As the death toll in Shanghai climbs, China moves to contain the rise in new COVID infections in Beijing

Benjamin Mateus

Despite having checked the spread of COVID-19 infections across Shanghai during the last four weeks of lockdown, the death toll has begun to mount quickly. After reporting 39 deaths on Saturday, the next day, the number of new fatalities had jumped to 51, according to Chinese health officials. This brings the total to 138 since the resurgence of cases in March.

Because Chinese health officials have been tracking asymptomatic, symptomatic, and those that convert to symptomatic cases separately, the day-to-day analysis conducted by the World Socialist Web Site found that over the last several weeks, the share of symptomatic COVID cases has been climbing congruent with the nature of the disease caused by COVID. Unsurprising, death as a lagging indicator is beginning to confirm the lethal potential of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus objectively and the critical need to eliminate every discovered outbreak.

The Western press and prominent scientists,  like Dr. Michael Osterholm, have insisted that the Chinese official statistics on COVID are fixed because the death tolls are so low. However, the trends captured from tracking the daily official publicly available reports give a clear and essential insight into how the infection spreads—first asymptomatically, then converting to symptomatic disease, followed by severe cases, and finally death. The data is consistent with what is known about the disease and underscores the deep politicization of the pandemic even among experts in the field to vilify any attempt to eliminate the coronavirus.

Men make up the larger share of the recent deaths in China, with the mean age of death averaging over 80. Many had multiple comorbidities contributing to their deaths from COVID. More than 95 percent of individuals who perished were not vaccinated, highlighting the concerns raised by Chinese officials about the low vaccination rates among the oldest in the country and the efficacy of the Chinese vaccines in preventing hospitalizations and deaths.

Overall, cases in the financial hub continue their downward trajectory as Zero-COVID remains the official strategy employed against the virus, with China the only country to adhere to comprehensive pandemic prevention measures across the globe. Asymptomatic cases were down to 16,983 from 19,657 a day earlier. The number of confirmed symptomatic infections was up at 2,472 from 1,401 the previous day, of which 846 were conversions to symptomatic illness.

Meanwhile, 20,548 asymptomatic cases were released from medical observation, leaving almost a quarter-million people with asymptomatic cases under observation. There are presently 29,178 patients with the symptomatic disease (12.4 percent of COVID cases) in hospitals being treated, of which 274 are in serious condition. The figure in the severe category has increased by 38.

Over 360 medical experts specializing in managing complex health issues have been mobilized to eight city-level COVID-19-designated hospitals to assist in treating complex cases. A third of the patients admitted to these hospitals are over 70 suffering from various cardiac, kidney, pulmonary or liver conditions.

“People in advanced ages are the most vulnerable to coronavirus due to low immunity and weak physical conditions,” Zhao Dandan, deputy director of the Shanghai Health Commission, explained to SHINE, the Shanghai Daily’s digital news outlet.

Efforts by Chinese authorities to stem the rise in infections with the Omicron variant pose enormous challenges. The logistics required are complex and need a concerted political will to ensure these efforts that isolate and restrict the mobility of millions of inhabitants while at the same time attempting to meet their most basic needs.

Added to these are political pressures from global finance capitalism that have scorned every scientific effort to prioritize lives.

On Friday, Liang Wannian, head of the expert panel leading the country’s COVID-19 response, addressed the media in Beijing. He likened the Zero-COVID policy to “insurance for the 1.4 billion people,” given the dangers posed by Omicron. “The key is to effectively recognize and manage the source of transmission, cut transmission chains, and protect vulnerable groups so that the outbreak does not rebound on a large scale.”

He added, “It would be a huge disaster” for China to relax restrictions. “Once we relax control, the virus will spread widely, and there will be many heavy cases and deaths among the elderly. The huge number of heavy cases will take a toll on the medical system, and if medical staff gets infected, medical services cannot be provided, and there will be a vicious cycle.”

By Monday, Beijing was facing the beginning of a new surge of outbreaks, with 29 new COVID cases up from 22 on Sunday. These are compounded by a rise in COVID cases last week in Jiangsu and Hebei, Shanghai and Beijing provinces.

The outbreaking in Beijing has been attributed to several cases discovered at a middle school in Chaoyang District, among a tour group and delivery service. Half of the 70 local COVID cases were found in that district, home to 3.5 million people, which includes several embassies and multinational companies. Classes were immediately suspended, and efforts were underway to screen more of the students and faculties in middle and primary schools in the area.

However, on the news of rising deaths in Shanghai, authorities in Beijing moved quickly to begin citywide testing to stamp out the outbreak before it reached similar levels. Additional measures included the lockdown of several residential compounds where COVID cases were discovered. 

The news prompted a rush to grocery stores and markets to purchase daily necessities and foods in preparation for what many have surmised would become a citywide lockdown. The official city paper, Beijing Daily, wrote that the major supermarket chains had doubled their inventories. Operating hours were extended on Sunday, an offhand acknowledgment of what was to come. However, based on a review of several media sources, the population has taken the reports in stride.

The emphasis in the Western mainstream press, however, continues to remain not on the effort to save lives but the disruption to the global supply chains. Time magazine bemoaned that more than half of China’s major cities continued to remain in some form of lockdown or restrictions, which included industrial centers like Changchun, Jilin, Tianjin, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou.

Professor Eswar Prasad, who teaches economics and trade policy at Cornell University and a previous head of the IMF’s China Division, told Time, “The already extensive disruptions to global supply chains are being exacerbated by the lockdowns in China, adding to the inflationary pressures and difficulties in procuring a broad range of consumer goods.”

A top Huawei executive Richard Yu warned on WeChat, Chinese social media, “If Shanghai cannot resume production by May, all of the tech and industrial players who have supply chains in the area will come to a complete halt, especially the automotive industry. That will pose severe consequences and massive losses for the whole industry.”

In a recent World Economic Outlook report published this month, the IMF said, “recent lockdowns in key manufacturing and trade hubs in China will likely compound supply disruptions elsewhere.”

The Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese stocks, the Shanghai Composite and CSI 300, fell the most in more than two years, down 5.1 and 4.9 percent. On Monday, global stocks fell sharply on fears over more lockdowns in China. These dramatic changes in stock indices have an indirect, but almost linear correlation to the lives gained. They prove the previous observation, in reverse, that stocks have generally risen with the number that have died from COVID.

Turkey hits PKK, YPG in Iraq, Syria

Ulaş Ateşçi

Last week, Turkey announced an invasion code-named “Claw-Lock” into areas of northern Iraq controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Air strikes and Special Forces raids targeted the Kurdish-nationalist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). While Turkey declared over 50 militiamen dead, the PKK claimed it had killed nearly 30 Turkish soldiers so far.

This takes place as US-led NATO powers escalate a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and surging energy and food prices worldwide intensify anger in the working class in every country. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkish government faces an unprecedented economic and social crisis and an increasingly militant working class at home.

Turkish soldiers conduct patrol on outside Manbij, Syria. (Wikimedia Commons)

Last Monday, Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar said the Turkish air force hit “shelters, bunkers, caves, tunnels, ammunition depots and so-called headquarters belonging to the terrorist organization,” referring to the PKK. He said the Turkish army used artillery, ATAK helicopters, and armed drones in the Metina, Zap, and Avasin-Basyan areas of Iraqi Kurdistan.

This invasion is part of a series of Turkish military operations against PKK positions in Iraq’s Duhok province: Operation Claw in 2019; Operation Claw-Tiger in 2020; and Operation Claw-Lightning and Operation Claw-Thunderbolt in 2021. Turkey has had a permanent military presence in the area since 2016 with over 35 military points, according to a statement from the Turkish presidency in 2020.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said, “Soon there will not be a place called Qandil,” referring to the PKK’s central headquarters. Murat Karayılan, a PKK leader, said this is not an “operation,” but a “major war.” He said the current fight against the Turkish army is for “survival.” Another PKK leader, Duran Kalkan, threatened to turn all cities in Turkey “into a war zone.” Afterwards, two attacks occurred in Istanbul and Bursa. The Turkish Interior Ministry blamed the PKK and its allies.

The Turkish state-owned TRT World reported that the latest Turkish invasion is proceeding with direct support from KRG Peshmerga forces. It wrote, “With the start of the operation, and even days before, Kurdish Peshmerga forces were deployed to the area to block routes and prevent the PKK from going underground in Kurdish towns and villages.”

It added, “The offensive began days after [Iraqi] Kurdish Prime Minister Masrour Barzani’s Ankara visit last week.” On April 13, just before this visit, US State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary Joey Hood met with Masrour Barzani and KRG President Nechrivan Barzani in Erbil.

However, Baghdad sharply denounced Turkey’s illegal invasion of Iraqi territory. On Tuesday, the Iraqi Foreign Ministry summoned the Turkish ambassador, handing him a “firmly-worded note of protest” urging Turkey to “put an end to acts of provocation and unacceptable violations.” Iraqi officials denied Erdoğan’s claims that Iraq supported the Turkish invasion.

The Turkish invasion in Iraq is accompanied by operations against the US-backed People’s Defense Units (YPG) militias, the PKK’s allies in Syria. The Turkish Defence Ministry claimed its forces killed 50 YPG militiamen in Mare, a district north of Aleppo. Kurdish fighters also claim that they killed 10 Turkish special forces in the district. The Turkish army has occupied parts of northern Syria since 2016 to prevent the formation of a YPG-led Kurdish enclave on its southern borders.

Turkey’s invasion of Iraq comes amid multiple US-backed maneuvers to reduce Europe’s energy dependence on Russia. Among these is the sale of natural gas from Iraqi Kurdistan to Europe via Turkey, reportedly with Israeli support.

Kurdish Prime Minister Barzani met with Boris Johnson last Tuesday in London. According to a statement from Johnson’s office, “Prime Minister Barzani spoke about his aspiration to export energy to Europe, and the Prime Minister lauded his efforts to help reduce Western reliance on Russian oil and gas.”

Currently, there is no gas pipeline between Turkey and Iraq. According to the Turkish state-owned Anadolu Agency (AA), work on building a pipeline stopped after the 2017 Kurdistan independence referendum crisis. On February, AA cited an Iraqi official saying, “KRG will start selling natural gas to Turkey in 2025.”

However, Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court ruled last February that the Erbil administration cannot export oil and gas independently from Baghdad, so that Baghdad must be included in future plans.

According to Rudaw in Iraqi Kurdistan, “the Energy Ministry of the Kurdistan Region signed an engineering, procurement and construction contract with KAR Group in December 2021 for the expansion of the natural gas pipeline network towards the Turkish border.” The Kurdistan natural gas pipeline would thus reach to within 35 kilometers of the Turkish border.

The region from which Ankara is seeking to expel PKK militias in Iraq is apparently of critical importance for the planned gas pipeline.

However, NATO’s goal of escalating its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine while paralyzing the Russian economy is putting pressure on Europe to end its oil and gas imports from Russia even sooner. This was a major topic in Turkey, Greece and Cyprus during visits by US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland in early April.

During her visit, she reiterated that Washington has withdrawn its support from the EastMed pipeline project between Greece, Cyprus and Israel, which excludes Turkey. Speaking to the Greek daily Kathimerini, she said it will be “very expensive and take 10 years to build. Everybody needs energy now, needs gas, needs electricity. So that’s why we are changing focus now towards LNG.” She added, “this part of the world can also be an energy engine for Northern Europe.”

Nuland also referred to “the Floating LNG Terminal in Alexandroupoli. That allows Greece to be an energy hub not just for your own needs, but for all Southeastern Europe at the key moment.” The terminal would become operational by the end of 2023, according to the Greek-owner company Gastrade.

While visiting Turkey, Nuland activated the Strategic Mechanism, a new instrument aiming to improve bilateral ties and resolve problems between Washington and Ankara. Speaking to Hürriyet Daily News in Turkey, she referred to the ongoing normalization of Turkish-Israeli relations based on potential energy supply projects from the eastern Mediterranean.

She said, “First of all, it’s strongly in our interest, we believe it’s in the interest of both Israel and Turkey to have good strong relations, trade relations, energy relations,” adding: “Among the things that this war highlights is the need for all countries that still have a high amount of imports of oil and gas from Russia in their mix to find ways to diversify and to diversify fast.”

At the end of March, Erdoğan announced that a gas pipeline from Israel through Turkey to Europe is on the agenda. Israeli President Isaac Herzog made a state visit to Ankara, the first for an Israeli president, in early March. Erdoğan said that possible Turkish-Israeli gas cooperation was “one of the most important steps we can take together for bilateral ties.”

The Leviathan field in the eastern Mediterranean, Reuters reports, “already supplies Israel, Jordan and Egypt. Its owners—Chevron and Israeli firms NewMed Energy and Ratio Oil—plan to crank up production from 12 to 21 billion cubic meters (BCM) a year. By comparison, the European Union imported 155 billion cubic meters of Russian gas last year, covering close to 40 percent of its consumption.”

Reuters cited Israeli officials saying that a potential under-sea pipeline between Turkey and Israel would run 500–550km and cost up to €1.5 billion to build (the EastMed pipeline cost €6 billion). However, such a pipeline would raises decades-long issues and new potential conflicts over Cyprus and the NATO-led war of regime change in Syria because it “would need to cross waters of either Cyprus, which Ankara does not recognize, or Syria, with which Ankara has no diplomatic relations and has backed rebels fighting the government in Damascus.”

Ethiopia and US failed policy

John Graversgaard

Eritrea Ethiopia

In the media, we see one-sided media campaign against Ethiopia, where armed war has broken out between the central government and rebels in the northern province of Tigray. In the absence of knowledge of the content of the conflict, Western governments and the media choose to support the rebels’ narrative. Rebels who have strong friends in Washington. One is tempted to say – as usual. If you take a closer look at who advises Joe Biden in Washington, you better understand the confusion. These are people who were closely linked to the old regime in Addis Ababa, a regime dominated by the Tigray people of the TPLF (Tigray People’s Liberation Front).

The old guard

The ethnically based TPLF regime lost power in 2018 after ruling Ethiopia for 27 years. Popular protests and demonstrations resulted in losing power. Oppression of ethnic minorities and a brutal policy meant that people had enough of decades of oppression. In a desperate attempt to retain power and influence, the TPLF has attempted a coup-like attempt aimed at the newly elected government with President Abiy Ahmed. When the TPLF lost power, they withdrew to Tigray and went over to open struggle against the government. In this fight, they received support from Washington, and the United States has increasingly been hated through its support for the TPLF – which has switched to the use of open terror. The result is that the future prospects of the United States in Ethiopia have deteriorated, as the United States, through its actions, has strengthened the anti-colonialist and pan-African forces working for a more independent Africa. The EU has also chosen the same course and commented on the conflict in a way that lacks evidence and basis in what actually happened in the conflict.

The TPLF was formed in 1975 as a Marxist organization, and from the beginning there was a faction with plans to establish the province of Tigray as an independent state, as a “Great Tigray”. The TPLF actively participated in the fight against the military dictatorship of Mengistu, which was supported by the Soviet Union. The strongest factor, however, was the Eritrean liberation movement, the EPLF, which trained the TPLF militarily and which, through the use of guerrilla leadership and strategic advantages of Eritrea’s geography, crushed the Ethiopian army. Ethiopia had air support, but could not match the freedom fighters who had massive support in the population. With the support of the EPLF, the TPLF then conquered power over Ethiopia, a multi-ethnic country historically marked by a strong central power that has tried to oppress the minorities. For example through repression of unrest and denial of Eritrea’s independence. Changing regimes have thus waged war against Eritrea, whether under Emperor Haile Selassie, the Mengistu regime or the TPLF regime. After many years of war, the Mengistu regime collapsed. The EPLF liberated Eritrea, and the TPLF seized power in Ethiopia in 1991.

It was a government based on an ethnic minority of 6% of the population, and this minority from Tigray occupied key positions in the country. The TPLF changed Ethiopia’s regional division to follow ethnic and linguistic criteria. Ethiopia is otherwise a patchwork of ethnic groups with their own languages ​​and with several religions that live close together. This division was fateful and laid the groundwork for growing conflicts between ethnic groups.

The regime became increasingly hated and developed into a kleptocratic regime that filled its own pockets and was good at gaining support from the West. Large sums could be transfered to the accounts of senior TPLF persons abroad. At the same time, Ethiopia continued to wage war against Eritrea – instead of focusing on development and cooperation in one of the world’s poorest regions.

The TPLF continued to have significant control over the military, and large sections of the country’s military were located in Tigray. Was it to plan to regain power – or was it to ensure a consolidation of their plans for a Big Tigray? Probably both.

TPLF starts the war

At night 4 Nov. In 2020, the TPLF attacked the military bases of the Northern Military Command, located in Tigray. It is reported that it was a brutal, unprovoked assault in which about 400 officers and soldiers were slaughtered while sleeping in their barracks. The TPLF seized munitions, including long-range missiles, in which 22 were fired at Asmara, the capital of Eritrea. TPLF also went on the offensive in neighboring regions of Amhara and Afar, with great devastation as a result and mass exodus of people. Many were murdered as TPLF supporters went from house to house with machetes and knives. The city of Mai Kadra in particular was hit hard by massacres, and these brutal murders are well documented. There was extensive destruction of infrastructure as well as buildings as well as hospitals, clinics, colleges, bridges and roads. Tragic devastation where only the civilian population are losers. The TPLF has desperately thrown itself into a war to regain the power they have lost. As always in wars, truth is the first victim of war, and the TPLF has skillfully used its vast financial resources to portray itself as the victims through effective cyber-propaganda. The use of social media has led to a cascade of misinformation about what has actually happened.

US strategic mistake

Ethiopia has long been an “anchor” in the region in US foreign policy. Through control of Ethiopia, the United States was able to control the Red Sea, one of the world’s most important trade routes. During the feudal empire under Haile Selassie, Ethiopia was a secure partner, however interrupted by a military coup under Colonel Mengistu who allied with the Soviet Union. Colonel Mengistu imposed a brutal dictatorship and continued the struggle against Eritrea’s independence, which was a serious mistake. Although Ethiopia received massive military support from the Eastern Bloc, it was defeated by the Eritrean liberation movement, which had the advantage of a population that supported the rebels, and mountainous terrain ideal for guerrilla warfare.

In 1991, Eritrea became an independent nation, which broke with American foreign policy, which since decolonization in Africa and the Cold War had supported Ethiopia’s control of Eritrea. Eritrea had fought against both the great superpowers and took over a war-torn country after 30 years of armed freedom struggle. With Ethiopia’s defeat in Eritrea, it opened up for a takeover of Ethiopia by the Tigray group. It orientated itself towards the United States and, as before, had ambitions to control Eritrea. The TPLF proved to be a willing tool for the United States and during the Bush

administration’s “war on terror” the United States was able to send prisoners to torture prisons in Ethiopia. As a reward for this loyalty, Ethiopia was given free rein to continue its sabotage of the peace agreement with Eritrea. Ethiopia also attacked Somalia with the support of the West and committed serious war crimes in Ogaden, which is populated by a Somali-speaking population. Ogaden came under a total blockade, in which the abuses that took place were largely ignored by the West.

In the 1998-2000 war against Eritrea, in which the Ethiopian military massively attacked Eritrea and penetrated far into Eritrea, the United States played a passive role. It was a very bloody war, and hundreds of thousands of Eritreans had to flee north into Eritrea in order not to be captured inside the territories occupied by Ethiopia. A peace agreement is signed in Algiers in 2000, confirmed by the USA and the EU, with a detailed plan for marking the border, and a UN force (UNMEE) is deployed, to which Denmark also contributed. After the border was demarcated by an independent commission, Ethiopia refused to recognize it and was not sanctioned for this breach. Ethiopia did not withdraw its troops from territories allotted to Eritrea.

Where changing US governments and presidents had unconditionally supported the TPLF regime, and seen through fingers with the regime’s brutal repression, a change is happening with Trump, who shifted focus away from the region. New people came in office in Washington with responsibility for African policy, and the sanctions that had been imposed from 2009 – 2018 against Eritrea are lifted. With the Biden government, however, the old people return to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which had nurtured very close ties with the TPLF government and seen through fingers with the TPLF’s brutal rule. These are senior Democrats like Samantha Power and Susan Rice, who have also been very active in sanctioning Eritrea. There are also people who become very active in the media war, where one is passive in the face of the heinous crimes committed by the TPLF, and resulting in the Ethiopian government designates the TPLF as a terrorist organization.

Ahmed Abiy comes to power

The TPLF loses power in Addis Ababa in a reasonably peaceful transition in April 2018, with the opposition taking over. New prime minister is Abiy Ahmed, and the TPLF elite, who suddenly lose all their power, begins to fight the new government. A serious breach occurs when the TPLF decides to hold regional elections in Tigray, contrary to the government’s postponement of elections due to COVID-19. Abbink (2021) writes that the TPLF fought against being pushed aside, losing both military power and control of their business empire. As well as the risk of being held accountable for their crimes. Their history as an “avant-garde party” had shown that they had spared no means to crush their opponents. Their years of support from the US and the EU over 27 years had given them the belief of being self-described to power. Their strategy now became to control Tigray and present themselves as victims. A narrative they managed to sell to Western media and governments. There were no real social reasons for the uprising in Tigray, and it is described by Abbink (2021) as an elite “top-down” uprising after losing power. The people of Tigray and the neighboring provinces of Amhara and Afar were to pay a great price.

Abiy then surprises everyone by making peace with Eritrea and traveling to Asmara and meeting with great cheers. The President of Eritrea comes to Addis Ababa, and this thaw in the longtime frozen relations between the two countries surprises everyone, not least the West, which suddenly sees African leaders step into character with their own agenda. Abiy utters the famous words: “Isayas is leading us! ”. Shocking statement for

Washington and Brussels, which have been accustomed to seeing Ethiopia as a state that has not challenged imperialism.

The TPLF is declared a terrorist organization

In May 2021, the Ethiopian government declares the TPLF a terrorist organization. This is due to the massive atrocities that have taken place in Tigray and in the neighboring provinces of Amhara and Afar. Child soldiers are being used, ethnic killings, sexual abuse and rape take place, looting, destruction of hospitals, churches and infrastructure and not least massacres of civilians, which can in no way be military targets. TPLF opens prisons and thousands of criminals are released. TPLF emerges as an elite fighting for its own interests and taking an entire population hostage in their nationalist and ethnicized project. The future of an entire generation is being destroyed.

At the same time, the TPLF portrays it as being besieged and using hunger as a political weapon in their propaganda. Emergency transports and trucks are confiscated and do not return, but are used by the TPLF in their warfare. War in an agricultural country where people flee and are expelled causes great suffering, not least because it means that the peasants cannot cultivate their land. But the lack of condemnation from the West is causing great bitterness in Addis Ababa. Although overwhelming evidence is presented of the TPLF’s aggression, the United States and the West are passive, thus giving the TPLF hope that their uprising has support. It succeeds especially through a targeted campaign on social media with the support of TPLF-positive groups abroad.

All parties to the war have made abuses, but the TPLF surpasses all with their ethnic killings of innocent civilians in both Tigray and the neighboring provinces of Amhara and Afar. It caused a shock in the Ethiopian public, but was not the subject of publicity in the global media. On the contrary, Joe Biden imposed sanctions, and the European Parliament expressed support for the rebels in a resolution. It was widely seen in Ethiopia as a neocolonial policy.

Cyber war

TPLF have orchestrated a targeted propaganda in global media in a regular cyber war, that has affected world public opinion in a way that made it as important as their warfare on earth. This meant that media outlets such as CNN, the New York Times and the Daily Telegraph broadcast news based on TPLF propaganda. For example, New York Times referred to child soldiers as “highly motivated young recruits” (Abbink, 2021).

Through a narrative that the TPLF were the victims and were subjected to genocide and starvation, it managed for a period to influence the Western media and politicians. The government of Addis Ababa declared a unilateral ceasefire in June 2021, but the TPLF continued their mass killings and ravages. However, the large amount of information about their atrocities and war crimes, not least the brutal ethnic violence in the neighboring provinces, has meant that their image is crumbling.

Ethiopia is not bowing

The Ethiopian government has entered into character and has expelled UN staff who, contrary to their mandate, have supported the TPLF. It triggered automatic condemnations from the EU and the US, which otherwise do not refrain from expelling diplomats. Ethiopia has been subjected to a massive international campaign in which leading political forces in the United States and the European Union have not addressed “facts on the ground”. This has led to an unnecessary prolongation of the crisis in northern Ethiopia. There is a need for a more evidence-based policy that works with the Ethiopian federal government to stop ethnic-based violence and support peaceful development in the region. The current policy has the character of a neo-imperialist policy towards an independent country, Ethiopia, which has never been colonized. The protests in Africa against this policy are strong – they say #NoMore.

Israel’s anti-Palestinian provocations threaten stability of Israel, Gaza, West Bank and Jordan

Jean Shaoul

Israeli security forces again attacked Palestinian worshippers as angry clashes broke out at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem early Friday, at the end of the third week of Ramadan. Using drones they fired tear gas, stun grenades and rubber-coated bullets, injuring at least 57, of whom 14 were hospitalized.

The mosque compound, holy to Jews and Muslims, has been occupied illegally along with the West Bank, Gaza and Syria’s Golan Heights since the 1967 Arab Israeli war. It is under the custodianship of the Jordanian government. Israel has broken longstanding agreements that allow Jewish visits but bar Jewish worship at the site, as extremists groups demand access to pray there.

Israeli security forces take position during an attack on Palestinians demonstrators at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City, Friday, April 15, 2022 (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

The police said they were responding to stone-throwing and fireworks set off by masked rioters. Israeli officials have blamed Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated group that controls Gaza, saying it and other parties are “stoking tensions” by claiming that Israel aims to change the status quo at al-Aqsa.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called for an investigation of Israeli police actions, with spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani saying, “The use of force by Israeli police resulting in widespread injuries among worshippers and staff in and around the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound must be promptly, impartially, independently and transparently investigated.”

Friday’s attack follows weeks of rising violence that have led to the deaths of 14 Israelis since March 22, while raids by Israeli security forces have killed more than 18 Palestinians since the start of Ramadan on April 2 in the biggest wave of violence, outside of a full-scale war, in several years.

The previous Friday, Israel stormed the mosque compound, injuring more than 150 worshippers. Since then, there have been almost daily attacks amid a febrile atmosphere in Jerusalem and the West Bank that threatens political stability on both the domestic and international arenas.

On Sunday morning, Israeli police allowed hundreds of Jews to enter the compound while blocking Muslim access for several hours, leading to clashes, the arrest of at least 18 Palestinians and the wounding of at least 17, five by rubber-tipped bullets according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.

On Tuesday, thousands of far-right settlers marched to Homesh in the occupied West bank, under the protection of Israeli soldiers who blocked a Palestinian counterdemonstration after Defence Minister Benny Gantz's reversed initial military warnings that soldiers would not protect the marchers. Homesh has since 2005 functioned as the site of a yeshiva, a religious seminary, becoming an unauthorized settler outpost. Last year an Israeli settler was killed by Palestinians, making Homesh a rallying point for hardline Zionists.

Among those attending the march were Idit Silman, a lawmaker from Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s Yamina Party who recently resigned from his fragile coalition government, ending its majority, saying it did not adequately represent Zionist and Jewish values, and fascistic lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir. Security forces fired tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades to disperse angry crowds protesting the march, injuring 79 Palestinians.

On Wednesday, hundreds of Jewish nationalists marched through Jerusalem chanting anti-Palestinian slogans such as “death to the Arabs.” Among the marchers were Lehava, an extremist group that seeks to prevent any mixing of Jews and non-Jews, and Ben-Gvir, who was greeted by the mob as their “next prime minister.” The march went ahead despite a lack of approval from Israeli police and warnings by Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic spy agency, that allowing Ben-Gvir to participate could ignite massive unrest and another war with Gaza.

Early Thursday morning, Israel carried out air strikes on Gaza in response to a rocket fired from the besieged enclave that caused no injuries or even damage as it landed in an open area near Sderot in southern Israel, prompting further rocket and gunfire from Gaza. Israel called its attack on Gaza, supposedly aimed at a facility manufacturing rocket motors, “the most significant” since last May, when Israel launched a murderous assault on Gaza following its storming of the al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan and brutal suppression of protests in East Jerusalem over the threatened eviction of six Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah. Palestinian militants fired two more rockets from Gaza Friday night.

On Thursday morning, security forces again attacked worshippers and attempted to raid the al-Aqsa mosque’s main prayer hall before allowing Jewish settlers to enter the compound.

As well as attacks in East Jerusalem and Gaza, Israel’s security forces have also continued their raids on towns and cities across the West Bank, arresting and shooting Palestinians. They have largely focused on the northern town of Jenin, a centre of Palestinian opposition to the repressive regime of Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), where Hamas’ influence has grown. This week, two young Palestinians died from wounds sustained earlier when Israel’s security forces invaded the Jenin area.

Security forces have twice attacked the Palestine Technical University’s Kadoorie campus in Tulkarema city in the northern West Bank—injuring four people in the first attack and two 21-year-old students and a security guard a day later. 

The rise in tensions has exacerbated Israel’s political crisis as Mansour Abbas, the leader of the four-member United Arab List (the Ra’am), an Islamist party, announced the party was suspending its membership of Bennett’s coalition. With parliament in recess until May 8, the government is in no immediate danger. But should Ra’am fail to rejoin the coalition, opposition parties would have a 64-56 majority in the 120-seat parliament, enough to bring down the government and send Israel to its fifth election in three years.

Bennett’s coalition, brokered last year by the incoming Biden administration after the fourth elections in two years, brings together parties from across Israel’s narrow political spectrum, including Ra’am. The parties have little in common beyond their opposition to former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and desire to avoid a fifth election.

Ra’am’s decision on whether to rejoin the government ultimately depends on whether Israel wages another war against Hamas, which has gained increasing support in the West Bank as opposition to the PA’s subservience to Israel and deteriorating social conditions grows. Under pressure from Egypt, Hamas has sought to prevent another all-out war. But as Bennett seeks to placate his religious and settler support base through provocations against the Palestinians, Hamas is stepping up the rhetoric, forcing Ra’am and Mansour Abbas to withdraw from the government.

The PA in the West Bank is being challenged by workers, with teachers carrying out a four-week partial strike and protests over the failure to pay an agreed cost of living and family allowance and late payments of their salaries. Teachers have rejected the agreement between the General Union of Palestinian Teachers (GUPT) and the Ministry of Education to end their action.

Israel’s provocations have infuriated its new Arab allies, the Gulf and Moroccan monarchies as well as Jordan.

The custodian of the Al-Aqsa Mosque has seen mounting opposition to the corrupt regime of Jordan’s King Abdullah and deepening poverty and social inequality, with weeks-long protests by the unemployed in front of the royal palace, as well as an attempted coup last year by the king’s half-brother. It has called on the Biden administration, the European Union and leaders of Egypt, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, to put pressure on Israel to stop sending security forces onto the mosque compound. It has requested the UN Security Council debate events at the compound. Abdullah is anxious to prevent Israel providing Saudi Arabia with an excuse to assert its authority over the site, a demand Riyadh made of former US President Donald Trump in return for joining his “deal of the century” plan for the Middle East.

So precarious is Abdullah’s position that US Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Yael Lempert and Deputy Assistant Secretary Hady Amr were sent to the Middle East last week in a bid to shore up the beleaguered regimes in Jordan and the West Bank. They went first to Amman to meet Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, before going to see Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, PA President Mahmoud Abbas and senior Palestinian officials in Ramallah, with a final stop in Egypt.

British ruling class fears “summer of discontent”

Thomas Scripps

Workers in the UK are in a strong position to launch an offensive for improved wages and conditions but are being hamstrung by the trade unions.

The Sunday Times admits as much in an April 17 article showing that the British ruling class is acutely aware of the social explosion threatened by its pursuing war against Russia abroad and austerity at home, precipitating an historic fall in living standards amid an ongoing pandemic.

The piece asks, “Is Britain heading for the summer of discontent?” The reference is to the 1978-9 Winter of Discontent which saw millions of days of strike action over pay during the Labour government of James Callaghan.

In this 1979 file photo, a man sits on the ground in front of a mound of garbage in London's Leicester Square, accumulated during a strike by council employees. (AP Photo/John Glanville, File)

Part of the Murdoch empire, the Times article was written by editor for the City of London section Jill Treanor, together with reporter Laith Al-Khalaf, and clearly reflects the concerns haunting Conservative government ministers and business executives alike.

Describing the current record inflation and tight labour market (there is now one vacancy for every unemployed worker), Treanor and Al-Khalaf say the situation is “raising questions about whether workers are going to be powerful enough to wrest inflation-busting wage rises from employers”. They add, “There is a feeling that the balance of power weighted in favour of management for decades is beginning to shift.”

Large sections of the working class are currently pushing for action, including 40,000 rail workers balloting for a national strike, a similar number of BT workers doing the same, and refuse workers engaged in local disputes all over the country. Tens of thousands of university workers have taken weeks of strike action this year and recently renewed their ballot. Education workers have voted at their annual conferences to fight for above-inflation pay increases. On May 3, around a thousand workers at the UK’s 114 Crown Post Offices are set to walk out to oppose Royal Mail’s refusal to grant a pay rise for 2021-22.

The Times raises its warnings with reference to the trade unions. Its authors note, “The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has already registered the highest number of industrial disputes (300) in five years—after a period of record-low industrial strife”. They include an interactive strike map identifying each dispute across the country.

But the same article reveals that the unions’ role is not to lead the charge of a militant working class, but to head it off. The authors explain, “given the high demand for workers from so many employers, economists have anticipated wages rising across the board—and are confounded by what has actually happened. ‘It’s an odd situation where economists would expect pay inflation to take off at this point, and working people actually to be able to start raising their pay. But we’re not seeing that—prices are still rising faster than wages,’ [senior lecturer in economics at the Open University Alan] Shipman said.”

On Monday, the Times’s economics correspondent Arthi Nachiappan provided the grisly details in, “Wage rises on the back burner despite inflation”. She reports, “Forty-eight percent of companies are not awarding pay rises, according to research by the Chartered Management Institute. Of the 52 percent of companies who are, the average increase is 2.8 per cent—less than half the [Consumer Prices Index-CPI] rate of inflation.” That rate is expected to climb towards 10 percent over the year—Retail Price Index (RPI) inflation is already at 9 percent.

This would worsen an already crippling situation for workers’ budgets. Annual pay growth to February, excluding bonusses, was 4 percent, less than half RPI inflation in the same period. In the public sector, where union density is significantly higher (52 percent) than in the private sector (13 percent), pay growth was much lower, just 2.1 percent. Two of the worst rates of annual pay growth to February, including bonusses, were for education (1 percent) and public administration (1.4 percent) workers; the two sectors with the highest union density, at roughly five in 10 and four in 10 workers respectively.

The slashing of real wages has not been achieved through a crushing defeat of the unions but with their collaboration. Successive waves of industrial action have been carved up, delayed, demobilised and betrayed, with swathes of redundancies and below inflation pay deals imposed.

What could have been a national strike at the largest private bus operator Stagecoach was divided into a series of separately fought and sold-out disputes by Unite. Bus drivers in the capital, employed by different operators, were split up the same way. Thousands of distribution workers for some of the UK’s largest supermarkets met the same fate at the hands of Unite, USDAW and the GMB. University workers have been worn down by the UCU’s refusal to wage an effective struggle in defence of their pay and pensions, with savage cuts enacted earlier this year.

Unions in the public sector, including UNISON, the Royal College of Nursing, the National Education Union and Unite, oversaw the imposition of below inflation pay rises for health, education and local government workers, without a strike even being launched—either by refusing to organise a ballot or failing to win a mandate from members disgusted by years of betrayals. In the private sector, the Communication Workers Union averted a national Royal Mail strike and what would have been the first national strike at BT since 1987.

Attacks on wages and conditions were allowed to be pushed through with the threat of “fire and rehire” at British Gas, Go North West, British Airways and Jacobs Douwe Egberts, to name only the most prominent defeats.

Through these efforts the unions have kept industrial action safely within the bounds of the historic lows maintained since the end of the 1984-5 miners’ strike, with the average number of days lost to strike action each year in 1990-2019 less than a tenth of the figure for 1960-1989. Nothing flattering is implied of the unions of the 1970s—whose pro-Labour Party, nationalist politics could provide no way forward for the working class, opening the way to Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 election—to say that the contemporary unions are corporatist shells by comparison.

They are the forces through which Governor of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey’s infamous demand for wage “restraint”, cited by Treanor and Al-Khalaf, is being enforced. The authors also quote the revealing response to Bailey of deputy general secretary of the TUC Paul Novack: “The chancellor himself said that inflation has been driven by what’s happening to energy prices; it’s not about wages spiraling out of control.”

Novack and the TUC see the 300 disputes cited by the Times as a hit list, with each one to be throttled in turn. The figure was first reported by the Guardian under the headline, “Strikes in UK at highest in five years as inflation hits pay”. It was forced to issue a correction, “The headline of this article was amended… to refer correctly to industrial disputes, not strikes.”

This is the state of the class struggle in the UK. Workers are straining for a fight against the employers and the Tory government; the unions are working overtime to prevent a strike wave developing; the sections of the affluent middle class who staff papers like the Guardian and recognise this service are doing what they can to boost the unions’ shredded reputations.

Protesters in Dover march in protest at the job losses at P&O (WSWS Media)

Columnist Owen Jones provided the most shameless and ill-advised example at the end of March, warning, “Exploiters such as P&O”, who had just sacked 800 ferry workers on the spot and replaced them with a slave-wage overseas crew, “watch out—there’s a new wave of trade unionists coming for you”.

Describing an “existential menace to trade unions”, Jones noted, “Trade union membership is around half of its 1979 peak” and the “very concept” of trade unionism “is alien to many younger people”. But, he insisted, “unions are the only viable challengers to the P&Os of this world—and that fact is surely becoming ever more obvious.”

A week later, the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union responsible for the P&O workers had overseen a rout, with not a single job saved and not a day of solidarity action called as it joined the Labour Party in making nationalist and always futile appeals to the Tories to “Save Britain’s Ferries”.

These are organisations which defend nothing. Far from proving the unions’ rediscovered militancy, events at P&O were a damning confirmation that there is no attack too brutal the employers can launch that will force them into serious opposition.

Jones’s risible attempt to evoke a “union resurgence” is part of a broader effort to stop workers drawing the necessary conclusion from this situation that new organs of class struggle are needed. When the Times writes that “some experts see opportunities for the unions to prove their purpose”, or the Financial Times of “a test for Britain’s unions in the most intense period of worker unrest since the 2016 Trade Union Act placed new, onerous limits on their activities”, what really concerns them is whether the unions can get out in front of a mass movement of the working class they know is coming, the better to bring it under control.

Sharon Graham (Credit: Unite)

An absurd myth has therefore been built up around the Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham—a “new broom… shifting the focus… to the nitty-gritty of what unions used to do: getting better deals for workers” (Times) and “the biggest potential threat yet to the Thatcherite anti-union settlement” (Guardian)—to provide proof of the unions’ supposed vitality.

Graham in fact sums up the modern trade union movement better than Jones and his ilk would like. A political nobody whose life has been spent in backroom discussions with managers, shareholders and investors as part of Unite’s “leverage” department, elected by fewer than 50,000 people out of 1.2 million members, she hovers like the grim reaper over every strike.

Under her leadership, Unite officials have been the foremost firefighters damping down outbreaks of working-class struggle, negotiating above inflation pay rise only in critical sections of the economy with acute labour shortages such as among HGV drivers. The vast majority of disputes were sold out in below inflation deal defeats that are falsely portrayed as “wins” by Graham’s many pseudo-left hangers-on.

That the second most commonly cited proof of union dynamism is the small Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB), an organisation which recruits mainly super-exploited migrant workers ignored by the major unions and with less than 7,000 members, but which remains oriented to the TUC, says everything about the reality of a “union resurgence”.

The trade unions barely feature in the lives of most UK workers, three quarters of whom are not in a union and not covered by a collective agreement in their workplace. Those that are members confront in these organisations a hostile force, led by general secretaries with incomes in the top five percent, standing on the side of the employers and the government. A bureaucracy which through its suppression of industrial action has facilitated spiraling inequality for decades, stagnating wages since the 2008 financial crash, and now sharply falling pay in service to the war drive of British imperialism.

Mélenchon to ally with Greens, PCF, NPA in French legislative election

Kumaran Ira

Unsubmissive France (LFI) candidate Jean Luc-Mélenchon came in third with 21.95 percent of the vote in the first round of the presidential election, eliminating him from yesterday’s runoff. In response, Mélenchon is now trying to rally his supporters behind a campaign for the French legislative elections in June.

Mélenchon aims not to mobilise the working class but to demobilise it. LFI called for building a Popular Union, an electoral coalition of discredited bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties, aiming to make Mélenchon prime minister under a Macron or Le Pen presidency.

On April 15, LFI sent a letter to several parties including Europe Ecology-The Greens (EELV), the Stalinist French Communist Party (PCF) and the Pabloite New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA). The letter was not addressed to the big-business Socialist Party (PS) of former president François Hollande. However, the PS National Council adopted a resolution on Tuesday evening proposing to discuss with all supposedly “left” forces, including LFI.

In the letter, LFI refers to Mélenchon’s results in the first round: “Last Sunday, three clearly defined political blocs emerged from the ballot box. One around the liberals, another with the far right, the third with the Popular Union.”

Tacitly pushing for a vote for Macron as the lesser evil, the letter cynically asserts that Macron or Le Pen both represent a danger, “even if they are of a different nature.” It adds that “in the present context and given the sharp delineations between the three groups, this second round will therefore elect a presidency by coercion and by default. None of the country’s political tensions will be resolved. On the contrary, they are likely to be aggravated.”

This reveals the class chasm separating the Socialist Equality Party (PES), the French section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, from Mélenchon and LFI. The PES has called for an active boycott of the second round, to mobilise workers, reject the two reactionary candidates, and prepare struggles against the next president, be it Macron or Le Pen. Mélenchon, on the other hand, seeks to disorient the working class by steering social opposition to the next president into a parliamentary dead end.

Mélenchon got more than 7.7 million votes among workers and young people who opposed both the unpopular Macron and the neo-fascist Marine Le Pen. Objectively, LFI is in a powerful position. Armed with the votes of young people and millions in the working class areas of the big cities, Mélenchon could call for strikes and demonstrations to boycott the presidential election, and to oppose austerity and war. This would have broad support among workers in France and beyond.

However, LFI does not seek to mobilise workers and young people against the next reactionary president. Instead, it aims to work with Macron or even a neo-fascist president to channel working class opposition into parliament and suppress the class struggle. This also unmasks the role of the NPA, which has responded favorably to LFI’s proposal of talks.

“I ask the French to elect me prime minister” by voting for a “majority of Unsubmissive [referring to his LFI party]” and “members of the Popular Union” in the legislative elections of June 12 and 19, Mélenchon said on BFM-TV on April 19. The aim would be to achieve a parliamentary bloc within the capitalist state to legitimise the next president, be it Marine Le Pen, an openly neo-fascist candidate, or Macron, who also pursues far-right policies against workers.

Workers’ struggles against the next president cannot take place in parliament, through parties of the established order like EELV or the PCF. Deep anger is rising among workers in France and Europe amid a growing social and economic crisis, exacerbated by rising inflation, the pandemic and the dangerous military conflict between NATO and Russia in Ukraine. This anger is also directed at parties, such as EELV, which openly called for a Macron vote.

In order to make itself heard by workers in its electorate, LFI admits that both the Macron and Le Pen campaigns represent a “danger” for workers. But far from seeking to mobilise this opposition to Macron and Le Pen in struggle, LFI offers itself to Macron or Le Pen as potential allies in the same government that would pursue reactionary policies on all the main issues of the day.

Mélenchon’s letter says nothing about the pandemic or NATO manoeuvres against Russia, which threaten to provoke nuclear war. On the war, Mélenchon has sided with NATO by solely blaming Russia for the conflict. On the pandemic, LFI supported the anti-vaccine movement, dominated from the outset by the far right, adopting its reactionary arguments that collective vaccination is an attack on individual liberties.

The People’s Union aims to lure voters into voting for an unprincipled electoral coalition around Mélenchon, which could also include openly right-wing forces. LFI claims Mélenchon would pursue radical policies to build “a new governmental majority, that is, a political majority in the National Assembly.” It promises in its letter to “stabilise and further entrench the popular pole to make it available and a majority as soon as possible, especially for the next legislative elections.”

LFI says the People's Union wants to “build based on a programme, not party logos.” LFI does not limit its alliance with the parties to which it sent the letter. According to the letter, “This new stage will obviously be a coalition of parties and movements but also of personalities and associative and trade union figures. They will meet in a new parliament, like the parliament of the People’s Union, reconstituted for this election.”

Mélenchon clearly implies that he is open to alliances with the right. In a tweet on April 19 he wrote: “I don’t ask people what they were before, if they were right-wing or left-wing. I welcome all those who want to join us on the basis of a programme. All those who want to participate in the victory of the programme are welcome.”

A clear warning must be made on the so-called “popular bloc” Mélenchon is assembling. It is not a revolutionary, socialist, or working class movement, but an unprincipled petty-bourgeois bloc. He wants to work with parties and unions that for decades have helped close factories, cut jobs, and isolate and demoralise struggles against social austerity and police-state violence.

Mélenchon proposes to obtain various concessions under capitalism, rejecting the overthrow of capitalism and the struggle for socialism on a European and international scale. While he advances important social demands—raising the minimum wage to €1,400 monthly, freezing prices to fight inflation, and keeping the retirement age at 60—he calls to build alliances with parties that are in fact hostile to such demands. He thus aims to deceive the workers and block a struggle against the financial aristocracy.

The discredited parties with which Mélenchon wants to ally himself called to vote for Macron, denounced “yellow vests” protesting for social equality against Macron, and gave a blank cheque to policies of mass infection with the coronavirus. LFI voted for many parts of Macron’s Islamophobic “anti-separatist law.” Mélenchon himself repeatedly chanted, “We must not give a single vote to Mrs Le Pen,” after the first round, encouraging his supporters to vote Macron yesterday.

“Breaking the back” of Russia: US war aims emerge in Ukraine

Andre Damon

On Sunday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin traveled to Kiev, Ukraine to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in the highest-level US official visit to Ukraine’s capital city since the war broke out.

Their trip comes as, in the span of just ten days, US President Joe Biden announced that the US would send $1.6 billion in weapons to Ukraine, including aircraft, drones, artillery and armored vehicles.

Blinken and Austin went to Kiev to give Zelensky his marching orders. The US is calling the shots in the war, with Zelensky’s government serving as a puppet. Ukraine’s oligarchs have been bought off with billions of dollars to supply the Ukrainian people as cannon fodder in a conflict with Russia.

U.S. Army Lt. Gen. John Kolasheski, the Commanding General of V Corps, holds an operational overview as he speaks with reporters, Sunday, April 24, 2022, in Poland near the Ukraine border. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)

Fighting a “hot war on Ukrainian territory” has been a central goal of US imperialist planning since at least the 2014 Ukrainian coup, and likely as far back as the 2004 “Orange Revolution.” So vital were the US military preparations for this conflict that they led to what was only the third impeachment of a president in US history, over allegations that then President Donald Trump withheld weapons from Ukraine.

On February 24, the years-long buildup of Ukraine as a US/NATO fortress against Russia prompted Washington’s desired outcome—Russia’s invasion of the country—in what US strategists hoped would become “Russia’s Afghanistan,” which would “bleed” the country “white.”

Now, two months since the outbreak of the war, US officials are stating publicly what they previously admitted only in secret: The United States is the driving force in a war aimed at crippling and subjugating Russia and overthrowing its government, no matter the cost in Ukrainian lives.  

In an interview with CBS, former US Army Europe Commander Ben Hodges declared, “You know, we’re not just observers cheering for Ukraine here.” The United States, Hodges said, should declare, “We want to win.”

He continued, “that means all Russian forces back to pre-24 February … a long-term commitment to the full restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty—that means Crimea and Donbas—and then finally breaking the back of Russia’s ability to project power outside of Russia to threaten Georgia, to threaten Moldova, to threaten our Baltic allies.”

In other words, the goals of the United States must be not only to retake Crimea—territory that Russia claims as its own—but to destroy the fighting capacity of the Russian military. 

On Friday, the New York Times used the phrase “bring Russia to its knees” in an editorial, declaring, “Sanctions alone—at least any sanctions that European countries would be willing to now consider—will not bring Russia to its knees any time soon.”

The deliberate use of these phrases—“bring Russia to its knees” and “breaking the back” of Russia—expose the official narrative of the war presented for public consumption in the media, namely that it was an unprovoked onslaught by powerful Russia against poor and helpless Ukraine.

The clear implication of these statements is the expansion of the war inside Russian territory, potentially including the deployment of US forces either in Ukraine, on Russian territory, or both.

In a statement on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Senate Democrat Chris Coons, referred to by Politico as Biden’s “Shadow Secretary of State,” effectively doubled down on his demand for a discussion about sending US troops to Ukraine.

Coons was asked, “In some public remarks this week, you said the country needs to talk about when it might be willing to send troops to Ukraine.” To this, Coons replied, “Putin will only stop when we stop him.”

In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” US Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer was asked point blank: “Is the US policy objective right now for Ukraine to defeat Russia? Can you say that definitively?” Finer effectively answered yes. “Russia is more isolated in the world. Its economy is weaker… And our objective is going to be to continue that trend.”

This is not just a war that Washington wanted. It was a war that the United States provoked. The billions of dollars in arms funneled to Ukraine under the last three presidencies, Biden’s declaration that he does not recognize Russia’s “red lines,” the refusal to negotiate over Ukraine’s potential membership of NATO—all were calculated to provoke the present war.

Once the war broke out, the United States has done everything possible to cut off any diplomatic settlement. Along with goading US officials to openly declare the US policy to be the military defeat of Russia, the talk shows Sunday were dominated with condemnations of the efforts of the United Nations to broker a diplomatic settlement of the war.

US newscasters poured scorn upon efforts by UN Secretary-General António Guterres to find a peaceful settlement of the war by meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Asking a leading question, Kristen Welker of NBC demanded, “Does the UN Secretary General, is he authorized to speak on behalf of the Ukrainian government?”

Igor Zhovkva, deputy head of the office of Ukrainian President Zelensky, replied by condemning Guterres’s efforts. “This is not good idea to travel to Moscow. We did not understand his intention to travel to Moscow and to talk to President Putin.”

In order to drum up public support for the war, the US media is carrying out a campaign of incitement, accusing Russia of war crimes, massacres, and genocide, aimed at creating a hatred of Russians with increasingly racist overtones.

The liberal and pseudo-left apologists for US capitalism, including disoriented layers of academics, incapable of seeing anything in historical context, have been swept up in the militarist hysteria against Russia.

A warning must be made: The aims being pursued increasingly openly by the United States in the war inevitably involve the expansion of the conflict. There is nothing left of the fiction that the United States and NATO are not at war with Russia. In pursuit of regime change, the dismemberment of Russia, and the plundering of its vast resources, American imperialism is risking nuclear war.