Thousands of American high school students illegally forced into Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps

Nancy Hanover & James Vega

As the US expands the US/NATO war against Russia and prepares for war with China, the military faces a growing shortage of new recruits. Large numbers of young people are increasingly wary, if not hostile, to service in the military. In response, school authorities and the armed services are forcing children by the thousands, probably tens of thousands, into the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) at their high schools.

The collusion of high schools in the implementation of mandatory JROTC enrollment, a violation of both international law and military rules, was highlighted by the New York Times in December. Attempting damage-control, four Democratic lawmakers—senators Bernie Sanders (Vermont) and Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts) and representatives Ted Lieu (California) and Chrissy Houlahan (Pennsylvania)—have asked the Department of Education and Department of Defense to respond to a series of questions.

In its December feature, the Times reported that hundreds of public records requests had proven that “thousands of public school students were being funneled into the [JROTC] classes without ever having chosen them, either as an explicit requirement or by being automatically enrolled.”

Andreya Thomas told the Times that she was auto-enrolled as a freshman at Pershing High in Detroit. She said she pleaded to be allowed to drop JROTC, but school administrators refused. She was not alone in being involuntarily enrolled into JROTC. Ninety percent of the school’s 2021-22 freshman class was enrolled. Thomas frequently skipped the class and got a failing grade, but was nevertheless put back in for her sophomore year. She said recruiters pushed the claim that a military career could help pay for college.

Renaissance High School color guard, Detroit, Michigan. [Photo: US Army]

Three other high schools in the Detroit Public Schools Community District enroll more than 75 percent of their ninth-grade students in military training. Detroit is far from unique. The list of schools that force students into JROTC spans the US.

Florida parent Julio Mejia told the Times that his daughter was initially refused permission to drop JROTC. Only after he met with several administrators personally could he secure her release from the program.

Cities whose schools enroll more than 75 percent of students include: Vincent, Alabama; Spring, Texas; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Cape Coral, Florida; Charlotte, North Carolina; Memphis, Tennessee; Port Gibson, Mississippi; San Diego, California. Cities where more than half of all students are slotted into ROTC training include Baltimore, Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston Miami, St. Louis and Washington D.C.

The education news outlet Chalkbeat has documented widespread mandatory JROTC enrollment in Chicago. A 2021 report cited the military’s massive presence, enrolling 7,800 students at 44 schools. That Chicago Public Schools boasted the highest proportion of students in military courses in the nation was a “point of pride” for Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot, said Chalkbeat. Outraged Chicago parents exposed the mandatory practices and forced an end to the requirement, after revealing that at four schools, 100 percent of children were enrolled.

Repeatedly, attention has been called to JROTC’s legal and ethical violations. The New York Civil Liberties Union questioned the Buffalo school district on its violation of students’ rights in 2005; San Diego parents exposed similar practices in 2008.

In 2011, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) issued a lengthy report titled “Soldiers of Misfortune,” which indicted the US for violations of the United Nations’ Optional Protocol to the “Rights of the Child,” ratified by the US Senate in 2002, by targeting children under 17 for military recruitment. The ACLU wrote: “Public schools serve as prime recruiting grounds for the military, and the US military’s generally accepted procedures for recruitment of high school students plainly violate the Optional Protocol.”

The ACLU also cited the Department of Defense’s database assembled under the provisions of the bipartisan-supported “No Child Left Behind Act,” enacted in 2001, which authorized the Pentagon to collect data on 16-year-olds and provide it to recruiters. The ACLU also pointed to the pre-JROTC program, Middle School Cadet Corps (MSCC), which enlists those as young as 11.

“Soldiers of Misfortune” substantiates its argument by citing the Army recruiters’ handbook, which is distributed to over 10,000 recruiters. It states, “If you wait until they’re [high school] seniors, it’s probably too late.”

These recruiters are assigned responsibility for all youth attending a specific high school and instructed to “effectively penetrate the school market,” and “be so helpful and so much a part of the school scene that you are in constant demand.”

Recruiters are advised to maximize their effectiveness by “offer[ing] their services as assistant football, basketball, track, baseball or wrestling coaches,” to “offer to be a chaperone or escort for homecoming activities and coronations,” to “[d]eliver donuts and coffee for faculty once a month,” to “participate visibly in Hispanic Heritage and Black History Month activities …” to “befriend student leaders, such as the student president or the captain of the football team, whom recruiters can develop into ‘COIs’ (centers of influence) that can encourage other students to enlist.”

The violations of the rights of students and their parents have been so egregious that even some military personnel have objected. JROTC instructor and retired Army Major William White taught in three states and said enrollment was a constant emphasis. He told the Times, “Kids were forced into the program,” admitting that even he faced blowback when he tried to help children exit the course.

The Times also reported that at least 33 of the program’s instructors were charged in sexual misconduct cases involving students. As a result of the recent spotlight, the Pentagon has admitted to 114 allegations of violence, sexual abuse or sexual harassment by JROTC instructors over the last 10 years.

A map of JROTC locations, color coded by Brigades, at high schools across the United States. [Photo: US Department of Defense]

However, according to Jackie Speier, a former Democratic congresswoman from California, the abuse is far more rampant. “It is chilling to think that after we have been addressing this issue for over 10 years within the military—where we know that cases exceed 20,000 to 30,000 a year and only 5,000 report, and we know that the chain of command has been part of the problem—to come and see this going on in our classrooms, in high school, is traumatizing to me, to be quite honest,” she said.

But no matter how often the military is called on the carpet, the programs continue to expand.

What is JROTC?

JROTC cadets (children between the ages of 12 and 17) undergo military-style physical fitness training, drill like a soldier, learn marksmanship and military history, and wear uniforms. In short, students experience “a taste of the military” under the direction of a retired service member. “The only word I can think of is ‘indoctrination,’” said Florida parent Julio Mejia.

The government has long invested in JROTC and its college-based companion program, ROTC, precisely to indoctrinate patriotism, “discipline” and obedience to authority, and, above all, to increase military enlistment.

JROTC originated in 1916 during World War I, a war that cost the lives of over 100,000 Americans and 20 million worldwide. The high school training program was significantly expanded in 1964 in line with the demand for more US servicemen in Vietnam. That war cost the lives of about 1.3 million people, including over 50,000 Americans.

Presently, six of the eight branches of the US military (Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Space Force) have JROTC programs that train half a million students a year. (The Space Force program is still in the development stage.)

Unsurprisingly, these programs target the socio-economically disadvantaged, who have fewer options for higher education or are particularly worried about student loan debt. According to statistics presented by the Times, 40 percent of JROTC programs are in inner-city schools, serving a student population with a 50 percent proportion of minorities. Especially high enrollment was reported (between 75 and 100 percent of an annual class) in low-income areas of Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Oklahoma City and Mobile, Alabama. JROTC has been an essential component of the “economic draft,” channeling military volunteers drawn from impoverished sections of the working class.

The military also targets school districts reeling from years of budget cuts. States have allowed JROTC classes to be categorized as “physical education,” thereby allowing schools to lay off PE teachers and substitute ROTC instructors. These military veterans, making on average $50,000 a year, are not required to have a bachelor’s degree or be certified to teach. About half of their salary is covered by the military, which also pays for students’ uniforms and other supplemental paraphernalia. In this way, ROTC, with hundreds of millions of dollars at its disposal, bribes impoverished schools with budgetary fixes. For fiscal year 2021, the JROTC budget was about $428 million.

JROTC Air Rifle training. [Photo: US Army]

The military also provides textbooks, another cost savings for schools. But these learning materials are often little more than patriotic and pro-war propaganda. The New York Times report cited outright lies justifying the Vietnam War, false claims about the US bombing of Libya, the deceitful downplaying of the US downing of an Iranian passenger jet that killed 290 people in 1988, and more. Two different textbooks, reviewed by the Times, ascribe the US loss in Vietnam to “restrictions” by the top brass, echoing the fascistic outlook of Air Force General Curtis LeMay, who incinerated two-thirds of Japanese cities during World War II and later called for “bombing Hanoi back to the Stone Age.”

Some school administrators have deployed JROTC as a means to promote military discipline and rote obedience as an antidote to the terrible effects of the social crisis on youth, including widespread mental health problems.

It is no surprise that the rabidly right-wing National Rifle Association (NRA) funnels millions of dollars to JROTC programs and sponsors competitions at which military recruiters stand by. JROTC instructors often encourage cadets to join the NRA and have volunteered students to participate in NRA fund-raising events.

A military recruitment crisis

Young people have seen the US at war their entire lifetime, as American wars of foreign plunder have raged for over 30 years. From the Desert Storm invasion of Iraq in 1991 to the bombing of Serbia in 1999, the “war on terror” launched with the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the “shock and awe” reinvasion of Iraq in 2003, and brutal bombings and interventions in Syria, Libya and more—the American project for global domination has metastasized into a NATO-US war against nuclear-armed Russia.

Many have seen family members return from these wars, suffering from PTSD or injuries, with inadequate medical care and no decent job prospects. This has had a deep-going social impact.

As a result, “Every branch of the US military is struggling to meet its fiscal year 2022 recruiting goals,” NBC reported, citing “multiple US military and defense officials, and numbers obtained by NBC News show[ing] both a record low percentage of young Americans eligible to serve and an even tinier fraction willing to consider it.”

The report continued: “The officials said the Pentagon’s top leaders are now scrambling for ways to find new recruits to fill out the ranks of the all-volunteer force,” adding that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks considered the shortfall “a serious issue,” on which they “have been meeting … frequently with other leaders.”

The “concern” on the part of Democratic Party stalwarts Sanders and Warren will prove to be just another in a long line of cover-ups of abuse of young people by JROTC. The real concern of the Democrats is sufficient staffing and munitions to project US power across Asia and the world, as the ruling class engages in further wars on behalf of Wall Street.

More than ever, the Democrats support the military’s escalating demands for new recruits. All of the above-cited lawmakers who contacted the departments of Education and Defense voted for this year’s record military budget of $858 billion. None of them, including the supposed “democratic socialist” Sanders, has suggested disbanding JROTC, nor will they.

In fact, a bill was introduced in the US Senate in 2020, co-sponsored by Democrats, to nearly double JROTC. From the standpoint of the military, the program is wildly successful.

Between 30 and 50 percent of graduating JROTC cadets join the military, as of 2000. General James L. Jones, then-Commandant of the Marine Corps, testified that the value of the JROTC program was “beyond contest.” He added, “Fully one-third of our young men and women who join a Junior ROTC program wind up wearing the uniform of a Marine.” Overall, students who attend a high school with JROTC are more than twice as likely to enlist.

Members of the Xavier High School Army JROTC march up 5th Avenue during the annual Columbus Day Parade, Monday, October 10, 2022, in New York. [AP Photo/Mary Altaffer]

Finally, it should be noted that in line with the Democrats’ escalation of US imperialist wars, the Democratic Socialists of America-aligned Jacobin magazine does its part to cover up the significance of JROTC’s vast military recruitment program. Far from calling for opposition to all imperialist wars and the dismantling of the military’s apparatus of mass murder and repression, a January 8 article titled “JROTC is preying on poor students,” by Seth Kershner and Scott Harding, meekly calls for “rein[ing] in the military’s presence and power in public schools.”

The authors suggest, “In their communication with parents, and their training [sic] for high school principals, JROTC leaders should acknowledge what their program is designed to do: prepare America’s children for military service.” They conclude that “fundamental reforms of the program can help challenge the growing militarization of public schools,” and imply that the problem is one of “lax oversight,” sexism and racism.

The notion of “reforming” the US military is perhaps the most ludicrous proposition the DSA has advanced in its role as supporter of and adjunct to the Democratic Party.

Record cold in US Northeast exposes deepening cracks in social infrastructure

Kate Randall

The Northeast US was hit with the coldest temperatures seen in decades over the weekend as an arctic air mass passed over the region. The polar vortex was accompanied by powerful winds, driving wind chills to dangerous levels.

Temperatures broke records over a century old early Saturday in Boston, where real temperatures hit −10 Fahrenheit, and in Providence, Rhode Island, which plunged to −9 degrees Fahrenheit (both about −23 Celsius), according to the National Weather Service (NWS). Temperatures dropped to 4 degrees in New York City, −6 in Hartford, Connecticut and −15 in Concord, New Hampshire, with strong winds making it feel much colder everywhere.

Thomas Moore, right, rests on his bed inside a shelter at Crossroads Rhode Island during a wave of frigid weather in Providence, R.I., Friday, February 3, 2023. A frigid Arctic front swept in from Canada, leading communities in the Northeast to close schools and open warming centers Friday. [AP Photo/David Goldman]

The summit of Mount Washington in New Hampshire, the region’s highest elevation at 6,288 feet, plummeted to a low of −47 degrees (−44 Celsius) early Saturday morning, tying the previous record set in 1934. Wind chills atop the mountain approached −110 degrees (−79 Celsius). The NWS in Caribou, Maine, tweeted on Friday that it had received reports of “frostquakes,” tremors in the earth similar to earthquakes, caused by sudden cracks in the frozen ground.

According to poweroutage.us, 18,000 customers in Maine and New York state were without electricity Saturday morning; power had been restored to all but 5,000 customers by afternoon.

The frigid weather followed the month of January that saw record high temperatures in many areas of the region. While the cold snap might appear to contradict the growing evidence of global warming, many meteorologists argue that such wild gyrations in temperatures are actually an indication of climate change. Some scientists say the rapid warming in the Arctic may be increasing the likelihood that frigid polar air can dive southward.

In New York City, a Code Blue was in effect, meaning that no one seeking shelter should be denied. A cold emergency was declared through Sunday by Mayor Michelle Wu in Boston, where city and agency workers visited outside areas which many homeless people regularly frequent. Boston authorities reported that only 10 people chose to remain outdoors Friday night in the city’s largest tent encampment.

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healy ordered Boston’s South Station to remain open to the homeless to sleep after the private property manager of the train station had recently illegally locked them out by tying the doors shut with trash bags. Dozens of people slept on benches and up against walls in the station Friday night.

In late December, state housing officials sent a letter to the Massachusetts legislature warning that within months the state may run out of space and not be able to place homeless families in the state’s emergency shelter system unless action was taken.

Mike Kennealy, state housing and economic development secretary, and Jennifer Maddox, undersecretary for the state Department of Housing and Community Development, cited “decreased exits” from the shelter system and increased entries into it as reasons for the emergency housing shortage. They said the state would not be able to expand funding and operation of the existing network of 3,500 shelter units, meaning those seeking housing might be turned away.

Winter temperatures in colder regions of the country mean that many homeless individuals and families who have been sleeping in cars, emergency rooms, campgrounds, state forests and other places not fit for human habitation seek emergency shelter. As of mid-December, 294 homeless families were living in motels or temporary shelters instead of in more traditional shelter units.

Last year, Massachusetts had the third-highest number of homeless families in the country. The state also has a right-to-shelter law that requires the state government to immediately house certain families that apply for help. However, such laws are next to useless under conditions where the funding does not exist to meet the increased need.

Freezing temperatures only add to the crisis that exists due to exploding home and rental prices and under conditions where increasing numbers of people have been pushed into homelessness due to unemployment, low wages and the skyrocketing cost of living. The pandemic has only exacerbated this crisis.

In addition, thousands of immigrants have come to New England and New York after being sent there in provocations by the fascistic governors of Texas and Florida. In September, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ordered two planeloads of migrants flown to the Massachusetts offshore island of Martha’s Vineyard, where they were abandoned with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

The record-breaking cold weather has also exposed the deteriorating state of Massachusetts’ hospital system. On Saturday night, a pipe burst in the Boston Medical Center’s emergency department, flooding it and forcing it to be closed until Tuesday. Ambulances will be diverted to other hospitals until it can reopen.

This latest crisis comes as median ambulance response times in Boston for life-threatening emergencies such as cardiac arrest, arterial bleeds or unconsciousness have grown significantly over the past year, rising from just over 7 minutes to 7.7 minutes in December, according to Boston EMS records.

Response times citywide are the slowest since at least 2014. In some Boston neighborhoods, response times are even worse, hitting nearly 11 minutes in Hyde Park and 9.5 minutes in West Roxbury for urgent calls. In such emergencies, seconds can mean the difference between life and death.

According to a recent analysis by the Boston Globe, the delays are due not only to high call volumes and short-staffing of health care workers, who have left the profession due to deteriorating conditions, low pay and burnout during the pandemic. A central cause is hospital overcrowding, due to hospitals’ inability to quickly discharge patients to understaffed nursing homes and rehabilitation centers.

This hospital capacity crisis is slowing ambulance service by forcing EMS workers to stand in line until hospital teams can take over their patients’ care. EMTs call this “holding the wall,” according to Cataldo Ambulance Service, one of the busiest ambulance companies in Eastern Massachusetts.

David Franklin, a paramedic with Cataldo, told the Globe, “Sometimes ambulances are backed up at a hospital 12 deep, waiting for the hospital triage nurse to speak to others ahead of them in line.” Ambulance crews were forced to wait for up to two hours on some days in December at Massachusetts General Hospital, according to the Globe.

Sudan’s military junta to normalise relations with Israel amid massive crackdown on Palestinians

Jean Shaoul

As the new far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ramps up its murderous repression of the Palestinians, the head of Sudan’s military junta, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has agreed to “normalise” relations with Israel in the near future.

It is yet another sordid betrayal of the Palestinians by an Arab regime that has barely been reported in the Arab media, much less commented upon or criticised.

Sudan's head of the military, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, speaks during a press conference at the General Command of the Armed Forces in Khartoum, Sudan, October 26, 2021. [AP Photo/Marwan Ali, File]

The announcement came during Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen’s visit to Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, where he also discussed military and security issues. The signing ceremony of the peace agreement “will take place in a few months’ time in Washington after the establishment of a civilian government… as part of the ongoing transition process in the country,” according to a statement issued by Israel’s Foreign Ministry.

Sudan follows the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain—unquestionably given the nod by Saudi Arabia—and Morocco, which normalised relations with Israel under the “Abraham Accords” brokered by the Trump administration and Egypt and Jordan, which recognised Israel in 1979 and 1994 respectively. These agreements, establishing diplomatic and trade relations, ended the state of war and boycott by members of the Arab League since the establishment of the state of Israel, the Arab–Israeli War and the displacement of 700,000 Palestinians in 1948.

The agreements made visible their back-channel security, intelligence and commercial dealings with Israel and their repudiation of any commitment to the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital—based on Israel’s full withdrawal from the territories captured in the 1967 Arab Israeli war—and a “just settlement” of the Palestinian refugee problem based on UN Resolution 194.

It was in Khartoum after the 1967 Arab Israeli war that the Arab League famously inaugurated its “three nos” policy in relation to Israel: no peace, no recognition and no negotiations. Now, as far as the Arab regimes are concerned, the Palestinians no longer matter.

While Sudan had accepted the Abraham Accords in November 2020, signing with the US in exchange for a package of vital financial incentives, including Sudan’s long-awaited removal from Washington’s list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, it had not signed the agreement with Israel. Discussions stalled after the military’s sacking of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and his transitional civilian government in October 2021, when the Biden administration suspended $700 million in financial assistance to Sudan.

Cohen, speaking at a press conference Thursday, said that the visit to Sudan laid “the foundations for a historic peace agreement with a strategic Arab and Muslim country. The peace agreement between Israel and Sudan will promote regional stability and contribute to the national security of the State of Israel.” The signing would “serve as an opportunity for the establishment of relations with other countries in Africa as well as the strengthening of existing ties with African countries.”

Sudan occupies a strategically important location on the shores of the Red Sea, between Egypt and Eritrea, where it controls maritime routes. It borders on Ethiopia, one of Israel’s most important allies on the African continent, whose leader Abiy Ahmed paid his first visit to Sudan since the military coup.

Under longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir, who was aligned with Qatar, Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood and had supported Hamas, the bourgeois clerical group that controls the Gaza Strip, Sudan was subject on several occasions to Israeli bombings of convoys allegedly carrying weapons and ammunition to Hamas.

Al-Burhan, following his pre-emptive military coup in the face of mass protests against al-Bashir in April 2019, has repudiated Sudan’s alliance with the Palestinians and Hamas, to secure security and trade deals with Israel. This was part of a bid to win favour with Washington, amid a deepening economic and political crisis. While he announced a framework deal in December, after months of protests and repression in which 120 protesters were killed—for a two-year civilian transition towards elections—it is widely viewed as yet another fraudulent cover for military rule and has been met with mass protests.

Protesters march on Friday, July 1, 2022 in Khartoum, Sudan, a day after nine people were killed in demonstrations against the country’s ruling generals. (AP Photo/Marwan Ali)

The US Biden administration is determined to sever Sudan’s relationship with Iran, Russia and China, close Sudan’s large Red Sea port of Port Sudan to the Russian navy, and strengthen its regional anti-Iran alliance.

The UAE, which has signed extensive commercial deals to open economic zones and ports in Sudan, and Egypt have welcomed normalization. Hamas condemned the move, which “contradicts the general Sudanese stance that is against the normalization of ties with the Israeli occupation state and supports the just Palestinian cause” and called “on the Sudanese leadership to backtrack on this decision that contradicts the interests of the brotherly people of Sudan and would only serve the Israeli occupation’s agenda.”

This latest normalisation deal deepens the treacherous role of the Arab bourgeoisie, which has now formally buried its own “two state” solution and confirms that the nationalist agenda championed by all sections of the Palestinian bourgeoisie provides no way forward for the decades-long struggle of the workers and oppressed masses.

On Thursday, Chad's President Mahamat Idriss Deby, who took power after his father, the dictator Idriss Deby, was killed by rebel forces in 2021, opened the country’s embassy in Ramat Gan, a suburb of Tel Aviv, some 50 years after diplomatic ties were severed in 1972. Chad is a member of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), founded in 1969 after a fire in the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem apparently started by a Christian fundamentalist. Like the Arab League the OIC is ostensibly committed a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a boycott of Israeli products to pressure Israel into ending the occupation. In establishing relations with Chad, one of the poorest countries in the world, Netanyahu is signaling that the Palestinians do not figure on the agenda of either the Arab or Muslim states.

These developments come just weeks after the installation of the most far-right government in Israel’s history, one that includes fascistic and racist parties based on Jewish settlers, and ultra-Orthodox parties which seek to suppress not only the Palestinians but the more secular sections of the Jewish population.

It has stepped up Israel’s already savage repression of the Palestinians in pursuit of its programme of accelerated settlement expansion and moves towards full annexation of the Palestinian territories illegally occupied since the 1967 Arab Israeli war. This is combined with imposing even more pervasive apartheid conditions for Palestinians, including legislation making it easier to disqualify Arab legislators, and provocations at the al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

Last year, 231 Palestinians lost their lives in extra-judicial killings at the hands of the Israeli military and settlers, the highest number since 2005. Some 35 Palestinians have already been killed this year. One factor in the massive raid on Jenin by the Israel military last month that left 10 dead and 20 injured—as well as terrorising the Palestinian population—was to provoke retaliation by desperate Palestinians to deflect anger against the government outwards and demobilise the anti-government protests.

A key element in Netanyahu’s expansionist plans at the expense of both the Palestinians and the Israeli working class is his bolstering of the government’s powers—to be achieved by neutering the judiciary. This is in the service of Israel’s plutocrats, ruling over one of the most socially polarised countries in the OECD group of advanced economies, raising the spectre of civil war.

The court “reform” plan has sparked mass opposition, with weekly demonstrations protesting the government’s plans. Saturday witnessed the fifth such protest with widening participation across the country as tens of thousands took to the streets of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and other towns and cities. Anti-occupation groups including Combatants for Peace, Machsom Watch, Peace Now and A Land for All, took part in a separate demonstration in Tel Aviv under the slogan, “There is no democracy with occupation.”

Demonstrations were also held in some 20 cities in North America, Europe and Australia.

The recent events have exposed the twin political myths of the Middle East. First, the transformation of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation into a repressive adjunct of the Israeli state, and by extension US imperialism—imposing impoverishment of the Palestinian masses—refutes the notion that bourgeois nationalism, even in its most radical form of the armed struggle, could end the oppression of the Arab masses. Second, the emergence of a fascistic government in Israel and the very real prospect of civil war shatters any conception that the establishment of a Jewish state based on the dispossession and removal of the Palestinian people could provide a safe haven for the Jewish people.

Crisis deepens in Australia’s emergency departments

John Mackay

Emergency departments (EDs) across Australia face a growing crisis in 2023, with reports of long wait times, life-threatening delays and dangerous understaffing.

A recent survey by the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM) highlighted a national shortage of emergency doctors. The survey found ED directors were expecting widespread shortages in 2023, including shortfalls of 28 percent for specialist trainees, 30 percent for junior medical officers and 10 percent for senior decision-makers. The ACEM said this was a product of staff leaving due to unsustainable working conditions.

ICU nurses protesting outside Westmead Hospital on January 19, 2022. [Photo: NSW Nurses and Midwives' Association]

The crisis is particularly acute in rural, regional and remote EDs, where staff shortages are as high as 85 percent for specialist trainee roles, 66 percent for junior medical officer positions and 22 percent for senior decision-making roles.

In December, the Age reported that Victorian EDs were experiencing such a significant staffing crisis that they were often forced to run at reduced capacity and many staff were working double or extra shifts to cover absences. Doctors expressed concern that smaller EDs, particularly in regional areas, would be forced to close because they could not operate safely.

Dr Andy Tagg, deputy chair of ACEM’s Victorian faculty, told the Age that EDs were regularly short of junior doctors, nurses and senior consultants. ACEM President Dr Clare Skinner said burnt-out colleagues were facing “some of the busiest, most crowded shifts they’ve ever worked in their lives.” There were “significant” numbers of patients with COVID or disease exacerbated by COVID.

Senior emergency doctor Simon Judkins told the Age some EDs, particularly those in regional areas of Victoria, could be considered “sometimes unsafe” due to the lack of staff.

He said: “I think there’s a lot of EDs moving into [2023] who are really looking at their roster templates and thinking ‘how the hell are we actually going to get by? There [are] so many gaps in their rosters that they are concerned about the safety of their ED.”

Understaffing has been exacerbated by the ongoing wave of COVID-19 infections, the product of the “let it rip” COVID policies embraced by all Australian governments, federal and state alike. In the second week of December, some 1,500 staff were unable to work due to COVID-19 infection across Victorian hospitals.

The crisis in emergency care is reflected in figures tabled in the Victorian state parliament last month, which showed hundreds of people have waited more than 24 hours in emergency departments. Western Health, which serves a major working-class region of the state’s capital, was the worst performing area. Sunshine Hospital emergency department recorded 366 patients forced to wait more than 24 hours for treatment in 2021-22. At Footscray hospital, 65 people waited more than 24 hours.

This crisis is mirrored across the country. Bed-block and increased ambulance ramping outside overcrowded emergency departments have been reported in every state and territory in recent months.

In Queensland, recent government figures show that between June and September, 6,979 patients waited more than 24 hours in emergency departments, across the state’s 26 largest hospitals.

In Western Australia, ambulances spent 66,000 hours ramped outside hospitals in 2022, the worst annual figure on record.

In New South Wales, between July and September 2022, just 65.6 percent of ED patients were treated within the timeframe appropriate for the severity of their injury or illness, 9 percentage points lower than in 2021. In working-class Western Sydney, just 43.2 percent of patients received timely emergency care, down from 52.4 percent the previous year.

The healthcare crisis was also highlighted in South Australia last month, with the resignation of a high-ranking emergency physician from Royal Adelaide Hospital. Dr Megan Brooks issued a four-page letter warning that the hospital’s emergency department lacked the “resources to provide timely and safe patient care.”

Focusing her criticism on the hospital’s finance and planning leadership, she wrote: “If the clinical teams conducted our work with the same flagrant disregard for basic governance processes and professionalism, we would be at risk of being barred from clinical practice… It offends our very humanity, and flies in the face of all that we are trained to do… we have looked every one of those patients in the eye and been forced to decide that another human being needs care before them.”

In response to the letter, state Labor Health Minister Chris Picton acknowledged the hospital system was suffering from “years of neglect.” The Labor party regained office in South Australia last year after a campaign focused on the disastrous state of the public health system. But when Labor was last in office, from 2002 to 2018, it slashed health spending, presided over rising levels of ambulance “ramping” and shut down hospitals, including the Adelaide General Repatriation Hospital. Labor, moreover, has accelerated the “let it rip” COVID policies that are overwhelming the healthcare system.

At the end of December, the Tasmanian branch of ACEM issued a press release entitled “Tasmania’s emergency doctors: healthcare staff are breaking,” after a “code yellow” was issued at the Royal Hobart Hospital. Dr Juan Asceno-Lane, Tasmanian chair of ACEM, explained: “What [a code yellow] means, in real life, is that the hospital and interconnected health system are overwhelmed. There are far too many sick and injured people, and there are not enough trained staff and beds to cope with demand.”

Asceno-Lane continued: “No one wants to watch elderly patients, who are so confused and disorientated from being stuck in the ED for days and days, due to a lack of spaces in care or hospital, that they must be sedated.”

The nationwide crisis is the product of decades of funding cuts to public healthcare under successive state and federal governments, Labor and Liberal-National. This offensive is only being deepened under the Albanese Labor government.

Federal budget papers handed down in October revealed payments to the states and territories for public hospitals are expected to decrease by more than $755 million this financial year and $2.4 billion over four years.

The Labor government has also refused to increase Medicare consultation rates for doctors, which have been frozen for most of the past decade. This is increasingly driving doctors, including GPs, to abandon “bulk-billing” and demand up-front payments from patients that will only be partially reimbursed. Those who cannot afford to pay are forced to attend hospital emergency clinics for medical assistance, putting further strain on public hospital emergency departments.

US media whips up anti-Chinese hysteria over balloon flight

Andre Damon

Over the past four days, the American population has been subjected to a barrage of war propaganda over the claim that China sent a huge balloon visible to the naked eye to spy on US nuclear bases.

The media machine is operating at full throttle. Since the balloon’s existence was publicly announced last week, breathless coverage has provided minute-by-minute updates on the progress of the floating white balloon as it slowly traversed across the continental United States. The story led every newspaper for days, was the first item on the evening news broadcasts, and dominated the 24-hour cable news networks.

A Chinese balloon drifts over Myrtle Beach, South Carolina shortly before being shot down by an US F-22 fighter jet. [Photo by Russotp / CC BY-SA 4.0]

On Friday, former President Donald Trump called for the balloon to be shot down—a demand that was repeated by Republican and Democratic politicians. On Saturday, under orders from Biden, the US Air Force shot down the balloon, in the first US attack on a Chinese aircraft since the Korean War.

On Friday, a day after the existence of the balloon was publicly announced, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled his scheduled trip to China, which had been promoted as part of a supposed rapprochement between the two countries.

All of the media coverage has accepted the unsubstantiated claim that the airship was a secret Chinese “surveillance balloon” specifically targeting US military installations.

While the specific purpose of the balloon cannot be definitively stated, the notion that the Chinese government is seeking to secretly obtain vital information on US nuclear weapons by means of a gigantic and clearly visible object slowly passing through US airspace is, to put it mildly, ludicrous.

Far more likely is the account given by Beijing, that the high-altitude balloon was conducting meteorological surveillance and was blown off course, entering the United States on January 28. “It is a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes,” China’s Foreign Ministry said. “Affected by the Westerlies and with limited self-steering capability, the airship deviated far from its planned course.”

NASA has launched dozens of balloon missions similar to the one destroyed by the US Air Force on Saturday. According to a NASA presentation by University of Hawaii Professor Peter Gortham, “Balloons offer flight opportunities for unique science investigations that require, or can be done in, near-space.”

According to the website of NASA’s arctic balloon program, “Scientists use scientific data collected during balloon flights to help answer important questions about the universe, atmosphere, the Sun and the space environment.”

A worker helps inflate NASA’s super pressure balloon, launched from Wanaka Airport, New Zealand, in 2016. Scientists regularly launch balloons into the atmosphere to study physics and meteorology. [Photo: NASA/Bill Rodman]

In publications that are written primarily for those within the state apparatus, a more sober assessment can be found. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a leading think tank connected to US intelligence agencies, commented on Friday that “the most likely explanation is that this is an errant weather balloon that went astray—lost weather balloons are the basis of many ‘UFO sightings.’”

The CSIS added that the incident is “embarrassing for China, and some Chinese meteorologist may be packing his or her bags for reassignment to Inner Mongolia.”

But in the media, such an appraisal is nowhere to be found. That the white orb is a “spy balloon” is taken as fact, and no section of the US media has even suggested the possibility of the most routine and reasonable explanation—that this was a peaceful research mission just like NASA has conducted dozens of times.

Instead, the Biden administration, working together with the Republican Party and with the support of the US media, seized on the opportunity to whip up anti-Chinese hate and xenophobia.

The aim of this campaign is to condition the public to accept US plans for war with China that have been years in the making, and to construe China, which the United States is encircling with offensive missiles just miles from its coastline, as the aggressor in the Sino-American conflict.

The script of this week’s “imminent threat” is well-worn. This type of wall-to-wall media hysteria was used to justify the 1991 Gulf War, the 1998 bombing of Yugoslavia, the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the 2011 bombings of Syria and Libya. All of these claims—above all the Bush administration’s assertions that the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein possessed “weapons of mass destruction”—turned out to be nothing more than hot air.

But the media, acting as if the American people are all idiots, is reprising its role, hoping it will have the time-tested result of laying the groundwork for America’s next “war of choice.” This time, the target is not an impoverished former colony, but China, the world’s second-largest economy with the world’s second-largest military budget.

Even as the US and NATO powers recklessly escalate the war with Russia over Ukraine, the ruling class is preparing for a conflict with China, for which the war against Russia has been viewed as a necessary precondition.

In 2018, the United States adopted a National Security Strategy that urged the Pentagon to make its highest priority preparing for a war with China. While the military was operating with this conception, the US media kept these plans secret from the American population.

But this week’s media hysteria over the balloon was used to introduce the concept of a potential war with China as a positive good, which the United States needs to prepare for.

The declaration by Air Force General Mike Minihan that the US faces a war with China by 2025 has been treated by the media as a sage and impartial warning.

He called for building “a fortified, ready, integrated, and agile Joint Force Maneuver Team ready to fight and win inside the first island chain,” referring to Taiwan, Japan, and other islands off the coast of China.

Implying that large numbers of his command will die in such a war, Minihan instructed them to “consider their personal affairs and whether a visit should be scheduled with their servicing base legal office to ensure they are legally ready and prepared.”

Chuck Todd, moderator of Meet the Press, asked Democratic Senator Cory Booker, “Are you going to be supporting whatever it takes to prepare for war with China over Taiwan? Do we need to do more to prepare for that potential?”

In just the past week, the United States announced a plan to put additional bases in the Philippines from which it could launch attacks on China. Biden also held discussions with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on the remilitarization of the country in preparation for a conflict with China.

The entire incident is a lesson in how the media works to advance US war plans, promoting trumped-up threats against the US and covering up the US’s aggressive actions against the targets of its wars.

The latest campaign to demonize China has parallels to the promotion by both the Trump and Biden administrations of the Wuhan lab lie, the conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was created by scientific research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Podemos bemoans crackdown in Peru, but arms Peru’s regime against the workers

Alejandro López

The bloody police-state repression unleashed on the Peruvian workers and youth by the regime of Dina Boluarte, which was installed in a US- and EU-backed coup, is again exposing Spain’s ruling pseudo-left party, Podemos.

Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias, January 13, 2020. [AP Photo/Manu Fernandez]

Protests have continued for seven weeks since the installation of the Boluarte regime, which has responded with a bloody crackdown. Mass arrests are underway. More than 60 people have been killed, including minors, and nearly 1,000 injured as the Peruvian regime unleashes police armed with tear gas, rubber bullets, and armored vehicles on protesters.

Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos coalition government is firmly on the side of the coup against the Peruvian workers.

Last week, Podemos lawmaker and first secretary of parliament, Gerardo Pisarello, publicly insisted his government was shocked and dismayed by the violence in Peru. He declared: “I cannot begin my speech on foreign policy without first expressing our deep concern about the repressive violence that has been unleashed against the civilian population in Peru in recent weeks.” He called on “the Government of Dina Boluarte to end the repression and persecution of community leaders, and ensure Peruvians’ legitimate right to protest.”

This was a cynical and lying exercise in political damage control, after Amnesty International issued a report showing that the Peruvian regime was using riot control equipment sold to it by the PSOE and Podemos to crack down on Peruvian workers and youth.

Amnesty International estimates that between 2017 and June 2022, the PSOE-Podemos government exported millions of euros worth in arms to Peru, including €4.7 million in light arms, €2.4 million worth of ammunition and close to €1 million in riot control weapons. Over the same period, it issued licences authorising the export of €184 million in arms to Peru, of which about €40 million were riot control material.

This was when the PSOE and Podemos were in power, first in a PSOE-led minority government backed by Podemos from 2018 to January 2020, and in a coalition government since then. The WSWS reported in 2021 that the PSOE Podemos-government is a “leading exporter in police and riot gear as the global financial aristocracy faces mass social opposition to its policies of austerity, militarism and malign neglect in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.” These weapons are now being used against workers in Peru.

Amnesty International has requested the suspension of these exports in a letter addressed to the Spanish Secretary of State for Commerce, Xiana Margarida Méndez. It requests that—in accordance with the Arms Trade Treaty, which obliges not to authorise exports when there is a substantial risk of serious human rights violations—the PSOE-Podemos government should revoke authorisation of exports of lethal and anti-riot material. This letter has been ignored.

The export of riot control material under Podemos was not an oversight or a passing error of this pseudo-left party. Indeed, Podemos placed calls for the mass export of lethal weaponry to military dictatorships and right-wing regimes at the centre of its economic policies.

In October 2020, Podemos’ Defence spokesman Roberto Uriarte spoke at the Information Defence Forum in parliament to call for export diversification and more research in the arms industry. The industry should not “put all their eggs in one basket,” he said. Instead, he added, “The defence industry must base its growth on the diversification of its solutions and on the search for new markets abroad, so that the Ministry of Defence is not the only client of the weapons industry.”

Uriarte called on Spain to export arms to regimes around the world. “We should not only sell [arms] in a monoculture fashion to the monarchies of the Persian Gulf,” he said. Spain, he insisted, must “implement public policies and facilitate the internationalisation” of weapons sales. He called for investment in research and development, which requires “long-term policies, little demagogy and a lot of sacrifice and dedication.”

Podemos acted on its call for a massive expansion of Spanish arms exports. Under Podemos, Spain climbed from the 11th-largest arms exporter worldwide in 2016 to the seventh in 2020—a position it still has today. It only lags behind the major imperialist countries like the US, Britain, Germany and France and world powers such as Russia and China. Spain’s military-industrial complex is a pillar of its economy, employing 21,000 people and generating an annual turnover of €6.2 billion.

In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic killed hundreds of thousands across Spain and Europe, the PSOE-Podemos government authorised weapons sales worth a record €22.5 billion.

Amid NATO’s rapidly-escalating war with Russia in Ukraine, Podemos is working to ramp up its arms sales. Spain’s arms industry is set for record profits after the PSOE-Podemos government passed its 2023 budget, with the largest increase in military spending in Spanish history. This spending will total over €12.8 billion next year, up from around €10 billion in 2022. This is in line with Madrid’s pledge to NATO to increase its defence budget to 2 percent of GDP by 2029.

According to data from the Delàs Center for Peace Studies, Madrid’s real military spending—which includes, besides the Ministry of Defence budget, other items of a military nature purchased by the Spanish government—will be €27 billion, or €75.7 million per day. A large portion of this spending, €4.9 billion, is allocated to “special modernisation programmes,” which mostly go to Spanish arms companies.

The Barcelona-based daily La Vanguardia recently published an article titled “Historic boost to the defence industry” hailing the military escalation launched by Podemos. Arms manufacturers like Airbus, Navantia, GDELS-Santa Bárbara and Indra are those, it wrote, that the PSOE-Podemos government “wants to convert into the spearhead of a long-term country operation to strengthen the sector. For them there will be a shower of millions.”

It hailed the surge in state handouts to the arms manufacturers launched by Podemos, adding: “The opportunity is unprecedented. Never before has the Spanish defence, security, aeronautics and space industry faced the challenge of growing and modernising with such a powerful contribution of state money.”

Podemos’ eagerness to export arms for state repression internationally was clearly bound up with its now well-established record of using such weapons against strikers in Spain itself.

In November 2021, the PSOE-Podemos government sent police to fire pepper spray, tear gas and rubber bullets at striking Cádiz metalworkers, even deploying armoured cars in working class areas to terrorize the public. It launched the unprecedented deployment of 23,000 cops to break the April 2022 truckers’ strike, and of 20,000 police officers armed with 6,000 taser cartridges to crack down on protests against last June’s NATO summit.

Abroad, by backing Boluarte in Lima, Podemos aims to safeguard continued extraction of Peru’s strategic mineral wealth—especially copper, zinc and liquefied natural gas—and the corporate interests of Spanish banks BBVA and Banco Santander, and multinationals like Telefónica and Zara.