World economy “defying gravity”

Nick Beams

So far, the global economy appears to have dodged a bullet. Predictions of a recession resulting from the interest hikes by the world’s major central banks have not materialised. But there are warnings that beneath the surface, and not far below it, there are mounting problems, and the present situation is not sustainable.

A man wearing a protective mask walks in front of an electronic display board in the lobby of the Shanghai Stock Exchange building, China, Friday, Feb. 14, 2020. [AP Photo]

This was the theme of an editorial in the Economist magazine published over the weekend under the title: “The world economy is defying gravity. That cannot last.” In a reference to the road-runner cartoon character, some commentators have labelled it a Wile E. Coyote moment.

Even as wars rage and the geopolitical climate darkens, it began, “the world economy has been an irrepressible source of cheer.”

According to the magazine, America’s economy roared ahead in the fourth quarter at an annualised rate of 4.9 percent, inflation is coming down, the central banks may have stopped their rate tightening and China, because of a property crisis, appears to be about to benefit from a modest stimulus.

“Unfortunately, however,” it continued, “this good cheer cannot last. The foundations for today’s growth look unstable. Peer ahead, and threats abound.”

Pointing to the rapid rise in interest rates, one of the sharpest in decades, the editorial noted that the US government now had to pay 5 percent to borrow for 30 years, compared to just 1.2 percent during the COVID-19 pandemic recession. Not long ago, Germany’s borrowing costs were negative but were now nearly 3 percent and even the Bank of Japan had all but given up on its promise to keep borrowing costs at 1 percent.

The editorial directly took issue with recent comments by US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen that the higher rates were a good thing because they reflected a healthy economy.

“In fact, they are a source of danger. Because higher rates are likely to persist, today’s economic policies will fail and so will the growth they have fostered.”

The Economist claimed, as others have, that one of the reasons the US economy has fared better than expected is because consumers have been spending money accumulated in the pandemic and there were still $1 trillion of “excess savings” left.

Once that ran out, interest rates would “start to bite” and trouble would emerge across the world economy as rates stayed higher for longer.

Business bankruptcies were starting to rise in the US and Europe, with companies that locked in low rates eventually facing the rising cost of finance. Higher mortgage costs would affect house prices. Banks holding long-term securities (the value of which has fallen) would have to take action to “plug the holes blown in their balance sheets by higher rates.”

The editorial saw rising government debt as a major problem, with US government deficit in the year to September about double what had been expected in mid-2022.

“At a time of low unemployment, such borrowing is jaw-droppingly reckless. All told, government debt in the rich world is now higher, as a share of GDP, than at any time since after the Napoleonic wars.”

The Economist is clearly of the view that the growth of debt is behind the selloff in the bond market and the rise in interest rates (bond prices and interest rates have an inverse relationship) because of the growing incapacity of financial markets to keep funding government debt.

The opposed position, advanced by Yellen and others, is that rising rates are an expression of economic strength.

Some important evidence on this issue came last week with the market reaction to the US Treasury’s decision to reduce the issuing of new debt below market expectations and to restructure debt issuance towards the shorter end of the market.

As the Wall Street Journal reported, the Treasury decision “handed investors a happy surprise.”

By the end of the week, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note had fallen to 4.557 percent, after briefly topping 5 percent on October 23. The S&P 500 stock market index climbed 5.9 percent for the week, “largely reflecting relief over the decline in yields, which are a critical driver of US borrowing costs.”

Under what were once “normal” conditions, the Treasury moves would have had next-to-no impact. That they were even undertaken and had the effect they produced, indicated growing problems of liquidity in the world’s most important financial market, resulting from its increasing difficulty in digesting rising government debt.

Following the Treasury move and the US Federal Reserve decision on the same day not to increase its interest rates, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) said “relief was palpable across Wall Street.”

How long that lasts is another question. Sonal Desai, chief investment officer at Franklin Templeton Fixed Income, told the WSJ the rally was “overdone.”

There was an idea that “Treasury has the market’s back, [but] it can’t,” she said. “The size of the budget deficit means that there is an absolute limit to how much the Treasury can do.”

The growth of US debt amid tightening liquidity is by no means the only source of turbulence.

There is the ongoing issue of the so-called basis trade, in which investors use large amounts of borrowed money to sell bond futures and buy bonds to make money from the very small gap in their price—a practice which, according to research by the Federal Reserve, posed “financial stability vulnerability.”

Life insurance companies, once regarded as pillar of financial rectitude, are also getting caught up in the coils of the financial market.

Last week, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) urged financial regulators to take a close look at the activities of private equity funds such as Apollo, Blackstone Carlyle and others, warning of the possibility of “systemic risk” and the danger of “contagion” to other parts of the financial system.

The IMF move followed a warning last month by private equity investor J C Flowers that the increase in life insurance companies investing with private equity groups was posing a risk. There was the possibility of more than one firm getting “zapped.”

The role of insurance companies is decisive. It should be recalled that in 2008 financial authorities were prepared to let the investment bank Lehman Brothers go under but stepped in to bail out the system when the insurance giant AIG was threatened.

On top of the ever-present and deepening financial risks, there is the added threat of war and geo-political tensions to the stability of the global economy. Two major figures in the world of finance capital issued warnings to this effect over the weekend.

JP Morgan chairman Jamie Dimon said that, coming on top of the Ukraine war, the Israeli war on Hamas was “quite scary and unpredictable.”

In the US there was still a “strong” economy. “But these geopolitical matters are very serious—arguably the most serious since 1938.”

Larry Fink, the chief executive of BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, said geopolitical risk was a major component in shaping lives amid growing fears.

Rising fear led to reduced spending and so “the probability of a European recession grows and the probability of a US recession grows.”

Fink said inflation would be higher for longer and this would require the Federal Reserve to lift rates further and “that will be ultimately the way we get into a recession.”

Six Pacific states line up with US-Israel against UN vote for Gaza ceasefire

Patrick O’Connor

A recent United Nations General Assembly vote on a motion calling for an “immediate, durable and sustainable humanitarian truce” in Gaza highlighted the American and Israeli international isolation from the world’s population. Most governments sought to head off the growing public hostility to the genocidal assault on the Palestinian people by voting for or abstaining on the motion.

James Marape and Benjamin Netanyhu open PNG embassy in Jerusalem, September 5, 2023. [Photo: Facebook, PNG Office of the Prime Minister]

Of the 12 nation states that directly lined up with the US and Israel to vote “no,” six were small Pacific states with a median population of just 80,000 people. Four of these—Nauru, Palau, Marshall Islands and Micronesia—are impoverished micro-states, with the latter three functioning as colonies of the United States in all but name. The other two governments with larger populations that aligned with Washington and Tel Aviv—Papua New Guinea and Fiji—again demonstrated their abject subservience to imperialism.

The three-page October 27 UN General Assembly truce resolution also demanded that “all parties immediately and fully comply with their obligations under international law,” with “immediate, continuous, sufficient and unhindered provision of essential goods and services to civilians throughout the Gaza Strip, including but not limited to water, food, medical supplies, fuel and electricity.”

The final vote was 120 in favour, 45 abstentions, and 14 against. The entire procedure represented a fraud against the Palestinian people, bringing to mind Lenin’s characterisation of the League of Nations, the UN’s pre-World War II predecessor, as a “thieves’ kitchen.”

The UN resolution committed those in favour to nothing. The states voting “yes” included multiple capitalist regimes in the Middle East, including Egypt and Jordan, that for decades have actively collaborated with Israel in suppressing the Palestinian struggle. Likewise, several of those who abstained on the General Assembly vote are long-standing allies of the US and Israel and have lent active support to the attack on Gaza—including Britain, Germany, Australia and Canada.

That all said, the “no” vote on the truce resolution had an especially provocative character, demonstrating blatant disregard for basic precepts of international law by the US and Israel, together with their flunkies.

Washington relied on bought-and-paid-for Pacific mini-states in order to cobble together a double-digit “no” vote within the 179-member UN General Assembly.

Palau, Marshall Islands and Micronesia are American-dominated island territories north of Papua New Guinea. These archipelagos were historically colonised by multiple powers, including Spain, Germany and Japan. After World War II, the US seized them from Japan and held them for decades as administrators of a so-called UN trusteeship.

American authorities ran roughshod over the rights of the indigenous populations. In Marshall Islands, for example, between 1946 and 1958 the US detonated 67 nuclear devices for testing purposes. Residents became unwitting medical experiment subjects when American military authorities commissioned studies to measure the impact of nuclear fallout. Nuclear-contaminated earth from testing sites in Nevada was also shipped to the archipelago and dumped there.

The three north Oceania states each received nominal independence beginning in the late 1970s, but remain bound by a so-called Compact of Free Association with the US. This arrangement involves Washington funneling cash to the states’ ruling elites each year, in return for the US being legally responsible for defence and national security, with the American military enjoying untrammeled access to the islands and sea territories. These operations serve to complement the main US bases in the Pacific Ocean, in Hawaii and Guam. Their importance to Washington has only increased as it attempts to militarily encircle China.

An additional quid pro quo between the US and Palau, Marshall Islands and Micronesia involves foreign relations and UN votes. The Pacific states function as US proxies, including by defending Israeli government and military operations against the Palestinians. For years, the three governments have lined up alongside Washington and Tel Aviv to oppose even the mildest censure of Israel, or any tepid suggestion that the Palestinians have rights.

Last July a Jerusalem Post journalist travelled to these north Pacific states to investigate this record of countries, which “most Israelis have trouble finding on a map.” The report explained: “It is their close ties with Washington that are the deciding factor. On my visit to Palau, one senior official bluntly told me, ‘We vote with Israel because that’s what America does.’ It’s that simple.”

In the southwest Pacific, Nauru’s nominal independence is similarly bogus. It has a population of less than 20,000 people. In the 20th century, British and Australian corporations ruthlessly stripped the island of its valuable phosphate reserves. More than 80 percent of the state remains uninhabitable due to the legacy of strip mining. More recently, the Nauruan ruling elite has accepted cash to illegally imprison asylum seekers on behalf of successive Australian governments. Nauru’s votes in the UN reflect its ruling elite’s mercenary relationship with Canberra and allied imperialist powers.

The more populous Papua New Guinea (PNG) (with a population over 10 million) and Fiji (around 1 million) have not always lined up alongside the US and Israel in the UN.

Their vote on the proposed Gaza ceasefire reflected increasingly close ties with Washington, amid a US campaign to minimise China’s influence in the southwest Pacific. Previous PNG and Fijian governments have welcomed expanded Chinese trade and investment, promoting a “look north” foreign policy. They sought to manoeuvre for advantage between Beijing on the one hand and US and Australian imperialism on the other. Recently-installed administrations in both countries, however, have revised this stance.

PNG Prime Minister James Marape, who took office last year, signed a Defence Cooperation Agreement with the US in May. It will significantly expand American military operations in the country by allowing “uninhibited access” to strategic military and civilian locations, including ports and airports. This is aimed against China, with Washington preparing to wage a war of aggression against its Asian rival.

Marape also sought to curry favour with the US, as well as evangelical Christians within PNG, by personally opening an embassy in Jerusalem last September. The prime minister said that Jerusalem was the “universal capital of the nation and people of Israel,” while saying nothing about Israel’s illegal occupation of East Jerusalem since 1967. Marape declared that Israeli investors were welcome to land in a “special economic zone” in PNG, adding that his government would support Israel on votes at the UN.

These moves have been widely opposed within PNG. Students have staged multiple protests over the military agreement with the US. Numerous social media posts have condemned the government for its opposition to a ceasefire in Gaza, accusing Marape of acting as a puppet. One Facebook post read: “Papua New Guinea a FAKE Christian Nation has voted AGAINST peace in Israel. Someone needs to be held responsible for NOT protecting civilians and humanitarian obligations.”

In Fiji, Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka issued a statement explaining the country’s UN vote that amplified Israeli propaganda points. It falsely declared: “Israel’s primary target is Hamas, not the Palestinian population… They have established safe zones to help Gazan citizens relocate out of harm’s way.”

Rabuka, who came to office last December, has reoriented Fijian foreign policy closer in line with US and Australian interests. In June he indicated he would review and consider terminating a policing agreement with Beijing that was signed in 2011, allowing Chinese officers to be deployed to the country.

The UN vote triggered a crisis within his unstable coalition government. Deputy prime minister and National Federation Party leader Biman Prasad declared his opposition, and called for a cessation of violence in Gaza to allow the provision of humanitarian aid. Rifts within the Fijian ruling elite were also expressed by former military strongman Frank Bainimarama. He warned of a heightened security risk for hundreds of Fijian troops serving in so-called UN peacekeeping operations in several Middle Eastern countries.

Many ordinary Fijians are outraged at their government’s complicity in the Gaza genocide. After days of heated online discussion, students at the University of the South Pacific planned to hold a demonstration last Saturday in support of the Palestinian people. The government immediately banned it. Home Affairs Minister Pio Tikoduadua declared that his priority was “the security of the nation,” adding: “You can see what’s happening on social media. You don’t have to add fuel to the fire.”

The blatantly anti-democratic suppression of the student rally reflects the government’s fragility and nervousness. As throughout the world, in Fiji and other Pacific states a chasm separates the reaction of the population to the Israeli genocide—marked by horror and revulsion—and that of the ruling elite, which is cynically indifferent if not openly enthusiastic for the bloody operation.

Death toll in Gaza passes 10,000, as Israeli military prepares massive ground attack

Patrick Martin

Thousands of Israeli soldiers backed by tanks, artillery, warplanes and warships have surrounded Gaza City, the most densely populated portion of the Gaza Strip, threatening mass killing on an even greater scale than has already taken place. The Gaza Health Ministry announced Monday that the confirmed death toll has now surpassed 10,000 in the first 30 days of the war, which is in reality a one-sided slaughter of the population of an enclave in which 2.3 million people live in an area the size of Detroit or Philadelphia.

Palestinians inspect the damage of a destroyed house following an Israeli airstrike in Jabaliya refugee camp, on the outskirts of Gaza City, Sunday, November 5, 2023. [AP Photo/Mohammed Alaswad]

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Monday that it had cut the northern half of Gaza off from the southern half, meaning that there was no longer any possibility of the remaining people in Gaza City—estimated at 500,000—escaping from the hellish conditions of bombardment and massacre. A full-scale block-by-block, house-to-house ground invasion of Gaza City could develop within hours, according to military observers and journalists. This is likely to include the destruction of any building believed to be housing Hamas fighters, or any structure the IDF claims has a Hamas tunnel underneath it. Given the reports in the imperialist press of “hundreds of miles” of such tunnels, and the IDF claims that Hamas has built headquarters and other military facilities underneath hospitals, schools and other key civilian infrastructure, it is predictable that a ground invasion will involve the total destruction of Gaza City, with countless casualties among the helpless and trapped population.

The conditions for Palestinians in Gaza, both north and south, combine mass starvation with the threat of imminent death from bombs, rockets, missiles and artillery shells unleashed by the Israeli military. The Gaza director of UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for the Palestinian people, said Friday that the average Gaza resident is living on two pieces of pita bread per day made from flour stockpiled by the UN agency. The Gaza Strip is a “scene of death and destruction,” Thomas White said, while UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the enclave had become a “graveyard for children.”

UNRWA sustains 89 bakeries throughout Gaza, supplying bread to three-quarters of the population, about 1.7 million, but many of these have been shut down because of damage inflicted in the bombing or the exhaustion of fuel supplies needed to run ovens. Israel is not permitting fuel trucks to pass through the Rafah Border Crossing from Egypt into southern Gaza.

At a press briefing by UN aid officials, White said that the water supply in Gaza was hopelessly compromised, partly through the shutdown of water intake from Israel, partly from the collapse of sewage treatment because of lack of fuel, leading to contamination of what water remains. This is endangering the health of the population, especially children, because of the threat of cholera and other diseases related to consumption of untreated water.

Martin Griffiths, chief of UN humanitarian operations, said that 72 UNRWA staff members had been killed since October 7. “I think it’s the highest number of U.N. staff lost in a conflict,” he said. This figure has since risen to 88, according to press reports Monday.

He added that the official death toll reported by the Gaza Health Ministry was undoubtedly a serious underestimation. The real figure will only be known after the rubble is cleared after the end of fighting, he said. Half of all buildings in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged.

The global outrage among working people over the genocide in Gaza found expression Monday in the refusal of 1,200 dockworkers in Barcelona to load ships carrying war materiel to Israel. The members of the dockers union OEPB called for a ceasefire. According to the Spanish newspaper El Diario, “Workers have committed to not load, unload, or facilitate the tasks of any boat containing weapons.” The workers declared that the conditions in Gaza violated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and criticized the decision of the Spanish government to export 300 million euros in arms to Israel this year, adding to the 700 million euros shipped in the last few years.

The Barcelona dockworkers had previously halted shipments of arms to Gaza during earlier Israeli attacks in 2014 and to US-NATO forces during the bombing of Libya in 2011.

The worldwide opposition to the hellish conditions in Gaza even found expression at an otherwise routine press briefing Monday at the US State Department. There was a brief intersection with reality when a reporter asked Principal Deputy Press Spokesman Vedant Patel whether he and other officials were concerned over the possibility of war crimes charges against them because of their role in defending Israeli mass killings in Gaza. The exchange is worth taking note of.

The press briefing took on an antagonistic character as a number of reporters from Muslim and Arab countries peppered Patel with questions about US support for Israel’s war of extermination in Gaza, including the cutoff of food, water and electricity, and the indiscriminate bombing of hospitals, schools and residential neighborhoods. Patel answered all these questions with stock phrases about upholding Israel’s “right to defend itself,” although when asked how killing children in Gaza could be considered “self-defense,” he did not reply. Instead, he made repeated references to the October 7 Hamas attack across the Gaza border into Israel.

The State Department spokesman claimed that civilians were being killed because Hamas used them as “human shields” and deliberately “co-located” military facilities within the civilian infrastructure of Gaza. This reply is particularly disingenuous given that Hamas is a political party which runs the government of Gaza and directs hospitals, schools and other social services.

One reporter cited the resignation of Craig Mokhiber from the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, citing the Israel genocide and asked whether the US government has “bribed” or otherwise pressured the Palestinian Authority not to bring charges of genocide against Israel before the International Court of Justice. Patel replied blandly that the US would continue to raise with Israel “the need to distinguish between Hamas terrorists and Palestinian civilians.”

When Patel declared that the State Department has a “rigorous process” for determining when genocide is occurring and had not done so in the case of Gaza, the reporter cited a letter from the Center for Constitutional Rights to congressmen and senators, warning them that they could face prosecution for war crimes and “abetting genocide” if they vote to approve the Biden administration’s request for a supplemental appropriation of $14 billion for Israel’s continued prosecution of the war on Gaza.

He asked Patel directly, “Do members of the State Department officials face similar possibilities?” When Patel repeated his statement that the State Department has not found that genocide is occurring in Gaza, the reporter asked angrily about “hospital after hospital, bakery after bakery” being destroyed by Israeli air strikes.

At that point, Patel turned to other reporters and other topics, and only a few minutes later the press briefing was shut down.

Holland Government Scholarships 2024/2025

Application Deadlines:

• 1st February 2024
• 1st May 2024.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: international students from outside the European Economic Area (EEA)

To be taken at (country): Netherlands research universities and universities of applied sciences

Fields of Study: courses offered at the Universities

About Holland Government Scholarships: The Holland Scholarship is financed by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science as well as several Dutch research universities and universities of applied sciences. This scholarship is meant for international students from outside the European Economic Area (EEA) who want to do their bachelor’s or master’s in the Netherlands.

Type: full-time Bachelors, Masters.

Eligibility Criteria:

• Your nationality is non-EEA.
• You are applying for a full-time bachelor’s or master’s programme at one of the participating Dutch higher education institutions.
• You meet the specific requirements of the institution of your choice.
• You do not have a degree from an education facility in the Netherlands.

Number of Scholarships: not specified

Value of Holland Government Scholarships: The scholarship amounts to €5,000.

Duration of Scholarship: You will receive this in the first year of your studies.

How to Apply: 

• The deadline for application is either 1 February 2023 or 1 May 2023. Please check your specific deadline on the website of the institution you want to apply to.
• Further information about the application procedure, the participating institutions and the specific deadlines is available on the website of the institution of your choice.

Check further instructions below.

1. Choose a course and/or institution with the Studyfinder tool.
2. Check whether the Dutch higher education institution is participating.
   a. Participating research universities
   b. Participating universities of applied sciences
3. Check the selected fields of studies on the website of the Dutch higher education institution.
4. Check whether you meet the application criteria above.
5. You need to apply for the Holland Government Scholarship directly at the institution of your choice and meet their selection criteria.
6. If you have any questions about the procedure, please contact the institution you are applying to directly.
7. After the application deadline, the institution you applied to will contact you to let you know if you have been awarded a scholarship.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Huge protests throughout the Asia-Pacific against the Gaza genocide

Ben McGrath

This weekend, many hundreds of thousands of people across the Asia-Pacific region took part in the global demonstrations opposing Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza and denouncing the imperialist powers for supporting the slaughter. Workers and young people expressed not only their revulsion to what is taking place in Gaza, but their anti-war sentiment in general.

Protesters shout slogans and wave Palestinian flags during a more than one million strong rally in support of the Palestinians in Gaza, at the National Monument in Jakarta, Indonesia, Sunday, Nov. 5, 2023. [AP Photo/Dita Alangkara]

All these protests have faced a near-total blackout in the corporate and government media, which has also attempted to hide from the public the atrocities being committed by Israel. However, as they learn what is happening to the Palestinian people, more and more people are coming out to demand action against the slaughter in Gaza.

In Indonesia, one of the most populous countries in the region, thousands of people have taken part in protests since the beginning of the Palestinian uprising on October 7 and Israel’s brutal response. The largest protest to date took place Sunday in Jakarta. Hundreds of thousands gathered near the United States embassy, located by National Monument Square. Participants waved Palestinian flags and called for a ceasefire and a free Palestine.

Participants reported on social media that as many as two million people took part. Protests also took place in other cities around the country.

Demonstrators condemned the barbarism taking place. “I wanted to take part in this march so that I can show to the public that here in Indonesia we have a huge number of people who care about Palestine,” 22-year-old Syifa told Arab News. “I think it’s important, while you are able, to give out your voice for humanity. Especially because this Palestine issue is clearly not a conflict, it’s genocide.”

In neighboring Malaysia, tens of thousands protested. On Sunday, for example, video footage on social media of a packed soccer stadium in Terengganu showed fans waving Palestinian flags and chanting in support of Palestinians.

Large numbers of people have been taking part in protests around Malaysia. The previous week on October 28, tens of thousands held a rally and march to the US embassy in Kuala Lumpur. Tens of thousands demonstrated on October 22.

At the latter demonstration, Hussein, a 35-year-old Palestinian stated: “There’s a lot of awareness that’s increasing towards the support of the Palestinian cause, and to finally give a fair share of attention to what the Palestinians have been pleading for since 1948, which is fair standards of living and equality.”

Significantly, protests are growing in Japan, where widespread anti-war sentiment exists within the working class. Even as Tokyo is pushing to remilitarize and prepare for a US-instigated war against China, the demonstrations taking place show that the Japanese public does not buy the imperialist propaganda used as justification for such conflicts.

An October 18 protest near the US embassy in Tokyo, Japan, in solidarity with Palestinian people in Gaza. [AP Photo/Ayaka McGill]

In one of the largest rallies to date, thousands marched on Sunday in Tokyo near the Israeli embassy, calling for an end to Israeli war crimes. They shouted slogans such as “Free Palestine” and “No genocide.”

Another protest in Tokyo on November 1 involved 300 people near Israel’s embassy. A 60-year-old woman at that protest told Japan’s national broadcaster NHK that there had been little coverage of what was going on in Gaza, but she felt compelled to demonstrate after learning more about it. Others felt similarly and called for more protests.

Additional rallies have taken place in other major Japanese cities. Demonstrating outside the US consulate in Osaka on October 16, Yoshiyasu Yamakawa, one of the protest organizers declared: “There’s no chance of resolution through military escalation. I want the US to immediately stop aiding Israel, work toward an unconditional military withdrawal and the start of peace negotiations.”

On October 22, about 300 people protested in the city of Fukuoka. That rally was organized by Osama Eljamal, originally from the Gaza Strip and a professor at Kyushu University. Other Palestinians residing in Japan took part in the rally. They declared solidarity with the Palestinian people while calling for a ceasefire and end to war.

Similarly, hundreds of people have demonstrated in Seoul, South Korea. On Saturday, protesters gathered at Cheonggyecheon, near the Israeli and US embassies. Rally participants called for a ceasefire while denouncing the genocide in Gaza. Those taking part included Koreans and foreign residents.

Palestinian supporters march during a rally to urge Israel to suspend attacks on Gaza Strip, in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2023. [AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon]

Other protests have been held in Seoul and in cities like Busan. This includes rallies on a weekly basis since Israel’s attack on Gaza began. In some cases, police have intervened to try to silence protests, claiming the rallies exceeded legal noise limits.   

In the Philippines, there have been protests in Manila as well as in the southern part of the country where there is a sizeable Muslim population. Hundreds gathered at protests in the capital city on November 4, holding Palestinian flags and calling for an end to hostilities.

Other protests have taken place in recent days, particularly to denounce Manila’s decision to abstain from a United Nations vote on October 27 calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Protesters have held up signs reading “Stand with Palestine” while denouncing the role of US imperialism in supporting Israel’s genocide. At times, police have clashed with protesters.

Bangkok, Thailand has also seen protests in recent weeks. One of the largest demonstrations reported on took place October 21, when hundreds rallied near the Israeli embassy. Demonstrators held signs with slogans such as “Bombing kids is not self-defense.”

The protests occurring throughout the Asia-Pacific region are just the tip of the iceberg, mostly hidden from view by the official media. Millions more are drawing the conclusion that the assault on Palestinians in Gaza is an attack on the rights of all working people.

Japan prepares to deploy fighter jets to Australia on a rotational basis

Ben McGrath

Amid the escalation of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and with the United States threatening wider military intervention in the Middle East, the imperialist powers in the Indo-Pacific are pushing ahead with the Washington-led war drive against China. This includes Japan and Australia, which are expanding their military presence throughout the region while Tokyo also remilitarizes.

Japanese Air Self-Defense Force F-35A fighter aircraft. [Photo: ASDF/DEFENSE MINISTRY ]

The Asahi Shimbun reported on October 30, citing Japanese government sources, that Tokyo plans to deploy Air Self-Defense Force (the formal name of Japan’s air force) fighter jets to Australia on a rotational basis as early as the next fiscal year. These include F-35s, F-15s and F-2s, which would be stationed in Australia for several months a year while conducting training drills with the Australian air force.

Tokyo and Canberra are deepening their military ties to line up with Washington’s war preparations against China. During a meeting between Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara and his Australian counterpart Richard Marles in Tokyo on October 19, the two agreed to put into practice a Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) signed between the two countries in January 2022, which went into formal effect in August.

The RAA allows troops from one country to enter the other more easily, facilitating their stationing abroad. According to the ministers, this will allow Japan and Australia to enhance operational cooperation and interoperability between their armed forces. The fighter jet deployment is an outcome of the RAA. Tokyo has similar agreements with the US and the United Kingdom.

Kihara and Marles also agreed to deepen trilateral military collaboration with the US. Washington regards both countries as key components of the war drive against China. While the US is the only country with which Japan has a formal military treaty, Tokyo considers Australia one of its closest partners. Both are members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad), a quasi-military alliance that includes the US and India.

Australia is a key base of operations for the US military, which includes the stationing of 2,500 US Marines in Darwin on a “rotational” basis. US think-tanks have described this base as an important strike force for a future conflict with China. The deployment of Japanese jets to Australia is meant to further solidify this position.

In recent years, Tokyo and Canberra have stepped up their military cooperation, which includes joint military exercises as well as unveiling a new security pact in October 2022. The closer integration between the two is part of the web of alliances that Washington is pushing to surround China. In addition to the Quad, Canberra joined the AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom, United States) pact in September 2021, while Tokyo has worked to integrate its own operations with US allies, including South Korea.

In Tokyo, Marles declared: “Our growing strategic alignment contributes to shared security challenges in our region, and is key to promoting an open, secure and prosperous Indo-Pacific.”

The promotion of a “free and open Indo-Pacific” is a euphemism for its opposite. The growing Japanese-Australian alliance means working to encircle China in order to goad Beijing into a military conflict, as the US and NATO did to Russia over Ukraine.

Japan is also using the fighter jet deployment to further its aims of remilitarization and to circumvent Article 9 of its post-World War II constitution that bans maintaining a military or deploying it overseas. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s administration states that basing jets in Australia is allowed under Japan’s “collective self-defense” doctrine, which Tokyo claims permits its Self-Defense Forces (SDF) to go to war in “defense” of “like-minded countries.”

No branch of the SDF has previously been deployed abroad for such training purposes. The deployment is part of Japan’s new National Defense Strategy, one of three documents released last December to further develop Tokyo’s war plans. The other two documents are the National Security Strategy and the Defense Buildup Program. Japan’s only overseas base is located in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa, ostensibly to combat piracy in the region.

There is nothing defensive about this whatsoever. In 2014, the Shinzo Abe government carried out a “reinterpretation” of the constitution to justify the “collective self-defense” concept. The following year, Abe’s government and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party ran roughshod over popular anti-war sentiment and mass protests to force through so-called national security legislation to justify this “reinterpretation.”

Tokyo has backed Washington as it has inflamed previously minor territorial disputes in the Indi-Pacific, practically overturned the “One China” policy regarding Taiwan, and sharply increased its military presence in the region to place pressure on Beijing.

Legal experts question the constitutionality of the fighter jet deployment. Koichi Yokota, a professor emeritus from Kyushu University and a constitutional law expert, told the Asahi Shimbun: “Even the right to collective self-defense, which was made possible by the (2015) national security legislation, is highly suspected of being unconstitutional.” He added that the rotational deployment “could expand the scope of the right to collective self-defense without limit, making it clearly unconstitutional.”

This last point identifies the government’s true aim. The dispatch of fighter jets overseas sets a quasi-legal precedent for expanding Tokyo’s military operations overseas without regard for the constitution or for any requirement to amend the constitution, a prospect that faces considerable opposition in the working class.

Tokyo is also working to expand military partnerships with other countries in the region. Prime Minister Kishida visited the Philippines for two days on Friday and Saturday for discussions with President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., before leaving for Malaysia.

Tokyo announced on November 1 that it plans to provide surveillance radars to the Philippines as part of its new Official Security Assistance program, introduced earlier this year. Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno stated: “While drastically strengthening Japan’s own defenses, it’s essential to improve the security and deterrent capabilities of like-minded countries.” Kishida and Marcos also discussed their own Reciprocal Access Agreement to allow Japanese troops to be stationed in the Philippines.

Vietnamese President Vo Van Thuong is set to visit Japan this month, where Hanoi and Tokyo plan to elevate their relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership. Hanoi and Washington signed a similar agreement in September when US President Joe Biden visited Vietnam.

Gaza: From colony, to open air prison, to killing field—Part Two

Jean Shaoul

In 1993, Israel’s incoming Labor Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Arafat signed the Oslo Accords, promising a “two-state solution” whereby Arafat and the Palestinian Authority would guarantee Israel’s security and preside over a bifurcated, non-contiguous state, separate from but contained by Israel. This precluded any possibility of an independent sovereign state, let alone any democracy or improvement in the Palestinians’ social and economic conditions.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, US president Bill Clinton, and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, September 13, 1993

Oslo’s economic arrangements left Israel in control of foreign policy, defence, the settlements and the borders and crossings into Israel. It gave Israel jurisdiction over a customs union with the PA that exempted Israeli goods from customs duties and de facto control of Palestinian water and other resources, while giving the Palestinians the right to work in Israel. It held the PA’s purse strings, courtesy of its collection on the PA’s behalf of customs duties and value added tax—equal to about 75 percent of all PA revenue—and regularly withheld the tax revenue.

The newly formed Islamist groups, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), rejected the Oslo Accords and escalated their attacks on Israel. Rabin responded by implementing a closure regime, sealing Israel’s borders, establishing checkpoints and restricting Palestinians’ entry into Israel for work or business, breaking the Oslo agreements. Gaza was subjected to repeated closures. In 1994, even as the Accords concluded, Israel began constructing a perimeter fence around the enclave.

Deprived of their Palestinian workforce, Israel’s bosses turned instead to Asia for cheap labour, with the number immigrant workers reaching 100,000 by 1996, far more than the 70,000 Palestinians at their peak. The Palestinians had lost their limited usefulness to Israel’s employers, but not their land, resources and markets.

Israel’s land grab and settlement building continued apace. By 2000, the number of housing units had increased by 52 percent and three new settlements were officially established, along with over 42 unofficial settlements. The number of settlers rose from 115,700 in 1993 to 176,973 in mid-1999. Israel’s extraction of Palestinian water resources escalated, rendering Gaza’s water undrinkable and causing an acute water crisis in Gaza in 2000.

The Oslo Accords legitimized the increased theft of Palestinian land and resources, and a one-way movement of goods with little or no movement of labour. While Israel prospered during the Oslo years and largely secured the end of the Arab boycott, Palestinian agriculture and its economy collapsed, and unemployment and poverty rose. While Israel’s per capita GDP rose by 14 percent during Oslo years, the Palestinians’ per capita GDP fell by 3.8 percent. The situation in Gaza was even starker. Its share of the Palestinian economy fell from around 37 percent in 1994 to 31 percent in 2000.

The second Intifada and the ghettoization of the Palestinians

The assassination of Rabin in 1995 by a right-wing, religious zealot signaled the refusal of Israel’s ruling elite to make any meaningful concessions to the Palestinians. This and the self-evident fraud of the Oslo process that had brought only appalling poverty and degradation for the Palestinian workers and peasants, amid the rampant corruption and cronyism of the Palestinian bourgeoisie, gave rise to the second Intifada in September 2000. This was as much an uprising against the PLO leadership that had signed up to Oslo as against Israel, with Mahmoud Abbas, one of the negotiators of the Oslo Accords, calling for an end to the Intifada. It paved the way for the rise of Hamas as a political force to fill the vacuum.

It would take six years of massive Israeli violence and brutality to crush the uprising, with Arafat confined in a virtual prison inside the PA’s compound in Ramallah almost until his still unexplained death in 2004.

Faris Odeh, a 14 year-old boy who was killed in early November 2000—during the Second Intifada—throwing a stone at an Israel Defense Forces tank in the Gaza Strip. This photo was taken on October 29, 2000, and Odeh was shot dead 10 days later on November 8, while again throwing stones at Israeli troops. [Photo: Associated Press/Laurent Rebours)]

With the “demographic problem” escalating, all the Zionist parties sought to expand control over the West Bank, escalate settlement construction and promote population transfers and ethnic cleansing.

Ariel Sharon’s government embarked on a policy of separating Israel from the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and the West Bank Palestinians from those in the Gaza Strip. This included imposing a blockade on Gaza, erecting a high wall around the Strip, bombing Gaza’s new international airport just three years after it was opened in 1998, and stifling Gaza’s fishing industry by encircling it, ostensibly to stop arms smuggling.

Announcing in 2003 that Israel would “disengage” from Gaza, Sharon closed down the settlements and withdrew the troops guarding Israel’s assets in the Strip, having gained Washington’s green light for far more important settlement expansion and consolidation in the West Bank. He ordered the construction of the infamous Separation Wall that seized a further 18 kilometres of land inside the West Bank, taking 9 percent of the territory.

President George W. Bush of United States (center) discusses the Middle East with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel (left) and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas [Photo: US gov]

On taking up the PA presidency in 2005, Abbas faithfully imposed Israel’s dictats. After Hamas won a surprise victory in the January 2006 Palestinian elections over his Fatah-dominated PLO, widely seen as the corrupt representative of a handful of multimillionaires and Israel’s proxy security force, Abbas—with Israel’s backing—waged an unsuccessful civil war to unseat Hamas in its Gaza stronghold. The fratricidal struggle marked the definitive end of the Oslo “two-state solution” and more fundamentally of the nationalist perspective on which the Palestinians had based their struggle against Israel.

Following Fatah’s rout, Israel imposed a full-scale economic blockade of Gaza, with the backing of the PA, Egypt, the Arab regimes and the imperialist powers. Israel allowed just 259 commercial trucks to leave Gaza in the first three years, bringing Gaza’s exports, including agricultural products, to a halt. Within a year, employment in Gaza’s manufacturing industries fell from 35,000 to just 860. In 2010, Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron, no friend of the Palestinians, called Gaza “an open-air prison.”

Gaza’s plight was compounded by Israel’s repeated assaults that destroyed much of its public and social infrastructure and residential and commercial buildings. Its share of the Palestinian economy fell to 22 percent in 2008 and to 18 percent in 2018. Its per capita GDP of just $1,500 is now half that of the mid-1990s. Even before the war started, poverty rates were more than 50 percent, with unemployment at a similar level, leaving 80 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million population dependent on international aid.

The failure of Palestinian nationalism and the way forward for Palestinian and Jewish workers

The suffering inflicted on the Palestinians, no less than the failure of the Zionist project to secure a “safe haven for the Jews,” flows from the impossibility of securing democratic rights and socio-economic demands on the basis of a nationalist perspective. Fatah’s perspective of establishing a secular, democratic state by means of armed struggle could never provide the basis for the unification of Jewish and Palestinian workers that is required for the dismantling of the Zionist state. With the Israeli bourgeoisie backed to the hilt by the Arab regimes and the imperialist powers, above all the US whose interests it serves, the overthrow of the Zionist state would necessitate the overthrow of the Arab regimes.

Fatah, dominated by the Palestinian bourgeoisie, could never address that. Its aim was to reach a negotiated settlement with imperialism that would secure a state serving the interests of the Palestinian elite within the Middle East. It pledged to “cooperate with all Arab states.” Like all nationalist movements, it prioritized the national struggle over the class struggle, making it impossible to develop a class-based anti-imperialist movement that would cut across ethnic, religious and national division, be it in Jordan, Lebanon or Syria but above all in Israel. Instead, it maneuvered between one or other bourgeois Arab regime, all of whom in turn isolated and abandoned the PLO and the Palestinian people.

Hamas’s action on October 7, launched to secure the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails and the end of the blockade, against vastly superior forces, was tantamount to a suicide mission, with 1,500 Palestinians losing their lives in the attack. But its legitimate resistance to decades of oppression and siege, the longest in modern history, cannot end the terrible suffering of the Palestinian people or halt Israel and US imperialism’s plans for a wider war in the region.

Palestinians look for survivors following Israeli airstrike in Nusseirat refugee camp, Gaza Strip, October 31, 2023. [AP Photo/Doaa AlBaz]

The Biden administration has deployed US war ships and troops to the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East and launched attacks on Iranian-backed targets in Syria, while Israel, in addition to its repeated attacks on Syria, has exchanged fire with Hezbollah in the Israel, Lebanon and Syria border region.

The genocidal war now engulfing Gaza is no less a tragedy for the Israeli working class. The perspective of nationalism has proved to be just as disastrous for the Jews as their Palestinian counterparts. Israel has developed as an apartheid state, discriminating against non-Jews and responsible for decades of brutality against the Palestinians in the occupied territories and neighbouring countries. Israel’s ruling elite, having embraced fascism, has no political perspective other than dictatorship at home, genocide and ethnic cleansing, and savage wars abroad. Israeli workers will be sacrificed in the service of the Israeli ruling elite and its imperialist backers.

Throughout the nine-month protest movement against Netanyahu’s fascist government, the World Socialist Web Site warned that the only way to combat the threat to democratic rights and put an end to the danger of war is to break with all factions of the Zionist bourgeoisie and carry out a struggle to unite the Palestinian and Jewish working class. We warned, “The opposition leaders are no less committed to the expansion of Israel’s borders at the expense of the Palestinians,” a statement confirmed by opposition leaders Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot’s rush to join Netanyahu’s war cabinet.

Demonstrators block the traffic on a highway crossing the city during a protest against Netanyahu's dictatorial measures aimed at the judicial system, in Tel Aviv, Monday, July 24, 2023. [AP Photo/ Oded Balilty]

A state founded on the basis of “the ongoing repression of the Palestinians was always incapable of developing a genuinely democratic society. Its evolution as a garrison state for US imperialism, repeatedly at war with its Arab neighbours and in perpetual war with the Palestinians; pursing an expansionist ‘Greater Israel’ policy; resting ever more firmly on right-wing settler population in the Occupied Territories and US military subventions to offset the destabilizing impact of acute levels of social inequality among the highest in the world, is what has paved the way for the Frankenstein monster of Netanyahu’s government.”