U.S. diplomats have been unsuccessful in recruiting key countries in the Global South, particularly India and Brazil, to support Ukraine in its war with Russia. Nations of the Global South don’t want to be part of the Cold War between the West and Russia; don’t accept the Western view of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as “unprovoked;” and charge the United States and key European countries with hypocrisy in trying to isolate authoritarian countries.
The United States has been particularly critical of African countries for not taking a strong stand against Russia’s war against Ukraine, and for ignoring the Western sanctions regime against Russia. The United States can’t even get longterm partners such as Israel and Jordan to take sides between Washington and Moscow. As both China and Russia increase their economic and military deliverables to the African continent, it has become more difficult for the Unites States to achieve its diplomatic goals. Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has visited numerous African countries this year in order to prepare for July’s summit in St. Petersburg with African leaders.
U.S. charges of human rights violations against Russia and China also fall on deaf ears in the Global South because of the increased gun violence in the United States; the increased wealth gap between the rich and poor; and of course the systemic racism in U.S. society. The insurrection in Washington on January 6, 2021, raised additional questions regarding the strength and longevity of U.S. democracy and U.S. governance. The polarization and disunity in the United States belie its self-appointed image as a laboratory of democracy. U.S. efforts at regime change over the past seventy years sustain the cynicism of Third World leaders.
The current reporting in the mainstream media regarding the violence in Sudan assigns blame to the role of the Russian military and the paramilitary Wagner Group, but ignores the role of U.S. support for military leaders in Sudan as well as throughout the Global South, particularly Africa and Latin America. U.S. diplomats have been coddling military leaders in Africa, particularly in Sudan, rather than working with civilian leaders. The United States and the European Union leaned to the Sudanese military leaders as the only valid power brokers for organizing a government in Khartoum.
This is similar to decades of U.S. involvement In Central America, where the U.S. supported general officers in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, despite their role in terrorizing the populace. Washington supported power-sharing arrangements in these nations, even though civilian officials were typically secondary to their military counterparts.
There have been several significant votes in the United Nations since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022, with increasing numbers of African states unwilling to support the U.S. positions on suspending Russia from the Human Rights Council or calling for Russian reparations for Ukraine. Russia is still highly regarded for decades of support for Africa’s liberation movements and opposition to European colonial interests.
The United States for the most part has ignored African interests, and only recently did Vice President Kamala Harris travel to Africa to announce forthcoming economic assistance. This assistance pales in comparison to Chinese support for numerous infrastructure projects throughout the continent. Recently, South Africa allowed a Russian cargo plane to land at an air force base near Pretoria, although it was under sanctions from the United States for shipping weapons to Russian military forces.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to South Africa last year; shortly thereafter South Africa and Russia held their first joint military exercises. Russian Vladimir Putin is expected to travel to South Africa later this year for a regional summit, and it is highly unlikely that the South African government will support the requests of the International Criminal Court for the arrest of the Russian leader if he were to appear.
The Biden administration needs to take note of the charge of hypocrisy from leaders in India, Brazil, and elsewhere. While U.S. diplomats encourage Global South nations to avoid energy contracts with Russia, the United States is looking for ways to improve its relations with Venezuela in order to import more oil from Caracas. President Joe Biden campaigned on the basis of turning Saudi Arabia into a “pariah,” but traveled to Riyadh to fist bump Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in order to get increased Saudi oil production. Numerous European countries have signed significant energy contracts with repressive Arab regimes in order to bolster their own energy imports.
Recent leaked documents demonstrate that India has resisted U.S. efforts to support Western resolutions at the UN regarding the Russian invasion. India also resisted U.S. efforts to arrange a discussion of the war at the recent G-20 summit in New Dehli. Leaked documents also reveal that India’s national security adviser, Ajit Kumar Doval, assured his Russian counterpart, Nikolay Petrushev, that India would not take sides in the current confrontation between Russian and the United States. Other important regional states such as Brazil, Egypt, and Pakistan have given similar assurances to their Russian counterparts. All of these nations have been paying higher prices for important commodities and consumer goods because of U.S. sanctions and tariffs against China and Russia. Meanwhile, Exxon Mobil and Chevron, the two largest American oil companies, have been earning record profits as a result of disruptions in Russian energy deliveries.
Meanwhile, China is stealing a march on the United States in both the Middle East and Africa. In addition to signing long-term energy arrangements with both Iran and Saudi Arabia, Beijing is poised to dominate the exploitation of the most important minerals for the manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles. Demand for cobalt is expected to increase significantly in the near term, and the Democratic Republic of Congo dominates the mining of cobalt. Lithium allows electric vehicles to generate the same energy and speed as gas vehicles, and Zimbabwe is a top producer of lithium. China has excellent state-to-state relations with these key African countries as well as an increased presence in Afghanistan, which has huge reserves of lithium. The United States and its allies have sufficient reserves of lithium and copper, for example, but it would require significant investments and technological cooperation to build up mining industries.
Overall, U.S. investment pales in comparison to China’s belt and road initiatives throughout the Global South, particularly the huge loans for vast infrastructure projects, and U.S. demands regarding democratic governance compare unfavorably to Russian and Chinese unwillingness to force the countries of the Global South to take sides. There is also an intense great power competition for influence in the Middle East and North Africa as both Moscow and Beijing take advantage of U.S. nonrecognition of Iran; U.S. open-ended support for Israel; and U.S. hypocrisy over its role in the so-called Middle East peace process.
The UK Conservative government utilised Saturday’s coronation of King Charles III to clamp down on anti-monarchist and other protesters. Newly enacted police-state powers under the Public Order Act rolled out days before the event were used to carry out mass arrests and set a precedent for their future widespread use.
London’s Metropolitan Police arrested 64 people for offences including affray, public order offences, breach of the peace and the sinister charge of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.
Police arrest an anti-monarchy demonstrators ahead of the procession of Britain's King Charles III to Westminster Abbey for his coronation in London Saturday, May 6, 2023. [AP Photo/Scott Garfitt]
Most significantly the Met moved to take out the leadership of the Republic group and prevent their participation in the protests. Republic are a registered pressure group in existence since 1983 advocating the abolition of the monarchy and its replacement with a parliamentary republic. Their protests generally consist of chanting “Not My King!”
In the days leading to the coronation the Home Office sent threatening messages to Republic, informing them that the Public Order Act 2023 had been passed and that its provisions would be used during a mass mobilisation of police. The legislation was brought forward from its initial timetable and received Royal Assent—signed into law by Charles himself, on May 2. The Met announced four days ahead of the coronation, “We have an extremely low threshold for anybody or anything that will disrupt this event and what you will see is very swift action from us.”
At around 7.30 a.m. Saturday, before any protesting had begun, six members of Republic, including its leader Graham Smith, were arrested near Trafalgar Square where the group planned to hold a rally near the statue of the deposed monarch Charles 1 (1600-1649). Police seized by force a vanload of hundreds of placards reading “Not My King.” A video seen by 5.5 million on Twitter shows a reporter asking why the arrests are being carried out and a police officer replies, “I’m not going to get into a conversation about that, they are under arrest, end of.”
Smith was held for nearly 16 hours in police custody, only being released at 11 p.m. Saturday evening. Smith tweeted, “I’m now out of the police station. Still waiting for my colleagues. Make no mistake. There is no longer a right to peaceful protest in the UK. I have been told many times the monarch is there to defend our freedoms. Now our freedoms are under attack in his name.” He added of the arrested colleagues, “We are not being given a reason. They will probably be released when the whole monarchy PR show is over.”
A Republic director, Harry Stratton, stated, “What would we lock on to? We are just protesting”—referring to the newly-minted offense of gluing yourself to a road, building and art-works by environmental protesters. He added that one protester at Trafalgar Square had been taken away by police as he had string on him. “It’s string that was part of his placard. What was he going to do with that?”
Stratton revealed, “We had meetings with the police where they outlined what would and wouldn't be accepted today. They told us any mention of Prince Andrew or the sex abuse cases would mean arrests.”
Chillingly, the state was prepared to kill protesters during the coronation, with Stratton revealing, “They said if anybody got in the way of the procession, they could be shot because the military around the streets might be a bit touchy and not understand what was going on.” He added, “These arrests seem like the work of a police state. It’s not acceptable. We are only saying that we don’t believe in the monarchy and we’re doing it peacefully.”
Such was the dragnet imposed by the Met that three volunteer members of Westminster City Council’s Night Stars team who give out rape alarm whistles to vulnerable women—with Home Office funding—were arrested for having the item in their possession. The volunteers were apprehended at 2 a.m. Saturday morning on suspicion of conspiracy to commit public nuisance and held for 14 hours. The Met claimed it had “received intelligence that indicated groups and individuals seeking to disrupt today’s coronation proceedings were planning to use rape alarms to disrupt the procession.”
The Public Order Act is one of the most draconian pieces of legislation in British history, effectively ending the right to protest and further clamping down on strikes. Protests are deemed illegal if they include acts causing “serious disruption to two or more individuals, or to an organisation.” “Serious disruption” includes “noise.”
The Home Office stated last week that the legislation would “bolster the police’s powers to respond more effectively to disruptive and dangerous protests.” It noted “the following measures in the Public Order Bill will commence on 3rd May 2023. The definition of serious disruption in the Public Order Bill: locking on; going equipped to lock on; interference with key national infrastructure; amending the seniority of police officers in London who may attach conditions to an upcoming protest or prohibit a trespassory assembly to match that applicable in forces outside of London.”
Police can stop and search protesters if they suspect they are setting out to cause disruption. The penalty for those convicted of blocking roads, airports and railways is a jail sentence of up to 12 months. Those locking on to others, objects or buildings face prison for six months and an unlimited fine.
One of the Republic organisers said, “We had a delivery of placards ready for the protest and then the tactical support unit questioned us as to how we had got through the road closures. They questioned whether what we were doing was a delivery. They then said they found evidence of means of locking on, of items that could be used to lock on, and they arrested us.”
The repression was carried out as part of a vast lockdown of the capital by 11,500 Met Police officers, codenamed Operation Golden Orb. 9,000 members of the UK’s Armed Forces were in London with 2,000 on active duty and the remainder on ceremonial duties.
Also deployed was HMS Diamond, with the Type-45 destroyer warship docked in the Thames at Greenwich. The Royal Navy said it had been deployed to “celebrate the Coronation.” However, the Sun newspaper reported, “But Naval sources say it would only take a ‘flick of a switch’ to trigger its air defence systems.” The ship is able to deploy 16 missiles at the same time as they head towards targets.
The repression of protest, no matter how small, points to the crisis and fear of a ruling elite and the terminal decay of a system atop which sits a hidebound medieval monarchy with its ridiculous ceremonies, crowns and costumes—the accumulation of centuries of medieval trash. They view all protest as a threat from below.
Several commentators raised that the coronation points to the existence of two Britains, torn apart by class antagonism. No less than the Financial Times, in an op-ed by Henry Mance, warned that for all the interest of a royalist constituency in the “splendid and strange ritual,” it “would be wrong to say that the British public had been gripped by the prospect of the coronation. Two-fifths thought it was a waste of taxpayer money, according to one poll. Two-thirds didn’t care about it very much or at all, according to another.”
He added, “The whole of Britain, let alone the Commonwealth, could not fit into the coronation. Britain is not simply the gleam of the orb; it is the gloom of the sky outside. It is not only the flag-waving faithful on the Mall; it is the republican protesters who were arrested in Trafalgar Square. It is not just the millions who gaped at the television; it is the millions who were more interested in the afternoon’s football.”
The coronation exposed that the “oldest democracy in the world” is one only in name. That protest against this system is now outlawed is a decisive refutation of all the lies that NATO’s war against Russia is being fought to defend democracy.
According to research by the Museum of Homelessness charity, 1,313 people died while homeless across Britain in 2022. The last three years of reporting by the charity have shown a continuous year-on-year increase in deaths of this kind, with 1,286 fatalities recorded in 2021, 976 in 2020, and 710 in 2019, making an overall increase of 85 percent.
The Dying Homeless Project was established by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in October 2017 and taken on by Museum of Homelessness in April 2019. It commented on the figures, “More than 4,000 people have died while homeless across the UK since 2019, with someone now dying every 6.5 hours on average.”
A homeless man sleeping in a shop doorway in Romford, London, December 2022 [Photo: WSWS]
The real number of deaths is likely to be higher as several local authorities did not respond to freedom of Information (FOI) requests, including Ealing, Hackney Lewisham, Hillingdon, Blackpool, Fife and Birmingham. Birmingham, the UK’s second largest city with a population approaching 1.2 million, told the charity that they do not collect information on how and when people are dying in homelessness settings.
Other local councils reported that they were not able to provide more detailed information relating to age or causes of death.
As well as FOI requests, details were gathered from members of the public, grassroots groups, coroners’ reports, homelessness charities and family members.
For the first time, the death figures include those living in exempt accommodation, which is usually shared and where some support is provided, but which is not currently regulated.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) also provides data on deaths of homeless people, however the methodologies are different. The Homelessness Museum survey covers the whole of the UK, and captures data from sources left out of official statistics gathering. Nonetheless, the ONS too found an increase in deaths, with their most recent estimate for 2021 significantly higher than in any of the years 2013-2017.
The homeless population is often understood to include those sleeping out on the streets, but in fact includes people in a number of settings. These include supported accommodation (13.8 percent), emergency accommodation (4.3 percent), bed and breakfast accommodation (4.4 percent), temporary accommodation (35.5 percent), rough sleepers’ accommodation (24.4 percent), and others (6.9 percent). The street homeless make up 10.6 percent of the total.
Homelessness deaths occur throughout the year, with a higher number actually occurring in the summer. This is contrary to the popular understanding that homeless people are more likely to die in the winter time and shows that the serious risk to life is in no way seasonal.
The causes of death were sampled from 314 people from the overall number of 1,313—all of them living on the streets with no fixed abode. After physical health conditions, they are predominantly linked to drugs, alcohol and overdosing.
The study notes, “Last year we reported on 31 people completing suicide; this has increased to 35 this year [to March 2023]. Five of these deaths were of people who were street homeless and had no fixed abode.”
People who are homeless or sleeping out on the streets often struggle to access mental health support, and there are gaps in provision for what are some of the most vulnerable people in society.
The ages of 951 of the people who died were known, with people often perishing before they reach middle age. The most common group for age of death was 35-55. This figure is shocking when one considers that average life expectancy in the UK is 80.
Those who died in exempt accommodation are highlighted in this year’s report. This is accommodation not commissioned by local authorities, but which is used to house vulnerable people. Such housing is exempt from local licensing regulations and housing benefit caps, which mean the local council or police have few powers to act over the quality and safety of the dwelling.
The majority of local authorities responding to FOI requests for information on deaths in exempt accommodation said they did not have data. Of the total 151 deaths recorded across the twelve who provided data, Manchester had the highest number at 109.
Even the government’s own report into exempt accommodation published last year via the Department for Levelling up and Communities was scathing in its criticisms. It described the system as a complete mess and in some instances involving the exploitation of vulnerable people, as unscrupulous providers make excessive profits by capitalising on loopholes. The gold-rush is all funded by taxpayers through housing benefit paid by tenants to landlords.
The inquiry found that some residents’ experiences of exempt accommodation are hellish and that some people’s situations actually deteriorate versus living on the streets as a result of the shocking conditions in which they live.
Homelessness Museum calls for mandatory fatality reviews for all local authorities, including accountability. Co-founder Matt Turtle said, “The fact that so many people continue to die in unregulated, taxpayer funded accommodation run by rogue landlords is a disgrace”.
In 2022 the government spent £1.6 billion putting people into this type of accommodation, mostly owned by private companies or individuals.
At root, homelessness deaths are the outcome of year of cuts to housing, mental and general health, drug, alcohol and allied services. Figures published by The Health Foundation show that the public health grant has been cut by 26 percent in real terms per person basis since 2015/16. Paid to local authorities from the Department of Health and Social Care budget, the grant is used to provide preventative services including drug alcohol services, smoking cessation, children’s health services and sexual health services.
The real terms per person cuts have been even greater to those living in some of the most deprived areas of England. The seaside town of Blackpool, considered to be the most deprived upper tier local authority in England, has seen its grant (including new drug and alcohol treatment funding) cut by £33 per person in real terms since 2015/16.
Poor health outcomes are strongly associated with living in areas of socio-economic deprivation. A girl born into one of the most deprived 10 percent of areas can expect to live in good health for 19 years less than a girl born into the least deprived 10 percent areas—a factor that contributed to high COVID-19 mortality rates.
The deaths of thousands of homeless people is a chilling confirmation, amid an ongoing pandemic that has taken over 220,000 lives in Britain, that the ruling class views the lives of working-class people as entirely dispensable.
Last week, news emerged that NATO intends to open a liaison office in Tokyo, Japan next year. The office would be NATO’s first in the Asia-Pacific region and represents the increasing role of the organisation in preparation for a US-led war against China. Both Tokyo and NATO have confirmed the plans.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, left, and Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida after media briefing in Tokyo on Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2023. [AP Photo/Takashi Aoyama]
Nikkei Asia reported on May 3 that NATO’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg discussed opening the office with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during Stoltenberg’s visit to Japan in January. Similar offices exist at the United Nations in New York and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in Vienna, as well as in Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kuwait. Tokyo also intends to create an independent mission to NATO by separating its current mission from its embassy in Belgium and dispatching a new ambassador.
While the move does not mean Japan is joining the alliance, the new NATO office in Tokyo is a major provocation directed at China. The US/NATO war against Russia in Ukraine was instigated, in part, through the encroachment of NATO’s borders towards Russia. NATO’s collaboration with countries like Japan, coupled with attempts to goad Beijing by challenging the “One China” policy over Taiwan, will only heighten the danger of war.
The Danish ambassador to Japan, Peter Taksoe-Jensen, who acts as the contact point between Tokyo and NATO, made clear that the decision to open the liaison office was directed against China and preventing it from becoming an economic challenger to the West.
He told Nikkei Asia, “In 2022, at the (NATO) Madrid Summit, allied leaders decided that Russia was no longer a partner but a foe, and that there was also an acknowledgement that China's rise would and could have an impact on trans-European security.”
Beijing’s Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Mao Ning criticised the plans for the new liaison office in Tokyo, saying, “NATO’s continual eastward expansion in the Asia-Pacific, interference in regional affairs, attempts to destroy regional peace and stability, and push for bloc confrontation calls for high vigilance from countries in the region.”
NATO and Japan also intend to sign an Individually Tailored Partnership Program (ITPP) ahead of the July 11 and 12 NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. Japan, as well as South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand is expected to attend the summit. The liaison office will facilitate increased cooperation between NATO and these four countries, dubbed the Asia-Pacific partners of NATO, or AP4. The meeting last year in Madrid was the first time the four nations had been invited to attend a NATO summit.
As part of their collaboration, Japan and NATO will also work together to address “cyber threats, disruptive technologies, and disinformation activities.” In other words, the two will work on ensuring that the internet and social media are employed to spread imperialist propaganda while blocking workers and youth from accessing so-called “disinformation,” including socialist, anti-imperialist and anti-war viewpoints.
The opening of the office is part of a broader agenda in which the US is developing and integrating a series of alliances meant to surround China. These include the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), comprised of the US, Australia, India, and Japan, and the AUKUS alliance, made up of Australia, the United Kingdom and the US. Washington and Seoul also recently announced increased collaboration over the planning and use of Washington’s nuclear arsenal.
In addition, under pressure from Washington, Tokyo and Seoul have worked to ease tensions that have existed between the two countries for years. Following a summit in Tokyo in March between Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, the two sides agreed to increased cooperation, normalisation of a military intelligence-sharing agreement and more military drills alongside the US.
Japan is also increasing its cooperation with other countries, including the UK. Tokyo signed a Reciprocal Access Agreement with London in January granting troops from each country easier access to enter the other. Tokyo is considering a similar agreement with the Philippines.
The opening of the NATO office in Japan also contributes to Tokyo’s goal of remilitarisation. In 2014, the then-Shinzo Abe administration announced a “reinterpretation” of the constitution to allow so-called “collective self-defense.” The following year, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) rammed legislation through parliament to codify this change. This, Tokyo argues, allows Japan to go to war alongside an ally in the name of “self-defense,” thereby sidestepping Article 9 of the constitution, which explicitly bars Japan from maintaining a military or waging war.
By working alongside NATO, Tokyo will claim that its growing military assertiveness and aggression aligns with this bogus and unconstitutional concept of “collective self-defense.”
Along these lines, a NATO delegation visited Japan from April 24-26, led by its Cooperative Security Division Director Lieutenant General Francesco Diella, who met with leading Japanese military officials. Diella claimed during these discussions, “Our security is deeply interconnected and so must be our cooperation, which is rooted in our shared values, and our shared vision—of a free, peaceful and prosperous world.”
The claims that NATO and its member countries as well as Japan represent “shared values” is aimed against Russia and China. Washington, Tokyo and their allies claim that in Asia, China represents a threat to the “free and open” Indo-Pacific. In reality, the imperialist powers denounce Beijing for not acquiescing to the post-World War II order established and dominated by the US. While Washington conducts provocative and dangerous “freedom of navigation” operations on China’s doorstep, any reaction from Beijing is denounced as proof of Chinese “aggression.”
Furthermore, the claims that NATO and, above all, the United States represent “democratic values” flies in the face of reality. In the US, immigrants are denied the right to asylum while police regularly gun down workers and the poor. In France, the president of the rich, Emmanuel Macron, rules using police state repression against striking workers and protesters. In the UK, journalist Julian Assange remains behind bars in Belmarsh Prison for exposing the crimes of US imperialism while the government wasted hundreds of millions of pounds on King Charles’s recent coronation ceremony.
In Japan, past war crimes are covered up in order to promote remilitarisation. The ruling LDP, with no genuine opposition from other parties, is pursuing constitutional amendments that would severely restrict democratic rights, and journalists face barriers and even harassment.
Ultimately, Washington, Tokyo, and NATO’s goal is not defense of “democratic values,” but the re-division of the Indo-Pacific at the expense of China, risking a new world war that would be fought with nuclear weapons.
Nine people were killed and seven wounded in a mass shooting Saturday at an outlet mall in Allen, Texas, just north of Dallas. This was the 200th mass shooting in the US so far this year, averaging about 11 such events per week.
According to ABC News, multiple law enforcement agencies responded to the shooting at 3:30 p.m. The gunman was killed in the parking lot by a police officer who was at the mall on an unrelated call. Officials said the ages of the victims ranged from 5 to 61.
People raise their hands as they leave a shopping center following reports of a shooting, Saturday, May 6, 2023, in Allen, Texas. [AP Photo/LM Otero]
According to an Allen Police Department news release on Sunday, four people were undergoing treatment at Medical City McKinney Hospital, with three in critical condition. Another person is undergoing treatment at Medical City Plano, one at Medical City Children’s Hospital, and another at a hospital not named in the release.
The suspected shooter has been identified as Mauricio Garcia, 33, a security guard. Garcia reportedly used an AR-15 rifle in the shooting and had at least one other weapon on him when he was fatally shot. More weapons were found in his car.
Witnesses said the gunman’s tactical vest was packed with ammunition. According CBS News reporter J.D. Miles, Garcia, who was living in an extended-stay hotel in Dallas, had “no serious criminal record.”
Dashcam video circulating on social media shows the shooter leaving a grey sedan outside of Allen Premium Outlets mall and immediately proceeding to open fire on mall-goers. People ran from the shooter and some fled in their cars under fire.
One boy and his mother told CNN they fled in their car and were hit twice by gunfire. A witness speaking to the Washington Post described a young boy running away from the shooter while screaming “run!” At least one victim was a child, according to officials and witnesses. Another young boy was found under the corpse of his mother, who died shielding him.
It is not clear if there was a security guard on duty at the mall, though an individual with a security uniform was among the dead.
The Post reports that according to “people familiar with the investigation,” the shooter “had an apparent fascination with white supremacist or neo-Nazi beliefs that are now being examined by investigators as a possible motive for the attack.”
According to the Post’s sources, the shooter had a patch on his tactical vest that read “RWDS,” which stands for Right Wing Death Squad. An RWDS patch was worn by Proud Boy Jeremy Bertino at Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rallies in the lead-up to the January 6 coup. The shooting is reportedly being investigated as a possible hate crime.
As of this writing, the reports linking Garcia to neofascist tendencies have not been confirmed by the local police or federal authorities. Allen Police Chief Brian Harvey told the press that the police believe the gunman acted alone.
The shooting comes just days after a mass shooting in an Atlanta, Georgia hospital by a Coast Guard veteran, injuring four and killing one, and just over a week after five people were killed, including an eight-year-old boy, in a mass shooting of a family by a neighbor in a rural town north of Houston, Texas. These “mass casualty” events were preceded by mass shootings in Alabama and Kentucky.
According to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), 14,675 shooting deaths have been recorded so far this year, rapidly approaching the total number for all of 2018. Last year there were 20,200 deaths and 647 mass shootings. This was topped only by 2021, which had the highest number of shootings and deaths since the GVA began keeping track in 2014, when there were 272 mass shootings.
The American media and political establishment is incapable of providing any serious explanation for this epidemic of gun violence because it is an expression of a social breakdown of staggering dimensions, rooted in a toxic and insoluble crisis of American capitalism.
The lavish coronation ceremony for King Charles III and Queen Camilla, accompanied by saturation media coverage and the bestowing of a one-day bank holiday, is advanced as a unifying moment for the nation. It is nothing of the sort.
The display of inherited privilege and wealth, the rampant militarism and glorification of British imperialism, including its flaunting of massive gems looted and incorporated into various crowns, sceptres and staffs, plus the £250 million bill for the tax payers, are obscene—a tone deaf insult to millions of struggling workers and their families.
King Charles III, at the time the Prince of Wales, reading the speech on behalf of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II in 2022. [Photo by Annabel Moeller / CC BY 2.0]
Far from offering the chance for a renewal of the monarchy, restoring its popularity, the coronation will confirm the decline in support for this rotten institution, especially among the younger generation, marking its terminal crisis.
Charles is crowned aged 74, Britain’s oldest monarch, after decades in the shadow of his mother. Not only does he enjoy none of the popular affection in which Queen Elizabeth II was held, he is widely regarded as a ludicrous figure. King Charles is a mystic who has long promoted pseudo-science and quack therapies, including homeopathy, spiritual “self-healing” and treating cancer with fruit juice and coffee. He stands at the head of a venal, money grubbing and deeply corrupt family freed from the restraining hand and political shield provided by their matriarch.
On the death of the queen, the WSWS commented:
“Her death occurs at a time of acute economic, social and political crisis for British imperialism, including the deepest collapse of living standards since the Great Depression, a NATO proxy war against Russia waged on mainland Europe, and a rising wave of class struggle that threatens to erupt into a general strike.
“The ruling class now faces this perfect storm without its popular representative of state on which it has relied to project the myth of national unity and suppress social conflict… Today, the earnest hope of the ruling class is that Charles’ time on the throne is short so that the carefully groomed and prepared Prince William can have a chance to restore a much-reduced monarchy’s public standing.”
Damage limitations have been employed in the ceremony to mitigate problems, historic and recent. Acting as head of the Church of England, which now is followed by just 16 percent of the population and with 40 percent saying they have no religion, Charles will not refer to himself as “Defender of the Faith”. The ceremony will instead involve leaders from the Jewish, Sunni and Shia Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Bahai and Zoroastrian faiths. In addition, only Prince William will perform the grotesquely-named “Homage of Royal Blood”—pledging loyalty to the king. The participation, as is usual, of the royal dukes, would necessarily involve the scandal-ridden Prince Andrew and renegade Prince Harry. Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, will remain in California.
Given the coronation’s exorbitant cost, there have been extraordinary efforts to stress its “modest” character—at least in comparison with Elizabeth’s in 1953—while boasting nonetheless of its pomp and pageantry.
As proof of Britain’s military might, for example, more than 6,000 members of the armed forces will take part, with prominent roles for Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, Chief of the Defence Staff, and General Sir Patrick Sanders, Chief of the General Staff, with a flypast by 68 aircraft from all three of the Armed Forces. But royal commentators have contrasted this display to the 600 RAF and Commonwealth planes which took to the skies for Elizabeth. The coronation will be attended by 2,000 guests compared with Elizabeth’s more than 8,000. “The King is acutely aware of the cost of living crisis and just how many people are struggling,” a royal source told the Daily Mirror.
Coronation portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, by Cecil Beaton, June 1953, London, England. [Photo: Cecil Beaton/Royal Collection RCIN 2153177]
Such schizophrenic efforts reflect huge nervousness in ruling circles, with public support for the monarchy at an all-time low. Only 29 percent of Britons describe the monarchy as “very important”, while 25 percent say it is “not at all important” and should be abolished. Among young people, 78 percent are not interested in the monarchy and 38 percent want it abolished.
52 percent of readers polled by the Daily Mirror thought Charles should pay for his own coronation. This followed a widely reported investigation into Charles’s fabulous personal wealth by the Guardian, finding it had risen to almost £2 billion—said to be a conservative estimate—after tax free inheritances from the queen.
Public opposition to the coronation has been met with state measures to suppress anticipated protests. More than 11,500 police will be on duty with the first use of powers contained in the recently enacted Public Order Bill, including 12-month sentences for blocking roads and railways and six-month sentences and unlimited fines for “locking on” to buildings or objects. The Home Office has sent threatening messages to the group Republic.
The coronation’s order of service—the recognition; the oath; the anointing; the investiture and crowning; and the enthronement and homage, as well as the Queen Consort's coronation—is so ludicrous that its strategic importance for British imperialism can be underestimated.
The ceremony invokes one thousand years of history, employing such devices as the Stone of Destiny, the Sword of State, the Sword of Offering, the Sword of Mercy, the Bracelets of Sincerity and Wisdom, and items of dress including the Robe of Righteousness, and so on. There is in addition the linking of the English Crown to the biblical kings Saul, David and Solomon, through Charles’s anointing with oil pressed from Israeli olives—to stress that he too is a representative of God on earth.
Reference to the “divine right of kings” is still a feature of state rule in the United Kingdom, 374 years after Charles I was executed for High Treason in the aftermath of the English Civil War for insisting on this principle. It was reaffirmed with the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II in 1660, but henceforth monarchs ruled under the sufferance of parliament as the political instrument of the rising bourgeoisie—codified following the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when King William III and Queen Mary swore an oath to uphold the laws made in parliament.
In the centuries which followed, the monarchy and other trappings of feudalism were placed in service to bourgeois rule. As the WSWS commented on Charles III’s first major public engagement as monarch in September last year:
“What is being conveyed in the endless pomp and ceremony is the might of the state, the pre-eminence of the nation, and the supposed permanence of an existing social order characterised by vast inequalities where everyone must show the necessary deference and respect to ‘tradition’ and the ruling elite that embodies these traditions.”
Perhaps the most extraordinary element of Charles’s coronation ceremony, therefore, is the decision to strengthen and make open, rather than downplay, the position of the king as head of state. To great fanfare, Lambeth Palace, representing the Archbishop of Canterbury, in discussion with Charles and the Sunak government, has unveiled “The Homage of The People.” Replacing the “Homage of the Peers”, 150 million citizens of the UK and the 15 Commonwealth states are being asked to take part in a “great cry”, pledging their allegiance to the Crown.
The order of service will read: “All who so desire, in the abbey, and elsewhere, say together: ‘All: I swear that I will pay true allegiance to your majesty, and to your heirs and successors according to law. So help me God.’”
This obscenity, invoking the subordination of the people to hereditary privilege and an unelected head of state, is being hailed as an example of “modernisation” by bootlickers including Shabana Mahmood MP, Labour’s National Campaign Coordinator, who described it as “a wonderful way to bring the ceremony and the monarchy closer to the people.”
What is at stake is not personal loyalty to the king, but to the capitalist state apparatus which he heads. The coronation is conceived as an appeal for national unity, at a time of rising social tensions and class conflict and with war having already erupted on European soil. It occurs amid a strike wave in Britain and mass protests across the English Channel in France against Macron’s dictatorial imposition of pension reform, the largest strike and protest movement there since May-June 1968. Indeed, a planned visit by King Charles to France less than six weeks ago was hurriedly cancelled, with Britain’s former ambassador, Peter Ricketts, warning that a banquet planned by Charles at the Palace of Versailles could have “echoes” of the French Revolution.
From Queen Elizabeth II to Charles III
Queen Elizabeth II was a student of Walter Bagehot’s “The English Constitution” (published as a book in 1867), taught to her during twice-weekly private lessons at Eton College in 1938. The then 12-year-old princess, who became heir to the throne after her uncle Edward’s abdication in 1936, came to embody Bagehot’s description of the essential function of the constitutional monarch.
Walter Bagehot (1826-1877) portrait by Norman Hirst
Bagehot’s essays articulated the central fears of the British ruling class following the Chartist movement, the 1848 revolutions and the American Civil War. A full-throated warning of the dangers posed by democratic, egalitarian, republican and socialist doctrines, Bagehot’s work expressed the fear and hatred of the British ruling class toward the working class—the “Vox diaboli” (voice of the Devil).
To prevent a “political combination of the lower classes… an evil of the first magnitude,” a means had to be found of exerting control over the “crowds of people scarcely more civilised than the majority of two thousand years ago.” This was the essential “theatrical” element of the state’s constitution represented by the monarchy, which “strengthens our Government with the strength of religion.”
He continued, “The elements which excite the most easy reverence will be the THEATRICAL elements—those which appeal to the senses, which claim to be embodiments of the greatest human ideas, which boast in some cases of far more than human origin. That which is mystic in its claims; that which is occult in its mode of action; that which is brilliant to the eye; that which is seen vividly for a moment, and then is seen no more; that which is hidden and unhidden; that which is specious, and yet interesting, palpable in its seeming, and yet professing to be more than palpable in its results…”
Elizabeth II played her allotted role as a bulwark of wealth and privilege supremely well, abiding by Bagehot’s instruction that the monarch must “not be touched. It should be evident that he does no wrong. He should not be brought too closely to real measurement. He should be aloof and solitary… a visible symbol of unity to those still so imperfectly educated as to need a symbol.”
FILE - In this Tuesday, July 10, 2018 file photo, members of the royal family gather on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, with from left, Prince Charles, Camilla the Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Andrew, Queen Elizabeth II, Meghan the Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry, Prince William and Kate the Duchess of Cambridge, as they watch a flypast of Royal Air Force aircraft pass over Buckingham Palace in London. [AP Photo/Matt Dunham]
The monarch’s fundamental purpose was to conceal from the working class the class nature of the state. Bagehot wrote, “constitutional royalty has the function which I insisted on at length in my last essay, and which, though it is by far the greatest, I need not now enlarge upon again. It acts as a DISGUISE. It enables our real rulers to change without heedless people knowing it. The masses of Englishmen are not fit for an elective government; if they knew how near they were to it, they would be surprised, and almost tremble.”
Bagehot had warned that the supremacy of the “lower classes” could be averted only “by the greatest wisdom and the greatest foresight in the higher classes.” But the coronation of such a deeply unpopular figure as Charles—described by his own friends as an “Olympian whinger”—cripples the monarchy’s ability to act as a unifying force. Bagehot had emphasised that “a royal family sweetens politics by the seasonable addition of nice and pretty events. It introduces irrelevant facts into the business of government, but they are facts which speak to ‘men’s bosoms’ and employ their thoughts.” But the stench surrounding Prince Andrew’s relations with Jeffrey Epstein and the tawdry infighting between Prince Harry, Charles, Camilla, and William are “facts” which point to the scale of the present crisis. The population’s support for the royal family is unravelling amid the deepest economic, social and political impasse facing British capitalism since the 1930s.
In his 1925 work, “Where is Britain Going?”, Trotsky wrote essential passages on the role of the British monarchy generally, and particularly at times of acute crisis, presenting a devastating critique of the unprincipled attitude of the Labour Party leaders toward it, including their reactionary empirical, gradualist and ahistorical philosophy.
“Royalty, they declare, ‘does not hinder’ the country’s progress and works out cheaper than a president if you count all the expense of elections, and so on and so forth. Such speeches by Labour leaders typify a facet of their ‘idiosyncrasies’ which cannot be called anything other than conservative block-headedness.”
Leon Trotsky
Trotsky countered, “Royalty is weak as long as the bourgeois parliament is the instrument of bourgeois rule and as long as the bourgeoisie has no need of extra-parliamentary methods. But the bourgeoisie can if necessary use royalty as the focus of all extra-parliamentary, i.e., real forces directed against the working class.”
The British monarchy possesses enormous power. Under normal conditions, the monarch’s role as head of state, including the requirement of royal assent for legislation, and the fact that politicians and generals swear allegiance to the king, appears antiquated, vestigial, and ceremonial. But when class antagonisms grow to a point of open conflict, democracy must give way to dictatorship and the “symbolic” powers of the monarch, including the king’s role as Commander in Chief of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, become real, and defying them an act of treason.
The provocative and criminal actions of the security forces are bringing the Israeli/Palestinian conflict to fever pitch, with analysts predicting a new Palestinian intifada, or uprising.
In the last days, security forces have killed at least four Palestinians they allege have killed Israeli citizens, without even attempting to arrest, formally charge them and bring them before the courts.
A Palestinian walks by a building hit by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City, Tuesday, May 18, 2021. Since the fighting began last week, the Israeli military has launched hundreds of airstrikes it says are targeting Hamas' militant infrastructure, while Palestinian militants have fired thousands of rockets into Israel. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)
These now routine executions carried out during mass raid operations that terrorise the local population dispense with all the norms of bourgeois justice, including innocent till proven guilty. They are upheld by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition, all factions of the Zionist political elite—secular and religious—and Israel’s judicial system, including the Supreme Court.
On Thursday morning, 200 soldiers, including undercover units, raided the old city of Nablus, in the northern West Bank, shooting and killing Muath Masri, Ibrahim Jabr and Hasan Qatnani and wounding four others. The three men were members of the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated group that controls the besieged enclave of Gaza. It was just one of Israel’s near-daily assassination raids in the West Bank.
A military spokesperson claimed that two of the men had carried out the shooting attack in the Jordan Valley on April 7 that killed an Israeli-British woman and two of her daughters who lived in a nearby settlement—one of around 200 settlements built on Palestinian land illegal under international laws—but were silent about the third and the two that were wounded. The Qassam Brigades said that the shooting of the three women was in retaliation for Israeli assaults on worshippers at the al-Aqsa mosque in occupied East Jerusalem during Ramadan.
According to the Palestine Red Crescent Society, some 166 people were injured during Wednesday’s raid, mostly from tear gas inhalation, while four people were hit by live fire. The intensity of the raid and the fierce clashes with Palestinian fighters forced schools to suspend classes.
Also on Wednesday, Israel fired missiles on Gaza, killing 58-year-old Hashil Mubarak and injuring five others in Gaza City, belying Tel Aviv’s claim that the 16 targets were militia military sites. The Israeli attack followed rocket fire from Gaza that injured three foreign nationals in the southern town of Sderot. Gaza’s rockets came in response to the death Tuesday of 44-year-old Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan, who had been on hunger strike for 86 days in protest against his detention in an Israeli jail.
People passing by a Khader Adnan stencil on a wall by Manara square, Ramallah, 23 Feb. 2012
Adnan, from the West Bank village of Arraba near Jenin, was well-known for his defiance of the Israeli authorities, having spent about eight years in detention, mostly without charge or trial. He had gone on hunger strikes on six occasions—25 days in 2004, 66 days in 2011 and 2012, 55 days in 2015, 58 days in 2018 and 25 days in 2021—to obtain his release.
Such orders for detention without charge or trial, typically issued for six-month periods, can be renewed indefinitely, while attorneys are not allowed to see the evidence against them. The number of Palestinians now being held without charge or trial has soared to more than 1,000, the highest since the second intifada, according to the Israeli advocacy group HaMoked.
This time, an Israeli military court charged Adnan with “terror-related offences,” accusing him of being a senior member of a proscribed organization, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Despite a near 100 percent conviction rate for Palestinians in Israel’s military courts, Adnan had had no trial.
He died after being denied medical treatment or visits from his family, while a military appeals court refused his release just days before his death. The prison authorities lyingly claimed he had refused medical treatment.
Adnan’s death prompted widespread anger in the West Bank, with several towns and cities declaring general strikes. He is the first Palestinian to die during a hunger strike in almost 40 years, bringing to 237 the number of Palestinian prisoners who have died in Israeli custody since 1967.
Israel has thus far refused to hand over his body to his family for burial—along with the bodies of hundreds of Palestinians who either died in prison or were killed during security incidents, a policy nodded through by the Supreme Court in 2019.
Last month, Al-Haq and Addameer, two leading Palestinian human rights organizations, provided evidence to the UN Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur about Israel’s torturous, cruel and degrading treatment of Palestinian prisoners and efforts to hide these crimes. They said that medical staff in Israeli prisons give the go ahead to interrogate Palestinian detainees, ignoring the evidence of torture on their bodies. They highlighted the Israeli government’s “limitations on medical treatment” that had caused the deaths of prisoners over the years.
Israel’s fascistic minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has stepped up the brutal treatment of Palestinian prisoners, limiting the time they can use the showers; serving them stale and frozen bread; conducting frequent raids and searches of cells and increasing the use of solitary confinement. A Bill is currently going through parliament that would allow the execution of Palestinians who kill Israelis.
On Thursday, in a separate incident, soldiers shot and killed a young woman, 26-year-old Iman Ziyad Odeh, claiming she had stabbed a soldier, who was slightly wounded in the incident, in the town of Huwara, near Nablus. In February, Huwara was the scene of a pogrom-like rampage by hundreds of Israeli settlers after two Israelis were shot dead as they drove through the town.
It is not just the armed forces and police that act as judges and executioners. Israeli civilians living in the settlements in the occupied West Bank do too—and with impunity. The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs recorded at least 2,955 settler attacks, in which at least 22 Palestinians were killed, and at least 1,258 others injured, between 2010 and 2019, with just seven percent of settler attacks leading to criminal charges and only 3 percent of investigations leading to a conviction, according to Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organisation.
In the four months of this year, the Israeli army has killed at least 102 Palestinians, 20 of them children, while settlers have killed five Palestinians. At least 19 Israelis, one Ukrainian and one Italian have been killed over the same period.
None of this is enough for Israel fascistic leaders. The Jewish Power leader Ben Gvir branded the military’s response “feeble” and ordered his far-right Otzma Yehudit faction to boycott the Knesset votes on Wednesday in protest at “the weak response in Gaza.” Other right-wing leaders criticized the government saying, “We will pay for weak policy.”
Netanyahu echoed these sentiments, praising the military for “settling the score” in Nablus, making clear that the aim was to not to arrest the Palestinians but kill them. “Our message to those who harm us and those trying to harm us is that it may take a day, a week or a month, but be sure that we’ll settle the score with you,” he said. “It doesn’t matter where you try to hide, we’ll find you. Whoever harms us forfeits his life.”
Opposition National Unity party leader Benny Gantz denounced Netanyahu for his weak leadership, while boasting about the previous “government of change” when he headed the defence ministry in relation to the Palestinians and Gaza. His remarks underscore that the self-proclaimed leaders of the social protests opposing Netanyahu’s judicial coup have no essential differences with Israel’s far right government.
The Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories remain under savage military repression and brazen vigilante and settler violence—all upheld by Israel’s Supreme Court. It is impossible to defend democratic rights for Jewish Israelis at the same time as defending military dictatorship in the West Bank and Gaza.
