US sends long-range missiles to Ukraine

Andre Damon

The White House announced Friday that it would send long-range missiles capable of striking nearly 100 miles into Russian territory to Ukraine, in one of the most significant escalations of US involvement in the war with Russia to date.

Following Washington’s tradition of the “Friday afternoon news dump,” the announcement was timed so as to garner as little public attention as possible.

The pliant American media supported the Biden administration’s goal of keeping the American public from understanding the consequences of this action. This massive escalation of the war against Russia received effectively no media coverage. It was not featured on the front pages of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, or Washington Post, and was not reported on the evening cable news shows.

The weapons system, known as the ground-launched Small Diameter Bomb, is a rocket-launched maneuverable glide bomb with double the range of the HIMARS missiles Washington has already provided.

Airmen with the 3rd Munitions Squadron assemble a rack of inert small diameter bombs during readiness training at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, Feb. 9, 2018. The small diameter bomb is a precise and accurate weapon that allows the the F-22 Raptor to deliver decisive air power. (U.S. Air Force photo by Alejandro Peña)

The announcement marks a repudiation of Biden’s pledge in May that “We are not encouraging or enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its borders,” and his declaration that “We’re not going to send to Ukraine rocket systems that strike into Russia.”

The announcement is the latest in a whirlwind escalation of US involvement in the war over the past week. On January 26, the White House declared that it would send 31 Abrams main battle tanks to Ukraine, as part of a coalition of NATO countries sending over 120 main battle tanks in the first “wave.”

No sooner was this announcement made than the White House revealed that it was in discussions to send F-16 fighters to Ukraine, against the backdrop of demands by Democratic and Republican politicians and dominant sections of the US media to send the aircraft.

The expected announcement of the new long-range weapons comes as press reports indicate that the Biden administration is discussing openly endorsing a Ukrainian assault on the predominantly Russian-speaking peninsula of Crimea, which Russia has claimed as its territory since 2014.

While the Biden administration endorsed the Zelensky government’s Crimean Platform back in 2021, which entails the “retaking of Crimea,” since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Washington had toned down its explicit endorsement for the official war aim of the Zelensky government in order to hide the massively escalatory character of its involvement in the war.

Now, however, the New York Times reports, “(T)he Biden administration is finally starting to concede that Kyiv may need the power to strike the Russian sanctuary, even if such a move increases the risk of escalation.”

The Times writes that “the Biden administration is considering what would be one of its boldest moves yet, helping Ukraine to attack the peninsula.”

In an article for the think tank magazine Foreign Affairs, entitled “What Ukraine Needs to Liberate Crimea,” United States Army lieutenant colonel Alexander Vindman declared that “Washington should give Ukraine the weapons and assistance it needs to win quickly and decisively.” Vindman is the former Director for European Affairs for the United States National Security Council.

In the article, Vindman explained how a NATO-backed Ukrainian offensive against Crimea would proceed:

The first step would be to pin down Russia’s forces in the Kherson and Luhansk regions and in the northern part of Donetsk. Next, Ukraine would free the remainder of Zaporizhzhia Province and push through southern Donetsk to reach the Sea of Azov, severing Russia’s land bridge to Ukraine. Ukrainian forces would also need to destroy the Kerch Strait Bridge, which connects Russia to the Crimean Peninsula and allows Moscow to resupply its troops by road and rail.

What none of the planners of this offensive admit, however, is that its implementation will require a massive expansion of NATO involvement in the war, including not only the deployment of advanced weapons systems, but the direct deployment of NATO troops.

Last week, explaining the deployment of the M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, the WSWS outlined how  such a scenario could unfold:

The significance of Biden’s announcement lies less in the battlefield impact of the tanks than in the consequences of deploying them. The turbine-driven Abrams tanks will require a massive logistical network inside Ukraine, involving large numbers of specialist American contractors. Attacks on these supply networks and American personnel servicing the tanks will then be used to press for implementation of a “no-fly zone” and the deployment of US and NATO troops to Ukraine.

Just one week after these words were written, the initial stages of this scenario are already being put into place.

On Friday, Politico reported that “A group of former military officers and private donors is raising money to send Western mechanics close to the Ukrainian frontlines, where they will repair battle-damaged donated weapons and vehicles that have been flooding into the country.”

The report continued, “The plan is to find 100 to 200 experienced contractors who would travel to Ukraine and embed themselves with small units near the front lines. Under the project, called Trident Support, those contractors would in turn teach the Ukrainian troops how to fix their equipment on the fly.”

The claim that this initiative is being led by “retired” officers is merely a fraudulent pretense distancing the Biden administration from this deployment. While the deployment of the contractors may be “voluntary,” threats to the safety of the hundreds of American personnel on the front lines maintaining American vehicles could serve just as well as a pretense for US escalation of the war.

France and Australia to make artillery shells for Ukrainian army

Mike Head

The Australian and French governments have agreed to a deal to jointly manufacture and supply thousands of artillery shells to the Ukrainian army, the defence and foreign ministers of the two countries announced on Monday. The plan, unveiled at a “2+2” ministerial meeting in Paris, reportedly involves the Australian supply of explosives for the shells, to be made in France.

“Several thousand 155mm shells will be manufactured jointly” by French arms supplier Nexter, French Defence Minister Sébastien Lecornu said. His Australian counterpart and deputy prime minister Richard Marles said the plan would come with a “multi-million-dollar” price tag, but neither provided an actual figure.

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna (second right) and French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu, (second left) pose with Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles (left) and Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong prior to their joint meeting at the French foreign ministry in Paris, Monday, Jan.30, 2023. [AP Photo/Yoan Valat, Pool via AP]

The agreement marks a further significant stepping up of both governments’ involvement in the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, in line with the dangerous escalation by the US and Germany, marked by the deployment of advanced heavy tanks.

It came soon after the January 4 announcement by French President Emmanuel Macron that France would deliver AMX-10 RC light tanks to the Ukrainian military. That was the first dispatch of Western tanks, soon followed by Washington and Berlin.

It also came on the heels of the Australian Labor government sending 70 military personnel two weeks ago to join Operation Interflex, a UK-led mission that has already trained around 10,000 Ukrainian troops. That took Australia’s military contribution to at least $655 million, including the supply of 90 Bushmaster armoured vehicles, making it one of the largest non-NATO contributors to the war.

Several types of artillery sent to Ukraine from the NATO powers fire 155mm shells, including French-made CAESAR truck-mounted guns, the British-built M777 howitzer and the German Panzerhaubitze 2000 self-propelled gun.

Marles declared that the ammunition supplies fit into “the ongoing level of support both France and Australia are providing Ukraine to make sure Ukraine is able to stay in this conflict and… see it concluded on its own terms.” That language indicates an indefinite commitment, echoing similar aggressive statements from the Biden administration.

Lecornu said the aid would be “significant” and “an effort that will be kept up over time,” with the first deliveries slated for the first quarter of 2023, that is, within two months.

Such comments underscore the intent of the US-led powers to deliberately stoke and ramp up the war, using Ukraine as a battleground for a drive to defeat and dismember Russia, having goaded Putin’s oligarchic regime into a disastrous invasion.

Monday’s meeting was the first Australia-France Foreign and Defence Ministerial Consultations since the diplomatic rupture caused by the September 2021 AUKUS treaty between the US, UK and Australia. Australia dumped a $90 billion contract to purchase French submarines in favour of a deal with the US and UK to supply nuclear-powered attack submarines.

The resumption of strategic and military ties between Australia and France, which has colonies and bases across the Indian and Pacific oceans, highlights the reality that the war against Russia is regarded by the US and all its imperialist allies as a prelude to one against China for control over the entire strategic and resource-rich Eurasian landmass.

By repairing relations with France, which began with a visit to Paris last July by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the Labor government in Australia is assisting the Biden administration to strengthen a network of military alliances encircling China, while bolstering the interests of Australian and French capitalism in the region.

Marles said the signed agreement was the opening of “new cooperation between the Australian and French defence industries.” He said the meeting also agreed to “grow and deepen the relationship between our two defence forces” and the two countries would have greater access to their respective defence facilities in the Indo-Pacific region.

As indicated by the joint statement issued by the four ministers, the two imperialist powers regard this collaboration as part of a wider alliance, focused on the Indo-Pacific, directed against China as well as Russia.

The statement declared that “France and Australia agreed to continue to work together” to “address shared security challenges” in the Indo-Pacific region. While not explicitly naming China as the target, the statement left no doubt about that. It employed all the catchphrases used by the US and its allies against China, including vowing to support “freedom of navigation” naval operations and overflights in Chinese-controlled areas of the South China Sea.

The statement effectively lined up behind Washington’s escalating steps to provoke China into a conflict over Taiwan by eroding the 50-year-old “One China” policy, whereby the Chinese government was in effect recognised as the legitimate government over all of China, including Taiwan.

While claiming to support the “status quo” and “peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” the statement pledged to “support Taiwan’s meaningful participation in the work of international organisations” and “continue deepening relations with Taiwan in the economic, scientific, trade, technological and cultural fields.”

French imperialism, which once directly controlled a vast colonial empire, notably in Africa and Indochina, remains a major nuclear-armed power across the Indo-Pacific. It retains colonial rule over territories with about 1.65 million citizens and five permanent military bases manned by 7,000 personnel, from the Indian Ocean islands of Mayotte and Reunion, to the Pacific Ocean islands of New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna and French Polynesia.

During a visit to the region in 2018, Macron called for a new Indo-Pacific “axis” directed against China, signaling moves alongside other European imperialist powers, particularly the UK and Germany, to assert their own predatory interests in the region under conditions of rising Chinese influence and Washington’s aggressive moves against China.

Monday’s statement signaled a heightened involvement of French forces in allied military exercises and operations in the region. “The ministers welcomed Australia’s increased involvement in the Croix du Sud multilateral exercise this April and Australia’s support for France’s first full participation in Exercise Talisman Sabre in 2023, following its participation as an observer member in 2021.”

Croix du Sud is a French military exercise held every two years in New Caledonia and surrounding waters. Talisman Sabre is a major US-Australian exercise, involving thousands of troops, held in Australia every second year since 2005.

In 2021, the French nuclear attack submarine Émeraude, along with the naval support ship Seine, conducted patrols in the South China Sea.That year, France also sent an amphibious assault ship, the Tonnerre, and the frigate Surcouf to pass through the disputed waters twice during its annual Jeanne d’Arc mission, and French SIGINT ship Dupuy de Lôme sailed through the Taiwan Strait.

This week, French naval sources said the country’s navy was working toward a Pacific Region deployment in 2025 for its Charles de Gaulle carrier strike group, which carries nuclear weapons.

Ever since taking office last May, the Australian Labor government has outdone its Liberal-National predecessor in placing the country on the frontline of US war plans, joining NATO and other US-led alliance summits, bullying Pacific island states into security pacts aimed against China and spending billions on new military hardware—at least $4 billion in the first three weeks of 2023.

The visit to Paris by Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong was just the first part of a bigger mission. It centres on talks in London and Washington to seek to finalise the AUKUS arrangements for the far-greater Australian purchases of submarines, hypersonic missiles and other weaponry.

Ukraine cracks down on military “deserters”

Jason Melanovski

Amidst a major escalation of the war in Ukraine by NATO, the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has begun cracking down on “refuseniks,” or deserting soldiers, as bloody fighting continues with Russian forces for control of Bakhmut.

Under the newly signed law draft Law 8271, soldiers directly disobeying an order, threatening a senior officer with violence or deserting one’s unit would face five to 10 years in prison. Convictions of desertion in the face of fire will carry a minimum of five and a maximum of 12 years in prison.

The law enforcing stricter penalties on soldiers convicted of abandoning fighting positions or defying their commanders was initially ratified by the Ukrainian parliament in December and publicly supported by the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valeriy Zaluzhny. 

Zaluzhny—an admirer of the far-right fascist hero Stepan Bandera—complained at the time that Ukrainian soldiers could theoretically flee an assigned position or defy a commander and face little more than a 10 percent deduction from his military salary.

Earlier in December, Andrey Marochko, an officer with the Russian-backed Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), had alleged an increase in desertion rates among Ukrainian forces.

“There have been increasingly more saboteurs and people deserting their positions [in the special operation zone], as well as more wrangling with commanders and hazing. Incidents of taking drugs and alcohol have also increased. Besides, social tensions have grown sharply in Ukraine,” Marochko said. While Marochko certainly has a strategic incentive to make such statements, the introduction of the law shortly thereafter lends credence to his remarks.

Zelensky signed the law on January 25 despite widespread criticism from Ukrainian citizens and soldiers who rightfully view the Ukrainian justice system as corrupt and controlled by the wealthy.

Following the initial introduction of the law in December, an electronic petition appeared calling for Zelensky to veto the proposal and quickly gathered the necessary 25,000 signatures for Zelensky’s consideration.

According to the author of the petition, Tetiana Kostohryzenko, “the command will gain leverage to blackmail and punish the military with prison for almost any criticism of their decisions, even if the decisions are incompetent and based on unsuccessful combat management.”  

A total of 34,941 Ukrainians signed the petition leading up to Zelensky’s signing of the law. Despite the appeal garnering the necessary signatures for an official response from the president’s office, Zelensky completely ignored public opposition and signed the bill into law anyway.

According to Ukrainian media outlets such as the Kyiv Post, Zaluzhny, who maintains extremely close ties to the US military, is widely viewed as a potential rival to Zelensky in the upcoming 2024 presidential elections. A Zelensky veto of the measure could have potentially undermined his own support within the Ukrainian military and the United States government.

The law is clearly intended to bolster the Ukrainian military command’s control over its troops as it is nearing a “very active phase of the war” with “intense operations” expected at the front in February and March, according to the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense.

Speaking to the Freedom channel, Andrii Yusov, representative of the Chief Intelligence Directorate, revealed that the Ukrainian military foresaw “a difficult situation” developing at the front due to a Russian offensive and is counting on further weapons shipments from the West as the war escalates in the coming months.

Yusov’s comments essentially suggest that thousands or more Ukrainian and Russian soldiers will lose their lives in an imperialist-backed war with no peaceful resolution in sight.

While both Ukrainian and Western officials have attempted to hide the scale of death within the military, Ukrainian casualties likely equal or exceed Russian losses. 

In November, US General Mark Milley nonchalantly revealed that 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed or wounded in just eight months of fighting while speaking at the Economic Club of New York City.

“You are looking at well over 100,000 Russian soldiers killed and wounded,” Milley said. “Same thing probably on the Ukrainian side.”

Milley speaks regularly with his Ukrainian counterpart Zaluzhny and is well aware of the mass casualties taking place on the battlefield as the US government continues to escalate its direct involvement in the war.

The drive to crack down on evaders is also taking place as videos of the forced mobilization of Ukrainian men have spread on social media. In one video a man is shown being grabbed in an apartment by two men dressed in military clothing, while a small child intervenes. While such videos are denounced by the Ukrainian government as “fakes,” they correspond with reports of haphazard and arbitrary forced mobilization over the previous summer and fall. Such reports were even taken up by the New York Times, which admitted at the time, “Recruiters approach young men on the street, but the standards are not always clear, and there are reports of unwilling men being signed up while some eager to fight are turned away.”

Approximately 2,500 cases of draft dodging have been opened so far in Ukraine during the war with 400 indictments.

Over 90 percent of Europeans worry about the rising cost of living

Elisabeth Zimmermann

The latest Eurobarometer survey found that 93 percent of Europeans are very concerned about the rising cost of living. High food and energy prices meant nearly 40 percent of the EU population are already struggling to pay for things, and almost one in two says his or her standard of living has fallen. Another 39 percent expected their standard of living to fall this year.

A homeless man walks along a street in a shopping district in central London, Thursday, February 2, 2023. [AP Photo/Kin Cheung]

For the Eurobarometer survey, some 27,000 citizens were interviewed in all 27 EU member states in October and November last year. The survey was commissioned by the European Parliament and published last week.

In it, 39 percent of respondents said they had difficulty paying their bills “most of the time” or “occasionally.” That is an increase of 9 percent since the autumn of 2021, when 30 percent of respondents voiced this problem.

The concurrence and multiplicity of crises is particularly reflected in the concerns of the European population: the coronavirus pandemic, the escalation of the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, the associated risk of a third, nuclear world war and the impact of all these developments on people’s lives. Two-thirds of respondents are not satisfied with the measures taken by national governments and European bodies to counter these dangers.

In immediate second place to concerns about the high cost of living, respondents cited fear of poverty and social exclusion (82 percent). And almost as many said they were worried about climate change (81 percent) and fearful of the war in Ukraine spreading to other countries (also 81 percent). Fear of nuclear war was cited by 74 percent of all respondents.

In all EU member states, more than seven in 10 respondents expressed concern about high inflation and the rising cost of living. In Greece, 100 percent of respondents expressed this worry, in Cyprus 99 percent, and in Italy and Portugal 98 percent. Rising prices, including particularly sharp increases in food and energy prices, are felt by all sections of the working class—regardless of gender, age, origin, educational or professional background.

The following countries experienced above-average declines in living standards, particularly due to sharp increases in food and energy prices: In Cyprus, 70 percent of respondents said their standard of living had already declined; in Greece, 66 percent; in Malta, 65 percent; in France, 62 percent; and in Portugal, 57 percent.

In Hungary, 44 percent of respondents (slightly below the EU average of 46 percent) said their standard of living had already declined as a result of the pandemic, the Ukraine war and economic crisis. Forty-seven percent of Hungarians surveyed (compared to 39 percent for the EU average) were worried about their situation worsening in the coming months. More than 80 percent were afraid of an expansion of the Ukraine war.

One cause of high inflation is the impact of the cheap money policies pursued by central banks in the US and Europe. Governments have also thrown support packages worth hundreds of billions of dollars, euros and other currencies at the corporations and the rich over the past decade and a half. This has been done to keep stock prices high and to protect their profits. These trillion-dollar giveaways, which have increased sharply since the outbreak of the pandemic, are now to be recovered through the intensified exploitation and impoverishment of the working class.

Other factors also continue to fuel inflation: These include the decline in the labour force due to coronavirus deaths, ongoing infections, and the effects of Long-Covid. The criminal profits-before-lives policies of capitalist governments around the world are responsible for this. Further, the war that the USA and NATO are waging in Ukraine against Russia, the threats of war against China and the related insane rearmament spending that all countries in Europe, with Germany in the lead, are engaged in are also part of this.

Last but not least, the price gouging by the large corporations, especially in the food and energy sectors, is significantly contributing to inflation. The prices runups come to about 20 percent for food and about 60 percent in the energy sector. Working people and the poorest sections of the working class are particularly affected.

The recently published Oxfam report also shows that the gulf between rich and poor has widened enormously worldwide. More than 800 million people are suffering from hunger, which is about one in 10 of the world’s population; and millions do not know how to make ends meet. But at the same time, the billionaires are seeing gigantic increases in their wealth.

As the Oxfam report shows, the corporations and super-rich are the crisis “winners.” They are profiting from the suffering and death caused by the pandemic and the energy crisis. For example, 95 food and energy corporations worldwide more than doubled their profits in 2022. They made $306 billion in windfall profits and distributed $257 billion (84 percent) of that to their shareholders. (Oxfam defines profits as windfall if they exceed the 2018-2021 average by 10 percent or more.) Since the start of the pandemic, the richest 1 percent of the world’s population has pocketed about two-thirds of the growth in global wealth.

In Germany, the trend is even more extreme. Of the growth in wealth produced in Germany in 2020 and 2021, 81 percent went to the richest 1 percent of the population. At the same time, tens of millions of workers suffered losses in their real wages. People already living in poverty are unable to pay a large proportion of their bills and must decide whether to spend the money on food or on heating.

Blinken green lights Israel’s far right government suppression of Palestinians

Jean Shaoul

Swallowing his “concerns” that the recent wave of violence could lead to a third intifada, or uprising, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the go ahead to suppress the Palestinians as the two leaders discussed plans for operations against Iran.

Speaking at a press conference in Jerusalem after meetings Netanyahu and later with Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, Blinken made the usual ritual incantations of support for a “two-state solution” meaning a mini-Palestinian statelet of isolated Bantustans subservient to Israel. This was a policy rejected decades ago by the fascistic and racist forces in Israel’s newly installed government, to the extent of supporting the November 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, for signing the Oslo Accords in 1993.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shake hands during a news conference, on January 30, 2023 in Jerusalem. [AP Photo/Ronaldo Schemidt]

Blinken all but acknowledged this and its catastrophic implications, saying “What we’re seeing now for Palestinians is a shrinking horizon of hope, not an expanding one. And that, too, we believe needs to change” as he tossed some loose change —$50 million in new American funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency that provides aid to the Palestinian refugee camps—at Abbas’s feet.

Blinken said he had heard “deep concern about the current trajectory” of escalating tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. But beyond calling on Abbas to restore the PA’s coordination with Israel’s security services, abandoned after the Israeli massacre in Jenin, to refrain from pursuing cases against Israel in the International Criminal Court and appealing for a “de-escalation” he put forward no new proposals.

Neither did he exert any pressure on Netanyahu to rein in Israel’s security forces and settlers that have killed 32 Palestinians so far this year. Far from it, he declared that “America’s commitment has never wavered. It never will.”

Blinken just shrugged his shoulders, saying “It is fundamentally up to them. They have to work together to find a path forward that both defuses the current cycle of violence and, I hope, also leads to positive steps to build back some confidence.”

His de facto support—along with the silence of the major European powers—for Israel’s brutal suppression of the Palestinians and its illegal occupation of their land since the 1967 Arab Israeli war is bound up with the dependence of US imperialism on Israel as the guardian of its predatory interests in the resource-rich region, and as its subcontractor in its covert war against Iran and its allies in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen—under conditions where Iran and Russia are forging ever closer relations.

Netanyahu, responding in an interview with CNN on Tuesday to a question about US concerns that expanding Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank could exacerbate tensions, pointed to the Trump administration’s brokering of the Abraham Accords. The Accords had normalized relations between Israel and several Arab countries, led to increasing military, economic and technological ties and side-lined the Palestinian issue.

He said, “I went around them (Palestinians), I went directly to the Arab states and forged with a new concept of peace… I forged four historic peace agreements, the Abraham Accords, which is twice the number of peace agreements that all my predecessors in 70 years got combined.”

Netanyahu added, “When effectively the Arab-Israeli conflict (comes) to an end, I think we’ll circle back to the Palestinians and get a workable peace with the Palestinians.” By this he meant that the venal Arab bourgeois regimes would do nothing to defend the Palestinians and would be satisfied with an insincere pledge of a future settlement—in which they can “have all the powers that they need to govern themselves. But none of the powers that could threaten (us) and this means that Israel should have the overriding security responsibility.”

Since taking office at the end of December, his government, stacked with fascists, racists and homophobes, is pursuing its coalition agreement that asserts its commitment to territorial expansionism, Jewish Supremacy and the mass repression of the Palestinians.

Netanyahu is doubling down on his government’s attacks on the Palestinians, promising to “strengthen” the settlements in response to shooting attacks in Jerusalem including a suicide attack by a lone Palestinian on a Jerusalem synagogue Friday night, in which seven Israelis were killed, and the shooting of an Israeli father and son on Saturday by a 13-year-old Palestinian.

These shootings follow a wave of violence on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, provoked by the escalating attacks over the last year by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), police and armed settlers that led to the death of 271 Palestinians, mostly in the West Bank, in 2022 and last Thursday’s massacre during a raid on the West Bank city of Jenin that left 10 Palestinians dead, the deadliest such raid in years.

There were nearly 150 violent settler attacks on Palestinians across the West Bank over the weekend. On Monday, the IDF opened fire on a car supposedly driving suspiciously, killing the driver, 26-year-old Nassim Abu Fouda, in Hebron.

Netanyahu, speaking ahead of a cabinet meeting Sunday said, “Our answer to terrorism is an iron fist and a powerful, swift and precise response.” The “iron fist” included: the immediately sealing of attackers’ family homes, over and above Israel’s longstanding practice of demolishing the houses at a later date; the revocation of Israeli residency, citizenship and national insurance rights of “families of terrorists that support terrorism and removing them to the territory of the Palestinian Authority”; easing of restrictions on Israeli civilians carrying guns; bolstering military and police units; and the confiscation of weapons from Palestinians.

Netanyahu also called for legislation to allow “the immediate dismissal of workers who have supported terrorism, without need for a hearing.” While he did not say what measures he would take to strengthen the settlements, the IDF said on Saturday it had already moved an additional battalion to the West Bank.

The new proposals have sparked concerns that they will fuel the growing violence between Israelis and Palestinians and precipitate an all-out war, with Ramadan and Passover set to coincide in April.

At the same time, the government is stoking a constitutional crisis within Israel that has aroused mass opposition, with tens of thousands taking to the streets on four successive Saturday evenings in Israel’s major cities. It plans to neuter the judicial system by curtailing the High Court’s ability to strike down laws, allowing parliament to override any such rulings, and doing away with the post of attorney general. This would pave the way to end Netanyahu’s corruption trial and facilitate more rapid settlement construction in preparation for annexing much of the West Bank.

The government is also set to introduce new legislation overturning the Supreme Court’s decision to bar ultra-Orthodox Shas Party leader Arieh Dery from serving as both Interior and Health Minister. The court had ruled it “unreasonable” to appoint “a person who has been convicted three times of offenses throughout his life, and he violated his duty to serve the public loyally and lawfully while serving in senior public positions.” The legislation, if passed, will deny the court any authority to intervene in ministerial appointments.

Also planned, is the closing of Israel’s public broadcasting corporation and the muzzling of the media, restricting the publication of “sensitive information” as defined in the Privacy Protection Law. This would include “data on the personality, intimate affairs… opinions and beliefs of a person” and thus ban any opinion recorded in a conversation. This would outlaw any statement casting doubt on the credibility of a prime minister charged with corruption.

Simcha Rothman, from the fascistic Religious Zionism Party and chairman of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee, has introduced legislation aimed at severely limiting workers' right to strike in key sectors such as electricity, water, transport, health, the stock exchange and the Bank of Israel, while making any sympathy strike illegal unless approved by a secret ballot of the union’s members in which at least half the members voted.

COVID-19 is a leading cause of death in children in the US, study finds

Emma Arceneaux

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, (JAMA) on Monday shows that COVID-19 is a leading cause of death among children ages 0-19 in the United States.

By analyzing death certificates of children and young people in the United States between August 1, 2021 and July 31, 2022, researchers found that COVID-19 ranked “eighth among all causes of death, fifth in disease-related causes of death (excluding unintentional injuries, suicide and assault), and first in deaths caused by infectious or respiratory disease.”

The period of study included the Delta and Omicron waves of the pandemic, which ripped through US schools and caused record infections, hospitalizations and deaths among children. However, the authors found that even in the pre-Delta period of the pandemic, COVID-19 still ranked as the ninth-leading cause of death in children. As well, the disease was a leading cause of death within each age group, ranking seventh among ages less than 1 and ages 1-4; sixth among children ages 5-9 and 10-14; and fifth among those ages 15-19.

Arihana Macias, 7, gets a compress after receiving the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for children five to 12 years at a Dallas County Health and Human vaccination site in Mesquite, Texas, Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021. [AP Photo/LM Otero]

The findings explode the myth that COVID-19 is mild in children and that it is nothing more than the “flu.” Influenza itself is a harmful disease that needlessly kills between dozens and hundreds of children in the US each year, including at least 91 this season according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data. Still, COVID-19 is far deadlier than the flu.

The study identified 821 deaths in which COVID-19 was listed as the underlying cause of death, compared to 472 deaths attributed to “influenza and pneumonia” in the same period, which, the authors note, is a category that may include multiple pathogens. The crude death rate among children (reported deaths compared to the estimated population size) for COVID-19 was 1.0 per 100,000, compared to .6 per 100,000 for “influenza and pneumonia.”

The authors note that their findings may underestimate the true mortality burden of COVID-19 in children for a number of reasons, including that “analyses of excess deaths have suggested under-reporting bias for COVID-19 deaths” and that the “criteria for classifying COVID-19 deaths is heterogeneous across states and has changed over time.” Further, they only counted those death certificates which listed COVID-19 as the underlying cause of death and not a contributing cause of death; nor was the impact of long-term sequelae (Long COVID) likely captured in their data.

Significantly, a recent study by the CDC found that at least 3,500 people in the US have died from Long COVID since the start of the pandemic, though the true figure is certainly higher for many of the same reasons cited above, in addition to the fact that guidance for clinically identifying and reporting Long COVID is continuously changing. 

Among children, the CDC has found that those previously infected with COVID-19 were at higher risk of a number of serious and potentially life-threatening conditions affecting the lungs, heart, veins and kidneys. These include increased incidences of cardiomyopathy and myocarditis, heart conditions which account for approximately 11.8 and 4.6 percent of cardiovascular deaths in children respectively, according to a study in the American Heart Journal. The umbrella term “diseases of the heart” ranked as the seventh leading cause of death among children in the JAMA study.

Additionally, over 9,300 children have been afflicted with multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), a serious condition associated with COVID-19. The CDC has recorded 76 deaths in children due to MIS-C to date.

The finding that COVID-19 is a leading cause of death in children comes as President Joe Biden, who declared in September that the “pandemic is over,” announced Monday that in May the federal government will terminate both the public health emergency and the national emergency declared for the pandemic.

In practice, this means that what little remains of free testing, vaccines and treatments will be cut off and the cost of these essential measures will be offloaded by the ruling class onto the backs of the working class. At the same time, millions of people are set to lose Medicaid health insurance beginning April 1, and extra food assistance provided to SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) recipients will also end in March.

The pandemic, in reality, continues to maim and kill thousands of people in the US each week. Even with severe limitations in testing and data reporting, the current 7-day rolling average for deaths in the US is 468 per day according to Our World in Data, or 3,276 per week.

Children are also dying each week. As the World Socialist Web Site has previously explained in its reporting on pediatric COVID-19 deaths, the database for classifying deaths based on death certificates lags far behind the agency's COVID-19 Data Tracker that records deaths based on direct reports from state health agencies. Official death certificates can take as long as six months to be finalized.

According to Data Tracker, 2,032 children ages 0-17 have died from COVID-19, 57 of whom were added in January 2023.

By comparison, the CDC’s interactive page monitoring the pediatric mortality impact of influenza recorded 2,147 deaths between 2004 and the present. In other words, COVID-19 has killed approximately as many children in three years as influenza did in nearly 20 years.

Children ages 5 to 11 wait in line with their parents to receive the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at a pediatric vaccine clinic set up at Willard Intermediate School in Santa Ana, Calif., Nov. 9, 2021. [AP Photo/Jae C. Hong]

It is no hyperbole to characterize the pandemic as a brutal and ongoing experiment upon an entire generation. The latest sero-prevalence survey by the CDC estimates that 96.3 percent of all US children have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 at least once. In total, over 180,000 children in the US have been hospitalized over the course of the pandemic.

Whereas in 2020 and 2021 there remained limited mitigation measures in schools, these were virtually all thrown out in 2022 under the “guidance” of the CDC itself and with the full endorsement of the national teachers unions, which have played the instrumental role of stifling educators’ opposition to mass infection and forcing millions of teachers and students back into virus-filled classrooms. These conditions led to the unprecedented “tripledemic” that ravaged the pediatric population this past fall, filling hospitals to capacity with children sick with RSV, flu, COVID-19 or any combination of the three.

On the world scale, a study published in December found COVID-19 to be the leading cause of death globally in 2021, ahead of both ischemic heart disease and cancer. CNN reported that preliminary figures show that despite killing fewer Americans in 2022 than 2021, COVID-19 is projected to remain the third leading cause of death in the US overall for 2022.

By consciously pursuing policies of mass infection that will lead to millions of deaths each year, capitalist governments around the world have carried out a program of “social murder,” particularly targeting the elderly and immunocompromised.

In the statement, “2023: The global capitalist crisis and the growing offensive of the international working class,” Joseph Kishore and David North write that “there is no precedent in modern history for governments that are not openly fascistic implementing policies that it is known will result in mass illness and death. But this is precisely what all the capitalist states have done over the course of the pandemic.” This response, they continue, can leave no doubt as to how these governments will respond to even greater threats.

That these policies have not spared children, the most innocent and helpless layer of society, proves the total incorrigibility of the entire capitalist system, including both the Republican and Democratic parties and the pseudo-left organizations that provide cover for the latter. Despite the existence of all the necessary medical and technological tools to totally eliminate COVID-19 on a world scale, all matters of social life, including public health, are subordinate to private profit.

Price-gouging drives record profits at US energy giants

US energy giant ExxonMobil posted an annual profit of $55.7 billion Tuesday—the largest ever for any US energy company.

ExxonMobil’s profit figure was $10 billion more than its previous high of $45 billion in 2008 and its return on capital was an extraordinary 25 percent. ExxonMobil share prices rose 80 percent last year. Only tech giants Apple and Microsoft have reported higher profits so far.

Chevron reported record 2022 profits of $35.5 billion. ConocoPhillips, Marathon Petroleum and other major energy companies are also expected to report record or near record profits.

The gasoline price board is shown at a gas station in Menlo Park, Calif., March 21, 2022. [AP Photo/Jeff Chiu]

These record profits are the result of both price gouging by the oil companies and the slashing of costs, including the suppression of wage increases to below the rate of inflation.

Oil prices have surged over the past year with the eruption of the NATO war with Russia in Ukraine, fueled by the imposition of sanctions on Russian energy exports.

The report on oil company profits follows the publication of a report by UK-based charity Oxfam showing that during the pandemic the super wealthy became even richer, corralling two-thirds of new wealth created, as much as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population. Food and energy companies more than doubled their profits in 2022 amid expanding poverty and hunger worldwide.

Following the pattern of other large corporations, ExxonMobil is using its windfall to further enrich investors. ExxonMobil launched a $50 billion share buyback program in December and is increasing dividends. Last week Chevron announced a $75 billion stock buyback program.

In response to public indignation over the report of record oil company profits, a White House spokesman issued a demagogic statement professing surprise and outrage while Biden sent out a tweet Tuesday night criticizing “Big Oil” for paying “shareholders billions instead of reinvesting profits.”

However, far from an isolated case of corporate excess, the bonanza for the oil giants is the inevitable consequence of the anti-working class and pro-big business policies being pursued by the Biden administration. This has included the stoking of inflation by shoveling unlimited amounts of essentially free government cash into the coffers of Wall Street, vast increases in military spending to pursue conflict with Russia and China and the disastrous impact of economic disruption caused by the refusal of governments to implement the public health measures needed to halt the ongoing pandemic, now in its fourth year.

The Biden administration has, meanwhile, enlisted the trade union bureaucracy to suppress strikes and hold down pay increases well below the rate of inflation to make the working class pay the cost of its reckless policies. This included the imposition of a miserable well-below-inflation wage settlement on the backs of 30,000 oil workers in the name of “national unity,” coinciding with the launching of the US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine last year. This was followed in November by Biden’s sponsorship of strikebreaking legislation imposing a management-dictated contract on the back of more than 100,000 US railroad workers.

The White House has supported the US Federal Reserve Board program of raising interest rates in order to drive up unemployment to beat back workers’ wage demands. At a press conference Wednesday, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said the US central bank would continue with its policy of interest rate increases, announcing a further 0.25 percent rise in its benchmark rate. He restated the Fed’s intention to keep raising rates for the foreseeable future, citing a “strong labor market” and “elevated” wage growth.

Wall Street has blamed the surge in inflation on “excessive” wage gains by workers resulting from the relative availability of jobs. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, price increases have significantly outpaced whatever minimal wage gains workers have been able to wring from employers. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, wages overall increased 5.1 percent in 2022 while the Consumer Price Index rose 6.5 percent, down from 9 percent last summer. However, the prices of basic items have risen in excess of that. Food prices are up 10 percent over the year and egg prices alone have gone up 60 percent. Butter is up 31 percent and lettuce 25 percent. The average price of gasoline is down since highs last year of $5 per gallon but still stands at $3.50 per gallon, having risen 30 cents per gallon in the last month. Gas prices are set to rise further when an EU ban on gas imports from Russia takes effect February 5.

A large portion of the rise in oil company profits is due to the artificial driving up of oil prices by the energy conglomerates. A study published by liberal think tank Economic Policy Institute in April found that 54 percent of the recent overall growth in prices can be attributed to higher profits, while only 8 percent was attributable to higher unit labor costs.

Not only are ExxonMobil and other large corporations profiting off, and in fact stoking, inflation, they are avoiding paying most taxes on their windfall. The Center for American Progress reported that ExxonMobil’s effective tax rate was just 2.8 percent despite a nominal 21 percent federal corporate income tax rate. Chevron paid only $174 million in federal income taxes despite earning $9.5 billion last year, an effective rate of 1.8 percent.

The top rate was lowered to 21 percent from 35 percent under the Trump administration and left at that level while Democrats controlled the White House and both branches of Congress.

Other large corporations paid little or no taxes in 2021 including Amazon (6.1 percent), Ford (1 percent), General Motors (0.2 percent), Bank of America (3.5 percent) and FedEx (4.2 percent).

Some paid no taxes, like AT&T, which had no tax liability in 2021 despite $29.6 billion in earnings, claiming instead a refund or credit of $1.2 billion.

The mock indignation of Biden and various capitalist politicians aside, the massive profits reaped by the oil companies at the expense of the living standards of workers show the incompatibility of the private ownership of the energy industry with the well-being of broad masses of the population. The conflict between the public interest and private profit is being further brought to the fore by the existential challenge posed by climate change and implacable corporate opposition to a globally coordinated program to reorient away from fossil fuels.

Caterpillar handed investors $6.7 billion in 2022, while demanding more concessions from workers in next contract

Marcus Day

Caterpillar equipment seen at a Ziegler CAT dealer. [AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall]

On Tuesday, global construction and mining equipment manufacturer Caterpillar announced its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings for 2022. The earnings report showed substantial sales increases and strong profitability over the previous year, which the company utilized to reward its investors with a $6.7 billion payout via share buybacks and dividends. Since 2018, Caterpillar has distributed more than $23 billion to its investors, or roughly $12.6 million every day.

The bonanza for Caterpillar’s shareholders—dominated by major investment firms like the Vanguard Group, State Street Global Advisors and BlackRock—comes at the same time that the company is preparing to demand a new round of concessions from nearly 7,000 US workers in the United Auto Workers union whose six-year contract with CAT expires on March 1. The workers, for their part, are seeking to win major improvements in wages, benefits, paid time off and working conditions, and reverse years of givebacks overseen by the UAW bureaucracy. On Friday, workers voted by a near-unanimous 98.6 percent to authorize a strike.

“Our global team delivered one of the best years in our nearly 100-year history, including record full-year adjusted profit per share,” CEO Jim Umpleby said in a statement accompanying the earnings release. Although the figure was not included in the latest earnings report, Umpleby no doubt received a handsome payout himself last year; between 2019-2021, he took in more than $72.5 million in combined salary and other compensation, according to the company’s financial filings.

Responding to the earnings report, one Caterpillar worker in East Peoria told the WSWS sarcastically: “Looks like they’ll be able to afford some good help.”

Caterpillar’s fourth-quarter revenue rose to $16.6 billion, up 20 percent compared to the same period last year, buoyed by continued price increases. Revenue ended up 17 percent for 2022 overall, hitting $59.4 billion. The company’s prices have risen 14 percent recently, the highest rise in a decade, according to a report by a Bank of America research analyst cited by Reuters.

The company also reported a strong year-over-year growth in operating profit, rising 15 percent to $7.9 billion.

In addition to a record-high full-year profit per share, adjusted operating profit margins also rose to an all-time high, hitting a robust 17 percent in the fourth quarter.

The company projected further growth in revenue and profit in the coming year, stating that it expected higher prices to “more than offset manufacturing costs.”

However, in an indication of the headwinds posed by the broader economic and political crisis, profit per share saw a sizable decline year over year in the fourth quarter and missed financial analysts’ estimates, falling 29 percent to $2.79 a share. Executives attributed the drop-off in fourth quarter earnings to elevated material and freight costs from ongoing supply chain problems, as well as unfavorable foreign exchange rates with the US dollar. Wall Street reacted negatively to the news, driving the company’s share price down sharply before it recovered somewhat, remaining 5 percent below its recent all-time high.

Significantly, no reference was made in the company’s conference call with financial analysts Tuesday to the looming UAW contract expiration or the possibility of a strike. Wall Street representatives likely have little doubt that Caterpillar management is preparing an aggressive response to a walkout, based on the company’s well-known reputation for its no-holds-barred approach to its workforce.

The company has seen years of strong profitability based on the long-term suppression of labor costs, which it has wrung out of its global workforce by combining ruthless strikebreaking and reliance on the pro-corporate trade union bureaucracies. In 2017, the UAW pushed through a six-year contract over widespread opposition—with the largest local voting it down—which sanctioned the closure of the company’s plant in Aurora, Illinois, and provided only two 2 percent annual wage increases.

Summing up what workers are looking to win in the approaching contract struggle, one Caterpillar worker told the WSWS, “More y time [paid time off]. More vacation days. More pay. Better retirement benefits.”

Another veteran worker in the Peoria area told the WSWS: “What they paid out to the shareholders alone would pay for all our demands. Restore pensions, wage increase, COLA, profit sharing, health care, everything.

“Of course it has never been a matter of ‘CAN they.’ It’s strictly a question of ‘WILL they.’ With undisguised contempt they snap their fingers in our face and say ‘you don’t deserve it.’

“At our ‘start of shift’ meeting today, one of the talking points was a year-end summary of safety ‘incidents’ for 2022. 433 for Mapleton facility alone. Including x number of recordable injuries, x number of first aid visits, x number of burns, and so on. No mention of the two fatalities.”

In 2022, Steven Dierkes, a 39-year-old worker at Caterpillar’s Mapleton, Illinois, foundry, fell into a vat of molten metal after being on the job less than two weeks.

The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) said in a report following its investigation that the death was attributable to Caterpillar’s “willful” safety violation and “failure to meet its legal responsibilities to ensure the safety and health of workers” but fined the company only $145,027—roughly equivalent to just two days’ pay for the company’s CEO. The death was the second at the foundry in just six months.

Concluding, the Caterpillar worker said, “We simply do not register in their minds as living things, let alone human beings.”

The struggle at Caterpillar, in contrast to previous years, is taking place amid a renewed eruption of the class struggle internationally, which is increasingly taking the form of a rebellion against the corrupt trade union bureaucracies. Over the course of the past two years, workers in the UAW have repeatedly voted to reject pro-corporate contracts negotiated and endorsed by union executives, including by overwhelming 90 percent margins at Volvo Trucks and John Deere in 2021.