Canada commits to purchase F-35 fighter jets, vows massive defence spending hike in April 7 budget

Roger Jordan

Canada’s Liberal government has announced that it plans to purchase 88 F-35 fighter jets from the giant US arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin, and will significantly hike military spending in its 2022 budget, scheduled to be presented this Thursday.

The minority Liberal government is assured parliamentary support for both measures, thanks to the three-year “confidence-and-supply” agreement struck between Prime Justin Trudeau and New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh March 21. Outside of parliament, this governmental alliance will rely on the corporatist trade unions to suppress working-class opposition to war abroad and austerity for public services at home.

The Trudeau government and social-democratic NDP politicians, with the support of much of the corporate-controlled media, are claiming their political partnership will “deliver for Canadians” by creating a “better, more prosperous future.” In reality, the only constituencies the Liberal-NDP alliance will deliver for are Canadian big business and its military. Behind rhetoric about making dental care available for all, “strengthening health care” and “making parliament work for Canadians,” the Liberals and NDP will work to ensure that Canadian imperialism’s war machine gets the funding and equipment required to continue its provocative role in NATO’s proxy war with Russia, while enforcing “fiscal responsibility,” i.e., public spending restraint, at home.

The Liberal-NDP deal coincided with a massive escalation of NATO’s proxy war against Russia, in which Ottawa is playing a major and particularly aggressive role. Since NATO goaded Putin into invading Ukraine, the Trudeau government has sent tens of millions of dollars of offensive weaponry to Kiev, whose military forces are rife with far-right nationalists and neo-Nazis, and boosted Canada’s military presence in the Baltic and Black Sea regions.

An F-35B Lightning combat aircraft flies off the coast of England on July 1, 2016. (Photo by SAC Tim Laurence)

The measures the Trudeau government is now taking to greatly expand the Canadian Armed Forces’ capabilities are aimed at ensuring Canadian imperialism can continue to wage war around the world in alliance with its US military-strategic partner for decades to come.

Lockheed Martin describes the F-35 stealth fighter jet as the “most lethal, survivable and connected fighter aircraft in the world.” Its key features include “enhanced electronic warfare,” “advanced sensors,” and “advanced 5th-Generation weapons capability.” The price tag for Canada’s 88 jets will be about $15 billion. This sum is about equal to what the federal government, which has far and away the greatest fiscal powers and resources under Canada’s constitution, provided the provinces and territories in 2020, under the Canada Social Transfer, to pay for social assistance, post-secondary and early childhood education and other social services.

But the F-35 purchase is only the tip of the iceberg.

By supporting the Liberal government through June 2025, the NDP is ensuring that it can enact a large chunk of the 70 percent hike in annual defence spending the Liberals pledged in June 2017 that they would implement over nine years ending in 2026. Under this plan, the current defence budget of around $23 billion will to rise to about $32 billion over the next four years. The additional funds are committed to funding, among other things, a new fleet of warships and armed drones.

However, due to the advent of a new era of “strategic competition” between the great powers—i.e., the Canadian-backed US military-strategic offensives against Russia and China—these huge planned military spending increases are now being dismissed as grossly inadequate by the military top brass, the most influential ruling class think-tanks, and the government itself. Defence Minister Anita Anand has boasted that she has brought before cabinet various plans to increase Canada’s defence spending to 2 percent of GDP and more. NATO is currently pressing all member states to raise defence budgets to at least 2 percent of GDP forthwith.

To meet this goal, Canada would effectively need to double defence spending from its current $23 billion level. Parliamentary budget officer Yves Giroux told CBC that while Canada’s current defence spending equates to 1.39 percent of GDP, an additional “$20-25 billion” annually would be needed to keep the budget above 2 percent of economic output if the effects of economic growth and inflation are taken into account.

On top of this, there is strong support within the top echelons of the military and foreign policy establishment for a massive investment in modernizing NORAD, the North American aerospace and maritime defence command, a Cold War bilateral Canada-US continental defence structure. Canada’s contribution to modernizing NORAD’s “early warning” surveillance system in the far north is estimated at $11 billion.

However, the key issue now being discussed within the Canadian ruling class and military-security establishment is the need for Canada to join the US ballistic missile defence shield and otherwise assist in developing the means to “take out” “over the horizon threats”—that is to prepare to wage “winnable” nuclear war against Russia and China.

The NDP has repeatedly reiterated its full-throated support for this mad rearmament drive, which can only be understood as the Canadian ruling elite’s preparation to be a major belligerent in a third world war, as it was in the two imperialist world wars of the last century. NDP Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Heather Macpherson noted recently, “We have seen our military be decimated over [the] long-term. This is not something that has just happened. We have not provided the tools that our soldiers, our men and women in uniform, need to do the jobs that we're asking them to do safely.”

The NDP, no less so than the Liberals and Tories, is also fully on board with the reckless drive to war with Russia, which threatens to trigger a global conflagration. The NDP used a recent opposition day in parliament to table a motion aimed at making the sweeping economic sanctions against Russia “more effective.” Party spokeswoman for national defence Lindsay Mathyssen said, “Economic sanctions are a strong tool we have to hit at Putin where it will hurt him most, his wealth. However, sanctions won’t have the desired effect if the government is not willing to enforce them properly.” She demanded a public blacklist of Russian owners of Canadian assets, a move that would no doubt be used to further intensify the hysterical anti-Russia war fever in the upper middle class.

In reality, the price for sanctions will be paid for by working people in Russia, Ukraine, and around the world as the cost of key commodities and basic necessities shoot up under conditions where wages remain stagnant.

Canadian imperialism’s vast rearmament program will come at the expense of the working class. The tens of billions in additional war spending to be clawed out of public spending and workers’ wages will be added to the hundreds of billions looted from public funds by the corporate elite and financial oligarchy during the pandemic, when the Trudeau government orchestrated the transfer of over $650 billion to big business and the banks virtually overnight. Like the ruling elite’s huge outlays to wage war, the bailout of the super-rich during the pandemic was fully endorsed by the NDP and trade unions, who ensured that all popular opposition to the ruling elite’s back-to-work/back-to-school drive was sabotaged and suppressed.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has explicitly stated that additional funding for the military will mean budget cuts elsewhere. During her fall fiscal update in December 2021, Freeland pledged to impose “fiscal guardrails” to ensure that the government spending conducted during the early stages of COVID-19 was reduced and Canada could work towards a balanced budget.

Behind the blather in the corporate media about major new spending commitments to placate the NDP, the reality is that both the Liberals and New Democrats fully endorse the framework of austerity for public spending and low taxes for the corporate elite that has dominated political life for the past three decades. There are no plans to reverse the savage cuts to health care, education, social housing and other critical social services that have seen inequality and poverty in Canada rise to unprecedented levels. On the contrary, cuts in these areas will have to be intensified to pay for the massive military budget and subsidies for the so-called “green,” “clean energy” economy, from which corporate Canada hopes to reap multi-billion-dollar profits in the years to come.

The Liberals and NDP will rely on the trade union bureaucracy to suppress working class opposition to this class war agenda. The Canadian Labour Congress has declared its whole-hearted support for the confidence-and-supply agreement, with its president Bea Bruske enthusing in The Hill Times that “hope and optimism shines through the gray fog” in Ottawa thanks to the Liberal-NDP deal. It was a “welcome antidote to the noxious partisan rhetoric of recent weeks and months,” she asserted.

The meaning of this remark is unmistakable. Bruske, the union bureaucracy and the NDP are determined that no “partisan” divisions emerge on the ruling elite’s waging of war abroad, huge rearmament for the military, and austerity for public spending. To this end, the unions will keep sabotaging workers’ struggles, like the Teamsters’ sellout of the courageous struggle by 3,000 CP Rail workers on the very same day that Trudeau and Singh announced their agreement.

Corporate media parrots the Azov Battalion

Jason Melanovski

Over a month into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Western corporate media now uncritically passes on information sourced from the fascist Azov Battalion.

During the 2014 United States-backed coup of elected President Viktor Yanukovych, the general stance of Western media towards Kiev was uncritical, downplaying or ignoring the leading role fascist forces played in bringing down the Yanukovych government.

Armored vehicles of the Azov regiment in Mariupol [Credit: Wanderer777/CC BY-SA 4.0/Wikimedia]

These forces, including the Svoboda Party and the Right Sector, out of which the Azov Battalion emerged, openly place themselves in the traditions of Nazi collaborationist organizations like the OUN-B and the UPA, which were responsible for the massacres of tens of thousands of Jews, Poles as well as Ukrainian civilians during World War II.

So blatant was the presence of prominent neo-Nazi forces in Ukraine that following the 2014 coup and outbreak of civil war in the eastern Donbass region, several media outlets such as Time, USA Today, the New York Times and others released stories admitting that indeed, the most dedicated soldiers within Ukraine’s Armed Forces were neo-Nazis.

In a 2015 USA Today article titled “Volunteer Ukrainian unit includes Nazis,” Azov Battalion spokesman Andriy Diachenko admitted that 10 to 20 percent of Azov’s members were neo-Nazis.

Time magazine noted in a January 2021 article “How a white-supremacist Milita uses Facebook to Radicalize and Train New Members,” that Azov’s neo-Nazi ideology and history were undeniable.

Regarding Azov founder Andriy Biletsky and his former Patriot of Ukraine group, Time reported that “Biletsky’s nickname within the group was Bely Vozhd, or White Ruler, and his manifesto seemed to pluck it’s narrative straight from Nazi ideology. Ukrainian nationalists, it said, must ‘lead the white nations of the world in a final crusade for their survival, a crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen,’ a German term for ‘subhumans,’ with roots in Nazi propaganda.”

Even though the US was funneling billions of weapons into Ukraine’s military and paramilitary, Azov-related articles often attempted to distance the United States from the backing of Azov. Thus, a 2015 New York Times article on Ukraine’s far-right militias attempted to reassure its readers by uncritically reporting that “Americans are specifically prohibited from giving [military] instruction to members of the Azov group.”

A since deleted post on the website of the Azov Battalion, showing its members with representatives of the US and Canadian military in 2017

In reality, pictures show that US officers have long been involved in training members of the Azov Battalion.

Now, with NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, all such pretences by the media have been abandoned. The Azov Battalion is integrated into Ukraine’s National Guard and is now playing a prominent role in the war, especially in Mariupol, a predominantly Russian-speaking city in southern Ukraine, control over which is of key strategic significance.

As the Western media plays a critical role in distributing imperialist propaganda on the war, “information” from the Azov Battalion is now propagated directly to Western audiences—often with no mention of its ties to neo-Nazis.

NBCs chief foreign policy correspondent Richard Engel led the way in whitewashing Azov when in early February he showed the Azov Battalion training Mariupol residents in the use of weapons and first aid. Despite the fact that Azov’s use of a Wolfsangel insignia, which is associated with Hitler’s SS in the Second World War, was clearly identifiable, Engel failed to mention Azov at all.

On March 22, CBS News published a defence of Azov titled “The Azov Battalion: How Putin built a false premise for war against ‘Nazis’ in Ukraine.”

In the article, CBS quoted Ruslan Leviev, an analyst with the Conflict Intelligence Team, as an expert in its defence of Azov.

Leviev flatly lied to CBS: “There are no Nazi battalions in Ukraine.”

“There is (the Azov) regiment … There are (estimated) several thousand people who are in this regiment. It is indeed a group where many members adhere to nationalist and far-right views. But a lot of people also join it because it is one of the most prepared and fit-for-war units,” Leviev assured CBS.

Later, on April 1, CNN featured a video on the Erin Burnett Upfront show of Azov Battalion Captain Bohdan Krotevych claiming that Russian forces had created “mountains of corpses on the streets,” noting that Krotevych is part of “ultra nationalist far-right battalion.”

But this disclosure had no impact on Burnett, who repeated Krotevych’s accusations as a statement of fact. Burnett also relayed Krotevych’s claim that the Mariupol bombing had killed 400 people, 100 more than the widely quoted figure of 300 dead.

On March 29, CNN published a story titled “A far-right battalion has a key role in Ukraine's resistance. It’s neo-Nazi history has been exploited by Putin,” defending Azov as an “effective fighting force” and downplaying its neo-Nazi ideology as a matter of the past.

After covering the myriad fascist violent incidents, and quoting at length from its leaders, the article denounces any questioning of the information coming from Azov regarding the war, such as the bombing of the Mariupol theatre as “Russian disinformation.”

Despite going to great lengths to sanitize Azov, the story was too truthful for the Ukrainian bourgeoisie, as parliament member Serhiy Taruta published an open letter and on Facebook called on CNN to quit publishing “Russian propaganda.”

Serious questions remain regarding the bombing of the Mariupol Theater, which Russia has accused Azov of blowing up as a false flag operation to elicit support for a no-fly zone in Ukraine. Whatever the nature of the bombing, it was quickly seized upon by Western media outlets and governments to call for an intensification of the anti-Russia war drive.

As Max Blumenthal reported on the GrayZone, Azov photos of the theatre bombing were quickly disseminated through western media outlets with no disclaimer that they were taken by a neo-Nazi militia.

Azov Battalion Deputy Commander Svyatoslav Palamar has been widely used as a source on the situation in Mariupol, including by CNN, the NewYork Post and the Telegraph. Again, no mention is made of Azov’s neo-Nazi ideology.

Blumenthal also noted that the western media reporting on the bombing was largely based on tweets from Kyiv Independent reporter Illia Ponomarenko, who has admitted to being “consecrated” into the Azov Battalion.

Ponomarenko has built a large following on Twitter since the beginning of Russia’s invasion and serves as a conduit for Ukrainian war propaganda back to western audiences.

Twitter post of dead Russian soldiers by Illia Ponomarenko

A cheerleader for Ukrainian nationalism and war, Ponomarenko regularly posts gory photos of dead Russian soldiers and calls for NATO to intervene in the war on Ukraine’s behalf, thus assisting a social media campaign by Ukraine’s armed forces and the far-right that directly violates the Geneva Convention for the humane treatment of prisoners of war.

Notably, Ponomarenko’s employer, the newly created Kyiv Independent receives its funding from western imperialism, including the US’s National Endowment for Democracy and the EU’s European Endowment for Democracy.

More recently, photos of the apparent killing of civilians in Bucha first appeared on the social media accounts of figures such as Ponomarenko and the far-right “activist” thug Serhii Sternenko. The photos and reports were then fed to Western media outlets, which again seized upon them to call for increased sanctions against Russia and the prosecution of President Vladimir Putin as a war criminal.

Photo captions by the New York Times indicate that Azov Battalion soldiers were among the first to enter Bucha on April 2 after Russian forces left the town on March 30. Despite this fact, claims of a wanton Russian massacre are promoted uncritically while those calling for investigation before judgement are smeared as “Russian trolls.”

US workers and poor suffer widely disproportionate death toll from COVID-19, study finds

Kate Randall

As the US death toll from COVID-19 climbs above 1 million, the government and its mouthpieces in the media continue to perpetuate the myth that deaths from COVID-19 are a generally natural phenomenon that authorities have been all but powerless to stop. According to this lie, SARS-CoV-2 has spread and killed without concern for the socioeconomic status of its victims.

However, a new report exposes the grim reality that among the more than 81 million Americans who have been infected by the deadly virus, the poor and those living in low-income communities have been far more likely to die. During the repeated COVID-19 waves that have struck down hundreds of thousands over the last two years, death rates were as much as five times higher in the poorest counties than in those with the highest median incomes.

The report was produced by the Poor People’s Campaign in partnership with economists at the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network led by Jeffrey Sachs. Analyzing statistics from more than 3,200 US counties, the report compares the poorest 10 percent of counties with the richest 10 percent. And the results are staggering.

The study clearly shows that it is the working class—the low-paid, the unemployed, those in “essential” workplaces, those without health insurance, the rent-burdened—who have been disproportionately and devastatingly impacted by the pandemic.

Children and their caregivers arrive for school in New York, Monday, March 7, 2022. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

As the authors write: “The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated preexisting social and economic disparities that have long festered in the US. Widespread and unequal distribution of wealth, income and resources prior to the pandemic created the conditions for many of the negative outcomes associated with the virus.”

In other words, the immense class divide in US society has been further demonstrated by the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on the millions of people who live in impoverished counties across America. Government policies have created poverty, hunger, hyper-exploitation on the job, unemployment and deplorable living conditions that have created the prime conditions for COVID-19 to fester and kill.

The report divides US counties into deciles, each representing approximately 10 percent of the population by income. It also provides valuable interactive maps and graphics that chart the course of the pandemic in these counties.

In the poorest decile, in which 42-94 percent of people live in poverty, the death rate is near double that of counties with less than a fifth of people live in poverty. Approximately 31 million people live in the poorest decile of counties studied.

Mingo County, West Virginia, is one of the lowest income counties in the US, with 52.41 percent of the population living under 200 percent of the federal poverty guideline, which stands at about $36,000 for a household of two. The Appalachian state has been devastated by unemployment and the opioid crisis.

Mingo County’s COVID-19 death rate is 470 per 100,000, ranking it in the highest quarter of counties. The county is 95 percent white and media income is $32,746 with over half of its residents living under 200 percent of the poverty line. The official unemployment rate currently stands at 7.5 percent. The Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921, in neighboring Logan County, was a massive labor uprising as part of the drive to unionize miners which saw the US military deployed to enforce martial law and arrest hundreds of workers.

In the Bronx in New York City, 51 percent of county residents live under 200 percent of the poverty line. Over 60 percent of residents are rent-burdened, paying more than 30 percent of household income towards rent. It is one of the most ethnically diverse counties in the US. Of its 1.4 million residents, 55 percent are Hispanic, 29 percent black, 9 percent white and around 5 percent Asian. It has a COVID-19 death rate of 538 per 100,000, which is among the highest death rates in the country. Many Bronx residents work in Manhattan, servicing New York City’s wealthy elite.

By contrast, in Fairfax County, Virginia, one of the richest counties in the US, the median income stands at $124,831, with 15.1 percent of people living below the 200 percent poverty line. The COVID-19 death rate stands at 115 per 100,000. Fairfax revolves around professional service and technology, with many employees working for the US government. The county hosts several intelligence agencies, including the CIA. It is also headquarters to seven of the Fortune 500 Companies.

Nearly three-quarters of the counties with the lowest median incomes and highest percentage of people living in poverty are in the country’s Southeast and Southwest.

Wilkinson County, Mississippi, in the Deep South, has a median income of $27,313. More than 60 percent of people there live below 200 percent of the poverty line. The COVID-19 death rate stands at 510 per 100,000 people. About two-thirds of the county’s population is African American.

In Gila County, Arizona, in the Southwest, 44.68 percent of residents live below the 200 percent poverty line. The COVID-19 death rate is 641 per 100,000 people, one of the nation’s highest. The county is 77 percent white and 15 percent Native American. Eighteen percent are Hispanic or Latino.

The COVID-19 death rate in McKinley County, New Mexico, is 786 per 100,000 people. The median income is $33,834, and more than 61 percent lives below the 200 percent poverty line. Three-quarters of the county’s population are Native American.

According to the report, the two most deadly periods for the pandemic have been the “third wave,” of winter 2020-2021, accounting for nearly 40 percent of all deaths to date, and the ongoing Omicron wave, accounting for nearly 20 percent of deaths so far.

During the third wave, deaths rates were 4.5 times higher in the group of counties in the decile with the lowest median income compared to those with the highest median income. Deaths rates were five times higher in the poorest counties during the Delta variant phase, while the Omicron phase has seen a death rate nearly three times higher in counties with lower median incomes.

While vaccination rates tend to be higher in wealthier counties, vaccination status does not explain all the variation across income groups, as in almost every decile, county vaccine coverage ranges from 85 percent or higher to under 5 percent.

The report aggregates data by connecting information about COVID-19 deaths to other demographic features, including income, race, health insurance status and other characteristics. It demonstrates the connections between poverty, race and the pandemic and seeks to show how “poverty, age, gender, race, ethnicity, disability and class intersect with COVID-19 outcomes.”

As the county examples above demonstrate, however, it is class that is driving the misery of the COVID-19 pandemic. The poorest counties, which have suffered the most and seen the most deaths, vary widely by ethnic make-up, with socioeconomic class being the overriding factor.

As the report correctly states on the pandemic, “While US billionaires increased their wealth by $2.1 trillion, or by 70 percent, many Americans faced eviction, hunger, and record unemployment.” As in all aspects of social life, it is the working class that has been the main target of SARS-CoV-2, driven by the criminal policies of the ruling elite and the two big-business parties.

German press seizes upon claims of Russian atrocities to demand military escalation

Peter Schwarz

Atrocity propaganda is one of the most important weapons of modern warfare. The enemy is alleged to have committed bestial crimes, which are either totally invented or greatly exaggerated, to then seek their total destruction. This is the pattern now being followed by the broad campaign about Russian war crimes in Bucha.

As yet, although there is neither reliable information nor any independent investigation, the Ukrainian government and NATO are using the alleged massacre of civilians to burn all bridges leading to a ceasefire and to promulgate the continuation of the war until the complete subjugation of Russia.

What exactly took place in Bucha is not yet clear. The Ukrainian and Russian accounts of events differ diametrically. The Ukrainian government accuses the Russian army of brutally murdering over 400 civilians in the small town near Kiev. The Russian government speaks of a “provocation by the Kiev regime” and claims that no one was harmed in the town until the withdrawal of Russian troops on 30 March.

Photos and video footage show numerous bodies in civilian clothes lying on the roadside. Journalists also confirm they have seen bodies. Who these are and who killed them and when, however, has not yet been clarified. In view of the role similar incidents have played in imperialist war propaganda, the greatest caution is therefore called for.

Bodies to be buried at a cemetery in Bucha, outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 5, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

Let us recall the “Račak massacre,” which was instrumentalised by NATO to justify its war against Yugoslavia in violation of international law. On 15 and 16 January 1999, 40 bodies were found near the village of Račak, and presented by the Western media as evidence of an alleged Serb genocide of Kosovo Albanians. Later, it turned out that the evidence had been manipulated. The actual events have not been clarified to this day, as important documents remain under lock and key.

Even now, the NATO powers immediately instrumentalised the alleged Bucha massacre to intensify the conflict with Russia. President Joe Biden has announced further sanctions and called for a “war crimes trial” against President Vladimir Putin, effectively blocking the path to a negotiated settlement. The European Union also wants to tighten its sanctions against Russia.

The reactions in Germany are particularly ferocious. Formerly liberal representatives of the affluent middle class, including numerous journalists, are gripped by a veritable war hysteria. For them, sanctions against Russia and military support for Ukraine cannot go far enough.

News and talk shows have degenerated into pure propaganda programmes where dissenting opinions are no longer tolerated. Even ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who used to be foreign minister, are caught in the crossfire of criticism because they once cultivated diplomatic relations with Putin. Steinmeier has since admitted his “mistake”; Merkel has not, so far.

Green Party Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, a leading voice in German war propaganda, has expelled 40 Russian diplomats from Germany in response to Bucha. The German government, like its US counterpart, is supplying additional weaponry to Ukraine.

The double standards of this campaign break all bounds. Journalists, who for decades have defended every war crime committed by the USA and NATO and downplayed the historical crimes of the Nazis, are discovering a new dimension of war crimes in Bucha.

Typical is a comment by the head of the politics department of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Stefan Kornelius. What was visible in Bucha, he writes, “cannot even begin to be described with the term crime and makes clear the brutal, bestial nature of this slaughter.” The Russian invasion was “aimed solely at destruction and death,” it defied “all notions of atrocity.” Ukraine was suffering “not a war of aggression” but “a campaign of extermination.”

The Nazis described their war against the Soviet Union, in which almost 30 million people fell victim, as a “campaign of extermination.” In the territory of today’s Ukraine alone, they murdered 5 million people, including 1.5 million Jews. In Babi Yar, which is only a few kilometres away from Bucha, Hitler’s Wehrmacht (army) shot 34,000 Jewish men, women, and children within 36 hours.

Equating the events in Bucha with these historical crimes deliberately trivialises the Nazi regime, in order to follow in its footsteps. Kornelius advocates intensifying the war against Russia until its complete surrender. “Those who believe that Ukraine can make peace with Russia and the war would then end should be honest: No one in Ukraine will make peace, these images will catapult the war into a new dimension,” he writes.

Kornelius, who is very well connected internationally, has long been active as a propagandist of German militarism. As early as 2014, he had welcomed the overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych by fascist militias and called for NATO military intervention when Russia incorporated Crimea into its territory in response.

A year earlier, he had advocated US military intervention in Syria following an alleged poison gas attack on Syrian civilians. Cynically, he noted that it did not really matter whether the Assad regime or the Western-backed rebels had used the poison gas: “Realistically, it also makes little difference who fired the shells.”

Kornelius is just one of many German journalists calling for all-out war against Russia.

Mathieu von Rohr, head of the “Foreign Desk,” writes in Der Spiegel: “There will not be a return to the status quo ante, there cannot be. Not with Russia, not for Europe. This war has irrevocably changed some things on the continent: It is now definitively clear that peace in Europe can only be defended against Russia.”

He also accuses Putin of waging “a war of extermination against Ukraine” and concludes: “We must supply Ukraine with all the weapons it can use, especially heavy weapons—and quickly.”

In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Reinhard Veser comments that the Ukrainians were “in a struggle for existence in which they have no other option but to fight back with all their might. The West must provide them with the means to do so.” Compromises with Putin could not lead to lasting peace, he writes.

The rehabilitation of Nazism is an inseparable part of this war campaign. In 2014, the return of German militarism and support for the right-wing coup in Ukraine went hand in hand with the trivialisation of Nazi crimes. At the time, Berlin historian Jörg Baberowski called in Der Spiegel for the rehabilitation of Nazi apologist Ernst Nolte and attested that Hitler had “not been cruel.”

When the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) and its youth organisation IYSSE protested against this, the bourgeois media almost uniformly rallied behind Baberowski. When the SGP gained support among students and workers, the Verfassungsschutz (secret service) denounced it as a “left-wing extremist” organisation, placed it under surveillance and included it in its annual report. At that time, the political rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) also began.

In the meantime, the trivialisation of Nazi crimes has become commonplace in Germany. Ukrainian Ambassador Andriy Melnyk, an open admirer of Nazi collaborator and war criminal Stepan Bandera, is a celebrated guest in editorial offices and at political events.

When Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced the biggest rearmament offensive since Hitler in the Bundestag (federal parliament) on 27 February, Melnyk, who sat in the public gallery with former Federal President Joachim Gauck, was greeted with a standing ovation by deputies from all parliamentary groups. Since then, Melnyk has unabashedly defended his extreme right-wing views.

The target of his latest attack is Süddeutsche Zeitung columnist Heribert Prantl. The latter had called Melnyk’s cult of Bandera “alienating” and noted: “Bandera is a convicted murderer of the Polish Interior Minister Pieracki in 1934; he became the leader of the radical anti-Semitic wing of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists in 1940; he took over police powers there after the German Wehrmacht invaded Lemberg/Lviv and was involved in pogroms against the Jewish civilian population as well as in the murder of Soviet prisoners of war.”

Melnyk retorted on Twitter, “Neither the Russians, nor the Germans have the right to determine who Ukrainians revere as heroes. Stepan Bandera & hundreds of thousands of my compatriots fought both Hitler and Stalin for the [UKR] state. Leave us alone with your lectures.”

The war offensive against Russia and the rehabilitation of Nazi crimes are two sides of the same coin. Germany, the USA, and NATO are not concerned with the “freedom” of Ukraine and the welfare of its people. They are waging a proxy war against Russia in order to conquer it—as Hitler once did—and divide it up among themselves. In doing so, they consciously accept the risk of a third, nuclear world war. The population and the army of Ukraine, which they are arming to the teeth, serve as their cannon fodder.

The reactionary, nationalist regime of Vladimir Putin, which represents the interests of the Russian oligarchs, has nothing to oppose this. It vacillates between offers of negotiations with the imperialist powers, nuclear sabre-rattling and brutal military actions that play into the hands of imperialist propaganda.

US Justice Department expanding probe of taxes, business dealings of Hunter Biden

Jacob Crosse

In recent days, a longstanding investigation by the Department of Justice (DoJ) into the taxes and financial affairs of Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, has become the subject of prominent news reports in the mainstream press. The reports, nearly all citing anonymous sources within the DoJ, confirm that the investigation, which began during the Trump administration but was not disclosed by Hunter Biden until December 2020, has broadened in scope.

As of this writing, no official charges have been made against Hunter Biden or any other member of the Biden family.

Prominent articles on the federal investigation into the younger Biden’s international business dealings began to appear in mid-March. On March 16, the New York Times reported that the president’s son recently paid off an outstanding tax liability of over $1 million. Nevertheless, “a grand jury continued to gather evidence in a wide-ranging examination of his international business dealings, according to people familiar with the case,” the newspaper wrote.

Subsequent reports, citing sources within the DoJ, confirmed that witnesses with close ties to Hunter Biden, including former business and romantic partners, are being interviewed by a federal grand jury located in Wilmington, Delaware. Among them is former business associate and fellow Yale University alumnus Devon Archer.

Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, centre, his son Hunter Biden, left, and his sister Valerie Biden Owens, right (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

Archer was sentenced to 13 months imprisonment in February for his participation in a fraud scheme, following his conviction in 2018. The operation involved defrauding the Oglala Sioux tribe of roughly $60 million in bonds.

While Hunter Biden was not involved in Archer’s fraud case, the former friends and business partners both sat on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, which, the DoJ has confirmed, is under investigation.

Hunter Biden was appointed to the Burisma board, despite having no experience in the field, during the period when his father, then vice president, served as the point-man for the Obama administration’s imperialist operations in Ukraine following the US-backed Maidan coup of February 2014.

Burisma paid Hunter Biden roughly $50,000 a month between 2014 and 2019. The money was wired to a Delaware-based corporation called Rosemont Seneca Bohai LLC, which was owned by Archer and registered by him on February 13, 2014. The company, according to a September 2020 report by Senate Republicans, acted as “a shell entity” to receive an estimated $3.5 million in payments from Burisma to Archer and Hunter Biden. In the same report, the Republicans detailed Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China.

Citing emails on Biden’s laptop, the Washington Post on March 30 confirmed that over a 14- month period, Hunter and his uncle, James Biden, received $4.8 million in “consulting fees” from the China Energy Company Limited (CEFC).

The fees were part of a contract signed by Biden and Dong Gongwen, president of CEFC, on August 2, 2017. In its article on the contract, the Washington Post reported that Hunter Biden “would get a one-time retainer of $500,000 and would then receive a monthly stipend of $100,000, with his uncle James Biden getting $65,000 a month.”

The Republicans are seeking to make these shady dealings a centerpiece of their 2022 midterm election campaign. Spearheaded by Trump’s fascist former White House adviser Stephen Bannon and Trump’s coup lawyer Rudy Giuliani, they are presenting Joe Biden as the head of a crime family that is in the thrall of the Chinese Communist Party. According to their conspiracy theory, the CCP, seeking to protect its “investment” in the Bidens, intervened in the 2020 presidential election to falsify the vote in favor of its preferred candidate.

While the federal investigation was originally centered on alleged tax violations and money laundering by Hunter Biden, recent press reports indicate that the government is also looking into whether Biden violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) by failing to register with the State Department.

The reports confirm evidence of self-dealing and corruption on the part of Hunter Biden, which one would be safe in assuming did not stop with him. Corruption is pervasive in the bourgeois political system and both of its corporate-controlled parties.

Under conditions of a global pandemic in which the financial oligarchy has enriched itself fabulously over the bodies of millions of workers, it is not surprising that its political puppets exploit their office for personal gain.

That, however, does not alter the fact that the Republican Party is massively implicated in the attempted coup of January 6, 2021 and is being transformed under its “Fuehrer” Trump into a fascistic party. The petty, or not-so-petty, corruption of the Bidens (as well as the Obamas, the Clintons, etc.) in no way lessens the danger to the working class represented by the growth of a fascist movement in the US.

In this connection, it is noteworthy that as evidence of widespread support for Trump’s coup attempt within the ruling class and its military, police and intelligence agencies has mounted, extending to the Supreme Court itself, Democratic-aligned organs such as the Washington Post and New York Times have taken to reporting details of Hunter Biden’s business dealings that were previously the specialty of right-wing, pro-Trump news outlets such as the New York Post .

When the latter began publishing articles on the subject in October 2020, the Washington Post and the Times dismissed them as “Russian disinformation.”

Last Monday, March 28, during a meeting of the House Select Committee on January 6 that voted unanimously to refer Trump accomplices Dan Scavino and Peter Navarro to Congress on criminal contempt charges, several committee members, including Democrats Elaine Luria, Adam Schiff and Zoe Lofgren, forcefully called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to bring charges against those previously referred to the DoJ for contempt of Congress.

“This committee is doing its job. The Department of Justice needs to do theirs,” demanded Lofgren. So far, only Bannon has been arraigned on criminal contempt of Congress charges, while former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, whom Congress voted to hold in contempt in December 2020, has yet to be arraigned.

Less than a week later, the New York Times published a front-page article titled “Garland Faces Growing Pressure as Jan. 6 Investigation Widens.” The Times reported that while “there is no indication that federal prosecutors are close to charging the former president,” Joe Biden was allegedly “aghast” that Trump’s inner circle could defy congressional subpoenas.

The Times reported that Biden expressed frustration “to his inner circle” late last year regarding Garland’s refusal to date to launch high-level prosecutions.

The very next day, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, appearing on ABC News’ “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” denied the reporting in the Times, telling his host, “I’ve never heard the president say that.” He hastened to add that Biden “has confidence in the attorney general.”

One day later, on Monday, April 4, Politico ran an interview with Lofgren in which the January 6 Committee member suggested there was no point in the committee sending a criminal referral against Trump to the Justice Department.

“A referral doesn’t mean anything,” Lofgren said. “It has no legal weight whatsoever.”

These developments underscore the role of the Democratic Party in covering up the fascist plot that culminated in the January 6, 2021 attempt to overthrow the US Constitution, and in keeping the working class in the dark about the ongoing and accelerating preparations for dictatorial rule.

Sri Lanka’s ruling coalition crumbles, but president refuses to resign

Saman Gunadasa

The Sri Lankan government of President Gotabhaya Rajapakse holds an unstable, wafer-thin majority in parliament amid widening anti-government protests fueled by desperate shortages of food items, fuel, medicines and electricity. Working people are compelled to wait for hours in long queues just to secure the essentials for life and then at exorbitant and rising prices.

The parliamentary session was called yesterday in the wake of the resignation of the entire cabinet except Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse, the president’s brother. President Rajapakse appealed to the opposition parties on Monday to take part in a new cabinet but was flatly rejected by the three major opposition parties—the Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB), Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP).

Under the pressure of mass protests demanding the resignation of the president and the government, the ruling coalition is crumbling. Groups of government parliamentarians and minor coalition parties announced their decision in parliament to leave the government yesterday and sit as “independents”.

These included 12 members of Rajapakse’s own Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna, 16 from ten smaller parties, 14 from the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), and two from the plantation-based Ceylon Workers Congress. As a result, the government commands just 114 seats in the 225-seat parliament—as of yesterday at least.

Anti-government demonstration in Hatton on April 4 [WSWS Media]

President Rajapakse has bluntly rejected the demands of protesters for his resignation and has instead offered to swear in as the next government any party that can demonstrate a majority in parliament. The offer is a desperate and cynical offer to the opposition parties. Under the executive presidency, Rajapakse retained enormous powers, including to sack the government at any time.

The president also understands that for all their posturing, none of the opposition parties has any solution to the crisis, other than impose further burdens on working people. All of them defend the capitalist system to the hilt, which means putting corporate profits and repayments on huge foreign debt ahead of the essential needs of the majority. The SJB’s criticism of the government is that it should have begged for an IMF bailout sooner—in other words more austerity, sooner.

The immense political crisis of the government was underscored by the resignation yesterday of the newly appointed Finance Minister Ali Sabri and finance ministry secretary S.R. Artygala. Sabri’s resignation came less than 24 hours after his appointment on Monday, along with three other ministers to form a skeleton cabinet.

Sabri, who was the president’s personal lawyer, took over from Basil Rajapakse, who was due to go to Washington this week for discussions over an IMF bailout package. The turmoil in the finance ministry as well as central bank, whose governor resigned on Monday, is a measure of the country’s deep economic crisis.

March in Kandy demands Rajapakse resign, 4 April [WSWS Media]

The country which was hit hard by the pandemic as well as the government’s criminal “let it rip” policy that allowed COVID-19 to spread island-wide. The economic crisis dramatically escalated following global dislocation produced by the US-NATO proxy war with Russia in Ukraine.

Sri Lanka’s dwindling foreign reserves mean that it has no money to pay for imports of essential items. The country is on the brink of default. The country’s stock and bond markets have been stumbling due to the escalating crisis. On April 4, the All Share Price Index was down by 32.5 percent this year. Bloomberg labeled the Colombo Stock Exchange as the second-worst performer after Russia.

In parliament yesterday, Minister of Education and leader of the house Dinesh Gunawardane challenged the opposition to demonstrate that it has a majority and to inform the president that it can form government. No such demonstration took place.

In a demagogic speech, SJB leader Sajith Premadasa, who is also opposition leader, called on the president and the entire government to resign. “The time has come to change the executive presidency. Let us use this opportunity,” he declared. But neither Premadasa nor the leaders of the other opposition leaders outlined what they would do to address the economic and social crisis.

Protesting health workers from Balapitya Hospital in the south, 5 April [WSWS Media]

Premadasa’s call to “change the executive presidency” is a ruse to appeal to popular sentiment for an end to the autocratic presidential powers. Opposition parties have routinely called for changes to the executive presidency but when in office have done little or nothing to modify it. Premadasa’s failure to outline a single concrete measure is to hide the austerity agenda that the SJB would institute if in office.

The executive presidency must not simply be changed or modified. It must be abolished. Rajapakse holds sweeping powers not just to install or dismiss governments, but to arrogate to himself ministries and to rule by decree. He is currently defence minister which gives him control not only of Sri Lanka’s huge military apparatus but also the police.

The SJB is the majority breakaway from the right-wing United National Party, which changed the constitution to institute the executive presidency in 1978. Neither the SJB nor any of the other opposition parties has any intention of abolishing the executive presidency which has served the ruling class in times of crisis—such as the present—as the lever to marshal the state apparatus and security forces against the working class.

Yesterday Rajapakse ended the state of emergency, which can be reimposed at any time. He still has a battery of anti-democratic laws—including the ability to ban strikes in key public sectors. While offering to install an opposition government, which he can dispense with as he wishes, he is certainly involved in close talks with the military top brass, with whom he has the closest of relationships.

Workers and youth march in Galle to demand resignation of President Rajapakse, 5 April [WSWS Media]

Defence Secretary Kamal Gunaratna yesterday issued a thinly-veiled threat to protesters saying security forces will not hesitate to enforce the law against those involving in violence. He accused some protesters “of deliberately engaging in violent protests in an organised manner causing damage to public and private properties and disrupting the day-to-day life of the people on main roads and in public places.”

These comments are a warning that the current regime is prepared to exploit any pretext to mobilise the security forces to suppress the nation-wide protests. Rajapakse, who billed himself during the 2019 presidential election as the strongman needed to save Sri Lanka, has installed former and serving generals into key administrative powers, and has the power to impose dictatorial forms of rule.

The central demand of the protests is that Rajapakse has to resign. There is no question that Gota has got to go! But who and what government is to replace him? No faith can be placed in any of the opposition parties or combinations of parties—all of which have a proven track record of defending the interest of big business, the super-rich, foreign investors and above all, international finance capital.