The Middle East may never be the same

James M. Dorsey

Hamas, the Islamist militia that controls Gaza, will likely emerge a victor regardless of how the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian fighting ends.

Hamas’ unprecedented attack on Israel, described by some analysts as the Jewish state’s 9/11, changes the dynamics of Middle Eastern geopolitics.

The brutal attack involved prolonged fighting with the Israeli military in Israeli towns and cities, the firing of thousands of rockets at Israeli population centers, the random killing of innocent civilians in Israeli homes, and the kidnapping of scores of Israeli soldiers and civilians.

BBC foreign correspondent Secunder Kermani described sirens sounding off and multiple explosions as he disembarked at Tel Aviv airport on Saturday.

Like the Turkish assault on Kurdish positions in Syria and Iraq in the wake of the October 1 suicide bombing in Ankara, the Hamas attack and Israel’s retaliatory pounding of Gaza call into question the sustainability of a regional de-escalation that freezes rather than tackles perennial conflicts.

Similarly, the attack pours cold water on the notion of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his ultra-nationalist and ultra-conservative coalition partners that Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands can be sustained indefinitely.

On Hamas’ tailcoat, Iran, long opposed to Arab normalisation of relations with Israel, sees the Palestinian offensive as vindication of its position.

Only days before the hostilities, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei cautioned that normalisation of relations with Israel amounted to “gambling” that was “doomed to failure.”

He warned that countries establishing relations with the Jewish state would be “in harm’s way.”

Raising the specter of a wider regional conflict, Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad told the BBC that the group had direct backing for the attack from Iran. Mr. Hamad did not specify what support entailed.

Even if suggestions prove correct that Iran helped Hamas plan and prepare for the attack, the group would have launched its assault because it served its purposes rather than serving Iranian interests.

Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite militia, bolstered the threat of a regional conflagration by firing rockets at the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms in southern Lebanon. Israel retaliated with armed drones.

The Hezbollah attack came after Israeli soldiers opened fire on pro-Hamas demonstrators carrying the group’s flag on the Lebanese side of the border. There were no reported casualties.

Meanwhile, a Saudi statement suggested that the Hamas attack had complicated US-led efforts to engineer Saudi recognition of Israel.

The Saudi foreign ministry recalled the kingdom’s “repeated warning of the dangers of the explosion of the situation as a result of the occupation, the deprivation of the Palestinian people of their legitimate rights, and the repetition of systematic provocations against its sanctities.”

The statement indicated that the fighting reinforced Saudi conditioning of diplomatic relations with Israel on viable steps toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Already, the fighting will stop Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman from becoming the third Cabinet-level Israeli official to visit Saudi Arabia in less than two weeks.

Ms. Silman was expected to attend this week’s MENACW 2023, the Middle East and North Africa Climate Week conference in the kingdom, one of four Regional Climate Weeks held worldwide ahead of next month’s COP28 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai.

In what diplomats described as an indication of the United Arab Emirates’ predicament, Emirati officials insisted that Sunday’s United Nations Security Council discussion of the fighting would be a closed session rather than a private meeting. The UAE called for the meeting alongside Malta.

Unlike a private meeting, the closed session excluded Israeli and Palestinian representatives. It ended without a Council statement.

The UAE was one of four Arab states to recognize Israel in 2020. At the same time, UAE officials describe Hamas as a terrorist organisation.

Had there been a Palestinian representation, the Palestinian voice would have been President Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestine Authority, dominated by Al Fatah, Hamas’ archrival, further marginalized by the fighting.

This weekend, Mr. Abbas was reduced to issuing a statement insisting that Palestinians had the right to defend themselves against the “terror of settlers and occupation troops.”

With the perennial potential collapse of the Palestine Authority, Hamas’ attack strengthens the group in a likely struggle to succeed 87-year-old Mr. Abbas, who has lost public support.

While the Israeli-Palestinian fighting was likely to boost popular Arab rejection of relations with Israel, social media responses in Turkey indicated a different sentiment among one segment of Turkish public opinion.

“Israel is probably more popular than ever among Turks,” said Turkish Middle East scholar Karabekir Akkoyunlu.

Mr. Akkoyunlu attributed Israel’s popularity to Israeli support for Azerbaijan against Armenia, rising anti-Arab sentiment in Turkey, and Arab countries normalizing relations with the Jewish state.

That did not stop many Turks from marching in Istanbul this weekend to support the Hamas attack.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hosted Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in July and has allowed the group to operate.

However, unlike Arab statements that blamed Israel for the violence, Mr. Erdogan offered to mediate between Israel and Hamas.

The fighting risks, at least in the short-term, stiffening Israel’s refusal to entertain steps that would enable the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel or a viable one-state solution, even if the Netanyahu government, the most ultra-conservative and ultra-nationalist in Israeli history, becomes a victim of renewed violence.

Israeli reticence will be further reinforced by likely increased violence on the West Bank, where Palestinian militants resisting Israeli occupation are certain to be emboldened. Militants called this weekend on Palestinians to fight Israelis in their West Bank towns.

Some Israeli sources suggested that Israel’s focus in the last year on Palestinian resistance in the West Bank had led Israel to pay less attention to Gaza.

More than 50 years after initial Egyptian-Syrian advances in the early days of the 1973 Middle East caught Israel by surprise, the Hamas attack has put a dent in Israel’s image of military superiority and prowess.

In addition, perceptions of Israeli weakness may be reinforced once the guns fall silent, with the country likely to be wracked by assertions that the Hamas attack was an intelligence and operational failure.

Nevertheless, Israel would likely benefit from an international community breathing a sigh of relief should the Netanyahu government, too, pay a high price with its possible demise.

No Israeli government has survived longer than six months in the aftermath of a major war like the 1973 war or the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

Even so, the Hamas attack is likely to impact Israeli public opinion. On the one hand, it is expected to harden attitudes towards Palestinians, reinforced by Hamas’ brutal attacks on innocent civilians and abuse of soldiers.

On the other hand, Israelis will probably have less confidence in Israeli security. “I’m worried. I can’t believe what happened. I’ve lost confidence,” said an Israeli woman in a text message.

Mr. Netanyahu has sought to capitalize on the hostilities and unprecedented losses suffered by Israel at the hands of Palestinians, — reportedly 600 dead, including 26 soldiers, and more than 2000 wounded at the time of this writing – by inviting opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz to join an emergency government.

Mr. Lapid said in a statement that Mr. Netanyahu would have to ditch his far-right and ultra-conservative coalition partners in forming an emergency government.

The prime minister “knows that with the current extreme and dysfunctional security cabinet, he can’t manage a war. Israel needs to be led by a professional, experienced, and responsible government.”

Mr. Netanyahu’s invitation came as the fighting temporarily eased the prime minister’s immediate domestic concerns.

The rocket attacks and fighting in Israeli towns and settlements close to Gaza ended, at least temporarily, nine months of mass protests against Mr. Netanyahu’s judicial changes.

It also halted protests by military reservists, including fighter jet pilots currently striking Gaza,  who had earlier refused to report for duty because of the judicial changes.

Israeli ultra-nationalists and military commanders warned that the reservists’ protest would weaken Israeli military readiness.

On Saturday, Israel called up reservists for a possible ground invasion of Gaza after Hamas took scores of Israeli soldiers and civilians hostage and transferred them from Israel to Gaza.

Israel may take heart from the unconditional US and European support, fueled by Hamas’ Islamic State-style brutality, in public statements after the Hamas attack.

However, reality is very different behind the scenes, according to US and European diplomats.

Mr. Netanyahu has not endeared himself to Western leaders by heading a government that has expanded Israeli settlements in the West Bank; tacitly endorsed increased anti-Palestinian violence by Israeli settlers; violated fragile understandings on the Temple Mount or Haram-ash-Sharif, a site in Jerusalem holy to Jews and Muslims; and responded brutally to Palestinian resistance.

In addition, Mr. Netanyahu has embraced nationalist and far-right European leaders, who look more favorably at his policies than Western Europeans, the European Union, and US President Joe Biden.

Forming an emergency government would ease Western criticism of Israeli policies.

Distressing images from Gaza could counter that as Israel continues with its devastating bombing of Gaza, which has killed at least 300 Palestinians and wounded nearly 2,000 others in less than 24 hours.

Nevertheless, Hamas may have miscalculated by counting on Mr. Netanyahu’s strained relations with his Western partners, leading them to take a more even-handed approach to renewed violence.

Selfies of Hamas fighters lynching the corpses of killed Israeli soldiers, reports of killings of Israeli civilians in their homes in towns near Gaza, and the parade of the dead body of a German tattoo artist buried the slim chance of a more nuanced Western attitude.

Even so, a Middle Eastern diplomat argued, “The Middle Eastern paradigm has changed. Everyone is forced to recalibrate. Hamas shattered perceptions. The Middle East may never be the same.”

Netanyahu regime staggered by Palestinian uprising

Alex Lantier

“A slave-owner who through cunning and violence shackles a slave in chains, and a slave who through cunning or violence breaks the chains–let not the contemptible eunuchs tell us that they are equals before a court of morality!”—Leon Trotsky, 1938

On Friday night, Palestinian forces in the Gaza Strip launched a surprise attack, firing a rocket barrage and attacking Israeli forces surrounding the Gaza Strip. As of Saturday night, there were 200 Israelis dead and 1,100 wounded, and 232 Palestinians dead and 1,697 wounded. Initially caught unprepared, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are counterattacking, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to extract an “unprecedented price” in blood from Gaza.

What began Friday night is an uprising of the Palestinian people against the violent and brutally oppressive Israeli occupation. The Netanyahu government has sanctioned the constant theft of Palestinian lands by fascistic Israeli settlers, blockaded the Gaza Strip, targeted members of its ruling Hamas party for assassination and organized provocations against Muslims at Al-Aqsa Mosque. By imposing unbearable conditions on Gaza, it made armed resistance inevitable.

Pledging “rock-solid and unwavering” support for Israeli military operations against Gaza, Biden said: “The United States unequivocally condemns this appalling assault against Israel by Hamas terrorists from Gaza, and I made clear to Prime Minister Netanyahu that we stand ready to offer all appropriate means of support to the government and people of Israel. Terrorism is never justified. Israel has a right to defend itself and its people.”

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock declared: “The odious violence of Hamas against civilians in Israel is unprecedented and unjustifiable. This terrorism must stop immediately. Israel has our full solidarity.”

The hypocrisy of these statements is staggering. As always, the sympathies of the imperialist powers are with the oppressors. Any manifestation of resistance by the oppressed is greeted with frenzied denunciations. The media ignores the fact that the Israeli government is led by a criminal, whose coalition is dominated by fascistic racists and is engaged in efforts to suppress the constitution.

In its coverage of the Ukraine war, the media never fails to condemn what it habitually refers to as Russia’s “illegal annexation of Crimea.” The United States has repeatedly declared that it will support Ukraine’s war to regain Crimea “as long as it takes.” But it never condemns Israel’s illegal annexation of vast tracts of Palestinian land.

The Palestinian population of Gaza and the Hamas government do not have powerful imperialist backers arming them to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. As the Palestinians take up arms against an occupation by the Israeli military, which receives billions of dollars in US military aid each year, they know they face overwhelming odds.

Yet the Palestinian forces are not hailed as heroes, but rather denounced as terrorists by the reactionary politicians and servile media of the NATO countries. In reality, the Israeli state for years has repeatedly targeted and killed hundreds or thousands of civilians in indiscriminate attacks on the densely populated Gaza Strip.

On Saturday night, in a bloodcurdling address to the nation, Netanyahu told “residents of Gaza” to “get out now, because we will operate everywhere and with full force.” Since his government blockades Gaza and does not let anyone leave, this is a declaration that Netanyahu sees Gaza’s entire population as a legitimate target. Asserting that “Hamas wants to murder us all,” Netanyahu pledged to “fight them to the bitter end” and that cities where Hamas operates would turn into “cities of ruin.”

This barbaric threat to destroy the Gaza Strip testifies to the fascistic character of Netanyahu’s regime. The end product of the Zionist regime’s decades-long shift to the right has been his incorporation of violent far-right groups like the Religious Zionist Party into his government. Its members call for the expulsion of Palestinians from the occupied territories, promote killings of Palestinians such as the 1994 Cave of Patriarchs massacre, demand the destruction of the Al-Aqsa mosque and promote the legacy of American-born fascist Meir Kahane.

Netanyahu’s justification for his war is based on a falsification of the aims of Hamas, which he treats as a genocidal organization. In reality, the statement issued by the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, stresses its opposition not to Jews but to Israeli occupation. Condemning murders of Palestinians by Israeli troops and settlers, long-term imprisonment of Palestinians, theft of Palestinian lands, and provocations at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, it concludes:

“As the Israeli occupation maintains its siege of the Gaza Strip and continues its crimes against our Palestinian people, while showing utmost disregard for international laws and resolutions amid US and Western support and international silence, we have decided to put an end to all of that. We announce a military operation against the Israeli occupation, which comes in response to the continued Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people and violations at the Al-Aqsa mosque.”

Hamas’s ability to secretly prepare such an operation and launch it on October 6—50 years after the Yom Kippur War—exposes the depth of the crisis of the Israeli state. It is overrun with fascistic elements, has battled a years-long trial of Netanyahu for corruption, and faced mass protests of workers and youth earlier this year as it tried and failed to ram through a constitutional reform to undermine the legal independence of the judiciary. Its attempt to suppress Palestinian opposition through fascistic terror has failed.

The Netanyahu government was surprised by the Palestinian uprising in much the same way as Nazi commanders in occupied Poland were surprised by the 1943 uprising of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto and the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. Blinded by its arrogance and racial hatred, it believed that repression had so broken the back of the Palestinians that resistance would be impossible. Its error now exposed, it is moving—also as in occupied Poland, where the Nazis reacted to uprisings by slaughtering tens and hundreds of thousands—towards a bloodbath.

Household water bills to soar in UK

Paul Mitchell

Average household water bills in the UK are set to soar by 40 percent, or £156 a year by 2030. Customers supplied by Southern Water will suffer a bigger rise, by £262 a year to £674, and those living in the Thames Water area by £175 to £598.

The companies say investors won’t cough up the £96 billion needed to tackle their abysmal record on water leaks and sewage pollution and are demanding that customers pay for improvements instead. For the last 20 years leakage has remained virtually unchanged at around 3,200 million litres a day, between 15 percent and 30 percent of water produced. Most criminal of all sewage spilled into rivers and seas more than 380,000 times in 2022.

Map which includes the location of Combined Sewer Overflows [Photo by Courtesy of The Rivers Trust]

The price hikes will further impoverish those who have endured runaway inflation over the last two years for other necessities of life including food, which reached 19 percent in March, gas (130 percent increase) and electricity (70 percent). The water companies have admitted their proposals will see more households qualifying for support with their water billsup from one million to three million.

The increases have been denounced by campaign groups. Clean water campaigner and former musician Feargal Sharkey told the BBC's Today programme the proposals were a “breathtakingly catastrophic strategy” for the water industry.

He explained that the financial regulator Ofwat had previously acknowledged that water companies had received enough money “to develop, build and maintain a sewage system capable of properly dealing with our sewage”.

“So I don't know why Ofwat would ever agree that the customer should pay again for a second time for a service we’ve never received,” Sharkey added.

Consumer Council for Water CEO, Mike Keil, said, “If a water company has failed to meet existing environmental compliance, it should be putting that right at its own cost--households should not be footing the bill again.”

Oxford University economics professor and water expert, Dieter Helm said, “The question of whether the water companies have properly paid for capital maintenance and done what they are supposed to have done in the previous periods should come before any new borrowing and hence cost to customers.”

Public outcry over the proposed price increases coming has resurrected calls in the trade unions and Labour Party, ahead of its annual conference this week, for renationalisation of the water industry, a key manifesto commitment under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the party from 2015-2020.

GMB national officer Gary Carter declared, “Water bosses are the ones responsible for the terrible state of England’s rivers and waterways; they should be paying to restore them to good health, not the public… Water privatisation has failed—consumers shouldn’t have to pay for this failure.”

The rump of Corbyn’s former parliamentary supporters in the Socialist Campaign Group have chimed in, with Corbyn's shadow chancellor John McDonnell saying, “Water privatisation has been the biggest rip-off privatisation of them all.”

“Fortunes have been made at all our expense as the service has deteriorated, charges have gone through the roof, massive debts have been incurred to pay shareholders, and they’ve polluted our rivers and seas. Thirty years of regulation has significantly failed. Public ownership is the only serious option from here on,” McDonnell added.

This will never happen under Labour. Corbyn's renationalisation proposals are dead and buried. During his bid to become party leader in 2020 after Corbyn’s ousting, Sir Keir Starmer declared, “Public services should be in public hands, not making profits for shareholders… Support common ownership of rail, mail, energy and water; end outsourcing in our NHS, local government and justice system.”

Key “left” figures backed him. Laura Parker, Momentum’s national coordinator and Corbyn’s former political secretary, declared Starmer had a vision for “unifying the party” and “making an unequivocal commitment to preserving our core policies.”

Parker added: “In defending the transformative economic agenda upon which he stood as a Shadow Cabinet member in 2019, I trust that Keir means what he has written in his ten pledges to us. It would be self-defeating for him to say one thing then act otherwise.”

Within a few weeks, Starmer was indeed acting otherwise, hinting “a massive move forward” on water quality was possible without nationalization. “I think with stronger regulation, stronger enforcement of regulation, and accountability at the top of the water companies we can make a massive move forward on this,” he added.

In March 2023, Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves openly abandoned Labour’s promise to nationalise water with the words, “Within our fiscal rules, to be spending billions of pounds on nationalizing things, that just doesn’t stack up against our fiscal rules.”

Rachel Reeves, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, United Kingdom, speaking in the Is the World in a Debt Spiral? at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2023 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, 19 January [Photo by World Economic Forum/Walter Duerst/Flickr / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]

In May, an 88-page draft programme in preparation for Labour's conference this week was circulated. It included a few anodyne management-speak sentences calling for “a new regulatory approach” that would increase the “accountability” of the industry so that it is “better managed in the public interest”, “punish” illegal activity and “set ambitious targets” to stop pollution. These are not new ideas. Most of them can already be found in Margaret Thatcher’s 1989 Water Act and the remit of Ofwat.

Even these weasel words failed to appear in Starmer's recent “5 missions” statement. In fact, there was not a single word about water.

Neither Starmer’s “new regulatory approach” or Corbyn’s renationalisation under capitalism can solve the problems of a water industry that has been systematically looted. Since privatisation at the end of the 1980s, water companies have paid more than £72 billion in dividends to their shareholders and accrued around £60 billion in debt, the servicing of which contributes 20 percent of the average bill.

The companies have become a maze of indebted financial structures involving international private equity funds, shell companies and tax havens, which no amount of regulation has been able to control. According to one water expert, the companies “rely on Ofwat to act publicly as their defender—rather than a protector of consumer rights.”

Ofwat, whose main role is to ensure that water companies can “appropriately finance all of their functions,” proved itself powerless to prevent the collapse in June of Thames Water—the UK’s largest water company, supplying a fifth of the country’s population. Its £14 billion debt raised the alarm about the critical state of the entire water industry.

Emboldened by Ofwat’s “light-touch” regulation, Thames Water is now saying its £18.7 billion rescue plan won’t get funding from investors—who are able to get better returns from UK gilts and bonds—unless Ofwat changes its rules to allow higher profits. The company demanded Ofwat relax rules around penalties, which sees customers reimbursed for poor performance, including sewage spills.

Subsequent discussions on future financing between the company, regulator and government are shrouded in secrecy.

The nationalisation proposed by the Corbyn leadership was always predicated on compensating the water companies, possibly by up to £40 billion. It effectively rewarded their looting and saddled the taxpayer with the debt as had happened with £56 billion debt of the rail infrastructure owner Network Rail, “nationalised” last year.

A real alternative necessitates a socialist policy for water supply and sanitation. This would involve taking the water companies into public ownership without compensation and supplying clean water based on rational planning and coordination, so that everyone has access to this most basic necessity.

Mexico’s president AMLO shields military’s complicity in disappearance of Ayotzinapa students

Don Knowland

September 27 marked nine years since the disappearance of 43 rural teaching students (normalistas) from the town of Ayotzinapa in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero.

Relatives of missing Ayotzinapa students; signs read "They were taken alive, we want them back alive." [Photo by Thiago Dezan / CIDH / CC BY 2.0]

There remains little doubt that the normalistas, who had commandeered three buses in the City of Iguala in order to attend a protest in Mexico City, were killed through the coordinated actions of a local narcotics gang, the Guerreros Unidos, local, state and federal police, and the Mexican military. They were likely killed because the buses had some of the gang’s narcotics on them.

At the outset, the Mexican Attorney General (PGR) under former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, Jesús Murillo Karam, and his office, concocted a coverup story to the effect that the students had been killed by the local gang members, their remains burned at a local garbage dump, and then tossed into an adjoining river. 

This falsification, which, inverting reality, became known as the “historical truth”, was aimed at hiding the role of the police and security forces involved, and especially that of the Army.

The National Defense Ministry (Sedena) maneuvered from the outset to try to buttress the 'historical truth,' and shield the Iguala infantry battalions and their officers, along with Sedena. itself For example, an attempt was made to conjure up a link between the students and organized crime. 

On September 27, 2015, retired Gen. Humberto Guillermo Aguilar sent an email to then-Secretary of National Defense Salvador Cienfuegos recommending that he hire experts to support the garbage dump hypothesis. “The “historical truth’ may not be accepted, but it cannot be changed,” Cienfuegos wrote a Sedena document leaked by the Guacamaya hacking group.

As further shown by emails from the Army leaked by the Guacamaya group, in May 2017 Sedena drew up an enemies list of “actors averse to the official version” of the Ayotzinapa case. Human rights organizations, and prominent journalists, academics and legislators figured prominently in that document. Mexico’s current president, the pseudo-left populist Andre Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), was included, because he had demanded that the participation of the Army in the crime be investigated, and that the soldiers involved be punished.

The military’s attempted coverup did not succeed. The major role in debunking the “historical truth” was played by the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), made up of four experts sent by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to investigate the Ayotzinapa case, and the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team.

When AMLO took office in late December 2018, he trumpeted that his first order of business was forming a “Presidential Commission for Truth and Access to Justice” (Covaj), to be led by his Undersecretary of Human Rights, Alejandro Encinas. He claimed it would get to the bottom of this atrocity, come what may. AMLO ordered that “all available information” be provided to the investigation. 

Things did not exactly work out that way.

The Commission proceeded at a snail’s pace, prolonging the anguish of the families of the 43, and effectively snubbing them.

In 2019, the PGR ordered the creation of the Special Investigation and Litigation Unit for the Ayotzinapa Case (UEILCA), and a special prosecutor was appointed. A select few were then served up to take the rap.

On August 19, 2022, Murillo Karam and his right-hand man Tomas Zerón, now a fugitive from justice, were charged and arrested for the crimes of torturing gang witnesses to force them to lie, the forced disappearance of the normalistas, and acting against the administration of justice. 

At that time warrants were also requested and issued against 20 local military commanders and military personnel from the 27th and 41st infantry battalions in the city of Iguala, including colonels Rafael Hernández Nieto and José Rodríguez; the latter subsequently promoted to the rank of general. Warrants were also issued as to five administrative and judicial officials from the state of Guerrero; 26 police officials from the nearby municipality of Huitzuco; six from Iguala and one from nearby Cocula; plus 11 state police officials from Guerrero and 14 members of the Guerreros Unidos gang.

Conspicuously absent from any scrutiny or prosecution were those who sat at the highest levels of the defense ministry, the military chiefs, or in the national intelligence agency. It would beggar belief to conclude that these layers were not fully informed of the true course of events in 2014, and particularly as to the role of the local military units in the murder of the students. At the bare minimum, they covered up, but they retained impunity.

At that same time, on August 18, 2022, Alejandro Encinas issued, to considerable fanfare, the report of the “Truth Commission.” The report conceded that the persecution and disappearance of the Ayotzinapa 43 was a “state crime,” involving local officials and military units, and that the government of then President Peña Nieto had pursued a deliberate policy of concealment of the crime and obstruction of justice. 

But the Covaj report failed to address the roles played in the coverup by Sedena, the military brass, and the national intelligence agency, then known as CISEN. 

At that time the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) also charged Rodríguez Pérez with ordering the killing of some of the 43 normalistas. 

However, the judge assigned to the case at that time declined to issue a warrant against the general on that charge, instead limiting the charge to engaging in organized crime, that is, for collaborating with the Guerrero Unidos gang.

Inexplicably, the FGR itself began to dismantle its special unit in August 2022. It then removed the investigative police it had set aside for that unit, canceled most of the warrants, and otherwise interfered with the work of the special prosecutor, Omar Gómez Trejo. In response Gómez Trejo resigned. 

According to members of the GIEI, the FGR took this action because the special unit would have begun to investigate officials from the FGR itself, who allegedly participated in acts of torture to fabricate the “historical truth.” 

The GIEI warned that Trejo’s resignation put the future of the Ayotzinapa case at risk, and could delay its resolution for at least three to five years. 

The GIEI further emphasized the loss of critical knowledge with the departure of Trejo, while also fearing that he would be the subject of reprisals, such as an internal affairs investigation for focusing on military personnel.

It is now unclear how many of the subjects of the warrants are currently in custody. But in June of this year, 16 warrants were reactivated, including warrants for Hernández Nieto and Rodríguez Pérez. Hernández Nieto remains in custody.

In late July of this year the GIEI ended its investigation and issued a final report. The GIEI had managed to obtain cell tracking data of key figures such as Rodríguez Pérez, and recordings of calls of military and other security personnel involved in the disappearance of the normalistas. The GIEI however was unable to determine the locations of the remains of the deceased, since they had been divided into groups and disposed of at different locations by gang members. 

In its final report, the GIEI emphasized the resistance of the Mexican state, and most of all the Army, but including the Navy and the federal intelligence agency, to providing all documentation and evidence bearing on the Ayotzinapa events.

In its reports, the GIEI concluded that the Navy manipulated the scene at the landfill, and that Sedena 'obtained all information through torture' and falsified arrest warrants. Moreover, at least 26 witnesses of the Iguala case have died or been killed. 

General Cienfuegos, the Secretary of Defense under Peña Nieto, that is, during the time of the Ayotzinapa killings and coverup, had played a key role in this coverup.

Early on in the Ayotzinapa investigation Cienfuegos refused to permit the GIEI access to troops that had been on the scene in Iguala, saying he would not permit his soldiers “to be treated like criminals.” Cienfuegos in a television interview on October 15, 2015 said: “We had nothing to do with it. Why do they want to enter the military installations? The Attorney General's Office did its investigation and did not find any minimal indication of our participation in something illegal.” These were boldfaced lies.

Cienfuegos himself had criminal ties to narcos in Guerrero. In 2005-2007 he commanded the IXth Military Military Region, headquartered in Acapulco, Guerrero. He allegedly protected the Sinaloa Cartel (headed by “Chapo” Guzman) and the related Beltrán-Leyva Cartel (headed by Guzman’s cousins), which controlled the Guerrero region at the time. And clear evidence existed that he was being paid to protect and directly facilitate drug shipments by the H-2 cartel, a Beltran-Leyva offshoot. 

General Cienfuegos was eventually seized at an airport in the U.S. and held and investigated by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency for drug trafficking and money laundering, protecting drug smuggling corridors and alerting cartel bosses to U.S. enforcement actions. In November 2020, AMLO pressured the U.S. to release Cienfuegos, despite strong evidence against him.

In 2021, through then Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, AMLO negotiated the return of Cienfuegos. The Trump administration dropped the charges and returned Cienfuegos to Mexico so that, as a joint U.S.-Mexico statement explained, “he may be investigated and, if appropriate, charged under Mexican law.”

Neither occurred. AMLO falsely claimed that Cienfuegos had been expressly exonerated by the FGR, now headed by AMLO’s current PGR Alejandro Gertz Manero. Cienfuegos was a free man. A trial had to be avoided at all costs. It could have implicated other military brass still on duty and exposed the extent of corruption in the armed forces. 

As a candidate for president AMLO had slammed Mexico’s armed forces and the “mafia of power” that he said controlled them. He accused soldiers of human rights abuses in the country’s bloody drug war and at that time publicly chastised Cienfuegos. 

AMLO claimed only last year that the military's official policy under previous administrations was to “kill them all,” i.e. extrajudicial executions, while he has since minimized or outright lied about numerous reports of extrajudicial executions, torture and spying against journalists and human rights advocates by the military under his administration. 

He reneged on his campaign to end the military’s involvement in fighting drug trafficking, while vastly expanding the role of the armed forces in other civilian matters. 

AMLO created a National Guard, under the Army’s jurisdiction, which now has over 100,000 troops, and gave the military responsibility for recruiting, training and funding the new force. The militarized National Guard has in large part replaced the civilian federal police. Its presence is now ubiquitous throughout the country.

The president also assigned the military a contract to build a new international airport outside Mexico City, and the military is building part of a multibillion-dollar tourist train on the Caribbean coast. These projects give the armed forces more independent streams of revenue, opportunities for corruption, and even greater autonomy.

The military has taken over ports, airports and customs. It troops play the leading role in oppressing migrants passing through Mexico as they seek to reach the United States. Its budget has expanded by double digits during AMLO’s presidency. 

In sum, AMLO increasingly relies on the Mexican military to rule. These moves reveal an increasingly authoritarian course on AMLO’s part, and ultimately his reliance on the military to suppress any threat of working class unrest, and maintain oligarchic rule in Mexico. 

The extent of AMLO’s embrace of the military was vividly illustrated in April when he held a press conference with Gen. Luis Cresencio Sandoval González, Mexico’s current secretary of defense, the supreme commander of the armed forces. As the GIEI was beginning to publicly lay out the basis for its final report on Ayotzinapa, the two belittled its investigation. 

Cresencio Sandoval warned that it would be “reckless” to hold the Army responsible for the disappearance of the normalistas. “I have an obligation,” he insisted, “to take care of the prestige of the Army .... ” 

The President chimed in, absurdly describing as “conjecture” the statement by the members of GIEI that the Army could hide information on the case. AMLO insisted that “everything the Defense Secretariat has was delivered,” a demonstrably risible claim.

López Obrador went on to attack the advisers and lawyers of the relatives of the normalistas, saying he did not trust them. He made clear where his sympathies lie.

Even more graphically illustrating the integration of the regime of AMLO and his Morena party with Mexico’s military and security forces is the peculiar case of Omar García Harfuch, who was the head of the Federal Police in Guerrero state when the normalistas were disappeared. 

Mexico City’s mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum, who is now the official candidate for Mexican president of AMLO’s Morena party in the upcoming 2024 election, appointed García Harfuch in 2019 as head of the Investigative Police of Mexico City’s now defunct Attorney General’s Office, as well as intelligence coordinator of her Security cabinet. With Sheinbaum vacating the mayor’s office to run for president, García Harfuch is running as Morena’s candidate for mayor to replace her. 

Definitive documentation and cell phone records now place García Harfuch at a critical meeting in Iguala a week after the normalistas were disappeared, where the “historical truth” was initially concocted. It also appears that the head of the Guerreros Unidos gang had Harfuch’s contact information in his phone book. Yet neither AMLO nor Sheinbaum have called Harfuch and his candidacy for Mexico City mayor into the slightest question.

South Korean main opposition leader in court on corruption charges

Ben McGrath

The leader of South Korea’s main opposition Democratic Party (DP) attended his first trial on corruption charges on Friday. Lee Jae-myung faces numerous allegations, with last week’s proceedings focused on a land development scandal. The charges are not simply about the immediate allegations at hand, but are the result of growing social tensions and the government’s targeting of opposition political figures.

South Korea's main opposition Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung arrives to attend a hearing on his arrest warrant on corruption charges at the Seoul Central District Court in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2023. [AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon]

Prosecutors have been investigating Lee for months. Lee is accused of using his position as mayor of Seongnam from 2010 to 2018 to illegally benefit property developers working on projects in the city’s Wirye and Daejang-dong districts. This supposedly led to 489.5 billion won ($US364 million) in financial losses for the local government while the private developers were able to reap upwards of 809 billion won ($US602 million) in profits.

Lee also stands accused of soliciting 13.3 billion won ($US9.9 million) in bribes from major corporations, funnelled through Seongnam’s professional soccer team. Seongnam is located in Gyeonggi Province, just south of Seoul.

On September 27, Lee avoided arrest in a different case related to accusations that he had similarly used his influence as mayor to benefit private developers in a project in Seongnam’s Baekhyeon-dong district.

In addition, Lee faces charges that he oversaw the remittance of $US8 million to North Korea during his tenure as governor of Gyeonggi Province from 2018-2021. In another separate case, Lee has been accused of violating the election law during his failed bid in last year’s presidential election.

Lee has denied the accusations against him and denounced them as politically motivated. On Friday, he stated during his court hearing, “Dozens of prosecutors were mobilized for the investigation of me and hundreds of raids were carried out.” He continued, “They will continue with it again and keep doing it as long as I’m alive, will they not?”

There is no doubt that the cases against Lee are politically motivated, regardless of any alleged personal dishonesty. Bribery and corruption are widespread throughout the South Korean political and business worlds. Corruption cases are used to settle political scores in the ruling class and cover up the real motivations for targeting a given individual or group.  

The government of right-wing President Yoon Suk-yeol and the ruling People Power Party are deeply concerned over growing social unrest. As around the globe, South Korea is facing declining economic conditions and an upsurge of the working class that refuses to foot the bill for this downturn. Yoon has also directly lined the country up behind Washington for a US-instigated war against China, which includes forming what is essentially a trilateral military alliance with the US and Japan, Korea’s former colonial oppressor.

Lacking any popular support for its agenda, the Yoon regime is responding by reviving the police state measures of past dictatorships. The targeting of the main opposition party stems from the fear that any, even limited, political opposition could become the focal point for a broader struggle against the government and its agenda. The attacks on Lee are aimed at intimidating rival sections of the ruling class while also preparing broader attacks on the working class.

Yoon, who previously served as South Korea’s top prosecutor, defeated Lee by less than one percent in the March 2022 presidential election. After taking office, Yoon stacked various government positions, including at the ministerial level, with former prosecutors close to him.  Many of the officials currently holding key positions in the prosecutorial service itself are Yoon allies.

The president has attacked workers’ right to strike and organize, pledged to restrict the right to protest, and attempted to silence critics in the media. In a Liberation Day speech on August 15, the president denounced political opponents as “anti-state forces” who are under the influence of “communist totalitarianism.”

Only seven years ago, a massive protest movement erupted against the right-wing government of Park Geun-hye, who was impeached and removed from office. While seemingly driven by Park’s personal corruption, demonstrators expressed their frustrations with worsening economic conditions and began to draw lines between Park’s conduct and the oppressive character of the capitalist system as a whole.

Democrat Moon Jae-in subsequently replaced Park as president in 2017. He came to office posturing as a friend of workers and even as a vaguely anti-war candidate, pledging to negotiate with North Korea. In reality, Moon oversaw attacks on the working class and the expansion of social inequality, particularly throughout the still-ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which helped pave the way for the conservatives to take power again.

Economic conditions have declined further since then. A driving factor is US protectionist measures aimed at China, which are hampering South Korea’s ability to trade with its two largest economic partners. Exports have fallen for 12 straight months while those of semiconductors, a key export item, have fallen for 14 straight months. Workers’ real wages have declined nearly every month since April 2022 as a result of inflation.

Lee Jae-myung and the Democratic Party are certainly no friends of the working class. The DP represents sections of the bourgeoisie that fear the US-led war drive in the region is cutting across their interests, including business connections in China and the desire to open up North Korea as an ultra-cheap labour platform. The Democrats are also conscious of the widespread anti-war sentiment within the working class, which the party attempts to direct along nationalist channels by utilizing anti-Japanese chauvinism.

In targeting the Democrats, the Yoon administration wants to ensure that no movement can coalesce around the opposition that will disrupt the government’s agenda, including its war preparations alongside Washington and Tokyo. While the DP would attempt to divert or block any working-class movement, the fear within the ruling class is that mass protests could erupt against the government could spiral out of the control of the Democrats and their allies in the trade unions.

The Democrats are downplaying the government’s anti-democratic measures and blaming Yoon’s lack of experience. An article last month in the DP-aligned Hankyoreh newspaper, declared that Yoon had “blundered” his way into office. The article claimed Yoon “ended up running for president and winning without really knowing why he should be president or what he should do if he became president.”

In reality, under conditions of geo-political tensions and an intensifying economic and social crisis at home, the Yoon government is reviving the police-state measures of the past. While the South Korean military dictatorship was formally replaced by an elected presidential administration in 1987, the state apparatus has remained largely unchanged.

Yenching Academy Masters Fellowships 2024

Application Deadline: 3rd December 2023 (12:00 noon Beijing time).

Eligible Countries: International

To be Taken at (country): China

About the Award: The Yenching Academy is a fully-funded residential program offering various interdisciplinary courses on China within the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Working closely with their academic mentors, Yenching Scholars have the flexibility to create their study paths by choosing from six research areas and a variety of extracurricular activities. Studying at the Academy represents a unique opportunity not only for intercultural and academic exchange, but also for personal and professional development. 

Field of Study: Scholars participate in infield studies to culturally, economically, or socio-politically significant regions within Mainland China. Each Scholar chooses one of six research areas corresponding to thesis topic. (The research area does not affect course selection options or requirements.)

Research Areas:

•  Economics & Management
•  History & Archaeology
•   Law & Society
•  Literature & Culture
•   Philosophy & Religion
•   Politics & International Relations

Eligibility: Applicants should have:

· Minimum of a Bachelor’s degree in any field, awarded no later than August 31 of the year in which they wish to enroll;
· An outstanding academic record;
· Strong interest in interdisciplinary study of China;
· A record of extracurricular achievement, community engagement and social responsibility;
· Leadership potential;
· English proficiency.

Successful applicants will show how the Yenching Academy program is relevant and valuable for their career plans.
Preference is given to candidates age 25 or younger as of August 31 2022. For students from countries with mandatory military service, the age preference is 27 years old or younger.

Number of Awards: About 125

Value of Award: Yenching Academy provides a generous postgraduate fellowship covering tuition fees, a travel stipend for one round-trip journey between each Scholar’s base city and Beijing, accommodations, and a monthly living stipend.

Duration of Program: 

• Fellowships for international scholars are for 12 months, with the option to extend for a second year in Beijing.
• During the second year in Beijing, students may apply for a limited number or Teaching, Research, or Administrative Assistantships.
• In addition, scholars may apply for grants to help fund research projects related to China Studies.
• All students complete coursework during their first year. The second year is for completing thesis writing and defense (international students who choose to leave Beijing after the first year may complete thesis defense remotely). Degrees are granted upon completing all coursework and satisfactory defense of the thesis, and are awarded in January and July of each year.
• The Academy also offers a limited number of doctoral scholarships to selected Yenching Scholars who want to pursue doctoral degrees in other Peking University departments.

How to Apply: Apply here

Visit Program Webpage for Details

UK Covid-19 Inquiry evidence reveals how “let it rip” policy determined the end of COVID lockdowns

Ioan Petrescu

Public hearings in the second stage of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry began this week. The inquiry was announced by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson in May 2021 and has been moving at a snail’s pace, with proceedings expected to take until 2026 to complete. In the meantime, 229,000 people have died of COVID in Britain, according to official statistics, while millions suffer from Long COVID.

Lead counsel Hugo Keith KC read out the evidence on Tuesday, the first day of this stage of the inquiry focusing on political decision-making in Westminster between January 2020 and February 2022. It revealed new information on the criminal attitude that prevailed in government circles at the beginning of the pandemic, and their overarching concerns that the economy be protected, not the population.

UK Covid-19 Inquiry lead counsel Hugo Keith KC [Photo: ovid19.public-inquiry.uk]

Despite the World Health Organization declaring COVID a pandemic on February 24, 2020 and reports of thousands of infections and deaths coming in from around the world, most notably from Italy, Dominic Cummings, at the time a senior advisor to Prime Minister Boris Johnson wrote in a text message on March 2: “The PM [prime minister] doesn't think it's a big deal; [he] doesn't think anything can be done, and his focus is elsewhere; he thinks it will be like swine flu and thinks his main danger is taking the economy into a slump.”

At various times, claims have been made that the government was not aware of the seriousness of the pandemic or of the consequences of it running unchecked, to excuse the criminal actions taken. Evidence at the hearings debunks this completely. An unnamed “senior Cabinet official” is quoted as saying on March 13, 2020, “I think this country's [headed] for a disaster, I think we're going to kill thousands of people.” A text sent a day earlier on March 12, from Cummings reads: “We’ve got big problems coming. The [Cabinet Office] is terrifyingly shit. No plans. Totally behind the pace. […] We're looking at 100 to 500,000 deaths between optimistic and pessimistic scenarios.”

Concerned with ensuring the profits of corporations, the Tory government delayed instituting any public health measures as long as possible. It only acted when it became clear that the National Health Service (NHS) was going to collapse, threatening the stability of the state and massive economic damage. The ruling class had to take into account growing public concern and anger in the working class that measures had not been put in place to protect the population.

The government had no plan in place to institute a lockdown and had to haphazardly come up with one. Despite the decision for a lockdown being taken on March 9, it wasn’t imposed until March 23, causing more people to needlessly die. This is graphically described by Cummings in a text to Johnson: “You’re going to have to lock down but there is no lockdown plan, it does not exist, SAGE [Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies] haven’t modelled it, the Department of Health and Social Care don’t have a plan”. Reportedly, Johnson replied by musing out loud whether the virus should just be allowed to “let rip”.

Johnson had already declared the homicidal “herd immunity” programme in public on the This Morning TV show on March 5, where he explained, “One of the theories is, that perhaps you could take it on the chin, take it all in one go and allow the disease, as it were, to move through the population.”

As these discussions were taking place, the murderous decision was made, on March 17, 2020, to release tens of thousands of mainly elderly patients from hospitals to care homes, without testing. Taken in opposition to all medical advice and against any public health considerations this resulted in thousands of needless deaths as COVID tore through care homes turning them into killing fields.

Evidence presented in the inquiry makes clear that the consequences of this action were fully understood. Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, had briefed the cabinet about asymptomatic transmission just a few days previously. As lawyers for the bereaved noted, “In light of what was known, the decision in both England and Wales to discharge people from hospital into care homes without testing was indefensible.”

As infections were rising again in September and early October 2020, after an ebb throughout the summer due to the lockdown being in place—and after most lockdown restrictions were lifted at the beginning of July—discussions took place in the Cabinet Office on whether to reimpose the lockdown.

The contending sides outlined their arguments to Johnson. At a meeting on October 25, 2020, one comment made to Johnson was “let it rip”, and, in relation to elderly people, which would have been the most threatened by a new surge of COVID, “They have had a good innings”. Just five days later, on October 30, 2020, even as Johnson had to authorise a second national lockdown to begin six days later on November 5, he made his infamous statement in Downing Street, blurting out, “No more fucking lockdowns. Let the bodies pile high in their thousands”.

People queue for coronavirus booster jabs at St Thomas' Hospital, with the National COVID Memorial Wall in the foreground, in London, December 13, 2021. [AP Photo/Matt Dunham]

This policy of social murder led to well over 100,000 more deaths over the next year, with many among the elderly. It summed up the determination of the ruling elite to end all lockdowns—an aim carried out just a few months later from March 8 to July 2021—in what was described as a “roadmap out of lockdown” that would end all restrictions “irreversibly”. This agenda was fervently backed by Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party who worked with the government as a self-declared “constructive” opposition throughout the first years of the pandemic.

The cabinet first had discussions around Long COVID in October 2020. Anthony Metzer KC, speaking on behalf of Long Covid Kids, Long Covid SOS and Long Covid Support, told the inquiry that Johnson initially “denied the truth of the suffering” of Long COVID patients. “In October 2020, while the Department of Health and Social Care was publishing guidance on long Covid and called for recognition and support for people with long Covid, Boris Johnson scrawled in capitals that long Covid was ‘bollocks’”. Metzer added, “Mr Johnson has admitted in his witness statement that he didn’t believe long Covid truly existed, dismissing it as ‘Gulf War Syndrome stuff’. The inquiry will be concerned to probe how the former prime minister could possibly hold this view in October 2020.” Noting that Johnson now accepted that Long Covid was a “serious health condition”, Metzer said at the time, “The UK’s senior most decision-makers were dismissing, diminishing and disbelieving the very existence and risk of long Covid.”

During the second and third day of hearings, the inquiry heard evidence on how the government was prioritizing profit over the health and lives of the population. On Tuesday, it was revealed from the diary of government chief scientific adviser Vallance that “Chancellor [Rishi Sunak] blocking all notion of paying to get people to isolate despite all the evidence that this will be needed.” On Wednesday, the British Medical Association (BMA) testified that the government “abandoned basic public health protection” when setting up a privatised Test and Trace system. Caroline Abrahams, charity director for Age UK, described an “underlying assumption that older people with care needs would be unlikely to survive”.

The evidence presented paints a devastating picture of ruling elite indifference to the suffering and loss of lives of workers and the elderly. Their only motive was protecting the interests of the banks and corporations. But what is known publicly only scratches the surface of their criminal conduct. This was highlighted by the refusal of current Prime Minister Sunak to release all his WhatsApp messages to the inquiry. Sunak’s statement to the inquiry says, “Having changed my phone a number of times over the last three years, I do not have access to the WhatsApp messages that I sent or received during the relevant time, and neither were the messages backed up.”

The body heard that key WhatsApp messages by Johnson from January 31 to June 7, 2020, are “unrecoverable”. The loss of Johnson’s messages were described by Peter Weatherby KC, for Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, as a “remarkable and unfortunate coincidence”. Weatherby said, “We would urge the inquiry to commission experts to see why those messages can’t be retrieved and whether they may have been deleted.”

As the WSWS has noted, the role of the inquiry is not to hold anyone to account for the disastrous handling of the pandemic. No matter what evidence is uncovered or oral evidence presented, the Inquires Act prohibits ruling on or determining anyone’s civil or criminal liability. Like every other public inquiry held, from the Aberfan disaster in 1966, to the Grenfell Tower inferno, it will finish in a whitewash.