With Modi's support, BJP governments waging bulldozer campaign of state lawlessness and terror targeting Muslims

Kranti Kumara

Using blatantly unconstitutional and outright thuggish methods akin to those the Israeli Zionist regime routinely employs against Palestinians, BJP-ruled states and municipalities across India are illegally bulldozing the homes and shops of Muslims they have targeted for retribution.

This campaign of state lawlessness and terror is being spearheaded by the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh (UP), India’s most populous state, and its chief minister Yogi Adityanath. Adityanath—who was under criminal indictment for inciting violent attacks on Muslims when India’s prime minister and BJP supremo, Narenda Modi, made him UP chief minister—revels in his new nickname of “Bulldozer Baba.” 

The ruins of the bulldozed home of Mohammad Javed and Parveen Fatima and their family. (Twitter)

On the orders of BJP led-governments, homes and shops owned by Muslims are being demolished without due process, and invariably with little to no warning.  The authorities suddenly paste a notice that this or that portion of a building was constructed illegally and will be demolished forthwith, despite it being in existence for decades. Then a day later, bulldozers, accompanied by a huge contingent of police, arrive and in a few hours there is only a pile of rubble.

The homes and shops of prominent Muslims who have spoken out against the Modi government and the BJP’s continual anti-Muslim incitement and provocations are being targeted. So too are those of Muslim protesters, frequently under the pretext that they threw stones at police. The BJP-led North Delhi Municipal Corporation mounted a so-called “anti-encroachment” drive in April, supposedly targeting illegally built houses and shops—all Muslim-owned—just days after a communal clash during a religious procession provoked by Hindu far-right activists. 

In a recent and especially egregious case of state terrorism, municipal authorities in  Prayagraj (formerly Allahabad), acting under the direction of UP Chief Minister Adityanath, demolished the home of Mohammad Javed, a leading figure in the Muslim-led Welfare Party of India.

The notice to demolish the home was served to Javed despite the fact that it was owned by his wife, Parveen Fatima. She had inherited it from her father more than two decades ago. Subsequently, the house was expanded and two more floors were added. The notice declared that some parts of the expansion were “illegal,” despite the fact that the authorities had never previously complained about it. The notice announcing the house would be demolished the next day was pasted on the wall of the house only around 10 p.m. on Saturday, June 11. The following day, a bulldozer and a phalanx of police wearing riot gear descended upon the house, and within a few hours, reduced it and all of its contents to rubble. The municipal authorities did not even give the family time to collect the most minimal belongings, such as photos, let alone furniture, utensils and appliances.

The UP authorities have accused Javed of being the “mastermind” of protests that erupted in Prayagraj and numerous other towns across north India on Friday, June 10. The protests were in opposition to the insulting remarks made against Islam by senior BJP officials in late May in what was a transparent case of communal incitement. The remarks sparked an international outcry from some 20 countries, many of which summoned Indian diplomatic representatives to hand them strong protest notes.

Javed appears to have been singled out because his daughter, Afreen Fatima, is a prominent anti-government activist who organized mass protests in December 2019 and the first months of 2020 against the Modi government’s anti-Muslim Citizenship Amendment Act. At the time, Afreen was a prominent student leader at the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) where she was pursuing graduate studies. Along with others at JNU, Afreen organized demonstrations that helped spark an India-wide movement that saw millions across India take to the streets to protest against the CAA, pushing the BJP government for a time onto the backfoot.

The UP police responded to the June 10 protests with state violence, beating protesters and arresting hundreds. The BJP-led authorities also demolished the homes of two protesters whom they accused of throwing stones at the rampaging UP police.

Adityanath’s media adviser tweeted a photo of a bulldozer on Saturday, the day after the protests, brazenly adding: “Unruly elements remember, every Friday is followed by a Saturday.”

Such brutish invective constantly pours from the mouths of top BJP officials. In kicking off the campaign for India’s 2019 general election, Amit Shah, the home minster and Modi’s chief henchman, made bloodthirsty comments referring to desperate refugees from Bangladesh and Myanmar (Burma) as “termites.” “Infiltrators are like termites in the soil of Bengal, “ he thundered. “A Bharatiya Janata Party government will pick up infiltrators one by one and throw them into the Bay of Bengal.”

Communalist incitement and provocations by BJP politicians and their Hindu far-right allies have been systematically facilitated by the Indian state. The police are notorious for turning a blind eye to communalist attacks on Muslims, and often participate in them. The courts—including India’s Supreme Court, which never tires of posing as a solemn defender of citizens’ constitutional rights—have time and again failed to convict those guilty of fomenting communalist atrocities and sanctioned, through acts of omission and commission, one communalist outrage after another.    

The current wave of demolitions are in defiance of notices the Supreme Court issued on April 21, after a spate of bulldozer demolitions in the preceding months in UP, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Gujarat, and Delhi. But India’s highest court has taken no action to enforce its own orders. The Supreme Court stood by when municipal authorities in the Delhi neighborhood of Shaheen Bagh, the center of the anti-CAA protests, bulldozed numerous shops and homes in early May in what was a transparent and patently illegal act of revenge.

Most notoriously, in a judgment issued November 9, 2019, the Indian Supreme Court legitimized the Dec. 6, 1992 razing of the 16th century Babri Masjid (mosque) by the BJP and its allied Hindu communal organizations—an action carried out in direct violation of the orders of India’s highest court and that precipitated the worst communal violence across India since the 1947 communal partition that divided the subcontinent into an expressly Muslim Pakistan and a predominantly Hindu India.

In its 2019 judgment, the Supreme Court “ordered” the Modi-led government to carry out one of its longstanding ambitions and oversee the building of a temple to the mythical Hindu god Lord Ram on the site of the razed Babri Masjid. In so doing, it effectively endorsed the absurd, Hindu-extremist obscurantist argument that the grounds upon which the Babri Masjid had stood was Lord Ram’s birthplace.

In UP and Madhya Pradesh (MP), the BJP chief ministers have unleashed bulldozer terror against what they called “love Jihad,” that is a reference to inter-faith relationships between Hindus and Muslims. In MP, in late April, after a Muslim boy and a local Hindu girl eloped, MP authorities razed the home of the boy’s father and three of his shops.

This gangster-style political rule is being overseen by Modi and his thuggish second-in-command Amit Shah. Several BJP leaders have commented to the press that “muscular politics” is being actively promoted by Modi, Shah and the Hindu-fascist RSS, the BJP’s parent organization. There is now reportedly “an immense competition” for BJP Chief Ministers (CM) to join the “muscular CM” club, so as to get on the good side of Modi and Shah.

The lawless actions of Modi, his BJP and the Hindu supremacist right as a whole are the malignant expressions of a crisis-ridden, diseased social order. They are relentlessly whipping up communal strife in an attempt to divert mounting mass social anger, frustration and anxiety along reactionary channels, embolden their far-right followers, and divide the working class.

Over the past two years there has been a mounting wave of strikes and protests involving workers from all parts of India and cutting across all communal and caste divides. Tens of millions have taken to the streets to oppose precarious contract labour jobs, privatization, dilapidated public services and the ruling class’ ruinous profits-before-lives response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The BJP’s communal incitement and lawlessness has caused some elements in the ruling elite to wring their hands and voice fears that the Modi government could reap a whirlwind by further communalizing and discrediting all the institutions of the state. Recently more than a dozen retired senior judges, including three former Supreme Court justices, accused Adityanath’s government of “making a mockery of the Constitution.” In a letter to the current Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, they urged the court to intervene against “violence and repression by state authorities against Muslim citizens.” They further noted that “Such a brutal clampdown is an unacceptable subversion of the rule of law and a violation of the rights of citizens.”

But the dominant factions of the ruling class, which over the past decade have embraced the BJP and made it their principal political instrument, consigning the Congress Party to life-support, continue to back the Modi government. Terrified of an eruption of the working class, they cling to the would-be Hindu strongman Modi and his toxic communalist BJP, calculating that it is their best means to intensify worker exploitation and aggressively assert their predatory interests on the world stage.  

On Thursday, June 16, the Supreme Court, in response to a plea filed by the Jamiat-Ulama-I-Hind organization, asked the UP government to file an affidavit in three days about the recent bulldozer demolitions. Instead of condemning this whole practice of bulldozer-razing homes and shops, India’s highest court sheepishly asked the UP government to ensure that no further demolitions of properties are carried out in the state without following “due process.”

France’s hung parliament, rising class struggles stagger Macron

Alex Lantier

Last night, President Emmanuel Macron addressed the French people for the first time since the debacle that his “Ensemble” coalition suffered in Sunday’s legislative elections. The result was a perfunctory, 10-minute address that outlined no concrete policies but made clear that the election has led to a historic crisis of rule in France.

Claiming that “on April 24, you renewed your confidence in me by electing me president of the Republic,” Macron said, “No political force can today make laws by itself. Indeed, the presidential party now holds a plurality in parliament. … To act in your interests and those of the nation, we must collectively learn to govern and write laws differently.”

Macron was silent on his plans to raise the retirement age by three years to 65, make welfare recipients work for benefits, massively raise university tuition and spend billions of euros on building up the army for war with Russia. Instead, he called to “clarify in the coming days how much responsibility and cooperation different groups in the National Assembly are willing to take on. … Enter into a coalition for government and action? Just agreeing to vote certain texts, our budget, which ones? It is now up to political groups to say very transparently how far they will go.”

Macron is setting a course for a confrontation with the working class, which not only in France but across Europe and internationally is rebelling against the policies he aims to impose. Thrusting aside the results of the elections—in which the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (NUPES) led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon won the most votes, beating out his “Ensemble” group—Macron is proclaiming that he will impose his agenda, running roughshod over working class opposition.

Before Macron’s speech, former Health Minister Olivier Véran, who is now tasked with relations with the parliament, said he was consider including the right-wing The Republicans (LR), the Greens, the big business Socialist Party (PS) or the Stalinist French Communist Party (PCF) in a governmental alliance with the deputies currently supporting Macron. Véran said: “What is on the table is identifying a majority to advance, reform and transform our country.”

Prior to Macron’s speech, moreover, PCF General Secretary Fabien Roussel indicated that he was considering the possibility of joining a national unity government under Macron. Roussel said, however, that it would be hard for the PCF to join a national unity government at the current time, given Macron’s deep unpopularity.

Unexpectedly, however, Macron did not clearly state in his remarks whether he would try to form a government of national unity or simply move ahead with a minority government. His remarks ended in a peculiar ultimatum to the leaders of other parliamentary parties to adopt his reactionary program as their own.

“Most of the leaders I spoke to have ruled out the possibility of a government of national unity. This is a hypothesis that, moreover, from my standpoint is not currently justified. … I think thus that it is possible in this crucial moment we are living, to find a larger, clearer majority to act,” he said, adding, “I hope that in the coming weeks, this political process will continue with clarity and responsibility.”

In reality, less than two months after his re-election on April 24, Macron’s administration is teetering on the brink of collapse. This is not, however, principally due to the fact that the legislative elections ultimately produced a hung parliament. Indeed, factoring in LR, PS and Green deputies, there is an open consensus among a majority in the National Assembly for a program of rapid and aggressive austerity attacks against the working class and military build-up against Russia.

Indeed, NUPES leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon last week publicly declared his support for Macron’s trip to Kiev to escalate European arms delivery to the far-right nationalist regime in Ukraine for the war against Russia.

The parliamentary parties are not willing to turn these endorsements of Macron’s agenda into active participation in his government, however, under conditions of an explosive growth of the class struggle not only in France, but across Europe and internationally.

Across the English Channel, British rail workers are launching a strike action aiming to reverse decades of social attacks on the working class and police-military build-up since the defeat of the 1985 miners strike. This is, however, the most explosive conflict of an entire series of struggles that are breaking out across the European continent against the impoverishment of workers by inflation and the evermore aggressive military policy targeting Russia.

Belgian transport workers were on strike on Monday, protesting low wages and NATO aggression against Russia, and French truckers will go out next week to protest rising fuel prices. Health care and airport workers across Europe and in France will be going on strike in the coming weeks to demand higher wages and better working conditions amid the continuing fall-out of the official mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The struggles of the working class, to be victorious, must be taken out of the hands of national union bureaucracies tied to organizations like the NUPES in France, and waged as a political struggle against the governments of the European Union (EU). The Macron administration and the entire EU will wage a ruthless struggle against workers’ wage demands and opposition to war, which they view as intolerable. Against this, the decisive question is the conscious, international unification of the working class in a struggle for socialism.

This struggle against inflation, the pandemic and imperialist war can only proceed via a struggle that seeks to bring down the Macron government and its EU allies, and transfer power to the working class. The drawing in of ever broader layers of workers into struggle will bring them into headlong conflict with organizations such as the PCF or the NUPES, which—though the capitalist media falsely presents them as “left”—are seeking a compromise with Macron.

Macron is grooming the entire NUPES alliance as potential supporters for his administration against the workers. This includes not only Roussel’s PCF but also the Unsubmissive France (LFI) party directly led by Mélenchon.

While LFI presents itself as a more intransigent opposition to Macron, it is also signaling that it is seeking a deal with Macron. Top LFI official Adrien Quatennens visited Macron in the Elysée Palace for talks and afterwards said: “We are not candidates for any arrangement, any combination, any participation in a government with the president of the Republic because our political diagnosis, is that we need a government that will do the opposite of what his government is doing. I told him that it would be totally incoherent and improbable for us to participate in this type of coalition.”

At the same time, Quatennens said, “We have never been an opposition on principle,” adding that LFI hoped that it would be possible for the majority of the National Assembly to vote a “great law dealing with the social emergency situation” during Macron’s term. He also boasted that Macron had personally told him that he believes LFI is a party compatible with the existing French republic. That is, Macron and LFI know they are united against the danger of revolution.

The nearly 8 million votes for Mélenchon in the April presidential elections and the vote of over one-quarter of the electorate for the NUPES reflect support not for LFI’s maneuvers with Macron but for a determined political struggle against Macron. As the class struggle intensifies, this support will only grow and draw ever broader layers of workers into struggle.

Bipartisan gun bill passes procedural vote in US Senate

Jacob Crosse

In response to rising social anger over mass shootings at schools, grocery stores, churches, malls, sporting events and virtually every other public space in the United States, in a procedural vote on Tuesday, the Senate advanced the 80-page Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

Leading senators have indicated that they expect the bill to clear the Senate this week, perhaps as early as Thursday, at which point it will be sent back to the House of Representatives for a vote. On Wednesday, Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told reporters she expected that the House would pass the bill before the weekend and the two-week Fourth of July recess for Congress.

According to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), so far this year, 20,753 people in the US have died after being shot by a firearm. Of these, nearly half, 11,418 people, used a gun to commit suicide.

There have been more mass shootings in the US this year than days on the calendar. The GVA, which defines a mass shooting as an incident in which at least four people, not including the shooter, are injured or killed, has documented 278 incidences this year. The gruesome total is nine more mass shootings than the GVA recorded in all of 2014.

In a routine report over the weekend, ABC News documented nine such incidences across the US. Shootings took place in Maryland, South Carolina, New York, Washington D.C., Florida and Texas, leaving six people dead and 42 injured.

While the bill advanced by the Senate Tuesday night is ostensibly aimed at reducing such gun-related killings, it will have little or no impact on the epidemic of mass shootings. This bill includes none of the limited proposals advanced by President Joe Biden in a speech earlier this month, such as a ban on high-capacity magazines, a reinstatement of the 1994 assault weapons ban, or a rise in the legal age to purchase a gun.

The bill provides meager social and health care spending, such as increased “tele-health” and grants for Child Health Insurance Programs (CHIPS), but the “gun control” provisions are toothless.

The “Safer Communities Act,” unlike the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban, does not restrict the sale of semi-automatic rifles, such as those used in the recent Buffalo and Uvalde massacres, or raise the age limit to purchase the high-powered weaponry.

In fact, the “gun bill,” does not include the words “gun,” “magazine,” “rifle,” “AR-15,” “M-16,” “semi-automatic,” “pistol,” “automatic,” “revolver” or “shotgun” anywhere in the text.

However, the legislation does provide hundreds of millions in additional funding to local, state and federal police, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
This, no doubt, explains the bipartisan support for the bill and the effusive praise it has received in the capitalist press, which has presented the bill as the most consequential reform on firearms in decades.

The toothless character of the legislation is evident from the support it received from a section of Republicans. Despite opposition from the powerful National Rifle Association gun lobby, the bill advanced Tuesday night by a 64-34 margin, with 14 Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, joining all 50 Democratic senators in overcoming the filibuster hurdle and bringing it up for a floor vote.

On Tuesday, McConnell called the bill “a commonsense package of policies that will help make these horrifying incidents less likely, while fully upholding the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.”

Emphasizing the dearth of any “gun control” measure in the bill, McConnell added, “For years, the far left falsely claimed that Congress could only address the terrible issue of mass murders by trampling on law-abiding Americans’ constitutional rights. This bill proves that false.”

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who has led the Democrats in bipartisan Senate talks to rein in gun violence, talks with reporters, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, June 22, 2022. [AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite]

Lead Democratic Senate negotiator Chris Murphy (Connecticut), revealing the political purpose behind the measure, said it was a “breakthrough,” but “more importantly, it’s a bipartisan breakthrough.”

Murphy and the Democrats’ “bipartisan breakthrough” includes $100,000,000 to the FBI for “salaries and expense” to meet “additional resources needs of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.”

The system, commonly referred to as NICS, is used to screen potential buyers for previous crimes that would prevent them from owning a weapon. The bill includes for the first time a search feature that would allow NICS to have access to juvenile justice and mental health records.

It also appropriates $1.4 billion for “state and local law enforcement assistance,” which is “to remain available until expended, for grants to be administered by the Office of Justice Programs.” The bill calls for $280,000,000 to be spent each year on such programs.

Additionally, the bill appropriates another $100,000,000 for “Community Oriented Policing Services,” otherwise known as the COPS program, which is also overseen by the Department of Justice. In a White House statement released this past March, Biden boasted that his budget had already more than doubled money for the COPS hiring program.

As for funds that are in the bill but are not directly given to the police, the measure calls for $750 million in funding for states to implement and/or bolster “red-flag” laws or extreme protection orders. These laws allow a judge to order someone to relinquish his firearm if the person is deemed a threat to himself or others. While 19 states and the District of Columbia have “red-flag” laws, 30 states do not.

The robust funding for police in the “bipartisan” bill testifies to the fact that the US government and its capitalist ruling class have no solution to the epidemic of gun violence outside of more police repression.

Lithuania to expand blockade of Russian goods as Ukraine war widens

Andre Damon

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda told Reuters on Wednesday that Lithuania, in cooperation with the European Union, is preparing to expand the list of goods that it is blocking Russia from transporting to its semi-exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea.

Earlier this week, Lithuania implemented a partial blockade of Kaliningrad, prompting threats of retaliation from Moscow.

“We are looking forward to implementing the next stages of the sanctions,” Nauseda told Reuters. “We feel the support of the European Union (EU), because this is a decision made by the European Union.”

Nikolai Patrushev, the head of Russia’s Security Council, said the blockade would prompt a Russian response that would “have a serious negative impact on the people of Lithuania.”

“Of course, Russia will respond to hostile actions. Appropriate measures are in the works and will be adopted in the near future,” he said Tuesday.

Also on Tuesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the EU Ambassador to Russia in a “resolute protest” of the transit ban. The ministry said it “demanded an immediate resumption of the normal operation” of transit to Kaliningrad, threatening that “retaliatory measures will follow.”

Nauseda all but dared Russia to respond militarily, declaring, “I do not believe that Russia will challenge us in a military sense, because we are a NATO member.”

The escalation of the EU/ Lithuanian blockade of Kaliningrad comes amid a rapid expansion of the war, both in geographic scope and in intensity.

On Monday, the Ukrainian armed forces hit several oil drilling platforms of the company Cherneftegaz on the Crimean Peninsula in the Black Sea which was annexed by Russia in 2014.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian forces carried out an attack 150 kilometers inside the Russian border, in Novoshakhtinsk in the Rostov region, using kamikaze drones.

In this handout photo released by Russian Emergency Ministry Press Service, Russian Emergency Situation ministry's firefighters work at the scene of a fire at the Novoshakhtinsk oil processing plant in the Rostov-on-Don region in Russia, Wednesday, June 22, 2022. [AP Photo/Russian Emergency Ministry Press Service]

The attack came just weeks after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed the country was “not interested” in carrying out attacks inside Russia and after US President Joe Biden said the US would not encourage “Ukraine to strike beyond its borders.”

Although it was not clear what kind of drone was used in the attack, the United States has provided Ukraine with hundreds of kamikaze drones, known as the “switchblade.”

The Financial Times reported that “A post by Ukraine’s 72nd Mechanized Brigade read: ‘For some reason, the Novoshakhtinsk Oil Refinery is on fire in Russia,’ later adding that hitting such a target with a ‘kamikaze drone’ 150km deep into the enemy-controlled territory is ‘not bad!’”

Russia, meanwhile, continued to unleash devastating attacks inside Ukraine. The Russian Ministry of Defense claims that a Russian strike on a shipbuilding plant in the Ukrainian port of Nikolaev killed up to 500 troops on Tuesday, in a shocking display of the lethality of the war that is raging on the European continent.

Ukrainian officials have acknowledged that up to 500 troops are dying each day of the war, with up to 1,000 daily casualties. Just three weeks ago, Zelensky put the daily death toll at 60-100.

These strikes exemplify the expanding scope and lethality of the war, which is rapidly spreading throughout Ukrainian and Russian territory, and threatens to become a direct shooting war between Russian and NATO forces.

Meanwhile, International Energy Agency head Fatih Birol has warned that Europe should be prepared for a total shutdown of Russian gas exports into the European Union. “Europe should be ready in case Russian gas is completely cut off. The nearer we are coming to winter, the more we understand Russia’s intentions,” he said.

The New York Times cited Michael Kofman, the director of Russia studies at CAN as saying that the key cities of  “Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, could fall in the near term,” in what the US-based Institute for the Study of War called “a clear setback for Ukrainian defenses.”

Amid these continued military setbacks on the battlefield, the EU and NATO are rapidly integrating Ukraine in the US-backed alliance system. Alexey Arestovich, a prominent adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said Wednesday that Ukraine’s eventual membership in both the EU and NATO is a mere formality, declaring that Ukraine was already a “de facto” member of the NATO alliance.

On Tuesday, the European Union officials said the EU will accept Ukraine as a candidate member this week.

Moreover, Polish President Andrzej Duda announced that the so-called Trimarium forum or Three Seas Initiative, a revival of the inter-war Intermarium alliance, has created  “participatory partnership” status for Ukraine. The Triumarium is openly aimed at curtailing Russian influence across Eastern Europe. It already encompasses the majority of countries between the Black and the Baltic Seas, including Poland, Croatia, Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Slovenia.

Zelensky’s advisor Arestovich boasted, “We became the 13th country of the Trimarium… And 12 Trimarium countries are EU members. That is, almost half of the EU countries. This means that our integration with the EU has gone much further than everyone is currently assessing.”

Even as the Ukraine war spins out of control, the US is rapidly escalating military tensions with China. Pentagon Spokesman Ned Price declared that the US intends to continue sending warships in so-called “freedom of navigation” operations in the Taiwan Strait, after Chinese officials allegedly told the US in private that the waterway was closed to US ships.

“We’re concerned by China’s aggressive rhetoric, its increasing pressure and intimidation regarding Taiwan.” He added, “and we’ll continue, as we have said before, to fly, to sail, and to operate wherever international law allows, and that includes transiting through the Taiwan Strait.”

China, meanwhile, sent one of the largest sorties of military aircraft toward Taiwan so far this year, with 29 aircraft entering Taiwan’s air defense identification zone Tuesday.

As the war in Ukraine rapidly expands, and the US showdown with China over Taiwan escalates, US President Joe Biden gave a speech on “Putin’s price hike” on Wednesday, declaring that “this is a time of war,” and that the US population must accept rising prices as part of the war effort.

With the cost of the war surging, last week the Senate Armed Services committee proposed to increase the 2023 military budget, already the largest on record, by a further 6 percent.

The further expansion of the war, both in its European and Pacific theaters, will have devastating consequences on the US population, already reeling from runaway inflation and facing the prospect of a major recession within the next year.

Sri Lankan trade unions back IMF austerity policies

W.A. Sunil

The Sri Lankan government, with active union support, has begun unleashing a new round of International Monetary Fund (IMF) dictated attacks on jobs and social conditions.

On Monday, an IMF team visited Colombo to begin 10 days of discussions with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and senior Central Bank and Treasury officials. The talks are focused on Colombo’s proposals to reduce government expenditure, step up privatisation, and implement other austerity measures. Debt restructuring to repay loans to foreign creditors is a major issue in the discussions.

These measures will further slash jobs, wages and pensions as well as health and education, severely impacting millions of workers and the poor. While some of the trade unions are silently backing these proposals, others are openly embracing these anti working class measures.

Ranil Wickremesinghe [Source: United National Party Facebook]

President Gotabhaya Rajapakse and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe have already proposed the elimination of over 800,000 public sector jobs. In line with repeated IMF complaints that state sector wages are too high, the government’s drastic downsizing is aimed at halving its salary expenditure of 845.7 billion rupees ($US4.2 billion) in 2021.

The ministries of public administration and manpower and human resources have already announced how they plan to impose these cuts.

One proposal is to direct state employees to apply for foreign jobs, granting them unpaid leave for five years. As well as destroying jobs, authorities believe this will generate foreign income for the cash-strapped government.

The Sri Lanka Foreign Employment Bureau has revealed that a record number of workers have registered, since public sector authorities announced that they were directing state employees to find jobs abroad. Another job-cutting proposal includes the introduction of a voluntary retirement scheme, which involves meagre compensation.

This week the government, citing worsening fuel shortages, issued a two-week “work from home” order for most public sector employees. It follows the previous introduction of a public sector four-day week.

Last week, President Rajapakse proposed the decentralisation of the public service to district and regional levels, breaking up existing centralised institutions. While presented as a necessary measure to provide “an efficient service to the public,” it is another step in the dismantling of these services.

Not a single union has opposed any of these measures, let alone warned their members about the grave consequences. On the contrary, some public sector unions have begun campaigning to encourage their members to seek foreign employment.

Government Nursing Officers Union (GNOU) President Saman Rathnapriya is playing a leading role in promoting the government’s call for state employees to get foreign jobs. Rathnapriya was a former parliamentarian for Wickremesinghe’s United National Party.

Government Nursing Officers Union (GNOU) President Saman Rathnapriya [WSWS Media]

Rathnapriya told a media conference: “We are now preparing to send nursing officers [overseas], who have the highest demand in the world, through a special project. Even though there is a lack of staff here [for hospitals], we do it to bring dollars. We do so because we’re thinking of the country.” Rathnapriya’s patriotic posturing is to obscure the fact that he is implementing one of the IMF’s dictates.

Federation of Health Professionals (FHP) president Ravi Kumudesh was even more explicit. Asked about the government program, he told the WSWS: “Instead of sending half of the state employees’ home, we can direct them to foreign employment, thus obeying what the IMF asks from us.”

The reactionary responses of the GNOU and FHP are in the context of an escalating collapse of public health caused by ongoing funding cuts by successive Sri Lankan governments, slavishly endorsed by these and other health sector unions.

According to recent figures issued by the Central Bank, there is a shortage of at least 30,000 nursing staff in government hospitals. A massive outflow of nurses into foreign jobs will only hasten the closure of public hospitals and assist the government to slash free public health. The outflow of other public sector employees into foreign jobs and associated job cuts will produce a similar collapse of public services.

The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) does not oppose workers taking foreign jobs. Many state employees would prefer to seek work abroad as a means of escaping the current social calamity, but this will lead to massive cuts in state jobs. The working class is not responsible for this crisis of Sri Lankan capitalism and must oppose the government and IMF attempts to impose this burden on the masses.

Recent IMF dictated government measures have pushed inflation to unprecedented levels. According to the figures released yesterday, Sri Lanka’s year-on-year inflation rate for May rose to 45.3 percent. Food inflation climbed to 58 percent.

These steep increases, which began last September in line with spiraling global inflation produced by the COVID-19 pandemic, were compounded by the US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

While inflation has eaten into the wages of workers and the meagre income of the poor across the country, the unions have done nothing to defend workers’ living standards. Like the trade unions in every country, those in Sri Lanka are doing their utmost to assist the government and big business make the working class pay for this crisis.

Workers and youth protest in Kandy on May 6 [WSWS Media]

When 200,000 teachers and principals began online strike action and protests for higher wages last July, the education union leaders met with Mahinda Rajapakse, who was then prime minster. Rajapakse told them that “under the present global situation and the country’s financial predicament, the government is not in a position to rectify the salary issue at this moment.”

The union leaders responded by assuring him that they had “a clear understanding that an immediate increment for the salaries is not possible due to the current economic crisis” and asked the government to “take a policy decision” on salary increase. After 100 days of strike action the unions betrayed their members, accepting a salary increase of just one third of the original demand.

Similarly, when the government refused health workers wage’ demands in February, FHP leader Kumudesh told the media that his members were “professionals” and understood “the financial hardship the country is going through.” This was why the union, he said, was “not pushing for money at present” and that any settlement could only be in “principle.”

In April, the unions, following the outbreak of mass protests and demonstrations demanding the resignation of President Rajapakse and his government, betrayed the two one-day general strikes on April 28 and May 6, called by the Trade Union Coordination Committee and the United Trade Unions and Mass Organisations.

The unions called the strike to channel the anger behind the call of the opposition parties for an interim capitalist regime. However, when millions of workers walked off the job to defend their living standards, the unions took fright and called off further strikes.

This betrayal provided an opening for President Rajapakse to appoint Wickremesinghe prime minister and the imposition of harsh IMF austerity.

Ukraine bans largest opposition party

Jason Melanovski

A Ukrainian court has officially banned the activities of the country’s largest opposition party, the Opposition Platform—For Life party.

The decision was handed down by the Administrative Court of Appeals No. 8 on June 20 in Lviv and effectively upheld President Volodymyr Zelensky’s banning of 11 political parties that Kiev regarded as “anti-Ukrainian” and “collaborationists” earlier in March. The measure was then approved by the Ukrainian parliament in May.

Ten other pro-Russian and left-wing parties were included in Zelensky’s ban, among them the Socialist Party of Ukraine and the Party of Shariy led by the popular Youtube blogger Anatoly Shariy.

In addition to legally banning the party’s activities, the court also stated that the party’s property and assets will be confiscated by the State Treasury. 

The banning of the country’s largest opposition party marks the temporary culmination of an undemocratic campaign initiated by the Zelensky government against parties and individuals who could potentially undermine the war that Kiev is waging against Russia on behalf of the imperialist powers.

Led by oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk, the party controlled 44 out of 450 seats in Ukraine’s parliament, surpassed only by the ruling Servant of the People party of President Volodymyr Zelensky. Prior to Russia’s invasion in February, several opinion polls showed the Russia-aligned party leading hypothetical parliamentary elections or finishing second.

In eastern and southern regions of Ukraine, Opposition—For Life functioned as the dominant political party at both national and local levels. It was the effective successor to the Party of Regions of former President Viktor Yanukovych. In contrast to his opponents in the oligarchy that, with the heavy backing from US and German imperialism, toppled him in 2014 in a coup, Yanukovich spoke for a faction of the Ukrainian oligarchy that has been seeking to balance between Western imperialism and the Kremlin, and opposed a direct alliance of Ukraine with NATO.

Prior to 2014, the Party of Regions was the country’s largest political party but it disintegrated after the coup as its members fled the country or joined Opposition Bloc, the pro-Moscow predecessor of the Opposition—For Life party. 

Medvedchuk, the co-founder and head of the Opposition—For Life party, is a billionaire who has long maintained very close ties to the Russian oligarchy and, in particular, the Putin regime. 

However, Medvedechuk’s Opposition—For Life party publicly denounced Russia’s invasion of the country and called for negotiations to quickly end the war. Twenty-three of its national parliament members voluntarily left the party and formed the Platform for Life and Peace party which has pledged to protect Russian-minority rights within Ukraine but distanced itself even further from Medvedchuk and Moscow.

Throughout its existence, the party supported the implementation of the Minsk agreements, which were intended to end the war in the eastern Donbass region between Russian-backed separatists and the Ukrainian government through a settlement negotiated with French and German imperialism. Despite coming to power in 2019 on vague promises to secure peace, prior to the invasion Zelensky and his staff were openly hostile to the agreements’ implementation, which called for a federated status in the separatist-controlled regions and local elections.  

For over a year prior to the current war, the Zelensky government, at the behest of US imperialism, worked systematically to stamp out the party’s influence, and in February of 2021 undemocratically banned three popular television stations associated with Medvedchuk. At the time, the move was praised by the US Embassy as part of Kiev’s efforts “to counter Russia’s malign influence, in line with Ukrainian law, in defense of its sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Later in May 2021 Medvedchuk was arrested and charged with “embezzlement” as well as “high treason” for “subversive activities against Ukraine.” A Ukrainian court placed him under house arrest, where he would remain until the outbreak of full-scale war in February of this year, when he fled.

On April 12, Medvedchuk was apprehended by Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) while apparently disguised as a Ukrainian soldier and again charged him with treason for supposedly providing Russia with military assistance.

No evidence has been published indicating how exactly Medvedchuk supposedly collaborated with the Russians. Nor has it been explained why he remained in Kiev days after the attack, putting his life in certain danger, if he really did know of the impending invasion beforehand.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has publicly offered Moscow to exchange Medvedchuk for captured Ukrainian soldiers. Moscow has so far publicly refused to discuss the exchange of its supposed stalwart collaborator, but recent reports suggest he could be swapped for British nationals recently captured by separatist forces.

While under arrest, Medvedchuk has become entangled in the ongoing prosecution of former President Petro Poroshenko, another Zelensky political rival. In May, the SBU released a video in which Medvedchuk accused Poroshenko of enlisting his assistance to illegally purchase a Russian oil pipeline.

Due to his immense wealth and political influence, Medvedchuk undoubtedly knows much about “where the bodies are buried”—both figuratively and literally in the case of bourgeois Ukrainian politics—and it is likely the Zelensky government will now exploit him to continue its persecution of political enemies. 

Whatever the ultimate fate of Medvedchuk and the remnants of his political party, the banning and state liquidation of oppositional parties exposes the lie that Ukraine is a bulwark of “democracy” that needs to be defended in a “just war” against totalitarian Russia.

In reality, Ukraine is controlled by a section of the reactionary ultra-wealthy oligarchy that has emerged out of the Stalinist destruction of the Soviet Union and which has chosen an open alliance with NATO against Russia. It is now demonstrating with the war that it is willing and able to kill hundreds of thousands of its own citizens to maintain its rule and pro-NATO orientation. According to officials of the ruling party, between 200 and 500 members of the Ukrainian armed forces are dying every single day in the war in east Ukraine. There are also growing reports of desertions on both sides of the conflict.

The banning of the Opposition—For Life party and other oppositional parties makes clear that the imperialist-backed Zelensky government will stop at nothing to crush opposition to its war—above all when it emerges within the working class.

Israel’s government collapses after one year in power

Jean Shaoul

Israel’s “government of change” coalition led by right-winger and former settlement leader Naftali Bennett has announced it can no longer stay in office following the defection of two of his Yamina Party members.

The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, is to be dissolved next Tuesday, which means that the government will fall and the country will go to the polls, probably in late October or November, for the fifth time in three and a half years.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, left, speaks during a joint statement with Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, at the Knesset, Israel's parliament, in Jerusalem, Monday, June 20, 2022. Bennett's office announced Monday, that his weakened coalition will be disbanded and the country will head to new elections. Bennett and his main coalition partner, Yair Lapid, decided to present a vote to dissolve parliament in the coming days, Bennett's office said. Lapid is then to serve as caretaker prime minister. The election, expected in the fall, would be Israel's fifth in three years. [AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo]

The announcement comes just 12 months after Bennett’s government took power on June 21, 2021, in Israel’s fourth inconclusive election in two years, ending 12 years of rule by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In accordance with their coalition deal, Yair Lapid, leader of Yesh Atid, the largest party in the government, will replace Bennett as caretaker prime minister until new elections are held and another government is formed. He will continue as foreign minister, meeting US President Joe Biden when he visits Israel on July 13, while Bennett will take on the role of alternate prime minister, handling the Iran portfolio.

Israel’s deepening political crisis flows from the rapid escalation of class tensions within Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, the Middle East and internationally, as Israel’s political elite gives succour to the far-right, fascistic forces led by Jewish Power legislator Itamar Ben Gvir and his Religious Zionism partner Bezalel Smotrich. It was Netanyahu who engineered their entry into the Knesset to bolster his bloc prior to the 2021 elections. Their Jewish supremacist agenda includes Israeli rule over the West Bank, the expulsion of Israel’s Palestinian population and the demolition of the al-Aqsa Mosque to make way for the building of a Jewish Temple.

Lapid and Bennett assembled an unlikely coalition with a razor-thin majority after Netanyahu—on trial for corruption, fraud and breach of trust—proved unable to form a coalition despite his Likud Party winning the largest number of votes in last year’s election. United only in their opposition to Netanyahu, the coalition consisted of eight disparate parties, spanning most of Israel’s mainstream parties, including those ostensibly committed to the Olso Accords and a Palestinian mini-state—Meretz, Labour, Yesh Atid and Blue and White—and included for the first time one of Israel’s Arab parties, the United Arab List.

Lapid ceded the premiership to Bennett even though the latter’s party won only six seats because he was seen as more acceptable to the coalition’s right flank, agreeing not to negotiate with the Palestinians over statehood for the duration of their alliance. That set the scene for what passes for Israel’s left and centrist parties to support an ever-sharper lurch to the right, an escalation of Israel’s covert wars against Iran and its allies, Syria and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and its attacks on the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

In the last year, Israel has demolished at least 580 structures in the occupied territories, while its security forces have killed more than 100 Palestinians, according to B’stelem, the human rights organisation. The HaMoked Centre for the Defense of the Individual says that 640 Palestinians are being held without trial in “administrative detention.” According to other sources, the government has advanced plans to build 7,292 housing units in the settlements and issued calls for proposals for a further 1,550, while housing starts in the settlements increased sharply.

It was the Minister for Public Security from the Labour Party Omer Bar-Lev who approved last month’s Jerusalem Flag March that led to violent clashes with the Palestinians amid chants of “death to Arabs.” He justified the ultra-nationalist march so as not to “undermine the legitimacy and erode the sovereignty” of Israel in occupied East Jerusalem. His police officers brutally assaulted the pallbearers of murdered Al-Jazeera Arabic journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in Jerusalem for carrying Palestinian flags. Defence Minister Benny Gantz from Blue and White classified six Palestinian civil society organizations as terrorist organizations.

As Bennett faced increasing opposition from his own right-wing, with Matan Kahana, one of his ministers, saying he wished he had a magic button that could peacefully send all Palestinian citizens of Israel to Switzerland and two of his Yamina Party members and three of his political advisors resigning, the left and centrist parties leapt to his government’s defence. They supported the extension of Israel’s apartheid laws, with both the Labour Party and Yesh Atid absenting themselves from the Knesset, enabling the passage of racist bills expanding community admission committees that can ban Palestinians from living in Jewish neighbourhoods and outlawing Palestinian flags at state-funded institutions.

Most of the centre-left voted to renew the legislation extending Israeli law to the settlements in Area C in the occupied West Bank that is under direct military rule, even as Netanyahu’s opposition bloc voted against the extension in a political maneouvre aimed at bringing down the government and securing his own return to power.

It was the failure of the Knesset to approve the law—renewable every five years—that brought down the government. Without the passage of such a law by July 2, the settlers’ right to enter Israel, obtain benefits and de facto rights as Israeli citizens would have lapsed and they would have been subject to military law. By dissolving parliament, Bennett and Lapid automatically triggered the extension of the settler law. They apparently took their decision without discussing or even informing the defence or interior ministers.

With polls predicting that Netanyahu’s Likud Party will again win the largest number of seats and the far-right forces of Ben Gvir and Smotrich likely to increase their vote, but not enough for Netanyahu to form a government, it is possible that right-wing parties on both sides of the government-opposition divide will join forces to form another coalition without holding further elections.

Israel’s political crisis comes amid key domestic issues, including the annual budget for 2023, the health, economic and social fallout from the continuing COVID-19 pandemic that has killed nearly 11,000 people and is again on the rise as all restrictions have been lifted. The skyrocketing cost of living, one of the highest in the advanced countries, makes it hard for Israelis and Palestinians alike to put food on the table.

In scenes reminiscent of the tent protests in 2011, in the last week young people have been setting up tents in towns and cities throughout Israel in protest against the country’s high housing costs that have escalated even as wages fell in real terms, with a big rally scheduled for July 2. With most young people unable to afford to buy a home and public housing sparse, with thousands on waiting lists for years, they are dependent on a rental housing market that is almost entirely unregulated. It also takes place as teachers’ half day strikes continue for a third day over their demands for higher pay and dozens of resident physicians from Haemek Hospital in Afula went on 24-hour strike over the postponement of the shortening of on-call times at hospitals.

The occupied West Bank, where the corrupt Palestinian Authority (PA), Israel’s subcontractor enforcing its illegal hold over the West Bank and Gaza, has sought to strengthen the grip of the Fatah movement as rumours surrounding President Mahmoud Abbas’s failing health spread, is a social powder keg.

Stellantis announces more indefinite layoffs, as rising gas prices and interest rates slow auto sales

Shannon Jones

Employees at Sterling Stamping Plant remove a minivan roof after it has been stamped in a 180-inch Transfer Press [Photo by Stellantis Media]

Indefinite layoffs were scheduled to begin this week at the Stellantis Sterling Stamping plant in the north Detroit suburbs. Far from opposing the cuts, the United Auto Workers (UAW) union is collaborating to shift displaced workers to other Stellantis plants scores or hundreds of miles away, including the Jeep plant in Toledo, Ohio, and the transmission complex in Kokomo, Indiana.

Neither the UAW nor management has divulged how many jobs will be cut, nor what portion of those being laid off will be full-time workers or temps. According to a letter circulated by UAW Local 1264 at Sterling Stamping, there were 90 available job slots for displaced workers at Detroit-area Mopar parts and distribution facilities, as well as 150 at Toledo Assembly, 39 skilled trades positions in Kokomo and 50 parts hauling jobs with FCA Transport. The UAW also announced that Stellantis was adding 460 temp jobs.

In a statement on the cuts, Stellantis spokeswoman Ann Marie Fortunate said, “In order to operate the plant in a more sustainable manner Stellantis confirms that there will be indefinite layoffs at the Sterling Stamping Plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan, effective June 20.” There are over 2,100 workers at Sterling Stamping, which Stellantis claims is the largest stamping plant in the world.

The layoff announcement comes as new vehicle sales have been hit by rising gas prices and higher interest rates, which make car financing more expensive. US new car sales fell to an annualized rate of 12.8 million in May, down from 14.6 million in April. Historically car sales have picked up in May.

This month, the US Federal Reserve raised its key interest rate by 0.75 percentage points, the highest single rate increase in almost 30 years. The interest rate hikes, using the pretext of fighting inflation, are in reality intended to drive up unemployment in order to dampen the militancy of workers who are demanding wage increases to compensate for price rises.

Stellantis and the other Detroit automakers have been reaping bumper profits despite constant production interruptions due to parts shortages. At the same time, regular plant shutdowns, along with skyrocketing inflation, have wreaked havoc on workers’ incomes.

At the end of March, 98 workers had been laid off at Sterling Stamping. Warren Stamping had laid off an unspecified number of workers in April.

Stellantis had also announced indefinite layoffs at other plants earlier this year, including at the assembly plant in Belvidere, Illinois, and at Windsor Assembly in Ontario, Canada.

At Belvidere, management has announced a goal of reducing employment to just 800 workers, down from the current count of 1,800 and far below the 5,000 the plant employed in 2019. Stellantis is still threatening to cut the second shift at Windsor Assembly, although it has extended the shift through the end of 2022.

Workers posting on social media reacted angrily to the announcement of the job cuts at Sterling Stamping. The UAW’s announcement that laid off workers would have the “opportunity” to transfer to plants outside the Detroit metro area also did not sit well with many.

One worker wrote on Facebook, “They continue to hire Tpt’s [temporary part-time workers] by the 100’s. Worst thing we could have ever allowed the company to do. That needs to be a strong point in the contract negotiations, go back to a percentage of the work force.”

Another worker posted, “This is how your slave owners save themselves, by sacrificing its slaves! Wait until they post ‘We’re Hiring’ at half of what the slaves they sacrificed were making! Wake up people.....YOU MADE THEM RICH, THEN THEY THROW YOU AWAY! Think you deserve it?! They do!”

Referring to the Stellantis management statement announcing the job cuts, another worker commented, “‘In a more sustainable manner?’ No, that means the investors are not earning enough money. Therefore, they order to have employees cut so their earnings will increase.

“This is what everything has come down to. It’s all about working as a skeleton crew.”

The cuts take place under conditions in which automakers are pouring enormous resources into the development of electric vehicles (EV). To generate the capital needed to dominate the EV and other new technologies, all the car companies are working to lower labor costs and squeeze as much profit as possible out of their existing workforces.

Ford announced production cuts at four large assembly plants over the summer, according to a recent memo sent to Chicago Stamping workers. The cuts will impact workers at Chicago Assembly, Kansas City Assembly, the Kentucky Truck plant and Louisville Assembly. Workers at Chicago Stamping will face layoffs as of Monday and running through September 11. The company asked for workers to volunteer for temporary layoff during the summer.

Ford is also apparently eyeing the shutdown of Louisville Assembly due to parts shortages. Press reports did not indicate for how long.

Stellantis and other automakers have turned to hiring more and more temp workers, both to cut costs and cover for labor shortages due to sickness, incapacitation or the retirement of more senior workers. The callous disregard for worker safety by both the UAW and the Detroit carmakers was highlighted by the announcement this week that masks will no longer be required at any plant, even in areas of high COVID-19 transmission such as Detroit.

On top of this, workers face dangerous conditions. In 2021 Sterling Stamping crane operator Terry Garr died in a tragic accident in the facility. One year later the UAW has yet to publish the results of the investigation into the accident.

A veteran worker at the Ford Kansas City Assembly worker told the World Socialist Web Site that temp workers at his plant were quitting due to the recent record heat and generally poor working conditions.

“There is no climate control on the assembly line but fans,” he said. “I can barely work under my fans. I am always outside of my cool zone grabbing doors and loading their crappy machines everyday doing 11 hours.”

Other Ford workers described similar conditions. A worker at Ford Ohio Assembly told the WSWS that in some areas of the plant the heat index reached 118 last week. “It is brutal....the humidity makes it hard to breathe in here. Several people fell out and were taken to medical. Shouldn’t have to risk your health to keep a job. Same with COVID. People see how expendable we are.”

Both Ford and the UAW have trumpeted the company’s recent announcement that some 3,000 temporary workers would be converted to full-time positions. Workers have reported that the automakers have struggled for months to hire and retain employees and stem high turnover, given the grueling workplace conditions which have become widespread.

According to the Detroit Bureau, an auto industry news site, Ford’s move to convert the temps to full-time also allows more senior, higher-paid workers to take their place for voluntary layoff.

There can be no doubt that the automotive executives, in consultation with Wall Street analysts and top UAW officials, are already well into planning their strategy for the expiration of the Big Three-UAW contracts next year. In Europe, Ford has given a foretaste of what it is preparing. The company has pit workers in a fratricidal race to the bottom, stoking a “bidding war” between plants in Spain and Germany to see which factory can offer the most cuts, with promises of EV investments and job security dangled in return.

But opposition to any further concessions is already high and building among autoworkers. A militant mood has also emerged among heavy equipment workers at CNH Industrial—where workers are nearing their second month on strike, in a struggle which has been isolated by the UAW—and Caterpillar, where outrage erupted earlier this month over the horrific workplace death of 39-year-old Steven Dierkes.