Biden meets the Butcher of Riyadh

Andre Damon

On Friday, US President Joe Biden will meet with Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. The visit is a reversal of Biden’s categorical promise on the campaign trail to make the theocratic dictatorship a “pariah” in response to the Saudi royal family’s murder of dissident Jamaal Khashoggi.

In February of last year, the Biden administration issued a report concluding that bin Salman personally “approved” the 2018 murder of Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist whose writings had been published by the Washington Post.

Khashoggi was lured to the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul, Turkey to obtain documents related to his upcoming marriage. Once inside, he was killed by a group of assassins. A recording subsequently released by the Turkish government appeared to document his body being dismembered with a saw.

At a Democratic presidential debate in November 2020, Biden was categorical that were he to be elected president, his administration would stop selling weapons to Saudi Arabia for use in its war against Yemen and “punish” the Saudi officials who had killed Khashoggi.

“Khashoggi was, in fact, murdered and dismembered,” Biden said, “and I believe on the order of the crown prince. And I would make it very clear we were not going to, in fact, sell more weapons to them, we were going to, in fact, make them pay the price and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are…”

Biden added that he would “end the sale of materiel to the Saudis where they’re going in and murdering children, and they’re murdering innocent people.”

In addition to the murder of Khashoggi, Biden was referring to the war in Yemen in which Saudi Arabia has, with US bombs, deliberately targeted the civilian population, including through mass starvation. As one United Nations official concluded, “Civilians in Yemen are not starving, they are being starved.” He called on Saudi Arabia to be referred to the International Criminal Court.

According to the US State Department, “significant human rights issues” in Saudi Arabia include:

unlawful killings; executions for nonviolent offenses; forced disappearances; torture … substantial interference with the freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association … inability of citizens to choose their government peacefully through free and fair elections; violence and discrimination against women … criminalization of consensual same-sex sexual activity; and restrictions on workers’ freedom of association, including prohibition of trade unions and collective bargaining.

In March, just four months before Biden’s trip, Saudi Arabia executed 81 people on a single day, the most in the kingdom’s modern history.

Despite his promises upon taking office, Biden continued to expand US arms shipments to Saudi Arabia to carry out its war against the civilian population of Yemen, selling a further $650 million in missiles in 2021.

In meeting with bin Salman and continuing to fund the homicidal war in Yemen, while discussing an intensification of threats against Iran, Biden is also further repudiating his lying pledge to “close this period of relentless war.”

Even as Biden was making his empty statements about Saudi Arabia while a candidate, far-reaching plans were already underway to systematically arm Ukraine in preparation for the current US-backed proxy war with Russia. In the name of this war, Biden has justified the total abandonment of any pretense of distancing himself from Saudi Arabia’s mass murder in Yemen and its killing of Khashoggi.

One of the most striking characteristics of the propaganda surrounding the US war against Russia is the total exclusion of any discussion of the material interests guiding the US intervention in the war.

The one premise that cannot be challenged in the media is that the war is driven purely by altruistic motives and that the United States is willing, through sheer benevolence, to expend limitless resources in the prosecution of a just war in defense of “democracy.” Any other explanation is labeled Russian propaganda.

This reality makes the op-ed published by Biden in the Washington Post on Saturday all the more significant. While attempting to justify his trip to Saudi Arabia, Biden dismissed any discussion of human rights, explaining US goals in the Middle East entirely through the lens of American geopolitical ambitions.

To this end, Biden used the words “human rights” and “Khashoggi” only once in the piece. Rather, the entire justification of the trip was framed in terms of US commercial and military strategy, or, as Biden put it, to “advance important American interests.”

He explained, right off the bat, that he is traveling to the Middle East because “its waterways are essential to global trade and the supply chains we rely on. Its energy resources are vital for mitigating the impact on global supplies of Russia’s war in Ukraine.”

In an op-ed published last month in the Washington Post, Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s fiancée, appealed to the Biden administration to “cancel your trip and uphold your promise to pursue justice for Jamaal,” saying the trip “will significantly compound our grief and hopelessness.”

She asked Biden, ”You condemn Russia for persecuting dissidents and committing war crimes in Ukraine,” yet why is the Saudi Royal Family “being given a pass? Is that the price of oil?”

Clearly, it is.

Biden adds that while his “views on human rights are clear and long-standing,” military and economic imperatives are primary.

As president, it is my job to keep our country strong and secure. We have to counter Russia’s aggression, put ourselves in the best possible position to outcompete China, and work for greater stability in a consequential region of the world. To do these things, we have to engage directly with countries that can impact those outcomes. Saudi Arabia is one of them, and when I meet with Saudi leaders on Friday, my aim will be to strengthen a strategic partnership going forward that’s based on mutual interests and responsibilities.

In other words, the United States has an interest in war with Russia, and Saudi Arabia has an interest in killing dissidents and committing war crimes against the people of Yemen. America’s “strategic partnership” is predicated on the mutual pursuit of these “mutual interests.”

The conclusions that are to be drawn from Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia are clear. Humanitarian concerns have in fact no relevance in US foreign policy. They are mere packaging and public relations.

US foreign policy is driven by American imperialism’s drive for global hegemony, and its single-minded focus on destroying and subjugating Russia is the prelude to a military conflict with China.

To maintain its position as global hegemon, the US conquered Iraq and Afghanistan, killing over 1 million people in bloody decades-long wars. As part of this “war on terror,” the American military and intelligence agencies carried out a policy of torture and mass slaughter.

Now, it is giving its Saudi allies free rein to commit war crimes and kill and torture their domestic opponents.

UK Living Standards Audit 2022: Stagnant wages have left millions “brutally exposed”

Simon Whelan & Richard Tyler

Fifteen years of stagnating wages in Britain have left millions of the poorest paid workers defenceless in the face of rising inflation, resulting in an unprecedented “income shock”. Around 10 million people are being pushed into “severe levels of poverty”, according to a new report by the Resolution Foundation.

Living Standards Audit 2022, published on July 4, found that 15 years of falling wages have left millions of people “brutally exposed” to what it described as a “catastrophic” cost-of-living crisis.

Its report follows warnings by prominent “consumer champion” Martin Lewis that Britain is on the verge of “civil unrest” due to rising fuel bills, with millions of low- and middle-income earners unable to meet basic living costs.

Wages

Average wages are no higher today than they were before the 2008 financial crisis, representing a wage loss of £9,200 per year, the foundation’s audit found. This equates to nearly £150,000 in lost income per person over the last decade and a half.

While those on low and middle incomes have seen their pay stagnate, or even decline in real terms, those at the top have watched their wealth skyrocket. This year’s Sunday Times Rich List found the richest 250 individuals in the UK own more wealth than the top one thousand held just five years ago.

This has produced a situation in which the top ten most unequal years on record in the UK have all been recorded during the 21st century, with five taking place since 2013-14, as the Resolution Foundation report notes.

The Resolution Foundation research, says the Financial Times, “chimes with [our] own analysis” which showed that over the last decade, UK living standards grew at the lowest rate since the Second World War.  

The gap widens

The report shows that during the immediate post-war decades, wages growth was evenly spread across the income divide, never differing by more than a few percentage points.

This began to change abruptly with the coming to power of Thatcher in 1979. Between 1984 and 1990, the top 5 percent saw their average household disposable income (after housing costs) rise by 10 percent, while those at the bottom enjoyed less than 2 percent growth. This is a trend that has continued ever since. While all income groups saw a fall in the years following the 2008 financial crisis, those at the top rapidly recovered. The years of austerity, however, have produced stagnating and falling wages growth for the lower paid. Between 2016 and 2019, the very top earners continued to improve their incomes, while those at the bottom saw the real value of their take-home pay fall.

Housing

Housing costs are by far the single largest item of expenditure for those on lower incomes. While the top fifth of households spend less than 5 percent of their income on housing, for the bottom fifth, it consumes between 22 and 38 percent.

The sell-off of public housing by successive Tory and Labour governments has forced many low-income families into more expensive privately rented accommodation. These are among the most vulnerable groups identified by the report. Those with the lowest typical incomes pre-COVID-19 included social and private renters (37 and 24 percent below the overall median), children (20 percent below in the case of under 5s) and single parents (35 percent below).

Since December 2021, the Bank of England has raised its base interest rate from 0.1 to 1.25 percent, with some forecasts putting it at 3 percent by the end of the year. The prospect of higher rates will push up the cost of mortgages, threatening to make them unaffordable for many working-class and lower-middle-class homeowners.

Benefits

Benefits, including unemployment benefits and state pension, are falling rapidly against inflation. For the top twenty percent of income earners, benefits make a negligible contribution to their disposable income, while for the bottom twenty percent they represent over a third.

Successive governments have decoupled non-pension benefit levels from rises in earnings, increasing social inequality and both relative and absolute poverty. While never generous, basic unemployment benefit was equivalent to 28 percent of average earnings in 1972-73, “but this had halved to 14 per cent by 2019-20, and in 2022-23 is likely to average 13 percent,” the report notes.

Pensioners have fared only marginally better. Starting at the same point as unemployment benefit in 1972-73, when pensions also were equivalent to about a third of average wages, this has now fallen to a quarter.

Savings

On top of low wages growth, most working-class families have little or no savings to call upon if things become difficult.

At the bottom of the income table, around a fifth said they could not even manage for a week if they lost their main income source. About the same number said they would struggle to last a month. In contrast, well over half (57 percent) of the very top earners said they could last a year or more.

Most Lloyds Bank customers have less than £500 of savings in their accounts, its chief executive Charlie Nunn told the BBC on July 6. The number of Lloyds customers seeking debt advice has jumped by a third in the first six months of this year.

According to a separate “wealth and wellbeing” survey by financial services and insurance company LV= that released on July 7, more than half (53 percent) of those questioned said their financial situation had worsened over the last three months. And 43 percent said they expected their finances to deteriorate over the next three months, equating to some 23 million people. Over a third (36 percent) said they were now “struggling” financially, with young people aged 18-34 being the most concerned, followed by those with young children.

Minimum wage growth

According to the Resolution Foundation’s audit, “Recent increases in employment have shored up incomes towards the bottom of the distribution,” particularly among female employees.

Moreover, it says the “incidence of low pay has reduced significantly thanks to bold targets for minimum wages.” At the same time, it is forced to note that “this alone is not a panacea for earnings and income inequalities: only 38 percent of people with low weekly pay now have low hourly pay.”

In other words, the rise in employment, and the setting of a totally inadequate minimum hourly wage, has consolidated a low-pay sector, in which weekly pay is still insufficient to meet workers’ needs. The rise in part-time working and zero-hours contracts has benefited employers, who can effectively subsidise their low pay operations by forcing staff to claim various in-work benefits to top up their wages.

The Resolution Foundation audit provides valuable empirical evidence showing the declining position of the working class on the UK’s income ladder.

However, its proposed remedy, boosting economic growth and improving productivity, denies the reality that under capitalism all gains in productivity are subordinated to the drive for profit through the exploitation of wage labour.

Typical incomes of the poorest fifth of the UK population were no higher on the eve of the pandemic than they were back in 2004-05, despite GDP per capita growing by 12 percent over this near twenty-year period.

Measured by international standards, the UK is the second most unequal G7 country. The audit found, “The UK’s Gini coefficient for disposable income was 0.37, lower than in the US (0.39) but higher than all other G7 countries, and higher than every other country in Europe other than Bulgaria.”

Johnson remains UK prime minister as Tories lurch to right and Labour offers a “stable” alternative

Chris Marsden

Conservative Party efforts to force Boris Johnson to give way immediately to a “caretaker” prime minister, likely his deputy Dominic Raab, are an attempt to placate public anger while a new and even more right-wing government is prepared.

This palace coup is being aided and abetted by Sir Keir Starmer and the Labour Party, functioning as a loyal opposition tasked with preventing any independent intervention by the working class.

The demand for Johnson’s immediate removal has receded in part because it became associated with Tory pro-Remainers such as party grandees John Major and Michael Heseltine, who explicitly linked Johnson’s immediate ouster to recalibrating Britain’s relationship with the European Union. But the decisive calculation among party leaders was that moving now might worsen governmental instability while a succession is fought out.

Speaking to the BBC’s Today programme, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, treasurer of the backbench 1922 Committee, said of a caretaker option, “that ship has sailed.” Johnson loyalist and new education secretary James Cleverly told Sky News, “If we can achieve [a leadership contest] within weeks rather than within months, then I think we have to focus on that.”

The prime minister’s representatives also promised he would not make any significant fiscal changes while acting in a de-facto “caretaker” role.

There could still be a shift, but the focus of top Tory MPs is on securing their own positions and preparing the party to take on the working class at home and to pursue NATO’s proxy war with Russia in Ukraine more aggressively.

The entire gamut of potential candidates is in favour of cutting taxes and government spending, which demands savage austerity, combined with support for greater military spending to take on both Russia and China.

Former Chancellor Rishi Sunak, together with former education secretary Sajid Javid, precipitated Johnson’s downfall by resigning their cabinet posts.

Sunak embodies the Tories’ role as the party of the oligarchy. A multimillionaire, his wife is Akshata Murty, daughter of N. R. Narayana Murthy of Indian multi-national IT company Infosys, and is worth an estimated £690 million, twice as much as the queen.

Sunak announced his leadership bid with a glossy video titled “Get ready for Rishi”, which blathers on about his supposedly humble origins and commitment to opportunities for everyone. But his self-proclaimed differences with Johnson are that his populist streak has prevented the necessary clampdown on social spending and wages.

Just how right-wing Johnson’s potential replacements are can be gleaned from Tom Tugenhadt. The one-nation Tory announced his candidacy this morning with an op-ed in the Telegraph insisting that, “Taxes, bluntly, are too high and there is an emerging consensus across the party that they must come down.”

Tugenhadt, chair of the Foreign affairs Committee, is one of several military figures standing for election who are among the most frothing in a party of warmongers. He wrote, “I have served before – in the military, and now in Parliament. Now I hope to answer the call once again as prime minister.” This military allusion is to his serving in both Iraq and Afghanistan, which he argued Britain should never have withdrawn from.

In February, Tugendhat said all Russians should be expelled from the UK, declaring, “We can freeze Russian assets in this country, all of them. We can expel Russian citizens, all of them... We can make a choice to defend our interests, to defend the British people, and to defend our international partners.”

Just ahead of Sunak, the favourite to replace Johnson is Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, who became a captain in the Scots Guards after his patrol captured an IRA unit attempting to carry out a bomb attack against British troops.

As Defence Secretary, Wallace also criticised the US for forcing the UK to quit Afghanistan and presided over a comprehensive defence review designed to prepare the UK for war against Russia and China. He denounced negotiations with Russia over Ukraine as “appeasement”, warning President Vladimir Putin of “what could be a very, very bloody war.”

Last month, he stood alongside the new head of the British Army, General Sir Patrick Sanders, as he insisted that Britain faced its “1937 moment”, two years before the outbreak of world war, before insisting, “The British Army must be prepared to engage in warfare at its most violent” in a direct fight “for NATO territory.”

Austerity and war demands the ruthless repression of the working class. This is underscored by Home Secretary Priti Patel’s candidacy, which begins just as she presides on Monday over the moving of legislation allowing the use of agency workers as scabs, aimed at breaking strikes on the rail and in other key industries and services.

The Tories’ offensive will provoke mass opposition. The Daily Telegraph warned Friday that the “new prime minister’s in-tray will be fraught with danger… When Boris Johnson’s successor finally enters Number 10–which could be as late as September or October–they may find themselves facing a possible winter of discontent.”

It is in recognition of the threat posed by an escalation of the class struggle that Starmer has said he will table a motion of no confidence next week and that he is ready for a snap general election if one is called.

Starmer addressed the media today after being cleared by Durham Police of breaking lockdown rules when he and his deputy Angela Rayner had a beer and curry gathering with party activists during election campaigning on April 11, 2021. The police judged the gathering was “reasonably necessary for work”. Starmer boasted that their pledge to resign if fined showed the integrity needed to restore faith and “change people’s minds about politics.”

“Britain deserves that fresh start, that can only come with a change of government,” he said.

Asked whether he thought “the answer to the chaos and instability now is a general election,” he replied that stability was his goal. The Tory Party was tearing itself apart, while the Labour Party is united and wants to “press on with a plan for Britain.” He would not, he stressed, form an alliance with the Scottish National Party, which “wants to break up the United Kingdom,” but did not rule out an alliance with the Liberal Democrats.

Both he and Rayner again said that Labour’s plan for a no confidence vote was to uphold the national interest, designed to encourage Johnson’s swift removal by the Tories who had a “duty” to “do the right thing.”

Starmer has spent months making clear what Labour’s plans for government would be, should efforts to keep a retooled Tory Party in office fail. Its economic policies would be near identical and its commitment to war unshakable.

Labour’s essential task would be to prevent the social explosion warned of by the Telegraph. Starmer, Lammy and other Labour leaders have denounced recent strikes against the Tories and Starmer has threatened to discipline any MP who attends a picket line.

German hospitals face deepening crisis as COVID-19 infections and deaths rise

Markus Salzmann

The dominance of the coronavirus variants BA.4 and BA.5 as well as the ending of any protective measures against COVID-19 have produced a rapid increase in the number of infections. On Thursday, the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s central agency for infectious diseases, reported 135,402 new coronavirus infections, and on Tuesday there were as many as 147,489. The 7-day incidence rose to over 690 infections per 100,000 inhabitants, from 650 on Monday.

These figures do not even begin to reflect the real extent of the disaster. The abolition of free testing, the scrapping of compulsory testing for certain activities, and the dramatic reduction of testing options mean that only a portion of total infections is registered. Every day, 100 to 200 people are dying of COVID-19. Officially, there have already been 142,000 coronavirus deaths in Germany.

Patient in an intensive care unit (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

As a result of the murderous policy of mass infection, the hospitals, which have been at their limits for two-and-a-half years, are once again on the brink of collapse. On Monday, according to the daily report of the Intensive Care Register of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (DIVI), the number of coronavirus intensive care patients rose above 1,000. This is the highest number of patients since mid-May.

The scientific director of the DIVI, Christian Karagiannidis, warned that the hospital bed occupancy rate for the summer season was relatively high. The number of available beds will continue to decline due to staff shortages, he added. It is not only the increasing number of hospital admissions that is pushing the entire health care system to the limit. Ever-increasing numbers of employees are getting infected and are therefore absent from the workplace.

The chief executive of the German Hospital Society (DKG), Gerald Gaß, told the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND): “We receive reports from all federal states that individual wards and departments must be closed due to staff shortages.” At times, even emergency room admissions are affected.

“We see bottlenecks in hospitals, especially in Schleswig-Holstein with its particularly high infection rates,” said Susanne Johna, chairwoman of the Marburger Bund doctors’ union, in Handelsblatt. “The health system is reaching its limits in places. In the third year of the pandemic, this is a real disaster.”

Looking ahead to the upcoming autumn wave, Johna explained: “Then we will not only be dealing with a coronavirus, but probably also with an aggressive flu wave. This combination of coronavirus and influenza waves would be a real problem, as the health care system would then have to deal with two serious diseases on a large scale.”

Entire departments of large hospitals are already paralysed. The University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein (UKSH) had to close several wards at its Kiel and Lübeck sites due to staff shortages. On July 1, 479 employees were in isolation, a number that rose to over 600 by July 8.

The shortage of personnel, which has been rampant for a long time, is also having a major impact in other federal states. The situation in Saxony’s hospitals is also extremely tenuous due to coronavirus cases in the workforce and the general lack of nursing staff. “The economic situation and staff shortages make the situation more difficult,” said the deputy managing director of the Saxony Hospital Association Friedrich R. München. He pointed out that “future service restrictions” cannot be ruled out.

The provision of care has already deteriorated compared to the time before the pandemic. At the St. Georg Clinic in Leipzig, around a quarter fewer beds are currently in operation. This is due to staff shortages and COVID-19 absences.

According to a spokeswoman for the hospital, more nurses than ever before have decided to leave the health care system in the last two years. Only the “dedicated commitment of our employees” has so far prevented the closure of entire wards, she said.

Only five of 11 operating theatres were in operation in the Asklepios Klinik Nord Heidberg in Hamburg last week, according to the company. All areas of the University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) are also affected by staff shortages. “Around 250 of more than 14,400 employees are currently in isolation. Therefore, since the beginning of the pandemic, planned and non-urgent operations have had to be postponed again and again and beds have had to be closed,” the hospital said.

Throughout Germany, dozens of other hospitals have agreed to reduce their operating capacities. 

At the hospital in Erding, Bavaria, an average of 140 out of 800 employees are currently ill every day. In addition, there are numerous vacancies that cannot be filled. In the meantime, one ward is completely closed, while others can only be operated to a limited extent and some planned operations can’t be carried out.

The Merkur newspaper reported on a doctor at a Munich hospital. There are currently only three out of eight operating theatres in operation, he explained. Ongoing operations are sometimes aborted due to an emergency. “And it’s now midsummer, not winter.” The doctor said he has never experienced such a dramatic shortage of personnel.

The strike by nurses at the university hospitals in North Rhine-Westphalia also demonstrates the catastrophic situation in health care. Employees are now in their tenth week of strike action at six university hospitals. While the Verdi trade union is working to break the strike by concluding a so-called “relief collective agreement,” the workers are protesting against the unsustainable conditions that endanger the lives and well-being of patients and employees.

Even in the face of these disastrous developments, the government is sticking to its pandemic policy. Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (Social Democrats) and other government representatives have made it clear that effective measures such as lockdowns and school and business closures will no longer be considered under any circumstances. Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated in his summer interview with public broadcaster ARD: “School closures should no longer take place.”

Some states have repealed the last few remaining measures. In Bavaria, the state government recently abolished the compulsory requirement to wear a mask on public transport. Health Minister Klaus Holetschek (Christian Social Union) defended the decision with the right-wing mantra: “We are thus focusing more on the personal responsibility of the citizens.”

Under conditions of staff shortages due to coronavirus infections, Free Democratic Party Vice-President Wolfgang Kubicki called for a further reduction of the quarantine period for people who test positive to three days.

The trade unions are also defending the “profits before lives” policy. Maike Finnern of the teachers union (GEW) told the RND that new school and day care closures in the autumn must be prevented. It is precisely the reopening of child care facilities and schools that have led to an explosive increase in infections and facilitated the spread of virus mutations.

In Berlin, the Social Democrat/Left Party/Green state government, the so-called “red-red-green Senate,” is implementing an austerity policy on health care. The district of Neukölln alone is to reduce its coronavirus staff from 54 to 10 employees. Neukölln’s public health doctor Nicolai Savaskan stated that this will no longer guarantee the protection of vulnerable groups in old people’s homes and nursing homes. “That means serious cases and deaths,” said the doctor.

Biden signs toothless executive order in lieu of serious measures to defend abortion rights

Barry Grey

On Friday, President Joe Biden gave a White House speech and signed an executive order purporting to do all he could as president to safeguard women’s access to abortion medication and bolster the security and legal options of both those seeking and those providing abortion services.

Abortion rights demonstrators protest outside of the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday, May 3, 2022 in Washington. [AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana]

However, the meager scope of the executive order’s provisions as well as Biden’s speech belied his effort to present himself and the Democratic Party as defenders of the right to abortion and democratic rights in general.

The White House only announced the speech and the executive order late Thursday, amidst growing and increasingly public criticisms from sections of the Democratic Party and abortion rights groups linked to it of the administration’s failure to even make a pretense of a serious fight against the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade two weeks ago.

The very fact that the event was held in the middle of a work day and not during prime time pointed to the cynical calculations behind it. There was no intention of mobilizing mass popular anger over the ruling by far-right ideologues on the Court and the barbaric abortion bans being imposed by Republican governors and legislatures in states across the country.

It was instead aimed at providing political cover for the administration’s capitulation, while using the destruction of a constitutional right established a half-century ago to once again divert social opposition into the dead end of backing Democratic candidates, this time in the upcoming November midterm elections.

“The only way to fulfill and restore that right for women is by voting, by exercising their power at the ballot box,” Biden said. “We need two additional pro-choice senators and the House to codify Roe as federal law. Your vote can make that a reality. … For God’s sake, there is an election in November. Vote, vote, vote, vote.”

Having no doubt consulted his pollsters and election advisers, based on the party’s orientation to better-off, suburban women and its branding of the “white working class” as racist, Biden declared, “The women of America can determine the outcome of this issue. … It is my hope and strong belief that women will turn out in record numbers to reclaim the rights that have been taken from them by the Court.”

No explanation was offered for the fact that Biden and the Democrats did nothing to mobilize opposition to the overthrow of Roe for nearly two months after Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion was leaked to the press, or that Democratic-led Congresses and Democratic presidents never attempted to codify the landmark decision in legislation during the 50 years after it was handed down, despite unceasing efforts by the Republican right to weaken and overturn it.

The Democrats presently control both houses of Congress and the White House and have done nothing to protect the basic right of women to decide whether or not to have a child, under conditions of extreme social crisis and hardship in which an unwanted pregnancy can spell destitution for parent and child alike.

For the purposes of this speech, Biden ramped up his rhetoric, denouncing the Republican majority on the Court for an illegitimate ruling based on the falsification of history and an absurd reading of the Constitution which denies any constitutional right to privacy. He accurately called the ruling “an exercise in raw political power” and outlined its dire consequences and further implications.

“Governors have taken the Court’s decision as a green light to impose some of the harshest and most restrictive laws seen in this country in a long time. These laws not only put women’s lives as risk, they will cost lives…

“We are witnessing a giant step backward in much of our country. Already, the bans are in effect in 13 states. Twelve additional states are likely to ban choice in the coming weeks. In a number of the states, the laws are so extreme, they raise the threat of criminal penalties for doctors and health care providers. They’re so extreme that many don’t allow exceptions, event of rape or incest.”

He cited the case of a 10-year old victim of rape who had to cross into Indiana to obtain an abortion because of the abortion ban imposed in her home state of Ohio. He continued: “The Court’s decision has already been received as a green light to go further and pass a national ban. … The decision has an impact much beyond Roe, the right to privacy generally. Marriage equality, contraception, so much more is at risk.”

He put forward the political fiction that the problem was an “out-of-control Supreme Court” working in conjunction with “extremist elements” of the Republican Party. This ignores the fact that virtually the entire Republican Party supports the overturn of Roe and the destruction of abortion rights, along with the rest of the fascistic program of party leader Donald Trump.

In the midst of this denunciation of “extremist Republicans” and call to elect Democrats, Biden once again offered the olive branch of bipartisanship, referring to reactionaries pushing for a national ban on abortions as “my Republican friends.”

To the extent that Biden presented an accurate picture of the catastrophic and far-reaching implications of the Supreme Court ruling on abortion, including its immediate impact on women and families across the country, he unwittingly underscored the puny and token character of the provisions of his executive order.

Some Democratic lawmakers and pro-choice advocacy groups have called for executive actions that would actually challenge the abortion bans imposed by Republican governors and legislatures and the domination of the Supreme Court by a group of far-right conspirators.

These include declaring a national health emergency; using federal lands and facilities such as military bases and Veterans Administration hospitals to provide abortion access, including in “red” Republican-controlled states with abortion bans; and expanding the number of Supreme Court justices. Biden has rejected all of these proposals.

Instead, the executive order directs the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) working with the attorney general and other federal officials and agencies to propose measures to:

• Protect the ability of women to travel out of state to obtain abortion services banned in their home state;
• Protect the ability of women to obtain abortion medication approved by the Food and Drug Administration;
• Increase security at abortion clinics that remain open;
• Safeguard access to emergency contraception and long-acting reversible contraception, such as IUDs;
• Protect patient privacy, including information from phone calls, Google searches and other data stored on cell phones and on the internet;
• Ramp up outreach and public education efforts on abortion;
• Convene private pro bono attorneys and organizations to provide legal representation to those seeking abortions, as well as those providing them; and
• Establish an interagency task force on reproductive health care access, including Attorney General Merrick Garland.

For all of Biden’s talk about the immediate danger to the health and very life of women and girls, the November election is four months away, and even in the unlikely case that the Democrats secure a pro-choice majority in the Senate and maintain control of the House, the new Congress will not assume office until next January.

How many lives will be dramatically altered or lost between now and then?

“We’ve received a lot of lip service from this administration, and all the gaslighting calls to ‘just vote’ are not enough,” said Sharmin Hossain, the campaign director of the Liberate Abortion Coalition, a group of more than 150 reproductive rights organizations. “We can’t wait 190 days. People need care now and that wait could mean life or death for people.”

The utter cynicism and hypocrisy of Biden and his party are demonstrated by the fact, fairly widely reported, that Biden made a deal with Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky to appoint Chad Meredith to the federal bench in return for McConnell agreeing to smooth approval for other Biden nominees.

Meredith was Kentucky solicitor general from 2019 to 2021, before which he was chief deputy general counsel to then-Governor Matt Bevin, a Republican. In that role he defended the state’s anti-abortion rights law requiring doctors to perform an ultrasound examination before performing an abortion. This was a common demand of anti-abortion forces who oppose abortion on religious grounds and call it murder.

According to the Courier Journal newspaper in Kentucky, which obtained internal Democratic Party documents, the White House told Governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat, on July 23 that Meredith’s appointment would be announced the following day. But July 24 was the day the Supreme Court released its ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, and the White House thought it best to hold the announcement while pro-choice demonstrations were spreading across the country.

Though repeatedly asked, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has refused to speak about the deal to nominate Meredith, and the White House has never renounced its intention to follow through with the appointment.

Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe assassinated

Ben McGrath

Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe died yesterday after being shot while delivering a campaign speech in the city of Nara ahead of Sunday’s upper house election. Abe, a far-right nationalist closely connected with the ruling class’s remilitarization drive, was Japan’s longest serving prime minister, serving a stint from 2006 to 2007, and then from 2012 until stepping down in 2020.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on, August 31, 2020. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

Abe, 67, was shot around 11:30 Friday morning near Nara’s Yamato-Saidaiji Station. According to eye-witness and video accounts, an assailant fired two rounds at Abe from a homemade shotgun, striking him in the neck and left collarbone, and causing injuries to his heart. Abe then collapsed and was rushed to a hospital. He was pronounced dead at 5:03 p.m.

Security personnel detained Tetsuya Yamagami, an unemployed 41-year-old man, at the scene of the incident. He was subsequently formally arrested. According to police, a search of Yamagami’s home turned up additional homemade guns and explosives. He was previously employed as a dispatch worker at a manufacturing company since the fall of 2020, but reportedly quit in May, saying he felt “tired.”

Government officials stated that Yamagami also served in the Marine Self-Defense Force—Japan’s navy—for nearly three years until 2005.

The exact motive for the shooting is unclear. According to police, the suspect stated that he was “dissatisfied with former Prime Minister Abe and aimed to kill him” due to the belief that Abe was involved with a “specific organization.” The police said it is a religious organization, though it has not been identified. Yamagami is also reported as saying, “It’s not a grudge against the political beliefs of former Prime Minister Abe.”

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), responded to Abe’s assassination, saying, “This attack is an act of brutality that happened during the elections—the very foundation of our democracy—and is absolutely unforgiveable.”

The killing takes place amid deepening social tensions and growing anger towards governments, both in Japan and internationally. Political leaders and the media have eulogized Abe, while painting a picture of Japan as a nation in mourning. Though shocked, many, however, were quick to criticize the former prime minister. Speaking to the media in Kyoto, a woman identified only by her family name Otake, stated, “I think that various problems that Japan has now were brought about during his administration. I’m against Abe.”

For two-and-half years the COVID-19 pandemic has raged around the world, causing death, as well as impacting people’s health and ability to work as governments, including in Tokyo, refuse to take measures to stop the virus’s spread. The United States/NATO-instigated war against Russia in Ukraine and the war drive against China is also enflaming these tensions.

Regardless of the exact reason for the assassination, the Japanese government will use Abe’s assassination to intensify its attacks on democratic rights, as it ramps up its preparations for war against China in particular. It plans to double military spending to make Japan the third-largest spending country on the armed forces in the world.

Abe and the Japanese ruling class have had long-standing goals to revise the constitution to give the government emergency powers that could be used to silence political opposition and to alter Article 9, known as the pacifist clause, which formally bars Japan from fielding a military or deploying it overseas.

Abe’s second term in office marked a significant shift to the right in the Japanese establishment. Abe was a member of the ultra-nationalist organization Nippon Kaigi, which promotes remilitarization, historical revisionism to cover up the crimes of the Japanese military in the 1930s and 1940s, and the restriction of democratic rights. Many other leading government figures, including Prime Minister Kishida, also belong to this organization.

Abe regularly addressed Nippon Kaigi, pledging to push through constitutional changes that would explicitly recognize the legality of Japan’s military, the Self-Defense Forces (SDF), in a move that would pave the way for Article 9’s eventual abolition. This would allow Japanese imperialism to more aggressively assert itself overseas in coordination with US war preparations aimed at China.

During his tenure in office, Abe oversaw a so-called reinterpretation of the constitution in 2014 to allow Japan’s SDF to engage in “collective self-defense” overseas alongside an ally. His government then pushed legislation through the National Diet to formalize the “reinterpretation” the following year, running roughshod over mass public opposition and demonstrations.

His government pursued a policy of downplaying or falsifying Imperial Japan’s war crimes. As a result, Abe was particularly reviled in China and South Korea.  These crimes included the forced recruitment of as many as 200,000 “comfort women,” a euphemism for sex slaves, throughout Asia, who were stationed in military “comfort stations” during World War II. His government also downplayed the Rape of Nanjing, when in 1937–1938 Japanese soldiers rampaged for six weeks through Nanjing, killing an estimated 300,000 people.

Abe’s key economic policy which bears his name made deep inroads into the social position of the working class. Consisting of “three arrows,” Abenomics included a mixture of limited pump-priming measures, quantitative easing, and corporate restructuring and attacks on working conditions. These policies helped large businesses increase profits considerably, as wages stagnated. As a result, when the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, the hardest hit were non-regular workers, who had greatly expanded to comprise 38 percent of all employees in Japan.

Though Abe resigned as prime minister due to ill health, he remained a lawmaker in the National Diet’s lower house as well as incredibly influential within the LDP. Abe was replaced by Yoshihide Suga, who lasted a year as prime minister, followed by Kishida. Abe did not remain quiet, but instead became an even more belligerent antagonist of Beijing, challenging the “One China” policy over Taiwan. In February, Abe called for introducing US nuclear weapons to Japan, on the pretext of the threat posed by China and North Korea, triggering open debate on the matter within the LDP.

Abe leaves behind a legacy of attacks on the working-class at home and the sharp rise of militarism and tensions in the Indo-Pacific region that are pushing Japan ever closer to war.

Massive floods in South Asia kill hundreds, displace millions

Wimal Perera

Heavy monsoon rains across South Asia since March, mainly affecting India and Bangladesh, have caused floods and landslides with hundreds dead and missing, and millions displaced. Flood survivors face immense hardships because of government failures to take adequate emergency and relief measures.

A rickshaw driver ferries a passenger past a flooded street after continuous rainfall in Gauhati, India, Wednesday, June 15, 2022. [AP Photo/Anupam Nath]

In India, over 600 have died and more than five million have been affected. The northeastern states of Assam and Meghalaya have been hardest hit—at least 200 have died with over 4 million impacted. The Indian National Emergency Response Centre reported 168 deaths in Himachal Pradesh, 60 in Maharashtra, 46 in Bihar, 46 in Madhya Pradesh, 36 in Gujarat and 36 in Meghalaya with 56 missing.

In Bangladesh, at least 17 of the country’s 64 districts, mostly in the north and the northeastern Sylhet region, have been hit. More than 100 people have been killed with over 7 million flood affected. The New Age reported on July 3: “The inhabitants in shoals of northern regions are, however, bearing the worst brunt, with many living in submerged houses or on embankments for about a month.”

Floods and hundreds of landslides have damaged river embankments, roads, houses and crops, with devastating consequences for livestock, domestic animals and poultry. Survivors are sheltering in makeshift camps without adequate drinking water and food—also they are contracting water-borne diseases.

The floods are compounding the social crisis caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. According to the understated official figures, there have been over 525,000 deaths and 43 million cases in India, with 30,000 deaths and nearly two million cases in Bangladesh.

The Indian and Bangladesh governments have responded to the crisis with contempt for the victims, refusing to provide adequate relief materials, rescue equipment, medicine, trained personnel and safe, useable infrastructure.

The callous indifference of government authorities is generating widespread anger among survivors. On June 30, the All Assam Students’ Union held protests across Assam state to demand flood relief. Just days before, people from southern Assam's Barak Valley residing in Delhi, demonstrated to demand relief materials and a special economic package to rehabilitate the flood-hit Silchar area.

Attempting to dissipate the anger, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma visited Silchar but had to admit that relief materials were not reaching many of 280,000 flood survivors. In a crude attempt to deflect anger away from his government, he tried to blame the “unprecedented” floods in Silchar on the actions of “some miscreants” who he alleged had breached “the embankment at Bethukandi” and proposed posting police to the site in the future.

The northeastern Sylhet region in Bangladesh has been severely affected. “Dozens of people have died, many of them young children, in the worst floods northeast Bangladesh has seen in more than a century. More than four million people have been left stranded,” the BBC reported late last month.

Khudeza Begum, 50, a mother of seven, who lost her husband to cancer, was living in Companiganj district when the waters started to rise. She told the BBC that her family had to leave their home when the water level rose to her chest. They tried to escape by boat with her family.

“As we were traveling, it capsized,” Begum said. “My children and I survived by swimming and holding onto a tree… I couldn’t save my rice or my duck, chicken, cow or goat. They were all drowned. I have to say, I have nothing left except my life.”

As reported by the New Nation on June 30, the Pandargaon union council chair in Sylhet said that “80 percent of the people have lost rice, potato and livestock stored in their houses.” The government, according to flood management experts, “has not developed its capacity to tackle recurring flash floods in the region,” the newspaper said.

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina visited the flood-hit areas of Netrokona, Sunamganj and Sylhet districts by helicopter on June 21, telling survivors they “should not panic over the floods.” The people of Bangladesh, she declared “always have to be prepared to face such natural disasters.”

Bangladeshis face floods on an almost annual basis, with many losing their lives and livelihoods because successive governments, including those led by Hasina, have failed to take the necessary flood mitigation measures to control these “natural disasters.”

After feigning concern and offering a few empty platitudes, Hasina played the nationalist card, declaring that the floods impacting on the Sylhet region, had come from the Indian states of Meghalaya and Assam. She then left the survivors to fend for themselves.

Bangladeshi authorities have said that Sylhet was flooded because all 54 floodgates at the Gajoldoba barrage on the Indian side of Teesta River were suddenly opened on June 9. The New Age reported on June 11, that this led to inundation of 63 villages from five northern districts, Rangpur, Kurigram, Lalmonirhat, Nilphamari and Gaibandha, affecting over 100,000 people.

In 2010, India and Bangladesh initiated discussions on a Teesta water-sharing treaty under the Indo-Bangladesh Joint Rivers Commission, claiming that this would resolve flooding issues.

Although the leaders of India and Bangladesh have held several rounds of talks for a Teesta water-sharing treaty, it has not materialised.

Any rational solution to the issue of flooding as well as irrigation and water sharing is blocked by the reactionary 1947 partition of British India into a Muslim Pakistan and a Hindu-dominated India. The ruling classes in Bangladesh and India defend their own narrow interests at the expense of lives and social needs of the vast majority of the population in both countries.

Government claims that floods in South Asia are “natural” are a lie. The social catastrophes generated by monsoonal rains and cyclones are created by capitalism and its irrational and destructive drive for profits. This includes unplanned urbanisation, as well as increased fossil-fuel burning leading to global warming, which threatens not just Bangladesh but low-lying countries across the globe.

The science.thewire.in website on June 22 stated: “Climate change was likely to have made the rains that unleashed catastrophic flooding across Bangladesh worse.” Quoting climate scientists, it warned: “While South Asia’s monsoon rains follow natural atmospheric patterns, the rains will become more erratic and torrential as global temperatures continue to climb.”

Placing profits of big business and foreign investors over human lives, India and Bangladesh have heavily invested on transport and power infrastructure development for investors and high military spending while providing little for disaster prevention and relief.