Israeli bombardment claims over 700 lives in 24 hours as imperialist powers double down on support for genocide against Palestinians

Jordan Shilton

Palestinian health ministry officials reported Tuesday that 704 Palestinians were killed by Israeli air strikes over the preceding 24 hours, making it the deadliest day since Israel’s bombardment of Gaza began over two weeks ago. The grim statistic coincided with statements by representatives of American and French imperialism underscoring their support for the savage slaughter of civilians in the Gaza Strip.

Conditions in the enclave are worsening by the hour. Hospitals are being forced to reduce services due to a lack of fuel, which Israeli authorities are preventing from entering Gaza via the Rafah border crossing from Egypt. Even the UN Refugee Agency (UNRWA) reported that its operations in Gaza may have to be suspended within 24 hours if fuel supplies fail to arrive.

“We are hosting 600,000 people in over 160 underground facilities, including schools, medical facilities, and other buildings like warehouses … We’re so stretched that we have to open warehouses to receive the displaced,” said UNRWA director of communications Juliette Touma. “Supplies are also running out, so we will not be able to give any supplies to [Palestinians in Gaza]. We will not be able to do very simple things like start our fleet of cars or turn on the trucks and go pick up those supplies that are coming in from the borders.”

The World Health Organization called for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” Tuesday to allow for fuel shipments to reach Gaza. Six hospitals across Gaza have shut entirely due to a lack of fuel, the WHO said, and the al-Shifa Hospital, the Indonesian Hospital and the Turkish Friendship Hospital are struggling to maintain critical services. “Unless vital fuel and additional health supplies are urgently delivered into Gaza, thousands of vulnerable patients risk death or medical complications as critical services shut down due to lack of power,” the WHO warned.

The Israeli government reiterated yesterday its bitter opposition to any fuel shipments entering Gaza. Only eight trucks passed through the Rafah crossing late in the evening, five carrying water, two food, and one carrying medical supplies for 2.3 million people. Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari asserted without providing any evidence that “Hamas uses it [fuel] for its operational needs.”

The Israeli military continued its indiscriminate bombing campaign throughout the day. It struck several targets in the south of the Gaza Strip, where Israeli government officials ordered over a million people to flee almost two weeks ago to ostensibly be “safe” from attacks. One air strike flattened a residential building in Khan Younis with dozens of casualties. Later in the day, a Gaza health ministry spokesman said that 50 people had been killed in air strikes within an hour.

Late in the evening, the Palestinian Red Crescent reported an air strike in the vicinity of its headquarters and the al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis, where some 4,000 civilians are sheltering from Israeli bombs. Initial reports indicated extensive damage and numerous injuries.

The ability of the far-right Netanyahu government, which is deeply unpopular within Israel, to resort to such brutal methods of collective punishment is due above all to the unconditional support it enjoys from the imperialist powers, first and foremost the United States. White House spokesman John Kirby emphasized Washington’s endorsement of the onslaught on Gaza, telling a Tuesday press conference, “This is war. It is combat. It is bloody. It is ugly, and it’s going to be messy. And innocent civilians are going to be hurt going forward.”

French President Emmanuel Macron became the latest leader from one of the major imperialist powers to visit Israel, appearing alongside Netanyahu at a Tuesday press conference to declare his unflinching solidarity with the genocide against the Palestinians. Macron proposed extending the international coalition formed to fight the Islamic State terrorist group in Syria and Iraq in 2014 to include Hamas. Countries fighting ISIS “should also fight against Hamas,” he said. An Elysee Palace official later added that France is available “to beef up what we are doing in the coalition against ISIS. We are available to include Hamas in [being targeted by] the coalition against ISIS depending on what Israel will ask us to deliver.”

The comparison of the present war with the multi-national operations against ISIS is revealing, since the savage US-led war in Syria and Iraq led to the indiscriminate killing of tens of thousands of civilians. The “liberation” of cities like Mosul and Raqqa from ISIS control was achieved through their virtual destruction.

The prospect of direct US and French involvement underscores how the Israeli regime’s war on Gaza is rapidly evolving into a region-wide conflict, or more accurately the Middle East front in a global war. The Biden administration has already dispatched two aircraft carrier battle groups to the region with over 15,000 personnel, while making direct threats against Iran.

On Tuesday, Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder confirmed that American bases in Syria and Iraq came under attack 10 times between October 17 and 24. A report from NBC News later in the day revealed that two dozen US soldiers were injured in the attacks. Taking direct aim at Tehran, Ryder remarked menacingly, “We know that the groups [that] conduct these attacks are supported by the IRGC [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps] and the Iranian regime. What we are seeing is the prospect for more significant escalation against US forces and personnel across the region in the very near term coming from Iranian proxy forces and ultimately from Iran. We are preparing for this escalation both in terms of defending our forces and responding decisively.”

At a UN Security Council debate, US secretary of State Anthony Blinken also took aim at Iran, accusing it of supporting Hamas, Hizbollah, and the Hauthis “for years.” Referring to the attacks on US bases, he added ominously, “If Iran or its proxies attack U.S. personnel anywhere, make no mistake:  We will defend our people, we will defend our security – swiftly and decisively.”

The UN Security Council debate also underlined the strident rejection by Israel and its imperialist allies of any recognition of the oppression suffered by the Palestinians over the past three-quarters of a century. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres made some remarks that in previous conflicts in the Middle East would have been more or less widely accepted. “It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum,” he said. “The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.”

Israel’s UN envoy Gilad Erdan responded by demanding Guterres’ resignation, calling his remarks “shocking,” while Foreign Minister Eli Cohen cancelled a planned meeting with the UN head. Opposition leader Benny Gantz, who was brought into the war cabinet by Netanyahu, labelled Guterres a “terror apologist.”

Number of UK schools and hospitals liable to collapse rises

Margot Miller

The number of schools and hospitals in the UK found to have been built with dangerous reinforced aerated concrete (RAAC), which poses a “critical risk to life”, is rising.

RAAC is a lightweight, cheap concrete used widely between the 1950s and 1980s in public buildings including schools, universities, hospitals and housing, on flat roofs, walls and floors. It is susceptible to failure after contact with water and has a limited lifespan of 30 years, after which it can collapse without warning.

Reinforced Aerated Autoclaved Concrete (RAAC), close-up view [Photo by Marco Bernardini, own work / CC BY-SA 3.0]

In 1982, RAAC production in the UK ceased amid safety concerns. However, there was no attempt to ascertain which buildings contained it or monitor and replace it. Despite warnings from building experts and roof collapses in schools, successive governments, Labour and Conservative, tried to ignore a life-threatening catastrophe waiting to happen because of the enormous costs remedial work would entail.

RAAC is just one deadly problem plaguing schools. Equally dangerous are “system-built” classroom blocks, while exposure to asbestos has killed tens of 1,000s from mesothelioma. System-built blocks are made of concrete, steel and timber, rather than brick and stone, with a similar design life to RAAC, used in construction between 1940 and 1980. The Department for Education (DfE) identified 13,000 such blocks in schools, but of concern regarding liability to collapse are 3,600 with concrete or timber frames.

Schools Week revealed that according to the National Audit Office, the DfE had not yet engaged specialists to carry out invasive inspections, despite agreeing a scheme to assess 200 schools last year.

The funding for the remedial work to make schools and public building safe conflicts with the Conservative government and Labour opposition’s commitment to NATO’s expanding wars in the Ukraine and the Middle East, for which no expense is spared.

Last week, the Department of Health and Social Care published a list of 42 hospitals confirmed to contain RAAC, up from its previous figure of 18. The list of schools and colleges found with RAAC rose to 214, an increase of 41 from the previous tally on September 19.

On the eve of schools reopening in September, the government was forced to close more than 100 found to have RAAC after an incident during the holidays involving structural collapse.

In May, National Health Service (NHS) Trusts received instructions from the government to assess their buildings for the presence of RAAC. As the list of hospitals confirmed to be affected grew, Sir Julian Hartley, chief executive of NHS Providers representing NHS Trusts in England, said, 'This old concrete puts patients and staff at risk and the picture is getting worse.” The trusts were doing 'everything they can, at huge cost, to keep patients safe.”

The BBC reported that seven of the trusts most at risk will not have their RAAC replaced until 2030, while other hospitals will have to wait 12 years.

Hartley said, “The RAAC problem is a symptom of a far bigger and long-running one. The NHS has a £10 billion-plus backlog of repairs.”

Decades of funding cuts have decimated the NHS, education and support services, to pay for the multi-hundred billion pound bank and pandemic bailouts, and a burgeoning defence budget which alone has soared over £5 billion annually.

In England the list of hospitals built using RAAC includes four in London, 11 in the North West, seven in the North East and Yorkshire, three in the Midlands, eight in the East of England and nine in the South East.

In Scotland, 254 hospital buildings are being investigated while RAAC was found in two hospitals in Wales. The Welsh government declared a major incident at Withybush Hospital in Pembrokeshire, closing three wards with RAAC in September.

Last week, a school in Wakefield closed after a survey revealed RAAC. St Thomas à Becket will remain shut and teach online, opening only to year 11 pupils from November 1. The academy was not on the list of schools with RAAC published by the DfE.

The DfE list includes a further three schools confirmed with RAAC which was “not present after initial tests”, placing a question mark over the efficacy of the initial testing conducted. The schools are Brandhall Primary in Sandwell, Cockermouth School in Cumberland and The Appleton School in Essex.

Government website gov.uk listing the “Education settings with confirmed RAAC and mitigations in place” indicates that most of the schools and colleges are now teaching face-to-face, with 12 combining face-face teaching and remote learning.

The government does not specify the nature of the mitigations, but comments to parliament by DfE Under Secretary of State Baroness Barran indicate a shoddy, patch-up job. As well as using portacabins as temporary classrooms for an unspecified time, she suggested “semi-permanent” timber be secured beneath areas with RAAC that could last for up to 10 years.

Across Scotland, 16 local authorities reported schools with RAAC, while surveys are planned in 120 schools in Northern Ireland. In Wales, a school in Conwy County, one in Denbighshire and two on the Isle of Anglesey closed due to RAAC.

Essex is the worst hit county in England, with 70 confirmed cases, an increase of eight since the last count. Interviewed in Clacton, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak blustered, “We’re already investing record sums into our schools, particularly to help our pupils catch up from the lost learning from Covid. We’re in the midst at the moment of the biggest ever tutoring programme that this country has ever seen which we’ve invested £5 billion to provide millions of tutoring hours particularly for our most disadvantaged children who suffered enormously as a result of the lost learning during Covid.”

This feigned concern for disadvantaged children is belied by further funding cuts schools face due to an DfE error in forecasting pupil numbers. James Saunders, head of an Essex school which will receive £50,000 less than expected, told the Guardian, “The impact of not just this error, but other funding shortfalls and cuts is that education is in danger of becoming reduced to a barebones boilerplate model or basic schooling.”

Heads face losing teaching assistants, who work with SEND pupils (special educational needs and disabilities) as well as with the COVID catch-up program.

Tytherington secondary school in Macclesfield, facing a shortfall of £44,000, may abandon appointments for pastoral care workers tasked with improving attendance—a stated government priority—and SEND provision.

Farnborough College of Technology is one of six colleges (post 16 education) on the government’s list found with RAAC. With 3,600 students on role, remedial work at the college is expected to cost £800,000 to be funded by the DfE. The college, however, estimates the complete RAAC replacement project at “millions of pounds”, indicating the massive shortfall in investment needed to remove and replace RAAC across the whole school estate.

Building work underway at one of the affected schools, Abbey Lane Primary in Sheffield, England, September 1, 2023

Abbey Lane Primary School in Sheffield learned this week that the government has reneged on its promise to pay £620,000 to remove and replace RAAC found on its roof.

The response of the National Education Union, ASCL, NAHT, GMB, UNISON, Unite and Community unions to the RAAC scandal was summed up by Trades Union Congress General Secretary Paul Nowak’s futile appeal to the Sunak government “to commit to a programme of capital investment that repairs and rebuilds our public estate.” For its part the Labour Party has made clear it has no “magic money tree” to spend on health or education.

UK: Minimum Services Legislation to be used against teachers in future strikes

Tania Kent

The Department of Education (DfE) met with trade unions last Friday following an “invitation” by Education Secretary Gillian Keegan to discuss a “voluntary” agreement to limit industrial action in schools and colleges.

If no agreement is reached, Keegan told Parliament the same day, she will use powers granted through the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act introduced in July to prevent education workers from striking.

Striking teachers at Tapton school in Sheffield, February 1, 2023

The new legislation is central to the shift in ruling circles to authoritarian rule in response to an upsurge of class struggle and industrial action not witnessed in over 30 years. It goes hand in hand with calls for a police crackdown to criminalise mass protests nationwide against the Conservative government’s backing of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza.

Daniel Kebede, newly elected general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), the sector’s largest, informed his members through X Friday: “Interesting shotgun meeting again with the DFE. Less than 24 hours’ notice. No notice of what was to be discussed. Turns out they want to implement Minimum Service Levels in schools to break strikes.”

The Strikes (MSL) Act grants ministers’ powers to impose minimum service levels during strikes in key sectors of the economy. It will be used against workers in ambulance, fire and rail services, health, education, border security and nuclear decommissioning.

The government’s draft Code of Practice for MSL threatens workers taking lawful strike action with disciplinary charges and threats to their employment, as well as levelling fines against unions and individual workers. The draft code states, “To encourage compliance, unions must take ‘reasonable steps’ to ensure members who are identified on the work notice on a strike day do not take part in strike action and comply with the work notice… If a trade union fails to take reasonable steps, the employer could seek damages from the union or an injunction to prevent the strike action taking place.”

Kebede responded with meaningless wish list committing the NEU to nothing, stating, “1) if @GillianKeegan wants to implement minimum service levels, I have some ideas: Every child taught in a class under 30, every child taught by a qualified teacher, every child to have the SEND [special educational needs] support they need, every child to be taught in a school that is fit for purpose and not crumbling.”

In July, the education unions—led by the NEU—sold out strikes that were spread over seven months against intolerable working conditions, declining wages and a dire lack of funding. In her statement Friday, Keegan complained, “Ten days of strikes by educators this year resulted in the loss of 25 million school days.”

So how does the NEU aim deliver a counter-offensive? According to Kebede, an incoming Labour government led by Sir Keir Starmer would be the cure: “2) The government have no democratic mandate to attack our democratic right to strike. The PM has never faced an election and they would be wiped out if they did. No mandate and no right to attack our democratic right to strike.”

Trade unions have hailed the prospect of an incoming Labour government, on the basis that it is committed to repealing the Strikes Act. But the opposition of the Labour Party and the trade unions to the Act is premised on the trade union bureaucracy’s proven role in suppressing every major struggle of the working class over the last four decades. To impose MSLs, they warn, would risk the class struggle breaking out of their control.

That the education unions will mount no effective campaign to defend the right to strike and protect their members was established in the sellout of the NEU’s strikes in July. As the MSL legislation went through its final stages in parliament on July 20, the unions were balloting staff to end their strike action against the government. The NEU called out its members demanded a 12 percent wage rise—which was to be fully funded—but accepted a rotten below inflation 6.5 percent rise that was not fully funded with almost half the rise (3 percent) coming out of cash strapped school budgets.

Educators accepted the government’s offer of 6.5 percent, convinced that the union bureaucracy had proven that they would not take up a fight for fully funded above inflation pay rise. The three main unions, NEU, NASUWT and NAHT had all passed their threshold for strike action, threatening a first ever mass strike of all educators.

As this sell-out was imposed, no mention was made of the anti-strike laws and their implications, nor any action proposed to overturn the dictatorial measures. This was mirrored by the trade unions involved in strikes throughout the country—the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, Communication Workers Union, University and College Union, Royal College of Nursing, and British Medical Association.

The MSL legislation is in preparation for a renewed offensive by workers, with the government making clear it anticipates ongoing opposition to its agenda of war and austerity. The draft Code explains, “Since June 2022, there have been more than 4 million working days lost to strikes, far more than in any previous year over the last 30 years. Industrial action has affected around one in ten businesses, and of those affected, around one in four on average reported not being able to fully operate due to industrial action.”

It cautions, “While a number of unions have now accepted pay deals, there is no guarantee that the level of strike action experienced over the last year, which caused severe disruption and threatened the lives and livelihoods of the public, will not happen again.”

The government’s is correct in its prognosis, whatever efforts are made by the union bureaucracy to suppress the class struggle.

Schools, in particular, are a social and political tinderbox. They reopened in September amid a Raac (Reinforced Autoclave Aerated Concrete) scandal that has resulted in mass disruption to children’s education as over 100 schools were forced to close fully or partially due to fear of their imminent collapse, with over 500 others at risk and 8,000 needing urgent risk assessments. The government has refused to provide the over £4 billion in immediate funding to rebuild unsafe schools. In addition, COVID is once again rampant, threatening the lives and welfare of teachers and children. The government has already reneged on its funding promises made to end the school strikes, claiming to have made an “error” in its calculations that will mean schools must cover a £370 million shortfall from their already dwindling budgets. The number of children in class sizes over 30 is the biggest ever and job vacancies at their highest since 2004.

Most fundamentally, the social crisis facing the entire working class worsens by the day under conditions where the joint Tory/Labour drive for austerity is sharpened by the need to find British imperialism’s war measures against Russia in Ukraine and now its backing for Israel’s filthy genocide against the Palestinians. Mass opposition to the crimes of Israel and its backers in London, Tory and Labour alike, is strongest among the younger generation and is shared by the majority of educators.

Death toll from Israeli war on Gaza passes 5,000

Patrick Martin

A wounded Palestinian woman runs following Israeli airstrikes that targeted her neighbourhood in Gaza City, Monday, Oct. 23, 2023. [AP Photo/Abed Khaled]

More than 5,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by Israeli rockets, bombs, mortars and artillery shells since the onslaught began on October 8, according the Health Ministry of the Hamas government in the enclave. Another 15,000 have been wounded, and victims of the bombardment have swamped the 19 hospitals in the Gaza Strip.

The 5,087 officially killed include more than 2,000 children under 18 and about 1,100 women, the Health Ministry said Monday. More children have died in Gaza in two weeks than have been killed in the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine in 20 months.

Even the horrific toll reported by the Health Ministry seems likely to be a major undercount. The Israeli Air Force says that it has so far carried out strikes against more than 10,000 targets in Gaza, and its huge bombs and missile warheads, all supposedly “precision” weapons, are targeted against concentrations of people, either inside buildings or out in the open.

A staggering 1.4 million out of the 2.3 million population of Gaza have fled their homes, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Association (UNRWA), which provides aid to the Palestinian population. Nearly 580,000 are seeking refuge in UNRWA-run schools and shelters, the agency said. Some 40 percent of the housing stock of the entire enclave has been destroyed or damaged in the Israeli bombing. UNRWA said that 29 members of its staff, half of them teachers, have been killed since the bombing began.

The most criminal aspect of the overnight bombings of October 22-23 is that many of the 320 strikes acknowledged by the Israel Defense Forces were in southern Gaza, the region where the IDF has told Palestinians to go to in order to avoid becoming targets in the impending ground invasion by Israeli forces.

IDF warplanes have dropped tons of leaflets on northern Gaza telling the population to evacuate to the south. But the fighter bombers and missiles have followed the movement of the population and targeted hospitals, refugee encampments and columns of people fleeing the north.

Al-Jazeera reported 61 deaths at the Abou Youssef Al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, at the southernmost point of the Gaza Strip, where the crossing into Egypt has become a major chokepoint. The bodies were laid out on the hospital grounds for lack of space inside the facility.

The news service’s correspondent in southern Gaza wrote, “It’s a critical condition,” with at least 28 people killed near Rafah and 14 more killed near a petroleum station in Khan Younis that was hit by an Israeli strike. Fuel shortages could force several hospitals in southern Gaza to “run out of service” soon.

The movement of a few dozen aid trucks through the Rafah crossing from Egypt was finally permitted by Israeli authorities. They are delivering a “drop in the ocean,” according to UN aid officials, and the aid is limited to food, water and medical supplies, but not the fuel which is desperately needed to run hospital generators and water pumping and desalination facilities.

According to one aid official, 40 trucks a day carrying diesel, benzene and cooking gas entered Gaza in August. Since October 7, not a single truck has been allowed in. Israeli Energy Minister Israel Katz said in a statement October 12, “Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electric switch will be turned on, no water tap will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home.” 

Even this tiny amount of aid entering southern Gaza is being withheld from Gaza City and other parts of northern Gaza, once home to a majority of the population of the enclave. The al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in Gaza City, with a capacity of 700 patients in ordinary times, currently has 5,000 patients and 45,000 gathered around its grounds seeking safety and shelter.

“The north didn’t receive anything” from incoming aid, Mahmoud Shalabi, an aid worker, told the Associated Press. The worker for the Medical Aid for Palestinians group based in the northern town of Beit Lahia said, “It’s like a death sentence for the people in the north of Gaza.”

According to the AP, Shalabi also confirmed the earlier report that the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza has ran out of fuel and suffered a power outage, leaving it in total darkness.

The Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that Israeli warplanes launched a series of raids Monday evening near Al-Quds Hospital, which is affiliated with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in Gaza.

Israel issued evacuation orders to 17 hospitals operating in Gaza City, according to the UN humanitarian office, but the hospitals have not moved people, “given this would endanger the lives of vulnerable patients.”

This defiance sparked last week’s attack by Israel, on October 17, in which nearly 500 Palestinians were massacred at the Al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital in Gaza City. The Israeli authorities, the Biden administration and the corporate media continue to deny that Israel was responsible for this atrocity, claiming instead that it was the result of a rocket misfired by the Palestinian resistance group Islamic Jihad.

The New York Times actually published a groveling apology in its Monday edition, expressing its regret for having initially given a relatively truthful account of the massacre, rather than denouncing Hamas as a dubious source of information. Nonetheless, a news report the same day in the Times acknowledged, “Israel has also turned down requests by The Times to provide logs of all its military activity in the area at the time of the strike, and declined to specify the video on which it based its assessment of Palestinian responsibility.”

US media outlets reported that the Pentagon has sent Lt. Gen. James Glynn, a three-star Marine general, to Israel to share his expertise on urban warfare. Glynn served a two-year tour in Iraq in 2006-2007, during some of the heaviest fighting against Sunni insurgents and later commanded the Special Operations Command of the entire Marine Corps.

Also Monday, the Times of Israel reported mounting pressure from IDF commanders on the Netanyahu government to give the green light for the ground invasion of Gaza. “After 16 days of airstrikes, the IDF has told the government that it is fully prepared for a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip, and believes it can achieve the goals set out for it, even at the risk of heavy casualties to soldiers,” the newspaper said.

The IDF command reportedly “fears that further hostage releases by Hamas could lead the political leadership to delay a ground incursion or even halt it midway.” Hamas released two American hostages Friday night and two Israeli hostages on Monday night.

UN report says global economy could be heading for systemic crises

Nick Beams

The latest UN Trade and Development Report, published earlier this month, presents a picture of a global economy wracked by lower investment and growth, the increased domination of giant corporations, financial speculation, a falling share of labour income and rising social equality.

The report contains an important chapter detailing the link between financial speculation in commodity markets and rising costs in basic foodstuffs.

IMF Headquarters, Washington, DC. [Photo by IMF / CC BY 4.0]

Setting out the overall situation, the report said: “Today’s global economic landscape is characterised by growing inequalities and divergence of growth paths between key regions.”

The world economy, slated to grow at only 2.4 percent this year, with a slight rise to 2.5 percent in 2024, “is flying at ‘stall speed’… meeting the definition of a global recession.”

“Compounding these issues is the absence of adequate multilateral responses and coordination measures. Without decisive action, the fragility of the global economy and an array of diverse shocks risk evolving into systemic crises.”

The growth rate shows no sign of returning to pre-pandemic levels in the absence of any “clear driving force” to propel the global economy onto a “robust and sustainable recovery track.” The figure is among the lowest in the past four decades, outside of crisis years.

One of the key features of the present situation, outlined in the report, is the increasing domination of the global economy by giant corporations and finance capital. This has led to the reduction of the labour share of income from 57 percent in 2000 to 53 percent today.

Roughly translated into raw figures, this means that with global GDP at close to $100 trillion, the income flowing to working people today is around $4 trillion less than it would have been had the already depressed share in 2000 been maintained.

In the words of the report: “The declining labour share and the rising profits of [multinationals] point to the key role of large corporations dominating international activities… [and] driving up global functional income inequality.”

The domination of finance capital and the rise in interest rates is already having a major impact on poorer countries.

“Some 3.3 billion people—almost half of humanity—now live in countries that spend more on debt interest payments than on education or health,” the report said, with the external and publicly guaranteed debt in these countries tripling over the past decade.

The proportion of government revenue used for debt service payments rose from 6 percent in 2010 to 16 percent in 2021. Nearly a third of these countries are on the “precipice of debt distress” with the situation to worsen as interest rates on bonds rise.

One of the major effects of the COVID pandemic has been to trigger a surge in inflation to the highest levels seen in four decades. This brought a major shift in the policies of the major central banks, led by the US Fed, to rapidly lift interest rates on the grounds that this was needed to “fight inflation.”

The objective was not to deal with the cause of the price hikes but rather with its effects—that is, to slow the economy in order to suppress the wages struggles of the working class in the response to cuts in living standards.

A major component of the inflation surge has been the escalation of food prices and other necessities such as fuel and energy which the UN report makes clear is rooted in the activities of the corporate food giants and commodity traders.

As with all reports from bodies such as the IMF or the World Bank, the UN report presents its findings as part of a case for reform. Its own analysis, however, demonstrates is impossible to implement such measures as long as the major corporations remain in the dominant position. Notwithstanding this approach, the report provides some important information.

Its chapter dealing with “food commodities” and “corporate profiteering” begins: “The stark contrast between the surging profits of commodity trading giants and the widespread food insecurity of millions underscores a troubling reality: unregulated activity within the commodities sector contributes to speculative price increases and market instability, exacerbating the global food crisis.”

It draws the conclusion: “Profiteering from financial activities now drives profits in the global food trading sector.”

That is, whether workers, in advanced capitalist and developing countries alike, can put food on the table to feed their children is determined by the activities of financial speculators.

The report noted there was a vicious interplay developing in which higher energy costs increased the price of fertilizers, leading to a reduction in their use and lower crop yields, which in turn led to higher food prices.

The profits of the nine big fertilizer companies over the past five years grew from an average of around $14 billion before the pandemic to $28 billion in 2021 and then to what is called an “astounding” $49 billion in 2022.

It cited a July report by the international aid agency Oxfam which found that food and beverage corporations made on average $14 billion a year in windfall profits for 2021 and 2002, more than enough to cover the $6.4 billion needed to deliver life-saving assistance for East Africa twice over.

Within the food commodity markets, speculative activities that play a major role in price hikes are not just carried out by banks, hedge funds and other financial institutions. The major food trading companies, such as Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill, have become actively involved as well.

These firms have “come to occupy a privileged position in terms of setting prices, accessing funding, and participating directly in financial markets.” This enabled speculative trades in organised market platforms but also in derivatives markets “over which most governments in the advanced countries have no authority or control.”

These activities are increasing as the report pointed to the “disproportionate role” played by “non-operating activities (speculation) … in the current era of super profits.”

In other words, the global food market is a kind of giant casino in which the chips in the hands of the ultra-wealthy players are the lives of livelihoods of billions of workers and their families.

There is a major transition taking place in which large commodity trading companies have become major financiers.

“They act as creditors to governments and private entities,” carry out speculation on the future direction of prices “leveraging their large informational advantage” and issue financial instruments to third party investors such as pension funds who want to get in on the action.

Like all would be reformers, the authors of the report advance the prospect of regulation. But the facts are so stark that their own findings make clear this is a completely bankrupt perspective.

After pointing to the domination of the food system by major agri-corporations, which have been able to expand their influence up and down supply chain, it concludes: “If a handful of companies continue to hold inordinate power over the world’s food systems, any policy effort to mitigate the short-term effects of food price spikes will be futile in the long term.”

US inflames war throughout the Middle East

Andre Damon

USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier refuels from the underway replenishment oiler USNS Laramie in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, Oct. 11, 2023. (U.S. Navy photo via AP) [AP Photo]

The United States, whose military has killed over one million people during illegal wars in the Middle East over the past quarter-century, is using Israel’s assault against the Palestinians to provoke a wider war throughout the region.

The US is surging troops, warships and aircraft to the Middle East. At least 10,000 sailors, soldiers and airmen have already been deployed to the region, and an unspecified number of troops—possibly in the tens of thousands—have been told to make ready to deploy.

The Biden administration has given its full support for Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians which is taking place through the mass bombing of civilians, killing between 300 and 400 people every single day, as well as the deliberate starvation and dehydration of the population.

At the same time, it is providing the weapons with which Israel is simultaneously carrying out attacks on Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank.

Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians, using American weapons and with American political, military and logistical support, is just one component of the US military escalation throughout the region.

On Saturday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced steps to “strengthen” the US military’s “posture in the region,” citing “escalations by Iran.” Austin said he was putting US missile defense systems on alert throughout the region and had placed an “additional number of forces on prepare to deploy order.”

The US military has asserted that over the past week troops stationed in Iraq have come under attack from what it claims are Iranian proxy forces.

“Iran is closely monitoring these events and, in some cases, actively facilitating these attacks and spurring on others who may want to exploit the conflict for their own good or for that of Iran,” said Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby on Monday.

In an interview on Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared, “We expect that there’s a likelihood of escalation, escalation by Iranian proxies directed against our forces, directed against our personnel. We are taking steps to make sure that we can effectively defend our people and respond decisively if we need to.”

Blinken insisted, “This is not what we want, not what we’re looking for. We don’t want escalation.” He added, “We’ve also deployed very significant assets to the region, two aircraft carrier battle groups, not to provoke, but to deter.”

Blinken, as always, is lying. The escalation is on the part of the United States, which is flooding the Middle East with troops and weapons.

The United States, via its proxy, Israel, is bombing Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria in a deliberate effort to provoke Iran. It is surrounding Iran with warships and aircraft and threatening that any alleged attack against them will be used as a pretext to attack Iran.

The US maintains thousands of troops in Iraq following its brutal and illegal 2003 invasion of that country. US troops are similarly deployed illegally in Syria, in defiance of the Syrian government. All of these troops are poised to strike Iran at a moment’s notice.

Israeli officials continue to make threats against Lebanon. During a visit with troops on the border with Lebanon Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned of “devastating consequences to Hezbollah and the state of Lebanon,” adding, “We’ll hit it with a force it can’t even imagine.” Israel has ordered the evacuation of over 200,000 people from its northern border.

On Sunday, Nir Barkat, Israel’s economy minister, threatened that if the war spills over into Lebanon, “We will not just retaliate to those fronts, but we will go to the head of the snake, which is Iran.”

The US and other imperialist media are, meanwhile, agitating for a direct military conflict with Iran. In an op-ed in The Economist, David Schenker, former US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, openly called for a military conflict with Iran. “More effective than financial tools, however, is military might. … Unfortunately, to forestall a widening of the war in Gaza, Washington may have no choice but to engage militarily.”

In his prime-time speech on Thursday, Biden presented a messianic vision of American global domination, claiming that American military and economic overlordship is the unifying principle in the world. “American leadership is what holds the world together,” Biden said.

He was more explicit in a campaign reception the next day, declaring, “We were in a postwar period for 50 years where it worked pretty well, but that’s sort of run out of steam. It needs a new world order in a sense, like that was a world order.”

To say that the “postwar period” is over is effectively to declare a new period of world war. The Biden administration is escalating the war in the Middle East and threatening to directly attack Iran as part of what it sees as a globe-spanning conflict for world hegemony, stretching from Eastern Europe to the Middle East and the Pacific. American imperialism, confronted with the economic rise of China and the global decline of the US economy, sees war as the means to assert world domination.

The United States worked to provoke the war in Ukraine, with the aim of drawing Moscow into a proxy conflict aimed at “bleeding Russia white.” But two years on, Ukraine’s latest offensive has failed, and the United States is desperately seeking to escalate the conflict in order to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia. At the same time, Washington is instigating a conflict with China over Taiwan and attempting to economically strangle China by blocking its access to advanced computer technology.

Biden’s call last week for $105 billion in additional military spending for all of these fronts marks a major step in the escalation of what is, in fact, the initial stages of a third world war.

The United States is confronting Russia and China, which are both nuclear-armed powers. Israel also possesses nuclear weapons, and at least one member of Israel’s parliament, Revital “Tally” Gotliv, has called for the use of the “doomsday weapon” in the present conflict. Washington’s escalation of military violence threatens human civilization.

But American imperialism’s stoking of world war confronts broad popular opposition. Over the past weekend, millions of people demonstrated on every inhabited continent in opposition to the US-Israeli genocide against the Palestinians. In London, 300,000 people took part in the city’s largest antiwar rally since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The Middle East as a “Powder Keg”

Vladislav B. Sotirovic

The focal feature of both the history and the politics of the region of the Middle East in the Modern and Contemporary Age (during the last 250 years) is the constant conflicts between different internal and external conflicts. Therefore, probably, the term “powder keg” best describes this region (the Balkans as well) for the very reason that for a long period, the Middle East was and is involved in different larger or smaller forms of conflicts, struggles, and wars. However, as in many other global cases, the roots of modern and contemporary problems are largely sown in the past, and, consequently, current political events have to be taken within a larger historical background. The autochthonous people have been all the time on the crossroads of different civilizations and political-cultural influences from abroad and, therefore, their crossroad position was the battleground for foreign invaders even from West Europe in the Middle Ages (the Crusaders).

The biggest part of the Middle East from the first half of the 16th century until the second half of the 19th century was under the domination of the Ottoman Empire. Since the second half of the 19th century West European states (France, UK, and Italy) started gradually to introduce their political, military, and economic-financial control over the region. After WWI, West European colonialists received formal protection rights in the Middle East in the form of mandates (French and British) with an increased influx of Euro-Jewish settlers in Palestine. Several new national states were created after 1918, dividing the land not respecting tribal differences or Western (British) promises made to Arabs for their support in 1916−1918 which finally resulted in unfixed problems since today.

The proclamation of an independent state of Zionist Israel on May 14th, 1948 only more fueled the political situation in the Middle East and provoked a harsh Arab reaction, leading to three major Arab-Israeli wars and several minors. This conflict is one of the longest in modern history as those two Semitic peoples – the (Muslim) Arabs and the (Zionist) Jews – are struggling for their bilateral peaceful coexistence of 60+ (or even 100 since the 1920s). Since the end of the Cold War 1.0, there were two US and Allied invasions in the region inspired by the Iraqi-Kuwait conflict which led to the First Gulf War in 1990−1991 followed by the UN sanctions. In the next century, the USA and its allies (primarily the Brits) started the Second Gulf War in 2003 by the aggression on Iraq, supposedly searching for the WMD bringing together with the invasion of Afghanistan an additional geopolitical mass in the Middle East.

In the region, there were conflicts between the states like the Iran-Iraqi War in the 1980s (anyway inspired by the US) or the conflicts (in fact, civil wars) within certain states in which, for instance, the Islamic fundamentalists or/and extremists challenged the official governments (Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Yemen, Somalia, or predictably in Iraq in the near future). The next type of conflict is those which occurred for the reason that some local organizations or groups, usually with foreign assistance, opposed the occupiers like in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Kuwait, or Afghanistan. In the current stage of the regional conflicts in the Middle East, the focal hope for the regional people is that the struggle between Zionist Israel and its Muslim neighbors will be soon over by peaceful negotiations, conflict resolution, and economic development like it finally happened, for instance, with the Kingdom of Jordan and Egypt (today, Bahrein and the UAE recognized Israel too).

Nevertheless, we have to be even more concerned regarding the clash of civilizations (predicted by S. P. Huntington in 1993) in the region founded, in fact, on incompatible cultural differences. Probably, the most serious cultural clash in the Middle East is that of the Western-type of globalization and style of life that is fueled by interaction with oil-buyer external (Western) powers but which is in opposition with traditional Middle Eastern/Islamic values and life philosophy. In dealing with such questions, several focal points and facts had to be stressed as remarkable features of Arab-Islamic Middle Eastern culture:

1. Muslim religion in this region historically, in principle, was showing tolerance for other faiths.
2. There are many Muslims (both Arabs and not) who are supporting the faster process of democratic reforms in the region and fighting against unequal distribution of wealth within their states, especially oil states.
3. The majority of the regional inhabitants do not support violent Islamic radicalism/fundamentalism and especially its call for military jihad for the sake of changing the existing political structure and promoting their worldview.
4. Western civilization is extremely indebted to Arabs for their translations during the Middle Ages of crucial Hellenistic knowledge and tradition but above all in science and medicine. 
5. Islamic intellectuals and academicians are not, in principle, against the West but they really fear Western political power and influence in their societies, especially regarding materialism and cultural colonialism.
6. Historically, a bilateral enriching coexistence between Muslims and Westerners is more the rule but not some exception.
7. As a matter of fact, more than half of 1,6 billion Muslims in the world are not Arabs, most Muslims are not fundamentalists, and the majority of the Middle Eastern Muslims (including Iran and excluding Turkey) are Arabs.
8. Muslims in the region of the Middle East are not dogmatically homogeneous as they are divided among themselves mainly in two focal branches: Sunni and Shia communities.
9. Economic factors mainly behind their control are pushing the Middle East into the globalized marketplace.
10. The contemporary Middle East is a region of substantial social, political, cultural, and economic transition.

Nevertheless, the Middle East attracted full global attention after 9/11 2001 due to the terror acts in New York and Washington committed by the regional Islamic radical organization – al-Queda when their members led by Saudi wealthy Osama bin Laden crashed three hijacked airliners into NYC WTC and Washington, D.C.’s Pentagon buildings killing over 3000 people. It is extremely important to notice that after 9/11, 56 Muslim states immediately condemned the terror act as something that is in opposition to the Islamic values, teachings, way of life, and Qur’an. However, this terror act generated an American global war against (Islamic) terrorism, accompanied by Western invasions, occupations, and mass-killings of the civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq which in many eyes of the Muslims is seen as a modern type of anti-Islamic crusades.

The question is what might prompt Middle Eastern individuals, especially youngsters, to commit any type of terror act? Surely, behind such act is a deeper process of radicalization of the Arab Islamic youth by Islamic fundamentalists and extremists but on the other hand, there are many members of the younger Arab generation, including Arabs who studied in the West, who has a sense of being oppressed and humiliated by Westerners or just intentionally provoked by, for instance, French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Some of these (disillusioned?) youngsters are recruited into militant and terrorist (patriotic?) networks.

US lifts ban on Venezuelan oil in preparation for global war

Andrea Lobo

The Biden administration issued last week a license to allow Venezuela to sell oil, gas and gold to any markets for the first time since 2019. At the time, US sanctions were expanded to unsuccessfully encourage the Venezuelan military to oust President Nicolás Maduro and recognize the self-proclaimed “interim president” Juan Guaidó, a US puppet. 

Nicolas Maduro and Jorge Rodriguez, president of the National Assembly and chief negotiator , announce the recent agreements with the US-backed opposition and the Biden administration, October 20 [Photo: @NicolasMaduro]

While the license is set for six months, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that it could be canceled anytime, and that Maduro has until late November to meet US demands. 

The announcement is the result of talks between the Maduro administration and the US-backed opposition in Barbados and directly with the Biden administration in Qatar. Maduro has agreed to hold general elections in late 2024 and to receive deportees from the United States for the first time in four years. About 50,000 Venezuelan refugees are already threatened with deportation based on arbitrary and illegal decrees issued by Biden. 

Washington is also demanding Maduro free so-called “political prisoners,” including those condemned for participating in US regime change operations, and reverse bans against certain candidates, namely Maria Corina Machado. An open advocate of foreign military incursions and an earlier opponent of any talks with Maduro or sanctions relief, Machado is the frontrunner against all likely candidates, including Maduro. 

Maduro responded on Wednesday by appealing to Biden to “turn the page” and “rebuild our relationship based on respect.” Then, on Thursday, Caracas freed five prisoners tied to the opposition parties. 

The deal is a total prostration of the Maduro government to US imperialism. It does not end or actually ease US sanctions, otherwise a “license” would not be necessary. A ban on trading Venezuelan bonds, the freezing of billions of Venezuelan state assets in the US and other measures largely sanctioning trade with Venezuelan firms remain in force, while Maduro agreed that the shares of Citgo—the US branch of the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA—will be sold to pay creditors. Diplomatic relations, moreover, have not been formally re-established, and a $15 million US bounty for Maduro’s capture is still in effect.

These measures have amounted to a criminal economic blockade depriving Venezuela of trade and foreign reserves necessary to import vital goods like food and medicines. The sanctions have been chiefly responsible for tens of thousands of deaths and the displacement of millions of refugees, treated with disdain by the Biden administration.

The deal is carefully crafted to maintain broad economic desperation while facilitating Washington’s war drives against China, Russia and Iran—all allies and trade partners of the Maduro government—as well as its active support of Israel’s genocidal campaign against Gaza.

The mass deportations of Venezuelans are aimed as another concession to Biden’s fascistic Republican “colleagues” to secure their support for spending billions more in the US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

Then, as explained by Bloomberg: “The rollback of American sanctions on Venezuelan oil could rob Chinese buyers of one of their cheapest sources of crude.” One Chinese source said to Reuters: “We would expect the supply from Venezuela to slide in the coming months as Caracas may prioritize sales to Europe and the U.S., and prioritizing big oil firms.” India is also likely to compete for limited Venezuelan oil. 

Since 2015, China has refused to give any new credits to Venezuela, but tens of billions of dollars remained outstanding. In order to offset this debt, a Chinese military firm working with independent refiners has continued shipping Venezuelan oil, sold at major discounts, and rebranding it to avoid sanctions.

The new US license is another provocation aimed at interrupting these operations and further isolating China from sources of cheap oil, including sanctioned Iranian and Russian crude. 

More broadly, warnings that oil could rise well above $100 in case of a broader war in the Middle East come after months of a global undersupply, which the Energy Information Administration predicts at 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) through the first quarter of 2024. Barron’s cites estimates that US licenses could allow Venezuela to increase production by that exact amount and “plug that gap.” 

The Biden administration had already allowed Chevron to produce limited amounts of crude oil in Venezuela, and the company plans to increase its production to 150,000 bpd. 

In total, Venezuela is producing about 800,000 bpd, less than a third of the output before sanctions. But analysts indicate that the state of disrepair of much of the oil infrastructure in the country and the limited character of the sanctions relief will prevent production from increasing much higher. “So far, oil traders don’t seem optimistic that Venezuela will once again become an oil powerhouse,” Barron’s concludes.

In other words, the US license is aimed not at significantly increasing production, much less resolving Venezuela’s economic crisis, but rather redirecting its cheap oil away from China, while allowing lucrative deals between US and European firms and a thin layer of the Venezuelan ruling elite. 

The deal and Maduro’s assurances to Wall Street essentially forego any major increases in social spending to address the desperate humanitarian crisis.

The electoral deal opens a new avenue for regime change and helps dress a brutal imperialist extortion as “steps toward democracy.” 

Since the economic crisis began in 2014, Maduro and his late predecessor Hugo Chávez brutally suppressed any resistance from below while enforcing historic attacks on living standards in what was one of the richest countries in the region. Beyond empty “anti-imperialist rhetoric,” the ruling Socialist United Party (PSUV) has consistently made appeals to demonstrate its subservience to local and foreign capital. 

The main employer organization Fedecámaras, which has been actively involved in US-backed coup attempts, has recently appealed for an end to all sanctions and praised the policies of the Maduro administration. Its president Adán Celis described this weekend to TalCual how Maduro has already agreed to free trade zones and a regressive “Law of Tax Harmonization” as well as the creation of a “General Staff against Smuggling” composed of the government and the regional employer organizations to improve their “productivity and competivity.”

Celis stated that he is “convinced” that the government will agree to sell fully or partially a list of 800 public-owned companies and said there was “progress” and “increasingly fluid” talks on further legal “warrantees and conditions for private investment.” Such conditions refer to lifting regulations to let capitalists exploit workers and natural resources freely. Celis called specifically for “coexistence without intervention on employers and union leaders,” referring to a corporatist alliance with the state and the union bureaucracy, which is largely controlled by US-backed political forces, to impose the diktats of the corporations. 

For now, having failed repeatedly at regime change—most recently a failed operation by CIA-trained mercenaries to kidnap or kill the Venezuelan leadership in May 2020,—US imperialism and its partners in the Venezuelan ruling class are agreeing to have the PSUV and perhaps Maduro, who has not announced his candidacy, remain in a power-sharing agreement. 

It must be added that the US State Department had applauded a crackdown against entrenched sectors of the “boli-bourgeoisie,” a layer of the military and state bureaucracy that enriched itself through corruption under Chávez. 

However, the PSUV’s power-sharing agreement with forces that have worked for years to overthrow it sets the stage for a successful coup once US imperialism and broader sections of the military leadership conclude that the PSUV is unable to continue suppressing the class struggle and guaranteeing their interests. 

More broadly, the control that US imperialism had exerted in its “backyard” is today disproportionate to its relative weight in the economy regionally and globally, just as the colonies of the European powers were disproportionate to their economic weight on the eve of World War II. Regardless of the temporary arrangements and megalomaniac maneuvers by Biden, in a context of rapid economic decay, as Leon Trotsky warned as early as 1938, “the United States is heading inevitably toward an imperialist explosion such as the world has never seen.”