China’s second wave of COVID infections, deaths, Long COVID, and government lies: Conclusion

Lily Zhao & Evan Blake

Criminal silence from the corporate media and pseudo-left

The mass suffering and deaths from China’s second COVID-19 wave has been met with virtually complete silence in the corporate media internationally. Even in the regional press in China and throughout East Asia, outside of a handful of local media outlets reporting on Dr. Zhong Nanshan’s projection of 65 million weekly infections by the end of June, there has been no coverage of this catastrophe.

The South China Morning Post published two brief reports in June that simply repeated the official monthly figures from the Chinese CDC, which vastly underestimated the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths. These articles also parroted the lies and deliberate misinformation from health care officials downplaying the scope and impact of the current wave.

One of the only recent articles on COVID-19 in China by the Western corporate media was published on June 6 in the Washington Post titled “China abandoned ‘zero covid.’ But some don’t want to leave it behind.” The article maligns China’s Zero-COVID policy and people who continue to adhere to strict measures to protect themselves, while drastically minimizing the impact of China’s second COVID-19 wave, as well as its first. Nowhere do the words “death” or “Long COVID” even appear.

The Post interviews a handful of people, whom they refer to as “zero covid holdouts,” including Gugu, who “wears a face mask outside.” While noting that Gugu has diabetes and high blood pressure, so she “felt safe under zero covid,” the Post slanders this policy that once protected people with underlying conditions like Gugu as “China’s notoriously strict approach to keeping the virus out.”

Another person interviewed in the same article, Lin Yiwu, is concerned about the consequences of multiple reinfections, which will be hard to avoid under current circumstances. He said, “If possible, avoid catching it at all. Delay—the later you get it the better. And as much as possible, reduce the number of times you catch it. Delay, reduce and avoid.”

Lin is part of an online community formed by like-minded people where they share “tips on how to build an air purifier at home or what face masks are more breathable.”

The Washington Post attempts to present these people who remain careful about COVID-19 as crazy and refers to them as “evidence of the long shadow that the zero-covid approach still casts on China.” However, this vilification cannot cover up the existing and growing social concerns over the prospect of unending waves of the pandemic.

Even more damning than the silence of the corporate media is that of the international pseudo-left organizations, which claim to be socialist or in some cases even Trotskyist. Not a word has been said about the deepening social disaster in China by any of these political tendencies, all of which had advocated for the lifting of Zero-COVID.

These include but are not limited to Socialist Alternative, La Izquierda Diario, the International Marxist Tendency, International Viewpoint, Socialist Appeal, Committee for a Workers’ International and Jacobin. A browse through these organizations’ websites reveals that most of their coverage on the COVID-19 pandemic stopped altogether in January.

For over two years prior to the lifting of Zero-COVID in China, virtually every pseudo-left tendency continuously denounced the Zero-COVID policy as “draconian” and demanded that it be lifted immediately. In late November 2022, these tendencies hailed the “white paper” protests, a series of small, choreographed anti-Zero-COVID protests at universities and cities across China, which were seized upon by the CCP to fully scrap Zero-COVID on December 7, 2022.

Now that China has joined the rest of the world in the horrific “forever COVID” policy of repeated waves of mass infection, death and debilitation, all these pseudo-left tendencies have gone silent about their complicity in this public health disaster.

The real political orientation of the pseudo-left stands thoroughly exposed. In no way do they speak for or represent the interests of the working class. Rather, they give voice to the individualist and self-centered politics of the affluent middle class, who largely view anti-COVID public health measures as interruptions to their lifestyles.

Conclusion

Contrary to the depictions of Zero-COVID as oppressive and widely resented, it was understood within broad sections of the Chinese population that these measures, despite their inconvenience and sometimes bureaucratic excesses, were necessary to protect their health and lives. In a poll conducted just prior to the lifting of Zero-COVID in China, only 11.9 percent of the population supported “large-scale adjustment” to the policy.

Even today, when almost all public health measures have been revoked, a section of the population that sees the real danger of the virus and used to actively support Zero-COVID measures still strives to protect themselves through strict infection control measures. They are joined by millions of people globally who continue to shield themselves from COVID-19 to the greatest extent possible through indoor masking in public places, limiting social contact, testing and other measures.

At the same time, the individual struggles of these “Zero-COVID holdouts” underscore the impossibility of combating a global pandemic on an individual basis without any public health infrastructure or global coordination. Fundamentally, the pandemic can only be stopped through the building of a mass movement of the international working class, in unity with principled scientists, fighting for a global elimination strategy.

The necessity for this strategy was underscored in a significant interview conducted by the World Socialist Web Site last week with COVID-19 researcher Arijit Chakravarty, whose team at Fractal Therapeutics has produced among the most far-sighted and critical papers throughout the pandemic.

In the interview, Chakravarty warned of the immense dangers of letting COVID-19 spread completely unchecked, which increases the likelihood that a far more dangerous variant will evolve. He stated:

I can’t predict the outcome of the next wave. I can’t predict the outcome of the next five waves. But, at the rate that we are going, a prediction can be made with a high degree of certainty that something bad will happen sooner than later along these lines. Keep this pandemic running for another five years, and you’ll face a debacle on a scale that you haven’t yet seen. That’s a given.

Commenting on the ending of the Public Health Emergency declaration by the World Health Organization last month and the false claims that “the pandemic is over”—which he characterized as “Orwellian Newspeak”—Chakravarty said that global society now has nothing in place to protect against a more dangerous variant. He stressed:

In that kind of reactive strategy what will happen is billions will be infected before we realize something is wrong. And that’s too late to do anything about it. So not only is the pandemic very much not over, but by creating the impression that the pandemic is over in the face of rampant viral spread and continuing rapid viral evolution, we are essentially sticking our chin out and asking the virus to do its worst.

Chakravarty is one of the best-informed scientists on the pandemic, and his warnings must be heeded. The complete scrapping of Zero-COVID in China and global adoption of a “forever COVID” policy is only accelerating the process of viral evolution. The coronavirus now has a home among 8 billion people throughout the world in which it will continue to mutate and evolve.

The experience of the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically altered global society, exacerbating the preexisting contradictions of world capitalism and exposing the bankruptcy of this social system in the eyes of masses of workers. It has accelerated the eruption of a new imperialist redivision of the world through the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, while at the same time propelling the working class into struggle on every continent.

The same process is now taking place in Chinese society, which confronts the horrific reality of perpetual waves of mass infection, death and Long COVID and the growing threat of military conflict with US imperialism. It is essential that the Chinese working class orient to its international brothers and sisters and initiate a global struggle to stop the pandemic, as well as the escalating danger of a nuclear World War III, climate change and other existential threats confronting mankind.

US-EU move forward in anti-Chinese critical mineral supply chain agreement

Gabriel Black

Bystrinsky Mining and Concentration Plant, located in the Trans-Baikal Territory. [Photo: Andrey Kuzmin]

The United States and the European Union announced Thursday that they had reached the initial stages of an agreement aimed at establishing a new international supply chain for critical minerals. The purpose of this Critical Minerals Agreement (CMA) is to economically prepare for the escalation of the US-led drive to cripple and dominate China.

Over the last two years, the US and the EU have launched a series of measures to encourage the production of so-called critical minerals. Critical minerals refer to several dozen nonferrous metals that are essential to many aspects of modern production, including batteries, electronics, and advanced weaponry.

Demand for some of these minerals, for example, lithium, is expected to grow by as much as 42 times in the next decade. This is being driven by, among other things, booming sales for electric vehicles (EVs).

The supply chains, however, for critical minerals are dominated by Chinese companies.

Facing lackluster domestic oil production and an increasingly expensive and volatile global oil market outside of its control, China made a strategic bet almost two decades ago to develop a domestic EV supply chain. In order to do so, several Chinese companies emerged in the 2000s that excelled at battery production and the critical minerals necessary to produce them. This, and the turning of China into the world’s sweatshop, have caused critical mineral supply chains to be largely controlled by Chinese companies.

As the US prepares for war with China, and leads or cajoles its European allies to join, securing new critical mineral supply chains, as well as battery production, is vital to these military-economic preparations.

The new US-EU CMA lays the groundwork for how the US and the EU will begin to cooperate with each other on creating these new mineral and EV supply chains, while at the same time reducing the chances that they harm each other’s economies in the process. It follows a similar agreement between the US and Australia signed in May.

For months, European lawmakers and car company executives have been upset about the impacts of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

While the act was not seriously aimed at addressing climate change—and, in fact, provided a major boon for the fossil fuel industry—it did create a $7,500 tax rebate for EVs with a majority of their mineral content made in the US or one of its free trade partners. This significant tax bonus was seen by European car companies as a potentially devastating measure that would prevent the competition of European EVs in the US.

The new EU-US CMA is still being worked out. What has been agreed to, following talks at the G7 and in Sweden last month, is an initial framework for collaboration between the US and the EU on critical minerals.

This initial framework contains two core aspects.

First, the US has agreed to make an exception for the EU in terms of the IRA, therefore giving European critical mineral production the same status as American production. Effectively this means that EVs and batteries made with American and European critical minerals will receive a massive $7,500 rebate, but companies that rely more on Chinese sources will not. (Because Chinese companies are so widespread in this sector, the IRA only stipulates that at least half of the mineral content should come from the US or an allied country.)

Second, the US and EU have agreed to begin developing a series of cooperative measures aimed at improving the “sustainability,” “equity,” “environmental protection,” and “labor rights” of critical mineral production.

The true purpose of this language is to cloak the construction of an anti-China supply chain in progressive terms.

“Sustainability” and “labor rights” are not the real concerns of the major capitalist governments, whose industries and militaries pollute and maim on a daily basis. Rather, as they construct their new supply chains with the world’s largest, most advanced mining companies, they will use these claims to drive a wedge between “good” critical minerals—from the US and its allies—and “bad” minerals from China.

The US-EU agreement builds upon existing EU and US agreements, including the Net Zero Industry Act (EU), the Critical Raw Material Act (EU), the CHIPS Act (US) and the Inflation Reduction Act (US), as well as the expanded use of the US’s wartime Defense Production Act. Collectively these are funneling hundreds of billions of dollars towards the development of critical mineral production controlled by the US and the EU.

While the agreement suggests a new period of cooperation between the EU and the US on these issues, it should not be assumed that the tensions between these two blocks have subsided.

In Germany, in particular, there is a high degree of dependency on the Chinese consumer market for the selling of its cars. BMW, for example, sells a third of its cars in China. As the US intensifies its economic and military ensnarement of China, the position of German capital in the country may be disrupted.

This is one of many potential rifts between the ruling class of the US and sections of the European bourgeoisie. As nationalist protectionist measures grow, and all pretenses of supporting the “free market” are abandoned, conflicts between the major imperialist powers are bound to rise and fracture the US-led imperialist world.

Within the borders of Europe there are preparations underway for critical mineral production. However, it is unlikely that production within European borders will significantly change in the next five to 10 years.

Last week, Norway announced that it would open up a massive underwater region in the Arctic to mining. The size of the area it is opening up is equivalent to the size of Germany. However, the mining would be of a highly experimental character, operating at depths up to 4,000 meters. The minerals beneath the floor bed include cobalt, nickel and copper. But the feasibility and affordability of this potential zone of extraction remains to be seen.

Neighboring Sweden previously announced the find of the largest rare earth deposits in the EU. Now, LKAB, the Swedish company overseeing the development of a new mine to extract these minerals, says the deposit is a quarter larger than they thought.

More importantly, Russia and Ukraine have some of the most substantial reserves of critical minerals in Europe, making the outcome of the NATO-Russia war of key importance for the development of a US-led conflict against China.

The problem, however, with many of these European deposits, including Ukraine’s lithium, Norway’s deep-sea mining, and Sweden’s rare earth find, is that they are all in relatively early stages of speculative exploration. In contrast, the production chains in Russia, Indonesia, Chile, China, Australia and the Congo are proven, long-established sites of profitable extraction.

As in all resource extraction, the feasibility of extracting a resource—the time it takes to develop it, how much is actually there, and the profitability of the operation—cannot be fully understood before extraction. This is particularly the case with Norway’s deep-sea mining, an extreme form of production that will not easily compete with cheaper, easier sources elsewhere. Sweden’s rare earth deposits, for example, are thought to take a minimum of 10 years to develop.

This difficulty in starting new mines for these operations, placed alongside the expected growth in demand for these minerals, further underscores the feverish hunt by the US and the EU to develop these resources.

Australian Senate passes Voice referendum bill amid falling public support

Mike Head

The Australian Senate yesterday passed, by 52 votes to 19, the Albanese Labor government’s legislation to hold a referendum, sometime this year, to entrench in the country’s 1901 Constitution an indigenous Voice, an advisory body, to “make representations” to parliament and the executive government.

Australian PM Anthony Albanese (centre with red tie) with Voice Working Group in Canberra, 23 March 2023.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has staked his personal political position, and that of his government, on securing a “yes” vote, but polling indicates increasingly that the referendum is likely to fail.

Now that the bill has passed both houses of parliament, the government must set a referendum date, no sooner than two months away and no later than six months. According to media reports, Albanese will probably set the date for mid-October. Yet there are growing doubts that a “yes” vote will reach the constitutionally necessary majority of voters, and separate majorities in four of the six Australian states.

At a media conference after the Senate vote, Albanese vowed to be front and centre in the referendum campaign, saying he and his government were “all in.” At the same time, he and other government leaders sought to boost the flagging support for the proposal by downplaying the Voice plan itself. They presented the referendum as simply one about recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Constitution for the first time.

Albanese and Labor ministers declared they had “confidence” and “faith” that the Australian people would vote “yes.” But the government has shifted its ground, to avoid referring to the Voice as much as possible. That is because the more people learn about this proposed unelected institution at the heart of the existing political order, the more they distrust it.

The Voice has become more widely seen, including among ordinary indigenous people, as an elite project, backed by big business and other establishment voices, that will do nothing to address the appalling conditions of most indigenous people, whether in remote communities, regional towns or working-class suburbs of the major cities.

In fact, the Voice will further integrate a privileged indigenous layer of CEOs, entrepreneurs and senior academics into the capitalist political establishment, which is presiding over a deepening cost-of-living crisis and declining conditions of the working class as a whole. Soaring prices, home mortgage payments and rents are having a devastating impact on all working-class households, aggravated by sharply falling real wages, staff shortages and intolerable workloads.

Media polls have shown a decline in support for the Voice, down below 50 percent, over the past year since Albanese first announced the referendum plan in his May 2022 election victory speech. A defeat would be a blow to the government. Albanese has made the Voice absolutely central to Labor’s agenda, which consists of escalating war preparations against China, delivering income tax cuts for the wealthy, axing all remaining COVID-19 safety measures and further cutting public health and education spending.

Yesterday, most Liberal Party senators joined hands with their Labor and Greens counterparts, as well as three crossbench senators, to vote for the bill. But many Liberals, including party leader Peter Dutton, are calling for a “no” vote, which is the party’s official position. Several Liberals voted against the bill, in order to participate in writing the “no” case in the official referendum pamphlet to be mailed out across the country. Also voting against were the rural-based Nationals, the far-right Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and Lidia Thorpe, a former Greens, now independent, indigenous senator who opposes the Voice from a black nationalist standpoint.

The Labor government is systematically burying all reference to a report by Marcia Langton and Tom Calma, two prominent indigenous figures, setting out the proposed structure of the Voice. That is because the report outlines plans for an unelected 24-member body, chosen by the existing bodies and vested interests, such as land councils and government-funded service providers, that have presided over the social misery suffered by most indigenous people, augmented by a growing number of indigenous business owners.

Likewise, the multi-million dollar corporate-funded “yes” advertising campaign does not even mention the Voice. Instead, it makes a vague reference to giving indigenous people “a real say” and “recognition” in the Constitution.

At the media conference, Albanese again presented a “yes” vote as an act of national patriotism. “It will be a moment of national unity, a chance to make our nation even greater,” he insisted. It was a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to lift our great nation even higher.”

That message is part of the government’s efforts to manufacture a new image of national unity, above all for war purposes, under conditions of ever-widening social inequality. It is connected to its call, issued in its Defence Strategic Review in March, for an “all of nation” effort to transform the economy into one prepared for war, including by pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into military weaponry, such as AUKUS nuclear-powered attack submarines and long-range missiles.

Albanese also asserted that the Voice referendum was “something that has not arisen in Canberra.” It was “the culmination of years of discussion, consultation and patient hard work by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people themselves.” That is utterly false. Far from arising from a grassroots movement, it originated from the very top—a 2015 meeting between selected indigenous leaders and then-Liberal Prime Minister Tony Abbott at his official Sydney harbourside residence.

As documented in a book by two central advocates of the Voice scheme, Megan Davis, an Aboriginal law professor, and fellow law professor George Williams, rather than a movement from below, the Voice project originated as, and remains, a bid by members of an indigenous elite, including Davis and right-wing lawyer Noel Pearson, to head off anger and disaffection among ordinary indigenous people, especially after Abbott’s government slashed funding for indigenous services.

Today, most of all, the Voice plan seeks to prevent that ongoing discontent from linking up to the growing unrest throughout the working class as a whole, as workers and their families suffer the greatest cuts to their living conditions since World War II.

Albanese further claimed that “recognition of this continent’s first people in our nation’s constitution” would mean “making concrete practical change that makes a difference to people’s lives.” He has previously ruled out, however, extra funding to redress the shocking social conditions, including in remote settlements and town camps denied basic facilities.

As with previous initiatives, such as Labor’s 2008 parliamentary apology to the Indigenous Stolen Generations who were forcibly removed from their parents, the Voice will provide a supposedly progressive gloss over a stepped-up onslaught on welfare and other social rights of working people as a whole.

And the health, housing, education and living conditions of the majority of indigenous people, as one of the most vulnerable sections of the working class, will continue to decline, as they have throughout the official “Closing the Gap” program since the 2008 apology.

Moreover, “recognition” in the colonial-era 1901 Constitution means strengthening the very capitalist state apparatus and socio-economic order that has been responsible for the more than two centuries of massacres, dispossession, separations and suppression inflicted on the indigenous population.

Speaking against the referendum bill during the final debate in the Senate, Thorpe declared it was “happy assimilation day.” An advocate of treaties between Australian governments and indigenous groups, she denounced the Constitution as “an illegal document.” She declared that “sovereignty was never ceded” by indigenous people and this sovereignty would mean dissolving “the colonial, violent institution that we’re all in right now.”

Behind this seemingly radical rhetoric, Thorpe demanded a place “at the table” for the “black sovereignty movement” and “real power.” This is basically a call for greater privileges and resources for the indigenous elites along the lines of the Treaty of Waitangi process in New Zealand. There, hundreds of millions of dollars have been distributed to Māori tribal corporations, fostering a wealthy layer of Māori entrepreneurs, politicians, lawyers, academics and bureaucrats, at the expense of Māori workers, one of the most oppressed sections of the New Zealand working class.

Ideologically, Thorpe and those backing the Voice share a similar outlook. Both are proponents of Aboriginal identity politics, which insists that race, not class, is the fundamental division in society. While racism certainly exists, and is fostered by the ruling class to seek to divide workers along racial lines, the source of the oppression of the indigenous people, as it is with the rest of the working class, is the capitalist private ownership of society’s resources—relations that Thorpe and the other identity politics representatives defend.

Supreme Court Upholds Law Protecting Native American Children

Kirsten Matoy Carlson

The Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act, a 1978 law enacted to protect Native American children in the U.S. and strengthen their families, in a June 15, 2023, ruling. Tribal leaders praised the decision as upholding the basic constitutional principles governing the relationships among Native nations and the federal government.

Congress originally passed the Indian Child Welfare Act in response to requests from tribal leaders, and other advocates for Native Americans, to stop state governments from removing an alarming number of Native children from their families. Before the law took effect, state social welfare agencies were removing between 25% and 35% of all Native American children, and 90% of those removed were sent to be raised by non-Native families.

The Indian Child Welfare Act recognizes the government-to-government relationship Native American nations have with the United States. It covers certain child placements and sets uniform standards for state and tribal courts to follow when they decide American Indian child welfare cases. These standards include provisions that ensure that tribal governments are aware of and can have a say in the placement of Native American children. They aim to reduce the trauma of family and tribal separation by instructing courts to make active efforts to keep families together.

In 2017, the state of Texas and non-Natives seeking to adopt or foster Native American children challenged provisions of the law. They argued that the law exceeds Congress’ constitutional powers, impermissibly tells state officials what to do, and illegally discriminates against non-American Indians.

Writing for a 7-2 majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote, “the bottom line is that we reject all of the petitioners’ challenges to the statute.”

As a result of the ruling, Native nations’ most valuable resource – their children – will continue to gain the benefits of growing up knowing their own Indigenous cultures and communities.

Court and Congress diverge

As my research has shown, Congress and the Supreme Court have increasingly diverged in how they view the laws that relate to Native American tribes.

The court has not consistently deferred to Congress but rather has increasingly claimed the power to be the final arbitrator of American Indian policy. In doing so, it has undermined congressional policies meant to foster tribal governance and protect tribal lands and bodies.

The petitioners in the current case, Haaland v. Brackeen, seized on this trend. They questioned Congress’ ability to enact laws affecting tribal governments and their citizens. They argued that Congress lacked the constitutional authority to enact the Indian Child Welfare Act.

From my perspective as an expert in federal Native American law, the court’s decision is significant because the court affirmed Congress’ constitutional power over American Indian affairs.

Congress’ role in Native American affairs

The majority of the justices responded to the petitioners’ arguments by reiterating the court’s longstanding characterization of Congress’ power over American Indian affairs as “plenary and exclusive.”

Writing for the majority, Barrett stated, “Congress’s power to legislate with respect to Indians is well-established and broad. Consistent with that breadth, we have not doubted Congress’s ability to legislate across a wide range of areas, including criminal law, domestic violence, employment, property, tax, and trade.”

Barrett relied on earlier cases to find that Congress’ power over American Indian affairs comes from and remains limited by the U.S. Constitution. “We reiterate that Congress’s authority to legislate with respect to Indians is not unbounded,” she wrote.

The majority concluded, “If there are arguments that [the act] exceeds Congress’s authority as our precedent stands today, petitioners do not make them.”

Open questions remain

The majority reaffirmed Congress’ broad authority over Native American affairs but left other questions unresolved.

The Texas attorney general and the other litigants claimed that the Indian Child Welfare Act discriminates against non-Native Americans by making it harder for them to adopt Native children. The law instructs courts to place children with their relatives – either Native or non-Native, someone in their tribe, or an American Indian family if possible.

The litigants said this preference for placement with an Native family is racial and violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution, which requires government policies to be racially neutral. Tribal nations counter that federal laws and previous court decisions have defined Native status as a political, not racial, designation. The Court did not deal with this claim.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote separately to emphasize the seriousness of these claims. He stated, “[t]he equal protection issue remains undecided.”

Kavanaugh’s words may invite future challenges to the Indian Child Welfare Act and to the political status of American Indians as citizens of tribal governments.

In the meantime, the court’s decision ensures that Native children will continue to experience the social and health benefits of being raised in their tribal cultures.

More importantly, the court’s decision acknowledges the vital, constitutional role that Congress plays in Native American affairs and defers to a congressional policy protective of Native nations and their people.

Lineages of Lies and British Politics

Bhabani Shankar Nayak

The hundred and six pages Partygate inquiry report, conducted by the Privileges Committee of the British Parliament, not only highlights the evident character of Boris Johnson as a habitual liar but also exposes the deceptive political strategies employed by the Tories. The timing of the report’s release is part of a broader strategy by conservative spin doctors to construct a convenient exculpatory narrative, allowing both past and current Tory Prime Ministers to evade accountability for their utter failures while diverting public attention. The Conservative Party has been successful in diverting public scrutiny for the past fourteen years, employing customary tactics that have shielded five of its Prime Ministers from public and parliamentary scrutiny. Boris Johnson is not the first liar in Tory politics, nor will he be the last in British politics. It is customary for both the ruling classes and non-ruling elites in British politics to propagate lies to serve their own interests. Throughout history, political integrity has been foreign to the British ruling classes. The Partygate report may unveil the truth, but ironically, truth itself becomes a casualty, where Tories escape accountability and outsource the blames on others. Will Boris Johnson be remembered as the first liar in British politics? And will he be the last?

Lies in British politics are not coincidental; they are deeply ingrained. Deception and misleading both the Parliament and the public have become customary practices in modern British politics. Manipulating public opinion through diversionary tactics has become a weapon for gaining and retaining power. False narratives and political expediency lie at the core of modern British politics, spanning from Churchill to Sunak.

The Tory-led “EU Referendum” project, for instance, was built upon a foundation of lies. Similarly, the Labour Party, under Tony Blair, infamously presented the “dodgy dossier” that served as a pretext for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, also based on a pack of lies. The Costs of War Project report by Brown University and the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs revealed the devastating toll of the Iraq war from March 2003 to October 2018, with an estimated 268,000 to 295,000 people killed in violence, including 182,272 to 204,575 civilians according to Iraq Body Count’s figures. Tony Blair’s lies resulted in the loss of millions of Iraqi lives. The consequences were dire, not only in terms of human lives but also in financial terms. British taxpayers were burdened with a staggering £8.4 billion, and numerous British and American soldiers paid the ultimate price for the lies perpetuated by war criminals like Tony Blair and George Bush. The mistakes made by Blair and his counterparts were not mere errors but deliberate falsehoods that led to catastrophic consequences. The cost in terms of lives lost and resources squandered cannot be understated, and it is a painful reminder of the grave impact that lies and deception can have on the world.

The vilification campaign against former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is yet another example of the pervasive use of lies in British politics. Corbyn’s unwavering honesty and integrity in both public and private life became a disqualification in the eyes of the British political establishment. The ruling classes orchestrated his defeat, but they were unsuccessful in tarnishing Corbyn’s reputation for honesty and integrity. Despite enduring relentless vilification, Corbyn continues to hold a prominent position in British politics. The truth has a remarkable resilience throughout history, and no matter how much reactionary propaganda is employed, it cannot conceal the everyday realities of politics in Britain. Corbyn’s steadfastness in the face of such attacks serves as a testament to the enduring power of truth. While the British ruling classes may have sought to undermine Corbyn, they have failed to extinguish the genuine integrity that he embodies.

The literal normalisation and naturalisation of Kiplingian lies have played a role in shaping and domesticating everyday lives in Britain. The persistence of otherness in British politics is evident as the current Tory Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, leads efforts to target establishments such as restaurants, car washes, nail bars, barber shops, and convenience stores in order to apprehend so-called illegal immigrants, many of whom are among the poor and homeless. It is important to question who these individuals labelled as illegal immigrants truly are, why they have come to Britain, and the circumstances that compelled them to leave their loved ones and homes behind.

The lives and livelihoods of people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America have been devastated by colonial and neo-colonial wars, as well as neoliberal economic policies. These individuals have been sold fraudulent dreams of a better life in Britain and America, prompting them to embark on perilous journeys across treacherous waters and roads. Tragically, their paths often lead them to death, destitution, or encounters with figures like Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who acts as a heartless immigration officer.

Rishi Sunak’s temporary role as an immigration officer is a part of a juvenile and deceptive practice employed to divert attention from his party’s failures and shield himself from public scrutiny. The racist political tactics rooted in colonial discourse on migration form the core of the lies perpetuated by the British ruling class. Blaming refugees and illegal immigrants for health and homelessness crises allows the Tories to find respite for their own underfunding and austerity measures while evading accountability. These lies and misleading narratives provide a smokescreen for the Tory government’s own failures and create a buffer against public scrutiny. It is crucial to challenge and expose the deceitful practices that perpetuate injustice and divert attention from the real issues at hand.

The history of Pax Britannia is indeed tainted by a legacy of lies, dishonesty, death, destitution, robbery, looting, scandals, and deceptive practices perpetrated by the British colonial empire. The concept of “civility” and the so-called “civilizing” missions of British colonialism served as a grand deceit to exploit people and plunder their resources. The notion of colonial civility, in reality, meant endless murder, boundless exploitation, and the enslavement of indigenous populations in their own lands. The absence of accountability defined the scandals of the British empire, allowing its atrocities to go unpunished.

The relationship between lies and British politics is deeply entrenched in history, with the ruling classes weaving deception into the very fabric of political discourse in modern Britain. Lies, misinformation, and deceptive political strategies serve to undermine democracy and weaken citizenship by sowing disillusionment among the masses. They provide a means for the ruling and non-ruling elites to evade public scrutiny and democratic accountability. The erosion of trust, accountability, and the subversion of democratic processes are central to the growth of a culture of depoliticisation, which aligns with the requirements of capitalism to shield itself from democratic scrutiny.

Boris Johnson represents the epitome of deceptive politics in contemporary Britain, where the ruling class undermines democracy and democratic practices to subjugate its citizens through the proliferation of lies. The purpose is to domesticate the population and maintain control in the name of nationalism based on white supremacy.

Working class politics offers an alternative to combat the pervasive culture of deceptive mainstream politics in Britain and beyond. Grounded in the reflections on the everyday realities of both material and non-material aspects of people’s lives, working class politics has the potential to drive transformative change in society along a progressive trajectory that aligns with the needs and aspirations of the masses. Working class politics is rooted in an understanding of the mosaic of truth and reality, acknowledging the historical struggles of the working class against various forms of capitalist deception. Throughout history, these struggles have highlighted the need for alternatives that challenge the status quo and address the systemic injustices perpetuated by deceptive political practices by the ruling classes. The resurgence of working-class alternatives is evident, and it is crucial for society to open its doors and windows to embrace the working-class political struggles. By doing so, we can strive towards a peaceful and prosperous society that is founded on truth and authenticity, moving away from the manipulative tactics of deceptive politics. Embracing working class politics provides an opportunity to prioritise the well-being and aspirations of the majority, fostering a more equitable and just society for all.

Guatemalan government launches witch-hunt against journalists, judges and prosecutors

Andrea Lobo

Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora Marroquín, internationally renowned for exposing corruption and human rights violations, was sentenced last Wednesday to six years in prison and a US$38,000 penalty for allegedly laundering money. 

Giammattei welcomes US Vice President Kamala Harris, June 7, 2021 [Photo: @GuatemalaGob]

The indictment marks the culmination of a politically motivated campaign by the far-right government of President Alejandro Giammattei against Zamora and the newspaper he founded and led, elPeriódico, which was forced to permanently shut down last month. 

This witch-hunt and the complicit silence by US imperialism represent a stark warning. Four decades after the brutal US-backed junta that killed over 200,000 people, the Guatemalan ruling elite is dispensing with its democratic trappings and turning again to the methods of dictatorship and fascism. 

Zamora was jailed in July 2022, only five days after elPeriódico published its latest corruption allegations against Giammattei. The police raided the headquarters of what was the main investigative newspaper in the country, temporarily detained numerous other employees and froze its bank accounts. 

Zamora’s defense insisted that the $40,000 allegedly laundered were used for paying salaries and were donated by a businessperson who did not want to be openly associated with the paper for fear of reprisals. 

The journalist received a show trial. No concrete evidence was presented against him, and Zamora was denied the right to present his own evidence and witnesses. He also had to switch lawyers eight times, with four being prosecuted themselves for their participation in the case and others facing various difficulties. His final lawyer was given just 12 hours before the process began. 

His lawyers were also threatened by the fascist Foundation against Terrorism, which was created in 2013 to defend military officials accused of human rights abuses. Ironically, one of the group’s first actions was to publish ads in elPeriódico protesting the conviction against the military dictator José Efráin Ríos Montt (1982-83) for carrying out a genocide against Mayans. Now it has filed dozens of lawsuits against those investigating corruption cases. 

On Wednesday, Zamora declared, “We live in a dictatorship. A veiled, multi-party, tyrannical dictatorship.” He also explained to reporters: “I have a son in exile with an arrest warrant and, luckily, my wife left the country last night because I fear that they’ll capture her.”

His son described to BBC the long history of reprisals for Zamora’s work, including an attempted murder with grenades in 1996, a raid by armed gangsters who kept the family hostage for hours while mock executing Zamora in 2003, a kidnapping in 2008, a beating in 2013, and numerous death threats. 

Highlighting the vindictive character of the case, prosecutors were demanding a 40-year sentence over blackmail and influence peddling charges, which were rejected by the court. 

Several prominent journalists have faced similar trumped-up charges of money laundering and “criminal association,” as well as raids and harassment by the police and the military under Giammattei, and at least half-a-dozen have been compelled to leave the country. 

These attacks against the press are part of a broader crackdown against journalists, judges and prosecutors in charge of investigating vast networks of corruption of politicians and leading businesspeople. These cases were launched under the aegis, at least initially, of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG). 

At least two dozen judges and prosecutors have been compelled to leave the country—most prominently Miguel Ángel Gálvez, who sent Ríos Montt to trial for genocide, sentenced former President Otto Pérez Molina for corruption and was handling a case against military officials for torturing and massacring 175 left-wing professionals and students. Gálvez has stressed that threats against him come from the military leadership, and that it is again taking over each government department as in the 1980s. 

The CICIG, several officials and news publications were being sponsored by the US government, which was using select corruption cases as one of its weapons to keep the local bourgeoisie and state aligned with US interests. The case against Otto Pérez Molina triggered mass protests, which were ultimately channeled behind support for the CICIG.

However, since the actor-turned-President Jimmy Morales dissolved the CICIG in 2019 to halt investigations against him, the tables turned, and the prosecutors became the persecuted. The move was backed by the Trump administration, after the US Congress had virtually halted funding for the “anti-corruption” campaign.

Now, as US imperialism has done countless times, the Biden administration has effectively endorsed the repression of the forces it was sponsoring. The White House has limited its response to Giammattei’s crackdown to placing the General Prosecutor María Consuelo Porras, the leader of the Foundation against Terrorism, Ricardo Méndez Ruiz and several other officials on a list of “Corrupt and Undemocratic Actors.”  

The US government has continued handing millions in military aid to Guatemala and working closely with the Guatemalan security forces.

In a recent interview with El Faro, the now exiled judge Gálvez explained that meetings with US officials in Washington led him to conclude that “the United States will not dare to take tougher action [against Giammattei].” He added: “The US is running out of allies in Central America and doesn’t want to lose Guatemala… there is the issue of China and Russia. The stage is complex, and they fear that, if they take a firmer decision, Guatemala will lean on someone else.” 

The regional bourgeoisies have tried use their current or potential ties with China, as well as Washington’s demands to detain migrants traveling north, to negotiate a greater share of the profits from the exploitation of local workers and natural resources for themselves. But any tussle with imperialism rests on the ability of the weak ruling elites to suppress the class struggle amid rampant inequality and poverty. 

Since 2018, there have been repeated waves of mass protests and general strikes across Latin America and internationally that represent the greatest threat to both US imperialism and its local client elites. In November 2020, Giammattei responded with police-state repression to major protests against social austerity, which were triggered by the lack of anti-COVID protections and the indifferent response to those losing their livelihoods to the pandemic, droughts and tropical storms and hurricanes, whose intensity and frequency have increased as a result of climate change. 

Giammattei then agreed to the demands by the Trump and Biden administrations to deploy thousands of troops along its borders to detain and return migrants. In return, the Biden administration has repeatedly embraced the Giammattei administration. 

Now, the presidential elections, which will take place next Sunday, have seen four candidates disqualified, including the right-wing TikToker Carlos Pineda, who was leading the polls. The top candidates have all based their campaigns on promises of iron-fist tactics against gangs, including building up the security forces and building mega-prisons, largely imitating El Salvador’s authoritarian President Nayib Bukele.

Most strikingly, the top candidate for the traditional right-wing parties will be Zury Ríos, the daughter of fascist military dictator Efraín Ríos Montt. She has argued that “The military had every right to execute the necessary actions” under her father and “took care of protecting the state.” She has also expressed admiration for Bukele, who has imprisoned more than 1 percent of the population and established police-state rule across El Salvador.

Particularly since the dissolution of the USSR, US imperialism has been relying on military force, including endless wars and furthering its historic ties to the local military castes, to counter the accelerating erosion of its economic position vis-a-vis China. 

If Washington has decided to give a green light to the Guatemalan ruling elite’s attacks on journalists, judges and prosecutors, it is because it supports a turn to dictatorship and placing military officials trained and armed by the United States in control of the government, as it has done repeatedly in Guatemala and across Latin America throughout the last century, in pursuit of regional hegemony.

Kakhovka Dam explosion exacerbates social catastrophe facing the Ukrainian working class

Jason Melanovski

While the Ukrainian government continues its vaunted NATO-backed counter-offensive against Russian-held territory in the east at a horrific human toll, the explosion of the Kakhovka Dam, which occurred in the first 48 hours of the counter-offensive, is set to inflict huge consequences on the already catastrophic economic and social situation facing the Ukrainian working class.

Already, the collapse of the Kakhovka dam has led to a major ecological and humanitarian crisis. Within less than two weeks following the dam’s explosion at least 17 deaths have been reported, and thousands of local residents in both Ukrainian and Russian-held territory have been evacuated from their homes.

A local resident makes her way through a flooded road after the walls of the Kakhovka dam collapsed overnight, in Kherson, Ukraine, Tuesday, Jun 6, 2023. [AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka]

At least 35 people, including 7 children, are missing. Rescue efforts continue, but they have been complicated by the ongoing war.

In the Dnipropetrovsk region, 300,000 people are without clean drinking water and over a million could face water shortages according to the head of the regional council. The right-wing government of President Volodymyr Zelensky has allocated $4 million to provide alternate sources of water, a paltry sum compared to the billions currently being spent on sending Ukrainian soldiers to their deaths in the counter-offensive.

Over 150 tons of machine oil were swept into the Black Sea, which was already Europe’s most polluted sea. Large amounts of pesticides and fertilizers have been washed away and the risk of outbreaks of waterborne diseases such as cholera has greatly increased.

Anti-tank and amphibious mines were also washed away and will now pose a huge danger to civilians who encounter them even far away from the frontlines. Debris from the dam has been spotted as far away as in the city of Odessa on the Black Sea.

Aside from the immediate ecological and humanitarian disaster, the dam collapse has immense economic consequences for an already devastated Ukrainian economy. The Kakhovka dam played a central role in providing irrigation for farmland and hydroelectric power to important factories in the region.

Completed in 1956 as part of the Soviet Union’s development of hydroelectric power, it also created Ukraine’s second-largest freshwater reservoir and provided four separate provinces with water through a system of canals.

The dam’s primary role as an irrigation reservoir was essential to turning an area typically subject to regular droughts into Ukraine’s most productive agricultural region.

Vadym Dudka, an agronomist and CEO of Agroanaliz Ltd, an international agro-consulting company, told the Kyiv Independent that prior to the dam breach, the region contained 330,000 hectares of irrigated land and provided 80 percent of all vegetables in Ukraine as well as a large percentage of fruits and grapes. According to Dudka, 85 to 90 percent of the region’s fields were dedicated to corn and soybeans. Ukraine is one of the world’s largest exporters of both.

Over the previous year and a half, the war had already caused global food prices to skyrocket and the dam’s explosion will further accelerate global food inflation. In Ukraine itself, food prices rose 26 percent within the first year of the war and prices for basic items such fruits and vegetables have continued to rise over 20 percent compared to the previous year. Prices for eggs have increased nearly 130 percent.

As UN aid chief Martin Griffiths told the BBC in a recent interview, “This is a breadbasket—that whole area going down towards the Black Sea and Crimea is a breadbasket not only for Ukraine but also for the world. We’re in difficulties already on food security but food prices, I’m sure, are bound to increase.”

“It is almost inevitable that we are going to see huge, huge problems in harvesting and sowing for the next harvest. And so what we are going to see is a huge impact on global food security—that’s what’s going to happen,” Griffiths predicted.

Within the first year of the war alone, Ukraine’s agricultural sector already lost $4.3 billion according to the Kyiv School of Economics.

While the extent of the damage on the Russian side of the flooding is unclear, Monika Tothova, economist at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, told Al Jazeera that Ukraine’s harvest this year will almost certainly be a disaster.

Based on the satellite images and modeling of the flooding, “it is very likely this year’s harvest will be a complete loss, depending how long the water stays,” Tothova said.

The dam collapse has also forced the closure of a number of factories in the region while national unemployment is already shockingly high at 26 percent. This number does not include the nearly 8.5 million Ukrainians who fled abroad as a result of the NATO-backed war, nor the hundreds of thousands who have been drafted—willingly or not—into the Armed Forces.

The region around the Kakhovka dam is still a major steel-producing region and the reservoir’s water was used in manufacturing processes. Ukrainian steel companies Metinvest and ArcelorMittal had a number of factories in the region employing tens of thousands of workers. One day after the dam collapse, on June 7, ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel producer, which owns Ukraine’s largest steel factory, suspended crude and rolled steel production, while Metinvest was already operating at 35-45 percent capacity due to the war. 

In addition to the consequences of the flooding, both companies have lost a number of factories to Russian forces, including the massive Azovstal factory in Mariupol. Metinvest alone employed 37,000 workers in now Russian-controlled territory, and the war has effectively split in half a major productive industry.

Prior to the war, Ukraine provided a tenth of Europe’s steel imports, a fading remnant but still substantial sign of the industrial power that was concentrated in Ukraine during the Soviet Union. Overall Ukrainian steel production has fallen over 70 percent since the start of the war to 6.26 million tons.

Like the war as a whole, the collapse of such massive productive industries, with huge job losses and lives ruined, is ultimately a consequence of the destruction of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism by the Stalinist bureaucracy in 1991.

Rather than immediately pause the war to address the ecological and humanitarian crisis caused by the war, the Ukrainian ruling class with the backing of Western imperialism is driving its forces on an ever larger scale and with ever greater speed into mass slaughter.

Moreover, the loss of jobs caused by the flood will undoubtedly drive large numbers of Ukrainian workers into unemployment, where they will be subject to conscription in the war. A recent report in the Ukrainian news outlet Strana indicated that a desperate Zelensky government is now requiring Ukrainian men to register with the military in order to obtain a job. Thus, many are now torn between being unemployed and the risk of being handed a military summons and sent to the front.

As the WSWS has reported, despite the virtual ban on dissent and criticism of the war, widespread opposition exists among Ukrainian workers and youth who are bearing the brunt of the catastrophe unfolding around them.

Meanwhile, both Russia and Ukraine continue to accuse one another of intentionally destroying the Kakhovka dam. This week the Washington D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War reported that “flooding has deprived Russian forces of previously held positions in at least 12 settlements on the east (left) bank of the Dnipro River and has pushed Russian lines back as far as 10 kilometers in some areas.” If true, the dam collapse which occurred just as Ukraine began its counter-offensive might well have been the result of an act of sabotage by the Zelensky government.