Israel warns more to come after withdrawal from Jenin

Jean Shaoul

Israel Defence Forces (IDF) pulled out of the northern West Bank city of Jenin Wednesday morning, ending its two-day invasion and bombardment of the city and the densely populated refugee camp.

Itamar Yaar, a former deputy head of Israel’s National Security Council and a colonel in the reserves, insisted the withdrawal was not the end and threatened more action to come. “It doesn’t mean we’ve done what we’ve done, we’re out and that’s it,” he said. “The operation was relatively short and limited. That means we might see similar activities” that could take place in Jenin “even tomorrow.”

Palestinians walk on a destroyed road following two days of Israeli military raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, July 5, 2023 [AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed]

This threat echoed the earlier remarks of the IDF chief of central command and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It flows inexorably from the agenda of Netanyahu’s far-right coalition, which is committed to the annexation of the West Bank in defiance of international law—preferably “cleansed” of Palestinians or failing that, crowded into isolated and blockaded enclaves—in pursuit of its aim of establishing a Jewish Supremacist state in both Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. These fascistic forces have encouraged and incited their supporters to carry out vigilante attacks in the West Bank to terrorise and drive out the Palestinians, while demanding that the IDF take ever more aggressive action against the Palestinians.

The entire Jenin operation, planned over months and conducted with the full knowledge and consent of US imperialism—that never ceases to justify its own military aggression in the name of “humanitarian intervention”—was in flagrant violation of the international conventions on war and human rights outlawing military action against civilians.

The 1,000 plus troops, replete with massive firepower, had entered Jenin in armoured vehicles and bulldozers under cover of armed drones and helicopters. Their declared objective was to root out a few hundred Palestinian militants, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Lions’ Den, the Jenin Brigades, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and others that Israel designates as “terrorists,” and seize their arms and explosives. Israel’s security forces claimed that more than 50 shooting attacks have been carried out by militants from the Jenin area since the start of the year.

An IDF spokesperson insisted, “We didn’t come to conquer the refugee camp [in Jenin]. This isn’t an operation against the Palestinian Authority, it’s an operation against terror organizations in Jenin that are making the lives of the civilian population in Jenin miserable.” The operation would continue indefinitely, he added. “This will be a continuum of operations that aren’t necessarily limited in time throughout northern Samaria [the occupied West Bank], as intelligence and operational timing dictate.”

This was the pretext for soldiers to go on a planned rampage, ploughing up streets, destroying the utility networks, smashing up many of the refugee camp’s buildings—homes, residential buildings, medical facilities and mosques and destroying all the vehicles in their path—traumatizing the population and forcing around one quarter of the 14,000 residents of the refugee camp to flee their homes. They went on house-to-house searches, interrogated several hundred Palestinians of whom around 30 were detained for further questioning and seizing arms caches and explosives.

The IDF troops left behind whole areas of the city a war zone, with little or nothing for the fugitive families to return to—some 80 percent of the homes were damaged or destroyed—and no prospect of ever acquiring the financial and material resources to make good the damage as the Palestinians’ experience in Gaza has shown. This comes after decades of Israeli military control over Area C, some 60 percent of the West Bank, that has prevented the construction and rehabilitation of the water, sewerage, electricity and transport infrastructure, devastating the economy, wrecking livelihoods and causing untold suffering.

Israeli forces killed twelve Palestinians, including four minors. Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed eight as its fighters. Israel injured more than 100, of whom 20 are in a critical condition, preventing many of the wounded from receiving medical treatment. It brings the total number of West Bank Palestinians killed by Israeli forces to nearly 150, while several dozen more have been killed in Gaza.

So one-sided was this week’s operation that just one Israeli soldier was killed—and as the troops withdrew—which the IDF said this was likely due to “friendly fire.” The IDF admitted that there were few armed clashes with the militants because the 300 wanted gunmen had fled the area.

On Wednesday, the Palestinians held mass funeral processions for the dead, with angry crowds expelling Palestinian Authority officials who had come to pay their respects, denouncing them as “traitors” for doing nothing to protect them from Israel’s attack and calling their actions “shameful.” Militants in the besieged Palestinian enclave of Gaza fired five rockets towards southern Israel in a token show of solidarity with Jenin that were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome system.

On Thursday afternoon, a Palestinian shot dead an Israeli soldier near the West Bank settlement of Kedumim. Israeli security forces gave chase to a car driver and killed him. The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, the clerical group that controls Gaza, claimed him as a member and said his action was a response to Israel’s assault on Jenin.

On Thursday, the IDF carried out artillery strikes against southern Lebanon after an anti-tank guided missile fired from Lebanon exploded on the border fence close to the village of Ghajar that straddles the border. It comes amid rising tensions on the border. Last week, Hezbollah, the Lebanese clerical party allied with Iran that has provided vital support for President Bashar al-Assad during the 12-year long proxy war financed and supported by the Gulf States, Turkey and the CIA—and aimed at toppling his regime—said it shot down an Israeli drone flying over a village in southern Lebanon.

Israeli jets also carried out airstrikes against targets near the Syrian capital of Damascus on Wednesday night, the second Israeli strike on Syria this week, likely targeting warehouses storing “advanced Iranian weapons,” according to a report on the Ynet news site. The strikes came as Syria and Russia were holding joint air exercises, scheduled to last for several days, focusing “on joint air, air defense and electronic warfare operations to counter airstrikes,” according to the Russian military.

Early on Sunday, the IDF said that its fighter jets had struck a Syrian air defense battery after a Syrian anti-aircraft missile launched from the system had exploded in Israeli airspace. This was apparently in response to several Israeli strikes near the city of Homs that Syria’s state news agency reported had caused “material losses.”

Mobilization in Ukraine: Zelensky government on a manhunt

Maxim Goldarb

One of the most burning issues in Ukrainian society over the past year and a half has been the mobilization into the army. In our country, everyone is well aware of the enormous scale that not only the mobilization itself has reached, but also of numerous, systemic violations of human rights in the course of mobilization. However, most of the media in Western countries hush up this information. 

The law in Ukraine provides definite rules for the procedure of military registration and conscription to military service of conscripts and reservists. In particular, it regulates the procedure for delivery of summonses for conscription.

A summons for military service is a written document that is issued in the name of a specific person. The summons must be prepared in advance¸ and cannot be filled out in front of the person to whom it is handed. If the summons is issued correctly, the conscript is obliged to appear before the relevant state body responsible for mobilization—the Territorial Center for Recruitment and Social Support (TCR or TTsK in Russian and SS or SP in Russian). But if the summons has been issued incorrectly, the conscript does not have such an obligation.

According to the law, summonses cannot be delivered by messenger message, text message, phone call or e-mail. Employees of recruitment centers are not allowed to write out summonses “on the spot” in front of the person to whom the summons is addressed, or to add data to the partially completed form of the summons.

However, in practice, the legal framework for mobilization in Ukraine is being violated systematically and on a mass-scale. To name but a few cases: 

• In mid-January 2023, representatives of the TCR tried to check documents on the street in Odessa in order to issue a summons for military service on the spot.
• In Zaporozhzhia, in mid-January 2023, TCR employees, together with the police, stopped people on the street and filled out empty summonses. This case was recorded on video.  
• In late January 2023, the police detained people in villages and sent them, even without summonses, to the TCR.
• In late February 2023, in the city of Berehove in Transcarpathia, employees of the TCR demanded documents from citizens on the street and issued summonses on the spot.

Having seen enough of such methods of mobilization, many men, while on the streets, have begun to hide from people in military uniform (the mobilization is carried out by the military personnel of the TCR).

Then the authorities began to use even more blatant methods in order to send as many people as possible to the war. 

• In January 2023, in Odessa, representatives of the TCR hid inside an ambulance, and ten, when they saw men of military age (from 18 to 60 years old), they jumped out onto the street, handed out summons and forcibly dragged those who resisted into the ambulance. Even the military was soon forced to admit this fact.
• In late January—early February 2023, a number of cases were recorded in which TCR employees, either together with the police or independently, were literally catching people on the streets of Odessa and a number of other Ukrainian cities.
• In Ternopil in mid-February 2023, representatives of the TCR grabbed men of military age at a bus station and forced them into the bus.

Similar cases were reported in February 2023 in: Chernomorsk; Transcarpathia; Kropyvnytsky; Cherkasy and many other cities and regions.

There is no way to classify these cases other than as kidnappings—a criminal offense. This is also proven by a number of court decisions.

On March 3, 2023, the district court of Nikolaev ordered that a complaint by citizen I. Dirk about a criminal offense be entered into the Unified Register of Pre-trial Investigations (ERDR). The applicant provided a video recording showing how a group of persons in military uniform forced him into a car and took him against his will to one of the regional Territorial Centers for Recruitment and Social Support. The complaint was filed under Articles 146, 371 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (unlawful deprivation of liberty or kidnapping; knowingly unlawful detention, custody, house arrest or detention).

On March 7, 2023, in Odessa, on April 10 Street, employees of the TCR forcibly grabbed  a citizen off the street and took him to serve the summons. In the evening, his wife wrote a statement to the police about the illegal kidnapping of her husband. Criminal proceedings were opened in the case.

In addition, there have been repeated reports about cases in which summons are handed out as a means of criminal or administrative punishment, which is illegal. Thus, on March 20, 2023, a video appeared of an incident in which an Odessa taxi driver expressed “insufficiently patriotic thoughts”. Then, on March 22, 2023, it was reported that “he was found and drafted into the army.”

These examples constitute only a relatively small list of cases of a large number of human rights violations during the mobilization. In fact, there are thousands such examples, and we only learn about those cases that are caught on video and are made public on social media or in the press. 

The Ukrainian government of Volodymyr Zelensky has organized a hunt for its own citizens. Men of military age, in gross violation of the law, are seized off the streets and forcibly sent into the army. Then, in a great many cases they are sent to the front with virtually no military training. As a result, they quickly die or are seriously injured.

By now, many men avoid going out at all and try to stay at home as much as possible. However, the need to work in order to provide for themselves and their families makes it impossible for most men to avoid appearing in public places.

Most Ukrainian men then become “cannon fodder” simply because they lack any kind of military training. Yet this does not go for the “chosen ones”—the ruling elite. None of its representatives—the president’s entourage, ministers, deputies, as well as the oligarchs— are fighting at the front. The same goes for their adult sons. All of them are either deep in the rear, or even went abroad without hindrance. They prefer to make money from war rather than die in it. The ruling elite leaves the right to die in this war to the working people, to the poor, to which, at this point, the majority of the population of Ukraine belong. In this context, it should also be noted that in Ukraine’s shattered economy, military salaries are just about the only possible income for the remaining able-bodied people who are forced to risk their lives and health in order to feed their families.

In the mobilization, the class essence of the ruling oligarchy has manifested itself with complete clarity. This also explains why the leading Western media maintain complete silence about this: they desperately try to preserve the false media image—which they themselves created—of a supposedly existing “unity of the democratic Ukrainian government and people”. But this has little to do with reality.

Thousands protest Sri Lankan government’s attacks on welfare subsidies

S. K. Irangani

Protests have erupted across almost all Sri Lankan districts during the past two weeks over the Wickremesinghe government’s exclusion of thousands of people from its new “Aswesuma” welfare program. Poor people excluded from the scheme gathered outside Divisional Secretariats, the government’s regional administrative units, demanding that they have access to the assistance.

Protesting women demand Aswsuma relief payments in Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka, on 26 June 2023 [Photo: Facebook]

Aswesuma was introduced by President Ranil Wickremesinghe in May to replace the previously existing “Samurdhi” program. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) demanded the government cut welfare and other social spending as part of its $US3 billion bailout loan in March. The welfare program, the IMF declared, should only assist “vulnerable sections.”

Most of the protesters previously received Samurdhi but are excluded from receiving Aswesuma. They accuse the government of not accepting their applications for the new program.

Sri Lankan governments have implemented various relief programs—Janasaviya (Empowering people) and Samurdhi—in previous decades, falsely claiming that the measures would eliminate poverty. These programs, however, have nothing to do with ending poverty but are desperate attempts to dissipate popular opposition to Sri Lanka’s capitalist ruling elite.

World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) reporters spoke to those impacted by the new scheme who angrily explained the desperate situation they now confront.

Ashoka Herath, from Handessa in the Kandy district, told the WSWS that she no longer receives the 2,500-rupee ($US8) monthly Samurdhi subsidy and now faces enormous difficulties.

Ashoka Herath

“My husband does not have a job but we have twin girls who are both studying for their advanced level exam. Their expenditure has gone up several fold,” she said.

Herath explained that officials surveying homes for the Aswesuma program had been instructed by the government to remove poor families like hers from the new welfare list.

“If you have a motor bicycle, small stall or a small chicken farm, your name is cut from the list. Does the government worry what you have to spend on your childrens’ education and medicine?” she said.

A woman who used to work at a private hospital in Kandy but lost her job because she was blind in one eye, endorsed Ashoka’s comments. “I received 3,500 rupees under Samurdhi but that has been cut under Aswesuma. We’ve been thrown into a desperate struggle to try and live,” she said.

A widow with three children from Dambaathupathana, Heeloya in Bandarawela explained that she will not receive Aswesuma welfare because she has done various odd jobs and received a daily wage.

“It’s been four years since my husband’s death and we do not have any permanent income. With Samurdhi I was just able to live and give my children porridge, even though I had an empty stomach. Now we’re being forced to die. In my village there are several people who are suffering even more than me after having been removed from Aswesuma,” she said.

H. Dhammika from Uthuru Kabillawela in Bandarawela worked as a housemaid for a monthly wage of 12,000 rupees and previously received a Samurdhi subsidy. She has been excluded from the new program. Her husband is incapacitated and cannot move following surgery on his back.

“I’m also a patient,” Dhammika explained. “My husband and I need medicine from Badulla general hospital but we now have to spend a lot of money buying it because it’s no longer available at the hospital. How can we live if we are spending large amounts of money on medicines while the prices are skyrocketing? How does it become aswesuma [relief] if the subsidies to extremely poor people like us are being gutted?” she asked.

Confronted with island-wide protests over the new welfare program, the government announced that those excluded from Aswesuma would have until July 10 to appeal. By Tuesday over 550,000 people had submitted appeals in a telling indication of the extreme poverty in Sri Lanka.

Protesters occupy Divisional Secretariat office in Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka, June 26, 2023 [Photo: Facebook]

While the presidential media unit reports that over 3.3 million people have qualified to receive Aswesuma, Wickremesinghe’s so-called relief program is such a pittance that it does not even cover the bare minimum expenses of a family for a day. Under the scheme, benefits will be provided to four distinct groups: transitional [those on the verge of being poor], vulnerable, poor and extreme poor.

Accordingly, 400,000 transitional beneficiaries/families will receive a monthly allowance of 2,500 rupees ($8) from July 1 to December 31; 400,000 vulnerable beneficiaries will get a 5,000-rupee monthly allowance until March 31, 2024; and 800,000 poor and extreme poor persons will receive 8,500 and 15,000-rupee monthly allowances respectively for the next three years.

According to the Department of Census and Statistics June survey, the poorest 40 percent of the population earns only 26,931 rupees a month, which is not enough to provide a family of four with three meals a day, let alone pay for other living costs. The poorest 20 percent earns a paltry 17,532 rupees per month.

Hyperinflation slashed real income in Sri Lanka by 40 percent over the past year. Amid these desperate conditions the government has replaced the limited Samurdhi welfare program with its criminally inadequate Aswesuma grants. This measure, which will throw millions more Sri Lankans in to poverty, further underlines what IMF officials meant when stating that their bailout loan would be linked to a “brutal experiment” in Sri Lanka.

Sajith Premadasa, leader of Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) and the parliamentary opposition, denounced the government, declaring in parliament that only 1.2 million people would receive Aswesuma benefits even though Sri Lanka’s poor had increased from 3 to 7 million in recent years. He failed to mention that the new welfare program is a direct response to IMF demands, policies which he and his party fully support.

Vijitha Herath, a Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) parliamentarian, recently told a media conference that many of those not qualifying for Aswesuma failed to receive it because of “errors” in the selection criteria. He also claimed that Aswesuma was not part of the IMF austerity program, and insisted that the JVP opposed it. These claims are false. The JVP is thoroughly committed to the IMF and international capital. In fact, Herath told parliament on March 24, 2023 that the JVP was not opposed to seeking an IMF bailout.

The trade union bureaucracies, which are busy suppressing workers’ opposition to government privatisation measures and attacks on jobs, wages and pensions, are maintaining a deathly silence about the vicious assault on Sri Lanka’s poor.

The Sri Lankan working class must come to the defence of the poverty-stricken masses and rally them in a unified political struggle against the government’s IMF austerity measures, which will throw millions more into abject poverty.

Supreme Court Preserves College Preferences for Wealthy Whites

Sonali Kolhatkar

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

The United States Supreme Court’s recent ruling striking down race as a factor in college and university admissions was in response to a case brought by a conservative organization claiming that Asian Americans are harmed by preferences for people of other nonwhite races. The case, which focused on Harvard University and the University of North Carolina’s affirmative action policies, used Asian students as a wedge against Black, Latino, Indigenous, and other communities of color. More importantly, it left preferences for wealthy white students intact.

Justice Clarence Thomas, writing on behalf of the majority that voted in favor of ending affirmative action, said in response to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissenting opinion, “How, for example, would Justice Jackson explain the need for race-based preferences to the Chinese student who has worked hard his whole life, only to be denied college admission in part because of his skin color?”

His concern for Chinese students would be touching were it not for the fact that, according to the New York Times, Thomas “was admitted to Yale Law School under an explicit affirmative action plan with the goal of having blacks and other minority members make up about 10 percent of the entering class.” Further, Thomas said in a 1983 speech, that affirmative action policies were of “paramount importance.” He added that “But for them, God only knows where I would be today… These laws and their proper application are all that stand between the first 17 years of my life and the second 17 years.” He has significantly changed his tune since then.

Janelle Wong, a professor of American studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, told NBC that the right uses fake concerns about Asian students to promote their goal of undermining racial equity policies, saying, “They weaponize concerns about anti-Asian attacks and violence against other minorities.” Wong added, “This is an old tactic in white supremacy’s playbook and should not be allowed to succeed.”

In using Asians to undermine the policies that offer equity-based redress for racially marginalized groups, Thomas and his conservative colleagues—the rest of whom are all white—left intact a crucial method from which wealthy white people benefit: so-called legacy admissions.

Journalist Michael Harriot put it this way on Twitter, “The Court struck down Affirmative Action For everyone except WHITE PEOPLE.”

By that, he meant that conservative Supreme Court justices did not restrict preferences for the children of alumni, employees, donors, and other similarly well-connected, privileged people.

Former president George W. Bush is a classic example of how legacy admissions are effectively a form of affirmative action for whites. How else would a mediocre student like him be admitted to Yale University? But because his father and grandfather were both Yale alumni, Bush was basically a nepo baby. Legacy admissions give people like him a leg-up in ensuring that generational wealth, privilege, and power remain in the family.

The origins of legacy admissions lie in antisemitism. According to a book by Jerome Karabel written nearly two decades ago, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, legacy admissions were a way to reduce the number of Jewish Americans who were increasingly academically qualified to win admission but who did not fit into the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant tradition that such schools uplifted. So, elite universities changed the goal posts, ensuring that family ties gave mediocre, but well-connected, Protestant whites an edge.

That preferential treatment continues today, reinforcing white supremacy. For example, according to one Ivy League college admissions consultation firm Admission Sight, legacy admissions are a way for universities to deepen “their economic and community-building contributions.” Such euphemistic language obscures the fact that the ugly practice of legacy admissions is in fact a race-based affirmative action policy—for wealthy whites—a community that needs no affirmation given the white supremacist society in which it flourishes.

Admission Sight also admitted that “According to the released Harvard legacy acceptance rate, more than 36 percent of the students in the Harvard Class of 2022 are descendants of previous Harvard students.” Those who cannot claim their parents attended Harvard, since 2015, “had a five times lower chance of being accepted than those who came from a Harvard family.”

There is another entry point for wealth and privilege if legacy admissions don’t apply—bribery. In a court case stemming from the college admissions scandal that broke in 2019, it was revealed that the University of Southern California was willing to consider applicants whose families offered large donations to the school. These “special interest” or “VIP” donors received preferential treatment. Even the University of California, a state university system, has been found to give preferential treatment to wealthy whites. A state audit found that at least 64 people, most of them wealthy and white, were admitted in recent years to UC schools solely because of their family connections and donations.

Whites have even used affirmative action policies intended for racial minorities whenever possible to access higher education, seeking to game the system by using genetic testing.

A 2006 New York Times story quoted the white father of adopted twins gleefully touting that newly available DNA tests showed his white-passing sons were “9 percent Native American and 11 percent northern African.” The man admitted that the birth parents of the twins were white, but that “you can bet that any advantage we can take we will.”

But when a white woman named Nicole Katchur was told that she ought to take a genetic test to see if nonwhite ancestry could help her win admission, instead of calling out admissions officers for encouraging white people to game a system intended to promote racial equity, Katchur instead sued to end affirmative action. Rather than seeing her whiteness as a built-in advantage, she blamed policies that helped people of color obtain a level playing field. That same logic informed the 2016 lawsuit against affirmative action brought by another white woman, Abigail Fisher, in Texas. Indeed white women, who have been the biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action policies in college admissions, have also led the charge to dismantle those policies.

The Supreme Court’s latest ruling on affirmative action doesn’t end race-based preference. It further entrenches white supremacist preferences.

The good news is that while one of the Supreme Court’s conservative justices, Neil Gorsuch, disagreed with his liberal colleague, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, on ending race-based admissions for nonwhite students, he agreed with her that legacy admissions had to end as well.

The ruling has also spurred President Joe Biden to go on the offensive. In a speech responding to the ruling, he said, “Today, I’m directing the Department of Education to analyze what practices help build… more inclusive and diverse student bodies and what practices hold that back, practices like legacy admissions and other systems that expand privilege instead of opportunity.”

Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon told MarketWatch, “The longstanding use of legacy and donor preferences in admissions has unfairly elevated children of donors and alumni—who may be excellent students and well-qualified, but are the last people who need an extra leg up in the complicated and competitive college admissions process.” He explained that a policy like legacy admissions, “creates an unlevel playing field for students without those built-in advantages, especially minority and first-generation students.”

To that end, Merkley and Democratic Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York recently introduced the Fair College Admissions for Students Act, which would end preferential treatment for applications from wealthy, privileged families.

Whether or not the bill moves in Congress, the fact remains that college admissions are biased—toward wealthy white Americans. Those conservatives celebrating the end of affirmative action have exposed yet again how their real agenda is to ensure that white wealth continues to benefit from unfair advantages.

New study finds that lifting Zero-COVID in China caused 1.4 billion infections and up to 2.6 million deaths

Aaron Edwards

A significant study published July 1 in Nature Communications sheds light on the horrific wave of COVID-19 infections and deaths that swept across China last winter after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) abruptly ended its life-saving Zero-COVID policy. The study, titled “Swift and extensive Omicron outbreak in China after sudden exit from ‘zero-COVID’ policy,” is the most comprehensive model published to date detailing the impacts of the rapid lifting of all mitigation measures, testing, and reporting of cases.

On November 11, 2022, China began to lift its longstanding Zero-COVID policy, instead adopting a suite of 20 measures that could be characterized as a stringent mitigationist strategy. City-wide lockdowns were replaced with targeted, smaller-scale lockdowns. Travel restrictions were partially lifted, and compulsory mass testing and reporting were ended. Contact tracing was limited to direct contacts of infected persons, and quarantine periods were shortened.

On December 7, all core public health measures associated with Zero-COVID were fully lifted. Lockdowns were prohibited, all contact tracing was stopped and quarantining at home was encouraged instead of at a centralized location. Testing and reporting became voluntary.

The study provides a granular breakdown of the respective effects of the November 11 and December 7 policy changes, showing how the highly transmissible Omicron BA.5 and BF.7 subvariants ravaged the population of 1.4 billion people after December 7 in particular. In this short time period of less than two months, an estimated 97 percent of the Chinese population (1.37 billion people) were infected.

The model-inferred daily cases (orange bands) during the three policy periods (zero-COVID, 20 Measures, and 10 Measures) near the end of 2022, and official case counts (points). Shades of orange show the median, 50% credibility interval (CrI), and 95% CrI. [Photo by Goldberg, E.E., Lin, Q., Romero-Severson, E.O. et al. / CC BY 4.0]

Due to the drastic decline in COVID-19 testing and reporting starting on November 11, the official figures quickly became inaccurate. Thus, the study draws data from online surveys conducted by a website for the Chinese health authorities on December 26. The authors note:

We developed a modeling approach that integrates both the official case count data before Nov 11 and the December survey data to reveal a more complete picture of the dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 before and after the dismantling of zero-COVID. Extensive sensitivity analyses confirm that our conclusions are robust to many assumptions about the data and model, and our findings are validated by comparison against two other independent datasets.

The study found that the December 7 full lifting of Zero-COVID caused a precipitous increase in transmission, reducing the total infection doubling time from 4.7 days to 1.6 days, producing these shocking figures:

Our results suggest that on Dec. 7, the day when full exit from zero-COVID was announced, there were ~1 million new infections. Because of the extremely high rate of spread afterwards, the outbreak ballooned such that 97% [95%, 99%] of the population (i.e., 1.37 billion people) became infected in December. As a result of the exponential nature of the spread, the vast majority of people (88% [83%, 93%] of the population) became infected during the short window of time between Dec. 15 and 31, 2022….

With an infection fatality ratio between 0.1 and 0.2% for the Omicron variant, we would expect between 1.3 and 2.6 million COVID-19 deaths in China during Dec. 2022 as well as Jan. 2023 (because of the delay from infection to death).

The conclusions of the study validate the continuous warnings made by the World Socialist Web Site on the dangers of lifting Zero-COVID. On November 15, the WSWS was the first outlet in the world to note that the CCP was initiating the process of lifting Zero-COVID, after over a year of intense pressure from Western governments and corporate media outlets. We warned, “There is no scientific justification for this move, which is based solely on political and economic considerations. In the coming days and weeks, the situation could quickly spiral out of control, particularly in places with lower vaccination rates.”

In the first of many Perspective statements on the lifting of Zero-COVID in China, we deepened these warnings and advocated for the reversal of this policy change, noting:

[T]he objective laws of viral transmission could quickly spiral out of control. Any shift away from a Zero-COVID elimination strategy carries with it the potential for a monumental catastrophe…

The lifting of Zero-COVID is a political question which confronts the entire world’s population. Allowing the virus to spread in this immunologically naive population could provide it with over 1 billion new hosts in which it could further mutate and spawn new variants. This reactionary policy change in China thus poses the need for workers internationally to renew their struggle against the policies of their own governments and to unify across national boundaries.

These warnings by the WSWS were developed throughout November, as we continued to advocate the full deployment of all available public health measures. Examining the time period between November 11 and December 7, the study makes clear that it was still possible to reverse the lifting of Zero-COVID and contain the growing outbreak.

Throughout the first phase of scrapping mitigation measures, the “20 measures” phase, the CCP still could have reversed course. But the government and media downplayed the dangers as the number of infections grew. The dramatic increase in cases that occurred as the “10 measures” phase began on December 7 shows how quickly the situation became catastrophic.

The emergency ward of a hospital in China, January 3, 2023. [AP Photo/Andy Wong]

Fundamentally, the lifting of Zero-COVID was not done in the interests of public health, but in response to enormous financial and geopolitical pressures from the imperialist powers and growing opposition within sections of the Chinese ruling class and upper middle class.

The tipping point that prompted the November 11 transition away from Zero-COVID came when multinational corporations, including Nike and Apple, threatened to move their business out of China. Then, in late November a series of small, choreographed protests against Zero-COVID were trumpeted in the bourgeois media internationally.

The CCP seized upon these “white paper” protests against Zero-COVID to fully implement a policy they were already intending to carry out. In this, they were supported by virtually every pseudo-left political tendency in the world, who share with the protesters a social base among the upper middle class.

The latest study on China’s first COVID-19 wave was published roughly one month after the World Health Organization (WHO) and US President Joe Biden rescinded their COVID-19 public health emergency declarations. At the behest of global finance capital, capitalist world governments have demanded that there be no interruptions in the process of wealth accumulation regardless of the cost in human life. The Western media, after continuously demanding the end of Zero-COVID in China, has now dropped the subject of the pandemic altogether.

The study, which was first submitted on March 7, contains the following statement warning about a second wave of the pandemic in China:

A slower epidemic wave would help to ease hospital burden, allow sufficient health care for infected people, prevent epidemic overshoot (i.e., a large final epidemic size because of rapid spread), and ultimately reduce the number of deaths. Such considerations may be of renewed importance later in 2023, when the large cohort of people infected at the end of 2022 may become susceptible to reinfection.

This second wave is currently ripping through China just as the study was published, while the government and the media are working to cover it up.

Provocation against refugees in Kocaeli, Turkey highlights growing dangers

Barış Demir

On Sunday, false allegations that a group of Syrians raided a Turkish house in the Dilovası district of Kocaeli, a major industrial city near Istanbul, led to an attempted mob attack on Syrians in the area.

What started as friction between neighbors was transformed into late night attacks and marches targeting refugees. The responsibility for this poisonous atmosphere lies with the entire political establishment. In particular, bourgeois opposition parties led by the Kemalist Republican People’s Party (CHP), which attacks President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s reactionary government from the right, play a noxious role.

Syrians wait to cross into Syria from Turkey at the Cilvegozu border gate, near the town of Antakya, southeastern Turkey, Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2023. [AP Photo/Unal Cam]

According to Ömer Faruk Gergeroğlu, Kocaeli deputy of the Kurdish nationalist-led Green Left Party: “Syrian children aged seven or eight stoned someone’s dog. The dog’s owner used violence against the children. Then the dog was poisoned, and the family whose dog was killed went and attacked the Syrian family’s house.”

Both on social media and in the capitalist press, especially in reports from outlets that are close to the bourgeois opposition, it was claimed that a Syrian group raided a Turkish house in the neighborhood with weapons and sticks in hand. Following calls on social media to mobilize, hundreds of people in the neighborhood took to the streets and chanted, “We don’t want refugees in Dilovası.”

Kocaeli deputy Lütfü Türkkan of the far-right Good Party, known for his anti-refugee rhetoric, shared a video on social media stating: “The incidents that started in my town, Kocaeli, Dilovası, when Syrians raided a house, continued tonight with people taking to the streets. The citizens are now dispersing. Tomorrow evening they will gather in front of the district governor’s office and demand that the Syrians leave Dilovası.”

The media joined the campaign. ODA TV reported that a “Syrian group raided a citizen’s house in Kocaeli: The city was in chaos.” The daily Sözcü, close to the CHP, wrote: “Tension due to Syrians! People took to the streets, the city was in chaos.” And Kocaeli Gazetesi claimed that a “Syrian group with guns and sticks raided a Turkish citizen’s house in Kocaeli.”

However, the governor of Kocaeli, Serdar Yavuz, said, “The dispute over the suspected killing of a pet quickly turned into a fight, but the security officers quickly intervened in the incident and solved the problem that evening.”

He continued: “There was no direct attacks on any citizen’s house. In particular, there was a very brief incident between the person whose dog died, his close friends and people in the neighborhood and Syrians under temporary protection living in the neighborhood. That sums up the incident.”

The governor added that Turkish citizens were provoked with false allegations on social media. He stated: “Some provocative posts were posted on social media. Unfortunately, there was a provocation. They claimed that foreign Syrians were stoning the houses of our citizens. In other words, there was a false allegation. It was provoked with a video.”

It was reported that refugees living and working in the Dilovası district of Kocaeli could not go to work yesterday because of the dangerous environment and fear of possible attacks.

This provocation must be taken as a warning to the working class. Rival factions of the ruling class have been feeding anti-refugee sentiments for years. They want to channel growing social anger into the dead end of nationalism and divide the working class.

Turkey is among the countries hosting the largest numbers of refugees as a result of 30 years of war waged by the US-led imperialist powers in the broader region since the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. According to a report published by the Refugees Association in Turkey, there were 3.3 million Syrians living in Turkey as of June 15, of which 72.29 percent were women and children. Including those from other countries and unregistered migrants, it is estimated that there are around 5 million refugees and immigrants living in Turkey.

The ground for attacks on Syrians and all refugees in Turkey has been laid by the poisonous propaganda of the bourgeois opposition, which generally attacks the government from the right on the issue.

Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the CHP and the candidate of the Nation Alliance against Erdoğan in the recent the presidential elections, made his long-standing reactionary anti-refugee propaganda a main campaign theme after the first round on 14 May, along with rhetoric about “fighting terrorism.” He allied with the far-right Victory Party to demand the deportation of millions of refugees.

“As soon as I come to power, I will send all the refugees back home,” Kılıçdaroğlu said in a statement, adding, “Do you realise that if they [the Erdoğan government] stay in power, more than 10 million more refugees will come to Turkey? These refugees will become potential crime machines. Looting will start.”

Although his defeat in the elections showed that the anti-refugee campaign did not get popular support, Kılıçdaroğlu made clear that he will continue the campaign by appointing Gökşen Anıl Ulukuş as a personal adviser. Ulukuş was the founding president of the youth movement of the Victory Party.

Kılıçdaroğlu’s statements blaming the economic crisis and the soaring cost of living—both of which stem from the crisis of capitalism—on refugees, the most vulnerable section of the population, and his alliances with fascistic forces did not cause the Kurdish nationalists and pseudo-left parties to hesitate in backing him in the elections. The dangerous provocation in Dilovası stands as an indictment of them no less than the CHP.

The People’s Democracy Party (HDP), the Green Left Party (YSP) and the Workers’ Party of Turkey (TİP) have maintained a shameful silence on Kılıçdaroğlu’s campaign to deport millions of refugees. They repeatedly reiterated their support for him ahead of the second round of the presidential vote on May 28.

The Left Party (former ÖDP), the Stalinist Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) and the Morenoite Workers’ Democracy Party (İDP) have also aided and abetted this political crime by declaring their support for Kılıçdaroğlu.

Yellen’s China visit a tactical manoeuvre

Nick Beams

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen begins a four-day visit to China today supposedly to ease tensions between the world’s two major economic powers. However, the trip is very much a tactical manoeuvre by the US in its ongoing economic warfare against China waged under the banner of protecting “national security.”

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen testifies before the House Financial Services Committee in Washington, Tuesday, June 13, 2023. [AP Photo/Amanda Andrade-Rhoades, File]

While media reports and official statements will perhaps refer to productive discussions and even olive branches, the real agenda of the US, spelled out on numerous occasions, is that China must submit to the so-called “rules-based” international order it determines.

The Yellen visit is part of a broader US operation to be seen as lessening conflict and follows on the heels of Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s visit to Beijing last month.

The Blinken visit, which was put on hold in February after the accusations that a Chinese weather balloon was engaged in spy operations, now admitted by the US not to have taken place, was aimed at seeking to ease tensions somewhat while the US-NATO war in the Ukraine is stepped up.

Yellen’s visit has the same aim. It is also intended to placate fears in many nations, particularly those in the South-Asian region that have close economic ties with China, that US actions may cause them major economic problems.

Another longer-term issue is concern in the US that China will step up retaliatory action over the lengthening list of US technology and trade restrictions implemented against it, disrupting supply chains before alternative sources have been put in place.

In announcing the visit, the Treasury Department referred to the major speech by Yellen delivered in April in which she outlined the basis of the US actions on China.

Yellen claimed in that address the US was seeking a “constructive and fair economic relationship” with China. But, as the World Socialist Web Site noted at the time, it amounted to a declaration of economic war.

While insisting that the US did not want to “decouple” from China and that a “full separation” of the two economies would “disastrous,” Yellen made it clear that “our national security” is an area where the US “will not compromise,” along with upholding “human rights,” the hypocritical invocation of which has become a key ideological component of ever-increasing US militarism.

National security has been invoked to impose a series of sweeping technology bans aimed at crippling China’s development in this crucial area. As virtually all technological advancement has potential military applications this means the bans are continually broadening.

On the eve of the visit the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that “according to people familiar with the situation”—generally a euphemism for a government leak—the Biden administration is “preparing to restrict Chinese companies’ access to cloud-computing services.”

The new rule, if adopted, would require that companies such as Amazon and Microsoft obtain government permission before they provided cloud-computing services that use advanced artificial intelligence chips to Chinese customers.

The report said the proposed restrictions were aimed at closing a loophole, identified by national security analysts, by which Chinese AI companies may have been able to bypass current export controls by using the services and that the Commerce Department would announce the intended action as part of the export control policy implemented by the administration last October.

The basic economic strategy of the US was outlined in another WSJ article previewing the Yellen visit.

“The Biden administration,” it said, “has been preparing an executive order for months that will aim to cut off some US investment into Chinese technology sectors perceived as risks to national security. It is also weighing additional restrictions on exporting semiconductors to China, a step designed to crimp Beijing’s ability to develop advanced artificial intelligence. And Yellen has repeatedly called for multinational companies to shift their supply chains outside of China, while Congress has created new subsidies motivating them to do so.”

One of aims of the visit will be to push back Chinese measures directed against the US while it is still dependent on China in many areas of the economy. According to a Treasury official, cited by the Financial Times, Yellen would raise a new anti-espionage law that gives Beijing more power to retaliate against US actions and those of other western nations.

“We’re concerned about what kind of implications that would potentially have for all foreign firms or … US firms in particular,” the official said.

The ban imposed by China against the US chipmaker Micron may also come up for discussion.

The overall aim of the Yellen visit is clear. It is to lay down the law to Beijing on US national security, if not in public, then behind closed doors, while trying to push back as much as it can against any retaliatory actions which would adversely impact on the US.

One thing it is not about is taking any meaningful measures to ease the tensions. This can be seen from the record. Immediately after Blinken’s visit, Biden poured petrol on the fire by labelling Chinese president Xi Jinping a “dictator.” And while he was in Beijing, Blinken made allegations of Chinese spying from an intelligence base in Cuba.

On the economic front everything is going in the same direction. Not only have all the sanctions and tariffs imposed under Trump been retained, but new ones have been regularly added.

This is in line with the central thrust of US national security analysis that, irrespective of military measures, the very economic expansion of China, particularly in the crucial area of high-tech, constitutes in and of itself an existential threat to US global economic dominance.

If the US were genuinely interested in relaxing tensions, then some concessions would be offered as a kind of olive branch. But even the most minimal moves in that direction have been rejected.

Last year Yellen suggested that it might assist the easing of inflationary pressures in the US if some of the tariffs imposed on $350 billion worth of Chinese goods were relaxed, a regular request of China. Not even by the wildest stretch can these measures be deemed to have anything directly to do with “national security.”

However, any relaxation was virtually ruled out in May when Yellen said in an interview, “My sense is the general feeling in the administration is that it’s not appropriate to lower the tariffs.”

Yellen is not going to Beijing to negotiate but to dictate.