Lebanon faces first cholera outbreak in decades

Jean Shaoul

Lebanese and international officials have reported that the death toll from the country’s cholera outbreak—its first in three decades—has reached 18. There have been over 1,400 confirmed cases since the first was recorded on October 5.

Cholera, a disease that is relatively simple to treat with oral or intravenous hydration and antibiotics, has long been associated with the world’s poorest countries where access to clean water and basic sanitation is limited.

That an outbreak is taking place in 2022 in Lebanon, once a relatively affluent country, is due to the desperate poverty created by decades of imperialist wars in the Middle East, Washington’s proxy war for regime change in neighbouring Syria, the “let it rip” pandemic policies of the world’s capitalist governments, the plundering of the country’s resources by Lebanon’s corrupt financial elite, the 2020 Port of Beirut blast, the economic impact of the US/NATO war on Russia in Ukraine, and profiteering by the world’s pharmaceutical industry.

The result has been a massive 60 percent reduction in Lebanon’s economy, with GDP falling from about $55 billion in 2018 to an estimated $20.5 billion in 2021, the kind of contraction usually associated with wars, according to the World Bank.

A Syrian child receives the Cholera vaccine at a Syrian refugee camp in Bhanine village, in the North Lebanon province, Lebanon, Saturday, November 12, 2022. Lebanon and many neighboring countries are facing an outbreak of cases. [AP Photo/Bilal Hussein]

Cholera, a water-borne intestinal disease, spreads by the ingestion of water or food that has been contaminated by the waste of infected people. It causes uncontrollable diarrhea and vomiting that can lead to death within hours from dehydration if untreated. As 75 percent of those who contract cholera exhibit no symptoms, the real number of those infected in Lebanon could well be more than 5,000.

The disease was first identified in Lebanon’s rural areas, in the northern districts bordering Syria. Its presence was “probably due to population movements,” according to the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) technical team in Lebanon, Alissar Rady. It has spread rapidly throughout all eight governorates and 18 out of 26 districts.

Since late August more than 35,000 suspected cases of cholera and 92 deaths have been reported across Syria, where the WHO believes the outbreak probably started. Poverty levels have soared since the start of the war in 2011 that has devastated the country’s physical, economic and agricultural infrastructure. Syria’s cholera outbreak comes during the country’s worst drought in decades. Raw sewage is being pumped into the Euphrates River on which hundreds of thousands of people depend.

The WHO explains that Syria’s cases are linked to an outbreak that began in Afghanistan in June before spreading to Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, then Syria and Lebanon.

“Most cholera cases in Lebanon have been in the camps, among the roughly one million Syrians who have taken refuge over the past decade from the conflict in their homeland,” Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said.

Children are at greater risk of developing severe cases, particularly if they are malnourished. In Lebanon, a quarter of all cholera cases have been reported among children between 0 and 4 years of age, according to the most recent UNICEF Lebanon situation report.

The country’s economic crisis has left broad swathes of the country subject to repeated and long electricity shutoffs. Unable to secure fuel, many of its main water treatment plants cannot pump water to households, with the South Lebanon Water Establishment recently announcing it would have to shut down services, leaving thousands without running water. Raw sewage is therefore being pumped into the rivers.

Adding to the crisis is the acute shortage of vaccines globally. The Indian subsidiary of French company Sanofi responsible for producing one of only two oral cholera vaccines available for use in humanitarian emergencies is set to halt production at the end of this year, just as the world faces an “unprecedented” series of deadly outbreaks.

This is despite repeated appeals from the WHO’s director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Last month he warned that the climate crisis had “turbocharged” the spread of the disease as extreme weather events such as floods, cyclones and droughts reduce people’s access to clean water. He pointed out that the average fatality rate from the disease this year was almost three times the rate of the previous five years.

The WHO has responded by suspending two-dose vaccination to enable the available doses to be used more widely. Lebanon only took delivery of its first vaccines—13,000 donated by France—at the beginning of this month. Another 600,000 doses have been provided by the WHO for those most at risk, including frontline workers, prisoners, refugees, and their host communities.

Lebanon’s cholera outbreak takes place amid widespread poverty, collapsing public services and growing community tensions, with the global food and fuel crisis exacerbating the already dire situation. Some 80 percent of the country’s 6.8 million population are living below the poverty line. Lebanon’s currency has lost 95 percent of its value, driving up prices and demolishing purchasing power. Food prices have jumped 500 percent in the last year due to galloping inflation.

Access to basic goods, including food, water, healthcare (with hospitals only accepting payment in US dollars), education and transportation is in jeopardy. Four out of 10 school-aged migrants and Syrian refugees are out of education, while 14 percent of Lebanese children dropped out during 2020-2021. As fuel prices have soared with the ending of government subsidies in September, the cost of a ride in a shared taxi, the main form of public transport, has rocketed from 2,000 pounds pre-crisis to 50,000.

Emigration is at its highest level since the civil war of 1975 to 1989. According to a 2021 Gallup poll, a record 63 percent of people surveyed wanted to leave permanently, up from 26 percent before the crisis. Among those leaving are doctors, with the WHO reporting that most hospitals are operating at 50 percent capacity. Around 40 percent of doctors, mostly specialists, and 30 percent of nurses have permanently emigrated or are working part-time abroad.

Lebanon’s banks, owned by wealthy families that have lent to the state that defaulted on its hard currency debt in 2020, have frozen ordinary depositors out of their dollar accounts. They have severely limited all withdrawals based on exchange rates that wipe out up to 95 percent of their value. There has been a spate of well-publicized bank heists as desperate customers seek to withdraw their cash to pay for much-needed healthcare treatment for their loved ones.

All of this has been compounded by Lebanon’s long-running political crisis. The 89-year-old President Michel Aoun retired at the end of his six-year term of office without the warring factions in the country’s parliament—beholden to various regional paymasters in the Gulf and Iran—having agreed a successor. The president signs bills into law and appoints new prime ministers. Under the country’s sectarian constitution, the position must be held by a Christian.

On four separate occasions, the two rival Christian factions were unable to secure sufficient support for their presidential candidate, leaving Lebanon governed by a caretaker cabinet with limited powers—led by the country’s richest man Najib Mikati, who has been unable to form a government since his nomination to the post last May. 

Some 1.5 million Syrian refugees are living in Lebanon in appalling, overcrowded and unsanitary conditions in informal settlements and collective shelters without legal rights.

The government has announced a “voluntary” repatriation scheme, even as it incites discrimination against refugees. It follows a similar scheme in 2018 when Lebanon repatriated around 400,000 refugees. Few in the run-down camps in central Bekaa, eastern Lebanon, said they would sign up. Amnesty International’s Syria researcher Diana Semaan said simply, “Syria is not safe for returns,” pointing out that past returnees had been subject to rights violations including detention, torture, rape and forced disappearance.

Successful launch of Artemis I: In the footsteps of Apollo, but no further

Bryan Dyne

The Artemis I mission launched from the Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday, November 16 at 1:47 a.m. Eastern Time, marking the first successful test of NASA’s Space Launch System. The mission’s goal is to send the main payload, an uncrewed Orion spacecraft, into orbit around the Moon and then safely return to Earth’s surface. The mission is slated to last for 26 days and is serving as a test flight for future crewed missions that will possibly once again land humans on the surface of the Moon.

There has been a great deal of of official fanfare surrounding the launch promoting various reactionary sentiments. Vice President Kamala Harris voiced American nationalism, asserting “America is charting a path back to the Moon.” President Biden placed identity politics front and center, declaring, “This ship will enable the first woman and the first person of color to set foot on the lunar surface.” And NASA Administrator Bill Nelson muddled science and religion, claiming that Artemis will “explore the heavens.”

Above all, there has been an attempt to equate Artemis to the Apollo missions. The New York Times, for example, wrote that the launch was “evoking the bygone Apollo era.” The Washington Post claimed that the launch was a “major milestone” for NASA and appropriated the comment of Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan, who said as he left the lunar surface near the end of Apollo 17’s mission in 1972, “we shall return.”

This first high-resolution image, taken on the first day of the Artemis I mission, was captured by a camera on the tip of one of Orion’s solar arrays. The spacecraft was 57,000 miles from Earth when the image was captured, and continues to distance itself from planet Earth as it approaches the Moon and distant retrograde orbit. [Photo: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Office of Communications]

From a scientific standpoint, Artemis is at best retracing Apollo, not going beyond it. While the Space Launch System (SLS) is currently the most powerful rocket flying, it still falls short of the thrust provided by the Soviet Union’s Energia super-heavy lift launch vehicle, which had a short-lived career in the 1980s, and the Saturn V, which was used for nine crewed flights to orbit and land on the Moon, and to launch the space station Skylab.

In particular, while the Saturn V was able to lift its payload to the Moon and enter orbit in just a few days, the SLS only has enough thrust to just barely get the Orion spacecraft to the point where the Moon’s gravity is stronger than Earth’s, at which point the Moon’s gravity is used to pull the spacecraft into orbit. An astronomer who spoke to the WSWS said, “It’s like coasting to the top of a hill with barely any extra to get over it, then coasting down slightly into the hollow beyond.”

The result is that while the Apollo missions reached the Moon in two days, it will take the Orion six days to fly by the Moon and another four to actually enter orbit. And while there is certainly a scientific argument for lowering the energy requirement to enter lunar orbit, the reality is that the SLS is the cheapest rocket that NASA was able to produce to return to the Moon, not necessarily the most effective one.

Of course, certain advancements have been made. The Orion spacecraft is powered by solar panels instead of batteries, so missions can extend theoretically for months. It is also much larger than the command and service modules of the Apollo era, allowing six astronauts to travel comfortably aboard instead of three cramped together. And several modern advances in computing have been incorporated to make the spacecraft overall more capable of extended spaceflight.

Overall, however, Artemis is largely a rehash of Apollo. It is launched using what is essentially a smaller Saturn V with solid rocket boosters attached, along with re-used main engines from decommissioned space shuttles to further cut development costs. None of the myriad ideas to take spaceflight beyond 1960s rocketry that were developed over many decades have been considered, much less used, nor is there any significant funding for moving past what is ultimately a very expensive and inefficient endeavor. 

There are, moreover, geostrategic aspects of Artemis that are essentially the same as those of Apollo. It should not be forgotten that there might not have been a US space program if the Soviet Union had not launched Sputnik in 1957, forcing President Eisenhower to respond with the launch of Explorer 1 three months later. And President Kennedy only announced a manned mission to the Moon after a series of further successes and firsts by the USSR. There was a very real need to ensure that the image of American capitalism was not undermined by the ongoing triumphs of the workers state, degenerated as it was, that emerged from the 1917 October Revolution.

Today, the US return to space is also driven by geopolitical conflict, this time in response to efforts by China to develop its own space exploration program, even as the American ruling elite tries to maintain its hegemonic world position. There have been attempts since the 1990s to prevent technical information related to space flight from reaching either the Chinese government or Chinese corporations. The Obama administration worked to codify these attempts into law and oversaw the passage of the Wolf Amendment in 2011, which formally prevents NASA from interacting “in any way” with the Chinese National Space Agency. 

There are other US imperialist interests bound up with Artemis. Despite the many international treaties and agreements to exclude outer space from warfare, it is still very much considered a battleground, as exemplified by the establishment of the US Space Force in 2019. The ability of other nations, above all China, to launch probes to Mars, to land rovers on the Moon and even to launch their own space station (China’s Tiangong space station was launched in 2021) are seen primarily as military threats.

Such interests of course also drive the Chinese Communist Party, and that of every bourgeois government. The division of the world into competing nation-states means that competition is extended to space. Rockets are not primarily for science, but for prestige and threats among world powers.

Arguably the major difference between the Apollo and Artemis missions is the vast increase of private business interests invested in the success of the program. That is not to say there were not business interests heavily involved in NASA’s early space program. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, just to name a few aerospace and defense companies, have always been involved in building US spacecraft. But there was genuine innovation that led to the development of several technologies used in both in rocketry and across daily life.

Now, multibillion dollar-efforts are designed solely to enhance the portfolios of select individuals. The most infamous is Elon Musk, which has often claimed SpaceX will be the way forward for space travel, a claim echoed constantly by a slavish corporate media. And yet despite vast increases in technology over the past several decades, including several in computing, miniaturization and 3D printing from which Musk can draw, the flagship Falcon Heavy is only 45 percent as capable as the Saturn V. 

Musk is joined by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his company Blue Origin, as well as Richard Branson’s The Spaceship Company. And the latter two are barely interested in genuine spaceflight, more interested in providing suborbital flights so that ultra-wealthy patrons, like themselves, can claim the title astronaut. 

There is also a more sinister aspect to the drive by private companies to conduct space flight. Many companies, Musk most of all, have made a point of having private missions to the Moon and even Mars. They are ultimately an attempt to stake private claim on whole worlds, with no oversight or regulations and the ability to exploit both resources and labor on a hitherto unseen scale. How could workers on the Moon, after all, possibly protest if their lives can just be snuffed out on the whim of one individual turning off life support?

Such is the logic of the Artemis project, and space exploration as a whole, under capitalism. What should be the continued expansion of humanity’s drive to understand and master nature is inevitably subordinated to the expansion of human exploitation and private profit.

Sri Lankan president presents IMF-dictated budget

Saman Gunadasa

On November 14, Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who is also the finance minister, presented the 2023 budget, along the lines dictated by the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) savage austerity program. The government will receive a bailout loan from the IMF only if its demands are implemented.

Wickremesinghe, however, stated in his budget speech that “the economic reforms we are bringing are not limited to the reforms agreed upon with the IMF.”

Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe arrives at the parliamentary complex in Colombo, Sri Lanka on Aug. 3, 2022. [AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena]

The budget did not include any measures to address the brutal social conditions facing workers and the poor, who are struggling with hyperinflation, shortages of essentials and starvation.

As the budget was being presented, a World Food Program (WFP) survey said nearly seven in ten households—68 percent of the country’s population—are turning to coping mechanisms such as eating less of their preferred foods, and reducing the number and size of meals. According to the WFP, 3.4 million people are being prioritised to receive emergency assistance.

Sri Lanka’s statistics and census department reported in October that annual inflation stands at 66 percent and food inflation 86 percent. However, Professor Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins University in the US recently said the real inflation rate was 115 and called the official figures a “complete fiction.” 

The budget forecasts expenditure of 5.8 trillion rupees ($US15.8 billion), up from 4.4 trillion estimated for this year. The new spending is to be funded through a massive increase of tax revenue by 69 percent. Wickremesinghe plans to slash the budget deficit to 7.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2023 from this year’s 9.8 percent, and to produce a surplus of 2.3 percent.

These figures indicate that an immense burden will be placed upon working people.

* The government has increased the CESS taxes (levied to fund hundreds of different services) by about 15 percent, and will further increase import costs for many essential items. 

* Value added tax (VAT) will be increased again next April. In September, the government raised this tax from 12 to 15 percent on all goods and services.

*A surcharge tax will be imposed at the point of importation on diesel, petrol and crude oil, thus lifting prices. The new taxes come on top of increases introduced in September.

* The finance minister also announced an end to the “pay as you earn” income tax regime for state institutions from January next year, a change which will affect public sector workers. Sri Lanka’s state banks and some state-owned enterprises (SOE) currently pay their employees’ taxes as a concession.

* The budget announced the privatisation of several SOEs, including Sri Lankan Airlines, Sri Lanka Telecom, the Colombo Hilton and Waters Edge hotels, and the Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation and its subsidiaries. More privatisations are in the pipeline.

* A presidential commission will be appointed to propose “reforms” to the public sector, which employs 1.45 million people. Wickremesinghe complained that “a large portion of the government revenue has to be spent on their salaries and wages.” The government already has plans to slash the number of public employees by half.

Wickremesinghe also announced changes to labour legislation, which he said “are necessary for economic transformation.” Wickremesinghe said an insurance scheme will be implemented to cover private sector workers who lose their jobs, hinting that this would make it easier for businesses to sack workers while maintaining low wages—something that has long been demanded by the corporate elite.

Wickremesinghe spoke of “creating an internationally competitive workforce with high skills in the next ten years.” In fact, the economic reforms proposed in the budget are intended to maintain a cheap and disposable workforce that international finance capital can exploit to the hilt.

As a further step towards the privatisation of public healthcare, the budget introduced a user-pays system for a percentage of wards in some major hospitals, beginning with the Colombo national hospital.

Free health services were a major gain won by the working class in past struggles. Successive governments, particularly since 1977, have systematically cut back on public healthcare, paving the way for mushrooming private health institutions, including hospitals.

Showing the priorities of the government, the budget allocated 539 billion rupees for the security forces and police, while providing only 322 billion rupees for health and 232 billion for education. The Wickremesinghe regime is preparing for increasingly brutal police and military action to crush opposition from workers and the poor to the relentless assault on living standards.

Wickremesinghe glorified the capitalist profit system as the solution to the country’s economic crisis. “From the small entrepreneur in the village to the large-scale entrepreneurs, everyone was treated as exploiters. We must change this situation,” he declared.

At the same time, Wickremesinghe cynically blamed the crisis on ordinary people’s supposed greed. He declared that the population “would like to see budget proposals that appear to be relief on the surface even if it means indebtedness to the world. We lost our way because of taking that popular route.” 

He continued: “We are not having a wedding by being in debt to the world” and added: “[What] did we do? Borrowing the hard-earned money of other countries and spending it on our consumption. We got lazy day by day.”

In reality, successive regimes amassed huge debts not in order to alleviate conditions for workers or the poor, but to build infrastructure to facilitate business investment.

The global economic crisis, which grew worse over decades, was exacerbated by the “let it rip” coronavirus policies adopted by governments around the world. The US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine further accelerated the inflationary crisis in every country.

The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, Sri Lanka’s main big business lobby, issued a statement praising the budget: “We trust the commendable proposals in the budget will see timely implementation and will continue to involve private sector consultation.”

At the same time, the chamber called on the government to go further in its attacks on workers by removing the “mandated” wages system in the plantations. Previous governments have ordered that tea plantation workers be paid the inadequate 1,000 rupees (US$2.72) per day. Not a single plantation company adhered to this requirement, and they have all imposed back-breaking workloads on the workers.

Sri Lanka’s opposition parties, which agree with the IMF austerity demands, made some token criticisms of the budget in an attempt to divert the widespread anger among masses of people.

Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) leading MP Harsha De Silva applauded the budget for containing “good reforms,” but asked for a general election to select a “good team” to implement these reforms effectively.

The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna-led National People’s Power (PPP) MP Vijitha Herath said, “This could be called a ‘Muppet’ Budget,’ which has aligned with all the reforms set by the IMF.” This party is also calling for a general election to deliver a so-called “new mandate” to implement the austerity program.

Thus far, not a single trade union has uttered a word about the budget. All of them are supporting the IMF program. 

The working class should take the lead in preparing its own counter-offensive against this brutal austerity drive.

Millions of workers and poor people took part in mass struggles in the four months beginning in April, demanding an end to intolerable inflation, shortages of essentials including food, medicine and fuel. They demanded the resignation of former President Gotabhaya Rajapakse and his regime.

Rajapakse fled the country and his government collapsed. However, the trade unions supported by the pseudo-left Frontline Socialist Party betrayed this struggle, diverting it behind the SJB and JVP’s demand for an interim government made up of the various bourgeois parties.

This betrayal has allowed the unelected President Wickremesinghe to implement the IMF-prescribed austerity and unleash repression against workers, the rural poor and students.

Mass shooting at gay nightclub in Colorado leaves at least 5 dead and 25 injured

Jacob Crosse

As of this writing, at least five people are dead and 25 more are injured following the latest mass shooting in the United States, which occurred late Saturday evening.

The shooting took place at the Q Club, the longest operating and largest gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

A makeshift memorial near Club Q, a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Sunday, Nov. 20, 2022 where a mass shooting occurred late Saturday night that left at least 5 dead and 25 injured. [AP Photo/Geneva Heffernan]

In a press conference Sunday, Colorado Springs Police Chief Adrian Vasquez said that emergency services began receiving multiple calls concerning a shooting at the club at 11:56 p.m. and that police were on the scene by midnight.

Vasquez acknowledged that police did little to stop the rampage, noting that by the time police arrived, two people inside the club had already subdued the gunman.

“We owe them a great debt of thanks,” Vasquez said Sunday morning.

Police have identified the suspected shooter as 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich, a local resident. This author was unable to locate any social media profiles linked to Aldrich. However, this is not the first time Aldrich has had significant police contact and there is no question police knew of Aldrich before Saturday’s incident.

In June 2021, Aldrich was arrested on multiple and serious charges after his mother called the police and, according to a statement from the El Paso County, Colorado, Sheriff’s Office, warned that “her son was threatening to cause harm to her with a homemade bomb, multiple weapons, and ammunition.”

The police statement said that Aldrich’s mother was not home at the time she made the call and that she did not know where her son was. Police were able to locate Aldrich at a separate residence about one mile away from his home and about 15 miles from where Saturday’s massacre took place.

In the incident last year, according to police, once Aldrich was located he refused to surrender, prompting the police to evacuate a quarter-mile radius around the residence as a precaution, due to the suspected bomb threat. Eventually, after nearly two hours, Aldrich surrendered to the police.

In their statement, the cops said they did not find any explosives in either residence. Notably, the police did not indicate whether any ammunition or weapons were located or seized.

In the 2021 incident, Aldrich was charged with two counts of felony menacing and three counts of first-degree kidnapping. However, the charges were later dropped and, according to a report in the Gazette, Aldrich called an editor at the newspaper this past August and requested that the story be removed or updated because the “entire case was dismissed.” The Gazette reported that the case has since been sealed by the 4th Judicial District Attorney’s Office.

The police have refused to confirm that the two incidents are related. Neither have they denied a connection.

In a second press conference, held Sunday night, Vasquez confirmed that the shooter had yet to speak with police and did not appear to have said anything at the crime scene. Vasquez confirmed that police investigators recovered a pistol, an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle, additional rounds and magazines at the club following the shooting.

Vasquez said that the club did not garner a lot of attention from the police, noting that it was “low-key” from a “police perspective,” and was “not on our radar as a high volume of calls or anything like that.”

In a report on the shooting in the New York Times, owners of the club, Matthew Haynes and Nic Grzecka, confirmed after viewing security camera footage that an unarmed patron stopped the shooter.

“He saved dozens and dozens of lives,” Haynes said. Grzecka told the Times that the shooting lasted less than two minutes before the gunman was subdued with the help of another person.

Haynes said the gunman entered the club with “tremendous firepower” and was apparently wearing a military-style flak jacket.

Joshua Thurman, a patron who was in the club during the shooting, described the terrifying situation to local media. “This is our only safe space here in The Springs,” Thurman said. “So for this to get shot up, what are we going to do now? Where are we going to go? Yea we can ‘rebuild’ and ‘come together,’ but what about those people who lost their lives for no reason?”

Loading Tweet ...

Tweet not loading? See it directly on Twitter

According to Gun Violence Archive (GVA), this year in the US there have been at least 602 mass shootings, which are defined as shootings in which at least four people, not including the gunman, are shot.

So far this year, per the GVA, nearly 18,000 of the more than 39,000 gun deaths in the US are due to homicide, while over 21,000 people used a gun to commit suicide. There has not been a single week in the US this year without at least four mass shootings. In July alone, the GVA recorded 89 mass shootings.

Colorado Springs, with a population just under half a million, is the second-largest city in Colorado. It is home to major US military installations.

This includes Fort Carson, a sprawling 137,000-acre Army base and home of the 4th Infantry Division, Peterson Air Force base, Schriever Air Force Base and the United States Air Force Academy, the premier officer training installation of the US Air Force.

The city is home to a growing Christian nationalist movement, heavily linked to the Republican Party and the military. The website MinistryWatch.com, which brands itself as a website “Empowering Donors to Christian Ministries,” noted in a 2021 article that more than “500 ministries call Colorado Springs home.”

It notes that organizations based in Colorado Springs “bring in over $2.5 billion a year,” with one of the “most well known” being Focus on the Family, the far-right Christian fundamentalist organization founded by James Dobson in 1983 after close consultation with the Ronald Reagan White House.

For decades, the organization has worked closely with Republicans in shaping anti-gay and anti-abortion messaging, while ginning up the vote for Republican candidates.

On November 27, 2015, Christian terrorist Robert Lewis Dear, animated by right-wing smears against Planned Parenthood promulgated by Republicans and their allies on the religious right, attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic located in Colorado Springs, murdering three people including a police officer, and injuring nine others.

During his trial, Dear proclaimed, “I am guilty, there’s no trial. I’m a warrior for the babies.” He added, “Kill the babies, that’s what Planned Parenthood does.”

In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers, a Republican, confirmed that at least 19 of the injured victims had gunshot wounds. Suthers said that other patrons suffered injuries trying to escape the carnage. He characterized the attacker as a “lone gunman” and said it was “premature” to determine a motive for the shooting.

However, he did acknowledge that the incident had “all the appearances of a hate crime.”

The mayor confirmed that the person who stopped the shooting did so by grabbing a handgun from Aldrich and bludgeoning him with it. “It was quite something,” Suthers told the Times. “It happened quite quickly.”

Colorado Springs is politically dominated by the Republican Party, which has increasingly made anti-gay agitation a part of its right-wing propaganda, creating an atmosphere conducive to such acts of homicidal violence.

So far this year, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has documented “more than 300 anti-LGBTQ+ bills” introduced in 23 states by Republicans, aimed at limiting the rights of transgender persons. This includes Florida’s “Don’t say gay” bill, enacted earlier this year.

Deadly attacks against LGBTQ persons have continued throughout 2022. Last Wednesday, HRC reported that at least 32 transgender people had been murdered in the US thus far in 2022, compared to 57 last year. HRC notes that the figures are likely a vast undercount, given that many trans persons are misgendered following their death.

Turkey bombs Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq

Barış Demir & Ulaş Ateşçi

The Turkish Defense Ministry announced early Sunday morning the start of “Air Operation Claw-Sword” targeting Kurdish nationalist militias in northern Iraq and northern Syria. According to the statement, Qandil, Asos and Hakurk in northern Iraq and Kobane, Tel Rifaat, Cizire and Derik in northern Syria were hit. Mass protests were reportedly organized in many places in northern Syria against the air strikes.

People inspect a site damaged by Turkish airstrikes that hit an electricity station in the village of Taql Baql, in Hasakeh province, Syria, Sunday, November 20, 2022. [AP Photo/Baderkhan Ahmad]

The ministry said the airstrikes “were carried out in line with the right of self-defense under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.” Turkish warplanes are reportedly using Syrian airspace, which is controlled by Russia, whose government is therefore tacitly allowing the bombings to take place.

This operation against the US-backed People’s Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) comes amid NATO war against Russia in Ukraine.

According to the Turkish Defense Ministry statement, the bombardment targeted “shelters, bunkers, caves, tunnels, ammunition depots and so-called headquarters and training camps” belonging to the PKK and YPG, claiming that civilians were not harmed. However, according to ANHA (Hawar News Agency), 11 civilians, including ANHA reporter İsam Ebdullah, were killed and 6 people, including another journalist, were wounded in the bombardments. The report claimed that 14 Syrian soldiers were also killed.

Syria’s state-owned Sana news agency confirmed the deaths of Syrian soldiers but did not state how many were killed.

Turkish Interior Ministry blamed the PKK and YPG for a rocket attack on the Öncüpınar Border Gate in Kilis yesterday, which injured 8 security personnel. Anadolu Agency also reported that four rockets were fired at Karkamış district of Gaziantep province from northern Syria yesterday evening, and that the rockets landed in empty areas. The YPG was held responsible for the rockets in the report.

Farhad Shami, head the media center of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), of which the YPG is the backbone, reported that airstrikes destroyed the COVID-19 Hospital in Kobane, the power plant in Derik and grain stores in Dahir al Arab.

SDF General Commander Mazlum Ebdi warned in a statement that the conflict could escalate. He said, “We don’t want a big war to break out. But if the Turkish state insists on war against us, we are ready for a great resistance. The war is not only limited to here, it spreads everywhere and everyone is affected by this war.” The PYD added, “Russia and the International Coalition led by the United States are responsible for the atrocities committed by the Turkish state against our people.”

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government presented the operation as a response to last Sunday’s terrorist attack targeting civilians on Istiklal Street, one of Istanbul’s most crowded centers. The Defense Ministry described the air strikes as “Payback time! The scoundrels are being held to account for their treacherous attacks,” while Presidential Spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin tweeted: “The day of reckoning for İstiklal!”

The Turkish government blamed the PKK and YPG for the terror attack that killed six people, including two children, and wounded 81 others, but they denied the allegation. Ahlam Albashir, the alleged main perpetrator of the attack, allegedly testified that she was “a member of the YPG” but also that they had “threatened to harm her siblings” to force her to carry out the attack. After the incident, 19 people were arrested and 29 were deported.

Beyond the suspicions about Albashır, who is said to be an “intelligence officer of the YPG,” revelations from the fascistic Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), an ally of the Erdoğan government, placed phone calls to Albashır has raised doubts about official statements. Mehmet Emin İlhan, the head of the MHP’s Güçlükonak district in Şırnak, claimed that the telephone line registered to him had been illegally obtained and that he had not spoken to Albashır.

This raises the issue of whether Erdoğan’s blaming of the PKK and the YPG for the terrorist attack in Istanbul were in fact part of Ankara’s planning of an operation in Syria targeting Kurdish militias.

Significantly, in recent days, the US Consulate General in Erbil also issued a warning to US citizens on its web site, stating that it is “monitoring credible open-source reports of potential Turkish military action in northern Syria and northern Iraq in the coming days. The U.S. government continues to strongly advise U.S. citizens to avoid these areas.”

Ultimately, the Erdoğan government has seized on this terrorist attack as a pretext for a new operation against Kurdish nationalist forces in Syria and Iraq. In fact, Ankara’s preparations to invade Syria date back to May. “We will soon start taking new steps regarding the incomplete parts of the work we have started to create safe zones 30 kilometers deep along our southern borders,” Erdoğan declared on May 23.

However, at the time, Ankara could not get the green light for a new operation from Washington which was using the YPG as a proxy force against President Assad’s regime in Syria, and from Russia and Iran, which support the Assad regime.

The World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Group call on workers to oppose the use of a terrorist attack as a pretext for militarism and war and warn workers internationally of the dangers of military escalation. The fact that Syrian government soldiers have already been killed points to the possibility of further escalation between Turkish and Syrian forces. Growing tensions between Damascus and Ankara, an ardent supporter of NATO’s war for regime change in Syria, escalated into direct confrontation in 2020.

Since 2016, Ankara has launched numerous operations in Syria to prevent the emergence of a Kurdish state on its southern borders, demanding that its NATO allies, particularly the United States, stop using the YPG as a proxy force in Syria. The Turkish Armed Forces and their Islamist proxies currently control around 10 percent of Syria, home to 4.4 million people.

In addition, the Erdoğan government is facing an explosive economic and social crisis at home. Official annual inflation has reached 85 percent, while tens of millions of working people have suffered unprecedented impoverishment. As discontent grows within the working class, Turkey is heading for presidential and parliamentary elections in 2023.

In these circumstances, Erdoğan is seeking to suppress class tensions and re-consolidate his support base by promoting Turkish nationalism and militarism. The government also aims to expel Syrian Arab refugees from Turkey by forcing the YPG militia out of northern Syria so it can place the refugees there.

Biden administration grants immunity to Saudi crown prince, murderer of Jamal Khashoggi

Patrick Martin

The US State Department has granted immunity to Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, shielding him from prosecution for the murder of US citizen and Saudi political dissident Jamal Khashoggi. The decision was disclosed last week, and widely reported on Friday.

This action shows that the Biden administration’s claim to defend democracy and human rights—the supposed justification for its intervention in the Ukraine war and around the world—is a flat-out lie.

Biden said contemptuously during his visit to Saudi Arabia last May, when journalists questioned him about the murder and dismemberment of Khashoggi by a hit squad inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, “Why don’t you guys talk about something that matters? I’m happy to answer a question that matters.” That is the authentic, arrogant voice of US imperialism.

In this image released by the Saudi Royal Palace, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, right, greets President Joe Biden with a fist bump after his arrival at Al-Salam palace in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Friday, July 15, 2022. [AP Photo/Bandar Aljaloud/Saudi Royal Palace via AP]

The State Department was responding to an official query from a federal judge hearing the civil suit brought by Khashoggi’s fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, and a human rights group Khashoggi had founded, seeking to hold bin Salman accountable for the murder. It issued instructions to the US Department of Justice to intervene in the case by informing the judge that bin Salman had sovereign immunity, “which the United States has consistently and across administrations applied to heads of state, heads of government and foreign ministers while they are in office.”

The action appeared to be coordinated with the Saudi regime, since in September bin Salman was appointed prime minister by his father the king, who, according to Saudi custom, had carried that title, with his son as deputy prime minister. That appointment meant that bin Salman now qualified for the exemption from legal liability. Bin Salman has not traveled to Europe or the United States since the Khashoggi murder in 2018 to avoid possible legal problems. 

Biden claimed during the 2020 election campaign that he would make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” on the world scene because of the Khashoggi murder. Once in office, he released an assessment by the CIA—which has vast experience both in murders and their cover-up—that bin Salman ordered the killing of Khashoggi, which was carried out under the direction of his personal security chief.

Fred Ryan, the publisher of the Washington Post, where Khashoggi wrote a regular op-ed column focused on the Middle East and particularly the Saudi monarchy, denounced the State Department, saying in a statement, “President Biden is failing to uphold America’s most cherished values. He’s granting a license to kill to one of the world’s most egregious human rights abusers.”

The record of bloody tyranny in Saudi Arabia extends far beyond the gruesome killing of Khashoggi. The monarchic regime kills dozens of its own subjects every year, mainly through public beheadings and hangings, especially targeting advocates of the rights of the country’s Shia minority, who live mainly in the oil-rich Eastern Province. In the the most recent mass execution, last March, 81 men were beheaded at bin Salman’s orders.

None of this matters compared to the Saudi supply of oil to the world market, and its lucrative arms purchases, mainly from American manufacturers, to bolster its critical military role in the Arabian Peninsula and against Iran, just across the Persian Gulf. Biden traveled to Riyadh in May to make amends to bin Salman for his campaign rhetoric and plead with the de facto Saudi ruler to boost production to offset the cutoff of Russian supplies as a result of the war in Ukraine. Instead, bin Salman recently ordered a reduction in Saudi production, evidently seeking to force more US concessions, including the State Department declaration last week.

Biden’s rapprochement with bin Salman is part of a broader pattern, in which Washington cultivates a network of autocrats and murderers around the world in order to maintain its global domination. Two weeks ago Biden traveled to Egypt to attend the UN-sponsored COP27 climate summit. There he was welcomed by the country’s military dictator, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, shaking hands stained with the blood of thousands of Egyptian workers and youth massacred in the 2013 military coup that suppressed a budding revolutionary movement.

Biden praised el-Sisi’s role in Gaza, where the military regime has helped prop up Israeli domination of nearly two million Palestinians by policing and virtually closing the enclave’s border with Egypt. He pledged to preserve “our strong defense partnership,” expressing the hope that “we can even say we’re closer and stronger in every way.”

President Joe Biden speaks as Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi laughs during a meeting at the COP27 U.N. Climate Summit, Friday, Nov. 11, 2022, at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. [AP Photo/Alex Brandon]

This week, Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris, is meeting with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who aims to reprise his father’s role as a dictatorial ruler of that country. Harris traveled to Manila Sunday after attending the summit of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Thailand. 

In Bangkok, she had a cordial chat with Thai military ruler Prayut Chan-o-cha, who suppresses workers and small farmers on behalf of the monarchy, the big financial interests, and the imperialist powers, especially the US and Japan. According to the official readout of the meeting, the two leaders “discussed our security cooperation … and the benefits our alliance provides for our people as we promote a free and open Indo-Pacific.” That is diplomatic jargon for Thailand lining up with the US-led campaign against China.

The readout said Harris “reaffirmed the enduring partnership between the United States and Thailand, one that is rooted in common values, and discussed efforts to strengthen our cooperation across a range of bilateral and global issues.” Thailand’s military rulers have dispersed parliaments, rigged elections, banned opposition parties and violently suppressed antigovernment protests. To claim “common values” has an ominous ring.

Both Democratic and Republican senators spoke out in support of the State Department statement, citing the geopolitical interests of American imperialism in the Middle East as the overriding issue. Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia said, “We need to be enough of a realist to realize that Saudi Arabia has been a bulwark against Iran. It is a leader in a very messy part of the world.”

Republican Senator Tom Cotton was even blunter. Asked about the issue during an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” he said, “Look, if we didn’t have allies and partners who don’t always share our political systems, our cultural and social sensibilities, we wouldn’t have any allies and partners. Saudi Arabia has been an important partner of the United States for 80 years. Presidents of both parties have worked with them.”

He continued, “[W]hat matters most about governments around the world is less whether they’re democratic or nondemocratic and more whether they’re pro-American or anti-American. And the simple fact is, Saudi Arabia has been an American partner going back 80 years.”

There is another issue in the embrace of the murderer of Khashoggi by the Biden administration, one which is perhaps even more important than the specific role of the Saudi regime in US foreign policy. As the State Department statement said, “Across administrations, there is an unbroken practice of the United States recognizing immunity for heads of government while they are in office—and we expect other governments to do the same for the United States.” 

Former State Department lawyer Brian Finucane told the Washington Post that every US administration was concerned about American officials being prosecuted in foreign courts for war crimes and other charges. “Reciprocity concerns lie at the core of this rule,” he told the newspaper. 

When it comes to murder and other barbaric acts, bin Salman, el-Sisi and Marcos Jr. cannot hold a candle to an American president. The victims of American military aggression, “targeted killings,” and economic blockades (Iraq, Iran, North Korea) number in the millions. No government since Hitler’s Germany has killed so many. Thus every American president fears legal consequences.

It is for that reason that the United States has refused, under both Democratic and Republican presidents, to join the International Criminal Court (ICC), and Congress even passed legislation authorizing US military action to rescue any American brought before the tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands.

Third COVID wave worsens in New Zealand

Tom Peters

On November 16, officials from New Zealand’s ministry of health held a press conference on the rising number of cases, deaths and hospitalisations from the country’s third wave of COVID-19.

It was the first government press conference dedicated to the pandemic in almost two months. The Labour Party-led government has tried to avoid talking about the worsening crisis, particularly since Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern lifted almost all mask mandates and other public health measures in September and falsely asserted that “the worst of the pandemic is, in many ways, over.”

Medical staff test shoppers who volunteered at a pop-up community COVID-19 testing station at a supermarket carpark in Christchurch, New Zealand. [AP Photo/Mark Baker]

On November 6, Ardern was asked by a TVNZ interviewer whether she was worried about increasing case numbers. She replied that the “extra wave before Christmas” had been “predicted” by the government, adding falsely that cases “are starting to look like they’re peaking and coming away.”

From November 6 to November 17, the seven-day average of reported cases has increased from 2,969 to 3,154. As of November 18, 329 people were in hospital with COVID, up from 305 on November 1.

On Wednesday, Dr Andrew Old, deputy director-general of the ministry’s Public Health Agency, revealed new modelling showing daily cases could rise to 11,000 over the summer, fuelled by a “swarm” of more transmissible Omicron sub-variants. Hospitalisations could reach 100 per day and deaths could exceed the previous peak reached in July at the height of the second wave—a time when COVID was New Zealand’s leading cause of death and the country’s per capita COVID deaths were the highest in the world.

While making these warnings, government officials did not announce the reintroduction of public health measures to stop or even mitigate the spread of the coronavirus. Dr Old advised members of the public to get vaccinated, test if they have symptoms and self-isolate if they test positive, and take a supply of rapid antigen tests when going on holiday. These individual measures will not prevent thousands more people becoming severely ill and hundreds dying in the coming months.

Official figures show that a total of 2,154 people have died of COVID, but the real toll is far higher. Another 436 deaths are classified as unconfirmed due to lack of data, but occurred shortly after a COVID infection. Another 695 deaths which occurred within 28 days of infection are classified as not the result of COVID, although there is no detail of how this determination was made.

All but 59 of these deaths occurred in 2022; they are the preventable outcome of deliberate and criminal policy decisions. Just over a year ago Ardern announced the end of the previous zero COVID policy, which had kept New Zealand almost entirely free from the virus thanks to the use of temporary lockdowns, border quarantine and strict isolation measures.

The ending of lockdowns, reopening of workplaces and schools, and the removal of quarantine, masking and vaccine mandates, was carried out on the orders of big business. In every country, the financial elite has placed profit ahead of workers’ safety and determined that more than 22 million deaths in the past two years is an acceptable cost of doing business.

The “let it rip” agenda could never have been imposed without the assistance of the trade unions, which did nothing to protect workers and worked hand-in-hand with the state and corporations.

It is likely that well over half New Zealand’s population has been infected with COVID at least once. Reinfections now account for about 20 percent of reported daily cases. This alarming fact disproves the unscientific claims, repeated by Dr Old and other officials, that New Zealanders may be safer because of so-called “hybrid immunity” from both vaccination and mass infection. Every new infection can weaken the immune system and make people more susceptible to severe consequences, including Long Covid.

The level of conscious criminality on the part of the government was underscored on November 15 by a Newsroom report, which noted that publicly released documents show that in August, Dr Old “recommended the mask mandate remain in place for public transport and other close contact situations but ministers overrode him.”

Dr Old advised the government that “removing mask mandates and quarantine requirements for household contacts at the same time could increase infections and hospitalisations by 50-55 percent in the short-term.” He wrote that “Māori, Pasifika, people with disabilities, and people living in areas of high deprivation are likely to be disproportionately affected if mask mandates were removed and replaced with strong recommendations.”

Epidemiologist Dr Amanda Kvalsvig told Newsroom that the removal of masks on public transport was hard to comprehend. She said: “Any policy position that fails to make use of basic protections against Covid-19 spread in the community is knowingly contributing to the already unacceptable health inequities in this country.”

The reason the ruling class opposes mask use is because they are a constant visual reminder that the pandemic is still raging, and that action must be taken to stop transmission.

Every week brings more news of the catastrophic situation in the public health system, which faces a shortage of at least 4,000 nurses and hundreds of doctors and was in crisis even before the pandemic.

Figures released on November 15 show that 594 people spent 24 hours waiting in an emergency department in August, up from 160 in August last year. Long wait times have been implicated in a number of avoidable deaths.

The flood of patients needing urgent attention has led to thousands of non-urgent, but vital, procedures being delayed. The Bay of Plenty Times reported on November 5, for example, that the number of patients waiting for surgery at Tauranga Hospital has soared from 12 in October 2017 to 1,940 five years later. One 75-year-old woman was told in May 2020 she needed hip surgery; two-and-a-half years later the operation has still not been scheduled.

Whangārei Hospital emergency physician Dr Gary Payinda wrote in Stuff that the situation in Tauranga was representative of the entire country, following decades of healthcare being starved of resources.

He noted that this situation was connected with a broader crisis of social inequality: “Civil society has eroded, infrastructure has been allowed to degrade, and the middle class hollowed out, while the wealthy have done very, very well… The top two billionaires in New Zealand own more wealth than the bottom 1,500,000 people in our country. To call that obscene and unsustainable is an understatement.”