USA’s Strangulation of the International Criminal Court

Yanis Iqbal

On 2 September, 2020, the US sanctioned two officials of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for investigating into alleged war crimes by US forces and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Afghanistan since 2003.The officials are ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, and the ICC’s head of Jurisdiction, Complementary, and Cooperation Division, Phakiso Mochochok (sanctioned for having materially assisted Prosecutor Bensouda). Announcing this decision, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said, “the United States is taking action to protect Americans from unjust and illegitimate investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC), which threatens our sovereignty and poses a danger to the United States and our allies…The ICC’s recklessness has forced us to this point, and the ICC cannot be allowed to follow through with its politically-driven targeting of U.S. personnel.”

The sanctions have racially targeted the two African individuals among the five officials in the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor (OTP). Despite possible links to the Afghanistan investigation on account of their judicial positions, the US has chosen not to sanction Director of the Investigations Division Michel de Smedt, Deputy Prosecutor James Stewart, and Director of the Prosecutions Division Fabricio Guariglia.

Through the sanctions, Bensouda and Mochochok have been included in the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons list, maintained by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). The consequences of being designated include:

• “any assets the person has in the United States are frozen;
• the individual can no longer conduct transactions in U.S. dollars which may occur anywhere in the world;
• persons, including financial institutions, cannot conduct transactions with or provide services to the designated individual;
• the designated individual and their family members are barred from entering the United States; and
• anyone who materially assists the designated individual can themselves be designated.”

American Hostility toward ICC

The US government’s hatred of the ICC boils down to one primary concern: the possibility that US citizens may be prosecuted and convicted by the court for grisly conduct supported by the American empire. As a result, the US has been in conflict with ICC from the start, trying to subvert its judicial capacities. One month after the ICC officially came into existence on July 1, 2002, US President George Bush signed the American Service members’ Protection Act (ASPA), which limited U.S. government assistance to the ICC; curtailed military assistance to countries that ratified the Rome Statute (the treaty establishing ICC); and authorized the President to use “all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release” of certain U.S. and allied persons who may be detained or tried by the ICC.

As the US believes that ICC is a threat to its imperialist excesses, top officials of the country have never relented in their vituperation and destabilization of the intergovernmental organization. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called ICC a “kangaroo court”. Similarly, Attorney-General William Barr said that the US Justice Department had “received substantial credible information that raises serious concerns about a long history of financial corruption and malfeasance at the highest levels in the office of the prosecutor.” President Trump, while addressing UN General Assembly, stated, “United States will provide no support or recognition to the International Criminal Court. As far as America is concerned the ICC has no jurisdiction, no legitimacy, and no authority.” Such villificatory language reached its apogee when John Bolton gave a speech to the Federalist Society in Washington, D.C on 11 September, 2018. During the speech, he dubbed ICC as (1) a “supranational tribunal” that targeted “America’s senior political leadership” and (2) a “free-wheeling global organization claiming jurisdiction over individuals without their consent.” If that was not enough, he further said in a thuggish tone: “The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court. We will not cooperate with the ICC. We will provide no assistance to the ICC. We will not join the ICC. We will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us.”

The Afghanistan Investigation

In November 2017, the currently sanctioned Prosecutor Bensouda asked for authorization from the ICC’s judiciary to investigate crimes against humanity and war crimes by the Taliban and their affiliated Haqqani Network; war crimes of ill-treatment by the Afghan intelligence agency National Directorate for Security and the Afghan National Police; and war crimes of torture by US military forces deployed in Afghanistan and in secret detention facilities operated by the CIA. Bensouda requested a full investigation because US administrations and courts have consistently chosen not to prosecute the torturers. While torture was banned in 2009 by former President Barack Obama, the torturers were allowed to get off scot-free. Talking about this decision to award impunity to the torturers, Obama had said, “You know, it is important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had. And a lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots.”

In response to this potential investigation, the US revoked Bensouda’s entry-visa on 4 April, 2019 and Pompeo hubristically stated, “I’m announcing a policy of US visa restrictions on those individuals directly responsible for any ICC investigation of US personnel…If you’re responsible for the proposed ICC investigation of US personnel in connection with the situation in Afghanistan you should not assume that you still have, or will get, a visa or that you will be permitted to enter the United States,”.

Facing the US-sponsored public campaign of defamation and aggressions, the Pre-Trial Chamber II of the ICC rejected Bensouda’s request on 12 April, 2019, – 8 days after the visa revocation- expressing concern over (1) the “availability of evidence for crimes dating back so long in time”; (2) the prospect of attaining meaningful cooperation from relevant actors; and (3) the “significant amount of resources” necessary to fund this sort of investigation considering the ICC’s budget. The Pre-Trial Chamber believed that there was no reasonable basis to believe the investigation served “the interests of justice” although it accepted that there was a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed in the territory of Afghanistan by various actors.

The rejection of Bensouda’s request was closely tied with USA’s attempts to prevent its imperialist cruelty from being fully exposed by a judicial body. Article 15 of the Rome Statute provides that “victims may make representations to the Pre-Trial Chamber either in support or opposition to the Prosecutor’s request for an investigation.” In Ms. Bensouda’s case, 680 out of 699 applications submitted to the court by victims and victims groups welcomed the requested investigation. Despite the support of the victims, the US unilaterally impeded the investigation, nakedly asserting the ruthlessness of its imperial power.

To contest the rejection of Bensouda’s Afghanistan investigation, the OTP and the legal representatives of 3 victims appeared before the Pre-Trial Chamber in June 2019. Six months later, the Appeals Chamber of the ICC held a three-day public hearing where the OTP, victims’ representatives, the defense lawyer of the Afghan government and several civil society members presented their arguments against or in support of the Pre-Trial Chamber’s decision. After this public hearing, the Appeals Chamber of the ICC decided unanimously on 5 March, 2020, to authorize the Prosecutor to commence the investigation into the crimes committed on the territory of Afghanistan since 1 May 2003, as well as other crimes that have a nexus to the armed conflict in Afghanistan and were committed on the territory of other States Parties, including Poland, Romania and Lithuania by the US army and CIA.

Enraged by ICC’s actions, President Donald Trump issued an executive order  on 11 June, 2020, that authorized asset freezes and family travel bans against ICC officials and potentially targeted others who assist ICC investigations. In the executive order, Trump said that the authorization of investigation into US war crimes in Afghanistan threatens “to infringe upon the sovereignty of the United States and impede the critical national security and foreign policy work of United States Government and allied officials”. Building upon these unfounded claims, he went on to say: “I therefore determine that any attempt by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute any United States personnel…constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, and I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.” All these statements amount to an arrogant declaration of impunity for any American involved in war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. Furthermore, through these conceited declarations, the US is blatantly asserting that it is justified to kill people in pursuit of expansionist aims.

USA’s Contorted Arguments

In view of the audacity shown by the ICC in authorizing the Afghanistan investigation, new sanctions have been imposed on two ICC officials in the contemporary period. To legitimize its aggressive actions against the ICC, the US has relied on contorted legal arguments.

Repeatedly, the US has declared that it is not a party to the Rome Statute that created the ICC and, being a non-signatory national, is not bound by the norms created by the ICC. Contrary to this reasoning, the core crimes within the ICC’s jurisdiction-genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes-are crimes of universal jurisdiction and thus, the nationals of the US can be subject to prosecution before the court. Echoing this point, the UN General Assembly has declared: “States shall co-operate with each other on a bilateral and multilateral basis with a view to halting and preventing war crimes and crimes against humanity, and shall take the domestic and international measures necessary for that purpose.” Moreover, nationals of non-Party States have long been exposed to potential prosecution without the consent of their governments. The US itself has accepted this by becoming party to treaties such as the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention against Torture which obligate the parties to pursue the malefactor regardless of whether they are a national of a state that is party to the treaty in question.

By punishing the ICC for attempting to expose the barbarism of its war on Afghanistan, the US has overtly outlined the coercive foundations upon which its empire is built. Slowly and steadily, it is becoming clear that the US is guided by imperialist interests and is willing to flout any law to expand its empire.

Species in Peril: Loss, Love and Protection

Subhankar Banerjee

Human calamities abound. The unrelenting coronavirus pandemic has already claimed more than 900,000 lives worldwide. The images of exploding wildfires from the American Southwest—California, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington—look apocalyptic. Racial injustice and inequity in the United States marches on. And, the economic suffering?—painful.

In this moment of so much death and suffering—do we even have the capacity to extend our care, our love for nonhuman kin—bears, bees, bugs, butterflies, and all the other nonhuman animals and plants with whom we share this Earth? Perhaps, for most, not, or not that much. And yet, there are committed people all over the world who have long fought for, and will continue to fight for, the natural world, which is really a fight for our survival too.

But let us peek into the nonhuman world for a moment, which is also our world.

The Living Planet Report 2020 is out now. Two years ago, in an article, “Biological Annihilation: A Planet in Loss Mode,” I had summarized the findings in the Living Planet Report 2018 with the following words:

As a comprehensive survey of the health of our planet and the impact of human activity on other species, its key message was grim indeed: between 1970 and 2014, it found, monitored populations of vertebrates had declined in abundance by an average of 60% globally, with particularly pronounced losses in the tropics and in freshwater systems. South and Central America suffered a dramatic loss of 89% of such vertebrates, while freshwater populations of vertebrates declined by a lesser but still staggering 83% worldwide.

The Living Planet Report 2020 updates those numbers with two additional years of data. Between 1970 and 2016, monitored populations of vertebrates—or amphibians, birds, fishes, mammals, and reptiles—have declined in abundance by an average of 68% globally, up from 60%; in South and Central America, the loss is still most pronounced: at 94%, up from 89%; and for freshwater species globally: 84% decline, up from 83%.

In other words, our nonhuman relatives are vanishing at an extraordinary scale and pace. But that tragedy is not yet registering in our collective imagination.

Have you witnessed, or organized a collective mourning to honor our dead nonhuman relatives? Have you seen any flowers, real or plastic, placed by the roadside, or at a city square to honor the dead bears, bugs and bees?

While the Living Planet Report serves up, every two years, a health assessment of our living Earth—the present compared to the recent past—another report, the landmark May 2019 UN biodiversity assessment offered a glimpse of where we are headed: one million animal and plant species face extinction, many within decades, due to human activity.

Are we even awake to the fact that we are doing our damnedest to ensure that our nonhuman relatives don’t have a snowball chance in hell to survive on this planet?

That is only half of the story, however.

Many committed people around the world—Indigenous land, water and species protectors; biologists and ecologists; the species conservationists; policy makers; artists; writers; educators; and community organizers—are all working hard to chart more-just and livable multispecies futures.

The crisis of biological annihilation, which includes human-caused species extinctions, mass die-offs and massacres, is as much a scientific issue as it is cultural and political.

War on Biological Nurseries and Conservation Laws

How has the United States’ White House responded to the intensifying biodiversity crisis since President Trump took office in January 2017?

The answer: By waging an all-out war on nonhuman lives.

Shortly after assuming office, President Trump announced his intention to make America “energy dominant” and, then Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke suggested that that dominance would come from drilling for oil and gas in Alaska, including in the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Coastal Plain of the Arctic Refuge is a biological nursery of global significance, and a place the Indigenous Gwich’in people call Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit (“the sacred place where life begins”). The Trump administration also proceeded to expand oil and gas development around Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, a place considered sacred by the Indigenous peoples of the Southwest. In response, I convened a national conference, the last oil: a multispecies justice symposium in February 2018.

Things are heating up on the Arctic Refuge issue. Last month, the Trump administration “finalized its plan to open up part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil and gas development, a move that overturns six decades of protections for the largest remaining stretch of wilderness in the United States,” the New York Times reported on August 17. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt is hopeful that “there could be a lease sale by the end of the year.”

But licking your chops doesn’t always lead to eating.

On Wednesday, September 9, Gwich’in Tribal governments continued their decades-long fight to protect the Coastal Plain from fossil fuel development by filing suit against the Interior Department.

Additionally, fifteen state governments, led by the State of Washington’s Attorney General Bob Ferguson, stood alongside the Tribes and filed a separate lawsuit in the federal district court in Alaska.

Two years ago, when I was in Washington, DC, for a two-day Arctic Refuge campaign strategy workshop—the morning started with New Mexico’s Senator Tom Udall addressing us. Sen. Udall has long been our champion in Congress to protect the Arctic Refuge, and a true friend to the Gwich’in Nation. After all, it was his uncle, Arizona Congressman Morris “Mo” Udall who was one of the principal architects of the most expansive environmental protection laws in U.S. history—the 1980 Alaska National Interest Land Conservation Act (ANILCA), which doubled the size of the original Arctic National Wildlife Range, renamed it a Refuge, and granted subsistence rights to the Indigenous peoples, including inside designated wilderness.

Back to Trump’s war on conservation.

On July 15, 2020, President Trump “unilaterally weakened one of the nation’s bedrock conservation laws, the National Environmental Policy Act, limiting public review of federal infrastructure projects to speed up the permitting of freeways, power plants and pipelines,“ the New York Times reported.

Earlier this year, when the Trump administration was moving to gut the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, Sen. Udall called “move to gut NEPA is one of the worst decisions made by the worst environmental administration in history. … At a time when we are staring down the serious threat of climate change to our way of life—especially in states like New Mexico—and are in peril of another mass species extinction, NEPA is one of the few tools we have to limit further damage to our environment.”

After all, NEPA was established during the tenure of the Senator’s father, Stewart Udall, a passionate conservationist who served as U.S. Secretary of the Interior during the 1960s.

And, how did the Trump administration respond last year to the landmark May 2019 UN biodiversity assessment which warned that one million animals and plant species face extinction due to human activity?

Three months later, on August 12, 2019, the Trump administration announced its intention to gut the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the hallowed legal framework to protect imperiled species.

The community members in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands had offered a different kind of response last Fall to the UN biodiversity assessment. Artists and academics across the Rio Grande watershed, from southern Colorado to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, responded creatively by organizing more than a dozen exhibitions and programs that expressed both sorrow and hope, our connection to the living earth and need for action.

“This may be the first time that communities across a large region spanning two nations have engaged the biological crisis in such an expansive and distributed manner with a shared concern and generosity,” I wrote in the exhibition catalog essay.

During the same time, responding to a call from scientists, in October 2019, Sen. Udall co-sponsored the Thirty by Thirty Resolution to Save Nature, which calls on the federal government to establish a national goal of conserving at least 30 percent of the land and the oceans within the territory of the United States by 2030. The following month, in November, Sen. Udall sponsored the Tribal Wildlife Corridors Act which would support wildlife management efforts by tribal governments.

And, on February 7, 2020, New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland with support from her colleagues, introduced a companion Thirty by Thirty Resolution to Save Nature in the House.

Building on the foundations of these community-engaged and culturally inclusive creative and federal policy initiatives, Sen. Udall and I will be co-hosting UNM Biodiversity Webinar Series—Fall 2020, which will launch on Monday, September 14, and will conclude on Thursday, December 3. The webinar series will foster conversations on the escalating biodiversity crisis and inspire public participation to mitigate the tragedy. This online symposium is FREE and open to the public, but registration is required. I hope to see you at the inaugural webinar on Monday.

These times can seem bleak, but we take inspiration in the endurance of people like the Gwich’in and members of the Udall family, who resolutely maintain the struggle to better protect the natural world. Our nonhuman relatives need us and, we need them.

Human disturbances of wild areas increase the likelihood of future pandemics

Philip Guelpa

As if rapidly accelerating climate change and environmental degradation were not reason enough to undertake major efforts to halt and reverse the ongoing destruction of natural ecosystems by uncontrolled human activities, another urgent incentive is now making itself painfully evident.

New research reinforces the already growing scientific understanding that human incursions into wild areas are increasing the likelihood that disease organisms endemic to animal populations in such areas will “cross over” to humans. The coronavirus that causes COVID-19, most likely originating in bats, appears to be only the latest example of this process.

The zoonotic (animal) origin of a significant number of human diseases has been known for decades (e.g., plague, rabies, Lyme disease, SARS, MERS, West Nile virus). According to a CDC report released last year, “Six out of every 10 infectious diseases in people [in the US] are zoonotic, which makes it crucial that the nation strengthen its capabilities to prevent and respond to these diseases using a One Health approach.

“One Health is an approach that recognizes the connection between people, animals, plants, and their shared environment and calls for experts in human, animal, and environmental health to work together to achieve the best health outcomes for all.” It is notable that a number of these are of recent origin. However, little has been done to address the problem because to do so would collide with powerful economic interests.

A just released study, published in the scientific journal Nature (Gibb et al., 5 August 2020), explores the dynamic between human activities and the spread of such diseases. It is based on an analysis of approximately 6,800 ecological communities, focusing specifically on 376 host (i.e., disease-carrying) species on six continents.

The analysis indicates a pernicious relationship between human incursion into wild areas (e.g., by deforestation or urban expansion) and the promotion of animal species that tend to be carriers of diseases likely to infect humans. Such activities tend to reduce biodiversity, creating conditions favorable to species that reproduce rapidly and are flexible in their diets and physical habitat requirements—mice, rats, and pigeons come to mind—at the expense of those with narrower, and thus less flexible, adaptations.

Specifically, the researchers found that species that tend to do well in environments disturbed by human activities, such as rodents, bats, and passerine birds, have a higher probability of carrying disease organisms which have a known propensity for transfer to humans. For those species, the richness (number of species) is 18 to 72 percent higher and the total abundance (size of population) 21 to 144 percent higher in such environments as compared to less disturbed settings.

As we have noted previously, environments with reduced biodiversity (i.e., a lower variety of species) tend to be more unstable than those with greater species diversity. This creates a positive feedback loop. Opportunistic species that thrive in unstable environments outcompete those that are less tolerant of ecological disruption. As human incursions increase, the imbalance is magnified, resulting in animal populations dominated by an abundance of a small number of highly successful species. When these animals harbor pathogens likely to spread to humans, which is what the recent study found, the potential for deadly outbreaks is created.

Deforestation and other human incursions into wild areas increase the ecological “edge” (i.e., length of the border) between developed and undeveloped areas. As a result, not only do people increasingly penetrate deeper into the natural areas to collect plant and animal resources, but wild animals tend to wander into developed areas due to reductions in their habitats and food supplies, increasing exposures between the two. Stress on wild animal populations is also likely to increase their susceptibility to disease, creating an enlarged reservoir for pathogens that are available for transmission to humans.

The same research team that conducted the study published in Nature has found a correlation between socioeconomic factors, development trends and the presence of probable host species with Ebola outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

An important factor contributing to the virulence of zoonotic diseases has to do with the evolutionary history of the disease organisms and their hosts. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and its presumed host, bats, have likely been evolving together for a very long time. The bat population has, through genetic adaptation (i.e., large numbers of deaths), evolved a tolerance to the virus, similar to that of humans to the common cold.

For humans, on the other hand, SARS-CoV-2 is a “novel” pathogen. There has been no co-evolution. Therefore, the interaction between the two is highly unbalanced. This is analogous to the devastation suffered by Native Americans to European diseases, to which they had no prior exposure. The same is true for future potential zoonotic disease, emphasizing the urgent need to address the mechanisms that promote such outbreaks.

In a recent essay in the journal Science, an interdisciplinary team urged that controlling deforestation and a reduction in the wildlife trade (sale and consumption of wild animals) would reduce the potential for similar pandemics in the future.

Increasing human incursions into wild areas are primarily driven by economic factors. These include both large scale industry, such as oil exploration, mining and agribusiness, and the movement of small agriculturalists driven by economic necessity. The common underlying force is capitalism—the rapacious quest for profit at any cost on the one hand and impoverishment of workers and peasants on the other. Until this system is abolished, more pandemics on the scale of COVID-19 or greater are inevitable.

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences plan for racial and gender criteria: A right-wing attack on artistic freedom

David Walsh

The decision by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in Hollywood to demand, in effect, that films conform to racial and gender criteria to qualify for its Best Picture award is a vicious attack on artistic freedom and a step down a very sinister path.

The actions reveal that the affluent layer in charge in Hollywood, allied with the Democratic Party, is either indifferent or hostile to the process by which art is created and ruthlessly determined to pursue its selfish, grasping political and economic agenda. Far from resulting in greater “diversity” and “inclusion” in any meaningful sense, the rules mandated by the AMPAS thought police will further narrow studio filmmaking and implicitly set limits on what can and cannot be said.

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences website

What’s taking place, in effect, is an attempt to impose a second Production Code, the set of censorship regulations, enforced by an infamous political and quasi-religious apparatus, that from 1934 to the mid-1960s severely restricted American filmmakers.

The new policies are the outcome of several years of intense pressure by identity politics activists, Democratic Party-aligned figures in Hollywood and media outlets like the New York Times. The #OscarsSoWhite controversy, which erupted in 2016 when for the second year in a row all 20 performers nominated in the lead and supporting acting categories were white, provided a pretext for the launching of the new initiative.

The Academy set about “diversifying” itself, which has largely meant inviting several thousand individuals, a considerable proportion of whom are women and members of “underrepresented ethnic/racial communities,” to join its ranks. This year, for example, the organization, according to Deadline, touted that its invitees were “49 percent international, 45 percent women, and 36 percent underrepresented ethnic/racial.”

In June, AMPAS officials ominously announced that a task force was working on the next phase of its “equity and inclusion initiative,” known as “ Academy Aperture 2025. ” A September 8 press release announced the new “Representation and Inclusion Standards” for the Best Picture award proposed by the task force, chaired by Academy governors DeVon Franklin (producer, motivational speaker and preacher!) and Jim Gianopulos (multi-millionaire chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures).

The formulas this body has come up with are both foul and absurd. To be deemed eligible for the Best Picture award at the 2024 Academy Awards (in 2022 and 2023, producers will only have to submit “a confidential Academy Inclusion Standards form”), a movie will have to meet two out of four standards (A through D).

To achieve “Standard A,” a film must meet one of the following criteria:

• At least one of the lead actors or significant supporting actors is Asian, Hispanic/Latinx, Black/African American, Indigenous/Native American/Alaskan Native, Middle Eastern/North African, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander or from another “underrepresented race or ethnicity.”
  
• At least 30 percent of all actors in secondary and more minor roles are from at least two of the following underrepresented groups: “Women, racial or ethnic group, LGBTQ+ or people with cognitive or physical disabilities, or who are deaf or hard of hearing.”
  
• “The main storyline(s), theme or narrative of the film is centered on an underrepresented group(s).”

“Standard B” mandates that a certain number of “creative leadership positions and department heads” (“Casting Director, Cinematographer, Composer, Costume Designer, Director, Editor, Hairstylist, Makeup Artist, Producer,” etc.) come from the aforesaid “underrepresented groups.” It would require that at least 30 percent of the film’s crew is from the same underrepresented groups.

“Standard C” concerns “industry access and opportunities,” including the provision of paid apprenticeships or internships for women and members of racial or ethnic groups, and “Standard D” requires a given studio and/or film group to have “multiple in-house senior executives” from the various “underrepresented groups… on their marketing, publicity, and/or distribution teams.”

Academy invites 819 to membership in 2020

Where does one begin?

The underlying premise of this effort, as we argued in 2016 when the issue became a prominent one, is that “artwork should be categorized and presumably appreciated according to whether it represents a male or female, black or white perspective.” Whether they liked it or not, we warned, such forces were setting up this basic standard: “women gain more from art produced by women, Jews from work created by Jews, African-Americans from ‘African-American art,’ etc.”

Assuming that artistic perspective is thoroughly framed by race or gender, the AMPAS bureaucrats and their advisers elevate such matters to the level of a worldview. In ideological terms, in their obsession with race in particular, such views have been identified historically with the far right.

We pointed out in 2016 that the “Nazis asserted the existence of distinct ‘Aryan’ and ‘Jewish [Bolshevik, liberal, degenerate]’ cultures, separated out ‘Aryan music’ from ‘Jewish music,’ and so forth. They classified human beings collectively as ‘races,’ with inherited characteristics, as one commentator notes, ‘related not only to outward appearance and physical structure, but also shaped internal mental life, ways of thinking, creative and organizational abilities, intelligence, taste and appreciation of culture, physical strength, and military prowess.’”

We added that “those who view art and culture in racial (or gender) terms and make race (or gender) the basis for a theory of aesthetics give credence to and encourage this type of filth.” Our warnings at the time that the Academy was heading in the direction of racial or gender quotas have been confirmed in spades.

According to the outlook of the Academy brain trust, “art” is a mere means to an end, little more than the spelling or fleshing out, through the use of actors, sets, décor, of one’s racial or gender essence. Again, how far is that from the Hitler view that art’s exterior form should embody “an inner racial ideal” (Henry Grosshans, Hitler and the Artists)?

Astonishingly, the Academy, in its press release, has the temerity to assert that its goals “will not compromise the creative freedom filmmakers must have.”

To the extent that the task force members and Academy governors actually believe this, it only underscores the extent to which identity politics has saturated their entire beings. “Creative freedom,” in their minds, is reduced to expressing one’s ethnic or gender identity.

In fact, film artists are being pushed in a definite direction. There is nothing neutral or “innocent” about the new standards.

By their very existence and insistence, they inevitably draw the artist’s and the public’s attention toward questions of ethnicity, nationality and gender and away from the problems of class, inequality, poverty and the danger of war and dictatorship. It is an only slightly veiled mandating of themes and storylines. Hollywood’s officialdom is telling producers, writers and directors: this is what should concern you, these are the officially sponsored and endorsed issues we want you to bring before the public.

The question of genuine artistic truth never arises for such people. That a filmmaker should dedicate him or herself wholeheartedly, self-sacrificingly, to the pursuit of portraying what is, regardless of the consequences, is unimaginable to them.

They begin with various cynical calculations as to what sort of movie might be acceptable to middle class public opinion or profitable to investors, and assume the artists have the same starting point. No serious work was ever created with a recipe book in hand from which the artist simply selects the proper ingredients.

“Diversity” and “inclusiveness,” when raised by identity politics operators in Hollywood, are empty, fraudulent slogans. What’s involved from an economic point of view is the attempt by an already privileged layer of African Americans and females to lay hands on a bigger share of the entertainment industry profit bonanza for themselves.

There’s no added “diversity” in one affluent petty-bourgeois layer replacing another, the only difference being the color of their skin or their gender. All the considerable efforts at “inclusiveness” to this point have not improved the generally miserable output in Hollywood one iota. White or black, male or female, the not very inspiring thoughts and feelings of the top five or seven percent of the population are what we see represented on movie screens.

The selfishness of these layers knows no bounds. Their hostility in recent years to such films as Lincoln, Free State of Jones, Green Book and others has revealed their deep hostility to work that pointed to more general, broader concerns, the healthier concerns of the mass of the population.

As we wrote on another occasion four years ago: “Of course, there is a massive ‘lack of diversity’ problem in Hollywood, but it is not a racial one. The United States is an immensely complex society with a population of some 320 million people, the vast majority of whom work for a wage—or would like to. How well represented is the working class in American filmmaking, including the overwhelmingly proletarian African American and Latino population? In general, how thoroughly are the complexities of US society and its people depicted by Hollywood?

“With a few honorable exceptions, contemporary American and global filmmaking solely investigates the lives and feelings of a small fraction of the population, the affluent, self-absorbed upper-middle class, residing in their various pockets of affluence.”

Every serious artist must experience a feeling of revulsion on being told what and how to create a work, especially by an alliance of racialist snake-oil salesmen and CEOs. The formula, complete freedom for art, takes on an ever greater and more concrete, and revolutionary, significance.

Solomon Islands’ renegade province threatens separatist split over China diplomatic recognition

Patrick O’Connor

The leader of one of Solomon Islands’ nine provinces, Malaita, has said he is organising an independence referendum, possibly to be held within weeks.

The separatist threat is the latest in a series of provocations by Malaitan Premier Daniel Suidani, who is being backed by US and Australian imperialism in his campaign against the national government’s diplomatic switch from Taiwan to Beijing that was announced in September last year.

After diplomatic ties were established between the Solomon Islands and China, Suidani immediately insisted that Malaita province did not recognise the move. He organised pro-Taiwan demonstrations on the island and sought to whip up anti-Chinese sentiment through anti-communist and evangelical Christian, anti-atheist rhetoric. The Malaitan provincial administration has effectively sought to maintain its own foreign policy, coordinating aid and economic assistance from Taipei. Suidani also declared that no Chinese aid projects or economic investment would be permitted on Malaita, and no Chinese nationals would be allowed to visit.

The provincial government has created a pogromist atmosphere. A pro-independence outfit “Malaita 4 Democracy,” issued a threat at the beginning of this month to all ethnic Chinese businesspeople to leave the island within 24 hours. Many shops in the Malaita provincial centre of Auki were boarded up on September 2, before police intervened to prevent attacks.

Suidani used as the pretext for the threatened independence referendum the national government’s authorisation of a flight on August 31 from Guangzhou, China to Solomon Islands. The Chinese-funded flight carried returning Solomon Islands’ citizens as well as Chinese aid workers sent to help construct facilities for the 2023 Pacific Games, and the first Chinese ambassador to the country, Li Ming. All passengers tested negative for COVID-19 three times before boarding the flight. Suidani nevertheless attempted to whip up a fear campaign over coronavirus infections. (Solomon Islands is one of the few countries to have avoided any positive cases.)

It remains to be seen whether Suidani will be able to proceed with the separatist ballot. Opposition members of the Malaitan provincial legislature have also said they hope to move a no confidence resolution against the premier. The national government has declared the proposed referendum illegal and threatened court action to stop it.

Suidani’s administration responded with a statement that absurdly accused the elected, multi-party coalition national government of “moving into the area of dictatorship; Solomon Islands is slipping into the direction of the one-party system of China.”

The Malaitan administration’s reckless actions threaten a civil war within the impoverished South Pacific country. Between 1999 and 2003, a low-intensity civil war that involved the separatist Malaita Eagle Force militia cost around 200 lives and forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes.

The threat of renewed conflict has been deliberately stoked by the United States, as part of its aggressive drive to undermine China’s influence in the Pacific.

When Solomon Islands’ Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare announced the diplomatic switch from Taipei to Beijing last year, US officials reacted with fury. Vice President Mike Pence cancelled a scheduled meeting with Sogavare at a United Nations meeting, Republican Senator Marco Rubio threatened economic sanctions, and other Republican congressmen demanded that aid be cut-off.

These public declarations followed an earlier, highly secretive deployment of US officials to Malaita. Dispatched to the province in August last year, just prior to Sogavare’s confirmation of the diplomatic switch, members of the Department of State, Department of Defense, Department of Trade, as well as embassy and aid personnel met with Daniel Suidani. No doubt CIA operatives were also represented in the delegation. After the meeting, unusually, no press statements, photographs, or social media posts were issued to explain what had been discussed.

Subsequently, Suidani boasted of American support and said he would invite the US and Australian governments to assist with “Malaitan security.”

Solomon Islands is an isolated country of just 600,000 people, with an undeveloped economy largely based on subsistence agriculture. Its location, however, makes it geo-strategically significant. The 1942–43 Battle of Guadalcanal was among the bloodiest of the US military’s confrontations with Japanese forces during World War II. US imperialism’s post-war declaration that the entire Pacific Ocean constituted an “American lake,” is now threatened by the economic and military rise of China.

The US ruling elite is seeking to maintain its Pacific and global hegemony through diplomatic provocations, economic pressure, and threats of military violence. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo signaled a shift towards a de facto “regime-change” policy against China in a major speech last July. The Solomon Islands’ government has been targeted for destabilisation and potential removal as part of this campaign.

The US Defense Department’s annual report to Congress on China’s military capacity, “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China (PRC) 2020,” was issued on September 1. Without presenting any evidence, it accused Beijing of having “likely considered” twelve countries (among them Sri Lanka, Burma, Indonesia, and Kenya) as potential sites for overseas military bases. The Chinese government, the report alleged, “has probably already made overtures” to three other countries—Namibia, Vanuatu, and Solomon Islands.

The report added: “Known focus areas of PLA planning are along the SLOCs [Sea lines of communication] from China to the Strait of Hormuz, Africa, and the Pacific Islands.”

Washington is accelerating its military buildup in the Pacific. Defense Secretary Mark Esper visited Palau on August 28, a small archipelago chain east of the Philippines with a population of about 20,000 people. The islands, which were a “trust territory” administered by the US after World War II, received formal independence in 1994 but the state continues to function as an American semi-colony. Palau is one of just four Pacific states that maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan and not China. Esper used his visit to hypocritically denounce Beijing for “its ongoing destabilising activities in the region.”

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that the visit may be followed by the establishment of a permanent US military base: “The Republic of Palau has asked the Pentagon to build ports, bases and airfields on the island nation, officials said, offering a boost to US military expansion plans in Asia, as Washington aims to counter China.”

India’s Supreme Court punishes prominent lawyer for criticizing its role in assault on democratic rights

Kranti Kumara

Despite a public outcry, India’s Supreme Court has convicted and sentenced prominent Indian lawyer Prashant Bhushan for “contempt of court” for having accused it of complicity in the far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s assault on democratic rights.

The court’s victimization of Bhushan for his trenchant remarks is a gross attack on democratic rights.

India’s highest court found Bhushan guilty of “criminal contempt of court” for two tweets the well-known “Public Interest litigation” and civil rights attorney made in late June that criticized the court’s conduct and that of the Chief Justice of India. According to the Court, with his tweets Bhushan had sought to “to scandalize the entire institution.”

In the run-up to last week’s sentencing hearing, the three-judge Supreme Court panel that had convicted Bhushan repeatedly threatened to jail him if he did not issue a grovelling apology.

This Buhsan rightly refused to do, insisting he could not issue an apology for exercising his basic democratic right to free expression. In his written response to the court’s threat to hold him in criminal contempt, he stated that if his tweets were “regarded as a contempt, it would stifle free speech and would constitute an unreasonable restriction on the right of a citizen,” as guaranteed “under Article 19 (1) (a) of the [Indian] Constitution,” to “freedom of speech and expression.”

Under conditions where COVID-19 is raging across India, jailing the 63-year-old Bhushan would have placed his health and life in peril.

Ultimately, the court backed down, and offered Bhushan a way of avoiding jail if he paid a token fine. His lawyer promptly did this.

However, in passing sentence, India’s highest court continued to insist on its “right” to punish and jail those who criticize its actions.

The Court’s 82-page sentencing verdict conceded that India’s contempt of court law is “vague” and “colonial.” It also claimed there “cannot be any compromise” in upholding the “Right to Free Speech and Opinions.” But all this was just a crude attempt to give a veneer of legitimacy to a flagrantly anti-democratic judgement that is meant to silence opposition to the court’s role as a resolute defender of Indian big business and accomplice of the Hindu supremacist BJP.

The verdict proclaimed that when criticism of the Supreme Court’s conduct goes “beyond a permissible limit,” it has a duty to act. The court must wield “the strong arm of the law” to “strike” those who challenge “the supremacy of the law by fouling its source and stream”— that is, those who dare to criticize its anti-democratic actions.

In this case, the court gave Bhushan the option of paying a 1 rupee (1.25 US cent) fine, but not without adding that if he failed to do so by Sept. 15, he would be imprisoned for three months and “debarred from practising in this Court for a period of three years.”

What then, were the remarks made by Bhushan that so enraged India’s Supreme Court justices?

On June 26, he tweeted:

When historians in the future look back at the last 6 years to see how democracy has been destroyed in India even without a formal Emergency, they will particularly mark the role of the Supreme Court in this destruction, & more particularly the role of the last 4 CJIs (Chief Justices of India).

In speaking of the “last 6 years,” Bhushan is referring to the rule of the Narendra Modi-led BJP government. The most powerful sections of Indian big business propelled the BJP to power in May 2014 in order to accelerate the pace of pro-investor “reform” and more aggressively pursue their great-power ambitions on the global arena, above all by integrating India more fully into Washington’s strategic offensive against China.

In pursuit of this agenda, the Modi government has jailed opponents on trumped-up sedition and terrorism charges, turned a blind eye to Hindu supremacist violence, carried out a constitutional coup to strip Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir of its semi-autonomous constitutional status, and increased censorship of social media.

Three days later, on June 29, Bhushan posted a second tweet:

CJI rides a 50 lakh [rupee] motorcycle belonging to a BJP leader at Raj Bhavan, Nagpur, without a mask or helmet, at a time when he keeps the SC [Supreme Court] in Lockdown mode denying citizens their fundamental right to access Justice!

Here Bhushan was pointing to the glaring contrast between the privileged life of Chief Justice Sharad Arvind Bobde, a supposed motorcycle enthusiast, who could afford, in the midst of COVID-19 lockdown, to check out a Rs. 5 million ($68,000) Harley Davidson motorcycle in the hope of buying one, even while the Supreme Court was shut down, purportedly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result of the lockdown, numerous constitutional challengers to the Modi government’s violation of basic democratic rights, including the imposition of an effective state of siege in Indian-held Kashmir, are in limbo. Bhushan’s post was also meant to draw attention to the chummy relations between Chief Justice Bhode and a BJP leader in Bhode’s hometown of Nagpur.

Under government pressure, Twitter denied access to both of Bhushan’s tweets in India in July, even before the Supreme Court had ruled that they constituted contempt of court.

Time and again over the last six years, India’s Supreme Court has aided and abetted the anti-democratic and Hindu communalist actions of the Modi government.

It legitimized the violent, decades-long agitation that the BJP and its Hindu supremacist allies have mounted to raze a famous mosque in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, and erect in its stead a temple to the mythical Hindu god Lord Ram. Although the Babri Masjid was destroyed by BJP-incited Hindu fanatics in 1992 in express opposition to the Supreme Court’s own orders, the court handed the site over to the BJP’s allies last November and “ordered” the government to supervise the construction of a “Ram Temple.”

The court has also repeatedly come to the government’s support during the COVID-19 pandemic, defending its ruinous handling of the pandemic and threatening the media with “fake news” charges if it doesn’t publicize government propaganda about the health crisis.

The most shameful example of the Supreme Court’s complicity in the Modi government’s attack on democratic rights has been its sanctioning of its coup against Kashmir. This began with the abrogation by executive fiat of Jammu and Kashmir’s special constitutional status on August 5, 2019, and has involved mass detentions without charge, months-long curfews under the British colonial authored Article 144 of the Criminal Code, and the suspension, now into its 14th month, of internet access to the 7 million people living in the northern Kashmir Valley.

With the intent of making it a fait accompli, India’s highest court has thus far flatly refused to take up any legal challenges to the change in Jammu and Kashmir’s status and the imposition, via its division, into two Union territories, of permanent central government rule. For months, the court stalled hearing challenges to the suspension of internet service, at one point admonishing the editor of the Kashmiri Times to have faith in the claims of the government and intelligence services that it would soon be restored. Then in January, it issued a ruling that ostensibly established a constitutional right to internet access, yet gave the government a free hand to continue to deny internet access to Kashmiris.

India’s judiciary, like all it state institutions, is increasingly staffed by outright Hindu communalists. Bhode’s predecessor as Chief Justice, Ranjan Gogoi, was rewarded with a nominated-seat in India’s upper house of parliament, just five months after the court under his leadership had given legal sanction to the building of a Ram Temple on the site of the razed Babri Masjid. Gogoi, who had to step down as CJI last November when he reached 65, is reportedly going to be the BJP’s Chief Minister candidate when Assam next holds state elections in 2021.

The court’s attack on Prashant Bhushan is all the more striking given his establishment connections. His father was the Law and Justice Minister in the Janata Party government of the late 1970s, and he himself was among the founders of the Aam Aadmi Party, which forms the government in the National Capital Territory, Delhi.

Clearly his criticisms struck too close to home.

While Bhushan draws a sharp contrast between the Supreme Court’s conduct over the last six years and previously, the reality is India’s ruling elite, its parties and state institutions have been lurching sharply right for decades. Modi, his authoritarian measures, and foul communalist politics are the outcome of the Indian bourgeoisie’s three-decade drive—long spearheaded by the Congress Party and supported by the entire political establishment, including the Stalinist CPM and CPI—to make India a cheap-labour haven for global capital and a junior partner of US imperialism.

Moreover, this process is paralleled around the world. The various rival nationally-based bourgeois cliques, whether led, as in France, by the ostensible liberal Emmanuel Macron, the fascistic Donald Trump, or his Brazilian ally and acolyte, Jair Bolsonaro, are turning to authoritarian methods of rule to suppress mounting social opposition and cultivating the extreme right as shock troops against the working class.

Democratic rights cannot and will not be defended, as the Stalinist CPM claims, by clutching to the tattered coattails of the “secular” Congress Party or the Supreme Court and the other putrefying “democratic” institutions of the Indian Republic.

The struggle to defend democratic rights and defeat Modi and communal reaction must be based on the working class. It must be mobilized as an independent political force, rallying the toilers behind it, against all sections and parties of the ruling capitalist elite, and by fusing the defence of democratic rights to the fight for social equality, and against war and New Delhi’s alliance with US imperialism.

Hong Kong police carry out mass arrest of protesters

Ben McGrath

Police violently attacked demonstrations held last Sunday in Hong Kong over the delay of the city’s Legislative Council (LegCo) elections. Protesters also denounced the new national security law passed at the end of June, which is designed to further clamp down on free speech and democratic rights in Hong Kong. Police responded by arresting at least 289 people.

The LegCo general election was originally slated for Sunday, but was postponed for one year at the end of July, with the government claiming it was necessary in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The delay was clearly a political decision, made over concerns that the pan-democrats, an election bloc of the city’s official political opposition, might win a majority. In local district elections last November, the pan-democrats took 347 out of 452 district council seats and 17 of 18 councils. Twelve opposition candidates had also been barred from contesting the election prior to its postponement.

The protests were promoted by anonymous online activists. While the organizers’ exact affiliations are unknown, undoubtedly there are many in Hong Kong concerned about the growing attacks on democratic rights who supported the call to demonstrate but feared that voicing their feelings openly could lead to arrest.

The organizers hoped to gather 50,000 people, but the demonstrations were smaller than those in the recent past. Protests began in the Jordan neighborhood of Kowloon before spreading to Yau Ma Tei and Mong Kok. Some participants chanted, “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times,” a slogan popularized by right-wing “localist” groups.

In response, the authorities mobilized 2,000 heavily armed riot police, with water cannons and armored vehicles on standby. Despite the relatively small numbers involved, police violently assaulted demonstrators with pepper spray and pepper balls. Protesters were hit with batons and knocked to the ground, including a 12-year-old girl whose mother said she was not involved in the demonstration.

Police targeted journalists, threatening them with arrest for covering the rally and the violent response of the police and claiming that they could be considered protest participants. At least one photographer was detained.

Senior Police Superintendent Li Kwai-wah used the pandemic to justify the assaults and the arrests. “If you organize, incite or participate in such gatherings, you are breaking the law and will be arrested,” Li stated. Under COVID-19 restrictions in the city, public gatherings of more than two people are banned.

The majority of those arrested were accused of illegal assembly. Others were detained for disorderly conduct, obstructing police officers, or for failure to produce identity cards. One woman was held for supposedly chanting pro-Hong Kong independence slogans, a violation of the national security law. The last mass arrest of protesters was on July 1 when 370 people were detained.

League of Social Democrats (LSD) members were among those arrested, including Leung Kwok-hung (also known as “Long Hair”), Raphael Wong, and Figo Chan. The LSD is a middle-class protest group founded in 2006 by Leung and Albert Chan, a former Democratic Party member. It uses radical-sounding slogans and phrases combined with support for the pan-democrats in the LegCo as a means to prevent workers and youth from breaking with the political establishment.

Tam Tak-chi, a leader of the People Power group, which is allied with the LSD, was also arrested on Sunday for “uttering seditious words” and accused under a British colonial era law. Tam had set up street booths between June and August where he criticized the government’s COVID-19 response.

The fact that the protests have dwindled in size is not only due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. It is a result of the politics of the pan-democrats as a whole. The bloc is a collection of capitalist parties, though some like the LSD attempt to appear more radical, which fear that a genuine united movement of workers and youth fighting for democratic and social rights will threaten the pan-democrats’ privileged positions within Hong Kong society.

This layer of the political establishment gives voice to elements within the Hong Kong bourgeoisie that are concerned about Beijing’s encroachment on their business interests and appeal to US and British imperialism to pressure the Chinese government in their defense. As a result, they were largely absent from the protest movement last year when it was at its height.

When those protests erupted in June 2019 against legislation that would have allowed extradition of Beijing’s political opponents to the mainland, there was far more behind the movement than simple opposition to the bill. Hong Kong is one of the most unequal cities in the world. It is home to the sixth largest number of billionaires on the planet, while one-fifth of the population lives below the official poverty line. Workers’ wages have stagnated and safe and affordable housing is extremely difficult to find.

This economic discontent was reflected in August and September last year when tens of thousands of workers participated in strikes, demonstrating that there are deeper political, social, and economic issues at work. The entrance of the working class into the struggle sent waves of fear through the ruling class.

The movement, however, lacked a revolutionary socialist and internationalist perspective and the pan-democrats and their allies were able to corral the protest movement behind right-wing and pro-imperialist appeals to the US or the UK for aid or even to “liberate Hong Kong.” This cut the working class off from the broader protest movement, creating the situation in which Beijing and the Hong Kong ruling elites could recover and launch this year’s attacks on democratic rights.

Hong Kong workers and progressive youth must not place any faith in the pan-democrats regardless of their rhetoric. Those genuinely motivated by a desire to defend democratic and social rights must fight for the unity of the working class in the city and throughout China and fight for their political independence and for international socialism.

Iraqi health care workers threaten nationwide strike to demand resources to fight pandemic

Jean Shaoul

Medical school graduates and health workers have taken to the streets of Baghdad in protest over the lack of resources to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. They are demanding oxygen for patients and personal protection equipment for staff, as well as jobs for health care graduates.

At least 1,500 doctors have been infected and 44 doctors have died, a likely underestimate, while 3,000 doctors over 60 years of age were instructed to take early retirement.

Health care workers are threatening a partial strike, exempting emergency wards and intensive care units, and later a nationwide strike. It comes as Iraq has recorded around 250,000 coronavirus cases and more than 7,730 deaths. The worst affected areas are Sulaymaniya and Erbil governorates in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq.

Iraq had initially contained the pandemic with lockdown measures, but cases and deaths have more than doubled since early July, when the government began the gradual lifting of restrictions, resumed international flights and opened Iraq’s borders.

Hospitals have been overwhelmed. Iraq’s health care system, once the best in the Arab world, was gutted by the 1991 Gulf War, a decade of US sanctions, the 2003 US-led war and occupation of Iraq, and the wretched political sectarian system imposed by Washington. More than 20,000 doctors have fled the country in recent years because of insecurity, threats, and the assassination of hundreds of doctors in targeted killings.

As a result, the health service now employs only 30,000 doctors, about 0.8 doctors per 1,000 people, which is one of the lowest numbers per capita in the world, with hospitals becoming a place to die as health care budgets were turned into a mechanism for doling out patronage. Today, 31,000 recent health care graduates have been unable to find jobs, leaving them at risk of losing their practicing certificates.

In June, the incoming government of Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi caused outrage and derision when it called on the governorates to recruit volunteers from retired doctors or graduates provided that they “do not shoulder any financial obligations.”

The health care system, like all of Iraq’s decimated public services, have fallen victim to successive government-sanctioned looting operations and most recently the catastrophic fall in oil prices and the OPEC-agreed cuts in production. Oil revenues, which constitute 90 percent of government income, have been halved, plunging the economy into the abyss.

The approval of the 2020 budget has been delayed by the unrest that started in October when mass protests against the appalling social conditions, government corruption and the entire political setup forced the resignation of Prime Minister Adil Abdul Mahdi. It was the first time since the 2003 US-led war that a government had been forced to resign due to popular pressure.

Iraq’s economy has already contracted by more than 9.7 percent, in contrast to 4.4 percent growth last year. The government’s budget deficit, about $20 billion, is expected to soar, while its debt to foreign financial institutions has risen to more than $104 billion. The government is likely to need a further $40 billion of external financing that Washington will only green light if Baghdad implements free market “reforms,” privatisations and the slashing of the public wage bill, subsidies and benefits that will further impoverish the working class. Above all, the US is demanding that the government impose direct control over the mainly Shia Hashid Shaabi militias, which have long demanded Western forces depart the country entirely.

Just 10 percent of Iraqi jobs provide regular employment, largely in the public sector and allocated on the basis of Iraq’s sectarian political system. The remaining 90 percent are casual day work that require two such “jobs” to put food on the table. All this is in a country where 60 percent of the population is under 24 and most young people are without work.

While the spread of the coronavirus and lockdown measures halted the mass rallies and ended the tent sit-ins in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, fresh protests have started amid frequent and long electricity outages during a blistering summer when temperatures topped 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit). At the end of July, two anti-government protesters were killed and 21 were injured in renewed clashes with the security forces.

Last month, protests broke out in Sulaymaniya and across the KRG over months of unpaid wages and growing hardship, with workers storming the headquarters of the ruling political parties. Scores of people have been injured in street clashes as the KRG’s security forces carried out dozens of arrests. Doctors went on strike for a second time over unpaid wages.

The KRG blamed the non-payment of wages on the federal government in Baghdad, which according to Iraq’s budget law is required to pay the KRG about 12 percent of the federal budget in return for 250,000 barrels of crude oil per day. In April, Baghdad stopped making the $380 million monthly payments, claiming the KRG had not shared oil production with the federal government.

Following the protests, and under pressure from the US with whom the KRG has close links, Baghdad agreed to restore most of the payments in the August-October period in return for 50 percent of the customs revenue from border crossings in areas under the KRG’s control and to discuss other outstanding disagreements.

In recent months, Iraq has seen a wave of assassinations, including the drive-by killing in Baghdad in July of Hisham al Hashimi, a prominent Iraqi security expert. His assassination has been widely attributed to forces allied to Iran as an indirect warning to Washington.

Iraq has for decades been caught in the crosshairs of US imperialism’s increasingly militaristic confrontation with Iran that is bound up with Washington’s build up for “great power” confrontation with China, attempting to use military force to establish a chokehold over the energy resources upon which the Chinese economy depends.

Some Shia factions allied with Iran were unhappy at Kadhimi’s appointment as prime minister in May. Kadhimi, a former head of Iraq’s National Intelligence Service, who spent 20 years in exile in the UK and US, is on good terms with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and is viewed as a US spy and puppet. But they gave him the nod in the belief that their parliamentary majority would be able to neuter him.

Al-Kadhimi accepted a poisoned chalice. He is under huge popular pressure to bring the killers of peaceful protesters to justice. Around 560 protesters were killed and thousands injured since October, with the government taking no action to identify those in the security forces responsible. His government has pledged to investigate the killings and the imprisonment of hundreds of demonstrators, and to pay compensation of $8,380 to the families of those killed.

Al-Kadhimi has announced the holding of new elections in June next year, another key demand of the protest movement. While the elections will be based upon legislation overturning Iraq’s sectarian political system, voting procedures and constituency boundaries have not been finalised, neither has the role of the election commission in organising the polls, widely believed to be rigged. He has also ordered state institutions to stop classifying Iraqis by religious sect following a social media outcry.

Last month, Kadhimi flew to Washington to try to reach a “Strategic Pact” with the Trump administration aimed at securing increased aid in a bid to reduce Iraq’s dependency on Iran.

The last months have seen increasing attacks on US facilities, following Washington’s assassination on January 3 of Iran’s General Qassem Suleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis—a prominent member of the Iraqi government and Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU) leader. Parliament called for the immediate withdrawal of all US troops in the country, but the US refused to leave—with President Donald Trump threatening Baghdad with sanctions if it ordered American troops out. In March, Washington set up at least four new batteries of Patriot air defence systems in Iraq as a preparatory move for an attack on Iran.

On Wednesday, Washington agreed to a face-saving reduction in US forces in Iraq, cutting its presence from 5,200 to 3,000 troops this month as part of a wider draw-down in the region. It leaves intact the far larger number of US private military contractors.