more openly oriented to the bourgeois CHP-led alliance, but it has not been officially included in this alliance, which has largely ignored its demands. Recognizing its key role in the elections, the HDP leadership announced in early January that it would nominate its own presidential candidate if it was still ignored. It will participate in the parliamentary elections with its own candidates in the Labor and Freedom Alliance it has formed with a coalition of pseudo-left and Stalinist parties.

In the run-up to the elections, there is a very real danger that the Erdoğan government will launch a new military offensive against the US-backed Kurdish forces in Syria, trying to quell the growing social anger by promoting nationalism and militarism.

Blinken in Israel: Planning for war with an ally in crisis

Patrick Martin

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top officials Monday, for talks on the mounting political crisis in Israel, and on joint US-Israeli military operations against Iran.

Netanyahu clearly wanted the main focus to be on the second of these topics, but in his public remarks as they met, Blinken made it clear that there is mounting anxiety in Washington over the explosive political conditions building up both in the occupied territories and within the Jewish state itself.

The Biden administration is clearly concerned that the events of the past month are destabilizing the Israeli regime and calling into question its ability to serve as the principal bastion of American imperialism in the Middle East.

Its level of concern is reflected in the extraordinary relay of top US officials through Jerusalem in the month of January: first National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, then CIA Director William Burns, and now Secretary of State Blinken.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, meets with Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Monday, Jan. 30, 2023 in Jerusalem. [AP Photo/Ronaldo Schemidt/Pool]

Netanyahu has assembled a radical right-wing government, headed by his Likud Party, the traditional party of the Israeli right, but with the participation of fascistic parties based in settlers on the West Bank and ultra-religious parties which seek to suppress not only the Palestinians but the more secular sections of the Jewish population.

Partly in order to block his own continued prosecution on corruption charges—as well as similar charges against several key political allies—Netanyahu is pursuing a series of changes in the Israeli political structure that would remove the attorney general and abolish the independence of the judiciary.

Israel has no written constitution or guarantees of basic democratic rights, and the previous Netanyahu government formally declared Israel the “nation-state of the Jewish people,” reducing Palestinians to a second-class, apartheid-like status.

The latest proposal to effectively neuter the judiciary, popularly considered the last independent line of defense for democratic rights, aroused mass opposition, with several huge demonstrations in Tel Aviv, with as many as 100,000 people, in a country of only 7 million.

Blinken made an explicit reference to these protests in his public remarks, an unusual breach of the traditional diplomatic posture that a country’s internal affairs are its own business. This was clearly not out of concern for democratic rights in general. The US envoy had just spent a day in Egypt schmoozing with the bloodstained military dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

A further destabilizing factor, to which Blinken devoted most of his public comments, is the wave of violence on the West Bank and in Jerusalem, provoked by an Israeli raid Thursday in the West Bank city of Jenin, which left ten Palestinians dead.

This was followed by a suicide attack by a lone Palestinian on a Jerusalem synagogue Friday night, in which seven were killed. On Saturday, a 13-year-old Palestinian opened fire on an Israeli father and son, wounding both. On Sunday there were numerous settler attacks on Palestinians across the West Bank—some reports said as many as 150 violent incidents were recorded over the weekend.

On Monday, Israeli military forces in the occupied city of Hebron opened fire on a car which was supposedly driving suspiciously, killing the driver, 26-year-old Nassim Abu Fouda, who was shot in the head.

In his opening statement to Netanyahu and in subsequent public remarks, Blinken called for an end to the violence, by which he meant actions by Palestinians, and settlers, and other Jewish vigilantes. He made no reference to the Israeli massacre that touched off the current round of attacks, let alone voicing any criticism.

After his meetings with Netanyahu and other cabinet officials, Blinken is to travel Tuesday to the West Bank city of Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority is headquartered, for talks with the 87-year-old president Mahmoud Abbas. He is expected to bully the PA into restoring official cooperation with the Israeli security forces in actions to suppress the Palestinian population of the West Bank. This cooperation was suspended after the bloody assault in Jenin.

The closed-door talks between Blinken and Netanyahu are likely to have dispensed briefly with the internal crisis, and given much greater attention to the mounting military aggressiveness of both Israel and the United States against Iran.

There is no doubt active planning under way for further actions after Saturday’s attack on the Iranian city of Isfahan, where military targets were hit by small drone aircraft apparently launched within Iran by Israeli agents. There are conflicting reports on the nature of the targets and the extent of the damage, but the city is a center of Iranian air and space operations.

The Pentagon declared Sunday that the American military had no role in the strike, but as the conservative Jerusalem Post pointed out, “There are all sorts of ways to parse the Pentagon statement that the US had no military involvement in the drone strike. Might it have had intelligence or cyber involvement?”

Netanyahu has made war threats to forestall the supposed threat of a nuclear-armed Iran his political calling card. He adamantly opposed the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six major powers, including the United States, and hailed the Trump administration for pulling out of the agreement and effectively wrecking it.

The Biden administration has moved closer to the Israeli position in the wake of the outbreak of the US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. Russia has reportedly relied on Iranian-made drones as an effective weapon against Ukrainian targets, although Iran claims the drones were supplied before the war broke out last February.

An aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky openly linked the Israeli drone attack on Isfahan and the use of Iranian drones in Ukraine. There has been considerable speculation in the US corporate media that the Biden administration is seeking means to disrupt Iranian drone production or otherwise retaliate against Tehran for its de facto alliance with Russia.

Earlier this month, the US and Israel carried out their largest-ever joint military exercises, involving 7,500 troops and encompassing air, sea and ground forces. In an interview with CNN Monday night, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby declared that these exercises were directed primarily against Iran, which he called the principal security threat to US interests in the Middle East and to the state of Israel.

TV and radio workers strike against corruption and for secure jobs at German broadcaster RBB

Gustav Kemper

Hundreds of workers at broadcaster Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB) went on a day-long strike on January 27, giving expression to their anger over the unrestrained enrichment and corruption at board level. Their willingness to strike was great and had an impact on current programming, with numerous broadcasts either being cancelled or replaced by programmes from other stations.

Rally of striking RBB employees [Photo: WSWS]

While 250 journalists, technicians and members of other professions met in front of the television centre for the strike rally, others in the various operational departments downed tools, including in the television switching room, the technology department at the Berlin studio, the RBB Kultur programme, the ARD joint facility “ARD Digital” in Potsdam, which is managed by RBB, and elsewhere.

Not a single electronic reporting team went out that day. Many programmes were affected, including RBB’s Berlin regional programming, which broadcast an emergency program. The midday TV programs were cancelled and Radio 1 broadcast only music.

Patricia, Thomas and Daniel. The placard reads "Put the money into programming and not the deep pockets of the management, the lawyers, ex-directors" [Photo: WSWS]

Strikers spoke to WSWS reporters about their demands and their anger at the corruption on the RBB board. “The bureaucracy in the administration and the director’s office funnel outrageous salaries to themselves,” Daniel said. Like his colleagues Patricia and Thomas, Daniel works as a “freelancer” for the broadcaster. Although they do the same work as permanent employees, they receive noticeably less pay.

“We are mainly concerned with fair pay, that the work of freelancers and permanent employees is rewarded at the same level,” Thomas explained. Patricia added. “Freelancers don’t get sick pay, no health insurance subsidies, the child allowance is only 50 percent of what permanent employees get.”

Philipp, also a freelance journalist, vented his anger: “The help-yourself mentality at board level is intolerable. We need more money for good programmes, not the cuts that are now on the table.”

Asked if it was still possible to undertake critical journalism under such conditions, Franziska replied, “There are areas where it becomes difficult. I don’t think the conditions are good to do fearless journalism if you’re afraid for your job.”

In fact, major cost-cutting is imminent, which will affect the number of employees as well as pay cheques. Following the dismissal of the station’s former director, Patricia Schlesinger, her successor, Katrin Vernau, was expected to clean up the corruption. Several law firms were hired to investigate “undesirable structural developments” at the station. So far, €1.4 million in legal fees have been incurred, which are now to be recouped through cuts in programming and staff.

In addition, there are losses due to the cancellation of a Digital Media Building, whose construction had been planned by the former broadcast management, at an estimated cost of €184 million. The project has since been abandoned, but the €18 million costs incurred to date are to be saved at the expense of employees.

The previous collective agreement for permanent staff expired at the end of September 2022. The Verdi trade union had agreed to postpone negotiations on a follow-up contract for three months so that the new director would have enough time to get an overview.

When these negotiations were supposed to start on January 26, the surprise came. The RBB negotiating commission declared that it had no mandate to negotiate. The director had “not yet been able to get a complete overview of the station’s situation,” it said.

As a result, Verdi and the German Journalists’ Association (DJV) jointly called for a one-day warning strike. But RBB staff should be on their guard because Verdi is closely linked to the parties running the Berlin Senate (state executive) and represents their interests. There is a political complex linking the broadcaster’s administrative board, which is selected by the RBB Broadcasting Council, the ruling Senate parties and the union’s officials.

For example, the 29 members of the Broadcasting Council comprise representatives of churches, business associations, the DGB (German Federation of Trade Unions), Verdi, the Civil Servants’ Association, the Berlin and Brandenburg Chamber of Industry and Commerce, cultural associations, and a total of seven representatives of the parties in the state legislatures of Berlin and neighbouring Brandenburg.

These networks represent the political and economic interests of the ruling parties. This is evident in the content of television and radio programmes, in which critical positions are often suppressed. Savings in programming and job cuts are also the consequence of years of corruption.

The Berlin Senate (controlled by the Social Democrats [SPD], Left Party and Greens) supports military rearmament and the war expenditures agreed by the federal coalition government of the SPD, Liberal Democrats (FDP) and Greens. It is implementing drastic cuts in vital health and education provisions in the state budget. The response of the RBB board of directors to demands for wage increases and job protection is predictable. Instead of improvements for staff, further social cuts are being prepared.

In response to the horrendous demand for €1.4 million from the law firms and the extension of their brief by another three months, which has not yet been priced in, the chairman of the board of directors, Dorette König, a former staunch supporter of the Stalinist party of state in the former East Germany, gave the terse answer: “What would be the alternative?”

The RBB corruption affair is the visible expression of the right-wing developments in the media sector. It is not being cleaned up but hushed up. The few thousand euros that are now being saved on the salaries of board members will not drain the swamp but are purely window dressing.

This is also shown by the award of a lucrative consultancy contract to the former editor-in-chief, Christoph Singelnstein, who left the station at the end of March 2021. Together with his pension, and a consulting contract worth €6,300 a month, his monthly income amounts to €15,000.

RBB’s ailing situation reflects the rot of capitalist society. While the media degenerate into propaganda instruments for the war policy of the federal coalition, the livelihoods of working people are being shattered.

Erik and Tamara. The placard reads "For fair wages, digital first—but really!!! & no sudden format changes" [Photo: WSWS]

Many young employees are disappointed with the situation at RBB. Tamara and Erik told the WSWS, “We are against the way young people are treated, who are even worse off than the older ones. We will never make as much money as the older ones in this job.”

They reported that about 60 percent of employees at RBB were freelancers. “The people in digital get the lowest rate of pay. Yet digital is the future. For example, developing a YouTube format series or social media work. Television is still the best paid, followed by radio. That doesn’t reflect modern times.”

Asked what they think about the fact that hundreds of billions are spent on military rearmament and war, while at the same time drastic cuts are being made in all areas of public service, they replied, “By all means, we are against war. But the problems here existed before the war. Our struggle started long before, but now the situation is getting worse.”

Sweden discovers major rare earth deposits in Arctic region

Gabriel Black

Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara Aktiebolag (LKAB) mine in winter, photo was taken from the top of Loussavaara mountain, 7 October, 2018. [Photo by Witext / CC BY-SA 4.0]

A Swedish mining company reported earlier this month that it  has discovered a large deposit of rare earth minerals in the far north of the country.

Rare earths are a series of 17 minerals commonly found together that are used in most high-tech electronics, military systems and batteries. While widely distributed throughout the world, they are hard to find in sufficient concentrations to be economic to extract.

The deposit was found by Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara Aktiebolag (LKAB), a state-owned mining company that operates two major iron mines in the far north of the country, just inside the Arctic Circle. The discovery was made at LKAB’s Kiruna mine, which is about 130 kilometers from the Finnish border and 300 kilometers from the Russian border.

Like many critical minerals, rare earths are found in relatively lower quantities, often near or interspersed with other, more common metals, like copper or iron. In this case, the minerals were found interspersed with phosphorous in an iron-oxide apatite deposit a few kilometers from the Kiruna mine.

The discovery was heralded in the mainstream press throughout Europe and the US as a significant geopolitical development that would wrestle control over the rare earth supply chain away from China.

NPR’s Paddy Hirsch described it as “a very big deal for the West.” He continued, “We have seen in the last 10 years that the U.S. in particular has been very, very worried about the fact that China has such a lock hold on the production of rare earths. … So this find in Sweden is a very big deal for the West and for Western nations and NATO…”

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), about 60 percent of the world’s rare earths come from China. The vast majority of that—more than a third of the world’s total production—comes from a single location, the Bayan Odo deposit in the Inner Mongolia region of Northern China.

The United States is the second largest producer of rare earths, accounting for a little more than 10 percent of the supply.

The new deposits in Sweden—within a global context—are less impressive than the media fanfare suggests. LKAB says it found roughly 1 million tons of rare earth oxides. However, there are already some 120 million tons of reserves globally. Forty-four of those tons are located in China, with Vietnam, Brazil and Russia tied for second-place with about 20 million tons each.

Reserve estimates, however, can be deceptive. Not only are reserves educated guesses at a complex geologic formation buried beneath the earth, but they also do not account for how easy the reserves are to produce.

In a press conference announcing the find, LKAB CEO Jan Mostrom explained, “We don’t actually know how big it is. We don’t actually know how, in which way, we can utilize, develop this project. But what we can say today, with what we know today is that it’s by far the largest deposit of REE’s [Rare Earth Elements] in Europe.”

Currently there are no large-scale mines in the European Union (EU), and only one relatively small processor of rare earths located in Estonia. China, in contrast, controls almost 90 percent of the processing of rare earths globally.

The main importance of the LKAB find is that it may create the possibility for the EU to develop, within its own borders, a rare earth supply chain. This could both allow European manufacturers to challenge their global competitors in rapidly expanding markets, like electric vehicle production, and enable the continent’s major imperialist powers to supply modern weaponry to their militaries without relying on materials supplied by potential rivals.

As the World Socialist Web Site has previously explained, Russia is also a major holder of rare earth minerals and critical minerals more broadly. Both the Biden and Trump administrations have launched major, multi-billion-dollar initiatives to develop these critical mineral resources under the control of the US and its allies.

While the geographic discrepancies in rare earth production and processing are partially the result of geology, it has more to do with the globalization of production and the transformation of China into the sweatshop of the world. 

China’s rise as a central hub of electronics and industrial manufacturing has made it relatively convenient from the standpoint of globally mobile corporations to locate mineral processing there. It has the cheap labor force and the land. China’s factories are also frequently the destination of these processed minerals. 

Additionally, mining and processing ores of rare earths and other critical minerals is a toxic process that leaves long lasting damage to the environment. The major international corporations have, until recently, been content with letting this dirty process happen elsewhere.

The actual development of the Swedish mine will take between 10 to 15 years before production can begin. 

LKAB has announced plans to become a significant processor, not only of rare earths, but all sorts of critical minerals. It recently purchased the Norwegian company REEtec, which specializes in more environmentally friendly forms of processing rare earths. 

As David Hognelid, LKAB’s chief strategy officer, told the New York Times, “We want to have the whole value chain.” LKAB is currently planning an industrial park that will develop these processing capabilities in the north of Sweden.

The location of significant quantities of rare earths, oil and natural gas in the Arctic region is one reason why the high north is increasingly the subject of intense conflicts between the major and regional powers. Eight countries, including the United States, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia and Sweden, have territorial claims in the Arctic, with some of them contested. As sea ice melts, the possibility of securing control over these key resources, as well as newly open sea lanes for trade routes, has encouraged an increase in military activity in the region.

LKAB’s rare earth discovery takes place during a massive escalation of the NATO-Russia war in Ukraine. This last week, the US announced it would be sending M1 Abrams tanks, widely considered the most advanced battle tanks in the world, to Ukrainian troops.

US imperialism and its European allies are intent on defeating and carving up Russia to seize control of the vast amounts of natural resources that lie beneath its landmass. These include rare earths and large quantities of oil and natural gas.

In this regard, the United States views the war as a stepping stone in a far deadlier conflict with China. US war strategists are actively preparing and plotting this war, largely behind the backs of the population. Securing supplies of critical minerals like rare earths is seen as an essential form of preparation, given their strategic significance and China’s domination of the global market.